David Hadley's Blog, page 89

Come To That

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Well, it could be taken the wrong way – as the bishop said to the… well, anyway.

She did make the offer, though, and as I’m not a tabloid journalist, I did not make my excuses and leave. Also, not being a politician, I didn’t ask for a receipt for a claim against expenses.

Consequently I am a bit out of pocket, with nothing to show for it except a pain down the left-hand side of my back and some rather… well, interesting memories.

Oh, and she let me keep the rhubarb, not that it is much use now the stiffness has gone from it.

I know how it feels, being somewhat deflated myself, now… as it were.

Of course, back in my younger days I would have soon bounced back and been ready to go again in less than an hour. These days it takes so much longer… weeks at a time. Come to that… as it were, back then I would not have needed such professional expertise in the first place.

But such are the ravages of time.

There are some who would say that such occurrences show a certain amount of decadence. The jaded society, the times we live in and all that. Obviously, these are people who have little or no knowledge of history. After all, forced rhubarb has been around for centuries. Although, admittedly not quite in the way she forces it, or with such dexterity. However, even despite the involvement of Leeds in the practice during its heyday, there is little in the records about using the practice for erotic ends.

However, times have changed.

Some say it is the growth in the use of the Internet that has resulted in such niche practices, interests and deviations becoming more common. However, back in the early days of the Internet such professional ladies did offer their services on newsgroups. These groups were often set up by those interested and fascinated by the practice and the various techniques developed by these ladies and their devoted clients. Of course, back in those days it took a couple of minutes to download a high-resolution photograph of a stick of rhubarb. So, some say it is those early text-based exchanges between the ladies of the rhubarb and their devoted followers that led to the Internet forced rhubarb erotica phenomenon. Then, that in turn led to the extraordinary worldwide best-seller Fifty Sticks of Rhubarb recently becoming such an international erotica sensation.

Anyway, anyone fancy a dish of rhubarb crumble? It would be a shame for all that rhubarb go to waste, especially after what it’s been though….

As it were.

 

Tea Break At The World’s End

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It began – as do all the important events in life – with a nice cup of tea.

Then the world ended.

Which was a bit unusual.

Luckily, though, Ben had finished his cup of tea and placed the empty mug down on a firm surface. So, even when the world ended, he did not suffer the extra inconvenience of any residual tea spillage. This was also fortunate for Ben as he realised – admittedly sometime later – clean trousers are a bit more difficult to come by after the world ends.

Ben, of course, did not realise the world had ended at the time. He just noticed a ripple across the top of the tank, which was unusual. The neutrino detector was so far beneath the surface, so the ordinary perturbations of the Earth were not supposed to effect the tank. At least, that was what Ben remembered from his initial orientation talk when he got the job.

Anyway, once his tea break was over, Ben got on with his general cleaning and caretaking duties. Then only noticing the emergency backup generator was working when he changed a burnt-out bulb in an old indicator panel, a leftover from the pre-software days.

Then, at the end of his shift, Ben put his broom away and made his way to the lift. Even the lift was on emergency power, which surprised Ben. He assumed he’d missed the announcement about a back-up procedure test. He often did miss them. After all, he was only the cleaner and caretaker, not one of the scientists, or – even – the holiest of holies, an administrator.

Eventually, the lift eased its way to the ground floor and its doors sighed open. Ben could see the emergency generator was struggling to cope. So he went to find someone who knew what was going on.

He couldn’t find anyone.

Ben was alone.

There was no-one else in the entire facility. But, still Ben didn’t know the world had already ended… not yet anyway.

 

Not A Pretty Sight

‘It’s not a pretty sight.’ Even Lydon’s usually laconic style was absent. Jensen had never seen him looking so pale. Lydon shivered, gripping the coffee-cup tight between both his hands.

Jensen waited.

‘What?’

Jensen smiled at his subordinate. ‘Usually, about now, you say you’ve seen worse.’

Lydon shook his head, looking down at the lid on his coffee container.

Jensen’s smile vanished. He took a deep breath, not sure if he wanted to see something that had shaken the usually unshakeable Lydon.

Jensen eased his way into the forensic tent, hating the rustling plastic and the disposable paper suit he had to wear. Usually, he didn’t like the barriers between him and the crime scene made necessary by modern forensics.

He….

He stood, looking down… then up at the tree… then around the scene. Even the pathologist, Dr Debbie as they all called her, was not her usual black-humoured self. She knelt as pale as the surrounding snow. That snow that wasn’t red and wet, anyway.

Jensen stood transfixed by a piece of… something hanging from a low bare branch of the tree, slowly dripping blood on the snow below it. Jensen had seen many bodies in his time in the murder squad, even some gangland torture killings.

This was worse.

Dr Debbie looked up. She smiled briefly without much warmth. ‘Well, as you see….’

‘Why me?’ Jensen said to her. ‘You know I don’t do murder any more. I left the squad.’

Dr Debbie nodded. ‘Who… whatever did this wasn’t human.’ She stood up. ‘Whatever did this wasn’t natural either. That’s why we sent for you.’

 

One Of Those Places

It was one of those places.

Gelekin was used to that sort of place. A place where the clientèle started off the evening vertical and ended up horizontal.

If they had the money – and the inclination – they ended their day horizontal in the rooms upstairs, usually fast asleep. As they slept, their hired companion stole every valuable from the discarded clothing then disappeared, leaving only representatives of the management for the now impoverished, hung-over and bewildered mark to complain at. It was no use complaining to them. The management hired their representatives by how close they resembled mountains: huge, wide, lofty and silent. Looking more than capable of raining down an avalanche on your throbbing head.

Others, perhaps older, definitely poorer and sometimes even wiser, preferred to stay downstairs and get horizontal the thirsty way on ales, wines and spirits. Drinks which always started out undrinkable, but became much more palatable with practice – sometimes, a great deal of practice.

Gelekin always ended up at such places. This time though he was not upstairs and impoverished, or downstairs and hungover. He was wide-awake, fresh and trying not to choke on the stale, smoke-filled air as the dawn crept around the edges of the heavy curtains.

Over in the far corner a kitchen slave, from the Far North, judging by her pale skin and red hair, was cleaning up. Or rather, she was using a bucket of filthy water and a threadbare mop to move the pools of vomit around the dirty floor. Meanwhile, last night’s unconscious patrons snored away, lying where they had collapsed.

Gelekin smiled as he saw the familiar shaggy black hair under the… thing that had once been a hat. Tredar was fast asleep in a pool of ale. At least, this time, Gelekin knew he would not have to placate unpaid whores, fight off angy fathers and cuckolded husbands to rescue his companion.

Gelekin sighed and grabbed an arm, pulling the snoring man from his seat. Tredar snorted as his head thumped against the floorboards, but did not wake.

‘Come on,’ Gelekin said to the unconscious man as he dragged him towards the door. ‘Today, we are to save the Kingdom… again.’

 

Back To Basics

‘What?’

‘That one.’

Are you sure?’ The magician looked down at the… that… the thing on the bench in front of him.

The student nodded. She wasn’t exactly beaming, but there was a smile there.

The magician picked one of the wands from the wand rack, wiping it on his sleeve as he approached the bench again. The thing raised what could have been an eyebrow as the magician approached it. He poked the… the thing with the end of the wand. The thing wobbled like a thick jelly, the eye-like… thing on the… er… thing blinked slowly.

‘Well?’ The student stood up straighter, a bloom of pride on her face.

‘Well….’ The magician didn’t want to admit it was hopeless. Students like this one, with such rich – and indulgent parents – were never hopeless. He prodded the thing again. It wobbled again. ‘Not exactly the traditional handsome prince, is it?’

The student deflated. ‘But you gave me a frog.’

The magician tried one of those benevolent smiles he’d heard were useful at times like this. ‘Well, it is traditional.’

‘Tradition, pah.’ The student folded her arms. The wand in her hand shot out a stream of sparks that scorched the top of the workbench.

‘WHAT…!’ The magician remembered the tuition fees were almost due. ‘Er… what have I told you about discharging your wand as soon as you’ve used it?’

The student sighed and nodded. ‘Always make sure there is no magic left in the wand afterwards, EVERY time you use it,’ she said in a sing-song voice. Her eyes rolled up into her head and her weight fell on one leg as she folded her arms even tighter. She sighed theatrically.

Bloody magic, the magician thought. Is it real worth it? Then he thought of the tuition fees, straightened his beard, sighed and reached for the Introductory Magic book. ‘Right, let’s start again.’

 

Waiting For The Sign

When the time comes, we will know. That’s what they say.

Until then, we wait here. We wait for the sign that will take us forward into the unknown.

None of us know what they are waiting for. Our leaders are as unsure as the rest of us. They, the leaders, have tents, while we lie here on the bare ground and wait. The camp stretches around as far as the eye can see. Although, as Radge said the other morning, ‘The eye can’t see very far here.’

The valley below the hillside is growing thick with smoke from the campfires. The stream at the bottom of what was once a pleasant valley is now little more than a churned-up mud track. Now, it’s more the memory of a stream than the stream itself.

Meanwhile, up on the brow of the hill, each morning and each evening as day and night exchange places, the priests gather to await the sign. We all watch as they go about their rituals. None of us really knowing what it is they are doing. Or, if – as increasing numbers of us mutter under our breath – they have any idea what they are doing themselves.

Most of us ordinary solders were farmers until a few weeks ago. Folk like us never have much time for the priests and their rituals, especially not these city priests. In the cities they have time for the luxury of religion and all its chanting and rituals. Out there in the fields, gods are only useful as a curse when the plough breaks or the wolves come down from the mountains to tear the lambs apart.

It seems here too, out on the battlefield, although we are supposedly fighting this war in their name – there aren’t many gods. If there are any around – which I doubt – then it appears none of them care enough to give us the sign we wait for.

 

Eroticism And Advertising

It was not as advertised, but then not much is. After all, very few car insurance transactions do involve small mammals, even at the cheaper end of the sector where staff wages are a significant cost. There, peanuts – or even chickenfeed – start to look like offering viable wage cost reductions. Especially when you consider the tarnished reputation of the UK’s educational system and its inability to produce employment-ready worker drone units.

However, as advertised does suggest it should bear some resemblance to the product or service advertised. These days though advertisers have to resort to all manner of subtle – and not so subtle – tricks to get the attention, no matter how fleeting, of a consumer immured to all forms of the hard sell.

Not that we were paying that much attention to the adverts, to be honest. At least, not since the craze for erotic knitting took our neighbourhood by storm at the end of last winter. Never before have I had so many bobble hats, scarves and mittens. But since those scientific studies were published at the end of last year showing a direct causal relationship between knitting and the female libido, wool does seem to have become the most used material in contemporary fashion.

Not only that, homemade clothing has lost the stigma it once possessed as a cheapskate alternative. Especially now that the number and variety of your pullovers, cardigans and other knitwear is a public demonstration of your virility, and the complexity of the knitwear patterning is taken as a sign of an active and inventive sex life.

So, anyway, there she was with the box waiting when I got home. We opened it in a state of sexual excitement and tension we’d not felt since our wedding night, or – to be honest – that first time round by the bins behind Tesco several years before the aforementioned wedding night.

Of course, the do-it-yourself knitting wool kit was advertised on prime-time TV with a high concept glossy advert more redolent of a pre-Christmas perfumery advert. One of those that makes you wonder what they are selling, and – more mysteriously – who to.

But then, the wife has taken to knitting with the alacrity she has only ever shown when the possibility of getting stuck in a hotel lift with Bradd Pitt and a gallon drum of baby oil was her idea of romantic yearning.

Anyway, there we were urging each other to open it.

So we did.

We looked inside.

It looked up at us and baa-ed.

 

A World In Peril

It was not a time or a place for such things. Sometimes, though, it is necessary for certain actions to take place whatever the consequences and whatever the wish that things could – somehow – be different. There were many things about Membranes Gastropod’s life that he wished were different, including his name. But that was the name he’d chosen from out of all the petabytes of information swirling around in the cloud around him as he fell into this dimension. Those were the words that somehow attached themselves to him, giving him an identity.

When he arrived, clutching the solid ground underneath him he needed a name to cling to. Otherwise, he thought, if he let go this world would dissolve under him, leaving him back falling through the void.

Membranes Gastropod.

It could be worse.

At the moment though, he was not entirely sure how it could be worse. Not that it was a bad place, this Earth. The dominant creatures on it, while not exactly intelligent, did have nice fur and made a purring sound Gastropod found quite soothing. Their slaves, though, the humanoid creatures, were a different matter entirely. Although, they did do a rather involved comedy routine he found highly amusing. He’d amassed quite a bit of footage of this rather comical thing they called politics to show everyone when he got back to his own world. He was sure it would become the comedy hit of the dimensions.

Meanwhile he was here, now, and he assumed this was why he’d come tumbling through the dimensions. He stared into the….

Well, that too didn’t have a name.

The creatures on the planet had meowed their concerns about it to him. They’d tried, and failed, to point out the impending disaster to their human slaves. But – it appeared – that the slaves could only see three dimensions and were consequently completely oblivious to their impending doom.

Normally, Gastropod would have just saved the cats and left the humans to enjoy the last of their politics until their world was consumed by the dimensional void. But he was keen to see how the next plot twist – the election, they called it – turned out.

So, he sighed, checked his hastily-assembled dimensional void neutraliser was plugged in to the nearest available power socket, hitched up his kilt and set out to save yet another world, if only for the cats.

 

Too Young To Listen

Too Young To Listen

There is always now,

as there was always then,

all hidden stillness dark

to surface out from silence

we see the bluest sky spreading

over dawn’s new brightness.

Only then will it be time

for time’s beginning once again

as those old days return

to take us by the hand

and lead us into new green valleys

life once promised back when

we were as young as dawning

and far too young to listen,

hearing nothing this old world could tell us.

Thinking we knew so much better

knowing everything about this world

and how it turns around us.

Carving certainty from hillsides

all we carried back from up there

down from those high hills we stood on

were these stone mistakes that litter

all the floors of this green valley

we stumble around, while trying

to rebuild all we have broken.

Another Dead Body

‘A body?’

‘Yes.’

‘Dead.’

‘Indeed. Very, as bodies usually are.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that sergeant. After all we – you and I – both have bodies, which in my case feels very much alive. And, using my finely honed powers of deductive reasoning I would say the evidence suggests that your body is alive also.’

‘Right.’ Sergeant Harris sighed. Reason would also suggest, he thought, that there must be some people somewhere who were unfeasibly cheerful in the mornings. It was just his hard luck to have one as his DI. ‘Shall we?’ He waved towards where the car ought to be, obscured by sheets of pouring rain.

DI Carter looked out on the world and squinted at the rain. ‘Outside, is it?’

‘That’s where we usually keep the rest of the world… sir.’

Carter glared at Harris.

‘Sorry, Guv.’

‘No, I meant the body… inside or outside?’ Carter sighed. ‘And what have I told you about calling me Guv?’

‘Sorry, Gu…. Sir.’ Cater stared at the rain wondering how it was possible for a cloud to hold that much water, then realising it obviously couldn’t. ‘Yes, sir, sod’s law. It is outside.’ He pulled up the collar of his already sodden coat. ‘Although, by now it is probably underwater.’

Harris smiled and plucked an umbrella from a stand by his front door. ‘Let’s go then.’ He stepped smartly forward, opening the umbrella as he did so, so not a single drop of rain fell on him. He strode off towards the vague blue blur that could be the waiting car, leaving Harris standing in his superior’s doorway wondering if anyone else in the entire country had an umbrella stand. He looked up to realise Carter wasn’t waiting for him.

‘Shit,’ Harris said and closing his gu…. Superior’s front door behind him, splashed his way to the waiting car and yet another dead body.