Why ‘Hatred’?

Yes, why?

Well, let me see.

There are two reasons, really.

The first one is obvious but, still, I have set out on this road so I will pace the distance it takes to travel it.

All of my life has been taken up with observation and reflection. Even in the depths of drunkenness there were still occasions that caused me to sit back and dwell for a moment or two on what was happening.

Perhaps, it is just possible, that these occasions were especially during periods of drunkenness. Unfortunately, these occasions were frequent and prolonged for a long time until eventually, I managed to emerge from living in a bottle to find that the real world was not as rosy as I thought it was going to be.

A story for another day.

I have noticed, for example, that people like to taunt. They like to hurl accusations and blame – whether true or false seems immaterial.

Commensurate with that is that the best response is, wherever possible, to ignore them.

That really stirs their pot.

It would seem that the point of goading someone is to make them respond. Once a response is obtained from the ‘goadee’ then the ‘goader’ has won.

Another good thing is to stay calm. Used soft, measured responses.

That gets them going, too. They want you to lose your temper, they want you to shout so that you lose control and say something they can use against you.

In both instances the person proffering the taunts is trying to bring you down to their level.

A friend of mine, Jim Mac., has the perfect solution. He says absolutely nothing until the whole thing gets to a point where nothing is going to help and then he knocks them out and walks away. I have never known Jim to lose his temper but, then, he doesn’t need to because he is assured of his own capabilities, he is confident that, whatever happens, he will win.

Is violence the answer? Asimov famously said, “Violence is the final recourse of the incompetent.”

Sadly, there are times when violence is the only answer in spite of what our conscience and the pacifists tell us.

As a small boy it was important, in the school particularly, to establish a pecking order amongst our peers. This is now being stamped out (they will not succeed, of course) by the left wing, politically correct crowd who are set on abolishing, for example, school sports. They are doing this on the grounds that someone losing a race will get a ‘complex’. Poor dears. Coming last in life will give you a much bigger complex! Coming second in a firefight with an enemy will remove that complex.

Getting the pecking order sorted out was a matter for fists and still is. The PC people will not stop that, it is the natural order of things amongst school children.

This extends into the growing up and grown up world where the tendency is for the fists to be replaced by words.

In order to gain superiority over a rival it becomes necessary to hurl abuse. This is not just something that happens occasionally—no, it happens all the time.

You hear it every day.

You hear someone telling you, or another person, that so-and-so is fat, that Mrs G is hideously ugly. This is said, not just as a matter of fact, but to gain superiority over the fat or ugly person. It is rarely said in a kind manner as a form of sympathy; the words are formed in a kind of gloat.

These are negatives, they are abuse. They give rise, as do the fists in the playground, to hatred.

This happens at every level. It is most pronounced at a political level because it becomes public property.

It is part of our competitive world.

Hatred abounds.

In spite of the idea that we are bound by charity towards our brothers and sisters in the world.

The second reason?

Ha! You thought I’d forgotten, didn’t you?

You may have noticed that I write things down. When I’m not writing stories I’m writing books on jet engines. When I’m resting from writing about jet engines I write, what are generally, philosophical ramblings on this ‘Blog’. When I’m not writing I draw cartoons and write captions, very often.

So. I write.

Stories. Mostly.

What are stories about?

Read Shakespeare. Or Chaucer. Then gradually come up to date through Bacon, Dickens, HG Wells, Verne, Conan-Doyle, Asimov, Clarke, et al.

Look for common threads.

Sex.

Yes. Shakespeare was obsessed with sex. He really went to town with Titania in ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’.

Violence.

Most stories contain violence because most stories rotate about crime or war.

Power (money).

At some point every story is about power or the acquisition of it.

Many stories contain elements of all these things and somewhere within it there is hatred. Always hatred.

We are inured to it. It is so much a part of our everyday life that, in all probability, we have ceased to notice it.

It is there. It lurks in every corner of our lives.

The latest one to hit America is the ‘Occupy’ thing that most people outside of America barely understand—if at all. But there are images of policemen pepper-spraying citizens with the accompanying captions proclaiming ‘police violence’ or ‘police justification’ depending which side of the fence you reside.

We don’t have to look far for other sources of hatred. It is not necessary to rake over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict however distasteful that is to see other examples.

Homophobia, racism, hatred of drug dealers, homeless vagrants, government health policies (or lack of, notwithstanding), the neighbour’s dog/cat/goldfish, that teenager with a face full of safety pins and spiked hair... The list is endless.

For all of us there is something that makes our spleen tingle and the veins in our neck stand out.

And that, as a writer, is what we have to observe. What is it that makes people tick, lust, drool, salivate, itch, throw up?

Not just the obvious. The devil is in the detail.

Now I’m just off to study a bit of lust... er... I mean for food—gluttony!  Yes, that’s it. Gluttony.

Don’t you just hate gluttons?

Hatred

At a very young age there was a dawn of realisation that the one emotion that is exceptionally easy to promote in anyone is hatred.

It takes very little for another person, no matter how ‘well adjusted they may think they are—or seem to be, to feel that antipathy towards a cause or belief well up inside them.

To be honest with you, I feel that Vegans, particularly, have got it all wrong. I don’t hate them; I just feel that they are, somehow, on the wrong track for, potentially, the wrong reasons. Perhaps that is a story for another time.

But hatred would be, if you follow a specific line of reasoning, a reasonable next step. I could write a book saying that Vegans are a threat to the World Order; that they are ‘Undermining the Food and Agrarian Economy’; ‘Vegans plot Genocide in the Third World’.

We could ignore the facts and use evidence from ignorance. We could make up stories; we could fabricate details that would make Vegans appear not just despicable but loathsome.

Stupid?

Yes. Of course it is.

And yet the majority of Earth’s population do this all the time. Not against Vegans, I hasten to say, but in other matters.

Religion.

Never talk about religion. My Gran had a notice up in the dining room—a somewhat grandiose term for the kitchen-dinette in her tiny flat (apartment), that stated:

“The following topics of conversation are forbidden around this meal table:

Sex

Politics

Religion”

Nowadays she might have added ‘football’ (soccer)!

I am not, in this discourse, interested in any one religion. What I am interested in is the idea that the only way to promote your own cause is to denigrate the beliefs of other people.

Most of us are familiar with the Atheists postings on the net. They are full of ‘cut and paste’ arguments and contrived dogma that all boils down to the idea of “prove it”. Atheists require theists to ‘prove’ there is a Deity of some form.

The hole in this idea is that, if there were proof that a God exists, proof would change a ‘belief’ system into a ‘fact’ system.

The whole point of a faith is that there is no definable proof. There is no mathematical equation and yet they press on with their immature and nonsensical arguments.

Similarly, people of different faiths like to try and bring down those who believe otherwise.

Why?

There is a book extant written by one Robert Morey that is, from cover to cover, filled with lies, half-truths, misdirections and points taken out of context that purports to be a ‘well researched document revealing the truth behind a growing religion’.

No. It is not.

The saddening and disquieting part of it is that many people who are not of that belief will believe it. They will not research the truth themselves, they will not check the facts nor will they even view it with some cynicism.

No. They will believe it implicitly because it is what they want to believe. They want to feel superior; they like it that somebody has ‘revealed the truth’ about another faith even if it is a pack of lies.

Perhaps I could tender another idea.

Many of my friends have different faiths. My Hindu friends have three million Gods—this gives them a wide choice to select from, something to suit every taste and occasion. My Buddhist friends enjoy the thought of reincarnation as do my Pagan friends but they have ‘Summerland’ to go to first. My Christian friends are full of rejoicing at their beliefs and my Muslim friends like to pray five times a day every day.

None of them insult the others. None of them mock or denigrate the others.

Why can we not enjoy our own beliefs without recourse to slighting the faiths of others?

The Pilgrim Fathers set sail from Britain in order to worship as they saw best fit. Their beliefs were very different from the spirits of the local residents of Plymouth Rock but they felt strong enough in their own ideas to press on.

Yes, there were almost immediate differences but that is another direction.

Freedom of religion and belief.

America, and now most of ‘Civilisation’, was built on that.

Enjoy yours and let others enjoy theirs. Look at the celebrations of others as we enjoy Deepavalli, Christmas, Aidul-fitr, the Hungry ghost Festival and others in their turn.

Why turn the beliefs of other people into hatred?  If this goes on the next thing is that there will be those who stir up aggression because of skin tone.

Heaven forfend!

Shalom, Peace be Upon You, Wassalam

Internal Struggles

A thousand years ago, when the British Empire was still a twinkle in some merchant’s eye, I had a thought that rose up from the words in a book I was reading.

In those days, after around seven or eight years of life, I would read anything. Books about birds, birds’ eggs, animals, trees, aeroplanes (avid reader of anything about aeroplanes), astronomy... anything.

Astronomy was one of my favourites although I have never been able to pick out constellations or other planets. My interest was purely academic—no practical applications at all.

As a side note, astrology has never interested me. For those who gain comfort from it, may it warm your heart and keep your soul. For me? I cannot imagine how a star many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of light years from us can have any bearing on our lives. Furthermore, the future has yet to happen and so soothsaying and other forms of ‘voyancy’ into that ‘which is yet to happen’ is a nonsense; too many variables.

I should love to know what is going to happen in the next few minutes—never mind next week, month, year...

[NB: This ‘spell/grammar check thing has no clue about ‘astyanax’. It’s quick enough to leap on ‘fragment’ and ‘passive voice’. Irritating!]

Where was I? Too many idea sprites sparking away, they trigger ‘The Voices’!

Oh, yes. The thought.

While reading about stars and galaxies, steeped in a sense of wonder at how many different forms these things take, ‘The Thought’ hit me.

Where does it end?

Our planet goes around a star that we call ‘Sol’—our sun; this, in its turn, goes around with billions of other stars in a galaxy; billions of galaxies, spreading out, presumably rotate in a Universe.

Perhaps there are many universes—in fact, there would have to be or there would just be an infinite void full of nothing out there.

So? Where does it end? Is there a wall or fence? Is there a sphere of crystalline rock entombing all that we know?

But, then, what lies beyond that?

I could feel my mind slipping away. This was a thought that I was not equipped to deal with but I knew that it would grab hold of my mind and put it in some sort of cerebral lock forever if nothing was done.

The only way I could rationalise it was to write a story. Where the story is now I know not. Lost forever in some rubbish bin swirling around in the space-time continuum where favourite teddy bears and stamp collections go.

The Seed

A boy gazed at a seed. It was quite a large seed, possibly from one of the trees that grew all around the place where he was sitting.

His focus was entirely on the seed. Nothing else existed, not even the faint sound of his Mother’s voice calling him in for lunch somewhere in the distance.

Somewhere within the seed he knew that there were smaller parts that made up the seed. That it was a collection of molecules and atoms arranged to form the flesh of the seed so that it would grow and become something bigger, perhaps huge.

He held the seed closer to his eye even ‘though he was well aware that those tiny particles were invisible; even microscopic life forms were beyond the visual range of his eye.

‘Perhaps,’ he thought, ‘one day someone will invent something that will be able to see atoms and molecules. But, then, how will they know that it is the atoms or molecules they are aiming at and not the particles that make up the machine for seeing such infinitesimally small points of matter.’

The boy sat back, staring, unseeing, up at the trees.

We are going around the sun. The sun is part of a galaxy. There are billions of galaxies out there just as there are billions of atoms in this seed.

What if this universe is an atom?

What if we were able to go so far out into space that we could observe millions, perhaps billions, of universes?

What would that make?

If we went even farther out, what are the universes rotating around?

Could we go so far out that we could see what becomes of these universes?

Eventually we could see that all those universes were part of a seed.

A small boy is holding it, wondering. Wondering at what tiny particles make up this seed. He is ignoring his Mother’s voice in the distance.

Does he realise that deep, deep down inside that seed is another boy holding a seed just like his and that that small boy’s seed also contains a small boy holding a seed?

Does he know that he, too, is just part of an atom?

End

Little dogs have little fleas upon their backs to bite ‘em.

And little fleas have smaller fleas, and so ad infinitum.

Anon.

Now you know.  Even back in 1956 or ’57 my head was full of odd things.

Mum’s Mid-Years

Mum had been diagnosed with some sort of nervous disorder.  They could, they said, remove the symptoms but not the cause.

The Doctor had said, “My goodness! Why on earth did you not bring this little girl to us sooner?”

They did not because, whatever it was that was the problem had, to Nan, been a simple thing of ‘she will grow out of it’ or ‘she will just have to pull herself together’.  Unless there was blood pouring out of you then, according to Nan, you just needed to ‘snap out of it’.

Then, of course, there was the expense. There was no free health service in those days where people could go because they needed company or a warm place to sit.

They admitted Mum to hospital and strapped her to a bed.

“Will I be out in time for my birthday?” Mum asked them.

“We certainly hope so,” they told her.

Those four weeks became four months and then seven months. All the time strapped down to the bed.

The Queen Mum—that was Queen Mary, then, came to visit the children and gave mum a doll which was only recently misplaced.

They wheeled her out to watch the Christmas festivities and then they wheeled her back into the ward.

She was pronounced cured but every time she became tired, in pain or worried about something she would rock. This continued right up to her death. The specialist here said that the symptoms had been treated but not the cause, thus echoing the original diagnosis.

What was it? We don’t know. We had lots of strange notions like ‘Huntington’s Chorea’ thrown at us but, really, we don’t know and, now, never shall.

Mum became a nurse for a while. After she witnessed a fellow nurse fall from the balcony and break her back she decided to stop that career.

She greeted Matron one morning.

“Good morning, Matron,” she said cheerfully.

“Nurse! You do not speak to me unless I speak to you first. Do we understand each other?” Matron admonished Mum.

“Yes, Matron,” Mum said. Admonished.

She moved to GEC at crystal Palace where they were making radio valves and other associated things.

Nan and Mum’s Aunty told her that she should get a job like Edna.  It was a good job with good pay. Edna’s job was sticking labels on beer bottles at the Watney’s brewery just around the corner from the flat where Mum lived. Mum could not conceive of a job more ineffably boring so chose to go to Crystal Palace.

Note: The Watney’s Brewery is at the end of the annual boat race between Oxford and Cambridge. I believe it is now ‘Budweiser’ or some similar fizzy weasel piss.

At some point, someone from the research labs asked if she would like to join them. It meant a drop in pay but was a more interesting job.

Nan wasn’t too keen on that but Mum went anyway.

They were developing television. Until that point it was all studio and laboratory work but, one fine day, they were all sitting on the floor in the lab to watch the very first outside broadcast. Mum was the only woman there so she became the first woman ever to see an outside live transmission.

It was the Epsom Derby. It was a tiny screen, which Mum had helped to make, coated by hand with the appropriate chemicals. Glass blowers at the lab had formed it to precise descriptions given by the boffins.

The picture was very snowy, Mum said, but they could see the horses. Mum had money on a horse called ‘Blue Peter’—she saw it win. What a great day.

When she got home she asked Nan for her winnings. Nan was bemused, “How do you know what won, Ducks?” Nan asked.

“Saw it. On the telly,” Mum told her.

There were no winnings. Nan thought that ‘Blue Peter’ was a no-hoper so had put the money on something else.

The war started.

One day Mum just happened to remark that it was possible that German Mum’s might worry about their sons just as much as our Mum’s worry about the British boys.

She was hauled up before a committee.

They were doing important, and secret, work towards the war effort and so a German sympathiser was not really the sort of girl they wanted in the laboratory.

They did offer her a job back in the factory but Mum was crestfallen so she left.

She joined the Royal Air Force.

“Where did you work?” they asked.

“GEC,” she said.

“Oh, good. You can be an electrician,” they smiled.

Mum didn’t know anything about electrics and even less about aeroplanes. But they taught her and she became a Corporal.

One day she was crossing the parade ground carrying a generator. She dropped it—they are heavy! Picking it up quickly she continued on her way but, at last, thought better of it and turned around to take it back to the electrical bay.

When she arrived in the bay the Warrant Officer said that he had seen her drop it and was waiting to see what she would do. He was happy that she had done the right thing and so there was no further action taken.

One day she was soldering a cable on a Lancaster in a hurry to get it ready to go out. The solder dripped onto her arm inside her elbow. I noticed that the scar was still there when they were washing her down for burial.

And then she tested the undercarriage. She had carried out a repair to the undercarriage system so she selected ‘Undercarriage up’.

[Yes, yes, I know. ‘u/c retract’, but not everyone who reads this is an aviation person like us!!]

Sure enough, it worked.

Sadly, there were no jacks underneath the aircraft to support it but there was, however, an LAC (Leading Aircraftman) under it doing a job on the bomb doors.

Happily, somebody got something under the aeroplane to stop it coming down any further and crushing the LAC who escaped with minor injuries and in a foul mood. Mum said the air was blue!

A short while later, Mum had a tooth out. She couldn’t eat because her mouth hurt so much.

That same LAC cycled all the way to the mess hall, collected some bread and soup and brought it back to her. He then proceeded to feed her.

That was the point at which Mum fell in love with Dad.

Dad died in 1999, Mum left us almost exactly eleven years later.

Were they happy together?

Mostly.

But the rest of the war and later life must be saved for another day.

No matter what we authors make up, there will always be something stranger happen in fact.

Everybody’s life has drama; some of it is minor to others but, to that person, it is a major hurdle in their life.

When you describe an emotion try to make it real. Feel it while you are writing it. There is nothing shameful about tears falling on your keyboard just as there is no embarrassment about laughing out loud when you are on your own.

Whatever you feel it will show in your writing.

Try it.

Mum’s Sister

Since I am full of that smelly fruit called ‘Durian’, there is a case for digressing slightly away from Mum.  This is not, really, apropos of anything specific, I just don't feel like writing about Mum right now.  Is that OK?

When Mum was ‘chosen’ at the orphanage she was taken to the flat where Nan and Granddad Billy lived.

Billy worked on the buses.  He remembered a time of horse drawn buses and hearses.  When there was a funeral they would pad the horses feet as a sign of respect, no noise to disturb those who were mourning the deceased.

Times change, don’t they?

Long after Mum came from the orphanage, during the Great Strike, Nan saw all the men from the bus depot hanging around in the street outside her flat.  She fetched Billy’s rifle from the First World War, opened the window and waved the gun at them shouting, “Get back to work you ‘lazy people’,” or words to that effect, in her broad Cockney!

[She used to call me ‘Ducks’, it was a term of affection but it confused me for many years!]

The police came and disarmed her, gave her a severe ‘tutting’ and went away.

Nan was a lady who had terrible ulcers on her legs.  The health service in those days was non-existent.  She would go on a particular day to a clinic for poor people where they would line up all those with leg ulcers.  Then, with what looked like a wallpaper brush, they would ‘paint’ all the legs with some solution from a bucket.  There was no thought of disinfecting the brush between ‘treatments’.

That was life in those days.  You just put up with what you had.

Mum discovered that she had a ‘sister’.

Her sister was a shade older and had a terrible temper.

At one time there was an argument during which sister threw a knife at Nan and Mum.  They were already heading out of the door, which they slammed shut to hear the knife thud and quiver into the other side of the door.

Another time, sister was banished to her room.  Later she was found sitting in a major pout in the middle of the room surrounded by wallpaper; none of which was left on the walls.  Billy said it saved him a lot of trouble since he planned to redecorate anyway.

Mum was in trouble at school.  The school had glass partitions so the classes could see each other.  The teacher got the cane out to punish Mum; at which point sister appeared.

“You are not caning my sister,” she raged.  Grabbing the cane she snapped it over her knee.

Ultimately, sister married a man who I was not, personally, very keen on.  I suppose he was all right in his own way but I could never be comfortable with him.

They lived on the banks of the river near Twickenham and had three children.  A boy with two younger sisters.

The boy was chased by the swans once, possibly he had wandered too near their nest.  Frightened him, as you might imagine.

He also had a time when he was dour and reticent.  Sister sat him down and told him that they were not leaving his room until he told her what the problem was.

Seems there was a lamp-lighter preying on young boys.  Sister rolled up her sleeves...  The police saved him.  Pity, really.

They were all coming to Devon, to us, for a holiday but the husband reversed the car into the river, thus cancelling the holiday.

They all became sick.  Very sick.

They were, all of them, active members of the local Church.  Nobody came to see how they were.  Nobody came to help.  Nobody.

Until.

‘Tap, tap, tap,’ on the door.

“Ugh?  We are sick, you can’t come in,” sister croaked at the smartly dressed ladies.

“Deary me.  That’s no bother.  You go and lie down, we’ll soon sort you out.”

They did.

In no time they had organised people for shopping, cleaning, laundry, cooking and feeding.  They sorted out a doctor to come and made sure the medications were taken appropriately.  They kept this up for two weeks.

Thus sister and her family became Jehovah Witnesses.

Ultimately they moved to a better life in Canada.  I was told my cousin had died so it was with some surprise that Mum had a letter from her shortly before she passed away.

Billy had complained of a stomach pain.  Nan was never one for much sympathy for sick people, “Pull yourself together, Billy,” she told him.

When the ambulance came she was seen running after it calling out for her Billy.

She never saw him again.

You just never know, do you?

And that’s why, every time I say goodbye to BOM, I say, “I love you.”

Because you never know.

Perhaps it is best that I get on with writing now.  Because?

From the Orphanage Onwards

Previously, on ‘The Write Stuff’...

No, no!  I have been watching far too much TV recently.  Some of it good but much of it is just pap to soak up time.  Discipline, that is what is needed.

‘Law and Order, SVU’ is the main culprit.  The stories are heart rending in the extreme, the plots are well written and the acting is excellent.  How to turn my back on the TV at eight o’clock?

Needs must.

I left the ‘story of Mum’ hanging somewhat.  It needs a little more because there is a story of life in amongst it that is applicable to lots of people.

As I said, a long time ago, Mum’s life revolved around the idea that she was rejected at birth.  She had no value or worth.

Let’s look at the beginning of that idea.

In the orphanage all the little girls had their own tasks to perform.  Every day was a ritual of cleaning and other small chores.  Girls who had been very good were awarded a piece of the crackling off Matron’s pork joint; something to be treasured and guarded.

Every so often there would be a ‘Choosing Day’ when they were all lined up and members of the public would wander in out of boredom or, maybe, to genuinely select a girl to be raised as their own.

Mum was ‘chosen’ one fine day.  The couple that chose her picked her because she smiled.  Probably a nervous reaction but she did smile and was chosen.

The agreement was that she could go with this couple providing that they supplied her with clothes, her orphanage clothes would then be returned.  Keeping her was subject to a periodic check by a nurse (Houghton, one believes) who would either give the couple permission to keep her or she would be returned to the orphanage.

The Royal Richmond Orphanage no longer exists and no record can be found.  Perhaps it was bombed out during World War 2.  There are references to 'Fatherless Children's Asylums' but nothing specific.

The couple became known to me as Nan and Grandad, this will give you a clue that she stayed with them for a long time but, on the way to their flat in southwest London, she was asked if she would like a toy.

They took her into a toyshop where, after much deliberation, she chose—a dustpan and brush.

Red. A red dustpan and brush.

Of course she had never had a toy.  Never.  She had always been required to share her work implements; to have a dustpan and brush of her very own was something wonderful, a thing of great joy.

Nan stopped at the butcher’s before they arrived home.  An extra mouth required an extra bit of meat.

While Nan was selecting the appropriate piece the butcher shouted, “Hoi!  Stop that!  What does she think she’s bleedin’ doin’?”

Mum had decided that the floor was filthy and wanted to clean it up using her new ‘toy’.  Sadly, the butcher had only just laid clean sawdust on the floor to soak up any spilt blood from his produce and was incensed that this strange little girl was sweeping it up.

Mum had never been in a butcher’s shop before but she recognised the difference between clean floors and dirty floors.

And so Mum was introduced to family life at the age of eight years.  Suddenly she had a sister who was, almost, a homicidal maniac at first.  She had been in and out of foster homes for a long time because nobody could cope with her temper.  Her Mum was Welsh and her Dad was a German Prisoner of War.  Somehow she had ended up in an orphanage and was fostered out.

Nan was not going to be defeated by a slip of a girl.  And she was not.  Nan stayed the course and Mum’s sister grew up to be a lovely soul.

This was 1924.  A new start.

Not until the sixties was it discovered that Mum had no birth certificate.  Nobody had thought to register her at birth and Nan never adopted her.

At one point she needed a passport but, with no birth certificate, it was decided that it could not be done.

In 2002 I got Mum a passport.  No problem.

And that is how she came to live with us here in Malaysia.

She was abandoned at birth so, no matter what, she was not going to be abandoned at the end of her life.

There is more to the story, of course, but maybe another time.  Writing this is still painful but, just maybe, it needs to be done.

How we develop.  How we find our lives set.  Our characters, our little idiosyncrasies are all laid out for us at an early age.  Fight though we do it is so difficult to get past certain ideas, certain barriers that have been put into place for us or by us.

Abuse takes so many forms.  For many people abuse is sexual, for others it is psychological.  Sometimes you can have the kindest people in the world around you but if you are not prepared for the big world ‘out there’ then that is also a form of abuse.

Leopards, they say, do not change their spots.  For us authors we are encouraged to develop, or grow, our characters, but beware.  Characters are real people.  They live in our minds, they exist, they are our friends, colleagues and, sometimes, our enemies.

They do not change.

People rarely, if ever, really change.

Superficially there are some subtle changes but the character we grew up with stays with us for life.  I wish it were not so.  I dearly wish that people could change but it is my experience that any change is usually only in the mind of the beholder.

We just get better at hiding it.

But that is another story for another time.

Stories

Four stories from the mind of David S Leyman to suit all tastes:

‘The Hags of Teeb’ is a humorous novella underscoring the British form of xenophobia and the class system. Major Jassington Farquar DeTovington-Beauville, Duke of Scafell Pike and the fifth Baron Livesey, twenty-third in line heir to the throne of the Empire with his faithful family retainer, Gaspard, go into battle with the ‘Herds of Dollib’.  The result of this encounter will determine their ultimate fate; will they get the treasure or will they be doomed forever?

‘Meevo’, a novelette with a military flavour.  A dangerous mutant escapes from a high security prison in Molepolole, a windswept, icy and toxic wasteland where escapees can expect to die once they are clear of the confines of the prison.

A squad of the toughest space soldiers is sent south from their tropical headquarters in Liverpool to catch the mutant and either return it to its cell or kill it.

The soldiers are ill suited to a mission where the hunted will make you see what it wants you to see.

‘Crater’ is a, largely, military space opera focussing on a war of attrition between humans and an ancient race of beings who crashed one of their ships on Earth.

They want us, and everything on our planet for fuel, we would rather not allow this and go into battle to prevent our extermination at their hands.

They believe they are immortal but we have an advantage—we breed.  They may have the technology but we have numbers, a history of warfare and a will to survive.

This story spans millennia and the far reaches of space.  Who will prevail?  What is mankind’s ultimate fate?

‘Three’s Company’.  A romantic short story set somewhere ‘up there’ amongst other worlds on an unknown planet where an attachment is formed between a human and a rather feline human as a result of an expedition into the jungles of the north.

Years later a mystery develops when the human, Iffan Beute, leaves his home in the south to visit a dying friend in the northern part of their homeland.  All the ‘Northerners’ regard his companion as a ‘ghost’ and his friend, Metth Croym, is fixated on a painting that he cannot remember creating.

All of the stories are available on Kindle at:

Amazon.com                  [http://amzn.to/my2xAB]

Amazon.co.uk                  [http://amzn.to/kRW8tv]

[Also on Amazon.de]

All covers on ‘iqliptiq’ books are by ‘Hishgraphics’:

(http://www.hishgraphics.com/)

There are also some ‘free to read’ stories on the web site:

www.davidleyman.com

These are ‘in the rough’, mostly, straight from the head into the keyboard with no ‘post writing’ work done on them.  Except ‘Silicon Ballet’ that was an entry for a writing competition.

Have fun and enjoy; tell your friends and ask them to tell their friends.

It’s In The Bag

It is, perhaps, a bit of a cruel title but facts are facts.  Sometimes we don’t like facts, this is when a little white lie comes in handy.

You will observe that I referred to a little ‘white’ lie as opposed to... what?  ‘White’ lies are OK but any other hue is, apparently, not.

Something like ‘red’ letter days and hitting a ‘purple’ patch are all good things but ‘black’ anything is not. ‘Black’ Friday, for example. Dad was born on a Friday the thirteenth in 1922.  He regarded any Friday the thirteenth as a ‘Lucky Day’.

I regard it, as I do any date, as ‘a day’.

The colour of any particular day, philosophy, metaphor, maxim, what-have-you, is entirely irrelevant to me because I am colour blind.  This is not a disease – although you could, reasonably, say that I could allow myself to be dis-eased by it!  One of the advantages of being colour-blind, for me, is that my wife likes to say that I have yet to realise that she is black.

Of course, I am not ‘shade’ blind.

Mum was blinded by her perceptions of her origins.  Perhaps I should explain that.

In 1916 a gentleman walking his dog in a London park, the park was called Barnes Common, heard noises emanating from a paper bag.  He examined the contents and discovered that the bag contained a baby.

In those days, during the First World War, abandoned babies were not uncommon.  This particular park was then a place where people ‘of quality’ might stroll; nowadays it is a place where junkies and muggers disport themselves.

The gentleman took the bag, plus baby, to the police station at Marylebone (pron: Marlybone, for those unfamiliar with London).  From thence she was checked by a certain Nurse Houghton and whisked off to the orphanage at Richmond on the banks of the River Thames, near Kew.

For eight years, Mum lived in the orphanage.  It was tough in there, there were no perks or frills unless you count being awarded the crackling from Matron’s Sunday pork joint for being especially good as a ‘perk’.

One of the senior girls used to take delight in trying to drown Mum in the bath when it was her turn to wash the junior girls.

All the girls had jobs to do – and woe betide them if there was any shirking!

Nurse Houghton was tasked, from time to time, to check the girls’ health.  There was a photograph, at one time, of baby Mum being held by Nurse Houghton but a search of old newspapers in the British Library archives in North London turned nothing up and Mum’s old copy could not be found.

I would like you to close your eyes and imagine, if you will, that the first eight years of your life were in an all-girl environment governed by strict discipline.  There was very little light shining into their lives.  I have told, already, the story of the singing so I shall not repeat it here.

Their only contact with the outside world was a controlled walk in the park – Richmond had, and still does, a large deer park, and the ‘choosing’ day.

At pre-determined intervals people would come to the orphanage and choose a girl to take home with them.  There appeared to be very little control or legislation about this and the reason is very simple.

Towards the top of this ‘Blog’ I mentioned that discarded babies were quite de rigueur* at that time.

[*‘de rigueur’ = Required by the current fashion or custom; socially obligatory. From French: de, of + rigueur, rigor, strictness.  Just saying.]

Why should this be?  Well, there a couple of reasons that spring immediately to mind.

Firstly, World War One was raging on the Continent.  The Generals of both sides were busy organizing a war of attrition that was denuding several Nations of their men folk.  This means that there were lots of women ‘at home’ – some of whom were ‘with child’, as it were.

Young ladies with no means of support – and that means ‘no husband’ were at the mercy of the elements.  “Get out and never darken our doors again” would be quite a common instruction.  It would be far better, if her boyfriend had been terminated for the war effort, that she go ‘on holiday’ to some fictitious relative, give birth and heave the baby over a hedge somewhere dark and, preferably, remote.

Secondly, women were second-class citizens by a very long chalk.  Tendrils of this mindset still linger on in many backward places – like Newcastle, for example.  If a young girl were to actually get a job it would, very often, be ‘in service’ to some member of the gentry or a rich businessman. 

Members of the aristocracy and rich businessmen alike were not above a bit of ‘messing around with the help’.

When ‘the help’ started to become plump they would be offered a choice, “You can keep the job or you can keep the baby!”

Now what?  Keep the baby?  Where to go?  How to support yourself and the child?  There was always the ‘Workhouse’, of course but, well, hell...  A place for the homeless and destitute that was little better than death; the last one hung around until about 1948 with the abolition of the ‘Poor Law’.  Of course, they changed the name a few times.  As they do!

Alternative?  Find a dark and secluded spot, a paper bag...

Orphanages were expensive to run and were funded by public donation; possibly as a result of guilt complexes from the rich and famous.  Naturally disposing of as many children as possible to caring foster parent can only be a good thing.  Background checks were minimal and the foster parents were paid a small stipend to cover essential costs.

We will look at Mum’s progress in that direction later.

As a result of my Mother’s beginnings she was convinced that nobody, ever, wanted her.  She was abandoned at birth and therefore had no value.  This thought continued with her until her death in 2010, almost exactly 95 years after she was found.

I, on the other hand, am convinced that my, unknown, Grandfather was a person of note – very likely Royalty.  You will observe that I do have, not only aristocratic features, but also a noble, if not Royal, mien.

What does this have to do with writing?  Not much except that, very often truth is stranger than fiction.  Whatever story you try to make up somebody, somewhere, will have something to top it and it will be, moreover, fact.

You don’t think I’m Royalty?  You disprove it.

I’m happy to know that Kate just married into MY family.