Peak Times

In the pond in the park the fountain stopped. Swans slid across to investigate. A van crawled towards the pond's edge and stopped next to the fisherman. Three men in overalls all different shades of orange exited the van and unloaded a cement mixer, a spade, a pneumatic scoop and four yellow plastic sections of fence. While one of them plugged the cement mixer in at the cafe and mixed the cement the other two fenced off a small area at the edge of the pond and attacked the pavement with the pneumatic scoop. Dust settled on ice creams. Dogs conferenced. Picnics succeeded. The scooping men returned the scoop to the van and took out a tarpaulin-covered box attached to a black pole. They carried it to the fenced off area and set the pole in the ground with the box on top. The scoopers held it upright while the cement man cemented the base. When this was done he used his spade to flick the rubble from the hole into the pond. All three stood and inspected the box on the pole, looked at each other, and removed the tarpaulin. Children screamed. The box had a coin slot at the top, a note slit in the middle, and a change tray at the bottom. They loaded the fence and the scoop and the mixer and the spade and themselves into the van and drove away slowly with the hazard lights blinking. A woman in a Nirvana t-shirt approached the box and put 50p in the slot. The fountain came back on.

Disruptive Obedience

...would be better than whatever what we're upto now is, although it's a spicy proposition to get anything through the bugle on a schoolday these days. The moguls have iron elbows and scrutinise non-verbal expressions for whiffs of sass, which can result in any respectable clam-head you care to mention being trounced into the nudge-tunnel for the required probe into whether what their visible parts recently exuded was agonised wonder about how to galvanise a breakthrough in The Year of The Fist, or a deplorable lack of exuberance, both of which have near-identical appearances, and we find it best to find out as soon as possible which of these it might have been. We want big swigs of happiness during choppy times. We're only breaking ribs by accident.

Subject Matters

I anonymously published, in a quarterly workplace journal, distributed only to members of a particular sub-group within those workplaces, and read by a sub-group of that sub-group presumably in idle moments between obligations, let me be clear, an account of an event: the twice-yearly conversion, by their line manager, of a working human's current value, potential value, and behavioural desirability, into a dot on a graph. The account's tone was one of inquisitive sarcasm. It ended with three questions. The last word of the last of these questions was: sinister. The use of this arguably overly-dramatic or maybe even paranoid adjective was proportionate as a response to the emergence, during the twice-yearly conversion, of a queasy situation regarding the crusading-and-prevailing new business doctrine: if you don't say you love the doctrine, if you say you don't love the doctrine, if you scamper about the office pointing out the doctrine's snags and foibles, your dot will never be placed in the upper third of the graph, because your questioning of the doctrine that produced the graph counts as undesirable behaviour. Never mind how well you perform in the day-to-day tasks, you will never be deemed excellent unless you learn to say you are a fan of the compulsory one true path.
Shortly after everyone'd had their twice-yearly conversion, and before the doctrine's implementation-assessors visited, to convert the whole building into a multi-million pound dot on a self-congratulatory ideological conquest display unit, there was a noticeable office-wide increase in I-heart-the-doctrine pomp and fanfare, and judging the sincerity of this here grisly flag-waving, and those there frantic declarations of fervent belief, became impossible.

Only To Be Expected

Every not often next-door has a party in its back garden and as I exit my front door at sundown to begin another Desecration Wednesday or similar, I find at our wall a shiny young guzzler wondering how close to the right place they are. Very, I say, and while they ask if I've got any phone credit and if yes can they borrow the phone and some of the credit to summon someone from the next-back garden to the next-front gate, I hoist them like a fat baby over my shoulder and through my cluttered hall and thin kitchen to the back door, where they wonder what I'm playing at and I undo all the locks and plod through the shin-deep weeds and hurl them neighbourly over the fence without warning or apology.
Later, at large, as I thrust the empty bottle of anything-over-five-percent into the municipal waste-heap, I feel a vague sense of community.

Bulk Centre

The screens above the seats on the return train all had the same scrolling message saying this seat is probably reserved. As the carriage filled up people stared at the message for their own seat and turned around to stare at the one opposite and then stare at each other and wonder when this new lack of certainty had been demanded. I walked through some conversations - this is a yes or no thing surely - this country's public services - how much more are we going to take - maybe the destinations are only probable too - I do hope there's a drinks trolley - I'll be needing a drugs trolley - and a word with the governor - has the smell got worse or has my nose improved? - just got out, a week, see the kids - sand in my lungs - countryside, a real treat - so ludicrously above inflation - seem to care - of course Hugo insisted we weren't to fly - futile sanctions - the sound off please - a diabolical sense - flabby like she is, no thanks - put up with - nice little set-up if the weather doesn't - had to babe - locked into a punitive schedule here, so I'm not able to - can't tell him yet but the silence must seem - I found an empty seat as the train began to crawl and fell asleep next to a woman who smelled like a goth but wasn't.

A Five and Five Ones

Bad Liebenzell is a valley village full of flowers, where walkers carry a spear in each hand and pairs of pumpkins live on benches with no explanations, a large one next to a tiny one, all down the street and no-one sits down next to them.
Halloween enthusiasm stretched out to the border, where just inside the first service station entrance stood sixty witches, all with the same mouth-agape gleeface, some three feet tall and some three inches small, rubber or plastic and welcome to Germany. Oktoberfest was nowhere in sight, but Lidl is rife and cheap beer cheaper than in France, and if you take the bottles back you can put them in the whirring laser-tunnel that eats empties and kerchings a voucher into your shaking hand, which, if you can hold onto it, can be spent exactly like money, on delicious seasonal goods like beer and wine. Why isn't there one of these in every supermarket in England?