The Full Story

Where did that come from? 3

2012-01-26T12:47:00.001Z

Hendricks returned to consciousness and the conviction he was in a submarine being tumbled about the seabed, his head swollen with the pressure, his stomach churning with acid fear and nauseating dislocation. This he might have accepted but for an implacable sense of foreboding welling up through the terror and bewilderment. The situation would disintegrate further. Whatever unspeakable deeds he had enacted, regardless of irreparable damage caused to himself and those close to him, he would soon be making things worse. Nothing he could do about it.

His mouth tasted of corpses; his soul had left for the coast. He was crawling out of blackout. He didn’t know what terrified him more - what he’d done in this latest one, or when the next one would descend on him, He reached automatically for a bottle under the shabby, wet bed.

Once he found the bottle, he discovered the room. It was a small room and smelled of things even worse than himself. There was a small notice affixed to the back of the door. Another hotel room, then. And, from the damp on the walls, not quite one star standard. He’d landed lucky.

He pulled himself to his feet, gagging with the effort and crept over to try and decipher the language on the tariff notice on the door. It refused to swim into focus. The door was bolted, though. He’d had that much sense when he’d arrived.

It was a mildly peevish gurgling that jerked him into feral alertness and sent him stumbling into the bathroom, horribly afraid that he wasn’t alone. And he wasn’t.

There was a piglet in the bath, entangled in his top sheet and blankets. It looked reproachfully up at him. He sighed with relief. For a moment he’d thought he’d heard a baby.

Where did that come from? 2

2012-01-10T16:20:00.001Z

Burkett had allowed a day’s rest before the assault on the summit. Any longer and their food reserves wouldn’t last the descent to mid-way camp, any less and they wouldn’t be guaranteed of sufficient momentum on the final climb. Tasker and Kemp would accompany him to the peak. Spinetti and Holmes had taken it well, all things considered. They’d put the success of the expedition before any personal ambition to be the first human beings to stand atop C3.

From first light, the climbing party picked their way through freezing mist, across treacherous ice and vertiginous outcrops of rock. Hour after hour they fought the mountain until at last they gained the summit, breaking through the last vestiges of cloud to stand in fierce sunshine, exhausted and uplifted in equal measure. In every direction the world lay far beneath their feet. Something no man had seen before.

Burkett threw an arm around Kemp’s shoulder while Tasker busied himself with the camera, before shuffling over to join them. Lungs bursting and limbs aching, they managed a reticent smile into the camera for posterity. They may be the first men to stand there, but they’d have no vulgar triumphalism.

The snow at their feet was ever shifting as fierce cross-winds buffeted the summit. Burkett looked down as something scudded along the ground and bumped into his snow-boot.

It was an empty packet of cheap cigarettes.

Burkett scooped it up into his pocket. He saw the others staring at him in utter dejection.

“Wondered where I’d dropped that,” he improvised hastily. “Never do to leave litter up here, would it?”

On the way down, they all pretended Burkett was not a lifetime and almost fanatical non-smoker. When they reached base camp, his first request was for a cup of tea and a smoke.

Where did that come from? 1

2011-12-28T12:11:00.003Z

Penelope sat in the front parlour and watched Simon Prendergast walk gingerly up the garden path. He was wearing his Sunday suit and was clutching a propitiatory bunch of tulips.

Penelope was wearing her best tortoise shell comb, a souvenir from Paris from a long-dead uncle and never yet worn. She’d taken down an equally vintage frock from its tissue-papered reliquary perched on top of the wardrobe. The stage was set.

She could hear her mother hovering outside the door, panting as heavily as Towser, the family’s asthmatic bulldog they’d locked in the kitchen for fear he would slobber on Mr Prendergast’s trousers. Her father would be hiding amongst his roses. Both parents would be on tenterhooks about the morning’s outcome. The impossible achieved; a home to themselves after long years. A spinster transformed. A daughter finally fledged.

Penelope thought of the little terraced house she and Simon would aspire to. Of knitting while Simon read of an evening, beside their own prudently banked coal fire. She allowed herself a glimpse in the clock glass. She was, admittedly, not in the first flush. Not a slip of girl. But she’d got the lipstick to behave eventually. She felt she could afford to think of herself as a catch, just this once, on her special day.

Her mother ushered a nervous Simon into the tiny parlour before retiring with unnecessarily theatrical discretion. Penelope stood up. There was a moment’s silence

Then, without warning, Penelope felt her colon relax. As she struggled, poker-faced, to control it, she gave vent to a loud, lengthy and keening fart, owing more to Wagner perhaps than Purcell. They both stood transfixed as the noise reverberated around them, rattling the clock casing. Towser, being locked in the kitchen, was too far away plausibly to be blamed.

Out of the question 4

2011-12-12T17:40:00.004Z

Ford-Roberts, the Prime Minister’s private secretary, stared morosely out of the window at the barrage balloons hanging low over Westminster. He sighed deeply and continued, “I’m afraid the Old Man’s insisting.”

“Oh Christ,” Sir Brendan Cluster, the Cabinet Secretary, ran a hand over his patrician face in desolation. “The Germans at Calais. Europe supine beneath the jackboot. And now this.”

Cluster lit a Players Navy Cut, exhaled streams of smoke down his nose and brought years of experience to bear on the problem, “Firstly, can he actually play the ukulele? He may just find it all too much for him.”

“He’s taught himself,”Ford-Roberts admitted, “Badly.”

“And when is he planning to perform?”

Ford-Roberts spilled out the awful truth, “He’s going to do the full ‘I can promise you nothing but blood, toil tears and sweat’ right up to the big finish, then up with the ukulele and ‘If you can see what I can see when I’m cleaning windows.’.”

He froze for a moment as the Cabinet Secretary appeared to be trying to control some kind of seizure. “He says it’ll lighten the mood, sir.”

Cluster exploded, “Do you think the Americans are going to overcome their innate isolationism and the vested interests of generations to bail out a fat man with a cigar singing comic songs with a ukulele?! Will the Russians die obligingly in their millions because of what Winnie claims he saw when he was cleaning windows?”

“Everybody likes a good laugh, sir,” Ford-Robbers offered feebly.

“He’s your responsibility, Ford-Roberts,” Sir Bertrand replied icily, “Unless you’d prefer immediate reassignment to a one-man submarine in the Arctic circle.”

Ford-Roberts returned to the Prime Minister’s private drawing room, found the new ukulele and stamped it into matchwood.The PM was too busy to notice. Britain was saved.

Out of the question 3

2011-11-30T14:34:00.004Z

Colonel Makepeace squatted in the depths of his rhododendrons, his dress trousers around his ankles, his whole being wracked with intestinal spasms. He stared balefully up at the moon and, between rectal convulsions, brought down esoteric curses upon his wife and her patrician attitudes.

“It’s quite out of the question, Potts,” she had said that morning. “I’m sure you understand.”

Mrs Potts, their irreplaceable cook and housekeeper, had requested the evening off. Her son had been posted overseas suddenly. She had just this one night to say goodbye.

But the Bensons were coming for dinner, and the Oordes; prominent members of the community and not to be put off with some cold collation. Mrs Makepeace was adamant.

That evening, about ten minutes after the consommé, Colonel Makepeace found himself charging through the French windows towards his rhododendrons, Mrs Oorde having wedged her fat self in the downstairs convenience and his wife having commandeered the upstairs bathroom.

Mrs Benson had given up begging Mrs Oorde to evacuate quickly (in every sense) and had scrambled frantically into the herb garden. Colonel Makepeace could see the moon glinting on her diamond earrings, amongst rosemary and thyme. She appeared to be thrashing her head from side to side.

Above his own imprecations, he heard Commander Benson and Sir Reginald Oorde, ensconced in the gardenias nearest the house, exhorting the Almighty in their extremis.

Deirdre Makepeace held on to the toilet seat for dear life. Realising her current discomfort was nothing to the social ostracism that awaited her, her groans echoed about the upstairs landing.

Mrs Potts hummed a little tune as she cycled down the lane, towards her son’s farewell do in the King’s Head. She’d left the rest of the meal on hotplates on the sideboard. They’d just have to fend for themselves.

Out of the question 2

2011-11-15T15:09:00.002Z

“If I made an exception for you, sir, I’d have to make an exception for everybody.”

“Come now. Consistency is a principle valued only by forgers and serial killers.”

“It just wouldn’t be fair to other patrons, sir, would it?”

“Exceptional people require exceptional service. Why do you feel this questionable need to be fair to the rest of humanity?”

“Why, sir, do you feel the need to eat in this restaurant wearing neither trousers nor underpants?”

“Simple. I wish to dine al fresco.”

Out of the question 1

2011-11-09T17:46:00.002Z

Hampton had paid a thousand dollars for his place at the Open Dialogue Forum’s Gala dinner in Manhattan’s most august hotel. He’d invested in a new tuxedo and an exquisitely subtle haircut from his uptown barbers, along with an equally discreet manicure. He’d sent his wife and daughter off on a long weekend to Aspen in case he had to invite some influential fellow diners back to his club for further deliberations, and not return home till the early hours. He’d spent long hours studying all economic and political turbulences impacting upon the Forum’s concerns and activities. Two interns from Harvard had briefed him comprehensively on any issue that might arise during loaded interchanges following the keynote speeches.

The room was full of money and influence and opportunity. Hampton was prepared for any eventuality except for a former Secretary of State sitting in his allotted space, crumbling bread rolls into his lap in senile abstraction. The diners sitting either side of the misplaced political heavyweight refused to meet Hampton’s imploring eyes. Any social aberration here could destroy careers and fortunes.

“Mr Secretary,” Hampton began cautiously.

“Chustsom zoup,” the eminent dotard cut him with a peremptory flick of a skeletal hand. His voice retained the heavy Mittel-European cadence of all those famous newsreels.

“I’m not a waiter, sir!” Anxiety broke over Hampton in waves.

The Secretary glared at Hampton through his trademark heavy horn-rimmed spectacles, “Zoup, you moron!” he barked in a surprisingly loud voice.

The Gala dinner turned in itswell-heeled totality to see what solecism had taken place. Hampton scurried away to the kitchen to find a bowl of soup.There was no other option. The old man had bombed large portions of Asia back into the Stone Age; Heaven knew what connections and occult power he still possessed.

The Kindness of Strangers 4

2011-10-24T12:12:00.001+01:00

He heard them before he saw them. Voices somewhere above him, up through the pressing weight of his seemingly endless captivity. He neither moved, nor made a sound. He was used now to waiting, to avoiding hopes, projections, anticipations and the inevitable body blows of disappointment and abandonment. But he listened to the sounds of movement, and the barely perceptible shifts and easing of the cloying mass that entombed him.

“Careful, careful,” said a commanding voice, and he knew that someone was coming closer and he wasn’t alone. He stilled his mind.

“I think there’s something here, sir,” said another, “Yes, there’s definitely something.”

Rescue! He couldn’t prevent himself; the agonies of hope coursed through him. He tried to make a noise, but somehow none came. He felt of the earth, only light and the presence of other men could break him from this mud and clay, could transform him into flesh and laughter once more.

Then a chink of light opened in the great darkness above, and in flooded a human presence with the simple words, “My God, we’ve found one.”

“Go easy,” cried the commanding voice, “He’ll be in a hell of a state.”

He lay back, while he heard them working patiently and painstakingly above him, trying to prepare himself for life on the surface, back in the haunts of men, and the demand of appetites and survival. When amidst all his preparations, they suddenly uncovered him.

He smiled up at them as they clustered round him. They smiled down at him, welcoming, caring, affirming his life.

“A hunter,” cried one, “Look at the arrows, and those pelts beside him.”

He said nothing, but looked up at them fondly, his heart bursting with gratitude. They’d been three thousand years, but they’d finally come to get him out.

The Kindness of Strangers 3

2011-10-10T10:57:00.000+01:00

Pretty as a picture, Effie had worked Cable Street since she could remember. And, for all her tender age, she was making a fine job of it. She had her own room above the pawn shop where she’d take her regulars. A safe alleyway to accommodate passing trade. Some small savings. Her daily gin intake stopped just short of lethal. Even Jack the Ripper had passed her by, preferring older, tougher meat for his arcane purposes. The other girls, when they were disposed to be kind, said Effie led a charmed life. She had an angel on her shoulder.

Perhaps it was that which first attracted the attention of the Reverend Esmond Petty who accompanied by his devoted cousin Lady Miranda Cossington, was on one of his regular trawls of the East End looking for vulnerable girls to take under his protective wing.

He straightway approached Effie and declared, “My dear child, your salvation is at hand.”

“Got years in me yet,” Effie protested, mistaking his offer of ecumenical support for some kind of medical diagnosis.

“We’re here to help you,” cooed Lady Miranda, “We wish to lead you to Paradise.”

Effie regarded them sceptically. She wasn’t taking them both back to her room; they might make off with her savings. “Alright, a florin for a stand-up in the alley. Three bob if the lady needs attention too.”

“Gracious!” exclaimed the clergyman, “It’s your soul we wish to embrace.”

“My soul’s my own,” replied Effie, outraged. “Not for sale to the likes of you.”

“Think we’re wasting our time here,” Petty confided quietly in his cousin.

Lady Miranda smiled wanly and rummaged in her handbag. She produced a florin and handed it to her cousin. “Go on, Esmond,” she muttered, “You might at least get a shag out of it.”

The Kindness of Strangers 2

2011-10-05T22:52:00.002+01:00

Chester liked to flop out in the little square at lunchtime, when the office workers came out to bask in whatever sun the tall buildings allowed to permeate. The office workers would sit on the pale grass, undo their ties or hitch up constricting skirts a few inches and open up their sandwiches and takeaway coffees. They’d try to ignore Chester, his grime, his rags, the blackened toes protruding through his cutaway hobnail boots. If they couldn’t ignore his surly presence, they’d awkwardly hand over a coin or two in the hopes of watching him stumble away to leave them in peace.

Chester made a reasonable living out of their embarrassment, a bottle of cheap wine, a lung kebab, a plug of black tobacco. And so he kept to his glowering routine.

He was nonplussed when one day an attractive young woman sat down deliberately beside him and produced two separate lunch bags. She handed one to him, saying “There you are. Prawn salad, tiramisu, iced tea and a candy. Bon appétit.”

He stared at her uncomprehendingly.

“There’s a towelette in there and a plastic fork and spoon,” she added, “Better keep the cutlery for another time.”

With that she ignored him, and ate her lunch, looking idly about her as the other regulars came and went. Chester ate the prawn salad in silence, and the tiramisu. He drank the iced tea and ate the chocolate truffle though he’d never liked them. He made what he felt was an appreciative grunt, but she ignored this.

Finally, she got up, brushed down her dress and walked primly away. Chester watched her in amazement, daring to hope that perhaps this was the start of a regular thing.

Ten minutes after she’d left, the agonising stomach cramps began.

The Kindness of Strangers 1

2011-09-19T17:03:00.003+01:00

Moments after he’d got off the train, Belvedere had lost his wallet. He’d stood in the middle of Kings Cross station trying to explain to a tearful grandmother that, having just arrived from the country himself, he had no idea where the nearest convent was, while her accomplice, a skeletal youth recessive to the point of invisibility, deftly transferred Belvedere’s last few pounds, driving license and bank card into his own safekeeping.

Belvedere sat on his battered suitcase and pondered his next move. The address of his recently deceased mother’s best friend had been folded safe and secure amongst his few pounds, and he hadn’t the faintest idea now of where he was expected.

Two urchins of indeterminate gender offered to conduct him to a nearby hotel. They mistook his shyness for resistance, and attempted further blandishments. Sex with either of them. With both. With himself while they watched, on his own while they sat in the bar downstairs. He sat, silent and crimson with embarrassment, until they walked off hissing abuse.

Eventually a station official wandered over to point out Belvedere could not sit there all night, clogging up the place. Didn’t he have a home to go to?

Belvedere acknowledged that he had but the address had been in his long gone wallet. He’d had another home in the country, until his mother’s recent demise. Currently, his home was Kings Cross.

Alarmed at this, the official took him into a staff room and gave him a cup of tea.

They put him on the milk train back to where he’d come from, in the care of the guard in the mail van. In truth, none of them knew whether it was the right thing to do, but they pretended it was for the best anyway.

Закон веры.

2011-09-06T14:17:00.007+01:00

Dear Chips. Because I haven't any more text to illustrate I let the usually unreliable Google's translator to translate an old "An Act Of Faith" into what may possible be Russian .Let's hope that someone might find this funny...Have a good holiday

Oscar

Робин смотрел его дядя Андрей построить gyrocopter в течение пятнадцати лет. С тех пор как он был в маленькую мастерскую дяди Андрея позади старые наделы. Сначала он был слишком мал, чтобы помочь, кроме, может быть, чтобы забрать планы прототипа, когда дядя Андрей нарисовал их со своего рабочего места с странствующий локтя.
Но с течением времени он стал достаточно большим, чтобы держать вещи, важные вещи, как лучший плоскогубцами или горшки клей, который так часто скрылся. Его специальностью было найти гвозди, шурупы или скобы, которые упали на землю и потерял себя среди щепы и пыли. С раскаты полового созревания, она была его задача провести первый рабочий макет до футбольных полей, и удерживать топливо, а дядя Андрей готовил машину на его запуск стойкой.

Это gyrocopter день дядя Эндрюс расчистили детский сад забор и уничтожил их дом Венди, но амбиции Робина были отправился к звездам. Он был Aeronaut в процессе становления. И так, в его позднем подростковом, и до сих пор не сообщая его мама, Робин сидел за штурвалом gyrocopter дяди Андрея, как он тяжело опустился на сайте первого натиска его понижает предшественника по тяжести. Это были сумерки; разумная предосторожность, потому что детский сад будет закрыт. "Готов?" Спросил дядя Андрей, всегда немногословный человек. Робин дал ему широкой улыбкой и большие пальцы.

Дядя Андрей, то уволил его боком тебя сто метров, за превосходную скорость и прямо в стену Совета раздевалки, где он взорвался в огненный шар, который может рассматриваться в двадцати милях. Дядя Андрей вытащил из его планов задний карман и опрошенных ими. Он дал ruminative мало хрюкать, а затем с наклоном к себе в мастерскую.

Surprise! 4

2011-08-11T12:52:00.001+01:00

Andrea knew the ghost thing wasn’t going to work, but she’d let Caroline and Babs talk her into it anyway. They’d appropriated one of Babs’ mother’s bed sheets, which now trailed on the ground all around her, and set off giggling and a wee bit tipsy to wait for Chloe outside the Anglers’ Arms.

Everyone knew Chloe was superstitious. Everybody knew she crossed herself if a black cat crossed her path, and prayed fervidly each year to be delivered from ghouls and hobgoblins on Halloween. Everyone knew she took the five minute walk down the towpath to River Cottage and climbed in over back wall, if her mother had grounded her, which she did with monotonous regularity. But only Caroline and Babs believed that if Andrea leapt out of the shrubbery lining the towpath wailing and waving her arms under the voluminous sheet, that Chloe would wee herself and thus provide them all with a good laugh and a talking point for months if not years ahead.

So, that night Andrea crouched in the riverside shrubbery, shivering and forlorn, while Sissy and Babs stayed snug in the pub, making sure Chloe took the usual way home and “didn’t ruin everything”.

“What have we here?” asked a quiet but unsettling voice, and Andrea knew a man was standing over her. He seemed strangely tense.

“Whoooo,” she mumbled awkwardly. Madness to think he might himself be terrified of the paranormal, but it seemed her only hope. “Whooooo.”

“It’s a girlie,” he came to a weirdly delighted conclusion. “And what’s more, it’s gift wrapped.”

The evening wasn’t a total failure for Caroline and Babs, or even Chloe. Of course, the prank didn’t take place, but they were the first to discover the crime scene. And got themselves on local television news.

Surprise! 3

2011-07-26T14:06:00.001+01:00

The Reverend Panderby, at St Barnabas’s, was a stickler for the traditional observation of the harvest festival. Other younger pastors in the diocese might grow beards and pluck guitars whilst extolling the Life Force or Mother Nature and advocating environmentalist pray-ins. Panderby preferred his celebration of God’s bounty to be more conservative. He turned a blind eye to the shameless priapism of Mayday with its maypoles and Morris Dancers, because he knew the same May Revellers would appear with fulsome offerings to his Harvest Festival when the time of plenty came.

Then he would bedeck his church with their donations. Monstrous marrows and cabbages, boxes of juicy apples, piles of pears, punnets of strawberries, gargantuan loaves of bread, whole cheeses, even cascades of grapes and flagons of elder wine. They would hold a service of thanksgiving followed by tea on the vicarage lawn, while the Reverend Panderby supervised his curate, Mullens, in the storing of the choicest items in his outsize pantry. The residue went to the Cottage Hospital in a returnable basket.
One year, after the service the Reverend Panderby and Mullens returned to carry off the cornucopia of local produce, to find the church empty. Everything edible had been stripped away. And a note left which read, ‘God helps those who help themselves.’

“Witchcraft! Blasphemy!” wheezed the Reverend Panderby as Mullens hastened him away.

The Police could find no evidence of larceny. The vehicles necessary to effect such a theft would have been seen and weren’t. Panderby raged at them all.

But it was only when filling in the insurance claim that Mullens suggested the affair might come under the category of Act of God that the Vicar succumbed to his final apoplexy.

A fine sheath of corn and a mound of fruit are etched into his tombstone.

Surprise! 2

2011-07-02T15:55:00.005+01:00

“He won’t know what hit ‘im,” Constable Hipkiss observed with some satisfaction as he and Sergeant Potts concealed themselves about the luxury suite in the Grand Hotel. “Gentleman Cat Burglar? Rat in a trap, more like!”

Concealment was no easy matter; Potts had an ample figure which protruded beneath the floor length velvet drapes now drawn across the window. And Hipkiss, having received permission to take his helmet off, was still finding it difficult to fold himself into the wardrobe, hung with expensive Parisian frocks and exotically scented with Lady Lobelia Carson’s perfumes. What his wife was going to say, he shuddered to think.

The drapes rose and fell with Potts stertorous breathing and his voice was muffled as he spoke, “Mind the language, Hipkiss, You’re working with the Yard now.”

The Yard in the form of Inspector Cutler and Detective Sergeant Walsh was endeavouring to hide itself behind an enormous bouquet of roses set in a free-standing Chinese vase of Imperial dimensions. It was never going to work so Walsh yielded to rank and disconsolately crammed himself under the king-size bed.

“Right, absolute silence,” commanded Inspector Cutler. “Nobody moves a muscle till he’s in and opened the safe.”

And they waited. And waited.

Until Lady Lobelia Carson staggered through the door clinging on to a young airman and a bottle of champagne. Giggling and tottering she pulled off her clothes and then dragged him down on the carpet with her.

“But the bed...” he protested.

“Too far away,” she replied and fell hungrily upon him.

At one point in the proceedings she was down on all fours when, opening her eyes, she caught sight of Sergeant Walsh’s baleful stare from under the bed.

“Oh, bugger,” she sighed, maintaining a firm grip on the carpet. “I knew I’d forgotten something.”

Surprise! 1

2011-05-14T18:09:00.001+01:00

The artist steadfastly refused to allow the Duke to look at his portrait.

Day after endless day, the Duke had balanced precariously on a stuffed horse, wearing an elaborate periwig, burnished breast plate over a white topcoat with gold lace facings, a scarlet sash, knee boots, and belt with pistols. He’d refused to maintain his heavy cavalryman’s sword in the charge position so the artist had to make do with him pointing commandingly at the enemy forces, somewhere out of the studio window. His plumed hat bore down more heavily on him with every sitting. He was damned hot and damned uncomfortable.

The painting commemorated a pivotal moment in his and nation’s history. And the Duke was naturally anxious to check on its progress. He hoped the dauber hadn’t made him look fat. His mistress had described his tendency to resemble a prizewinning pig when confronted with something contrary to his will. He’d permitted the observation because of the rapacity of her appetites and the depravity of her services. But if this artist fellow had captured that side of him, he was going to feel some Ducal steel through his kidney.

With a martial snort, he slid off his mount and stomped over to the artist, snatching from him the cloth he always threw over his easel should anyone approach.

“I insist on seeing my likeness,” he bellowed as the painter blanched.

The Duke stared directly at his portrait and lost the power of speech.

“I preferred you without clothes,” the artist tried to explain. “In the Classic mode.”

The Duke, crimson with fury, could only point and splutter at the image that so offended him.

“But look, your Grace,” the artist made one last effort to deflect the Ducal anger. “I have given you an impressive pair of testicles.”

That’s quite enough of that 4

2011-05-05T11:48:00.005+01:00

The Northallerton coven stood shivering in a circle while Agnes, her enormous buttocks blue with cold, knelt over the pile of wet brushwood and flicked petulantly at it with a disposable lighter. A dank fog wrapped itself around them. With their rain flecked, goose pimpled skin they resembled a consignment of oven-ready chickens rather than a convocation of the willing brides of Beelzebub.

“I’ve got some paraffin in the van,” offered Janie, her hair corkscrewing out either side of her potato like features.

“Will he come if we use artificial aids?” Glenda sounded anxious. She didn’t want to miss Asmodeus after all this waiting.

“We don’t get that fire going, we’ll end up in bloody casualty,” pronounced big Cherie from the fish shop. “Hypo-bloody-whotsit, more than likely.”

“I’m not ending up in A & E with me bum out,” said Agnes, breathing heavily through her mouth like a drowning chow. “Fetch that paraffin, Janie. Sharpish.”

Witchcraft had a lot to recommend it, if the weather was clement. You got out of the house. You communed with demons. You did things the Women’s Institute would scarcely countenance. Like to see that lot jumping naked over a fire, or yielding themselves up to the barbarous phallus of Satan. But the Dales could be as unforgiving as Lucifer, if you didn’t afford them sufficient respect.

Janie arrived with a plastic bottle which she sprinkled over the brushwood mound. Agnes flicked her lighter, the brush ignited and both witches jumped back immediately with their hair and hands on fire.

The rest of the coven watched them run around screaming and flapping uselessly at themselves.

“Is that supposed to happen?” asked Glenda.

“Just showing off,” said another.

And while Agnes and Janie combusted across the Dales, the coven called it a night and went home.

That's quite enough of that 3

2011-04-22T12:17:00.003+01:00

Amelia took great care of her garden. She’d modelled it on the gardens of Versailles, as far as the boundaries of her small bungalow would permit and as far as she could tell from the postcard of Versailles an aunt had sent her so many years before. Like her aunt, Amelia liked to think of herself as a hardy perennial, and in truth she had got by, under her own steam and without the help or interest of any man, through a variety of often harsh conditions.

Every day she pottered about her borders, fussed about her shrubs, descaled her tiny sputtering fountain and deftly negotiated her rockery. Her days, though uneventful, were a balm to her ageing soul. It was her nights that had become a torment. No sooner had she pulled the quilt up to her chin and switched out the light than the grunting began.

Urgent primal grunts they were, accompanied by scrubbings and rustlings. Hedgehogs, it had to be hedgehogs, fornicating amongst her primula. She tried to ignore them. She hummed school hymns, snatches of Gilbert and Sullivan, but to no avail. The nocturnal grunts bored into her head.

After two weeks of sleepless nights, she was a nervous wreck. Even pruning her rose standards offered her no solace. Something had to be done.

That night, after turning out the bedside light, she slipped out of the side door with a torch and a spray-can of oven cleaner. Cruel, she knew, but if they wouldn’t desist they were getting a blast. It was either them or her.

Crouched beneath her bedroom window, his hands oddly employed inside his trousers, she found Mr. Pratchett from down the road.

“Do you mind awfully?” he said. “Only I’ve been barred from the swimming baths.”

That's quite enough of that 2

2011-04-15T16:16:00.010+01:00

Barely six years old, Arrabella Fordyce-Mainwaring was the darling of the First Class lounge and indeed of the entire SS Gloriana, sailing majestically out towards Rangoon, bearing amongst her passengers Empire builders, administrators, military men and wives and well- bred sybarites, with people of lesser station at a suitable remove. Arrabella’s golden curls, angelic blue eyes and engaging lisp brightened every one’s day and put a smile on the face of even the most grizzled seadog. The only person on board not enchanted by her was Reginald Ormsby-Wallerton. He’d arrived at Southampton with apparent glandular fever and was immediately quarantined in the ship’s sickroom. It soon became apparent he was in fact suffering from acute alcoholic poisoning, (and, in the ship’s doctor’s view, extreme moral turpitude). Three weeks later he was delivered, pallid and disconsolate, to his stateroom. He cheered up immediately on realising his convalescence meant he’d made no inroads into the trunk full of brandy he’d brought along against the vagaries of room service. He set to, diligently, to make up for lost time.

They were now cruising through balmy days in the Indian Ocean. On the First Class deck Arrabella, in the cutest of sailor suits, was dancing a diminutive hornpipe and trilling a sea-shanty, under the doting regard of all present. Sailors had stopped to gaze captivated at her darling performance; tally clerks and similar lined the steps up from Second Class to listen.

Ormsby-Wallerton arrived on deck to take his first ruminative breath of sea air. He ignored the crowd of gawpers, but noticed something unpleasant bobbing about him at knee level. It was hairy and nimble and making some ghastly racket. Automatically, he seized it by an extremity and heaved it over the guard rail into the ocean below.

"That’s quite enough of that.”

-Dear readers, wherever you are, I apologise for the hiatus in posting these tales of despair and lost false hopes. The hard disc of my computer commited suicide and I had lost all my files, thanks to Zoly now I recovered them and now we can and will continue posting periodically. All the best. Oscar Grillo

That's quite enough of that 1

2011-03-16T18:04:00.001Z

Jeremy waved his baton in what he hoped was an implacable but encouraging manner. He wanted the orchestra to stop messing about with Beethoven but he didn’t want them to slip into a slough of despond and wander off for cigarette and a whinge like they usually did.

It was always the same with amateurs. They had even less patience than talent. They couldn’t abide the noise they made, and grew angry at their own incompetence. And then they blamed Jeremy for putting them through it.

The fiddles scraped, the horns bellowed and farted, the woodwind shrieked, the percussion clattered and banged, the harpist, who should have been sitting it out, caught her fingers in her own strings and caterwauled with pain. Somewhere Beethoven was spinning in his grave. Jeremy stolidly slapped out the beat with his stick, looking stern and purposeful for a few bars before segueing insincerely into cheery and optimistic grins. Nobody believed him, on either side of the podium.

True, he hadn’t made the Philharmonic; his compositions mouldered unfinished in the box room; his wife no longer asked him how his day had gone. But, he was conductor and director of the Cincinnati Senior Citizens’ Orchestra and, surely, he was worthy of some respect. He was bringing music into these geriatric morons’ lives, wasn’t he?

Finally, he could take it no longer. He threw his baton to the ground and pounded on the podium with his fists, “Enough, enough, you tone-deaf cretins!” he screamed. “Pigs in the abattoir are more tuneful than you are!”

They looked up at him, askance, as with one more wild-eyed shriek, he rushed from the hall.

Then, cautiously at first and then with increasing vigour, they began to pick out “I’m just wild about Harry.”

Knocking at Death's door 4

2011-03-11T14:23:00.004Z

“Go back, please,” urged St Peter, “You have so much yet to give the world. Soon enough it will find itself bereft of your unparallel generosity of spirit, your acute sensitivity and towering intellect. But that time is not now. Too many people depend on you. And more will come to benefit from your wisdom, your guidance and your drive. Too many hearts will break. Too many lives will fracture. Too little light will be shed where it is needed. No, you must go back. You will be too sadly missed.”

“You mean there’s been some kind of mistake?” Arkwright, a florid man from the North Riding, gave the celestial gatekeeper one of his characteristic beetle-browed glares.

“You’ve been called before your time,” repeated Peter with the patience of a saint. “The world needs you more than we do, presently.”

“I’ve paid for the bloody funeral,” protested Arkwright, looking down askance at his gown and wondering whether Hubbard and Sons, Funeral Directors, Harrogate had cut a few corners on the generous provision he’d made for his send off.

“What you have to offer humanity is beyond price,” soothed the Saint. “You’ve never been wrong in seventy years, have you? They need you.”

“Bloody pencil pushers,” Arkwright huffed, as he turned back and hauled his portly form down into the lower cloud cover. “Need a rocket up their backsides.”

“They’ll only send him back again,” observed the angel Gabriel

“He’s bound for the basement, actually,” Saint Peter explained, ticking Arkwright off the list.

“But if he insists on turning up here, I thought he should climb up twice to hear the news.”

“Isn’t that rather unkind?”

“For the first time in his life, he’s going to put a smile on someone’s face,” replied Saint Peter.

And, yes, how the cherubim chortled.

Knocking at Death’s Door 3

2011-02-24T11:42:00.001Z

Walton sat up in bed, peering towards the bedroom door over a mound of crumpled paper handkerchiefs, through a miasma of eucalyptus and general debility. Any minute now his wife would appear in the doorway and ask, with bare civility, if he wanted another hot drink.

She did not believe he was ill. Or rather she did not believe he was this ill.

Walton was a primary school teacher. He tried to induce in his charges the rudiments of literacy, numeracy and a sense of wonder at the world. They’d responded by a sequence of killer viruses.

Walton sighed, which turned into a cough which kick-started his post nasal drip again. His wife opened the door and regarded him coolly as he thrashed around for a clean tissue.

“I’m going to the shops,” she announced.

He waved a hand tragically, rumbling something indistinct through his coagulated airwaves. She ignored this and turned to go. Then, over her shoulder, “I’ve left a soup on the stove for your lunch. You’d better turn it off if I’m not back in twenty minutes. The whole place could go up.”

And then she was gone. Walton was aghast. Did she seriously believe him capable of getting downstairs? And to leave this time bomb ticking underneath him!

Morosely he watched the minutes tick round on his alarm clock. Twenty minutes passed. Then thirty. Consumed with panic and irritation, he dragged himself out of bed, pulled on his slippers and staggered to the door. He fell giddy, nauseous and resentful.

He was half way down the stairs when he felt a massive myocardial infarction in his chest. His sight flared, his body spasmed and as he tumbled down towards the hall carpet and oblivion, he had one final flash of wishful thinking. This would show her.

Knocking at Death's Door 2

2011-02-16T15:14:00.003Z

“I’d very much like a second opinion,” asserted the patient, buttoning up his shirt and stuffing the tails into his trousers.

“Dead, quite dead,” murmured Dr Millmoss, updating his notes in turquoise ink which he blotted carefully and then tucked away into his capacious wood and brass filing cabinet. Dr Millmoss, after fifty years in practice, intended to let the cyber-world pass him by.

“Bit of a cough, I grant you,” continued the patient, bending over gingerly to do up his shoelaces. “And perhaps a pound or two over what is considered fashionably healthy.”

“Would you kindly ask the next...” the ancient doctor gave him a vague wave of the hand along with his best professional twinkle over his half moon glasses, and then looked out of the window at the rose bushes in the practice’s garden.

The patient stood up and gripped the front of Millmoss’s desk to steady himself , as a wave of giddiness and, he had to admit, anxiety washed over him, “But ‘dead’, dammit?”

“Oh, yes. Dead as a doornail,”the doctor gave him an avuncular smile. “No pulse, d’you see? No pulse at all. Vital sign, the pulse.”

The patient grabbed his own wrist; his pulse appeared to be racing away. In time with the blood pounding in his temples and echoing in his ears. “What are you talking about? I can feel it!”

The doctor stood up and ushered him condescendingly to the door, “These things are best left to a medical man.”

With that he shut the door, leaving the patient face to face with the doctor’s receptionist, a kindly woman of a certain age.

The man thrust his wrist out towards her, “Dead, he says! No pulse, he says! Feel that!”

“Oh dear,” the receptionist sighed. “Doctor’s left his gloves on again.”

Knocking at Death's Door1

2011-02-04T14:39:00.001Z

Fredric had been at the University in Nantes when the messenger arrived. The emissary went straightway to the chemistry lab, being assured he’d find the young nobleman toiling conscientiously over the molecular compounds now believed to constitute the makeup of the universe. Eventually he located Frederic in one of the cheaper bordellos, toiling conscientiously over a mountainous trollope known as La Grande Volaille.

Protesting vigorously, Frederic was bundled first into his breeches and then into a waiting coach, which set off back to the family chateau. He had barely time to retch out his hangover into a soiled petticoat he’d retained in the belief it was his handkerchief, when Frederic was informed that his father, the Marquis, was awaiting both him and the last rites.

Things were at last beginning to look up. Frederic, always an acquisitive lad, had managed to accumulate an impressive array of debts and a variety of social diseases in his short stay in academe. His father’s would not be the only release from worldly cares. He brightened up considerably, clapped the emissary on the back and asked if he had a bottle or two about him, and possibly some cold meats.

Rubbing his hands breezily Frederic bustled into his father’s sickroom, the curtains drawn, the old man lying gaunt and still in the half-light.

“Still hanging on, father?” cried the son. “Do hurry up.”

“This world can be a harsh and difficult place,” wheezed his father. “Even so, I could not in all conscience leave it to your tender mercies.”

He produced an ancient flintlock pistol from beneath the bedclothes and put a ball straight through Frederic’s forehead.

“A man has certain obligations,” the marquis murmured to the emissary before joining his son, albeit temporarily, on his journey to the hereafter.

On Second Thoughts 5

2011-01-25T15:00:00.002Z

Julien was unlike the rest of the students in the little country seminary. Most of them were strapping farmer’s sons applying themselves to their vocation with an agricultural fervour. Julien, the only son of a widowed teacher, was a delicate lad. Pallid and withdrawn, he cultivated an exclusively interior landscape. Father Bernard, the seminary’s director, was well aware of Julien’s prodigious intellectual gifts, but it was perhaps to offset such an intensity of self reflection, that he allocated the young priest the early morning tasks in the Seminary’s rigorous schedule.

Every day at five, Julien would tiptoe past his snoring classmates down to the kitchen, where he would set fresh logs upon the banked embers within the massive stove. Then he would cross the yard to feed the chickens and break the ice on the horse trough, which served both the Seminary’s mule and any passing traffic from the village.

Following that, his most agreeable duty was to make his way inside the village bakery to fill his basket with crisply crusted baguettes hot from the oven. The warmth from the ovens, the aroma and Therese’s dazzling smile would carry him through to Matins in a benign haze that bordered on the mystical.

Therese, the baker’s daughter, was petite and full-figured with hair continually unpinning itself around her face. She wore an apron over her chemise to tend the ovens, but that hardly concealed the film of sweat that glistened on her fair skin. She always greeted Julien with an open-hearted grin and a twinkle of the eye, as she helped him load the cumbersome basket for his oafish brothers in the Lord.

Julien has his own place now in Nantes. His patisseries are the talk of the region.

Father Bernard believes God moves in mysterious ways.

On second thoughts 4

2011-01-17T17:02:00.001Z

Doctor Lipkiss crouched in the rear of the plane while his Special Forces attendants meticulously checked his equipment. They examined every part of his parachute harness and his spare chute. They recalibrated the orientation meters and controls on his wristband tracking device. They ran checks on his helmet and harness cameras, his personal communication system from earpieces to throat mike.

In about ten minutes Doctor Lipkiss, flanked by the attendants, was going to jump out of the airframe and freefall his way into the forbidden wastes below, pulling up around four hundred meters from the ground to open his chute. . He would land, hopefully intact, and march quick time across to prefixed coordinates, where he would take a number of rock, earth and water samples, for his colleagues back home to analyse.

A keen sportsman, Lipkiss had volunteered for this operation after a number of samples gathered by military personnel had been found to be contaminated at source and therefore useless. “I could do better, myself,” he had exclaimed in the lab. And three months later the authorities had held him to it.

It had seemed like a great adventure at that stage. Not even his wife’s stricken anxiety (he couldn’t keep it secret from her) could dissuade him. Pride, both national and personal, had carried him through.

Until now. He out peered into the night, and envisaged his legs shattering on the uprushing rock, his spinal column puncturing the roof of his skull. He envisaged himself dragged crippled and defenceless into sound-proofed torture chambers where even the truth would not save him.

“I’m not sure this is a good idea, guys,” he tried to sound laconic on his throat mike.

They kicked him out into the freezing airstream. After all, every geek they took out said that.

On second thoughts 3

2011-01-10T16:41:00.002Z

Smike had walked the hedgerows since the first days of the Enclosures. He’d avoided the workhouse by his sure-footedness across rooftops at night and his nimble fingers deftly plundering the pockets of gentlefolk at country fairs and other crowded places. He was averse to both paid labour and trouble, preferring to give each a wide berth.

So it was with mixed emotions that he encountered the recumbent figure of a parson, sprawled by the wayside one glorious summer afternoon. As Smike bent over the near lifeless form, the portly cleric looked up at him with a gasp of relief.

“I’ve been thrown by my mare,” the old man smiled ruefully; with the face of an elderly cherub. “But if you were to bear the news to the rectory at Sedgley but three miles hence, they will send out a cart with the apothecary to succour me.” He managed, grimacing with pain, to slip a hand into a waistcoat pocket and extract a sovereign, “And this might in part recompense you for your trouble.”

Smike looked down at the sovereign, the easiest money he’d ever earn. He imagined arriving at the rectory in Sedgley, being praised for his charitable intentions, fed and furnished with a glass or two. For once he’d be a welcome guest.

Smike held the old parson’s hand, smiled benignly and then deftly cut his throat. After a few gurgling moments the reverend gentleman was reunited with his Maker. Smike was able to ease his earthly remains through a gap in the hedgerow into the meadow beyond. There, he pulled on his dusty frockcoat, his breeches and gaiters, his dog collar and his broad-brimmed hat. He picked up his breviary and his handkerchief. And returned the way he’d come.

People asked too many awkward questions of welcome guests.

On second thoughts 2

2010-12-31T15:10:00.002Z

Thackeray gathered his remaining officers round him inside the tiny ruined Chapel that served as his headquarters. The remnants of his native infantry battalion manned whatever part of the perimeter still afforded cover. The guns were for the moment silent. Powder-stained and ragged, his officers crowded round the map Thackeray had spread on the battered altar, which would soon revert to a bloody operating table.

“We’ve been though much since Kandahar,” Thackeray’s strong voice belied his exhausted eyes and wilting side-whiskers, “So I’ll not attempt to gull you now.”

He outlined a circle around the compound with a blunt forefinger, “There are twenty thousand Mutineers out there, in a bloody frenzy, armed to the teeth. We have approximately...” and he glanced at his aide-de-camp Masterson.

“About a hundred and ten native infantry, at the last count.” replied that worthy. “But they’re slipping away to join the rebels on an hourly basis.”

There was a grumble of disapproval amongst them; such treachery was not to be countenanced. Thackeray drew himself up.

“There will be no relief column,” he growled “And there will be no surrender. I expect you to hold to the last man.”

“To the very last bullet, Sir,” they assured him.

Then adjusting their buttons and belts to meet their destiny with full regimental dignity, they strode out to die like Englishmen.

Thackeray waited for each return to his post. Then he tore off his tunic and smeared himself with boot polish. Winding a filthy turban about his head and sticking a murderous knife in his belt, he left by the back door. He hunched his back and ran with a curious, crippled gait. He hoped to God he looked like an old Sepoy as he slipped through the lines to blend with the oncoming hordes.

On second thoughts 1

2010-12-21T10:54:00.001Z

Dexter’s first impression of Wendy was that she was a difficult woman, hard to please, impatient and volatile. She was attractive in a peaky sort of way, and educated enough to hold down a job superior to his in the accounts department. But she was someone to stay clear of.

Wendy disparaged all and sundry. She sneered in triumph before she pulled them to pieces. Her only smile was in bitter vindication of her angry forecasts on the derelictions of others. Most people in the department were too scared of her to actively dislike her.

Then one day Dexter saw her gazing out of the window, with an expression of such melancholy that his heart keened with her. She seemed consumed by a timeless sadness. However, she became aware of his attention and gave him such an icy, challenging stare that he hurried away and pretended to busy himself with the copier.

It was clear to Dexter that Wendy was a wounded soul. She had been deeply hurt in some way. Life had been cruel and so she had thrown up these sturdy defences around her. How lonely she must be inside that armour.

He revised his opinion of her, clinging to this new subtle truth even as Wendy continued to harangue those who didn’t come up to her sky-high expectations. Behind the virago, Dexter could see the wounded baby girl, helplessly adrift in a hostile world.

He found himself defending her to his colleagues. This sudden turnaround of their shared aversion led to him becoming as isolated as she was. Dexter didn’t care. His empathy was too strong to give way.

So, they both soldiered on alone. Until the Christmas party when Dexter kissed her impulsively under the mistletoe.

Wendy broke his arm in three places.

Further Acts of Faith 2

2010-12-10T16:41:00.003Z

The ruins of the little fortified chapel stood in sun-bleached relief against the azure blue sea. An on-shore breeze ruffled the coarse grass of the promontory to which the Knights Oracular had retired, after the disastrous Battle of Hattin ended the Second Crusade.

While other Orders scuttled back towards Europe in disarray before Saladin’s conquering armies, Grandmaster Bernard Desmouches led his small band of heavily armed clairvoyants to this obscure outcrop on the Levantine coast.

They built their lodge and in its cellar buried whatever pillage they managed to retain. They hid their mail coats, broadswords and axes. And kept their heads down.

Lacking the commercial skills of the Templars, the militarism of the Teutonic Knights and the pastoral vocation of the Hospitallers, the Knights Oracular relied chiefly on their gift of Second Sight. They told the fortunes of passing travellers and whenever they saw trouble ahead, they kept out of the way of it.

Passers-by saw only a community of raggedy, wild-eyed hermits, shuffling round on an uncomfortable rock overlooking an indifferent sea.

They had always been regarded with distrust and derision by their more assertive brothers-in-arms. And, as history is written only by the winners, they have disappeared from all chronicles of the Crusades. The current vogue for the Templars and the Grail, conspiracies amongst the early Church and lost testaments has failed to dislodge them from obscurity.

At last a famous author stood amongst the fallen stones of their final refuge. He observed the scratched symbol of the open mouth (often misrepresented as a vagina) on the cornerstone. He picked his way down to their cellar, with a hammer and chisel, to unearth their secrets and their remaining treasure.

The last remaining, spindly buttress fell in on him, killing him instantly.

They’d seen it coming, of course.

Further Acts of Faith 1

2010-12-02T18:36:00.003Z

Trevor met the old man one night at the bus-stop. Trevor was waiting for a bus. The old man was living there; his possessions consisted of a battered brown-paper parcel, tied up with inordinate amounts of string. Trevor shifted from foot to foot, impatiently consulting his watch. The bus remained resolutely absent.

After a while, the old man cleared his throat and spoke, “Not very happy in your own company, are you?”

Embarrassed, Trevor remained mute. With great relief he spotted the bus arriving.

“Easily done, though,” the old man stood up. “Getting to know yourself. Getting to like yourself, even.”

Trevor found the old man sitting next to him on the bus. He stared ahead, but the old man continued in a gentle but persistent manner. “All it takes is an act of faith.”

When Trevor got off the bus he found the old man still with him.

“Are you following me?” he asked, irately.

“Not at all,” demurred the old man, “I’m accompanying you.”

And so he was, right up to the door

“I live here,” protested Trevor.

“After a fashion,” agreed the old man.

“I’m not inviting you in,” insisted Trevor.

“That’s fine,” replied the old man, “Just wanted to give you this.”

He handed Trevor the battered parcel.

“I can’t, “began Trevor.

“In it,” the old man assured him, “you’ll find everything you need to be happy.”

And then he walked off.

Trevor sat alone on his sofa with the parcel and, despite himself, began to disentangle the string. Inside was another parcel, almost identical but slightly smaller. He set to work again. He persisted, driven by curiosity and irritation in equal measure. By the early morning his room was filled with crumpled brown paper and innumerable lengths and tangles of string. And nothing else.

An Act of Faith 3

2010-11-25T17:42:00.003Z

The rest of the team had already clattered out along the changing room corridor and out on to the pitch. Selby sat on the bench, bending over his right foot and adjusting the laces on his boot. His coach stood before him, a ball under his arm.

“If you’re going to make it, really make it, in this game, you have to really want it.” The coach spoke with a vital intensity, “You have to have the game in your blood. Live it, breathe it, eat it, and sleep it. It has to take over your soul. It has to be the reason you wake up in the morning and what you dream of at night.

Being the best you can be won’t be enough. One day your mind will wander and down you’ll go. No, you have to believe you're the best. You have to make every movement, every thought on the pitch out there, an affirmation of your true belief. Your self belief.

You have to have absolute faith in yourself. No questions. No doubts. Absolute unconquerable faith. Every move you make, every angle you run, every time you connect with the ball, every time you respond to an opponent’s intentions is an act of faith

Now get out there and show me some of that faith in action.”

“Yes, Mr Watkins,” replied Selby as he finished off lacing his boots. Then he trotted out to join the rest of the under-eights on the school field. He had a slight earache but they’d put him on the wing as usual. If he ran about a bit and kept out of the way, he probably wouldn’t get hurt. They might not even pass to him.

And they were having sausages for dinner.

An Act of Faith 2

2010-11-18T17:39:00.002Z

Perceval was known throughout the county as a man of piety and devout religious principal. So scrupulous was he in his observations that his place in the front pew in St Joseph’s had been worn as thin as a wafer. He refused to replace his tattered hassock, though, remarking that the cold flags of the church floor reminded him every moment of the more onerous sufferings of others.

However his sense of religious obligation was hardly matched by his sense of direction; perhaps earthly dimensions were beyond him. So lacking was he in basic orienteering skills that the parish priest always phoned up Perceval’s housekeeper to make sure he’d got home from the service without incident.

Perceval’s stated intention to make the pilgrimage to Santiago was therefore viewed by some in the village as idiotic beyond belief. Bets were laid in the public bar as to his actual destination. Birmingham was the firm favourite, followed by Intensive Care.

The priest, a kindly man, gently put it to Perceval that perhaps it was his allotted to path to remain at home; a pilgrimage of the heart was open to everyone after all. Perceval remained adamant, his faith was his rock. He could not live with the spiritual dereliction incurred by giving way to his navigational shortcomings. They were simply a test of his faith.

So on Monday 3rd October 1983, Perceval appeared at the gate of his cottage, with a haversack over his shoulder, a plastic mac over his arm, stout boots on his feet and a scallop shell pinned to the lapel of his old Harris Tweed jacket. His housekeeper wept as she waved from the bay window as her employer, doffing his hat to all he passed, walked out of the village.

He disappeared without trace, of course.

An Act of Faith 1

2010-11-10T10:12:00.003Z

Robin had watched his Uncle Andrew build the gyrocopter for fifteen years. Ever since he’d been into Uncle Andrew’s little workshop behind the old allotments.

At first he’d been too small to help, except maybe to pick up the prototype’s plans when Uncle Andrew brushed them off his workbench with an errant elbow. But as time progressed he grew big enough to hold things; important things like the best pliers or pots of glue that so often went into hiding. His speciality was finding nails, screws or staples that had fallen to the ground and lost themselves amongst the woodchips and dust. With the rumblings of puberty, it had been his task to carry the first working scale-model down to the football fields, and hold the fuel can, while Uncle Andrew readied the machine on its launch stanchion. That day Uncle Andrews’s gyrocopter had cleared the kindergarten fence and obliterated their Wendy House, but Robin’s ambitions had journeyed to the stars. He was an Aeronaut in the making.

And so, in his late teens, and still without telling his mum, Robin sat at the controls of Uncle Andrew’s gyrocopter as it sat heavily upon the site of its downscaled predecessor’s first onslaught on gravity. It was dusk; a sensible precaution because the kindergarten would be shut.

“Ready?” asked Uncle Andrew, always a man of few words.

Robin gave him a broad grin and the thumbs up.

Uncle Andrew then fired him sideways three hundred meters, at outstanding velocity and straight into the wall of the Council changing rooms, where he exploded in a fireball that could be seen twenty miles away.

Uncle Andrew pulled the plans from his rear pocket and surveyed them. He gave a ruminative little grunt and then sloped off back to his workshop.

Off the map 4

2010-10-29T12:48:00.001+01:00

“It’s not on here!” Big Mike Molloy stamped a stubby forefinger on the map stretched over the bonnet of the Landcruiser. “Way I see it, if it’s not on the map, it doesn’t exist.”

The desert sun bore down relentlessly on the group of hard-hats clustered around Big Mike. Around them, all progress arrested, was a spectacular array of excavators, pile-drivers and dump trucks and all their support vehicles. The trans-national highway (to date ) stretched away into the horizon behind them.

In front of them, in the middle of a wadi they wanted to turn into a six-lane highway, was a small baked-mud hut. It appeared to be a shrine. Primitive and implacable. Earlier than any Sufi, earlier indeed than any Hermetic tradition. Beads and rags were attached to disintegrating wooden staves. Hieroglyphs were scrawled around the tiny doorway, and characters of a pre –Aramaic language. From the interior came the unmistakable odour of goat, mixed with ancient ashes. If you squinted at the few remaining mosaic pieces on its wall you could just make out the remains of a face.

Big Mike looked at it, “Who the fuck’s that?”

“Ozymandias?” quipped a surveyor who liked to think he’d had a classical education.

“More like Ozzy fucking Osborne,” snarled Big Mike, “Flatten it.”

“Someone might be living in it,” protested the surveyor.

“Give a him a couple of goats and a kick up the ass,” ordered Big Mike, “He’ll think it’s fucking Christmas.”

There was a general shuffling. Big Mike looked at them scornfully

He stomped over to the hut, bent down to bellow through the tiny door, “Hey, Holy Joe! Piss off! I’ve got a road to build.”

And suddenly he wasn’t there.

They searched the little shrine inside and out. And then they build around it.

Off the map 3

2010-10-22T12:47:00.002+01:00

It was dusk as Everett coaxed his car down the narrow, winding lane. The rutted surface scraped ominously beneath his feet. He gripped the wheel, fearful of stony outcrops and the jagged Hawthorne branches jutting into the lane.

Suddenly the lane lurched into a small gravel patch fronting a dilapidated, rambling old house. Everett realised with a shudder that he’d arrived.

An amateur botanist, he’d answered a free-sheet classified ad promising ‘Seclusion and a rural idyll for the discerning Nature Lover’. At the Hawthorne Hotel, Coppice Lane, Wiltshire. The address had sounded somewhat more substantial than the reality.

Still, he pulled out his case and went in the front door. The musty foyer was dimly lit but a rubicund little man beamed at him from behind the reception desk.

“You’re a little off the map,” Everett said breezily, to mask his apprehension.

“”That we are,” agreed the landlord, “Pride ourselves on it.”

He handed Everett a key with what seemed to be an otter’s tail keyring. “Number 4, Mr Everett. Lovely view over the pond.” He paused apologetically, “You’ve missed dinner, sir.”

“That’s fine,” replied Everett, “I ate on the way down.”

“Can I have something sent up to your room, sir?” twinkled the little man.

“Well, that would be nice,” Everett conceded.

“There’s pork or lamb, sir,” he replied, with an incongruously roguish wink, “Or chicken. Birds are small, though. You might need two.”

“A little lamb would be nice,” Everett said hastily heading up the stairs.

“Indeed it would, sir,” The warm voice followed him. “Coming right up.”

Everett was already in bed when the door opened and a tiny lamb ran into the room, a pink ribbon around its neck. The landlord’s head appeared around the jamb.

“Enjoy,” he leered salaciously, and turned out the light.

Off the map 2

2010-10-14T13:17:00.002+01:00

Champion Room Fragrance’s marketing brainstorm stared glumly at each other around the table in the Byron Suite of a country house hotel. Mature willows drooped outside in the water meadow. Their heads ached. Their mouths were dry with bad coffee. Layout paper was strewn about the floor, daubed by platitudes, false starts, plagiarisms, and other commercial gibberish all in bright blue marker pen.

Sally, the moderator, took a deep breath and started again. The Champion group was a major source of business for her research consultancy; she could ill afford any client dissatisfaction. The situation wasn’t help by Terry Champion, the heir apparent, sitting at one end of the table in his striped shirt and red braces (everyone else had been told “smart casual”). Terry Champion spoke as he found.

“Come on, everyone,” she said earnestly, widening her eyes to maximum sincerity. “There are no wrong answers here. We need to think out of the box, forget there’s a box at all. We want to be off the map.

“Right off the map!” Terry rapped the table in front of him.

“Let your imagination flow! Even if it doesn’t make sense to you, it could still trigger something. Nothing is sacred. Nothing is silly. Everything is useful.”

“Keith,” barked Terry. “You’re team leader, fucking lead.”

Keith stood up, terrified and portly, dyed hair scraped across his dome. He attempted a wacky grin. “Right!” he said, frantically. “Right! We all strip off, completely naked, thread daisies through our pubes, run into the store and jump up and down and shout ‘Champion’s Room Fragrances! As fresh as The Rites of Spring!’”

His eyes swept the room, desperately seeking approbation.

“Interesting,” Sally tried to sound like she as giving this serious thought.

“That’s not off the map!” yelled Terry. “That’s off your fucking head!”

Off the map 1

2010-10-07T11:23:00.002+01:00

Jillian and Ross Dempsey took their trekking holidays seriously. They would exchange office clothes (smart casual for Jill, pinstripe for Ross) for state-of-the- art climate controlled, thermal body suits; Swiss mountaineering fleeces; NASA ultra-thin, stormproof shells with reversible approach pants and high altitude trek boots. They would pack ultra-light rucksacks, with micro-fibre sleeping bags and mountain bivouac, hydration sachets and self-heating meals-in-bags, GPS system and back-up, water filters and medical kit. Their titanium foraging knives could also be used for field surgery. Their mini-torches bounced halogen brightness off the heavens.

They would leave their Blackberries at home. When they went on holiday they planned to go off the map and stay there. Their only contact with work colleagues, loved ones and the rest of the world would be the emergency beacon built into their GPS system, which they were at great pains to tell everyone they would make damn sure they never needed to call upon.

Jillian and Ross would tell you they were only really at home in the high peaks, from Nepal to the Andes. Only those challenging tracks and breathtaking views could counterbalance the toxic complexities of their demanding careers.

“We feel kinda clean up there,” Ross would give his boyish grin, while Jillian would nod in complete if shy agreement. And then they’d be gone for three weeks.

To a cheap motel room, the seedier the better, somewhere like Vegas, Penang or Nairobi, where they’d stack the kit, slip into something comfortable (boxers for Ross, diaphanous thong for Jill), break open the first case of tequila, the packs of Amyl Nitrate and the intimate appliances. After two weeks, whoever’s cognitive faculties were still functioning would get up and switch on the sun lamp.

It was important to have that high mountain colour when they got back.

The one that got away 4

2010-09-29T17:09:00.002+01:00

He stepped through the open gate and was free. It was exhilarating and yet terrifying. He set off down the road, walking faster and faster, trying to speed away from his apprehension at the immensity of it all. Then, with a carefree shake of the head, he gave himself into it. And ran and ran, feeling his muscles stretch, his lungs open, feeling alive.

The sun shone and a light wind caused the leaves to dance in the tall trees, as he made his way into town. He’d not been allowed here before, locked away, regimented in the numbing protection of a sacrosanct routine.

When he reached the High Street, people began to stop and stare at him. He dropped his pace, and pressed on, affording them the occasional sideways glance. He didn’t want to cause offence here, any trouble and his freedom might be rescinded.

People stepped off the pavement in front of him, some smiling, some frowning. Some foolish children ran off yelling or laughing, it was difficult to know which. Everybody seemed to have something to say, so he stopped on a street corner and had a good look round.

The crowd stared back. One or two moved forward in seemed to be a threatening manner, so he moved back into a side alley, to give them time to return to a better mood.

He could hear fast footfalls behind him and gave up propriety and ran like hell, ducking into the nearest break in the wall. It was an open door and he dashed into a room with a pleasantly soapy smell. A fat woman stared at him, mouthing silently, before leaping onto a chair. She punched at something in her hand and then shouted into it.

“Police!” she screamed, “There’s a pig in the laundrette!”

The one that got away 3

2010-09-23T12:39:00.003+01:00

Squadron Leader Fanshawe crossed into Switzerland on the 15th March 1943. He wore a battered suit made from artfully modified remnants of uniform, prison camp blankets and bedding. His hat had been filched during a visit from the Red Cross and his suitcase carefully constructed from camouflaged cardboard.

He was weak from hunger, wheezing from the damp and cold of so many nights out in the open and limping from a leap from a train bound for Basel, during a document check.

He kept to the deepest shadows of the fir trees as he made his way down the mountain slopes. A meeting with an unfriendly Swiss border guard could have him bundled back across the frontier to, at the very least, further incarceration.

Then he saw the bright and cheerful light at the window of the little chalet nestling amongst the conifers. That single twinkling light embodied all the carefree spirit of his pre-war years, an indomitable refusal to submit to the bleakness and terror of war.

Fanshawe knocked tentatively on the door, rehearsing his cover story (he was a lost Swedish businessman travelling in typewriter parts), and it was opened by a rosy cheeked, roly-poly farmer’s wife.

“Come in, schatzi,” she beamed at him. “You are just in time for dinner.”

Inside was as warm as toast. She led him into a tiny parlour, took his hat, helped him off with his sodden overcoat, and settled him in a chair by a cosy fire with a glass of apple brandy.

A few minutes later her husband, a large man with deep-set eyes, came in and hit him a resounding blow on the top of the head with a blacksmith’s hammer.

Fanshawe had discovered the infamous cannibal family of the Eastern Alps, fifteen years before the Swiss Police did.

The One That Got Away 2

2010-09-13T10:11:00.003+01:00

Desiree Martin peered through the heavy musty drapes at the waves washing perpetually on the Malibu shore. Her makeup matched the faded gilt splendour of the surroundings; her robe was faded too, the pink velour echoing her trembling lips and her strained, tired eyes. She peered out at the waves, wondering if the morning were late enough for a Tom Collins, if only she could remember how.

Desiree was one of those actresses made for black and white. The fact that she had survived twenty years of Technicolor was a tribute to her hunger, her persistence and the Hollywood tittle tattle that she could suck a golf ball through a thirty metre length of hose-pipe.

Desiree had sucked a lot of golf balls for industry stalwarts now long dead, and the occasional pool man or car valet to keep in training. She had started off in dubious exposure movies involving jazz and “reefers” and then progressed to slasher movies and various arcane “B” genres. She’s on some internet sites still. Goateed, pallid film buffs will tell you that nobody played a depraved nun as archly as Desiree.

She didn’t have the face for television, nor the contacts nor the memory. Nor the right ex-husbands nor the track record nor the favours she could call in. So she ended up at the beach house, which her only legitimate friend had insisted she bought in her own name.

Desiree stared at the sea spray, waiting for a particular man to walk through it, muscled, tanned and nonchalant with mischievous eyes and an open grin. It hadn’t quite happened between them before, or had it? They’d met so long ago. He’d said he’d be back.

“C’mon, mister,” she whispered. “There’s a B feature queen here waiting to give you the works.”

The one that got away 1

2010-09-02T15:00:00.003+01:00

Arthur always swore there was a giant carp in the River Nidd. He swore he’d seen it frequently, looming just below the surface in secret locations. He swore he’d hooked it twice, but that it had snapped his line with a disdainful tug and cruised sturdily away. He swore that one day he’d land it and then all the walking sheep droppings who cast aspersions at him in the public bar of the Pately Arms would be forced to eat their words.

The public bar thought Arthur was, as ever, talking through the shiny seat of his moleskins. So when, one day, he produced a new reel for his battered old rod, with specialist line vaunting the tensile strength normally required on Marlin boats, they didn’t bother to conceal their reservations. They hooted with mirth. They slapped the bar and the dusty furnishings in their hilarity. They called him all kinds of names in arcane dialects from the primeval Dales.

Arthur did not stand still in the face of such concerted abuse; he finished his pint of tepid local ale and strode off to his appointment with destiny and his giant carp.

An hour or so later the public bar heard an uncanny and suddenly truncated wail. Those not paralysed by beer ran out of the pub and headed down the narrow lane to the river, only to fall silent at what they found on the riverbank.

Arthur’s tackle box and battered old fishing stool had been kicked over; his keep-net was bent and empty; his thermos leaked weak tea upon the mud. Two deep grooves ran down from the upturned stool into the Nidd’s silent waters, gouged out by the heels of Arthur’s ancient rubber boots.

“It’ll be Arthur playing silly buggers,” pronounced someone, and they returned to the bar.

Proof positive 4

2010-08-26T11:09:00.002+01:00

Madge’s clientele were convinced of her psychic powers. Any persistent sceptics had been subtly shrugged off, leaving a small and devoted congregation who met at Madge’s every Thursday evening, for tea, chocolate fingers and intermittent access to the Afterlife.

Madge herself was gracious as her fragile health and considerable status amongst habitués of the Spirit World would permit. She carried herself with the natural reserve of the adept.

So it was with some surprise when the séance members assembled in Madge’s tiny parlour, hung with arcane artefacts and dominated by a giant aspidistra, found themselves confronted by a loud red-faced man in an even louder suit.

“Reggie Babcock,” he pronounced to whoever failed to evade his sweaty handshake.

“He’s my landlord,” Madge reported listlessly to a concerned acolyte. “And in matters of the material world, one’s hands are tied.

“Come on, Madge,” Reggie twinkled, producing a hip flask and drawing deeply from it, “Let’s have those spooks out on parade!”

The members sat around the parlour table, their hands outstretched, fingers touching. Madge dimmed the lights and took her place at the table’s head. For a while there was silence, punctuated by amused sniggers from Reggie Babcock.

“Is there anybody there?” Madge intoned in the darkness.

There came a sharp rap on the table.

“Good grief,” Reggie snorted derisively, “Can’t you do better than that?”

There was a sudden gust of wind, a crackle of energy, and a convulsive tremor at Reggie’s end of the table. Members squealed or gasped at the upheaval. One raced to turn on the lights.

While Madge sat serenely entranced at the head of the table, Reggie was slumped back in his chair, his head thrown back, sightless eyes bulging. An enormous Bratwurst filled his gaping mouth and protruded some two feet into the room.

Proof positive 3

2010-08-19T11:55:00.001+01:00

The professor stared at the filmy clouds gathered at the summit of his mosquito netting. The sun was beating its way through the closed tent flaps, so that beneath the clouds warm ochre light prevailed. The blood pounded in his temples, his tongue moved noisily in his parched mouth. He was conscious of every blink of his eyelids. Outside he could hear the clatter of rocks and picks, and occasional staccato interchanges in Arabic, as the huge archaeological site progressed without him.

The fever had come upon him after his first visit to the central chamber, freshly unearthed beneath what he believed to be Amahets’ tomb. Malarial probably, or some dysenteric relative, or yet one more parasitic invader produced in this arid, flyblown land. The workmen muttered about a curse, of course. The revenge of some long dead High Priest outraged at the violation of his sacred resting place. He’d had to put an end to that. A press embargo. The media would be sure to fan superstitious flames to assuage the credulous appetites of the supposedly developed world.

He became aware of someone hovering at his bedside and peered through the netting. “Is that you Pupkiss?”

“Yes, Professor,” his assistant sounded oddly subdued. “We’ve found hieroglyphs in the central chamber.”

“What do they say?”

“Oh some fantastic nonsense,” Pupkiss tried a dismissive laugh.

“Tell me,” insisted the Professor.

“Behold me, Amahet.” Pupkiss recited woodenly. “Who violates my tomb, his testicles shall turn green and he shall die before the month is out.”

The professor used all his strength to throw back his top sheet and he attempted an insouciant tone, “Well, what can you see, Pupkiss?”

But there came only silence.

Proof positive 2

2010-08-08T18:58:00.005+01:00

Version A

Version B

Detective Sergeant Stephens chewed morosely on his cheese and pickle sandwich and stared out of the window. The rain was falling steadily into the station courtyard, creating busy rivulets on the grimy panes. Stephens scratched a thick ear ruminatively and then squinted over his chaotic desktop at Detective Constable Hewitt who was sitting at her desk across from him, picking her way through some takeaway sashimi.

“What you got there?” he grunted, “Some kind of home autopsy kit?”

Louise Hewitt ignored him. She picked up a slice of raw tuna with her chopsticks and brought it to her mouth with a practiced hand. Then she paused, “We get the coroner’s report yet?” she asked. “On the Francis case?”

Stephens bit deep into his sandwich and talked through it, “Stabbed with a screwdriver fifteen times to the head, thirty seven times to the abdomen, superficial defence wounds to hands and forearms, and then disembowelled clumsily with a barbecue fork. Far as they can tell the whole process took around twenty minutes to half an hour.”

Hewitt dipped a thick slice of salmon into her little plastic bowl of soy and wasabi, and popped it in her mouth. She pushed a number of large photographic prints about the surface of her pristine desk. “Made a hell of a mess of the lounge” she observed. “They seem to have smeared him up over the walls.”

Stephens rummaged in a large paper bag set in front of him, for his scotch egg. He’d saved that till last. He bit into it with relish, and then remembered, “They’d forced him to eat the family hamster. It was found wedged down his throat.”

“Oooh, don’t,” said Detective Constable Hewitt with a grimace of disgust.

There was still a vestige of compassion left in the C.I.D. room.

Proof positive 1

2010-07-30T12:34:00.001+01:00

The Angel was waiting for Jennifer in the kitchen. It stood by the freezer, casting a golden luminescence over the Aga. It looked somewhat tired around the eyes but Jennifer didn’t register this. She simply dropped the bottle of vodka she had brought back from the supermarket, which fragmented on the Tuscan tiles, and gave vent to a soundless scream.

“I got here as quickly as I could,” the Angel explained apologetically, “But there’s a lot of traffic over the Near East and I had to reroute.”

Jennifer clung to a stool by the breakfast bar and gaped at the ineffable splendour of her visitor. She could hear her cutlery, her crystal glassware and her bone china vibrating inside the fitted cupboards.

The Angel gave her a slow sad smile, “Precisely three hours ago you found out your husband Keith has been having an affair with his partner George. They are moving into George’s apartment. And are commencing proceedings against you for drunkenness and other supposed domestic derelictions. They will be claiming custody of the children. An unlikely eventuality, but one that could have a major bearing on any settlement you might expect. The children have gone to his mother’s, and are understandably distressed.”

With one foot, Jennifer stirred disconsolately at the broken bottle in its plastic bag. She gave a sniff.

“You then said...” the Angel put his fingers to his temples and closed his eyes to summon up a perfect recollection, “’Oh, My God! Has it really come to this?’”

Jennifer made a feeble gesture of acknowledgement with one hand.

The Angel gave her a kindly smile, “I’m here to tell you, Jennifer, that yes, it has.” He gave his wings a little loosening stretch, “Now, any other questions I can help you with before I go?”

Friends in low places 4

2010-07-22T11:51:00.004+01:00

Mrs Crabtree allowed her maid, Edie, the morning off. The whole village would be at St Botolph’s for the wedding and Mrs Crabtree thought it would both educate her and remind her of her place.

Sir Heston Blissett was marrying the Honourable Cynthia Butterwick; they were the shire’s most eligible couple. Edie had for a time served as an upstairs maid to the Butterwicks, followed by a sojourn with the Blissetts before Sir Heston offered her to Mrs Crabtree, a cousin of sorts, in the weeks leading to his marriage.

So, on a gorgeous summer’s morning, in a packed St Botolph’s, Major Butterwick gave his daughter away, with the County looking on in fervid admiration.

“If any man knows of any just cause or impediment why these two should not be joined in holy matrimony, may he speak now…” rumbled the Reverend Smiley.

“Please Vicar, I do,” came a diffident voice from the last pew.

There were gasps and mutterings. The bride-to-be blanched, her porcelain complexion now chalky. Sir Heston turned with fire in his eyes. The Major’s monocle hit the flagstones. Lady Blissett sat heavily enough to cause her stays to squeak.

“What is the meaning of this, child?” the Reverend’s voice was cold.

“I’ve attended Miss Butterwick in her bath a great many times, Vicar, “offered up Edie helpfully, “And I have to say she is not blessed with a comely appearance below.”

“What are you saying, girl?” bellowed the Vicar. As the bride-to-be pulled her veil back over her face and collapsed into her father’s arms.

“Well, Sir Heston said I had the prettiest part he ever did see,” Edie continued to discharge her religious duty, “And I should hate his wife to be a disappointment to him.”

Friends in low places 3

2010-07-10T11:50:00.004+01:00

The Fourth Murderer was understandably peeved. When he’d signed on for Macbeth he’d been assured of his place at Number Three. But some footling friend of the director had turned up, all lace and pomade, powdered and primped like a Bishop’s favourite in a Molly House. This posturing Ganymede had spent but ten minutes closeted in the director’s cubbyhole, and Third Murderer had slipped down to Fourth Murderer, with scarcely a please and thank you.

He sat sulking in the wings as the gentry and the groundlings massed the other side of the curtain, the orange girls plying their trade, oranges now and hot fumblings later. A burly stagehand eased him to one side as he clambered on stage with a chunk of wayside tree under one arm. Then noticing his forlorn aspect, stopped to enquire, “What’s awry with you, you big Jessie? Someone stolen your hairnet?”

The Fourth Murder tried to maintain a dignified silence, but dejection got the better of him and in a flurry of exposition, he filled the stagehand in on his dwindled fortunes.

The stagehand was a kindly man. “Which one is it?” he whispered, peering into the knot of players as they gathered off stage, ready to depict Banquo’s untimely demise.

“The one with the fat legs and smug expression,” replied the Fourth Murderer spitefully, following that with a stab of his finger.

The stagehand disappeared back stage again and returned with a sturdy length of tree trunk to complete the set. Passing the Third Murderer, he inadvertently caught him a crashing blow to the back of the head with it, felling him instantly and comprehensively.

“What have you done?” the Fourth Murderer stared down, aghast, at the insentient form at his feet.

“A slight rewrite,” muttered the stagehand. “Now make the most of it.”

Friends in low places 2

2010-06-22T11:12:00.004+01:00

The alleyway was narrow and Brunson had difficulty negotiating his considerable girth along it. He sighed when he saw the sharp turn at the end and the high brick wall confronting him. He managed to drag a handkerchief from his jacket pocket, and mopped at his sweating face. Good job it hadn’t been in his trouser pocket; he’d have had to stand there and melt. No way he’d have reached it.

He inched his way along the passage, feet stumbling over unseen detritus, both shoulders rustling against the grubby brickwork on either side, the music from within the Club throbbing through the walls.

Then all at once a nightcreeper slipped around the corner and moved up swiftly upon him, lithe, urgent yet indifferent. The street rat came to a halt inches from Brunson’s heaving chest, deigned to register his sagging tie and sweat-soaked shirt and finally looked up insolently from beneath his hood.

“Taking up too much space, fat boy,” the nightcreeper pursed its lips, mockingly.

Brunson stared outraged at the little creep. Hot bile rose to his mouth, but no words.

“I’d slip between your legs, but them thighs don’t part much, do they?” The nightcreeper yawned softly. Gave his watch a cursory glance.

Brunson forced a hand into his inside jacket pocket pull out his warrant card. He flicked it open and held it up in front of the nightcreeper’s indolent gaze. “Vice!” he announced, thickly.

“Not right now,” replied the street rat evenly, “And most definitely not with you.”

He gave Brunson a dismissive smile and turned around, to pad back the way he’d came.

Brunson tugged out his heavy police revolver, a faithful friend, from his shoulder holster and blew the back of the nightcreeper’s head off. He’d like to hear a snappy answer to that.

Friends in low places 1

2010-06-14T15:49:00.002+01:00

The coach jolted along the pitted roads from Brighton, tipping alarmingly at many a dangerous corner. Rain lashed down upon the coachman, hunched into his portmanteau, hat tugged over his eyes, blunderbuss propped beside him.

Inside, the Dowager Duchess of Swinborough, an august presence in the King’s circle, peered myopically at her companion, Amelia, whom she had dressed with sufficient expenditure to present her to fashionable society, should they ever make it to her town property in Park Lane. The great lady grunted with satisfaction. Amelia was gratifyingly plain, and so cast no shadow on her own fast ebbing looks. (The Duchess owned to forty, and had done so for decades.)

Pressed in tightly between them, almost lost amongst the wigs and crinolines, her spindly secretary Prescott essayed to maintain a placid expression. This fast travel unnerved him, the Duchess’s powder made him want to sneeze and Amelia’s sharp elbow was forever in his ribs.

“You will say nothing at Court, without my permission.” observed the Duchess for the umpteenth time. “I have a reputation to consider.”

Amelia nodded dutifully.

Suddenly the carriage jerked to a dizzying halt. Amelia was thrown to the floor. Prescott found himself pince-nez deep in the Duchess’s mountainous cleavage, and the great lady herself found herself confronted by a leering ruffian, brandishing two enormous pistols through the window.

“Money or perish,” snarled the villain, as Prescott fainted.

“Get out!” bawled the Duchess.

“Fat Lizzie?!” the highwayman was dumbfounded, “Thought you was still rolling sailors Brighton way.”

The Duchess’ eyes bulged. Her chest heaved.

“No kidding me, you old doxy, “continued the roadman amiably. “Tupped you meself often enough, haven’t I?”

Amelia made a bleating sound from the floor.

The roadman didn’t want to take it, but the Duchess gave him ten sovereign to just stay away.

The joys of self denial 4

2010-06-07T16:37:00.003+01:00

“You must be at least curious, surely?” Ernesto wheedled. “After all this time.”

He slid the plane ticket over the cafe table. Pablo, poet in exile, cultural icon, curator of national nostalgias, looked at it sceptically.

He’d lived in Geneva for thirty years, summoning up his homeland in tightly constructed poems and infrequent public statements. They enabled his countrymen to relive a world gone by, where the present was stable and productive, where hopes were fresh and the future attainable. They reaffirmed their ideals in his measured and wry protestations.

He had rendered their hopes timeless and inviolate by his verse and also by his absence. He was a distant reminder of what ought to be.

“Come home Pablo,” cajoled Ernesto.

The warrant for his arrest had been rescinded years ago. An academic bursary had been offered and declined.

He had denied himself the quotidian experience of the land his work embodied. He had denied himself the buses, the pastries, the pollution, the buskers, the smell of drains and gardens. He had denied himself the humid transference from summer to autumn, the uniquely tinged streetlamps, the myriad worthless small coins wearing holes in one’s pockets. He had denied himself the ageing of friends and the natural entropy of families.

He had not gone back because, in his heart, he suspected it wasn’t there anymore. A football team could summon up as much of a national identity as his meticulously crafted poems.

“You can lecture, give readings,” enthused Ernesto. “It’s all arranged.” He pointed at the ticket, “First class. All expenses paid.”

Pablo shut his eyes and thought of all the ordinary things he had missed over the years. And of all the things that had gone on without him.

“It’s better I stay,” he said, and pushed the ticket away.

Los placeres de la renuncia.

“¿Seguro que no sentís un poco de curiosidad después de tanto tiempo?” insinuó Ernesto.

Pablo, poeta en exilio, ícono de cultura, preservador de nostalgias nacionales, miró con escepticismo el billete aéreo que el otro le deslizó sobre la mesa del café.

Durante treinta años había vivido en Ginebra, conjurando a su patria en poemas cuidadosamente construídos y escasas declaraciones públicas. Así había permitido a sus compatriotas revivir un mundo ya desaparecido, donde el presente era estable y productivo, las esperanzas eran nuevas y el futuro era alcanzable.
En sus mesuradas y sardónicas protestas ellos reafirmaban sus ideales.
Con su poesía, y también su ausencia, había logrado que las esperanzas de ellos se eternizaran y permanecieran intactas. Él era un lejano recordatorio de cómo deberían ser las cosas.

“Volvé a casa, Pablo,” lo incitó Ernesto.

Hacía años que se había revocado la orden de arresto. Le habían ofrecido un puesto académico que había rehusado.

Se había auto-negado la experiencia cotidiana del país que era tema principal de su trabajo. Se había privado de los colectivos, las empanadas, el aire contaminado, los artistas callejeros, el olor a cloacas y los jardines. Había renunciado a la húmeda transición de verano a otoño, los faroles callejeros de tonos únicos, las cantidades de moneditas de valor ínfimo que abrían agujeros en sus bolsillos. Se había negado el envejecimiento de los amigos y la entropía natural de las familias.

No había vuelto nunca porque, en el fondo, sospechaba que ese país ya no existía. Bastaba un equipo de fútbol para conjurar tanta identidad nacional como sus meticulosamente elaborados poemas.

“Podrás dar conferencias, lecturas”, insistió Ernesto, “está todo listo”. Señaló el billete: “En primera clase, todo pago”.

Pablo cerró los ojos y pensó en todas las cosas normales de las que se había privado durante tantos años y en todo lo que había sucedido durante su ausencia.

“Mejor me quedo”, dijo, y empujó, rechazándolo, el billete.

Traducción de Patricia Grillo

The joys of self denial 3

2010-06-01T15:57:00.002+01:00

“Not long now, darling,” Sophie’s huge eyes looked beseechingly up at him. “I want to, too, you know. I’m having to be to be just as patient as you.”

James looked down at her as the moonlight danced on her golden ringlets. In his present mood, his fiancée bore a passing resemblance to an amnesiac sheep.

“Damn it, Sophie,” he muttered, “Nobody goes in for this chastity before marriage nonsense. Not in this day and age.”

The huge eyes brimmed with tears, “You don’t really mind, do you?” she wailed, “Oh I can’t bear it.”

James brightened up a little at this anguish. Perhaps she was coming round after all. He slid an exploratory hand down towards her hemline. She stepped back with a disconsolate sob.

James clenched his fists in exasperation. She was his first real girlfriend. An adventurous girl, he had thought, with certainly a daring dress sense. Yet with a surprising reticence in sexual matters. They’d known each other for just over a week and he’d proposed after three days, hoping to encourage her to greater intimacy. But all he’d had so far was a kiss in the Pictures and a series of promissory notes of carnal paradise. Still, he’d come this far. He had to keep going now.

“I’m going to make you so happy, darling” she promised him smiling through tears. Then she pecked him on the cheek and dodged nimbly inside her front door.

James walked off home gruffly to yet another late night session of porn and self pity. Sophie waved to him from her bedroom window. And then busied herself with the unguents, pessaries and antibiotics, cursing that drunken evening with the Russian trawlermen. She really should have shown more control.

The joys of self denial 2

2010-05-26T15:21:00.003+01:00

The old man of the high peaks could hear them coming, thousands of feet below in the sun-kissed valleys, where meadow flowers fluttered in the warm breezes. He could hear their feckless chatter, already truncated by breathlessness. By the time they got to him, they’d be panting for air. They would, of course, expect him to make their travails worth while.

It was cool up in the heights, but he never elected to notice. He had the truths to contemplate, the way of light, the ground of being. Heat, hunger and thirst were rather impertinent interruptions in the light of revelations gently being made known to him, if only he could keep his mind out of the way.

Throughout the day he followed their ascent, the stumbling, the cursing, the swigging of water bottles, and the controlled desperation of it all. He neither moved nor declined to move. He simply listened. He had drunk some water and had eaten some nuts and fruit in the recent past. He had no bodily needs to attend to.

They arrived in the late afternoon. Two hot young men, bursting with philosophical enquiry and ontological need, staggered up to the entrance to his cave and stood, bowed over before him, gasping for breath and enlightenment.

“You know, don’t you?” said the first young man, mopping his face with his scarf. “You know what life’s all about.”

The old man shrugged a careless affirmative. The men’s faces lit up.

“Can you tell us?” asked the second man eagerly. His eyes were popping in the altitude.

“Yes I can,” replied the old man with a small, open smile.

The men looked at each other in delight and relief.

“But I’m not going to,” continued the old man, and he crawled back into his cave.

The joys of self denial 1

2010-05-13T18:42:00.002+01:00

Celia stared into the window of the Patisserie. The cakes were piled up on silver stands and trays. Exotic fancies, delicate tarts, sumptuous gateaux, a cornucopia of temptation. Celia rubbed a flip-flopped foot against the back of a fat calf, and contemplated the generosity of it all. Here was plenty; sugar-coated, rum-soaked, cream-cascaded, fruit-heavy plenty. She confirmed her selection with a podgy forefinger, the nail varnish chipped but every bit as bright as the cherries on the Black Forest gateau in pride of place. Having toyed with some macaroons and discarded them in favour of the almond butter biscuits, just to set off the more creamy indulgence of the fondants and éclairs, she finalised her choice and then turned from the window and walked away. Today’s ritual completed.

By the time she’d reached the car park behind the library and squeezed herself into her little runaround, the cakes were far behind her. She looked down at herself. The weight was coming off. Not so you’d notice perhaps, nothing dramatic, but slowly and steadily.

She watched a woman unchaining her bike from the railings. In a lilac plastic helmet and tight, vivid cycle suit. Not much younger than Celia, and not at all concerned about her body shape being so explicitly displayed.

Celia looked at the bike. And wanted one.

She would be a lissom streak of lycra, cornering at breathless speed, her nimble fingers working precisely through the gears. Head down, elbows in, high-toned legs pumping, her wasp waist firm, her bottom high in the air, taut, flexed and proud, ogled by men about whom she simply did not care. Couldn’t be less bothered, frankly. They’d had their chance.

Tomorrow she’d abjure the Patisserie for the bike shop. Just for a look. A look couldn’t possibly do any harm.

Memories are made of this 5

2010-05-05T11:15:00.001+01:00

The scent wafted through him as Robert was half way up the stairs to his flat; a blend of baked chlorophyll, flint dust and salt sea. Mediterranean. Coastal mountains, from the strength of the chlorophyll over the salt air. And then he caught the olive trees, and a hint of cypress and he knew he was back in the Midi.

As he passed the flat on the floor below his, the smell intensified; he drew in the warm aroma of a fresh café express, the acrid smoke of a forbidden and therefore furtive Caporal and the persistent buzzing of straining mopeds in the small square where he’d spent so much time that particular summer. Back came the sunlight dappling through the trees fringing the square, the bustle of the fragrant little fruit and vegetable market and the complete absence of Jessica, who would be up in the villa, seething quietly beside the pool, sleek with expensive lotion.

Mrs Alford was probably serving up something Provencale again for when Mr Alford came home from the office. She was occasionally adventurous like this. She found recipes in the supplements or on the television.

And if Mrs Alford found something Provencale and Robert was passing, he would return to that sun soaked yet distressingly turbulent summer when the love of his life found out he was not at all the man for her. Jessica could barely manage three weeks with him in the land of Matisse; to spend the rest of her life with him would be utterly beyond her.

Even so, despite the tears, Robert appreciated these little return visits, and with a little sniff he found his key and let himself into his flat. He’d planned on spaghetti, but somehow he didn’t feel like one now. An herb omelette, perhaps.

Memories are made of this 4

2010-03-27T12:46:00.004Z

Every morning Warren used to stumble along the pebble beach behind his Uncle Reg, while the man worked up a “thirst” for a pint at the Fisherman’s Tavern. Mindful of opening time as Uncle Reg was, you could have set your watch by their procession. He would leave the house early enough to deflect any comment from Aunt Amy (as if she still cared) and stride purposefully along, pausing every thirty yards or so, to breath in the sea air with much ceremony and a complacent pat of his impressive paunch. Warren would try to keep up, scuffing his toes in his detested sandals. They would reach the Fisherman’s just as the pot-man was unbolting the door,
One memorable day their progress was arrested by a showy couple, reclining on loungers with an ice bucket between, containing a bottle of Champagne Perry. The man, in brilliantined hair, polo shirt and slacks, interrupted Reg’s deep sea breathing to ask a favour. Reg eyed his alarmingly coiffed wife suspiciously. It was a touch chilly for her cantilevered one-piece and sunglasses.

The man handed Reg one of the new, sporty little 8mm film cameras, and gave him detailed instructions. Warren watched excitedly, as Reg anchored his heavy boots in the stones, pointed the camera and announced he was ready. The couple then went through an elaborate pantomime of pouring out the wine, clinking glasses and luxuriating ostentatiously in the sun. It went on a long time. Their friends and family were going to be very impressed and, no doubt, envious.

Finally Reg handed the camera back and moved off quickly. He had time to make up and Warren had barely enough breath to ask, “Did you get all that in focus?”

“Oh yes,” muttered Reg, “They’ve got five perfect minutes of sea wall.”

Memories are made of this 3

2010-03-24T12:32:00.003Z

Throughout her career as a dancer, Amelia’s mother had kept a scrapbook. Amelia used to leaf through it as a girl, retracing endless tours in working men’s clubs, on cruise ships and overseas military establishments, the occasional foray into variety shows and sporadic appearances on regional television. Amelia’s mother appeared in many guises and various ensembles. As well as a jobbing chorus girl, she had been a founder member of the Go-Goettes, and of their successors Rhythm!. She stared out from ancient Variety Showcall listings, dressed in ball gowns, mini-skirts, slashed tango outfits, fishnets and plumes, veils and harem pants, and even an approximated Pocahontas costume. Her smile remained the same throughout, sparkling and somewhat desperate, as she beamed out across the years.

Then she had married Amelia’s father, and that particular show was over. On occasion when Amelia was very young, her mother would take the scrapbook out and they would go through it together, commenting on the frocks or the funny names of other entertainers. Amelia’s mother would summon up memories of Yorkshire digs, dashing young soldiers in Aden, or storms on the Bay of Biscay during her bolero number. Eventually though, the scrapbook was left in Amelia’s bedroom cupboard and Amelia turned its pages alone.

Which made it all the more painful when, years later, Amelia discovered on completing yet one more house move with her own family, that the crate containing her childhood mementoes had been lost.

She drove to her mother’s sheltered accommodation in tears

“Mum, I’m so sorry!” she confessed, distraught. “Your scrapbook’s been lost in the move.”

“Don’t be so daft!” her mother laughed gaily. She pulled off one her slippers, stretched out a battered and calloused foot, and wiggled her damaged dancer’s toes. “I’ve got these to remind me of all that.”

Memories are made of this 2

2010-03-23T13:11:00.001Z

“Let’s go over it again, sir, shall we?” Detective Sergeant Walpole stared down at Peter’s statement, his patience sorely tried.

The complainant sat in an armchair with blanket around his knees, sipping a tiny glass of Madeira. He had not offered one to the Sergeant.

“I’ve already told you a dozen times,” Peter replied peevishly. “I really don’t see what…”

“Not much to go on, is there, sir?” Walpole scanned the sheet, “You were writing a poem, the doorbell rang. You opened the door and the step was on fire. As you stamped the flames out you found out it was a paperbag filled with ‘dog doo’.”

“I have been traumatised on my own doorstep,” Peter protested. “Shouldn’t you be canvassing the neighbourhood for witnesses?”

The policeman sighed. “Perhaps if we could establish some kind of motive?”

“Lunacy,” Peter rearranged the blanket about his knees primly.

“Can you think of anybody who’d have a grudge against you?” Walpole persisted, feeling he might soon join their number.

“No,” The poet was adamant, until it came to him. “Yes!”

“And who might that be?” Walpole clicked his ballpoint encouragingly.

“Rowan Smallpiece,” the poet’s eyes burned in his head. “It’s just his sort of twisted handiwork.”

“And why would…?”

“He picked his nose and ate it. During ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’. I had him thrown out of the choir.”

Walpole faltered over his notes, “And this was…?”

“First year of Big School,” came the prompt reply. “1973.”

“That’s a very long time ago, sir,” said the policeman, slipping his notebook back inside his jacket and getting warily to his feet.

“Ah, but if looks could kill, Sergeant,” Peter’s eyes bored into his, and then focused on a faraway place as Walpole, with the usual assurances, saw himself out. “If looks could only kill.”

Memories are made of this 1

2010-03-16T14:18:00.002Z

The elderly couple stood awkwardly just inside the entrance to the Le Coq d’Or and waited for a waiter to seat them. Eventually the bistro’s proprietress came out from the kitchen, with a small sigh of exasperation, to see why they were clogging up the doorway and not seating themselves as patrons were expected to.

The man began flapping his arms and grunting at her. Eventually she realised he was talking to her in execrable French. She put them all out of their misery with a terse, “I speak English, Monsieur.”

“Our usual table, please, Madame!” he beamed.

“George!” his wife nudged him affectionately, and explained to the waiting Frenchwoman, “We used to come here regularly. A long time ago.”

“We met here, Madame,” the old man added. “You would have been a baby.”

The proprietress relaxed into a welcoming smile and ushered them through the lunchtime throng towards a tiny table beside a radiator, with a partial view of the window.

They seemed delighted, nodding to each other as they struggled out of their coats and into the tiny space. “Nothing’s changed!” his wife said to him.

He took her hand, “No, love. Absolutely nothing.”

He looked up to the proprietress, “I came to be a poet. But we met, right here, and I came to my senses.”

They stuck to the menu du jour. When they weren’t eating they were holding hands, looking around them and evidently swapping fond memories.

The proprietress watched them leave, hand in hand. To her certain knowledge the place had only existed for ten years. Her husband had wrangled permission out of the Prefecture, then, to erect it on the site of a dilapidated public urinal that dated back before the Franco-Prussian War. She doubted Les Anglais had met up in that.

Omens and Maledictions 5

2010-03-10T15:34:00.002Z

The cave walls were cast into sinister shadows by the flickering torchlight which glimmered on the breast plates and helmets of the Praetorian Guard. The night breezes brought in the smell of basil and exotic flowers from the wild gardens, and blended with the heady incense burned by the Oracle’s acolytes.

The Oracle herself looked deep into the fissure in the rock wall, from which all her cosmic revelations flowed and shook her head, “The Gods have nothing to tell you.”

The Emperor shuffled awkwardly from foot to foot, “Couldn’t you try again?”

She raised a disdainful eyebrow, “It is not propitious. Your oblations have clearly been regarded as paltry.”

The Emperor looked back at the tethered white bull, the heavy sacks of gold coin, the ivory tusks from beyond Carthage, the sheaves of golden corn, the many amphorae of sweet wine, the overflowing bowls of delicate fruits. He felt the rage rise within him. What did the old bag mean by paltry?

He turned to the commander of his guard and gave a desultory wave at the treasure, “Take it all back.”

“That,” the Oracle’s voice was lethal on the night air, her eyes bored into him like a cobra’s with a rat, “ would be a grave mistake.”

“I came for an omen, lady,” The Emperor shrugged, with wry apology. “No play, no pay.”

“The Gods are not mocked,” she hissed at him.

He gave her a derisory smile and ordered the guard to take up his oblations and accompany him back down the winding hill path to the city.

Half way down, the commander of the guard cut the Emperor’s throat. He had his men return the tribute to the Oracle’s cave. As the new Emperor he knew he couldn’t be too careful.

Omens and maledictions 4

2010-03-05T13:49:00.001Z

Leif the Unvanquished, clan chief of the Berserkers, stood at the prow of his longboat as his men rowed them out into the cold North Sea to meet their destiny. Behind him at the settlement, the elders, the womenfolk and their children watched their departure in silence. At his shoulder stood his battle-scarred lieutenant, the mighty Lars, twin battle-axes strapped across his back, one hand on the rigging as he surveyed the glittering horizon.

“Wherever we strike land, my lord,” Lars rumbled, “Men shall think the torments of Hades have fallen upon them.”

Leif looked back at his crew, hand-picked men, veterans of a hundred merciless raids, trained to slaughter, drenched in blood and the glories of battle, deaf to the pleas of survivors, widows and bondswomen in their rapine and riot, all his to command. They would follow him to the ends of the earth, which is where he intended to lead them.

“So much out there for the taking, Lars,” Leif spoke at last, “and these hellhounds shall snatch it from the jaws of death.”

To the southern sun, then, for the fabulous treasures, the palaces, pearls and princesses, theirs to plunder at will.

High above them in the pale Northern sky a lone seabird circled the boat. Leif and Lars watched it glide effortlessly around them as their oars churned the black waters. Then, with a sudden screech, it broke off its course and plummeted into the icy sea, never to resurface.

Leif looked hard at Lars, and then sighed. “Turn us round and take us back in,” he ordered.

“We’re packing it in, lads,” he explained to his Berserkers as they executed the difficult, arduous turn, “According to that bird there’s a shit storm coming and we don’t want to be caught out in that.”

Omens and Maledictions 3

2010-02-24T12:49:00.002Z

William Henty was a man of few words and of those none were sociable; he worked for the local council, and was the scourge of those fortunate enough to be allocated an allotment. While they sought to supplement their diets with fresh fruit and vegetables, with perhaps some begonias on the side, Henty saw only wilful negligence and wholesale flouting of council regulations.

Henty mounted dawn raids on allotment sites, scrutinising taps and hoses, inspecting bins and compost heaps, paths, and sheds, ensuring that nobody defiled his sacred bye-laws. Any transgression was ruthless punished by fines or, his preference, eviction.

Then one day he found Mr Pincus was living in his shed, in direct contravention of the terms of his debenture. Hearing some music coming from a tiny shanty half hidden amongst towering bean plants, Henty thrust aside the rickety door to discover Mr Pincus, swaddled in old blankets, lying back on a small truckle bed, reading a racing paper and smoking a noisome pipe. One outraged sweep of the tiny room established Mr Pincus was running a small fridge off the mains and a tiny portable television. Some rabbit broth simmered on a butane gas stove.

“Get out of it, you fucking gypsy!” bellowed the council official, making irate notes on his clipboard.

“You want to watch that temper,” replied Mr Pincus affably. “You’ll blow a gasket.”

“You’ll be out by nightfall, you tinker bastard!” Henty snarled over his shoulder as he stormed off up the path. “We don’t want your sort here.”

Mr Pincus mumbled something as he leaned out of bed to turn the gas down under his soup; Henty pulled up on the path with a gasp, clutched at his chest and keeled over into someone’s potatoes.

Mr Pincus is still living in his shed.

Omens and maledictions 2

2010-02-12T12:31:00.001Z

Molly Carrot hurried along the seafront towards the Variety Theatre for her first ever audition. Her swaying summer frock showed off her lissom figure and long legs to best advantage, her blonde hair was becomingly ruffled by the onshore breeze, her white strap sandals skipped along beneath her, her toenails flashed pearly pink in the sunlight. She dazzled old and young men alike on the promenade. They gawped if they could or otherwise darted sidelong wistful glances. Young women snorted defensively at such an “obvious” girl, while older women shook experienced heads at a young life going so directly to the bad.

Then a high-flying seagull shat copiously on Molly’s head. She staggered, stunned by the impact, dropping her handbag and stood swaying in the thoroughfare, seagull shit trickling down her perfectly painted cheeks. The younger ladies snickered and a wave of silent pleasure ran through their elder counterparts. Children pointed gleefully. The men, in the main, remained silent, awaiting events.

The Honourable Eustace Fairfax, however, rushed across from the gardens of the Grand Hotel to commiserate. He steadied Molly while her vision cleared, restored her handbag to her, then offered her his handkerchief to remove the bulk of the detritus, the bathroom facilities of his suite at the Grand in which to refurbish her toilette, and dinner that evening to compensate for such an unfortunate experience.

“It’s supposed to be lucky!” Molly gave him the full benefit of her huge baby blue eyes. “Though I doubt I’ll make the chorus in the summer special looking like this.”

Eustace took her for the season to Nice, before housing her, discreetly, in Chelsea. Her theatrical career never quite flourished but Molly always made a point of feeding the seagulls on the rare occasion that she returned to her home town.

Omens and maledictions

2010-02-03T15:17:00.002Z

A small lottery win enabled Stanley Potter sell his luggage shop in Kidderminster and attempt to fulfil his wife Denise’s ambition to be one of the leisured village folk you saw in television series like Miss Marple, or read about in P.G.Woodhouse. Things have of course moved on since the days depicted therein, but Denise was convinced that with sufficient floral furnishings they could simulate enough Olde Worlde charm to get by.

Denise was a determined woman, as anyone in the Tanning Salon business has to be; within weeks, the Potters had found their dream cottage in a tiny Wiltshire village called Cowing, and paid an exorbitant price for it.

Their first night in the dream cottage, an owl appeared on the fencepost at the end of the garden. It called in a melancholy and persistent manner. Stanley, knowing Denise’s nervous disposition, threw a slipper at it out of the bedroom window. Both bird and slipper disappeared. Even so, Denise was distracted by the all pervading silence and had to put her earplugs in.

Next morning they found a dead crow on the front path, but besides excoriating the local waste disposal services, Denise said no more about it, while Stanley lifted it gingerly on a garden fork and slung it over the back wall, where the owl had been.

That evening after they’d walked into the village to find the store had closed early “for family reasons”, they found a straw dollie nailed to the cottage door with a dead dormouse dangling from each arm.

“Bless!” purred Denise. “It’s just their shy rustic way of saying welcome to Cowing. We’ll get all sorts of invitations, once they pluck up the courage to say hello properly.”

That night the cottage burned down; Denise had her earplugs in and missed it.

Far Flung Adventures 7

2010-01-27T10:48:00.003Z

The train clattered and jolted as it hurtled along through the grey late afternoon light. Mason threaded his way through knots of people in the narrow corridor, some staring out at the endless forest, some snatching a cigarette or a swig from a bottle of vodka or schnapps.

Kleptykin was on this train. He was sure of that. He had to find him. To warn him that Vronsky had exposed him. That even now Massimov’s goons were on his track.

He tried to negotiate his way round a large man in an arctic fox coat, talking to a companion in glasses and astrakhan. The big man turned and gasped in surprised.

“Good God,” he cried in a plummy English voice, “it’s Measles Mason! Devil are you doing this in this neck of the woods, Measles?”

It was Breadbin Frobisher, a rugby oaf from his school days. A buffoon then, and seemingly now. Mason replied quickly in Russian, and seeing no light of comprehension, said in a thick Urals’ accent, “You make mistake. Please let me through.”

“It’s you, Measles, alright!” chortled Breadbin. He explained to the man with him, “Brought measles with him first term at Wellington. We all got it. Been ‘Measles’ ever since.”

Mason made to slip by, but Breadbin held him fast in a manly grip, and twinkled amiably at him, “Another one of your jokes, eh, Measles? Now, don’t be a rotter. Tell an old school chum what brings an enterprising cove like you out to this benighted wasteland. I’m travelling in pig-iron, myself.”

Mason sensed a presence behind him and felt the knife slide in above his kidney, slick, expert, agonising. So, Massimov’s goons were on the train. His vision blurred.

“Sure you’re OK, old chap?” Breadbin’s sounded urgent and concerned, “You’ve gone awfully pale.”

Birthday Boy

2010-01-23T06:29:00.003Z

I want to wish a happy birthday to my compadre Chips Hardy.

Many happy years of happiness and fruitful creativity for you, old codger!!!

Oscar

Far Flung Adventures 6

2010-01-19T16:03:00.001Z

Hemel brought the biplane down neatly and climbed wearily out of the cockpit. It had been his third bombing run of the morning.

He’d located the rebels on his dawn patrol and had returned to the Sultan’s airstrip to take on ordnance. He’d then retuned to their makeshift encampment in the foothills due east, to eliminate all resistance. Joystick between his knees, he’d leaned out to drop his bombs, by hand, upon scattering tribesmen below. Occasionally a musket ball would drone past his leather flying helmet, and once, more alarmingly, there’d been the whine of a rifle bullet, but in the main the men below had contented themselves for running, pointlessly, for their horses or camels, or diving under the momentary sanctuary of a few threadbare bushes.

Boileau, the ex-Legionnaire, met him outside the wooden shack serving as the station HQ and took his report. “Nothing left worth bombing,” said Hemel, without pausing.

The adjutant knew better than to press for details. Hemel’s temper was as legendary as his efficiency. Boileau simply wiped the mission off his blackboard and returned to his paperwork.

Hemel kicked open the door to his quarters and threw himself down on his truckle bed. He smelled of engine oil, and sweat. He wanted a beer, a field shower and perhaps a little Beethoven on his phonograph.

He was bored with the trackless wastes, the heat, and the flies. He was bored with bombing aborigines, but the pay was adequate and it meant he could keep flying. For Kaiser or Sultan, it made no difference to Hemel.

He grunted as he pulled off his flying boots, and let one foot fall heavily over the side of the bed to the floor. An adult scorpion stung him in the ankle. And he was dead by nightfall.

Far Flung Adventures 5

2010-01-08T14:00:00.002Z

Larsson had eaten the last of the huskies’ feet, so Svenson had boiled up poor dead Davidsen’s mittens and furs and they eaked this bouillon out over two weeks, one mugful a day each. And they waited for the supply ship to cut its way through.

They’d given up trying to mend the radio after a week, having started out with resource and ingenuity, descended into violent recriminations and ended up with forlorn prayer, before pushing the mangled set through a hole in the ice they’d made in a pointless quest for fish.

After that they’d played I-spy but gave that up on the third day, when Svenson had broken down, yelling at Larsson to spy something different from “bloody snow”. Svenson had then led them in calisthenics but had turned his ankle on the ice, and Larsson said he felt stupid doing them on his own. And anyway the fitter he was, the hungrier he felt.

They’d read to each other from their obsolete and tragically inaccurate weather printouts, adopting colleagues voices until Svenson did poor dead Davidsen by mistake and they’d both had a tearful moment. They’d reminisced about life in the meteorological institute. Larsson recalled the big breasted analyst from that exchange scheme in Riga, and said he’d managed to sleep with her. He apologised for such unprofessional behaviour. Svenson said he was gay and didn’t care. Larsson looked a little hunted and Svenson told him not to kid himself. If Larsson were the last man on earth, he - Svenson – would still find him mildly repellent.

Larsson reflected that if the supply ship didn’t cut its way through, he probably would be the last man on earth as far as Svenson was concerned. He didn’t know whether to feel relieved about this.

Far Flung Adventures 4

2009-12-30T17:54:00.006Z

Elliott crouched down at the foot of a crumbling, sun baked wall and watched the daily market assemble itself around him. He rearranged his filthy rags, set out his battered wooden begging bowl and spat noisily into the dust.

Before him was a mad cramped jostling space, a brief release from the dark labyrinthine alleys whose complexity made the Souk virtually unnavigable. Traders, whose hovels opened onto the tiny square, opened their shutters and drew out wares from dark interiors. Others arrived carrying their goods on their heads. Each had an appointed place, and each wanted a little bit more, so the air was filled with imprecations and appeals to the Almighty.

Nobody paid attention to the scrawny beggar from the hill country, and Elliot prided himself on his disguise. His own mother wouldn’t have recognised him. He had an eye for detail, an instinctive appreciation of local colour and fifteen years with the Colonial Police had provided him with plenty of opportunity to study those he was spying upon.

If there were any truth in the rumours of unrest and insurrection, they would manifest themselves here, amongst the gossiping tongues of the marketplace. All he had to do was remain unnoticed and alert.

A fat man padded past, and then drew himself up before returning to Elliot and standing in front of him, looking down affably.

“Baksheesh,” croaked Elliot in perfect hill tones.

The fat man sat beside him, and mopped at the sweat running from beneath his turban. He fixed Elliot with an ingenuous smile, displaying an impressive array of gold teeth. Then he leaned in closer. Elliot’s nerves were taut. Was this to be the confidence that completed his mission?

“God be with you, Engleesh,” the fat man said warmly. “You want to buy some feelthy postcards?”

Far Flung Adventures 3

2009-12-21T16:56:00.001Z

Half way through a vicious Klondike winter, Muscat discovered his companion in the tiny cabin was a full-grown grizzly bear. The fug of the stove, the pervading reek of unwashed clothing and a working still of virulent moonshine had served to delay this discovery by six weeks.

Muscat lay on his fetid bunk, paralysed with fear. Six feet across the splintered floor, the hulking brute sprawled across the bunk it had occupied since the avalanche had engulfed them.

Muscat tried to shake his head clear of grain alcohol and assess the situation. If he hadn’t noticed his companion was a bear, the bear had seemingly made the same mistake about him, or remained indifferent to the presence of man. But, bears were never indifferent where food was concerned. Soon it would feel the ravenings of hunger, and this unnatural truce would end in bloody attack.

As his vision cleared, Muscat made out the stock of his shotgun on the floor beside him, protruding from the dangling filthy blanket. He edged a hand down slowly toward his salvation. The bear grunted and shifted its huge bulk; but after one juddering snort, it returned to its deep snoring.

Muscat’s fingers closed on the stock and he drew the gun out from beneath the bunk, wincing as its steel scraped on the rough timber floor. He brought close it up to him, to see the two cartridges nestling in place. Then leaning across as far as he dared, he placed the barrels against the sleeping ursine mass and pulled both triggers.

The noise was deafening and the cabin filled with smoke and the reek of cordite. Snow on the roof, two meters deep, cracked. The bear sat up with a blood-curdling shriek and, in its death throes, transformed itself into Muscat’s brother Raymond.

Far Flung Adventures 1

2009-12-14T12:20:00.001Z

Midshipman Dainty became separated from the water party through that most innocent of impulses, a love of nature. Despite orders to secure water inland and return to the bumboats without delay and despite sightings of cannibal war parties in the archipelago, Dainty succumbed to the beauty of an orchid overhanging the narrow pathway. Sending the party on under the temporary command of a burly bosun, he settled back with pad and pencil, to commit the marvellous bloom to paper.

The party had lumbered on, with water barrels on makeshift barrows. Cutlasses and muskets at the ready, they scanned the dense foliage for rapacious head hunters. While Dainty, a slim, golden-haired youth, smiled dreamily at the bromeliad and strove to capture its exquisite lines.

Half an hour later, on completing a satisfactory study, he registered the complete absence of brawny, naval ratings hauling heavy equipment back down the path. A furrow of doubt and vexation creased his perfect brow. Then he heard voices on the shore.

He dashed back to the shore line, in time to watch the bumboats making their way back, through the breakers, to HMS Vantage. He looked at the sketch of the orchid, still clasped in his hand, and shook his head as he reflected that he and it were two natural beauties lost amidst the leafy Polynesian shore. He sighed poetically.

At that moment a massive Polynesian war club, with multiple knobbles and ridges, flattened his golden curls. The second blow shattered the perfect symmetry of his handsome face. The muscled warrior desisted from a third, not wishing to ruin his trophy’s profile nor afflict his lunch with irritating bone fragments.

From the poop deck, Vantage’s captain captured the moment in his spyglass. Not much to Dainty, he reflected, beggars would be hungry again by tea-time.

Family Secrets 3

2009-11-30T18:17:00.001Z

For ten years after her mother’s death Jennifer looked after Aunty Winnie. Unlike Jennifer’s mother, who had been generous, cheerful and accommodating, Auntie Winnie was irascible and demanding. She was a martyr to her own digestion and a tyrant to everybody else. She sucked strong mints and gave no quarter.
Jennifer’s mother was all too accommodating to pancreatic cancer and died suddenly, leaving Jennifer a small seafront home and an inveterate invalid.

Winnie retired to the top bedroom of the tiny house and refused to respond charitably to any overtures, not even her nightly glass of warm brandy in milk. She would listen grimly to the radio at full volume, scowling at the seagulls circling above her dormer window. Throughout the night she would hobble heavy footed to the bathroom, slamming the door so that Jennifer would be fully aware of her indisposition.

Jennifer, never overly social, watched both her life and her health dwindle as she scrabbled exhaustedly up and down the narrow stairs to minister to Aunty Winnie’s remorseless requirements. She worked mornings in a greeting cards shop, returning home each day in dread of accusations of neglect and demands for fresh sheets, ironed nighties and fillets of sole in milk. She persisted for her mother’s sake. Even though on some nights she surprised herself with visions of Aunty Winnie’s spite-filled face disappearing once and for all beneath a smothering duck down pillow.

One unusually calm morning, Jennifer crept upstairs to face whatever onslaught Aunty Winnie was silently preparing for her, and discovered her lying dead beneath the dormer window, some crumbs of bread in her hand, waiting for the seagulls for all eternity.

Probate proved a problem; for when Jennifer sat down with the family solicitor, she discovered Aunty Winnie wasn’t related to her mother at all.

Lost Worlds 5

2009-11-20T16:48:00.003Z

The Count prodded at an errant log with the toe of his gleaming hunting boot and steered it back into the monumental hearth. Around the stone mantel wildebeests, antelope and bison stared down neutrally; in a corner a huge brown bear stood on its hind legs, clawing at the air, complacent, glassy eyes belying its snarling mouth.

“Estates in Carpathia!” he spat. “Mother can you seriously consider aligning the most ancient house in Ruthenia to these whey faced yokels? All for a few thousand acres of scrub, bedevilled by diseased peasants and flyblown cattle. I am cousin to kings!”

His mother waved this aside with a bejewelled hand; she was not going to be deflected by mere bombast. The Count paced in front of the roaring fire, his hands clutched behind his back. He paused to pour himself a glass of Tokay, drank it in one impetuous gulp.

“It’s practically miscegenation,” he scowled into the flames.

His mother placed her hands together in her lap and drew herself up. “You will marry Anna-Sophia,” she stated, quietly, unequivocally. “She’s lumpen, docile and three months pregnant, if her doctor is to be believed, by any one of her brothers. Carpathian families are deplorably close.” She stifled his protest with a flick of the glove. “It will save you the burden of attempting it yourself.”

“I will not demean…” he began.

“You are a ham-fisted invert, whose sole interests are slaughtering wildlife and molesting farmhands. You are also the only man in the Empire who believes this to be a secret. Anna-Sophia, almost a total ignoramus, will be a dutiful and incurious wife.”

She smiled coldly at him as he dashed the Tokay glass into the fire, his shoulders heaving with despairing sobs. The family name was safe, for another generation at least.

Lost Worlds 3

2009-11-13T14:34:00.003Z

Click on picture to enlarge

The mist came down so fast they had no chance of making it back to the valley by nightfall. The expedition party halted, strung out along the path they’d hacked through the thicket, while Colonel Arbuthnot consulted Professor Dawkins on their safest course of action. The air was humid, the mist fetid and clammy. Above them loomed ancient trees.

“We’d better climb out above this,” opined the Colonel. “Spend all night chasing our own tails if we try to pick our way back down to the river.”

However, the weather and the forest closed in and, after many hard hours, the Colonel and the Professor found themselves alone, exhausted and disorientated.

Round and round they went, hacking at seemingly endless undergrowth until just when all hope seemed lost, the Professor pointed ahead, “What’s that?”

The jungle ended suddenly at the brink of a chasm, plunging into sightless depths. On the other side was a rock wall with a path cut into it. From nowhere came the scent of jasmine on a light refreshing breeze.

Spanning the chasm was a narrow, rickety wooden bridge. At the far end stood a tiny man in saffron robes. He held a golden bowl heaped with unknown fruits.
“Welcome gentlemen to the land of peace and plenty. Cross now that we may offer you solace and nourishment.”

Tiny monks, similarly attired, appeared behind him, each carrying a golden platter, some with food, and others with scented towels.

“Come on Dawkins,” said the Colonel, “We must get into shelter.”

Both men stepped tentatively onto the fragile, swaying walk-way and instantly plummeted through it. They fell shrieking into the distant depths.

“Not again!” cried the tiny Abbott. He turned to the monks, who were holding onto the rock wall helpless with laughter, “It’s not funny!”

Lost Worlds 2

2009-11-07T17:22:00.002Z

Social Services had spirited away the remains of the late, intestate Arthur Curtis. They had done as much as was humanly possible to reconnect the deceased to the living but had failed to trace any next of kin. And so they sent in the house clearing agency prior to redecorating and reallocating Arthur’s small, top floor council flat.

Henry Seasons and his assistant Marek took the lift, which for once was working. They left Martin in the van, a necessary precaution in the ASBO age. Both were habituated to the poignant nature of their work. They had encountered all kinds of unsettling interiors, from the squalid to the stomach turning. They were not prepared for Arthur’s eyrie.

At first sight it was the familiar, discreetly shabby last refuge of a UK senior citizen; the tired furniture; the yellowing table cloth on the tiny table; the vase of dried grasses on the narrow mantelpiece.

Then Marek opened up the sideboard. Inside were dozens of tiny ballerinas. Figurines, models, toys and dolls in porcelain, china, glass and latterly plastic. A riot of tiny dancers sequestered together, frozen in the middle of some wondrous performance.

They filled the kitchen cupboards, the chest of drawers in the bedroom, the bathroom cabinet, and the meter cupboard. Every private space was filled with Little Swans, Sleeping Beauties, Sylphides et al. Hundreds upon hundreds of them, in graceful poses, staring loftily into space. Henry and Marek looked at each other and shrugged.

Henry braved the heavy wardrobe; behind the rumpled suit, the faded tweed jacket and the formless twill trousers, hung a silvery tutu with glittering skirts. It too was sagging and well worn. Under it, Henry found a pair of battered silver ballet pumps, in a large size.

Arthur Curtis had danced his final solo.

This is our 70th posting

Lost Worlds 1

2009-10-30T18:20:00.002Z

Dinosaurs lived at the end of the coppice. They lurked in the shadows down there, waiting to snatch up eight year old sisters and devour them. Despite this, Mary insisted on following Ben and Harry on their expeditions through the garden fence and into the lowering mysteries of the tatty patch of elms and scrub.

Mary would scoff loudly at these monstrous inventions, as they negotiated the narrow path winding through the thicket, under the sticky leaves of the few surviving trees. She’d point out there were no tracks. There were always tracks. And dinosaurs didn’t fly, well some did, but they couldn’t fly through trees, could they? Why didn’t the boys just stop fibbing? She was coming along anyway.

Ben and Harry would scour the little track and dusty brambles for some plausible spoor but, as ever, all they could find were single shoes, shattered bottles of cheap cider and unpleasant clumps of tissue paper containing grown up things they didn’t want to know about.

Then, there’d be some unidentifiable sound from the other end of the coppice. Foliage would rustle, branches would sway and Mary would suddenly accept the presence of ravenous, scaly giants. With a squeak of fear, she’d take off back down the path to safety. She’d be too scared to stop and stick her tongue out at her brother and his horrid friend, until she’d gained the sanctuary of the garden, where she’d turn and pull hideous and vengeful faces in their direction.

Ben and Harry would carry on their expedition unencumbered.

One day it happened just like that, only it wasn’t the noise of an imaginary dinosaur they all heard, but something much worse. And Mary stood in her garden, pulling vengeful faces in the direction of what was rapidly becoming a crime scene.

The Perfect Crime 5

2009-10-24T12:42:00.001+01:00

The bloodstain was still there on the fireside rug where the major’s body had been found in the library, the assegai protruding from his back.

Inspector Cutler and Sergeant Walsh walked back out into the hall and closed the door. The houseguests were assembled in the drawing room, the staff confined to their quarters; they had time to take stock. Cutler ran through the facts, which Walsh ticked off with a stubby pencil in his notebook.

“Time of death: eleven to eleven thirty. Mrs Prendergast was walking into the village with the vicar. The Batterby’s were seen on the golf links. Dr. Johnson was attending Daphne Hewitt in her room. Cook was with the gardener in the kitchen garden, seen by Boucher from the road. Boot boy on his bike coming back from Admiral Bascombe’s with the handbag Miss Glamis had left there.”

“Miss Glamis?” Walsh squinted at his notebook.

“On the ten forty five to Worcester,” sighed Cutler. “Makes no sense. Everyone’s in the clear.”

“Somebody isn’t, sir,” replied Walsh, tersely.

“Time for a smoke eh, Sergeant?” Cutler never carried smokes of his own.

Walsh walked over to where his raincoat was draped across the post table and rummaged in the pockets.

“My lighter,” he cried, “It’s gone!”

“You must have left it at the station, man,” replied Cutler dismissively.

“It was there when I came in, sir!” insisted Walsh, “It never leaves me. Solid gold. Anniversary present. My wife’ll go potty.”

“At home, then.”

“It was in my pocket when we rang the doorbell, sir,” Walsh persisted, “I remember making sure. I knew you’d be cadging a...” he faltered.

“Well, forget it,” snapped Cutler, “We’ve got more important things to do.”

Up in the attic, the boot boy fingered his gleaming prize. Nobody would be bothered with him.

The Perfect Crime 4

2009-10-16T12:59:00.001+01:00

When Bernie the Weasel decided to pull off the heist of the century, he knew only the best team would do. His recruitment was slow and meticulous. Finally in a secluded villa set well back from the Cote and the Casino they were to turn over, Bernie assembled his troops.

Cigar in hand, he called the roll. “Mad” Marco and his Balkan Bastards needed no introduction; their capacity for indiscriminate slaughter was legendary. “Boom Boom” Detroux, “Electrical” Wilson and “Wheels” Larsson shook hands. They had either worked before or knew each other by reputation. Until they came to Nobody Jones.

“What’s he do, this Nobody?” growled Mad Marko, measuring the portly, little man for a shallow grave.

“Absolutely nothing,” replied Nobody Jones, cheerfully, “I can assure you of that.”

“While we do the job, he goes on a camping tour of the Camargue,” rasped Bernie, “with his wife.”

There was a deadly quiet. Nobody Jones smiled amiably at everybody.

Bernie spelled it out, “Nobody Jones is the finest innocent bystander in the business.”

The silence continued, more puzzled than deadly now.

“If he’s spotted with us, he’s so clean it confuses every Law Agency in the world. Ain’t a Database built can work a connection. He’s insurance.”

There was a general buzz of approval. Someone opened a bottle of slivovitz; Jones went off to polish his camper. Bernie pulled out the maps and diagrams.

Two days later, while Nobody Jones was cruising through Montpelier, the gang knocked over the Casino for eighty million euros. It worked like a dream.

Jones retired to a small but beautiful cottage in Dorset to contemplate his garden. He had made substantial sums of money and, occasionally as he clipped away at his topiary, he would reflect that his career had been the perfect crime.

The Perfect Crime 3

2009-10-09T13:08:00.003+01:00

“Do you know who I am?” the old woman glared up at the floorwalker like a pug with toothache.

“Of course, Lady Malmouth,” he tried to pacify her. “We meet so often.”

“Then, why are you molesting me in this appalling fashion?” she bellowed, and the entire jewellery department stopped and stared.

The floorwalker prevailed on her nurse-companion, Bridget, “I must examine Lady Malmouth’s handbag. I fear she might inadvertently…,” he had said this so often, he could hardly bear to string the euphemism together, “...again.”

Bridget nodded, and then whispered in Lady Malmouth’s ear, “Shall we leave this for Christopher to settle, my lady? And go home and put our feet up?”

Lady Malmouth gave a peremptory nod and then emptied the contents of her bag onto the counter. She sniffed at the floorwalker, “If your staff were more attentive, one might not be forced to help oneself.”

Her son, the Honourable Christopher would soon be in, brusque and embarrassed, to sign the cheque; later, he would draw Bridget aside to upbraid her for taking his mother back into London’s finest store, when everyone knew what was bound to happen. Bridget would protest she had no control over her ladyship and offer notice, which Christopher would hastily turn down, having even less control himself.

The floorwalker escorted them to the side entrance, Lady Malmouth brushing his effusions aside.

Back in the Mayfair mews, Lady Malmouth sank back onto a gilded sofa, with a gin. Bridget went to her room. She took the platinum note-clip and the pearls from her coat pocket and examined them. They were of her usual high quality. At this rate she’d be able to buy the beach-house in Goa within two years. Providing Lady Malmouth didn’t do anything stupid, like die on her.

The Perfect Crime 2

2009-10-01T16:58:00.002+01:00

Half-way through the afternoon, and three lines into his poem, Peter heard the doorbell ring. He tried to ignore it, but it rang insistently. He strode to answer the door, hoping whoever it was would tell by his icy, tight-lipped expression that they were guilty of the most unpardonable interruption. He would not be drawn into any vulgar complaint; he would simply direct a glare of such mordant disdain, they would apologise profusely and retire, abject and ashamed.

He opened the door to discover there was nobody there. His rage became incandescent. Then he noticed that on the outside doormat, in place of any cringing interloper, was a very large paperbag. It was on fire. Huge flames leapt up from it, along with the smell of lighter fluid. They licked at his chest; the fumes tore at his nostrils.

Peter’s rage turned upon the instant to panic and, regardless of the effect on his slippers, he stamped down on the inferno with both feet. His frenetic fandango had an immediate effect. As the oily flames capered and receded beneath his onslaught, he became aware of a pulping texture beneath his thin leather soles, and a disgusting stench rising up amongst the benzene. Someone had filled the bag with dog faeces and he was now treading them, warm and pliant, in all directions.

He looked around for help, for answers, for some sense of purpose. His poem was as ruined as his trousers; his socks and slippers didn’t even bear thinking about. Stranded, nauseated and helpless on his own porch, he realised life had not equipped him for this.

“Did you know him?” asked one of the perpetrators, as they strolled away.
“Not in the slightest,” replied the other, “but he’ll know why we did it.”

The Perfect Crime.

2009-09-22T16:08:00.001+01:00

Mrs Bell was the last long-term resident in the Windermere Hotel, Surbiton. She had a small room, well away from the sales reps, filled with dust, lily of the valley talc and Readers Digest. She received no mail, talked to nobody, wore small black hats, tired cardigans and had continuous trouble with her spectacles. Her sole pleasure seemed to be tormenting whoever was waiting on her at dinner. She always sat at the same corner table, eyeing even the cruet with suspicion.

David, on his gap year, had drawn the short straw and Mrs Bell’s table. He brought her the day’s hors d’oeuvre.

“What’s this?” She poked at it with umbrage.

“Egg mayonnaise,” explained David.

“I don’t want this muck on it.” She poked at it again.

Under her baleful stare, David returned reluctantly to the kitchen where the chef, a malevolent chain-smoking Scottish dwarf, snarled and bustled.

“Mrs Bell doesn’t want the mayonnaise, chef,” he croaked.

MacLeish stared at him like a cobra with heartburn and then seized the plate. He pushed aside Fidel at the cleaning station and, clamping a nicotined hand over the contents, thrust Mrs Bell’s egg mayonnaise under the soapy hot tap, sluicing the dish back to three dark lettuce leaves and a severely hardboiled egg. He flattened out the lettuce, now steaming faintly and smelling of lye, and crushed the egg halves into their centre. Then he handed the plate back. “Give the old bitch that fucker,” he ordered.

Caught between a rock and a hard place, David sleepwalked his way back to Mrs Bell’s table, and placed the dish in front of her. She inspected it closely, sniffed at in, and prodded it with her fork.

“That’s much better,” she snapped.

David floated back to the kitchen; he was now a made man.

Love is a many splendoured thing 4

2009-09-15T14:55:00.004+01:00

Brooke received a singing telegram on St.Valentine’s Day. A circus clown; red nose, huge shoes, whirling bow tie and voluminous trousers, arrived at her open-plan office, and positioned himself in front of her desk. While Brooke, red-faced and mortified tried, to ignore him, he threw out his arms and announced a song of Andrew’s composing. This detailed, at full volume, endearing characteristics like her snoring, her predilection for junk food and her comprehensive shaving habits. It then moved on to a sentimental pronouncement of forgiveness and a resounding if fatuous declaration of undying love, “I love you lots and lots and lots/ My sweetest, darling farty-bots.”

On this, the clown produced a klaxon which he honked suggestively, before planting a wet kiss on Brooke’s crimson cheek, with a final cry of “Happy Valentines, you hairy old slapper!!”

He then strode away, his shoes slapping on the parquet flooring, his job well done.

Most of Brooke’s colleagues had frozen in a rictus of embarrassment, but her closest friends fed upon the spectacle greedily. Brooke refused to run, tear-sodden, to the ladies washroom. Instead she speed-dialled Andrew and told him he had a very small penis and bad breath, and that her Yoga coach, Darryl, was an infinitely better screw. Plus her brothers were now looking for him, to break both his legs. She rang off, to spontaneous if sporadic applause, and attempted to get on with her morning.

Ben from IT, who had worshipped her from afar, tried to restrain his elation. Aware that the odour powering out from his trainers might betray his joy, he slipped into the men’s washroom to commune his silent triumph to the roller towel. The coast was clear. Brooke was there for the taking. He wondered what doggerel he could inflict on her from Darryl.

Love is a many splendoured thing 3

2009-09-07T16:56:00.001+01:00

Brenda had never considered cosmetic surgery; she was quite happy with the body God had given her. God clearly had a penchant for short redheads with moon faces, small breasts and chunky thighs. Everyone else would just have to make do.

Until she met Eamonn. They both hated the same things and enjoyed long walks in the country in proper boots. Eamonn bought her a new rucksack to carry their waterproofs and so she knew it was the real thing. But then something hinted to her that Eamonn might not share God’s taste in women. He kept looking at Britney Spears videos, singing her songs, mooning over her pictures in magazines.

There was nothing for it, she concluded, she would have to despoil God’s creation and become a big breasted blonde with cow eyes. She didn’t tell Eamonn about his lovely surprise; she told him she’d be away for a few days with her job.

When Eamonn next went round to Brenda’s flat, he was confronted with an angry blonde with black eyes, a weasel’s nose and aggressively large breasts. She daren’t move her mouth and her breasts felt like someone had taken a wrench to them. How the hell could he put her through all this?

Chastened by her transformation and her quiet fury, Eamonn suggested a weekend on Dartmoor, their old favoured hiking country. She sulked all the way down the motorway, and overnight at the hostel. Her breasts chafed under the rucksack straps. She could hardly breathe through her tiny new nostrils. She couldn’t even snort with impatience at him.

Next morning, she stormed across the moors in silence. Eamonn put a spurt on, striding ahead until his muscles screamed. Perhaps he could lose her by the Tor. After that it would be up to helicopter rescue.

Love is a many splendoured thing 2

2009-08-24T18:03:00.002+01:00

Brendan had spent ten of his thirty years of marriage inside. He thought this was a natural consequence of being a career criminal. His wife, June, who’d brought up their two boys alone, thought it was a consequence of Brendan being pig thick. She tried not to dwell on it.

June’s friend, Winnie, whose Dave was a serially unsuccessful robber, said her marriage wouldn’t have lasted without Dave’s lengthy prison sentences. Absence made the heart grow fonder, she said. June hadn’t noticed this, but kept it to herself.

June found herself becoming close to Terry, her next door neighbour, well past forty, who worked for the council and lived with his sister. Terry ran June around, dropped the boys off at football and fixed things around the house. June wasn’t sure what she’d do, if Terry made a pass at her but was somehow disheartened this never seemed to cross his mind.

Brendan was in Wandsworth, looking at another three years, when June surprised herself by fondling Terry’s bottom beside the airing cupboard. Terry pretended not to notice and went on replacing the landing light bulb, so June persisted, almost petulantly. They ended up under the quilt in the second bedroom, where Terry went through his aerobics apologetically and June hung on for dear life. At last, she was meeting her own needs. Terry persisted conscientiously until she gave a little hoot of triumph, whereupon he got off and went downstairs to make a pot of tea.

Their affair went on for three months until, for once in his life, Brendan was acquitted for lack of evidence. On his second night back home, he met Terry at the local pub and Terry bought him a large scotch. Brendan thought he’d never seen the man looking so free and easy.

Love is a many splendoured thing 1

2009-08-15T15:52:00.003+01:00

Daisy always had the Blues in her blood. In her prepubescent years while her friends were being witches or West Life fans, Daisy would sing the blues in her bedroom, loudly. Her mother was tone deaf, and her father wanted a quite life in other ways, so Daisy remained uninterrupted.

Around her fourteenth birthday she met Phil, and let him listen to her perform old Bonnie Rait numbers in her bedroom, while her mum was hanging out the washing downstairs. Phil, whose sex life had been chiefly a thing of fantasy, said he thought she was wonderful. She told him he had a lot to learn. Blues was not wonderful. It was searing and intense. But she slipped his hand up her t-shirt by way of encouragement

As they grew older, Daisy tried to start a band, but it was difficult. Fellow musicians drifted away, usually after the first rehearsal. It was only Phil’s determination, his white van and his overtime money from the Post Office that kept her going. She worked as a hairdresser, humming all the while, and sung in pubs at the weekend. There was never more than one gig per venue, but Phil assured her she needed the exposure.

One day during a lunchtime gig, after the strippers, she saw somebody recording her on his digital camera. He and his friend seemed to be smirking about something, so she faced them out and asked to see what was so funny.

She listened to herself in horror. “Phil, I sound like a foghorn!”

“You do, love,” replied Phil, gently. Then thinking to console her, he added, “But you could suck a golf ball through a garden hose.”

She’s given up the blues now. And she’s given up Phil, for letting her go on so long with it.

A natural history of bankers 4

2009-08-04T19:35:00.001+01:00

Sheila had fought every step of the way in her banking career. She’d endured team meetings in lap-dancing clubs, testosterone-charged banter, exclusion from the coke binges in the men’s washroom, the yobbery that spanned classes and ages throughout the bank. She’d evaded the cul de sac of trackers and analysts and pushed her way in amongst the dealers and managers. She was on the up, and she intended to keep herself there.
She knew all about glass ceilings. She’d seen the dominant males up there on high, urinating down on her, but she’d persevered. She had to be twice as good to earn half as much. Her bonuses were paltry; her Porsche wasn’t a turbo; her flat in Mayfair wasn’t exactly paid off; but she was still in the game.
Until one morning she found herself out on the pavement with her belongings in a cardboard box and news photographers snapping away. She stood there in a daze. She cost half as much as her peers, worked twice as hard and brought in more money. If there was any advantage in being cheap, she’d expected the recession to point it out to the over-cologned bison running her department. She hadn’t lost billions trying to compensate for the size of her penis, after all.
It was all so dreadfully unfair. She walked into the bijoux City pub across the road, pushed her way through the uber-redundant, drowning their sorrows on vintage Crystal before their credit cards were torn up, and ordered herself a scotch. The moment it arrived, she burst into tears of exasperation, not caring for a moment that her profile was faltering and her make-up blurring with it.
“It’s so unfair!” she wailed.
“You’re right, there,” agreed the antediluvian barman. “In China, they’d have shot you.”

A natural history of bankers 3

2009-07-27T15:50:00.003+01:00

Click on picture to enlarge.

When her dad’s pension fund dwindled to beer money and he was required, along with fellow employees, to take one month’s unpaid holiday, Harriet Walker felt more apprehensive than is customary about bringing home her new boyfriend, Oliver. Oliver was presentable, with Home Counties, privately-educated provenance, no overt addictions or twitches and a reasonably restrained taste in sports cars. He worked, nonetheless, for a bank in the City. He had received bonuses for diligence and assertive behaviour, which, no doubt her father would see as the fruits of rampaging greed, and other men’s gullibility.

The moral standing of a coprophagic child abuser sat easily on Oliver’s shoulders, as he entered the garden where Harriet’s father was listlessly cutting back wisteria. Oliver’s guileless demeanour reflected a complete innocence of his profession’s tarnished reputation in the Walker household, and indeed the world at large. Oliver was a personable young man and determined to be liked by everyone he chose for the privilege.

“My God, Mr Walker,” he offered politely as he surveyed the truncated shrubbery. “You do have green fingers.”

Mr Walker hyperventilated at this sudden intrusion; he forestalled cardiac arrest by inquiring, “Are you Harriet’s bloke?”

“That’s right,” Oliver saw the state of Mr Walker’s gardening gloves and decided to forego shaking hands.

“Met her at that damn estate agents, I suppose,” Mr Walker essayed.

“Oh, no. I work for a City bank,” smiled Oliver, and added with mock sincerity, “Sorry about that!”

“Come on you two! I’m sure lunch must be ready!” Harriet sprinted down the garden path, wondering how on earth she had missed Oliver’s arrival; all her nightmares about to take shape, all her precautions redundant.

.As they walked into lunch, Mr Walker stuck a garden fork into the back of Oliver’s leg; he hoped the brute got tetanus.

A natural history of bankers 2

2009-07-18T12:30:00.002+01:00

Jeremy worked for a merchant bank. He didn’t have the emotional abandon to be a rock star, so he muddled along playing guitar in groups, whose members were similarly encumbered by professional day jobs. He bought expensive equipment and worked diligently on his song collections. He also rose to some prominence at the bank, being known for his diligence and his ruthlessness. However, the amoral rapacity he brought to financial matters just wouldn’t transfer to his creative ambitions.

His latest group broke up when the drummer was transferred to a litigations specialist in Hong Kong, and Jeremy felt himself at a crossroads. He could not be both banker and musician. To his colleagues’ disbelief, he resigned and went to follow his dream, saving them a considerable amount of severance money as the crunch came.

Jeremy found a job playing in a Riverside café frequented by the bohemian middle-classes. He told the manager his history and his dream, and the man took him on immediately. Jeremy would sit on a stool with his guitar and work quietly through his repertoire. The customers would drink coffee and eat recherché salads and ignore him. After a few days however, this lack of appreciation began to irritate him. Next day he turned up with an amp, cranked it up, and began to sing out his soul, a banker no more.

The manager terminated his residency immediately.

“I’m a musician,” Jeremy protested, “I deserve to be listened to.”

“You’re shit,” replied the manager, “I just didn’t notice till you turned up the volume”

Jeremy carted off his equipment, to tell his girlfriend he was between gigs again.
“Thought a singing banker would be a laugh,” the manager explained to his chef. “But there’s nothing funny about them at all, is there?”

A natural history of bankers

2009-07-08T17:04:00.001+01:00

Ray cruised his Bentley Turbo through the suburban streets to the house he and his fellow hedge-funders had had converted into their state-of –the-art office. Parking was a nightmare with all the middle class women whingeing on about their school runs or getting the ambulance in for granddad’s outpatient visits, but he could ignore them with ease. It was handy for Heathrow, the races and a little state-of-the art oriental girl he maintained in Wimbledon. It was his big joke. He could make money anywhere. And he could spend it exactly how he wished to.

That was all changing of course. The money he’d made had been drastically reduced, and hiding it away was becoming ever more complicated, but times would change. And when they did, he would be there at the front of the queue. The market belonged to marketeers. It was the natural way of things. He parked up and went in to make money.

When he came out again that evening, he was dumfounded. Gouged into his Bentley’s gleaming bonnet were the words “USELESS EVIL GREEDY BASTARD!” He gazed about him in utter disbelief at the quite road, with its pollarded trees and recycling bins laid dutifully out for the following day. Who on earth round there could do something like that?

Ray went back in to his desk and called the police. They took an hour to arrive, a statement and no further action.

Family Secrets 2

2009-06-29T16:07:00.004+01:00

Pat and Mary Reagan were outwardly proud and privately relieved when their youngest, Barry, joined a religious community. Barry was never likely to follow his brothers into the family firm. His first attempt at hod-carrying had ended in tears (his) and a broken foot (his father’s). He suffered from asthma and vertigo, so his Uncle Tom’s scaffolding firm was equally denied him.

He was not one for a drink or a bet, and on family occasions would be found with the women, listening to them bemoan the moral standing of friends and neighbours. Barry sat quietly by, eyes sparkling, taking in every nuance of the feminine pecking order.

The women set him up with Maureen from the post office. A large girl with thick wavy hair and no obvious impairments, she watched him weep inaudibly in the bus shelter on the way home from their first date, and consigned him, loudly, to the role of Village Nancy.

Barry finally secured a part time position in the Chemists, where he dutifully doled out mouthwash, haemorrhoid cream and sanitary wear to the small community. The younger women objected to his whey-faced involvement in their intimate requirements, but the elder forbore with him, such a nice boy, if a worry to his mother.

Finally the parish priest, Father Nigel, arranged for Barry to become a lay brother at a small religious community in the back country. It would give him a purpose and keep him out of trouble, Father Nigel opined.

“My own son a bride of Christ,” grumbled Pat Reagan over a pint of porter, as Barry was shipped out to his vocation.

“Bride of Father Nigel, more like,” muttered his brother, Tom. “Still, good luck to him.”

Barry had kept Maureen out of the family; they could afford to be charitable.

Family Secrets.

2009-06-19T17:15:00.003+01:00

Nobody would ever talk about Auntie Irene. She appeared as a teenager, ghostly thin and with protruding teeth, at the edges of black and white family photographs, staring into the camera with lop-sided intensity. She wore shapeless floral frocks and sandals, seemingly in all weathers. Sometimes she stood beside her sister June, whose dazzling smile and extravagant perm cast her into shadow. There was one faded photograph of Irene as a baby, squinting in disbelief at the lens, from her mother’s lap. There were no pictures of her in adult life.

If Auntie Irene remained peripheral in family photographs, she was entirely absent from family conversations and history. Something happened during her teenage years that effectively wiped her off the map; although her death certificate, nestling beneath the same photographs in a battered biscuit tin in the attic, showed her to have died, of pneumonia at the age of forty seven.

At first Penny thought her auntie was a spy, leading a romantic double life far away from dull family routine in Tring, where June, Penny’s mum, had ended up the wife of a dyspeptic dentist. Every time Penny asked her mum about Auntie Irene, she was brushed off with a terse, “We don’t want to go into all that, now.”

But Penny did want to go into all that. The less she knew about Auntie Irene, the more she wanted to be like her. Until one day she heard her mum and dad arguing, and her dad capped a particularly heated altercation by yelling, “You’re as mad as poor old Irene!”

“You leave my sister alone!” her mum screamed back.

“Pity your dad didn’t,” retorted her father at the top of his voice. “She might have had half a chance.”

After that, Penny didn’t talk about Auntie Irene either.

Old dog, new tricks 4

2009-06-17T18:26:00.002+01:00

Mariusz had always been a carpenter. His father had been a carpenter, and his grandfather. He’d been through every conceivable state certificate and qualification and had worked with his father, as soon as he was able to hold a saw. If you asked Mariusz about himself, the first thing he’d tell you was that he was a carpenter, born and bred. He may not have been much of a conversationalist, but he could do wonders with wood.

Until he came to England, to work in the building trade. In England he found there were more than enough carpenters. They weren’t as good as him, young men with slapdash ways, but they took precedence with the gangers, because they had been there for longer. So Mariusz worked as a labourer while the carpenters bodged jobs in front of him. He was earning money, true, but gradually despondency overtook him.

Jerzy, the site foreman and an old friend from home, had a great idea. “Mariusz, you’re a shit labourer.” He told his old friend one day. “And you look like shit, too.”

“I’m a master carpenter,” Mariusz moaned. “I wasn’t meant to shovel.”

“We got too many fucking carpenters,” replied Jerzy, “Be an electrician.”

“I don’t know anything about it!” protested Mariusz.

“Who the fuck does over here?!” laughed Jerzy. “Follow the fucking diagrams. Long as you’re not colour blind, you can’t go wrong.”

So Mariusz became the gang electrician. His first job burned to the ground two days after the plasterers had finished. A month later he shorted out High Wycombe. After that, three scaffolders died when a Chelsea renovation went suddenly live.
Jerzy, site foreman on each job, was dismissed for an unacceptable level of delay. Mariusz is site foreman now. He’s really taken to it.

Old dog, new tricks 3

2009-06-06T16:13:00.003+01:00

Rosemary got her grandson Neil to bring her knitting machine down from the attic. It was going to be the source of a much needed second income when her husband was alive and, as her pension dwindled, it looked like it was going to have to fulfil the same function again.

She went through all the patterns in her instruction book, still safe in its plastic bag after all these years and saw, sadly, that the cardigans and jumpers of a bygone age was about as attractive as the room dividers and lava lamps that the models wearing them were posing beside. Some jumpers had motifs knitted into them. One even boasted something like a Smurf or a Troll, she couldn’t remember. Even so, they simply wouldn’t do. Rosemary looked out of her flat window in search of inspiration, and saw that someone had spray painted “Pussy Posse” on the wall by the garages down below. That sounded modern and something to do with cats and cowboys so it should appeal to girls and boys alike. She rummaged through her bags of wool, saved over the years and pushed to the back of the cupboard beneath the stairs. She chose apricot and rose and set to work.

Rosemary’s oldest friend June modelled her new creation at the Community centre where she went for senior citizens yoga. Everyone was very taken. Glenda from the Bowling Club said she’d like four in team colours (Lilac and pale grey) and Enid ordered two as Christmas presents for her nieces in Australia.

Word soon spread amongst the elder ladies in the area and Rosemary was kept very busy with the demand. Her housekeeping increased considerably. Now, all she had to do was produce something that appealed more directly to the men.

Old dog, new tricks 2

2009-05-29T11:31:00.001+01:00

David knew he was a cliché. A man of his age hanging round with a woman twenty years his junior. It was pathetic, doomed and irresistible. It was also adultery, but he put that on ice. He and his wife went back a long way; theirs had been a primeval romance and they had evolved, he told himself, into different species.

It was different with Katie, a junior executive in a sister department at his conglomerate. With Katie, there was passion, originality, lots of laughs. She didn’t think he was a played-out irritation, she thought he was worldly and capable. She admired him, and she told him so. Nobody had done either of those things for years, if ever. This had to be the real thing.

He bought a baseball cap. And an i-pod, which he could just about operate, without breaking it or dislocating his thumb. He tried to follow, understand and tolerate TV dramas, documentaries about dogs coming back from the dead and the extraordinary effectiveness of the primal scream. An essential part of his pre-sex supplication was an update on modern culture and Katie required him to hold his own, before she held his for him.

He ate vegetarian meals. He folded up the bigotries of decades and threw them away. In return he got a new life, a reborn vitality and an entirely new sense of self worth.

Until one day Katie told him they’d have to stop. And went off to a different job and persons of her own age.

David thought he ought to be grown up about this, but he found that in his time with Katie, he’d forgotten how. He wished he could be an old dog again, but the new tricks kept getting in the way.

Old dog, new tricks.

2009-05-18T18:05:00.001+01:00

Colin had spent twenty five years as an engineer. He started off in the field and ended up doing fifteen years air-conditioned soft labour in middle-management in the Gulf. He built up a prodigious set of golfing stories, a confirmed way of doing things, and very few friends. The longer he stayed in place, the more he was singled out as a target by other, younger, hungrier engineers. They felt he was cocooned. They felt he had been cocooned years ago, and had dried out in there. He was best hoovered up discreetly.

Colin continued to pump out his complacent bonhomie, with his short-sleeved drip-dry shirts and multicolour biro, until finally he was sucked up by someone in human resources, based in Houston, and spat out at Heathrow, with a small remittance and no career prospects.

He found a job as a limo driver; shuttling those still rampant on the career ladder to the airport or other significant destinations. He always had an anecdote handy; a cheerful recollection from his past to mirror or cap whatever the suit in the back seat was going through. He was cordially detested by those who bothered to listen to his observations and advice.

Until one day the culls began, and the suits in the back seat began to look ashen and stressed. As the days went on, they talked about downsizing, changing careers, opting out, trying anything

“Whatever you do,” advised Colin, “Don’t touch the chauffeur business. It’s a disaster.”

This time he had his eye on the competition.

Absurdly mismatched pairs 3

2009-05-11T17:51:00.002+01:00

It was quite a shock when Julie discovered she had been discreetly possessed by Lucifer. She tried to offset this by casting off her Goth regalia and impersonating a lyrical hippie girl in love with the universe and at one with nature. She had some hope that Satan would be so disgusted by an insipid flower child, that he’d vacate the premises and move somewhere more appropriate. Like Gillian from next door, who already had a wall eye and seemed eminently suitable.

Satan on the other hand, seemed to enjoy the street theatre, the haikus, the incense and even the brown rice. He whispered observations on the stylistic limitations of Khalil Gibran and the advantages of bestiality but in the main seemed content with a passive role. Maybe it was the marihuana, maybe the patchouli, but Julie’s demonic possession stayed a relatively balanced affair.

Until the third day of a music festival out in the country when Julie’s tepee collapsed under the continuous torrential rain and she found herself wading through mud on the first day of her period, with her sanitary protection stolen along with her handbag by persons unknown.

She was queuing in the rain for the overflowing ladies portocabin behind a number of similarly bedraggled women, when a girl in teased hair and patchwork tights pushed in front of her and told her, drunkenly, to “get over it.”. Julie took her by her satin lapels and wrenched out her throat with her teeth.

As the interloper’s arterial blood pumped across the mire, the queue seemed to clear instantly and Julie was safely ensconced on the loo when the police arrived. She opened the door on a tableau of gore and disapproval.

“Whatever possessed you?” cried someone.

“Just a friend.” replied Julie.

Life imitating art 1

2009-05-04T16:18:00.001+01:00

Daniel Morris was quite a useful fast bowler. He played for the Sunday side of Swafham and was counted on to dispose of the major threats amongst the opposition, so that Swafham’s captain, the portly Reverend Kershaw and his fellow opener, Constable Burrows, could amble out and safely knock off the required runs. They would then retire to the Dog and Pheasant, for a few pints and a gloat.

Swafham’s success made them an irritation in the fixtures table, but their beautiful ground offset the inevitable pasting from Morris’s bowling and the trundling run acquisition of Kershaw and Burrows.

One day they were drawn against a side of mini-celebrities, past sportsmen, media personalities and the inevitable recuperated rock legend. The mini-celebrities provided champagne and orange juice at pre-match drinks, but Morris was careful to restrict himself to the orange juice. To the inexplicable amusement of the recuperated rock legend, he sunk three glasses in succession.

Half way through his run-up, Daniel Morris felt an elation he had never experienced before; his legs felt immensely powerful, his chest expansive, his arms supple and strong. The ball felt like a metal projectile weighted perfectly in his hand. The breath streamed through his nostrils in an icy gush. He focused past the dwarfish umpire to the awaiting batsman.

The batsman seemed to morph into an excoriated form of David Gower. His face became a fleshy blur. His legs, encased in bandage-like pads, straddled the wicket. He gave a hallucinatory leer and flexed goatish muscles.

The effect was raw, venomous and terrifying. Without knowing what impelled him, Daniel Morris shrieked with terror and speeding ever faster, raced down the length of the wicket, past the crouching batsman, past the keeper, over the boundary ropes and across the fields.

He has retired from the game.

The bigger picture.

2009-04-28T15:47:00.001+01:00

Tony was called up during the first days of World War 2 and sent to Norway. He was eighteen with prominent teeth and a concave chest. Apart from summer holidays at Broadstairs, he’d never been outside Rotherhithe before and the sea voyage, despite the U-boat threat, entranced him.

Not very long after they had landed, they sat Tony beside a fjord with a Carr’s anti-tank rifle and told him to cover their retreat. A column of Panzer tanks was imminent and it was his job to hold them up. He left with a very small quantity of chocolate, even less ammunition and an encouraging pat on his helmet.

He lay there in the glorious sunshine, his anti-tank rifled trained on a distant bend in the road around which the first Panzer tank would soon rumble, and thought how wonderful the morning was. The air was crystal clear, the waters glittered and a soft breeze rustled through the green, clean grass.

A roly-poly famer’s wife appeared round the distant bend in the road with a cow on a halter. Tony listened to the tinkling of its bell on the wind and averted his aim. He hoped she would be well clear before the Panzers arrived, and then tried not to think about the Panzers at all.

As the farmer’s wife and the cow made their way slowly towards him he could see she had an affable smile on her face, to match the morning. He wondered if he should say something as she passed. Something sociable, to dissipate the tension in him, the fear he couldn’t quite acknowledge

As she drew near he shouted over a polite if nervous, “Good morning!”

“Bollocks!” she called out genially. Then, having observed the necessary proprieties, she walked on, leaving Tony waiting for the Panzers.

Stereotypical drama.

2009-04-22T19:02:00.001+01:00

When the bombardment finally stopped the mud still seemed to churn and shift. Corporal Alfie Parsons smiled grimly at this from the bottom of his dugout. He was probably the only man to suffer sea sickness ten or twenty miles inland. He certainly seemed to be the only man alive in his trench. He watched his hands stop shaking then after tidying up a dragging puttee he crawled out into the main alley to see if any of Ypres remained.

Cruelly, it was a beautiful sunny day. A light breeze played on the shattered mud-smeared world around him and plucked at the twisted limbs of the raggedy dead and the splintered wood and tangled wire of their failed defences.

He looked instinctively up at the outer wall, in case the Hun were about to fall upon him, and gasped aloud as a butterfly fluttered into land on top of a shrapnel pocked periscope. Its breathtaking beauty and open fragility stilled the earth beneath Corporal Alfie Parsons. Tears welled in his eyes as he reached out to cup the unattainable.

He felt it flutter and then settle in the doting prison of his fingers and drew it to his grimy face. To breath in its innocence before freeing it.

A sniper’s bullet entered his clavicle and ricocheted amongst his ribs. Corporal Alfie Parsons retched out gouts of blood and sank to his knees. The butterfly resettled on some nearby cable. The trench was retaken by evening.

(Arnhem, Naesby, Im Jim, Khe San,Waterloo, booby trap ulster, baggage train at Agincourt)

Disasters narrowly averted

2009-04-14T19:02:00.002+01:00

Click on picture to enlarge.

When Julian jumped in front of the train, he felt a great sense of release. He had considered his life at length. He’d run through his prospects, his relationship with other people at work, the dim light in which he was held by his family, the exaggerated absence of his sex life, his incompetence at any kind of social endeavour, sport, hobby or pastime. Above all, the boredom that ravaged him from the moment he got up to face the meaningless selection of a variety breakfast cereal.

Each day, from the moment he opened his eyes, his life went down hill, inevitably, interminably, irrevocably. It was beyond his understanding, and beyond his control.

Now, for once, he was going to take control of the one aspect of it that remained in his power. He was going to cease breathing. The rest could do as it liked.

He pondered the methods open to him. He’d heard alcohol and pills could be both agonising and unreliable. He was far too squeamish to try cutting anything, and he couldn’t afford to fly to some clinic in Switzerland, to say he was feeling terminal. Finally, he decided on a Central Line train coming into North Acton station. Access was easy. The platforms were low, so there wasn’t far to jump. And it would be quick.

He bought a ticket to Holborn, so as not to arouse suspicion, went down to the eastbound platform, waited for fifteen minutes and then, as the train arrived, he jumped.

The train stopped short. Everybody stared. Now he was in real trouble.