David Hadley's Blog, page 46
July 20, 2016
The Revolting Peasantry
‘Is it that bad?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh.’ The emperor stared deep into his aviary. Birds he almost understood, in as much as an emperor needed to understand anything. After all, he had advisors for that sort of thing. But people, he did not understand people. He glanced up at the chancellor. ‘Why are they revolting?’
The emperor could see that the chancellor was struggling to make sense of it himself. The chancellor turned to the soldier in the ragged uniform with the soot marks – and what looked like d...
July 13, 2016
Prehistoric Swingers
Epiglottis Grainsilo is probably the world’s leading expert on ancient and prehistoric sexual deviations. She first put forward the now widely-accepted theory that Stonehenge was originally built for prehistoric dogging couples eager for a bit of illicit action up against the bluestones.
In later centuries, of course, the Roman conquerors used to park their chariots in the spaces between the stones. Later, the Romans copied the concept to build some of their own colonnaded sites for people no...
July 8, 2016
Free Kindle Humour Novel: In the Beginning
In the Beginning FREE for the next Five days. Get it here (universal link)
In the Beginning
It’s a God’s life.
Albert Meadows, recently made redundant and tired of his disappointing life, is looking to make a new start and is desperate to find something worthwhile to fill his time.
So, what could be better than creating a brand new universe of his own, in his garden shed?
But, when he introduces intelligent life to his new universe, things don’t turn out as he planned, especially when the tri...
July 6, 2016
A God No More
It was cold. Shreena wrapped the blankets tight around herself. She was not used to the cold. She had almost forgotten how cold this world could be. She opened one eye and glanced around.
The sun was rising through the trees. She could see her breath on the cold air, rising from where she lay. She wanted, more than anything, to stay where she was and wait for it to get warm again.
No, that was wrong.
She threw off the blankets and grabbed at her clothes, struggling with the unfamiliarity of t...
July 1, 2016
The Fall of a Modern Celebrity
Welshrarebit Cheesetoastie became the world’s leading headline maker when she was still at a very early age. At that time, her management company had still not decided whether she was going to be a pop star, actress, TV reality star, model, politician or just someone famous for being famous. Her management company, FlOggingADeAdHOrse Inc., soon came to the conclusion that Cheesetoastie was a true celebrity, born to be famous. So, what she was actually famous for could wait until they saw what...
June 29, 2016
When the Walls Shut Out the World
Reasons hang there in the silence, heavy and ponderous. We feel the weight of them dragging the sky down to the horizon, pulling that horizon closer until we feel its confines around us. There is no escape from the now and the reasons that hold us here, together in a room where the walls keep us safe, but also make us prisoners of this here and this now. The walls keep us safe from the reasons waiting out there to entangle us in all their reasons why not and why this should ever happen. But t...
June 24, 2016
Ancient Computing
Ukulele Serialbus is now the UK’s first emeritus professor of Ancient Computing at the prestigious Bridgnorth Institute of Technology. She is, of course, mostly known to the general public for her recent TV series on the Neolithic use of the spacebar and early Roman versions of the Windows operating system. This did so much to turn most of Europe into a single empire, all using more or less the same operating system.
It was Julius Caesar’s defeat of the Gaul tribes and his forcing them to con...
June 22, 2016
A New Golden Age
According to the old stories, whispered late at night amongst people who have known each other a long time, there was a time when there were no Temples on the hills in each town or village. These old stories tell of a time from before when our grandfathers were young. They tell of a land much different from this one. The stories tell of a land of a king, of his lords and barons ruling from their castles on those hills.
That was a time before the Dark Priests came.
The castles are long gone no...
June 17, 2016
The Steam Generated Floozy Designator
Livewire Plugsocket was the Victorian philosopher, inventor and floozy expert. He was most famous for his invention of the Steam Generated Floozy Designator. As we know, in Victorian Britain there were a quite a high number of ladies willing to trade their time and attention for financial recompense from a gentleman of means. Unfortunately, for the Victorian man about town at the time, there were a number of different names, descriptions and designations. There were not only floozies, trollop...
June 14, 2016
Forgetting is Easy
Forgetting is easy. I no longer remember her name, or remember how her eyelids crinkled when she laughed. I do not remember those times down by the river when the days flowed by so easily. I do not recall the times when we told each other of our lives and how they had no direction or purpose until we found each other down by that river. Until then, we had drifted around the world. Now we sat on the bank watching the river, telling each other that we would stay together like two streams meetin...
