Living Under The Wisdom Of Guru. All Praise To Guru.

This is the third of four pieces written in writers' groups this week.  Most weeks during school terms the Writers' Cafe meets on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings.  If you're in Newcastle Upon Tyne look it up and come write with us.  All are welcome.

The prompt given for this related to the origin stories of different types of tea.  But we were allowed to write about our favourite drink if we weren't so keen on tea.  We were also allowed to be very liberal with the truth - origin stories being, after all is said and done, just stories.

What follows is what I wrote.  Free written.  With only one word crossed out on my page.  I haven't changed a thing when typing it up except to alter the spelling of the drink.  Adding an "h" somehow made it seem more spiritually appropriate.

The drink in this picture was real.  An actual product.  Sold as seen.  And blessed by a priest.  It's not the drink in the story.  I was thinking of quite a few spiritual leaders, scams, and odd beliefs while writing including some products and people that friends of mine believe in and continue with undented belief even when contrary and sometimes conclusive evidence is given that the products don't work or the people are liars.  The story uses the word "manifested."  As I wrote that the image of Sai Baba came to mind.  He's faked a lot of miracles through basic conjuring skills.  That's been proved - and the evidence for his paedophilia is pretty damning too.  But people still believe.  Just as in this story.  I thought of Millerites and Jehovah's Witnesses and other groups whose followers continue to follow even when the prophecies and "clear word of Scripture" goes wrong.  I thought of spurious health claims and how we need to be a lot more careful with who and what we grant the assent of faith to.  I did a lot of thinking in that ten, possibly fifteen minute writing period.

Guru was wise.  Guru was just.

Guru could read your soul and work miracles.

Guru manifested gold dust and once caused the tigers to roar and retreat.

Guru convinced me in his smile, in the way he opened Scriptures.  Or left them closed.  His words were as much life as anything from Vedas or Christ.

So I moved to guru's commune, gave up my life of chasing the world.  I lived alongside Guru.  Or at least in the same town.  I was hardly worthy to walk in his divine light footsteps.

Guru's blessing was sold to the world.  We all knew the story.  How as as child he had discovered his holy well, deep in the tunnel beneath his bed.  Guru was guided by Lord Krishna himself to dig through his floor and the spirit of Lao Tzu lit his way; showed direction through the antediluvian passages to the spring.

Guru was enlightened in the drinking.  God granted him a special gift.  Later, Gautama led him in his earthly mission.  To bring not only the word of spirit but the liquid nectar of spirit to all who would hear.

And so, three years before I followed him into the communal seclusion, Guru revealed Kalamah to the world.  Drink each day and it would help purify you.  Body.  Mind.  Soul.  Spirit.  It would detox you.  And who knows?  Perhaps, were it in the beneficent timing of God, you too would be enlightened.  Just like Guru.

But Kalamah flowed from a single spring.  It was scarce.  It was costly.

In the commune we drank for free.  One sip a day.  And we praised Guru.  Bowed to him.  Our hope.

What remained was bottled.  Sold.  For a price befitting a product of such eternal value.

After five years in Guru's commune I advanced and was accepted into the inner sanctum.  Into Guru's confidence.  It was there I learned the secret of Kalamah.  At last, Guru led me to the spring, the source of Kalamah.

I learned this:  There was no spring.  All there was were cartons of pear juice, bright red food colouring, and tinctures of liquorice and rosemary.

Initially I was disappointed.  Until Guru showed me how God led him to sell Kalamah for the greater spiritual good.  Guru showed me how precious his blessing was.

He was Guru.  He was enlightened.  How could I not believe?

All praise the wisdom of Guru.  All drink from the spring.  Find enlightenment.

Guru's blessing is the Light of the World.

The Came From Darkness - Creatures In The Attic

I've enjoyed being with creative people in different groups this week.  On both Tuesday and Wednesday morning I was able to attend The Writers' Cafe.  Both occasions were a joy.  It's great to meet with the people there; to chat and to write.  It's great to be among people who are enthusiastic for the process of writing and who encourage each other in that process.  It's great to get feedback.  And it's great to hear the wide range of work we come up with, quickly written, from the various writing prompts.

Each session is themed and during our time together we will write from one or two prompts.  This week has given me four short pieces of writing.  Today I'm going to post the first of these.  Our topic was attics.  This remained the theme for the second piece.  I have homework to write about a cellar and a discovered place.  My confession is that I haven't done my homework yet even though the idea for what I will writer was already there in my head on Tuesday in the group.

Today I've spent the day with my little autistic theatre group.  Those people are great.  The radio play I've written there is complete with the exception of sorting out the files for sound effects and background music.  I've found it all but haven't been disciplined enough to download and convert it all.  Some more homework.

Here then is the first little piece from The Writers' Cafe this week.  In many ways it's the weakest of the four.  It needs more detail and perhaps one day it'll get it.  For now though here are the words, as free written in the session.  They're in 5-7-5 syllable structure, like haiku but not true traditional haiku themes or image structure.

Image from here.

They came from darkness.

Grinning yellow teeth; grey eyes.

Whispered sour nothings.

They came from darkness.

Slow descent of attic stairs,

Torn clothes, dead scarred chests.

They came from darkness.

Fingers: Beckoning.  "Join us.

Cursed, But not alone."

They came from darkness.

With one flick of loft light switch

They vanished from sight.

Glaring, naked bulb

Shone through my fierce fear haunting

Revealed only dust.

Later, I upstairs

Explored the memory space.

Boxes of other lives.

In the light, safety.

I smiled.  Relieved.  Began to laugh.

Then, they laughed with me.

The light dimmed to black.

Hands.  Breath.  My body held.  Squeezed.

They came from darkness.

The Girl Whose Good Fortune Nearly Killed Her - Part one of two

I'm not well again.  So for today you're only getting half a story.  I'll finish it for tomorrow's post.

The following was inspired by the Sunday Assembly, Manchester.  Partly.  I was able to be there for their meeting last weekend.  Unfortunately I couldn't stick around for cake.  The subject of the meeting was luck and a fortune cookie was placed under each chair.  I sneakily took two cookies away from me and as I waited for my coach back to Newcastle a story idea came to mind.  What if someone believed such fortunes and took them literally?  This is the first half of that story, based on the two fortunes I received.

Please excuse the bad focus on my photos - my phone wasn't coping well with tiny writing and bad lighting.

Mary woke up in pain.  Her chest hurt more than anything else, as if an elephant had stood on her rib cage or a family of mice had burrowed into it, ripping through flesh with their tiny teeth.  Her head hurt too as if she was subject to the worst of hangovers.  Thinking about the pain only caused her more pain.  Thinking about opening her eyes when there was obviously an intrusive bright light above her made the pain in her brain far worse.  Mary lay there for a while.  Maybe if she lay still long enough everything would feel much better.  She didn't know how long it was but the torment inside her mind gradually subsided from hurricane force to just a severe gale.

Mary opened her eyes.  She was in a hospital bed and her mother was standing over her.  Staring at her with a very worried expression on her face.  She had been crying.

"Thank God.  You're awake.  You're a fucking idiot Louise.  What the hell did you think you were doing?"

The sound of her mother shouting made Mary's head hurt again.  She closed her eyes for a while.  Slowly it came back to her and she realised what must have happened.

"I was obeying it mum.  That's all.  I did what it said and you told me it was true didn't you?"

"What was true?  Whatever possessed you Louise?  You're bloody lucky to be alive.  Could have killed yourself you dunce.  And heaven knows how we're going to get the stains out of the carpet."

Mary's mum started to cry.  "Just look at what you've done to your mum.  I could have lost you."

Mary could only stare.  It had all made perfect sense in her mind.  Had she really almost died?  How was that possible when she had only been walking in obedience?

"Mum, mum.  Don't cry.  I did it for you.  Because you said to and you gave them to me.  It should have been okay."

"Sod it Louise!  Of course it wasn't going to be okay.  And you'll be scarred for life.  Scarred.  I was so scared when I found you lying there.  Thought someone had murdered you.  Oh Jesus, Mary and Joseph I did.  And then I saw those knives."

She cried more and fell across Mary's legs, grabbing her hand and clasping it tightly.

"Mum?  I'll be fine and we'll work it out.  Maybe I did something wrong.  Although I can't think what.  And mum?  My name's Mary now, do you remember?"

"God Louise, is this somehow related to that?  I told you the first time that you didn't have to take it literally and act on it."

"Yeah, but mum, that's not what you said in the restaurant and it was such a special night and that Chinese man said it too and you said that he looked like some kind of prophet.  I think he was.  My name's Mary.  I had to obey because you said and I did too."

Perhaps it had been a mistake from the beginning.  Perhaps Mary's mum should never have agreed to take her to a Chinese restaurant to celebrate her twelfth birthday.  At home they only ever ate good, wholesome English food and that's the way Mary's mum liked it.  But then Mary had seen a programme on television about Chinese food and had spent the next month repeating those strange words over and over again and pestering to be allowed to try them.  Chow Mein.  Foo Yung.  Wonton.  What kind of words were those?  Mary's mum believed only in chips, steak and kidney pudding and foods she could understand.

But Mary had gone on about it so much that eventually her mum could take it no more and said that they would try one Chinese meal.  At a restaurant in town.  When the day arrived Mary was dancing in excitement.  She had been obsessed with the menu for weeks, downloading it from the restaurant website and learning it off by heart.  All she could think about was what Kung Pao and Dim Sum might be.  Her mum was scared.  Scared of the new foods in the new place.

At seven o'clock they arrived for their meal.  Mary's mum didn't know what to do or what to ask for so the waiter helped her explore the menu.  She was relieved that the final section contained some English dishes so she settled on roast chicken and chips for her main course.  Mary said, "Oh mum, that's so boring.  I'm going to order a starter, two main courses and a pudding and you can try them too.  You'll see.  You'll like them."

It was true.  Mary's mum did like the food and by the end of the meal was surprised that she regretted ordering chicken and chips.  That char sui chow mein Mary had ordered turned out to be delicious even though it had such a strange name.  She decided that one day she might risk a Chinese ready meal from the supermarket.  Maybe they sold chow mein there too.

At the close of the meal the waiter gave them the bill on a little plate.  There were also two little packages.  Mary's mum called the waiter back, saying, "Er, excuse me, sorry.  But what are these?"

"Madam, special gift from us to you.  These are fortune cookies.  Inside each cookie there is a piece of paper and it will tell your fortune or give you a special insight into your life.  It never fails.  It's almost as if the gods were inside the fortune cookies."

"Oh, I don't think I want to try that.  It all sounds a bit superstitious to me.  It's probably true if you say it is but I'll stick with my God thank you and trust him to know my fortune.  I don't want my cookie.  Sorry."

"That's fine madam.  You don't have to accept the gift.  How about your little girl?"

"No.  I shouldn't think she'd want to have one either."

Mary piped up.  "Actually I'd like to.  The man said it never fails and you said it's true.  Can I have your cookie too mum?  Please.  It is my birthday."

Mary's mum relented, saying, "Louise, Louise.  You do have a lot of funny ideas.  But I suppose it won't do any harm just this once."

Mary put the cookies in her pocket.  "I'll read one tonight and then the other in a few days.  Make my birthday last a bit longer."

That night Mary opened her first cookie.  It didn't taste very nice.  Nevertheless she ate the whole thing before opening the small piece of paper inside.

It read "A good name is better than riches."

She thought hard about what that might mean.  She hadn't got many riches, just a few pounds in a piggy bank.  She didn't think she had a good name either.  Louise?  In what way was that a good name?  It wasn't in the Bible or any of the other holy books her mum had.  It was a bad name and she couldn't begin to see why her parents had given it to her.  Perhaps it was all her dad's fault.  Mum often said he was a bad man and they hadn't seen him since Mary was two.

There was only one thing for it if she wanted to obey the fortune cookie.  She had to get rid of her riches and change her name.  Then her life would work out for the best.  It was obvious.  The Chinese prophet said so and he was obviously right.

The following morning Mary went down to breakfast with her piggy bank.  As her mum served her with toast and jam Mary said, "Mum, can I give all my money into the second collection on Sunday.  It's Peter's Pence isn't it?  It'll all go somewhere worthwhile."

"I suppose so.  If that's what you really want.  But weren't you saving up for something?"

"Oh, that doesn't matter.  It's only riches and there are better things than riches.  Can I?  Please mum."

"Okay.  You're a kind girl Louise.  I'm so lucky to have you."  Mary's mum gave her a hug.

"Oh, and mum.  I'm changing my name.  I don't like Louise any more.  I want to be called Mary.  That's a good name isn't it?  It's the kind of name you might have if you are pure like Jesus' mum."

"No you can't.  That was your dear departed gran's name and she was a good soul even if your dad turned out to be a child of the devil.  You're not changing your name.  And that's final."

"But mum.  I like Mary.  It suits me because I want to be obedient too.  And you said it was probably true and it is true just like you said so I've got to be Mary.  Got to be.  Please mum.  I have to do it."

"Louise Baker you shut your mouth now.  You're not changing your name.  Not while you live under my roof."

Mary shut her mouth.  It was all so unfair.  The fortune cookie had told her to be called Mary, hadn't it?  So that's the way it had to be.  And since it was impossible to change her name while living under her mum's roof ...  Later that day Mary wrote a note to her mother.

"Mum, I'm sorry but I am leaving home today.  I have to be called Mary and you've made it impossible.  So I've got to go.  I've left my piggy bank next to this note.  Could you see that the money inside, three pounds and fourteen pence, are put into the offering?  Thanks Mum.  I love you.  I'm sorry to leave because I do love you ever such a lot and it was so funny watching your face when you tried that first mouthful of chow mein.  Don't worry about me.  I'll have a good name and that's better than riches.  I have to obey and I hope you can see that I'm doing the right thing.  Your obedient daughter, Mary."



[1680 words]

Some Found Diary Entries About The Mystery Of Babies (And Sex)

I found a book in the street today.*  I'm going to try to get it back to its owner if I can find him.  Inside the cover are the words, "Henry Rodgerson.  My Diary."  There was no address and I confess I read from the diary in order to try to return it.  I haven't been able to locate Henry.  Perhaps you can help.  These are the final two entries in the book.  If you have any ideas let me know.  I want to return the book if I can.

Thank you.

That's me.  About six weeks old and already looking happy!

March 7th 2017

The greatest mystery of life is this:  Where do babies come from?  They just seem to appear.  One week a woman is walking in the park alone.  The next she's in company.  Baby in a pram.  And then she'll gather with others.  Eight babies.  Eight prams.  And eight women, all sharing this special secret knowledge.  Babies.  I was one once.  At least that's what I've been told.  I don't remember it.  Perhaps they're right.  I was that small and helpless too.  I can't quite imagine it.  Maybe my parents were privy to that secret knowledge too and maybe they knew of deep mysteries.  Not me.  I've thought long and hard about these things.  Am I the only one who doesn't know?  Is there some kind of global conspiracy against me?  I mean, I know where to find a pram.  That's easy.  I even know where I might find a woman with the necessary skill to push the thing.  Women are everywhere.  I know that.  Everywhere.  I don't understand them though.  The only woman at home was mum and she's mum.  Not a woman like the ones in the park.  And there weren't any of these strange, somehow different creatures at school.  But I see them now.  Everywhere.  In shops, in the street.  I even see them at church and have talked to some of them too.  They don't seem very different but I can tell most of them are another species.  Because of their clothes.  Sometimes it's hard to tell.  No.  I don't understand what women are meant to be at all.  They're a bit like men.  Are they a new invention?  Did a doctor invent them round the time I left home?  I don't know.  Some of them look too old but I can't tell for sure.  Do women appear in the same way as babies?  Another secret.  How do I find out?  Anyway, I can find a pram.  Find a woman.  But a baby?  Where on earth can I find one of those that isn't already in a pram?  Why do they all know?
Long.  Hard.  Difficult.  That's how I've thought.  Yesterday my dad gave me a clue and it's what I'm going to investigate today.  I asked him about babies.  Again.  I keep asking him and he just goes silent.  Mumbles incoherently.  Or says to ask mum.  I ask her and she does the same.  But says to ask dad.  It's not fair.  I don't think so.  I mean, they know the secret.  Why don't they want me to know?  I'd quite like a baby.  They're so cute.  Except when they cry.  And so pink.  Except when they're other colours.  People are different colours.  Did you know that dear diary?  I was amazed to find that out when I left home.  It's okay though.  Doesn't matter.  It was a shock though the day I first saw a person who wasn't pink.  Now I'm used to it and wonder why I only saw pink people at school.  Anyway.  I asked dad again yesterday.  And asked again.  I want answers.  I want a baby and if there's a special shop I want to know where it is.  So I asked him.  Over and over.  Forty-seven times.
It was at this point he snapped at me.  Looked mean.  Shouted, "Damn you stop asking about such disgusting things."  I don't think babies are disgusting.  So I asked again.  "Please dad, you got me.  Where do babies come from?  Where did you go to get me?"  Dad boomed.  "For God's sake Henry.  Didn't you listen to Secks Ed?"  Then he stormed out.  Slammed the door so hard the walls shook.  I've never seen him to that before.
A clue.  Secks Ed.  Secks Ed.  Funny name.  I know someone called Ed.  But his first name isn't Secks.  Secks.  Secks?  Funny word.  What kind of a word is that?  Secks Ed.  And then in the middle of the night I realised.  Secks.  I've heard the word before.  In hushed tones.  It was a long time ago.  I was still at school.  Fifteen years old.  There was a rumour.  All of us were going to meet Secks Ed.  Maybe he was a clown.  Big red nose.  Perhaps he'd read us a story or teach us about another country.  Or tell us about politics.  No wonder the tones were hushed if he was going to mention dangerous things like politics.
This morning I remembered.  I never got to meet Secks Ed.  Never.  I would have to find him.  And so later I'm going to the library for the first time.  See if they know Secks Ed.  They might know his address.  I'm excited to find him.  I'll tell you why I didn't meet him when he visited my school.  Did he say something about babies?  I can hardly believe it's possible.  Circuses and maths.  That would be better.  Much preferable and I'd like to have seen his big red nose and ...


[at this point a page has been ripped out]

... the library.



March 8th 2017

Oh my God.  No.  That's awful.  The man at the library gave me a book.  He said that Ed wasn't a person at all.  His first name was on the front of the book and it's actually spelled S - E - X.  When I got home I started to read the book.
THAT happens?  No.  No.  NO.  God no.

I don't want a baby any more.  Awful.  Truly, gut-wrenchingly the worst thing I've ever seen.  Disgusting.  Horribly, horribly disgusting.  The pictures are even worse.  I feel very ill.

Say no more.  I'm going back to bed.





*All information in the opening paragraph is false. The diary entries were free written in a Writers' Cafe session on March 7th.  The session was based on The Guinness Book of Records but some of us moved far away from the books.  How I got from the world record Rubik's Cube solve to the free writing is a tale that I don't need to tell here.  Especially as I want to write about the Cube at some point.  I put this disclaimer here just so you know I'm not publicly posting the private diary of someone.  As if you ever thought I might.

Death And Life At Sea - A Continuation of A Fallen Life

Note: This post follows on immediately from yesterday's post.  You can find that under this link.

I have been told too that I should return to my private detective, whose first case was posted within the last week.  You can find that under this link.  I also want to continue the story about the stranger on my bed.  I posted the first part of that a few days ago.  You can find that under this link.  I also need to write about The Cafe of Stolen Dreams.  And I have a novel to write too.  So many possible writing projects.  When I began this blog two months ago my only project was to write from a prompt every day.  I am amazed how much has changed in just two months.

This is the first time one post on this blog has followed on from another.  I guess it won't be the last.  Here it is.  The second short chapter of a story.  It began with suicide.  Happy stuff!





I awoke to find myself in someone else's bed.  I could tell it wasn't mine.  The light was all wrong, the covers were too scratchy, and my own bed tended to stay still.  This one was rocking gently and I couldn't tell whether the movement was soothing or nauseating.  I opened my eyes to find a man staring down at me.  He had four long scars running down the length of his face.

"So you've woken up all by yourself.  You're in a strange room and a man like me is with you.  What do you do?"

"Hey, what?"

"What do you do?  Serious question."

"Er, er.  I ask you where I am."

"Is that the best you can do?  How disappointing.  I was rather hoping you might use some magic power to transport yourself onto the deck or that you might see how sinister I look and decide to engage me in mortal combat.  It's been a while since anyone did that.  But no.  Where am I?"  He asked the question with a sarcastic leer.

"Okay then.  Who are you?   And how did I get here?"

"Pulled you out of the water didn't I?  I am Captain Jonas and you're on my ship.  Saw your body floating out in the sea and thought you were dead.  Maybe you were.  But then you had a heartbeat so I stuck you in the spare bed for safekeeping.  Thought it up to you whether you live or die.  You seem to be having difficulties making that choice for yourself but don't let my face scare you, I'm a kind old fool and thought you should have another chance."

It all came back to me.  My suicide.  My miraculous resurrection on the rocks and how I had subsequently drowned.  Or maybe I hadn't.  I couldn't have drowned could I?  Not totally, because I was here now.

Jonas kept talking but I hardly took in the words.  Something about death and life and turning of wheels.  I looked around at the cabin.  It contained two other beds, both with the same rough grey fabric that covered me.  Decoration was sparse and the grey paint on the walls was disheartening.  The only break from the grey was two pictures hung next to the door.  The first was of a whale.  The other of a blue wizard's hat and at the bottom of the picture I could just see that it was being worn by someone.  I lay back on the bed.  Started to drift away into sleep.  Until Jonas said something that brought me back to full alertness.

"Your friend wasn't so lucky."

"Wha .. wha ... what friend?"

"That other woman who was with you.  Sorry to have to tell you.  She's dead.  Won't be coming back to life any time soon either.  Not with the state of her.  I really don't understand how these things work.  There she is, all puffy and her skin a total mess.  Looks like she's been sleeping with the fishes for days.  And there you are, all bright eyes and perky in the first mate's bunk, with your skin all smooth and gorgeous as if you had only been out for a quick dip.  Say, you're not related are you?  She's all puffed up and it's a very sorry sight but she looks a bit like you.  Stuck her down in the freezer until we get to a port if that's okay.  Don't tell me you were out with your family and lost them all.  Not that.  Oh, why must I be so insensitive all the time?"

I understood.  My corpse from the rocks had obviously washed out too and been picked up with me in some freak of currents.  The bloated flesh was odd but I guessed that stranger things had happened.  Somewhere.  At least once.

"Can I see her?"

"Later, later.  There's plenty of time for that.  We won't be in port for a day or two unless that changes.  First off you should eat.  Must be hungry after nearly drowning and all.  I've put out some clothes for you on the other bed.  Yes, yes, you're naked.  I've seen it all.  Too late.  But I don't care about any of that and don't suppose you want to stay that way.  They're not much to look at and won't fit well but they're better than nothing.  Can get a bit cold on deck too when the wind takes us."

"Thank you captain.  You're too good to me."

"Nonsense lass.  Nonsense.  It's nothing.  Shame about the other one though."

"Was it bad?  How broken is she?  How bad do her injuries look?"

"Injuries?  Oh my no.  No injuries.  You don't get injured in the sea unless something eats you or you get stung by jellyfish or electric eels or find yourself caught up in the propeller of an ocean liner."  He laughed heartily.  "Injuries indeed.  My, my, you do have some funny ideas about the sea don't you?!"

Maybe I didn't understand after all.

"Please, I need to see her.  Need to know.  I couldn't eat a thing without knowing."

"Calm yourself.  Calm yourself.  Get yourself dressed and I'll take you down there.  She's not going anywhere.  And then afterwards I'll tell you what's what and you can help me clean the net.  It'll do you good.  Otherwise you'll just be thinking about it.  Why you're alive and the other one is very, very dead."

He left me then.  I got out of the bed.  Examined my body.  Everything was where it should be and I had to admit my skin really was quite gorgeous and smooth.  Where it should be?  Not quite.  It should be smashed up on the rocks and then washed into the sea.  If indeed the waves dislodged my corpse from those spikes.  That's where I should be.  Quite dead.  But nothing had gone to plan since I jumped from the cliff.  Nothing much had gone to plan in the year before jumping.  Otherwise I guess I would never have wanted to die so much.

As I dressed into Jonas' clothes I reflected that, having died twice, I didn't want to do it again.  I wanted to live.  Find a future.  Turn from all those things which had gone wrong and forge something new.  New town.  New people.  New everything.  I could do it.  Why not?  If others could sort their lives out why not me?  I didn't know why I wasn't dead.  Twice.  A rush of gratitude coursed through me and I burst into tears.

Once I had composed myself I left the cabin and found myself in a simple galley kitchen.  Jonas was there.  He took one look at me and burst out laughing.  "I'm sorry.  You do look funny though.  Dwarfed by my clothes.  And grey really isn't your colour.  I'll find you something in a bit to hold up those trousers.  Can't have you having to hold them up yourself all the time, not that I care.  Come on, I'll take you down to the other one now."

He led me out onto the deck of the boat, helping me climb the steep ladder from the galley although I didn't really need assistance.  On the deck I saw several fishing nets and various equipment that I hardly understood.  There was a wooden building at the front that looked close to collapse. Inside I could see the top of a steering wheel.  And that was it.  Everything was painted in the same grey as the cabin.

Jonas opened a trapdoor that had blended perfectly with the deck.  "Get a move on," he said, "I don't know about you but I want my lunch and if we don't hurry it'll be dinner time already and we'll be wanting to turn the clocks for a ham sandwich."

We climbed down another ladder.  This time I was offered no assistance.  In the room below there were several large freezers.  They all had their doors open.  All were empty.  And in the middle of the room were two smaller chest freezers.  "One's for my food.  The other's for just in case," Jonas explained.  "Wouldn't want the just in cases to get mixed with my food would I?  Even so they nearly didn't give me the second one.  Took weeks of arguing.   Seriously though?  Would you want to keep your fish fingers in the same box as your human fingers."

He laughed again.  I didn't.

"Sorry.  I guess that joke was in bad taste.  She's in that one on the right.  I'm off now.  Make lunch for us while I still can.  And then you can tell me about yourself and I can fill in the gaps."

Jonas left and I opened the freezer.  Laid out flat inside was a human corpse.  Bloated, distended, discoloured by the water and by having been dead for a while.  I could still see her face though.  It was mine.  I looked closer and reached in to check.  There were no obvious wounds.  No breakages.  Nothing to show where I had been impaled or shattered on the rocks.  I realised with a start that this wasn't that corpse.

The miracle had happened again.  I really had drowned.  Days ago probably.  And this was my corpse.  Or at least my second corpse.  Somehow I stood here.  Alive.  While I also lay here frozen on a fishing boat with no fish.  Somewhere, presumably, there was another version of me.  I stared at myself a little longer.  Closed the freezer.  And sank to the floor, uncomprehending, not wanting to face the questions that would come.  Perhaps my death would become harder than my life ever was.


[1614 words]

Death On The Rocks - The End and Beginning Of A Fallen Life

This is the beginning of a story.  Today I have no time or energy to complete it.  I promise you, it has a happy ending.  I know where it's going.  And it's going to be positive.  It just begins in an unhappy place.  I realise I'm collecting lots of unfinished projects.  I want to write more about Oxford Brookes.  I want to write more about the stranger on my bed.  Much more.  And I want to finish this tale.

I apologise that what I've written this morning - a shade more than 1500 words - ends at a difficult moment.  That couldn't be helped.  This person is telling me their story and that's the point they reached.  They've told me more but haven't given the details.  I know the destination.  I don't know the journey.

Okay, okay, you've convinced me.  Or rather Babylon 5 convinced me.  Joe Staczynski, the creator of that series, talked of the journey and the destination.  Episodes early on gave away parts of the destination.  We knew big parts of the fates of some of the characters.  We didn't know how they got there.  So I'm going to tell you one thing now about the character in this story.  One thing only:

They do not attempt suicide.

I think perhaps I should leave behind writing prompts much of the time.  I'm meant to be writing from a prompt on a list every day this year.  At it turns out I have only written from one of those prompts on one day in the last week.  I honestly believe it's the worst post out of the seven days.  Perhaps I should use the prompt only when I have nothing else to write about.  Not look at the prompt as my first priority for writing.

It is now the end of February.  I have posted every day for two months.  The blog is not what I had imagined it would be.  It is something more.  I've been pleasantly surprised by the experience.  Two months down.  Ten months to go.  I believe I can make it.

Rock under a cliff. Unlike the story.

To begin at the beginning.

No!  I'm not going to do that.  Other writers, more brilliant than I and with a dozen best-selling novels to their name might start their stories in a sensible place but I am known for being awkward, argumentative and just plain difficult.  So I'm going to begin at the end.

It hurt.  Everything hurt.  I can't begin to describe to you the pain.  As a life choice I wouldn't recommend jumping from a cliff, landing on rocks, breaking most of the bones in your body, getting impaled in two places on a spike and slowly bleeding out.  It's not something you might find in one of those books with names like "1001 Stupid Things You Must Do Before You Die."  If a book of methods of death was ever written, with the methods ranks in order of unpleasantness my choice of actions that day would have been somewhere on the unpleasant end.  Somewhere in between crucifixion and bathing in acid.

I couldn't move.  Screamed for help for a while although I knew there wasn't much of a chance of being heard.  I hadn't chosen my place of death for its publicity value.  Not for me the very visible statement of jumping from a skyscraper or leaping from the Pennine Way onto the M62.  If only I had.  Then perhaps the landing would have led to an instant end to my miserable being.  Or perhaps I was just as unlucky in death as I was in life.  Perhaps no matter how I'd decided to kill myself things wouldn't have gone as planned.

By all rights I should have been killed outright.  Four hundred foot sheer drop.  Onto the rocks.  No chance of surviving that.  And then the sea would wash in on the tide and carry my corpse away.  I'd studied the currents.  I wasn't going to be washing up on any beach.  Let my body be food for the ocean and do more good in death than it did in life.  That's what I'd thought of course.  Now I know better.

My death was slow.  Agonising.  And as I lay dying, in moments of clarity, I got to thinking about my choices and asked myself whether there might have been a better way.  A better way of dying.  Yes, that.  Even as blood seeped from my wounds I chastised myself for not killing myself properly.  Then another thought appeared.  I wondered whether there might have been a better way of living.  Or some reason why carrying on living might have been a good idea.  It was too late by then of course but I couldn't help but regret that I would never see the sunset again or the view from the top of the cliff.

I watched the sea.  It was getting closer and my dying was taking too long, without the pain ever diminishing.  I wondered whether it would be a lapse into unconsciousness that would take away my suffering.  Or whether it would be the sea, stealing me away and drowning me.  Drowning seemed infinitely more preferable to carrying on suffering.  I couldn't even move.  A seal on nearby rocks watched me curiously.

And then I died.  I felt myself sink away from the world.  The last I knew was the sound of the gulls and the waves that would soon claim me.  Death, when it finally came, was a relief.  Peaceful.  Death was a smile and I welcomed it.

That's the end of the story.  The very end.  Or at least it should have been.  I woke up again.  I found myself lying on the rocks under the cliff.  I wasn't in pain any more so that was something.  I lifted up my arms to check them, realising in the process that my right arm was no longer pinned on that spike.  There was no blood.  No sign of injury.  I sat myself up and looked around.

My first thought was to wonder how the heck I was going to get off the rock ledge I sat on.  The sea would cover it soon and there wasn't any way I'd be able to climb far enough to avoid it.  My second thought became clear when I turned round and saw myself.  I was dead.  Covered in blood.  A spike through my arm and side.  My body was a mess.  I walked over to it and examined it further.  Yes.  A mess.  But I looked peaceful.  Even after the torture I'd just experienced and the hurts and uncontrollable urges of the life I'd lived before.  After my hell, my loneliness, after all those years in which hope just kept being disappointed, I finally had a beatific look of peace on my face.  I was glad.

"Death, where is thy victory?  Where is thy sting?"  Okay.  I was dead.  But here I was, up and walking and with a body that made me feel fitter and stronger than I had since my teens.  I was a keen swimmer back then but hadn't even been in a pool in twenty years.  That reminded me.  The sea.  The cliff.  Perhaps I could swim out.  Maybe I'd get there.  Wouldn't drown or get caught too badly in the current.  Start walking now and I could cut down the distance I'd have to manage in the water.

I turned my back on my corpse.  Good riddance to it.  I had a new body now and it felt much better.  I began walking, as fast as I could manage without risking falling on the rocks.  As I walked, the obvious fact came to mind.  I was dead.  Wasn't I?  I didn't feel dead but I must be because I'd seen myself.  Was I some kind of ghost?  Surely not.  I had a physical body not some airy, half-believed amorphous form.  I pinched myself to make sure.  Yes.  Physical.  Definitely.  And I felt good.  Mentally too.  It was as if suffering so much on the rocks and then giving in to dying had cleared a lot of my problems away.  I wanted to live.  Found myself seeing living as a gift and this second chance as a miracle.  I stopped to catch my breath.  Before starting again I screamed out in joy.  I don't think I ever did that before.

The sea continued to advance until it washed over the rock shelf, covering my feet, my shins, my ankles.  A sudden rush of water, and how the hell did that happen?, and it covered my hips and I could hardly see the rocks below.  Walking further was going to be impossible.  I just hoped my swimming technique would come back to me and I'd be able to make it.  I knew I had to swim a couple of miles at least.  I didn't want to die.  Not now.

I swam.  Steady strokes.  It didn't take long until I was swimming like a champion again and in this new body I felt I would be able to swim the Channel.  A few miles would be simple.  I made good progress.  Fighting for new life, for the miracle, with each stroke.  It was all very exciting and under the circumstances I knew I wouldn't be overly embarrassed to climb out of the sea naked.  Even though it was the middle of the afternoon.  And I would be emerging onto a tourist beach.  Hopefully someone would lend me a towel.  After that I could work out what to do.

I worried for a moment that I'd been wrong about the currents.  That my dead body would wash up on the beach in a few days.  Complete with my ID and phone.  It would be far more embarrassing than a thousand tourists seeing my very healthy new body in all its glory.  I'd be there living my life and then I'd show up dead.  I didn't know what would happen then.

Unfortunately I was right.  I had been wrong.  But wrong in a different way.  I'd obviously made an error somewhere because the sea started to tug at me more than I'd expected.  I thought as I swam that I'd be able to stay close to the rocks.  I couldn't.  As the current strengthened I was pulled further and further from the shore.  There was no way back.  If I'd been an Olympic champion it wouldn't have changed a thing.  I grew weaker.  And weaker.  Until I had to stop and lie on my back and float.

And then I couldn't even do that.  I fought it for as long as I could.  But it was inevitable.  I had to give in at some point.  I despaired.  Just when I'd found an excitement about life it was being stolen away from me again.  I wanted to live.  Desperately.  I wanted to grow old, marry someone, make my life so extraordinary people would write books and poems about me.  It was all so unfair.  Why should I have this miraculous second life if it wasn't going to continue?

I gave myself to the water.  Sank.  Allowed the sea to fill my lungs.  It wasn't so bad.  Much better than the pain I'd felt on the rocks.  I would be food for the ocean after all.  Twice.  It didn't take long.  I died.  Again.


[1548 words]

Last Night I Woke To Find A Stranger Sitting On My Bed

During my post for yesterday I said that a story idea had popped into my head and that I would allow the story to be written at some point during the day.  This is that story.  It begins with someone waking up to find another someone sitting on their bed.  That is the only thing the story has in common with the ideas in my head this morning.

This is a first chapter.  Whether any more chapters are ever written is something I cannot know at this point.  I would like to write more.  Because at this point I don't know who either someone is.  While writing this neither of them told me the answer.  So don't write in and ask me to tell you.  I expect if I wrote more the answers would come.

Here it is.  Chapter one.  It has no title.  They haven't told me that either.

A picture of the end of my bed. Taken by a stranger.

I woke up in the night with a start to find her tickling my toes.

"Ah, there you are," she said with a look of relief on her face.  "I thought for a minute there you might be dead."

I backed away, fear and confusion combining in an unholy mess, and pressed my back up against the wall.  Pulled in my knees to my chest and stared at her.  Too scared to speak.  I wasn't in the habit of waking up to find a stranger sitting on my bed.

"Now, now, there's no need to worry yourself over me.  I'm not going to hurt you my dear."

At that I must have looked closer to terror because she said, "I shouldn't have said that should I?  That's what they say in fairy tales isn't it and then they eat you or kill you in some curious manner or imprison you or force you to work for them for a million years or trick you into sleeping for a hundred.  I must heartily apologise for my breach in positive language skills."

She looked at me and smiled warmly.  "Come my dear.  I did it again didn't I?  I can't help it.  You see I don't think they properly trained me for this job.  I was meant to gently raise you out of sleep or wait for you to wake up naturally.  But when I saw your eyes were closed and couldn't hear snoring sounds I didn't know what to do.  What if you had been dead?  They wouldn't have been pleased with me.  So I couldn't resist.  Anyway, your right foot was already exposed.  Tip time: If you keep your feet covered up you won't get so cold.  Where was I?  Any idea?"

I stared at her some more.  Began to relax a little.  She was a very strange stranger and her long blue hair was an awful mess of curls and knots.  She wore a dress made of purple bubble wrap and a mixture of rainbow colour bracelets all the way from her wrists to her elbows.  What she was doing on my bed was beyond my comprehension.  How she had got into my house was another question.  But I had to admit that it was probable she wasn't going to transform into a giant goblin and gobble me up whole or drag me into the kingdom of the gnomes.  Whoever she was, I didn't sense any danger.  Nevertheless I continued to stare at her silently.

"No idea.  I don't mind.  Sometimes it's better to have no idea.  Sometimes it's better just to take it all as it comes.  I myself lived without a clue for many years.  That wasn't my fault of course.  And it wasn't my choosing either.  It was an enchantment that did it and I never found out who enchanted me although I have my suspicions.  I know it wasn't a human so it can't have been you.  Not that you would have wanted to trap me in such a cruel way.  You hadn't even met me.  Unless of course I make some error so awful that you seek revenge and can find a time mistress to try to stop me being here in the first place.  Did you do that?  Oh, silly me."  She let out a big laugh as if it was the funniest thing in the whole world.  "You wouldn't know.  You haven't done it yet.  I'll tell you know though.  If you are going to be considering cursing me in the past there's no point.  It won't stop me.  Of course it won't.  I'm here anyway.  But it wasn't you.  I don't think.  I believe it was either one of Rose, Rose or Rose.  You probably don't know them because they don't live in your bedroom.  They're triplets.  Identical and their parents couldn't tell them apart so they all got given the same name.  It's ever so confusing.  Yes, I was enchanted.  Now I'm just enchanting as I'm sure you can tell.  Do you like my dress?  I made it myself.  I like purple.  I found the material blowing in the wind one day and had to carefully paint each individual bubble in a slightly different shade of purple.  It took ages.  And the enchantment was hard to break.  Not only was I clueless but my cluelessness reset itself every day.  That's why I was clueless for so many years.  But I'm not clueless now.  I have a clue.  Even if I did wake you so rudely and call you my dear.  I think I've explained myself properly now.  Any questions?"

I could hardly take in her story.  All that talk of revenge and spells was too much for me at half past three in the morning.  It might have been too much at half past three in the afternoon.  And as for her dress.  It was well crafted, I had to admit that to myself.  I wouldn't have thought a bubble wrap dress could ever fit so well.  Yet to my eyes there was only one shade of purple.  Struggling to make sense of her I managed to ask four questions.

"Just two.  For now.  Who are you?  And what are you doing here, sitting on my bed?  No, I take it back.  Another question.  I'm asking three not two  How did you get in?  I'm sure I locked the front door, the back door, all the windows and even the cat flap.  Are you a lock pick or something?"

She squealed and put her hands over her ears.  "Enough, enough.  Stop it right now.  That's four questions now.  I do wish you would stop changing your mind so abruptly.  It's very confusing and I'm not going to answer any questions if you carry on like that.  I'm sorry but that's just how it is."

To prove her point she stuck her fingers in her ears and started singing "La, la, la ..." loudly and without even a hint of a melody.  I wouldn't have even called it a series of notes.  I shook my head.  How rude.  To come and sit on my bed uninvited and not even answer any questions.  I could hardly believe it.  Trust me to get the one bedroom visitor who seemed to be a little unstable.  I changed that thought.  Her instability could have been much worse and she could have been concealing an unbreakable knife in that dress.  I could see she wasn't.  The whole thing was a little opaque.  Not transparent enough to reveal everything but the outfit didn't leave much to my imagination.

I leaned forward and gently touched her arm.  Looked at her with the kindest expression I could manage.  I think possibly my expression was mistaken for murderous because she closed her eyes and shouted "La, la, la, I'm not listening but I'm not allowed to leave."

I gave up and went to make two mugs of tea.  Leave her to her strange tantrum.  When I came back to the bedroom she was quiet.  Quiet and lying down.  Quiet and fast asleep cuddled up to my large teddy bear.  Great.  Now I couldn't go back to bed.  I put on my dressing gown and pulled a blanket from the cupboard.  Sat on my big bean bag and drank my tea.  Then I lay down and got as comfortable as I could without lying on my bed.  She could answer my questions in the morning and then I would see about lending her one of my own dresses.  My imagination may not have had to work hard but I had to work hard to not remember the outline of her breasts - and I confess I felt more than a little guilty for noticing them - or the way she smiled at me, or the fact that I would have loved to give her hair a good wash and then gently comb out all the knots, or the way I found all the odd things she said to be quite endearing.  Whoever she was, it didn't seem an altogether bad thing that she had appeared on my bed.

Presently I fell asleep.  I woke up with aches all through my back and bones.  I groaned as I turned to my side and remembered I was on the floor.  I could see from the clock by the bed that it was seven sixteen.  Quite respectable.  Then I remembered the stranger.  The stranger and her melodious voice and endearing giggle.  The stranger with her annoying habit of la, la la-ing.  I sat up and looked on the bed.

She was gone.

Perhaps I had dreamed the whole thing.  That seemed the most likely scenario.  A dream.  Far more likely than a blue, purple, rainbow girl coming through locked doors - and they were locked, I checked before breakfast - and rambling on about enchantments.  No.  Of course not.  She wasn't real.  Not real.  But vivid enough that I was able to fill two whole pages in my dream diary.  A new personal record.  I looked at the empty mug of tea.  I looked at the full mug.  I wondered why I had made two mugs but guessed I'd been sleepwalking.  I hadn't done that for a while.  Perhaps my dinner had made my head do funny things.  I wouldn't be buying that particular pie again.

Over breakfast I thought about my dream.  If all my dreams were similar I'd look forward to going to bed every night.  As long as I didn't end up sleeping on the floor.  She really had been quite pretty and had an amazing sparkle in her eyes and a cute way of playing with her bracelets while she talked, as if she was counting each of them in turn.  I decided that I would write up my dream.  Present it as a story.  So that's what I've done.

Tonight I will go to bed again.  Perhaps I will dream.  Perhaps I will dream of her.  Maybe she'll come and visit again and this time I won't be scared as I sleep and can find out who my brain thinks she might be.  Perhaps.  I can only hope.  I'm going to bed early tonight just in case.

I'll let you know.


[1696 words]

Oxford Brookes And The Case Of The Blyth Buddleia Burglar

Daily writing challenge.  Day 56.

Today I didn't have a clue what to write.  I didn't fancy today's writing prompt or any of the ones I've missed out.  I indulged in procrastination.  And then a silly remark made to a friend this morning popped into my head.  I typed four words.  I didn't know what could follow them.  As it turned out, another two thousand words followed.  I'm sure they all make some kind of sense!  So I present to you a short story.

Our buddleia

The Case of the Blyth Buddleia Burglar

Oxford Brookes

Private Detective

The name looked good on the door. It had taken me years to get to this point and I wasn't going to waste it. I had the champagne ready. After years of studying the intricacies and depravities of the human race I gained enough understanding to be able to see past the apparent quandaries a case would present me with. After another three years of working as apprentice to the greatest detective of them all, Lord Comfort, I'd felt ready to move on. Strike out on my own. Be my own man. I'd saved up enough money to hire an office for a year. It was make or break. If I could solve enough high profile cases I'd be set for life. If not, I'd have to give up my dream and become a journalist for a local newspaper.

Or possibly I could write a book about all the unsavoury things I got up to when studying the depravities of the human race. I didn't think you can solve crimes without truly understanding criminals. Couldn't discover the truth about adultery without being an adulterer. And you wouldn't be able to sniff out a drug baron unless you've first sniffed out a wide selection of drugs. Lord Comfort had laughed when I told him all this in my interview. He told me that he had never committed a crime, never taken an illegal drug. He admired my zealousness but not my methodology. If it wasn't for that great man I would never have progressed as I did in the fine art of detection.

I'd even solved the case of the Blyth buddleia burglar. All by myself. I'd taken it upon myself to investigate all on my own when reports came in of someone stealing entire buddleias from gardens in Blyth. I drove to the town and immediately set to work, like all good detectives should. I didn't even take a detour to a restaurant. I didn't spend some hours resting on the beach. And I most definitely didn't get lost on the way there and end up in Blackpool. Definitely not, although Lord Comfort did question me later on why it took me two days to get to my first interview in Blyth and why my driving expenses claim was for three-hundred miles rather than thirty. I explained that it had been a very complicated case and there had been unforeseen clues that needed following up.

The interviews didn't bear much fruit. Each householder told me the same thing. They had gone to bed one night knowing there were buddleias in the garden. The next morning their plants had vanished. Gone. Taken. By person or persons unknown. That person hadn't been seen or heard and hadn't left as much as a fingerprint covered spade or shovel, just a card left at every crime scene in place of the plants. It bore the inscription “Buddleias are us. Get your finest buddleias here.” There was an address and phone number too but I knew from my year spent living with a criminal gang that criminals are dishonest. Those cards could have been left by anyone. Even if they were left by the thieves I knew the information could be forged. Lord Comfort once told me, “If something is too obvious it may be wrong too.” And his teaching had served me well.

As far as clues went, these poor unfortunate souls were perfectly useless. One of them was lying too. I'm almost sure of it, since she lived in a fifth floor flat with no garden. However, since I am a private detective, rather than a policeman, I wasn't able to arrest her for wasting my very precious time, all the more precious since I'd got stuck in a five mile tailback on my way back from not getting lost in Blackpool. She protested that her buddleia had been in a plant pot outside her front door but there wasn't a hint of a sign that a pot had ever been there and she didn't have a receipt from the garden centre.

After the interviews I was left without a lead. Missing buddleias. What was a trainee detective to do? What would Lord Comfort do? I needed time to think and had passed a very nice looking restaurant on my way back from the beach I didn't go to. I would think there. And put the meal on expenses. It was a very fine meal indeed. Four courses because after the first three I still hadn't solved the case. After the fourth I had inspiration. Contact the local drug baron. He would know. And I knew him from my past scholarly examinations of depravity. If anyone was dealing in buddleias on the Blyth black market he would tell me, with proper encouragement. I headed off, without support, independent because I trust my abilities, to see the criminal kingpin.

Their buddleia

It was the right choice. I solved the case. Purely as a result of my finely honed instincts. I didn't even reach the baron. Which is quite a relief because he's a scary man and while I would have done anything to solve the case I didn't want to get injured or be forced to claim the purchase of a quantity of drugs on expenses. Lord Comfort might not have been impressed.

Three streets away from the baron's home I saw two people and in an instant, a brilliant instant of unrivalled detection, I knew I had found my quarry. Not just one thief as the police had assumed. But two. They were unloading a selection of very beautiful buddleia plants from the back of an open truck. The truck door was painted with “Buddleias Are Us” and I cleverly spotted that the phone number was the same as that on those cunningly planted cards. I checked the address too. I used Google maps, an A to Z street map and asked some people in nearby houses as well. I even checked the sign at the end of the street and the number of the thieves front door. Everything matched. Everything. Perfectly. Not even one digit or letter out. Perhaps those cards had been tiny clues after all. Perhaps if I'd gone down that unlikely route and investigated them with due diligence I wouldn't have been able to enjoy a four course meal.

I opened the case I kept in the back of the car and put on one of my best detective disguises. Sometimes it's better not to walk up to potential culprits saying, “Hello, I'm a detective come to make a citizen's arrest.” I thought it better to be in disguise. So I pulled out some glasses, a fake stick-on moustache and a cigar. Groucho Marx makes a particularly cunning disguise. Nobody sees through my Marx, whether Groucho, Karl, or and Spencer.

I walked up to the thieves. At a normal pace. Without trying to hide my presence behind the neighbours bush to observe them for an hour and gather evidence or courage. I didn't do that. Mrs. Mayberry lied at the trial. She did. I wasn't hiding. I walked up to the despicable plant thieves and said, “Excuse me, I couldn't help noticing your beautiful buddleia plants. I'm a great lover of buddleias myself ...” I admit I'd had to find out what a buddleia looked like before my journey to Blyth. “... and I was hoping to be able to fill my garden with them. These are wonderful. I'd love to have them or even come to work for you in the buddleia business. It would be my dream job. Where ever did you get such amazing examples of this horticultural ambience? …” I hoped they wouldn't see through me when I accidentally used an out of place word like ambience. “I don't want to pry into your business secrets and don't want to take over and undercut your prices or anything like that. No, no, not me. I'm just an innocent buddleia lover who bears an uncanny resemblance to Groucho Marx. Where did you get them?”

One of the thieves stared at me. He looked mean. He looked also like he hadn't understood what I'd been saying. Maybe my use of the word ambience had completely stumped him.

The other spoke. He said, “We nicked 'em, didn't we. Went round the town, couple of nights ago and nicked 'em out of people's gardens. Seemed like the best way to start a new business. Ain't our stock the best? People will come miles for all our buddleias. Miles. And loads of people in Blyth are wanting to get new plants so I've heard to replace the ones some gadger nicked.” He laughed.

I said, “Thank you most kindly sir. I would like to buy your plants. Give me an hour while I go to the bank and I'll come back and pay you a fair price.”

But I didn't go to the bank did I? Oh no, not me. I'm far too clever for that. I'd taped the conversation too. I went to the police instead. Told them of my discovery. They were ever so impressed and went off to arrest the thieves straight away. I was a hero in the town. I drove back to Lord Comfort that night knowing I had done very well to solve my first solo case and I only got delayed for two nights in a five star hotel in Scarborough. For the second time in a week I didn't get lost. It was intentional. I promise. Anyway, I needed some pampering after all my mental and physical exertion. Detective work is difficult you know. The hotel would be on expenses so it was okay.

When I returned to his office Lord Comfort didn't seem impressed with my work. I stressed how amazing I had been but he queried every little insignificant detail. The three days I didn't spend in Blyth. The hundreds of miles driven. The restaurant bill. He even seemed worried about the hotel bill and the hundred and twenty pounds extra I'd spent on room service and emptying part of the mini-bar in my room.

The next day Comfort congratulated me on solving my first case. He said I was a fully fledged detective now and said I should be starting my own company. He said I was ready and that it would make him very happy to see me working somewhere else. He said he couldn't bear to think of me still working for him after everything I'd done. I agreed. It was obvious. I'm a genius in the art of detection and it's only one step from buddleias to murder, kidnapping and plots to take over the world.

So, just a month later, there I was. Back at the very beginning of my story. Those bright red letters had just been painted on the door of my new office. I was a happy man and they looked so good.

Oxford Brookes

Private Detective

I shook up my champagne bottle and pushed off the cork so it could spray everywhere. Like at a Grand Prix except my office is far more important than a silly driving race in which it's impossible to get lost or take a wrong turn. I sprayed that champagne joyfully. It went all over me. All over the painter. All over the corridor floor. I could put the cleaning bill on expenses. And all over my new door too.

The paint was still wet. The celebratory booze washed it away. The painter quit. And the cleaner told me to mop the bloody thing up myself. I spent the rest of the day sorting out the mess. It hadn't been an auspicious first day but the only way was up.

Before I left for the night I repainted the letters on the door. I didn't need to pay a painter for such a simple job. It took another month before I noticed why I hadn't received a string of wealthy clients coming to my door in despair. A month before someone pointed out a little error in those big, shiny, bright red letters. They read

Oxford Brookes

Private Defective

[2035 words]

It Was Beaks At Dawn When The Avocet and Curlew Went To War

Last night I said some random words to my wife.  This morning I've free written from them.  What follows is the result.  I had some ideas as I began to write.  Most of them weren't used.  One idea was to write a bird poem and include lots of bad bird puns.  Instead there's this piece of silliness!

Yesterday (Sunday) I didn't write a post.  Oh dear.  So I'm playing catch up today and need to write a second post this evening.  I didn't write but I did attend a performance poetry workshop for the first time.  And for the first time ever I performed a poem I wrote.  To an audience of poets, to be critiqued.  In many ways that's the safest place to begin.  A bunch of poets isn't likely to say, "Ooh that was total crap.  Get out and don't you dare come here again you fake poet!"  Every one of them knows how hard it is and everyone is there to encourage others to write and perform as best as they can.  Which means that all critique is constructive and even if something is total crap it's a learning experience rather than a damning one.  But I wasn't total crap, either in the words or the performance.  Far from it.  Happily, I should be able to get to the next workshop.  By that time I will have performed at least one short piece before a room full of people.  Another step in the plan without a plan.

Here then is the first piece of writing for today.  You will notice that I've totally ignored the writing prompt list.  That doesn't matter.  This blog is about writing not lists.

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In the duel between the avocet and the curlew it was beaks at dawn.

Ornithological history does not record which of the birds began the argument. All we know for sure is that one small barb led to another and another until they could hardly bear to inhabit the same piece of waterway. While it is true that each would criticise the other for their plumage, and many suspect that both were jealous, the main sticking point was their beaks.

The avocet would say “Look at you, you're upside down and stupid. That beak of yours is ridiculous. Why would anyone want something as useless as that down-curving monstrosity on the end of your face?”

And the curlew would reply, “My beak is a wonder. It's the stuff of legend. Anyway, it's much better than yours. Yours is up-turned. I suppose that's apt for such a stuck up bird. You've got ideas above your station.”

A curlew. Image from the RSPB

The avocet said, “It's not my fault the bird people made me their emblem. They took one look at me and knew I was best and my beak was perfect.”

“They only did it for the sympathy vote knowing they would get extra donations when people saw just how pitiful you were. So turn your beak round now before I rip it off your face.”

That did it. The avocet didn't want to listen to any more of such talk. The marsh was only big enough for the one of them. So he said, “I challenge you to a duel. We shall fight to the death. Or until one of us gives up.”

“That's easy. I'll win. Tomorrow morning at dawn we shall meet on the waterfront and fight.”

The following morning a crowd gathered. The official duel adjudicator was there too with his case of weapons. The finest of juggling clubs, hula hoops and frisbees were combined with ribbons, bubbles, and a selection of stick on red noses. He was so embarrassed when he opened up the case and everyone saw he had made an error of judgement, bringing everything from his other job as circus clown. The duel was postponed for the day. Nobody minded too much. The birds spent the day playing as best they could. But it's hard to blow bubbles when you're a bird.

An avocet.  Image from the RSPB

The following morning a bigger crowd gathered. The official duel adjudicator was there again with his case of weapons. This time he hadn't made a mistake. He opened up the trunk and everyone oohed and aahed over the cache. The finest of wooded clubs was supplemented by a selection of swords, bottles, knives, guns, and even a pair of intricately decorated tickling sticks although the adjudicator later admitted they should have been in his other case.

The avocet and curlew stared at the case and shouted at each other.

“I'm gonna cut you up into tiny pieces. See if I don't.”

“You little ass-wipe. Go get eaten by a cat! One bullet into your bird brain and everyone will tweet and squawk in celebration of my victory.”

They continued insulting each other and the language grew more and more fruity until an entire orchard of trees collapsed under the weight of words. It took until seven in the evening before they could agree on how to try to kill each other and the whole duel had to be postponed.

The following morning a crowd gathered that was so big they could hardly fit in the wetlands at all. A family of capercaillie had travelled down especially on the night train and a video link had been set up because a blood thirsty emu wanted to watch. The duel adjudicator was there again with his case of weapons and a smile on his face because he got double pay for overtime.

The avocet and the curlew approached the chest.

“Take up your weapons,” the adjudicator intoned imperiously.

The two birds bent down over the chest and took up the weapons in their beaks. Each would have a jewel encrusted sword. A gentleman's weapon although neither thought the other a gentleman. It was then that everyone realised there had been a miscalculation.

For whether your beak is upturned or downturned it's not a swordsman's anatomy of choice. Neither bird could pick up their sword. They tried hard. For most of the day. The crowds got bored and would have demanded their money back had it not been for a troupe of eagles laying on an aerobatic display that everyone appreciated. Everyone that is apart from the pigeons who were shanghaied into being part of the display and were dined on that evening. The ice cream seller was happiest of all because she nearly sold her entire stock to hot birds, without once stopping to wonder how the birds happened to be carrying money or how they might have all managed to carry the cones.

The avocet and the curlew were encouraged to try other weapons. But it was no good. The avocet could hang a gun from his beak but such a weapon just fell off when the curlew tried to pick it up. It wasn't really any use for the avocet either because he found there was no way to aim a gun hung from a beak. Let alone reach up with is wing and fire. Even the wooden clubs were impossible.

It was an owl who proposed the solution. “I propose the solution of unarmed combat,” he said.

The curlew laughed. “Unarmed combat? You unwise owl you. Of course it'll be unarmed. Because we haven't got arms to combat with. We've got wings. And that's where the problem lies. Wings are excellent for flight but useless for weapon carrying.”

A penguin and an ostrich from the local zoo were heard to grumble at the mention of flight but that only made some of the other birds turn and laugh at them.

The owl said. “No, no, I meant you should fight without weapons. Bird to bird combat. Just use your beaks as swords and you'll soon see which is better. Or at least which is better for duelling.”

The avocet and the curlew looked at each other and nodded. They would do as the owl said. But it was getting late so the duel was postponed once more.

The following morning a crowd gathered. It was smaller. Some of the birds had needed to get home. The duel adjudicator was there. He had left his case at home, locked up in a big safe. He announced the rules. The two birds would stand back to back and take twenty paces, turn and then charge at each other and fight on his command.

They lined up on the beach happy to face away from each other. They paced. Turned. There was beak hatred in their eyes. The adjudicator shouted, loudly, “Ready … steady … GO!” and the birds ran and flapped, meaning to impale each other.

They didn't get a chance. When they were still ten paces apart a puffin suddenly flapped down between them and cried “STOP! Stop this madness.”

The avocet stopped.

The curlew stopped. Fell over. Ungracefully stood again.

They stared at the puffin. Stared some more.

The puffin said, “There's no need to fight about which of your beaks is the best. You, avocet, look fine in your plumage and with your upturned beak. And you, curlew, look just as good in your plumage and with your downturned beak. There's no denying that. Your beaks are both good so give each other a hug.”

The avocet and curlew approached each other. They had to admit it. The puffin was quite right. So they lifted up their wings and hugged each other warmly before deciding to head off to a seafood restaurant for a make-up meal.

The puffin smiled. As best as a beaked creature can smile.

“My work here is done. I must return to my island now.”

He flew off and as he did so he called back to the crowds.

“Anyone with half a brain can see the truth. My beak is the best in the world.”

[1362 words]

The Greatest Printing Story Ever Told. A Tale Of Perfection.

50. Just Say No: Write about the power you felt when you told someone no.


Celebrate!  Call the Jubilee year!  Forgive all debts and free all slaves!  This is my fiftieth writing post in fifty days.  At the beginning of the year I did not know whether I would reach this point.  Looking back I'm pleased with some of the writing I've posted.  I'm pleased too with a few things I haven't posted and with the way that words have been flowing sometimes.  I know I have a lot to learn, that there are plenty of aspects of writing about which I am totally clueless.  But I am pleased and can smile at my own words.  I have also been surprised by it all.  Surprised by the stories especially, but surprised too that I've attempted poems.

Above all I've been enjoying the process.  It's been a joy process.  And that, in the end, is the most important thing of all.

So let us celebrate gladly.  And let us humbly pray for each of the next three-hundred and fifteen days on which I plan to write again.  Hundreds more prompts to either use or ignore.  On some days, ignorance is bliss!

This story was basically free written.  I warn you now: It's 2900 words long.  I also warn you:  I did not know the ending of the story until I wrote the final sentences.  I was surprised to learn what happened.  Did not expect that!

Two happy print workers.  Image taken from here.

I worked my ass off to satisfy him.  Put in overtime nearly every day.  Took every training course going in order to become an expert.  Nearly broke my back.  At least it felt that way.  By the end of it I could do the job faster than anyone else, neater than anyone else, and with more of a smile than anyone else.  I was the life and soul of the factory as well as being employee of the month six times during that last year of hell.

It might seem like menial work to you but to me it was satisfyingly important.  Without me and my colleagues there wouldn't have been any product at all.  The whole company would have headed right up shit creek.  Blindfold.  In a leaky boat.  We're the ones who got that product out there, an important cog in a machine that would have been better oiled if only the boss had the foresight to add any oil at all.  He was a bit useless but I knew he wouldn't be there forever.  I admit it.  I do.  I didn't just do all that training for the love of my role on the factory floor.  I was looking for promotion.  Give him enough help, I thought, and maybe he'll choose me to replace him.  I hoped he would.

So I put my learning to good use.  Kept sending him memos.  Kept telling him what I thought should have been obvious.  If you tweak it here, add in this efficiency there, you'll get five, ten percent more productivity.  Sometimes he listened.  But I never got the credit even when I copied the entire factory into a couple of memos.  On purpose though of course I said it was an accident.  It didn't work.  Instead he publicly humiliated me by replying to everyone that I was an idiot with stupid ideas.  And he didn't make the changes even though half the factory could see that they would have saved the company thousands over the course of a year.  Not only that, the bastard demoted me.  I had stood on the second rung of the ladder.  Now I was at the bottom and it was only through the influence of a supervisor that I was reinstated to my previous post a couple of months later.

I loved my job.  It gave me a sense of peace to see it well done.  It was varied too.  It wasn't just one job, it was many.  Sometimes I'd be sticking address labels onto envelopes for a whole day and every time I placed one of those stickers I'd feel an electric tingle because I'd placed it exactly in the middle and perfectly straight.  I couldn't understand some of the other workers around me.  Especially the temps.  They were just shoddy.  Their labels could be centimetres off centre and at an angle that made me nervous.  To think, sometimes they would stick on an address more than five degrees from straight.  Why didn't they care?  I don't know.  How anyone wouldn't be ashamed of such messiness is beyond me.  Maybe they didn't get a thrill from a well placed label.  Maybe they just hadn't given it a try.  They were slow too.  At least compared to me.  And that's a very strange thing.  I took pride in being both neater and quicker.

After sticking in such a glorious manner I would fill the envelopes with whatever had been printed and needed sending.  Seal the envelope.  Straight.  That should be easy enough shouldn't it?  To seal an envelope in a perfectly straight way every single time.  It should.  Yet my colleagues were still able to bungle the process.  No wonder they smiled less than I did.  No wonder they moaned about how boring the job was.  If they took pride in doing it right they could have experienced regular bursts of those pleasant tingles.  Stupid people.

Other days I would have other tasks to complete.  Collating leaflets and papers.  I liked that one.  It wasn't my favourite though.  That honour is split in my mind between two specific tasks.  The first of these involved combining several sections of a catalogue, stapling them together, and then packing them correctly.  Ten catalogues in a bundle.  Then another bundle placed in the opposite direction.  That was an amazing week.  I spent nearly all of it using the stapling machine because I was the most efficient at it.  I was glad to do so.  My colleagues' task was to combine the sections and then pass them to me already sorted into tens.  My colleagues were bloody useless!  It's fortunate I was stapling and packing.  Alone.  Otherwise the whole job would have been wrong and perhaps the company would have gone bankrupt.

I saved the day again.  What I learned that week was that my colleagues couldn't count up to ten.  They had one task.  Just one.  To count all the way from one to ten.  Who were these people who couldn't even do that?  Idiots!  The bundles they passed me sometimes had eight or nine catalogues.  Sometimes eleven or twelve.  Just think of how awful it would have been if I hadn't recounted absolutely everything.  The boss would have been the laughing stock of the entire printing industry.  They would have probably cut his master printer's tie off at the annual dinner and dance and forced him to bathe in ink as a punishment.  Was he grateful to me?  No he wasn't.  The swine.

My other absolute favourite job I ever did was a folding job.  A machine had gone wrong elsewhere in the factory - easily avoidable if only the boss had listened to one of the public memos because I could see the disaster was coming and that the creasing machine would break.  So there we were with one-hundred thousand pieces of card that were meant to have machine made creases in.  Pieces of card with no creases.  So I and my shoddy, messy, quite frankly useless and should be sacked colleagues had to add all the creases into these bits of card.  Manually.  That was bliss for me I can tell you.  It took us nearly a month to finish the job.  A month of beautiful creases, perfect lines, wondrous love.  They all hated it of course, moaned about it and did a generally rubbish job.  I wish I could have got them to change.  Wish I could have convinced them that being even a single millimetre out was far too much.  Wish I could have taught them all how the job should be done.  Instead, all I could do was work, work, work on my own piles of card.  I gave everything to that job and when it was over I grieved.

There had to come a breaking point.  Not even I could keep up my pace of work forever with no reward.  Three years in and I was still folding, counting, sticking and I hadn't even been allowed to progress to the role of luggage label print coordinator.  A job with responsibility.  A job where I would have kept meticulous records and in which I am certain I would have improved efficiency by a total of seventy-six percent just by rearranging the order in which the different parts of the job were completed.  Even the stupidest of dolts should have been able to see it.  Three years of doing everything.  I could have run the whole company with my eyes closed.  I could have made us world leaders in printing, expanded the base of operations into the largest premises in the city and possibly even be given the contracts to print everything for Apple.  Waitrose too, and there were a few publishing houses I thought I'd be able to win over.  Start small and then buy out the Oxford University Press within three years.  It was doable.  I kept showing my boss how and he kept asking me to do the lowest of low jobs.  I enjoyed them of course but that wasn't the point.  I wanted more.  That's not a lot to ask for.  Not if you consider how brilliant I was.

During the course of the next two years I became increasingly dissatisfied.  More sticking.  Then a foreign evangelist decided he should send one of his stupid religious magazines to every single house in Britain.  Somehow or other my boss won the contract.  I think it was because my boss used to read those stupid religious magazines.  He had holy handkerchiefs on display in his office and on some days he replaced the music playing in the factory with rubbish songs in which they sang about how miserable life on earth was and to keep your chin up because heaven might be nice.  I don't think those days increased productivity.  My colleagues would grumble and agree with the first half of the sentiments of the song.  Yes, they would say, life is miserable isn't it?  All this folding and collating?  It's bloody miserable.  Enough about them.  The job is what's important.  Our team, with lots of temps drafted in all of whom were rubbish, had to stick an address label on each of thirty million envelopes, fill the envelopes, seal them and pile them neatly on pallets.

Even I have limits.  Thirty million.  And I broke.  I am not ashamed to admit it.  I broke.  We had pretty much finished the job and I'd made sure that each pallet was perfectly packed.  As neat as anything.  I'd had to make changes of course because nobody else could count to ten, let alone pack something neatly and with no sticking out edges.  Twenty-five thousand envelopes to each pallet.  One-hundred and twenty pallets.  And we were working on pallet one-hundred and seventeen.

Then the order came from the boss.  I'd already queried it when we were still working on the second pallet.  I had.  I'd done it and if he had listened then he would have saved his company.  I'd asked him a very simple question about the envelopes.  Any fool would have thought of it.   I said this:  "Shouldn't the envelopes each have a postage label as well as an address label?"  I'd received a reply too.  "Dear worker."  He didn't even call me by my name.  "You are only a level two packer.  Don't be so arrogant as to have any more ideas above your station.  Don't think you have the right to tell me what I should be doing.  Do it again and I'll have no choice but to end your contract with my illustrious"  Illustrious!  I ask you!  "company.  This is your first and final written warning."  I could have screamed.  I wanted to go right up to his office there and then and scream at him and try to knock some sense into his skull.  Physically if necessary.  I knew he was wrong.

So when that order came it was inevitable.  I remember the exact wording.  "When you have finished sticking address labels to envelopes I need you to start sticking postage labels on each of them.  This must be completed by the end of the week otherwise we will lose our contract and there will be consequences for each of you and possibly for the future of the company.  For the rest of the week I need each of you to work eighteen hour shifts in order to get as much done as you can.  As a reward, there will be a slice of chocolate cake provide for each of you every day next week and I will personally see to it that you each receive a signed copy of the evangelist's new book which will, I am sure, bless the soul of each one of you.  Thank you for your attention in this matter."

Enough was enough.  Why hadn't he listened?  I burst.  I stomped upstairs very loudly and walked into his office.  He was on the phone trying to apologise that there might be a delay.  He looked worried.  I got more and more angry as he talked and when he put the phone down I told him everything I thought of him, told him he shouldn't have been such a turd to me when I'd told him about the problem ages ago and had given him dozens and dozens of good ideas before and told him we would have easily finished the job if he had listened to me and how now we wouldn't finish it even if we all worked twenty-eight hours a day instead of eighteen and how I thought he was a rubbish boss and how I would be much better suited for his role.  I didn't shut up there of course.  I told him a lot more.  Reminded him of how he had demoted me for saying things that would have been good for his company.  Told him how much of my life I'd given to him, how much pride I'd taken in every job no matter how menial or repetitive.

And then I told him this:  "I will not undertake your massive shifts while you sit up here drinking coffee.  I'm not going to do it, not going to solve your problems for you.  I packed those pallets perfectly and worked more than anyone else.  I'm not doing it all again.  Find someone else to do it.  Promote me to a job where my intellect and training can be put to use.  At least let me use a bloody guillotine for one!  I don't want to see those bloody Christian junk mailings again.  Nobody wants to see them."

It felt wonderful.  Honestly, I had never felt more free as I did in those moments of shouting my head off at the boss.  The excitement of it all beat any electric tingles from sticking on labels.  This was living.  This was my future.  This was salvation to everything I was, a new beginning.  This would lead to a decent wage and a managerial post.  I just knew it.

My boss fired me on the spot and gave me five minutes to collect my bag and coat and leave the factory.  Said he would call the police if I didn't go.

I left.  I believed he would see his error and call me back.  I don't know why I believed that.  In retrospect I can see my belief was as crazy as some of the things the evangelist claimed to believe.  I'd been right, those moments were a new beginning.  It just wasn't as part of a printing company.

As for the company, it went belly up by the end of the year.  My boss failed to complete the contract for the evangelist.  The labels were crooked and a colleague I bumped into told me that nobody had been able to pack a pallet as neatly as I could.  Everything ran very late.  Just as I had predicted.  The evangelist wasn't forgiving.  My ex-boss stormed out of their meeting shouting that it didn't say that it didn't really matter if everyone got their crummy magazines a few weeks late.  The evangelist proved that he and Jesus didn't see eye to eye on things at all.  Because he sued the company for breach of contract.   He won the case, even preached against the dishonesty of the printing firm he'd hired.  But he used the magazines that we had packed and labelled anyway, getting another firm to finish the job for free in return for him promoting them across the globe.

The company was ruined.

And as a result of the posting of thirty-million evangelistic magazines this happened:

Fifty thousand copies were used to line cat litter trays.
The KLF reformed, gathered together eighty-nine thousand copies and burned them while dressed as lambs and carrying nine foot crucifixes.
Christians up and down the country rejoiced to receive such a righteous and holy piece of mail, briefly browse it, saw they had heard it all before, and chucked it away.
The total weight of paper recycled during a month increased.
People of other faiths complained to the government about some of the articles in the magazine.
The atheists of the internet laughed at everything they read and two memes went viral.
Friends of The Earth pointed out the cost to the environment of so much junk mail and began a campaign against all junk mail, with moderate success in the hearts and minds of the people but no success at all in reducing the amount of rubbish posted through letterboxes.

The evangelist was pleased.  He had done his duty and spread the good news.
Some people read the magazine and were impressed.
Some people thought about it.
Some considered doing something about it all and making changes in their lives.

A year later it was known that at least three people had been solidly converted through the work of the evangelist.  He featured the three on his television show, syndicated globally.  He was heard to say that if just one person had been saved it would have been worth it.

After another year two of the three had left the church.  One had become a well known speaker, touring the country visiting humanist and atheist groups.  He appeared on the BBC a few times.

The third person?  Well that was me.  Saved by grace and the weight of thirty-million labels.

I work for the evangelist now.  I'm head of the printing company God told him to establish on earth.  It was for printing that Christ set me free.




[2924 words]