I can't believe it's come to this
Yes, a Tales From The Ridge clips show.
The Ridge is a year old today, so Ecks is celebrating by picking some of his favourite posts of the last 12 months and recycling them in a transparent, shameless attempt at avoiding writing anything new. So sit comfortably, peel back your eyelids and join Ecks as he jumps the shark...
The Cloud
As day broke and the dawn stroked her golden fingers over the belly of the sky, a single lonely white cloud found herself marooned on the horizon. She watched as the man walked down the cold sand of the beach to the sea, and she watched as he waded into the calm waters, deeper and deeper until he was totally submerged. He stayed under the water whilst the sun rose up in anger and the cloud had to hide, and he stayed under the water as the sun grew fat and lazy and the cloud grew in confidence and crept cautiously across the sky. Eventually the sun slid down mortally wounded and bled onto the horizon, and the cloud rejoiced and danced for the timid stars before falling laughing into the sea, chopping the surface into pieces to join her lover in a confusion of bubbles.
Poor Jaws
Once, when I was younger, on a day when the sun was fat and clouds were piled up on the horizon like ice cream, I caught a shark. He was half as long as I was tall, with skin as harsh as sandpaper, and although his eyes were black and sad, he smiled at me as I scooped him into my boat. He told me, as he lay heaped in the belly of the boat, of strands of eel grass stroking his fins in the warm Sargasso, of endless twisting conversations with lonely remoras, of nights spent watching the ripples from a boat tear the moon into a thousand shimmering strips...and a tear painted a snail trail down my cheek as I realised my mistake. I apologised as I eased the hook out of his jagged mouth and helped him onto the lip of the boat, but he smiled again and assured me that he did not mind. His skin rasped against the wood as he slipped back into the diamond sea, and the water laughed as it embraced him.
The Other Side Of The Wall
He’d always lived next to the wall. It dominated the landscape, an abrupt barrier to hold back the fields and trees that flowed down from the distant purple mountains, a line that ran as far as the eye could see in either direction. It loomed ominously, yet offered the comfort of protection as much as any uneasy sensation of captivity. His tumbledown hut had huddled against it for longer than anyone cared to remember, isolated and remote, sheltering in its fatherly shadow. He’d been happy for years, perfectly happy, until one day a traveller had come by and asked him what was on the other side.
He’d replied that he had no reason not to believe the government when they said that there was nothing there, but the way the traveller smirked at him made him feel uneasy. He had never thought about it, never doubted the officials, but from that moment forth curiosity consumed his life. His every waking hour was spent thinking about what bizarre things might be on the other side, just yards from his own hut, until finally he grabbed his ladder and flung it against the wall. It fell pitifully short, and so he chopped down tree after tree for wood to add to the ladder until it was long enough to reach the top of the wall. When, finally, it was long enough to reach the summit, he leaned it against the bricks and ascended to the top. With heart in mouth, he peered over.
He saw a vista of trees and fields, and in the distance, purple mountains wreathed in cloud. Then he looked down. Below him, hugging the wall, was a single small, dilapidated shack. Beside it, a man was urgently hammering lengths of wood onto the end of a ladder.
The abyss
The man who was a hero stood before the corpses, his once-golden hair matted black to his scalp in thick bloody knots, his skin tattooed with grime and criss-crossed by the scarred mementos of his many victories. He had slit the throats and torn out the hearts of tyrants and dictators, duplicitous politicians, corrupt priests, rapists, murderers, thieves, cheats, adulterers, liars and slanderers, and now, finally, he had stopped.
"I have killed all who have sinned," he said with some regret, "There are no monsters left."
He was wrong.
Springs eternal
There is a boat out on the ocean somewhere crowded with wretched people who have left their lives behind. The desperate and the despairing, all collected up and filled with hope and poured into this leaky tub to go in search of new lives. So it has been and so it will be.
Every so often they limp into some sun-kissed port, and the grizzled captain lumbers ashore to deliver his verdict. He casts his eyes around, shielding them from the sun with his red hand, and eventually says "No, this place isn't for us." and they return once more to the open seas. So it has been and so it will be.
The story goes that when they were anchored in Maracaibo, after the captain had decided against staying, a boy tugged on his jacket and asked him why. "Listen, lad," he said, "If we stay here who knows what might happen to us? At least at sea we have hope, and that's more than any of us have had before." And the ship slunk out of the port and into the arms of the sea.
So it has been and so it will be.
Tube
Pestilence crossed his legs as the train rattled through Chancery Lane station. He'd been on the tube since South Ruislip and, apart from a 6-year-old girl who had wrinkled her nose and peered at him with saucer eyes, no-one had looked at him twice. His dirty robes spilled down the seat and onto the foot of the dead-eyed woman slumped beside him.
"Forget horses - this is how we should travel when the end comes," he said out loud, "No-one will even notice us until it's too late."
The crumpled banker sitting next to him coughed as he hunched down further into the refuge of his newspaper.
Roland, The Dog-Faced Boy
I have been blessed and cursed in equal measure. My great fortune was the exciting, nomadic life of the circus; its antithesis, the very feature that sent me there. For, since the very day of my birth, apart from those periods of regular shavings, depilatory ointments and trichological experiments meted out by my increasingly desperate parents before they gave up on me and sent me packing in shame, my face has been covered in a bushy coat of luxuriant black whiskers.
My time in G. J. Granham’s Travelling Circus was varied and immensely enjoyable, and I circumnavigated the globe twice over as a star. Though the life may seem lonely from without, I was never short of companionship, for my stays at every venue were punctuated by nights of frenzied sexual activity as, impelled by reasons still unbeknownst to me, women of all shapes and hues desired greatly to copulate with me. They would seek me out after the performance and satisfy their animalistic fantasies with me behind the tents, next to where the elephants do their business.
One night in Prague when I was slipping out of the big top, though, I was accosted by a girl whose face was covered by a gauzy veil.
“I have watched you every night for six months,” she told me, “I have followed you from Calcutta to Johannesburg, and finally I have found the courage to approach you. No, don’t speak; let me finish.”
She placed her finger on my lips and raised her other hand to lift the veil and reveal her face. It was obscured by a thousand ginger hairs.
“See, Roland,” she whispered, “I am a dog-faced girl.”
I took her hand in mine.
“You should have shaved,” I said, “You look like a freak.”
The Ridge is a year old today, so Ecks is celebrating by picking some of his favourite posts of the last 12 months and recycling them in a transparent, shameless attempt at avoiding writing anything new. So sit comfortably, peel back your eyelids and join Ecks as he jumps the shark...
The Cloud
As day broke and the dawn stroked her golden fingers over the belly of the sky, a single lonely white cloud found herself marooned on the horizon. She watched as the man walked down the cold sand of the beach to the sea, and she watched as he waded into the calm waters, deeper and deeper until he was totally submerged. He stayed under the water whilst the sun rose up in anger and the cloud had to hide, and he stayed under the water as the sun grew fat and lazy and the cloud grew in confidence and crept cautiously across the sky. Eventually the sun slid down mortally wounded and bled onto the horizon, and the cloud rejoiced and danced for the timid stars before falling laughing into the sea, chopping the surface into pieces to join her lover in a confusion of bubbles.
Poor Jaws
Once, when I was younger, on a day when the sun was fat and clouds were piled up on the horizon like ice cream, I caught a shark. He was half as long as I was tall, with skin as harsh as sandpaper, and although his eyes were black and sad, he smiled at me as I scooped him into my boat. He told me, as he lay heaped in the belly of the boat, of strands of eel grass stroking his fins in the warm Sargasso, of endless twisting conversations with lonely remoras, of nights spent watching the ripples from a boat tear the moon into a thousand shimmering strips...and a tear painted a snail trail down my cheek as I realised my mistake. I apologised as I eased the hook out of his jagged mouth and helped him onto the lip of the boat, but he smiled again and assured me that he did not mind. His skin rasped against the wood as he slipped back into the diamond sea, and the water laughed as it embraced him.
The Other Side Of The Wall
He’d always lived next to the wall. It dominated the landscape, an abrupt barrier to hold back the fields and trees that flowed down from the distant purple mountains, a line that ran as far as the eye could see in either direction. It loomed ominously, yet offered the comfort of protection as much as any uneasy sensation of captivity. His tumbledown hut had huddled against it for longer than anyone cared to remember, isolated and remote, sheltering in its fatherly shadow. He’d been happy for years, perfectly happy, until one day a traveller had come by and asked him what was on the other side.
He’d replied that he had no reason not to believe the government when they said that there was nothing there, but the way the traveller smirked at him made him feel uneasy. He had never thought about it, never doubted the officials, but from that moment forth curiosity consumed his life. His every waking hour was spent thinking about what bizarre things might be on the other side, just yards from his own hut, until finally he grabbed his ladder and flung it against the wall. It fell pitifully short, and so he chopped down tree after tree for wood to add to the ladder until it was long enough to reach the top of the wall. When, finally, it was long enough to reach the summit, he leaned it against the bricks and ascended to the top. With heart in mouth, he peered over.
He saw a vista of trees and fields, and in the distance, purple mountains wreathed in cloud. Then he looked down. Below him, hugging the wall, was a single small, dilapidated shack. Beside it, a man was urgently hammering lengths of wood onto the end of a ladder.
The abyss
The man who was a hero stood before the corpses, his once-golden hair matted black to his scalp in thick bloody knots, his skin tattooed with grime and criss-crossed by the scarred mementos of his many victories. He had slit the throats and torn out the hearts of tyrants and dictators, duplicitous politicians, corrupt priests, rapists, murderers, thieves, cheats, adulterers, liars and slanderers, and now, finally, he had stopped.
"I have killed all who have sinned," he said with some regret, "There are no monsters left."
He was wrong.
Springs eternal
There is a boat out on the ocean somewhere crowded with wretched people who have left their lives behind. The desperate and the despairing, all collected up and filled with hope and poured into this leaky tub to go in search of new lives. So it has been and so it will be.
Every so often they limp into some sun-kissed port, and the grizzled captain lumbers ashore to deliver his verdict. He casts his eyes around, shielding them from the sun with his red hand, and eventually says "No, this place isn't for us." and they return once more to the open seas. So it has been and so it will be.
The story goes that when they were anchored in Maracaibo, after the captain had decided against staying, a boy tugged on his jacket and asked him why. "Listen, lad," he said, "If we stay here who knows what might happen to us? At least at sea we have hope, and that's more than any of us have had before." And the ship slunk out of the port and into the arms of the sea.
So it has been and so it will be.
Tube
Pestilence crossed his legs as the train rattled through Chancery Lane station. He'd been on the tube since South Ruislip and, apart from a 6-year-old girl who had wrinkled her nose and peered at him with saucer eyes, no-one had looked at him twice. His dirty robes spilled down the seat and onto the foot of the dead-eyed woman slumped beside him.
"Forget horses - this is how we should travel when the end comes," he said out loud, "No-one will even notice us until it's too late."
The crumpled banker sitting next to him coughed as he hunched down further into the refuge of his newspaper.
Roland, The Dog-Faced Boy
I have been blessed and cursed in equal measure. My great fortune was the exciting, nomadic life of the circus; its antithesis, the very feature that sent me there. For, since the very day of my birth, apart from those periods of regular shavings, depilatory ointments and trichological experiments meted out by my increasingly desperate parents before they gave up on me and sent me packing in shame, my face has been covered in a bushy coat of luxuriant black whiskers.
My time in G. J. Granham’s Travelling Circus was varied and immensely enjoyable, and I circumnavigated the globe twice over as a star. Though the life may seem lonely from without, I was never short of companionship, for my stays at every venue were punctuated by nights of frenzied sexual activity as, impelled by reasons still unbeknownst to me, women of all shapes and hues desired greatly to copulate with me. They would seek me out after the performance and satisfy their animalistic fantasies with me behind the tents, next to where the elephants do their business.
One night in Prague when I was slipping out of the big top, though, I was accosted by a girl whose face was covered by a gauzy veil.
“I have watched you every night for six months,” she told me, “I have followed you from Calcutta to Johannesburg, and finally I have found the courage to approach you. No, don’t speak; let me finish.”
She placed her finger on my lips and raised her other hand to lift the veil and reveal her face. It was obscured by a thousand ginger hairs.
“See, Roland,” she whispered, “I am a dog-faced girl.”
I took her hand in mine.
“You should have shaved,” I said, “You look like a freak.”
posted by Ecks Ridgehead at
12/14/2005 10:46:00 am
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