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In a word: Incline

When you first think of this word, it is with a slippery slope in mind.

I’ve been on a few of those in my time.

And while we’re on the subject, those inclines measured in degrees are very important if you want a train to get up and down the side of a mountain.

For the train, that’s an incline plane, the point where traction alone won’t get the iron horse up the hill.

Did I say ‘Iron Horse’?  Sorry, regressed there, back to the mid-1800s in the American West for a moment.

It’s not that important when it comes to trucks and cars, and less so if you like four-wheel driving; getting up near-vertical mountainsides often present a welcome challenge to the true enthusiast

But for the rest of us, not so much if you find yourself sliding in reverse uncontrollably into the bay.  I’m sure it’s happened more than once.

Then…

Are you inclined to go?

A very different sort of incline, ie to be disposed towards an attitude or desire.

An inclination, maybe, not to go four-wheel driving?

There is another, probably more obscure use of the word incline, and that relates to an elevated geological formation.  Not the sort of reference that crops up in everyday conversation at the coffee shop.

But, you never know.  Try it next time you have coffee and see what happens.

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Writing about writing a book – Day 2

Hang about.  Didn’t I read somewhere you need to plan your novel, create an outline setting the plot points, and flesh out the characters?

I’m sure it didn’t say, sit down and start writing!

Time to find a writing pad, and put my thinking cap on.

I make a list, what’s the story going to be about? Who’s going to be in it, at least at the start?

Like a newspaper story, I need a who, what, when, where, and how.

Right now.

 

I pick up the pen.

 

Character number one:

Computer nerd, ok, that’s a little close to the bone, a computer manager who is trying to be everything at once, and failing.  Still me, but with a twist.  Now, add a little mystery to him, and give him a secret, one that will only be revealed after a specific set of circumstance.  Yes, I like that.

We’ll call him Bill, ex-regular army, a badly injured and repatriated soldier who was sent to fight a war in Vietnam, the result of which had made him, at times, unfit to live with.

He had a wife, which brings us to,

Character number two:

Ellen, Bill’s ex-wife, an army brat and a General’s daughter, and the result of one of those romances that met disapproval for so many reasons.  It worked until Bill came back from the war, and from there it slowly disintegrated.  There are two daughters, both by the time the novel begins, old enough to understand the ramifications of a divorce.

Character number three:

The man who is Bill’s immediate superior, the Services Department manager, a rather officious man who blindly follows orders, a man who takes pleasure in making others feel small and insignificant, and worst of all, takes the credit where none is due.

Oops, too much, that is my old boss.  He’ll know immediately I’m parodying him.  Tone it down, just a little, but more or less that’s him.  Last name Benton.  He will play a small role in the story.

Character number four:

Jennifer, the IT Department’s assistant manager, a woman who arrives in a shroud of mystery, and then, in time, to provide Bill with a shoulder to cry on when he and Ellen finally split, and perhaps something else later on.

More on her later as the story unfolds.

So far so good.

What’s the plot?

Huge corporation plotting to take over the world using computers?  No, that’s been done to death.

Huge corporation, OK, let’s stop blaming the corporate world for everything wrong in the world.  Corporations are not bad people, people are the bad people.  That’s a rip off cliché, from guns don’t kill people, people kill people!  There will be guns, and there will be dead people.

There will be people hiding behind a huge corporation, using a part of their computer network to move billions of illegally gained money around.  That’s better.

Now, having got that, our ‘hero’ has to ‘discover’ this network, and the people behind it.

All we need now is to set the ball rolling, a single event that ‘throws a cat among the pigeons’.

Yes, Bill is on holidays, a welcome relief from the problems of work.  He dreams of what he’s going to do for the next two weeks.  The phone rings.  Benton calling, the world is coming to an end, the network is down.  He’s needed.  A few terse words, but he relents.

Pen in hand I begin to write.

 

© Charles Heath 2016-2019

365 Days of writing, 2026 – 153

Day 153 – Writing Exercise

…

I was lying in a hospital bed staring at the ceiling, after being told that morning that a few seconds either way of me getting to the hospital could have been a matter of life and death.

No visitors for two days, and a very laborious interview with the police where I was practically browbeaten into making a confession, of stuff I hadn’t done, and through mistaken identity..

They were determined to make me the scapegoat.  Now, looking at my brother who had made a special trip to see me, I was annoyed.

He should have been the one who was attacked. 

And all because I borrowed his car?

It seemed to me he was oblivious, or pretending to be obvious, to the fact that it should have been him and not me, but something told me I was never going to get him to admit that he was the one they wanted to hurt, not me. 

And this was not the first time it had happened.

“I think you know I was not the target,” I said, “and definitely not the one who committed any of the crimes I’m being accused of.  The mere fact that we are almost alike is a very telling factor.”

We were not twins but the year apart in age did little to tell us apart, even from quite close.  Cerise, his wife, had taken years before she could accurately tell us apart.

“You were running their distributional network,” he said.  “That had nothing to do with me.”

“I did what I was told, believing that what I was doing was at the behest of the company, and I would believe that was the case if I were in my own car, not yours.”

He was clutching at straws.  I had only told him a few days ago that the people I worked for were the McKenzies, people who were direct competitors.  It hadn’t gone down well.

It was when I realised I was being set up.  It might have explained what happened, but it came back to the car, and why he had asked me to take it from a downtown car park to his house.

“The bottom line is that they targeted the car and then hesitated before they tried to beat me to death.  I was not who they were looking for.”

He shrugged.  “Unless the police catch them, we’ll never know for sure.  I’ll get some people to investigate and arrange for some protection.  You’ll survive.”

I almost laughed at that.  I’ll survive.  Not if they came after me again.

“Thanks for nothing.”

Another minute, and he left.  I was surprised he’d stayed as long as he had.  It reflected the disdain he held for me and my choices when, a dozen years back, I refused to join the family firm.

Perhaps it was the people who turned up at all hours of the night and say, people who were not the sort of customers general merchants dealt with, not out of a shed at the back of the house, or an old factory turned into a warehouse.

My father was consolidating his criminal empire.  I discovered that when he was shot at the warehouse and died in the hospital three days later.  The shooter was never identified, despite the description I’d given to the police.  My brother refused to back me up.

He had no doubt done a deal not to shop them in return for them leaving us alone.  It was never going to hold.  But I left the business the day after my father died and got a legitimate job.

Or so I thought.

I guess that criminals and the kids of criminals never quite escape the stigma.  I got what I thought was a legitimate job, only to discover it was a rival organisation trying to muscle its way into my brother’s territory.

He didn’t know, not exactly, and I didn’t know until recently, and if there was a silver lining, this bashing had given me the perfect excuse to walk away.

That being the case, I had no job, I was nearly dead, and I had nowhere to go. I was not going to join the family firm.  Robert could have it all to himself.  If anything, I wanted revenge and to make the McKenzies pay.  If they were the attackers.

…

The room was empty and quiet.  The TV was on mute, running some game show that dealt with words and phrases.  It seemed pointless.

It was when Detective Chief Inspector Ramsen came in and closed the door behind her.  Years ago, when she was a Detective Sergeant, she had been the one to tell me the organisation that was behind my father’s death, just not who did it.

Perhaps she knew I would kill them if I found out.  The fact that I was the son of an alleged murderer did little to assuage her opinion.

She sat in the chair next to the bed.

“I hear your brother came to visit.”

She never said hello, nor asked how I felt.  Just sent the interrogators. 

“He was very sympathetic.”

“Sarcasm doesn’t become you.”

“Nor does fake sympathy from a heartless bitch.”

Her expression hardened.  “Someone got out of bed on the wrong side this morning.”

She frowned.  I had called her worse.  She liked the idea that people thought she was as hard as any man in her station house.

“I wasn’t the target, and I am not part of my brother’s organisation.  He won’t admit it, but it was him they were after.”

“Perhaps, but you were working for the McKenzies.  They might have assumed you were a spy.  That could explain this attack.”

“I didn’t know that until last week.  You might want to tell that interrogation team that I was in his car.  Whoever sent the thugs made a mistake.”

She shook her head.  “They would have been watching you.  The car is irrelevant.”

“So, it’s the old adage, dead men tell no lies, or the truth.  I’m very lucky to be here.”

“Are you going back to the McKenzie’s?”

“No.  If old man McKenzie was the one who sent in the thug squad, simply because he doubted my loyalty, then what’s the point?”

“So, that means you’re in no man’s land.  Perhaps with no allegiance to anyone, you could help us.”

“I’m not going back.”

“You could end up in jail.”

“Good.  I’ll take my chances.”

“They’d be slim to none.”

“Better than going back into a nest of vipers.  Thanks, but no thanks.”

“Suit yourself.”

…

When everything goes wrong, you find out just who your friends are.

I didn’t have many, and those I thought I had were more acquaintances than friends.  We spoke, we had coffee, sometimes a drink after work, but that was it.

One thing I knew better than most was to never discuss business or your job in a workplace that thrived on secrecy, real or imaginary.

After all, when I first started, there were constant reminders not to discuss anything that happened with anyone inside and especially outside the company.

Now I knew why.

But, here’s the thing.  I didn’t talk to anyone when I discovered the true nature of the business.  I was simply shocked at the discoveries I made, but I kept them to myself.  That’s why it was impossible to believe they sent people after me.

It was also odd that they hadn’t sent someone to see me yet, though it was plausible they didn’t know.  The fact I hadn’t turned up for work, or called in as unavailable of course, would set off alarm bells,  and the last person who did that caused havoc.

Except if I knew the Chief Inspector, she would have turned up on their doorstep first thing for her version of a short chat, so the odds were they were still trying to figure out what to do.

Old Man McKenzie, one of the four Mackenzies in management, was by far the nastiest of the group.  I rumbled the fact that the legitimate business was acting as a front, that a well-trained group that kept the separation, and one of the four slipped once.  A step so slight had I blinked I would have missed it

Though it could be said that being brought up in a crime family should have made me very aware of what was really going on, it didn’t.  I was kept at arm’s length at home for a long time, and only introduced gradually once I was old enough.

But what I saw, I didn’t like. 

When my father was murdered because of warring families that had once worked together in harmony, I left home and left the business, not that I had spent much time working for it.

What happened after that was a matter of reflection, and disappointment.  I had been naive if I ever thought I could escape.  Perhaps had I moved to the other side of the country, or overseas, maybe, but I didn’t go far, just across town.

I went to an employment agency, filled out all the forms and was surprised when they found me a job, not far from where I was living at the time.

The people were friendly but not too friendly.  I was given on-the-job training, couriers work delivering parcels.  I thought it was like working for FedEx.  Over time, I rose to be a distribution manager, and then was in charge of a whole division.

And like I said, I would have been none the wiser if one of the drivers hadn’t made a fundamental error, delivering a parcel to the wrong address.  A report had been left on my desk, in my absence.  I came back, looked at it, checked the delivery against the orders and shipping dockets, noticing there were products on the delivery dockets not on the order.  Then I realised it was not my distribution centre but one of the other three; they were just dovetailing their deliveries in my vans.

A report not for me to action, I put it back where I found it, and went out to lunch, and when I came back, it was gone.  Later that night, I checked the orders and delivery dockets for the day, and at least forty of the customers got the same product.  The product?  Sugar cubes.

Then I checked the customers and found they were on a secondary distribution list, with about four or five hundred others.  Names, not businesses.  Runs every two weeks.  A bit more digging, quietly, I found what the product was.

None of my business.

Of course, even that wouldn’t have mattered, had it not been the one person I would never have believed to have any criminal intent. 

…

I must have drifted off into an uneasy sleep, something I thought would be impossible given the number and off times the nurses came to check what they called ‘vitals’.

Being annoyed so many times must raise anyone’s blood pressure.  I know mine was up.

When I woke, it was not a nurse, but someone dropping into the visitor chair.  Someone who wore a fragrant scent.

I opened my eyes.  And blinked.

Scarlet McKenzie.

Most of the people in that company were scared of her.  She had a temper and could make a grown man wither before her.

I spent most of my time avoiding her.

“Chris.”

“Scarlet.”  I decided to use her first name, which was a risk.  It didn’t matter; I wasn’t going back.

She scowled, but let it pass.

“You’re not at work.”

Was it a statement or was it something else?

“For obvious reasons.”

“What happened?”

“I thought that was obvious, too.  Are you here to finish the job?”

She looked surprised. “What job?  You think I had something to do with it?”

It was hard to tell whether she was utterly shocked or a darned good actress.

“I was attacked in my brother’s car by a McKenzie hit team.”

“And your brother…” A strange look came over her face.  “.. is Callum Waterson.”

“I used to be Christopher Waterson.  I left home after your people killed my father.  When I joined the firm, it wasn’t owned by the McKenzies, that came later.  I knew who you were; I simply expected you would continue to keep a legitimate company.  I thought you were the straight man running it.”

“I am.  And it is legitimate.  I made it very clear I wanted nothing to do with their business.”

“You just supplement the drivers deliveries.  It’s brilliant by the way.”

“I’m not in charge of that side of things, and I wasn’t impressed when I discovered what they were doing.”

“You didn’t deny setting the dogs on my brother.”

“That wasn’t me, and believe me, if I had a seat at the table at would not have happened.  But then, if I put two and two together, I would bet on the fact that it was Bennie making a move on the leadership.  My father’s retiring, and stupidly made it a contest between Bennie and Reggie.  Only Reggie could come up with a hair-brained scheme like trying to assassinate your brother.”

She shook her head.  “And only Reggie could get it so spectacularly wrong.  I’m sorry.”

In that moment, I think I could see the dilemma I had in her expression, that spot between the proverbial rock and a hard place.  And dare I say it, I felt sorry for her.

“If it’s any consolation, I know how you feel.”

She gave me a strange look, one that I couldn’t interpret. 

“Are you coming back?”

“No.  It would be rather awkward facing up to the people who ordered a hit on your brother, made a mistake and tried to kill me instead.  I don’t really care what went on there. I’m done with it.  When I get out of this place, I’m disappearing for good.”

“Where?”

“It wouldn’t be an ambush if I told you.”

“And if I came with you?”

“We’d disappear together.  But I would get your hopes up thinking it would be the life you’re accustomed to.”

“You’d be surprised to learn what I could become accustomed to.  Make plans for two, and I’ll call you.  I’ll sort out your absence at work.”

She smiled, more of a grimace than amusement, then left.  I wondered for a moment how a girl with an outfit worth more than my car was going to disappear without leaving a trail of cash payments or credit card records in her wake.

Never going to happen.

…

Nevertheless, as the weeks passed and the physios got me back on my feet, albeit awkwardly at first, when I was discharged from the hospital, I could walk again, after a fashion.

My brother had visited me once to tell me that he knew who had attacked me, and realised it was him they were after.

He was surprised to learn anyone cared that much.  It surprised me that he was a leader of a crime family, because it usually meant he had to be ruthless.

What I didn’t know was that he had been transitioning the crime proceeds to funding legitimate businesses, and that was making more than the crime was with less risks

And cleaning up the vulnerable youths by taking them off the streets and giving them something to do.  Perhaps he was a target because he was reducing the McKenzie’s customer pool.

I asked him what he was going to do, and he said nothing.  What would be the point?  He did say that he had passed on the message that if anything happened to me, there would be repercussions.  As for Reggie, he intimated that he wasn’t the smartest one in that family and would never take over from his father.

I went home, such as it was, and spent a few days staring at the walls.  I’d told Callam that I was going away, overseas on a slow boat, and probably wouldn’t be coming back.

It didn’t seem to bother him.  I was always what he called a lost cause.

I found the slow boat, what might have been called in days gone by a tramp steamer, but in reality a cargo ship with a few passenger cabins.  It was heading to Florida, as good a place as any to start an odyssey.

What I wanted, rather than needed, fitted into a small battered suitcase.  Then I sent a cryptic message to Scarlett’s cell phone, and decided if she didn’t call, I was going anyway.  I had never quite believed she would just up and leave.

Her family probably wouldn’t let her.

I found my way to the ship, did the customary immigration checks and cleared to board the boat.  I waited an hour, and she didn’t show.  I was not surprised. 

The steward gave me the tour of the ship’s facilities, which were first class, as to be expected considering how much the tickets cost, and then delivered me to the suite. 

He opened the door, I went in, and he closed it behind me.  I leaned against the door and took it in.  It was a surprise even after seeing photos of it.

“You took your time.”

A female voice came from another room, and then she appeared.

Scarlet.

“You came?”

“Would I ask you to get me a ticket if I wasn’t coming?”

“I didn’t hear anything from you.”

“I didn’t want them to find out.  They think I’m visiting an aunt up country.  They’re never going to change.  And I don’t want anything to do with their criminal activities.”

“And you don’t mind being with me?”

She smiled.  “I’ve kept my eye on you.  You get on with the job, you don’t try to big note yourself, you handle people with respect and care.  I know you like me, because every now and then, I see you, calculating the odds of whether or not I would say yes to an invitation to coffee or lunch.  I would have said yes, you know.  I don’t bite.  Well, maybe sometimes, but I believe your company will be exactly what I need.”  She looked around.  “I love the boat.”  She held out her hand.  “Come.  I’ll show you the suite.  Do you know how nice this was going to be?”

“I had photographs.”

“It’s better than that.  And a balcony.  Sea air, hazy afternoons, reading or just sleeping…”

“Or we’ll get tangled up in an Atlantic storm.”

“Hush, you’re denting the romantic feeling that’s running through me.”

I took her hand and felt a shiver go through her.  It was most likely the aftereffect of the notion she had escaped.  It would wear off once the reality set in, but perhaps I should try being in the moment too, as she gently pulled me in the direction of the bedroom.

There was only one bed.

“So.  Sleeping arrangements,” she said.  “I like the left-hand side, I do not like people who snore, and, well, you’ll find out soon enough.  There’s enough room for four, so it’s not like we’ll run into each other.”

Her enthusiasm was infectious.  I wondered how I could have contemplated doing this on my own.  For years, I had denied myself the pleasure of company, given the family I had and the world I was in.  I had given the idea of finding a nice girl and dating, but it only got as far as Scarlet.  I had no idea how she would respond, so I didn’t bother.

And if I were truthful, given who she was and who I was, it would never have got to first base.  It never occurred to me that she was in exactly the same boat as i was.

Perhaps I should just let it flow and see where it takes us.

I relaxed.  “Have you been put on the balcony?”

“Of course.  Come.  You’re going to love it.”

…

©  Charles Heath  2026

PI Walthenson’s second case – A case of finding the ‘Flying Dutchman’.

Known only to a few, there is a legend that a ship named the ‘Flying Dutchman’ left Nazi Germany in the last weeks of the war and set sail for America, escorted by U-boats, under a different name. Aboard was a trove of treasure and gold worth a ‘king’s ransom’.

It was said that it had been sent to a group of American Nazis to create the Fourth Reich at an appropriate time. Over the years, many expeditions off the coast had searched, but found no trace of the vessel or the treasure.

In other words, it was just a legend created to boost tourism.

…

Fast forward to 2024. Our intrepid private detective, Harry Walthenson, overhears a conversation at Grand Central Station. It was the oddness of the message that caught his attention. An investigation turned up nothing out of the ordinary, and he thinks no more about it.

Then Harry is kidnapped, interrogated, and asked questions over and over about a date and a place, why he went there, and when he could not give satisfactory answers, he was beaten half to death and left for dead on a rubbish heap. He was lucky that it was a living space for homeless men; otherwise, he would have died.

In the aftermath, he once again gives it no more thought.

…

After resolving his first case successfully, there’s no rest. Harry’s angry mother comes to his office and demands that he find out where his father has gone. She believes he has run off with a mistress, not for the first time.

Perhaps it was not the wisest decision she has made, because Harry promises to investigate, and adds that she might not like what he finds.

He soon discovered he does not like what he finds, that his father’s friends, a cabal formed at University, have two who are his mother’s current lovers, and another, a criminal blackmailing his father.

Felicity, now his partner, working on a different case, and trying to get answers, uncovers a crime family involved in guarding a disused warehouse on the docks, where she believes Harry had been taken for interrogation, and subsequently dumped nearby to die.

Why are they up to? What is so important that the empty warehouse needs guarding? Who is employing them?

Harry, following up on the death of the blackmailer, traces his death back to an enforcer employed by his grandfather. His mother’s grandfather was a pre-war industrialist who made his fortune in war munitions and shipbuilding.

He was also a member of the American Nazi party.

When Harry also discovers a logbook belonging to a so-called wartime Liberty ship the “Paul Revere” in brackets ‘Freiheitskämpfer’, hidden by his father, and written in a code that is not readily identifiable.

It is no longer a matter of a father who has run off with his mistress; it is a very frightened man in fear of his life, running from a group who will stop at nothing to get the logbook back. And when Harry discovers a family connection to the group, it becomes a race against time to decode the log and find his father before his grandfather does.

…

Coming soon: Harry Walthenson’s new adventure – A case of finding the ‘Flying Dutchman’

The cinema of my dreams – I never wanted to go to Africa – Episode 44

Our hero knows he’s in serious trouble.

The problem is, there are familiar faces and the question of who a friend is and who is a foe is made all the more difficult because of the enemy, if it was the enemy, simply because it didn’t look or sound or act like the enemy.

Now, it appears, his problems stem from another operation he participated in, and because of it, he has now been roped into what might be called a suicide mission.

I spent another hour trading stories of Army life, none of mine bearing any resemblance to the truth before the party started.

I said to him, several times, that in my estimation, a part would start at a particular time. He seemed intrigued by how that could be possible when all my men were locked up and guarded.

The captain, it seemed, was a man of limited intellect.

Or just plain overconfident that he had quelled the incursion and attempted to take the prisoner’s home.

I was under house arrest, just not in the house with the rest of the men. The captain decided, being the ranking officer of our group, that I should be accorded facilities befitting my rank. It didn’t change my opinion of the captain, but it did raise the respect level slightly.

As an officer and a gentleman, as he described himself, he was also a student of Army procedures and practices, not only of his own army but that of others. I admired his hobby outside of working hours.

We were just discussing aspects of the First World War, and the part Africa played in it when both of us suddenly heard gunshots. So did the guard picked up his gun and carefully went out the front door.

The captain pulled his pistol from out of the top drawer and made sure the magazine had bullets in it. Just in case he needed to use it. All the men, suddenly increased to six, armed and dangerous, in that room had a gun, like the captain. They were commanded by another soldier dressed in fatigues, perhaps a Colonel or higher.

I’d notice some African countries had a higher proportion of Generals, to say Lieutenants, and deduced from that, field promotions were a regular thing. That was not my experience here. So far.

I heard another gunshot, this time closer to the hut. Was it my people, mounting their attack? Or was it the Commander, back to retake what was his?

There would be no love lost between the captain and the commander, and if was a betting man, in a fight, my money would be on the commander.

The sounds of gunfire continued for about ten minutes, then it became sporadic, then none. There were footsteps on the boards at the front of the hut, and then a cautious entry, gun barrel first, “if you have a gun pointed at the door, I suggest you put it down.” Monroe.

Having caught the captain’s attention from the front, the Colonel came in the rear and had his gun barrel pointing to the small of the captain’s back. “Drop it now.”

The captain did as he was told.

“You had more men on the perimeter?” he said with a sigh.

“Yes. I thought it prudent to have more than one sniper, a fact that the Militia commander hadn’t given a thought to.” I looked over at Monroe. “Have we secured the airfield?”

“Yes. 10 surviving soldiers, some of them in a bad way, are in the second barracks. They won’t be mounting a counterattack.”

I heard an engine; a large plane engine being started.

“That will be Davies playing with her new toy. Someone is on the runway lights; the rest are heading for the plane. Where are the hostages?” She glared at the captain.

He shrugged.

Shurl burst in the door. “Out, back through that door,” I said. “Be careful there isn’t a guard waiting for you.”

Monroe looked at me. “Can I shoot the insubordinate bastard?”

A look of surprise, not terror, crossed the captain’s face.

“Just take him back to the cells and lock him up.”

Shurl came out with the two hostages, just as the second plane engine fired. Monroe took the captain back to the cells and returned a minute or so later. Shurl had taken the hostages to the plane. Baines would be waiting to switch on the lights at the last minute, and hopefully, the rest were on board.

They would be waiting for Monroe and me.

Both engines were running smoothly, and Davies was testing the rudder and flaps. Suddenly the runway lights came on, and Baines came running towards the plane. Monroe and I jumped aboard, and then Baines followed, pulling the door shut behind him.

I heard the engine noise increase, and then we were moving.

I headed up to the cockpit and joined Davies. She was now in her element, her face a picture of concentration. We were slowly moving to the end of the runway, and I could see her working her way through the preflight checklist.

I tried to speak to her, but she couldn’t hear. She had headphones on. There was a pair near the co-pilot’s seat. I sat down and put them on.

“Everything OK?”

“Nearly. Be quiet for a minute.”

We were at the end of the strip and she turned the plane. She would have checked the wind, not that I’d felt any, and adjusted the take-off direction accordingly.

Then, after what looked like a deep breath and slow exhale, she pushed the engine controls to maximum, and we started moving, slowly gathering speed. The runway surface wasn’t exactly flat, but it was enough not to impede forward motion. Not long after the rear of the plane rose, and then in what seemed effortless, we were in the air.

Odd then, when we passed through 2,000 feet, I wondered who this plane belonged to.

© Charles Heath 2020

Inspiration, Maybe – Volume 2

50 photographs, 50 stories, of which there is one of the 50 below.

They all start with –

A picture paints … well, as many words as you like.  For instance:

And, the story:

Have you ever watched your hopes and dreams simply fly away?

Everything I thought I wanted and needed had just left in an aeroplane, and although I said I was not going to, I came to the airport to see the plane leave.  Not the person on it, that would have been far too difficult and emotional, but perhaps it was symbolic, the end of one life and the start of another.

But no matter what I thought or felt, we had both come to the right decision.  She needed the opportunity to spread her wings.  It was probably not the best idea for her to apply for the job without telling me, but I understood her reasons.

She was in a rut.  Though her job was a very good one, it was not as demanding as she had expected, particularly after the last promotion, but with it came resentment from others on her level that she, the youngest of the group, would get the position.

It was something that had been weighing her down for the last three months, and if she noticed it, the late nights, the moodiness, sometimes a flash of temper.  I knew she had one; no one could have such red hair and not, but she had always kept it in check.

And then there was us, together, and after seven years, it felt like we were going nowhere.  Perhaps that was down to my lack of ambition, and though she never said it, lack of sophistication.  It hadn’t been an issue, well, not until her last promotion, and the fact that she had to entertain more, and frankly, I felt like an embarrassment to her.

So, there it was, three days ago, the beginning of the weekend, and we had planned to go away for a few days and take stock.  We both acknowledged we needed to talk, but it never seemed the right time.

It was then that she said she had quit her job and found a new one.  Starting the following Monday.

Ok, that took me by surprise, not so much that it was something I sort of guessed might happen, but that she would just blurt it out.

I think that right then, at that moment, I could feel her frustration with everything around her.

What surprised her was my reaction.  None.

I simply asked who, where, and when.

A world-class newspaper in New York, and she had to be there in a week.

A week.

It was all the time I had left with her.

I remember just shrugging and asking if the planned weekend away was off.

She stood on the other side of the kitchen counter, hands around a cup of coffee she had just poured, and that one thing I remembered was the lone tear that ran down her cheek.

Is that all you want to know?

I did, yes, but we had lost the intimacy we used to have, where she would have told me what was happening, and we would have brainstormed solutions. I might be a cabinet maker, but I still had a brain, was what I overheard her tell a friend once.

There’s not much to ask, I said.  You’ve been desperately unhappy and haven’t been able to hide it all that well, you have been under a lot of pressure trying to deal with a group of troglodytes, and you’ve been leaning on Bentley’s shoulder instead of mine, and I get it, he’s got more experience in that place,  and the politics that go with it, and is still an ally.

Her immediate superior was instrumental in her getting the position, but unlike some men in his position, he had not taken advantage of the situation like some might.  And even if she had made a move, which I doubted, that was not the sort of woman she was, he would have politely declined.

One of the very few happily married men in that organisation, so I heard.

So, she said, you’re not just a pretty face.

Par for the course for a cabinet maker whose university degree is in psychology.  It doesn’t take rocket science to see what was happening to you.  I just didn’t think it was my place to jump in unless you asked me, and when you didn’t, well, that told me everything I needed to know.

Yes, our relationship had a use-by date, and it was in the next few days.

I was thinking, she said, that you might come with me; you can make cabinets anywhere.

I could, but I think the real problem wasn’t just the job.  It was everything around her and going with her that would just be a constant reminder of what had been holding her back. I didn’t want that for her and said so.

Then the only question left was, what do we do now?

Go shopping for suitcases.  Bags to pack, and places to go.

Getting on the roller coaster is easy.  At the beginning, it’s a slow, easy ride, followed by the slow climb to the top.  It’s much like some relationships; they start out easy, they require a little work to get to the next level, followed by the adrenaline rush when it all comes together.

What most people forget is that what comes down must go back up, and life is pretty much a roller coaster with highs and lows.

Our roller coaster had just come out of the final turn, and we were braking so that it would stop at the station.

There was no question of going with her to New York.  Yes, I promised I’d come over and visit her, but that was a promise with crossed fingers behind my back.  After a few months in the new job, the last thing she’d want was a reminder of what she left behind.  New friends, new life.

We packed her bags, threw out everything she didn’t want, a free trip to the op shop with stuff she knew others would like to have, and basically, by the time she was ready to go, there was nothing left of her in the apartment, or anywhere.

Her friends would be seeing her off at the airport, and that’s when I told her I was not coming; that moment, the taxi arrived to take her away forever.  I remember standing there, watching the taxi go.  It was going to be, and was, as hard as it was to watch the plane leave.

So, there I was, finally staring at the blank sky, around me a dozen other plane spotters, a rather motley crew of plane enthusiasts.

Already that morning, there had been 6 different types of planes departing, and I could hear another winding up its engines for take-off.

People coming, people going.

Maybe I would go to New York in a couple of months, not to see her, but just to see what the attraction was.  Or maybe I would drop in, just to see how she was.

As one of my friends told me when I gave him the news, the future is never written in stone, and it’s about time you broadened your horizons.

Perhaps it was.

© Charles Heath 2020-2026

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Coming soon.  Find the above story and 49 others like it in:

The cinema of my dreams – It ended in Sorrento – Episode 66

It’ll never work, Giulietta Moretti

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I knocked on Juliet’s door and before I could speak, she told me to go away.  In my book that was an invitation to go in.

I closed the door behind me.  She was lying on the bed staring at the ceiling.

“I thought I told you to go away.”  She gave me the go-away look.

I sat in the chair beside the bed.  The hotel must have thought someone would want to read in peace in their room, otherwise, I didn’t see the point.  “Why is it everywhere I go these days, you’re there.”

“We’ve had this discussion.”

“I haven’t got an answer yet?  My problem is that I have a suspicious mind, and generally, I can see conspiracies before others.  You being here has conspiracy written all over it.”

“I was not responsible for crazies like Larry or that Vittoria singling me out to cause others grief.”

“You’re the wrong place, wrong time kind of girl?  Or has your brother got himself into another jam?”

“No.  He’s safe.  And I thank you for getting him out of the mess he was in.  That was my fault, and I won’t let it happen again.”

“Then how did you get involved in this mess?”

She rolled sideways to look at me.  Perhaps she shouldn’t, I could see the tear tracks.  She had been crying, though I’m not sure why.

“A phone call.  My real name is Giulietta Moretti, and the woman who asked for me by that name sounded like one who had been ringing a great many of them.  I just happened to be in a certain Italian town at a certain age, and she said she had something that might interest me.  Call me dumb, but after the life I’ve had, something sounded better than nothing.”

“Changing your name no doubt improves your prospects, like an alias.  Is this Giulietta Moretti a doctor also?”

“She could be, with a forged certificate, but I wasn’t going to play that card.  I was working with dead people, so I didn’t think it mattered.  You can’t kill dead people, Evan.”

“Unless they rise from the dead and try to kill you.”

She looked at me strangely.

“Don’t worry.  Different lifetime.  I like your real name, by the way.  It has a lovely ring to it.”  And I had no idea why I said that.  “Perhaps I should stop calling you Juliet.  We digress.  Continue.”

“I met her in Milan over coffee, and she said if I could find the relevant documents, I might be her missing daughter, and if I was, then I might be an heir to a Count’s estate.  She said she had once worked in the residence and had a relationship with the Count, and the Countess didn’t know about it.  He was, she said, very discreet.”

“Of course, he was.  You can imagine just how discreet he would be.  A house full of pretty servant girls, for him, would be a smorgasbord.  You went along with the plan?”

“Of course.  I found my birth certificate and some old photos of my mother and I, who looked nothing like the woman who called me, so I took them and then asked her what her game was.  When she looked at the photos, she said the woman was a friend of hers who worked at the residence, and that she had given me to her to look after, and being the bad mother she was, basically abandoned me.  Well, I told her where she got off and left.

“A week later, she turns up again, and tells me I am her daughter, and shows me another birth certificate and photos of her, my mother and me at the residence.  It’s possible she was telling the truth, so I decided to run with it.  She said that the will was going to be ratified, which is not in a few days and that I should wait for her call to come and stake my claim.

“The moment I did that, my life went crazy, and then you turn up, and people are shooting at me.  I was glad to see you again, though.”

“Is that it?”

“Basically.”

“It’s a good story.”

“It’s a true story.”

“It’s a story with elements of truth woven into another story, the story that lives between the lines.  I’ll tell you what I told Francesca out there.  I live in a world of lies and deceit, and smoke and mirrors.  I was taught by the best not to believe anyone or anything.  Or trust anyone.  If you want to have any chance of seeing me again, you’d better be prepared to tell me the whole truth, irrespective of what you think I might think.  Hell, you’re the most confusing, irritating, aggravating person I’ve ever known.”

“That far under your skin, eh?”  She smiled.

“You’re still at the top of my list.  Don’t push it.  You’re going to help me sort out this mess tomorrow, and then you and I are going to have this out.”

“What if I say no?”

“Do you have a death wish?”

“Maybe I like dancing with the devil.”

 I shook my head and stood.

“It’ll never work, Giulietta Moretti.  Never.”

…

© Charles Heath 2023-2026

The 2am Rant: Sometimes it’s better to say that an expressed opinion is your own

It’s always a good thing to get that across, especially if you work for an organisation that could misinterpret what that opinion is, or generally have an opposing opinion.  Of course, by saying your opinions are your own, you’re covering yourself from becoming unemployed, but is this a futile act?

Perhaps it’s better to not say anything because everything you say and do eventually finds its way to those you want most not to hear about it, perhaps one of the big negatives of the internet and social media.

And…

It seems odd to me that you can’t have an opinion of your own, even if it is contrary to that of the organisation you work for, and especially if their opinion has changed over time.  An opposing opinion, not delivered in a derogatory manner, would have the expectation of sparking healthy debate, but it doesn’t always end up like that.

I’m sure there are others out there that will disagree and use the overused word, loyalty.   Perhaps their mantra will be ‘keep your opinions to yourself’.

This, too, often crops up in personal relationships, and adds weight to the statement, ‘you can pick your friends but not your relatives’.

I’m told I have an opinion on everything, a statement delivered in a manner that suggests sarcasm.  Whether it’s true or not, isn’t the essence of free speech, working within the parameters of not inciting hate, bigotry, racism, or sexism, a fundamental right of anyone in a democracy?

Seems not.

There’s always someone out there, higher up the food chain, with an opinion of their own, obviously the right one, and who will not hesitate to silence yours.  But, isn’t it strange that to silence you, they have to use leverage, like your job, to get theirs across?

Well, my opinions are in my writing, and whether or not you agree with them or not, I’m sure you will let me know.  In a robust but respectful manner.

Unlike some, my door is always open.

What I learned about writing – The use of real people as characters.

The Muse Next Door: Weaving Real Life into Your Fiction (Pros & Cons)

As writers, we’re constantly searching for inspiration. Sometimes it strikes like lightning, a fully formed idea bursting forth. More often, though, our wellspring of creativity is much closer than we think: it’s the rich, messy, beautiful tapestry of real life itself.

The question then becomes: how much of that life – the people we know, the experiences we’ve had – should we actually weave into our stories? It’s a powerful tool, but like any powerful tool, it comes with a user manual that highlights both its immense benefits and its potential pitfalls.

Let’s explore the pros and cons of drawing directly from real people and personal experiences for your characters and plots.

The Allure of Authenticity: The Pros

There’s a reason so many authors look to their own lives and the people around them. The benefits are substantial:

  1. Authenticity and Relatability: Real life has a texture that’s hard to invent. When you base a character on someone you know, or a plot on an event you’ve lived through, you bring an immediate sense of truth and lived experience to the page. Readers are incredibly astute; they can often feel when a character or situation rings true, and this fosters a deeper connection.
  2. Rich Detail and Nuance: Ever tried to describe a facial twitch or an odd habit from scratch? It’s tough. But if you’re picturing your eccentric Aunt Carol, those details come naturally. Real people are complex, contradictory, and full of fascinating quirks that can make your fictional characters leap off the page in a way pure invention sometimes struggles to achieve.
  3. Emotional Resonance: When you write about an experience you’ve had, or channel the emotions you’ve witnessed in someone else, that raw feeling seeps into your words. This can create powerful, moving scenes that deeply affect your readers because the emotion is rooted in a genuine place.
  4. Overcoming Writer’s Block: Stuck on character motivation? Can’t figure out how a scene should unfold? Sometimes, recalling how a real person reacted in a similar situation, or remembering the actual sequence of events, can provide the perfect springboard to get your story moving again.
  5. A Wellspring of Conflict: Life is full of conflict – big and small. The annoying neighbour, the family squabble, the quiet tension in a relationship. These everyday conflicts, when amplified or subtly altered, can form the backbone of incredibly compelling plots.

The Treacherous Territory: The Cons

While the well of reality is deep, it’s also fraught with potential dangers.

  1. Ethical & Privacy Concerns: This is the biggest hurdle. When you base characters on real people, you risk:
    • Hurting Feelings: Friends, family, or even acquaintances might recognise themselves – or parts of themselves – and feel exposed, misrepresented, or betrayed.
    • Legal Repercussions: While less common for fiction, if you depict someone in a negative, identifiable way that could be proven false and damaging, you could face libel or defamation charges. (Though usually, fiction is protected if it’s not directly claiming to be fact).
    • Breaching Trust: Once you start writing about people you know, they might become wary of sharing personal details with you in the future.
  2. Creative Constraints: Sticking too close to reality can actually limit your creativity.
    • Lack of Arc: Real people don’t always have satisfying story arcs. Their lives are often meandering, and if you simply copy, your character might feel directionless or flat in a fictional context.
    • Predictability: If you’re too faithful to a real person, your character might act exactly as that person would, making their choices and the plot predictable for both you and your readers.
  3. Personal Bias and Emotional Baggage: You can’t write about people you know or experiences you’ve had with true objectivity.
    • Vengeful Writing: It’s tempting to use fiction to “settle scores” or air grievances, but this usually results in one-dimensional characters and a preachy, unengaging narrative.
    • Emotional Overwhelm: Writing about highly personal or traumatic experiences can be emotionally draining and difficult, sometimes re-traumatising the writer.
  4. Lack of Transformation: The goal of fiction isn’t to create a perfect mirror of reality, but to transform it into something meaningful. Simply transplanting a person or an event often misses the opportunity for deeper exploration, metaphor, or thematic development.
  5. “Who’s That?” Dilemma: For those close to you, reading your work can become a game of “spot the real person,” detracting from their immersion in the story you’re trying to tell.

The Art of Transformation: Making it Work

So, how do you harness the power of real life without falling into its traps? The key is transformation, not transcription.

  1. Mix and Match: Don’t base a character on just one person. Take the biting wit of your colleague, the fashion sense of your cousin, and the deep-seated insecurity of your old high school teacher, and blend them into a completely new entity.
  2. Exaggerate and Subvert: Take a real trait and dial it up to eleven, or flip it on its head. Did your uncle always tell tall tales? What if your character is pathologically honest to a fault?
  3. Change Circumstances: Put familiar people in unfamiliar situations. What would your overly cautious friend do if suddenly faced with an impossible life-or-death choice?
  4. Shift Perspectives: If you’re drawing from a personal experience, try writing it from the perspective of another person involved, or even an outside observer. This creates distance and allows for more objective storytelling.
  5. Focus on the Universal: Instead of replicating a specific argument you had, identify the universal themes within it: miscommunication, pride, fear. Then, build a fictional scenario around those themes.
  6. Ask “What If?”: This is your greatest tool. “What if that person I know, with that specific trait, found themselves in this completely different, fictional situation?”

Conclusion

Our lives are the richest source material we possess. The people we meet, the places we go, and the emotions we feel are the raw ingredients of compelling stories. But like a skilled chef, a writer must know how to select, prepare, and transform those ingredients into something entirely new – a dish that nourishes the reader, stands on its own merits, and respects the origins without being bound by them.

So, open your eyes to the muse next door, but always wield your pen with thought, creativity, and a healthy dose of ethical consideration.

365 Days of writing, 2026 – 152

Day 152 – Words of Wisdom

…

The Art of the Mirror: Why Great Literature Must Embrace the Mess

In his typically sharp, aphoristic style, Nassim Nicholas Taleb once argued: “Literature comes alive with covering up vices, defects, weaknesses, and confusions; it dies with every trace of preaching.”

It is a provocation that strikes at the heart of our modern literary malaise. In an era where “message-driven” storytelling is often prioritised over narrative integrity, Taleb’s words serve as a necessary intervention. He suggests that the moment a writer picks up a soapbox, they put down their pen.

But why does preaching kill a story? And why is the “covering up” of human frailty the very thing that makes a character breathe?

The Death of the Moral Compass

When a book begins to preach, the story stops being a mirror and starts being a lecture. A preacher assumes they have a monopoly on truth, and their only goal is to transmit that truth to a captive audience.

Literature, however, is not a monologue—it is a haunting, mutual experience. When an author decides that the purpose of their work is to moralise, they strip the characters of their agency. If a character is merely a vessel for a political or ethical point, they cease to be a “person.” They become a mannequin in a shop window, dressed in the author’s ideology.

Readers are sophisticated; they can smell didacticism from a mile away. When we feel we are being “taught,” our natural inclination is to resist. We stop reading to understand and start reading to evaluate. The magic is broken.

The Beauty of the “Cover-Up”

Taleb’s insistence that literature comes alive by “covering up” is not a call for dishonesty. Rather, it is an acknowledgment of the complexity of the human condition.

The greatest characters in literature—from Raskolnikov’s feverish guilt in Crime and Punishment to the quiet, desperate failures of the protagonists in Chekhov’s stories—are never fully transparent. They are bundles of contradictions. They act against their own interests. They suppress their darkest impulses, not because they are inherently “good,” but because they are terrified, confused, and profoundly human.

“Covering up” is the act of psychological realism. It is the writer acknowledging that we are all hiding something—from others, and often from ourselves.

When a writer portrays a character’s messy, confusing, and contradictory nature without labelling it as “wrong” or “right,” they create a space for the reader to step into. We don’t connect with perfect icons; we connect with the broken, the stammering, and the confused. We see our own “vices and defects” reflected in the prose, and in that recognition, we feel less alone.

The Reader as Co-Conspirator

If literature dies with preaching, it comes alive through the active labour of the reader. A great book presents a situation—a vice, a defect, a confusion—and refuses to provide the answer key.

By leaving the moral ambiguity intact, the author invites the reader to become an accomplice. You are not being told what to think; you are being shown what it feels like to be human. You are forced to judge, empathise, and grapple with the same mess the character is navigating.

Final Thoughts: The Courage to be Unclear

In the digital age, we are constantly bombarded with certainty. Every tweet, headline, and think-piece demands that we pick a side and commit to a moral posture.

Literature should be the last refuge from this binary exhaustion. By resisting the urge to preach, authors allow for the richness of ambiguity. They allow characters to fail, to be weak, and to be profoundly imperfect.

So, perhaps that is the ultimate test of a great book: Does it try to fix you, or does it try to show you? If it chooses the latter, it isn’t just a piece of writing—it’s a breathing, living thing that reminds us that in our vices, our weaknesses, and our confusions, we are at our most readable.

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Top 5 sights on the road less travelled – Rome

Escape the Crowds: Rome’s Top 5 Unsung Tourist Gems

Rome. Just the name conjures images of the Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain, and endless lines of eager tourists. While these iconic sights are essential, the Eternal City offers so much more—especially for those willing to venture slightly off the beaten path.

If you’re looking to soak up Rome’s history, beauty, and distinctive character without battling the massive crowds, we’ve curated a list of the top five visitor attractions that are surprisingly peaceful and utterly captivating.

Here are Rome’s best-kept secrets, proving you don’t need a huge crowd to have a monumental experience.

1. The Centrale Montemartini Museum (Museo della Centrale Montemartini)

Why Visit: This museum offers one of the most stunning juxtapositions in all of Rome: pristine classical statues set against the backdrop of a decommissioned early 20th-century thermoelectric power plant.

The Distinctive Feature: Imagine towering, oily industrial machinery—boilers, engines, and generators—acting as the unlikely stage for brilliant white marble statues of gods and emperors. Originally intended as temporary storage for overflow artifacts from the Capitoline Museums, the exhibit became permanent and breathtaking. It’s an unforgettable blend of industrial archaeology and ancient art, offering a quiet, contemplative space far from the bustling Capitoline Hill.

Crowd Level: Extremely low. Often, you’ll feel like you have entire halls to yourself.

2. The Baths of Caracalla (Terme di Caracalla)

Why Visit: Everyone knows the Roman Forum, but fewer people explore the vast, evocative ruins of the ancient Roman baths. The Baths of Caracalla were a massive public complex, more like a modern leisure center than just a place to wash, accommodating thousands of Romans daily.

The Distinctive Feature: Unlike the Forum, where structures are densely packed, Caracalla’s ruins are sprawling, allowing you to truly appreciate the sheer scale of Imperial Roman architecture. The remaining walls and arches soar towards the sky, hinting at the dome-covered halls and mosaic-tiled floors that once existed. Visiting here is an atmospheric experience, particularly beautiful at sunset, offering a powerful sense of quiet grandeur.

Crowd Level: Low to moderate. While tour buses occasionally stop, the immense size of the site easily disperses visitors.

3. The Basilica di Santo Stefano Rotondo al Celio

Why Visit: If you’re tired of the gilded splendor and tourist throngs of the major papal basilicas, head to Rome’s oldest circular church. Dedicated to Saint Stephen, this basilica is an architectural curiosity unlike any other in the city.

The Distinctive Feature: Built in the 5th century, the church utilizes a striking circular plan with concentric rings of columns. Inside, the walls are lined with graphic frescoes depicting the horrific martyrdoms of early Christian saints. While certainly macabre, these 16th-century paintings are historically fascinating—a unique and somber art gallery within a classical structure. Its isolated location on the quiet Celian Hill ensures a serene, thought-provoking visit.

Crowd Level: Very low. You are likely to find peace and solitude here.

4. The Quartiere Coppedè

Why Visit: Leave the Roman ruins behind for a moment and step into a fantastical, fairytale neighborhood that feels lifted straight out of a storybook.

The Distinctive Feature: Though technically a small urban area within the larger Trieste district, Quartiere Coppedè is an architectural masterpiece designed by Gino Coppedè in the early 20th century. Walk through the stunning archway (the Arco di Coppedè) and discover whimsical palaces, fountains (like the famous Fountain of the Frogs), and facades adorned with sculptures of nymphs, animals, and mythical creatures. It’s a hidden gem of Art Nouveau and Baroque fusion—a completely unexpected visual delight perfect for photography and quiet exploration.

Crowd Level: Minimal. This is a residential area primarily visited by local residents and architecture enthusiasts.

5. The Protestant Cemetery (Cimitero Acattolico)

Why Visit: Tucked away beside the Pyramid of Cestius, this cemetery is one of the most beautiful and tranquil spots in Rome. It is the final resting place for non-Catholics, including famous figures like the poets John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

The Distinctive Feature: Far more than just a graveyard, this site is a lush, perfectly manicured garden park often referred to as “the most beautiful corner of Rome.” Cypress trees cast shadows over elaborate, touching monuments and tombstones written in dozens of languages. It offers a poignant, introspective break from the city noise, blending art, history, and nature in a profoundly moving way. The air of quiet contemplation is palpable.

Crowd Level: Low, though the small entrance fee helps maintain its peaceful atmosphere.

Rome’s true magic isn’t just in its famous landmarks, but in the countless layers of history waiting to be quietly discovered. By seeking out these distinctive, less-trafficked attractions, you can enjoy a richer, more personal experience of the Eternal City. Happy exploring!

In a word: Key

So, as we all know, a key is used to lock or unlock a door, gate, or something else.  It’s either made of shiny metal, brass, or rusty iron, it can be small, or very, very big, as is the key to a dungeon.

We can have one key or we can have many or even a master key that unlocks everything, very handy if you have a house full of locked rooms.

People always seem to want to steal them, especially in crime shows.

There is also an item called a key card.  Not the metal thing, but a plastic thing, that opens doors.  Odd that it’s called keyless entry!

Then there’s what is known as the key to something, i.e. you might have the key to his or her heart, metaphorically speaking.

And in that metaphorical sense, it opens up pandora’s box with a plethora of different meanings.

He had the key to the puzzle.

I wish sometimes I had the key to be able to write better, that that one particular key eludes me.

There are keys on a keyboard, the ones you use on computers and calculators.  They were originally on typewriters.  You can also find keys on a piano, or an accordion, and some other musical instruments.

A key can also be a master index field, or unique identifier, in a database, particularly those kept on computers.

And,

there’s a host of other uses for the word key, such as

roughening a surface

describing the shooting area on a basketball court

a group, or one, of small coral islets

matching words to pictures

or, you’re just too keyed up to sleep.