DAVID BIRTWISTLE OIKUS

He stood in the shadows and surveyed the house. No lights downstairs, one light upstairs. He moved silently to the downpipe and pulled. It held firm. Quickly and easily he moved upwards until he reached the window-sill. With one hand round the bracket, he felt the frame with his other. He slid his fingers under the bar and tapped it hard. In six seconds he was inside. There, on the bedside table, were his keys.

The chef had got to the top the hard way and wasn't giving up now. He concentrated on the pesto. The roasted pine nuts went into the blender, then the finest olive oil. Fresh basil and garlic, the squeeze of a lemon and finally the freshly grated parmesan. On the stove a pan was boiling furiously and he kept one eye on it as he ground the sauce to a rich paste. She was sitting there waiting. He drained the pasta, a touch of salt, the black pepper. This was it. He hadn't seen his daughter for over a year.

Gripping the cast-iron frying pan tightly in her fist, his mother-in-law waited quietly and patiently behind the kitchen door for the comedian to come home.

Monday was always a slack day. With few customers the barman found other jobs to occupy himself. He would polish the brasses and the glasses, seek out nooks and crannies and search for stains and miniscule spots of grease. He worked with energy and concentration as if he were blocking out all thoughts of life beyond this walled space. Indeed, he was dreading the moment he had to call Thank you gentlemen, time please. Let's be having you for, in truth, he had no home to go to.

On the upper reaches of the mountainside in the remote tribal region on the Afghan/Pakistan border lies a plateau undetected by satellite reconnaissance. Amid clouds of dust the huge American helicopter landed more men and equipment. They were crack troops. The cave system was a maze running for two hundred miles. On the river Dane near Jodrell-Bank, the fisherman pulled in another trout. Behind him the small, limestone cave was hidden by bracken and gorse. That nice Asian man who spent his holidays there paid handsomely for fresh food and promised to pay his poaching fines in the closed season.

With Isaac, that moment of blinding insight which only pure genius recognises and turns to special advantage, occurred with the apple and the tree. That instant, when he unlocked one of the secrets of the universe and realised the pull of gravity may extend far beyond, owed everything to absolute concentration. A total focussing of the mind:
Down
Downwards
Downward momentum
A downward pull
A pulling down.
He put the laws of motion on the backburner and looked up at Molly Hodgkinson's bum:
"Your knickers are coming down."
"No they're not," she replied
"Oh Yes, they are," he grinned.

Heinrich Wurrtleblatt-Schmidt was an anglophile and chief technician on the European project in that big tunnel under the Alps. They examined the most fundamental questions in physics, the deepest laws of nature. In September 2008 the machine shut down with a fault. Heinrich had no protons to monitor but the piping by his work-station grew hot. He now pursued his passion - recipes for savoury duck, black peas, oven bottoms, tripe and trotters and the Lancashire Sauce of his beloved Rawtenstall. By the time they'd fixed it he'd opened Der Englander SchwarzWurst undErbse Breilg over the road to great acclaim.

He was painting the fence when he noticed the old man down by the drystone wall. Adjusting his cap the man picked up from a loose pile, sized things up and placed each stone with a hollow clatter exactly where it should go. He was astounded at the man's skill. He felt the weight, eyed its shape and somewhere there was an exact spot for it. He seemed to read the stone. "What's your secret?" he had to ask. The old man coughed and replied. "It's all in the rack of the eye and the gape of the gob."

He was giving up his allotment. He'd hacked it out of wilderness into this beautiful raised-bed system. Indeed its qualities were enhanced by contrast with the scrubland behind where impenetrable brambles and tall nettles almost covered an old shed made of corrugated metal and decrepit doors. The young artist who'd opted out and squatted there crept closer and listened. "My back isn't what it was but it's these new rules and the health and safety. It's crazy. Take that old shed back there. Once over there were sixty of 'em, all originals. Turner Prize winners each and everyone!"

In the Cern laboratory in Geneva, scientists from all over Europe pursue research into the nuclear and the sub-nuclear world. The Large Hadron Collider is the most powerful experimental apparatus ever created. It will probe the greatest questions of physics: what is the universe made of and how did it all begin? It looks wonderful. Its end-cap is like a light-pulsating, inter-galactic STARGATE interface, awesome enough to suggest it might truly divine some universal secret. What it will actually show us is that the Buddha was right all along - space, time and matter are all an illusion, you thick twats!!!!!

I was dead beat. I’d had the DA on my back all day. He's 22 stone. Suddenly a small blonde knocked on the door. I knew she was small because I could see her kneecaps through the cathatch. "OK blue-eyes," I said. "Quit spinning the faucet and give me the straight tomatoes." "You a sleuth or a slime-ball?" she asked. "The crazy thing is I am going crazy," I said. "And when I say nuts I don't mean cashews, I mean BRAZILS!!!" "You'll do me pal. A can of macadamias ain't worth a hill of beans in this screwball's world!"

The ritual and choreography are age-old, Yeomen of the Guard in Tudor garb take their lanterns to search the vaults in gold and crimson skirts and tights. Well-scrubbed lords preen themselves in ermine gowns and silken socks. Lifeguards in polished helmets line the steps. Gentlemen At Arms with golden epaulettes and spotless plumes queue in file. The Queen wearing the Imperial State Crown trails a long, burgundy robe. Fanfare, pageantry and pomp, all actors in a show. As for live events I think I prefer a stand-up or perhaps the smoke and crackle and lights of Guy Fawkes Night.

The locals drooled over her scrumptious Boxing Day sandwiches so when 'Britain's Best Butty' started advertising they told her to 'get in there'. The recipe was a secret and the locals were happy to oblige and just eat. She took a clingfilm-covered plateful to the area heats and the judges devoured the lot. She was in. That meant telling all. The secret was Christmas leftovers - pork, turkey, veg, stuffing, cranberries, even the solidified gravy, all blended to a pate. She decided a secret was a secret and didn't go. If you're wondering how I got it, I'm not telling you either!

The police used his expert advice to decipher CCTV tapes. As a lip-reader his challenge was to translate any voice, any accent. He was given unprecedented access to TV studios, editorial suites and archives. Last Thursday at Granada studios he sifted through six hours of The Royal Variety Performance. Whilst the boy bands were on the Duke whispered from the comer of his mouth. He cracked it, juggled the phrases and made up a short poem:
Gott in Himmel!
Blood and Sand! Jesus Wept!
Fucking Nora!!!
He sent it to a magazine and came second in the rude haiku competition.

When the preview caught her eye she had to watch it. BBC2 - 'Grow your own drugs for Christmas.' It involved an ethno-botanist presenting both recipes and natural remedies. What attracted her wasn't the herbal hangover cure for her husband but the two for the price of one, the fruity mince pies that also work wonders on cystitis. It could have been Delia or Jamie with herbal extras. Candied peel, sultanas, cinnamon, allspice, nuts and wild fennel and cow-parsley from the hedgerow. Boring uncle Harold came round and devoured them. "Hmmmmmm. What do you call these?" " 'Second Helpings', Uncle Harold," she replied.

The Venerable Bede was limping. Saelfric the Sly caught him up.
"Give yourself a break, lad. Take a Holy Day."
"I'm trying to think."
"Try Coast-Coracling. Get away from it all!"
"I've everything I need right here."
"That wattle beach-hut at Tynemouth. Sand, Sea n 'Surf'
"Listen, pal. The entire known universe is inside this skull. That's enough!"
" That hot geyser at Gateshead. Warm-water rafting! There's fun for everyone."
"That doesn't grab me."
"How about: Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by Indoor Real Peat Fire Holidays of Hartlepool?"
"Book me in because I'm worth it!!”

The research was done for insurance purposes. This small village in Somerset, with its, spring waters, fresh air and passion for grow-your-own emerged as the top location in Britain for longevity. 92 year old Harold Dehiob-Thripps has gardened for 63 years. Sitting in front of a home-made garlic and onion pie with cabbage and sprout mash and Jerusalem artichoke jus, he said "We put it down to fresh air, sex and soil high in sulphur. These vegetables surpasseth all understanding." As he spoke his breath stripped the paint off the plywood pelmet and the grapes threw themselves off the wallpaper.

Leading academics believe education is being undermined by the growing 'reward culture' in schools. "Children gain certificates for the most mundane achievements" they say. " Kids need strong, old-fashioned discipline," says William Wittering of the Leonard Swindley inner-city academy. "Those who won't read or write sit at the back twiddling raffia. We only give certificates if a pupil can put:
•   his school cap on the right way round
•   his glasses on the front of his head
•   his spare dinner tickets in his turn-ups.
I didn't get my Blue Peter badge for picking my nose and flirting it!"

Road conditions were treacherous. Water covered the thick ice. He walked to the shop slowly, like a deep-sea diver, keeping his centre of gravity low. It took twice the normal time. As he banged his shoes at the newsagents an ugly bloke in an anorak pushed past. Inside he had to wait as the guy monopolised the magazine rack. Once outside again, the man was there, reading. He ignored him and set off home. Behind him, a scuffle and skid. "Bollocks," he thought but he stopped and turned. The man was helping up the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.

The recent freezing weather didn't stop those brave enough to go for an open-air swim. Brighton swimming club took their traditional Christmas swim in the English Channel. In Hyde Park swimmers dived in the Serpentine and were given a restorative glass of brandy afterwards. On the Pennines the Bacup Underwater Wrestling team cracked the ice on the local reservoir, swam to the Blubberfold Moor tripe fondling fete, rubbed themselves down with nettles to protect against rheumatoid arthritis and drank Benny and Hot to remind us all that the Battle of Bosworth Field was won on the northern slopes of Pendle.

He was an Egyptologist specialising in pyramids. It wasn't the dates or the kings and queens that fascinated him but the very shape and purpose of these structures. They acted as spiritual gateways to the heavens and their haunting geometry triggered a powerful, subliminal effect on the human mind. Doreen Dobson's interest in holy places was more practical. She enjoyed being shagged round the back of old churches. She loved to grind the plump, pink cheeks of her arse into the brickwork behind the local Methodist chapel. It made him see stars but didn't do much good for his knuckles.

She came into teaching in her forties. The staff were mostly younger. She felt out of touch. To compensate she spoke to the kids like a 'with-it' teenager. Both staff and kids cringed. Simon Springett came in as new headteacher. He was business-orientated with contacts everywhere. She began to spend time in his office filling him in on what was going off. She became known as 'Springy's spy'. The staff led her on no end, plans, conspiracies, false rumours and she duly reported back. Two weeks later Springy turned grey whilst she was invited to train teachers at the poly.

He only went there for the fish&chips. He'd seen Rick Stein sitting in this cafe with a battered cod hanging over the sides of his plate. Then he got sucked in. First the replica of Captain Cook's ship and then The Dracula Trail, a guided tour of Bram Stoker's time there. The guide took them at dusk through the shadows and told them in a deep, slow, spooky voice about the occult and the supernatural. As they reached the famous 199th step, he recovered his breath, stuck a small silver cannonball up his arse and threw himself off the battlements.

He wanted to grow large, magical vegetables and he was eager for knowledge. Compost and manure were the key, the earth itself and the nutrients in it. Then one or two special additives: foliar feeds with comfrey, nettles and seaweed. Tomatoes, leeks and onions could double in size. If you added HLA, human urine, to the compost-heap it provided food for the bacteria. One gardener in Yorkshire used to come home after ten pints of Tetley' s bitter and wazz in a steaming golden arc onto his white roses. The large buds always came out with red hunting hats on.

Deep underground, they had to work over Christmas and they stayed in touch with family and the festive season by electronic link. They believed they had picked up signature traces of the most elusive and mysterious element in the universe: signals left by weakly interacting massive particles, the very components of dark matter. On the day they took a break and reported in. Spokesman Zyron T Hackinabush said "We can't see it because it doesn't generate or absorb light. How do we know it's there? Indeed, where is it?" The big machine whirred and the screen flashed: IT'S BEHIND YOU!!!

A new Quality-of-Life survey rates Elmbridge in Surrey as the closest thing to paradise in the UK. Residents enjoy above-average earnings, better health, greater longevity, bigger houses, better GCSE results, less rain and more sunshine than the rest of the country. The gardener, on minimum wage with kids at an inner-city comprehensive, made a space at the back of a large, restored greenhouse and carefully propagated Kinea Sodomorum, the vine of Sodom, which was supposed to "bestoweth the grapes of Gall" and looked a bit like a tomato. So far he'd introduced it to 137 gardens and was still counting.

BBC Radio Five Live. Sports Report. "And now for all youz academics, doctors, and them what went to Oxford, here's the footy results in Latin. Only five results today because of the weather:
League Division Two
Deva2 Danum2
Lindumo 0 Ad Pontem 0
And in the derby match:
Eboracum 3 Lagentium 3
League Division One
Clausentium 1 Verulamium 1
And lastly the Premiership
Mancunium 4 Londinium 1
One Rugby match today
Aquasolis 27 Mordunum 9
All racing today at Cataractonium was cancelled.
Now sit back, relax and tune in to BBC1 for the final of Venio Saltatio Severe.

For the past eight years there has been uncertainty over their whereabouts, some fearing they'd been killed, others thinking they were in Iran, Afghanistan or Sudan. This rich and privileged group of about 30 people have been in a secret enclave, a secure Rawtenstall council compound trying to live as normal life as possible. Nephew Sayeed's uncle bought him a pound shop on Rozzerman Street and rents half an allotment for his sister's donkeys. It is believed American drone aircraft found nothing when they overflew the Rossendale triangle and satellite photography reveals no sign of life whatsoever in the area.

The closure of Guantanamo Bay is being deliberately slowed down to maximise job-creation provision. As President Obama's administration seeks to place the most dangerous captives in an unoccupied prison fiacility-in Illinois, local politicians there welcome the move as they expect up to 3000 new jobs. More revenue will be generated as low risk prisoners contribute to the reconstruction of existing buildings into Cubo-Disney. Millions of visitors are expected to enjoy Dungeons, Dragons and and Detainees, the Sand Flume and Ayatollahs of the Caribbean II- the Edges of Known Reason. Students can enrol in vocational courses on media-manipulation and credibility studies.

He was a respected researcher in Biblical languages and received a sample of the writings, supposedly the sayings of Jesus. The original Christians believed they could find God within themselves and didn't require priests or authority figures as intermediaries. The Church found this message dangerous and hid them away for 2000 years. His section was from The Apocalypse of James. He studied the source of their inner strength: "Look not to the tattler nor the scandalmonger of the inn. Neither blather ye nor talk bollocks. Keepeth shtoom when all about squawketh like a parrot. Beware of old women of both sexes......."

Horace looked at the photograph of the great mural. "Hey!" he exclaimed. "That John the Baptist's a nancy boy!" "No. No," said his friend. " The DaVinci Code! The whole painting's full of secrets. That's Mary. She married Jesus and his blood line was protected to this day by The Priory ofZion. His ancestors could be any one of us." "How come?" M=Mary and the ratio of body parts is 1:6" "Mine isn't and I look Welsh not Jewish". "Not you, us! We can trace you back in two easy jumps to a landlord in Abersoch and Neanderthal Man!"

The unexpected snowfall turned the whole place into one big holiday camp. Schools were closed, parents stayed at home and the air was filled with joyful shouts and snowballs. Red and green sledges swooshed along and everywhere were Wellingtons with polka dots, snowmen with carrots, and people in gloves, hats and scarves. It was treacherous for driving but magic for the young-at-heart. That Doreen Dobson amazed herself. She dragged the postman round the back of the Methodist chapel, found a queue there, realised the blue bobble-cap was her neighbour and the woman with the dress up was the postman's wife!

The new headteacher's arrival coincided with that large fall of snow. He was proud of making it in. The caretaker was the only other member of staff there. The heating was out, the plumbers couldn't get through and the education offices phoned to say all schools were closed. Six weeks later the boiler had been replaced and it started to thaw. Then the offices got back to him to say his police check hadn't been completed. "It can take ages." By Whit he had the mumps but he'd successfully applied for the principal's job at the inner-city, Leonard Swindley academy.

The media were banned for the South African president's wedding but digital recordings were smuggled out. Jacob Zuma, a 67-year old polygamist married Tobeka Madiba, 32, in Nkandia in rural KwaZulu-Natal province. The leader of the Christian Democrat party said, "polygamy and a return to ancestral worship is a step back into the dark ages." Clad in leopard skins they joined in a traditional dance to pounding drums and much belly-wobbling. One source said it looked like an obesity group work-out. The president's entry in Who's Who reads, Hobbies: Making suet puddings, collecting Lard wrappers and interfering with womens' clothing.

The staff at the Leonard Swindley inner-city high school, recently turned academy, were long-suffering and hard pressed. News that the new head was another outside appointment left them somewhat underwhelmed. When he entered the yard the new head was nonplussed at the figures before him. Three had glasses like beer bottle bottoms, four seemed to be in obesity rehab, and six had serious glide-eye problems one in particular like a Morecambe whelk. It looked like a special needs residential hostel and that was just the staff. At 11.45 the head passed out. The geography teacher won the sweepstake with 11.50.

Last month satellite reconnaissance revealed pictures of the upper Amazon showing evidence of a vast empire of cities, citadels and treasure. This civilisation deep in the jungle close to Brazil's border with Bolivia is believed to be the fabled El Dorado. Early explorations of this area drew thousands of explorers to their deaths and inspired Conan Doyle's masterpiece. A small team on the ground report evidence of a geoglyph-taverna culture and the primitive distillation of local crops including potatoes, chillies, tomatoes and hops. Translations of an ancient signpost reads: Free tequila for the over eighties if accompanied by a parent.

He turned the key and the Volvo estate burst into life. He plugged in his Sat-Nav, swerved round and punched in his co-ordinates. The car took off smoothly. "Turn left" said a disembodied voice. He turned right. A car slid in behind. "Recalculating" said the voice. He checked his mirror and jammed on his brakes as a fat woman and child stepped off the kerb. "Straight ahead." He turned right and pulled in. He approached a door and went in. The woman looked up. He looked her in the eye and said, " Forty five yards of sausage skins please!"

He woke up with a start. A creak downstairs. A faint groan of timber, a muted thud, and a soft rustle. He nudged the missus, A groan. He slid into his slippers, put on his dressing-gown and grabbed his walking-stick. He crept onto the landing and found his torch. The noises were closer, outside the front door! The torch beam fell on a wide-open letterbox. Squeezed through it was a mass of pink flesh. It was that Doreen Dobson again and he deduced a) she was on a box and b) there must be a queue behind the chapel tonight.

By the light of the torch-beam his gloved hands spun the dials. He put on a stethoscope and listened for the faintest of clicks. He tapped the metal and spun the wheels again. After a series of muted clunks the safe door swung open. Immediately the lights went on and applause broke out from the 26 people watching his every move. "Three minutes flat," he said. Everyone began chatting and putting thirty quid apiece into a box. He made more money giving WEA night-school classes in breaking in than he did nicking jewellery. "Next week, bedroom windows, dormers and extensions"

I was minding my own business straightening some bent nails, as you do, when I thought "Life can start up in some very hostile environments. All it needs is the right temperature, some humidity...... That universe out there should be teeming with life! You know what I mean? If that pulse-laser-propulsion programme can get us up there among the stars, surely one of them could come visiting us. Is that too much to ask? No way! I fink not! Say no more!" The next Open University broadcast will be on that Particle doings under them alps. Solid! Sound as a pound! Sorted!

The caretaker leant on a brush and cast a watchful eye round the hall. The chairs and desks were arranged around the outside of the room and the lights glared that winter/orange fuzz that made you blink. The group approached the table that said 'Miss Franny'. "Who've you brought with you tonight, Darren?" "This is my carer, Miss. This is my social worker.......you know my child psychologist........my key worker, my step-father, my birth mother and her sperm donor, my current osteopath, my grief counsellor..........." "Who are they at the back?" "That's Baron, Sharon and Faron, Miss, the other three quadruplets."

Banned on health grounds in the USA after the BSE crisis Haggis is now back on the shelves. This is good news for most Scottish-Americans but bad for Hank T. McSporran Jr. who'd been making his own and passing it off as authentic at seriously inflated prices. He uses traditional oatmeal and suet mixed with sheep's lungs, bollocks and eyeballs. With added asafoetida they taste better than any chieftain-o-the pudding-race in Scotland. Unfortunately the verticillium wilt present on small traces of tomato caused several cases of brain damage. Some doctors say, " Take haggis as part of your regular five-a-day!"

After Christmas Darren was joined by the other three quadruplets, Sharon, Baron and Laren in year one. Miss Franny found them lively and challenging as any other typically dysfunctional 21st century family but there was an up-side. After a week the Albanian gangster's children had left, the drug-pusher's siblings were learning to read and the Somali child-guerrillas were getting 'A's for English. She decided to perform a background check and found that staff from Smedley Street Primary now filled the whole of the senior psychiatric ward in the local hospital and they'd refurbished it and re-named it after Barren's family.

The First Move

Niels Bohr, Nobel laureate for his work on quantum physics had also worked in Manchester, then on the atomic bomb in America and then helped set up CERN with that big positron collider. What people didn't know was that he was hooked on Westerns and spent half his time working out why the goodie who drew second was faster than the baddie who drew first. He'd meet his pals in the Home Wreckers Club, drink Red Barrel and eat Pork 'n beans with garlic and asafoetida. They were the silent-but-deadly beans and helped him no-end with his research on stealth technology.

Sorted!

The situation was either dire or on-the-up depending how you looked at it. Miss Franny was dealing with the probation officer. Darren, Barren Sharon and Larren had been caught at it. In mitigation it was out-of-school and the motive was honourable. There were eight reports of them demanding money with menaces or 'taxing' as Darren put it. They'd been as good as gold in school and the money was for a chair lift up the fire-escape at the local psychiatric ward, named after their family. Miss Franny sensed signs of behavioural improvement. The probation officer used the words 'thieving bastards'.

The Jig Saw Killer.

He was a bouncer with links to the mob. His M.O. was to kill and then dismember his victims. He admitted to butchering the bodies often men whilst working as a doorman in a nightclub run by gangsters. He scattered their body parts across three counties and then emptied his victims' bank accounts. The killings were fuelled by greed and excessive cocaine. He'd evaded the police for several years until finally he tried to claim unemployment benefit and only confessed after the job centre sent him to work as a caretaker's assistant at the Leonard Swindley inner city academy.

Up and Running.

The parliamentary watchdog's new stringent guidelines on MPs expenses list those items MPs can legitimately claim on their constituency expenses including the cost of surgeries and administrative support. The list is now in the public domain and Harold Blenkinsop MP for CleckHeatonville South was called to account on his £7458 of taxpayers' money. Originally claimed for his family's annual lard and peanut butter bill he transferred it, to show he was of good faith, to his fat-buster's allowance, his weight-loss clinic subscription, a personal trainer and the WWF fund to support that beached whale where the Knott-End ferry comes in.

That Old-Fashioned Self Sufficiency.

The most respected organic organisation in the UK, the Soil Association, has been debating its "posh" image and the notion that organic is elitist. The Prince of Wales is its patron. "Organic is now seen as expensive," he said. "High quality nutritious food from sustainable systems should be the right of everyone". Uncle Egbert Heckmondwyke on his allotment in Higher Crumpsall said. "There's too much fancy dabbling these days. Let's get back to Broccoli and chips with monosodium glutamate and a few E-numbers. My nephews have no allergies and they roll around in slutch and eat them slugs with asafoetida."

From Pillar to Post

Herbal medicine practitioners are up in arms at being classified as "at best harmless and at worst fraudulent and toxic." European legislation will now stop unregulated practitioners from accessing many key herbal medicines. However, new clinical trials of hawthorn extract have shown it to work on heart failure and carry few risks. Everyone knows that garlic reduces blood cholesterol. The whole street knows that our Cissie's Harold cured his migraine with feverfew. But God only knows what'll cure that Doreen Dobson's red rash or how many blokes she's passed it on to now she uses the back of the library.

Brown Jolly.

Anwar Bagnaht was a Greenpeace activist in Kerela. That American multi-national was trying to grow genetically modified aubergines on local farms. As the staple ingredient for the fiery brinjal curry it would threaten bio-diversity. "This is leading to colonisation of the food sector," he said. "It is the staple food of the poor. What are we to do?" He got a job in the company's executive canteen, stuffed the aubergines with marrowfat peas, senna pods, asafoetida and the odd Dorset Naga and stood back. They spent the next three years trying to dream up ways of marketing ice-cold loo rolls.

Coals to Newcastle.

Yeung Chow Pakchoi had a row of paddy fields outside Nanchang in Jianqxi province. His land was on top of coal deposits next to a nuclear power station. He had a small boat and six cattle. A recent report said that the major polluter in China was not factory effluent but farmers' fertilisers and pesticides. Yeung Chow was canny in the Yorkshire mould and thought diversification might be the answer. "Contamination is road of borrox but ah! Sorution at hand! Confucius he say 'Complomise.' No need fo artifisher fertiliser. I glow mallowfa peas and expo to brother chippo in Hey sham!"

Field of Dreams by Gregory O'Faulden.

Jean-Paul began to see football as the perfect metaphor. There was no contradiction here because he was determined that intellectuals should take a public stand on every important question of the day. Anticipating the true importance of Match of the Day, he realised the whole emotional focus of the proletariat was on a small square of turf for ninety minutes every Saturday. Thus began a sequence of reasoning leading from existentialism to post-structuralism. He'd been good at footy himself at school largely because he had a knack of keeping one eye on the ball and the other of the defender.

Spelling it out loud.

As it thawed he left his lawnmower collection and went out digging. He overdid it and pulled his back so he took his wife to 'Music night' at the British Legion. The beer was 50p cheaper than the pub and the burger and chips was less than you could make it for yourself. The first turn was the Chechenska Republika folk ensemble, followed by the Djibouti percussion orchestra and ending with the Bob Blenkinsop Blues Band. Meanwhile instead of Bingo they played Countdown and that quiet man from Kyrgystan won it with 11 consonants and 5 vowels making 'smegmitis horrens'.

Planning

Miss Franny was medium term planning. For her that meant a week. She'd seen the probation officer about Darren and such was the sob story she'd given him before, he turned up with his grief counsellor. There were SATS to be managed, Health and Safety, documentation for OFSTED, the Turrets training, the finance sub-committee and the governors who wanted to know what had happened to all the teaching. She pondered under which item on the agenda should she introduce the Kosovo bomber's lad in the pastoral forum. If the chair put on a guillotine she might be home by midnight.

The Elvis Diet: you know it makes sense.

She was down at the local weekly class. She'd had the beds strengthened and a reinforced rubber mat under the carpet to stop the floorboards splitting. That gained her ten points for a start. She'd had the kids blood pressure taken, introduced them to Californian syrup of figs and been to the Compulsory Eating Disorder forum. That gained her twenty more. She weighed herself and saw her trainer who checked her exercise plan, her personalised goals and her body/mass index. She went home and had an eight ounce butter-puff fudge as she read the Lard News and Beef Dripping Weekly.

The Library: round the back.

It was built in fifteenth century Gothic style with tracery windows and leaded lights bearing the arms of the duchy of Lancaster. The brick and stone contrasted with the soft green roof tiles and formed an island of tranquillity with a small garden on three sides. It was a 'temple of peace devoted to the uplifting of the people.' Doreen Dobson liked the postman to uplift her over the smooth stone and crunch her bum into the rustic brick. It was a grade 2 listed building. After the chapel and the tramp's hut Doreen listed it nine out often.

A Belarus Hard Man.

He came from the land of Yaroslav the Wise, son of Volodymyr the Great. Originally populated by refugees from the Byzantine empire his land grew until it became the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. It had a thousand year history drenched in blood. He rode freely among the forests and vast tracts of marshland. His name was Boris the Bloodlust. Until recently he'd been rampaging with his brother Mirislav the Malign but he tired of this unrepressed barbarism and decided to settle down and put something back into the community. He was last seen flagging the back of his cousin's yurt.

DIY: Withdrawal Symptoms.

He was waiting for the paint to dry. He wandered round the house. He tightened a washer in the loo, took a radiator off and put it back on, found some holes for his spare polyfilla, and put a new pane of glass in the greenhouse roof. The kids came home and walked straight into the paintwork, the dog licked the polyfilla, and the wife hadn't the faintest he'd done anything at all. He went to the shed in a huff and turned to his real hobby of straightening old, rusty nails and classifying his Aldi brochures and Screwfix catalogues.

Mean Streets: the Big Apple.

There are eight million stories in the Naked City. You're about to sleep through one of them. Stan Sludz was in an unmarked car. The heat was on. He got an APB. He gunned the car on to Banks then up to Cohen and Wilson. He could have taken Van der Sar and Vidic up to Ferdinand but he had the roof down. What started as a 433 became a 442. He hung a left onto Jensen and Carlysle and ground to a halt at Caldwell. The body was flat in the mud." Captain, the vic's dead. It looks like an own goal, boss."

A Lovely Picture;

For years she'd taken it for granted but now they've pulled that scout hut down everything's open and bared to view. That was what had hidden them from the road. It had been a big shed and cast a deep shadow along the back of the Methodist chapel. Doreen wondered whether to risk it up the fire escape but reluctantly dragged the postman through the hedge and into cardboard hut. When the new metro goes past few will ever realise... ..Doreen turned round, the postman adjusted his trousers, the boy scout pulled the cover back and the tramp took the photograph.

DIY: extensions again.

The first real sun of the year brought out the purple cyclamen and the camellias to the soundtrack of spanners ringing on scaffolding, foundations going in and radio one at full blast. Skips lined the road and neighbours were out in force dumping their dead Christmas trees on top of old joists and window frames. He was up a ladder with his drill like that man in the personal injury lawyers advert as the sound of glass broke all around him. He breathed in happily. "On a day like this it's almost impossible to hear fat people eating pork scratchings"

The mind boggles.

"All them potholes after all that snow! Our street is covered in ‘em. When th’ice came and got in those cracks it bulged like t' biceps on th'ulk. I blame them utility companies myself. Always digging holes and leaving bits showing. You can catch your heel, trip, twist your ankle, fall flat on your face, bump your bike, bang your car wheels, buckle your zimmer frame and I don't know what. That Asphalt Industries Alliance feller said there were 1.5 million potholes on British roads last year alone. I'm going to subscribe to his weekly. It sounded so interesting!"

It doesn't add up. OU Broadcast 52.

Today an intriguing rarity - Fermat 's Little Theorem. This is not to be confused with Fermat's Last Theorem or Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle which everybody knows. No! the Little Theorem states that if p is a prime and a is an integer co-prime then ap-1 will be evenly divisible by p. Geddit? Cop for that, pal! Sort that one out. Solid! Sound as a pound. Now your homework is this: If it takes half a pound of tripe to make a pig a flannel waistcoat how long does it take a fly wearing boxing-gloves to walk over a barrel of treacle?

School: Knowing family background helps

Miss Franny was checking the website of the Multiple Birth Association. After she'd had Darren, Karen, Barren and Larren their mum had had the twins, Farren and Garren and last week she'd given birth to Eric. Miss Franny was aware of the unique challenges that multi-birth families face, especially the chances of family breakdown. They would all pass through the school so she sent off for the Managing the Behaviour in Multiples brochure and made a mental note to send Barren to the bookies with her 3.10 bet. He was hot on his times-tables and they wouldn't rip him off.

Not Fit for Man Nor Beast.

It was the worst he could remember. The wind came from the North East, howled down the chimneystack, found cracks in the doors and blew as an icy draught round his shoulders. He sat there in vests, sweater, fleece, a duvet round him and a hat over his ears. Outside the rain lashed in sheets and turned to sleet. There was a knock on the door. Baseball cap on back to front, pebbled glasses steaming and the rain dripping past his bicycle clips it was Darryl Dilnutt: "Before he died, did your uncle Ernest say owt about a set of drain rods?”

He got a call from the auction house. The accent was French. "We 'ave an item which requires your expert opinion. C'est les lunettes, spectacles." "You want me to authenticate?" "No monsieur. The frames are proper National 'Ealth. Ze left lens is like a beer bottle bottom and the right like a Bordeaux buccin or whelk as you say. They were in Madame de Beauvoir's boudoir marked 'mementos d'amour.' Should we say 'curios' or 'literature' or 'philosophy' or what?' "How about' les yeux oppose' or 'avec un certain digression' or to be even more politically correct, 'sur le penchant?

The hostage situation was over. They flew him back to Brize-Norton after two years in an Iraqi compound. US intelligence sources deny that negotiations involved the release of members of Asaib Abi al-Haq. He described his experiences, "The first three months were hard and I'm not going into now but once they allowed me a food parcel I never looked back. My black peas, chitterlings and tripe and elder were seen as simpatico. After that I got the works. My favourite was sheeps'-eye tagine with cumin and pine nut scrotum slices and Simoon blanket-rippers. I'm looking forward to being re-captured."

The outside temperature was minus sixty and gravity 1/6th of earth's. His job in predictive logistics was to consider forthcoming probabilities as they built the dome over the large crater and created a human habitat on Mars. They would create greenhouse gases to liberate water and then they'd recapitulate the history of life on Earth, only faster. He re-read the mission statement..... "to spread intelligent life as a gift to the universe." New religions at each other's throats, big business, phase III golf courses, interplanetary Disneyland. He thought 'Fuck this!' took early retirement and bought a caravan at Knott End.

The slavering pit-bull next door was used for intimidation and 'street status'. The low-life at the end of the leash said he was less likely to "get robbed" if he went out with it. He was over-weight, wore a baseball hat on sideways and had tattoos on his neck. Being creative the next-door neighbour thought food was the answer. He bought a large Aberdeen Angus steak, dipped it in his granny's mulligatawny soup with extra asafoetida and lobbed it over the fence. Not dead but feeling not at all well it was mugged three days later by a Jack Russell.

There was a peculiar, hollow, nasal squeak coming from his new left leather shoe. When he stepped out it sounded like geese going south. Speeding up and women with prams looked up in the air and pointed. The children were wide-eyed in expectation. If he'd had a synthesizer he could have cut a record! When his socks warmed up it began to sound like a muted trombone. Back home, he put his feet on the kitchen table to give the cheese a chance to breathe and it played Always look on the bright side of life all on its own.

He pulled in at Tesco's as someone else pulled out leaving him the front parking space. He felt blessed. He had a £1 Lucky Dip. 9 million to one but if you're not in it you can't win it! Next he squeezed the tomatoes. Rock hard. Good job he tried. Next the sell-by-date shelf. He picked up a lettuce and boiled ham sandwich and a pork chop for a song. What made his day was the freezer special offer - Morecambe whelks. 3 tubs for the, price of 5! It was such a good offer he bought two lots to celebrate.

He was struggling with the quickie. You could almost hear his brain working overtime. 4 down, Michael Caine Film (3,7,3) He was sure he'd seen it. The something something. The first word was blank 'H' blank. The second word was T blank 'A' blank T blank 'N'. It looked like 'Indian' or something like that only longer. The last word was blank 'O' blank. He wrote it out lengthways: -H- -I-A-I-N -O-. Suddenly a light went on and a bell rang. The Iranian Mob! He remembered seeing it! A cracking film. He'd have something to boast about tonight, now.

First there were all the meetings and then meetings about meetings. Full staff meeting, Heads of Department meeting, Pastoral care meetings Senior management meetings, Governors, Health and Safety, New initiatives and now Strategies to deal with innovation overload. Then there were the training days and twilight Inset, Children’s rights, juvenile delinquency awareness, Street Credibility in Britain Today….. she wondered when she’d get time to do some teaching. For her own health and sanity she considered having a day off. For the school there was so much to fit in and so little time she thought of abandoning Christmas and Easter.

He put down his AEG WS6 110volt angle-grinder with its direct air exhaust, rotating gear head and spindle lock and decided to do something more basic. On his workbench he emptied a 1Kg jar of bent, rusty 3inch nails. Rolling them with his fingers he tapped them with a toffee hammer until he had straightened, re-usable nails. This gave him the same satisfaction as rolling cigarettes. He’d left behind the modern technological world and re-entered a realm of quiet, tactile bliss. So enchanted was he that he took his Stanley 5-83-123 Auto Trigger clamps and gave them a loving massage.

Mildred Pilkington had antennae like Jodrell Bank. She’d spotted that Doreen Dobson taking the window cleaner round the back of the library. This week she took him to see the tramp’s makeshift hut down the railway line whilst he was off begging. Mildred suggested to old Harold Hodgkinson that he swallow a Viagra and they’d use the empty space. The pill and the fresh air seemed to do Harold an uncanny power of good, Mildred felt refreshed, Doreen experienced being horizontal for a change but the window cleaner was told next time he had to bring a couple of bricks.

On the banks of the Nile, where it flows through the Nubian desert, the European technicians were teaching a small group to use the latest satellite communications. Lost along the longest river in the largest country in Africa they were virtually undetectable, just specks in a sea of sand. On the river Dane in Cheshire the fisherman was away on a job. The friendly Asian eased his way into the sunshine and checked the reception on his mobile phone.”Tomorrow? Good. And get me a number 53 with extra noodles. It’s my birthday and I have a little something for you.”

He was respraying his Qualcast E Sidewheel lawnmower complete with rear roller when he spotted the rust patch on his collection box. It was too much for his sensibilities. “I’m going down the allotments,” he said’. He’d become an associate member and could still buy things cheaply at the shop. He checked his list: Potting compost, nitro-chalk, superphosphates, Growmore granules, blue Slugdeath pellets, nitrate of ammonia, brushwood killer………….His two aims for this year were simple i) to grow everything organically and ii) to cross Brussells sprouts with dock roots for extra hardiness. There’d be none of that GM mallarky here!

He was down at Granada studios again going through the tapes of President Zuma’s visit. He found the one of the duke in the state coach sitting next to the President’s 5^th wife Thobeka Madiba. He watched the corner of his mouth. It began to twitch. He was talking to himself again. Such was the skill he could decipher even this. “What happened to that Mandela chappie? Still I must say if he can podge a plump little pudding like this at his age, there must be something there. I wonder what sort of bush tucker keeps his pecker up?”

He was thinking seriously about a pilgrimage to Thrupp – where Edward Budding had invented the first lawn-mower, when it brightened up. He shot out into his small back garden to put his first earlies into two plastic containers. Manure, top soil, fertiliser and chitted potatoes each in a nest with leaf mould to protect them. The care and attention were astonishing. He spread the last layers with his hands as though tucking a baby into a cradle. Into this meditative state came his eureka moment. “I’ll downsize properly! I’ll collect two-pronged, short-handled weeders or maybe even early Cornish hardwood dibbers!”

That giant European collider was on again after eighteen months shutdown for maintenance. It took fifteen years to get the world’s biggest machine up and running and it just fizzled out. Heinrich Flemblatt’s job was to detect stray currents leaking out of the magnetic protection system. Along the tunnel he tightened a few screws and gave the casing a right good kicking with his size twelve Doc Marten’s Ironbridge safety boots. Suddenly it started humming. With an esoteric smile on his face he walked back to his room to relax and sift through his collection of Victorian English bicycle clips.

The miserable expression on his mush had grown out of the view he held of the universe. All things were grinding down in a remorseless way, all physical systems were impermanent. He’d picked up echoes from Bertrand Russell of that profound despair when facing ‘the vast death of the solar system.’ When he looked at the Hubble pictures all he saw was disintegration and death. In his greenhouse, the old man who’d left school at 14 opened his newspaper and the swirling gases and colours and forms in the photograph looked like staring into the heart of a prize chrysanthemum.

As the fisherman was away on a hall, stairs and landing job it occurred to him what an inspiration his Mexican bandit voice was. The perfect eccentricity so beloved of the English. He decided to practice. “Senor, for you I keel a thousand bulls.” He said ‘bulls’ with a very soft ‘s’. He wondered if the fancy dress shop had sombreros and bandoliers. He would greet his friend with “For two pesos I slit my grandma’s throat. For three pesos I slit my own!” He would be safe as houses. He sighed, “Muchachos, it’s a crazy but it’s a true!”

He was in his shed looking at the snail hibernating, a film of crisp mucus gluing it to a plastic box. He was pondering how many other wondrous life forms shared his small enclosed space. Most were hidden out of sight. The spiders he regarded as friends; moths and lacewings lived their whole life-cycle there. Bees, wasps, ants, beetles, flies, midges, gnats and mice had all made this space their own. Then it dawned on him! Ever since he’d been enticed into that cardboard box by that Doreen Dobson he might be inhabited himself and it probably wasn’t simply nits.

The hiding man peeked into the day room. It looked like a close-up from ‘Christ Carrying the Cross’ by Hieronymus Bosch. Everywhere there were popping eyeballs, lolling tongues and a distinct shortage of teeth. It was a sight for sore eyes. One old man reminded him of Robert Newton and once a week Long John Silver seemed to catch a second breath and remember his old socialist principles. He loved listening to him. “Come ‘ere,” he’d say. “If I stand on that lavvy lid and look over those chimneytops, on a clear day I can still see the class struggle.”

The two white guys sat at the back of the rural church listening and recording the rocking beat, the complex cross-rhythm and the harsh edge to the singing. Although traditional it contained the future. Elvis, Little Richard and Jerry-Lee would discover this magic in years to come. Simultaneously, on a Rossendale Hillbilly farm, Big Bad ‘Brother’ Bob Blenkinsop sat in his kitchen with his plywood ukulele and banged his clog on the stone floor. “I woke up this morning. I got straight back into bed!” It would take Carl Williams and his Blue Suede Shoes twenty years to catch up.

Alan Titchmarch started telling the younger generation where it was all going wrong. “Get off Twitter and into that garden!!! Get some fresh air and exercise, for crying out loud! Get your hands dirty. Stick ‘em in that compost and plant some spuds! Forget that clappetty clippetty clicking on them miniature touch-pads where the letters are smaller than the instructions on a seed packet and get outside, you bone-idle, work-shy layabouts! What’s the world coming to? We have the most bracing climate in the world. Who wants Spain or the Caribbean when you can have sleet and slutch like this?”

With his Friar Tuck disguise and tonsure, he began to ingratiate himself with the management. Gardening was too much like hard work but he offered to wheel round the library books and take individual prescriptions to patients’ rooms. After a week he’d discovered two really good crime writers and gained access to class A drugs. With Wednesdays off he could flog the stuff and buy a car. Then with camouflage and transport he could set himself up as a private-eye and do some serious checking up on people whilst he worked out just where that Dr Shipman had gone wrong.

The sun eventually came out and so did the barbecues. She told him theirs was now too rusty and unsafe. “Go and get another from B&Q!” It was like a red rag to a bull. He didn’t need a sat/nav. His car knew the way on auto-pilot. He decided on a large gas burner at £25 cheaper than last year. Then the dilemma – he’d have to create storage space somewhere. Extend the extension? Add to the kitchen? Another outhouse? The sunny bit of the garden was getting smaller. This didn’t bode well for the tomatoes and the dog had claustrophobia.

The streets around the Leonard Swindley inner city high school aka ‘academy’ looked like downtown Beirut. The east was friendly but west and south gave people the creeps. Boarded up blocks, druggies in doorways, bottles and needles on the pavement, it gave off an eerie sense of desolation. Indeed Miss Franny had just ‘processed’ the daughter of a Lebanese Christian phalangista who had the fiery spirit of an unbroken arab horse or serious attention deficit disorder as we prefer to call it. She wondered how many more they could take and would six weeks on chip barms slow her down?

He was on a stake-out on the corner of 4^th and 43^rd. The name was Studz, Stan Studz, Studz with a Zee. He had a private practice. It was gross but unobtrusive so people let it pass. He was looking for the perp. The perp had left clues. He wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. He was looking for a Caucasian male with a glass eye, a wooden leg and a truss. Mensa this guy wasn’t. He was no Norman Einstein! With clues like that you didn’t need to solve the New York Times cryptic crossword. So he waited…….

Out of the immense darkness of space the asteroid MN4 emerged into a near-Earth orbit. The scientist at his console estimated the odds at 1:37.Made of Iron and Nickel and travelling at tremendous velocity its impact would be transformed into a shock wave which would change the very mineral structure of the rocks. Should he recommend a nuclear explosion or a solar reflector to prevent plummeting temperatures and mass extinction? The only thing he was certain of was: if he didn’t get Sarson’s vinegar on his chips he’d throw a tantrum and spit on his picture of Patrick Moore.

He was reading the paper in the pub and looking at a photograph of a 250m year old fossil, the latest archaeological discovery from China. A Saurichthys. What a work of art! The colours of the background rock were earthy oranges and pastel browns and set against them were the precise, shiny, black lines of the head and teeth and the curved scorpion-like spine. It was evidence of how our eco-system had recovered after a mass extinction. He looked about him, at the assembled skulls and the expressions on them and realised what scientists meant by qualifying ‘recovery’ with ‘partial’.

He knew now that for five billion years this icy juggernaut had roamed the outer reaches of our solar system like a cosmic hoover sucking in debris and destroying comets. It was a world with no ground, just cloud swirls, thunderstorms and hurricanes the size of earth. From Jupiter our planet looks like a feeble speck circling a distant sun. It suddenly came to him that the universe isn’t cosy, it’s all bangs and crashes and flashing lights and fireworks. He wondered if that Doreen Dobson would invite him round to see her Christmas tree once her husband went back.

He became an actor because he just couldn’t do much in real life and knew he was very good at pretending. He realised there were loads of opportunities to make far more money than he would working for a living by living in cloud-cuckoo-land, giving false impressions and leading people up the garden path. He would sit and watch himself for hours in the mirror. Pausing, breathing very slowly, empty of any expression and void of all feeling, he’d just sit there. Then he’d twich, stir, an eye would flicker, and he’d moisten his lips. Slowly he’d become somebody else.

He was researching the mysteries of the gas giants in the outer reaches of the solar system, a study that challenged the accepted laws of nature. Deep inside Jupiter, below the storms, the temperature and pressure just built up until the magnetic field extended all the way to Saturn. Pressure and heat were transforming the core into metallic hydrogen but he knew that on one of its moons……………At the bookies he asked what were the odds of finding life on another planet. He drew out his life savings and got 90-1 on life being found in the next 250 years.

He’d had a detox but was still smoking and his personal aerobics regime consisted of digesting noisily and coughing his guts up. Leaning on the counter he ordered 4 double cheese burgers with fries, onion rings, and ten sachets of ketchup. “Hey! A chip barm whilst I’m waiting!” He was deeply anxious to have something to cling on to, a ray of hope, a touchstone. In his pocket was a copy of The Elvis Diet and he opened it at random. Page 46 –“Never eat on an empty stomach.” “Oh, and another thing, two of them waffles fried in lard”

JPS was determined that intellectuals should take a public stand on every great question of the day when suddenly it hit him. Le futbal! He saw football as the universal metaphor, the perfect vehicle for social criticism. What began in Being and Nothingness would lead on through Post Structuralism into the very fabric of Ethno Methodological exploration. He devoted his later years to working out the formula for calculating how much phlegm was hawked up after 22 men had played for 90 minutes. Do we count the Green Gilberts coughed up in extra time and what about the ref and linesmen?

They’d rigged up a device whereby they could weigh one leg at a time. If they’d been tree trunks they’d be two hundred years old – each! Fat bulged in rolls down her sides. She had so many double-chins it looked like she was staring at you over a plate of crumpets. Her husband was founder-member of the Overweight Football Supporters Association. He specialised in eating pork scratchings as loudly as possible in front of Match of the Day and drowning the crackle with a football rattle. Their pride and joy was that both of them had broken the stair-lift twice.

Heisenberg had shown how matrix mechanics can be interpreted in terms of classical physics. The major breakthrough in understanding the discrete energy states of atomic systems came to him whilst recovering from hayfever in Helgoland. He realised that the measuring process involved the role of the scientist interacting with the observed object. To relax his mind he took a break and tried envisioning something practical . What could you usefully do, what could you actually make, with all those used Fray Bentos pie tins he’d stacked in his shed? And, moreover, he wondered what modified maize starch actually looked like.

He didn’t like going abroad but most people disagreed and went off. It had been sunny so far but he was sceptical. He decided to crack on with his own inland beach-hut. In Scarborough they cost a fortune; his cost £200. He got into that holiday spirit and stacked it with siege rations. He re-sealed the roof, put in a stove and bought a wind-up radio. Sure enough it rained for forty days and nights. He relaxed with a bottle of Chilean red and listened to Test Match Special shooting bluebottles with his pop gun. One cork was a niner.

At 6.15 he had his first breakfast : meusli, a cup of tea and a slice of toast. For elevenses: cold artichoke hearts with a salsa of onion, garlic, tomato, capers and chilli. That was his 5-a-day already! His whole body buzzed and he felt an acute sense of being alive. Leading up to lunch his senses groaned. He could hardly concentrate on his job. The choice became existential: Meat and potato? Steak and Kidley? Cornish? Donkey and fries? A pie floater? He ordered fish, chips, large mushy peas and two babby’s ‘eads with gravy and pickled eggs for afters

When the job offer flopped through the letterbox with a loud plop she went into a bit of a tizzy. She read the job description again: four days on, three days off, nights every other week, holidays- last week in July/ first week in August. She could hardly believe it, it was right up her street. She wondered whether to take it there and then but something she couldn’t exactly put her finger on didn’t ring quite true. Her suspicions increased as she stared at that address: The Blue Lagoon House, The Entry Ginnel, Just off Hirohito Street, Cleckheaton, Yorks.

He spent last Saturday lunchtime, as usual, talking bollocks and balderdash with his mates in the pub. One of them brought in a jar of Mexican jalapenos, and they dared each other. He had five. When he told his wife she put a toilet roll in the fridge and banned the kids from the downstairs loo. Next week someone brought in a Dorset Naga at over a million on the Scoville scale. The Indian army use them in smoke grenades. The room went quiet as he stood, stuck a brick up his arse and threw himself out of the window.

The cosmologist sat at his desk, hand on brow, pondering deeply. Yesterday he had considered the origin of microwave background radiation, the day before, how galaxies actually form and cluster. Today, lodged into his brain was the notion that space, time and matter all began 13.7 billion years ago. There were implications here. Outside, the janitor opened the cupboard door and lit up. He breathed the smoke outwards and up and swallowed deeply. His question was no less momentous. “How on earth do you down a pint in one go and how come Pete Taylor’s aunt Sybil has no clack?”

Have you seen what they’ve done to that new Aldi brochure? Everybody’s horrified. All that gloss and glitz has gone. The paper’s like a pound shop wrapper. Them Flu Relief Capsules and Vapour Rub are still only 99p but I ask you. You can still do the whole shop in one stop and them microwavable vegetables at 79p are still good value and that anti dandruff shampoo gives a real shine to hair that looks like a budgie cage lining but same as I mean to say, printing your special buys like that. San Izal has more shine and polish.

They were doing an extension behind the old ironmonger’s and they’d pulled the high wall down. Lo and behold! It was much bigger than anyone imagined – an old courtyard with mullioned windows, pine doors, nooks and crannies. That Doreen Dobson was with the first group in. The Civic Society laid claim to the granite sets, the history teacher mapped out a large school project and Doreen eyed the cellars, the old air-raid shelter and the platforms up the cast-iron fire-escapes .She knew that on a foggy night, with a Sherlock Holmes air of mystery, the place fairly reeked of possibilities.

He re-read the ancient, cryptic scripts. Here was the most famous prophet in history who had foretold every major event. The text was full of bleak warnings about the third Anti-Christ. The 16^th century French was difficult and meanings changed over time but he cracked a small overlooked section. Not everything was doom and gloom! He’d predicted Napoleon, Hitler, the Atomic bomb, the Great Fire of London, Hurricane Katrina, the Tsunami and the end of the world in 3797. But here, with pin-point precision he stated that in August 2009 Burnley would beat Man United 2-1 at the Golden Turf.

Sherlock Holmes sat in his leather, wing-back armchair in front of a log fire puffing occasionally on his long meerschaum pipe. That famous profile was in silhouette. “Great Heavens!” he murmured. “The fate of that poor innocent child! This heinous fiend must be brought to justice. But I must admit that I’m completely baffled.” At times like this, to allow his mind to relax and the subconscious rise and do its work, he’d do a quiz or a crossword puzzle. The question was: where do the best pies come from? He answered confidently with a flourish of his quill – Holland!

The mountaineer knew some people believed that with mobile-phones and GPS no-one is alone anymore. Climbing for him was not simply an exercise in skill and strength but a philosophy, a way of life. It involved pitting human frailty against the immensity of nature and overcoming it. “Each climb is about solitude, emptiness.” He eased the toe of his boot into a fissure and pushed. “And if this doesn’t work I’ll change my hobby and go back to collecting them red elastic bands that the postman chucks on the flagstones up our street.”

Miss Franny had told Darren, after he’d run into trouble again, that life’s most important lesson was to stay cool and observe. He heeded her advice. He started observing celebrities and how they gained stardust by placing retainers with grandiose titles between themselves and their fans. The charisma was proportionate to the distance created. When the policeman arrived at school he had to get past his personal trainer, his A and R man, his recording engineer, his masseur, his clairvoyant, his Moben designer, his acupuncturist and his cornerman. He asked for his autograph and let him off with a warning..

Jean-Paul was re-editing A Critique of Dialectical Reason for the Swahili edition when his mind strayed back to his youth and his full fitness. A penalty shoot out. He remembered taking his time, walking slowly and steadily from the half-way line to the penalty spot, using every psychological ploy he could think of. There were lessons in this to add to his grand metaphor. The goalie jigged his shoulders, toyed with his gloves, opened his arms full stretch and danced up and down. He ran, smacked it and the net bulged. It was all being and somethingness in them days.

The fisherman’s friend spotted the outsider for what he was as soon as he pitched up. Homeland Security, seconded to MI5, seeking Al Qaida operatives in Britain. Angular, crew cut, shades and a bulge under his right arm. He also looked intelligent but put his baseball cap on backwards. As he cast into the deep pool under the willows he sidled up to the fisherman and gave him a glance. That nice Asian man watched from the cave. He whispered “Would you go under cover and become a sleeper?” “You big southern Jessie! We don’t like nancy boys here, pal!!!!”

It was starting to rain so he pulled his collar up. He was standing across the road looking up at the rooftop waiting for the sweep’s brush to pop out of the chimney-pot. Then it started to chuck it down, hard! The pink roof tiles were dancing with water splashes as raindrops big as marbles bounced and turned to steam. He couldn’t see a thing. After an hour or so it stopped. Absolutely nothing there at all. His trousers were sodden and his glasses clouded up. He wandered back over, went inside and his wife and the chimney-sweep were gone.

He surveyed the garden with his professional’s eye. Border perennials, large lawn, fruit trees, weeping willow, pond. There, on the edge of the rockery, behind the Helianthemums and the Candytuft was the first clump of knotweed. “It’s terribly invasive. It can push through concrete and it’s a structural threat to buildings. The seeds shoot twenty metres so your neighbours might….” “Anything. Just get rid!” “It’s difficult. It’ll cost.” He took out the roots, sifted the soil, bagged everything up and sprayed. He’d now plant this lot in that garden with the tennis court. That would pay for a new pick-up.

It was a typical suburban scene. The milkman had been, wheelies were out on the kerb and people were up and about. She shouted up the stairs to her son. “Your breakfast’s ready and you’re late for school.” “I don’t want to go to school!” “Whyever not?” “I don’t want!” “Well tell me exactly why you shouldn’t go.” “I hate the boys and the boys hate me. I hate the staff and all the staff hate me!” “Well I’ll give you two good reasons why you’ve got to go.” “What are they?” “One you’re 43 and two you’re the headmaster!”

He’d been at his work station for days and he was going a bit stir-crazy. He was working on the Event Horizon where gravity became so extreme it stops time itself. This was the singularity, a point of infinite gravity where the laws of physics cease – a black hole. He had a bit of a giddy spell. He started thinking of all things black: black currants, black magic, black forest gateaux, black velvet, and then his mind came to rest. His body was telling him that what he needed was egg and chips with a couple of Bury black puddings.

He was impressed with the stair lift. It took the residents to the top before they forgot what they were going upstairs for. He had two goes on it. When he came down the rest room was full, some were riveted to the new Aldi brochure, the rest watching the test match on teletext. Eyeballs bulged, jaws slackened, false teeth ground. For a wanted man this was not only camouflage but fun. He was enjoying his gap year. Pretending to be bonkers opened his eyes. The loose paving-stone on that big patio would be perfect if he met his ex-missus.

“There are billions of universes out there and black holes could be portals, short cuts through time and space, cosmic subways to get us there. The one at the centre of our galaxy is hidden by a cluster of stars. The Holy Grail of physics is to take a picture of it, try to capture its silhouette. We would need to link up radio telescopes from Hawaii to Chile to Africa to create a virtual dish 6000 miles across big enough to do the task. Homework: The Dark Heart of our Galaxy – Discuss. OK? Fair to Middleton? Good. Bad. Wicked!”

Another state opening, another day of pomp and pageantry. The Yeomen performed their ritual search in red and gold Elizabethan garb, the lords in ermine sat there plump and smug and set up for life. The lip-reader was mesmerised. He wanted to try this in real time without using recordings. The royal couple descended the rickety rungs of the state coach and tottered towards the golden thrones. The Duke spoke through clenched teeth but he caught the drift. “Mein Gott! Verflucht! Who loosened that step? And get that dolloper in the wig to shovel this horse shit for my fuschias.”

He leaned back in his reinforced recliner and felt the floorboards groan. He was watching daytime TV with one foot up and his left leg attached to his circulation booster. He’d had an RSJ put in with a strap so he could haul himself upright. An advert came on for fat lads’ clothing. The trousers had space for a large bum and if you weren’t athletically challenged already there’s room enough for when you were. The sweaters were like bell tents full of fitness logos but what he fancied was the outsize baseball cap advertising the world lard eating championships.

It was the Dark Ages. The Romans had been and gone. The Venerable Bede sat at his desk thinking. Bounded by the Tyne and the Humber he never strayed far from his Jarrow monastery though his imagination encompassed the whole known world. He took stock of the waifs and strays left behind by the conquerors and his wish was to give them a single identity – the English! The only factor he could find that united them was this dreadful weather. But, hey, who wants Iberia, Asia Minor or Carthage when we have all this sleet and slush of our own?

He was a man on a mission. He was using a cast-iron mould to grow a square marrow when the real deal hit him – the world’s first one hundredweight single tuber potato! He began a breeding programme which crossed the blight-resistant Sarpo Mira with the Doreen Dobson, a plump, early maincrop with pink splashes round the eyes. He wanted a jaw-dropper. And to go with it he would create the rudest kohlrabi in Christendom and a double-cheeked purple turnip you could park a small bicycle in. He was flushed. He felt like the last man alive in those Midsomer Murders.

He was trying to get his mind round the numbers. The universe consists of billions and billions of stars and galaxies, but until 14 billion years ago, none of them existed. In a single moment everything we know was created. The hydrogen atoms in that glass of water were born moments after the big bang. What actually happened? Why a bang? Why not a whump or a whoosh? If he could answer that it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason. He would finally understand the mind of God. Then he realised – he’d left his sausages under the grill.

He’d not had an allotment for months and was going stir-crazy when old Norman asked him to keep an eye on his plot. It was cold so he decided to fettle the beds and make a fire. He used a plank so as not to compact the soil and planted a few garlics as a surprise gift. Then the kindling took light, the branches went on and sparks filled the air. Sure enough he hadn’t lost his touch. By the time he put the big log on three sheds behind him were ablaze and another four looked ready to go.

He was a bit concerned about how mentally active he was. He reported in at weight-watchers each week without fail but he was no good at crosswords or sedukos or anything intellectual. He only read two things really so he decided to read them again. The first was Aldi Special Buys. There was this machine that you strap to your genitalia and it prints out your salt intake, your blood-sugar level, your heart-rate, your collesterol and tells you how much weight you’ve put on this week. All for £36.50. His other must-read brochure was Lard News and Beef Dripping Monthly.

‘Outer space, as far as we can measure it, is 150 billion light years across. It may well be infinite. We may never know. What we do know is what began 14 billion years ago has not stopped yet and is not slowing down. Most of our galactic neighbours are receding and working out how our galaxy will end is a mystery as deep as its beginning. Will it end in fire or ice, a bang or a whimper? Homework: Are we just one in a long line of universes? Right? Sorted! Din I? Ci*y, Uni*ed, an all that lot.’

He had a Gouloise in and it was making one of his eyes water. He was looking more and more like Gerard Houllier or Rene from ‘Ello Ello.’ He re-read the letter from his English admirer pointing out new perspectives on his work. “The trouble is we are stuck with a construct of the idea of nothing which is nothing to do with what nothing is.” He was tempted to extend his football metaphor into being and nothingness when he read the P.S. “By the way Mr. Sartre, you must have exceptional eyesight if you can see through those glasses.”

The weather had taken a turn for the worse as the rain eased off to a steady deluge. He was sitting in his inland beach hut with candles and a log fire. Peace and bliss surrounded him and large questions opened before him. The light and shadow and flicker of the flames made him feel like he was inside a Rembrandt painting. He became aware of the fundamental inter-connectedness of all things. He cleared his mind and addressed a koan, a deep almost impenetrable question : How do you design a ten page tourist brochure for Knott End local council?

He was there under deep cover. The drug cartel he’d spilled the beans on had eyes everywhere but not on this sheltered housing project. He congratulated himself on his bushcraft and camouflage. They might be closing in but the secret was: he really enjoyed it. It was warm, cheap, and comfortable and he kept a bottle of Senatogen on his dresser to reinforce his geriatric credentials. There were lots of things to play with: a dialysis machine, circulation booster, stair lift, hip bath. The next target was a tuned-up mobility scooter so he could get in free at FC United.

The warden found rats! In a sheltered housing project they would cause pandemonium. “They smell ‘orrible and they’re big as Persian cats! Can you do something? That Rodent Eradication Technician can’t come till a week on Tuesday!” “Let’s have a look.” “They piddle and pittle an ‘undred times a day. Deadly infections abound! Think of our feeble-minded fuddy-duddies and our doddering old dim-wits!” That indeed might well blow his cover, he thought. He put out Spam laced with deadly nightshade, Lymburger cheese and asafoetida then sat in his recliner, eating Vesta Chow Mein and playing with his pet cavy Horace.

It was too wet to go down to the plot so he did a bit of a recce on his neighbour’s greenhouse. There he was feeding his giant squash. This lad had his eye on the Harrogate Heavy Vegetable Championships. With his binoculars he could read the large print on his growing-tips card. “If you overfeed vegetables artificially they get heart rot and burst out into gnurls. Giant veg however, don’t need to be perfect, just big. Feed till it almost splits.” He realised now where he got his obsession. His wife had a face like a burst tractor tyre.

He was in the monastery Physick Garden looking at all the herbs. He was pondering the Doctrine of Signatures, the belief that plants whose shape and colour remind us of parts of the human body are efficacious therein as medicines. Thus there was lungwort, blood root, toothwort and even wormwood to expel parasites. Then the fish woman rolled up with a cart full of guernets. She was a brazen hussy in a pink, low-cut dress. For a moment he stopped thinking about his Farmer Giles and tried to find an apt phrase. “Mutton dressed as chops” he whispered to himself.

Breathing very heavily he leant against the door and locked it. A Yale, a 4-bar tumbler, a thick chain and two solid bolts. The police had advised everyone in the village to stay indoors and stay calm. The net was closing in on the armed killer who lived locally and was stalking the area with a shotgun. His heart pounded and his blood pressure soared. He told himself to calm down, took a leaf out of Alfred E Numan’s book, went upstairs and started to make a roll of silver-foil from cigarette packets to send to poor children in Africa.

It must be that Seasonal Affective Disorder. It wasn’t really light till 10 O’Clock and it started to fade again about half past 2. When it drizzled with clouds overhead it was dark all day. Doom and gloom, dull and dank. All sense of hope disappeared. He decided he must snap out of it, pull himself together and straighten a few rusty nails to use again later. As his spirits returned he began to practice an old rag and bone man’s cry and he remembered that five or six bottles of wine a night are supposed to stop you ageing.

From the outside, he was a mildly eccentric, conservative English gentleman. Inside he was bursting with revolutionary ideas. He kept his great work secret. Always methodical to a tee he spent his time observing, scrutinising, refocusing and bringing new perspectives to bear on basic assumptions. He asked fundamental questions of the secrets of life on earth and he saw how within the changing nature of the planet only the best-adapted survive. So, on Sundays he would put on his suit and tie and gaiters and waistcoat and with his whole family he would obediently visit the church of God, Chiropodist.

He worked out in the gym every day. Weights, press-ups, cycle, rowing machine, parallel bars, punch bag. His muscles bulged and his torso gleamed. He took enhancers, vitamin supplements, steroids and herbal extracts. He made Charles Atlas look like a road map for kiddywinks. When he tensed, his stomach was so hard if you hit him you’d break your hand. He’d do a nine mile run then come home and eat a two pound steak and six eggs with a gallon of tap-water. To relax, he’d turn on the telly and watch re-runs of Hardy Drew and the Nancy Boys.

His aunt died and left him some land. Only a few fields and a couple of out-buildings but it changed his life. It was damp and wind-swept but it got him out of the house. Instead of watching Midsomer Murders he could now whiz up and down in the mud in his old tractor, pack and unpack bales of hay, go out ragwort riving, and slap plenty of mortar on those dry-stone walls. It was so much fun he bought a second-hand Countryfile calendar for the year behind and filled it in with all the things he should have done.

With all these cuts Miss Franny now had 43 in her class and between them they spoke 19 languages. The school was now officially the Leonard Swindley Academy for Media and the Arts. The problem was they had no media teacher and the only thing the kids had off to a fine art was thieving. When faced with adversity, get your priorities right! First, in her role as finance officer, she saw the caretaker and cleaners had double overtime. Second she bought in enough herbs and spices to turn school dinners into a Caribbean banquet. Attendance figures went up again.

School dinners were going down a treat and the cleaners had things spick and span. Miss Franny’s foresight in realising that an army marches on its stomach proved prophetic. Many Headteachers in England had never realised the two most important principles of social control were: see to the caretaker then see to the dinner ladies. This week’s menu was:

Monday        Chicken rice and peas
Tuesday        Curry goat
Wednesday   Saltfish and ackee
Thursday       Meat patties and plantain
Friday Creole rabbit and pepperpot

The kids begged to come in on Saturdays and Miss Franny always got a little something for the weekend.

He was overjoyed with his old Massey Ferguson tractor. He loved the big wheels and chunky tyres. He’d discovered a rusty bucket and blade that went with it. He spent three days loading up with loose stones, bouncing over the bumps and ruts and dumping them at the other end of the field. Since he stopped watching Jeremy Kyle he was in clover. He began to love mud and all the slurp and slurrup. He splashed slutch all over the place. After a week of digging and splashing his field began to look like the Somme. “Beautiful” he said dreamily.

Doreen was so inspired by the yard that opened up when the wall was demolished, she just stood there, content to breathe it all in. The possibilities were so huge she entered a state of monastic grace. She felt like Sir Mortimer Wheeler on his first day in the Indus Valley. She was happy to live within her imagination rather than her senses. She gazed at the fire-escapes, the darkened stairwells and the covers over the air-raid shelters. They conjured up pictures of ancient catacombs. But she did hope they wouldn’t collapse and were strong enough to take the strain.

Holmes sat in the wing-back chair thinking. They’d seen the footprints of a gigantic hound so hideous the blood froze in their veins and a corpse that lay there torn to shreds. The doctor spoke. “You’re the only man in England who can help us.” He gazed past the shroud of mist and the flickering fire. He didn’t need logic, he needed a koan to release his imagination. He remembered his cousin Hugh. “Why are there no hedges down the middle of fields?” “Aaaarrrooooooohhhh!” “Ah! If we’re to catch him red-handed we must go out on foot across the mire.”

The supreme master of deductive reasoning pondered the work of these diabolical saboteurs which was gaining in intensity. “Frightful,” he said. “We are all in grave danger, Watson.” “Great Scott, Holmes. A terrible business. How could a thing like this happen?” The answer was like blancmange slipping through his clutching fingers. The enigmatic assemblage of nerve cells which formed his wondrous brain reached a limit. The pipe! After a few puffs his mind relaxed and his imagination kicked in. ‘We’ve got chickens, ducks, geese, why do we never see turkey’s eggs in the shop?’ “A smokescreen Watson. I have it!”

A thick pea-souper enveloped Baker Street. Horses clip-clopped slowly on the cobblestones. The very genius of evil, the most dangerous criminal England has ever known, the most dastardly fiend in Christendom was back. Holmes had to get inside Moriarty’s brain to outwit him. It was a matter of the greatest importance. He had to disengage his logical, deductive brain and access intuition and imagination. He practised a form of special insight, instinctive penetration, and it occurred to him: A fool who knows he’s a fool is a wise man indeed! “Subterfuge, Watson. A great diversion. Moriarty’s after the crown Jewels!”

“Lestrade, it doesn’t necessarily follow. The poor girl’s brother was murdered horribly. Her fiancé has been maliciously accused. Yet there’s more to this. The killer must be here with us in this very room!” The structure of the anatomical galaxy inside the great detective’s cranium made the policeman wonder by what evolutionary history, its main routes and by-ways led all the way to this one man’s head, this noggin, this deerstalker-holder to be capable of finding a solution. “There is someone here who refuses to take ‘yes’ for an answer! Don’t move any of you. Watson, turn on the lights.”

His full name was Jean-Paul Charles Grimshaw-Sartre. His mother was Albert Schweitzer’s cousin and his granny looked like Ena Sharples without teeth. She often said ‘Bien alors, j’aurai aller au fond de notre escalier’ and he wondered whether there had been a possible Lancastrian connection which had given rise to his famous football metaphor. “Existence precedes essence,” he thought as the Stadium of Damp and Drizzle drifted before his eyes. In years to come this genetic continuum would enable his grandson to fashion the dictum “Apart from Cantona the only other French philosopher to play for United was Mark Hughes.”

Long dead stars provided the stardust that created our solar-system and our very bodies are formed from that initial debris. There is only so much Hydrogen in the universe and when it is used up there will be no more evolution. First the massive stars will burn out then the medium ones like ours. Inexorably it will get colder. This is the best time to be alive – the golden age of the universe but it won’t last. Homework: How do stars create the building blocks of life? In it ? Din I? Wicked. Good. Bad. Sound as a pound, pal!