Always been obsessed with time. The passing of it, the tricks it sometimes plays, the way it always runs out just when you need more of it. That kind of thing.
I was washing what's left of my hair the other day, watching most of it go down the plughole - a bit like sand running out of an hourglass - reminding me in a very personal way that I'm getting on a bit now. That's winter for you. Makes you maudlin. This was just before the 21st December when the world was supposed to go up in flames according to some people's interpretation of an ancient prophecy. I was thinking that in that case at least I'd be dead before I was bald. Every cloud...
But it was not to be. The sun dawned on a cloudy and drizzly 22nd December (like every other day this year it seems), the world continued to spin on its axis and my hair continued to succumb to gravity. On the plus side it meant that at least my little girl's Christmas presents weren't bought in vain.
Regarding the time thing, I love watches. Not the battery/quartz jobbies of recent times, but the proper old-fashioned stuff. Mechanical, wind-ups, automatics - the ones where little cogs and wheels are permanently in motion on your wrist, spinning time away in a very mechanized way. Look at the workings of a mechanical watch and you can actually see the passing of time, the cog teeth meshing together grinding the seconds away, the fly wheel rocking back and forth. Look at a battery movement and you might as well be looking at a brick.
Anyroad, a couple of things.
I was lucky enough recently to be asked to write a short story which has been adapted into a screenplay and filmed as a short movie. In New York would you believe. This is the link to the website which explains a bit more about it.
Also I recently released a second collection of slightly unusual short stories. It's called Sending Flowers By Interpol' and is available on the Amazon Kindle store. It's based on the regulars of a pub 'somewhere up North' and is narrated by one of them.
Here's an extract from one of the stories, 'Farmer Giles'.
FARMER GILES
Do I believe in aliens? You'd be a fool not to round here. I mean look at Ted over there and tell me he's not from another planet. It's no bloody coincidence he's got the letters E.T. in his name. And you want to see his wife and kids. Dear God. Talk about restricting the gene pool.
To be honest, I have an open mind about it. Yes, there probably are little green men somewhere out there but unless they're going to come in here and buy me a pint of bitter with a whisky chaser, I'm not going to dwell on it.
But that's just reminded me of something. Before your time, but there used to be a bloke come in here called Farmer Giles. Well that's what we called him, though he wasn't a farmer and his name wasn't Giles. But he had a bit of land and he'd bought a tractor to drive up and down in. Thought he was something because he owned a few fields. You know the ones, just past Posh Tom's council allotment. Think Giles had been left the fields in a will, or won them at a card game or something. Anyway he stuck a couple of sheep in them and thought he was landed gentry.
Except he was always looking for easy ways to make money, get rich quick schemes and the like. A bit of a wide boy, wheeler dealer. Never really made anything from them but it didn't stop him trying. He held car boots sales on the fields, summer fairs, agricultural shows, all that stuff. Just trying to make a bit of brass. He even grew crops every now and again. Yes, you're right. Unusual use for land these days.
Anyway, one night we see him in here reading a book. All quiet in the corner, keeping himself to himself. Well that's not like him. Usually you can't shut the bugger up. We'd heard he'd been having money problems though, so we thought it might have something to do with that and we didn't want to pry. Well, not so's he'd notice anyway.
With a bit of ingenuity (Windy Mick dropped an empty glass on the floor next to him) we managed to get a look at the book's cover. 'True Stories of the Unexplained'. Not his usual reading material. More often than not he had a copy of some glossy country magazine tucked under his arm for effect. Even then we knew he only looked at the pictures.
Anyway we didn't think much more about it till a few weeks later on a Saturday morning I picked up the local paper.
'CROP CIRCLES BAFFLE AUTHORITIES'.
That was the main headline, above a picture of Giles standing at the gate to one of his fields, pointing over it with an expression of surprise on his face as genuine as his Rolex. And then there's another photo next to that, this one taken from the air, showing his field from above. And in the middle of the corn he's been growing are all these weird shapes and spirals, like someone drunk has been driving around with a lawnmower in there, which perhaps wasn’t too far from the truth.
Well the article goes on, telling how Giles had gone down to his field a couple of days before and found these bizarre shapes in there. No idea how they could have got there, he says. The gate had been locked and there were no tracks or other clues. How strange. Very Twilight Zone.
Straightaway I remembered that book he'd been shiftily reading that night and made my way down to the pub. A few of the gang were already there talking about it and Windy Mick said it had even been on the local radio stations.
Well by now we've a pretty good idea what all this is about, so we drink up and head down there.
(Extract from the short story 'Farmer Giles' in Sending Flowers By Interpol by David Heaton available on the Amazon Kindle Store).
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