Book Launch!

A writer friend, Kay Lawrence,  has just published her second volume of the QT Anthologies.

The second of the QT Anthologies comprises fourteen brand new stories of varying length and genre. Featuring the light-hearted experiences of a night school cleaner, the fable of Jack Frost, a thriller set in the mountains, storms, villains, and heart-warming tales, there's something in this collection for everyone. To help you choose which story to read next each title is listed with its word count, ranging from 500 words to 10,500.

Here is the link.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Anthology-Book-Unseen-Stories-ebook/dp/B009ZIJIZG/ref=sr_1_5?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1351759993&sr=1-5

The first volume is still available.

I am sure you will have a very enjoyable read.

Shampooing my geranium

I’ve just got back from holiday in sunny Herculaneum.

cycled across Europe on my bike made of titanium.

First I tried to make it from a type of cheap uranium,

looked it up and found that it is called actinouranium.

The tubes turned out too heavy and changed into plutonium

So giving me a headache at the back of my pericranium

Had to change from aspirin to a big dose of succedaneum

This quickly cured the pain so I shampooed my geranium.

Rufus

It’s hot in the sun but cold on the ice

The water is wet but drier is nice

The wind it blows, sometimes high, often low

Rain is not common but we always have snow

Sometimes I eat penguin, other times seal,

penguin’s ok but seal is more real

I like the Ant’ but Arctic is wetter

South is too far so I like North better

I wanted another but one cub is fine,

easy to feed and then keep in line.

Spring is the time that we leave our lair

pause digging out, sniffing the air.

Often I’m good but sometimes I’m bad

Sometimes I’m happy, other times sad

Warm in my white fur that many call hair

Hi there, I’m Rufus, the bipolar bear

Going to war in 1917

In Felixstowe Camp, waiting to go

Here since the call-up, what do we know

of the war, how’s it all going?

Winning or losing, no way of knowing.

‘But I need to go, to do my bit.’

The war has been running for three long years

Rumours we’re leaving, I prick up my ears.

We train with the signal lamp, morse is our friend

as we trim the wick and learn how to send

signals ‘cross mountains, received in a blink

We travel through Europe by ship and by train

Sun in the valley, snow on the plain.

I list in my diary the places we pass,

more than four days just sat on my arse.

The flowers and vineyards are all new to us.

We’re getting so close, nearing the fighting

‘Will I be up to it, is it exciting?

Will I stand up, as strong as my mates?

Waiting and fearing, what is my fate?

What is to come, how bad will it be? 

Sailing

None of us like the long leg across the Southern Ocean. There’s no land, see. The rollers go right round the globe with nothing to stop them, only the molleys to see them. We was close-hauled when it happened, Lascar Jim on the wheel. The off watch hands were asleep in the fo’c’s’le, the deck watch loafing topside, taking shelter in the lee of the deck house.

      Jim must have been caught napping, probably leering a goney. He allowed the head to pay off a few points to larboard so the squall took us full broadside, laying her over near to her beam ends. We hadn’t reefed the top gallants so she shuddered to recover with the weight of green in the scuppers and the pressure of the squall aloft.

       The Bos’n was at my back shouting,’ Get those topgallants reefed sharpish, sailing master, or I’ll have your guts for garters.’  I had to whip the watch with a turk’s head to get them up the mast and do my bidding.

      She slowly laboured back to upright, shaking the water off her like a dog after a ducking. She shuddered as the prow dipped into a trough but Jim had her back on course, head to wind.

      I told off the deck hands to let fly the halliards for the top yards to give the reefing gang a chance to beat the wet canvas into shape so they could throw lines around the sails and reef them in.

      We were now in a safe condition, not carrying too much sail and hove to until the sea state dropped. This would lengthen the voyage and cost the owners a packet but still less than losing the ship and cargo.

      The frozen mast monkeys clambered down the rat lines and took shelter. The bos’n ordered a tot for each man who had been aloft. We only lost two men in that evolution.

      The Bos’n beckoned me over and said, ‘Get Lascar Jim relieved off the wheel, take him to the grating on the poop deck and give him twenty lashes.’

      ‘Twenty will kill him, Sir,’ I argued.

      ‘He won’t do it again then will he? Just get on with it and make sure both watches are there to watch, unless you want a couple for yerself.’

      Jim was lashed down on the grating, a wedge of quid rammed in his mouth to stop his screams. The flogging started. He was unconscious after ten, the open wounds dripping blood off his back. The torment continued until the chorus from the hands reached twenty. Salt was rubbed into the wounds to stop infection, then he was cut down and taken below where he died later that night.

      I had the job of putting a stitch through his nose and sewing him in a canvas shroud before he was slid over the side with a marlin spike at his feet so as he didn’t float.

      No one had a prayer to say for his soul.

Murder in the morning

The church clock strikes eight, so those villagers who are awake know without checking that it is six. A cock crows. A body lies across the doorway of the church, a line of crumb-carrying ants marches across the fedora  covering its face. There is a serene, momentary quiet after the chimes cease. A figure ‘2’ glides past the church wall, before the silence is cracked by a baby crying.

      ‘I fear we have a cereal killer at work here, Watson.’

      ‘That’s incredible, Holmes, how do you deduce that?’

      ‘Two hours have gone missing, which will no doubt result in riots just as in the last century when the government decided to move the clocks forward to Summer Time. A witness has spoken of seeing a figure of two hours leaving the scene of the crime. The crumbs that the ants are carrying appear to be from a brand of breakfast food made from maize. I think you will find that the corpse is that of an American citizen from Cincinnatti. Only an American would wear a fedora in a churchyard at this time in the morning with brown shoes. Please be so kind as to check his pockets for any identification, Watson.’

      ‘By jove, Holmes, that is amaizeing, his driving licence shows he is Dr Kellogg from Cicinnati.’

      ‘Thank you, Watson, but please leave the puns to me.’

      ‘Righto, Holmes, old boy, but where does the cock come into the story?’

      ‘I would be very surprised that, when we turn the body over, if we do not find a cornflake packet there with the famous picture of the cockerel on the front.’

      ‘Would you help me roll the body over please, Sergeant Doodlegregg, my good fellow? asked Watson.

      ‘Certainly Sir,’ said the sergeant, taking off his cape and lying it on the damp grass. They rolled the body on to it with a great effort from the policeman.

      ‘Why are you out of breath sergeant?’ asked the good doctor.

      ‘Oi’ve been getting rather a large belly recently, sir so I’ve  been on one of those new-fangled  low carb diets.’

      ‘Those diets are a waist of time, if you ask me,’ affirmed Watson

      ‘No one is and I’ve told you before about those puns, Watson.’

      ‘Sorry Holmes. We have found the cereal packet that you predicted. I assume that confirms your suspicions?’

      ‘Yes, partly but I am wondering if there have been any other suspicious deaths in the village recently Sergeant?’ enquired Holmes.

      ‘Well not really, Sir. There was Mrs Scot, of course, who was found dead at her home in Alpen Crescent last week. She had been stabbed twenty seven times in the back. A clear case of suicide we thought.

      Ten days ago we found the bodies of three patients in the local mental hospital. We put it down as a random nut cluster at the time.

      Then, I suppose, we should include all bran stoker’s family who disappeared last year. That case kept us going down at the station for a while, I can tell you’

      ‘Thank you sergeant. Wait! Can you hear that noise?’

      ‘Do you mean that baby crying, Holmes?’ said Watson.

      ‘No, you idiot, that is just the new year. I meant the other sound, that is the crack of dawn if I am not very much mistaken.’

      ‘But, who killed all these people in the village?’ asked Watson.

      ‘I think you will find that our sergeant here has a lot to answer for in this case. Please check his breath. I think you will find that he has a very bad case of halitosis caused by his body burning fat and going into ketosis. His beath will smell of acetone. You will understand this better than me, Watson, being a medical man.

      I think a bowl of muesli will force a confession from him’

      ‘You are an incredible detective, Holmes,’ muttered Watson as he poured half a pint of best semi skim into the cereal bowl.

Writing challenge 1st September 2012

Choices – Light or dark?

I’d had the idea for a long time, perhaps ten years or more. It started out as almost a philosophical theory and then gradually morphed into a mechanical representation of that idea. It went something like this.

      You are sitting in your favourite chair reading a really good book. You know the one, the one you wished you had written but knew that you really weren’t capable of producing. It is one of those late autumn dreamy afternoons where the evening arrives earlier than you had expected. What happened to those long summer evenings that seemed to go on late into the night when you were a child, at home during those never ending, magical summer school holidays? It starts to get dark. It becomes increasingly difficult to make out the print so what do you do? You reach up and flick a light switch on and the problem is solved and you carry on reading for as long as you wish, regardless of the sun’s desertion to more southerly parts of the world.

      Later, when you have finished reading and there are other demands on your time, you casually flick off the light switch and darkness returns to the room. Is it just the lack of sunlight that makes it dark or is there an unseen dark star in the sky that produces the darkness? Call it, perhaps, anti light in the same way that physicists say that matter is balanced by anti matter and gravity is balanced by anti gravity. Confucianists have thought this way for millennia with the idea of everything in nature having a balance, as exemplified by the concepts yin and yang.

      Think back, to picture yourself sitting in the chair. Perhaps it is earlier in the afternoon and the sun is streaming through the windows making it unpleasantly warm and too bright for your eyes as the sunlight reflects off the page into your eyes, making you squint. You feel sleepy and decide to have a snooze but it is too warm and bright.You have only one option, pull down a blind or draw a curtain to screen you from the sun. Why can’t you lean over and flick on the dark switch?

      There would be many benefits if you could. One would be that you would not need to buy blinds or curtains. Another is that the dark, being antilight, would cancel out the light, and therefore the electricity used to produce it. This would mean that as your use of dark during the summer increased, it would cancel out the cost of the light that you used during the winter. You would become truly carbon neutral – for light and dark anyway – I’ll come to the rest of it later, maybe.

      I spent another five years working out the technology to generate, distribute and control this new dark energy. It was a lot easier than I thought as it was possible to use the National Grid to distribute the dark energy from the production sites, which were of course the same power stations that produced the electricity for converting into light. All it needed was a small modification at the power stations to produce the dark energy from the waste heat. Coal fired power stations are only about 33% efficient so there is plenty of waste heat to use.

      It was easy to use the existing grid to carry the dark energy in the same way as you can download an e mail while carrying on a conversation on Skype, using the same broadband connection, at the same time. I never have understood why the two don’t get mixed up and you end up talking to your e mail account – I am just happy that it works.

      I now had the idea and the system designed,. All I needed now were backers and customers. I decided to go on television and pitch to some millionaires on one of those animal alliteration shows; Sheep’s Shed, Pig’s Pen, Horse’s House or some such. There are many of them these days on television. My pitch went very well, Duncan and Theo started fighting over their bids as soon as they saw the full potential but it was Peter Meaden who came up with the best offer. I grabbed it and the rest is history, as they say.

      That is why there is a three way switch in every room in your house that gives you the choice of how light or dark you want the room.

      What next, you ask. Well, light switches sometimes have dimmers so I have developed a brighter system for the dark switches. It is now in production and will be launched early next year. I am now looking at heating and cooling systems and perhaps a secondary application of domestic water heating and refrigeration.

      I had a passing thought the other day about gravity. I was reading about Isaac Newton’s trinary mathematics system and I wondered if…