David Hadley's Blog, page 176

Public Artwork

Well, anyway, here we are standing next to the latest piece of public sculpture commission by a local authority to commemorate some pet project or other some local councillor wanted to….

Hang on… sorry, this is not it.

Apparently, this is the local council Recycling Centre overflow pile.

The sculpture is over there….

Hang on….

Anyway, I have here with me, the local councillor: Wodge Spendthrift.

Ms Spendthrift, can I begin by…? Er…. So, this is it? Are you sure? To be honest, I think I preferred that pile of recycling.

Ah, unfortunately Ms Spendthrift has just remembered another appointment, so moving on….

The local council apparently had to close down six libraries and seven old people’s homes in order to afford to commission this… this… this thing. Obviously, it is money well spent as specially-commissioned research has shown that it could bring in significant amounts of tourists… quite possibly in order to wonder at the complete waste of money that the council has pissed away on this… this….

Oh, apparently, it has won an award. Unsurprisingly it is an award by a committee trying to promote more public sculptures of this kind and that committee is mainly made up from the people who would receive significant percentages of that commissioning money.

Apparently, a reader of a local newspaper has worked out it would have been cheaper for the council to burn a pile of five pound notes heaped up to the same height as this… this… thing….

Anyway, back to the studio… please.

The Artefact

Anyway, there it was, just sitting there like a… like a… thing, except that it was vibrating slightly and humming.

A mystery.

It looked alien, not of this world.

Obviously then I thought it must not be alien. What are – after all, when you think about it – the chances of something that looks alien actually being alien.

Not much, obviously.

At least if you are not some kind of conspiracy nutte… theorist.

That is, unless there are secretly aliens amongst us, after all. Whenever you are out and about you do have to wonder… even just reading the news or watching TV you do sometimes wonder if you are the same species, the same human race, as those that you see around with their strange habits, strange dress, strange ideas. Perhaps we are all aliens and this planet is some sort of dumping ground for the cosmic oddities that no species wants to have around – that would explain so much.

Anyway, so, unless there were aliens about – which there doesn't seem to be any real evidence for such a notion, then, this thing… whatever it was - was not alien.

Anyway, there I was staring at it, wondering if it was radioactive when Jennifer hurried back out of her room, picked it up, looking rather embarrassed, switched off its vibrating and hurried back into her room with it and the laptop she'd hurriedly shut down before dashing from the room when I'd come home unexpectedly five minutes before.

Like I said... a mystery.

Collectable Memorabilia

You can never be quite sure that the way she looks askance at your enviable collection of reindeer mementos is really as admiring as you'd hoped. That is the thing with starting to collect things. This is especially true of collecting things that no-one with – shall we say – a more firmer footing on the lower slopes of sanity would regard as worthy of spending a few minutes with, let alone building up - over many lonely years – a collection of pristine reindeer memorabilia that would be the envy of… well, the envy of no-one.

After all, there are those out there, usually to be found wandering the desolate shores of loneliness after the last boat of plausible female companionship has set sail from the harbour with all passengers eager to quit the forlorn shore where you now tread. Those selfsame people who now take a long look at the cruel world that has so callously and carelessly tossed them aside often turn for comfort to small plastic figures (still in the original packaging) and posters and… well, whatever they can capture in their sweaty paws, clutch to their concave chests and scurry back to their lair with.

Anyway, I have this mint condition edition of the World Reindeer of the Year album from 1976, one I am sure would complete your enviable collection, are you interested?

Space, Time and Car Parking

 

Still, it's not as if she had much choice, the laws of nature being what they are. After all, we all know how much easier it would be for parking the car if we weren't just limited to the four dimensions of conventional space time. Sod the Star Trek warp drive, what would be a greater boon to the human race would be the warp car parking space that could somehow unfold out of some other dimension or something to enable you to park with ease, and - once parked – get out of the car without having to perform some Olympic–standard gymnastic routines to unfold your body out of the less than two inches of room you have to open the car door without hitting the car in the adjacent space or some bollard, waste bin, light fixture or some other street furniture the creator of the car park littered across the place like some concrete, metal and plastic confetti.

Still, like I said, she didn't have much choice – lacking the warp parking facility, so she just left it there, spread diagonally across the two spaces. After all, it was not as if it was the busy time. The car park itself was more or less deserted, which is one of the advantages of going shopping when there is major sporting event underway.

Not that she knew that, of course.

The rest of the world – including car parking space delineations - was not much interest to her. She had far more important things to occupy her mind than mere rules and regulations, especially those universal laws of physics that seemed to do so much to thwart her desires. Still, though, she did get her shopping done, which in the great cosmic scheme of things is – after all – what really matters.

Out of the Blue

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It was odd. As soon as I came out, I realised how alien it all was. The sky was blue for a start off. I'd never expected something like that. The ground, when I ventured out, past the churned up ground where I'd landed, was covered with green things that seemed to be growing out of it too.

I wondered if they could be intelligent at first but then I noticed these other larger fluffy things were doing what I could only describe as using these other green things for fuel.

There are – admittedly – many different kinds of intelligent being in the universe, but none so far recorded allow themselves to be eaten by larger fluffy things that resemble small fat clouds – on legs.

Yes, legs….

Who would have thought of that?

I did try making contact with one of the ambulatory clouds, but as soon as I got anywhere near them they all moved away, in a herd, then turned and made bleating noises at each other until I moved away.

Legs and bleating noises….

It looked as though I'd arrived on a planet – yet again – with no intelligent life. Legs and noises? After all, nowhere in the known universe is there any kind of intelligent life that has legs or makes bleating noises, let alone both.

I decided to give up and move on. I made my way back up the hill….

Then I saw one!

She was speeding past on a magnificent meandering pathway with some of the sexiest tyres I'd ever seen.

I motored down to the black pathway as fast as I could, but by the time I'd got there she'd gone.

I was just thinking I'd imagined it, when out of the distance another one came along the path, a silver one this time, and this one flashed her headlamps at me! And we hadn't even been introduced formally to each other.

Suddenly, I decided I liked this world as I flashed back, ready to give chase.

The Day Pouring Down on Her Skin

It was easy to forget in those days. Sometimes she held me so enthralled I forgot to make the new day for her and she would sit there on the edge of her bed wondering where the morning had gone. Sometimes I would be so absorbed in watching her sleep and watching the dreams I'd made unfold for her that I forgot she would need to wake up, and that – once awake – she would need a world there, waiting to greet her.

I had so many warm spring and summer days ready for her, as well as the golden days of autumn and those bright sunny days of winter she liked so much when the snow turned the bare world white, fresh and so new.

I used to like the way she would run out into the morning, often on the warmer days without bothering to dress in the clothes I'd laid out for her, just too feel the day pouring down on her skin.

Then, though, I started to forget things. I forgot to set the birds singing with the dawn. I forgot to open the flowers and to set the breeze blowing through the grass around her feet. Sometimes, I would forget the clouds or the cooling rain she liked to dance through on hot days.

Once, I realised with a start, I had left her alone for several days without even a morning for her to look out upon. When I got there, I found her all alone with no day and no world around her; just standing alone in the emptiness, which was all I'd left for her.

Spadgecock's Patented Wildfowl Distractor

Still, it was never that easy for a gentleman to find a suitable device for intriguing any waterfowl before the invention of Spadgecock's Patented Wildfowl Distractor, back in the Mid-Victorian period. Up until then the dubious serenity of certain water-based species of birds was most disconcerting to the naturalists who were beginning to take an interest in their surroundings as the scientific revolution spread. Furthermore, much to the relief of the Victorian gentry, it was discovered that over-luxuriant bewhiskering was no bar to taking an interest in the natural world as Charles Darwin himself so spectacularly demonstrated.

It was thought, initially, by some early theorists of the natural world that any bird caught unawares by a heavily-bewhiskered Victorian gentleman would immediately take to the air. This did, indeed, prove to be the case with a lot of birds easily scared off by the approach of a large Victorian gentleman, his whiskers and all the mechanical devices and accoutrements that the Victorian felt necessary for his survival so far away from his servants, especially the scullery maids.

There was a fashion for the aspiring naturalist to take various devices on his expeditions, such as the well-known Mechanical Scullery maid. This was a steam-powered contrivance that could rummage around in a gentleman's trouser region and inveigle its way through the copious amounts of Victorian underwear to bring relief to a gentleman whilst out in the wild and away from scullery maids and other female domestic staff as well as too far away for any trollop, harlot or other lady of transactional voluptuousness to assist with his yearnings.

When amateur birdwatcher and inventor Jebediah Spadgecock first witnessed a demonstration of the then new sport of Chicken-Intriguing, and saw how distracting birds by piquing their interest could prevent birds from flying away, he came up with the idea of creating some sort of mechanical device that would so intrigue birds that they would not fly away, thus allowing bird watchers to get a good look at them.

However, much to Spadgecock's chagrin, there didn't seem to be much that wild birds were interested in, apart from finding stuff to eat, avoiding stuff that wanted to eat them and collecting nesting material. His first attempt at a device, based on the increasingly popular What the Butler Saw machines, his What the Bullfinch Saw, displayed a female bird settling down in her nest for a little light preening. However, this did little to keep the attention of wild birds, with most immediately flying off to find some nesting material to impress the female who had – apparently – just appeared out of nowhere.

Then, one day, when Spadgecock was doing some in-depth research into the kinds of ostrich feathers preferred by London's strumpets, harlots and totty at some of the capital's more upmarket bordellos, he discovered one of the trollops had a budgie in a cage that was often fascinated by its own reflection in a mirror. This was the breakthrough Spadgecock had been waiting for, pausing only to have his way with seven of that bawdy house's prime floozies, he hurried back to his workshop.

Spadgecock's Patented Wildfowl Distractor was ready just in time for the Great Exhibition of 1851, where it soon became a must-see exhibit, second only in popularity to the latest steam-powered version of the Mechanical Scullery maid.

Spadgecock's Patented Wildfowl Distractor was based around a multitude of steam-powered rotating mirrors guaranteed to keep any bird mesmerised long enough for any aspiring Victorian gentleman naturalist to have a damned good look at the bird, and – possibly – even knock of a sketch or two of it, even whist being pleasured by his Mechanical Scullery maid.

Unfortunately, for Spadgecock, though, disaster struck one summer afternoon during the final field test of his Distractor when his workmen set up the Mechanical Scullery maid far too close to the Distractor whilst Spadgecock was distracted by a nearby meadow pipit. Before anyone could warn Spadgecock to run the Mechanical Scullery maid's fingers were already intertwining themselves in the Distractor's steam engine.

The resulting explosion was said to have been heard seven miles away and all that was left of Spadgecock himself were the last eighteen inches of his stovepipe hat and a grommet from the Distractor's flange mechanism. Both of these items were buried, in lieu of a body, in Spadgecock's local village church cemetery in a ceremony attended by several members of the Royal Society, representatives of the British Royal family and nearly every floozy, strumpet and harlot in London.

Spadgecock's death put an end to any further research into ways of intriguing birds for several years, and – by then – photography had advanced enough to make any need for a Wildfowl Distractor superfluous, which was a sad end to yet another example of Victorian British genius.

Too Rough for Her Delicate World

She said I was too rough for her delicate world when these rough hands grab too hard around her soft life. She wanted gentle moments that swayed in the breeze not my heavy storms that tore through her life ripping everything apart and uprooting all her calm moments. She wanted warm gentle rains not my storms that flooded everything and smashed all the boats in her safe harbour. She wanted a warming sun that brought life to her valley, not the scorching heat-wave that burnt everything and left scorched destruction in its wake. She wanted time and languid motion on smooth flowing rivers, not raging torrents that broke their banks and left everything of her life sodden and hopeless.

She wanted to teach me how to be gentle and I wanted to show her the dangers of this rough world and how I could keep her safe from it all. How I could be the wall she could hide behind, when the world tumbled and fell all around her. That I would be there always ready to be the rock she could cling to when the rough seas of life shipwrecked her. That I could be the one safe place she could always run to and I would be there, standing over her for as long as she needed me.

Thursday Poem: Chasing

Chasing

Even she, when she walks,
walks without looking back.

The past is too close.
It follows her and it follows you.

You turn down paths to follow her
as she leads you away to new places.

While the past chases on behind
almost reaching out to pull you back.

She takes you down to the river
as the past whispers in your ear

That you have been here before
and that she knows this as well.

She takes your hand and leads you
out into the cold rushing water,

While the past reminds you
that these waters were once just snow

on the hills you cannot see
that lie lost in the deep clouds
like memories of who you used to be.

Avoiding the Twat

Twang Spludgetrimmer is – of course – now world-famous for being very slightly faster at running about a bit over a comparable distance than anyone else in the world.

Since Avoiding the Twat became an Olympic sport back in 1996, it has grown in popularity both at an amateur and professional level, to the point where it is now regarded as one of the most important Olympic sports. However, as the Olympics mainly consists of sports no-one is really that interested in, otherwise they would have tournaments of their own, then this poses a problem for superstars in their field like Twang Spludgetrimmer.

Ever since Twang Spludgetrimmer began avoiding people who got on her tits back in her schooldays, she was regarded as potential Avoiding the Twat star material. It was her PE teacher who first recognised Spludgetrimmer's potential when she found that Twang had an uncanny knack of always being somewhere else – often in only a few seconds - whenever PE was on her timetable. In fact, her PE teacher never saw Spludgetrimmer at all, except for a few seconds at the end of the period, whenever she was meant to be doing PE.

As her PE teacher, Sinew Hairybush, said later: 'It wasn't until I realised I'd never seen Twang out on the playing field, that I realised I must be a massive twat – something I'd always discounted, despite the graffiti in the changing rooms – and that Twang was a genius at avoiding me.'

Consequently, despite never turning up for the training sessions, Twang Spludgetrimmer was made captain of the school Avoiding the Twat team, and then went on to go solo at county, then national level, despite none of the selectors having ever met her for more than a cursory few seconds when they were already late for another appointment.

Not only was Spludgetrimmer a natural expert on the Avoiding the Twat pitch, she was also adept at it off the pitch too. For example, there is no record of her ever giving an interview with any pre- or post-match sports commentators or media sports correspondents since she began representing her country, nor did she ever turn up for her MBE award ceremony, or attend any London Olympics 2012 press conferences with Sebastian Coe or either of the London mayors.

Everyone with an interest in the sport of Avoiding the Twat, however, hopes that if Spludgetrimmer is amongst the Avoiding the Twat medal winners at London 2012 she will actually appear on the podium to receive her no-doubt well-deserved medal.