Al Stravinsky’s brilliant blog

Another place to play/purchase my songs!

nobody@vox.com(Al Stravinsky) — Fri, 16 May 2008 20:20:56 +0100

I know, you've got them all already, but you might like to own them twice...

This IAC player has all the tracks from my album 'The sentence that I serve' (that's a line from my song 'Fridge says', for the uninitiated). It, they, and several others can be purchased at IAC, CDBaby, iTunes... phew... even Woolworth's have several hidden in with their Pick 'n' Mix for a few lucky punters.

Thanks again
Al

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Have you a minute to spare, please?

nobody@vox.com(Al Stravinsky) — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:30:04 +0100

I just remixed this. Big deal you say. Yeah, OK, in the grand scheme of things... tis nothing, a mere trifle...lasts 60 seconds so I'm not asking much.

Sixty-second song 2008

Al Stravinsky

Thanks for calling in.
Al

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

All my bloody songs on one widget!

nobody@vox.com(Al Stravinsky) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 23:54:22 +0000

Soundclick have just offered me this - after all this time of uploading and pasting every song onto every site (I have the full set). Anyway, just click play and away you go... 55 of 'em I think. Something like that, anyway. Thanks again - Al

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Will's wondrous sword

nobody@vox.com(Al Stravinsky) — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:31:53 +0000

I wrote a bedtime story for my boys, aged 7 and 9. They seem to like it and thought I ought to share it, so here it is...

Will's wondrous sword

‘I don’t want this one – that one.’

‘But they’re all the same. What’s the difference? That’s eight I’ve got down now - I can’t take apart the whole shop. You’re having this one. They… are… all… the… same!’

‘I don’t want any of them then.’ His face was sullen, cheeks reddening. He didn’t understand. It was his money. He’d saved his pocket money for just this moment and he wanted that one.

‘I’m not getting any more down. This is it.’

Dad was fed up of this. Buying Ed’s new Playstation game was easy and this should only have taken a moment too, but it was always the same. It seemed to him that they set out to do something nice together but it always got spoilt somehow… usually by Will’s stubbornness. He just wouldn’t compromise. He would cut off his nose to spite his face – in fact he would cut off his whole head. So the first sword on the hook wasn’t right. Neither was the second. When Dad reached up to get the third, the hole in the cardboard backing had ripped right to the edge, meaning it couldn’t be hung back up… but Will wasn’t having that one either. Number four was slightly scratched… five, six and seven weren’t right - they looked ‘funny’. Dad was fuming now and Will was crying. The people in the shop were looking at them, but were trying to look as if they weren’t.

‘Is it this one?’ hissed Dad, ‘I only put 20 minutes on the parking meter… Come on!’

‘Yes,’ said Will not looking up, tears stinging his eyes.

‘How do you know if you don’t look? Look at it! …If we get home and you change your mind…’

‘Can we just go?’ between the sobs.

How could it all have gone so wrong? Why couldn’t Dad understand that they were all different and he wanted the one that was just right? Why did Dad have to make such a big deal out of it? It wasn’t his money! And why were grown-ups always in such a hurry?

In the car on the way home, strapped into the back seat, Will clutched the carrier bag to himself, though he hated the sword now and hated how he felt. If it were real he’d have whipped it out, cut his dad’s head off and held it up by its grey hair to show the crowd, then swivelled on his heel so the whole arena could see it. And they’d have gone wild. They would love him and they would understand why he felt this way.

‘Shall we call at the chippy?’

‘Don’t know…’

‘Come on!’ Dad’s voice softened, encouraging his son into meeting him half way. ‘You’ve got the sword now. Sorry I was so grumpy, but we nearly got a parking ticket – she was about to write it out when we got back there. Good job we ran! And lucky I’m such a good-looking guy that I managed to sweet-talk her.’ Dad smiled into the rear view mirror and Will grimaced back.

‘Fish ‘n’ chips then?’

‘Ok… er… Please.’

Phew. That’s lunch sorted, thought Dad. At least Will agreed to that. They’ll need some for Ed and Mum too. Saturdays were very busy days and there was no time for anything fancy. There was so much to do in the afternoon that cooking and washing-up would usually be out of the question. They’d have to eat them off the tray – they taste better like that anyway, with loads of salt and vinegar – and stuff the papers in the bin. Job done. The kids would have to amuse themselves in the afternoon – well, Ed would be kept quiet with his new game, and Will should be Ok with his shiny new sword to play with.

III

After dinner Will took the carrier bag up to his room and closed the door. The bad time in the shop was a distant memory now. The food had raised his spirits, as had the cartoons on the TV and the can of Diet Coke. This was the moment he’d waited for. The bag was cast onto the floor and the cardboard - complete with instructions - was ripped away and discarded. At last the silvery weapon rested across Will’s upturned palms. The sun bounced into his room off the windows of the house across the street and the sword glinted. He tilted his hands so that the reflection played back and forth across his eyes, and he marvelled at the intricate carvings - something he hadn’t spotted before. It was the one he’d wanted, the only one with a red jewel inset into the handle – all the others were blue – and he smiled and closed his eyes as a glow of satisfaction filled his whole body. It was made for him. He’d just said yes in the shop and hadn’t looked, but he was sure it would be the right one. And here it was. It was meant for him.

He held the handle now and it suddenly felt heavy, sturdy and so realistic. Swishing it around, as he’d seen warriors do as they warmed up for battle, he felt powerful and very confident. Will opened his bedroom door and ran to his brother’s room so he could see himself in the full-length mirror. There he was, long blonde hair swinging like a Norse invader as he handled the sword with grace and ease. An ugly troll riding a fearsome dragon crept up on him from behind but he saw their reflection. With the same move he’d used when showing Dad’s head to the cheering crowd, he turned swiftly on his heel and gave the troll a terrifying blow to the neck with the flat edge of the blade. The spell was broken and the creatures instantly turned back into a large teddy bear and a rocking chair. The thwack made a sparkling cloud of dust rise up into the shaft of sunlight that slanted through the slightly open curtains.

What happened next wasn’t possible but Will saw it happen all the same. As he swung the sword again he sliced through the dusty sunbeam, cutting it into two sections. The lowest section of the beam fell to the blue carpet and silently shattered into a billion particles. Free from the laws that fixed them into straight lines, the particles spiralled and twisted around the room then gradually faded, burning out like tiny stars. He stopped when he saw what he had done and stood still, in awe, amazement and fear.

The shaft of light was cut cleanly through like a crystal, the squared end looking like the cross-section of polished quartz he’d seen in a fossil shop at the seaside - full of reflections. Instead of continuing its parallel path to make a bright patch of light on the wall, it just finished in the air. He stepped in front of the cut beam and there was no bright light on him. Only when he walked into the end of it did the sun paint a stripe down him… and he quickly realised the stripe was skin-coloured. The beam had penetrated his T-shirt like an X-ray and was lighting up his flesh. He leaned into it and saw, in horror, that the beam seemed to enter his body so that he could see first his ribs, then his lungs, heart and backbone… As he stepped forwards the beam made a hole right through him, though he felt no pain, only the sun’s warmth where his surface skin should be. He jumped backwards out of the light and the hole closed as he did so.

Turning his back to the window he looked at himself in the mirror once again. He hesitated, shrugged to himself, and then stepped backwards into the beam. Feeling the heat on his back he took another step… the logo on the front of his Batman T-shirt glowed from within and suddenly he had a slot the size of a birthday card that went all the way through him. Through the mirror he could see right through his own chest, and out of the window behind him. His internal organs, visible in the walls of the hole, seemed to be working perfectly, and the pulsing and heaving of his own flesh intrigued him. As he swayed from side to side the hole swayed too, showing different parts of his innards in its walls. He stepped forward out of the beam and he was again in shade, the hole gone.

The carpet still twinkled with particles of the section that had fallen and shattered like a giant icicle, but the minute lights were slowly going out. The edge of the sword’s blade was coated in a similar display and he stared in wonder until the last tiny sun flickered and died.

Will froze for a moment trying to take in what had happened, then he ran downstairs to find his elder brother. No-one else would believe him; he wasn’t sure he believed it himself. Ed was on the Playstation fighting dragons of his own, and he took a lot of persuading that there was something worth seeing in his room - he’d only been in there twenty minutes earlier and had seen nothing new. Will didn’t want the grown-ups to hear him, wanted Ed to see it first, so couldn’t say too much; he used only hand signals and whispers. Suddenly Ed thought he knew what William was saying – he’d broken one of his things! The clumsy, careless idiot! His heart began to race, his temples pounded, and he dropped the games controller and ran up the stairs two at a time.

There was an almost audible clang as shock stopped him dead in the doorway, as if he’d run into an invisible force field. The sunbeam poked half way into the room, ending impossibly in mid air. Ninety-three million miles away the other end was connected to the sun that was probably still stinging from the damage to its limb. Ed was only the second person in Earth’s history to see such a thing, but it did not hold his attention for long. Sticking out of the carpet, exactly where Will had dropped it, was the bejewelled handle of Will’s new toy, the entire half metre blade of which was buried into the floor.

‘My carpet!’ Ed screamed, and ran to the spot where the sword entered. He started to pull it out and it came with ease, but the nearer he got to the tip the slower was its progress and the harder it got, as if the floor was setting around it like glue. Tugging with all his might it finally came free and he fell backwards into his laundry basket with a clatter. Then he dropped to his knees to inspect the damage, but there was no mark. Not a single sign. He grabbed his magnifying glass from the bookcase and peered through it at the spot, but the result was the same. Suddenly he remembered what he held in his other hand and threw it down. It rattled harmlessly, plastically, against the skirting board and came to rest by his knees. He cautiously picked it up again and ran the magnifying glass over it. It looked like a plastic sword and felt like a plastic sword. It was a harmless plastic sword.

‘But it’s changed,’ said Will, as if reading Ed’s mind. He’d been there throughout, had followed him silently upstairs, and now came over and fell to his knees for a closer look. ‘It was heavier than that before. It was… real, a real sword. It started out plastic… then… changed. I thought it was me, my imagination making it do it, but it was… real.’

‘How could it be? What did you do?’ sneered Ed incredulously, even though he’d seen and felt its power at first hand.

‘I don’t know… I just… made the light flash in my eyes… the sun’s reflection… that’s all! And I whacked the bear with it too... but nothing else. Honest!’

They both thought of something at the same time and looked up. The severed sunbeam! There it was, maybe a little fainter than before, but still there. They stood either side of it, drawing their hands towards the polished end. As their fingertips entered the light they vanished. As their hands were pushed into the beam they vanished too. The stumps of their fingers, hands and arms entering and leaving the beam were grotesque but they couldn’t help but stare and do it over and over again. First they screwed up their faces in horror and disgust and then amazement, and finally burst out laughing at the sheer lunacy of it.

Suddenly the beam faded noticeably and they both quickly drew their hands away. Looking through the window they saw the reason: a low grey cloud was crossing the sun; a flock of them stretched all the way to the horizon behind it. The beam was totally extinguished. The first cloud passed and a full, normal beam returned, lighting up a section of the Simpsons poster next to the mirror. Now their hands merely cast animal shadows just as they normally would. Again the light faded. Now when they looked outside the sky was full of grey and it started to drizzle. There was no sign that anything strange or wonderful had happened. The two boys stared open-mouthed at what they had witnessed and wondered at how quickly they had accepted it. They needed to tell someone but what could they say? Nothing – no-one would believe them. It was too fantastic, like a shared dream.

VII

And then it rained. It poured for two whole days and threatened to wash out all their school holidays. The garden pond overflowed until the entire garden was a pond, rivers overflowed till flood plains were lagoons, and the sun slept through it all. On the third day Will woke late. Birds were singing and the sun was once again shining. Looking out of his window he saw the footpath had already started to dry and he began to plan what he would do for the day.

After breakfast he went back to his room, got dressed and then gingerly took the sword out of its hiding place. He hadn’t dare play with it since the other day’s events. Ed had decided that sunlight affected it somehow so the dark wardrobe was probably as safe a place as any to keep it. And Will had left it there, only glancing in occasionally to see if there was any change. But it looked so harmless now that he couldn’t believe it could be dangerous and he so wanted to play with it. He was about to open his curtains when Ed burst in.

‘What are you doing? Keep it in the dark!’

‘But it’s plastic, just plastic,’ sighed Will, ‘and anyway, there are no sunbeams in here - the sun’s round the side now. Come on, it’s too dark in here.’

He opened the curtains. The sword was just a toy. They examined it again and couldn’t believe the powerful things it had done.

‘We need to do experiments,’ said Ed, ‘…to find out if it still has powers, see what it can do, how it works. We need to plan, write down what we do, and write the results. Then, if anything goes wrong, people will at least know what happened to us.’ He sounded brave but practical and suddenly much older than his nine years.

Will felt a chill when he realised there could still be danger, but he was excited too. He thought for a moment, biting his lip.

‘OK. I’ll get the paper and pencils. Let’s do it!’

‘You boys OK up there?’ shouted Mum. Silent pause. ‘Are you boys OK?’

‘Er… just playing.’

‘Try not to do anything daft. I’m just going shopping. Dad’s on the computer in the back room if you need anything, but try not to disturb him… did you hear me?’

‘Yes… OK. See ya!’ They hoped they would, but couldn’t really say for sure.

VIII

They pushed aside the clutter on Will’s bedroom floor and set up some things on his desk. Will started to draw diagrams of experiments they might do, tried to imagine how and why the change came about. They knew that the sun had something to do with it. Ed reckoned that its power was wearing off as he’d pulled it from the floor, that’s why it was hard to do. And that’s why it was just a toy again when he threw it down. This made good sense to both of them.

‘Shall I be the cutter?’ asked Ed hopefully.

‘Yeah, you can do it. I’ll take notes.’

‘The sun will be round here soon,’ whispered Ed, and he held the sword respectfully. ‘If it can cut a sunbeam and slice through a carpet without even leaving a mark, think how sharp it must be! Don’t stand in front of me while I’m holding it, just in case.’

‘Don’t worry, I won’t,’ grinned Will.

Ed opened the wardrobe door and placed the sword back inside the gloom where it would be safe till they needed it. They plotted and planned for ages, neither wanting to be the one who could be blamed for a silly mistake.

Then they sat on the floor in silence, waiting for the Earth to turn, waiting for the shadow of Will’s remote-control robot - who stood guard on the windowsill – to appear in the room. Like a sundial he would measure the time for them, but time seemed to be standing still. They waited. At last, his long shadow could be seen on the wooden wardrobe door. The spot where they sat on the planet was turning toward the sun at about a thousand miles an hour, but the shadow’s progress across the door was somehow slower than the slowest snail. But move it did and soon the sun was streaming in across the floor as it continued its journey across this part of the sky.

‘It’s time,’ said Ed dramatically, and they looked at each other for confirmation. They both nodded. Ed reached inside the wardrobe, closed his fingers around the sword’s handle, and carefully brought it out into the open while keeping it in the shadows.

‘Number 1,’ read Will, ‘Hold sword in sunlight.’

Ed slowly lifted the sword horizontally and turned the blade till he was blinded by reflected light. It felt as if its weight increased, like when he held a cup under a running tap, and he could hear a high-pitch sizzling sound. The blade’s edge was alive with light and it was becoming heavier. He held it there, far longer than Will had done. It began to hum quietly, and then sing with a metallic, flute-like sound.

‘Write this down… holding in sunlight… glowing… getting heavier, vibrating, humming…’

Will scribbled as fast as he could, full stops, spelling and punctuation sailing out of the window. When he’d finished he read again:

‘Number 2: Cut a pencil.’

Ed took the red HB pencil that Will held out to him, never taking his eyes off the blade of the sword. He held the two objects as far away from him as possible and, as if they might explode at any moment, tightened his jaw and half closed his eyes. He brought the two things together and watched in disbelief as the blade passed through the pencil as if it wasn’t there. Even stranger, the pencil was still in one piece. He passed it to Will who ran it through his fingers, bent it, and, with an effort, snapped it into two uneven pieces with ragged ends.

‘It went right through it but didn’t cut it! How?’ Will stared at the two pieces, one in each hand, realised it was Ed’s pencil and secretly tried to fit it back together. He gave up, hid half and started to write the results with the sharpened half. After a few moments he spoke again:

‘Number 3: Cut a sunbeam!’

Ed looked again at the blade. It shone with its own light as if it had stored the sun’s energy that had poured into it. He turned it to look at the edge, but as the blade reached the perpendicular it vanished. Then he turned it slowly by degrees and it reappeared. As he turned it back to look down at the edge, again it became invisible. It was unbelievably sharp, yet did no visible damage to anything it touched, except…

Ed swiped at the sunlit air but nothing happened. He slashed again but there was no beam to cut.

‘We need dust,’ said Will, ‘it’s not dusty enough. I whacked the bear and there was a cloud of it in the sunlight and when I swung the sword again it happened. Make some dust!’

Ed reached to the top of the wardrobe where he knew dust was lurking, and swept the thin layer of fluff and dead skin into the air with his hand. Will kept well back. Ed stepped to one side of this galaxy of tiny particles, held up the sword ceremoniously and sliced through it from top to bottom with one exaggerated movement. The sword then passed through the carpeted floor like a ghost, and came up and out of it, leaving no trace.

As in Will’s room three days before, the light severed from the sun fell to earth with a silent crash and dissolved into a fiery random dance. It left a polished rectangle a metre high by half a metre wide on the end of the beam that now reached only halfway across the room. If the beam was a long parallel corridor to the sun, then the rectangle was the door into it - a blank one with no handle. Will reached out to touch it with his half a pencil, but tripped over a stray roller boot. He tumbled forwards through the shiny door and vanished without a sound.

Ed had to think fast. If the sun went in the half-beam would disappear, only to be replaced by a complete one when the sun came out again; the door would be gone. Would Will be able to get back through a new one if Ed cut it, or would he be trapped in the old one forever? His questions were soon forgotten: a floating hand appeared, then a face, and then Will’s head hung impossibly in the air.

‘Ed! Ed! Ed! This is fantastic. Come and see! Look at my watch…oh, it’s normal now… wait…’

He disappeared again for a few seconds but soon re-emerged.

‘It’s like my room in here, it is my room, but things are different, way different… my clothes, my watch… the bed…’ His head went through again leaving just a few strands of his long blonde hair behind before reappearing. ‘Woah! The bed... it’s, it’s… fantastic. But I’m the same… well, I think I am. Come on!’

‘What about the sword?’

‘Leave it… No! Bring it… leave it! I don’t know…’

‘I’ll bring it. Step out of the way!’

Ed approached the door slowly, stuck through his left arm, then raised his left foot and carefully placed it through, feeling for the floor. It found a firm surface that he still couldn’t see. The beam finished about 30cm from the floor on his side and about the same on the invisible other side. He now straddled the two worlds. He dithered, hesitated, he wasn’t sure, but a tug on his invisible hand made up his mind for him and through he went. The rectangle faded to nothing and the sun was gone.

XII

The first thing Ed noticed was the change in the light. It was red here. The room glowed with a red light that came from the window… but it wasn’t Will’s rectangular, white window frame, it was circular. The frame here was of shining chrome and looked like the porthole on a spacecraft. Outside, the black sky was half filled by a vast scarlet orb and where their drive and front garden should have been swirled a beautiful blue and white marbled planet thousands of miles below.

‘Right!’ exclaimed Ed, ‘See what yer mean!’

They were on some kind of space station. The room, much bigger than Will’s real room, was mainly chrome and blue. All the furniture was tubular and shiny. The bed hovered in the air emitting the slightest hum. But the most amazing thing was Will. His clothes were mainly black, so densely black that they reflected no light at all. Oval chrome pads that protected his elbows, knees and shoulders each became a mirror of the room. A tight-fitting black skullcap hugged his head and the hair flowing from beneath it seemed even longer than usual.

‘Ed, watch this!’

Will closed his eyes and concentrated. He started to levitate. He rose about 20 centimetres into the air, opened his eyes, folded his arms, and hung there, smiling.

‘It’s my shoes… I can tell them what to do. And look at this!’

He raised his left hand. He was wearing something that looked like a watch, but the black strap was broader and very tight fitting. It had an array of flashing lights on its surface and a rectangular blue screen that was displaying strange, alien symbols. He touched the screen, then a combination of the flashing lights. A blue light beam appeared which seemed to scan the bed in front of them. The bed was then surrounded by a yellow glow and vanished. He pressed some more buttons, counted to five and it reappeared.

‘I sent it to another room – and then brought it back!’

‘How do you know what to do? You’ve never been here.’

‘I don’t know, I just do. Watch!’

Again he closed his eyes and this time he held out his hand as if holding a cup. A can of coke miraculously appeared, the fizz of bursting bubbles announcing that it was already open and ready to drink. Ed’s mouth fell open but he was speechless. He took the can from Will and took a swig. It was real enough. They finished the can between them. This was thirsty work.

XIII

Will laughed. ‘It’s the room. Try it. I just knew it would do it the moment I got here, didn’t have to work it out. Don’t you feel it?’

Ed looked down at himself but he looked the same. He held out his hand and screwed up his eyes but nothing appeared, then he looked round for somewhere to rest the sword, thinking that with free hands he could concentrate better. A glass shelf appeared half way up the wall. Will laughed.

‘Voila!’

The shelf sagged slightly as if to measure the weight of the sword, then readjusted itself into its original position.

‘The shelf’s not fixed to the wall! It’s just hanging there, in the air!’

‘I know,’ said Will, ‘I made it.’

‘What do you mean, you made it? You’ve only been here two minutes. I don’t get it… an’ why can’t I do it?’

‘Cos this is not your room, idiot!’ Will replied jokingly, but he could see his brother getting frustrated and angry and thought he’d better stop showing off. Then he noticed something. Something important. Something terrible.

‘The way back!’ screamed Will, ‘It’s gone…Noooo!’

They ran around feeling the air, hoping the door had merely faded, but Will was right, it had gone.

XIV

‘Open!’

The circular metal door to Will’s room slid back silently on his command, and the boys found themselves facing a long cylindrical corridor with grey padded walls that emitted a soft, even light. Another circular door immediately to the left was Mum and Dad’s room. And the next one to that, about five metres away, was Ed’s. The one directly in front of them was the bathroom. All this they knew instinctively, as the layout was similar to home. To the right should have been stairs if the plan of their own house was still being followed, but there were no stairs, just a drop of about ten metres. I say a drop, but nothing dropped in this part of the station because there was no gravity. They simply floated and pushed themselves off the walls to move around, doing handstands, cartwheels, back flips, all with perfect ease. Will started to laugh and Ed joined in and soon they could do nothing for laughing; they just floated helplessly in mid-corridor.

‘Let’s go in my room,’ said Ed eventually and the door slid open at his command. Will looked really pleased for him. ‘Wow! I just thought it, and it’s just how I wanted it!

One second there was a void, and then the details appeared, just as Ed imagined them.

‘Can we just make anything up and it happens?’

‘No.’

Gravity took over as they crossed the threshold and they both slammed to the floor.

‘You haven’t quite got the hang of that either!’ said the same voice that had said no.

‘Aaaagh! Who are you? And what are you doing in my room? I didn’t imagine you!’

‘Fear not,’ said the stranger, ‘for I should imagine mighty dread has seized your troubled minds,’ and he chuckled to himself, ‘I’ve been waiting to say that.’ Then he addressed the startled boys:

‘No. It was I who imagined you,’ and he smiled reassuringly.

If he’d had wings you’d have described him as an angel, and indeed most of him looked angelic: he was dressed in luminous white robes and he was young, tall, strong and very handsome. His eyes were all-seeing, all-knowing, and his voice was deep and sonorous. His platinum hair was short and spiky and he had two small silver horns protruding through his scalp.

‘Where is my sword?’ he asked, suddenly a favourite uncle that had known them all their lives.

‘In my room,’ said Will, ‘and it’s mine! I bought it. My money, so it’s mine!’ The uncle routine was not going to fool him.

‘OK, keep calm, youngling.’ The stranger chuckled again but quickly looked seriously at them. ‘We have a problem. You have cut through a beam, fallen through a door, and created a universe where the suns are not powerful enough to charge up the sword. So you can’t go home. You’re not the first to do it, and you won’t be the last. Look!’

Ed’s bedroom had a porthole too, only his was gold, solid gold. The stranger’s glowing robes cast soft shadows around the room and Ed could now see all the wonders he had created for himself: a chocolate fountain stood in the corner; a musical drinks dispenser in the other; a table football with real but tiny players who waited for his touchline commands; and a hovering bed that was a golden hemisphere. One wall was suddenly a bank of monitors adding random splashes of colour to the room; they were previewing every computer game he’d ever imagined. Outside - about twenty million miles outside - hung a little red sun in the night sky.

Ed kicked something. He bent down, picked up a pouch with a string-tied top and took out a glass sphere about the size of a tennis ball. He threw it up with one hand to feel its weight. The stranger reached out and caught it. On closer inspection they saw that it had tens of tiny golden fish swimming around inside it.

‘I’m not sure what that is, but I can sense it is dangerous,’ said the stranger, suddenly looking rather scared.

XVI

‘Oh yeah… I think I know!’ Ed suddenly remembered. ‘It’s not dangerous. It’s from a game I once made up in my head. I called it ‘Goldfish’. Each player, in turn, has to perform a simple task chosen by the others. Whoever holds the ball – the Goldfish Ball - pretends not to remember how to do that task and the other players, in turn, have to help him by giving simple instructions. But it wasn’t a special ball like this – look at it, it’s fantastic! The bag’s cool too - best put it back in before it gets scratched… It’s beautiful.’

‘How do I do that?’ said the stranger without a hint of irony, holding the ball out in front of him and turning it around in wonder.

‘Ha, very funny,’ laughed Ed.

‘No, really, how do I do it?’ The stranger looked lost and confused.

‘What? Wow it really works! It really makes you forget. That’s brilliant! Can’t wait to take it to school!’ and Ed carefully wrapped the bag around the ball and tied up the top. The stranger shook his head as if waking from a dream and smiled wryly.

Ed now noticed he wasn’t really dressed for the occasion. He closed his eyes and instantly donned clothes just like Will’s, only with a belt round his waist onto which he hung the pouch. He then, just to check his boots, rose fifty centimetres into the air, paused there a second and then returned smiling to the ground.

‘You’ve made two suns, a big one and a small one, which is very novel’ said the stranger, ‘but neither of them have anything like the power we need. Your sun back home is perfect for the job. Well, it would be because I made it and I’m not daft…’

‘Are… are you… God?’ asked Edward, in awe.

‘No! Well… no… well… I suppose I am in a way,’ and he shrugged, as if he’d never thought of it like that before.

‘In what sort of way?’ enquired Will politely, imagining this was the way to address someone who isn’t sure if he’s God or not.

‘I don’t believe you,’ Ed butted in. He looked around. ‘I don’t believe any of this. It’s just a dream… or something...’

‘Ok. Let me explain,’ said the stranger softly. He tilted his head, a director’s chair appeared behind him and he sat down with the confidence of someone who’d done that sort of thing before.

XVII

‘In the beginning…’ and he chuckled once more. He now seemed to be enjoying himself. ‘Sorry, let me start again. I made that sword you now call yours. It’s not a bad piece of work either for an apprentice. My master was impressed enough to let me pass out of college and into the fields fully two eons before my friends. It’s the only one I ever made, whereas most people have to have at least three or four goes before they get it right. Anyway, I was out in the fields harvesting, like we do…’

‘Harvesting what? What do you harvest with a sword?’ Ed butted in again.

‘Energy. We make these,’ and he took a tiny, pure-white, glowing cube from his robes. ‘Oh… enough talk - let me show you.’

He looked at the boys in turn and when he saw he had their full attention he raised his right hand to his face. He closed his eyes, pressed his thumb to his right temple, his middle finger to his left and said something like:

‘Beam-stump event 202506. Run!’

The boys were suddenly in another place, but the stranger still stood before them, his palm still covering his face. They had their eyes open, knew they were in Ed’s new room, but around them was a vast barren plain. The sky - white fluffy clouds scurrying across a dome of blue - looked much like home, but it was bigger somehow. A range of hazy, blue mountains rose to their right and to their left was nothing but the dry, flat plain for mile upon mile. When their eyes adjusted to the distances involved they began to focus on tiny figures who glinted as if signalling to each other with mirrors.

The stranger wiped his brow then stirred up the dusty ground with his foot. A breeze caught the powdered soil and swirled it up into the air. He squinted up to the sky, and seemed to be counting the clouds, judging their speeds. He gave a satisfied nod. From his robes he took out a small, dull, white die. Ed noticed the stranger wore a silvery ring on his left hand and he drew the cube across the ring’s mounted red jewel, scratching something on its surface. He then began to unfold the cube as if it was made up of layers of very thin paper and he soon had a strip about 10 centimetres wide and a metre long. Will couldn’t believe that the cube contained so much material, but he was soon going to be even more amazed.

XVIII

The stranger then produced a long silver pin from his robes and fixed one end of the strip to the ground. Again he looked at the sky. He unfolded the sheet again along its length till it was fully ten metres long, yet still only ten centimetres wide. Now he pinned down the other end. He began to unfold the shimmering material along its width and it floated like a sail as he did so. The wind caught and played games with it, but quickly and expertly the stranger continued with his task till a ten metre-square sheet faced the changing sky. He pinned down the last corner and looked appraisingly at what he’d done. Barely pausing for breath he stepped into the middle of the sheet, drew out his sword - Will’s sword - and waited, poised to strike. The sheet reflected the sky and shone with rainbow colours like oil on water. It seemed to be barely there.

The wind spiralled a column of fine dust from the ground and it passed around the stranger. The clouds parted and a shaft of sunlight raced across the plain to where they stood. As it passed over them and lit them, the sword sparkled and hummed sending shining signals of its own to the distant figures around them. The stranger sprung into action. He was athletic and strong and moved so quickly he was almost a blur. He harvested the beams like a machine, and as they fell to the ground they didn’t shatter and escape as they had on Earth, they vanished, absorbed by the material under his feet. His skill was not only in cutting and moving, he also had to avoid the beam-stumps whose ends were now glinting from all four corners of the sheet.

Will noticed a corner pin working loose from the ground and thought he ought to push it back in, but he found that moving was very hard work, like swimming through treacle. Before he’d travelled barely one step the sheet broke loose. The stranger snagged his foot, toppled through a large glassy door and was no more.

XIX

Now Ed and Will witnessed the stranger’s act of creation, magnified and slowed down a billion times especially for them. It started, as these things usually do, with a bubble, but at first there was nothing. The stranger came from nowhere; the bubble formed around him and started to expand. As it grew, they noticed another bubble inside the first that contained the sword. Countless more tiny bubbles started to appear inside the first one and they too expanded. Many of them contained minute, wobbling, floating spheres of their own. Then they all - except for the original one that still grew around them - silently burst revealing a huge variety of objects, some of them recognisable to them, some not. The whole scene resembled an exploded diagram like the ones the boys had seen in books. Invisible connections seemed to be made between the pieces and then it all came together; it imploded. It was a giant puzzle that could be finished in many ways, though they felt that only one way would make the correct solution. Will suddenly recognised the shop he had been in three days before. At first it was hazy like a mirage, but soon it was solid and real. Every single piece was fixed in place and was in perfect harmony with everything around it.

Looking outside the shop was a dizzying experience but both boys managed to do it for a moment or two. Bubbles silently popped all around them. The places, people, animals, plants, bacteria, molecules and atoms that emerged and formed, all cast their stories like fishing lines into the past. These joined up, spinning, twisting and squeezing together, eventually becoming one strand. Zooming out, the boys saw millions of these strands come together and capture new stars and whole galaxies in their spiralling net. They tangled, turned and twisted with incredible speed and energy, eventually forming a single, tight, slender line that disappeared down into a dense mist. Then a flash of light obliterated everything, shrank to a single point and vanished. They were now at the beginning of time.

After a brief pause, as if creation was taking a breath, it all ran forwards again: the point; the flash; and the thread that grew like a cosmic Indian rope trick. As it grew it started to unwind. With their minds the boys held onto one strand that they climbed as it split and split again. Faster and faster it separated as it spun undone and they crazily wheeled round and round on the edge of a whirlpool of creation. After a while they found themselves clinging to one tiny branch where they saw the earth quickly form - the molten ball solidified, clouds formed and seas filled. They climbed further up their thread and saw life, in its simplest form, being born. As the rope finally unwound into a universal and seemingly infinite frayed-end, they followed their own personal tiny threads up through evolution, from protocells to people, in the blink of an eye. The unwinding suddenly stopped with a jolt. In his mind the stranger looked down on a beautiful, spiralling array of galaxies and multi-coloured points of light that swirled un-detectably as normal time took the reins. Then he was back in the toyshop, rushing around looking worried, as if he’d lost something. Ed and Will simply saw themselves sitting watching TV. It was 4.37 pm a week last Monday.

Again they found themselves on the vast plain. They were alone except for the distant figures with glinting swords harvesting beams of their own. The stranger tumbled headfirst back out of the beam-stump he had just fallen into. He did a dramatic forward roll and rose gracefully to his feet in the centre of his sheet. Dusting himself down, re-arranging his robes and nodding and smiling to himself, he strode out to the edge of the shimmering square.

After picking up the stray pin that had worked loose and caused him to trip, he patrolled the perimeter and drew the other three pins from their corners. Dropping to one knee he touched the red jewel of his ring to the edge of the sheet. It instantly snapped taut into a perfect square that resembled a pane of very thin glass. He touched the ring to it again and, incredibly, the sheet began to fold itself up as if it had a memory that the red jewel had somehow re-awoken. Within four or five seconds the small white cube had reformed itself and sat on the ground at his feet. Now it glowed noticeably. He picked it up and held it close to his right eye to examine it before hiding it deep in his robes. Suddenly he seemed to remember something, looked quickly at the sky, and then leapt back through the beam-stump from which he had just reappeared.

The image faded and they were once again in Ed’s new room and the stranger stood before them. He took his hand from his temples.

‘Phew. That’s some ride isn’t it? Now do you believe me?’

XXI

He took out the cube and tossed it to Ed to scrutinise.

‘We use them like you use a battery, only these are much more powerful and flexible. On my planet that is all we have – there are no fossil fuels – but as long as our sun continues to shine we have all the power we need. Of course there’s always a downside and things sometimes go wrong. We need dust or a mist so we can see the beams we’ve cut – for safety reasons the sword won’t work unless the beams are visible. Normally, a cloud crosses the sun and erases the old beam-stumps and then new, whole beams are formed when the cloud moves on – that’s why we need just the right cloud and ground conditions to harvest – but sometimes there’s an accident…’

‘Accident? Like what happened to you?’ said Ed, wide eyes leaving the cube for a moment.

‘Yes. Sometimes someone…’ and he looked kindly at Will, ‘stumbles into the beam-stump before it’s erased. I’ve done it myself a couple of times. Your universe was the result of one… and… you don’t want to hear about the other, it was a total disaster… but I was only young then.’

He looked around a little nervously and then continued: ‘This one will soon be a disaster and we’ll be trapped and killed if we stay long enough. You’ve done a good job, Will, because the general building blocks are very sound, but it will start unravelling soon so we need to get a move on.’

‘Why will it… unravel?’ said Will sadly, ‘I love it here.’

‘You’ve made something that is able to exist for a short while, but it’s not very stable. That planet down there is hollow, like a football. These two suns are very near the end of their lives and there are very few stars in the sky. You’re only seven, so how could you imagine it all? But you made something; well, you’re bound to create once you fall through a freshly-cut one - anyone can do that - but your next one, if you ever make a next one, will be so much better…’

‘Why can anyone do it?’ asked Will, a little hurt.

‘The sword cuts time. That’s really all it does… sort of freezes the sunbeam, like an icicle, so that we can take away the bit we need. Where the beam is cut there is for the moment, on the polished surface that you see, a threshold of infinite possibilities with infinite energy. If you fall through… you are like a god. It feeds from your ideas… and here we are as proof: this is your universe, Will. It’s good for a first effort, but it doesn’t have long to live. I’m a wise old man so the one you call home should go on for a while yet. I’m quite proud of it!’

‘So you… are God then… well, you’re our God… does every universe have its own God? But how come I could imagine my own room, make it how I wanted it? Am I a god too?’ Ed thought he’d caught the stranger out with that one.

‘Because that’s how Will made his universe, so that in your room you could do that. That was his gift to you.’

XXII

The stranger continued: ‘Now then, about my sword’.

‘Finders keepers… I saw it in the shop! And once it was there and once I bought it, it’s mine forever!’ Will knew his argument wasn’t going to stand up to scrutiny, but he tried.

‘Yeah, why can’t he keep it and why did it all start with a shop? What’s that got to do with anything?’ Ed joined in too.

‘I fell through my beam-stump a week last Monday by your time. I’m a child at heart so a toyshop was the perfect thing for me to land in. The rest of Earth was simple enough to make – it’s based on the classic ‘Feosimgnis’ model with carbon-based life forms – like you. Whatever was in my head - and was possible - happened, and happened almost instantly. Like the ‘big bang’ your scientists talk about, except it wasn’t billions of years ago, it all happened last week. Your memories, and the memories of everyone and everything, are backward projections from the date you were all made. Very difficult to do but I am very clever so it’s all perfectly possible. There’ll be a few things that you’ll remember that others won’t, but that won’t cause the thing to fall apart – that’s how memory is on Earth: you people simply forget - I knew that would help. That keeps it stable. Your home planet could go on for ages!’

This was too much for Ed:

‘So we’ve only existed for seven, eight… nine days. Our whole universe has only existed for nine days? I don’t believe you! I can remember my birthday party last year, and the year before. Are you saying they didn’t happen? My memories are all fake?’

The stranger was serious now: ‘What you remember is real. It’s as real as anything in any universe. Trust me. It happened. But it sort of happened in reverse, from a week last Monday backwards. If it wasn’t totally real and possible then it wouldn’t work and your world would vanish in a puff of smoke – just like this one will, very soon.’

XXIII

‘Why do you need to create anything? Why not just climb back through the… beam-stump?’ The explanation was merely producing more questions and Ed was full of them.

‘Because… if we fell into a void we would instantly cease to exist. The sword gives us the chance to create a dimension where we can charge it up and get back home in one piece. Some harvesters make them last just long enough to save themselves, but I’m a bit of a perfectionist: I have pride in everything I do… Anyway, it’s good to create something every once in a while, it keeps the old brain active,’ and he smiled, suddenly looking very wise as he tapped his temple with his right index finger.

‘And the sword?’ Will wouldn’t let it go.

‘I dropped it just after I fell through and it became a part of my creation. It was run down, harmless, and hung in the shop with a dozen others similar to it without me even knowing, so I couldn’t find it. I popped back home to get a cube – that cube – then I wandered around my new place looking for it. I went to the toilet, got a hotdog and waited, knowing it would just turn up. When you took it home and held it up in the sunlight, it charged up again and I could feel it was being used. It’s like an extra arm to me so I could tell it was active. I couldn’t pinpoint it the first time you used it, but today it was charged much higher and for much longer too, so I was able to home in on it. Well, I missed it by a few metres, but it’s not far away from here is it?’

‘It’s in my room,’ said Will who then asked another question: ‘If we can’t make the sword work… if the suns aren’t bright enough, how will we ever get back home?’

The stranger raised his eyebrows, ‘Ah, that’s a good question.’

XXIV

'Right boys. What will happen is this: as this universe starts to disintegrate, the red supergiant outside Will’s window will collapse inwards and then go super nova, meaning it will explode. That will happen in two or three minutes.’

For once in their lives both Ed and Will were listening very intently.

‘You need to use that light to power the sword and try to find your way back home before this station is destroyed. I can transport myself in the same way as I got here – the elders among our people have learned to shift between all these worlds - but I can’t take you with me. The sword is your only escape. It’s a good job Ed brought it with him or you’d be finished. I’ll lend it to you. It is programmed to remember where you came from in case of an accident, and will search for a way home for you from the infinite number of options available. But it may take it some time. Make haste!’

‘You said elders? But you only look about twenty.’ Ed said it, but Will thought it too.

‘Yes… I spend seven or eight days each year in a dimension where time goes at about fifty times the rate it does here – but backwards. It’s a strange way to spend a holiday but it’s worth it: I will live as long as that dimension exists and look forever young…’ He smiled a self-satisfied smile that left not a wrinkle on his cherubic billion year-old face.

He then glanced at his watch. ‘Right, then!’ Slapping his hands onto his thighs he stood up. ‘Best be going! Oh, before I do, I’d better warn you. So far you’ve only come across the good things you’ve created, but you will have made some bad stuff too, maybe some deadly stuff. This is a small place and there’s nowhere to run, so I suggest you leave as soon as you can. The cube please.’

Ed reluctantly threw it back to him.

‘OK boys. And one final thing – never put your hands into a cut sunbeam! Think about it! What if the sun goes in?’

Will pictured himself in front of the mirror with the hole passing right through him and winced both at his stupidity and at his good fortune.’

‘Good luck!’ The stranger winked, rubbed the cube between his thumb and fingers and then he vanished.

XXV

The boys left Ed’s room and were weightless again in the grey cylindrical corridor. As they bounced their way back to Will’s room they felt a low growl that shook the whole structure. They both stopped and listened. As they started to move they heard it again.

‘It’s coming from downstairs!’ Ed was scared, but Will was petrified. Ed could see it in his face.

‘Will, what is it? Is it the ‘bad stuff’? You made it… what did you make?’

They heard a door on the ground floor hiss open, and then heavy, shuffling, scraping sounds and more deep growls. Neither dare look over the edge of the landing into the tunnel that led to the ground floor. In their house it would have been the stairs, but in this weightless, any-way-up place it was just another grey cylindrical corridor.

‘It’s… it’s my bad dreams, my nightmares. They’ve come to life. I tried to blank them out but I couldn’t stop them completely. They are here.’

‘But what are they? What will they do? Shhhh - I can’t hear them now. Have they gone?’

‘They’re weightless now,’ Will whispered, ‘they are floating.’

The boys huddled together and, as best as they could without gravity to ground them, backed up against mum and dad’s bedroom door. Several huge shapes loomed on the far wall as the soft light cast the monsters’ silent shadows.

‘Quick!’ Ed hissed, ‘hide in here! The nightmares never follow you into mum and dad’s room,’ but the door wouldn’t open. ‘It’s locked!’

A black, featureless, ghostly shape rose slowly into view. Its smell was disgusting, and its outline changed constantly like an agitated jelly. It couldn’t see, but, through the tentacles on its head, it could sense fear and so it gravitated towards them. A deep rumbling growl came from somewhere within it that rattled the boys’ brains in their heads. Slowly it approached them like a giant black slug.

One by one, three more wobbling heads came into view. They instantly sensed where the boys were and edged their way forwards for the feast, adding their own deafening cries to the cacophony.

XXVI

‘Will! The watch. Use the watch!’

Quick as mercury, Will raised his left arm and pressed some buttons. Blue light scanned the first nightmare and it was surrounded by a yellow glow. Just before its slimy, black tentacles touched them it vanished. The other three hesitated and were silent for a second, sensing that their comrade had gone, but they soon continued their steady advance.

‘Again!’

But the watch had to recharge for five seconds. They shrank back into the frame of the door making themselves as small as possible as the recharge lights flashed and Will counted aloud: ‘… two, three, four, five! Go!’

A second unspeakable beast glowed then disappeared. This was Will’s worst nightmare come to life and he realised he wasn’t liking this place much now. Five more seconds agonisingly passed and the third monster was despatched just before it struck.

But the fourth one was very close behind it and would soon be upon them. Its huge bulk seemed to be growing and now it towered over them; the smell of death surrounded it and its rumbling, scraping roars were ear splitting.

‘One… two…’ Their time was up. Then Ed remembered something.

He took the pouch from his waist, ripped it open and hurled the Goldfish Ball at the monster. It plunged deep into the huge, black, gooey blob.

‘Three…’

‘Kill us! Ed screamed, ‘Kill us!’

Will looked at him in horror. The monster stopped. It wobbled and swayed, silently waiting for instructions. It held the ball somewhere inside it and had forgotten how to kill.

‘It’s playing the game,’ shouted Ed, ‘And it doesn’t know what to do next!’ The sphere bought them the seconds they needed.

‘…five! Go!’ A blue light, a yellow glow and the final confused nightmare vanished too, leaving the sphere hanging in the air. Ed wrapped the pouch around it, kissed it and reattached it to his belt. They were now on their own. All they could hear was the faint hum of the station going about its business of replenishing and filtering air, maintaining a comfortable temperature, and automatically cleaning the toilet.

‘Where did you send them?’

‘Into the sun,’ answered Will, ‘Into the big red sun. No more nightmares for me.’

XXVII

The boys quickly made their way to Will’s room – no weightless fooling about in the corridor now – and Ed took up the sword from the glass shelf. The red star was huge, a thousand times bigger than the dwarf on the other side, but its light was still relatively weak. As they observed through the porthole, it started to collapse silently inwards at an alarming rate, and its scarlet hue began to turn to orange as it shrank. Yellow and blue streaks crossed its surface like lightning bolts. Violet flares tried to escape but were greedily snatched back in. It was now about half its original size. The station began to turn slowly in space as it was sucked into the imploding fireball. The sword was caught in the blinding white rays that now shone from cracks in the star’s crazed surface and it began to sparkle and sing.

‘But there’s no dust in the atmosphere; it’s all too clean!’ Ed exclaimed, ‘How will we see the beams?’

Will thought for a moment. ‘Make it colder in here!’ he ordered, seemingly to no-one in particular. ‘Colder!’ There was a whoosh of icy air and they both shivered as the station’s air-conditioning instantly did as it was told. Ed breathed out through his mouth and formed sunlit clouds of condensation. The boys nodded at each other. Ed raised the sword and prepared to strike.

Suddenly the room was cast into darkness as their home continued to slowly revolve under the force of the shrinking star’s gravity. They waited silently, nervously for their ‘night’ to end. Once again white light entered the room as the station completed one revolution. The boys both breathed life into the beam and Ed cut through it savagely. The severed section fell to the floor and shattered into millions of scattering pieces, leaving a circular portal that they would have to dive through.

‘Come on! Let’s jump!’

‘No!’ screamed Will, ‘It’s the wrong one.’

‘What! How can you tell? Jump!’

‘This one won’t take us home. I’ll know when it’s the right one. Wait!’

Again night descended on the room. They saw the tiny red sun pass by the window and then they stood in the darkness, breathing heavily with hearts beating hard, waiting for the dawn of another rotation.

XXVIII

Light shone in once more and Ed cut again. Another silent shattering of sunbeams, another circular polished door. Again Will shook his head. Round and round they spun while the sun shrank - it was collapsing and getting ready to blow. Each time Ed scythed the sunlight. Each time Will shook his head. They jumped up and down in the darkness to keep warm, the freezing air sprinkling a powdery frost onto every surface.

Then the moment they’d dreaded: stellar fragments hurtled towards them at unbelievable speed as the star went supernova.

‘Is it this one?’ screamed Ed. ‘We only have seconds left… Come on!

Will closed his eyes and concentrated.

‘How do you know if you don’t look? Look at it! …We’ll never get home if you don’t look…’

‘No!’

Will shook his head again. He would know when the time was right, but he didn’t know if they had the time. Again darkness swallowed them. The station was buffeted by the leading edge of the shock wave that was about to engulf them.

Light leaked into the room once more and a bright crescent appeared on the far wall that slowly opened up into a full circle. They both breathed hard. Ed hacked at the beam and the cylindrical severed limb of the dying star fell to the floor and disintegrated.

‘Can we just go?’ Ed was pleading now, holding onto the surprisingly steady hovering bed to keep his balance as the station rocked again.

The round end of the beam began to turn oval as the station continued to rotate.

Will suddenly opened his eyes. ‘This one! It’s this one! Jump!’

Ed took two steps and flung himself through. Will had a last look around his universe that was soon to be no more. The beam was little more than a crescent once again as the station spun its last. Two steps and a flying leap and he too disappeared. Three and a half seconds later the station was engulfed by a wave of white-hot debris from the exploding star and was completely destroyed.

XXIX

Ed and Will untangled their limbs and sat up on the familiar floor, still shaking from the cold and their ordeal. They’d made it. The sword in Ed’s hand was once again a harmless plastic toy and they were dressed in their normal clothes. They looked at each other and heaved a joint sigh of relief. Will shook his head in disbelief and a storm of ice crystals fell from his long hair and onto the carpet as if to confirm the reality of what they had just survived. With surprise, Ed saw the pouch containing the glass sphere at the foot of the ladder that led up to Will’s bed. He reached for it but before he could untie it he heard the front door. A distinctive and welcome voice rang out:

‘I’m home! Yoo-hoo! You ok? Boys! Ed… Will! Are you two still up there? Hello… You’re very quiet!

‘Yes Mum, we’re here. We were just playing a game with my new sword… but… er… we’ve had enough of it now.’

They looked at each other with zigzag lips and wide eyes, and then burst out laughing.

*******

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

'On my first sonne': A GCSE English Literature mock exam.

nobody@vox.com(Al Stravinsky) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:33:40 +0000

Hi again

I started work last September as a 'Learning Support Assistant' in a local high school. Yesterday, as the title suggests, I sat in on an English Literature mock exam, to check that the cheeky buggers didn't cheat and to help with any problems that might crop up. It was the first time I'd been asked to fill this role. The dreaded words were spoken: 'You have one hour and 45 minutes to complete the paper. Pick up your pens. You may begin!'

Most of the room of 13 boys and one girl did nothing, just sat twiddling, tapping, slouching, sneering, grinning inanely. The girl wrote manically and eventually four or five of the lads had a go... the rest did barely anything. It affected me. I could have cried. Not at them, for them.

I've been in class with some of them over the last five months and, shame on me, thought they were mainly a pain in the arse: disruptive, uncooperative, sometimes even violent. But yesterday I felt sorry for them. I could always see their behaviour was a front, a cover for their insecurity, but as they sat silently, uncomfortably alone, they looked painfully lost. It was very poignant. They are 16 years old and English is their first language, though they can barely read The Beano or write a note for the milkman. There is little doubt that, in their ignorance, their parents have failed them. The school has failed them too despite the wonderful staff's best efforts. And so has the system.

As I walked between the desks I picked up a redundant 'Anthology' and began to read Ben Johnson's 'On my first sonne'. It's a fantastic poem and, being the father of a seven year-old boy, it has touched me deeply. An idea spontaneously sprung into my mind and I wrote this when I got home, using some of the original's language and form. I compared the pause before the exam to the one before the Battle of the Somme. The ages of many of the boys in both scenarios would be similar. Their immediate fates would be different - no-one normally faces death in an exam room - but the hopelessness of the two situations was what tied them together. Both are a tragic waste of young life.

On my first Somme

Fare well my boys, but how did we prepare thee

Without hope or sense to grasp the gravity?

Five years you were lent to us, the chance was brief

To engage you; now we daily share the bell’s relief.

Reluctant recruits! Soon the dreaded call will come:

‘Pick up your swords, the hour is marked – it has begun’.

Death’s face grins and sneers among the ordered rows,

Armed with feigned indifference to fend the blows

This day will rain. Now, truly, here doth lie

Ben Johnson’s best piece of poetry.

The greatest shame as I see them fall?

What I love they will never like at all.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Bubbles

nobody@vox.com(Al Stravinsky) — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 14:14:52 +0000

Is life a series of bubbles? Or one big bubble with lots of smaller ones bouncing around inside? Each phase of your life is perhaps enclosed in the taut transparent skin in which it grew. All the materials for that phase that were there from the start are now used up; it's expanded as far as it can, and it's time to step outside and set it free.

Butterflies

Al Stravinsky

I wrote songs for a while. I felt they had a purpose. Each one had a life of its own: a creative energy that forced it into being; emotion to give the inflation drive and direction; and an experience it was born to define. As it neared completion, the energy waned, raw materials expired, the bubble contracted a little as it sealed; then the story was told/the experience was exorcised/the emotion was expressed. Rainbows swirled on its surface as it floated before me exactly as I had imagined, yet beyond my expectations - it was complete.

Sitting here in my life's bubble, I see, herein, a floating 'songs bubble' full of little bubbles of its own. Each song is fragile, existing only as I made it; too delicate to touch, alter: too easy to spoil, destroy. No-one will cover them, few will play them. But for me who made them, there is a beauty hovering there which will always be a part of me and apart from me. I smile to hear the faint tinkling sounds within them as they float past, and, occasionally, I step through a membrane to relive a time and its soundtrack caught within.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Well, well, well...

nobody@vox.com(Al Stravinsky) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 23:29:24 +0000

I thought I was OK, but depression is lurking, ready to strike. I have a deep well of unhappiness that sinks right down to the core of me. Was it always, innately, there?. Or have experience and disappointment dug it for me? I put a lid on it most of the time, but almost everything I do reverberates around the damp and dripping walls down there in the dark, and the echoes colour my feelings and reactions on the surface.

Loving you

Al Stravinsky

So I'm starting to act like an unhappy person again - tetchy, cynical, short-tempered... at one time I could often blank it out/rise above it, but now it's a constant, though often still subtle, state. The soul-searching, re-appraisal, and mulling-over of old, mainly negative events take me only one way: down. My battered wooden-pail-on-a-rope dredges deeper with every clawing draw, bringing to the surface all manner of fragments of painful, broken, long-cast-away things. It's an up and down cycle that it would be better to stop, because thrown-away, buried, or drowned things should stay that way. But that's easier said than done, as those of you with wells of your own will know.

But visualising it thus - the classic well of a Grimm fairy tale - helps me to see the mechanical nature of the process: the casting down; the slow winding up; the fishing around in the murky container for another shard on which to cut myself; and down again... I can stop this at any stage. Think 'well'. Take the handle, turn the gears, release the coils, lower the bucket... stop. Put on the brake and leave it there; imagine it swinging, just out of sight, in the shadows - empty. An occasional drip leaves it at its apocheir and hangs in the dark, searching for any spark of light to fill it and give it life, before falling into the glassy treacle-black depths. Put on the lid. Walk away. Done.

Xmas is a sad time (what are we celebrating exactly? He's not coming back now you silly buggers), and I wonder why all the world cannot see it for what it is. If you were OK before, you may be totally depressed now... probably not... Sorry, either way. But (a problem shared and all that) you'll be pleased to know I feel much better.

Al x

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

It gets worse, year on year...

nobody@vox.com(Al Stravinsky) — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 15:16:52 +0000

One Christmas

Al Stravinsky

Ho! Ho! Ho!

It doesn't take a Shakespeare combined with a Mozart (imagine that on your band's CD case insert though: Written by Shakespeare/Mozart) to write a great song, but honestly, for one who: doesn't dance; go 'clubbing'; suffer from teenage relationship angst; is over 40 and is thus not fooled by a jaunty rhythm/well-executed loop/repeated expletive/juvenile chant as an excuse for song, there is very little in popular music culture to engage one's ears and brain. Is there a law that says adults must be exposed to teenage musical fare as a matter of course (pub/super-market/shopping precinct/advertising/lift)? Are we not allowed to grow out of it, in much the same way we left Baa Baa Black Sheep behind us? And why is it supposed that only someone of tender years has anything of value to expound? Why is popular music the only field where experience, skill and knowledge are seemingly not valued? Why are the incontinent ramblings/wailings of some drug-troubled young man or woman valued so highly? And why are they all pretty, doe-eyed, vulnerable little things; even the boys?

Because they sell? I think that's it: the more vulnerable/pretty/troubled the young person and hence the more internet/radio/tabloid/TV exposure they get, the more they sell. Sell, sell, bloody sell; to vulnerable, lovelorn, ostensibly troubled teenagers who have nothing better to do with their pocket-money and their time. The ability to sell is the only quality recognised these days it seems, mainly because the results (for the exploiters who filter what we receive) are so monetarily tangible. When sales numbers are the only criteria, the packaging is all we are left with; traditional concepts of quality and value are thrown in the land-fill instead.

What a bugger. And what a shame. And it gets worse, year on year... much like Xmas does. All packaging and glitter, with no meaning or substance. Maybe, as today roughly coincides with that time of year, that's what brought the subject to mind. Or is it just me? Yes, it probably is.

Anyway. All my vulnerability/prettiness/troubledom could be fitted onto this full-stop (.) with room for them to roam around for a long time before they as much as bumped into each other. So. This is my Xmas song; only it's an unpackaged, non profit-making, non-Xmas Xmas song. Christmas gets a mention, but that's all; it's not about Christmas at all. No Santas, reindeers, snowflakes, icicles; no stable, manger, baby Jesus; no 'goodwill to all mankind', no seraphs spaking, no shining throngs (only in Richard O'Brien's musical version of The Nativity it would be a 'shining thong'). Just me, me, me. Hope you enjoy it. Ho! Ho! Ho!

Read and post comments | Send to a friend