David Hadley's Blog, page 77

Don���t Look Down

I held on. I was not going to let go. I thought of looking down, but heights are not my best subject. I had my eyes closed tight and my hands clenched around the rough bark of the overhanging tree. One of the reasons why I���d closed my eyes was that loose soil and the occasional small stone were drizzling down on me. A part of me, a diminishing part of me, hoped it was just dirt broken loose by my fall over the edge. Another part of me, growing more certain all the time, thought it could be my weight pulling the tree loose.

I was too scared to open my eyes to find out.

I was also too scared to open my eyes in case I caught a glimpse of just how much empty air there was below me.

It felt like a lot.

My hands, already bloodied and battered from the fight, were searing hot with pain. The rough bark felt as though it was tearing the remaining skin from my hands. It would be such a relief to let go and feel the cool air on my torn palms.

I gripped tighter.

I knew I had to move, one way or the other. The idea of letting go and falling��� falling��� falling��� was the stuff of nightmares.

I took a deep breath, tightened my grip on the narrow tree trunk, feeling it bend and shift under my moving weight. I decided to count to three��� then I would open my eyes, even though the shift of my breathing had caused another brief shower of soil and stone all over my face.

Three!

My eyes didn���t open, no matter how much I tried.

I took another deep breath and counted to three again.

The side of the cliff, ravine – or whatever it was in front of my eyes – was fascinating. Until then, I hadn���t known how rock, stone, soil could be so fascinating. Up above me the sky was dull and grey threatening rain and lots of it.

The air felt cool, fresh on my face. The sound of the river, stream, or whatever it was, way below me was soothing, calming.

Listening intently, I could hear birdsong��� then voices. They were still here, up there looking for me.

Eventually, they would find the body of the man who���d jumped me, up there on the cliff edge.

Then they would look over the edge.

Then it would be all over for me��� one way or another.

I had to look down, see if there was a way out for me.

I closed my eyes.

This time I would look down.

One���.

Two���.

Three���.

���Oh, shit!���

 

Gods And Emperors

It was long ago, back in the days when the gods held this world in their hands.

Or, so we thought.

Back then, there were reasons for everything. That was what we believed. It was what the priests told us to believe, anyway.

Of course, there we those who did not believe their child had died of some hideous disease because it suited the plans of the gods, but they knew better than ask questions like that. Even the Emperors feared the power of the priests and knew when they should remain silent. Even if those Emperors themselves were, according to those same priests, gods themselves.

Time passed, though, as it always did, and the priests got lazy and arrogant. At least, according to the stories told of the time. Soon there were rebellions in the North and the invaders came from the East in their devilish long dragon boats.

The people, of course, turned to the gods and the priests to help them in this, their time of greatest ever need. The gods were no help. Not even the Emperor God himself could bring about an end to the rebellions or the growing gains made by the invaders.

There was talk too that in the lands captured by the invaders the folk there had given up on our old gods. Instead, they���d turned to the gods of the invaders. These were strong, powerful, gods who ensured victories, riches and spoils.

The invaders were, it seemed at the time, going to take over this entire land, no matter what the Emperor and the priests decreed. Our armies fell back in defeat. The invaders plundered and marched on, from victory to victory.

Then, the final battle came and the Emperor died. His supporters, including the priests, claimed he died bravely in a hail of arrows. Others there at the battle say different. My own father, a young boy there to refresh supplies to the fighting men, said he saw the Emperor fleeing from the battlefield chased by a few laughing invaders. The Emperor, my father said, fell from his horse and knelt, pleading, in the mud. The one thing that the invaders do not like is cowardice, especially on the battlefield.

So the Emperor died there and then.

That was when the people, in the few lands we had left, turned on the priests. They scorned our ineffectual gods, especially the cowardly Emperor God.

When the priests decreed they had a new Emperor for us, the people burnt down the Emperor���s palace and set fire to the temples. Many hundreds of priests died, while many more suddenly stopped believing in the gods that failed.

Now no-one – even if they do – admits to worshipping those old gods anymore.

Still the invaders march on, unbeaten.

 

People Who Dare To Have Opinions

Earlier today, the BBC announced a new audience-participation programme called People Who Dare To Have Opinions. The programme will invite people who dare to have unauthorised opinions to speak in front of a specially-selected typical BBC audience. The people selected to appear will be people who have dared say something some have found in some way objectionable. Something that either the Twitter mob, the metropolitan media, or any others belonging to the self-created groups of overbearing, professionalised grievance-takers that decide what are and what are not acceptable opinions have taken exception towards.

Of course, it will also depend upon just who is voicing that opinion. For some views are allowed to be expressed, as long as the person uttering them belongs to one of the politically-acceptable groupings favoured by the grievance mongers and offence takers.

Naturally, the people who dare to have opinions must not be allowed to repeat what they have said, especially in front of the delicate ears of the specially-invited audience. Rather the opinion-giver (as the victi��� participant will be called) is made to sit in front of the audience in silent penitence. Then the members of that audience reinterpret what the opinion-giver said in the most egregious way possible, in order to score what the programme makers call Victim Points. The winner of the audience participation contest will be that member of the audience who scores the most Victim Points. Mainly by pointing out how offensive the opinion was to various specially-selected victim groups and how they have personally been damaged by being within earshot of such an offensive act of blatant opinion-sharing.

Of course, the BBC will also be displaying a whole series of premium-rate phone numbers for viewers to call. These lines will also be available for those viewers who feel they have been traumatised by living in the same universe as someone who holds such an unfashionable opinion. Those traumatised viewers can call those phone lines to have their sense of victimhood massaged and pampered by professional grievance mongers.

Then, at the end of the programme, the contestant judged to have the most outrageously dangerous opinion will be found guilty of daring to think for themselves by the studio audience. The winning candidate will thereafter be condemned to be shunned by polite society. At least until the time when they will be taken from their place of incarceration to a place of execution. There, they will undergo the form of savage and barbaric medieval death penalty deemed most appropriate for their crime by the studio audience and viewer telephone votes.

 

When Time Slipped Through Her Fingers

There were times when Ceri thought she understood this world. There were times she could take a moment out of the stream of time and keep it precious. She could hold a moment, a second, a minute, in her hand and turn it to catch the light. She could set it down, crouching on the sun-warmed grass, breathe a breath of her life into it and set it into motion once again. She could take that moment, that instant, and turn it again to change the way it moved on from there, spreading itself out into space and time.

The world to her was graspable, malleable. Ceri could – mostly – turn it and shape it into the ways she wanted, she desired. She could have the world in any shape she liked.

Except���.

There were times, instances, which evaded her grasp. Moments that slipped from her hand. No matter how she reached, no matter how tight her grip, she could not keep them. They slipped through her fingers like darting fish grabbed in a fast flowing stream. They were there in her hand, long enough for her to feel the squirming moment, feel the living heartbeat, then they were gone. Each swimming free down the time stream, never caught by her again.

Although, Ceri could take other moments from that stream too, she could grab the wriggling seconds in her hands and tame them to follow her commands and desires.

However, she could not go back. The time stream flowed only one way. The past was there behind her, disappearing into the mists of memory around the river���s bend that led back into long ago.

She���d tried walking back along the bank of the time stream, but she could not. Like memory, Ceri could look back along the river but some force she called the Now Wall kept her from going back. The Now Wall was always there at her back, pushing her forward, like a strong current in the river. She could only ever reach out to grasp the passing moments as the river took her always onward into the future.

However, it was a future Ceri could bend and shape as though the time river wasn���t following a course, not heading inexorably towards the sea on the route it had carved from the centuries. She could twist those moments; turn that river to take her on towards some destination.

Ceri, though, did not know what lay beyond the horizon what lay beyond. She could only twist the river of moments and hope that one day in the far future she would reach that waiting sea and discover why the river flowed there.

 

Washed By The Tears Of Rain

We began here in this place of memories. We grew out of this ground, where the past falls and becomes this soil, this earth. This is a place of memories, where the now will grow out into the future. We use the nourishment of what has passed and gone to give us life; to grow up towards the sky, warmed by the sun and washed by the tears of rain.

We drink deep of that warmth and of that rain to grow strong. To pull us away from what has been and gone, but still remains rooted there for when the winds of circumstance blow against us and the frost of fear nips at us.

One day we know we���ll fall. Eventually bowed down by the weight of time and circumstances, withered by age and illness, we will fall too. We will fall back to the earth to become the nourishment for those that will grow from us.

These memories are what we have to grow from and the memory of us is what those who come after will grow from too. This soil grows thick and heavy with the weight of memory it carries. We cannot escape from it, no matter how we yearn towards the sun. No matter how we grow and stretch into the air above, we remain rooted to the ground, unable to break free and escape into the empty air.

You and I, we turn to face each other, feeling the sun on our faces. Each of us feels the strong roots holding us here. No matter how we pull against them and yearn for freedom, this weight of memory holds us close to the ground. Even when there is so much sky up there waiting for us and the sun waits to cradle us in its warmth.

We remain, though, rooted here. The desire to fly free pulls us up and the weight of memory roots us here. We turn towards each other and see we are not alone, no matter how huge that sky can be, nor how deep this earth of memory is. Our roots grow deep and our hands reach out, up towards that warming sun.

We have each other and that is enough, when we feel the earth and the sun both pulling us in opposite directions. Meanwhile, we grow here together, entangling around each other so that neither of us knows where we end and the other begins.

We grow strong because we grow together.

 

Media Personality Of The Year

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Herbivore Goatspanner is probably the UK���s leading contemporary commentator on current events in the media. Thus, she is an excellent choice for this year���s Media Personality of the Year award. It is not that she is in any way an expert on any of the subjects she pontificate about in the TV and radio studios, or in several column inches on in the national press. It is just that she looks good on TV, and can file copy of the requisite length for the papers. Furthermore, she guarantees to have an opinion on anything and everything. Usually, as well, she can engineer that opinion in such a way that it sounds initially contentious. This is more than enough for a sub-editor or programme presenter to come up with a headline or item introduction that seems far more controversial than Goatspanner���s actual column or remarks. Thereby garnering the audience attention that the particular media outlet needs in order to generate the necessary advertising or viewing figures.

After all, these days, news is so easily available, quite literally at the touch of a button or swipe of a touchscreen. Therefore, all the media outlets know that mere news is not enough. They also know that it is the best way to get the vital audience engagement to encourage advertisers or to justify the TV licence tax, is to have someone contentious on the programme or in their pages. However, they do not want to frighten away the advertisers, or risk an investigation into the use of the licence tax. Therefore, they don���t want anyone too contentious; especially when budget cutbacks have reduced the security guards needed to escort the excessively controversial from the offices or studios.

News is, despite what some journalist like to believe, after all mere entertainment. Consequently, news producers believe there is nothing more entertaining as an argument between studio guests or between newspaper columnists and their readers, even if it only gives the vague impression that something is happening. After all, most news programmes on the TV are just endless scenes of man-made or natural disasters in foreign fields or tedious and trivial insider gossip from the Westminster village. Having someone with contentious views spout them for the glee of the audience ��� whether pro or anti the contrarian doesn���t really matter. After all, for the media it is the heat produced that is their raison d���etre, not the light.

Therefore, whenever editors need a contentious opinion about anything to spice up a dull news half-hour or to fill a few column inches between the all-important adverts, the media call upon Goatspanner. Mainly because she will have an opinion about whatever is the slightly controversial subject of the moment. What, of course, adds to Goatspanner���s value is that opponents cannot pin her down as either Right wing or Left wing. Therefore, both sides can feel comfortable in attacking her, knowing no-one will call their tribal loyalty into question. Thus, the claim, that Goatspanner and her opinions ��� no matter how trivial the subject matter ��� are vital for the circus that passes for democracy, is not as absurd as it sounds.

So her winning the Media Personality of the Year is ��� for once ��� not that contentious after all.

 

Terrorism And The West���s Response

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After the latest Uttabollux terrorist organisation pISsed, sometimes known as In A Bit Of A State, supplanted the Al-Ka-Hollix, it soon began taking territory and influence from the Al-coholiks, especially after closing time. It now looks like the pISsed advance across the world���s heavy-drinking regions could be unstoppable. Especially once the pISsed forces learn how to drive their armoured vehicles while under the influence. Although, as many military tacticians have pointed out, it doesn���t really matter if the driver is pissed when in control of a tank, as they just tend to roll over obstacles.

However, a shortcoming of the pISsed military strategy of out drinking their opponents was revealed when one of their armoured columns accidently ran over and destroyed all that week���s supply of wines, beers and spirits. This happened when the lead driver mistook the military unit���s logistical supply base for a late-night corner shop. Consequently, he attempted to nip in and buy a few tons of light snacks for that evening���s push against a heavily entrenched enemy and mistook the accelerator pedal for the brake. That enemy occupied not only the majority of the disputed area���s pubs, but had already run up a substantial bar tab. Consequently, pISsed knew they would have a great deal of difficulty routing the opposition.

In the past, pISsed had always managed to overrun the position quite easily be loudly proclaiming ���Last Orders!��� as they advanced. Thus causing the enemy to flee, in panic, to the nearest bar in their rear.

However, as the Al-Coholiks, found, once the opposition is organised and they can order several rounds in advance. Then once they entrench themselves in the best parts of the pub, they are not so easy to dislodge, no matter how heavy the drinking gets.

In a response to the latest advances by pISsed, the American president had to act. He ordered some of the American military���s biggest drinkers, including Special Forces Tactical Imbibers, into the affected regions. They are there to help train the local forces in the necessary heavy drinking that will be needed to counter this latest outbreak of terrorist activity.

The British Prime Minister too, has promised that several northern British cities will be sending some of their most experienced heavy drinkers into the region to help contain the pISsed forces.

Many critics of Western policy have criticised this policy as ���too few drinks, too late���. Some have even called into question the poor response of Germany. A country who, traditionally, since the end of WWII has made it illegal for its heaviest drinkers to operate outside the NATO drinking region or its own borders.

However, many counter this by pointing out that the Western world and its allies are always willing to drink as heavily as possible. In particular when called upon to counter any real and substantial threat to the Western world and its way of drinking. Consequently, many confidently predict the rise of pISsed will have no real effect on this in the end as long as they do not disrupt the West���s supply of bar snacks.

 

Sport ��� The New Golden Age

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Tenpin Dirigible is probably the world���s leading exponent of the use of competition in an erotic context, as well ��� of course ��� as in an erotic contest. Of course, since the last Olympics, sports have begun to lose a great deal of support and interest. Most people are not that interested in seeing just how far someone can throw something heavy or how far they can jump or how fast they can run, merely for the sake it.

These days, even football is losing supporters, with FIFA mired in scandal after scandal. Some say there are legitimate questions that need asking when, for example, the 2024 World Cup was awarded to one of the more obscure of Saturn���s moons. The football authorities denied any corruption. However, some did point to the number of committee members who suddenly had off-Earth tax shelters, free interplanetary chauffeured travel and even ��� in some cases ��� new mistresses not of Earth origin.

Adding to that is the increasing disconnect between players and the fans. As well as the complete loss of local connection between teams and the local area, many teams are now little more than fashion brands. The time is ripe ��� as many commentators say, for an entirely new arena ��� in both senses of the word ��� of sport to claim the attentions of disgruntled sports fans.

Of course, most of the world���s population is already far more interested in on-line porn than all the sports put together. So, it was ��� in hindsight ��� only a matter of time before some canny entrepreneurs and investors saw the potential of combining the two.

Hence, the arrival of Tenpin Dirigible on the scene and his reinvention of what was once a satirical concept – the Sex Olympics. Already, people had begun to notice that the leading porn stars were starting to look more and more like professional athletes, mainly from having bodies that seemingly defied normal anatomical limitations and acceptability.

Of course, there has always been some element of competition and contest in some areas of erotica, where the viewers were often impressed with the stamina of the contestants. However, it was Tenpin Dirigible���s insight into how these aspects of the art form could combine with the most exciting aspects of sports that lead to this new golden age of sport we are now experiencing.

Sports audiences, that were seemingly in terminal decline, are now growing again as arenas once again fill with fans of these new erotic sports.

Spectators flock to watch some of the new sports. For example, especially popular these days is the new version of the 100 metres. There, a sportswoman, or sportsman who is the first to accommodate the necessary number of other contestants adding up to that length, wins the race. As for the long jump and the award for the season��� leading scorer and fondle of the month, all those are rather self-explanatory, as well as being riveting for the spectators or viewers.

Most importantly, the revival of sport through the effort of Tenpin Dirigible has seen a massive increase in sponsorship too. For many brands, association with contestants who display both athletic and sexual prowess, is the exact brand image they have been seeking for so long. This means that the future of these new sports in this new golden age of sport in now assured for the foreseeable future, providing the athletes, can ��� of course – keep it up.

 

When Heresy Walked This Land

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Well, not that he had any choice in the matter. He stepped forward reaching for his clipboard holster, but it was no longer there.

Times had changed.

He was an old-timer now.

There was a time, he remembered, back in the glory days of the old government when being a diversity office meant . It was a time when he could stand tall and proud as he bought diversity law to the wild frontier towns here right on the edge of the West Midlands.

Now though, he no longer had a clipboard and he felt its demise was more than symbolic of his loss of prestige. No longer did the women drag their children inside as he rode his bicycle down their street. No longer did the pubs pretend to be shut. Nor did the men on the street pretend they were off to the council offices for a diversity-awareness training course when he questioned them out on the street.

These days, it broke his heart to acknowledge it, but it seemed that no-one thought that diversity awareness was the vital matter he believed ��� knew – it to be.

There was talk, whispered in the corridors of the council offices, that some of the public had even begun to question the most holy writ of their five-a-day fruit and vegetable requirements. There was talk of heretics out in the badlands of Tipton, who decreed that the BMI index and the devil worship that was obesity were not as bad as the official figures complained.

He looked down at his official council diversity-monitoring device. It connected wirelessly to the council own computers back at the offices. As usual, it was updating itself. That was the problem with shifting targets and changing definitions of what constituted his remit. Every time someone made a claim about a newly discovered or invented subset of the excluded, the deprived or the victims of this world���s callous impartiality to all and sundry, the diversity criteria needed updating.

He���d lost count of the times he���d strode into some workplace, shop, or even household, furious with righteous indignation on behalf of some group of the excluded. Only to find that the privelidged group he was complaining about had their own unmet diversity quota too. Often, the competing claims meant his hand-held device either froze or crashed, as it tried to resolve who – out of all those with competing claims – was the most deserving of his attentions.

Now, these days, as he strode the streets he was aware of the cold hostility ion the eyes of those he passed. He wondered if he was the heretic, after all, not them.

 

Organised Crime In The UK

Chaingang Chickenstrangler is probably the UK���s most notorious criminal mastermind. Born into poverty in the infamous east end of Walsall, where criminality was rife, to Chickenstrangler a life of crime seemed the only way out of his predicament.

He discovered, after experimenting with other forms of criminal activity, that a protection racket, extorting money from ordinary people with menaces was the only way to make serious money at the time. So he immediately set up a political party and began getting his cronies elected, first into local government and then into the Houses of Parliament.

The Chickenstrangler party, as they became were very adept at extorting money from ordinary people by inventing what they called taxes. This was a way of getting money for themselves and their pet projects from ordinary citizens. They did this by threatening the citizens with the over-mighty forces of the state if they did not pay up.

It was a typical protection racket.

Of course, the Chickenstrangler party claimed that the money raised would make the lives of the ordinary people better and would go towards improving services, first at a local level. Then, when the Chickenstrangler party got into parliament, the party claimed the so-called ���taxes��� would improve the country as a whole.

However, these ���taxes��� continually increased as time went by; with little or no improvement in the services the so-called taxes were meant to pay for. Instead, the people began to notice that the criminals ��� who no tried to legitimise their criminal activity by calling themselves politicians ��� were living at a much higher standard of living than the ordinary folk. The politicians bestowed on themselves lavish expense accounts and all manner of other benefits and freebies that the general population had to work hard for, if they could ever afford them at all.

However, ordinary people were too intimidated to raise doubts about the politicians and their claims to be on the side of ordinary people. Because ��then the politicians would send around the�� ���boys��� from the media to investigate those troublemakers. The media often accusing the ordinary people of various thought crimes the politician gangs had made illegal. If this didn���t work, the politicians sent in their ���tax inspectors��� to investigate the accounts of the troublemakers.

Anyway, if enough people dared stand up against the politicians, then the politicians would just simply make whatever those people were doing illegal. As the police and the army were ��� rather than representing the people ��� in the pay of the politicians, the opposition were the ones that suffered.

Even today, the stranglehold that the political gang have on the way the country is ���governed��� remains almost total. There is little chance that the people will ever be completely free of this form of organised crime, even when the people no longer vote for them.

After all, ���voting��� is a transparent bit of meaningless theatre, mainly because you can only ever vote for more politicians and never against them. Therefore, the politicians can still claim they have a mandate, no matter how few actually vote for them.

So all we can do is hand over as much of our money as they demand. Meanwhile, we live in the vain hope that they will leave us alone and not make any more of what we like to do illegal. All we have left to console ourselves with is the dream that one day we will be free of this vast criminal conspiracy that rules our lives.