David Hadley's Blog, page 91

Closing Down

It’s true that it wasn’t the job I’d always wanted, but, as I confidently expected to become a rock star in the very near future, I thought it would be good enough in the meantime. So, the job in the record shop, initially part-time while I waited for my big break, felt close enough to being in the music business for me to keep my dream alive.

In a way, I kept telling myself, it was almost the next-best thing to being a musician. Meanwhile, of course, I kept up with my guitar practice for when my big break came. I even played in a handful of bands as the years went by and the dream slowly faded and then died as each band fizzled out without ever setting the world, or even the local pubs, alight.

These days, though, I own the place. Well, I rent the shop space, but Stylus Records is my shop. Initially, Dan, the original owner used to come around just curse me – and his luck – during the CD boom that came along a year or so after he’d retired and sold out to me. Now, if he were still alive, he’d be laughing his arse off at how it has all collapsed….

No… to be fair – which Dan always was – that cursing was done always with a smile of genuine glee that I was doing so well. No, Dan would be there, staring out through the front display window next to me, shaking his head slowly… wondering – as I do – what has happened, what has gone wrong.

Actually, no, I do know what happened. It’s simple really – we don’t get the kids, not any more. They don’t need us because they don’t have the record buying habit, the CD buying habit. It’s not just – as people say – the downloading, illegal or legal, that is the problem. No, I think now the music is over and it is time for us to turn out the light. We have reached the stop sign at the end of the long and winding road. It is the end, beautiful friend. The long strange trip has reached the terminal and it is time to dismount from the Magic Bus. They still call it rock music, I know, but these days it no longer means what it used to, if it means anything at all.

“I’m closing the shop,” I said to Mark and Debbie, late one Saturday afternoon at the end of a long quiet period. Actually, to tell the truth, the whole day had been just one long quiet period. When I think back to those hectic Saturdays in the seventies when Dan, Karen and I would long for even a couple of minutes of peace and quiet to drink our now stone-cold mugs of tea behind the counter, I realise just how much times have changed.

[...]

Continues at Wattpad.

 

Battle Fatigue

Even then, there were moments left hanging there, which could go one way or another. We edged around those moments never sure what the other would do, each afraid of taking the one step that would bring us closer, in case we were rebuffed.

We both knew we could, if we made the effort, close the gap between us. We had known each other far too long for something so simple, so small, to tear us apart. But both of us were wounded, scared and scarred, unwilling to attempt crossing that no-man’s land of this particular battlefield.

Maybe we were shell-shocked by the years of conflict. Maybe our battle fatigue was such that neither of us could gather ourselves for that final push back into enemy territory.

What had been, years ago, such a grand alliance between the two of us, had – over the years – turned to distrust, suspicion and awareness that each side was forming other alliances out beyond the other’s influence.

The border between us faded away during those first few years, so we became one. Then that border slowly reasserted itself until it became the disputed territory and then became these battlefields fought over so long and bitterly.

Still, neither of us would give up, neither of us wanted to admit defeat, surrender to the thought of us as apart, separate, the border between us fenced, guarded and inviolable.

So, each night, no matter how far apart we slept, each far over our own sides of the bed, the next morning found us wrapped in each other’s arms like two battle-weary soldiers who’d fought each other to death.

 

The Thief Of Dreams

It was her world, hers alone. I was an intruder, a stranger and an interloper. By then, though, I had already learnt many lessons about sneaking around as people slept. I had to be careful to stay out of her line of sight, stay in the shadows, make no noise or movement that would attract attention.

People do not know how vulnerable their worlds are as they dream. They do not realise how easily it is for someone like me to sneak inside and tear their whole world apart.

I am not like that though. I do not enter to savage or destroy. I come as an explorer, as someone seeking knowledge, wisdom, enlightenment. I come looking for those secrets we all hold dear and only let out as we sleep, as we dream.

Computer hackers talk about backdoors, ways of entering computer programs and systems, sometimes to cause harm and sometimes just to see what is there, a digital tourist. I suppose I am one of those tourists too, but I only come out on my travels when people sleep.

I open the back door to their dreams and step inside, creeping from shadow to shadow as their minds wander the dream worlds they create. Some people talk of strangers in their dreams, of strange shifting shadows and movements glimpsed out of the corners of their eyes as they wander their dream worlds.

That shadow, that presence, is me, searching for the secrets that hide in the dreams of us all, trying to make sense of what we claim not to desire and not to want.

I go searching all through your dreams and haunt all your nightmares.

One day, though, we will meet – by accident – in some small café in this real world. There I will sit you down and tell you all about what I’ve found deep inside your dreams and what it means.

 

The Beasts Of The City

Well, sometimes it doesn’t seem so bad. After all, there is no rush hour these days. There is no idiot TV and there is a blessed freedom from arseholes mouthing their opinions and dickheads telling you what they think.

Best of all, though, there are no politicians.

Worst of all there are no women in their summer clothes sunning themselves in the parks. Not that there are any parks, though, come to that. Well, not as they used to be. Now, what were once parks are wildernesses in the heart of the cities, filled with all manner of wild animals, including some like the packs of dogs that were once tame. There are some too, I’ve seen, that must have escaped the zoos, or even illegal private collections.

Why else would there be a pride of lions in the heart of Birmingham?

Then there are the creatures that were once human. Those are the scariest of all. There is something terrifying about seeing them; half-human, half-beast, scurrying through these overgrown concrete wastelands, stuck somewhere between the human and the inhuman. Beasts hunting in squabbling enraged packs that kill without distinction, or even awareness, but with all the human tactical ability and finesse that allows them to set traps, ambushes and to attack with co-ordinated overwhelming force.

That is why those of us, the few that we are, who still regard ourselves as human, have left the cities far behind. Instead, we found a way of living here deep in the hidden countryside where we can pretend to one another – and, sometimes, even to ourselves – that we have made a new home.

 

DIY TV

Spleen Toolshed is perhaps the UK’s leading celebrity DIY TV show star. His first programme Cocking it up with Toolshed is widely acclaimed as the first modern DIY programme on British TV. In the past, the DIY programme scene was dominated by men who knew what they were doing, even when what they were doing was ballsing things up. Several, unlike Toolshed himself, actually knew which end of the hammer you hit the nail with. A skill Toolshed has yet to master, even though after 3 major TV series and over 250 individual programmes he can now distinguish a nail from a box of miscellaneous fixings an astonishing three out of seven times. A skill which puts him at least in the top 8% of British DIY enthusiasts.

Although DIY as a pastime has declined from its heyday, weekends and bank holidays often find men being dragged around DIY emporia by women with a gleam in their eye that actual experience has left undimmed. These women dream of bathrooms and kitchens that will be the envy of their friends, and not as now resembling one of those houses the special forces use to train for urban terrorism operations.

Still Toolshed himself, despite his lack of ability, talent or experience. Or – more likely because of his complete lack of self-awareness – has made a lucrative career out of invading people’s homes. He turns up with a camera crew and a gang of cowboy associates. Then after some self-conscious under-rehearsed banter the cowboys begin buggering about with that house – usually to the despair of the householder – until that programme’s budget has all gone. Which, unfortunately for the householder these days, means quite a bit of buggering about. For as the programme’s popularity has – inexplicably to some – increased, so has its budget.

Most critics put the success of the programme down to the fact that it is up against the Sunday evening religious programmes on the other side, which makes it the only really safe haven for those who do not know that most modern TVs do now have an off switch.

Because of this Toolshed’s newest TV programme Toolshed’s Domestic Disasters is now one of the most watched programmes, not only in its time slot, but on TV in the UK as a whole. Many say they only watch it to see the look of horror and despair on the home-owner’s face when Toolshed and his herd of grinning hammer-wielding simpletons unveil what they have done to a previously quite nice house. Something that almost invariably involves a lot of purple, shiny things and incredible amounts of shoddy tat.

Surprisingly, Toolshed has only been sued less than a dozen times by irate householders foolish enough to let him lose in their homes, often merely in the hope that they themselves will actually appear on television.

Still, there is hope for the UK, after it was recently announced by a government in desperate need of some good publicity that they will be employing Toolshed as an adviser on the UK’s perennial housing shortage. All we can hope is that they do not allow him anywhere near any more of Britain’s limited housing stock with his hammer.

 

The Uneasy Silence

There were too many things left unresolved. Out here, where there is only silence and the hours drag, there is little else to do, except think. When you look out on that vast infinity of stars out there, there is too much time to sit and brood on what might have been. Looking out on the stars from the observation station, you are looking back in time, on stars whose light takes thousands, millions of years, to arrive here. So it is hard not to think of the past and all that went wrong.

There are those who said we were wrong to flee. They said we should have made a stand, fought, right down to the last human. They say the Breth Empire will not stop at the edge planets, like Far York which was once our home. They say the Breth will conquer and slaughter until there are no humans left, not even back on Earth.

Others wonder though if they will stop. That it might be us who are the expansionist ones and the Breth response is taken through fear and that it is they, the Breth, who are under threat from our expansionism.

The truth is, no-one knows the answer. So we flee in front of them. Our fleet growing into an armada as more and more refugees from more and more planets and systems join with us. All fleeing, all leaving their homes behind for the starving Breth to devour into their expanding empire.

If this is not war now, then it will become war soon. Already we receive reports of the starships, battlecruisers and other great warships, from all the human systems coming together a few systems away, ready to take the battle to the Breth.

Some cheer and punch the air, saying it being about time and that those alien motherfuckers are in for a surprise and it will all be over by Christmas.

Others of us, like me, sit up here in silence and look at the stars and wonder how many wars like this their light has illuminated. How many thousands will have to die before some sort of uneasy tense solution is dragged out of the war-weary civilisations, who have no choice in the end but to learn to live with each other.

 

Something for the Weekend – Free Kindle Humour: The Theory of Car Parks

The Theory of Car Parks

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She Flew

 

Jessica saw the puddle as she flew towards it, knowing she would land in it. She spread herself as she landed with a squelch in the heavy mud, filthy water splashing up all around her. She twisted as she landed; her uniform already sodden. She pulled the pistol from her holster, aiming back at the… at the… whatever it was that had hurled her across the farmyard into the puddle.

Her pistol wavered in her shaking hand as she looked for a target on the huge monstrosity lumbering towards her. Already, at this distance she could smell again the sopping wet shaggy fur that covered it from head to toe. She spat mud as she remembered it squeezing her against itself in a bear-hug before it threw her across the yard.

Through the pouring rain she saw it pause at the body of one of the farm workers. It snorted and thumped one of its huge legs down on the chest of the farm worker, grabbing at the man’s arm with its front paws… hands. The thing, the beast, tore the arm from the body and gnawed at the fleshy end. Jessica saw those huge pointed teeth and swallowed hard.

Aim for the mouth, she thought, taking her pistol in both hands. Her police radio squawked to life, she recognised her call sign.

‘Help is coming. Hang on, Jessica!’ the voice distorted, crackling and almost inaudible in the hammering downpour.

The beast threw the half-chewed arm over its shoulder, sniffed the air and turned back towards Jessica.

She swallowed knowing the beast would have her long before any of that help could ever arrive. She braced herself, aimed for the roaring bloody mouth and squeezed the trigger.

 

The Streets Are Grass

The Streets Are Grass

Back then we had history; we had a past. All that is gone now. All that remains are these ruins from a time long gone. A time that will never return.

Even now, amongst the younger ones, the past is just a place of stories and wonder. Just tales told around the fires at night by the old ones.

Even us older ones find the memories fading. The history is becoming myth and legend. Sometimes I find it hard to remember what was true and what a story. Back in those days, we had so many stories. We had books, TV, films and computer games. There were even News programmes that took the chaos of a day and turned it into a story the television could tell us before it tucked us up for the night.

Now, the only stories we have are what we remember and the handful of books that were not used for fuel. Back in the early days, back when we still felt a strong pull back to the old world, we thought we would get the power back, get the towns and cities back. We thought that, in time, a new world would grow from the ruins of the old world. But all that grew in the cities were weeds, then other plants and now there are trees growing out of what used to be an office block and the streets are grass.

Survival was all that mattered, and some of us did indeed survive. Now, though, we old ones, the few that remain, are the only connection back to that old world. A world that to the young ones contains more monsters and ghosts than the possibility of civilisation. So, now I wonder if that old world can ever come back once we old ones are gone and forgotten.

Where These Roads Go

 

There is always so much that could have been, compared with the narrow world of what is. There are so many turnings at each crossroads, but only one is taken. Each road leads not to some eternal city but another crossroads with, again, a multiplicity of further turnings. There are so many roads not taken, so many roads leading further away from home.

Shania stood at the crossroads with her familiar city behind her. Looking back, she vowed to herself, under her breath, never to return. She could see each of the other three roads led off around bends to places she’d only heard of in the tales of travellers at the Inn, as she served their ale and meals while fighting off their wandering hands.

There had been Thoma too, and his stories of what lay beyond the city and the many crossroads where he’d waited to relieve traveller of the burden of their wealth. But now he swung from a rope in the King’s courtyard and those bright blue eyes she’d come to love saw no more crossroads.

So Shania had considered her options and seen they didn’t amount to much beyond serving in the Inn and growing old. Then, that morning she’d looked over at the few clothes and meagre stores she’d packed since Thoma swung. All in all, she considered the road a much better alternative than the bucket of dirty tepid mopping water that was her only other option.

Shania dressed, picked up her heavy but meagre pack. Stepping carefully over the vomit and ale-stained unmopped floor, she strode out here to the crossroads she’d never gone past.

Now, she stood here, wondering which way to go.