David Hadley's Blog, page 203

Invasion of the Universe

Soon every solar system was living in fear. It seemed the invasion forces were growing, getting stronger as they landed on world after world, dispersing throughout every country on every continent of that world – or found the most desirable parts of the ocean floor on the water-worlds, planted their signs and sped off in their ships to conqueror the next planet, the next solar system, the next quadrant and the next galaxy.

Soon, it seemed the entire universe was living in fear, all fearing an invasion from the dread Estate Agents of Earth! Forced to leave their home planet by an economic downturn that seemed as though it would never end, the vast armies of estate agents took to their spaceships and set out to boldly find desirable residences where no estate agent had found before.

The galactic federation found they and their armies were outnumbered, out-gunned and outmanoeuvred by the swarms of estate agents that would pour from the invasion fleets to snap up every desirable residence on a planet, and then leave the devastated planet festooned with Estate Agent signs and slowly suffocating under the huge quantities of property description leaflets produced by each invasion force.

Some worlds tried pretending they were out, or had no properties up for sale. The councils controlling the floating cities of Handrash 12 even revoked all property rights and held all land and housing - on their floating islands high up in the sky - in common ownership of the people, but the canny estate agents staged a revolution, showing the citizens just how much their residence was worth on the intergalactic property-price websites and soon everyone on Handrash 12 was a property owner looking to sell as the bodies of the local councillors were pushed off over the edges of the floating cities into the Endless Seas, far below.

It seemed that no-one or nothing could stop the fearsome Estate Agents of Earth and their plans to put the entire universe up for sale... or rent.

The Soft Certainty of Skin against Skin

The soft certainty of skin against skin. The silent eloquence of touch that tells so much compared to the stuttering inelegance of crude words that can never get this close. The words stutter and stumble into incoherence and silence when their inadequacies are exposed by this certainty of touch. My fingers move and your body responds with its own affirmative that needs no words to close this space that forever lies between two people, even two people lying this close, skin against skin.

What more needs to be said now that our bodies have learnt the language of each other? Words only get in the way crudely stumbling into the silences that do not need them, taking away the certainty and leaving their ambiguities and imprecisions there instead.

I could say so much, but my lips are needed to kiss where words can only create distances. The silence envelops us like the warm blankets of safety, keeping us close and taking away that world that lies beyond this room, that world that creates so much to keep us apart, just as any words we could say would take this moment and tear it apart, just as we too would part and leave these wordless moments broken on this bed.

Chick Lit Sales Slump

Despite the apparent recent slump in the sales of chic-lit novels, Sherrytrifle Avoirdupois' new novel Go On Shag me, I'm A Really Fit Bird, Honest goes on sale today. In this, her 23rd novel, Avoirdupois again explores her familiar Chick Lit theme of slightly chubby girls trying to get a decent bloke to hang around for more than a one-night stand. For those of you needing to know, the embarrassing episode concerning the unsuitable knickers and the immanent shag conflict is on page 134, a staggering 22 pages later than the similar episode in her last novel: OOOoooh Chocolate! and 56 pages later than the original scene in her first novel I Need A Fit Bloke To Give Me A Damn Good Seeing To.

Critics have now claimed that the whole Chick Lit genre has long since been mined to exhaustion. After all, they reason, there can't be all that many young(ish) urban single women out there completely wasting their lives away on too much alcohol, too much chocolate and a vague undefined longing.

Maybe, as one cynical reviewer suggested, the readers of these books never go beyond a vague feeling that there must be more to life than wine, handbags, shoes and a seemingly endless line of brief unsatisfactory superficial relationships with a long line of men who never really seem to know how to grow up, or even realise that they should.

The Innermost Thoughts of the Citizenry

Ah, but now all our donkey requisitioning assistants look askance at the small bunches of daffodils we have placed adjacent to the rear of our favourite box of small stationery supplies, whilst we go about adjusting the grommets on several of the smaller ecclesiastical gentlemen who frequent the boudoirs of our more pulchritudinous neighbours.

All-in-all then, a typical autumn afternoon, no doubt something you are all familiar with, which makes you now wonder why I bother mentioning it. I wondered the same thing myself, but at least it got me a paragraph further down the page, and you are still here – aren't you – reading this. So, evidentially stating, or even re-stating, the obvious is not as detrimental to maintaining the reader's interest as one would otherwise assume. Providing – of course – that is if that subject is one that you ever muse upon.

After all, far be it from me to intrude upon your innermost thought processes, especially considering we still seem to have a governmental caste who seem to believe that, not only do they have a right to intrude into the innermost thoughts of its citizens, but that it is a fundamental part of their duty – as a government - to do so. Just why this seems to be the case is, however, I believe a fit subject for conjecture, and for concern, for it goes to the heart of what it is to be an individual and is completely counter to the long struggles we in the west have undergone in order to make ourselves free from the tyranny of others.

Therefore, if you want to be free of such malignities, then it is entirely your duty to yourself to turn your back on the political, the theological, and all other …ists and …isms. Then to take a step forward into true freedom, in which case it may be an idea to make a few sandwiches for the journey… just to be on the safe side.

Always Remember

There were times, like the time she walked naked across a sun-filled bedroom, when I told myself that this was something I must remember. Already, I was thinking of the future and how those far-away empty days could be filled by memories. I knew then that life only ever makes any sense when we look back on it, if we are lucky.

Usually, of course, life never makes any sense. It has no narrative, it has no structure. Usually life is little more than a series of accidents: one damn thing after another.

Back then, though, I knew that there were times that were worth remembering. That way she would look up at me from under her half-closed eyelids whenever I said something she thought was stupid. She could make me regret my clumsiness of thought and speech with just a glance. She taught me the wisdom of silence and the importance of thinking instead of speaking.

She taught me how to hold her and how to let go. When to leave her alone as she sauntered along the sea's edge the waves lapping over her bare feet as she stared off into distances I could not see.

Not only that, when she went away she taught me all I needed to know about the importance of memories and how to understand loss.

And so it Begins

Sometimes it looks as though something like this is not going to get off to a very good start. There is a lack of action, a lack of drama in the first few opening sentences. There is little even to say what it is going to be about.

Right about now you begin to wonder if it is worth the time and the effort to carry on reading it.

You decide that unless something happens in the next few sentences then you will give it up as a bad job and go and look for something else more interesting to read.

Then the sentence introducing the naked lady appears.

Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, what was turning into something rather dull and pedestrian now contains a naked woman....

It could get interesting....

However, for the time being the naked woman just stands there, not really doing much, not really knowing what she ought to be doing.

She becomes aware of the audience somehow, the readers all sitting there waiting for her to do something with this... this... what looks like it may be some kind of story. She begins to feel nervous,insecure, shy even with all those people staring at her. Looking down she sees that she is totally naked, without even the flimsiest narrative convention to cover her nudity, or even give it some kind of context or artistic value.

The naked woman realises she doesn't even have a name, or even a description beyond the fact of her nudity. In fact, she is not really sure she belongs in this story at all.

With an angry sigh she glares back out of the narrative framework at the audience of readers, who under her harsh scrutiny feel themselves blush as her glaring stare causes them to look away, giving her the chance to escape the narrative convention of the story and run off home so that she can get dressed, promising herself she will never again believe any writer who promises to put her into one of his tales.

Wartime Secrets Revealed

Many people have, no doubt, heard of the SAS. However, very few have any real knowledge of what really goes on within this - by necessity - very secretive organisation.

It all began, as most such things do, during the dark days of war. It was during WWII, just after the siege of Tobruk that the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, was shocked to discover that no-one really knew how much the infamous tins of 'bully beef' really cost at battlefront prices compared to the Axis equivalents. So, then, after a series of top level Most Secret meetings involving the top brass of the armed forces, cabinet politicians and the most senior civil servants, the SAS - the Secret Accountancy Service - was formed.

Initially, it was intended to work behind the enemy lines, conducting secret audits of the Axis powers' accounts. However, vital as some of this information was in streamlining the Allied accountancy procedures, it was still not enough.

Then, one night, as he was awaiting a vital air-drop of calculating machines deep inside occupied France, Major Soggy-Biscuit of the SAS hit upon the idea of introducing fraudulent expense claims into the German accounting system.

After receiving enthusiastic approval from the British government, including a message of full support from Winston Churchill himself, Major Soggy-Biscuit in June 1942 inserted a false claim for travel expenses into the German accountancy system.

The results were devastating as the normally hyper-efficient German accountancy ground to a halt as the discrepancy was found to be unreconcilable. Consequently, with the German army, navy and air force all unable to respond during the auditing period, the British and their allies were able to mount several successful commando and air raids virtually unopposed.

[….]

[Taken from How the SAS Began included in Tales of the Unexpurgated]

A Summer of Penguins on Trampolines

Then what? Where shall we go and what shall we do? Will you bring the trampoline, whilst I round up the penguins – first making sure there are no very small nuns hiding amongst them. After all, we all know what happened to the last bouncing nun on the trampoline in that fateful summer of '09, don't we?

After all, there is nothing that lifts despondent spirits like a whole flock of penguins bouncing up and down, even though very few of them attempt anything acrobatic.

Of course, it was back in a summer of penguins on trampolines that we met. You too had a strong interest in trampolining, especially while naked, and it was a philosophy of life I found more than attractive, especially later played back in slow motion. It was almost hypnotic the way your... but I'll have to think about that a bit later.

In depth.

Of course,

But all too soon that summer was over and the trampolines were packed away, the penguins dispersed back to their jobs on the trading floors of some of London's most prestigious financial institutions... and you put your clothes back on.

I still had the memories though.... The memories... and the slow-motion videos.

Monday Poem: Midsummer Dreaming

Midsummer Dreaming

A warm midsummer night can offer dreams,
a possibility of such bright notions
all formed from airy nothings to become
a whole new cast of folk that go beyond

the merely human and its limitations
are only at the furthest reaching out
of our desires where humans change and twist
become strange  animals that turn and prowl

and the beyond the human acquires shapes
that shadow all the shapes of human forms
and hot desires to take us on dark dances
through the confusing woods at night until

all is revealed as back in order now
by the cool early dawn's revealing light.

The Official God-Bothering Hat

We all know – I'm sure – the correct way to apply an undercoat of paint to any nearby recumbent clerical gentleman without causing undue distress to his vestments. However, with the increasing number of women of the female persuasion entering into religious office, there is now the added difficulty of finding a paintbrush of the correct size to deal with the more exacting female figure, even if it is hidden in clerical garb, especially when on more formal ceremonial occasions the aforesaid clerical personage may be wearing an official God-Bothering hat.

Of course wearing a God-Bothering hat goes way back beyond the current crop of religions and – therefore - back beyond the current crop of gods were invented. Most historians and archaeologists probably therefore presume that the official tribal god-botherers would have felt the need to signify to the rest of the tribe that some sort of official god-bothering ceremony was taking place, and - as with most human special formal occasions – they decided that the best way to do this was to wear a hat.

Even in this age of advancement and wonders in which we live many formal occasions still require the wearing of a hat. The British queen for example has to lob on one of her crowns when doing those ceremonies those that surround her regard as important, people still tend to wear hats at other such great personal ceremonial occasions too, such as at weddings, playing cricket and doing sexual intercourse properly. Therefore it is obvious to see what - in the days when people thought religions mattered – it was deemed proper for all official god-botherers, especially the god-botherer-in-chief to wear a special hat in order to signify that he was bothering whatever god it was in an official capacity, and therefore no-one in the congregation was to giggle at his absurd headgear.