Twenty Fourteen to Twenty Fifteen

This year has been a good year. A hard year, but a good year.

I handed in my dissertation, on the application of situationist psychogeographical techniques to studying archaeological landscapes, and sat my final exams in April/May. That was a proper slog. As C hadn't been able to find a proper job (seriously, someone around Glasgow must want to hire Cambridge graduates. I mean, WTF?) and so I had to work 25-35 hours a week as well as studying full time and working on my dissertation. It's a wonder that there's not more grey in my mane right now! :)

So I'm now an archaeologist. Which is to say that I'm, for the most part, underemployed and not working in archaeology... I probably could find a job in archaeology but most beginning jobs are for people to work on excavations and I have a terrible loathing for excavation and, to boot, I'm not very good at it. I've also got crap knees so crawling around in the muck all day scraping away layer after layer of mud isn't really that appealing a prospect. If anyone happens to want to hire an archaeologically trained office monkey though -I'm your man. :D

This year was also the year that I finally, thanks to finishing uni, found the time to both read a whole heap of the fiction that I've been building up over the course of my studies and to start actually writing some.

I've completed one full length story, The Sable Masque, which is currently sat in the slush pile at one of my favourite short fiction magazines awaiting rejection. It's a short tale of a man who wakes up one morning to find that the world around him has changed dramatically, and horrifyingly, yet only he seems aware of the change. It's also quite heavily metaphorical for the alienation of the worker under capitalism and all that jazz. Well, it seems heavily metaphorical to me.

I also won second prize in a wee flash fiction competition for a piece called The Dolly Doll which was nice.

I've currently got a whole host of works in progress.

I have nearly finished a King in Yellow inspired story called Scheme, which was formerly known as Schemes of Grey and Yellow, which I posted an excerpt from earlier this month. I'm also making slow but steady progress on my novella Dolorosa which I'm hoping to have finished, well -ready for redrafting, by spring.

I'm working on a small collection of King in Yellow related stories that I'm hoping to release as an ebook this summer to celebrate the anniversary of both the birth of Robert W Chambers and the publication of his King in Yellow collection. Currently there are three works in progress including Scheme. One follows a young unemployed man and his encounter with a secret institution in Glasgow that uses Lethal Chambers to allow the poor and unemployed to voluntarily cull their own ranks. The other is a letter from a prisoner awaiting trial in Barlinnie Prison following his accusation of having committed a string of murders for which he blames a certain 19^th Century document...

Added to the Yellow stories are Sally's System -a story about family tradition, holidays, and murder most foul; To the Mountain -a kickstartered expedition to an anomaly on Google Earth turns rather more interesting than the participants imagined; and Our Clouded Hills -a novelette set in near future Britain.

I've also become slightly more active with regards the Lovecraft Ezine public message board and even managed to catch a live show a few weeks ago. Which is a first due to my work patterns and time zones. The Sunday show doesn't air until 11p.m. on this side of the pond and given as I work Sunday and then generally have to be up at 6a.m. the following morning I don't really get the chance to watch live. Hopefully I'll get more chances in future. I also really want to help out with the Ezine now that I have some free time as I think it's a really important project. To my mind the Ezine is replacing the gap left by the clusterfuck that Weird Tales has become since the change in management.

On the home front Little Ms. X continues to impress me as she continues to grow into a fabulous young woman working out the world around her. She's so much more clued up than I was at her age, she's amazing and makes me so happy and proud in equal measure. Even when she's in full blown angry teenager mode. I can't wait to see what happens next even though it is also terrifying given the bullshit and nonsense that comes with being a teenager. I also have the growing urge to kill every teenage boy within a 20 mile radius of the village. Just to be on the safe side, you know?

As we move into 2015 I'm not going to make any new years resolutions as I always seem to break them almost immediately. There are some goals that I am going to set myself however which I may be able to achieve.

Firstly I'm going to knock smoking on the head. Again. C and I are both going to switch across to those e-fag things as a stepping stone to getting off the evil weed. I'm also going to try and put out a piece of free fiction every month with the first pieces, probably, being Sally's System and Our Clouded Hills which will be, again hopefully, going out in January and February,

Also, hopefully, there will be a less dead end job for me to find early in the new year. Fingers crossed eh?

Lists!

Everyone loves a good old end of year list so here are a couple of mine.

Books I've read (Not counting books for uni, obv.)

Never Again: A collection of weird fiction against fascism and racism containing a brilliant variety of the Weird.

A Season in Carcosa: Edited by the King in Yellow himself, Joseph S Pulver Sr. this is a fantastic anthology of tales inspired by Chambers' King in Yellow series. Very highly recommended.

The Weird: I actually bought this a couple of years ago but it is a massive tome and I've been slowly dipping in and out of it for a long time now. This is probably the defining volume when it comes to Weird fiction.

Cthulhu 2000: I bought this specifically so I could read Black Man with a Horn by T.E.D. Klein which I reviewed a few months ago.

The Red Tree: An utterly fantastic novel from Caitlin Kiernan. If you haven't already read this you should. Now. It's probably one of the best works of Cosmic Horror that has been produced in the last couple of decades. Absolutely brilliant.

The Spectral Link: The long awaited, and stunningly presented, new tales from the dark master Thomas Ligotti. I reviewd it when it came out, you can read that here.

The Wide Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies: John Langan's collection of long shorts. Another wonderful collection from a master of the weird.

Celebrant: This novel by Michael Cisco is a confusing one. I don't know whether to read it extremely closely or to just let the sumptuous text wash over in. Cisco manages to maintain a highly strange and surreal prose style throughout this novel that makes this one of the most gorgeous things I've ever read.

The New Uncanny: An interesting anthology looking at Freud's notion of the uncanny. This is well worth picking up if you get the chance.

Cthulhu Cymraeg: It's true that the Welsh language may look and sound something like Aklo but this volume is in English so that even I could read it. The few stories in this slim volume cross the spectrum of the weird including some bizarro works and more traditional, and chilling, cosmic horror.

The Dark Domain: Stefan Grabinski is a singular Polish voice. Writing at the beginning of the 20th Century his work belies an unease with the increasing speed of industrialisation and mechanisation of the world around him.

American Supernatural Tales: A brilliant collection put together by S.T. Joshi in a series curated by Guillermo Del Toro. This book features fiction that spans nearly two centuries and features some of America's finest writers of horror fiction from Washington Irvine through H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King and on to Thomas Ligotti and Caitlin Kiernan.

The Thomas Ligotti Reader: A collection of essays looking at Ligotti, his work, and his influences. For the true cosmic horror nerd.

HP Lovecraft The Complete Fiction: A beautiful collection of HPL's stories put out by Barnes and Noble of all people.

Films I've enjoyed

Banshee Chapter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhrYDiaSo_s

Oculus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYJrxezWLUk

Absentia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aa1UJLqYeBU

Pride

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZfFvsKDuUU

Dead Snow 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glIoXwTcG60

Shows I've enjoyed

True Detective: Yeah, there was the whole shenanigans with the plagiarism of Thomas Ligotti but it was still a fantastic show. I just wish the creator was a bit more honest about his influences.

Gotham: A bit of a silly show but that emerged into a nice mob vs. the police show with some nice tips towards the Batman universe that even a non-Batfan like me can appreciate.

Constantine: A bit of a let down to be honest but I'm still hoping that it will develop into something more fitting of the name. The Welsh dude that plays Constantine is brilliant in the role so hopefully it will move away from the monster of the week pish that has defined the fist episodes.

Supernatural: Because if I want a monster of the week show I go to the Winchester boys. :)

American Horror Story: I didn't really think that much of Freak Show but Little Ms. X loves it and I pissed myself laughing when she pointed out that "Murder House had ghosts, Asylum had aliens and a serial killers, Coven had witches. Freak Show has an entitled rich white boy because there's nothing more terrifying." :D

The Walking Dead: Probably the most tense show on TV. Every time someone does something dangerous, like walking down the road or having a poo, I'm convinced they're going to die a bloody death at just that moment. Proper edge of your seat horror.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Despite starting slow this has just grown better and better as it has gone on and I'm chomping at the bit for the next season.

The Wire: Yeah, I know. But C only just managed to get me to watch it this summer and wow! It's one of the best bits of television ever produced.

Music I've listened to

Radical Dance Faction

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUsx4iEe8HU

Joan Osborne

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbAeTywPiP4

Faith No More

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJR2Ab-DIkA

The Baghdaddies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68W-QFg5czs

Tansads

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZotfSiLInx8

Ned's Atomic Dustbin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFxVMfBfQDY

Leatherface

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYQBUyL0ips

[spunge]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbH50Bv31l8

Leftover Crack

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unxrRffd9iY

Star Fucking Hipsters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAqRHaQxStU

 

I hope everyone has had a great year and I hope that we have a better one over the coming 12 months.

What a Day

Wow, yesterday was rather good for me and mine and I truly hope it was good for you too.
C and I got to spoil Little Ms. X, and one another, absolutely rotten. It was also really nice to see that the most excitedly expectant look on Ms. X's face wasn't when she was opening her own presents but when C was opening the Tremors collection we had gotten her. She's a good kid so she is.
I'm presently laying bed nursing something of a hangover after having rather over indulged in one of my more liquid presents..





I do like a wee tipple of Laphroig so I do.
I've been laying here in bed for the last half an hour or so wanting to crack into one, or some, of my other gifts from C and X but you know what? I can't decide which to delve into first! I have options paralysis! Oh the humanity!





As an added bonus this also turned up in the post on Xmas Eve.





So I have a rather wonderful amount of reading to do over the next few months if only can decide where to begin. :D

Sick of JK Rowling's Shit

In which I faithfully transcribe a conversation between my partner, C, and our daughter, the splendiferous Ms. X.

Ms. X: I'm sick of JK Rowling's shit.

C: Why, what's she done?

Ms. X: She's basically said that there are lots of LGBT students at Hogwarts, she just didn't bother to, you know, mention anything about it. You can't do that! I mean, what even is she saying? That there are queer kids at Hogwarts, but they're polite enough to never mention it, or show it? What? I'm sick of her. I'm gonna email her and tell her that it only counts as having queer kids in your books if you actually bother to, you know, WRITE queer kids in your books.

It's moments like this that make me exceptionally happy and proud. :)

Black Clouds over your European Indie Publishers: VATMOSS is a MESS

My good friend Paolo explains the utter mess that is the EU's new VAT rules and how they are going to affect indie artists.

The Fall

I have recently been watching the second season of The Fall, a BBC drama that pits an English police detective against an Irish serial rapist and murderer. It's fantastic, if extremely disturbing, viewing although it did take me a little while to get used to Gillian Anderson's English accent as I'm so used to seeing her as Agent Scully in the X-Files.

I was thinking about the show recently and trying to pin down exactly what it is about the show that I like. At first I thought that it was because it was a very woman dominated show with most of the main characters being women. This is something that is rather notable as the vast majority of police shows are very male centric, especially shows where the villain is a man who preys on women. It does grate somewhat when shows are dominated by men protecting women so it is nice to see a woman hunting the predator.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Anderson as DSI Stella Gibson/Feminism[/caption]

 

Which brings me to what it is about the show that I find so compelling. The whole show seems to me to a metaphor for the conflict between feminism (albeit, of the liberal rather than left wing kind) and misogyny, more so than any other show or film that I can think of. Jamie Dornan is fantastic as Paul Spector - the embodiment of the rage, manipulativeness, victim blaming, violence of misogyny and patriarchy. I can't think of any character I've seen recently that has stirred such repulsion in me which is a credit to Dornan's abilities as an actor. It is extremely easy for a villain, especially one as vile as Paul Spector, to be portrayed in an almost cartoonish fashion (Joffrey in A Game of Thrones is a good example of this) and so becoming less believable.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="422"] Dornan as Spector/Misogyny[/caption]

 

I really can't recommend the show highly enough. The first season is on Netflix and season 2 is airing now in the UK, you can watch it on the iPlayer if you're not in the UK if you install Hola Unblocker some other IP masking browser extension.

It's quite sad how much I love a good cop drama. Especially when I have such a deep criticism of the social role of the police. :D Hopefully this will tide me over until I can find another bleak and harrowing Scandinavian drama.

Strange Fiction?

This is a really interesting article over at Nightmare Magazine by Simon Strantzas. I don't particularly agree with it in his definition of what constitutes a weird tale (I prefer Mieville's notion of the uncanny vs. the abcanny) and he seems to take cosmic horror as the defining feature of the weird tale rather than it being a facet of the weird.

"Weird fiction of this[the pulp adventure] sort seems to have had its birth in America, bursting onto the scene from Lovecraft’s pen. The exploration of the cosmic indifference (at best; malignance at worst) melded with the adventure story suits the mindset of the new world, whose mythology gravitates to philosopher-explorers."

I don't even think HPL would agree with this as he seemed to place himself into the wider cannon of the weird along with Machen, Blackwood, et al.

In the article Strantzas tries to delineate the 'strange' tale from the 'weird' tale. A distinction that I'm not sure is possible with the definitions that he gives.

"These are tales where the otherworld isn’t as much known as it is hinted at, and rather than explore the philosophies of our shared existence, the strange is more interested in the psychology of our individual lives. If the weird is cosmic, the strange is micro-cosmic, investigating the universe within our psychological existence.

[...]

It’s these feelings of disconnection that form the primary power of the strange tale, and from where it draws the bulk of its emotional power. Real life moments of loss, despair, and depression wreak a certain kind of havoc on us and can quite literally distort our comprehension of the world as we experience it. In many ways, this distortion and that of the strange’s dream-logic overlap, allowing the strange to become a proxy and providing readers the opportunity to directly confront their turmoils. That being said, it would be irresponsible to suggest the readers are then able to prevail against these forces, for with the strange no one really comes out ahead. Those that survive are ultimately scarred by the experience—which may be the most realistic and lifelike of all horror’s punishments. Existential wounds follow both the protagonists and the reader long afterward, which plays in stark relief to the weird and its sudden onset of temporary madness in the face of the impossible."

Now to me this seems as though it would fit squarely within the realm of the weird tale as written by Schulz, Kafka, Cisco, and others. It sounds, to me, like Strantzas is describing weird fiction as influenced by the surrealist movement.

I don't know, perhaps we do put too much emphasis on the cosmic horror aspect of the weird (which is no surprise being as HPL looms so large in the field) which may, or may not, be to the detriment of the wider weird. Personally I find the diversity of the weird to be extremely appealing. I love being able to slip from one tale of epic cosmic terror to a more subtle tale that teases at the frayed edges of what it is to be human.

Either that or I should, perhaps, not think about these sorts of thing before I've had my morning coffee...

Libraries Gave us Power - Save the Machen Collection in Newport

Libraries gave us power, then work came and set us free.

So goes the opening of the Manic Street Preachers' song A Design for Life, the line "Libraries gave us power" was taken from the inscription above the old Carnegie library in the Pillgwenlly area of my home town - Newport in Gwent. The old Carnegie library is no more and the residents of Pillgwenlly have to make do with a tiny library/resource centre better suited to being a corner shop than a font of learning and education.

I left Newport more than a decade ago, truth be told, I rarely visit. I haven't returned there for around three or four years. I do still however have a certain pride at coming from Newport. The city is, or maybe was, known for its thriving music scene -mostly thanks to the fantastically grimy TJs venue. It was a place where there was always something creative happening. That was always thanks to the people of Newport though, never the local council.

It seems that the local council have always had an aversion to the arts and to the heritage of the town. When a medieval ship was uncovered on the banks of the mighty River Usk it took a concerted campaign by local people to stop the council from simply building on top of it. Recently the council destroyed a marvellous mural celebrating the people of Newport's role in the Chartist Uprising of 1839 and the struggle for working class representation in parliament to make way for a new shopping centre. Friends of culture the council are not.

Now, under the guise of austerity, the council are wanting to close the city's central library, art gallery and the city's museum. The library was like a second home to me when I was a youngster. I would always spend my Saturday afternoons reading in the library or exploring the museum -which shares a building with the library and the art gallery. When I discovered the reference section of the library at the age of 9 or 10 I was in hog heaven. So many wonderful old books! I could easily lose myself there come rain or sun on a weekend.

The library is about as central to the city of Newport as it's possible to get. The building stands on John Frost Square, named for the leader of the Chartist Uprising, right in the heart of the city. It is a place that is accessible to all the people of Newport and, so far as I'm concerned, is vital to the essence of the place. A library is a place of collective self education and betterment. That this library shares a building with the art gallery and museum makes it even more of a hub for the heritage and culture of the city.

Added to that Newport library is also the home of the best collection of material by, and related to, the lauded author of the fantastic, Arthur Machen. The library houses rare items donated by family, friends, and fans of Arthur Machen and it is vital that this collection is protected. More than that it is vital that this son of Newport (Caerleon, Machen's birthplace, is separated from Newport by a couple fields is all) is celebrated by the city.

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="259"] Machen c.a. 1905 Wikipedia[/caption]

Machen had an immense effect on the fantastic literature of the 20th, and 21st, Centuries. He has influenced the works of HP Lovecraft, Stephen King, China Mieville, and many, many more. His literary influence has spread beyond the world of literature though and has also been felt in the multi-billion dollar movie industry. Newport City Council should be celebrating this heritage and using it to promote Newport. They should not be slashing and hacking at the services that the people of Newport deserve and stripping future generations of the heritage and culture they too deserve.

So, what can be done?

Well, I'm sure that the people of the 'port will not be taking this lying down, they can be a feisty lot when their dander is up. However those of us that are in places rather distant from mae hen wlad fy mamau can still show our support and highlight to the council the international significance of the Machen collection.

There is a form on the council website asking for feedback on the proposed cuts. It asks where in Newport you live but you can leave that blank and then tell them that you are from elsewhere in the world on page 2 of the form. You can access the feedback form here.

You could also write to Bob Bright, the current council leader

Bob Bright
Leader of Newport City Council
80 Allt-yr-yn Road
Newport
South Wales, NP20 5EF

or contact him via the council website.

I would also recommend getting in touch with the local media. The local newspaper for Newport and the surrounding area is The South Wales Argus and you can write to them here. the lcoal radio station is Capital, South Wales and you can contact them on 02920 942940(news room) or 02920 949494(studio) or use the email form here. Local television comes from ITV Wales, who can be emailed via wales@itv.com and contacted on Facebook(click), and BBC Wales who can be contacted on 02920 323 255(news room), emailed on newsonline.wales@bbc.co.uk, or via their Facebook page(click).

Newport also has two Members of Parliament, Paul Flynn and Jessica Mordin.

Paul Flynn can be contacted on 01633 262348 / 020 7219 3478 and emailed at paulflynnmp@talk21.com.

Jessica Mordin can be contacted on 01633 841725 and emailed at jessica.morden.mp@parliament.uk

Newport also has two members of the Welsh Assembly, Dame Rosemary Butler and John Griffiths.

Dame Butler can be contacted on  01633 222 523 / 0300 200 7104 and emailed at Rosemary.Butler@assembly.wales

John Griffiths can be contacted on 01633 222 302 / 0300 200 7122 and emailed at John.Griffiths@assembly.wales

(Note: for all phone numbers replace '01, 02 or 03' at the beginning with +442 if calling internationally)

Hopefully if enough people, nationally and internationally, kick up a stink it will help those people in Newport who want to stop this happening.

Thanks to the good folks at Wormwoodiana for spreading the word about this.

The Deep Ones & The Deep End

A couple of nice wee Lovecraftian short films from Simo Paulakoski and Daniel Johansson.

The Deep Ones (2013)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcEGuTKdVOU

The Deep End (2014)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RITrBudjOE

Lovecraft's Bust Mk 2.0

Daniel José Older yesterday published an article on The Guardian's website where he again calls for the Word Fantasy Award to be changed from its current incarnation of a bust of H.P. Lovecraft. As I have written before I completely agree with him. I don't think it should be a bust of Octavia Butler, as I have also said before, but it should definitely not be an image of a white American man. After all it is supposed to be the World Fantasy Award is it not?

However I do tire of Older's insistence that Lovecraft was a bad writer.

Lovecraft was an uneven craftsman at best – his stories clunk along, overburdened with adjectives and stale characters. It’s his world-building and imagination that helped solidify his legacy, but even that is tainted by a failure of craft and humanity.

No, sorry Daniel but no. Lovecraft was a spectacular writer. He knew that characterisation wasn't his strong point and so he played to his skills. His imagination and his ability to build a sense of dread. Also, I'm not really willing to give that much credence to the artistic sensibilities of a person who claims to be an author yet is seemingly unable to use a dictionary.

[Older on the use of the word "cyclopean"] (And why… why why why does this word recur in damn near every Lovecraft story? What image are we to take from this? Buildings with a single window at the top? Buildings built by one-eyed giants? It means nothing to me visually, yet it’s clearly one of Lovecraft’s favorite adjectives.)

So, given the context in which the word is used, it should be fairly simple for a reader to discover quite what the author means. Hell, even before I looked the word up as a teenager I got the impression that it meant huge. When I also learned of the form of masonry, common to the Mediterranean in the Bronze Age as you ask, it added more to the story. Does Mr Older instantly discount an author who uses any words with which he is unfamiliar? In which case let's hope that he never tries to read Shakespeare or, heaven forbid, Will Self.

He detailed his rabid, paranoid racism in many letters, and it permeates his mythos. Lovecraft peopled his fiction with hordes of swarthy, child-killing and abjectly stupid black and brown people, while women are almost non-existent.

Again, this is simply either not the case or not, completely, relevant. Lovecraft's private correspondence does show his utterly wrong headed and vile opinions on race and class. However they do not permeate his work. They are there in some of his works (The Horror at Red Hook, Call of Cthulhu and Herbert West: Reanimator for example) but in his entire corpus they mostly feature not at all. I get the feeling that Older has not read much Lovecraft or has not done so since he was a teenager. Which would explain why only certain aspects of his work stand out in memory.

What I would argue is that Lovecraft's bigotry (he wasn't simply a racist) is apparent in his work in his fear that an old way of life is being wiped away by the new and emerging world. A fairly standard reactionary/right wing fear that we see reflected in the pages of The Express and the Daily Mail. The way that this fear manifests in Lovecraft's work however is not in the explicit bigotry of works like The Horror at Red Hook but in the sense of the inevitable doom that comes with the return of the Old Ones. The fear of forces 'outside' civilisation that would wipe it away in a heartbeat. I would also tie this fear to the psychic rupture that was caused by the mechanised slaughter of the First World War. The war of 1914-1918 acted as a break between the old world and the new. A lot of Lovecraft's writing, in particular his Mythos fiction, was a reaction to this break, this rupture, as was the work of many of the Modernist writers and artists.

Regardless of Older's lack of familiarity with the work of Lovecraft, or his ability to use either a dictionary or Google, the bust is entirely inappropriate and could very easily be replaced. I just wish that folk would stop stating that Lovecraft was a bad writer and making false claims about his work. The reality of his bigotry is bad enough and needs no exaggeration.

NaNoBustMo

Well I never made my NaNoWriMo target; which was set at 35,000 words rather than 50,000 as that's the ballpark figure for where I see my novella heading. I did get about 15,000 words of it written though. I also managed to get a few thousand words down on a few short stories I'm working on. I know that having a few different projects on the go isn't exactly the best working practice but I have so many bloody ideas I have to get them at least partially written down so that I can come back to them later.

The short story I have done the most work on is provisionally titled Schemes of Grey and Yellow and riffs off Chambers' King in Yellow mythos. It's set on a nameless housing scheme (that's a council estate for people down south or a project for my occasional American reader) in the west of Scotland. Dolorosa, I'm actually rather firm on that title, is set in Glasgow and follows the tragic events that beset a young working class Glaswegian woman after her family has a chance encounter with the unknown. You can read brief excerpts from the first drafts below. I expect them both to change rather considerably in the rewrite.

One thing that I have managed to do though is come up with a couple of cover designs for Dolorosa. Productive procrastination for the win eh? I'm not sure which one I prefer though, which is a pain. I may put it up for a vote when the book is ready to be released.

Dolorosa(Excerpt)

Soft greys and whites bleed across the sky. The world below is awash with greens, purples and cold serrated granite scratching at the clouds. The mountains are emblazoned with flashes of green grass and the purple of the heather, their slopes both sheer and gentle sink into the wide flat bottom of the glen. Two veins of water, sparkling silver below the washed out sky, merge into a wide river tracing its way through landscape. At the far end of the glen, beside the wide river, sits a small town - little more than a village really. A flat topped church steeple looks over the town, the old winding streets and the newer, more linear and regimented, housing developments giving the town a patchwork look. The glen is dotted with small collections of farm buildings and everywhere the signs of an industrial agriculture winding down in the autumn months.

Higher up the sides of the valley are sheep worn meadows, heather, gorse. In a well shorn meadow stands a woman. She stands by herself, not quite in the middle of the meadow. She is dressed unsuitably for both the time of year and the environment in which she stands. Her jacket looks better suited to dashing between the shelter of shops on a Saturday afternoon in a town somewhere. It is so completely soaked that it appears almost black where, when dry, it is grey. Her hair, shoulder length and brown, has been whipped around her face as though by a storm and stuck there by the rain. Yet the air here is still. Still and, but for the soft hum of the ever present insects, quiet. There is no wind to carry the sob. The deep gulping of air is swallowed by the silence spread between land and sky.

Her head is thrown back. Her eyes closed but her mouth open. A dark O set against her sickly pale skin. Her arms hang at her sides. Her hands opening and closing, opening and closing. Clenching. Grasping at nothing. She sinks to her knees. Her head bowing as she gulps and releases another sob. Slowly she folds herself over her legs, her head pushing into the cold grass. Her arms stretch out before her. Hands clutching handfuls of emerald blades. Fingers digging into the soft brown earth. Clawing at it. She sobs again and begins to tremble. Her back heaves as sob after sob escapes her convulsing body. Louder and louder, faster and faster until she is crying uncontrollably. She lifts her head and screams. Rage and sadness shatter the silence of the glen. Her scream crosses the vastness between earth and sky. If it could, her scream, would sunder the world; set the heavens aflame til naught remained but ash. Ash and sorrow.

Schemes of Grey and Yellow(Excerpt)

The scheme was grey. Everywhere. Every house, every shop and commercial unit, every block of flats. Grey. The uniform grey of the Scottish housing scheme. Low cost housing that mirrored the perpetual slate sky above. The choice of colour scheme, ubiquitous around the country, seemed a cruel joke played by the powers that be on the powers that don't. The most dreichit country on earth and it mirrors the miserable bastard weather in its miserable bastard housing.
Leon waited outside Satish the Paki's shop for Black Martin. Satish wasn't a Paki, his parents had come to Scotland from India long before Leon was born. Still didn't stop his shop being called the Paki shop. People aren't always blessed with the greatest amount of either intelligence or originality at times thought Leon.
Black Martin wasn't black either. He had just gone through a goth period in school, listening to the Cure and Joy Division, dressing all in black, and in doing so had earned himself the now redundant, and wholly unimaginative, nickname.

Black Martin came out of the shop laughing and waving back at Satish of whom Leon could see slices between the posters advertising fizzy drinks and loaves of bread which were spread haphazardly across the windows of the store. Martin waved him over and tossed a can of juice at him as he approached.

"Satish gave us 'em on tick til tomorrow, giro day innit?"

"Nice one!" Leon waved back through the glass at Satish.

"He gave us some baccy an' aw. Want one?"

Martin stripped the small green pouch of its plastic wrapping and began to roll a cigarette before passing the pouch and the slim blue packet of rolling papers across.

"Where d'you fancy going then?"

"I dunno, Weird Malky's?"

"The paedo?"

"Aye, well he's always got booze in and, for the record, he ain't a paedo. That's just shite talked by folk 'cos he's a bit odd is all."

#

Just behind Satish's shop lay Fairmount Park, a sad looking stretch of patchy yellowing grass with a square of concrete littered with broken glass which used to hold climbing frames and slides. The sign beside the sorry looking grey square proudly proclaimed a new park opening soon funded by some company or other in partnership with Glasgow City Council. The sign looked as sorry as the rest of park; it having stood out in the elements for the best part of five years. Leon and Martin had still been in high school when they had pulled down the old play equipment citing "safety concerns" and promising to replace the equipment with modern, up to date "safe" equipment for the children of the Scheme. Now all that remained was an old bench which, for reasons unknown, had escaped the attentions of the supossedly safety conscious city council. Upon that bench now sat Cameron Wiley, one of the local drunks, his head bent low so that from behind he appeared to have been the victim of an amazingly bloodless decapitation. Sat beside him were two large yellow labelled green glass bottles.

"Check it." Leon gestured towards the old drunk. "Shall we go keep the auld cunt company?"

"Aye, why no?"

Leon had always had a soft spot for Cameron Wiley. Before he had screwed himself up on the booze he had been a decent guy. He was only in his late 40s but looked far older. Once, when Leon and Martin had been wains Wiley had saved them from getting collared by the cops when they were playing truant. He had done so by picking a fight with himself outside the shop causing the cops to lose interest in the young lads trying desperately to hide bottles of tonic wine in their jackets. As soon as the cops went to deal with the screaming and shouting drunk the boys had fled. Leon had glanced back as they rounded the corner away from the cops and as he did so he saw Wiley wink at him and smile.

"Afternoon auld yin." Martin and Leon stood over the derelict. He smelled like he had spilled more booze over himself than he had drank since the last time he changed his clothes, which may well have been some time ago. "Whit ye on wi' Cam'?"

Cameron Wiley jumped as though wakened from a deep sleep. A thin black booklet slipped from his hands as he looked up at the boys. His eyes paler than Leon remembered, the colour washed out.

"Wha? Who? Is it? Naw!" Cameron slurred the words and wobbled as though unsteady on his feet, despite being sat down. Placing one grubby hand on the back of the bench he pushed himself up and on to his feet.

"Is that you? Naw, naw, naw. You're lads, no lassies. Are you here?"

Martin, grinning, slapped his hand onto Leon's shoulder. "Auld yin's wrecked. Surprise!"

Wiley glanced at Martin, then at Leon, his eyes narrowed as though trying to focus on the boys.

"You're, you're no, um, you're no him or her. You're no even here." And with that he staggered off back the way the boys had walked.

"Don't think I've ever seen the old pissheid so wasted before." Leon watched as Cameron Wiley wove his way along the cracked and overgrown path. Snatching occasionally at invisible insects in the air about his head.

"Never mind that" Martin lifted the two, unopened, bottles of Buckfast Tonic Wine in either hand. "Score! Screw going tae the paedo's house the now. Let's have these first."

Leon sat in the spot that Cameron had just vacated and took a bottle from Martin. "One fer you, and one fer me!". Leon opened his bottle and took an enormous swallow. An heroic swig as Martin may have put it.

They sat awhile watching the empty park; the occasional ray of light bursting through the clouds and dashing across the park as though the light itself was in a rush to get away from this place and its grey hopelessness. Leon said as much to Martin.

"If there's a bright centre to the universe, my dear Leon, you're on the scheme it's furthest fuckin' from." Martin cackled to himself. "I'm away for a piss." He stood, taking his mostly empty bottle of wine with him. "And I'll be takin' this. I'm no havin' you tanning it whilst I'm at me most vulnerable."

With that he swaggered in the direction of some nearby sickly looking bushes. Leon had once been playing with James Donaldson in the park, when they were 10 or 11 years old, and they had found a huge stack of porno magazines in those same bushes. By the looks of the bushes the wages of sin did not pay well. They had paid Leon and James Donaldson well enough when they had sold the magazines to the highest bidders at school the next day.

Glancing at the floor between his feet he noticed the black booklet that Cameron Wiley had dropped. It had the pattern of the sole of his trainers stamped on the cover in dirt now but was otherwise fine. He picked it up.

Le Roi en Jaune. Leon didn't remember much in the way of French from school but he recognised the word for yellow. Flipping it open he saw that the words inside were in English.

"What's that then?" Martin dropped himself down next to Leon on the bench.

"Fuck knows. Cam' dropped it. Look like a play or something." He passed it to Martin who looked at the cover and passed it right back.

"I can't read French man, can youse?"

"Naw, it's in English inside. Just called something about yellow in French on the cover. Anyway," he rolled the booklet up and stuffed it into his back pocket, "shall we head over to drink some of Malky's booze?" With that he drained the last of his bottle, dropped it on the floor and got to his feet.

"Aye, come on then." Martin stood finishing his wine in a single gulp. "Though if he starts touching me I'm calling Child Line!"

"He's not a paedo! And besides, if he was I think you would be safe from him. You're ugly as fuck an 'aw. I wouldn't nonce you up if were a paedo."

With that they headed across the park towards Malky's flat in the high rise blocks.

#

Leon awoke lying on the floor of Malky's flat. The sun, bereft of heat but blinding nonetheless, streaming through his curtainless windows and punching holes of screaming agony straight through his eyes and deep into his brain.

"Aw, my fucking God."

He rolled over and flung his arm across his face to protect himself from the golden needles of fire that were trying to embed themselves deeper and deeper into his head. After laying there for ten minutes groaning and praying to anyone that would listen for either the pain to go away or for someone to kill him outright Leon sat up.

Malky the Paedo's flat was in an even worse state than it normally was. Things appeared to have gotten especially messy last night. Their visit to Malky the not-a-paedo had been well timed as he had, that morning, gotten his sick money and so Martin and Leon had generously offered to go to Satish's for him, thus saving him the effort of walking all the way across the park to pick up booze. Of course they paid themselves a purple can of Tennants Super for the effort and drank that on the way back. After which there had been vodka. Lots, and lots of vodka. Followed by another trip to Satish's just before 10 o'clock for yet more vodka. Then Martin had pulled the booklet Cameron had dropped from Leon's pocket and started reading aloud from it in a pompous faux English accent. Because, so far as Martin was concerned, only English people liked plays - posh English people at that. He had then passed it to Malky who continued reading, and even sang some of it. Leon had taken a turn and then the bottle was passed around again and after that things just went black.

Slowly, very slowly lest he throw up, Leon got to his feet and went for a piss. After he had finished, and assured himself that he wasn't going to throw up, he went back to the living room and checked all the vodka bottles for hair of the dog. Empty, every last one of them. He poked his head into Malky's bedroom and there were Malky and Martin sleeping top and tail in Malky's bed. He tried to take a photograph to send around to everybody but the battery on his phone was completely dead. "Piece of shit", he put it back in his pocket and pulled out a ten pound note. Malky's change from the final trip to Satish's last night. He put it back in his pocket, grabbed his coat and Cam's weird black book and quietly let himself out of the flat.

Leon shut the door quietly behind himself, put his coat on and walked towards the door to the lifts, his trainers squeaking on the cheap tiled flooring. Pulling open the heavy green fire door the stench of piss and stale alcohol hit him bodily and made him retch, bend double, and almost vomit. Standing on the landing, staring directly at him, was Cameron Wiley. A black moth the size of his face fluttering about his head.

"You got here then, aye?"

Leon's hand slipped from the door as his body reeled and he threw up the remnants of the previous night's excess. His mouth and eyes burning from the vodka, tonic wine, and God knows what else that now lay splashed about the floor before him Leon dry heaved once more and then stood straight -his head swimming. He pulled the door open. The landing was empty.

"Cam?" He poked his head through the door. There was no Cameron, no bloody big moth. Not even the smell that had set his stomach churning. Cautiously, one hand on the door frame the other holding the door open, he walked out onto the lifts landing. There was no one there. Opposite the lift doors was the drying area, used more for people storing crap they didn't want to have to take down 14 floors to throw away than for the drying of clothes, into which Cameron could have ducked. The door to the drying area hung slightly ajar.

"Cameron?" Leon reached out and gently pushed the door with the tips of his fingers letting it swing open under its own weight. Stepping into the half light of the drying area he could see that there was no Cameron Wiley in there. Just a worn out sofa, a broken pushchair and a few mouldering cardboard boxes.

Confused and trying to remember if he done anything besides drink too much the previous night Leon backed out onto the landing and called the lift.

Leon leaned against the tarnished checkerplate of the lift wall and closed his eyes, blotches of technicolour static swam in the darkness behind his lids. Each small side to side movement of the lift felt like the carriage was swinging wildly free of the confines of the enclosing lift shaft. Grateful that he had already thrown up his stomach contents Leon opened his eyes. The lift had already reached the ground floor and the doors had opened without him realising. Beyond the doors the entrance hallway was dark, the normally harsh neon strip light in the ceiling was dimmed to a sickly orange-yellow colour and beyond the hallway, through the reinforced glass window of the heavy green metal door Leon could see that the world beyond was dim.

"Fuck this." He hit the door close button and the doors juddered back together. The lift shook for a moment and the doors opened once more onto the dim hallway. Once, twice, three times he tried the door close button and each time the same result. The lift juddered and the doors opened. He backed up to the rear wall of the lift and slid down until he was sat on the floor staring disbelievingly at the tepidly illuminated hallway and the greyer than usual world beyond.

Remembering the staircase Leon rose cautiously to his feet. He may not like the thought of walking up 14 floors, 28 flights of stairs - two per floor, back to Malky's flat but he liked the thought of venturing beyond the confines of the tower block even less. Placing one hand on the door jam he leaned slowly out from the lift looking first to his left and then to his right, the hall was deserted, the door to the staircase was a mere fifteen feet to his right and beyond that the climb to safety, if not sanity, fourteen floors above.

Leon stepped from the lift, the carriage juddered as he stepped onto the the tiled floor of the hall and the doors creaked closed once more. From beyond the closed doors he heard the sound of the lift beginning its ascent.

"Oh, for fucks sake man!" Leon threw his hands to his head before hurriedly pressing the lift call button. He hammered on the button but to no effect. The lift continued its climb and the doors remained closed. Considering whether to wait for the lift or begin his ascent a glance behind him at the unnatural twilight beyond the main door made his mind up for him. He would climb.

Hope you like what you read. :)

 

Be a Bastard this Christmas

That's the message of some homelessness charities and local councils this festive season anyway.



Posters like the one above are becoming regular features of many town and city centres around the UK and that absolutely sickens me. There was a similar campaign against beggars in Leeds about 11 years ago which asked "Would you give a junkie £1 towards his next fix?". Completely ignoring the cold hard fact that by no means all people who are homeless have drug or alcohol issues. One wag in Leeds also highlighted another serious flaw in campaigns against street begging when they defaced the signs in Leeds so that they also read "Or have them mug you later in desperation?"

If someone has gotten to the point in their life where they have to ask for money on the street then the ins and outs of how/why they are in that situation should not be of any concern to us. What should be our concern is helping alleviate the situation of our fellow humans. If someone has to ask for money it should be of no concern why they need it just that we are in a position to help them. What they spend their money on is no more your concern than where your local bar man, doctor, or school teacher spend their money.

At the moment we are facing some of the worst attacks on the living conditions of ordinary people that we have seen in decades. Not only is homelessness skyrocketing, there are nearly 100,00 homeless children in the UK, and the government has criminalised squatting in England and Wales. So now homeless people no longer even have the recourse to shelter in abandoned buildings -a right won by those made homeless due to the bombing campaigns in the Second World War. With the ongoing cuts to benefits and the ever increasing number of people who are finding themselves sanctioned by the Department of Work and Pensions (being denied access to benefits for 3-6 months or more for usually minor infractions or mistakes with benefits claims) we can expect to see more and more people driven onto the streets. Driven to desperation.

I'm extremely poor and am massively underemployed, we somehow manage to scrape by month to month, but from now on, when I can afford it, I'm definitely going to give money to beggars. (Not that I don't already do so, but I'm going to do it more now) I don't care if they spend the money I give them on soup, special brew, strippers, or smack. It's none of my god damn business. What is my business however is the scum bags who are carrying out these attacks on us. They wallow in luxury and decadence* and laugh and jeer whilst they strip away everything we have won from them over the last century.

Seriously. How many more people have to be killed by sanctions or take their own lives due to the prejudices and sanctions of the benefits/housing system before there are politicians hanging from lamp posts all over Whitehall?

My kindness couldn't kill. Their hatred most definitely fucking does. >:(

Collect Call of Cthulhu

Can't believe I've never seen this before. The Real Ghostbusters take on the Cthulhu cult. Featuring Clark Ashton, Ted Kleine ,and Alice Derleth. :D The cult also holds its meetings at "Wagner's Occult Shop" and the 'busters get help from a Mr Howard. :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94-DqjR0b58