Squallitaire

“Can you spare some change, please Sir?”

Hermannus

Rain-lashed piers in winter months are home to a certain kind of being.

The Underwhelming Feeling of Enlightenment

They both agree: sometimes it is simply better not to know.

The Family Sunshine

Some of the family heirlooms, shared for the first time.

Food Chain Inversion

More from The Apocalypse Advisory Committee. You have ten years, at best.

Prepare For Apocalyspe

The bees are dying and the gulf stream is failing. The oil will run out, the icecaps will melt, botulism will become viral and cockroaches will rule the earth. Contrary to all expectation, Barak Obama will not be our salvation. Don’t get taken by surprise. Prepare now, you have only months, perhaps a couple more birthdays. There are ten steps to survival. Here is the checklist. Check it.

(1) Dig a well in the yard, but don’t tell anyone.

(2) Save jam jars.

(3) Print off the internet for future reference after it’s gone.

(4) Practice safely removing ticks & leeches.

(5) Keep a mental note of nearby alcoholics and foxes.

(6) Buy seeds.

(7) Learn to navigate by the stars.

(8) Practice eating tinned dog & cat meat.

(9) Rewatch all Ray Mears on iPlayer.

(10) Try not to think about The Road.

Repossession

Ah bin Poe Zest. Nammit. Ah got me sum kinda rockin devil in me, sum kinda Garr Hool. Ahma kinda Zom Bee or sum Go Lem or sump else likewise. Sweet Jheesu.

∞

Now, that’s an approximation. Bo Vaxxine isn’t always easy to translate, and the feeling – the signal, the reception – is stronger or weaker at different times. Bo wants me to learn the banjo and sing a little to help with the flow. If I put The Groupies or Link Wray or some such hillbilly on the grammy he goes hog-wild.  Sometimes gets a real hold on me and makes me dance a jerky, manic kind of dance. Caught my eyes in the mirror once while I was shaking around. Them big round eyes looked mighty terror-full. That ain’t no real word, a course, but Bo Vaxxine sure gotta speak fo’ me sometime.

Here I go again.

Amos Well

There’s a black dog up on the hill yonder. My Amos wouldn’t tolerate the dogs on his fields but nowadays they run wild with nobody to stop them. Standing here on the back porch I always thought of that hill as Amos Ridge, though never said such a thing to him, lest he take the strap to me like some poor child he taken a dislike to. Everything around here got the mark of Amos upon it, including me. This is his farm. Amos Farm. That there: his field. Amos Field. Follow Amos Track down to the old barns where Amos done his slaughtering. Those poor cows afforded no dignity, in life or death. Amos Barns. Amos Meat. And then there’s me. Wife, he called me. Like I got no name of my own. Amos Wife. Well, not any more. Not since I took a rock to him, and put him down the well, bloody and confused and maybe a mite regretful. Now I’m Amos free.

Stupid Clock

Friday listens to the speaking clock.

She has a project: understand the dynamic voice qualities of a speaker – intonation, rhythm, fluency and speed – understand the speaker. Everyone is on a vibrating line into the their own future, and all futures are connected. The better you understand a person, the clearer their connection to their future, and to yours.

The problem is this: most people are complex. Not easy to know. Coloured by their experiences, their different personas, their agreements with themselves and the world. Friday knows her lover better than anybody – they have been intertwined some eight years. Yet even Owen’s line-to-the-future is clouded with uncertainty. Wreathed in a mist of contradiction and doubt.

So Friday has a theory: That woman, Sarah Mendes da Costa, recorded the speaking clock without doubt or uncertainty. She was focused on an emotionally consistent monologue. At that point in time, if you knew her well and had the gift, you should be able to see her line-to-the-future, and therefore yours. So Friday spends many free hours listening to the speaking clock, hoping to understand the voice and divine the future. It would be a technopaganic breakthrough.

Owen thinks: it’s just a stupid clock.

Goldfish

The history of goldfish is:

Like all things remarkable, goldfish were invented in China. Selectively bred from small Asian carp that had been kept as a food stock for thousands of years, they were venerated for their talismanic properties, regal connotation and beauty. It was perhaps for this complex symbology that small-time Black Country criminal and gang-member Elwood Stencil, after trying out the pseudonym Mo’ Tek, eventually settled on the nom de plume of The Goldfish, rather than for any physical similarity.

The modern condition of goldfish in the West is:

By the twentieth century their slow encroachment westward matched the debasement of their value: the fad for swallowing live goldfish as a stunt was first recorded at Harvard University in 1939 and persisted for many years. Today they are nothing more than prizes in plastic bags for children who can throw a hoop over a bottle at a travelling fun fair. It seems almost inevitable, therefore, that Elwood ‘the Goldfish’ Stencil would be the most laughably inept gang criminal in the history of the West Midlands. He remains incarcerated in a low security open prison from which he has failed to escape on several occasions.