WHEN OPENING AN EASTER EGG (a.k.a. A List of Serious Instructions for Approaching Chocolate Ovoids)

The Cardboard Packaging

• Open at top then, once egg is safely put aside, open bottom too.
• Tear off flaps in case a bee needs to be captured and delivered outdoors.
• Put hand through curiously-shaped window and rattle like bracelet.
• Answer puzzles on box or otherwise decorate with permanent marker.

The Plastic Packaging

• Turn upside down and flap two halves like filmy wings.
• Use scissors on plastic just for click and wobbliness of cut.
• Keep aside in case ovoid mould comes in handy for later occasion.
• Wonder why weeks later and promptly chuck out.

The Tin Foil

• Peel off carefully and flatten, cutting off wherever torn.
• Apply to action figures as shiny face mask.
• Peel off carefully to preserve face imprint then scrunch up with sadism.
• Play catch with precious nugget until bin intercedes.

The Chocolate Egg

• Tap against lip of bowl to open.
• Break down into chocolatey shards.
• Use thin sharp shard to write name on bigger shard.
• Preserve in fridge or devour in one.

HER IMPERFECT MEMORY (a.k.a. Two Poems for International Women's Day)

Her Imperfect Memory

All she is now is a name,

full name so as not to forget.

Sometimes she's her golden mane

with curls as memory set.

With focus she becomes her stance,

her wrists bent down as she walks,

little jiggles suggest a dance

but soft groans whenever she talks.

And yet every morning, she’s there

right on the tip of my tongue,

obsession with absent blue stares

soon gone with the day begun.



She Died at Second Cactus

Mary the Sioux,

they'll say,

made a move for their guns,

those Hamish Boys,

and fired through the brim

of a ten gallon hat.

The boys so startled,

Mary shot a boot

and ran through

their screaming,

caught up by their cursing.

Out of breath

in an open desert,

Mary passed a cactus,

emptying both barrels

till the Hamishes

were halved.

Facing away,

Mary the Sioux,

felt and was felled

by a fraction of wrath.

Last glance at a second cactus.

Yes. The second cactus.

There is an end.

That should be it.

Still onward wagon

to a foregone conclusion

of a White man's devising.

Making the Shortlist at Comma Press (a.k.a. Proof that Competitions Are Worth Entering)

A rather marvellous thing has happened to me this week.

After months of sending out to writing competitions, I have finally heard back something heartening. From Comma Press!

Towards the end of last year I submitted a short story to them via their Dinesh Allirajah Prize. The theme was 'Artificial Intelligence', a subject I have written plenty for in the past. I am pleased to say that one of these stories has made their shortlist.

This is by no means the end of the process. A judging panel is currently reviewing all six stories before a winner is announced on Saturday 30th May as part of the Northern Short Story Festival in Leeds.

I wish the other shortlisters good luck and look forward to us all sharing space in an exclusive Comma Press ebook regardless of the final outcome.

In the meantime, I will do my best to distract myself with more themed posts on here and amusing word observations on Twitter.

For more information, here is the link to the official Comma Press shortlist announcement page...

https://commapress.co.uk/news/shortlist-announced-for-the-third-annual/

HONEY (a.k.a. A Tender Moment Between Stacks of Pancakes)

Each with a high stack of pancakes, we revealed our hands.

            “I wish this wasn’t our last meal,” she said. This came as quite a shock but I tried not to let it show on my face. I found that filling my cheeks with blueberries helped. Still she was waiting on my answer.

            “Honesty is good.” I took her chilly hand as it lay beside her untouched fork. “If only it could have been a little sweeter.”

            She pulled away to open out her serviette on her lap. “You leave something too long and what can you expect?” She wrinkled her nose at the bananas between her pancakes. Even I could see they were bruised. I held up some excess blueberries with my fork but she declined, instead tying back her greying hair as if she intended to throw herself face first into her meal. I chuckled at the thought. This raised an eyebrow.

            “Just occurred to me,” I replied, “don’t you normally have honey?”

            She sighed. “I do but it’s not really a honey day.”

            I followed her glance out of the café window beside our table. The wind buffeted the evergreens as it had done for the past month. A sandwich board skidded by.

“I must admit, we’re both being extraordinarily healthy today with our fruit choices.”

             “Mm,” she said teasing out a large browning banana slice and left it balanced precariously on the rim of her plate.

            It was getting harder and harder to maintain my cheeriness. This may well have been a bad day of definitive endings but it seemed a shame to waste the Shrove Tuesday treat on our personal mope. I raised a hand and got the attention of the barista wiping the hot water spout with a cloth.

            “Can we have some honey on these?” I asked.

            She turned to me. “But what about your tooth?”

            “I’ll just eat out of the left side of my mouth,” I said, grinning with a black molar somewhere in the back.

            She chuckled. “Good thing you’ve got your toothbrush packed.”

            I hadn’t expected her to say that but then, by the look of wide eyes, she hadn’t either. We let out nervous laughter so loud that it startled the barista coming up with her honey jug. Regaining her professionalism, she drizzled generously over both our pancake stacks. At last something sweet to sink our teeth into before walking out for good.

PUNCH LINE PARTY (a.k.a. A Bad Joke Story for UK Punday 2020)

The pirate sips a Bacardi Breezer. The Spanish footballer bites into a cube of chicken, sliding it off the kebab stick. Multicolour lights dance around them as they stand beside the party buffet.
The pirate takes the black hat from his head and wafts himself with it, causing the fake red beard to flutter. His other hand reaches for the steering wheel on his crotch but hesitates, remembering that it is there, that it can't be moved until after the party is over.
The footballer grins at this but itches the tight Astroturf skirt he is wearing. It goes right up to his crotch so at least he is in a more comfortable position than his friend. He starts to feel the heat himself, wafting his Real Madrid jersey.
"I'm going to kill Derek," the pirate says. "You just know he picked this venue to make the night even more impossible."
The footballer looks around. "Not so many people," he lisps.
"Don't do that."
"Why?"
"It's racist."
The footballer shrugs. "I'm just having a little fun."
"Well, there could actually be a real Spanish person coming tonight."
"You know something I don't?"
"No." The pirate finishes his drink. "Ah."
The footballer tilts his head and squints. "Was that argh?"
"What?"
"Sounds like the start of your punch line to me."
"No it wasn't."
"Admit it! You were so sick of waiting for someone to trip up that you were considering sabotaging yourself." The footballer turns round to peruse the buffet. "You know the rules."
The pirate joins. "Of course I do. Which is precisely why I wouldn't say anything like that."
"If you says so," the footballer says, winking.
The pirate sighs. "'Argh' isn't even a key part of my punch line."
"Oh really? How does it go?"
The pirate glares at him. "I don't know. How does yours go?"
The footballer laughs this off.
The pirate looks over his shoulder. He focuses on a couple at the other end of the room, a man and a woman with things on their head. A paper bag over his face and a small plastic cow wrapped in her hair.
"Who are they?"
The footballer follows his gaze. He breathes in. "Oh no. You won't get me like that."
"Are you seriously telling me their puns are their real names?"
"Yep. Ingenious, isn't it?"
"Annoying more like."
The footballer turns his attention to the door at the front of the room. "Oh shit."
"What?" the pirate asks, turning around.
They both groan as Quasimodo shuffles up to them. He has a bell glued to his left cheek.
"Hello, friends," he lisps.
"That's racist," the footballer remarks, glancing at the pirate.
He shakes his head. "In this case it's just offensive."
Quasimodo grins. "Go on then."
"Go on then what?"
"Say it."
The footballer and the pirate look at each other.
"No," they both answer.
Quasimodo stomps his foot. "Oh, come on! Where's the fun in that?"
"We'll lose if we say the punch line to your stupid little joke," the pirate says.
"Really?"
"You didn't know the rules?"
"I knew to dress up as a joke."
The footballer laughs. "That's only part of it. If someone says the punch line to any joke in here then you lose."
"I lose what?"
"The game."
Quasimodo frowns. "I thought it was a party."
"It is. And this is the big party game."
Quasimodo grumbles, grabbing a pig in a blanket. The eye beneath his plastic forehead bulge lands on a woman entering the party. She is dressed as a giant fish. Its eye has been cut out.
"Now that one is obvious," he says, turning back. "I mean, who would even say that punch line? Doesn't exactly fit into normal conversation."
"No disagreement there," the pirate mutters.
"And how about her friend?" the footballer asks.
Quasimodo watches another woman stumble in on all fours, both of her eyes covered up. She has light brown fur and is definitely meant to be a mammal but he is unsure precisely which one. One horn is far larger than the other on her head.
"Could it be mythical?" the pirate muses out loud.
"Maybe." The footballer flicks Quasimodo in the arm. "What do you think?"
"No idea."
Alarms blare. Confetti falls. Streamers fly. Both the footballer and the pirate grin at their fellow guest as he squeezes his eyes shut in embarrassment. He palms his disfigured face. Everyone at the party cheers.
"And that's the end of the game," the footballer says with a glint in his eye.
Quasimodo groans and looks up. "What do I have to do?"
The pirate rests a hand on his shoulder. "Buy everyone a round of drinks."
Quasimodo turns to the bar.
The footballer laughs. "Unfortunately the booze won't be quite as cheap as the laughs in here."

THE DICHOTOMY OF CROSSING DISTANCES (a.k.a. Setting Forth from New Year's Day)

I’ve recently been looking into Zeno’s Dichotomy Paradox. To simplify it in an awkward fashion, imagine walking a distance. Say the exit of a supermarket to wherever you parked your car. Now that is a set distance with a set time but to get there you will need to reach the halfway point first. However, if you’re going to split distances in half, you might as well split that halfway point in half too, and its subsequent halfway point in half and so on and so forth. Now if you add up all those new split distances, the sum total would be infinity. After a moment’s consideration, the overall distance between the supermarket and your car becomes impossibly long.

            Now this paradox is easily refuted by mathematical thinking but that’s not what I’m concerned with today. I’m more interested in the kind of mindset where the Dichotomy Paradox is almost always a problem. In short, anxiety.

            I am an anxious person. I worry about great distances before I’ve even begun the journey. I imagine every distance beyond the footpath to town or to work is a great distance. It’s a journey fraught with potential perils at every step from genuine niggles like losing my bearings and having to rely on the kindness and accuracy of strangers, to outrageous fears like my glasses flying off my face and landing in the middle of a busy road. Like in the paradox, every step of the way contains a new obstacle and hold-up.

            Normally all it takes to get over this fear is to set about moving forward. The thing about the Dichotomy Paradox when applied to real life is that it is undermined by actually crossing the distance. Calculations and halving are all well and good but they are nothing compared to the human tendency to just get on with the task at hand. It’s really that simple and yet remains very easy to forget.

            Now perseverance is always easier when you know what’s at the end of the road, when you ultimately realise that very little will change as a consequence. You can fight back the concept of the Dichotomy Paradox if the task is something that won’t take long and won’t result in the end of a life or a way of life. In those harrowing circumstances there will be days when the Dichotomy Paradox will just tie you up in knots and paralyze you with fear. After all, the certainty of disappearance doesn’t bear thinking about.

            Nevertheless, my suggested workaround for this is to bypass the multiple potential measurements in that distance with our feet. Change is scary but sometimes we go through the motions of routine behaviour and motor memory and suddenly we're well past the problem. If there was ever really a problem to begin with.

            I would say Zeno’s Dichotomy Paradox is something to think about now we’re in a new year and decade. It’s something to acknowledge and hopefully overcome.

I NEVER LIKED TWO THOUSAND AND NINETEEN (a.k.a. A Villa-knell to Mark the End of a Rather Unpleasant Year)

I never liked two thousand and nineteen

Not just an odd number but on the verge

Of a brighter twenty-twenty dream.

The year itself: dull and awkward scenes

With some tough memories I long to purge.

I never liked two thousand and nineteen.

My tired eyes have a teary sheen,

Overflowing with a desperate urge

For a brighter twenty-twenty dream.

And still how maddening time’s march now seems,

Its beat so solemn it might be a dirge.

I never liked two thousand and nineteen.

It’s become so hard to vent my spleen

For if I start, I might very well splurge

Before the brighter twenty-twenty dream.

I suppose it won’t be too long between

The years, before present and future merge.

I never liked two thousand and nineteen

But I might the twenty-twenty dream.