David Hadley's Blog, page 167

In Case of Civil Unrest

Still, I suppose not that many people these days still use the old-fashioned hand-cranked device for relocating domesticate ruminants to a more secure area in case of civil unrest.

Not only that, I have sometimes been forced to go back to the equally old-fashioned threat of full-frontal first use of the harmonica, even though this country was once signatory to the No First Use of the Harmonica Treaty way back in the dark days of the Cold War when it seem the threat of ever-present balalaika attack would overshadow us all in the free (well, often quite expensive) West.

Anyway, so we had all the sheep in the safe room, just in case some placard-wielding troglodyte insisted on annoying all and sundry with a sense of his (or her) sense of thwarted entitlement, when we realised that one of our sheep was missing.

Of course, with Benjy being a sheep and therefore instinctively inclined to follow any form of crowd or herd, we immediately assumed that the sheep had joined the demonstration and was in there somewhere baa-ing along with the crowd as they claimed some slight diminution of their taxpayer–paid and government- provided privilege was something akin to a major infringement of their human rights.

We were right.

For, later that night, as the news reporter gleefully pointed to the mass ranks of over a couple of dozen ‘protestors’ , we could clearly see Benjy the sheep up on the platform urging them on to greater things and at the same time calling for a complete ban on the use of mint sauce.

The latest word is that Benjy has become a militant activist and now plans the overthrow of western capitalism and mandatory free use of the sheep dip for all workers, each according to their needs.

The Warriors of the Shopping Malls

Then the moment came and we had no choice but to stare at our eggcups with the eyes of those who have loved and lost. Then, after we’d given those poor unfortunates their eyes back and added the eggcups to the washing up heap, we strode off out into the world, ready to do battle.

However, the battle had been cancelled due to some unforeseen Health and Safety concerns about how dangerous lethal weaponry could be in such a situation. So, instead of doing battle for control of the realm, fate, the forces of history and doing over those arrogant tossers from the Far Lands, we went shopping instead.

However, shopping in full battle armour is not quite the life-informingly joyous occasion that the TV adverts would have us believe, especially if you have trouble fitting your war chariot in a parking space and your blood-thirsty hordes of warriors can’t decide whether or not to go for a cup of tea and a cake before beginning their retail experience rampage or whether it would make sense to have a break partway through, giving everyone in the army a chance to review their purchases or decide if they wanted to go back to the specialist retailer for that halberd after all, even though it was not quite the right colour and the balance was not ideal.

Anyway, I managed to pick up a very cheap battle-axe in the sales, so in future I will not have anywhere near as much trouble slicing the top off my breakfast boiled egg again, at least judging by the way that sales assistant’s head bounced down the aisle in the shop when he asked me if I wanted to test my new purchase.

Ground-Breaking TV

Obviously we were all as excited as the constantly-repeated trailers told us we should be. After all, that great bastion of smug metropolitan self-indulgence, the BBC, had told us how much it had all cost, how ground-breaking it was, how inclusive and affirming it was and – most importantly of all – how many celebrities we’d never heard of would be joining the programme, or, rather, cultural event, in order for us to share in their wit, wisdom and erudite incisiveness as well as bask in the reflected glow of the aura of fame and stardom.

So, there we all were – the whole nation as media columnists like to claim (although, in reality hardly enough to claim status as a minority) - waiting with eager anticipation for what the trailers had proclaimed would be the event of the decade, easily eclipsing such run of the mill events as the Olympics, Queen’s Jubilee, Euro 2012, the All-Nude Mastermind Final and all the other events that were all supposedly outdoing each other for our attention.

As the pre-programme announcement said, it was to be a live 3-hour special on each evening for the next seven months. It was appointment TV at its best, the finest that greatest of all self-proclaimed greats in broadcasting, the BBC could do to give theist loyal viewers the televisual experience they all hoped, prayed and desired to see. It would be the TV event that would define a generation and spawn countless imitators as well as become the one TV event that would become essential for any future cultural history of this – our – time.

We sat, eager, and awaited….

Then it came…

The opening credits of Celebrity Paint Watch Live. The revolutionary programme, live every evening where we the ordinary viewing public get to sit with a celebrity presenter as we watch a wall and thrill to see – there live and right in front of our eyes - the paint drying on that wall while the celebrity does what all celebrities do best – tell us all about themselves.

As the critics all agreed later, it was the best night’s TV anyone could ever remember and well worth the three hours a day – every day – out of people’s lives it took to watch.

Hate Crime Concerns

Well, obviously there was a small amount of concern about what the metropolitan media elite like to call a ‘hate crime’, but to the rest of the country is little more than slightly over-zealous use of a badminton racquet in a manner not envisaged by the manufacturer.

Still, you have to admit it was a damn fine shot and – apparently – the highest ever recorded altitude achieved by a stickleback, or - for that matter - any aquatic creature. Unfortunately, though, it didn’t quite reach the altitude gained by a newt back in 1975, when launched from a catapult in Godalming, so that record still remains to be broken.

Although, there is some dispute among experts and political activists about where a fish and an amphibian should be classed together or whether they should have separate categories; hence the concern in some areas of the media that this is an attempt by a Tory (of course) government to instil a prejudice against amphibians in general and newts in particular.

Many in the Left-Wing press - and at the BBC - see this as blatant anti-newt propaganda put about to discredit the Left, for as we all know one of the great darlings of the British Left is well-known for his deep interest in newts and where they, and other amphibians, stand in the political spectrum.

Cantankerous Weather Gods

Well, it happens….

It now may be worthwhile considering various methods of stopping it happening, especially after all the complaints from the neighbours, or, at the very least, adjusting the volume control so that it doesn’t frighten any neighbourhood llamas out grazing at that time in the morning.

Anyway, on to more moister matters, which – this summer certainly – seems to be more or less everything else. Those in positions of power and influence in this country should always remember the weather gods are a cantankerous bunch, never happier than when buggering the weather about and causing us mere mortals to tut when we dare open our morning curtains.

Those of us wise to the ways of the weather knew only too well what a mistake it was to mention the word ‘drought’ in the hearing of the weather gods. Anyone with any sense knew that as soon as we had an official drought, then that was the time to go out and buy some new wellies, an umbrella and to sign up for canoeing lessons.

Now, though, all people can do is sit patiently in the puddle that used to be their downstairs rooms and wait for someone to make it official that the country is in a state of flood in the hearing of the weather gods, so they can go and fetch the hot dry summer they have hidden away somewhere, waiting for just such an occurrence.

Monday Poem: Slightly Further

Slightly Further

If I walk away, down to the shore
I will see the sea and see the sky
and that horizon where they meet
seeming almost close enough to touch.

But so many things seem to be there
close enough for easy reaching hands.
I could lift my hand up to the sky, pluck
out the moon from the face of the night.

I could take each of the stars in turn
and thread them on your necklace.
I could see down to the smallest speck
and the immense spaces that make solidity.

I could see it all. I could do it all.
I could do everything and anything
I could do it all, if I found that place
to stand to reach only slightly further.

But it all lies always just out of reach
like the perfect kiss and that moment
long gone when it seemed all right,
all perfect, lying here next to you.

Something for the Weekend: Free Kindle Novel – Dance on Fire

Free for the next five days:

Dance on Fire

What do you do when sex and drugs and rock and roll are no longer enough? At one time, Transmission were probably the most famous rock band on the planet. Now, even as they approach their twenty-fifth anniversary they are still up there, one of the top ten bands of all time. However, each of the surviving members of the band feels something, somewhere, has gone wrong, and the rock and roll dream they used to believe in so much has become an empty and hollow routine. Dance On Fire is an exploration of the relationships between the remaining original members of Transmission, and their manager, as the band enters their 25th year together. The novel charts their growing realisation that rock music no longer has any meaning for them, and they are - at best - still going through force of habit - 'We've become our own tribute band.' Dance On Fire is a novel about the shallowness of everlasting adolescence and the vacuity at the heart of the rock and roll mythology.

Extract:

The throbbing beating brain-numbing noise was almost solid enough to touch. The noise used as music in clubs like this was too loud to be music, too primal to be music, too crude to be music; a noise stripped of almost all its possibilities of becoming music. It was music beaten up, raped, buggered, pissed on and left for dead with its lifeblood oozing out of it and running down the drain with each pulsebeat.

Pete loved it now.

He was dancing, with a half-full bottle of Champagne in each hand. Dancing – or so he thought – like a shaman, like a witch doctor. He was the mystical priest of the beat. He was primal too. He was savage. He was base. He was Dionysus.

The lights throbbed and pulsed showing then concealing the smiling, laughing, grinning coterie he - or rather, his recently discovered valid credit card – had gathered. He had disciples. He was the pied piper, the pied pissed-up prankster that would lead his gang of grinning cavorting lovelies to a new, higher paradise.

‘Wsdsd…FGGFvmm…? HGTffvbb!’

‘What?’ Pete jammed his ear up against the mouth of… whatever her name was.

‘XXXXZXzzzzzz! Quuallll! Tits?’

In the briefest of silences in the noise, Pete was sure that he had heard the word ‘tits’. He nodded his head enthusiastically. ‘Tits, yes!’ he yelled grinning down at the items in question. He was almost sure she had only the normal complement, but there seemed to be far more than just two in there. However, she proved his notion of the conventional correct when she whipped her top off and shook both of them in Pete’s face.

‘Yum! Yum!’ Pete shouted, watching mesmerised, as they performed a slow-motion gravity-defining dance all of their own.

The rest of his entourage had now noticed that one of their number had managed to monopolise the attention of their platinum-credit-card wielding sugar daddy. So, in the spirit of good old free enterprise they too decided that a revealing of their own not-inconsiderable assets would be a way of restoring some balance to the proceedings.

By this time, Pete was already seeing double – if not triple – the sudden avalanche of naked mammaries bouncing and undulating for his delectation was almost too much for him to cope with. He stopped his cavorting and took a step back.

Unfortunately, his backwards motion brought him into contact with the almost full pint held by one of a group of young men. The men were already feeling more than a touch aggrieved that this bloke – at least old enough to be their father – was monopolising so much female attention seemingly through the mere fact of being significantly wealthier than all of them put together.

‘Oi! Cunt. Watch it.’

Pete heard and turned. He grinned. ‘Sorry, mate. It’s getting a bit crowded in here isn’t it?’ He gestured behind him towards the undulating mammorial tide that was threatening to engulf them all.

‘Are you taking the piss?’

‘What? No.’

‘Hey Jimmy, this old cunt is taking the piss, as well as all the birds.’

Jimmy and the rest of the gang began to circle around Pete. Even in his befuddled state, Pete could recognise that things were beginning to get ugly. As the circle closed around him, he could see the girls edged out one by one. But still the first punch to the side of his head took him by surprise.

Pete staggered back into the men who had moved around behind him. They pushed him forward once more. It was over twenty years since Pete and Johnny had to fight their way out of an Austin bar. Since then Pete had not had to raise a fist in anger. Despite this, he knew he was easily able to handle half a dozen or so blokes who were probably over twenty years his junior. He raised his fists, noticing that he still held the two – now empty – champagne bottles.

‘Hmm… useful,’ Pete Muttered. He could feel that his mouth was already starting to swell up. He raised the bottles and took up a martial arts pose.

There was a whirling blur and the man directly in front of Pete collapsed. One of the topless girls took his place. The way she was swinging her lethal looking handbag around her head caused all the young men to turn in her direction. They gazed, mesmerised by her breasts and the slow, almost, leisurely way they developed independent orbits around her upper body.

Two more of the men fell, handbagged from behind be Pete’s tribe of vengeful amazons. Pete lowered his bottles and just stared as the gang fell one by one. Out of the corner of his eye, Pete just noticed the handbag bouncing off the shaven head of one of his attackers and heading towards him.

‘Wat…!’

There was pain. He fell. It went dark.

*

Available here: UK or here: US

Flotsam Days

Each morning, she would walk out on the beach, searching the flotsam at the tide’s edge for what she could find. Most days, she came back empty-handed. Most days, it was mainly just seaweed and other odds and ends of a throwaway world, thrown away to ride the seas until they were dragged up by the tumbling waves and left upon a beach like this one, only pausing, until another tide came along and washed them away again.

Her life was like the tides, washing along the beach each day, taking and leaving whatever she found on this floating boundary between the land and the sea. Taking some of them back with her into the depths of her own life in order to make sense of something she did not know how to name.

There was a world there, she was sure of it. Something that lay beyond her world of sea and land and where they met to exchange gifts each day. She knew these things she found; these oddments and fragments were from another world that lay at some angle she could glimpse, but not see.

She knew if she took these objects home with her; to the room high under the eves of her cottage, she could spend her days arranging them until they all fell into place and she would have the key she could use to unlock the door to this other world she knew was waiting to welcome her.

Unexplained Visitations

Sometimes, it seems as though someone has left the door open and the entire room has filled up with small Welsh canteen manageresses while no-one was looking… well, at least in this part of the country, anyway. In other parts of the country, not quite so close to the Welsh border regions, then you may suddenly find yourself overrun by East Anglian double-glazing salesmen, Cockney banjo-impersonators or even badger whisperers from Yorkshire.

Although, reports of some unfortunate people's houses suffering unexplained infestations of Media Studies students from Cornwall has been put down to hysteria whipped up by tabloid newspapers eager to have something other than the thighs of lady tennis players to report upon during the impending political closed-season.

Having said that though, the reports of quantity surveyors from Illfracombe suddenly – and inexplicably – appearing in people's kitchens has been confirmed, and - what is more – put down to someone in Ludlow forgetting to turn off a dripping tap properly.

However, the authorities are reporting that they do have the situation under control, at least as far north as Bradford. That, then, should at least put your mind at rest for the time being, that is – of course - unless you are unfortunate enough to be residing somewhere north of Bradford, in which case the authorities seem to be suggesting you are on your own.

Thursday Poem: Days Slip Through

Days Slip Through

Days are like that, piling up one after another
and another, until the morning you wake

to find a whole week of days
has slipped beyond your grasp

before you could even manage
to reach towards a single day.

They slip through the hand like water,
like grains of sand running through fingers

no matter how tight you hold them
the days evade and slip away from you

leaving you here, sitting alone
wondering where your time has gone.