New stuff.

I'm feeling a bit restless as I write this because I'm meant to be doing a dozen other things right now, most particularly arranging into some coherent form all my notes for a long project which I've been thinking about for the past (brief check) entirety of human history. However, I can also recognise that it's high time I put up some of the stuff I've been working on recently, because otherwise everyone in the world will get depressed, their marriages will collapse, their crops will fail, their cities will crumble to their very roots, leaving only the wind to howl through the mouldering precincts, intoning an ethereal 'WHY?'. All because of me. I can't have that on my conscience.

So, to wit, here are two new poems, 'The Lovers' and 'Counting Sheep', plus a story imaginatively titled Untitled Story, No. 4. I must say, I do feel like I've made some progress with these pieces and am largely satisfied with all of them - excepting Counting Sheep's title, which is rubbish. However, I can't think of a better one at the moment so ho and, indeed, hum. Oh yeah, if you look closely you'll also find a sample of some of the work I've been doing for M&C Saatchi over the last few months. More of that will be posted when the work itself has gone live. Now, go forth and sound the splendid trumpets of your passion. Or, to put it another way, have a nice day.

Introducing The Black And White Prince.

We had the good fortune to rescue a very charming and wonderful old cat a few years ago. He was black and white, walked like Clint Eastwood, dribbled when you stroked him and frequently conversed with us in squeaky little, almost-silent miaows. He had very bad arthritis when we found him yet, despite this, we enjoyed six years of human-cat joy until he became too ill to go on. Very sad. However, that's not what this is about. I just wanted to note here what a fine gent he was and that this is who I'm talking about in the hopefully funny scraps of conversations I used to make up between him, my wife and me, which I have just posted to the Prose section of the website. 

Cat Says To Me, Pt. I is here and Cat Says To Me, Pt. II is here. 

 

Another Shaggy Dog Story

This is a true story.

A friend of a friend was asked to dog-sit for her boss' beloved golden retriever. She liked her boss and, more importantly, wanted to impress him. This seemed a prime opportunity for her to showcase those qualities which bosses seem to cherish. She said yes, no problem.

He dropped the dog off at her flat on a cold Tuesday afternoon and gave her some fairly complicated instructions about what to feed it and when and how often it liked to go for walks. He obviously doted on the dog. It was a wrench to leave him for so long. He gave the dog one last tummy rub and thanked the woman once again for helping him out and then he was gone. 

Things went swimmingly for the first couple of days. The dog was very friendly. She enjoyed taking it for walks after work and throwing a stick for it in the local park. 

On the evening of the third night she gave the dog a pat and went up to bed. All was well with the world.

When she came down in the morning, all was considerably less well with the world on account of the fact that the dog was stone dead. 

Hmm. Tricky. How was this lady going to explain to her boss the demise of his beloved pooch? What if he thought it was her fault? What was she going to do?

She needed to find a way - a highly credible way - of explaining the death of the dog to her boss. After some thought, she came up with the idea of taking the dog's body to a vet. The vet would tell her what had killed the dog and she would be exonerated, thus avoiding all the awful consequences which she'd been envisaging for herself, such as unemployment, public decrial, homelessness and becoming the sex slave of a short, angry man from Warrington.

But she didn't own a car and, according to yell.com, the nearest vet was a car journey away. How was she going to get the dog there? After some more thought she put the body into a suitcase. Which was totally fine and normal behaviour on her part.

Then she wheeled the suitcase with the dead dog in it to her nearest Tube station and got on the Piccadilly line. Also normal. Taxis are expensive, and they probably charge extra for dead dogs.

When she got to Bond Street, she got off the train, because that's where the vet's surgery was. She wasn't stupid.    

However, she was finding it pretty hard going by this point. The case was extremely bulky and it turned out that the dead body of an adult golden retriever is very heavy. She'd already had a great deal of trouble getting it on and off the train and onto the escalators. 

So her heart sank when she saw the double-flight of steps leading up to the street. She paused. She lifted the case. It was so heavy that it slipped from her grip and landed on her foot. She winced and swore loudly. 

It was then that the young man approached her. 

'You look like you're having a spot of trouble there. Are you sure I can't help you, give you a hand?'

She looked at him. He had soft brown eyes and a roguish hint of stubble across a chiselled jaw. His body looked pretty good underneath a leather jacket and a navy blue jumper. He didn't smell palpably of urine. If she hadn't been carrying a dead dog at the time, this was exactly the sort of man she would have liked to come over and offer to carry something for her, and then possibly buy her a drink, and maybe accompany her to a quiet country hotel for, like, sex and stuff. 

He smiled. It was a nice smile. 

She forgot why she shouldn't let anyone but her carry the suitcase. She quite forgot that it contained the corpse of her boss' golden retriever.  

'That would be great,' she said, 'as long as you're sure it's not too much trouble.'

'No trouble at all,' he twinkled back at her as he reached down for the handle on the suitcase.

Their hands briefly touched. 

They started up the stairs together. She felt a little lightheaded. The last couple of hours had been so intense - and now this. Well, it never rains but it pours. She did wish the guy would slow down a bit, though. He was actually edging out in front of her, she was falling further and further behind, panting to keep up. 

'Whew! Slow down a bit,' she said, 'I can't keep up.'

But instead of slowing down, he turned back to look at her. She noticed that he was a lot less good-looking from this angle. His chin was weak and he looked shifty, those eyes of his darted around too much. A moment of recognition passed between them. Then he was off, running up the stairs, taking them two at a time, reaching the street and pounding flat-out across the pavement, the suitcase clutched in both arms.

The girl ran after him.

'Hey, no!' she cried. 'Please! Please stop! It's just a dog. IT'S JUST A DOG!'

But he was out of earshot by then, weaving in and out of the traffic on Oxford Street, heading up an alley, passing out of sight. 

She never did find the dog. And no one knows what she told her boss. Or what the guy said when he opened the suitcase.