Delusions of Adequacy

Wordzzled!

2012-01-30T00:10:00.000Z

Yes, it's jolly old Wordzzle time again. As I donated the words this week, it behooves me to take part at least.

The creator of Wordzzles lives here.

The mini - challenge words: mode, bread, blues, epic, tripod

Arvind was going on and on about how epic he was sounding on his guitar lately. Apparently, his teacher had just taught him to play blues tunes in the Dorian mode and he was completely smitten with the idea of his own brilliance. I grunted now and then during his peroration, and adjusted the camera tripod for the umpteenth time, trying in vain to get a really good position from which to film the stage. Suddenly, I got the perfect placement and locked off the legs with a triumphant grin. ‘Awww, man!!’ groaned Arvind, suddenly. ‘Look what you’ve done!’ I looked to where he was pointing; the leg of the tripod had neatly impaled the little plastic baggie of bread and cheese that was to be Arvind’s lunch. The ratbag wouldn’t even let me leave it there until the show was over. Shame, because it gave the perfect angle.

The 10-worder - challenge words: nickel, banshee, render, foil, noodle, aggressive, smooth, hat stand, cat, treat

“He’s gone as mad as a hat stand,” said Gerry into the pretty young reporter’s out-thrust microphone. “Last night, he made himself a hat out of foil - to keep the government out of his noodle, so he said.” Gerry took a pull at his cigarette and blew out the smoke. The young reporter’s smile didn’t falter for a moment, even though most of the smoke went into her face.

“Has he been aggressive?” she asked, “Has he attacked anybody?” This was the kind of detail her viewers wanted: violence – that or sex. And today, Nigel Render, lead singer of Smooth Banshee, out on tour for the first time in seven years, had handed her the scoop of a lifetime by having a very public meltdown on stage.

“Nah, he’s a cool cat,” replied Gerry, the band’s drummer. “He wouldn’t hit anybody. He’s too laid back. He’s just sitting in his room, flipping a nickel over and over again, muttering to himself, saying we should all treat him with respect. He’ll come out of it in a bit-”

From somewhere behind him, there came the sound of a single gunshot.

“ – or maybe not.”

And, of course.... Harold.

(Story so far can be read by following the link, top right)

Teatime was still some distance from the house when he heard the sound of Mr Teeth’s shotgun. He scampered a bit more quickly through the leafy darkness of the lower branches of the many ornamental trees surrounding the property. The scent of oranges hung distractingly in the air, but there was no time for such things now. He got to the edge of the trees at last and peered towards the house.

The security lights at the rear of the property had come on and in their fierce white glare, the little monkey could see two men sprawled on the ground near the open patio door. They appeared to be wearing silvery suits, whose metallic sheen was now being spoiled in places by trickles of blood from the men’s wounds. The men were still moving feebly, and Teatime could hear their faint cursing.

Abruptly, the sound of another shot rang out – a different weapon this time, by the sound of it. This was followed by the sound of something smashing and tinkling inside the house, but Teatime could not see who had fired. It certainly hadn’t been the two men on the ground, so that must mean there were more invisible types about. How jolly annoying! If it weren’t for the fact that the demon and India needed the invisibility suits that Harold had liberated, he was all for going back and advising that they drive away and leave Mr Jackson to sort things out himself. He seemed capable enough.

The suits were needed, though, and they were in the house. Teatime scratched his chin thoughtfully for a moment. If Mr Jackson could see the intruders properly, he could probably deal with them: he’d probably faced worse odds in his time on the streets as a young man, and he clearly had no qualms about shooting people.

As he gazed around for possible solutions, Teatime’s eye was caught by something over at the base of the back wall of the house. An idea suddenly sprang into the little monkey’s head. It would be risky, as he would be in plain sight if he went over there. Still, he was confident the two wounded intruders were in no position to interfere with his plan, and he was willing to bet that any others would be intent on the doorway into the house.

There was no time to lose. He leapt from the tree, landing lightly upon the smooth green expanse of the lawn, and raced for all he was worth towards the thing he had seen.

-0-0-0-0-

“I should have gone with him,” Harold said, as the sound of the second shot came to their ears.

“No,” said Box, firmly, “Those people are bound to be looking for you, and we don’t know if they have any more of those freezing machines. You’re best staying away from them.”

“But what if he gets hurt?” protested Harold, “You humans seem to have no qualms about shooting each other for the slightest reason – a little animal isn’t going to be very safe, is he?”

“He’ll be OK,” said Box, “He’s a smart little creature; he won’t take any unnecessary risks. Just sit tight.”

Harold slumped unhappily back into his seat. Box was probably right, but if anything happened to the little fellow....

He drummed his fingers.

He tried to think calming thoughts; usually, a nice piece of music would pop into his head to do the job but, tonight, his mental orchestra seemed to be gigging elsewhere.

Nope.

It was no good.

Harold flung open the car door and jumped out.

“What in the name of Zeus are you doing? Get back here!” barked Box, opening his own door. He and India exited the car as Harold set off down the street towards the high wall encircling Mr Teeth’s garden.

The other two set off after him, India lugging out her taser as she ran.

Harold was already astride the top of the wall when they reached it.

“For pity’s sake, come down!” urged Box, his voice ragged from running.

India didn’t say anything, she simply whipped up her taser and fired.

-0-0-0-0-0-

Teatime covered the ground between the trees and the house in several nerve-wracking seconds. Banking on the idea that the intruders would be looking anywhere but into the garden, he ran in a straight line across the lawn, veering off as he reached the edge of the pool of radiance shed by the security lights. Here, he ran round the edge of the lighted area so as to remain invisible as long as possible.

A low stone balustrade ran round the edge of the patio, which was a stone-flagged area slightly higher than the lawn. Teatime kept this low barrier between himself and the area of the doors as he scrambled quickly round to the house’s rear wall.

Another shot roared from within in the house; the first weapon Teatime had heard had evidently been discharged again. Although the weapon made a terrific racket and shot peppered the area, it had no other effect. Teatime hoped fervently that this did not mean that the other intruders were inside the house already. If they were, his cunning plan would be to no avail.

Crouching as low as possible and thanking the universe for his grey colouring, he made his way to his objective. At the base of the wall, there was a hinged metal cover. Teatime flipped this up, glancing around nervously to check that he was not being observed. Idiot! He chided himself. They’re invisible. How in the name of all that’s unholy are you going to know if they’re watching you?

Having no means to prop the cover open, Teatime resorted to the undignified expedient of resting it on the top of his head. Behind the cover was a simple control panel, whose controls were labelled in Spanish. Teatime pressed the large green ‘Activar’ button and the ‘sistema de aspersión‘ sprang into life.

-0-0-0-0-0-

India skipped smartly out of the way as Harold hit the pavement with a crunch that made even the grizzled Box wince.

“Are you out of your mind, Agent?” Box whispered furiously. Somewhere over the wall, another shot rang out.

“Sorry, didn’t exactly have time to discuss it,” she replied, rolling Harold onto his back with her foot. She leant over him. “Listen, demon. Believe it or not, I did not want to have to do that, but I am not going to let you ruin everything by running off and getting yourself caught. I get that you’re concerned for your little monkey-thing, but he’s way smarter than you are and knows how to keep his head down, which is more than can be said for you.”

The effects of a taser are more severe and longer-lasting for demons’ vessels that they are on humans. This was just as well, because if Harold had been able to move right then, he would have liked very much to throttle Agent India on the spot. She was right, of course – at least in part – which was pretty annoying in itself. Teatime was smart and quick. The thing that really galled him, though, was that India had used her taser on him – again! He hadn’t been planning to just go running in willy-nilly; he had learned that much from recent events, at least. But the fact of the matter was, she clearly still didn’t trust him or respect him at all.

After all they’d been through. After all he’d done to convince her that he was on her side!

What did you expect? said a cynical little voice at the back of his mind. Did you really think they would ever see you as part of their cosy little team and all go running around having jolly adventures together? Wise up, dummy! They’re just using you, and when this is over, it’ll be back to the Basement like nothing ever happened.

“We don’t have time – “ India’s voice trailed off.

When she’d shot Harold that first time, his eyes had displayed shock and surprise more than anything else.

This time, however, they were absolutely ablaze with anger.

-0-0-0-0-0

Mr Teeth’s expensive garden sprinkler system came to life. From many artfully concealed nozzles, jets of water gushed out and began to play over the garden, soaking everything in sight – including the patio.

The state-of-the-art Rainbow Industries camouflage suits were fantastic pieces of technology. Although they were sufficiently waterproof to keep on working perfectly well as the sprinkler water landed on them (they had been developed for the military, after all), they – and the men wearing them – still provided a physical obstruction to the water’s inexorable journey to the ground. At once, two intruders were outlined by the water, sparkling silver in the glow of the security lights, splashing off them. From inside the house, Mr Teeth’s deep bark of laughter came to Teatime’s ears, followed immediately by the roar of his shotgun. The blast caught the two men, who had been crouched close together by the doorway, obviously looking to creep into the house and take its owner by surprise.

As the buckshot tore into them, the hi-tech suits immediately stopped working, leaving two more sprawled silver-suited bodies on the patio. Teatime pushed a large red button on the control panel and the water shut off. He watched as Mr Teeth strode out through the ruined patio door and deftly disarmed all four intruders, before turning to where he was crouched.

Seeing that his saviour had been none other than the tiny monkey, the big man’s eyes widened in surprise.

“Thanks, man, that was good thinking – and good timing.” he rumbled, “I owe you. Never would have thought of using the water like that." His voice turned thoughtrful, "Pity the fancy suits got wasted, though.” Setting his shot gun against the wall, he checked the four men’s injuries – the buckshot had left multiple wounds, but none appeared life-threatening.

He retrieved the gun again and leaned up against the wall where he could see all four downed men.

“What now, Mr Jackson?” asked Teatime.

“Now we wait for Pauli and his boys and then we’ll figure out what to do with these guys.” He waved the tip of the shotgun’s barrel at the erstwhile intruders. Where are the others, anyway?”

“They’re waiting in the next street,” Teatime replied, “I’d better go and fetch them I suppose.” He scampered off into the trees once more.

It's a sausage roll, so sue me!

2012-01-26T15:21:00.002Z

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” The voice was metallic, slightly grating.

“Huh?” I said. I was just reaching into the open fridge to grab the last sausage roll for my lunch.

“The item you are currently engaged in extracting is of low nutritive value, and contains more than your recommended daily amounts of fat and salt.”

“So?” I retorted, somewhat defensively, “I’m in a hurry, I’ll eat some fruit later or something.”

“Based on records of your past behaviour in this regard, the likelihood of your consuming fruit or vegetables today is calculated to be approximately .02034543%.” I’m sure a note of smugness had crept into the voice as it said this.

“Approximately?” I said, sarcastically. My hand hovered over the inviting little plastic tray with its lone occupant – the last survivor of six siblings. My fingers twitched, undecided.

“Yes,” the voice replied, “I am capable of calculating the odds to 20+ decimal places, but given the element of uncertainty inherent at the quantum level, coupled with the element of irrationality with which humans are wont to pepper their decision-making, a calculation even to this level of precision is at best an approximation.”

“Poor you,” I said, picking up the pastry delicacy.

“No,” said the voice, “Poor you. Consumption of that sausage roll will increase the probability of your premature death or disablement by heart disease, cancer or stroke.”

“But it’s just one little…” My voice trailed off.

There had been six rolls a few days ago, now there was just one.

I lived alone and the cat didn’t care for pastry.

My clothes had been feeling a little tight lately.

Sighing, I dropped the sausage roll into the bin. I seemed to remember there being some cottage cheese and celery in the back of the fridge (I have no idea how it got there; I’m sure I didn’t order it. Maybe the cat did it for a joke).

The bin lid thunked closed and I turned back to the fridge and my gastronomic equivalent of a hair shirt.

The voice spoke again.

“The item you have just consigned to the trash was still within its best before date and was undamaged and free of contaminants. According to the government’s policy on domestic waste reduction, I am required to deduct 200 green points from your household account. Your current balance is minus –“

“GIVE ME A BREAK!” I yelled.

Damn SmartHouse(TM)!

Worst.

Decision.

Ever.

Seriously, Amazon?

2012-01-18T14:36:00.000Z

The other day, a friend of mine told me he’d found a Kindle book which told the story of one of the schools we both attended as young ‘uns. As its cost was less than one of your English pounds, I thought I’d track it down for myself.

I duly logged into Amazon and, as I didn’t know the exact title of the book, I just typed the school’s name - ‘Copthorne’ – into the search box. I'm happy-go-lucky like that.

The results page is reproduced below. The first three results are eminently sensible, but what’s going on with result number four?!

I'm guessing this masterpiece of cinematography had a director whose name was Copthorne or some such. I note it's listed as currently unavailable - as if there might be stocks of it in the future. Can't wait.

I'm tempted to wonder what you'd get if you ask Amazon for 'asian ravers' - a book on 12th Century Ecclesiastical Architecture, perhaps, or a treatise on calculus.

Search engines, gotta love 'em!

First Wordzzle of 2012

2012-01-10T20:34:00.002Z

It's been ages, I know. For newbies around here, the idea is to use the random set of words you're given in a piece of writing. The inventor of Wordzzles is here.

A couple of left-over mini challenges. These are good little kickstarters for creativity.

Challenge words: wonder, wing, flowers, drunk, purpose

Vroo was having the time of his life.

The sun was shining, food was plentiful and even the puddle water had tasted extra good today. He adjusted his wing feathers and began a lazy turn that would carry him across the garden and up onto the roof of The Joneses’ shed, from where he planned to spend the afternoon soaking up the warm rays.

BLAM!

He smashed into unyielding glass, knocking himself senseless. Luckily, the flowers under the window were there to break his fall.

He lay there for a short while in a state of semi-concussed wonder, one of his wings hurting like crazy. How had he managed to hit the window? He'd been banking in good time, he was sure, so he should have missed it.

The crows on the fence just about laughed themselves off their perches. Their wicked plan had borne fruit.

Earlier that day, they had - accidentally on purpose - knocked over a discarded can of beer, spilling its contents into the pigeon's favoured drinking puddle.

There really was no funnier sight than a drunk pigeon.

Challenge words: sweet, whimper, orange glow, flute, dose

The sweet, sad notes of a flute woke me. Through the window, the dawn sky was lit by an orange glow. Red sky in the morning, I thought, shepherd’s warning. The flute died away and was replaced by the tiniest whimper from Mattie, my old king Charles spaniel. He sat next to his bowl, brown eyes large and liquid with supplication. I looked at the clock: 18:45. Not sunrise then but sunset! Poor Mattie, I had slept the day through, missing his breakfast. The bottle of cold remedy sat on the dresser where I had left it and next to it lay the spoon I had used to dose myself. I must have been in a bad way last night – the directions had said 1 TEAspoon. I picked up the tablespoon and headed for the kitchen, waggy-tailed dog in tow.

And, inevitably, more Harold (see the Story So Far link top right to get caught up)

“Drive on past and don’t slow down” barked Box from the passenger seat.

They had just turned into the road that led to the gates of Mr Teeth’s swiss-cheese-windowed mansion. A white van bearing an Infinity Recycling logo, its lights out, was parked so as to block the gateway. The gates themselves stood ajar. There was no sign of anybody around.

“How on Earth did they find us?” India wondered aloud.

“No idea, but they obviously did.” Box exhaled heavily. “This is not good. We’ll have to assume that Mr Jackson won’t be able to help us now, I think.”

“We can’t just leave him, surely?” said India.

“I’m not sure we have a choice,” replied Box, “We don’t have any weapons apart from your taser and we have no idea how many or how heavily armed the Infinity Recycling people are. Our best bet is to get ourselves away from here. I’m betting the Infinity goons aren’t looking for Mr Jackson anyway, so once they find out we’re not there, they might well just leave.”

“We have to get into the house, anyway, though.” Said India.

Box frowned. “Why’s that?”

“The invisibility suits are in there. We need them if we’re going to get into that building. Plus, if we just wait around for them to go, they might find the suits and take them back. We didn’t exactly hide them.”
Box rubbed his brow.

“OK, ok, drive slowly and let me think.” He sighed.

Harold, Teatime and India waited in tense silence as the little brown man cogitated.

“Alright,” Box said, at length. “The first thing we need is information. Mr Teatime,” he said, turning to the little monkey, “would you be willing to go on a information-gathering mission?”

-0-0-0-0-0-

Mr Teeth woke with a start. He’d been dozing at his desk, waiting for the OGS people to come back from the hospital with their colleague. He cast a bleary eye around for the source of the insistent beeping that had awoken him. On his computer screen, a message balloon had popped up, informing him that the front gate had been opened without authorisation.

Mr teeth had grown up on the streets and had a very keenly developed survival sense. He knew that the OGS people had the code to get in the gates legitimately, so whoever had triggered the alarm was no friend of his, that was for sure.

Silently blessing the foresight that had made him spend so much on his security system, he pulled up the feed from the gate camera.

The gates were ajar. A truck was parked across them, but of its occupants there was no sign.

He flicked through the feeds on all the other cameras around the house and grounds.

Nothing.

He stood up and operated the combination lock on the silver-grey metal cabinet behind his chair. The lock gave one final click and he swung the door open. From inside the cabinet, he took out a pump-action shotgun which he quickly loaded and cocked. He grabbed a handful of extra shells and stuffed them into his pocket – you could never have too much ammo as far as he was concerned.

He made his way out of the study into the unlit hallway, pulling the door closed behind him. He stopped to listen for a moment, at the same time allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkness.

No unusual sounds came to him, but then it would take anybody a little while to reach the house from the gate – even running.

He fished his mobile out of his pocket, quickly thumbed through the contacts list and selected one.

“Pauli, this is Elroy,” he said quietly when the other person picked up the call. “Got some unwelcome visitors here, gonna need you and your boys sooner rather than later.”

“Be there in twenty.”

Mr teeth grunted, ended the call and dropped the phone back into his packet.

There were three ways into the house: the front door, the patio doors at the back, and the door from the garage. Mr Teeth didn’t think that the intruders would come in the front door. The garage would be problematic too, as the intruders would have to get it open, then skirt the car to get to the house door, which was an extra obstacle if locked – which it was. No, too much could go wrong with that, and it would take too much time for them.

That left the patio doors.

With the house empty but for himself, only Mr Teeth’s study had been lit.

Keeping out of direct line of sight of the living room doorway, he moved quietly along the dark hall until he could stand to one side of the door to the living room and look in.

A rectangle of pale moonlight marked the position of the patio doors. Through them, Mr teeth could see a smooth expanse of lawn running down to the trees and the ornamental pond. Nothing moved out there; not even the wind stirred the tree branches tonight.

After about a minute, Mr Teeth became aware of a soft sound, a kind of metallic clicking, coming from where the patio door lock was located. Someone was trying to pick the lock. So, whoever it was had elected to take a quiet approach.

Mr teeth steadied the barrel of the shotgun against the doorframe assumed a more balanced stance. He could still not see anyone out there – and his PIR-activated lights had not come on either, which they most certainly should have done by now. Clearly, whoever was out there had access to one of those invisibility suits that the OGS girl and the demon had been going on about.

This was a problem: there was no telling how many people were out there. The van he had seen on the camera feed looked like it could hold half-a-dozen people at most. Six to one were not great odds and when the six were invisible….

Part of Mr Teeth’s brain kept trying to tell him to exercise that particular type of discretion which is the better part of valour and beat feet out of there. A more stubborn part of it, however, put its fingers in its ears and hummed loudly; this was his home after all and he would not be driven out of it.

A soft click came from the lock area. Mr Teeth angled the barrel of the shotgun towards that spot.

The patio door began to slide open – all by itself, apparently.

Mr Teeth fired.

NaSoWriMo? Not-So-Rhyme-O!

2011-12-30T17:25:00.000Z

In November, my good friend Don't Feed the Pixies and I had a crack at NaNoWriMo 2011, and duly churned out a 50,000 word ‘novel’ each.

I now, of course, have to go back and turn into something vaguely readable the steaming pile of brain-vomit that I produced.

Before that, however, let’s look at this month’s whacky challenge, as proposed by the Pixie himself:

write 10-12 brand new songs in a month.

Taking the lower number as our target, this equates to 1 song every 3.1 days; if you take the higher, it’s more like 1 song every 2.6 days. So even aiming for the higher target, you get a nice leisurely two-and-a-half days to write each song.

A song’s only going to be a few hundred words at the most.

Compare this with the 1,667 words you need to get done each day to complete the novel-writing challenge.

Easy-peasy then.

Yes.

No.

Yes and no.

I started off quite well as I had quite a few bits of songs and music ideas I’d been mucking about with for ages. The pressure of the deadline helped me turn these fragments into completed songs – not particularly good ones, necessarily, but complete. Using the NaNo idea of just get the thing written down and worry about the quality later paid off once again, as I now how some completed things that can be polished.

Also, all the frantic tugging on the frayed ends of a few musical ideas somehow drew out two whole shiny new songs, which wrote themselves very quickly. I haven’t managed to write any new songs for months, so this was an unexpected and welcome bonus.

As if this wasn’t enough, the drive spilled over into completing the Twelve Days of Christmas series that I first started way back in 2001, and kept promising to complete every year since then. Again, there was something about having to come up with a post every day for thirteen days that seemed to fuel the thing to completion.

Pixie and I are hoping to play our creations to each other for the first time tomorrow night as part of our New Year’s Eve festivities.

As of now, I have just over 24 hours to pen 2 more songs to make the minimum target.

I have to say that, although I’m actually part way through both the 2 remaining songs, I’m struggling to complete them.

I got nothing.

I’ll come back to them later tonight and again tomorrow.

Thing is, even if I don’t complete them, this has been a truly worthwhile challenge for me. There is clearly a little bit of my brain that thrives on deadlines – even if it’s just a bit of fun between friends

I think my New Year’s Resolution for 2012 will not be about giving up stuff, but rather about adding things to my life. I'd like to try and create something new each month in 2012.

If anybody has any ideas for a creativity-based monthly challenge, please leave a comment.

In any case, here's wishing you all...

A very Happy 2012

from me

and

all the voices in my head.

The Twelve Days of Christmas - Finale

2011-12-25T00:25:00.001Z

To: e_meeks@freenet.com
Date: 25th December 2023
Subject: Re: Replicator fault

Dear Mr Meeks

Our second-line support team has completed its investigation of your Replicon 2000.

It would appear that your machine contained some malicious subroutines which were inserted by a former employee of Replicon Inc. with a view to damaging the company’s reputation.

This particular employee worked as a programmer on the 2000 series and was dismissed for gross misconduct some months ago. Our standard procedure in such cases is to purge completely any machine containing the employee’s code and re-install its software from a certified archive.

It would appear that a small number of units were inadvertently shipped before they could be re-initialised in this way. Regrettably, your unit was one of these. Fortunately, all the others were still in one of our distribution centres and so had not yet been activated. This is why the behaviour of your unit appeared to be a one-off.

We would like to offer you our most sincere apologies for all the distress you have been caused. Replicon Inc. will of course reimburse you completely for all costs incurred as a result of this incident.

Additionally, as a gesture of apology, we would like to offer you a complimentary upgrade to your unit, along with a year’s free rental.

The new Replicon 5000 offers state-of-the-art replication at nearly twice the speed of its predecessor. Which? Recently described it as ‘delivering faultless and versatile service’.

Yours truly

Gerard Cochrane
Service Manager

To: customer_service@replicon.com
Date: 25th December 2023
Subject: Auto-reply: Re: Replicator fault

This is an automated message, so please do not reply to it.

I am leaving to go and live rough in the woods.

I will be cold.

I will be wet.

I will no doubt quite often be hungry and will eventually assume the ragged and unkempt appearance of some kind of wild man.

It is my aspiration to become the stuff of urban legend.

I will have no access to any technology more sophisticated than an axe and that will be just fine.

Farewell.

Yours truly

Edward Meeks

The Twelve Days of Christmas - Day Twelve

2011-12-24T12:16:00.000Z

To: customer_service@replicon.com

Date: 24th December 2023

Subject: Replicator fault

Dear Mr Cochrane

The structural engineer’s dire predictions have come true.

The foundations of my house have had to bear the weight of twelve pear trees, forty Jersey cows (plus 40 hefty milkmaids), thirty-six clod-hopping dancers, thirty inebriated aristocrats, twenty-two bag-piping Scotsmen, repeated inundation by thousands of gallons of water, and two-hundred and twenty-four assorted birds, whose rate of guano production is, frankly, incredible.

Today was evidently the last straw. The moment the twelve drummers, which were Satan’s gift to me today, began their demonic percussion, the whole back half of the house gave out a weary sigh, collapsed and slowly slid into the flooded basement. In a stroke of monstrous irony, your vile machine, which is evidently made of stern stuff, held up the kitchen ceiling for just long enough to allow us all to escape into the garden unharmed.

Part of me wishes it hadn’t.

Undaunted, the drummers, pipers, lords, dancers, and milkmaids began their wanton carousing once again and the neighbours – who have borne the daily commotions with remarkable goodwill thus far – finally snapped and called the police once more.

The cows, left to their own devices by the milkmaids (who were busy cavorting with the lords), strayed out into the street, where they occupied themselves by goring Mr Jenkins’s new red BMW. I can’t think why the cows would target that one car so much.

The last I saw of my wife, she was firmly wrapped in the hairy arms of one of the pipers – an uncouth red-headed fellow by the name of Angus. When all this is over, there will be words.

I was gazing around in horrified stupefaction at the little slice of Passchendaele which was once my home and garden when the police arrived. I have just now returned from five hours of grilling down at the station. They even had the nerve to call in a psychiatrist!

In retrospect, perhaps the tears and the rocking back and forth did give them some due cause for alarm.

I am now homeless.

When all the devastation has been paid for, I will be penniless.

If Angus has his wicked way, I shall probably be wifeless as well.

It’s been a week since I last saw my dear children.

I haven’t eaten anything but eggs for days (can you IMAGINE the effect on my digestion?) and I have not slept.

You have ruined me.

I hope you’re satisfied.

Yours truly

Edward Meeks

To: e_meeks@freenet.com

Date: 24th December 2023

Subject: Re: Replicator fault

Dear Mr Meeks

I am so very sorry for your troubles.

We at Replicon Inc. wish only to make life better for our customers by providing them with products which are reliable, versatile and useful, and it is not now, nor ever has been our intention to ruin anyone’s life.

Four members of our second-line support team should reach your house tomorrow and hopefully they will be able to ascertain the root cause of the unusual behaviour of your Replicon 2000 unit.

In the meantime, may I personally wish you a happy Christmas.

Yours truly

Gerard Cochrane

Service Manager

The Twelve Days of Christmas - Day Eleven

2011-12-23T14:05:00.001Z

To: customer_service@replicon.com

Date: 23rd December 2023

Subject: Replicator fault

Dear Mr Cochrane

I am pleased you have escalated my case to your Head Office, but that does not help me right now, does it?

The wretched machine did its hellish work again this morning and now a second day of wild partying is in full swing, fuelled by liquor provided by today’s clutch of loathsome lords – all despite my very best efforts (threats, entreaties, and more than a few tears, if I’m honest) to prevent it.

Those wanton hussies, the dancing girls and their toadies, the milkmaids, were delighted by the arrival of eleven pipers in full highland regalia. They lost absolutely no time in endeavouring to find out what lies under a Scotsman’s kilt, I can tell you!

My formerly sober and sensible wife, newly arrived back from her stint in the drugs rehabilitation clinic, immediately joined in the ‘fun’, and even started the drinking games! I have no idea what kind of treatment that so-called clinic dispenses, but I’ll be demanding a full refund on their fees, that’s for certain!

The police visited me early this morning, and I was forced to pay 100Cr bail for each one of yesterday’s revellers - including your engineer, by the way. You will be relieved to learn she was none the worse for her ordeal, although, given her greenish pallor and general lack of physical co-ordination, I doubt that she’ll be reporting for work today.

Apparently, the marauding conga line sashayed into the town centre last night, disrupting traffic left and right, and harassing innocent passers-by. The latter apparently included a perfectly inoffensive group of Hare Krishna devotees, whose flowers and cymbals the revellers ripped from their hands and whose leader, when he protested (mildly – they ARE peaceful people, after all), they carried off bodily and dumped into the municipal fountain.

The court case is scheduled for sometime in the new year.

Thank you for the counselling voucher. When I attempted to redeem it on the Samari-corp website as instructed, however, I was re-directed to the website of Requiescat-In-Pacem.com. The voucher, it seems, was for a free cremation (single decedent, basic package, excl. return of ashes to next-of-kin).

I must say, while I am certain the stress of the last eleven days will definitely kill me in the end, I thought this was in rather poor (and premature) taste. Please confirm when your people can come and sort out this nightmare machine and please ensure that it is before I have genuine need of the voucher.

Yours truly

Edward Meeks

To: e_meeks@freenet.com

Date: 23rd December 2023

Subject: Re: Replicator fault

Dear Mr Meeks

I can only offer my humble apologies once again for the continuing distress you are experiencing in this frankly highly extraordinary case.

Thank you for paying to bail out our engineer. I have credited your account with 100Cr by way of reimbursement.

I am so sorry for your having received the wrong voucher. I can only put it down to an error in our automated system, which must have attached the wrong item to my outgoing mail. I am sending another voucher with this mail.

Please feel free to keep the first voucher and make use of it whenever you see fit (provided that it is before the expiry date – no pun intended).

Please be assured that members of our second-line support team will be flying in as soon as visas and such can be arranged for them.

Yours truly

Gerard Cochrane

Service Manager

The Twelve Days of Christmas - Day Ten

2011-12-22T12:28:00.002Z

To: customer_service@replicon.com

Date: 22nd December 2023

Subject: Replicator fault

Dear Mr Cochrane

Thank you for sending your engineer to visit me today.

Unfortunately, as the young lady will no doubt inform you in her report (when she is eventually in a position to write it, and assuming she can actually remember the events of today), she was not able to disconnect the diabolical contraption as planned..

Today, the ten lords a-leaping made their unwelcome appearance. These boorish hooray-henrys came with several barrels of strong liquor (the cause of their leaping, no doubt!) and, along with those common slatterns the dancing girls and the milkmaids (whose capacity for strong drink is frankly mesmerising), immediately set about having a wild and noisy party.

When she arrived, your engineer was immediately mobbed by the uncouth revellers, forcibly plied with strong drink and was then dragooned into an impromptu conga, which eventually snaked its raucous way out into the street.

I have not seen her - or the other party-goers - since.

In the meantime, with the garden gate being left open and farmer Watson not yet having arrived to collect today’s crop of livestock, the beasts got out and straightaway laid waste to the allotments behind the house.

All the various birds trailed after them like some feather-brained Legion of the Damned, finishing off anything that the cows had not already eaten, defecated upon, or simply trodden into oblivion.

I imagine that, when the allotment owners discover the catastrophe that has befallen the crops they have tended with such loving care, there will be a necktie party and yours truly will be the guest of honour.

To be honest, I am tempted to phone them myself right now.

Yours truly

Edward Meeks

To: e_meeks@freenet.com

Date: 22nd December 2023

Subject: Re: Replicator fault

Dear Mr Meeks

We have not yet received our engineer’s report of today’s visit, and have been unable to reach her by phone.

We are extremely concerned for her safety and whereabouts. We have, therefore, alerted the local police and have passed your contact details to them, so you should expect a visit from them in the near future.

As their safety clearly cannot be guaranteed, I cannot in all good conscience order any more of my engineers to visit you.

However, because of the unusual and serious developments in your case, I have now made a formal report of it to our Head Office with a recommendation that an investigation be started by our second-line support team.

Your last remarks appear to be of a somewhat suicidal nature. In recognition of your distress, please allow me to offer you a voucher for a complimentary session with one of the state-of-the-art counselling robots provided by our sister company, Samari-Corp*.

Yours truly

Gerard Cochrane

Service Manager

*This offer should in no way be construed as an admission of liability on the part of Replicon Inc., its shareholders, board, staff, affiliates, parent company or subsidiaries.

The Twelve Days of Christmas - Day Nine

2011-12-21T12:21:00.001Z

To: customer_service@replicon.com

Date: 21st December 2023

Subject: Replicator fault

Dear Mr Cochrane

I apologise for my previous mail, but as you can imagine, I have been under a certain amount of stress just lately. I have barely slept a wink, and my diet now consists almost entirely of hen and goose eggs, since your machine will absolutely NOT produce anything other than the twelve days of Christmas ‘gifts’. I cannot even send out for food any more as the geese (who are now quite numerous and very aggressive), along with my somewhat wild-eyed and dishevelled appearance, has scared off all the delivery people.

Today, the bowels of Hell, to which your infernal machine apparently has a direct connection, spat up the usual, plus nine ladies dancing. I say ‘ladies’, but the troupe of tawdry strumpets that came gyrating suggestively through the living-room this morning was anything but ladylike. The best that can be said for it is that the increasingly smug yahoo who has been removing the pear trees each day (he has just bought himself a small yacht, by the way) and the grinning ape that pumps out the basement enjoyed the display so much that they offered me a modest reduction in their bills. Small mercies, i suppose.

The neighbours are now more or less constantly complaining about the noise and the barnyard smell, and even the offer of free milk and eggs does not seem to placate them.

The police were called after a number of the milkmaids (more like fishwives from their language) got into an altercation with Mr Jenkins opposite when he complained that one of the cows had dented his car. I will now, it seems, have to pay for that, plus the replacement of his front window after a milk pail was hurled through it.

I am at my wits’ end. The dancers came equipped with tambourines with which to accompany themselves in their wanton cavorting. These, they have been employing without mercy since they arrived, adding to the general surreal cacophony of honks, hisses, squawks, moos and of course my own quiet sobbing.

For the love of all that is holy, please send someone (a female might be safe from the sex-starved milkmaids and lascivious dancers) to disconnect this mechanical abomination.

Yours truly

Edward Meeks

To: e_meeks@freenet.com

Date: 21st December 2023

Subject: Re: Replicator fault

Dear Mr Meeks

I am very mindful of the distress you are suffering at this time and thank you for your apology, which I gladly accept.

I have arranged for one of our engineers (a female, as you suggested) to visit you tomorrow at 11:00.

I trust this is satisfactory.

Yours truly

Gerard Cochrane

Service Manager

The Twelve Days of Christmas - Day Eight

2011-12-20T21:17:00.000Z

To: customer_service@replicon.com

Date: 20th December 2023

Subject: Replicator fault

I am losing the will to live! I waited in all day and your engineer DID NOT CALL! What kind of service do you call this?

You HAVE to turn your hellish machine off!

This morning, in addition to the usual array of feathered gits, tedious pear tree and yet another few thousand gallons of freezing water, the eight maids turned up – along with eight Jersey cows - since without them there would be no ‘a-milking’, apparently!

These malodorous, clod-hopping beasts have just about reduced to splinters anything and everything downstairs that had not already been shat on or submerged. The maids managed to drive the wretched animals out into the garden (with some difficulty, as our doorways are meant for people not livestock), whereupon they (the cows, not the maids) proceeded to eat or trample underfoot all my wife’s much-loved flowerbeds.

In the space of a single morning, these appalling bovines have succeeded in reducing the garden to nothing more than a sea of glutinous, manure-tainted mud, so that it now more closely resembles the aftermath of the Somme than a suburban front yard.

My dear lady wife has now had to be referred to the local drug addiction service due to the amount of tranquillisers she has been consuming these last few days.

I have at least managed to contact a local farmer who has agreed to take the cows off my hands, but what on earth am I supposed to do with eight semi-skilled female agricultural workers?

Words cannot DESCRIBE the level of hatred that is building up in my heart towards you and your accursed company. I see you have been most careful not to publish the address of your offices anywhere – very wise! If I knew where to find you, I would come over there with a baseball bat.

Yours truly

Edward Meeks

To: e_meeks@freenet.com

Date: 20th December 2023

Subject: Re: Replicator fault

Dear Mr Meeks

Our engineer called at you house at 13:00 today, as promised. He was, however, not able to reach the front door as he was set upon by a gang of uncouth young females (the words he actually used in his report were ‘gaggle of nymphomaniac harpies’).

Replicon Inc. takes the safety of its staff very seriously and unless our engineers can be assured of safe access to your premises, we cannot in good conscience send any more of them to your house.

I appreciate that you are experiencing a great deal of frustration at this time, Mr Meeks, but I would ask you to refrain from the kind of threatening language you used in your last mail.

Yours truly

Gerard Cochrane

Service Manager

The Twelve Days of Christmas - Day Seven

2011-12-19T21:00:00.001Z

To: customer_service@replicon.com

Date: 19th December 2023

Subject: Replicator fault

Mr Cochrane!

The 26^th December most certainly is NOT suitable!

By my calculations, this diabolical contraption of yours will have run all the way through the entire nightmare of the Twelve Days of Christmas by then! My health (I have developed a nasty itchy rash and a hacking cough from excessive contact with bird feathers and guano) and my finances (I am now having to dig into my children’s college funds to pay for repairs because the insurance company is now not even returning my calls) will be ruined.

I NEED it to be shut off NOW!

Today, the seven swans arrived and, since the song specifically states that they should be ‘a-swimming’, so did several thousand gallons of freezing cold water! So now I’ve had to hire yet another grinning buffoon of a contractor to pump out the water, which has ruined everything on the ground floor and flooded the basement into the bargain. This, of course, is in addition to the usual collection of feathered vermin and the inevitable pear tree.

The swans and the geese are even now squabbling over territory in the living room – there being no room for them in the guano-steeped, bird-infested, reeking desolation that was once my kitchen.

I would disconnect the wretched device myself had you not, for reasons which are beyond me, wired it directly into the mains.

I am considering taking an axe to the bloody thing unless you send someone out today.

Yours truly

Edward Meeks

To: e_meeks@freenet.com

Date: 19th December 2023

Subject: Re: Replicator fault

Dear Mr Meeks

I continue to be saddened by the distress you are experiencing with your unit.

I must remind you, however, that according to the customer agreement you signed when you took delivery of your Replicon 2000, the machine itself remains the property of Replicon Inc. If you should inflict deliberate damage upon it or tamper with it in any way, Replicon Inc. would have no recourse but to seek financial restitution from you through the courts.

Given the urgency of your situation, however, I have reviewed my engineers’ schedules and I am pleased to be able to offer you a visit tomorrow at 13:00.

I hope this is suitable to you.

Yours truly

Gerard Cochrane

Service Manager

The Twelve Days of Christmas - Day Six

2011-12-18T20:28:00.000Z

To: customer_service@replicon.com

Date: 18th December 2023

Subject: Replicator fault

Have you ANY IDEA just how aggressive a flock of geese with eggs to protect actually are?

Six hissing, honking psychopaths turned up today, along with all the other feathered pests and yet another damn pear tree! They have since escaped and are now terrorising the neighbourhood. Mrs O’Leary from next door has decided to barricade herself in after being viciously pecked when she tried to shoo the vile creatures away with a yard broom.

The police have issued ME with a caution.

How can you POSSIBLY say there’s nothing wrong with your damned machine?

Please, just come and disconnect it. I will even continue to pay the rental.

Yours truly

Edward Meeks

To: e_meeks@freenet.com

Date: 18th December 2023

Subject: Re: Replicator fault

Dear Mr Meeks

I can only say how sorry we at Replicon are to hear of your continuing difficulties.

As regards to your request for disconnection, this is a very busy time of year for us, as many people are purchasing and installing our machines ready for the Christmas festivities. The earliest, therefore, that we can schedule a visit by one of our engineers is 26^th December at 10:30 a.m.

I trust that this is satisfactory.

Yours truly

Gerard Cochrane

Service Manager

The Twelve Days of Christmas - Day Five

2011-12-17T21:50:00.000Z

To: customer_service@replicon.com

Date: 17^th December 2023

Subject: Replicator fault

Sir

I can hardly believe my eyes!

You are saying that this infernal contraption of yours is working perfectly, yet here I am knee deep in leaf-litter and bird-shit! Yes, it happened again this morning!

I will have now to call in a structural engineer to assess the damage to my property caused by the repeated extra weight on the foundations of unsolicited pear-trees.

The children, who were at first quite delighted with the novelty of all these different kinds of birds, have now developed an allergy to feathers and have been sent to their grandparents for safety.

The kitchen is a no-go area. The place reeks of guano. The neighbours are starting to make complaints about the demented shrieking of all these loathsome avians and my dear lady wife continues to dwell on planet Prozac.

Today being the fifth day, I was hoping that I would at least get five gold rings with which to offset the spiralling costs of this ridiculous situation but, no! It turns out that the five gold rings are in fact common pheasants! Yet more bloody birds!

I hereby demand that, if you cannot rectify the problem with this hellish machine, you remove it from my premises forthwith.

I am instructing my bank to withhold any further payments until this situation is resolved.

Yours truly

Edward Meeks

To: e_meeks@freenet.com

Date: 17^th December 2023

Subject: Re: Replicator fault

Dear Mr Meeks

Thank you for your most recent letter.

I am truly sorry that you are continuing to experience difficulty with your Replicon 2000.

I feel, however, that I must remind you that the customer agreement you signed when you took delivery of the Replicon 2000 runs for a minimum period of twelve months, and it is only after this period has elapsed that the option to cancel is available.

As the unit is functioning correctly, we are under no obligation to remove or repair it and you are liable for the agreed monthly payments. Failure to make these payments will leave Replicon Inc with no recourse but to seek recovery of the payments through the courts.

Yours truly

Gerard Cochrane

Service Manager

The Twelve Days of Christmas - Day Four

2011-12-16T09:01:00.000Z

To: customer_service@replicon.com

Date: 16^th December 2023

Subject: Replicator fault

Dear Sir

Is this some kind of joke?

Your engineer called today – if you can dignify the knuckle-dragging anthropoid in overalls that showed up at my door with such a title. The oaf pronounced the wretched machine to be in perfect working order!

He did this despite that fact that he had to climb over yet another pear tree and dodge a small army of feathered assassins to do it!

The four colly birds which appeared today have joined forces with the other avian pests and have now occupied the kitchen, viciously attacking anyone foolish enough to enter – including the inspector from the Animal Rescue people who has now washed his hands of us!

The contractor who has been removing the pear trees for us has just turned up in a brand new truck.

My dear lady wife has been prescribed anti-depressants by our Doctor@Home service, and is now happily living on another planet!

Would that I could join her!

Please find enclosed yet more bills.

Yours truly

Edward Meeks

To: e_meeks@freenet.com

Date: 16^th December 2023

Subject: Re: Replicator fault

Dear Mr Meeks

Our engineer has delivered his report on your Replicon 2000.

It is, as you previously said, patched to the latest version and, apart from a certain amount of debris build-up in the output chute (which seems mainly to consist of feathers and small twigs), the machine passed all of the diagnostic tests he could devise.

We can only assume, therefore, that the problems you are experiencing are caused by operator error or malicious action.

The customer agreement you signed when you took delivery of the Replicon 2000 specifically states that Replicon Inc. is not liable to pay for any damage arising in such circumstances.

We will not, therefore, be paying any further bills for damage.

Yours truly

Gerard Cochrane

Service Manager

The Twelve Days of Christmas - Day Three

2011-12-15T08:14:00.000Z

To: customer_service@replicon.com

Date: 15^th December 2023

Subject: Replicator fault

Dear Sir

It’s happened again!

This time, in addition to the pear-tree, partridge and doves, there are now three hens scratching away at the Axminster in the living room. I couldn’t say if they were French, since they have not exactly spoken to me!

My wife, who has borne all the preceding upsets with great patience is threatening to undergo a sense-of-humour-failure. She has retired to bed with a large bottle of brandy.

As soon as I have finished writing this letter, I shall be joining her.

Bills to follow.

Yours truly

Edward Meeks

To: e_meeks@freenet.com

Date: 15^th December 2023

Subject: Re: Replicator fault

Dear Mr Meeks

I am sorry to hear of your continuing difficulties.

We did send an engineer to visit you today, but he reports that he was unable to gain entry to your premises, despite repeated ringing of the bell. He says that you were certainly in at the time, because he could hear some rather off-key singing coming from the upper floor of your home.

He will be visiting again tomorrow to assess the situation, please ensure that he is able to gain entry.

Yours truly

Gerard Cochrane

Service Manager

The Twelve Days of Christmas - Day Two

2011-12-14T08:41:00.000Z

To: customer_service@replicon.com

Date: 14^th December 2023

Subject: Replicator fault

Dear Sir

Thank you for your prompt reply. I did as you suggested, and the diagnostic readout on my Replicon 2000 now shows a software level of 3.08i – the latest level.

Why then, did I come downstairs this morning to discover yet another partridge and pear tree, accompanied by two members of what my KnowledgeBase has identified as the family columbidae – Turtle Doves, I presume?

So not only do I have the problem of having a large tree removed from the premises (again!) I now have to trouble my local Animal Rescue group once more to find homes for these noisome and somewhat loose-bowelled avians.

As before, I will be sending you the bills for the tree removal and also for steam-cleaning my carpets and furniture.

Yours truly

Edward Meeks

To: e_meeks@freenet.com

Date: 14^th December 2023

Subject: Re: Replicator fault

Dear Mr Meeks

Once again, we can only offer our most sincere apologies for this extremely unusual behaviour by our product. 3.08i is indeed the correct patch-level. Frankly, we cannot understand how this could have happened.

We will be sending an engineer out to examine your unit. In the meantime, please accept our continued apologies and be assured that we will pay for the damage caused.

Yours truly

Gerard Cochrane

Service Manager

The Twelve Days of Christmas - Day One

2011-12-13T11:11:00.000Z

To: customer_service@replicon.com

Date: 13^th December 2023

Subject: Replicator fault

Dear Sir

I purchased a Replicon 2000 a few weeks ago and, up until now, it has given faultless service, replicating everything I’ve asked of it, perfectly.

This morning, however, I came downstairs to find that it had replicated a large fruit-bearing tree and a small member of the phasianidae family which my home KnowledgeBase has classified as perdix perdix or, more commonly, a grey partridge. No one in the house was up before me and these items were certainly not there when I went to bed last night!

I can remove the partridge with little difficulty – the local Animal Rescue group has agreed to take it off my hands. The pear tree however, is another matter, and the local landscaping contractor has quoted me a bill of 500 credits plus tax to cut it up and remove it.

I demand an explanation and you should be advised that I will be sending the landscaper’s bill to your company.

Yours truly

Edward Meeks

To: e_meeks@freenet.com

Date: 13^th December 2023

Subject: Re: Replicator fault

Dear Mr Meeks

We are sorry to hear that you have been having problems with the Replicon 2000. We have over a million of these units in service and have not received any other complaints of unsolicited replicating. However, as a gesture of goodwill on our part, we are willing to pay the bill for the removal of the pear tree on this occasion.

You should ensure that the software for the Replicon 2000 is up-to-date. You can do this by visiting our website at www.replicon.com/support, where you can download the latest patches.

Yours truly

Gerard Cochrane

Service Manager

NaNoWriMo - done

2011-12-05T11:33:00.000Z

I did it. Fifty-thousand-plus words in thirty days (twenty-nine actually, if we want to be picky).

At one point, I was a whopping 10,000 words behind schedule (work is truly the curse of the creative mind!) and honestly thought I’d never catch up. Luckily, a couple of really long and fertile weekend sessions got me back on track and the words came thick and fast for the final downhill rush to the finish.

Phew!

So, what did I get from the experience, apart from a sore neck and shoulders from hunching over my laptop?

Firstly, a HUGE buzz for having met the challenge. I'm naturally quite goal-oriented so NaNoWriMo really chimed with me.

Secondly, I now have what I think is a workable first draft for a story idea I’ve been kicking around in my head for years. This means more to me than the buzz of making the wordcount.

Just as I was setting out on NaNoWriMo, I followed a link on A Beer for the Shower - the MOST awe-inspiring blog in the bloggie-verse – fail to follow it at your peril!. This led to an article by one Laura Miller, called Better Yet – DON’T Write That Novel. This article says, amongst other things, that NaNoWriMo, because it encourages people just to write and ignore (for the moment) the quality, is causing far too much crap to be written – crap which gets sent to hapless editors and agents, apparently.

To answer this: I know my NaNo is NOT the finished article. I would be a deluded idiot to imagine otherwise, and would not dream of showing it to anybody other than my NaNoBuddy Don’t Feed the Pixies without a thorough revamp. I daresay most NaNos are execrably bad and should be burnt immediately, but that’s NOT the point.

The point, for me at least, is that I had to discipline myself to sit down and pound out a story, come what may. I’ve never approached writing in quite this way before (and I have been writing all my adult life). It is such a refreshing change!

I have several half-baked novels which have withered through over-editing and general faffing about to the point I get bored with them. What I have learned this year is that if you just keep going, it IS possible to get to the end AND you won’t actually die if there are some inconsistencies or plot holes, because these can be fixed in the re-write.

Having a definite goal to reach really pulled the story out of me and made it grow and change in ways I never would have imagined. Characters appeared as extras, then suddenly blossomed into really interesting people. The setting changed. Heck, just about everything did.

Recommendations for anybody (including me) thinking of doing a NaNo in the future:

Have at least a start and a finish for the story – you can fill in the middle as you go.

Have a buddy to urge you onwards. DFTP and I exchanged texts most days and talked about our progress and this kept the thing alive for me.

And finally: just give it a go! What’s the worst that can happen?

Just for funsies, here's what I imagine the back-cover blurb for my NaNo might be:

The construction of FS-111-Albert-Einstein is almost complete. When fully operational, the station will be one of the most important and potentially lucrative nodes in the FarNetwork, providing a valuable shortcut between two of the busiest sectors in the Ninety Worlds.

For two years now, construction has progressed more or less without a hitch, but about a month ago, things started to go wrong.

At first, it was just inexplicable graffiti appearing on walls and some minor vandalism.

Then a loading bot accidentally crushes a couple of construction workers.

Shortly after that, the suicides begin – or at least, what appear to be suicides.

Has all the construction project’s bad luck simply come at once? Is it some kind of malicious action by a rival corporation, eager to snatch the node licence from Amalgamated Leisure? Or is there a deranged and ingenious killer aboard FS-111?

Gideon Taverner, a freelance security consultant, is hired to find out.

An Unsuitable Job for a Cat

2011-11-24T11:23:00.000Z

I drew this effort some time ago, but it came too soon after this cartoon I did about a blind man, so I decided to wait a bit.

For the record, I do not think disability is funny per se, but blind people can have funny things happen to them just as easily as everybody else. As a partially-sighted person, I can personally attest to this.

I'm not sure what's going on with the minimalist landscape, though (I am: downright laziness - Ed).

Yeah, because what the internet really needs right now

2011-11-20T15:30:00.000Z

...is another perishing cat poem.

I really should be doing my NaNoWriMo (nearly 25,000 words in, thanks for asking).

It's actually been quite liberating just writing without stopping every five minutes to go back and edit. I'd reccommend doing NaNo for this reason alone.

The story has changed almost completely out of recognition. My original concept was going to be set in a very small setting with just a few characters. Within just a few paragraphs of starting, it changed to a much large setting and had loads more characters - most of whom are just background to be fair, so don't really figure in the story itself, but they were never meant to be there.

It's also taking much longer simply to type in the words than I expected. If things are flowing, I can get about 2,500 words entered in a stint of a few hours.

It's proving to be a really good exercise in discipline though. If I want to hit the target I have to make my word count each day. End of. I'm not 100% conviced that I am going to make it, but I am going to give it my best shot.

Anyway, back to that cat poem

He is a cat of the edges,
Of High places and ledges,
Of four-clawed defences,
Of walking on fences.

He is all about sneaking,
Of nosing and peeking,
Of staring and thinking,
Of slow languid blinking.

He is of playfully pawing,
Of lightning fast clawing,
Of suddenly chasing,
Of restlessly pacing.

He is of stalking and pouncing,
Of walking and bouncing,
Of stretching and leaping,
Of suddenly sleeping.

He is of dreamily twitching,
Of magic and witching,
Of warning and prowling,
Of warring and yowling.

He is a cat of the edges,
Of High places and ledges,
Of fireside and mat,
Of contradictions, this cat.

A New Home in the Sky - Reward and Recognition

2011-11-17T21:27:00.002Z

The latest feel-good initiative to slither out of the murky depths of the last Senior Management Team’s ~~corporate jolly~~ Strategic Workshop is the Applause system.

This is a wizard wheeze where you may nominate a co-worker for some outstanding bit of work, for being extra helpful or for just not screwing up too much this month.

You log into the special dedicated Applause portal and make your nomination, which has to be tied in with one of the company’s core values (leadership, customer service, adding value, ass-kissing, etc.) and you have to write a citation, explaining just why you think Nerdy Unix Guy or Ugly But Surprisingly Competent Incident Manager should receive an award.

You must be as specific as possible.

You must give dates, times, projects, client names, etc.

You have 140 characters.

Now, if by some superhuman act of précis (and text-speak is frowned upon) you manage to convey a flavour of your colleague’s incandescent brilliance, a committee of managers will scrutinise your effort and decide if it has merit.

Pulling a dirty great sword out of a stone? Easy-peasy!

Solving the riddle of perpetual motion? Pah!

Explaining why 'I’m a Celebrity' is still on our TV screens? OK, I’ll give you that one, that's inexplicable.

Persuading a group of people whose prime motivation is to keep costs down to give something away for free? Now, that’s hard!

If, by any chance, your Paen to That Guy in Networks should be found worthy, the nominated co-worker will receive a number of Applause points.

Applause points can be spent on things e.g. 10,000 points will get you a paperclip or some such, 20,000 will get you a pen, that kind of thing.

You have to get tons of these points to get anything truly worthwhile.

What’s a typical award, I hear you ask?

2,500 points.

You’d probably have to work for the company for a hundred years (and kiss a LOT of bottom) to amass a decent numberof points – by which time, the scheme will almost certainly have been discontinued.

But never mind, even if you can’t manage to squeeze a few measly points out of the system, you can always send your beloved co-worker an Applause e-card instead!

Yes, that’ll make them feel loved – after all, it’s not about the money, is it?

You can choose from a range of e-cards bearing anodyne and instantly forgettable images of implausibly attractive office workers laughing gaily into each other’s faces as they give presentations, or work on their computers. You may personalise it with a message of your own (you can use more than 140 characters for this if you like, it's not like it will cost anything).

By the way, it has been decided that there are to be no salary reviews this financial year.

Feel the love.

Wordzzle 178

2011-11-13T20:26:00.000Z

Well, I've managed one. NaNoWriMo has really eaten up my time and brains - much more so than I anticipated.

Anyhoo, here's a mini chalenge and a chunk of Harold. For more Wordzzle-related fun go to Raven's Nest.

Words to include: historical, hysterical, purple, purist, gelding

With a sigh, I put down the book. To be honest, it hadn’t really been gripping me anyway. It was supposed to be a historical novel set in the medieval period, but they should have shelved it under ‘hysterical’ instead. Such tosh! Purple prose abounded and, underneath the ridiculously overblown verbiage was a plot so contrived and thin, you could see light through it. I mean, a pretty young woman whose only companion in the world, a bay gelding, wandering about the countryside unescorted – highly implausible for the day. I suppose I’m being too much of a purist, but they really should not send this kind of twaddle for review to yours truly of all people - a Professor of Medieval History at Trinity College Cambridge.

And Harold, of course.............. (catch up using the link top right)

“This is highly irregular!” The young nurse’s voice was stiff with disapproval. “Mr Box is sleeping and mustn’t be disturbed.”

“But this is really urgent,” said India, “Please, can we have just a few minutes. We’ll be very quiet, I promise.”

Standing behind her, Harold favoured the nurse with his friendliest smile and was pleased to see a little uncertainty creep into her frosty expression.

“Please,” he added, “We just need to give him some very important family news. We’ll be gone before you know it.”

The nurse glanced around to see if anybody else was watching and sighed.

“All right,” she said, “I’ll let you see him, but you get five minutes and that’s it.”

“Thanks,” said India. “That’s all we need, honestly.”

It had all started with India wishing out loud that Box could be there to offer his advice about the current situation. Mr Teeth had offered to loan his not inconsiderable resources to project Distraction, as Harold had insisted on dubbing the current phase of activity. India had been uncertain whether to accept more of his help – so far, his house and the use of a car had been the only things they’d had from hm. All along, India had been squeamish about collaborating with someone who was almost certainly involved in who knows what criminal ventures, but she was pragmatic enough to realise that beggars cannot always be choosers. Still she had sighed and wished for Box’s counsel.

Harold had suddenly had an idea and, well, here they were.

Box was sleeping like the proverbial baby when the nurse ushered them into the dimly-lit room. She went over to the bed and roused his gently.

“Mr Box,” she said softly, “There are a couple of people here to see you. I can send them away if you don’t want to be disturbed.”

Box blinked blearily around the room for a few moments and then his eyes settled on India and Harold.

“No, it’s fine, they can stay.” He pushed himself up the bed and fumbled for the controls to raise the end of it.

“Five minutes.” The nurse said sternly as she left the room.

India and Harold moved over to the bedside.

“I take it things have gone awry.” Said Box, “Pass me that water will you? Thanks.”

Harold handed him the glass from the nightstand while India quickly outlined what had happened.

“And you’ve not been able to contact Mercury and Co since.” He confirmed when she had finished.

“No.” she replied, “But we’re thinking of putting together some kind of a distraction and using the invisibility suits to get inside Infinity Recycling. You’re a much more experienced agent, though, and I wanted to get your take on it.”

“Well, it’s going to take more than a few hurried minutes for me to get my ideas together.” Box said, “Do you have layouts of the uilding, things like that? How many people can Mr Jackson provide?”

“We can go into that back at the house,” said India.

Box blinked.

“Are you fixing to break me out of the hospital?” He said, his voice a mixture of disbelief and just a little glee.

“You’ll be walking out on your own.” Said Harold.

Box frowned. “Say what now?”

“We don’t have a lot of time to explain.” Said India, “The demon here thinks he can fix your leg. I have pointed out that it’s a bit more complicated than a china mug, but he seems to think he can do it and, given the urgency of the situation, I think it’s worth a try.”

-0-0-0-0-

“OK, I’m here,” said Flowers, as she walked into the cramped security office containing Moon.

“Doctor, we’ve had some developments tonight. Some OGS Agents have discovered our little hideaway and, while we’ve rounded up some of them, there is at least one other, plus a Fallen running around loose. We need to know where they would most likely have gone. We’re so close now with this project, we simply can’t have things ruined by a couple of loose cannon.”

Flowers frowned.

“And you’ve called me in because – ?“

“I was thinking that you could maybe,” Moon was suddenly less sure of himself, “well, give one of them a shot of something that might, you know, loosen their inhibitions a bit, get them to tell us where they’ve been hiding out.”

“I see,” Flowers said, hesitantly. Her cabinets down in the lab did contain several drugs that would undoubtedly do the trick, but... She knew she was being a total hypocrite for being so precious all of a sudden about using her drugs in this way, especially when she had already done so once. Nevertheless, her conscience had been nagging away at her since then and she was not keen to feed it any further. Then she remembered something.

“I think I might have an idea where we can look for your loose cannons,” she said.

-0-0-0-0-0-

Box gingerly lowered his feet to the cool linoleum of his hospital room. The stab of pain he had been expected did not come and he breathed a sigh of relief. “So far so good,” he murmured.

Carefully, India and Harold helped him to transfer his full weight to his feet and stand. On the bed behind him lay a tangle of discarded bandage and broken chunks of plaster of Paris. Box had taken a bit of convincing to get him to allow a Fallen – even one he’d recently been working with – to touch him. In the end, though, he’d relented and Harold had set to work with, it now appeared, good results.

Box took a few test steps unaided and pronounced himself satisfied. He was just pulling on his leather trousers when the door opened. The nurse froze in the doorway when she took in what was going on.

“It’s OK,” Box said quickly, before she did anything rash. “I’m going to discharge myself. I’m a whole lot better and my cousin needs me. Can you get the paperwork ready please?”

“Mr Box,” she gasped, “It’s the middle of the night! I strongly advise you at least to wait until morning, I can’t in all conscience – “

“Please,” said Box, in a firm voice. “I’m leaving. Now. I’d rather not make any more fuss than I have to, so please get me whatever I need to sign and I’ll be on my way.”

And, twenty minutes later, with India at the wheel, they all headed back towards Mr Teeth’s.

You Shouldn't Over-Think These Things

2011-11-09T12:21:00.000Z

The picture below has been appearing in Reader’s Digest magazine for some months now. It’s a advertisement for Silvikrin hairspray - For Life's Little Surprises

I have no particular feelings, good or ill, about Silvikrin as a product, I’m sure it’s a perfectly good one if you happen to like hairspray. It’s been around for as long as I can remember, so I guess it must be reasonably popular.

If, however, I were basing my hairspray choice solely on this picture, I would never in a million years buy this product.

So what do we have here that is apparently such a turn-off for me?

I’m guessing we’re meant to imagine that this little scene takes place at blonde lady’s (let’s call her Patricia) workplace. Her colleagues have organised a little surprise for her birthday and there she is, with token black lady (I’m going to call her Marcie) and some chap from Accounts (arbitrarily designated by me as Tony), exhibiting excited surprise at their thoughtfulness.

“For me? Wow! Thanks, you guys!” we almost imagine her crying excitedly.

Marcie is so excited herself that she is squealing too. “I know!” she cries, “I know!”

Tony looks on in wry amusement at the ladies’ hysteria. Aaah, those crazy ladies, he thinks. You wouldn’t catch a manly bloke like me carrying on like that.

All harmless enough, of course, but look at the picture some more.

Why has Patricia only got two workmates? Are the others all shyly hiding out of shot? Maybe nobody likes her very much. More importantly, who’s going to eat all that cake?

Why is Tony so creepy-looking? Look at him, peering over the top of the partition, he looks like some kind of horrible office chad (if anybody remembers chads?). Does he secretly have the hots for Patricia – or maybe Marcie? Either way, he looks like a stalker to me.

Look at what Patricia has got pinned to the partition under the Happy Birthday banner…

- A picture of the queen (possibly a calendar)
- A postcard or something with what looks like a crown on it
- A photo, possibly of her and some kids (where’s hubby, I wonder?)

Look also on her desk. There’s a mug and calendar bearing a union jack. Patricia is clearly VERY patriotic. Yes, I do realise that the idea of the ad is that Silvikrin is a British product, but so far all we’re seeing is a middle-aged woman who might for all we know be a member of the British National Party. Does she actually like Marcie or does she secretly wish she would ‘go back to where she came from’ (I’m going to say Marcie was born in Tunbridge Wells, so Patricia is bang out of order here).

And am I the only person in the world who thinks Patricia is slightly over-reacting to the cake and rather small birthday card? Come on Pat! It’s not that great – there aren’t even any presents, for goodness sake! Maybe she’s trying to impress creepy Tony. Now that hubby’s out of the way, she might well be on the prowl, the voracious old Cougar.

The tag-line for the advertisement is Set for the day. All day. Yes, because you clearly do need a superior hair product to keep your unruly locks in check in case you encounter a mildly surprising situation and have to pretend to be so excited you can barely breathe.

So I guess I’m only meant to be buying Silvikrin if I’m a middle-aged racist cougar with hardly any friends who has an orgasm any time somebody presents her with cake.

No thanks, Silvikrin.

I do like cake though.

NaNoWriMo is here and I'm joining in!

2011-11-02T12:37:00.000Z

Yes, after faffing about for a couple of years, I’ve finally decided to have a go at this National Novel Writing Month malarky (actually, it should be International Novel Writing Month by now, surely?).

The question is: can I pump out a 50,000 word novelette in just 30 days?

My good friend Don't Feed the Pixies did exactly that a couple of years ago, and produced a highly readable and thrilling story, which I personally think he needs to go back to and brush up with a view towards publication - jus' sayin'.

I need to knock out at least 1,667 words a day on average for 30 days to get there.

Doesn’t sound too bad when you say it like that, does it? It can take me 1,000 words just to get warmed-up sometimes.

Mind you, I’ve already managed to miss one whole day through having to go to work then having to go to a KT Tunstall gig (which was brilliant, in case you were wondering), so now I need to catch up if I’m to stay on track. I've created a spreadsheet to track my progress and everything.

If anybody asks, yesterday was a planning day, ok?

The story I'm going with is one that has been kicking around in my head for years, but about which I have never so much as jotted down a single note on paper. I’m already abuzz with thoughts of possible interesting (I hope) characters to plonk into my story. It will be Science Fiction, set in the far-ish future (saves piddling about with boring research) and will be a kind of murder mystery suspense-y thing.

NaNoWriters are, I believe, allowed to do a little planning before 1st November, but the actual writing itself must wait until the first day.

I’ve had a poke about on the NaNoWriMo website and there are forums where you can discuss your ideas, get help with plot holes, etc. This part of it looks quite interesting, and I particularly like the ‘Adoption Centre’ forum where people leave ideas for character names, funny lines, etc., for others to pick up and use.

I’ve now actually written the first couple of paragraphs (127 words) and am itching to do more, but I have to work.

Really.

Darn it.

It's only Wordzzles, but Wordzzles are all I have...

2011-10-29T22:35:00.000+01:00

I have been the very quintessence of laziness the last couple of weeks, so it's high time to make amends.

Raven, the creator of Wordzzles, is still bravely soldiering on with them and her blog can be found here, please pay her a visit or, better still, JOIN IN!

Here are a couple of minis I did earlier.

Challenge words: keen, swan, organ, champ, brush

“It’s never a good thing to champ at the bit too much where this job is concerned,” said Master Gottfried to his newest apprentice, a keen young fellow by the name of Otto. “A grand old lady like this one takes many months of careful patient work to restore her lest, like the fabled swan, she should sing just once and then die.” He chuckled at his own bon mot and then handed the brush to Otto. “Now, up you go, my lad.” Otto looked doubtfully at the rickety wooden ladder leading up to a narrow hatch, beyond which was dust, darkness and all the myriad organ pipes and actuators he was going to have to clean. He shuddered. There would be spiders up there the size of dinner-plates, he was sure of it. Master Gottfried smiled to himself The pipe loft with its dark, cramped spaces was always the acid test for any new apprentice. Otto took a deep shaky breath and began to climb.

Challenge words: flaw, filling, filter, flattery, fashionable

The décor was fashionable and the waiters kept the obsequious flattery to the barest minimum, what was not to like about Chez Dez, the newest bistro in town? Alex scribbled a few notes into his notebook and glanced at his pocketwatch. The deadline for copy was 4 o’clock. Plenty of time. His order arrived served in Chez Dez’s signature gleaming white crockery - a cup of filter coffee and a slice of Chez dez’s homemade apple pie. Alex took a mouthful of pie and chewed on it thoughfully, before frowning and scribbling a few more thoughts. He took a sip of coffee and raised his eyebrows in surprise. Next day, the local paper’s food section carried the headline: Tinned pie filling and instant coffee – the flaw in Chez Dez’s perfection.

And, of course, Harold...... Catch-up link is top right, if you need it.

No sooner had the words left her mouth than India could have kicked herself – really, really hard. Unbelievabley, she had just blurted out to one of the Fallen that it had hold of technology that could render it completely undetectable as it went about its wicked business. Brilliant work there India, she told herself severely, truly outstanding!

She half-expected Harold to pounce on her mistake with an evil cackle or something, but the stupid demon just tugged of the ski-mask and carried on drinking its coffee like nothing had happened. Maybe she’d got away with it after all.

One look at the suddenly thoughtful expression on Teatime’s face, however, instantly disabused her of that notion; the demon may have been too slow-witted to realise the strategic implications, but the monkey-thing clearly wasn’t.

When the little monkey spoke, however, it was not to gloat over her foolishness.

“That might well be jolly useful, actually,” he said.

“Oh?” said Harold.

“Well,” continued Teatime, “I was wondering how we were going to get around the fact that these wretched people seem to have a way of detecting your kind, and this just might be it. If Agent India’s gift doesn’t work when you’re in that ridiculous getup, then perhaps the Infinity Recycling people’s machines won’t either.”

Keen to keep the conversation going down this particular track, India said.

“We have two of these suits, so we could both sneak in, couldn’t we?”

“Yes,” replied Teatime, “But as I said earlier, we still have the problem of physical obstacles and guards to bypass. Magic suits aren’t going to get us through locked doors. We will need a diversion, as I said.”

“It would have to be something pretty big,” said Harold, “those guards seemed quite professional and well-organised.”

“Then it sounds like we’re going to need some help.” said India.

-0-0-0-0-

“No, we do not give him what he wants,” declared Prada, folding her arms firmly across her chest. “India and the demon are the only ones who know what’s going on and where we are. We cannot possibly allow Moon and his friends to get hold of them.”

“Assuming the demon hasn’t just run off somewhere, of course,” observed Othello, “If it was looking for a chance to get away from us, it’s just been handed the best one yet.”

“I don’t think it will do that, somehow.” Said Mercury. “It has been pretty helpful thus far, besides which, the Reckoner made it quite clear that he would take it personally if the demon betrayed our trust in any way. No I suspect it will follow the plan and go back to the -” He stopped himself and grinned ruefully. “Oooh, I nearly blew it then, didn’t I? Heh, I bet Moon’s got this place bugged in some way – I would if I were him.”

Moon did indeed have the place bugged, and could not help but smile at Mercury’s stopping himself from blabbing at the last moment. He leaned back in his chair, away from the security console. A small screen showed a grainy video feed from the conference room with the three OGS agents in it. It was clear they were not going to give anything away for free, but Moon had just that moment had an idea. He picked up the phone and dialled a number. He drummed his fingers lightly on the arm of his chair as the call went though.

“Hello?” came a woman’s sleepy voice. It was, after all, the middle of the night.

“Dr Flowers? This is RolexBoy. Can you come down to Infinity Recycling right away please?”

A New Home in the Sky - A Simple Question

2011-10-28T15:15:00.003+01:00

It’s a quiet day here at Klueless Support, the sand falling silently and tranquilly through the hourglass, until a soft ping announces the arrival of an email.

The report I ran today is showing the same figures as yesterday. This is wrong as the numbers are always different. Please can you fix it.

Regards

A User

Now I like a challenge, but there really is precious little to go on here, so there follows an email trail, summarised below:

Me: Which report is it that’s incorrect?

User: The Open Calls report

Me: OK, where in Klueless is that, is it in the public folders or your personal folder? Do you extract it yourself or get it by email? (Note: there are literally hundreds of reports, some of which the users create themselves. With the best will in the world, we can’t know all of them.)

User: As it stands I’m asked to run a report for the Service Desk that generates data pulled from Klueless. I’ve attached a list of reports that get sent to me if that’s any help? (6 attachments)

Me: So, is it one of the sent ones that’s not showing refreshed figures for today?

User: Thanks for getting back to me. The 2 spreadsheets attached show the same data sent for two different days. We know this is a fault as no two days will be the same as calls get opened and closed continually. (2 attachments)

Me: Yes, but I need to know the name and location of the actual report that’s wrong.

Some time goes by and I do some digging around on my own, eventually managing to locate a scheduled job that automatically generates a report called Open Calls. I see one bit of it has failed, so re-run that. This does not, however, explain why today’s and yesterday’s figures are the same.

Out of boredom, I open the two spreadsheets that the user claims contain identical data, just in case.

They do not contain identical data – not even close.

Puzzled, I email the user and ask him to check again and, lo and behold, it turns out he’s got confused; the two spreadsheets ARE different, but he is sure they were the same earlier.

Hmmmm. Yes, maybe the little internet pixies altered them or something.

This is a not untypical exchange between us and our beloved user community, more's the pity. I have to say our lives would be easier if users:

- did not assume we in support have the same knowlege of their reports (or anything else) as they do

- gave us clear information about where they got the report in the first place

- double-checked before firing off an email

We in support are users of other systems, with their own support teams, so this is probably good advice for us too.

Something for the Weekend

2011-10-21T13:38:00.000+01:00

Hope you'll all be as happy as this guy is.....

Someone to Watch Over Me

2011-10-19T12:32:00.001+01:00

My friend believes in angels.

For the record, I don’t have a problem with people believing in angels per se; they feature in several religious traditions and I’m perfectly happy for folks to embrace that kind of thing if they so wish.

This post is about beings known as angels, though, not about God as such.

My friend, however, takes it a step further (as indeed do lots of other people) and claims that he has a personal guardian angel looking out for him – we all do, apparently.

Angels on 24/7 security duty?

Not sure about that. I have questions.

Firstly, why would powerful supernatural beings (they must have some power or there would be no point them guarding us) take it upon themselves to watch over us mortals? Don’t they have anything else/better to do? Do they not have interests and relationships of their own to pursue? Are they able to interact with others of their kind? If not, then it would surely be a lonely vigil. Most of us live unexciting lives which, while they inevitably contain some element of risk, are probably not going to tax the abilities of a supernatural being overly much. So it would be a boring vigil as well.

Giving up your own interests and relationships for what could be an extremely boring and possibly lonely assignment is a big sacrifice, so why would they do it?

Perhaps they don’t have a choice: whichever supreme being is running the show could order it to be done and, obedient servants that they are, angels would (joyfully) comply. So maybe they get gratification from serving. Perhaps they are in constant communion with others of their kind and with the supreme being and so are not lonely after all.

Also, I guess if you’re an eternal being, the lifespan of a mortal is pretty insignificant and it would not feel to the angel like much time had passed before the next mortal to be looked after came along. Maybe that keeps it interesting for them.

So, OK, let’s assume there are guardian angels who are content to look after each one of us.

From what are they guarding us, and how far does their remit extend?

Now if we go with the whole benevolent-angels-exist scenario, then it might well be the case that there are evil supernatural forces at work too – perhaps angels are warding us from these.

This is a tough one to prove either way. Most of us are about as psychic as a teaspoon (ordinary teaspoons, mind you, not the ones that hang out with Uri Geller; those guys can predict the Lottery and everything) so we are usually not able to sense these threats for ourselves. Science has yet to prove or conclusively disprove the existence of supernatural entities of any kind. We are not, therefore, in a position to confirm or deny the existence of these evil forces.

I suppose we’ll just have to leave that as an open question for the time being and move on.

We do, however, have solid empirical evidence of evil in the physical world, so how much do our guardian angels protect us from this?

Not so much, it would seem.

History is jam-packed with war, genocide, cruelty, crime, destruction, etc.

Where were the guardian angels of those people trapped in the World Trade Centre in September 2001, for example? Come to that, if everyone has a guardian angel, where were the guardian angels of the people flying the planes on that day? The people in the building’s angels would presumably not have wanted the buildings to be struck by the planes. The pilots’ and unwilling passengers' angels likewise. So how did it happen?

OK, everyone has to die some time and maybe it was those people’s time to go, the angels knew it and so allowed it to happen (this is very fatalistic, incidentally, and whole books could be written on determinism and fate – and have been). How do the angels know it’s someone’s time to go?

Maybe the angels were over-ruled by a higher power – a power whose motives here are questionable, surely.

Now, at this point in any discussion like this, somebody usually advances the argument that mankind has free will and for angels to have prevented the planes hitting the towers, for example, that would be a breach of the terrorists’ free will and so is not allowed.

So the free will of a few terrorists carries more weight than the lives of thousands of people?

Really?

Would it have been an infringement of anybody’s free will if the buildings had stayed up for just a bit longer instead of collapsing? Some people would still have died, inevitably, but nothing like as many.

Alright, what about non-lethal threats, are we protected from them at least?

A few weeks ago, while out walking, I tripped and twisted the ligaments in my foot so badly that seven weeks on they’re still not right. Should I have been prevented by my guardian angel from tripping? If not (which presumably is the case since I did in fact trip) then why not? How was the decision made? Was I supposed to learn something valuable from this accident? I must be a very dull pupil then because I’m not sure that I have – other than to wear stouter shoes next time I go walking (for the record, I was wearing trainers, not six-inch stillettos or anything like that - sensible enough shoes, I’d have thought). Maybe I’m being unkind. Maybe my guardian angel did intervene and stopped me from breaking my leg or neck or something. (Aren’t I just the crummy ingrate?)

Maybe our angels guard us only from malevolent acts, not random accidents. Tell that to the woman whose kid has just been mown down by a drunk driver (assuming the driver did not set out to kill, and so was acting irresponsibly rather than out of malice).

It could also be argued that life would be boring without some adversity in it. Perhaps we need challenges to keep us on our toes (not my toes though, they’re still sore).

Agreed. I suspect, however, that someone whose family has just been wiped out by disease and starvation could do with a lot less adversity and still be kept on their metaphorical toes. Do the starving millions of Africa have guardian angels? If so, what exactly are they doing?

Do they protect us from ourselves?

My angel-loving friend is a longtime smoker who has tried on numerous occasions to give up. Now, we know that smoking is bad for health – a real threat to one’s wellbeing. My friend desires to quit and be rid of this threat. Cannot his guardian angel help him out with this? It would be a protective act if ever there was one, and would be well aligned with his own desires in the matter, leaving his free will still gloriously intact.

When all’s said and done, there can be only two possibilities why a guardian angel does not act to protect its charge from harm:

It is unwilling to.

It is unable to.

If the former, then we would have to hope that its decisions are both guided by our best interests and that they are sound. Angels must have access to a great deal of information (both past, present and future) to know what’s ultimately in our interests. What if my interest conflicts with yours? Whose angel wins that one?

If the latter, and they are unable to act, then I’d have to ask what/who is preventing it and why. I’d then want to address the questions above to that entity.

On balance, I’d have to say I’m not convinced we have personal guardian angels – if they exist in a universe with no supreme being then their actions seem rather arbitrary and their motives puzzling given the state of things.

if there is an omnipotent being, why would he need assistants anyway?

Apologies for a very long rambly post.

Does anybody out there have any opinions or experiences to offer?

Why I can't get nuthin' done around here

2011-10-14T12:54:00.001+01:00

It all started with a perfectly innocent order from Amazon.

I wanted Simon's Cat. If you've not come across this YouTube (and now three-book and heaps-of-merchandising) phenomenon, I urge you to get yourself over to YouTube and search for Simon's Cat - the animated cartoons are priceless.

But I digress.

The box came with Amazon's usual efficiency and I opened it to reveal...

Hmm, that explains the mewing noises and the unexpected weight, I suppose.

Maybe I should have been more specific with the wording of my order. I should have said 'Simon's Cat BOOK III' or something. Computers are, after all, nothing if not maddeningly literal-minded.

Anyhow, he was just so cute, I had to keep him. Besides, have you ever tried to work your way through the complexity of Amazon's returns process? Stephen Hawking, arguably one of the most giant brains we have around here, has this to say on it:

"It is no good getting furious if you get stuck. What I do is keep thinking about the problem but work on something else. Sometimes it is years before I see the way forward. In the case of information loss and black holes, it was 29 years."

(OK, he was probably talking about quantum gravity or some such, but he would have said this, I'm sure).

So now he (the cat, not Stephen Hawing. Goodness, how weird would THAT be?) has insinuated himself into every corner of my life.

So now, whenever I open a drawer...

I've no idea how he gets in there and closes it behind himself - one of the world's great mysteries, I suppose. Perhaps he knows a few things that Stephen Hawking doesn't.

If I try to go out shopping...

I think he wants to come along to make sure I get the right kitty treats. I'd take him, but honestly, I simply could not bear all the cat-is-out-of-the-bag type puns. Besides which, he probably has expensive tastes.

Maybe I should just stop fighting it and settle down with a nice book...

If only I could....

At least, when my boss asks me why I haven't completed an assignment, I can show him this - not that it'll be any excuse, mind you. There needs to be a new timesheet booking code: 'Feline-induced downtime' or something.

And the thing about kittehs is that you can't stop at just one....

And that's why I can't get nuthin' done around here.

Hapy Friday everybody!

Gary's Coming

2011-10-08T23:11:00.000+01:00

The following is a shortie I wrote back in 1999.

‘Gemma, we’re going now. You be a good girl for Grampy, won’t you?’

Mrs Haines bent down and pecked a lipstick kiss onto her eight-year old daughter’s cheek. The smell of her perfume enveloped them both like an invisible scented cloud.

‘Don’t go out tonight, Mummy.’ Gemma begged, ’Pleeeeease.’

Gemma hated it when Mummy and Daddy went out for the evening and left her with Grampy. She didn’t like Grampy: he was old and scary and smelt of wee. She threw her arms around her mother’s legs to stop her going.

‘Now come on, darling, don’t be silly.’ Mrs Haines chided gently. She prised Gemma’s hands loose carefully so that the child’s nails didn’t ladder her stockings. Gemma burst into tears.

‘But if you go, Gary will come and set our house on fire.’ she whined.

‘What?’ Gemma’s mother was surprised. Gemma always played up when she and Richard were going out for the night, but then usually went and cuddled Big Ted and cried herself to sleep. This was a new tactic.

‘Gary said he’s going to set our house on fire.’ Gemma repeated.

‘Gemma, who’s Gary?’ Mrs Haines knelt down so that she could be face to face with her daughter.

‘A boy.’ Gemma mumbled.

‘From school?’

Gemma shrugged. Gary was just Gary, she didn’t know what school he went to. Mrs Haines gently held her daughter’s shoulders.

‘Answer me, Gemma. Is Gary from your school?’

‘I don’t know.’ the little girl answered in a small voice.

‘What’s his second name?’

‘I don’t know.’ she repeated.

This is serious, thought Mrs Haines. She would have to phone the school tomorrow.

‘Well, don’t worry, darling.’ she said in a reassuring voice, ‘I’ll talk to your teacher tomorrow and we’ll find this naughty boy, OK?’ Mrs Haines gave her daughter a hug and another kiss, and stood up to go.

‘Remember,’ she said, ‘Grampy’s here so nobody’s going to do anything to hurt you. Now say bye-bye to Daddy.’

Mr Haines had just come down the stairs and was standing by the front door, jingling the car keys.

‘Ready?’ he asked brightly.

‘Yes, let’s get going.’ his wife replied, preceding him out the front door. ‘You’ll never guess what Gemma just said to me.’

‘Tell me in the car.’ he said, ‘We’re late as it is’

Mummy hadn’t believed her. Gemma knew she wouldn’t. She had gone out with Daddy anyway just like she always did, and now she was all alone with Grampy with his wee smell and his cold hard hands.

The next day, Gemma’s teacher, Miss Bean, took her to one side.

‘Gemma,’ she said, ‘your Mummy’s just phoned and told me that you said a boy called Gary threatened to set your house on fire. Is this true?’

‘Yes, Miss Bean.’

‘Which Gary was it. Was it Gary Powell?’
Gemma shook her head.

‘Gary Summers?’

Again no.

‘Gary Hurst?’

‘No, Miss.’

‘Well, that’s all the Garys in the school, are you sure it was one of them?’

Gemma shrugged.

‘Would you recognise him if you saw him?’

Gemma shrugged again.

‘Gemma,’ Miss Bean said in her Serious voice. ‘You’re not making this up are you?’

‘No, Miss.’ Gemma replied.

‘Alright. Go and sit back down.’ Gemma did as she was told.

Miss Bean sighed as she watched the little girl return to her seat. The child was probably lying – she was certainly being evasive. Perhaps she was just looking for a bit of attention. It was a shame: she was such a bright child and a hard worker too.

Miss Bean decided she would phone the child’s mother and reassure her, encourage her to maybe lavish a little extra affection on the child for a few days, that should sort it out.

Gemma sat in her seat. Miss Bean was nice, but she couldn’t tell her about Gary. Gemma toyed with the idea of telling Miss Bean that it had been Gary Summers after all, who had made the threat, but she was an honest child at heart and didn’t want to get the boy into trouble for nothing. Perhaps Mummy and Daddy would stay at home tonight and she wouldn’t have to talk about Gary any more.

‘OK, Gemma, we’re going. Have you got a kiss for Mummy?’ Mrs Haines bent down and pecked a lipstick kiss Gemma’s on cheek, just like last night.

‘But Mummy,’ Gemma protested. ‘Gary’s coming!’

‘Now Gemma,’ said Mrs Haines firmly, ‘Miss Bean told me you made that story up.’ Miss Bean had not actually said that, but Mrs Haines was impatient to get away and could not think of a better way of putting it.

‘But it’s true!’ insisted Gemma, tears springing to her eyes.

‘Now settle down, or Mummy will get very cross.’ Mrs Haines said firmly. ‘Say bye-bye.’

Gemma said the hated words and watched her mother close the door.

A few moments later, she heard the car start up and drive away, carrying off the two people in the world that she wanted to have close by, that could keep her safe. Why wouldn’t they stay with her?

Not long after, Gemma noticed that Grampy had fallen asleep in the chair She tiptoed over to the little side table next to him.

She picked up the box of matches that Grampy used to light his smelly old pipe. She opened it, took out a match and struck it.

Gary’s coming, she whispered to herself, letting the burning match drop from her fingers.

Jubal - In the Wild

2011-10-06T09:36:00.000+01:00

Here as ~~threatened~~ promised, is another one of my old cartoon strips, digitally remastered for your viewing pleasure.

Think Dungeons & Dragons....

Happy days...

What's in a Wordzzle

2011-10-05T00:09:00.000+01:00

Again with the Wordzzles! Created by Raven of Raven's Nest.

I reverted to a 5 word challenge this week, wuss that I am.

Challenge words are: bank, lotion, carpenter, slick, cheek

They were having some building work done at the bank and, as I approached, one of the builders – a carpenter of sorts by the look of him – appeared to nudge his fellow and whisper something. Now, I’m sick of this kind of thing happening. I mean, the cheek of people who think they can pass comment on others’ appearances in public like that! OK, I take good care of myself without being a slave to every new lotion or miracle cream that comes on the market, sure, but still… “Just who do you think you are!” I yelled, “keep you damn comments to yourself why don’t you?” His face was a picture of surprise. I guess he’d never been confronted before, ha! Just as I entered the building, my foot shot out from under me on the unexpectedly slick floor and down I went like a sack of mortified potatoes. “See?” The carpenter said to his mate. “Told you she wouldn’t see the ‘wet floor’ sign! Seriously, Stu, you need to reposition it before we get sued!”

And Harold (catchup link top right, folks)

India flung open the door before Harold even had a chance to ring the bell. He allowed his hand, with finger extended, to hang in the air for a moment for comic effect.

“Get in here, demon, and tell me everything that happened!” she barked.

“Pleased to see you too, Agent,” Harold replied, which earned him a Look.

Between them, and with many an irascible shouted instruction from Teatime, Harold and the little monkey had managed not only to get into the car (Mercury had the keys), but also to get it going and to pilot it back to Mr Teeth’s swiss-cheese house without crashing into anything or drawing unwanted attention from the police. Quite an achievement, Harold thought.

He recounted the night’s events in detail to India, a mug of steaming coffee in one hand. He purposefully left out anything about the two silvery cases he had liberated from the crashed truck. He wanted her to ask about them. When he was finished, she obliged him. She pointed to the silvery cases.

“What are those things, then?”

“Well,” replied Harold, lifting one on to the table and opening it, “they might just be the answer to our prayers.” He lifted a bundle of sleek, silvery material out of the case and shook it out for India to see.

“OK” she said carefully, eyes narrowed, “I’m seeing a fancy-looking oversize romper suit. How is going to help us?”

“This is what the guards who captured us – or should I say Prada – were wearing that allowed them to sneak up on us.” Harold explained.

“Seriously? They were dressed in a thing like that and you didn’t see them coming?”

Harold set aside the clothing and reached into the case a second time, lifting out an object the size and shape of a small backpack – complete with straps. “I think this is the power unit or something. When it’s switched on, you can’t be seen or heard, it’s really spooky!”

“Leaving aside for a moment the ironic fact that one of the Fallen thinks something’s spooky, how can we make use of it?” India had reached out and was rubbing the cloth between her thumb and forefinger, like it was a blouse she was considering purchasing.

“Well, I thought we might wear them and sneak back into Infinity Recycling, rescue our people, put an end to whatever’s going on and every one lives happy ever after.” Harold said, brightly.

“If I might inject a much-needed note of reality,” said Teatime, who had been watching. “Even with your magic suits, you can’t just waltz in there. There are still physical obstacles to overcome – locked doors and suchlike.”

“But, I can deal with those,” said Harold, “I – “

“Yes, old stick, I’m sure you can, given time.” Said the monkey patiently, “But don’t you think someone will notice a door opening all by itself – they’ve clearly got cameras all over the wretched place and probably heaps of guards. No, we’re going to need a diversion.”

“Actually, before we all rush down the road making plans,” said India, “we should probably make sure the suits actually work. We might need a special code to operate them or something. If we can’t get them switched on, there’s no use wasting time planning to use them.”

“You make an excellent point, Agent,” said Teatime. He turned to Harold, “Well, off you go old shoe.”

“You sure you want me to do this?” asked Harold.

“Well, the suit’s too big for the monkey, and if it goes bang or something, I’m not indestructible,” retorted India, “so, yes, demon, you get to do it.”

Harold was secretly rather pleased. He’d been itching to try out this clever bit of human technology. Yes, ok, he was a demon and many demons could and did make themselves invisible at will, but he’d never had the time to work on that – and probably never would now. He slipped off his jacket and began to undress down to his underwear. India took one look, blushed and stalked out of the room.

Harold grinned. Teatime sighed and rolled his eyes.

Harold wriggled into the romper suit which was quite stretchy when it came to it, and fitted his six-foot frame quite well. In addition to the suit, there were bootie-like things with soft soles, gloves and a ski-mask. Harold donned all of these.

“It’s safe to come back in now,” he called out to India. “I’m decent.”

“That’s something you’ll never be,” she muttered as she came back into the room.

“Aww, I’m hurt!” said Harold, mockingly, placing a hand over where his heart would be.. “Just when I thought we were beginning to get along and all.”

“Hmph!” was India’s only response. She walked over to the empty case and looked inside. “Hmm, I guess it was too much to hope that they’d leave a handy instruction booklet lying about.”

Harold had picked up the backpack-like object and was examining it.

“There’s a cable here,” he said, “Maybe it connects to the suit somehow.” He ran his hands over the suit until he found a hard lump in the collar of the romper suit. He teased it out between finger and thumb and slid the jack on the end of the cable into it until a soft click told him it was seated correctly.

“Am I invisible yet?” he asked.

“No.” chorused India and Teatime.

“Hmm, obviously, there’s a switch somewhere that’s easy to get to – it would need to be. There’s not one on the backpack, so it must be around here on the suit somewhere.” He put his arms through the straps and shrugged the backpack into place, being careful not to pull the connection apart. He cast his mind back to when the guards had first magically appeared. They had drawn weapons, but before that they’d been apparently clasping one wrist with the opposite hand.

“Got it!” he cried in triumph, pressing the small stud located on the left hand cuff.

He felt a soft vibration start up in the backpack. The biggest change though was that the world had suddenly been re-rendered in weird colours – all purples and greys in lower definition than normal.

“How bout now?” He turned round to see a look of utmost surprise on India’s face, and Teatime bolt upright on the table, his tiny teeth bared – an instinctive monkey reaction to the strange, no doubt.

“Very well, turn it off, turn it off, old sock!” urged Teatime, “We don’t want to run the battery down, do we?” Harold pressed the stud again. The vibration stopped and the world returned to normal colours.

Now he could see her again properly, Harold could not but help notice that India had gone very pale and very quiet.

“Agent? Are you alright?” he asked. “Shall I get you some water?”

“Turn it on again.” She said faintly.

Harold shrugged and did as he was told. The purple-o-vision bloomed silently, filling he field of view once more.

“OK, off again.” India’s voice was firmer now.

Harold complied.

“That is so weird,” she said, shaking her head.

“What is?” asked Harold. “Didn’t the suit work properly? Was I still visible?”

India wiped a hand across her forehead.

“Not only were you not visible, demon,” she replied grimly, “but my teeth stopped itching. I couldn’t sense you at all.”

The Crap You Get on Facebook Sometimes.

2011-09-30T20:36:00.000+01:00

I saw the below posted on my brother-in-law's Facebook status this afternoon.
"GOOD LUCK EVERYONE !!~~This year October has 5 Mondays, 5 Saturdays and 5 Sundays. This Happens once every 823 years. This is called money bags. So copy this to your status and money will arrive within 4 days. Based on Chinese Feng Shui. The one who does not copy, will be without money. Copy within 11 mins of reading. Can't hurt so I did it :) IT CAN'T HURT"

I really hate these things. They’re like those awful, awful chain e-mails and texts you get sometimes. My response (as posted on MY status, is this:

OK, let's be clear here. Humans appeared on Earth at an arbitrary point in its lifetime. Some arbitrary point after this, we started giving names to the days, months, seasons and whatnot. That there are 5 Mondays, Saturdays and Sundays (or anything else) in an arbitrarily-named time period - no matter how rarely it occurs, means nothing. Zip, Zilch. Nada.

The universe does not go by what we say - or by what we post on Facebook.

Even if every single FB user pasted the above tripe into their status, the ONLY thing that would happen is that FB's DBAs (database administrators) would probably have to consider adding disk space to accommodate such an extra load of meaningless twaddle. I daresay they're used to it - they've probably got auto-grow on the database files set up anyway.

But I digress.

The universe runs on Physics, not people's wishes.

Money will arrive in 4 days? Why 4 days? Why not tomorrow?

Based on Chinese Feng-shui? Ah yes, that well-known and scientifically proven set of principles that has more to do with where best to put your pot-pourri than with the calendar, last time I looked.

The one who does not copy will be without money. Really? I rely on having a job to give me money - not mumbo-jumbo.

And 11 minutes to re-post? Again, purely random. Eight I would have understood, as I believe it's deemed lucky in Chinese numerology (as we seem to be taking a taxi the hell OUT of Rationality City, I thought I'd mention it).

No it can't hurt anything - except YOUR BRAIN!

Let's take responsibility for our actions. Work hard. Pay your dues. Give one another a helping hand occasionally, and I can pretty much GUARANTEE the world WILL be a better place.

Not bollocks, just common sense.

Have a great weekend!

Thursday Wordzzle

2011-09-29T20:05:00.000+01:00

Boy, does work ever get in the way of blogging!

I thought I'd try my hand at a mega 15 word Wordzzle this week, just to see if I still can.

For rules and similar such poop, go to Raven's Nest

Challenge words: corn, chalice, perpendicular, what if, leaves, relief, teaching, healer, ramp, diamond ring, peek-a-boo, highest, shallow, willing, imagination

Normally, dealing with Galactic Emperor Phloxx XXII, Keeper of the Perpendicular Chalice, Guardian of the Sacred Teaching, Wielder of the Eternal Diamond Ring of Arcturus, Holder of the Highest something-or-other (truth to tell I’ve forgotten the whole rigmarole - it goes on for pages and pages) is about as much fun as playing peek-a-boo with a spitting cobra.

Today, however, I don’t know if it’s just my imagination, but he seems more.... reasonable. More willing to listen to his advisors - which is a bit of a pity. The trouble with him is, you see, he’s basically a spoilt little boy. The trouble with him is, he is a spoilt little boy who wields immense power. When most little boys don’t get their own way, a toy might get broken. When Phloxx doesn’t get his own way, whole worlds burn.

Not that he’s a bad fellow, you understand, just a little shallow in the thinking department - centuries of inbreeding will do that to the best of us. Nobody’s ever stood up to him and so he just does as he pleases – often with deadly consequences for somebody.

I often ask myself, what if he’d had proper guidance from wise teachers as a youth. How different things might have been. What accomplishments he might have boasted of!

Such wishful thinking is pointless, though, and just leaves one more dissatisfied than ever.

He’s immensely fat these days. Despite my advice, he will keep on eating and eating – corn-fed chicken is his current favourite, and the palace chefs are working their fingers to the bone to ensure there’s always a fresh dish on hand whenever he should take it into his head to call for it. We’ve had to have a ramp installed so he can waddle up to his throne (his vanity will not allow him to use a powered chair or any other aid. Sign of weakness, he calls it).

Sad then that he was so affable just now, because today his chicken will contain an extra ingredient.

I know I will not long outlive him, his guards are nothing if not loyal and, even if he is congenitally stupid, the guard captain is not.

I know history will vilify me as a regicide and as the healer who betrayed his patient’s sacred trust.

I also know that the empire will breathe a collective sigh of relief.

And this week's Harold (there is a link top right to the story so far)

Agents Mercury, Othello and Prada looked up guiltily as the door opened. They had been going through the few drawers and cupboards in the conference room, looking for a plug-in telephone after Othello had spotted a socket for one on the wall.

Agent Moon walked in.

“Moon! Tell your goons to let us go!” Prada was on her feet and shouting before the door was even closed behind him.

“Agent Prada,” warned Mercury, “let’s just stay calm and see what Moon has to say for himself.” He looked enquiringly at the latter. “Well?”

Prada slumped grumpily into a seat and began to worry at a hangnail with her teeth. Moon perched himself on the corner of the long conference table and surveyed the three of them. He looked different somehow, more confident, more mature and self-assured.

“Look,” he began, “I realise that this looks really bad –“

“Ya think?” muttered Prada, which earned her a frown from Mercury.

“- but, please believe me when I say that what’s going on here, what I’m involved in, is one of the most important projects this world has ever seen.”

“That’s a bold statement,” said Othello, “Care to elucidate?”

Moon took a moment to scratch at his temple as he composed his thoughts.

“I’d be more than happy to, believe me, but first I need some information from you guys.”

“Oh?” said Mercury, guardedly.

“Yeah, it’s just a small thing really, but I really need to know where Agent India and your pet demon are right now.”

Mercury, Prada and Othello looked at each other briefly, then Mercury spoke.

“And why would you need to know that, Agent?”

“We’re at a very sensitive stage in our work here,” Moon replied, “We really can’t afford to have unpredictable elements running about the place, disturbing things. It’s just too important.’

”You don’t seriously expect us to tell you, just like that, surely.” Said Prada.

Moon sighed. “I suppose not, but I thought it was worth while to ask, anyway.”

“So what now?” said Prada, “You going to start threatening us? Get one of your goons to shoot one of us like you did to Emerald? Like you did to Box?”

Moon’s face reddened.

“Those things were never meant to happen like that, I swear.” He said fervently. “A few people misunderstood what they were supposed to be doing and …” he trailed off, and suddenly, for a moment, he was the Moon they recognised - young, uncertain.

“Did whoever it was who planted the bomb in the warehouse misunderstand as well?” asked Othello, “Only, it seems to me that setting up something like that would take a certain amount of premeditation. Firing a gun can be a spur of the moment thing, but not planting explosives, that takes planning. You’re going to have to do better than that, Moon.”

Moon showed his palms in a conciliatory gesture. “You’re right, of course. In retrospect, it was a stupid thing to have done and, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry, I really am. It’s just that what we’re doing here is so very important.”

“Look, Fallen and Loyal alike have disappeared completely,” said Mercury, “Gone. Vanished. Not dismissed – which was always sufficient before now, but vanished. Are you destroying them somehow? And why target the Loyal when they’re on our side, for pity’s sake! Don’t you realise that you’re upsetting an ancient arrangement that has stood the test of time for centuries?”

“I understand that there are serious implications to what we’re doing here, believe me,” said Moon, “We appreciate that neither the Basement nor the Penthouse is going to be happy with what we’re doing here, but – “ he stood up and began pacing, as if about to deliver a speech.

“Humans have always been stuck in the middle between the two of them, at the mercy of either temptation from the Basement or whatever crumbs of bounty the Penthouse sees fit to bestow.”

“But that’s how it’s meant to be,” interrupted Prada. “If it – “

“Let me finish, please,” said Moon, cutting her off. “The Fallen and the Loyal have abilities that none of us humans can match and yet they hardly ever use them. There’s so much good they could do in the world but they don’t. Why? Because of some ancient agreement – to which we were not even party!”

“Moon, you know perfectly well why they can’t get involved in human affairs,” said Mercury, a not of irritation creeping into his voice. “Any one of them could rule this world without hardly lifting a finger if it so chose. The arrangement is for our protection, so that we are free to conduct our affairs as we see fit. They can try to influence us – that’s all. Our free will is what’s at stake here.”

“I know that!” Moon was beginning to sound angry himself now, “But is it an infringement of anybody’s free will if they get cured of cancer, or if a drought-stricken region suddenly get some rain for once? If a starving kid gets a bowl of rice? They see all this misery and they stand by and do nothing! If somebody saw an old lady fall down in the street and hurt herself, and yet just walked on by, we would be outraged at their lack of compassion. If we mortals can act altruistically, then why can’t they? It would be nothing to them.” He stopped, a little out of breath.

“I’m sure the Loyal at any rate would agree with you,” said Othello, “And I’m sure they very much want to help, but where do you draw the line? You can feed a single starving mouth easily enough, you might even feed a village or a town. Then you might just say to yourself, well, I can end starvation in this whole land altogether by getting the government to stop fighting internecine civil wars with their neighbours. Oh, and while I’m at it, I should get the neighbour governments to improve their human rights records. Pretty soon, if you go down that road, you’d be running the whole place. So it’s best not to even start down that road – hence the arrangement.”

“Well, I think it’s time things changed.” Declared Moon. “If they can’t – or won’t - help then –“

“- you’ll wipe then out.” Prada finished for him, flatly.

“No. That is not what’s happening here – the last thing we want is for any of them to be wiped out.”

“Then what?” asked Mercury.

For a moment, it looked as though Moon were actually going to tell them, but he obviously thought better of it. He shook his head.

“Sorry,” he said, “As I said, I’ll tell you gladly, but only when India and the demon are secured.”

He moved to the door. “Have a think about it and if you change your mind, just tell the guard. In the meantime, I’ll have some drinks and sandwiches sent in.”

The door closed. Mercury, Prada and Othello looked at one another.

“So,” said Mercury, “Do we give him what he wants?”

Toys You Cannot Buy

2011-09-21T13:58:00.000+01:00

Here's another cartoon.

It ocurred to me that the Action Man (GI Joe for our US friends?) is missing a trick. You can get all kinds of costumes for him - but not, I suspect, the one in the cartoon below.

Perhaps, there's a series here. Roman Catholic Chaplain, Rabbi Chaplain, dare I say Muslim Chaplain (mind you, that's a toy that's not getting made any time soon - no images of humans allowed and Action Man is just that).

The Hungry Ones

2011-09-20T14:25:00.000+01:00

They are here again today.

The hungry ones.

Just the other side of the flimsy plywood door, I can hear them both pacing to and fro. I’ve shut the door against them and, fortunately, they’re not smart enough to figure out handles.

Yet.

They are smart enough to know, however, that I can’t stay in here forever. Sooner or later I’ll have to emerge and they’ll be waiting. Waiting for as long as it takes.

It’s what they do.

From time to time, I hear a soft noise from one of them like a low mew, followed by the scrabble of their claws on the tiles outside the door as they pause in their relentless pacing for a bout of bad-tempered boxing. Each wants to be the only one, but neither is strong enough to drive off the other. It’s soon over though, and the endless pacing resumes.

Sometimes, they attack the door in a flurry of rapid claws as if they imagine they can wear and tear the thin plywood away and get in.

Sometimes, they make piteous mewling noises, hoping I’ll be stirred to pity and open the door. They do this even though they know it will do them no good.

I’ll not be fooled.

Again.

It’s not me they want.

It’s the treasure I guard.

Salmon sandwiches with two cats in the house! What was I thinking?

Haiku! Gesundheit!

2011-09-19T11:16:00.000+01:00

Believe it or not, I have never, ever, not even once, written a haiku.

I have no explanation for this gaping lacuna in my creative repertoir. Maybe I thought it was too hard or something, I dunno.

Anyhow, I've had a go at rectifying this serious deficiency. Now, I know that to some people, the allure of the haiku has been sadly diminished by its over-use, but it is such a neat little form. I imagine a good haiku should be like one of those brush paintings where, with but a few strokes, a tiny perfect image is created. I particularly like haiku where the last line contains a little surprise twist.

I doubt that these are strictly perfect in their structure, but here goes. I present for you my working day - in haiku.

Sardines close-packed
Blue box enfolding
Bus overcrowded

Sky empty without
Head empty within
404 Page not found

A winding path
A splash of carp
Panini bounty accepted

Wires hum with music
Tinny seconds tick by
Your Chairman has not arrived.

Sinking autumn sun
Blushing leaves drifting
Car park deserted

Happy Monday everyone!

Wordzzle-schmordzzle

2011-09-18T22:28:00.000+01:00

Yep, we're talking word challenges here, people. Go to the home of their instigator at Raven's Nest.

I thought I've have a crack at a 10-word challenge this week. The words to include are: crane, argument, implement, fallacy, triumph, graph, giggle, twig, spigot, worry

In the centre of an old courtyard there lies a large wide-lipped stone basin. It once contained a pool of sparkling clear water, in the middle of which stood a marvellously wrought statue of a crane. A fountain had gushed and splashed out of a spigot cunningly hidden in the bird’s stone beak.

In the old days, the lip of the basin had served as a seat and the courtyard itself as a bustling informal meeting place; its walls echoing with the white noise of splashing water and the lively conversation of student and master alike.

Now, crossing the courtyard at a snail’s pace in his dusty black robe, old Master Ortiz pauses to rest a while on the basin’s accommodatingly wide lip, just as he does every day. The sunshine stored in the ancient, honey-coloured stone warms his old bones and for that he is grateful. His old eyes, dim and milky now, can almost see the fountain playing and splashing in the sunlight, his ears can almost catch the snatches of argument, the shouts of triumph, the whispered confidences, the odd giggle… It is a fallacy though, a bout of wishful thinking. There is no one here now but himself – hasn’t been for years.

He runs a gnarled hand over his face. The decades have drawn a graph of worry and care there, not that there’s anyone around to see it, of course. He had warned them, the other masters, but they hadn’t listened. They hadn’t listened and the magic had run out, just as he’d said it would. One by one they had all left this place; if there was no magic, there was no point in having a school for it.

Now, the fountain stands silent, its basin home to dried twig and creeping weed, dead leaf and dessicated moss. The water no longer pours from the beak of the cunningly-fashioned stone crane. This is not because the magic failed. No, simple time has broken the mechanism and Ortiz does not know how to fix it, nor does he possess any suitable implement to do so even if he did.

Having rested, Grand Master Ortiz, one time Advisor to Kings and wielder of powers most puissant and arcane, struggles to his feet and shuffles on his way. With any luck, the scrawny chickens he keeps in the old refectory will favour him with an egg or two today.

And, of course, HAROLD! Follow the Story So Far link top right to get all caught up.

“You have absolutely no right to keep us here! Let us go!” Prada’s pale face was flushed with anger.

“Please sit down, miss, and stay calm,” said Nugent, patiently. “I’m sure everything will be fine, but we have our orders. Someone will be along to speak to you soon.” He closed the door firmly behind him, leaving Prada, Othello and Mercury alone together for the first time since their capture.

Othello waited a few moments and then went over to the door. He eased it open a crack, glanced out and quickly closed it again.

“Two guards outside,” he said. “Armed.”

Mercury, meanwhile was checking the windows.

“These can’t be opened,” he sighed. “Looks like we’re here for the duration.”

“And since they have our phones, we can’t even let India know what’s happened.” Said Prada. The guards of units Three and Four had searched them quickly and professionally before ushering them into what looked like a perfectly ordinary conference room.

“She’ll know something’s up when we don’t make the check-in call.” Mercury looked at his watch, “in about ten minutes or so.”

“Were the guys that nabbed you wearing Predator-suits as well?” asked Prada.

“Predator suits?” Mercury inquired with raised eyebrow. “Oh! The fancy invisibility things? Yeah, they flat-footed us quite handily. What I wouldn’t give for a few of those things!”

“They’re some seriously advanced tech,” said Othello, “Military maybe. There’s a pile of money being spent here. I think we’re definitely on to something now.” He turned to Prada, “ So what happened to the demon? Did they capture it?”

Teatime crouched under a hedge, straining his tiny eyes and ears to the maximum to reassure himself that there were no perishing humans about. The car they had all arrived in earlier that evening sat, apparently undisturbed, just in the spot they had left it. During their earlier planning session at Mr Teeth’s, it had been decided that the car was the place to meet up if anything untoward happened. Well, untoward was certainly an understatement. A supposedly low-risk recce mission had turned into a complete shambles.

Teatime hoped Harold had a) got away safely and b) remembered this part of the plan. He was a good-hearted chap but, honestly, sometimes he could be such a complete duffer. Besides, it would be colossally inconvenient if the silly oaf had got himself captured. Not only would the investigation be severely hampered, but Teatime would have to explain things to Harold’s father. Not a pleasant prospect.

Harold had not forgotten the plan. It had taken a while, but he had eventually managed to find a service ladder and climb out of the culvert. As soon as he had emerged, he had tried calling Mercury’s phone to let him know what had happened. It had just rung and rung and then gone to voicemail. So had Othello’s. He even called Prada just in case, somehow, she had managed to escape herself, but the result was the same. This did not bode well. Maybe all the agents had been captured then. Well, all except one. India. His number one fan. With some trepidation, he dialled her number.

“All of them?” India cried, incredulous.

“It would seem so, I can’t raise any of them on their cells.”

“But you managed to escape. Just you.” Her voice had a hard, suspicious edge to it.

“Well, Teatime too, probably. We got split up in all the confusion.”
India rubbed her eyes. She needed to think. This was one scenario they had not rehearsed. She was effectively in charge now all of a sudden. This was only her first proper mission. She was the most junior member of the team, she couldn’t be expected to tackle this level of responsibility. It just wasn’t right. Get a grip, she told herself sternly. She took a big breath.

“OK, demon, try and find the monkey-thing and then both of you get back here, so we can figure out what to do next.“

“Will do.”

The line went dead. Well that went surprisingly well, Harold thought as he put the phone away. He had been expecting much more of a tongue-lashing than that. She must be softening.

Right then, back to the car and hopefully a reunion with Teatime.

A New Home in the Sky - Project Wideawake

2011-09-16T11:33:00.000+01:00

There is a building near to our new home which has us fascinated.

It is not remarkable in its own right, being as it is, a typical modern office construction a couple of floors tall.

No, what gets us is the ridiculously high security measures it enjoys compared to all the other buildings on the site. We’re talking double barriers for cars, where the second one only opens when the first one has closed behind you, and 10-foot high fences - which are actually electrified.

It has its own independent power supply.

There is no company branding on the building anywhere. The cars visible in its car park are all of good make and recent manufacture, so there is clearly money here. But what can it be?

Theories abound, of course, ranging from the mundane it’s a data centre for some big corporation to the more fanciful it’s a secret government installation to the downright silly the building is a hollow shell which splits apart and open up to allow the launch of missiles a-la Bond villain.

I must say that while the last theory is probably the least probable, what better place to hide out if you are a super-villain than an ordinary business park?

Private Island? Too obvious.

Insides of extinct volcanoes? Puh-lease! And too visible on Googe Earth.

Nobody suspects a boringly anonymous building amongst a ton of other such buildings.

Set your minds at ease though, people, we at NHitS will be keeping a close watch and are prepared to alert the authorities at the first sign of megalomaniac geniuses attempting world domination.

Dark Wordzzle

2011-09-10T23:44:00.000+01:00

Not sure where in my head, this mini came from. Go to Raven's Nest for Wordzzle rules, etc.

The Mini (trembling, spacious, pendant, traffic, legal)

“Yeah, I’m a partner in a big legal firm, it’s a lot of stress.” the man brayed, his voice booming around the spacious hotel bedroom. “I’m the Wilkerson of Wilkerson, Maitland & Penopscott, but you won’t have heard of them. “ Marta smiled uncertainly at him, as he gently stroked the backs of his fingers down her cheek. “Can you even understand a word of what I’m saying, bitch?” He said tenderly, still smiling his perfect-toothed smile. Then he punched her in the face.
Marta had known the blow would be coming at some point, this was, after all, what men like this paid her pimp so handsomely for. Had known, but it still hurt like hell.
Wilkerson bent down, grabbed a fistful of her hair and hauled her up. She could taste blood in her mouth where his blow had rammed the inside of her cheek against her teeth. Yuri had promised her a nice safe cleaning job in England, maybe some bar work if she was good. Bastard! All he had done was traffic her to a dingy flat somewhere in London where she was kept a virtual prisoner by a man called Alexei. She was only allowed out on occasions like tonight when she was driven to a hotel like this one and even then, Alexei waited outside while the paying customer did whatever he wanted to her. No escape.
Wilkerson threw her roughly onto the bed and began to undo his trousers.
Marta was trembling all over and was naked apart from the pendant she wore. It had mysteriously appeared in her room that morning with an unsigned note telling her to wear it always. It twinkled prettily as Wilkerson began brutally extracting his money’s worth.
Suddenly the door burst open and in rushed six police officers who quickly dragged Wilkerson away from the bed, handcuffing him none too gently. One of the officers, a woman, spoke to Marta softly in her own language.
“It’s OK, you’re safe now.” She handed Marta her clothes
“How did you find me?” Marta asked, hardly able to comprehend the sudden change in her fortunes.
“We have suspected Alexei Popov of being a pimp for some time, so we managed to slip the pendant you’re wearing into the flat for you to find. It contains a microphone and transmitter. Wordlessly, Marta took off the pendant and handed it to the other woman, who smiled. Through the open doorway, Marta could see a furious Alexei being dragged away in handcuffs.

... and this week's dollop of Harold.

(follow the link to the 'story so far' top right of this page to get caught up).

Harold dropped the twenty feet or so into the culvert, landing lightly. He trotted over to the crashed truck. Some kind of liquid was leaking from somewhere and spreading in a dark pool around it. Harold hoped it wasn’t fuel or anything else flammable: he’d seen lots of movies and TV programmes since coming to earth and vehicles inevitably seemed to go ka-boom shortly after crashing. If motor vehicles were so dangerous, why on earth did humans routinely trust their lives to them? Harold wasn’t afraid for himself; his clothes would be ruined, of course, if the truck blew up, but he would be basically unharmed – if a little weak and in need of pizza. The humans inside would not fare so well, however, so chop-chop, old bean, he told himself in his best mental imitation of Teatime.

The truck’s rear end was closest to him and one of the doors, having burst open in the crash, was lying invitingly open on the ground, providing a handy means for Harold to scramble in.

The inside of the truck was a shambles. There had clearly been a lot of complicated and delicate equipment in here, but most of it had been torn from its mountings in the crash and was smashed and scattered all over the place. Bits of broken glass glittered everywhere. Thankfully, there was no electrical sparking – indeed, all was eerily quiet. Harold’s night vision, demonically good as it was, soon allowed him to spot the rear compartment’s lone occupant.

The man was unconscious with a sizeable gash on his forehead which was bleeding freely. He was lying sprawled on top of a small heap of busted up equipment. Further examination, however, was hampered by two large silvery equipment cases which had tumbled onto the man’s body and legs. Harold grabbed the handle of the nearest one and unceremoniously slung it out through the door-hole, where it landed with a clatter on the concrete beyond. The second one followed suit shortly after.

Harold crouched next to the man. He was quite young by the looks of it, which was good as it meant that he would be strong and healthy. Humans’ bodies were so terrifically delicate, though. One wrong move from Harold and a bad situation might become much, much worse. Harold had seen fly-on-the-wall documentaries about hospital ERs and knew that broken necks and spines were bad news. If he moved the man… He wracked his brains for a moment, wrestling with the beginnings of an idea, then shrugged to himself: it was worth a try, surely?

He tentatively reached out his hand and, using the same facility that had allowed him to sense the locks on the various doors he had opened, he tried to ‘see’ if anything was broken in the man’s body. The rush of sensation he received in return was very odd indeed: humans, it transpired, were basically a big bag of warm squishy with a bony frame. Fortunately, the man seemed to be undamaged apart from the knock on the head he’d received.

Harold carefully manoeuvred the limp and distinctly uncooperative form out through the door hole and dragged it far enough away (he hoped) from any potential ka-boom. Not knowing anything about recovery positions or anything much else of First Aid (the Basement did not have this subject on its curriculum for some reason), he made the fellow as comfortable as he could, then headed back to the van.

As he trotted past them on his way to the front of the truck, Harold glanced at the two bulky cases he had ejected so carelessly. They bore the Rainbow Industries logo as well as some other black stencilled lettering: RI-180-A Smart Camouflage (Medium). Harold felt a stab of excitement: if those cases contained what he thought they did, then getting Prada back might be a tad easier.

There was no time for that now, however.

Harold scrambled up onto the passenger side of the vehicle, which was now effectively its roof, and made his way over to the driver’s compartment. Through the broken passenger side window, Harold could see that both airbags had gone off and then deflated, leaving their fabric draped in pale folds eerily reminiscent of a shroud, over the occupants, neither of whom was moving.

Harold stood up and tried to tug the passenger door open, but it was badly buckled and refused to budge. Favouring the universe with a gimme-a-break-already sigh, Harold crouched down again and used his abilities, just as he had done on Mr Peck’s cable-tie handcuffs, teasing the molecules of the twisted metal apart bit by bit, so as to avoid sparks and subsequent unwelcome ka-booms.

The door now open, Harold reached in and gently lifted the air-bag material out of the way, the better to see the two men. A hand-scan (as he suddenly decided to called it) revealed that the passenger had a broken arm and a couple of cracked ribs, as well as a large egg of a bump on the side of his head – no doubt the cause of his unconsciousness. He tried to reach down to the driver to check on him, but the bulk of the passenger’s body prevented it.

The passenger himself was probably not in too great a danger from his injuries, Harold thought (so, you’re a doctor all of a sudden, taunted his own inner voice), but clearly the man would benefit by not being in the truck any longer than was necessary.

But how to get him out safely?

The truck’s front windshield was a spider web of cracks, but was, miraculously, still more or less in one piece. If Harold could just remove it, there would be a nice big aperture through which rescue could be effected. He was just starting to congratulate himself on his own inventiveness when the sound of a passing siren drifted down from the highway above.

He smacked himself in the forehead with the heel of his hand. You idiot! he told himself, you should have rung for an ambulance before getting stuck in!

He reached for his phone, but, as his fingers curled around its cool smooth plastic, he suddenly remembered all those NO MOBILE PHONE signs displayed so prominently in filling stations. Mouthing a silent phew at his lucky escape, he jumped down to the ground.

Once he got to work on it, the windscreen all but fell out of its own accord and, with the large gap it left, Harold was now able to check on the truck’s driver at last.

That corner of the truck had borne the full brunt of the vehicle’s high speed impact with the unyielding concrete of the culvert’s wall. There was nothing anyone could do for the driver now.

Shaking his head, Harold carefully eased the passenger out of the truck and dragged him as gently as he could over to where he had left the other man, laying him down beside his comrade. He then dialled 911 and gave brief details of the men’s injuries and the location.

That done, he suddenly felt quite drained. All the tearing about at high speed, followed by all the scanning and cutting of metal and glass had apparently taken its toll. What he wouldn’t give for some pizza right now! No rest for the wicked, though, he told himself.

Slinging the straps of the two cases over his shoulders, Harold started walking along the culvert and away from the crash site – it wouldn’t do to be around when the medics (and Police, probably) showed up. Now, there had to be a service ladder or something around here somewhere...

Will Somebody Please Shut That Damn Monkey The Hell Up!

2011-09-05T17:40:00.000+01:00

Every music teacher since the dawn of time has heard this excuse about a million times.

It gets trotted out, usually in an exasperated whining tone, (at least it is when I do it) when a pupil cocks up a piece that they have been working on:

“I don’t understand! I played it perfectly before the lesson.”

The thing is, it’s probably true, and in my own case it really is. In my own practice time, I can play my pieces all the way through. OK, I’m never going to be booked for the Albert Hall or Ronnie Scott’s but nevertheless I manage to get to the end in a vaguely passable fashion.

As soon as I play in front of my Musical Jedi Master , however, all those successful performances fly out the window and stupid mistakes creep in.

It is maddening.

It is frustrating.

I blame the monkey.

The monkey that lives in my head and who just will not shut up.

Now, to play music successfully, you need to be able to concentrate and focus. All those little dots don’t read themselves, you know. Once you've taken your eye off them, they have a nasty habit of jumping about the page in gay abandon and you'll never get them to behave after that.

What you absolutely do not need is someone who, just as you’re getting to the tricky bit, will demand in a loud voice “Ooh, are we having faggots* for dinner?” or, just as you’re approaching that nice easy bit that will take you coasting nicely to the end, will suddenly screech excitedly “You’ve got to the end! And with no mistakes!“, which of course results in an instant musical train wreck.

I hate him.
He knows just the very best moment to pitch in for maximum annoyance. He knows, for example, that distracting me when I’m by myself is hardly worth the effort (although he does have a go occasionally - usually when I'm trying to get to sleep). No, he knows the real money’s in causing maximum embarrassment by popping up when I’m trying to impress somebody like my teacher or an audience.

I have tried meditation. You know how that’s supposed to go. You’re supposed to clear your mind of all thoughts and just concentrate on your own breathing or belly button or whatever.

I generally get to about five seconds before it’s “Hi, how’s it going? Gosh it’s really quiet in here. Oh, I’m sorry! Were you in the middle of something? “

I’ve tried cutting out caffeine to absolutely no avail. He stays the same and I just get cranky.

I’ve tried alcohol but, based on empirical observation, it would need enough of it to knock over a rhino before there would be any noticeable effect, and the resultant loss of control over limbs (and possibly over bodily functions as well), would kind of defeat the object.

There are times, though, when his yammerings have lesseffect. For example, he’s only ever once managed to sabotage a singing performance of mine to any degree, and that was over twenty years ago.

He only spoils a guitar performance if I'm trying to record it and want it note-perfect.

His doesn’t bother me much when I’m making a speech at Toastmasters – especially if it’s an impromptu one. In point of fact, in the latter case, his quicksilver flitting from thought to thought at the speed of light can actually be a help.

So what’s the difference?

It must be a confidence thing. I believe I’m good at singing. I believe I’ve good at speech-making.

If only I could make myself believe I was as good at saxophone and piano.

Self-confidence is the monkey’s Kryptonite.

Anybody out there got any idea how I can get more Kryptonite? Failing that, does anybody know of ways to cage/silence the monkey?

*Faggots: a kind of meat pattie, usually served in a rich savoury gravy. Not the kind you were thinking about.

Just Another Bloomin' Wordzzle

2011-09-03T23:39:00.002+01:00

I really gotta write some other type of blog entries, seriously! My brain is devoid of inspiration at the moment though.

Any hoo....

Go to Raven's Nest for rules and whatnot.

My mini from last week. Words: turtle, fragrant, bubbles, sugar, pregnant

He could picture it as clearly as if he were seeing it right now. His hands, complete with gleaming new wedding band, pressing down hard, hard, and his wife’s face a terrified mask under the fragrant bubbles as she thrashed and writhed in his grip. Her sudden stillness and the scented water settling to a slow gentle lapping in the bath. The turtle-shaped tub of bath crystals, smashed in the struggle, its contents spread in a wide power fan across the marble tiles like so much spilt sugar. Her last taunting words “You know, I wasn’t actually pregnant, but how else was I going to get you to pop the question….?”

And Harold, of course.... For the story so far, follow the link top right.

Harold found himself running across an area of rough ground, mostly loose, dry dirt with the odd tussock of scrubby grass dotted here and there. Behind him, he could hear the truck’s engine being revved and what sounded like a very bad-tempered clash of gears as it was hastily slammed into reverse. Hopefully, the Infinity Recycling crew would waste a lot of precious time getting the truck back out of the loading yard and onto the road again, time he could use to his advantage.

He looked back to see if any of them had followed him over the fence, but could see nothing except the sweep of the truck’s lights as it swung around, and even these disappeared as it drove out of the yard.

Where would they go?

Harold’s mind raced: having seen him run off into the dark, they would try to find a way onto this open area as soon as they could. He wasn’t out of the woods yet by a long chalk. Heh, woods would be quite handy in his current predicament.

Then he had an idea. Whipping out his phone, he called up Google Maps. It took a maddeningly long time for the app to work out where he was and display the map of the area, but eventually it appeared.

Up ahead, about half a mile off, Harold could see a line of moving lights. So that would be the highway indicated on the map just there then. So, that bit was the business park and there was the loading yard. Harold zoomed the image out to get the whole of the rough ground onto the screen. It looked like there was just the one place that a vehicle could get through and was it just over there….

Sure enough, as if on cue, like the eyes of some malevolent creature, the truck’s headlights appeared and began to grow larger as the vehicle bounced and bumped its way onto the field.

Harold headed for the lights of the highway. Maybe he’d be able to persuade someone to stop and give him a ride (unlikely! he admonished himself), but even so, once he actually was on the well-lit main road, surely the IR people wouldn’t be able to try and capture him without drawing a lot on unwelcome attention. It was definitely the best bet at this stage.

The truck’s engine roared as the driver floored the accelerator. Harold risked a look back and saw that the truck was on a somewhat oblique course to his; it looked like the truck’s occupants didn’t exactly know where he was at this point, which was fine by him.

The highway lights drew steadily closer. He might make it yet.

Suddenly, the truck accelerated past Harold on what was now almost a parallel course, albeit a hundred yards to the side. Darn it! They must have figured out the highway was his best bet and were trying to get there before he did. That was not good news: the open ground was a rough wedge shape with the narrowest part abutting the highway. If they did get there in time and got their freezing machine going again there was no way he was getting past them. He slowed to a stop; no point in running straight into their trap. The obvious thing would be to head back the way he’d come, putting maximum distance between himself and them.

He turned and began to run back.

Behind him, the truck’s engine, which had been a more or less constant roar suddenly rose in pitch, giving out a tortured mechanical scream. This lasted but a moment, however, before being cut off by a horrendous crashing sound, followed by the nails-on-blackboard screech of something heavy and metallic sliding against something very hard and very rough.

Then all at once there was silence.

Harold whirled round.

The truck was gone.

He stood there for a few moments, at a loss. In his experience, trucks did not just disappear. After a while, though, a new sound came to his ears, an irregular ticking interspersed with the occasional spong of cooling metal.

Harold made his way over to where the noise was coming from. The mystery of its sudden vanishing act was solved. A twenty foot wide, twenty foot deep solid concrete drainage culvert ran more of less parallel to the highway. The truck’s driver simply hadn’t seen it in time.

The truck lay on its side at the bottom of the far wall. It must have hit at an angle, its momentum flipping it round a full 180 degrees given that it was now facing back the way it had been going. From what Harold could see of it, the driver’s side was completely staved in and the rest of the truck looked pretty bent and battered. It wouldn’t be following anyone anywhere now.

For a moment his spirits soared. This was his chance! He could get away, hook up with Teatime, Othello and Mercury and figure out how to rescue Prada.

But, a more level-headed thought insisted, there were people in that truck. If they had survived the crash, they were very likely to be needing medical attention.

So call an ambulance and leave them to take care of it.

But an ambulance could take ages, those people needed help now.

But if they weren’t that badly injured after all, he’d be walking straight into their arms.

Not badly injured? Seriously? The truck was a mess.

Harold gazed at the crumpled truck for a moment longer and then with a sigh, walked to the edge of the culvert and jumped down into it.

More Wordzzling

2011-08-21T21:01:00.000+01:00

You know the drill. You get the words. You put them into a piece of writing.

Anything else you need to know, go to Raven's Nest to find out.

A 5-word mini

Words: world, sly as a fox, photo album, doppelganger, basket

It was a wet Sunday afternoon and Nilam was bored. On a whim, he climbed the rickety ladder into the attic. Over the years, he’d come to know quite intimately all the junk in this cobweb-strewn, musty little world: the old basket chair his grandfather had made; the musty suitcases which had contained all his family’s possessions when they had fled from the old country; boxes of old books – unreadable to Nilam, who did not know anything but English. Again, on a whim, he pulled out one of the biggest books to flip through. To his surprise, it was not a book as such but a photo album – and much newer than the other books in the box. He turned the pages. There were his parents, smiling into the camera. The pictures were dated about the time when Nilam would have been a baby. Sure enough, in his mother’s arms, was a chubby little boy he recognised as himself. But wait! His father held an identical baby in his arms. Now, Nilam knew he was an only child, so who was this doppelganger baby? Nilam’s mother or father had been almost as sly as a fox to hide these pictures up here, but not sly enough. Nilam took the album and hurried back down the ladder.

And another slice of Harold.

Follow the link up there on the right to get up to speed.

Harold risked a glance back over his shoulder as he ran. It looked like Prada was trying to make use of Teatime’s distraction herself: she was struggling manfully (girlfully?) in the grip of two of the silver-suited guards. The other two were pounding along the road after him. Of Teatime, there was no visible sign. He hoped the little monkey was ok. With any luck, the humans in their usual arrogance would overlook him as just a dumb animal and he would make good his escape.

What about Agent Prada, though?

A razor-edged icicle of guilt stabbed into his mind and he almost turned back for her. A second thought, however, hot on the heels of the first pointed out, quite reasonably, that getting himself captured would be no help whatsoever to anybody, so he shifted up a gear to put some distance between himself and his pursuers. His earthly vessel was not super-strong, but it was very fast and it did not get tired or out of breath. His pursuers were soon falling behind.

Inside the Infinity Recycling building, Nugent cursed softly as the red dot on the c-detector winked out.

“Unit four, this is Sec-1, what’s your status?”

Unit four’s leader responded after a few moments. “Sec-1, we have captured one of the intruders, the other one ran off. Roe and Rehman are in pursuit.”

“Copy that, unit four ”

Nugent switched to a different channel. “Mobile team, immediate scramble. We have a contact heading south.”

“Mobile team, acknowledged,” came the crisp reply.

Mercury and Othello were caught as flat-footed as Prada and Harold had been – only they didn’t have a handy monkey-shaped distraction, so ended up being matched ignominiously into the Infinity Recycling building by the unsmiling guards of Unit three.

As soon as he saw that Harold had got clear, Teatime leapt away from the flailing arms of the stupid human guards and set off in the same general direction as the demon. He had no hope of catching him, of course, but one direction was as good as another under the circumstances. Unlike Harold, however, Teatime had no qualms whatsoever about leaving Prada to her fate. So far as he was concerned, she could take care of herself and the guards’ weapons were clearly meant to intimidate rather than injure or kill since they had not tried to use them. Besides which, any humans struggling with her were humans who were not chasing him.

Somewhere far behind him, Harold heard an engine cough into life. This was not good: he could not possibly outrun a motor vehicle, and what if it was equipped like the one at the safe house that had managed to freeze him? He had to get away from the road and hope the vehicle was not set up to travel over rough terrain – not that there was much of that in this over-landscaped and asphalt-covered place.

The sound of the engine was growing louder now. It was a hungry, angry sound to Harold’s ears.

He veered off the main road and headed for a gap between Eaton-Brewer Inc and Knight Securities, a narrow service road of some kind. He hoped that the Infinity Recycling vehicle would carry on along the main route and that his short-cut would get him clear of the business park. If he could get to some roadless ground…

The buildings were two lightless boxes looming up on either side as he ran between them, his footfalls echoing madly off the walls. Behind him, he heard the vehicle shift down and slow – it was turning too! Harold was sure that the driver could not have actually seen him; the road was curved and he would have been far enough around to be out of sight, he was sure. Either the driver had got very lucky in his guesses or he had some means of tracking him. Now that would be really bad news. It made sense though: he and Prada had been very careful to stay a good distance from the cameras and lighting at Infinity Recycling and yet they had still been discovered. So, unless Mercury or Othello had blundered – and he could not believe they would have – it must have been his own presence that had alerted the strange silver-suited guards. It would appear they had some sort of demon-detection technology.

Project Dynamo had been perfected after all.

The service road emerged onto another road, running parallel to the original one. Harold ran straight across it, looking left and right in desperation, hoping for any kind of narrow gap that would prevent the vehicle from following. Nothing obvious presented itself and he could feel panic rising as the sound of the vehicle changed: it was now between the buildings and would emerge at any moment.

He took another service road. This one curved around the back of a building into a loading yard of some sort.

Dead end!

A high fence surrounded the yard. Harold glanced around wildly. He could hear the vehicle’s wheels bump up over a drainage grating that had marked the entrance to the service road. He could not be caught here!

Then he spied it – a dumpster hunkered down in the corner of the yard. He sprinted over to it, leapt up onto it, his feet clanging noisily on the metal of its lid, and bounced-jumped for the top of the fence.

His hands closed around the topmost horizontal bar and he began to heave himself up, ready to swing over the top.

The world was suddenly filled with light as the vehicle roared into the yard and screeched to a stop. Immediately, a strange whining sound filled the air and Harold’s vision swam crazily.

The freezing machine!

More terrified than he had ever been in his long life, he hurled himself over the top of the fence, not bothering to engineer a clever landing – he was a demon after all, and it was not like he would break an ankle.

He hit the dirt on the other side of the fence hard, rolled and staggered to his feet. His limbs felt unaccountably sluggish and heavy. He felt – what was the words the humans used, tired! His head was full of cotton wool. He lurched forward a step or two, the world tilting and listing crazily, then he took another few. A few yards behind him and a million miles away, the engine of the vehicle was idling now and he could hear shouts. They sounded angry. That was a good thing. He stumbled forward a few more drunken steps and suddenly started to feel more normal. Maybe the machine wasn’t fully switched on yet, maybe it had to warm up or something.

A balloon of hope and excitement suddenly inflated inside him and he pushed himself onward into the darkness, feeling better with every step.

A New Home in the Sky - Moving Day II

2011-08-17T20:14:00.002+01:00

Well, it’s finally happened: the slum-lords and rackrents had decided that we’re outta here. Throwback Towers is to be our home no longer.

Soon the bulldozers will rumble in…

It’s an emotional day for us as we dismantle the Wall of Weird, which has presided over our daily doings this last year.

Down comes the “What Would Paddington Do?” poster that we made ourselves. Paddington Bear has been our faithful moral compass: we've discovered almost any conumdrum can be solves with reference to marmalade sandwiches.

Down come the gnomic sayings of Lisa T.

Last but not least, down comes retro-clock. This is a clock so hideously tacky, so plasticy-nasty, so devoid of any redeeming aesthetic charm that its natural and spiritual home in the world is, of course, with us, its human analogues.

All the chairs have been rounded up and herded into the Purple Zone. The way some of them are clustered together is decidedly conspiratorial, like they’re plotting something. Mind you, it wouldn’t be the first time for some of these chairs.

They have form.

They look innocent enough, and they are perfectly comfy to sit in. The have a nice tall back just right for leaning back against. The unwary soul that does this will be ok for a while, but lean back just a little bit more, just a leetle beet… and WHAM! The chair back will suddenly give way and dump the hapless victim on his head. These chairs used to hang around near open seventh-floor windows, waiting. Waiting and hoping…

I wonder what will become of them. I wonder if we should pin warnings on them or something. I’m not brave enough to do it though, there are about thirty of them and they seem to be eying me suspiciously as I go past.

I empty out the contents of my desk drawers, which is remarkable only for the sheer mundanity of it all: pens, pencils, erasers, pound shop earpiece and microphone for teleconferencing, strangely attractive Christmas tree decoration (not sure why I’m keeping this, to be honest).

And now it’s time to go.

Goodbye Wall of Weird.

Goodbye Purple Zone.

Goodbye staircase challenge (your 12 floors were no match for us in the end).

Goodbye rats (the new place will be quieter and no need for a baseball bat by the desk).

Goodbye Spare Change Guy – hope it all works out for you in the end.

Goodbye Pound Shop and 99p Store.

We’ve seen the new place. It’s clean and new. It doesn’t smell. Acres of desk space await. There’s a room with leather sofas in for our use. The kitchen is devoid of rats and roaches. There’s a big fridge in there with cans of drink in it. There are baskets of fruit and chocolate just lying about the place.

But it won’t be the same.

Wordzzle 163 or something

2011-08-08T22:38:00.000+01:00

More Wordzzling fun with Raven

The challenge: to include the set words in a piece of writing
Set words: windows, pollution, space ship, little person, cheese cake

The last ever space ship, SS Windows of Opportunity, blasted off from the pollution-stricken Earth, leaving behind those not lucky enough to be chosen in the Grand Lottery or rich enough to buy a place on board. Their fate would be a miserable one: the oceans were dying, along with the trees. Once they were dead, such animal life as remained would shortly follow them into the endless night. The ship was mankind's last hope. Down in the hold, Carolyn "Cheese Cake" Brown congratulated herself on her own cunning and audacity. Being only a little person, she'd managed to sneak aboard the ship inside a large crate – no slow lingering death for her! Up on the bridge, the ship's automated systems continued their pre-set sequence. The systems' current activity flashed up onto the captain's console: MASS REDUCTION PROTOCOL 003-alpha - CARGO SECTION DE-PRESSURISATION IN 3...2...1...

Set words: peace, purple, pelican, particular, pugnacious

Owen had a particular reputation for being overly pugnacious. He himself didn’t see it that way. He was, he would tell anyone who would listen, forthright, yes, a little brusque perhaps, but never pugnacious. “I’ve never pugnated in my life!”, he would quip, and those around him would laugh politely, having heard the same joke a million times before. But inwardly, Owen was filled with a nebulous inarticulate rage that dogged his days and kept him up at night, restlessly pacing. His wife had run off with a rat-faced little runt, one Simon Titchner , owner of the Purple Pelican bar. It had been twenty years, but the sting of her betrayal would still not allow him a moment’s peace.

And more Harold......

Moon put down the phone and jumped out of bed. A mixture of excitement and puzzlement was building inside him. The c-detectors at Infinity had never so much as twitched before now, except when rigged for staff training exercises. Nugent had said the reading was low - a mere 3.5, but it was stable and seemed to be moving purposefully and systematically around the outside of the site.

Moon tugged on his trousers and hurriedly fished his shirt and jacket off the floor. One shoe was playing hard-to-get under the bed and he had practically to lie down full-length to retrieve it.

There could really only be one explanation for the blip. Somehow, Mercury and his team, plus their pet demon by the looks of things, had figured out where the facility was! Keys, phone, phone, phone! Where the hell was his phone? Oh, there it was on the bedside table. How on earth had they managed to find out where the facility was? Flowers's interrogation of Box had revealed that they knew nothing worth knowing. The facility wasn't even officially listed as belonging to Infinity Recycling - only some serious digging would have revealed the connection. Someone obviously had been digging, though, probably Othello, he would have been the only one smart enough. Flinging on his jacket, Moon headed for the door.

The quiet of the night was broken by the sound of an approaching vehicle.

"Quick, get down behind here," Prada whispered, tugging Harold's arm. They both crouched down behind Adept Engineering's conveniently placed and neatly clipped box hedge. Teatime hopped off Harold's shoulder and moved toward the hedge with a view to climbing up it.

"How exciting is this?" whispered Harold excitedly.

"Don't get too enthusiastic," she whispered back, "we're just keeping a low profile is all, just a precaution. After all, it's unlikely anybody would look twice at us anyway, but still..."

Teatime peered over the top of the hedge as the vehicle passed by. After a moment, he clambered down to ground level.

"False alarm, chaps," he said, "It was just a delivery van or some such."

Nugent repositioned the CCTV cameras to point to the area corresponding to the dot on the c-detector. Annoyingly, the area lay just beyond the reach of the perimeter lighting, so he brought the thermal camera to bear on the same spot. Aha! Two crouching figures could be made out, along with a third much smaller one on the ground next to them. Nugent spoke into his headset microphone.

"Units one, two and three, search your sectors, we have a positive in sector 4 and there may be others."

"Unit four. You have two targets and possibly a small animal of some kind on your front porch."

"Unit four, copy." came the crisp reply.

It was as if the guards appeared out of nowhere. Prada and Harold scrambled to their feet as the six men appeared suddenly to shimmer into existence around them. They were all dressed from head-to-toe in a snug-fitting uniform of some strange material. It resembled more than anything the sort of shiny nylon silver suits actors wore in old sci-fi B movies that were meant to show that in the far, far future mankind may have had jet-packs and food pills, but absolutely no sense of style. The guards' heads were covered in a ski-mask like affair of the same stuff and round their waists they had broad pouched belts, a-la Batman, and some kind of oblong backpacks. Science Fiction props their costumes might have been, but the weapons they were now drawing looked perfectly realistic.

One of the men, a leader of some sort presumably, whipped off his ski mask. Underneath, he was revealed to be a pleasant-looking, blond man in his late twenties.

"Sir? Ma-am?" he began, "I have to inform you you're trespassing on private property and I'm gonna have to ask you to come with us please"

Harold and Prada glanced at each other, neither sure exactly what to do. Of course, the guards might just want to ask them a few questions and then let them go on their way, in which case, there would be no harm in going with them. On the other hand, if the guards were part of the shadowy organisation responsible for the disappearance of the angels and demons and possibly the murder of Agent Emerald as well, it would be very foolish to go with them right now.

Suddenly, one of the guards grabbed at his head as a quick, agile shape landed upon it and began tearing at the ski mask covering the man's face.

"Run!" screeched Teatime in Infernal and leapt off the man's head just as one of his colleagues took a swipe at him.

Harold vaulted the low hedge and ran.

Political Incorrectness Gone Maaad!

2011-08-02T21:02:00.000+01:00

Sometimes, but travel can be boring. At these times, my mind wanders..... and gets to here.

Bad, naughty brain!

The Return of the Wordzzle

2011-07-10T23:28:00.001+01:00

Yes, it's been FOREVER since I posted one of these - or indeed anything else, for that matter. Put it down to an extended case of the can'thelpits.

Anyway, Raven's cranked things up again, so go to Raven's Nest for all the poop on what to do.

Here's an old mini challenge I did yonks ago but didn't post.

Words: treasure trove, potency, salamander, choice, cheddar cheese

The survivors from the Salamander counted themselves lucky to be alive. They had managed, in the dying minutes of the ship's hellish plunge through the atmosphere, to climb into the only undamaged escape pod and blast away from the stricken vessel. The escape pod's AI had got them down safely, if a little roughly, and now, here they were on a strange new world. The AI confirmed that the atmosphere was breathable and the temperature bearable. The pod being too small for them to live in, they had little choice but to venture outside. There, a treasure trove of breathtakingly beautiful scenery and flora awaited them. Small, brightly-coloured birds flitted amongst the trees and, in the bushes, small furry animals of surpassing cuteness peeped out with large liquid brown eyes. Despite this, within seconds, the men were sobbing, jostling, pushing and practically falling over each other in their haste to scramble back into the pod. As they closed the airlock once more, a strange sound came from the AI's speaker grille. The atmosphere was indeed breathable – but the AI had neglected to mention that it was not remotely bearable. The air had a smell of eye-watering potency, a rank miasma such as might be possessed by an aged cheddar cheese long since gone to its reward, a stench strong enough to fell a bull elephant. The strange sound was, according to the AI's hastily-consulted manual, being generated by its state-of-the-art levity module. This feature was discontinued in subsequent models.

This week's mini words: whales, ferns, purchase, sparkling cider, tranquilizers

Andrew awoke, astonished to find himself lying on a bed of ferns, their fragrance filling his nostrils. Someone had thrown some kind of animal skin over him as a kind of blanket. It was dark, but his eyes began to adjust and he became aware of a red flickering light dancing on the rough stone of the wall next to him. So, he was in a cave then, and someone had a fire going. He tried to remember the last thing he had been doing, but drew a blank, he could get no purchase on his memory. His head ached and he must have let out a groan or something, because suddenly there was someone beside him and a cool hand was on his brow. A cup was pressed to his lips and he drank, finding himself suddenly thirsty. The liquid had a light taste of... apples. Then, he remembered. The debts, the divorce, the redundancy notice, the glass after glass of Whales Finest Sparkling Cider and a whole bottle of tranquilisers. But he'd been saved by this kind stranger.
"Thank you," he croaked, "I might have died..."
There was a smile in the stranger's voice, "What makes you think you didn't?"

And here's a non-wordzzle-y Harold episode.

New to Harold? Catch up here.

It was night once more, with just a few stars showing, as Mercury stopped the car.

"OK," he said, "The place Moon visited today is just at the end of this road on the right – you've seen it on Google earth. We're just going to go around the outside and see what we can see for ourselves. Be on the lookout for cameras and any other security . The whole idea is just to get a good look and see if there might be a way in or if there's anything else we can learn about the place. Let's try not to arouse suspicion."

Harold could feel a tingle of excitement as he got out of the car. They had finally made some real progress, they were finally closing in on their mysterious adversary.

Looking around though, he had to admit that, as secret headquarters went, this place was a bit of a let-down. The business park was typical of its type – a campus of single or two-storey brick buildings, as alike as Lego blocks. Each pale brick-built building was surrounded by a block-paved parking area and the regulation amount of carefully landscaped but essentially uninspired lawn and planting. Each building had a tasteful sign proclaiming the name of the company housed in it – Adept Engineering, MillCo, Branch & Simons, and so on.

"We'll be approaching Moon's building from the rear, which should be less obtrusive, but we still need to be careful." Mercury said quietly. "Prada, you're with the demon and Mr Teatime. Othello, you're with me." He took out his phone and dialled India's number. "OK, we're at the park and we're about to do a circuit of the building."

They set off, splitting up at the next intersection, so as to approach the building from different directions and save time by covering the area in two teams.

"Looks like a few things have changed since Google maps last photographed this place." murmured Prada, as she and Harold looked at Infinity Recycling's premises. Unlike the other Lego blocks on the park, this one had a 10-foot high fence of sturdy metal railings running around it. The landscaping had been torn out and replaced by asphalt. The building itself was not noticeably different from any others on the park. A couple of white trucks and a handful of cars were parked in the parking area and, while most of the building was in darkness, light glowed behind drawn blinds in a couple of the ground floor windows. The parking area itself was well-lit by tall light poles around the perimeter.

"There seems to be an awful lot of security for a recycling business," said Teatime. "I can't imagine anyone wanting to steal what is essentially rubbish."

"Maybe they recover gold from old circuit boards or something, or maybe it's toxic stuff and they need to keep people out for safety." said Prada, peering up at a light pole next to the fence. "Is that a camera up there?"

Harold looked where she was indicating and saw the telltale shape. "Looks like there might be more than one." he said.

"Maybe they've got infrared as well, just in case." Prada got out her notebok and jotted this detail down, marking the position of the pole on a sketch-map. She took out a camera of her own and took a few quick photos. "OK, Let's move around the next corner."

They started walking, being careful to stay well out of the range of the light.

Inside the building, a security guard set down his coffee mug. The console in front of him had emitted a beep, and a red LED was flashing. Below it, a monitor showed a red dot moving slowly to the east of the building. The security guard's heart-rate increased: this particular monitor had never shown anything, except during training exercises.

He picked up the phone and dialled a few digits. "This is Nugent at Security-one. Sorry to disturb you, but I thought you should know that the c-detector's just lit up. Yes, for real"

A New Home in the Sky - Bricks Without Straw

2011-06-03T00:37:00.001+01:00

Boss comes in, his left ear glowing from an hour-long conference-call.

“New job for us,” he announces, “Remember we migrated all that data out of that old database ages ago?”

We nod and mumble, not wanting to get drawn into that particular slough of despond again.

“Well, the client reckons we’ve done it wrong and they want us to check all the data for discrepancies.”

Groan. How tedious. The original work was done by a freelancer who has since retired to the Bahamas on the money we paid him.

“OK,” I sigh, “Where’s the old database hosted?”

It’s not there anymore.” Replies Boss, “They’ve deleted it.”

“Well I like a challenge. “ I quip, “How are we to communicate with this deceased database then? Clairvoyance? Ouija board - could take a while and we don't have any tumblers.”

The unexpectedly rubber edge of my rapier wit bounces harmlessly off Boss’s icy glare. “There’s a backup of it that just needs restoring.”

“OK, where’s that then?”

“It’s on the public share in Resourcing’s domain.”

I try the IP address he gives me. “Nope, no access to there from here.” I inform him.

“Never mind,” he says, “We’ll get server support to copy it for us.”

“Where’s it going then?” I say. He tells me and I try logging in there, thinking it would save a bit of time to set up folders and suchlike. “Windows could not log you on….blah, blah...” So, no access to that either then.

“I’ll get it sorted,” he says wandering off.

“The database software is on there though, right?” I call to his rapidly departing back.

“Nah, you’ll have to install it,” he replies.

"Do we have the install files?"

"No, you'll have to download them."

So.

We have the deceased remains of a database sitting on a server I can’t access, which needs to go to another server I can’t access, upon which there’s no software to run it anyway.

I start to sing quietly.

“Wake up ev’ry mornin’, same thing for breakfas’ so that every mouth can beeee…”

“And you can cut that out for a start!” he snaps.

*Sigh*.

The Hugh Laurie Song

2011-05-20T16:13:00.000+01:00

Recently, the British actor, Hugh Laurie (of hit US TV series House fame), made an album of blues music with a whole bunch of well-regarded musicians and singers. Now, Hugh is a very gifted musician and, while not necessarily an outstanding singer, can at the very least hold of tune.

I heard the album playing in the local record shop (or what passes for one around here) and bought it – because of the music, rather than the singing, I should point out.

I brought it back into the office and, as just a few of us were in that day, we played the CD out loud.

My colleagues absolutely tore it to shreds.

According to them, it was not even remotely authentic, it was a cynical piece of self-indulgence, and it was not very good either. I think they were being a bit harsh.

But, I never pass up the opportunity for a comedy song, so I put their criticisms to music. This is a hastily-made recording of it.

The Hugh Laurie Song by DelusionsOfAdequacy

You are too middle-class to sing the blues.
Even though your only aim is to amuse.
You’ll never sound like you’re from the deep south
While that silver spoon sticking out of your mouth
That plummy accent should be reading the news.
You have no right to sing the blues.

Your home is just too fine for you to sing the blues.
That Georgian townhouse, in its secluded London mews.
Your snow white carpets, B&O, that good feng shui,
You’d never catch Robert Johnson using pot pourri.
With your designer bidets in every en suite loo.
You have no right to sing the blues.

You are just too well-fed to sing the blues
The finest Michelin-starred cuisine is yours to choose.
I bet the last time that you tasted famine
Was when Harrods ran out of smoked salmon.
If hunger’s never forced you to eat your own shoes,
You have no right to sing the blues.

Now we’re not saying white men don’t know trouble,
But, Hugh, I really hate to burst your bubble.
The Blues was born of suffering across the Atlantic
And public schoolboy, Oxbridge types are just inauthentic.

So unless you’ve pissed your life away on drugs and booze.
You have no right to sing the blues.
You’re too happy
You have no right to sing the blues.
You’re too rich
You have no right to sing the blues.
You’re well-adjusted
You have no right to sing the blues.
Ain’t.
That.
A.
Bitch!

Judge Not?

2011-05-10T08:12:00.000+01:00

A few days ago, as I was making my way through the city centre, I happened to be walking a couple of yards behind a man. As we went along, I noticed him dropping a piece of paper on to the ground. He didn’t stop to pick it up, of course.

Litterbug!

Now if there’s one thing that really gets a whole herd (if herd is the word) of my goats, it’s littering. It’s completely unnecessary - there are bins all over the place, for pity’s sake!

What to do, though?

In situations like this, I usually just seethe silently, being far, far too chicken to actually tackle the offender. I have been known to pick up litter and bin it myself. I may even have tutted loudly on occasion, but that’s as far as it goes usually.

Usually.

For some reason on this particular day, a couple of my self-preservation/embarrassment-limitation synapses must have been on the fritz, for I suddenly found myself speeding up to draw level with this terrible, ghastly, anti-social, vandal, this desecrater of public spaces, this contemptible scofflaw, this, this.... little old man.

The balloon of my righteous indignation popped. All the acerbic and, no doubt, hugely witty comments I was going to make just melted away.

Now, don’t get me wrong, little old men are not, per se, entitled to drop litter any more than anybody else is, but there was just something in the fellow’s demeanour that stopped all my windbaggery in its tracks.

Instead of, “Oy! You rotten litter lout, thanks for making the place look so nice – NOT!” I ended up saying “Excuse me, but I think you might have dropped something back there and I thought I should let you know in case it was important.”

“What? Where?” he asked, clearly a bit surprised to be spoken to by a stranger out of the blue. I indicated the fallen paper. He looked at it for a moment, then suddenly seemed to realise what it was. He grabbed it up quickly with many thanks, as though it had indeed been something of importance to him.

Now, he may have been an incredibly quick-thinking actor, able to pass off his littering ways as merely an accident, saving face in front of a stranger, but I like to think better of him than that. There was absolutely no trace of embarrassment or guilt about him (as there would be for me if I had dropped litter and caught at it) and in any case, we parted ways amicably.

What if I had simply gone ahead and berated the man for dropping litter when it had actually been an accident all along? I would have been deliberately unpleasant to someone who didn’t really deserve it – a nasty experience for him and certainly no credit to me.

As it was, I was apparently able to do someone a good turn, reuniting him with something important he might have lost.

A last-minute change in attitude on my part from outright condemnation to presumption of innocence brought about a completely different outcome.

Maybe I should try this approach more often – it’s certainly easier on the old blood-pressure.

Mind you, if I ever see some kid smashing up a phone box or spraying his ‘tag’ on a statue, I’m not sure that I won’t revert to silent seething – or even tutting.

Moral cowardice – I has it.

Weekly Wordzzle

2011-04-25T22:58:00.000+01:00

Hmm, it's been a few weeks since I did this last. Pesky work!

Anyway, Raven's Nest is the place to find the challenge-words for next week and other players for this. The challenge words are in bold in the pieces below.

Here's a mini I did a couple of weeks ago, but never got to publish until now.

Wine is a mocker and strong drink is raging. Well they got that right, thought Angus, as he inspected his morning-after face in the mirror. Beneath a cropped brush of bright red hair, a single bloodshot blue eye stared back at him. The other - a huge shiner of a black eye - was too swollen to open. He only dimly remembered the events of the night before, could not recall the faces of the participants in the fight (there must have been one, Angus was covered in cuts and bruises). For the life of him, he could not remember what it had been about. He caught sight of something sticking out from under the bed and stooped to haul it out into the light. His beloved clarinet! Tears sprang to his eyes as he cradled the poor broken thing in his arms. As he gently caressed the twisted keys, the splintered wood, he remembered. It had started with a few taunts, a little pushing and shoving and had escalated into a full-on pub-brawl, which had ended in the awful, awful sound of breaking wood. He was a clarinetist, for goodness' sake! What on earth had possessed him to walk alone into a saxophonists' pub?

This week's mini

I like to think of myself as a fairly pragmatic person: I don't 'do' feng shui, crystals and potpourri or any of that new age mumbo-jumbo, but when life busts a hobnailed boot through the tambourine of your hopes and ambitions, there's nothing like the serenity of a Japanese rock garden. There, you can sit in the middle of the simplicity, allowing your mind to play over the abstract flow of sand and rock. These shapes are not representative of anything, but they hint at some hidden message. You may ponder this and forget, for a while, all your shattered dreams.

This week's 10-worder.

New to Harold? Catch up here.

Moon stopped his car at the entrance to a non-descript campus on an equally unimpressive business park. A uniformed guard emerged from the little hut next to the security barrier, clip board in hand, and motioned for Moon to lower his window.

Moon turned off his car stereo, cutting off the sound of Mitch Carpenter, lead singer of Chip off the Old Block, going on about how his heart felt like it had a great big Charley Horse now all his happiness had fled because of old ladies' gossip or some such twaddle - at least that's what it had sounded like. That was one CD that was definitely going back to its lender without being copied!

He gave his name and showed his id to the guard and was waved through quickly enough.

Now that he was actually here, he could feel the excitement building inside him. The phone call last evening had been most intriguing. If the project had actually come up with some real results, he wouldn't be the only one with cause for gratitude. The implications were staggering,

Haines was waiting for him in the spartan little reception area. Moon signed in and the two men walked wordlessly to the laboratory where the demonstration was to take place.

As they entered the lab, Dr Flowers stood up behind her desk and greeted Moon warmly.

"Welcome, would you like some coffee or something before we get started?"

"No thanks, I had one just before setting out," Moon gazed around the room in bemused interest. There was a definite Heath-Robinson look to a lot of the equipment - a sort of mix and match approach, connecting all kinds of disparate bits of electrical and electronic components had been adopted, by the looks of it.

Flowers saw Moon looking.

"At this early stage, we're still trying to figure things out." she said, "Obviously, once we've refined our techniques, we can build something a little less messy-looking. Shall we start? If you take a seat here, you'll get a good view."

Haines sat down on a stool next to a large, blocky piece of equipment, encrusted with lights and dials and with numerous wires coming out of it. He then proceeded to pull onto his head what looked for all the world like a swimming cap. The cap was covered with round metal clips.

Flowers moved in and began to connect the wires from the equipment to the clips on Haines's swimming cap. When they were all connected, she flipped switches and the large box hummed to life.

"All set?" she asked.

Haines nodded.

Flowers picked up a telephone that lay next to the blinky-lights box.

"Pilkington? Switch on number three, if you please."

She replaced the handset and moved to where a lumpy shape lay under green surgical cloths on the bench.

She twitched these aside and Moon was surprised to see the body of a small monkey lying underneath.

Noticing Moon's startled reaction, Flowers smiled. "Don't worry," she said, "it's not dead, just anaesthetised." She lifted another cloth to reveal a surgical tray and instruments. Quickly donning some rubber gloves, she swabbed an area on the monkey's arm with antiseptic. It looked to Moon like a patch had been shaved in the monkey's fur. Flowers then took a scalpel from the tray and with deft precision, made a two-inch cut in the monkey's skin. Immediately, blood flowed out onto the green sheets. Flowers stepped aside and motioned to Haines, who stepped up to where Flowers had stood.

"Watch closely," said Flowers, and Moon leaned in, transfixed.

Haines reached over to where the little monkey lay and touched its arm, Moon wasn't sure, but he thought he saw the most miniscule flash or spark of blue run from Haines's finger to the animal. Haines then stepped back, a strangely euphoric look on his face.. With the blood covering the area, Moon could not see that anything had changed. He looked at Flowers with a quizzical expression. She grinned, stepped forward and swabbed the blood away.

"Amazing!" breathed Moon.

There was no sign whatsoever of the cut Flowers had just made.

A New Home in the Sky - Under African Skies

2011-04-24T17:30:00.002+01:00

As I gaze out of the seventh floor window here at Throwback Towers, I can see herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically across the vast plains of Sainsbury's car park.

The boss comes in, he's covered in scratches and his clothes in tatters.

"What happened to you," I ask.

"Bloody lions," he grumbles, "it's about time the council did something, the Municipal park pride are getting bolder by the day. They nearly had me today!"

"Well you will insist on cycling to work through their territory." I tell him.

"But it's green to cycle!" he protests. Very big on green is my boss.

"From where I'm standing," I quip, " it looks more like red, black and blue!" He is not impressed, so I put the kettle on to cheer him up.

"Anyway," he continues, "the ring road was chock-a-block: some pillock knocked over a zebra at junction six."

"Yeah, I heard it on the news. Mind you, they have managed to get rid of those hippos that had moved into the ornamental lake at long last, so that's good."

We sip our tea thoughtfully, the silence only broken by the scream of angry baboons fighting over the bins at the back of MacDonald's.

None of this is true, of course. There aren't any giraffes either, which is a pity as I quite like them.

Some local bright spark has, however, come up with the idea of re-opening a nearby pub (formerly the haunt of bikers and drug-pushers, when it wasn't being set on fire) as, wait for it, an African-themed pub.

Now, we weren't sure what that would entail, but the advertising specifically said, and I quote: "Customers can have the full experience of Africa without the trouble of going there."

Peering through the window of the afore-mentioned pub the other day, my boss was not able to discern anything especially African about the place - no Zulu spears and shields on the wall, no witch-doctor masks, no fake zebra skins.

There was a menu consisting of just two African-sounding dishes, and they apparently serve that most African of beverages: Guinness.

So it would seem that Africa is just like a run-down manky old pub next to the railway station in a dodgy part of a post-industrial English city.

It's a good job I was able to get my money back on those Kenyan Safari tickets then.

I wonder if anybody will open a space-themed pub, I've always fancied going to space, but it seems like a lot of bother.

The World Should Reflect the Data

2011-04-23T19:25:00.001+01:00

Another cartoon that came out of a throwaway remark made by a colleague at work.

As some of you may know, my job is to support systems that provide management information (MI). One of the annoying things that happens is when someone rings up and complains that the system is not showing the figures they expect. A lot of times, this is just a case of the user not understanding what the report he/she is viewing is actually showing and is easily solved with a bit of explanation. Sometimes, though, there is a genuine fault and we have to amend the information held in the database, which can be very tricky when lots of pieces of information are dependent upon each other.

Sometimes, it'd just be easier to fix the world....

I tried out several ideas for this joke, like having someone fallng from a high window, having been pushed, or of having the IT chappie looking through the sights of a sniper's rifle about to shoot someone. I tried having IT chappie running out of the room, snatching up the rifle as he went. None of them really worked though.

In the end, I think this is more subtle and hopefully funnier (plus it was easier to draw!).

New Music Genre

2011-04-13T22:19:00.001+01:00

Yes, you've heard of House Music and Garage Music. Now meet Cardboard Box Music.

This little tune had been kicking around in my head for ages until I finally backed it into a corner and got some words down.

As it's such a simple little thing, I thought I'd try recording it on GarageBand for the iPad - a cut-down version of a program that grown-up Apple Macs have. I think for £2.99, it's not bad.

The vocals and guitar have a very boxy sound to them because they were recorded in a room which is anythng but anechoic. Plus, I suspect that the iPad mic, while doing a fair job, isn't intended for high quality studio recording.

The bass part and the drums were created using the virtual instruments that come with garageBand.

Anyhoo, have a listen to as much of it as you can stand and let me know your thoughts. One thing I think the song lacks is an instrumental section to break things up a bit. Maybe in version 2....

My Name is Mud - Trimmed by DelusionsOfAdequacy

If you can't get the widget to play click here to go to SoundCloud and hear it there.

Don't worry, Watercats, your crown as blogland's premier musos is quite safe.

Weekly Wordzzle 149

2011-04-03T23:16:00.000+01:00

Staying up waaaay later than I should to finish this.

Go to Raven's Nest to rules, next week's words and more players.

The Mini (origami, book review, spinster, vultures, cheese)

Clayton Olliphant IV plonked the hastily-grabbed cheese sandwich and brick-thick paperback (the subject of many a glowing book review) down on the counter and immediately began to rummage in his pockets for the right money, as the cashier –a confirmed and embittered spinster if ever there was one – grumpily rang his purchases up on the till. Above his head, a speaker crackled into life and the station announcer nasally regretted to inform passengers that the 17:42 Virgin West Coast train to London Euston would be delayed for approximately thirty minutes due to an attack of origami vultures in the Wolverhampton area. He then went on to apologise, blah, blah, blah. Clayton looked around him. His fellow travellers were looking at one another and shrugging in bemused resignation. So he had heard right. He smiled to himself: so that’s where his birds had got to.

The 10-Worder (happy endings, charitable, shapeless, magical, mushroom soup, spectator, enclosure, one hand tied behind my/your back, pregnant, pretending)

New to Harold? Cantch up here.

Seeing Harold's crestfallen look, Teatime gave an exasperated sigh.

"Well you needn't look so sorry for yourself," he scolded, "I mean, you didn't seriously believe, even for one second, that you'd be staying here when this lot's all over, did you?"

"To be honest," admitted Harold, gloomily "I hadn't actually been thinking about it at all. I got kind of caught up the excitement of trying to solve the mystery and, well, you know..." he trailed off.

"Well, I hate to break it to you, old sock," replied the little monkey, "but for you and your kind, there just aren't any happy endings, and it's no use pretending there are."

Harold stood up, picked up his plate and cutlery and carried them to the sink before opening the kitchen door.

"Now, where are you off to?" inquired Teatime.

"Just going outside into the garden for a while." replied Harold, stepping outside, "The sun will be up in a few hours and thought I'd grab a chance to enjoy the coolness."

A few stars were out, scattered randomly about the dark velvet sky like shiny crumbs dropped from some celestial table. Harold took a deep breath. The rich scent of the night garden was magical, heady and musky. A light breeze fingered the trees and plants that grew in shapeless profusion in the large enclosure of Mr Teeth's garden, causing them to whisper to one another conspiratorially.

Harold strolled across the smooth green carpet of the lawn to where he could make out a small stone seat next to a pond. Mr Teeth – or his landscaper – had designed with sensitivity: the little stone bench was simple and the pond artfully natural-looking. Harold sat down and shook his head. He liked Teatime really, and was somewhat in awe of his intelligence and general savoir-faire, but most charitable thing that could probably be said of the little fellow was that he lacked empathy at times. Scratch that, thought Harold ruefully. Teatime, my friend, you might be able to out-think me blindfolded and with one hand tied behind your back, but you're about as subtle as a pregnant rhino on a bad hormone day. He smiled at the image his train of thought had conjured up.

Overhead, a shower of meteorites appeared in the sky, blazing for a few moments against the blackness, only to disappear as suddenly as they arrived. Harold watched it. The night was really putting on a show for its lone spectator, it seemed. He would miss things like this. Humans had so much beauty to enjoy all the time. Still, there was nothing to be done about it, so there was no use moping. He lingered in the garden, savouring the time alone, until the first rays of the sun began to apply touches of colour to everything.

-0-0-0-0-

"Damn vending machine's only got mushroom soup, no tomato, sorry, Doc." The voice had lost its mosquito whine and was sounding more normal as it swirled into the consciousness of the Listener. How it knew what was normal for these voices it was not sure, but it did know, which was a small anchor-point in a vast dark sea of uncertainty.

"Oh well," Came the second voice (the Flowers woman, the Listener thought). "It'll have to do. Now let's go over what we're going to be doing this afternoon, I want RolexBoy to be genuinely impressed with what we're doing here."

"Enough to keep funding us, anyway." chuckled the first voice.

"There's more than just money at stake here, Haynes," chided Flowers.

"I know, sorry, Doc."

"Anyway," continued Flowers, "We had good repeatability yesterday with the monkeys, so I thought we should show him them."

"Just the monkeys?"

"Yes, why, what are you thinking?"

"Well," said Haynes, "I was thinking we could maybe do something a little more ambitious. Maybe demonstrate on one of us."

"On an actual human?" Flowers's voice had risen somewhat and was bordering on the unattractively shrill, "Are you mad? We've only just about got a reliable result with the monkeys – and that's only been since yesterday. It's way too risky to contemplate – and certainly not in front of the paying customer, as it were. Plus, there is the small matter of ethics. No, we'll use one of the monkeys to show him."

"I wasn't thinking of doing anything life-threatening, it would of course be a volunteer and there'd be just a small – "

"Absolutely not!" Flowers was adamant.

"You're the boss." sighed Haynes.

You're the boss.

Boss.

Boss.

The word sent a thrill though the Listener. He had been a boss once. He had been called that by somebody. The memory was like the thinnest gossamer strand - if the Listener tugged on it too hard, it would snap and leave nothing behind.

Gently, oh, so gently, the Listener allowed the whisp of memory to float where it would. Soon, it touched something and other memories began to appear one by one. A city, music, laughter. Light.

The Poetry Bus - Animal Magic Special

2011-04-02T14:18:00.000+01:00

Time to hop aboard the mighty poetical omnibus once more, ably driven by Titus, who set a prompt for us here. We were to write about aminal(s), specifically:

1) The Dolphin
2) The Gecko
3) The Panther
4) The Bushbaby
5) The Archerfish
6) The Kingfisher
7) The Harrier
8) The Ring-tailed Lemur

Well, the word 'panther' does appear in my poem below, so it qualifies for a ticket I suppose, but whether or not it qualifies as a proper pome, I cannot say. I am in silly mode (as usual). This trifle is best read aloud I think.

What Shall I Be?

If I were good at panthing
Then a panther I would be.
If couging were my forte
A cougar you would see.

In black and white pyjamas,
I’d probably look a dweeb.
But it looks so neat on Zeeebras
‘cos they know how to zeeb.

A lithe and slinky Boa
If bo-ing were my bag,
Or a deadly silent Jaguar
If only I could jag.

So, I guess I’ll have to settle
For the cat no-one can beat.
For there’s one thing that I’m sure of
I do know how to cheet.

Thinking about this kind of silliness reminded me of a children's television programme from my youth. It was called Animal Magic and was hosted by Johnny Morris, who used to do voices for the animals, as well as telling us all about them.

It's a classic! Here's a clip where Johnny and an orang-utan wax philiosophical about hats.

Weekly Wordzzle 148

2011-03-26T22:11:00.000Z

Well, what else is there to do on a Saturday night? Probably loads of things but, meh!

As usual, hie yourself over to Raven's Nest for more Wordzzles and next week's words.

The Mini (misery, saga, flat as a pancake, pearls, octagon)

Minette stared down in horror at the hundreds of little pearls that had just scattered over the floor in all directions, the broken string of the necklace dangling limply from her hand. The beautiful little orbs were rolling everywhere. Some were making a break for it under the sofa, some were heading purposefully for the octagon-shaped dining table, others were dashing for the doorway. As if she didn’t have enough misery in her life! Now her most treasured possession – her mother’s pearl necklace - was broken. It was that Bertrand Saga’s fault for making her so angry that she had yanked impatiently at the clasp instead of undoing it carefully. Call himself an opera critic? Jumped-up little hack! How dare he say that she, Minette LaCroix, veteran of La Scala and Glyndebourne, and famed soprano, sang as flat as a pancake!

The 10-Worder (sharp as a tack, paper towels, sage, boiling water, mystery, salivate, news worthy, try it on for size, pardon, ambulance)

New to Harold? The catch-up is here.

“Quickly! Paper towels and boiling water, for pity’s sake!” gasped Teatime, as he hurtled past an astonished Harold and on down the corridor. Harold closed Moon’s door as quietly as possible before setting off after the little monkey.

“What on earth happened to you?” he asked as he caught up, “and – what IS that awful smell?”

“That perishing Moon fellow decided he wanted a midnight snack, so I was forced to sequester myself at short notice in his kitchen rubbish bin – a most unpleasant and malodorous place of concealment, I can tell you.” replied Teatime. “It is a mystery to baffle even the wisest sage why humans, with a world of delicious natural foods to choose from, still insist on filling their bellies with such disgusting lifeless fare as comes in little film-wrapped plastic trays, which they then consume whilst in the mindless, slack-jawed thrall of the television. I ended up sitting in the semi-congealed remains of such a dish – an experience which could actually be improved by a long hot soak in a bath of industrial waste!”

Harold burst out laughing.

“It’s not funny!” Teatime cried, crossly. “I was in there for simply ages. The fellow just would not go back to bed.”

“Begging your pardon,” laughed Harold, “but it is rather hilarious – having to hide in a bin – you couldn’t make this stuff up.”

“No, you jolly well couldn’t!” agreed the little monkey huffily.

“What were you doing in the kitchen, anyway?” asked Harold.

“Oh, I decided to take the opportunity to rustle up a three course dinner, of course!” retorted Teatime, “ What do you THINK I was doing there? I was looking for the key to Moon’s briefcase, the wretched fellow had locked it so I wasn’t able to plant the tracker inside.”

“I see. But you did plant the tracker somewhere?”

“Yes, yes, I settled for slipping it into the lining of his jacket in the end – I just hope he continues to wear it.”

“Well, that’s better than nothing anyway,” said Harold, “I’m just glad we weren’t discovered.”

“Indeed,” agreed Teatime.

Outside the building, the street was fairly dark and quiet. In the distance an ambulance siren wailed. Harold walked down the street and round the corner to where Othello was waiting in the car.

“Mission accomplished,” he said, climbing in.

“What took you so long?” asked Othello. “I was about to come in after you.”

“It’s a long story,” laughed Harold. “But not terribly newsworthy.” He added, seeing Teatime’s scowl. Othello grunted and started up the car.

They soon arrived back at Mr Teeth’s, where only Mercury was still waiting up for them.

“Well, let’s hope Moon doesn’t find the tracker or any traces of our little visit,” he said, after hearing the night’s events, as related by a grinning Harold, “he’s as sharp as a tack, that one, and can probably put two and two together as well as anybody.” He stifled a huge yawn, “Well, I think I’ll turn in now, see you in the morning.” He wandered off in the direction of the bedrooms.

“You know,” said Harold, “all that talk of kitchens and food has made me realise we haven’t had any proper food for hours – those sugar cookies have completely worn off. Fancy sharing some sort of disgusting lifeless fare with me?”

“Very funny,” said Teatime.

They wandered into the kitchen where a quick rummage through Mr Teeth’s cupboards and refrigerator yielded various cold meats, a heap of salad, bread and butter and a pile of enough fresh fruit to make even Teatime salivate a little.

“Right,” declared Harold, “that looks about enough. Let’s try it on for size.”

They set to.

“I hope this tracker device thing works out,” said Teatime, after a while.

“Yeah, it’d be nice to finally make some real progress at last,” agreed Harold. “Just think, we might actually solve the case in a few days. I can’t wait!”

“Really?” asked Teatime, “I’d have thought you would have wanted it to last as long as possible.”

“Why would I want that?” asked Harold, puzzled.

“Well, old biscuit,” explained the little monkey, “Once the case is finally over, these humans aren’t exactly going to let you hang about up here, are they? It’ll be back to the Basement for you before you can say Jack Robinson, won’t it?”

“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that.” Said Harold.

He put down his knife and fork, his appetite had suddenly disappeared.

So, what do we know about Amber?

2011-03-26T19:58:00.000Z

What we know is this:

Amber works in a shop.

She’s not happy at having to work Saturdays (6 in a row now, apparently). She hates having to cash up or be in charge of the keys as it means she has to arrive early and leave late.

She has a toothache, but cannot afford the dentist.

She has a friend called Nathan.

She’s going to buy 200 cigarettes today before the chancellor’s tax makes the price go up (this was on Budget day).

She likes to go through desk drawers at work when no-one’s around. She found a ten-pound note in one the other day, which she promptly pocketed to spend in the pub that lunchtime.

She’s going to order takeaway food tonight, but not from Oceana as she’s sick of that place and not from China Garden either, as that place is “minging”.

Remember, she can’t afford the dentist - even with an income augmented by desk-drawer windfalls, but she can afford ciggies and takeaway food.

She’s planning to meet up with friends tonight at “the Crez”.

She’s been late for work a few times lately because the bus didn’t come – even though she set out early.

She loves her mum.

How do we know this?

Amber is someone who likes to chat on her mobile whilst riding on the bus. Amber likes to chat AT EXTREMELY HIGH VOLUME on her mobile whilst riding on the bus.

Is it ear-wigging when a conversation is practically yelled into your ear-holes?

What Printer Error Messages Should Really Say

2011-03-25T10:28:00.001Z

In our office, anyway..........

Happy Friday, everyone!

Lies Told by I.T. Support

2011-03-21T23:19:00.000Z

This cartoon came about as a result of a joke conversation we had in the office today.

It having been way too early this morning when I logged in, I had forgotten to put some files onto one of our web servers (a routine job we do every day). The users spotted this and raised an enquiry about the missing files. We quickly copied them over and told the users to look again (note the subtle psychological hint here that, somehow, the users were mistaken - it's a VERY important weapon in the IT Support arsenal).

Lo, and behold, the files were there, but the users then wanted to know WHY they had not been there before (our Jedi mind-tricks were not so potent after all it seemed).

Now, seasoned IT professionals that we are, we did not want to admit to such a mundane thing as a case of numpty-itis, so we "forgot" to answer their email for a bit, hoping they'd get bored and drift away.

A bit later, one of the users, who clearly fancied himself as a bit of a techno whizz-kid, emailed in with this deathless theory: one of the files is bigger than the other two. Is it possible that the big one blocked the other two from copying across?

Bless!

Anyway, I tried to get my boss to email the guy back with the explanation being touted in the cartoon below. Sadly, he refused, but we had a great laugh out of the idea.

Hope you did too!

The Poetry Bus - Uiscebot's Odyssey

2011-03-20T21:56:00.002Z

It's been a while....

Anyway, this week's Poetry Bus prompt comes from Uiscebot. We were to go somewhere new, experience it and write about it. There were some other bits as well - and a threat of death if rules were not followed.

I haven't been anywhere new lately (no time) so wrote about a place which was very new to me when I visited it in 2004 - China. Everywhere we went, hordes of people would appear from nowhere with cries of Hello! Hello! and try to sell us 'genuine' Rolexes, Chairman Mao watches and other gewgaws. We nicknamed these folks the Hello People.

The Hello People

Here are the Hello People,
Crowding excitedly round us,
Hemming us in,
As we alight from bus, train or plane.

Here are the Hello People.
All black eyes, outstretched hands
And big false grins
You buy? Very cheap! You buy?

Here are the Hello People.
They hunt in unruly packs
Our fat western wallets
Are their quarry.

Here are the Hello People.
We should buy, shouldn’t we?
Help the struggling poor?
Make them like us.

Make them like us.

Weekly Wordzzle 147

2011-03-20T21:26:00.000Z

I'm back, after what seems like an age of me promising myself (and others) that I'd play and then not getting chance to do it.

But, on with the motley.... for rules, this week's players and next week's words go to Raven's Nest.

The Mini (organism, energy, harmonica, calibration, spread your wings and fly)

The thin, reedy sound of a harmonica floats into the room from somewhere below in the street – Marcel, no doubt, busking for a few centimes to buy more of those foul cigarettes he so enjoys. Bars of sunlight stream through the gaps in the shutters, striping the wall above my head. I count the bars of yellow light in a kind of lazy mocking calibration of the shutters’ ability to keep the room dim and cool, the way I like it. JJ snoozes on next to me, unaware. JJ is an organism of two distinct polarities: asleep, he is a loose tangle of slack limbs and tousled black hair, awake, a lithe, taut bundle of restless energy and piercing black eyes. From where I’m lying, I can see his discarded T-shirt, a rumpled pool of cloth on the red-brown tiles. Spread Your Wings and Fly is just about legible amongst the folds. Good advice. Under the bed, my suitcase is already packed.

The 10-Worder (wanderlust, wisdom, popcorn, hearts and flowers, melting snow, bank account, chapter, painting, politics, imagination)

New to Harold? Catch up here

Teatime crouched anxiously in Moon’s garbage bin, keeping as still as possible. This was not easy, as he seemed to be sitting in a disgusting-smelling plastic meal tray, complete with popcorn-sized lumps of a decidedly squishy substance adhering to it. As the sounds of Moon moving about in the kitchen came to him inside the malodorous receptacle (a bowl of cereal and a glass of water seemed to be in order), Teatime’s initial relief at having hidden himself so quickly disappeared like so much melting snow, to be replaced by an exasperated questioning in his mind of the wisdom of hiding in a place from which there was no possibility of escape if discovered.

For his part, Moon was a little puzzled: as he’d made his way across the living room with a view to fixing himself a little snack (the macaroni cheese ready-meal had been as unsatisfying as it had been unappetising), he’d been sure he’d heard a noise coming from the kitchen, but when he’d arrived and flipped on the light, all had been still and quiet - apart from one thing. The cutlery drawer had been slightly open. Now Moon was sure he’d left it properly closed. Nothing else was amiss though, so he dismissed the noise as a product of the imagination of a half-asleep brain.

As he dipped his spoon into the cereal and munched, he thought about the possible new chapter in his life that looked to be opening up. The message he’d received earlier that day had been most promising, but on no account was he going to get his hopes up too much – that way lay disappointment. Still, so long as his informant hadn’t been painting too rosy a picture of things, there was much to hope for.

Moon paused for a moment to give silent thanks for the wanderlust that had taken him on that trip to Europe. It had almost cleaned out his then meagre bank account, but it had been so worth it to have run purely by chance into his uncle in Switzerland. And what a momentous meeting it had turned out to be. They’d met on a climb and had hit it off almost immediately. It had taken them both some time to realise they were related, but by then they were fast friends anyway. Once back home, Moon had found a job in OGS more-or-less waiting for him. Everything had been going along very nicely after that - until Moon had got a call telling him his uncle had been injured in a climbing accident. As the last of the cereal disappeared, revealing a ridiculous hearts-and-flowers motif at the bottom of the bowl, Moon felt more hopeful than he had at any time since then. If things worked out, after tomorrow, everybody would have to sit up and take notice: not just OGS, with its internal politics and adherence to the old ways, but eventually the whole world.