Clubbing is an Ideal Way to meet New People
The misty tendrils of dawn mixed with the steaming leaves of the warm ferns on the southern slopes, and Urk woke from his light, hesitant sleep with his stomach growling and his honed hunting instinct at the ready. He raised a woolly head and sniffed the air, ears and eyes alert and attuned to the slightest signal that there might be something good to eat on the horizon.
Urk had a weapon, a tool he had fashioned by the simple act of pulling it off a tree and rubbing it with a flint until one end fitted into his gnarled and hairy hand. The weapon was heavy and crude, but it had served him well. Without useful talons or teeth it was all that made the difference between survival and starvation for Urk.
He heard an unfamiliar noise. It was not a beast, nor a flying creature, but it was worth investigating anyway. Most creatures could make good eating. He picked his way through the high ferns and overgrown vines, looking like a blundering beast yet moving as stealthily as a shrew.
The noise came again. It was somehow strangely familiar although it was new. Urk suddenly felt a strange new sensation. Fear, but not of any predator. Longing, but not for food. The sound was one he had known once, long ago, but he was unable to grasp that concept fully. He did, however, know that it was a good sound, that his fear was not from any threat.
It was answered by another, one very similar but pitched higher, as though it was a smaller creature. The first then came again, its call longer and gruffer. Urk was nearer now, and parted the foliage carefully as he crouched and shuffled forward. When the higher sound issued once more his heavy brow knotted in puzzlement. It was almost as though these beasts were responding to one another. As though there were two of them, and one would utter a noise, and then the other, and then the first again, for some uncertain purpose.
Urk remained low when he reached the place from which the noise came, and he stared. He had not seen such creatures before. Like him, they stood on two long limbs and used their other limbs to hold things. Like him their eyes were set forward, like a predator, and their noses were too small to be sensitive to much. Like his their skin was furless but they wore the fur of other creatures they had killed.
But they were not like him, too. They stood higher, and their heads were clearer and flatter than those he remembered from… what? He had seen creatures like himself before, long ago. He remembered a female in particular. She had not been like these, and she had fallen prey to a beast. He had been alone since then.
He liked it better that way. These things were strange in their familiarity. He was nervous and fearful. He was a creature of instinct, and was not aware of having made the decision, but it was nevertheless made. He tightened his grip on his club and prepared to attack.
After all, most creatures could make good eating.
Bats
A Halloween story
A bloodcurdling scream rent the air. Jana ran towards the sound, her hands wet and covered in soap bubbles. Is that pain, she asked herself as she ran, or was it frustration? And how is it that other mothers claim they can tell the difference?
The flat was tiny, so it was only seconds before she was holding her three-year-old son, Benji, and inspecting the boo-boo on his thumb.
“I wanted to carve my pumpkin,” he explained between sobs. He’d found a knife, she saw. Only a dinner-knife, but the serrated edge had injured him nevertheless. Guilt thumped in her chest. This is my fault. I should have been more careful to put that knife out of reach.
“I have a special tool for carving pumpkins,” Jana assured the pouting little boy. “It’s safe for children to use. I’ll get it for you.” Still whimpering, Benji picked up the little pumpkin and followed his mother back to their narrow kitchen.
Every home has a rummage drawer, Jana assured herself as she rummaged through hers. Behind her Benji stood forlornly, expectantly, the humble-yet-heavy pumpkin cradled in his hands.
“It’s definitely in here,” Jana told her son as she pulled the drawer out altogether in one quick movement and dumped its contents onto the floor. As she had hoped, the assorted trinkets and oddments distracted the little boy from his sorrow. Benji put down the pumpkin in order to run after a blue-green marble which had leapt free and rolled across the laminate floor.
Elastic bands, broken key fobs, drawing pins (ouch), old cracker gifts, tealights (good, I can use those in the pumpkin) a USB stick and something which Jana didn’t recognise were now spread across her kitchen floor. But no child’s pumpkin carving tool. She was sure she’d put it in this drawer after last Halloween. She tried not to berate herself for losing it. Even good parents lose things all the time.
But they can afford to replace them, she couldn’t help thinking, And they’re not struggling to bring up a three-year-old in a tiny damp flat next door to a cemetery.
Realising that she was only a moment away from branding herself a failure, she picked up the strange metal object and studied it closely. It was a very large, heavy and ornate key, black with grime and grease, or maybe oxidisation.
Benji was back and picked two more marbles from the messy pile to add to the one he had caught. “What’s that?”
“It’s an old-fashioned key,” she told him.
“What does it open?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen it before. It must have been already in the drawer when we moved in.”
“Could it open the crypt?” Benji asked, intrigued.
It was an intriguing thought. The ‘crypt’ was actually an ancient stone outhouse, probably used to store the graveyard gardener’s tools decades or even centuries ago, but it had earned the spooky nickname by dint of its position right in the middle of a field of graves, and the fact that it was locked so no one was really certain what was in there.
“Let’s find out,” Jana declared taking an excited little boy by the hand. It was starting to get dark, there was moisture in the air and a storm was brewing. If she didn’t take him right now he’d be antsy all evening.
As they left the flat through the back door and walked through the gap in the fence the wind howled through the trees like a banshee. I should have put his coat on him! Jana chided herself, but despite the oppressive atmosphere and the wind that whipped at their faces Benji looked excited and happy.
She pushed the heavy key into the weathered and sunken lock. It fitted, and it clicked easily when she turned it. The gnarled wooden door swung open and they stepped tentatively inside.
Dust motes swirled and danced in the last rays of light diffusing through the grimy window, vintage gossamer strands of spiders’ webs fluttered like lace bunting, and above them a huddled sea of life swayed, stretched and squeaked at the disturbance. Spellbound, Jana and her son took in the delicate and rich stillness of the place.
“What are those?” Benji asked, looking up at the low rafters.
“I think,” his mother said gently, “they are bats.” She wondered whether she was supposed to be scared of the fluffy little sleepers. Didn’t they drink your blood and get tangled in your hair? And yet all she could think of was how much Benji loved his Batman figure.
One of the bats dropped from the eaves, stretched out paper-thin wings and flapped through the broken window pane into the encroaching night. Jana bent down to put an arm around Benji’s shoulders in case he was alarmed at the sudden movement, but instead he seemed enthralled and entranced by the little creatures.
“They’re really cute!” he whispered in wonder.
“Yes,” she had to agree. “They really are. Like fluffy little bunnies with wings.”
Without warning Benji flung both arms around her neck and planted a wet kiss on her cheek. “None of the other children at nursery have pet bats!” he declared joyfully. “You’re the best mummy ever!”
Apples and Oranges
A Christmas Story
Belinda the Elf was old enough to remember a workshop, a room bright with chatter and sparkling tools, where the floor was thick with soft sawdust and bits of mi
racles. She remembered watching her father chiselling a block of pale pine, and being struck with awe at the speed with which the little toy train took shape under his hands.
When it was finished she had helped sand it to a butter-soft finish, and then carried it gently to the paint shop where the lively crew had painted it in bright primary colours, varnished it, and affixed a tag identifying the child it was intended for.
Hundreds of thousands of wooden toys had come out of that workshop each year. Many more soft ones had come from the sewing rooms, and the clay moulders and metalworkers had always been busy too, in those long-ago days. As soon as she was old enough, Belinda had been put to work in the orangery, picking the fruit which filled out the toe of those glorious Christmas stockings.
The writing had been on the wall when the orange grove had closed down. Apparently children no longer wanted fruit among their Christmas presents. The wood shop was the next to go. And now, this.
Belinda cowered from the crowds in a shop doorway as she checked the list in her pocket, spreading all eighteen shopping bags on the ground around her feet in order to do so. She had crossed off most of the items, but still had to find three iPad Minis, five Disney DVDs and some One Direction perfume.
One of the paper bags had split open on contact with the ground, spilling its contents across the pavement. Belinda sighed. It was all very well having these recyclable, environmentally-friendly bags, but you couldn’t beat a burlap sack for strength and durability.
Belinda transferred the Superdry hoodies and Yankee Candles to some of the other bags, gathered them all up, and pushed her way into the horde of shoppers again to search for the Disney Store. Ironic, she thought, that the only apples and oranges children wanted in their stockings these days were iPads and mobile phones.
And that gave Belinda an idea.
When Belinda returned from the exhausting shopping trip, she went straight to Santa’s office. As bosses went, he was very approachable and fair, and his secretary waved Belinda through without even buzzing the intercom.
Santa was in the process of hanging a bauble on his sleigh. “Helps NORAD to get a good fix for the tracking,” he explained.
“I suppose that’s a good thing,” Belinda said. She was also old enough also to remember when Santa had liked to be very secretive and mysterious about his whereabouts.
“What can I do for you, Belinda?” Father Christmas asked her. “Good shopping trip today?”
“I got everything on the list,” Belinda said, “and the disguise held.” That might be Santa’s definition of a good trip to the shops, but it wasn’t hers. She didn’t like waiting in queues for hours, or being pushed about by crowds, or finding that the very thing she needed was out of stock. “I’ve had an idea.”
“Oh. Out with it then.”
Belinda spoke slowly, calmly, and clearly. “We. Don’t. Do. Brands.”
Santa looked at her as sternly as he could, which was difficult when his eyes were naturally twinkly and his demeanour jolly. “What do you mean?”
She’d expected some resistance and was prepared for it. “I mean that in the old days when I was a child and you were…exactly the same as you are now…children used to ask for a doll, or a rocking horse, or a spinning top. And we’d make them here.”
Santa nodded slowly.
“And now they want Moshi Monsters this, and Ben 10 that, and the latest Now CD, and a Kindle, and a Samsung Galaxy Tab, and an Xbox game. And we can’t make those.”
“Of course not,” Santa agreed. “Copyright. Trademarks. Complicated technological wizardry. That’s why you Elves have to go out and buy them.”
“But why don’t we not buy them? Why don’t we deliver the same beautiful, individual, hardwearing, handmade toys we used to? We have workshops standing empty, and skilled Elves who have been reduced to trawling round Boots looking for My Little Pony Bubble Bath.”
“But then, how would the children get their Nintendo DSs and their Baby Born nursery sets?” Santa asked.
“Their parents could buy them, and they could add them to what we give. After all, they can track you online now. They know when to expect a filled stocking. They could add these branded technological monstrosities to the beautiful toys we make before the children wake up again.”
Santa pondered this. He twiddled the big silver bauble on his sleigh. He took off his red hat and scratched his bald head. He twisted his fingers in his beard thoughtfully. And finally he frowned down his bulbous red nose at Belinda. “It would help with the bottom line,” he admitted.