'knock knock' - A Letter, October 5th 2004

"Hope I'm not too late...".

Noticing the door is slightly ajar our intrepid adventurer pushes the door, and it eerily creaks open. "YOOOOHOOOOoooooooo..!!", not surprisingly, the whole house reverberates "ANYONE HOME..!". The silence is deafening, but then a jumbo jet would be like silence in the wake of that announcement.
"I wonder if this is the right house..?"
"Still talking to yourself we see",
"It was retorical...", she replies, and gives herself an icy glare in the hallway mirror, "Now unless you have something worthwhile to contribute, go back to sleep...".
"We would think someone who uses as much punctuation as you, err, me, hmm, us? nevermind, well you would think you would be more punctual"
"Very amusing", the temperature falls, "NOT.!! Anyway, I'm not late, I was, as ever unavoidably delayed."
"Oh LOL!", for a second her innner voice reflects as to whether it can actually laugh out loud, but it cartainly tries, "well that is one way of describing it. Maybe you should tell the shrink that next time you see him. Oh and also, ask him which is the correct term, "you", "me" or "us" when talking to mysel... ourselv... you... oh bother!", and with that, the silence just grew louder.

Perusing her surroundings, our intrepid adventurer concludes that this is indeed the correct address - shelves here and there hanging at odd angles, cupboard doors not quite square, laminate flooring - all obvious signs of the amateur DIY'er.
"Yes this is definately the right place. You can't fake this level of DIY".

As she scans around her environs, her eye is drawn to a spot of blood on the laminate near her feet, and another, a few inches further on, and another, and another, heading in the direction of what appears to be the kitchen. A few more splashes in the kitchen sink and around the tap. She concludes that someone obviously was trying to clean a wound.
"Hmm, judging by the amount of blood, prolly a 2d4 hit", she ponders out loud. The trail leads away from the kitchen and through a rear door and out to the driveway at the side of the house. The acrid smell of exhaust fumes heavy with burnt oil hang in the air.
"Someone left in a hurry", she says to the gods, as her inner voice continues to run around a mobius loop of self discovery.

Back in the kitchen, in one corner, an old Amiga 500, attached to an old flickering screen, lies strewn with paper.
"Upgraded the PC at last I see", and taking a blank piece of the debris from the corner, writes a few words upon it, folds it in half, and writes "to J. from A.", and places it tent like in the middle of the kitchen table.

She scans around the kitchen, smiles, and then turns in the direction of the front door and leaves the house by the way she came in, not noticing that the trail of blood leads through the front door and into the garden, and seems to originate in the vicinity of a power tool. If she had noticed the trail, and had time to inspect the power tool, she would of found it to be an Unholy Hedge Trimmer +1/+3 vs Unwitting DIY'ers. It would of appeared to have been hastily discarded, quite near to a hedge - or at least some kind of shrubbery - that had been under going some kind of weird topiary... but not quite finished.

A.

An Autobiography - Part Two

I have sat on this wall watching the rising of the tide for many years. My bones are as dry as the sand that surrounds me, as far as the eye can see, as far as the mind can feel, it stretches on forever. No life. Nothing. But maybe, one day... ahh, now an old mind wanders, wanders these desert wastes. My hopes are more poisonous than my dreams ever were. But again, maybe, one day, a new form will find my wall and will continue my vigil here, either along side me, or long after the last traces of my being have vanished completely.

Maybe one day, I will be able to continue the search for home...

An Autobiography - Part One

Twenty-seven days later and the electric went off, so we drank the wine that the waiter recommended. It was a fruity little number, with a subtle undercurrent, which added somewhat to it’s encumbrance. Jack said that it conveyed the whole atmosphere of the place in it’s bouquet, yet disillusioned you with it’s intoxicating fullness of body. It served him as a reminder of just why we were here, without it, he would have lost his way within the first few minutes of our arrival.

Armed with a couple of bottles, and the all important cork remover, we decided to explore the darkness, for we were in need of some light entertainment. Stumbling over the bodies, which still littered the floor (the going was heavy, but Jack was courageous enough to pull them from our path and piled them to one side), we made our way towards the head waiter’s enclave. We found him sitting there, shiftily scribbling on his order pad.
“Add these to our bill, garcon.” Jack was slick, you had to give him credit for that.
The head waiter looked up, “Fuck off” he grunted, and continued scribbling.
Not one to be outdone, Jack looked down at him, “Actually, we are starting to feel hungry, how about we order the . . .”
“OK!” the head waiter spluttered, “that’s another three bottles of Chateau Boileau du Narcejac onto your bill. Now go and piss off, I’m busy” he snarled back at us. A look of mirthless amusement shone from Jack’s eyes in response to this victory.

I suggested the washroom to my partner, and he nodded in agreement. We approached the wood grained door, our apprehension starting to get the better of us. The symbol on the door shone, even in this near darkness. It was a tarnished bronze colour and the surface of it seemed to bubble and boil from some deep chemical reaction that was taking place between the metal and the darkness. It felt like an age before we got within reach of the shining brass-like oblong hand panel which was fixed to the door by six round headed screws. The detail was exceptional, we had to stop and wonder at the level of technological achievement behind it all. We stood there breathless and windswept, deciding to finish the remainder of the bottle of wine we opened on our journey over here. I saw Jack’s hand move slowly inside his pocket.
“I’ll toss you for it” he said coyly.
I looked hard, into his deep blue eyes, a wry smile drifting across his glistening lips.
“Heads” I called.
The smile vanished. Jack pulled on his lucky coin; it was an old piece of metal he found on the second day of our arrival here. It had saved our lives numerous times in the past weeks. His hand came up, out of his pocket, and he launched the coin into the air. It seemed to sail majestically through the air currents and warm updrafts. Time slowed, as it always did at this point, and so while we waited for the outcome I opened another bottle of wine. We spoke about how we had laughed before coming here, how easy it was going to be, and how easy it was going to be to get back again. But in reality it hadn’t been. Not at all. Twenty-seven god-awful days later, and we were still here.



A faint whistling brought us from our reverie. The coin was returning from it’s flight, a slightly different shape as always. It headed straight for Jack’s hand. He deftly caught it, and as quick as lightning, he shoved it straight back into his pocket.
“Yes” he said, “two of them”.
“About bloody time” I replied.
We smiled a desperate smile at each other, and as one, we pushed open the door. The brass panel was cold and slimy to the touch, but we were suitably rewarded. In that split second, a blinding white light emerged from the doorway and time folded upon itself. We were only allowed a brief glimpse of the brown-white enamelled receptacles hanging from the walls, before we were picked up by time and space. With a sickening ‘THWAP’, and excellent visuals, we were taken through all sorts of differing space-time conflicts back to where we had originally started our journey from, twenty-seven days ago.

We sat in the middle of the operations centre, proud of our achievements, and supping the last from the bottle of wine.
“I told you it was going to be easy” Jack said, slapping me on my back,
“Easy, yes, but you said nothing about the music”

I can still here Jack laughing to this very day.

23rd September - Farewell. . .

A period of drought, although a lot of rain has fallen.

It's very strange how a simple incident can prove so devastating, and make you feel that everything we do is so very, very trivial.

I have said my private and personal farewells, but after losing two of my closest colleagues and friends it seemed only appropriate to say it publicly. John and Alison, you will be so greatly missed...

2nd September - My Life is Brilliant

James Blunt is as sharp as a pencil, but also examines the male psyche in his tune, "You're Beautiful". I've heard this song tons of times, but while stuck in traffic on the M1, heading back from Alfreton up to Durham I actually listened to the lyric and smiled to myself.

Other than practising the art of how to look insane sitting in a car, an art which I practice daily, either by talking, singing or laughing along to the radio. Of course the hands-free mobile phone has made this less of an art form, than a random nodding of heads and thinking 'on the phone', rather than the thought of 'nutter' running through their minds.

But do men really think that a pleasant smile can mean so much..? or even more, to write a song about.??

Then there's the religious side that men think Angels are female, a - I must admit - common popularisation and image, although most religious visitations, and maybe a fact of wiring of my female brain, have a male appearance, although lacking a vital 'tool' in the pants department.