Return to normal, by Peter Morford

 After more than a year I’ve got used to working from home. It was odd at first to wake at my usual time of 6am and be ready for the short walk to the station for the 7.10 up-train. I miss the regularity of

meeting my friends in the buffet car for our breakfasts. I say friends but we rarely exchanged names, all we had in common was a ninety minute trip from the coast to Victoria Station. We naturally broke up

into little cliques. There were the two chess-players who patiently ignored the misleading advice we gave them. There was the card school on table one. The argumentative set huffed and puffed about

the Government. There was the man who liked to tease the buffet attendant, who, in his best Jeeves voice, would ask how Sir would like his toast. After a moment’s thought Horace would say “Medium rare, my good man.” Sometimes, just to be awkward, he could demand “Very well done. I want to hear your smoke alarm.”

For more than a year one table hosted two women, two men. My friend Greene speculated about them. He also had theories about the men he called Trotsky and Churchill as they heatedly argued their left-wing-right-wing view of life and then politely shook hands as they left the train.

I remembered the retirement party for the old boy who had commuted for 45 years.

**

I took a spare bedroom for my home office. For the first week or two I dressed in my usual City suit, white shirt, regimental tie, shiny shoes. After a while I gradually dressed down. I was respectable above the waist in deference to the daily Zoom meetings, but below that – jeans, shorts, flip-flops. Only two vital things were the same. I was always at my desk 9.15 to 5.30, took 45 minutes for lunch. After a tea break I was back at the keyboard for another 30 minutes, the time I had always spent working on the home-bound train.

Now there is talk about a return to the office. We’ve all been vaccinated months ago and tested weekly. It should be safe, we are told. My colleagues viewed the prospect in different ways. Some would miss the freedom and trust they had enjoyed. The Bank ruled that, as long as all tasks were completed on time, they were happy.

We had all saved money. My Bank balance is padded with the unspent £5000 for a yearly season ticket and I would guess, £3000 for lunches in The Bistro.

Old stagers like me had certain figures on our minds. I was a 30-year commuter. Think of the numbers. I had made the 140 miles round trip about 7000 times, over a million miles. I had spent 21,000 hours on dusty seats or, on the homeward trip, waiting for a seat. I had the skills of a homing pigeon. If I dozed I knew instantly where I was when I awoke, in darkness or light. I had never missed my stop. Did I want this return to The City? I could retire or, perhaps find a local job. But what would I find in a sleepy seaside town?

Fear, by Pat Askew

 I found myself on the outskirts of a large burial-ground. The light was murky. Some distance away, with her back to me, a young girl in a red dress was laying flowers on a grave. Closer to me, but somehow much less distinct, was another figure, who seemed to be a woman in beige, watching the girl. I was seized with a terrible fear that they would turn round, and I would find they had the faces of werewolves; or even worse, that they would have no faces at all. I decided to tiptoe quietly away. The figures did not move, and I realised the scene was only a picture. But then I discovered I could not move either, and that I was part of the picture too. 

The Great British Fake-off, by Mark Lovett

 A bald man and a Goth stared at an Autocue. “Bakers, welcome back to the tent for your Show Stopper Challenge”, shouted Matt,  “today Prue and Paul would like you to bake, not one, but two cakes”. 

“That’s right”, opined Noel, wiping mascara from his eyes. “One should be an image of how you see yourself, whilst the other should be how others see you; no Doppelgängers allowed!

“On your marks, get set – Fake!"

Weighed down by a surfeit of hair gel, Paul Hollywood sashayed across towards an overweight blonde baker.

Alongside Paul stood an eighty-one-year-old Dame from Cape Town, looking like a Mondrian painting with glasses.

“Now, Mr Johnson tell me about your cakes”, queried Prue, “How are they different?”

 “Well, yes and no, whilst on the other hand, maybe. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is the key to this culinary triumph you see emerging before you. By the way would you like an intimate dinner this evening; Carrie is away”.

“I’m sorry Mr Johnson but I am 24 years older than you and my son Paul is now one of your MPs!”

 “I don’t care about Backbenchers and what is more, 24 years, is nothing – that is exactly how much older I am than Carrie”.

Remembering that Johnson had insulted Scousers in 2011, Paul Hollywood adjusted his stare to warp speed eleven and sneered at Boris. “Answer Prue’s question!” 

“Oh, I never do that, people might at last realise that behind the charisma lies a mendacious fraud. Vox populi is not in my Latin Primer.”

Thus, they had to wait to find out that Boris’ first cake was Winston Churchill in a blonde wig, whilst his second was Pinocchio.

Johnson didn’t win the Star Baker apron. That went to Emmanuel Macron for his two gateaux of Napoléon and Napoléon.

Angela Merkel was a close second with Catherine the Great and Mutti, whilst Joe Biden was third with Franklin Roosevelt. He failed to produce a second cake as he could not decide between Statler and Waldorf from the Muppets.

Boris didn’t actually finish, as Pinocchio’s nose kept on growing; he wondered why. Non ducor, duco Boris whispered to himself, although he worried whether Vincit qui se vincit still applied.

As the detritus was being cleared away, Matt and Noel sat in the corner. “Before I met you” said Noel, “I used to think Alopecia was a mythical European State, much like Ruritania”. 

“If only that were true” replied Matt, “then we could make Boris the King and get the Brothers Grimm to write his speeches”.

Lost Content, by Martin White

 At the back of a room of junk and forgotten things, I find a cardboard box. Inside, a tangle of lifeless wooden heads and knotted limbs; the remains of a troupe of marionettes that were part of the puppet shows that my friend and I presented at children's parties and village fetes a great many years ago. We had a rudimentary theatre: proscenium arch, wings and backcloth, which we would quickly set up. There were over a dozen puppets to unwind and hang ready for the show. This varied cast of characters had trod the boards of the fit-up, long consigned to the tip.

   Pelham puppets were a poular children's toy of the time, and we added to them puppets we had made ourselves. And so there would be a variety of turns, presented to music on the Dansette record player: Lullabelle with her maracas and grass skirt on the fringe of racial parody as she danced to a West Indian beat; clowns, acrobats and jugglers in a circus sketch; and Mr MacBoozle, a red-faced Scot, always ready to raise a bottle of whisky to his lips and stagger across the stage; Wag the dog enthusiastically running here and there; and, most popular of all, two skeletons cavorting to the tune of Danse Macabre, limbs flying apart, heads rising into the sky, bringing gasps and screams from the young audiences.

  These puppets had lain lifeless for years, their strings knotted and entwined, until a friend with more patience and dexterity than I could muster untangled them so that they might be able to move again.

.........................................................................................................................................

forgotten puppet troupe

   I still remember

 which strings to pull

 

Poetry, by John Garland

 As I lay in the darkness I tried reciting a certain poem to myself. I felt it was important: if I completed my recitation, something of great importance would follow. It was an awkward sort of poem, full of strange words and unusual turns of phrase, but the real problem was that my attention kept wandering and I found myself thinking of something else entirely, and I had to start again. Eventually, after much concentration, I managed to recite the entire poem without a break, though it didn't hold a great deal of meaning for me. I then waited for developments. But nothing happened; nothing whatsoever.

Perhaps it was the wrong poem?

Scratch, by Graham Attenborough

 Scratch

It’s the loneliness that gets you.

The mundane silence of the company you keep,

the monotony of your own repeated sighing in unlit streets.

And the scratch of the match repeats,

over and over,

lighting up darkness briefly.

Graham Attenborough 1959-2021

R.I.P.

The fame of Ray Sweet, by Peter Morford

 He could plant a tree faster than anyone else without appearing to hurry. He would dig the hole, ease the sapling into place, heel it in, stake and enclose it in the time that most planters would need to barely scrape the dirt. Turfing, he would cut a perfect oblong, gently slide the levelled blade and up would come a turf as precisely shaped as a brick, ready for stacking and, later, for warming the hamlet’s cottages.

On a late summer’s day in 1970 Ray loaded his trailer and, just as he was thinking of stopping for the day, decided he’d cut one or two more turves. His spade struck something hard. He knew it wasn’t a rock. He shifted the cut but the blade still stopped only an inch or two below the surface. He dug carefully around until he exposed the end of a log. Instinctively, Ray knew what it was.

He dug carefully round it. As he expected, the log had been driven at an angle. He started to dig another hole about a yard away –found nothing, Tried again and struck timber. Ray Sweet had found an “X”. He moved 6ft away and found only one pole But he again excavated to reveal the remains of another timber “X”. He looked around and saw nobody. He partly refilled the holes and went home for supper. All he had to do now was to unload his trailer, stack the turves into neat cairns to dry.

   Emma had a nice mutton joint from the butchers, fresh vegetables from the garden and ice cream from the village shop. As it was Friday they would dress up and head for the pub. Emma would join her women friends at their favourite table and the men would roam between table and bar. He collected his beer and Emma’s shandy and joined his friends at the big table where they would talk about farming, football and films on the telly. A coarse joke or two would be told, just too quietly for the coven to overhear. 

“I passed your field this afternoon,” Joe Banks said. “You looked as though you were digging deeper than usual. Treasure hunting?”

Ray said, “I think I’ve found a bit of an old causeway. Two crossed poles.”

“Christian cross?” Joe asked.

“No. An “X” – like Cedric uses when he signs his name.”

Cedric pretended to be insulted. “Cheeky blighter. If you don’t mind, Ray, I’d like to have a look at your field – shall we say 9 o’clock tomorrow?”

He asked his friends not to talk about it yet.

In the morning Ray uncovered the posts and watched his friend trowel the dirt away.

“As I thought, Ray it’s a prehistoric causeway or raised track. This part of Somerset is full of antiquity and legend. Avalon, Camelot, Glastonbury, The Tor; one of King Arthur’s grave; they’re like the day before yesterday compared with this structure. I need to get Flinders.”

The following Monday an excited Professor Flinders declared that this could be a major historical find. Those two crosses indicated the direction of the path and it justified a full investigation. They might even find the planks which rested on the crosses.

“Cover up the holes and the Natural History Department will fence off the site for a major dig,” Flinders said. “I’ll get my students to help. This find won’t make us rich, but you could be famous.”

The rest, as they say, is history. The experts carefully removed what they could. They carbon-dated the timber, they counted the tree-rings and produced a report. Ray Sweet had found the oldest and the longest Early Neolithic causeway in the world. Flinders confidently dated it to 3807 BCE. Acidic peat had protected it for nearly 6,000 years’

“We’ll name this The Sweet Road,” Flinders said to Ray.

That’s what it’s called on the Ordnance Survey Map of the boggy Somerset Levels.