Day 59 - Refreshed

 REFRESHED

Prompt - Refreshed : Write a poem about a time you really felt refreshed and renewed.  Maybe it was a dip in a pool on a hot summer day, a drink of lemonade, or other situation that helped you relax and start again.

Egg frying streets

A sun that heats

Me up until I melt

Shirts stick like peel

Making me feel

Like an over roasted Celt

Then late one night

I'm trying to write

And hear a pattering sound

It swells, it hammers

It calls, it yammers

There's water covered ground

Though people say

A sunny day 

Is always for the best

Too much of sun

Is never fun

Rain comes as welcome guest

It might be late

But this was fate

Drawing me to the downpour

I walk alone

Soaked to the bone

And feel my spirits soar

Refreshed again

I praise the rain

For bringing cool and succour

It's nature's way

She's trying to say

There is no one to best her

I'll be the same

When the name

Of lockdown's in the past

In a flood of gigs

We'll trough like pigs

Live music's back at last

Day 58 - Darkness

 DARKNESS

Prompt - Darkness : Write a poem or journal entry inspired by what you can't see

You Can't See Me

What you see

Is

My size

My colour

My clothes

My hair

My walk

My job

My home

What you don't see

Is

My thoughts

My feelings

My passions

My fears

My confidence

My talents

My love

Me

Day 57 - Alarm Clock

 ALARM CLOCK

Prompt - Alarm Clock : Write about waking up.

There was a noise that wouldn't stop.  Leading to irritation.  Puzzlement. Fog.  Alex turned over, hoping it would simply stop, go away, leave him alone.  Why was it happening?  Slowly the power of his brain was able to shrug off sleep enough to realise that it was his alarm going off.  And then he remembered why.

It was a shock.  A double shock.  The first part of that being the alarm itself.  Nine years since he'd retired, after forty three of early mornings, getting into work by eight, getting the job done.  Obeying the alarm that woke him and Mags at six thirty, day after day after day.  When he'd left they'd sat down and discussed what they were going to do with this new life together.  And what they wouldn't do.  Being slaves to the early morning bell was one of the first to go.  

Like being reborn.  Their days felt relaxed, pleasurable, actually theirs to own and use.  They had fun, something that had seemed unimaginable for decades.  They no longer had to endure all those external pressures, so it felt like every day was a weekend, except that even their weekends had been busy, especially when Greta was young.  Eight and bit years they had, then Mags was taken from him, suddenly.  Heart failure, when they'd been on a fairground ride together, holding hands.  The shock still hadn't left him, eight months later, but he always smiled to think she'd died doing something she'd loved.  There had been a good few fairgrounds before that.  

But there had been a hole in their life too.  A Greta shaped hole.  Their daughter had cut them out of her world a few years before he'd retired, unable to take any more of what she always saw as her mother's interference in her life.  Alex had tried to fill in the cracks, but didn't have the diplomatic skills.  He knew Greta was right, but he could never have told his wife that.  Loyalty was strong within him.  They found what they needed to enjoy their life without their daughter, but it was always in the background.

He called Greta when Mags died, but she'd changed her number and never told them.   He wasn't even sure where she lived now.  Until last week.  He was wary of unexpected calls from strange numbers, but something made him pick up this one.  It was Greta.  She'd only just learned of her mother's death, she was in Perth now, she had two daughters and would Alex want to meet them?  There was more, but those were the bits he focussed on.  He had granddaughters, he would get to see them, and his daughter wanted him back in her life.  It wasn't life with Mags, but it sounded like it might be a bloody good compensation.

All this flooded back into his shuffling mind, gradually absorbing the day ahead.  Get himself up, and out, and on board the 09.45 from platform eight.  And see what this day brought.  Another new life?  His alarm clock had never been so important.

Day 56 - Photograph

 

PHOTOGRAPH

Prompt - Photograph : Write a story or journal entry influenced by a photograph you see online or in a magazine

I returned to the ranks of the occasional kilt wearers almost four years ago, after long ago given up on them after an embarrassing incident almost half a century before.  The initial motivation was joining in the spirit of event when I did Kiltwalk, but I found I really enjoyed wearing my kilt at other times too.  It does change the way you feel about yourself when you wear one, and it seems to alter the way other people see you too, but it's  pleasure in itself, a totally different feel to walking around in my usual denim.  

They are (were? will be? what tense do we use in these strange covid times of lockdown?) a common enough sight on the streets of Edinburgh these days, and worn in such a variety of styles that there are no limits to their appropriateness.  Changed times from my younger days when if you saw a man in a kilt he'd invariably fit into one of four categories.  He was attending a wedding, in a pipe band, in the military, or, worst of all, an American tourist seeking out his 'heritage'.  They would be worn as part of a more or less formal outfit.  

Changed times where tee shirt and walking boots are now the most commonly sighted combo.  Kilts abound at Scotland rugby matches, at parties, on the street, on days around town and evening sout on the town.  They have been adopted by younger Scots guys as a marker of their nationality, in a UK that is rapidly falling apart.  They are still worn to weddings, but in increasingly different outfits.  Many still hire, but ownership is increasing.  Dress it up, dress it down.  Wear a cargo kilt.  They have long since shed tartan as their sole design, and you can easily pick up a camo kilt if that's what lights your bunnet.  And kilted yoga gurus and fitness instructors, spartanly dressed in tartan and boots, have gained a big following online.

But none of them sum up the changed social attitudes of the twenty first century better than the kilted photos I've chosen today.  It's called progress.

Day 55 - Holding Hands

 HOLDING HANDS

Prompt - Holding hands : Write about the first time you help someone's hand

It had felt like it would never get to this point.  It had felt like we would always get to this point.  It felt... like a beginning, except it wasn't, it was just one more step in the story, a story which nobody knew how and when the end would ever come.

I saw her first from behind, walking down the corridor and heading for the door into the sun.  In an office of more than six hundred random bodies it took something to stand out.  So what was it that made me stare?  The walk?  The scarf artfully arranged across the shoulders?  The hair?  All and none of these?  I was no believer in the arcane notion of fate, but there can still be a sense of moment, of now and it meaning more than the moment before.  Mundanely special.

No turn of the head as she left the building.  I followed her, pleased to see she was heading in the direction of where my car lay parked.  As, no doubt, did hers.  Or was someone waiting for her?  I put on a bit more speed, so I was passing her just after we'd crossed the road, but didn't dare look across.  Instead I went to my car, put the key in the lock (no remotes in those olden times!), and looked up.  In time to see her pass.  She looked at me.  And looked away.  No smile.  No sense of connection.  On her side.  But me?  I... needed to know.  I had no idea what it was, but I knew I needed to know it.

I sat in my car until she passed, noting colour, model, registration.  Bright orange, so it would be easy to spot.  If I needed to spot it.  Drove home, sat, pondered.  A couple of hours before my wife got in, Tuesday was her late night, and dinner wouldn't take me long, so thinking time was available.  

Who was she?  Where in the huge complex we'd emerged from did she work?  Name, rank, serial number?  And the most baffling scary question of them all - how could I get to talk to her?  I found an answer.  I knew it wasn't really an answer, but it was the only one I'd got.  A letter.  Left under the wiper behind that orange bonnet.  Saying... Hope flew out of one window and in another.  saying whatever came into my head, however mad.  Anonymous.  A dramatic gesture of... bafflement?  I had no idea what any of this really meant.

The letter was written, placed, seen to have vanished, presumably read.  But what next?  Even if she hadn't been horrified by the strangeness of the contents, she had no idea who I was?  Or I her.  But I would.  However long it took.

Months passed.  Bit by bit I filled in the jigsaw.  She worked in the same building as me, and there was the sky, dotted with clouds, peering out.  She worked on the first floor, and there was the grass at the foot of the picture, a hint of the dogs legs in sight.  She often worked late, and the dogs, and the sheep they herded, came to life.  Walking with a colleague we passed her on the stairs, they exchanged greetings, and from that I found out her name.  I had my shepherd, I had the image on the box lid.  But I still didn't know what to do with it.

My own job suddenly offered a link.  I went into a room looking for a woman I needed to talk to  and there she was.  There they both were, for the person I sought was her boss.  Was she looking at me as I had my tedious conversation?  Was she aware of how much I wanted to look at her?  I risked a smile in that direction as I left, and almost skipped out the door when it was returned.  

I walked along that corridor often enough, trying to look purposeful, but there always seemed to be someone still with her in that room.  Until one day.  When I couldn't do it, and walked on.  Why risk my expectations?  I sulked back to my room, and trembled in fury at my own cowardice.

That corridor drew me back.  That room, and the mystery behind a desk.  And one evening I found myself in there and asking for her boss and I knew she'd gone home and it would just be us and I babbled something and she babbled something and together we babbled and then I left.  No sulk this time, just a dire need to draw in breath, to make myself believe that I'd done what I didn't think I'd do and wanted to do again.  Is breathlessness the same as love?

A week passed, I returned, our babbling now more purposeful, more probing, finding out, facts, the trivia of lives, tentative bond building.  Another visit.  Another.  Conscious that this would soon be seen by people, the wrong people, that stories would flow.  That this needed to come to some kind of ending, or beginning.  We talked again.  We talked about that need to end.  We talked with sadness.  The point was reached.  My hand met hers, held on.  She squeezed back.  I suggested lunch.  Some time.  She said no.  She said no.  I let go.  The end had come.

As I reached the door she said "But I do want to see you again".  I looked back, I looked into those tentatively smiling eyes, I looked at the hand I'd just held.  The end hadn't come.  I was looking at a beginning.

Day 54 - Dear Diary

 DEAR DIARY

Prompt - Dear Diary : Write a poem or short story about a diary entry you've read or imagined.

Anna came to me in Bravo blue

Said the only one I want is you

Took me up unto her spire

Promised she would take me higher

The bedroom seemed just like my folks'

Anna likes her little jokes

We loved in every way and fashion

Hours filled with steamy passion

But Charlie Drake quite spoiled the mood

His interjection just plain rude

Insists he showed us magic tricks

While I just wanted Anna's licks

Her touch, her taste, her wiles in bed

But Charlie froze the moment dead

So now I miss my sex inspector

The wee man proved he's no respecter

Of dreams that lead to copulation

Illusion ending our flirtation

Though Anna is in pride of place

I wish I'd forget Charlie's face

This nonsense was based on a diary entry of mine from 1987 (which I had been data capturing the day before writing the above) describing a strange dream I'd remembered when I woke.  Being seduced by Anna Carteret in her police uniform from her character in Juliet Bravo, she took me into the upstairs of her home, which resembled a church, only for her bedroom to look exactly like that of my parents.  We made love, my diary says I enjoyed it, but it was brought to an end by the old comedian Charlie Drake coming in to perform magic tricks.  Bizarre.

Day 53 - Tear-Jerker

 TEAR-JERKER

Prompt - Tear-Jerker : Watch a movie that makes you cry.  Write about that scene in the movie.

It must be a couple of decades since I last watched Truly, Madly, Deeply, so there was an element of risk in my choice of tear-jerker.  What if it didn't work on me the way it once had?  What if I'd misremembered how sad it was (and I am only too aware of how unreliable my memory is at times...)?  What if there were no tears?

I needn't have worried.  It remains as powerfully emotional (and emotionally manipulative!) as it felt twenty plus years ago.  The prompt suggests I write about 'the' scene that made me cry.  But there were at least six moments that brought tears into my eyes, from the first few minutes right through to the closing moments.  It as convincing a portrayal of grief, and eventual redemption, as I can recall.

But first a brief synopsis for anyone reading this and unfamiliar with the movie.  A 1990 film, set in contemporary London, starring Juliet Stevenson as Nina and Alan Rickman as Jamie.  Nina is grieving, to the exclusion of all else in life, the death of her partner, Jamie.  Neither her therapist or concerned friends and family can bring her out of her self pitying state.  Jamie suddenly returns, as a ghost, and lives with her, which restores Nina to life.  But there are frustrations to living with a dead person, she meets a good man but is unable to commit, until she can accept it's time to say goodbye and move on.  Classic tear-jerker territory, but raised above the risk of melodrama by brilliant performances and an excellent script.  And it's often as funny as it is sad.

In one of the earliest scenes Nina is about to leave her office, but is held back by boss Sandy (Bill Paterson).  He comments on her behaviour, wants her to come for drinks with the crowd, clearly cares about her a lot.  And she shuffles out of the door, unable to explain, unable to deal with the kindness, finding sadness the easier option.  It was easy to imagine feeling the same way in those circumstances, and empathy is a powerful emotional string puller.

At her therapist Nina is in full on blub mode, tears, snot, crumpled face, angry with everyone and everything and Jamie more that anyone else.  Who could resist the power of that face?  It is where we do not want to be.  She admits to hearing his voice, constantly, telling her to get on with the mundane acts of her life, like locking the back door at night.  A presence both there and not there.  

Then Jamie comes back into her life.  She is playing piano, hears a cello accompaniment and smiles at the memory.  Except that the strings continue when the keys cease to sound.  We see Jamie in the background, and, turning round, so does Nina.  It is a moment of disbelief, of joy at reconnection, of grief at knowing that this cannot be real.  And yet it is, he is solid (albeit constantly cold) yet certainly dead.  And she can wallow in something more joyful at last.

All of these pile one on another in the first thirty minutes, but my other welling up moments come towards the end of the film.  Goodbyes and new beginnings.  The most moving moment of all (and one which has brought the tears out as I recall it) sees Jamie reciting a poem in Spanish, with Nina translating each one into English as he proceeds.  It is an excerpt from La Muerta (The Dead Woman) by the great Chilean, Pablo Neruda, and each successive line becomes harder for Nina to relate as she builds towards another flood of tears, this time in Jamie's (dead) arms.

The final lines of the verse are

"my feet will want to march

to where you are sleeping

but I shall go on living"

- my bottom lip trembled, my own tears joined Juliet's, and it was clear that this moment was pivotal, was the chance for her to finally accept the life she had, leaving the one now lost to her.

My final two moments were less dramatic, less emotionally draining, for the tears were part happiness now.  When Mark (Michael Maloney) persuades her to talk about the barrier she has put up, and shows his understanding of her situation, it feels like a release.  And the closing moments, when Mark comes to collect her from that 'terrible flat' and in the window stands Jamie, sad/happy to see her go, surrounded by his dead mates who all wave the couple off into the night.  

Letting go, accepting loss, returning to real life, are bittersweet moments in life.  My tears were for Nina and Jamie, and Mark, and all the people who have to pass through such moments in their lives - which means all of us.  And for myself, for I am incapable of watching, or reading about, such situations without imagining myself placed in them and wondering how I'd react.  As Nina and Mark and even as Jamie (except I can't play the cello...).  It's a tribute to Stevenson and the late Rickman, and to writer and director Anthony Minghella, that there were times when the emotions felt as real to me as they did to the characters.  Experiencing these moments by proxy flexes our emotional muscles without risk, reminds us what it means to be human.  That's what stories are for.

(Footnote.  I had completely  forgotten the poetry scene, and the strange coincidence it brought forth.  My choice of weepy movie lay between TMD and Il Postino, in which one of the central characters is a fictionalised version of Neruda.)

Day 52 - Memory Lane

 MEMORY LANE

Prompt - Memory Lane : What does Memory Lane look like?  How do you get there?

Memory Lane is a ghost location, a confused jumble of images and perceptions, distorted by time and prejudices and facts omitted, fantasies added.  It is an unreliable place, and yet, by and large, a friendly one, for it's somewhere we can distort reality to our own needs.  But there can be consequences.

The routes there vary, but for me there are, like Urmston, two main ways to get to the destination, albeit each comes with many detours and blind alleys.  One of these is available to all, the other only to a certain few.  But the one thing they have in common is that they have little in common with the places others visit in the same way.  Our memory lanes are all unique.

The route that is open to fewer is via written record, and that has been a dominant source for me over recent years.  I have kept a (more or less) daily diary since the start of 1975.  I am on my forty sixth annual voyage into recording my mundane life.  Until mid 2014 all of these were on paper, in individual volumes.  The first couple were in quite small books, but for many years they were A4, a page to every day, later A5.  Only when we were downsizing did I recognise that now, with the technology available, they should be entered online, accessible from multiple devices and not taking up physical space in the home.  So back-captured the earlier part of 2014 and have been online since.

That left a lot of paper diaries taking up room, and I set myself the long and sometimes tedious task of capturing every single entry since I began.  So far I'm up to mid 1987, meaning that I have nineteen years of my life on Google's servers, plus more than half of '87 and the beginnings of this lockdown year of '21.  Only twenty six and a bit years to go!

I could have worked backwards, considering the later entries to be the more useful, but that takes away from what the process can provide.  This is my way into Memory Lane on a regular basis, even if the words on the page and the memories associated with them clash sometimes.  Or fill in huge gaps.  I find there is so much I've forgotten, or distorted over time.  

Having ended my first marriage with some bitterness between us, I tend to look back on those years together with negativity.  Or so I thought.  And while that's true at times, meaning I've blanked out the happier times, it's also fair to say that I've been surprised how bad it was at times, and how frequently it almost came to an end, even within the first year together.  Memory works both ways.

Although the entries are mostly about mundane details, and there's a lot of sadness and negativity at times, it's fascinating to rediscover the person I once was, to see what's changed and what's not (I'm much happier now!), and all the events and people and places I've totally forgotten about.  Even reading about them in my own words doesn't bring them back sometimes.  Memory Lane is a place with many black holes.

But my other route to this shady past is by the same road that most follow - random chance.  It might be something as concrete as a need to recall events for official purposes, or to relate a tale that provides background and explanation, or to respond to the therapist's questioning.  More often it will be slim chance.  A song heard, a place shown on TV, a mention of an old radio programme, a word about a previous employer, or friend, or lover.  Reading a book can trigger memories, as you find yourself associating with one character or another, or recalling your own reflections of events you have lived through.  JFK syndrome?  

One of the delights of the human mind is its ability to perform associations that are not consciously obvious.  A tune unheard for decades returns us to a specific pub at a specific time.  Perhaps even to a specific seat and table.  A news item about the anniversary of the first moon landing recalls being wakened in the middle of the night and brought downstairs to watch a fuzzy image of a great moment in history.  The colour of a coat on the street brings back a forgotten friend from decades ago.  It's this unpredictability that makes Memory Lane a place to cherish, even when fears lurk there too.  

It looks like the past, but a past you have built up in your own mind, not a historical record.  You get there in surprise, in wonder.  Memory lane is a glory of humanity, and we all fear losing it for ever.  With good reason.

Day 51 - Sunrise/Sunset

 SUNRISE/SUNSET

Prompt - Sunrise/Sunset : The sun comes up, the sun goes down.  It goes round and round.  Write something inspiring about the sunrise or sunset.

It only took a dodgy mussel and a golden sky to change his life.

Day four of their holiday and the pattern was already well established.  They'd all be down some time between midday and one, first beer of the day by the pool, then out to get something to eat before hitting the beach, back to the hotel to change, out for the night, back around three.  Or four.  Or five.  Back before sunrise anyway.  A lads holiday to perfection.

But not on this day.  They'd been seeking out the cheapest possible places to eat.  Not usually a problem on this island, where prices were much the same in most tavernas within walking distance of the hotel, but last night they'd spotted one that was extra-cheap.  It looked a bit dirtier than the rest, and the few locals that sat there weren't the friendliest, but what the hell, if it meant more money for beer it was worth taking the chance.  

He decided on the mussels again.  Yesterday's had been the best he'd ever tasted, like they'd just jumped straight from the water and on to his plate, and he was hooked.  But they didn't taste quite like yesterdays, didn't have that same freshness.  Even through the last traces of hangover and the first influences of the beer he was discriminating enough to spot the difference.  And still didn't have the sense to push the plate away.  They were still delicious.

They were also dangerous.  As he realised after a couple of hours laid out in the sun, with nausea coming upon him.  His first thought was a bit of sunstroke, always a big risk for a white skinned, ginger headed Scot.  Giffnock never had sunshine like this.  The others were predictably unsympathetic.  Lads didn't do understanding.

"Beer deficiency, get this one down you."

"If it's OK for lobsters it's OK for you."

"Get in the sea."

But he was so hot.  So dizzy.  His stomach churned, his senses dulled, his power of speech evaporated.  And then it came out, both ends, as he simultaneously shat in his shorts and vomited over the towel and sand.  And fell to his knees, red and pale at the same time, groaning.  Even the lads had to take that seriously.

-------------------------------------------------

They carried him back to the hotel, reception got a doctor, and food poisoning diagnosed.  A pill to settle him, lots of water, lots of rest.  Not that he had much say in it.  His body had given up holidaying.  Told he'd probably sleep for the next eight hours at least the lads decided there was no point in letting this minor setback spoil their holiday, so they were soon off out for the night.  Caring bunch.

He woke about five thirty.  The room was cool, the silence was strangely reassuring.  He felt weak, but glad he had got over the worst.  Drank some water.  His stomach briefly rebelled, but settled down.  Te drank some more.  

Light was appearing through the blue curtains, a light he hadn't seen before.  Opening them up he gasped.  He'd thought the view pleasant enough, but nothing special.  But this was special.  

The jumble of buildings below, a mix of shops and tavernas and half finished flats, was matt black, featureless, an up and down baseline to the picture, the spikes of ariels and a couple of telegraph poles like points on a graph.  Beyond that the pale silvered sea, greys and whites and that one golden line down the centre, silhouetting the fragile outline of a small sailing boat.  Another line of black, the voluptuous islands across the sound, rolling, revealing, suggesting.  And above that...  Oh above that was a sight he thought only existed in the imagination of artists.

He'd seen some spectacular sunsets back home, pinks and purples and flashes of yellow.  Sunrises were a less frequent sight in his lifestyle, but some summer days the blue would be washed with yellows and stabs of white.  But nothing like this, not remotely like this.  Golden.  Buttercup.  Lemon.  Satsuma.  Dundee United.  An underlay of scarlet intensity.  All this from a rising sun, inching above a valley in those hills.  Not the blinding sunlight of the daytime, nor the softer shadowy light of evening, but a glory previously unknown to him.  

Maybe two minutes of this.  And then the sun was that fraction higher, that bit stronger, that speared into his eyes and wiped out the scene.  He retired to his bed, dazzled by the light and the vision. He'd glimpsed something special, something he wouldn't have seen without that dodgy seafood.  He'd had a sign.  Had he?

He took it easy for the rest of the day, stayed in the shade, off the booze, drank water, ate fruit and eggs and a little pasta in the evening.  He let the lads off the hook and told them to get on with enjoying themselves and he'd back with them when he felt able to.  But he didn't want to be back with them.  He wanted to get to bed early and see the sunrise again.  It didn't disappoint, and this time he had the photos to prove it.  

He pleaded frailty again next day, riding the jibes, with only one aim in mind.  Even risked mussels at the first place he'd had them, and lived.  He talked more to the locals, found out about the history of the island, the places that could be explored.  Talked more to the people in the tourist industry who'd come here to make this place their home, away from the rain and cold and greyness of 'back there'.  

The lockdowns of the past two years had made him realise that he could do his job from anywhere, and the months spent alone in his flat made him realise that something was missing from his life.  He walked past that dirty little taverna and found himself grateful.  Without their lack of hygiene he'd never have seen that sunrise, never have had the time to be sober and inquiring about the place where that sky could be seen.  A question formed in his mind, became a decision, and he went to look for estate agents.  He was going to be able to see that golden sky for many years to come.

Day 50 - Just Say No

 JUST SAY NO

Prompt - Just Say No :  Write about the power you felt when you told someone no.

I wasn't very good at saying no.  I'm still not.  I'm wasn't always good at saying yes either.  Indecision was too easy.  But that can't carry on when your task is delivery of a project that must be completed on time.  No matter what it took.  This was a so-called Millennium Bug project, and the first of January 2000 would be unforgiving.  So one of the most significant decisions I had to make has stuck in my mind and still comes back to me, more than two decades later.  

Our pilot sites were up and running, and faults were being logged at a worrying rate.  The new version, for the first wave of the rollout proper, still had known faults, although it was far better than anything the pilots had.  The start of the rollout proper approached, was less than a week away and I had to decide to send out my installation teams, or delay the first wave.  (This was pre internet-rollout days, I was having to send two teams of seven people out on the road for four plus months, to over six hundred sites, using floppy discs as the installation medium.)   The timetable was long and complicated.  yes, there was plenty of contingency built in, but I knew, from what we'd already experienced with our eleven pilot sites, that there would be delays, problems to overcome, more unforeseen events blocking the path.  

My two team leaders, deputies, senior advisers, whatever you want to call them, wanted delay.  They knew how bad the application still was, knew that there would be another, better version coming in a couple of weeks.  Or however long the testers took to approve it.  They didn't want the pressure of knowing that there was a version out there that wasn't showing us in a good light, and advised that I'd have to find resource, later in the year perhaps, to go to these sites again and install upgrades.  

A simple enough choice.  I could go to my project board and explain why I was calling a delay in the timetable, contact all the local authorities who were geared up to receive our guys , then rejig the timetable to accommodate the changes.  That would absorb some of my contingency, remove a bit of the flexibility I'd built in.  It would make us look bad in the eyes of our customers.  Not a problem in itself, but the associated loss of confidence would reduce the goodwill I knew I needed to succeed.  And my problem would be how long to call the delay for.  two weeks?  Three?  What if the testing didn't complete by then?  Another delay?

Or I could say I had listened to their advice, but remind them that this had to be my responsibility.  I would let the board know that I was proceeding against the advice of my team, so that if it all backfired I'd be the one to carry the can.  

So I said no.  That was my job.  I won't pretend I felt confident, that I was sure that I'd done the right thing, that there weren't a lot of doubts.  I worried, I questioned my own ability.  I went over the options and the arguments over and over again, even after I'd made the decision.  But I made it.  And time proved it was the right choice.  My deputy were generous enough to admit it, months later (deputy singular by then, as the other had succumbed to a serious illness and died during the project).  

Sometimes I got it right.

Day 49 - Joke Poem

 JOKE POEM

Prompt - Joke Poem : What did the wall say to the other wall?  Meet me at the corner!  Write something inspired by a favourite joke.  

I went out to get some black paint

The guy in the shop said we ain't

Got any that dark

Would this hit the mark

A beautiful red that's real quaint?

Such daftness I cannot abide

I really tried not to be snide

But there was no way

So I heard myself say

No problem, my bike's there outside

Based on an old joke I loved as a kid :

A man goes into a shop and asks for a rtine of black paint.  The man in the shop says "sorry, sir, we don't have any black paint at the moment, would a tin of red do?".  To which the customer replies "That's OK, I've left my bike outside".

This became a standard response in our family when someone (usually my mother) suddenly came out with something totally irrelevant to the conversation.  Probably cemented my love of sarcasm as well...

Day 48 - The Stars

 THE STARS

Prompt - The Stars : Take inspiration from a night sky.  Or write about a time when "the stars aligned" in your horoscope

He lay back, arms outstretched, on the dark slope that would lead him back to the hostel, when the world stopped spinning.  The others had gone on, each in their own dimension, each hoping their two feet remembered how to walk.  It had been a good night.

Above him the stars shone in a clear sky, and he pondered their intensities and patterns and meanings.   While he had no patience for the nonsense of astrology, he did know that the sight before him was an influence on his life, and that of his planet.  It's broad expanse widened the mind, tickled curiosity into action, and fired imagination to shoot out in bewildering shots of light.

At a simple physical level there was the power of our moon's gravity on the oceans, or the ever present, albeit low, risk of some stray rock or ice hitting into the planet's atmosphere.  Beyond that the urge to know something about the neighbours, a fascination and conjecture and fictional horrors of Venus and Mars and beyond.  And beyond that?  Suns, planetary systems, satellites, black holes, asteroid conglomerations, and maybe, somewhere, life.  So much was known, so much more unknown.  So much open to a mind that could take an inherent daftness and spin stories that left reality behind and formed their own universe.  

he laughed out loud.  One star kept winking at him, like a signal.  Clearly a spacecraft in distress, it's journey disrupted by a faulty toaster that had overloaded the circuits and set off the emergency systems.  Clearly.  They would be seeking a landing on the nearest oxygen rich planet, time for repair work, time to explore, time to what the locals had to offer.  

He would help them.  He would tell their tale.  Met with the violent instincts of humanity they would use laughter as their primary defensive weapon.  They would find friends and take them off to another galaxy, to true civilisation, away from the primitives they'd found.  

It was a struggle to get up.  Took four attempts, and by the time he succeeded dawn was creeping in behind him.  But he was happy.  Delirious stupidly, rantingly so.  He shared his news with everyone at the hostel, earning a new low point in the esteem of his fellow man.  So what?  he was going to write a book.

Day 47 - Light Switch

 LIGHT SWITCH

Prompt - Light Switch : Write about coming out of the dark and seeing the light.

The USA is emerging into the light, with the Biden presidency replacing the worst and most corrupt US regime in history.  Another four years of that darkness could have proved fatal to US democracy, as the orange manbaby's attempts to resist a democratic result showed.  Biden might not be a strong light - he's no Bernie - but Harris looks promising and America should have brighter future than seemed the case a year ago.

But the UK?  The darkness here is getting deeper and, unlike the USA, there is no robust constitution that resists the right wing's predations.  Even Weimar had more protections.  Brexshit can be seen as damaging for the economic implications, but it's human rights that are most worrying aspect.  An immigration policy that's reminiscent of the National Front in the seventies.  Privatisation proposals that will do even more damage to public services than the dire Thatcher era achieved.  And hard worn employment, diversity and basic human rights under threat.  A Labour opposition that looks inadequate for the job, and a right wing media that revels in the restrictions taking place, giving them even more freedom to lie.

Scotland has a glimpse of what the end of the tunnel could look like.  We can get out of this shitshow, but it will need to be done soon, before the hard right coup taking place down south places even greater obstacles in our way.  It will be as hard as in 2014, for project Fear will be in full swing as soon as any referendum campaign kicks off.  Countering unionist lies will be a hard battle.  But the goal is so worth it, a chance to create a Scotland that at some point in the future will look to be as successful as the likes of Denmark and Finland - regularly assessed to be among the happiest countries in the world.  And what other measurement could shed more light than that?

Day 46 - Dirty

 DIRTY 

Prompt - Dirty : Write about getting covered in mud.

The silent treatment.  It's been going on for two days now, and I wonder how much longer she can keep it up for.  Unpleasant, tedious, but easily enough endured.  The memory still makes me laugh, and it's created a great bond between me and the kids.

We'd gone on a walk together, the four of us.  A rare enough event these days, our (most) teenagers being more likely to sit exchanging digitally with their pals than risk being seen out with the old folks, but this time they were persuaded.  We'd been cooped up for a couple of weeks by the weather, and my suggestion of following up our burst of fresh air with a trip to Krispy Kreme.  Even their mother thought this would be a good thing.  

So we drove down to the coast, took the path along the front that would loop back on the walkway through the woods.  

"Is it not going to be too muddy after all that rain?"  She had a fear of the brown stuff, or anything which might render any one of the four of us less than pristine.  I always thought she was being overly protective, and a little snobbish about the whole thing, but had, perhaps wrongly, given way to her attitude over the years.  If the kids wanted to play an outdoor sport then tennis was OK, football wasn't, and rugby was the ultimate horror.

"No, it's all paved, well drained, and with the sun out like this it should be drying quickly."  I sounded more confident than I felt, but I wasn't going to say anything to risk rocking this fragile boat of family unity.

The walk along the front was glorious.  A fresh wind, blue sky, rippling sea.  People out walking their dogs, walking their dampness blues away, relishing the thought that Spring was (maybe) here now.  Stephen and Paul walked with less relish than most, but at least they weren't moaning (yet).  This felt as near perfection as I'd experienced in some time.

We left the waterfront and turned up into the woods, and the path that would take us back to the car.  Few signs of leaves yet, so the sunlight cast intricate ever moving patterns across our bodies as we walked.  I made a few observations about our surroundings, and nobody called me stupid or eye-rolled heavensward.  A landmark day indeed.  Even when I commented on the various flowers now making their appearance was I curtailed.  

A bigger shock came when Paul picked some pathside bluebells and presented them, in his fully scruffy gallantry, to his mother.  Who was this boy and why didn't I recognise him?  Was he really mine?

Was it this sudden act that promoted the moment of uncharacteristic madness?  I may never know, and certainly not under the current regime of Mum keeping mum.  She wanted some snowdrops to add to her posy, and decided to get them herself.  They were just a little way off the path, requiring a couple of steps on the grassy slope to our right, and she handed me Paul's violet contribution to hold.  As she set off I looked down and saw the sheen that suggested that this might not be the hard earth she thought it was, but knew well enough not to say anything that might be construed as critical of her decision.  I'm glad I didn't.

One step, no problem.  Two steps, big problem.  As she reached don towards the dainty petals her footing started to give.  Slowly at first, less slowly a second later, and suddenly they were gone.  She put a hand down.  The hand immediately began to slide in the opposite direct to that or her fet.  Another hand, and now she was sliding in four directions at once.  

We watched, fascinated, expectant, as the inevitable ending came, leaving her spreadeagled like a fawn on ice, but without the cuteness.  

"Help me".  I could only just make out her muddied plea.  I looked at the boys.  Big mistake.  We laughed.  We chucked, giggled, snorted, guffawed, howled, raored, unable to move.  And the best was still to come.

"We'll have to pull you back towards the path, or I'll end up the same as you."  Well that's what I tried to say, but whether or not she could understand my breathless cackling I do not know.  Signalling to Stephen, we grabbed and ankle each and pulled.  She slid nice and easy on the greasy surface.

"Eeeugh" from Stephen, looking at the mud on his hands from grasping his mother's soiled clothing.  She'd taught them well.

It took a bit of effort to get her upright, probably not helped by our own reluctance to get ourselves too filthy - I was thinking of what it might do to the car seats - but eventually there she was.  Not quite the woman who'd ventured flowerwards, more like a low budget mud monster from a fifties B movie.  We laughed some more.  We laughed a lot.

The journey back was interesting.  Knowing she hated getting the car interior mucky I suggested she remove much of her clothing.  But the mud monster climbed silently into the passenger seat, a brooding swamy presence.  I looked at the boys and willed them not to mention doughnuts.  That treat could wait.  The one we had more than made up for it.

I've had the car valeted.  The clothes went into the bin.  And we might never ever walk together as a family again.  Was it worth it.  Oh my god yes, a thousand times yes.  You can't buy that kind of happy memory.

Day 45 - Mirror, Mirror

 MIRROR, MIRROR

Prompt - Mirror, Mirror : What if your mirror started talking to you?  What might the mirror say?

Hi, I've seen you before.  Almost every day.  And I see changes.  Are they good or bad, these changes?  That's for you to decide.  I'm a neutral in this one.  I just reflect what I have put before me.

The face is a bit more crumpled, a bit more lined, there are little blemishes I don't recall from a year or so ago.  The last year has seen you look more like your age, although you might just about pass for less than sixty on a good day.  Maybe.  The hair and beard are greyer for sure, but you can carry that off.  Still old though...

The body's done less well.  Softer, flabbier, moobier.   Recognisably an old man's body, it needs to be kept clothed for the outside world.  Nobody wants to see that.  But at least the gut looks flat.  Ish.  Well, compared to a lot of your peers it does.

But that's just the physical stuff.  I can see deeper, I can see inside, and that's a kinder story.  You look like a man who's finally comfortable with himself, who has accepted who he is and can live with that.  It wasn't always that way, was it?  That's a more recent development.  Maybe that's why you could just about pass for sixty, eh?

Day 44 - Insult

 INSULT 

Prompt - Insult : Write about being insulted.  How do you feel?  Why do you think the other person insulted you?

If you fancy being insulted you only have to go on Twitter.  Query somebody's political views, especially if they show any signs of extremism (and there are plenty of them around), and you'll soon find yourself insulted.  I got into an exchange with a group of unionists, happy in their own wee bubble (as indy supporters often can be too), who didn't like me pointing out the errors in some of their 'facts'.  One immediately decided I was an 'SNP clown, nationalist and anglophobe'.  Which is interesting, because I wouldn't see myself as any of those, and have the evidence to back it up.  

I might vote for the SNP, but they are a vehicle of convenience.  If I desperately want to go to Vilnius, and it turns out that the only direct flight is on Ryanair I'll hold my nose and go with Mr O'Leary's underpaid minions.  Doesn't make me a fan of Ryanair though.  I'll only vote for parties that further the cause of Scottish independence, and that means SNP are, at the moment, the only realistic place to put my vote, at least at constituency level.

The nationalist label is an interesting one, and I suppose it depends how you define it.  It's a term I reject, almost as much as the daft 'patriot'.  The latter suggests to me the "my country, right or wrong" approach, which I would certainly never subscribe to.  Scotland can make mistakes as much as any other nation.  While 'nationalist' is, again in my own head, someone who thinks their country superior to others.  We might be in some ways, but certainly not in others.  

As for anglophobe...  I asked if he'd like to check that with my Liverpudlian wife.  Or the majority of my best friends.  Who are English, living in England, where I stayed for 35 years.  He didn't seem to want to know after that.

Insults can be wounding.  If you let them be.  This one was mildly irritating, but so ludicrous that it made me laugh more than anything else.  Twitter insults are invariably the most fun.

Day 43 - The Sound of Silence

 THE SOUND OF SILENCE

Prompt - The Sound of Silence : Write about staying quiet when you feel like shouting

Unjust provocation.  Mental torture.  Tolerance stresser.  Peace breaker.  All these things and more, and yet I had passed the test.  I could be proud of myself.

I'd had a rough couple of years.  Pressure at work, break up at home, death in the family.  It had got to be too much, way too much, and I'd not been able to cope.  But there was help, there was advice, there were friends and there were new ways to be learned.  And I thought that the final brick needed to rebuild myself was going to be here.  A Monastery of Meditation, deep in the Highlands, a place of peace and tranquility and mental regeneration.

A seven day vow of silence, a steady daily routine, a life in the slowest of slow lanes, bringing calm and a sense of order to my febrile mind.  Smiling faces, gentle people, a life reduced to the basics of happiness.  With five days gone it began to feel like this was the chrysalis from which I'd flutter away into a new and more colourful life, with needs shorn to a minimum, ambitions set aside.  Until I saw him.

At the end of those first five days were allowed to watch a news programme on the last two evenings, so we would be up to speed with the world we were returning to.  And there he was.  The man who looks like the  hate spawn of Lord Snooty and Heinrich Himmler - Jacob Rees-Mogg.  A creature for whom even loathing isn't good enough.  He was spouting his usual gibberish suggesting the poor should eat gravel and gay people should be transported to Saint Helena.

I wanted to shout.  i wanted to scream.  The noise rose within me with the force of an internal strangulation.  i swallowed hard.  I swallowed again to make sure.  And I stayed silent.  I shook with fury, but quietly, almost sedately.  

The abbott smiled.  He knew I'd passed the test.  I could be proud of myself.

Day 42 - Warehouse

 WAREHOUSE

Prompt - Warehouse : Write about being inside an old abandoned warehouse.

I really liked James.  Even if I still couldn't figure out how a good looking guy who was twelve years younger could be so into me.  But he was, and I'm not one to turn down a good time.  So when he asked to go to a rave with him I was well up for it.  All the way until he said it would be in Malone's, the huge old warehouse on the derelict Gresham estate.  He didn't know, how could he?   He didn't know why I was suddenly prevaricating.  He didn't know what that name meant to me.

That one word took me back thirteen years, when James was still just a kid and I was nineteen.  And up for those good times.  The scene I was part of was pretty crazy at times, but never more so than in Malone's.  It had already been empty for fifteen years by then, another byproduct of the destructiveness of the Thatcher years, like so much of our sad little town.  But it was easy to get into, well away from prying eyes (and ears) and massively empty.  Nothing but the myriad pillars supporting the glass roof to interfere with the huge floorspace that sat between four distant banks of brick.

Somebody, I never knew who, decided this was the perfect place to have bike races.  Guys who'd tried to do a bit of street racing, and swiftly found themselves in law trouble, looking for somewhere more discrete to show off their skills and machines.  And so the Maloney Wacky Races came to be.

A track around the inner perimeter of the building, delineated by the outermost pillars.  In the centre the 'pits', the crowd, the boose, the drugs.  The madness.  Races were pursuits, each rider starting on opposite sides of the building, trying to ten, or fifteen, or twenty laps quicker than the other guy.  Noise and smells, noise and smells, from bikes and people.  Exciting, illicit, addictive.  Summer weekends of my youth.

Riders regularly lost control, slid into corners, where mattresses were stretically placed.  There was one nasty accident, a rider losing control, hitting a wall, brick winning out over bone.  He was carried, on a makeshift stretcher, out to the main road, with his bike, and an ambulance called.  No need to give Malone's unneccasry publicity.

But didn't we all know it wouldn't end there?  That it would end, but not in the way we wanted?  That that one accident had been a warning that fell into the same state of neglect as the warehouse?  We should never have been surprised by the end, but we were.

Denis Johnstone.   A name I'll never wipe from my brain.  He'd been close to losing it on the turn, but looked like he'd corrected enough.  Except his instincts weren't all they should have been.  The coke saw to that.  He'd oversorrected, lost the back wheel as he returned from brushing the wall, and slid into the partying crowd.  Slid two feet from me, my eyes and ears confronted with carnage and screams they tried to reject.  A severed leg, a battered head, a bloody mess, a shower of sparks, the sound of metal on stone, the sound of fear, the sound of pain, the sound of dying, imprinted on my senses.

Somebody called 999.  Somebody had to.  One death, three serious injuries, another fifteen with some kind of physical damage, and I don't know how many of us carrying the mental wounds.  I hadn't fogotten, but I still didn't ant reminding. 

James thinks I didn't want to go to his rave because i thought I'd feel old there.  I let him think that.  It was easier on him that way.

Day 41 - What You Don't Know

 WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW

Prompt - What You Don't Know : Write about a secret you've kept from someone else or how you feel when you know someone is keeping a secret from you.

My wife can't keep secrets.  Except that she can.  What I mean is, I never thought she could keep anything secret.  She is, despite what I'm about to tell you, the very definition of an open book.  A face that can't hide anything, a fundamental innocence that lacks the cunning to deceive.  In other words, honest.  It's one of the things I love her for.

We were heading down to London and discussing our plans for the two days ahead of us.  And something wasn't quite right.  On our first night we were booked into a reading at The Poetry Cafe.  We both loved Henry Normal, hadn't seen him for about fifteen years, and were anticipating a fun evening.  She'd booked the whole trip - she's far better at these things than I am - and I was eager to know what to expect.  But every time we got on to the subject of henry she changed it to something else.  Every time.  Like I said, something wasn't right, but I couldn't figure out what it might be.  I knew she couldn't be hiding anything from me, so I wondered what the problem was.  

When we got to the cafe we were told it was cash only for the night, their card machine had broken down.  I set off to find an ATM.  On my return I found my wife sat talking to a small man in a cardigan.  Only as I reached the table did I realise it was the man we'd come to see.  

"Ah, you must be Blyth."  I was taken aback, but assumed he'd just been told my name in conversation.  "I hope you'll like the poem."  And with that he stood up and wandered off to talk to someone else.

"THE poem?  Surely there's more than one, or has he taken up epic verse?"

She looked abashed, but delighted.

"Our poem.  When I booked I told him it was our anniversary and asked if he'd give us a mention.  he said he'd write a poem just for us."

"But..."  Now I knew what I'd been picking up on.  The evasion was her way of lying without actually lying, the nearest her nature allowed her to get to actual dishonesty.  

I've never been so proud of her.  And the poem was good too.

Day 40 - Car Keys

 CAR KEYS

Prompt - Car Keys : Write about someone getting their driver's licence for the first time

"Don't worry about all that stuff Mum, we'll sort everything out for you.  Doug'll get all the money side organised, I'll go through Dad's clothes and stuff with you, and Doug can sell the car."

"Leave the car please."

"Why?  When either of us come back we'll have our own cars with us."

"I know.  I just want you to leave it for now.  No, you can help me get the ownership transferred into my name, is that difficult?"

"No, it's not difficult, but why would you want to?  You don't drive so it's just going to be sat there as a drain on your money."

"I'm going to learn."  Susan and Doug looked at each other, and turned back to their mother with carefully composed expressions of concerned patience.

Doug spoke slowly, as if he were addressing a particularly dim brexshiteer.  "Why do you want to learn now, after all this time?  We think it might be a bit risky... you know?"

"At my time of life?" snapped Sheila.

"Yes, well no, well, it is quite ... late..."  His voice trailed away.  When his mum looked at him like that he felt about six again.

"Mum..." Susan tried to add her voice, but was swiftly cut off.

"I've thought about this and I know what I want to do.  Stop treating me as if I'm senile and decrepit."

"But it's so soon after..."  She was cut off almost immediately.

"And I'm still in shock from Rob's death?  Of course I am, but this is something I decided a long time ago.  When he was gone, if he went before me, I'd finally get the freedom I've wanted."  Her forty-something children looked at her with a mixture of surprise, sympathy and sheepishness.  "You probably don't even know that I took lessons long before either of you appeared.  But your father rubbished my attempts to the point where I lost all my confidence and gave up.  Never tried again.  He was always there to take me where I needed to go, or at least to the places he said I needed to go.  I'm going to be able to make my own decisions now.  I have plans."

Any further objections were firmly suppressed and her children knew they were beaten.  They'd do what they could to help and advise, but there was no doubt about who was in charge.  

Three weeks after the funeral Sheila had her first lesson.  Hamish, the instructor, was an old friend so he'd been able to slot her in early.  Between lessons she pestered everyone she knew to ride shotgun while she learned to take charge of Rob's old Alfa.  And even she wondered why she felt so confident, so determined, so capable.  Friends and family had to get to grips with this new Sheila, who had opinions of her own and goals in her life.  

She passed.  First time.  Hamish beamed almost as much as Sheila.  After the first outings he'd never doubted her, had seen how quickly she took to driving, how much she'd absorbed in all those decades in the passenger seat.  

Back home she wanted to go out in the Alfa.  Was tempted by the idea of going it alone, going solo.  But there was another temptation too.  Art Baker, a widower who lived a few doors down on the other side, had been one of her most enthusiastic shotgun riders.  Maybe he'd like to go for a spin?  She savoured the cliche in her mind.

He would.  They did.  And together they planned a road trip.  Rob had hated the idea of road trips, so they'd never gone.  She looked forward to telling Susan and Doug.

Day 39 - Coffee & Tea

 COFFEE & TEA

Prompt - Coffee & Tea : Surely you drink one or the other or know someone who does - write about it!

Swallowing the last bit of toast, he threw the still too-hot coffee in after it and got himself out the door.  Checked his watch, ran, made the bus with about fifteen seconds to spare.  And breathe.  Or as well as he could behind a mask.

It was one of the rare days when he had to go into the office, and ten months of working from home had dulled his early morning abilities.  With no routine to fall back on any more it became an adventure of uncertainty every time, an exercise in skin-of-the-teethness.  It was becoming harder and harder to remember how he used to do it, and now his getting ready reflexes felt atrophied and clunky.  They'd gone the way of other olde worlde skills like thatching roofs and drystane dyking.  Welcome to the 2020s.

He started to think about how he used to be.  Organised, slick, in the groove.  Pre pandemic days, a period that increasingly felt like a lesson from history.  By the time he went for the bus he'd have got himself groomed ans suited and had some cereal, joining the queue in plenty time, and early enough to get off two stops early to take in his favourite coffee shop and a bit of a walk along to the office.  He missed that coffee shop.

He missed the coffee, so much better than anything his crappy kitchen machine could churn out.  He missed the croissant he always had with it, fully justified by the wee bit walking that followed.  And, he had to admit, he missed the service.  He missed Keri.  He missed her smile, her shiny black hair, her constant jollity.  He missed her.

They'd never spoken beyond the usual exchanges and the pleasantries she seemed to have for every customer.  There'd never been a suggestion that the customer-server link could ever become anything more than that.  Except that the suggestion was there, inside his head, a link into a fantasy world that escalated from coffee to a date, a date to the best sex of his life, the sex to marriage, the marriage to children, the children to a comforting slippered old age together.  His fantasies didn't have an edit function.

He'd never voiced this to anyone.  Probably never would.  Least of all to Keri.  The times he'd contemplated doing something about it he'd ended up sweating and panicking so much that he'd skipped his morning treat out of fear and embarrassment.  

Would the coffee shop reopen when lockdown ended?  Would Keri still be serving?  Would his job go back to being office based?  So many unknowns.  All he did know was he missed his coffee.  And croissant.  And that smile.  But at least he still had the fantasies.

Day 38 - Fire-starter

 FIRE-STARTERS

Prompt - Fire-starters : Write about building a fire

We reached the top of the rise and looked around.  With the same result as we'd had on the one before and the one before that.

"Shit" said Davey, his vocabulary more limited after each climb.

"Not only shit, but the same shit as last time" I said, my lexicon as exhausted as his.

"We are lost.  We are definitely lost."  Raj's contribution was more to the point and finally vocalised what we'd all been thinking for the past hour or more.  The sun was getting distinctly low, and we'd been getting increasingly desperate over the past ninety minutes, as our predicament steadily became clearer.  We looked at the rolling anonymous horizons, we looked at each other.  As one we checked our phones, and back to one another, each showing the same blank expression.  As blank as our signal bars.  My juice was getting low too.

"Do we accept that we are not going to get back tonight?"  One of us had to ask and it might as well be me.  More looks, and resigned nods.  There was no discussion to be had on that one.  "So we need to try and shelter and se what we can do when it's light again.  Either of you done anything like this before?"

Simultaneous snorts of derision.  At least we were still functioning as a unit.  We were city boys, street smart and hill hopeless.  What had made us decide on a hiking weekend was a discussion to be had another time, but for now it was our forlorn status that took the spotlight.

We managed to have a sensible, almost panic-free, discussion and swiftly came up with a short list of statements of the bleedin obvious.

1.  It would be dark soon and we could get into real trouble if we were still walking by then

2.  It would be cold soon and we had little more with us that the clothes we stood up in

3.  It would be dinner time soon and we had hardly any food with us

4.  It was going to be the worst night of our lives

"So we need to find the most sheltered spot we can within the next ten minutes, see if we can get a fire going, and share out what little we have to eat.  Agreed?"  There wasn't much for them to disagree with.  We found an almost cave like hollow on the slope that looked like it might face west (by city boy reckoning).  Just big enough for three to lie down, some cover if it did rain, and, at least for now, hidden from the worst of the wind.

There was some scrub and bushes a bit further down, so Davey and I went down to get something that would burn while Raj tried to arrange our packs into something resembling a rabbit's bedroom, and worked out how much sustenance there was (if you count crisps, biscuits and lager as sustenance).  

We soon returned with armfuls of combustibles, and did one more run for more before darkness descended.  When we got back Raj had 'built' (thrown together) something that might do the job.

"Right, who's got matches or a lighter?"  My voice was now the brightest thing about the night, with clouds obscuring moon and stars.  

"Not me" from Davey.

"None of us smoke" pipes Raj.

"And none of us had a clue what we were doing coming out here." I added, accessing the hive mind.  "What per cent have you got on your phones?"

Twenty three for Davey, seventeen for Raj, a mere twelve from my Samsung.  We had chargers with us, but...

"How do we light a fire?  Anyone been a boy scout?  Fan of Bear Grylls?  Watched I'm a celebrity?  Anyone?"  Nobody dibbed or dobbed.

"All I know is you rub two sticks together or bang stones.  Or something."  Davey wasn't exactly Wikipedia.  "Oh, and you can use a magnifying glass and the sun, eh?"  It was probably as well he couldn't see the expressions on our faces.

"Kindling."  The word came to me from some ancient knowledge.  Pushed to explain I tried as best i could.  "It's sort of easy to catch fire stuff, like paper and things, that then gets the woody bits going.  You light the kindling first to start the fire."  I might not be right, but the others wouldn't know anyway.  "Raj, haven't you got a notebook?"

"Yeah, but..."

"Rip it up, tear it into strips and make a wee pile of them.  Davey, you've got most juice so we best use your phone as the torch for now, so Raj can see what he's doing and look see if there's any sticks in that pile that look rubbable.  While you do that I'll use the rest of mine to look for some rocks to bang together.

Tasks completed we set about it like the cavemen we weren't.  Twenty sparkless minutes went by, three idiots looked beaten in the ever fainter light of Davey's beam.  

"We'd best eat something and try to get some sleep.  I really, really hate to say this, but it's huddle up time guys, but even that's a step up from hypothermia."  They hated to hear me say, but the freezing to death option was strong motivator.  We ate our subtle repast, with first my, then Davey's phone giving out.  Time to make our bed and lie in it.

I didn't know if I'd be able to sleep or not, and lay there trying to hold Raj close for warmth, and ignore all the weird sounds out there.  Where was a friendly police siren when you needed one?

"Aw, fuckin hell, I don't believe it!" shouts the weird and scary voice of Davey Munroe.

"What, what?" says a fearful Raj and I.

"Don't know if I should laugh or cry."  Remember that pub we stopped in in that unpronounceable village?"

"Uh huh".

"Remember me saying how old fashioned the place was to have books of matches with their name on them?"

"Uh huh".

"Well... "

"Well??" says a pissed off Raj

"Remember me putting one of them in my pocket?  Because i didn't, but I just stuck my hand in for warmth and that must be what this is."

Raj sat up fast and had his phone out and the light on, eager to see this fabulous treasure uncovered by the intrepid David.  Matches.  A whole book of matches.  

"Thank you old world" I said.

It still took three city boy goes to get the bloody thing alight, but soon we had a fire going.  There was enough power left in Raj's phone for one more trip to the fuel source, and we had enough to keep it going for a while.  We decided to take turns staying awake to ensure it didn't go out and I went first.  Because I wanted to feel smug about kindling.

The city boys would survive the night.

Day 37 - Puzzle

 PUZZLE

Prompt - Puzzle : Write about putting together the pieces of puzzles

What is a puzzle?  The first line of the relevant Wikipedia entry says "a game, problem, or toy that tests a person's ingenuity or knowledge".  And today's prompt says "the pieces of a puzzle".  Does that necessarily imply physical pieces, like a jigsaw?  Or could it also include the likes of crosswords or sudoku, where the 'pieces' are written down?  And if 'problem' is extended further, how about building flatpack furniture?  Most people who have tried a wardrobe from some cartoonish diagrams would consider it as fiendish a puzzle as the most difficult of jigsaws or crosswords.

Whichever one of these definitions you might wish to choose, they all have one thing in common.  Solving them requires similar approaches.  Understand what it is you are trying to achieve.  Develop a strategy, which may or may not include a set of instructions, understand and identify what the component parts are.  Follow an ordered and logical path in undertaking and completing the puzzle.

That works in slightly different ways for different variations.  If you're following IKEA's wee pictorials it's best to go through the construction in the order they suggest.  But if the puzzle is a crossword then you might have your own method.  My preferred approach is to go through all the across clues, followed by the downs, and fill in any really obvious answers to give me some starting points to follow up.  Others might prefer to tackle it one clue at a time.  The best approach is the one that works for you, unless it's a wardrobe when you're better off following the order proscribed.  

And the same approaches also transfer into the workplace.  Drawing up plans is like solving a puzzle, trying to fit all the pieces together into a logical progression that uses resources and time effectively, while aiming towards a final goal.  Solving puzzle isn't always fun.  

Mind you, sometimes i think it's a shame that life doesn't come with an IKEA booklet...

Day 36 - Frame It

 FRAME IT

Prompt - Frame It : Write a short poem or quote that would make for good wall art in your home.

There's an old couple up in the Heights

They sit and she knits and he writes

Though lockdown persists

Their lives get their twists

Watching gory police dramas at night

-------------------------

Lockdown Love = Tolerance

------------------------

Lockdown Love = True love

-------------------------

Sick and breathless and sweaty sheen

Of covid we had plenty

A lifetime challenge come around

Surviving Twenty Twenty

------------------------------

I won't suggest this poem's great

I'll never rival Ovid

But I had a need to use his name

As the only rhyme for covid

----------------------------

As Caps fans we both had to learn

To ignore all accusers

They might be losing all the time

But at least they were OUR losers

--------------------------

Stuck in bed, stuck indoors

Emerging to discover

No gigs, no plays, no cakes to eat

A world gone under cover

No-one to see, not much to do

Going out became a bother

Though 2020 did it's worst

We always had each other

-------------------------------------

Day 35 - War and Peace

 WAR AND PEACE

Prompt - War and Peace : Write about a recent conflict you dealt with in your life.

One of the best things about the whole lockdown/pandemic scenario has been being stuck at home so much.  Yes, it can be boring, each day much the same as the one before, but there are compensations.  We haven't spent so much time together for we don't know how long and the good news, indeed a reason to feel joyful, is that we still like each other so much after all these years.  Not just love, but really enjoying each other's company.  It really was a good decision!

So when something happens to scratch that smooth surface it feels not just irritating but wrong.  We had an argument.  You couldn't call it a fight.  Maybe no more than a disagreement.  It didn't last long, it's now behind us, but a pebble thrown into a dead calm pond can cause a lot of ripples.  

I'd been reading about the adverse side effects some people can have to the covid vaccine, especially the second dose.  That worried me.  Indeed I'd have to admit to being a bit frightened.  Many years ago I had to have a typhoid jag before going on holiday to Spain.  My then wife had hers first and was OK afterwards, other than feeling a bit tired. A few days later I had mine, and my reaction wasn't quite the same...

I felt weak and dizzy and had to go to be.  For the next twelve hours I was hot, cold, hot, wildly feverish, hallucinating, jabbering nonsense and lost touch with the world.  Except I knew I was ill, and was, for some of that time, convinced I was dying.  Totally convinced.  So I have reasons to fear a possible reaction to the jags I've be having in the next few months.  I know my immune system was compromised by a spell of glandular fever in my early twenties, so I am exactly the sort of person who is most likely to take it badly.

So there's my fear of being so ill that I think I'm a goner.  But I also worry about how it might impact on my personal daily targets.  Trivial in comparison, yet important motivators to me - and in these times we need all of those we can get.  If I'm to keep up my daily record of walking eleven thousand steps, and writing something in response to my 365 challenge (and, by extension, my daily 750words) I can't afford to be hors de combat for twenty four hours.

It was in that state of mind that I started to tell her about the article, and my fears.  And yes, I know I can be a bit of a hypochondriac at times, but I had past experience to give me good reasons for concern.  She wasn't sympathetic.  It was a fair point to make that I was worrying about something that was probably some months off, but surely not to diminish my fear of a repeat of that serious malfunction all those decades ago?  And so we aired different views, both got annoyed feeling the other wasn't been given a hearing, and both got ratty.  

It felt wrong after so many months of harmony.  It felt like it should stop.  So it did.  I decided to say no more about it.  I felt hurt, and woke up in the morning still slightly aggravated.  But there had been no point in prolonging the dispute, when it was clear it would only become worse and achieve nothing.  No need to forgive, just forget.

Day 34 - Sounds

 SOUNDS

Prompt - Sounds : Sit outside for about an hour.  Write down the sounds you hear.

"Sit outside for about an hour."  Hah!  It is the third of February, in Scotland, and we are going through a pandemic-induced lockdown.  A look out the window tells me the weather is 'seasonal'.  That is gusting winds and rain that verges on sleet.  I will not be sitting down anywhere outside!  I will not be sitting anywhere inside either, for the cafes are closed and the notion of pavement seating is not to be entertained at present.  Give it another three months...

So this exercise might be one to try later in the year, in a climate more conducive to the experience.  For now I'll make do with the sonic experience of today's walk to the shop.

As soon as I'm outside it's clear there are three distinct sets of background noises, all of which will be with me, to a greater or lesser extent, throughout the hour and bit I am out for.  There's the weather itself, with wind noise in vegetation rushing in and out, and the rain falling, drumming on windows and pattering on the shoulder straps of my backpack.

Second there's the traffic noise.  At junctions, where queues await the green light, engine noises come to the fore, but most of the time they are subsidiary to the road noise, the which of rubber on wet tarmac and the occasional splash as a puddle is raised.  Buses and lorries have their own special dominance.  Despite lockdown rules this noise seems not much reduced from what was once considered normal - whatever that is.

And there's the thuds and clanks and hum of machinery.  As I walk along I'm rarely far from roadworks or building constructions and I hear rather than see the sounds of powered tools that I probably wouldn't even be able to put a name to if they came into sight.

Into this bland melange occasional other noises intrude.  As I pass by the cemetery wall there are workmen shouting to each other on the other side, voices raised to carry over the sound of the mechanical digger that is part of their team.  Gravedigging probably, but all I can see above the wall is a couple of hard hats and arm and roof of the digger.

Further down the road there's a persistent alarm wailing for attention.  Car or house?  As I near it's clearly a house, and the noise steadily diminishes once I walk past.  No sign of any problem, no smoke or anyone around, and this is not the right weather for standing to observe.  I hear the siren of an emergency vehicle in the distance, but it isn't coming this way.

Taking the steps down to the Water of Leith walkway the background noises drop to a gentle and indistinguishable whisper and, for the first time, I hear birdsong.  It's hard to concentrate on listening, because there are more people down here and I'm using a lot of my concentration to keep my distance from people who don't seem to have understood why social distancing is so important right now.  Especially some of the bloody joggers!  There are few voices raised, except those calling children or dogs.

Although it's a hundred yards away, the weir is much louder than usual, the river flowing faster, as it's fed by the rain and snow of recent days.  Further along the water is more gushy than burbly today.  

Back on the streets, the buses again do a good job of drowning out the rest, and there's tinny pop music coming from a builder's radio.  I take a walk down a narrow cobbled lane.  For the first time the thud of my boots becomes more dominant in the soundtrack.  The lane takes me into peaceful backstreets I have't encountered before.  As I negotiate my way around the dead ends the background sounds dim once again, the traffic distant, and there's less construction noise.  The noise I hear now surprises me, as it comes from within my chest.  It sounds, and feels, like a large globule of liquid moving around.  Not worrying, just strange.

Now on the busier roads that strangeness once again fades beneath the general blanket of this part of the city.  There are few people on the pavements, there's nobody in the shops.  The wind and rain are effective partners of lockdown strategy.  I go into the supermarket.

My ability to listen to my surroundings as I let my mind work on getting the items I need, as quickly as possible, and avoiding proximity to other shoppers.  There's a bland tannoy announcement about keeping safe, there's a shop assistant at the tills calling out to someone that she'll help them in a moment.  Clinks of cans and clinks of glass, freezer doors thud shut.  But I want out and back into the relative safety of the wet windy world as soon as I can.

The shorter walk home sounds much like the outgoing journey, those three major background sources again.  With one outstanding exception.  As I pass a column of cars waiting to be released from the red, one has music pumping out from behind the streaming windows.  Not the usual whump, whump, whump of a driving bass, but something more carnival like, as if from a funfair.  An atmospheric illusion no doubt, for I don't see the young driver as likely to be a fan of wurlitzers or oompah music.

And home again.  Insulated from most of the above.  But the wind still howls across the skylights at times, and in the distance a siren wah-wahs.  A warm dry flat is a better place to listen from on a day like today.

Day 33 - Jewellery

 JEWELLERY

Prompt - Jewellery : Write about a piece of jewellery.  Who does it belong to?

"That's a lovely brooch" he said.  "From someone special?"

"Not really, just a gift from a friend in return for a favour.  It was a surprise at the time, but now it means a lot to me."  He looked more closely, although whether to examine the heart shape on my lapel, or simply to get closer to me, I wasn't sure.  I hoped he wasn't much interested in my jewellery.

The brooch was silver, shaped into the outline of a heart, studded with eighteen rose diamonds that gave it a sparkling pink lustre that caught the eye in the right light.   

"Must have been some favour."

"Well if you fancy buying me a drink I'll tell you all about it."  He did.  It didn't take much to agree we'd go into Brodies, given it was next door the far less cosy shop we'd met in.  Corner table occupied, drinks in front of us, names and chit chat exchanged, and I kept my part of the bargain. 

"We were down in London a couple of years ago, at a big conference for recruitment agencies like ours."

"We?"  Cautious face.

"My husband and me."  He sat back.  "My now ex-husband, for reasons which will soon be obvious if you let me tell the story."  He leaned in, interested again.  "We worked together, had started the company together, we'd been married for five years.  But this week down south he was suddenly having to go to extra curricular meetings to which I wasn't invited, didn't need to  go, I'd just be bored, and so on.  I wasn't convinced, but I couldn't say it wasn't happening either."  

I paused, remembering the pain of the first couple of days.

"On the Tuesday night, with Ron having done his disappearing act since mid afternoon, I went out with, Angie an old friend who's in the same business.  We're having a drink and chatting away and a guy suddenly joins us, slips in beside Ange.  I looked at her, she looked sheepish.

"Sorry, she says, I should have mentioned Ben would be joining us.  You don't mind, do you?"  It didn't look like I had a lot of choice, unless I fancied the evening to myself.  Ben was about forty five, a good ten or more years older than Ange and me.  Short, chubby, balding, big red nose.  His suit looked old and cheap.  It was hard to see what linked the two of them.

"Except it soon wasn't, as they clearly couldn't keep their hands of each other, and Angie, my bright, hard nosed friend, went like a labrador pup.  Gooseberry time for me."

We left the pub, and Ben took us to the restaurant he'd booked.  Nice place, not cheap, looked a bit pricey for Ben.  It probably was.  "My treat." said Angie."  I raised my eyebrows and he knew what I meant.

"To be fair to Ben he was easy to talk to, could be really funny, and clearly adored my pal.  Between courses I learned more about how and when they'd met, how the relationship had developed - and the bit the made me realise why I was along.  As cover.  Ben was, of course, married.  To a woman he claimed to detest - don't they all? - and wanted to leave.  But the look on his face every time her name came up showed me just how terrified of her he was.  

"We were at the coffee and liqueur stage when Ben pulls this brooch out of his pocket, pins it to his lapel.  Angie tells him off, but is clearly delighted to see it.  Turns out this is something she gave him as a keepsake, and he's messing about wearing it in public, just for the laughs.  But he stopped laughing suddenly.

"A tweedy-looking woman stood at the table, fury made flesh.  She bellows "Benjamin, what's that?", pointing at his sparking decoration.  Ben looks flustered, Angie's colour has drained and I don't need any introductions to know who this is.  "That's mine" I said, "Angie gave it to me as a present and Ben was giving us a laugh saying it looked better on him.  What d'you think?"

"She looked at me, looked at Ben, looked at Angie, and looked unsure what came next.  "Come on Ben, give it back, I don't think your good lady thinks it suits you."  He handed it over and I pinned it on.  "The things we do when we get a bit pissed with colleagues, eh." I said, winking at her.  She ignored me now, and asked Ben if he was coming to the hotel.  And he went, just like that, leaving Angie to stare after him, her mouth opening and closing soundlessly.  

"She was angry, hurt, vengeful, and she described various things she wanted to do to Ben and spouse.  Figured that he must have been stupid enough to put the restaurant booking in his calendar and the harpie had charged up from Kent to catch him out.  She reckoned she wouldn't see him again.  Before we left I gave her back the brooch.  Well, tried to.  She wouldn't have it.  Said it would only remind her of him, and I deserved it for my quick thinking.  I soon realised she wouldn't accept me refusing so I got this beauty out of it.

"I also got my divorce.  As we left the restaurant who should appear out of the place across the road?  My soon-to-be-ex and his bit of extra curricular activity, draped over each other.  This sobered me up and I managed to quieten Ange and drag her along so we could follow them.  To watch a bit gropy smooch at the taxi rank.  Was I going to be like Mrs Ben and barge in to embarrass them?  Too bloody right I was.  

"And the rest, as they say, is history."

My companion sat smiling.  "Good story, nice punchline.  Think those gems have changed your luck?"

"You mean you only noticed me because of my diamonds?"

He laughed, and I loved that sound.  "That would be like noticing the Mona Lisa because it's got a nice frame."

I unpinned the brooch, stuck it on his lapel.  He looked at me quizzically, half amused at the gesture.

"Let's see if anyone turns up" I said.

Day 32 - Rewrite

 REWRITE

Prompt - Rewrite : Take any poem or short story you enjoy.  Rewrite it in your own words.

Fair play to you, you beige skinned beauty

You're the best of all our food

Better than sausage or any dumpling

So I'll shout out why you're so good

You sit there ready to be opened

Plump and hot and full within

A knife stands ready to do the job

The oozing fat shines on your skin

The cook's blade is held above

Then cuts in deep to reveal

Your steaming innards tumbling out

The aromatic luxuriant meal

Then in dive the diners' spoons

Rushing to get their share

Til stomachs fill and stretch the skin

Say thanks for such glorious fare

Could any man eating lean cuisine

Or some noxious frozen pish

Or some mushy rice based plateful

Look down on upon this tasty dish?

Poor guy, look at him eat junk

The sofa sitting TV slob 

His food so lacking any worth

He's far too weak to do his job

But see the man who eats the haggis

Striding out across the land

Strong for work and play and leisure

A force of nature there he'll stand

The gods that look on human need

To their chosen foods they drag us

Scotland wants no fancy muck

Just give us what we want, the haggis!

Footnote - Based on Burns' Address to a Haggis