David Hadley's Blog, page 147

Thursday Poem: Within Constraints

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Within Constraints

Formal arrangements are made, so we
Know of our place within them.
We do not have to step outside

What is required or what is expected.
We move within constraints
And only in acceptable ways

To do what is required, no more
Beyond what is deemed appropriate
For our station and situation.

Here is where we are appointed to
And this is where we shall remain
Until such a time as we are desired

To be somewhere else, or to become
Something other than what we are
As current circumstances may demand.

The Trouble with Taxation

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Of course, at first, not that many people had one… at least not that they’d admit to. After all, if you had one, would you mention it… especially to anyone in an official capacity charged with taking an interest in such matters, particularly in relation to revenue-raising?

I thought not.

After all, as soon as someone in authority thought about it, they made it illegal to have one without paying any tax on it, which is what those in authority like to do. After all, they assume, what is the point of being in authority if you do not use that authority to seriously piss other people off?

So, after the first ones arrived from wherever in the universe they came from, or – as some have speculated – from some other dimension not too unlike this one, but with more fluffy things, everybody wanted one, even if just to feel that fur purring peacefully on the bed next to them.

Luckily, or so we thought at the time, these creatures (if they are creatures) are very keen on breeding, almost as much as people are, or at least they are as keen on doing it as humans are….

Yes, they do – before you ask - and they like it, even with people you or I would run away from. Fumblies will mate with everyone and everything… including – for some reason – old car tyres.

So, everybody was having a good time – including the Fumblies (and – quite possibly – the old car tyres) and so those in authority realised that this would never do, so they decide to tax the ownership of Fumblies, and – when that didn’t put a stop to it – they thought about making owning one illegal. However the authorities soon discovered that there is a point beyond which even the authorities cannot piss people off, at least not if they want to keep their cushy jobs.

However, now the Fumblies have applied – through some very high-powered intergalactic lawyers, to have all the taxes on them revoked as contrary to, and in clear breach of, their (non-)human rights as set out in the Sentient Beings (Non-taxable status thereof) Act of Star Date: -322905.53873203794. Because, if there is one thing Fumblies like even better than eating doughnuts and having sex with all and sundry (and old car tyres) that thing is pissing off those in authority, often just for the hell of it.

The Sentimental Apprentice

You will believe a man can fly… well, at least until the sudden arrival at ground level puts an end to all that rather unseemly flailing about and screaming.

Still, it was the way he would have liked to go….

Probably….

At least, that was what Nathaniel said as we took the lift back to the ground floor, turning in the opposite direction away from the flashing lights and sirens, away from the gathering crowd all rushing to see what they could film on their mobiles.

‘Did he talk?’ I said, once we were away from the building.

‘Of course,’ Nathaniel said, not looking at me as he spoke. ‘They all do in the end.’

‘Was it really necessary, though… in the end? His end?’

Nathaniel stopped and turned to me. ‘Sometimes your sentimentality puzzles me.’

‘Sentimentality?’ I stared back into his dark sunglasses, watching the familiar twitch along the edge of his jaw line….

Eventually, Nathaniel nodded again. ‘Sentimentality.’ He nodded at his own word as though it confirmed something. ‘Sometimes I think you aren’t cut out to be an assassin,’ he said before turning away from me and heading off down the street.

I thought about telling him that I didn’t want to be an assassin either, but somehow… at the interview, it had been decided. Now, here I was… Nathaniel’s apprentice, being trained to be a killer, despite my sentimentality.

I ran to catch up with Nathaniel as he strode away down the street, the sound of sirens fading into the distance behind us.

Monday Poem: Feel Good

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Feel Good

All across the sky are written
the secrets of the night.
We look for meanings
in these arrangements,

but there is only distance,
in that cold darkness
that separates and divides.

We cannot reach beyond
but one hand over the eyes
can block out all of the sky.

This willing blindness
created by the need to believe,
to become a child again.

To be taken back to childhood,
by the hand to that garden
of innocence and protection.

Where what is too hard to face,
too dangerous, too real,
is taken away from us

and handed to the devils,
where blame is transferred,
so we can feel good again.

Fugitive

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It was cold. She had forgotten how cold it could get, this far north, in the mornings, even in late summer. Her breath formed clouds in front of her as she knelt in the damp grass, already with hints of frost down in some of the exposed places, out away from the edge of trees where she stood now. She watched the open ground spread out down the hillside in front of her for a few minutes. The road – such that it was, more of a sketch of a dirt track – was empty, bare for as far as she could see, no sign of movement at all.

Satisfied, she wrapped the travelling cloak around her. As she shivered, she decided to risk a fire, but only here amongst the trees, where – she hoped – the smoke would be contained, then diffused, by the heavy foliage above her.

She cleared the ground under a tree with the toe of her boot, gathered up some small twigs and dry leaves, feeling the stiffness of the night easing with the movement. Even so, she still shivered, her fingers feeling numb and heavy as she searched through her pack for her tinderbox.

Once the fire was going and its meagre warmth start to spread up her body from her outstretched hands, she began to think about food.

It was then she heard them, the sound of horses down on the road. She glanced up and saw that her fears had been correct after all.

They were coming for her.

Free Kindle Short Story: Twisting the Night Away

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FREE FOR 5 DAYS– SHORT STORY:

Twisting the Night Away

(Short story – 5,000 words approx.)

If you want to get an ex-girlfriend back, what could be a better way of impressing her than a magic carpet ride through the night to a romantic evening together in some alternate dimension?

Twisting the Night Away

‘What is it?’ I said, already thinking I knew the answer.

‘It's a carpet.’

‘Hmm....’

‘A magic carpet!’

‘Bollocks!’

‘It is... honestly... would I lie to y... well, it is a magic carpet. Not a word of a lie.’

‘What, you mean flying... all that Arabian Nights stuff?’

‘Yes.’

‘Bollocks!’

‘Come on, then?’

‘What?’

‘Outside....’

‘I'm not going to fight you about it. If you want to think you've got a magic carpet... well, that's fine with me…. I'll just be off.’

‘No, not that. I'm going to show you....’

‘Show me what?’ I'd heard rumours about this strange little shop.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I'll prove to you that it is a magic carpet.’

‘I'll have to warn you...,’ I said, laughing as I followed him out through the back of the shop out into the loading bay. ‘... I don't like heights.’

We sat down together on the carpet in the traditional manner: him cross-legged at the front, me kneeling behind him, feeling like a tit, and giggling.

‘You won't be laughing in a minute,’ he said.

He was right.

A minute later I felt like puking over the edge of the carpet down onto the town far below us. ‘I told... I told you I don't like heights,’ I managed to croak in-between stopping myself from vomiting. It didn't help that there was a hole in the carpet I could look down at the town through, and that if I dared to look up I was immediately hit in the face by what seemed to be thousands of flying insects.

Not to mention the helicopter.

Not that I didn't try, but I'm sure he never heard it over the sound of the wind rushing past our faces, and having to fight off the swarms of insects.

Still, we – sort of – managed to land with most of the carpet intact.

Although, I'm sure the flight engineer will no doubt want to ask the pilot why he has fragments of shredded carpet entangled in his rotors.

In the end, I decided against buying the flying carpet after all, even when the price was reduced due to helicopter damage, like I said: I don't like heights.

There was one thing, though, that stopped me leaving his shop.

‘So, this being a… Magic Shop, am I to take it to mean that you don’t mean… er… conjuring tricks: rabbits, top hats and so on?’

The shop owner nodded. ‘I’m Morgan, by the way.’ He held out his hand.

I hesitated.

‘No tricks,’ Morgan said. ‘I promise.’ He smiled.

‘Tony,’ I said as I shook his hand. He held it for a moment longer than I thought really necessary while his eyes studied my face.

‘What?’ I said. ‘Have I got something on my face?’ As far as I could remember I hadn’t eaten anything that day which would leave a mark and usually I’m pretty good at getting almost all my food in my mouth. I wondered if one of those flying insects was smeared bloodily all over me.

‘No.’ Morgan shook his head as he let go of my hand. ‘You have the look, Tony.’

‘What look?’ I glanced around for a mirror, eager to see this look I apparently had.

Morgan tuned to a doorway which had one of those bead curtains instead of a door, he held it aside with one hand while he gestured me into the room beyond with the other.

‘You are a Twister,’ he said.

‘A what?’

‘A Twister.’ Once inside the room he sat on an easy chair and pointed to the sofa.

I sat. ‘A… twis… a twister?’

Morgan nodded. ‘This is not my world. I am out of place, far from home.’ He smiled at me. ‘I twisted another world to the shapes I wanted, took the facts of it and altered it... and, well, I ended up here.’ He sat forward, his elbows on his thighs. ‘Look, all the worlds we inhabit are much a creation of our minds as they are, separate and apart from us.’ He raised his eyebrows.

I nodded, feeling relaxed in his company, despite the fact he was talking utter bollocks. The magic carpet, though, had not been bollocks. It had been real. Far too real, I still felt queasy and had to keep touching the solidity of things: my hands on the sofa arms, my feet on the floor, my body pressed against the seat. I needed that reassurance of solidity.

‘What most people do not know though..,’ Morgan said, leaning back in his chair again. ‘…is that the world is not only a creation of the mind, it can also be changed, re-created by the mind.’

I nodded slowly, not really believing, but wanting him to go on.

‘Most people do not know how to change, how to alter, this world to make it turn into something else: some new land, some new country, some new planet, some new plane… into some new reality.’

As Morgan told me this, I – of course – did not believe him. I knew magic was something only ever found in stories and this world had physical rules, laws of nature that bound everything in it… despite my magic carpet ride.

Then, Morgan took me out onto his flat roof and twisted the night with one broad gesture of his hand and we were suddenly living in some far exotic land I had never seen, never heard of before. We were in a land of exotic sounds and smells, hot and spicy, a land of languid heat and shimmering diaphanous robes worn by dark-skinned women who looked at us though veils and scarves that kept all but their eyes secret from us.

I stood up on that roof, which had been one roof among thousands in a dark damp and cold town and found myself in a place far away from everything I’d ever known. One of those dark-eyed women sauntered towards me, her long fingers, stroked my cheek as though I was the exotic one… and then Morgan twisted the night again with a gesture that brought us back again, back to the cold and damp and lonely, with only the fading pressure from where those long fingers had stoked my cheek to remind me that it had all been so very real. As real as the magic carpet, as real as that helicopter.

I shivered….

Morgan turned to me. ‘And you, Tony are one who can do this. You, like me, are a Twister.’

‘Fuck off….’ I said.

Morgan laughed. ‘No, it is you that can fuck off…. He reached out and took my shoulder in his hand as he looked deep into my eyes with his eyes that seemed, suddenly, to be filled with infinite distances. ‘You, Tony, my friend…. You can fuck off anywhere… and everywhere you can imagine…. You have the power….’

‘Yeah…?’

‘Yes.’

I looked at my hands, they didn’t look that powerful. I had trouble opening a new jam jar with them, let alone creating a world out of nothing.

Morgan took my right hand in his, holding it just below the wrist. ‘Relax,’ he said.

I tried to relax as he manoeuvred my arm around, outlining some weird shape in the cold night air.

I felt something in the air change, as though the air around us had grown thick and heavy, then an instant later the feeling was gone. He jerked my hand back with a short sharp tug and let my arm drop.

‘Ah…’ he said.

The duck quacked.

Up until then there had been only the two of us standing up on the cold damp roof.

Now there was the two of us… and a duck.

[….]

*

[ Available FREE here (UK) or here (US) for 5 days only ]

The Undead and Allied Trades

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And breathe….

Or not, if you are a fully-paid up member of the Undead and Allied Trades Association. Since the incorporation into EU employment law of legislation outlawing discrimination against those who are no longer alive. It has become clear that the rate of unemployment amongst the Undead still remains stubbornly higher than the national average for the currently vital. What is more, because the traditional employers of what used to be known as zombies – before that term was outlawed as prejudicial and discriminatory – are mainly public sector employees, with the recent downturn in such jobs due to the almost-noticeable savage cutbacks, even those jobs – such as working for the local council are no longer there for the Undead to fill.

There has – hence this current initiative – been some talk, often as a result of nothing more than unthinking prejudice – that the Undead are not up to certain jobs, often due to a lack of fitness and a – slight – propensity towards losing the occasion body part.

This is why this current scheme to bring daily exercise into the workplace has been introduced by this government, who - quite by accident - discovered a not-too-un-presentable young backbench MP who doesn’t look too bad in a leotard*, to lead the nationwide exercise programme currently shown on the Parliament channel at 9:00 AM every morning. A move that has seen the viewing audience for that channel at that time of the day soar into the tens.

However, such is the propensity for taking assumed offence in this day and age, any suggestion that the Undead are in any way less physically-capable than those still breathing, is now regarded as beyond the pale and – henceforth – why these physical exercises are no longer even suggested to be solely for the benefit of the ex-living community. This is why it is now obligatory for every citizen unit of this country to be up and ready before their viewscre… TVs each morning at the allotted hour, all ready to begin their physical exercises.

 

*At least, she is much better on the eye – and a delicate morning stomach - than - say – a similarly-attired Eric Pickles would be.

Thursday Poem: The Restless Wind

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The Restless Wind

All that will remain will be dust
on the futile crying wind.
We will all turn to dust

as our words crack and dry
blown far from our thoughts
by the always restless wind.

All we have is the dry cracked heat
and the empty silence of wind-blown words
that say nothing, as nothing can be said

now that the days are empty of all
but the heat and the dry dead wind
that never stops blowing our restless dust

across these plains that were once
the hills and green raining valleys
where we knew our ordinary lives.

Shakespeare and Historical Accuracy

‘Let us sit upon the ground. And tell sad stories of the death of kings; how some have been deposed; some slain in war, some haunted by the fear of Brussels sprouts returning in the dead watches of the night.’

As the original Folio version of Shakespeare’s Richard II shows, the bard was much troubled by the role of Brussels sprouts in history, and concerned that their influence was much overlooked by those who would learn lessons from that history.

Of course, for those of us in later years the only lesson we ever seen to learn from history is the strange propensity for those in the field to have a predilection for leather elbow patches on their jackets, something which also applies to male history teachers too.

Still, as none of us can ever forget what we learnt in history, especially British history, even though we may be slightly hazy on some of the more recondite aspects of it, as Shakespeare himself showed – and contemporary Hollywood has adopted with glee bordering on the orgasmic - we should not let mere historical accuracy get in the way of making up a good story.

Still, though, we should always remember that Shakespeare was right about the sprouts.

 

[See also: Shakespeare and Advertising]

All Gone

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It was a morning much like any other. He got up unwillingly, not quite believing the night had gone so fast, and stumbled off towards the bathroom, only noticing halfway there that the bathroom had gone… disappeared.

He looked down, realisation coming slow to his sleep-addled brain. He was standing in long grass, the breeze blowing ticklish waving green blades against his bare legs. Still seeing, but not registering, the scene that lay around him, eventually he began to realise he was standing on a small hill, covered with long green grass, under bright, warm sunlight. The hill carried on down a gentle slope to a valley bottom, where a stream meandered, and then back up on the opposing side to the peak of a higher hill where bare rocks grew up towards the cloudless sky. On that opposite hillside, a herd of some animals he could not recognise grazed in apparent tranquillity.

He turned to see his bedroom door, slightly ajar, standing on the hillside behind him. He noticed it seemed to shimmer around the edges, and that it was fading. The longer he looked the more he could see of the rising hillside behind it, through what should have been a solid white-painted wooden door.

He took a step towards it, craning round to see if he could see his bedroom through the door. He could… but that was fading too, he could see small white flowers – a bit like daisies – appearing through the very solidity of his bed.

‘This is some dream,’ he said, surprised at the loudness of his own voice in the relative quietness of the landscape.

Steeling himself, he closed his eyes and stepped back through the fading doorway.

He stood, eyes closed, trying to decide if what he felt under his bare feet was more grass or his bedroom carpet. He realised he couldn’t tell, his legs still itched and tickled from the grass, but he couldn’t tell, without opening his eyes, if that was a memory or something that was still happening.

He realised he didn’t want to find out.

Right, he said to himself. I’ll give it a count of five and then I’ll open my eyes.

‘One…. Two… three… four… five….’

He opened his eyes.