First and last man?

First and last man?

The nuclear war had killed everyone else on the planet twenty years before. He had travelled and searched since then but with no success. Why was he the one to be spared? Was it a blessing or a curse?

            Adam was the last human alive, he was alone, no one to talk to, no one to help him and needing help to get through each long, lonely day, no one to share the new glorious flame-red sunsets, no one to walk along the beach with him, no one to laugh with, no one to love and to love him, no children – ever again on the Earth, he was truly alone. Human life had briefly flared into existence before it’s stupidity snuffed itself out, all in one brief tick of the Earth’s geological clock. He was completely, utterly and absolutely alone, the only human in the cold, dark, unknowing, uncaring universe. He walked into the house, out of the twilight for yet another eve alone.

            As he closed the door behind him, he felt a tap on his shoulder.

The telephone call

The telephone call.

The steamer was working well so the wall paper was coming off in great long damp strips. I was determined to get the nursery ready before young James was born. Only I knew that he was a boy whose name was going to be James Henry so I had carefully chosen non gender specific paint colours, beige all over. As I peeled back one strip, I saw some writing on the old plaster slowly becoming exposed. It was a phone number.

            My curiosity got the better of me, as always, so I had to ring it. I didn’t get a chance to speak before a Scottish sounding voice said,

            ‘I told you five  years ago not to ring this number again unless you wanted another job, I guess you need the money as usual.’ Giving me no time to answer, it went on, ‘Ok then, I’ll send you the usual package by courier, you will get it tomorrow. The job must be completed in two days or your life will be forfeit’, the line went dead. I called it again because I couldn’t have heard right, could I? There was no answer. I couldn’t sleep that night for the worry and called the number again many times but no answer.

            The courier turned up early the next morning and got me to sign for a bulky, heavy, package. I went inside and opened it. There was a gun, a magazine with ten bullets, fifteen thousand pounds in used tenners and a photo of the house with the address written on the back.

            It was clear that I was now in the strange position of having to kill myself or someone would come and do it for me in two days time. My first two thoughts were, James was in danger and who had done this to me? Was it that ratbag of a boyfriend who had walked out on me when I told him I was pregnant? In fact I had kicked him out when he told me to get an abortion. How could I do that to my James? I insisted on staying in the house well, his house really, I thought he owed me that. I convinced him by mentioning that I might have chat about some of his less public activities to my brother who happed to be a police sergeant. Was this his way of ensuring that I kept quiet about his thieving?

            My third thought was that I hadn’t spoken to the Jock on the phone so he didn’t know who he was talking to but would have assumed it was his usual contractor who would have been the only person with that number. It was clear that the contractor would have only got the photo and address of the house and so would have killed whoever was there.

            A cunning plan was coming together in my mind. If I didn’t kill myself, and James, then a fall back contractor would come and kill whoever was in the house in two days time because he/her had failed to carry out the job. I rang Dave and sweet talked him into doing some decorating for me in a couple of days time. I had an ante natal appointment that day which probably last all day.

            I ended up with a gun, fifteen thousand pounds, a house for James and me, no ex. and a very pretty picture of the house to put on the wall in the nursery, over the phone number. Oh, and James’ nursery nearly decorated. All it cost me was a bit of scrubbing to get rid of the blood after the police had taken Dave’s body away. I had a perfect alibi, I was at the hospital being checked by the midwife.

            Seems like a good result from one phone call.

Carmageddon

Carmageddon

It was the first day of the school summer holidays, the North West, the Midlands and London were draining their people on to the motorways as families headed South West to the caravan parks and B & B’s of Dorset, Devon and Cornwall. They were like the Scanwegian lemmings heading for that cliff or swarms of starlings wheeling in harmony through the sky, ready to emigrate at the change of the seasons, depending on your cynicism level that day. There were the clever ones who set off early and so got into the sclerotic traffic in the cool of the morning and the laggards who had a lay-in on the first day of the holiday and so missed the worst of the enthusiastic jam joiners.

            As they filtered out of the village capillaries and city streets to join the veins and arteries, the pressure built. This was not helped by under powered cars optimistically trying to tow overloaded and unbalanced caravans and four seater city cars heavy with holiday gear and surfboards on the roof to catch the wind and tug at the steering. The weekend travellers were on the road, their thin wheeled and walled houses swaying and lurching along behind them as they reached and scurried along the unfamiliar motorways, trying to work out, unsuccessfully, which lane they should be in.

            The gamekeepers, traffic police they called them selves now, lurked on their special ramps just off the hard shoulder or looked down with Olympian detachment from the bridges over the motorway, waiting to swoop down on their prey at the first sign of problems, picking off the weaklings. There were not many speeders today, there was no space, just many examples of reckless, dangerous and downright incompetent driving.

            The pressure was building as the traffic grew thicker, less space between each car, drivers fighting over that extra metre of advantage. Macho competitiveness increasing the temperature. If you have winners, you must have losers and those are the dangerous ones who try to cut corners.

            It was inevitable that there would be a crash. It could not be called an accident as it was predictable and predicted by the gamekeepers. They had seen it all before.

He was struggling to control his rig, the Renault Clio was not heavy enough to balance the twin axle, six berth Bailey Ranger. He kept it together until they left the Gordano services on the M5. The climb up the hill through the Tickenham cutting went well but then he started the down slope towards the Somerset Levels. The caravan behind him was taking control but it was still going well until they burst out of the protecting cliffs and felt the full force of the cross wind coming in from the Bristol Channel. The caravan lurched sideways and pulled the car with it, he over corrected and dragged the caravan back on track but the damper was not strong enough to handle the force and so the snaking started. The caravan pulled first one way and then the other. The snaking increased until the rig was out of control and he was helpless in the grip of the laws of physics. The spring-mass system was now in the grip of a simple harmonic motion. The caravan was now lifting each wheel off the ground in turn as it swung until the centre of gravity eventually went outside a wheel and it went over on to its side. The car was too small and light to handle this and so was taken over as well until the complete rig was sliding down the hard shoulder on its side, bits of plastic and plywood being ground off the ‘van and flying away in the wind until it came to a shuddering halt.

            Carmageddon.

            There was dazed silence in the car apart from the roar of the traffic passing and the screeching of brakes as everyone tried to stop. They looked at each other and found that no one was hurt apart from some grazes and bruises and a feeling of shock at the speed that the holiday mood had so nearly turned into tragedy. He clambered out of the driver’s door, which was now part of the roof. He lifted the others out and sent them behind the safety barrier. They looked back at the heap of fibreglass and plywood, mixed in with sleeping bags and packets of cornflakes, that was planned to be their home for the next two weeks. A toothbrush was lonely out in lane two, gently rinsed by the drizzly rain.

            All three traffic lanes Southbound were now blocked. The main artery from the Midlands and London down to the South West was now totally blocked on the busiest day of the year by a clot of cars, vans and caravans. It was a major stroke and the supply of nutrients to Devon was cut off. The clot fed back until the traffic was stopped at the previous junction at Gordano and, as with all strokes, the traffic started to bleed off into the surrounding tissues. Some drivers tried to fight their way into the services where they caused mayhem for the already overloaded facilities. Some just turned off, following the map to cut around the blockage, some just turned off, hoping to blindly find their way through the unknown maze of local lanes, Some, a little further back up the motorway took a chance and turned off to attempt to drive down the hard shoulder thereby causing a potential problem as the way through for fire engines and ambulances was totally blocked, potentially a murderous act.

            Now the situation deteriorated. The motorway was totally blocked, even the Northbound was down to a crawl as drivers slowed in case there were obstructions on their side. There was no way through along the hard shoulder for the rescue vehicles to get to the scene, the local area was starting to seize up. The drivers near the crash eventually got together, cleared the wreckage off the carriageways and got two lanes of the motorway slowly moving again. The selfish ones blocking the hard shoulder barged their way back on to the main lanes and the emergency services eventually got to the crash site.

            Two hours after the crash, the traffic on the motorway was moving slowly but steadily and the jam was slowly clearing. It was like aspirins clearing a blood clot, slowly reviving a patient that, hopefully, had no permanent damage. The roads in a twenty mile radius were completely gridlocked, taking about three hours to clear. The locals, as usual, had wisely stayed at home where possible, they knew what happened on these mad gaderene exodus days.

            Just another Saturday morning on the M5.

Poetry Corner

Poetry corner

A poetry corner has only two sides

So every word subtly, into it glides

Without a simple reason or rhyme

Another side would make it fine

But it would still only be triasidic

A better thing  by far is a poetry square

And then you really know not where

‘Cos the words can go on all four sides

Spelling mistakes you there can hides

Now it’s grown to a pyramid – in three D

A pentagon’s my idea of heaven

Except when hit on nine eleven

A wonderful shape, symetrical too

Good for elephants in the zoo

Six too many, just have seven

We’re getting on now to a hexagon

Just like a hat of a Mexican

Dozing off in the midday sun

Could be many or only one,

-more will make a septagon

I’m sick of shapes

Please no more

Poetry’s fine

On its own

Polly’s gone.

The fox nosed through the rubbish drifting against the scrubby hedge, lifting its head occasionally to sniff cautiously at the air

The fox nosed through the rubbish drifting against the scrubby hedge, lifting its head occasionally to sniff cautiously at the air. It was nervous here in unknown and therefore dangerous territory.

            It had been tempted here because of the plentiful food scraps that overflowed from the rubbish bins along the street and tumbled out of the split black bags dumped carelessly in the alleys along the backs of the many fast food establishments. That bounty would come later, after it had completed the search through the rubbish piled up like a snow drift against the windward side of the hedge. It was always better to wait until dark to enter the city as there were less people on the streets then and the pickings were richer. A half-eaten burger was better than chasing mice across frozen fields just for a small crunchy morsel

            It then saw the vixen sneaking up on its food source. While concentrating on this new threat it didn’t see the speeding Land Cruiser coming. There was a double splat as both foxes instantly died in the multiple collision. James braked hard, stopped and got out with Henry to see what he had hit in the twilight.

            ‘Two fully grown foxes’ he thought, ‘ this is a bonus’ as he slung both bodies in the back of the pick up.

            His next stop was of the Road Kill Café just down the road – strap line ‘ You flatten ‘em, we cook ‘em, no kill refused’. He knew they would take them. His confidence was shaken, they had a big stock in the freezer after that icy few days last week.

            ‘I’ll try the taxidermist next,’ he thought, so off he roared to the other end of town.

            ‘I could do them mounted for £426’ said the stuffing man.

            ‘How much for just shaking hands?’ asked James who thought this was a bit much.

            ‘Get lost’ he said, ‘I only do quality work’

            So James headed off to his last resort to make a few pounds out of his collision, he needed some cash to pay for the dent in the Toyota’s bumper.

            ‘I could make some very fashionable headwear from those furs ,’ offered the furrier in Aden street.

An agreement was reached between the two men and James drove off happy, knowing he could sell the headgear quite easily for a good price.

            Henry’s mobile went with that stupid ring tone he insisted on using.

            ‘What was that all about?’ asked James when the call finished.

            ‘I’ve got a job booked next week in Aughtermoody,’ said Henry.

            ‘Wear the fox hat?’ said James.

Some birthdays are better than others.

Some birthdays are better than others. This sounds like one of those statements that comes under Sybil Faulty’s specialist subject, stating the bleeding obvious but I think the difficulty comes in quantifying the degree of betterness.

            To help you come to some understanding of what I mean, I will quote you a couple of examples.

            My 94^th birthday in 2011 was sort of ok, I had just completed an Open University course called Start writing fiction, I had got an acceptable mark for the first assignment and had sent in what I would describe as my masterwork for the final course assignment. In my terms, this means that I had hopes of just clearing the 40% bar to earn a pass for the course and so gain 10 points towards my Open degree that lay on the far horizon, like your ship that never comes in. I had been working towards this degree for three years and it seemed as far away as ever. Would I live long enough to limp up those three steps to accept that scroll of imitation parchment in an academic black robe, mortar board optional, I had done the research. Apparently it is acceptable to leave the Zimmer at the foot of the steps and imitate an F1 pit stop and change to elbow crutches before starting the accent.

            Now, by contrast, my 158^th birthday in 2075 was a lot better. I still hadn’t completed enough modules and earned enough points for a degree of course but I had passed A 215, Creative writing and A369 Advanced Creative writing so I was now qualified to write to the reader’s letters pages of The Sun. These letters, of course, are all fiction and so excellent practice as recommended by my Tutor – even though they never did see fit to print any of mine. The good news was that, the Thursday before my birthday, I had my novel accepted for publication by Hudder and Staunton. You will no doubt have read it by now so I don’t need to tell you the title. It was a phenomenal worldwide success, having sold some 13 copies in the USA alone. I am, of course, in discussions with the publishers about the amount of the advance for research etc. for my second novel, as soon as they return my calls that is. They are probably very busy dealing with the marketing, merchandising and film rights for my first masterpiece.

             I’ll just try calling them again……..

I was satisfied with my lot in life, right up until that dreadful moment when she said,

I was satisfied with my lot in life, right up until that dreadful moment when she said,

            ‘We have lost three landing slots at Heathrow so will be needing fewer pilots. As one of the oldest, we have decided to let you go in the first group’

            She was the HR Director for LOT Polish Airlines and had been given intructions to get rid of seven pilots.

            I had many years of flying experience so I thought getting another pilot’s position would be simple. I replied to an advert for pilots from British Airways in Flight magazine and they sent me a sheaf of forms to fill in. This was going well until I came to the section called academic qualifications and there, staring at me, were about three acres of gleaming white paper with me having nothing to put in there. I knew this meant I didn’t have a chance with BA. I had been flying with LOT for many years and had started before qualifications were a requirement – if you could fly well, you were in. I had to get some qualifications.

            There was only one thing to do, start studying with the Open University. I went to see the friendly folk at the regional centre in Bristol the next time I passed through and they suggested I start with a level 1 course to get me into the idea of learning at home, but which course?

            I have long had an interest in the arts and humanities so decided to try a twelve week course called Rabbit snaring and street betting. This went very well except my tutor was a little elusive, especially on evenings with no moon but he gave me some good tips and the winnings paid for the course. The snaring part of the module convinced me of the truth that the meek shall inherit the earth, but only the patch they are buried in and taught me to be more ruthless in advancing my goals. I also managed to get some credits approved from my time at the university of life although there were some raised eyebrows over some of the subjects I put forward, Hang gliding and restaurent management and Bungee jumping with quantum physics were easily approved of course.

            I got a good pass on this first course, which encouraged me to press on with the OU so, here I am, signed up for A215 Creative writing and raring to go.

            Next time you are passing through Warsaw, look me up and we can have a chat about our OU experiences. If I am not at home, I may be flying the plane you are booked on.

The decade that style forgot.

The decade that style forgot.

It wasn’t going well. The courtroom was hot, he could feel the sweat running down his sides and he had to keep wiping his forehead which he knew gave the impression that he was under a lot of stress, which he was. There was another hour before the normal daily finishing time of 4 o’clock and even the judge looked bored and sleepy.

            He was suing the Red Star shipping line for negligence because he had broken his left leg on a cruise on the Mediterranean Princess. He had slipped on the wet upper deck when he took a walk during some rough weather near the Messina Straits. He enjoyed the exhilaration of walking on a tilting deck with the spray hitting his face as the ship burrowed into a wave, the the wind whipping the spray high into the air.

            His solicitor had taken him through the story of the accident and in the process had the jury in tears. Now Peter had to face the cross examination from the lawyer who was representing the shipping line. He was totally different to Peter’s solicitor. He was very smartly dressed and had that healthy corn-fed look that you only see on successful lawyers and hospital consultants. His shirts were obviously from Asher and Turnbull and his suit had never seen the ‘George’ rail in Marx and Sparx. Peter’s solicitor would never take silk, he would be lucky if he took tweed and had a rumpolled air about him as if he was just coping with the job he was doing but it was all getting a little beyond him on a bad day, like this.

            ‘So Mr Stile, did you not hear the Captain’s announcement on the ship’s loudspeaker system at, I believe 1322 on that Friday, advising all passengers who wished to walk on the upper deck to use extreme caution and make full use of the handrails fitted for their safety?’

            ‘Yes, I did,’admitted Peter intimidated by the immaculately suited and booted lawyer..

            ‘And did you retain a strong hold on the handrails provided by my client for your safety during your perambulations?’

            ‘Err no,’ he stuttered

            ‘And why not, may I ask?’

            ‘I didn’t remember, I suppose.’

            ‘”You, didn’t remember, I suppose”, ‘ the barrister repeated, ‘and because of this lapse of memory we are all assembled in this stifling courtroom to hear how you came to break your leg.  And, furthermore, you are asking my client to pay for this event when in fact it was caused by the deck aid that Stile forgot.’

            ‘Case dismissed’ said the judge.

The end of the world - part 1

The end of the world - part 1

Some birthdays are better than others. He had just bought his wife a brand new Japanese dishwasher so this was going to be one of her best.

            Professor Peter Papadopoulos Niccolo Machiavelli, Dave to his friends, was a pretty simple and straight forward sort of guy so he was shocked when he discovered the extent and deviousness of the Japanese plot.

            He had gone through the usual academic mill, BSc in Chemical Engineering followed by a Masters in applied creative writing, then he took a three year PhD. His thesis was, ‘ Events that could either cause the end of the world or annoy a couple of people for a few days,’ He had come up with some better titles – ‘It was the best of times and it was the worst of times’ but apparently this had already been used by some sociology student. His second choice was ‘It was the start of times’ but this had been claimed by Adam’s ghost-writer at Eden Publishing . ‘The end of Times’ had been challenged by a daily paper so he was left with the title above which he thought really flowed off the tongue and had a majestic note of authority.

            His next task was to list all the possible threats and dangers that could mean the end of the world – not the end of the world as we know it but the end of the world, full stop. These potential hazards included;-

·         Half of an island falling into the Atlantic and causing a huge tsunami that would destroy most of the Eastern seaboard of the Americas.

·         A massive meteorite strike a big as the one that destroyed the dinosaurs; and a few cockroaches but no one ever worries about them.

·         Human destruction of the Earth’s biosphere, making the Earth unable to support human life

·         Global warming which destroys the crop growing capacity of the Earth

·         A full stop

and

• Dishwashers

Yes, I know you probably think this is ridiculous; how could an island break in half and then fall into the sea? Much more likely is the dishwasher theory.

It goes something like this.

            You will know that the Japanese people tend to be somewhat vertically challenged. ( Please never call a Japanese man an oriental dwarf as ‘OD’ translates into Japanese as slimy tapeworm – which is hardly complimentary, you must agree. )

This has never been liked much by the Japanese people who look up to the Northern Europeans – they don’t have much choice really do they? – except of course when they are bowing or drinking tea on the floor.

Dr Arigato Origami was commissioned by the Japanese government to research into the cause of this height disparity and what could be done about it. After eleven years work at the University of Hari San ( Now, come on, I wouldn’t be that obvious would I? )  in Northern Honshoe  he came up with an explanation.

            Did you know that Japanese always rinse their dishes after washing them up while Europeans never do? Ari had discovered that it was the daily ingestion of tiny amounts of detergent that made the Europeans grow taller. It is too technical to go into it in much depth here but it has to do with the electro-gravitic tension between cells. This had to be stopped! He suggested that the Government in Tokyo should issue daily detergent pills but this was seen as unlikely to succeed – would you take a daily Daz tablet if the government asked you to? Exactly. Ari had to come up with a different solution so he invented dishwashers and started selling them to the gullible Europeans. ( Did you know that there was no such word as ‘gullible’ in the Oxford English Dictionary until 1873? ). The genius of this plan was that, not only did the Japanese make a lot of money selling the machines, but the dishes were rinsed by the machines so stopping the Europeans taking their daily dose of detergent. The machines could not be sold in Japan, for obvious reasons.

            There was a problem – it was the law of unintended consequences. This says that; Any well intentioned action will come back and bite you on the ankle – or something like that anyway.

            The sequence goes something like this; Europeans stop eating detergent, no detergent going down the drain to the sewage plant, no detergent going into the rivers, no detergent sprayed onto farmland via irrigation. No detergent going into the sea. If the European people stopped growing, what do you think happened to fish, crops, farm animals? Exactly, no food! Well there would always be sushi but who can live on that? This was not discovered until it was too late to start manufacturing detergent again, all the plants had been converted to dishwasher production.

            That famous phrase by Ted Eliot from his poem The Hollow Men sums it up really, ‘The end of the world came not with a bang but with a pre wash, hot soapy wash, rinse and dry.’