Author: Andrew Gold

“Thunderball”

Andrew Gold Micro Fiction

 

Alice slips on her shoes, quietly opens the door, pulls up a frayed coat collar against the rain and walks unsteadily away. Turning the corner she stops, leans against a wall to breathe and listen, but there is only the echo of a barking dog and her own footfall moving on. She does not know where to, but it will not be back: her bloodied eye tells her that. It is not the first time he has hit her, this time for forgetting his lottery ticket. His ticket. Her ticket, and five million pounds, will take her far, far away.

 

100 words

“Judge not…”

Andrew Gold Micro Fiction

 

Bing bong.
Like Wyndham’s Chrysalids, they are crisp, clean, cloned and innocent.
Wanly smiling she says “Do you think about the future at all?”
It must be cold dispiriting work, winter door-stepping the unsaveable, so I say “At my age I think more about the past”.
They laugh, and put at ease come in for debate, tea and homemade scones.
“These are lovely,” he says, “really unusual flavour. May I?”
“Of course,” I say, “help yourselves. Take some home if you like.”
Leaving, already giggly, she hands me leaflets.
Mulling Matthew 7, I wonder what they’ll think about their futures.

100 words

“Distance Past”

Andrew Gold Micro Fiction

 

His heart recognised her immediately; after 30 years it still skipped. She did not see him in the cafe; she was stirring soup, and his memories. His eyes traced the olive soft skin of her arm, rising and falling, the little birthmark that still peeked from her sleeve.
He had never understood how the space between them could ache so. Now it ached more than ever but she, still wearing a ring, and he one of his own, was still untouchable.
So holding the thought that, if she knew, she would really love him back, he turned and walked away.

100 words

“True Love”

Andrew Gold Micro Fiction

 

Cheryl is giving Victor his regular trim.
“How’s your week been?”
“Same old, same old”, he lies.
The lost love of his life has just arrived at the home, but does not remember him. Dementia.
“There, Victor, nicely presentable.”
Tidied, he sits staring at the garden, untended like his love, holding her hand. Once soft and supple, her thin skin maps a long life with another.
Rehearsing passion never declared he squeezes and mouths “I love you, Jenny”, but it escapes.
She squeezes back, staring now at him.
“Are you Eric?”
Her slight smile is worth the deceit.
“Yes dear”.

100 words

“Putting the Clocks Back”

Andrew Gold Micro Fiction

 

It’s that time of year again, but it is years since John rose to the alarm. He weighs the value of getting up at all but then sighs and rolls stiffly out of bed, edging downstairs one step at a time, the bannisters for support not fun. Through the steam of a boiling kettle he contemplates the cold dark morning, fingers his coarsely stubbled chin and wonders how others, out there, live with caution bred of age and uncertainty.
Waiting for television to emerge from its nightly chrysalis he adjusts all the clocks, except the one he cannot turn back.

100 words

The 2015 UK Election – have you decided which way YOU will vote?

Andrew Gold Politics

At time of writing we are a week and a day away from polling day, and the political parties are becoming ever more desperate.  There’s a kind of barrow boy hawking going on, each trying to get your attention with ever more ludicrous, never-to-be repeated, buy one-get one free offers.  If you can’t make up your mind whose offer to take up bear in mind they are all (Greens excepted) liars – if I can use that term for not telling the truth by omission.

Please bear in mind the following:

The LibDems chose, CHOSE, to go into a coalition with the Conservatives in 2010.  They could have chosen Labour but didn’t.  They promised no tuition fees for Tertiary education and reneged on that promise.  They have had a senior figure, Danny Alexander, hand in hand with George Osborne paring back the economy for the last 5 years.  The LibDems now claim they are responsible for all the good things that have happened but none of the bad.  I’m afraid that doesn’t wash.  Meanwhile we have the obscenity of homelessness juxtaposed with promises of extending the Thatcherite “Right to Buy”; food banks, juxtaposed with more billionnaires per capita than anywhere on the planet; cuts in all sorts of social provision; the NHS dismantled and privatised from the inside by a pointless restructuring.  Bed blocking, resulting directly from cuts to social care budgets causing so-called ‘black’ emergency conditions in hospitals.

The Conservatives try to alarm us by saying the SNP will (somehow) coerce a minority Labour administration into dropping the Trident missile programme.  Quite apart from the mathematical nonsense (there are 600+MPs, most of whom want Trident to be renewed), who was it that emasculated our armed forces in two successive hatchet jobs of so-called Strategic Defence Review?  The Conservative and LibDem coalition, in case you’ve forgotten.  They scrapped the Nimrod programme, actually breaking up completed airframes; admittedly the project was massively over budget and years late but it was about to bear fruit.  In the face of warnings about the unpredictability of world politics, and in particular the certainty of a de-clawed Russia not being a threat, they scrapped another wonderful and proven aircraft, the Harrier (which, by the way, the American military love and use), along with the aircraft carriers that carried them, and then ordered two massive new ones for £6 billiuon or so which don’t have planes to fly off them!  In case you didn’t know we, along with a lot of other countries, are buying into an Amercian ‘plane, the F35, which is riddled with problems and so far non-operational in the maritime context.  Meanwhile we have Russian ‘planes and submarines probing our borders day and daily.  The SNP, by the way, are promoting strong conventional forces – saying that there are 200+ countries in the world and only a handful have “the bomb”.

Labour, at leadership level, either don’t know or won’t say what they really want.  Are they so desperate to get back into power that they would present themselves as ‘pink’ Tories (which is where the LibDems used to be), or are they really that right wing?  The SNP have shamed them with their vision for a socially just society and it will be interesting to see what happens if Labour, along with the last Tory standing, are wiped out electorally in Scotland.  I have a theory that parts of the Labour elite don’t want to win this election: they want the Conservative / LibDem coalition to finish ‘fixing’ the deficit, and taking tough decisions that simply couldn’t be entertained by a Labour administration, letting them take the blame for all the pain they cause, and getting in next time around.  Even if there wer a Conservative majority my theory goes on that following a failure to win in 2015 Ed Milliband, Labour leader, will be replaced and we will struggle on to 2017 when the ‘hokey cokey’ EU referendum will cause another election.

Now for the rag-bag of assorted right and ultra-right people who are UKIP.  Despite all the hype, I don’t expect UKIP to get more than 20 seats, probably a lot less.  Don’t vote for them; they only have one policy that is worth the paper it’s written on – we do need more robust control over our borders and better arrangements for managing immigration.  Otherwise, don’t go there; I’m not old enough to remember first hand but I certainly know about the rise of the far right in Europe in the 1930s and you don’t have to look far to see the shadow of fascism in Russia, the Balkans, even France (where 25% of the electorate voted for Marine LePen).  The socio-economic background isn’t so very different now in Britain in the 2010s.

Finally, please also bear this in mind: over recent years we have got used to policy changes being ‘trailed’ and announced well ahead.  By the time the change actually happens we’ve been softened up, or got used to the idea, and don’t notice (they think).  This year we have already had a number of announcements about fiscal and other changes which amount to cuts.  These cuts haven’t happened yet but we are told to expect more of the same, much more, going on to 2018 when (allegedly) the books will be balanced.  No wonder the Conservatives don’t want to tell us where the knife will slice – we are already into the bone on many public services.  I’m completely with the parties who (as Labour said at the last election too) want to slow the rate of cutting even if it means extending the date by which we will be free of National debt.

There’s a whole heap more to say, but not now, about energy policy, sustainability, proportional representation and so on.  If I were in Scotland I’d vote SNP.  Vote with your conscience, but at all costs vote.  There is no likelihood of unseating the Tory in my own constituency but I’ll be voting Green because I believe in their message.  Just know that whoever you vote for you are going to get something else.

 

 

 

Rabbi Burns – A Tale for Burns Night

Andrew Gold Short Stories

I was Glasgow-January cold, head-down at my ‘Hungry and Homeless’ pitch outside the station; knees under my chin, complete with polystyrene cup, obligatory sad-eyed mongrel at my feet, and a fresh pack of cigarettes in my army surplus satchel. The dog looked up, so I looked up too. “Any spare change, pal?” I said, but the outstretched hand was empty.

“I’m Bob Burns,” the owner of the hand said, “my friends call me the Rabbi”.

I shook the hand. Looking at his clothes, and hearing the Ulster edge in his voice, I thought, “Rabbi is it? More like another dosser”, but instead I said “I don’t do synagogue, and you don’t sound, or look, Jewish – so…..”. I hoped he’d take the hint and go away, but instead he sat on the blanket. The dog raised an eyebrow and half-looked at him, but dropped her head again when he stroked it, and went back to sleep.

“I’ve heard that before”, he said, “the not-looking-Jewish bit anyway…, apart from wearing this.” He fingered a silver Star of David around his neck, hanging on the same chain as a small crucifix, a miniature Buddha, a couple of Chinese-looking symbols and a Hindu Mandala. He went on, “I think it’s the red hair that foxes people. Me Ma was from Larne, and me Da was from Poland. He was a refugee, and Jewish, in that order too – a refugee in his mind all his life, poor man. Of course, technically, that makes me not Jewish at all – since it passes through the mother’s line – so that makes me…”

“A Protestant,” I interrupted, with more than a touch of sectarian sarcasm, and pointing to the laden chain, “but it looks like that’s the only team you’re not playing for; you hedging your bets?”

He smiled. “Aye, Mebee. I like to think of meself as more of an ‘Ecumenical Non-Conformist’,” but while I was mesmerised by the mock-importance of that, he said, “Can I ponce a fag off you?” Something in his grin was disarming, even irresistible: I gave in. “Here, have one of these,” I said, offering not the end of my roll-up, which I kept for the image, but one of my precious Silk Cut, “but do you mind not sitting here with it – the punters are put off if we’re mob handed, you’ll queer my…”, but I didn’t get to finish; the authority of his touch on my sleeve shut me up.

“I was wondering, if you’ve got nowhere to go later, would you come across to the shelter, under the railway arches over there?” His head pointed, with a nod and a flick, to a side street. “We’re doing soup, and some poetry”. And with that he rose, like a snake uncoiling to a charmer’s pipe, and, just as hypnotically, swayed off through the evening rush-hour crowd. He called back over his shoulder, “and tea,” and then, “thanks for the fag,” and finally a fading “see you later.”
I can’t say now, any more than I could then, why near that midnight I was standing under the railway arches, the dog even more nervous than me, looking for a non-Jewish, poetry-reading, Irish Rabbi called Burns. I felt the dog’s string go eager-taut in my hand as she, again, saw him first, this time coming out of an open doorway in a wall. He fussed her: “Hello Gypsy lass, good girl, Good girl,” and then turned to me, his hand on my shoulder. “You made it then – that’s grand. Come on in, we’ve a fire going, the soup’s on – we’ll start the poetry in half an hour or so”. I didn’t remember having told him the dog’s name, but let it pass, and followed him, and the warm air, into the cellar. The smell of damp plaster and brick dust mixed with that of defeat from those sitting hunched on boxes and chairs around the walls, and the kettle of sweet broth on the brazier.

I was the youngest there by a mile. Some seemed so old that they were beyond old: poverty, cold and hopelessness does that, especially the hopelessness: I’d seen it on the streets every day.

We sat. Hunted, weary, and even a little wary, each gripping soup and broken bread in fingerless gloved hands: refugees all, from the world outside. In the dim paraffin-lamp light, and through the steam rising from my cup, I watched the Rabbi. He was a sort-of beachcomber of souls, and we were the flotsam thrown up on his personal shore. He moved around the walls, speaking quietly, refilling cups and offering something to each in turn….offering – I couldn’t hear the words; for all the world it could have been a benediction, absolution even, except for him being a Rabbi of course, but he was offering something – more than soup and bread – I could see it in their faces.

“Well, Ally,” he said, as he got round to me, “let’s get the poetry going before we all fall asleep.” He held out a folded piece of paper, “Here, you can start”. I didn’t remember having told him my name either, but didn’t dwell on it at the time, and so I read. The rest of the night passed well enough, all reading something, and in the morning we left, dispersing our strange fellowship in the early fog.

It was a couple of months later when I did think about it: when I went back to tell him how I’d had a change in my luck, how I had a place to stay now, and a job: crappy, but a job. I wanted to tell him that I didn’t feel hopeless any more, that I had even thought, just once or twice, of going to synagogue again. I was going to ask him how he had known….but…., but I couldn’t find the opening in the wall under the arch, never mind the cellar.
A old man, sweeping the road there, said I must be mistaken: his breathing and words punctuated by his rasping brush strokes. “There hasn’t been a cellar here since the war…………….a raid on the railway yards…………..direct hit……………….a lot of people killed in there…………………….mostly refugees off a train…………….filled in the cellar when the viaduct was rebuilt.” Then I thought about it.

I still had the piece of paper he gave me, and I read it again then, as I do now…

“Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a’ that)
That Sense and Worth, o’er a’ the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an’ a’ that.
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
It’s comin yet for a’ that,
That man to man, the world o’er,
Shall brithers be for a’ that.”

and his handwritten footnote,

“We’re all the same before God, Ally, any religion or none!”

was signed, of course,
Rabbi Burns.

Andrew Gold 2014
1147 words

Are we really Charlie?

Andrew Gold Politics

Like most of the world I was repelled by the murderous terrorist attacks in Paris last week. My sinking heart went out to the dead and their families. Now my overwhelming emotion is one of contempt for the magazine Charlie Hebdo, and their defiant adherence to a creed that they have an inalienable right to offend, come what may. I find it as disgusting as that of the so-called Muslim /Islamist attackers and unmasks Charlie Hebdo as self-obsessed and self-important. The kindest interpretation of its actions is that working in a political and artistic bubble isolates them from wider society.
The printing of 3, and then 5, million copies of their latest issue – complete with another front cover depicting the Muslim Prophet Mohammed – is no more than a cynical milking of the genuine outpouring of support for the dead and bereaved but portrayed as unqualified support for the magazine itself.
It is ironic that a publication so niche, so marginal in France that it was allegedly on the brink of financial disaster and selling less than 60,000 copies per issue normally, has been saved by this unique, and hopefully, short term spike in sales. Copies of the latest issue are already changing hands on e-Bay for vastly inflated prices, which calls into question the motivation of some who queued to, allegedly, express their support for free speech by buying a copy. Perhaps some, like Charlie Hebdo itself, were just out to make a quick Euro.
If you look at back issues of Charlie Hebdo, which you can do online, you find a magazine with many graphics that are more caricature than cartoon: drawings which depend on, and reinforce, the worst racial and cultural stereotyping to make a point. Take the so-called cartoons of Prophet Mohammed: there are no reliable images of him (just as for Jesus Christ) so the lazy cartoonists depict him as a fat lipped, boggle eyed, bulbously or hook nosed man with a turban. The depiction of a Jew is the same, except for different headgear and hair curls. Irrespective of the religious offence they cause, they are offensive in themselves, full stop, and in my opinion are borderline racist.

Our concentration on Charlie Hebdo has, regrettably, distracted attention from a coincident attack by Boko Harram, another murderous gang pursuing what they claim is an Islamic agenda, killing 2000 not 14 – but then they are Africans killing Africans in Africa, not Parisians.
A BBC journalist reported that the latest, first post-attack, issue of the magazine carried a defiant message which said that if you weren’t ‘with’ Charlie Hebdo then……..

He declined to repeat what it actually said on air as it was too explicit to broadcast. You can imagine what Charlie Hebdo said.
Well, I’m not ‘with’ them: Je ne suis pas Charlie.  Are you?

Travel By Train? Why would you bother if there were other options?

Andrew Gold Rant

My wife and I have just travelled to Birmingham from Exeter, with a ‘side trip’ to Gobowen (Shropshire): Christmas with family.  We had taken the precaution of booking and reserving seats well ahead, a decision that was both well justified and also completely pointless.  I will explain.  The process of reserving a seat offers various options: facing direction of travel, table, near luggage racks, near toilets, near power outlet (for the inevitable I.T.) and so on.  What these options do not allow you to do is select a different option for each of what may be multiple seats: travelling together but selecting aisle seat may result in being separated (i.e. not adjacent) – there is no option for adjacency.  On one of our journeys this meant being in different rows.  On another journey our ‘facing direction of travel’ selection was completely nullified by the inability of the person who applies the little ‘reserved’ tickets to apply them to the correct seats!  On the type of train deployed between Exeter and Birmingham this reservation identifier is a scrolling L.E.D screen which shows whether a seat is available and for what portion of the overall route.  Quite clever, you might think.  However when the train is very crowded, and people arrive at variable times before departure, the whole process of boarding is slowed down while people stand in the aisle waiting to read the scrolling information.  This builds delay into the system at the point of origin but, en-route, people just want to get on the train before the doors close.  Even people with reservations, who presumably know which seat they should be in, get in the wrong carriage or through the wrong door and then have to negotiate their way (with their luggage) to the right place.  For those without reservations it ought to be possible for a simple Red/Green light to identify a seat available, for at least the next portion of the journey, from the carriage end.

Our journey to Birmingham was uneventful but understandably, given the season, crowded.  There was, predictably, a great deal of larger-than-normal holiday luggage, and many bags of awkward sized gifts which would not fit in the overhead shelf.  The baggage storage facilities on trains are barely equal to the demand at the busy times, but when overlaid by the frequently selfish and stupid behaviour of passengers, who insist on having their baggage as near as possible (even blocking the aisle or occupying a seat) is made totally inadequate.  Those few who try to be sensible, by placing bags under the seat in front, inevitably displace their feet and legs into the aisle.  On our journey the catering cart was unable to pass down the train, neither could passengers easily walk to where the cart was.  Someone left a huge case in the doorway when, two feet to the right, was an available floor level storage bay.  These are not uncommon experiences on the UK rail network on busy services at any time of year, not just at Christmas.

The train from Birmingham to Gobowen (an hour and a half) was actually going all the way to Holyhead (a ferry port).  It consisted of only 4 cars and was so overcrowded that people were standing from one end of the train to the other from the start.  People with reserved seats were simply unable to reach them.  One woman selfishly prevented anyone from taking the vacant seat allocated to her husband, despite the fact that he’d found a seat elsewhere and, by ‘phone from there, told her he didn’t need the one she was guarding!  Worse still, the train divided at Shrewsbury so those who needed to get to the other portion of the train had to try to get off, run down the platform, and then fight their way back onto the half-train with all the people already waiting on the platform at Shrewsbury.  It was an utter shambles: one old lady gave up and got off, hoping to catch a later train.  The delayed boarding caused a delayed departure, no doubt with consequences for many other trains in  the network.

None of this was well managed by the on-train staff who were in crisis-management mode, but in any event could not pass down the train to exert any influence.  This brings me to another point: managing passenger behaviour (or misbehaviour).  At its core the attraction of travel by train, rather than by road or domestically by air, is that you can go from city or town, place to place, in relative comfort and security and you have access to sanitation and refreshment.  You can guarantee a seat by reservation and the journey should be relatively stress free.  If this falls down in any way the journey becomes a matter of endurance, and any future journey an unattractive prospect.  Furthermore it cannot be safe having people standing everywhere, and escape routes blocked by bags.  There must be a concerted effort to eliminate it and one measure might be to have, at least some, ‘no standing’ services: you have a seat or you don’t travel.

There are (largely ineffectual) posters encouraging passengers to be considerate to others when using electronic devices.  If you should find yourself near someone who just talks incessantly, and loudly, is foul-mouthed, drunk or generally anti-social, a long journey becomes a nightmare.  All of this we experienced at some point.

There has to be a way for the train operators to pull people up, of saying “shape up or get off”.  I realise this puts the on-train staff in a difficult, potentially confrontational, position – but airlines manage it.  Of course, generally, there are more staff to react to an escalating situation on an aircraft, perhaps 2 or 3 for the equivalent of two train carriages.

In other countries where rail travel is widely used, anti-social behaviour isn’t tolerated and in some, Japan for example, it simply wouldn’t arise in the first place.  So is there a cultural dimension here: is Britain just more anarchic, selfish and anti-social?  Maybe we are, but it wasn’t always like this and it doesn’t need to be now.

 

A trip to the Neurologist

Andrew Gold Lyme disease

After two short-lived, but intensely painful, cramps (adductors) I went to my GP who referred me to a neurologist.  The intention was to assess and perhaps investigate whether there was any permanent damage to nerves caused by the Lyme.  Between my appointment with the GP and actually getting to see the neurologist I must say I seemed to improve, both specifically and generally, so it was a bit of a non-event, although he did appear to listen and he offered a lumbar puncture, and/or repeat serology.  Now, I know that both of these would be unlikely to do other than show I had, at one time or another, been infected by borrelia burgdorferi (Lyme Disease) and, in the case of the lumbar puncture, are not risk free procedures, so I declined.

I asked him about the occasional twitching of my abdomen, not unlike a 6 month old foetus kicking: “I think it is most likely referred or actual pulsing of your abdominal aorta”.  I couldn’t be bothered to argue about this, but the plain fact is that I twitch elsewhere from time to time and none of it is synchronous with my cardiac pulsing.

In the end we decided to watch and wait, and do a full blood screen for ‘everything including a malfunctioning thyroid’.  This is highly likely to identify borderline (one side of the border or the other) Type 2 Diabetes!   Q.E.D you don’t have chronic Lyme Mr Gold.  The official line is intact, Public Health England can rest easy.

The blood test results showed absolutely…nothing; my GP is so reassured she hasn’t even ‘phoned for a follow-up consultation.