Budget 2015

Hello. So, I'm under no illusions that my little blog has a small audience, and that most of the people reading it probably know me personally. That said, the internet is a wonderfully interconnected thing, even for no-name scribblers like me, so I feel this post needs some context for what I like to think of as my international audience. I am both British and living in England, and on Wednesday the Chancellor of the Exchequer (chap who runs the money in our parliament) released his budget, detailing various spending plans and cuts to be enacted. On Wednesday I wrote a little poem in response to that which I'd like to share with you. For the piece to work you need to know a) that the budget has just been released, and b) that the Chancellor's name is George Osborne. The piece is untitled and goes thusly:

Fuck George Osborne.

Fuck him negligently and with no real concern for his orgasm.

Fuck him while making enough noise to seriously strain his relationship with his upstairs neighbour, who has to get up early for work and already struggles to get enough sleep because they have a newborn.

Fuck him with the stereo playing music which does not really create a fuck-appropriate ambience - Chopin's Nocturnes, or didgeridoo music, or something.

Fuck him in such a way that accidentally break several small ornaments of great emotional worth.

Fuck him whilst wearing a cologne which aggravates his hay-fever.

Fuck him and give him a hickey which is clearly visible above the collar on his work shirts.

Fuck him directly after eating a kebab so you get chilli sauce on his favourite pillow case.

Fuck him with the door left open so the cat can come in and stare at him.

Fuck him after agreeing on a safe-word which you know will set off a speech impediment which, while not all that noticeable, he still gets embarrassed about.

Fuck him and, at the point of climax, whisper into his ear the name of his least favourite geography teacher.

Fuck him and afterwards, when he asks if it was good for you too, leave a very slight pause before answering.

Fuck him and then, later when he's just about to fall asleep, sneeze so violently that you bash the back of your head into his nose. Then when you roll over to see if he's alright, wipe it on his shoulder.

Fuck George Osborne in all the above ways, then over the course of a week leave him one hundred and thirty seven voicemail messages tearfully asking why he doesn't want a second date.

One hopes you're well,

Yrs,

ADWoodward

The Tale of Joseph Spunkleson

Hello. I've written a little fable which I'd like to share with you. It's called The Tale of Joseph Spunkleson and it goes thusly:

The Tale of Joseph Spunkleston

"Hello, madam," said Joseph Spunkleston. "These are my genitals. Would you like to lick them?"
"No, thank you," she replied, as politely as she could manage.
"Fair enough," he replied. "The offer's still open if you change your mind."
Joseph Spunkleston never really learned the appropriate context for his penis and testicles. This led, later in life, to a rather embarrassing conversation with a lady paramedic after he tried to fuck the toaster

The End


One hopes you're well,
yrs,
ADWoodward

Fair Selene

Hello. Sorry not to have posted for a while. I have been writing, and have some things which I think should be quite good. it's just that I have no idea how to end any of them. Or in some cases start. I'm quite good at writing middles, so I've got that going for me at least. As luck would have it, though, I had one of those occasions where my brain gives me something almost fully-formed. I got it down before it could go away and would like to share it with you. It's called "Fair Selene", and it goes thusly:

Fair Selene

     I like it when you can see the moon during the day, when fair Selene comes to say hello. Even though she knows most people will be too distracted by the light-show her fiery brother has enacted, she comes anyway. She comes to see what you look like when you're not sleeping. She comes in keeping with her duty of care to those of us who know she's always there and ever shining. Subtly smiling on a seat of azure cloth she adds her light to our days. She's made more soft by blinding rays, but we who spot her in a crowded day marvel at her beauty in a  hundred thousand little ways.
     Little ways count. They count when there are are only a few of them or when they mount up to a quantity which is difficult to count. Each way may weigh only an ounce, but an ounce can tip the scales towards contentment and away from fear and doubt. Fair Selene doesn't need to shout to be heard because we have learned her worth and eagerly turn our brains to sponges to soak up every word.
     This shouldn't come as a surprise because her standing in our eyes has been hard earned. Each time we turned away from the sun and sat huddled in our own private ebon night, besieged and plagued by anxiety and self-inflicted fright, she set her sight on this scene which has played over and again in our mind. With kind determination she forces into our hands the keys of our emancipation. Her pale and steady light drains from the world all the lying colours we've daubed upon it. She sets the record right. When we behold the world without false hue we see internally what fair Selene already eternally knew. If we have sinned, it is only in acting without the love we owe ourselves.
     So, I like seeing the moon during the day. It reminds me that always there is light.

One hopes you're well,
yours,
ADWoodward

On Humanity

Hello. I should be revising right now. I don't like revising and I think my brain is being helpful by giving me other things to do. It gave me a little thing which I have dutifully written down and would like to share with you. My brain didn't give me a title so for now it's called On Humanity and it goes thusly:

On Humanity

D’you ever want to put your fist through a table? You don’t, not because you’re not able, but in case some shocked person screams out “That’s mahogany!” The agony of your personal Odyssey isn’t anything new. Don’t you forget you’re not the first to get the hull of your trireme wet. A thousand generations or more since ancient times have left their native shores and set sail for distant climes. A thousand generations from a myriad of nations have braved these seas before you learned how to breathe. Despite the odds stacked against them your ancestors squared their shoulders, set their feet and met them. They sailed through the crashing boulders and crossed the raucous seas. They reached the Caucasus and retrieved the Golden Fleece. You are the successful result of a billion years of evolution and with every revolution of the wheel of fate your ancestors grit their teeth and set a faster pace. No other creature has sent one of their own into outer space. Only one percent of our DNA separates us from chimpanzees and we have crosswords and blackberry jam and artistic jamborees while (nice as they are) they’re naked and live in trees. The ease with which we put ourselves down is strange since the bricks of our molecular arrangements were forged in stars. You are the dust of stars so you really must start getting some perspective. Do some good, write some ringing invective. Make sure the world’s a better place by the time you leave, because, sir and madam, I believe we are not the fallen descendants of Adam and of Eve. We are risen apes. If that thought escapes you for a single day and you hate your life and regret it or rue it, forget all else save that you’re human and humans are great so I’m sure you’ll get through it.

One hopes you're well,
yrs,
ADWoodward

A Small Recommendation

Hello.

Have you ever been sat in the corner of a room filled to the brim with emptiness of an unknown origin, trapped by a great black dog which with drooling yellow fangs snaps off the words “you’re a cunt” in near-continuous, rumbling litany to keep you immobile and scare off any visitors you might have?

I have.

I probably wouldn't recommend it to friends.

One hopes you're well,

yrs,

ADWoodward

The Peril of the Department

Hello. Looking for something else on my laptop I have discovered a thing about which I had entirely forgotten. Last year, my department was one of many under threat of debilitating cuts and restructuring from an over-paid and out-of-touch university management. I wrote the following out of anger at this. I wrote it before I had started this blog and so didn't post it then. Since last year the proposals were successfully fought by the department, so the piece is now out-of-date. That said, I think it's still quite good so I thought I'd share it with you. It is inspired by the Cyclops episode from Homer's Odyssey (IX.80-410) and goes thusly:

The Peril of the Department

                Striking the white surf with their oar-blades, my valiant crew and I came to the land of the University Managers, a fierce, suit-clad people who never raise a hand to plant knowledge in young heads. All the aspirations and abilities that grow in that green, red-bricked land spring up, as far as they know, unsown and untilled. Thinkers and writers and groups of young people clustered with new ways of approaching old problems that sprout with the aid of critical-thinking and research skills all appear thanks to the providence of the immortal gods.

                Not so very far from the land of the university managers, and not so near either, there lies a luxuriant island, covered with world-class academics buzzing merrily away in their paper hives and happy, flourishing students sprouting from the sun-splashed lawns. The University Managers have nothing like our ability to see the soul of a thing, no sensitive minds to see the value of a thing beyond the bottom line of a balance sheet. Such visionaries would make the isle a fine colony for the university managers.

                It is by no means a poor country, capable of yielding any crop in due season. However, unable to access its splendid meadows and friendly, intriguing caves, the University Managers, unknowing of the Elysium they destroy, shroud the land with clouds of external fees which they send up like a man with an overly-focussed gaze clears out his attic, throwing away ancient treasures glittering with jewels of the purest beauty. Ignorant of the benefits such artefacts could bring to him and his family, he piles them on the bonfire as though they were dust-covered, empty boxes of Fox’s Teatime Assortment. Such was the pall hanging over this little isle. With such pressure from overhead blocking out the sun, the natural beauty of the island faded and its crops, delicious and useful, were already struggling to burst from the rich loam in the quantities they had in recent years.

                The tide and the wind conspired without consulting us at this critical stage in our journey, forbade us from landing on this still-happy little land that reminded me so much of our homeland of peaceful, verdant Academia and drove us directly to the land of the university managers.

                Springing from the ship, the tall and much-lauded Department, I and my companions landed in this strange, foreboding land, pausing only to pick up a skin of fine, purple-red wine to appease whoever might live in this land that they might grant us the supplies we needed to continue our journey back home, back to sacred, joyful Academia.

                Trembling with the fear the rumours of these monsters had instilled in us, we swallowed our fear and made our way to the great, fearful residence. The bones of previous adventurers driven to these shores by fickle providence crunched under our feet, but we had no choice; our only hope of continuing our journey lay in the mercy of whatever creature made its home in that awful, joyless place. Entering the residence, a lofty cave hacked out of the living mountain by the sweat of thankless slaves, we were appalled. Our hearts sank as we spied banners bearing the ancient, terrible battle-cry of “Efficiency Savings.” Tears ran down our cheeks as we spied the spreadsheets, terrible trophies of battles past. Vomit rose in my throat and I sank to my knees as I saw a terrible sight. There on the floor, mutilated by the strokes of an axe but still recognisable, was the head of one whom I’d known in my boyhood back in Academia. Poor Sussex; hacked to death and abandoned in the corner like the garbage at the end of a riotous feast.

                “What’s this?” A terrible shadow fell across us as the voice boomed around the corpse-stenched abode. We turned and saw for the terrible form of Polyagnosias, King of the University Managers. One horrible eye, capable only of seeing one horrible, lifeless vision of the world, gleamed like a pus-oozing boil from its forehead. The bloated, barbarous creature wore a jacket fashioned the skins of his victims, with patches on the elbows dyed with the heart-blood he mercilessly drains from them. The sickening image stood in malignant mockery of the garb and peaceful mindset of we Academics. The trousers bulged grotesquely with the fetid, stinking masses of the creature’s half-finished meal of “bonuses”, a sickly sweet fruit no honest man can hope to taste. We learned this term from brave men who have faced these monstrosities and fled with their lives weakened and trembling, they shamble about their native homes like the pale shades that haunt the banks of the Styx, unable to continue with the work that used to give them such due to their grief for slaughtered companions whose absence they miss like a butchered limb.

                With the pallid, gaunt faces of these heroes-brought-low capering in their nauseating dance before my eyes, I approached the dreadful creature and looked into its gaze, into that terrifying window both flat and unloving. I proffered the wine which we had brought from our ship and spake thusly:

                “Sire, noble king of this ancient, wooded land, I thank you for not instantly devouring us and taking our meagre supplies for yourself. It shames us to have to rely on another’s mercy to survive, but we have no other choice. We set out with enough supplies on our great ship, The Department, to make it to our destination, with a small amount left over as well. Woe befell us when those being who shape events and control the smallest aspect of our lives placed upon our shoulders a great and massive burden. Those supplies, which without this would have been enough, are now under great pressure. We need your help so that we might return to our homeland where our crops need tending and our young require our experienced hands to set them on the right course for the future. Please take this gift and let it warm your heart towards helping us in this time of sudden uncertainty.”

                The beast seized the wine in its oversized paw and greedily drank it down. It did not pause to enjoy the gift or express any thanks that it had received it. Such thoughts of gratitude do not enter a mind that regards privilege as its due. The beast turned its eye to me and smiled a terrible, grotesque approximation of a grin. It’s mimicry of civility made what I feared seem all the more terrible. With the half-rotten flecks of previous meals visible in its teeth, the beast addressed me:

                “Who are you who rightfully honours me so?”

                “I am Nobody, Lord.”

                “Then as a reward I shall eat Nobody last.”

                With this the beast seized two of my companions and ate them whole and speedily, their cries for mercy as redundant as their attempts to get away from that terrible, reaching hand. Not sated by this first barbarous course, the beast seized another two of my companions and dispatched them in the same way. Gross excess of this sort warms the body and soothes the mind, and so the terrible beast retired to its bed of piled-up treasure, unearned and unvalued, and began to snore.

                The beast had left the entrance to its home unbarred, and left nothing to prevent us escaping and evading a further confrontation which would surely end in us sharing the same grisly fate. But what use would flight serve? Losing four of my faithful companions had wounded me deeply. More than that, though, without them we had no hope of properly steering the tall and well-built Department. We would drift, unable to properly move the oaken planking and swift painted prow through the surf, until some unseen future catastrophe from the gods ended our adventures for good.

                We were resolved. Our only hope of being able to continue under the bright lamp of the sun lay in this cave, lay in our own determination. Lying to one side of the cave was a huge staff of green olive-wood which the beast had cut to carry with it when it was out strolling to support its weight when circumstance, as it so often did, left him with barely a leg on which to stand. Spying this pole, a plan instantly formed in my mind. I called for my companions to aid me in this new task before me. The pole was so large that it took the combined efforts of all the crew-members of the Department to move it and so secure our freedom.

                We moved the pole over to the fire cheerfully blazing under the cavernous hearth and held it in the flames. When the fierce glow from the olive stake warned me it was about to catch alight in the flames, green as it was, I withdrew it from the fire and my companions gathered around. A god now inspired them with tremendous courage. Seizing the olive pole, they drove its sharpened end directly into the beast’s flesh next to it monstrous, sleeping eye while I used my weight from above to twist it home; like a man using a hole-punch to pierce a stack of papers he’d spent years of painstaking research producing while his colleagues work around him proof-reading and ensuring the piece is of the same high quality that secures the reputation and future income of their college. In much the same way we handled our pole with its red-hot point and twisted it into the beast’s flesh until the blood boiled up and the stench of scorched flesh rose up and stung our nostrils. We removed the pole and could see the unused eye we’d released from its binding of healed-over skin, the second eye that grants its owner perspective and which can fade if not used.

                The pain caused the beast to empty its stomach of its foul meal. My companions came tumbling out in rush of wine and foul juices, shaken but ecstatic that what they’d thought was their end was not so. The beast awoke with a yelp and screamed in a voice that could be heard for miles around the following:

                “Nobody has opened my eyes! Nobody has helped me see the justice of using some of my grand resources to help him and his Department continue on their journey instead of keeping it selfishly for my own comfort!”

                All around him the other University Managers nodded approvingly at what seemed like a fine decision which would do much to improve their people’s reputation in the world and resolved to congratulate their king on his noble and praiseworthy action. It didn’t matter to us that the king of the University Managers was now seen as clement and wise, we were simply jubilant to have resolved this dangerous situation. As dawn appeared, fresh and rosy-fingered, we were once again striking the white surf with our oar-blades, back on course to our home of peaceful Academia

One hopes you're well,
yrs,
ADWoodward

Arts Degree

Hello. I wrote the first bit of this way back in January an the rest earlier this week. I enjoyed writing the first bit but when I came back to it after the first session I could not get back into the tone of it. On Tuesday I got sudden inspiration and finished it. I'm quite happy with how it has turned out, so I thought I'd share it with you. It goes thusly:

Arts Degree

Or: Don’t Interrupt My Drinking

I was sat in the pub last week with a beer and a steak and sat by my plate a stack - near collapse, on the verge - a pile of Latin verse. For a while a man had been staring and with a smile he struck a bearing and spoke. My reply, though terse, failed to unnerve him or move him, in fact he just zoomed in and asked: “Can you tell me what the point is: all this toil up in that joint with the purpose to anoint eight thousand more youths (less dropouts) with certification?. They’re so impatient to fill the nation with vagrants who are qualified to debate the neighbours on the literature of Plato – they think they’re so smart but really they’re useless and vaypid.” His fallacy’s quite flagrant. Not least because it’s vapid, the ‘a’ is short, like my patience. I don’t retort because I want my steak and not confrontation. But this paragon of tedious arrogance has had a rapid thought and continues as though he’s not already bored me: “The problem with you – as in you lot, not just you here before me – is that you all think what you learn will matter when you enter the real world and scatter to earn your place in it. Why, that stack of notes right there, I think you’ll just bin it. You’ll never use it again, and so, my studious young friend, I ask: why do you do it? Why do you strive at these tasks?” He then says something he shouldn’t, just one thing: “I think it’s right that the Arts have lost all their funding.”

“Well sir,” I state, a little irate, “I don’t concur. In fact, I believe your thoughts are both daft and actively damaging. And I’m not being disparaging just to get you to leave- though that’s an event whose failure to happen I honestly grieve. No, it’s not just that you bore me and ignore me when I give you hints that your little stint in my presence isn’t a thing that I like; it’s that you’re wrong. So get on your bike and go. But first I’d like you to know the reasons you’re wrong. The list is quite long so I’ll just give you a few. In fact, only two!”

I pick up my beer and soften my thirst. “Reason the first. We ‘waste our time’ and taste the fine thought of minds from ages past to learn how to think; really think not just muse on what we will drink. We do this because – and I do hope you’re following – if we go through our lives just merrily swallowing the things that are said and the words that are spread by those in charge we’ll derail rather fast. Then, when we’re done, this all will have led to a stark inability to speak with facility to see our goals won without tanks, bombs, and guns: speaking is nicer than steel, lead, and fire.

“Reason the second, the more important, I reckon, is that beauty - the wonders that you see and hear and know and feel – is hard to make real. It’s a trophy that’s born from a half-dreamt phantasm. The true artist’s job is in bridging this chasm and in making these joys a concrete reality. This is why we need an Arts faculty. The Sciences constantly give us marvellous tools to help us survive but if we’re really to thrive we need reasons to live. These can only come if we all speak as one and support the Arts.”

Soundly chastised my opponent departs. I pause, then I grin and order a gin. A double with lime and soda. As the young people say: that’s better; rant over.

One hopes you're well,
yrs,
ADWoodward

On Bread and Games

                Hello. We live in a democracy: a society wherein government rules only by the consent of the people who have the right to demand certain things from their rulers and throw them out of power if they deem those in power haven’t looked after their interests. I know, it’s terrible, isn’t it? Eugh, people getting a say in the fate of their own countries, yuk. This is not a good idea because, as anyone who’s been to a Weatherspoons on Curry Thursday can tell you, people are scum. They’re also sorely in need of a few elocution lessons, but that’s a topic for a different set of poorly-researched, opinions masquerading as an article. Today I’m concerning myself with how to minimise the damage this whole “Right of Nations to Self-Determination” thing can do to the plans of an aspiring oligarch.

                I recommend oligarchy rather than monarchy to solve our country’s problem with mob rule because there’s a lot of work involved in manipulating the fate of nations to suit one’s own needs; it is a complex and time-consuming exercise which will be made much easier with colleagues. The other reason is that the existing governmental system is one with power in several hands so by having a cabal rule your people by your side you can maintain a facade of not changing things too dramatically; this will allow you to strengthen your grip on the reins of power before anyone realises what you are doing. So, you will need a group you can trust to follow instructions. You either need people with shared goals and philosophy or some on whom you have some dirt which can be used to blackmail them. I advocate the latter because ideals might change when a person is given power, but blackmail will only become a more potent means of control once they are in the public eye.

                You will no doubt want to rush straight off to pull down the great pillars of your society and tear up its foundations to make room for your new solid gold swimming pool, but if you want to succeed hold on a minute. Grinding down the institutions of a people to make gravel for your driveway takes longer than one might thing – Rome’s constitution wasn’t irrevocably altered in a day, as they say – so you’ll need some sort of fig leaf or mandate to hide behind while you’re working. I recommend blaming the previous rulers. Whether you’re pretending to restore republican morality or tackle a deficit, you will be thankful for the ability to say “Well, I’m sorry, but this wouldn’t be necessary if they hadn’t messed things up quite so badly. Now bend over, bite the pillow and take your medicine. Oh, you like your medicine, don’t you? You need your medicine because you’re a sick society in need of reform, aren’t you? Oh, take the medicine! Take it! If you stop clenching then we can all be in THIS together, too!” Practice this sort of phrase and remember to vary it; you’ll seem far from genuine if you just repeat the same catch-phrase verbatim each time you’re challenged.

                This is quite enough for your to-do list for now, so I’ll leave you here. I don’t want to blind you with science and in any case I have a date with a bottle of gin. Don’t be scared if it seems like a lot of work, it’s all necessary to get the changes you see as being necessary. But in the interest of balance I will tell you that you can affect these changes another way. You can properly engage with the current imperfect system, organise your peers and lobby your representatives to actually earn their salary, constantly reminding them of problems and what you think needs changing, tell them they’ll lose your vote if they fundamentally change the health service, for example. I didn’t say the alternative method of changing society was any easier, did I? In any case, you’d better get cracking on finding the darkest secrets of your soon-to-be colleagues in office, or writing to your MP or whatever. If you don’t get started soon some other group with educated accents and shiny faces and vast wealth will get in and dismantle the country to suit the interests of their friends.

                Oh? They already have? Hmm. Well in that case make yourself a bacon sarnie, stick on “The Apprentice” and accept your fate like a good little subject. Pan ludique are all we, the ruled classes, really need anyway, innit?

One hopes you're well,

Yrs,

ADWoodward

Indistinct Visions of Four Futures

Hello. Sorry to have abandoned you all recently; I've been just busy enough that I've not had the time to focus and get anything down on paper. In the last day or so, though, I've experienced a small lull in my commitments and have taken the opportunity to finish a thing which I thought I'd share with you. It goes thusly:

Indistinct Visions of Four Futures

                I’m sitting in a friend’s bedroom. It is late and I am peaceful. We have been watching and talking of mildly interesting things of little import, though at this point the proceedings have reached a natural lull. In the quiet I’m struck by a sudden realisation, perfect in its clarity. For each of us I see another, similar figure in the same space. The figures are larger and more indistinct; representative of a possibility rather than a concrete reality. Each figure is clearly in a different, future setting but I cannot see precisely what that might be.

                The first of my companions has paused, leaving a cigarette half-rolled to enjoy idly throwing a lighter into the air and catching it. These distinct actions both seem an incredibly worthy use of his time. If he catches the lighter it’s completely okay because he chose to do it so of course he would succeed. If he misses it’s fine because he is just messing around. He returns to his rolling and his deliberate, practised movements are entirely in accordance with some plan he’s hatched or orders he has received. The translucent animus following his movements seems to be wearing a uniform. I cannot be sure whether it is best dress or combat fatigues or a well-made but slightly over-worn blazer, but it conveys purpose. Whether it is a terrible objective or a wonderful aim I cannot be certain, but the clothes of the image seem entirely suitable for the task at hand. This is a man who will be certain of things and his place within them.

                The second young man is to the right of the first. He is reclining on a bean-bag; smoking a cigarette he was lent; lent because although the lender would not get the same fag back again there is an amicable certainty that the debt would be repaid quickly and without fuss or any uncomfortable sense of obligation. He sits up to make use of the ashtray on one corner of the bed and meets my eyes when he becomes aware of my gaze. He holds it while we share a laugh about something that I can’t quite remember and returns to his squidgy throne. He is the youngest of our group – the hairs on his chin the unshaved fur of an adolescent lion rather than anything approaching an actual beard. He also the most silent, though this is by nature and not by status. I see a confident and content figure occupying the same space as this cub. It is possibly arranging the affairs of its pride with calm, unopposed authority;  possibly improving life for those around it with a subtly jovial presence and a few carefully timed words. Either way this future will be, barring great catastrophe, of positive worth to those who encounter it.

                My third colleague in my evening of positively unproductive time-passing is the one whom I’ve known the longest. With the music idly shuffling between genres it is his ceiling at which we are staring; it is his realm and he is holding court. He is discussing something delightfully unimportant with a knowing and deliberate, patently preposterous patina of pomposity. We are amusing ourselves by not letting him make his point. He is amusing us by rising to the bait. It is an act made funnier by the times we can all think of when it was genuine irritation. He is a legitimately good man: dedicated, loyal, diligent, generous, and ready to listen. This is why I am made uncomfortable by some of what I’m seeing in the nebulous figure loitering about him. I do see all the positive qualities which make me his friend, but they have been corrupted. Pessimism at his chances of success has worn the dedication to listlessness; emotional wounds have built walls around his loyalty; without passion for his tasks his diligence has fled; no one gives to him anymore so generosity is a childhood fairytale; he is surrounded by and has learned from a cadre of closed-eared pseudo-friends. The indistinct figures may just be the idle imaginings of a weary mind, but I am worried nonetheless. The social being learns much from those who surround it, so I hope this dear friend of mine plants himself in loving soil.

                And what of myself? Can the cracked and imperfect lens be used to examine the wielder? I try. I see a man, sat thinking, with a distracted look upon his face. I do not know what it is going through his mind, nor can even guess the nature of the thought. Is it a carefully constructed network of highways linking towns across a vast and peopled plain? Is it a lightning flash, sudden and wonderful, short-lived and evading capture? Is it a vortex, spinning and consuming, sucking all into its Charybdic maw, swallowing the hopeful sailors as they strive vainly for the safety of their native harbour? Or is it an old lapdog by the fire enjoying the warmth, and content for any who wishes to give a pat and bit of ham? I don’t know – I was interrupted by a proffered bottle and a request to put something funny up on the screen. It’s probably (I decide as I take a swig of something sweet and fiery) either all of them or none of them. It might be interesting to see but futures can wait; we’ve got cartoons to watch.

One hopes you're well
   yrs,
      ADWoodward

A Message From Your Friends at the BNP

Hello. As much as anything else recently I've been endeavouring to catch up on the news, particularly political news - solemn duty of all citizens of democracies and all that. This made me remember that I'd written this piece. I thought I'd share it with you because I enjoy it; it's the closest thing to satire I've written. It goes thusly:

A Message From Your Friends at the BNP

I’m here from the BNP to make a party political broadcast. We here at the Belgian Geologists are Nasty party want to warn you about the grave threat Belgian geologists pose to Britain. Belgian geologists – all of them, not just a small minority of extremists – every single Belgian geologist is evil and out to destroy your way of life. Belgian geologists are a naturally backwards and jealous people, it’s ingrained into them at birth. Belgian Geologists - all of them, not just a small minority of extremists – even the little ones you see playing in the park, every single Belgian geologist bases their entire life on one holy book – the Manuel belge de géologie- which if you read it you’ll find is full of gross, outdated barbarisms. I’ve not read it- eugh books- I don’t need to read it, I know it’s evil, my mate Barry told me so.

The Belgian landscape is made up of mud, boredom and occasionally and an irate Colin Farrell, this leaves Belgian geologists very little to study. That means Belgian geologists – all of them, not just a small minority of extremists – even the nice ones at your work - every single Belgian geologist is part of a conspiracy to bring all other geologists down to their level. Now the English are fantastic geologists, as our language exhibits. English contains the word ‘homilite’ which is both an ‘association’ and a ‘borosilicate of iron and calcium’. Belgian geologists don’t have access to such a brilliant word for ‘borosilicate of iron and calcium’, if Belgian geologists want to discuss borosilicates of iron and calcium they can’t use homilite, they have to use another word, a Belgian word. I don’t know what that word is, obviously – I’ve not done any research to back this up. Who needs research when your opinions are informed by blind prejudice and things I’ve barely understood from internet chatrooms? And that’s just one example of the evil of Belgian geologists – which you would all know about if you weren’t blinded by the liberal media who are too cowed by Belgian-geological extremism to bring you the truth! That’s right Belgian geologists – all of them, not just a small minority of extremists - even the ones who are entirely integrated and don’t even know that much about geology - every single one of them believes that if they sneak onto British public transport and suddenly and violently explain the differences between igneous and metamorphic rocks then they will be rewarded with 72 samples of homilites. We can only hope that if it is true there’ll be some great cosmic joke: “I was promised 72 homilites!” Yes but did your holy book state whether they would be borosilicates of iron and calcium, or simply rather fancy synonyms for association?

One hopes you're well,
   Yrs,
      ADWoodward

Thunder and Silence

Hello. I have decided, as much to keep in the habit of putting things up here as anything, to share with you a short piece of fiction. If I ever get the time and the idea this might become the opening of something longer; as is I think it's rather good as a piece for its own sake. This started off when the opening sentence came to me in the pub and was written in two spurts of activity across the next few days. It goes thusly:

Thunder and Silence

Thunder crashed around the valley, its echoes shaking the misted glass of the old house. Well-maintained, despite its age, the red bricks of those stoic walls were the only sign of human artistry for a hundred miles around. No broad, flagstoned highways scarred the silent, sylvan, surrounds; indeed no paths at all save the winding, scarce-seen tracks along which wolves stalked the nervous deer. This was a primeval land. No booted foot had dared pick its way through the uninviting undergrowth for three hundred years; not since a grey-robed man had willed a house into existence at the bend of the stampeding river in that sly-shadowed valley.

                Watching the river through the stinging hail, from the warmer side of the lead-fixed panes was a man whose beard now matched the grey of his robe. Lines that had been formed by several lifetimes of studious scowling were being deepened as the man watched the raucous play of the storm-gods with irritated disdain.

                “Go blow yourselves out somewhere else,” he told them in the kind but firm tones of a harassed parent. “Some of us are trying to work.”

There was a pause while the bruise-coloured cloudbank digested this. The next crash, an unobserved observer could imagine, sounded angry and defiant, like a child refusing to accept it was bedtime. A blue-white streak of blistering light flung itself from the petulant sky towards the man and his window. The observer might have thought a lightning bolt would not have been able to look taken aback; they would have been wrong. This one, unused as it was to being stopped by an unseen barrier, managed it quite well.

“Stop that.”

 The words, though calmly said, filled the entire valley. The cloudbank flinched then rumbled sullenly.

“I mean it. Right now.”

The wind suddenly ceased, dropping its hastily-snatched cargo of forest-floor detritus. In the now-thunderless calm the tiny percussive sound of the last few hailstones completing their fall could be heard. The robed man drew breath for another reprimand. The clouds parted instantly and obsequiously, letting a shaft of warm sunlight fall onto the window and the man it framed. He suspiciously regarded the sky for one long moment, harrumphed and returned to the leather armchair and battered scroll he had abandoned.

                He was so engrossed in the arcane spider-scrawl in front of him as to be rendered almost-uninteresting, so the unseen witness might now take this opportunity to leave the wild-haired scholar to his reading and nose about the room, leafing through the draws in search of a spare cigarette. It was cluttered. Books and papers lay where they’d been discarded, half-obscuring the esoteric apparatus that occupied all of the many tables, desks and workbenches. One of the benches was conspicuously free from the academic snowdrifts. It held the studious man’s current project. On this bench, stood under the room’s large sky-light, sat a stone. In the light from the globe hovering a few inches from the ceiling it seemed to have sheen about it. First red, then green, then the blue of deep sunlit waters could be seen from its apparently perfect surface. About the size of a child’s skull, it was held by heavy, black iron vices that were themselves screwed to the work-surface. If stones could escape, someone had ensured this particular one would struggle to do so. If asked what it was, the man would, depending on his mood, answer either “None of your concern,” or “Something fascinatingly dangerous.” If he answered with the latter, he would then indicate the scorch marks along one wall.

                A gnat, bored with aimless flitting, settled itself on the stone. It burst into flame. The smell of a tiny life extinguished without care filled the room and failed to break the man’s concentration. With enough exposure and apathy, people can get used to anything. The light from the globe wasn’t the clearest ever seen, so an observer might have missed the stone’s adding of half a millimetre to its circumference.

                “Jumped-up, new-age rubbish!”

                A scroll, written a hundred years before the birth of the oldest person in the world outside this room, landed in the grate under the undusted mantelpiece where it crumpled despondently. The paper became even more dejected when the robed man felt the evening’s chill and ignited it with a small, precise gesture. The little ember was fed on thought and mild irritation directed down that gesture until a respectable blaze at in the grate, denying all association with the barely-warm little squirt that had recently occupied the space.

                The bewhiskered man turned his attention and his chair towards the workbench. The stone stood still. He frowned. The stone did nothing. He glowered. The stone, if anything, became slightly less animated.

                “Right, you. That’s enough of this brooding-in-the-corner-threatening-the-whole-of-existence business.”

                Two ancient consciousnesses reached decisions, gathered their insurmountable wills and focussed on their opponents. One took a couple of goes to roll up his voluminous sleeves; the other wished it had sleeves to roll up.

                The air in the room took on a dense and pressing aspect, thickening enough to delay the glow from the ceiling-globe and trap the heat from the fire. Sound could not move through that immobile mass. Time was held in place by the full force of millennia of mental mass meeting at high speed. It strained against the steel-clad thoughts blocking its path. The immense wills used the energies of supernovas to force their opponent one proton back.

                The old man felt like one for the first time in centuries; he could no longer spare the energy to maintain his physical strength. The thought that had been sent into the world to create the fire rushed along the psychic highways to defend its native home; the force that had created the house abandoned its colony of mortar to fight for the capital of flesh and bone; the bricks themselves melted to dust then to unbound force to rally the broad-cuffed commander. All reported for duty and promptly charged from synaptic gates to scream their battle cries at the massed opposing legions. An enemy rank fell. Then another. The whole barbarian horde was in full rout! The marshalled thought of three hundred years and more charged across the space and threw its weight at the red-streaked black of the hostile citadel.

                The stone cracked.

                Sleeves fell back to wrists. Now-white hair hung limply down.

                The ancient Sage of the River’s Bend fell backwards and dust settled on his barely rising chest.

                Thunder crashed around the valley and it started to rain.

                                                                                                                                                 

One hopes you're well,
   yrs,
      ADWoodward

How to Help a Small Hope Grow

Hello. On and off again over the last three or so days I've been writing a thing. The following is it:

How to Help a Small Hope Grow

                Not too far from the nearest, joy-filled group of people, there is a shadowy dell, or perhaps the right word is depression. Looking at it from the outside it doesn’t seem particularly deep nor its sides all that steep, but if one were to find oneself at its bottom there would be a certain difficulty in escaping. Perspective is a strange thing: from a slight distance outside one would think it a pleasant enough spot in which to enjoy a few beers and some intelligent chat with friends, even though it’s a tad removed from the beauty of full sunshine or the excitement of the unrestricted gale. But if one takes the time to peer in tentatively, we find ourselves looking down on a fetid quagmire that traps the feet of the playful hopes that unwittingly built their nest on the side of the depression, so near as to be almost unavoidable.

                Hopes are a strange and wonderful species of creature. They have soft coats of varying hues; some are a clean white which might hurt the eyes, some are deepest red, some blue, some green some black but all are pleasing to the eye if seen if seen in the right light. Their eyes are large and darting, full of unfocussed curiosity as they look for new meadows in which to frolic. Their soft feet are unsure when young but as they mature grow into an agility that lets them mount all but the sheerest of obstacles.

                Look! Timidly emerging from its nest is a newborn with fur like a blushing poppy. Its long-lashed eyes shyly search its surrounds for another being with whom it might forge a connection and then perhaps a friendship. It sees the grasping, sodden bog and sags in resignation. It knows it is not strong enough to leap that loathsome dell. It mews softly. It mews its cry of desperation, unable to make the leap itself, needing another, an outsider, there to help it jump but it’s afraid of being scorned by whomever hears and thrown off balance to into the depression to feed it with its death.

                A short distance away, but close enough to be just visible over the lip of the depression from the low, lowly vantage point of a young, helpless hope, there was the top of a brown-haired head. The hair was just light enough so as not to be black and in this light had two locks crossing at right angles in the wind that verged on red. That red cross was aid and salvation to the poor hope, and it mewed slightly louder and longer than before: a salutation, a call to parlay.

                The newborn immediately regretted its rash action. The owner of that hair would not want to be bothered by a thing as weak and pathetic as itself, there were far better things to do with one’s time than help a pink weasel out of a puddle. The hair probably hadn’t even heard the tiny wretched cry. It was probably better this way. Everyone know proper young hopes should be able to solve their own problems, and if this struggling, scared little one couldn’t then it probably wasn’t trying hard enough; bigger problems than a dell get overcome every minute of the day. The hope sagged again.

                But wait! The head has stopped! And now it is moving closer, revealing eyes, a nose, and a concerned but caring frown. It is the head of a young woman in navy blue. The little hope’s heart soared at the thought of someone else taking time out of their day to engage with it. Light sometimes plays tricks with your eyes, but if you had seen this moment of uplift you would have thought the fuzz-covered hope had grown a little larger. The young woman reached the edge of the depression, saw the tiny hope on the far side of it and her concern changed to determination. She reached into a pocket and pulled out a seed. You might think this seed to be a little thing, not worth anything to anyone, but you’d be wrong. It contained the hope’s salvation.

                She stuck the seed into the ground with a decisive thrust of a finger. The hope, definitely bigger now, looked on in anxiety and anticipation. There was a pause. The simple gesture had no discernible effect at first. But then a lone shoot emerged from the soil. It swayed, its tip barely an inch from the loam that had bore it. It swayed, its tip barely three inches from the loam that had bore it, then six, then a foot, then more. Much thicker than it had been, the shoot’s weight bent it down towards the depression and the hope waiting for an escape within it. The hope, itself larger and more sure-footed, stepped onto the vine the moment it touched the earth near the nest. Though shaky, the plant proved a perfectly adequate path for the hope’s egress. A fond, quick lick of the hand was all the thanks the hope knew how to give, but it was accepted by she who watched it with a warm grin as it scampered off to find food and grow into a full-fledged reality.

                The young woman, or others of a similarly caring disposition, regularly comes to the plant to check it’s still there to serve as a highway for hopes. They tend it with genuine concern and chase away the sharp-toothed doubts – vicious, buzzing creatures that seek to gnaw through the plant and leave the hopes once again stranded in the depression. This is a continual task, and not always properly rewarded, but it is thanks to considerate people like this that the hopes which emerge, unsure and barely-formed, can have a chance at growing up and loving life.

                I for one would like to thank them.

   One hopes you're well,

      Yrs,

         ADWoodward