Space is a vacuum, so what the smeg was the guy tapping on the window of my flitter even breathing. I was deeply rattled and that must have been why I opened communication with the hull.
“Who are you?”
“Adam.”
I laughed.
“My name is Eve.”
“You? Eve?”
“Yes.”
He put his hands on the airlock door and just pulled it open. He appeared on the bridge, threw me over his shoulder and walked out of the ship – into the unexpected.
This planetoid is called Eden, and all on it belongs to us save for the tree and the snake…

©️Jane Jago

Man shall not live by prose alone, so I offer here some bouquets plucked from my garden of the Muses. Perhaps they might inspire you to attempt your own meagre efforts at the high art of poetry. Do not be discouraged if what you dribble onto the page is vastly less illustrious than my own pure poems. It is not given to all of us to be the Chosen One of Erato…

Haiku -1

The white purity
Of my poetical soul
Illuminatus

Haiku -2

A flower petal
Weighted down under raindrops
Visceral delight

Haiku -3

I despicable
Fighting hourly temptation
Scratching succubus

Heavenly Host

I wondered, lonely and so proud
My thoughts so high, oe’r window sills
When all at once I was endowed
With views through neighbour’s curtain frills.

I glimpsed the barest hint of skin
As through my bedroom blinds I’d peek.
To speculate who was within
The electoral roll didst seek.

I glimpsed again and flesh did see
That lofted oe’r sleek curves and tan
But then Mama did answer me:
“Moons? That new neighbour? It’s a man.”

So yet I peer the blinds between
And linger on the vision there
The secret seer, sight unseen
So it’s a man? I could not care!

Scream

The primal scream in my Underpants
As I caress my own Pomposity
Can be heard Echoing
In the emptiness that is My Cranium
I speak of the Mythologies as the Harpies
Gather their dead Syllable by Syllable
Where is your
Dragon
Now?

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

You can find more of IVy’s profound thoughts in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

A double celebration as our blog turns six this week just as our US readers are having fireworks for a completely unrelated reason!

Yes, six years ago two slightly eccentric women got together and decided to change the world…

Well, that idea didn’t make it passed the first brainstorming session, so instead we settled on making a blog of odd bits and pieces to add a lift to your day – every day (and for some years it was even twice a day!). We couldn’t think of a name for the project by the time it went live so we stuck with what we had on the header: ‘Working Title Blogspot’.

Over the years we have introduced you to some interesting characters such as Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV (and his indomitable mother Jacintha), our feisty Granny with her pearls of wisdom and her rants, the astrologer Madam Pendulica (and her cat, Ailuros!), Lucida the (very alternative) Lifestyle Coach, Nanny Bee, the Gnomes and others. We have drabbled and rhymed, serialised and serenaded – all just for you!

Thanks for keeping with us!

It is traditional for us to have something a bit interactive for our anniversary. This year if you’d like to get in touch or leave a comment and tell us who your favourite character ever on the blog has been, we’ll do a special anniversary appearance, next month, of whoever gets the most votes !

Happy Fourth of July!

Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook

It was evening, and all day there had been a steady stream of visitors with questions that varied from the inane to the life-changing. Watson thought the old woman must be exhausted but her eyes were still bird bright and once she had eaten the soup he heated in the modern kitchen hidden in the holy caverns she seemed fine.
“Do you feel it, Watson?”
“Feel what?”
“A certain unease in the air.”
“No. But I wouldn’t. I’m not an oracle.”
“And you believe I am?” She cackled with unsuppressed mirth.
When he first arrived her combativeness rendered him speechless, but he had learned better.
“Sometimes you are a true oracle. Others you are as fake as a television evangelist.”
“A fair answer.”
She sat in silence for quite some time and he wondered if she had finished talking for the day. He was about to leave her in peace when she held up a black-nailed hand.
“I used to be married, you know. But it was on the skids by the time I came here. The bastard thought he’d shoved all his debt onto me. Until I disappeared, then his creditors moved their attention back to him. He wound up without a pot to piss in.”
“Did he ever find you?”
“Eventually. By which time he’d found a wealthy widow to leech on. But he still wanted revenge. Came up here with a flick knife and a bad attitude. But a sawn-off trumps a tidgy knife and he had to run away with his tail between his legs.”
She laughed her wheezing laugh.
“And the best of it? His wealthy ‘wife’ wasn’t happy about bigamy. She bought him from me and now he does what he’s told. Or else…”
She lapsed into a doze and her young ghost writer felt a moment of pity for a mere man who tangled with the pile of rags and malice that comprised the oracle at her worst. He was wondering why he tolerated her when the bell on the pathway rang a single sharp note. Picking up the remains of their shared meal he hiked to his usual viewpoint.
The sunset was staining the mountain almost blood red, and for a moment he thought the hair of the woman who climbed wearily onto the plateau was a trick of that light. But it wasn’t. The woman was every teenager’s wet dream from the red polish on her toenails to the scarlet curls that tumbled down her back.
She looked at the oracle and smiled a slow, mean smile.
“You don’t look all that much to me.”
“I could say the same about you. If I was interested enough.”
The redhead hissed. “You should care, old woman. I owe you a bad turn and I always pay my debts.”
“I don’t remember doing anything to any painted Jezebel. But I’m getting old and forgetful. Remind me.”
“You cost me a soft billet and a nice farm. Now I’m stuck with a passenger and nobody wanting to step up to the plate.”
“Do you say the the father of what’s in your belly refuses to acknowledge it?”
The redhead opened her mouth, but whatever she had been going to say was interrupted by a groan from the mountain and a gentle undulation of the earth where she stood. She squeaked and twisted her hands together. Looking at the oracle, she made a sort of mewing noise and her face paled until the circles of rouge on her cheeks stood out like paint on a circus doll.
The oracle spoke and her voice filled the air with the sound of flapping wings.
“Come out of your concealment cowardly creature. Lest the mountain grind you to dust.”
The man who crawled over the edge of the escarpment wore a sharp suit and held a pistol in one hand.
“Take your wife and the child in her belly and go. While you still have the option. You came to cheat and lie your way into a comfortable fortune. But you chose the wrong town. Begone.”
“Old bitch,” he screamed. “Breathe your last.”
But he couldn’t squeeze the trigger, his hand shook too much. Something in the oracle’s basilisk gaze broke what little courage he had and he turned and ran, dropping the pistol as he went.
The redhead looked at his retreating figure and spat on the ground.
“Spineless cretin.”
The oracle laughed. “You got his number now, right enough.”
“Yup. That’n isn’t gonna be any manner of use to anyone. I reckon I’ll do better on my own.” She showed her teeth. “I guess I owe you a good turn now, old mother.”
“Let’s call it quits then. And if you ever need a job there’s always a mountain looking for an oracle with the balls to run a long con.”
The redhead laughed and turned away. At the top of the path she turned her head.
“Maybe one day.”

Jane Jago

Stars fell from the breast of night
To drop and die like winter leaves
Their dying made the sky so bright
As mortal children scarce believed
But we understood too late
That none awoke to take their place
And death in darkness was our fate
As Mother Nature turned her face

jane jago 2023

Avilon woke up as his training taught him – moving from sleep to full consciousness in less time than it took to draw a breath.
In the past this was followed by instant physical movement: to rouse, rise and be ready for anything within moments. His life depending upon it. But today he lay still, eyes open on a blank ceiling, noticing the fine lines where the printed construction panels joined, noticing the slight unevenness which hid the recessed lighting and noticing the absence of the data stream downloading information from the Lattice.
The strangeness of it still left him with a vague uneasiness. All his conscious life he had been accompanied by its intrusive companionship. All his conscious life he had been trained to equate its absence with the inevitability of death, with the knowledge if he stayed out of range of live-linkage for more than a brief period of time the wiring in his brain would burn out and kill him. He was adjusting to the lack, although sometimes he forgot and then there would be a stab of panic until he remembered.
He missed it.
The Lattice.
It troubled him when he could not call up the data he needed on something he had not encountered before or when he needed information about his environment. He knew there were public link networks he could access, but they were not tailored to his needs – they needed him to use them. Shut off from the Lattice he felt isolated and alone. It had been his guide and companion for as long as he could remember and without it he often had to stifle an illogical sense of abandonment and loss.
The Lattice would have given him an ID on every individual he encountered, marked them as friend or foe so he would know how to deal with them. Even without access to tactical data, the subdural sensors that were standard equipment for all Special Legion troops, would have given him readings revealing the emotional state of those around him: heart-rate, muscle tension, changes in blood flow – the small signs warning of attack long before it came.
It sometimes felt like going deaf or blind. Or both.
He lay still, realising for the first time ever in his conscious life, he had no reason to rise that day – unless he made the active choice to do so.
 A totally new experience. 
In its own way a little overwhelming too, pushing onto his shoulders the responsibility for making the decision about what to do with his time. Every other day of his life as a Special he had been assigned tasks. That carried on as part of the Legion’s discharge process and then through the CRD who had arranged his relocation and given him a new identity, culminating in the last ten days of work at the reclamation plant.
At least the work taxed neither his physical nor his mental resources, although it seemed to do so for some of those he worked with. They complained a lot about the stench, the weight of the skips they were required to manhandle when the robotics failed, the inadequacy of the maintenance team, the dangers of the hazardous materials they sometimes needed to deal with and the incompetence of the management. Avilon obeyed the instructions, mastered the tasks his manager expected him to perform and avoided, as far as possible, involving himself in conversations or any other social interactions with his co-workers. He knew he could have no real grasp of their motivation and values. To engage with them on any other than the most superficial level was bound to result in their hostility. And. sure enough. it had done so on the previous day.
“What did you do?”
He had been eating the food provided from the meal-synth in the plant’s cafeteria during his mid-shift meal break when one of his co-workers sat down at the same table, a man Avilon already identified as one of the informal leaders amongst the workers. His hair was cropped close to his head and a large animated tattoo of a winged female covered over half his face. He sat down purposefully, easing off the works issue jacket which would restrict movement and displaying muscles testifying to a good many leisure hours spent working out.
“Do?” Avilon asked, not wanting to antagonise his unwanted table companion by ignoring him.
“Shit. This stuff is worse than the crap we get out of the toxic waste cans. Yes, friend, do. You are here from CRD, right? So what did you do?”
“You mean what crime did I commit?”
The tattooed man nodded.
“That’s the one. You’re a bright bastard, catch on right quick, don’t you?”
At this point Avilon heard the odd snort of muffled laughter from those sitting at the other tables nearby. A large, well muscled, woman made a gesture towards him with one arm and there was more laughter. He had seen new grunts in the Specials go through much the same social farce. He also knew the trajectory it always took and the end result. But here, unlike the Specials, he must make sure not to let anyone end up dead or maimed. He took the time to remind himself, consciously, because he knew when it kicked off he might otherwise just react. With that thought very clear in his mind he looked back at the tattooed man.
“I killed people.”
The tattoo lifted up and moved back and the animation revealed more of the female form, as the other man grinned, baring his teeth.
“Bit of a hard man then?”
 “No. Not really. No more than anyone else.”
 The other man frowned, then gave a short laugh.
“You think you could take me?”
Avilon realised he could predict with precision the course of this conversation. He wondered if, no matter how he responded, he could avoid the inevitable. He tried.
“I don’t want to fight you. I don’t want to fight anyone. I am eating. Then I have work to do.”
“You sound like a coward to me.”
Avilon had not needed any sub-dural sensors to warn him. This man broadcast his intentions a long time before the tray left the table aimed at his face. Avilon deflected it, caught the punch that followed, then drove his hand under the skirts of the winged woman tattoo to strike at the nerve cluster at the base of the neck, deliberately taking care to use much less than lethal force. The man doubled over on his seat, making odd noises.
It happened fast enough that Avilon got to his feet and moved clear of the table, ready to deal with any further trouble, before the tattooed man stopped gasping. But none of the other workers in the cafeteria had even moved. They sat in a frozen tableau of shocked faces, some with food part-way to their mouths, others caught mouth opened, half-masticated food visible within. The only sound and movement came from the tattooed man as he struggled to breathe.
At that moment Avilon realised precisely what he was in this civilian world.
So he stared down the other workers, his gaze steady until all eyes looked away from him. Then he walked out and went back to work. At the next break, the shift manager sent for him and told him he would receive his first pay and, as he earned a rest day, he should be sure and take it the following day – oh and he could go home early if he wanted. He had stayed to finish the shift.
So now he lay in bed with an entire day of unallocated time and a seemingly infinite range of possible things he could do with it.

From Trust A Few, the first book of Haruspex trilogy a Fortune’s Fools book by E.M. Swift-Hook

An everyday tale of village life and vampires…

It wanted five days to the start of the new month and Ginny spent most of them trying to find all the things Stan and his pals had laboriously hidden in the wrong places.
She had got back from the shop to find them already in their van and about to go.
“Don’t worry about that cuppa,” Dan/Ian/Stan told her, as though he was doing her a big favour by letting her off making it. “Me and the lads’ll get going right away.” 
So she had tipped them and they were gone before she’d walked back into the house.
She had been careful to mark each box with its destination room, but they still seemed to have decided for themselves where each should go.
The room she planned to make into her study-office-come-reading nook, which had a wonderful view over the back garden, was so full of boxes she couldn’t even get through the door, whilst her bedroom had nothing in it except her bed – not even the bedding, which was presumably somewhere in the study under the boxes of her books. Fortunately, she had a sleeping bag in the boot of her car which meant she didn’t need to excavate frantically that evening, but she did ponder whether she might have been deliberately misled by Stan the removal man when he suggested she went to the shop.
The next day she was sorting the kitchen, unpacking things into drawers and cupboards whilst singing to the radio about how the sun always shone on television, when a shadow fell across the threshold of the kitchen door, left open to let in the fresh air.
Like most dwellings, the cottage had a front door which opened – via a short path and a fringe of grass – onto the road and was where visitors were expected to present themselves. The kitchen door was in the side of the house, accessed by a path with a high hedge that led to the back garden and was blocked by a gate at the front. So the sudden appearance of the shadow was startling and unexpected.
She spun around heart pounding and found herself looking into the eyes of the man she had bumped into on the way to the shop. Only now he was fully clothed. Jeans and a short-sleeved black Armani shirt, with a white dog-collar.
“Hello there,” he shouted. “I’m your vicar, Doug Turner. I did knock but the music… ”
Blushing furiously, Ginny grabbed at the DAB and turned it off.
“Sorry,” she mumbled and then managed to get out something about making tea and would he like one.
He accepted with a dazzling smile and for a few moments she was able to consume herself in finding and rinsing two mugs and dropping a regular tea bag in each.
Could you even give a mug of tea to a vicar? Didn’t it need to be bone-china cups and saucers and a teapot of Darjeeling not a ‘Happy Price’ teabag from the local shop?
By the time she was done he had leaned his muscular frame against the wall and he graciously accepted the proffered mug.
“What, no cucumber sandwiches?”
Ginny gaped at him blankly.
“I-I’m sorry?”
He shook his head and grinned at her and she noticed his teeth seemed a little large at the front.
“An old joke. One we vicars often get.”
“Oh. Right. I’ve not met many. In fact, I can’t think of any. I don’t think I’ve lived somewhere that had a vicar before.”
For some reason he found that hilarious and Ginny watched the tea in his mug slop dangerously close to the rim as he laughed.
“Everywhere in the country has a vicar,” he said when the laughter subsided and as if that explained why he had been so amused. “You’ll’ve had a vicar before but never knew it.”
Ginny tried to take control of the conversation again.
“Do you call on all your…” She fell at the first hurdle. What did vicars call their community? Flock? That sounded archaic. “…on all new people?”
Vicar Doug took a slup of tea and pulled a face. Ginny wasn’t sure whether that was a response to her tea making or her question.
“I try to get to meet new parishioners when I can, but I did want to apologise for running into you the other day. I thought you were a tourist.”
He made it sound as if running into tourists was perfectly acceptable behaviour. And perhaps it was in a place like this where tourists were no doubt seen as an annoying fact of life.
“Oh. I see. Well, I’m not.” She realised belatedly she hadn’t introduced herself and stuck out the hand not clutching her mug. “Ginny Cropper. Pleased to meet you.”
His hand stopped half-way as if he was having second thoughts about the shake.
“Not the Ginny Cropper?”
Her heart sank. She found herself resorting to an old line.
“Depends what you mean by that. I’m certainly a Ginny Cropper.”
“I meant, are you the woman behind the Virginia Creeper lifestyle brand?”
His hand completed the journey to hers but barely touched her fingers before withdrawing, the intensity of his gaze upon her.
You couldn’t lie to a vicar, could you?
Could you?
Ginny dropped his gaze and turned to look out of the small kitchen window, through it she could see the wheelie bin and a cat sitting on the recycling box. There was nothing to offer her an escape or inspiration.
“I was,” she admitted. “But I’ve retired – sort of.” 
There was a long silence behind her and in the end she had to turn around.
Vicar Doug was gone.
His unfinished mug of tea sat on the floor where he had been. 
As startled by his departure as his arrival, Ginny picked up the mug and emptied it into the sink, washing it out without really thinking. It was, she realised, her British Wildlife Society mug, which had a picture of an endangered species of native bats on the side.
Sighing, she decided she was going to find it more trying than she had realised to get used to life in Little Botheringham.

Part 6 of Much Dithering in Little Botheringham by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook, will be here next week.

Tanker walked Ben to the gate and watched him get on the school bus. At home time he was waiting, but the bus never came. Instead Mum came out of the house with her face all streaked with tears.

“Come in, Tanker, the bus isn’t coming.”

Ben never came home. All Tanker could do was feel sad. One day Mum put on his car harness and smiled.

“You wanna see Ben?”

Tanker didn’t believe her. But then in a strange place smelling of ill people, he saw his Ben sitting in a funny chair. Boy and dog cried happy tears. 

©Jane Jago

Man shall not live by prose alone, so I offer here some bouquets plucked from my garden of the Muses. Perhaps they might inspire you to attempt your own meagre efforts at the high art of poetry. Do not be discouraged if what you dribble onto the page is vastly less illustrious than my own pure poems. It is not given to all of us to be the Chosen One of Erato…

Biker Biker

Biker, biker roaring past
In the street, night before last
What the hell possess-ed thee
To wake me up at half-past three?

On what distant motorway
Did you begin your ride that day?
On what tarmac didst you roll
From whence came you my sleep to troll?

And what hard shoulder fast depart
Could twist your manifold apart?
So that the popping of the sound
Could so reverberate around?

What did hammer your bike chain
To make it thunder in the rain?
What did make you choose my road
To burden with your heavy load?

When the stars – or sparks more like,
Flew from the tailpipe of your bike,
Did you wonder what fell fate
Left you back-firing by my gate?

Biker, biker roaring past
In the street, night before last
What the hell possess-ed thee
To blast me up at half-past three?

Rubaiyat Sonnet

Alas the Muse must vanish with the light
And close the manuscript of youthful fire
Why must I have so many thoughts in flight?
Why will not my Muse simply me inspire?
For every night a glass I have turned down
On this inverted bowl I call my desk
And bent my head for the laureates crown
To birth another written arabesque
But whence the bird forth from the branch hath flown?
How is’t Her brightness hence from me doth go?
Now here, abandoned, weeping, I do groan,
To ask why my Muse doth despise me so?

O Muse!

Oh Muse
How thou despitest me
With thine honeyed tongue in another’s ear
Oh Muse
How thou despiseth me
Wandering fingertips drawing another near
Oh Muse
What has thy servant done
That thou takes flight into the setting sun
Oh Muse
Oh harlot dancing veiled alone
If I thee beg on bended knee wilt come home
Oh Muse
How thou mistreateth me
Who but thy every torment loves
Oh Muse
How thou defeatest me
Thy servant and the tenderest of doves
Oh Muse
Oh fickle Muse!

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

You can find more of IVy’s profound thoughts in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

After twenty-two years of happy marriage, Bob and Carol marched into the guidance counsellor’s room wearing identical expressions of fury and heartache.
“He is utterly intolerable,” Carol declared.
“She is completely unbearable,” Bob countered.
“He says strawberry ice cream is best, which is obviously just wrong.”
“She thinks chocolate tastes better. How could she?”
The counsellor sighed. It was the usual problem.
“A good marriage is about compromise, you know. Do you agree on vanilla?”
They both nodded warily.
A short time later they left wreathed in smiles – and with a tub of Neapolitan ice cream in a carrier bag.

E.M. Swift-Hook