Ever hear someone say it was better in the old days?
I have.
I’ve been guilty of saying it myself.
But, was it?
When I was a child there was no such thing as personal computers and calculators. Everything came out of books, and maths had to be done in your head.
Holidays were about joining up with other neighborhood children and making your own entertainment. I remember for a long time, as a child, we didn’t have television.
It was down to the meadows near the creek to pick blackberries, swim in the water, or raiding new housing estates for offcuts to build a cubby house.
Not like today with television, video players, movies on demand, personal computers, game boys and a plethora of other entertainment choices.
Were we better off back in the old days?
We were in the sun with no idea that sunburn led to cancer and death. Sunscreen was unheard of, so in that regard maybe not.
In the old days, the only telephones were in the house and were expensive to use. You could have a colored phone so long as it was black and made of bakelite.
It was a long time before we had plastic colored phones or even wall phones. Those were also the days of telephone boxes, the only way the make a call when away from home
Now every man and his dog has a mobile phone/computer while on the move. I know, the dogs keep crashing into me on the street.
And then I also remember my father saying it’s not like the old days, so I had to wonder what he meant.
Perhaps it is an oft-used but less understood lament for a time when we remember we were happy and carefree, those days before mortgages, children, maxed out credit cards, and the children’s mobile phone bills.
For a story that was conceived during those long boring hours flying in a steel cocoon, striving to keep away the thoughts that the plane and everyone in it could just simply disappear as planes have in the past, it has come a long way.
Whilst I have always had a fascination with what happened during the second world war, not the battles or fighting, but in the more obscure events that took place, I decided to pen my own little sidebar to what was a long and bitter war.
And, so, it continues…
——
The Standartenfuhrer checked his gun and settled his nerves for an onslaught. If they were going to die, then he was going to kill as many of them as he could.
He threw his hand pistol to Mayer. “Shoot anything that comes in the door.”
Mayer fumbled the weapon, dropping it on the floor, then finding it hard, with cold hands, to pick it up. Perhaps his life wasn’t sufficiently in danger to be more proactive.
The Standartenfuhrer shook his head. Boffins were all the same. The slightest threat and they went weak at the knees. And Mayer was no exception.
Mayer managed to get the gun into his hand.
“Don’t forget to turn off the safety.”
Mayer looked at the gun, and found the switch.
At the same time, another burst of gunfire ricocheted off the walls of the hut. It was followed by a harsh order to stop firing, and save the ammunition for the enemy. There was also a mutter about alerting the enemy, but that ship had sailed.
The soldiers seemed content to shoot randomly at the cabin, rather than check to see if anyone was inside, and soon the sounds of men, guns, and dogs were gone. The dogs had not picked up their scent, and the Standartenfuhrer had managed to cover their tracks sufficiently to keep them at bay.
Relief, but not enough to rest. The Standartenfuhrer knew they had to keep moving.
In the background, both could hear a stream locomotive at slow speed passing. In the circuitous route they’d taken to escape, they must have circled back towards the railway line which must be on the other side of the forest.
That proximity of the railway line would work in their favor because the next phase of the journey was going to be on a train.
Just not one full of soldiers, if possible.
After a half-hour, just to ensure the soldiers didn’t return, the Standartenfuhrer dragged himself up off the ground.
“We’d better move. They’re likely to come back, or had a second sweep when they don’t find us.”
“Surely we can have a rest.”
“If you want to get caught. I don’t have to tell you what they’ll do to you if they capture you.”
“Probably send me back to that hell hole.”
“Hitler is not that forgiving. The odds are you’ll be handed over to the SS and I’m sure you’ve seen what those people are capable of.”
He had, especially with the forced labor from the Jewish camps and POW camps. At times it beggared belief.
Mayer dragged himself up off the floor.
The Standartenfuhrer checked his weapon, then looked out through the crack in the door. It was dark and snowing, not too heavy, but enough to hide their movement. It was a shame their coats were dark, they would stand out against the white background, but it couldn’t be helped. That was a problem for daylight, still some hours away.
“Keep your weapon handy. You may need it.”
Mayer was worried his hands would be too cold and stiff, and instead of having it in his hand, slipped it into his pocket. He didn’t think too many people would be about at this hour.
“Once outside, head straight for the trees, as fast as you can.”
The Standartenfuhrer was in the doorway one second, gone the next, and Mayer followed. He could just see the dark figure in front of him, then almost ran into him when he stopped just past the first line of trees.
He could see lights intermittently through the trees, a train or houses along the railway line perhaps.
It was much darker in the forest, and they had to go slower, picking their way through the trees, running into low branches, and getting a face full of wet snow, often trickling down the back of their necks.
It was cold, wet, and very uncomfortable.
The Standartenfuhrer stopped. The trees had thinned and the lights became more pronounced. They could now definitely hear a locomotive close by, and a train well lit up stopped. The windows were fogged from condensation on the inside, but it was clear enough to see heads.
It was a passenger train, waiting.
A piercing whistle shattered the relative quiet, and another train coming in the other direction at speed flashed passed very loudly, the wheels of the carriages clanking on the track joints. An empty freight train with many flat cars, going back to Germany.
Then suddenly shouting, a whistle, and gunfire.
A man was running towards them,, and several soldiers were in pursuit, randomly shooting in his direction, and into the forest. A shot hit the running person and they fell.
Mayer heard a thud and a groan, then realized that the Standartenfuhrer had been hit. By the time he turned the Standartenfuhrer over, he was dead.
Mayer ducked out of sight just before torchlight shone on the spot he was crouching.
There was another shout, and the soldiers started heading towards him.
This book has been written for some time and the manuscript was sitting in a box with half a dozen others gathering dust and not quite as complete, so this month it is going to get the makeover, a first draft for the editor.
And so it begins…
…
It might be a little pedantic, but I have to pay more attention to the word count and make sure the revision is spaced correctly over the thirty days.
Today, day 5, the count is 1,862 words, making a total of 8,943 words so far.
What I have to be careful about is not to let the pressure get to me. I mean, I have to revise about 1,700 words a day to maintain the target. It seems a small amount, but remember this is supposed to produce a reasonably polished manuscript that an editor will not throw back at me.
If I miss a day, or the creative juices stop flowing…
OK, not something we need to think about.
Just a minor issue, though, I left a section out the first time around to be written, because I was not sure what I wanted to write. Perhaps what is coming may give some insight.
In the meantime, yet another yellow post-it note. Or I could just get it done.
People do do overtime don;t they?
I’m thinking of getting a new colour for the post-it notes, perhaps a more soothing pale green.
Sydney to Beijing – Qantas A330-200 Boarding 11:45, everyone on board by 12:02, for a 12:10 departure. Pushing back 12:12 Take off 12:27
Lunch Airline food is getting better but the fact they serve it up to you in a metal tray with a thick aluminum lid does nothing for the quality of the food inside. I get what the chef is trying to do but often there is too little of one thing and too much of another and what you finish up with is slop in a tray. Sometimes it’s edible sometimes it’s not. Sometimes the meat is tender and other times it’s like boot leather. As it is today. I think it’s pork, I should have had the chicken. Or perhaps it was chicken. I hate it when you can’t tell what it is that you’re eating. But, the drinks were good.
Rest or Sleep, maybe It’s going to take 11 hours and 20 minutes from Sydney to Beijing, a long time to sit in a plane with nothing much to do other than crosswords, read a book or newspaper or magazine, listen to music on your own device, or the in-flight entertainment, watch a movie again by the in-flight entertainment – if it works – or try to get some sleep. I started with the crosswords but got bored quickly. I fiddled with the in-flight entertainment, looked at the movies and tv shows but none really interested me, not then at least, so I set it to the flight path. Not exactly stellar entertainment, but it’s always interesting to know where the plane is. Or is it? If we crash, what good would it do me to know it’s somewhere over the ocean, not far from Manila, or somewhere else. It’s not as if I could phone someone up, on the way down, to let them know where we are. But, just after dinner, we still haven’t left Australia
However, by the time I’ve finished fiddling with and dismissing all of the entertainment alternatives, it’s back to the flight path and now we are…
Somewhere approaching the Sulu Sea, which I’ve never heard of before, so it looks like I’ll have to study up on my geography when I get home.
OK, Manila looks like somewhere I’ve heard of, so we have to be flying over the Philippines. Not far left of that is Vietnam. Neither of those places is on my travel bucket list, so I’ll just look from up here and be satisfied with that.
Working, or not Chronic boredom is setting in by the time we are just past halfway to our destination. We are over 6 hours into the flight and there no possible way I’m going to get any sleep. I brought my Galaxy Tab loaded with a few of my novel outlines, and planning for missing chapters, thinking I might get a little thinking time in. Plane rides, I find, are excellent for getting an opportunity to write virtually unhindered by outside interruptions, if, of course, you discount the number of times people brush past, knocking your seat, the person in front lowering the seat into your face, or people around you continually asking you to turn off your light because they’re trying to sleep. Sorry, I say, but you can suffer my pain with me. It’s one of the joys of flying with over two hundred others in a claustrophobic environment. Besides, aren’t the lights supposed to be slanted so only I get the rays of light? Except, I guess when the fixed light doesn’t line up with where the airline has fixed the seat (usually so they can squash more people in). So, sorry, not sorry, take it up with the airline.
Back to work, and I put in some quality time on a part of the story that had been eluding me for a while. I knew what I wanted to write, but not how I was going to approach it, so that blissfully quiet and intense time worked in my favour, something that would not have happened back home. I won’t bore you with the synopsis, just suffice to say it’s finally down on paper, digitally that is, and it’s a huge step forward towards finishing it. There is, of course, the end play, the reading of the will but not before there are a few thrusts and parry’s by some of the players, but all in all the objective was to showcase a group of people with their strengths and weaknesses pushing their characters in various directions, some at odds with what is expected of them. But enough of that. A quick check of our position shows we’re still over water but closer to our destination, so much so, we might start the pre-landing rituals, starting with food.
Dinner 7:00 – Dinner is served, well, the lights go on and a lot of tired people try to shake the sleep, and sleeplessness, out of their systems. Then flight attendants that are far too cheerful, and must have beamed in from somewhere else, serve another interesting concoction that says what’s in it but you can’t really be sure of the ingredients. It comes and it goes.
9:10 – We begin our descent into Beijing, you know, that moment when the engines almost stop and there’s a sickening lurch and the plane heads downward. 9:56 – We touch down on the runway, in the dark and apparently it has been raining though from inside the plane you’d never know. 10:10 – the plane arrives at the gate, the usual few minutes to open the door, and, being closer to the front of the plane this time, it doesn’t take that long before the queue is moving.
Early or late, it doesn’t matter. After clearing customs and immigration, we have to go in search of our tour guide, waiting for us somewhere outside the arrivals terminal.
Who could imagine that one visit to the local hospital could fuel a medical nightmare?
Aside from the original suspicion I was having heart problems, doctors started lining up appointments for an endoscopy and colonoscopy, though I suspect these were for a different malady, and the main event, an angiogram.
I didn’t have heart problems though it was possible I had angina, the reason for the angiogram, but I did have acute kidney failure which was interesting, to say the least, and possibly attributed to ipBrufen, though it was impossible to say if the medication for psoriatic arthritis, a venomous little pill called methotrexate, was or was not a contributing factor.
But is was great to learn that my psioratic arthritis could lead to heart attack, and lung issues, a few problems my original arthritis consultant conveniently forgot to tell me about.
No sooner than I was released from the hospital after this first set of maladies, I was back three or four days later with hospital-acquired pneumonia, a devil of a problem that requires some very invasive searches for the type of bug so it could be treated properly.
It led to five days of antibiotics, a considerable inability to breathe without help from an oxygen mask, and several CT scans with and without dye to get a better look at the problem.
If only that was all that was wrong with me.
The CT scan showed up a lump or lesion on my right thyroid which led to further investigation, an ultrasound, a biopsy, and a visit to the surgeon to be told it had to come out.
But that’s not all. No, I didn’t get a set of steak knives for being one the first ten this week to be diagnosed with anything, I was told my PSA reading was twice the average for my age, a clear indication I might have prostate cancer.
Wow. Just to sort of news you need to hear before the weekend. Worse perhaps than a rainstorm when camping in a floorless tent. I had to now wait for the results of a new blood test.
Ok. I get it that things are bound to go wrong when you get older, but what I object to is everything going wrong at once.
Perhaps when we stop the aging process a lot of these issues will go away, but I fear not. The human body is surprisingly robust for quite a long time despite our attempts to test it to the limits of endurance.
It is advice too late for me to make sure my misspent youth is not wasted on being stupid or believing I’m indestructible. The plain truth is, we are not, and I didn’t get the memo.
Now, I guess, it is time to actually do everything, or as much as I can, before I start to deteriorating further and not be able to do anything. I have a few good years before arthritis sets in and makes life more difficult than it already is.
I’m back home and this story has been sitting on a back burner for a few months, waiting for some more to be written.
The trouble is, there are also other stories to write, and I’m not very good at prioritising.
But, here we are, a few minutes opened up and it didn’t take long to get back into the groove.
An unlikely ally?
“Wait.”
It seemed that I had managed to scare her. Either that, or she had decided to be a little more forthcoming. I stopped and waited until she caught up. I was nearly at the top of the stairs.
“Look, I have to go back to my people, and I’ll get them to look into those two people you don’t seem to trust, who were they, Nobbin and Severin?”
“I don’t think you want to do that. You start making waves, your people will send out feelers and they’ll get to hear about it, and they will know exactly where it came from, and it’ll come back and bite you. For your own peace of mind, I’d let the sleeping dogs lie.”
She seemed over-eager to get ahead using this as a steppingstone. I’d seen the type, in the training ranks, and in former jobs. She was clearly assigned this job because of her looks, and she might be a good agent too, but she hadn’t thought this through.
“Are you telling me to back off?”
“I’m trying to save your life. If I have no idea who to trust, then I have to assume both of them are theoretically the enemy. I’m still counting the blessings I’m still alive, but I suspect that will only last until the USB is found. The rest of my team are dead.”
Now that put the right amount of fear into her.
“If they’re willing to kill everybody that’s come in contact with this information, I doubt they’d stop at killing the both of us if we got in their way.”
“Then you have a plan?”
“At the moment that plan consists of one line. Stay alive and find the USB before they do. After that, I’ll see what happens.”
I caught sight of an incident, two people almost colliding, and one, I noticed, was more intent on his phone which is what caused the clash. And, a second later, I thought I recognised one of the two.
Maury. Severin’s offsider, and more likely cleanup man. My guess, he was the one searching O’Connell’s flat, and Jan’.”
I think it was safe to say she was compromised.
“Ok,” I said quietly, “we have a problem, well two problems.” And if I was wrong about her, and she was one of Severin’s people, which, seeing Maury just turned a probable into a likely, I had three.
If she was, I hadn’t seen that coming.
“What now?”
Time to test the water.
“One of Severin’s men is downstairs, mingling, which means he knows I’m here, and maybe you two.”
I did a quick check of my scan of O’Connell’s, thinking I might have picked up a bug. It was the only explanation why Maury was here. And, it was likely he was not alone.
Not me. Jan?
“Did you take anything from O’Connell’s?”
“No. Why?”
“Are you sure. Think”
While scanning the lower floor of the station looking, no doubt, for Maury, and anyone that might present a problem, she looked like she was recounting her steps.
“Damn. A pen. I left it there the last time I saw him.” She pulled it out of her bag and went to toss it in the bin.
I snatched it, and as someone brushed past me, I dropped it into their pocket.
A flash of annoyance, then, “Hey, that cost a lot of money.”
“Then be grateful it didn’t cost you your life. Yet.”
We waited, keeping far enough back from the stairs, but with still a good view of the station. I kept an eye on the man whom I gave the pen as he made his way across the floor towards one of the platforms. Luckily it was at the furthest end, and as he approached it, I saw three figures, and Maury slowly make their way towards him forming a blockade so he couldn’t escape.
“Time to go.”
She had noticed the movement too.
We went down the stairs and headed towards the first available exit. As we were going out the door, we heard a commotion, the team obviously apprehending the wrong man, who would be wondering why four burly men were accosting him on his way home.
What happens when your past finally catches up with you?
…
Christmas is just around the corner, a time to be with family. For Will Mason, an orphan since he was fourteen, it is a time for reflection on what his life could have been, and what it could be.
Until a chance encounter brings back to life the reasons for his twenty years of self-imposed exile from a life only normal people could have. From that moment Will’s life slowly starts to unravel and it’s obvious to him it’s time to move on.
This time, however, there is more at stake.
Will has broken his number one rule, don’t get involved.
With his nemesis, Eddie Jamieson, suddenly within reach, and a blossoming relationship with an office colleague, Maria, about to change everything, Will has to make a choice. Quietly leave, or finally, make a stand.
But as Will soon discovers, when other people are involved there is going to be terrible consequences no matter what choice he makes.
It’s a town we visited in Italy when on a private tour. Of course, I wrote it down on a notepad app on my phone at the time, and, yes, not long after that, an accidental reset lost all the data.
Now, I have no idea with the name of the town is, just that it was a picturesque stopover in the middle of a delightful private tour of Tuscany.
There are narrow laneways that I suspect no one 300 hundred years ago planned for cars
Narrower walkways that lead to very dark places
Walkways on the side of the hills that look down on the picturesque valleys
And rather interesting hillsides, some of which provided inspiration for Leonardo da Vinci
Or maybe it was this landscape, though it is difficult to see what could be found as inspiration in such a bland hillside
A lot of houses, some of them quite large, nestled in amongst the trees
Gardens, of sorts, balcony’s, not so big, and hidden doorways
Even not so secret passageways between houses.
All in all, it was an interesting visit, and it made me wonder what it would be like to live here, all crowded together, rather than living on our relatively isolated quarter-acre blocks.
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 on her for the last three months, and if noticed it, the late nights, the moodiness, and 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 like 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 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 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, which 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, 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. In the beginning, it’s a slow easy ride, followed by a slow climb to the top. It’s much like some relationships, they start out easy, but 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 the new job, the last thing she 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 few trips 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 were a dozen other plane spotters, a rather motley crew of plane enthusiasts.
Already that morning there’s 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.
This book has been written for some time and the manuscript was sitting in a box with half a dozen others gathering dust and not quite as complete, so this month it is going to get the makeover, a first draft for the editor.
And so it begins…
…
So, finally, the plan is working
…
The story is progressing and I can see, for the moment, that the story is heading in the right direction.
Of course, in saying that, it might just jinx the project.
There was a small moment of hesitation though, one of those, perhaps this might be a ‘better way moment’ that caused a brief stoppage while I considered the consequences. Then of course I make that fatal change that will have consequences later on.
Then I just added another sticky note to the four hundred others lining the monitor and nearby shelves and went back to work.
Who needs a good memory when you’ve got a hundred pads of stick notes just waiting to be used.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 