A Tangled Rope

New technological Breakthrough Announced!

davidhadley59@gmail.com (David Hadley) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:03:00 +0000

People speak of the internet, the walkman, the personal computer, the mobile phone, the anti-itchy-knee device and - even - nuclear-powered shopping tigers as the defining technological innovations of recent years. But, if his new prototype lives up to its potential then Porrigestain Mankyvest will surely be the contemporary inventor whose name lives on into well into the future.

Although still at the prototype stage, his - as yet unnamed - device could be the one technological innovation that will revolutionize the lives and careers of so many people who work in public service jobs. From politicians and their civil servants through local government workers right down to the sales assistants in computer retail chain stores, this device could undoubtedly revolutionise the jobs these people do. In turn, Mankyvest's device will revolutionise the lives of the rest of us, the general public, too, who are forced to interact with the people performing these public service jobs as we go about our daily lives. So in short, this device has revolutionary worldwide implications.

Quite simply, the Mankyvest device works like this: When in contact with a member of public needing a specific service to be performed by the public service worker, then that worker just enters twenty-seven personally specific data pieces into the device using any three of the integrated keyboards. Then the public service worker presses four function keys and waits, for often as little as 30 seconds. Then, after a thorough and painstaking analysis of the data provided, the machine is able to print out - using its own integrated printer - a set of instructions, with easy-to-follow diagrams, for that public service worker. If the public service worker then follows the instructions exactly, it will - for the first time in the history of such public service jobs - enable that public service worker to distinguish easily - and with an astonishing accuracy rate of over 76% - their arse from their elbow.

The UK's Leading Conceptual Artist

davidhadley59@gmail.com (David Hadley) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:44:00 +0000

Lepidoptera Disestablishment has - over the last few decades - become one of this country's leading conceptual artists. Her new exhibition at the prestigious Tipton East Scout Hut has become one of the Must-See shows of the year, if not of the decade. Although lacking any official confirmation, following her nomination for the 2009 Turner prize, it has been rumoured that not only will Disestablishment be showing several new works, but several of the major pieces from her career so far will also on display.

So, all in all, it will be a rare treat for the genuine conceptual art lover, and we can expect that the streets of Tipton will overflow with conceptual artists, critics and many, many, other lovers of high metropolitan fashionable artistry. Quite possibly a rare and a singular treat for this otherwise quiet backwater, only ever famous for being the home of the Pork Scratching. No doubt, the citizens of this town will be falling over themselves to give the traditional Black Country welcome usually reserved for hordes of effete and pretentious Southern softies.

So, for those that do survive the welcome from the locals, what can they expect once they have bribed the scouts to let them into the hut?

Well, in the words of Disestablishment's art dealer for the last seventeen years, Stigmata Clenches, quite a treat. "I remember waking up in Lepidoptera's studio one morning," he reminisced recently. "…and, after disentangling myself from my then boyfriend I just happened to glance up and there it was, right there, in the kitchen. I was amazed, shocked, awed, sexually aroused, amazed once more and shocked again."

[Disestablishment's seminal piece – Fridge]

Clenches is, of course, talking about Disestablishment's seminal piece - Fridge. A free-standing white metallic… well, one can only say 'box', where one of the sides opens to reveal a series of shelves on which Lepidoptera had precisely arranged several items of foodstuff, some wrapped in cling film, others unidentified in plain plastic boxes and other miscellaneous containers. What else could say so much about our modern 21^st century urban lifestyles and the state of the world we live in, in both environmental and in geo-political terms? 'The most outspoken condemnation of neo-conservative American Neo-imperialism in the current art catalogues' gushed the Sunday Indifference art-critic Formica Buttplug, when it was first shown at the Tate six years ago.

However, everyone is eager to witness her latest piece. Simply entitled Hanky, Lepidoptera herself explained in her most recent interview in Pretentious Git Magazine:

I had a bit of a cold, and I… like… y'know… just… well… basically… sneezed. Luckily, for some reason I had a paper handkerchief nearby…." She smiled, blushing slightly. "Usually, I don't bother with such petit-bourgeois conventions," she added nervously. "Usually, I just wipe my snot on the nearest lackey or hanger-on, and they are so grateful for the privilege. But, well, let's just say I had this paper hanky, all right? No need to make such a big deal about it…huh." She drank deeply from her seventh bottle of vodka before continuing. "Anyway, I had a look afterwards, y'know? Yeah, I'm totally outrageous like that, I just don't care about your sterile, hypocritical, middle-class morality. And then I thought I could make some serious money… er… a serious point about the modern existential dilemma with this piece. Y'know, what was once on the inside, internal, private, is now on the outside, on display for the world to see. It just says so much about this celebrity culture we world famous artists have to endure in this day and age.

So, an exhibition not to be missed, even though it does take place far away from - the centre of the universe - London, in the sort of place the metropolitan elite would not usually allow their live-in nannies to be seen dead in, let alone visit themselves. But such is the pulling-power of this hyper-important artist in this fashionable stage of her career, even such a - normally kiss of death - stunt such as holding her exhibition outside of the metropolis is unlikely to fall flat.

Book now - tickets are bound to disappear fast.

Blog Post of the Day

davidhadley59@gmail.com (David Hadley) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:47:00 +0000

"Well, Alan, here we are right at the start of a new Blog post. How do you think it is going, Alan?"

"Well, Gary. It's early doors, yet. But the lad seems off to a strong start, moving slowly - but confidently - down the page."

"So, then Alan… er… Gary… no, that's me…. Er… Jimmy, do you think we're in for a good post today?"

"No. The lad's tired, out of form. We'll be lucky to see a couple of worthwhile lines… if that."

"Alan?"

"Yes…. But I think the lad has it in him to give 110% on the day, at the end of the day, Gary."

"Mark?"

"Maybe. It isn't over until it is over, at the end of the day, when all's said and done, Gary."

"Well… with those final words we'll hand you back to the studio. Steve?"

"Thanks Des… Er… Gary. Now, stay tuned for the final…. Yes, the final of the Women's East-Gloucestershire Under-27 Standing-A-Bit-Still Contest! Coming up right after this short break."

Here We Are

davidhadley59@gmail.com (David Hadley) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:43:00 +0000

[British School 19th century 1800-1899]

Here we are, looking for a moment we can take and use for ourselves. Here we are expecting this world to leave us alone as we find our own quiet space far from the indifferent crowds and faces that watch every step we make.

We are lost between them, between those that do not care and those who haunt our every moment. We do not go to places where we are known, we do not look for the familiar.

We become new people, away from the people and places that define us.

Everything becomes new for this old familiar story and we play roles so many have played before. We are not the first and we will not be the last. We exist though in our own special time, with places where we are not known and surrounded by strangers to us both.

We create a new life to run alongside our normal lives and we step in and out of each one as though we are stepping through mirrors.

[See here for an explanation of these posts labelled as Fragments]

Bonfire Night Poem: Fireworks

davidhadley59@gmail.com (David Hadley) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:52:00 +0000

[A ~~Monday~~ ~~Friday~~ Bonfire Night Poem]

Fireworks

These times take the shape
Of beginnings for you.
But I've lived a life
Like this before.
The sharp sudden colours
Of fireworks exploding
Into instances of creation
Are so new to you, so you
Bang on the window
And clap and yell.

I have been here before
And every now is tinged
With memories of my first times
And how each bursting memory
Lasted longer, far longer
Than this brief life of sparks
Tumbling down onto damp ground.

Times like this are gone
So suddenly. We forget
So much about transience.
But this - it is your first time,
It will always last forever.

First published: Eclipse. Issue 8. October 1999

Less Tangible

davidhadley59@gmail.com (David Hadley) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:45:00 +0000

Putting all this aside for one moment, I try to turn back the pages to where it all began for me. The days when I was so lost and alone, I couldn’t make any sense of the size and shape of this world, and how it seemed to move along without ever noticing me. I felt like a shadow, less tangible than everything else and dependant on external forces to be seen. I had no solidity of my own, hardly ever noticed until the day you stepped out of the heat of the sun.

You gave me a reason and that reason in turn gave me a shape, a form and solidity, until one day too, I could step out of the shadows and become whole.

[See here for an explanation of these posts labelled as Fragments]

Wednesday Story: Worker

davidhadley59@gmail.com (David Hadley) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:09:00 +0000

This whole business has been yet another one of those things. Sometimes, I wonder just how I get into situations like this. Things seem to happen to me without me getting any say, any initial choice, in the matter.

My life with Jane seemed to happen to me, no matter what I did. For instance, I can remember waking up one morning and, quite suddenly, realising we had been married for six years. I could not remember where all the time had gone. I had - sort of - just drifted, gone along with the flow, letting Jane decide when it was time to move along to the next stage from going out together, to engagement, to marriage, to mortgage and new home.

When the long-expected redundancies finally came around, and my job disappeared, I had no idea what to do. I just wandered around in a state of... well... shock... I suppose. Again, it was Jane who pushed me out of my torpor and into the round of applications, interviews and the - seemingly inevitable - rejections.

That was it really. Job-hunting became something else I slipped into, another dull routine. That is, until the day I walked into that office, and Fiona stood up, leaning forward from behind the desk to shake my hand. There was something in the way she stared at me all through that interview that made me nervous. I wondered if I had ever met her before and - maybe - insulted her in some way.

All through that interview I had the feeling that Fiona was someone I must have yelled obscenities at; for nicking my parking space, or pushing in the queue at the Post Office or something like that. Usually, I am quite a mild-mannered and relaxed person, but sometimes - just sometimes - I do really lose my temper with people. When I'm in one of those fits of temper, fits of rage, that seem to be growing all too common these days. Whenever I shout at anyone - usually in the car, or in shops and suchlike - I often wonder how I would react if I met those same people in another, less fraught, situation.

I was nervous throughout the interview. I was almost trembling with the growing conviction that she remembered me from such an incident and she was - somehow - planning her revenge. To be honest, I am not very good at interviews, even at the best of times, but the way that Fiona kept on staring at me made me even more nervous than usual.

At the end of the interview she held onto my hand and stared at me again. I was, any second, expecting her to blurt out something like: "So you don't remember calling me a cretinous blind cow at the traffic lights in town six months ago, then? And you dare to think I would give someone like you this job?" However, she just smiled and said something along the lines of, "Thank you, Alan. We'll let you know." The usual post-interview stuff.

So, I was really surprised - just two days later - to get the letter offering me the job. I showed the letter to Jane.

"See, I told you that persistence would pay off in the end," Jane said.

"Come on, Alan. It's time we got back to the office." Fiona kissed me, deeply but briefly. She took my hand as we walked back to her car and winked at me. "After all, if we are going to be working late again, we need to get everything for today finished, quickly."

I smiled back, rather weakly, hoping that my lack of enthusiasm wasn't too obvious. After all, I do need this job, especially the way Jane is spending money these days, and with the baby on the way (I can still remember Fiona's thin frosty smile when I told her that bit of news). Fiona is, after all, the one who said this was strictly sex, and that was all it was ever going to be.

I have noticed that Fiona does tend to go a bit - I suppose, sullen is the word I'm looking for - at times. I think that however much she tries to deny it; however hard she tries to play the super-efficient businesswoman and all that, I do think that she can still hear the tick of the biological clock. That she can hear the voices of her parents, hear her married, settled friends and their smug talk of their good lives. She can feel the pull of the wedding, the house, the mortgage.

I don't think she can be all that different to any of the rest of us in noticing the passage of time. Just occasionally, I can see it in her eyes too. I think I can only describe it as a look of yearning. It seems to be a search, a quest for something more than what her life is offering to her.

It is, I suppose, like these games that I have to play with her. This desire she has to do it in risky places, in public, or - at least - semi-public, places. It seems that ordinary sex, an ordinary affair, isn't enough for her. She needs more. She needs the extra pressure of the risk, of being seen, of being caught.

Maybe it is because these days it is not enough for us to just get through our ordinary lives. No, we have to fight, to struggle, to overcome. We have to see our lives as a test, a challenge, a quest. A life is not a real life unless we can point to the corpse of some dragon that we have slain along the way.

It seems to be that way with Fiona too, the closer she is to being caught the stronger her orgasm. I'm getting quite good, these days, at getting dressed as we run, or drive away, from the scene of our latest adventure. There must be a fair few security guards in the local area who have had a dull shift enlivened by a grainy out-of-focus sequence of Fiona and me getting down to it right in front of their cameras.

Once, I asked her about her current obsession with doing it in front of the security cameras.

"Perhaps I'm a frustrated actress," she said between giggles as she struggled to dress while I drove us out of the multi-storey car park.

"You look tired," Jane said to me at the weekend. "Are you sure all this overtime, all this extra work isn't too much for you?"

I yawned and shrugged. I was having trouble staying awake. The previous week Fiona had had me in a multi-storey car park, a cinema, the zoo, the art gallery and - almost - in a phone box. But some fraught woman had banged on the phone-box door, just as I was slipping my hand up between Fiona's thighs.

Apparently, there had been an accident just up the road. A speeding mini-cab had knocked down an old man. Luckily, it was beginning to get dark, so the woman had no idea what we were doing in the phone-box.

"Perhaps you ought to get another job," Jane said. She shifted around in her seat, trying to get comfortable. She was seven and a half months gone, and the hot late summer weather made it difficult for her.

I looked at her - really looked at her - for the first time in what seemed like months. As with so many women, late pregnancy seemed to suit her. I leant across and kissed her.

She looked at me in surprise, blinking quickly a couple of times. "Y'know, that is the first time you have kissed me in weeks... maybe months.... I thought that maybe you'd gone off me because...." She looked down, touching her stomach.

"No, of course not. Don't be silly," I said, slipping my hand up between her thighs. "It's just... maybe you are right, maybe this job is too much for me, taking too much out of me."

We kissed again, and she looked at me in a way that I recognised only too well. "Do you... well...?" she said.

At first, I didn't think I could, not after all that Fiona had put me through during the previous weeks, but - in the end - I managed it.

But, it was the just lying there together bit, afterwards. Together, there on the front-room carpet, our backs leaning against the sofa, that was the best bit. It was such a relief not to be racing away, fastening my shirt with one hand and holding up my trousers with the other. We just sat their skin against skin, talking of this and that and whatever else came to mind until Jane took it in mind to have another go and climbed back onto my lap.

I was very surprised to find that I did - as it were - rise to the occasion. But I was not half as surprised as Jane was a couple of minutes later.

"What did you call me?" She stopped dead.

"What?"

"You just called me Fiona." She twisted her breasts away from my hands.

"I didn't, did I?"

"You did."

"Oh, I... are you sure?"

"Yes." She looked at me hard, for a moment. Then she smiled. "Yes, I think that job is getting to you." She began to move again. "After all, the other night you called out her name in your sleep."

"Did I?" I tried to sound casual.

"Yes. But I know not to take it seriously. I can't imagine you ever finding her attractive."

"No, " I said. "Of course not."

"Anyway, you know I'd kill you if you ever messed around, don't you?"

"Yes, dear. Of course." I smiled up at her.

She stopped moving again. She stared at me levelly. I could see the seriousness in her eyes. "No, I'm serious. Look at the state you've got me into." She sat up straight and stroked her stomach. For the first time, I noticed there was a new thin line of hair from her navel down to her pubic hair.

"I'm not going to let you escape, not now. You have responsibilities, obligations," she said. "Aw... what's happened?"

"I'm sorry," I replied. "I must be more tired than I thought."

"It's all right," she said. Although I could see that it wasn't.

"No! I just can't.... Not any more. Sorry."

Fiona was not the sort to give up easily, she was not used to being refused. Her hand moved down my body. I tried taking a step backwards, but I was up against the wall.

Her face was close to mine. I could see every pore in her skin. "I could always sack you... for non-co-operation," she said as she pulled my zip down.

"I... could... have you for sexual harassment," I said.

"Bollocks. Who would believe that?" she laughed. "Anyway, you wouldn't be able to live with it, no man could. Imagine what all the other blokes will say about you: 'fancy turning that down - must be a closet poof'." She took a step back, although her hand remained inside my underpants. She cocked her head to one side. "Is that it? Are you a poof?"

"No... No. I... it's just that... well... Jane, y'know? Come on, Fiona. I am a married man."

"So?" She now had both hands inside my trousers. "That never bothered you before." She squeezed. Hard.

"Ooh - aaah! Jesus Christ!" I doubled up as she let go.

"You do disappoint me Alan," she said. "And I thought I'd found a man with some balls at last. It seems you are just like all the rest. Another wimp." She turned away, wiping her hands on her skirt. She turned back. "One week's notice."

"You can't do that!"

"Can't I? Why not?"

"Because.... I...."

"Oh, come on. You haven't got the balls to quit, to walk out. You're too scared - shit-scared - of what precious little wifey will think."

"No... no, it's not that. I... well...." I smiled. I took a step towards her and kissed her. I stroked her cheek with my fingertips. "It's just that I'm not sure I can resist the temptation, not any more. I think I ought to go, get out of here, before... well, with the baby coming and... you always said you wanted no commitments."

Fiona smiled as she looped her arms around my neck. "You could always stay. You deserve a promotion. You could become my right-hand man. Yes, that's a good idea. I like the things you do to me with your right hand."

We kissed again. I looked over her shoulder at the clock. "Come on," I said. "One more time in the multi-storey?"

She nodded slowly. "I think one more time is easily enough to get you to change your mind."

"I'm beginning to change my mind already." I nuzzled her neck, nibbling her earlobe in the way I knew she liked. "I'll drive," I said. "You get undressed... completely... like last time."

She giggled and kissed me on the lips. Taking my hand she led me out of the office and around to the car park.

I drove all the way to the top of the multi-storey - five floors. It was a bright warm day. By the time I stopped the car, Fiona was already naked.

I pointed over to the housing for some type of ventilator shaft, a brick construction about four or five feet square with a flat concrete top, just off to the left of the main ramp to the level. "Over there," I said, leaning over to Fiona.

She nodded eagerly, giggling as she got out of the car.

I can still remember the look on her face as I drove away, the passenger door flapping. I think she thought it was a joke when I stopped the car. She began to run towards the car. I almost waited for her, but then I had another twinge in my balls from when she had grabbed me in the office. I leant across the seats, quickly slammed the passenger-side door and drove off.

I left her clothes - neatly folded - on her desk. My letter of resignation - with immediate effect - was lying on the top of the pile.

END

[This, and other stories can also be found here as well]

The Day Is A Story

davidhadley59@gmail.com (David Hadley) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:37:00 +0000

The day is like a story you have heard before. You are familiar with how it begins and you know how it will end. The characters and scenes you have seen before, played out like this across this usual stage.

I have seen these moments and held them close, keeping them safe from the deprecations of time and capricious memory. I kept them safe to give to you whenever you begin to wonder what this life is doing to you. However, you do not seem to recognise these things I have kept, examining them all with a quizzical eye as though they are the belongings of someone else, kept for no obvious reason. You dismiss them with a shrug, as knickknacks and trinkets; merely the sad detritus of a life kept shut up in a drawer no-one has opened for years.

You hastily sweep them all away, ready – you say – for a new beginning, a new start, but when you look away into the distance, I see there are tears in your eyes too.

[See here for an explanation of these posts labelled as Fragments]

Another Recycling Success!

davidhadley59@gmail.com (David Hadley) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:30:00 +0000

In yet another Government announcement, the Minister for Making Politics Seem Relevant, Penny Backhander, announced that the government has had another great success in its recycling programme, confirming that the government's strategy for the recycling of old TV programmes will continue.

'It has been an enormous success,' she said, 'not only are the mainstream channels showing even more repeats than ever, thanks to digital and satellite TV, they have even more channels to put out even more repeats than they could ever manage before.'

A spokesman for the TV industry, Tawdry Tripemonger, said:

Even with all the repeats we are throwing at the TV audiences across all the channels that are now available, there are still large gaps between the adverts that need to be filled.

Ordinary people have done their best to help out with the massive shortage of new TV programmes by joining in the so-called ‘Reality’ shows and the completely misnamed ‘talent’ shows, despite their obvious lack of any of the - admittedly, limited - talent necessary to make even the less than mediocre TV programmes we now pour out all over the schedules.

However, one result of the current fashion for ordinary folk to make utter arses of themselves in ‘Reality’ programmes now means that the UK has become more than self-sufficient in vacuous talent-less 'celebrities'. Consequently, the government are looking at setting up agencies in some foreign countries in order to begin exporting some of these vacuous and untalented ‘celebrities’ to foreign markets.

Hetty Carpetmuncher the Government's Official Token Dyke, and Spokesbeing for Meaningless Initiatives, claimed:

At the last World Cup in Germany during 2006 we had great success in a pilot initiative, demonstrating the total inanity and pointlessness of our World Cup team's wives and girlfriends (the so-called ~~Sla~~… ~~Hag~~… WAGS) to the world celebrity market, and - judging by the column inches wasted on their moronic activities around the world - we are able to say that it seemed to be a great success. We hope to repeat, and possibly – expand upon, this initiative during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. With any luck we should be able to flog off a good many of these Wags to foreign football leagues, not only ridding our celebrity magazines of their tedious obsession with the pointless and puerile existence of these WAGS, but we should also earn some much needed foreign exchange to help pay off the massive government debt run up by Gordo… that was all the fault of the Americans.

The Absence Of Name

davidhadley59@gmail.com (David Hadley) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:47:00 +0000

It comes out of the stillness and silence. It grows around you as you sit, waiting for nothing to happen. There is a calm still centre that lies at the heart of your ever-turning world. It can be found if you only make a space where you can sit and wait for it to arrive. It has no name and it does not need one. It is the absence of name; it is the absence of everything, except stillness of thought. A place where your mind does not fall over itself or run itself in circles in some desperate need for diversion. It is the very thing that lies at the heart of all things, the place that diversion seeks to avoid.

You have to learn how to hold it, so its very elusiveness does not slip from the grasp. Too loose and it flies away, gyring in the empty air just out of reach of your reaching fingers. Too tight and you choke the breathing heart from it and you are left again with nothing but empty hands and nothing to show for it.

Although, paradoxically, having nothing is the ideal state, but it is not that nothing of loss, an absence, it is the presence of something real, the calmness of knowing.

It is something that has been stolen and distorted by religions, of course; but you do not need the false justification of the angry gods, no-one needs any god, once you find this place that religions both grope towards and try to deny to you, except through their own manipulations and control of your mind. Religions only exist for you to break free of them and come to this place of real knowing.

[See here for an explanation of these posts labelled as Fragments]

Monday Poem: An Autumn Morning

davidhadley59@gmail.com (David Hadley) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:05:00 +0000

An Autumn Morning

A time will come to us
When these children run away.
Over the horizon and gone
To the lands of their own lives.

What shall we do then?

Shall we wake up suddenly
One autumn morning, wishing
For the comfort of strangers?

Will we be aliens to each other?
Strange unknowable creatures
Whose actions are incomprehensible
And more than slightly disgusting.

Or maybe there will still be
An ember to tend into flame
An old familiar welcoming fire
Where we can still warm old bones.

This Changed Place

davidhadley59@gmail.com (David Hadley) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:59:00 +0000

Here.

I wonder if and I wonder why. I do not know and I cannot say. All the days fall around us as we stand waiting for our own world to begin once again. We used to move though this world so easily as though we belonged here and it was our home.

Now we come as strangers, held captive in another land for a long time. Everything now feels new and strange, somehow changed. This world belongs to us no more. We see it in the places. We see it in the faces that surround us. We left this land long ago to travel to new places. Now we have returned and it is no longer a familiar place to us. We do not know this new language or the customs of this changed place.

We have forgotten how to act naturally in such a place and stand awkwardly on the edges of things, uncertain.

[See here for an explanation of these posts labelled as Fragments]

Friday Poem: She Is

davidhadley59@gmail.com (David Hadley) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:46:00 +0000

She Is

She is the sky.
She could be a bird,
She could soar so high.

She is the sun.
She could be the moon.
She could be the stars.

She is freedom.
She has no limits,
A shape without form.

I could ask her name,
But she speaks softly.
A sound I can hear
Only as silence.

I look where she looks
Among the rocks and pools.
But I do not see
What she shows to me.

She wants me to walk
Beside her, but I trip
I stumble, unsettled,
Unsure in her wake.

Transfixed by her slow
Graceful easefulness,
I watch her walking,
But miss where she steps.

She sings a soft song
Of belonging, out
To the sky and sea,

As I mumble to the pages
Of a tattered notebook.

Ripeness

davidhadley59@gmail.com (David Hadley) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:41:00 +0000

There you were, keeping your head down, just getting on with it, knowing that there would be time enough for all those things that seemed just out of reach. You knew that one day you would reach up into that tree of possibilities and pluck its ripest fruit just for yourself. It would be a golden day in the sun, a day when you would finally have the time, the opportunity and the knowledge gained through a life that had been well-lived to appreciate just how sweet that fruit could be.

Now, though, you look up suddenly, to find that you are already deep into autumn and falling inexorably into the dark days of winter. That fruit that you were hoping for, longing for, that sweet summer fruit that hung so temptingly from the tree, has gone, fallen into the deep entangled undergrowth. Kicking through the grass, nettles and brambles, you find the remains of that fruit, rotten and broken, on the ground.

Your summer is long gone; it passed without you ever really noticing. You thought those long sun-filled days could last forever, you ignored how the night was slowly creeping over your days, slowly taking them over, and how there was suddenly a sharper chill to those mornings that had seemed to be always warm.

Your autumn fell down around you, creeping into your summer, whilst you thought you were still dancing through your summer nights, not noticing how much darker, how cooler, they had become.

We all think our summers will last forever. We all believe that we are immortal and our summer is eternal. We are wrong. Autumn will come to us all, and all too soon, we will taste the sharp ice of our winter on our tongue.

[See here for an explanation of these posts labelled as Fragments]

Cannot Be Unsaid

davidhadley59@gmail.com (David Hadley) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:47:00 +0000

A moment is all that stands between now and then. Those words said cannot be unsaid. That silence cannot be returned to, and filled in with all you should have said as she turned away. All our moments are irredeemable in that way. Our mistakes are there for us to see. They are the ghosts of our mistakes haunting every subsequent move we make.

However, we should not let our fears of those ghosts paralyse us. We have to learn to live with them, learn from them, realise that everyone makes mistakes. We should all know that everyone makes far more mistakes than they get things right. It is important to understand that mistakes are something we learn from, grow from, if we are wise enough to use them well, to learn from them. An even bigger mistake is to pretend that your mistakes never happened, that you have been right in everything you have ever done. That is not just being mistaken; that is being an idiot.

None of us is perfection and no-one will ever achieve perfection, the best we can do is try to get as close to it as we can. In life we all eventually lose, because we will all – one day – lose this life, but what matters is not the act of losing – as it is inevitable – but how well we lose, with grace, with dignity, with understanding, with wisdom. Just as Socrates said “The unexamined life is not worth living.” it is not also worth dying with.

[See here for an explanation of these posts labelled as Fragments]

Wednesday Story: Dead Leaves

davidhadley59@gmail.com (David Hadley) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:31:00 +0000

Dead Leaves

We were walking together deep in the countryside. It was a bright, but chilly, autumn day. The wind was blowing, twisting the dead leaves into the air. We both were wearing thick heavy coats and scarves. I wished I had a hat.

Helen's hand was deep inside the pocket of my coat, her arm wrapped around mine. I turned to look at her and she smiled at me. I noticed she had a few dead leaves sticking to her hair. I picked them off with my free hand. I was about to drop them.

"No." Helen took the leaves from me and put them in her coat pocket. "I want to keep them."

We trudged up to the top of the hill. The wind was stronger up there. Helen had to keep one hand up to her face to keep her hair from whipping into her eyes. From up there we could see out over the forest, spread out like a green sheet thrown over the hillsides, and the small village seeming almost insignificant from that height.

"Let's go back down, out of this wind, Martin," she said, turning away without looking at me. She walked on in front of me, looking down at her feet as she stepped carefully down the steep path. I hurried to catch up with her.

"What's the matter?" I said.

"You know," she said, not looking up.

I stopped walking. "But what can I do?"

Helen stopped a few feet in front of me; she turned and looked back up the hill at me. "You can choose. Choose...? Shit! I'm not something in a shop, you know. I'm me! A person. You shouldn't have the power of choice over people - it's disgusting really." She looked away from me, over towards the woods on her right, staring hard. She brushed her eyes roughly with the sleeve of her coat.

"I can't walk out. Just leave," I said.

"Why not? You strolled into my life. Why can't you walk out of hers?"

"I have obligations. I owe her something, something more than a sudden empty space in her life."

"But what about me?" Helen said quietly. She turned away from me and ran towards the trees.

She was sitting on the ground with her back against a tree when I found her. I knelt down in front of her and took her hand.

"You're cold," I said. She nodded without looking up at me. "You always used to say you didn't want me to leave her. You said you wanted to be independent, free. You said you didn't want to live with anyone ever again."

“I've changed my mind. I don't like waking up in the night and finding no-one there, not any more." She turned her hand so it was holding mine. She looked at my hand as though she was trying to read something in its palm.

"I had my palm read once," she said. "The gypsy said I was going to be happy. But I think she only said what people expected her to say. I don't think lines on someone's hand can mean anything. Do you, Martin?"

I shook my head. Helen pulled me towards her, she kissed me on the lips and I sat down beside her. I put my arm around her shoulders.

"I want to wake up next to you," she said. "Every day."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes.... No.... How should I know? It just feels right, that's all. That is all we can ever know, isn't it?"

"Do people ever really change?" I said. "I don't know if Claire and I have changed, moved away from each other, or whether we have not changed at all and so become bored with each other. I think that if people do change, it happens so slowly that it is unnoticeable."

"Does it matter?" Helen said.

"I don't know. I just like to try to understand why and how things happen, that's all."

"What is there to understand? You don't - you say - love her any more. You say she doesn't love you. Wouldn't you rather be with me? You used to say that one day we would be together."

"Yes, of course I want to be with you. But it is just not that simple."

Helen stood up and walked away. I sighed and followed her. For a moment or two, as I followed her down the steep path, I wondered what it would be like, waking up next to Helen each morning - every morning - for the rest of our lives.

In the beginning, several months before, her unpredictability, her mood-swings, her sheer vibrancy had seemed so exciting. It was a stark contrast to the staid routine that my life with Claire had become. But, watching Helen as she scrambled down that path, I was starting to regret it all. I wished I'd acted differently that first time, when the new village schoolteacher had dropped into my second-hand bookshop.

It had happened with almost clichéd inevitability. A young, idealistic, enthusiastic teacher arrives at a sleepy village, deep in the countryside. At first, her enthusiasm for her new job is enough to sustain her, but when the inevitable inertia, the simple endless day to day slog, begins to wear her down, she has no place to turn. She has nothing except her growing friendship with the owner of the village bookshop. He is the only one adult she has met in the village that she feels she has anything in common with, any rapport.

It began last summer, during the long school holiday. Helen began hanging around in the shop, just half-hearted browsing at first. I used to watch her leafing through the books, the almost sensual way she would delicately turn the - sometimes fragile - pages like a mother sweeping the hair out of her child's eyes.

Then she started helping out. My main trade is by post - rare books ordered through my web site. She used to love to help me sort out the books. She enjoyed packing them like the delicate objects they were into the well-padded boxes ready for shipment all around the world.

But it wasn't until about six months ago that we first kissed. Spring in the air and all that, I suppose. By that time, I had reluctantly given up on my vague half-fantasies about the good-looking teacher in her mid-twenties falling in love with the forty-two year old balding bookshop owner. So when she leant forward over the box she was taping up and kissed me I... well... I just stood there, not quite believing it had happened and half-expecting to be woken by the alarm clock.

Funnily enough, no-one in the village seemed to regard it as a remote possibility either. There had been one or two looks when Helen first started hanging around my shop. But the idea of the sexy young schoolteacher and the bookshop owner having an affair was so obviously absurd that even village gossip could not sustain it.

Anyway, any such notion received its deathblow through Claire's absolute conviction that Helen had far more sense, more of a life, to consider an affair with someone like me. "That girl's got far too much about her to want to bother with someone as dull as ditch water as my Martin," Claire had said when interrogated by the Farnborough-Jones sisters in the butcher’s one Tuesday morning in early April.

"No, it is because you are like you are," Helen had said to me when I asked her the inevitable "Why me?"

"I'm so fed up with the egotistical selfishness of young blokes. So tired of men who only want to be the hero in the film of their own life," she said sadly. She was sitting naked in the wicker chair by her bed, smoking a joint. "You seem so... so calm." She watched the smoke curling up towards the ceiling for a moment. I had the sense, the feeling that there was some pain, some memory. When she turned back I could see the beginning of a tear in her eye. She swallowed, then smiled. "That's what I like about being in your shop, the calm, the peacefulness. I always feel there is something solid, safe, secure about being surrounded by books. So much silent wisdom."

"But you're still young," I said. "You should be out grabbing life by the balls, instead of getting stuck in this backwater with a dull old stick like me."

She stubbed out the joint and stood up. "No, come back to bed. I only want to take you by the balls."

I was bought back out of my reverie by the realisation she had taken the wrong path down the hillside.

"Helen! Helen! Stop! Wait!" I called; I could see her coat, the dark brown sheepskin, through the trees and the flash of her blonde hair. But she did not wait. I tried running, but slipped on the wet leaves. By the time I had struggled to my feet she was out of sight. I ran after her, wiping the mud from my hands onto my coat.

I had almost caught up with her. I caught a flash of blonde hair through the trees. I sighed with relief. But then I heard her scream as she dropped from view.

The story I had heard, when I was a child, was that during WWII a German bomber had crashed into the side of the hill. It had been on its way to the industrial heart of the midlands with a full bomb load. As far as I know, it is a true story. But whether it was the cause of the, almost cliff-like, sheer drop that makes up most of the south side of the hill, or not, I have no idea.

I crept forward, towards the edge, slowly. I've never been very good at heights at the best of times. But the thought of looking over the edge and seeing Helen a hundred and fifty feet or so below....

At first, I could not make out what I was seeing. The mud-covered fingers holding onto the edge of the cliff didn't seem - somehow - quite human. But when I realised what they were, I knelt down, wrapping my left arm around a nearby tree trunk.

"Hang on, it's me. I'm here. Helen?"

"Martin? Oh shit... fuck.... Help me!"

I leant out over the edge, grabbing her arm around the wrist. "I've got you," I said. She was heavy, so heavy, staring up into my eyes, pleading, desperate. I was having trouble holding on to her, I could feel her slipping through my fingers. I knew that this was it, the deciding moment. When I had saved her, I would have no choice. I would have to leave Claire and go with Helen. This act of rescue would bind us together far more deeply than any mere marriage vow.

"Hell. Oh God! Come on, I've got you."

At first, I didn't recognise the voice. I could not move. I was just staring at my empty hand stretched out over the edge of the drop. I knew if I stopped focussing on my empty hand and looked down, I would be able to see where Helen had fallen.

"No, don't look. Come here. Sit against this tree. Here, drink some of this." It was Brian, the landlord of the Goose and Chickens. He pressed the flask of brandy against my mouth. I swallowed, choked and coughed.

"I saw everything," he said. "I saw exactly what happened. Drink some more. I've got my mobile."

I sat against the tree, sipping the brandy. Usually I don't touch spirits, but I was incongruously wondering if I would get the chance of another drink before they sent me away to prison, and just what was the difference between manslaughter and murder.

"Hello, Ian? No I don't care if you're off-duty. No, shut up! This is serious. There's been a... an incident. I'm up on Barrow Hill. That new teacher from the school, Miss... Thomas, yes... Helen. No." He glanced down, over the edge of the drop. "No... there's no chance, no hope at all. She... at the bottom of the sheer drop. No, Martin...from the bookshop...." Brian looked over at me as he spoke. "Yes. No, he was holding her by the arm... I saw everything... all of it... he nearly managed to save her.... Yes, a bloody hero, he deserves a medal. He nearly got himself killed trying to save her. Five minutes? I'll wait here for you here then. I think Martin is in shock anyway."

I opened my mouth, trying to say something.

"No, you drink that. Best thing for shock, brandy. Anyway, you deserve it. A bloody hero, that's what you are. A bloody hero."

END

[This, and other stories can also be found here as well]

It's An Outrage!

davidhadley59@gmail.com (David Hadley) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:52:00 +0000

Do you - only too often - see news stories where people stridently claim 'It's an outrage!' about something you've never even noticed, let alone thought about before? Do you feel outraged by your inability to find something to get outraged about? Do you need that sense of outraged self-justification that will give shape, definition, and - maybe - even meaning to YOUR otherwise drab and meaningless existence?

Yes?

Then you need People Who Need To Feel Outraged About Something (PWNTFOAS).

PWNTFOAS is the new umbrella group for people who feel outraged that they are missing out by not being outraged by something.

These days it seems that hardly a day can go by without some item appearing on the news featuring someone, or some group, claiming to be outraged by something or other. It can be a trivial little petty thing like some celebrity, or other citizen of medialand saying, doing, wearing, taking, eating, something that one of these people can find 'offensive', through being offended by something in the media itself, right up to the vital issue of feeling outraged that what they have to say is far too important to their own overriding sense of self-esteem to be ignored, no matter how trivial the actual subject matter.

PWNTFOAS has been formed for those people who feel their feelings of self-justifying outrage have not yet found a subject, people who feel they are not getting the attention they feel they deserve from an ungrateful and indifferent world.

PWNTFOAS is for those people who feel the need to be a part of the 21^st Century's update of Descartes' famous dictum: I am on the telly, therefore I am.

PWNTFOAS will scour the news TV, radio, internet and the press looking for any item, no matter how small or insignificant that it feels one, or more, of its members can work up at least some mild indignation about.

Not only that, PWNTFOAS will draft and announce a press release for those outraged members to read out in front of journalists - and - hopefully - those all-important TV cameras.

The Leaves On A Tree

davidhadley59@gmail.com (David Hadley) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:36:00 +0000

These days it is as though the world has changed its shape around us. There was a time that seems so long ago now, when it seemed almost as if the world had been made to fit around us.

Nowadays we are not so sure.

Although there are some who like to see themselves, or – more often – the rest of us, as some parasites, some harmful disease on the surface of the Earth, as some abhorrent freak on nature that will destroy the planet it feeds off.

In one sense though every thing is a freak of nature, for that is how nature survives, how living things continue is through natural selection.

Human beings are not – as religions try to fool us into believing – something set apart from nature. We are as natural as the leaves on a tree or that fish glinting silver in the shadowed pool. We can no more step outside nature than we can step outside space and time.

With earthquakes, volcanoes, storms and floods nature can show that we are just as puny as ants washed away in a downpour. Our cities may look mighty and twinkle brightly when seen from space, but to the rest of nature they matter as much as do termite mounds.

We are not here as some mysterious whim of some god, a toy for him to idle away his endless hours, we have grown from the nature of this world and we will continue to be defined by it, even as our powers to redefine it in our own way grow from our understanding of it. This world is all our futures as well as all of our pasts.

[See here for an explanation of these posts labelled as Fragments]

Inspector of the Queen’s Tandems

davidhadley59@gmail.com (David Hadley) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:51:00 +0000

These days the post of Head Inspector of the Queen’s Tandems is mainly a symbolic role, especially since Her Majesty has forgone the use of the Crown Ceremonial Tandem following the infamous incident involving Prince Philip and the Chinese national Olympic yo-yo team back in the summer of 1976. The current holder of the office, Lord Sprinkle of Doolaly, however is still entitled to the royal gift of an annual trollop, or strumpet, and butt of sack that the post has entailed since first being set up under Charles II, just seventeen and a half minutes after the Restoration. Of course, back in those days the tandem had yet to be invented. However, Charles II had many faults, but a lack of foresight was not one of them.

These days, the Queen’s personal brace of ceremonial tandems is second only to the fleet of tandems owned by Elton John, kept in the former Royal Artillery tandem sheds down in Watford. One of the most interesting of Elton John’s tandems is the Silver-Flight Degenerate that was – as many historians now believe – the very machine that sparked the infamous Manchester tandem riot of 1923. One of its mudguards still bear traces of what is said to be the blood of one of the 17 Tandem Day Martyrs, who gave their lives to prevent the scourge of cycling taking hold in this country in the same way as it had taken hold on the continent, especially in France.

Unfortunately, despite the government making the possession of bicycle clips an imprisonable offence, and banning the important of handlebar bells, the evil epidemic of cycling did gain a foothold in this country. Faced with the overwhelming tide of bicycles the government was forced to legalise cycling just as WWII broke out in Europe.

However, it was felt that the Royal family should be prepared to flee the country, should the worst happen and the Germans invade the British Isles, so they were provided with a special fleet of royal tandems. It was, therefore, the job of the Head Inspector of the Queen’s Tandems to make sure that the fleet of royal tandems was kept in tip-top condition ready for such an eventually. At least, it was for the 27 minutes it took for the members of the Royal household to remember than Britain is an island and any attempt to flee an invading enemy by tandem would – eventually – come to a rather moist end. However, by then the Head Inspector of the Queen’s Tandems had already been given his ceremonial hat and, by Royal protocol, it was therefore too late to disestablish the role. Consequently, it has remained a mainly ceremonial role right up to this day when the hat is worn by the Head Inspector of the Queen’s Tandems for the official Trooping Of The Tandems on the first Tuesday after Easter each year.

Empty Of Meaning

davidhadley59@gmail.com (David Hadley) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:38:00 +0000

Too many words. There are too many words that have been said and now we stand here inside the only thing that remains: the silence. Around us the very air seems empty of meaning with no energy to carry any more words upon it. The air itself seems thick, heavy, as though weighted down by too much that has already been said.

Neither of us has the energy either for more words. They have become meaningless sitting heavy in the pit of the stomach like a surfeit of excuses, explanation, denial and justification. We have gorged ourselves on our self-justifications and now we feel sick. The thought of just one more word lies heavy and makes the gorge rise.

We cannot, though, turn away from each other. Neither of us knows how to be alone any longer. We fear too that solitude will bring back the words. We fear words of recrimination haunting our loneliness, the ghosts of all we have walked away from and lost.

So, we stand, heads bowed in defeat, but each waiting for the other to make acknowledgement of their capitulation, so that we can both surrender together and leave the battlefield in mutual defeat. That way we can bring comfort to each other, each easing our own pain within the sorrows of the other.

[See here for an explanation of these posts labelled as Fragments]

Friday Poem: Our Lives

davidhadley59@gmail.com (David Hadley) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 08:12:00 +0000

Our Lives

I can look into her, or any woman's eyes
And see our lives together. All the days
Have candle-lit slow dinners with soft talk.
The barefoot moonlight strolls along the beach
And shaded summer afternoons in bed.

She sometimes too, returns my easy look,
Knowing too well the thoughts she senses there,
Written behind the smile I offer her.

Then she will see the nights she spends alone.
The table with gutted candles drowned in wax,
Uneaten food, and waiting empty plates.
The sea's long, pounding, raging, futile storms,
Her long and lonely walks across the beach
And solitary tear-filled afternoons.

She sees a list of all my failed attempts.
A catalogue of disappointing days.
Her smile fading, she turns and walks away.

High Above

davidhadley59@gmail.com (David Hadley) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:41:00 +0000

Our route will take us through valleys where sightless indifferent mountains brood silently, looming overhead through the trees. As we climb higher, we glimpse the sea, blue and silent stretching out to where it meets the sky.

Up here, above everything, the rocks are bare, breaking free of the grass and gorse to reach up towards the clouds, almost close enough to touch. A hand reaching up could almost take the sky into the grasp to hold it there.

You stretched out naked beneath me, could become our sacrifice to appease the dark clouds gathering right at the edge of all we can now see of the sky, with the land below held out before us like a sheet spread for the gods to tumble gifts out upon.

Those trees gathered around the foot of this cliff, stand way below us now and become an indifferent mass; like those crowds that gather, bright purposeless specks staining the sands of the beach with little lives, serving no purpose for us watching above.

Your one raised finger can erase them all, while we, indifferent, enfold each other into ourselves to play at fecund gods once again.

[See here for an explanation of these posts labelled as Fragments]

A Workplace Romance

davidhadley59@gmail.com (David Hadley) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:13:00 +0000

If we could just dance together like clerical assistants in the moonlight, before cuddling close under the star-filled sky to swap underwear requisition forms together as if we were teenagers once more. Then we could see how close to a hole-punch we could place our post-it notes before rushing off together to chase post room distribution trolleys through the endless empty post-finishing time offices and corridors of all our fantasies.

Ah, but, these days we are far too busy for such carefree times. We spend our hours together poring over our mutual stock manifests, and, later, whispering the secrets of double-entry bookkeeping to each other under sweat-soaked A4 sheets of our feint-ruled desire as the tea-break of our yearnings dunks the last of its digestives in our ever-cooling tea.

Once, those were the dreams we had; always bringing love’s small gifts to each other: all receipts, invoices, stock lists and other such knick-knacks and keepsakes of the heart. We would meet, rushing together into stationary cupboards and storerooms, exchanging our kisses and embraces just like businessmen and politicians exchanging well-stuffed plain manila envelopes. Ah, so many of those plain manila A5 envelopes of the soul we exchanged on those tender after office-hours nights together.

Oh, but, you are gone now, like an MBA graduate in the night, off on the audit trail of discovery to small businesses I shall never know.

NASA Search For Intelligent Life In Jeopardy

davidhadley59@gmail.com (David Hadley) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 08:02:00 +0000

As NASA prepares to test launch its latest rocket, there were doubts expressed yesterday as to whether its intended mission – to search for intelligent life in the British political system – was a colossal waste of time and money.

[Photo taken by NASA probe launched into the recent Labour conference showing a complete absence of intelligent life]

Over the years there have been a few tantalising hints that the British political scene may once have – a long time a go – harboured intelligent life, but looking at the barren intellectual landscape it now presents to us, many find that very difficult to believe. NASA has taken it upon itself, however, to investigate these signs and to settle - for once and all - if it is possible for intellectually coherent beings to survive in the near-vacuum of what passes for modern day political thought.

As a NASA spokesperson said:

We launched a number of probes, one into each of the recent Party Political Conferences in the hope of detecting any signs that the political parties had any detectable signs of intelligence. We knew it was a long shot as party conferences are usually the last place anyone would expect to detect any signs of intelligence, but by then we were getting desperate for anything, anything at all, that could justify us continuing with the project.

After all, with the rate Britain is plummeting down the league tables from everything from individual freedom to – quite possibly – the Subbuteo world championships – times are indeed getting desperate, and – if the country is to survive as anything other than a place on the map – something needs to be done, and done quickly – to get some one with even the vaguest idea of knowing what they are doing back in change of the place before it goes completely tits-up.

The NASA probe sent crashing into the Labour party conference discovered little more beyond the Labour party’s ongoing project to make everything illegal they can’t tax, and to tax everything they can’t – yet – make illegal. The only signs of life found by the probe were footprints from Labour’s bureaucratic centralising dinosaur, apparently living on long after it should have become extinct through being weighed down by its own internal contradictions and its society-destroying perverse incentives.

Unwilling to let it touch down, in fear it could become contaminated by the deadly alien spores it is rumoured to emit, NASA kept its probe safely in orbit around the Conservative Party conference, where – to the surprise of many it did pick up some – rather ambiguous - signals. Up until recently it has been assumed that the Tory conference was a totally unsuitable place for any form of intelligent life to flourish, beyond the basic reflex knee-jerk response to any mention of ‘hanging and flogging.’

However, some maverick scientists within NASA have claimed that there was some hope of finding intelligence within the Conservative party, but hopes are diminishing especially after the latest probe beamed back reports of an outbreak of publicity-seeking tokenism of the worst sort: namely all-women short lists, exactly the opposite of anything resembling intelligent life by turning politics into even less relevance; a sort of Benetton or Coke-cola advert with nice smiley representatives of all the sexes, sexual orientations, races, hairstyles and choice of knitwear in the country in a big shiny happy people snog-fest.

As one political journalist said:

When people want politicians to be ‘more representative’ they do not want this pick ‘n’ mix selection of all the various diversities, they want politicians who have some idea, some notion, however vague and ill-informed of what it is like to live in this over-regulated, over-taxed, over health and safety obsessed kingdom of the petty-minded over-officious bureaucratic box ticking mentality that chokes all the point, purpose and joy out of life with a kind of gleeful bloody-mindedness interested solely in its own ever-increasing expansion and vital self-importance.

On its way back from somewhere far more interesting, another NASA probe briefly flew past the Liberal Democrats conference. Interestingly (nearly), in the far distant past, this party once showed signs of evolving some sense of individual liberty and responsibility as the basis for a political philosophy. However, exposure to some of the more toxic elements of socialism and a bout of some rather unpleasant interbreeding with the Labour party, led to the then Liberal party taking up weave your own lentilism, windfarms, sandals married to an abiding interest in unsuitable beards and excessive amounts of un-seasonal knitwear. This was – of course - a complete evolutionary dead end. Little of any worth has been heard from any of their conferences recently, and, consequently, political scientists are tentatively coming to the conclusion that this species may soon become extinct.

UPDATE:

A NASA spokesstarchild has just made the following statement to the world’s press:

Frankly we believe this mission to seek out intelligent life in the British political system is a complete and utter waste of time, money and resources and it will be cancelled forthwith. Instead, today I announce a new mission for NASA, where we are going to explore space: the final frontier. Where the voyages of the starship Enterprise will undertake five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilisations; to boldly go where no man has gone before and introduce all those lives and civilisations to the wonders of the Obamagasm… at gun-point, if necessary. Thank you.

The Diversity Outreach Co-Ordinator With No Name

davidhadley59@gmail.com (David Hadley) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:52:00 +0000

It was a one horse town, out in the wilds of the country, in the badlands far beyond the M25.

The salon bar doors swung open and the be-ponchoed stranger stepped into the room. The piano stopped mid-tune, and all conversation halted. Each of the stranger’s steps on the wooden floor rang out as she made her way to the bar.

‘What’ll it be, stranger?’ said the barman, wiping the bar in front of the stranger.

The stranger looked around at the room. ‘I’ll have an organic nettle cordial,’ she said, firmly looking around at each face in the bar, waiting for each to turn and look away.

‘What?’ said the barman.

‘Organic nettle cordial… please.’

‘We… there’s….’

A figure at one of the distant tables carefully laid his dominos face down and stood up.

‘This is a lager pub,’ he said, hitching up his trousers as he made his way towards the woman at the bar. ‘Maybe, if you’re a bit posh and like that sort of thing, maybe some bitter. But not soft drinks… never.’

‘Well, I’m afraid that is going to have to change,’ said the woman carefully, softly.

‘Oh, yeah?’ said the big man, stepping closer to the woman.

‘If this establishment is going to attract the right cross-culturally diverse, ethnic mix and members of the requisite sexual minorities, it is. Yes,’ said the woman, reaching into her bag.

There was a screech of wood against wood as the customers leapt from their chairs to take cover. The big man took a step back, as the woman quickly pulled a clipboard from her bag.

‘Look out, she’s got a questionnaire!‘ screamed one man as he dived head-first through the big plate-glass window stumbled back to his feet and ran, blood dripping from his lacerated face, for the hills.

The other regulars turned as one and began to stampede for the exits.

‘Stop!’ the woman yelled. She pulled out some identification. ‘I’m from the council. Nobody move. All of you sit down and get out a pen. The council needs a record of your ethnicity, sexual preferences, age, disability requirements and so forth, so that we can see if this establishment is fulfilling all the necessary diversity quotas. Come on now, one form each.’

Three days later, when the Diversity Outreach Co-ordinator With No Name rode out of the town on her bicycle, it was still a one-horse town, but it had wheelchair access to the saloon and the whorehouse now catered for the Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Community every second Tuesday of the month.