Block

Wrote this quite a while ago. Like the idea but not sure I like what I’ve written.

Please have at it with sticks.

Pointy ones.

*

I push the button and wait for the chaos. Two shapes dart past the frosted glass of the front door. The gate buzzes, releases and swings open. I have just enough time to close it and turn around before I’m enveloped in a three way maelstrom of children and dog.

“Daddy! DADDEEEEEE!”

I fend off the dog with one hand, low five my son with the other and shuffle forward bearing the weight of a three year old blonde haired limpet on my right leg. She slides off me just before the steps.

“Yucch Daddy! Why are you all sweaty?” Her nose wrinkles.

“I’ve been running my love, that’s what happens.”

She gives me a serious look and then starts laughing. “StinkEEE Daddy!” She runs inside yelling and giggling.

Reinventing Amy

As a general rule I tend to shy away from re-posting old stories but for some odd reason this one has been nagging at me for the last couple of days so while I’m busy with some new things I hope to like here’s an old thing I actually do like. As always with these things there’s a little bit of history threading its way through a whole heap of fiction…

*

“We’re really so sorry Craig. She was an amazing woman.”

“The best of the best.”

“She was so sweet, so gentle. We all loved her.”

“Amy was one of a kind, she didn’t deserve for this to…”

“I broke your pie dish.”

That one simple truth banished the spell of unending platitudes. Caught me off guard. “Sorry, you broke…?”

“The pie dish.” Deb looks at me and makes a circle with her hands. “Round thing. Generally used for the carrying and serving of pies.”

Lefty

This morning I woke up in bed with an old man’s hand.

Not a severed hand from a different, older man.

Nothing as sinister as that.

No suggestion that I was, in some way, being sent a warning message from some aging mafioso masquerading as a perfectly normal member of the Twilight Valley Nursing Village who, for reasons best known only to himself, had given up on the cranial end of horses and settled for lopping off the hands of his fellow residents before depositing them in the beds of strangers under cover of darkness. There was a suggestion far back in my family tree that there was some sort of Italian connection to my heritage but even so the link would be tenuous at best. It’s not like I’m the direct descendent of Guiseppe “The Limp” Panettone or some such.

The hand, I confess, was my own.

Regulatory Gremlin

Since Theodore took up residence in my scrotum, life has become somewhat more complex.

“Call me Teddy.”

“I’d rather stick to Theodore if it’s all the same to you.”

“Suit yourself. I’m just trying to make it easier for you.”

“Why on earth would I want things to be easier? Having a miniscule, talking…thing inside my nutsack seems like a perfectly reasonable and normal arrangement.”

Bob. A Job.

To whom it may concern:

I am writing to inform you of my resignation from the position of Acting Junior Vice-Assistant to the Deputy Director of Marketing with immediate effect. I seem to recall something in my original contract about a thirty day notice period but in the spirit of agile management and notwithstanding the fact that I wiped my arse with said document a couple of months back, it’s probably best for all concerned if I slip off quietly into the night.

Go on admit it. You’d love it if I genuinely slipped off into the night. You probably wouldn’t complain too much if I slipped off noisily, say, from a fourteenth-floor window but in the famous words of Mick and the boys…you CAN’T always GET what you WAAAANNNNT.

New Story: A Single Grain Of Salt

It’s always nice to have an excuse to scribble some words on a blog post – and today’s excuse is to tell you that I’ve got a brand new piece up on Literally Stories.

A Single Grain Of Salt is a story that has been trying to get written for a couple of years without a whole lot of success. For me, this often happens when a tale has a link to reality, and particularly when it relates to an event that still haunts me despite the fact that tragedy was avoided.

The Generation We Lost (Repost)

“All things bright and beautiful
All creatures great and small
All things wise and wonderful
The Lord God…”

*

“I was told I should report here. What do you need me to do?”

“Shovels are over there, buckets are behind you. Dig or help carry it away.”

*

“Each little flower that opens
Each little bird that sings…”

*

“I’m sorry Mrs Jones but you’ll have to move back. They’re going as fast as they can.”

“I just need to know if Tommy is OK. He is OK isn’t he? He said he was feeling sick this morning but you know what they are like on last day of school…”

Same Time Next Thursday?

Greetings O Fair And Wondrous Blog-Folk!

It has come to my attention (attentive little soul wot I am) that one or two of us are feeling a little bit jaded and uninspired at present.

This simply will not do.

We need a bit of fun in our lives.

The Generation Of Wonder

“Where are we going?” Tom asks.

“To the canteen.”

“We have a canteen?”

It sits on the southern half of the ninth floor. A dull filling sandwiched between eight floors of grey, baffled cubicles above and seven below. Aside from the obligatory chocolate bar dispenser and dubious coffee machine the canteen is devoid of any trace of a food provisioning service. A single kettle sits at the end of an extended breakfast bar surrounded by five types of tea and no spoons. In the opposite corner, a desperate looking microwave yearns for someone to drop in a coin and turn the dial. A tired looking toaster serves up seven settings of charcoal. Functional tables and chairs litter the remainder of the room. Mercifully the lack of cooking equipment means the bleak fittings are spared their obligatory layer of grease and yet they still feel dirty to the touch; like everything that survives in this place is coated in a congealing layer of unrealised dreams and wasted ambition.

Clock Watching

At a quarter to four she said “I’ll pick you up at seven,” and I believed her. Now that we’re somewhere south of twenty past the time she chose I’m starting to have my doubts.

If she’s not here by half past I’ll send the babysitter home. It’s a shame and all because I don’t really go out much these days and the kids were out by six forty-five. I’m sure she’s got a good reason and it’s probably for the best anyway.