Thoughts on smiles and checkout operation

A smile flitted across my face. It lingered for a while before proceeding to other business. I mused on the nature of happiness for a while before dismissing it as fickle – must like my own facial expressions. Then I wondered why and how an assortment of muscle movements could manifest and create happiness. And if a smile was so effective at this job, why could the same not be said for tautened elbow skin or a bent little finger? People don't make sense.

My supervisor walks past my checkout and fires a cursory glance at me accompanied by a smile denoting recognition. She doesn't know what my name is. I flex my elbow in greeting. She cocks an eyebrow – confusion. People don't understand me. Sometimes I wonder if I do. What if all this time I've been getting myself all wrong. I imagine the situation –

My conscience walks up to me. Things aren't working out, I just feel you don't know me. I think we should try a trial separation.

Don't go! I beg. It goes. I go limp. Oh well.

A customer takes a pin made of pure unwanted attention to my blissful bubble of dreams. My language becomes flowery and over dramatic. I warmly greet them like an old friend. Welcome! Come in, sit by the fire, would you like something to drink? Can I help with your packing. They are not my friend. I know it, they know it and they respond – their reply heavily laden with false warmth. A sense of dreary joviality lazily flops over the conversation. They joke about how they only came in for a pint of milk. I could scarcely care less. I laugh politely. My laugh is like a bicycle pump for their ego. Endorsed by my laugh they are suddenly the world's greatest stand up – the torpid, mundane shopping gags that I've heard a million times before rattle by like freight trains. A metaphor which only helps highlight how mass produced such jokes are. I profusely thank anonymous customer number 482 for his custom and take his money with a smile made of lies. I quietly thank my muscles.

My Aborted Prose

The sun rose, in that sort of fiery glistening style it usually does. I always like to start with some sort of description of dawn. It's a rather nice time but my descriptions always seem to lack any sort of soul. To be truthful, of course, the sun did nothing at all, it was late evening on an October Sunday and the sky did that dull uneventful thing it always seems to. Yet I should take comfort that somewhere, the sun was rising, and it was more fiery and glistening than I would ever see – the grass is always greener, no? Anyway the state of the sky and in fact a vague date and time having been established I should venture into the uncharted territory of some sort of narrative.

Well best to begin nine months ago when the whole thing began. I was lying in bed one morning, the sun was rising, glistening and fiery but somewhat lacklustre and uninspiring. Then it hit me a little spark – something to do with neural patterns and brainwaves and all that. Somewhere it was conceived a little gleaming centre one of those most precious things. Those little electrical signals that are at the birth of all those distractions from the primary objectives of eating, sleeping and reproducing. I rushed to the computer. It took a dreadfully long time to load. As it loaded I felt offended by its cold logical progressions – it didn't have what I had, sure it had been born of one but it didn't have what I now possessed, it was inferior. Whilst I stewed in my contempt, Windows treated me to a little jingle for my pleasure. I snorted at its pathetic attempt to curry favour. Metal bastard. However I didn't share my dislike for it with the computer, whatever I thought of it I needed its power. Then I began. I typed and typed and typed – the words flowing out of me like extra appendages – don't ask me what they said I can't remember now, but it was stunning, it was natural – everything was right. Every morning this process would continue. I saw the words and constituent letters wrack up on the unsightly simulation of a page. From time to time I mused on the nature of paper and how I'd prefer parchment, but that mattered not, for even the pixelated punctuation seemed beautiful.

Sometimes I would think of my strange mutually dependant relationship with the lifeless box sitting next to me and its associated other boxes all similarly grey and distasteful. Not even their friendly curved edges would curb my dislike for them. They sat there, smug in the knowledge that I needed them to perform my demands as much as they needed me to press a button.

The months progressed and the words and fake pages and letters and commas and glorious hyphens – I do so like hyphens – stacked up. They still all seemed perfect, all so lovingly crafted – art no less! A picture paints a thousand words, with 2000 words I can make two pictures and my word count was going up. I'd wipe the smile of that conceited little Mona Lisa, she'd be on her way to Edvard Munch.

Then it came to today, a nine month process. I wake up eager to read over my work, my creation. I caress the first few lines tenderly with my eyes. I am the proud father and the mother – this was the asexual reproduction of authorship. Then, paragraph two, three, four – marvellous, beautiful everyone of them. Then, I felt lost. Where was I going, where was the plot, what on earth was I thinking. Still born. It was dead on the monitor, lifeless. It would soon be consigned to the recycle bin with all the other concept shaped fetuses.

Back to the drawing board.

Open letter to a Mr Samuel Coleridge

Dear Mr Coleridge,

I am writing this letter to express my distaste at the sentiments shown by you regarding the shooting of albatrosses in your poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". In my opinion, these unsightly beasts not only deserve to, but should be shot upon first sight if possible. I ask you Mr Coleridge have you ever taken the time to look one of these filthy animals in the eye? If you had, I feel sure you would experience the same sense of utter, unparalleled disgust as I do upon looking upon them as they waft their fetid stench of fish and miles and miles of sea upon me. These creatures taunt us, Mr Coleridge, and for this treachery deserve to be treated no better than a repugnant cancer upon the ocean. They must be expunged from our memories, their skeletons exhumed and cast into the fiery pits of hell.

Also I wish to prove to you that the shooting of these grotesque harpies of the Pacific is not in fact bad luck. When I was but a small child my father shot such an animal, all that year I achieved good grades in Geography class. Admittedly I had a penchant for geography before the shooting of said bird, yet my point still stands. Furthermore my wife accepted my proposal of marriage after I displayed my brute strength by shooting an albatross from out cliff top house.

In addition to a public retraction of your statements on albatross shooting I also wish you to make necessary revisions to "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". However since you are hundreds of years dead I have made the required changes myself.

The poem reads the same up until the shooting incident, which now reads thus:

`God save thee, ancient Mariner !
From the fiends, that plague thee thus !--
Why look'st thou so ?'--With my cross-bow
I shot the ALBATROSS.

The rest of the journey fared well.

THE END

I care not if these amendments please you. If you wished me to take your opinions into account you should not have published such frankly disgusting views on albatross preservation.

Yours furiously

Dr. Albert Fulmar

Not entirely serious fiction (a reprise)

The return of Not Entirely Serious Fiction

Miss Helena Kensington reclined in her garden lounger. It was a rainy day but Miss Kensington had, as she put it, "bought the bloody thing," so she was going to "fucking well use it".

Next door Lord Walthamstow peered over his fence. He had been pruning his bushes, but whilst under the influence of LSD had pruned them to mere stumps. He spied Miss Kensington in her lounger; something about her struck him as different to the morning, when he had watched her putting her clothes on using binoculars – a radical method of dressing but she preferred it to any other.

He suddenly realised what it was:

"Miss Kensington!" he exclaimed "You do appear to be covered in lizards!"

"What utter nonsense," dismissed Miss Kensington "have you been at the LSD again?" She enquired sternly, as a gecko playfully scuttled along her forehead.

Yet Lord Walthamstow was insistent. As they debated the matter, several assorted skinks and a small Gila monster, perturbed by the rain, sought shelter beneath the lounger.

The joy of not entirely serious fiction

Kate strolled in from the garden. She had been out there for several days and the family had been beginning to worry, but Cranbrook didn't fear for her, he remembered the summer of '74, most of which had been spent in a deck chair.

"I trust you have not begun to moulder again m'lady" he enquired.

"What?" Kate enquired as if in a dream

"You've been in the garden again, ma'am"

"Really?! Again, I really must reign myself in, I hardly even noticed"

"Well its always the way of these things, you remember your uncle Ernest don't you?"

"Yes…did they ever find him?"

"Yes, after six months watering the plants we got suspicious as to his whereabouts, it turns out he was underneath the petunias…we decided it was best not to uproot him…"

"Poor man, such a waste of a CBE"

The idle chatter continued for some time before Cranbrook busied himself ironing plant life, he did so like the stain a freshly ironed pansy made on his JML ironing board cover.

Some hours later the respectable Mr William Tottering arrived at the house.

"Yes?" Said Cranbrook answering the door, "Ah Mr Tottering! Do come in"

"Thank you, Cranbrook." Said Mr Tottering politely.

"Kate is in the back room, do go through"

Mr Tottering proceeded through. The back room of the house was unsurprisingly at the back. However in the 1600s it had been the front room, until parliament decided south was north and vice versa, at which point it became the back room. When he reached the back room Kate was stabbing a mattress.

"Kate?" Mr Tottering enquired.

"Oh! Do excuse me Mr Tottering, I was stabbing a mattress." Apologised Kate

"Not a problem, miss. But your downward action leaves a little to be desired"

"Some guidance would be much appreciated"

"I would be delighted" Said Mr Tottering.

He walked towards Kate and the mattress. He took her stabbing arm in his thin insect-like arm and gripped the screwdriver. Together they slowly moved the screwdriver into the mattress. The bedding gave way to their combined might. The achievement filled their souls with joy and they collapsed into each others arms.

"Kate my dear…" said Mr Tottering nervously

"yes?" she enquired in a fearful tone

"I have something to tell you…"

"what, my love?"

"I'm afraid…I'm a Praying Mantis."

"I know William, I know…somehow…I've always known."

"Then are you comfortable with having a litter of mantis-babies"

"William, darling, my love for you spreads beyond boundaries set out by Darwin, I would love you were you a squid or even Welsh!"

"I am truly unworthy!" Gasped William, choking back tears

Geographically incorrect writing

Wild stallions galloped across the expansive and possibly totally fictional plains of Scandanavia. They dashed and swerved like a swarm of agitated birds, as if for the sheer enjoyment of man.

Man however was not paying attention at this particular time, man turned to his son, Bjorn Mansson.

"Son, you are nearing your 11th birthday, aren't you?"
"No" replied young Bjorn.
"Well it is time you began to learn your father's trade." Said Man, having not listened to his son's response.
"What would you like me to do, father?" Enquired Bjorn nervously
"Return to the house and fetch my tools, and the booklet entitled 'The Government of Scandanavia's guide to Fatherhood.'"
"Yes father."

Bjorn rushed back to the house. He was full of apprehension, yet he was excited, he would soon be a man.

Meanwhile, Man had noticed that the stallions had ceased their galloping and formed a union. Man filled his time penning a letter of complaint to the government regarding the newly formed G.S.G (Galloping Stallions' Guild). After an hour of letter writing Bjorn returned with the required tools and helpful booklet.

Man perused the booklet for some time. He read much useful information such as "Your children most likely have an allergy to band saws, they may start leaking a red liquid. Under no circumstances attempt to make this into a beverage.". Out of the corner of his eye, Man noticed that the angry stallions had formed a blockade around the only post box for 10 miles. He was enraged that he would not be able to post his initial complaint letter, so enraged that he scrawled another hasty note about his anger at not being able to post either of his letters.

After many minutes Bjorn coughed politely, Man looked up from the helpful booklet. Thankfully he had just read the section on boredom and so was able to administer the correct treatment to his son. The Heimlich manoeuvre – repeatedly. Sure enough, after 13 administrations of this useful manoeuvre, Bjorn was not bored.

After several more hours looking at the helpful booklet, Man was prepared. He stood up, straightened his clothes. Bjorn perceived there was much gravity attached to what man was about to say.

"Today, my son…" Began Man.
"Yes, father?"
"I am going to teach you…" Said Man pausing for effect "How to craft Kinder egg toys."

END!

Opener/introduction

Good evening,

My name is (or isn't)
Howard A. Catswell.

This, my inaugural blog, is simply an introduction. I am the author of many a non-acclaimed work of short fiction. Previously these have been located in another place in cyberspace, but i have decided to amalgamate them into one website designed for their storage.

So I shall post what I consider to be the highlights of my lengthy (non-existant) career in writing.

Goodnight - don't have nightmares.