It's not a valid defence in law, you know?

I grew up in a time when bad news was hard to come by. As a child, with my education well underway, I existed in a world where, once I'd clunked my clunky way through the shiny, black gates at the end of the drive, laid my bicycle on its side (Being careful to lay it on it's left side to prevent any damage being done to the Sturmey Archer gear hub) and fastened the gate behind me so as not to be followed by the family dog, I was "off the grid". If, whilst I was busy in the park building a den, damming the stream to catch sticklebacks or booting a ball around, my granddad died or our house burnt down I would continue building, damming and booting with a snotty smile on my face until home time, my fun uninterrupted by the selfish deaths of aging relatives or the destruction of my family home. Ultimately short lived but blissful, ignorance in the age of innocence.

Of course, sooner or later the bad news got through, but by then the fun had been had, the dens and dams built and the balls booted and booted until eventually ending up stuck in a tree, popped by the guy with the garden fork on the allotment or, on one occasion following an explosion of glass and the clarion call of "LEG IT", on the rug in Naggy Harris' front room. Once fun's been had, it's had. Receiving the worst news you can possible imagine upon returning home hungry, happy and with twigs stuck in your 1970s David Essex curls can't strip you of the laughter and smiles you've already laughed and smiled, although maybe they get put to the back of your mind until the pain has faded.

It wasn't just us street urchins that had to wait for bad news either. Way back in those heady days of my youth, while my father still worked at the timber yard and before he bought the pub that ensured he was always on hand to deal out punishments, the phrase "just you wait until your dad gets home, you little bastard" was bandied about with unnerving regularity. My father would leave for work at the crack of dawn, before my sister or I were awake, spend his day toiling away by the bank's of the ship canal and then make his weary way home without once hearing of the multitude of misdemeanors his mini-me had made. Generally, what with all the overtime he was forced to do to keep the roof over our heads, he'd not get home until his kids were in bed and his wife had forgotten about the phone call from Naggy Harris or the stink bomb that had gone off in his son's pocket whilst sat at the dining table, the bad news he was due becoming, with a little distance, not worth mentioning, mainly forgotten and not imparted. The trials and tribulations of my mother's day fading into memories that, maybe one day, would become nothing more than funny stories told to embarrass her son with when introduced to every new girlfriend the poor boy would ever get. The cow.

Then the end of the age of innocence snuck up on me. My birthday falling in early September, I was one of the first of my group of friends to pass my driving test and have a car, a beautiful, beige MKII Escort. One evening I found myself in a rather swish bar on the newly developed Salford Quays. As I sat, feet dangling from the ridiculously high stool I was perched on and gazing out at the ship canal on which my father worked before the posh people had moved in, my friend Andy arrived. Unusually for Andy, he was wearing a suit. Not his own suit, it was quite apparent he'd borrowed it from his father, a man a good six inches shorter than himself, and the half mast, flapping turn-ups of the trousers revealed not only his mismatched Playboy socks but a good half inch of hairy leg. Normally, I'd have latched onto this wardrobe disaster and mercilessly taken the piss, however this evening he carried with him a curious and intriguing device. It appeared to be a car battery inside a suitcase and with a telephone handset perched atop. He was sweating profusely, having carried this portable, but bloody heavy, device from the office of the company that, as of this evening, employed him and the establishment in which we'd arranged to meet. He heaved the device onto the tall, round table, narrowly missing my pint of lime and soda in the process (I'd given up drinking as soon as I passed my driving test, preferring to wow the chicks with wheels rather than fail to impress with drunken shenanigans) and sat opposite me with a grunt.

Andy, having recently been given the boot from the chicken counter at the local Tesco, had made a dramatic career choice and was now salesman for a telecommunications company selling their space-age, and to me almost magical, mobile telephones. The device that now sat before me, in a puddle of lime and soda since, for some reason, those trendy wine bars that popped up all over the place in the 1980s refused to furnish their patrons with beer mats, hummed as it intrigued.

Andy and I spent much of the rest of that evening driving around Salford and Stretford, parking outside our friends houses, looking up our friends phone numbers in the diary I carried with me and calling them.

"Hiya Shirley, it's John. Ask me where I am."

"Hiya John, where are you?"

"Look out of your window."

We'd watch for the twitch of the net curtains, wave frantically with maniacal grins plastered across out faces, blast the horn and wheel spin away. I felt like James Bond.

A few years later, now married with children and still at the tail end of the age of innocence, I found myself working as a jobbing builder. I'd managed to get contracts with a number of care homes through "contacts" in the pub. Each night I would call in to the pub and be given a list of jobs that needed doing, but getting hold of me through the day if an emergency cropped up was difficult.

And so it came to pass that I purchased my first ever mobile phone.

Unlike Andy's miraculous device, this was a Motorola Personal Phone, a mobile phone so small it could be carried in your pocket, so long as you were wearing cargo pants and didn't mind having a bruised thigh. It had buttons rather than a dial and a skinny, plastic, retractable aerial, ideal for chewing when pensive or cleaning ears, usually also while pensive. It was the beginning of the end.

I pulled up outside my house with my new acquisition lay on the passenger seat. I picked it up and dialled.

"Hello."

"Hiya son, ask me where I am."

"Where are you dad?"

"Look out of the window."

I watched for the twitch of the net curtains and waved frantically at my son, peering confused from within, with a maniacal grin plastered across my face as I blasted the horn. James bloody Bond.

Now my days were busier and far more fiscally rewarding. On call, always available in an emergency and with a very reasonable call out fee, I wondered how I'd ever lived without such a device.

But there were drawbacks.

No more could my wife defer punishment for whichever misdemeanor my own mini-me had perpetrated until his dad got home, more often than not calming down before then and forgetting all about it. Now, no matter how insignificant a felony he had committed, his father could be phoned and could provide, remotely, a suitable scolding.

That phone came and that phone went, to be replaced by another phone. And another. And another. It's pushing thirty years since first I phoned a friend from a Ford, since I wondered at the brave, new world that this incredible invention seemed to be opening up, and in that time I've become more and more reliant on the little box of inedible chips that I carry with me.

No longer can the box of chips really be called a phone. Where once the pinnacle of mobile phone technology came with an alarm clock and a ridiculously basic but highly addictive game to while away potty time on it, nowadays your mobile phone is better described as a portable computer that fits in your pocket and doesn't bruise your thigh, with a phone on it. The advent of this miracle of modern day marvels has brought with it an end to the ignorance of fathers all over the world. No more brief respite from the role of the parent to be scared of, no more are we just an idle threat of a vague punishment that may or may not come to pass, now paternal admonishments are "on tap". Now, daddy can be just as angry at his offspring as their mother is, whenever their mother is. The age of innocence and of ignorance is no more.

Ever contactable by anyone we share those eleven digits with, whenever it's convenient for them to call and whether or not it's convenient to be called. On the lavatory, paying for your groceries or in mid conversation, that incessant, repetitive, relentless beep of our phones is enough to force us to answer, dropping change at the checkout, hushing the person conversing with us or desperately clenching our buttocks for fear of an audible "plop" or "ffffffffrrrt" noise being converted into digits and resonating remotely in our mothers lounge or bosses office.

And, should we refuse to answer our flashing phones, there are text messages. And emails. iMessages, KIK, twitter, facebook, a myriad of methods to make sure you can't claim "I didn't know". You have to read the messages because even if you don't the sender will still think you did, still be angry if you don't respond, still claim they told you when, technically, they bloody didn't. No more ignorance sounds like a good thing, but there's an awful lot of that shit you could do without knowing.

This week, my contract on my phone came to an end. For the first time ever I managed to get to the end of a whole contract without breaking the phone I received for signing up. No scratches on the screen, no dents in the case, no loose buttons. A perfectly serviceable iPhone 5. So off I went to the to a local branch of a major phone shop intending to walk out with the same phone in my pocket that I walked in with, but with a greatly reduced monthly charge. During negotiations it came to light that not only could I have a vastly reduced bill for a greatly improved service I could also, for no extra charge or work, walk out of the shop with a brand new, shiny, gold iPhone 6. I didn't want the new phone, but I'd have been a fool not to take it.

So I spent last night playing with the new phone, to all intents and purposes a slightly lighter and larger version of the one I already had. Downloads downloaded, updates updated and restore restored I settled down to read a book, on my phone. Something I've never done before but, given the now larger display in my pocket, I thought I'd try. It wasn't an unpleasant experience but, being a lover of actual, physical, warm, musty, papery books it's not one I'll be repeating often.

This morning I left the house. As ever, I went through the routine of checking my pockets in order and ensuring I had everything I like to have with me with me. Keys, wallet, spectacles, a can of dog deterrent to fend off the feral Staffies that roam Horwich and, most importantly, my phone. My day was already well underway before I realised that I'd picked up my perfectly good old phone rather than my perfectly similar but a little bit larger new phone. What's more, last night as I was updating the newer model I scrubbed clean the memory of the old and so I was bereft of podcast to listen too, of Twitter to while away minutes and of any way of telling the time. It felt like I'd lost a leg.

Strangely, the only thing I wasn't sorry to not have with me was the ability to be contacted by anyone.

Sitting at a bus stop I noticed that, even though I knew the phone in my hand was redundant, I couldn't help but keep glancing at it and clicking the little button on the top. I was bored, terribly bored, and I longed for my wireless connection with the world. Looking around me I noticed everyone else at the bus stop had their own phones in their own hands, staring at their own little screens and tapping away at their own little buttons, sometimes smiling, sometimes not. All stood within a few metres of each other, all conversing with people near and far, passing the time with people that were absent when all around people were present. People that they may never see again, right there, right then, available and, just like them, eager to converse with someone. Bloody ignorant, some people.

I stared out of the window of the bus as we chugged along Chorley New Road, watching the texters text and the tweeters tweet as they shuffled along the pavements, and traveled the few miles to the supermarket.

Basket in hand I weaved my way through the other shoppers, occasionally selecting an own-brand item from a shelf and doing a bit of mental arithmetic so as to ensure no embarrassment at the checkout. Suddenly, a young lady came around the corner and began making her way up the aisle in which I stood. Head down and tapping away at the keys of the phone in her hand, she was on a collision course with me. I was sandwiched between a stack of boxes on a pallet truck to my right, a pensioner with a trolley to my rear and some semi-skimmed milk to my left. The only way to avoid a collision was to leap up high, grab hold of the "This Week's Specials" sign that hung above my head and swing to safety into aisle six where, if the owner of the tinny voice on the tannoy where to be believed, there had been a spillage a little earlier.

Of course, I'm not bloody Spiderman, so I was forced to brace for impact.

She walked straight into me, phone first, and immediately muttered an apology. I was looking right at her face when the impact occurred. Not even for the briefest moment, not even whilst apologising, did her gaze leave the messages on the screen before her. She took a pace or two back and then, still without tearing her attention from her phone and plainly imagining that everyone around her knew how important her messaging was, walked into me again. Again, an apology and again no glance from the screen.

When she struck me for the third time she realised something was amiss. She looked up, an angry expression on her face, and glanced around desperately for someone to vent her fury on. She saw she couldn't get through the way she'd intended and so angrily span on her heels to find another way through. Unfortunately, another young lady, possibly engrossed in a Twitter spat, was coming up behind young lady number one. Their phones clashed together, tumbling from their respective owner's grips and falling to the floor. Both young ladies were, obviously, very upset by this unexpected turn of events and a particularly loud argument followed during which, it emerged, both thought the other to be an ignorant bastard.

The new-fangled phones that had brought an end to the age of ignorance have now, a few short decades later, brought forth a new age of ignorance.

No need to converse with, interact with or even acknowledge those around us. No need to form new, real life, flesh and blood friendships with the people we encounter every day. Now we can happily take our own little bubble of ignorance outside with us and enjoy it 24/7. That in itself is by no means the greatest gift science has bestowed upon the modern world...

...but at least now we can let our children know their granddad is dead via WhatsApp.

J2H.

I'm sure Tracey's lovely, really.

My first friend had no name.

He was a drawing I'd done, in blue crayon. An alien spaceman with tall, domed, glass helmet, a squiggly smile and six fingers, unequal in length. At some point he'd come to life and taken to following me around the house never speaking. The only clue to his identity was the big "A" crayoned on his chest. I was three years old, so maybe the "A" had been put there because it was the letter I'd learn't to write first and had practiced the most, who knows?

At first, I believed my imaginary friend was pretty cool, but his lack of speech stunted the deepening of any relationship we might have built up. Eventually, he started freaking me out. The way he'd sit on the stool in the corner of my bedroom wiggling his ribbon like fingers at me when I was trying to sleep, how he'd stand a little too close, behind me, whilst I peed combined with his unnatural fascination around dead animals and matches made me uneasy, but he had no one else and so I put up with him.

I was aware he wasn't real, or at least that he wasn't real to everyone else. I could see him but no one else could. I'd try to enter every room last so I could hold the door open for a second while he slipped through unseen, he couldn't operate a door handle since he wasn't actually real. We had a door of dimpled glass between our front room and the hallway and so, if I'd not managed to smuggle him in, I could see him, even more distorted and wiggly, through the textured glass, flailing his arms, fluttering his fingers and getting angrier and angrier. Of course, I couldn't let him in, my parents would think me crazy and so I'd sit, fidgeting, trying desperately to come up with an excuse to walk across the room and briefly open the door to allow him entry. I never did come up with a plan but, fidgety as I was, my mother would always send me to "try and use the bloody toilet". Problem solved.

On many occasions I tried to devise plans to give my increasingly unnerving friend the slip. I knew he couldn't be killed, he was a crayon drawing for goodness sake, how do you kill a crayon drawing? I tried leaving him at the shops, but he figured out all he need do was stick close to whichever grown up I was with and I'd not get far. I dug a grave in the back garden to bury him alive in, but my mum made me go to a doctor. I racked my brains for some Machiavellian plan. I considered traps comprising of nooses and nets like those I'd seen on Tarzan. Mum confiscated the nooses and made me see the doctor again.

I tried hiding. I hid in the dustbin. I still remember the look on my fathers face as he raised the lid and saw his three year old son curled up in the bottom hissing "shush" at him with a finger over his lips. Dad wasn't one for doctors, he dragged me out, slapped my arse and told my mum. Who took me to the doctor.

Then, when all was lost and I'd accepted that I'd have a wiggly space alien at my wedding, my family moved house. I remember driving away from our old home, surreptitiously waving goodbye to my wiggly friend as he stood in the bay window of the living room I'd locked him in waving goodbye right back at me. I began to wonder if I'd miss him, whether I should have brought him with us and a mild panic set in. Was I making a mistake? Then, dad turned on the radio in the little car and I became lost in lyrics regarding a chaps regret over causing his Sugar Baby Love to be blue. Problem solved.

We'd moved from a main road to a quiet, little cul-de-sac that my parents deemed safe enough for a four year old boy to play out on unsupervised. Many of the other houses on the street had families with children living in them and so, within a few short hours of arriving, I had enough non-crayoned friends to ensure the silent attentions of the wiggly alien were soon pushed to the back of my mind, whereupon they became memories, memories that remained mainly unvisited.

A little over a year ago I felt a bit poorly. After a while I felt a bit poorlier still and then, at some point late in the evening, I became really rather poorly indeed. I've no real notion of the passage of time in the period that followed, I'm by no means a wimp and have always had a particularly high pain threshold but the pain I suffered that night was unlike any pain I'd previously experienced. Maybe my pain threshold isn't actually as high as I'd imagined, it was just that I'd not experienced real pain before that night. Who knows? Although, the damn good kickings and the spectacular motorcycle accidents I've had would indicate that I'm very well acquainted with the sensation.

I writhed around on the floor, a pain in my chest that blurred every sense I had. The world looked wobbly and sounded like it was under water. I was aware of DickFingers, sat on the settee talking on the phone. I remember thinking "why isn't she helping", unaware she was on the phone to the Ambulance service, and then tweeting about it. By now I was beginning to feel really rather sorry for myself, then, at some point soon after, I became aware of the attentions of the paramedics who gave me the most deliciously sour drink that dulled the pain just enough to bring me back to the world around me.

I was taken from this house, via ambulance, to the not-so-local hospital. As I climbed into the back of the big, yellow, emergency bus parked around the corner I looked around. I became aware that there was, given that my already dicky heart had just suffered and "Unexplained Cardiac Event", a possibility I would never see this street on which I lived again. It was dark, cold and rainy. Some of the bins in the back entry had been kicked over again, their contents spreading out onto the road where a rat tugged at a disposed of disposable nappy. The street art on the gable end wall reminded me that "Tracey is a slag" and to "fuck you lol". I wondered if I'd miss it.

All things considered, I decided I'd not.

Later, having been prodded, poked, jabbed and stabbed long enough for the doctors to confidently assume I wasn't quite ready to die, I left the hospital. There was some discussion among the staff as to whether I should be allowed to but I'd made my mind up. DickFingers was going away the following day so who would walk my dogs? I signed a form, collected a prescription and phoned a taxi.

I don't know if it's a peculiar condition, but at certain times in my life I've experienced events from a third person perspective as if I'm watching a film, complete with soundtrack. The journey home during the early hours of a Sunday morning, alone in the back of a sickeningly sweet smelling mini-cab, was, to me, a very eighties affair. Slow jazz playing, my clammy forehead resting gently against the glass of the little back window as raindrops rolled down the other side of the pane, the world lit in shades of soft amber that radiated from the fog wrapped lamp posts as I sped through streets populated with burglars, prostitutes and other general miscreants

As we slowed down to turn into a junction, cheap brake pads squealing and echoing back off the shuttering ply that separated the derelict pub to my left from the rest of the town, I saw the street I thought earlier I'd not miss swinging into view. The sight of the derogatory graffiti, the rodent-shredded infant sanitary products and the crumbling tarmac dragged my attention away from my atmospheric, rain slick, eighties view and dumped me in the atmospheric, rain slick now, and I smiled. I hadn't missed it, but I was glad to be seeing it again. It meant I was home and, more importantly, not even a little bit dead.

I was still what I can only describe as "off my tits" on those delicious painkillers they'd been kind enough to feed me in hospital, so this part might not have actually happened, but as I pushed the door shut on the taxi in readiness for the last few metres of my triumphant, non-dead return journey I noticed the song that had been playing on the radio, the song my imaginary slow jazz had been obscuring, a song that was all about a chaps regret over causing his Sugar Baby Love to be blue. I saw, in the rear window of the departing taxi and waving a wiggly wave my wiggly, blue friend, having not thought about him in decades, and I smiled. If that song was playing, then it was a coincidence that it should be playing at two points in my life during which I'd been wondering such similar wonders, but even a coincidence is as wondrous as any spooky notion of fate, karma or messages from the Universe itself. A lot of work goes into a coincidence. Since the "P" of the "Pop" of the "B" of the "Big Bang" the atoms of the Universe have been speeding their way through the space into which they've been released, clumping together here and there and making "stuff". Loads of "stuff", filling the space with "stuff". All those millennium, bouncing off one and other, ricocheting around the cosmos and, as a result of this process, briefly coming together to make the instant that is the instant we're in, to make for that brief moment the vast majesty that is everything in that one, unique, never to be seen again work of art. Some of this wonderful tapestry woven around us is incredibly beautiful. Mountains, stars, birds, spiral galaxies and mycelium. Some, less beautiful and some others totally uninspiring and instantly forgettable. But each as important as the others, nonetheless.

I'd been right when I'd decided I wouldn't miss my friend. He wasn't important, at least not since he'd been forgotten. He happened though, once, when there was nothing else more important. A short, meaningless, unimportant and empty period in my existence into which life had rushed like atoms into a vast, empty void. He represented a time when I couldn't play outside my house and had no friends, a sad time maybe, but a time that was then. The only reason I know I was missing out when I had no friends back then is because I've had some since, and maybe it's that automatic connection that makes us smile. A negative experience that made appreciation of the positive yet to come possible.

All those bits in between, those bits that you know you won't miss, those bits are as important as the other bits. It's right, you probably won't ever miss them, you won't miss the cat that sits and licks his balls in the window of that house you walk past every day or the broken inspection panel on the lamppost outside the off licence, you'll not miss the way your front door feels when it clicks shut or the way your significant other does that thing that really gets your goat. But give it time. Give it enough time and it'll become a memory you're free to forget. Maybe you'll never revisit many of things you don't miss but did, but occasionally you will. And no matter how meaningless a thing that thing you don't miss but did is, I bet you smile. Smile by association. Smile at all those other things you do miss that led up to and came from that punctured Pampers or that wiggly alien behind the dimpled glass.

Once there's enough distance between the period in the past and the instant you're in, the simplest, most unattractive, most mundane thing can become the most poignant, can bring forth the most surprising smile and can reveal itself as the catalyst for the more important things that came since. A divider in the office filing cabinet drawer of life.

A tune and a wall with some fading graffiti together with the recent memory of a minor heart attack had reminded me of a disturbing psychological event from my early years and caused me to smile. To smile thinking about my younger self during that stage in his life where, if his father hadn't done a shitload of overtime and saved up for a better house, he might have grown up with an increasingly malevolent delusion following him around. I don't miss almost becoming insane, but I am glad I once was. I don't miss the gable end wall on the corner of our street, but I'm now always happy to see it waiting as I traipse home from the supermarket, it's dirty brickwork silently reminding me I'm nearly home and still not dead..

All those terrible, shortsighted, romantic choices you've made that ended in tears were leading you here to this, your happy contentment. Unless, of course, you're neither happy nor content, in which case you're in the midst of one of those periods you won't miss. Just do your best to make sure you get the chance to not miss it and maybe one day, wrapped in an NHS blanket and wondering who will walk the dogs if you die, it'll be no more than the empty space into which the great life you've had since exploded.

Don't let the things you wont miss be all you can remember. Fill the space.

J2H.

Ending.

No kiss on the cheek before walking away

No hug of farewell, no words left to say

She'd wanted to hold him and never let go

To tell him she's sorry and loves him, but no

He'd stared straight ahead as she'd shut the car door

And driven away without a word more

She turned and she wiped some grit from her eye

While the moon up above saw straight through her lie

He fumbled his way back in through the door

The same door they'd left through an hour before

The cold and the crisp and the wintry sun

Had taken a bow now the night had begun

He tore off his gloves and his hat and his scarf

And sat in his seat with his feet by the hearth

Then gazed at the place where, an hour before

She'd sat her last sit and would sit there no more

He stared at the window but couldn't see past

The velvety night pressed against the cold glass

He watched as the raindrops rolled down the pane

And winced as he felt the tears building again

Threatening to spill and to roll down his cheek

He opted to snarl, to hide he was weak

He breathed deep and curled up while, high in the sky

The moon up above saw straight through his lie

Her train made good time but she'd noticed not

The passage of time or the tight, little knot

That dwelt deep inside her and prodded and poked

That niggled and fizzled, made her wish she still smoked

That thing she ignored, that she'd not give a name

The tight, little knot remained there just the same

Just one change to make on her long journey west

To a life she'd once had with her make-up a mess

He sat in his seat whilst his mind was elsewhere

He floundered and wallowed in morbid despair

He tried hard to focus on all that was bad

For fear that the good thoughts would make him feel sad

He thought of the sulking and fighting and tears

Getting more frequent with passage of years

He thought that he hated her, hoped that she'd die

Though the moon up above saw straight through that lie

Time to kill, time to dwell, time to try not to think

As she sat in the cafe not drinking her drink

She fumbled about in her purse for her phone

And looked at the screen and she let out a groan

Zero missed calls, no message unread

All he'd to say he'd plainly now said

She was glad he'd not called, she wasn't surprised

But the moon up above saw straight through her lies

A man is a man and a man will be man

So he went to the fridge and cracked open a can

Then slipped on his slippers and flopped himself down

Flicking through channels and wearing a frown

Hunger! That's it, that's the pain in his belly

He picked up his phone and he turned off his telly

He'd order a curry be brought to his door

Then drink enough beer so he'd miss her no more

The screen on his phone faded from black

To reveal that face staring straight back

The face of a woman now far, far away

He'd change that bloody picture, though just not today

Zero missed calls, no message unread

All she'd to say she'd plainly now said

He'd delete her tomorrow, from phone and life too

But the moon up above knew that that wasn't true

Each side of the platform, a train on each track

One taking her forward and one going back

To the life she'd messed up and the man that she'd hurt

She took a deep breath and she straightened her skirt

She shook her head clear, her choice had been made

The pain and the hurt would eventually fade

She'd spoiled it all now but she would remain strong

Though the moon up above knew, in this, she was wrong

Nothing on telly, he grabbed the remote

As the voice on the box urged him to vote

For whichever of the singers had hurt his ears least

He clicked the red button to make the voice cease

Then he looked once again at the face on the phone

And hoped that he'd make it now he was alone

He'd be fine, he was sure, no need to worry

"It'll all be alright. Now, where's my curry?"

She stepped from the train, there was no turning back

And set off with her suitcase that clickety-clacked

As it rolled and it bounced along right behind

The hurrying woman with taxi to find

She shook her head clear, her choice had been made

But it wasn't her choice, if it were she'd have stayed

Curled up in a ball on the seat right beside

The man she'd betrayed, and she finally cried

He stood by the door to the little back yard

Smoking and drinking and trying so hard

To think about nothing, to breathe and relax

To think of the future, not dwell on the past

If only he'd known the last kiss that they'd had

Before his whole world had turned out so bad

Was the last kiss forever and soon she'd be gone

He'd still hold her tight and the kiss would go on

The taxi pulled up at the end of the street

The street from the past that now greeted her feet

She counted the coins into the chubby hand

Of the driver who'd driven, who'd chatted and

Had told her a story all about how

A football team had wowed a crowd

She thanked him and turned, took a mirror from her purse

Glanced at herself, she'd never looked worse

He could hold it no longer, that last beer wanted out

So he'd nipped to the toilet at just about

The same time that the finger had pressed the doorbell

He'd only just started, "Oh, bloody hell"

He called through the house, "Yes, yes, just a tick"

Dashing downstairs and replacing his dick

"I'm sure you lot watch until we're indisposed"

He moaned as he finished straightening his clothes

He opened the door to the man with the smile

That'd brought his hot food over many a mile

He tipped him and thanked him and bid him goodbye

Then hurried indoors with a tear in his eye

He taken the bags and realised what he'd done

A meal for two instead of for one

He looked at the space on the seat right beside

His place on the couch, and he finally cried

The smile of the man as they passed in the street

Went unnoticed by her as she stared at her feet

The door from her past now barring her way

She realised she had no idea what she'd say

She'd made a mistake and this was the end

Of the life that she'd broken and just couldn't mend

So now in the cold and the dark she was stood

Chewing her lip like a cow would it's cud

His appetite lost, he grabbed coat and hat

And his keys and his phone and the money that

If he rushed down the street to the pub on the corner

He could turn in to beer to supply tears to mourn her

And help him to sleep when the time to sleep came

If he drank enough maybe he'd forget her name

The future starts here, as is always the way

A new year of your life starts every new day

A check of the mirror and lick of the lips

She straightened her skirt over her hips

She reached for the doorbell, the time had now come

She'd made her mistakes, what's done had been done

She, just like we, couldn't alter what's been

It was time to move forward, see what's to be seen

The future starts here, as is always the way

A new year of your life will start every day

With a coat on his back and a hat on his head

He went through the back door to the passage that led

Past the bins, where he dumped the two big bags of food

And into the street where the wind matched his mood

Biting and chilly and harsh and so bleak

And bringing forth tears that stung at his cheek

He turned up his collar, tipped forward his head

And wished he'd gone to bed instead

It wasn't the plan, it shouldn't be so

She traveled so far and he wasn't at home

She pressed and pressed and pressed once again

But no sound of life came from within

This house from her past with her future behind

Where no lights were lit behind the blinds

While high up above the big moon did look down

And think, "Pretty girl, why not just turn around?"

She'd made a mistake, what had she done?

Thrown everything away on some meaningless fun

She shouldn't have come here, it just wasn't right

So she stepped from the porch into silvery moonlight

"Oh" did she say after turning away

From the door to the street where, blocking her way

Stood a man in a hat and a coat and who

Smiled despite tears and she smiled too

They fumbled their way back in through the door

The same door they'd left through some hours before

The door to the future they knew would be hard

"Sit down" he called out as he dashed to the yard

No talking that night, they'd no need to hurry

Curled up and enjoying their microwaved curry

What's done is done, the past's set in stone

But the future's a tapestry still being sewn

J2H.

The bird watcher.

Sitting and watching the comings and goings

The happy farewells and the tearful hello-ings

The sadness and stillness and long pensive nights

The tears of the weary who wailed at their plight

The bad and the guilty and good who'd done wrong

He listened along to their pitiful song

He listened intently and never once sought

To give them relief from the pain that they'd brought

That wasn't his remit, his duty or task

The questions not questioned, they weren't his to ask

Nor answers to give nor pleas to appease

He listened to prayers from men on their knees

Men with no God but men who now swore

To live better lives for the God they'd ignored

If only he'd help them, they'd beg and entreat

No more would they lie, steal, kill, hurt or cheat

He'd watch as they paced and they sat and they lay

As they stared at the walls until night turned to day

He'd watch as they jumped at the sound of the key

As they'd try to regain some raw dignity

To try and pretend that they weren't really scared

To snarl at the world with their vicious teeth bared

He'd know as they knew that it was all a front

That they'd cried and they'd trembled and all that they want

Is to walk through that door and to never return

Though some of them would, some folk never learn

He'd wish each man well, though the words were unheard

His face, though well seen, was always ignored

And when those he'd watched had left him alone

Having gone to that somewhere that they called their home

He stayed where he sat in this place they'd thought hell

That brick in the wall of that cold prison cell

J2H.

The moon's always larger in a foreign land.

There are many things that, although small, I enjoy. Little things that don't matter, things that if I had to do without I'd be no worse off but things that I enjoy nonetheless and for no good reason.

One such little thing is giving my dogs their evening meal. Fresh from a walk and still wearing my scarf I mix the meat, biscuits, pasta and eggs with boiling water as they sit either side of me, place the bowls on the floor, in the same place every time, utter the words "Good dogs, eat" and crouch between them tickling their backs and watching their tails wag as they greedily wolf it down.

At some point I stop tickling them and go to put the kettle on, still watching them and smiling as I spoon the coffee and sugar into my invariably filthy cup. At this point, for no good reason, the dogs swap bowls. They've both eaten all the good bits first, both bowls now contain nothing but biscuit soaked in beef dripping, neither dog gains, or loses, anything by the swap, but swap they do. It's always been the way and recently I've begun to wonder why they do it. The best I can come up with is that both dogs believe that maybe the other dog has bacon in their bowl. They love bacon, who doesn't? But this is never the case. Even on those rare days when I've put bacon in their bowls, the bacon is the first thing they eat. They must, by now, realise there's no bacon, but still they hope.

There was a chap, I'm changing the names to protect the guilty so let's call him "Tommy" for that wasn't his name, who owned a pub in Salford during the years my father owned his own. Tommy's pub was rough. As rough a pub as you could ever hope not to walk in to. Never a weekend went by that Tommy wasn't involved in a fight, and he loved it. He was a fighter, not a lover, unless you were talking about fighting. He loved fighting, and he was bloody good at it.

Practice makes perfect.

Still, as the decades wore on he became less able. By the time he was in his fifties his face resembled Spam, his knuckles were nothing but scarred callouses and very few of his few remaining teeth were unbroken. As it happened, his becoming less able to swing his trademark haymaker or bite off an ear during a bear hug mattered not.

You can't out-punch a bullet.

His customers no longer settled their arguments by administering a damn good thrashing, they now carried guns. Big guns, little guns, revolvers, Lugers, Derringers and shotguns were flashed and occasionally fired within the confines of his little pub in the middle of Salford.

My father's pub didn't suffer in the same way. Through luck rather than judgement he'd become friends with the "right" people, or more precisely the mothers and fathers of the "right" people. His pub policed itself. Of course he had to fight, especially in the early days, but by the time he decided he wanted to retire he was running a pub filled with laughter, music, good times and gangster's mothers.

No one fires a gun in the vicinity of a gangster's mother.

His retirement lasted just a few weeks. Like the dog that quickly realises there's no bacon in the other dog's bowl, he realised he'd made a mistake and so, after decades of owning and running his own pub he took on another pub, this time as a manager.

It was a pretty pub in a little village beside a river. Low, oak beamed ceilings, creaky doors, lots of brass around the real fires and a regular wage doing what he loved doing when he no longer needed, money wise, to do it. A far better "retirement" than the house he'd bought in Blackpool where he had nothing to do but live out his years watching cowboy films with only my mother for company.

Tommy came to visit one Sunday.

He stood at the solid oak bar in my father's little pub watching the couples chatting quietly as they enjoyed their Sunday roast and decided that he wanted what my father had. The following day he made a call to his area manager and inquired about management opportunities. The area manager said he had just the thing. A little pub in a little village near a little river. He brought a folder round containing the figures, the turnover and targets, the menu, the range of real ales served and a few glossy photographs.

Tommy was sold.

Without hesitation, and based only on the contents of the folder provided by the area manager, Tommy applied for the pub. He thought he would have to go through a few interviews, maybe provide a business plan, but was delighted when the area manager offered him the pub the very same day. He couldn't for the life of him understand why no one else had applied for the pub in the two years that it had been on the market and managed by a series of temporary relief landlords, but he wasn't a man to look a gift horse in the mouth. Within a month of visiting my father's new pub Tommy had a new pub of his own.

Tommy moved into the pub on a Monday.

The pub was, indeed, as pretty as the pictures he'd seen in the folder. The village was a village and the river was a river but, unlike the pub my father now ran, this pub was busy. Very busy indeed. The village, though once small and picturesque, had been one of the sites chosen in the 1950s by the authorities upon which to build an enormous, sprawling council estate to re-house those cleared from the slums of Manchester. As with many of the pubs in the area, it was as rough as fuck.

But Tommy's ability to fight was still a formidable ability and, as rough as this pub was, he had fought harder men than this village contained. Throughout that first week, night after night, he would stamp his authority on the ne'er-do-wells with fists of fury and flurries of fists. The disease that is gun crime, so prevalent in Salford, had yet to spread this far so, all things considered, Tommy was happy.

Until early doors on Friday night.

Alone behind the bar he stood, flicking through the newspaper, with only two customers, a young man in a shell suit and a chap of a similar age to Tommy in Wellington boots and flat cap, stood at opposite ends of the bar. At some point the young man became a bit tipsy and mischievous and, having no target other than the landlord who already had a reputation as a fearsome pugilist and serial ear-eater, he crackled his static-filled, shell suited self over to the older gentleman, stood right beside him and just stared.

Tommy spotted this without looking up. He pretended to read his paper, giving the impression he'd not noticed, and secretly readied himself for what was to come.

The young man, slowly and purposely, reached out a Sovereign festooned hand and tipped the older chaps drink over, spilling it's contents over the bar and over the man himself. The man himself, less slowly but equally purposely, took a handful of the younger man's hair and slammed his face into the bar, picked up his now empty glass and smashed it into the young man's cheek.

Tommy had expected he'd have to tackle the man with the newly-bloody shell suit and was a little taken aback by this unexpected turn of events. He grabbed the older chap and transported him from bar to street in one, fluid movement before going back to help the sobbing beer-spiller to hold what remained of his cheek in place while they waited for an ambulance.

A few minutes later. while Tommy was still pressing a bar towel to the beer-spiller's wounds and with emergency services en-route, the older man returned. Tommy had bolted the door after ejecting him and now he stood, his upper body visible through the glass portion of the entrance with a look of vicious vexation on his face, rattling the door and armed with what appeared to be a pool cue. His rage was quite plainly still not sated. Tommy strode over to the door, intending to render the man incapacitated until the arrival of the police.

He unbolted and swung back the door, free hand clenched into a fist and ready to deliver his devastating haymaker. As the door swung open the older chap raised the "pool cue". Only it wasn't a pool cue.

Tommy dived for cover as the older chap drew back the string on what, it now turned out, was an ancient and powerful longbow. An arrow flew across the empty pub in the direction of the young man with the blood, and now urine, stains on his shell suit, missing it's intended target by a yard and embedding itself in the counter.

Tommy had left Salford to escape the shotguns and now was having to deal with longbows.

Maybe a long bow is the greener grass on the other side that Tommy craved. Maybe his dodging wooden shafts rather than hot lead was the bacon in the other dog's bowl. If so, it would appear he wasn't a fan of green and couldn't stomach bacon since, soon after this incident, in a place where he wasn't known and knew no one, he gave up the pub game. And he missed it terribly.

He'd not done his homework, not considered every possibility, he'd just seen an unfamiliar Devil and decided it would be a better Devil than the Devil he knew. The problem with Devils is, whether you know them or not, they're still Devils.

He'd thought he'd seen my father's good fortune and he wanted it but, in reality, what he'd seen wasn't good fortune, it was just a different life, lead a different way and with a different result. Some people have lives that seem better than our own, it's just a fact of life.

No matter how much we have, we want more, but remember...

...All your own bacon is in your own bowl.

J2H.

The bloke on his own and the girl with no lippy.

Rain rapped at the window by which he sat
As he stared at a screen and had a nice chat
With some folk with whom he'd never meet
As he was propelled along a street
Through driving rain and wind and hail
Past the girl that ran but, sadly, failed
To catch the bus on which he sat
Staring at a screen and having a chat

She'd chased the bus but, alas, in vain

Through howling wind and driving rain

Had failed to make it to the stop

Having stopped to retrieve the phone that she'd dropped

While typing her words into that little box

To let the world know it was now "wine-o'clock"

She'd chased the bus but, alas, in vain

Now stood, disappointed, in driving rain

He turned the key and unlocked the door
Of the little flat on the sixteenth floor
Of the concrete tower that he now called home
And checked the time upon his phone
Early tonight, he'd manage to make
An earlier bus than he'd usually take
He kicked off his shoes and kicked shut the door
Of his little flat on the sixteenth floor

Dripping wet and feeling forlorn

And cursing the heels she'd stupidly worn

She took a seat next to a chap who

Smelt a little like beef stew

She found the hole in her phone and plugged in the jack

Of the headphones she wore, and then settled back

Dripping wet and feeling forlorn

Her weight off the heels she'd stupidly worn

Just one more refresh before taking a shower
He promised himself, but refreshed for an hour
Until, eventually, of Tweeting he bored
He glanced at the time then thought "Just once more"
And another refresh, whilst sat on the loo
Telling the world he was taking a poo
Finally, clean and fresh from the shower
He sat on the bed wasting just one more hour

Arriving home much later tonight

Two steps at a time, she dashed up the flight

Of steps that led to the house in that

She lived all alone, except for her cat

A trail of drips followed the path

She took to the bathroom to run a hot bath

Having arrived home much later tonight

She needed to hurry, her timing now tight

Late he now was when he went to go meet
His friends and acquaintances in the pub down the street
They'd waited and waited, but waited no more
And jumped in the taxi that stood by the door
Then away into town for a night on the tiles
With laughter and flirting and boozy, broad smiles
Too late he had been when he'd arrived to meet
The friends being driven, away down the street

You get nowt good from rushing, her dad used to say

So she'd given up trying, and now made her way

To the pub down the street for a bottle of red

To bring home and enjoy while she sat on her bed

And painted her nails and read a good book

With her cat curled beside her and licking his butt

You get nowt good from rushing, her dad had oft said

So she'd given up trying and chilled out instead

Billy no mates tonight, all alone he stood by
The fruit machine near the bogs and he let out a sigh
As he sipped on his pint and played with his phone
Just this one quick drink then he'd make his way home
He checked his emails and text messages too
Then finished his pint and went to the loo
Billy no mates tonight, all alone in the shitter
Cock in one hand as he scrolled through his Twitter

She'd not done her hair or put on her lippy
So she donned hat and scarf, although it wasn't nippy
And left for the pub with her purse in her hand
And arrived at the bar just as the band
Tested the mic with a "one, two, one-two"
And waited for service from the barmaid who
Hadn't noticed her there, in her scarf and her hat
And fiddled on her phone, involved in a chat

He fastened his jacket as he walked by the bar
Intending to leave, though he didn't get far
The girl in the corner with tenner in hand
Caused him to pause as he walked past the band
Who were ready to go and who started to play
A song by the Beatles about a hard day
He unfastened his jacket and walked to the bar
It'd surely not hurt to have one more jar?

She saw him and wished that she'd taken more time
Before leaving the house to come buy her wine
She smiled and pretended to not notice him there
As he stood right beside her and ordered his beer
"Oh sorry" he said, "Have I jumped the queue?"
She smiled and she nodded and he said "after you"
She thanked him and wished that she'd taken more time
Then said to the barmaid "A glass of red wine"

The band were on fire, they danced all night long
They clapped and they cheered when the band played "their" song
A song that they both said they loved more than others
A song about two young, bright, star crossed lovers
They spoke about things that they'd done and they wished
And his journey home on the bus that she'd missed
The band were on fire and when they'd finally finished
They clapped and they cheered having loved every minute

The girl with no lippy and the bloke on his own
Walked home arm in arm, ignoring their phones
They chatted and giggled and walked rather slow
Taking their time and getting to know
More about one and other, their likes and dislikes
Her love of cute cats and his of fast bikes
Then the bloke on his own and the girl with no lippy
Shared their first kiss in the queue for chippy

J2H.

The little dog that was scared of the wind.

She’d lay on the rug by the crackling fire
Once that evening’s good walk had caused her to tire
She fell asleep listening to the creak of the trees
As the boughs and the branches did bend in the breeze

But as she lay snoozing and snoring her snores
The wind began blowing much harder outdoors
It’s gentle caress of the leaves on the lawn
Came rougher and tougher, “A storm!” it did warn

She lay and she dreamt of a day in the sun
Chasing some rabbits and having some fun
She leapt and she gambolled and sniffled and snuffled
Through hedges and rivers and long grass that rustled

But back in our world where the cold wind was growing
From gentle to harsher then further to blowing
The panes in the windows and knockers on doors
She awoke with a start and leapt to all fours

Light it had been when she’d closed tired eyes
And settled down for her nap, with trumps and with sighs
But away in her dream world she’d no way of knowing
Of the light slowly dying and darkness now growing

A dog doesn’t know when it’s dreaming, you see?
It isn’t as wise as you or as me
So this world full of thunder, of wind and of rain
To which she returned from her dream seemed insane

She growled and she trembled, then barked in the night
Heckles high with teeth bared and ready to fight
To see off the beast that roared at her door
So she could sleep and dream once more

But the beast didn’t flee, he continued to scream
To bang and to rattle and disturb her dream
No respite he took from his horrid assault
He pushed at the door, secured by a bolt

He breathed through the keyhole, his breath cold as ice
And peed on the window, that wasn’t nice
And when he realised his way in was barred
He kicked over the dustbin that sat in the yard

She rushed to the door to check it was safe
But the beast found a way in through the fireplace
Whistling and screeching and wailing a wail
It whipped up a shower of sparks with its tail

A log that had smouldered and crackled and popped
Leapt from the fire and rolled to a stop
Beneath the big chair that sat by the door
It smouldered and fizzled and set fire to the floor

The man of the house muttered “Blummin’ mutt”
As he slipped his right slipper onto the wrong foot
Then struck a long match and carefully lit
The lamp by the bed upon which he did sit

He mumbled and grumbled and, bleary eyed,
He came down the stairs intending to chide
His furry best friend who had disturbed his nod
“What the hell is your problem, you daft, noisy dog?”

Tail wagging she met him, he tickled her head
“Shush now, you daft dog, there’s neighbours in bed.”
Then, glancing around, he noticed the flicker
And smelt burning carpet and his heart did beat quicker

He snatched up a bucket and dashed to the tap
And filled it with water then went running back
The way he had come and through to the room
Where the flames from the chair were lighting the gloom

He threw at it the water, the bucket and all
It covered the flames and a good chunk of wall
The fire extinguished, though smoke filled the room
That daft blummin’ dog had saved him from doom

No more does he leave the fire alight
When the time comes for him to retire for the night
The room does go cold, it has to be said
But his dog now curls up on the foot of his bed

All cosy and warm, she lies there and dreams
Of chasing those rabbits through forests and streams
And when the wind blows, as it frequently will
She wakes and she listens and lies very still

She sniffs at the air, just to be sure
That a log isn’t burning on the parlour floor
Then, once that she’s certain that all’s safe and sound
She goes back to sleep, his loyal, faithful hound

J2H.