David Hadley's Blog, page 145

Going Shopping

Anyway, not that we'd had all that much by way of a summer, still she did insist on the annual pilgrimage to the emporium of all dread and tears, so we could look upon their mighty displays of furnishings and despair.

Of course, it is regarded as cheating to look upon anything there presented and saying 'that'll do,' then turn for the checkout as if the whole adventure is over. These things are supposed to take time and consideration. It is not enough – apparently - to find something quite comfortable, with a colour scheme that does not look like the cat has been sick all over it and at a price that doesn't make the eyes bleed.

No.

No....

Everything in the shop must be examined in the minutest detail – preferably several times. Each item must be given the greatest philosophical scrutiny and the oracles of the appropriate magazine or TV programme must be quoted, ideally in great depth.

Minute distinctions of colour and texture must be debated with all due earnestness and seriousness and any such heretic as oneself - who with a flurry of measuring tape - condemns the whole project on mere grounds of a lack of mere physical space, or some other such piffling intrusion of reality, is roundly condemned and then dismissed to the outer reaches of the car park to reflect on a life of sin against the wisdom and beneficence of the domestic gods, while she goes off to have a cup of tea and to think* about it.

 

*I.e. to make a vow to herself to keep coming back to these places weekend after weekend until the man surrenders.

Something Unexpected

This was not what was expected. Although, as it happens it was the officially-designated day for something unexpected to happen. After all, it was discovered by someone involved in the vital Health and Safety field that one of the most common causes of accidents in the workplace was when something unexpected happened.

Therefore, in an attempt to reduce the number of accidents in the various workplaces throughout the EU, unexpected things were outlawed and anything that happened in the workplace which was not expected was made illegal.

Of course, as a typical bureaucracy the EU health and Safety executive expected that once they had made something illegal it would henceforth stop happening. Satisfied they had done their job they turned to the vital matter of cheese cracker safety and the heartbreak caused by premature breakage of the cheese biscuit during application of the cheese, especially in the case of so-called soft cheeses, whose often woefully inadequate spreadability often results in cracker-breakage despondency.

However, much to the surprise and consternation of the Bureaucracy – and thus in direct contravention of their new law – the unexpected still happened in the workplace, which deeply upset those tidy minds that wanted everything in its place and in order.

Therefore, in an attempt to tidy up the disparity between what the official mind saw as desirable and the awkward messiness of reality they decreed that henceforth the unexpected could only happen on an officially-designated day.

However, to no-one else's surprise the first officially designated Day of the Unexpected passed off entirely without incident. Much to the chagrin of those who had organised the special Europe-wide celebrations to mark this new day in the calendar.

Still, there is always next year – unless something unexpected happens.

The Travelling Intimate Device Salesperson

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Of course, being the kind of woman she was meant that none of the options presented to her - in my demonstration of all the available options – were entirely suitable. Although, in line with company policy, she was allowed to give each and every piece of equipment a full test, which I must say left me with both backache and a very tired tongue.

She, however, by the end, had a broad smile on her face and I like to think it was not all down to the comedy interlude I introduced halfway through proceedings when her Yorkshire terrier ran off with my trousers, whilst I was still partly inside them.

Such, however, is the life of the travelling Intimate Device salesperson. After all, it could be worse, considering I managed to avoid getting allocated to the offshore division, which mainly sells inflatable intimate companions to the offshore drilling industry and – I’ve heard – emptying the demonstration model, up on the helicopter landing pad, after a sales test-drive by the entire crew, can take several hours, especially in a force nine gale when it is essential to keep a firm grip on the ankles or risk losing the demonstration model on the winds and being forced to buy a new replacement out of your commission.

It also helps to stay upwind as it empties… apparently.

Unleashing the Banjo

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Not that she was too unfamiliar with the use of a banjo as an offensive weapon; after all, she had – in her youth – frequented some of the more authentic Folk Music venues in the country. The sort of places where the beards are as unkempt as the woolly jumpers and the cider flows like rivers in spate and accordions are unmasked at the midnight hour.

Like I said, she was not afraid to unleash the banjo, providing she was sufficiently provoked. After all, she had lived wild and free on one of the remotest hill farms in the Welsh border regions and even knew how to pronounce Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyll-llantysiliogogogoch without drowning her nearest interlocutor in spittle or strangling herself with her own entangled epiglottis.

Of course, coming from that region meant that she knew all the local words and expressions for rain – all thirty-seven of them – from: it’s pissing down to it’s absolutely fucking pissing it down, and she had even heard the myths and legends about the secret special word used only when the sun shone, although rumour had it that word had been last used in her grandmother’s grandmother’s time and then only once… on a Thursday.

Still, she was a fine figure of a woman, with all the necessary strength in her arms to keep a sheep in its place while the shepherd put his wellies on and to wrestle a wild accordion into submission.

And, yes, I loved her, loved her with all my heart, until that fateful day when the all the cider barrels in the cellar sprung leaks and she was the only one brave enough to volunteer to go down there and drink the cellar dry.

She nearly managed it, too.

EU Outlaws Disparagement

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Well, as you are no doubt well aware, recent EU legislation has outlawed disparaging comments made against any woodland creatures, indigenous or otherwise. In some parts of the EU, which used to be separate countries until they were subsumed by the ever-hungry bureaucratic morass that is the EU’s governing bodies, there has been a long tradition of insulting the boar, for which animal rights (sic) campaigners have long argued for a ban, saying that this is little more than species-ism and that comparing a boar to one’s mother-in-law should be regarded as a crime more damaging to the self-esteem of a boar than the recently-outlawed showing a goose a jar of pate and sniggering in a way to cause distress to the goose and any vulnerable goslings in the vicinity.



The British delegation fought bravely for almost five whole minutes before giving in completely to get an opt-out from this legislation for the UK, considering the facts that Britain has no wild boars (plenty of bores, of course) and that the traditional rural sport of Taking The Piss Out Of The Squirrels is already threatened by urban encroachment, and could be dealt a devastating blow, just when the sport was showing signs of revival, mainly due to it being a demonstration sport at the recent London Olympics, where the UK’s leading exponent of arboreal mammal-related abuse, Ken ‘The Hazelnut’ Nonsequitor, won a silver medal for reducing a pine marten to a quivering wreck by calling it a ugly ferret – a move later condemned by the RSPCA and the UK’s powerful ferret-fondling lobby.



However, critics of the new law have suggested that the UK do what all other EU countries do, when a law is brought in they don’t like, by simply ignoring it and carrying on as usual.

Immanent Sardines on Toast

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I would like to invite a member of the audience up on stage for a moment.

Thank you.

Now, may I ask your name?

Really?

And that was a name given to you by your parents, was it?

Interesting....

Are you sure you weren’t kidnapped by gypsies… or aliens or someone from Essex… or anything like that, as a baby?

No?

Right.

Anyway, if you would please examine this perfectly normal tin of sardines and confirm to the rest of the audience that it is perfectly normal in every way… except, of course, for the mere addition on a small nuclear-powered engine… and the wheels, of course.

After all, I’m sure many of us – when we were young – longed for that far off day in the future when we would all have our own self-propelled sardine tins in order to enjoy the thrill of sardines on toast no matter where we were in the world when those particular hunger pangs struck.

After all, who amongst you fine people gathered here on this day of all days cannot – hand on heart – deny, that when those particular hunger pangs begin there is no other way on this planet to assuage them, except by the prospect of some immanent sardines on toast.

For that is why the world has been crying out in its need for self-propelled sardine tins, of which this is just the first of many, not only that, soon the day will come when I will unveil my time-travelling inter-planetary electric toaster able to deliver hot fresh toast to any point in the space-time continuum (and Tewksbury), and on that great day we will all know for sure that the future has – indeed – arrived at long last.

New Kindle Book Out Now: The River is an Endless Rope - Poems

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This book is a new collection of over 180 poems by David Hadley.

David Hadley's poems have been published in several magazines in the UK and US.

Several of his poems have been cherry-picked by the editors at ABCtales.com.   The River is an Endless Rope Available here (UK) or here (US).

*

The River is an Endless Rope

All through this slipping of time
The river flows sedately onward,
An endless rope pulled by the sea.
Sometimes, though, the river swells,
Swells in anger, as it tries to twist
Break free from the grip of the sea.
But the sea’s grip is too strong,
Holding tight onto this river’s tongue
For millions of long winding years.

In all that time, the churning sea
Has not let the river drop once,
Not yet, and - perhaps – not ever.
Days flow on, pouring into the past
Like water back into deeper seas.
The river ties the rain back home
To the deeper distant seas,
Connecting now to then to now
Like rain to water and sea.

I spend a great deal of time
Walking along by this river,
Watching its steps, marking its moods,
Taking every day it brings
And trying to hold on, like the sea
Holds tight to its own rivers
Pulling them back towards it
Fearing that too much freedom means
They will one day break free.

*

Shakespeare and Commercialism

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‘The isle is full of noises’. As most people know Elizabethan spelling was more a matter of individual choice rather than adhering to any standard, so Shakespearean scholars have often overlooked the fact that here the bard meant aisles rather than isles as yet again he was working under commercial commission, something which today’s Arts Council subsidised theatricals would regard with abject horror, seeing their precious bard sullying himself with commercial concerns. However, those were very different times when Kings and governments pissed money away on endless pointless wars against each other rather than keeping a bunch of luvvies in breakfast champagne.

The Tempest as any historian of the time well knows was one of the more successful Elizabethan supermarkets well-know for its BOGOF offers on a surfeit of lampreys and its take-home sacks of sack. However, he supermarket had been losing market share to the somewhat slightly more upmarket Marlowe’s which had outlawed religious feuding on its premises and was therefore a much more pleasant shopping experience for the gentry.

However, in an inspired marketing exercise Tempest hit back, hiring Shakespeare to create a play which hinted at all the wonders available in their aisles and their magical product range, and – of course – hinting that the then CEO of Marlowe’s, Arthur Caliban, son of the famous Right-wing political leader Margaret Sycorax, was up to no good with all manner of schemes set up to fool his customers.

As with any advertising or marketing scheme which involved Shakespeare the whole enterprise was a massive success, allowing Shakespeare at long last to retire from the theatre business and to buy both a new bed and a much better new pair of gloves.

Worse Things Happen in West Bromwich

Well, as they say: Worse things happen in West Bromwich, which is not surprising really considering. Although, at this time of the day it is probably best not to dwell on exactly what those worse things are, especially for those of us with a less than robust constitution, or within a short bus ride of that locality. Still, it could be worse, but perhaps it would be best not to mention Carlisle, or even Hull; especially not under the current circumstances where the hordes of the easy offended swarm all over any pronouncement in order to find something to be outraged by.

She was one of them, of course, easily outraged – especially on other people’s behalf – by anything that was judged to lie outside her narrow and strict definitions of propriety. She who would mock and pout scorn on those of earlier generations who she saw as prudish, moralistic and hypocritical for upholding a different set of standards to her own, which she held as equally judgementally as they held theirs. Sadly, though, she too became an unintentional victim when the counter-terrorism forces of a major free Western power developed the Irony Bomb, the first prototype of which exploded in her vicinity just as she was accusing some people she disagreed with of abusing the concept of Free Speech by saying things which she disagreed with.

I could say she will be sadly missed… but I won’t.

The Form and the Void

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‘So, what is it?’ She was not as impressed as he’d hoped.

‘It’s a universe.’

‘Oh.’ His wife sniffed as she looked down on his creation. ‘What’s it for?’

‘Well… it’s… it’s….’ He looked around his shed for inspiration. ‘Well, you always said I ought to do something about that form and void I had at the back of the shed. Well… this is it.’

‘What’s it for, though?’ She poked at one of the galaxies, which set it spinning.

‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘I was just tidying up the shed and it got a bit dark back there, so I said ‘Let there be light,’ next thing I knew there were these suns and planets all over the place.’

He pointed out one of the spinning globes. ‘I rather like that one there… Soil… the blue and green one.’

She peered. ‘I suppose its okay, if you like that sort of thing. I wish you’d made something a bit more….well, useful.’ She took her glasses off and looked down at the spinning blue–green globe. ‘Ew! There are things on it… vermin all over it.’

‘Those are not vermin, those are my creations!’

‘What are they… horrible pink and hairy things?’

‘I call them humans,’ he said.

‘Well, get rid of them. I don’t want them escaping off that thing and getting into the house.’ With that she turned and strode off, slamming the door of his shed.

Still, he thought as he tipped the whole universe into a rubbish sack for the recycling, he’d only wasted six days on it.