Sign Of The Times

I was on a bus, coming from Manchester, which arrived at the bus station of my hometown of Middleton. A woman got on it with her friend and two young children in tow, saying that they were going to Langley which is, at the most, a ten minute journey.

Watching her friend shepherding the children to take their seats, she used her card to pay and then joined them. At that point she studied her ticket and within seconds had marched back to the front of the bus, kicking off with the driver.

“Sixteen pounds and forty-four pence! For two adults and two children? Going to Langley? That’s a piss take, an absolute piss take! Sixteen forty-four?!”

The driver looked at her ticket and then explained that the 16.44 was actually the time at which she’d bought the ticket.

I really wish that she’d have caught the last bus at 23.59.

Claws For The Weekend: The Depopulated

This morning I went up to the doctors to make an appointment for my son, and there was only me in the queue. (Can a queue of one even be called a queue?)

This has never happened before. I mean never, in the history of me going to the doctors to make an appointment for anyone.

From this I deduced that 1: two thirds of the estate on which I live are dead. And 2: The remaining third had not got up yet.

Cue my best ever least waiting time. There’s always a bonus.

Have a great weekend everybody. I hope your communities are hanging on. (Apart from Jerusalem’s Lot. Those guys are gone.)

See you on the flip side.

Brief Encounter

I’d only been walking the dog for a few minutes when I saw, beneath the spring-blossoming tree by the grass verge, a man walking towards us. It was, as my wife affectionately refers to him, the Happy Drunk.

Living alone and often under the influence (but no harm to anyone), sometimes you’d hear him singing aloud on his way home in the evening. Other times he’d be ruminating to himself, completely unaware of your presence. This was early morning though, and he took us in as our individual journeys brought us together.

“That’s a beautiful dog. Is it a spaniel?” he asked.

“Yeah, he’s a Welsh Springer Spaniel.”

“A Welsh Springer? I didn’t know that, I just know a spaniel when I see one. There are different ones, aren’t there?”

“Yes, the English ones are more popular but I think these are better looking dogs. The English Springers are a little bigger, with flat heads instead of these domed ones, and Welshies are always this red and white colour whereas the English ones can be different.”

“Ah, I’ll never remember that,” he replied dismissively. “I just love spaniels. What’s his name?”

I was going to mention that we’d wanted a Welsh name for a Welsh dog and so I’d (half-jokingly) proposed Tom (Jones) and (Katherine) Jenkins, but decided to play it safe and keep it simple. “He’s called Bryn.”

Mishearing, he ruffled the dogs head delightedly. “Fire and brimstone, eh? Fire and brimstone.”

Then we went our separate ways, Bryn throwing a brief, curious glance over his shoulder, the Happy Drunk’s musings turning Biblical.

The Peace Of Wild Things

A few of my fellow bloggers have chosen poems to mark National Poetry Month, which falls in April, and so to take part I’ve chosen the title poem of a collection that I’m currently reading.

It describes the kind of refuge that I often seek.

Who Resides In The Shadows?

I’ve not written any fiction for six years.

I hadn’t realised it had been that long until I was going through some books today and uncovered the two volumes of The Northlore Series that I have three stories included in (Volume One: Folklore; Volume Two: Mythos), along with a poem.

I sat down and read my contributions. Reading them for the first time in a while felt strange, as though they’d been penned by someone else. The last one was published in 2016, and since then it seems that my focus has been solely on poetry and non-fiction.

I enjoyed becoming acquainted with those characters again: Alfred Cartwright, the former English teacher finding himself trapped in the horror of the Somme, and Andy, the young, infatuated, wannabe writer, working in a Manchester cafe for a little extra money.

As any reader or writer will know, fictional characters take on flesh in the mind’s eye, appearing in the form that our imaginations give to them. But with the final character – a Lutheran Pastor ministering to a small rural village in Norway, I had a little help with an illustration provided by the series’ artist, Evelinn Enoksen:

I peered at his face, up close, thinking ah, I remember you. Torsten Göransson, the Stockholm man of faith, struggling through the snow.

It made me think of other characters that I have, neither drawn nor written, existing half-formed in the back of my mind, having been pushed back further down the line.

Maybe I should consider bringing some of them out into the light? Maybe they want to breathe a little?

Maybe I should turn my focus inwards and ask “Who’s there?”

Perhaps after this oral history project is completed.