Silly America. It’s said I can become a citizen! Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of my life. My naturalization ceremony will take place at a mystery date in the next 2-3 months and, alongside 6000 other furners in a sports arena, all of us huddled together – huddled, one might almost say like some sort of a mass yearning to be free, although equally one might not – I will pledge allegiance to the Flag and vow to punch anyone being mean about the Constitution.

I’m looking forward to it. I’ve long been in love with the founding principles of this country. True, the Founding Fathers were flawed, some of them deeply so, especially with respect to slavery, but together they came up with a brilliant groundbreaking document filled with truly enlightened convictions on how their new Republic should be set up to guarantee people the right to liberty and self-determination. Their ideas were noble and good and as much as we fail (and they failed) to live up to them, the ideas themselves continue to be excellent anchors to principles and precepts not quite yet lost. I don’t think “America is the best country in the world” or any such ridiculous statement, but I do sign on to its ideals, however remote we may seem to be from them at times.

Mostly, I want to be a citizen because I want to vote, and have a voice in the country my children are growing up in. I want them to see me vote and for them to go on and become voters who will beget voters who will beget more voters and then that’s it, because that’s as far as my mind will beget at the moment.

Despite being required by the US to renounce my allegiance to all other countries, I will be continue to be British too because officially all Britons are subjects of the Crown. I could renounce Britain until I’m star-spangled in the face but apparantly Queenie doesn’t recognise my renunciation. She just doesn’t, that’s all. She probably wakes up on an average morning to her private secretary saying “Another couple of renouncers today, Ma’am”, and I expect she doesn’t miss a beat while uncurling her rollers and trilling “Well, it’s a jolly good thing I don’t recognise that sort of thing then, Fortescue, isn’t it? Now do pass the royal boiled egg, won’t you, I am hungrier than a bleedin’ mofo this morning”.

And continues with her day.

Being a subject doesn’t bother me as much as some people think it ought to. I know that ideologically it’s pretty crap and everything but, as it doesn’t mean much at all in practical terms, I can’t get that exercised about it. The royals only cost us 40p each a year and I’m pretty sure most of us have that kicking about down the sides of our sofas. And besides, it’s not their fault they were born royal. It looks like a pretty crappy life, really, with all that duty and precedent and protocol and having to show up to places you really can’t be arsed showing up to:

“But, Beh-ttieee, I just fancied a quiet night in with Eastenders and a spot of Glenmorangie!”

“Phillip, you know perfectly well you have to go and present a silver plunger to the retiring head of the Welsh Plumber’s Assn. this evening!” (The queen can actually say Assn, like that. They train her to say that stuff. Actually they train her to say thet stuff, but thet’s neither here nor there.)

“Look, I can’t go, can I?” the Queen will probably continue. “I have to be at the Barnstaple community-run eco-supermarket-opening by six, and then these bloody Blairs are coming over for a while. After thet I have to get to bed early because we’re orf to Fife first thing to tour a trifle-sponge-making fectory.”

“But what’s the bally point in being the Queen if you can’t decide to take a day orf?”

“Dyootay, Phillip, dyootay. Now go and take thet negligee orf, the car will be here any minute. You will try not to insult anyone tonight, Phlippers, won’t you? The papers are saying that the people are fond enough me and Anne but think the rest of you are a waste of space and money. “An appalling old anachronism” I think the Telegraph called you the other day. The Telegraph!”

That conversation must happen …ooooooh… ’bout every-other-nightly, I’d say, down the palace.

Really and honestly, I’m kind of glad I’ll still be a Brit. because it would be strange indeed to think of th’ould sod as foreign. Dual nationality is a pretty cool thing though, and without being able to have it I reckon I’d have had to think a lot longer and harder about becoming an American citizen. All in all, if being a subject is all I have to do to hang onto my British citizenship then it’s all right by me. So foot in both camps straddling the pond and trying not to let Iceland see my metaphorical knickers – that’s for me.

~oOo~

Haven’t been posting much lately on account of being a bit busy. Plus in the evenings the Olympics are on and there are all sorts of incredible bouding and leaping and running and flying bodies to watch. I have a mounting stack of books I want to read too. Blogging eats up reading time like anti-matter swallows galaxies – with a terrifying, all-consuming indifference to the rest of life and a great rip in the Book-Time continuum.

If I’m not around commenting for a few days here and there, don’t think it’s because I don’t love all your lovely selves and your fine blogs. One good blog-pal has emailed to make sure I’m not avoiding them and I feel horrible to have given them that impression because I swear there’s nothing personal in my visiting patterns. The nature of some blogs has me save them up for when I’ve got the time to sit down for an extended read, savour them and do them justice. Others are more suited to those times when you have short 10 minute intervals here and there to pop in and out during the day during those times the children don’t seem to need much raising other than telling them not to do that to daddy’s iPod again.

I’m really sorry if I’ve made anyone else think I was going cool on them. I promise that’s not the case. If you’re on my sidebar I love you, and a whole other bunch of blogs besides. Blogging’s a time-gobbler though and so for a week or so I’m gonna just watch the Olympics and read the things I’ve been meaning to read. I’ll prolly be around, just a lil’ bitty less for a lil’ bitty while, is all.

PS. Is there anyone who believes the Chinese women’s gymnastics team are all 16 or over? The telly tells me they are 16 and it says so on all their documents but my eyes are screaming “No blimmin way, Pedro! That wee one’s got to be 12 at the very, very absolutest of mosts!”

Nobody likes a smirker.

In the town of Stornoway, at the turn of the 20th century, there were two men well known for their smirking. One, Smirky Smith (45) had a congenital condition called rigor smirkus which caused his facial muscles to sieze up into an infuriating smirk at unpredictable moments, much vexing his neighbours. Stress aggravated the poor man’s affliction and not being able to trust his facial expressions made social situations tortuous, and not in an even slightly sexy way.

The other smirker was a mere arsehole, and by mere, I mean utter. He was the local councillor for the powerful Seaforth Ward and was feared mainly for his ruthless smirk, and his “I know something about the municipal sewer system you don’t” smirk although he had many other kinds. He had pretensions up the skatoolumshinopterops (local euphemism for the bottom), fancied himself a wag and was the sort of fellow who, upon hearing about a devastating monsoon in Bangladesh, would send the Red Cross an umbrella, barely able to conceal his cleverness at the Post-Office and completely unable to conceal it later at the pub. An arsehole then. His name was Hugh Jorgan (42), and he was.

Even in the year 2000, there were many in Stornoway who didn’t believe in congenital conditions, only character flaws and punishments from God. Smirky Smith was deemed to be a puzzle. He was also deemed to be a butcher and one and half of these things was right. He was known far and wide as a fellow generous with his time and money, always the first to help a neighbour or do some kind service for some-kind-service-needer. But except for a few understanding old ladies, people couldn’t understand why he so often also appeared to be a prick.

In the shop, while he would give all his regular customers an extra sausage in their packets, sometimes his face would twitch into a knowing smirk right at the worst moment.

“Extra sausage in there for you this week” he would wink with a kind smile to poor Mrs. Matheson whose husband had run away with all her money and a freckled prawn-packer from Balallan, “I’m sure you can use it.”

But right then his kind smile would contort into a salaciously knowing smirk and Mrs. Matheson would get it all wrong about the sausage and declare “Oh! Oh! Did you hear that Mrs. MacLeod? I’ve never heard such impertinence in my life” and beat him about the head with her handbag. Sometimes other shoppers would join in.

Incidents of this nature happened about once a week. Not enough to put housewives off his delicious meaty vittles, which were the best in town, but just enough to make them wary of his sudden, disconcerting smirks.

As you might imagine, Smirky Smith was a lonely, unhappy man. Hugh Jorgan on the other hand never met a person he didn’t feel he could be smug and supercillious to. His smirks weren’t the comic or impishly charming smirks of the incidental smirker. Hugh Jorgan’s smirks were all about power. They were designed to put people in their place – to show who was the smartest at the table, to mark himself as the urbane fellow who knew the system because he kept the system in his pocket.

The odd thing, considering the size of the town, was that the two had never met. One day they did. It was at the annual regatta on the harbour. The weather was foul. Rain lashed the beshorted’n'tee-shirted islanders on their purple and white variegated legs, and wind whipped puffs of their candy-flosses into the hair of other people too cheap to buy their own which was dead unfair. But despite the thunder and occasional lightening, people were having fun. And the Bonny Baby contest was just about to be decided! Look!

Traditionally a butcher judged this event, having an eye for a good healthy hock and experience in identifying a superior breeding line. This year it was Smirky Smith’s turn and he was dreading it. What if he smirked when announcing the winner? What if it looked like he thought the island’s bonniest baby, the very bonniest it could manage, was really a little goblin? How upset would the parents be? How enraged the crowd? he thought as mounted the outdoor stage and walked up and down the row of dribbly little humans sitting on their beaming mammy’s laps. He made his selection, a fat, jovial little bubble-blower from Ranish, the one with the least snotty summer cold.

Hugh Jorgan, also sitting up on the stage behind a table full of trophies was the local dignitary selected to present the prizes this year. He sat there in full-on self-satisfied smirk, puffed with his celebrity and the thrill it was sending through the proles. A thrill that didn’t in fact exist, even in a parallel universe. Rather, in all other possible parallel universes, and even the impossible ones, the crowd was as one brain in thinking “God, would you look at that smirking bastard up there all smug and condescending. Why I’d like to…!” And there they split off from one another in a babble of preferred come-uppances for their councillor.

The time came for Smirky to announce the winner. Trembling he approached the microphone. The crowd hushed in anticipation, and, as if this were some sort of made-up story and not the absolute Gospel truth, even the rain and wind seemed to calm momentarily. For a minute he stood there, swaying, facing the upturned faces like a pinata who knows the beating he was born for was about to begin. He removed his cap and ran his fingers through barely there hair, staring into his cap as if it contained the answers to all his questions. He looked up.

“The, uh, th…” (Oh God, the dreadful twitching was starting) “…the winner …” (Oh please God, no! Don’t let me smirk, please don’t let me smirk!) “um… of this year’s bonny baby competition…” (Oh no! Here it comes! No no no!) “is…”

But Smirky never did get to say who had won, for at that moment the heavy heavens cracked open and righteous fire from God’s own finger* struck the mercury amalgam fillings in the head of one of the mammies on the slick, wet stage, sending heaps and heaps of volts through everyone on it. The crowd screamed or bellowed according to their voice-ranges and relative level of operatic training. The figures on the stage, jumped and jiggled and all their skeletons glowed bluely through their bodies. Percy Veerence, stoic and father of 7, just had time to notice with a groan another tiny skeleton sucking its tiny bony thumb, deep in his wife’s pelvis, as she and # 7 jerked up and down the stage.

And then it was all over. God put his finger away, zipped up the low-slung heavens and the people on the stage collapsed like charmed cobras might if a sudden snake-charmer strike with immediate effect had been announced.

Nobody on the stage that day died but some formerly straight-haired people weren’t any more. The same thing could be said of the straight-laced people whose morals suddenly went all curly. But something much more remarkable happened. For on that wonderful day Smirky Smith lost the smirk tht had plagued him his whole life, and Hugh Jorgan lost the smirk that had supported his ego.

Hugh experienced a catastrophic loss in confidence without his smirk, resigned abruptly from public life and slowly but surely, through means of a Deepak Chopra Audio lecture on DVD and a high-fibre diet, rediscovered the lovely person underneath the arrogant bastard.

Smirky Smith was never to lose his nickname but, now, finally able to control his facial muscles, he quickly became a beloved figure in the town, married a woman with a skellie eye and a twinkle in it, and lived pleasant-facedly ever after, out from under the shadow of the Vale of Tears And Smirks.

*Or lightning.
The End

Short One Act Play, by Sam, Problemchildbride.

Girl: Ever get unaccountably sad?

Boy: Sure I do, we all do.

Girl: Which is worse, do you think? Unaccountable sadness or sadness for a reason?

Boy: Who cares? Cheer up, you miserable bint!

THE END

*

Late Night Arts Show Commentary on Short One Act Play.

Knowledgable Theatre Critic In Black Polo Neck In Dark Studio Making Him Look Like Just A Head: Hmmnyes mmnyes. I see. Mnyesyesyesyes. An interesting treatment of an age-old puzzle in PCB’s newest play. I like the way Sam has voiced a pointless question and then very cleverly failed to answer it. That’s a very post-meta-ist thing to do, and although it’s an incredibly easy and mindless technique, that only adds to its post-metaism. In addition she has trivialised the whole question of despair using the common enough trope of forced incongruous humour. This is an old trick but in juxtaposing the old with the ultra modern post-metaism she is, I feel, commenting on society today in the larger sense of its meaninglessness.

Interviewer: You don’t think she’s just writing down any old crap and seeing where it ends up then, do you?

Knowledgable Theatre Critic In Black Polo Neck: Aha, well, you see, lack of thought in plays is the newest thing, the very newest, darling. She’s being extraordinarily brave and avant-garde, I feel. Clearly, Tom Stoppard, or anyone with any real clue about the theater would think it was rubbish, but being rubbish is not the point, you see. Indeed it is hardly ever the point. This is exactly the sort of cutting edge tripe work that keeps people in black polo necks like me in a job. I think she’s marvellous and I shall be saying so tomorrow in my highly influential newspaper column.

Interviewer: Uh-huh. Do you not see any irony in the fact that this commentary has already gone on longer than the actual play?

Knowledgable Theatre Critic In Black Polo Neck: My dear fellow, I could go on all night in this grating tone of voice.

Suddenly Grey and Defeated Looking Interviewer: Some might say she just couldn’t think of a post tonight and was a bit gloomy for no real reason so she desultoraly typed out something unutterably stupid.

Smirking Knowledgable Theatre Critic In Black Polo Neck: Well, you see, that’s where you need me. To explain to you why you’re wrong on almost every point, and to make you and all your viewers feel stupid and inferior, sitting at home on their inelegant sofas with their high-street garments and not getting the high, high pop art that Sam has accomplished here.

Interviewer, Pinching Bridge Of Nose: You mean she was on some sort of illegal drugs when she penned this.

Knowledgable Theatre Critic In Black Polo Neck: No, if you look at Sam’s past interviews you’ll notice she has always regretted not taking nearly enough illegal drugs.

Interviewer, Emboldening: I would submit that, after this…frankly disappointing effort, she probably needs a little something to raise her standard of work a little.

Knowledgable Theatre Critic In Black Polo Neck: If by frankly disappointing effort you mean the crowning achievement of her blog and nascent theeyater career, then I concur.

(Interviewer stares at Knowledgable Theatre Critic In Black Polo Neck for some time).

Sombre Interviewer Turning To Camera: That appears to be all the time we have for this topic. Thank you so much, Mr. Knowledgable Critic, for your illuminating insights… Now, after the break we will be speaking to Ms. Diaphonous Scarves In Her Hair about some other idiot thing or other… my God! Is this what I got my English pHD for? To nod mindlessly at complete wankers every night in an ill-lit room? Why are we sitting in a black room, anyway? And where do they find these ridiculous people? And what the hell was that bloody awful Short One Act Play all about anyway, eh? I’ll tell you what – nothing, that’s what, nothing.

(Begins to unmike, continues to rage)

I mean, I’m seriously losing the will to live here talking about this desperately Godawful cra…

(Screen goes to commercial advertisements for the people at home… On set, the studio producer burst out crying and orders the assistant studio producer to go and fire that bastard host immediately for messing up his one big chance to actually, finally, produce (produce!), to prove himself capable of doing grown up serious programming. Who’s going to hire him now, after this debacle? the studio producer demands to know. Who?? he sobs. He slumps down heavily on his producer’s stool, certain that it’s back to bloody children’s programming for him.)

It’s not easy to be a male ballet-dancer in the Hebrides. It’s not easy being green either, as unlucky holidaymakers coming off the Ullapool ferry will liverishly attest, but it’s not worse than being a male ballet dancer.

Not long ago there were two. Michael Barry-Ishnick of Callanish, and a slight lad from Luskentyre with dark and beautiful eyes who at age 9 had run away from the beatings to Moscow, never to be seen again.

Fortunately for Michael he was built like Bruto and, at just 14, already had a full muftie beard springing from his face like shiny, black scribbles with a Sharpie. Noone messed with him, even when he did his barre exercises against the 5-bar-gate to his croft or practised jet?-turns along the road, the only flat surface around where he had room to really leap. No one would think of teasing such a boy-giant who, at 220lbs, could dance en-pointe without blocks as if he were the springiest of sprongy dik-diks. With toes as strong as that, potential mockers could only wonder how strong his other bits were. Nobody wanted to find out.

Michael’s parents, fearing the cruel taunts of his friends, and more importantly, of theirs, had tried to steer their son into football and rugby, and even, in desperation, into golf. But he had declared them all “sissy sports”, which required not a tenth of the discipline and strength of a ballet dancer, and he would not be turned from his beloved hobby.

Michael’s mother, Clara Barry, an Irish woman from Ballyshoo who had got herself into trouble with a Swan Loch boy one Christmas Eve when the moon was as high as they were, couldn’t think where he got it from. Oh, she’d craved Pavlova when she was carrying him but that by itself couldn’t do it, surely. Anyway, she had craved toad-in-the-hole with Catriona but at six, Catriona had shown no signs of a herpetological bent and had decapitated her rubber Kermit with a pair of safety scissors.

Michael at six years old already had a technically flawless soubresaut, which, he would patiently explain to people, was a “sudden leap”. By 7 he had started experimenting with satsumas and a pair of his mothers pilfered tights.

Michael’s father, Callanish’s only policeman, Colin Ishnick, was a no-nonsense sort of a fellow. He was good man but his son’s love of ballet was alien and bewildering to him. Although secretly in awe of his son’s dancing ability, a part of him couldn’t forget that all the other guys’ teenage sons spent their free time on more traditional things like footie or drinking liquor til they had to go to hospital. He just wanted the same problems his friends had with their kids. He didn’t want to be different.

That last summer, Clara and Colin would often sit in the evenings by the fire, cracking nuts and watching, puzzled, from the window as their son practiced for his imminent entrance exam to the Royal Academy of Dance in Edinburgh: performing here an exquisite arabesque by the washing-line, or there a heartfelt pli? by the wheelie bin.

One August night they were watching in silence as Michael posy-turning like a dervish across the lawn, each of them lost in their own thoughts. Dusk was falling in the garden and, suddenly, in the gloaming, they saw their son as if for the first time. As he did the splits by the peonies his torso looked strong and statuesque but in a second he was up and bounding across the garden with such improbable agility and grace that Clara found herself puttin aside her nutcracker, and Colin his sweets. Unaware of themselves Michael’s parents got up and moved as one to the window.

How could he do that? How could he make it seem like an orchestra was playing, rather than just the old clock ticking on the mantlepiece? Is he not bound by gravity like the rest of us? He really looked as if he might break clear of it and take flight at any minute. It was as if he were dancing on the cusp of weightlessness.

For half an hour or more, they stood by the window and watched him as the shadows lengthened and the day died. He looks like a poem out there, thought his father, a curious sensation bubbling in his throat. Never before had the policeman seen such unbounded beauty and he knew that this was as close as a mortal could get to finding out what pure spirit looks like; what hope might look like.

Finally, the light got too dim outside to see Michael beyon the reflection of their sitting-room on the windowpane. As they turned to the fire, both their faces were wet with tears, aching with the beauty their son had dazzled them with. Never had they been more proud, never had they loved their son more than this moment. They wanted all their friends to see him, and know how extraordinary he was! O, why hadn’t they encouraged their child? Why had they turned away, embarrassed when he begged to show them his latest perfected step? How could they have let him down like that? Well things would be different now. The first thing they would do when he came in do would be to tell their son for the very first time how proud they were of him and his ballet!

They never saw the meteor hit. They heard only a sound like a shotgun in the garden. The crater was six-feet round and about as deep, and so it was decided that he would be buried right there where he died, dancing. And that’s the end. They were all horribly devastated, obviously, but there’s nothing really else to say, except that Catriona, through a series of career mishaps and one embarrassing social disease, became a herpetologist after all, by mistake.

Lame way to finish a story? A meteor hit him to death, the end? Well take it up with Life. Life’s always shearing narrative arcs off, leaving high, jaggedy, pointless points to rip your trousers if you are a tall person or your shirt if you’re short. If Life can do it, so can I.

The End.

WTFittyF? I’m going to hate this story in the morning, and it won’t respect me either.
You’re right, I have. 3 large glasses of something red whose name I can’t remember but it had a comical long-legged cat on the label. Pleasantly sleepy now, eyes closing. Night night, world wide web. Sleep tight.

I had a mole removed today by the way. I smelled what cooked me would smell like. I’d need some garlic, of course, but i reckon I’d be OK for a mid-week dinner with some new potatoes and a crisp salad.

Howlpants Sheeppoke, the Hallucinating Shepherd of Brue never meant to hurt anyone that October day so it was with dismay that he sat on the high hillside and watched the village explode and burn. He took no pleasure whatsoever in seeing Mrs. MacCuish from the Post Office flung 30 feet in the air in a slow elegant arc, even though a small part of him thrilled to the naughty semantic thought of her being hoisted on his petard. As a boy in the shop with his mother, he’d always taken a secret pleasure in being pressed in fond envelopment to Mrs. MacCuish’s suffocating bosom, with the sure certainty of a lollipop to follow. He hated to see her looking so floppy and flying.

Oh, he knew he hallucinated, he knew as well as anybody. The gentle rattle from the pill-bottle in his pocket usually soothed him, but looking at old burning Mr. Jamieson racing towards the duckpond, his clothes all aflame, the tinkle seemed to be mocking him. You shouldn’t have forgotten us on Tuesday…shouldn’t have forgotten us on Tuesday…Tuesday…Tuesday… they seemed to say.

But when exactly did the hallucination begin that day, and when did it end? Howlpants Sheeppoke, the Hallucinating Shepherd of Brue, could not be sure. Was he still hallucinating now, even nasally, as the smell of burning chaos drifted up the hill to his nostrils?

He was pretty sure now he had been hallucinating when he tore into the village shop screaming “The clouds! The clouds have fangs! Look everybody! See how their abominable maws are slavering with rain! They mean to fang US! Fang us to death! Hide! Throw tins of soup! Anything! Don’t just stand there gawking! O rainy, unhappy day of the fanged clouds! Who will help me throw things at them? Who will listen to me?”

The people had stared of course, they usually did, before saying to each other “Oh that’s just young Howlpants Sheeppoke, he’s an hallucinating shepherd, you know. Don’t pay him any mind. Nice lad really” Then gradually they’d gone back to the usual things of stacking the shelves, chatting by the eggs, doing some minor shoplifting.

Mr. MacKenzie was looking at the birthday card for their son Calum that Mrs. MacKenzie was showing him.

“Oh I don’t know, The Transformers? I mean he is turning 21, Effie.”

“Don’t be silly!” bustled Mrs. Mackenzie. “He loves technology and things of that sort. I think it’s Calumy, very Calumy.”

And that’s what had gone wrong. As she said “It’s Calumy, very Calumy” she chanced to look up and straight into the dilated pupils of Howlpants, now sitting quietly on the ice-cream freezer and eating scratch-cards.

Howlpants Sheeppoke heard nothing at all about a beloved son. What he heard was, “Calumny, very calumny,” and a gear snapped back into place in his head, the fan-belt engaged again and started up blowing hot winds of sulphurous rage over his throbbing, hurty brain.

For if there was one thing that everyone knew that Howlpants hated, it was to be called a calumnist. On less insane days, he knew that technically some of his Cassandra-like proclamations in the shop about man-eating Glaswegians coming over the hill, and all the tractors suddenly melting, thawing and resolving themselves into a dew, were not true, but, he had maintained at the emergency meeting last year – as had his doctor and indeed most of the village, except the minister – that because the hallucinations were true to him, he could not be called a liar. He would not be called a liar. The last person to call him one, he’d beaten so badly she couldn’t go to play-school for a month.

But, and also yet, here was someone looking him straight in the eye and saying “Calumny, very calumny” (albeit a bit archaically – but wasn’t that Shakespeare dude really popular, right now? Hadn’t the Barvas Players just done “As You Like It” in Shawbost? This woman had obviously picked up Elizabethan speech patterns and was using them to fling the stinging insult at him from her lair, by the greetings cards.) He could not stand for it. His brain kicked up another gear and with a fury that knocked the crisps-rack clear 10 feet across the shop, he leapt to his feet and attempted to strangle Mrs. MacKenzie.

Mr. MacKenzie paused only very slightly before rushing to his wife’s aid. He pried the mad shepherd’s fingers away from the purpling neck of his semi-beloved and was lucky to sustain only a broken coccyx when Howlpants’s rage-fortified strength lobbed him backwards into the washing powder.

Howlpants flung his head backwards, his neck ropey with fury, and screamed at the ceiling tiles “Calumny? Calumny, is it?” Then seizing the basket of Halloween rockets by the counter and a Zippo from the window display he roared out of the shop as suddenly as he’d entered it, leaving the shocked shoppers to attend to the whimpering MacKenzies.

All through Brue phones rang and the word spread rapidly that Howlpants Sheeppoke had really lost it this time. The village went eerily quiet. By and by, one by one, people started coming out of their doors to see what was happening. The first ones to do so were also the first to see the rockets go off as Howlpants clambered to the top of the statue of The Unknown Crofter at the crossroads, laughing maniacally and howling “Calumny nononononononononohahahahahahaha!”

The rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air – it’s an old story but never was it played out so multicolouredly as it was at Brue. Howlpants had been everywhere with his fireworks. The barns exploded, the library van, the church, the holiday cottages, the Post Office and the Whaler’s Rest. But not the school. Not the school.

And how beautiful it all was, thought Howlpants Sheeppoke from up on his hill. If you could ignore for a minute the flying cows and people, and the annoying screams of anguish, how beautiful to see the pub explode into green and red like that, the church into blue and gold! And suddenly, Howlpants was not sorry any more. Not sorry at all.

*

Not long after the sound of the explosions and burning Hebrideans had subsided, Flossie, Howlpants’s favourite sheep, wondered over and licked him absently with her rough tongue. He came to groggily, sat up and gazed down at the peaceful green village beneath him. He saw Mrs. MacCuish wave goodbye to the post-van from town, and there was Mrs. MacKenzie hanging out her washing. He lay back on the soft mossy grass, closed his eyes and smiled. It had all just been a beautiful dream.

When he opened his eyes again, it was raining and a grinning fanged cloud leered down at him as it descended upon the hill, shrouding it, and muffling all noise…

There isn’t much I could tell you about the sex lives of the Free Church elders that wouldn’t make you scream and cut your ears off with a circular saw. I could write it here but, if the countless people worldwide that read this blog were suddenly all to gouge their eyes out with grapefruit spoons on the same day, questions would be asked, and answers would be given and pretty soon word would get back to the elders about my suggesting they have sex-lives. Then they would tell God and I wouldn’t get into Heaven. I’m not risking eternal damnation for you lot, so instead I’ll tell you that pipistrel bats are active in and around Stornoway.

The splendid K8 tagged me for a meme about Pet Peeves. I did a meme right at the start of my blogging life. It was pretty across-the-board and has covered a lot of memes I’ve been tagged with since, so sometimes I don’t do them if it seems like I’ve written something similar before. I put the first one on my About Me page, up yonder. That meme already says more than anyone would care to know about a California housewife, but I haven’t memed in yonks so tonight, my little interwebblies, I meme! The better part of a bottle of mellowing Chianti in me wants a nice easy post but it might backfire because of the mellowing part which is causing me to not feel all that angry at the mome. Ah well, I’m sure I can summon up a thundercloud.

This meme’s about Peeves. Here are the rules:

The Rules

1. List two things that irritate you for a reason (and list the reason!), and two things that irritate you for no apparent reason whatsoever!!
2. Give credit to the person who tagged you.
3. Link your answers to the original blog
4. Tag four new people to participate.

OK.

Two things that irritate me for a reason.

- Bold washing powder. Because I am allergic to it.

- I hate with a fury what passes for news broadcasts in America today. We have no evening news broadcasts, we have evening magazine shows masquerading as news. Lazy, sensationalized, mawkish, and mediocre, I could go on and on all night about this most peevish peeve of mine. I suspect that too many of us feel the same way though so I won’t meme about the actual, pathetic shows. Instead I’ll meme about a side peeve: the cheap, sensationalist, and often fear-mongering hooks both the local and national newscasts dangle in the early evening to lure or scare us into watching the 10pm news:

- “A Southland tire manufacturer announces serious flaws in one type of tire – tune in to tonight’s broadcast to see if your family’s at risk!” It’s not the news’s job to tease you with the news! They’re supposed to report it, aren’t they? To inform the populace. And even when they’re not hanging possible peril over your heads til 10pm so you can’t enjoy anything in the meantime, there they are again, during the commercials, appealing to our vanity, our stupidity, our inanity and the basement level of our natures to get us to tune in:

- “Which summer cocktail packs the most calories? You may be surprised!”

- “An LA madame publishes her memoirs! Tune into see which prominent politicians, stars and CEOs are named in the book!”

- “344 people sickened as a popular food item tests positive for salmonella! Find out at 10pm what you need to know now to protect your health!”

Two things that irritate me for no reason.

- People. Other people are the most enraging irritants on earth. Nothing irritates a person more than another person. We can’t help it, it’s normal. Unless you have twin souls, chances are there’s not a person on this earth who couldn’t irritate you eventually, especially even your loved ones. We make friends with only those people whose little irritating aspects we can get over because what might be annoying is far outweighed by what’s really cool.

I put People in the No Reason bit because sometimes there just isn’t a reason. And even when there is, people often have a hard time determining if they are irritated by another person because the other person is an arsehole, or because they themselves are arseholes. Sometimes it never even occurs to people to check that; it never registers that he or she might be the asshole, even the biggest asshole of all!

Assholes are tied with The Well-Meaning in terms of potential irritation but, for my devalued dollar, the most irritating people for no real reason other than they are assholes, are the assholes. Unaccountably, assholes really get on my nerves. And asshats. (Assholes are worse than arseholes – try saying asshole and arsehole out loud and you’ll soon see who’s the dickiest.)

- The colour salmon-pink on anything other than a salmon.

- Oooh. And young men who wear bow-ties in lieu of a personality. Again, why that should bother me I don’t know – perhaps I’m an asshole. I’m sure they’re probably OK really, but I can’t get over the fact that I don’t really think they are.

2. Gr8 K8 linked me and so I thank her for an easy post. You should thank her too that you’re not reading about owl-shame again.

3. Shout out to Skillet, the originator of this meme.

4. By a process of closing my eyes and pointing at my sidebar, I’ll link to Pat, Conan, Eolai, Dr. Maroon and anybody who wants to do it.

*

Bock the Robber has been doing a series of posts on the Andrew Hanlon case and asked me to spread the word about it on my blog. It’s a disturbing story about a young Irishman gunned down by police in Oregon. He was shot 7 times and it seems noone can say for sure why. The shooter is a cop who has been separately arraigned on charges of the sexual abuse of a young girl, but evidence suggests there may have been 3 shooters. Check out Bock’s series of posts on the case to learn more.

*

I got my citizenship test appointment! September 22nd. I don’t know how speedy things are from then to the citizenship ceremony but, with a bit of luck, I’ll be able to vote in this election after all!

*

Very proud of my wee bro. Last week he qualified to become a medic on the oil-rigs in the North Sea. Right now he’s on a platform-decommissioning support-vessel East of Orkney, somewhere out in the great briny. He thought he’d be right in there with the severed fingers and heart attacks right away but they were in an off-work week when he arrived. He called me, bored the other night, because he’d only had one case of Athlete’s Foot. He was all eager for a follow-up appointment, but the guy said he was going back to shore the following day. Bah, thought Wee Bro. I told him I would will a couple of mangled digits for him – just so he keeps his hand in, like. Lets all hope for at least a foreign-body in an eye, eh!

Things I have spilt in the last 72 hours.

1 x cup of tea on pile of freshly laundered towels

1/2 glass red wine on a blue dress.

1 large bowl of pennies, old keys and miscellaneous objets d’arse on the loud clangy floor.

1 jar of spaghetti sauce on garage floor when bottom gave out on crappy safeway plastic bag.

Unknown quantity of blood (possibly dangerous ammounts) by cutting finger on glass from smashed spaghetti jar.

But that’s fine. I can deal with spills and mopping up. What I mind with my whole head and bulging veins, is the Problem Husband telling people that I upset my teacup or my wine glass or anything else. No, I didn’t, soldier!!!! They bloody well upset me! Bloody holding vessels failing to do their holding jobs! No wonder the economy’s turning to shit. When you can’t even rely on your teacup it might be a sign that it’s time to sell up the homestead and move to the greenwood with a gun and your old Girl Guide survival handbook, wait the bally recession out until cups feel secure enough in their futures again to perform their tasks. I blame Cheney. He’s behind my ruined blue dress somehow. Anyone want to be Linda Tripp to my Monica? Impeach! Lets bring the government down!

Your tour guide here! Here we are at stop 221, a popular attraction: Phil, The Lonely Fly-Fisherman And His World-Famous Interesting Mutterings. Everyone off the bus!

Phil, the lonely fly fisherman is out fishing again, alone. Let us approach him quietly from behind so we might overhear his mutterings all the more sneakily.

The mutterings of a lonely fly-fisherman are among the most interesting in the world. Now you won’t read that in any book nor hear it from any statistician, but you can count on my word that it’s true, friends. Have I ever steered you wrong? Only a divorced single of mother of 6 living in a mid-priced suburb of Brasilia has the edge on the lonely fly fisherman for interesting mumblings, for she, also, has noone to talk to despite her large and clamorous family.

Right now, sshhoooooooosh! Softly, softly we approach the huddled figure at the loch’s edge. We’re in luck! He’s mumbling. Everybody crouch down behind that boulder there while I swing this fuzzy microphoned boom out over him. Let’s see if we can pick up some mumbles. OK folks, don your headphones!

Lonely Fly Fisherman: “Oh why did I lie that time to Miranda? It was always between us after that, besmirching her trust for me like a lollipop stain on a priest’s surplice. It was such a little thing too, I hardly know why I did it. Why oh why oh…
Wait! Was that a twitch on the water…?

(Silence for 83 seconds)

Why? Why did I have to tell her I was a dangerous and sexy maverick librarian who categorized his own way, the rules be damned? I guess I was desperate for her short-term love. But she saw it, saw the lie behind my eyes. She knew I’m not man enough to mess with the Dewey.

(Silence for 18 minutes.)

I wish I knew why soda bubbles only stream from certain points in the glass. There’s probably some very simple chemistry or physics behind it that I feel I should know about, as a reasonably well-educated man living and fly-fishing in the 21st century. I’m pretty sure there’s no biology behind it. I don’t think. Nah, no biology. Bubbles aren’t living things…although they do grow and move and reproduce… Goddammit! What’s the matter with you, man? Bubbles aren’t alive! I wouldn’t have to think these thoughts if I weren’t so awfully awfully lonely…!

(Phil sometimes has periods of crippling despair like this. Don’t be concerned though, they never last longer than a month or so at a time. And besides, when he’s cheery, he doesn’t come fishing and then we’re left with no stop 221. The mainland press, as I’m sure you’re aware, have tried to imply we’ve paid all his old friends not to talk to him anymore, just so we can cram another stop on the tour in, but there’s no truth in that. Ahahahahaha.)

Oh! Oh, I just thought of a joke! Which world capital has the most junked out automobiles in the world? Khartoum! Ahahahahahahahaha! Oh I must tell that to … to whom? I have noone. There is nobody to whom I can tell my joke… Oh for Chrissakes, why do I have to be so bloody grammatically correct all the time? I’m all by my bloomin’ self out here! Why am I so anal? Why must I be so self-pitying and loathsome?

Biff! Biff!

(Observe as the lonely fisherman slaps himself upside the head, folks…Minutes pass… He’s calming down now…)

Why doesn’t analyse mean bullshit? It’s right there in the word – anal lies! Why don’t therapists just tell you the truth and say they’re going to bullshit you? Oh this is going nowhere…!

(Attraction 221 will occasionally break down and weep like he’s doing now but, again, there’s no cause for alarm. Weeping’s just a form of happiness for Phil, the Lonely Fly-Fisherman.)

Fish? Hello? Fish, if you’re out there, give a guy a break, eh? How about it? You sacrifice your life to my hook and I will tell everyone you were much bigger and more fearsome than you are. Except I have no everybody…There’s only the wind will hear my big-fish lie.

(Silence for 3 more minutes)

Did you know, fish, that the word ovation comes from the Latin ovis – a sheep? I think that might explain why I find myself cheering and clapping loudly at things I didn’t think were as good as all that.

Another thing, fish. Montaigne once said, “Even on the most exalted throne in the world we are only sitting on our own bottom.” I hope he said it more than once. I would have. It’s a good one.

When I was 9 I could play The Well Tempered Clavier by Bach with only two fingers (moving really quickly) and I was hailed as a prodigy. When I hit puberty I lost that ability. Science can’t tell me why.

I should have moved my bowels this morning before i came out. I knew it, and yet I didn’t. I didn’t, and now they’ll be waiting for me when I get back.

How long could a person live if toothpaste was the only thing to eat?… Oy, fish? Any guesses…?

What’ve I got in for my dinner tonight…?”

The fuzzy boom retreats.

*

Well there we have it, folks. Not as interesting as I’d hoped but you can never tell how his thoughts will turn. I’ve noticed that when there’s cheese in his sandwiches he’s at his most interesting but, as you might be able to see, folks, today it’s some sort of involved fancy schmancy Mediterranean wrap which does actually look quite interesting itself. See, it hasn’t entirely been a waste of time, eh? And it’s certainly whetted my appetite for some of Mrs. MacIver’s lovely scones at Stop 222. Ahahahahaha. Of course, Phil’s really at his most interesting in the early mornings and at sunset but during the day he can lapse into drivel, like we’ve heard. Yeah. Sorry about that. But what can you do? It’s beyond our control. One of these things. You pays your money, you takes your chances etc. Ahahahaha.

‘K, everybody, back to the bus. There’s a pine-fitted gift-shop at the tea-rooms beside attraction 222 and they have copies of The Lonely, Muttering Fisherman: His Greatest Hits available for purchase in both tape and CD formats, if you’d like to hear him a bit more, uh, on form. Ahahahahaha.

*

The moral of the post is: Stay away from people who are not as interesting as their sandwiches. Also, don’t pay for any Hebridean bus tour until it is over. These people will so screw you over.

Square-Jawed George adored Genevieve above all the other rabbits in the warren. Splendidly, Genevieve admired George’s muscular haunches and his strong, decisive chin. Square-Jawed George and Genevieve would often lie among the primroses under the old willow tree and read poetry to each other, or go strolling ardently by the river. Sometimes they would skip and scamper through the meadow, laughing and laughing as if they were the first bunnies ever to have loved.

But this wasn’t enough love even for two so star-crossed as they, even for two who had his moon rising in her Sagittarius. Their love grew and grew until pretty soon it was nauseating the whole warren. Square-Jawed George and Genevieve would walk the wooded meadow as lovers do, lost in each other’s eyes, occasionally knocking over toadstool dwellings but oblivious to everything and everyone except their love. As they passed by, in their wake they left dozens of innocent rabbits doubled-up, heaving and retching out their half-nibbled stomach contents in the pleasant meadow flowers. The ladybirds who lived in the toadstools were furious too at having lost yet another housing development cul-de-sac to the lovers. The whole meadow smelled of regurgitated dandelion-stems, and toadstool prices in the area had plummeted. The strain on the community was beginning to show.

The rabbits and ladybirds took their complaints to the warren-council where dark words were muttered and mid-toned discussions screamed, but there seemed to be nothing in the law books which forbade the public exchange of tender lovelinesses between consenting rabbits. It seemed the law’s paws were tied. Maybe it’ll stop when Spring is over, they hoped.

Spring turned to Summer. One Wednesday in July, a hot, stifling day which left even the most equable rabbits grumpy and irritable, the meadow was smelling particularly rank. Square-Jawed George and Genevieve had been even more vomitsome lately. Sweaty bunnies lay here and there in the scorched and scratchy grass, fanning themselves with blighted dock leaves and bickering. Malnutrition from all the vomiting had taken its toll on some of the bunnies. Everywhere ears drooped, teeth rotted and ribs showed painfully through their dull coats. Only Square-Jawed George and Genevieve were still bright of eye and perky of bob-tail. And here they came.

“What shall I compare thee to today, my sweet doe?” trilled Square-jawed George buckfully. A summer day’s sooo been done.” But, because his chin was so very decisive, the word came to him almost immediately. “An evening! A summer’s evening!” And Genevieve loved him even more for his easy command of words.

“Oh Christ, here they come again!” said one rabbit and the word spread throughout the meadow. “Quick – paws in ears, eyes shut and lalalalalas!

But the mood was different in the meadow today. The rabbits didn’t put their paws in their ears or shut their eyes or do lalalalas. Instead, it was very, very quiet, each rabbit straining to hear what the lovers were saying as they passed, as if masochism were the new arugula. Here and there a bunny eye glinted. Square-Jawed George and Genevieve lolloped on, not seeing or hearing anything but themselves.

And something snapped. it was impossible to say who started it, only that an electrifying twitch-nerve surged through the watching rabbits like a sort of murderous Mexican wave and all 700 rabbits sprang forward in a fury, launching themselves at the lovers with their teeth bared.

Long after the fluff had settled, and the blood trickled away into the soil, long after the crows had done for the remains of the tragic pair, I, an old, old owl, who had seem it all come to pass from my high forest perch by the meadow would gather my grandowlets around me and tell them the tale of Square-Jawed George and Genevieve.

“Why did they have to die?” they would sob, doing little owl droppings of despair all over my nice rug.

And I would shake my wise old head, as I handed them buckets of water and disinfectant to clean up.

“They were too beautiful for this world.” I would whisper, my eyes shining with brine. And I would turn away from my darlings then, and all the old guilt would come flooding back. The guilt about how good the lovers’ little hearts had tasted as, unseen, I plucked them from their breasts before the crows came for their broken bodies.

THE END

I read this today and thought of my friend, Jeremy – confirmed Deadhead and a man with way too much residual acid leftover from earlier days still swilling around in his brain. Or maybe just the right amount – you’d have to ask him, but he’d probably say “Not enough, sister, not enough.”

Anyway, Jer’s away on his holidays right now so he prolly won’t see this, but I thought I’d post this quote anyway. It’s not the most profound, nor the most daintily put quote ever, but it gladdened my wicked heart this morning and anyway I’ve got nuffink else. I’ve been doing Other Stuff, see, and doing Other Stuff plays merry hell with your blogging time. Other Stuff is down right importunately impertinent.

Anyway, Jeremy’s a believer in the transformative powers of dance, and I of music. Transformative in the rolled-back eyeballs, swirly twirly, higher plane way – not in the turns you into a mongoose way. Here’s the quote:

“In song and dance man expresses himself as a member of a higher community: he has forgotten how to walk and speak and is on the way toward flying up into the air, dancing.” Nietzsche.

See? Wasn’t that nice and gentle for a Thursday morning? Not too demanding, just a recognition of the beautiful things. There’s nothing like a little cribbed wisdom at twenty past ten.

Other Stuff rears its stuffy, snorting head again. I’ll give it a decongestant, see if that clears it. Back in bits.

This post, I shall be mostly using f-words.

Friday the fourf: a fair football-field full of folk for the fireworks, with no apparant plowmen in sight.

Saturday: fickle and fitful like the affections of a feckless feline cat.

Right, I’m fed up of that now.

Sunday: after Wimbledon was Wimblewon, one lazy, hazy, crazy day of summer ensued. We had a going away party for a
friend. The good thing about California is that you can party outside all day and night so your floors never get sticky or crumbed upon.

And it all just goes to show that the simple things are the best, cats are feckers, not all things go to show something.

With any luck, by next 4th of July I will be a citizen of these United States and so able to vote. By George (but not for him), I can’t wait to vote! I will roll up my sleeves and press my pencil extra hard on the ballot just to show how votey I am. I expect I’ll hum an Eagles classic or The Battle Hymn Of The Republic or maybe something by the Pollice because I’m all about the pertinent tunes, yo. Uh-huh, oh yeah.

Citizenhood probably won’t happen before November (the INS website estimates the process currently takes a speedy 426 days) but my piffling vote in national affairs wouldn’t have the slightest bit of effect anyway. I don’t live in a swing state and California will probably turn a cool shade of Obama blue just fine without my help – not that Obama is blue, People Who Haven’t Seen Him Before. America wouldn’t elect a Smurf to the highest office in the land. Not again.

I’ve been disenfranchised for so long now though that my constitutional prerogative is starting to wither from lack of use. I’m sure there’s a pill for that but I’d rather cure it the natural way with a *cough* well-hung Chad. Not being resident in Scotland for the past 11 years has rendered me ineligible to vote in both Scottish and British elections, and being a mere legal alien in the US has meant I haven’t been able to vote here either. Nobody in the whole wide world gives a toss what I think, in other words, except perhaps the Toyota customer survey people. That’s fine, but I still want my voice-that-nobody-cares-about to be heard! I’d rather be a persona non grata than a non persona grata.

But yet, but yet I am taxed. Then let the cry go up throughout the sitting-room, “No taxation without representation!” The pot-plants agree greenly but they don’t envy me, that’s just how they do everything.

But when I can vote I still won’t be happy because even the voteless me ponders long and hard over the issues and choices at hand and I know that there are people somewhere who will be voting on which of the spouses is most First-Lady-like or which candidate has the larger lifetime consumption of apple-pie. And some people won’t bother voting at all because they want to watch that show with that guy who does that thing. And I will be of the uppity opinion that what these people need is a jolly good murdering – I will be careful not to say that at my interview, of course, in case they deem me cruel and unnaturalizable.

Only, ssssshh! You won’t tell them, will you? Don’t tell them about the real me because then they will not let me join America but I’ll have to pay the membership fees all the same, and my children will grow up not having the example of their mother voting causing them to not vote and one day when they should be voting, they will decide to go to the beach instead and there they will meet unsuitable men called Stone and Troy whom their daddy and I will hate and we will therefore be forced to write our own daughters out of our wills in a scene of brandy and complex emotions, and then the ProbHub will die but the girls and I will be too stubborn even to make up at the funeral and then I will die all alone and smelly in a flat in Croydon and the neighbours will say I was always a quiet one and what will become of the cats, and whoever is doing Shirley McClean-type roles in the future will play me in the harrowing movie they will make of our lives because one of the unsuitable men at the beach turned out to be the spoilt son of someone big in corporate Hollywood, and I will not come out of it terribly well at all.

So you won’t, will you? Aah, great. Ta, petals, I knew I could count on you.

Today is the Problem Husband’s and my 9th anniversary. We met when I was 21 and married when I was 25 so really we’ve been bothering each other for more like 13 years. I looked it up though and the 13th anniversary is lace.

Hubbles is not really so big on the lace, and, although I’m sure he could enjoy a nice doiley or have about 40 seconds worth of polite remarks on the craftsmanship of a table-cloth, I’m not all that keen on doilies myself, as it goes. Plus, giving one’s husband lace, even well-meant, non-vitriolic lace, has all too often marked a precipitous downturn in the health of many marriages. Trust is violated – the unspoken trust a man has in his wife that she will never ever attempt to give him lace. On any occasion. That sort of thing can cause deep hurts and irrepairable harm to a married couple. So we’ll deal with lace when we have to, and not before.

The anniversary 9th is pottery which isn’t what we need at all. We are bullish on pottery – not in a china-shop way, of
course – then we’d be bearish on it, I guess. In any event, we’re all potteried up, perhaps even faultily so.

What we lack is towels. Our towels are constantly being stolen by aliens who don’t have our towel-making technology, and so, by the power vested in me by me, I declare this anniversary in the Problem household, the anniversary of towels. So be it!

(My eyelids are closing as I type this so sorry for any really bad misspellings or mistakes.)

I’ve just watched Rogerer Federer slay Mario Ancic in a 20 minute set. In the last 4 games he only lost 1 point.

But who cares about that? Andy Murray’s playing in the other quarter-final, later today.

Go Andy Murray ! Do it for us, baby! Forget the overwhelming odds against you and play your wee Dunblaney heart out!

Back to Hector soon. Andymonium has entered our sitting room for the day though and Wimbledon fortnight is a black hole of unfinished tasks for me, anyway. My children grow pale and undernourished as I forget to feed them. The cat grows listless and sulky as I terrify her from her slumbers with my sudden, animated ooohs! and aaaahs! at the telly. My husband has to tell me to wash my face and comb my hair. Moss starts to grow in the corners and the neighbours call to ask if everything is alright only uncollected mail is starting to fly off down the street and plaster itself to the windscreens of oncoming traffic bringing about horrible, squishy tragedy. All the weeping and screaming hullaballo, all the bleeding car-crash victims and their outraged relatives, I will nod to and absently acknowledge but will remain effectively oblivious to, til Sunday night, when Wimbledon is over and the authorities come to take my waif-like children away and we all get in the papers because I hole us all up in the house and shoot at county officials in the street. Happens every year.

Go, Andy, go!

It was one of these days. It dragged and bulged and time was all wonky. It was a Sunday in Lewis. Hector wanted nothing more than to life face down on the cool linoleum in the kitchen, or lie face up under a coffee-table but he was stuck there on the sofa between his granny and his grandpa listening to the minister. He could feel his brain writhing in boredom in his skull, pulling his eye-tubes back painfully, trying to get them to roll the bulbed eyeballs back into his head and take a nap.

“Hnngg ahhhngg ee hnng hnng hnnng” droned the minister.

“Oooooh! huhee huhoo huhibbleibbleibble” exclaimed Granny.

“Gildy bildy beedly o?” asked Grandpa.

And so they went on. There would be another hour of this at least and he was of an age now where he was supposed to be able to participate in after-church chat with the minister before a light tea of sandwiches and then out to church again to burn the holy taper at both ends. Candles and tapers weren’t allowed in the Worshipful Spartan Free Kirk Of The Hebrides though, being too wicked, so he doubted if candle metaphors were allowed either. He spent the next 5 minutes of his life concentrating on all he had ever heard about candles.

At 13, Hector knew there had to be more to life than this. He was stuck here for the next 5 years until he could escape off the island to university. The thought of almost 300 more sundays spent like this between now and then squeezed and pinched at his brain making it want to leap right out of his head and onto the carpet to gather some soothing, muffling fluff. He stifled a yawn.

The proximity to hellfire made a Lewis Sunday curl up like a leaf. In this stifling tube of a day with light only at either end, a child could curl and take in the hell-fire heat, or that child could use his imagination to take himself to a place that wasn’t Sunday: to go to one end of the tube and peer through the quiet, hot noise of Sunday to the next week as if the rolled-up day was a telescope; or at the past week like it was a microscope. I myself was a microscope kid. I pored over the minutiae, the hurts and small insults of the past week, the faces of people, why they might be the way they were: jolly, lumpy, tired, angry. Hector was a telescope kid though. On Sundays he looked forward.

“Hngg, ee hngii Machnngh hingee hnnngh” said the minister.

Suddenly Hector had an idea. It was a big big idea. It was a Big Idea.

He was going to start a cult. An undercover cult, of course, he couldn’t let his granny find out it was anything to do with him. But with the internet, starting a cult anonymously should be a breeze.

What did he know about cults? Hector forgot to be bored. His near-cooked brain-meat was alive again and full of possibilities.

Cults needed a charismatic leader, of that he was sure. That leader needed to have the wide, slow smile of fearlessness. He needed to go for long periods of time without blinking. He needed to shock peoples’ sensibilities with flat outrageous sentences such as “People whose names begin with L deserve to die!” or “The BBC will poison your souls unless you purify yourself by sleeping with me!” The more outlandish the statement, the more he could convince people of its essential truth and quake all their mental geography to the point where they were capable of anything. These people would be called Hectorians.

“Aaah, beedly bildy ba diddle-glid.” intoned his Grandpa.

Hector began to think.

To Be Continued…

(This tale will be told in episodes but I want you guys to be a part of it. So you tell me, what is this cult about? What does it celebrate? Bear in mind the setting is the Western Isles so sun-worshipping is probably out.)