David Hadley's Storefront

A Tangled Rope

• New technological Breakthrough Announced!

  2009 Nov 09

  People speak of the internet, the walkman, the personal computer, the mobile phone, the anti-itchy-knee device and - even - nuclear-powered shopping tigers as the defining technological innovations of recent years. But, if his new prototype lives up to its potential then Porrigestain Mankyvest will surely be the contemporary inventor whose name lives on into well into the future.

  Although still at the prototype stage, his - as yet unnamed - device could be the one technological innovation that will revolutionize the lives and careers of so many people who work in public service jobs. From politicians and their civil servants through local government workers right down to the sales assistants in computer retail chain stores, this device could undoubtedly revolutionise the jobs these people do. In turn, Mankyvest's device will revolutionise the lives of the rest of us, the general public, too, who are forced to interact with the people performing these public service jobs as we go about our daily lives. So in short, this device has revolutionary worldwide implications.

  

  Quite simply, the Mankyvest device works like this: When in contact with a member of public needing a specific service to be performed by the public service worker, then that worker just enters twenty-seven personally specific data pieces into the device using any three of the integrated keyboards. Then the public service worker presses four function keys and waits, for often as little as 30 seconds. Then, after a thorough and painstaking analysis of the data provided, the machine is able to print out - using its own integrated printer - a set of instructions, with easy-to-follow diagrams, for that public service worker. If the public service worker then follows the instructions exactly, it will - for the first time in the history of such public service jobs - enable that public service worker to distinguish easily - and with an astonishing accuracy rate of over 76% - their arse from their elbow.

  

  
  

  

• The UK's Leading Conceptual Artist

  2009 Nov 06

  Lepidoptera Disestablishment has - over the last few decades - become one of this country's leading conceptual artists. Her new exhibition at the prestigious Tipton East Scout Hut has become one of the Must-See shows of the year, if not of the decade. Although lacking any official confirmation, following her nomination for the 2009 Turner prize, it has been rumoured that not only will Disestablishment be showing several new works, but several of the major pieces from her career so far will also on display.

  So, all in all, it will be a rare treat for the genuine conceptual art lover, and we can expect that the streets of Tipton will overflow with conceptual artists, critics and many, many, other lovers of high metropolitan fashionable artistry. Quite possibly a rare and a singular treat for this otherwise quiet backwater, only ever famous for being the home of the Pork Scratching. No doubt, the citizens of this town will be falling over themselves to give the traditional Black Country welcome usually reserved for hordes of effete and pretentious Southern softies.

  So, for those that do survive the welcome from the locals, what can they expect once they have bribed the scouts to let them into the hut?

  Well, in the words of Disestablishment's art dealer for the last seventeen years, Stigmata Clenches, quite a treat. "I remember waking up in Lepidoptera's studio one morning," he reminisced recently. "…and, after disentangling myself from my then boyfriend I just happened to glance up and there it was, right there, in the kitchen. I was amazed, shocked, awed, sexually aroused, amazed once more and shocked again."

  

  [Disestablishment's seminal piece – Fridge]

  Clenches is, of course, talking about Disestablishment's seminal piece - Fridge. A free-standing white metallic… well, one can only say 'box', where one of the sides opens to reveal a series of shelves on which Lepidoptera had precisely arranged several items of foodstuff, some wrapped in cling film, others unidentified in plain plastic boxes and other miscellaneous containers. What else could say so much about our modern 21^st century urban lifestyles and the state of the world we live in, in both environmental and in geo-political terms? 'The most outspoken condemnation of neo-conservative American Neo-imperialism in the current art catalogues' gushed the Sunday Indifference art-critic Formica Buttplug, when it was first shown at the Tate six years ago.

  However, everyone is eager to witness her latest piece. Simply entitled Hanky, Lepidoptera herself explained in her most recent interview in Pretentious Git Magazine:

  I had a bit of a cold, and I… like… y'know… just… well… basically… sneezed. Luckily, for some reason I had a paper handkerchief nearby…." She smiled, blushing slightly. "Usually, I don't bother with such petit-bourgeois conventions," she added nervously. "Usually, I just wipe my snot on the nearest lackey or hanger-on, and they are so grateful for the privilege. But, well, let's just say I had this paper hanky, all right? No need to make such a big deal about it…huh." She drank deeply from her seventh bottle of vodka before continuing. "Anyway, I had a look afterwards, y'know? Yeah, I'm totally outrageous like that, I just don't care about your sterile, hypocritical, middle-class morality. And then I thought I could make some serious money… er… a serious point about the modern existential dilemma with this piece. Y'know, what was once on the inside, internal, private, is now on the outside, on display for the world to see. It just says so much about this celebrity culture we world famous artists have to endure in this day and age.

  So, an exhibition not to be missed, even though it does take place far away from - the centre of the universe - London, in the sort of place the metropolitan elite would not usually allow their live-in nannies to be seen dead in, let alone visit themselves. But such is the pulling-power of this hyper-important artist in this fashionable stage of her career, even such a - normally kiss of death - stunt such as holding her exhibition outside of the metropolis is unlikely to fall flat.

  Book now - tickets are bound to disappear fast.

  

  
  

  

• Blog Post of the Day

  2009 Nov 06

  

  "Well, Alan, here we are right at the start of a new Blog post. How do you think it is going, Alan?"

  "Well, Gary. It's early doors, yet. But the lad seems off to a strong start, moving slowly - but confidently - down the page."

  "So, then Alan… er… Gary… no, that's me…. Er… Jimmy, do you think we're in for a good post today?"

  "No. The lad's tired, out of form. We'll be lucky to see a couple of worthwhile lines… if that."

  "Alan?"

  "Yes…. But I think the lad has it in him to give 110% on the day, at the end of the day, Gary."

  "Mark?"

  "Maybe. It isn't over until it is over, at the end of the day, when all's said and done, Gary."

  "Well… with those final words we'll hand you back to the studio. Steve?"

  "Thanks Des… Er… Gary. Now, stay tuned for the final…. Yes, the final of the Women's East-Gloucestershire Under-27 Standing-A-Bit-Still Contest! Coming up right after this short break."

  

  
  

  

• Here We Are

  2009 Nov 05

  

  [British School 19th century  1800-1899]

  Here we are, looking for a moment we can take and use for ourselves. Here we are expecting this world to leave us alone as we find our own quiet space far from the indifferent crowds and faces that watch every step we make.

  We are lost between them, between those that do not care and those who haunt our every moment. We do not go to places where we are known, we do not look for the familiar.

  We become new people, away from the people and places that define us.

  Everything becomes new for this old familiar story and we play roles so many have played before. We are not the first and we will not be the last. We exist though in our own special time, with places where we are not known and surrounded by strangers to us both.

  We create a new life to run alongside our normal lives and we step in and out of each one as though we are stepping through mirrors.

   

  [See here for an explanation of these posts labelled as Fragments]

  

  
  

  

• Bonfire Night Poem: Fireworks

  2009 Nov 05

  [A Monday Friday Bonfire Night Poem]

  

  Fireworks

  These times take the shape
  Of beginnings for you.
  But I've lived a life
  Like this before.
  The sharp sudden colours
  Of fireworks exploding
  Into instances of creation
  Are so new to you, so you
  Bang on the window
  And clap and yell.

  I have been here before
  And every now is tinged
  With memories of my first times
  And how each bursting memory
  Lasted longer, far longer
  Than this brief life of sparks
  Tumbling down onto damp ground.

  Times like this are gone
  So suddenly. We forget
  So much about transience.
  But this - it is your first time,
  It will always last forever.

   

  First published: Eclipse.  Issue 8. October 1999

  

  
  

  

• Less Tangible

  2009 Nov 04

  

  Putting all this aside for one moment, I try to turn back the pages to where it all began for me. The days when I was so lost and alone, I couldn’t make any sense of the size and shape of this world, and how it seemed to move along without ever noticing me. I felt like a shadow, less tangible than everything else and dependant on external forces to be seen. I had no solidity of my own, hardly ever noticed until the day you stepped out of the heat of the sun.

  You gave me a reason and that reason in turn gave me a shape, a form and solidity, until one day too, I could step out of the shadows and become whole.

  [See here for an explanation of these posts labelled as Fragments]

  

  
  

  

• Wednesday Story: Worker

  2009 Nov 04

  

  This whole business has been yet another one of those things. Sometimes, I wonder just how I get into situations like this. Things seem to happen to me without me getting any say, any initial choice, in the matter.

  My life with Jane seemed to happen to me, no matter what I did. For instance, I can remember waking up one morning and, quite suddenly, realising we had been married for six years. I could not remember where all the time had gone. I had - sort of - just drifted, gone along with the flow, letting Jane decide when it was time to move along to the next stage from going out together, to engagement, to marriage, to mortgage and new home.

  When the long-expected redundancies finally came around, and my job disappeared, I had no idea what to do. I just wandered around in a state of... well... shock... I suppose. Again, it was Jane who pushed me out of my torpor and into the round of applications, interviews and the - seemingly inevitable - rejections.

  That was it really. Job-hunting became something else I slipped into, another dull routine. That is, until the day I walked into that office, and Fiona stood up, leaning forward from behind the desk to shake my hand. There was something in the way she stared at me all through that interview that made me nervous. I wondered if I had ever met her before and - maybe - insulted her in some way.

  All through that interview I had the feeling that Fiona was someone I must have yelled obscenities at; for nicking my parking space, or pushing in the queue at the Post Office or something like that. Usually, I am quite a mild-mannered and relaxed person, but sometimes - just sometimes - I do really lose my temper with people. When I'm in one of those fits of temper, fits of rage, that seem to be growing all too common these days. Whenever I shout at anyone - usually in the car, or in shops and suchlike - I often wonder how I would react if I met those same people in another, less fraught, situation.

  I was nervous throughout the interview. I was almost trembling with the growing conviction that she remembered me from such an incident and she was - somehow - planning her revenge. To be honest, I am not very good at interviews, even at the best of times, but the way that Fiona kept on staring at me made me even more nervous than usual.

  At the end of the interview she held onto my hand and stared at me again. I was, any second, expecting her to blurt out something like: "So you don't remember calling me a cretinous blind cow at the traffic lights in town six months ago, then? And you dare to think I would give someone like you this job?" However, she just smiled and said something along the lines of, "Thank you, Alan. We'll let you know." The usual post-interview stuff.

  So, I was really surprised - just two days later - to get the letter offering me the job. I showed the letter to Jane.

  "See, I told you that persistence would pay off in the end," Jane said.

  *

  "Come on, Alan. It's time we got back to the office." Fiona kissed me, deeply but briefly. She took my hand as we walked back to her car and winked at me. "After all, if we are going to be working late again, we need to get everything for today finished, quickly."

  I smiled back, rather weakly, hoping that my lack of enthusiasm wasn't too obvious. After all, I do need this job, especially the way Jane is spending money these days, and with the baby on the way (I can still remember Fiona's thin frosty smile when I told her that bit of news). Fiona is, after all, the one who said this was strictly sex, and that was all it was ever going to be.

  I have noticed that Fiona does tend to go a bit - I suppose, sullen is the word I'm looking for - at times. I think that however much she tries to deny it; however hard she tries to play the super-efficient businesswoman and all that, I do think that she can still hear the tick of the biological clock. That she can hear the voices of her parents, hear her married, settled friends and their smug talk of their good lives. She can feel the pull of the wedding, the house, the mortgage.

  I don't think she can be all that different to any of the rest of us in noticing the passage of time. Just occasionally, I can see it in her eyes too. I think I can only describe it as a look of yearning. It seems to be a search, a quest for something more than what her life is offering to her.

  It is, I suppose, like these games that I have to play with her. This desire she has to do it in risky places, in public, or - at least - semi-public, places. It seems that ordinary sex, an ordinary affair, isn't enough for her. She needs more. She needs the extra pressure of the risk, of being seen, of being caught.

  Maybe it is because these days it is not enough for us to just get through our ordinary lives. No, we have to fight, to struggle, to overcome. We have to see our lives as a test, a challenge, a quest. A life is not a real life unless we can point to the corpse of some dragon that we have slain along the way.

  It seems to be that way with Fiona too, the closer she is to being caught the stronger her orgasm. I'm getting quite good, these days, at getting dressed as we run, or drive away, from the scene of our latest adventure. There must be a fair few security guards in the local area who have had a dull shift enlivened by a grainy out-of-focus sequence of Fiona and me getting down to it right in front of their cameras.

  Once, I asked her about her current obsession with doing it in front of the security cameras.

  "Perhaps I'm a frustrated actress," she said between giggles as she struggled to dress while I drove us out of the multi-storey car park.

  *

  "You look tired," Jane said to me at the weekend. "Are you sure all this overtime, all this extra work isn't too much for you?"

  I yawned and shrugged. I was having trouble staying awake. The previous week Fiona had had me in a multi-storey car park, a cinema, the zoo, the art gallery and - almost - in a phone box. But some fraught woman had banged on the phone-box door, just as I was slipping my hand up between Fiona's thighs.

  Apparently, there had been an accident just up the road. A speeding mini-cab had knocked down an old man. Luckily, it was beginning to get dark, so the woman had no idea what we were doing in the phone-box.

  "Perhaps you ought to get another job," Jane said. She shifted around in her seat, trying to get comfortable. She was seven and a half months gone, and the hot late summer weather made it difficult for her.

  I looked at her - really looked at her - for the first time in what seemed like months. As with so many women, late pregnancy seemed to suit her. I leant across and kissed her.

  She looked at me in surprise, blinking quickly a couple of times. "Y'know, that is the first time you have kissed me in weeks... maybe months.... I thought that maybe you'd gone off me because...." She looked down, touching her stomach.

  "No, of course not. Don't be silly," I said, slipping my hand up between her thighs. "It's just... maybe you are right, maybe this job is too much for me, taking too much out of me."

  We kissed again, and she looked at me in a way that I recognised only too well. "Do you... well...?" she said.

  At first, I didn't think I could, not after all that Fiona had put me through during the previous weeks, but - in the end - I managed it.

  But, it was the just lying there together bit, afterwards. Together, there on the front-room carpet, our backs leaning against the sofa, that was the best bit. It was such a relief not to be racing away, fastening my shirt with one hand and holding up my trousers with the other. We just sat their skin against skin, talking of this and that and whatever else came to mind until Jane took it in mind to have another go and climbed back onto my lap.

  I was very surprised to find that I did - as it were - rise to the occasion. But I was not half as surprised as Jane was a couple of minutes later.

  "What did you call me?" She stopped dead.

  "What?"

  "You just called me Fiona." She twisted her breasts away from my hands.

  "I didn't, did I?"

  "You did."

  "Oh, I... are you sure?"

  "Yes." She looked at me hard, for a moment. Then she smiled. "Yes, I think that job is getting to you." She began to move again. "After all, the other night you called out her name in your sleep."

  "Did I?" I tried to sound casual.

  "Yes. But I know not to take it seriously. I can't imagine you ever finding her attractive."

  "No, " I said. "Of course not."

  "Anyway, you know I'd kill you if you ever messed around, don't you?"

  "Yes, dear. Of course." I smiled up at her.

  She stopped moving again. She stared at me levelly. I could see the seriousness in her eyes. "No, I'm serious. Look at the state you've got me into." She sat up straight and stroked her stomach. For the first time, I noticed there was a new thin line of hair from her navel down to her pubic hair.

  "I'm not going to let you escape, not now. You have responsibilities, obligations," she said. "Aw... what's happened?"

  "I'm sorry," I replied. "I must be more tired than I thought."

  "It's all right," she said. Although I could see that it wasn't.

  *

  "No! I just can't.... Not any more. Sorry."

  Fiona was not the sort to give up easily, she was not used to being refused. Her hand moved down my body. I tried taking a step backwards, but I was up against the wall.

  Her face was close to mine. I could see every pore in her skin. "I could always sack you... for non-co-operation," she said as she pulled my zip down.

  "I... could... have you for sexual harassment," I said.

  "Bollocks. Who would believe that?" she laughed. "Anyway, you wouldn't be able to live with it, no man could. Imagine what all the other blokes will say about you: 'fancy turning that down - must be a closet poof'." She took a step back, although her hand remained inside my underpants. She cocked her head to one side. "Is that it? Are you a poof?"

  "No... No. I... it's just that... well... Jane, y'know? Come on, Fiona. I am a married man."

  "So?" She now had both hands inside my trousers. "That never bothered you before." She squeezed. Hard.

  "Ooh - aaah! Jesus Christ!" I doubled up as she let go.

  "You do disappoint me Alan," she said. "And I thought I'd found a man with some balls at last. It seems you are just like all the rest. Another wimp." She turned away, wiping her hands on her skirt. She turned back. "One week's notice."

  "You can't do that!"

  "Can't I? Why not?"

  "Because.... I...."

  "Oh, come on. You haven't got the balls to quit, to walk out. You're too scared - shit-scared - of what precious little wifey will think."

  "No... no, it's not that. I... well...." I smiled. I took a step towards her and kissed her. I stroked her cheek with my fingertips. "It's just that I'm not sure I can resist the temptation, not any more. I think I ought to go, get out of here, before... well, with the baby coming and... you always said you wanted no commitments."

  Fiona smiled as she looped her arms around my neck. "You could always stay. You deserve a promotion. You could become my right-hand man. Yes, that's a good idea. I like the things you do to me with your right hand."

  We kissed again. I looked over her shoulder at the clock. "Come on," I said. "One more time in the multi-storey?"

  She nodded slowly. "I think one more time is easily enough to get you to change your mind."

  "I'm beginning to change my mind already." I nuzzled her neck, nibbling her earlobe in the way I knew she liked. "I'll drive," I said. "You get undressed... completely... like last time."

  She giggled and kissed me on the lips. Taking my hand she led me out of the office and around to the car park.

  *

  I drove all the way to the top of the multi-storey - five floors. It was a bright warm day. By the time I stopped the car, Fiona was already naked.

  I pointed over to the housing for some type of ventilator shaft, a brick construction about four or five feet square with a flat concrete top, just off to the left of the main ramp to the level. "Over there," I said, leaning over to Fiona.

  She nodded eagerly, giggling as she got out of the car.

  *

  I can still remember the look on her face as I drove away, the passenger door flapping. I think she thought it was a joke when I stopped the car. She began to run towards the car. I almost waited for her, but then I had another twinge in my balls from when she had grabbed me in the office. I leant across the seats, quickly slammed the passenger-side door and drove off.

  I left her clothes - neatly folded - on her desk. My letter of resignation - with immediate effect - was lying on the top of the pile.

  END

   

  [This, and other stories can also be found here as well]