a thirty fourth story...'conversion'

The bumper of the car in front had a sticker on.

It read: ‘Jesus is my Airbag’.

Erol slowed, and then decided to overtake instead.

As he pulled into the outside lane and passed the car, he took a good look at the driver.

The driver was white, perhaps mid fifties, with a matted beard and crow’s feet around his eyes.  He was wearing a Red Sox baseball cap.

To Erol he resembled a latter day incarnation of John the Baptist.

‘GODSPEED!’, Erol shouted sarcastically through his open window as he sped by.

He didn’t much like Christians, they made him uncomfortable what with their floppy arms, limp handshakes, fake humility and scout badges. 

~

Half an hour later, Erol decided to pull into a gas station to refill and get a bite to eat.  He parked up, had the attendant – an octogenarian in blue dungarees and an oily white shirt – see to his car, and walked over to the roadside diner.  The roadside diner resembled a pink breeze block with windows.  Inside it was empty save a couple of truckers tucking into an early lunch of ham and eggs.  Erol sidled up to the counter and ordered the same, as well as a glass of beer to wash it down.

As Erol was forking his first mouthful of ham and eggs into his mouth, John the Baptist walked in.  Erol swallowed.  John the Baptist strode to the counter and asked gruffly for a menu.  The waitress, a chubby blonde in a powder pink apron, presented him with one. John the Baptist began to study it. 

Erol hesitated a moment before going back to his food. 

Ham and eggs, he thought.  They sure go well together!

But really he was thinking about John the Baptist.

~

John the Baptist must have been a fast eater, or perhaps he just ordered a soda or something, because by the time it came for Erol to return to the counter and pay the chubby blonde waitress in the powder pink apron, John the Baptist was there too!

Erol felt a little nervous.

John the Baptist was studying him from under his Red Sox baseball cap with two beady eyes. 

Erol waited as the waitress counted out his change, and tried to distract his mind with thoughts of ham and eggs.

Then it happened.

‘Don’t I recognise you from somewhere?’, John the Baptist asked Erol with a voice that sounded lived in for a couple of thousand years.  Erol flinched, and looked in the opposite direction, ‘No, sir’, he replied shuffling his feet. 

‘Yes, I do’, continued John the Baptist as the waitress returned Erol’s change, ‘you shouted at me back there on the freeway, didn’t you?.  Oops, thought Erol, putting his change in his back pocket, a jolt going up his spine – John the Baptist wasn’t a big man, but there was something menacing or at least disconcerting about him. 

‘What did you say, exactly?’ pressed John the Baptist, ‘Godspeed, was it?’.  Erol didn’t answer but stayed where he was.  John the Baptist leaned towards him, ‘are you a believer in Christ Almighty?’, he growled.  Erol was beginning to feel silly and embarrassed, the Holy Chickens were coming home to roost!

‘No, sir’, he said.  ‘No, sir’, repeated John the Baptist fingering his matted beard, head to one side, ‘you're awful polite aren’tchya, boy?’.  Erol said nothing again. ‘No, Suh?’ mimicked John the Baptist, breaking into a broad grin and bearing a set of wonky yellow teeth. 

Humiliation complete, Erol fled like St Peter with his ears on fire.

~

But Erol’s humiliation wasn’t complete.  Oh no!

When he returned to where his car had been, guess what?! It was nowhere to be seen.  Erol, shaken by his brief encounter with John the Baptist, cut a folorn figure standing in the gas station forecourt, scratching his head.

(The old gas station attendant was nowhere to be seen either!)

Good heav..said Erol and then caught himself.  Godda..and then he caught himself again.  Jesu..one more time.. ‘For FUCK’s SAKE’, he moaned, as the door to the roadside diner opened, and John the Baptist emerged.

Erol turned.  John the Baptist touched his Red Sox baseball cap by way of acknowledgement and headed towards his parked car with the ‘Jesus is my Airbag’ sticker on the bumper.

And then epiphany struck!

The Spirit of the Lord was born in Erol.

At the top of his voice, he yelled: ‘JOHNNY: TAKE ME TO THE RIVER!’

a thirty third story...'majority rules'

 Shirley was a ‘go-getter’.

And more often than not, she got what she wanted.

Why?

Shirley knew how.

She could get along with people famously, and then manipulate them, also famously, to her own ends.

Shirely was a weapon.

~

Milos’ Cypriot grandmother always told him: ‘beware, a woman with brains’.  Milos took little notice – his grandmother was losing her marbles.  Besides, Milos’ mother and father always told him: ‘marry a woman with brains’ – and as far as he could tell his parents had the full set.

Moreover, Milos’ parents were both General Practitioners: they of all people had to be sane, and consequently worth listening to. 

Indeed, Milos’ listened to and obeyed his parents when they suggested, for his own future comfort and sanity, he work hard at his studies and try to become a General Practitioner just like them! 

This lead Milos to Medical School.

‘You’ll meet a woman with brains!’, warned his grandmother from underneath her shawl on hearing the news, ‘I hope I do!’, replied Milos.  And he did.

Her name was Shirley.

~

On first impressions, Milos was hugely impressed.  He had never met someone as beautiful as Shirley, and with such a grasp of Advanced Medical Ethics.  What he didn’t know was this:  Shirley largely saw boys as animate objects, fitted with integrated circuits enabling them to talk, she could play around with.  Had Milos known when she was little Shirley had torn the heads off all three of her Ken dolls, one after another (Barbie must have been mortified; Ken probably went to a better place), he might have proceeded with more caution.

Then again how many men, presented with outstanding female beauty, are able to exercise self restraint?

Not even Bill Clinton – one of the Greatest Men in the recent history of Planet Earth.

~

Anyhow..

Milos and Shirley started an affair. 

The affair went on for three months.

Then Shirley ended it.

‘We’re just not right for each other’, Shirley said – meaning, I’m bored now.  ‘But we are!’, pleaded Milos.  ‘No we’re not’, insisted Shirley.  ‘Why?’, blubbered Milos.  ‘We’re just not’, insisted Shirley again, and on they went until Milos’ integrated circuit couldn’t take any more.

~

Poor Milos!

When he first met Shirley he was a vigorous and popular young academic, he now became a slightly less vigorous, slightly less popular wretch.  In his second year at Medical School he dropped out altogether and, at the time of writing, is growing sunflowers to make margarine.

Here’s a thing:  Milos still day dreams about Shirley every morning – the day dream consists of Shirley in her bra and knickerlace, spreading margarine on her morning toast.

Love: one of the socially accepted forms of insanity.

You won’t find so much as a prescription at your GP!

~

While Milos was left to moon over his sunflowers, Shirley graduated from Medical School with distinction.  In her wake she left behind: Hal, once a rich and arrogant Freshman, now back at home working quietly on his father’s estate looking after his father’s regiment of Flamingos; Jordan, once the best and brashest Football player in college, now five stone overweight and turning beef patties in Roy Rogers; Greg, once the sharpest tool in the Physicians Drawer, now daily administering Mephedrone or Meow with an inane smile permanently super glued to his face; and last, but by no means least, Lavinia – once heterosexual, then bisexual, now confused.

Milos, Hal, Jordan, Greg and Lavinia: introducing Shirley’s toys!

~

Life was such a fun game for Shirley – and her beauty and intelligence put her in control of all the various outcomes, as well as presenting her with opportunity after opportunity she could take as she pleased.  Shirley was also lucky in the sense she was able to be objective when it came to the naturally occurring handicaps that lurk within the emotional composition of every single one of us: empathy, compassion and our old foe, Love!

For Shirley, love didn’t have to involve any suffering, nor did it have to involve any sacrifice, or compromise, unbridled desire, or delirious pleasure and so on. 

Boys and girls: Shirley was straight from the fridge!!

i.e. Cool

Then again, Shirley found with time her unparalleled ability to control her fortunes and feelings became something of a handicap in itself – she was so successful at life things began to lose their meaning:

As a Junior Doctor, if she deliberately showed a disinterest in her patients or poured scorn on her colleagues, on account of her looks the majority would normally give her the benefit of the doubt, and congratulate her.

It felt hollow.

Away from the surgery, if she deliberately made herself look ugly, on account of her mind the majority would keep her cocktail glass full to the brim and be fascinated by her.

The majority wanted Shirley to continue being successful and they made sure she was; but for Shirley, continued success meant continued Ennui.  And it was getting worse.

~

When Shirley made Senior Partner at the unprecedented age of twenty nine, she was inconsolable (at least behind closed doors).  When Shirley was awarded a Mastership by the American College of Physicians, she contemplated suicide.  When Shirley married Patrick Soon-Shiong, a self-made Master of Science, worth 7 billion dollars (pharmaceuticals), and one of the fifty richest men in the United States, she deliberately overdosed on tranquilisers, only to wake up at the same hour she always did and find it was time to go to work again!

At the clinic, following her attempt to take her own precocious life (one of her first and last recorded failures), Shirley’s patients said she was looking beautiful – every single one of them – and how with attributes like hers (as well as an exceedingly wealthy husband), they just knew there was more success to come!

‘We’ll do whatever we can to help’, said a nice, little old lady in the waiting room after their appointment was finished, at which juncture one of Shirley’s doctor colleagues strode over and clapped her on the shoulder: ‘We sure will, Shirley!’, he said smiling, Shirley thought mischievously, ‘we sure will!’.

~

But he meant every word!

Oh dear!

If Shirley could only have been growing sunflowers, farming Flamingos, frying processed meat, or doing animals for a living!!

But alas, no.

In succeeding years, Shirley won the Nobel Peace Prize, the International Women of Courage Award, the National Medal of Science, Cosmopolitan Woman of the Decade, Missus Virginia (three times), and finally the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award bestowed by the Leader of the Free World. 

Sound great?

Or does it sound like a monotonous list of successes, all of them well-known, all of them with previous winners, all of them enshrined in an age old institution, one age old discipline after another, all of them de riguer?

Perhaps not.

But to Shirley it did, and not one to fail a second time, Shirley succeeded in ending her life shortly after her trip to the White House to have tea on the famous White House lawn, having received her Presidential Medal of Freedom.

I won’t divulge how she ended her life – it wasn’t very pleasant.

Never mind.

Whatever!

~

So for the moral of the story (I’m told there should be one), how about this:

Shirley’s gravestone carries this simple and eloquent epitaph:

The majority rules!

Take note, and don't be a smarty pants.

a thirty second story...'stoney'

Stoney always said.

He always said if he had one super power it wouldn’t be to be able live forever, or to fly, to swim under water, or run faster than a Cape Hunting Dog. 

Stoney always said his super power would be to be able to play Barrelhouse piano.

Fair enough!

His middle aged friends, on the other hand, all wanted to be Clark Kent.

Well, who wouldn’t?!

But Stoney knew this: that his super power would bring the most joy to the most people – the joy of music. 

Let it be known: nothing, and by that I mean, zilch, zero can change one’s physical chemistry more rapidly than three minutes of popular song.

Or Barrelhouse piano.

The keys are positively jumping!

~

At school, when Stoney was a boy, he had tried to learn the Trumpet.  For the first five lessons Stoney remembered blowing raspberries into a mouthpiece, and when at last the mouthpiece was connected up with the rest of the instrument, the result was somewhat disappointing.  After ten lessons he could just about manage a just about passable version of Boo-ga-loo, but in truth, it was too much like hard work.  And Boo-ga-loo was not exactly the Rolling Stones, besides the Rolling Stones didn’t play Trumpet, any of them – they used Session Brass.

Then, towards the end of his teenage years, Stoney, like so many adolescents in search of an identity, or in some cases notoriety, dabbled with Guitar.  Similarly, after ten lessons, he could, with a little finger gymnastics, play the opening three chords of Yellow Submarine, a nursery rhyme by the Beatles. 

That was it! 

And lo he gave up on his dream of becoming the next Charlie Mingus or George Harrison, the next superhero, and devoted himself to Sports.

~

Unfortunately for Stoney, his subsequent endeavours to become the new Hank Aaron or Bobby Orr didn’t fare a great deal better.  Stoney was tall and thin.  His limbs grew so fast between the ages of fourteen and sixteen the rest of his body had to play catch up, and his brain encountered all sorts of problems re-establishing communication with Stoney’s increasingly distant appendages.  Swinging a bat, catching and kicking a ball, hitting a hockey puck, all proved troublesome. 

It was Stoney’s Sports Coach in High School that made Stoney wearily familiar with the magnanimous cliche: ‘it’s the taking part that counts’.

Then again, taking part in Sports was as much as Stoney could aspire to (if taking part involved running awkwardly around a football field and never receiving the ball all game, or bringing round the water for the boys during the 9^th innings).

~

Anyway, Stoney’s admiration for Barrelhouse piano stemmed from his Uncle Ned.  Uncle Ned was a jazz obsessive.  He even had a tattoo of a tenor saxophone on his forearm.  Uncle Ned used to take Stoney to a juke joint called ‘Po’ Monkeys’ every Friday night.  There Stoney heard a whole plethora of Boogie-woogie, and had his first drink (an American Corn Whiskey), his first dance (to Big Joe Turner’s ‘Roll ‘em Pete’), and his first kiss (with Ana-Lee Lewis, a big, frumpy girl in her early twenties, who wore horn rimmed spectacles). 

Uncle Ned also played a bit of Boogie-woogie himself: in hindsight, he might have been Stoney’s superhero!

Superheroes, however, are often immortal or indeed indestructible – Uncle Ned proved to be neither.  In a gruesome, but ultimate and somehow fitting manner, Uncle Ned hanged himself with piano wire when Stoney was twenty two.  It later emerged Uncle Ned had been in oodles of debt, including an eye-watering bar tab still outstanding at ‘Po’ Monkeys’.

In the aftermath of Uncle Ned’s demise, Stoney revisited his Guitar and tried to write a song in Uncle Ned’s memory.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, it ended up sounding like the beginning of Yellow Submarine.

‘In a town, where I was born..’

~

Another thing Stoney always said.

Stoney always said he wanted to die with a smile on his face.

‘Dying is the easy part!’, his middle aged friends would say, and Stoney would smile.  Stoney smiled a lot – it was as if he was in practice (perhaps with Uncle Ned in mind).

And yet, the unusual thing about Stoney, other than his desire for his super power to be able to play Barrelhouse piano, was his ability to smile at life: to see the good things, not always the bad things; to see beauty in people, even in Ana-Lee Lewis, and not only the ugliness – Ana-Lee Lewis again. 

For this reason Stoney was happily married with two kids, a boy and a girl.  Also for this reason Stoney wanted to die with a smile on his face, and not with piano wire around his neck, no matter how strong his love of Boogie-woogie. 

He had as good a chance as any!

~

When the Big Day came – arguably the most momentous day in anyone’s life, and one of which we (typically) have zilch, zero memory, and very few photographs – Stoney was watering the front lawn of his house, fondly remembering Uncle Ned, and ‘Po’ Monkeys’ (and quite possibly Ana-Lee Lewis). 

On the Big Day, his two kids came back from school with their mother to find Stoney prostrate on the lawn with the dog, Truman, yapping loudly and darting in and out of the jets of water springing from the hose in Stoney’s hands.

To Stoney’s four year old daughter, Stoney seemed very happily asleep.

He was in fact, dead.

What can you say other than ‘practice makes perfect!’

(Expect maybe: ‘it’s the taking part that counts’)

~

Still, at Stoney’s funeral the mood was significantly lighter than it had been thirty years previously at Uncle Ned’s.  How good of Stoney to die happily, people said; and how much more comfortable it made the people he left behind feel about it all.  Indeed, Ana-Lee Lewis was the only one who cried at the funeral, and the wake that followed was talked about by Boogie-woogie enthusiasts all over the county for months thereafter. 

And let’s not forget the funeral casket that ferried the rigid, yet smiling, six feet, four inches of Stoney up the conveyor belt and into the oven: it was constructed from the timber of an old Barrelhouse piano.

a thirty first story...'frank's wife'

It took him half a life time but Frank finally said something sincere to his wife.  Over dinner one evening, with the kids all grown up, he told her he didn’t love her and her never had.  Then, as his wife sat in stunned silence, he added that he harboured homosexual designs on their neighbour’s son, Finley, and that their fledgling relationship had already been consummated in Finley’s parent’s basement garage, Wednesday last.

His wife fell off her chair backwards.  Or at least one could imagine her doing so.  In fact she picked up her steak knife and hurled it at Frank.  With the unerring accuracy of a member of the AKTA (American Knife Thrower’s Alliance), the blade pierced his pulmonary artery.  Frank was dead within the time it took his wife to clear his plate away.  She didn’t of course clear his plate away – and nor was she a member of the AKTA.

The police arrived an hour later after Frank’s wife had made a panicked telephone call to the local police department.  In fact, Frank’s wife didn’t telephone the local police department at all, and the police never showed up as a consequence.  What Frank’s wife did do was carefully place Frank’s hands around the handle of her steak knife, now safely embedded in Frank’s chest – she was trying to make it look like suicide – and then went around to their neighbour’s house armed with Frank’s Glock handgun. 

Finley politely answered the door only to find Frank’s wife unload three rounds of lead into his stomach before delivering the coup de grace to his forehead.  As Frank’s wife stepped over Finley’s bullet ridden corpse, his parents emerged from the living room.  Frank’s wife discharged four more rounds.  The first hit Finley’s father straight in his left eye, shattering his glasses, and the second, third and fourth blew off Finley’s mother’s right ear, and emptied her guts all over the hallway carpet.

As Finley’s mother lay bleeding to death, Frank’s wife put Frank’s handgun about a yard away from Finley’s body and, after fixing herself a gin and tonic back at home, went to bed.  During the middle of the night, Frank’s wife roused herself and once she had worked herself into a self-induced hysteria, she did at last make a panicked telephone call to the police.

‘My husband has killed himself!!’, she yelled into the receiver.  ‘Your husband has killed himself?’, replied the operator in an unwitting impersonation of a psychoanalyst.  ‘My husband has killed himself and I don’t know what to do!!’, Frank’s wife screamed.  ‘Your husband has killed himself and you don’t know what to do?’, replied the operator again.  ‘YES!!’ shrieked Frank’s wife.  ‘He has?’, asked the operator as if in genuine surprise.  ‘HE’S GOT A STEAK KNIFE THROUGH HIS HEART’, Frank’s wife was by now in a genuine frenzy, ‘He Was An Emotionally Redundant Faggot Anyhow!!’

~

The grandfather clock stuck eight.

Silence except for the sound of eating.

Frank’s wife picked at the contents of her dinner, and refused to make eye contact with Frank who was nonchalantly chewing over his steak: she thought of Frank and Finley smoking marijuana and fornicating next door, she thought of what to tell her children, and how to convey her suspicions to Finley’s parents.      

a thirtieth story...'other people's shoes'

 Standing in other people’s shoes is hard.  Typically they don’t fit very well.  They rub and it’s uncomfortable.  But imagine a minute, Jia Li.  Jia Li is a seventeen year old Chinese girl.  For the sake of convenience let’s say her name translates into English as ‘beautiful and good’. 

Jia Li’s feet are so small – they were bound as is the Chinese custom when she was very young – she is in fact able to stand in virtually anyone’s shoes.  Well I never!  And what’s more, I do not mean only in the Literal Sense.  Jai Li may have very small feet, but she also has a very BIG heart and an Open Mind.  Moreover, she has round almond eyes, a cute button nose, sensual lips, gently sloping shoulders, perfect skin, supple breasts, a flat stomach, firm buttocks, shapely hips and fabulous legs.  What a knock out!

And she can speak fifteen different languages, and would have no problem reading this short story.

Gulp!!

So where does she live and what’s her number? I hear you say.  Well, here’s the rub: I’ve just made her up.  So sorry. 

Although, before I apologise any further, China has a population of over 1.3 billion covering almost 10 million square kilometres of land mass.  Perhaps Jai Li exists after all. 

Again for the sake of convenience let’s say she does.

Now we’re talking!

And it’s nice to share some of my experiences of Jai Li.  She’s one helluva girl!!

Do you know she started a petition to abolish the Confucius Peace Prize?  It has so far been unsuccessful, and you may ask why, but consider the following: the Confucius Peace Prize was awarded for the first time way back in 2010.  It exists to this day to promote ‘world peace from an Eastern perspective’.  Now this is hilarious for anyone with a notion of what peace really means and with a passing knowledge of Chinese politics, home and abroad. 

Jai Li opposed the Confucius Peace Prize because she felt the sentiment behind it was balderdash.  And then in 2011 Vladimir Putin received the award.  She had seen for herself that peace from an ‘Eastern perspective’ involved putting people down, keeping them quiet and wantonly executing those that don’t (often from one yard with a pistol in the back of the head).

What else?

Well, Jai Li has also helped out in a rural health centre not far from her home in Sichuan province.  The Chinese government has spent close to 125 billion dollars over the last three years alone on health care.  However, rural health centres like the one where Jai Li works are still back in the nineteenth century, or at best chronically underfunded and overrun.  Way to go!

Also in the last three years Sichuan province suffered a catastrophic earthquake.  68’000 people died.  Many others were injured.  And still many Chinese men and women have no idea of what kind of healthcare provision they are entitled to.

Once again, Jai Li, has been working tirelessly on their behalf.  Jai Li might be the Chinese Florence Nightingale.

She might also be the Chinese Harper Lee.  Again, Jai Li understands the importance of trying out other people’s skin.  As a consequence of her many experiences – including working in the rural health centre in Sichuan province – she knows, above all, that human beings are fragile; that they need to be shown love, kindness and compassion over anything else.  This is why Jai Li is training to become a teacher.  She wants to impart the wisdom of Atticus Finch to as many little Chinese as possible.  And, guess what?  It’s not as hard a job as it sounds, all they need do is just learn a single trick.

That said, many of the members of the Chinese government seem never to have been taught this single trick growing up, or at least they have forgotten it during their rise through the political ranks.  Moreover, across the world in the affluent areas of society, teaching and practice of this single trick is often regarded as bogus!  How many job specifications these days advertise for kindness?  Some industries would sooner employ someone with great filing skills.  Jai Li knows the people in charge of the wellbeing of her countrymen and women are borderline psychopathic.

Listen:

Jai Li is only seventeen.  But she understands small things can make a big difference.  For instance, she can smile with her eyes, and when you meet her you can see a universe in them, full of possibility - remember, she has an Open Mind.  Moreover, Jai Li is a very tactile girl, she knows touch can heal and that touching people makes them feel real - remember too, she has a BIG heart.  And she loves you as much as she loves me.  Her love for us both is uncritical but also fair.

She has fifteen different languages and great filing skills as added extras!

Nevertheless, if you reading this as a head of recruitment in a major national or international firm, and Jai Li sounds like the perfect ambassador for your brand, or indeed a nice bit on the side to work your front desk, you more than likely won’t be able to find her. People like Jai Li have a tendency to crop up in unusual places, they just appear in our midst.  Search all you will but after a while you’ll be forced to concede you are wasting your time.  And Time is Money.  Don’t waste it!

Of course, Jai Li has been an unpaid volunteer at the rural health centre in Sichuan province – she understood she had something unique to offer and felt obliged to help, but without ever desiring anything in return except for her patients to get better. 

The Chinese government’s 125 billion dollars couldn’t buy enough Jai Li’s for all the tea in their own goddamn country!

a twenty ninth story...'language, in short'

Dog: Woof!

Cat: ____

Dog: Woof! Woof! Woof!

Cat: ____

Dog: Grrrrrrrrrrr!

Cat: ????

Dog: Woof!

And there you have it.  This short screen play underlines the importance of LANGUAGE – hands down the greatest invention in human creation!  People talk of the Wheel, the Microchip, Anesthetic, Antibiotics, the Printing Press, but without language none of these would have been possible.  Language has helped  humans collaborate and enabled a meeting of minds throughout our history as a species; this in turn has led to what determinists like to call ‘progress’ (at least in between the times we’ve been blowing each other up). 

Homosapiens uber alles!  

~

Consider this: in the aforementioned screen play you could have easily substituted the dog and the cat with our cromagnon ancestors before they learned to pronounce their vowels.  And on the subject of vowels, I sometimes wonder whether Progressive Homosapiens such as you and I are, in fact, in regression. 

The evidence: text speak and acronyms.  TBH, I am concerned, and IMHO, so should you be.

(:-<)

We spend our lives running from pillar to post in lunatic fashion, and – this is meant to be a rhetorical question – why should we bother with elocution when we can communicate with each other using four letters as opposed to four whole words!!?  Take it from me, we just have to. 

Here’s an idea: we are ‘time poor’, we remain obstinate or unaware of the future (tomorrow will come around if we’re not careful) and IAF (‘in all fairness’ – my small contribution to 21^st century prose) we have our priorities in the wrong order.

~

My grandson has an iPad.  He is three years old.  Babysitting him is the easiest job in the world.  The iPad babysits my grandson for me, while I watch old re-runs of Super Bowl!  He sits passively on the shag pile carpet, presses coloured buttons and listens to voice activated commands.  I watch him waiting for an outburst that never comes and wonder how his neural signals are working.  My main source of wonderment is whether my grandson is reading the (few) written words displayed on his plasma screen or simply listening to them.  Are the words and sentences being formed in his brain being formed by him, or on his behalf by the machine?! 

(:-\)

Then, at some point in the evening, my daughter returns with her husband from wherever they have been. 

By the way, my daughter is a graduate of Oxford University, she majored in English literature.  She has brains! 

Hastily I switch off Super Bowl and start making meaningless chit chat with my grandson, something along the lines of the screen play involving the dog and the cat and with much the same outcome, i.e. not very much of one.  My daughter walks into the living room and says ‘hello’ before picking my grandson up in her arms.  I ask where they have been.  My daughter tells me they have been to see The Tempest by William Shakespeare, the Godfather of Modern English.  ‘Was it good?’, I ask. My daughter says it was, although the theatre was half empty.  ‘Why?’ I ask once more. 

Here, another rhetorical question.

~

Shakespeare is the Greatest Story Teller Since Aesop.  True.  Then again his plays can appear on first reading, rather complicated in their language.  I would agree with people who say he is not the easiest playwright to get along with, but then should something a little complicated spoil our enjoyment, or turn us off altogether?! In our schools nowadays Shakespeare’s works are being reduced to a series of comic strips.  Because it’s more straightforward.  Hey teacher!

Meanwhile, the growing apathy towards Shakespeare suggests a society falling out of love with our Greatest Invention: 

‘For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.’

Sonnet twenty-nine, FYI.  Take note!

Or, Nota Bene!!

(as a quick aside I performed an internet search using the internet search provider who’s brand name recently became Generic Noun and Verb in our English dictionary, and found pages and pages of people asking for the translation of N.B.  An acronym a generation of technological determinists didn’t understand!).

~

To extrapolate the point I make with regard to Nota Bene, Latin is widely considered a dead language these days.  Even fifty years ago my Latin class was a mere seven or eight people out of perhaps two hundred in my school year.  No one speaks it anymore, no one can pronounce their vowels! 

As a consequence acronyms from Latin times have become hard for some of us to understand.  Surely language in the fullest sense has to remain if our abbreviations in our expression are going to continue to mean something.  Living in a ‘modern’ culture (by now you must realise I am an ardent post-structuralist) we rely heavily on abbreviations in everyday comms (!).  IF ‘modern’ forms of abbreviation become the dominant form of expression, there is a danger we’ll be misunderstanding each other in the future, IF the richness and diversity of our language is suppressed.

WTF!

So before your next text message arrives, allow me to leave you with the first line from a version of an old joke, understood for hundreds of years, and perhaps consider it something of a rhetorical premonition:

‘How many cats and dogs does it take to change a light bulb?’

(;-)

a twenty eighth story...'black woollen socks, beach shorts and beach sandals'

The sun shone.  Madison liked this.  He liked sunny weather.  Sunny weather meant he could wear his beach shorts.  They were knee length and covered in little cartoons of little people dressed in much the same way as Madison liked to dress when the sun was out and high in the sky.  The little people were riding the frothing crests of little frothing waves on little surf boards: they looked as if they were having a fun time!

Anyhow..

Among many things, Madison liked to consider himself a surf boarder.  Unfortunately he never quite pulled off the look; with his beach shorts he wore beach sandals, and with his beach sandals he wore socks!  Black woollen socks pulled up above his ankles – Hawii Five O!

Madison dressed like an only child, indeed Madison was an only child.  Moreover, his parents separated on his second birthday.  They had an argument over a soft toy.  Madison’s father bought him the wrong version of Mickey Mouse – a big cuddly version of Mini Mouse.  In defence of Madison’s father he was extremely myopic and had left his glasses at home going to the Disney Store on behalf of Madison’s mother.  Madison’s mother was in bed dosed up on various psychiatric drugs.  Madison’s father had little or no interest in Walt or any of his movies.  It was the last straw, the match in the powder barrel and so forth. 

Oh stuff and fluff!

~

And it came to pass that Madison grew up with his mother; he couldn’t remember his father, then again after a while neither could his mother.  When her consumption of all manner of pharmaceuticals fogged her mind and sent her into a permanent stupor, some generous soul arranged a guardian for Madison.  The guardian was kind and benevolent, schooled Madison, cooked him his meals and even played with him while Madison’s mother lay in her silk pyjamas dreaming of nothing in particular. 

That said, Madison’s guardian also knew squat about Disney movies.

Then again, Madison soon became more interested in other things, namely, surf boarding!

But wait a moment! 

Madison, his narcotized mother and his guardian all lived in a twenty-fourth floor apartment, on the east side of Central Park, New York City.  New York City is, for anyone who has watched ‘Friends’, not only a series of cheap, knock up television sets, but the Capital of the East and resides on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. 

Meanwhile, for anyone who maintains more than a passing enthusiasm toward American Pop Greats, the Beach Boys, you’ll know that they were formed in 1961 in Hawthorne, LA County on the Western Seabord of the US.  This is where the surf is up! 

People in LA County spend their time frolicking among the sandy surf of the state’s many beaches.  The Beach Boys music was as much to do with frolicking as it was to do with surf boarding.  Madison liked the Beach Boys as much as he liked the sun – and his knee length beach shorts.  And surf boarding.

i.e. A lot.

Sadly though for Madison during his formative years he could but dream of going to LA County, let alone of going surfing.  Remember: he lived in city made out of a series of cheap, knock up television sets.

Nevertheless, as a teenager he would often take his transistor radio from his bedroom, run a hot bath, and wearing his beach shorts (back then a different pair with little cartoons of little green palm trees on little yellow islands) slide back and forth on his front in the soap suds with the Beach Boys music playing in the background.  At some stage he discovered this activity was also somewhat arousing, and he began to take little pictures of scantily clad women with him too.

~

Surf boarding had sex appeal.  Madison had very little.  But he was intrigued by it regardless and remained so into his twenties or Two Zeroes.  During his Two Zeroes Madison was still living in the same twenty-fourth floor apartment slightly on the east side of Central Park, New York City, albeit without his intoxicated mother and his once benevolent guardian.  In one of the more surprising and unusual events to befall Madison he had discovered the two in bed together one Thursday afternoon on returning from High School, and the next morning his mother and his guardian eloped.  Madison had no idea where they had gone, and was devastated for days; he loved his mother in spite of her complete reluctance to love him back and he loved his guardian like she was his mother.  

Perhaps a fortnight later, again on his return from High School, he found a postcard on the door mat.  It was of two scantily clad woman lying on a beach some place.  The message, in pink italics, read: Ooh La La! 

On the back his mother had scrawled: Miss YOU!

Madison took it with him on his next visit to the bathroom.

~

By the time Madison’s mother and guardian had left him, however, it was the Rolling Stones that accompanied his surf boarding fantasies.  The Rolling Stones didn’t make a great deal of surf music, but increasingly Madison’s surf boarding fantasies also involved attractive members of the opposite sex.  The Rolling Stones did write about the opposite sex – a lot. 

One of the Stones’ songs about members of the opposite sex had in fact been a favourite of Madison’s mother – it was called ‘Mother’s Little Helper’ and was to do with single mothers on barbiturates, specifically Nembutal.  How indulgent of her!  And yet, let it not be said the Stones were ‘only a rock n’ roll band’.  Music in the sixties was all about social commentary.  I know this and never even lived through the decade!!

~

The Rolling Stones featured in Madison’s life in another way apart from their music.  Madison’s habit of wearing black woollen socks pulled up above his ankles came from none of than Mick Jagger (the Beast, and former student of the London School of Economics).  Mick Jagger, lead singer of the Stones’, was pictured wearing the very same black woollen socks pulled up above his ankles in a photograph of the band Madison saw on a record sleeve.  Mercifully, while this photograph intrigued Madison, he opted in the end for a pair of beach shorts instead of a very small pair of Y-fronts to be worn in combination.

Which brings us neatly back to Madison’s dress sense and growing up as an only child..

Like so many in his predicament he was lonely, and he didn’t have any siblings to look up to, down upon, or define himself against.  And this is largely why he dressed as he did, and wanted to be thought of as surf boarder.  He longed to fit in, to kick with the fray, frolic in the sandy surf etc, but not in New York he couldn’t and not if he went to LA County either. 

Madison’s mother was an only child too, and her subsequent insecurities manifested themselves in a passive aggressive way against Madison.  After giving birth to one child, she didn’t want to fuck men anymore.