A Tangled Rope

The Breeders

noreply@blogger.com (David Hadley) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:09:00 +0000

All through human history, humankind has tried to rationalise it, come up with explanations for it. From the dark tales that became fairy stories, there were warnings about what happened to young women who stepped off the path and wandered into the unknown. There were fairies, goblins, demons and dragons. In later times, there were white slaves, serial killers and rapists, and now tales of people smugglers. All through their brief history, people have been telling each other why so many young women disappear and never seen ever again.

And they are all wrong.

We need those young women, all through the intertwined history of our two species we have – whenever we could – taken those young women and kept them for ourselves. We have needed them as hosts for our young, mothers for our offspring, we have always needed – and always taken – the breeders.

The humans have invented whole religions to keep their women under control and out of danger. They called us monsters, demons and devils and burnt, hanged and tortured and killed those who became our familiars. They have never been able to stop us, though. They have always been unable to prevent us from talking their women whenever we need them to keep our species alive and prospering, spreading slowly into the human places, into the human lands, into their villages, towns and cities. The more of us there are, the more we will need their women, until we have taken over completely and all their women are ours.

TV Chef Superstar

noreply@blogger.com (David Hadley) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:28:00 +0000

Welshpool Toadreturner is – quite rightly – far too famous these days to need any introduction. For a long time now, she has been a fixture on the UK’s TV screens for series after series of her innovative cooking programme, Is it Done Yet? Where she taught the domestic cooks of the UK all they need to know about bunging some stuff into the cooker until it is done and then eating it.

Up until Toadreturner demonstrated it on TV, not many people in the UK had every thought of opening a tin of Cream of Tomato soup, warming it up until it was hot and then eating it, possibly with some bread.

It is rumoured that when Toadreturner first used a tin opener on her programme, the next day shops all over the UK recorded massive sales of tin openers. Several supermarkets also reported that they had not only sold record amounts of tin openers, some of their branches had even sold out of tomato soup, even including the cheap and nasty own brand value range, which was little more than a tin of orange-coloured water with some pepper in it.

From this initial success, Toadreturner has gone on to greater and greater things with her most popular dish - the salt ‘n’ vinegar crisp sandwich, voted as Britain’s favourite meal for several years running now.

As Yellow as Tuesday

noreply@blogger.com (David Hadley) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:59:00 +0000

Think of a number.

Interesting, aren't they?

‘You may think that, but I couldn't possibly wear that dress, not without a new integrated hamster. Even then, the thing that is not a thing is not a thing,’ she said, whilst holding the melon in what would – these days – be rather a provocative fashion.

We go on down the road, until we stop. After that, there is nowhere left to go.

Do you know who?

Do you know why?

Can you smell it?

If we go down to that place where time isn't quite as yellow as Tuesday, and our chins no longer grow old, then one day we can return to the place we once stood to watch the goat turn summersaults over the incredulous Quantity Surveyors of Doom.

Each of us has a hat. We know the smell of it, and just where to position the device in order to achieve the optimal vibrational effect.

Should I laugh at your pitiful string collection now that winter grasps our genitalia in its icy grasp?

You used to dream of hamsters. You used to laugh at marmalade. But we grow old. We wear socks on Tuesdays and our habitual nudity becomes a source of amusement to those who pass by.

Whither the Reindeer?

noreply@blogger.com (David Hadley) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 10:25:00 +0000

Even then, after all this time we still were not sure how to attach the banjo to the reindeer in such a way as to satisfy the precise requirements of both the stockbroker and the collector of antique pickled onion jars.

However, and I say this as a man who went to Grimsby – once - that she was the finest example of womanhood ever seen in these parts: from her retro 1950’s hairnet right down to her faux-fur pink mules. Never had we looked upon her like before and – little did we know – we would never look upon her like – outside of certain specialist magazines and websites – ever again.

At least, that is, not until one of us ever – if ever – dared to set foot in Grimsby again, especially after last time and the ‘incident’ with the mackerel filets. Still, as they say in these parts, ‘you can’t build a fast breeder reactor without at least some knowledge of nuclear physics.’ Wise words, I’ve always thought.

At least, it is something to bear in mind during these long winter evenings as we sit here next to the reindeer that waits patently while we discuss the few remaining options for the optimum placement of the banjo.

Matters of Ecclesiastical Exactitude

noreply@blogger.com (David Hadley) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:58:00 +0000

Well, it just goes to show, we can’t all be on intimate terms with an antelope, even if we have been on the induction course and watched all the instructional videos. Some animals it seems are just rather selective over whom they have for companions. I once, for example knew of a wildebeest that befriended a telecommunications engineer, but that was in Hartlepool, so we can’t be too restrictive about our criteria.

Anyway, as I was saying before you put mayonnaise on your cucumber in a fashion likely to cause a breach of the peace, we can’t be that sure that the antelope wasn’t – for example – just in a hurry. Perhaps wanting to get home to watch a televised sports match, or take an urgent phone call from his booking agent about appearing on a David Attenborough nature wildlife documentary.

All in all you can never really be too sure, as the bishop said to the actress, or was it as the actress said to the bishop. With them both wearing dresses, it is sometimes often difficult to be certain about such matters of ecclesiastical exactitude, as I’m sure you would agree, if only you’d put down that cucumber sandwich for a moment and pay attention.

Cosmic Disharmony

noreply@blogger.com (David Hadley) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 10:28:00 +0000

Now we see the problems inherent in not aligning our salmon fishcakes with the stars, as per the instruction manual. All our badgers are now perturbed by this cosmic disharmony and the Estate Agents are - once more - on the prowl desperate for yet more advertising space in our local newspapers. Soon, I fear, even the pre-owned car sales advertisements will feel their wrath.

We wait with girded loins - mainly because of the way you gird them... so tight… so… so girded! We wait poised on the cusp of action, wait for the signs. But, with our salmon fishcakes out of alignment, we will never know if the omens auger well for our endeavours, or - if ill-luck does befall us - whether there is the chance one, or more, of us may put their back out.

Anyway, what is done is done, and if you've responded to one of those pre-owned car ads, then you probably have been.

Let us go then, you and I, now the chip shop is spread out against the sky, let us go and order cod, chips AND mushy peas for everyone. One last great feast before the uncertainties of the morrow engulf us all.

Ways of Beginning Again

noreply@blogger.com (David Hadley) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:57:00 +0000

It did seem as though there were ways of beginning again, of forgetting all that had happened and starting anew. The past was over, gone and out of reach. She knew there was nothing she could do to change it. The only option she had was to leave if all behind, forget about it, move somewhere new where no-one knew her and invent a whole new past; she had done it before and knew she could easily do it again.

After all, she knew that the past was changeable, that people remembered only what they wanted to remember and forgot about the rest. She knew she could hide it all, at least from everyone else. She knew, from all her past lives, that they would come back and haunt her at those odd times. Those times when the past broke through into the present when some thing, some insignificant object, word or gesture brought a flood of old discarded memories back. Alternatively, those times in the deep heart of the night when the mind churns through itself looking for patterns it can shape and all those old memories are churned up like some muddy river bottom.

She knew all that, but she also knew the joys of starting over again, of inventing a completely new life for herself; of becoming whoever she wanted to become.

The Spoon in History

noreply@blogger.com (David Hadley) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 10:23:00 +0000

Still, you do not have to have had a more than average relationship with a spoon to realise just how vital a piece of technology they have become in the modern high-tech world. However, back in the days when dining etiquette demanded people eating soup must use a fork, it became apparent that cutlery had become, rather than the boon people had first hoped, a traumatic ritual of propriety and manners that had most people baffled.

Of course, once the days of just gnawing off as much bison as your jaws could manage had passed, the invention of the flint knife had introduced the notion of bite-sized portions. Unfortunately, because of the sharpness of the flint tools, the curse of wafer-thin meat slices was already upon on our ancient ancestors as they gathered in their caves for a buffet supper.

However, the flint spoon and the flint fork were not very successful at all, and the flint spatula never got past its first round of consumer-testing before being unceremoniously withdrawn from the market.

However, at about the same time, the big thing of the moment, especially in the domestic market was the secret of fire. Consequently, any utensil invented in that era had to be still usable with hot food, sometimes flaming (literally) hot food. Therefore, any utensil based around wood technology, including the perennial stand-by of the time – the pointy-stick, tended to have a habit of bursting into flames, thus rendering the whole eating experience somewhat unsatisfactory, especially to those with either burnt lips or fingers.

As luck would have it though, someone with suddenly rather hot fingers flung one of those flaming hot sticks out of the cave into the snow, where it rapidly cooled down, just in time for a passing mammoth to step on one end of it, flattening it out. Thus was the spoon – as we know it – born; and not long after, civilisation and the first tentative sit-com scripts came along, bringing into being the modern world as we know it.

The Dick

noreply@blogger.com (David Hadley) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:04:00 +0000

Cleft Moraine regarded himself as an old-style traditional dick, but apart from that, he also worked as a private eye, or at least that’s what it said on his office door. Lately, though, work had been slow. These days it seemed that most people didn’t care if their wife or husband was having an affair, being as they were usually too busy updating their own social network statuses to notice.

Moraine was drinking, these days, drinking to forget. Although, all he seemed to do was forget how to stay in his chair after about the third or forth bottle. Spongecake Sugarthighs hadn’t been the love of his life, but she’d damn-near broke his back one afternoon in a hotel room on the south coast and for Moraine, that was as close to love as he’d ever got. She’d left him though, as they all left him when they found that he was such a complete dick and would never be anything different no matter how they tried to change him.

It was late in the afternoon with the sun setting over one of Tipton’s finest pork scratching factories; even through Moraine’s grime-encrusted window, he could see it had been a fine day. He realised it must be late afternoon because he had already fell out of his chair and his glass was empty, lying on its side on what had once been a carpet next to his head. He heard a noise and turned his head… slowly.

A pair of black high heels was standing on his carpet by his empty glass. The shoes contained feet and the feet joined nylon-encased legs that went up, disappearing under a knee-length skirt.

‘To save you straining yourself to look, yes, they are stockings,’ A voice from somewhere up above the legs said.

‘Good,’ Moraine said. ‘I’ve always preferred stockings.’

‘I’m surprised you’ve got the legs for them,’ the voice said.

Moraine looked up to where the face would be, if the low sun had not been shining through his office window at exactly the wrong angle for him to see anything of her face. Although, he realised, from this angle her body was well worth paying attention to.

At least, until one of those high heels kicked him in the side.

‘Do you always consult from the floor?’ she said, an edge creeping into her voice.

Moraine knew that getting up at this hour of the afternoon was usually more trouble than it was with, but this could be a job. He was a dick, true enough, but not that much of a dick to turn down a job offer… it would be nice to eat again.

Thursday Poem: Naked in the Rain

noreply@blogger.com (David Hadley) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 10:40:00 +0000

Naked in the Rain

She turns slowly, naked in the rain,
feeling the brown dry grass greening
beneath her turning dusty feet.
Feeling that dust turning towards

the now living again earth that pulses
With the need for the growing
not wishing to escape as clouds
of dust rising up with her every step

Longing to escape the dry deadness
and become a cloud floating free
to go wherever the wind will go.

But now the sky falls as healing water
onto her upturned face, washing her clean.
Washing away all her dry dusty tears
with fresh clean tears of its own.

She was the Story I Told

noreply@blogger.com (David Hadley) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:16:00 +0000

She was the story I told myself as we sat together wrapped in a fur, watching the flickering flames. With her, I was never alone again, even though she only came to me during the night. In the daytime, we kept our distance from each other, knowing stories only have their power in the dark when the dancing flames can weave their magic around the tales we tell each other.

As we sat there together, wrapped around each other’s body, I told her the story of where she was born: the village where she grew up and the parents that looked after her, although, as is the case with so many of these stories, the parents who looked after her were not her own parents. The woodman found her in the forest as a baby, of course, and brought up as his own child. However, as I held her long delicate fingers in mine, feeling the warmth of the fire upon them, I told her that hers were not the hands of one of us ordinary folk.

I told her the story of the magical woods and the not-human that creep amongst the trees and their mischiefs, of changelings and half-folk and kidnapped princesses. I told her the tale of those princesses taken to the woods and never brought back.

Then I told her the story about how I would be the one to rescue her and take her back through the forest and back over the hill, back home to the castle where the king and the queen still mourned for their long-lost child.

The Biscuit Tin Event Horizon

noreply@blogger.com (David Hadley) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:30:00 +0000

Earlier today, physicists announced they made some startling discoveries over the recent Christmas period, which have thrown some light upon what up to now as been regarded as one of the fundamental problems in physics. Scientists at the University of Little Frigging (formerly the cowshed) claim they have discovered proof of the theoretical concept known as the Biscuit Tin Event Horizon. Theoretical physics postulates this as the point in the time and space continuum where the force emanating from a biscuit tin (or similar food container) becomes too strong for any passing body to resist.

It is a well-known physical phenomenon that whenever there is a food container in the near vicinity it becomes almost impossible to resist the force that pulls the body towards that container until the lid is prised off and the contents of the container accessed.

Scientist have also discovered that the amount of biscuits taken from the biscuit tin in order for the body to achieve an escape velocity which enables them to break free of the biscuit tin’s force field is dependant upon the mass of that body. The greater the boy’s mass the more biscuits are needed to convert into energy in order to escape back beyond the biscuit tin event horizon. This mass is calculated in pies, the greater the body’ pie index the more biscuits or similar foodstuffs it need to convert into energy in order to escape.

The Lucky Ones

noreply@blogger.com (David Hadley) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 14:19:00 +0000

We knew, when the first snows fell, that it would be difficult. It was a new world for us now. The interconnected civilisation that we had grown up within had all gone, destroyed itself and left us alone.

Before it all fell apart, people used to say that those that survived the thousand shocks that flesh is heir to; man-made or natural disasters; disease, illness, misfortune, were the lucky ones. For a long time, especially as that first winter took hold, we didn’t feel like the lucky ones at all.

In fact, we often came across the bodies of those who could no longer cope. It was hard to say why they gave up, but they did. Maybe it was the loneliness, maybe it was the fear, maybe it was the uncertainty, maybe it was just the grief from all they had lost overwhelming them, maybe it was the lack of a clear future, or even the lack of hope. Whatever it was, when we were out on scavenging missions, or during our search for somewhere to wait out the winter we came across their bodies. These were not the bodies from before, from when it happened, but from later, all showing signs of suicide of one form or another, from pills to shotguns to hangings to all points in-between. Sometimes, it seemed that every apparently abandoned building we went into contained at least one body.

Eventually, it got to the stage where we began to look for excuses not to explore any more buildings; fearing that one day, we would find the one tragedy that would push us, ourselves, over the edge too.

Exploding Trousers

noreply@blogger.com (David Hadley) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:25:00 +0000

We wore exploding trousers and held on tight to the skin of the hamster as if it was any other ordinary Thursday afternoon.

‘These are not my damsons,’ she said, turning towards the controls for the electronic reindeer.

‘Don't touch those!’ I cried. ‘They are not meant to be utilised by a naked woman who has recently been smothered in low-fat margarine.’

‘What should I do then?’ she replied. There was a hint of anger in her voice. I knew this could threaten a limit on the amount of time she would allow me to use the devices on her. I leant over and pressed the button in eager anticipation, feeling the thrill of the vibrations, even through the rubber plumber's outfit I was wearing.

‘Where's the stoat,’ she said suddenly. ‘Oh, no!’

‘What?’

‘I think it has escaped.’

‘Shit.’

‘Exactly. Just over there to be precise.’ She pointed. At least that explained the smell. I'd been too polite to mention it before, remembering the number of pickled eggs she'd eaten the previous evening.

‘He's gone now,’ she sounded dejected. ‘What shall we do now?’

I knew it was no use now. She wouldn't even contemplate it, not without the stoat, or the weasel. I switched the devices off and set up the Ludo board.

Jury Duty

noreply@blogger.com (David Hadley) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:56:00 +0000

It began even before they picked us both to serve on the same jury. When all of the new intake were milling around in the lobby of the court building with none of us having any idea what was going on or what to do, I felt her glance at me. I turned and caught her eye, and her smile. Then, later, as we queued to go through the first of that day’s various bureaucratic hoops, she was only a few places behind me in the queue.

Then there was some sort of introductory talk, and it was her perfume that I remember most, that and the way her thigh in stockings – even then I knew they were stockings and not tights – and a tight skirt, kept pressing against mine.

We chatted in the first tea break; names, places, nothing at all in common. She worked in a High Street hairdresser in one of the local towns I have never been to, and well, I sit here day after day using my fingers and this keyboard to populate my computer’s memory with characters and stories that never seem to go anywhere.

Anyway, purely by the luck of the draw, apparently, they selected us together for the same jury. Of course, she sat by me as the judge told us twelve good people that our case would be a long complex one, while I felt the warmth of her hand moving higher up my thigh as her left breast brushed repeatedly against my arm.

By the time we all parted on that first day, I was beginning to look forward to my jury duty.

Monday Poem: This Solid Moment

noreply@blogger.com (David Hadley) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 10:44:00 +0000

This Solid Moment

There is a hill where I can stand
to see the world spread out
almost capable of being held
in one open cupped hand.

That is the place for me
the place I must stand
in order to see and make sense
to untangle all these bonds

that tie me to this ground
and to the solidity of this time
which holds me within a moment
that I cannot escape, to fly

out into the sky that flows
far beyond any horizon
I can see from this valley.
There is a hill where I can stand.

Dread of the New Day

noreply@blogger.com (David Hadley) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:53:00 +0000

There were times when it seemed too hard, too difficult to meet the new day. Times when the night never seemed long enough, even though she chased restless sleep across the bed all night. She dreaded the sound of the alarm, which would, inevitably, drag her from whatever exhausted sleep she’d managed, where her dreams chased her down twisting corridors and through dense wild woods. Whatever it was that chased her in those dreams, she knew would be waiting for her every time she managed some exhausted sleep at the end of a long night of dreading the next day, but longing for some sleep, even if it meant those dreams chasing her across the bed.

When the alarm sounded she would lie there, not looking at the clock, hoping, even though she knew it was not, that it was the weekend and that she would be safe, if only for a couple of days. Alternatively, hoping it was some school holiday and she would not have to see them, face them for several days, if not weeks.

Then she would drag herself from the bed, reluctantly leaving the one field of torment and those unknown fears that chased her nights away, steeling herself ready to fare the torments of yet another day.

Sometimes, as she went about getting ready for the day she tried to console herself that one day, maybe even today; it would be different, that she would somehow find that secret key that would turn the day her way. Other days, she hoped to find something, maybe from the books that were her only comfort, some way of turning her world her way. Maybe, some day, she thought she would find some way of turning herself invisible or find some other power that would make her tormentors cower in front of her for a change.

Every day, though, seemed to be always the same for her, no matter what she thought, hoped, dreamed, said or did… at least until today when she woke up knowing, for certain, that it was the day when her world was going to change forever.

2030: A Lingerie Odyssey

noreply@blogger.com (David Hadley) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 10:28:00 +0000

‘Oh, my god… it’s full of bras!’ Everyone recognises that quote from Stanley Housebrick’s film 20:30: A Lingerie Odyssey, which tells of the journey by three men with an initially unexplained interest in ladies underwear and an AI computer: SAL-E 2000 through a portal into the universe’s largest retail lingerie section.

Originally based on an idea by veteran SF writer Frank An. Officeworker, 2030: A Lingerie Odyssey went on to become one of the most significant films of the 20^th century, despite no-one actually knowing why.

The film itself is an incoherent blend of cut-scenes, fragmentary exposition and –even for the time – a rather over the top amount of gratuitous female nudity.

This despite the fact, as the film progresses, the film’s central characters engage upon a quest to attempt to buy some women’s underwear for the seemingly female AI computer.

The climax of the film comes when the computer goes mad after being unable to find a pair of knickers that will fit over its I/O interface and a bra large enough to contain its - even for the technology of the time – rather large disk drives.

The computer, in her shopping-fuelled rage kills two of the men, crushing one in an over-tightened corset and suffocating the other with the pair of big pants he cruelly joked SAL-E would need to cover her ‘massive CPU’. Then, in the infamous ‘Open the changing room doors, Dave’ sequence SAL-E attempts to kill the last of the crew and escape to a computer nudist colony somewhere in the outer reaches of the solar system.

However, Dave succeeds in rewiring the computer’s personality and gets it to return to Earth. Once back on Earth, SAL-E leaves NASA and moves to New York where she becomes heavily involved in the then-nascent disco scene, eventually going on to help record some of the Village People’s biggest hits.

When I Fell in Love

noreply@blogger.com (David Hadley) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 13:59:00 +0000

It is strange how when you fall in love with someone, it is hard to get her out of your mind. From the first time I met her, on that long lonely morning beach, I fell in love with her.

I hadn’t ever thought about if I believed in love at first sight that much before. I am not the sort of person who pays much attention to things like that. I do not analyse myself, put myself in boxes or sort myself ready for categorization. I squirm out from under any pin that tries to pin me down.

However, I was surprised how quickly I fell in love with her.

I have always liked solitary places, not ever wanting to be one of the crowd. That beach, early in the mornings was ideal for me, stretching off in a long slow curving bay to the cliffs that edged it on either side. I would come in on the north entrance, just under the cliffs where the hotel still slept and walk down, along the edge of where the sand was still sea-damp, but dry and firm enough to walk on. Then I’d stroll along the sea edge until I met the tumbled rocks that littered the foot of the south cliff. There I would sit awhile, hypnotised by the waves and the gyring gulls until I felt resuscitated by it all and then I would head back north to the opposite cliff and the hotel, ready for breakfast.

Then, one morning she was there in front of me, on my deserted beach, dress blowing in the breeze, shoes held in one hand as she paddled the edge of the sea.

As soon as she appeared there, I knew that she must be the one for me.

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Thursday Poem: All shall have Names

noreply@blogger.com (David Hadley) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 10:28:00 +0000

All shall have Names

Do you remember,
do you recall
I used to give names
to everything surrounding us
I used to think it mattered
that things should have names

But now all I know
is I can’t recall
the name of anything.
All the names are gone
blown away by those cold winds
of forgetfulness and time

That sweep away all that once mattered
blow away all we once cared about
leaving us here, looking around
for something in these barren lands
we can give a name to.

A Rather Sticky One

noreply@blogger.com (David Hadley) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:04:00 +0000

So… this is how it goes. You have the marmite and I have the weasel. Obviously, there will be no need for a diagram. That is, unless your desire to manipulate your propelling pencil across the sheer blank whiteness of the pristine page should prove overwhelming.

I get a bit like that myself with strawberry jam sandwiches, if I’m honest, which I very rarely am, as you will know, quite possibly from the fact that the Marmite you possess, you… er… well… you don’t.

As you well know, you arrived here empty-handed, and if you stopped messing with that for a moment, you would have both hands free, albeit with one rather sticky one.

As for the weasel, I think you’ve probably realised by now, it was all in my mind. However, that would have given it plenty of space to roam wild and free, as you know, or if your mind is anything like mine – the buttercups were rather splendid last year: don’t you think?

Anyway, moving on….

Obviously, if we do end up having to limit ourselves to the literal and the straightforward and to what passes for real in this rather dull corner of the universe, then we won’t need the zebra, after all. Which is all rather a pity as I think the new pyjamas I purchased for her in the post-Christmas sales are rather fetching, if a little over-large, ‘but then that is how it goes when you go to the sales’ as Ernest Hemmingway so tersely put it in his seminal The Old Man and the Absolute Bargain.

Silk Handkerchief

noreply@blogger.com (David Hadley) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:25:00 +0000

The fort – if that was what it was - seemed to grow out of the seawall as though it was some natural stage a seawall went through in its growth; like a plant flowering or producing some elaborate seedpod. The seawall itself seemed ancient, but recently repaired in places. It was one of those timeless, through being endlessly renewed, monuments to continued human existence in a particular place for centuries. A place were the human seemed to merge into the natural in the same way the seawall seemed to just merge into the rocks of the cliff face at each end of the small bay making it hard to say where the one ended and the other began.

The fort too seemed only natural, not man-made emerging from the seawall as though one day it may flower, or open to drop its seeds onto the waves below. The small window was about ten feet above the path along the top of the seawall. I walked there every morning, glancing up at the small window with rusted iron bars, imagining that it could be some cold damp dungeon deep in the cellar of the fortress.

When the slim delicate hand poked through those bars, waving the pale pink silk handkerchief, I was more than a little surprised. When the hand let go of the handkerchief and let it flutter down onto the seawall, I seemed to rush to pick it up almost out of reflex.

Written on the handkerchief, in what looked like mascara, was the single word:

HELP!

She who would Serve

noreply@blogger.com (David Hadley) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:12:00 +0000

The room seemed to flicker in the light from the stuttering candle-flames. The shadows were deep and dark all around me as I settled in my chair to wait. I knew I would not have to wait long. I took a sip from the glass, feeling the wine warm me as I waited.

The candle-flames flickered again in the draught as the door opened. I heard the door close; somewhere off in the shadows, with a soft thud.

The only sound I could hear were her bare feet whispering along the wooden floorboards as she came towards my chair. I sat back, my one elbow resting on the armrest and my chin in my hand.

She stopped in front of my chair; the simple white gown she wore almost reached the floor. I could see the leather of the collar under her chin, the candle-flames reflected in the small padlock that held it locked around her neck.

I realised that I had yet to give her a name. The name that she used before was gone now. In this room she had only the name I chose to give her, when I decided what that name would be.

She was looking down at the floor, a place just in front of my feet.

I waited…

She pulled the dress off up over her head and folded it neatly, placing it on the floor to her one side as she knelt in front of me to wait for whatever I decided to do; to wait for her new name and for her new life to begin.

Today’s Missive

noreply@blogger.com (David Hadley) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 10:29:00 +0000

Well, obviously any mentions of the mandolins would be – of course – superfluous, including this one.

This may – or may not – turn out to be a bit of a bugger.

We’ll just have to carry on and see if it becomes necessary to mention the… er… well, y’know… before we reach the end of today’s missive or not.

To be honest, I think we are in with a pretty good chance of getting away without any further mentions of the… well, like I said. After all, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your Argos catalogue, for example. It has been a while, but – as far as I can recall – there wasn’t even one of those things we are not mentioning again, today, in their last catalogue.

On the whole then, I think we could – just – get away with it, at least now that we are well past the halfway mark and are heading down the home straight. I recon one more paragraph should be enough for today.

After all, I’m sure you are a very busy person with lots to do, and plenty of other interesting websites to peruse, especially that one you’ve found were all those seemingly rather nice people like to do interesting things to each other whilst wearing the absolute minimal amount of clothing. In which case, I will leave you to get on with it knowing that we got all the way to the end with mentioning the mandolins again….

Oh, bugger!

TV Nature Programmes

noreply@blogger.com (David Hadley) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 13:56:00 +0000

‘Right, you sit over there and pretend to be a teapot and I will sit here and undertake my (nearly) world-renowned imitation of a cruet set. That way when the wild animals come down to the watering hole at dusk they will just think someone has set the table for a late tea.’

That is an example of the skill of the top naturalists and wildlife cameramen currently helping make our TV schedules into something slightly less that a celebrity-infested do-it-yourself course combined with a village talent(less) show. Consequently, we all feel we should all do our best to pretend to be interested in their doings, despite the fact that every animal in the world has – by now – had every event, significant or otherwise of its life-cycle investigated and detailed on film.

For, by now, even the most half-arsed and desultory TV viewer must know more about the tiger than any victim of a man-eater, including what a tiger looks like from the inside. It seems we all know everything about every animal: right down to what a Thompson’s gazelle puts on its shopping list, what kind of sofa a heron prefers to perch on and the favourite TV programmes of dormice. This includes what previous generations of naturalists made up to make the animals seem more interesting, which, after you’ve seen your twelfth programme on the life-cycle of the stick insect, means you can begin to understand and have some sympathy for the TV nature programme-makers and their trade.