Jim Connolly junior was a big, bouncing redhead of a baby, and seemed quite well aware of his status at the centre of the universe. Even his father would lean over the cradle when nobody was about and touch a huge finger to the baby’s soft cheek.
The family moved from the flat to a house with its own little garden when Baby Jim was a year old and Betty was already thickening with his brother or sister.
It was a hot, stuffy afternoon, a couple of weeks after the move and Betty was taking the kids to the park, via a visit to Donny’s mam. She turned the corner into the street where Donny’s family lived, and Mrs J came out of her house to see her granddaughter. She hugged the little girl and grinned at Betty.
‘I shouldn’t ought to say this,’ the old woman rasped in her tobacco-roughened voice, ‘but I reckon our Donny done you a favour when he got hisself squashed.’
Betty patted her arm. ‘Maybe so. But we miss him don’t we.’
Mrs J wiped a furtive tear. ‘Yes. The bugger was the apple of my eye. And he knew it. Thanks for letting me see little Donna, she’s all I have of him.’
‘Aye. I know that, and you’re all she has of him too.’
They didn’t stay much longer, as the coolness of the park beckoned. Betty sat on a convenient bench, while Donna clambered monkey-like about the tall climbing frame. Once she was sure the little girl was safely occupied, Betty let her mind wander a little – remembering how Donny’s mam had never had any time for her while he was alive, and the callous way the old woman had driven her from the mean little house she and Donny had shared right after he was killed. None of that had been unexpected, but when Mrs J had humbled her pride enough to come to the flat and beg to be allowed to see Donna that had been a surprise. It had never occurred to her to say no, and when the old woman had gone on her way she also remembered the warmth of Jim’s arm about her and how his approval had made her feel. He had kissed her on the top of her head and spoken in a slightly thickened voice.
‘You’re some kind of a girl, Betty. Did it never occur to you that you could have said no?’
She had looked up at him in some confusion. ‘Why’d I want to do that? It ain’t her fault she’s the way she is, and Donna’s her only grandbaby.’
The thumbs he rubbed across her cheekbones had felt like a blessing of sorts.
The next day he brought her flowers, yellow scented roses and oxeye daisies tied with a bow of yellow ribbon. If she concentrated she could still smell those roses.
But that was then, and now it was time to go home and water the garden before she cooked fish and chips for tea. She scooped up Donna and sat the tired little girl in the end of the pram, where she started up a soft-voiced babble of conversation with her baby brother. They were all but home when a pair of figures in a bus stop caught her eye. They seemed incongruous in this settled family area although she couldn’t at first figure out why. The woman fitted in fine, being young and very modestly dressed with her mouse-brown hair coiled in a neat bun and a blue linen hat to shield her from the afternoon sun. No. It was the man who was wrong. He had his back to her, but his pinstripe suit, patent leather shoes and fedora hat marked him as a wide boy to anyone with eyes to see. Then he turned around and her heart did strange things in her chest. It was Donny. He recognised her almost immediately and the smile that lifted one corner of his mouth took her back to the dancehall where they first met. He winked, and bent his head to the girl in the bus shelter.
As the girl lifted her hand Betty could see the gold of a wedding ring. She looked down at the band on her own left hand and that steadied her more than anything else could have. While Donny pitched his new love whatever tale he was weaving, Donna looked up at Betty and grinned.
‘Hungry Mum,’ she said.
And those simple words solidified something in Betty’s chest, showing her precisely what she needed to do. Donny Jackson had walked away from his life, his debts, his enemies, and his responsibilities. Now, if she wasn’t mistaken, he was thinking he could pick up where he left off. Only he couldn’t. His face might still be able to set her stomach aflutter, but she couldn’t forgive what he had done. Not only had he left her with nothing, he had also left his mother to mourn him as dead. Worst of all, though, there was Donna, and without Jim that little girl would have been going to bed hungry at least five nights out of seven.
Betty stiffened her spine and watched Donny come out of the bus shelter walking with his usual swagger. He walked towards her with his hands outstretched and she blanked him, willing her eyes to show no sign of recognition. She drew almost level with him and he opened his mouth to speak. Betty ran the wheels of the pram over his highly polished shoes and then kept on walking.

© jane jago

Okay let’s get this right out in the open before we begin. Whatever this heap of steaming ordure is it is NOT reality. It is no more real than the soap opera you won’t admit to watching. It’s contrived and packaged to get you to believe in it.

• What is real about putting a bunch of semi-famous people in the jungle and only feeding them beans? Although imagining the aroma is vaguely amusing.
• What is real about shoving a load of attention seekers in a house and force-feeding them booze? This is purely for those who want to watch cut-price porn.
• What is real about getting together a group of the nastiest human beings you can find and offering a job to the last one standing? It would be marginally less boring if they were actually allowed to kill each other.
• What is real about encouraging assorted no-hopers onto a stage and laughing at their lack of talent? This is mostly just so cruel that it can only be watched with beer goggles on.
• What is real about watching over-privileged tossers attempting to get laid? This just makes me wonder precisely how inbred the little bastards are.

I could go on…

And breathe, Gran, you are hyperventilating now. *lights a ciggy and decides that drinking Southern Comfort from the bottle is sometimes necessary*

Having reached the conclusion that it’s all pretty much shite there is one question hanging in the air. Why is it on night after night? Because this shite is popular, and people who begin their ‘careers’ on reality tv are becoming mainstream ‘stars’. Why? Are we so devoid of talent as to make a cult of being a bit dim?

Being genuinely goshswoggled by the amount of airtime devoted to this  regurgitation of humanity at its least appealing I took myself to the pub, where it was OAP luncheon day, had myself some dinner and conducted a straw poll.

What I discovered was beyond depressing. People who are really old enough to know better watch this dross for the following reasons:

• I like to get to understand people in real situations. (Where would that be then?)
• I really like the presenter. (Can one like an oleaginous bastard?)
• It’s an interesting social experiment. (See, even the middle classes get drawn in.)
• It’s lovely to see the children on it. (That’ll be the talent show element.)
• And finally (probably the only honest one). I watch for the tits.

To recap. Reality tv serves only one purpose – to bring forward even more people who are famous for being famous. Oh and maybe to fill the schedules cheaply.
There is only one reason for watching any of it and that’s the vain hope that somebody, somewhere, someday will up and twat one of the presenters…

You can now have a collection of Granny’s inimitable insights of your very own in Granny Knows Best.

Enticknapp was sitting among the cabbages considering his options. He knew he had been a bad puppy and he rather thought a spanking might be on the cards. 

Maybe he should just run away.

But if he ran away he would never see the small human again, and he loved her.

He cried a puppy tear and crept out of the cabbage patch to face his punishment.

Boss man spied him and bent to pick him up with gentle hands.

“Never mind, puppy,” he said. “It was my fault. I didn’t let you out when you woke up.”

Enticknapp smiled.

©️Jane Jago

Dear Reader Who Writes,

At risk of preaching to the converted, I must first take the time to be sure you are all acquainted with me. I am Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV and acclaimed author of the millionth best seller science fiction and fantasy novel, ‘Fatswhistle and Buchtooth’. As such I have been delving deep into my treasure trove of writing wisdom to bring a few of the more luminous gems of my experience to light.

It is true that young people today are not as they were. When I was a fuzzy-faced youth in my early twenties, awaiting the chance to shave for the first time, I would not have dreamed of behaving in the manner of my old-school chum’s son when he came to stay overnight the other week on the way to some foreign destination for a ‘Gap year’. He has just turned eighteen. Called Henry.

He swanned into the house and dropped his rucksack on my feet, gesturing imperiously upwards with one finger, no doubt to indicate that he expected me to take it upstairs for him. Then he caught sight of Mumsie, spreadeagled over the sofa as is her wont. His eyes widened and I heard him say: “Em. Eye. Elle. Eff.” After which bizarre incantation he threw himself upon his knees beside Mumsie and whispered something in her ear which made her laugh. Well, giggle.

I retreated to my writing room and when I emerged in the early hours I found the rucksack was still untouched downstairs. By the time I rose to breakfast, Henry had left for Peru and Mumsie was humming happily and dancing around the front room holding a half-empty bottle of Champagne.

It occurred to me then and there, that I should address myself to that phenomenon of recent literary note: the Young Adult novel.

How To Write A Book: The Write Approach to YA

The first thing to remember is that your heroine – and it almost always is a heroine – must be living a normal, but extra-miserable life. She must be the school social reject or the really plain girl wearing glasses and unfashionable clothes. She is probably poor, but if rich, must have an isolated and unhappy time as a result. In a science-fiction or fantasy setting, she will be an orphan, abused, beaten and downtrodden – probably enslaved. At best she may be allowed an ‘ordinary’ background within whatever world she lives. She can have one good friend. 

But, remember, no matter how bad you make her issues, on no account can she be fat.

Having established this dual point of miserable powerlessness and rejected loner, the author must then bestow upon this heroine a magical power or super ability which is linked to a mysterious family heritage. Or may be brought about by the discovery of an artefact – or both. This will then transform our dowdy underdog cygnet into a burgeoning youthful swan.

At this point, the romantic elements should be established. If her ‘one good friend’ was male, he now becomes a suitor and is joined by one or more other suitors all of which now adore the heroine and all want her to adore them. The degree of self-abasement you can portray for these unfortunate males will boost the popularity of your final work. No matter how much the heroine rejects them, or how rudely, they will return and grovel at her feet each and every time. Or storm off and then turn up to save her in the end.

Do be sure to make her suitors as various as possible. If you are writing fantasy or supernatural fiction, they can be an elf,  fairy, angel, fallen angel, demon, vampire or a were-something. If science-fiction then aliens of whatever variety. Be sure to make the nice ones rich and the not so nice ones poor.

On no account allow any long-term romantic liaison to become established between your heroine and any of these males. To do so will end the game and end the series because, of course, this first book will be just the start of a series.

Take this advice to your collective bosoms my dear students and fame and fortune will stalk your steps.

Until next time.

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.

Built upon an asteroid, these mighty habitation towers are the final stronghold of humanity in a star system ravaged by a long-ago war. Now, centuries after the apocalyptic conflict, the city thrives — a utopia for the rich who live at the top, built on the labours of the poor stuck below. Starway Pathfinders is a science fiction show that entertains the better off and brings hope to the poor…

Dog was half drunk and wondering if he should have accepted the invitation to join his best friend in the dive bar on thirty-three. Teram was the kind who liked to go slumming — said it kept him grounded. He ran the family salvage company and was the hands-on type who liked to do the work at the sharp end. His idea of a good night out was to go drinking with his hard-core salvage crews.
“They are good people, Dog — and they would be made up to meet you.”
“No. They would be made up to meet Sub-Commander Arlan Stude, not Hengast ‘Dog’ Gethick, jobbing actor.”
Teram did not deny it, just rolled his shoulders as they took the glides down.
“They won’t recognise you anyway without that uniform and the sexy half-mask,” he confided. “But you got to know what you are to these boys. They won’t miss an episode. You are like their hero.”
Dog shook his head and altered course to avoid his towering bulk blocking the way for a couple with a baby.
“It’s all crap. Just kids’ stories in grown-up words. None of it real. Not like it’ll ever happen. I don’t see the real Strands ever funding a space exploration mission. They’d not see profit in it.”
Teram glanced up at him.
“You don’t get it do you, Dog? It’s not that it’ll never happen — everyone knows it’ll never happen. It’s that it shows something bigger than this.” He gestured to the buzz of humanity around them. “These are people penned into the cage this city’s become — you, your show, it opens the doors of that cage for a while. Opens the doors and lets in hope. More than hope. Real belief in a future that can be more than this.”
That was too much, and Dog shook his head.
“I’m an actor, not a fucking messiah.”

The bar was not as bad as Dog had thought it would be. It was well ventilated and the people who were vaping whatever noxious substances sat in a side room where an androgyne gyrated naked on a podium. Teram’s crew sat together by the one window which offered not so much a panorama of the cityscape of the kind Dog had at home, but more like a murky glimpse into the bowels of the world — dark and lit by sudden flares.
“So, what you do, Dog?”
Someone had to ask, and lulled by the strong spirits and the rough but good-natured bonhomie, Dog almost forgot himself.
“I’m an actor.” He remembered in time and quickly added, “Used to do that commercial for Eatin’ Quix delivery?”
That met with a few nods of recall and the topic moved on. But it was too much to expect Teram would let it lie for long.
“So, what did you guys make of the latest SP? You think they will find those Kyruku?” His eyes slid to Dog and he winked. “Makes you think. Aliens and all.”
Dog said nothing as the men around him speculated.
“Ain’t no fucking aliens. If there were, we’d have met ’em by now. Stands to reason.”
“Yeah. But The Golden Strand is headed ’cross the fucking galaxy, not just round the block and home; it’s different.”
“Different? You see that view screen they get to see stuff on? Huge thing. Dream of that for our ship. What you say, boss — when we getting that kind of tech?”
There was laughter, and Teram laughed loudest of all.
“What if it was for real, though?” someone said. Dog had not picked up the names; he’d tried, but the faces were too similar — worn, weary and bleak. He recalled an odd conversation he’d had with Heila a couple of days before: she’d been going on about her fans, her people. Well, he guessed these were his people. Gnarled by life before they hit thirty, running on dreams and stardust and the false hope held out by the allure of each episode of Starways Pathfinders.
“What if? You kidding? I’d sign up in a second.”
“Yeah. Think of it. The freedom of the stars. Going where no other fucker’s ever been.”
“Be like, you’d be alive. You’d matter. You’d be doing something — something good.”
Heads nodded and someone called another round of drinks. Dog stared out of the window at the inky sludge that coated it, dulling the grim sights it would otherwise expose.

Star Dust by E.M. Swift-Hook, originally appeared in The Last City, a shared-universe anthology. This version is the ‘Author’s Cut’ and differs, very slightly, from that original. Next week – Episode 0100

Things are not quite how you might remember them in the 100 Acre Wood for Christopher Robin, Pooh Bear and their friends…

***** ***** *****

Jane Jago

Hope springs eternal, but, for why?
It’s magic lending wings to fly
Lifting hurt hearts upto the sky
To sink again when truth comes by.

Hope springs eternal like the flowers
Called forth by each seasons powers
Building schemes into strong bowers
Until the truth its scheming sours.

Hope springs eternal from the rocks
Of grim reality’s brutal knocks
Its key the door of dreams unlocks
And from those dreams the waking shocks.

Hope springs eternal, as the stars
But an unfaithful lover mars
The lives of those whose touch it tars
When truth the whole illusion jars.

Hope springs eternal, weaves a rope
With which we bind ourselves to cope
With all that life throws in our scope
And this illusion springs from hope.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Officer Connolly was neither young nor new to the job, but this sort of thing was never pleasant and he hunched his shoulders in his blue uniform coat as he knocked on the blue-painted door. The outside light came on and a thin young woman with a child on her hip opened the door. She saw his uniform and sighed.
‘What’s he done now?’
The girl sounded almost unbearably weary and Connolly felt the stirring of unusual pity.
‘Mrs Jackson?’
The girl laughed, but it was a harsh sound like scraping fingernails down a chalkboard.
‘No. But I’m Donny Jackson’s woman and this is his daughter.’
‘Then I’m sorry to have to inform you that there was a road traffic accident on the ring road this afternoon, in which a town car was comprehensively crushed by a thirty-ton lorry. Your man was a passenger in the town car.’ He broke off, looking, had he known it, greenish-pale and sick. ‘Look. There wasn’t enough left of him to identify in the normal way, but we found CCTV footage from the town centre that shows Donny Jackson getting into the car outside Jake’s billiards hall. Also, whoever was in the passenger seat of the crushed car was wearing Donny’s watch and his Saint Christopher medallion.’
The girl’s face was by now paper white under her tan and she swayed slightly on her feet. For a moment the policeman thought she was going to faint, but instead she grasped the edge of the door.
‘Thank you for coming to tell me.’
She closed the door gently, and as the uniformed constable turned away he could hear the heartbreaking sound of her sobs. That depth of sorrow woke something in his cicatrised heart, and, as he walked away, he thought he would come back in a few days. Just to see how things were.
Three days later, and it was his day off so he wasn’t in uniform when he knocked. The girl opened the door cautiously, as she obviously didn’t recognise him. He made her understand who he was, and that he had come to assure himself of her welfare, so she let him in. To his surprise the room was filled with cardboard boxes.
‘If you’d come tomorrow you wouldn’t have found us here,’ she explained. ‘The house belongs to Donny’s mam and she’s kicking us out.’
He was shocked, if unsurprised, at such callous behaviour.
‘Where will you go?’
‘Back to my own mam. I’ve nowhere else.’
‘Hang on a minute. Let me make a phone call.’
He got the girl, whose name turned out to be Betty, and her child into a flat by the river, courtesy of the company whose lorry had effectively minced little Donna’s father.
Having somehow made himself responsible for Betty and Donna, it became second nature to call on them daily, and make sure they got whatever was due to them – as opposed to the crumbs that Donny’s family thought they might be able to spare.
With enough to eat, and no worries about illegal activities or hard men in suits with shooters, Betty put on a little weight and the prettiness that had attracted Donny began to show itself again. She started to sing as she cleaned her little home and the dimple in her left cheek danced when she smiled.
Donny died on a filthy November afternoon, and, to give him his due, it wasn’t until Easter that a certain burly red-haired policeman moved himself into Betty’s flat and her bed.
Jim Connolly wasn’t a bad sort of a man and Betty was happier and better cared for than she had ever been before. If a corner of her heart would always belong to Donny Jackson, she certainly never said anything to Jim about it.
They settled down happily enough, and Jim began to look forward to coming home to a cooked tea on the table and Donna’s innocent chatter about her day. He also, when he thought about it for long enough to admit it to himself, understood that Betty’s smiles were becoming the underpinnings of his life.
In the middle of August, Betty fainted while she was dishing up his tea. He rushed her to the doctor only to find out he was going to be a father.
‘Well, that settles that doesn’t it. I was going to wait a while, but we’ll be married as soon as the banns are read.’
Betty looked at him open mouthed. ‘You sure Jim?’
‘I am and I’ll be adopting Donna too.’
Understanding this to be as close to a declaration of love as Jim could ever come, Betty smiled and nodded.

To be concluded next week…

© jane jago

Nothing new with this.

I recall the local paper decades ago trying to boost its sales by declaring ‘Rape Up Fifty Percent Countywide’ and then presenting its readers with an analysis of field usage as more farmers were switching to growing oilseed rape.

It gave us all a giggle in those non-PC days.

Today in otherwise quite reliable newspapers or online newsfeeds, I see headlines like ‘Planet-Killing Asteroid heading for Earth’ or ‘Robocop Police Now on the Streets’ then I read them to find that the asteroid is heading towards us but going to miss by the astronomical equivalent of a country mile and the police robot is simply a glorified smart speaker on wheels there to give advice to tourists.

My advice is if a headline sounds like it’s meant to overexcite, ignore it. If the news in it matters you can be sure you will get to hear it very soon anyway and I don’t know about you, but I have have much better things to do with my day than reading non-news dressed up to look like it matters.

Perhaps if we all ignore it they will stop doing it…

You can now have a collection of Granny’s inimitable insights of your very own in Granny Knows Best.

The Tribune breezed into the room like a beak-nosed hurricane. Julia rather wished that she could see her new partner’s face when the formidable Decimus Lucius Didero lifted her in his brawny arms and kissed her on both cheeks. She wriggled and kicked and he put her down.
“Llewelyn,” he grunted, “you take care of my little foster sister.”
Dai looked as if he couldn’t think what to say. Julia was very sure this was not the way he usually saw Romans interacting. The Tribune grinned.
“She will grow on you, and she can’t help being Roman any more than you can help coming from a place where they make up songs about everything and shag sheep. Now. I’ll assign you a contubernium of praetorians.”

Julia winced inwardly knowing how that would sound to the Briton and was not surprised that Dai’s looked furious although he said nothing. Decimus smiled a wolf’s smile.
“Calm down, you and Julia will still be in command and you can keep your own posse too, if you can trust them all. It’s just that my lads can get away with doing things you and yours never could. And they don’t have to wait for anybody’s permission. I’m thinking that by the time your boss has consulted all the people who are paying her, our bird could easily have flown the coop,”
Once again, Dai kept his mouth shut and Julia could see the knowledge that Decimus was right, openly warring with his loyalty to the force to which he belonged. She gave him a sympathetic look and he actually smiled back at her, a thin smile to be sure, but definitely an upward tilt of the lips. The Tribune, who she knew would have missed nothing, grunted at them, but it wasn’t an unfriendly sound.

“Right. Listen carefully. There are some things you need to know but I’m not supposed to tell you. Privileged information, praetorian confidentiality and that kind of merda. Well I’m not having it. My little sister doesn’t go to war unprepared.” He pointed a thick finger at the pair of them. “You need to know about your corpses. Bellicus and Docca were in big trouble. They were being targeted by a betting syndicate who try to get players taking money to fix Games. And I don’t mean any of your little Londinium locals, I mean the big boys from Rome. Those people do not play nice when someone says ‘no’. They also don’t take kindly to anyone poking a nose in their affairs, no matter who it might be.

“More of a worry, though, is this Luca. He left Rome under a cloud. It was either exile or death. He chose exile. You don’t need to know precisely what he did but you do need to know that at least six very powerful families had reason to want him punished. Whether or not they succeeded at arm’s length, I don’t care to speculate. Just be aware that he was very good at making enemies. The interesting thing is he was supposed to stay in Gallia Lugdunensis where Daddy has extensive estates around the town of Lutetia, under a form of house arrest. But clearly he didn’t and I heard today his wife didn’t either. We have no idea where she is right now.”
Julia looked at her old friend.
“That explains a lot. That old cunnus Marius looked as if he was eating merda when he had me in his office and sent me on this mission. He about halfway forbade me to bring Edbert and the dogs.”
“I hope you ignored him.”
“I did.”
“Good. You’ll need them. But you will also have an apartment here. Inns are insecure at the best of times. This is starting to smell bad.”
Julia opened her mouth to object, then thought better of it. Things were indeed smelling bad. She began to formulate a thought, but before she had time to work it through, Didero turned his attention to Dai.
“You’ll move your men in here for the duration of this case.”
Again, Julia could see the flare of pride in the Briton’s blue eyes being quickly damped by rational thought. She realised, at that moment, that she was dealing with a man who lived in a steady state of war with his own passions, a very Celtic trait. Somehow that thought just made him more intriguing.
“As you will, dominus,” Dai said. “And I see that would be safer. We’ll be in the barracks?”
“They will be, yes. They can share with the men assigned to you and Julia. I’ll arrange your accommodation too.”
Dai bowed his head.
“Dominus.”

Dying to be Roman by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook is a whodunit set in a modern day Britain where the Roman Empire still rules.