Rucksack, by Pat Edwards

Patrick was meticulous with what he packed, careful in the detail of how each item rested snugly in its own tight space. He slipped out without anyone seeing him leave the house. Ahmed was silent and prayerful as he pulled tight the straps and locked the clips in place. His mobile was fully-charged in his pocket. Ruth was shopping for Kosher food and sticking to strict rabbinical law, keen to impress his parents. Geeta was with her brother who glared at anyone who gave her admiring looks. BOOM! Interesting, dangerous, that you are thinking what you are thinking.

Departure and Arrival: The Curious Happening of an Entomologist's Journey, by Toli Kram

Grober Schillerfalter over the last few months had gained a great deal of weight, and as he took his seat on the Glasgow train he took up most of the two places.  As the train left the station he reached under the table and retracted a large holdall.  Unzipping it, he removed a copy of "European Butterflies and Moths" by W. F. Kirby, then taking out the rest of the contents, assorted cans of pop, bags of crisps, popcorn, Mars bars, Snickers and many other chocolate treats.  Soon he was noisily munching, chewing and making a mess of his immediate surroundings as well as of himself with bits of crisps and chocolate around his mouth.

After all this he sat very still and quiet with a blank stare and his stomach began gurgling, rumbling, dancing and popping under his brown sweater knitted by his elderly aunt.  The only thing moving was his fidgeting hand that tugged and played with the hem of his sweater.  Fortunately, or unfortunately, his fingers found the end thread that had not been securely finished, and he tugged at it;  so much so that he wrapped two fingers in the brown wool.  The man sitting opposite had his eyes transfixed as the thread of wool darted to and fro across Grober's large rotund belly.  It zigzagged across him, disappearing under his jacket on both sides and inched up over his stomach to his chest, revealing a brightly patterned blue and purple Hawaiian shirt.  By this time the wool wrapped around his hand was the size of a small bowling ball.

After a few hours an announcement came over the train’s tannoy system telling passengers they were approaching the last stop.  Grober Schillerfalter slowly but carefully removed the ball from his hand, picked up his book and all the debris around him and put it in his bag, then took out a tissue from his jacket and wiped his face and hands.  The squealing breaks and rocking of the carriage stirred him deeply, as if something excitingly different was going to happen soon.  He felt strangely abnormal in some way, but couldn’t explain it.  Onto the platform with a few others he stepped, glanced around to get his bearings, and walked over to a large rubbish bin.  He stood looking down into the empty space, and into it threw his bag, then his coat, and what remained of his sweater and his shoes.

The platform was nearly empty on this sunny Sunday morning. He turned and moved towards the exit.  As he walked he unbuttoned the Hawaiian shirt, holding the bottom corners with his hands. He raised his arms and flapped them as his heals rose.  He flapped his arms again and again several times and his toes gently left the platform surface as he fluttered silently out of the station.

("Schillerfalter" is the Purple Emperor butterfly)

A Message Daubed on a Derelict House, by Steve Harrison

“Brenda, Look!’                                           

‘What, love?’

‘On that wall.’

‘What wall?’

‘There’s another one!’

‘Another one, another what?’

‘On That derelict wall   between the Pit Yard and the Clay Works.’

‘What have you spotted?’

‘Another unneeded apostrophe, that’s all.’

‘I see ‘em all over now.”

And there it floated, between the t and the s, slightly faded, the colour of favourite jeans, a denim blue vertical remnant of a heart felt sprayed statement.

The whole phrase went slowly downwards to the right, maybe the ground sloped then or the sprayer’s arm got tired or it was too dark to use the mortar as guidelines but it all added to the sloppiness.

“There was another one in the bar last week, on the crisps.’

‘On the crisps?’

‘No, not on the crisps themselves but the sign.’

‘Three packets of crisp’s any flavours one pound’

‘What about the flavours?’

‘You could buy any flavours.’

‘No, did it have an unneeded apostrophe on the flavours?’

‘No, nor the packets. Just the crisp’s.’

‘Three packets of crisp’s any flavours one pound’

‘Can we go around the roundabout again and get a photo?’

‘A what?’

‘A photo of the wall for my collection of unneeded apostrophes.

It’s part of a project. For my homework”

So they did. Brenda parked in a puddle and Bryan

got the left foot of his best shoes wet and his right foot muddy.

And by holding the camera in landscape mode he captured

‘All capitalists are scum’ on the roll of film he‘d have to find a place on the internet to develop.

“Brenda, when did it all start?’

‘What?’

‘The unneeded apostrophes.’

‘Writing them or spotting them?’

‘Both.’

‘Tricky Bryan, Well those early aerosols could have affected the sprayer’s brain for the sloppiness, that’s both presentation and punctuation or they learned it at as children in the grocers on the signs for apple’s and banana’s.

And your Literacy Course has made them stand out for you, so you now spot them, you see things you never saw before.

You’re an apostrophe spotter Bryan’

‘Is that good?’

‘It’s a hobby’’

‘Is there a hobby of putting apostrophes in?’

‘No need, there’s a glut of them. There’s enough for everybody .In fact there’s too many. We could all have our fair share and there’d be enough to keep in storage for lean years

Or global warming.’

 Bryan was still looking puzzled after or maybe because of the answer.

He stared curiously at the message again cocking his head to the same angle as the slogan.

“Brenda, should Capitalists have a capital letter?’

‘Now, is it a proper noun or is it at the start of a sentence.’

‘In the middle.’

‘Is it a proper noun?’

‘It’s a big C on the wall, big C or little c Brenda?’

‘Good question Bryan, you decide, big C or little c.’

‘Big C.’

‘Correct’

‘Am I now a Capitalist as well as an apostrophe stopper?’

 ‘Yes Bryan maybe we are....’

[Alternative ending]

‘But always remember Bryan,

We may be Capitalists,

But we’re not scum.’

A Sorry State of Affairs, by Pat Edwards

Young love, and the prospect of a whole life together.

Does anyone, anywhere, actually know what that means? Wedding day, new home; then settling down to find out that it is all quite mundane. Get a dog, find a hobby, throw yourself into your work. Children all leave home; and worse, go to live miles away. The inevitable affair. Well, at least the sex is better and they understand me. Well, it was at first, and they did for a while. 

Ready meal, DVD, emails from the kids. Oh God: retirement. Kids announce engagements.

Does anyone, anywhere, actually know anything?

Hands, by Peter Shilston

If you’re a real Sherlock Holmes, you can learn a lot about people by looking closely at them. In the old days, of course, you could always tell miners by the coal-dust ingrained in their skin, and weavers had bad front teeth because of what they called “kissing the shuttle”. It even applies to some trades today: an antique dealer once joked that he could always spot his fellow-tradesmen by their baggy trousers, caused by kneeling down to take a closer look at the furniture. But hands are the main thing for clues.
       Manual workers’ hands look quite different. There’s a story from the Russian revolution that the Red Guard used to patrol around Petrograd stopping strangers and examining their hands. If a man had hard hands, he was a worker and they’d buy him a drink; but if he had soft hands it meant he was a bourgeois and they beat him up. But Lenin had to put a stop to this, because so many of the Bolshevik leaders had soft hands!
       My wife once managed something on these lines. She was brought up on a farm, and when she told this to a chap we’d just met, he said he was a farmer too, on the Surrey-Sussex border; but after he’d gone she said to me, “Did you see his hands? He’s never milked a cow in his life!” He wasn’t THAT kind of farmer, you see; the sort who has to milk his own cattle. I thought Sherlock Holmes would have been proud of her.Now where was I? Oh yes. I think you could apply this to a whole lot of different professions if you knew what you were doing. You could probably spot musicians, for instance, and even guess the instrument. The fingertips and nails for playing stringed instruments would be a dead give-away And teachers would always have chalk underneath the fingernails of the hand they used to write on the blackboard, though I don’t expect this applies any more.

People who’ve played a lot of sport can also be distinctive. Yes, I’m trying to come to the point. Everyone knows that rugby forwards tend to have horrible cauliflower ears from all that time in the scrum. Olympic throwers will have overdeveloped muscles on one side of the body, and so will tennis players and fencers. And footballers have often had knee operations, though of course this isn’t easy to spot when they’re just walking around.
        As regards hands: I remember a reporter once telling the American gymnast Kurt Thomas that people could probably stub out cigarettes on his palms and he wouldn’t feel a thing. Cricketers also have hands like old boots. Do you remember when Darren Gough was on “Strictly Come Dancing”? In one of the early rounds, a judge complained that he had big thick hands that looked inelegant. He must have felt like saying, well of course I’ve got big thick hands; I’m a fast bowler, what do you expect? It didn’t stop him winning in the end, though. And cricketers often have broken fingers: I’ve known one or two with fingers sticking out at ridiculous angles. And if you do a lot of bowling you develop calluses on the spinning fingers, and these can get ripped and be very painful.

I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get to the point, officer. I know I’ve been waffling away,but that’s because I’m just as upset as you are: I’m sure you’ll understand. As regards this particular person, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him before; in fact, I couldn’t tell him from Adam; though of course when the body’s got no head, you can’t be certain. But I’m prepared to bet that he was a slow-left-arm bowler..

Deck Chairs, by Steve Harrison

Picture  two striped Deck Chairs

The canvas of the deck chairs had started to stiffen in the cold air and as there would be little call for them in this weather, Bert’s self-allocated job would to be to keep warm, with only one eye needed for the more hardened intrepid punters.

Between hand cupped secret draws on a stealthy cigarette he had time to examine and appreciate the deceptively simple design. Two pivots, one piece of canvas, nine pieces of 2 by 1 timber. He knew his deck chairs.

When autumn came; never stack away wet, grease on the bolts, oil on the wood, moth balls between every five chairs and the stains of summer; of beer, baccky and babies; could always be wiped or blancoed out.

He knew his punters too: who would be baffled by the mechanisms, who would expect it to be assembled and, on an insightful day, he could predict a low, high or medium seating setting .

Folding chairs had been found in Egyptian tombs, but these were the apex of  design  a classic flat pack to the seasons. Just a couple of inches thick when folded they could be stored by tennis courts , cricket fields , in wooden huts on piers and promenades, below band stand  and pavilions, a striped flag to the English summer.

A seasonal banner that spring had come, to open up like canvas butterflies after winters hibernating in creosoted sheds, stacked carefully behind rollers and tennis nets, another summer to spread out and celebrate if the moths hadn’t got in there.

It was all in the preparation; no food, no vermin, no rain no rot, with care no creaks, deck chairs were easy to please.

What a life ! A cosy winter packed tighter than horizontal penguins; then beaches, piers and sporting occasions, the occasional cruise.

He remembered trying to unfold and erect his first one, when chair and stacker were the same height and getting trapped between the canvas jaws. And then the success of the back bar fitting into the serrated teeth, smugly sitting in it, front bar under his knees, scuffed shoes and half-mast socks just dangling like swinging conkers, legs not yet long enough to touch the floor.

A rite of passage from his boyhood, like the first solo bicycle repair puncture when his thumbs were strong enough to replace the tyre over the rim without his father’s help, and the conspirator winks between them after smuggling forks as tyre levers.

The smell of his own cigarette fumed it back, enamel bowls to be sneaked out of kitchens to find the holes , given away by the smallest bubbles from hedgerow punctures, but always look for another one just in case.

He sighed the final drag on the twice used cigarette.

But it was now a chilly evening: his nose smelt that ice was in the air. To keep warm he decided to stack and re arrange the deck chairs.

 .

Puzzles, by Patrick Askew

I came away from the auction with a small box of Chinese bric-a-brac, which I had bid for because I liked the look of a piece of jade which formed one of the items. When I got it home, however, the jade turned out on closer inspection to be obviously modern, and not even very good quality at that; and I was relieved I hadn’t bid more. 
   Most of the other items in the box were frankly rubbish, but one or two attracted a second glance, if only to try to convince myself that my money hadn‘t been completely wasted. There was a carving in dark wood, beneath a glass dome smaller than a child’s fist, consisting of a man in a robe seated at a table. There was a teapot and a cup detached from the main carving and lying loose: probably the carving had been broken, but somehow it reminded me of those cheap little toys where you have to manoeuvre ball-bearings through a maze, or into slots in a picture. I even attempted to shake the dome to get these objects back onto the table, but failed miserably and gave up after a few goes. 
   At the bottom of the box was a medallion the size of a coin, on a chain. There were characters I couldn’t read on one side of it, and it surprised me, because I didn’t think it was the sort of thing the Chinese went in for. I suspected it wasn’t really Chinese at all, and I certainly didn’t find it at all attractive, but in an idle moment I hung it round my neck.
   For some reason, I suddenly felt an overwhelming desire to return to the game, or whatever it was, under the glass dome. I shook it, and it took very little time or effort to get the cup and teapot into their right places on the table; but somehow they weren’t tiny any more: the whole carving had expanded until it was life-size, and I was right there beside it, watching. And the man in the robe was alive and moving. I watched as he poured himself a cup of tea, and then picked it up to drink it. And I realised that he mustn’t drink it, because the tea was poisoned; and I tried to shout at him not to, but no sound came out.The poison must have been very potent, because he collapsed almost immediately. And he realised what had happened to him, because he was able to lift his head from the table to look directly up at me, and his look said,
“YOU DID IT!”.