And now...the two grandest words in the english vernacular!

MANCHESTER UNITED.

a fifty fourth story...'the ghost of christmas yet to come'

Gary parked his car as close to the shopping plaza as possible, and cut the motor.  In front of him a large woman emerged from a red saloon.  Gary narrowed his eyes.  There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with her, and yet she was stationed in a disabled parking space.  Gary had not heard of lifestyle diabetes.

The large woman (incidentally the democratically elected constituent Member of Parliament) waddled over to the parking meter, while Gary rummaged in the glove compartment for spare change.   The new government tax on cash (pounds, pence and so on) was beginning to bite.  It had been introduced to persuade consumers to use plastic instead: credit cards were being subsidised by another government initiative as a result of a levy on children’s toys.

~

As Gary walked across the parking lot he hunkered low in his thread loose jacket and searched his pockets for his cigarette lighter.  He had a couple of cigarettes left from the packet his wife had bought him for a recent birthday.  God bless her, thought Gary – his wife had to do three weeks overtime to afford it, had to go on the dark web to purchase lighter fuel.  And as for the crate of lager, Gary dreaded to think about what sacrifice had gone into buying that! 

I’ll repay her somehow..perhaps I’ll take her away somewhere Gary imagined, in an instant remembering his friend Tommy who had re-mortgaged his house to afford air tax to fly his family to Spain.  And then there was the duty on sun screen and swim wear.  Swim wear had been the subject of a series of public service advertisements aimed at educating people in the dangers of promiscuity.  There were a few beaches in the UK that had now been designated red light zones (not that anyone under the age of fifty ever visited them in the first place). 

Gary sighed, lit up and inhaled..there would be no holiday then – besides getting the time off work would have involved filling in one form after another, after another, as well as a visit to the Citizens Advice Bureau to be shown how not to infringe the application: a highly probable scenario.  Gary’s co-worker, Darren, had had his holiday application rejected on the grounds he was left handed (the clue was in his handwriting!).  Left handed people were viewed by the home office as a potential communist/pink press threat, better contained within surveillance boundaries.

~

Still, it was nearly Christmas, and there was something vaguely reminiscent of good old fashioned Christmas cheer in the air, even if the low energy Christmas lights, and faith neutral Christmas decorations (comprising of purple stars and glitter) did little to capitalise on this residual feeling.

Nevermind, mulled wine was what Gary had been sent to procure by his wife, and as Gary entered the supermarket past a government approved Santa Claus, posing in an all in one red and green Lycra bodysuit, he was praying to the faith neutral Gods half the bank loan he and his wife had taken out for the festive season would not be used up on one bottle alone.  After all the children would need something  to drink too; equally the thought of making moonshine again from left over cans of Anti-Freeze didn’t appeal (Gary's children by the way were legally obliged to a daily intake of antabuse until their sixteenth birthday to prevent under age alcohol consumption).

~

..Up and down the aisles the supermarket was full of grey looking people struggling to steer their remote control trolleys, struggling gamely to look cheerful, however antiquated a posture looking cheerful had become.  Gary reached the alcohol section.  Customary security checks were being carried out to ensure all consumers were not carrying any metallic materials, sharp objects – belts had to be removed etcetera.  Gary got in line, at least it wasn’t as bad as buying cigarettes he thought, where you were likely to be strip searched and or taken for an X-Ray – all for your own good, of course, as the government slogan went.  

All for your own good, Gary repeated to himself, as he prepared to unlace his shoes and unbuckle his wrist watch, all for you own good...

…if only the politicians would acknowledge 99% of abstinent non-smokers die, more or less the same.

a fifty third story...'quantum immortality'

Billy was a no hoper.  Right from the start he was the runt of the litter.  Had he been a pig he would have been shot point blank in the forehead with an air gun before his first birthday.  Fortunately for Billy he was born into the master race – Billy was a human being.

On September 5, 1984 at the Robert Wood Johnson hospital, New Brunswick, in the state of New Jersey, Billy entered the world.  He had two arms (with hands), two legs (with feet), a small head (with the usual appendages), and as it turned out, a small brain, small enough to fit inside his small cranium.  He weighed only 5lb 7oz.

Rather than shoot him with an air gun, drown him in a well, give him a lethal injection, or any other of the sometimes cruel, sometimes ingenious ways the human race has come up with to extinguish life, Billy was saved.  It was the 1980s and mercy killing was no longer sanctioned among the medical profession, however much doctors, surgeons etcetera wanted to play God, or thought themselves on a par with their creator.

Along with Billy, and on the very same day, from Billy’s mother’s birth tunnel there emerged Cassandra and Cleo.  They were Billy’s twins.  Cassandra weighed 7lb 8oz; Cleo 9lbs 4oz.  Cleo had an appetite even as a foetus.

Father of the new born triplets was Raymond.  Raymond would later cite September 5, 1984 as the greatest day of his life; save the three occasions he would remarry in the following 21 years, and the two occasions the Baltimore (Indianapolis) Colts won Superbowl (his subsequent marriages were childless).  Raymond was a tall man, with big hands, thick forearms, a broad chest and a chin like a car bumper.  He lost his hair at nineteen and wore a Baltimore (Indianapolis) Colts baseball cap to conceal his shiny bald pate.

As for Billy’s mother, she was a darling: patient and loving, trusting (gullible) and beautiful (after a fashion).  Evyette, for that was her name, had first met Raymond at college.  Raymond was a line back for the college football team and not renowned for a great deal else; Evyette was the Prom Queen, also not renowned for a great deal else.  They dated for two years before Raymond summoned the courage to ask Evyette’s father, a straight up ex-US airman, for her pretty lil’ hand in marriage.  ‘Yew won’t be able to find a ring to fit, mah fingers ah so small and dainty’, Evyette gushed on learning of their engagement.

And when they were eventually married, and the reception had passed in an emotional whirl, Raymond carried his princess to the conjugal bed, impregnated Evyette with his semen.  Three of Raymond’s sperm had the stamina of cross channel swimmers.

~

Anyhow, fast forward back to the delivery room at the Robert Wood Johnson hospital on September 5, 1984, and the midwife in charge of overseeing the arrival of little Cleo, Cassandra and the even littler Billy, a stout matronly woman with a large bosom and froglike chin by the name of Gladys decided the even littler Billy would be best off in an incubation ward.  The world was such a mighty big place, and Billy was such a teeny tiny visitor.  So it came to pass that Billy’s first four weeks on planet earth were spent in a ventilated chamber roughly the size of a kitty carrier while outside the white washed walls of the hospital life for ordinary, decent people went on as normal and stuff happened: a new Canadian prime minister was elected, a man crossed the Atlantic ocean in a hot air balloon and the US Embassy in Beirut was car bombed, killing twenty two people.

An upside down world of hot air, indiscriminate murder and misfortune, the world Billy was exposed to on leaving the Robert Wood Johnson hospital at the beginning of October, 1984.

~

New Brunswick is a medium sized urban conurbation in Middlesex County, NJ.  It is known as ‘Healthcare City’ because of the number of medical centres in the area. Among it’s famous sons, daughters are actor Michael Douglas, Wheeler Winston Dixon, filmmaker, critic, author, and the aforementioned Robert Wood Johnson.  Robert Wood Johnson by the way was a successful industrialist, he succumbed to chronic renal insufficiency before his home town had acquired the moniker: ‘Healthcare City’, and before the hospital which today bears his name was built.

For Billy childhood in Healthcare City was, ironically, plagued with illness.  His slight frame coupled with a pre-disposition to various ailments meant that before his fifth birthday he had suffered mumps, measles, chicken pox, diphtheria, viral meningitis, pneumonia, head lice and a broken arm.  The doctors told Billy’s mother Billy had amazing powers of recovery, which in sense was true and just as well. 

On the occasion of his fifth birthday little Billy had some of his little friends around for tea.  They had cocktail sausages, cheese and pineapple sticks, sugar rings, chocolate fingers and cran-apple.  After tea there were games of pin the tail on the donkey, blind man’s buff, and musical chairs.  As an adult Billy would remember the occasion for two reasons: it was the first time he was allowed to fire party streamers (the bang echoed in his ears for days later), second, it was one of the last times he saw his father.  Raymond left Billy’s mother, Evyette, a week after Billy’s fifth birthday for a seventeen year old cheer leader.  It came as a nothing less than a colossal surprise.

Billy never forgave his father.  Evyette did, but then she was still in love with Raymond and would remain so. 

~

In part due to the complications surrounding Billy’s birth, growing up was something young Billy found difficult.  At the age of six he was put on a programme of growth steroids by his doctor in the hope he would spurt skyward like Jack and or the beanstalk.  Alas for Billy he didn’t and his twin brother Cleo inherited his father’s muscular physique and (one and only) gift for sports, becoming the footballer in the family; Billy, meanwhile, found himself faced with the unenviable choice of becoming team mascot or water boy.  He chose neither.

As part of this extra curricular schooling Billy instead went to embroidery class.  He was good with his fingers, found he could thread a needle etcetera, and it was at embroidery class that Billy met Sabrina.  Sabrina was by any measure an unusual teenage girl.  She dressed head to toe in black, wore black woollen skirts, black woollen cardigans.  She didn’t wear make-up, had her hair in a stern bob.  Sabrina also claimed she could talk to the prophets and among other things that she was two thousand years old.  Billy learned from Sabrina human beings could in fact live for centuries using various bodies as conduits for the Self and for their souls! 

One afternoon during embroidery class when Billy was putting the finishing touches to a cross stitch of the Stars and Stripes, a cross stitch he would present to his mother, Evyette, for Thanksgiving, Sabrina leaned over and whispered in Billy’s ear.  ‘Come with me’, she said.  ‘Now?’, asked Billy, ever so slightly taken aback.  ‘Now!’, Sabrina replied.

~

In front of Billy and Sabrina was the imposing post-colonial façade of Queen’s College on the distinguished campus of Rutgers University, New Brunswick.  It looked like the kind of all American civic building where the Declaration of Independence might otherwise have been signed back on July 4, 1776 (Sabrina, at this historic juncture, was apparently living inside the body of Thomas Jefferson’s maid, sometime mistress).  The autumnal afternoon was drawing to a close and the old, low light filtered through the golden leaves of the beech trees bordering the manicured lawn where they stood.  Billy shifted from one foot to another. ‘Aren’t we going in?’, he asked presently.  Sabrina seemed to think about this for a moment before taking Billy’s hand and together they walked up the marble steps leading to the college entrance hall.

‘Where are we going?’, Billy wondered aloud as they entered the atrium opening out onto a long corridor, the pervasive and institutional aroma of wood varnish and brass polish filling his nostrils.  Sabrina’s nose twitched, she pressed Billy’s hand.  ‘We’re going to see the Proficient’, she replied, ‘you’ll see’. 

~

Billy’s first meeting with the Proficient took place on the 278^th day of the Gregorian calendar year, October 4, 1996: almost exactly twelve years and a month after Billy’s arrival into the universe.  On the very same day the BPAA US Bowling Open was won by Mr Dave Husted of Milwaukie, Oregon.  As a noteworthy aside, Husted has earned well over a million dollars routinely knocking over ten medium sized skittles, rolling a 2lb spherical object down a polyurethane lane flanked by two semi-cylindrical channels.  Sound like a complicated way to earn a living!?

Yes and no. 

Although Husted would have counted himself fortunate in comparison with the Proficient, professional ten pin bowling being an honest and, for those blessed with Husted’s unerring accuracy, relatively straightforward means of bringing home the bacon; the Proficient on the other hand often had to fall back on hoola hoola.

Hoola hoola is essentially the same thing as shilling the rubes, the same thing as conning the suckers.  Sabrina was a two thousand year old sucker, Billy needed to be careful what he wished for.. 

 ..Because Sabrina could not possibly be two thousand years old, after all she was in Billy’s class at school and not even Noah (of Ark fame) made it into his twentieth century.  Then again if the rules that govern common perception or ‘reality’ are, through the medium of Science among other disciplines, continually evolving for good and bad, there remains the possibility Sabrina could have been as old as the desert fathers. 

Indeed, the Proficient made his living professing the eternality of the human soul, the elasticity of Time, the tendency for history to replicate itself and quantum immorality.  He lived in a six bedroom town house with his beautiful and trusting wife, was an emeritus professor at the university by day, a serial womaniser by night.  Apropos, The Proficient was fifty four (and he knew it only too well).

When Billy met the Proficient, the Proficient was still developing his theories on all four of the aforementioned tenets, and how using the alchemy of finance they could be best capitalised upon.   While neither Billy or Sabrina had a great deal of pocket money, the Proficient nevertheless realised in his proteges he would need unquestioning loyalty, and by his reckoning children and women (and film actors) were the most obsequious.  Moreover, he was aware that to actually get his theories to develop any kind of liquidity in future he would need a publisher.  The first five publishers the Proficient approached turned him down on the spot, and he told anyone who would listen that the publishing industry was full of ex-Decca records executives.  The sixth publisher, however, took him on.

~

Halverson & Miller Inc. had been around for fifty one years.  It was one of the few remaining independent publishers, and it had a reputation for maverick output.  The history of Halverson & Miller Inc. was assorted:  the company had published everything and anything from gardening books to political treatises, soft core pornography to coffee table presentations on catholic iconography.  Around about the time when the Proficient, writing under the pseudonym Arthur C Bojangles, submitted his book proposal, Halverson & Miller Inc. were starting afresh for what seemed the umpteenth time with yet another influx of editorial staff.  Among the new members of the editorial team was Milo Grinder.  Milo was twenty six, young and relentlessly ambitious.  He, like Billy, had also been the runt of the litter (he was one of six) and was badly bullied throughout school.  Milo, therefore, took solace in books of all kinds – including, as Milo mentioned at interview with the company, some Halverson & Miller Inc. publications, namely their relatively successful soft core pornography series, a cross between Willard Price and Mills and Boon.

One morning Milo was sitting at his desk nibbling his fingernails when the post arrived.  There was a letter from his mother, who wrote to him at his company address weekly to tell him she was still alive and that she hoped he was too, and also a strange maroon coloured A4 envelope, sealed with..a seal.  Milo’s curiosity was aroused.

The maroon coloured A4 envelope was of course from the Proficient, or Arthur C Bojangles.  Inside Milo found a one hundred and twenty page manuscript entitled ‘Earthling Popular Culture: from Pharaoh to the Present Day, a personal introduction’.  Milo turned over the first leaf, read the first sentence: ‘You are two thousand years old!  We have met before, you and I, on the sand banks of the Nile delta’. 

~

As it so happened the Proficient also told Billy they had met before, a long, long time ago, again on the sand banks of the Nile delta.  Sitting in the Proficient’s oak paneled office, Queens college, Rutgers University on October 4, 1996, Billy was bemused, but nevertheless felt the courage to ask what it was he was doing on the Nile delta, some twenty centuries previous.  The Proficient swept back his thinning hair, and fixed Billy with a benevolent gaze.  ‘Billy,you and I were being born, dear boy!’

It was something of a revelation to Billy that he was far more senior than recent memory suggested.  However, life in the drab surroundings of New Brunswick led Billy to the easily reached conclusion that the Proficient’s claim he and Billy were in essence ancient brothers was probably worth entertaining for the general lack of entertainment in Billy’s life if nothing else.  Moreover, his friend Sabrina said she was two thousand years old, and had bedded Thomas Jefferson. 

Meanwhile, for Milo Grinder, the Proficient, Arthur C Bonjangles’ proclamation at least invited Milo to read the next sentence of the one hundred and twenty page manuscript, and then the one after that and so on. 

~

Milo Grinder was a lonely child, even with five siblings for company.  Milo’s father worked in a factory seemingly all hours making component parts for washing machines; Milo’s mother also worked long hours in an industrial laundry – the laundry largely dealt with hospital bed wear: Milo’s mother had found all manner of things in the sorting station where items ready to be washed were delivered, including a human ear and a severed ring finger with fake diamond encrusted engagement ring still attached.

Like Billy, Milo found growing up in Healthcare City, New Brunswick tedious and not without difficulty.  His school years passed in a state of abject misery, and although he made it into Rutgers university, he quit after two terms for the simple and eloquent reason that he hated it.  Various menial jobs followed, including pizza delivery (Corleone’s Pizza), photographic equipment sales (B&H), and telephone operation (Amtrak).  Then his father died of a heart attack and his mother followed him to the grave shortly afterwards as a result of a machine accident at work. 

Tragedy!

But behind the black cloud of family tragedy there was a silver lining; Billy’s inheritance, while not a princely sum, enabled him to at last do something he genuinely wanted with his life – he chose to train for a career in publishing.

~

It will be obvious to the observant reader Billy and Milo shared certain similarities: they were both small for their age, bored and unhappy with their existence, minus a father, in need of a fatherly figure, while Billy was a dreamer and Milo was a fantasist, i.e. a dreamer with corporeal ambition!

The Proficient or Arthur C Bojangles wasn’t too dissimilar himself, except that he was in a position to play Dad, or there on the sand banks of the Nile delta in the year 4BC, older brother and leader.

His first book - ‘Earthling Popular Culture: from Pharaoh to the Present Day, a personal introduction’ – was released by Halverson & Miller Inc. in 1998.  Somehow, Milo succeeded in persuading the editorial board it was worth publishing and would sell.   ‘But where do you see the market?’, queried the Sales and Marketing director, (who had read the opening sentence and did not feel any kinship whatsoever with the Proficient) to which Milo smiled and announced it didn’t matter since Arthur C Bojangles had agreed to take two thousand copies himself on publication, thereby ensuring the project break even and earn a little profit on top.  The general consensus was: how could we refuse?

Billy was fourteen when the Proficient’s first book was published, and quickly becoming politicised in the doctrine which had earlier so taken Sabrina.  Indeed, Billy came across as a fervent believer in the eternality of the human soul, the elasticity of Time, the tendency for history to replicate itself and quantum immorality, in part because he didn’t really understand, in part because there was very little to understand, in part because he felt vulnerable in his new found belief – he had never roomed with the founder of American independence, seen the pyramids let alone the great sphinx at Giza.  Still, as the Proficient told him, just because you round a bend in a river and cannot see it anymore, it does not mean it never existed. 

Milo was twenty eight when Arthur C Bojangles first book was published, and quickly becoming aware of the realities of the publishing industry; he was already starkly aware of the reality of living in an upside down world of hot air, indiscriminate murder and misfortune.  In truth he had found the Proficient (Milo noticed with wry amusement this was Bojangles’ email signature) a pain in the backside to project manage, but he knew the book would be a relative success, especially with a serial fantasist, and an expert in hoola hoola promoting the thing.

The Proficient was fifty six when he received two thousand copies of what he hoped would be, and considered anyway, his seminal debut.  Using his connections and a little assistance (albeit typically reluctant assistance from  Halverson & Miller Inc.) he managed to engineer a book launch at Queen’s College, Rutgers University.  His wife, who worked conveniently enough in the film industry as an editor, excelled her obsequious self and persuaded two prominent film actors (Trip Babbitt and Trina Houses), soon to appear in the film she was in the process of editing, not only to attend the launch, but also spread the word about her husband’s work among their film star friends.   

~

Trip Babbitt and Trina Houses’ film star friends had many of the same childhood issues as Billy and Milo, and like Billy, many of them were not very bright, or like Billy’s mother, were too trusting.  Unlike Billy, or indeed Milo, Trip Babbitt, Trina Houses and their film star friends had also spent most of their lives, in a professional capacity or otherwise, attention seeking or playing make believe; consequently their concept of reality was unsteady at best and as with any stage set, could easily be taken down and rebuilt.  The Proficient’s idea that they had all met before on the sand banks of the Nile delta two thousand years ago was attractive to Trip, Trina and their friends, because it enabled them to have something to talk about in interviews and have something else to pretend.  In time, Trip and Trina would claim they were in fact the modern day incarnations of Anthony and Cleopatra respectively.

So before long the Proficient was BIG in Hollywood, and Billy (as well as Sabrina) was his little campaigner; Trip and Trina along with their film star friends professed their allegiance to the Proficient (‘call me Arthur..’) whenever they saw an opportunity (for themselves) and Milo signed up the Proficient’s second book for Halverson & Miller Inc. – the first sold seven thousand copies in it’s first year; a healthy return.

With a little sleight of hand, Arthur C Bojangles was on his way to quantum immortality, and little Billy, who if he had been born on the sand banks of the Nile Delta, or even a hundred years previous, would have been drowned in a well, or shot in the forehead with an air gun before his first birthday, hoped he was on the way toward it too.     

a fifty second story...'squeaking, squeaking'

Joanna wanted to write a squeak.

She wanted to squeak about her life.

What she had been doing and so on.

She wanted someone to acknowledge her existence.

You see lots of Joanna’s friends felt they were as insignificant as plankton floating benignly on the gentle and undulating surface of the Great Pacific Ocean (or perhaps more appositely the skin of a municipal pond).  Or that they were mice in a cavernous underground cellar who would never see the star light (feature on X Factor).

Anyhow, as a consequence of a series of innovations including Web 2.0, reality television, and Cheryl Crumb, Joanna’s friends dreamed BIG.  And when they went online to squeak about their lives they felt the need to be someone – it wasn’t any good any more to hold down an unassuming job in Londis, hang out by the swings, play spin the bottle every now and again – and yet the gulf between who they were (plankton floating on the surface of the Great Pacific Ocean or mice in a cavernous underground cellar) and who they wanted to be (Cheryl Crumb) was wide and getting wider.

Web 2.0 enabled Joanna and her friends to create UGC; that’s user generated content to the average chap you’ll find buying groceries from Londis.  So Joanna and her friends could all of a sudden post videos of them doing their make up on IMeMy Space, and record themselves singing karoke (in the style of Cheryl Crumb) on ItsUorMeBitch.com.  And on top of this they could communicate with people they had and would never meet using one hundred and something characters and a series of facial expressions derived from one hundred and something keys on their computer.

Moving on..while it is the common perception reality television was the brain child of Keith Chegwin, it wasn’t, we have Channel Four to blame instead.  Over a decade ago Channel Four made a show based on a famously over rated George Orwell novel, incidentally revolving around the year of my birth (me, the author).  The show was publicised so well vast numbers of (typically) young people, many of them Joanna’s age, became convinced it was a) real (it wasn’t) b) worth their while watching (again it wasn’t, even if you happened to be cursed with immortality) c) they could be famous for simply being themselves (when they couldn’t).          

Cheryl Crumb, meanwhile, is notorious (in the gutter press) for being beautiful and glamorous, slightly less notorious for being expertly staged managed by her public relations team, as well as for funding the burgeoning fake hair industry.  In many ways she is the embodiment of reality television with her extensions, false eye lashes, playboy bunny smile etcetera, i.e. not real.  But of course to Joanna and her friends Cheryl Crumb is real enough, they want to be her, and Web 2.0 and Channel Four help them feel an affiliation with her.  Thing is Cheryl Crumb the God breathed human being isn’t really there at all: she’s a fragrance, a shampoo, a pot of mascara, a compressed voice spewed out of a pink iPod.  I would like the rap artist with the split personality - M and M - to ask for the real Cheryl Crumb to please stand up.  Without heels she is five feet one, and in essence it may be that she is also plankton floating on the gentle and undulating surface of the Pacific Ocean, or a mouse in a cavernous underground cellar unable to see the star light just like Joanna and her friends.

Indeed it may be..but..it serves everyone a whole lot better if Cheryl Crumb is BIG, if she is the star light.  After all the world revolves around the idea of aspiration, including the economy, our pounds and our dollars make the planet turn on it’s axis.  And human beings, including Joanna and her friends, and Cheryl Crumb’s public relations team, as well as the employees of Channel Four, even the creators of Web 2.0 and Keith Chegwin, you and I, like to have something to dream at, something to aim for, a goal, a word on a wing or simply a pot of gold at the end of the proverbial rainbow; it’s the best mechanism we have for rising above the muckiness and mundanity of day to day existence, and pretending all is not as grey as it can seem.

And as for the reality TV show based on George Orwell’s famously over rated novel, it and shows like it simultaneously work as an inspiration for those with aspirations and as a comfort blanket for the rest of us who realise we, as apparently sometimes warm, kind and generous human beings, aren’t as bad as we might think in comparison with some other ‘real’ people. (Admittedly watching the BBC or ITN news can give you the same sensation).

So when you’re next in front of your computer screen and you feel the need to squeak, instead of telling fellow squeakers whereabouts you are seated in Starbucks, whether the radiator is working in your bathroom, or how many glasses of bubbly you had last night and how much your head hurts, or indeed posting a audiovisual link to your new Cheryl Crumb impersonation, why not simply squeak..‘I’m alright, Jack’.  No one will notice you for it.

But that’s OK!

I promise you, you are guaranteed to have left a finger print at least somewhere.

On something.

Perhaps even a mark on someone. 

Therefore you are real.  And you being here in the first place is meaningful.

a fifty first story...'sinsuses'

Jimmy was ill. He hated being ill. Especially when it seemed every other human being on planet earth was having such a great time!

(They weren't of course)

Anyway, Jimmy's head hurt, his whole body had been racked with pain, his bones ached to the marrow, he had even had heart palpitations, although all but his headache had passed. Now he was ready to go out and party again, except his Fucking Sinuses wouldn't clear!

(And breathing with his mouth open didn't work, and made him look like a retard)

Worse still, instead of being able to party with his friends, dance the night way etcetera, Jimmy was stuck indoors with a nine hour long film trilogy. The film trilogy was written originally as a series of painstakingly researched novels, a whole life time's work on the author's part, about fictional wizards, halflings (also fictional), golems and monsters (again both fictional), with an item of prized jewellery as the centrepiece; before being hastily adapted for the silver screen for a large sum of money ($430 million).

The film trilogy in question was produced on a small island in between the Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea, a small island famous for it's scenery..

(the small island famous for it's scenery was so far away from anywhere else the human race had largely not found the time to travel there and ruin it beyond recognition, although the British in their inimitable way had a jolly good try! Indeed, as a quick aside there exist no more than thirteen countries in the world the British haven't tried to ravage)

~

..About fifteen minutes into watching the film trilogy Jimmy began to get restless. How did I ever think this was any good?! he wondered. Where in Brian of Nazareth's name were my critical faculties?

(Jimmy had seen the trilogy before and thought, along with the rest of his friends and an army of film critics, that it was brilliant. Then again, Jimmy wasn't obliged (with a portion of the $430 million) to write nice things about the trilogy in the national press – the army of film critics, however, had been).

So after a quarter of an hour Jimmy deposited the cat on his lap onto the floor and stood up. 'Ouch', he said aloud, clutching his forehead, 'Fucking Sinuses'. He was annoyed the film trilogy about fictional wizards, halflings, golems, monsters and jewellery items, had not alleviated his agony.

(Also the company of his friends, however fictional some of them even were, was more entertaining).

At the kitchen sink Jimmy poured himself a glass of water, opened a packet of paracetamol and popped (if that is the verb one should use with regard to administering legal pharmaceuticals) two capsules. Half an hour later he 'popped' another couple. Paracetamol didn't seem to work as fast as methylamphetamine, or pipeweed!

While his mind wandered, he stood at the kitchen window (the place where the men and women who populate the literary world contemplate the drama of existence), before returning to his arm chair to find the aforementioned debunked feline in his place.

'Whaa?', exclaimed Jimmy.

The debunked feline looked up at him and started to purr loudly and in an evidently self-satisfied manner.

I know I'm missing out whined Jimmy to himself, I know, I know, I know. 'You know do you?', the debunked feline appeared to retort, smiling like the proverbial Cheshire.

Jimmy squeezed the bridge of his nose, pulled out a moist handkerchief.

'Fucking Sinsuses'.

Bilbo Baggins' eleventy first birthday bash was already in full swing.

a fiftieth story...'election special'

So he had triumphed.

And his overriding emotion at first was relief.

It was only when hastily amending the one thousand one hundred and eighteen words in his pre-prepared victory speech did it dawn on him with horrible clarity, he had won himself the Worst Job In The World.

~

‘Five minutes, Mister President’, called in one of the presidential aides through the dressing room door, finger to his ear piece. 

‘Five minutes?’

‘Yes, that’s right sir’. 

Mister President sighed, and put down his pen.  Five minutes left of the next four years.  Four years in which he would be expected to fulfil his high fluted promises, four years in which he would inevitably fail to do so.

Hmph!

His wife appeared in the doorway, smelling of elderflower and wearing a ‘Vote Democrat’ broach on the lapel of her jacket.  She frowned when she saw Mister President hunched over his desk, spectacles hanging from a cord around his neck, shielding his eyes. 

‘What’s the matter, dear?’ enquired Missus President as she made her way over to him.  Mister President sighed again and shifted a little in his chair.  ‘Four years, Elma’, he said wearily, ‘four years’.  Missus President stood behind him and put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently.  ‘You’re tense’, she remarked.  Mister President was indeed tense.  Tense, nervous, frightened.  Take me back to dear old blighty…oh, how he wished!

He put his hand on Missus President’s hand and held it there, then pressed her hand into the hollow of his shoulder.  Four years, four…, Christ on a motor bike, what am I doing?

They were still for a moment, Missus President lovingly stroking Mister President’s silver mane.  Then Mister President spoke: ‘Elma’, he said, breaking the silence, ‘Yes, dear?’ replied Missus President almost in a whisper.  Mister President let go of his wife’s hand, looked at himself in the mirror, not even so much as a line on my forehead, ‘Elma..do you think I can go through with this?’

~

The expectant crowd was getting a little restless.  They were simply desperate to see the new Leader of the Free World; it seemed to them he was fifteen minutes late, but what was fifteen minutes in comparison with four years!?    

Four years in which the country had been brought to it’s knees, exposed as a bullying, hoarding, unsympathetic megalith, run by borderline psychopaths, blood as well as oil on their hands.

But Mister President, or rather the new Mister President, had come as a knight in shining armour, and today had finally lanced the boil on Uncle’s cheek, was about to wade into the cesspit of corruption and in Herculean style clean the place out.

Or so they hoped..

..so Mister President had promised.  The problem was in his heart of hearts he didn’t actually envisage getting in. 

~

Mister President walked out the dressing room with his wife in tow, flanked on either side by a couple of security guards, both the size of an industrial refrigerator.  His aides were there to greet him in the corridor and shake his hand one by one.  At that moment Mister President deeply resented their sycophantic smiles, these people who had been too good at their job, had now left his life in ruins.  And at the end of a long line was his campaigns manager positively bursting with pride – the high executioner, might as well have had an axe in his hands.

‘Congratulations, Mister President’, ‘Well done, Mister President’, ‘Go get ‘em Mister President’, ‘God bless America, Mister President’.  The stage was set, and fast approaching, up the rickety stairs, through the wings and..

~

The spotlights seemed like a dozen beaming suns to the President, scourging his retina.  He could barely make out the delirious, flag waving mass before him, was grateful for the lectern to lean on as the cheering built to a crescendo.

Flashbulbs!

The President’s heart had gone from being in his mouth, to being in his shoes.  These nitwits, why the hell should I give a damn!  The thought of bringing back conscription flickered across his mind, a cruel smirk breaking across his features.  TV cameras caught it of course, and commentators everywhere saw at as a sign the new President was relaxed, comfortable in his new Power Soles, or at least getting used to them.

And when finally the joyous kerfuffle abated, the President gripped the edge of the lectern, took a deep breath, and spoke: ‘Thank you so much’ he began, although he didn’t mean a word of it, his moral being stripped naked of it’s clothing of principles with every second that passed, while his raving mad supporters erupted.  They had elected a grateful President, and he had proper command of the English language!  The cockamamie bullshit was at an end!  Hallelujah!  I’ll show these buffoons there is no God thought the President, chuckling vengefully. 

Indeed the whole situation, from politics and love, law, war, peace and harmony, nearly everything the President was beginning to find darkly amusing.  Guantanamo or bust would have made a better campaign slogan.  Only fifteen minutes ago the futility of his predicament as both Leader of the Free World and as a member of the human race; the folly of a whole nation of human beings, the grim reality of four years in government had not fully registered.

Love, peace and harmony? mused the President, before contemplating how to follow his introductory platitude..

..Maybe in the next world, but not in mine.       

a forty ninth story...'when I paint my masterpiece'

She was playing with her hair and listening to him talk.  It wasn’t easy.  He took it as a sign she was interested.  She wasn’t.  In fact she was bored out of her skull.  ‘When I paint my masterpiece…’ he was saying.  She was looking over his shoulder at the door.  ‘When I paint my masterpiece’ he repeated, hoping for effect.  She examined her nails.  ‘When you do what?’, she heard him the first time.  He took a sip of wine.  ‘I am a painter’ he said grandly.  ‘I see’ she replied and regretted opening up another line of conversation.

‘I didn’t bother with art at school..You can’t teach people to express themselves, can you?’ he asked, chewing on a cocktail stick in the corner of his mouth.  She shrugged: ‘I don’t know’ she said, but inside she was thinking how she always ended up on dates like this, and that it seemed sometimes there wasn’t a normal guy left out there anymore.  ‘You see teachers do not understand freedom of expression, they do not see that a painting should directly reflect a person’s character’, he cleared his throat and pressed on.  She couldn’t believe she was listening to this.  It felt like she was in a lecture.

The boy with the stammer hadn’t been too bad.  In fact she had thought him rather cute, but something about him made her impatient.  But the banker had been a bore, and the other artist she had been out with...  Back in the now, he was still indulging himself, ‘Art is more about concept than design.  Art is…’  But her mind quickly returned to the boy with the stammer and then she moved onto thinking about famous people with stammers.  James Stewart was the first one that came to her.  Somewhere she had read how he cured his stammer by putting a stone in his mouth, she didn’t know why, but at that moment she wished she had a stone: she thought she could put it to several uses.

When at last they asked the waiter for the check she felt relief washing over her in a tremendous wave.  In fairness, he had agreed to pay for the meal – ‘the pleasure is all mine’ he said, and it had been.   While he was visiting the restrooms for the last time she sat and looked around the dining room.  There were several young couples chattering away, helping themselves to each others plates, all shiny and happy, all having fun.  She put on some lip balm, closed her purse and wanted so badly for the waiting to be over.