Sorry about this folks, but it appears that I need to repeat myself once again…
To all of those who are new to any form of ‘Social Media’, in particular blogs, there are certain rules of etiquette that must be strictly observed, particularly when offering a comment for consideration. New writers please take note – if you wish your comment to appear on my blog, or any other, never ever include a link to your book. There are lines that must never be crossed when it comes to good manners on the Internet. Doing the aforementioned breaks just about every unspoken rule of commonsense and etiquette.
I don’t do it, and neither should you!
While you may see nothing wrong in engaging in a bit of spam promotion on sites like Facebook when commenting, believe me when I tell you that what you are doing is guaranteed to turn people…
I’m not a vegan. I’m not a vegetarian. I don’t plan on being one. I’m not a political activist. I’m not an environmentalist. I don’t like Greta Thunberg. But I do think the environment is worth protecting. I don’t think we live in end times. I think there are only two genders and he/she/it are the only pronouns I’m comfortable using. I think LGBTQ (did I forget a letter?) rights and #MeToo are overrated and detrimental to the people they are supposed to be (and rightly so) fighting for. And I don’t like Mumford and Sons because they sound like Coldplay. And pulled pork buns are not the best way to enjoy pork.
And what the hell is so great about craft beer?
The main reason I don’t like any of these things is the people who do like these things – call them millennials, hipsters, hippies, the left, whatever…
Because of the hubbub in the stadium no one saw or heard the thumb of an insignificant elderly man’s left hand snap against his left forefinger, before sweeping both of his hands in front of him in an imperceptible way, close to his body. But, everyone there that day experienced the carnage that transpired.
As far as he was concerned the time to rid the nation of everyone who didn’t deserve to live had arrived! He sat at the back of the crowd in the stadium listening to Miserere mei, Deus (Agnus Dei) on his headphones, oblivious to the chaotic scene unfolding before him. Whenever circumstances appeared to be getting beyond his control, Allegri’s beautiful choral work always restored his inner peace. With his right hand he once more waved it from left to right in an almost dismissive gesture. Instantly peace returned to the stadium. Apart from a whimper here, a cry of pain there, silence soon descended among the thousands of dead and dying football fans.
What had brought him to commit this momentous act? From his perspective it was sheer desperation on his part at the indifference regarding the state of the world. Rather, how mankind had renounced its stewardship of the world in favour of wealth, greed, avarice – call it what you will. Unbeknown to him, he was the instrument of a higher power. Something or someone was controlling him. It had been grooming him since his birth seventy-two years earlier. Up until this point in time he had been surreptitiously guided. Ideas of absolute right and wrong were implanted in his mind by his guide as he grew to adulthood. That said, he hadn’t exactly led a blameless life. Far from it in fact! He still drank; endlessly smoked roll your own cigarettes. Malawi Leaf being his tobacco of choice. It had taken him over a month of searching online to find a tobacconist that stocked it in this country. His home positively reeks of it. Having said that it isn’t unpleasant since it’s smoke produces a perfumed odour.
Time for his next target?
The stress of getting a ticket to the Strangers Gallery above the floor of the House of Commons in the Palace of Westminster had taken its toll. If only they had known! It didn’t matter a damn, he was here! From where he sat in the shadows, none of his fellow observers of the Mother of all Parliaments in action noticed as he inserted his ear plugs and adjusted the volume of his Smartphone to suit. Soon he began to relax as Miserere mei, Deus soothed him once again. It would soon be time to act once more. A lesson had to be learnt by the servants of the rich and powerful in the United Kingdom. Thinking about it, servants is the wrong word! Enforcers summed up every politician sat below him to a tee, as he saw it. An example had to be made! He straightened his back and then stood briefly, cocked his left thumb as he pointed the first finger of his left hand at the head of one backbencher in the government, before sitting down. Somewhere a woman screamed. Panic ensued as the politicians fought each other to exit the House as quickly as they could. As he was being jostled towards the door by those behind him, he turned to glance at his handiwork. Blood still spurted from the neck of the decapitated body of a back-bencher. What remained of its head stuck to the wooden panel behind the body. Thanks to the daily live television coverage of parliament by the EU biased British Broadcasting Corporation, panic soon spread across the country. Newspapers and political pundits wanted to know who or what was responsible. A politician had been executed in the House; and yet no shot was heard. No weapon found!
What would be the third target?
Three weeks later he arrived on The Isle of Dogs which had long since vanished under tarmac and concrete like so many former landmarks of old London. He chose Canary Wharf simply because it was the latest Central Business District to be built there; an obscene monument to greed and corruption. It had to go! He walked the canyons of glass and steel looking for somewhere relatively safe while he carried out his plan. The idea of returning to the Underground Station from whence he had arrived suddenly dawned on him. Fifteen minutes later he had arrived back at the north entrance close to Canada Square.
Once again no one took the least bit of notice as he plugged his headphones into his Smartphone and pressed the classical music app. Anyone that had taken any notice would have seen nothing more than an elderly man, eyes closed, conducting a phantom orchestra as his hands began their deadly work once again. With each gesture of the rolled up newspaper in his left hand the skyscrapers housing the United Kingdom’s investment banks began to tear themselves apart. With his right he described rapid upward motions which sent buildings like The Shard, several thousand feet into the air, before plummeting to the ground. His symphony of death only stopped when every skyscraper had been reduced to nothing more than a pile of twisted steel, concrete, and shattered glass. What his next target would be would have to wait. He needed to go home to recuperate…
~~~
Getting this idea for my next novella or novel out of my head has been a cathartic process. For months now I have dreamt of having this terrible untraceable power at my fingertips. Often I would wake in the middle of the night completely terrified by it! In case you are wondering, the old man in the story is me. While I cannot change the way people mistreat our planet and each other, I can imagine a scenario that would put the fear of God into most of us. As for Allegri’s choral work, it always reduces me to tears of joy each time I listen to it with my eyes closed.
Click on the sound file at the top of the post to experience its beauty for yourself.
~~~
Havoing read this, should you think you are experiencing de ja vu, I wrote it back in November 2019, posting it here on my blog back then. It was when I first began seriously thinking about my current psychological WIP – The Power of The Mind. I inserted it into the manuscript as the fourth chapter a couple of days back…
It has to be confessed that Elisa Doon was not a conventional young lady. Her father, Mandrak Doon was a wealthy man, in parts, a usurer, lawyer, merchant adventurer and (quietly and with never a mention to anybody else) a philosopher. Elisa was considered beautiful, with elegant carriage and delightful manners. But it must be said that some of her contemporaries, (and all of their mothers) considered her flighty and no-better-than-she-should-be. The reason for this was that she was a great reader.
Some young ladies will take a novel with them when they go to a dance. It acts as camouflage. It means that if the gentlemen are too befuddled to recognise true beauty and thus neglect to ask them to dance, they can claim they never noticed, so engrossed were they in their book.
If Elisa took a novel with her when she went to a dance, it was…
If you are thinking that this post’s title is vaguely familiar, it is. After originally posting what was then considered a highly contentious philosophical article on the thorny subject of UFO’s under the title in question, which I produced way back in 2010 for a small time UFO magazine, long since closed down, I decided to make it the name of my blog. For those of you who haven’t trawled through all of my old posts, ‘Have We Had Help’ was the second post in my blog. Now read on bearing in mind that some things I wrote about back then have changed. From memory the article got no comments at the time, probably because of its length. Hardly surprising since it was on Blogger and not here on WordPress where the readers are far more intelligent and enlightened and the trolls are nonexistent…
As she reached up to kiss me goodbye I felt my wife’s hand rest on my chest. “Look after yourself out there” she said: it was what she always said but somehow there was a sense of urgency about it today, or was my conscience talking? I was on my way to work among other things.
I’d already told her I would be late back because I was dining out with colleagues, not an unusual event, but on this occasion I was being economical with the truth. Maria, an intern spending the summer with our company had brought that edge of curiosity and interest to the day not normally seen in working circles, at least not mine. I like to think, I have a reputation for being impersonally professional at all times but that changed under her influence into something much more personal.
How can you possibly ‘Like’ a blog post unless you have taken the opportunity to actually read it in the first place. It makes no sense whatsoever! I’ve had totally illogical responses in the past. One stands out. I’m talking about people who think that clicking ‘like’ is good. It is, but it isn’t! All it shows is that you can’t actually be bothered to read the post in question! If you did, I’m betting that you would feel compelled to comment!
We all know that while there are millions who still love to read, the majority who class themselves as writers these days, especially on all forms of Social Media – simply aren’t. Instead they pontificate endlessly on the English language and its use. I would suggest that these people have yet to write a book of their own!
In complete contrast, one or two of us like myself…
I came into my 70th year recently. I understand that women don’t like talking about their age. I hear that and I wonder why. I am anxious about quite a lot of things. Naturally, as we get older, we stare at the grave more intently and we attempt to take stock of our journey so far. I have been asking myself quite a lot of questions. What do they mean when they say one should retire? I still have stories running riot in my head. I have been so disillusioned by the poor sales that I am hesitant to publish. I know my country does not really like reading except it becomes compulsory. I really wish to share but who wants to share with me? I do not want to be maudlin so I simply sigh and keep quiet. My dwindling resources demands that I must have a will to…
Here for your amusement is the very first short story I ever wrote. The idea for it was born one day while I was midway through writing a 150,000 word Scifi novel, when a certain Kiwi dog named Boof (not the one pictured above) started running round my friend’s house in the west coast North Island town of Raglan, barking at anything and everything, even his own reflection. I don’t exactly remember what day or even what month I wrote it, but it was definitely while I was staying with my best friend and his family on a brief trip back to my other home country – New Zealand, in 2003. As it happens, it turned out to be my last trip anywhere, what with one thing or another. But that’s another story entirely…
***
The sun was shining and the winds were light. Barney sat looking out the window…
I’m obviously better preserved than I thought. I’ve clearly kept my youthful good looks. At least you’d think so from the number of people who seem to assume I was born yesterday. It’s like the time I was levelling up a gateway. When livestock or tractors go into a field they can make a bit of a mess. It’s easy to understand why, everything passes through that one narrow passage.
So if the gateway runs the risk of getting churned up, we’ll often tip something in it to provide a hard surface. It really depends what you’ve got about. I’ve known people use sand, crusher-run, quarry waste, or any waste stone. I was just using some beach cobble. It came from an old building that had finally had to come down. As I was levelling it out a chap was watching me and commented that there were a couple of…
Have We Had Help? 
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