Two Women and Some Books
You held my hand and touched my heart
Through fields of wheat we ran
Our hearts were filled with happiness
As our true love began
We wed and raised a family
Through fields of beans and kale
They grew and flourished merrily
As our true love was hale
We welcomed all the grandchildren
Through fields of sprouting corn
And counted our lives many joys
As our true love was strong
We left to make a long journey
Through fields of lavender
Hand in hand and happily
‘Cos true love is forever
Goggling The Box
A television programme – no a series, sorry several series of television programmes – dedicated to watching people watching television programmes.
What the actual?
Me and Gyp looked on in disbelief as the ‘stars’ did random things like cutting their toenails, trying to train a puppy, attempting the splits, eating face cream by mistake because it was in the fridge, all while allegedly watching a selection of the ‘best’ tv.
There was screaming, crying, sarcastic comment, political pontification, and a goodly amount of deeply disingenuous thickness.
As entertainment I suppose it has its moments, albeit usually provided unintentionally – when the ‘stars’ misinformed opinions are so funny as to make one weep, or when domestic friction rears its ugly head in front of the tv screen.
Otherwise it has all the allure of watching paint dry.
It is not a ‘social experiment’ any more than Big Brother was, although this has got to have been a lot cheaper to make. No sets to construct, no audience to be bussed about the landscape, no shouty presenter to pay. The only common denominator is a single voice over – just in case we can’t work out what the feck is going on.
One can see the appeal to its creators cheap programming offering the allure of the knowledge that something will go wrong every time.
This is Schadenfreude tv at its most opportunistic.
But Gyp likes it. He rather fancies a punch up with the Rottweilers….
It doesn’t matter what you think – this is Granny’s opinion and it’s not up for discussion!
King Raynar chose for his wife the daughter of the king next door, the beautiful Princess Raina.
Her sister, Princess Sunna, was jealous and went to a sorcerer, who put a curse on Raina that if she did not ride straight across the stream between the two kingdoms, it would rain there for the rest of her life.
When Raina reached the stream she was determined to cross but a bird flew up, startling her horse so she reined it in.
It started to rain right away.
So, you see, it rained in the reign of Raynar when Raina reined.
Elron and his sister-wife Elanda dallied in the dappled shade of the forest. They walked hand in hand, stopping every few steps to kiss and caress. Elanda slipped away and ran a few steps, for the sheer joy of him catching her in his strong arms and bearing her down into the sweet loam to ravish her with tender savagery.
They strayed closer to the homes of the human creatures than was their habit, standing for a while to watch as the white-clad and silent women of the sanctuary bore a wrapped bundle to the flat rock of sacrifice, leaving it there before scuttling away on silent feet.
“I wonder what gift they spare to the old ones,” Elanda spoke idly, even as her beloved’s clever hands worked their magic. He bent her over a convenient tree branch and they began their unending game yet again.
This time the little mewing cries did not come only from Elanda’s throat as they continued even after she drooped like a spent lily.
“It’s a child. The old one will dine on child tonight.”
Elanda walked on soft feet to where the babe lay and pulled back the blanket from his fair features. She gazed enraptured.
“Look Elron. Is he not beautiful?”
Elron looked, without too much interest, but found to his surprise that the child was indeed of surpassing beauty. Gold of hair, blue of eye, and possessed of skin so thin and white that the blue veins could clearly be discerned beneath their fragile coverlet.
“He is indeed beautiful. Shall we keep him?”
“We could. But what of the old one?”
“I will call him up a fat boar. He will like that better anyway.”
Elanda’s smile was a thing of witchery, so the deed was done. They retraced their steps, only this time The beautiful fae had a beautiful child in her arms. Once away from the grove of the old ones, she stopped and seated herself on a sweetly scented bank of wild flowers.
“The child must feed,” she declared opening her garment.
Elron expected to feel jealousy at the sight of another mouth at his beloved’s breast, and he was surprised to find that all he felt was excitement as the child’s perfect lips encircled Elanda’s long pink nipple.
He watched for some while, until, impelled by some appetite he didn’t know he possessed, he bent his handsome head to suckle the other breast.
As quickly as a bolt of summer lightning, the child stirred in Elanda’s arms and struck like a viper sinking sharp and yellowish teeth into the pulse that beat in the big male’s neck.
Elron was paralysed and could only groan in agony as the creature drunk his life force. The eyes that had looked so blue in the sacred grove now glowed red as the succubus fed.
Seemingly unknowing, Elanda crooned a lullaby and stroked the baby’s milk-white skin…
It was one of those winter evenings when your own fireside is the best place to be when Nanny’s dream of bee-loud summer was interrupted by a quiet tap on the door. It was the vicar’s housekeeper. She dropped a small curtesy and Nanny wondered why her prickles didn’t tear holes in her flowered gown.
“The vicar asks if you could spare him a few moments ma’am.”
“What? Right now?”
“If you please.”
Nanny shoved her feet into her bright red rubber boots and wrapped herself in a cloak of fine combed wool.
“Lead the way, Tiggywinkle.”
In the vicar’s study, the formidable bosom of the village’s premier gossip was accompanied by her daughter – who didn’t look too happy to be there.
“Ah. Bee. I’m being asked to call out Farmer Greengrass in church as an adulterer and the father of the baby Amelia here is carrying.”
“I’m not asking Reverend, I demand that you put my daughter in place of that man’s barren wife.”
Nanny sniffed. “Adulterer he may well be. But the child ain’t his.”
“Are you calling my daughter a liar?”
“Egg it how you please. The babe ain’t his.”
The bosom loomed.
“How dare you?”
Nanny grinned. “It ent his wife what’s barren.”
Then she went home.
The body had been found washed up on a beach near Segontium and would normally have attracted little, if any, attention as no one had been reported missing. But this corpse had been found to have a ring of Citizenship still attached to a finger, but lodged in the corpse’s throat. To Dai’s impotent fury, Rome reserved the full benefits and privileges of justice for her own children—and it seemed this might be one such case.
Despite the body being partially decomposed, dental records had enabled them to trace its identity. Zirri Yedder had been a freelance journalist with a history of producing cutting investigative pieces that highlighted local issues—local to Mauretania Tingitana that is, the province, where he had lived in the capital, Tingist. Although the pathologist report that Dai read was not entirely sure of the cause of death, it was also very clear that the body had been tortured beforehand.
But the finger was not the finger of Zirri Yedder and he had never been a Roman Citizen. He had, however, been registered at a cupona in the village of Caerhun and the landlady there said he had been there awaiting an invitation to the temple. She had last seen him as he set off to answer his eventual summons and no one had seen him alive since then.
Which was why Dai and Bryn now stood on the edge of the crowd watching as the service began. A security guard hovered nervously near by, trying not to make it too obvious that he was watching them as they observed proceedings.
“Who’d have thought a man who died nearly two thousand years ago having self-labelled as a deity, would still be honoured as a worker of miracles in the modern age?” Bryn’s voice was pitched so it was lost in the chanting from the crowd. Even so Dai looked at him sharply.
“You should be careful saying those kinds of things, SI Cartvel. Especially here.”
Bryn lifted his wrist and tapped the screen on his wristphone.
“Not me, Bard, I’m just reading what our friend Yedder put up on his social media. It was meant as a teaser for his next piece.”
“And I missed that, how?”
“You are a busy man, Submagistratus and these little details…”
“I checked his social media feed, right back for the last three years.”
“Ah, that would explain it then.” Bryn was looking almost smug. “It only posted today—less than an hour ago in fact. It must have been one he scheduled before he died.”
“Spado!” Dai said, but without real rancour. “Was there more?”
The other man shook his head. “No. That was it. Just says: ‘My current investigation is going to make a lot of people sit up and think’, then what I told you. Seems to be his style. Putting up a teaser a couple of days before the main article comes out. This time though, I think he hit the wrong kind of deadline first.”
From Dying to be Cured a Dai and Julia Mystery by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook a whodunit set in a modern day Britain where the Roman Empire still rules and one of the stories in the SciFi Roundtable’s anthology Gods of Clay .
Patience was sure that having been given such a name meant inevitably her rebellious spirit would rise against it. If she had to wait for something she would pass it by.
Swiping right was a quick way to a boyfriend.
Until she met Marcus.
Marcus insisted on not dating anyone until after his exams. Four whole months. Patience managed somehow.
Then Patience wanted him to move in, but he said they needed to save for a bigger place.
It took six months.
Then Patience wanted to get married.
Marcus purchased a special licence and they were wed the next day.
Nanny was having a quiet think (okay she was occupied in the closet) when there came a ferocious banging on the door. She adjusted her clothing and made her way to where some person was assaulting her paintwork.
“Whatever is the matter?”
Gladys the Griffin clutched an eggshell to her breast.
“He killed my baby.”
Nanny sighed.
“Who killed your baby?”
“Scoggins the Sadist.”
Nanny removed the shell from Gladys’ front claw.
“Right miss. Why do think this here egg is yourn?”
Gladys shuffled her rear feet and the lion claws dug into the lawn. Nanny winced but pressed on.
“I’m waiting Gladys.”
“It was the gore crow brung it to me and tells me Scoggins has my baby running down his chin.”
“Right Gladys, listen. You doesn’t lay eggs. You got a lion bumhole not an eagle one. And if you did, this here’s a ostrich eggshell.”
Which might even have worked had not the vicar his own self appeared at the corner with egg decorating his chin.
Gladys lunged and he barely got off the ground in time.
He was much too fat to fly well and Nanny idly wondered what would happen when Gladys caught him, but she was too busy tending the scrapes in her lawn to really care.
A monster glimpsed at the edge of a TV screen; a pandemic causing an outbreak of mutual incomprehension; planets being destroyed by peacekeeping missions; a sentient space craft. Ranging from portraits of a relationship in a time of space travel to tales of vengeful aliens, from dystopian visions to poignant evocations of loss, this collection of short stories and poems takes the reader on a journey to other times and distant lands.
Other Times, Distant Lands by Lee Garratt is collection of scifi short stories and poems, published by Dimensionfold in 2020.
Bitter Weeds
Zarg looked at the moon above and spat. Generations beyond count, he and his people had lived on this planet and their hatred of it had only grown more fierce, more strong with each passing year. Lived here. Hah that was a joke. Survived here barely. Hid in caves away from the burning sun. Buried themselves deep into the earth to escape the freezing cold of the nights. Scrabbled at the red soil for miserable amounts of water which, no matter how much they filtered, still tasted like old metal. Ranged for miles and miles to hunt and kill the elusive garbs, beasts that ran without exhaustion, fought and kicked like devils when finally cornered, and tasted like hell itself when roasted.
Their numbers were few now. Fewer even, it was said, than when they initially arrived all those years ago, survivors of a brutal inter stellar war that saw their people exterminated and their planet destroyed. Somehow these few escaped and, their rockets, finally failing on them, landed on this planet. Their joy at being able to breathe this thin air soon turning to despair when repeated expeditions failed to find anything else other than the awful terrain they had landed on. No forests, no glades, no marshes. Nothing. Just endless scrubland and rocks stretching away to infinity. Some brackish saline lakes. A near dead sea. Thorn bushes, snakes, a few reptiles and the bastard garbs.
No, it wasn’t a nice planet. And their numbers had slowly dwindled despite their best efforts. Their advanced medicine had dealt with infection and injury but could do little about their terrible diet. The sun, so close, burned fierce and raw, caused cancers to bloom and spread (the only things that ever grew on this planet went the joke) and, it was thought, had affected their fertility. The cold too killed many every year. Those youngsters out exploring just too long. The old, those past 40, unable to keep it out no matter how many furs they wore. Not to mention the garbs too of course who exacted their annual toll of the too slow or foolhardy (their advanced weaponry having failed many hundreds of years ago they had long since mostly reverted to the spear and the chase).
Their culture too had suffered. For years beyond count, their brightest and best had strived in this alien landscape to retain memories of their home planet, its achievements and its glories. The magnificent prose sagas of Zing’s epic journey across the landscapes; Turg’s incredible landscapes on an almost one to one scale (the picture of a mountain the size of a mountain, imagine!); Jing’s music of the spheres so sublime, so affecting, that it transported the listener so fully and completely to other times and places (so witnesses had stated) that audience members had to be physically shaken to get their attention, even if there was a fire in the building, so deep was its hypnotic hold.
All this though, was but mere memory now. Each new generation, not being able to see any great paintings, hear any soaring chords, slowly started to turn away from these scraps of story from home, sullen, as if from a lie. Turn away and gaze out of their dismal caves, out to boulders and scrub, the ferocious glare that cast everything in such hideous clarity.
Do you see writing as an escape from the sorrows of existence, an exercise in futility, or an excuse to tell lies and get paid for it? Or is there another option…
Hmm good question. I’d say for the most part it is an ‘exercise in futillity’. Let’s face it, when a reader is faced with a choice of reading ‘Dune’, ‘The Martian Chronicles’ or my latest opus, I am facing an uphill task. That said, as every writer knows having something out there, in print, is probably the closest I will ever come to a (very meagre) form of immortality. So, I’ll take it!
Have you ever written somebody you know into a book? A lover? A friend? An enemy?
A lot of the characters in my stories are named after my son ‘Alfred’, so I often have him in mind. Other than that I suppose the answer is rather boring ‘no’. They are all just amalgams of myself and people I have met.
If you could meet one person (alive or dead) who would you choose? And what would you talk about? And what do you bring as a gift?
Ernest Hemingway. I’d like to meet him in a bar in Spain, get drunk with him. If he was in a generous patient mood, I’d like to get out my copy of his collected works and go through it very painstakingly, story by story. This could probably take months so i think he will have hit me long before i have finished. I think i would bring him some interesting craft beers and a book from his future that he hadn’t read. How about – ‘The rum diaries’ by Hunter S Thompson. I think he’d like that. Or something by Cormac Mccarthy. I think he would be interested in him.
Lee has been a kibbutznik, a Metropolitan police officer, has taken people up the Mekong River and hiking in the Polish mountains and is currently a middle-aged teacher living in the English midlands. Brought up on a diet of Tolkien, Hemingway and Le Guin, he writes a variety of poetry and prose. Lee Garratt’s work can be found in a wide variety of publications: these include ‘Starline’, the official journal for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association, and ‘Mancunian Ways’, a recent anthology of Manchester based poems released last year by Fly on the Wall Press. He has had two collections of his short stories and poetry published by Dimensionfold Publishing: New Worlds and ‘Other Lands, Distant Times and, most recently, a fantasy YA novella, Remains. You can find out more about him from his publishers page and follow him on Twitter.
“You should prosecute,” her friends advised.
But it was not so easy as all that.
How could you prove that the man you had been dating for the last three years had raped you?
They had gone out to dinner and then back to his place for coffee, as always. But she had been tired and needed to be up for work early so had said she would just like to sleep.
But he had not listened.
He had insisted.
Even when she said ‘no’ again and again, and struggled.
But how could she prove that.
How could she prosecute?
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