David Hadley's Blog, page 154

The Mystery of the Fridge

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There was a fridge.

There was a spoon.

Fairly obviously a fridge will not – in the normal course of events – fit inside a spoon.

A spoon will, of course, fit easily into a fridge. However, that is not where we usually put them.

So, as I stood there, in front of the closed door of the fridge, I had to ask myself why I had just opened the fridge, put a spoon inside it and then shut its door again.

I had no answer to that question.

I opened the fridge door again and there was the spoon sitting – quite comfortably – on the shelf in front of me.

Why?

I thought. I must have come into the kitchen and picked up a spoon, intending to eat something from the fridge using that spoon.

I opened the door again. The fridge was empty, apart from the spoon. There was nothing in there at all.

I shut the fridge door again and looked at my watch.

The watch, amongst other things, told me it was Sunday. We usually did our shopping on Saturday, so the fridge should be full of stuff, lovely things all waiting there to be eaten.

So, I’d come into the kitchen, got a spoon and opened the fridge, expecting to eat something from it, probably involving the spoon. But the fridge was empty, so I’d put the spoon down in shock and shut the fridge, my mind blank and unable to process this startling information in a satisfactory manner.

I smiled. I had solved the problem.

No, I hadn’t.

Why was the fridge empty? Empty on a Sunday?

I looked around the kitchen, looking for an answer.

It was only then I realised that the kitchen wasn’t there, either.

Yet to Be

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Turning back from the moment, moving away from the solidity of the ground, moving into a form of space that knows no up nor down. This is a place that is no place and a nowhere that is somewhere and a here that is now only. Still, we turn around to look back, attempting to discover how we came to be here, in this now and nowhere, here and now.

You and I make gestures towards each other, turning the possible over in our hands as though it is some strange gift given to us we do not know how to use, as though we cannot create a new world, a new way of living from these materials around us.

We have all the possibilities of a life together in reach, but we do not know how to take them, how to shape them, to create a new world around this instant of time that holds us trapped like insects in amber, like two people caught in a photograph hung on a wall, unable to break free of the frame that holds us in this pose, poised between a world we have left behind and a world that waits, yet to be.

Secret Weapons of WWII

‘Never let it be said, by anyone, that this once-great country of ours does not fully understand the art of the cheese sandwich!’ Noble words, I’m sure you both (and your special friend) agree. In was in the darkest hour of WWII that the then Prime Minister of Britain, Winston Churchill, uttered this unforgettable call to arms after a Luftwaffe raid which destroyed one of London’s most famous sandwich shops.

Of course, as everyone knows, the cheese sandwich – with or without pickle - has always been a vital part of the British people’s ability to cope with adversity. As one infantry private rescued from Dunkirk bitterly remarked: ‘Bloody French baguettes! As soon as you try to take a bite, the bloody cheese falls out of the other end… and don’t talk to me about that useless French cheese. No wonder they’re going to lose.’ Wise and prophetic words, as subsequent events proved.

Of course, the Germans did expend a great deal of time, money and energy trying to develop super weapons such as the V1 and V2, the Me262 and other such wonders of the age, however, they never really developed a battlefield-ready cheese sandwich, and – for many historians of the time – that is probably why they ultimately lost the war.

Sunday Poem: The Chain

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The Chain

Stars are like everything thrown across
an infinite nowhere and left forgotten.
Names are everywhere, pining us down,

taking lives and holding them still.
Each name a form of chain holding us
tight against the background of this world.

Unable to break free of the chain of a name
we twist and turn against its pull
that roots us to this here and this now

at least until we break free of this world
and float off into the sky of forgetfulness
where our names become just more air,

more lost sounds floating on the breeze
that flows across the fields of history
until we are forgotten forever.

No Land for Her

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There were only the possibilities of some new land hidden beyond the curve of this world, some distant place Valerie thought she could discover where she would find she belonged. This was no land for her; this was no place for her. The people here, in this narrow world, seemed cold, spiteful, too uninterested in the possibilities of existence for her.

Valerie wanted more, more than this thin cold life of stunted possibility. She wanted more than this, but what she wanted she could not say. She did not want the foolish, stumbling boys or the heavy-handed men who turned to stare as she hurried past on some essential errand. She wanted someone who had eyes that could see further than the narrow open ground that lay between the village and the forest. Someone who wondered what it was like beyond the mist-shrouded hills and snow-capped mountains. Someone who could see as far as seeing goes.

The only thing Valerie did know, and know for sure, was that she would not find someone like that here in her village.

So, when the travelling storyteller came to town carrying his heavy bag of tales, poems and possibilities, Valerie was ready, waiting for him, ready to follow him to the end of all his stories.

New Kindle Novella Out Now: Have a Go

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Have a Go

[Novella – 17, 500 words approx]

The day John Russell became a Have a Go Hero, for accidentally foiling an armed bank robbery, was the day his life changed forever, and all he’d wanted was a nice cup of tea.

Extract:

[…]

‘Can I have some money too, Daddy?’ Beth said.

John smiled down at her. ‘I suppose so. How much do you want?’

‘A million pounds.’

John was too stunned to reply for a moment. He looked down at Beth who seemed to be waiting patiently for her more than reasonable request to be granted. ‘What do you want with a millio.... What the f…!’

Suddenly, the doors burst open and two armed men rushed into the bank, both wearing ski masks, ex-army style clothing and leather gloves.

One - armed with a sawn-off shotgun - herded the stunned customers, including Debbie and Stan, up against the wall.

The other, armed with an automatic pistol, forced a large bag under the counter screen. ‘Fill it! Quick! My mate - Mr Blue - over there has a very nervous trigger finger. If you don't want to spend the rest of the day wiping your customers off the walls of this nice little bank of yours, you'll hurry up. And keep well away from that alarm button under the counter.’ He looked across at the other three members of staff cowering behind the counter. ‘The rest of you come out here and join your customers over by the wall where Mr Blue can look after you properly.’

The man with the shotgun turned to face the one at the counter. ‘Hang on! I'm Mr Green this time. We agreed - remember?’

‘What? Oh, right… whatever you say Chri… Mr Bl… Mr Green.’

Once the three members of staff had hurried to join the customers standing against the wall, Mr Green turned back and stood where all the staff and customers could see him clearly. ‘Hey, everyone! Just to make it clear, so that no-one is confused. I'm Mr Gree… Mr Blue, and To… he is Mr Green. Everyone understand?’ He looked around carefully, his finger stroking the trigger of his shotgun. ‘Well, do you?’

The assembled customers and staff stared back at him.

‘What? Oh, hang on…. No. I'm Mr Green.’ He pointed across towards his accomplice with his shotgun. ‘He is Mr….’

‘Hey Chris! Er… Mr Green, careful where you are pointing that!’

‘Sorry To… Mr Blue.’ He turned back to face the bewildered group. ‘Right, for the last time… I'm Mr Green and Tom…. He is Mr Blue. Right?’

There was a general muttering of assent from the assembled customers and staff.

‘Right, that's that sorted. Let's get on with it, Mr Bl… Green… Blue,’ said the bank robber at the counter.

‘Green!’ Mr Green yelled without turning to look at him.

‘Mr Green, right.’

‘Right! All of you - back against the wall and keep still. Put your hands on your heads!’ Mr Green pointed the shotgun at each of the adults in the queue until they complied.

Beth was too bewildered to move; looking from the bank robber to John and back again as tears formed in her eyes and her lips trembled.

‘Move little girl. Move!’ Mr Green yelled, pointing his shotgun at Beth, then trying to push her back with its barrel.

Beth stood still and burst into tears.

There was sudden anger on John's face. He stepped forward. Debbie tried to pull him back, but John shrugged her off.

He stood a few inches from the gunman. ‘Don't point that thing at my daughter you pathetic bastard!’ He grabbed the gun barrel and twisted it away from Beth and up towards the ceiling.

Mr Green was too stunned to react at first. But the sudden jerk of his gun made him pull the trigger. The gun fired up at the ceiling.

John and Mr Green were showered with shredded ceiling tiles, falling around them like feathers. Mr Green stood with his mouth as wide-open as the ski-mask would allow, staring up at the massive hole his gun had blown in the ceiling while snow flakes of former ceiling slowly fell down over and around him.

John stepped forward, forcing the gun butt back into Mr Green's stomach with some force. The villain doubled over in pain as John struggled with him. John tightened his grip on the gun, trying to twist it out of the hands of the villain. He jerked it upwards, making the gun butt hit Mr Green in the face.

The bank robber groaned and crumpled to the floor. He let go of the gun, letting it fall to the floor. The shotgun slid across the polished tiles and underneath a table.

Over by the counter, Mr Blue saw his accomplice was down. He glanced at the teller, who dropped the half-filled bag on the floor on her side of the counter and pressed the alarm. He tried to point his pistol at the teller, but his panic made the gun wave around so he couldn't aim it properly. The teller pressed a button and a steel shutter slammed down over the front of the counter.

Mr Blue turned and pointed his gun at John, in his nervousness he fumbled with his gun. The pistol was waving around erratically as he tried to pull the trigger, but the safety catch was still on. Mr Blue frantically tried to release the safety catch, but pressed the wrong switch, accidentally ejecting the magazine instead.

The magazine fell out of the gun and dropped onto his foot, causing the bullets to eject and scatter all over the floor.

Mr Blue looked around in panic before dropping to his knees and scrabbling around - trying to put the bullets back into the magazine - but his gloved hands made it impossible to pick up the bullets from the highly-polished floor. He looked up as he heard distant sirens and decided to run.

John turned - still stunned and covered in shredded roof tiles - to see Mr Blue bearing down on him. The bank robber swung his pistol at John's head as he tried to get past, catching John on the temple. Mr Blue glanced back as he got to the door and saw John slowly sinking to the floor, unconscious.

The customers and staff in the bank stood against the wall with their hands half in the air, not knowing what to do as they stared at the slowly-closing bank door. Debbie was on her knees comforting Beth and Stan. The old woman was feebly dragging her unwilling son towards the stunned Mr Green, still lying on the floor and moaning softly, less than a foot from the unconscious John.

Mr Green was slowly recovering. He blinked twice then shook his head, but all he could see was the face of old woman gradually coming into focus as she leant over him.

‘Mother?’ he said with a tentative smile behind the ski mask.

The old woman's face screwed up in anger. ‘You b… bas…! You basta….you… you…!’ She was still supported on one side by her son and the walking stick on the other, as she drew her leg back and delivered a powerful kick to the ribs of the prostrate Mr Green.

Mr Green writhed across the floor, trying to escape the old woman's kicking. ‘Ow! Stop. Get her off me!’

The customers and staff, still against the wall with their hands up, began to smile and relax, slowly lowering their hands, as they watched the old woman.

Mr Green was scampering around the floor on all fours, trying to hide behind tables, chairs, plants and anything else he could find. The old woman, still supported on her son's arm, tottered after him, trying to hit him with her walking stick.

‘Keep still!’ she yelled at him. ‘I'm going to give you the damn good thrashing you so obviously deserve… you… you… you…!’

‘Help! Get her off me! Stoppit. Ow, Christ! No. Help! Help!’ Mr Green yelled back.

[….]

Have a Go: A novella - by David Hadley:

Available here (UK) and here (US) for the Kindle now.

Celebrity Chefs

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‘It makes sense, of course, to always make sure the golden-hamster droppings come to a slow boil before simmering for 176.235 seconds. Then drain them and allowing them to dry on the naked stomach of a Peruvian supermodel, before attempting to grate them over the nearest available member of your home-grown herd of antelope as they migrate across the wild open savannah of your kitchen.’

Obviously, for the rest of us, who occupy normal space and time, such recipes are far beyond what we have available in our more modest kitchens. For not only do these celebrity chefs presume that we – in the ordinary and mundane planes of existence – have easy access to organic peasant-reared hand-dried golden hamster droppings, or whatever this season’s trendiest ingredient is, they also seem to assume that we can afford to buy such things, even if we are lucky enough to find a shop that sells them… or – for that matter – has even heard of them.

Not only that, they seem to have a kitchen the size of several football pitches filled with all manner of devices, technology, equipment and peripherals that make our bent rolling pin and rusty apple-corer look more than inadequate as they chop, slice, whiz, drizzle and do all manner of arcane culinary manipulations to their pile of golden hamster droppings that would cost ordinary folks the best part of a month’s wages; let alone enable us to afford the rest of the ingredients.

So we sigh, turn off the telly, head off into a kitchen half the size of the box the celebrity chef gets her golden hamster droppings delivered to her door in, and we make a salt ‘n’ vinegar crisp sandwich using the best supermarket own-brand sliced white we can afford, spread liberally with a butter substitute that has the taste, consistency and spreadability of decade-old axle grease, drizzled almost liberally with value-brand salt ’n’ vinegar proto-crisps that may once have has a nodding acquaintance with a real potato , but that was so long ago that they no longer have any memory of it.

Then, satisfied, replete and in awe of our own culinary skills we return to the TV to see if there is anything better on now.

Thursday Poem: Walking into Walls

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Walking into Walls

Only knowledge lifts us up
from this slow fading dream
to a world we can walk through

stepping away, through these ghosts
and walking into walls that hold us
apart from those sudden moments

that make us wonder what is real
and how each day can fall around us
leaving nothing but memory and loss,

when distance grows longer as time
takes us away from all we once
thought so certain and so right.

Here we are now, and waiting
for those ghosts of memory
to slip through these solid walls

and reach out across the years
with hands we will never hold
and voices we no longer hear.

Living History

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Quite obviously, back in those distant times, the people were quite aware that they were living in historical times and were therefore quite resigned to their lack of modern technology. This is why there is – to the modern reader – a rather puzzling lack of mention of things like mobile phones, computers and other wonders of the modern era - as well as the curses of our age like television - in the historical record. Because the people in those times, now known to modern historians as The Olden Days, knew some things had not yet been invented they – very wisely – did not mention those things at all.

Even though, for example, Victorian TV was some of the best the world has ever known, with some of the finest examples of the reality genre – such as Scullery Maid Factor, Know Your Place and other such jewels of the genre, the Victorians knew better than to make any mention of them in the historical record, less we – their descendants – come to realise we are not quite the know-it-all smart-arses we think we are.

This also explains why the Victorians also managed to keep their massive country-wide motorway network so secret from future generations by cunningly disguising it as a canal network, something they had learnt from the clever way the Stone Age people of this country had shrewdly disguised a Neolithic multi-story car park as Stonehenge many, many, centuries before.

How to Improve Your Sex-Life

As is so often the case, when she arrives at your front door naked under her coat and – this time - carrying an accordion and a grapefruit, you know you are in for another evening of her latest How to Improve Your Sex-Life sexual technique hastily cribbed from whatever some magazine or website contributor has re-imagined some ‘scientific’ research, hastily cobbled together by some cosmetic company’s bogus ‘laboratory’ or by the PR department of a former polytechnic eager to boost its media profile.

Still, however, the one last week – apparently from the leading article in one of those women’s magazines that likes to point out we are all doing sex wrong – which involved the tin of anchovies, Val Doonican’s back catalogue and a pedalo, did turn out to be much more rewarding than I’d originally anticipated, when she arrived half an hour late. Mainly because acquiring a pedalo at this time of year is not all that easy to obtain, even for hire, especially with us living so far from the seaside.

It was worth it though, just to see the looks on the neighbour’s faces as they watched us trying to launch a pedalo on our garden fish pond whilst trying to remember enough of the lyrics of Paddy McGintys Goat for us to achieve a simultaneous orgasm without spilling the contents of the tin of anchovies overboard and further upsetting some already rather perturbed koi carp.

Still, though, as I remarked later in our mutual post-coital glow, I do enjoy having anchovies on my pizza… not only that, there was a not inconsiderable discount on the out of season pedalo hire too… so a successful evening all round, I think.