David Hadley's Blog, page 81

One Of Those Mornings

As mornings go, Cheld thought, it was one of the better ones. Anyway, she���d had worse. At least this one started where it should, at dawn. The sun was behaving as it should too, rising up out across the horizon.

Which was all good.

Except for the colour.

Cheld had hung around on quite a few worlds, but she couldn���t remember many ��� if any ��� that had a blue-green sun. Which was odd.

She gave her navcomp a shake. It still insisted it was on the planet, the planet that was now rising where the device said the sun should be.

She noticed her shadow and turned.

Aaaggghhh! It was bright.

The sun was behind her. The planet was in front of her. That meant she was standing on its moon.

She gave the navcomp a look that, if it were one of her husbands, it would have made it make its excuses and run.

Cheld turned the device off and then back on again. She sighed.

It was the mornings, always the mornings.

Even on planets or moons that didn���t have mornings as such, it was still the mornings.

She strode off across the moon, noticing, for the first time, that the gravity was lower than her device had told her it should be. She hadn���t noticed before. But then she���d been intent on the device, reading it rather than looking around her.

But it was morning.

Underlings had died for disrupting her mornings, which is why she now preferred to work alone, at least before midday. She arrived back at her scout ship and kicked the moon���s dust from her boots.

She saw something over in the distance she���d not noticed when she landed. There was a machine and something waving in the non-wind.

She magnified her visor. A sort of metallic piece of cloth stuck to a stick. The stick, in its turn, stuck into the moon���s surface. Next to the rag on a stick was some sort of primitive craft.

Cheld tried to scratch her head, forgetting about her helmet, as she always did. She cursed as her hands struck the hard unyielding material encasing her head. So, the planet���s creatures had discovered how to do space flight. She looked up into the star-filled sky and saw the familiar twinkle. In that case, she thought, our invasion is just in time.

She glanced down at the navcomp. It was back online. She looked up at the blue-green planet, back at its primitive space machine, smiled and signalled for the invasion to begin.

 

This Time Of Parting

We kissed for the last time that morning. We turned away from each other as if moving through air suddenly made heavier, denser, by this time of parting.

We knew when it began that it would not last. We both knew that time was only a stage on both our journeys. We were both moving on and had paused there only for a time, neither expecting, or wanting, any entanglements. Although, the world always finds a way of tangle lives together no matter what those living them desire.

We were both out of place in that office where the talk was only of property prices and office politics. Neither of which Jenny or I cared about. We were both young, both dreamers. We thought we would walk these roads until we found the dreams that haunted us and found a way of making them happen. Jenny had a journal. She filled it with dreams, ideas, possibilities and other worlds lying at angles to this one. I had a guitar. I let it take me on journeys too, away from this world down roads we would weave together out of notes and time.

Our difference, our separateness, from the others in the office drove Jenny and I together. We became two outcasts, always on the outside of things. Her words and my music had drawn us closer and closer. Until we were first kissing and then lying together in my narrow bed, both trying to find a way to merge our dreams and desires as we merged our bodies into one.

We tried to keep it a secret. But there are no secrets in offices, in entangled working lives, no matter how apart Jenny and I tried to be. There was gossip, there was sniggering, even talk of as a couple going out together. They asked us when would we get engaged and all that sort of thing. Those there, in that place, could see nothing beyond marriage and a mortgage for any relationship. Although, when they spoke to us, we said that was not what we wanted, not what it was about. Neither of us was sure they could ever understand. Although, of course, we, Jenny and I, understood far less than we thought we did.

What could have been over in days or weeks, turned into months as Jenny and I grew closer together rather than our separateness forcing us apart. We were both loners who had never before found true companionship. It scared us both, not knowing about this need that relying on someone else can bring.

Her words and my music, though, were two different songs. Eventually, the time came when I knew it was time for me to leave. An old friend was forming a band, far from where we lived. I knew, or at least thought I knew, that I had to go where the music took me. I asked Jenny to come with me. But both of us knew we would not survive, not without the opposition from the office that threw us together and kept us together and apart from them.

We kissed and said goodbye on that station platform. I rode the train away from her and never looked back. Although I never said, not in all the interviews since, when asked what my songs are about, I shrug and change the subject. I never tell anyone that all my songs are about her, how I can���t help looking back, always wishing she���d been on that train with me.

 

The Waiting Rooms

It was strange, the way they appeared, emerging out of the world like something surreal. A bit like some cartoon where Droopy, Daffy duck, or someone like that, folds up the cartoon world and pockets it, but in reverse.

These places unfolded themselves out of the thin air. It was that old SF and Fantasy idea of a portal between worlds made real.

Of course, people entered through these portals, often before the authorities located them and put up the barriers and guards. Only then did they begin organising their ���official��� examinations and explorations.

Those few early brave ��� or foolish ��� souls whose curiosity overcame them were soon back though.

���There���s nothing to see there,��� one teenager from Birmingham said to the waiting TV cameras, in an interview when he emerged. ���It���s just like an empty room.���

The first distorted pictures from the robot cameras sent inside as an initial investigation, verified his claims and those of the other adventurous first-timers. The world soon lost interest in those first explorers, some of whom had hoped for fame and fortune. However, fame in the news is fleeting and the world soon forgot them. The Waiting Rooms, as the media had named them, slipped lower down the news running orders and disappeared from the front pages of websites and the few remaining physical newspapers.

They were there; spread around the world, exactly 500 miles apart ��� to the nearest quarter of an inch. Some made claims for one particular one ��� usually in the claimants own country – as being the central one around which all the others were mere satellites. No-one could prove, or discount, this though. The Waiting Rooms all looked felt, smelt ��� a faint salty tang like a sea breeze ��� the same.

There were theories, of course, about what they were, and why they were here. Alien intelligences, parallel universes, some anomaly caused by experiments at CERN, even a communist plot or a message from god, or the gods. No-one knew why they were here, what ��� if anything ��� they were here for, or what to do about them.

Once the scientists and secret government bodies had run out of tests and experiments to perform on them, the governments lost interest in them. For a while, some became tourist destinations until people saw for themselves how dull they were,

Everybody got used to them, learnt to ignore them and forgot about them. At least until the day when everyone woke up to find the Waiting Rooms were gone.

Their sudden absence brought them back into the news again. Then they were forgotten ��� just as fast ��� as natural and political crises took over the news again.

Until yesterday, that is, when all the Waiting Rooms came back, unfolding themselves out of the thin air… and waiting once more.

 

Eroticism In The Modern Age

Well, it wasn���t quite that simple at first. These things never are. Obviously, in this modern world such activities do not receive the opprobrium they would in earlier times, but still���.

After all, the erotic use of eggcups is still ��� it is said ��� illegal in certain American states. Furthermore, some people in Humberside to this day will not allow the unsupervised use of eggcups in mixed company, unless the participants are of a marriageable age and both are wearing cardigans and slippers.

So anyway, there are certain internet sites where even unmarried people can purchase a brace of eggcups with little or no investigation into their circumstances and what they intend to use those egg cups for.

After all, as some of those politicians caught out in the most recent tabloid sting operation claimed, there are several uses for eggcups beyond the erotic. Although, as befitting today���s��� more cynical age, most people ��� according to the latest polls ��� regard such claims as self-serving at best.

After all, some of the most downloaded porn on the internet ��� I���m led to believe ��� does feature some very explicit use of eggcups, sometimes even with the eggs and toast soldiers as well.

Of course, the use of the toast did mean that several of the more vocal tabloids called for government legislation to outlaw the erotic use of boiled eggs and soldiers, especially when copiously buttered. They, of course, cite the danger that youngsters – especially children at an impressionable age – will be led astray, or even into sexual experimentation by such images. Of course, this glosses over what older generations in pre-internet times got up to around the back of the bike sheds, boiling their eggs and toasting bread over open fires. They were innocent times only in the rosy glow of nostalgia and selective forgetfulness.

After all, even into the 1970s certain male students were sent down from Oxbridge for inviting female undergraduates into their rooms to dunk their toast soldiers in the male���s eggcups.

Anyway, there is little of the sordid or underhand about such activities these days. Most cities and larger towns have certain clubs where men can watch attractive underdressed young ladies, eating from egg cups. As well as – it is rumoured ��� in the less well regulated of these clubs – they can go into back rooms. There, those same young ladies – for a fee ��� will do those other intimate things with eggcups that we all ��� if we are honest ��� have fantasised about doing. Some of us may even have tried a time or two, if we are lucky enough to have met someone broadminded enough and with an interest in sexual experimentation��� and eggcups.

So, when she opened her kitchen cupboard and showed me her collection of egg cups, I made my excuses and stayed.

 

Shadows Are Like Dreams

Shadows are like dreams haunting the memory with the hidden and the possible. The shadows haunt the dreams and the possibilities the dreams hold within themselves haunt all the shadows. Juliet was a woman who knew too much about the shadows. She was born in the darkness. She had crawled out of the deepest shadows of the cold city night, vowing never to return. She would not go back, even though she knew she had left part of herself behind.

Even now, years later, she distrusted the dark and kept away from the shadows. Away from those shadows calling out her name, whispering entreaties to her as she rushed from pool of light to pool of light.

Slamming her front door behind her, Juliet leant back against the solid door as though keeping it shut against a horde of intruders laying siege to her world. The hallway of her home, like the rest of the house, was bright and lit against the darkness with nothing that could cast a shadow. There was nowhere for those that haunted the surrounding shadows to hide. This house was her safe place. She need never fear the dark here.

Breathing deeply, she pushed herself away from the door, locking it against the night, bolting it. She stood back as if a locked door was a work of art that demanded contemplation and admiration. Juliet even nodded her satisfaction to herself as she turned for her kitchen.

She fancied a bright salad, the antithesis of the cold winter darkness outside. With a mug of some warm, white milk perhaps. Once she’d liked black coffee, until one day its oily shadows had whispered to her of what she’d left behind in the shadows and what had become of that part of her. Tears had fallen, breaking the darkness of the coffee into ripples and she’d never drunk anything dark or black ever again.

She drew the kitchen blind. At least the snow was white, hiding parts of the darkness of this world under its blankets, making it clean again. It would be good if the snow were still there in the morning. A dark winter morning was still the prisoner of the night and every day when she had to leave before sunrise she longed for spring to come.

Now, in her bright kitchen, with her clean, sharp, colourful salad and pure white milk she was safe at last.

Then the bright lights dimmed, flickered, stuttered and darkness dropped over her world as all the electrical hums fell silent around her. The mug of milk crashed unseen to the floor as Juliet screamed, knowing the shadows had come to take her back inside themselves.

Once More Into The Breach

Back at the base of operations, it was time to review the mission. Luckily, we had achieved most of the mission objectives with no casualties and only minor damage to the bank balance. Checking back over the list of primary objectives, though, we did discover that – for some reason – we���d managed to miss picking up any milk.

A quick inventory of our logistic supply base did reveal that we were very low on milk. Consequently, it would severely compromise the big push towards Sunday lunch, especially the planned secondary objective of a good pudding. In particular, when going into battle against the apple crumble without any custard to back us up. One of the junior officers suggested we replace the custard with ice cream from the tactical reserve, but the wife also wanted cheese sauce for the cauliflower in the main course. This would mean, of course, resupplying our tactical milk reserves.

Bravely I stepped forward to propose a quick commando raid, early on the Sunday morning. If I moved quickly, I could get in, get the milk and get out again before the massive Sunday newspaper rush turned such a sortie into a suicide mission. In particular, if him from number 56 was in there and he began talking about his gardening exploits again. Last time he���d cornered me by the magazine rack and was pounding my defensive position with his rhododendron anecdotes. I barely escaped without any damage to my sanity. After all, there is only so much one man can know about rhododendrons ��� except him from number 56, obviously.

However, the wife was concerned that a visit to the corner shop would cause severe damage to our ��� now somewhat depleted – cash reserves. Furthermore, she argued, the price of their milk could be too high a price to pay, even for cheese sauce and/or custard.

���Of course, this wouldn���t have happened back in my day,��� the old General wisely counselled. ���Back then we had milk deliveries every day.���

I remembered those convoys of brave deliverymen, risking all to bring milk, groceries, even at one point fresh fish to the door. But the treacherous underhand secret warfare of the governments tax and regulation war had torpedoed too many of those brave men. Many had chosen to go down with their milk floats, deep into the depths of history and nostalgic TV programming, never to be seen again.

However, I knew what I had to do. I donned my battle gear, checked that my debit card was loaded, kissed my wife and children and once more headed out to do battle with the overwhelming forces of the supermarket.

 

The Rains Of Circumstance

Each day was like rain falling all around, a downpour of time, falling down on unprotected heads. The world was there to be trudged through; the heavy mud of circumstance weighing down each foot. Struggling through the day became more and more of an ordeal the longer the rains of circumstance fell.

The sky was lost in clouds hanging unmoving in a grey sorrowful sky. Time did not pass. Night came before acknowledging dawn. The sky was dim, featureless, grey. The ground was black, sodden mud. The waters spread until rivers grew into lakes, meeting and merging.

It looked as though the world would never know another summer or forgotten spring. Some turned towards the gods: begging, pleading and petitioning. There were rumours of sacrifices out in the Wildlands, a return to the old gods and their blood rituals. There were even whispers of human sacrifice and young virgins disappearing from villages.

The fear grew out of the rain, out of the storms. Strangers died on the roads. Wounded travellers left to die where they���d crawled. Nowhere was safe and anyone not already known was a potential danger.

As time went on and the food stores ran out, more and more people took to the road, searching for safety and security. Bloody savage fights broke out between starving gangs of wanderers. These grew into skirmishes between the remnants of villages on the move. Then tribes formed where there were once communities.

The diseases grew and spread and still the rain came down.

Soon there were battles, where there had once been skirmishes as tribes became armies. Those armies set out to conqueror, because that was the only way to survive.

The world turned colder and the rains turned to snows. Those who still believed knew now that the gods had abandoned them and there was nothing left to live for. Those without hope carried on, because that was all they knew.

Then, one day, after the longest winter anyone had ever known, the sky cleared. A tentative pale sun appeared, bringing its light and feeble warmth to a land drowned deep under the rains of circumstance.

 

Video Game Outrage

Yesterday, there were further call in the media for greater controls over computer and video games. The controversy centres around the latest game in the very popular Call Of Gardening franchise: Call Of Gardening 4: This Time It���s Begonias.

The furore erupted yesterday when several of the UK���s tabloid newspapers revealed what happens in the so-called Potting Shed level, where�� – the newspapers claim ��� there is some over-explicit dibber-related action. A seasoned gardening correspondent from one of the UK���s broadsheet newspapers admitted, however, that ���it all seems rather tame, considering what really goes on in some of the garden sheds in England.��� Nevertheless, since his comments provoked outrage on Twitter, he has since apologised to anyone still suffering from any sweet pea related trauma who may have inadvertently stumbled across his twitter feed.

However, some gamers have said that the realism of the slug-eradication level has given several of them nightmares. One experienced gamer complained that he was unable to sleep after witnessing the graphic detail of what happens to the slugs, when salt is poured onto them, during the game���s quick time slug-salting level.

The Call of Gardening franchise has run into trouble several times before. Last year���s Call Of Gardening 3: World Of Roses was questioned over its over-graphic rose deadhead footage. Even though the game makers said they had spoken to several expert gardeners who advised them on how trained professionals approach the task. This, however, did not stop several rent-a-quote MPs expressing their outrage in the belief they were connecting with their constituents.

However, many fans of the game say they have learnt a great deal about actual gardening from the games. One gamer said ���I would never have realised how to hold a dibber properly if it wasn���t for this game.��� Another said the game had ���changed my whole attitude towards decking.���

Of course, the game series itself has become an enormous money-spinner for the company behind the game. The last game Call Of Gardening 3 sold 56 billion copies in just two days. Some industry sources say that every human being on the planet capable of operating a game controller has played the game at least up to the Water Feature level. However, others dispute these figures, claiming there are not enough computers and game consoles in the world to reach such a high number.

However, the enormous advertising budget of the game means that all real media outrage about the game is bound to be muted, at least until all the launch adverts have appeared. Still, it remains to be seen if this latest episode of the franchise will have the addictive gaming power of the previous versions.

 

Deep Into The Unknown Lands

Leyline Cyclepath is probably the UK���s leading celebrity explorer of the modern age. He has thrilled, enthralled and shocked London Metropolitan media luvvies with his televised journeys of discovery and exploration. In particular, his journeys into what they regard as some of the wildest, savage and uncivilised places lying north of the M25.

Only last year, he enthralled the inhabitants of the London Media world with several ��hours of fashionable shaky hand-held video footage. All hastily sent back by Cyclepath from his foray deep into the heart of what the media like to call ���The North���.

At first, Cyclepath had attempted to discover the remains of a once noble lost tribe of indigenous Northmen known through legend as The Rugby League. As legend has it, this fearsome tribe of warriors operates in some of the wildest places of myth and legend in the North, including such mystical and mythical places as Leeds, Bradford and St Helens. As rare, mystical and romantic to Cyclepath���s southern audience as Atlantis and the Garden of Eden have been to other times throughout history.

Cyclepath did, he claimed, hear the mysterious tribe of The Rugby League chanting in the distance, one dark winter���s night. But, he claimed, his native bearers would not approach the citadel of the Rugby League because the bearers worshipped another god called Cricket. A god that hibernates during the long northern winters and is rarely seen, then only on hot, dry days of which there are few that far north of Watford Gap Services.

Cyclepath has also claimed he discovered the lost city of Grimsby. A place spoken of in awe and fear by many travellers who have journeyed deep into the heart of the North, far from the�� gentle southern lands they are used to. Some sceptics disputed this, claiming the place is a myth from times before history began. However, Cyclepath claimed that he had indeed been to Grimsby, but explained the lack of any tangible evidence as due to the fact it was shut on the day he arrived.

Cyclepath also once thought about trying to discover the mouth of the mighty Humber a river, which legends tell, meets the sea at a fabulous golden city called Hull. A place where it is rumoured the streets are paved with fish and other signs of great wealth lauded by the residents of that city. A city it is rumoured ruled over by a savage beast called a Lord Prescott, who rides two mighty war chariots at once and curses the world in a dialect all of its own.

However, Cyclepath had to turn back from his attempt to reach the fabled golden city of Hull. Mainly because he ran out of avocado dip, and had to return south as fast as possible before his Oyster card ran out. So maybe mankind will never learn if the fabled Golden City of Hull is a real place or just the stuff of myth and legend, at least for another generation.

 

High Noon In The Old West

It was High Noon

She stood there.

I gulped.

I could see she had the mandolin ready. It was loaded too.

I, of course, had the accordion within easy reach in my accordion holster.

Once, before the drink, before Gloria, I was the fastest accordion player in the West, feared from as far away as Bilston. Everyone in the West Midlands had heard of me. Back then I was called Hopalong, because of my��� well, let���s just say I was well-blessed in a way that made the ladies smile���.

Very well-blessed, which is why I had to walk with a limp.

These days, though, since Gloria, and especially since the drink, they know me more as Staggeralong. Staggeralong Then Walk Into Walls.

But my prime accordioning days were behind me. I knew I would be no match for a six-string mandolin, not in the hands of a youngster like her, one with such a keen eye. I could see from the look on her face she���d already seen why they used to call me Hopalong. Except now, I���d have trouble even hopping.

Even in my then well-refreshed state, I could see she was a very attractive woman.

���I reckon, you might be pleased to see me,��� she said as three vultures came down out of a cloudless sky and attempted to perch on it. I waved my hat and shooed them away. I remembered the last time I���d been to the doctor with vulture claw marks in it. The receptionist had not been impressed, especially when I had to stand out in the middle of the waiting room while the doctor applied the ointment in his consulting room.

���I���m too old for this,��� I said, tapping my trusty accordion.

She reached for her mandolin. ���Careful. Old-timer. I do have a rather itchy mandolin finger. But I���m not her for a shootout.���

���You���re not?���

���No,��� she said. ���I���m what you might call the law around here, now.���

I laughed. ���But this is the West Midlands���.��� I spat into the dust. ���We have no call for law and order, not in these parts. I remembered the last time a lawman had ridden into town on his bicycle, looking for a pork scratching rustling ring.��� They���d carried him out feet first only two days later. But that is Midlands beer for you.

���So what brings you, a lawma��� lawwoman to this one-tandem town?���

���You?���

���Me?���

���Yes, you Staggeralong Then Walk Into Walls ��� or should I call you Hopalong Hugewang?���

I shrugged. ���I still don���t see what business it is of a lawwoman���s, even if that was once my name.���

���I���ve come to take you in, Hopalong.���

���Why?��� My hand hovered over my accordion.

���Because of your library book.���

���My library book? But���.���

���Yes, it���s overdue.���

���Overd���.��� My accordion fell into the dust as I raised my hands. I would take my chances with a lawman, even a lawwoman, but a librarian was another matter. ���It���s a fair cop,��� I said. ���I���ll come quietly.���

She looked down at the matter that had arisen between us. ���Oh, no,��� she said. She reached out with her handcuffs in her hand. ���I���m going to make sure you don���t come quietly for a very long time.���