Including Thursday Thirteen, Totally Optional Prompts and Heads or Tails.
Have you had a go yet?
The UK was going to build ten new eco-towns. Now it has been downgraded to just two. Soon, they will go as well. The Recession is on and government is having to pull back. Except, Prime Minister Brownski says they’re not pulling back. Rather, it is all systems go and spend, spend, spend.
The debt will be enormous, of course.
We’ll be paying it back for fifty years. But Brownski is convinced that spending to create jobs to build up the public sector will be the best cure for Recession.
Of course, this is a load of bunkum. It is just the old socialist talking, not allowing a silly capitalist thing like a Recession stop his plans to bring everyone into government employment. That’s why the eco-towns have gone. No socialist value in that!
Man on the Moon, Buzz Aldrin, has been talking about Mars.
He says that the first astronauts should be prepared to spend their whole life on the planet, in the spirit of the first European settlers to America.
He could well be right, but is 21st century man up to this challenge? For one thing, those first settlers had a different appreciation of time. The wristwatch has made an hour a long time, so could we again begin to think in terms of decades for a single purpose?
Another problem is individuality. History has become the story of our self instead of the history of our community. The idea of achievement in order to achieve immortality in history has gone. We no longer sacrifice ourselves to the greater cause in the west.
Perhaps these attitudes will have to be fought in order to become true space explorers.
Next post, Thursday. Hope to see you then.
© Anthony North, November 2008
TT #29 – THIRTEEN LINES
Thirteen lines of poetry
not many, but maybe enough to see,
the events that happened I don’t know when,
to the person, dead before ten;
Was it murder? It surely must,
footprints – there! – in the dust;
Weapon found by his side,
now the detective, he does pry,
into the circumstances of his lot,
the reasons why he was surely shot,
well before it was his time;
So, who was it – who dun this crime?
Ah! If only I had another line …
(c) Anthony North, November 2008
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GUARDED ANGEL – A Cass Nova Detective Thriller
I met her when I was clubbing one night. Yes, I know, I’m in my 30s now – I’m a detective inspector – and I should be over these things. But clubbing is still fun, and it’s good to know I can still pull.
She was gorgeous. Blonde with a body that could gyrate as well as it looked. My usual style worked and in minutes we were dancing. Within the hour, first kiss, and by midnight she proved herself no Cinderella.
We never bothered with names – no point; it was just a one night stand; we both knew that – but I was to call her my Guarded Angel.
My mother had warned me about the type, and psychologists later confirmed it. What had gone wrong in her childhood, I had no idea, but women who could use their body like that, flash that perfect look and totally enchant you had no respect for themselves. Deep down, they had feelings of inferiority, and as a defence they used their sex as a weapon. Dickens understood this. In Great Expectations Estella is bred purposely to take Miss Havisham’s revenge on men. They were good time girls, but you never got into their heads. This was closed to normal interaction, a psychological guard outside.
So I used her as she used me. There was nothing romantic. It was the satisfaction of desire. But when I saw her a couple of nights later, it was obvious that the enchantment was beginning to work on me.
I was in a bar and in she came, on the arm of Ben Stiles. She’d obviously used the enchantment well, as she’d hooked one of the biggest gangsters in town. Yet those eyes kept flashing towards me, and there seemed such vulnerability in them. Indeed, next to Stiles she seemed like a vulnerable child.
At one point she moved away from Stiles and his henchmen. I approached her. Asked what the hell she was doing with them. Warned her to get away from them. They were dangerous.
The next day I received a message from Stiles – a beaten up low life with a cryptic message in his pocket to stay away from his property.
Was that when chivalry entered my head? I don’t know, but I decided to get Stiles; take him out – and throughout it all it seemed as if I was doing it for my Guarded Angel.
My investigations soon showed me the way. An informer had let me know that Stiles was taking a drugs delivery soon. I worked out where, and when, and I was there at the bust. But somehow Stiles got away.
That night, I found him – or should I say, he found me. He was alone and angry, and as he stood there in the road, silhouetted by a nearby streetlamp, I saw the glint of the blade.
I prepared to defend myself, but as he came forward, two shots crackled through the night.
Stiles’ eyes went dead, and his body soon followed, and as he fell, there was my Guarded Angel behind him, gun in hand.
I acted quickly – checked no one had seen anything; grabbed her by the hand and took her away; disposed of the gun – it would be just one more unsolved gangland killing. And it seemed I’d saved her from quite a life of abuse, for Stiles knew the type, too, and used it.
My Guarded Angel didn’t stay with me long. I’d been so enchanted I actually thought we could have had a relationship, but it was only on the surface. I never got inside. And as I said to her as she left me – went off to find another battle to fight: ‘You may think that guard protects you, but believe me, it’s your jailer.’
© Anthony North, November 2008
BOOK MARKET
Buy this book, it’s very good,
sometimes I think it’s written in blood,
so much effort has been expelled,
I really think I have excelled
It’s all very well to say it like that,
but as a publisher I have to ask,
are you an expert, or maybe a celebrity?
If not, it’s not a publishable entity
But look at the words, the form, the style,
it really goes the extra mile,
original in all it says,
a whole new way it does display
But will it get an audience, I ask?
That is really the only task,
you writers come here with ideas anew,
but what of my profit margins? Now shoo
But profit comes from originality,
the reader finding something new with glee,
that’s how culture marches on,
singing to the writers’ song
What a load of romantic crap,
the reader is someone to entrap,
if you want to really get on,
do something sensational, excite the throng
This is not how literature should be,
but it’s clear you’re not going to see,
so I’ll take your advice, they’ll say I sang,
do you like my gun? Bang!!!
(c) Anthony North, November 2008
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