David Hadley's Blog, page 99
June 17, 2014
Never Raced or Rallied
The horse stared at him. Gench looked away. He’d never got the hang of animals. He felt they always had a look of contempt or dismissiveness about them whenever they looked at him, as if thinking Gench was the lesser beast. Sometimes, Gench thought they were probably right. ‘How much?’
The merchant looked up and down Gench. ‘More than you can afford.’
‘How do you know?’
The merchant spat into the straw at their feet. ‘I ought to tell you to piss off, cheeky young sod.’
‘Don’t talk to me like that.’ Gench stood up taller. ‘I am a qualified wizard.’
‘Bollocks! Where is your robe…? Where is your hat?’
‘I’ve had a… well, a rather awkward morning.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yes.’ Gench pulled the… well, he wasn’t actually sure it was a robe, or even meant as clothing, around him. ‘Now, how much for the horse?’
‘Seven hundred.’
‘What? For that?’ Gench took a step closer to the horse.
The horse snorted.
Gench took a couple of steps back. ‘I’ll give you a hundred.’
The merchant spat again. He shook his head. ‘It’s a lovely little runner. They don’t make them like that any more.’ The merchant patted the horse’s flank. Dust flew. The merchant coughed. ‘Never raced or rallied.’ The merchant looked into Gench’s face. ‘Five hundred.’
‘Never raced or rallied? What does that mean?’ Gench wondered if it was good.
‘You know horse races?’
Gench nodded.
‘Well, a rally is a long race, but with more mud.’
‘Oh.’
‘Very popular.’
‘Oh, really?’
‘Yes.’
‘Three hundred.’ Gench checked the purse was still there. He’d had time to snatch that from the bedroom floor, but not his robes or his official wizarding hat. Gench wondered what that said about him. The fact he’d chosen the gold over his clothes, his hat and even the reputation of the girl… whatever her name was…. Well, he supposed, maybe it was a sign that he was a proper wizard after all. He stared back at the merchant. ‘Three hundred and I won’t turn you into a frog.’
‘Three-seventy-five.’
‘Deal.’
They both spat on their palms and shook.
The horse snorted and shat on the floor, right next to Gench’s bare foot.
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June 16, 2014
Britain’s New Poet laureate
Stanza Synecdoche first came to prominence in the UK’s vital contemporary poetry scene with her Lines on a Shopping List. A three-page, 27 stanza piece detailing all the things she needed to buy on her next shopping trip. Critics praised the piece for her daring use of juxtaposition in placing fresh vegetables next to boxed cereals. Thus echoing the use of the shopping list form first used by Wordsworth. Most notably in his seminal Note to a Grocer, way back in the height of English Romanticism. A piece which sent Coleridge into paroxysm of delight and forced him to lie down and smoke three pipes of opium to recover his equilibrium.
Synecdoche, though, did not rest there. For some time now the traditional haiku-like form known as the Note to the Milkman has been in decline in the UK. Increasingly so as traditional doorstep deliveries have given way to supermarket purchases. Ironically, Synecdoche herself references this in her Lines on a Shopping List mentioned above with the simple but profoundly moving line Milk x 3. But in her own Notes to the Milkman cycle, Synecdoche referenced a bygone age, a simpler age. Thus with her now-famous piece called Three pints of Gold Top and ending the cycle with the doom-laden and Forlorn elegy to a lost England contained in the final No Milk Today. / Thank You. A farewell to a bygone age that had brought a tear to many a poetry critic’s eye.
Synecdoche, thought, has moved on to embrace more contemporary matters with a whole pad of Post-It notes poems. Here detailing the minutiae of the contemporary daily life of the busy poet, especially her oft-quoted epic entitled Things to Remember. Mainly for its urgent plea for compassion in a heartless capitalistic society made stark in the urgent line: Feed the Cat. Something that even the most poetry-unaware of us can feel resonating deep within our souls. Even more so as we watch the nightly news unfolding a world of horrors upon us all. While as we sit struck numb a hungry cat meows next to its empty bowl in the kitchen.
It is through such obvious humanity and understanding that Synecdoche has come to dominate contemporary poetry. And why the announcement today of her taking the traditional post of Poet Laureate in the UK is long overdue.
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June 14, 2014
This Blog Has Now Closed
Sorry, but this blog has now closed.
However, I have not given up blogging - you don't get rid of me that easily.
From Monday (16/06/2014) my blog will continue at my David Hadley- Author website more or less as it has done here.
New site RSS feed.
This site's archive has been imported into the new site, but I will leave this one here so that any links to it will still work.
I hope you will join me at the new place, but if you find a better way of wasting your time, thanks for stopping by.
Bye (for now).
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June 13, 2014
Britain’s Greatest Living Olympian
Splurge Debunker is probably the UK’s most famous contemporary athlete. Especially since her stunning victory and gold medal in the Freestyle Ladies Radiator-Bleeding final in London 2012. A contest where she won gold against some very strong opposition, especially from the Norwegian Sopwith Fjordbasker.
It was, of course the controversial decision by the Spanish judge to award Debunker 17 (out of a possible 9) points for artistic interpretation, which enabled Debunker to get through the semi-final against the Russian Expectyouto Diebondski. After the match, the Russian team complained against the ruling. However, later analysis of the slow-motion replay of the Norwegian judge’s calculations, carefully examined by the Olympic Federation’s own mathematicians, showed there had been no foul play and there was nothing illegal in his use of the calculator.
Debunker survived a doping scandal early in her career, when it was discovered her ability to bleed up to seven radiators a session was fuelled by excessive amounts of strong black coffee and digestive biscuits. However, the use of coffee as well as her aerodynamically-designed ergonomic radiator-bleeding key was ruled not in contravention of the strict Olympic standards for competitive radiator-bleeding.
Debunker’s radiator key itself was designed by the Olympic team also responsible for designing the ears of Britain’s gold-medal wining cyclists and high divers. There, the problem of wind-resistance against such protuberances can seriously diminish the scores of such athletes by an astonishing 0.000001%. Enough – at this level of competition – to have an almost discernible effect on both the athlete’s performance and their results. Or at least to make a suitably-adjusted graph look impressive in Olympic funding-allocation meetings.
So, Debunker herself is bound to go down in British sporting history as one of the all-time greats of competitive radiator-bleeding. There are rumours that their will be some recognition of her great achievement in the next New-Year’s Honour list. A recognition that is both timely and more than well-deserved.
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[Books by David Hadley are available here (UK) or here (US).]
Britain's Greatest Living Olympian
Splurge Debunker is probably the UK’s most famous contemporary athlete. Especially since her stunning victory and gold medal in the Freestyle Ladies Radiator-Bleeding final in London 2012. A contest where she won gold against some very strong opposition, especially from the Norwegian Sopwith Fjordbasker.
It was, of course the controversial decision by the Spanish judge to award Debunker 17 (out of a possible 9) points for artistic interpretation, which enabled Debunker to get through the semi-final against the Russian Expectyouto Diebondski. After the match, the Russian team complained against the ruling. However, later analysis of the slow-motion replay of the Norwegian judge’s calculations, carefully examined by the Olympic Federation’s own mathematicians, showed there had been no foul play and there was nothing illegal in his use of the calculator.
Debunker survived a doping scandal early in her career, when it was discovered her ability to bleed up to seven radiators a session was fuelled by excessive amounts of strong black coffee and digestive biscuits. However, the use of coffee as well as her aerodynamically-designed ergonomic radiator-bleeding key was ruled not in contravention of the strict Olympic standards for competitive radiator-bleeding.
Debunker’s radiator key itself was designed by the Olympic team also responsible for designing the ears of Britain’s gold-medal wining cyclists and high divers. There, the problem of wind-resistance against such protuberances can seriously diminish the scores of such athletes by an astonishing 0.000001%. Enough – at this level of competition - to have an almost discernible effect on both the athlete’s performance and their results. Or at least to make a suitably-adjusted graph look impressive in Olympic funding-allocation meetings.
So, Debunker herself is bound to go down in British sporting history as one of the all-time greats of competitive radiator-bleeding. There are rumours that their will be some recognition of her great achievement in the next New-Year’s Honour list. A recognition that is both timely and more than well-deserved.
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[Books by David Hadley are available here (UK) or here (US).]
Ignite Books: David Hadley
June 12, 2014
The Coming Apocalypse
When it began, we – of course – were ready.
Nearly.
As is the way of these things, popular culture had prepared us well for the threat. Everyone who’d watched a film or some TV, played a computer game or read any genre fiction was well-prepared for the immanent zombie apocalypse.
So, when word of the apocalypse spread, building rumour upon rumour, everyone was ready. We all expected the streets to be thronged with legions of the undead, thirsting for the fresh brains of the living.
Ah… if only it had been that easy.
Everyone had been wondering, well, quite a few people anyway, just why the world need quite so many celebrities. Of course, if is a well-known tenet of media theory that the world’s tabloids need a constant fresh supply of young ladies falling out of their dresses at various high-profile celebrity events. But that alone could not explain just why there were now so many so-called reality TV programmes churning out a constant stream of these new celebrities, most with the media half-life of a fatally-irradiated gnat.
But, as some conspiracy theorists pointed out, every army needs its infantry, its cannon-fodder.
Then everyone laughed at the paranoid imaginings of the conspiracy loonies.
Until it was too late.
No-one is laughing now.
Not now the brain-destroying celebrity hordes are on the rampage down all our High Streets. There they surround innocent people going about their own business. The celebrities then force the ordinary people to engage in mass inane conversations about trivia and banal minutia until their brains explode. Then the ravening celebrity zombie hordes can feed and gorge until it is time to seek out the next victim.
And people used to laugh when some warned of the dangers of celebrity culture for our precarious civilisation.
Who is laughing now?
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June 11, 2014
Contemporary mathematics
Spindizzy Legobrick is probably the UK’s leading contemporary mathematician. He is famous for solving both Goldfinger’s Postulation and the world-famous Cheese Imponderable first formulated by Gödel during a slow Wednesday afternoon.
As most mathematically-literate people are aware Goldfinger’s Postulation claims that each number can be written with either straight lines (such as 1 or 7), or with round curvy bits (such as 6 and 8). 2 of course features both a curved bit at the top and a straight bit at the bottom, and 5 has the straight bits at the top and the curve at the bottom as Legobrick proved.
Gödel’s Cheese Imponderable however is not so straightforward to resolve. As first stated Gödel’s contention that in an infinite universe there must be some chesses that are not very nice does seem uncontroversial. Especially to those who have not performed any in-depth mathematical analysis of not only the cheeses that do exist, but also of the cheeses that could exist in an infinite universe.
For example, even though it runs counter to common sense, in an infinite universe it would be possible to make cheese from all manner of ingredients. Ingredients from car tyres through to geography teachers. Surely, Gödel argued, in his paper introducing the subject, some of those cheeses would not be very tasty. By using certain equations that go beyond the scope of this article he proved – at least to his own satisfaction – that a cheese made of 17th century wardrobes fittings would be very nasty indeed.
There the subject rested until the invention of computers. With computers of a significantly powerful processing capacity such as today’s supercomputers Legobrick argued it would be mathematically possible to model several million cheeses. A sufficiently-powerful computer, he argued, could find many – but not all - palatable cheeses made from a whole gamut of ingredients in the time it takes to make a decent serving of cheese on toast.
This paper, by Legobrick, was presented to the Proceedings of the World Mathematical Cheese Society early this year and met with both wild acclaim and peer approval. Straight away, several mathematicians with access to such computers rushed off to see if they could come up with a cheese made from ingredients that contradicted both Legobrick’s thesis and were still quite tasty.
However, as this article goes to press it seems that Legobrick’s contention that most – if not all – such cheeses made from ingredients not usually used in cheese making only a finite quantity of them would indeed be edible still stands uncontested.
It will be interesting to see if cheese mathematicians of the future ever do come up with a non-standard cheese that is as tasty as a nice bit of Stilton and thus disprove Legobrick’s solution to Gödel’s great Cheese Imponderable.
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June 10, 2014
The Birthday Present
Then – suddenly – there it was!
‘Oh,’ she said.
‘Is that all you can say?’ I was a bit put out, especially after all the trouble I’d gone to. Eye of newt is not that easy to come by, not around here.
‘We’ll I’d expected… well, something a bit more….’ She made one of those vague-shaped gestures that are not easy to interpret.
‘What is that supposed to mean?’
‘Well, you know…?’
‘What?’
‘Magic and all that?’
‘Yes…?’
‘I’d just… I suppose… expected something a bit more…?’
‘A bit more what?’
‘Well, magical… basically.’
‘Oh.’
‘Not that I’m complaining,’ she complained. ‘Another thing?’
‘Yes.’ I realised I was tapping my arm with my magic wand. I remembered what that had done to the handsome prince… well, toad now, of course, and stopped. ‘What other thing?’
‘It smells of pumpkin.’
‘Right. What do you expect it to smell of?’
‘Well… I dunno… leather, metal… that new car smell.’
‘It smells of pumpkin… because… well.’ I gestured in the air with the wand, making sure I’d turned it off first, of course.
She sighed. ‘Typical.’
‘What?’
‘I never asked to be the daughter of a wizard. Other dads on their daughter’s birthday…. Well, you know, they at least go out and buy something… not this.’ She pointed down at the car. Maybe bright pumpkin orange is not the right shade for a teenager’s first car, but I’ve seen worse.
‘I bought the pumpkin,’ I protested.
But by then it was already too late. She had already stormed off.
‘Don’t slam the…!’ I yelled as the door slammed.
‘Well, that went well,’ her mother said in her I told you so voice.
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘At least I didn’t have to tell her about having to be home by midnight with it.’
Kids, eh?
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June 9, 2014
The Superhero Saves the Day… Probably
Then… suddenly…!
No… hang on….
Then with all the haste and alacrity of a Public Inquiry she strolled into action.
He trembled in terror. Well, there was a frisson of irritation. ‘Yet again,’ the supervillain, Upstart Naughtyman, snorted, looking down. ‘Yet again have you thwarted my plans for world domination. Curses!’
Fixed-Penalty Notice Woman stood for a moment, arms crossed, as she glared down upon Naughtyman as he tried to find something in the sub-clauses of the fixed Penalty that would enable him to evade justice yet again. ‘It says here I have to pay a fine for attempting world domination without the necessary permits?’
‘Yes.’ She smiled to see him cower and tremble in the face of the notice. ‘There are…’ she added, ‘also some concerns about the health and safety standards at your secret volcanic island lair.’
‘What? How did you discover all this?’ Naughtyman felt his plans crumbling all around him.
‘You had to apply for planing permission for your secret island, didn’t you?’
‘Curses, foiled again.’ Naughtyman knew there must be some way he could complete his plans for world domination without some interfering superhero thwarting him. Last time it had been VATInspectorman and his sidekick PAYEboy who stopped him. Thwarting his plans to build a secret nuclear-missile submarine base in Tewkesbury, when they discovered inconsistencies in his VAT returns. Also that he’d been paying his horde of devoted minions less than the minimum wage. But, now this…. He looked up into the uncompromising eyes of Fixed-Penalty Notice woman and he knew he’d failed again.
‘My job here is done!’ Fixed-Penalty Notice woman said. ‘So, if you’d just countersign this receipt for my legitimately-incurred expenses. I can be on my way to fight for truth, justice and the bureaucratic way!’
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