Aquatic Lizards

James Great-great-granddad

James' family had been ichthyosaurs as far back as anyone could remember, his Nan even had an old photo of his great great granddad being an ichthyosaur. It had been solid dependable work, not as glamorous as being a long necked plesiosaur maybe, but if you were going be an enormous aquatic lizard then you could do worse than getting a position as an icthyosaur. It was a job for life.

But times changed, icthyosaurs were going an extinct, not that James' family understood.

Jane

"Jane up the street got a position as a kronosaurus at that new company in town, why can't you do something like that?"

"It's not the same thing mum, kronosaurs are better adapted to the lower oceanic oxygen content of the late cretaceous. I just don't have those sort of qualifications."

Every morning it was like this and James couldn't deal with it anymore, he knew what he had to do.

"A MOSASAUR?" Dad was apoplectic. "Jimmy this is a step too far! You know they closed your uncle's factory down because of competition from mosasaurs!"

"If it is a choice between being out of work or being a mosasaur I'm going to take my chances dad, the world has changed, and mosasaurs are better at catching bony fish and those new aquatic birds which are all the rage."

Dad stuck his head into his newspaper "it's just a fad, you'll see."

"Won't that mean you have to go onto the land? I don't like the though of that, all sorts of weirdos up there!"

"No mum, mosasaurs are fully aquatic. You're thinking of aigosaurs. Honestly you're so narrow minded!"

An Herring

The first few weeks as a mosasaur were fantastic, herring has just been invented and James' team had won the contract to eat them. He was making new friends at work, and saving up some money so that he could move out on his own. He knew from the way dad looked at him that he wasn't welcome anymore, no matter how much mum pretended otherwise.

Then a massive comet hit the gulf of mexico and he and everyone he knew died.

Satellites

Susan was surprised to find a crater where her home should have been. According to her neighbours the satellite had hit the street just a few minutes earlier. She gazed into the smouldering hole and thought about all her things, the jewelry in her bedside cabinet that was now probably a molten pool of metal, the brand new TV which had been converted into a fine powder at the bottom of the hole which used to be her house.

At first the insurance company claimed that the collision was an act of God which they could not cover, though eventually she convinced the bloke in the call centre that satellites were created by men rather than deities.

“Do you have the vehicle’s registration number?” asked the man in the call centre (it crossed her mind that he had mentioned his name, was it Neil? Susan decided to avoid using his name in case she had it wrong.) She did not have the vehicle’s registration number. “Well then I’m afraid there isn’t much we can do” said Neil “You should have taken the other party’s details before they left the scene of the accident”

She tried calling NASA but they weren’t much help either, they claimed they didn’t have any missing satellites and certainly couldn’t help if she didn’t know what model or even what colour the satellite had been. “I’ll have to check with one of my colleagues” said the lady from NASA “let me put you on hold.”

“Shit” said Susan, checking her watch. At this rate she would miss her husband’s funeral.

Lilly's Legs

Everything was ready. Just hit the button and the device would activate and at the very same moment a call would go through to the emergency services. There was a tiny risk involved of course, there always was with something like this. A tiny risk that it could all go wrong, but if it was so tiny why had Lilly been sat here for the last 4 hours and 27 minutes with her finger hovering over the button? Sat here doing nothing while every minute she waited her window of opportunity became smaller and smaller.

The Four Keiths

Keith 4

The rain thundered against the palm fronds Keith had erected as a cover over his balcony. Every evening when he got home from the plant he followed the same routine: he made a large daiquiri and watched the pelicans grab frogs and fishes from the Pomona swamp. Some people hated the swamp, complained it smelled, but Keith loved the rich warmth of it. To him the swamp, which had been dug out to absorb the tropical rains, represented Manchester’s ability to adapt as much as his job at the rum distillery did.

Ian's Car

The first artificial intelligence wasn't a NASA supercomputer, it wasn't deep in a bunker in CERN, or in the head of some robot in a high-tech Japanese factory. The first artificial intelligence was an Audi in a driveway in Sutton Coldfield.

It was one of those mild sunny afternoons and Ian Warrett was going to the pub to watch the football. He pressed the start button on the car and a message appeared on the screen, the one that usually telling you what radio show is on.

I DON’T THINK YOU SHOULD DO THIS

Why We Broke Up

A few weeks ago I was talking to a friend about relationships and I mentioned my feeling that the reasons I had for breaking up with people were often pretty ridiculous. She wanted some examples but I struggled to come up with them at the time and, as ever with these things, only started to remember some of the better ones on the way home. As is the way of the modern world I felt a compulsive desire to share them with strangers on the internet. But the obvious problem was that a lot of them made me look like a jerk, or made other people look like jerks and I like to think that I'm not that sort of guy. How could I deal with this? Well the solution was obvious: lying. So here are the reasons why we broke up; some of them are mine, some came from friends, some I made up:

Discover your Ancestors

Margaret Smith has become unstuck in time. Finding out about her ancestors seemed fun at first, a hobby to while away the time now that the kids had moved out and started families of her own. A chance to unearth some long lost family scandal, perhaps to discover an illustrious ancestor, and to finally work out how exactly she was related to all the half remembered aunts of her childhood.

An advert on ITV 7 had pointed her in the direction of Ancestor-Discoverer dot com, a site which promised to make easy all the hard work of searching through archives and records and take her directly to the business of nosing around the private business of her forebears. She made a cup of tea and got her laptop ready, entering all the information the site needed: her name, her date of birth, the details of any known relatives. She then pressed enter and set the machine whirring away.

The Tunnel

There is a scratching on the floor, in the floor in front of my desk. A frantic scratching a scrabbling, scuffling, scrofulous, scratching which only I can hear. I noticed it when they moved me to the new desk I had never heard it before and neither had anyone else. I asked Diane who sits next to me if she can hear the scratching but she says she can’t hear a thing. I asked Dan in IT if it was something to do with my computer but he can’t hear it either. It has been nearly a month and still no one can hear it but me.

Ray Winstone

Having asked the intern for a cup of tea, milk one sugar, the actor Ray Winstone attempted to sink into the chair at the edge of the studio. However he was soon forced to sit bolt upright, the flimsy fold out chair did not make slouching comfortable and he was worried it would be unable to support his increasingly ample weight. They had just finished recording another advert for the betting firm BET365, in which Ray Winstone was pretending to be in another, different advert. He had convinced himself that this meant he was working three different jobs, including his current starring role in a gritty big screen re-make of the Sweeney, and that this entirely justified his constant exhaustion. By this point in his life Ray Winstone had wanted to retire and move to a cottage in the Cotswolds, perhaps doing occasional theatre work and taking time to write his memoirs. Downsizing had seemed like a good idea, especially now that his daughters, the actresses Lois and Jaime Winstone, had left home but his wife, the actress Elaine McCausland, didn’t want to move out of London because of her social life and had actually made him to move to a new bigger home. He was having trouble paying off the mortgage.

A booming laugh shook the set and Ray Winstone looked up to see the director joking with the Giant Disembodied Head of Ray Winstone. Ray Winstone attempted to avoid looking at his own Giant Disembodied Head but it spun round and stared at him before beginning to float in his direction, the director in tow. Ray Winstone had originally enjoyed the company of the Giant Disembodied Head of Ray Winstone, even considered him a friend of sorts, but he had grown to despise his own Giant Disembodied Head. In it he could see every imperfection in his own aging face blown up to several times their original size; every time the head spoke he heard the same idiosyncrasies that he hated in his voice as though they were being broadcast through a megaphone.

Ray Winstone had met his own head shortly after the release of the critical and commercial failure Beowulf, directed and produced by Robert Zemeckis. Zemeckis had told him that the film would be a huge success and that his innovative motion capture process would allow him to continue his film career long into the future despite his rapidly deteriorating physique. In fact it was these assurances that had allowed Ray Winstone to be brought around by his wife’s pleas for a new home. The fallout of Beowulf combined with his disastrous appearance in Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull had left him embittered to the idea of computer graphics in cinema.

Soon after the failure of Beowulf Zemeckis had sent Ray Winstone a Fortnum and Mason’s hamper by way of an apology. Ray Winstone had thrown the hamper under a Northern Line tube train as it came up to the platform, an action which he found incredibly cathartic but which his wife, the actress Elaine McCausland, had called “petty” and “childish”.

It was because of his distrust of computer graphics that he had initially turned down the BET365 job, but a few days later he had found his own Giant Disembodied Head sleeping rough, hovering about 2 foot above an alley next to his local pub. Ray Winstone’s Giant Disembodied Head had explained to Ray Winstone how it had tried to make a living as a Ray Winstone impersonator and how its career had faltered due to the fact that in London there were a lot of people who sounded like Ray Winstone already and because it was a Giant Disembodied Head, which had unsettled the punters and made it difficult to find suitable performance spaces. Ray Winstone could empathise, having once been a struggling up and coming actor himself, and also felt some responsibility due to the fact that it was his own head. He had called BET365 back the next morning and arranged to get his head an audition.

Now the shoe was on the other foot (metaphorically of course, unlike Ray Winstone The Giant Disembodied Head of Ray Winstone didn’t need shoes as it mostly travelled by hovering or just spontaneously appearing in rooms when it was needed). Ray Winstone had been the one in need of help. Ray Winstone’s Giant Disembodied Head knew that Ray Winstone was having money troubles so had set him up with a job supporting him in a few of the TV adverts. Ray Winstone hated having to rely on anyone, especially his own head.

“Me and the lads are going to the pub mate, fancy coming along for a pint” boomed The Giant Disembodied Head of Ray Winstone.

“No thanks mate” said Ray Winstone “I need to get some sleep, me and my wife, the actress Elaine McCausland, are going to the Lake District tomorrow and I’ve got an early start.”

Unlike Ray Winstone the Giant Disembodied Head of Ray Winstone did not need to sleep and rarely had to eat. Ray Winstone had sometimes wondered if The Giant Disembodied head had been absorbing energy from him but he soon became resigned to the fact that he was just getting older.

The Giant Disembodied Head of Ray Winstone appeared to disapprove of Ray Winstone’s answer and began to scowl. It then started to rotate violently around its axis, so fast that Ray Winstone was unable to make out any of his features and he appeared to be nothing more than a blur. The gust of air put off by this display blew scripts across the studio and knocked over some of the flimsier pieces of the set. The Head then bobbed and came to a rest with a beaming smile.

“You’re fucking whipped mate! Come on just one pint!”

Ray Winstone sighed and slumped into his chair. It gave way with a sudden crunch leaving Ray Winstone in a heap on the floor. Ray Winstone’s Giant Disembodied Head continued to levitate a few feet above him. It had no need for chairs.

I realise some of you might not have seen the advert in question, so here it is

Goodyear

The blimp first appeared for one of the Manchester derbies, hovering over Old Trafford. Do blimps float or do they hover? Either way it was up there in the sky, moving in a slow circle above the stadium, silently extolling the virtues of vulcanised rubber.

People joked that it said “Ice Cube is a pimp” on the side. It didn’t, it said “Goodyear”. People expected it to move on once the derby was over. It didn’t.

The blimp stayed there all season. You could say it loomed ominously, but it didn’t because in fact there are few modes of transport less ominous than a bright yellow and blue blimp. Really as far as transportation goes that is as festive and non-ominous as you can get.

The citizenry of Manchester wondered if it was part of a sponsorship deal: Sir Alex Ferguson would not be drawn on the subject. Goodyear remained silent.

Towards the end of the season it was suggested that the league cup was inside and that if City won the league it would buzz (or drift?) over to the Emirates. They won and the blimp remained obstinately above Old Trafford.

In fact it stayed there the next season, and the season after that, moving in those long graceful circuits over the Trafford skyline.

Goodyear went bust in the end, because of the hovercars, but the blimp stayed there regardless. No one really knew whose responsibility it was to deal with the blimp, it wasn’t causing any harm so there was no real clamour to remove it. If anything it had become a landmark, a symbol of the city, something that had entered people’s consciousness. “Let your troubles float away (like the Trafford blimp)” people would say, “Your troubles will circle back around in the end (like the Trafford blimp)” the cynics would retort.

As ever with these thing the cynics were eventually proved right, to the frustration of decent friendly people everywhere, and the blimp started to become a problem. You see the blimp’s endless cycle had begun to deteriorate and it was at risk of becoming snagged in the cables of one of the cities mighty and world famous cloud towers. And so it was that, years after it had first appeared, the city was forced to hire some adventurous soul to strap on a jet pack and try to take control of the ancient piece of machinery.

Inside was a perfectly preserved time capsule of a bygone age and resting at the controls a skeleton wearing a t-shirt stating “World’s #1 Blimp Pilot.” Who he was we may never know, all records from that era at the club having been consumed in the construction of Fergie’s vast funeral pyre.

Craig Chapter 6: And Finally

“Okay I get it, stop the video. Why didn’t I see this before?”

“I sent it to you repeatedly Officer Henderson, but you never check your messages.”

“Right well I don’t care about any of it, I’m not going to sign off on this, killing sentient creatures to make a rich man richer, it’s barbaric!”

“If you don’t sign off on it someone else will Officer Henderson”

“Then why are you pressuring me to do it? Why are you making this shitty job even shittier? Why do you want me to go down in history as the universes most unreasonable mass murderer?”

“Because I’m feeling kind”

“Well you’ve got a damn odd way of showing it!”

At that moment a thought went through his mind, he could stop it all happening, he could save all the… goop… well it didn’t matter what it looked like he could save it. Destroy the data, stop the ship getting back to earth. There had to be some sort of self destruct, a button he could press, something! I mean no one might realise it was him but if he saved a whole species from being turned into animal food then his life might mean something right? It would have been worth it all right?

“They’ll let you stay on Earth Craig. I know you hate space travel, if you agree they’ll promote you, let you stay on Earth, and study your frogs. That’s how I’m being kind.”

Well it had been a shit job, but if someone had to do it...

Craig Chapter 5: The Advert

A white haired man in a short sleeve shirt walks toward the viewer across a golf course in what could be the Caribbean. He bends down to pick up a golf ball then looks up at the camera and smiles; his teeth are incredibly white, his accent mid-Atlantic.

Hi there! I’m Charles Benson, founder and majority owner of the Benson Group, but as an employee of one of the many companies in our great big family I’m sure you knew that already! You also know that we in Benson Group strive for excellence in all we do, from computing to mining, healthcare to construction, sanitation to space exploration! [Brightly lit images of handsome people performing these activities flash across the screen] But did you know than we are also the world’s largest producer of pork based products? That’s right! Pork is where this business started, why every time you eat a slice of bacon, or a mouth watering pork chop, or even a gelatine based sweet you are probably eating part of a Benson pig!

Why is he wearing a short sleeve shirt? The skin on his arms is like muslin and covered in tiny white hairs.

But there is always competition and we here at Benson are constantly trying to stay ahead of the game. That’s why I’m offering major rewards to any employees who come up with workable ways for us to corner the pork market once and for all, rewards including:

A new voice takes over, deeper, more American.

Bonuses, Pay Increases, Promotion, Extra Holiday! Eeexecutive Company Cars,

Craig Chapter 4: Preckselfflurt

The technology existed to make a computer’s speech entirely indistinguishable from that of humans but when tried this had generally had the effect of massively creeping people out, because it gave the impression that computers were just as intelligent as humans when in fact they were far, far more intelligent. All computers were now designed to speak in a slightly self satisfied way with a tinny robotic voice.

“Signs of sentience detected, do you wish to attempt interspecies communication?”

“Wait you mean the goo can think?”

“Affirmative, do you wish to attempt interspecies communication?”

Craig had decided to stick some sensor equipment into the goop to see what it actually was, but intelligence had been the furthest thing from his mind what with how basic a creature it looked. The ability to speak to other life forms had been invented several decades earlier, but after it was discovered that cats did actually want to kill and eat all humans and the slightly unsettling discovery that certain trees could think (and held an extremely superior attitude) the practice fell out of fashion outside of scientific circles.

“Well yes, affirmative, let’s hear what this thing thinks!”

“That thing looks horrible”

“x150?” (That was the computer’s name by the way)

“Yes Officer Henderson it’s so solid looking”

“You’re not making any sense x150”

“That was not I Officer Henderson that was the sample did it put me in this container?”

“Can you give it a different voice? I can’t tell the difference between you and it”

“This ship computer contains a free copy of my voice programme, on registering this product further voices can be acquired for the low price of Five Ninety Nine a month and…”

“Okay never mind just don’t talk while I’m communicating with the sample”

“Affirmative hello”

“Um hello, I’m… I’m… from earth?… do you have a name?”

Craig realised he should have probably read the manual on making first contact with new species.

“Greetings ‘from earth’ we are an aspect of that which is described as Preckselfflurt”

“No, no, I’m called Craig Henderson; the planet I come from is called earth”

“Ah we see Craig Henderson…”

“Call me Craig”

“We see Craig, why have you separated us and put us in a container?”

“Well I wanted to study you I didn’t realise you were intelligent”

“Preckselfflurt is incredibly intelligent and we contain an aspect of that”

“Wait, wait are you prekle… prekself… is that your name or something else’s?”

“Preckselfflurt is all and we are simply a part of it, we can feel we have been disconnected”

“Oh wow! Are you telepathic?”

“Of course not telepathy is tabloid nonsense. I don’t think you really get what we are saying here”

Craig had to admit that he didn’t and that talking to an alien species was a hell of a lot more difficult than he had anticipated. Not helped by the fact it was being done via the voice of a self satisfied computer. This was his big break though right? Validation of a life’s work? The thing that he would be

“Pig Slop”

The words hung for a few moments.

“Excuse me?”

“This is x150 Officer Henderson I have cut off the sample life form’s voice”

“That… pig slop?”

“An analysis of the materials comprising the sample showed that they would make an excellent dietary supplement for pigs I have already fed a sample to one of the ships pigs and –“

“YOU FED AN INTELLIGENT NEW LIFEFORM TO… we have a ships pig?”

“Several pigs, as well as cows, sheep, horses, newts…”

As x150 droned on providing a list of apparently every animal on earth Craig grew increasingly perturbed, not only because he was the ships biologist and no one had told him, not only because it seemed a computer was entirely capable of doing his job without him, not only because he despised his job, but because he had been serving on this ship for years and had never explored it enough to find the incredible menagerie that it apparently held.

“… and the pig rapidly showed increased production of the chemicals necessary for excellent bacon”

“I don’t care anymore x150! I am not going to let us harvest an intelligent, living, breathing” (actually he didn’t know if it breathed) “creature so we can make more delicious bacon!”

“There is a near 100% chance of promotion”

“What?”

Craig Chapter 3: Goop

Planet 2024XV871d was a disappointment for almost everyone on board because it was covered in water and that meant that getting at any of the minerals would be really fucking hard. Craig was in his element however. For the first time in his decade long career the call went out for “Exobiology Officer Henderson to come to the bridge” when they reached their destination. It was with some pleasure as he watched Captain Benson disgustedly tell him that preliminary scans had shown that 2024XV871d was absolutely swimming with organic material. Whilst all the geologists sat gloomily on the ship Craig was flying down to the planet practically every day. Even if most of it was cooped up a tiny submarine collecting samples the amount of time spent off the ship was liberating.

The only problem was that the underwater life was almost entirely gross. It might have been bias because he was one himself but Craig liked vertebrates. He especially liked frogs. Nothing on this planet had anything remotely similar to a backbone; instead the main form of life seemed to be sacks of goop. In fact saying they were sacks was quite frankly a misnomer because they were just formless lumps of goop and once he though that he had worked out which balls of goop were different animals they would just sort of flop into an entirely different type of goop. And then those balls would split off into different balls of goop.

At one point he found a thing that looked a bit like a tree but when he tried to take a sample it collapsed into a runny translucent slurry, full of flecks and veins like a cracked egg that hadn’t quite managed to become a bird, which slopped all over the submarine and into all the equipment. What had once been excitement about finding new life rapidly turned into a nightmare of constantly cleaning organic goo out of sensors, robotic joints, window seals, clothes, hair… everything. In the end he just started wiping what he could off the sub and into a bucket which he then poured into the sample chamber.

Craig Chapter 2: Space Travel is Time Travel

Most people who haven’t been on an interstellar journey assume that it is extremely exciting. I mean all the elements are there, you are going faster than the speed of light, and you get to go somewhere no-one has ever been before, and so on. This of course is a lie and space travel is in fact one of the most boring things that humankind has ever managed to come up with. I don’t understand physics and quite frankly the guys in engineering are so boring that I would never let them explain it to me, but the reason we can now go faster than light is something called “time dilation”. I don’t know what this means, I can explain what it does though.

When you get on the ship everything is normal, then the engine kicks in and all the stuff outside the window starts moving slower and slower until after about a day everything stops moving entirely. Also it all goes a bit blue for some reason. I can’t remember if time outside stops or time inside moves faster, but the second one is less terrifying to think about. The further you are going the longer you spend with time stopped (for this trip it was two months). After your time stuck like that there is a big red flash and you suddenly appear where you want to end up two months (or whatever) after you had first fired up the engine.

This means you spend two months with almost nothing to do, seeing only the same people who are on the ship with you and having to endure the same unmoving view out of the window. I would say that the window thing would make you go insane but apparently when they first started the ships didn’t have windows because they thought it would just be dull to look at (it is) and one year long trip ended up with everyone killing each other. I couldn’t do a year; the longest trip I ever took was five months. That was the time I found the slime mould. I’ll be honest it probably was just mud, in fact I know it was because I spent the entire five month journey back trying to make it do something to show it was alive. And it didn’t. I guess I just wanted to feel that I had managed to do something instead of wasting an entire year.

Some of the people on the ship spend most of the “journey” actually doing work, but most of us are scientists and we don’t really have anything to do when we are outbound. As the only biologist on a ship full of geologists and engineers I don’t have much in common with the rest of the crew and I spend most of my time reading or watching old movies. This next thing probably only confirms that Roxy was right and I am a loser, but the reason I went into space was that I used to love Star Trek, but after seeing about thirty dead rocks the “new life and new civilizations” bit pissed me off so much I ejected the lot of it into space.

Craig Chapter 1: Myxogastria

Craig hated parties because they always had a way of reminding him of the pointlessness of his existence. Okay perhaps existence was laying it on a bit thick, but at the very least they reminded him of how terribly unimportant his job was. The title “senior exobiological survey officer” made his position seem a bit interesting, or at the very least confusing enough to kick start a conversation, the problem was that they always went the same way:

“Wow… what does that mean?”

“Well I go to other planets to find aliens”

“Oh that’s impressive! Have you ever found any?”

“Err not really…”

“Not really?”

From there he would go onto explain how he’d once found something that was a bit like a slime mould but not really and it was generally at this point that the conversation trailed off and he started to doubt the relevance of his life’s work.

Tonight was the Blast Off party for the latest expedition. Blast Off parties were a bit of an anachronism, I mean people went into space every day right? But it was one of those traditions which didn’t die and which make life terrible for everyone. Craig had to admit he was feeling particularly maudlin about tonight’s party because Rosanna Clark was stood at the other end of the room. Craig and Rosanna had dated briefly for two years while they were at university, but had broken up when he decided that he wanted to go and look for mould on rocks in space and she had decided to go to the Amazon and actually find some interesting new animals. Which she had done repeatedly to the point that she was now actually quite famous and was apparently about to be the star of some new nature programme.

The other reason for their breakup was that he had accidently slept with her best friend.

The room was actually quite small, just some crappy conference room at the company headquarters with a bar at one end and a buffet table at the other, but through intense scowling Craig had managed to creating a patch of calm for him to get annoyed by the fact that no one was talking to him and instead were all crowding round her. Because of the tiny size of this cheap little room he could hear her telling stories about where she was flying off to film next, the cool and useful things she’d discovered, how hard it was to work with a holographic version of David Attenborough, talking frogs. It was making him too sick to drink so he just leant against the wall staring into and idly swirling the rum and coke with a straw. Just as he was deciding he could easily sneak out she suddenly materialised in front of him.

He was annoyed that he still found her attractive. Beautiful in fact. He thought about looking for imperfections, an out of place strand of her long curling black hair, but he knew it was a futile effort.

“Craig I didn’t see you there” (lies) “are you on this mission?”

“You know I am Roxy. Why are you even here?”

“Don’t call me Roxy darling. Ray Benson invited me if you must know”

Ray Benson was the son of Charles Benson head of Benson Interstellar. He was the ship’s captain as well. Craig’s boss. Well he assumed that was who she meant.

“Do you mean Ray Benson as in son of Charles Benson the head of Benson Interstellar, and the captain e.g. my boss?”

“You mean i.e. Craig” (did he?) “and yes of course that Ray Benson. We’re dating. Didn’t you know?”

Craig’s heart sank into his guts. I mean the fact that Rosanna was vastly more successful than him was already shitty enough but. Wait a second.

“Wait a second I thought we broke up because I was going to space and now you’re dating a man who works in space?”

“We broke up because you slept with my best friend Craig”

“I thought that happened after the space thing?”

“It didn’t.”

The pause that followed was so awkward that it was almost certainly pregnant.

Whatever that meant.

“Ray told me about the mud you found.” (Definitely the most venomous sentence one could say with the word mud in it)

“It wasn’t mud Rosanna; it was more like a slime mould.”

“It wasn’t alive. Mould is alive, mud isn’t.”

“It’s alien. It’s hard to tell if it’s alive or not, aliens work differently than us. I assume. It probably just lives very slowly, so it’s hard to notice if it’s alive.”

“You’re a loser Craig.”

Automatic Doors

A person stands in front of a door, entirely still. Just staring through the glass at the street outside refusing to believe.

Another jumps away from the door in shock, she rushes to a different type of door and pushes the handles hoping that no one saw.

Some just turn around, pretend they had never meant to go towards the door in the first place, it was just a misunderstanding you see?

All the automatic doors in the world have stopped working and no one wants to admit it. No one wants to think about what it means
This is a situation I have been dealing with all my life so I know how to react. They have never worked for me you see, I used to joke that it was because I had no soul. Like that episode of the Simpsons. The one where Bart sells his soul. And the door won’t open because he doesn’t have a soul. I joked that I also didn’t have a soul.
The thing I always found strange when I told that joke was that no one ever agreed. Some would laugh politely but none of them would ever admit that the doors wouldn’t open for them. I briefly wondered if it was a social faux pas, whether automatic doors were a far larger part of our culture than I realised. But soon it became apparent that there was just no shared experience for the joke to work, I was the only person who ever had to deal with automatic doors not opening.
At the time I viewed it as a burden, I used to have to wait till a normal person went in and dive through behind them, or traipse around and use the non-automatic doors. It was at worst a minor inconvenience I admit, but it still rankled. Now my suffering is suddenly a boon. I am the only person who isn’t panicking, who isn’t nervous, embarrassed. This has been my life for as long as I can remember and I am the only person on Earth who knows how to act, it’s liberating. It almost makes it all worth it.
I have not been blessed with any knowledge or insight as to why the doors have stopped working, a few see me as some sort of messianic figure who holds a special bond with them but this is clearly ridiculous. They are doors. I don’t know why they all stopped working at once, I guess they just realised they didn’t have to open any more. Why they gave me advance warning is a bigger mystery, I don’t think we will ever really know.
It’s not a major issue, all buildings must have non-mechanical doors for fire safety reasons.

Written from the sick bed of Mr G.N. Thomas Esq., BA., MA.

My post this week involves arcane robes, pyramids, and strange stories told in darkened rooms amongst many other things. With this in mind I want to make clear that I haven't become a freemason (or maybe I have and am hiding it from you?) No.)) Still it does all sound a bit mysterious doesn't it? And maybe it will explain why I haven't had time to do anything for ANGER TUESDAY or the midweek music update or even the much awaited cooking with G, or at least I hope it will because I consider myself a dab hand at coming up with excuses for not writing and I don't want my illusions to be shattered. Unfortunately as I haven't written anything all week this will probably be a long one, but please dear reader push ahead, it's worth it. Honestly.

Arcane Robes

So Monday was my second graduation, and because of that I am now officially a Master of Arts in International Political Economy. I have a fancy bit of paper to prove it and everything! Although in a way this graduation can be considered a bit more important it was actually a lot less stressful, probably because I've done it all before when I got my bachelors and so I'm now a bit of an expert at the whole dressing funny and getting a piece of paper business. In fact going in I couldn't really give a damn about he fact I was getting a masters. Far more important in my opinion was that I had managed to do up a tie on my own with no help.

Honestly this is a really big achievement for me; I never had a school tie so didn't pick up the skill at a young age, my hand eye coordination is almost non-existant, and I have trouble understanding the concept of mirrors. But after about half and hour of trying I finally managed to make myself look presentable and that small miracle set me in a good mood for the rest of the day.

Your humble author shakes the hand
of an oddly dressed woman,
while dressed oddly

The actual business of getting the piece of paper, once you are through with the incredibly tedious speaches from the senior faculty, is over pretty quickly. Then comes the whole point of the day: partying. This starts of with a stereotypical photo of everyone throwing their stupid hats in the air (I could go on at length about how much I hate the stupid hats). After that I went out for drinks and dinner with my Mum and Dad to Giorgio on Portland Street (very good, not overly expensive). At this point I also should mention my awesome new coat which my parents gave me as a present: a knee length 50's vintage overcoat, it's awesome and is basically all I ever wanted in a coat.

After the gentle start the real partying started when I headed back down to the uni for some drinks with my fellow graduates. Now I won't go in to too much detail about what went on, both to spare people any embarrasment and to avoid any legal complications, but it's fair to say we partied right and then we possibly partied too right. Regardless of what happened I decided it would be a good idea to walk home in the damp and freezing cold at about half six in the morning and then wake up to see my parents at about midday for lunch. This was not a good idea.

It will not surprise you to know that upon seeing my hungover dishevelled form my parents didn't decide to stay for lunch but instead left about as fast as they possibly could to see my aunt for lunch in Birmingham instead and I don't blame them in the slightest.

Strange Stories

I obviously wrote off the whole of Tuesday as a hangover day and moped around the flat trying to do as little of anything that might involve any sort of effort. By Wednesday I was back on my feet and only as lazy as I normally am. Also I'd just like to say at this point that bar Monday I think everyday this week I tried to do Christmas shopping and never quite got round to it.

The Castle Hotel

The exciting event of Wednesday was brought about by my friend Nija who pointed out that we should probably hang out before she went home to Atlanta for the holidays and that (I'm sure) quite coincidentally she was telling a story at the Castle Hotel that evening and that would be the perfect place to hang out, after getting Mexican food of course (Poncho's at the Arndale Market, cheap and delicious).

The event at the Castle was a relatively new night called Tales of Whatever, the website sums it up but basically people tell true life stories without any notes or prompts. There were some great stories and the Castle always has a great atmosphere and great beer. Nija told a brilliant story about her parents, and then just after her there was an open mic slot. Now I've been to things at the Castle before, having gone along to Bad Language quite a lot over the last year, but I've never had the guts to go up on stage before. For some reason on Wednesday I did it anyway and gave a... mostly true account of my time in Saudi Arabia (some things may have been slightly exaggerated for comedic and dramatic affect).

Much to my surprise rather than being booed off stage and kicked out of the venue I actually got a round of applause and was asked to come back again! I'm slightly worried that this will all go to my head but it has definitely given me a bit of a spring in my step finding out that people like to hear me prattle on and has also convinced me that I really need to finish some of the stories I've started and never got round to finishing so I can read those at people at some point.

Pyramids

No, the lame kind of pyramid

On Thursday afternoon I had a job interview. Or at least I thought I did. Throughout Wednesday night I tossed and turned with a horrible fever, at one point dreaming I was a cast member in Seinfeld, at another point getting up and sleepwalking which as far as I'm aware I've never done before. This should have been an omen. I woke up on Thursday feeling possibly more awful than I'd even felt on Tuesday, even worse knowing that I had this job interview looming over me in a couple of hours.

I decided some preparation was necessary so I looked up the company. They had a weird and crap website which all looked very cheap and badly made. I was feeling a bit paranoid but decided it was probably just the fever and I should have a shower and some ibuprofen before I judged.

And then came the Google search and the words "pyramid scheme". And not just once, a whole load of people linking these guys in with a pyramid scheme. I guess I didn't want to give up on hope entirely, I've been job hunting for ages and these were the first people who had actually offered me anything so I decided to call them and let them make their case. The conversation went something like this.

"Hi I read some things about your company on the internet a-"
*click* beep

It was shit luck and combined with the cold, the crappy weather and the fact I had to go to the job centre later that day it put me in a foul mood and one that didn't exactly inspire good blog writing.

and in conclusion

As I write to you dear reader I am wrapped up warm in bed, the cold seems to be abating, and yesterday evening I had dinner with friends (Tampopo on Albert Square, slightly overpriced and I think Umami on Oxford Road tastes better) and then stuffed my face with fresh macaroons from the Chrsitmas Market (some stall at the christmas market, amazing because macaroons), and all in all I can say that it hasn't really been that bad a week. Some things weren't great and I definitely hope they don't happen again but maybe even bad experiences can make a story worth telling and to be honest they were totally counterbalanced by all the great things and great people that made up the good times.

And on that note I'd like to say thanks to the ever lovely Miss Lucy Boucher, blogger extraordinaire, who inspired me to finally get round to writing this all down. Thanks Lu. You should really read her stuff she is a lot better at this than me.