Hello!
Sarah here!
Hearty Hugs to anyone that listens AND shares these thought provoking new writing eps! (Fanks!)
There is so much to celebrate in this crazy time for us all. There is. Look for those things. Find them. It has kept me going anyways...
Creativity, although staunched in some in this cray time, positively flows like voluminous beauteous fountain waterfalls from others. I am blessed with knowing some amazingly talented folks in the audio fiction field, and also have met some new talent too, who have contributed wholeheartedly to this latest Quirky Quaralogue Adventure!
The Quaralogues is a mini season of monologues written in quarantine, and I am DELIGHTED to be able to share them with you!
Please do check out the links to the creatives and their other works below - all have contributed as writers or voice actors or both in this first season!
I HOPE YOU ENJOY THEIR WORK!
Please do reach out to them and tell them you have really enjoyed their works, or...employ them for EVERYTHING! ALL OF THEM!FOR THEY ARE AMAAZINGGGGG!
...If you would like to support my work to help me pay folks like these more and more for their awesome, feel free to become a Quirky Patreon here, or contribute to my Quirky Voices ko-fi account here.
Thank you!
HAPPY LISTENING - PLEASE PASS ON THESE EPS TO OTHER GROOVY STORY LOVING FOLKS.
Sarah Golding
Quirky Voices
Sarah here!
Hearty Hugs to anyone that listens AND shares these thought provoking new writing eps! (Fanks!)
There is so much to celebrate in this crazy time for us all. There is. Look for those things. Find them. It has kept me going anyways...
Creativity, although staunched in some in this cray time, positively flows like voluminous beauteous fountain waterfalls from others. I am blessed with knowing some amazingly talented folks in the audio fiction field, and also have met some new talent too, who have contributed wholeheartedly to this latest Quirky Quaralogue Adventure!
The Quaralogues is a mini season of monologues written in quarantine, and I am DELIGHTED to be able to share them with you!
Please do check out the links to the creatives and their other works below - all have contributed as writers or voice actors or both in this first season!
I HOPE YOU ENJOY THEIR WORK!
Please do reach out to them and tell them you have really enjoyed their works, or...employ them for EVERYTHING! ALL OF THEM!FOR THEY ARE AMAAZINGGGGG!
...If you would like to support my work to help me pay folks like these more and more for their awesome, feel free to become a Quirky Patreon here, or contribute to my Quirky Voices ko-fi account here.
Thank you!
HAPPY LISTENING - PLEASE PASS ON THESE EPS TO OTHER GROOVY STORY LOVING FOLKS.
Sarah Golding
Quirky Voices
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Sarah Golding (She/her)Exec Producer, Writer, Voice Actor, Editor Composer, etcThank you muchly for investing time in listening to my QUIRKY work! I just kind of...get an idea and try to work it through to development, AND gain as many inspiring collaborations as possible-though at the moment I am juggling many plates!
Essentially, I just want to act - and have found myself with some delightful, exciting and badass roles in such gems of audio fiction realms such as Amelia Project, Girl in Space, Oz 9, Hostile Worlds, The Orphans, Subjective Truth, Ninth World Journal, Dashing Onions and so much more...over 100 more... I write, produce and act in Quirky works, host MADIVA podcast - a podcast for and about voice acting for indie audio drama...I have organised and produced many new writing competitions to be produced live at events like PODUK and LONDON PODFEST, and have run voice acting and audio drama workshops at a variety of events online and in person. I am happy to be consulted and can run a variety of voice acting workshops for you, and will be running more Quirky Voices Voice acting courses in the mew year. I contribute to the FICTION PODCAST NEWS WEEKLY (though Lindsay Harris-Friel does the hard work) and also run monthly get togethers for the AUDIO DRAMA HUB VIRTUAL PUBS. I am having the best fun. Find me: TWITTER: @SarahOfGolding EMAIL: [email protected] |
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EMILY C A SNYDER She/herWRITER - EP 1 - 'HERE'Emily C. A. Snyder is an novelist, playwright, actor, director working out of New York City.
She is the Artistic Director/Founder of TURN TO FLESH PRODUCTIONS and the host of the podcast Hamlet to Hamilton: Exploring Verse Drama both of which help writers and performers develop new plays in heightened text with vibrant roles for womxn and those underrepresented in Classical Art. That is, they develop "new Shakespeare plays" for everybody Shakespeare didn't write for! Snyder is an internationally produced and published playwright, whose works have been performed from Dublin, Ireland to Christchurch, New Zealand, and toured the United States of America and beyond. She has acted and directed the majority of Shakespeare's canon, with favorite roles including Brutus from Julius Caesar and Rosalind from As You Like It, voicing the Countess Olivia in Twelfth Night for the ChopBard podcast, [and Juliet] as well as performing in her own plays, such as Juliet in Juliet and Her Romeo which premiered in New York City in 2020. Learn more: emilycasnyder.info WEBSITE: http://www.emilycasnyder.info PRONOUNS: she/her TWITTER: @emilycasnyder (also Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.) PODCASTS: Hamlet to Hamilton: Exploring Verse Drama | http://www.hamlettohamilton.com | TWITTER @hamlet2hamilton | FB @hamlettohamilton COMPANY: TURN TO FLESH PRODUCTIONS | http://www.turntoflesh.org | TWITTER/IG/FB @turntoflesh |
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Fiona ThrailleWriter / Voice Actor - EP 1 - 'BEANS'Fiona is a Producer, writer, voice actor and sound designer, editor and runs the Audio Production company Dashing Onions Audio. Dashing Onions Audio creates original audio drama miniseries and one-off plays, focusing on stories with elements of oddness, mythology and the supernatural.She narrates audiobooks too - there's a link below to some works!
TWITTER @fthrll Dashing Onions Audio website @Dashing Onions on Twitter. Audio book links narrated by Fiona - A wintry collection of cosy tales by Debbie Manber Kupfer, including a lovely Hanukkah one, is available on Audible here... |
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Danyelle Ellett (She/Her)Writer / Voice Actor EP 1 -
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Jacqueline AshmanWriter - EP 1 - 'The Housemates tale'
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Tal Minear (They / Them)Writer / Voice Actor EP 1 -
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Fiona MackinnonVoice ActorBased in Edinburgh, I feel as if I live in a filmset! I’m usually narrating corporate films and promos. But I love to find myself playing someone else, I’m drawn to old crones, evil nuns, nurses, and ethereal types, love anything with humour and weaving the story together. Recent audio drama roles have been:- playing both Rusalka and Mary Bannock in The Loathsome Lambton Worm, Nurse Shelton in Christmas with Gran, Kennedy in The Hidden People, Mama and the Professor in Loell’s Quest, The Nurse in an episode of the Horror Shop Radio, Susan in The Dog bite episode in the Plumforest Podcast series and of course narrating Quirky Voices monologues for the Quaralogue series. Twitter : @FionaFmack Website: fionamackvoices.com |
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Angelique LazarusVoice Actor - EP 1 'Here', EP 3 'Mermaid's Tale'Angelique is a true vocalist. From choirs and musical theatre throughout her youth to professional theatre, teaching, and voice acting as an adult, voice is what she does (hence the moniker Angelique Voices)! She voices animation, commercial, audio book, and audio drama projects and even has a podcast, The Polyglottal Stop, about language, language learning, and sociolinguistics. Check her out via any of the links provided!
Full name: Angelique Lazarus Twitter: @AngeliqueVoices Instagram: @Angeliquevoices.mp3 Website: https://angeliquevoices.com Podcast: The Polyglottal Stop Podcast Twitter & Instagram: @PolyglottalPod |
QUARALOGUE WRITERS AND ACTORS 2020
Please check out their other works and contact them to employ them allll in YOUR projects of audio joyyyy
Daniel Cook
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Caroline has blasted onto the audiofiction scene as a positive proactive creative BRILLIANT whirlwind of a talent, and writes, produces and can be heard in many many shows..... including Seen and Not heard, Light Hearts, Hughes and Mincks, Ghost Detectives and SO MUCH MORE!
Check out their awesome further by clicking here! |
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Karim Kronfli (He/him)Father Christmas in Episode 3Pronouns - He \ Him
Twitter = @BullshotUK Podchaser Creator Profile https://www.podchaser.com/creators/karim-kronfli-107ZzkFiMb |
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Matthew McleanWRITER - A DRUNK Helen Christmas - EP 3Matthew is a fabulous writer and performer of all things audio fiction as well as being the founding father of the AUDIO DRAMA PRODUCTION PODCAST and also a founding member of the brilliant online podcast resource THE PODCAST HOST found here.
Also, if you did not know it existed, his brilliant fun comedy horror podcast (NSFW) A SCOTTISH PODCAST can be found heyyaaahh |
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Tina Daniels (She / Her)
VOICE ACTOR - EP 4 - SAFE / THE WALLTina Daniels is a voice actor who is horrific at biographies.
No, really. It’s a hot mess. She really should just pay someone to do these. That being said, she is a Midwest based voice actor, writer, and cat mom. (To everyone who edits my audio: My cats say hi. They miss you, and they keep wondering why you cut them out. Their people will call your people.) She became interested in voice acting while working as a DJ at her college radio station, and after 10 years of procrastination and lurking on Voice123, finally rounded up some equipment and recorded some auditions. A few places you can hear her work are Moonbase Theta, Out, The Devil Hates Mondays, and Witches of the City. She’s also- against any and all good judgement- dabbled in some writing, and jumped head first into e-book formatting, and audiobook production. Because what even is time management? For more information about all of this, more upcoming projects, or to share your favorite vegan recipes, please check out tinadaniels.xyz |
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Caroline Holmes (She / Her)Writer / Performer - EP 4 Is it ok to be ok?Caroline Holmes has had many years of using her voice/s as inspirational teacher, avid language learner and bewildered mother. She has discovered the joys of narrating-producing an eclectic mix of audiobooks including historical romance, non-fiction, urban fantasy, psychological thriller, magic, Scottish fantasy...and a children’s book about a charming troll who speaks an invented language.
Constantly on the lookout for new challenges, she is thrilled by the prospect of finding a new voice for any species, gender or age with any sort of accent and exploring how it performs in emotional, exciting or comic situations. She derives enormous satisfaction from collaborative work and will tackle any character or genre with huge enthusiasm, all the while being keen to cooperate with writers, directors and other performers. Clear communication and meeting deadlines are points of honour, and Caroline is guaranteed to put in 100 percent effort to achieve them. Contact [email protected] to get in touch with Caroline for all voice acting opportunity fun! (Caroline was on the inaugural QUIRKY VOICES course of 2020 and Sarah thinks you should for sure employ her for EVERYTHINGGGGGG ) |
MORE EPISODE FOUR NEW TALENT
FIND THE WORKS OF THESE WONDEROUS FOLK IN EPISODE 4
AARON CLARK
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ISABELLE LEE
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JULIE HOVERSON
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UK DOMESTIC ABUSE HELPLINES / WEBSITES / RESOURCES
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GOVT ADVICE - HOW TO GET HELP DURING COVID |
WOMEN'S AIDSafety advice for survivors and those who seek help and advice
WEBSITE |
USA DOMESTIC ABUSE HELPLINES/ WEBSITES / RESOURCES
hotline.orgYou can call, you can read, but do reach out if you need to.
Recognizing abuse is the first step. WEBSITE. |
NCADVFor infö and help.
If you are being abused by your partner, know there is nothing you have done or are doing to cause the abuse. It is solely the choice of the abuser to abuse. It may seem impossible to escape your abuser, change your circumstances, or find the help you need, but it is possible. However, you know your abuser best, so think carefully through your situation and circumstances and do what is the best for you. WEBSITE |
VICTIM SUPPORTThe UK government’s definition of domestic violence is ‘any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive, threatening behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are, or have been, intimate partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality. The abuse can encompass, but is not limited to psychological, physical, sexual, financial, emotional.’
WEBSITE |
LINKS TO PEOPLE PLACES AND THINGS INSPIRED BY THE QUARALOGUE MONOLOGUES
Please explore these amazing places to get help, be inspired, and help you get some head space in this current crazy world
IMAGE FROM @fat_mia_ana
HERE
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iMAGE by NADIA HAFID
BEANS
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Kamala Harris and Ruby Bridges - 'Out of the Shadows' iMAGE -by Gordon Jones
ANNUAL ACTIVISM
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IMAGE BY VIACHISLAV RUBEL FROM SHUTTERSTOCK
THE HOUSEMATES TAIL
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IMAGE BY RACHEL SWASEY FROM HERE https://quotesgram.com/img/one-step-at-a-time-quotes/1991880/
ONE STEP AT A TIME
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PUBLIC SENT LINKS
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^ ^
EPISODE ONE - WRITTEN MONOLOGUES
ALL OF THESE ORIGINAL TEXTS ARE COPYRIGHT THE OWNER -
PLEASE CONTACT THEM IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO USE THEIR WORKS OR EMAIL
[email protected] THANK YOUP
HERE by Emily C A Snyder
Performed by Daniel Cook, Fiona Mackinnon,
Angelique Lazarus, Sarah Golding
BEANS by Fiona Thraille
Performed by Fiona Thraille
ANNUAL ACTIVISM by Dany Ellett
Performed by Dany Ellett
THE HOUSEMATES TAIL By Jacqueline Ashman Performed by Sarah Golding
ONE STEP AT A TIME by Tal Minear.
Performed by Tal Minear
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HERE
By Emily C A Snyder
Perhaps I am alone in this, but:
Does anyone else feel they're struggling to remember the Before Times?
I mean, remember deep in your bones, remember. Remember viscerally.
Remember with your breath.
This - all of this - doesn't even feel like "pandemic times" now. It doesn't even have the long drawn-out horror (or perhaps I'm watching less news); the constant fatigue that makes me AWARE of the fatigue; the deep sorrow or depression or even the ache of pervasive numbness.
It just...is. But now still isn't a "new norm" (nor do I wish it to become so!). It's just a...hereness.
Is anyone else in this strange sort of...
Hereness?
Am I alone in this Hereness? Am I overthinking this Hereness? Am I in some sort of state of unexpected Hamletesqueian bliss of "Being"...Here?
Not surviving. Not living. Just... Here.
Shrug.
I'm Here.
Here. Here. Here.
I remember, with the dull ache of someone else’s life, hazily in the Before Times – before we knew they were “Before,” back when they were Then; back when they were Now (as now, there’s too much Now; a Neverending Now) – I remember that my heart was broken – once. I remember, and more viscerally, I remember, gripping to my pillow as though it were the only thing left tangible in this world of shattering reality; I remember the sobs that left my throat so raw I couldn’t speak the words of how I hurt; I remember gripping the sharp, unbearable crucifixion of my splintered soul against the dullness of the world – because if I could feel! If I could Feel – Anything. If I could stay awash with pain and grief and shards of half-disintegrating memories of Him Him Him-And-I-And-Him then I would know that I was, that we were, that We-Had-Been, and that though we are destroyed and Nothing now – the Pain screams out:
I AM!
Not...here.
Not: “Being Here.”
But: I AM!
...IAM. IAM...
I AM.
And if I am; if my memory can fly as free as any shuttlecock that threads the Loom of Fate; if I can retrieve with bright and sunshot clarity of anything Before –
The memory of walking in a field The high grass susurrating Th’insistent drone of insect whirring The mellow scent of wheat
The feel of loam beneath my naked feet
The splendour of a sky in sleek suspended sunsets And the sudden gust of wind
That seems to fill my lungs and lift me
Fill me
Crack me into pieces
To swirl among the stars
Not “Here” – but Everywhere
Not stuck within a series of never-endings “Nows” that make me dread each dawn; each sunlit hour; each endless stretch of night—NO!
Not “Now” nor the ceaseless tick of Time, but:
Beyond.
With purpose. With companionship. With hand in solid hand that skips the hand of time, like children with a rope; leaving it behind, or playing hopscotch; lengthy hours in a minute, when that minute’s spent with someone else on Something else than:
Here.
But I am... Here.
The months have grown upon me. I am heavier than I was. And I Am... Here.
The hours stretch before me. I stay up until the dawn, just to see another day begin, and know that I Am...
Here.
I cook. I clean. I try to make a life. Things take twice as long, and half as short; I’ve seen this video three times and still don’t know the words; I’ve started things and ended them before they had begun; I’ve ended things and wondered how they started; I’ve cried and screamed and still felt nothing but the low-pervasive fear that sits beside me as I sip my morning tea (or did I make this yesterday?); I’ve watched the world through the window of my screen; I scroll and I despair; I’m afraid my friends don’t like me: I wonder if we’re friends; I miss people/I hate people/I want people/I fear people; and I shout in twenty characters or less, I scream into the virtual abyss, along with the deep, computed well of everybody’s sobs that We Are Still...
Here.
WeAreHere. We Are Here. We Are Here, We Are Here, We Are... ...Here.
But not together.
Just...
Here.
Here. There. There.
O——————I miss you all.
I’mhere.
I’lljustkeeponbeinghere.
Pleasebethere.
Pleasestaybeingthere.
Pleasedon’tnotbethere.
Please— please--
There.
...There...
please?
(Anyone?) (Hello?...)
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BEANS
By Fiona Thraille
Int. Home Office
LISA:
Thanks Matt. Yeah, I can collate that for... when did we say, was it 10am Janet booked for tomorrow? Yeah, ten. Great. See you then! Bye...
(PAUSE, SLIGHTLY ANXIOUS) Just er looking for 'leave meeting' ... wouldn't you think by now...? (BEAT) You found it. Okay. (BEAT, MOCKING HERSELF) "I can collate all that for you by ten a.m. tomorrow Matt, no problem!" I'm such an idiot. (BEAT, SIPS WARM DRINK). Anyway, as I have a moment...
SOUND: Keyboard typing along with:
(WHILE TYPING) "My Covid Memories".....ugh no. Delete delete delete delete... "Covid Diary". Yeah. Okay, what day are we...? (BEAT) Delete delete delete... "Dear family, I think it's been... is it three months?
SOUND: Phone ring, under.
And so I'm writing this for, like, future posterity about how we've all...
SOUND: Beep as pick up phone.
Hi Mum, you alright? Yeah, all fine here, all still well. Look, can I ring you back? I'm still at work for another... (BEAT, SIGHS) You remember! It's just like last time. Can you see a little picture of a basket? I dunno, somewhere in the corner at the top... that's it! Click on
that and it'll... (BEAT) double click yes. (BEAT) Left button. Anywhere on it. On the icon, the picture itself. Go on. Now what's come up?
Right. Can you see a box somewhere on the page that says "checkout groceries"? Try down the bottom somewhere? Checkout. That's it! Click that. (BEAT) Yes, left button. (BEAT) Yes, anywhere on the words. (BEAT) I don't know, I can't remember... try one click and if that doesn't... great! Well done! So you can do the rest from here. Just press confirm and... Enter? Send? (LISTENS) Well, you have to press something Mum, or it won't go through. What buttons do they give you?
SOUND: Muffled shouting, off
Hang on (SHOUTS, off) Everything alright?
SOUND: Muffled affirmative shouts
Pay! Yes, that sounds right, doesn't it? Do that. (BEAT) Anywhere on the word yes. (BEAT) Left button. (BEAT) Just like before Mum, if it doesn't work with one click then... (BEAT) Brilliant! You're sorted. Look, I've gotta go, the kids are... (MOVING OFF) yeah, not now, I'll get them to ring you after tea, alright? Yeah, and you too, bye, bye.... (BEAT, GOING OFF) Now, if you two are fighting, I won't be....
FADE OUT
(COMING ON, SHOUTING OFF) ....I'm not ignoring you! ...Soon, I promise. After tea! We can play it then...
SOUND: DOORBELL, OFF
Oh, you are kidding... (MOVING OFF, SHOUTING OFF) Don't answer that! I'm coming!
PAUSE. FADE IN
No, I'm glad you did ring. No. It's a good idea to get the figures sorted before we waste an evening on different pages. Yeah! No, any time. Really. You too. Hope you get a chance to put your feet up a bit, too! At ten tomorrow. Yeah. Bye.
SOUND: Phone put down
(READING) "Future posterity..." blah blah... I dunno.
SOUND: Keyboard, typing away with:
It's... hard at times. It's hard to fit it all in. It's been the best having you here at home. It's been a chance we'll never get again. And I love it. But it's so hard to.... I feel torn all the time, y'know, and so even taking these moments to write this rather than sort your tea so I can sneak off to sort everything for this meeting tomorrow, it sums it up, doesn’t it? Just feels like rather than write all this rubbish, I might as well do... we're just living in the moment. And that's what you're meant to do, isn't it? (BEAT) It doesn't work written down because I'll just write about how we laughed, and played games, and actually talked, and that's 'posterity' isn't it? The third of it that’s special. (BEAT) It's not remembering the other two thirds, the stupid fucking arguments – that’s not the stuff of historical documents is it? (RANTS RAPIDLY) "Dear Covid Diary, today I ate cold beans on toast because Gemma said Luke "didn't cook the beans properly, so she wouldn't eat them and she wasn't hungry anyway and she hated beans, especially the ones he cooked" and Luke said “fine, she could starve or cook the beans perfectly herself if she was that clever, and she was not only being mean but stupid because it was impossible not to cook beans properly because they come already cooked." He did have a point about that. But so did she. Because the beans were cold. And I didn't want a silent meal, because I don't want the headspace to think about all of this not ending soon... and I have a department meeting tomorrow morning that I'm going to be up half the night preparing for... and whatever happens, I'm not going to be able to keep up full-time hours, my whole (...couldn’t really call it “career” before all this hit...) My whole “succession of jobs” is going down the pan and it makes me panic, and feel furious because if someone had bothered to read the can of beans, they'd have realised they are prepared, they're ready to go. They are cooked, they’re in the sauce.... And they can smell the toast...
SOUND: crashing sound, off
(WORRIED, shouting) You alright?
SOUND: muffled affirmative
(SHOUTS) Coming! (TO SELF) And when you've got to the point of not only having pointless arguments, but writing them down... Deleeeeeete. Then you're living in the now, right? And that's a good thing. (MOVING OFF) I'm sure that's meant to be healthy. This is all healthy. It's all going to be fine.... / (BEAT, getting frustrated) Do you want to lose your screen time.....?
SOUND: / raising voices off FADE OUT
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ANNUAL ACTIVISM
By Danyelle Ellett
“It’s going to be a bad day,” he says instead of ‘goodmorning’ as I pad into the living room, eyes still crusted with sleep and ignorance to the latest pandemonium this upside down year has to offer. His focus is glued to the soft glow of his phone, an execution playing out before the collective eyes of millions. The world now fixates on an Eight minute and forty six second time loop, when only the day before time felt meaningless and limitless in the uncertainty of how many more days, weeks, months the lock down would continue.
George Floyd echos Eric Garner who echoed nameless others unfortunate enough to be born a black man in America before the camera could capture their lynching’s, before activism was in vogue.
The leadership that ranted endlessly about kneeling before is now silent in the aftermath. What was once a an action of peaceful protest interrupting the notes of a tune proclaiming an off key song of liberty now is an overseares actions squashing the pulp from the strange fruit on a hot summers day.
We were ripe and ready; a harvest as old as this countries thirteen stars, as intentional as this country’s thirteenth amendment. This strange fruit was squashed between their toes and bottled to age -a crop that was once transplanted into non-native soil has turned to wine even as the woke liberals and right fascists both loudly whined about being oppressed in a nation built to sweeten them and sour us.
My grandma Gloria, a negro spiritual sung on sundays only a few generations removed from shackles, whose last name of “Freeman” decries the past and announces in the present you don’t own me - taught me kneeling in pews - that wine is the embodiment of sacrifice; holy, anointed, and created in patience.
We are a bottled commodity that is labeled for white consumption and yet we see ourselves smashed on the pavement, crimson rivers soaking into the road. We fragments of glass, sharp and cutting, are just seen by them as a nuisance to be swept into the gutters lest we disrupt the flow of traffic. Nothing to see here, keep it moving. Normally they all have somewhere to go, to be that’s more pressing but quarantine has provided a suspension of time in which bystanders can stop and gawk and stare down the wreckage even as the cops tried to usher them back on their way.
The combination of blatant violence and corruption that has always been visible meets with free time and boredom, which has never been easily available in these united states of capitalism, creates a thirst for activism that social media for once cannot quench. People take to the streets with signs and with concern, screaming out behind masks that enough is enough. This lynching becomes the tipping point despite all the ones that came before: a sleeping Breonna, a peaceful Philando with a child in the back seat, little Tamir playing with a toy. Every name listed or forgotten, observed by the media or regulated to a dismissive cop’s paperwork were encompassed in the Black Lives Matter protests that were a hope spring oasis in the dessert of an unprecedented year.
They marched against a system designed to convict and kill with impunity in an America who whispers to lady liberty, tying her blindfold tighter, that everyone is innocent until proven guilty, and that due process still exists. They marched and they screamed, they screamed and they marched and swore that this time they would not be satisfied. Quench our thirst for Justice, they screamed or meet the Fires of Vengeance. The people of Flint Michigan knew better than any that no reprieve in this thirsty work was coming, even as the rest of us naively hoped as we watched the police precinct burn to ash.
Summers fever for justice cooled into an apathetic Autumn, ashes blew away on the winds of supposed change, scattered and no longer a monument to a unified vision. Instead of protests there were Theatrical shout downs from keyboard allies gatekeeping words like Spooky from their social media platform, fingers frantically active while they lay on the couch, feet propped up.
I need a break, they say behind closed doors- worn down from a year of shocking news and mask mandates and drinking at home instead of drinking at bars. Even as the news reports two more dead in the states, teenagers this time, they post instead about Thanksgiving plans and Holiday recipes.
America’s collective fatigue for quarantining and fighting for justice is undoubtable and disheartening.
While it may all seem hopeless. A blizzard of death, a lack of empathy, and the injustice of the many that falls one unique snowflake at a time around us until it is an overwhelming mountain of problems that seep the cold into your bones causing shivers born of helplessness… I can’t help but stare out my window at the world now months removed from that bad day and contemplate what comes next. Do I too become buried under the avalanche of apathy or could I start once more a spark of hope to ignite a fire of change? What would become of the world if we each focused our resources of time and money and experience and lessons and generosity of heart, all which outpours during the worst of circumstances but dries up when the unrest has quieted, and instead persisted and persevered, if we stand committed to change, to actively watering the seedlings of grass roots activism- that perhaps there will be a day where the snow melts and green shoots of a new season emerge from acts of love, of triumph, of overcoming and have reason to say “Its going to be a good day".
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THE HOUSEMATE’S TAIL
By Jacqueline Ashman
(Deep drawn out sigh) That woman is driving me nuts! I just can’t get away from her. It doesn’t matter where I go or what I do she’s just there. Always right there. Wherever I go in this house – there she is. In the bedroom. In the kitchen. In the loft. Behind the sofa. It’s like I’ve been chipped. I even went and hid in the garage a couple of days ago. It was absolutely chucking it down – and that garage roof needs some attention, I can tell you – and she decides that that’s the perfect time to take out the recycling and what happens? I get dragged back into the house again and I’m stuck on the sofa for two hours while she reads a book. Apparently, it’s nice to have me there so she can read the good bits to me – like I care! All I wanted was some air.
I’m thinking of getting her bell to put round her neck. See how she likes that!
You sit in front of the telly these days and all you hear is lock down this, isolation that, social distancing the other. Kwaw, what I wouldn’t give for a bit of flippin’ social distancing.
I mean, don’t get me wrong. I love her. Love her to bits. She’s adorable. No, really. She is. She’s kind, generous, warm, generally sweet-smelling and there’s always plenty of good grub. I’m very comfortable here with her. But it is all getting a bit much. I can’t get 10 minutes to myself.
And yes, of course, there is an element of mutual reliance in any relationship. I understand that. ‘Course I do. We both bring something to the table that the other appreciates. But 8 months! 8 flippin’ long flippin’ months! I can’t even go for a pee without her asking me how it went. Honestly, if the food weren’t so good I think I’d leave.
And the noises she makes! I was up in the loft last week and she still found me. And while she was up there she discovered an old turntable. So, now, she’s playing through all her old records. And, of course, she knows them all like the back of her paw. All day long now it’s either
blubbering on the sofa, clutching me like I’m some sort of stress toy, or bouncing round the living room like a demented rabbit high on gin and carrot juice caterwauling like a police siren! Call that entertainment? ‘Cause I don’t.
And when she’s not doing that, it’s the hoovering! I hate that hoover. Every morning – hoover. Every time it rains – hoover. Every night before she goes to bed – hoover. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it. Always have. It’s not just the noise, although that’s bad enough, but it smells funny and the way it moves just creeps me out. I don’t remember any specific incidents but I think maybe when I was small...
And, I know it’s tough on her being stuck at home – she’s been working from home, she’s not leaving the house unless it’s to go out to buy food, there’s not been anyone coming round, she’s not been going out – but seriously, she’s not the only one suffering. What about me? Does she think I’m here just to satisfy her selfish desire for affirmation that she’s a worthwhile sentient being? Don’t I matter?
I just don’t know what to do. I’ve tried. I really have tried everything I can think of to communicate to her that this over-attentiveness isn’t helping either of us in the long run. I too have needs. That’s it’s not all about her. But she just doesn’t get it. I’m a free spirit – she’s always known that – that why she loves me. It’s not like I’m saying it’s over between us just give me some space. But I just can’t seem to make her understand.
But yesterday she crossed a line. Frankly, it’s like I’m being stalked. Here’s what happened: I managed to escape for half an hour – it was wonderful, just to be alone, I was free - and I caught myself a lovely little squirrel (not easy, ‘cause they’re quick little blighters and they fight like, well, like squirrels when they’re cornered) but it was raining so I brought it back into the kitchen to finish playing with it in the warm. And what happens? Scream. Sob. Wail. You’d think the world was ending, you really would. So, she takes my squirrel away (well, what’s left of it). Yells at me like
I’ve done something bad and storms off to the bedroom and gets the flippin’ hoover out. Then, and this is where things get very nasty, she goes out and buys me a collar with a bell on it. Me! A bell!
I’m not sure how much more of this I can take. It’s a dog’s life being a cat.
=======================================
**********************************************************
ONE STEP AT A TIME
BY Tal Minear
I get up
I walk the five steps to my computer
And turn it on
I do the start-of day things
Check email
Make Tea
I unlock my phone
Get caught up on notifications
Get caught up on the news
It’s never good news
I miss good news.
I try to focus on work and not everything else
Do the engineering things that need doing
I try not to think about what’s going on
How cases are rising
That people are dying
I try not to think about the thingsI miss
Like going to the movies
Or eating at restaurants
And hugging friends
I miss hugging friends.
I have a list of things I’ll do someday
But it’s for someday, not today
I wish I knew when things will change
But I just know they’re not so great right now
They’re really not so great right now
I am one step from fully overwhelmed at all times
Just below my limit
Sometimes, already there
Starting when I get up
And walk the five steps to my computer.
And turn it on.
QUARALOGUES 2020 EPISODE TWO
====. ^^^^^^**********^^^^^^
A PERFECT TEN
By Jacqueline Ashman
SOUND OF ALARM CLOCK
SOUND OF SCRABBLING FOR ALARM CLOCK ALARM CLOCK SWITCHED OFF (Yawning/stretching sounds followed by gentle snoring) SOUND OF ALARM CLOCK
Oh, shut up!
SOUND OF ALARM CLOCK HITTING THE WALL
Right. Tuesday. What delights will Tuesday bring me? Monday was a complete wash out so – structure, structure, structure, isn’t that what they say? Or am I thinking of location, location, location. Gawd, I do so hate property porn. Just makes me so dissatisfied with what I’ve got.
OK, stop it. Time’s a-wastin’.
(Sounds of huffing and blowing, noisy sucking of teeth etc – basically anything to avoid getting up)
Nope. Come up. Plans. Make plans. Plans for Tuesday. OK. The time is now... where’s that clock? Oh, yeah. SOUNDS OF SCUFFLING FOR THE CLOCK
7 minutes to 8 in the morning. What are we going to do today to fill it with joy, happiness and achievement? Tuesday. Tuesday.
JACQUELINE ASHMAN
SOUNDS OF RIFFLING THROUGH A NEWSPAPER
Nothing on the telly. Nothing on the telly at all. Oooh, ‘old on. Merlin’s on at 8 o’clock tonight. I like that. That bloke from the coffee ads is in it. I like him. I like him a lot. I don’t like the coffee – well, I don’t like coffee at all – but I remember buying it anyway in the hope that someone like him would pop round to borrow some. Never did. Rotten stuff. I think I’ve still it jar somewhere. I really must throw it out. I mean, it’s been 30 years and he hasn’t popped round yet.
OK, so... Merlin at 8pm. That runs for an hour. Half of hour to potter around the kitchen after that, maybe do a hot water bottle. Yep. 9.30 isn’t too early to go to bed with a good book in the middle of winter. In fact, it’s quite a respectable time to go to bed with a good book. Not in the middle of summer, of course. Then it’s sad. But in the middle of winter, if it’s a really good book, it’s more than acceptable.
I wonder if I’ve got anything decent to read in the house. Bound to have something. That’s an idea. I could spend hours looking for a good book to read. That’s a plan. Not a good one. Find a book, watch the telly, go to bed.
No. Come on. You’re better than that. Structure. Come on. You can do it. You’re an intelligent, educated woman. Structure. Structure. A plan. Hmmmmm
Hah! Got it. I need a list of 10 things to achieve today. Easy, peasy, lemon-squeezy. Ten things. Just ten thing. Ten little things.
Right, pen and paper.
(groan as if stretching)
SOUNDS OF RIFLING FOR PEN AND A PAD Got it. Here we go. Ten things
One
Hmmm...
Ah. One: Chores
I need to put some washing in, do the washing up, take the rubbish and the recycling out and clean the goldfish bowl out. Although, I haven’t had any fish in it since July so maybe that can be lumped in with the recycling. But that’s good for number one.
One: Chores – Tick
Two: Sarah’s birthday card – get a card, write it, post it.
Where am I going to get a birthday card|? The supermarket cards are rubbish and I can’t send her a rubbish card – hers to me are always really good. Although she did send me the same card this year as last year. No. You can’t do that to her. Send her a good card. Or maybe just ring her up on Saturday and sing “happy birthday to you” down the phone at her. Yes. That’s so much better than sending a rubbish card.
You could make her a card.
(Laughs)
Who are you kidding?
So, Two: Find the box of random birthday cards and send one to Sarah with a note in it saying you’ll give her a call on Saturday.
Oooh, Two A: check with Kate that Sarah’s birthday is on Saturday. Three: Put charity bag stuff up into the loft.
Which means that, when they open again, you can go back up into the loft to get them down so that’s actually an investment in next week’s list. Nice one.
Four: Four. Four. Four. Four. Quatre. Quatro. Oooh, got it. Four: do half an hour’s Italian. You’ve got some old cassette tapes somewhere and, if we ever come out of lock down, you might go to Italy and it’ll be great if you can speak the language. Molto bene.
Five: French (see four, above). No. That’s cheating.
Five: Do some exercise. You’ve got two Davina DVDs still in their cellophane that Sarah bought you for Christmas. Time you did something about that.
‘Ang on. Sarah bought me 2 fitness DVDs? Cheeky mare! What is she suggesting? Right.
Two: Send Sarah a random birthday card. No note about calling to sing on the date. Delete Two A
SOUND OF SCRIBBLING OUT
Six: Put new zip in red skirt.
Where am I going to get a seven inch zip in the middle of lock down? SOUND OF SCRIBBLING OUT
Oooh, throw used up pen away. No. That’ll come under One: chores. Six: Defrost Freezer
No. That’s another one for chores
Six: Wash net curt – nope. Chores again
Six: Make appointment for dental check up.
Oh. Can’t do that. They’re only taking emergency appointments. Six: Six. Six. Six
Oh stuff it.
One: Sarah’s birthday card
Two: do some exercise
Three: listen to your language tapes
Four: do the washing up
Five: put the washing in
Six: stuff into the loft
Seven: defrost freezer
Eight: take the recycling out to the garage
Nine: watch Merlin
Ten: ummmmm – uhrrrrrr – Ten: uhh oh! Lor! Got it! Ten: WRITE LIST
====
HAROLD AT THE WEDDING
BY Sarah Golding
My mum is sore in her chest and her head she says. I can hear her funny loud breathing from my bedroom. It’s like...Darth Vader. My Yoda clock says 19:14 and I know that was a year of the start of a war, and dad says ‘we are in a war son, it’s a pandemic. We need to be sensible’. But I don’t live with dad I live with my mum. And she is sick. And I am not sure what to do. Maybe I should....climb into bed and give her a cuddle. Get her some water. Yes. I’ll do that. I was trying to think where mum got sick from. We were at a wedding at the weekend - not the weekend just gone, the one before that - auntie Pam got married. Mum said it was about time, and they should have put it off because of the virus but then Auntie Pam said if that happened, they’d never get married, so....we went.
There was a hundred people there. A big rustle n bustle of dresses and suited booted legs, and white table cloths -slung lazy like sad ghosts over tables I could hide under, and play Lego with my cousins Stuart and Alice, and Alice was taken for a nap in her hotel room and Stuart wee’d in a plant pot, and then came back and played under the table with me....without washing his hands...until we had to move for the wedding lunch, where it was hot and the windows streamed up, and many people spoke and laughed, and loads of glasses were chinked and I got a present for being a page boy (more Lego) and the room smelt of...bacon...and hot breath and the windows steamed up because it was raining alll day, and there were trees inside which I thought was weird, and mum said it was for decoration, and also helped there to be more oxygen in the room which I didn’t understand, and then... then, they cleared allllll of the tables and everyone including mum enjoyed the ‘free bar’ and I got a fizzy drink and a milkshake and felt sick, because we was dancing together and doing the Hokey Cokey and it was so so fun and noisy and happy and dizzy and mummy fell on the floor on her bottom and everyone laughed so much and it looked like mum had wet herself but she said it was Auntie Pamela’s white wine and Uncle Ronnie’s friend Barry said he’d help her drink that up later and it was weird.
A few people wore masks and sat outside all the time, and mum said they were just grumpy, and if they didn’t want to come, they shouldn’t have, and uncle Fred left early with Stuart and Alice saying in a shouty voice ‘we shouldn’t have come there’s a pandemic on and this is crazy’ which was annoying because also then I was the only child left.
Auntie Pam didnt hear him she was too busy dancing to Carwash and The mocky Rainer. I didn’t ask her what a mocky Rainer was and she didn’t stop smiling all day. Her face must had hurt. Mine hurts after half an hour of you’ve been framed. Everyone hugged Auntie Pamalam. Everyone danced with her. She carried me for dancing queen by ABBA - I love that song. She looked beautiful, and put lipstick on my cheek all smeary and mummy said I looked like the joker and I said I wasn’t feeling very funny and everyone laughed, and we all danced and danced and danced and laughed and danced until my ears were booming, and everyone had a really cool time, and our feet hurt, so when we sat down, I made a tower of place mats from the bar, as mummy sat there with that friend of Uncle Ronnie trying to massage her feet, and she had vodka and cokes - quite a few....and I was up until wayyy after ten o clock, until grandma came to get me and take me to her house for sleeps. I was very tired. And had had too much fizzy, and milkshake, and my tummy hurt. But. Now. Now...I hurt...in a different way.
And I am only six.
I think mum said that was what gave grandma the virus. That she came to the wedding to get me. And that I stayed at her house. And that I didn’t know it but I had the virus. Then. That I caught it at the wedding. And I stayed at grandmas for the week because mummy wasn’t well after the wedding either and grandmas said mummy’s mentally healthiness was important. I don’t know what that means but I think mummy needs to drink more water, and watch her health, and brush her teeth twice a day, and get exercise.
And then we found out mummy had the virus.
Grandma tutted a lot when she told me ...of the hundred people at that wedding, over half contradicticated the nasty virus from the dancing and the sharing of space and singing, and not social distancing for many hours. And of that 50 people, there were 42 different families represented - that didn’t even include the staff of the hotel who were there too. And of those 42 families who all took the virus home from the wedding, as a con...say...quenceical of that, grandma said, perhaps upwards of 15,000 people were affected ...15,000...because 42 different homes had five different friends they saw, and those five saw five more, and those five snd those five and those five and so on, and contracepted the virus from people who had been at that ‘ille....illy.... illegal gathering’ in the pandemic, and aren’t they covvvidiotssss because people got sick who hadn’t even been near the wedding themselves.
Which is stupid. And sad. Isn’t it?
It is very continuous....contagent.....contagious mum said, which means it passes to humans very quickly. I think I got it from Auntie Pam ... I mean...woahhhhh 15,000 people?! There’s only 200 at my school and I hate standing out in assembly in front of that many. So. How many is 15,000. I can’t even count that high.
Fif.
Teen.
Thousand.
And it’s keeping going so, who knows how many more people have it now from just that one time we danced, and ate, and sang the night away. That’s. So. Many. People. It made me so sad.
Mum said. ...when she wasn’t so sick, she said many wedding guests were meant to quarantine and didn’t, and they kept on going to work and parties and parks, and she...she said - when she could talk in full sentences - she said she thinks at least 130 people linked to it have died. Yeah. And they weren’t even people AT the wedding. Like I was. Mum said people didn’t wash their hands properly, and were singing in each other’s mouths and sweating and rubbing and kissing and wibbling and wobbling hugging...yuk....and folks at the wedding allll went to work the next day, and on tubes and trains and jumbo jet planes back to America and France, and schools, and jobs in marketing and administ...admininin....office works in the next few days (struggles to say the word) asymptomatic...mummy taught me that word and I’ve heard it on the news....that means at that time they weren’t showing any symptoms ...and then, boom.
Sick.
Cant breathe.
Dead.
My mum can’t breathe very well.
I am very worried.
We got so many phonecalls. I asked mum why we were getting so many phone calls and she said..because people were selfish and didn’t think. Mum said we shouldn’t have gone...it shouldn’t had happened - she always cries when she talks about it now....she said....she said we were all too close for too long, and that the wedding was a ‘super spreader’.
I said to mum super things usually were good things like superman or super cool and she cried and hugged me and said ‘I know. I know’. That was before. When she had the energy for hugging back. Auntie Pamela spent allllll her honeymoon holiday time in hospital. They say she’s getting better. I hope she does. New Uncle Ronnie was ok but he looks so thin and sad on the FaceTime calls to mum from outside the hospital, and his hair looks like a bush, and his face is like a bit of a beard, but not a very good one. I could see it because....he wasn’t even wearing a mask and there were other patients near him smoking and coughing and laughing and I was thinking....why are you not thinking what I am thinking New Uncle Ronnie? Wear. A. Mask.
My clock says 19:18. I learnt at school in lockdown, that that was The end of World War One. I wonder if this pandemic will take four years to end? Or will it be over by Christmas? I had the virus and it felt like...a cold. I was staying at grandmas when I got...shivery. And hot. And cold. And sore. And a little teeny rash. I couldn’t smell anything which was weird cos I love grandmas perfume and she wears a lot of it....wore. Wore a lot of it.
Today it’s grandmas funeral.
In the morning.
9:30 am.
It took six days.
From the wedding, to her death.
Feeling unwell.
Getting hot.
Cant breathe.
Hospital.
Heart attack.
Gone.
Six.
And now it’s her funeral.
She’s gone. That’s how I understand that she’s not here. She’s. Just. Gone.
And. I don’t want to go.
And I lie here next to mummy - can you hear her?....and her heart is beating so fast. It’s like a bomb. Ticking up and up and up and It might fly out of her chest and power itself to the moon and explode into a trillion stars.
I don’t want mummy to leave me too.
I don’t want anyone to see mummy like this. I love you mummy. Get better. I don’t want anyone to see her sick.
Because.
Maybe it’s my fault she has this, and....
Maybe people blame me...for killing grandma.
====
BOXED IN
by Diane Alexander
It was a ‘lack of concentration’ moment. Chopping red peppers. Red peppers. So red that I didn’t even notice the blood…. or the pain… because, well, life sucks right now, and I feel I’ve lost all sense of feeling from the toes up.
There was a moment of confusion - mouth-watering red pepper spilling its deep red juices across my board - to a sickening snap of realisation. Red peppers don’t bleed…..
So what is this pool of claret I see before me?
“Knife, oh razor-sharp knife of mine, what juices do behold me? How doth blood flow from this succulent capsicum and why should it be, that I, a mere mortal of lowliness, be gifted with such an extreme and rare specimen from the exotic fruit garden.”
Sod. Sod the pepper. The pepper isn’t bleeding. It’s me! Its bloody me!
It’s not the first accident I’ve had since being boxed in. I mean, I’ve not wet the bed or anything like that, but stubbing toes, walking into things, smacking my head on the cupboard and dropping heavy crockery and pans, on my feet….. has all been part of my casualty repertoire
“Get me to a hospital for thy broken bones and bleeding torso. Repair me before thine body splitteth open and thine figure falls apart.”
It’s been tough. No, actually it’s been shit. I want to say its been bearable, but it hasn’t. Not always.
The novelty, if one can call it that, more like divergence, wore off a few weeks back. Huge intentions of working out every day and getting fit with Joe Wicks became a chore after only three days. I had never bounced my boobies up and down with such vigour before, so why was I going to do it now, just because half the nation, and the government I might add, says we should get fit and healthy. I AM fit and healthy. Sort of. I don’t need to prove anything to anyone, and flaying the jugs about is actually not my idea of a great work out.
The roots started to appear after a few weeks, and as my hair got longer, there were less sexy bouncy curls and more ropey straggly bits. Other hair grew out of pores I never knew existed and my skin started to look dry and scaly, like a hippo with dermatitis from soap and water overuse. I’ve slapped on moisturiser every day, but I still look like a wrinkled old witch.
I talk to myself. Hell why not? There’s no-one else in the house to talk to, and to be honest I quite enjoy it. It makes for interesting listening. I can’t believe how argumentative I am. And opinionated. God I can be difficult at times. Great discussion though. My defense against my argument which contradicted my opinion, went really well. And I loved the debate. I can’t believe what valid points I made. I really should discuss things with myself more.
But if I’m honest, as the weeks have gone by, things are starting to get a little…. dull. The weather has been glorious, and I’ve been stuck indoors. Alone. Me. By myself. Me and the walls, me and the spiders. Me and the wasps from the wasps nest in the eaves. Me and the TV. Me and Alexa. Me and … ..me. And life has taken on a new normal as I have become a recluse, a hermit, a mad one in a box of…… a little cuckoo, a little more weird, a loner, alone-ly, a little bit calmer, a little lighter, and I feel, an easier person to live with. Either that, or I’ve just got used to not being around people.
So my finger is ditching blood and casting it out of my body like a drainpipe gushing out water on a rainy day. And I’m searching, and I mean searching, because I’m pretty sure I haven’t got any, not in the house anyway, only in the first aid kit in the car, for a plaster or a sticky piece of something that will bind this overzealous gash together and stop the bleeding. I wrap a piece of kitchen roll round it which is a bit pointless, because it’s not a Plenty One sheet, just a cheap pound shop one, so it isn’t very absorbent and basically the blood is just oozing out like an overspilling gutter. I’m feeling queasy, so many spots across the floor, it looks like a Hansel and Gretel trail
And there it is…. Tap tap.
Uh?
Tap tap
Tap tap? On the window? I’m on the first floor! Who the hell is tap tapping my window?
I figure it must be my imaginery friend throwing stones up to get my attention or a phantom car kicking up grit from the road that’s over half a mile away. Or a resident pigeon – I often get one tap tapping at my window at 730 at night to borrow a cup of sugar or something.
Tap tap
Seriously? I’m bleeding here. I really haven’t got time for trivial chit-chat with unknown beings. I’m trying to prepare dinner, cook it and eat it, before I …… actually bleed to death.
Tap tap, tappety tap.
I stop rummaging and look up.
Un…be…lievable. Stood there, arms folded, looking all white and drawn, impatient and irritable with his black cape and gothic eyes staring at me….. Count Drac.
It’s a bit early for you isn’t it?
He glares
I thought you lot only came out at night.
Yes, it is night, I know, but it’s early night, not night night, as in late night… midnight night sort of night.
He stares at me.
I stare back. What?
Can’t you see I’m busy. I’m bleeding everywhere and I can’t find…… ahh. Of course. That’s why you’re here.
Smelt it did you?
You can’t come in mate. Oh don’t give me that look. You can’t. I’m isolating. And shielding. And bleeding. And still rummaging. Lots of ings. Including starving. I must have one in the house somewhere….surely? Pritt stick – will that work? Where’s the bloody super glue when you need it.
Why aren’t you wearing a mask? Don’t you know there’s a pandemic on. You need a face covering.
What do you mean you can’t wear one? Everyone has to wear…….
You can’t work with one on. oh I guess you can’t.
Well we need to stay 2metres apart, so don’t even think about getting close.
I could pop it on a saucer and leave it outside the door. But you better put some gloves on or use anti bac or something. I don’t think I’m infected, but I could be asymptomatic or something and you’d never know.
What? This virus thing? Well it’s a nasty disgusting disease that came from bats….. why are you asking? You should know!
You’re here to deliver it. Great! Thanks. I don’t want it.
I don’t care if you want to give it to me. I …don’t… want it.
Well I just won’t open the window. Then you can’t give it to me.
No. You’re not listening. I don’t want it.
What do you mean sharing?
You have to give me something if I give something to you.
Yeh, but I don’t want what you want to give me. Seriously it’s not a fair swap.
You know when a kid sulks when you won’t give them what they want. He had that look. That ‘it’s not fair, life is so cruel’ look that I almost caved in and opened the window.
Look I’m happy to give. I… just… don’t… want…. Anything… back. Just take the bloody blood. And go.
I took the sodden piece of kitchen roll away from the cut. It was starting to heal.
Look it’s starting to close up now. Oh, not what you wanted to hear.
He was stood with his face pressed to the window, his rancid tongue dragging along the glass as his bloodshot eyes focussed on the soggy wet red tissue on the side.
Well you can have this, but…..
He lurched at the glass.
You need to move away from the window. I’m serious. Move back. 2metres. At least.
I dropped the tissue on a plate. The cut had started to seep open again. I squeezed down hard on my finger and the cut seeped open again. I generously dropped some blobs on the shiny china.
I seriously do not want anything for this. In fact I don’t even want the plate back.
But you need to distance, otherwise I’m not opening this window.
Mesmerised by the glistening pool and red polka-dotted plate, his eyes never faltered but he slowly moved back from the glass.
I grabbed my mask and covered my face. I covered my finger for protection and to stop the flow – didn’t want him launching himself and me - and began to open the window. He was edging forward. I shut it again.
Move away. 2metres. No actually more…. 3 or 4 metres I don’t trust you. You’ve got no bloody mask on. I don’t want you breathing all over me.
I threatened to wipe the plate. He backed away. I placed the plate and quickly shut the window.
He attacked, lapping up the blood like a dog with a juicy bone sucking on the soggy tissue as he left.
I didn’t even see him go.
I found myself on the floor, lying on the spotted floor, feeling like I was waking from a bad dream
I got up, all whoozy-like and I looked at the state of myself. I was covered in red spots like Measles had attacked my clothing.
I found a scraggy piece of lint in the drawer, and wrapped it round my finger, and then whizzed round with reams and reams of Sellotape. It would have to do.
I’d gone off cooking..…and red peppers. And the idea ofchips with ketchup was making my stomach lurch.
The fridge was empty… I’d been scraping up crumbs for several days, and the food delivery wasn’t due for another two . There wasn’t even a morsel of chocolate left.
Daylight, Joe Wicks and boob bouncing was a long way off and I really wasn’t in the mood for another debate tonight. There’s only so much arguing one can do with oneself.
I made a cup of tea, and watched the sun set. Then watched the moon rise, and caught a shooting star in the palm of my hand. I listened to music, did my nails, and tried to read a book. I wrote a poem, then at midnight I baked a cake.
I drew blood and gave blood. Well in my semi-comatose fainting state I did.
My imagination and my craziness ran away with me, as it had yesterday, and the day before that and the day before that. We made it through another day. All of us.
I stayed in and stayed safe. Locked in and locked down. Alone but alive. And just a little …..crazy.
====
I MISS THEM I MISS THEM I MISS THEM
By Sarah Golding
SFX SCRUBBING OF A FLOOR OR SOME SUCH
(Stopping cleaning for a moment)
(Like as in Truly Madly Deeply)
OHHHHhhhhh.
I miss them I miss them I miss them sooo much.
(Starting to scrub the floors again so exertion needed under the words….
I wanted to start again…break it off…I couldn’t cope with not seeing them for so long and the dark thoughts just....creep in don’t they? Maybe it’s better to wait til things are...’normal’ whatever that is.....start clean over….oh…the current obsession with clean…..well, I am….Clean and sober…have a…clean bill of health, making my home….cleannnn, cleaning up my act, and, ya know, if I am talking to myself out loud -as it’s the only time I speak at the moment - I gotta say world, I wanna come clean. It will alllll come out in the wash but…. I think….I think if anyone is listening ...on reflection, and oh have I had time for lots of that....I think I....love them. Yes. I think I very much do. I….can’t stop thinking about them….absence makes the heart grow...fffffffickle....confused....jealous...anxious...no...fonder ....I ...guess. Yes. Today. I feel fonder.
(BIG SIGH)
Right. Tea. I need….tea…
(SFX MAKES TEA)
Lockdown - season one - meant they couldn’t come up at the weekends as usual or I couldn’t go and stay with them in their…quite frankly… mansion of a house compared to my one bedroomed sixth floor flat...and..it’s...so....hard. Being apart. I mean, it’s been months now, and...We obviously can talk on the phone, and they’ve got a zoom account for their work, so we use that to...watch movies and...cook the same meal at the same time on ‘date nights’ - yeah they’re a better cook…just…by a leeeeedle bit...ah who am I kidding?!
I so wish they could pass me their finished dishes through the screen....much better than my bland squelchy efforts...but. It’s not the same.
Not.
The same.
I miss.....Touch. The vibrations of their voice…their..smell....I miss their…heat. I mean. My feet on their cold back was bliss, right? Their arms enfolded around me. Them whispering into my safe space. My warm. And oh their smell! They never told me their scent of choice...wait… they always said I smell good - it’s not scent for them is it? Uhm. Aftershave? I...don’t know...I wish I knew what their scent-er-shave was. I’d buy it and spray it everywhere....everywhere. (Pause) Actually maybe just on the bedding. Don’t want my place smelling like a….a boudoir!?
They left a jumper here the last time and I stupidly washed it, so it smells of my washing powder now, not them. But....I still sleep with it. Hugging it tightly Like some child missing a parent. Weird huh?
Yeah.
It is weird.
I get that.
Weirdy weird...this lockdown is sending me weird.
(PAUSE)
SFX KETTLE BOILS
They had a temperature a few days ago they said. They haven’t posted on their usual social media platform thingummydoodles. And, I am starting to get worried. They haven’t texted - not even sent me their emoji of the day since....Tuesday? No. Nothing.
SFX POURS A CUPPA
Do I....do I call their work or is that too...needy? Are they proper sick? Do they have the virus or are they just sleeping something else off? I mean, we don’t share exactly what we do of our everyday. Well. They don’t. I saw a Facebook tag of them in a bar with a friend on a friend’s account from a few days ago...looked like they went on to someone’s house - ‘with my bubble’ it said on the smiling pic - too smiley. Too. Close. Am I meant to read more In to that? ‘With my bubble?’ Why can’t I be in their bubble??? Why can’t I be ‘with?’ Ohhhhhh....I can’t help but feel jealous of that. Greener than greeeen. The hulk got nothin on me...Oh I can talk myself into such worry huh? Especially as they didn’t tell me. They didn’t tell me they were going to the bars still. Bit stupid at this stage of lockdown I think. I did say to them. I said… it was stupid well not actually TO them but in my head....I think they’ll close them soon. The bars....bar us from the bar....bar bar bar. Just when people need them the most huh?
SFX SIPS TEA
SIGHS IN HAPPINESS AT TEA
Oh my, I could do with a ...proper drink right now. I’ve only got neat gin left. No Tonic. I suppose I could mask up and go to the shops and get some. But. Not everyone is wearing a mask at the moment. That’s a bit mad huh world? I’m a bit...scared to go out to be honest. Simple things like...going in the lift and pressing the buttons become trauma inducing , virus avoiding moments. How much stale air is trapped in those things? How many germs multiplying in the buttons? I just take the stairs but I don’t touch the bannisters so...with my co-ordination that’s quite dangerous ...and thankfully I can open the door with my butt...my ever expanding lockdown butt...... All this unseen peril Keeps me...on the edge. Huh world?
And when I’m outside, it seems it’s just… walking in a wide arc around other folks to avoid them in my face...in my space. I don’t understand why some folks just seem to be just acting like things are...normal....whatever that is. I mean. It’s so...confusing right now...what we are being told we can and can’t do huh?
I saw this brilliant woman do an impression of the essence of the government’s current tirade of conflicting messages. It was like, go outside but...don’t go outside, go to work but ...don’t go to work, you can see your family but you can’t see them… inside....you can see some of them outside, as long as they aren’t too old, (and vulnerable) or young, (and vulnerable) or with underlying health conditions (of being old, or vulnerable), and, as long as you are inside, and they are outside, maybe with, or without a mask, the. That’s maybe ok but not ok, oh, and sneeeeeeze into your elbow not a tissue, and catch it bin it kill it - but make sure you put it in your own bin and then set fire to the contents, and disinfect everything but you don’t need to disinfect everything and just perhaps stay in bed and don’t move don’t speak don’t do anything BUT DO support local shops and businesses and maybe then you’ll be ok. They’ll be ok. We will all be...ok. I mean.
It’s so.
Confusing.
And ...oh it hits me in waves...I was trying to distract myself from it by making two cups of tea, making two meals...I’m...
I’m all alone here right now....
Alone. Alone alone alone! (SINGS) Allll by myselffff!
We’re all alone really aren’t we. In a way. In our heads. In our minds. Even in the biggest crowds we are often very much....alone.
My company...is a ticking clock, and the passing traffic, and whatever doom and gloom news report there is...and (big sigh) ...I can’t see the end of this...it doesn’t seem...temporary any more....there is no horizon even....and I just want...a ...hug. To ...feel. I want to talk to someone who is actually here in the room with me. Not me myself and I...but someone...else...anyone! Now. Not through a cold glass screen on zoom or on the phone. I vibe on peoples presence. Vibe. I love the word viiibe. Viiiiibe. Vvvvvviiiiibe.
Being furloughed isn’t helping. No. I’m a bit worried about money. But then. Who isn’t?
Who
Isn’t?
Are you worried Mrs Teacup?
(MRS TEACUP VOICE)
Well yes I am but I am more concerned that you’re giving me a voice to be honest. So I agree you need to see..someone. Probably a professional....
(NORMAL VOICE)
Hmmm
They were asking for volunteers to help on the farms. Maybe there is one...Down the road? I could help with? Maybe? But. How would I get there? I can’t drive. I don’t want to go on public transport cos...virus. But...I need to Make some more pennies but...virus. I mean. I s’pose I’m not spending much but. Virus. Then less money is coming in too. And that’s a worry. Rent was always tight as it is.
I wonder if I could ask them if I could....move in...? Would that work? I could...I could do their house up for them - I do. Love to decorate...I just moved this furniture around again this morning to a few knocks on the ceiling from him below. Silly old git. But. I hope he’s ok. I started to harmonise gently with his singing this morning. He was going through his Beatles catalogue. He put ‘Love me do’ on in his kitchen and I could clearly hear it as I lay in. Dreaming of holding my love…my hearts desire. Of whispering in their ear and having them gently caress my lily white arms and then our eyes meet and. Oh. I miss them, I miss them.
Why aren’t they calling me?
Where are they?
Why aren’t they answering my texts?
Why won’t they pick up when I call? Are they sick? I don’t know. I...don’t...know....
PAUSE
SFX PHONE RINGS....
Oh! It’s them!
(ANSWERS PHONE)
Hello! (PAUSE) You’re....outside the front door? (PAUSE) Oh! Really? For the night? Uhm. (PAUSE) Sure. I guess. But....you’ve been out...in bars and things and I.... (PAUSE) it was from last year...for her birthday? Oh so you didn’t go out!? UHm...well yes, only a little bit jealous....she’s..married? Oh. Good for her. (To self) Good for me. Hmm, What?...you’ve been....isolating so you could see me? (PAUSE) Oh I think I’m going to cry. That’s the loveliest thing anyone’s done for-Ahhh you bring gifts!? And food and…wine? From online?! Oh....I missed you so much! I missed you I missed you and I can’t wait to kiss you! (PAUSE) Oh. Yes. Sorry that was forward. Hmm? You...love it when I talk like that? Right! Wow. Ok yes sorry, I repeat everything at the moment - haven’t actually spoken in real life to someone for months - sure...I’ll buzz you - sorry didn’t mean to leave you out in the cold - Come on in! Up! In and up! I am sorry I am Far Too Excited to speak to someone that isn’t me - I’m loony vibing all over the place. (PAUSE) Yes! I love that word too! Viiiiibe. Ok. No. I won’t hang up until you’re here. In front of me. (PAUSE) Yes. We can do that. Oh stop! You want to...what? Oh my The neighbours you saucy brisket! No I’m not sure what a brisket is it’s the first thing my brain thought of. I think I’m a little bit...overwhelmed! Is this really happening? (PAUSE) Oh. Good. But. Yes. Don’t take the lift. Hurry up the stairs. Cos...virus. Don’t touch the hand rail. Cos...virus. It’s Only 6 flights. Cos...I love on the sixth floor. Live. Live. Sorry. I meant that. (PAUSE) You want me to...keep talking...? Er. You sure? Any confessions to make? Er...Ok. I’ll come clean...talking of which...to be sure of cleanliness, and no viral particles entering on you, maybe...when you get up here maybe Shower first. Shower. Everything....yes even the flowers...shower the flowers for hours and shower me with compliments - and yes let’s drink! To us! Yes! (PAUSE) Keep talking? Uhm ok I’m not sure what to say...ok...yep I’ll just rifff ok um,
experimental sentiments are the rudiments of confidence
and once I thought that we were over
now I see we’re just begun
I cannot wait to see you up here,
start afresh and love someone - oh my. Yes. I said it. No don’t stop coming up the stairs. What? Did you just? ....Say it again. And again! Oh. You do? You do! Well I do you do too too! Yes, Well...I agree. As soon as you’re here. Yes I will! And yes You will! Well I can’t wait to read it from your lips.
Yes.
Ok
But First…..let’s start today…clean over….I’ll start the shower...
====
WHAT DO WE KNOW OF OUR GRANDMOTHERS
by Sarah Golding
What do we know of our grandmothers?
Faces raised
Heads up
Sleeves rolled
They were brave
No nonsense resilient folks
Did they do what they were told?
What do we know of our grand mothers
Fighting for equality
They spearheaded life
As we know it now
And it’s getting better huh?
Agree?
What do we know of our children
Fighting more internally
With this world we deflate
Selfish actions they grate
Inert futures yet to see
What do we know of our own true self
Are we contributing well for the good?
Can the fight of the ancestors
That trod here before
Ignite light in us all as it should?
What do we know of this world that we share?
Cultures creeds riches crude poverty
We ignore those in need
For resource and for greed
It’s our fault
Let’s begin. Now. To care
- A PERFECT 10 by Jacqueline Ashman.
Performed by Fiona Mackinnon
- HAROLD by Sarah Golding
- BOXED IN by Diane Alexander
Performed by Diane Alexander - I MISS THEM by Sarah Golding
Performed by Caroline Mincks - WHAT DO WE KNOW OF OUR GRANDMOTHERS
Written/Performed by Sarah Golding
====. ^^^^^^**********^^^^^^
A PERFECT TEN
By Jacqueline Ashman
SOUND OF ALARM CLOCK
SOUND OF SCRABBLING FOR ALARM CLOCK ALARM CLOCK SWITCHED OFF (Yawning/stretching sounds followed by gentle snoring) SOUND OF ALARM CLOCK
Oh, shut up!
SOUND OF ALARM CLOCK HITTING THE WALL
Right. Tuesday. What delights will Tuesday bring me? Monday was a complete wash out so – structure, structure, structure, isn’t that what they say? Or am I thinking of location, location, location. Gawd, I do so hate property porn. Just makes me so dissatisfied with what I’ve got.
OK, stop it. Time’s a-wastin’.
(Sounds of huffing and blowing, noisy sucking of teeth etc – basically anything to avoid getting up)
Nope. Come up. Plans. Make plans. Plans for Tuesday. OK. The time is now... where’s that clock? Oh, yeah. SOUNDS OF SCUFFLING FOR THE CLOCK
7 minutes to 8 in the morning. What are we going to do today to fill it with joy, happiness and achievement? Tuesday. Tuesday.
JACQUELINE ASHMAN
SOUNDS OF RIFFLING THROUGH A NEWSPAPER
Nothing on the telly. Nothing on the telly at all. Oooh, ‘old on. Merlin’s on at 8 o’clock tonight. I like that. That bloke from the coffee ads is in it. I like him. I like him a lot. I don’t like the coffee – well, I don’t like coffee at all – but I remember buying it anyway in the hope that someone like him would pop round to borrow some. Never did. Rotten stuff. I think I’ve still it jar somewhere. I really must throw it out. I mean, it’s been 30 years and he hasn’t popped round yet.
OK, so... Merlin at 8pm. That runs for an hour. Half of hour to potter around the kitchen after that, maybe do a hot water bottle. Yep. 9.30 isn’t too early to go to bed with a good book in the middle of winter. In fact, it’s quite a respectable time to go to bed with a good book. Not in the middle of summer, of course. Then it’s sad. But in the middle of winter, if it’s a really good book, it’s more than acceptable.
I wonder if I’ve got anything decent to read in the house. Bound to have something. That’s an idea. I could spend hours looking for a good book to read. That’s a plan. Not a good one. Find a book, watch the telly, go to bed.
No. Come on. You’re better than that. Structure. Come on. You can do it. You’re an intelligent, educated woman. Structure. Structure. A plan. Hmmmmm
Hah! Got it. I need a list of 10 things to achieve today. Easy, peasy, lemon-squeezy. Ten things. Just ten thing. Ten little things.
Right, pen and paper.
(groan as if stretching)
SOUNDS OF RIFLING FOR PEN AND A PAD Got it. Here we go. Ten things
One
Hmmm...
Ah. One: Chores
I need to put some washing in, do the washing up, take the rubbish and the recycling out and clean the goldfish bowl out. Although, I haven’t had any fish in it since July so maybe that can be lumped in with the recycling. But that’s good for number one.
One: Chores – Tick
Two: Sarah’s birthday card – get a card, write it, post it.
Where am I going to get a birthday card|? The supermarket cards are rubbish and I can’t send her a rubbish card – hers to me are always really good. Although she did send me the same card this year as last year. No. You can’t do that to her. Send her a good card. Or maybe just ring her up on Saturday and sing “happy birthday to you” down the phone at her. Yes. That’s so much better than sending a rubbish card.
You could make her a card.
(Laughs)
Who are you kidding?
So, Two: Find the box of random birthday cards and send one to Sarah with a note in it saying you’ll give her a call on Saturday.
Oooh, Two A: check with Kate that Sarah’s birthday is on Saturday. Three: Put charity bag stuff up into the loft.
Which means that, when they open again, you can go back up into the loft to get them down so that’s actually an investment in next week’s list. Nice one.
Four: Four. Four. Four. Four. Quatre. Quatro. Oooh, got it. Four: do half an hour’s Italian. You’ve got some old cassette tapes somewhere and, if we ever come out of lock down, you might go to Italy and it’ll be great if you can speak the language. Molto bene.
Five: French (see four, above). No. That’s cheating.
Five: Do some exercise. You’ve got two Davina DVDs still in their cellophane that Sarah bought you for Christmas. Time you did something about that.
‘Ang on. Sarah bought me 2 fitness DVDs? Cheeky mare! What is she suggesting? Right.
Two: Send Sarah a random birthday card. No note about calling to sing on the date. Delete Two A
SOUND OF SCRIBBLING OUT
Six: Put new zip in red skirt.
Where am I going to get a seven inch zip in the middle of lock down? SOUND OF SCRIBBLING OUT
Oooh, throw used up pen away. No. That’ll come under One: chores. Six: Defrost Freezer
No. That’s another one for chores
Six: Wash net curt – nope. Chores again
Six: Make appointment for dental check up.
Oh. Can’t do that. They’re only taking emergency appointments. Six: Six. Six. Six
Oh stuff it.
One: Sarah’s birthday card
Two: do some exercise
Three: listen to your language tapes
Four: do the washing up
Five: put the washing in
Six: stuff into the loft
Seven: defrost freezer
Eight: take the recycling out to the garage
Nine: watch Merlin
Ten: ummmmm – uhrrrrrr – Ten: uhh oh! Lor! Got it! Ten: WRITE LIST
====
HAROLD AT THE WEDDING
BY Sarah Golding
My mum is sore in her chest and her head she says. I can hear her funny loud breathing from my bedroom. It’s like...Darth Vader. My Yoda clock says 19:14 and I know that was a year of the start of a war, and dad says ‘we are in a war son, it’s a pandemic. We need to be sensible’. But I don’t live with dad I live with my mum. And she is sick. And I am not sure what to do. Maybe I should....climb into bed and give her a cuddle. Get her some water. Yes. I’ll do that. I was trying to think where mum got sick from. We were at a wedding at the weekend - not the weekend just gone, the one before that - auntie Pam got married. Mum said it was about time, and they should have put it off because of the virus but then Auntie Pam said if that happened, they’d never get married, so....we went.
There was a hundred people there. A big rustle n bustle of dresses and suited booted legs, and white table cloths -slung lazy like sad ghosts over tables I could hide under, and play Lego with my cousins Stuart and Alice, and Alice was taken for a nap in her hotel room and Stuart wee’d in a plant pot, and then came back and played under the table with me....without washing his hands...until we had to move for the wedding lunch, where it was hot and the windows streamed up, and many people spoke and laughed, and loads of glasses were chinked and I got a present for being a page boy (more Lego) and the room smelt of...bacon...and hot breath and the windows steamed up because it was raining alll day, and there were trees inside which I thought was weird, and mum said it was for decoration, and also helped there to be more oxygen in the room which I didn’t understand, and then... then, they cleared allllll of the tables and everyone including mum enjoyed the ‘free bar’ and I got a fizzy drink and a milkshake and felt sick, because we was dancing together and doing the Hokey Cokey and it was so so fun and noisy and happy and dizzy and mummy fell on the floor on her bottom and everyone laughed so much and it looked like mum had wet herself but she said it was Auntie Pamela’s white wine and Uncle Ronnie’s friend Barry said he’d help her drink that up later and it was weird.
A few people wore masks and sat outside all the time, and mum said they were just grumpy, and if they didn’t want to come, they shouldn’t have, and uncle Fred left early with Stuart and Alice saying in a shouty voice ‘we shouldn’t have come there’s a pandemic on and this is crazy’ which was annoying because also then I was the only child left.
Auntie Pam didnt hear him she was too busy dancing to Carwash and The mocky Rainer. I didn’t ask her what a mocky Rainer was and she didn’t stop smiling all day. Her face must had hurt. Mine hurts after half an hour of you’ve been framed. Everyone hugged Auntie Pamalam. Everyone danced with her. She carried me for dancing queen by ABBA - I love that song. She looked beautiful, and put lipstick on my cheek all smeary and mummy said I looked like the joker and I said I wasn’t feeling very funny and everyone laughed, and we all danced and danced and danced and laughed and danced until my ears were booming, and everyone had a really cool time, and our feet hurt, so when we sat down, I made a tower of place mats from the bar, as mummy sat there with that friend of Uncle Ronnie trying to massage her feet, and she had vodka and cokes - quite a few....and I was up until wayyy after ten o clock, until grandma came to get me and take me to her house for sleeps. I was very tired. And had had too much fizzy, and milkshake, and my tummy hurt. But. Now. Now...I hurt...in a different way.
And I am only six.
I think mum said that was what gave grandma the virus. That she came to the wedding to get me. And that I stayed at her house. And that I didn’t know it but I had the virus. Then. That I caught it at the wedding. And I stayed at grandmas for the week because mummy wasn’t well after the wedding either and grandmas said mummy’s mentally healthiness was important. I don’t know what that means but I think mummy needs to drink more water, and watch her health, and brush her teeth twice a day, and get exercise.
And then we found out mummy had the virus.
Grandma tutted a lot when she told me ...of the hundred people at that wedding, over half contradicticated the nasty virus from the dancing and the sharing of space and singing, and not social distancing for many hours. And of that 50 people, there were 42 different families represented - that didn’t even include the staff of the hotel who were there too. And of those 42 families who all took the virus home from the wedding, as a con...say...quenceical of that, grandma said, perhaps upwards of 15,000 people were affected ...15,000...because 42 different homes had five different friends they saw, and those five saw five more, and those five snd those five and those five and so on, and contracepted the virus from people who had been at that ‘ille....illy.... illegal gathering’ in the pandemic, and aren’t they covvvidiotssss because people got sick who hadn’t even been near the wedding themselves.
Which is stupid. And sad. Isn’t it?
It is very continuous....contagent.....contagious mum said, which means it passes to humans very quickly. I think I got it from Auntie Pam ... I mean...woahhhhh 15,000 people?! There’s only 200 at my school and I hate standing out in assembly in front of that many. So. How many is 15,000. I can’t even count that high.
Fif.
Teen.
Thousand.
And it’s keeping going so, who knows how many more people have it now from just that one time we danced, and ate, and sang the night away. That’s. So. Many. People. It made me so sad.
Mum said. ...when she wasn’t so sick, she said many wedding guests were meant to quarantine and didn’t, and they kept on going to work and parties and parks, and she...she said - when she could talk in full sentences - she said she thinks at least 130 people linked to it have died. Yeah. And they weren’t even people AT the wedding. Like I was. Mum said people didn’t wash their hands properly, and were singing in each other’s mouths and sweating and rubbing and kissing and wibbling and wobbling hugging...yuk....and folks at the wedding allll went to work the next day, and on tubes and trains and jumbo jet planes back to America and France, and schools, and jobs in marketing and administ...admininin....office works in the next few days (struggles to say the word) asymptomatic...mummy taught me that word and I’ve heard it on the news....that means at that time they weren’t showing any symptoms ...and then, boom.
Sick.
Cant breathe.
Dead.
My mum can’t breathe very well.
I am very worried.
We got so many phonecalls. I asked mum why we were getting so many phone calls and she said..because people were selfish and didn’t think. Mum said we shouldn’t have gone...it shouldn’t had happened - she always cries when she talks about it now....she said....she said we were all too close for too long, and that the wedding was a ‘super spreader’.
I said to mum super things usually were good things like superman or super cool and she cried and hugged me and said ‘I know. I know’. That was before. When she had the energy for hugging back. Auntie Pamela spent allllll her honeymoon holiday time in hospital. They say she’s getting better. I hope she does. New Uncle Ronnie was ok but he looks so thin and sad on the FaceTime calls to mum from outside the hospital, and his hair looks like a bush, and his face is like a bit of a beard, but not a very good one. I could see it because....he wasn’t even wearing a mask and there were other patients near him smoking and coughing and laughing and I was thinking....why are you not thinking what I am thinking New Uncle Ronnie? Wear. A. Mask.
My clock says 19:18. I learnt at school in lockdown, that that was The end of World War One. I wonder if this pandemic will take four years to end? Or will it be over by Christmas? I had the virus and it felt like...a cold. I was staying at grandmas when I got...shivery. And hot. And cold. And sore. And a little teeny rash. I couldn’t smell anything which was weird cos I love grandmas perfume and she wears a lot of it....wore. Wore a lot of it.
Today it’s grandmas funeral.
In the morning.
9:30 am.
It took six days.
From the wedding, to her death.
Feeling unwell.
Getting hot.
Cant breathe.
Hospital.
Heart attack.
Gone.
Six.
And now it’s her funeral.
She’s gone. That’s how I understand that she’s not here. She’s. Just. Gone.
And. I don’t want to go.
And I lie here next to mummy - can you hear her?....and her heart is beating so fast. It’s like a bomb. Ticking up and up and up and It might fly out of her chest and power itself to the moon and explode into a trillion stars.
I don’t want mummy to leave me too.
I don’t want anyone to see mummy like this. I love you mummy. Get better. I don’t want anyone to see her sick.
Because.
Maybe it’s my fault she has this, and....
Maybe people blame me...for killing grandma.
====
BOXED IN
by Diane Alexander
It was a ‘lack of concentration’ moment. Chopping red peppers. Red peppers. So red that I didn’t even notice the blood…. or the pain… because, well, life sucks right now, and I feel I’ve lost all sense of feeling from the toes up.
There was a moment of confusion - mouth-watering red pepper spilling its deep red juices across my board - to a sickening snap of realisation. Red peppers don’t bleed…..
So what is this pool of claret I see before me?
“Knife, oh razor-sharp knife of mine, what juices do behold me? How doth blood flow from this succulent capsicum and why should it be, that I, a mere mortal of lowliness, be gifted with such an extreme and rare specimen from the exotic fruit garden.”
Sod. Sod the pepper. The pepper isn’t bleeding. It’s me! Its bloody me!
It’s not the first accident I’ve had since being boxed in. I mean, I’ve not wet the bed or anything like that, but stubbing toes, walking into things, smacking my head on the cupboard and dropping heavy crockery and pans, on my feet….. has all been part of my casualty repertoire
“Get me to a hospital for thy broken bones and bleeding torso. Repair me before thine body splitteth open and thine figure falls apart.”
It’s been tough. No, actually it’s been shit. I want to say its been bearable, but it hasn’t. Not always.
The novelty, if one can call it that, more like divergence, wore off a few weeks back. Huge intentions of working out every day and getting fit with Joe Wicks became a chore after only three days. I had never bounced my boobies up and down with such vigour before, so why was I going to do it now, just because half the nation, and the government I might add, says we should get fit and healthy. I AM fit and healthy. Sort of. I don’t need to prove anything to anyone, and flaying the jugs about is actually not my idea of a great work out.
The roots started to appear after a few weeks, and as my hair got longer, there were less sexy bouncy curls and more ropey straggly bits. Other hair grew out of pores I never knew existed and my skin started to look dry and scaly, like a hippo with dermatitis from soap and water overuse. I’ve slapped on moisturiser every day, but I still look like a wrinkled old witch.
I talk to myself. Hell why not? There’s no-one else in the house to talk to, and to be honest I quite enjoy it. It makes for interesting listening. I can’t believe how argumentative I am. And opinionated. God I can be difficult at times. Great discussion though. My defense against my argument which contradicted my opinion, went really well. And I loved the debate. I can’t believe what valid points I made. I really should discuss things with myself more.
But if I’m honest, as the weeks have gone by, things are starting to get a little…. dull. The weather has been glorious, and I’ve been stuck indoors. Alone. Me. By myself. Me and the walls, me and the spiders. Me and the wasps from the wasps nest in the eaves. Me and the TV. Me and Alexa. Me and … ..me. And life has taken on a new normal as I have become a recluse, a hermit, a mad one in a box of…… a little cuckoo, a little more weird, a loner, alone-ly, a little bit calmer, a little lighter, and I feel, an easier person to live with. Either that, or I’ve just got used to not being around people.
So my finger is ditching blood and casting it out of my body like a drainpipe gushing out water on a rainy day. And I’m searching, and I mean searching, because I’m pretty sure I haven’t got any, not in the house anyway, only in the first aid kit in the car, for a plaster or a sticky piece of something that will bind this overzealous gash together and stop the bleeding. I wrap a piece of kitchen roll round it which is a bit pointless, because it’s not a Plenty One sheet, just a cheap pound shop one, so it isn’t very absorbent and basically the blood is just oozing out like an overspilling gutter. I’m feeling queasy, so many spots across the floor, it looks like a Hansel and Gretel trail
And there it is…. Tap tap.
Uh?
Tap tap
Tap tap? On the window? I’m on the first floor! Who the hell is tap tapping my window?
I figure it must be my imaginery friend throwing stones up to get my attention or a phantom car kicking up grit from the road that’s over half a mile away. Or a resident pigeon – I often get one tap tapping at my window at 730 at night to borrow a cup of sugar or something.
Tap tap
Seriously? I’m bleeding here. I really haven’t got time for trivial chit-chat with unknown beings. I’m trying to prepare dinner, cook it and eat it, before I …… actually bleed to death.
Tap tap, tappety tap.
I stop rummaging and look up.
Un…be…lievable. Stood there, arms folded, looking all white and drawn, impatient and irritable with his black cape and gothic eyes staring at me….. Count Drac.
It’s a bit early for you isn’t it?
He glares
I thought you lot only came out at night.
Yes, it is night, I know, but it’s early night, not night night, as in late night… midnight night sort of night.
He stares at me.
I stare back. What?
Can’t you see I’m busy. I’m bleeding everywhere and I can’t find…… ahh. Of course. That’s why you’re here.
Smelt it did you?
You can’t come in mate. Oh don’t give me that look. You can’t. I’m isolating. And shielding. And bleeding. And still rummaging. Lots of ings. Including starving. I must have one in the house somewhere….surely? Pritt stick – will that work? Where’s the bloody super glue when you need it.
Why aren’t you wearing a mask? Don’t you know there’s a pandemic on. You need a face covering.
What do you mean you can’t wear one? Everyone has to wear…….
You can’t work with one on. oh I guess you can’t.
Well we need to stay 2metres apart, so don’t even think about getting close.
I could pop it on a saucer and leave it outside the door. But you better put some gloves on or use anti bac or something. I don’t think I’m infected, but I could be asymptomatic or something and you’d never know.
What? This virus thing? Well it’s a nasty disgusting disease that came from bats….. why are you asking? You should know!
You’re here to deliver it. Great! Thanks. I don’t want it.
I don’t care if you want to give it to me. I …don’t… want it.
Well I just won’t open the window. Then you can’t give it to me.
No. You’re not listening. I don’t want it.
What do you mean sharing?
You have to give me something if I give something to you.
Yeh, but I don’t want what you want to give me. Seriously it’s not a fair swap.
You know when a kid sulks when you won’t give them what they want. He had that look. That ‘it’s not fair, life is so cruel’ look that I almost caved in and opened the window.
Look I’m happy to give. I… just… don’t… want…. Anything… back. Just take the bloody blood. And go.
I took the sodden piece of kitchen roll away from the cut. It was starting to heal.
Look it’s starting to close up now. Oh, not what you wanted to hear.
He was stood with his face pressed to the window, his rancid tongue dragging along the glass as his bloodshot eyes focussed on the soggy wet red tissue on the side.
Well you can have this, but…..
He lurched at the glass.
You need to move away from the window. I’m serious. Move back. 2metres. At least.
I dropped the tissue on a plate. The cut had started to seep open again. I squeezed down hard on my finger and the cut seeped open again. I generously dropped some blobs on the shiny china.
I seriously do not want anything for this. In fact I don’t even want the plate back.
But you need to distance, otherwise I’m not opening this window.
Mesmerised by the glistening pool and red polka-dotted plate, his eyes never faltered but he slowly moved back from the glass.
I grabbed my mask and covered my face. I covered my finger for protection and to stop the flow – didn’t want him launching himself and me - and began to open the window. He was edging forward. I shut it again.
Move away. 2metres. No actually more…. 3 or 4 metres I don’t trust you. You’ve got no bloody mask on. I don’t want you breathing all over me.
I threatened to wipe the plate. He backed away. I placed the plate and quickly shut the window.
He attacked, lapping up the blood like a dog with a juicy bone sucking on the soggy tissue as he left.
I didn’t even see him go.
I found myself on the floor, lying on the spotted floor, feeling like I was waking from a bad dream
I got up, all whoozy-like and I looked at the state of myself. I was covered in red spots like Measles had attacked my clothing.
I found a scraggy piece of lint in the drawer, and wrapped it round my finger, and then whizzed round with reams and reams of Sellotape. It would have to do.
I’d gone off cooking..…and red peppers. And the idea ofchips with ketchup was making my stomach lurch.
The fridge was empty… I’d been scraping up crumbs for several days, and the food delivery wasn’t due for another two . There wasn’t even a morsel of chocolate left.
Daylight, Joe Wicks and boob bouncing was a long way off and I really wasn’t in the mood for another debate tonight. There’s only so much arguing one can do with oneself.
I made a cup of tea, and watched the sun set. Then watched the moon rise, and caught a shooting star in the palm of my hand. I listened to music, did my nails, and tried to read a book. I wrote a poem, then at midnight I baked a cake.
I drew blood and gave blood. Well in my semi-comatose fainting state I did.
My imagination and my craziness ran away with me, as it had yesterday, and the day before that and the day before that. We made it through another day. All of us.
I stayed in and stayed safe. Locked in and locked down. Alone but alive. And just a little …..crazy.
====
I MISS THEM I MISS THEM I MISS THEM
By Sarah Golding
SFX SCRUBBING OF A FLOOR OR SOME SUCH
(Stopping cleaning for a moment)
(Like as in Truly Madly Deeply)
OHHHHhhhhh.
I miss them I miss them I miss them sooo much.
(Starting to scrub the floors again so exertion needed under the words….
I wanted to start again…break it off…I couldn’t cope with not seeing them for so long and the dark thoughts just....creep in don’t they? Maybe it’s better to wait til things are...’normal’ whatever that is.....start clean over….oh…the current obsession with clean…..well, I am….Clean and sober…have a…clean bill of health, making my home….cleannnn, cleaning up my act, and, ya know, if I am talking to myself out loud -as it’s the only time I speak at the moment - I gotta say world, I wanna come clean. It will alllll come out in the wash but…. I think….I think if anyone is listening ...on reflection, and oh have I had time for lots of that....I think I....love them. Yes. I think I very much do. I….can’t stop thinking about them….absence makes the heart grow...fffffffickle....confused....jealous...anxious...no...fonder ....I ...guess. Yes. Today. I feel fonder.
(BIG SIGH)
Right. Tea. I need….tea…
(SFX MAKES TEA)
Lockdown - season one - meant they couldn’t come up at the weekends as usual or I couldn’t go and stay with them in their…quite frankly… mansion of a house compared to my one bedroomed sixth floor flat...and..it’s...so....hard. Being apart. I mean, it’s been months now, and...We obviously can talk on the phone, and they’ve got a zoom account for their work, so we use that to...watch movies and...cook the same meal at the same time on ‘date nights’ - yeah they’re a better cook…just…by a leeeeedle bit...ah who am I kidding?!
I so wish they could pass me their finished dishes through the screen....much better than my bland squelchy efforts...but. It’s not the same.
Not.
The same.
I miss.....Touch. The vibrations of their voice…their..smell....I miss their…heat. I mean. My feet on their cold back was bliss, right? Their arms enfolded around me. Them whispering into my safe space. My warm. And oh their smell! They never told me their scent of choice...wait… they always said I smell good - it’s not scent for them is it? Uhm. Aftershave? I...don’t know...I wish I knew what their scent-er-shave was. I’d buy it and spray it everywhere....everywhere. (Pause) Actually maybe just on the bedding. Don’t want my place smelling like a….a boudoir!?
They left a jumper here the last time and I stupidly washed it, so it smells of my washing powder now, not them. But....I still sleep with it. Hugging it tightly Like some child missing a parent. Weird huh?
Yeah.
It is weird.
I get that.
Weirdy weird...this lockdown is sending me weird.
(PAUSE)
SFX KETTLE BOILS
They had a temperature a few days ago they said. They haven’t posted on their usual social media platform thingummydoodles. And, I am starting to get worried. They haven’t texted - not even sent me their emoji of the day since....Tuesday? No. Nothing.
SFX POURS A CUPPA
Do I....do I call their work or is that too...needy? Are they proper sick? Do they have the virus or are they just sleeping something else off? I mean, we don’t share exactly what we do of our everyday. Well. They don’t. I saw a Facebook tag of them in a bar with a friend on a friend’s account from a few days ago...looked like they went on to someone’s house - ‘with my bubble’ it said on the smiling pic - too smiley. Too. Close. Am I meant to read more In to that? ‘With my bubble?’ Why can’t I be in their bubble??? Why can’t I be ‘with?’ Ohhhhhh....I can’t help but feel jealous of that. Greener than greeeen. The hulk got nothin on me...Oh I can talk myself into such worry huh? Especially as they didn’t tell me. They didn’t tell me they were going to the bars still. Bit stupid at this stage of lockdown I think. I did say to them. I said… it was stupid well not actually TO them but in my head....I think they’ll close them soon. The bars....bar us from the bar....bar bar bar. Just when people need them the most huh?
SFX SIPS TEA
SIGHS IN HAPPINESS AT TEA
Oh my, I could do with a ...proper drink right now. I’ve only got neat gin left. No Tonic. I suppose I could mask up and go to the shops and get some. But. Not everyone is wearing a mask at the moment. That’s a bit mad huh world? I’m a bit...scared to go out to be honest. Simple things like...going in the lift and pressing the buttons become trauma inducing , virus avoiding moments. How much stale air is trapped in those things? How many germs multiplying in the buttons? I just take the stairs but I don’t touch the bannisters so...with my co-ordination that’s quite dangerous ...and thankfully I can open the door with my butt...my ever expanding lockdown butt...... All this unseen peril Keeps me...on the edge. Huh world?
And when I’m outside, it seems it’s just… walking in a wide arc around other folks to avoid them in my face...in my space. I don’t understand why some folks just seem to be just acting like things are...normal....whatever that is. I mean. It’s so...confusing right now...what we are being told we can and can’t do huh?
I saw this brilliant woman do an impression of the essence of the government’s current tirade of conflicting messages. It was like, go outside but...don’t go outside, go to work but ...don’t go to work, you can see your family but you can’t see them… inside....you can see some of them outside, as long as they aren’t too old, (and vulnerable) or young, (and vulnerable) or with underlying health conditions (of being old, or vulnerable), and, as long as you are inside, and they are outside, maybe with, or without a mask, the. That’s maybe ok but not ok, oh, and sneeeeeeze into your elbow not a tissue, and catch it bin it kill it - but make sure you put it in your own bin and then set fire to the contents, and disinfect everything but you don’t need to disinfect everything and just perhaps stay in bed and don’t move don’t speak don’t do anything BUT DO support local shops and businesses and maybe then you’ll be ok. They’ll be ok. We will all be...ok. I mean.
It’s so.
Confusing.
And ...oh it hits me in waves...I was trying to distract myself from it by making two cups of tea, making two meals...I’m...
I’m all alone here right now....
Alone. Alone alone alone! (SINGS) Allll by myselffff!
We’re all alone really aren’t we. In a way. In our heads. In our minds. Even in the biggest crowds we are often very much....alone.
My company...is a ticking clock, and the passing traffic, and whatever doom and gloom news report there is...and (big sigh) ...I can’t see the end of this...it doesn’t seem...temporary any more....there is no horizon even....and I just want...a ...hug. To ...feel. I want to talk to someone who is actually here in the room with me. Not me myself and I...but someone...else...anyone! Now. Not through a cold glass screen on zoom or on the phone. I vibe on peoples presence. Vibe. I love the word viiibe. Viiiiibe. Vvvvvviiiiibe.
Being furloughed isn’t helping. No. I’m a bit worried about money. But then. Who isn’t?
Who
Isn’t?
Are you worried Mrs Teacup?
(MRS TEACUP VOICE)
Well yes I am but I am more concerned that you’re giving me a voice to be honest. So I agree you need to see..someone. Probably a professional....
(NORMAL VOICE)
Hmmm
They were asking for volunteers to help on the farms. Maybe there is one...Down the road? I could help with? Maybe? But. How would I get there? I can’t drive. I don’t want to go on public transport cos...virus. But...I need to Make some more pennies but...virus. I mean. I s’pose I’m not spending much but. Virus. Then less money is coming in too. And that’s a worry. Rent was always tight as it is.
I wonder if I could ask them if I could....move in...? Would that work? I could...I could do their house up for them - I do. Love to decorate...I just moved this furniture around again this morning to a few knocks on the ceiling from him below. Silly old git. But. I hope he’s ok. I started to harmonise gently with his singing this morning. He was going through his Beatles catalogue. He put ‘Love me do’ on in his kitchen and I could clearly hear it as I lay in. Dreaming of holding my love…my hearts desire. Of whispering in their ear and having them gently caress my lily white arms and then our eyes meet and. Oh. I miss them, I miss them.
Why aren’t they calling me?
Where are they?
Why aren’t they answering my texts?
Why won’t they pick up when I call? Are they sick? I don’t know. I...don’t...know....
PAUSE
SFX PHONE RINGS....
Oh! It’s them!
(ANSWERS PHONE)
Hello! (PAUSE) You’re....outside the front door? (PAUSE) Oh! Really? For the night? Uhm. (PAUSE) Sure. I guess. But....you’ve been out...in bars and things and I.... (PAUSE) it was from last year...for her birthday? Oh so you didn’t go out!? UHm...well yes, only a little bit jealous....she’s..married? Oh. Good for her. (To self) Good for me. Hmm, What?...you’ve been....isolating so you could see me? (PAUSE) Oh I think I’m going to cry. That’s the loveliest thing anyone’s done for-Ahhh you bring gifts!? And food and…wine? From online?! Oh....I missed you so much! I missed you I missed you and I can’t wait to kiss you! (PAUSE) Oh. Yes. Sorry that was forward. Hmm? You...love it when I talk like that? Right! Wow. Ok yes sorry, I repeat everything at the moment - haven’t actually spoken in real life to someone for months - sure...I’ll buzz you - sorry didn’t mean to leave you out in the cold - Come on in! Up! In and up! I am sorry I am Far Too Excited to speak to someone that isn’t me - I’m loony vibing all over the place. (PAUSE) Yes! I love that word too! Viiiiibe. Ok. No. I won’t hang up until you’re here. In front of me. (PAUSE) Yes. We can do that. Oh stop! You want to...what? Oh my The neighbours you saucy brisket! No I’m not sure what a brisket is it’s the first thing my brain thought of. I think I’m a little bit...overwhelmed! Is this really happening? (PAUSE) Oh. Good. But. Yes. Don’t take the lift. Hurry up the stairs. Cos...virus. Don’t touch the hand rail. Cos...virus. It’s Only 6 flights. Cos...I love on the sixth floor. Live. Live. Sorry. I meant that. (PAUSE) You want me to...keep talking...? Er. You sure? Any confessions to make? Er...Ok. I’ll come clean...talking of which...to be sure of cleanliness, and no viral particles entering on you, maybe...when you get up here maybe Shower first. Shower. Everything....yes even the flowers...shower the flowers for hours and shower me with compliments - and yes let’s drink! To us! Yes! (PAUSE) Keep talking? Uhm ok I’m not sure what to say...ok...yep I’ll just rifff ok um,
experimental sentiments are the rudiments of confidence
and once I thought that we were over
now I see we’re just begun
I cannot wait to see you up here,
start afresh and love someone - oh my. Yes. I said it. No don’t stop coming up the stairs. What? Did you just? ....Say it again. And again! Oh. You do? You do! Well I do you do too too! Yes, Well...I agree. As soon as you’re here. Yes I will! And yes You will! Well I can’t wait to read it from your lips.
Yes.
Ok
But First…..let’s start today…clean over….I’ll start the shower...
====
WHAT DO WE KNOW OF OUR GRANDMOTHERS
by Sarah Golding
What do we know of our grandmothers?
Faces raised
Heads up
Sleeves rolled
They were brave
No nonsense resilient folks
Did they do what they were told?
What do we know of our grand mothers
Fighting for equality
They spearheaded life
As we know it now
And it’s getting better huh?
Agree?
What do we know of our children
Fighting more internally
With this world we deflate
Selfish actions they grate
Inert futures yet to see
What do we know of our own true self
Are we contributing well for the good?
Can the fight of the ancestors
That trod here before
Ignite light in us all as it should?
What do we know of this world that we share?
Cultures creeds riches crude poverty
We ignore those in need
For resource and for greed
It’s our fault
Let’s begin. Now. To care
QUARALOGUES EPISODE TWO SOUND EFFECTS LIST FROM FREESOUND.ORG
- S: FOLEY_Footsteps_Metal_001.wav by conleec | License: Creative Commons 0
- S: R04-26-Apartment Buzzer.wav by craigsmith | License: Creative Commons 0
- S: KITCHEN_AMBIENCE_ROOMTONE_01.wav by justingregoire | License: Creative Commons 0
- S: TeaCup44.wav by ahill86 | License: Creative Commons 0
- S: Tea cup set down 2.mp3 by TheHiraHira | License: Creative Commons 0
- S: Making tea 090413.wav by LG | License: Attribution - Used in full for I MISS THEM I MISS THEM I MISS THEM
- S: Kitchen cleaning - Espresso machine cleaning by Snake16547 | License: Creative Commons 0
- S: cleaning oven.wav by mediagruppen | License: Creative Commons 0
QAUAROLOGUES EPIOSDE THREEEEEEE AND A MERRY CHRISTMASSS TO YOUUUUU
===== ====*****==== =====
A DRUNK HELEN CHRISTMAS
By Matthew McLean
I was watching the TV, a drink in my hand
When I heard that a virus was sweeping the land
They told me to stay home, and never go out
But the fridge is near empty. It feels like a drought
Stock up on essentials, they said on the news
So I'm off to the shop and I'm buying more booze
My leaving the house kit: Hand gel and a mask
My track-and-trace app, and some gin in a flask
Then I'm working from home, and a call from my boss
Must go unanswered, cos I'm on the sauce
Boxed sets on Netflix and Amazon Prime
Cider and vodka and whisky and wine
Doing the garden and painting my hut
My life is a drag when the pubs are all shut
🍺
====
MERMAID
By Sarah Golding
SFX Water, Sea, wind, gulls, the occasional slap of the mermaids tail on the rock
SHELLY
So. Ya wouldn’t think us mermaids n merfolk in general would be affected by what the biped landsquibs are going through yeah? But yeah tho...We gots us a serious pandemic sea panic here innit though. It’s terrible yeah? ‘Keep your scales on’ they say but...I’m really ...scared. Us mermaids of the warm seas first got it back in...February. A few mer were mermal- sick - before that but...we didn’t really think much about it. Cos...Merflu is always bad after the new year to be fair, ya get me!?
Yeahhhhh.
I ...I think it was Shellllllby who was my first...closer merpal who got it....maybe got herself
Yeah.
MariKaren won’t wear a mask though. No. And she started coughing yesterday - which was sad but traumatic under water being honest. I thought she was hungover and trying to be...Yknow.... (wretch sound) oh I am sorry my gag reflex swims in if I even just think about someone being (gags) and I (gags). Sorrryyyy. Think nice things thinknicethings. Ok. ‘S gone. Anyways, an hour later or so after the (gags a bit), MariKaren’s scales went bright red cos s he’s like.... hot. Like I mean she’s actually one of my ‘hottest’ friends usually, but I’m talking about the other hot not the ‘hot’ hot if you know what I mean?
Know what I mean?
SFX DOLPHIN SOUNDS
Fever. Like the water around her kind of started to bubble warm. Was...weird. Disconcerting. Made my scales bristle bein’ honest.
So.
Yeah.
Bit worried about her and her passing anything into the sea around her bein’ honest. Sorry I can’t stop sayin’ bein’ honest cos I’m...bein’ honest, bein’ honest.
Yeah. I know she’s got a great bladder so...it’s not...that...cos when we have our drinking sleepover nights at Clam Cove she’s always last swimming at the bar...but hmmmm....hope she never ‘releases’ herself near me iykwim!Cos y’know, when you swim, sometimes you swallow some water and (gags). Ew. No. Not going there.
No
Nope
We asked her to isolate herself, but she’s so ....gregarious and doesn’t seem to care. Silly seacow. My respect for her has fallen to new depths of low. Off the hook. Anchor. Marianna trench. Lowwwww.
SFX DOLPHINS SOUND
Hmm? Social distancing? Yeah, well, I think she has been seeing KenMer the merman with the one tail fin smaller than the other? Nice smile tho. Nice. Smile. No social distancing has been happening there tho....if you get my drift? But yeah I’m a ...a bit worried, cos....well, gotta be honest, and I’m sure I can tell you dolphins cos you’re not as gossipy as the turtles but... totally by accident I saw a bit of ....action with Ken a few months ago m’self - when we were still allowed to mix - and it’s been playin’ on my mind.
SFX DOLPHINS
Ooh I know. Yeah. Quite by accident. He flirtatiously brushed up against my hind scales at the fishbake disco dive in the ole Davy Jones’ locker - they opened up a few new sunken galleons and lined them with anglerfish....looked gorgeous. Like me. So anyways, it was the count of midnight and allll the fish blew themselves out or buried themselves in the sand, and I turned and shouted ‘this is my year waahoooo I love 2020!’ and spun and screamed.... and my hair got stuck in KenMer’s looser lower body scales and we were...entangled hair akimbo - I nearly lost m’coconuts to the turbulent current that ensued - but...for a moment....one... magic moment....in the darkest dark ....it was....special....I felt...something...
SFX DOLPHINS
Well yes pain because anything pulling my long luscious locks hurts of course.....but no, no one else saw....as I said it ...It was dark. Proper dark dark dark. Though we know now not the darkest hour of this year that’s for sure. No I Couldn’t see a thing m’self and, well, he probably didn’t see it were me but ...well I don’t mind telling you, cos you won’t tell anyone will you?
SFX DOLPHINS
Noooo..GOOOOOD....but, yeah, ever since then, I have been harbouring ...feelings for him. Can’t stop thinking about his gorgeous little fin. And the big one. And his....ooh. Tho. Maybe I’m just lonely and he was the first and last person I...connected with - I guess what I am saying is, that I can’t believe I am finally ready to want some mermale company and settle deep down, and there’s a pandemic seademic. Typical innit tho. Ty. Pi. Cal!
I mean. I’d be happy for hAny company at the moment actually - it’s nice t’talk out loud to you bein’ honest. Haven’t spoken out loud since ...March? So what’s that...9 months? 9! Oh. How I wish someone would just.....falll into my lap one day....maybe I should wait around under cruise ships...I wonder if I sing my mermaid song that will lure anyone to the sea? (SINGS) Ahhh ahhh ahh ahh ahh ahh ahh ahh ahhhhh....
SFX ARG AND THEN A FALL AND THEN SPLASHING
Oop. Ooh allo! Here comes another cruise ship jumper. Oh. Oh dear. Ohhh was he lured by my song of sea joy, and quiet yearning to be loved? Oh my. This one ...well, can’t swim very well can he? Oh dear. Poor soul. He’s like a washing machine all of his own. Yeah. I know what a washing machine is. A tanker droppped a cargo load of them near Shellcove. Geekymer managed to work out how to make them work with fishtricity.....using the movement of our excitable fish friends to spark enough kinetic energy to get them going. So yeah. Always gets the tougher stains Out of the clam shells and coconuts anyways...all that spinning.
SFX SPLASHING
Shall I help him?
SFX DOLPHINS
I s’pose it’s my fault he was lured into the water. Maybe.
SFX DOLPHINS
Ooh. I don’t know if I should.
What if he’s got the...?
... But. Ooh. He is quite handsome. From this distance anyways. And his ‘help me’ face. Might just go and...have a little look see. Flirt with him. See what he’s like. If he’s worth a save by a mermaids breath. If he’s red, he’s hot, if he’s hot, I’ll go red. Cos I blush a lot don’t I! But I want him to be hot hot not actually hot cos if he is hot he might have the virus and then where will I be!? Oh the dilemma!
SFX SPLASHING
Ok. He’s gone under.
I can’t resist. I just HAVE to help a soul in need. No matter what the consequence.
His splashing seems so...alluring.
Stay safe dolphins.
Come on Otto. We need to protect others. And I doubt he’s wearing a mask after that jump from up there?
SFX DOLPHINS
What was that? 9 marks for form, 8 for water entry? 8 for flair! Cheeky mammals marking him out of ten for his dive. Well. Fall. I’ll give him a ten for splasharama and drama.
Cmon Otto! Let’s go save us a man! Who knows what adventures this could lead to.....and that’s what life is about isn’t it? On! To hAdventuuuuure!
SFX SQUIDGYSOUND
SFX TAIL SPLAT
SFX SPLASH INTO WATER
END
====
ALL IN THIS TOGETHER
By Diane Alexander
A 45 year old woman is sat on her bed in her bedroom, clutching a tissue. She’s red eyed and red face and tears are pouring from her eyes. She looks exhausted.
She is on the phone, talking to someone.
I can’t do this. I can’t. I really can’t
Pause
I know. I don’t want to though. I really don’t want to.
Pause
I know I’m needed. It’s just so hard.
I just need a few days. Away from it…. just to recharge
Pause
I can’t just phone in sick. If I phone in sick, they’ll think I’ve got it, then I can’t go in at all. And then I’ll have to quarantine for two weeks. That’s not what I want. I don’t need two weeks, I just need a day or two… to sleep
Pause
No, we’re flat out as it is. Staff are dropping like flies. It’s horrendous.
Pause
Four from my shift the other day. One I worked really closely with.
Pause
Oh no. No, no no, no. She’s very ill though. There’s just not enough PPE to go round.
Pause
We did order in. Loads. We go through loads. I went through 24 masks on one shift.
Pause
They do last a few hours, but when you change bed to move to another patient, you have to refresh your PPE.
My face is sore from the sweating and the rubbing and …..I’m not moaning about it. It’s just ….. sore and swollen. Nothing compared to….. It’s just so alien to what we’re used to.
Pause
I can’t cope Mum. I just can’t do this.
I’m tired and exhausted. It’s breaking me.
Pause
I don’t know.
Pause
They can’t give us a day off Mum. I’m working 14 hour shifts now, and even then they don’t want us to go home, because there’s no-one to replace us. A doctor collapsed yesterday. Through sheer exhaustion.
Pause
No I know you can’t imagine Mum. No-one can. That’s the problem. No-one has any idea. It’s not normal is it. It’s not like a normal day. A normal shift when you go in, do your job, and go home.
Not that any day is ever normal and it isn’t as easy as going in, doing your job and going home, but this…….this is different.
It’s like walking into the unknown. But not. Not really because you know what you’re walking into. It’s just hard to comprehend.
Pause
I wish it were that easy. I go in, positive, charged up. I have a job to do. These people need me and I need to help them. But after minutes…. I just want to turn around and go home.
I just feel so …. helpless.
Pause
I know.
I know mum. I know I’m helping some, of course I am. But not enough.
Normally, on a normal day, I go in. I know people are sick, that’s why I’m there. That’s why they’re there. I give them their meds, take their sats, monitor them, fluff up their pillows, chat to them, laugh with them, make them comfortable. And they leave. Alive. Well most of them. Some don’t, of course. They’re too ill, too damaged, too broken, weak, and it’s horrible. And I come home and hate the day, because we lost a patient. We lost a life. We had to let someone go, or we tried damned hard and we couldn’t save them. And you feel sad and a sense of failure but you know you did all you could.
Pause
Noooo, no this isn’t the same. This is …..unreal
This is fighting an unknown entity. This is doing battle with something you can’t beat. It’s picking up the weapons and doing everything in your power to strike it down, take it out and diminish it ..… with every single patient and every body that comes through that door. The same battle with the same invincible enemy that just gets stronger and stronger with every strike. It’s relentless. It’s soul destroying.
I walk in and those ….those poor people. Lying there. Struggling to breathe. They drifit in and out of consciousness and when they come to, they must wonder where the hell they are. They’re scared. The fear in their eyes is haunting. They cry. ‘Am I going to die, please help me, don’t let me die’
You just want to hug them… and comfort them. And you can’t.
You speak to them, and they can’t understand you. The suits and masks we wear stop legible communication. Half the time we can’t even understand each other.
You try to tell them, to stay calm. They need to control their breathing or they’ll go on a ventilator. Their sats drop and we put them in a coma, and they cry, “will I come out of this. I really don’t want to die” and all I can say is ‘yes, yes, of course you will.
Pause
But I don’t know. How the hell can I know?
They can’t see their family, they’re all alone. We offer them a phone call. It’s all we can do. And give them hope. That they wake up and survive.
She cries.
I don’t want to feel like this anymore. I feel so …. useless
I did this job to help people. This is awful
Long pause – during which she cries.
I remember when Grandpops died. It was the first time I knew of death. I remember that wrench in my guts, the feeling that someone had just thrust their hand inside my stomach, twisted everything inside me and pulled everything out. I was so frightened. I felt pain. I was hurt and confused. Why, why? Why my Grandpops? He wasn’t even that old.
And then you come to realise, that we all go. At some point. It’s life. It’s how it is. We live, we die. There is no option, no other path we can take. It just depends how long our path is, as to how long we live. And with that, it becomes more….bearable. Acceptable. A pain that is justifiable and tolerable because we .. we all die. And it was Grandpops turn.
That pain was unfathomable. This… is ….that pain. This… is that level.
I watch them arrive, I see them leave. It’s like a conveyor belt. I feel like I’m working in a morgue. One in, one out. Bodies coming and going. Going mostly. Never coming back. And it feels so…. so crushing. So heartbreaking.
Their poor families. How they hell do they cope? They can’t even see them. They come into the ward and they’re never seen again. How the hell do you get through that?
She sobs
Pause
I know. It’s breaking me. It’s just so hard.
Pause
I will. I will, of course I will.
Pause
I know I am doing good. I know this is a crises and it’s something that we have to get through. As a country, as a nation, and I know…. I know we’re not alone. The whole world is going through this. It’s just not something you ever think we would live through. It’s frightening.
Pause
No, I’ll be ok. I’m just shattered, and my emotions are high.
Pause
Yes Mum. I’ll be fine. I’m just feeling sorry for myself, and I have no right.
Pause
I know. I don’t think it’s so much feeling sorry for myself, I just feel so helpless, in a job where I normally feel so helpful. It’s just so damn hard.
I’ll call you later.
Pause
I will Mum, I promise. I love you. Stay indoors. Stay safe.
She gets up, looks at herself in the mirror. Wipes her face, and shakes herself as if to brush it all off
Right, get your backside in gear. Take a deep breathe and say after me, ‘you can do this’
I can do this.
You have to do this
I have to do this.
You can’t help people sitting at home.
I can’t help people sitting at home.
No, no damn right I can’t. I can help some. I can save some. I’m sure.
This will pass. Somehow, someday. Soon….. I hope.
Meanwhile, get a grip, get a face mask, and get on
=====
Old Man portals
By Sarah Golding
SFX TICKING CLOCK
I
Sit.
My window’s m’ portal out. Alongside m’telly box. I don’t need nothin else. Nope (sighs).
I’m living time. Living every moment here in this castled solace, from my favourite chair. Just me. Daphne went a good while ago - years...lifetimes ago...but. I still talks to her. Tells her to hush up whilst the news is on so’s I can keep...informed. Through our portal. To th’outside.
See, right now, so the portal says, Outside and beyond our doorstep is a danger. Outside and beyond our doorstep is...no more portals. No more telly. Just. A recipe for longer, more ...indefinite Sleep. Ha, yeah, that’s one way of putting it. I don’t sleep much at all these days unless by accident. There’s only so many minutes I have left and I’d like to see as many of them awake as I can.
Why? Why why why, well! There’s a...virus they say, hmm? If I’m hearing right, it’s Like the one from 1918 that took so many. So many who had survived that first terrible Nothin’-Great-About-it war. I was in the second one. A player they say. Saw France...Africa. Never been back. Wasn’t a holiday eh? No. But...I miss it. A bit. Not the places...the peoples. The...cameraderie the chums...my pals of the 22nd. Kept my cap all this time....it’s over there. On the sideboard. M’grandson Douglas used to wear it when he was a wee lad. When I was spritely enough to get down on the floor and line up the soldiers with him. He’s 22 now. Don’t see him. At all. None of ‘em come round. I mean they don’t live near now anyways but, Well, they can’t really anyways. Daphne kept us together see!? She phoned folks and organised folks and...come round for Sunday lunch and all that but. That’s fine now. It’s just me and my portals now. Third one being my mind of course. My ...memories. And then there’s the box sets. Douglas sends me the box sets. Or maybe his mum. I....forget.
SIGH
I’m not worried about dying now. So. If the enemy - the virus did gets in ‘ere, well. I guess I’d...do my best to fight it. I still gots shrapnel in me leg, and that ain’t killed me so...I don’t think a virus is gonna do me harm. I want to go like Daphne. Sleepin. Safe. Warm. Happy. Not knowin....Yknow.
But
I’m not ready to go anywhere else yet. No. Not yet eh? I lied a bit when I said I see no one. There’s a carer or two come round once a day. Ariadne and Felix or Feliz - can’t quite understand em all - they talk so fast! They come in and sort me out. Gimme a wash n a shave n sort me out some food for the day, bit of a clean up...not that I make much mess all my shuffling. They said I should attach cleaning cloths to me feet...that’s keep the place feet tidy eh!? Haven’t seen Feliz or Felix for a bit tho. Hope he hasn’t succumbed. There was no ...meat on His bones. I used to say ‘you eat this slop lad / you need it more than I’! And he’d be like ‘Oh Mr Taylor, you are a card innit tho’ and I was like...what does that mean? And...well, he couldn’t explain it.
Nice to hear my voice out loud tho. Some days - when they don’t come for whatever reason I...well, I don’t say a word do I, no? No I don’t. If the carers didn’t come I gots to thinkin maybe my mouth would close up. And my nose. And my eyes would fuse shut and I’d just be in the dark, not breathing. Not eating. Not seeing. Not feeling. And then I get to thinkin...well...that’s just death huh? Like death counterfeiting sleep. Oh sleeve of unenviable darkness I fear ye not. Cowards die many times before their deaths I say! But ...I ponder it lightly. I’m not...morbid about it. It comes to everyone...one way or another. Let me be boiled to death with melancholy I say. For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come. What dreams. What dreams.
For now though, I am still glad to be here. Watching. Listening to my portals. Thinking go now!? Now what’s they got is SO good. There were times when I lived through and in and in between where hateful death put on his ugliest mask. And now. Folks should wear a simple mask to simply stop them dying. A simple thing. I mean why not do it? These ‘Karen’s’ confuse me - shrieking like banshees about their rights and their anxiety? Just wear the damn mask girl. This is the problem with the now. Folks don’t value community enough. I sat on me wall this morning - wearing my mask - and not one person said good morning. I had to say it first to get any sort of grunt. I mean. Whats that about? What have I done? Why am I ...ignored? Transparent already? If I hadn’t spoke on the phone to the doctor this week I’d think I was a ghost. A present ghost. Ohhh people. Talk to folks, cos, like me, maybe we haven’t spoken out loud for a while. Speak to folks, phone folks, and Douglas tried to zooming me once but oh my eyes weren’t up to it. So. Yeah. Keep safe. Wear a mask. Cos...If you could see the virus - orrrr....the mustard gas, or the danger, you’d want to protect yourself right? If you could see the bad germs coming out of you. You’d want to protect your brother huh? Yeah. Quick boys! An ecstasy of fumbling....ohhh if they could see it comin as I did they’d be quicker to mask up. They would. You would. Wouldn’t yer? And to be honest all should wear these masks to protect others rather than just ‘emselves, but...they do t see that huh? Do they ‘eck. They’re blinder than me. I see so so clearly compared to them. So clearly. Will they change, hmm?
Nope. I doubt it.
Daft cows. All of em. Entitled. Make them work in the hospitals and the care homes I say. If they’re caught without a mask make them work where they need to wear them twenty four seven. Then that lot protesting against their ‘liberal rights’ with their ‘conspiracy theories’ and ‘it’s all a lie’ will wake up to the facts. Like that um...oh...I don’t recall his name....Saw a Turkish fellow on the telebox - biddiva Karen ‘e was, sayin’ he didn’t believe corona was real until he got it. And. They reported that...He died. He documented his demise. Every step of the virus taking over his body. Lots a leg. Oh. So sad. Was a youngun. Just a youngun. And he won’t be the last. Not if there’s a carry on like there is now. Yep. It’s real. It’s real it is. I know it is. I know it is because....It took my Daphne. Ten days it took. Just ten. Don’t know where she got it from. Could have been the bingo. The pub. Even the newsagents they said. I couldn’t even go to her funeral they said. Because I was in quarantine myself. Wasn’t well at all but...I never ended up in hospital. But....not seeing her off....Oh that hurt. Still does. More than the pain of any flesh wound. That hurt. But. I can imagine her, can’t I ducks. Sitting there. With me. Watchin’ the telebox. I can imagine her. Ut. I wish she was here. I do. I do. Stay safe out there, won’t ya. In your portals. Stay safe.
######
====
Father Christmas
Best Brian blessed pls
No peaking! 😬
So so so....Hellooo everybody....! It’s meeee Father Christmas! Ho ho ho.
Now, I do hope I’m talking to all the good folks of the world. Hmm? Am I!? Well of course I am - you can only hear me if you’re good, ho ho ho! Though if I start to glitch please fight those naughty thoughts children. I hope you will. Or I’ll...disappear. (GLITCHES A LITTLE) And we don’t want th-
Static
Ooh. I think I went a bit then. Did you have some bad thoughts? Say no to one more mince pie, put down the gin, and shun those inappropriate thoughts about that person you fancy and listen...purely...carefully, with all ears - or those tablet readers - as I have some very very veryyy important information to impart. Well. I hope to. If Rudolph will stop trying to nuzzle my toes. Stop Rudolph! It tickles!
Ah Hope. Hope is a wonderous thing isn’t it children? I know that this year has seen a big rise in the amount of letters I have received yearning for the positive side of hope. Woe woe woe. I’ve had to self isolate with Mrs Claus a lot this year, and conduct toy supervising sessions for my wonderful elves Over a variety of social platforms - and, well, it’s actually been rather nice. Being at home. I even surprised Mrs C with an omelette for lunch today. I mean. I started cooking it at breakfast time and the kitchen is a huge mess, but...it’s the thought that counts, right? Righhhht. Unfortunately she has been unwell this afternoon but. I am sure that will pass. (Shouting) Drink more water dear. That’ll help! Poor dear. Not you Rudolph. ’S spelt differently.
Well. 2020 eh? I er... just wanted to...pop on here to ..clear up a few worries you kidsywinks might be having. Because...I’ve heard tell of those Negative Nancy’s - not the one from the One Stars Podcast no no...though she might just make my good list if she works a little harder...the negative Nancy’s are calling me - your friendly Father Christmas, Santa Claus, Saint Nick - a potential super spreader this year. Yes! A super spreader - me!??? Of this terrible virus and...well, it’s simply not true. I just want to assure you that my suit is cleaned by magic for every house and abode of allllll I visit. And I have hand and beard sanitiser on hand - and in beard - Crystal elf is only employed to check me with the hygiene-o-meter before and after each house, flat, boat, yurt, caravan, tent etc etc etceteraaaa - every dwelling I visit TO GIVE YOU GOOD CHILDREN somehing to celebrate your…being good, and kind, and a good listener, a good friend, a good neighbour etc etc etceteraaa, and, if the clean reading isn’t 100% I do a full strip down and resuit (which at height and in cold is ....character building to say the least) so please do not worry. If you want to just wipe the presents packaging I deliver as a precaution before you open it feel free, but it is not necessary!
Also, please do remember to keep those chimneys and routes to the Christmas tree (or wherever you prefer I place the pressies) clear of toys, and stumble inducing obstacles. I nearly came a cropper on a very loud squeaky dogs toy shaped like a well known outward bound politician, and several unmade packs of strewn Lego, a train set and some sticklebricks last year. Don’t want to wake you up In the middle of the night with a howling Santa hmm?
So.
Hope you feel reassured kiddiwinks. You’re very precious to me and I do hope you’re being safe and sensible. Mrs Claus made me several wonderful masks including one that was an actual fake Father Christmas beard, which made us laugh a lot! I could even shave and just wear that I suppose. Might make a change. So yes. Hands face space and all that. If not for you for your fellow humans. You don’t want to be the super spreader, hmmm?
Also, gotta tell you,, Our route across the world will be followed again by NASA, so feel free to plug in to that to check our progress on Christmas Eve, but of course it goes without saying - even though I am saying it - that you have to make sure you are asleep nice and earlyor, well, I just won’t be able to visit! So no late night ghost story binging! Oh, And please thank whoever looks after you for leaving out the port or whisky or Long Island iced tea and cookies. That does very much keep me warm of a cold December evening. What’s that Rudolph? Ah yes. And Rudolph says thank you for the carrots. He also likes ferrero rochet and…what’s that Rudolph? A gin and tonic? Oh hohoho. Don’t be so silly. Though maybe that might be a nice change foe me….Or of course any chocolate. Maybe a box of them. And Jaffa cakes. Not that I am being greedy, I’m just, y’know, giving you suggestions. If you need them. Lovely.
Now. Here’s the bit where I ask you what you -yes lovely you, want for Christmas most of all. Have you been a good boy, girl, person , x this year hmm? Have you? Can you think what you would love most of all? Well good... though. I can’t bring anyone back from beyond, rid the world of the virus, instantly kill any bad people or roll back time, make you fly, invisible, not have to go to school ever agin etc etc etceteraaa. Sorry. Now, I’m going to count to three, and I would like to hear your thoughts - yes, out loud - so, when I count down, please send me your topmost wish for Christmas. Something you truly really really really really really really really really really really really really really want. Ready? 3...2...1.
Oooh. Now. That’s an ask isn’t it?! I know you shouldn’t say your wishes out loud but yes, if more of us wished for world peace, good health and happiness for all, and people to be nicer to each other, maybe we could make a difference. In fact. Shall we try to wish for that anyway? At the same time? For Peace, good health and happiness and for people to be nicer, and kind to each other? Ready? 3...2..1 wishhhh!
We wish for peace, for good health and happiness and for people to be nicer, and kind to each other.
Ah.
Good work.
I am certain we have made a difference in the positiv-o-meter - ah yes look! Happiness is up 15%, 3 billion people feel more at peace and 30% more folks have vowed to wash their hands for the whole twenty seconds and do both sides! Marvellous work dreamers! Marvellous. Ho ho ho.
Well folks. My internet connection looks unstable so I must go. Mrs Clause says I must get the food off the ceiling...and the cupboards..and the kitchen elves need a bath. I might jump in with them.
(GLITCHES)
Stop those naughty thoughts people...
So. Do stay safe out there.
I should go out for a run with Rudolph. Just as far as the local pole snowdrift. We need to practice his quick stopping you see. He kept overshooting the high rise buildings last year and we ended up going vertically down far too often. Not so good when you’re filled with those fine mince pies.
Have a wonderful day good people. Love to you and yours. Stay safe. Stay kind. Stay joyous and Merry Christmas to all and to all a Ho Ho Hoooooo
(Now, where did Mrs Clause put those marigolds.)
=====
CHRISTMAS IS A FEELING
By Sarah Golding
Ohhh
Christmas is a feeling
It starts within your heart
Emitted in short bursts of warm
And sometimes like a fart
A favourite drink cracked open
A call to distant chums
A gathering (online tho now)
To laugh and sing, joke puns
No matter your religion
Or way of life it’s true
You too can feel so christmassy
So gwan, try it, doooo
You get it from fine company
A movie or a song
I hope you too feel Christmassy
To last a whole year long
x
- A DRUNK HELEN CHRISTMAS By Matthew McLean Performed by Sarah Golding
- MERMAID'S TALE By Sarah Golding Performed by Angelique Lazarus
- ALL IN THIS TOGETHER By Diane Alexander Performed by Diane Alexander
- OLDMAN PORTALS By Sarah Golding Performed by Sarah Golding
- FATHER CHRISTMAS By Sarah Golding Performed by Karim Kronfli
- CHRISTMAS IS A FEELING written and performed by Sarah Golding
===== ====*****==== =====
A DRUNK HELEN CHRISTMAS
By Matthew McLean
I was watching the TV, a drink in my hand
When I heard that a virus was sweeping the land
They told me to stay home, and never go out
But the fridge is near empty. It feels like a drought
Stock up on essentials, they said on the news
So I'm off to the shop and I'm buying more booze
My leaving the house kit: Hand gel and a mask
My track-and-trace app, and some gin in a flask
Then I'm working from home, and a call from my boss
Must go unanswered, cos I'm on the sauce
Boxed sets on Netflix and Amazon Prime
Cider and vodka and whisky and wine
Doing the garden and painting my hut
My life is a drag when the pubs are all shut
🍺
====
MERMAID
By Sarah Golding
SFX Water, Sea, wind, gulls, the occasional slap of the mermaids tail on the rock
SHELLY
So. Ya wouldn’t think us mermaids n merfolk in general would be affected by what the biped landsquibs are going through yeah? But yeah tho...We gots us a serious pandemic sea panic here innit though. It’s terrible yeah? ‘Keep your scales on’ they say but...I’m really ...scared. Us mermaids of the warm seas first got it back in...February. A few mer were mermal- sick - before that but...we didn’t really think much about it. Cos...Merflu is always bad after the new year to be fair, ya get me!?
Yeahhhhh.
I ...I think it was Shellllllby who was my first...closer merpal who got it....maybe got herself
Yeah.
MariKaren won’t wear a mask though. No. And she started coughing yesterday - which was sad but traumatic under water being honest. I thought she was hungover and trying to be...Yknow.... (wretch sound) oh I am sorry my gag reflex swims in if I even just think about someone being (gags) and I (gags). Sorrryyyy. Think nice things thinknicethings. Ok. ‘S gone. Anyways, an hour later or so after the (gags a bit), MariKaren’s scales went bright red cos s he’s like.... hot. Like I mean she’s actually one of my ‘hottest’ friends usually, but I’m talking about the other hot not the ‘hot’ hot if you know what I mean?
Know what I mean?
SFX DOLPHIN SOUNDS
Fever. Like the water around her kind of started to bubble warm. Was...weird. Disconcerting. Made my scales bristle bein’ honest.
So.
Yeah.
Bit worried about her and her passing anything into the sea around her bein’ honest. Sorry I can’t stop sayin’ bein’ honest cos I’m...bein’ honest, bein’ honest.
Yeah. I know she’s got a great bladder so...it’s not...that...cos when we have our drinking sleepover nights at Clam Cove she’s always last swimming at the bar...but hmmmm....hope she never ‘releases’ herself near me iykwim!Cos y’know, when you swim, sometimes you swallow some water and (gags). Ew. No. Not going there.
No
Nope
We asked her to isolate herself, but she’s so ....gregarious and doesn’t seem to care. Silly seacow. My respect for her has fallen to new depths of low. Off the hook. Anchor. Marianna trench. Lowwwww.
SFX DOLPHINS SOUND
Hmm? Social distancing? Yeah, well, I think she has been seeing KenMer the merman with the one tail fin smaller than the other? Nice smile tho. Nice. Smile. No social distancing has been happening there tho....if you get my drift? But yeah I’m a ...a bit worried, cos....well, gotta be honest, and I’m sure I can tell you dolphins cos you’re not as gossipy as the turtles but... totally by accident I saw a bit of ....action with Ken a few months ago m’self - when we were still allowed to mix - and it’s been playin’ on my mind.
SFX DOLPHINS
Ooh I know. Yeah. Quite by accident. He flirtatiously brushed up against my hind scales at the fishbake disco dive in the ole Davy Jones’ locker - they opened up a few new sunken galleons and lined them with anglerfish....looked gorgeous. Like me. So anyways, it was the count of midnight and allll the fish blew themselves out or buried themselves in the sand, and I turned and shouted ‘this is my year waahoooo I love 2020!’ and spun and screamed.... and my hair got stuck in KenMer’s looser lower body scales and we were...entangled hair akimbo - I nearly lost m’coconuts to the turbulent current that ensued - but...for a moment....one... magic moment....in the darkest dark ....it was....special....I felt...something...
SFX DOLPHINS
Well yes pain because anything pulling my long luscious locks hurts of course.....but no, no one else saw....as I said it ...It was dark. Proper dark dark dark. Though we know now not the darkest hour of this year that’s for sure. No I Couldn’t see a thing m’self and, well, he probably didn’t see it were me but ...well I don’t mind telling you, cos you won’t tell anyone will you?
SFX DOLPHINS
Noooo..GOOOOOD....but, yeah, ever since then, I have been harbouring ...feelings for him. Can’t stop thinking about his gorgeous little fin. And the big one. And his....ooh. Tho. Maybe I’m just lonely and he was the first and last person I...connected with - I guess what I am saying is, that I can’t believe I am finally ready to want some mermale company and settle deep down, and there’s a pandemic seademic. Typical innit tho. Ty. Pi. Cal!
I mean. I’d be happy for hAny company at the moment actually - it’s nice t’talk out loud to you bein’ honest. Haven’t spoken out loud since ...March? So what’s that...9 months? 9! Oh. How I wish someone would just.....falll into my lap one day....maybe I should wait around under cruise ships...I wonder if I sing my mermaid song that will lure anyone to the sea? (SINGS) Ahhh ahhh ahh ahh ahh ahh ahh ahh ahhhhh....
SFX ARG AND THEN A FALL AND THEN SPLASHING
Oop. Ooh allo! Here comes another cruise ship jumper. Oh. Oh dear. Ohhh was he lured by my song of sea joy, and quiet yearning to be loved? Oh my. This one ...well, can’t swim very well can he? Oh dear. Poor soul. He’s like a washing machine all of his own. Yeah. I know what a washing machine is. A tanker droppped a cargo load of them near Shellcove. Geekymer managed to work out how to make them work with fishtricity.....using the movement of our excitable fish friends to spark enough kinetic energy to get them going. So yeah. Always gets the tougher stains Out of the clam shells and coconuts anyways...all that spinning.
SFX SPLASHING
Shall I help him?
SFX DOLPHINS
I s’pose it’s my fault he was lured into the water. Maybe.
SFX DOLPHINS
Ooh. I don’t know if I should.
What if he’s got the...?
... But. Ooh. He is quite handsome. From this distance anyways. And his ‘help me’ face. Might just go and...have a little look see. Flirt with him. See what he’s like. If he’s worth a save by a mermaids breath. If he’s red, he’s hot, if he’s hot, I’ll go red. Cos I blush a lot don’t I! But I want him to be hot hot not actually hot cos if he is hot he might have the virus and then where will I be!? Oh the dilemma!
SFX SPLASHING
Ok. He’s gone under.
I can’t resist. I just HAVE to help a soul in need. No matter what the consequence.
His splashing seems so...alluring.
Stay safe dolphins.
Come on Otto. We need to protect others. And I doubt he’s wearing a mask after that jump from up there?
SFX DOLPHINS
What was that? 9 marks for form, 8 for water entry? 8 for flair! Cheeky mammals marking him out of ten for his dive. Well. Fall. I’ll give him a ten for splasharama and drama.
Cmon Otto! Let’s go save us a man! Who knows what adventures this could lead to.....and that’s what life is about isn’t it? On! To hAdventuuuuure!
SFX SQUIDGYSOUND
SFX TAIL SPLAT
SFX SPLASH INTO WATER
END
====
ALL IN THIS TOGETHER
By Diane Alexander
A 45 year old woman is sat on her bed in her bedroom, clutching a tissue. She’s red eyed and red face and tears are pouring from her eyes. She looks exhausted.
She is on the phone, talking to someone.
I can’t do this. I can’t. I really can’t
Pause
I know. I don’t want to though. I really don’t want to.
Pause
I know I’m needed. It’s just so hard.
I just need a few days. Away from it…. just to recharge
Pause
I can’t just phone in sick. If I phone in sick, they’ll think I’ve got it, then I can’t go in at all. And then I’ll have to quarantine for two weeks. That’s not what I want. I don’t need two weeks, I just need a day or two… to sleep
Pause
No, we’re flat out as it is. Staff are dropping like flies. It’s horrendous.
Pause
Four from my shift the other day. One I worked really closely with.
Pause
Oh no. No, no no, no. She’s very ill though. There’s just not enough PPE to go round.
Pause
We did order in. Loads. We go through loads. I went through 24 masks on one shift.
Pause
They do last a few hours, but when you change bed to move to another patient, you have to refresh your PPE.
My face is sore from the sweating and the rubbing and …..I’m not moaning about it. It’s just ….. sore and swollen. Nothing compared to….. It’s just so alien to what we’re used to.
Pause
I can’t cope Mum. I just can’t do this.
I’m tired and exhausted. It’s breaking me.
Pause
I don’t know.
Pause
They can’t give us a day off Mum. I’m working 14 hour shifts now, and even then they don’t want us to go home, because there’s no-one to replace us. A doctor collapsed yesterday. Through sheer exhaustion.
Pause
No I know you can’t imagine Mum. No-one can. That’s the problem. No-one has any idea. It’s not normal is it. It’s not like a normal day. A normal shift when you go in, do your job, and go home.
Not that any day is ever normal and it isn’t as easy as going in, doing your job and going home, but this…….this is different.
It’s like walking into the unknown. But not. Not really because you know what you’re walking into. It’s just hard to comprehend.
Pause
I wish it were that easy. I go in, positive, charged up. I have a job to do. These people need me and I need to help them. But after minutes…. I just want to turn around and go home.
I just feel so …. helpless.
Pause
I know.
I know mum. I know I’m helping some, of course I am. But not enough.
Normally, on a normal day, I go in. I know people are sick, that’s why I’m there. That’s why they’re there. I give them their meds, take their sats, monitor them, fluff up their pillows, chat to them, laugh with them, make them comfortable. And they leave. Alive. Well most of them. Some don’t, of course. They’re too ill, too damaged, too broken, weak, and it’s horrible. And I come home and hate the day, because we lost a patient. We lost a life. We had to let someone go, or we tried damned hard and we couldn’t save them. And you feel sad and a sense of failure but you know you did all you could.
Pause
Noooo, no this isn’t the same. This is …..unreal
This is fighting an unknown entity. This is doing battle with something you can’t beat. It’s picking up the weapons and doing everything in your power to strike it down, take it out and diminish it ..… with every single patient and every body that comes through that door. The same battle with the same invincible enemy that just gets stronger and stronger with every strike. It’s relentless. It’s soul destroying.
I walk in and those ….those poor people. Lying there. Struggling to breathe. They drifit in and out of consciousness and when they come to, they must wonder where the hell they are. They’re scared. The fear in their eyes is haunting. They cry. ‘Am I going to die, please help me, don’t let me die’
You just want to hug them… and comfort them. And you can’t.
You speak to them, and they can’t understand you. The suits and masks we wear stop legible communication. Half the time we can’t even understand each other.
You try to tell them, to stay calm. They need to control their breathing or they’ll go on a ventilator. Their sats drop and we put them in a coma, and they cry, “will I come out of this. I really don’t want to die” and all I can say is ‘yes, yes, of course you will.
Pause
But I don’t know. How the hell can I know?
They can’t see their family, they’re all alone. We offer them a phone call. It’s all we can do. And give them hope. That they wake up and survive.
She cries.
I don’t want to feel like this anymore. I feel so …. useless
I did this job to help people. This is awful
Long pause – during which she cries.
I remember when Grandpops died. It was the first time I knew of death. I remember that wrench in my guts, the feeling that someone had just thrust their hand inside my stomach, twisted everything inside me and pulled everything out. I was so frightened. I felt pain. I was hurt and confused. Why, why? Why my Grandpops? He wasn’t even that old.
And then you come to realise, that we all go. At some point. It’s life. It’s how it is. We live, we die. There is no option, no other path we can take. It just depends how long our path is, as to how long we live. And with that, it becomes more….bearable. Acceptable. A pain that is justifiable and tolerable because we .. we all die. And it was Grandpops turn.
That pain was unfathomable. This… is ….that pain. This… is that level.
I watch them arrive, I see them leave. It’s like a conveyor belt. I feel like I’m working in a morgue. One in, one out. Bodies coming and going. Going mostly. Never coming back. And it feels so…. so crushing. So heartbreaking.
Their poor families. How they hell do they cope? They can’t even see them. They come into the ward and they’re never seen again. How the hell do you get through that?
She sobs
Pause
I know. It’s breaking me. It’s just so hard.
Pause
I will. I will, of course I will.
Pause
I know I am doing good. I know this is a crises and it’s something that we have to get through. As a country, as a nation, and I know…. I know we’re not alone. The whole world is going through this. It’s just not something you ever think we would live through. It’s frightening.
Pause
No, I’ll be ok. I’m just shattered, and my emotions are high.
Pause
Yes Mum. I’ll be fine. I’m just feeling sorry for myself, and I have no right.
Pause
I know. I don’t think it’s so much feeling sorry for myself, I just feel so helpless, in a job where I normally feel so helpful. It’s just so damn hard.
I’ll call you later.
Pause
I will Mum, I promise. I love you. Stay indoors. Stay safe.
She gets up, looks at herself in the mirror. Wipes her face, and shakes herself as if to brush it all off
Right, get your backside in gear. Take a deep breathe and say after me, ‘you can do this’
I can do this.
You have to do this
I have to do this.
You can’t help people sitting at home.
I can’t help people sitting at home.
No, no damn right I can’t. I can help some. I can save some. I’m sure.
This will pass. Somehow, someday. Soon….. I hope.
Meanwhile, get a grip, get a face mask, and get on
=====
Old Man portals
By Sarah Golding
SFX TICKING CLOCK
I
Sit.
My window’s m’ portal out. Alongside m’telly box. I don’t need nothin else. Nope (sighs).
I’m living time. Living every moment here in this castled solace, from my favourite chair. Just me. Daphne went a good while ago - years...lifetimes ago...but. I still talks to her. Tells her to hush up whilst the news is on so’s I can keep...informed. Through our portal. To th’outside.
See, right now, so the portal says, Outside and beyond our doorstep is a danger. Outside and beyond our doorstep is...no more portals. No more telly. Just. A recipe for longer, more ...indefinite Sleep. Ha, yeah, that’s one way of putting it. I don’t sleep much at all these days unless by accident. There’s only so many minutes I have left and I’d like to see as many of them awake as I can.
Why? Why why why, well! There’s a...virus they say, hmm? If I’m hearing right, it’s Like the one from 1918 that took so many. So many who had survived that first terrible Nothin’-Great-About-it war. I was in the second one. A player they say. Saw France...Africa. Never been back. Wasn’t a holiday eh? No. But...I miss it. A bit. Not the places...the peoples. The...cameraderie the chums...my pals of the 22nd. Kept my cap all this time....it’s over there. On the sideboard. M’grandson Douglas used to wear it when he was a wee lad. When I was spritely enough to get down on the floor and line up the soldiers with him. He’s 22 now. Don’t see him. At all. None of ‘em come round. I mean they don’t live near now anyways but, Well, they can’t really anyways. Daphne kept us together see!? She phoned folks and organised folks and...come round for Sunday lunch and all that but. That’s fine now. It’s just me and my portals now. Third one being my mind of course. My ...memories. And then there’s the box sets. Douglas sends me the box sets. Or maybe his mum. I....forget.
SIGH
I’m not worried about dying now. So. If the enemy - the virus did gets in ‘ere, well. I guess I’d...do my best to fight it. I still gots shrapnel in me leg, and that ain’t killed me so...I don’t think a virus is gonna do me harm. I want to go like Daphne. Sleepin. Safe. Warm. Happy. Not knowin....Yknow.
But
I’m not ready to go anywhere else yet. No. Not yet eh? I lied a bit when I said I see no one. There’s a carer or two come round once a day. Ariadne and Felix or Feliz - can’t quite understand em all - they talk so fast! They come in and sort me out. Gimme a wash n a shave n sort me out some food for the day, bit of a clean up...not that I make much mess all my shuffling. They said I should attach cleaning cloths to me feet...that’s keep the place feet tidy eh!? Haven’t seen Feliz or Felix for a bit tho. Hope he hasn’t succumbed. There was no ...meat on His bones. I used to say ‘you eat this slop lad / you need it more than I’! And he’d be like ‘Oh Mr Taylor, you are a card innit tho’ and I was like...what does that mean? And...well, he couldn’t explain it.
Nice to hear my voice out loud tho. Some days - when they don’t come for whatever reason I...well, I don’t say a word do I, no? No I don’t. If the carers didn’t come I gots to thinkin maybe my mouth would close up. And my nose. And my eyes would fuse shut and I’d just be in the dark, not breathing. Not eating. Not seeing. Not feeling. And then I get to thinkin...well...that’s just death huh? Like death counterfeiting sleep. Oh sleeve of unenviable darkness I fear ye not. Cowards die many times before their deaths I say! But ...I ponder it lightly. I’m not...morbid about it. It comes to everyone...one way or another. Let me be boiled to death with melancholy I say. For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come. What dreams. What dreams.
For now though, I am still glad to be here. Watching. Listening to my portals. Thinking go now!? Now what’s they got is SO good. There were times when I lived through and in and in between where hateful death put on his ugliest mask. And now. Folks should wear a simple mask to simply stop them dying. A simple thing. I mean why not do it? These ‘Karen’s’ confuse me - shrieking like banshees about their rights and their anxiety? Just wear the damn mask girl. This is the problem with the now. Folks don’t value community enough. I sat on me wall this morning - wearing my mask - and not one person said good morning. I had to say it first to get any sort of grunt. I mean. Whats that about? What have I done? Why am I ...ignored? Transparent already? If I hadn’t spoke on the phone to the doctor this week I’d think I was a ghost. A present ghost. Ohhh people. Talk to folks, cos, like me, maybe we haven’t spoken out loud for a while. Speak to folks, phone folks, and Douglas tried to zooming me once but oh my eyes weren’t up to it. So. Yeah. Keep safe. Wear a mask. Cos...If you could see the virus - orrrr....the mustard gas, or the danger, you’d want to protect yourself right? If you could see the bad germs coming out of you. You’d want to protect your brother huh? Yeah. Quick boys! An ecstasy of fumbling....ohhh if they could see it comin as I did they’d be quicker to mask up. They would. You would. Wouldn’t yer? And to be honest all should wear these masks to protect others rather than just ‘emselves, but...they do t see that huh? Do they ‘eck. They’re blinder than me. I see so so clearly compared to them. So clearly. Will they change, hmm?
Nope. I doubt it.
Daft cows. All of em. Entitled. Make them work in the hospitals and the care homes I say. If they’re caught without a mask make them work where they need to wear them twenty four seven. Then that lot protesting against their ‘liberal rights’ with their ‘conspiracy theories’ and ‘it’s all a lie’ will wake up to the facts. Like that um...oh...I don’t recall his name....Saw a Turkish fellow on the telebox - biddiva Karen ‘e was, sayin’ he didn’t believe corona was real until he got it. And. They reported that...He died. He documented his demise. Every step of the virus taking over his body. Lots a leg. Oh. So sad. Was a youngun. Just a youngun. And he won’t be the last. Not if there’s a carry on like there is now. Yep. It’s real. It’s real it is. I know it is. I know it is because....It took my Daphne. Ten days it took. Just ten. Don’t know where she got it from. Could have been the bingo. The pub. Even the newsagents they said. I couldn’t even go to her funeral they said. Because I was in quarantine myself. Wasn’t well at all but...I never ended up in hospital. But....not seeing her off....Oh that hurt. Still does. More than the pain of any flesh wound. That hurt. But. I can imagine her, can’t I ducks. Sitting there. With me. Watchin’ the telebox. I can imagine her. Ut. I wish she was here. I do. I do. Stay safe out there, won’t ya. In your portals. Stay safe.
######
====
Father Christmas
Best Brian blessed pls
No peaking! 😬
So so so....Hellooo everybody....! It’s meeee Father Christmas! Ho ho ho.
Now, I do hope I’m talking to all the good folks of the world. Hmm? Am I!? Well of course I am - you can only hear me if you’re good, ho ho ho! Though if I start to glitch please fight those naughty thoughts children. I hope you will. Or I’ll...disappear. (GLITCHES A LITTLE) And we don’t want th-
Static
Ooh. I think I went a bit then. Did you have some bad thoughts? Say no to one more mince pie, put down the gin, and shun those inappropriate thoughts about that person you fancy and listen...purely...carefully, with all ears - or those tablet readers - as I have some very very veryyy important information to impart. Well. I hope to. If Rudolph will stop trying to nuzzle my toes. Stop Rudolph! It tickles!
Ah Hope. Hope is a wonderous thing isn’t it children? I know that this year has seen a big rise in the amount of letters I have received yearning for the positive side of hope. Woe woe woe. I’ve had to self isolate with Mrs Claus a lot this year, and conduct toy supervising sessions for my wonderful elves Over a variety of social platforms - and, well, it’s actually been rather nice. Being at home. I even surprised Mrs C with an omelette for lunch today. I mean. I started cooking it at breakfast time and the kitchen is a huge mess, but...it’s the thought that counts, right? Righhhht. Unfortunately she has been unwell this afternoon but. I am sure that will pass. (Shouting) Drink more water dear. That’ll help! Poor dear. Not you Rudolph. ’S spelt differently.
Well. 2020 eh? I er... just wanted to...pop on here to ..clear up a few worries you kidsywinks might be having. Because...I’ve heard tell of those Negative Nancy’s - not the one from the One Stars Podcast no no...though she might just make my good list if she works a little harder...the negative Nancy’s are calling me - your friendly Father Christmas, Santa Claus, Saint Nick - a potential super spreader this year. Yes! A super spreader - me!??? Of this terrible virus and...well, it’s simply not true. I just want to assure you that my suit is cleaned by magic for every house and abode of allllll I visit. And I have hand and beard sanitiser on hand - and in beard - Crystal elf is only employed to check me with the hygiene-o-meter before and after each house, flat, boat, yurt, caravan, tent etc etc etceteraaaa - every dwelling I visit TO GIVE YOU GOOD CHILDREN somehing to celebrate your…being good, and kind, and a good listener, a good friend, a good neighbour etc etc etceteraaa, and, if the clean reading isn’t 100% I do a full strip down and resuit (which at height and in cold is ....character building to say the least) so please do not worry. If you want to just wipe the presents packaging I deliver as a precaution before you open it feel free, but it is not necessary!
Also, please do remember to keep those chimneys and routes to the Christmas tree (or wherever you prefer I place the pressies) clear of toys, and stumble inducing obstacles. I nearly came a cropper on a very loud squeaky dogs toy shaped like a well known outward bound politician, and several unmade packs of strewn Lego, a train set and some sticklebricks last year. Don’t want to wake you up In the middle of the night with a howling Santa hmm?
So.
Hope you feel reassured kiddiwinks. You’re very precious to me and I do hope you’re being safe and sensible. Mrs Claus made me several wonderful masks including one that was an actual fake Father Christmas beard, which made us laugh a lot! I could even shave and just wear that I suppose. Might make a change. So yes. Hands face space and all that. If not for you for your fellow humans. You don’t want to be the super spreader, hmmm?
Also, gotta tell you,, Our route across the world will be followed again by NASA, so feel free to plug in to that to check our progress on Christmas Eve, but of course it goes without saying - even though I am saying it - that you have to make sure you are asleep nice and earlyor, well, I just won’t be able to visit! So no late night ghost story binging! Oh, And please thank whoever looks after you for leaving out the port or whisky or Long Island iced tea and cookies. That does very much keep me warm of a cold December evening. What’s that Rudolph? Ah yes. And Rudolph says thank you for the carrots. He also likes ferrero rochet and…what’s that Rudolph? A gin and tonic? Oh hohoho. Don’t be so silly. Though maybe that might be a nice change foe me….Or of course any chocolate. Maybe a box of them. And Jaffa cakes. Not that I am being greedy, I’m just, y’know, giving you suggestions. If you need them. Lovely.
Now. Here’s the bit where I ask you what you -yes lovely you, want for Christmas most of all. Have you been a good boy, girl, person , x this year hmm? Have you? Can you think what you would love most of all? Well good... though. I can’t bring anyone back from beyond, rid the world of the virus, instantly kill any bad people or roll back time, make you fly, invisible, not have to go to school ever agin etc etc etceteraaa. Sorry. Now, I’m going to count to three, and I would like to hear your thoughts - yes, out loud - so, when I count down, please send me your topmost wish for Christmas. Something you truly really really really really really really really really really really really really really want. Ready? 3...2...1.
Oooh. Now. That’s an ask isn’t it?! I know you shouldn’t say your wishes out loud but yes, if more of us wished for world peace, good health and happiness for all, and people to be nicer to each other, maybe we could make a difference. In fact. Shall we try to wish for that anyway? At the same time? For Peace, good health and happiness and for people to be nicer, and kind to each other? Ready? 3...2..1 wishhhh!
We wish for peace, for good health and happiness and for people to be nicer, and kind to each other.
Ah.
Good work.
I am certain we have made a difference in the positiv-o-meter - ah yes look! Happiness is up 15%, 3 billion people feel more at peace and 30% more folks have vowed to wash their hands for the whole twenty seconds and do both sides! Marvellous work dreamers! Marvellous. Ho ho ho.
Well folks. My internet connection looks unstable so I must go. Mrs Clause says I must get the food off the ceiling...and the cupboards..and the kitchen elves need a bath. I might jump in with them.
(GLITCHES)
Stop those naughty thoughts people...
So. Do stay safe out there.
I should go out for a run with Rudolph. Just as far as the local pole snowdrift. We need to practice his quick stopping you see. He kept overshooting the high rise buildings last year and we ended up going vertically down far too often. Not so good when you’re filled with those fine mince pies.
Have a wonderful day good people. Love to you and yours. Stay safe. Stay kind. Stay joyous and Merry Christmas to all and to all a Ho Ho Hoooooo
(Now, where did Mrs Clause put those marigolds.)
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CHRISTMAS IS A FEELING
By Sarah Golding
Ohhh
Christmas is a feeling
It starts within your heart
Emitted in short bursts of warm
And sometimes like a fart
A favourite drink cracked open
A call to distant chums
A gathering (online tho now)
To laugh and sing, joke puns
No matter your religion
Or way of life it’s true
You too can feel so christmassy
So gwan, try it, doooo
You get it from fine company
A movie or a song
I hope you too feel Christmassy
To last a whole year long
x
- S: Ambience - Living Room with Clocks, Wind Chimes and Rainfall by RavenWolfProds | License: Creative Commons 0
- S: dive.wav by bruno.auzet | License: Creative Commons 0
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- S: fish slap ground or snow writhing wet.wav by kyles | License: Creative Commons 0
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- S: 5 meters dive.wav by bruno.auzet | License: Creative Commons 0
- S: human male scream 5 by JohnsonBrandEditing | License: Creative Commons 0
- S: Dolphin Noise-.wav by jfournier18 | License: Creative Commons 0
- S: Dolphin screaming underwater in Caribbean Sea (Mexico) by felix.blume | License: Creative Commons 0
- S: Wave on the rocks in Dinard (Britain, France) by felix.blume | License: Creative Commons 0
- S: stroganoff-short_5.wav by chemicalcrux | License: Attribution - used as baby octopi sounds and cut and repeated the slurps of the stroganoff to suit the baby octopi language
QUARALOGUES EPISODE FOUR
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Is it OK to Say I’m OK?
By Caroline Holmes
Hello! I’ve got a question for you: is it OK to say I’m OK? Because life since Covid has been so hard for so many people and the cloud looming over us seems to blot out the sun.
So it makes me feel rather hesitant to say that actually I’ve been having a pretty good time over the last six months or so. But it’s not helping anyone to feel guilty: so I’m just really grateful.
Here are five reasons
Number One: I’m not on my own.
My husband & I have been together for well over 40 years. We’re still regularly squabbling and driving each other up the wall but he makes me laugh every day. We’re not romantic types, but there’s something really endearing about that glint in his eye when he’s managed to distract me with some stupid joke from being really annoyed. And he likes having a permanent audience and someone to boss around. Or try to.
Number Two: We’ve got a dog.
A young Scottie to be precise.
Hector provides constant entertainment. He’s not like other Scotties we’ve had in that he’s incredibly affectionate. He really craves contact. When we’re sitting at the table we often realise he’s got us both pinned to the floor: his head on one person’s foot and his bottom on the other. He requires regular on-the-lap cuddles too.
This dog also talks. He has a fine range of squeaks and yowls. Very expressive.
Taking him for walks guarantees us exercise and a chance to marvel at his energy. He seems to think he’s a greyhound or a mountain goat. He’ll go haring off, ducking and weaving, all on his own, or charge up and down hills just for the joy of it. If there are other dogs’ bottoms to sniff or children around, he’s absolutely delighted… often more so than the other dog or the child, and that can be a bit of a problem.
We are paying a small FORTUNE for pet insurance, as he’s bound to need emergency surgery at some point. Anything left lying on the floor is bound to be for him… and he just loves chewing.
He did his best to ruin my flat pack chest of drawers. I hadn’t even opened the box to put it together! Luckily the chewed bits don’t show…
But the stains in the middle of my pale green carpet have resisted all cleaning efforts. An overnight snack on a couple of my favourite ball point pens. At least the ink wasn’t toxic. And no, it didn’t need to happen. “Just don’t leave stuff on the floor,” my husband points out in baffled frustration. “Well yes, that’s absolutely right!” I agree… and then forget to check again…
Number Three: We have regular – remote - contact with family.
You know the sort of thing:
“I can’t see you, can you see me? What do I do? Audio settings? Where’s that? Mum, take the phone away from your ear. This is a video call.”
Our kids & their families live down in London, so we don’t get to see them often anyway. But it has been great actually being able to chat & see their faces several times a week, and admire the grandchildren from a safe distance.
Number Four: We’ve both been retired for ages and we both have absorbing hobbies.
Well, I actually call mine work, cos I do make a little bit of money from it, but he won’t agree to that. “You’re having fun,” he says… which is true.
He has a coin collection that he’s cataloguing with loads of historical side notes and that’s really interesting… and a couple of old cars he fiddles around with that aren’t, unless you’re actually in them going for a tootle.
(Honk honk)
Now with the restrictions I haven’t had to go to rallies and trail around for hours looking at cars. Bonus!
My current work…hobby… is narrating and producing audiobooks. It’s fascinating. The only drawback is how long it takes me. Professionals reckon on six and a half hours of work to create one finished hour of audio. It takes me more like twenty, and counting. I can’t believe it myself! And some books sell and other ones don’t, ones I really like. Marketing is the key, apparently. Tricky, cos I haven’t really got a clue about that.
By the way, have you heard The Swordswoman by Malcolm Archibald yet? Worth a try - especially appealing to lovers of medieval Scottish fantasy!’
Number Five: Learning.
I’ve been doing it since the moment I was born and I’ll be doing it until the moment I die, and Covid’s not going to mess it up, because I’ve got the internet!
What a thrill knowing that you can find new information and skills any time night or day at the click of a button! I’ve just come to the end of Sarah’s Quirky Voices course for Voice Actors, and I’ve been loving it. It’s sparked off all sorts of ideas and possibilities for me. Amazing. Maybe I’ll get into marketing after all!
So yes, in spite of being classed as elderly (awful word, please don’t use it to my face), I am OK and intending to savour all the benefits life is offering, especially now in dangerous times.
Thank you for listening. Bye!
=====
SAFE
By ISABELLE LEE
If I’d known this was what we would all be facing I’d have thought twice. Maybe. Well, I’d like to tell myself that. Probably just wishful thinking though. When do I ever make a decent decision, pandemic or no pandemic.
God… pandemic, quarantine, virus, vaccine… it’s still so surreal that these words have become normal. This invisible danger that’s carried in the air and left on door handles, making us nervous to even open our own front doors. So we’re told to stay inside. Stay at home. Stay safe. Because that’s what home should be isn’t it? Safe. Somewhere you can bed in and ride this out, stay away from people who might infect you, who might be dangerous.
But I’ve messed up. I’ve let the danger penetrate my little home and I don’t feel so safe anymore.
It was good at first.
When we met up he said that he wanted it to be different this time. And I wanted it to be different this time too, so I let myself believe him. I really thought that we could make it happen. We were laughing again, having fun like we used to… you know… we were good together, everyone said so. And when he looked at me, and told me that I understood him better than anyone else I actually felt a pain in my chest as my heart started to revive, like the dull ache of a reawakened muscle that had been left to grow stiff and cold.
So of course I said yes and now he is back in my life and in my house and in my bed and in my head. We are facing lockdown together 24/7. It’s… suffocating.
There are good days and bad days. Lately more bad days. The moment I wake up I can sense how things are going to be, I don’t even have to open my eyes. Sometimes I just lie there with my eyes closed, pretending to still be asleep, struggling to breathe normally as I feel the oppressive atmosphere bearing down on me.
I would be lying if I didn’t admit that those days are really tough. But I know how hard life is for him in lockdown. It’s not easy for someone with his nature to be constantly trapped in this house. It’s making him more restless than ever. And I just make it worse for him. If I could stop messing up then we might be okay. It’s like I never learn, I open my big mouth and… well… um… well… last night things got way out of hand. I should have washed that plate again, I don’t know why I wound him up like that. . I think deep down there must be something wrong with me, I must be broken. I feel broken right now. I feel pathetic and small and squashed.
Last night he said that the world would be better without me in it.
I’m supposed to be calling mum today. She wants to show me her latest online purchases. She must be spending a fortune, she keeps buying new outfits ready for when she can go out again, although who knows when that will be. I’ll have to make an excuse and let her down again. But I can’t speak to her like this. I don’t want to upset her too.
Okay. Enough! No more feeling so sorry for myself. I should be happy that we are back together and I’m not facing this pandemic alone.
If I just try harder and stop saying the wrong thing or annoying him so much then he won’t be so disappointed in me. He tells me how I can make him happy, so if I can get a grip and stop being so needy, put him first, then maybe we can get back to where we were.
I’ll make a plan. I’ll make dinner! I’ll sort myself out and make things up to him. I’ll make things okay again. I know I can.
====
Hope
By Sarah Golding
Oh cling to me humanity.
Cling with edge of dug-in broken nail or full gripped slipping hand.
I ...am here forever. My light...it never dims to nothing....there is always...a glimmer. Some call me a beacon, a sliver, a chance...some say I am thought of for the best, but oh how you must also ...in desperate times, whilst holding on to me with all might and all you hold dear...prepare for the worst.
Are you prepared for this ...now?
Hmm?
Yea you. I address you...individually.
Where am I in your mind? For your kind?
For you!?
Do you recognise me?
Do I hug you? Or are you trying to find me in every nook, every cranny but I hide?
Do You need to search deeper.
Look harder?
Who am I?
I have many forms.
What am I that without me, all would give in to thoughts, and whims, and generations of inbuilt negative rabbit holes, and trains of thought, and eternal darkness to which we all too often succumb.
Dark places are lit by my presence. However slight. You need me even when you don’t think of me. You oft want to share your use of me with others. Or they share me with you. Which is fine. But I may not visit them. Or you. Not your way. Or theirs.
So. Who am I?
Yes.
I am hope.
My many guises inbuilt into patterns of behaviours and entrenched forevermore within you. I cannot truly be tangibly touched, but you can be touched by me, and I can be felt. But you cannot make me. I just...am. And you should know, I am here if you need me.
There is the fresh faced naivety of inborn hope in the young, ingrained and yet strained by life experience and adults taking it away.
We select our Chosen Hope – to overcome the disease and continue Living, to yearn for the as yet conceived - we need this chosen hope to hurdle life’s reality and lengthen our mortal playtime in this crazy world.
In time, Some deal in Borrowed Hope – when another triumphs of championing hope for you more clearly than you could ever imagine.
Sometimes you can borrow me and feel even more hopeful. Oh the to and fro of a bargainers hope - to counteract the worry and the anxiety, those using this element of my peeling layers say and believe aloud - ‘if I do this then along will come that’. Our fight or flight can be bargained for.
And the darkest hope - Unrealistic Hope – in your head being the next big thing - a Darcy Bussell, Stephen Spielberg, best foot baller, singer, dancer, writer, business leader, politician, Diva. All who made a deal with unrealistic hope live in a strange Probably not probable reality, but ...unrealistic hope prevails.
And beware false hope - if it’s too good to be true it probably is! Insurance schemes and pyramid schemes and lotteries and tv and postal and door to door and online scams, and ohhh the hope, the vague hope that one single individual can meet your every whim and solve all how you feel, are, and will be. Happiness does not often come of false hope. This way madness lies.
There are those with life experience who are more malleable in their thinking...like Those with resilience of patience, who have oodles of Mature Hope – you can wait.
For those with mature hope, something intangible means that you feel that somehow everything will turn out alright. That things are worthwhile.
Martin Luther King Jr., took the long view when he said, “The long arm of history bends toward justice.” This still stands. Towering. Concrete. It does.
We still can stand together in hope that justice will prevail. We just believe and cling to the hope that we will see more hope and optimism come to fruition in good deeds, good people and good times again. This world can heal. You can heal. We can be...better.
But for now, we can but hope...that my light burns for the good in us all, and guides us all to a healthier, happier world.
Keep me safe within you.
I
Will always
Be
Here.
====
Technology of yesterday, today
By Sarah Golding
Hello and welcome to next week's today’s episode of the technology of yesterday’s today, or ...TOY-T For those in the know, sponsored by quirky voices voice of NOW. No, We can’t believe they’re still going either. Sometimes we wish they’d...shutup. That aside and slightly to the left...In today’s show, we think back to how 2020 changed our fashion, mass commodity technology, our communication and our very understanding of who we actually are as a whole, under one moon, one sun, seven governments and a god or few for those that want one.
First. FASHION. Ahhh fashion fashion fashion...Le mistakes et le life changing designs of 2020.
Now here, from our smug little tiny moustache shaped like a pig tail world viewpoint of December 32, 2065, as we look back to over 30 years ago, to a time when the whole crazy world was gripped in the throes of a pandemic, we reflect on the good that came from that one crazy year. Millions sadly perished, millions became long term sick but! Trapped in their own homes and working remotely, with more time to think than ever on some days, the leaps and bounds we made in developments of fashion technology are astounding!
Take for example the holographic-folicle-fusion we know and use today. The simple implantation of a fibrous network rather than our own hair became integral to fashion and health as we know it now. Who needs clothes when NATURAL FUR-bbre clothing and hair can have you simply thinking what colours what fabrics you’d like to be seen in, and , boom, ooh la la, voila, programming in the days-wear with the KNOWYOURNEURALS connection, you could be wearing what you like how you like when you like, or of course, nothing at allllll you crazy Woodstock chasing kittens you. Though the wearing of birthday suits in public is still very much frowned upon. And I only went to prison once.
So, with the ability to programme in any fashion wear....mini skirt, a-line, Rara, hula, tights and baggy jumper, jeans, kilt and slogan t, cargoes, leather pants, hot pants, crochet pants, combats, lederhosen, anime cosplay or your trusty LBD, natural Fur-brrr wear changed how we wore what we wanted AND HOW! And also changed what I am wearing now! And don't I sound delicious!? The new holo clothing tech also was able to shorten and lengthen the hair coming from your follicular pores, with one simple thought, so ...you want a mini skirt, a maxi dress? With one thought through the KNOWYOURNEURALS network, you too, could look as good as me. Well. Nearly....as good, I mean, c’mon, you got to have great bone structure and a natural aptitude for being simply gorgeous too right?
The NAtural fur-brr network really made their name for themselves in 2021, offering what can only be described as marketing epiphany - health and fashion in one syringe - two-for one injection of the follicle network when they combined it with the newest approved vaccine against covid 19, 20 and 21 through 25. They really know how to work their socials n science huh?
My grandmother got this two for one fashion and vaccine or f&v, and apparently, it’s what has given me such a strong constitution, great bones and immunity to....most things.....apart from the common cold.....why can we not break that one?! Huh? Whhyyyyy? Maybe cynical me brain says, the money the pharmaceutical industry makes is the cause of that, or maybe, it is so stubborn a gentle pain inducing adapting viral infection, we never will. Go go my grandmother and her forward thinking cutting edge decision making and the good ole f&v. And shame on all those backward thinking folks who....(LAUGHING) thought that some billionaire chip expert was going to inject nano bots into their systems to track our movements! What a waste that would be. They already did that with our mobiles! Imbeciles.
That aside, formidable hat fashion of the 2020’s became incredible - stunning even, as people’s head hair could be changing colour and length and shape by the second! I currently am sporting the sailor boat Mohican, with rippling waves in a very fetching teal. Thank you natural fur-brrr network for making fashion fun again! And our hairdressers of course retrained to write the programs for hair fashion too, so, no one lost out. No one. Look...I even got the aural transplant for my crown....wait.....I just need to think and....
SFX SOUND OF THE SEA
I mean. It’s not just hair, it is art! Am I right? I’ll....turn that off for now though, don’t want to utilise my daily upload requests.....it’s getting expensive to top up!
But what of technology for home use I hear you ask? Well. Remember the zoom boom? And the countless video connecting service technologies that followed...YeronMUTE, MomTurnOnYourCam, VirtualAvatarspaceTearooms and more?
How wonderful, that natural fur-brr enabled folks to connect to other folks across the world....using their own hair! Eyebrow connectivity became ‘a thing’, and who can forget the new catch phrase "
(SINGING)
if you didn’t grow your bush brows,
you’d be left out in the field
Of cows. Mmooooooo."
(TALKING)
Obviously a terrible catch phrase, but the hearty moo after seemed to be the bit folks enjoyed and remembered. So, strong, robust, abundant hair follicles above the eyes became hotly sought after, over the thin, arched, plucked, tattooed, threaded landing strips of yore, with those bushier of brow becoming number one look-up swipe left and SCOOOORE on the dating scene (as their upload and connectivity were faster) With one sweep, and of course the KNOWYOURNEURALS connectivity, n some local WiFi, you could connect to audio and video using your own bushiest of bushy holographically enhanced Natural fur-brr eyebrows, any time any place any where. Even. In. The bath. We all remember THAT POTUS video, right? Where just thinking what you wanted to see, or how you wanted others to see you became a reality, to the point that, who actually knows what anyone actually looks like now? And who, truly, cares? I got me a new facial implant to make my cheekbones more playful and my eyes pop....literally....they can pop out ...on stalks. Great fun at parties.....and for seeing round corners on dark nights.
Well, we’re out of time...don’t cry.....I won't...cos I don’t have tear ducts anymore thanks to natural fur..brr tearduct-be-gone. As I am sure you know if you have the money to get it, All salt water produced by the body can be recycled using the Tearduct-be-gone implants to power the holographic follicular network and keep you fully clothed for 12 hours or less....and warm too! (If that is you upgraded to the Kinectic conduction package, which stores up your night tossing’s and turnings to power AND heat your natural fur-brr choices of the following day. No need for house central heating when you gots your own. Genius.
Well
It only remains for me to say that, though over 30 years ago, we still feel the losses of those who succumbed to the virus. We do. May they rest in peace. But for those who fought, who beat it, who sensibly got the vaccine and survived to live on, we send courteous thanks for your resilience, your trust in medicine, and, we also celebrate the time humanity had for reflection, for thought, and for creation. Natural fur-brr founder and creator, we salute you, and are ..in a way.....glad you had to endure, so that you could ....create.
SFX STIRRING MUSIC
We may be living in more underwater based dwellings, half the earth may be uninhabitable to to the 2035 meteor strike, the moving to Mars may have swelled our physical capacity for advancements in tech and living on hostile worlds, but blue voiture! our cutting edge, cutting no corner, cut hair no longer fashion is overdope. Schwaannnggg...supreme.....sublime....incredible, formidable n'oubliez pas monsieur et Mesdames et tout Les mondes ...and To use a 2020 thing....
you
smashed
it.
I’m Overly Dressed....no that really is my name...but I never live up to it..and...thank you for listening.
Keep dreaming big. Keep doing grande. Keep big making the grande dreams to be grande done to be big dreamed.... though...try not to be asleep allll of the time huh? To not dream perchance to Peut-etre stay awake for a.....little bit....to make those big dreams come true.
Goodnight.
====
MY WALL
By JULIE HOVERSON
This wall sums up my life. Superficially orderly rows of DVDs filling one wall of my tiny downstairs toilet. But look closer and there's no real order, no method. Or there is, but it changes as soon as I forget how I was rearranging them the last time. These here, they're movies I know I liked when I bought them, but I can't actually remember the films themselves. And up there, just at the end of my reach without getting up, are the ones I'm pretty sure I thought were stupid, but I can't remember if that was before or after I bought them.
I know, I know, why not just worship at the altar of amazon prime, or netflix, or hulu or any of the other new gods of our contemporary world, in whose presence we gather every evening - if we are fortunate enough to have a regular schedule of any kind - and pay our homage through our holy binging or random browsing. Honey? Honey, have we done the right obeisances by watching the entire series of shark this or tiger that? Have we been righteous enough?
Call me an old school atheist - what each god giveth, they can also taketh away, and I hate that shit. Like the periodic updates to scripture, every season the "movies netflix is dumping" are duly decreed and complained about and agonized over - is there time to watch it before it's gone? Will it ever come back? Sometimes they're even objected to and petitioned about, but that's only for exclusive shows - we want our patron saints, goddamn it!
And why not just hand our lives over to the new gods? What else do we have outside these walls but mask this sanitize that, quick bring in the mail before someone sees your face is naked!
Inside is easier. Once you've been cleansed - praise the holy amazon prime for the goods it brings! - you can relax, naked face and all, and give your attention to the shows they graciously bestow upon us. Without which we would be nothing. Without which we would go mad.
In desperation, we may even throw ourselves on the mercy of the mad god youtube, begging for solace, for the algorithms to bring us manna we haven't already seen a dozen times.
Is that the whole thing....not a trailer?
Quick, watch now before it gets pulled down, like the icons of a conquered race! Yea, that god is yet more fickle than the rest and it hides as much as it reveals.
A few of us would survive. We who read books and have retained a few, we who hoard the accoutrements of crafting. We who put our faith in the DVDs. But we don't want to stand out, to be singled out, to lose such privileges in a massive coup like the ones which have gone before - oh VHS, ancient deity that ruled for so many mighty years, what did you do to deserve the scrap heap?
I pay for my lip service, with the prime and the flix, and the cheap dark horse of shudder, but if something is really good, something I want to remember, to preserve, or try to share with friends - always assuming I can get close enough to share a TV with them again some distant day - I make damn sure that I'm not at the whims of anything larger than myself.
LIVE!
By Sarah Golding
To toast the new year In
I Looked far out to sea
So full of hope, cool futures
And new fun opp'rtunity
Oh if I’d known the maze
(Crazed daze)
Ahead of us Herein
I’d cease all celebra-ti-on
Neck
Drained dark half full cup full gone
So many dead
So many sick
New dreads and tiers
'N Mask up quick
Afraid to mix
Afraid to see
Your lovely friends
And family
No hugs for grandma
Grandpa too
Alone inside
Just me
Just you
Oh on this twelfth month 31st
I stand and gaze out fearing worst
Can I but hope MORE years I see
A precipice toed precariously
Hope vaccine helps
Humanity blessed
With unselfish b’haviour of the rest
Stops spread
Stops all conducting phase
Of these truly scary
Covid days
So rise up
Value sister brother
And all earth’s creatures
One another
And hope the sunset of this year
Brings hope beyond
For all
Less fear
I wish you good health
I wish you all well
I wish you warm lit
Way out of this hell
From all our balcony’s as we new year survey
I wish you love, health fun and play
I wish you all
Reflecting here
A full life
LIVE!
A true great year
SOUND EFFECTS USED IN EPISODE 4
- IS IT OK TO SAY I’M OK? Written and Performed by Caroline Holmes
- SAFE By Annalee Bougourd Performed by Tina Daniels?
- HOPE by Sarah Golding Performed by Fiona Mackinnon
- YESTERDAY'S TECH TODAY By Sarah Golding Performed by Aaron Clark
- MY WALL by Julie Hoverson Performed by Tina Daniels
- LIVE! Written and Performed By Sarah Golding
====
Is it OK to Say I’m OK?
By Caroline Holmes
Hello! I’ve got a question for you: is it OK to say I’m OK? Because life since Covid has been so hard for so many people and the cloud looming over us seems to blot out the sun.
So it makes me feel rather hesitant to say that actually I’ve been having a pretty good time over the last six months or so. But it’s not helping anyone to feel guilty: so I’m just really grateful.
Here are five reasons
Number One: I’m not on my own.
My husband & I have been together for well over 40 years. We’re still regularly squabbling and driving each other up the wall but he makes me laugh every day. We’re not romantic types, but there’s something really endearing about that glint in his eye when he’s managed to distract me with some stupid joke from being really annoyed. And he likes having a permanent audience and someone to boss around. Or try to.
Number Two: We’ve got a dog.
A young Scottie to be precise.
Hector provides constant entertainment. He’s not like other Scotties we’ve had in that he’s incredibly affectionate. He really craves contact. When we’re sitting at the table we often realise he’s got us both pinned to the floor: his head on one person’s foot and his bottom on the other. He requires regular on-the-lap cuddles too.
This dog also talks. He has a fine range of squeaks and yowls. Very expressive.
Taking him for walks guarantees us exercise and a chance to marvel at his energy. He seems to think he’s a greyhound or a mountain goat. He’ll go haring off, ducking and weaving, all on his own, or charge up and down hills just for the joy of it. If there are other dogs’ bottoms to sniff or children around, he’s absolutely delighted… often more so than the other dog or the child, and that can be a bit of a problem.
We are paying a small FORTUNE for pet insurance, as he’s bound to need emergency surgery at some point. Anything left lying on the floor is bound to be for him… and he just loves chewing.
He did his best to ruin my flat pack chest of drawers. I hadn’t even opened the box to put it together! Luckily the chewed bits don’t show…
But the stains in the middle of my pale green carpet have resisted all cleaning efforts. An overnight snack on a couple of my favourite ball point pens. At least the ink wasn’t toxic. And no, it didn’t need to happen. “Just don’t leave stuff on the floor,” my husband points out in baffled frustration. “Well yes, that’s absolutely right!” I agree… and then forget to check again…
Number Three: We have regular – remote - contact with family.
You know the sort of thing:
“I can’t see you, can you see me? What do I do? Audio settings? Where’s that? Mum, take the phone away from your ear. This is a video call.”
Our kids & their families live down in London, so we don’t get to see them often anyway. But it has been great actually being able to chat & see their faces several times a week, and admire the grandchildren from a safe distance.
Number Four: We’ve both been retired for ages and we both have absorbing hobbies.
Well, I actually call mine work, cos I do make a little bit of money from it, but he won’t agree to that. “You’re having fun,” he says… which is true.
He has a coin collection that he’s cataloguing with loads of historical side notes and that’s really interesting… and a couple of old cars he fiddles around with that aren’t, unless you’re actually in them going for a tootle.
(Honk honk)
Now with the restrictions I haven’t had to go to rallies and trail around for hours looking at cars. Bonus!
My current work…hobby… is narrating and producing audiobooks. It’s fascinating. The only drawback is how long it takes me. Professionals reckon on six and a half hours of work to create one finished hour of audio. It takes me more like twenty, and counting. I can’t believe it myself! And some books sell and other ones don’t, ones I really like. Marketing is the key, apparently. Tricky, cos I haven’t really got a clue about that.
By the way, have you heard The Swordswoman by Malcolm Archibald yet? Worth a try - especially appealing to lovers of medieval Scottish fantasy!’
Number Five: Learning.
I’ve been doing it since the moment I was born and I’ll be doing it until the moment I die, and Covid’s not going to mess it up, because I’ve got the internet!
What a thrill knowing that you can find new information and skills any time night or day at the click of a button! I’ve just come to the end of Sarah’s Quirky Voices course for Voice Actors, and I’ve been loving it. It’s sparked off all sorts of ideas and possibilities for me. Amazing. Maybe I’ll get into marketing after all!
So yes, in spite of being classed as elderly (awful word, please don’t use it to my face), I am OK and intending to savour all the benefits life is offering, especially now in dangerous times.
Thank you for listening. Bye!
=====
SAFE
By ISABELLE LEE
If I’d known this was what we would all be facing I’d have thought twice. Maybe. Well, I’d like to tell myself that. Probably just wishful thinking though. When do I ever make a decent decision, pandemic or no pandemic.
God… pandemic, quarantine, virus, vaccine… it’s still so surreal that these words have become normal. This invisible danger that’s carried in the air and left on door handles, making us nervous to even open our own front doors. So we’re told to stay inside. Stay at home. Stay safe. Because that’s what home should be isn’t it? Safe. Somewhere you can bed in and ride this out, stay away from people who might infect you, who might be dangerous.
But I’ve messed up. I’ve let the danger penetrate my little home and I don’t feel so safe anymore.
It was good at first.
When we met up he said that he wanted it to be different this time. And I wanted it to be different this time too, so I let myself believe him. I really thought that we could make it happen. We were laughing again, having fun like we used to… you know… we were good together, everyone said so. And when he looked at me, and told me that I understood him better than anyone else I actually felt a pain in my chest as my heart started to revive, like the dull ache of a reawakened muscle that had been left to grow stiff and cold.
So of course I said yes and now he is back in my life and in my house and in my bed and in my head. We are facing lockdown together 24/7. It’s… suffocating.
There are good days and bad days. Lately more bad days. The moment I wake up I can sense how things are going to be, I don’t even have to open my eyes. Sometimes I just lie there with my eyes closed, pretending to still be asleep, struggling to breathe normally as I feel the oppressive atmosphere bearing down on me.
I would be lying if I didn’t admit that those days are really tough. But I know how hard life is for him in lockdown. It’s not easy for someone with his nature to be constantly trapped in this house. It’s making him more restless than ever. And I just make it worse for him. If I could stop messing up then we might be okay. It’s like I never learn, I open my big mouth and… well… um… well… last night things got way out of hand. I should have washed that plate again, I don’t know why I wound him up like that. . I think deep down there must be something wrong with me, I must be broken. I feel broken right now. I feel pathetic and small and squashed.
Last night he said that the world would be better without me in it.
I’m supposed to be calling mum today. She wants to show me her latest online purchases. She must be spending a fortune, she keeps buying new outfits ready for when she can go out again, although who knows when that will be. I’ll have to make an excuse and let her down again. But I can’t speak to her like this. I don’t want to upset her too.
Okay. Enough! No more feeling so sorry for myself. I should be happy that we are back together and I’m not facing this pandemic alone.
If I just try harder and stop saying the wrong thing or annoying him so much then he won’t be so disappointed in me. He tells me how I can make him happy, so if I can get a grip and stop being so needy, put him first, then maybe we can get back to where we were.
I’ll make a plan. I’ll make dinner! I’ll sort myself out and make things up to him. I’ll make things okay again. I know I can.
====
Hope
By Sarah Golding
Oh cling to me humanity.
Cling with edge of dug-in broken nail or full gripped slipping hand.
I ...am here forever. My light...it never dims to nothing....there is always...a glimmer. Some call me a beacon, a sliver, a chance...some say I am thought of for the best, but oh how you must also ...in desperate times, whilst holding on to me with all might and all you hold dear...prepare for the worst.
Are you prepared for this ...now?
Hmm?
Yea you. I address you...individually.
Where am I in your mind? For your kind?
For you!?
Do you recognise me?
Do I hug you? Or are you trying to find me in every nook, every cranny but I hide?
Do You need to search deeper.
Look harder?
Who am I?
I have many forms.
What am I that without me, all would give in to thoughts, and whims, and generations of inbuilt negative rabbit holes, and trains of thought, and eternal darkness to which we all too often succumb.
Dark places are lit by my presence. However slight. You need me even when you don’t think of me. You oft want to share your use of me with others. Or they share me with you. Which is fine. But I may not visit them. Or you. Not your way. Or theirs.
So. Who am I?
Yes.
I am hope.
My many guises inbuilt into patterns of behaviours and entrenched forevermore within you. I cannot truly be tangibly touched, but you can be touched by me, and I can be felt. But you cannot make me. I just...am. And you should know, I am here if you need me.
There is the fresh faced naivety of inborn hope in the young, ingrained and yet strained by life experience and adults taking it away.
We select our Chosen Hope – to overcome the disease and continue Living, to yearn for the as yet conceived - we need this chosen hope to hurdle life’s reality and lengthen our mortal playtime in this crazy world.
In time, Some deal in Borrowed Hope – when another triumphs of championing hope for you more clearly than you could ever imagine.
Sometimes you can borrow me and feel even more hopeful. Oh the to and fro of a bargainers hope - to counteract the worry and the anxiety, those using this element of my peeling layers say and believe aloud - ‘if I do this then along will come that’. Our fight or flight can be bargained for.
And the darkest hope - Unrealistic Hope – in your head being the next big thing - a Darcy Bussell, Stephen Spielberg, best foot baller, singer, dancer, writer, business leader, politician, Diva. All who made a deal with unrealistic hope live in a strange Probably not probable reality, but ...unrealistic hope prevails.
And beware false hope - if it’s too good to be true it probably is! Insurance schemes and pyramid schemes and lotteries and tv and postal and door to door and online scams, and ohhh the hope, the vague hope that one single individual can meet your every whim and solve all how you feel, are, and will be. Happiness does not often come of false hope. This way madness lies.
There are those with life experience who are more malleable in their thinking...like Those with resilience of patience, who have oodles of Mature Hope – you can wait.
For those with mature hope, something intangible means that you feel that somehow everything will turn out alright. That things are worthwhile.
Martin Luther King Jr., took the long view when he said, “The long arm of history bends toward justice.” This still stands. Towering. Concrete. It does.
We still can stand together in hope that justice will prevail. We just believe and cling to the hope that we will see more hope and optimism come to fruition in good deeds, good people and good times again. This world can heal. You can heal. We can be...better.
But for now, we can but hope...that my light burns for the good in us all, and guides us all to a healthier, happier world.
Keep me safe within you.
I
Will always
Be
Here.
====
Technology of yesterday, today
By Sarah Golding
Hello and welcome to next week's today’s episode of the technology of yesterday’s today, or ...TOY-T For those in the know, sponsored by quirky voices voice of NOW. No, We can’t believe they’re still going either. Sometimes we wish they’d...shutup. That aside and slightly to the left...In today’s show, we think back to how 2020 changed our fashion, mass commodity technology, our communication and our very understanding of who we actually are as a whole, under one moon, one sun, seven governments and a god or few for those that want one.
First. FASHION. Ahhh fashion fashion fashion...Le mistakes et le life changing designs of 2020.
Now here, from our smug little tiny moustache shaped like a pig tail world viewpoint of December 32, 2065, as we look back to over 30 years ago, to a time when the whole crazy world was gripped in the throes of a pandemic, we reflect on the good that came from that one crazy year. Millions sadly perished, millions became long term sick but! Trapped in their own homes and working remotely, with more time to think than ever on some days, the leaps and bounds we made in developments of fashion technology are astounding!
Take for example the holographic-folicle-fusion we know and use today. The simple implantation of a fibrous network rather than our own hair became integral to fashion and health as we know it now. Who needs clothes when NATURAL FUR-bbre clothing and hair can have you simply thinking what colours what fabrics you’d like to be seen in, and , boom, ooh la la, voila, programming in the days-wear with the KNOWYOURNEURALS connection, you could be wearing what you like how you like when you like, or of course, nothing at allllll you crazy Woodstock chasing kittens you. Though the wearing of birthday suits in public is still very much frowned upon. And I only went to prison once.
So, with the ability to programme in any fashion wear....mini skirt, a-line, Rara, hula, tights and baggy jumper, jeans, kilt and slogan t, cargoes, leather pants, hot pants, crochet pants, combats, lederhosen, anime cosplay or your trusty LBD, natural Fur-brrr wear changed how we wore what we wanted AND HOW! And also changed what I am wearing now! And don't I sound delicious!? The new holo clothing tech also was able to shorten and lengthen the hair coming from your follicular pores, with one simple thought, so ...you want a mini skirt, a maxi dress? With one thought through the KNOWYOURNEURALS network, you too, could look as good as me. Well. Nearly....as good, I mean, c’mon, you got to have great bone structure and a natural aptitude for being simply gorgeous too right?
The NAtural fur-brr network really made their name for themselves in 2021, offering what can only be described as marketing epiphany - health and fashion in one syringe - two-for one injection of the follicle network when they combined it with the newest approved vaccine against covid 19, 20 and 21 through 25. They really know how to work their socials n science huh?
My grandmother got this two for one fashion and vaccine or f&v, and apparently, it’s what has given me such a strong constitution, great bones and immunity to....most things.....apart from the common cold.....why can we not break that one?! Huh? Whhyyyyy? Maybe cynical me brain says, the money the pharmaceutical industry makes is the cause of that, or maybe, it is so stubborn a gentle pain inducing adapting viral infection, we never will. Go go my grandmother and her forward thinking cutting edge decision making and the good ole f&v. And shame on all those backward thinking folks who....(LAUGHING) thought that some billionaire chip expert was going to inject nano bots into their systems to track our movements! What a waste that would be. They already did that with our mobiles! Imbeciles.
That aside, formidable hat fashion of the 2020’s became incredible - stunning even, as people’s head hair could be changing colour and length and shape by the second! I currently am sporting the sailor boat Mohican, with rippling waves in a very fetching teal. Thank you natural fur-brrr network for making fashion fun again! And our hairdressers of course retrained to write the programs for hair fashion too, so, no one lost out. No one. Look...I even got the aural transplant for my crown....wait.....I just need to think and....
SFX SOUND OF THE SEA
I mean. It’s not just hair, it is art! Am I right? I’ll....turn that off for now though, don’t want to utilise my daily upload requests.....it’s getting expensive to top up!
But what of technology for home use I hear you ask? Well. Remember the zoom boom? And the countless video connecting service technologies that followed...YeronMUTE, MomTurnOnYourCam, VirtualAvatarspaceTearooms and more?
How wonderful, that natural fur-brr enabled folks to connect to other folks across the world....using their own hair! Eyebrow connectivity became ‘a thing’, and who can forget the new catch phrase "
(SINGING)
if you didn’t grow your bush brows,
you’d be left out in the field
Of cows. Mmooooooo."
(TALKING)
Obviously a terrible catch phrase, but the hearty moo after seemed to be the bit folks enjoyed and remembered. So, strong, robust, abundant hair follicles above the eyes became hotly sought after, over the thin, arched, plucked, tattooed, threaded landing strips of yore, with those bushier of brow becoming number one look-up swipe left and SCOOOORE on the dating scene (as their upload and connectivity were faster) With one sweep, and of course the KNOWYOURNEURALS connectivity, n some local WiFi, you could connect to audio and video using your own bushiest of bushy holographically enhanced Natural fur-brr eyebrows, any time any place any where. Even. In. The bath. We all remember THAT POTUS video, right? Where just thinking what you wanted to see, or how you wanted others to see you became a reality, to the point that, who actually knows what anyone actually looks like now? And who, truly, cares? I got me a new facial implant to make my cheekbones more playful and my eyes pop....literally....they can pop out ...on stalks. Great fun at parties.....and for seeing round corners on dark nights.
Well, we’re out of time...don’t cry.....I won't...cos I don’t have tear ducts anymore thanks to natural fur..brr tearduct-be-gone. As I am sure you know if you have the money to get it, All salt water produced by the body can be recycled using the Tearduct-be-gone implants to power the holographic follicular network and keep you fully clothed for 12 hours or less....and warm too! (If that is you upgraded to the Kinectic conduction package, which stores up your night tossing’s and turnings to power AND heat your natural fur-brr choices of the following day. No need for house central heating when you gots your own. Genius.
Well
It only remains for me to say that, though over 30 years ago, we still feel the losses of those who succumbed to the virus. We do. May they rest in peace. But for those who fought, who beat it, who sensibly got the vaccine and survived to live on, we send courteous thanks for your resilience, your trust in medicine, and, we also celebrate the time humanity had for reflection, for thought, and for creation. Natural fur-brr founder and creator, we salute you, and are ..in a way.....glad you had to endure, so that you could ....create.
SFX STIRRING MUSIC
We may be living in more underwater based dwellings, half the earth may be uninhabitable to to the 2035 meteor strike, the moving to Mars may have swelled our physical capacity for advancements in tech and living on hostile worlds, but blue voiture! our cutting edge, cutting no corner, cut hair no longer fashion is overdope. Schwaannnggg...supreme.....sublime....incredible, formidable n'oubliez pas monsieur et Mesdames et tout Les mondes ...and To use a 2020 thing....
you
smashed
it.
I’m Overly Dressed....no that really is my name...but I never live up to it..and...thank you for listening.
Keep dreaming big. Keep doing grande. Keep big making the grande dreams to be grande done to be big dreamed.... though...try not to be asleep allll of the time huh? To not dream perchance to Peut-etre stay awake for a.....little bit....to make those big dreams come true.
Goodnight.
====
MY WALL
By JULIE HOVERSON
This wall sums up my life. Superficially orderly rows of DVDs filling one wall of my tiny downstairs toilet. But look closer and there's no real order, no method. Or there is, but it changes as soon as I forget how I was rearranging them the last time. These here, they're movies I know I liked when I bought them, but I can't actually remember the films themselves. And up there, just at the end of my reach without getting up, are the ones I'm pretty sure I thought were stupid, but I can't remember if that was before or after I bought them.
I know, I know, why not just worship at the altar of amazon prime, or netflix, or hulu or any of the other new gods of our contemporary world, in whose presence we gather every evening - if we are fortunate enough to have a regular schedule of any kind - and pay our homage through our holy binging or random browsing. Honey? Honey, have we done the right obeisances by watching the entire series of shark this or tiger that? Have we been righteous enough?
Call me an old school atheist - what each god giveth, they can also taketh away, and I hate that shit. Like the periodic updates to scripture, every season the "movies netflix is dumping" are duly decreed and complained about and agonized over - is there time to watch it before it's gone? Will it ever come back? Sometimes they're even objected to and petitioned about, but that's only for exclusive shows - we want our patron saints, goddamn it!
And why not just hand our lives over to the new gods? What else do we have outside these walls but mask this sanitize that, quick bring in the mail before someone sees your face is naked!
Inside is easier. Once you've been cleansed - praise the holy amazon prime for the goods it brings! - you can relax, naked face and all, and give your attention to the shows they graciously bestow upon us. Without which we would be nothing. Without which we would go mad.
In desperation, we may even throw ourselves on the mercy of the mad god youtube, begging for solace, for the algorithms to bring us manna we haven't already seen a dozen times.
Is that the whole thing....not a trailer?
Quick, watch now before it gets pulled down, like the icons of a conquered race! Yea, that god is yet more fickle than the rest and it hides as much as it reveals.
A few of us would survive. We who read books and have retained a few, we who hoard the accoutrements of crafting. We who put our faith in the DVDs. But we don't want to stand out, to be singled out, to lose such privileges in a massive coup like the ones which have gone before - oh VHS, ancient deity that ruled for so many mighty years, what did you do to deserve the scrap heap?
I pay for my lip service, with the prime and the flix, and the cheap dark horse of shudder, but if something is really good, something I want to remember, to preserve, or try to share with friends - always assuming I can get close enough to share a TV with them again some distant day - I make damn sure that I'm not at the whims of anything larger than myself.
LIVE!
By Sarah Golding
To toast the new year In
I Looked far out to sea
So full of hope, cool futures
And new fun opp'rtunity
Oh if I’d known the maze
(Crazed daze)
Ahead of us Herein
I’d cease all celebra-ti-on
Neck
Drained dark half full cup full gone
So many dead
So many sick
New dreads and tiers
'N Mask up quick
Afraid to mix
Afraid to see
Your lovely friends
And family
No hugs for grandma
Grandpa too
Alone inside
Just me
Just you
Oh on this twelfth month 31st
I stand and gaze out fearing worst
Can I but hope MORE years I see
A precipice toed precariously
Hope vaccine helps
Humanity blessed
With unselfish b’haviour of the rest
Stops spread
Stops all conducting phase
Of these truly scary
Covid days
So rise up
Value sister brother
And all earth’s creatures
One another
And hope the sunset of this year
Brings hope beyond
For all
Less fear
I wish you good health
I wish you all well
I wish you warm lit
Way out of this hell
From all our balcony’s as we new year survey
I wish you love, health fun and play
I wish you all
Reflecting here
A full life
LIVE!
A true great year
SOUND EFFECTS USED IN EPISODE 4
- S: Dolphin screaming underwater in Caribbean Sea (Mexico) by felix.blume | License: Creative Commons 0
