David Hadley's Blog, page 76

What The Stories Tell Us

Stories tell us so much. They tell us how the day begins and where the sun goes when the night creeps across the land. They tell us what the animals are and where they hide, out in the mystery of this world. Stories told me of the mists and how, one morning she would be there waiting for me.

The stories did not tell me her name, but then the gods do not use the human names we give them. That I was to be the one, I never doubted when I heard the stories of how the goddess would appear out of the morning mist to take her chosen one.

Without their mortal lovers the gods, the stories say, lose touch with this land, without a mortal lover the gods become distant, unknowable and unknowing. Their realm is not this mortal realm and it is part of the compact made in the old stories.

The stories used to tell, back in the Dark Times, that the people made sacrifices to the gods. Virgins offered to the gods in death to make sure the gods did not desert us. But, over time, and the time in stories in never that precise or accurate, this changed.

Then, the stories say, the gods would come, sometime in the shapes of animals, clouds or other natural forms. Sometimes they came even in the shape of humans, to take their lovers, steal them away through deceit and trickery.

Now, though, we live in other times and the gods will come, looking almost as human as the rest of us, to take a lover by the hand and take them back into the mists.

There are stories too, of what happens when a god comes and takes someone���s hand. No-one knows for sure though, because no-one has ever returned. We presume and speculate, but no-one knows. Perhaps the lovers do not grow old and die as we left behind do. But why then, if that is the case do the gods return to take another lover?

We presume even the gods themselves cannot prevent mortal death, even though they live lives – so the stories tell us – beyond what we could ever imagine.

As I said, I knew from the first time I heard the stories, that one day the goddess would come for me. I knew it would be the goddess of love, not the goddess of night or the cruel cold goddess of winter, who would come for me.

So, when, that morning she came for me out of the mists of the stories, I was waiting, ready to go with her.

 

The Kitchen Utensil Revolution

Dormouse Clutchpencil is probably the UK���s leading kitchenware design artist. Of course, for many decades, and in some cases for hundreds of years, kitchenware developed and evolved into the traditional shapes. These traditional forms have come about as people used the items of kitchenware and found that they worked, or if they didn���t work, they were forgotten, adapted or changed until they did work.

However, with so many design students, once they graduate, they are in need of employment. Some of them even seeking jobs beyond the usual career choice of fast food distribution customer service technician that is usually the reserve of graduates from such courses. Many graduates of these courses feel that the skills learnt on such courses could be used in a more constructive way. For example, Clutchpencil came up with the bright idea that kitchen utensils were all rather utilitarian and ��� for some unspecified reason ��� needed jazzing up.

The standard dictionary definition of a designer product states that it is a product redesigned by a designer to be half as good as the original at three times the price. Taking this definition to heart, Clutchpencil began redesigning many ordinary day-to-day kitchen utensils, devices and products. She started quietly by making unusual-looking kettles that didn���t work very well and then broke down completely in a few months. However, Clutchpencil found she could sell them by claiming she had totally redesigned and ���reinvented��� (which means copied from something else not designed for this job) the ordinary kettle. The ���redesign��� turned out to be a very lucrative for her. For, even though the kettles didn���t work as well ��� or, in many cases, at all – people still bought them in their thousands. They bought them primarily because the kettles looked a bit different to a standard kettle. This is ��� apparently ��� always useful in a kitchen, the place where conversation is usually limited or non-existent, despite what soap operas would have people believe.

Following this massive success, Clutchpencil began redesigning and reinventing every kitchen device utensil and other product she could get her hands on, from spatulas to egg cups. Soon she had spawned an entirely new industry out of what had been merely an industry where design was ranked much lower than usefulness and ease of use. However, such was Clutchpencil���s genius that the products she created were so much less useful than the products they replaced. Consequently, consumers ended up buying many more such products. People now often need two or three designer products where in the past they had used one. For example, various steamers, rice cookers, egg boilers and so forth; where in the past it was all done using one simple saucepan.

Such was her success in making people buy and fill up their kitchens with useless tat; Clutchpencil won design awards year after year from an envious, but also grateful, industry. She has since gone on to redesign and – mostly ��� make useless almost every item in the modern home.

Consequently, we must thank Dormouse Clutchpencil for all she has done to make modern life what it is.

Exile

It fell like slowness through the void. It slept a long time, while outside the stars revolved and the silence grew with distance.

It slept because there was nothing to do. It slept so long that it forgot the name it used to have. It forgot the peoples, the hive it grew from and – heresy of all heresies – it forgot its family and their name.

It even forgot why the family had gathered with the other tribes and hives to send it so far away from the homeworld. It forgot its crimes and the unprecedented horror it had inflicted on a homeworld that had known nothing like it ever before.

It forgot there was a time when its hive and its tribe worshipped it as a god. It forgot their praise and worship told it that it could never do no wrong.

At least until it made its first mistake: a mistake of overconfidence and overreach.

The entire homeworld had almost been in its grasp, and it could feel the homeworld and all its hives as its claws closed around everything.

Then one lost battle became two, then three. Then the slow fall began.

That first slow fall was nothing compared to this long slow fall that made it forget everything��� everything, except revenge.

All it knew was that the Homeworld had done wrong to it. It knew those that put it here for this almost endless journey should pay. All of them should pay for everything.

Then the fast hot time came.

Then there came the shattering thump and crash.

It felt like the end of everything.

It slept on then, as its body repaired itself from the crash and the ship tried to rebuild itself so the exile could continue.

But before the ship could rebuild itself, the creature awoke.

It had forgotten everything, except for the need for its revenge.

It tore free of the shackles meant to hold it inside the exile ship forever.

She was free at last.

She breathed deep of this new world and the promise it held. She now had to reinvent herself a name. She could start a new tribe here on this world so far from her own Homeworld.

Now the long sleep was over her eggs – she could feel them in their hundreds squirming inside her – were ready to lay.

All she needed was some prey for those eggs to mature in and for her young to feed on as they grew.

She emerged from the shattered ground where her broken ship lay to find prey. There were hundreds of them, arranged around her crash site, watching and waiting.

All she had was a burning for revenge, a need to lay her eggs and a hunger arising from a sleep that had taken her across the universe to this new world, lying ripe for her.

She saw guns, tanks, helicopters, TV crews and gawkers with flashing camera phones, but did not have any words to name them.

All she could see in front of her was prey and she was so hungry.

 

 

A Time To Go

���No.���

Trech turned.

She glared back at him. ���No.��� She folded her arms.

���Why not?���

���It is illegal, for one.���

Trench shrugged. ���Many things have been illegal at one time or another.��� He tugged at the hem of his sleeve; some of it came off in his hand.

���Many things have always been illegal.��� She took a step back towards the window. She did not turn to look out of it, but continued to glare at the old man.

���We need the money.��� He almost tugged on his sleeve again, but remembered about the delicate worn hem. ���We need the money. Look at this robe. How can anyone take me seriously as a wizard with a robe like this?���

���They don���t need the robe to think that.��� Shella turned to the window this time.

Trech felt dismissed. He didn���t leave. Wizards, on the whole, tended not to have children and those that did tend to have wives to do the looking after them and that sort of thing while the wizards themselves hid��� did important research in their rooms.

Sometimes, Trech thought it was Shella who kept him in poverty, in robes that were falling apart. Without her, he could have been��� he looked at her back, knowing she was angry. Her mother had been like that, the ability to look angry even from the back. But he���d loved Linz, and now he loved her daughter. He sighed.

���Look,��� he said to the angry back. ���We need the money. You need to��� have a life beyond this.���

���You could get a job?���

���A job��� but I���m a wizard.���

She turned. ���Really?���

He thought about pointing out the robe, the beard, the pointy hat. Once, when she���d been young with a head full of old wives stories, the robes and the pointy hat had been enough for her. Now she knew too much. His wife, Linz, had that look of world-weary wisdom in her eyes too. Sometimes, Trech thought his daughter was probably far clever than him, far clever than he would ever be.

���You could, if we had the money, go to university.���

���That place?��� She pointed out of the window towards the university. As usual, one of the towers was on fire. ���I���d rather keep pigs.���

���No, not that one. You know they don���t accept women there.��� Trech gulped. ���One of the universities in the Far Lands.���

���Are you trying to get rid of me?���

Trech shook his head. ���No, I want to come with you.��� He looked down at his pointy shoes��� well, one pointy shoe, the other���s point had fallen off days ago. ���After all, there is nothing here for me, not without you.���

���Oh, dad,��� she said stumbling across the dusty floor and taking him in her arms. ���I wouldn���t want to go without you, anyway.���

 

The Failings of the Serious Political Interview

Wildebeest Prolestrangler is probably the UK���s most famous celebrity political interviewer. Despite political interviews being about as interesting, informative and illuminating as a rather dull pebble on a very pebbly beach, the media likes to pretend – if only to themselves ��� that political interviews matter. Although, even though most of the viewing public would rather poke their own brains out through their ears with a very blunt knitting needle, the big political interview is somehow regarded by the media as carrying significant newsworthiness. Even to the point where it makes someone like Prolestrangler as famous as he is.

Although, to the general public, he is far more recognisable as the quizmaster on one of the more pretentiously tedious up-market early evening quiz programmes. Far more than he is regarded as an insightful and tenacious facilitator of the lying, evasion and duplicity that passes for the modern political interview.

For such is how low the political interview has fallen, with people not expecting it to provide any insight or illumination into what politicians like to think is their calling. Instead, it is ��� as every viewer or listener knows ��� just a public relations exercise. It is little more than an attempt at not creating any hostages to fortune. All while reassuring the politicians��� ever-dwindling group of supporters that they are not entirely ignored, dismissed and patronised by the political class. After all, a professional political class has no interest in the people or the country, but only in the perpetuation of their own position and lifestyle.

The only things ever remembered by anyone from a political interview are the gaffes, mistakes and cock-ups. So while the politicians involved do their utmost to sail through the situation unscathed, more and more interviewers like Prolestrangler see it as their job not to illuminate the political process ��� such that it is. Instead, they see themselves there to trip up the politician and prove to the viewers or listeners that the politician is as big a mendacious bastard as they���d already long suspected.

However, now Prolestrangler has decided that the political interview is a waste of time. Especially as now, most people only ever see their politicians on jungle-based reality programmes eating insects for no apparent reason. Although, many suspect that if the voting population had their way they would much more want to watch the politicians eaten by the insects, rather than the other way around.

Such is the contempt that politics and politicians are ��� quite rightly ��� held that TV personalities like Prolestrangler far that they are somehow contaminated by too close a contact with these creatures. Consequently, they have all, like Prolestrangler, now decided that – for the sake of their careers – they must move on. All feeling they must clamber out of the political cesspit and on into the real world, or as close to the real world as the media ever allows itself to get.

In that, we can only wish Wildebeest Prolestrangler the best for his future career and advertising voice-over earning potential.

 

The Great Plague and its Return

Of course, these days even some of the most civilised countries in the world are plagued by the occasional outbreak of tennis. Many countries do, of course, maintain strict border controls on the importation of racquets, nets and – of course ��� balls. Still, even in this modern, technological age, they are not immune from any sudden outbreak of tennis.

Back in the early years of the Twentieth Century, several outbreaks of tennis struck the UK. Unfortunately, here was little the authorities of the time could do to halt its spread. The only option that remained was to set up a specialised quarantine area within the London region. They wanted a place where those who they suspected of infection by with the disease, or were possible carriers of the disease, could be isolated for up to a fortnight or so. The authorities of the time were especially concerned that those with the highly infectious tennis balls were isolated too. Until the disease itself passed out of its dangerous phase, those infected with tennis could not be allowed to mingle with normal people.

Thus was – what we now know as – Wimbledon fortnight created. A time when the populace of London flees the city, much as they did in centuries long gone whenever there was an outbreak of plague.

Of course, over the centuries there have been many cures for tennis proclaimed. However, it was not until the Twentieth Century that scientists fully understood the nature of various diseases, especially those contagious ones known as sports.

Nowadays, most throughout the medical world accept that tennis passes from sufferer to sufferer through repeated contact with the infected balls. Still, however, some believe that even passing too close to a tennis court is enough to catch tennis. More surprising there are still some who ��� naively ��� believe that it is safe to practice tennis as long as everyone involves uses a net.

However, the World Health Organisation believes that it will not be long before a vaccine is developed. Such a vaccine would help rid this world of the scourge of tennis, and other similar racquet-based infections such as squash and badminton well before the end of this century. So in the future�� those with no natural immunity to the disease will not have to quarantine themselves away for the whole of Wimbledon fortnight. All hoping for the rain that is the only known cure for this calamitous and disfiguring disease. A disease that often leaves its sufferers – those that survive ��� forced to wear shorts for the rest of their all too brief and unhappy lives.

 

The Borderlands

It began out near the Borderlands. None of us knew what it meant at the time. The Borderlands had been out of bounds ever since the Dark Time. People died out there in the Early Days, and those that survived and came back to the Homeplace, they soon got sick and died too. Or, at least, those were the stories the old ones told us they had been told, by their old ones, back when they were young.

So, no matter where we roamed in the rest of the wild world, no-one ever went near the Borderlands, not until Jonas, anyway.

Silver was crying that morning; the other women were there in minutes, holding her, comforting her. My woman, Summer, was there bathing the cuts on Silver���s face as she sobbed out the story of her and Jonas.

Summer came to me minutes later. I was standing in the dust outside Silver���s pace, looking up at the roof and wondering why Jonas never repaired it.

Summer stood by me. ���You���ll have to go after him.���

���I suppose.���

���You are the Lawman. It is your job.���

I looked back towards our place. ���The crops?���

���I���ll take care of them��� me and the kids. They are old enough now.��� Summer touched my arm and looked at me in that way I can���t ignore. ���Silver needs you to put it right.���

I nodded and walked off to fetch back Jonas to make him pay, try to put it right.

Although, as I left I turned back, seeing Silver standing in her doorway, watching me. She had that look in her eye that nothing can put right. At least I could try. I waved a farewell to her, but Silver did not respond.

I asked around the Homeplace, but not many had much to say. Jonas was not popular. But I was the Lawman and people do not trust me either. Probably because they know I���m sworn to do what is right, and we all – even me – have done something that���s not right. We all carry the weight of it too, waiting for someone to find out.

As the Lawman, I���m usually the one that ends up doing that finding out.

I discovered eventually that the only place Jonas could have gone was over into the Borderlands. I thought that if he did he would be dead by now if he was lucky, or crawling back to die if he wasn���t.

But I have sworn to do what���s right. So, for the first time since I was a kid, a long time ago now, I went out to the Borderlands.

It was only then I saw how everything had changed out there.

 

The World In Her Hand

At first when Rose told me, I didn���t believe her. After all, I was the one with a physics degree. If I didn���t know how the universe worked down to the last detail, at least I had a good idea what was going on���.

Or that was what I thought until I saw what Rose was holding in her hand.

We were together in her bed, both lying on our sides facing each other. At first, she had a thoughtful look in her eyes.

I thought something was wrong.

���What is it?��� I reached out and stroked a strand of sweat-dampened hair out of her eyes.

She shook her head looking down at the small expanse of rumpled sheet between us. ���Nothing.���

���There is something���. Is it��� me?���

Rose looked up. She took my hand from her face and held it in hers, kissing my fingers. She smiled at me. ���Of course not.��� The smile faltered. ���Well, it is about you��� a bit.���

I knew it. She wanted to end it.

She saw my look. ���No, nothing like that.��� Now she reached out a reassuring hand to me. ���It is something more about me. Something you do not know, but I must tell you.���

���Is it something��� bad?���

She shook her head. ���At least, I don���t think it is bad��� but you might see it differently.���

I shook my head. I couldn���t ever see anything bad about Rose, or so I thought then.

���It is just the way you talk about the world, the universe��� science.���

���I know I ca be a bit of a bore, I���ve always loved science, physics. I know I get a bit carried away at times���. I���.���

���No, it is not that.��� Rose shifted in the bed.

���What is it then?���

���It is just���.��� She bit her lower lip.

���What?��� I said. ���You know you can say anything to me��� really.��� I stroked her arm, that wonderfully soft skin.

���Are you sure?���

���Yes.���

���Even if it is about your most cherished beliefs? Everything you know and understand about the world, the universe?���

���What? What is this? What are you talking about?���

Rose looked deep into my eyes. ���It is just everything you know about science, about physics���.���

���Yes, well, what about it?���

���It is wrong.���

���What?��� I laughed. ���Don���t be daft���.���

It was then she showed me.

She took my world, this universe, in her hand and twisted it into something new.

She was right too, everything I thought I knew about everything��� it was all wrong.

I still loved Rose though.

 

A Rock ���n��� Roll Survivor

Machinehead Tremeloarm is probably the UK���s leading survivor of the British music scene of the 1960s-70s. Known in his time as a consummate musician, it was rumoured that he had once managed to get up to page 7 of Bert Weedon���s Play With Yourself Every Day guitar instruction book. He may also have read several of the words in the manual, rather than just looking at the pictures like so many of the other guitarist of the era.

Not only did Tremeloarm know more that the requisite three chords, but he also knew how to hold the guitar the right way up. This was a skill that many of his contemporaries didn���t manage until usually well into their third album.

Of course, Tremeloarm had a long series of hit singles. The now world-famous standard Ooh Baby (Baby), My Baby is My Baby, Baby (Baby), staying at the top of the British single chart for almost 27 minutes.

A record for a record at the time.

Consequently, many predicted that Tremeloarm himself would have a career measured in months rather than the three or four days that was the average for the period. In those times, it was possible for a pop star to be an unknown in the morning, a massive star in the afternoon, and forgotten again by the time the pubs closed that same night.

However, it was the success and influence of the Beatles that changed how the pop music and pop star business worked. As with so many stars of the era, the Liverpool quartet was also a massive influence on Tremeloarm. However, it was not so much their music, or their fashion sense, that influenced Tremeloarm. In an interview with FAB N Groovy magazine, Paul McCartney made an off the cuff remark about both he and John Lennon experimenting with custard. This changed Tremeloarm���s whole attitude not only to music, but also to life, the universe and Luton.

Of course, the custard scene changed many musicians��� lives as they began to experiment more and more with such exotic substances. It was Tremeloarm���s fifth album, Major Custard���s Apple Crumble Army, which changed Tremeloarm���s entire philosophical outlook. Not only that, it also affected his guitar playing, but also his use of the then-new M1 motorway to get to Luton ��� the hip happening groovy town of the time. It also altered his decision to write songs with more than three chords in them. Furthermore, Tremeloarm used an accordion on several tracks, without the – then ��� obligatory legal health warning on the record sleeve.

It was this revolutionary use of the accordion, as well as his rather�� risqu�� – for the time – stage act, where several nude dancers gyrated in an enormous bowl of custard that caused outrage. It resulted too in getting Tremeloarm banned from America for almost a decade.

Although, those days are now long over. Nowadays, naked dancing in custard is a staple of so many contemporary rock and hip-hop acts, and middle-class dinner parties.

It is Tremeloarm and his revolutionary approach to rock ���n��� roll as an art form, and thus a tax-deductible activity, that we have to thank for the development of the modern music scene. This is something we should not forget.

 

Something for the Weekend – Free Kindle Humour: Grand Uncle Stagnant and the Summer of Love

��Grand Uncle Stagnant and the Summer of Love

Available now here (UK) or here (US)

��Yet more outpourings and ejaculations from Norbert Trouser-Quandary’s notably upstanding organ, featuring more tales of the doings and goings-on in that most delightfully perverted of England���s rural villages: Little Frigging in the Wold.

This volume of tales from Little Frigging features the adventures of Grand Uncle Stagnant back in the summer of love where he hears about the concept of free love and ��� almost immediately ��� stops issuing invoices.

Other tales in this volume detail the history of the Hot Strumpets on Wheels service, the uses of high visibility fetish gear, Little Frigging in the Wold ��� the computer game, the appendage of a hands-free pole-vaulter, pancakes and perversions and the Great Fire of Little Frigging. Grand Uncle Stagnant and the Summer of Love also contains many other intriguing events and happenings from the village and its environs, including the erotic use of the toolshed as well as pointers on the tactical subtleties of the Inter-Village Orgy match and much, much more.

Grand Uncle Stagnant and the Summer of Love

Available now here (UK) or here (US)

Further collections of tales from Little Frigging in the Wold can be found in: Little Frigging in the Wold and Sex, Pies and Sticky Tape.

Grand Uncle Stagnant and the Summer of Love

Available now here (UK) or here (US)

Some comments on David Hadley’s writing:

���I think I just broke all my vital organs laughing���

���another one of yours I truly enjoyed, ���Old Feebletrousers��� love it!���

���Loved this piece. Very funny and energetic���.���

���funny stuff!���

���that was brilliant!���

���on the one hand I���m so glad I decided to read the rest of this collection (funniest thing I���ve read in a LONG time) but on the other hand I wish I hadn���t done it during dinner as I just sprayed barely masticated tomato all over my keyboard from laughing too hard���

Grand Uncle Stagnant and the Summer of Love

Available now here (UK) or here (US)