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. 

.

  

The Old Man's Choice, by Peter Shilston

Paul sat in his chair as rigid and motionless as a statue, but inside his head thoughts spiralled endlessly around without reaching any conclusion. In the past he had always had confidence in his judgments; it had been one of his strengths; but not so now. Was he doing the right thing? Was it too late to change? How was he to know? He had always acted in accordance with certain fixed and inviolable rules, but he had never pretended to great intelligence. Throughout his long career, others had always done the detailed and difficult work for him: his function was to provide dignity and stability, and to calm down those brainy chaps when they got over-excited, as they often did. 

He had been respected too, and generally successful. But now here he was, alone. He dimly sensed that the world had changed: the rules which had governed his life had perhaps ceased to exist. The brainy chaps who might have helped him out had gone. He should have gone too: he realized that. More than once he had retired, and then allowed himself to be called back. He should have resisted that last call; in his heart he had known it all along: the only time in his life that he had ever acted weakly. Surely at his age he should have been allowed to live in peace! It had brought him nothing but uncertainty, when every course of action seemed distasteful.

          

Now there was this man he had to meet: a man young enough to be his grandson. Not that he would have wished any grandson of his to turn out like that! He had already met him more than once, and had disliked him intensely. The fellow was common beyond belief; obviously risen from the gutter; ill-mannered, disrespectful, dishonest and consumed with violent ambition: a man who acknowledged no rules of any kind in his pursuit of power. Paul’s oldest friends had warned him against having anything to do with this person. Where were his friends now, when he needed them most? Gone; all gone. He was alone, and what was he to do? For the first time in his life, Paul felt helpless; a mere cork, drifting in the tide of events.

          

The door opened to admit the unwanted visitor. Paul rose ponderously to his feet and, maintaining dignity till the last, stood as ramrod-straight as if still on the parade-ground. The other man was plainly ill-at-ease. He had taken the trouble to dress formally for the occasion, which served only to make him look more ridiculous than ever. The two exchanged stilted and unmeaning compliments, scarcely bothering to disguise the contempt they felt for each other. But the formalities had to be gone through. So the older man and the younger shook hands, and Field-Marshal-President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler Chancellor of Germany.

Don't Touch, by Martin Needham

It is now the 734th year since the outbreak of the Great and Merciful Peace and all the inhabitable areas have agreed upon two supreme commandments. These two rules were  born out of the  necessity of circumstance and have transformed human existence. 

Early in the time of Scarcity  the elders who took control of the holy google-net ruled that all human life was sacred and may not be taken, every individual must eat in moderation and exercise to maximise their lifespan. The eggs and sperm are still taken from the young at 17 years of age to be protected so that selected embryos can be produced  in gestation tanks when required by their family.  

For the first  two hundred years humanity prospered, people expected to live to 120 and then 150 and now 200 years. The sterile homes and blessings of the virtual worlds created by the omniscient and most revered google-net  meant that people continued to live entertained and safe existences.  So the planet was fully repopulated until the time of the  Super Abundance, coinciding with the final impotency of antibiotics. 

At this time the second great rule was revealed to us. Thou shalt not treat the sick. So for half a millennium we have lived in the midst of a dichotomy of rules born out of conflicting necessities which are  sustained by a personal greed for life and enshrined in religion. Thus we preserve and revere our online lifespan but we may not interfere with the sick. In this way the overall balance of life is preserved.  We study the great sciences of prevention, sterilisation  and vaccination that we might live longer. Everyone must wear their life preservers; white synthetic spider silk suits that armour us against the scourge of abrasions. We live within our sterosphere helmets that protect us from infection. We conduct our business through virtually controlled machines and exercise in virtual worlds inspired by reality and imagination.

I am a servant of the great and most majestic high google. In my first half century I was one of the developers of the most miraculous world time web, which has become the great investment sensation of our  age. We succeeded in drawing in  digital signals refracted back from the black star gravity pool. These data streams from the birth of our most revered google net brought us knowledge of what we now call  "the age of visceral engagement" .  At first we were shocked and sickened  by the violence, bare flesh and physical contact. It has since been used to reform our virtual entertainments.  

This is my first attempt to send a super accelerated data burst on the reverse path back through the curve of the  space/time depression. There is no rule against it, but in my heart I know there should be.  Studying your lives for over a hundred years now I feel compelled to warn you of the unfortunate alignments of rules, culture and circumstances that have enslaved us. I realise that this act may threaten our own existence.

I am 198 years old. I have followed the rules, lived long and been  well rewarded by our standards,  but perhaps less well in your judgements. I will send richer data streams after this simple old fashioned coded message, but try to imagine.  We must endure our illness and the consequences of them, we must not intervene.  We do not touch and remain untouched. 

I have recently lost another greatgreatgreatgrandchild in such circumstances as further fuel my doubts about the rules by which we live. We had stepped outside our block - risky but not against the rules. Five year old Louis saw the leaves blowing down from the trees. Before he could be stopped, he put up his visor that he might chase and catch a leaf. It brushed his eye as it floated down: infection followed and then death. 

I have stood coldly by and watched death too many times, and I know that you would judge me ill by the standards of your time for doing so.  Our children's instincts betray our true nature. It is  buried deeper as we mature by the consistent layers of conditioning that we must not touch.   When I first looked back at your time I was shocked, offended and physically sickened by the way that you touch each other, walk barefooted, breathe the air. We had lost the words for two mouths touching and even now I cannot bring myself to write it,  but now I am obsessed  by it and jealous.

 Preserve your humanity not your individual  selves, live a real and dirty life. Set your descendants free.

Yours in perpetual  servitude.            Gideon

The Fairy Cow of Mitchell's Fold, by Pauline Fisk

www.mythstories.com

Rural poverty it’s called. When you’ve got no work, bread or money for rent and the job-seeker’s allowance has been removed. There are folk up Mitchell’s Fold who don’t have fare money for the town bus, so God knows how they’re supposed to find work.  Things are desperate up there. If a fairy cow came along, begging to be milked, anybody could be forgiven for giving it a try.

That’s what happened to Angela.  Her cottage backs the wind and faces the standing stones of Mitchell’s Fold. She drew back her curtains one morning to find a cow between the stones, calling out to be milked. Now, Angela knew the legend of the fairy cow, but was a proud woman who’d never milked as much as the State in her life, so she ignored it. Every day the fairy cow called out; every day it sounded more desperately. And Angela was desperate too. She had mouths to feed, so in the end she decided needs must.

Angela placed a pot under the cow, hoping nobody would report her to the DSS. As in the legend, the milk came easily.  She filled her pot and every day afterwards, whatever its size, that got filled too.  Word got round and friends on benefit starting turning up. Ex-friends on benefit turned up too, and people whose benefits had been stopped.

Every day saw bigger containers placed under the cow.  Whatever the size, there was milk for all.  Pails to pots, couldrons to stone sinks, water tanks to Angela’s enamel bath that she yanked out without regret because she couldn’t afford to heat water anyway.

There was milk for everyone, and milk to spare. The spare became butter.  Churns were dug out. Cheeses were made the old-fashioned way. People milked all day and churned all night. Everybody was happy. There was a smile on every fat-filled, milky face.

But you know what it’s like.  Always someone begrudges someone else’s good fortune - in this case, the farmer who owned Mitchell’s Fold. He complained about riff-raff breaking down fences, leaving gates open and letting dogs run wild.  They’d worn a six-lane highway across his land, he said, taking home tanks of milk they’d got for free. And if there was one thing above all others that our good farmer friend couldn’t abide, it was the ‘something for nothing’ mentality.

Farmer Friend phoned the DSS. When he learned no rules prohibited magic cows from yielding milk to whomever they pleased, he decided to act.  In the wee hours before sun-up, he entered the stone circle with a three-legged stool. Before automated farming, he’d been good at milking.  Now, his crabby fingers remembered the knack.   

By nightfall, the fairy cow was dead, milked dry into a sieve which she could never fill, her river of wasted milk bled into the soil. Only then did the farmer stop. He walked away, and no one touched him.  No one needed to.  They left that to the avenging Angela of Mitchell’s Fold.

Within days the hill was empty, everybody down at the Job Centre accepting work at below minimum wage.  The farmer was delighted. He decided to abandon farming and go into politics.  But he never got the chance.      

There’s an extra stone at Mitchell’s Fold, in the centre where the cow once stood.  How Angela did it no one knows. No one was murdered there. The law couldn’t touch her. There’s no rule against turning fledgling politicians into stone.