tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32048667725520190662024-02-21T09:02:04.790-08:00Enjoy the little things.John Spaceyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01255146100519614173noreply@blogger.comBlogger119125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3204866772552019066.post-30012405409535863862018-03-21T12:00:00.000-07:002018-03-21T12:00:12.259-07:00My Books...<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="//ws-eu.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&OneJS=1&Operation=GetAdHtml&MarketPlace=GB&source=ac&ref=tf_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=enjoythelit0a-21&marketplace=amazon&region=GB&placement=B06ZXTHL37&asins=B06ZXTHL37&linkId=&show_border=true&link_opens_in_new_window=true" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;">
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</iframe>John Spaceyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01255146100519614173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3204866772552019066.post-78777794110455664862017-10-01T12:15:00.000-07:002017-11-26T13:09:39.316-08:00Smut & Filth.<h2 style="text-align: center;">
Introduction.</h2>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The following is based on true events, only the names have been changed to protect those not so innocent.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
WARNING : Sexual content, 18+.</div>
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<br /></div>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
Chapter Selection.</h3>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://hashtagenjoythelittlethings.blogspot.fr/p/smut-filth-chapter-one.html" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="480" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLqqT37phQHsg1v0rtXNWgK1gMREGdodeYUZ29s-ZWzk_AsQtvxCD4bokViU_plBeb56YX9lVpH6R5X9GTtc6CDSoi0lmQdoU32Xlqm72sKEfv4s-fRWj-xTQfgJf3u2lcvDNMEQ_oMmc/s200/FullSizeRender+%25285%2529.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
Chapter one.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://hashtagenjoythelittlethings.blogspot.fr/p/smut-and-filth-chapter-two.html" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="480" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDmU5ah5b6pyLbBpHdwuJQboj0bM6xqorPkiztiM3Qer-fnRaZAc98YBhNEltxW7qWeIdjpVtpo7eF9VKDQiZWGBTuJqEetFWJYiQpvavKrfeJh6ZyLNTE9FLg_5scacigAKk0-pzpJPo/s200/FullSizeRender+%25284%2529.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
Chapter two.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://hashtagenjoythelittlethings.blogspot.fr/p/she-drew-on-cigarette-hed-handed-her.html" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="480" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijTg_WQyoqWNi_s6XiWOXNa7zFsOEOsOrxmCroWK8TPlpShMUkb7jY-Bj7Gzq9zNKGYu-xG2xJz_lwYHs82aNf4fu-ms8njgpz_dlaV7S9OsyAVJqmXgryRGgyILx5qPTKPF22MLu268Y/s200/3.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
Chapter three.<br />
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<a href="http://hashtagenjoythelittlethings.blogspot.fr/p/smut-filth-capter-four.html" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="480" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEwZ1y5OILc4G6_z7luJgcaQCy7kVgHM6TdZQEAGadGbcHSKeU2cuS3_vMr4M8-cxROwD4I9BUeYAWFzmDYn9lz6iBHGcKPoYqTooC_zGJbDTSe4ljwVghDaVBs2AaXaVLMG0crDFSkPk/s200/4.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
Chapter four.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://hashtagenjoythelittlethings.blogspot.fr/p/smut-filth-chapter-five.html" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="480" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyw9t-0gt5Fyv_PAnZiNXY0vKtHXrunlvfLh3wDi-yNVsMRrm-3pPFsqVC0sNeoKzHvXAVqqWxFDufkAEchiyYdLgULEHvsc01tJ2eLYMOBCajahjPSS9nZxajF685ujJ9A29-mZizUrA/s200/FullSizeRender+%25284%2529.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
Chapter five.<br />
<br />
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<a href="http://hashtagenjoythelittlethings.blogspot.fr/p/smut-filth-chapter-six.html" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="480" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiok8LceYCd4O-mpnQr09Xl8Sy1WKtPW_1gc4T2IoDErX-I9zhnogwMVTzccqnkBTQdae-LeHs7uE7zTIvfzZN9Kx7OQ2KUP3ATUeIBPaGUxtb1_s5lpbnZ2ArosBCgI1fxuF_e_X0gFQU/s200/FullSizeRender+%25285%2529.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
Chapter six.<br />
<br />
<h4>
</h4>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://hashtagenjoythelittlethings.blogspot.fr/p/smu-filth-chapter-seven.html" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="480" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5WJ5KnYR21VdeOdgXYs2K-zjAl5qD37-nbCHDZqjb7XxMfivpjGKBq2FU16jhsI20ygYH4rkKi9uwQxpIjCzq92FJpu56r1n7G2j86-nv0-1soNRdCNdFdfz0spAGABcgC7hWqFFPO8Y/s200/FullSizeRender+%25284%2529.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Chapter seven.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="http://hashtagenjoythelittlethings.blogspot.fr/p/smut-filth-chapter-eight.html" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="480" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix2Sb_RDX2wMwkXSjCzUIeD6Gnd4oq1Ttp9uPPTi0M_bgeMd_nw-RR3F0SnCfPspts0s_klriuxi1UPOtyWreE_uFxPExxr6he_jhmMi-6fumVoTLfkXeZJosvDuhB20RiHUyqU3hKpf0/s200/FullSizeRender+%25285%2529.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Chapter eight.</div>
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<br /></div>
<h4>
</h4>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://hashtagenjoythelittlethings.blogspot.fr/p/smut-filth-chapter-nine.html" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="480" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZaQ8CkfOxnf1Hz_2igXmxRHlNzBbw6HtcYVxVsdD0CVExjFFV3LDtjvm7qe93scb_Jt-UmNR1Zks6vRv8gAbtu25nZzpLnTTs2X3GLe2STJGGqhKyp7LuWP0ynIhwWKPA6-bVmcVjL_Y/s200/FullSizeRender+%25284%2529.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Chapter nine.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="http://hashtagenjoythelittlethings.blogspot.fr/p/smut_10.html" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="480" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaypjd0Y0I3Pl82KNMcacNk2Ks1ekoKUAlv5NI71pDiprc3zxIUJ84JMN0s_vzAKD6sMs5XYYSfNMlIxmLzk2Jmlr9Wc9nMXyhNav83kZS0n80jkjYx6ep10RlKJiV6JdpKNUureauSXU/s200/FullSizeRender+%25285%2529.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Chapter ten.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://hashtagenjoythelittlethings.blogspot.fr/p/smut-filth-chapter-eleven.html" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="480" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsXomOZlhmDIIg7qT_EblHlgI7MsjD2jxzx2LPB7izyIVb6vSl-J_obQ4ME_CEKlPiQS2WyvZQMgtGkPM4uGGG-IKmu1_Qbttpj7YazcWc_DTJXfDvlc3_GKQlu1PTmogh2zwWYOb0sM4/s200/FullSizeRender+%25284%2529.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Chapter eleven.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="http://hashtagenjoythelittlethings.blogspot.fr/p/smut-filth-chapter-twelve.html" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="480" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSzySfdvPKKYx3A-3gG_mp6Si0FReJlj0O1RgZ2p9ad7e4XAlX7mzAux7P2KoJvFOVnpgudT7QeClqJvr-aDlMAWS-8PioxyIUs86vI_LdD8cn7BWpfYlHJYaCrtxewIV1MdmpeV_XdWA/s200/FullSizeRender+%25285%2529.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Chapter twelve.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="http://hashtagenjoythelittlethings.blogspot.fr/p/smut-filth-chapter-thirteen.html" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="480" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlMTeTAuwJ81jJd2oX4tl-o6jDNzAFrePBOoOnLxhoMj1D9blTwNRUbnmZChGG-trZWSYSDc3dro7nUstJiUyBxOR0zmOp8cYsA_9J1i1Nx4TWB10BAHvRMZoyBT5ytul_K7lLaCmQR90/s200/FullSizeRender+%25284%2529.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Chapter thirteen.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="http://hashtagenjoythelittlethings.blogspot.fr/p/smut-filth-chapter-fourteen.html" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="480" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNl_cq31GHvAhOOxJFyDOtYAlNHnb-3yax6LluTAPW7gCLu9_OxCThyjgmTMzsbsL1KnzpZnuiSBSF-A9BNrRZwrRck6UMPCUayIiCg6wiM28PJMPgFOeylHgegJ_xnBNKNoj1bDjcAmc/s200/FullSizeRender+%25285%2529.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Chapter fourteen.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="http://hashtagenjoythelittlethings.blogspot.fr/p/smut-filth-chapter-fifteen.html" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="480" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFA0uzczlh7dGv86Z_RKIMAA39XfisuXhRNvZ4LA38TFWLQhVLab5nH29LKCRc1X3Od-IOc4MkL0gzvkRu1RmZfuV80H6X_vMR0sLFS05LmU3IQd2pMvb_mE_DkfVFBsALiyHE1UWdgTM/s200/FullSizeRender+%25286%2529.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Chapter fifteen.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="http://hashtagenjoythelittlethings.blogspot.fr/p/smut-filth-chapter-sixteen.html" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="480" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWcALYkKLZRp1WOE7_QEcdLjQXQz1pqZ31kZF4_jZ9aeRX7B9lsKs1j48YZwcL7sqKmILDmYdV9fnYZH7aCyEUCDHlV3l-4bwDSkSVtQ48AcsRxMFxWCOTiC4vKqsJrg5RJ0s-a1dHvYY/s200/FullSizeRender+%25287%2529.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Chapter sixteen.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="http://hashtagenjoythelittlethings.blogspot.fr/p/smut-filth-chapter-seventeen.html" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="480" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAv4tonVonIK9esQOdA0UjSfh54vOI3Csra5ZBDyvlbBMxHZL6JVCHncTiIoMw_xPH0qm7-8fACow-OKgtOh6gxwliEzYazL00Qv8YODj7IpZxy1nlL0AL5Z53Kh_gMrNAT5vLc7Hkcq0/s200/FullSizeRender+%25284%2529.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Chapter seventeen.</div>
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<a href="http://hashtagenjoythelittlethings.blogspot.fr/p/smut-filth-chapter-eighteen.html" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="480" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhifBvxyON6JZuCreg6iqd1evlf7Wg_QcQhVYLqYKcoakLURJVMnX9k8DSn-fFnHcjkmM3DgGEpDY4BRvHU203IQK15ELYWm8RJGtoriOh_2buMNRlqS-AbQ4miUDur9X44kMCOma66-1s/s200/FullSizeRender+%25285%2529.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Chapter eighteen.</div>
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<a href="http://hashtagenjoythelittlethings.blogspot.fr/p/smut-filt.html" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="480" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbSr4Wjni3fGkmnx4iFVfn-iwt_1ZuL5rLjghIWjPK9kFxsTFY0CJAmoPCHje034URpAPFkOik4COkG3RaK6QvPJnwqm_sx9YGhgpKf40CxM7OP11pzLVhbOVjLmvowmii_qcrtlXrIpM/s200/IMG_4421.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Chapter nineteen.</div>
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<a href="http://hashtagenjoythelittlethings.blogspot.fr/p/smut-filth-chapter-twenty.html" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="480" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiagdahhnkhTp7Hie_XvnMm-1lgnIndqjo3j17vd2u4ybSwBZGLfgC0FViNK21qgUsCbUC7DrJs0tmevEQVCoFwlXqhRj2MfuwyRrJGVcAU6C9xcxGTAo2DRpFRgopGuUyzRpka7gWO9zs/s200/IMG_4423.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Chapter twenty.</div>
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<a href="http://hashtagenjoythelittlethings.blogspot.fr/p/smut-filth-chapter-twenty-one.html" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="480" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-BsKFdy5zJ7-lCpMgYyvoHji33mwRrfWxGsOY214f9-EgELVD_8i-c1oA0qx8Ut82BjQcpp1r5mLxc6eW2SZ7IKV2XDI8yKbp0oW-aiij_GtSEuWm3TURgHzYuL_eVA9YHWtMWDJkK9s/s200/IMG_4426.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Chapter twenty one.</div>
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<a href="http://hashtagenjoythelittlethings.blogspot.fr/p/smut-filth-chapter-twenty-two.html" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="480" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-se-1GM4B5OQQANjFRtJNXWQ6YNDDffb-SMjDbUfcD0KTbrxBoOrcRaxz7MPvID2t5A249wx5CZLjaG2TmxjIK57cZYUYSHHm0uJgNAbxn6Djj3aQN53cFbnqbTqMO6d3MYede3KtAXE/s200/IMG_4428.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Chapter twenty two.</div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://hashtagenjoythelittlethings.blogspot.fr/p/smut-filth-chapter-twenty-three.html" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="480" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNgO9C7oTxjuRggl4_3b7lwvFrMcxjZ6l176dPM4SrrI88krZqKz83Io81RvU09WiiZSrNKt-Mvzmj2eRM3OvloZUAs741etpTnWBizmMCb8PNAzyMuG2vnMkECC7tPWkaQ9pYff6wOBU/s200/IMG_4430.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Chapter twenty three.</div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://hashtagenjoythelittlethings.blogspot.fr/p/smut_26.html" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="480" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOk9VpGeljfHtjDoO7l6EcNArSqsefojdvd1ahYZ5cQKgq4uGrOFTmO5rlacKDKaBYDrvSjMXNFK0EkWUo_a5U15Wyai4PqS0MYxRYlNtjJmwYoBM0mB69RUdTrphgEl3bY4s9v4IVyaA/s200/IMG_4433.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Chapter twenty four.</div>
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<a href="http://hashtagenjoythelittlethings.blogspot.fr/p/smut-filth-chapter-twenty-five.html" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="480" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiFEHb0mXxUnUX2QEgfyCXYJuWM3aOxc8SPpCTv5A4Fhn42lxLiJHGB8aeFfujKOJJTFZ_d-0XdUmVBDLYtWC_CmeGDDA3fCuoLv2xLxgXEJM9vZIC4Sgs8IhjD5B_ZbxNmO3GtDMIbXw/s200/IMG_4435.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Chapter twenty five.</div>
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<br /></div>
<h4>
</h4>
<h4>
ALTERNATE ENDING coming SOON...</h4>
</div>
John Spaceyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01255146100519614173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3204866772552019066.post-66925370330038219162017-02-07T11:22:00.003-08:002018-03-21T12:21:58.241-07:00Be Kind...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.trusselltrust.org/" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0SP2zS1YP0B4oyxsFfVXw3GhE3lRb4Oot3EsY3Gf7AnpJLbl9ARd6NP7tI7hWQbPV-lYkB9mNVcTmu-u26k01BsD6roFkwya0O0UeoFuCLC-WmwK3nny0YC1_TQ6M60kdGGL5QLH46R8/s1600/TT.png" /></a></div>
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Donate to the Trussell Trust</div>
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____________________________________</div>
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<a href="https://www.migranthelpuk.org/donate/donate/credit-card" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="1440" height="100" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOhlETmjqnUuBzYPNIs71p36r_PpDVeKUMvPnZTA9LtNCV-FWp4E4-44kJEtCaO3YQ1vBUUvkJfWgcqAn6Azc800ztukG_f5Cv-rA4g_SkF4NsqOLz5pU2qM-CaEFnnCutBFLSctWqUow/s320/migrant+aid.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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Donate to Migrant Help...</div>
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<a href="https://www.migranthelpuk.org/donate/donate/credit-card" target="_blank">Click here...</a></div>
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John Spaceyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01255146100519614173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3204866772552019066.post-35422205162096926182016-09-25T06:16:00.000-07:002016-09-25T06:20:04.006-07:00Take this kiss upon the brow.<div class="MsoNormal">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg96LNBguWu4LqHb2dCfnLE5uhiRby0AEfea8CKsAZ4VguDb0JUw6v07F-ya05kL8PxyF96T9jUYANw_7Zub2KY7MsWHGyyyf0nHc5DtXuaG5yXhDvMd0ZzetCGEwYoBIgZUqM4iezrr0k/s1600/FullSizeRender.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="135" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg96LNBguWu4LqHb2dCfnLE5uhiRby0AEfea8CKsAZ4VguDb0JUw6v07F-ya05kL8PxyF96T9jUYANw_7Zub2KY7MsWHGyyyf0nHc5DtXuaG5yXhDvMd0ZzetCGEwYoBIgZUqM4iezrr0k/s200/FullSizeRender.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<br />
<h3>
Sometimes I lose track of time. I seem to spend much of my life daydreaming or struggling and, in both these instances, time really does fly by my eyes.</h3>
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A period of time ago that, to me, feels like an age but is more likely just a couple of years, I wrote a blog piece about a dream I had as a small child. A dream that I truly believe shaped my life and my attitude. The piece was entitled ā<i><b><a href="http://hashtagenjoythelittlethings.blogspot.fr/2014/11/the-girl-next-door.html" target="_blank">The girl next door</a></b></i>ā and is one of those few entries in what has become my journal that Iām actually proud of. I try not to read again these words once published, but I have, in that and a few others, found comfort during some of my darkest hours.</div>
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Last night I dreamed a dream just as convincing as my childhood dream about the girl next door and one that left me with a similar, yet very different, set of emotions upon awakening. I dreamt I was editing a video for my "<i><b><a href="http://hashtagenjoythelittlethings.blogspot.fr/p/the-video-diary.html" target="_blank">French Letters</a></b></i>" series on YouTube, a process that takes place weekly in the same seat at the same table as I smoke the same pipe and sip the same brand of remarkably cheap coffee from the same aging Cath Kidston mug with a chip in the rim and, just as in real life, my dream positioned me just so.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I was dreaming that I was playing the raw footage back and, as I generally do, snipping out the parts that don't show my best side.</div>
<h3>
<br />You didn't think I was really this pretty, did you?</h3>
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As many of you know, I live in a loft above a garage. The timbers of the loft are riddled with woodworm, the window is nothing more than a hole in a wall with a screen fastened across it and the roof provides me with a lovely, panoramic view of the stars above as I lie in my cot at nights. I love it.</div>
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The loft I viewed upon my dreamed screen was in no way similar to the one in which I'm currently sitting and tapping away at these keys. It was a trendy space with solid timbers, expensive rugs, an actual kitchen and a double bed. It even had a staircase that didn't sway from side to side in the wind, a veritable palace in comparison to the spider and lizard infested paradise I dwell in when my eyes are open. The sleeping me didn't question the differences, he didn't realise I was dreaming or that he was nothing more than a construct of that dream dreamed within another head, he just accepted it and moved on.</div>
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The footage on the screen was unusual in that I was naked. I'm not given to recording myself naked these days (not for YouTube, anyway), age and poverty having now decimated what was once a physique to be proud of, but again the slumbering John didn't question these anomalies. His finger hovered above the relevant key on the keyboard, ready to edit out any appearance of the aptly monickered "Little John", but no such appearances were made. The footage I surveyed through the eyes of dream John was absolutely fine and required no editing, so back we sat, puffing on our favourite pipe and relaxing, observing and sipping creamy coffee from the unchipped side of our mug, both of us oblivious to the fact that in the real world that only one of us had or would ever experience the real me was sleeping soundly beneath a rotten joist to which a photograph of people we'd once loved and felt loved by is pinned.</div>
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As we puffed and sipped and watched I became aware of further discrepancies, little clues that hinted at my real state. During one section of video I rocked a crib in which slept a dark haired infant, a baby girl, who I knew was not the fruit of my own loins but who I knew I cared deeply for. In another clip I lay in my bed, smiling and whispering to the viewer so as not to wake the dark haired woman that slept beside me, a woman I knew to be the mother of the child I loved but who I knew I cared nothing for.</div>
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Then, the proof I needed to jolt my sleeping brain from it's ignorance. A shot of me from a distance, naked as in every other shot, revealed a tattoo that I've never had set amidst the tattoos that cover much of my upper body.</div>
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<h3>
I was suddenly aware that I was asleep, that this was a dream from which I was about to wake, and I panicked.</h3>
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<div>
I panicked because of the child in the crib, the child that still slept soundly and whose face I hadn't seen and whose face, I now realised, I would never see. A child my sleeping brain told me I loved, who would be taken from me should my eyelids flutter open.<br />
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<h3>
And even worse than losing her I further came to realise that, once I'd returned to the land of the living, she'd be left with a woman that I now knew I despised.</h3>
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<div>
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So I fought to remain asleep. I dashed around the beautiful apartment my subconscious had constructed for me searching for somewhere to hide from the dawning dawn, but to no avail.</div>
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I woke, made myself a coffee and sat down to write this entry. This is one of those rare occasions where, even before having taken my seat at the keyboard, I'd known the ending, known the point I was going to make.</div>
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<h3>
As a child, on the morning after my dream of a life with the girl next door, I'd cried. I'd longed to return to the dream I'd just had, for that adventure to continue and to never end.</h3>
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As an adult, I fought to keep the adventure alive as long as I was able even though the panic I felt as I searched for a cupboard to hide in spoiled the ending of what, until then, had been a wonderful time. I'd focused on the dream's approaching culmination and I'd mourned its loss before its loss had arrived. Now, as I sip and puff and sit and think, I know that tonight will bring with it another dream, and that that next dream is only possible because the last one ended.</div>
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<h3>
Each adventure we undertake has both a beginning and an end but, to paraphrase the great Eric Morecambe, not necessarily in the right order. A new adventure can only begin after an end, so was the end really the end or was it really the beginning?</h3>
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<div>
A child will live the dream right up until morning comes, enjoying every moment of it and only allowing the sadness of loss once that loss it found. An adult will see the loss looming and fight against it, prematurely mourning a passing that may never come to pass and, in doing so, wasting precious time that could have been better spent by stroking the soft, dark hair of the child in the crib as he at last looked upon her face. A child enjoys his dreams, an adult fears the end.</div>
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<div>
The child in you is the optimism you feel when embarking on your next adventure. He is the one for whom the Cath Kiston cup is half filled, probably with Vimto, and who doesn't give a toss that he might get a cold sore from the chip. The adult, he's the pessimist. He looks forward to the adventure, so eager to taste it that he'll blow on the hot coffee to be able to take his first sip then, once embarked upon, dreads the other end as it approaches. His Cath Kidston cup is aging, half empty and he can only drink from one side for fear of the hypothetical scabby lip that may or may not arise at some point in a future he may or may not have.</div>
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<div>
If your cup is half empty then it's still half full, enjoy what's left. If it has a chip in it, finish your brew, smash the cup against the wall and go find the next adventure. You never know, you might be just the <i>dream-you </i>dreamt by the <i>real-you</i> and your real chipped cup is still sitting, safe and dirty, by the sink where you left if last night.<br />
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<h3>
Don't dread the morn, live the dream.</h3>
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<div>
<br />
<b>J2H.</b></div>
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</div>
John Spaceyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01255146100519614173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3204866772552019066.post-18191557720999548692016-09-01T14:04:00.000-07:002016-09-21T11:54:40.096-07:00Now available on Amazon...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk9yDd2kl4O-39Sb9C4IFW3dS7RMDtT1-eSl4VYsJZpNUr7azYd8JPEUSHyDKJElsPvECckXsQYKD1a3fj3AHa85uleeu4jl5vduOjDw1uyOm5wKYXiV3yuVc4wF1vFl0v8sBQYL7MTvM/s1600/cover+tall+tales+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="148" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk9yDd2kl4O-39Sb9C4IFW3dS7RMDtT1-eSl4VYsJZpNUr7azYd8JPEUSHyDKJElsPvECckXsQYKD1a3fj3AHa85uleeu4jl5vduOjDw1uyOm5wKYXiV3yuVc4wF1vFl0v8sBQYL7MTvM/s200/cover+tall+tales+2.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">
</h4>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">
</h4>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">
OUT NOW, in paperback and on Kindle, my new short story compilation...</h4>
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<br /></div>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">
The Short Tall Tales.</h2>
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<br /></div>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
A collection of four very different and disturbing stories of twisted realities.</h3>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b>"Where do they all belong?" documents the terror of the tormented</b></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b>and the torment their torment creates. "Ghost whispering" will</b></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b>have you scared to check under your bed. "Revenant" brings</b></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b>us a masterclass in karma and in the folly of wickedness and, finally,</b></i></div>
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<i><b>"Passing time" takes a look at the gentler side of those gone ahead.</b></i></div>
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<i><b><br /></b></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b>Four tales of terror and the unknown, of hope and retribution, plucked</b></i></div>
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<i><b>from the ether and placed on the page by the author.</b></i></div>
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<i><b><br /></b></i></div>
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<i><b>Who needs sleep anyway?</b></i></div>
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<i><b><br /></b></i></div>
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<i><b><br /></b></i></div>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
Click the following link to purchase the book via my own associate account, which means the pitiful amount I will receive for my share will be slightly less pitiful than if you go elsewhere.</h3>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">
<i>
(If you prefer to read your literature on a screen then hold on to that credit card, the eBook version will be with you very soon.)</i></h4>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
<br />Thanks to everyone that encouraged and supported me. It has been, and continues to be, greatly appreciated.</h3>
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<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="//ws-eu.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&OneJS=1&Operation=GetAdHtml&MarketPlace=GB&source=ac&ref=tf_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=enjoythelit0a-21&marketplace=amazon&region=GB&placement=1537250094&asins=1537250094&linkId=&show_border=true&link_opens_in_new_window=true" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;">
</iframe></div>
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<h4 style="text-align: center;">
Enjoy the little things.<br />J2H.</h4>
John Spaceyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01255146100519614173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3204866772552019066.post-26790320391549388972016-08-31T07:42:00.001-07:002016-08-31T07:43:17.560-07:00The fairy's reply.<h2>
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The fairy's reply.</div>
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A new short story...</div>
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<a href="http://hashtagenjoythelittlethings.blogspot.fr/p/the-fairys-reply.html?m=1" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqqkCrufi1OlOUZZ5wXWK1SaTfy8j5A4Wvw3g7t18WpqVIgps5q75LXt1bpSj9-O7vaBhyqfppPe0I93l2WhiRZ2bIgb6pz_TpuVFTheSWaetS8sROz8K92g98WZrsfpof46Z3BfZDaCc/s320/FullSizeRender+%25286%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Enjoy the little things.</div>
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J2H.</div>
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</h2>
John Spaceyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01255146100519614173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3204866772552019066.post-27346364412989361992016-08-24T08:07:00.000-07:002016-08-24T08:07:28.691-07:00The devil may care.<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRhzWxuj7DwyLFGfXK2dF-8jE24wTv-sqiVC1n9n2mOPK10xman0GZgkavNqnmIy6dNl2zPq1buLk8nviDHv3kRXjtGYMPC3hj4H3U0LCmv9Yv3e-2Zl7_ZQ5SFYYwWrlSnsYbr60ThzM/s1600/IMG_2482.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRhzWxuj7DwyLFGfXK2dF-8jE24wTv-sqiVC1n9n2mOPK10xman0GZgkavNqnmIy6dNl2zPq1buLk8nviDHv3kRXjtGYMPC3hj4H3U0LCmv9Yv3e-2Zl7_ZQ5SFYYwWrlSnsYbr60ThzM/s200/IMG_2482.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>
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<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">
He perched upon his great, grand throne</div>
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Of finest tooth and whitest bone</div>
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A fork of fire by his side</div>
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His clothes cut from rich sinnersā hides</div>
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And fanned the flames in the fiery pit</div>
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That warmed his feet whilst he did sit</div>
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And think about that bygone age</div>
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When those above still feared his rage</div>
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<br /></div>
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His blood did boil, his rage did swell</div>
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As he sat on his throne in his Kingdom of Hell</div>
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Like ageing porcelain, weathered and cracked</div>
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Veins lined his face with blood that was black</div>
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Then, all at once, he shouted a curse</div>
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So wicked it made even this damned place worse</div>
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He gnashed and thrashed and screamed and did shout</div>
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Then grabbed his fork, got up and went out</div>
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<br /></div>
</div>
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Time it was to have some fun</div>
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To wreak some havoc, rain fire upon</div>
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Those weak, soft bags of flesh filled with blood</div>
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To bring forth great suffering as only he could</div>
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He stamped his cloven feet and did call</div>
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For every creature that slithered or crawled</div>
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To do his bidding, spread forth his black seed</div>
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To undertake the darkest of deeds</div>
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<br /></div>
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He stood atop a lush hill and surveyed</div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
The land he had chosen to bring first to dark days</div>
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A land that when last heād walked on this Earth</div>
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Had been filled with happiness, joy and great mirth</div>
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He summoned forth legions of beasts from below</div>
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And considered how best to open his show</div>
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Pestilence, plague, brimstone or famine?</div>
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He smiled and set off for a night filled with damning</div>
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<br /></div>
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But wait, what was this? This couldnāt be right</div>
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Spread all around him, a pitiful sight</div>
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Men who had once stood proud and stood strong</div>
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Men who had fought and overcome wrong</div>
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Now brought to their knees, beaten and weak</div>
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Where once had stood heroes knelt only the meek</div>
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He searched high and low throughout that dark night</div>
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But hard as he tried found no good souls to blight</div>
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<br /></div>
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Old folk now dying, alone in cold beds</div>
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Good folk now used to remaining unfed</div>
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Sickness and poverty spread far and wide</div>
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Fear and hatred where once had lived pride</div>
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Filth in the streets and fear in sad eyes</div>
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A race of proud people now beaten by lies</div>
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Nick turned to his minions and sighed in despair</div>
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āWeāre out of our league, lads, letās go back downstairsā</div>
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<br /></div>
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J2H.</div>
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John Spaceyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01255146100519614173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3204866772552019066.post-37068863477116250972016-08-21T05:35:00.000-07:002016-08-21T06:31:54.027-07:00Noah's arc.<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXIBHXl2s4Grs-swQ1Z3EsrAsNp6WYIkz1y_-I7BtWw6PUNsE7cpXUfJxN7DkR4HtIXrn1T09K9fOCA1okmXMrZ5CF7B5tCYekF2jmMTh-OQ_WRroYWeGWe4JB1loCacdiGUsO7HodVqo/s1600/IMG_1992.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXIBHXl2s4Grs-swQ1Z3EsrAsNp6WYIkz1y_-I7BtWw6PUNsE7cpXUfJxN7DkR4HtIXrn1T09K9fOCA1okmXMrZ5CF7B5tCYekF2jmMTh-OQ_WRroYWeGWe4JB1loCacdiGUsO7HodVqo/s200/IMG_1992.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">A number of years ago whilst researching my family tree I discovered that, several centuries ago, one of my ancestors had </span>travelled<span style="font-family: inherit;"> to the islands of my birth from the Iberian peninsula aboard a shipā¦</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">ā¦as part of the Spanish Armada.</span></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">He, like many others, had been forced to fight in a war that would in no way benefit him for a king he detested. A number of ships turned left at the Bristol Channel, their mariners intent on jumping ship and fleeing ashore to Wales where they hoped to live their lives as free men.</span></h3>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Back then (as now) the Welsh hated the English as much as the English hated the Spanish, so in a case of āthe enemy of my enemy is alright by me, boyoā these oily looking, dark haired individuals were welcomed into the communities, becoming quickly assimilated.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This influx of migrants is, in fact, why the traditional Welsh doll is dark haired rather than being coloured in a more Celtic fashion, the gene pool having been forever altered in a way that would make a Brexiter's blood boil.</span></h3>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Iāve only ever been to the land of my forefathers once (Unless you count Ibiza, though the drug fuelled days of debauchery I experienced there gave me little insight into the place) and I wasnāt a fan. Still a child, Iād ended up at a bullfight and had had to sit, open mouthed and nauseated, as some blokes dressed as Copa Cabana showgirls went all āJoe Pesciā on some cows.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Back home in England I discovered that the father of one of my classmates, a local butcher, was a bull fighter. His name was Frank, which seemed to me an unusual name for a matador, and he was forever on the local news being celebrated as the only Englishman to take part in the barbarism of the Plaza de Toros.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">He was celebrated for being a bit of a twat to some cows and I said as much to his son and sonās friends. They didnāt dress as showgirls, nor did they stab me to death, but the severe dead arms I was given on the stairwell between lessons meant I struggled even to lift a pencil for several days afterwards.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Eventually, the sense and sensibilities of my countrymen caught up with my own and, rather than being featured on Granada Reports every summer, his business suffered. I seem to recall some rather ugly graffiti being daubed on his windows occasionally, I think there may also have been an arson attack and, eventually, his fame waned, at least in Britain.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I doubt it did likewise in Spain. I've heard it seldom wanes in Spain.</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">What is deemed to be socially acceptable now may not be so tomorrow. The world changes, the inhabitants change with it. In my lifetime I have seen drunk-drivers go from being considered as ācharactersā to become scum, decent people no longer smoke in the presence of children or non-smoking adults, most dog owners carry plastic bags to clean up after their best friends and folk take their own, reusable bags to the supermarket. There is no shame in looking at a situation and thinking āThatās not rightā even when most others couldnāt give two shits about the same subject. In such situations youāre generally just at the forefront of the zeitgeist. What you and I may consider insignificant your neighbour may find to be of the utmost importance and vice versa.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Like my distant ancestor, who took the Anglicised name of <i>Noah </i>upon arrival, I have recently left the land of my birth with no intention of returning. </span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Once, many moons ago, I couldnāt have imagined ever wanting to leave, but leave I now have. Following a zig-zag course north I eventually ended up being done a kindness that Iām sure I didnāt deserve and given the opportunity to flee the country that had allowed me to rot. The fates have conspired to bring me ever closer to the land of my mutinous ancestor and the closer I get the more I wonder why on Earth he ever left.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Once upon a time there was an England that was merry. Then some bloke with warts decided he wanted those around him to work hard and he told folk some fibs based on an old book. </span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Suddenly, instead of dancing, singing, loving and playing whilst occasionally doing enough work to sustain the lives of their countrymen, your average Englishmen began working as hard as they could to ensure that, once dead, theyād not suffer. Suffering for a lifetime to ensure theyād not suffer for an eternity. The f</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">ucking idiots.</span></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Working hard, paying taxes, making the warty man wealthy with no benefit to themselves.</span></h3>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Iām genuinely unsure how long I have been out of the country now. I could easily check, but I just can't be arsed. I donāt care. It doesnāt matter. I live among people who work to live, they donāt live to work. I visit pharmacies and, instead of seeing professional wearing pristine white lab coats and bustling about busily Iām greeted by a chap in jeans and a grateful dead tee-shirt who asks me how I am and smiles a lot. Appointments give one a vague idea of when something may occur. Basically, if your appointment is for 2pm on Tuesday then that simply means donāt make any plans for Tuesday afternoon.</span></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Itās wonderful.</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The young and the old smile and greet one and other in the street, food is shared, homes are homes and not investments, jobs are slotted in between lives. The only exception to these ārulesā are those other rules put in place by the economic migrants (apparently the French for āeconomic migrantā is āex-patā) who infest the one bar thatās owned by an Englishman in the town square and complain about having had to wait an hour for a bus. An hour during which, had they bothered to learn more of the language, they could have conversed with the locals who were waiting for the same bus and sharing food around.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Theyād not want that food though because, apparently, French food is all shit.</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Iām looking to head further away from the English channel soon, though if I could I'd remain right here. Like an abandoned galleon that eventually smashes into a beach many miles away I have no hand on the tiller of my life. But then, few of us ever have, we just think we have. I shall probably be in Spain by Christmas, completing the circle set in motion by my forefather and continued by myself. Maybe I'll find a way to stay here and not make it back "home", maybe the journey will remain unfinished, an arc rather than a circle.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It turns out that the warty man had mislead us and that life isn't a chance to earn enough merits for a happy afterlife but is, in fact, for living. Many a friend has told me they wish they could do what I have done and live how I now live. They wonāt believe me when I tell them they can. They have jobs to pay for their mortgages, they have mortgages to provide a roof, they toil for much of the week and, one day if they toil hard enough, theyāll die and leave that house to their offspring, providing the government with a huge chunk of revenue and their children with a house to tie them into a similar drudge.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Many reading this will think me an idiot or, at best, a dreamer. But I'm not the only one. Raining punches onto our skinny arms on a dusty school stairwell won't convert us to your way of thinking. Don't be the last to realise what others have already realised. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Modern life is as barbarous as any ridiculous, archaic tradition, though now the common man is the cow.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Some have said I'm <i>living the dream</i>, but a dream is a sleeping fallacy, a flight of fancy over which we've no conscious control. A dream cannot be lived. This is no dream, we'll not one day awaken, bleary eyed and refreshed, into a life of leisure where we'll be reunited with our loved ones.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Or, if I'm wrong and we do, it'll not be because we did a load of overtime to pay for bricks and mortar that, in a few hundred years time, won't even exist anymore. </span></h3>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">You don't have to jump ship to live life as a free man. Work less, earn less, owe less, dream less...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">...live more, love more.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Sorted.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b>J2H.</b></div>
John Spaceyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01255146100519614173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3204866772552019066.post-32636212121005906882016-08-14T07:09:00.001-07:002016-08-14T10:13:22.034-07:00Dog days and pavement pizzas.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<br />
A few years ago I wrote some children's books, the <i><b><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=kissy+sizzle" target="_blank">Kissy Sizzle trilogy</a>.</b></i><br />
<br />
They're still available on Amazon and remarkably reasonably priced, though the price came down when no one bought them so maybe that's something to think about if you were considering making a purchase.<br />
<br />
The books featured a little girl, a little boy, a yellow dog and a big dog, some time travel, some Nazis, several deaths and a legion of gorilla headed robot knights, the latter being my favourite creation. The children set off on a series of magical adventures, accompanied and protected by the dogs, visiting places I had visited and times I wish I'd experienced. I started writing them because I'd recently become a grandfather for the first time and, having no legacy to leave behind once the inevitable occurred, wanted to at least leave something for her to remember me by.<br />
<br />
I'm estranged from my family now and, being a bitter old bastard, I truly believe that's the way it will remain. I doubt either of my granddaughters will have read them, nor do I believe they'll ever know anything about me. It's a situation with which I have come to terms. I was quite literally left to rot by those I'd once protected, so balls to 'em all.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Anyway...</h3>
<br />
Many of the adventures undertaken by the heroes were loosely based on real life (and far less exciting) events I myself had previously experienced. Some are just retellings of imaginary adventures I'd had during my own childhood, the gorilla headed robot knights being one such example.<br />
<h3>
<br />Art, if that isn't too pretentious a word to use when describing one's own work, imitating life.</h3>
<br />
One of the characters, an old lady, was based upon a lady that once did me a great kindness several decades ago in a town square in southern France, a place not many miles from where I've once again found myself. This time, though, I find myself in the company of yellow dog and a big dog.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Life imitating art?</h3>
<br />
The woman in question looked to be in her late fifties, though her gait was that of someone at least a decade older.<br />
<br />
I saw her face only briefly, spoke to her for less than thirty seconds and then promptly forgot all about her for the best part of the decades that have blossomed and withered betwix then and now, until I needed to put a face to the kindly old lady in the tall tale for short folk that I wrote.<br />
<h3>
<br />Recently, probably as a result of my new location, I keep seeing her face. Sometimes in dreams, sometimes in those moments when I'm enjoying a bowlful of my favourite tobacco and staring at a blue or starry sky and sometimes when I see a person glance back at me.</h3>
<br />
It was the summer of 1990 and, it turned out, the hottest day of the year. I was lounging on a dusty pavement in a municipal park with my back against my knapsack when we met. Some fellow backpackers and I were whiling away the hours whilst waiting for a ferry to depart, playing cards and enjoying the glorious sunshine.<br />
<br />
"Pardon," She said as her shadow fell over us, "Are you Anglais?"<br />
<br />
All of us with cards in our hands squinted up at her, though it quickly became apparent it was only me that she was addressing. The sun cast a bright halo around her head, obscuring her face.<br />
<br />
"Oui" I replied, almost exhausting my French vocabulary.<br />
<br />
"Pour vous..." She said, holding out a pizza box, the smell of the hot cheese and pepperoni emanating from within reminding me that food had been a scarcity for the last few days whilst simultaneously setting my stomach off grumbling.<br />
<br />
<h3>
I was mortified. The lady with the cheesy box clearly thought me to be a vagrant. I declined her kind offer, politely and with a smile.</h3>
<br />
"S'il vous plait, c'est, erm, it is clean..." She opened the lid to reveal the pizza, moist and deep and missing one piece. "...you look like my son".<br />
<br />
I didn't know how to respond, I simply took the box from her and smiled. The lady turned away as I gazed after her.<br />
<br />
Once she'd taken three or four laboured paces she paused and looked back over her shoulder. Now free of the solar-halo I was able to see her face clearly. Short, white hair lay in curls around a plump face that was both tanned and deeply lined from a life lived on the cote d'azur.<br />
<br />
"Merci", I called, completing the exhaustion of my lexicon of <i>Le Language</i>.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Her lips were slightly parted and her chin trembled. Her steps seemed to stutter as if she couldn't decide which direction to take while she looked at me for the final time, an expression of sadness sadder than a stranger should ever be allowed to see spreading across her sun-kissed face. She smiled, turned and was no more.</h3>
<br />
That evening I caught the ferry to St. Tropez where I would, eventually, engage in a little ice-cream selling on the beach and salt-water scrubbing out in the bay. Everything did as every thing does and carried on regardless. I quickly forgot to wonder about my brief encounter with the woman.<br />
<br />
The memory is crystal clear. It was a beautiful day in a beautiful place during a beautiful period of existence. I can replay the scene in that quality of HD that only memory can create whenever and wherever I want. I can pause, zoom in to count the stray hairs caught on the collar of her coat (a heavy, chequered coat that looked far too substantial for the climate) or examine the card I had been about to play. It was the queen of hearts, I'm not sure if that was ironic.<br />
<br />
<h3>
I've no idea what, for that lady, came next.</h3>
<br />
For me, it was pizza (the first I'd ever eaten that I hadn't taken out of a freezer) and many games of cards in the sun before catching my ferry. My day was rounded off with a night sleeping on a bench half way up a mountain whilst a pack of dogs tore open my backpack having been attracted to it by the scent of the single slice of pizza wrapped in a Super-Marche bag I'd tucked away in one of the pockets.<br />
<br />
<h3>
I'd awoken when I'd heard the snuffling and gentle growling of the hungry hounds. Peeping out from within my quilted, nylon cocoon I watched as they rifled through my worldly goods, pissing on a select few items. </h3>
<br />
Frustratingly, I was aware that the most I could have done to protect my chattels would have been to hop at them and fall over, thereupon providing them with one of the biggest and juiciest chew toys a hound ever had. The sleeping bag would have provided some protection from the jaws of those hungry strays, though not for my succulent face. Also, rabies.<br />
<br />
<h3>
As my father always said, whenever faced with insurmountable odds, "<i>Fuck that for a game of soldiers</i>".</h3>
<br />
Those mangy, Gallic curs had left me with nothing but the orange shorts in which I'd been sleeping, a piss-soaked back pack, a couple of brightly coloured tee-shirts and a pair of shoes.<br />
<br />
I say "<i>pair of shoes</i>" but, unfortunately, one of the pair was a Nike trainer and the other a leather sandal, so maybe to refer to them as a "pair" is somewhat misleading. My mismatched footwear did, however, provide me with a convenient conversation starter whenever I met someone new.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Hopefully, that slice of pizza that those beastly bastards had so coveted gave at least one of them the Brad Pitts.</h3>
<br />
I can never ask the woman about her son. I wish I had. Maybe her sadness was because she'd lost him to disease. Maybe he was killed on active duty with the military. Maybe he was very much alive but, because of some stupid misunderstanding, had chosen to keep turned the back he'd turned in anger and, if the latter of these suppositions were to be true, maybe the sadness was soon to be gone and she now spends many happy Sunday hours laughing with her grandchildren as my doppelganger and his wife prepare a delicious lunch for them all to share.<br />
<br />
<h3>
I wonder if she ever wondered about me and, if she did, what did she imagine? </h3>
<br />
I'd imagine she'd imagine something nice, a better life for me than I've provided for myself. Conceivably, she remains alive today. Whether she is or not is just another one of those questions to which I'll never know the answer. As far as I'm concerned, she continues to live <i>Schrodinger's life</i>.<br />
<br />
I hope she lives in a little house amidst the lemon trees and wears a hat in the sun. I hope her calendar is filled with the birthdays' of descendants, that her pension plan has proven sufficient and that she has her son and her grandchildren to provide her with the luxuries that she deserves whilst having already provided her with a plethora of memories, memories of good times and loved ones rather than memories of a foreigner who looked a bit like her son, playing cards in the dust, wearing orange shorts...<br />
<br />
<h3>
...and eating her bloody pizza.</h3>
<br />
Sometimes, we let our imagination take control of the tiller. Generally, this is a mistake. We think the worst. We assume the worst. With no answers to our questions we continue to question, each question requiring a satisfactory answer. Not the correct answer, just one that is satisfactory. The answer we can imagine in most detail. Satisfactory.<br />
<br />
<h3>
But the satisfactory answer remains bereft of confirmation. No red tick from teacher to indicate we got it right, no smile from a question master on a television quiz show. Nothing.</h3>
<br />
So we continue to ask in the sure and certain knowledge that we'll receive no confirmation. What seems obvious at first is usually, though not exclusively, the correct answer. The woman with the pizza was most likely in mourning for a dead son. My appearance in her day had probably upset her and had cost her five sixths of her lunch. That is all I knew, know or can ever learn about the woman. On that day, at that time, she was sad and she gave a hungry teenager a pizza.<br />
<br />
Maybe, later that evening, the lady that had fed me sat down to watch her favourite quiz show on the television, laughing and claiming to have known the answers to every question just a moment after the contestant had given their own answer to the immaculately coiffured quiz master and maybe, in passing, she'd mentioned our meeting to her husband. I imagine he was trying to read his newspaper while wearing the grumpy expression of a man too vain to wear reading glasses, squinting at the blurry words on the page. Maybe she told someone else about seeing her son's ghost in the park, maybe she kept it to herself.<br />
<br />
If I'd taken the time to converse further with the lady then the rest of that day would've panned out differently. I would've found out her story. Maybe I'd have discovered that the son I reminded her of was fit and healthy, very much alive, and that she'd pitied me simply because she thought me too thin. Maybe her son had died in tragic circumstances, taken against the natural order of things earlier than she and leaving behind nothing for her to live for.<br />
<br />
Maybe she'd once made a mistake and, as I now have, turned her back on her offspring, leaving him to rot whilst, to her, he continued to exist in some kind of <i>Schrodinger's Offspring</i> fashion, possibly alive and flourishing in another part of the world or posibly dead and decaying in a ditch.<br />
<br />
Maybe I'd have become so engrossed in her story that I'd have missed the ferry and, therefore, not lost my pack to a pack.<br />
<br />
One day, I came back to Blighty. One day, I settled down, albeit not forever. One day I had a son, then another. And a daughter. One day I got divorced and, on a couple of other days, I had a couple of heart attacks. During those days I continued to forget about the kind lady with the pizza, she being nothing more than the briefest of brief encounters many years prior, the beginning of a story that was never ended...<br />
<br />
...until I wrote the ending.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Imagination, my friends, is the ultimate entertainment system.</h3>
<br />
J2H.John Spaceyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01255146100519614173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3204866772552019066.post-45029218806219534302016-08-07T06:39:00.001-07:002016-08-07T06:44:29.487-07:00The time'll come when everyone will know.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br /></div>
<br />
<br />
As I mentioned in <i><a href="https://hashtagenjoythelittlethings.blogspot.fr/2016/08/ten-feet-further-away_1.html" target="_blank">the post that immediately preceded this one</a>, </i>I've recently managed to escape the Hellish existence I'd been leading in a small northern town on a now irrelevant island floating off the shores of a disinterested continent and, at least for the time being, am living a life of luxurious poverty, lazing on a succession of sunny afternoons. How long this will last I have no idea, but even were it to end tomorrow it would've been well worth my giving everything up for.<br />
<h3>
<br />Especially since I had nothing to give up.</h3>
<br />
Each morning, after having taken my hounds for a dip in the nearby river, cycled into the village to get myself some breakfast and having showered beneath a hose pipe with a watering can rose taped to it (my stable loft is equipped with many things, alas mod-cons aren't amongst them) I generally spend an hour or so sitting in the unglazed window and watching the world around me gently come to life, puffing on my pipe and grinning like a Cheshire cat at the locals while demonstrating the full extent of my French with a few hearty "bonjour"s and "ca va bien, merci"s as my neighbours wander beneath my dangling feet.<br />
<br />
For the last five days I've watched three builders attempt to fit a door to an ageing cottage. Much to my dismay, the door they are fitting is brand new and constructed from uPVC. In my opinion it's a sin, but it's a family home and I'm sure that, come the approaching winter, the family in residence shall be grateful for the lack of draughty gaps that the previous, ancient, wooden door had. French tradesmen, it appears, don't do urgency.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Why should they? "You get nowt good from rushing" my dad always said. But five bloody days to fit a door?</h3>
<br />
The craftsmen turn up, they "ooh" and they "ahh" and they plot and they plan, then they go for breakfast. Upon returning they break out the hand chisels and the lump hammers and they chip away at the three foot thick wall around the doorway, puffing on Gauloises and laughing. They work like this until noon, when the sun enters it's hottest phase, then bugger off to do whatever it is that the locals do for the daily two hour period during which the streets are empty, returning later to smoke a few more cigarettes and prop the old door in position, making safe the property until the following day.<br />
<br />
As a small boy, I had a big box of Stickle-Bricks. I spent many a Saturday morning with those colourful, plastic brickettes scattered around me, the tip of my tongue protruding from the corner of my little mouth as I struggled to recreate the magnificent models that were printed on the inside of the box lid. Bi-planes, cars, bridges, all manner of convoluted and colourful creations were assembled and disassembled over and over again until, bored by the limitations of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denys_Fisher" target="_blank">the inventor of my favourite toy's</a> own imagination, I began to attempt my own designs.<br />
<br />
One fine Saturday morning, as <i>Champion the Wonder Horse</i> flickered his way through another grainy adventure on the crackling, monochrome tube in the corner of our lounge, I began work on my largest project yet, a castle of epic proportions. It included a keep, battlements, turrets and towers with arrow slits to allow my toy cowboys to shoot at the dinosaur riding Apaches that roamed the countryside beyond the safety of the citadel's walls. Walls thick enough to withstand the assault of the swiftest arrow whizzing from a bow or even the mightiest of cannonballs.<br />
<br />
Alas, the castle was missing two pieces, the portcullis and the drawbridge. They were to be the final parts of the epic construction, but I'd used the last of the prickly pieces providing the ramparts for the Lone Ranger and his band of merry men to perch upon and take their potshots.<br />
<br />
I asked my dad to help me, as all young men do when they realise they've buggered something up, and he gave me his empty Silk Cut packet to use.<br />
<br />
<h3>
I was less than happy with this solution and I told him so.</h3>
<br />
"Let's go out then, son." He said as he rose from is armchair, an unusual occurrence on one of those rare Saturdays on which he wasn't required to work at the timber yard.<br />
<br />
"I've not finished though, dad." I moaned, but he said I could wear my cowboy outfit if I did and so, cap guns blazing, we burst through the front door of our house like Butch and Sundance.<br />
<br />
I really hadn't wanted to go, but had I not then I'd not have found myself having a gunfight with another, similarly ridiculously dressed, preschool gunslinger. Nor would I have eaten a bacon sandwich at the cafe up the road or a choc ice in the park. I would likewise have missed out on being hoisted aloft to ride on my father's shoulders and wouldn't have seen the hungry fledglings in a nest that their mother had built atop the bus stop and, most importantly to to the rather mercenary four year old that I was, I'd not have strode back up our garden path two or three hours later clutching a new, slightly smaller and cheaper than the old, box of Stickle Bricks.<br />
<br />
<h3>
At last, the treasure of the cowboys would be safe from the marauding savages that coveted their riches.</h3>
<br />
I can remember every single moment of that brief trip to the shops in the nineteen seventies, Salfordian sunshine. I can further remember returning home to find my mother had "tidied away" [<i>dismantled, stuffed in the box in a haphazard fashion and dumped on my bedroom floor</i>] my construction and I can remember not caring a jot about the undoing of all my hard work.<br />
<br />
The following Saturday, as my father emptied another pack of Silk Cut and read the newspaper, I rebuilt my castle, this time with all necessary security features, on the rug in front of the fire.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Seven days to fit a door?</h3>
<br />
You get nowt good from rushing, but plenty from taking your time.<br />
<br />
J2H.John Spaceyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01255146100519614173noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3204866772552019066.post-3810088310534616732016-08-01T07:59:00.004-07:002016-08-03T07:59:55.744-07:00Ten feet further away.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<h3>
Dearest reader,</h3>
<br />
I have been living this last half a decade or so in an alien land. A land of squalor, hunger, loss, regret and very little else. If you've visited a few of these posts in the past then you will have almost certainly come across at least one of the many tales that document my spiralling plunge from humble beginning to abject poverty.<br />
<br />
<h3>
If you've not, and if you're interested, then "<a href="https://hashtagenjoythelittlethings.blogspot.fr/2014/12/dont-bank-on-it.html">Don't bank on it</a>", "<a href="https://hashtagenjoythelittlethings.blogspot.fr/2015/01/dont-look-down.html">Don't look down</a>" and "<a href="https://hashtagenjoythelittlethings.blogspot.fr/2016/07/high-fidelity.html">High fidelity</a>" are three such posts. </h3>
<br />
I fell from grace, landed in the gutter, bounced a bit, was run over by a juggernaut full of bleating sheep being driven at speed toward the abattoir and, finally, came to rest beside a tree, whereupon a series of scabby mongrels pissed on me whenever the fancy took them. My blog, like my pitiful exitence, has been a miserable place at times and it shall, on occasion, probably remain so, though hopefully those tales of struggle will become less frequent and, in future, shall relate to the past rather than the present.<br />
<br />
A week or two ago I awoke, coughing and spluttering as my diseased lungs tried to expel the mould spores that had spent the night colonising my blackened bellows, put on a set of clothes that were more holes than fabric and took my dogs for a walk, scanning the pavement for loose change that those wealthier than I had dropped (Always pay special attention at bus stops, people are forever dropping change as they frantically rifle their own pockets in search of their daysavers) in the hope that I'd find enough dough for a loaf of bread.<br />
<br />
<h3>
I didn't. I never do. Times are hard, people will stoop to reclaim any dropped coinage in times such as these.</h3>
<br />
The dogs and I returned home more quickly than I generally would have liked. It had begun to rain and my sock was soaking up moisture from the pavements via the hole in my right shoe. It was shaping up to be a very bad day indeed.<br />
<br />
I'd recently found that what little money I was supposed to be living on had been surreptitiously diverted. I had two sacks of dog food, some bacon, a few pies and enough credit on the gas and electricity prepayment meters to last a fortnight.<br />
<h3>
<br />Maybe even longer, if I didn't cook the pies.</h3>
<br />
So I buggered off. Not right then, but roughly a week later, having sold everything I had that I could find a buyer for. I even bagged up any clothes that wouldn't fit in my suitcase and weighed them in at a '<i>Cash-For-Clothes</i>' shop a couple of miles away. I scraped up every penny I could, closed my bank account, cancelled my phone contract, popped my keys in a padded envelope and the envelope into the post box and only then did I depart.<br />
<br />
It was scarier this time than last. The last time I threw everything up in the air and disappeared it was in a converted school mini-bus with enough money to last me six months. This time I had money for a week or two and had to scrounge lifts to get where I was going, but where I was going I eventually got.<br />
<br />
I'd headed north, to Scotland, having fallen out of love with England through a combination of the poverty into which I'd been dumped when some bankers had done some bad things, the EU referendum result and the fact that nothing around me made me smile anymore. I felt, and feel, none of the pride I once had in my country and my countrymen. There are tens of millions of lovely people in my home nation, but the scales have tipped recently, meaning that the lovely are no longer the majority.<br />
<br />
I first revisited an area of Scotland that I'd fallen in love with many years ago, the spectacular Forest of Argylle. I'd hoped to find work there through an old acquaintance but, upon settling into my first night in a static caravan at the back of an old barn, I realised that I'd been here and done this before. I stayed a short while to clear my lungs of spores, then continued zig-zagging around for a little while.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Then, before very long, serendipity struck.</h3>
<br />
A friend of mine from another lifetime was relocating to the continent and needed to drive her car there, a mammoth undertaking that she was unwilling to undertake. In return for my doing most of the driving, she paid for fuel, for the crossing and for food along the way, all I had to pay for was rabies shots. But, even better than all this, her new employer has given her a house in which to stay that has a stable around the back, above which is a small loft with no glass in the window, one plug socket, a day bed, a rusting bistro set and a hose pipe. What more could a man ever need?<br />
<br />
So here I am, the best part of a thousand miles away and turning a lovely shade of mahogany as I attempt to learn a language that I really should have learnt in school. I've even managed to earn a little more money, walking dogs for those who have grown used to the beauty in which they reside and who can no longer be bothered. Sometimes, mainly around bus stops, I find enough money to buy a loaf of bread, people here having none of the money worries that those in my last permanent residence had.<br />
<h3>
<br />It's fucking brilliant.</h3>
<br />
If I'm honest, I didn't expect to see this day. I could see no future, wanted no future. Had a chance conversation not taken place I'm sure that, by now, my hounds would be under new ownership and I would be missing, never to be found. As it is, I have my two dogs, a tan, food, wine, laughter and I'm missing, never to be found, in an alien land. And I found a pushbike under a pile of sacks in what I laughingly refer to as my loft-apartment. As in England, my roof is full of holes. Unlike England, this results in my getting a suntan in bed rather than a cough.<br />
<br />
<h3>
This journey isn't over and I have no idea where I'm going, but I do know one thing...</h3>
<div>
<br />
...I'm never going back.<br />
<br />
Enjoy the little things, folks. It's very important.<br />
<br />
<b>J2H.</b></div>
John Spaceyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01255146100519614173noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3204866772552019066.post-13938148176469646472016-07-03T15:11:00.000-07:002016-07-04T03:36:57.571-07:00Up all night, flushing a mattress down the toilet.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
If, like me, you're of a certain age you might remember a blurry image from those halcyon days of television before the advent of a decent bloody picture, an image of a man dressed in flannel pajama bottoms, tank top and beret leaping from a bed and straight through the floor of a hotel bedroom as his long suffering wife rued the day she'd agreed to a second honeymoon.<br />
<br />
I watched that particular episode of <i>Some Mother's Do 'Ave 'Em</i> with my father. It was the first time I'd seen Mr. Crawford's wonderful portrayal of the hapless hero and, as I sat on the floor beside my dad's armchair in my own flannel pajamas, a little bit of wee came out.<br />
<br />
<h3>
I became a big fan of the show, though it was ruined for me when I went to see it on stage. There was far too much singing and why did they dress Frank in a different hat? That mask was a bit scary, too.</h3>
<br />
The trials and tribulations that Betty Spencer, the aforementioned wife, endured through the well meaning but ultimately counter productive, even destructive, actions of her perpetually bewildered spouse never failed to amaze and amuse. The simplest of tasks would develop, over the thirty minute period of quality time my father and I wasted in front of the crackling box in the parlour, into catastrophes of devastating proportions. The comedy regularly managed to be nail biting while remaining faithful to the genre, the jeopardy created by Frank's conspicuous innocence, stupidity and steadfast refusal to give up even in the face of insurmountable odds never straying toward the melancholy but remaining focused sharply on the laughs.<br />
<br />
As each problem arose and escalated Frank would be forced to adapt his plan, invariably causing more damage and necessitating further half arsed notions be entertained and engaged. His ideas, even to the little lad with the pee-spot in his pajamas, were always obviously flawed and could never work, but the plans he came up with were the best he had to work with and so work with them Frank did. Frank was many things, but a quitter he was not.<br />
<br />
Yesterday, I awoke slowly. I reached out for my phone and squinted at the screen to see what time it was then, suddenly aware that an hour ago I'd pressed stop rather than snooze, leapt from my stinking pit and into my trousers.<br />
<br />
Generally, I'm an early riser. I seldom have to be, but it occurred to me years ago that time spent sleeping is time wasted, little chunks of life where we may as well be dead spread evenly throughout our existence. I have to sleep, but I make sure I sleep the bare minimum. Yesterday, for the first Saturday in a long time, rising early was a necessity.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Dickfingers was making her final, long journey to the desolate north to collect the remainder of her possessions and I still hadn't finished stitching prawns into her mattress.</h3>
<br />
First thing to be bargained away in favour of freeing up some of the rapidly dwindling time between the now that was then and the impending arrival was my ablutions, with the exception of my teeth. I engaged in a little multi-tasking and began dashing from room to room collecting bags, cases, wall hangings and boxes whilst scrubbing away with the baking soda toothpaste and looking for my other shoe.<br />
<br />
At last, I was caught up. Now time to walk my dogs, I grabbed my coat and headed for the door. Passing my armchair I spotted, still hanging from a nail on the wall, an enormous canvas that belonged to Dickfingers and that I knew she loved. I plucked it from the wall, placed it by the front door and stepped out into the grey morn.<br />
<br />
I heard a gentle thud as I locked the door behind me. I clearly remember hearing it but at that time I'd immediately decided it couldn't be anything important and, whatever it was, it'd still be there when I got back. Off I set, gently puffing my pipe as my dogs plodded along beside me, pausing occasionally to check their Pmail. It was a cool morning and the sky above was obscured by the heavy, dark clouds now threatening to spill their contents on the gloomy streets below.<br />
<br />
Thirty minutes later, after an uneventful morning wander, I arrived home as the first heavy raindrop struck the sparsely insulated portion of my head. I slid the key into the door and engaged the latch as I stepped forward, smiling at how well the initially disastrous morning was turning out, and smashed my nose into the uPVC that had failed to reveal an entrance after striking an obstruction an inch or two beyond the threshold.<br />
<br />
My eyes were screwed shut with the pain, so I didn't see the bright flash and was unaware of the breaking storm until I heard the long, low rumble of the thunder that followed and the sudden deluge of heavy, icy water that immediately began to turn my inappropriately selected jacket from a light tan colour to a deep, Ford Granada brown.<br />
<br />
Try as I might, whatever was wedging the door closed wasn't going to budge. The rain poured from the tip of my nose and rendered me blind by virtue of it's sheer ferocity. I slipped my phone from my pocket and forced my hand through the available gap, taking a photograph of the situation indoors in an effort to come up with a plan.<br />
<br />
The image on my phone's screen revealed how the large, well loved canvas I'd placed by the door just half an hour earlier had toppled over as I'd left. In an amazing coincidence, the exact proportions of the canvas were the exact proportions of the space on the floor between party wall, door frame and meter cupboard. The edge that lay furthest from the door was against a large, heavy box that was destined for the same destination. That box, which was heavy but not too heavy to stop my forcing entry, in turn filled the gap between the canvas and the bloody piano.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Aren't pianos heavy?</h3>
<br />
The surprisingly sturdy frame of the canvas was impossible to break or to move through either the X or the Y axis, it would have to be lifted, however the gap was far too narrow to get my arm through. Unless I removed my coat.<br />
<br />
<h3>
I removed my coat.</h3>
<br />
Getting colder and more sodden by the second, I slipped my arm through the gap at the top where I could force the door an extra inch or so open and began moving it closer to the ground, employing a sawing action as I pushed the plastic inward with my shoulder until, sat on my arse in the pissing rain, I finally managed to get stuck fast.<br />
<br />
I wriggled, pushed and panicked but all to no avail. Further hindered by having two large dogs attached to my right arm by leads (dogs who, given the inclement conditions, were exceptionally eager to get inside) I began searching my mind for a way out of this predicament in which I now found myself. Then, like the seventh cavalry charging into view, help arrived.<br />
<br />
<h3>
A local chap, having seen me sitting on my doorstep in a tee-shirt during a thunderstorm, had become concerned and had come to help me. I was so grateful.</h3>
<br />
The big dog, however, was not. He can be somewhat protective and had assessed the situation, that being me out of action and on the floor whilst a potential threat approached, and decided to act unilaterally. As the chap approached the gate he called out, having to shout above the wind and storm, and the big dog took this as an indication that the point in which to spring into action had arrived. Baring his teeth and flattening his ears, he sprang.<br />
<br />
Fifty kilograms of German canine muscle being launched skywards by four powerful legs, as it turns out, produces the exact amount of energy required to free a man of my proportions from a uPVC door, at the expense of my watch strap, six inches of forearm meat and the iPhone that I'd still been holding. As I wrestled back control of my hounds and watched the cavalry flee back the way he had come I came to believe it all pointless, that this was a conundrum with no answer, a riddle with no solution...<br />
<br />
<h3>
...and that I was fucked.</h3>
<br />
<br />
My time living in this grotty, ramshackle shithole has seen me have to break in, for one reason or another, on several occasions. On each occasion I have, once back inside, taken steps to prevent anyone else using the same method to ever again gain entry to my humble Horwich hovel. Yesterday, I realised what a great job I'd done. The place is a veritable fortress.<br />
<br />
Resigned to the fact that there was no other option I elected to break a kitchen window. This meant securing the dogs to a wheelie bin whilst I climbed the back yard wall, unlocking the gate, untying the dogs, standing the wheelie bin back up and refilling it with the shit now strewn all around before, finally, selecting a broken brick from the smorgasbord of detritus that lies half hidden in the weeds flourishing unchallenged beside a long established and inappropriate traffic cone.<br />
<br />
I approached the back window, masonry in hand and preparing to deliver a satisfying though fiscally devastating blow, when I heard a click.<br />
<br />
Through the window before which I stood I spied the big dog plod into the middle of the kitchen floor (beneath the ceiling maiden that contained the clean bedding I was looking forward to enjoying that night) and begin shaking vigorously, soon to be joined by his substantially smaller, though apparently no less absorbent nor shaky, fellow pack member.<br />
<br />
<h3>
The big dog has long since taught himself to operate levers and latches. I think I've seen him trying to master fire. I fear for the future.</h3>
<br />
It was this ability that had allowed him to gain entry through the unlocked back door to Fortress Two Hats. I'd not thought to try the handle.<br />
<br />
I retrieved my phone from behind the barricaded door and checked the time. Ten minutes before she'd said she'd arrive. Perfect. Dickfingers has never been on time for a single thing in her life, I had time for a shit.<br />
<br />
As I relaxed into my movement I phoned her.<br />
<br />
<h3>
"Hiya, how far off are you?" I asked, expecting the answer "Birmingham".</h3>
<br />
"We're just turning the van around outside." The revelation came at the same moment that my arse exploded, emitting a sound similar to that made by a swarm of bats leaving their cave at dusk. She was not only not late, she was a little bit early. Talk about turning over a new leaf.<br />
<br />
A frantic session of lifting and carrying and an awkward goodbye later and the deed was done. It wasn't a task I'd particularly wanted to carry out but one that we were both eager to complete as quickly and as easily as possible. Of course, <i>easy </i>isn't always possible. In those cases, <i>easiest </i>is all that's available. And easiest isn't necessarily easy.<br />
<br />
Shit happens, wall hangings topple over, doors get left unlocked and forearm skin grows back, sort of. Oh, and bedroom doors get opened by annoyingly smart and stinkingly wet German Shepherds eager to gain access to the bed that contains the only set of bedding you own that doesn't already smell like wet dog and making it smell like wet dog.<br />
<br />
<h3>
All that could have made the morning any more Spencer-esque would have been for the dog to have done a <i>woopsie </i>while he was on there.</h3>
<br />
Whatever needs doing needs be done. If it needs be done it'll be done even if a dog has to take control of the situation. Most of us won't ever have to stay up all night to flush a mattress down a hotel toilet, but sometimes we'll all feel like that's exactly what were doing, so desperate to escape the consequences of a situation that we undertake increasingly difficult, damaging and destructive acts until we achieve the outcome we desire or else achieve the knowledge that we failed and can move on.<br />
<br />
Either way, given enough time, the tale of your valiant/futile struggle will one day be no more than a funny story to tell your wife on your second honeymoon.<br />
<br />
Stick at it.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Be more Frank.</h3>
<br />
J2H.John Spaceyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01255146100519614173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3204866772552019066.post-36821408584740981492016-07-01T05:05:00.003-07:002016-07-01T05:33:27.481-07:00High fidelity.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<br />
It's no secret that I have, in these latter stages of my existence, become inextricably entangled in the misery of perpetual poverty. On occasion, when younger and considerably less fiscally challenged, I would find myself a bit short of readies after one of the weekends of debauchery that I regularly enjoyed whilst still among the vibrancy of Manchester (If you're from outside the UK, you may know Manchester as <i>"Shit London"</i>) but I'd have a full tummy all week, I'd still smoke and the bills would all still get paid on time. Many a Monday morning I would describe myself as not having a <i>"pot to piss in" </i>while munching on a bacon and sausage sandwich in the crew room at work<i>.</i><br />
<br />
<h3>
I was very ignorant.</h3>
<br />
During the lowest point of my plunge into the despair in which I now dwell I'd found myself in a routine where I would eat one evening meal every other day. Eventually, I began to struggle to supply sufficient provisions for even this meager diet and would occasionally go three and sometimes four days without eating.<br />
<br />
<h3>
To be clear, I mean not eating, not one single morsel, not even a cornflake, would pass my lips. I lost weight, muscle, hair and, eventually, all self respect.</h3>
<br />
I own dogs. I owned dogs when I was well off and I own those same dogs to this day. They, unlike me, have eaten well throughout even the darkest of my days. They were, and remain, my priority, the only things I have that I care for and from the moment I'd rescued the first from the shelter I had made a commitment. A commitment I have found difficult, one that has caused me seemingly endless worry at times, but one that I have taken seriously and have fulfilled.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Some might say "You could've sold those dogs and eaten, they're only dogs" and to those people I say "fuck off". But I digress...</h3>
<br />
It was a dark and, this being Horwich, stormy night in December. I was walking my commitments before retiring to the relative comfort of my hot water filled duvet and sign off on another day survived. It was pub chucking out time and the local "traditional English" chippy (run by a chap named Stavros and serving such delicacies as the traditional British donner kebab and pizza) was in the midst of it's busy period. I held my breath as I approached, as I did every night at this point on our excursion so as not to smell the food being prepared and enjoyed by those who would have full tummies all week, would probably still smoke and who wouldn't be fearing the bailiffs knock whilst describing themselves as being without a pot should the need to relieve themselves arise.<br />
<br />
A chap in a hi-vis jacket and rigger boots exited the chippy as we approached. He'd plainly enjoyed a good few hours of hard drinking and seemed to be suffering from Tourette's syndrome as he bid the chip shop staff farewell before bouncing off a lamppost and weaving his way up the hill in front of me. As he walked he opened the container he carried. The tantalising aroma of kebab meat with extra chili sauce filled the air and, now unable to avoid inhaling those meaty fumes as I walked in his wake, my mouth immediately began to water.<br />
<br />
He removed a strip of the greasy meat and held it high above his head, lowering it into his upturned mouth and greedily swallowing it as a fledgling would a fat, juicy worm. His mouth quickly free to receive a second strip, he selected one from the tangled mass within the container and began to raise it aloft. He paused on the pavement, inspected the strip of meat clasped between his fingertips and, having decided that this piece carried too much sauce, proceeded to toss it onto the floor before continuing on his merry-as-a-newt way home. I stopped in my tracks.<br />
<h3>
<br />It was a sizable piece of meat, lying there on a patch of pavement and kept dry from the sleet that had begun to replace the more usual rain by virtue of it's close proximity to a wall. The red sauce shimmered in the light cast by the nearby streetlamp.</h3>
<br />
I looked around to see if anyone was watching.<br />
<br />
A woman was following me up the hill. She smiled nervously as our eyes met and she saw me, standing there in the rain when all other's were rushing to get indoors. She crossed the street and I waited for her to pass, already having decided that the need to sate the pain I felt to be greater than the need for any dignity and actually looking forward, excitedly, to eating a piece of discarded fast food from a gutter. Once the lady had passed I turned and stooped to secure my bounty, just in time to see my favourite commitment lick her chili sauce stained dog-lips.<br />
<br />
There's gratitude for you.<br />
<br />
<h3>
They say the darkest hour comes before the dawn. The following day we were awarded a food parcel by the Salvation Army. It saved our lives, of that I have no doubt. My thoughts that night had been far darker than even I, with my penchant for all things noir, care to share.</h3>
<br />
When I was young, at about the same time that I'd discovered dancing and debauchery in the flesh pots of my closest Metropolis, there seemed to be a constant stream of images on the evening news showing children so weak from hunger that they didn't possess the strength to blink away a vomiting fly. They had suffered to a far greater extent than I ever have, I was still able to go without a meal so I could buy a sack of dog food, they'd surely have eaten the dog food. They'd lie motionless, appearing to me to be slipping away slowly and in an almost dignified manner. It never occurred to me that they were in agony but too weak to react to it, locked inside a withering shell as their core writhed in agony and flies lapped at their excretions. An image on a television can't portray the hell being suffered inside a soul. They would have given anything, betrayed every shred of human dignity, for a morsel of meat such as that my dog enjoyed on the pavement up the hill from the kebab shop. I know they would have, because even with my (far less extreme but still bloody painful) limited experience of starvation I, too, would have.<br />
<br />
I've been hungry again recently. Not as hungry as back then, but still bloody hungry. It doesn't worry me greatly though, even given that my starting position this time is so far lower than that which I held when I began the initial slippery slide. I'll either fail or prevail, time will tell, and either way it won't matter in this whole, great, grand scheme of shit. Not to me at least, though the dogs might get a little pissed off when they try and boil the kettle to make their tea. Hopefully, they'll get hungry before I start to rot so I can continue to provide from beyond the grave.<br />
<br />
<h3>
WOO-OOOOOH!</h3>
<br />
After all, I made a commitment and one should never be afraid to fulfill a commitment.<br />
<br />
No matter what the situation, there is great dignity in fulfilling a commitment made. It might be hard, it may hurt, it might cost you dear and there's a possibility the ultimate fulfillment comes as the result of your dogs noshing away on your most succulent parts and any of your steaming offal that they manage to expose with their frantic clawing and tearing, but nothing fills a chest with pride like a job of such magnitude being so well done.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Righteous pride in one's actions can be as comforting as the smell of hot rubber coming from beneath a duvet.</h3>
<br />
There's a chance that those around you won't know or appreciate the effort you've put in but it's important to see something through to the end. Maybe don't feed animals at the expense of yourself, but remember the little commitments you make every day. Those promises and arrangements made, those children that are currently annoying you but that will hopefully one day chip in to help with your trip to Dignitas and those commitments you make to yourself, they're all important. And remember...<br />
<br />
<h3>
...almost every commitment can be fulfilled without the need for a painful death on the floor of a cold home.</h3>
<br />
J2H.John Spaceyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01255146100519614173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3204866772552019066.post-81762316851221434632016-06-29T10:19:00.001-07:002016-07-03T02:27:14.182-07:00Truth and lies and halftime pies.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<br />
Before I begin rambling in my usual fashion about whatever nonsense my head feels the overwhelming urge to spit out, I feel it would be remiss of me not to cover a recent, life altering event. As some of you might know, especially those that follow me on Twitter (@Johnny_Spacey), Dickfingers and I are no more. She moved out, I stayed here.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Anyway...</h3>
<br />
Dickfingers wasn't the only one to vote with their feet. Unless you've been living under a rock in a hole in a trough in, oh I dunno, let's say Alaska, you will have by now noticed that we, the UK, have voted to leave the European Union.<br />
<br />
I say "we", I myself voted to remain a member. I admit I was surprised when I awoke on my settee, having fallen asleep there at some point before the sun had popped his brow above the skyline in a vain attempt to follow the count. I woke to find myself confirmed as a member of a minority.<br />
<br />
It's a situation I am well used to.<br />
<br />
As a small child my bedroom walls were covered with A4 sized posters torn from football magazines featuring my favourite footballer, a barrel chested vanguard of the squad from those halcyon days of the three day week and rickets. I had never made a conscious decision to support the Blues but, as with every other child in that era, I was indoctrinated into sharing my father's allegiance. These days, since the middle classes discovered that football is "splendid" and decided they wanted to price the proper fan out of his traditional Saturday afternoons of tribalism, delicious pies and alcohol fueled camaraderie, people tend to support whichever club is at the top when they start to pretend to have become interested.<br />
<br />
City were good back in those days before Colin Bell gave way to Kathy Lloyd and Linda Lusardi above my headboard. Then they went shit, then a bit good again before becoming absolutely diabolical until they got rich. Never once, even in the third tier of football and losing 2-0 with only moments left on the clock, did I ever waver from my staunch belief that, although shit at football, my allotted team were still the greatest on some surreal level...<br />
<br />
<h3>
...except once.</h3>
<br />
It was my first year at primary school. I loved that school. It was a new school, built in the minimalist style made popular by the rise of communism in the east. Every door in the school would waft open in defiance of the door closers installed whenever someone opened the ridiculously heavy main entrance door, the gym equipment was impressively dangerous looking and the asbestos particles twinkled like stars in the beams of light that crept through the black out curtains whenever we were watching "educational television" on those mornings Miss Grundy (my first love) sported a pimple on her usually flawless chin and seemed in an unusually agitated state.<br />
<br />
My first Wednesday brought with it my first games' lesson. A morning playing football whilst a different teacher, male and clad in a Royal blue track suit, smoked cigarettes and blew a whistle from the sideline. I was very excited. (It's just occurred to me, I have no idea what the girls where doing whilst we played footie. It being the seventies I'd imagine it was something to do with make-up or cooking.)<br />
<br />
We got changed in the cloak rooms and I took great pride in lacing up my boots as my father had taught me (why do the laces need wrapping around like that? You'd think by now someone would have begun manufacturing laces to fit them. That's one for Dragon's Den, that is) and smoothing my thigh length, sky blue, football socks up over my skinny calves.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Out onto the field we trotted and I stood in line, proudly puffing out my chest, a chest that bore the badge that I had grown up surrounded by.</h3>
<br />
I was the only one.<br />
<br />
Every other child bar one wore red, the one in neither red nor blue wore the white of Leeds United. No one was surprised when that kid was taken into care, his parents were quite plainly guilty of child abuse. A kid who would later quite literally grow into the name of "Fat Malc" asked why I supported "shitty City". I told him what I'd heard my father tell men when faced with the same situation. I smiled as I emulated a hero that even outshone Colin Bell.<br />
<br />
"I wanted to be a red, but I wasn't fucking ugly enough."<br />
<br />
Fat Malc was in no way a master of the headbutt, but his failed attempt at assault was enough to push my own indiscretion, the dropping of a fuck bomb, down the pecking order in things my chain smoking games teacher had to be fuming about, though I still received a clip around the ear.<br />
<br />
Badgered all day by lads who, apparently, all had fathers much bigger than I, I began to doubt my own beliefs. Here were people telling me that the football team I loved weren't actually the greatest but were shit and always lost. I was confused, but I couldn't imagine so many others were lying to me. I needed to speak to my dad.<br />
<br />
It was the days before my father had bought his first pub and he was still employed as a case maker at Parker Rosser's on Trafford Park, beneath the shadow of Old Trafford football ground. After milking the overtime, as was his want, he arrived home just before bedtime, his donkey jacket smelling sweetly of wood shavings and engineering grease, staggering all over and stinking of Polo Mints.<br />
<br />
"Hiya dad, can I talk to you?"<br />
<br />
"I thought you'd be in bed." He inspected my mother's burnt offerings left for him in the oven<br />
<br />
"It's important."<br />
<br />
<h3>
We pulled out chairs and I ate a piece of bread and butter whilst he peeled congealed gravy off his chop and made funny faces.</h3>
<br />
"Dad, can I support United?"<br />
<br />
He literally began to choke, slapping himself on the back and spluttering.<br />
<br />
"You fucking what?" He inquired.<br />
<br />
"I said, can I support United? Please?"<br />
<br />
"I thought you were going to tell me you were a poof," He laughed, "and no you bleedin' can't."<br />
<br />
<h3>
"What does "poof" mean?" I asked, steering the conversation in the way only a small child can, toward embarrassment.</h3>
<br />
"You know, gay..." He performed the universally recognised, acceptable-in-the-seventies hand signal, "...oooh, look at the muck in 'ere."<br />
<br />
"What, like German people?"<br />
<br />
"Eh?"<br />
<br />
"The Germans, the ones granddad dropped his bombs on."<br />
<br />
"Nazis?"<br />
<br />
"That's it, Nasties."<br />
<br />
"No, not bloody Nazis, Nazi's are like this", he performed a different though similar hand gesture, this time using two fingers from his free hand to represent a silly, little moustache.<br />
<br />
<h3>
There followed a conversation in which the phrases "my dead body", "I don't give a shit what Malc said" and "get your finger from up your nose" were used, then I went to bed.</h3>
<br />
The following day saw my first visit to the headmaster's office and a thirty minute session of isolation, the result of telling Soon-To-Be-Fat Malc and his red clad comrades that I had been reliably assured that, however big their dads were, mine would "stamp all over their fucking fingers" and informing the whole assembled shower they were, in fact, nothing but "Nastie gay pooftas" whilst goosestepping my way through an impersonation of a dead German Chancellor that Freddie Starr himself would've been proud of.<br />
<br />
But I digress...<br />
<br />
I'd been convinced my allegiance was to the best team. It wasn't, but it was the team I chose and the team I stood by. My father had told me City were the greatest and United were shit, he'd lied.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Bear in mind, these were the days before City were the greatest and United became shit at football. Turns out, maybe my old man was quite the Nostre Damus. </h3>
<br />
It didn't matter that he lied, that he'd over-egged the egg and mayonnaise sandwich. I watched our team rise and fall and rise and I'll probably watch them fall again one day. It's only football. I'm a Blue, that's that and my decision to remain in that minority in no way impacts on others, nor their steadfast refusal to see sense on myself.<br />
<br />
Imagine if you had been duped into basing your allegiance to something more important than kicking a ball or which cynically marketed merchandise you sent your son to school in on lies.<br />
<br />
To paraphrase the great Mr Shankly, the referendum wasn't a matter of life or death. It was far more important than that.<br />
<br />
<h3>
We shouldn't let the liars forget their lies, nor forget their lies ourselves.</h3>
<br />
Now, where will we be building this week's hospital?<br />
<br />
J2H.<br />
<br />
(Cheers Spence.)<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
John Spaceyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01255146100519614173noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3204866772552019066.post-13981795464240462752016-06-17T07:23:00.000-07:002016-06-17T11:37:38.321-07:00The scabby dog with the weaponised arse.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
The fleas leapt and swept and hopped through the air</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Diving like monkeys from hair to hair</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Laying their eggs on the dog in the chair</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And feasting on blood with nary a care</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Vigorously did the dog scratch at his chin</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Then wander his way through to the kitchen</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Where he snuffled and sniffled at the over filled bin</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Licking some beans from within an old tin</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The house was deserted, the door left ajar</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And the gaps in the fence meant that it couldn't bar</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The dog from escaping to roam near and far</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
'Til, just before tea time, being hit by a car</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The lady that hit him, her name was Annette</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Took the flea bitten mongrel to the town's local vet</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Where the back right leg of the poor, forlorn pet</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Was placed in a cast, once carefully set</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
No chip in his neck so his owners weren't found</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And the poor scabby dog was sent to the pound</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Until that fateful day came around</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
When a child arrived who'd been promised a hound</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Dad tried to convince her this dog wasn't right</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The mangy, old thing was a pitiful sight</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Patchy fur and a huge overbite</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Sitting in a kennel smelling strongly of shite</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
But certain she was that this sorry mutt</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Was the mutt meant for her, so, though he did tut</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Dad smiled, took the old dog and gently put</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Him on the backseat where he emptied his guts</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Mummy wasn't happy, she'd not wanted this</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
What was he thinking? Dad was taking the piss</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
But her daughter was happy and planted a kiss</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Upon the dog's head as, again, it's arse hissed</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
"Not in your room" Mummy had said</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
"You'll have to make do with Big Ted instead</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
His tummy is bad and he's only just fed</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
We don't want him pooing all over your bed"</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The girl was a good girl, she'd not disobeyed</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
So she wasn't admonished when her dad found her laid</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
On the floor by the blanket from which they had made</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
A bed for the mongrel they'd now named "Kincade"</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
With an arse that could easily clear a room</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Fur just as rough as a street sweeper's broom</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And breath smelling like the air from a tomb</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
He was hard to love, but loved he was soon</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Not just by the girl he was always beside</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The one in whose room he'd sneakily hide</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
But by all those around who smiled as they spied</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The girl with the grin and the dog by her side</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
One day, when she's older, the two will part</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And that parting will break that young lady's heart</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
She'll mourn poor Kincade, the dog with the art</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Of bringing forth tears with a well timed, ripe fart</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Later though, rather than sadness</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Or longing to feel his weight on her mattress</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The pain of the parting will burn less and less</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And memories of him will bring forth happiness</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The dog in the chair had had little to love</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Dealt a harsh hand by a hand from above</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
He'd never known life not to be tough</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Pardon the pun, but it'd been rather "Ruff"</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
A second chance had he earned, upon that day</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
When he'd spotted the gap and he'd run away</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
His back leg gave him gip, he'd certainly say</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
But it'd earned him a life less cold and less grey</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Should you find that life be hard and living it be harsh</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Find a gap in life's fence and then through it pass</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Live the rest of your day's both hard and fast</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Just like the scabby dog with the weaponised arse</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
(But do watch the traffic.)</h3>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
J2H.</div>
John Spaceyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01255146100519614173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3204866772552019066.post-50639641012956347402016-06-13T08:34:00.000-07:002016-06-16T03:37:51.196-07:00Spill.<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjdg9UTxje1Bt_TQzhubShtW0nYAs4dSl-yX09sqiV57fVkqG-UmJXUI-xU3y1BV8E4IwKbEyOKUw2cOFQ_W6uUreOm5l6VEu7MYp9afU28InFRUFS3xdPVkTSvasi3KxxfHJF_EW7_S8/s1600/FullSizeRender.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="141" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjdg9UTxje1Bt_TQzhubShtW0nYAs4dSl-yX09sqiV57fVkqG-UmJXUI-xU3y1BV8E4IwKbEyOKUw2cOFQ_W6uUreOm5l6VEu7MYp9afU28InFRUFS3xdPVkTSvasi3KxxfHJF_EW7_S8/s200/FullSizeRender.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
A note lies on a counter, it's laid there for a couple of days</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
Hasty words of beauty scrawled across it's blue lined page</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
The edge is tattered, having been torn</div>
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<div style="text-align: right;">
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From a notebook in which had been scribbled and drawn</div>
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'Twas written at speed and torn free in haste</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Then into a sugar bowl carefully placed</div>
</div>
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<br /></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: right;">
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The leaf's now stained and the ink's now blurred</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
You'd struggle to distinguish a single word</div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
But he'd not, the one who'd watched those words fade</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
And now reads instead from the impression they've made</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
Words never spoken but imparted still</div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
Thirteen of them offering a bittersweet pill</div>
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<div style="text-align: right;">
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<br /></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
He'd tried hard to cry whenever he'd brewed up</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
Rereading those words as he'd filled his best cup</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
Those words, as they'd ebbed and they'd flowed 'cross that page</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
Those words that once sated his deep, savage rage</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
Drew him in tight while they pushed all else out</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
And shone a small light on where once there'd lived doubt</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
The walls we erect and the fences we build</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
Are the barriers behind which our futures are killed</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
Speak and speak and speak some more</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
Talk, impart, confess, adore</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
Speak of all things, both the great and the small</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
Those things that you feel, tell others them all</div>
</div>
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<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
Open your gob and let the words spill</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
Don't think, just be honest and keep speaking 'til</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
The ears of the other, the brother or lover</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
Or sister or father or offspring or mother</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
The one to whom all of these words really matter</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
Hears the truth that dwells deep beneath idle chatter</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
One day soon he'll tidy up</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
Maybe even wash his favourite cup</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
He'll smile one last time as he reads what she wrote</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
Sigh a deep sigh and crumple the note</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
That day won't be long, already he's calm</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
But it can stay there for now, it's doing no harm</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
J2H.</div>
</div>
</div>
John Spaceyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01255146100519614173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3204866772552019066.post-61042635094696669992016-06-08T03:56:00.000-07:002016-06-16T03:36:28.294-07:00Mrs. Bird mustn't have made it.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOgF95psa5vhdmWXnif0N8LNxWe7-8d1Lg4ZoOdjjNXwNHiH1gevUlJNJxW_Vo6wxL842lwig3v73jn4-T6lDNHH1tKbZFJpccgrguSfZvZ4rRp8WxRhhtdf32RbMQ7UXFi5aNVYiEhyo/s1600/IMG_8111.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOgF95psa5vhdmWXnif0N8LNxWe7-8d1Lg4ZoOdjjNXwNHiH1gevUlJNJxW_Vo6wxL842lwig3v73jn4-T6lDNHH1tKbZFJpccgrguSfZvZ4rRp8WxRhhtdf32RbMQ7UXFi5aNVYiEhyo/s200/IMG_8111.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
For a rather large portion of my life I was able to say I hated no one and nothing and it was perfectly true. Then, along came two that I was justified in hating and hate I did, even though I had no idea who it was I was entitled to hate.<br />
<br />
Those first two hated will remain faceless, their faces only having been known by the woman they murdered. My Grandmother. She'd disturbed them whilst they were emptying the safe in my mother's pub and they'd attacked her before fleeing, never to be brought to justice. The last words anyone (that anyone being her daughter) heard my Grandmother say were "I don't feel well, Sheila", then she was gone.<br />
<br />
<h3>
I can't remember if the two I hate got away with any money, I genuinely couldn't have cared less and doubt that I bothered asking.</h3>
<br />
It was an alien emotion, hatred. I'd said I'd hated this and I'd hated that, hated her and hated him, many times but with as much sincerity as on those occasions when I'd told one of my sons I was going to kill him if I got my hands on him. Hatred is something that we imagine is easy to imagine until we've experienced it and I can understand how some are sent insane by it's constant throttling of one's stream of thoughts. It takes quite some burying and, no matter how deeply interred, still it will drag itself from it's grave and come to find you. What's more, every time it pays you a visit it's macabre appearance will have become ever more gruesome due to the effects of the increasingly advanced decomposition taking place and the gradual replacement of fingers and nails with bloodied, ragged stumps.<br />
<br />
<h3>
The two have remained the only two. There are many others that I feel anyone would be perfectly entitled to place on their own list of '<i>hatees' </i>but they don't make the grade for mine, the initial incumbents having set such a high benchmark. </h3>
<br />
In fact, my list doesn't actually hold a name at all since, as with their faces, I've never known their names. Nor do I know if they care about what they did or if they've led lives good or bad since the events of that afternoon. It's all so out of my control, I can in no way affect what has happened or any aspect of the killers' existences but I think I've gotten it under control. They've taken on a kind of <i>Schrodinger's murderers' </i>mantle somewhere in my head.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Maybe they both died of cancer?</h3>
<br />
My mum moved out of the pub, it having also been the very dwelling in which my father had recently died she now found it too painful to return. I'm not superstitious, but I can see why people believe in maledictions and why they'd not want to tempt providence too far. So, after a lifetime as a landlord's daughter then a landlord's wife, she became a receptionist. It was a shame, she'd been quite literally born into the licensed trade and it had suited her right down to the ground.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Even that which is right, it seems, won't last forever.</h3>
<br />
Eventually, she began to suit that which she became. She worked hard, had a full social life on the other side of the bar and kept a beautiful home, later retiring and moving to a patch of ground beneath sunnier skies. I'm sure that, in an instant, she'd swap everything she's achieved since my Grandmother's death just to have had more time with those by whose sides she'd flourished beside still beside her side, even if that meant being stuck running a pub in a rainy, northern town while her now-ancient mother complained about how steep the bloody stairs were and admonished her for leaving the bloody keys in the bloody safe again as she descended those aforementioned overly-steep stairs noisily (and sideways, so she could keep a good grip on the banister) before finally taking her place at the end of the bar and wondering where her bloody son-in-law was.<br />
<br />
But all of that is out of anyone's control. My mother can't affect the outcome of the action's of others and to focus on such impotency would add the fuel of frustration to the already burning embers of loss.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Longing, not loss, can bring the greatest pain. Ultimately, the pain of loss fades, whereas longing can only be sated or suffered.</h3>
<br />
My father would often say "you can't miss what you've never had", explaining the kindness he was performing in not letting me have whichever new toy I felt I just <i>had </i>to have. One day, he'd tell me, whichever useless, lead-coated, 1970's gizmo it was I was mithering him for would be broken, in the bin, gone and, he further explained, that loss would make me sad.<br />
<br />
<h3>
My dad was a right twat at times.</h3>
<br />
So I'd be left with longing and an endless list of things to save up for. Top of the list for a while was a tiny, furry, Paddington Bear toy. I loved it, longed for it, would whisper to it through the shop window whenever I stood waiting outside the newsagent's I'd seen it in, reassuring the little bear that, one day, we'd be together.<br />
<br />
Eventually, an opportunity to get my hands on the funds to purchase Paddington presented itself. Excitedly, I set off for Swinton shopping precinct to finally sate my longing with two inches of duffel coated, Peruvian perfection.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Who ever needed more?</h3>
<br />
The shopkeeper had placed him into a little, blue striped, paper bag which was now stuffed into the pocket of my duffel coat alongside my fruit Polos and my tissue. My hand remained in the pocket alongside the toy, fingers probing the bag. I toyed with it all the way home, my fingers stroking Paddington's short, coarse fur, shiny nose and felt hat.<br />
<br />
The Peruvian bear came everywhere I went and would spend his nights standing on my bedside cabinet to watch over me. I built him a little house out of a crisp box, painting roses around the front door, and spent many a happy hour ignoring all of my other toys while our relationship blossomed.<br />
<br />
<h3>
One day, I realised that I'd never checked beneath Paddington's hat to see the marmalade sandwich that surely lay there. I tugged at the brim, gently peeling it from the scalp.</h3>
<br />
It was fucking horrific.<br />
<br />
The manufacturers had saved themselves money by not extending the fur to cover the top of his head, that being covered by the hat anyway. The once hot glue that had held the red hat in place formed wrinkles on the exposed plastic scalp, tufts of felt remaining fastened there and giving my favourite toy the macabre appearance of a man scalped by savages in one of the Westerns my father and I regularly enjoyed.<br />
<br />
<h3>
And there was no marmalade sandwich.</h3>
<br />
I attempted repairs. The first method not to make matters better was <i>Pritt Stick </i>which, although in no way effective, did give the patient shiny patches where it matted the once fine fur. Plan B, <i>Superglue</i>, burnt the plastic beneath the fur and caused several patches of alopecia, further adding to his macabre appearance. Plan three, a staple, shattered much of his skull and destroyed an eye, the process completing my duffel coated friend's transition from Grizzly to grisly.<br />
<br />
What was worse was that I'd bought the bear with my own bloody money, mostly. The final portion had been provided by Broken-Legged Bri, my chubbiest and clumsiest chum. He had purchased from me my sister's Cindy doll, laughing gleefully as he immediately stripped her naked and used a felt tip pen to adorn her with nipples and a pubis before (thankfully) fucking off.<br />
<br />
<h3>
The mind boggles.</h3>
<br />
My dad had indeed been a '<i>right twat</i>', that's to say he was a twat but a twat who was right. Losing my furry friend had hurt greatly, especially given the horrific circumstances. I'd have given anything to turn the clock back and allow the marmalade sandwich to await those murderers in the realm of all things <i>Shrodinger</i>.<br />
<br />
We know what we know. We'd always like to know more, it's human nature, part of the condition. But maybe we shouldn't peel back the felt cap of curiosity for fear of what lies beneath? Curiosity, after all, killed the cat and killing small animals, well, that's indicative of a psychopath. Curiosity is a psychopath. It doesn't give two shits one way or the other about you, only about truth, but an unnecessary truth can be very painful. We're drawn to it like a cat to the other side of a busy main road at rush hour, it causes us to destroy our favourite toy or to walk into a room to see who those unfamiliar men's voices belong too and it will almost always hurt.<br />
<br />
What lay beneath the hat or who those men were hadn't mattered until curiosity had decided to stick it's fat nose in. We know good things rarely come from curiosity and we know we never overhear anything nice about ourselves but we still eavesdrop whenever the chance arises, whether walking past a door that someone has left slightly ajar or when queuing up for a pint at the bar of a busy, northern pub.<br />
<br />
Some stuff just doesn't matter. Most stuff, in fact, just doesn't matter. Not really. More importantly, though, if your daughter keeps leaving the keys in the safe, <i>be more Paddington</i>...<br />
<br />
...keep it under your hat.<br />
<br />
J2H.John Spaceyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01255146100519614173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3204866772552019066.post-60872317613237740152016-06-04T12:57:00.000-07:002016-06-16T03:38:55.979-07:00Look all around, there's nothing but blue skies.<div style="text-align: center;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAOS9IWlc6GgxqzLZi6qeSeFM4sDSxPPWLWCrqwvF187xtIS25ru0sYDg69c6JNhd5dURjfHjF6MTUPpzaL4BRStjyeQYlt69iPaQbmtgFeSWQldyT6igCLcr0r0lEYBCTB_ZMKKu6Ruk/s1600/IMG_8089.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAOS9IWlc6GgxqzLZi6qeSeFM4sDSxPPWLWCrqwvF187xtIS25ru0sYDg69c6JNhd5dURjfHjF6MTUPpzaL4BRStjyeQYlt69iPaQbmtgFeSWQldyT6igCLcr0r0lEYBCTB_ZMKKu6Ruk/s200/IMG_8089.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Mouldy and draughty, my house is a pit</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And even the dogs think the place shit</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
But it's all that I've got and I can't afford better</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
So when the boiler breaks I just put on a sweater</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
I'm grateful for whatever food's in my belly</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And until recently had a thirty year old telly</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
It worked well enough and gave me the impression</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Of action and drama in soap operas and Westerns</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
But then one night during a show with Stephen Fry in</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
That crackling, old box gave up even trying</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
It popped and sent smoke that was thick, pungent and white</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Drifting up high while I sat and said "Shite!"</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>So off I went to Tesco to get myself</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>A deal on a telly that came straight from the shelf</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>I carried it home, these new one's are light</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>And looked forward to my usual Saturday night</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>I settled down deep in my favourite chair</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>One foot on a dog that snoozed and snored there</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Lay on the floor halfway in between</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>The chair I had chosen and the flat, shiny screen</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Looking so lost, sitting dwarfed in betwix</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>A vase with a flower and a set of six pics</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>I squinted at the remote clasped, tight, in my hand</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Then turned on a film about a brass band</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The picture was crisp and the speakers were sound</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Then flicking through menus I suddenly found</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
All of those channels that, until recently</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Had been unavailable for me to see</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Those familiar shows watched without ever</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Seeing a spot on a famous presenter</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Or straggly hairs on the side of a beard</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Or how that bloke off the weather looks a bit weird</div>
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All these now clearly presented in glorious HD</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Even the wrinkles beneath Rachel Riley's knee</div>
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Spoiling my long held, low-def delusion</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Of perfection whenever I'd put local news on</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>The novelty of the benefit hi-def had brung</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Didn't linger around for very long</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>I longed for the time of blurry ignorance</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>I'd had and enjoyed while celebrities danced</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Then, as ever when Monday morn' came around</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Sat eating toast was where I could be found</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Staring through eyes that longed for the gloom</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>At the flat, wicked window in the corner of the room</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>But what was that, sitting on that settee?</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Glimpsed through the steam from my hot cup of tea</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Was a woman who looked even better today</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>And sent all the grey clouds drifting away</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Now she's the reason I tune in each morning</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Scratching my arse as the new day is dawning</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Munching on toast and loading a pipe to</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Enjoy on my dog walk while cleaning up dog poo</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
A Cupid's bow and eyes dark and bright</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
A smile that'd make all wrong things right</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
I hang upon every word that she breathes</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And won't start my day 'til she finally leaves</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
No matter the matter she's having to cover</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Her words mesmerise like a whispering lover</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Naga Munchetty, she's always enough</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
To brighten the day of an old bloke with a cough.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b>Enjoy the little things.</b></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>J2H<i>.</i></b></div>
John Spaceyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01255146100519614173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3204866772552019066.post-7184871208526151832016-05-20T04:31:00.000-07:002016-06-16T03:41:55.777-07:00The murder of the tree.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvGKKY5OmjQU3hJjggeDZjVCDsa4T0jfvmUlEVXkfnFHmNRuh74Pf9VKenC7xtmFUjVRS0tkU7v0btQX5f4prI5epl9mw3iPYKNU4ljdNY4A9_7VvjWoGV_FB47zjEonTAqvygotaWwHo/s1600/IMG_8148.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvGKKY5OmjQU3hJjggeDZjVCDsa4T0jfvmUlEVXkfnFHmNRuh74Pf9VKenC7xtmFUjVRS0tkU7v0btQX5f4prI5epl9mw3iPYKNU4ljdNY4A9_7VvjWoGV_FB47zjEonTAqvygotaWwHo/s200/IMG_8148.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There once was an unremarkable tree.</span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The unremarkable tree nestled between a small block of flats, a wall and a ginnel. It towered above the flats, it's canopy spreading wide and the tips of it's wooden fingers reaching for the windows and roof tiles, scratching at them whenever the westerly wind blew.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<h3>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">My house is a shit hole. Mismatched brickwork, a rotting gate and a yard filled with builder's detritus as a result of the stunted reparations to the crumbling residence taking place within our walls but it did have, until recently, a remarkably good view of the unremarkable tree.</span></h3>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I smoke a pipe and, most mornings and every evening, I'll spend half an hour or so tucked between the bins at the back gate taking shelter from the wind, rain and snow as best I can whilst enjoying a bowlful of Steeplechase, Avro or Kentucky Nougat. There is little of beauty to look at around my shit hole (ooh, matron!) so I tend to lose myself in my thoughts as I puff away.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Over time and without noticing, I became familiar with the unremarkable tree. It had a rhythm in it's wafting and the tree would entertain me as it tirelessly performed a swirling, whirling jig. In the evening bats would join the ballet and perform complex acrobatics in the air around and through it's branches, occasionally buzzing me as I puffed away. In the morning, a crow would land on the very highest branch and caw his appreciation of the brand new day.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The crow was, for a time, the only bird brave enough to alight on the tree. At some point in the past so long ago that it now seems it was always there, a plastic bag from a supermarket became entangled in the tree's spindly canopy and would flap in the blustery winds, sounding a little like a hundred wings taking to the air all at once. The noise had become part of the soundtrack to my pipe-times, eventually going mainly unnoticed by either the bird or me. Over recent weeks my friend the crow had been joined by his brethren. First, a second crow appeared, followed by a third until a whole flock would arrive each morning.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I'm given to flights of fancy, spending much of my time lost in bizarre imaginings, and I started to name the crows, even giving some of them back stories. They would sit in approximately the same place each time, spread throughout the branches in a pattern that resembled a living family tree.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There was Tarquin, the original crow who took the highest position. Big and good looking, the oiliest of his clan, Tarquin was my favourite. Finbar was a bit of a clown, Tinny Lynnette loved a drink and Dave the Beak was a ladies man.</span><br />
<h3>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The motley crew were made complete by the addition of the final three, Twitchy Pete, 'Arry the Bastard and Carl Sagar.</span></h3>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A couple of weeks ago a man with a chain-saw arrived. He spent some considerable time attached to the thicker branches by a loop of old rope as he removed the less thick branches higher up. I watched him, all the while hoping that each time he loosened the rope and began to descend that his job was complete and that what remained would remain. But he didn't.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Once he'd reduced the crow's roost to a stump, the man with the chainsaw used a vicious machine to transform the woody perennial's dismembered cadaver into wood chippings and departed. The following day, someone set fire to the stump and, like a man pissing into an open grave, threw a stained mattress and some bags of rubbish on top of it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The bats will find another hunting ground while Tarquin et al will find another tree to colonise. The new mattress that necessitated the burning of the old mattress will become stained and flattened with time. The wood chips will be spread over flower beds or treated and used to cushion the fall of children falling from swings and slides and I'll will still smoke my pipe in my grotty back yard. Life goes on.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But the family tree's gone.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A week or so ago, my uncle Jack shuffled off this mortal coil. I'd not seen him in donkeys' year, not since we buried his mother, the inimitable Granny Annie. His departure has resulted in my elevation to oldest Spacey, a status my uncle's younger brother, the bloke I called Dad, never achieved. My mother's still around, but she wasn't born a Spacey.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Yes, I'm aware that I'm displaying terrible sexism in discounting her but, in my defence, that's only because I'm terribly sexist.</span></h3>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I discovered he'd died when someone left me a message, in the form of a comment on a blog post. The Twitter-age version of slipping a note under a door, it was quite the shocker. The comment further broke two other pieces of sad news to me, in a sort of rip-the-plaster-off-quickly fashion, and was signed with a couple of kisses.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">To be fair, it's so long ago now that I can no longer remember the last time I spoke to any member of my family, so I suppose that even bothering to let me know was a kindness I couldn't have expected. Of course, given my state of familial estrangement, it would have been possible that I go to my grave without ever having heard the news, creating a sort of Schrodinger's Uncle and keeping his jolly face and dry wit alive within me, but that wasn't the case.</span><br />
<h3>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I cried. Alone. The dogs were with me, staring at me and wondering if I had any food (Mercenary bastards, dogs are) but no one else who'd known him now knows me.</span></h3>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A family tree, gone.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">What happens when Tarquin finally mistimes his escape whilst feasting on the remains of a cat on a dual carraigeway? Without the family tree he'll not be missed. Even if one of the other crows witnesses his cold, flat corpse how will they let the others know?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It'll probably be through an online comment section, but only because crows can't tweet.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">J2H.</span></h3>
</div>
John Spaceyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01255146100519614173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3204866772552019066.post-25057492234030945152016-04-21T07:59:00.000-07:002016-06-29T13:18:28.127-07:00If stretched, your bowels are as large as one hundred acres of woodland.*<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiamubRgzRefMh01gK2vDdQs0amE63QQep-S1uQLolLTwHkWzF1_Fkca8gZjWU5pcRTol0SO1sOo02KSFxYU6xqGeIfZARFDmRCF3eA9YlrscqP8YE9tdSdhM_ZI-ZQh95opOYa4hgGKPQ/s1600/IMG_8548.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiamubRgzRefMh01gK2vDdQs0amE63QQep-S1uQLolLTwHkWzF1_Fkca8gZjWU5pcRTol0SO1sOo02KSFxYU6xqGeIfZARFDmRCF3eA9YlrscqP8YE9tdSdhM_ZI-ZQh95opOYa4hgGKPQ/s200/IMG_8548.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
I've had some shit holidays in my time.<br />
<br />
What's worse, I forced many of those shit holidays on my children. Some of the holidays were so shit, I doubt they even realised we were on holiday.<br />
<br />
Generally slightly out of season (my times of austerity existed long before the advent of crooked bankers and guerilla class warfare) and involving a tent, caravan or canal boat, I'd drag them away for a few days of walking around, clambering over fences, climbing trees, exploring rivers and trying to light fires.<br />
<br />
One year, I dragged the poor buggers to my mother and father's new static caravan on the outskirts of a quaint, little fishing village.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Blackpool.</h3>
<br />
Once we'd finished setting up whichever game system was en vogue at that time we went to explore the site. It didn't take much time.<br />
<br />
As the sky began to turn from blue to magenta we headed back. Close to the caravan there was a small clump of pretty trees and the boys decided they'd like to round off an eventful day by acting like baboons. I left them to it and went inside, leaving the door open so I'd be able to hear the screams when the inevitable, easily avoidable, simply horrendous accident, that must surely take place, took place.<br />
<br />
I sat with my feet on the little coffee table that would later provide support for a double bed and watched the television. Before long, the five year old came crashing through the little, rattly door.<br />
<br />
My youngest was going through a phase that caused him to be referred to as "the fridge magnet", given his propensity for hanging off the door of the fridge and staring at the food inside whilst eating a bag of crisps and wondering "what next?" He went straight to the fridge and made himself a jam sandwich before flopping onto the seat next to me and taking the remote control from my lap as I took a twig from his hair.<br />
<br />
<h3>
"Dad, where does poo come from?"</h3>
<br />
I shook my head and smiled that smile that every father smiles whenever asked a question by a son still more stupid than he.<br />
<br />
"From your tummy, son."<br />
<br />
"What, MY tummy?" He furrowed his brow.<br />
<br />
"Yes, well, anyone's tummy."<br />
<br />
"But, how does poo get there?"<br />
<br />
"Erm, well, your food gets digested and the stuff your body doesn't need turns into poo."<br />
<br />
He mused over the information for a while whilst trying, unsuccessfully, to lick a blob of strawberry preserve from his own chin.<br />
<br />
"And then what?"<br />
<br />
"It comes out of your bottom."<br />
<br />
The five year old wrinkled his nose.<br />
<br />
"Eww, that's <i>disgus</i>... oh, Gladiators!" He exclaimed as he flicked through the few channels available on the little portable telly with the pound shop aerial.<br />
<br />
We sat and watched Wolf and his colleagues batter people with giant cotton buds and kick them whilst dangling from hoops for half an hour or so when Jet, my personal favourite, appeared.<br />
<br />
The twelve year old who wasn't there was almost as big a fan of the physically fantastic Ms. Youdale as his father was. I turned to my youngest prodigy...<br />
<br />
"Where's your brother?" I asked the little, ginger, bundle of joy by my side.<br />
<br />
He looked pensive for a moment, then his eyebrows arched and his mouth dropped open.<br />
<br />
"Awww, I forgot..."<br />
<br />
He rose to his feet, scattering crumbs of the light, curly, potato snacks that he'd had to follow the sandwich, the apple and the half a packet of Malted Milk biscuits he'd devoured onto the floor,<br />
<br />
"...he's stuck up a tree and he can't get down and he said for me to come and get you."<br />
<br />
I scrambled to my feet. By my reckoning, we'd been sat watching crap on telly while we spoke about crap and ate Quavers for good thirty minutes, during which time it had gone dark.<br />
<br />
"Quickly!" The absent minded child yelled as he leapt through the still open door, as if my tardiness was what had led to whatever terrible fate his brother had succumbed.<br />
<br />
<h3>
He'd done well, the twelve year old.</h3>
<br />
He'd successfully scaled the tallest of the trees to it's very top, though his forward planning had left much to be desired.<br />
<br />
During his ascent he'd snapped off many of the smaller branches and used them as foliage-to-earth missiles to launch at his brother below. After a rousing chorus of "I'm the King of the swingers", complete with monkey noises and a shimmy that had nearly dislodged him, he'd found himself unable to come back down, there being few hand or foot holds left beneath him.<br />
<br />
I got him down easily enough, using the same technique my own father had perfected on many of the shit holidays of my youth. He was cold, bored and his pride had been dented.<br />
<br />
Also, his brother was "an idiot" and had "better not have eaten my Quavers".<br />
<br />
Eventually, once he'd finished complaining about his arduous ordeal and had pestered me until I went to the co-op down the road for more Quavers, all was once again well with the world and I got to enjoy what was my favourite part of the day on a family holiday, putting the kids to bed.<br />
<br />
The boys shared the bedroom with two single bunks and, after much giggling, flatulence and screams of "stop it Jamie, I can't <i>breath</i>" I went in to say goodnight and tuck them in.<br />
<br />
"Dad, tell him, I've got Asthma you know? His arse might kill me." Never one to be overly-dramatic, my youngest did his best to get his brother in trouble, achieving a bollocking of his own for his use of "arse".<br />
<h3>
<br />To be fair, trouble was always something my eldest was able to get into without the help of his wheezy sibling.</h3>
<br />
"Can I read my book?" The five year old asked.<br />
<br />
"Of course," I replied, "where is it?"<br />
<br />
He pointed to his little holdall and I rummaged around inside, retrieving his book and passing it to him. He inspected the cover, wrinkled his nose and tossed the tome onto the floor.<br />
<br />
"I've changed my mind." He curled up with a sulky pout and a Gameboy, "I've gone off it now, it's disgusting."<br />
<br />
I picked up the book, along with the underwear and inside out tracksuits that lay scattered around, and smiled.<br />
<br />
With arms full I navigated my way backwards through the narrow door and out into the equally narrow hallway.<br />
<br />
"G'night, kids." I called over my shoulder as I dumped the dirty clothing on the floor of the kitchenette and grabbed a can of Guinness from the cupboard.<br />
<br />
I took a seat at the little bistro set outside, smoking a cigarette under the stars. The set sat upon the dozen or so concrete flags that my father had laid and that constituted a patio, it's uneven surface turning the seats into rocking chairs. My son's book was face down on the table as I enjoyed the peace and quiet and shortened my lifespan for no good reason. I considered my day, as I do when each day draws to a close, making sure I'd learnt the lessons life had delivered. That day, I'd learnt that trying to climb to the top is fine, just make sure you've a way back down if you need one and, a bonus life lesson learnt late in the evening, the importance of ensuring no ambiguity in one's questions.<br />
<br />
I stubbed my cigarette out on the saucer I used as an ashtray and picked up my five year old's book, smiling as I read the opening lines...<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b>"<a href="http://www.stylist.co.uk/books/100-best-opening-lines-from-childrens-books#gallery-16" target="_blank">Here is Edward Bear, coming down the stairs now, bump bump bump,</a></b></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b><a href="http://www.stylist.co.uk/books/100-best-opening-lines-from-childrens-books#gallery-16" target="_blank"> on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin</a>"</b></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b><br /></b></i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i><b><br /></b></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
J2H.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
*<span style="font-size: x-small;"> Absolute nonsense. </span></div>
John Spaceyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01255146100519614173noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3204866772552019066.post-91222433079218113242016-03-25T13:39:00.000-07:002016-03-25T14:54:34.516-07:00I've never suited plaid.<h3>
Aren't there a lot of crows about?</h3>
<br />
Sorry, I was miles away.<br />
<br />
It's been an eventful couple of months since last I addressed you. A major upheaval at home, a downturn in fortunes of a fiscal nature, a shitload of DIY and, to cap it all, I lost my funky Zippo lighter in the long grass on the field.<br />
<br />
<h3>
I chose a camouflage design Zippo. It looked lovely, but with hindsight the drawbacks should have been obvious.</h3>
<br />
Despite all the rigmarole, I've also managed to squeeze in one of what I have come to fondly call my <i>"little heart tickles"</i>. Imagine having your chest stamped on just once, but by an enormous ape's foot that immediately finds its peak pressure and keeps it applied.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Now, I'm not the world's most ticklish guy, but even I find these tickles debilitating.</h3>
<br />
This most recent tickle wasn't as bad as last. This time I was fit enough to sign a form saying I didn't want to be taken to hospital. Amidst the current turmoil a break would've been nice, but the closest hospital is many miles away and I knew that I didn't have the cash for extravagances such as bus fare home should I have been unfortunate enough to survive.<br />
<br />
Last time, scrawling my moniker on a disclaimer wasn't an option. As I was being driven away in the ambulance I was panicking and worrying about the post-me world. How would people cope?<br />
<br />
<h3>
Ha.</h3>
<br />
The day after that tickle, once back home and alone but for my faithful hounds, I thought some more about the painful experiences of the previous evening. What if? I gave it some serious consideration.<br />
<br />
Would anyone miss me? Would the world be a better or a worse place for my departure, or even for my having arrived in the first place? I drew deeply on the pipe my doctor has said I shouldn't draw on and gave the matter ever more consideration, eventually coming up with the answer.<br />
<br />
<h3>
I don't care.</h3>
<br />
Or, at least, I won't care. I'll be dead. Balls to 'em all.<br />
<br />
I have, over a number of years, developed for myself a <i>memory palace</i>. Initially just a technique to remember passwords, phone numbers and to-do lists (a now redundant technique given my over-reliance on the almighty Apple) it has evolved into something of great beauty that I can never share.<br />
<br />
In my mind's eye, doors from various locations in my past open up into others. If I imagine opening the gas cupboard in the council flat that I once loved and crawling through it I emerge from the cash-box door on the front of one of the fruit machines in the pub in which I grew up. The cellar door in that pub leads to a dark and familiarly scented staircase which, in turn, leads to my 'happy place', a garden by a brook with a bench beneath which my best dog snoozes.<br />
<br />
If I follow the brook upstream, my footsteps echoing as I pass underneath the hump backed bridge that forms part of the garden's boundary, the brook becomes a river and, when I emerge from the cool, moist air of the little tunnel I find myself walking along beside an enormous field, the sky above lilac and the wind rustling through and bending the long grass.<br />
<br />
In the centre of that field looms a giant version of the doll's house I bought for my granddaughter back in those long ago days when I was still the kind of man that did that kind of thing. Dark and forbidding beneath the heavy, stormy clouds that constantly roll overhead, tattered curtains flap from within the glassless windows while the flimsy plastic door swings open before slamming shut with a regularity that's almost rhythmical.<br />
<h3>
<br />It looks dark in the doll's house. </h3>
<br />
I don't know what possessed me to add this last feature, let alone the scarecrow in yellow sou'wester that stares at me as I walk by the gate-less gate posts. I've remained too scared to investigate further, only ever seeing the house from the distance. Maybe one day I'll take a look.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Past the diabolical doll's house and around the bend, where the river magically morphs into a canal, I arrive at a barge. </h3>
<br />
My barge, in which I can travel to the pub for lunch or smoke a pipe and listen to the little clockwork radio (with integrated LED torch) I used to have in my camper van dwelling days and that now sits by the pot-bellied stove in the corner. When it rains in the real world and creates that familiar and soothing pitter-patter soundtrack on the windows I close my eyes and imagine they're beating their tattoo on the roof of the little, red barge. I like my barge.<br />
<br />
The barge is moored at the bottom of my garden. A beautiful garden that leads up to the beautiful house that is my dream home. A fantasy dwelling into which I've put an enormous amount of work and detail and in which pipe smoking is never allowed.<br />
<br />
<h3>
(Unless I'm in the high backed, green, leather armchair that sits by the crackling fire in my dusty, musty, study.)</h3>
<br />
There's a tree house in the front garden. As with the doll's house, I've never visited it, though it looks far less intimidating.<br />
<br />
Scattered throughout these locations are my memories and the equipment I need for the myriad of coping strategies I find necessary. In my beloved council flat the lists and phone numbers I need to remember are kept, usually short term. The pub I grew up in contains the things I loved. The meetings and partings, cherished memories and the things I mustn't forget.<br />
<br />
My garden is where I leave the things I don't want to remember, that I want to be free of. I sit on the bench and take the wooden cigar box that my father brought back from Portugal from beneath my seat. (Every time I visit, the box has been replaced) After slowly opening the heavy lid and breathing deep the exotic aroma I place whatever pain I've brought with me inside, clicking shut the lid and engaging the tiny, brass hook and eye. When I'm ready, I place the box in the clear, shallow water as it babbles by. I sit by my best dog, light my pipe and watch as the box floats away, ever faster around the bend and down the weir, taking my pain with it.<br />
<br />
<h3>
As for the doll's house, fuck knows what's in there.</h3>
<br />
The barge is my thinking place, the dream house my safety. I spend a lot of my time in the house, usually either cooking or watching a film in the jacuzzi.<br />
<br />
I've spent many years creating this micro-verse inside my head. I know every detail. I can't change anything for want of ruining it all. Laws of physics are observed. If I dream, I now dream of that life, not this.<br />
<br />
This time, with my heart tickly and with the sure and certain knowledge that I'd not give a shit about the outcome of this situation that was clearly out of my control, I went there. I heard the words of Patty, of the paramedic that was treating me and, I seem to remember, of a cat that happened on by (He seemed perturbed to find me lying on the pavement and wasn't particularly sympathetic to my situation) before I tuned into the other world and, safely ensconced in my own imagination, began tapping out my pipe bowl against the garishly painted watering can that sits on the stern of my barge. I wandered slowly up the garden path and said good afternoon to the tramp that I found breaking into my shed last winter and who I've agreed can now live there.<br />
<br />
<h3>
I feel like I should be more in control of my fantasies.</h3>
<br />
I went indoors and made beef stew and dumplings as some of those I've lost milled around. It was very pleasant, once I'd finally managed to disregard the sensation of that giant shoe threatening to invert my ribcage from another reality.<br />
<br />
It was an odd experience set amid an already tempestuous period and one that I didn't have much time to consider. Once back in this greyer reality I share with you, once my hands had stopped shaking enough to be able to pack a pipe with my granddad's favourite tobacco and once I could stand at the back door unaided by anything other than the door frame I set about trying to forget what had come earlier. It wasn't so difficult. Other matters of far greater importance than a dicky ticker were easily focussed upon at that time but now, during this relatively pain free period of calm I find myself enjoying, I've begun to wonder.<br />
<br />
Why didn't I struggle? Why did I actively try to control what might have been my last thoughts in such a way? Was I trying to construct my own afterlife? One's last moment on earth would seem as an eternity once passed. I'd have given myself that eternity in my own, personalised, perfect world had the tickle become something more.<br />
<br />
It's not that I have nothing to lose, (Have you seen my dogs? And I've got half a Twix in the fridge.) it's just the realisation that we can only lose anything whilst alive. You can lose nothing when you die, all you could have lost is already gone. It's those unfortunate folk that stay behind that lose something, but they get over it. Or they don't.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Either way, it'll not bother us if we're dead.</h3>
<br />
This week has provided me with a brace of epiphanies. The first being that a man with nothing to lose can't be hurt nor made less happy. This epiphany has caused me to snarl a lot more than before and to give fewer shits.<br />
<br />
And the second has been that Codeine is <i>BRILLIANT. </i>This epiphany has caused me to snigger a lot more than before and to take fewer shits.<br />
<br />
<h3>
It is also responsible for the disjointed blog entry you've just endured. Sorry about that.</h3>
<br />
I think I'm almost ready to make a detour through that long grass and pay a visit to the doll's house. It'll be okay, there's a torch on the barge, I'll take that with me.<br />
<br />
Maybe I'll find my lighter.<br />
<br />
Enjoy the little things.<br />
<br />
<br />
J2H.John Spaceyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01255146100519614173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3204866772552019066.post-60400140050265871222016-02-08T03:22:00.001-08:002016-02-08T12:20:18.710-08:00The black heart of Jimmy Greenteeth.Taken from the upcoming children's book, <i style="font-weight: bold;">Jimmy Greenteeth and the Magic Kettle, </i>by John Spacey.<br />
<br />
If walking through the woods that lie<br />
Beside the stinking river<br />
You feel a wind upon your neck<br />
That makes you gasp and shiver<br />
Run and run and run straight home<br />
And never look behind<br />
For if you pause to take a glance<br />
Pure evil you will find<br />
<br />
That breeze you feel, that's not the wind<br />
But the breath of something wicked<br />
An evil looking, crooked toothed fiend<br />
Watching from the thicket<br />
Dressed in clothes once fine but that<br />
Had now seen better days<br />
Hunting for his supper<br />
Of unloved waifs and strays<br />
<br />
He'll start by tearing out your tongue<br />
So you can scream no more<br />
Then drag you to his evil lair<br />
And fling you to the floor<br />
He'll feast upon your flesh and bones<br />
One piece at a time<br />
And laugh and sing and taunt you with<br />
His wicked, scary rhyme<br />
<br />
So, parents, if you value them<br />
Keep your sons and daughters<br />
Safe and sound and well away<br />
From those oily, stinking waters<br />
For evil like you've never known<br />
Dwells in the dark beneath<br />
The silvery light of the moon at night<br />
In the heart of Jimmy Greenteeth<br />
<br />
<i><b>Author unknown.</b></i>John Spaceyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01255146100519614173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3204866772552019066.post-39841038654785271502016-01-21T16:38:00.000-08:002016-01-21T16:38:04.625-08:00Mr. MacGuffin's road to nothing.If your life were a book, who would have written it? And if that book had a hero, would you be he?<br />
<br />
As a young man, as with all young men, I harboured great expectations that, one day, I'd be revealed as the hero of my own story. The adventures of my grandfathers (men unfortunate enough to have been born into an age when it was possible for an ordinary man to live or die as a hero and fortunate enough to fall into the former category) were still relatively recent history. I saw photos, read letters and enjoyed tales of derring-do while balanced upon the bouncing knees of my still-living ancestors, looking forward to the day when I'd have stories of my own to tell.<br />
<br />
I'd been born on the cusp of two decades, one of flower and one of dour, and so my teenage years played out before a back-drop of black ash furniture and Grolsch stoppered shoes.<br />
<br />
<h3>
The eighties were shit.</h3>
<br />
Chances for heroics in Thatcher's Britain being as thin on the ground as gruel in an orphans bowl, I eventually settled into my role as a bit part in a series of books written for others by authors I'd never have chosen to read.<br />
<br />
When finally I stumbled upon it during a period of abject poverty, the genre that suited me best turned out to be not action/adventure or eroticism (my preferred choices) but Dickensian. My role was neither that of romantic lead nor overcomer of perilous tribulations. I wasn't a love interest and I wasn't a baddie. I was just the chap leaving the pub who stumbled into the hero of the tale causing him to drop and lose some important plot device in the snow, thereby necessitating an intriguing series of events. I was the Maltese Falcon to someone else's Bogart and the suitcase stuffed with money in the trunk of a monochrome car, pushed into a lake by a motel owner with an Oedipus complex. I had to be in the tales, but only so the tales could be told. I wasn't important to, or even mentioned in, any climactic final chapters.<br />
<br />
As I grew into the role I'd been given I began to develop my character (I felt he should be a pipe-smoking wearer of increasingly bizarre millinery, as is befitting of a Victorian money lender or ruddy faced drunkard with a cough) and I began to enjoy it.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Many people have said that I put the <i>"Dick"</i> in <i>"Dickensian"</i>. </h3>
<br />
I began to feel at home just sitting on the sidelines and watching the delicately interwoven stories of others being written around me.<br />
<br />
Recently, as is if my life needed to be any more Dickensian, a street urchin joined my little band of minor characters. A waif, not quite stray, who has gatecrashed my life at the point where I'd come to think I could just shut the door and cease to give a shit.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Disappointingly, he's not an orphan with a surprising heritage. He's not even able to pick a pocket or two.</h3>
<br />
But he's learning fast.<br />
<br />
The urchin is, in fact, the spawn of Dickfingers and, until recently, he'd lived what I'd previously believed to be a lovely life a couple of hundred miles away with his father. I'd only spent a few weeks of the few years I've been putting up with his mother's shit in his company, at Christmas and such like, so my view of his happiness was skewed by the fact that he was generally in possession of a new bicycle or mobile phone. It's easy for a child to be happy when he's getting gifts in a house many miles from any problems.<br />
<br />
For one reason or another, though, he wasn't quite as happy as an eleven year old should be when he went home.<br />
<br />
One dark and stormy night things came to a head. His father, along with the obligatory wicked step-mother, were what could only be described as at the very tip of their tethers and, abracadabra, a snotty child with a suitcase and an appetite that has devastated my fridge turned up on the doorstep. Fittingly, it began to snow shortly after he'd plonked himself under a pile of dogs and commandeered the remote control.<br />
<br />
<h3>
All we now need is for him to befriend an escaped criminal, that'll pop a blob of icing on our Dickensian cake.</h3>
<br />
Initially for a weekend, then a week, then another weekend and, as is the current state of play, until some future time yet to be decided upon, my life changed from one of wandering around with my dogs and smoking the occasional pipe in front of the fire to one of wandering around with my dogs and a child and smoking the occasional pipe in my back yard. No great shakes, really. There's not a great deal of work being done, my being in the fortunate position of having to answer to no one means I'm playing the role of responsible adult for much of the time instead. I'm also eating a lot of sweets, to heroically save the little bugger's teeth and to starve the legion of tapeworms (that are plainly helping him to dispose of all my bacon) into submission.<br />
<br />
<h3>
It's fucking brilliant.</h3>
<br />
Still only a bit part, and one that will eventually end when the action moves to another location, but maybe I'll get my name in the credits.<br />
<br />
It turns out that although all kids want to grow to be heroes of one kind or another, most of them don't achieve it. To realise one's insignificance in the whole grand scheme of things takes some of the weight off our shoulders. We shouldn't fight our way to the top of the credits, the most that will achieve is cement our place as villain of the piece.<br />
<br />
Had I been able to write my life myself, my version would've been cram-packed with cowboys, dinosaurs, bionic limbs and a golden castle. I would travel everywhere by hovercraft and my best friend would be a threadbare Teddy bear by the name of "Mangy". I would never have been to school, I'd be employed as an astronaut and, right, now I'd be sat on my father's knee watching Bodie and Doyle kick arse as my mother makes choc ice and chips for tea.<br />
<h3>
<br />All well and good, but who'd have helped the urchin?</h3>
<br />
J2H.John Spaceyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01255146100519614173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3204866772552019066.post-89429625806891620192016-01-09T10:33:00.001-08:002016-01-09T10:33:06.250-08:00No hot ashes.For many children, their first day at "proper" school is the beginning of the most epic journey they'll ever take. Some kids can't wait to don those grey shorts or those ankle socks and slip into the ridiculously shiny shoes their parents took them to Clarks' for, to pass through those gates and into those dusty halls where they'll gain the brief freedom from the restraints placed upon their every move by their despotic parents.<br />
<br />
<h3>
But I dreaded it.</h3>
<br />
My father, the selfish bastard, had taught me to read and write long before I'd got anywhere near a school hymn book or desk. A patient man, he'd write down words for me to copy on Sunday mornings at the big, round kitchen table whilst my sister broke things and screached and my mother stood in the hallway chatting to her friends and occasionally shouting "shut up, I'm on the bloody phone".<br />
<br />
We would make up stories together, usually about cowboys or space-aliens, and he would transcribe our imaginings into words on paper, leaving space between the lines for me to copy the words he'd magically formed. Writing was a piece of piss.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUNf5gWufPtwwIQ4JG9UAQPDhjsXA9yKvbBqQnhqlUeQ5wr3-ilm6br0HC45g733_0uQzZ5Srp_h-mBDr0yGRBLxiA-rOIbwe5ztOd6RKm6HQvaY5OMeDO5FVSRWPr_OaNq-8zw_DGtTg/s1600/898fff574e24eaf8ae6d8803a832f27b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUNf5gWufPtwwIQ4JG9UAQPDhjsXA9yKvbBqQnhqlUeQ5wr3-ilm6br0HC45g733_0uQzZ5Srp_h-mBDr0yGRBLxiA-rOIbwe5ztOd6RKm6HQvaY5OMeDO5FVSRWPr_OaNq-8zw_DGtTg/s200/898fff574e24eaf8ae6d8803a832f27b.jpg" width="148" /></a></div>
Reading the written word I found to be a little more difficult, but I managed to perfect that too, thanks mainly to the comics he bought me. The Beano, the Dandy, Topper, Beezer and Victor. Tales of war, tales of naughty schoolboys, of a huge cowboy with a penchant for red meat and a myriad more fantastical things.<br />
<br />
On the eve of my first day at 'proper' school my father found me hiding in our dustbin, with a torch, my teddy bear "Mangy" and a (by then empty) box of Farley's rusks that had previously been bought to placate my constantly bawling sister, liberated from the top shelf of the larder.<br />
<br />
<h3>
I stole those delicious little rusks at every opportunity, and there were many opportunities. It was the early 1970s and my mother thought nothing of shouting "I'm nipping to the shop, watch your sister" to her four year old son as she disappeared out of the door.</h3>
<br />
These brief spells free of parental guidance and control gave me a window of time just long enough to drag a dining chair to the shelves and clamber up, never stealing more than a couple and only ever from an already opened box so as to ensure my theft remained undiscovered and a new, potentially more difficult to reach, hiding place wouldn't be found and used and require new circumvention.<br />
<br />
I'd been hidden in there for what, to me, seemed like days but was probably no more than twenty minutes. My father lifted the lid and deposited a bin bag on me before he noticed.<br />
<br />
"What are you doing in there, son?" He smiled down at me with a look of confusion on his face.<br />
<br />
"Practising my reading, dad."<br />
<br />
"In the dark?"<br />
<br />
I smiled as I clicked on the torch, pleased with myself for my quick wits and silver tongue.<br />
<br />
"Oh, okay, what were you reading?"<br />
<br />
I panicked as he lifted me out of that stinking, plastic tub. I'd not for one second expected a follow-up question. I looked around.<br />
<br />
"That." I said, pointing at the little label on the inside of the bin's lid.<br />
<br />
<h3>
He didn't believe me, even when I correctly deciphered the legend. He knew exactly what his five year old prodigy was doing hidden in a waste bin with the toy he'd owned since the day he was born and a (by now empty) box of his sister's rusks on the evening before his education was set to commence. </h3>
<br />
He took me inside and we sat at the kitchen table. Then he had brought me my favourite comic and, as I began to flick through, he put a plate stacked high with rusks and a big glass of Vimto in front of me.<br />
<br />
"So what's up?" He didn't look at me as he asked, he just unfolded his newspaper and began reading. It's easier to open up to your dad when he's reading the back page of his evening paper, so I came clean.<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOhhpvHSo-fqaM60sr231tB80gdgp9hcxIeCgiuujWnQ-V0r1AkLFZ9Y0vAlg61-BYsicIlRkZO65akg69EIJvvrksizoqPeej2V-n36AcncsBbD5DUHKtrgZiRoqWCDp0puRpvN7z6Fw/s1600/laun.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="149" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOhhpvHSo-fqaM60sr231tB80gdgp9hcxIeCgiuujWnQ-V0r1AkLFZ9Y0vAlg61-BYsicIlRkZO65akg69EIJvvrksizoqPeej2V-n36AcncsBbD5DUHKtrgZiRoqWCDp0puRpvN7z6Fw/s200/laun.jpg" width="200" /></a>"I don't want to go to school" I replied from behind my new, purple, Vimto 'tache.<br />
<br />
"Oh, right." He paused a moment as he turned the page. "Why's that, then?"<br />
<br />
I opened my comic to the centre pages and turned it to face him.<br />
<br />
"I don't want to be caned for being naughty" I said as he smiled at the colourful images I'd shown him.<br />
<br />
"The Bash Street Kids?" He laughed. "Son, that's not real. It's just a comic."<br />
<br />
"But I saw a program on the telly..."<br />
<br />
"That's not real either" He said as he licked a thumb and turned a page, "And stop picking your nose".<br />
<br />
My dad explained that those tales were fantasy, like the tales we'd written together at the very table I was dropping crumbs on. The creators of my early literature were liars, the lot of them. Comic book artists and the heroes of my favourite TV shows had mislead me terribly. Not only would I not be caned but, my father promised, I'd also not be going to war, fighting off savage red-skins or flying to the moon.<br />
<br />
I never did get caned (though I was walloped by a PE teacher, given the slipper by a woodwork teacher, winded with a vicious prod from a headmistress and dragged by my hair away from a fight by a dinner lady) but, all the same, I hated school.<br />
<br />
<h3>
My taste in comic books matured as I grew from a snotty nosed five year old newbie into a confident and strutting eight year old with a snotty nose. I now read of heroic, square jawed Americans with the ability to don Lycra and fight crime, of alternate realities and of evil, megalomaniac villains.</h3>
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2ITOMqNqpsIBtU1D2oqquEiYbAaPfOEVxnH9Nic4wlA4HiOXezN6ZUaydSFAtCpAObDip1MCh7qUwunG2q_-9j83cTb07gvoQdEL8qSPJxBcADIPM2P8Br9CWvTL2DnrU2l0_oQNgHr4/s1600/Space+Dust+popping+candy.jpg.opt216x345o0%252C0s216x345.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2ITOMqNqpsIBtU1D2oqquEiYbAaPfOEVxnH9Nic4wlA4HiOXezN6ZUaydSFAtCpAObDip1MCh7qUwunG2q_-9j83cTb07gvoQdEL8qSPJxBcADIPM2P8Br9CWvTL2DnrU2l0_oQNgHr4/s200/Space+Dust+popping+candy.jpg.opt216x345o0%252C0s216x345.jpg" width="125" /></a>Most mornings I would walk to school alone, a coin in my pocket to spend at the healthy tuck shop at break time. Not being a fan of apples, crackers or bottles of panda pop I would, along with a couple of friends that always met me at the subway where we could safely pass underneath the dual carriageway, pop into the paper shop next to our school and buy packets of Space Dust or bags of Golden Wonder Cheese & Onion instead.<br />
<br />
One morning early in 1977 my friends and I made our usual, brief detour. The owner of the newsagents, Frank (Or "Fat Frank" as all the local kids knew him), was using a flick knife to cut the bands that held the bundles of newspapers and magazines he'd had delivered.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghst-aSJ38Es6g8iffKAZhjLlJrF3iCCc3dL05zkZyfuFflvmVSuwJOlrQY4usaCunDJcOG7arxiGDgdx4RD3pzuTaNH4rKRFMtni7e_FbGKFEj0XBB1eI_ARJ5CYE_mRLGHBT1jadbG8/s1600/250px-2000AD_First_Edition.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghst-aSJ38Es6g8iffKAZhjLlJrF3iCCc3dL05zkZyfuFflvmVSuwJOlrQY4usaCunDJcOG7arxiGDgdx4RD3pzuTaNH4rKRFMtni7e_FbGKFEj0XBB1eI_ARJ5CYE_mRLGHBT1jadbG8/s200/250px-2000AD_First_Edition.png" width="148" /></a>"You like comics," He said as I gazed at the confectionery, "have you seen this one?"<br />
<br />
He held up the first issue of a new publication. Only eight pence and with a free toy, a "Space Spinner". I've always been a sucker for a free Space Spinner and so, having quickly done the Maths and replaced the packet of fruit Polos I'd already selected, I bought it.<br />
<br />
It was a windy day in February. The Space Spinner had, on it's maiden flight, been diverted from the trajectory I'd intended (the target being the back of my mate's head) and carried by the wind back across the East Lancs' Road where it landed gracefully in the playground of the High School that sat on the other side. No doubt some older and luckier child found it. I was gutted. Until I read the comic.<br />
<br />
It was a British publication and, unusually, every bit as good as those imported comics with the tantalising adverts in the back for X-ray specs, stink bombs and hovercrafts that were, annoyingly, only available to American readers.<br />
<br />
I loved it. Stories of cyborgs, of futuristic, fascist police men, great floods and natural disasters caused by man's mistreatment of his environment. Some stories told of a Britain plunged into civil war or of society breaking down and lawlessness taking over. In some tales the rich lived in magnificent, walled communities and employed security guards to keep them safe from the desperate, hungry masses. Poorer people lived insular lives in tower blocks, wars were fought over scarce resources, television was God.<br />
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Machines designed and built better versions of themselves, negating the need for human life. Cars drove themselves, men lived on space stations, most folk were obese, people communicated by video, smoking was banned in all public places and plastic surgery was as normal as nipping to the hairdressers. Mutants, the result of the Strontium 90 deposited on the UK by the atomic bomb blasts of the recently fought Third World War, were shunned and feared by their own neighbours. These "others" eventually left their own country, travelling to foreign lands and alien worlds before, eventually, returning to wage war on those they saw as their oppressors.<br />
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Every one of those brightly illustrated tales pointed toward a dark, and not too distant, future. The weak persecuted, the good lambasted, the evil in charge. Orwellian stories of a world in which man struggled to survive, in which cruelty and danger were everyday problems, twisted realities painting a future to fear. A future of scorched landscapes and of cities ablaze, the smoke of the fires carrying the cinders of our brothers and sisters away from their suffering and into our lungs.<br />
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It's a good job they're just comics, that there aren't really any fascist police officers, that our people don't really live on one side or the other, that we don't fear those different to ourselves and no hot ashes are choking our children.<br />
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Can you imagine if any of that shit came to pass?<br />
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J2H.John Spaceyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01255146100519614173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3204866772552019066.post-394537200997118922015-12-12T17:12:00.000-08:002015-12-14T13:43:56.038-08:00The second, annual, fast becoming traditional, J2H Christmas special.<h3>
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As with last years offering, it's not for the little ones.</div>
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Plenty of sweary fucking words and some Nazis.</div>
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Merry Christmas my arse, I pray God it's my last.</div>
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#BUMHUG.</div>
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