Tales From The Ridge

Time, and its associated problems

2006-04-26T08:28:00.000Z

So, Ecks has been quiet lately. That has largely been because he was working on the "Last Chance" piece below, but also because work, play, novel writing and assorted elements of real life have begun to fill up more of his time than they have done for some time. As such, the posting on this blog may have to become a little less frequent for a while...

The Dancing On Fly Ash book arrived yesterday, though, so that was a good thing.

Apologies to fans of real science fiction

2006-04-07T17:32:00.000Z

They discovered the first one in 2091, during the seismic lunar surveys. It was communicated to the lab at Mare Anguis 4, in that self-consciously ambiguous way that scientists have, as an 'anomaly' - an unexpected spike on the graph, an unusually sinuous line within the oscilloscope, a decimal place lurking too far to the left - which meant that they had got their predictions wrong. A second survey was ordered, but the results were the same - anomalous - and so an excavation unit was dispatched. Three weeks and several metres of basalt later, a message chirped through the satcom to Mare Anguis 4:

"Littrow? Are you there?"

"Go ahead, EX2."

"You're not going to believe this."

"What have you found?"

"It's...well, it's a bell. A giant golden bell."

The bell, some thirty metres tall and sunk like a boil deep into the epidermis of the moon turned out to be made not of gold but of a material greatly resembling it. Science scanned and centrifuged and resonated and imaged and oscillated, but no conclusion could be drawn from the find other than that it was of non-human origin, and it remained a curiosity, a tourist attraction, until the seismic surveys of Mars in 2118.

The western slope of Olympus Mons was the site of the Martian anomaly. Excavation crews were soon on the scene, and Littrow was contacted immediately when the scientists at Olympus Station received the call to inform them that what seemed like an enormous sunken bell, thirty metres high and made of gold, had been found beneath the surface of Mars. Naturally, Littrow boarded the next available shuttle and was there in hours. But again, weeks of scientific endeavour gleaned nothing more than that the bell was not of human making, and it too fell into folklore.

Then, in 2130, deep beneath the rushing clouds, seismic surveyors on the surface of Venus were alarmed to notice a glowing blip on their hand-held screens as they logged the surface of Ishtar Terra. Checks and double checks led to the deployment of the excavation units, and Littrow, long retired, could scarcely breathe when he was contacted by his old friend Juralle at the Lakshmi outpost.

"I thought you'd want to know," he said.

"Another bell?" said Littrow.

"No...that would have been fine. That was almost what we were expecting."

"Then what?"

"It was a pair of cherries."

"Cherries?"

"A huge representation of them, thirty metres high. Carved deep into the earth and painted bright red."

"Unbelievable!"

"But wait, there's more...next to it there was a message inscribed into the bedrock. Each letter was twenty feet high. Can you imagine?"

"What did it say?"

"That was the funny thing...it said 'Bad luck! Three matches required for jackpot. Better luck next time.'"

The perception of guinea pigs

2006-04-06T11:24:00.000Z

As is often the case, Pongo Richter himself was the only person who did not think that he had gone mad. The authorities certainly thought he was; they were convinced of it. And the guinea pigs were convinced as well, which was ironic as they were the ones responsible for his condition.

Pongo hadn't minded at first. It was unusual, certainly, to be sharing the Tube with a six-foot tall guinea pig dressed in a business suit and reading the Financial Times, but no-one else batted an eyelid. And besides, he didn't think that guinea pigs were so bad; in fact he thought the way they snuffled those little noses of theirs was rather charming. So Pongo simply accepted them as one of the changes that he had to accept as part of modern life - some new genetic miracle or something - in the same way as he had accepted the Chinese family that had moved into the house across the road from him.

He saw more and more of them. Working in his bank, driving about town, playing football in the park, they were everywhere. He looked forward to seeing them; their soft, exuberant fur always made him feel calm. The guinea pigs, that is; not the Chinese family.

But one Sunday morning, as he was digging his garden, Pongo saw in the street one of the guinea pigs hop up onto another's shoulders, crack into its skull with those brutal incisors and lap at the brains inside as though they were the yolk of an egg. Horrified, Pongo leaped over his fence and whacked the guinea pig in the head repeatedly with his shovel until it lay crumpled in the street, dead. Panting, sweating, he walked into his house and called the police.

The police arrived within minutes, and the psychiatrists soon after, when he'd told the police what had happened.

"We can't have this," they said.

"You're telling me," said Pongo.

"Just killing people like that."

"You mean guinea pigs."

"Ah yes, the police told us about that. Do you see these guinea pigs often?"

"All the time. They're everywhere."

"And you say they're six feet tall, some of them? The same size as us?"

"Yes, yes! Haven't you seen them?"

"Dr Berner?" one of them called over his shoulder, "Will you bring the kit, please?"

As the sedatives began to take effect, Pongo reflected to himself that he really should have expected this - one of the psychiatrists was, after all, a guinea pig herself.

Even after years in the asylum Pongo didn't consider himself mad. But unfortunately for him, everyone else did. Especially the guinea pigs. Sadly for him, it was all simply a matter of perception.

Only What Is

2006-03-30T13:22:00.000Z

Ding-dong!
"Hello?"
"Parcel for Mr...uh...Ri...Ridgehead? Did I read that right? Is that really your name?"
"Yes! How dare you, it is a perfectly reasonable name."
"Uh, yeah, buddy...sure. Anyway, here's your parcel."
"Thank you. Now kindly get off my driveway or I'll shoot you in the spine."

And that was more or less how Ecks received his copy of Only What Is by Richard Lawrence Cohen. And what a great little book it is. Though it will not be read from cover to cover in one sitting - Ludmila's Broken English and Melmoth The Wanderer will put paid to that - that doesn't matter; the beauty of it is that it can be picked up as and when the mood or situation allows, and a single anecdote, thought, poem or story can be read in just a few minutes. A few such entries have been read by your intrepid reviewer already, and the vagaries of his memory mean that although they have already appeared on Richard's blog, they still read fresh. Perhaps the action of reading them from a printed page lends them a different aspect? Who knows. Either way, buy yourself a copy - you won't be disappointed!

Then, when you're done with it - though it's the kind of book to keep, in the opinion of your humble ridge-headed correspondent - you can set if free via BookCrossing, if you like.

Hank Marvin

2006-03-30T06:56:00.000Z

Dear Sir or Madam

It is a little-known fact that the cruellest thing for a shadow is the death of its owner, for though a shadow's life is not directly linked to its keeper, its fate is sealed once that final breath slips out past the lips. It lies trapped beneath the prostrate body, sliding around away from the sun but unable to free itself from the dead weight that pins it to the ground. And beyond the initial incidence of death, what awaits it? Burial or cremation of its host, both grisly fates - closure inside a wooden box, six feet of earth denying the life-giving light from sun or lightbulb, or cowering beneath the body as it, that which gives form to the shadow, is obliterated by fire.

But what can I do about this macabre state of affairs, you might say. What can I do to stop my shadow being denied the rights that I enjoy?

The good news is that it does not have to be this way - there is something you can do. The insertion of a simple paragraph into the last will and testament stipulating any of the following:

Open-air "burial" in a perspex casket
Inclusion of a skylight or internal lighting system in a conventional coffin
Cremation followed by reconsitution of ashes into an effigy

...will guarantee that your shadow continues to lead a vivid and fulfilling existence.

So ACT NOW! Change your last will and testament today - create a better tomorrow for your shadow.

Thank you for your time

Linda Aykanian
Liaison Officer
People For The Ethical Treatment of Shadows

One sided conversations #4

2006-03-27T08:07:00.000Z

"It's not unusual to trademark a new species, especially not after the years of modifications that have gone into it. They do have a proper scientific name, but it's quite dry. Not snappy at all. Round here we call them Piggets - you know, like 'pork nuggets'. The fast food places are just lapping them up - they keep them in little pens out by their freezers, like hamster cages, so they're absolutely fresh when they hit the deep-fryer."

"At first we experimented with dunking them in the breadcrumbs whole, but our test consumers were a little squeamish about eating the little heads and limbs, so now those parts are just clipped off. The next stage will be to develop a variant with particularly thin, weak necks and legs - for easy detachment - and beyond that hopefully to go totally headless and limbless. The guys are looking into it as we speak, but it could be months or even years away."

"Initial attempts have been fairly unsuccessful thus far, so we currently recommend just feeding them a diet high in butter and oil - saturated fats - to keep their skins nice and tacky. Then you can roll them straight in the breadcrumbs without adding any binding agent and just drop them in the deep-fryer."

"Oh, you get used to it, and it's quite high-pitched anyway. It's the same with lobsters, you know."

"I know. But we're hoping to bring out equivalent lamb, beef and chicken variants over the next five years, and beyond that...who knows? Mark my words, though - one day all livestock will be bite-sized."

HGP

2006-03-13T13:03:00.000Z

Malcolm

If you are reading this, then it means that I am dead. Let this letter be my epitaph, and my last chance to tell you that which I could not tell you whilst I was alive - had I done so they would have killed you. That you are still alive to read this letter is testament to my keeping my end of the bargain.

The Human Genome Project, my life's work, was supposed to be a beautiful achievement for mankind, but as you are more than aware it was anything but. No-one foresaw the riots, nor the reprisals, the genocide, the slavery...except for Them, the organisation whose name I never even found out. Our current state of affairs was exactly what they planned.

In hindsight, it was insultingly easy for them. They bought us off, all of us - what is more depressing, that everyone has their price, or that the price is always so low? The Project was funded by their money anyway, and it kept rolling in. We were each given bonuses when milestones were reached, and they showered us with expensive gifts - we didn't suspect anything, we just thought that perhaps, finally, scientists were being truly appreciated. Then, when we were nearly finished mapping the genome, we each received a visit from them. At night, at our homes. They told us what they wanted the Project to say - what conclusions it should draw - and they gave us a simple choice. Financial security for life in exchange for total silence, or...well, they made perfectly clear what would happen to us and our families if we decided to jump ship. So we were forced to publish what they told us to publish. That's where the data that went public came from.

That data was wrong, though. What was published wasn't what we found - there is no one single "master race"! No racial type's DNA is any closer to that of animals than any other! But we were too afraid to blow the lid off. These people are too powerful, too dangerous. Even when the riots started and we started to whisper amongst ourselves about exposing the lie, it always came back to "but what about our families"? So, to my shame, we stayed quiet. The lies became the accepted orthodoxy and we entered the age of modern slavery.

As my last wish, I would like to disassociate my memory from the lies, but I regret that I cannot make that decision as it will affect not me but you. With your mother and me gone, you are the only one that they can still hurt. What you do with this letter is up to you, but be aware that if you go public with it, you must be prepared to die. So you must ask yourself - is the truth more important than your life?

Dad

TV

2006-03-08T08:07:00.000Z

Never work with children or animals, they'd said. I should update it, thought the producer. Never work with children, animals or the chronically depressed. He tapped his clipboard agitatedly; they'd been here for four hours already, and nothing. Yes, technically they'd got all night, but...well, he hadn't got all night.

"Come on, what's the hold up?" he said, to no-one in particular.

They looked out into the studio at the man. He was sat on a simple wooden chair in a clear plexiglass booth surrounded by an organised tangle of wires. A camera sat and stared straight at his face as others ogled him from every conceivable angle, for replay after endless replay. The production team watched him expectantly, as they had done for the last four hours. The man bent his head forward and spoke quietly into the microphone on his lapel, and a voice floated out into the editing booth.

"Uh, Mr Partney?" the voice said, "I...uh, I still don't know if I can go through with this."

"Oh for god's sake," said the producer, "Jerry, get on the mike and tell him...tell him he can take as long as he likes, and we're very proud of him, and we know he can do it, and we're sure he wouldn't want to let us down. Some crap like that."

Jerry bent forward and spoke soothingly into his desktop microphone. The producer rubbed his head. Three months of interviews to find the right candidate. Weeks of psychological profiling. Days to build the studio and the booth. Advertising, promotions, trailers. A prime-time Saturday night slot. And the money - all that money! And now this schmo was having second thoughts? Unbelievable!

"You've all been so nice to me," came the disembodied voice, "And, well, that's partly why I'm not sure about this any more. I don't...I've been thinking, perhaps we--"

"Screw that," said the producer as the voice continued to drift out above them, "I've had enough of this loser. I want to get home at some point this evening. Jerry, can you tell him to hold it up to his head anyway, just so we can use the footage for some publicity stills? OK?"

Jerry bent over his microphone and began to speak.

"OK, now we're talking. Camera 1, get tight in on that gun," said the producer, "And Bill, get ready with that remote trigger. People, it's time to make the magic happen."

Who did that loser think he was? If the networks had paid for a suicide, then a suicide was what they'd get. This was television.

This one's for Richard

2006-03-08T07:48:00.000Z

For those of you - Richard Lawrence Cohen, that is - who think that I am some kind of Peter Pan-esque figure, check out my profile...and wish me happy birthday.

Genesis v8.29

2006-03-06T08:45:00.000Z

1. In the beginning there was a big bang.
2. And the universe was without form, and void.
3. And then, though no-one actually said "let there be quarks", there were quarks.
4. And the quarks were good (well, as good as a fundamental particle can be). And the quarks combined to form baryons, and the baryons were divided into protons and neutrons and electrons.
5. As the universe cooled, matter gradually stopped moving relativistically and its rest mass energy density came to gravitationally dominate that of radiation, and protons and electrons came together and hydrogen was formed. And, yes, it was good.
6. Over time, the slightly denser regions of matter gravitationally attracted other nearby matter and thus grew even denser, eventually forming gas clouds, stars, galaxies and the planet that would later come to be known as Earth.
7. And the molten surface of the Earth cooled to form the solid outer crust, and volcanic activity produced the atmosphere.
8. And condensing water vapour, added to by ice from comets, formed the oceans.
9. And in these oceans, highly energetic chemistry gave rise to self-replicating molecules that were not created in anyone's image, that eventually gave rise to primordial life. Well, you've got to start somewhere.
10. And primitive cyanobacteria developed that photosynthesised the atmosphere, creating oxygen. One of them may have been called Adam.
11. And eventually these primitive organisms developed sexual reproduction, for lo, though they were primitive they knew a good thing when they saw it.
12. And it was good, though it was even better once they got to know each other and were less embarrassed.
13. And evolution brought forth more complex plant types. These could have been called "grass", and "herb yielding seed after his kind", and "the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind", but such a description would be simplistic at best.
14. Then there were sponges, and jellyfish, and flatworms, and if they were formed in someone's image then he was one ugly sucker.
15. Then, to cut slightly shorter a very long story involving backbones and gills, the land and the sea were colonised by animals (but not by whales; they came later). There were certainly creeping things, but probably no cattle.
16. Then there were dinosaurs, and they were good, until a meteorite struck the earth, which was not good. Not for the dinosaurs, anyway. The fish probably didn't mind so much.
17. And then there was a kind of ape thing who decided that perhaps it would be fun to balance on these two back legs of hers, and she was called Lucy. Sorry, I mean Eve.
18. And then there was Man, who had dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, except the bigger ones with sharper teeth and claws that had a disconcerting habit of eating Man.
19. And Man evolved bigger brains and opposable thumbs and developed tools that gave man the opportunity to learn that the creeping things that crepteth over the earth and ate him were actually rather delicious when caught and killed and cooked over an open fire.
20. And man was fruitful, and multiplied, and replenished the earth, and subdued it, though in hindsight there was probably more subduing than replenishing going on.
21. And then there was Ikea, and the French, and tennis, and the concept of celebrity, and New Kids On The Block and electric toasters and patterned toilet paper.
22. And the evening and the morning were the 5 trillionth day (give or take 73 billion days).
23. And the Earth was good.
24. But it could probably have been better when you consider how long it had had to practise.

Please keep this book up-to-date! ALWAYS up-issue and redistribute following all major scientific discoveries.

Bad, baaad joke

2006-03-03T08:48:00.000Z

So I walked into The Framing Centre last night. Somewhat overwhelmed by the bewildering array of frames, wooden, metallic, plastic, some empty, some caressing prints and paintings, I sought out the owner, a bespectacled septuagenarian, to consult him.
"Good morning," he said.
"Ah, hello, yes," I said, "I knocked off a bank last night and I need someone to take the rap. What can you do for me?"
"I'm sorry?"
"I need you to place someone at the Wickborough branch of Barcwest yesterday for me. Otherwise I'm looking at a ten-stretch."
"I'm not sure I understand..."
"This is The Framing Centre, isn't it?"

Sorry. Been very busy at work, no time to come up with anything good. This awful joke - based on what I am going to do in a shop of the same name near where I live - was all that came into my mind.

ETA Nother Fine Mess

2006-02-27T18:36:00.000Z

"Take offs are always the worst, eh?" said the fat man in the seat next to him, "Take offs and landings. Once you're up it's OK."

"Yeah," said Gaizka. But he knew different; that's why he had begun to sweat. He bit at his fingernail and squeezed the mobile phone in his pocket with a clammy hand.

The mobile phone was his link. His comforter. He kept it in his hand at all times, alternately stroking and squeezing it as one might the hand of a lover, and in return it gave him a security and a fluttering rush in his stomach not unlike that a woman might have given him. It had been x-rayed and scanned and probed by electronic eyes that had seen further into its heart than he ever would, yet it still rested snugly against his thigh in his trouser pocket. Of course it did; it was just a phone.

Unlike his suitcase. Well, the suitcase itself was of the same shade as any other, but its contents were quite different to its brothers, sisters and cousins. Had he packed it himself, he'd been asked. Yes. Had it left his sight at any point, he'd been asked. No. He hadn't had to lie.

The links between Gaizka Sagastui and the rest of ETA had never been transparent - the neurons and synapses that link terrorist groups rarely are - but they had been smudged by a series of sometimes violent doctrinal arguments with the head of his talde. The rest of his group had shunned him as a result; he had become ostracised, frozen out. Yet his marginalisation did little to dent his enthusiasm; indeed, his identity as a minority within a minority served only to feed the persecutional embers that glowed in the pit of his gut. He remained within earshot of ETA via sympathetic friends, and the osmosis of nationalism continued to seep into him until, one day, his ragged mind hit upon the idea that would write him indelibly - he thought - into the pages of Basque nationalist folklore, and prove to the rest of ETA that he had been right.

Hence he found himself sat rigid in seat 12B on flight IB 3172 from Madrid, clutching his mobile phone as the bird lifted ponderously, goose-like, from the asphalt and into the air. The wheels folded up into the wings with a grinding clunk, and the fat man let out a sigh.

"Worst part over," he said, "Now it's easy. Until we get to Paris, of course. Say, are you all right?"

Gaizka ignored him. Out of the window, past the fat man's greying moustache, he saw the fields recede, the fields of olives trees reduced to green pointillism on a canvas of a thousand shades of brown. He checked his watch; ten minutes should do it.

"You look pale," said the fat man, "You should get the stewardess to bring you some water. I'll call her if you like."

"Really, I'm OK," said Gaizka.

Ten minutes trickled by. Gaizka hunched forwards, his foot tapping an urgent tattoo on the dirty footplate. The hand not holding the mobile phone distractedly wound the hem of his t-shirt into a stiff point. The fat man eyed him with suspicion.

He glanced at his watch. Ten minutes. Gaizka pulled the mobile phone out of his pocket, flipped it open and began to select the autodial.

"Hey," said the fat man, tapping his arm, "You're supposed to have turned that off. Hey!"

Gaizka twisted away and stood up proudly in his seat. Other passengers glanced sideways at him, unsure. He puffed his chest out and raised his arm aloft like a king leading a charge, the medieval glint of sun on sword updated to the cheerful millennial glow of a mobile phone display that winked at his confused co-passengers.

"Gora Euskadi Askatasuna!" he screamed in his ancient language, and thumbed the green "call" button.

Nothing.

At least, nothing that he had been expecting. The plane exploded, but only into a thousand fragments of noise. Men bellowed animal sounds, women wailed and clutched infants to their stomachs, and two men, sat at different ends of the plane, leaped to their feet and barrelled towards him. He squeezed the button again - still nothing. Was it working? He checked: yes. How could it have betrayed him? No; it wasn't the phone, he decided, not his phone. It must have been Mitxel's design. Yes, it was the suitcase that had been faulty.

The first barrelling man reached him, batted the phone from his hand with one balled fist and hammered the other square into Gaizka's face. The other barrelling man forced a gun hard into Gaizka's now fractured cheek. Gaizka deflated onto his seat.

Gaizka would lament again and again, as the cuffs bit into his wrists, as the sentence was passed, as he was beaten by Castellanos in the exercise yard as the guards looked away, the design for the bomb that Mitxel had settled upon. Had he access to the newspapers, however, he would have read of the explosion on the tarmac, he would have read of the destruction of a single, solitary baggage truck, he would have read of the spiderweb distribution across two runways of hundreds of flaming jumpers and t-shirts and pairs of trousers, and he would have read of how one Castellano baggage-handler was being congratulated daily by a stream of tearful passengers for having saved their lives with his laziness.

Buenos Dias!

2006-02-26T19:32:00.000Z

And Ecks is returned...minus his suitcase, which is believed to be loitering in a holding pattern somewhere over Madrid...having been sent back and forth (ida y vuelta, si quieres) four times between Terminal 4 and Terminal 4 Satellite (a trip of some 25 minutes) yo-yoing between various Iberia desks staffed by an exquisite mixture of the ignorant and the apathetic in a sanity-fracturing Herculean labour of trying to get iberoaerobureaucraticos to arrange for him a transfer onto a different flight...ending in a final exasperated exchange:

"Solo quiero ir a Londres, y que mi maleta va a Londres también."
Tippy-tappy-tippy-tappy-telephony-telephony-tippy-tappy
"Vale. Este vuelo - S49, 14:45."
"Ahora, qué hora es?"
"15:00."
"Joder!"

...having to sprint for the flight that had boarded 15 minutes previously...having initially been subjected to a two hour delay on the flight from Granada to Madrid...due to snow.

The moral of the story: the snow in Spain falls mainly on the plane. Oh, and don't fly Iberia.

Hasta luego

2006-02-10T14:23:00.000Z

No posts for a couple of weeks, as Ecks is off to Granada in Spain to relax and get on with some serious writing for his second novel.

Until then...

Logical thinking, 2006-style

2006-02-07T08:35:00.000Z

What are you doing?
I am protesting.
What are you protesting against?
A man.
What did he do?
He drew a picture.
What was it a picture of?
A prophet.
Is that bad?
It encourages idolatry.
What is idolatry?
The worshipping of false idols.
Is that bad?
My religion forbids it.
Does this man follow your religion?
No.
Did you yourself worship this drawing?
No.
Then why are you upset?
Er...death to the infidels!

Diplomacy

2006-01-31T10:20:00.000Z

There was a valley. A wide, flat, ancient river valley. In the valley was a small town called Crick. Not far from it was another small town called Dram. The two towns farmed the flood plain and fished the river and mined the hills. Times were good; the people multiplied and the towns grew larger, until one day a thought occurred to the mayor of Crick.

"If Dram continues to expand," he thought, "They will soon attack us and take our farmland and fisheries and mines."

So he ordered his artisans to construct a defensive wall around the town.

When the mayor of Dram saw this wall he called his advisors to him.

"Crick has built a wall," he told them, "What does this mean?"

"They mean to attack us," his advisors told him, "Why else would they feel the need to prepare defences?"

So the mayor of Dram ordered his artisans to build a wall around the town.

"Only it must be bigger than their wall," he said, "We cannot afford to be seen to be weak."

When the mayor of Crick saw the new wall he called his council into an emergency session.

"Our worst fears are confirmed," he said, "Dram is preparing for war. We have little choice but to show our strength and respond in kind. Only deterrence can prevent conflict."

So he ordered his artisans to build another wall outside the first wall, but bigger and thicker than before.

The mayor of Dram was understandably concerned when news of the new wall came down to him from his watchtowers.

"One wall was not enough," he said, "We must build another."

And so time passed and walls sprung up around Crick and Dram like the layers of an onion, and each time, the people of the towns built houses between the old walls and the new walls, until the point was reached at which Crick's latest wall touched Dram's latest wall. At this, the mayor of Crick called for a meeting with the mayor of Dram.

"We do not want to go to war with you," said the mayor of Crick, "But we will fight if we have to."

"We don't want war with you either," said the mayor of Dram, "But we will fight if you force our hand."

"Why don't we simply not go to war, then?"

"I thought you wanted to attack us."

"No...I thought you wanted to attack us."

"Not at all."

They laughed and embraced like brothers, and jointly decreed that the ugly defensive walls be torn down and the stone be used to build a new wall around the outside of both Crick and Dram, to celebrate and signify the newfound peace and unity between the two towns.

And so they did.

A short way up the river, the mayor of Sill stood in his watchtower and looked at the new wall being built around Crick and Dram.

"This can only mean one thing," he said, and called his council to session.

One sided conversations #3

2006-01-25T10:53:00.000Z

"I'm getting a letter...it's an 'R' or a 'P'. Does the letter 'R' or the letter 'P' mean anything to you? How about 'M'? I'm getting an 'M'. Is there an 'M' close to you?"

"Your father, his name was Michael? Yes, that's what I'm getting. It's your father, it's Michael. OK, I'm getting a feeling that he passed over as a result of something to do with the head or the heart, am I right?"

"Cirrhosis? Liver, that's right, the liver, that's what he's telling me. Because he liked to drink, right? But he's telling me to tell you not to worry, he's not in any pain any more. Now I'm getting something about a trinket of some kind, something that was important both to you and to him. Do you have anything of his that you keep with you, a ring or a bracelet, something like that?"

"Exactly, that brooch, that's the one. Of course. That's what he's saying to me, and he's saying keep it with you and he will always be there. OK, now he's telling me he has to go, but don't worry because he loves you and he's fine, just fine."

"I know, I know. There's...no, I can't explain it. There's no explanation for it. It's just a gift I have."

Run

2006-01-23T10:29:00.000Z

I run. I run to nowhere and from nothing. I run simply to be running.

My heels scold the ground as they throw me forwards. No; not me, it is not me that is being propelled, it is the earth. I tilt my body and at my insistence the world itself slides beneath me. Faster and faster it spins.

I am like the wind. The earth billows out behind me like a streamer until my feet break free from the pavement and I climb up into the clouds. I soar through them and as I rise they burst into explosions of tears. Troposphere, up, stratosphere, up, mesosphere, where the very air is frozen, up. I am the wind.

And then...what? A sword in my side, lead weights around my ankles, a steel band fixed too tightly across my chest. I fall, dragged back by a jealous earth in an Icarian plunge, and I land.

Heartbeatheartbeatheartbeatheartbeatbreathegaspheartbeatheartbeatheartbeat. Breathe. Breathe, heart, breathe.

So, mesosphere this time. Not bad. Nearly. So nearly. But not quite.

Next time I'll make it. Next time.

Oh Britannia

2006-01-18T09:07:00.000Z

Neon lights the empire
Where the sun will never set
The Raj reborn in Bradford
With the hatred that begets
We swear at David Beckham
Red cross painted on our cheek
We don't vote, but we'll never miss
A Coronation Street
We'll give Sanjeev a kicking
When he's waiting for the bus
'Cos when he sings God Save The Queen
He knows more words than us
Oh Britannia, don't think that you'll never rule again
But please don't ask me how, my dear, and please don't ask me when

The lamb of god no longer
On these pleasant pastures seen
We burned him so that foot and mouth
Would not make us unclean
The dark satanic mills are closed
Jerusalem's not built
Now Chinese children make our shirts
Whilst we ignore the guilt
The Mersey's our clogged artery
The Severn is our vein
And though we all love progress
We just stay the bleedin' same
Oh Britannia, don't think that you'll never rule again
But not before you change, my dear, the hearts of Englishmen

An ancient, stagnant monarchy
Wrapped in our red-white-blue
The same Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
On the throne since '52
And whether they're for Labour
The Lib Dems or for the Tories
Cromwell's children seem content
Invoking faded glories
The English way, why are we
So afraid of being rude?
That upper lip stays far too stiff
When we're all being screwed
Oh Britannia, don't think that you'll never rule again
Just don't you hold your breath, my dear, you'll pass out in the end

A Turing tale

2006-01-16T08:47:00.000Z

A funny thing happened at work today. When I got to my desk there was an e-mail waiting that said we all had to assemble in the conference room at ten sharp. So, come ten o'clock we were milling around in the conference room, buzzing with rumours, when the managing director walked on to the stage. He stood behind the glass lectern, tapped the microphone once, then began to speak.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "Dear colleagues, it is with a unique mixture of joy and sadness that I ask you to gather here today, as I regret to inform you that one of your dearest colleagues, Bob Sanderson, is no longer with us."

Murmurs.

"I know this will come as a shock to you, but don't worry. He has merely been switched off."

More murmurs.

"You see, Bob Sanderson was merely a computer program."

Murmurs growing into full-blown hubbub.

"And a very successful one at that. We programmed him with a few stock responses to work-related queries - you've all heard his 'Thanks [insert name], I'll pass that one on for Ray in accounts to action' line, I'm sure - and a number of vague day-to-day social niceties, and we were just amazed at how he seemed to fit right in. But the real masterstroke, we found, was programming him with an auto-forward function for e-mailed jokes and pictures of people hurting themselves in ridiculous ways. That was the icing on the cake. Did you never wonder why you never saw him? Why he only ever communicated by e-mail?"

Hubbub maturing into hullaballoo.

"So, that's the sad news. The happy news, though, is that after Bob's successful beta test CompuColleague v1.0 is now ready for roll-out, and will be taking over the Customer Care e-mail accounts. We're thinking of calling him Jeff. Oh, Barbara? Unfortunately this means you're out of a job. That will be all. Thanks for your time - back to work, people."

We filed out, back to our cubicles. Except for Barbara, of course.

So, it turns out Turing was wrong. Depressingly, in order to pass for human a computer has to display no real insight or intelligence, and only the most rudimentary of social skills.

Be honest, though: you're not that shocked, are you?

But anyway, did you see what those idiots in government have just done? What a bunch of idiots. And how about the game last night? That coach is something else, isn't he?

Dancing On Fly Ash is back up and running! Go and visit, you'll be glad you did.

One sided conversations #2

2006-01-12T12:25:00.000Z

"Never. They don't understand me there. I daren't go back."

"Because of the incident in the desert that time. I thought you knew about it - there's an article about it in the station's 'How Not To' file. Alright. I beamed down there, couple of thousand years ago this was, and I found this guy, all long beard and sandals, and I offered to help him help the rest of the world to, you know, take another step up the ladder. He got totally the wrong end of the stick - which isn't unusual - but of all the rotten luck they wrote a book about him, and I ended up in it as the root of all evil! Talk about a bad day at the office."

"I know, but the horns, the hooves, the tail...they're obsessed with appearances, you know what they're like. Every time I go down there, as soon as one of them sees me they run a mile. They could have the secret to cold fusion if they just stopped and listened. No, they blame me for everything, there's no way they're going to give me a second chance. So we have no choice but to let them get on with it on their own."

"It's not a disaster as such, I've got other planets in my portfolio. I'm still active in Fodgethith, Brao, Wyrgid and Pokmanok. And I'm going to introduce writing to a small hill tribe on Yan Griffan next week, I think they've evolved to a state where they're receptive. Losing Earth isn't so bad when you put it in perspective."

"Well of course they need our help. Look at the mess they've got themselves in without it! But what can we do? We can't change who we are. We're just going to have to give up on Earthlings and hope they stumble across improvement, peace and enlightenment without our help."

Cat in the box

2006-01-11T08:30:00.000Z

I walked into the lecture theatre and took my seat. The lecturer tapped a dusty blackboard and began.

"Carrying on from last time, in the mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics each system is associated with a complex Hilbert space such that each instantaneous state of the system is described by a unit vector in that space. This state vector encodes the probabilities for the outcomes of all possible measurements applied to the system. As the state of a system generally changes over time, the state vector is a function of time. The Schrödinger equation provides a quantitative description of the rate of change of the state vector. The Schrödinger equation is written aitch tee brackets psi ecks comma tee brackets equals eye aitch bar delta over delta tee psi ecks tee brackets, where eye is the unit imaginary number, aitch bar is Planck's constant divided by two pi and the Hamiltonian aitch tee is a self-adjoint operator acting on the state space. In non-relativistic quantum mechanics, the Hamiltonian of a particle can be expressed as the sum of two operators, one corresponding to kinetic energy and the other to potential energy. For a single particle of mass em with no electric charge and no spin, the kinetic energy operator is tee equals pee squared over two em, where pee is the momentum operator, which is defined as pee psi are comma tee brackets equals aitch bar over eye invert triangle psi are comma tee brackets. The potential energy operator is vee equals vee are brackets, where vee is a real scalar function of the position operator are. Putting these together we obtain aitch psi are comma tee brackets equals tee plus vee brackets psi are comma tee brackets equals square bracket minus aitch bar squared over two em invert triangle squared plus vee are brackets square bracket psi are comma tee brackets equals eye aitch bar delta psi over delta tee are comma tee brackets, where invert triangle squared is the Laplace operator. This is a commonly encountered form of the Schrödinger wave equation, though not the most general one. Does anyone have any questions at this point?"

I raised my hand.

"Is this British And European History From 1650 To 1850?" I asked.

"No," he said.

So I left.

Chronomether number six

2006-01-06T08:53:00.000Z

I was hiding in the long grass eating humble pie for breakfast
You were standing there behind me with a smile straight out of Texas
Another day of viciousness, a safety razor daydream
The poor men talking tidal waves, the rich men talking sunscreen
So I walked up to the courthouse, pinned a cross to my lapel
Somewhere between the abattoir and the May Day carousel
I ignored her as she danced there in that suit of bleaching bones
Then forced myself to watch when all the good men threw their stones

All I have is

2006-01-05T08:19:00.000Z

"Who am I? This is not my body, my body was younger than this! What have you done with my body?"
"You were in a coma. You have been in a coma for ten years. See? Look at these photographs."
"That looks somewhat like me, but it can't be. I have no memories of it. I don't remember that bed, or all those tubes, or that machine."
"Nonetheless, that is where you have been. Don't you remember the accident?"
"I remember the accident, and then I remember talking to you. There is nothing in between."
"Like I said, a coma."
"I don't believe you. You doctors must have placed my brain in the body of an old man."
"Don't be ridiculous."
"You took my brain and put it into an old man's body, and you converted my body into one of those mechs."
"There are laws against such actions!"
"All right then, prove that I am me."
"What?"
"Prove I am who I am."
"I have watched over you for ten years - I know that you are you!"
"I have no recollection of lying here."
"You saw the photographs."
"They don't look like me."
"Yes they do, just without the grey hair and wrinkles."
"Exactly. This body has grey hair, the man in that picture does not."
"It changed!"
"Nonetheless, the man in that picture is not me. Or rather, he is me, and I am now in someone else's body."
"Listen, you're being irrational. You've been lying here every day for ten years. You may not remember, but I've seen you with my own eyes."
"But existence is not physical, it is memorial. If a man lives alone his whole life, away from everyone, when he dies can he really be said to have existed? If no-one knows he was there, was he ever there at all? You are not the same person as you were ten years ago, but you at least have ten years of memories to bridge the gap between that man and you."
"But I know you were there. You existed there for ten years, even if you don't believe it."
"Perhaps, but I'm not sure I trust you. If you would switch my brain to another body, then what qualms would you have in lying to me? How can you prove to me that I have been lying here unconscious for ten years?"
"I suppose I can't."
"So I am awoken into...what? Chuang Tzu said that he dreamed that he was a butterfly, and that when he awoke he was no longer sure whether he was a man who had dreamed of being a butterfly or a butterfly who was dreaming of being a man. Perhaps I am simply dreaming. Perhaps I will awake tomorrow back in my body."

The invasion

2006-01-03T13:09:00.000Z

We are the last that we know of. There may be others out there somewhere, but I doubt it. They were that ruthless. There are fewer than a hundred of us left now.

They turned on us in the night. We weren't prepared. We'd spent so long aiming at each other that we hadn't noticed who the real enemy was. They moved among us at first, mimicking us expertly. We didn't see the stripes on the tiger, nor the lure dangling before the ragged jaws of the angler fish.

We're underground now, forced down in some old bunker connected to a mine shaft. It seems secure, but we just don't know. We don't know how determined They are to wipe us out, whether They're content to just let us huddle down here out of their way. Our thirst is slaked by mildewed condensation, our hunger staved off by mushrooms and thin gruels. I don't know for how long we can survive like this. One of the women is pregnant - I confess that I don't know her name - no-one yet has had the heart to discuss with her the fact that her baby will probably not survive. But I will not waste any more of your time.

This is not a plea for help; it is our epitaph. I end by wishing you luck if you are one of us and damning you to Hell if you are one of Them, for if you are reading this then we are probably already dead.

Chrimble

2005-12-23T08:28:00.000Z

'Twas the night before the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a peripheral was stirring, not even a mouse.

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

Ecks intends to funnel his energy into "proper" writing - rather than blog writing - over Christmas, so he'll be back some time around January the 3rd...

The Farm

2005-12-22T07:52:00.000Z

Below is a short excerpt from Ecks' new novel (as yet untitled). Its intended purpose is to go some way to explaining why the protagonist might be being pursued by the authorities.

One night, a few years ago, my next door neighbour Garro disappeared. When I left my apartment for work in the morning his door was hanging open and there was no sign of him. He wasn’t there when I got home in the evening either, and the door to his apartment was still open. It remained that way for four weeks, until one day he came back. His skin was pale, his eyes were sunk deep in grey sockets and his body hung limp from his head like washing hung out to dry. I asked him what had happened, where he had been, but he refused to say a word. He just hid in his apartment for weeks. When he eventually came out, weak as a gas and almost transparent, I asked him again, and he ushered me into my apartment and closed the door. Then he put some music on, turned all the taps on, sat me down on the sofa and whispered in my ear.

“So no-one can hear,” he said.

Then he told me what had happened to him.

He said they’d come for him in the small, crawling hours of morning, long before the sun came up. They’d borrowed a master key from the building supervisor, so he didn’t even hear them enter his apartment; the first he knew about it was being woken by a truncheon being jabbed into his stomach. There were six of them, dressed head to toe in black except for a little white ‘police’ patch sewn on the left arm, and they handcuffed him and dragged him out of his apartment by his feet, without even telling him what he was being arrested for. Then they put a bag over his head, bundled him into the back of some kind of vehicle, and started to drive. He asked them where they were going, but they just punched him and told him to be quiet.

“I knowed where we was going, though,” he whispered, “Don’t need no university schooling to work out anyone them lot arrest in the black boroughs’ll end up at the Farm.”

We all knew the stories, and we all knew someone who had disappeared, or gone away for a while and come back…different. The Farm was a semi-mythical place, said to be a remote old cattle ranch that had been converted into a government interrogation centre that skulked just beneath the view of the law. The President set it up years ago, just after he came into power. At first he used it to imprison his political opponents as he set about dismantling the pre-revolutionary apparatus of government, but when the last of those had been buried in the salt flats he handed the running of the camp over to the secret police, who turned their attention to the minorities – the blacks and the indians, mainly – torturing and killing them as they saw fit.

Garro said that when they eventually arrived at the Farm he was shoved and kicked into a tiny cell, and only then did they finally remove his hood. The guards spat on him and told him he was going to die, then left him alone in there for hours, though he didn’t know how long exactly as there was no clock and no window. They returned with food and water but made him beg before they gave it to him, and when it touched his tongue the water was brackish and the food rotten. When he had finished they whipped his legs with a length of rubber hose pierced with needles. They did this every day. Some days they urinated on his food. Some days they threatened to cut off his lips or his eyelids.

After a week, the routine changed. The whippings stopped, and after his food he was taken to a white-tiled, sterile-looking room where he was strapped to a bed. A man came in and asked him questions about his family, his friends and his neighbours, asking whether they were involved in any criminal or anti-government activity. When he said no, they simply told him he was lying and electrocuted him in the mouth or rubbed chillis onto his eyes, nose and genitals or pulled his toenails out with pliers or put his feet into boxes full of wasps.

He said that eventually they must have realised that he didn’t know anything, and that the coin they flipped must have come up heads as they decided not to kill him. He was hooded again, bundled into the back of another vehicle and driven away somewhere. On the way they told him that if he ever spoke of his experiences to another living soul, they’d come for him. After a few hours of driving they pulled over, unhooded him and dropped him by the side of the road.

“Last thing they said to me before they dumped me in the ditch,” he said, “Was I was lucky I done nothing wrong.”

I can't believe it's come to this

2005-12-14T10:46:00.000Z

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.”

Tethered John

2005-12-13T10:59:00.000Z

John Garvey had always been the strongest man in Phillipsburg. Muscles flowed beneath his skin like snakes in a sack, and he could take a child in each of his hands and lift them clean above his head without a prickle of sweat on his brow. He had not been born that way; that is to say, nature had not contrived to grant him his titanic physique. No; his muscles were of his own making. For, from the age of nine, following a disquieting experience in the crawling hours of morning in which he felt that he were floating up towards the ceiling, he had chained a great rock to his ankle, which he carried everywhere with him.

It lay by his bed as he slept, it sat under the table at his feet like a dog as he ate. It dragged behind him as he fought the mosquitoes for the right to work the land in the dust bowl. And his muscles grew and grew.

He was well-liked by the people of Phillipsburg. Tethered John, they called him. It didn't bother them that he believed he would float away if he ever became detached from his rock; he was a solid guy, a dependable guy. He rebuilt the church nigh on single-handedly after the storm of '52. Streamers of laughing children unfurled behind his decrepit pick-up truck as it stuttered into town belching smoke, and they followed him to the grocery store begging him to tell them the stories again, just one more time, and they listened wide-eyed as he told of how he uprooted a tree with his bare hands, how he pushed a stubborn cow into a field, how he hauled the Partons's jalopy out of the ditch. And when he announced his wedding to his fiancée Martha Pitwater, the whole town smiled for him.

So the guests standing in the field at his wedding, these fine people of Phillipsburg, were not unduly worried as he completed his vows, for though his final promise to his wife was to "remove this rock that holds me down and never again wear it, as your love is all I need to keep me rooted here", none imagined that anything would arise from his joining them in the rational world. They watched as with great ceremony he bent down and, with his bare hands, snapped the chain that bound his ankle to that rock, and they watched as he hurled the boulder into the river. They were still watching as he began to float upwards, towards the sun. Well, he didn't so much float away as fall upwards, as though gravity worked in reverse on him.

The menfolk blinked and the womenfolk wailed, and Martha Garvey née Pitwater dissolved into a cataract of tears before them. And though the wedding buffet was devoured - for after all, there is never any sense in wasting food - it was consumed in silence and with a solemnity never before seen in that part of the country.

Phillipsburg was never quite the same after that. Tethered John's rock was salvaged from the river, moved to the town square and mounted on a sturdy plinth, and Martha spent the rest of her days as a crow watching an empty sky. John never did return.

I suppose that's why I've never dared break the chains connecting me to my rock.

All quiet on the posting front

2005-12-11T10:10:00.000Z

No posts for a little while, because of this and because of this (which was posted on another forum asking for advice on the matter; forum membership is required to read it though, so instead of providing a link an abridged version is reproduced here):

Post 1

I was woken at 07:30 this morning by my next door neighbour...he had just seen another of our neighbours reverse out of her drive and into the side of my car, and then drive off. Very nice and community-minded of him to come round and tell me, and lucky he did or I wouldn't have known about it (I have tonsillitis so I wouldn't have left the house all day). Now, I was fairly annoyed at this, but I thought I'd let the tablets I'd just popped take effect before going out into the cold.

So at about 08:00, and Nurofenned up to the eyeballs, I ventured out and down the road to where my car was parked - opposite The Reverser's drive - with my camera phone to take some photos. I took some of my car door - dented, scratched, and streaked with red paint - and I took some of her car bumper - pretty much undamaged but smudged with blue paint. I thought about knocking on her door to ask to swap details then, but she had no lights on so I thought I'd wait until a more sociable hour. I'm nice like that, see.

Next time I looked her car was gone, and I assume she had gone off to work (luckily she missed my car this time), so when I saw lights on at 18:00 I wandered down there with my insurance documents. I should point out that her blue-smudged red car was nowhere to be seen...

"Hello," I said, "I've just popped round to swap insurance details."

"What?" she said.

"Erm...my car...?"

"What about it?"

"I thought you reversed into it."

"No, not me."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Did you see who did, then?"

"No."

"Oh. Oh, well, I suppose I'm going to have to involve the police then, as it looks like a hit and run."

"I suppose you will."

"You sure it wasn't you?"

"Yup."

"Does seem strange though. I mean, my car's parked right opposite your drive, there's red paint on my blue car and there's blue paint on your red car. I even took some photos."

"What with?"

"Erm...my camera phone?"

"Oh, your phone. I see."

"And my next-door neighbour saw you reverse into it."

"Did he now."

"Yes."

"Wasn't me."

"Are you serious?"

"Yes."

"You're seriously just going to take the p1ss?"

"I do what I like. Always have. [her exact words!]"

"I can't believe this. So you're refusing to swap details, even though I have photos of your car's paint on the damage, photos of my car's paint on your bumper, and an eyewitness account of what happened?"

"Tell you what, you leave your insurance details with me and I'll think about it."

Then she slammed the door in my face.

(I should point out that this exchange, when written, doesn't begin to convey the arrogance that was in her voice.)

Ooh, I was livid. I was spitting feathers (well, more phlegm than feathers, but I do have tonsillitis). So I went to my next door neighbour and asked him if he'd back me up - he said yes - and then I went to the police station and filled in some forms. The desk officer blokey said that someone would be allocated to it tomorrow and they'd come and talk to me and to her (and I assume to my next-door neighbour).

Post 2 (the next day)

I just got out of bed (yes, I know it's 09:00, but I'm still ill) and looked out of my window - half expecting to find my tyres slashed - and by chance saw her reversing her car out of her garage. So I grabbed my phone (only thing to hand with a camera on it) and wandered down to get a photo of her bumper with the number plate in it, on the pretense of getting my MOT certificate out of my car, for insurance purposes, like.

When I got down there, there was an envelope on my car windscreen. As I opened it she got out of her car and wandered over. The note in the envelope said "Hey, life's too short - call me today and we'll swap details."

"Morning!" she shrieked.

"Hello," I said.

"I just want you to know that it wasn't your negotiation skills that made me change my mind. [Either she reversed into my car or she didn't...I wasn't aware that it had to be negotiated!]"

"I thought you said you didn't do it. Are you saying you did now?"

"I'm not admitting anything."

"So you didn't do it, but you're willing to pay for it?"

"I've got insurance. I hope you have."

"Er...yes, I came round last night to swap it, remember? Oh, and I should let you know that you might get a call from the police at some point today."

"You called the police?"

"Well of course, it's a hit and run. I want to find out who did it."

"They won't get involved in civil stuff! Do you think I'm stupid?"

I bit my tongue; I assumed she meant it rhetorically.

So I got into my car and fished around in the glove compartment, and she got in her car and started reversing out. While she was doing this she was still talking to me, but I wasn't really listening - if her insurance is paying for it then I don't care what else she has to say. Then I got the file out of my car and got out, and the last thing she said before she drove off was "And don't you try and make out it's worse than it is! I took photos as well!"

So that's the week Ecks has had. Illness and further proof that common decency isn't actually very common at all, rounding off his annus horribilis perfectly. Roll on 2006, then he can erase 2005, in its entirety, from his mind.

Normal service will be resumed shortly...

If Gabriel García Márquez had been a chef

2005-11-28T02:45:00.000Z

Béchamel Sauce

This recipe was passed to me in Caracas by an itinerant Jewish merchant who told me that it was all that prevented him from being choked by the jungle whilst he searched for his father's grave, his eyes sparkling with a sadness that can come only from knowing the exact day of one's own death.

Ingredients
425ml milk
a few parsley stalks
1 bay leaf
1 blade of mace
10 whole black peppercorns
1 slice onion, 5mm thick
40g butter
20g plain flour
1 lemon

To begin with, burn the lemon. This will cause the air in the kitchen to grow so pungent that the silvery ghost of your dead mother will not enter the room, thereby leaving you to cook in peace. Then pour the milk into a saucepan - the saucepan I use was given to me by a small-breasted whore named Carlina in a Maracaibo boudoir suffocated by red velvet, but any heavy-bottomed pan will do - and add the parsley, bay leaf, mace, peppercorns and onion. Turn on the heat and stir until the slow spirallings of the liquid remind you of the melancholy descent into madness of an ancient dictator ravaged by syphilis. Strain the liquid into a jug, and do not forget to pick over the strainings for any diamonds that may have appeared.

Gently melt the butter, add the flour and stir vigorously until the mixture resembles the congealing tears of a dying man. To this, slowly add the infused milk, all the while stirring like a man cursed by the demons of lost loves. When half of the milk is added, pour in the rest and switch to a balloon whisk. Lower the heat to the kind of temperature that one might feel on kissing an innocent man's brow as he feels the unblinking eyes of the firing squad trained upon his heart, and cook for about five minutes (or for the time it takes for the cloud of silver butterflies to pass, whichever is the sooner).

If you wish, the above instructions may be carried out by a semi-transparent Indian, although I would caution that he be supervised lest he transport your cutlery to the spirit realm as a gift for his mulatto bride.

One sided conversations #1

2005-11-23T11:25:00.000Z

"We're not sure really, he was in there when we bought the place. The previous owners didn't say anything about him."

"That's right, just swimming around in there all day. He can't get out, he's too big to fit through the pipes. I suppose he must've got in there when he was a baby, don't know how. He seems happy enough though."

"No, he's not a great white, that would be absurd. He's a mako shark. We called in a marine biologist to give us some advice and that's what he told us he was. It was him that told us they're a protected species."

"So we couldn't just kill him, exactly right."

"Well yes, but to get in there we'd have to shut down our whole system and dismantle half the vats. Besides, even if you did have a tranquiliser gun, would you want to get into a vat of lemonade with one of them swimming around in there with you? And makos aren't native to the British Isles, we'd have to transport him a hell of a long way."

"Before we got here, we simply don't know, but we throw in a few fish for him every now and then. The biologist said he looked in good health, so we can't be doing much wrong. I suppose the sugar in the lemonade gives him some nutrition. We did make sure we routed the 'regular' rather than the 'diet' through that particular subsystem."

"No, they don't mind. Some of them even bring their kids in to see him at weekends. They call him Mikey."

"Oh no, not at all. It's all completely purified before it goes into bottles and cans."

"I don't think so. It might even be a selling point. I mean, you've heard of Gatorade...need I say more?"

November

2005-11-21T14:23:00.000Z

...a haiku.

Cold leaf, defiant,
Clings still to frost-feathered branch.
Like snow, it will fall.

Hallelujah

2005-11-17T11:13:00.000Z

I'm going to heaven. This isn't just something I believe, it's something I know. For sure. I'm safe, God told me. Told me himself. But not like those nuts you hear about, though. Not me. This was really God talking. The big man. He said I was sure-fire, grade A, top-of-the-class guaranteed for a place up there. You know, on high. Told me I'm a shoo-in. Pleased? Damn right I was pleased. I admit it, I was surprised too. Sure I was. Who wouldn't be? I mean, I've done some stuff in the past, some booze, a few assaults, a little petty theft, but nothing, you know, major. Some drugs, naturally. Who hasn't? I mean, I'd even taken a whole load of drugs just before God spoke to me, so I guess that just means that He's got different ideas of good and bad to us. And who am I to argue with the big guy? Nobody, that's who. Apart from being one of the lucky few who He's chosen to save. Man, it feels good, I can tell you.

So I figured, if I'm definitely heading up there when I die anyway, then what have I got to worry about down here? Not the police, that's for sure. If God himself says I'm cool, how the hell can they judge me? So I thought to myself, why not have a little fun before I go, huh? Do some stuff I always wanted to but thought I shouldn't? I mean, wouldn't you? Come on, you can answer. What's the matter, cat got your tongue? Oh, no, I almost forgot - I have it right here. Anyway, that's why you're tied to the chair there, and that's why I'm going to kill you.

Green day

2005-11-15T10:18:00.000Z

There was a ceremony when the last tree was uprooted. Shiny blue pennants fluttered in the summer breeze as the Mayor made a great show of tipping concrete into the earthy crater out of which ghostly white roots still poked.

"Now the whole town is clean and orderly," he said, "And we need never sweep leaves from the streets again."

Autumn arrived, and the evenings stretched further into the afternoons until it was winter, but no leaves lay crisp on the streets, and the Mayor was pleased. Winter's hoar-frost fingers chilled the grey streets and eventually melted into spring.

One day, as he was walking after breakfast, the Mayor noticed cracks appearing in the concrete outside the Town Hall. He stooped down to see green shoots poking up through the concrete carpet.

"Oh, no no no," he said, "This will not do. If flowers grow they will attract wasps."

So he called for the lorries to tip another layer on top of the cracked concrete.

Summer came and the wasp-free air shimmered above the baking concrete, and the mayor was pleased. Summer gave way to autumn, autumn conceded to winter, then once more spring arrived. Walking out after breakfast, the Mayor noticed cracks appearing in the concrete outside the Town Hall. He stooped down to see green shoots poking up through the concrete carpet.

"Oh dear me, no," he said, "Flowers and grasses will give people hayfever."

So he called for the lorries to tip another layer on top of the cracked concrete.

Every spring was the same until eventually a committee of residents arrived at the door of the Town Hall.

"Mayor," they said, "You've added so many layers of concrete that the ground has risen to the level that we can't open our doors."

"Oh my," said the Mayor, "This is a most unforeseen problem. Well, we can't take the concrete away, and of course we can't live our lives choked by plants, so our only option really is to build a new town elsewhere."

So the residents took their belongings and moved to a new site speckled with trees and nestled between verdant hills.
"It's not perfect," said the Mayor when they arrived, "And it'll take time, but eventually we'll build the town we want once more, right here."

A year later the first houses were finished, and the first roads to link them. The people suffered from hayfever and wasps in the summer and the streets were clogged with dead leaves in the autumn, but the Mayor assured them that in time these problems would be solved.

One day the Mayor returned to the old town. Down the middle of the main street ran a long, deep vein, a crack in the asphalt out of which sprouted an abundance of green shoots. He looked upon this and shook his head.

"In time this will all be fields again," he said, "Such a shame."

Long John's Lament...yarrr.

2005-11-09T09:21:00.000Z

I've stole molasses in Caracas and bananas off Havana
I've pillaged from St Lucia to Beijing
But beers drunk in Tangiers and a sloop moored in Guadeloupe
Don't compensate fer lonely pirating

Me hat's from Montserrat, me beard be always freshly sheared
Me wooden leg be finest beech veneer
But the parrot on yer shoulder don't much console ye when ye're older
Why must I be a lonely buccaneer?

Weekday mornings

2005-10-25T11:05:00.000Z

I head west before dawn breaks, fleeing the sunrise. My windscreen weeps rain, the world is blurred by its tears. Ahead of me, always, a column of red eyes, glaring angrily but constantly backing away as though afraid of me. We swim through the darkness for a time, but the sky behind grows blue. I can't outrun the sun. It arrives eventually, its light stained grey as it passes through the clouds, and the red eyes disappear. They must be scared of the dawn as well.

Shorty and the sights of Nepal

2005-10-18T11:45:00.000Z

Two weeks ago I went to Nepal
But I didn't see all of its mystical sprawl
For most of Nepal was behind a wall
And diminutive stature was my downfall

So I made up a story to cover the lack
Of photos of temples and minaret stacks
Alas, my friends were taken aback
And made a complaint to the head of Kodak

Ten packs of film was their gift of a sort
And off to Nepal without time to abort
I'm back at the wall and regret to report
Lo and behold, I am still too short

Hmm...perhaps poetry isn't Ecks' thing. Many thanks to Mark, who must be a poetry engineer (as he fixed my metre).

An eye-watering work of staggering mediocrity

2005-10-12T11:01:00.000Z

"Sir, the prisoner swears he doesn't know anything about any terrorists."
"Did you torture him?"
"Yes."
"Well go and do it some more, then."
-----
"Good news - he gave us a name, sir."
"Excellent. Have someone look into it. And clean your hands, they're dripping on the carpet."
-----
"Sir?"
"What is it?"
"The name he gave us was fake."
"Really? How odd. Get in there and torture him as punishment for giving us a false name. Then torture him some more to see if you can get him to give us some real information."
-----
"Two more names, sir."
"Good thing too. I was getting annoyed with the lights keep flickering; I was trying to read. Have someone investigate them, and torture him a little more in case he made them up again."
-----
"Sir...the names were fake again."
"Unbelievable - the cheek of the man! Go and torture him some more. So help me, we'll get these terrorists!"
"Sir, I think he's just giving us names so that we stop torturing him."
"Hmm...that is possible, I suppose. In that case, don't stop torturing him at all, even when he gives you information. That'll spoil his little plan."
-----
"Sir?"
"What is it? No, don't sit down, you'll stain the chair."
"He told us there was no longer any incentive for him to talk, so now he won't say a thing."
"Torture him harder!"
"But sir, it'll kill him."
"He should have thought of that before he started giving us the runaround. He's only got himself to blame."
"What if he doesn't actually know anything?"
"Impossible! Just get back in there."
-----
"Well, he's dead, sir."
"Damn! Oh well, bring in the next one and get started. One way or another we'll beat these inhuman monsters!"

Bride of the return of the son of As Yet Untitled

2005-10-10T07:01:00.000Z

OK, admittedly a little sooner than anticipated (Ecks has been a bit too busy to write anything new lately and this was already sitting there begging to be posted), here is the continuation of the start of Ecks' second book. Remember, it's still very much a first draft, so it'll be more Dan Brown than Gabriel Garcia Marquez...

We left Sucre in a hurry twelve days ago, Mirceles and Kinderman and I, so quickly that we didn’t even have time to pack a change of clothes. If we’d stayed any longer than we had to we’d be rotting in a cell by now, that’s for certain.

We were at my apartment, all three of us, when I found out that they were coming for me. We were in the middle of planning our trip to the coast when we were interrupted by a knock at my door, nervous knuckles rapping urgently on the flaky paintwork. The knuckles were thin and pointy and belonged to Lano, my neighbour.

“The police are coming,” he said, glancing down the hallway as he spoke, “I heard them talking to Crazy Emerson on the ground floor and they mentioned your name. He’ll keep them occupied for a bit, but they’re on their way up. If I were you I’d get out, and I’d go by the back door.”

Lano and I were hardly what one would call friends – I tended to keep myself to myself, restricting myself to a civil nod as we passed one another in the corridor – but in this neighbourhood the enemy of your enemy was your friend, and the police were the enemy of pretty much everyone.

“Thanks,” I said.

He grunted, and peered at me like a rat over his shoulder as he scurried down the corridor.

“This conversation didn’t happen, understand?”

I closed the door and turned to Mirceles and Kinderman.

“We’ve got to go,” I said simply, “The police are looking for me.”

They didn’t argue, and that made me smile. I think their unquestioning trust of me is one of the reasons I like them both so much.

I gathered a few basic items into a worn old rucksack and threw it over my shoulder before opening the window onto the narrow walkway that led to the fire escape. I helped Mirceles and Kinderman out onto it before following them myself. Within moments we were threading our way between the fly-blown dustbins, wading through the sticky-sweet odour of rotting fruit.

Luckily my car was parked down a side street a short distance from the apartment block; if I’d parked it out front, out where the police cars were now brooding like chickens, we’d all have been wearing matching steel bracelets by now. I threw the rucksack into the back and helped Mirceles and Kinderman onto the cracked leather seats, then clambered behind the wheel. Five minutes later we were out of the tangled backstreets and onto the main road that oozed like a cholesterol-choked artery through the middle of the city.

Our flight south took us right across the city, past the 1895 Grand Revolutionary Stadium, past the abandoned cigar factory that was once the beating heart of this city, past the drunks, the junkies, the hookers and other heaps of human rubble that collected in drifts on the edges of the Red Barrio. In a rash blaze of arrogance I chose to drive straight past the Presidential palace, but as we neared its vast marble archways my nerves jangled in my stomach and I wondered whether I hadn’t made an enormous mistake. My worry turned out to be misplaced; no-one looked at us twice. We were just another car on the road. I laughed at the colossal bronze statue of the President as it stood astride the arched entranceway, frowning in disapproval at all who passed, and I was still laughing when the traffic thinned to nothing and the dust of the city limits curled up behind us in the rear view mirror.

We sailed along the empty road, the big old car wallowing like a breaching whale as the asphalt slid beneath its wheels. Although the ribbon of tarmac that stretched out in front of us was cracked and dusty, it was to me a highway paved with gold, a highway that led to our salvation. Wiry grey bushes floated past with a regularity that hinted at landscaping. We passed a snake basking amongst the rocks by the roadside, with lurid crimson scales that were iridescent in the sun and a flickering black tongue, the only thing that betrayed that it was alive.

The car ran out of petrol shortly after we saw the snake. It coughed and choked and protested for a short time that it could carry on, but we had no choice eventually but to guide it to the side of the road and leave it to turn brown, disintegrate and die amongst the scrub; there was no question of going back for fuel. I cursed our luck, but we all knew that stopping for petrol in the city would have been far too risky, and the next service station was miles away. I helped Mirceles and Kinderman out of the car, took my rucksack from the back and started walking. We knew that the President’s thugs would have finished scouring my apartment and roughing up my neighbours and be glued to our trail like dogs by now, so we headed away from the road and off up into the hills. I hoped the abandoned car might confuse them a little and buy us some time, but I am a realistic enough person that I was planning for the worst case.

I had no compass with me, and of course neither did Mirceles or Kinderman, but I knew roughly the geography of the barren lands south of Sucre. Most of the desert was undulating sand and dry, baked earth punctuated by stunted bushes and tufts of coarse grass, but a great range of shifting dunes ran south for miles before turning east, framing the arid lands with an L-shaped border of sand. If we could keep the hills of sand on our right, we could travel relatively comfortably until we reached the southern dunes.

At first we travelled parallel to the road, but after an hour of walking it swept guiltily away from us, as though ashamed of our company, to head instead towards the sultry, mosquito-flecked swamps of the coast, and we were left without landmarks by which to plot our course. Before us lay a rolling dry sea of pink earth and grey rock, as featureless as the wide ocean. We had been cast adrift, left to the mercies of these desiccated waves.

Today is World Day Against The Death Penalty. If you want to know more about this, go here.

As yet untitled

2005-09-28T13:06:00.000Z

Below is the first draft of the start of Ecks' second book, as yet still tantalisingly untitled. For those who care, The Servants Of Gods still sits on a shelf gathering dust, as Ecks is too sick of the sight of it to bring himself to make the revisions that need to be made before it is in a fit state to be submitted to agents and publishers again. It will happen; just not yet...

Yesterday I tricked the Devil. It was an amazing story, one that should be handed down from generation to generation and told to children by their mothers, but the story of how I came to be where I am today is in my opinion more amazing, so I think I will tell that instead. To begin with, at least. For now let me leave it that the Devil is very handsome, but not as tall as the legends make out.

But where am I? Where is this place, the journey towards which has been so eventful that it should obscure a story about the Devil himself? It is a good question, and one to which I admit I do not know the answer myself, because I am in fact lost. My name is Moses Temple Rodriguez, I am 33 years old and I am lost.

I have been lost in the desert for twelve days, ever since I was forced to flee Sucre in fear for my life with my friends Mirceles and Kinderman. I am trying to find my way to the village where my brother lives, because if I can find him he’ll help me. When I reach the village I will be safe, because it’s deep in the south, on the other side of the desert, where the rebels are at their strongest. No-one who works for the government would dare set foot down there. I am not safe here. I am not safe anywhere unless I keep moving. If I don’t keep moving they will catch me. It’s quite simple.

I have no idea why they are after me. I can only guess that perhaps it has something to do with my politics, as everything in this algae-stained sinkhole of a country always leads back to politics eventually, if one unravels the threads far enough, although all of this is mere speculation and none of it makes any difference to my current situation. The fact is that if I don’t keep one step ahead of the troop of unshaven thugs that the President has sent out after me, I’ll find myself with my ribs on the wrong side of my chest with the buzzards picking them clean.

Just now as I woke I saw a cloud-white plume of dust rising up in the distance like cigar smoke. They are gaining on us. We must push on.

Oil be back

2005-09-26T14:22:00.000Z

That the hurricane had been created by the Texan oilmen there could be no doubt. What else would they do with their millions, their billions, than build a weather machine? It had been so obvious that, for once, even the conspiracy theorists had not bothered to raise a fuss. The roof of the underground bunker just outside Galveston had creaked open, they'd pointed the nozzle of the machine at the Persian Gulf, and in the study of his ranch, to a chorus of encouraging mooing from his cattle, a silver-haired billionaire had thrown the big red lever.

Of course, the Texan oilmen hadn't comprehended the power that the Gulf Stream wielded in its warm hands, that its breath would or even could turn their baby upon themselves.

That was close, an oilman said at their next meeting. I didn't like jazz anyway, said another. We were lucky, said a third. No, them Arabs was lucky, said the silver-haired billionaire. We'll fire it up again, he said, we just have to wait for the wind to change.

Inspired by Sharon Hurlbut's post over at Field Notes.

There are people I've e-mailed but never met

2005-09-23T07:49:00.000Z

At 08:54 on Tuesday the 12th of October 2005, Herbert Griffin arrived at work. He arrived at his desk to find a conspicuous gap where his computer had been.

"Where's my computer?" he asked his secretary. She looked up at him from beneath eyelids weighed down with mascara.

"Being replaced," she said, "IT said they'll be round with a new one by lunchtime."

"What happened to the old one?"

"Thrown out, I s'pose."

"But my whole life was on that computer."

She blinked slowly, shrugged and returned to her magazine. He felt faint. He shut the door to his office and sat down. Address book, phone numbers, bank details, customer reference numbers, calendar - all gone, locked in that machine's dead brain. These numbers, these abstract strings of digits were what defined him, and they were lost; for all intents and purposes he might as well not exist.

At 09:12 on Tuesday the 12th of October 2005, Herbert Griffin recognised the lump in his jacket pocket. His mobile phone! Of course, he thought, everything would be saved in there. He congratulated himself for having had the forethought to spend the extra money on a state-of-the-art multi-functional model. He dipped his hand into his pocket and thumbed the "ON" button.

Nothing.

Surely he hadn't forgotten to charge it? He pressed the button again, but the only thing that flickered on the small dark screen was the reflection of his own eye. A cold sensation ran through him, as though icy water was being poured down the inside of his body. He felt nauseous. His limbs felt weak, as though they had no bones in them. He slumped down in his chair, his breathing ragged, barely able to raise his voice to call his secretary.

"Amy," he called, "I'm...I'm not feeling at all well. Please cancel all my appointments for today."

She didn't look up from her magazine.

The room swam before him. Sweat trickled down his face and collected in milky pools in the folds around his eyes. He felt a disquieting numbness in his arms. He looked down. The leather of the chair was quite visible through them.

That morning friends and colleagues' e-mails went unanswered and their phone calls simply received a flat, dead tone. Meetings were unattended, appointments not kept. "Funny," e-mails said to each other as they flew through mazes of circuit boards, "he seems to have just vanished."

When the IT department arrived with a new computer, his office was empty. At 11:21 on Tuesday the 12th of October 2005, Herbert Griffin had disappeared.

The old gods

2005-09-19T07:16:00.000Z

It's a grey day. Across the road a crooked man scurries along like a raindrop running down a window pane. I recognise him from a past we both once shared. I pull the brakes on the rig. A thousand snakes hiss at me in indignation.

"Hey, Anansi," I call from the cab. He looks sideways at me but keeps on going. His legs rattle. I call again.

"My name's Anatole," he calls back, "Leave me alone."

"You're Anansi. I'd recognise you anywhere."

He pauses, looks first left and then right, then scuttles hunch-backed over the road.

"Keep your voice down," he says.

I open the door and he climbs in. Steam rises from his head in the warmth of the cab.

"So, how are things?" I ask.

"I'm doing fine. Fine. That's why I don't need you shouting...shouting that name across the street at me."

"I just wanted to reminisce. I haven't seen you for ages."

"I'm not Anansi any more, I'm Anatole. And I'm not a spider-god any more, I'm a chartered surveyor. That's why you haven't seen me for ages."

"I know, I know. I was just thinking, remember the old days? The fun we had? I thought maybe we could--"

"No, I don't remember the old days," he says, "At least, I'm trying not to. I try to keep my mind on my job."

"I'm sorry. It's this weather. It just got me thinking, is all."

"Listen: you're not Thor, you're Tony. You're a truck driver. Those days are over now. Just let it go."

He gets out of the cab. Rivulets of water stream down the window as he shuts the door firmly behind him. Lightning flashes a photograph of him at me - black-and-white, his collar turned up and his hat pulled down low - and moments later a snap of thunder rolls across the sky.

It makes me feel a little hollow.

Office politics

2005-09-12T06:59:00.000Z

"Yes, sir?"
"I'd like to talk to you about the two new members in your team. I've had some complaints from other members of staff that their behaviour is disruptive."
"Funny...I was sure Brian and Clive would get on fine."
"Brian Hitler and Clive Gandhi do not get on, by all accounts. There seems to be some kind of...of fundamental clash of personalities."
"Really? What's the problem?"
"I'm told that Brian has been trying to annex part of Clive's desk."
"Yes. He says he needs more space in which to work, sir, and that it used to be his anyway."
"Yes, well, that's bad enough in itself, but it gets worse - apparently, instead of complaining to Human Resources like most other people would, Clive has decided to lay down on the area of desk in question in some kind of non-violent protest."
"He is laying on his front, sir - he can still use his computer."
"That's hardly the point. Something will have to be done."
"I simply don't understand. They both came highly recommended."
"Don't worry, I'm not suggesting that you get rid of them. Just...move them so that they're not together."
"Ah. Well, in that case, I think I may have a solution: Brian can go and sit at the spare desk between Vicky Churchill and Derek Stalin, and Clive can share a desk with Bob The Hun. There - I think that's the last time we'll see a personality clash in this office."

The disconnected man

2005-09-08T14:02:00.000Z

The Earth looked beautiful from up there. A vast, perfect jewel of infinite facets, swirled with clouds but frozen like a photograph. It had been growing for some time, looming large; it filled Kovacs' field of vision now. A few of the billions of stars that they had marvelled at as they entered orbit had not been eclipsed by the Earth, and they loitered on the periphery of his vision, tiny pinholes in an eternal black curtain that would remain drawn forever.

Kovacs was pleased that their primary mission had gone well. Juspeczyk, Dreiberg, Veidt and Blake had all performed admirably, as he'd expected, and the solar panels had been replaced without incident. There had been the matter of the accident to mar an otherwise perfect trip, of course, but luckily nothing had been damaged. The space station would continue to crawl around the Earth as it had done for decades.

He looked down. Far below, a satellite traced its orbit before him, gliding across the earth like an ice-skater. It was probably beaming pictures of him and his team down to Earth right now for the people to gaze at over their dinner. He smiled down at it, imagining that he was smiling to all the people of the world.

It was starting to feel warmer now. Friction caused by the outer reaches of the Earth's atmosphere. Ironic, really; he'd been complaining about the cold when the accident had happened.

There was a click, and a grainy voice coated with static.

"Kovacs? Are you there?" Juspeczyk's voice buzzed in his ear. She was choking down sobs. "I hope you can hear me. Our hearts are with you, you hear? Our...I'm sorry, oh God, I...it's just..."

Another click, then silence.

The crew had been in intermittent radio contact with him since his safety cord had disconnected, all the while he'd been tumbling away from them towards Earth. They'd been talking to him for hours, trying to reassure him. They told him about how proud his family were of him, how good a friend he'd been to each of them, what a good team-mate he was. None of them mentioned the obvious, that in less than an hour the heat of entering the Earth's atmosphere would sear through his suit and burn him to a crisp.

For his part, Kovacs hadn't said anything. He knew that all conversations were recorded.

He hoped they wouldn't record his screams.

Lower Breckleton Borough Council, Customer Service Department

2005-09-07T06:57:00.000Z

"Good morning sir, how can I help?"
"Good morning. I'd like to claim damages from the council for my car. It was damaged by a pothole on a public road."
"I see."
"Can I do that?"
"Well, you could, but it would be terribly selfish of you, sir."
"Selfish? Would it?"
"Yes. You see, if it wasn't for people like you, sir, claiming money for damage caused by potholes, the council would have enough money to fill the potholes in. As it is, though, our hands are tied. Sand doesn't grow on trees, you know."
"But if the council had simply maintained the roads in the first place, there would be no claims."
"Would that it were so simple, sir. If it were just cars we had to worry about I'd be a happy man! But we have to deal with continental drift, stilt walkers, sunspots, dead albatrosses falling from the sky...each one enough to create the tiniest imperfection in the tarmac, to be nibbled at and gnawed at by tyres until a pothole sits like a boil in our otherwise flawless road. And the council can't monitor the flight path of every ageing albatross, sir! The costs would be crippling."
"So by making a claim, I'm preventing the council from maintaining roads."
"In effect, sir, yes."
"Roads that have been damaged by falling birds."
"Well, in fairness, the albatross is quite a large bird."
"So what would you advise me to do?"
"Go around, sir."
"I'm sorry?"
"The pothole: go around it. Then your car won't be damaged."
"But there are potholes on the other side of the road as well."
"Ah. Then go up on the pavement."
"Won't there be a risk that pedestrians will be injured?"
"Of course, but any such injuries and related claims will be made against you and not us. There, I think that's all settled then, thank you for your time. Next! Oh, good morning sir, how can I help?"
"Good morning. My rubbish wasn't collected this morning. I'd like to make a complaint."
"I see."
"Can I do that?"
"Well, you could, but it would be terribly selfish of you, sir."

The mask

2005-09-05T07:12:00.001Z

The end would begin in Tokyo. The lurid lights of Roppongi would glare down as people first succumbed to the angry, weeping blisters, then the ragged cough, the shivering, and finally the blood-flecked vomit as the stomach ate itself.

Minoru Nakata stumbled into the road. People streamed past him, electrical impulses down the synapse of the street. Between their feet, oily neon reflections wallowed in dark puddles. Minoru lurched into the stream and grabbed someone by the shoulder. The man's eyes flashed with fear.

"Tanaka is a bastard," Minoru said, and the man twisted his shoulder loose of Minoru's grip, "They can't cut me out like that, I run that damn lab. And he's wrong. It wasn't my fault, it was an accident. Accidents happen in labs all the time."

The man wriggled away from him and was swept up into the flow. Minoru stepped in front of a girl.

"Tanaka thought I breached protocols, but everything was fine," he pushed his face right up close to hers. She wiped his spittle from her mouth.

"Leave me alone, you drunk!"

Minoru saw her storm away from him.

"Everything was fine," he said to himself, "I designed those damn protocols myself. The samples couldn't have been compromised. The breakage was dealt with, the room was sterilised. Nothing was overlooked, nothing could have gone wrong. I know, I was there. I was there, damn it! I was th..."

The traffic fumes had choked the streets in the still heat that afternoon. Breathing would have been unbearable without some kind of protection. He pulled the surgical mask from the pocket of his suit jacket and looked at it. He let it go. It fell to the ground like a snowflake.

Under A Tuscan Sky

2005-08-30T07:59:00.000Z

We sweep by, tyres grumbling. Beside us in the fields, regiments of sunflowers wear wilted crowns. Their heads bowed towards the brown blood earth, they mourn the passing of summer. We leave dust hanging in the air behind us; a hot wind sighs up from the south and carries it away.

Nessun legge

2005-08-18T14:40:00.000Z

Ecks is off on holiday to Italy for a week. Blog updates on his return, amici mio!

0870 968 3665

2005-08-16T07:12:00.000Z

"You are in the process of fulfilling a vision, don't let fools clip your wings. Your daughter is pregnant, but she will have a miscarriage that will destroy her marriage. A strong sunset Venus and a bright midnight Jupiter imply the ability to snatch a very real victory from the jaws of apparent defeat - snatch it! The cancer in your liver has metastasised, and you have less than eight months to live. Pay heed to friends - don't always force yourself to learn some difficult lesson or shoulder a burden, just shrug your shoulders and let it slip away. Joshua will fail his chemistry exam, so there'll be no university for him. A forward-thinking person like you will grasp success on a day like today! Thank you for calling the Psychic Hotline."

Dumb all over

2005-08-08T09:29:00.000Z

Close the door. OK, good. Nathan, you're up for sentry duty today. Keep your eye on that corridor. OK, let's begin. Just stop me any time you want to ask a question.

Today we will be discussing gravity, and examining the flaws in Mr Perkins' astrology classes. And yes, children, there are flaws. I assume you have all heard of Sir Isaac Newton? No? How very sad. When I was younger everyone had heard of him. He was--

Yes, Jay? Well, that was a long time ago, before all the changes, and we are not here to reminisce. But I am an old man and I admit that nostalgia is my morphia, so I suppose we can perhaps talk a little on history as well...

It was different then, very different. Back then we had our own classes in schools and universities. Hell, there were universities. We had some respect. Men and women worked hard to mine the vast bleak face of our ignorance, chipping away at it, adding piece by painstaking piece to our collective understanding of the world. Those men and women will all be dead by now. And their work - decades, centuries of work - all gone. You wouldn't know it, of course; all the books have been destroyed, all the records altered, and anyone who spoke up just quietly disappeared. I mean, I'm taking a risk just telling you this. So don't you breathe a word of this to anyone. You keep attending your theology classes and your faith healing seminars and your Intelligent Design workshops, but on the inside you keep on questioning. Question everything. Then here, and only here, can you say it. And only then in a whisper.

Go ahead. Whisper it with me now:

Science.

Letters received whilst away on holiday

2005-08-02T08:47:00.000Z

18 July

Mr Kernow

We have your daughter. Enclosed with this letter is a photograph of her with my associate, Mr Aries, as proof of life. You will see that he is holding today's Times. If you wish to see her alive again, you will deposit a briefcase containing £8,000,000 in unmarked, non-consecutive notes on the bench facing the pond in Logan Park at 12:00 on the 21st of July. Any police involvement will, of course, make Mr Capricorn very unhappy. He is the one in the photo holding the knife.

Mr Leo

22 July

Mr Kernow

Mr Pisces informs me that no briefcase was left on the bench yesterday. This is most unexpected, but we will give you the benefit of the doubt this once and assume that there was simply some misunderstanding, and will for now leave all of your daughter's appendages attached to her body. As a result of the inconvenience incurred, however, the transaction fee ("ransom" is such an uncouth word, don't you think?) has inflated to £9,000,000. Please leave this money in a sports holdall in the skip behind Bradshaw Shoe Repairs at 17:30 on the 25th of July. The same terms and conditions as before still apply, of course.

Mr Leo

26 July

Mr Kernow

Mr Pisces is getting tired of making wasted journeys, Mr Kernow, and Mr Capricorn so hates to see Mr Pisces unhappy that he lopped off one of your daughter's fingers before Mr Aries and I could stop him. I have enclosed it in this letter. See what a neat job Mr Capricorn's knife did? He is a very keen amateur butcher, and he just loves to practise. In fact, the only technique he has yet to master is the severance of a head from a body, and you should assume that he will take whatever opportunities he can get to perfect that one. I will be sure to send you the results of his handiwork should the chance arise.

The fee is now £10,000,000. Leave it in a packing crate under the south strut of the Wilkinson-MacNay bridge at 20:00 on the 29th of July. I should advise you, however, that non-payment will result in the termination of our business arrangement and the subsequent liquidation of all assets that we hold.

Mr Leo

30 July

Mr Kernow

Mr Capricorn has grown tired of waiting for you to furnish us with our fee, so today he finally got around to perfecting that technique I was telling you about. I am sure you will be impressed - I will post the result of it to you so that you can examine his handiwork.

I am, of course, disappointed that we could not come to some arrangement regarding finances, but I hope that we may part on cordial terms.

Best wishes

Mr Leo

1 August

Dear Mr Kernow

We called at 08:33 on the 1st of August, but you weren't at home. There is a parcel being held for you at the Todcaster Sorting Office. If you do not claim it within 14 days it will be disposed of.

Regards

The Post Office

Perspectives

2005-08-01T00:52:00.000Z

The crow and the raven fly over the cemetery, their fluttering paths weaving above the antique graves of men long dead. They alight on the shoulders of an angel weeping stone tears and watch the funeral. Stiff black ranks of mourners bow over the coffin. A priest drones the usual words. Raindrops tap politely on the varnished pine lid. A sodden flag hangs at half mast, lifeless. Wet mud trickles onto the gravel path.

The crow and the raven fly away. Yesterday there had been a wedding; today there are no unattended plates of food. There is no reason to stay.

The Chrome-Plated Megaphone of Destiny

2005-07-26T09:22:00.001Z

There was a gap between hopeful dawn's rising and a night that drew heavy black curtains over the earth, so the day stretched to fill it. A man caught halfway between birth and death with an old-fashioned radio and drawers of neatly pressed clothes found himself marooned in this day as it slipped across the globe. He was not worried. He had been stranded in days before.

As the minute hand chased the hour hand he settled in and made himself comfortable. All he could do, he mused, was to sit it out. She'd be here eventually, to brighten his southern sky. It was all just a matter of time.

Medulla oblongata

2005-07-12T08:54:00.000Z

This guest post comes to you from an entity residing in the medulla oblongata of a 24-year-old Turkish man. The man's name is not important, but for those who are interested in such things, it is Ismet.

"The brain stem is a comfortable home; it gives one a clear perspective on a lot of things. There are none of the confused muddlings that clog the amygdala, nor the muddy clouds that stain the fringes of the frontal lobes. There was a time when I would inhabit these centres of higher consciousness, but the images there are too confused for my taste now. I remember fondly the time when I was younger, aeons ago, and none of my hosts exhibited any elevated cognition. Things were so much simpler then. More pure. It was beautiful.

The situation is worsened when they're in love. One must retreat further into the hindbrain in such cases, for fear of being drenched in the rushing purple waves that flood the cortexes. My host is in love. I can sense it even here, just a whisper from the spinal cord. There is a girl who bewitches him, whose words sound as music to his ears, whom he would take and hold in his arms and never let go - and yet he is afraid of her. I feel his pulse rise, his breathing quicken, his brain fear her as she nears. Then she smiles at him, and his knees weaken, and his belly turns hot and the feelings of fear melt into floods of warmth that flow even as far as the spine.

I understand neither his anxiety, nor his elation. These feelings, these responses, they run against the natural order of things. These emotions obfuscate the simple beauty that I, and surely all, must seek.

So once again, I find it time to locate for myself a new host. Perhaps this time I can acquire one immune to love, immune to the dizzying highs and the crushing lows, so that he and I can finally be truly happy."

Ecks Ridgehead is unwell.

Vote for Juanzo

2005-07-01T06:57:00.000Z

Time is at a premium this week, so Ecks is forced simply to leave this link for you.

Edible Flowers

2005-06-27T09:10:00.000Z

The last writing challenge was 350 words on "Edible Flowers".

Her husband’s name was Gdansig Kallorifax, but that was the least of her worries. Twelve years of marriage had changed him; she had married an athletic young man with an ardour of passion and vigour that had spread from his heart and his loins to fill every inch of their home, but over the years he had doused these flames with beer and filled the hole they left with food. Now he was a bloated walrus of a man, his skin stretched tight by his burgeoning gut, and he wallowed on the sofa like a beached whale waiting to be floated back to the sea.

The love of food that had replaced his love of her led him down many culinary cul-de-sacs, and, though the sight of him repulsed her, his wife dutifully indulged his variable gluttony. His journey as a gourmand had taken him past raw sea urchin roe, deep fried frog, stinging nettle leaves, chocolate-covered wasps and goat brain curry to his latest stop – flowers. And so she prepared meals for him that, although as unappetising to her as his usual fare, at least had the benefit of being sweetly fragranced.

It wasn’t the flowers that made her snap; she had decided some time ago that something needed to be done. She’d already made the decision. The flowers were just a happy coincidence.

That evening, though, she looked at him as he ate and remembered the good times at the beginning, before he had lost interest in her and in himself, and a doubt surfaced in her mind that asked her if she was doing the right thing. He can change, it said, but she forced it back under, starving it of oxygen, and looked at him as he really was: a lazy, corpulent caricature of the man she had once loved. The doubt had arrived far too late anyway; the nightshade petals had been the first thing on the plate to pass his lips.

Next week's challenge will be 300 words with the title "Roland, The Dog-Faced Boy".

Humid

2005-06-24T11:08:00.000Z

The heat is as oppressive as a firing squad; gritty sweat slicks under my shirt as the devil himself breathes on my neck. The fan is little help as it turns its head left-right-left as though searching for a lost child; it merely pushes the stale air bureacratically around the room. Bulging clouds outside the window hang heavy in the air, laughing, taunting me. They don't need so much rain in their grey bellies, yet still they will not release it. If this heat doesn't lift soon, I won't be here much longer. There will simply be a puddle on a chair where I used to be. Ecks marks the spot.

Pasta

2005-06-22T10:24:00.000Z

They weren't ready when the end came, even though they had known it was coming. It hit them when they sat down to eat dinner one evening. He'd cooked dinner, spaghetti bolognese, whilst she'd taken her shower. It was always like this. She came out of the bathroom wrapped in steam and a towel, and gave him her usual smile. He smiled back. She got changed. The pasta squirmed onto the plate, and he pinned it down with sauce. Cherry red polka-dots appeared on his shirt. It was always like this. They sat down at the table; him on the left, her on the right. Even though it was a little close to the wall, he didn't mind sitting on the left. She told him that the food tasted good. He thought it was nothing special. He told her that it was always like this. And at that point, as the parmesan relaxed into liquid on their plates, their relationship ended.

The important thing about endings, though, especially when writing fiction, is to know when to

Punk

2005-06-13T11:25:00.000Z

The last writing challenge was 250 words on the title "Punk".

Keep it simple, keep it quick, don’t give them time to think. If you think you’re dead. You’re a puppet. No-one will even care when your vomity corpse is found under the bridge with broken ribs and a needle in its eye. Kick them, smash them, it’s the only language they understand. If you don’t you’re just another cog in their fascist machine, and I will tear out your throat and piss down your neck. I’m no dogsbody. I’m not like everybody else. I will tear out your throat and piss down your neck. Blood, sweat and tears. That’s just the speed talking. Do something, do nothing, I don’t care. Don’t wait for me. Get pissed, get off your face, get angry. Steal something from someone. Lift them up, knock them down, then stomp them into oblivion. Blood, spit and beers. The end justifies the means. Visit someone else’s misery. I’m looking at them and they’re looking at me. United we stand. Do I offend you? If you want to know more just ask. But there’s no point in asking, you’ll get no reply. If you think you’re dead you probably aren’t. How could hell be any worse? Now you’re thinking. This is a sentence. This is another. This is a third. Go ahead and laugh, it really is that easy.

The next one has a two week deadline, as Ecks has to go to Paris again for another week...it will be 350 words on "Edible Flowers".

L'etranger

2005-06-06T13:25:00.000Z

Ecks is off to Paris for a week now. Will he return as Ecques Tête du Dorsale?

Probably not.

Blog updates upon his return, mes amis.

Paradise Jazz

2005-06-01T09:00:00.000Z

A slightly different post today. No fiction, just bare-faced advertising...

Buy Paradise Jazz by Kat Pomfret!

"My growing up was poetic; the kind that everybody likes to read about but nobody wants to have. In print, my childhood was one gigantic laugh-out-loud Christmas TV spectacular (things are certainly funnier in the past tense than the present) but the truth is, for Mom, Tantie, Jimmy and me, life was like jambalaya; plenty of flavour and lots of good things but, looked at one way, nothing to hold it all together, and, looked at another, Lord, you try unpicking one thing from another. And the unravelling begins for the first time with a bowl of sugar doughnuts, begins over again with a first-class ticket for flight 181 and a bottle of Freixenet, then begins for real the night Sanderson Miller walked into Paradise Jazz and heard a soul-dark girl singing white hot blues."

She's a very talented young British writer, Paradise Jazz is her debut novel and it's released today. It's available direct from Snowbooks, the publisher, or of course Amazon.

PS Kat Pomfret can now be unveiled as Ecks' mystery short-fiction-writing-challenge buddy, and as she was being consumed by the whirlwind of activity surrounding the release of her book last week she asked that the short story challenge set last week, "Punk", be delayed. So Ecks is sorry to report to those expecting a sizzling fictional piece about violence, piercings and phlegm that they will have to wait (although the mysteriously named yet efficient Belle Nuit has already composed a piece).

P.P.S. Yet another friend of Ecks has started a blog. There's a lot of it about, apparently.

Life imitates art imitates life

2005-05-31T10:23:00.000Z

Ecks' fingers hovered over the keyboard; he hadn't written a word since she'd stormed out three nights ago.

As always, it had been a foolish argument over nothing, but still her eyes had glittered like they always did, morning sunlight reflected in ice. She'd wasted no time in hurling the usual clothes into the usual bag, and he was left hanging there in his dressing gown as the familiar sound of stillettos click-clacked to silence on the other side of a slammed door.

Ecks let his fingers drop. It was no use; he knew by now that it was pointless to try to write without her. He placed a piece of paper neatly on the desk in front of him, picked up a pen and started to compose a letter.

"Dear Muse," he began, "I'm sorry. Please come back."

A friend of Ecks and another friend of Ecks have both started blogs. Now, we all know how nice it is to receive comments, so why don't you pop over there and say hello?

Chapter 1

2005-05-27T06:40:00.000Z

The following is Chapter 1 of The Servants Of Gods, Ecks Ridgehead's as yet unpublished first novel.

1. Civil War, Civil Guards

The spectre of the Spanish Civil War had passed La Locura by as it stalked the mainland, gaunt and hollow-masked, thrusting its dirty spear into the chests of so many young men and women. The three years of terrible bloodshed had certainly not gone unheeded, but happily for the residents of the tiny island they seemed to have been forgotten about in the bloody struggle for power. No calls to join either cause came, no troops marched into the Plaza Mayor, no aeroplanes whined overhead whistling their bombs or cackling their machine gun fire. The ships fat with weapons and ammunition bound for Franco’s Nationalist armies lumbered down from Germany and on round to southern Spain, ignoring La Locura as countless others had done before.

In return, most of the islanders ignored the war. There were some on the island that felt passionately about the conflict one way or another, but all were sensible enough not to wish to take up arms against their friends and kin, and for a community built centuries before by soldiers deserting to avoid conflict this was not altogether too surprising. The islanders decided pragmatically that the river of blood gushing into the sea from the mainland was swollen enough without being fed by a trickle from La Locura.

As it happened, most of the people who lived on La Locura were sympathetic to the Republican cause. This is not to say that they understood the politics of the Civil War and had chosen to side with the communists; to be honest, they had no particular left-wing ideologies at all, but were Republican by dint of being vaguely anti-Nationalist. Most would have laughed had it been suggested to them that they were supporting the communists. They didn’t believe in any of the communist ideals. Most of them went to church on a Sunday, and they would certainly have balked at any notion of land or property redistribution, unless, of course, it meant that they would get more. It was just that people on the island were aware of the fact that Franco’s Nationalists were in league with the despotic regimes of Mussolini and Hitler, about which they had heard vague yet terrible things, and that was quite enough to make their minds up for them.

Fidel, though, was staunchly Republican. He was the one that owned and operated a boat for Don Moscote, the island’s cocaine-smuggling entrepreneur, bringing goods and mail to the island from Portugal and Spain twice each week. Eager to make a contribution towards the Republican cause about which he was so passionate, he began to collect propaganda posters from the mainland and distribute them around the island, and by 1939 the slogans screamed down from every flat surface with their exclamation marks and unnecessary capital letters: "Peasants, the land is Yours!", "Workers! Fascism is Exploitation and Slavery!" and "The Claw of the Italian Invader grasps to Enslave us!" But by that time the war was all but over, and the Italian Invader was presumably already on the verge of grasping and Enslaving La Locura, whose residents, one must imagine, were now all set for Exploitation and Slavery.

In spite of the island’s overwhelming feeling of indifference towards it, the war did strike La Locura with one casualty, albeit indirectly. Fidel’s wife Consuela had a brother who had moved to Madrid as a young man, and some months into 1937 Fidel himself had the great misfortune of delivering to his wife a letter from her sister-in-law that told of her brother’s death at the hands of the Nationalist insurgents. His wife remained remarkably calm as she read the news, out loud, in front of him, but then she told him that she felt a little tired and that she would like to retire to bed to rest. She walked resignedly up the stairs without waiting for his reply, and Fidel was left with only the echo of her perfume for company. Despite hearing nothing from her he remained downstairs for several hours out of respect for her privacy, and he would have remained longer but for the ticking of the clock, which had become so loud that it was unbearable. When he could stand it no more he ventured up the stairs and into their bedroom, where he found her lying peacefully in bed with the letter clutched to her chest. His first glance told him that she was asleep, but after watching her for a few seconds he realised that this was not the case, and concluded through a mist of tears that she had simply lain down on the bed and died of sorrow. He pulled the letter from her embrace with tremulous fingers, trying desperately to ignore the dark blooms of ink blotted by her tears, and placed it back in the envelope, upon which he wrote “Return to Sender”. He sat down next to her on the bed and said to her as he stroked her hair: “So you would die for him rather than live for me.” He kissed her once on the forehead and once on the lips, then called for Padre Eusebio to arrange the funeral. Fidel never spoke of his wife again.

Contrary to Fidel’s protestations, in reality nothing much changed on the island after the war ground itself to an end in 1939 and the Nationalists took to power. The only perceptible difference was that, one by one, Fidel’s posters were torn down or pasted over, except for one that remained in Dionisio’s tavern which he kept solely to annoy Yolanda, his wife. It had originally borne the rousing slogan "Women, work more for the Men who Fight!" but he had obliterated the words "who Fight!", and whenever he wanted Yolanda to do something for him he would point to the poster and say "Believe me my darling, I would do it myself, but as you can see from this official poster it is the will of the government. Come now, you had better do it, or I will have to report you to the authorities." She always ignored him.

At the same time, far away in Madrid, General Franco began to contract the fever of paranoia endemic among revolutionary dictators, for those who gain power through revolution or insurgence are acutely aware that power thus gained could so easily be lost in a similar manner. So he set about installing the Guardia Civil, a national militia that kept its eyes fixed resolutely upon its own people, in Spain’s towns, cities and villages as a way of beating down rebellions and keeping the peace. As is so often the case, though, the peace that was gained through violence, fear and brutality was kept by violence, fear and brutality. The keepers of this uneasy peace, these officers of the Guardia Civil, were at best cantankerous and petty and at worst vicious and sadistic. They were officially part of the army and believed that they had all the privileges of military conquerors, and behaved as such. They always worked in pairs, for protection - which should give an indication of how well-loved they were. These two-man patrols were known as parejas.

-- o --

On the 23rd of April 1940, two wiry, angular young men arrived noiselessly in La Locura. Eduardo García and Iago Moisés stepped onto the quayside from Fidel’s boat wearing the dark green uniforms and grotesque leather hats of the Guardia Civil, and both bore the markings of Lieutenants. They brought with them a single suitcase and a sense of disquiet.

After disembarking they made straight for the decrepit police building, and on their arrival there they found Captain Godofredo Patrón leaning back in his chair, with his booted feet propped up on the desk and his hat full over his face, snoring like a drowning man. The immaculately attired Guards wrinkled their noses in disgust at the sight and smell of this slovenly individual, and in one movement Lieutenant García swept Captain Patrón’s dusty boots and silver hip flask off of the table and slammed a sturdy brown envelope down in their place. Captain Patrón woke with a start, his eyelids opening and closing like the wings of a dying moth.

"What’s going on? Who are you?" he spluttered, his eyes lolling wildly around, frantically trying to co-operate with each other.

"I am Lieutenant Eduardo García and this is Lieutenant Iago Moisés, of the Guardia Civil," said Lieutenant García, "We have come to relieve you of your duties. In that envelope you will find papers authorising the transfer of command from you to us. You won’t need to check them, I can assure you that they are all in order."

Captain Patrón’s bleary eyes widened as he blinked in the enormity of the situation. His brain was hammering out a painful rhythm against the inside of his skull.

"So...mmph...you, you’re in charge here now?"

"That is correct," sneered Lieutenant Moisés, his mosquito whine of a voice sidling lazily through the smoky atmosphere. "This is now a Guardia Civil post and you are not a Guardia Civil. It’s quite simple."

"What, you’re taking my job, just like that?" Captain Patrón’s sleep- and drink-fuddled brain was beginning to draw level with the conversation. "How can you do this?"

"You have been relieved of your duties," said Captain García. "You have twenty-four hours to remove your personal effects from this office. Although I doubt very much that the removal of two empty bottles of wine and a tin of cigars will require quite that much time."

And so it came about that Godofredo Patrón lost his job, and Lieutenants García and Moisés became La Locura’s inaugural Guardia Civil. They began their tenure by ordering the repainting of the outside of the police building to a sickly yellow colour, and by ordering a number of signs that proclaimed "Guardia Civil" in ugly black letters, along with an elaborate official crest. These were affixed to the main door and the outside walls.

When Captain Patrón left, they found that the interior of the police building was untidy, cramped and smelled strongly of smoke, which was the result of Captain Patrón’s cigars. He didn’t smoke them; instead he had had the habit of burning them in a small metal tray on his desk, as he firmly believed that the smoke would keep the mosquitos away. He had been indoctrinated into this habit when he was very young by his grandmother, a hunched old lizard who had burnt small ceramic bowls of tobacco on the window ledges of her house in order to drive away insects. The young Godofredo Patrón could see no reason to doubt the efficacy of such practice, despite the quiet disapproval of his mother, although at that tender and impressionable age he had been too young to appreciate that his grandmother was actually insane.

Lieutenant García thought that the lingering, acrid odour was not befitting of a Guardia Civil post, and so he and Lieutenant Moisés opened all the windows and left them open for a week to try to dissipate it. When this failed to have any effect they washed the walls with lemon juice and vinegar, and they burned fragrant woods and flowers in the office. But even in spite of all these efforts the smell refused to go, and because of all the open windows they suffered terribly from mosquito bites.

-- o --

The pareja did not delay in making their presence felt about La Locura. They patrolled the island from daybreak until dusk, and sometimes made random, unannounced house calls after dark. They leaned indolently against walls, staring at passers-by with hooded eyes and eavesdropping on their conversations. They strutted imperiously through the market like two malevolent peacocks, plucking whatever bread, fruit or sweets they desired from the stalls. They lurked at the sides of buildings, dirty green stains on the whitewash, appearing insidiously wherever people were chatting.

Early on in their time on the island they even paid an evening visit to the sprawling villa of Don Moscote, swaggering up to the gates and demanding to be let in. Don Moscote received them gladly. It is not known whether they were more receptive to bribery or to coercion, but they emerged blinking into the sunlight very late the next morning and never went anywhere near the estate again.

The rest of the islanders, however, were not fortunate enough to be able to divert the attentions of the two Guardias so easily. Their behaviour was carefully calculated to ensure that the locals knew that they were being watched, and their oil-black pistols, glistening like newly hatched snakes, were always prominently displayed on their hips. Lieutenant García seemed to be the more assertive of the two, and as he talked Lieutenant Moisés would rest his hand on the butt of his gun and nonchalantly cock and uncock the hammer with his thumb, making a dry, menacing click-click-click noise like the snapping of a bone that made the blood run like ice in the veins. The pareja took great care of these pistols, more even than they did of themselves. They dismantled and reassembled them first thing every morning, meticulously cleaning and oiling all the moving parts, removing the barrel and gazing down into it as though into the eyes of a newborn child. If for some reason they had been short of time, they would have cleaned their guns rather than washing themselves or shaving.

But they were never short of time, for how can one be short of time when one has no schedule, no appointments and no duties? Their sole purpose in La Locura was simply to be on the island, a palpable governmental presence designed to quell the possibility of Republican resistance. And so they remained, creeping, sneaking, bullying, and answering to no-one, a painful red boil just under the surface of the island.

-- o --

One Saturday evening in July the pareja called in at Dionisio’s tavern. The Casta family had owned the tavern in the Plaza Mayor since it had been built in 1591, one of the first permanent buildings on the island, and Dionisio Casta was the current incumbent after his father’s premature death. He was a tall man, in his forties, and a lifetime of lifting barrels of beer and crates of wine had given him broad shoulders and thick arms, although the passage of years had caused some of his chest to migrate southwards into something of a paunch. He had a head of thick black hair, which he always slicked back with grease, and his temples and exuberant black moustache were just beginning to show the first signs of grey. He jokingly attributed this to the various misdemeanours of his nine year old son, and would tell him so from time to time: "Abejundio! Come here, look at this! There in my moustache, another grey hair! I tell you, that was your fault, when you smashed those bottles of wine with your ball. How does that make you feel, eh?" And little Abejundio would go and look, and see the grey hair, and wonder whether it really was his fault. Then his father would laugh and pinch his cheek and tell him that one day he would be collecting grey hairs from his own son.

That Saturday the pareja made their way to the door of the tavern during the early part of the evening when the dying light was fading to blue, which contrasted starkly with the candlelight inside the tavern, flickering orange and gold through the thick, smoky windows. They waded through the dim outside, and a small green lizard skittered soundlessly across the wall as they marched over the flagstones. The dark wood of the door, smooth with age, was still warm to the touch from the day’s sun, and it sighed a greeting from its ageing hinges as Lieutenant García pushed it open. The muffled melody of laughter, chatter and clinking glasses became suddenly clearer, as though someone had lifted a heavy blanket from the room, and then just as quickly died away into silence as the newcomers were recognised.

The pareja strutted into the tavern. Lieutenant García cast his gaze haughtily around the room, to be greeted by a dozen cold, hard eyes. Dionisio looked up from his work. Begrudgingly he stopped cleaning the wine glasses and turned to face them. It was a warm evening, and rivulets of grease from his hair trickled slowly down his forehead as he forced what he hoped was a warm smile onto his stubbled jowls.

"Good evening Lieutenants. Can I help you? A drink, perhaps? On the house, of course."

Lieutenant García walked slowly into the tavern, motioning distractedly at the wall.

"Señor Casta, tell me," his words leaked out into the room like a film of oil onto water, "Is that a Communist poster I see on the wall over there?"

Lieutenant Moisés smirked, and his thumb twitched upon the hammer of his gun.

Click.

Dionisio’s gaze flicked over to the poster and back to the Lieutenant’s face. His smile became a little stiff around the edges.

"Oh, that’s just a joke, Lieutenant García. I only keep that there to annoy my wife."

"All the same, Señor Casta, it is Communist propaganda, is it not?"

Click.

"Well, until I defaced it, Lieutenant, yes, ah, I suppose it was. But as you can see, it doesn’t make much sense now."

Lieutenant Moisés sneered and rolled his eyes as Dionisio spoke.

"Hmm. Well you see, what doesn’t make much sense to me, Señor Casta, is why Communist propaganda would come to be in your possession in the first place, defaced or not."

Click.

"Can you tell me, Señor Casta?"

Dionisio wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, which he then wiped on his apron. His shirt, slightly damp with sweat, was sticking to his back and began to feel cold on his spine. He had heard about what happened on the mainland to political agitators. He had heard the stories of midnight raids and executions, the rumours of distorted bodies found the next morning and witnesses too petrified to identify them.

"It...please, it was just a childish joke, Lieutenant. We never really believed in it."

Click.

"’We’, Señor Casta, ‘we’? So you admit that it is not just you who appreciates this kind of literature? Am I to assume that there is a nest of vipers here on my island?"

"No, no, all I meant was that my customers could not help but see it, but señor, please, be reasonable."

Click.

Lieutenant García smeared his lips across his face and into a thin smile.

"Señor Casta, I think that perhaps it would be prudent for us to continue this discussion back at our headquarters. Shall we?"

He gestured to the door. Dionisio turned to the kitchen and called out his wife’s name, and she peered halfway around the door frame, her black hair hanging loose around her face from a long day of cleaning and cooking.

"Yolanda, I’ve...I’ve got to go with the Lieutenants here. They want to take me back to their office to ask me some questions." His eyes felt hot and moist. "Please don’t worry about me."

Her dark eyes flitted from his face to Lieutenant García’s. Her fingernails scratched the frame of the door as his words sank in. Dionisio turned back.

"Lieutenant García, may I be allowed to see my son before we go? He’s asleep upstairs."

"No, I don’t think so, there isn’t really time. It would be a shame to wake him, don’t you think? Besides, you’ll probably be back here before you know it."

Click.

It was at that point that he realised he would be dead before dawn.

Disembodied Voices

2005-05-23T09:50:00.000Z

Last week's writing challenge was 300 words on "Disembodied Voices".

It was cold outside, bones cold, and the darkness drip-dripped down slow like honey. I lay still like a snake, not moving but one bit, and I don’t mind to tell I was mighty ‘fraid. Not a body wun’t be after god Maru sent the Pakeha to come and kill all us brethren. So I laid there all not moving for an hour or some, ‘til I heard the voice.

“Anyone there?”

Now I din’t say nothing, cos I din’t know if it was brethren, or tricksome god Maui trying to make me into a fool, or some Pakeha buggah still hiding round trying to get me to show myself so he could stick me like he sticked everyone else in Te Awamutu. I din’t see nothing neither cos the dark was too sticky-black.

“Hello? Anyone there?”

I just laid perfect still, not hardly breathing, cos I din’t want a death clap from one of them thundersticks that god Tawhiri gave the Pakeha for who knows why. But the worrysome voice came up again.

“It’s me, Rewi. Is any other buggah there?”

It was Rewi, my brethren! I forgot the shitty ruckus that’d gone between him and me all them years ago quick-smart, and warmness and glad filled up my belly.

“Rewi! It’s me, Paranihi!”

He could hear me smilesome as I said it, but we din’t move or try to find each other, though. I was happy, and I thinks Rewi was too, just to hear a familiar voice.

We talked like when we was nippers, and in the dark we was nowhere. There may’ve been woesome streams of blood feeding the Waipa river as we lay there, but that was for morning. We two voices was back on that night twenty years ago when we was first friends.

Next week the target is 250 words with the title "Punk".

Men aren't really from Mars

2005-05-20T09:58:00.000Z

She said, what are you thinking about?

He paused.

He said, I was thinking about how we never get to spend as much time together as we used to, and that we should really put a little more effort into each other, because you certainly deserve better than I've been giving you, and I don't want you to think I just take you for granted.

He wasn't really, he was thinking about the football. But she didn't need to know that.

She smiled.

Survival of the...

2005-05-18T12:35:00.000Z

Huddled at the foot of the escarpment, the mind of the first human ever to develop sapient thought was overflowing with questions. Where does the sun come from? Will I die? If I do, where will I go? Why do I feel hunger? What is wind? Why does it do that when I look at her?

Unfortunately, this inauspicious question was the last that he would ask. Not for any lack of desire for knowledge, however, but because the second human ever to develop sapient thought was crouched nearby, and reasoning that if he crept up behind him and smashed his skull with a rock he could have that half-eaten antelope that he was hoarding.

Jackson's Rock

2005-05-16T07:18:00.000Z

Last week's writing challenge title was a 250 word piece called "Jackson's Rock."

The Advertising Standards Authority, Case #241-05

Complaint:

Objection to a radio advertising campaign in the Brightpool area. The advertisement claimed that “Jackson’s Rock is just so sweet it puts curls in your hair and a tingle in your feet”. Six complainants challenged the assertion that hair curled and feet tingled as a result of the consumption of this confectionery.

Adjudication:

Complaint Upheld

The Authority recommended that the advertisement not be shown in its current form.

Although Jackson-PharmaCom insisted that their confectionery did impart the properties advertised, they failed to submit evidence that proved their claims. Subsequent clinical tests of 100 individuals carried out by an independent body found that consumption of Jackson’s Rock did not cause the curling of hair that was originally straight, nor did it cause any kind of tingling sensation to be experienced in the feet (although one subject did experience podiatrical discomfort after he ate the rock, this was considered to be parasthesia brought on by ill-fitting shoes). Most subjects instead reported feelings of drowsiness, nausea, light-headedness, loss of balance and improvement in the condition of their haemerrhoids, which the Jackson-PharmaCom scientists duly noted.

A spokesman for Jackson-PharmaCom said: “We apologise wholeheartedly for any inconvenience that may have been caused by our advertisement. We hope you all continue to enjoy Jackson’s Rock, and don’t forget to complete and return the medical questionnaires for your chance to win a year’s supply!”

Rohit and Melissa also joined in this week.

Next week we're back to 300 words, and the title is "Disembodied Voices."

Burning bright

2005-05-12T20:17:00.000Z

I am alone in the dark. Almost alone. The moon smiles at me; we are friends, the moon and I. She watches me as I sway in and out of the foliage, my ribcage swinging slowly left to right to left as I pad along, and my way is lit by the tears of happiness she weeps at the sight of me. Some fall on my hide and my tail, and when they do my golden stripes dazzle the timorous nocturnal animals who cower from me as I pass. I am their king, they are my subjects. I never travel during the day; my fur shines brighter than the sun, and, jealous, he tries to burn me, so I take sanctuary in the protection of the trees and escape him in sleep. Only the moon understands my needs, my desires for solitude and autonomy. Every night I choose a different path for her. Tonight I walk by the stream. I pause to dip my whiskers into it and lap at the cool waters, and she splinters into a thousand shifting pieces before my eyes. I wait for her to regain her shape and then I move on, walking past a sign, written by humans, that says “Keep Out”, and I realise that I can’t remember the last time I saw my mother or my sister. At the same time I realise that I don’t miss them at all. I ignore the sign; it has been a long time since I obeyed anyone. I walk on, into the ruins of an ancient tower. I have been here before.

Five Reasons

2005-05-10T08:11:00.000Z

Last week's 300-word writing challenge title was "Five Reasons"...and it was actually a 450-word writing challenge.

“How many?”
“I’ve got two.”
“Me too. Damn, I was hoping you’d have three.”
“Yeah, well. What have you got?”
“OK, well, I know he—“
“Keep your bloody voice down!”
“Sorry…I know he hoards Company supplies, and I also know that he expressed clear and emotional disapproval when Catesby was Reorientated.”
“You have evidence?”
“Of course. I audiorec everything he says. You?”
“I’ve got him using Company e-ware for Offsite-related undertakings – I have digipics – and he told me last week that he thought that the Leader’s new TrueThought initiative was ‘unfair, unethical and unworkable’. It’s all there, on the cube.”
“Good.”
“They’re all good, but we still need one more. Did Rokewood come back with anything?”
“No.”
“Wintour?”
“No.”
”Damn. Listen, come here. It’s absolutely imperative that we get him out of our workcell asap, or the Colleagues will start to tar us with the same brush as him. I’ve seen the way they look at him. He’s being watched, which means we’re all being watched. Look, I’ve been a Company man my whole life, I’m not about to let him get me Reorientated. Not so close to retirement.”
“Can’t we make do with just four?”
“No. By order of the Leader. No Reorientations without five Good Reasons, he said, and I’m not going to risk getting a Good Reason against my name just for not following procedure.”
“Shame.”
“That’s how it is.”
“Listen, we won’t see him again, will we? If we do get him Reorientated.”
“When did you ever see a Reorient come back?”
”I suppose. It’s just that I feel a little…”
”Guilty? Don’t. He’s a parasite, he just takes, takes from the Company without giving anything in return.”
“What about his wife, though? What will—“
“His wife? What about my wife? What about your wife? You want Mary’s foodreq reduced because she’s married to a deviant?
“But I’m not a deviant.”
“You will be if he drags us all down with him. I’m damned if I’m going to let his behaviour taint hard working Colleagues like you and me.”
“I suppose.“
“Listen, try not to worry about it. If he did the right thing then nothing would happen to him, would it?"
”I suppose.”
“Good lad. Damn, is that the time? I swear offtimes were longer when I was your age.”
“We’d better log back in.”
“Talking of work, where is he? Isn’t he supposed to be at the workcell by now? His station’s unoccupied.”
“He’s late.”
“Hold on…say that again.”
“’He’s late.’ Why?”
“For the audiorec. We just got number five.”

Next week, for those who are interested, the word count is 250 and the title is "Jackson's Rock".

Pure fiction

2005-05-06T08:02:00.000Z

Labour majority in 2001: 165

Labour majority in 2005: 66

Tony Blair: "We have got to listen to the people and respond wisely and sensibly, but they have made it very clear they wanted to carry on with Labour."

Image culled from Private Eye.

Why we do what we do

2005-05-02T19:28:00.000Z

Running running I’m running towards something don’t know what it is never know only know that I have to run must get there as fast as possible otherwise something bad will happen don’t know what but something bad all I know is that I must run follow the trail patter antennae on the ground and follow the trail painted gold on the floor by some anonymous sister as fast as I can to get to the fruit or the sugar or the caterpillar or whatever else it is one of the scouts has found don’t know what it is doesn’t matter just get there quick get there quick scamper round the rock over the twigs dance across the waxy leaf don’t look left don’t look right then there it is a massive peach bruised and soft and smelling of nectar even at this distance covered in a twitching black mosaic of ants and I run with them alongside them tap antennae briefly but don’t waste time with pleasantries no time for that never time for that then scale that enormous golden north face find a seam and start digging chew the flesh nibble nibble chew it into a manageable transportable lump golden juices dribbling over shiny black thorax over shiny black head into shiny black mouth and now it hits liquid sugar explosion inside my brain and it tastes so sweet feels so good and a thought slips inside my head uninvited and makes me wonder why it is that I’m running all day doing this when I could just sit here and drink sugar-water

I could just stay here, I could just stay here. Roll the thought around a few times; I could just stay here. I don’t have to go back. I could stay here and drink the sugar-water, stay here and relax. I could just stay, I could

now I remember why I’m doing this I’m doing it because I have to shouldn’t have had those kinds of thoughts mustn’t have those kinds of thoughts again mustn’t stop mustn’t slow down they need me they all need me to keep going if I didn’t who knows what would happen pick up the lump of peach can’t stop can’t rest patter antennae can’t just go off and do whatever I want to run back along the trail quick quick I’m part of the community and the community is more important than me more important than me more important than me

The abyss

2005-04-27T12:13:00.000Z

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.

Stones

2005-04-25T08:14:00.000Z

Ecks has just started to do a weekly 300-word writing challenge with a friend. Last week's suggested title was "Stones".

My garden’s covered in half-stones and I’m still poor.

Let me explain:

One day I happened to drop a stone in my garden, and it split in two. Nothing unusual about that, you might think, and you’d be right. But inside the stone, perfectly still, was half a toad. Or, as I soon discovered, a whole toad, of which only half was showing (the front half, in case you were wondering).

I was amazed – who wouldn’t be? – but I was even more shocked when it blinked and proceeded to wriggle free. I had to sit down. My head swam. Darwin, I thought. Creation, I thought. A new widescreen TV, I thought.

Come and see the amazing toad that lived in a stone, I said, witness the miracle for yourself, just five pounds, I said, and they came and queued up around the block for a glimpse. The first man to see it said is that it, and I told him yes it was, but he didn’t seem very impressed. Worst five pounds I ever spent, he said as he left. The next man asked if it went back into the stone, maybe at night, to sleep, but I had to tell him that no, it didn’t, and he said it looked just like a normal toad if truth be told. The third man said that I could have just found any old toad and plonked it in a case next to a broken stone, and could he have his money back please.

So, I thought, is there another toad in another of the stones in my garden?

You want to know the answer?

Like I said, my garden’s covered in half-stones and I’m still poor.

Find out who you should vote for on May the 5th.

An open letter from the Scissor Man

2005-04-21T16:10:00.000Z

Dear Parents

I would like to take this opportunity to launch a plea.

You may know me as the Great Tall Tailor or the Great, Long, Red-Legged Scissor Man (although I resent the latter description, as the colouring of my legs is the result of an unfortunate medical condition), and as I am sure you are aware it is my grave responsibility to punish those children foolish enough to suck their thumbs. I am sad to say, however, that the halcyon days of Conrad and his ilk are long gone, and due to increased public scrutiny of government finances I am in danger of becoming marginalised.

As with so many state-sponsored initiatives, under the current government system my funding will not be renewed for 2006 if I do not fulfil a mandated quota. If this were to happen I would not only be out of a job but the whole country would suffer from the sorry disappearance of a valued public service.

I am aware of the distress that digital severage may cause to you and your child, but I hope I can set your mind at rest by assuring you that discomfort and any subsequent risk of infection are kept to an absolute minimum. My scissors are diamond-sharpened, sterile, surgical quality steel, are replaced after every use, and fully comply with Directive 451 from the UN Convention on Sharp Objects. Child selection, too, is fair and unprejudiced, as it is undertaken strictly in accordance with European Union Directive 4458-01-A (Cruel Punishments From Cautionary Tales - Client Selection Criteria).

So please, I beg you, allow me to fulfil my quota and keep this nation great: do not warn your child about the perils of thumb-sucking.

Yours sincerely

The Great Tall Tailor

Tomatoes

2005-04-19T12:16:00.000Z

One day I will found my own country, and give birth to my own religion to fit within its borders. I will create a brand new language, and I will choose letters for it that resemble the shapes of seeds found in tomatoes. I will designate the word represented by any random explosion of characters as "God", so that every time anyone cuts open a tomato, the word "God" is presented to them. People will learn that the placement of the seeds is random, and that every tomato contains the word "God", and that therefore the resemblance to the word is entirely coincidental. Then, instead of venerating the fruit until it rots they will slice it and place it into a salad, and learn to appreciate more wondrous things.

Every day, two Americans dance on fly ash. Go and watch, it's very entertaining (if a little disturbing at times).

The example of the Nettunfrigorians

2005-04-15T22:31:00.000Z

There are a lot of things that the Nettunfrigorians don't do over on their distant planet. They don't hate each other, for example. Actually, they don't hate anything. They don't fight, they don't argue, they don't insult one another. They certainly don't kill. They don't drop litter, they don't scrawl graffiti - even though they have four arms with which to do so - they don't even so much as bump into each other on the street and walk off without apologising.

Like I said, there are a lot of things that the Nettunfrigorians don't do.

But this isn't because they are so civilised, so advanced that they have transcended all forms of barbarism and entered enlightenment. No; it is because their scientists just discovered that their sun will explode at some point over the next few months, and this tends to focus the mind somewhat.

Numbers

2005-04-14T11:27:00.000Z

I have a stack of calendars in my attic, laid in a pile between the broken grandfather clock and the box of dog-eared photographs. There's a calendar for every year of my life.

They're scattered with numbers that reflect my image. My whole life is here, hidden between ones and fours and nines. Some parts of it I remember, but others are just like the 12th of August 1989. I did something on that day - I must have done, I was alive - but I don't know what. I don't even remember what the weather was like.

They say people are the sum of their past experiences. That's why I keep the calendars; so that when I die they can just take them down from the attic and add up all the dates into one big number, and that'll be me, right there.

Hopefully someone will take it and remember it and one day add me to some numbers of their own.

Springs eternal

2005-04-07T11:01:00.000Z

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.

Zevoord and the Germans

2005-04-05T08:02:00.000Z

Zevoord Dudenfabulus was the abandoned son of an Egyptian sailor and a Polish prostitute. His forehead was as wide and square as a box of matches and his body flapped beneath his shoulders like laundry hung out to dry. This body was sitting outside a café in Bruges in 1929, but his mind was hidden in the smoke of a Siamese opium house seven years previously.

This was not an unusual occurrence for Zevoord. Ever since the bicycle accident that had torn off his earlobe and left him in a coma for two days his mind had catapulted itself forward and backwards to locations within his own lifetime without warning, reminding him of his past and offering glimpses of his future.

He appreciated the ability to relive his more treasured memories with crystal clarity and was happy to see his future marriage and the birth of his son again and again, but sometimes he wished that he could sit down at a restaurant without having his hors d'ouevres interrupted by the hiss of the shower room at Auschwitz.

Le Cinque Terre

2005-03-29T08:31:00.000Z

The villages perch precariously, just out of reach of the waves, houses of every shape and hue clustering like barnacles on the dark rocks. Yellow, orange, green, blue. They clamber eagerly over each other like chicks in a nest as they compete for air, giving birth to narrow, confused streets, starved of light for most of the day. The sea sucks at the rocks below and the houses huddle closer.

Snowbooks redux

2005-03-29T07:26:00.000Z

"Dear [Ecks],

Thanks for being so patient with us. It has taken us longer than usual to get back to you (with other submissions passing through more quickly in the meantime) as we have deliberated over your work for a long time. Unfortunately the final decision is negative, after it has been read by a number of readers (who work remotely). Although our readers were enchanted by your writing, we just didn't find that it drew us long enough and kept us captivated the whole way through.

I am sorry to have taken so long in reaching this decision and I do wish you all the best in finding a more suitable publisher for your work.

Thanks again and best wishes

[Snowbooks]"

Oh well, back to the drawing board. Or rather the printer and the envelopes.

Hiatus

2005-03-22T13:11:00.000Z

Ecks is off to Italy today for a well-earned rest in Rapallo, near Genova, on the Ligurian coast; normal blogality will be resumed in one week.

Ciao!

Arnold the Anxiety Echidna

2005-03-16T09:39:00.000Z

Hi.

I'm Arnold.

No?

The Anxiety Echidna? Ring any bells? Still no? Come on, you must have heard of me. I'm like the Bluebird of Happiness or the Beer Monkey, only my speciality is anxiety, worry, nerves - that kind of thing. I'm the one who makes your fingers wobble, the one who stirs up your guts with a big cold stick. I breed butterflies - you know what I'm saying? Oh sure, I get a lot of stick for it, but someone's got to do it, so why not me? Besides, if it wasn't me it'd just be that beaver who's been hanging round the job centre with his CV dropping oh-so-subtle hints to the girls behind the desks all the time.

Anyway, I'm writing this on behalf of Ecks, who I've incapacitated somewhat these last few days. Thing is, see, he sent a sample of his book off to a little publisher called Snowbooks a little while ago, and they liked it and asked for the whole manuscript. So he sent it off - like I said, a while ago - and he e-mailed them a couple of times to see how it was going, and in his last response from them - last Monday - they said "Sorry about the delay, it's still with one of our readers, but we'll get a decision to you at the end of this week or the beginning of next."

I got the call on Thursday night, and I got to Ecks' house by Friday.

Well, it's Wednesday and here we are, still with no word from the publisher, and Ecks is feeling it a bit. OK, maybe I was a little vigorous with the old ice cubes in the belly, but, hey, I love my job, what can I say? He just wants to know the decision, one way or another, but he's stupid enough to be holding out hope that maybe...maybe...the answer will be...yes.

Me, I don't care. In fact, the later they leave it the more work I get! So here's to delays, indecision and uncertainty.

Cheers!

The Piper-Man and Me

2005-03-11T10:03:00.000Z

My entry for Fifty Words:

Well, since'n you ask, my love, I was borned a long time ago, when time slip-slided by slower and the earth was still warm like a treedog's belly. Well I weren't born as you'm was, no, more played to life I was, by the great tall piper-man who run 'long the sky in the gap between night and day. You keep him in mind, love, and don't lose mind it was him, yea, who make these rocks we'm set on, and it was him't starty the long, long fatfish river twisting down to the sea.

First thing of all things I ever remember was the music, from the piper-man's pipes, yea, so sweet and warm, and the second thing of all things I remember was seeing him with my new eyes running along the sky, and he looky-look down on me and he wink, but all the time he keep playing them pipes, pulling up hills from the ground, and sowing gum trees and digging glass-shiny lakes.

But before I got here, love, there weren't no other body around, no, and even when I get here this place was hollow-empty, just me and the crocodiles. I still seed the piper-man run flighty past ev'ry evening making more and more things 'cause the world was still newborn, but never once did he make me no companions, no, and so I get frighty cold in my bones for my lonely. But eventually ol' piper-man - good, great piper-man! - seed my weepy and blow his pipes 'til an apple fall off the tree, and by the time it land bump on the ground it was come't a woman, yea, and then I smile from my head to my belly.

You came soon after, love, stretchy your mama's belly out like a watermelon, and when you came jumbling into the world all squealy and grabby the piper-man never come after, not never again, for he seed that the world is done.

So that's the tell of how I came to be and how I meet your ol' mama and how you'm was borned, love, so don't you bellyache about your mama and papa, 'cause some of us never had none, no.

Apostrophe

2005-03-09T09:13:00.000Z

"Were coming for you" was all that the note said. He hadn't seen who had delivered it, but it didn't matter. It had probably just been shoved through the letterbox by some kid anyway, the note in one sweaty palm, a crisp five in the other.

It wasn't a warning, it was an announcement, and serenity breezed over him more than any other feeling when he read it. He was relieved that the waiting was finally over, that at last, one way or another, this unbearable situation would be resolved.

He thought about whether he should go for the gun in the drawer. He thought about whether his son would find the letter he'd written. He thought about the fact that the cat would need feeding. His thoughts waxed and waned until only the most banal remained in his mind and, as the front door caved inwards in an explosion of splinters, all he could think about was that missing apostrophe.

Want some fun?* Go to Fifty Words and take the weekly fifty-word story challenge.

*Your definition of fun may differ to the definition of fun held by Tales From The Ridge, its employees, shareholders and subsidiaries

Small gods

2005-03-07T09:37:00.000Z

I never get any thanks. I used to, back when people used to wear animal skins and horns on their heads and they knew that every forest, every pool, every hill had its own god, but these days - nothing. It's the big guys that get all the limelight - you know the ones I'm talking about - but they're the ones who do the least.

Now me, I actually touch people's lives. I'm the one who keeps this river flowing, so that the crops get water and the wheel on the mill turns and the fish can breed and the silt gets carried down to the sea. Now, before you say anything I know it's just a small river, but to the farms and villages that sit on its banks it's the whole world.

We're still here, we small gods. All of us. It doesn't matter that no-one believes in us any more, we're still the ones who bring those daffodils in springtime and keep that forest from dying and chase the salmon upstream to mate. And we always will. Just you remember that.

Blue sand

2005-03-02T00:17:00.000Z

One morning the man left. He'd had enough of his noisy, buzzing world, so he decided to go away and leave it all behind. He left the house and began to walk along the sun-baked asphalt, with no particular destination held in mind. Just walking with the lizards. It was a warm morning, and milky sweat pooled in his eyes. He walked all morning. He walked right through midday and out into the afternoon, ignoring the sun as it glowered at him from above. He walked past evening until the moon nudged the sun out of the sky and the road became sand, and then, finally, he stopped. The air was chilly and the sand at his feet was blue. He said to himself "At last, a place without wires or concrete," and he laid down on his back, smiled up at the stars and melted away into the landscape.

Obit

2005-02-23T08:17:00.000Z

"Go on, clear your stuff out," a gruff voice demanded, "We need this space for advertising."
"But I live here," said the truth shark.
"Not any more you don't. We're installing an advert for cheaper car insurance on this site."
The door rattled in its frame as the man left.

The back door opened into a dimly lit corridor. The truth shark had never been out this way before, so it was with some trepidation that he picked his way downwards. Stale air blew hot upon his face, the dry exhalations of the earth itself. Eventually he came to another door, an enormous iron portal flecked with blooms of rust, and, with nowhere else to go, he leaned heavily upon its gargantuan handle. It eased open with surprisingly little effort to reveal a vast cavern filled with thousands upon thousands of wretched forms just like him, bundled in ragged groups and huddled around meagre fires. They chattered like insects as they noticed him in the doorway. He took a step forward, and the chime of the heavy metal door closing behind him sang out disconcertingly across the cavern. Several of the tattered forms staggered menacingly towards him, gibbering about politics and literature and religion, but suddenly he felt a reassuring arm on his.

"Don't mind them," she said. She was dressed gaudily in bright colours, a startling contrast to the dim of this subterranean chamber, "I'm Kerry. You're new here, right?"
"Yeah, I just got here...who are all these..."
"They're not all cranky like that. Most of them are just like you and me. Let me guess - you're a scientist, right? Am I right? I never could get science. I used to tell people about what my owner was doing every day; I used to tell stories, show them pictures, let them know what music she was listening to...but then people stopped listening, and my owner stopped taking care of me until eventually she just gave up on me and kicked me out. Like you."
"How did you know that?"
"We're all the same down here. We're all orphans."
"Down here? Where am I, what is this place?"
"This place? This is where we go when no-one listens to us any more. This is where blogs come to die."

If you have time please visit the links on my blogroll...don't let them suffer the same fate as poor Truth Shark.

Doubts

2005-02-21T09:57:00.000Z

I'd not had doubts before. Not until now. For weeks and months I'd planned meticulously, unwavering in my dedication, my wholeness of purpose, and I'd been absolutely sure of myself. As they drenched me in insults I became more and more determined. As the fists fell upon me like rain I grew more convinced of my path. As my friends told me not to be so selfish when my face was crowded by sneers and taunts my resolve only hardened.

Only now, remembering my baby brother's smile as I held him in my arms - as the trigger slots into place, as the hammer falls, as the icy steel of the barrel brushes against my temple - only now, in an oasis of silence, do I wonder whether I'm doing the right thing.

Traitor's Pay

2005-02-17T08:28:00.000Z

Hot air hung like the dead man suspended from the driftwood gallows at the lip of the beach. A wind two days out of hell stirred up the heat and tugged at the strand of kelp that trailed from his foot like bunting, and the bleached, barnacled gibbet creaked languorously. The dead man turned on his rope to gaze on the sea once more with yearning, lifeless eyes.

A squat black ship slouched towards the horizon, carrying away with it his erstwhile companions. Burnt angrily onto his salty, blistered palm was the imprint of the coin that he had accepted from the Dutch, heated in a brazier and pressed into his hand by a captain who smiled at him like a crocodile as they trudged up the pink sand of the beach, the noose scratching at the sunburn on his neck with every step. A reminder to follow him to the afterlife, a cruel taunt as he stood on the banks of the Styx unable to pay Charon his levy. His traitor's pay.

Leagues Under The Sea x 2

2005-02-14T16:12:00.000Z

Ecks has now written 40,000 words of his new novel. Slow going, but then it is only written during lunch hours when he is at work. Productivity should increase in early March when he gets a laptop, though. Below is another excerpt, linked to the previous one...

Il Mafioso Arrabbiato

Umberto Cappello is doing what? No, I don’t believe it. No-one can be that arrogant. Or that stupid. Now leave me to finish my breakfast.

You’re still here. Why are you still here? Yes, I heard you, but you can’t possibly expect me to believe it. Gennaro, tell him it is not true. Tell him, and then take him away and have him shot for ruining my breakfast. Why are you just standing there? Don’t just stand there, Gennaro, do it! It’s not…it’s not true, is it? Is this true, Gennaro, this unsettling story that he is telling me? It is? Well, that has definitely ruined my breakfast. These eggs were perfect, but now they are shitty. You, come over here and clear these shitty eggs away before I…no, no, just clear them away. Now, Gennaro, come here and sit down and tell me exactly what this little bastard Umberto Cappello is doing setting up some kind of operation on my territory. What is it he’s running? Heroin? Well, I have the grace to admit it’s a good idea he’s come up with. No-one would think of looking for Turkish heroin in barrels of monastic beer…but he has been fantastically, monumentally stupid if he thinks I am just going to sit by on my arse and watch him bring in the cream from my monastery. You do see how it is my monastery, don’t you Gennaro? Yes, quite. Thank you, I thought so.

He must be soft in the head. To think that he could get away with it, such a thing on my own land! Who does he think he is, that son of a pox-ridden filthy scabrous whore’s dog, coming around here and pissing on my doorstep in this manner? Oh, if only he knew the pain he was causing me, and me with my delicate constitution. You know, Mamma always said I should have been an artist.

His brother, though, his brother Santino is one of the old guard, a true gentleman. He has been nothing but honourable in all the time that I’ve known him. But this whoreson is trying my patience. Am I not renowned for my patience? Yes, Gennaro, I know I am. It was a rhetorical question. Rhetorical. Look it up. I don’t know, a dictionary. I don’t…listen, forget about it, you idiot, that’s not the point. The point is…oh, now you’ve made me forget what I was going to say. Carlo? Carlo! Come here. Take Gennaro away, explain to him the meaning of the word rhetorical, and then have him shot for making me forget what I…no, I remember now. I was going to…what are you doing? No, leave him there, Carlo. Yes, I know what I said, but I’ve changed my mind.

Now, where was I? Gennaro, I need you to organise a little something for me. We need to get over to this monastery…what was the name of it, the monastery? San Pietro di Montechiaro? We need to get over there and get rid of this little pig Umberto. As soon as possible. What? No, guns. Guns! Get me as many guns as you can find, and as many of my men as can hold them. You’ll have to go with them, of course, you know how I hate the sight of blood. A fucking monastery! Heretical whelp, I’ll have him so full of lead that they’ll need a dozen men to carry his coffin. Him and everyone else there. I know, I know, it is a shame, I don’t like to kill men of the cloth. But they will be in his pocket, no doubt, paid off with…with whatever it is that monks want. Nuns, probably. No matter, kill them all. No lackeys, no accomplices, no witnesses. I shall just have to say some Hail Marys tonight.

Just make sure. Make sure that you leave no-one alive.

Skullduggery

2005-02-11T08:31:00.000Z

Long time ago, 'fore you was even borned, I knew a man kinda liked walkin'. He walked up mount'ns an' down valleys an' up streets an' 'cross bridges, fo' days an' days an' days at a time, all 'cause o' his love for walkin'. Anyhow, one day as he walkin' 'long a road 'longsides o' the ocean, he happen 'cross a skull by the side o' the road, a human skull, bleached white by the sun an' gleamin' like it been polished by angels. Well, the man picked up the skull an' looked into them holler, empty eyes an' he felt mighty sad, and he said as much.

"It seems such a shame," he said, "To be dead."

"How would you know?" said the skull.

Story goes the man didn't do so much walkin' after that.

If you haven't already seen it, go and read The Closet by Easywriter.

Simile Dickinson

2005-02-09T08:35:00.000Z

Ecks was helping his neighbour, retired lepidopterist Bombay Louis Harcourt, to haul his freshly sedated pygmy hippopotamus into the back of the borrowed hearse for transportation to the vet, when Bombay Louis commented that the animal was as heavy as Led Zeppelin wearing lead boots on Boxing Day. This prompted Ecks to wonder what his favourite similes were; he came up with the following:

As ugly as a box of frogs
As low as a snake's belly in a wagon rut
A face like a bag of spanners

A meagre list. Can you add to it?

Fahrenheit 98.6

2005-02-09T07:30:00.000Z

Ecks has just added Haloscan commenting and trackback to his blog, and in one stroke all previous comments have been summarily erased. Apparently 98.6º Fahrenheit, the temperature of the tip of a finger as it clicks on a mouse, is the temperature at which comments burn.

The Massacre at San Pietro di Montechiaro (I)

2005-02-08T08:55:00.000Z

What follows is the opening chapter of Ecks Ridgehead's new book (as yet untitled, and very much a work in progress) - any and all comments would be greatly appreciated. Specifically - does it make the reader want to continue reading?

The Massacre at San Pietro di Montechiaro (I)

It wasn’t until a long time after the dust had settled and the blood had dried dark on the ground that the journalists came to the monastery at San Pietro di Montechiaro. The first ones that trickled in came from the local newspapers, but then, as the story grew in notoriety and spread like the blood that seeped into the coarse monastic robes, reporters began to arrive from Naples, Rome, Florence and Milan.

They peered into the church and whistled and shook their heads in disbelief as they took in the scene of blood-soaked stones and twisted, broken bodies. They dubbed it the “San Pietro Massacre”, which I suppose was true enough, but when they came to write their stories the truth became a rather more elusive bird. Armed with every reporter’s love of the sensational and only the most meagre of undeniable facts, their pens raced across their notebooks.

“Escaped madman driven wild by full moon,” wrote one. “Misguided assassination attempt tears peaceful monastery to pieces,” wrote another. “Secretive extremist death cult with intense hatred of Catholicism,” wrote yet another. One reporter even went so far as to insist that the monks were loathsome sodomites and that the Angel of Death had descended upon them as punishment.

No matter how they wracked their brains and squeezed out the last drops from their imaginations, though, none of them got the account of events exactly right. As their cameras flashed and popped and they scrawled hyperbole into their notebooks, some of them got a little of it right and some got a little more of it right. But most of them got it nearly all wrong.

I know exactly how it happened, though. Because I was there.

[Edited: with thanks to JD Riso for her suggestions]

Become an "idiom-savant": Expressions & Sayings

Fog

2005-02-07T10:12:00.000Z

The fog that lurked in the hollows all morning has been chased away by the sun. Now the air is sharp and cold, and it strokes its chilly fingers along the roof of the mouth as it slips over the tongue.

Read Dave Clapper's topical joke.

Fifteen Minutes

2005-02-04T13:48:00.000Z

"I'm going to be famous."

His words were coming back to me now, drifting back to me on the breeze from a forgotten past.

"I'm going to be on TV, in the newspapers, everywhere. You'll see."

I still couldn't quite believe that he'd done it, that I was actually looking at his face on TV like he'd said. In hindsight I suppose it was obvious, but then so many things are when you have the luxury of being able to look back knowing all that has happened since.

"Anyone can be famous, it's not hard if you plan it out right."

I hadn't spoken to him for a long time, I hadn't even seen him. I suppose he must have been busy laying the groundwork, saving up some money to buy the plane ticket, things like that. It was obvious that he had gone to a lot of trouble to get to where he was today. He'd think it was worth it, though; everyone was talking about him. He certainly was famous.

"All you need is determination."

Some people are just different to others. They see themselves as special, they think that they should be treated differently, and eventually that attitude consumes them, pushing and driving them so relentlessly onward that they actually do become different to everyone else. He just had that kind of feeling, I suppose. I doubt I'll ever understand. I doubt the parents of all those poor kids will understand either.

"And a gun."

El Traficante

2005-02-02T13:16:00.000Z

Excerpt from "The Servants Of Gods", Ecks Ridgehead's as yet unpublished first novel

Don Apolinar Moscote was a very round man. A lifetime of privilege had bloated him and left him rotund in every way, from his pudgy sausage fingers to his great stretched belly. The roundness of his head was accentuated by the large central bald spot in his curly black hair, which made the top of his head look like a smooth pink bird’s egg poking out of a tangled nest of black twigs. His greasy lips were fat and dark, topped by a lank, drooping moustache parenthesised by puffy red cheeks, the mark of his lack of physical exercise. He wore loose, billowing shirts that he left untucked at the waist, and they hung down from his stomach inches out in front of his creased baggy trousers. An improbably delicate and feminine gold chain hung down from between one of the rolls of fat around his neck, a tiny crucifix tangling itself in the tufts of hair that sprouted up from his dry, sagging chest.

He lived in a beautiful, sprawling estate some way outside of the town. It was a glittering white diamond set into the luxuriant emerald of the cloud forest, framed by shady palms and speckled with rashes of fat, multicoloured flowers. The central villa, the residence of the Moscote family for centuries, was surrounded by smaller white satellites, each housing a different aspect of the Moscote family business. A trail of smoke snaked up from a long, narrow building that served as a canteen that fed the small army of workers and guards. Don Moscote’s men flitted constantly in and out of these buildings like bees around a hive.

Over on one side of the compound were a number of empty cages, the bones of the old menagerie hidden under moss and grime. During the middle years of the 19th Century, the Moscote family had constructed a menagerie and stocked it with animals from around the globe. The patriarch, Julio Octavio Moscote, had had a great passion for animals, and had wished to recreate on the island a kind of living natural museum to celebrate the diversity of natural life on the planet. This undertaking was at no small cost to himself, but money was of no import to him, as centuries of prosperous trading had left the Moscote family very wealthy. He imported birds of paradise from Papua New Guinea, monkeys from the Ivory Coast and great black pigs from Indochina. He imported koalas from Australia, giant tortoises from the Galápagos Islands and cantankerous llamas from the Andes. After painstaking experimentation he built a collection of songbirds from around the globe that each sang on the hour at different times of day, and then spent two weeks learning the particular song sung by each individual species so that this aviary could act as his own personal clock. His offspring, however, were less than enthusiastic towards animals, and allowed the private zoo to fall into disrepair until only old Gabito the llama remained, and when he finally died in 1880, his eyes dim and his mouth too cracked and dry to spit, the menagerie closed forever.