Author: Alexander Fawn

He was a great believer in the power of prayer.

He was always praying and asking for help with one thing or another. He was very devout in his praying. This is in no way surprising because it was often the case that early, rural man spent an awful lot of time praying. These appeals were proffered for things like rain, good fortune or forgiveness. This took place at a time unknown, but probably quite recently. In fact, at the time, whenever it was, just about everybody spent an awful lot of time praying for just about everything. It was simply the thing to do.

Now, it came to pass that the plug went missing from the sink out back. Looking around, he found that the goat had it between its teeth and was gnawing on it. As he watched, it disappeared with a gulp. As we all know, goats will happily eat anything. Anyway, this meant he could no longer fill the basin with water. He would have to pray. Unsurprisingly, at this point he returned to his dwelling, whatever that might be, in order to pick up the holy book, when he was suddenly struck by a thought. He rummaged through the rubbish and found a container top that exactly fitted the plughole. Laying a small scrap of plastic wrapping paper over the plughole he pushed the top in. In this way, he was able to fill the sink.

This will hold, he thought, until he could replace it with a proper plug.

Now, you may well ask, what did he learn from this incident? The answer being… absolutely nothing.

In fact, feeling that he had somehow robbed the almighty of the opportunity to miraculously fix the problem, he mumbled to himself, “I hope He doesn’t take offence.”

The town was small, small enough to feel like a village.

And yes, you’re right, everybody really did know everybody else’s business, and a lot of the time, their personal affairs. It’s probably best if people’s names are kept out of this narrative. The situation was fairly straight forward. The salesman that worked in the car yard was very much the type of man who liked to keep himself to himself. Despite this, it would be completely obvious to just about any old bystander that for a number of years he’d been infatuated with the woman that managed the only ladies hair salon in town. She had built her business up to a point where she had a regular customer base. It just so happened that for some considerable time she’d been engaged to the local dentist, who just happened to be the brother of the car salesman. The salesman had never shared his feelings for the owner of the salon, with the single exception of the barman at the golf club.

In fact, the salesman, who as stated was really quite shy, would clumsily try to give the impression that he had lots of girlfriends. Bragging about these was his attempt to cover up the fact that he was in love with the hairdresser. Not many people were taken in by this act, except the barman, who had his doubts about the salesman, ever since they were at school together and the man who sold cars was just a little too keen to dress up and play the part of Tinkerbell, the fairy from the magic wood, in the school play.

One may very well ask, was this a really complex love triangle?

Apparently not. The story ends when the car salesman, the lady who ran the hairdressers and the dentist, all got together one evening in the bar of the local golf club, where they had an open discussion, carried out in a manner the was both mature and polite that fixed the whole thing up!

The barman had nothing to do with it.

The café was busy; they sat at a corner table.

She switched her phone off, looked around and sighed. “I think we should move on, don’t you?”

He looked up from staring into his cup and smiled. “Yeah, I’m glad you brought it up. I have to say I’m more than tired of watching you forever playing with your phone. While we’re at it, you’re always fiddling with your hair. You bite your fingernails and talk with your mouth full. I should add that you’re just too fond of passing on gossip, whether true or false. I hate it when you crack your knuckles and you’re forever chewing on sweets. You’re a bit too fond of finishing my sentences for me. I hate watching you while you’re fixing your makeup in public. You’re never on time for a date and you can’t stop fidgeting when we’re in the cinema. You do too much window shopping for my liking and you spend too much on lottery tickets. I find it pretty creepy the way you’re continually looking for scabs to pick at. I find it boring when you go on about soap operas. You so often put things off and do a lot of unnecessary penny pinching. You’re too fond of name dropping, and have a habit of repeatedly saying ‘whatever’. And I really hate the way you keep clearing your throat.”

She sat shaking her head. “I meant… it’s getting noisy in here, can we go somewhere else.” She sighed again and raised her eyebrows. “But I think you’re right. From my point of view, you certainly complain a hell of a lot.”

They smiled at each other. It was a strange smile, but it was a smile nevertheless.

The boy was a genius, but as a result, he was always being teased.

School boys and girls alike, sniggered and made jokes behind his back. He was sick of it… really sick of it. It just didn’t stop!

One morning, when the teacher had been writing mathematical formulas on the blackboard, he had been called away. When he was gone, the nastiest child in the classroom, asked the boy genius to mathematically prove the existence of infinity.

At this, the boy went to the supply cupboard next to the blackboard and found a large piece of blue chalk. He came out and drew a huge arrow on the board, pointing right. He then walked to the classroom door and marked it in the same way, with an arrow, pointing right. Then he moved clockwise to the next wall and drew another, pointing right, beneath the window. He repeated this on the last wall, next to a set of shelves. Then, on the floor, in front of the open cupboard, he placed a final arrow, pointing towards the cupboard. At this point, he entered the tiny cupboard and closed the door behind him.

The room fell silent.

He was never to be seen again…

Do nonsense rhymes make any sense?

It’s really hard to know.

Beyond the meaning and the sense,

Ideas still ebb and flow.

–

To waste away one’s precious time

May well seem quite demeaning.

While given that they make no sense,

They can be full of meaning!

–

There’s Nash and Lear, Carroll and Seuss,

Kipling, Belloc and Field.

There’s Eliot, Milligan, Kipling and Bell,

What wonders do they yield?

–

They have no ground in reasoning.

In logic they make pretense.

It remains an utter mystery,

That the best of them make sense.

 

He used to work in the censorship division of one of the larger social media organisations.

He was an analyst in a little known, and probably little understood, part of the organisation. His work took in the matter of widespread global technical issues, analysing the work of activists and researchers, and examining outspoken political comment and dissent. He would look at flagged examples of suppressed content, monitoring the growing trend of internet shutdowns and the takedown of inappropriate social media content. He looked for cases where users are being disproportionately impacted. He would determine whether posts relating to unrest are being fully acknowledged, without suppression. Over all, he needed to determine whether or not people had fare access to information. He would search for examples where there is evidence of disproportionate impact as a result of content takedowns. All this, together with abiding by the rules set out for the international freedom of expression. In fact, all such issues that affect users around the world.

This was the good stuff.

Beyond these considerations were the really bad items. All day long he had to trawl through ugly media content that promoted hate, based on people’s race, religion, or disabilities. He needed to search for content that endorses violence in the form of material that depicted unacceptable forms of pornography together with either real or simulated violence. In fact, anything that by default, advocates deplorable behaviour.

In other words, he was looking at the dregs of society. He would have to view flagged images and content, then make a judgement as to whether what he was looking at violated the media platform’s laid down policies and standards. He would spend hours every day, every week, for months, looking at really dreadful stuff. It had been an ongoing litany of unimaginable filth. It was his remit to undergo a never-ending barrage of disgusting material.

There was an open plan room full of staff doing this self-same thing. None of them lasted too long in their role. The turnover of operators was high. He had heard that there had been many cases of employees having breakdowns, some cases where they had gone completely over the edge, together with a number of suicides. Of course, these things were never talked about.

He had lasted about nine months before he got out. He found a far more fulfilling job as one of a number of grounds-workers at the district asylum. He enjoyed the work and he was able to catch up with a lot of his old workmates.

Nobody in the medical profession had ever seen anything like it.

Experts from around the world attended the patient, most of them out of sheer curiosity. The patient, an otherwise healthy male in his thirties, welcomed the attention on the basis that it was exactly what he wanted. It was creating a worldwide audience that would in time understand the message he was trying to get across. What was not immediately apparent was the fact that the patient, had a tiny speaker tucked in beside his blood-pumping organ. With the use of the latest nanotechnology, customised Bluetooth, and a couple of other things, he was able to have a song in his heart.

The room that the patient occupied was packed with all kinds of medical specialists. They took it in turns to place their stethoscopes on the man’s chest and listen to something more than a heartbeat. When they had all listened and were standing around conferring with each other, they all slowly became aware of the movement in the bed.

The patient raised his hand.

The closest doctors standing either side of the bed leant over the man

The man in the bed whispered, “There’s a song in my heart.”

“What did he say?” asked the other specialist.

“He said, there’s a song in my heart.”

“He’s right,” said the orderly, standing in the corner.

Someone said, “What?”

“It’s Perry Como, singing, ‘They can’t take that away from me.’”

This whole idea, as set out above, is either a completely fanciful notion or a really good idea…

We are hieroglyphics.

We do our job. We do the best we can. We do what we can in the whole scheme of things. In every manner we are charged with giving meaning to things, all sorts of things, so many things, and indeed everything. With etching, engraving, drawing, printing, typing and writing. We are scribbled in notebooks, traced with flowing ink, embossed on tablets, branded on cattle, stamped on plastic tiles, carved on trees and sprayed on walls.

Sometimes large, sometimes small, indoors, outdoors, in every form, in every language, in every country, on monuments, record covers, cereal packets and photos. We fill the tiny labels on jars and bottles, state the rules on highways, we proclaim values on price tags, we are the grooves of remembrance in cemeteries. We say so much; when to use by, what the weight, what the colour, what the flavour, what the size. We mark pyramids, milestones and obelisks.

Even when chipped into rock and stone, we take on an unavoidable attribute.

Even then, we are impermanent.

The old man was leaning forward, motionless.

He looked on in wonder as several bees swarmed around the Wisteria bush. The park had lots of flower beds scattered along the footpath. This one had a bench opposite a particularly large arrangement of colourful plants, spilling out onto the walkway. He was fascinated by the methodical way the insects went about their tasks.

As the woman approached she looked at her watch before stopping. “Excuse me, are you OK?”

He looked up. “I beg your pardon?”

She smiled, saying, “I was asking if you were all right.”

“Oh! That’s very kind of you. Yes, thank you. Quite all right.” He pointed at the bush. “I was just watching these ladies busy collecting pollen.” He gave a quick nod. “I say ladies because these bees are all female. They’re the workers you see? They’re busy collecting pollen and nectar to feed the colony. It really is amazing, you know?”

Checking the time again, she said, “Yes, I suppose it is,” smiled and went to move off.

He pointed again and asked, “Do you know why there are so many of them here, at this particular bush, I mean?”

She looked around. “No, not really.”

He sat back on the bench with his hands clasped on his lap. ‘It’s the colour, you see,” he said with a wink. “These marvellous creatures have a preference for certain colours.”

She was now shifting from foot to foot. “Really? Look, I really must go…”

“It’s the colour purple that really attracts them,” he said. “That’s why they’re buzzing around this Wisteria.”

Walking away, she said, “Thanks, that’s very interesting. Sorry, running a bit late now.”

He raised his voice. “It’s not just the colour,”

“It’s not?” she replied, still walking away.

He called out, “It’s the fragrance.”

Further away now, she said, “Really?”

“Yes, they love the smell of Wisteria,” he cried.

“The honey bees have an incredibly sensitive sense of smell, even when they’re in flight,” he shouted.

Still walking, she waved over her shoulder without looking back.

Even louder, he yelled, “They can even use their sense of smell to locate other bees!”

She probably didn’t hear him.

She found Dad in the lounge, stretched out on the settee, holding his book.

This was the way he liked to spend his Sundays. He was such a creature of habit. Mum used to complain about it. He had these little habits of always doing things the same way, in the same order, at the same time. Her brother used to say that it took her to an early grave, but she didn’t think so.

She held his wrist; it must have happened in the last half hour.