David Hadley's Blog, page 174

A New Approach to Public Transport

It did come as something of a shock, especially to those of us not issued with the requisite pogo-sticks by the local council. After all, when you look at the economic costs associated with it, there is a lot to be said for it. A pogo stick lane down the street takes up far less room than a bus lane as well as getting rid of all the unnecessary bus shelters and bus garages, not to mention the cost saving in bus drivers alone.

True, the pogo-stick can be a bit awkward and sometimes unwieldy, especially for young parents with prams and so forth, as well as those who used to use public transport for their shopping trips. For example, it is easy to spot the trail left by a newcomer to the pogo-stick based shopping experience as the bouncing does tend to liberate a not-unreasonable amount of insecurely–packed shopping, especially such items as loose potatoes or oranges.

However, such teething troubles will no doubt be a thing of the past as the local population gets used to, and more experienced, with this new form of transport.

Furthermore, looking on the bright side, the pogo-stick is infinitely preferable to the other similar option of individual self-powered transportation – that cursed pedal-powered vehicle of Satan himself - the bicycle, and all its evil works.

Putting the Shopping Away: Tactics

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It was not that she was somewhat provocative in her handling of the melon, it was more a matter that such an act on her part left me with little choice over what to do with the rather large chunk of cheddar cheese I was holding.

Of course, many practitioners of the game should be smiling a wry smile of recognition at what has now become one of the standard opening moves of a match.

Quickly, before she could manoeuvre the melon to a more convenient location, I managed to put the cheese in the fridge and move on to the next item in my carrier bag. This happened to be a bottle of milk, thus easily trumping her carton of teabags.

However, the teabags were a special offer containing 50% extra free, which of course completely invalidated any advantage I had with the milk, leaving her with a penalty move which enabled her to finish putting all her shopping away from her carrier bag whilst I was left with a tin of tomato soup still in mine.

Next week, though, there will be a rematch, and as the loser this time I get first choice of shopping bag, so I think I will make sure I get the one with the digestive biscuits, of course.

Thursday Poem: Where Worlds Lie

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Where Worlds Lie

Once all it seemed you had to do
was reach out, and the world was there
right in the palm of your one hand,

just waiting, breathing easily
prepared for whatever you wanted
it to become. And now the world

is growing tired and lies exhausted
still at your feet, no longer willing
to rise  on your command and fly

out to where you desire to bring
that woman you see standing down
by the riverside and watching

the slow reflections drifting by
just looking for a face to come
rising up from that clear water

to bring her back here by the hand
to meet you in this place where worlds
wait to obey your next decree.

The People of the River God

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So, this was how it began; a moment taken out of the river of time and set aside here on the riverbank, just for her.

I had travelled this river for such a long time. From the place where the river was no longer a stream, down all its twists and turns, I had travelled until I arrived here out on the great plain. Her people lived on the edge of the river, their villages spread along the fertile soils that the river provided for them.

Almost inevitably, since the river provided them with so much, it had – over the centuries – become their god.

As I arrived out of the mist of distance along the great river, a person from some distant place that not even their legends spoke of, they assumed I was – at the very least – some messenger, some emissary for the river god. A few even dared to whisper that I could even be the river god himself; coming to bring either great benedictions or heap great calamities upon the people of the river.

Anyway, as soon as they saw the way I looked at her, she was given to me. I was never sure if they saw her as a sacrifice or a gift, or even a spy sent to discover if I was really their god, or just a mere messenger.

All I remember from that first night was the way she sat shivering in front of my fire, her eyes fixed on the dancing flames, refusing to look up at me, refusing to move, both fearing and desiring the moment when she would feel my first touch upon her.

When Time Stood Still

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Time stood still.

I’d never realised the power of that old cliché, not until that moment. I was amazed, but also not amazed at the same time. That is the trouble with living in a world where Science Fiction exists. I had read books, I had seen films, TV programmes, where the time froze, leaving balls suspended in the air, birds fixed in mid-flight, people with their faces contorted in mid-speech and with suspended gestures, their bodies becoming awkward ungainly statues.

It happened just like that… as expected, in a way. All as if someone, somewhere had pressed a universal pause button and nipped off to the toilet or to see what was in the fridge, or to let the dog out or the cat back in, only to come back after some unpredictable amount of time to unpause the universe and set the whole thing rolling again.

At the same time, though, I was amazed that it happened at all. I was, after all, living in a world bound by the rules and laws of science. It seemed impossible that suddenly all that could stop, that time could cease, that I could step outside time… and later, at other times - when I thought to check - that electricity could stop, with electrons – I presume - no longer flowing. Don’t ask me how or why it was everything but me that had come to a halt like that.

I carried on; as far as I could tell - biology, like physics not being my strong suit – the same as normal, while all around me the world came to a halt.

I don’t think, don’t expect, I was chosen. I may not know too much about science, but I do know enough about religion to know I have never suffered from that particular delusion.

All I know is that the world stopped and I carried on. Then one day I wondered if this happened to everybody, or to some others that I did not know about. I had never seen anyone else in those instances that time froze wandering through the crowds like me. But each instant is just that, the chances of time – if it was an individual thing – stopping for two people near to each other at the same instant must be pretty small, considering how big the world is, and how much time there is.

Then, one day, I saw her dancing towards me through the frozen crowd.

The Perils of Unsliced Bread

It was not as though she had never sliced bread before, but I remembered only too well what happened the last time. Certain women should not be allowed near sharpened blades, especially those with a well-developed feeling of disgruntlement towards their nearest and – formerly – dearest.

Still, it stopped bleeding eventually and she did then proceed towards making some sort of more conventional approach to the construction of a sandwich, even though it took a week for the cat to come out of hiding.

Of course, someone like her with a rather relaxed grip on her temper, than is usually the case outside certain more secure establishments than this place, can make life a little too interesting for those in their vicinity. At least, it does give us all a chance to keep fit and to develop a more alert state of mind than would otherwise be the case. It is probably for these reasons that her children became so adept at hide and seek… as well as advanced first aid.

So, in the end there can be a lot said for it, even though it is best to choose just what those words are very carefully if you suspect she is somewhere within earshot and has easy access to something sharp and pointy.

Polishing It… Furiously

Well, anyway, there she was with her doodahs all like a wossname at thingamajig, so all I could do was get the whatchamacallit out and polish it… furiously. As I said to the vicar at the time: ‘you don’t get many of them to the pound’, especially now when we have to dance in metric.

However, when she got the bagpipes out the vicar made his excuses and left. That is the sort of thing you have to expect with vicars, bringing religion into it and spoiling it for the rest of us. However, once the vicar had pedalled away, leaving with the harmonium in a very precarious position on the back of his unicycle, she locked the bagpipes back in their cage and got the Ludo board out.

So, all’s well that ends well, except for the dull ache in the back of the thighs and still – even now – all these weeks later she still has a tendency to blush when anyone offers her a teacake.

However, as I’ve said before – once or twice – sometimes you have to be careful when she gets her doodahs out, insisting that we all sing along. Still, her from down the road at number 32 did that dance she does when she’s had a few too many advocaats, so that made the evening rather more memorable than would be the case, even for a Thursday.

The Three Bears

Once upon a time there were another three bears: Daddy Bear, Mommy Bear and Mommy’s Special Friend Bear. Mommy’s Special Friend Bear used to come around to Daddy Bear and Mommy Bear’s den when he knew Daddy Bear was out, usually meeting with other activist bears down at the forest Drop-In Centre where they would organise campaigns about the prejudicial stereotyping of bears and what they got up to in the woods.

Meanwhile, Mommy Bear and Mommy’s Special Friend Bear were busy doing other things in the woods that were fair more sanitary than the things bears are usually presumed to do in the woods, although by the end of it they both usually need to use some soft tissue to wipe themselves down.

However, little did they know that one day their woodland-based activities would come to an abrupt end when, early one morning, Mommy Bear and Mommy’s Special Friend Bear were caught red-pawed by Daddy Bear and his activist friends as they led a protest march through the glade where Mommy Bear and Mommy’s Special Friend Bear were engaged in an activity - involving bondage gear and paw-cuffs - not usually associated with bears, not least outside David Attenborough’s private ursine DVD collection, anyway.

Anyway, as with all these stories they all lived happily ever after, but that was only because Daddy Bear had already, by then, met another Daddy Bear in the activist meetings who liked to do those other things bears do in the woods, but with other Daddy Bears instead of Mommy Bears, which – to Daddy Bear’s surprise, Mommy Bear said she’d always had her suspicions about. She had, she growled, some years ago come to the conclusion that Daddy Bear would be happier in the company of other Daddy Bears, anyway.

So, that was that, even though the protest march never got any publicity for the Bear’s Rights cause, because - as we know – journalists never go down to the woods, not even to cover the Teddy Bear’s Picnic, which is surprising as it is a far more adult affair than we have – up until now – been led to believe.

An Essential Rock Band

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Corrugated Transfat released their first single, on the incredibly hip Tosser label, way back in the mists of 1977, a time when all the hip young things were trying to persuade everyone, including themselves that punk was the thing of the moment. Despite arriving on the scene at the same time as punk, and releasing their first three singles on one of punk’s most iconic record labels, Corrugated Transfat were never really a punk band. For example, their lead guitarist Trim Understeer, knew which way up to hold a guitar and – despite the rumours to the contrary - their drummer, Crude Undertakings, never once tried to eat his own drum sticks.

That first single, Petrol in My left Ear (Baby) was totally ignored by the record-buying public, thereby forcing the music journalists trying to prove their street-cred into branding it an instant classic, the one single of the year everyone who regarded himself (this was, of course a totally male thing) as a serious record collector needed to bite off his own granny’s left leg to get hold of.

However, despite a significant increase in the number of suddenly semi-ambulatory old-age pensioners, the record never got the chart success the more deludedly-fashionable of the music journalists wanted it to be. This only went on to prove to them that they were right, for the only thing better that chart success to a hip journalist on the music papers was a complete lack of chart success by those they championed.

Not long after, Corrugated Transfat, split up due to the perennial ‘musical differences’ when their bass player, Torquewrench Portakabin, got a proper job with a leading accountancy firm, thereby instantly making the band the name to drop when reminiscing about the punk era with other similar overweight middle managers and sales reps pretending that ‘yeah, like I was there, man’.

Being First

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‘It’s these mornings,’ she said.

‘Oh,’ I said, glancing around. It seemed like a lovely spring day, just the way I like them – as always, of course.

‘They’re too cold.’

‘Oh.’ For a moment I thought about telling her about winter. It seemed an interesting idea when it came to me yesterday.

‘It’s the damp ground. It makes me feel all stiff and cold when I wake up… and there’s this.’

‘Dew,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘That’s what it’s called. What I named it.’

‘D… dew? Really? Why…?’ She flicked some of the dampness off her thigh. Some of it landed on the man. He twitched in his sleep. ’At first I thought I’d wet myself… in the night. Actually, that is something else I wanted to ask you about?’

‘Yes?’ I sighed. This looked as though it would be a long morning.

‘I mean this whole food and the… the other business. It occurred to me if we didn’t have to put the stuff, the food and water in the one end, then it wouldn’t need to come out the other. Am I right?’

I nodded. ‘I suppose….’ I said, wondering where she was going with this one. The day before it was about how some of the animals have nice soft fur while she and the man had only their skin and the odd patch of hair here and there that didn’t seem much use, at least not to her.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘Getting the food and eating it and so on… well, it gives you something to do, doesn’t it?’ I looked around. ‘After all, there’s not much else to do, is there?’ I regretted it as soon as I said it.

She looked at me. ‘That’s another thing….’ she said.