David Hadley's Blog, page 180

All Closed Up

We no longer speak of that time. The room itself is closed up, the furniture gone, the door closed and the key hidden away in a secret drawer in this desk that is, itself, never used.

We would turn, walk away from the house if we could. There are probably many who would buy it, turn it into something that makes it no longer a home, just that house where that thing happened once in one of its rooms. However, some things are beyond selling. Some things go beyond the physical. Money cannot buy some things. Money cannot help us forget, those of us who were there will remember and the house will remember too.

We tried to turn, to run, to leave, but there is nowhere left that is safe. Everyone knows you cannot escape yourself, no matter where you run. This house is as much us as we are it. It will be our home for as long as we live, for as long as the memory of what happened in that room lives.

I have decided that when I am the last of us left alive, the last thing I will do, before I too decide to die, is burn down this house, making sure that it is that room that is the first to burn.

The Golden Spoon Award

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Sagebush Toadselector was not just any run-of-the-mill dessert impersonator. If fact, her strawberry jam tart and custard won the prestigious Golden Spoon award three times in a row back in the late 1990s, with one judge describing her hand gestures as 'custard coming alive!'

Although, her real talent lay in custard mimicry, Toadselector was not unwilling to try other pudding accompaniments and sauces. For example, her brandy sauce for her BBC TV Christmas Special was regarded by several TV critics as a masterpiece unlikely ever to be equalled with some rating her show above and beyond the benchmark set by Morecombe and Wise in their heyday. It must be said too that neither Morecombe or Wise ever attempted to portray a sponge pudding in front of a live audience and TV viewers numbered in their millions, using only a piece of cardboard and a boob tube.

However, such cutting-edge dessert impersonation is not without its dangers, and not just from over-eager fans rushing forward with their spoons. Sometimes, say, in the case of pretending to be an apple crumble the risks to the performer – especially if they are attempting to be portraying Bramley apples – are considerable.

Tragedy struck Toadselector in what will from now on always be known as the Great Spotted Dick Disaster, when in a never before seen attempt to recreate over a score of currants live on stage, Toadselector fell thirty feet from her malfunctioning harness onto the stage below. Such was Toadselector's devotion to her craft and striving for full authenticity she never used a safety net, not even when attempting an Eton Mess.

As the Prime Minister said in his eulogy at her funeral 'We will not look upon her Apple Strudel again.' Later that day her body was encased in pastry covered in custard and buried in her home town of Luton, while a honour guard of pastry chefs help their spoons at half mast.

The Law of the Conservation of Conversational Momentum

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Obviously, under the law of the conservation of conversational momentum, she is not going to shut up until you admit that you were wrong. However, you should not concede fault at too early an opportunity, especially if all you want to do is get back to watching the match, film, or whatever, or carry on reading your book, or contemplating the eternal verities, or just giving your testicles their next 15-minute realignment check-over.

That way only trouble lies.

And not just in the matter of having uncomfortable inadequately-aligned testicles.

In order to make sure that the law of conservation of conversational momentum is satisfied, there must be an opposite and equal amount of conversational input from both sides of a conversation (or in the case of a multidimensional conversation from all sides), otherwise there will be spare energy left over which she - more often than not – will use up by throwing something at you, quite possibly during the vital last-minute penalty kick.

Therefore you must keep up your side of the conversation, no matter what she says, or says she said to whomever she was having the conversation with that she is now telling you about in minute detail to prove that she was right all along.

However, whatever you do, you should always make sure that she has the last word, otherwise it could lead to the entire destruction of the universe in a massive all-engulfing explosion that destroys space-time in its entirety… and that will all have been your fault, as she will no doubt inform you in the final moment before the entire universe suddenly ceases to exi….

He had Gone

He had gone.

She sensed something as soon as she walked into the house: a hollowness, an emptiness; the absence of something, of a living person.

As she dashed to room after room, she not only found him gone, but all his stuff had gone too.

His CDs, DVDs and a handful of framed photos he'd taken were gone from one room. The bookshelves showed gaps where his books had once sat. His half of the wardrobe was empty and the shelf he used in the bathroom had only a ring where his shaving foam tin had stood.

Back in the bedroom, wondering what she was going to do as she stood by the half-empty wardrobe, Karen stared at the bed, thinking how big it looked and how cold it would seem. Especially in the mornings, when she rolled over to lie in the warm he left behind as he got up.

In the kitchen, his favourite mug had gone and so had his jar of marmalade.

'No great loss,' Karen had never liked marmalade, but whether she was talking to herself about the lack of marmalade, or the apparent lack of Jeff in her life from now on, she was not sure.

In her study, Karen upended the vase over her waiting palm until the small key fell from it. She walked over to the desk, unlocked and pulled open the drawer. It was still there.

She took it from the drawer, reassured by its solid heft. She checked it was loaded. She dropped it into her handbag, along with the box of bullets for it. She took one look around her study and turned for the door.

'Don't worry, Jeff. I'm coming for you,' she said, picking up her bag, feeling the reassuring weight of the gun in it as she slung the bag's long handle over her should and fished out her car keys from its side-pocket.

The Time Stations

There were times when the times seemed to slip over each other and merge as though two rail tracks came together in a junction and merged into on for a while before separating, splitting out and moving apart again. These places where the time tracks merged were a bit like railway stations too, with separate events coming together all in the one place from different times and unloading their passengers, sometimes even swapping carriages before moving off again, back to their own time.

People seemed to haunt these time stations too, as railway stations seem haunted by the passengers passing through. It is a place of temporary – and temporal – disturbance where people only pass through, but can never call it home or come to rest there.

Usually, people caught the right time train out of those time stations, back to their own time, back to their own lives. There were some who made mistakes, boarded the wrong time, stood on the wrong platform, saw things that did not belong in their time. Some even became involved in things outside their time, things that they were not supposed to involve themselves in.

That is where we came in, we who staffed these time stations, the temporal junctions. Mostly, we were there to assist, put people back on their own time lines. See them safely on their journey with as little inconvenience and disturbance as possible.

However, there were some who came to these places deliberately, intent on using these junctions of time for their own purposes. Those times we had to step in, make sure that time stayed on track, that all the time journeys went on their way, that there were no derailments, crashes or any other disasters brought about by those who tried to tamper with time.

Monday Poem: Once-Invented Gods

Once-Invented Gods

Now there is only time and there's no space
outside this, as the numbers fall on down
into the space between the distant spaces.
You twist and turn to become a shape that moves
through distances and times still turning too.

We keep what we can hold, the reaching hand
outstretched towards what we almost can touch.
All reaching for what we can nearly grasp
in hands that need to hold the world so close
to know just how and why it turns always

and why the once-invented gods of old
are no use any more now we have grown
away from their harsh magic and mean purpose
towards a life we can all call our own.

New Book Out Now: Choosing Headgear for Penguins

Choosing Headgear for Penguins

No doubt you have been wondering over the years about what is the most suitable hat for the various breeds of penguin: such as a deerstalker for the King penguins, or whether emperor penguins should wear a top hat.
Perhaps you have also wondered if Napoleon wore a basque under his uniform at the battle of Waterloo and the role that lingerie played in history.
Maybe you have long puzzled over the role of the Stilton cavalry in the English Cheese war.

Possibly you may have pondered who was The Greatest Prime Minister Great Britain Never Had, or who was The Fastest Jelly Baby Diversity Co-Ordinator In The West.

You could have even puzzled over The Fabled Lost Source of the Pork Scratching.

Choosing Headgear for Penguins is the book that answers all of these and many other questions you've never thought of asking as well as much, much more about such diverse topics as: Celebrity Extreme Gardening, Eroticism and the Intellectuals, People Staring At Walls, Raiders Of The Lost Car Park, The Latest Celebrity Sex Scandal, The UK's Leading Adult Film Male Superstar and Weasel Defusing.

Some comments on David Hadley's humour pieces:
"Bloody Hilarious!"
"The hamsters of doom. Dammit, that's poetry. Well done"
"oh my god....I just about died laughing reading this...it's genius! Pure genius! Especially the bit about the fluffy particle...too funny."
"This made me laugh so much, tears came into my eyes...."
"I just sprayed barely masticated tomato all over my keyboard from laughing too hard"
"this really made me laugh. I shall never look at a cup of tea in the same way again."
"Brilliant! made me howl..."
"I think I just broke all my vital organs laughing"

The Corridors of her Dreams

I looked back to see her chasing me, down the corridors of her dreams, down the twisting lanes and along the skyways we had travelled together as she slept. We had said good-bye three dreamless nights ago and I had walked away, out of her dreams.

I thought it would be forever.

I thought I would wander these corridors of her dreams, revisit all the places we had spent the night together as she lay sleeping in her bed, remembering the times when she was there with me.

I could only presume that she too had been wandering down her dream corridors and had caught sight of me as I went forlornly from dream place to dream place wondering where it had all gone wrong.

I had come like a thief in the night, easing my way into her dreams, becoming the one she searched for, became the one she met each night as her hands crept down her body to bring her comfort in her sleeping. Only, in the dreams, it was my hands, my body, she saw, felt, tasted, as her fingers moved.

Here I was now, though, running down the corridors looking around frantically for a way out of her dreams, looking for a way back into the dreams of someone else, someone new I'd found when she had turned away to return to her waking world.

The Importance of Recycling

Of course, it is a matter, most days of just sweeping up all the spare zebras and putting them in a neat pile ready to be taken to the wildlife-recycling centre when there are enough to make the journey worthwhile. There is nothing quite as futile and unnecessary as turning up at the wildlife recycling centre with a zebra or two and a gazelle, especially on the busy days when there is a long queue for the armadillo bins.

Other towns, other cities, other councils, have a collection scheme though, where any unwanted wildlife is put out in a special box, bin or enclosure ready to be collected alongside all the other recycling: cardboard, tin, plastic, unwanted relatives and so on.

After all, even though sorting out the second cousins, say, from the aunties can be a bit labour intensive, it is far better to have to pay for that than the cost of clearing our hedgerows and roadsides of fly-tipped grandparents and discarded younger sisters.

There is also the additional problem of what to do with the toxic waste, such as politicians, estate agents, members of the legal profession and, of course, journalists. There is nothing worse than finding one of these dumped, often without their protective container and usually unmarked. Sometimes if, say, a politician gets in amongst the discarded uncles a whole batch can become contaminated and have to be thrown out, which is a complete waste and makes the who recycling process pointless and more trouble than it is worth.

Thursday Poem: Silver Skies

Silver Skies

It comes right out of silver skies
and wraps itself around us all.
You reach a hand towards a face
all lost in shadow and secret nights.
The name you call out is unknown.
A stranger to you and your world,
your dreams and all your memories.

You didn't expect someone to come
like this to take hold of your world
and set it spinning once again
here under these new silver skies.

You have had all the golds of summer
and touched the beaten copper autumn,
but now as your old world turns cold
here underneath these silver skies
you find it turning spring again.