It was one of those moments when he knew whatever decision he made could affect the entirety of the rest of his life. 

This was it.

There was no way to avoid making a choice and no way to prevent the cascading consequences reaching down through the years ahead. He could be losing a chance at a lifetime of happiness or maybe committing to the first step of something that was doomed to fail.

For a moment that awareness paralysed him completely. Even his thoughts. Then he looked at the screen in front of him and carefully swiped the picture.

Eleanor Swift-Hook

Take this exclusive opportunity to explore the mysteries of the zodiac through the wisdom of the esoterically enigmatic Madam Pendulica…

Aries. 

Aries children are the cuddly lambs of the zodiac. They are warm, charming and utterly without aggression or ambition.

Managing your Aries child

Just lead. They will follow.

Taurus.

Taurean children are sturdily stubborn. They won’t argue with you, but equally they won’t listen to a word you say.

Managing your Taurus child

Get between them and their ultimate goal and wave your arms about. This sometimes works.

Gemini.

The twins are a conundrum as one side of your child’s complex character will always be obliging and persuadable. Sadly, the other half will spend all it’s waking hours looking to outwit you.

Managing your Gemini child

Dot every i and cross every t. And hope. Unless your Gemini offspring are actually twins, in which case the best advice is to sit back and enjoy the ride. 

Cancer.

Complicated and convoluted of thought, your Cancer child will sneak past you at any given opportunity, and may well nip your arse in passing.

Managing your Cancer child

The ostentatious opening of a large jar of mayonnaise may function as a deterrent to the worst behaviours.

Leo.

Lazy, handsome, amoral and fond of sleeping in the sun. A Leo child will be untroublesome, but also unhelpful and invisible if there is any heavy lifting to be done.

Managing your Leo child 

Just scratch his belly, he will roll over and play dead for hours.

Virgo.

Virgo children are prim and often humourless. This is the only birth sign that voluntarily tidies its bedroom.

Managing your Virgo child

Just tell her how perfect she is. They bask in praise and will bend over backwards if compared favourably to their siblings.

Libra.

Libran children are calculating and weighing up the opposition is their forte. No Libra child will pick a fight with a low probability of victory.

Managing your Libra child

Just make sure they know you are bigger and uglier than they are.

Scorpio.

Scorpio children are intelligent, charismatic, humorous and wholly unprincipled. They are capable of the most monstrous behaviour couched in such a way as to render you speechless with laughter

Managing your Scorpio child 

Good luck with that foolish notion!

Sagittarius.

Pointedly principled, Sagittarian children can be relied on to ask embarrassing questions in public places, in very loud voices. 

Managing your Sagittarius child 

Remember that the centaur has two stomachs. These children may be instantly bribed with chocolate.

Capricorn.

Amiable, clever and organised. You can’t keep a goat anywhere a goat doesn’t want to be. On the plus side they are not picky eaters

Managing your Capricorn child 

Logic works. Threats don’t.

Aquarius.

Interminably busy, these children are often convinced that life is not giving them a fair deal. Can be whiny.

Managing your Aquarius child 

I recommend keeping them well hydrated – make sure they always have a waterbottle to carry around.

Pisces.

There are two kinds of Pisces children. The serenely uncomplicated swimmer with the tide and their absolute opposites the bruised, battered and scarred children who spend all their lives battling upstream.

Managing your Pisces child 

The serene sort need no management, the other buggers are unmanageable.

Madame Pendulica predicts she will return…

Born she was from darkness
In the bosom of the night
Daughter of indiscretion
Selene who shines so bright
Relaxes she and grows by day
Secret as a nun
And then she bellies like a sail
Giving back the sun
Born was she to wax and wane
In her appointed time
She calls the seas to rise and fall
A Circe in her prime
Born she was from that dark sky
Wherein we see her face
Silver sister, crescent moon
Epitome of grace
Born she was from darkness
Born she was to die
Consider our mortality
The crescent moon and I

Jane Jago

Dying to be Cured is set in a modern-day Britain where the Roman Empire still rules. Dai and Julia take on a fight against institutional corruption whilst dealing with the demands of family, friendship and domestic crises.

The door was directly off the carer’s waiting room and turned out ot be little more than a cubbyhole with a water closet and a wash basin. Julia carefully locked the door behind her and took stock of her options. There was a single narrow window open to the warm air and looking out onto the patio, but being designed for a toilet, it could not be looked in on from the outside, which meant she was safe from security cameras here at least. The first thing she did was to check and load the two weapons she had taken from the wheelchair tubes. One was a tranquilizer pistol. The other a small, but powerful, handgun she hoped she wouldn’t need to use.

Now to try and figure out what precisely was happening in this place. Julia was just about to attempt a ‘suicide run’ along the corridor – trusting in her own speed and silence and hoping to remain unseen – when she noticed a trapdoor in the centre of the ceiling. The old building clearly had a space above where no doubt cables, ventilation ducts and other such essentials were concealed from view. But the ceiling was still almost twice her own height overhead so how to get up there? 

She opened the door to the waiting room and made a dash – dragging three straight-backed wooden chairs into the necessary chamber before shutting and relocking the door. It was a relatively simple job, to stack the chairs in such a way as to provide her with a rudimentary and somewhat rickety ladder. With some trepidation, she she swarmed up onto the top of the wobbly pile. She had just managed to push the trap open and grasp the edge with both hands when the chairs under her gave a mighty creak and collapsed. Heaving herself into the roof space, she carefully closed the hatch behind her.

It was fairly light up there, with illumination coming via many ventilation grilles under the edge of the roof. Julia was grateful for that as it meant she could see the solid beams and avoid the places where the ceiling panels had no strong support. She had made her careful way about half the distance back to where she reckoned Gwen was, when she heard voices.

“That’s a total of five units so far. Any change?”

“Nothing so far. Patient is still stable.”

“Very well. Another unit then.”

She knew then that whatever was going on it had little to do with prayer. Her eyes were drawn to a pattern of light which seemed to be coming from under the fibrous insulation mat a little to her left. Carefully lifting the edge of the mat, she looked down into a room where an enormously fat woman slept in a high cot-sided bed. There were intravenous drips connected to her arm, but no one in the room. The voices spoke again, and Julia reckoned they were coming from just in front of her. She crawled forwards and picked at the edge of the matting.

Sure enough there was another ventilation grille, but the scene she looked into this time was even less like anybody’s idea of a holy temple. A man lay on a similar bed to the one the woman was asleep in, but he was strapped down with sturdy restraints on his arms, legs and torso. The room was full of white-coated men and women, one of whom was injecting something into a tube that ran into the supplicant’s chest. The muscles in the man’s arms and legs seemed to spasm against the restraints as they did so. For the first time since the start of the ‘adventure’ Julia felt real fear; she swallowed a mouthful of bile before making a brief recording of the scene with her wristphone.

Pulling herself together, she eased the insulation back in place before sending the signal that would have the cavalry charging to the rescue. Meanwhile, she had to get back to Gwen. 

She carried on along her beam until she thought herself the correct distance from the end of the building, but it still took her four increasingly desperate goes to find the right room. Gwen lay on her back, motionless, and for a moment Julia feared she was too late and Gwen had been given some experimental drug or other. But as she moved the ceiling panel Gwen’s eyes flew open. Julia stuck her head down through the hole in the ceiling and hissed. 

“I’m up here. Can you push the bed over so I can drop down onto it?”

“I think so.” Gwen’s voice was thin and thready but she heaved herself off the bed and managed a mighty shove that pushed it under the small hole. “Goodness me! Will you be able to get through there?”

“I have to. Now I’m going to drop a tranq pistol. Can you guard the door?”

Julia suited action to words and by way of reply, Gwen grasped the pistol in both hands and turned to face the door. Julia meanwhile, got her legs down the hole and squeezed her hips through with a little difficulty. Her torso was easier, and by putting both arms high above her head she managed to compress her shoulders enough to scrape through the aperture, landing in an ungainly heap on the mattress below. 

“They are using this place as a cover for some very unethical experimental medical interventions,” she told Gwen as she sat up. “I already called in the cavalry.”

Dying to be Cured by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook first appeared in Gods of Clay: A Sci Fi Roundtable Anthology.

Friday the Thirteenth! 

Who’s afraid of Freddy Krueger then? Lights a fag from the stub of the last one and sneers. 

Look at yourselves will you. Frightening yourselves shitless about a random date and a fictional monster. 

Get a grip!

Friday the Thirteenth is just another day. It is no more unlucky than any other day. 

To illustrate: I met my late and unlamented spouse on a Friday. Only it wasn’t the thirteenth. And I couldn’t blame luck. Nope. I wound up married to the louse because of the effects of rough cider not the friggin’ date….

So. Get out from under the bed. Get your legs down the appropriate holes in your trousers (or pants if you are a bloody colonial), and try to act like you have a brain cell.

Stop watching horror films if you don’t have the balls to realise they are fiction. 

Don’t be looking for lucky items of clothing, just put your adult panties on and get on with the day.

Do not walk around with your fingers crossed. You will only wind up hurting yourself.

Put the bloody rabbit foot down. It isn’t lucky for f***’s sake. The poor bloody rabbit is dead!

To cut a possibly very long rant a little shorter here is the bottom line.

Superstition is crap. It will never be anything but crap. It is designed to sell crap. And to allow the feeble-minded to blame their inadequacies on a higher power.

Again I say crap.

If I see anybody surreptitiously turning their money in their pocket, or avoiding their reflection I shall be kicking ass…

And as for tomorrow being Valentine’s Day, do you really want to get me started on that too?

You do?

That bitchfest in the name of lerv? That commercialisation of affection? That show the world how perfect your relationship is? That Gw***** P*****w of festivals?

In case you hadn’t guessed, Granny really don’t approve.

When I was a gel, your boyfriend sent you a card he had bought in Woolworths and probably forgot to take the price ticket off of. You showed it to your mum and your best friend and put it in a box with all your souvenirs. End of. And if nobody sent, well only you and your mum  and your best friend knew. No real harm done – unless your best friend was a bitch.

Nowadays nothing is that simple. Today you have to Instagram the card, the flowers, the jewels, the wine, the food, the guy, the naughty underwear…

Stop it. For the love of sanity. Do. Not. Do. It.

But. Given that it will occur and every halfwit on the planet will be posting the biggest lie they can concoct… 

Here’s the plan.

Buy yourself a bouquet of something pretty. Photograph it. Post it on all your social media with no explanation.

When somebody is rude enough to ask simply say the flowers were from your greatest admirer. Truth. And. Sorted…

Advice for chaps. If you are from the side of the room with dangly bits and facial hair the advice to you is Do Not Forget. Your life may depend on it… also a large present and a suitably soppy card can result in the sort of sexual favours you have only dreamed of.

Piss off. I’ve said all I’m going to say and you are annoying me now.

Happy Friday suckers!

Some whimsical words on whimsical themes…

The WI President’s chest
Was enclosed in a Viyella vest
But a yoga demonstration
Went wrong in translation
Causing one breast to fall from its nest

Jane Jago

Poems of puppy Fozzie Jago as he is exploring and experiencing the world!

The sky has been leaking for days.
And days
It washes the garden away.
Away
There’s wet water and bogs
And red mud that clogs
And no place for Fozzie to play.
To play

Jane Jago

It never seemed fair to Tammy. Why was it when autumn came that all the trees kept their green except the River Tree? 

She sat in her wheelchair and wondered if he was sad when his glorious green mantle turned to red and gold, then lifted away when the winds blew, leaving him standing gaunt on the riverbank.

He alone must die whilst those trees around him stayed green and strong.

Tammy watched the sunset, golden behind the River Tree. At least he would come alive again in the spring. She hoped she would still be there to see him…

Eleanor Swift-Hook

Take this exclusive opportunity to explore the mysteries of the zodiac through the wisdom of the esoterically enigmatic Madam Pendulica…

Aries

The cuddly lambs of the zodiac. Scratch an Arian between the ears and gambol about in the grass with them and you will have a lover for on whom you can depend.

Never show an Aries any harsh behaviour. They will run away.

Taurus

The laziest of lovers a Taurus will always be torn between making love and having a nice rest. Be gentle in your expectations and a Tauren will be faithful for life.

Never get between a Taurus and a bed, you will be crushed.

Gemini 

This sign never knows what it wants in a relationship. One face is absorbed in the relationship of the moment while the other is looking about for something new. Unsettling.

Never leave your Gemini lover alone with your best friend.

Cancer

Cancerians have a propensity towards the less gentle pleasures of the bedroom and are prone to pinching. Keep the upper hand and your love life will never be boring.

Never allow a Cancerian anything sharp.

Leo

The lion likes to roar and loves to be admired, but is mostly only interested in his or her own gratification. Purr a bit and they will know how to treat you.

Never have a mirror in the bedroom with a Leo or you won’t stop them admiring themselves for long enough to enjoy any physical closeness.

Virgo

The conundrum of the zodiac. Virgo lovers pretend disinterest and even dislike although in truth they are virtually insatiable. Keep fit if you want to stay in a relationship with a Virgo.

Never believe a Virgo headache, it’s just a ploy to make you work harder at convincing them.

Libra

While your Libra lover is weighing the consequences of each and every action and embrace, you will be able to get in plenty of nice naps. If you are not bothered by speed or continuity a Libra will get there in the end.

Never offer a Libra any choices or you will lose the will to live while they consider.

Scorpio

If you want affection avoid Scorpios like the plague. Ditto if you want fidelity or kindliness. However, if you want your bottom spanked… Experimentation is meat and drink to Scorpios so expect the unexpected.

Never let your Scorpio handcuff you to the bed. They may just find it amusing to leave you there.

Sagittarius 

The lover with the truest aim. Sagittarians are true bedroom athletes and satisfaction is guaranteed. Enjoy.

Never expect a good night’s sleep 

Aquarius 

The workaholics of the zodiac. Love is just another burden to this lot. But if you can wrest the water pot away from them they make charming lovers.

Never allow an Aquarius to bring their work into the bedroom.

Pisces

Cheerfully amoral, Pisceans are extremely able lovers and very good company. Open a bottle of something expensive and prepare to enjoy the ride.

Never let a Pisces see you care. It frightens them off. 

Madame Pendulica predicts she will return…

Today there were snowdrops
Pushing green lances
Through the dull earth
To the sky.

The small white blooms bowing
With heads in lace veils
Brides of the spring
Bright and blythe.

Winter’s last rearguard
Summer’s first promise
At this moment
Seasons bide.

True heralds of nature
Announcing a rebirth:
‘Life doth return
Hope stands high’.

Today there were snowdrops
With heads in lace veils
At this moment
Hope stands high.

E.M. Swift-Hook