Two Coffees, by Sandi Zand

Way back, when it mattered, I'd said: "There's only one rule and that is there are no rules."

You laughed. “You can’t do that,” you said. “Can’t say there aren’t rules and make that a rule – it’s a contradiction.”

“Okay,” I said. “Call it a guideline then. No rules, that’s the guideline. Agreed?”

“Yeah, cool,” you said. You laughed again, you sounded full, and I knew I had you.

You were making coffee. Instant. You didn’t drink the proper stuff back then. Even with coffee, you wouldn’t follow the rules; you’d pour hot water into the cups then sprinkle granules on the surface where they’d float in belligerent denial of purpose. You had to stir it for ages before they dissolved.

Now you’re making coffee again, in the espresso maker we bought last June, and you hand me mine – black, just as it comes. Into yours, you shake sugar from the bag, not caring whether you get one measure or five, and you stir the sticky brew with an egg spoon for ages.

“I was wondering,” you say, “what the guideline would be for seeing other people.”

The coffee burns my top lip, hits the roof of my mouth and burns that too. I swear, jerk the cup away, hot liquid curls over the edge and spills onto my shirt.

“I mean theoretically,” you say, “you know.”

“Why ask me?” I dab at the spill with a tea-towel, but it’s seeped right through and is clinging fast. I go to the sink, dampen a cloth and press the stain gently, glad to have my back to you. I wait for you to speak.

“Well, as guardian of guidelines,” you say. “I mean they are always yours, right? So I thought, well, you might have... you know... one in reserve…”

You move forward and peer over my shoulder.

“Rub soap on it,” you suggest.

“It’s silk,” I say, “dry-clean only.”

“They always put that, just covering their backs, it needs soap.”

You do the laundry with the same reckless will with which you sweeten your coffee. I had to make it a guideline in the end – after the first couple of months of sludge-grey whites – that we each take care of our own clothes.

“So…” You drain your cup in one mouthful, swallow it down on the pause. “What say you?”

“I suppose it’s a case of to thine own self be true,” I say.

“That’s the guideline?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Okay,” you say. “Cool. It was just theoretical, just curiosity, you know.”

You put down your empty cup.

I stand by the sink, a circle of damp encroaching on my chest.

And I wait for you to leave.

Offline, by Graham Attenborough

She was taken from her cell by two guards in their google uniforms. At the end of a long white corridor, still flanked by her guards, she was greeted by a smiling young woman who looked up briefly from a glowing tablet as she was brought in to a gleaming office, then looked down again.

'Please sit,' said a man sat behind a Habitat table adorned with a magnificent digitalised flowering plant.   She sat, the one-piece paper suit they had given her to wear crackling as she did so. 'What is your username'? the man asked.  She said nothing. 'Your google account? Amazon? What is your smart phone number?'  'I don't have a mobile' she said, 'or a username, a blog, a Facebook page or a google account. In fact, I don't even have a fucking computer - okay!'

They all looked at her as though she'd just said that she butchered babies for a living.  The man turned to his screen, tapped on it a couple of times and turned it towards her. Immediately she recognised herself walking along a fairly busy street. She saw that as other people walked along, the giant billboard screens flashed up their usernames and quickly directed them to their next shopping destination. A hint of a smile danced across her lips as she saw how the screens went blank as she passed them, unable to identify all her consumer wants and needs.

'As a matter of fact,' he said, 'no, it's not okay. Do you even have a bank account?'

'No' she said, 'I do not have a bank account. I don't want a bloody bank account and I have a democratic right not to have one if I choose.'  

The man laughed.'Oh, democracy. That old chestnut. Didn't you know? We have no need of democracy in the age of google because we have no need of governance. We are all free and equal under google. The world has moved on, my dear. You see, you and your kind are still living in the bad old days. That's why you insist on calling yourselves neo Luddites and Latter-day Diggers. They tried to halt progress too, didn't they, and of course they failed. I suggest you read about them sometime, on Wikipedia, that is - when you're back online. And you will be back online, reconnected to the net, because that is the only rule passed down by google in its all-consuming wisdom.  

'As I say' he went on, 'we are all free to choose under google but our choices must be made online. That is the rule. Everything we will ever need is to be found on the worldwide web and you must be a part of the great google family. Otherwise, well, you are nothing, nothing but a shadow, a waste of digits, an affront to consumerism. Someone like you is a non unit. You might as well be dead.'

'Are you actually saying,' the woman said, 'that our only purpose is to shop? To buy stuff online?' 'Of course', the man replied. 'What other purpose could we possibly have?'  She looked at the man aghast. She longed to go home, to her dogs, to her books and her vegetable garden. She didn't need google to be fulfilled. She only needed her freedom, her friends, love.  She said: 'you can't force me. You can give me an iPad and a username but I just won't log on. I don't want you, I don't need you.'

The man sat back in his chair and laced his fingers into a steeple.  He said, 'Nonsense, we all need google. Google is us and we are google. You see my dear, if you were online and keeping abreast of google events, you would know that the latest google nanotechnology means that we can now connect you to the web intravenously. You should consider yourself privileged, you shall be one of the first units on earth not merely to be connected but  actually to be a living part of google itself. There shall be no logging off, even as your physical body sleeps, you shall live and breath within the net, being updated instantaneously. I'm envious I can tell you. Just imagine, you will be as one with google, and, gradually, as this marvellous, google-given technology is rolled out, more and more of us will join you, our minds and bodies sharing forever the power and the glory of the one great google!'

Realising there was no escape from this madness, the woman began to panic. She stood up and tried to run, but the two google guards grabbed her by the arms and held her fast. 'They will take you down to the technicians now,' said the man kindly, 'we shall meet again my dear, online.' 

He stood to attention, tapped his chest with his right hand before stretching his arm out before him. 'Google be praised' he said, and the others responded.

'Praise be to Google!'

Her legs gave way beneath her.

Eat My Words, by Penny Simpson

“For a shilling? I’ll do it,” said a ragged young man. Several mouths opened then closed up, a few caps were shaken but nobody spoke. The stranger looked once more around the tap room then turned to the young man and said, “Come with me.”

When it was over, the young man went back to the inn, put his shilling down on the bar and ordered a pint of ale. The landlord stared at the silver coin and slowly shook his head. The young man grew red and shoved his shilling further across the bar. The landlord took a step back. When the embarrassed young man glanced around the room, every eye seemed to sink in deep contemplation of a glass. At length, old Thomas reached into his pocket, drew out two copper pennies and placed them next to the silver shilling on the bar. The landlord nodded, fetched a pint of ale and pushed it towards the young man. 

When he raised his glass, not one hand stirred but his own so he drank in silence, alone and too fast. Not until the door had shut behind him did anyone take a sup or speak one word. As he reeled along the lane and across the meadows, the young man heard old Thomas start a song. He felt the bitter tang of the shilling in his pocket and tasted it as he lost his pint of ale in a ditch.

The sourness remained and tainted his luck; he rarely got work, few bought the poles he cut or the sticks he tied in bundles and it was seldom he met with a smile. One November night, he heard a voice and saw a lantern approach with a well-fed growl, “You’re wanted.” The young man was reluctant to go. He sat and thought for a while but, this night or all, one silver shilling or thirty, what he had done was done. So he followed the lantern over the meadows and up the lane to a house where one window was lit.

The corpse lay stout and tall, starched linen under broad black cloth leaving scarce room at head and foot for two women, one quite old, the other quite young, both well dressed in the same black silk. A wooden platter of bread was propped on the dead man’s breast. The young man took it and ate. The old woman passed him a bowl of ale and he drank, the growl in his empty belly the only sound in the room.

When he had done, a maid appeared with a trembling hand to take the platter and bowl for burning. “Now say it,” the younger woman spoke and he remembered words repeated over an open grave, “I give easement and rest to thee, dear man. Come not down the lanes or in our meadows. And for thy peace, I pawn my own soul. Amen. Christ receive thy soul.”

He travelled wide where nobody knew, but found neither work nor company. A farmer hiring looked once at his clean straight limbs, again at his face and moved on. If a girl smiled or looked his way, her friend was sure to hurry her on. 'I cast a long shadow,' he thought, ‘It is the darkness I’ve taken into my soul.’

With his two shillings he bought supplies and returned to his corner to earth. They found him out whenever a death came sudden, unshriven. Each time the bread grew harder to swallow, the bitter taste grew stronger, the weight of the words grew greater. In the meadows he went muttering, “I’ve pawned my soul and can never be redeemed.”Down the lanes he’d wander and howl, “I’m lost. I’ve lost my soul.” From his bed in the woods come cries in the night “My soul. My soul. My soul.”

The village hears and fears their wanderer who had belonged but was lost, who carried his burden of sins into his grave and on, in their meadows and down the lanes.

Wild, by Graham Attenborough

Ironic, is it not, that I, of all men, should find myself roughly jostled about in this filthy wooden cart. And on such a journey too. I do not write this short tract to justify my life. I know who and what manner of man I am. I wish only to make the most of this, my exit from the stage.

Look at all these faces along the route. I should be gratified. I'm not. I recognise a few. Those simpering sycophants who would come to my office off the Old Bailey, squealing about their pilfered pocket watches, their silk kerchiefs, their family heirlooms. I, who came into this world with nothing, who worked and schemed and fought my way to riches. I was the man they ran to for help, to retrieve their treasures. Fools! Did they think me a magician? A seer? Did they believe I was a good man, their friend?

They did. They thought I actually scoured the stinking taverns and rotten rookeries of the city, like a bloodhound, sniffing out their precious stolen baubles. When all the while - and still it makes me smile to think of it - their silly trinkets were safely locked within my strongbox, just a few steps from where they sat.

I ran it all you see. All the pickpockets, house breakers and footpads of London Town worked for me, were in my pay and none would dare to cheat me. They went about their business doing my business, reporting back to me until I double crossed their names from my ledger. Alas, I went to far with that. But what was I to do? Catching thieves was my profession, ergo, some were sacrificed to the drop.

Blueskin Blake was my mistake. He thought me his friend, he thought us equal in the game. That's why I scratched the second cross against his name. But instead of sealing his fate, I sealed mine. He knew too much and found the time to tell it, to shout it out for all to hear. The magistrate set off the hue and cry and sent his hired louts for me.

Ah well, tis the nature of the game. I have won so many times, eventually I had to lose. And now, well here I am, the centre of this sorry spectacle. The shouts and jeers grow fierce and the coach curtains of the rich, twitch, with anticipation. It is time to hand this scrap to Mister Defoe. He may make of it what he will.

I see it now, the Tyburn Tree. I've seen it many times before but, this day, it waits for me.

For I, am Jonathan Wild. Thief-Taker General.

I have played my part.

The Atheist, by Graham Attenborough

On the day of resurrection, no one was more astonished than the atheist.

He woke from nothing into an utter darkness and had quickly established that he was confined within a small, damp-smelling box.  That realisation had induced sheer panic and he found himself screaming uncontrollably.  He kicked and punched and trashed about and then, with a sense of elation, felt the wooden walls fall away.  The solid, six feet of earth above him parted with ease - it was almost as though he were swimming through it. Without any real effort, his head burst into bright sunshine, hurting his eyes as he breathed deeply of the warm, clean air.  

The churchyard scene reminded the atheist of Stanley Spencer's Cookham Resurrection.  Bewildered men, women and children leaned or sat upon their own headstones.  Some wept with joy hugging loved ones whilst others knelt besides their open graves thanking God for granting them eternal life. 

At first, the atheist could do nothing but stare with incredulous wonder but soon his observant, questing mind began to take notice of detail.  There were perhaps three hundred people in the meagre village graveyard.  Others were emerging, mole-like, all around and he realised that no one appeared to be more than in their early thirties.  Including himself.  Yet he distinctly remembered his eightieth birthday.  He saw also, that everyone's burial clothes were in a pristine condition despite many having been dead for hundreds of years. 

As he watched the jubilation, he began to feel a sense of loneliness. The atheist had never married, had no children, few friends, preferring always to be the solitary scholar. His previous life, the atheist now considered, had been lived selfishly.  A sedentary existence, lived only for self gratification, shunning others and lacking in so much that constituted being fully human.  Now, here at the resurrection, surrounded by long lost loves, reunited, his aloneness pained him.

To his right he heard the gentle sobbing of a woman. She wore a delicate white Empire Line dress with matching Mop Cap and had clearly lived over two hundred years before himself.

The atheist stood before her. He held her long, warm hands and gazed into her depthless, timeless eyes. This simple human contact electrified him.  She smiled and he fell in love. His pure heart pumped love through his perfect veins as his imagination soared on wings of possibility.

Suddenly, the sky cracked and split asunder.  The atheist looked up and stared into the awful face of God.

Graham Attenborough (2014)

The Distractions of Hercules, by Peter Shilston

Many thousands of years ago, around the time half of Britain was covered in ice, the River Severn flowed north into the Dee estuary. But then, when the ice retreated, the god Zeus spoke to Hercules and said, “It is my desire that the Severn should now flow southwards. Take your club and beat out a new channel for the river”.

Hercules took his club and began his labour at the northern end of the new river-bed. But the god of the northern marshes, fearing that his wetlands would be drained, sent out his reed-girls to distract Hercules. And the reed-girls said, “Stop your work, Hercules, and come with us, and we will show you pleasures beyond imagining!” But Hercules answered, “Go away! Come back when I’ve finished!” and he continued with his work. But he was thinking so much about the beauty of the reed-girls that he beat out his channel shallower than he intended, so some of the wetlands survive to this day.

As Hercules worked further southwards, the river god, annoyed that he had not been consulted, sent river-nymphs to distract Hercules. The river-nymphs danced round Hercules and sang, “Stop your work, Hercules, and come with us, and we will show you pleasures beyond imagining!” But Hercules answered, “Go away! Come back when I’ve finished!” But he was so confused by the nymphs dancing in circles around him that he lost all sense of direction, and the course of the river-bed he was beating out, through where Shrewsbury now stands, instead of being a straight line, ran in great loops and meanders.

Hercules now reached a line of hills and began to beat a passage through them. But the god of the hills, foreseeing that men would come and cut down his trees to fire their furnaces, and blacken his rocks with their smoke, sent woodland dryads to distract Hercules. The dryads sang, “Leave your work, Hercules, and come with us, and we will show you pleasures beyond imagining!” But Hercules answered, “Go away! Comeback when I’ve finished!” But he was so eager to sample the pleasures that the dryads had promised that he stopped the work early, so that the Ironbridge Gorge was narrower than intended, and it remains a place of fierce and dangerous waters to this day.

At last Hercules finished his labours, and the Severn now flowed southwards in a new path. And Hercules went and sat down to rest in the Quarry gardens, and he called out, “Ho! Reed-girls and water-nymphs and tree-dryads! I’m finished at last! Where are the pleasures beyond imagining that you promised me?” But there was no answer, for they had all gone away. And Hercules in frustration smashed his club on the ground, causing a great pit which is now the Dingle Gardens. But eventually he fell asleep, tired out by his labours.

The god of the River Severn saw Hercules asleep and thought, “Now I’ll have my revenge! Reject the pleasures offered by my water-nymphs, did he? Not to mention the reed-girls and dryads too! I’ll place a curse on him so that he’ll never be able to enjoy such pleasures again!” And he cursed Hercules, but Hercules did not realize it till he awoke.

Men came and erected a statue of Hercules, which you can still see in the Quarry Gardens. This angered the river-god, and he was angrier still when he realized that, thanks to the labours of Hercules, he now faced a very long and weary route to the sea. His anger continues to this day; and every few years he sends down a flood, which often fills the Quarry Gardens and surrounds the statue of Hercules, but he has never managed to topple it. And if you go to the Quarry, you can still see Hercules, with his lion-skin and his mighty muscles and gigantic club – but if you look closely you will notice that, thanks to the river-god’s curse, he wears only an infeasibly tiny fig-leaf.

The Straight Tail of a Lion, by Nathalie Hildegarde Liege

A good breakfast in a hotel after a first night in Shrewsbury; I have my journal, Physics Education, by my cereals bowl. A lady dressed in blue from head to toes pushes a double glass door, heads to the Breakfast Room and pauses until the waiter shows her to the table next to mine. She is early for a cooked English breakfast. She waits. She pins her eyes on my Journal. Her hands unzip and go through her blue luggage, clogged up with her essentials, at the same time as talking to me.

"I love Shrewsbury. The guide who took our group for a history tour of the town told us with a nostalgic voice, Shrewsbury is now known for its many charity shops. I’d say there are also plenty of hair dressers for all styles.” She smiles and adds, “If I may, please enjoy this book. I'm guessing you teach Physics. Perhaps you could pass it on to one of your students.'

"Thank you," I say, taking the book. 'Yes, I do teach Physics. What an unusual title, Physics for Poets." 

"It was several days ago now," the lady said.  "I was on the opposite pavement to this hotel. I'd been looking its balcony, which Charles Dickens once referred to, and had turned away from it and gone into the Severn Hospice Charity shop. I wished to choose a book for the evening. The Christmassy silver cover caught my eye, also the red apple badge on Sir Isaac Newton’s chest. I bought it, but I can’t understand or read it as poetry."  

That was it.  The minute I bent my face to take a spoon of cereals, the lady vanished. No breakfast for her, not even a cup of tea.

Inside the book, I saw that someone had left a note numbered (4) at the first page of Chapter 5, entitled The Romance of Energy.

Written in red ink it said: The star expands into a red giant or a red super giant. On the back of the same note, written in luminous blue, were the headers of the paragraphs of the same chapter The many faces of energy, Binding Energy, Stars, Planets and Life.

Was this my first poem, made up out of the structure of the chapter?

If I think of stars or red giants, I'll always remember my nose up towards the heavens the first time I noticed the very special sculpted Lion over the doorway of this hotel, pulling into its car park beneath a clear winter sky. The tail of this, the Percy Lion, was a mystery.  I knew about the Alnwick Bridge’s lion and its unique straight tail, the Brentford Syon’s Park second Percy Lion with a straight tail too. Oddity of oddities, I even found a third Percy Lion with a straight tail at the very top of this Hotel, all tensed and isolated as if in self-defense, and crowned with stars? But this curly-tailed lion - I didn't know what that was about.

What I do know, though, was that the 1403 Battle of Shrewsbury took place here! Does the Percy Family know all about the Shrewsbury Lion that re-emerged in 1962 at the rear of the hotel, rich in the history of the town? His eyes and pride appear placed on the town centre and in the map line out to Battlefields. 

And dear Lady in Blue, if you had taken time for a breakfast I would have shared with you that piece of art and read out to you about the Lion Hotel, including all the things that the guide who led your tour didn't mention. 

.