David Hadley's Blog, page 189

Retail Experience and Technological Innovation

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Nowadays there aren't that many reasons why you would need to poke an assistant supermarket manager with a jumbo packet of cod-flavoured fish-style fingers early on a Tuesday and/or Friday morning, but you never know, which is why it is always best to be prepared. That is why Tatijunk Inc. have only this week introduced there real imitation plastic leather-look fish finger holster for shoppers everywhere (Except for the town of York, for the obvious Viking-related historical reasons, where the wearing of fish finger holsters has been banned since 883 AD).

This will – obviously – make the retail shopping experience much easier for shoppers who already have to cope with an overloaded shopping trolley where each wheel has a mind of its own and an apparent disinterest in going in the same direction as the rest of its siblings.

Therefore, the fish finger holster will enable the shopper to enjoy his/her retail experience without having to clutch a box of frozen fish fingers in the hand. Consequently, in the case of any sudden confrontation with an assistant supermarket manager, especially in the Baked Goods aisle, where it is not always possible to wield a box of frozen fish fingers successfully without causing some unintentional damage to the Eccles cakes, the box of fish-style eating fingers is always easily accessible. Thus making it ideal for any enquiry as to the whereabouts of the last item on your shopping list, which – for reasons known only to themselves – the management of the supermarket have removed from their traditional shelf, thus causing you consternation and chaos right at the climax of your retail experience.

Power Failure

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Laura stepped slowly and carefully down the hallway. She knew it well in the light, but the darkness made it strange, alien. She lost all sense of distance and scale the further she went. She did not know how far it was to her own door. The corridor was a usually unremarkable and unremembered part of her daily routine. It was a place for thinking of other things; things to do, people to meet. She was surprised that something so much a part of her ordinary day could become so strange, so alien.

She turned the corner and stubbed her toe on the first of the steps. She bit off her cry of pain, looking around guiltily, but, of course, she could see nothing and no-one. It seemed unusually quiet; there was no muffled mutter of televisions, music or any other noise. She walked slowly up the steps, counting each one.

She turned the next corner, her hand floating along the wall in front of her. She touched something cold and her hand shot away from it. She whimpered, easing her hand forward once more, biting at her bottom lip.

Laura sighed in relief as her hand revealed the familiar shape of the fire extinguisher. She knew then that her door would be the next along the corridor. She sighed in relief and lent back against the wall.

Then the hand touched her.

Thursday Poem: These Rituals

These Rituals

Here is everything, held on the outside
there is nothing left on the inside.
We go through the rituals, solemn and slow
and leave everything that matters behind.

We know now what we only guessed before,
these rituals have no meaning beyond themselves.
Certain steps taken, certain gestures made
not for the benefit of some unseen watcher,
who dispenses punishments and rewards.

But just as some dance that once meant something
and is now a ritualised movement across this floor
of a building that seemed to give answers
to the questions that few dared ask again.

And now the rain falls down through the empty sky,
drips on down through this leaking roof
onto the bowed heads of those who wait for signs
they know they never will see and never will come.

Telling her Story

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She emerged out of the possibilities of an unfolding story. At first, there was just the room, bare, empty: a room without design or purpose, barely four walls and a window. Of course, there had to be a door too, even a mystery – should it turn out to be one - needed a door, locked or otherwise.

As the room grew out of the shadows, I saw it had plain slightly off-white walls, bare as though either a freshly-painted room or one newly-built. Although, the room didn't feel new, either, it felt old; a room that had felt history and could be the home to ghosts… not the spectral hauntings in particular, but that weight of history and past lives that every room over a certain age has. A feeling of lives lived within it, of having a past that it is almost possible to reach out and touch.

Anyway, there she was, standing in front of the window, looking out onto an overgrown garden. She had her back to me, her long straight black hair, reflecting some of the spring sunlight from a sun high in the sky as she stood there, looking out.

At first, I wondered if she was one of those ghosts of the room. I wondered if she would continue to stand there staring out of the window until the room faded from the story, or if she would turn and face me and begin to tell me this new story herself.

The Cunning of the Penguins

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Sometimes you have no choice but to start by mentioning the penguins. Sometimes, though, you can get away with not mentioning them until the last paragraph. Other times, and these do seem to be becoming more common as time goes by, you can actually get through the whole piece without mentioning a single penguin.

However, the penguin is a wily creature and it can so easily insert itself into all manner of discourses, often without the writer of the aforesaid discourse noticing that the penguin has secreted itself in the discourse, until it is too late.

After all, who can ever forget the last time they saw a TV detective about to reveal the identity of the murderer, only to be confounded by the sudden appearance of a penguin into the script, that no-one, especially the scriptwriter knew was there?

It goes without saying, but I'm going to say it anyway, if only to squeeze a few more sentences out of this topic, that penguins often appear in nature programmes.

Such is the cunning of the penguins, that a naturalist will set off with the intention of having a bit of a wander around the Serengeti to see what the wildebeests are up to, only to find his plane and his film crew have for some reason ended up in Antarctica. Not only that, it soon becomes apparent that it is the season when the Emperor penguins are at their moist photogenic.

I'll tell you now – that is no mere co-incidence.

Not Realising at the Time

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It began here. It began as all things begin, without anyone realising at the time that things were going to change and change forever. It is only with hindsight, and when it is much too late to go back, that we realise how things have changed.

It all began simply enough when the government claimed it was, of course, having to take action for the good of us all, to protect us from those elements, both from within our own society and from outside who were threatening our way of life.

It seemed, though, at the time that the ever-present threat of terrorism, either from within or from outside had always been with us in one form or another. Nevertheless, we had – in that archetypal British way – managed to muddle through without much changing, except the occasional news headline about some atrocity or other, which – like all news headlines eventually faded into history.

However, the changes that the government had set in motion had not faded away into history, but had begun to creep and grow, mostly out of sight and out of mind, like some rampant weed that suddenly one day seems to have taken over the garden without anyone ever noticing.

It seemed that one day we woke up and our world had changed forever and it was too late for any of us to do anything to stop it.

I Need to Belong

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It was what she needed, she said, later. It was not something I could really understand. I had always been something of a loner. I had never belonged to anything. I never joined any club, never became a fan of any team or band, never wanted to be one of the lads or in with the in-crowd. I had always preferred to be the one that stood apart, alone.

I was standing apart, alone, when we met. I had left the noise of the party behind me and strolled out onto a balcony to breathe some fresh air and get away from inane opinions.

She came up behind me and stood at the balcony rail next to me, turning her body towards me. I turned my head just enough to acknowledge her presence. I had played this game before. I knew what she wanted, needed, probably more than she did, then.

We spoke, made those tentative introductions, traded necessary information in the way that people do in such situations. At first, I was barely polite, a little angry at having my precious solitude invaded. However, as we talked she seemed less annoying than most of those I'd come out on the balcony to avoid.

She was witty, intelligent, articulate – the sort of person you rarely meet at parties. She was married, of course. Her husband, she nodded back towards the party, '…with his mates, probably talking about sport.'

I nodded, thought about making some comment about the pointlessness of sport, but she beat me to it.

'I don't know, sometimes I think there is something homoerotic about men and sport.' She sipped her wine. 'My husband and his friends always seem to need to be measuring their dicks against something, against each other… metaphorically, of course.'

She was silent for a while. 'I'd leave him, but I have nowhere to go.' She was looking out over at the night sky, but then she turned back to me. 'I need to belong,' she said, toying with the chain around her neck as she looked into my eyes.

I looked back, expressionless. 'You could belong to me,' I said.

'Yes,' she replied and stared down at the wine in her glass, a smile appearing on her lips. 'I could.'

Monday Poem: Another Stilled Night

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Another Stilled Night

Is it better to cloak the night in dreams,
or to lie awake in the darkness,
plotting for what dawn will bring
as the unwilling hours stretch out
to drag each other slowly forward
to fall in unused heaps at the foot
of the bed that wallows in the doldrums
of another stilled night, where each
tick falls like the footstep of some uncurling monster
that creeps from dark shadow to shadow,
waiting for you to close your eyes
so its claws can reach out to drag you away.

Seasonal Traditions

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Well, anyway…. Not that I said anything at the time, after all, it is generally agreed that such things are dangerous, even though the custard is – at best – tepid.

However, we all know that – much like other endangered species – the estate agent occupies a very precarious niche in the eco-system, so any change in the temperature of the custard is bound to have some unforeseen consequences… as well as a few foreseen ones too.

Like I said, though, I didn't want to draw attention to the haphazard placement of the eggcups, at least not while her attention was distracted by the promise of glimpsing a celebrity in the distance… doing whatever it is that celebrities do to make them so ubiquitous, often for no obviously discernable reason.

Anyway, quite a crowd had gathered to watch the estate agent do the traditional early New Year dive into a galvanised bucket filled two-thirds of the way up with lukewarm custard. Furthermore, as I always say at times like this, you cannot argue against tradition, even when the reasons for such a tradition are long lost in the mists of history.

Some say, it dated back as far as the first ever Cliff Richards single, some say it is even older, dating back to the time of the dinosaurs, or even the days of black and white telly. All I know – however – is that the crowd all gather there in the hope that the estate agent misses the bucket completely, so that everyone can have a good old-fashioned and traditional early New Year snigger at the earnest continuation of a pointless tradition.

The Sofa of History

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The Osteopaths of Doom dance naked across the indifferent car parks of your darkest desires, while feral stockbrokers haunt the deepest shadows of your housing estate nightmares with the Spanners of Disaster clenched so tightly in their muddied paws. We have seen the nature documentaries of so many dark doings and we know - only too well - never to touch any small rodent with our touching sticks.

Yes, dear, dear, Gladys - it has come to this. Now we must don the shapeless cardigans of retirement and shuffle off together towards those endless Post Office queues that have so haunted our darkest nights. We are young no longer and the time has come for us to turn our backs on the vainglories of youth and learn to shun the more athletically exacting of our sexual imaginings, especially those involving gymnasium equipment, or the sprightlier of the smaller furry mammals.

Soon, my dear Gladys, we too will be little more than memories lost down the back of the Sofa of History, never to be found again.