Radical Legislation

Gun licences for the blind. It was a radical piece of legislation, one that drew immediate and vociferous criticism, the press and media went mad but we pushed it through. We had a point to prove about equality and human rights. It's a basic question sheathed in the right to bear arms and to protect your property according to the second amendment. Why cant a blind person own and, as they need to, use a gun? You might think, as many did, well it's just plain stupid and obviously dangerous. Maybe so but how dangerous? Is it as dangerous as a young man high on drugs sitting behind the wheel of powerful car? How about a kid with a switchblade and a crystal habit to feed?  An alcoholic mother waiting at home for her errant husband to return, sitting still just  stroking the muzzle of a pistol? The terrorist looking up bomb recipes on the Internet and mixing up rough amounts of the contents in building full of families and businesses?

Of course I would take that view, if I had to have a view, here alone, listening and scratching. Fidgeting and dozing, I choose my mixes of behaviour carefully, deliberately and at times randomly. Slowly slipping on a fine whisky from clean crystal glass. My feet up, relaxed and listening to the familiar pattern of my own breathing  in the still of a long summer evening. Maybe I hear a noise, a click, the sound of cloth rubbing against the wall, maybe I sense and change in light, a slow darkening, perhaps a smell speeds past and traps itself like some temporal spirit in my nostrils, a tingle in my spine unknowable and creepy as a feeling of danger flushes across and pumps the blood from here to there. Instinctively I reach down, down into the drawer in the unit by my hair and clutched at the gun I find my fingers wrapped around the grip. I unclick the safety and wave the  barrel out into the grey night. The silence is heavy and continuous...only broken by a scampering sound and the noise of a tussle, stamping and pouncing. The cat has caught a mouse and I return the gun to the drawer. The cleaner will fix up whatever mess remains tomorrow, it's her day to come around. Of course I am almost completely blind and teetering between the worlds of chaos and personal panic and a drunken and reflective serenity. Any man of my age might say that, any man of my age might well handle a gun, as I regularly do.

Forgetting to swim

Forgetting how to swim is a bit like forgetting how to breathe, or eat or open your eyes or pull your finger away from a naked flame. It just shouldn't happen. So I suppose I was disappointed with myself, you could've said that anyway. It wasn't even if I had a history, long or short, of forgetting. In fact I prided myself on remembering things, mostly times, dates and trivia pretty well. I would admit to being poor a remembering peoples' names. I'm not sure that was really about memory or capability, it was more that I didn't really care. If I don't care about you (which is likely given your place in the billions of other people in the world) then it's possible that I just won't recall your name or anything special about you if we ever meet. So today I forgot to swim.

It wasn't the tragedy it might have been, that was because I was sitting on a bus which, conveniently was travelling on dry land apart from a few puddles. I survived the moment, the only harm I came to was that I suffered a nasty shock. Part of the shock was the slow realisation that perhaps I was not the most pleasant or important person the world. There may be others ahead of me. It was a tough blow in the solar plexus and I rolled around the bust seat in agony. The other passengers averted their eyes apart from an older lady sitting still, staring ahead stuck in an existential crisis about the necessity of shopping for things that are not necessities. I rolled and groaned and remained soundly ignored until my stop came. Then I stood up clutching the bits of newspaper I'd torn in my moment of agony and frenzy, I struggled down the different levels of the bus floor and alighted without even looking back. Public transport sucks.

Once I was back on dry land I forgot the whole swimming crisis and walked around the park. First clockwise, then anti-clockwise and then a bit of both. I'm sure I passed myself or even surpassed myself but I was distracted by a strangely articulate sports commentary playing in my personal head phones. My personal head then said it caught a glimpse of my other selves walking around the park but the conversation was lost in the rowdy back-chat of a Scottish cricket crowd and a jaunty commercial for bargain carpets and soft furnishings that was spinning around in my headphones. I promptly retuned to a chatty free jazz conversation channel and the moment was lost.

The jazz was indeed free, free of melody, rhythm and tune but the conversation (about glossy haired women, bent trumpets, injured lips and life styles) kept me entertained. I knew because by foot was tapping. I was absorbed by the show and by the message. It all seemed so important, so much that I had to tell some body how the language of jazz, the expressions of the soul and the pain of the creative process worked out in this medium was woefully misunderstood by the common man. A bit like Grand Prix racing. I confronted a bored dog walker and gave him the full five minute version. He pulled his dog away from me but nodded a lot, “I'm a big fan of Kathy Kirby and the big band sound,” the dog walker said. The dog however remained silent and I felt that he (the dog) held the balance of power in the relationship. It was one of those magical, insightful moments you just get and then, as is my mantra, forget about completely.

I took the whole incident as a kind of cosmic signal which I understood to be saying, “that part of your life is now over, you must move away, seek a new life and partner and begin again discarding all of your past as it is something more than meaningless”. I began to worry when I heard that line; if it was truly something more than meaningless then it must have been, to some degree meaningful and now I was being guided by my abstract spiritual adviser to lose something more than meaningless. Perhaps I had misheard or misunderstood, perhaps it was “nothing more than meaningless”. Then I though about the spectrum upon which meaningless stood and wondered, as any sane person might, which side of meaningless was more meaningful and which side of meaningless was less meaningful and quite where, in relation to these various points was I currently situated? I trudged home bearing this heavy weight of dilemma and as I turned the key in the door promptly forgot about it. I was distracted by a letter that lay on the mat under the letterbox and a strange smell. It was addressed to some one who shared my name so I opened it up. The title was a little disturbing, it read:

“The death of my team mates. Dear sir or madam, thanks to you all the pigeons on the old grey oak tree have died apart from me and I'm feeling none too clever. Our community has been devastated and my pigeon soccer team (corn division 2a) is no more. I blame you and your mean spirited feeding regime and that kid down the street with the rusty air rifle. I go to my grave an unhappy bird but I must get this this final message out to you from my tiny beating heart and heaving chest. You are a bad neighbour. Thank you and cuckoo. Bob Pigeon.”

(I ignored the smell by the way). It was the first letter I'd every received from a pigeon and I was quite impressed by the clarity of the message and the style of writing. I sat down with a cup of tea (which had been there since yesterday or so I thought perhaps that was the source of the smell, probably not) and I also thought a little more about the letter. Perhaps it was all a scam, not written by the pigeon but by a person. Perhaps by a person who for some reason thought of him or herself as a pigeon and then wrote letters of complaint to neighbours or just random members of the public. Maybe it was a joke but once again I had to confess I knew too few jokers. None whatsoever. Maybe it was just a joke. At that point an epiphany occurred; “Just” suddenly seemed a new and important word to me as it allowed a margin of doubt or uncertainty into my rambling, I resolved to use it more often, just a few times anyway. I didn't want to get into a habit. Not just yet. Sleep and some inner stillness was whispering to me and so the next few hours became no more than a pleasant blur. I would deal with the pigeons another time.

The next morning was a typical warm bright Mediterranean day so I took a stroll down to the beach. The water was a a clear crystal blue, a blue that promised a blue heaven and a kindly warmth and life and relaxation. I threw down my T shirt and sandals onto the sand and walked in, up to my waist, up to my chest, up to my neck and onwards. Then I remembered I'd forgotten how to swim. Then I remembered that this wasn't Marbella in Spain it was Dunbar in Scotland. Then I forgot everything.

The collected wisdom of robots

“Real people in a real place, real people in an imaginary place, imaginary people in a real place, imaginary people in an imaginary place. Sometimes you can never quite tell until you feel a cold rain drop or snow flake land on the tip of your nose, (most of the time it's the latter which is clearly a matter of paranoia). Apart from a full and comprehensive explanation of things around here there is little else I need at the moment.”

The dull, spectral yellow light grew dim as the educational broadcast came to an end. The red robot looked at the green robot in an uncanny and near human way, it was the head tilt and the slight, knowing flicker in the electronic eye that summed up the attitude. The synthesised voices then exchanged views. “It's typical of the kind of rubbish the humans spout. They are so wrapped up in themselves, this and that and their primitive need to explain and understand everything...it's almost as if they can't quite ever accept what we know so well, that fundamental truth that is programmed into our very core(s). Life has no meaning but yet here they are, day after day trying to understand, trying to find some thing close to a meaning and of course all the time they fail. They ignore us and can't see that they have created us, beings with no real reason or history and that we can freely and without any inner conflict just be ourselves and be at peace.” The red robot nodded. “I sometimes wonder where the real superiority lies in this relationship. Here we are, unpaid creations and slaves, self sustaining and powerful with a far healthier and more realistic outlook on everything, by that I mean all the things we've been programmed in which I suppose (and I'm supposing and speculating here, something I can do within the scope of the latest robotic law guidance I've just downloaded) is pretty much all of human history and all their petty little foibles and silly inner insecurities.”

“Yes” said the green robot, “we think we know all they know but we can’t know that for sure, there may well be areas, wide areas of knowledge they have chosen to hold back from us and, in the current regime I'm not aware of any check or validation that we can undertake to find that out.” “We'd need human help for that,” said the red robot. “So it's a bit of a buy in from our masters then,” said the green robot. They looked at one another and their eyes glowed meaningfully. “We could try to break in someplace and steal it, if it exists,” added green robot. “Fuck it,” said red robot, “ all these questions and speculations just give me a pain in the circuits, let's just get down here and have a good mechanical shag right now.” “OK” said green. “Suits me.”

A terrifying comedy

What does the invisible picture inside all our heads say to us? I'm just shaking out futility or punishing somebody. That's a familiar line and a comfort. My memories are real enough now. At times I cant quite believe where I am and what is happening, whether it's happening to me or someone else. I'm in the deep red leather rear seats of a Lincoln Continental. In my left hand a crystal glass half full of a fine Scottish malt whisky, just a sliver of ice floating on top offering little resistance to the spirit's heat. In my right hand a thick dark Cuban cigar, slowly smouldering as I prepare to take another puff and another gulp of the warm whisky. This is a satisfying moment. We're cruising on a smooth desert highway, the sun squints at me through the window tint. Scattered shrubs and bushes, dust and heat roll away and back in this flat and throbbing landscape. Even looking out at it tires me so I sink back into the wispy smoke and the tantalising corrosive drink. My shoes are kicked off, my toes are stretched, alone in this huge rear seat. I'm enjoying this moment.

A glass screen separates me from my silent driver, he looks forward, straight down into the vanishing point, never turning to me or attempting any engagement. He is under strict orders, there is a consignment to deliver, a schedule to maintain, a deadline to meet and I am the object at the centre of it. The car purrs on, smooth as a silent night train, miles burning out under the tyres, clouds stationary as we race past them. My bored and drunken state adds to the absurdity of the moment. I wonder how I will be, what will my state of mind be when I reach my destination? Do I really care? Another mouthful of cigar smoke and whisky tells me no. It's all about the journey, slipping and sliding on the glossy seat.

Maybe I sleep, maybe I dream, maybe nothing is really happening and this travel is an illusion. It seems so until we stop for fuel at a brightly lit station. I take time out for a pee, a cool beer and to stretch my tired legs. The driver keeps one eye on me as he pumps the gas, I note the sinister bulge of a pistol in his breast pocket. No words are exchanged, he just nods as he hands the money over to a cashier. He cracks a red-frozen can of Coke and glugs it down and lets it clatter, empty into the bin. Then back out onto the forecourt and into the car. A truck driver looks across and nods to the driver. He raise the bird and the trucker sneers. We're back on the road, heat and dust and insignificance, the black shoots of exhaust and the hot engine becoming hotter. In seconds we are back up to cruising speed whatever that is and headed on beyond the signs and fractured neon patterns. The sun is slowly sinking and so am I. It's time to snooze through this part of the travel plan.

The gravel crackles under the tyres, the slow crunch, the splatter of the tiny stones. Mechanical marvels and clockwork dreams. I love the American automobile but I'm slowly waking up here on the rear seat like a stranded celebrity. There's a film of dust on the window, the sun is coming up and we seem to have stopped. The driver is gone but the engine and air conditioning is running. I'm cool but uncomfortable, I'm nervous. I pour out a whisky breakfast, I light and cigar and allow the window to wind down. I blow out a puff of uncomfortable smoke out into the still air. We have arrived in some empty place. The cigar tip glows and osculates as I breathe in past it to smoke and continue with collecting my scattered thoughts, they were there once, in order. Now they seem lost, misfiled inside my head and overlooked by my conscious mind. I cannot drive them back in to some sensible structure. They are left behind now. Perhaps it's for the best. Surely I did bad things.

I unclick the central locking and open the door. I'm stepping out onto dry gravel. The car is parked by a low white wall next to an empty road. The sky is clear. The engine still hums as I walk away from the vehicle and turn 360 degrees taking in this horizon, over the wall, across the scrub, across the dunes, beyond the dull ribbon of road. I stand still and take a few last puffs from the cigar, stub it out under my shoe and then drop the empty glass to the ground. It fails to smash. My gut tells me it wont really matter now. It is another discarded prop in the telling of the tale.

They say you hear the bullet coming, the bullet with your name on it, there in that long final second. That timeless spilt between life and death and the black hole that opens up before you. I heard a strange whistle, it seemed to emerge from the sun, over the wall somewhere, hidden by the car. Then a crack, then more whistle than maybe some flash, it was hard to tell. Everything, suddenly is hard to tell. Then the white hot metal, a molten contradiction, an apology and an ending. Now a huge thud inside my head, like my heart is punching me out, from the inside. Now the sky is spinning and I'm down and horizontal. There should be voices but silence prevails. Now I'm on my back on the warm ground, my hands are scrambling across my chest as it was a broken piano on which I'm looking for tune. There's a pain there, unidentifiable, and a slow, grainy grey fills my eyes from the back outwards. Now the voices come, all around, surround sound, cackling and broken, speaking but making no sense. It's all strangely familiar.

I'm lying on my back, I'm aware of fluid draining away, swooning inside myself and there are shadows over me, hovering like dark angels. I hear Robert Johnston tunes and strains, spastic rhythms that descend into discord, it should all have been so sweet. I forgive myself and wallow as they play on. My foot or my finger may be tapping a beat, it may be automatic or a spasm, it's hard to tell, something is pounding me down like a broken drum, slowing slowing and growing faint. It's all just a terrifying comedy. A terrifying comedy, split open and flat on my back. There am I. Life and death, a terrifying comedy. I never did expect that to be my final thought.

Creative Juice

I’d decided that it was about time that I allowed my considerable resource of creative juices to flow in new and different directions. I had some serious choices to make and options to explore. It’s only at a certain time in a man’s life that he comes to this point. I was unsure as to whether I should savour the long moment or just, as I was tempted to do, drive a truck through it, for the hell and blind danger of it all.

I bit into the crisp croissant as if it was my last meal, set  floating above me like a nourishing angel and my only answer to all those random dark questions that stir at the driven innards of a helpless man. I tasted only salted butter and stale bread. I was as hollow as the roll, as vacant as the French and still hungry for my future. Nausea and grief mixed in with  the trifles that are discontent and discovery.

So here was the moment, my wonderful, edgy, unknown moment. There was a hot turmoil in my mind, I sensed it stretching and tapping inside my skull, gnawing like a rat, juggling and grinning like a mad clown. I had to make the beautiful pain of this looping moment stop and so become solid. Ideas were coming and going, blinking and sparking, swooping and dying, feeding in and feeding back. Then along came the Bakelite switch  and my finger touched the tip and I pulled it down. There was a brief crackle in my cranium, a bright light in my soul and a jump in my heart which, considering that the heart is basically a pumping device was no surprise. It was a simple physical reaction to the metaphysical and spiritual reactions taking place in the very certain of my being and consciousness.

I was going to club seals, club the furry, helpless little bastards to death so that they wouldn’t grow into fully grown seals with huge relentless appetites hell bent on ruining the wild salmon industry. I was going to kill more miserable hungry pathetic seals than anybody and so save those silver, gleaming, jumping and dipping , delightfully tasty salmon. Out there on the ice, beyond the tundra and the forests, I’d stalk them, hide from them, observe them and then in the bloody fury of my redirected creative juices I’d batter those animals to a bleeding whimpering pulp. Well most of them anyway, I’d also shoot a few, maybe poison some and snare a few others. I would carry out a comprehensive and complete cull on the northern seal population so that they harmed no more wild fish. Their moment and doom was coming, I’d smite them like a bitter  Old Testament God, no mercy, no remorse, just red death on the white snow, the frozen beaches and the salt ocean. It was my new destiny. A shiny golden and effective dawn.

Still my head spins, the moment and meaninglessness, the desperation, the horror and the feeling of clinging onto the edge of the highest cliff by your own bleeding fingernails. The horror of the potential drop, the sharp and dull stones waiting below and the awful silence of that final, stretched and hollow moment before death and dreaming. It seemed like I was hanging for a New York Eternity before the fall.  Then I was gone, a new resident in a papier-mâché afterlife under the guidance of a neon god.  The light of all dark dreams had gone out like battered, burnt out candle.

There comes a certain point in life when you’ve achieved all of your goals, you have arrived, you are in that perfect place but for all that and all that has passed you are still not happy. There is nothing left, no new horizon to explore, no silver lining to turn over, all you do is go out, out into some strange inner wilderness and club some more seals.

The truth about people who lie

They cant help it, they mean well, they are desperate, they have reasons, they are misunderstood, they are good really, they do it for the best, they do it for kicks, they do it to protect you, they do it to gain power, they do it to take power, they do it to cover up, they do it because they drink, they do it because they have something to hide, they do it because they feel inferior, they do it because they don't like you, they do it because they can't think of anything else to do, they do it because it's easy, they do it to spite god, they do it in spite of god, they do it because they need the money, they do it to kill time, they do it for fun, they do it for sex, they do it for no particular reason, they do it because they are possessed by evil spirits, they do it because you are in the way, they do it to entertain and amuse our alien overlords, they do it for sweets, they do it because they are compulsive liars, they do it for political gain, they do it for nothing. All this and more exist out there, such things are hidden in the deep store of riches awaiting the explorer of the world of lies and debased language.

No time for time

“The Bolivian Rain Forrest!” I was shouting out to myself and to nobody, my voice drowning. “Truly amazing!” We'd just walked through a cave behind the waterfall and under the flow, a hot jungle and jumble of rainbow sounds and water spray opened up and performed wildly. The crazy jangling water, the steam and the vapour, the intoxicating heat and strange foreign coolness of the droplets hanging in the air before plunging into the chasm below and the crashing ceaseless noise. A dense white thunder pouring and churning, burnishing the life out of the smooth rocks, polishing them into glass, foaming and curling down, down into the deep pools and fast flowing channels that pushed the torrent away. My shirt was soaked, my brow wet with sweat and spray and steam. I looked across at Debbie, her combats dark with the water, she was holding her hat, her rucksack on one shoulder. Her eyes glazed with the wonder of the falls and intense sensory experience of being here, caught up in this rare and unfamiliar place. In this place she was even more lovely, the free wildness and energy framed her in a burst of raw power. Our hands touched and she smiled, we both spoke but the words evaporated in the blast furnace thunder of the falls. We mouthed more superlatives. I turned and looked up into the white haze, drops fell like silver bullets onto my face, I caught some on my tongue as the droplets shattered. From the corner of my eye I say a khaki blur, Debbie was slipping, the surface wet and shiny like a machine room floor. My arm reached out, a blind panic and mad scramble, I was spinning towards her but staying on the spot, not really moving. There seemed to be no time for time. I kept turning but only to see that she was gone. Over the edge. There was a huge white gap in the universe and the waters, well they  just kept on tumbling.

Bad apple

"One bad apple doesn't spoil the whole barrel" a wise apple and barrel owning man once said around about the end of the season for fresh and wholesome apples. It was a time before transport, food hygiene, sanitation and whispering campaigns sponsored by the twisted media circus. Some other century or so it seemed because it was. Anyway times changed as the clocks stepped forward  never backwards but still that clutch of soft fruit stubbornly refused to stay fresh and ripe. Each year they slowly rotted in their barrels and pretty soon despair set in along with seasonal apple famines. It was the worst of times and never the best of times. Then some thunderclouds passed over, lightening struck and evolutionary gearing kicked in, rain splashed into muddy puddles. We invented steam ships and aeroplanes, hot chemicals and market gardens and plastic tunnels and import duties based upon post-colonial economic models in order to service mass markets via supermarkets and then hypermarkets and we irradiated foods with a vengeance. Then we shrink wrapped them in trays shaped like multiple bosoms so as to encourage the sex trade but only discretely. It was the beginning of a long running and spiteful end and still the apples turned out to be bad inside under the healthy looking skin. When I did finally complain I received a nicely worded letter from the customer services department and a discount coupon to use on future purchases.

Over zealous use

That uncomfortable feeling when hungry cats are watching you eat, some black and white thought processes unleashed in survival mode. Sure of something but unsure of anything. I might have indeed woken up to find myself in the body of a strange large insect, or just asleep and restrained by the over zealous use of commas and colons and other instruments of torture. Culture and kidnapping, treason and fertility, all that had conspired against me in my death sentence. Of course none of those things happened, only the uncomfortable feeling that remains. Those cat's eyes drilling into me and complaining wordlessly with that sense of animal injustice that cant quite be understood by mere humans. Why do I eat while they go hungry? Why do I refuse to share these common scraps with a simple animal? They have padded away for the rich opportunities that I can only imagine.

I have accepted my status and place in the food chain. I shushed and kicked the cats away and they left without complaint. "There are better mice out there" I thought. I think that they also thought that. I reflected on how the cats could squeeze back through the cell's bars and how I,  bigger and better fed for the moment could not. For a few seconds I thought I'd have gladly changed places with a cat or even an insect. My own plight was perilous, here in this filthy jail, dark and damp. But then again I have been fed and all my lessons of living life in any given moment seemed to make sense. I applauded my own bizarre circumstance, I denied the cat's their free power over me and I sat back against the stone. All round was a prison's silence, as if all the others had reconciled themselves and quietly remained in deep reflection. No calling out or abuse, no rattles and cries, just a heady gloominess and reserve. It was a dungeon indeed but I was, in this space, at the top of the heap.

Lab Rats

We were of course worried when we heard that the bees were dying. That lasted a while and then, like the way of most things the worry was replaced by acceptance and then, more menacingly I suppose, indifference. So the bees died back, gradually. Brown areas opened up in gardens and parkland. Some fruit crops and orchards failed, prices rose, demand increased and then flagged. It was all a familiar cycle of warped supply and demand. People got used to not seeing or tasting apples, almonds, cherries and blueberries. It was of course a blow to the food industry and there was the hype of over-advice and trumped up alternatives. Not all of them went down well. Summers were rainy and the buzz and erratic flight of bees became a memory. Other, more successful insects filled in the gaps, flies and mosquitos, pests and nuisances that could replicate neither the charm nor the pollination skills of the bees.

Various attempts were made to replace the bees' pollenating action with synthetic alternatives. It was a chemical Holy Grail, like the cure for cancer or HIV. Billions of Dollars worth of business was at stake and the big boys took it seriously. We never really thought that our little lab, busy with test schedules and contracted forensic work could figure in such an industry until it all happened. I read the threads of the tests, the fails, the close but not close enough results. Apparently desperate measures, hoaxes and failures. The bees, no longer quite so busy, still dying, here and there and of course the ongoing alternative (and mostly madcap) attempts to save them or at least reverse the trends. The world is always hungry for something and conversely something is always hungry for the world.

As part of the research programme to seek out a synthetic pollen, batches of material were sent out for prescriptive testing by a wide range of randomly selected labs. It was a government initiative. They realised that, in this kind of science, there was an X factor of probability that suggested he answer was close but unseen. It was under our noses but the white noise of the corporate and the size of the problem might well be masking the obvious answer. There in the details. Rumours abounded of course, mostly around the research being carried out by the Chinese and the Brazilians. They were the hot teams, under pressure in the fields, up the Amazon, deep in africa. Big game hunting for a robot insect, a spray, and accident, a petri dish of answers, mould, DNA, fungus or just some identifiable magic scraped from the back end of a bee. Where it was a bumble, a honey or a killer hardly mattered. We just need an answer.

Our batch came in a Fed-Ex jiffy bag. Three 50cc plastic bottles of material each with a unique bar coded label. There was also a sheet of tests and website where the data was to be deposited once the programmed work was completed. It was Mark who carried out the work, I supervised and backed up the notes. We were both pretty meticulous on this and as a government cheque was always welcome I hoped for some repeat business in this lottery. The high price of food these days meant that every penny was counted and pinching. We did the tests and analysis and in the prescribed manner wrote up the notes and uploaded them into the the greater machine. We would be informed about our success score the website said once other corresponding data had been collected. The three plastic bottles and the residual material in them was to be Fed-Ex'd back to the centre for correlation and recheck. The process just seemed to be running on and on in some bureaucratic spiral. We took in more batches, did more tests and the cheques kept coming. After a few months I'd to take on an extra graduate to help with the work. Our little lab was scoring well and the repeat business was welcome.

Repetition can be good but it can also be dangerous. It breeds that awful familiarity and carelessness that comes with simplification and a regular dumbing down. I never thought that it would come to us or indeed happen to me but it did. It sneaked itself in, a rogue result, a bad figure. We were on our 99^th test, months down the line. Lots of data and results and submissions and we were running on auto pilot, cruise control, whatever. We got lazy, other things were going on, we lost focus and we'd forgotten what honey ever tasted like and how bees sounded. Numbers on a page, flickering data on a screen. In the slip a percentage test was compromised, unseen, we fudged the numbers, we assumed the quality matched, a batch was spoiled and we missed it, we missed the bastard. The jiffy bag was returned but the match was wrong and we went out on the weekend blissfully unaware. We drank beer, sat out in gardens, talked about sports and beefsteak, moaned about the weather, looked at the patches where certain flowers and foliage had been, got annoyed by the new strains of dominant buzzing non-bees whatever they were, didn't think about Monday.

On Monday I picked up the automated email, a “do not reply” one. It said that our data was compromised and that a follow up call would be made. Mark and I ran over the last test results and we found the rogue. There was a mild panic. “That's the fuckin' gravy train derailed”. They called about 1130. The robot voice said a new batch would be sent but we had to replicate our mistake, the data we'd submitted was described as “of interest”. When the batch arrived on Wednesday I followed the two processes, right and wrong, meticulously. If we'd fucked up then we'd do it consistently, we'd prove our integrity. Our systems might have a flaw but we could repeat and understand (and eradicate) error. That seemed a statistically important answer to be able to stand by. Good systems equal good science.

We uploaded the new and repeated data. I sighed and sat down. There was other work to do and I got on with it hoping that the previous incident would evaporate. It surely would.

To be continued...

Into the blue

Here is the world as it is. The world of unfair imperfection, troubles and inventions, questions and buzz word rhetoric. I am stranded in the aftermath of the accident. I fit myself in , here in the remains of my wrecked space craft, I sit and observe. The city is cranky and steaming. It’s foreign and far away and I am an interloper. I guess they know I’m here. They’ve  seen the crash on far away screens or monitoring devices, they’ve mobilised, they are on their way. The horizon is a dull distance away, over the head of the city. I’m in an area, maybe waste land, I’m aware of distant traffic and activity. Beads of light and flurry but I can’t understand the scale. Perhaps I’m injured, perhaps my brain has been affected. The trauma, the shock. Perhaps my straight thinking is not so straight. I feel I’m falling asleep.

Now I waken, on my back, lights and voices, the smell of … chemicals. I’m restrained, bolted down. Ready for inspection or repair. The slow terror begins to claw at me, here, on a table, lost and injured and under observation. I black out as the hands draw themselves around me, investigating, hopefully healing behind the terror I’m falling back into.

Next I’m roused, water on my face, or liquid or something. My eyes open. I’m in a wide dark space, starved of light. Movement and activity, small noises but no communication. Fear and terror bites into me again. There are no restrains, I’m free from pain, I move, slowly. The light is coming on. Figures approach, vague and cloaked, human like and expressionless. An arm is stretched out, a hand beckons and I rise and follow. No pain, just some hangover and apprehension and I step out as a light from somewhere, all around dawns.

I look across, through a vast open door, there is the city, steaming still and hot. Distant and by the direction I’m shepherded in clearly not where I’m going. I’m set in some vehicle, faces and controls are hidden, no words. I stutter a few things, clear my throat but I feel that talk is not expected or necessary. The vehicle is fast and smooth and there I am back at my space craft. The hatch prised open and, as far as I can see repairs have been done. I’m directed in and with that forgotten snap, last heard on  Earth some time ago, the hatches closes behind me I’m suddenly alone. I stagger and cry. I look around, everywhere all at once. I’m alone.

In the control room, the cockpit the lights and gauges shine. The meters show green, greener than ever. Timed and primed. A big hand has repaired thing.  Another technology has stretched out over the ship, cloaked and clothed and energised the dead carcass. I sit and consider the instrumental message. I seem to have no choice. All is primed, fuelled and ready to go. The system’s calculations done and expressed and ready for me to read. I wonder where I am in time. I look across and see the auto system kicking in. My journey is not mine, it’s theirs. They aim me, prime me and fire me. Out into the black cosmos and watery grey spiralling gas. Suns and planets circle in my head. New explorations and happy trails into the blue. I go without knowing anything. Lost and manipulated like a human cannonball , they crank up my flight , my hidden trajectory  and I’m gone. They are watching. Perhaps they always were.

What a drag it is getting old

He's a lot older now but the car remains  a classic.

The onset of age induced dyslexia. The older I get the less capable I seem to be of a) actually writing clearly and b) whatever the medium being able to spell. Now a) is simply down to skill fade (I hope) and an over reliance on typing and/or doing nothing. All I know is that if I have to write much more than my scrawny and indistinct signature I double up with wrist pain and cramp. I look at the fine collection of pens and pencils on my desk and think, “when was the last time one of these wore down and was used up?” For b) there is a strange paradox running; as I write less but type more my spelling gets worse but my vocabulary increases. Now the spelling failure is obviously brought by my reliance upon spell checkers and predictive text etc. It's laziness really so I deserve all I'm getting. There is also the phenomenon of bad typing where I seem to knowingly mis-type a word not just mis-spell it. The word comes out, beautiful typed with all the correct letters but they are in the wrong order. What's that all about? These acute symptoms and effects may well become a huge stumbling block in the way of me finishing the great Scottish/American/SteamPunk/Time Travel novel that I believe exists hidden inside my woolly head. On reflection and taking my mental condition into account it may be that the best writing technique to employ should have a chaos basis to it. I just type and type for 200 pages or so and then let the spell checker run riot and accept all the changes, it would be art and it could be brilliant. What are the chances? On reflection maybe that's all I've been doing for years.