Author: Alexander Fawn

After the reading of the will, he would wait a while before returning to the house.

He knew that the old man had never revealed the whereabouts of the proceeds from the diamond heist. It was a robbery that had resulted in him spending most of his adult life in prison. It had gone horribly wrong and people had got hurt. The diamonds were never recovered and no mention of them was made in the will. He was sure they had to be in the house. The man had always like games, hiding things in secret drawers and false bottoms of ornaments, so he knew it wasn’t going to be easy. He also knew that the house was due to be demolished and the land cleared. The tiny but precious stones would be lost forever. Being the home contents evaluator for the insurance company, he would have the place to himself for hours to carry out his search. If it came to that, he could spend the entire day in there.

It turned out that he did just that. From an early morning start, he had not discovered the false drawer in the desk until mid-afternoon. It contained a written note giving a safe’s combination, and this was followed by another hour before he found the safe cleverly concealed behind a mirror in the bathroom. It turned out to be virtually empty. It only contained another slip of paper that read: ‘A tongue-tied one. (4 letters)’.

He was stumped. He was very much a numbers man, not a words person. He had never been any good at cryptic puzzles, with their clever clues designed to misdirect you. He thinks about times in the past, when he had looked up the answer only to realize that he couldn’t figure out why it was the answer in the first place. He sat down with it for a further hour.

He had hit a brick wall, and there was no way he could ask anyone.

He left the house late that day, never knowing about the hollow heal…

She could go back to work now.

She could wear a mask behind the counter and tell customers about the department store’s range of cosmetics. She could do that. She could go in and pay close attention to the social distancing rules; she could. She could also scream out loud that she’s sick of all this… all this trouble! This evil pandemic being visited upon all the citizens of the world. What did we all do to deserve this? Do other people find it so difficult to wear a mask? Do they feel that it’s suffocating? The news reports tell her that the rules have changed again and she could go in and wear a mask all day. How would she feel if a customer comes to her counter without wearing one! What is she supposed to do about it? Does she say something to them, or does she report it to her manager? Is she just being silly thinking about that? She’ll be so glad when this is all over.

Meanwhile, she could go back to work now.

It had to be the very worst dream she’d ever had.

When she was snapped out of it by the alarm, she just lay there shivering. The entire nightmare was still there, very real. It started with being chased through the jungle by a tiger, this was followed by being caught in a storm, with lightening coming down hitting the ground all around her, then she was in a pit full of snakes all squirming around. Then, she was falling from the top of a high building and suddenly found herself out at sea gulping mouthfuls of water with no land in sight. The whole thing ended with her in a terrible car accident, being stuck in a car that was upside down and on fire. She was trying to get out when she woke up.

With a lot of effort she got out of bed and started her usual work day routine. The images from the night just wouldn’t go away. Being really concerned about it, she booked an early morning session with her personal analyst before heading in to work.

On his couch, she went through the whole thing in as much detail as she could remember, while he sat silently listening. When she had finally finished, he nodded for a while. He then confirmed her next regular appointment.

On her way out, he said, “Try to ease the amount of stress in your life.”

She left feeling so much better.

 

 

 

 

It was a hot, windy day when he decided to tidy up the garden.

He looked out of the back window and felt it was ideal weather for cleaning up the garden. He had been putting it off, but today he would make it happen. After all, he had the time to do it.

It took just eight minutes for him to walk around the back garden, looking to see what would need to be done to tidy the place up.

It took him seven minutes to change into his old gardening clothes and find his gardening gloves in the shed.

Six minutes to get the bucket from the side of the house and pick up sticks and small branches from the lawn and in the flower beds.

Five minutes to get the rake and rake up all of the dead leaves from the lawn and pile them up on a patch of open ground at the back of the garden.

Four minutes to take a last minute look around for anything else that needs to be burnt off. Return to the house, get a box of matches, go back to the pile and light the dead leaves, watch it until he was satisfied that the fire had taken hold.

Three minutes to hear the house phone go, return to the house to answer it, find the shopping list that his wife forgot, read the items out over the phone, then return to the garden.

Two minutes to discover that the flames from the fire were licking at the base of the back wooden fence, run and take the garden hose off the wall, connect it to the tap, drag the nozzle to the back of the garden, and put the fire out.

One minute to keep the hose going on the pile and the fence, until all of the smouldering had completely stopped.

And it took less than a minute for him to realise that it was not ideal weather for cleaning up the garden.

When the alarm clock buzzed, he woke with a terrible headache.

He shut it off quickly and listened. Yes, his flatmate had already left for work. He staggered into the bathroom. His head was pounding. After a wash and shave he fossicked around in the cabinet until he found a bottle of aspirin. He took one and dressed. It didn’t seem to be helping, so he put a couple more in his pocket. He’d take them later if his head didn’t clear. The walk to the bus stop was invigorating, but his headache was no better. He dipped into his pocket and swallowed both tablets. The bus came and he got on. The ride in usually took a few minutes. Hopefully, this would be enough time for the throbbing to stop completely.

The girl sitting in front of him was wearing a cap covered with tiny embroidered butterflies. The first inclination that something was not quite right was when the wings on a couple of them began to flutter. He squeezed his eyes shut, but it didn’t help. He looked across at the woman holding a poodle on her lap… but it wasn’t a poodle, it was a chicken! A chicken on a bus? He couldn’t wait to get off. When he did, he found that most of the people walking past had horns and nearly all of them were wearing red, clown noses. He leant against a wall looking at the blue rabbits perched on top of every street lamp. He took a deep breath. He really couldn’t go into work like this. With great care, he crossed the road, made his way to the bus stop and waited for a ride home.

When the bus came, he clambered on, and in a moment of clarity, mumbled to the gorilla that was in the driver’s seat, “They weren’t aspirin!”

From the beginning inventions

Have been going on.

Even now, from year to year.

Such a lot of really clever stuff,

So many things invented.

Too many to mention here.

–

The first wheels began to turn,

Improving transportation and travel,

By an ever increasing degree.

It may have started with a potter’s wheel,

In three thousand five hundred BC.

–

Writing implements in Mesopotamia;

Its importance couldn’t be clearer.

Three and a half thousand years

Into the Common Era.

–

The compass allowed navigation,

With ships sailing to and fro,

Exploring new lands across the seas.

With travellers busy preparing maps,

It enabled geographical location,

Two hundred years ago.

–

From the first solar calendars,

To the one now widely used,

Two long millennium have past.

With its accuracy in doubt,

A pope sorted it out,

And made it more accurate at last.

–

Sundials have been on the go

For around six thousand years.

They’ve seen a complete redesign.

All clocks from them derive,

Water clocks became mechanical

In China, in seven twenty five.

–

In fourteen fifty, came the printing press.

It was Gutenberg’s solution.

With newspapers spilling onto the streets,

It really came into its own,

And playing an intrinsic part

In the industrial revolution.

–

The electric battery in eighteen hundred;

Volta’s clever invention.

Creating a constant supply of power,

And used to operate so many things,

It’s certainly worth a mention.

–

There was Babbage’s mechanical computer,

Back in eighteen twenty two,

Weighing in by the ton.

Despite its many moving parts,

Something digital had begun.

–

Perkins built his refrigerator in eighteen thirty four,

Prolonging the life of food.

Based on the principle of removing heat,

The idea was rather shrewd.

–

Then came the telegraph from Morse and his team.

A far reaching thing to invent.

Long-distance communication made possible,

And using his code in eighteen forty four,

The first telegraphic message was sent.

–

The electric bulb, designed to last,

Lit up in eighteen eighty.

After lots of filaments braking,

And with tungsten finally used,

It certainly brought more light into the world,

The invention being quite weighty.

–

The airplane would take travellers across the globe,

Something da Vinci could draw and foresee.

It all started with the Wright brothers,

In nineteen hundred and three.

–

In nineteen forty seven, the transistor was born,

Amplifying electric signals greatly.

Replacing the vacuum tube to send signals further,

It opened the way for the electronics age,

With a great deal more, lately.

–

At an annual trade show in nineteen fifty nine,

An amazing thing was first demonstrated.

It was a solid integrated circuit,

Now commonly called the microchip,

Allowing new ways of doing things,

And an exciting future was created.

–

And finally to the humble pork pie, quite out of place,

From way back in seventeen forty seven.

It could be considered before its time,

The recipe came from Hannah Glasse.

And for some, the taste of heaven!

She was watching a show on the television, when she heard a noise coming from the kitchen.

Switching the show to mute, she moved silently out into the hall. She prayed that it had simply been something that had been stacked and had finally toppled down or some household pest running around looking for food… anything but him! As she entered the kitchen, she stopped dead in her tracks. It was him, he was there again; he had come back. She was confronted by that same old evil smile. This time her husband was holding a large knife. He was waving it around and looked even more menacing than any time before. She looked around and her eyes settled on the jar of rock salt. Before he could act, she flipped off the lid and through the contents at him. He let out an unholy scream and within moments he just melted away.

Back in the lounge, she opened her phone and found their number. When she got through, she explained what had happened. She had been told that in really bad cases the first spiritual purification may need a follow up.

She made an appointment for another a house cleansing.

The story goes that the old gold digger hit pay dirt.

Nobody knows how true it is. They say he had travelled what must have been the best part of thirty kilometres, on foot, in one day. Through the hot desert and the bush, he had made his way into town. He started before sunup and arrived at the public house in the late afternoon. Exhausted, he went to the bar and dropped a tiny pellet of gold on the counter. He sat with cold beers recuperating for a while before thinking about the huge gold nugget he was carrying. He thought it would be unwise to have it on display in public, particularly in such a place. He made his way to the gents, where he dug into his pocket. It was not there! He found a hole! He checked his other pocket. He checked all of his pockets, several times. It was obvious; it had been that pocket. It had been in that pocket with the tear in it and it had fallen out, but where?

He asked himself how anything that big and that heavy could fall through his pocket without him noticing. It had been a very hot day. He had felt delirious a couple of times. Anyway, the more he thought about it, the more he realised that it could only be somewhere along the thirty kilometres he’d just walked. He would have to retrace his route, every inch of it! It would be worth it; worth the trouble. He’d get a room here, then take off at first light.

Back at the bar, without making too much of a show of it, he began by checking the floor of the pub, then the steps at the front. He got a few queer looks from people, but ignored them. They didn’t know what was at stake. Outside, he stood looking back along the side of the road he had come in on. He shook his head and went back in to finish his drink.

The story goes that back at the bar he thinks about how he’d found what he’d spent three long years looking for. He remembers how he was chipping away when the thing just fell out and landed at his feet. He remembers how he picked it up and weighed it in the palm of his hand. He had tried to estimate what it was worth. It had to be worth thousands, considering the going rate. It would either fetch enough for him to retire, or at the very least to return to the same spot and hopefully find more and with better equipment and supplies. Thinking back, it now dawned on him that he’d come away too quickly, on an impulse. There was bound to be more at the site. Despite everything, that night he slept well.

Some say he took off the next morning. Some say he went back, all the way back, taking care to retrace his steps, and some say he was never seen again.

He had just been released from prison and was on parole after doing a stretch for burglary.

He wasn’t going back. Some of the older jailbirds seem to do time OK, but he didn’t. He’d had enough! He was still young enough to put it all behind him. His parole officer had found him work a in a building supplier’s warehouse, the pay wasn’t much, but it would get him back on his feet. They had agreed, as part of his rehabilitation that he should have as little as possible to do with the criminal fraternity that he had grown up with. This agreement applied in particular to his brother-in-law, a prominent member of the underworld. It was him that had got him started down the road of crime.

That evening he would go out and celebrate his freedom. After a long, hot shower at his mum’s, he put on a suit that had been waiting for him. When he arrived at his local, several of his old mates were there, wanting to welcome him back. The evening went really well and the beer flowed freely. He was completely drunk when, just before closing time, his brother-in-law showed up.

He pulled him to one side and whispered, “I’ve got a little job for you. Nice little earner. No risk. Right up your street, it is…”

The park was pretty and the bench was comfortable.

“What time is it?”

“Just gone nine.”

“No kids.”

“Eh?”

“No kids. They’re all at school.”

“You sure?”

“Yep.”

“Isn’t it school holidays?”

“No. That’s next week.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yes, I’m sure. Anyway, you’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

“Being argumentative.”

“Hey! That’s a bit harsh. I just thought it was this week, that’s all.”

“OK. But you do tend to contradict unnecessarily sometimes.”

“I disagree.”

“There you go again.”

“Look…”

“When a person has a different point of view about something, surely it’s reasonable to allow them to voice it?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether it is actually reasonable.”

“But…”

“It’s also about timing, of course the degree of repetition comes into it.”

“Hey! You talk about me! Have you any idea how argumentative you sound?”

“No.”

“Well, you do.”

“I’ll have to think about that…”

He looked up and was suddenly aware of a number of passing pedestrians taking an interest in him.

He whispered to himself, “Shut up, people are watching.”