A Shelf Of Broken Books

4 Across: Certainly something you'd read (3)

2008-12-21T19:04:00.002Z

From "The Mind Will Always Find Something To Do"

This is how I proposed to my late wife.
On the morning of our second anniversary I woke early. I slipped from beneath the covers, leaving her to sleep, and ran out to the newsagents to get the morning's paper. Standing by the counter, still in my pyjamas and slippers, I unfolded a copy and turned it over. There, on the back page, was my puzzle.
I rushed back to the kitchen to prepare breakfast. Eggs Benedict on toasted muffins with freshly made Hollandaise sauce; hot, ground coffee; hand-squeezed orange juice and a small bowl of plump, juicy strawberries, stalked and cut into halves.
I filled in a few of the clues myself, and then folded the paper back up in such a way that my puzzle was left facing up and wedged it under the plate on the breakfast tray.
She stirred as I entered the room. I told her to relax, that I was bringing her breakfast in bed. I placed the tray down beside her and she sat up dozily as I went to open the curtains. It was a beautiful spring morning, I remember. The ground outside was speckled with dew and the sun shone bright in the clear blue sky making each drop sparkle white.
While my back was turned I could hear her rearranging the items on the tray. The paper had been momentarily pushed to the side, but I knew that she would pick it up again. She always read the headlines as she had breakfast.
That day though, the day I proposed to my late wife, she didn't even make it to the front page. As she shook the paper open, with the back page facing her, she was confused to see that someone had already filled in a few of the answers on the crossword grid.
She opened her mouth to speak - to ask me what had happened to the paper, I imagine - but stopped when she realised what the words spelled out.

YOUR, HAND, IN, MARRIAGE, PLEASE

Were she in the frame of mind to pore over the puzzle sat in front of her then she would have noticed that the words written were indeed the correct answers to the spaces' corresponding clues.
8 Down: Collectively: carpals, metacarpals, phalanges (4);
23 Across: A grim era? Surely confused (8) and so on.
Initially I had wanted to go for the more traditional WILL, YOU, MARRY, ME but my editor had insisted that I not use any two lettered answers. He was happy for me to use the puzzle to propose - I had been a regular contributor for years, and he was always glad to have a light-hearted, quirky puzzle to end the week - only so long as I didn’t use any two lettered answers. Not only did he feel that they make a grid look too stumpy but, in all of his twelve years as puzzle editor for The Telegraph, he had never allowed a two lettered answer to be used. Even in this case, he wasn't prepared to make an exception.
He was right not to, of course. After all, if not for the rules, what is a crossword but just a mess of letters?
Had I resorted to using a two lettered answer, not only would there doubtless have been letters from irked readers, but I also would have felt as if I'd cheated in compiling the puzzle - something I have never knowingly done in my entire career. So it forced me into thinking of a different proposal.
By using YOUR, HAND, IN, MARRIAGE, PLEASE I was able to lock the two lettered IN on to HAND by the D to give the clue for 13 Across: Sounds like a trashcan being hammered (3) - which, while it may not be not my finest or my cleverest clue, got me out of that particular fix.
Now, in hindsight, I think I prefer that it was YOUR, HAND, IN, MARRIAGE, PLEASE. It sounds like it could be a clue itself. I can imagine people - commuters, housewives, university professors - completing the crossword that day and half making out the words of this slightly cryptic message for themselves. They will wonder if it is merely coincidence that these words have appeared before their eyes, or if perhaps that this was a message meant for someone.
A couple of days later as they wait for a train, or as they are cooking their supper, they will think about it again. They will think about that strange message and they will wonder if the person it was meant for ever got to see it, if the person that wrote it ever got their answer.

I smiled back at her, nodding my head towards the paper. She looked again at the grid again and saw the circled clue.
26 Across: What do you say? (3)
She looked back at me, blinked and then looked at the grid one final time before, slowly, picking up the biro.
Her hand shaking, she filled in her answer.
Y-E-S.

7 Down: Possible Shakespeare (4)

2008-12-21T18:57:00.002Z

From "The Mind Will Always Find Something To Do"

I compiled my first crossword at the age of eleven.
When my mother received the call from the hospital that my father had been attacked she felt, quite rightly, that she could not leave me alone in the house. Consequently, I was dragged along with her.
No sooner had we stepped through the doors of the reception than my mother was telling me to stay put and rushing off to find my father. At the time I remember thinking how strange it was that she didn't consider me old enough to be left alone in our family home - a building I knew well, and was relatively safe in - but that I was old enough to be left alone in a strange and vast hospital.
Of course, I know now that it was because I was far too young to have seen what had happened to my father and my mother, so desperate to be by his side, had momentarily lost all sense of rational thought.
Left to pace the corridors of the hospital by myself, I ended up chancing upon the gift shop. Immediately I scouted out the puzzle books but, as far as I could see, it appeared that there were none of the children's editions that I was used to on the shelves. Yet even if they had been heaving with them it would have made little difference, as the pocket money I had would not have stretched to a printed crossword compendium, so I bought a reporter's notepad and a pencil instead and went and sat down in the reception to write.
It started out just being page after page of interlocked words - no spacing, no clues, no real order. But then, as I started to run out of words, I started trying to imitate the sorts of clues that I had seen before in my own puzzle books.
They were basic. AMBULANCE, for example, would be Car for sick people (10).
I was left alone for maybe six or seven hours before my mother found me again. When she sat down next to me she looked pale and tired, but she smiled when she told me that the doctors had said that he was going to be all right.
I didn't find out until much later, after both of my parents had died, that my father had been very critically injured that day in a bank robbery. He had been waiting in a queue to make a withdrawal when four masked thieves staged a hold-up. Incapable of merely being a bystander to the proceedings, my father tried to make a grab for one of them as they made their escape - unaware that he had a five-inch knife tucked away up his trouser leg. As they tussled to the floor, the thief retrieved his blade and thrust it into my father's ribcage, rendering him immobile.
I'm told that paramedics made it to the scene with barely a minute to spare. He had lost a great deal of blood and was rushed to the emergency room operating theatre with his life hanging in the balance.
In the weeks of his recovery I once caught my father walking around shirtless. His chest was swathed in bandage and, right where his heart would have been in a biological diagram, there was a browning red soak-stain. Everybody had been describing the incident as my father's 'attack', and I, unaware at the time that he had been stabbed, therefore assumed that they were referring to a heart attack. Seeing the graphic evidence of this wound, coupled with my mistaken assumption, I had visions of his angry little heart thrashing around inside his body, trying to fight its way out of his chest. I saw his heart attack him.

It would be years and years before I was called upon to re-evaluate what I thought I knew about heart attacks. I was telling Claire about one of the board members of the security firm that I worked for who had had a heart attack, and I articulated in such a way that I ended up saying that he had been attacked in his lunch break. She looked shocked and sympathetic at just that, but she was utterly horrified when I told her not to worry, that it was only a mild attack and that it hadn't really come as a surprise to anyone at the office, though they were all understandably concerned.
When she finally realised what it was that I was trying to intimate, she set me straight. She told me that you suffer a heart attack, you aren't attacked by one. Immediately I racked my brain to think of any times that I might have spoken to anyone else about heart attacks, and whether I had maybe confused them with the same mistake.
Aside from the heart attack that my father had never actually had, I couldn't think of any other instance where I would have needed to discuss them with anyone - presumably why my eleven year old logic had gone unchallenged up to that point.
It's strange how these sorts of mistakes can lay dormant for so long.
Perhaps in passing I have told someone about some other person being attacked. I have visions of me saying to other people, “Yes, he was attacked on his way home from work.”
"How terrible!" they would exclaim, and I would nod.
"I know," I would say. "It looks like no-one is safe," referring to myocardial infarctions.
They would shake their head, muttering something like "What a world!" to themselves and then, instead of cutting red meat from their diet and taking regular exercise, they would get new locks fitted on their doors and think about setting up a Neighbourhood Watch scheme.

There are so many mistakes throughout the body my work. I see things now that I didn't see then. A mistaken use of "less" where I should have written "fewer"; attributing a paraphrased quote to Shakespeare when it was actually one of Mark Twain's; a complete misunderstanding of the word "contrition". To the non-cruciverbalist, to someone who doesn't work in crosswords, these may seem trivial and unimportant and, in the grand scheme of things, I suppose that they are. What irks me about them is that they are indicative of a much larger problem, namely that I've always been a bit of a pompous know-it-all.
At noticeably frequent intervals throughout my life it has been necessary for me to take stock of what I have known to be true, and what is in fact true, and each and every time it has hit me like a ton of bricks. I find that, actually, I know nothing. I know absolutely nothing. And yet each time I recover from this shock, the shock of realising that I know absolutely nothing, I think to myself "This time it's different." I think, "Now I'm wise."
The lesson has finally taken hold.
No more.

The Angel's Share

2008-11-13T12:22:00.001Z

There is a term in winemaking used to describe the volume of wine that disappears during the ageing process.
Whilst the wine is left in a darkened cellar somewhere, to age and to soak in the flavours of the huge oak barrels it is traditionally stored in, heat and humidity take their toll and turn as much as two percent of the barrel’s content into vapour. This vapour creeps through the tiny gaps and holes in the oak and escapes out into the air.
Though, scientifically, it is entirely possible to retrieve the vapours that escape and condense them back into a liquid state, it is a course of action rarely - if ever - practised. Even if it were a financially viable option to do so, the winemaking process is a very delicate one and, once the vapours have mixed with the open air, the chance of collecting undesired elements is too great. For the sake of two percent, winemakers would rather not risk tainting the entire barrel, thus that volume of wine remains forever lost, floating up into the skies.
It is what’s known as the Angel’s Share.
Trust the winemakers to be the ones who turn loss into such beauty.

Step Right Up

2008-11-06T17:49:00.000Z

This is how the dream would go.
Alex would wake to find himself at a funfair. Invariably it would be one of those travelling funfairs where everything was worked from the back of a truck; the type that would roll into town for a couple of days before packing on up and heading off again.
Ordinarily you’d expect these sorts of funfairs to set themselves up in a disused open-plan car park, a minor municipal park or some other urban expanse. Not this one though. This one would be in the streets.
As far as Alex could see, the streets would be closed in both directions and all of the rides and attractions would have been erected bang in the middle of the road, flanked on either side by bakers and butchers, restaurants and estate agents.
It would be the dead of night and the sky would be such a deep black that Alex would assume that it was winter, but he would not feel cold. In fact, he wouldn’t feel any temperature at all. It was like being in a photograph.
There was no noise either. Alex expected the air to be filled with the delighted screams of children, the cacophonic piped organ music of a hundred rollercoasters and candy floss vendors, the strange recorded laughter of an amplified automaton clown. He expected test-your-strength bells to be ringing, punctuating the passing of every five seconds, but instead he heard nothing but the sound of his own footsteps.
They would echo like he was walking on the varnished wooden floors of an abandoned manor house.
Clack. Clack.
Clack. Clack.
And all around him the funfair would be deserted. The stalls, the shooting ranges, the helter skelters, the waltzers, they would all be closed for business. The shutters would all be down and the neon lights that fringed them would be dull and lifeless as if each and every bulb was on the verge of fizzling out.
The ferris wheel would turn with nobody in the chairs. Goldfish would swim and blink in their little plastic bags, but nobody would be winning them. The dodgems would sit statically on the polished rink, the occasional spark firing silently from the charged grid overhead.
With his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jacket, Alex would walk around the funfair, looking for some sign of life. He would walk and walk and walk and walk - certain of his direction but not of what he’ll find.
Soon Alex would become aware of a shadowy figure standing behind the counter of a coconut shy. The figure would be human shaped and a strange wobbling noise would drift out from its mouth.
“Come and try your luck,” it said. “Step right up and try your luck.”
As he listens, the corners of a fifty pence piece would make themselves apparent in the soft flesh of Alex’s palm.
“How much is it?” Alex would ask.
“I’ll take whatever you’ve got,” the would voice reply.
Even knowing how this dream ends, Alex still can not seem to stop himself from shrugging, removing his hand from his jacket and handing over the coin.
The figure gingerly takes it between finger and thumb and drops it into a leather pouch that is tied against his hip.
Alex positions himself in the pitcher’s stance and examines his quarry. The coconuts seem unnaturally large and really rather close. The thought strikes him that if he was going to encounter any difficulty in knocking over one of these coconuts it wouldn’t be in hitting the target, it would be in mustering up enough force. A direct hit at this range would be easy enough, but even if he were to use a basketball he would still have trouble toppling one.
Alex jumps up and down on the spot, and shakes his throwing arm about to warm it up. When he feels suitably limber he sees that the figure is offering him up a bucket.
“How many do I get?” Alex asks.
The figure lifts his head. He smiles and speaks with a disconcerting wisdom.
“I shouldn’t imagine you’ll need more than one.”
Alex stares deep into the figure’s face and doesn’t break eye contact with him as he places his hand in.
There are no balls in the bucket. This much Alex knows. What exactly is in there, he can’t quite tell. There are certainly a few things knocking about in there and they all feel quite hard and rough. He jostles his hand about, moving the objects about and reaching further and further down, until he finds himself touching bottom of the bucket. His elbow is just above the rim and the contents come up about halfway up his forearm. As a final attempt he swirls his arm around and around, trying to hit upon something that feels recognisable but there is nothing.
Taking a step closer Alex raises his eyes to peer into the bucket. The figure brings it in a little bit closer towards Alex’s face so that he can get a really good look.
Inside the bucket is a clump of twisted, rusted metal, sharp at the edges.
Suddenly, Alex’s arm flares with pain - a cold burning brush that scratches its way over the flesh. He rips it out of the bucket and draws it up to his face.
He brings his hand to his eyes and there, running diagonally across the length of his palm is a huge flap of ghost white skin. It is half-peeled back to reveal a sticky, shiny gash and, in this thick sliver of brilliant red, Alex can see little metal filings and tiny flecks of rust dotted stuck deep into the flesh.
Suddenly, the noise of the funfair comes crashing into his ears, the chatter and squealing and bells and sirens. The bitter midnight wind whips its way around him and dives right into the heart of the wound. The muscles in his neck tighten up and start to spasm, pulling his jaw in awkward, unnatural directions. A sickening taste of salt begins to develop in the back of his throat.
He closes his fingers up around the dirty cut and takes a large gulp of frosty air before he wakes.

Ready For The Table

2008-10-28T22:07:00.001Z

Every morning at 5:30 Lucy would rise, dress herself and go outside to meet her father in the milking barn. Her father - who had never once insisted, nor insinuated, that she should help him out about the farm - had long stopped being surprised to see her there each day, standing at the door with her little wooden stool and her little tin bucket. Now he just let her get on with it.
In silence she would pitch up next to a cow and milk it until her bucket was about one third full (for this was as much as her five year old frame could carry). She would then take it to her father and leave it next to him without saying a word and return to the cow to pat it and offer it an officious, congratulatory “Good girl.”
Her milking duties complete, she would then go to the chicken coop, take up a scoopful of feed and scatter it about. Her father would feed them properly later - Lucy had no idea about the quantity of feed that chickens need to stay alive - but she would walk around to check that they were all awake and moving about.

It was an unusual sight to see this young girl dressed in wellington boots and waxed jacket mucking in with the chores like any old farm hand. She conducted herself in such a way that, were it not for her size or her youthful face, there was nothing at all to suggest that Lucy was in fact a child. She did not stop to pat the ducks as they gathered around her feet. She did not chase the lambs around the field, or laugh, or point, or call to her father to watch as they clumsily tried to find their feet. Neither the pigs, nor the horses, nor the flapping chickens frightened Lucy; she treated them more as if they were odd-looking colleagues than she did animals.
It filled Lucy’s father with a curious pride, seeing his child at work. To him, it was like having an angel help on his rounds and often was the time that he would stop and wallow in the immeasurable joy these mornings brought him.
Lucy similarly loved working. She loved nature, the large green fields, the early mornings and she loved each and every animal on the farm. Yet, of all these beautiful creatures that she was constantly surrounded by, Lucy’s heart belonged to only one. Misty, her cat.

The family had acquired Misty as a kitten the Christmas before last. Lucy - who was, at that time, three - took to the grey little tabby instantly and would cry and work herself up into the most tremendous tantrums if anybody else tried to play with him.
It would sleep in Lucy’s room in a small basket by her bed and, once the cows had been milked and the chickens fed, Lucy would spend the rest of the morning playing with him, until it was time for school. She would go and then when she returned home later in the afternoon, Lucy would drop her bags down in the kitchen and retire to her room once more to play with Misty.
For hours on end Lucy would sit and and do nothing more than simply brush his coat, running her fingers through his soft, fluffy fur. Afternoons and evenings were whiled away dangling bits of cotton in front of Misty’s nose, watching him jump and catch it in his claws. And, no matter how many times she was caught and scolded by her mother for doing so, Lucy continued to raid the pantry for the richest foods she could find - the goose livers, the smoked kippers and the thick, creamy milk - to feed to him.
It was clear to even the dullest of wits, how much Lucy cared for Misty.

One day, Lucy’s mother was cleaning the shower in the master bathroom when she heard a commotion in the kitchen. The sounds of screeching and crashing pots and pans echoed through house and she called down to check that everything was OK. Lucy called back that she was. Her mother asked her what she was doing. Lucy replied that she was cooking. It wasn’t until the smell began to fill the rooms - a smell like thick, burning hair - that she dropped her cleaning ran to the kitchen.
There she found Lucy, standing on her little wooden stool, trying to peel potatoes with a large carving knife. There was a thin but pungent mist through which her mother could see blood. Blood all down Lucy’s front, all over the work surface, spilling into the sink, all over the floor.
Snatching control of her hands, Lucy’s mother picked her up and checked her once over for wounds. Finding nothing more than a few scratches on her arms and wrists, she shrieked,
“Lucy! What happened?”
Calmly, Lucy replied.
“Misty,” she said pointing the gleaming knife towards to the smoking oven. “He’s ready for the table.”

How To Not Kill Yourself (in 12 simple steps)

2008-10-23T23:29:00.002+01:00

In order to not kill yourself you will need:
1 shotgun
1 wheelchair
1 or more neighbours with whom you are on good terms

1) Put the barrel of the shotgun into your mouth. For the purpose of not killing yourself, you’ll want to be looking at a good quality, mid-price range shotgun. If in doubt, we believe that you can never go wrong with a 12 gauge, smooth barrel that fires regular bird shot.

2) Clamp your teeth down on the barrel - not so hard that it hurts, but just enough so that you think you have it secured into position. It needs to be in far enough so that the muzzle is in past your teeth, but not so far down your throat that it blocks your airway - you don’t want to choke. Your head should still be able to oscillate freely.

3) You should, at this point, be in your wheelchair. Having lost the use of your legs in a driving accident 18 months ago, you should have been in your wheelchair for a good long time now.

4) Gently rest your thumb on the trigger. As you are pointing the gun on yourself you will be unable to use the traditional forefinger to fire the weapon, and so you will need to use your thumb instead, pushing the trigger away from you rather than pulling it in.

5) Your friend had been driving. He had lied to you about how much he had had to drink that night and you, having had quite the skinful yourself, were in no position to pass or make judgment. You just wanted to get home.

6) You fell asleep in the car and so don’t remember the crash. In fact, when you woke up three days later in the ICU the last thing you can remember is being at a party. You were at a party, you were talking, and drinking, and having a good time and now you can’t move your legs.

7) It is imperative that you DO NOT attempt to saw off any portion of the barrel at any time. It may occur to you, as you struggle with Step 4, that it would be much easier to gain greater purchase on the trigger if you customised the weapon somehow, say by sawing the barrel length. There are a number of reason why a person may decide to do this - to increase the weapon’s manoeuvrability, to ease storage capabilities or to widen the scatter effect of the shot - but for your purposes, for the purpose of not killing yourself, this will only cause a hinderance. In fact, if you are to have any hope of surviving this, you are going to need the barrel to be as long as it possibly can.
If, during the execution of these instructions, this or any similar thought dawns on you then you must cast it from your mind immediately.

8) If it’s any consolation your friend, the driver, died. So often you hear of these stories of intoxicated idiots taking a seat behind the wheel of their car, or van, or truck and causing these epic, pyrotechnic crashes only to emerge from the smouldering wreckage largely unscathed. They, the drivers, end up with nothing worse than a broken collarbone, some token custodial sentence and a lifelong driving ban, while scores of innocent passengers and pedestrians are irreparably maimed and killed. A doctor driving home from a late-night emergency call gets smashed into by a driver so blind drunk he can’t tell the difference between red and green. A distraught eight year old looking for her lost dog in the fields at the back of her house ends up knocked down by somw unexpected bonnet bursting through a hedge because the driver in charge of the car swerved violently off the road to avoid a binbag.
And then these people, they step from their totalled vehicles, survey the damage that they have caused and then they take out their phones and they call the emergency services - not because they’re noble but because they’re that fucking drunk.
These people, they’ll tell you that it’s just as bad as being dead, that it’s worse having to survive and to live with the guilt that comes from paralysing your friend, but there must also be a part of them, however small, that feels invincible, that feels strong and lucky to be alive.

9) Is your thumb in position? In your seated state you’re probably finding this part quite difficult. What you’ll probably need to do at this stage is to twist the trunk of your body (clockwise if you’re using your right thumb; counter-clockwise if you’re using your left). In doing so you should find that your leading shoulder will drop down, significantly extending your reach. For added comfort, you will find that turning your head to whichever side feels natural (again depending on whether you are right or left-handed) will relieve any unnecessary muscular tension.
You should notice that when your thumb finally does make some solid contact with the trigger that the barrel of the shotgun is still pointing straight up towards the ceiling while the top of your skull is now pointing towards one of the room’s four walls.

10) Imagine if he’d survived. There’s not long left, so just think about it quickly. Imagine if he’d survived. What would you have done?

11) Take a deep breath.

12) With whatever force you have in this uncomfortable and unnatural position, thrust you thumb down against the trigger. The shotgun fire should rip through the enamel and flesh of your cheek, missing any of the vital areas of your head, neck and spine. The force of it will knock you back in your chair and leave you unconscious.

Do not worry about calling an ambulance. The noise should alert a neighbours who will, no doubt, call one for you.

Charlie

2008-10-09T00:22:00.002+01:00

A wee homage tae Irvine Welsh - radge wee scunner that he is

See, now whit wis ah sayin? Made me lose mah fuckin thread, ya fuckin eejit.
Oh aye, that wis it. The dug.
So Maw wis feelin aw lanely n’that efter Faither died, n ah wisnae livin at hame so she’d ay be on the phone tae me, gripin oan n oan n’that near enough constant, ken? Dinnae get me wrang, ah fuckin love mah Mither an ah’ll fuckin flatten the man wha caws me a poof fir sayin so, but she wis jist greetin on doon tha phone day efter day, so I sez to her, “Ma, why d’ye no goan get yirsel a wee dug tae keep ye company? Take yir mind affay things.”
N she says aye, it wid be jist the fuckin ticket tae huv anither heartbeat roond the hoose, so she goes tae the pound or the kennel or wheriver the fuck ye go tae find a dug - ah dinnae fuckin know - n she finds this wee flea bag, a westie or some shite cawed Charlie. Fuck me, yis should huv seen the puir wee fucker. Owners afore Maw wid fuckin thrash the thing tae within an inchay its puff so it’s aw that this wee mite can dae just tae sit still. Most ay the time it wid shake like a fuckin paint mixer, pishin n shitein fuckin ivrywhere.
But Maw loves the wee cunt, n that’s whit’s important, so whit d’ye dae?
Turns oot - nae fuckin surprise - that the thing wisnae built tae last. It wis a weak-hearted wee soul n it popped its clogs oan her a month or so efter she gets it. Still, cuz of its history n’that, she wants tay gie it a proper send off, ken? Gie it in death whit it couldnae huv in life, n’aw that shite.
So she goes n buys this ceremonial urn thing tae pit its fuckin greasy auld ashes into efter she gets it fuckin flamed at the crem, n get this. The fuckin thing - this urn - is fuckin inscribed wi the wee cunt’s name. Fuckin inscribed! Y’ever hear a thing like it? Inscribed fir fuck’s sake!
The dug gets burned, Maw collects the ashes n then aw the pictures ay us get fuckin sidelined aff ay the mantlepiece tae make way fir this fuckin inscribed urn - n thair it sits, fuckin priday place in tha livin room, fir aw tae see.
Anyway, ah wis roond thair the ither day n some fuckin wee brats come a-knockin fir oor Jamie. Ah telt thum he wisnae in n these wee dossers start lookin at thair fuckin sneakers, like ah wis a disapprovin faither. Ah asked if ah could help thum at aw, n then wanay the aulder wans mumbles “He wis supposed tae be sortin us oot wi a wee bitay gear, ken?” So I seys tae the wee radges, “Come awa in lads. Ah’ve goat just the stuff fir yis.”
Ah walk thum through intae the livin room an ye should huv heard the gasps when they saw wee Charlie’s urn. This scrawny lad, fuckin’ face like the pavement ootside the Rat N Fuckin Parrot oan a Satday night, peeps up n seys “Fuck me! Is that the stash?”
Ah says, “Fuckin right it is. How much can ah pit yis aw doon fir?”
Anither wan, the fuckin treasurer, seys “Wir wantin twenty quid’s worth”
Ah roll mah eyes, gettin into mah part, ken, n sey “Goat a fuckin calculator on ye then, prick? Ah sell by weight, no by net fuckin price.” Glaikit wee fucker’s huvin trouble wi it, so ah explain tae him “Ye dinnae ask a greengrocer for twenty quid’s worthay tatties, ye ask him for a poond an a half. But seein as yer green tae the gemme I’ll tell ye what. Twenty quid works oot about fower grams.”
So ah goan fetch a sandwich bag ootay the kitchen drawer n start spoonin the ashes oot intay it.
Wanay thum - some wee bawheid - starts tryin tae be fuckin Scarface n’that seyin “Thon disnae look much like cocaine tae me” so ah fuckin steps ower tae the wee shite n sey “Whit are ye? Fuckin elevin? Twelve? C’moan pal, dinnae waste mah time. This is what gear looks like afore it gets bleached, ken? Ah cannae be ersed wi’ daein aw that shite masel - ah’ve goat owerheads tae consider - but if yis want tae go elsewhere n pay extra to get yersels some snow white Hollywood gear, by aw means boys, yir more than welcome. But fower grams for a fuckin purple? You willnae get a better price than that wi’oot packin a fuckin pistol, believe you me pal”
“Awright, awright,” he’s goin. “Nae need tae be like that. Ah wis only sayin.”
Aye, fuckin right ye wis only saying, ya radge wee bastard. Ah pit a knot in the bag n chuck it at the treasurer seyin, “Right, noo awa wi yis afore yir ma sees yir no in yir cots,” n the wee fuckers scarper.
Whit did I dae wi the cash? Ah’m gettin tae that part! Fuck’s sake, haud oan!
Then, see, ah’m oan the sofa, this twenty burnin a hole in mah poakit, feelin a wee bit bad fir sellin Ma’s dug’s remains tae kids n’that n ah’m startin tae feel that mebbe mah karma’ll be a bit ootay kilter so I decide tae caw on mah mate Duncan.
Dunc’s burd has this golden lab that went n goat itself knocked up by some fuckin randy auld mutt n had jist recently pished a loaday puppies ontay his kitchen flair. He’s been pullin his hair oot tryin tay offload them ontay some puir fucker ever since they saw the dug’s belly swell - in fact, Dunc wis aw up fir sackin it up n slingin it intay the river, but his missis widnae huv it.
So ah goes ower n thair’s this wee yin sitting therr that aw the ithers keep oan bitin n’that, really fuckin layin intay it, so ah pick it up by the scruffay its neck, bung Dunc a tenner fir his troubles n take it hame fir Maw.
Yir fuckin right it wis a nice thing tae dae, but that’s jist me thru n thru - aw fuckin heart.
Whit did she caw it?
She didnae caw it anythin. Ah named him.
Whit d’ye reckon I cawed it?
Ah cawed it Charlie as weel.
Ah’m no fuckin stupit.

The Eternal Struggle

2008-10-05T14:50:00.002+01:00

In a bathroom somewhere, a man sees a spider.

It is fairly sizeable for a domestic spider - its body about the size of fingernail - and, though this man is not particularly afraid of spiders, for the duration of his business there he does not take his eyes from it.
It sits upon a web that it has built for itself in the corner of the windowsill. The web is like a child's drawing - a fairytale snowflake with concentric octagons working their way in towards their creator, the spider.
And there it sits, the king of all it surveys.
Upon closer inspection, this man notices that underneath the spider, underneath the web, there is a similarly sizeable housefly, fluttering its wings. There is something in the way it flutters its wings that suggests to this man that the fly is nervous. That it knows something is afoot. That peril lies ahead.

This man, he watches on as the spider starts to rub one of its back legs up and down, like it is slowly working out an itch. Despite not knowing the first thing about arachnid hunting rituals, somehow he knows that this is not a good sign. He sees the spider preparing to pounce and the poor snared fly, with all of its huge, glimmering eyes, staring at the hungry jaws of doom.
A pang of sympathy strikes this man. Ordinarily he would not have thought of himself as the kind of person who would ever find himself concerned about the welfare of a common housefly, much less the kind of person who would actively go out of his way to try to save the life of one, but now here he was, hatching a plan to do just that.
The spider stops moving its leg, stops moving all together. It sits on its web, as still as can be, and looks down at this shivering fly. How cruel, the man thinks, for the spider to taunt the fly in such a manner. It's no wonder that people hate spiders if this is how they choose to conduct themselves.

This man, he knows what to do.
He will twist the handle of the window, apply gentle pressure to the pane and pop the whole thing open. The threads of the web, they will snap and they will fall. The fly, far from being trapped, will now have whole wide world to escape to and the spider - the proud, smug spider - will fall to the ground and be left with nothing.
No prey, no home, no hope.
That will teach it.

This man, his hand is on the handle and he is all but a wrist's twist away from putting his plan into action but suddenly he is struck by a thought.
How exactly had this fly got itself into such a precarious position?
Surely it's not possible that it could have flown in between the sticky strands of gossamer without catching a wing or a leg? Because if it had managed to execute such a flawless display of aeronautical ability and successfully navigate its way through the web then it stands to reason that the fly should be able get itself back out again.
And even if it couldn't, was that any reason to save the sorry little pest now? Wasn’t it the fly’s own stupid fault that it had got itself into a scrape it couldn't get out of? It was like those morons you read about who try to scale Everest in trainers and bumbags, who end up forcing emergency rescue teams to risk their lives in mortally treacherous conditions to come and save their worthless hides.
Or worse, and probably more likely, was that the fly had been standing in that position all the while that the web was formed around it, and it was either too stupid or too lazy to move when it saw the spider starting construction.
Really, how fast can a spider move?
And don't think for a second that this man will fall for the old 'kindness of strangers' gag either. Granted, spiders aren't the most active of hunters and flies don't live long enough to ever become wise, but even so. If the fly has the audacity to try to play it naïve, say that it had no idea that the spider was out to harm it, that it thought the spider was putting a roof over its head, then this man will kill it himself.

His thoughts turn to the spider, sitting upon the house that it has built for itself with its own blood, sweat and tears - or whatever juices that spiders excrete in place of blood, sweat and tears - and was now ready to enjoy the nice, square meal that it so rightly deserves after a hard day of honest toil.
Besides, flies are what spiders eat. Who is he to stop a spider from catching his daily feed? This man would certainly have something to say if somebody tore his house to the ground simply because of his dietary requirements.
And maybe there's a family. Maybe this spider is the mother or the father of a nest of little baby spiders. He thinks of all these tiny crawlers, the thousands and thousands of little eyes between them all blinking hungrily, all waiting for their hunter-gatherer parent to come home and feed them. The waiting turns to impatience, which turns to hunger, to anger, to desperation, to weakness and then, finally, to death.

Still, the fly, shivering and scared, looks so haunted and helpless. It’s been stupid and careless. Is that any reason to let it die?
Look at it. It knows it's been stupid. It know it’s been stupid and it’s sorry. It'll change its ways. It promises. It’s been stupid and selfish and it doesn’t want to live like this any more.
Really. It won't take anything for granted ever again. It'll be a better parent; a more considerate lover. It'll help out more in the community. Give it a chance to turn itself around. In a year his name will be revered in any circle you can care to think of, just you see if it isn't.
Come on. It's not as if it has ever asked for anything from you before. Just this one favour. Please.

Please.

His business concluded, this man buttons himself up.
He has made up his mind.
He opens the mirrored bathroom cabinet and retrieves a can of his wife's hairspray.
Clasping the thumb and forefinger of his left hand tight against his nostrils, and using his right hand to aim the can at the web he squeezes a firm forefinger down hard on the nozzle.
As this chemical storm rains down upon them, both the spider and the fly panic and make unwise reactionary movements.
The spider loses its footing and starts to scrabble on the wires of its web, frantically trying to stay upright as the gale force aerosol blasts past it. The spray burns cold against its body and pushes it flat against the net.
The fly shakes and shivers in violent fits and spasms; its wings flapping, its feet firmly in place.
Neither try to run but, as the hairspray starts to set, slowing their jolts and their thrashes, they keep trying to move until, gradually, they fall still. Stuck fast.
This man, he keeps squirting the spray on them until his finger starts to hurt. Drifts of substance have formed up against the sill which bubble and flatten and fade to leave a varnished sheen on the window’s surface. In their wake they leave the two creatures, both cased in body casts
He wonders if they are both still alive.
They are.
They are looking around and down at their limbs, and wondering why they are so suddenly paralyzed. Coated like candied apples, their eyes still seeing, their hearts still beating. They are bugs in amber trapped before their time. They are still very much there.
And they will still be there long after they have died. Long after their insides have turned to dust and have been blown away; when all that remains are the hollow husks of their bodies, dried and bleached by the sun. They will still be there, locked in this position.
The spider, sitting on his web, king of all he surveys.
The fly, cowering beneath, awaiting the inevitable.

From The Seat Of Your Car

2008-10-02T08:06:00.002+01:00

You can hardly believe what you’re watching. It’s as if your windscreen was a television set.
As you sit at this junction, your indicator still clicking as you wait to pull out safely, a messy crowd of paramedics and bystanders forms in front of you - all huddled around a twisted heap of bicycle.
You sat and watched it all: the bus clipping her front wheel; the humiliating struggle she had put up with her handlebars, like she was trying to control an errant pneumatic drill; the good Samaritan who tried to help move her to safety but accidentally snapped her frail wrist putting her in the recovery position.
And you know how ridiculous this sounds but you could swear that as they wheel the old lady, broken and barely conscious, into the back of the ambulance, she has weakly lifted her head to turn to face you directly and, with her wet, grey eyes, she is saying to you:

I know that it was not you who knocked me down, but you sure as hell did not pick me back up again.

It’s in that moment that you realise what you have done, and what you have failed to do, is something altogether worse.

Setting Off The Sprinklers

2008-09-20T01:32:00.002+01:00

The man sat in reception was not at all what Stefan had pictured. Not even slightly. He was old, much older than he had been expecting, and he had this awful, ravaged sort of look about him. His suit, though not tattered exactly, looked as though he had been wearing it since he left school. His skin was yellowing and papery, his posture was crumpled, his entire body just seemed to have been beaten. In short, he looked as though he had spent his entire adult life in the dingy depths of a pool hall.
Stefan had only been in recruitment for a few short months, but he knew instantly that the next fifteen minutes were going to be a complete waste of his time.
“Mr Thomas? How are you doing? I’m Stefan.”
Mr Thomas stands, brushes his palms down the front of his shirt and extends a hand to shake.
“Sorry. I’m a little early.”
“You can never be early for an interview; you’re can only ever be punctual.”
Mr Thomas shrugs.
“I’ve had nothing else to do today, is all.”
“Have you been offered a drink at all? Tea? Coffee? Water?”
“No, thanks. I’d better not.”
“OK. Well, if you’d just like to follow me through, we’ll get started.”
Stefan leads the way through the corridors of the building to a small interview room. Save for a desk, a couple of chairs and a large photographic print of a Caribbean sunset, the room is as barren as a squash court.
“Please, take a seat.”
“Thank you.”
Stefan takes his place behind the desk and then looks towards his feet as he speaks.
“Mr Thomas, I can’t help but notice that you appear to be a lot older than your application would seem to suggest you were.”
“Oh,” he says, not particularly surprised. “How old does it suggest I am?”
“It says you’re 26.”
Mr Thomas shrugs.
“People lie on their CVs all the time. You of all people should know that.”
“How old are you?”
“38.”
Stefan was guessing 45, 50.
“I see. And are there any other lies on here that you want to tell me about before we continue?”
“I can’t really remember. It’s been a while since I wrote it.”
Mr Thomas takes a packet of cigarettes out from his inside jacket pocket and begins turning it about between his fingers.
“The thing is, Mr Thomas, I’m a junior consultant. The vast majority of opportunities that come my way are for low-level temporary jobs or graduate positions. My clients are looking for people in their early to mid twenties, people prepared to take lower salaries for the sake of experience or to fund gap years. I mean this with the greatest deal of respect you understand, but I don’t imagine that there’s going to be much, if anything, on my books that will be that suitable for a man of your age.”
“That’s OK,” he says, looking down at his cigarettes, tapping the packet against his thigh. “I’m not really that fussed about finding a job.”
Stefan tries to catch this man’s eye, tries to lift his head up, but cannot seem to manage it.
“Then what exactly are you here for?”
Slowly, he slides a cigarette out from the packet, pinching it by the filter and plugging it between his pursed lips. He rustles about in another pocket for his lighter.
“I’m afraid you can’t smoke that in here. This is a non-smoking building.”
Mr Thomas pulls his hands from his pockets and brings them up to his mouth, as if he were about to play the harmonica. When he removes them seconds later, the cigarette is lit.
“Mr Thomas. This is a non-smoking building.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he says, sucking in with a smile. “Set off the sprinklers, will it?”
“Well, no,” Stefan starts, “but it’s, erm... it’s against...”
He can feel his cheeks burning. It’s visible. Mr Thomas laughs, exhaling a messy cloud of smoke.
“Wow. This really makes you uncomfortable, doesn’t it?”
He brings the cigarette up to eye level and wiggles it. Stefan tries too hard to ignore it.
“Well, I’ll tell you this much. If you don’t like me doing this, then you’re really going to hate what I’m about to do.”
Stefan shifts in his seat.
“What are you about to do?”
“What I’m about to do,” the man says, slouching forward and crossing his arms across his knees, “is wet myself.”
He is smiling, still smiling, but he is not joking.
Stefan blinks. The red in his cheeks begins to blanch rapidly.
“You’re going to what?”
“You heard. I’m going to wet myself. I’ve been fit to burst ever since I stepped on the bus here, so I thought ‘what the hell?’ - I’d just go ahead and wet myself.”
Stefan blinks again.
“Mr Thomas, if you need to go to the toilet we have a men’s room just down the corridor there on the right.”
“Oh, I have no doubt. An office this size, I imagine you’re legally obliged to have a men’s room. You probably have men’s rooms on on every floor, but I’m happy enough here, thank you.”
He flicks some ash onto the carpet and spreads it about with his foot.
Instinctively, Stefan picks up the phone but as he brings it to his ear he realises that he has no idea who he intends to call.
The dialtone buzzing in his ear, he watches Mr Thomas take a long, crackling drag and lay right back in the chair, tipping back his head. Stefan runs his fingers through his hair and wonders if standing up is the right or wrong thing to do.
Then it begins. The unusual yet unmistakable sound of urine trickling through the underside of a man’s trouser leg and landing on carpet. Like a muffled drum roll, it builds a sense of anxiety, a sense of expectancy in Stefan. It causes his brain to tick over quicker, to trip itself up. He becomes increasingly aware of his breathing and how arrhythmic it is becoming. By the time he is able to calm himself enough to be able to regulate it, it is all over.
Mr Thomas lets a satisfied sigh out through his nostrils and lets the half smoked cigarette drop from between his fingers. It hisses and extinguishes itself in the puddle in front of the seat.
“Well,” he says, slapping his hands down on his thighs and pushing himself up out of the chair, “I’ll see myself out.”

One Of Life's Hardest Lessons, Learned

2008-09-10T23:06:00.003+01:00

Outside a restaurant in Queenstown, New Zealand one Sunday morning, a family of five takes a table for breakfast.
The family are regulars and know the menu as well as any waiter there, so they place their weekly order without so much as a second thought before settling into their seats and resuming an animated discussion about the people of their church.
A few feet from where they sit a slight, scrappy blond child chases a duck around a patch of grass.
The child is dressed in nothing but a pair of camouflage-effect cargo shorts and, though he is really too old for them now, the waistband and the unmistakable bulge of a disposable nappy are clearly visible. He squeals and plods clumsily about, taking heavy uneven steps towards the duck.
The duck - a greyish brown creature with a majestic flash of purple on each wing - manages to waddle and quack its way away from the child. It does so in rather a wobbly line, bobbing its head up and down much in the manner of a carved wooden pull-toy that the child used to own and, up until recently, play with. This delights him no end and he shrieks with glee whenever the duck does it.
The family of five, their coffees arrive, and they turn their attention to each other once more.
They do not look in the child’s direction again; not until they hear the screeching of tyres, the tinkle of broken glass, and a sickeningly resonant thud.
When they do, they see that a 4x4 Land Rover vehicle has swerved and crashed into a stationary motorcycle parked at the side of the pavement, shattering its front headlight.
Ten, maybe twelve, feet in front of the Land Rover’s front bumper sits the misshapen, lifeless body of the duck - its legs splayed out in an unnatural fashion, its neck tucked awkwardly beneath its chest.
And there, safe from harm at the pavement’s edge, stands this breathless boy - his soft, shoeless feet teetering on the edge of the concrete - watching it all with wide and shining eyes.
Four feathers, scattered at random, float serenely down to the ground. As the final one touches the asphalt, the child’s father appears as if from nowhere and scoops him up into his arms.
The child clutches on to his father. He wants to sleep.
My french toast arrives.
I barely touch it.

Executive Decisions

2008-09-07T14:58:00.004+01:00

So.
The idea: a series on how to perform cosmetic operations at home.
The concept: “transform-yourself-on-a-budget.”
Prime-time slot. Thirteen parts. Your ideas, please.
Hmmm.
OK.
My first idea - and I’m just riffing here - is like ‘How To Do An Acid Peel With Things You’d Find Under The Sink.’ Tell people which ones work, which ones don’t, dilution quantities, application times. That sort of thing. How does that sound?
I’m thinking Season Premiere. Love it.
Really?
Yeah. It’s a keeper. Next.
How about laser hair removal? Maybe with, like, the laser in a remote control.
Or the laser part of a CD player.
Would those work?
I don’t know.
Something to look into.
Someone. Look into it.
A needle and thread job to pin the ears back?
In.
Mole removal with scissors?
In.
A nose job with a fillet knife?
I think I’ve seen that done somewhere.
Everything’s been done somewhere. There are no new ideas anymore; it’s all in the interpretation. It’s something worth bearing in mind.
Beside, it can’t hurt to show it again.
Good point.
So what are we saying?
Nose job. In.
Question.
Yes?
Are we going to be touching upon genitals?
Hmmm. Tricky one.
We probably don’t want to be too gender-specific. As you know, that’s the quickest way to alienate half the available audience.
Ah, yes. Good thinking.
OK. That’s settled then. Let’s stay away from genitals.
Trouble is, if you don’t want to be gender-specific, you’ll have to think carefully about what you want to do with boobs.
Boobs! Of course!
Yeah, and I was kind of thinking they could be a three-parter. Augmentations, reductions, then a special on nipples. But if you don’t want to be gender-specific...
DAMN IT! Making good TV is so damned tricky!
Sir, I don’t think men wouldn mind looking at boobs for three shows while the women learn.
You reckon?
Fairly sure, sir.
Really? OK, well let’s keep them in at this stage then.
Boobs. In.
Anything else?
Yeah. I don’t know who you’d talk to about this, the producer or the director or someone, but maybe you could get the expert or whoever to do the demonstration and then we could fade the screen to black so that viewers can see their reflections in their TV set and, y’know, do a sort of ‘repeat after me’ thing.
Fade to black? What? No picture?
You could probably still have the expert talking them through it.
With no picture?
It’ll be like radio, but on TV.
OK. I see what you mean.
I like it. It’s a nice angle.
Minimalist.
I’m sorry. Can I stop you there a second? I have to say, I’m a little bit uncomfortable with all this.
Really?
How so?
Just... Well, isn’t it a bit... y’know...
What?
Come on.
We value your opinions.
Well, just a bit... dangerous.
I see what you mean. Like we’d be encouraging people to cut themselves up?
Kind of.
Well, that is sort of the point, but the way I see it is that we’d actually be taking the danger out of amateur surgery. We would be educating people; making it safe. Do you see what I mean? The sad fact of the matter is that as long as there are taboos about cosmetic procedures, then people will ill-advisedly continue to chop themselves up in their houses without the most fundamental understanding of surgical practice Are you happy to let this sort of barbaric behaviour continue? I know I’m certainly not. No, these are important issues which need to be addressed and I solemnly believe that, as television executives, we have a responsibility - nay, a duty - to to ensure the safety of our viewers, as should you all. They are, after all, the reason we are here. Does that help at all?
I guess so.
Good.
So. Any ideas for the host?

Quiet And Shaky Voices

2008-09-06T18:45:00.003+01:00

My friend has a theory about old women's voices.
Looking at it logically, he says, old women should have the loudest, most resonant voices of all. They have been talking the longest, they have a full lifetime’s worth of things to say and, as their hearing fades, their voices should adjust in volume to compensate.
But they don’t. When women get old their voices turn quiet and shaky.
The reason that they get so quiet and shaky, he says, isn’t because old women live to be old. It’s because they live to be older than everyone else.
The vocal cords, like any other muscles in the body, are subject to the effects of atrophy and will weaken when not used. So as their husbands and partners die off and their circle of friends tightens in on them, so do their vocal cords.
They die off.
They tighten.
That’s why when an old woman bumps into you at the supermarket, or thanks you for offering her your seat on the bus, or asks you to donate money for a poppy, you can barely make out a word she says.
It’s all practice, he says, for the day that they become ghosts.