Money. When was the last time you saw any actual cash money?

Me neither.

Until.

The other day I had to waddle down the village to the post office (now tastefully housed in a very hygienic corner of the funeral director’s hushed premises) and acquire some actual moolah, because the plumber very kindly knocks off the vat if you pay him cash. The little girl behind the plexiglass screen very sweetly shoved the notes into a brown envelope I provided, so it wasn’t until I got home that I discovered  that twenties are now plastic.

I laughed so much that I right about pissed myself.

You aren’t going to tell me that you missed that little irony are you?

You are?

Okay, then, let me elucidate.

All around me are females (and a few very put upon males) of a certain age. Many of these bloody fossils are vociferous in their condemnation of the cashless status of society.

In the days when a game of euchre and a pasty was a possibility, the lounge bar would be full of these crusty old naysayers. I see them now, bellied up to the bar and waving fivers at the sorely harassed barmaid.

“You’ll never see me paying with plastic,” is their mantra as they waste hours counting small denomination coins into piles on the scratched mahogany of the bar.

Seems as if karma has caught up with them good and proper. You declare your aversion to ‘plastic’ Mrs Frobisher I think to myself, and then you go and wave a note above your head never once seeing that it is ‘plastic’ too…

That is seriously funny. Or maybe not.

Me?

I run up a modest bar bill and slap my card on the screen before tottering home singing immodestly.

My mate Mabel watched me do this for about three months then bit the bullet. She still don’t have a credit card, as the silly old moo would get in a right mucking fuddle, but she slaps her contactless debit card with all the je ne sais quoi of a  Kardashian in a high-end boutique.

In a rare moment of sobriety, I conducted a straw poll of the halt, the lame, the feckless and the demented as they sat their asses down for the last village OAP dinner before Armageddon.

Being asked why they don’t like to pay by card I got the following responses.

“I won’t know what I’ve spent.”

“I will run up a huge bill.”

“I like the feel of money.”

“My son/daughter/other ‘concerned’ family member doesn’t want me to.”

Struck me as so sad that I bought the buggers a round of sov blanc.

In a nutshell then…

On very rare occasions progress is A Good Thing. This might be one of them. 

It’s liberating.

I no longer need a purse or a handbag.

Got my phone in one pocket. My keys in the other. And my American Express card up me knicker leg.

Oh yes, you sad lot.

Have plastic. Will travel…

To celebrate our third birthday at the beginning of July, the Working Title Blog held a drabble writing competition.

As it is our third birthday completion we have three runners up! This one is from Jerald Larson.

“You’ve arrived!” Sir enthused, upon landing the big account. “Now it’s time to break the mould!”

Time, alas, that elusive fiend: so much to prove, so no time for regret. Break the mould I did, and sod the consequences!

That mould, I soon found, protects the uncultivated; what blobbed without its walls was a babbling, egotistical doughy mess.

But still, the orders came. Awards, clients, launches, reputation, gone in a flash: everyone loved the new me…

…except me. Mirrors betrayed the booze, parties, pressure, until…

…I broke.

My resignation postscript declared: “You can’t have your cake and eat it. Sir.”

When Francesca met Richard they were predisposed by fate to like each other – even though neither of them knew it at the time. They were both blandly handsome, both successful, both good-humoured if a little humourless, and both laboured under the disadvantage of unimaginative parents who bestowed on their offspring the sort of names more sensibly found in burlesque than high finance.
Richard (Rich to his very few friends) Dripping was an investment banker. He was a whizz kid and a high flyer, if rather more risk-averse than his peers, who was tipped for an early seat on the board of the private bank for whom he worked. Francesca (no diminutives please, the name is Francesca) Phaart was a tax accountant whose forensically detail-orientated carefulness had already earned her a junior partnership and made her not a few enemies.
Quite who thought it might be funny to introduce them to each other is rather lost in the mists of time, although the best guess is an undeniably louche specimen rejoicing in the cognomen Francis Ffotheringham, who was rather in the habit of collecting people with odd names. In the end, of course, it matters not who did the deed because some puckish deity somewhere had decreed that they should not only meet but that they should also fall in love.

For a couple of months Francesca and Rich met every weekend, discovering mutual tastes, mutual interests, and mutual dislikes enough to persuade them that they were well on the way to becoming a serious item. With this in mind, Francesca took Richard to her family home in the Cotswolds, where her parents were favourably impressed by the rather stolid young man on whom their daughter’s fancy had lighted. Their only private caveat was his name. As Papa Phaart remarked to his lady wife in the privacy of their wide, white bed:
“Seems a reasonable sort of a chap, but I’m pretty sure he won’t make the top of the tree with a damned silly name like Dripping.”
His wife nodded wisely and passed him a digestive biscuit.
Two weeks later, Richard and Francesca were on an aeroplane heading for the glass and steel tower in New York which Mr Dripping, the second Mrs Dripping, and Richard’s young half siblings called home. By and large, the visit was a success, with the New York Drippings united in approval of Francesca’s bland blonde handsomeness and her placid uncomplaining nature. The entire family accompanied the young couple to the airport and waved them off with smiling fondness. However, once they were through the departures gate the whole American contingent burst into raucous laughter.
“Phaart. Francesca Phaart.” Papa Dripping was holding his sides and the young Drippings were actually rolling around on the floor of the concourse.
“It’s a very good job,” the second Mrs Dripping opined genially, “that Richard inherited his mother’s sense of humour”.
“The lady doesn’t have a sense of humour,” Dripping senior expostulated.
“Precisely.”
But none of this hilarity was apparent to either Richard or Francesca who sailed serenely towards the next phase of their relationship without a care in the world.
In due course, a reputable jeweller was visited and a diamond of suitable size was purchased. The young couple hosted a dinner party at a fashionable restaurant to celebrate their engagement, and Francesca moved into Richard’s home in leafy Richmond.
Certainly, Francesca was well aware that her name caused a great deal of ribaldry among those she mentally dismissed as the uneducated, but she could see no humour in it herself and nor could she quite understand why certain of her acquaintance seemed to think Richard’s surname a source of ill-bred sniggers.
She might have carried on in blissful ignorance, had she not been placed in a position where she could not avoid overhearing a conversation between two female interns at her place of work. She was in one of the stalls in the female restroom, in fact she was about to emerge, when the sound of two sets of clicking heels stopped her in her tracks.
“…madam Phaart,” the voice was loaded with spite, “and I suppose she thinks that becoming Mrs Dripping will make her less of a household joke”.
“You should watch your mouth,” the other voice was quieter and more refined. “You don’t know who might overhear you.”
“I don’t care. Can’t she even see it?”
See what? Francesca wondered. But she was disturbed enough to mention it to Richard over dinner that night. He shook his head bemusedly.
“I don’t know, dear. Does it worry you?”
Francesca shook her fair head.
“Not really. I suspect it was just more vulgarity.”
And that might have been the end of that had not the bank chairman called Richard into his inner sanctum. They were closeted together for the best part of an hour before the older man wrung Richard’s hand.
“You will think about it then, Richard?”
“I’ll do better than that sir. I will get onto it immediately.”
That night he spoke seriously to Francesca.
“It has been put to me that a seat on the board of the bank is being kept warm for me.”
She looked at his heavily handsome face and felt a glow of pride.
“However, there is a stipulation. It is felt that the name Dripping is unsuitable to elevation to the board.”
“Oh. So what will you do?”
“Choose another. With your assistance, my dear.”
“I don’t think it much matters what. Other than Phaart.”
He smiled his complete understanding.
“I am quite drawn to Smith.”
And so it was that, after a bit of legal sleight of hand, Francesca and Richard became Mr and Mrs Smith and enjoyed many years of happy, if unexciting, marriage.

©️ Jane Jago

Pearls of wisdom from an octogenarian who’s seen it all…

Selfies

Please explain the phenomenon of the selfie to me. People and cameras at beauty spots. Photographing the scenery?

Are they fuck.

It’s selfies. Why?

I might like to see a picture of cherry blossom in Japan. Without someone’s fecking stupid face dead centre of the shot.

I have a nephew who is a minor celebrity and his life has been rendered hideous by the constant demands for a selfie from airheaded young females.

He even had one perch on his lap while he was getting a haircut.

He managed not to tell her where to shove her selfie stick. Just.

…. or ‘How To Speak Typo’ by Jane Jago

athanema (noun) – wheezing breath caused by running uphill when fat and unfit 

broing (verb) – the act of shyly suggesting a homosexual relationship 

depsite (noun) – place where ill-gotten gains are secreted

diea (noun)  – slightly wobbly locomotion caused by the ingestion of alcohol

feredom (verb) – of novels, the act of returning to the wild

infalt (verb) – to suck in air in preparation for giving somebody a right ear bashing

motger (noun) – small antipodean rodent that can be found in the holes in cheese

neote (adverb) – of speech weirdly hesitant and with an apologetic air

perguler (noun) – person paid to lie in court

rogjt (noun) – very hot chilli only eaten by the foolish or men at chucking out time on a Saturday night (yeah, okay, the foolish)

trud (noun) – very hard poo

upseide (adjective) – having the colour and texture of earwax

vitgun (noun) – peashooter loaded with vitamin pills

wjat (noun) – another term for a thingamajig

xplid (adjective) – pale green and about to vomit

Disclaimer: all these words are genuine typos defined by Jane Jago. The source of each is withheld to protect the guilty.

Ed was a hard man, so when everyone started wearing masks he laughed.

“I’m not hiding from no stupid virus,” he told his wife, Marilyn. “I’m fit as a fiddle so it won’t get me.”

If there was any justice in this world, Ed would have wound up gasping out his life in hospital. But because he didn’t wear a mask, Marilyn died and the eldest of their children, together with both Ed’s parents and Marilyn’s father.

And Ed?

Well, he spent four weeks in bed wishing he was dead and his heart was never right again – physically or emotionally.

E.M. Swift-Hook

The man who entered would have stood out even in a crowd. Here in the Hope, where the main colour was drab and the mood most often dour to sullen, he did not so much attract attention as cause it. One thing Jaz had learned in his time under the domes on Hell’s Breath, was how to judge people by their dress and manner. He could spot at a glance now, the kind of tourist who you could double charge on the viewing run and the kind you would refuse to allow a tab in the bar.
Jaz’s first thought was this must be one of the weirder ones. One of those who came here and talked about the mystical power of the flares or liked to make artworks in the micro-g viewing pod on Vel’s cousin’s ship. Too much money to spend, looking for something different, some new experience, to spend it on. But even as his thoughts were going over what he needed to say to Vel’s cousin over dinner – what he wanted to say to her – something kept him watching and not dismissing the new arrival as he would under normal circumstances.
There was nothing too outlandish about this man’s style of dress, although it hinted at the kind of wealth level you didn’t often see around Hell’s Breath. The fabric and cut looked sophisticated and expensive and the visible jewellery suggested he was trying for taste rather than bling. But if elegance was the effect he wanted to achieve, he failed. His hair – an untidy tangle of tawny-gold curls – ruined it, that and the addition of a very cheap looking opaque remote-link visor over his eyes.
“Ma says that funny man just came in on the hopper that took the oldies out.” Vel’s cousin’s daughter wriggled into the seat beside Jaz and started helping herself to the fruit on his plate without asking. “She said Auntie Vel said to tell you to check his luggage. She thinks he’s carrying something. Uncle Dom said the sensors were going ‘whip-woah’ when he went through them.” She licked her fingers and reached back to the plate. He gently grabbed the small hand before it could remove the last slice of fruit and then pushed the child firmly away.
“Tell your ma thanks – and stay out of here the pair of you.” The little girl treated him to one of her more scary pulled faces, then slipped out the back of the bar and through the door Jaz knew led passed the kitchens and out to the tiny demountable cabin beyond that she, her mother and Jaz called home. He watched her go in his peripheral vision, feeling a marked relief when the door slid closed behind her. But his focus remained fixed on the new arrival as it had throughout as he finished the last piece of fruit.
The newcomer seemed polite enough and Vel’s nephew’s boyfriend managed to check him in to one of the two remaining suites which were still habitable. The blond man made as if to move away from the counter to go to his suite. But then he turned back, his movement sudden, as if just remembering something.
“Oh yes, whilst I think of it, you don’t happen to know if there is a man by the name of Jazatar Baldrik staying here?”
Jaz felt a cold stillness within and flexed the muscles of one arm to feel the reassuring presence of an energy snub, linked thanks to his time in the Specials, on his inner arm. He pushed back from the table and stood up, the movement drew the attention of the new arrival who turned to look, eyes invisible beneath the visor but a wide smile now growing below it. Jaz did not watch the distracting smile, he watched the hands and the stance, but they were relaxed, nothing signalled intent to attack.
Jaz crossed the room towards the blond man, closing down the distance between them in a few quick steps, to get to hand-to-hand range, so he could be surer of control and, if needed, a kill.
The blond man let him do it, still smiling and relaxed.
“Jazatar Baldrik I assume?” The voice was light and sounded much too happy.
“Who  are you and what do you want?” To his own ears, Jaz’s question sounded more like a snarl. The smile beneath the visor grew even wider and the blond man reached up to remove the obscuring remote-link, revealing a pair of disturbing, intent, orange eyes.
“My name is Durban Chola and I need you to help me save the soul of Avilon Revid.”
Jaz made a decision and let the energy snub slip smoothly into his palm. Members of the Coalition’s security forces did not talk like this man and they were never going to afford his wardrobe. They were also going to be a lot better trained than to make such a spectacle of themselves in a place like the Hope.

From Haruspex I:Trust A Few a Fortune’s Fools book by E.M. Swift-Hook.

Pearls of wisdom from an octogenarian who’s seen it all…

The Brazilian 

Who in their right mind goes to a ‘salon’ and gets their pubic hair wrenched out by the roots?

One. It fucking hurts.

Two. It’s creepy walking around with a child’s pudenda

Three. It fucking hurts 

So. Before paying out your hard-earned cash ask yourself this. 

Why the fuck?

If you are doing it for a laugh then carry on – although I might question your idea of a ‘laugh’.

However, if you are doing it because your significant other finds your pubic hair in some way unpleasant that’s a whole new ballgame. 

Unless you really do have creepy pubes…

Paradise Found: Tales from the Library is an anthology of stories about the Library of Alexandria. It was rescued from Terra long ago by its founder, Ptolemy I and brought to Paradise City.
The City itself houses every god known to man and more than a few others, and exists in any time. It’s also a place where a person can become everything they ever wanted, or lose all they’ve ever known. The only constant is the Library.
All the proceeds from this anthology will be donated to help defray the medical expenses for Scott Pond as he comes back from cancer.

“Crumpled backwards over the edge of the marble fountain, his arms flung wide to either side, a body leaked blood into the water, turning it a pale salmon pink. Or perhaps the rose petlas that were strewn around were to blame. I couldn’t tell. I just knew he hadn’t been there that morning when Castor had come in.”

~ Requiem for an Unknown, Val Griswold-Ford.

Tania blinked away the green after-image as she tramped into the bar-café. It was quiet, cool; only the whirring of ceiling fans broke the silence. The bartender was absent. As were all the staff. She frowned and blinked some more till her eyes adjusted to the gloom.
In the centre of the main room were another nine people seated around a group of round tables. Some of them had their legs crossed, others were tapping away on their phones while the rest were playing ‘which finger can I wring off first’.
From the back of the bar-café floated the smell of bacon and sausages. And freshly-brewed coffee. Strong black tea coasted in on the aroma of peanut butter spread melting on hot toast. The bar pushed a tendril of an alcohol cordial into the fragrances. Not nauseating, but the additional fragrance killed any appetite Tania may have had. Of course, that didn’t count the knots, flips, and butterfly dances her stomach was doing.
It had been a long time since anyone had invited her to an interview. And certainly none in an eatery.”

~ Downward Mobility, Lai Zhao.

A Bite of… Lai Zhao

Would you rather be a hero or a villain?

The villain. Even after all these years, I prefer to be the villain, only because the role is so much fun! You get to do outrageous acts (if it suits the story) and get away with so much for so long, maybe forever. In my stories, the hero doesn’t always win, and the villain doesn’t always lose. Sometimes, it’s a tie. And sometimes, there’s an even greater villain or antagonist that disrupts the conflict.

Chocolate cake or coffee cake?

Has to be chocolate cake. Don’t get me wrong, I love coffee cake, but my absolute favourite is chocolate cake, and that has to be dark chocolate, too! Why? Well, ‘cos the flavour is calming, heavenly, and dark. It also helps that I have an endless supply of baking dark chocolate and other cake ingredients.
Dark chocolate lava mini-cakes, anyone? Or you’d prefer a Black Forest Gateau? I can make both.

You can have four guests at a dinner party. Name the four people living, dead or fictional you would Most/Least like to entertain.

The late Sir Terry Pratchett springs immediately to mind. I would love to talk to him, not specifically about writing, but about philosophy and his view of the world. There is a documentary about Sir Pratchett, but that’s through someone else’s eyes. Questions might include where he would take the world if he were able to command it, and what might he have done in a parallel world.
Zhuge Liang is the second guest I would most like to entertain. He was a Chinese politician, military strategist, writer, engineer, and inventor. He lived around 181 – 234 AD, during the Three Kingdoms period of China.
I would want to know Mr. Zhuge’s view on current events and what he would suggest. I’d also like to know what made him tick.
My Dad. He’s so reticent, and non-expressive of anything. It’d just be nice to get him to talk about himself.
My Mum. It’d be interesting to see her when she’s not being a mum.

A city of agoraphobia and claustrophobia is home to one Lai Zhao, writer of dark (sometimes urban) fantasy and non-fiction.
By day, Lai reviews the works of others and produces work-related articles. At night, though, she ponders the mysteries of parallel and fictional universes, populated by characters of the imagination. Some are tangible, some are corporeal. But they all exist in some form or another. It just so happens that these beings’ preferred existence is the written word. And maybe a plushie or two. You can catch Lai Zhao on Facebook.

Other books to which Lia Zho has contributed:

THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO WRITING FANTASY, VOL. 2: THE OPUS MAGUS (1st Edition)

THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO WRITING FANTASY, VOLUME 3: THE AUTHOR’S GRIMOIRE (1st Edition)

“That’s where it happened,” Lissiane pointed to the smooth moonlit waters. Karvon was seven and always asking about his father. Lissiane knew how much his father’s absence hurt him so she’d brought him here.

“I was swimming in the lake one summer evening when your father found me. He was the most handsome man I’d ever met. We fell in love but we couldn’t stay together. There were too many difficulties. So we vowed our love and parted. You were born the following spring.”

As they walked away Lissiane thought she saw the glint of moonlight on a merman’s tail.

E.M. Swift-Hook