The first meaning that comes to mind is a cue is a prompt, often from someone standing behind the camera in a television studio.
That is to say that a cue is some form of signal, a wave, a nod, or verbal.
A cue can also be where a tape or recording is set to a certain place, ready to play. One could assume, if playing tracks off an album of songs, and you wanted to play the fourth track, then you would cue it up, ready to go on, of course, the moment you got a, yes, cue to play it.
Then there is a cue used in a game of pool or snooker, that is a long thin tapered piece of wood with a felt tip.
Not exactly my favourite game, but it’s always the cues fault, not mine.
This is not to be considered with Que which is a shortened form for Quebec, in Canada.
Or que, which for some reason, only in California, is short for barbecue.
Or Queue, as in a long line, or a short one, of people waiting to get on a bus, or waiting to get tickets
In my experience every queue I get in is always a long one, and then suffer the frustration of waiting hours only to be told the tickets have all been sold.
Almost as bad as being stuck in a traffic jam, which is technically a queue of cars, never to get through the first set of lights, and sometimes not the second.
And don’t get me started on phone queues.
Queues are for people who have a lot of time on the hands.
There’s nothing like ‘hitting the wall’. It’s a rather quaint expression used when you have used up all your energy and there’s nothing left. A lot of sportspeople are very familiar with this expression.
But it doesn’t have anything to do with hitting a real wall, you know the sort, made out of plaster, or bricks, or timber. Some people hit the wall in this case too, and soon find out what it’s like to have a broken hand.
There’s wall street, you know the one, it has a bull in it, and it’s in New York, down that end of the city where the Twin Towers used to be. It’s rumoured lots of ‘jiggery-pokery’ goes on there.
Try stonewalling, you know, give answers to questions that don’t answer the questions, or find something else to do and put off being questioned. I’m not sure, however, that’s how Stonewall Jackson got his name.
We can climb the walls, metaphorically speaking, but it is something we don’t actually do when we’re bored.
And, I’m sure everyone has heard of the Great Wall of China. Even those who travel in space have seen it, from a long, long way away. I’ve tried walking along it, and up it, yes, parts of it go up the sides of mountains, and it’s challenging. Maybe you should try it sometime.
Perhaps a few others, just to finish with, like
I got hit by a wall of water – yep, watch out for them tidal waves
There’s a wall between us, nope, not gonna talk to you
His stomach wall is failing, which means he’s in very bad shape, and
He couldn’t get through the wall of players, oh, well, maybe we’ll win the FA cup final next year!
The first stop is at a Jade Museum to learn the history of jade. In Chinese, jade is pronounced as “Yu” and it has a history in China of at least four thousand years. On the way there, we are given a story about one of the guide’s relatives who had a jade bracelet, and how it has saved her from countless catastrophes.It is, quite literally ‘the’ good luck charm. Chinese gamblers are known to have small pieces of jade in their hands when visiting the casinos, for good luck. I’m not sure anything could provide a gambler with any sort of luck given how the odds are always slanted towards the house.
At any rate, this is neither the time of the place to debunk a ‘well-known fact’.
On arrival, our guide hands us over to a local guide, a real staff member, and she begins with a discussion on jade while we watch a single worker working on an intricate piece, what looks to be a globe within a globe, sorry, there are two workers, and the second is working on a dragon.
At the end of the passage that passes by the workers, and before you enter the main showroom, you are dazzled by the ship and is nothing short of magnificent.
Then it’s into a small room just off the main showroom where we are taken through the colors, and the carving process in the various stages, without really being told how the magic happens.
Then it’s out into the main showroom where the sales are made, and before dispersing to look at the jade collection, she briefly tells us how to tell real and fake jade, and she does the usual trick of getting one of the tour group to model a piece.
Looks good, let’s move on. To bigger and better examples.
What interested me, other than the small zodiac signs and other smallish pieces on the ‘promotion’ table, was the jade bangle our tour guide told us about on the bus. If anyone needs one, it is my other half, with all the medical issues and her sometimes clumsiness, two particular maladies this object is supposed to prevent. Jade to the Chinese is Diamonds to westerners, and the jade bangle is often handed down to the females of the family from generation to generation, often as an engagement present, to be worn on the left hand, the one closest to the heart.
There are literally thousands of them, but, they have to be specially fitted to your wrist because if it’s too large, you might lose it if it slips off and I didn’t think it could be too small. Nor is it cheap, and needing a larger size, it is reasonably expensive. But it is jadeite, the more expensive of the types of jade, and it can only appreciate in value, not that we are interested in the monetary value, it’s more the good luck aspect.
We could use some of that.
But, just to touch on something that can be the bugbear of traveling overseas, is the subject of happy houses, a better name for toilets, and has become a recurrent theme on this tour. It’s better than blurting out the word toilet and it seems there can be some not so happy houses given that the toilets in China are usually squat rather than sit, even for women. And apparently, everyone has an unhappy house story, particularly the women, and generally in having to squat over a pit. Why is this a discussion point, it seems the jade factory had what we have come to call happy, happy houses which have more proper toilets, and a stop here before going on the great wall was recommended, as the ‘happy house’ at the wall is deemed to be not such a happy house.
Not even this dragon was within my price range. Thank heaven they had smaller more affordable models. The object of having a dragon, large or small, is that it should be placed inside the main door to the house so that money can come in.
It also seems that stuffing the dragon’s mouth with money is also good luck. We passed on doing that.
After spending a small fortune, there was a bonus, free Chinese tea. Apparently, we will be coming back, after the Great Wall visit, to have lunch upstairs.
Alone, and awaiting your fate, minutes become hours, hours become a lifetime
Now that I’ve gone down the rabbit hole, it’s time to find out what sort of trouble is waiting. It might be hot in the desert, but I think it’s going to get hotter in the underground lair.
…
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way, your choice.”
There was always a choice, I’m sure, but at the end of the day, it always ended up bring the hard way.
It had been a long, and somewhat sleepless, night, pondering the whys and wherefores of what just happened.
I’m guessing I was supposed to die, like the pilot, now I was a thorn in their side.
The two men sent to collect me were purposefully selected for terror value, a sign that if I was contemplating anything other than full co-operation, these were the sort of men I would have to deal with.
The reality, on the other hand, was sometimes completely different.
I still hadn’t got proof that this was an enemy, or rogue, unit, so no point panicking yet.
“Let’s try the easy way first,” I said, getting off the stretcher and standing.
One remained outside the room, the other, after unlocking the door, ventured as far as the doorway. He seemed disappointed at my choice.
I walked between them further into the labyrinth until we reached another doorway, this with an opaque glass window, and though it I could see there was someone already in the room.
He opened the door, ushered me in, giving that little push in the back that was to remind me of the controlled force he had and would unleash. A nod in the direction of the room’s occupant, he withdrew and closed the door.
The occupant was an older man, in his 60s, the sort one would mistake as a university professor, but on reality was a master torturer in the guise of an interrogator.
We had them, I’d heard about them, but this was a first.
“Sit, Mr. James.”
All this politeness was a front, it had to be, designed perhaps to take me off my guard.
There was a table on one side with two chairs opposite each other. It wasn’t much of a table and the chairs looked cheap and uncomfortable, for both of us.
There was nothing else in the room and nothing on the table. The discussion no doubt would be recorded, or perhaps the man had a very good memory.
To make a good first impression, I sat.
For five minutes I could feel him looking at me, trying to make me feel uncomfortable. It was disconcerting, but I had decided to speak when spoken to.
It was true to say that very few people knew our department existed. In fact, I was not sure quite who it was I worked for, but when I’d been first tasked with the assignment, a transfer precipitated by a transgression that might have ended my career, I was certain I had been sent to purgatory.
At least, that’s what the sign on the door said.
The office, if it could be called that, was in the basement, around so many twists and turns in the passages that it was easy to believe you had entered another dimension. It wasn’t located in the building you walked through the front door of, but somewhere else nearby. Through the walls, you could hear the sounds of cars, but whether it was a nearby road above the ceiling, or they were parking, it was not easy to say.
On another side, the sounds of trains passing through tunnels were barely discernible, and sometimes only noticeable by a slight vibration of the coffee mug on the desktop, of which there were four, the maximum number of occupants in the small area, but I have never seen who two of the other four were.
Such was the nature of our job. We operated in secret, hidden from the world, and the others. I was never quite sure why.
…
The interview, when I thought was going to be fired, was given by an old man in a pinstripe suit, long past the age of retirement. In fact, had I not known better, I would have said he was dead, and all that was missing was the cobwebs. He had no sense of humor and got straight to the point.
“You are being transferred to PIB effective immediately.”
He didn’t say what PIB stood for, and the no-nonsense tone told me this was not the time to ask.
“Many have come, but few have stayed. It’s not a job to be taken lightly, and a word of advice, the work you are about to undertake is not to be discussed with anyone but the person you have been assigned to work with.”
He then handed me an envelope, sealed, and that was the end of the interview.
I did not get to speak a word. I had this speech memorized, ready to explain why I had failed so badly, and what I was prepared to do to make up for it, but I was not given the opportunity. Perhaps I should just be grateful I was given another chance.
I waited until I was out of the building, and a block away in a small cafe, and the cheerful waitress had brought my coffee and cake. It was, in a small way, a celebration I still had a job, working for the organization I had set my sights on way back when I was in school.
Making sure no one was sitting too close; I opened the envelope and took out the neatly folded sheet of paper.
It was blank.
Was this some sort of joke?
There was a loud noise outside in the street, a car backfiring, and it caused a few anxious moments, particularly for me in case it was trouble, but it wasn’t. When normality returned I went back to the sheet of paper, picking it up off the top of the coffee cup where it had fallen, and something caught my eye.
Writing. Specifically, numbers, but what I thought I’d seen had disappeared, or hadn’t been there at all.
A shake of the head, perplexed, to say the least, I took a sip of the coffee. As the cup passed under the sheet, a pattern was discernible, displaying then disappearing. Bringing the cup back under the sheet, numbers suddenly appeared. It was a telephone number. It was also very cloak and daggers.
Was it a test? Because at that moment when I saw the blank sheet of paper, the meaning was very clear. It was a puzzle, and if I didn’t work it out, then I didn’t get the job. I’d simply been told to turn up at an anonymous building to see a man whom I doubted would answer to the name I’d been given to ask for again after I left.
I entered the number then pressed ‘call’.
Seven rings before a woman’s voice answered, “Yes?”
No names, no identification.
“Mr McCall gave me an envelope with this number in it.”
“You worked it out?” She sounded surprised.
“By accident, yes.”
“Well, four out of five candidates don’t. Consider this to be your lucky morning, the day is not over yet. Where are you?”
I told her.
“Then you’re not far from Central Park. Go to the souvenir store and wait.”
“How will I know you?”
“You won’t, I’ll recognize you.”
Then the phone went dead, and I was left looking at it as if I had the ability to see, via the phone, who that person was. I shrugged. How many others had failed even the most basic test, to figure out what was on the sheet of paper, and, was it an indication of the work I would be doing?
I spent the better part of an hour watching the squirrels at play. They scuttled around on the ground chasing each other or their imaginary friends or leaping from branch to branch in the shrubs and trees. They didn’t seem to have a care in the world, and I wondered what that would be like.
Unfortunately, I had to pay the rent, bills, and eat, all of which required having a paying job. I had been looking at having to return home a dismal failure and fulfil the destiny my father had predicted for me.
“David Jackson, I presume?”
I looked sideways to see a woman about my own age, dressed so that she would look anonymous in a crowd. It was anyone’s guess how long she had been there, but that, I guess was the point. She had been observing me, and no doubt assessing my suitability.
Could I blend in? Perhaps not if I was that easily identifiable.
“I am.”
“What if anything has been explained to you about the job?”
“Nothing. I was asked to meet a nameless man in an anonymous office and was handed an envelope which led to my call to you.”
After I said it out loud it sounded crazy.
“If you don’t mind me asking but how did you work out how to read the letter?”
Moment of truth, was there a right or wrong answer? Most if not all the people who received it would not work it out.
“Quite by accident.”
She smiled. “The truth is a rare commodity in our business. But then, you’re one of a very select group of people who made it to this level.”
“Just out of curiosity, what happens to those who done work out how to read the number?”
“They don’t get to stand where you are. Welcome aboard.”
There is more going on on the story front, and just to keep my mind active, or tortured, as the case may be, there are a number of other stories I’m working on.
In particular, there is the story with the description, what happens after an action-packed start.
Quite a lot. In the third section of the story, after being shot out of the sky, interrogated, flown into northern Nigeria, and then crossed into the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to search search for two men being held to ransom, our players finally made it home.
Previous attempts to rescue them had failed, this one had to succeed. It’s a matter of dealing with local militias who are tricky to deal with and then get out of the country after affecting the rescue.
At times, while writing it, looking at a map and using google earth to see what it is like, I felt like I was there looking down the barrel of a gun, and then, in the helter-skelter of getting to the evacuation point, I’m sure my heart rate had lifted considerably, particularly when the battered DC3 was about to be shot at with air to air missiles.
Just imagine this …
A DC3 versus a very maneuverable helicopter. I was on the edge of my seat.
Next is the surveillance story where nothing is as it seems, which in the espionage business is nothing unusual. Nor is the fact you cannot trust anyone.
It starts out as a routine surveillance operation until a shop front explodes a moment or two after the target passes it. In the ensuing mayhem, the target reappears, now in fear of his life, and our main character tracks him to an alley where he is murdered before his eyes.
Soon after the two men whom our main character is working for appearing and start asking questions that make our main character think that they had perpetrated a hit on him, and decides that something is not right.
From there, the deeper he probes, the more interesting the characters and developments. Who was the target? What was he doing that got him killed? What does he have that everyone wants?
I’m about to start on the next phase of this story…
Then there is what I call comic light relief, the writing of stories inspired by photographs I’ve taken. Some, however, have exceeded the 1,000-word limit that I’ve set, only because I want to explore the story more, and some are spread over a number of stories.
The first book of stories, 1 to 50 are to be published soon. Currently, I’m working on number 148 of the third volume of stories, but number 88 is my favorite so far, simply because it involves a starship.
Stranger’s We’ve Become, a sequel to What Sets Us Apart.
The blurb:
Is she or isn’t she, that is the question!
Susan has returned to David, but he is having difficulty dealing with the changes. Her time in captivity has changed her markedly, so much so that David decides to give her some time and space to re-adjust back into normal life.
But doubts about whether he chose the real Susan remain.
In the meantime, David has to deal with Susan’s new security chief, the discovery of her rebuilding a palace in Russia, evidence of an affair, and several attempts on his life. And, once again, David is drawn into another of Predergast’s games, one that could ultimately prove fatal.
From being reunited with the enigmatic Alisha, a strange visit to Susan’s country estate, to Russia and back, to a rescue mission in Nigeria, David soon discovers those whom he thought he could trust each has their own agenda, one that apparently doesn’t include him.
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 just 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 down of her for the last three months, and if 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 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 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 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 where who, 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 I just shrugged and asked 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 that intimacy we used to have when 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 and instrumental in her getting the position, but unlike some men in his position he had not taken advantage of a situation like some men would. 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. On 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, follows 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 or of the final turn and we were braking so that it stops 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 t the new job the last thing shed want was a reminder of what she left behind. New friends new life.
We packed her bags, three out everything she didn’t want, a free trips to the op shop with stiff 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’s been 6 different types of plane depart, 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 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.
We have visited Venice twice, in 2006 and not so long ago.
Not much had changed from visit to visit.
Instead of staying in a hotel selected by a travel agent, the Savoia and Jolanda on the waterfront of Riva Degli Schiavoni, because I’m a Hilton Honors member, more recently we stayed at the Hilton Molino Stucky. It was located on an island, Giudecca, and had its own transport from the hotel to St Mark’s Square for a very reasonable one-off charge for the stay.
On our first visit, we traveled from Florence to Venice. We were advised to take a water taxi to the hotel, not only the most direct route but to see some of Venice from the water. The only drawback, you have to negotiate a price with the driver.
We were not very good negotiators, and it cost 60 Euros.
But, despite the cost, it was worth every Euro because the taxi driver took us by the scenic route, directly from the Station to the doorstep of our hotel. For a first time in Venice, and you want to see it from the water, a water taxi is the best option.
The first time we stayed at the Savoia and Jolanda Hotel, which was at the time quite old, and the room we had, on the ground floor, was comfortable enough, but being November, they had just stopped using the air conditioning, it was still quite warm and at times uncomfortable.
There were better rooms, but this was beyond the knowledge of the travel agent, and one of the reasons we stopped using agents to book hotels.
The most recent visit we had driven down from Salzburg to Venice airport where we had to return the hire car. From there we were intending to take a private water taxi from the airport to the hotel, for an estimated 120 Euros.
We saved our money and took the ACTV public waterbus, from the airport to the hotel, with one stop. It took a little over an hour and was equally as scenic.
Our room in the Hilton was on one of the upper levels, floor four, and had a view of the canal, the large passenger ships coming and going, as well as a remarkable view of Venice itself as far up the canal to St Marks Square in one direction, and the port for the passenger ships in the other.
We got to see three or four very large passenger ships come and go, along with a lot of other craft. I hadn’t realized how busy the waterways, and the Grand Canal, were.
Each evening after a day’s exploring we would end up in the Executive Lounge, and then one of the many restaurants, usually Il Molino for breakfast, and the Rialto Lobby Bar and Lounge for dinner. After that, it was a stroll down the waterfront taking in the night air, and perhaps to walk off the delicious dinner.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 