David Hadley's Blog, page 151

Songline Stories

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Usually, at the end of the day we sat; weary, around the camp fire, while the Elder told us a story. He often told the stories of the Old People from the Times Before. The Elder knows many stories of those long-gone people and the Times Before.

The Times Before were strange times, when the people did not wander around the barren lands, seeking some way of surviving. They had places they called homes, built in places called towns and cities where many of them all lived together, many, many more than there are in the tribe now.

When we are trudging through the dust of our days, looking for ways to carry on, some say the Elder makes up all these stories, that there were no Old People from The Times Before at all.

The Elder does not mind their disbelief, does not punish their heresy, although, when he hears such things his lights turn from green to red and stay that way for longer than normal. Usually, the Elder’s lights are always flickering from red to green and back again, except during the hot hours of the sun when we have to turn his mirrored face towards the sun for his meditations.

The Elder says he is getting older and his meditations under the heat of the sun take longer and longer. Sometimes, it takes several hours for that one particular light to turn from red to green and for the Elder to return to us, from wherever it is he goes during those times of meditation.

Charity Steeplechase

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And so it began, even though we had no real idea what to do with it. At least, though, it was relatively politics-free, despite some people doing their best to paint it as some sort of conspiracy of the rich and powerful to consolidate their ownership of the means of production through the medium of a naked pogo-stick steeplechase.

However, it was pointed out that most of the contestants were doing it for charity and the professional nude pogo stick riders were very much in the minority.

The conditions on the day, however, were far from perfect for the amateur, especially as there had been a sharp frost the previous night, leading to quite a nip in the air, especially when the cold air got to the nips themselves, with many contestants becoming very outstanding as a consequence, even at that early stage of the race.

The frost had also led to icy conditions on the course, especially on some of the sharper corners where many of the contestants fell as they rounded the bend just outside Argos. However, the crowd – very substantial indeed even for that time in the morning – were always more than willing to help the contestants remount their pogo-sticks, in fact such was the enthusiasm of the crowd for giving the contestants a hand whenever possible, that some of the contestants later complained they had been hindered more than helped by the eagerness of the crowd, with many of them suffering a loss of several seconds on their race time.

However, the steeplechase itself was won by the Scandinavian naked Pogo-stick steeplechase champion, Smorgasbord Undulations, for whom the race conditions were said to be ideal. Furthermore nearly £7.65 was raised for charity, a record which ensures that the event will return again next year.

Thursday Poem: If Left Unnamed

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If Left Unnamed

If left out there, unnamed, it can’t escape
Evade definitions and then return
Becoming something new and giving names
To that unnamed and hidden sense of dread
That turns all days to nights and nights to fears

Which haunt each dream, and grow from shadowed dark
To walk though memory and night and dreams.
So nightmare turns, becomes obsession. Dread
Itself becomes a fear of fear that grows
From days and nights which turn from dreams to fear.

And you are there and waiting for the day
To take your hand and take you on towards
A better form of life, away from here
And all it promised you, and failed to bring
Up to your open door you left ajar

And waiting for the day to come for you
To take you far from here to some unknown
And newer, further place not weighted down
So heavily with histories and tales
The stories, myths and legends all now told

Of golden days from long ago, and times
Before these days became the newest days
And suddenly it seemed as though forever
Was closer, ready now to grow and bloom
Into these moments you could never lose.

A Step Sideways

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Sometimes, it was easier to take a step sideways, out of danger and out of this world into one of the nearby parallel universes. There was always the possibility, though, that a step sideways would mean I was stepping sideways into a greater danger than I was stepping away from, especially if I forgot I was – for example – several stories above the ground when I slipped one way or another. Nearby universes are very similar, of course, but sometimes the distance is greater than a step and sometimes that step leads to a very different place.

For example, Shireen does not live on this Earth, even though she does exist – or versions of her – do exist in several of the closest parallel universes. In fact, only last week I discovered I’m married to her in some realities, which, if you knew Shireen, would make you wonder what kind of life I have there.

I have met myself over there and asked myself about it, and I still don’t quite believe it myself. Shireen is no easier to live with – no matter what universe you are in – than she is to live without.

Imagine an untamed wild horse, crossed with a hurricane, all living in the kind of body you used to dream about when you were a horny teenager, matched with a mind as sharp as a Saracen sword and you get some kind of idea of what she is like, at least during the daytime. At night Shireen is even wilder, and I have the scratch scars to prove it.

Anyway, there I was slipping sideways into a nearby universe - to avoid someone I’d rather not meet, at least without the money I owed him - when down the alley I found myself in, came Shireen, running and glancing back over her shoulder. We collided and both went sprawling. From the things she called me as we disentangled ourselves from each other, I discovered, she did not know me on this plane and – unless our relationship had hit a very rocky patch – we certainly weren’t married.

Anyway, I pulled her to her feet, and would have introduced myself, if the ricocheting bullet that struck the wall above our heads hadn’t interrupted the little speech I’d been planning….

‘Come on, Shireen!’ I yelled, instead. ‘Let’s get out of here.’ I took her hand and began to run. I didn’t get far.

Shireen stood there, her hand gripping mine, staring at me. ‘Who the fuck are you?’ she said ‘…and how do you know my name?’

Good question, I thought as the second bullet struck the wall, even closer to our heads.

The Weaver of Heavens

She had hands that could weave the possibilities from the most ordinary of days. She could take me in her hand and she could take me to places I had only ever seen in the strangest of my dreams. But when she took me in her mouth, she could take me beyond even those dream landscapes into worlds I had never known and into the shapes of existences that seemed to lie far beyond the world of promises. Even a religion could not have made promises of a heaven like the one she took me to - with only a few deft flicks of her tongue and movements of her lips - beyond the secret kisses of all the lovers there have ever been.



Her body could dance all the movements of love and weave all the wants and needs of everyone’s desire; she could take me into a moment beyond remembering to breathe.



She could twist the night into endless hours of slow and sensuous movement that could take my body on journeys through the sides of this world, beyond the edges of the possible and into realms where everything becomes the kiss of body against body and the delicate trace of lips along skin.



She could do more than merely make love; she could create a world out of nakedness and need, of want and desire. She could bury me under her body as though she was a mountain and drown me in her seas as easily as she could make me fly through her skies to visit every moon and star in her heaven, all before the dawn came and found us sleeping there, side-by-side in her bed.

Amateur Photography

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Obviously, there was a duck. After all, it would be odd to have a duck pond without one. At first, it – quite naturally (for a duck) - assumed we were there to steal its bread, but of course once we had assured the mallard that its diet of low-quality supermarket white-sliced was not our aim, it cruised off to the other side of the ponds to watch events unfold.

Which they did….

Although, the spontaneity of the event was somewhat – to what remains of my mind, anyway – marred by her insistence on folding her clothes neatly and placing them in a clean dry place, which – when you are adjacent to a duck pond – is not the simple straightforward matter it would otherwise be. My - I thought helpful – suggestion that she hang them on a branch of a nearby tree was rewarded by one of those looks that men tend to learn to recognise at an early age, and it was definitely not one of those looks that would launch a thousand ships, at least, not unless the sailors were fleeing in panic from her and her wrath.

Anyway, soon she was naked and, consequently, I’d completely forgotten why we’d gone there and what I was supposed to do.

She tutted in a way that suggested I’d better not ever suggest such a thing again and strode off – causing the duck to flee in panic – while I stood their watching her, clutching my forgotten equipment in my hand… at least until I realised what a magnificent figure she struck as she strode across the village green and was seemingly now hurrying back towards me - clutching a fallen tree branch - in a manner that suggested those aforementioned sailors would have been right to flee in fear of their lives.

So, after a careful – but rapid – consideration of my options, I did the brave thing and ran for it too.

Days of Revolution

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I knew her, back then. It was a long time ago. I was a different person then. I was young and – of course – I knew everything. Now, I am a different person, much older, and I know so little and care about even less.

Back then, I cared about everything, I wanted to save the world, put it all to rights and bring about a revolution that would end forever injustice, inequality, poverty and so much that I thought was wrong with the world.

These days all of that is still wrong, but I know I cannot put any of it right, and – what is more – one of the few things I do know, beyond any doubt is that those who try to make the world a better place by trying to tackle those big things only ever make things worse.

Jenny, back then, was like me, a believer in changing things. Even though we argued all the time, we both believed in the same things, both thought we could be the ones that could make the difference, be the ones who could make the world see how wrong it was, and how it could - we thought - so easily be so different.

It never occurred to us that the world knew about its own faults, and that those with any sense already knew that change is only ever really possible over time, that evolution is the only way, and revolution only ends with more children crying in the dirt and soaked in the blood of their parents.

One day, I woke up and realised all this. I tried to tell Jenny, but she – of course – would not listen. So, we had our final argument. I packed up my things and walked away and Jenny went off to save the world.

I’m still here, just trying to get though each day; the world goes on going to hell as it has always done, but Jenny…. Well, she was just defeated by it all and all that remains of her now are my memories of her.

Christmas Party

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But this is hardly the place for that, so if you don’t mind, could you put it away, at least until this blog’s Christmas party. That is when the overt flaunting of such things is not only acceptable, but regarded by some of the more… er… excitable habitués of this towering organ as something approaching almost de rigour for this particular time of year.

Now as I was about to say before you suddenly interrupted me with your –seemingly rather over zealous flaunting of that… that… decidedly average specimen of….

Hang on, is it supposed to be that colour?

Are you sure…? I mean if it was – as you say something to do with the weather, I mean, well we are indoors, aren’t we? After all, blogging and blog perusing are not – that often – considered outdoor sports are they?

Is it supposed to do that, as well?

I mean, I have heard of being friendly, but that does seem somewhat over-familiar, even for a regular visitor to this heap of deluded ramblings that I like to believe I have some sort of control over.

I would strongly suggest you take it for an examination by someone with a professional interest in such matters. I’m sure that when there used to be such things as phone boxes there were several enterprising young ladies who would – for a modest fee – take a professional interest in such matters, at least until your money ran out. I’m reasonably confident one of them – I’m sure – would be able to offer if not a course of treatment – some advice on how not to frighten the horses and the easily distracted by this constant proffering of your affliction to all and sundry.

But, for now I’ll bid you good day.

Philosophical Investigations

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‘There are many things in this world that – to the surprise of many - do not taste of pineapple.’ Everyone, these days, is surely familiar with these wise words by the 20th century’s greatest philosopher Ludwig von Wittless, who lived through some of the most tumultuous decades of that benighted century and was even present on that most significant day of the century when West Germany lost the World Cup Final to England in 1966. For von Witless this was a very complex situation as he had left Germany to escape the Nazi menace and now lived and taught at Oxford, in a fish and chip shop quite near one of the colleges.

Consequently, von Wittless was undecided which team to support as he had profound philosophical objections to Alf Ramsey’s use of the 4-3-3 formation. This – of course – led to his notorious philosophical break with the French philosopher, novelist and professional Gauloise-inhaler, Albert Campus, who famously declared that ‘the winger – like God – is dead.’ a statement which caused rioting at the Sorbonne and led to condemnation from one of the French president’s more philosophically-inclined mistresses.

Anyway, once von Wittless, had turned his back on football he – of course – returned to the philosophy of fruit and the age-old paradox – dating back to the time of Plato and Aristotle – of how do we know that an apple is an apple. Leaving aside A. J. Ayer’s contention that: ‘It is bloody obvious that an apple is a sodding apple and if you want to debate it, I’ll see you outside, son!’ as philosophically naïve, von Wittless observed – once he was well out of Ayer’s reach - that just because it is in the supermarket labelled as an apple – it does not necessarily mean that it is an apple, or – for that matter a pomegranate (as Heraclites had insisted before Pythagoras twatted him one around the scrolls with his philosophising bat).

Still, despite all these reservations, Von Witless did indeed make one of the most philosophically-sound fresh fruit salads ever tasted in a university Philosophy Department, and for that we of the succeeding generations should be extremely grateful for his pioneering work in this field.

I Fought the Law

Even if she was standing there entirely unarmed, the look on her face would be more than enough for anyone to first plead guilty and then beg for mercy even before they were informed of which of her myriad rules they had broken – quite possibly with malice aforethought.

The fact that these rules of hers are not written down, enforced or even acknowledged before they are broken is – of course – no excuse. It is enough that she knows of the rules and knows exactly when they have been broken.

It goes without saying that she is the victim here; she is the one that suffers when these secret rules are broken, because putting everything right is – as is everything else – a job that is always left to her.

However, it is wise not to point out that they are her rules, and that she will not allow anyone else to restore the order that she is the only one to see, and that she is the only one who knows when the secret rules are broken, and that everyone else was getting along in this indifferent world as best they could until she announced the great calamity had occurred and that the world would henceforth be ripped asunder until such time as she could step forth and restore calm and order.

In the meantime, the only answer for the transgressor she has already found guilty is self-banishment to the shed to learn the error of his ways, only to emerge some time latter faithfully promising to do better next time… in the sure and certain knowledge that sometime in the very near future he will be found wanting again.