Category: Blog

In a word: Loose

We’ve all heard of the expression, he’s playing it fast and loose, or more interestingly, he’s fast and loose with the truth.

I’ve never really got a proper definition of that expression, but it sounds good, and people have to use their imaginations and put their own interpretation to it.

And if this was the 1930s, and Clarke Gable was playing opposite Jean Harlow, it’s exactly how the posters would describe the blonde bombshell.

Loose, however, in a more literal sense means not tight, so a loose nut on a bolt might be the cause of a catastrophe.

And speaking of catastrophes, there’s a fox loose in the hen house.  Sadly it would be very difficult to catch and tie up.

Of course, in hot weather, you’d rather be wearing something loose, to keep cool.

Women, in particular, can wear their hair loose, as distinct from ‘up’, or in a ponytail or braids.

Some people make a loose interpretation, which inevitably creates grey areas, and loose lips, well, they’ve been known to sink ships.

This word can sometimes be confused with lose, which means something else entirely.

Like, lose a watch, lose your head, in more ways than one, lose your life, as if it was one of nine when it isn’t, and lose everything, perhaps, in the 1930’s stock market crash.

Quite literally, it means to be deprived of, or cease to gain or have.

You can lose weight, have a clock that loses time, or you can lose your temper.

Sometimes I lose the plot.

Inspiration, maybe – Volume 1

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:

lookingdownfromcoronetpeak

And the story:

It was once said that a desperate man has everything to lose.

The man I was chasing was desperate, but I, on the other hand, was more desperate to catch him.

He’d left a trail of dead people from one end of the island to the other.

The team had put in a lot of effort to locate him, and now his capture was imminent.  We were following the car he was in, from a discrete distance, and, at the appropriate time, we would catch up, pull him over, and make the arrest.

There was nowhere for him to go.

The road led to a dead-end, and the only way off the mountain was back down the road were now on.  Which was why I was somewhat surprised when we discovered where he was.

Where was he going?

“Damn,” I heard Alan mutter.  He was driving, being careful not to get too close, but not far enough away to lose sight of him.

“What?”

“I think he’s made us.”

“How?”

“Dumb bad luck, I’m guessing.  Or he expected we’d follow him up the mountain.  He’s just sped up.”

“How far away?”

“A half-mile.  We should see him higher up when we turn the next corner.”

It took an eternity to get there, and when we did, Alan was right, only he was further on than we thought.”

“Step on it.  Let’s catch him up before he gets to the top.”

Easy to say, not so easy to do.  The road was treacherous, and in places just gravel, and there were no guard rails to stop a three thousand footfall down the mountainside.

Good thing then I had the foresight to have three agents on the hill for just such a scenario.

Ten minutes later, we were in sight of the car, still moving quickly, but we were going slightly faster.  We’d catch up just short of the summit car park.

Or so we thought.

Coming quickly around another corner we almost slammed into the car we’d been chasing.

“What the hell…” Aland muttered.

I was out of the car, and over to see if he was in it, but I knew that it was only a slender possibility.  The car was empty, and no indication where he went.

Certainly not up the road.  It was relatively straightforward for the next mile, at which we would have reached the summit.  Up the mountainside from here, or down.

I looked up.  Nothing.

Alan yelled out, “He’s not going down, not that I can see, but if he did, there’s hardly a foothold and that’s a long fall.”

Then where did he go?

Then a man looking very much like our quarry came out from behind a rock embedded just a short distance up the hill.

“Sorry,” he said quite calmly.  “Had to go if you know what I mean.”

I’d lost him.

It was as simple as that.

I had been led a merry chase up the hill, and all the time he was getting away in a different direction.

I’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book, letting my desperation blind me to the disguise that anyone else would see through in an instant.

It was a lonely sight, looking down that road, knowing that I had to go all that way down again, only this time, without having to throw caution to the wind.

“Maybe next time,” Alan said.

“We’ll get him.  It’s just a matter of time.”

© Charles Heath 2019-2021

Find this and other stories in “Inspiration, maybe”  available soon.

InspirationMaybe1v1

Endless flight – a short story

It had been billed as the longest commercial flight in the world.  London to Sydney.

Previous times it had been flown, it was devoid of passengers and cargo, except for a few reporters and airline staff; not more than about 20.

The plane, state of the art, was capable of flying twenty-one hours straight.  We would only need Nineteen and a half.  It was the first flight of its kind, and we were the first to participate in what was being touted as history-making.

I was on board only because I’d won a competition.  To be honest, I couldn’t believe my luck.

I guess it was the same for the other 287 of us on board.  With baggage and cargo included, oh, and not forgetting fuel, I guess our biggest concern was getting off the ground.

It wasn’t long before that fear had been dispelled, though for a moment more than one of us thought we might not get into the air.  There were collective sighs of relief when we finally lurched into the air.

Once the seat belt sign went off, the First Officer spoke to the passengers, more or less telling us we were going to make history and to sit back and enjoy the in-flight service.

I guess it was ironic that as someone who didn’t like flying I was in this plane.  The thing is, I didn’t expect to win the competition.  But, I was on board for the experience and was going to make the most of it.  I’d brought half a dozen crossword books.

I woke from an uneasy sleep about two hours before I e plane was due to land.  The cabin lights had come on, and breakfast was about to be served.

Everyone else was in varying states of awareness.  Some hadn’t slept at all, which was what usually happened to me, and they looked like I felt.  Bleary-eyed and half awake.

I looked at the flight path in the headrest in front of me, and it said we had about an hour and fifty minutes, and from the outset, precisely on time.  We’d had headwinds and tailwinds but neither had any lasting effect on our arrival time.

Something else did.  After breakfast had been cleared away, and we were all getting ready for the last hour of the flight, word came through from the flight deck that we had to go into a holding pattern due to a problem on the ground.

The first question on everyone’s mind, did we have enough fuel.  The Captain, this time, allayed that fear.

But, I was sitting over the wing where I could see the engine.  I was not an expert but I thought I’d heard a murmur, the sort an engine made where the fuel supply was running out.

Perhaps not.  Perhaps it was my overwrought imagination after not enough proper sleep.

Another half-hour passed, and I could feel a change in the plane’s flight.  I was now listening and waiting and interpreting.  The Captain said the problem was resolved and we were cleared to land.

That’s when the engine outside my window stuttered, if only for a fraction of a second.

Fortunately, we were well into our descent, and I could see the ground below.  Now, going through some low cloud, the ride became bumpy, and I was sure it was covering the more frequent stuttering of the engine, and once, I was not the only one to hear it.

As the wheels went down and clunked into place, I think the engine stopped, though I couldn’t be sure, because there was little or no change in the plane’s flight other than a slight change in the plane’s speed but not its rate of descent, and none of us would have been any wiser had the pilot, in his usual calm manner, not told us there was a small problem with one of the engines but there was no problem with landing, and we would be on the ground in ten minutes.

In fact, the landing was, as any other I’d been on, flawless, even though I was sure I heard a slight stutter in the other ending, but by that time we were on the ground.

The only difference between this and any other landing was the accompaniment of several emergency services trucks, and the fact we were not going to a gate.  Instead, we were taken to a bay not far from the runways, and then calmly taken off the plane.

From the ground, just before being loaded onto a bus, I could see the plane, and it looked the same as it had any other time.

What did bother me was several words spoken by what looked to be an engineer.  He said, “That plane was literally flying on vapor.  What you’re seeing is 228 of the luckiest people in the world.”

If ever there was an excuse to buy a lottery ticket…

…

© Charles Heath 2020-2021

Short story writing – don’t try this at home! – Part 2

This is not a treatise, but a tongue in cheek, discussion on how to write short stories. Suffice to say this is not the definitive way of doing it, just mine. It works for me – it might not work for you.

There are two methods of writing, planning, sometimes meticulous planning, or flying by the seat of your pants, or being called a ‘pantser’.

The first has it all planned out before they start writing, from beginning to end, knowing what the end result will be. The second, well, we like to write and see where it takes us.

I like to think I fly by the seat of my pants, you know, like the reader who takes up the story and starts reading, not having a clue where it’s going to go. I prefer that blissful ignorance, of course, until I run out of ideas, roughly the equivalent of hitting a brick wall

Or that common enemy all writers have, the dreaded ‘writers block’.

I’ve tried both methods.

Each work, but in the case of the ‘planner’, you need to know where it’s going to start what’s going to happen in the middle and have the end firmly planted in your mind.

Not much good if a rotten character is making you angry and you want to kill him off, and in the most excruciatingly painful manner.

Flying blind gives you a little more creativeness and be able to go around a corner and see what’s there. It also allows for those complete changes of direction you come up with in the shower, the place that is a fertile ground for new ideas just when you’re running out of them.

But it can sometimes play havoc with word counts and if you’re trying to fit into 2,000 words, 5,000 words, or a lot less, taking the story where it wants to go is not a good idea, and sadly, I tend to let stories run their course.

And sometimes I like the idea of writing three different endings, and then can’t choose which one I like the best.

So, role model I am not. I like writing, and when I’m in the ‘zone’ it’s like I’m in another world.

But then, isn’t that the case for all of us?

More unclarity tomorrow!

The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to see the planets – Episode 17

In the old days it would be ‘Houston, we have a problem’

…

I thought about staying in the day room, not hiding, but on the pretext of getting that report ready for the Admiral, but it was only a fleeting thought.

I had been the captain of a cargo vessel, how much hard could this be?

I stepped onto the bridge, and it all felt different.

The second officer had been waiting by the door, and said, ‘We’ve picked up several alien vessels on the long range scanner, like nothing we’ve seen before.”

“Not like the vessel that you just saw? It can’t be our lucky day to find two new species within hours of each other, though I guess it’s not impossible.”

And considering we humans had been in space, and nearly to the edge of our galaxy for nearly ten years, why wait until now to make themselves known?

We arrived at the navigators console and he had the alien vessels displayed.

On screen, they were quite small, and trying to increase magnification turned them into blurs. I hadn’t seen the other ship. “Tell me we have a photograph of the alien vessel.”

“We have.”

The navigator displayed the alien vessel beside the two new ships, and at first glance they didn’t appear to be similar. We’d have to wait until we were closer.

And see if they were hostile, or not.

“How soon before we make contact?” I asked the navigator.

“About seven hours, sir.”

“Good. Keep on the trail of that vessel. Our orders are to retrieve the captain and Myers. Oh, and you’ve been promoted to Acting Number One,” I said quietly to the second officer.

“They’re not sending a replacement?” Clearly he wasn’t expecting it, and judging by his expression, not exactly happy about it.

“That is still to be decided. You have the bridge. I’ll be down in Engineering if you need me.”

Another trip in a suspect elevator that had a few creaks and groans before it delivered me safely to the engine room.

It was more a large open space that was very quiet, with banks of consoles and people in specially coloured uniforms to designate their department. Bridge crew were designated dark Green, Engineering navy blue.

I knew others were not exactly enamoured with their uniforms, but someone, or some group, had put a lot of thought into them. As for the design, well, that was a hot topic at any time among the crew.

The chief engineer, Scottish of course, had an office to himself, and had the accoutrements of his achievements scattered about, along with more interesting photographs of himself with many of the more famous people back on earth.

I had no such keepsakes.

He saw me coming and stood as I entered the office. It took a few seconds for it to register that it was a mark of respect to the captain, even though he was older, wiser, and far more experienced.

“Congratulations.”

He held out his hand and I shook it.

“I wish it was in better circumstances.”

“What exactly happened?”

“We were boarded. How they knew the captain was in his day room is anyone’s guess, but the alien beamed aboard, like we transport supplies.”

“We have yet to prove its not harmful, so these aliens must be different.”

“Except they take the same form, and speak our language.”

“No doubt using a translator. And if they can do that, then this is not the first time they have seen us.”

“But it’s the first time we’ve seen them?”

“Well, that’s a little more tricky because I think we have encountered them before. Your Admiral just uploaded a few files, and it seems we have encountered them before, though not quite so up close and personal.”

I didn’t like the way he referred to the Admiral as my Admiral, or perhaps I was not across his vernacular.

“He omitted to tell me that when I spoke to him.”

“It was in the middle of the night, and we were to get a briefing once we reached the edge of our galaxy. Van was across it, and was going to tell the crew in a few days, but this Venus thing popped up.

You know how it is, never a dull day in space.”

…

© Charles Heath 2021

A score to settle – The Second Editor’s draft – Day 19

The time has come to work on the second draft for the editor, taking into account all of the suggested changes, and there are quite a few. So much for thinking I could put in an almost flawless manuscript.

…

It’s a bad day.

Nothing I start seems to work out, a bit like painting yourself into a corner.

Words are beginning to annoy me, so much so, every file I’ve started today, so far, I’ve deleted.

It’s not a matter of getting words on paper, no matter how bad they are. If I added up all the words I’ve written so far, and discarded, it would have to be close to 10,000.

Time to step away from the laptop. My head is hurting, and I’m tired, more so than usual. I think the combination of late nights and not being able to work out where this story is going, is giving me a great deal of grief.

Is this where real writers head for the drinks cabinet and make a severe dent in the single malt?

Maybe I need to go out to a restaurant and have a fancy meal.

Or go to the pizza shop and get a meat lover’s special, and a cheap bottle of merlot.

It’s the second-worst number of words for a day in the past month.

Maybe after a rest, it’ll be different.

Searching for locations: Rome, Italy

Rome, Italy

We visited Rome in August

It was hot.

It was verrrry hot.

We flew into Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino airport after a rather bumpy flight from London.  Unlike most other airports the plane parked at a satellite terminal and after we disembarked we had to catch a train to the main terminal.

The most notable memory of this airport was my daughter’s discovery of a salami shop.

We had booked a transfer to take us to the hotel the Roma Corso Trieste Mercure in Via Gradisca from the airport.  It was a white air-conditioned van and so far we had avoided the heat.

One of the rooms had faulty air conditioning an absolute must as the rooms were very hot without it and necessitated a room change which was done quickly and efficiently.

The hotel was in the suburbs and without a car we were dependent on public transport.  According to the reception staff, there was a bus stop nearby, and a longer walk to the tram or light railway.  The bus seemed to be the best option as it would take us to the central terminal near the railway station, where all tour buses also operated from, and particularly the open-top buses that went to all the major tourist attractions.

That first day basically was given over to travelling, arriving by plane and settling into the hotel, thus we didn’t get to feel the force of the heat.  That came the next day.

After a walk around the hotel precinct to get our bearings and see what shops and restaurants were available, on returning to the hotel we were faced with limited choices of room service or to go out for dinner.

My daughter and l go for a long walk up Via Nomentana to find several shops and a restaurant.  We went into the restaurant and sat down.   We waited for 10 minutes and got no service nor did anyone come and ask us if we wanted to order food so instead we left somewhat disappointed and go next door to what seemed to be the Italian version of a delicatessen and ordered sandwiches and beer.   I bought a half dozen cans of Moretti beer two of which I drank on the way home.

It was still very hot even at eight at night and the sandwiches are delicious.  It just might be by that time we were starving and anything would have tasted great.

The next morning we are up and ready to chance the weather and some history.  Breakfast at the hotel is limited but very good.

We were going to use public transport and I’d studied up on the Internet.

Travelling on the bus required pre-purchase of tickets which could be bought in certain shops and locally when exploring the area near the hotel, l found a tobacconist.

Next, we needed to understand how to use the tickets. There was no one on the bus who could help so when l tried to scan the tickets and it failed, l gave up.  We had the same issue each day and in the end, the tickets never got used.

The trip to central Rome by bus took about 15 minutes.  In the morning it was reasonably cool and showed us a little of suburban Rome.  We also saw the trams but we would not be able to use them because our hotel not on a direct route.

That first full day we decided to go and see the Vatican.

Not understanding buses and which one we needed to get to the Vatican, we took a taxi.

Wow.  It was the metaphorical equivalent of driving over the edge of a cliff with a daredevil.  It was quite literally terrifying.

Or maybe we just didn’t know that this was probably the way people drove in Rome.

Shaken but delivered in one piece we found ourselves in the square opposite St Peters Basilica.

The square is impressive, with the statues atop a circular colonnaded walkway.  The church is incredible and took a few hours to take in and to top off the day we did a tour of the Vatican museum which took the rest of the afternoon.

Then it was back to the delicatessen for more sandwiches and beer, and an interesting discussion with several elderly Italian ladies, of which I did not understand one word.

On the second full day we decided to use one of the open-top bus tours and eventually decided on the hop-on hop-off tour simply because the bus was at the central transport terminal for trains and buses and it was getting hotter.

Our first stop was the Colosseum.  There were other monuments nearby, such as the Arch of Constantine, but as the heat factor increased we joined the queue to go into the Colosseum and gladly welcomed the shade once we got inside.

The queue was long and the wait equally so, but it was worth the wait.  It would be more interesting if they could restore part of it to its former glory so we could get a sense of the place as it once was.  But alas that may never happen, but even so, it is still magnificent as a ruin.

Outside in the heat, it was off to the ruins which were a longish walk from the Colosseum, taking Via Sacra, not far from the Arch of Constantine.  This day in the walkway there were a number of illegal vendors, selling knockoff goods such as handbags and watches, and who, at the first sight of the police, packed up their wares in a blanket and ran.

Included in these ruins were The Roman Forum, or just a few columns remaining, the Palatine Hill, Imperial Fori, including the Forum of Augustus, the Forum of Caesar, and more specifically the Forum of Trajan.  It was, unfortunately very hot and dusty in the ruins the day we visited.

We walked all the way to the Foro Romano and the Septimus Severo Arch at the other end of the ruins, past the Temple of Caesar.  I found it very difficult to picture what it was like when the buildings were intact, so I bought a guide to the ruins which showed the buildings as ruins and an overlay of how they would have looked.  The buildings, then, would be as amazing as the Colosseum, and it would have been interesting to have lived back then, though perhaps not as a Christian.

I lost count of the number of bottles of water we bought, but the word ‘frizzante’ was ringing in my ears by the end of the day.  Fortunately, the water did not cost a lot to buy.

At the end of the day, we caught the hop on hop off the bus at the Colosseum and decided not to get off and see any more monuments but observe them from the bus.  The only one I remember seeing was Circo Massimo.  Perhaps if we’d known it was going to be twice as hot on the bus, yes, there was no air-conditioning; we may have chosen another form of transport to get back to the hotel.

On the third and last day in Rome, we decided to go to the Trevi Fountain, see the pantheon and walk up the Spanish Steps.  We spent most of the morning in the cool of a café watching the tourists at the fountain.  By the time we reached the top of the Spanish Steps, we were finished.

After the anger, the serenity

I wanted to write a bit about how my day was going, and then I got angry.  It was a slow fuse because most of what I was angry about I’d been reading this morning.

And, yes, it’s about political leaders, those in power and those in opposition, and how inept they are in a crisis.

Listening to our opposition leader, briefly before I turned him off to watch a rerun of McHale’s Navy, it annoyed me that he had no answers to offer, only criticism.

Unfortunately, he’s not alone in the world.

Political leaders tended to blame everyone else for problems of their own making, whether it was when they were once in power, which happens a lot, or once they’re in opposition, conveniently forgetting they, too, hoped that by ignoring the problem, it might go away.

Or that the long-suffering public will have forgotten.  That’s why we have pugnacious journalists who remember for us.

The incompetence of the people who are supposedly in charge beggars belief.

Oh, God, I’m back on my soapbox.

Forgive me.

I’ll shut up about it now.

I’m trying to imagine what it’s like in the cold because it’s the height of summer here.  It’s not helping my imagination,  so let’s try…

It’s cold today, about 14 degrees Celsius, when it’s usually 27 degrees Celsius.  The sun is letting us down, and I suppose I should be grateful that we are not suffering from an ice age.

To be honest, I was seriously considering lighting the log fire.  Instead, we have reverse cycle air-conditioning, which is probably, in the long run, cheaper.

Have you seen how much it costs to buy wood?

But…

That could have made it difficult to write.

Not to come up with inspiration, but literally write, because my office is colder than a chiller room.  My beer in storage out here is colder than it is in the fridge.  Well, that sounded better in my head than on paper, but you get what I mean.

So, instead of writing, I sat down and binge-watched Sweet Magnolias, a light-hearted series from Netflix, which is of the same vein as Chesapeake Shores, etc, and more the sort of program I’d expect from Hallmark.

It was good.  It hooked me.

Three sets of lives intertwined in a large town in middle America perhaps.  I heard Charleston mentioned so perhaps it was in South Carolina.

The good thing about it?  Not one mention of political stupidity.

Just good old-fashioned heartache and trials and tribulations of trying to live your life, bumping up against the obstacles life throws up at you.

The town was called Serenity, so there’s a pun in there somewhere.

Maybe I’ll get some writing done tomorrow.

“One Last Look”, nothing is what it seems

A single event can have enormous consequences.

A single event driven by fate, after Ben told his wife Charlotte he would be late home one night, he left early, and by chance discovers his wife having dinner in their favourite restaurant with another man.

A single event where it could be said Ben was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Who was this man? Why was she having dinner with him?

A simple truth to explain the single event was all Ben required. Instead, Charlotte told him a lie.

A single event that forces Ben to question everything he thought he knew about his wife, and the people who are around her.

After a near-death experience and forced retirement into a world he is unfamiliar with, Ben finds himself once again drawn back into that life of lies, violence, and intrigue.

From London to a small village in Tuscany, little by little Ben discovers who the woman he married is, and the real reason why fate had brought them together.

It is available on Amazon here:  http://amzn.to/2CqUBcz

Searching for locations: Arezzo, Italy

There’s nothing like being a few days early or a few days late for a major festival.

We have the dubious honour of being able to do both without thinking. I guess this is why you should try to plan your holiday around events, if possible.

We love Italy.

We’ve been several times, but the last visit was the best. Of course, it was not without a lot of hiccups just getting there, but in the end, later than we expected, actually about five minutes before they closed Florence airport, we made it.

So, little did we know there was such a thing as Calcio Fiorentino an early form of football and rugby that originated in 16th-century Italy and is thought to have started in the Piazza Santa Croce in Florence. But we were in Florence, at the right time, and even got to see the procession through the streets of Florence.

You can read more about the game and rules at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcio_Fiorentino

We were not so lucky in Siena where we were about a week early for the Palio di Siena which was to take place on 2nd July.

Nor were we in Arezzo at the right time for the Saracen Joust which was held on the penultimate Saturday in June. It is held at the Piazza Grande in the heart of Arezzo and is one of the most beautiful piazzas in Tuscany.

The Piazza Della Liberta and the Town Hall tower

The Piazza Grande, also known as Piazza Vasari, is said to be situated on the site of the ancient Roman Forum.  Here, it is being set up for the coming Joust.

A different view of Arezzo Cathedral | Cattedrale dei Santi Pietro e Donato