David Hadley's Blog, page 158

A Bit of a Pickle

Still, she had brought the Jar of pickling vinegar and as I stood there clutching my shallots, she smiled, so I knew it was going to be all right. Except, of course, she could not get the lid off the jar so I had to let her keep a tight grasp on my shallots as I prised it off for her.

She showed her gratitude in the usual way, which left me with a slight limp for the rest of the week, but on the whole the situation passed with very little further upset. Although, I did feel she was somewhat rougher than really necessary in the way she jammed my shallots into the pickling jar with little or no sense of the ceremony of the occasion.

I’m sure that there are many men amongst (both of) you gathered here who feel that a woman’s touch on their shallots as something they look forward to, only to be somewhat disappointed by the rather perfunctory way she actually handles them when the time comes.

Still, as the old saying goes: ‘you can’t pickle onions without at least having some onions, a jar and something to pickle them in.’ A bit literal when compared with many old maxims, saws and sayings, but I feel you will get the gist.

Sandwiches in Peril

[image error]

Obviously… or not… there was not much she could do about the incipient danger of an attack by zombies, not without imperilling the integrity of her egg mayonnaise sandwich, anyway.

This is a problem so often overlooked by makers of sandwiches, both those that make the sandwiches themselves at home, and those made commercially for sale in sandwich shops and other such retail outlets.

Surely, it is about time that the UK government - or failing that, the EU – looked into the whole matter of sandwich robustness, especially when facing some out of the ordinary peril such as zombie attack, alien invasion or someone being accosted as they go about their business by some person paid to annoy, pester and/or irritate other people for commercial or other such purposes.

Keeping, say, a salad sandwich from losing all its tomato, or having the aforementioned egg mayonnaise oozing out of the back of the sandwich can be a traumatic experience, even in the calm of a local park or civic garden, let alone at the workplace desk during the normal working lunch hour or whilst going about one’s business on a busy thoroughfare.

So, when you risk dropping the cucumber from your sandwich as you flee the rapid fire lasers shooting from the fleet of an invading alien horde, it is bound to call into question the whole concept of a sandwich-based lunchtime economy and is one a growing number of us feel ought to be addressed by some governmental agency, or even some supra-governmental agency or institution, perhaps by sponsoring scientific research into increasing the robustness and long-term integrity of the sandwich and its filling, before we are faced with that – surely immanent – zombie apocalypse and/or alien invasion for which our current sandwich technology is - so obviously - woefully unsuited.

Thursday Poem: A Summer Beach

[image error]

A Summer Beach

If all of this were no more than the grains
of sand you trickled through your fingers that
particular long summer afternoon,

while staring out at that distant far tanker
on the horizon, seeing gulls go turning
on scraps of breeze, before you turn to me

while smiling that one smile of yours that says
it will all be all right, I think it would
be quite enough for me to turn to face

the rest of my day knowing you are there
beside me, waiting for whatever the day
will bring. Not letting either fall or stumble

while making our way back, away from here
returning from the shore to that small cottage
which now encloses all our lives around

each other every morning as we lie
together in its far too narrow bed.

All the Tea in China

[image error]

‘No, not for all the tea in China,’ she said with a certain amount of finality. Although, just why she would want that amount of tea, even with her legendary thirst, was not something she bothered to clarify. Not only that, there is also the matter of the storage.

Admittedly, she does have a lock-up down the back of the estate, but I doubt she would get much in the way of the tea from even a small Chinese province in there. Not that I know much about the average annual tea production statistics for China… or anywhere else for that matter. But I do presume they would be considerable. After all saying: ‘No, not for all the tea in China.’ does presuppose there will be a not inconsiderable amount of the aforesaid product in the aforesaid country. After all, it is not that impressive if that ‘All the tea in China.’ is only enough to make one weak cupful, is it?

Well, not only that, we have to be a bit careful these days with China becoming the economic superpower it has become. After all, it could be that its current industrial might has been bought about through a downgrading of its tea-producing sector, what with all the agricultural workers migrating to the cities seeking new jobs and so on. It could be that nowadays there is hardly any tea in China at all.

Anyway, after I’d pointed all this out to her, she hit me.

Then, after studying the effect that had on me, she hit me again… just to be sure.

Overly Dexterous Manipulation

[image error]

Obviously, any overly dexterous manipulation of your instrument will make any onlooker at least regard you with some suspicion, if not trepidation, as all forms of ability above and beyond the merely functional now get looked upon with something approaching disdain.

It does not do these days to be too good at something, lest others look askance upon your audacity to be talented beyond the acceptable limits of the mediocre. It makes others suspicious, for if you can be beyond average at any one thing, then there is a fear that you could be beyond average in other ways, especially ways that may turn out to be financially, or – concomitantly – sexually, beneficial to you in a way that puts you beyond the common herd.

That is not allowed, especially if you have – up until your secret was discovered – been masquerading as an ordinary individual – and if you can lie to those around you by having a hidden talent – then what else could you also be lying about? Perhaps you are not even human, which – considering the usual crowds you hang around with – would not be that remarkable as most of them seem to have been given up on by evolution not long after their ancestors accidentally fell out of the trees.

Anyway, where was I?

Ah, yes…. To put it another way: Perhaps – after all - the bagpipes are not really your ideal instrument, certainly not when attempting to play them in what – until now – has been rather an unconventional manner, even when – as you point out – the kilt does aid your rather… unorthodox – and to my mind, rather unsanitary - technique.

Monday Poem: To Shape a Secret

[image error]

To Shape a Secret

We search for signs
and give the power
of names to all
we see and all we hold,

keeping special secret names
for all we know,
but cannot see
and could never dare to touch.

Your hand moves
through the air to shape
a secret between us both
neither of us will speak of

outside these bare walls
holding us close
to each other, never more
than half a bed apart

as we both try to deny
wanting these times
to spread out through
all our future days

until there is no space
between our coming together
and all our long lonely days
and too inevitable partings.

Weaving Worlds from Nothing

[image error]

I don’t know when I grew old, but it happened so slowly, too slowly for me to notice. There was a time when one of the women would follow me away from the great halls at night, or wait for me out in the cold stone corridors, and come to my room for the night.

I always saw it as a form of magic; creating these people, places, and various deeds and doings both heroic and base, populating the long evenings with wonders for the audience. It was a form of magic the women always found fascinating. Where men would be held in wonder by those who could seemingly manipulate the world: do tricks, create illusions do magic, the women always seemed more fascinated by the way I could weave these stories out of nothing, how I could take them by the hand and lead the through a world of imagination and possibility with only the sound of my voice and the limits of my imagination.

They seemed to like the worlds I built for them when we were alone together too, those times I took them to whatever bed I’d been given for my stay. Women had taught me well when I was young, and I had always been a keen pupil in their schools. Later, I put all I’d learnt back into the stories I told those ladies under the sheets and blankets until they could take no more.

Now, though, I grow old and the corridors I walk to my bed seem longer, colder and far damper than they used to be. These days, the women no longer follow me or wait for me. All I have when I get to my lonely room is some wine, if I’m lucky, and a fire to ease the chill from these old bones. Still, though, as I stare into those flames, as I sit wrapped in blankets, sipping my wine I can tell myself the stories of all those women I used to know.

Spontaneous Ejaculations

[image error]

‘Ah…!’ you may say, especially if you are the kind of person who often has spontaneous ejaculations. Then, after you’ve apologised – especially to the vicar and his special companion – and wiped up all the evidence, we can proceed on to what you were about to say, whilst – of course – all standing at a safe distance in case of any existential repeat of your outpouring.

Still, as they say Rome wasn’t built in a day, especially considering all the various people who needed bribing to get the planning permission for the Colosseum, let alone the provision of adequate chariot parking facilities.

So, as you were – no doubt about to say – there is not much happening today out in that slough of despond that certain vested interests like to pretend is the real world. So, let us go then, you and I, now the evening is spread out against the sky out to where the fields are green, the setting sun is shinning and the sheep are open to suggestion, instead of wasting our time sitting here waiting for yet another strangely disappointing website to load despite it promising all manner of earthly delights only to be – in the end – somewhat underwhelming.

Underwear Lapses

[image error]

Even if the popular female celebrity had not done that with the mandolin and the llama, a very large number of people would be more than a little concerned about the fact that apparently she had forgotten to put on any underwear before setting out on her quest.

Luckily, though, for those thus concerned an alert tabloid photographer was on hand to record her mistake, so those that were worried about either her lack of underwear, or her lack of available brain power to enable her to remember how to get dressed properly, could hie themselves to a website where they could see the evidence first-hand and then express their various concerns in the comments section of the page helpfully provided by the site’s owners for just such a purpose.

The tabloid in question later – though a spokeswoman (herself suitably underweared) – said they regarded it as a public duty for the newspaper to inform any such celebrity - who happens to venture out unsuitably underclothed for the occasion - of their error and that by bringing such celebrity underwear lapses to the attention of the general public, they thus enabled those ordinary people to feel comfortable about their own underwear lapses and even to send pictorial evidence of those lapses by themselves or anyone else they managed to capture on camera to a new website set up for the purpose where a weekly prize of several hundred pounds would be given to the best such photo of the week – as voted on by visitors to the page. Everyone agreed that this would be a boon to the public debate on the urgent and growing problem of underwear omission that seems to be now plaguing this once-great country.

Not Much to Say

[image error]

There wasn’t much to say afterwards… or, at least, I thought so. She, though, had other ideas and so she told me all she could say about it…. This took some time.

Since we were – as far as I could tell – stranded there, there wasn’t much else to do, at least until the shock wore off, so I just sat there and listened to it all.

As far as she could see, it was – obviously – all someone else’s fault, but for the moment she couldn’t quite see who deserved the most blame.

As she went on… and on… and on, I looked around. As desert islands go, suppose it was more or less typical. However, I’m no expert and all I know about such places is what I’ve seen in films and various TV programmes. There was one I remembered from when I was young, very young, back in the days of black and white TV, when there had been a TV series about Robinson Crusoe. All I remembered from it was a long sandy beach with footprints and – possibly – a parrot that just said ‘poor, poor Robinson’ all the time.

Personally, I would have strangled that parrot after a few weeks. I looked over at her, still muttering away about suing the travel company, the boat owners and all and sundry and wondered if I would be able to stop myself from strangling her, if we were still stranded here after a few weeks of just the two of us.

I got up and wandered away from her, hoping I could find some way of getting us off the island before the visions of my hands tight around her neck got too strong to resist. I was hoping she would not follow me, but then as this shipwreck shows, I’ve never been that lucky.