This piece was adapted in response to the weekly photo prompt from the Unicorn Challenge.

Last Exit From Tenby

I’m an Australian, ‘doing Wales’. Next stop Portmeirion, to re-live ‘The Prisoner’ (‘I am, not a number! I am a free man!’).

At the Buccaneer Pub, inside the walls of the old town in Tenby, I’m drinking with ancients like me, pretending to be interested in rugby, while they pretend to be interested in cricket. Neither of us fakes our distrust of the Royals (though it must be said that the man in the top hat and overalls, feeding his bar stool-perched water spaniel some crisps and Guinness, is a little less harsh than his mates. He would allow them to take their own lives come the Revolution).

Drifting from a woman seated at a table behind me comes ‘I already told you what I want but you didn’t want to buy me that!’ before she storms off to the Ladies.

I turn to see her man, red of face and bloodshot-eyed, togged up for ‘a nice night down at the pub, to get out of the house, like’, staring at her receding back.

Before the next pint, I offer side bets to my new companions about how long it will take before he realises that she really didn’t want a gin and lime and that she’s been in the Ladies an awfully long time. And that the pub has a back door.

‘My round, convict lad,’ smiles Top Hat, ‘because the dog thinks your funny.’

This piece was re-purposed from a longer story in response to the weekly photo prompt from the Unicorn Challenge.

After Arabella had finished lamenting the loss of her latest boyfriend, Babs breathlessly unloaded that the trouble with Arabella was that she was insufficiently bubbly, too po-faced, not enough fizz.

Arabella nodded but was appalled by the idea that she would have to be an airhead to attract a man, so the next time a man approached her at a party, before he could speak, she blurted out ‘I’m a committed environmentalist, I hate jokes and I’m as poor as a church mouse.’

The man smiled and said ‘Ditto’ and would she like to accompany him to the Natural History Museum this Sunday because he’d heard there was a very powerful exhibition on the effects of plastics in oceans.

Agreeably stunned, Arabella said she’d love to and then he said ‘I don’t have a car, can you pick me up?’ She said of course and arrived on Sunday at the address he’d given her.

He said he’d had a better idea. A friend had loaned him his motor yacht and they could go looking for dolphins, which delighted Arabella. However, mid-boat-trip, he stopped the engine, dropped his pants and lunged at her, with his willie wagging like a metronome.

Arabella’s self-defense training kicked in instinctively and, while the man was still groin-groaning, she threw him overboard and, ignoring his pleas that he couldn’t swim, she watched him go under with a myriad bubbles rising to the surface and popping and she felt quite …effervescent.

This piece was written in response to the weekly photo prompt from the Unicorn Challenge.

‘So, theories, Detective Constable.’

‘Hit and run, gov. By aliens.’

‘Based on what?’

‘Well, gov, the ambos said that they couldn’t find a heartbeat. Or anything else because all his organs had been vacuumed up by some sort of probe applied to his nether regions.’

‘And the object in his hand?’

‘Sunscreen, gov.’

‘Sunscreen?’

‘Yes, gov. Clearly these were aliens originating from the Sun. He’s seen the intense solar rays and legged it, hoping the sunscreen would save him.’

‘The Sun?’

‘Well, stands to reason, gov. If they were coming from the Moon he wouldn’t have panicked and run into the road.’

‘So you’ve excluded the possibility of a drunk who’s gone to sleep in the middle of the road, whiskey bottle in hand, and been flattened by a passing truck?’

‘Oh, yes, gov. Because that’s what the aliens want us to believe. They’re cunning little baskets.’

‘So, tell me, Detective Constable, where did you gain your detailed knowledge of  the methods of nefarious aliens?’

‘Well, it’s all over the internet, isn’t it, gov? I mean, what if the powers that be are in on it and want to cover it up. Maybe they’re aliens that have infiltrated the system. Just sayin’, gov.’

‘So, if I were to say to you that this is the greatest load of nonsense I’ve heard in 30 years on the force, how would you respond?’

‘I would totally agree, gov, because I wouldn’t want to spoil my chances of promotion. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.’

This piece was written in response to the weekly photo prompt offered by the Unicorn Challenge.

The rock industry continues to embrace every form of weirdness and the tradition continues with this all-alien band packing them out at the Lovely Jubbly Club in downtown Jamietown. White tie, top hat and tails meets the Cyclops brothers in this funky frenzy of intergalactic rock a la Sultans of Swing.

Sam the Sham on the synth deck lays down everything from Booker T to Mahler, as Guitar George pumps out a wail harvest of blues/metal/grunge riffs. Vocals come from Sod Vicious, former front man for the Sock Pistols, famous for attacking the audience with machetes, but now rendered armless by a bout of mosh pit revenge. And then there’s the peripatetic lines of bass laid down by Bruce the Jackal, interspersed with mackerel and red herrings.

A reasonable facsimile of the Prefab Four is captured in this street art generated by legendary Banksy copyist, Wanksy. Of course, Bruce is missing because the garage door wasn’t big enough on this occasion but a spokesperson for the elusive Wanksy has said he’s promised to start from the other end next time.

Fans of the band, who like to style themselves as Cyclo Psychos, dress up in their image, covering one eye and terrifying pensioners at the local shopping mall as they do Clockwork Orange versions of Fred Astaire.

Rock fans, the world has changed forever and you need to get on board before the gravy train leaves the station.

Accompanying playlist:

Sultans of Swing https://youtu.be/8Pa9x9fZBtY

Fred Astaire https://youtu.be/c0VeEqonEa0

Sex Pistols https://youtu.be/bC4RFY8vtuM

Booker T https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbBcXvKvB08

This piece was written for the weekly Unicorn Challenge to respond to a photo prompt.

This is my home station, Limbo. Technically, it’s limbus patrum, the Limbo of the Fathers, but we patriarchs just say ‘Limbo’. We all know what that means (and it’s not breaking your back bending under a stick). And we all believe we’ll be saved from Hades one day.

When our train comes in, we’ll be taken up into the Bosom of Abraham. (Frankly, we’d prefer the Bosom of the Virgin Mary but it is what it is, as the Great Trumpeter says, constantly.)

The Limbo of the Fathers is that place where we men speculate endlessly on whether we should have ever had children. Stepfathers wonder if they should have acquired children (was that really God’s will?).

The next bit of gristle we tackle is whether we were the best father we could have been with what we had available. Too harsh, too soft, too mean, too generous, too unforgiving, too forgiving, better than our own fathers or worse and the list expands with each passing day (to the extent that ‘days’ apply in Limbo).

And in the darkest times, we spread out and hunker down alone, with our personal sackcloth and ashes, and wonder if we were ever truly loved by the children in our orbit. Eventually, we throw off the sackcloth and arise from our meals of ashes, hungry for the next world and what we expect will be its hard beauty.

But we don’t know. That’s the world of Limbo.

Bonus –The greatest love song ever written involving trains. Over to you, Robert Johnson. https://youtu.be/07T3h0b93Rg

This piece was written for the weekly photo prompt challenge provided by the Unicorn Challenge.

After the war over how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, the Holy See withdrew in a sulk and the Jesuit shipyard was forced to close. Unfortunately, it happened to occur at the time when the Holy Vessel (aka The Ark of the Convent) was in dry dock for repairs to its ageing cubits. Nobody wanted to buy it (the economy had receded along with the tideline) until the shrewd septuagenarian Michelangelo Escher sensed an opportunity.

He offered to salvage the stranded ship of the Vatican State, in return for a lifetime pass from Confession and the automatic dispensation of any sins committed from that point on, into Eternity (which took care of the Fires of Hell option).

He erected a brick façade around the ship’s shiver-me timbers, divided the interior up into rooms not much bigger than a monk’s cell, and then rented them out to True Believers for a fortune. After all, who wouldn’t want to end their days in one of the rooms in the Lord’s house of many mansions?

In a nod to the building’s heritage, the street at the front (known as the Path of the Righteous) was level. However, if you strayed around the corner into Old Nick Street, you would find the steep climb to the luxury apartments of the Earthly Rewards project, with its sublime central heating emanating from the convenient grid that opened for an express descent to Hades. But, what the Hell, the views were Divine.