David Hadley's Blog, page 201

I Have Seen the Future and it Tastes of Marmalade

[image error]

The oscillations of my turbo-sexual donkey divination device are but of naught when put up against the stalagmites and stalactites of your indifference. Let me touch the more intimate parts of your erotically-supercharged wallaby with the very tip of my touching stick (suitably recalibrated for marsupials, of course) and I will never again question the veracity of your expense claims.

Let us go then, you and I, now the stockbrokers are spread out against the sky and go on down to the naughty device shop and see if we can buy a half-pound bag of mixed and assorted naughty devices for our later perusal back in the comfort and safety of our very own potting shed.

I have seen the future and it tastes of marmalade.

Onward, my sex weasels, onward! There are wildebeests in the wainscoting once again and it is still only autumn. How can this be when there are only small grommets available in the shops?

Still, I have the banana here, do you have the lawyer oiled and readied?

[image error]

Jam and Scones

Ah, but we were young then and not quite as hairy in surprising places as we are now. There were times when it all seemed as though even the winters were one long endless summer and your impatience with the restrictions of underwear were not affected by sudden drops in temperatures and the prospect of a bracing cold front bringing a sudden nip into the air.

What cared we for the goose-pimpling cold when we shivered with desire and need and had so much picking vinegar and what seemed like an endless supply of shallots.

In the summer too there were strawberries and your deep yearning for me to spread our very own home-made jam across your still-warm scones, trembling with need as I then began to lick it off.

Still though, back in those days were young and free – or at least did not have to include VAT – and we thought they would last forever.

Now though, we sit here and debate the relative merits of socks and woollens as we feel the first chilly fingers of winter's icy dark mornings linger a little too long a little too close than we'd like to our nether regions which – for reasons known only to themselves – have seemingly decided to opt for early hibernation.

[image error]

Stories on the Wind

There were times when there were stories blowing on the wind. There were once times when it seemed there was a tale lying over every hill and each horizon hid legends and myths beyond the rising or setting sun. There were times when these lands seemed full of stories and each traveller carried with them tales of far places we only ever heard of in the stories and legends.

Now, though, we grow old and we grow weary. It seems we have heard too many tales. We have gone past wondering if all these stories are true, or embellished with distance and imagination. Now we wonder if we know the nature of truth at all. We have lived long enough to distinguish the lies that those who would make promises of leadership or salvation tell with every turn of their tongues.

We no long believe, even those of us who wanted to believe and those who needed to believe, no longer believe in the stories of gods and devils, monsters and ghosts.

We have lived too long and seen too much about how this world does not fit inside all those tales we have been told.

And yet....

And yet we sit here watching the dancing flames of our fires, waiting for someone to begin telling us a new tale....

The Curse of Our Age

Now, you may have become somewhat over-involved in giving displays of exhibition cheese-grating in many of the more infamous vestibules of some of the UK's most resplendent stately homes, but that does not give you the right to disport yourself over our most holy TV schedules with impunity. Be that as it may, I am not one to hold a grudge against anyone who has had the misfortune to become famous through over-frequent TV appearances. Celebrity is the plague of out age, and we should not hold those who become infected with it with scorn or contempt, providing they have – of course – done their best to avoid catching the disease in the first place. Celebrity is indeed the curse of our times and a serious threat to the integrity of our very elbows themselves.

However, if it does result in an enthusiasm for collecting begonias or attaching improbably shaped sets of cardboard wings to Dalmatians, then I'm afraid that questions should indeed be asked, but not – you'll be pleased to hear – by any self-proclaimed interlocutor on those very same TV programmes. That way madness lies, that is if you remember to turn left at the traffic lights and take the third exit from the roundabout.

No More Words

[Hotel room (1931) by Edward Hopper]

What if there were no words? What if all of this was left unsaid, with just the wind blowing through the leaves and the rustle of something prowling through the undergrowth?

Would anything change?

There are too many unnecessary words in the world as it is. A few more handfuls make no real difference to anything.

We do not need to speak. We do not need to tell each other things we think are true, but in the end turn out to be little more than lies masquerading as hopes and possibilities. We know we have no future to speak of, so we say nothing. We just let the touch of finger against face and the eloquence of skin against skin do all our talking for us.

All those words we have used in the past, to get lovers to take our hands and step out of their normal lives into a place like this, seem overused and meaningless now. A place like this is where the normal rules do not apply and time ceases to pass until see shrug our clothes back on and walk those separate paths back to our own lives without needing to fill the time saying things we know we cannot mean.

We can only ever really say goodbye and mean it, because neither of us knows whether it will really be the last good-bye this time, rather than the acknowledgement that these few stolen hours have only temporarily come to an end.

Making a Day of It

Those were the days, of course. You could tell by the way they tended to start in the morning and went on through midday into the afternoon and later, if they felt up to it, most of them would have a fairly good stab at an evening, with some of them even managing to make a night of it.

Obviously, not all of them made it, some of them struggled to get going in the morning. Almost as if all that effort of getting the sun to rise at dawn wore them out, so they would fall back into the night exhausted, never really making it out from under the duvet unless there was a halfway decent old black and white film on TV in the afternoon.

Some of them, though, made the effort: giving us a day we could – if we so desired – remember forever. It always gives people a bit of a boost when they open the curtains and see the day has made a bit of an effort. It doesn't have to be a bright warm sunny day. Some winter days with a fresh layer of snow sparkling in the crisp winter sun can seem worthwhile. Spring and autumn too can have fine days that linger long in the memory.

It is those rather dull days that never seem to get going that are the disappointing ones, the ones that make you feel you are living through Carlisle on early closing day, they are the ones that need to pull their socks up and - at least – try to be decent days.

Fire Hose

[….]

'Aaarrgh! Jesus, fuck!' Pete leapt out of bed, suddenly soaking wet and cold. Johnny was standing on the bottom of Pete's bed, stark naked except for a bright red bra fastened over his head like a Spitfire pilot's leather helmet. He was aiming a still-dripping fire hose at Pete.

'Oh, hello Helena,' Johnny said cordially.

'Bastard!' Helena said as she tried to extricate herself from the sodden sheets.

Johnny whipped the sheets away from her. 'Nice tits,' he said. He dropped the fire hose and sat on the bed, taking one of Helena's cigarettes from the bedside table and lighting it. 'Y'know, I wish I'd seen you pair shagging on that table. Not old hairy arse here, of course. But you.' He leered at Helena. 'I suppose a quick one, now, is out of the question?'

'Would 'fuck off' and 'over my dead body' be too ambiguous for you?'

'Ambi-what? Don't forget dear heart, I'm just a working-class thicko. I don't understand your posh words.' Johnny stood up and waved his cock at Helena. 'Anyway, fancy a bit of rough then?'

'Piss off.'

Pete leapt across the bed. 'No, don….' He made a grab for Helena just as Johnny did as she'd asked, all over the bed where she had been sitting. Pete took Helena by the hand and ran for the door as Johnny re-aimed his own personal fire hose.

'Johnny's coming to get you!' Johnny cried, leaping over the bed. 'Come back, Helena. It's only a bit of social justice. I only want to do to you what you upper-class folk have been doing to us workers for centuries.'

Pete grabbed the door and flung it open, dragging Helena out into the hotel corridor with him.

'Good evening, sir.' The police sergeant said. 'We have had reports from the hotel manager here, of a disturbance.'

Pete and Helena were trapped. They stood, naked, in front of the open hotel room door, confronted by the police sergeant, a constable, a WPC and the hotel manager. The two policemen smiled humourlessly at the nude couple as the WPC turned away towards the room just as Johnny pissed through the open doorway.

'Oh… shit,' she cried, jumping back out of the doorway and gingerly trying to keep her sodden uniform blouse away from her skin, holding it between the tips of her fingers.

'Er no… WPC Rogers,' the sergeant said, trying not to laugh. 'A misinterpretation of the evidence I would say.' He looked around the door into the hotel room. 'Oh, hello Johnny, I thought it would be you,' he said with a sigh. 'You know the form. Hold your hands out for the cuffs, and keep that thing pointed away from me.' He turned to Pete and Helena. 'I suggest you get dressed, sir, miss… before….'

There were several flashes in rapid succession. Pete turned to see a photographer and reporter at the other end of the corridor.

'Hey!' The constable shouted. But the photographer and reporter had already disappeared through the fire exit.

The sergeant herded the entire group back into Pete's room. Helena began to pick her clothes up from the floor as the WPC disappeared into the bathroom, still trying to stop her sodden blouse from touching her skin.

'I was going to say: 'before the press boys get here',' the sergeant said. 'But it's too late now.' He turned to Johnny. 'Have you got any idea where your clothes are this time?'

Johnny shook his head. The sergeant turned to the hotel manager and asked to borrow a blanket.

The manager nodded. 'I'll add it to the bill.'

'We are going to have to charge you this time, Johnny,' the constable said. 'Someone had parked their car underneath where you let that telly fall out of the window. He is not a happy man at all. It was a brand-new Mercedes.'

The WPC came back from the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, and dropped her blouse and personal radio on the bed. 'There's also damage to police property,' she said. 'He pissed all over my radio, it's completely fucked.' She turned to Johnny.

Johnny smiled at her. 'Any chance of a shag? I like a woman in uniform.'

The WPC smiled, and then brought her knee up quickly. Johnny groaned as he collapsed. He squirmed on the floor, gasping for breath and clutching his genitals.

The three police officers stood watching impassively for the several minutes it took before Johnny could speak again.

'My, my. What happened to you then?' the sergeant asked Johnny.

'I… I….' Johnny looked up at each of the officers in turn. 'I seem to have foolishly bumped into some furniture while I was too drunk to realise what I was doing.'

'Yes, my thoughts exactly,' the sergeant agreed.

'How much this time?'

Everyone turned at the sound of Stan's voice.

'It's gone beyond that, I'm afraid… sir,' the hotel manager said.

Stan glanced at the manager, then ignored him. He walked over to the sergeant. The sergeant was standing in the middle of the soaking wet hotel room, next to where Johnny lay on the floor. The PC and the WPC stood behind them. The WPC was now wearing a Transmission tour t-shirt Pete had given her.

'Is that true?' Stan said to the sergeant. The sergeant nodded.

'In that case,' Stan said. 'How much would I have to pay you to drop him out of the window?'

'I'd do that for nothing,' the WPC said.

'I'm in love!' Johnny said, reaching up to kiss the policewoman's hand. He groaned and then curled up into a ball on the soaking wet carpet. A moment later, he was snoring soundly.

[….]

[An extract from Dance on Fire]

About the Shadowed Places

She knew about the shadowed places. She knew there were places in the shadows and dark corners of this world that could lead off to other places set at an angle to this world. She knew that to pass through those shadows and dark places could bring her out into a world not like this one, but out into a new world.

She knew there were other worlds and other kinds of realities, and not just the ones where she would be the Warrior Princess of the Nine Kingdoms, riding into battles of destiny with her faithful war tiger at her side. She knew there were worlds beyond those places where she took her pick of young lovers and led them from the flickering brightness of the camp fire off into her tent where they would spend the night entwined on her bed of furs.

She knew too of the monsters and demons that crawled out of those dark shadows into the safety of the night to clamber and claw their way into all our dreams. She knew too, that she could step off into those shadows and walk the dark alleyways and convoluted corridors of all our dreams, taking arms against those monsters and demons so that we could all sleep safe.

She knew all this and yet she walked past those shadowed places every morning on her way to her ordinary life, knowing that the time was not yet quite right for her to walk out of that life into some new land, some new way of living... not yet, anyway.

Being Human

I don't suppose you would consider... y'know, just for a moment....

After all, you are – sort of – a rather attractive... erm... well, although there are some superficial resemblances to the human, I'm not quite sure if you'd actually qualify, not outside those remote rural backwaters where interbreeding has produced some remarkable genetic cock-ups, anyway.

Not that – to be honest – being human is all that it is cracked up to be, anyway. I mean, well, we've got the talking and the tool-making abilities, granted. But this whole genitalia thing is a bit of a botch job and walking upright - for those of us who've managed it - seems at first glance a good thing. There does seem to be quite a lot of back problems which seem to make the thing about reaching the high shelves in the supermarket as more of a curse than a boon.

Then there is this leg business. As a method of locomotion it does – more or less – serve the purpose, but the thing is you are never quite sure what to do with the legs when you are not using them. Then there is the thing which the wife does while sleeping which seems to involve her using the whole of the bed – and the quilt – leaving you with little more than the top corner to curl up in while she - somehow – turns into a snugly duvet-wrapped octopus spread out over the other 95% of the bed.

Makes you realise that 'Intelligent Design' is a load of old bollocks though, and that can only ever be a good thing.

Buffet Provided

[image error]

Well, there you are. That is, if it is you and not some cunningly-placed cardboard cut-out you have placed there to give me the impression that – this time – you have actually bothered to turn up and that my time spent preparing this buffet, modest though it is, has not been entirely wasted.

I had to walk all the way down to the corner shop for that packet of crisps. Admittedly, that was some time ago a you can tell by the long-expired Best Before date, but – as they say – it is the thought that counts. Although, why they do say such a thing is beyond me. They, whoever they are, though do have a propensity to talk utter bollocks at such times anyway.

Anyway, the pickled onion is of special – if these days only archaeological – interest. It is a family heirloom, passed down through generations of family parties, get-togethers and other such tortures by relatives, lying untouched throughout some of the most significant moments in the history of this country and special anniversaries of the collection of troglodytes, un-convicted serial-killers, child-stranglers and other detritus of the human race that passes for family whenever it is humans feel thy can face up to seeing those they share some sort of genetic relationship with, no matter how tenuous.

So, y'know, treat that pickled onion with the respect it deserves and I may, just, let you have five minutes alone with that slice of pork pie – that is as long as you provide your own piccalilli.