Better wet than white

Another Birthday story today - This one is for the person whose stay in hospital started the whole idea of my Edward Teach Stories turning into the Windspider Chronicles... She's also the person behind the character Lee'Sahr - Without her, none of this would have happened, so there's that to thank her for... Well, I say thank. In this episode, we're introduced to Carter Landry, who is a Bostonian crew-member (From Boston, in America, not from the planet Boston - Because that would be mental) and I've always thought that he'd be played by the actor Luke Kleintank, should there ever be a film. (Even though he's from Ohio)

-oOo-

“I’ve tried that… We’re still all going to die.” Lee’Sahr shouted into the Intercomm, sounding calmer than she felt.

“Try it again, make sure you shut down the thrusters completely before you try the cold restart.”

“Why don’t you just…?” She hit the fire dampener button with the flat of her hand, the whine of the electric motor confirming that she had completely run out of foam. “If I could stop the engines, or even put out the fire, I wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“Roger Skimmer Four, hold for instructions.”

“She’s going to kill us you know.” Britt called from the rear seat, “When she figures out we borrowed the skimmer just to get more beer for your Birthday.”

“We’ll be lucky if she gets the chance… Are you making a den?”

Britt stopped jamming floatation devices into any gap he could find and looked up at her. “I’m assuming a crash position for when we splashdown.”

“At the back?”

“Well, unless you’re intending to jam the handbrake on at the last minute, spin us around and reverse us into the ocean, yes… I’m sitting at the back, surrounded by spongy things that float.”

“What about me?”

“You’re driving.”

“What ‘bout me?” Mr. Rax uncurled his orange bulk from between the seats, where he had been hiding his giant Pradilan head and trying to think of happier, drier times.

The Intercomm beeped. “Rax, I think it’ll take more than crashing into the sea at…” She looked at the airspeed indicator, “almost the speed of sound to crack your scaly hide.  Yes?” The last comment was meant for the person on the other end of the Intercomm, but it still managed to put a confused look on Rax’s face, so that was nice.

Landry’s relaxed Bostonian voice rang from the Intercomm speaker, “Skimmer Four, this is Sidi Ferruch base, Carter Landry speaking, are you receiving?”

“Yeah, we’re still on fire, how’re things working out for you today?”

He laughed, “Lookin’ forward to your party, hope you can make it. You have all the beer. Lady Dorleith’s genuinely worried about you… And her skimmer.” There was the unmistakable sound of him putting his embroidered cowboy boots up on the control panel and leaning back into his seat, “Yeah, mostly the skimmer to be fair, she says those things are, like, really expensive…”

Lee’Sahr shook her head, “Look, is this just a social call or have you any last minute ideas on how we might survive the next few minutes?”

“Don’t get your shipsuit in a bunch. I got an idea, used to do it all the time back on the ranch just to show off. Your problem is that your starboard engine is on fire, right?”

“Yes, starboard is right, well done. Is that important?”

“Well, you’re flying over the sea, and the sea is made of water.”

“And?”

“And water puts out fire… All you have to do is dip the starboard air-intake into the water, it’ll pick up some water, shoot it through the engine and put the fire out. Then you can do the cold restart. Simple.”

“Yeah, thanks Landry, nothing to it. I’ll call you back when it’s done.” She flicked off the Intercomm, 

“You hear that Britt?”

A forearm with an extended thumb rose from the pile of floatation devices, then slowly disappeared back inside again.

“OK,” She stretched her fingers and grabbed the control stick. “Counting down to dipping a wing into the water whilst we’re going way too fast that will lead to us cartwheeling across the waves and disintegrating into a giant fireball of death in 5… 4… 3… 2…”

“WAIT!”

She shot a look back at Rax, “Sorry, dropped this.” He pointed at an obviously well-loved teddy-bear with six inches of glossy black claw, then held it tightly to his chest, screwed his eyes closed and nodded.

“5… 4… 3… 2…”

“WAIT!”

She turned around again to see Britt’s head sticking out of his protective mound. “What colour T-Shirt do you have on under your shipsuit?”

“What?”

“Well, whether this works or not, we’re probably going to get wet, and if you’re wearing a white T-shirt… Well, it’s your reputation I’m thinking of you know.”

“By the bare-buttocked Goddess of inappropriacy… ONE!” She jammed the control stick hard to the right and they hit the water…

Are You Experienced?

What're the two most infuriating words that any parent will hear from their children ever, in their lifetime? I don't mean the really scary ones like 'I'm pregnant' or 'It's broken' or 'On fire'. I mean the ones that you hear every weekend and every school holiday and every advert break during an otherwise immensely exciting program?

Yes, that's right, 'I'm boooooored!'

The little cherub, who you not so long ago bought the entire collection of Moshi Monsters for? Who you queued for at 07:30am a week before release day to make sure she was the first of her friends to own the new One Direction CD that detailed not only their tour dates, but a scratch and sniff sampling of their underwear drawer? Who has demanded, and received, every type, style and colour of Nintendo games system past, present and future?

We must have spent the GNP of Lesotho on toys etc. for the Dandies, both Mini and Micro, over their respective lives. But both of them would much rather sit in front of a PC or Laptop or iPad and watch YouTube videos. If for some reason you temporarily take away this dubious privilege, say they've been zoned out for six hours solid, or you actually need to use the device yourself. You get a selection of sighs that could extinguish an Australian forest fire and the occasional theatrical flounce onto the sofa.

There are cries of 'I'm bored!',

To which my normal reply is, 'No, you're lazy!'

And then I go on to enumerate all the things that they could be doing instead, which in fairness gets more and more ridiculous every time - It'll start off as 'Play on the Wii, or the Playstation, watch a DVD, walk the dog, wash the pots, draw a picture...' and ends up with, 'Shave the cat, iron a herring, translate Harry Potter into Klingon, laminate a duck...' By this time they've usually stopped listening, wandered off or slipped into a narcoleptic coma - All of which, I consider to be a win.

But I realised recently that it's not just kids that do this, maybe it's my particular group of friends, but for evey Facebook update I see on my timeline that says 'Today I got up, felt great, walked the dog, took an artistic photo of a thing, made something tasty for lunch and did stuff with a person until my eyes rolled back in my head when I OD'd on the greatness of it all,' there's twenty seven that say, 'Aren't people rubbish, I'm staying in bed, there's nothing to do, it's raining, everybody stop picking on me, it's everybody else's fault, wah-wah-wah!'

For Gods' (yes, pedants, that apostrophe IS in the right place) sake people DO SOMETHING! If your life is crap, do something about it, find out what's wrong and change it. There's no situation that anyone is in that is insurmountable. Then again, you might counter with any or all of the below;

'But I've got depression!' To which I would reply 'Me too!' diagnosed and prescribed for, but the one thing I took to heart is what my Doctor said just before signing the green slip that I took to the pharmacist, 'Mr Dandy, this isn't a cure, this is just to make life easier for you whilst you figure out what's wrong and sort it out.' - Which is exactly what I did, and I'm proud of myself for doing it. I know it's often easier said than done, and I know that a lot of people's triggers are more difficult to sort out than mine, but you're never going to feel any better unless this happens. (P.S. if they offer you CBT, even if there's a long waiting list - Say 'Yes please' - I've seen this really work well... If you go to your CBT appointment and they ask if you need to borrow a helmet and gloves, don't panic, it just means they've booked you on Compulsory Basic Training, not Cognitive Behaviour Therapy - Just go with it, fewer people who can ride motorcycles are depressed - That's a fact... Probably.)

'But I'm missing a leg!' Life's harder with a disability, I truly appreciate that and I've not experienced it first-hand myself, so I'm not really qualified to judge. (Unless you count an inability to stop correcting people on their pronunciation as a disability - It seems the people who give out the Blue Disabled Parking badges don't... Fascists!) But you hear stories every day of people who have conquered seemingly insurmountable odds to achieve what their doctors said was impossible... Be one of those people. If you need a bit of a lift in this department, Google a guy called Taylor Morris, and then try keep a straight face whilst you tell the Dole Office that you can't make it to the shops because you've got a bit of a dicky ankle.

'But I'm thick!' Well, that's as may be, but you can't let lack of education hinder your dreams, book yourself on a course at your local school. Learn about something you're interested in to start with - just to get you back into it, then try learning something that might help you take the next step towards happiness. You never know, you might be lucky and those two things are one and the same. If you can't do this, due to having to look after your young or similar, become a member of your local library, borrow books and actually read them - There are, quite literally, worlds to discover.

'I'm in the middle of nowhere with no transportation!' Walk, no... seriously... walk. There's nowhere (OK, barring islands etc) on the mainland United Kingdom that isn't accessible by you leaving your house, locking the door behind you and walking in the right direction for long enough - It might take a while, you might need to take a snack and maybe a thermos with you but seriously, you can do it. We've only had the Infernal Combustion Engine for the past hundred and thirty years. What do you think people did before that? It wasn't bitch and moan and lie in their own filth watching repeats of Jeremy Kyle all day I can tell you.

'I'm broke!' Me too, again, sorry. I sit around all the time going, 'I could just eat a raisin and biscuit Yorkie, shame I'm broke!' I normally say this in my living room, surrounded by CDs I don't listen to and DVDs that I'll never watch again. If you can't afford to buy the stuff you need (not want, don't waste your money on things you want, spend it on stuff you need, you know, carrots rather than beer and stuff like that) then sell something that you don't need quite as much.

'But!' - This is, without doubt, the most invidious word in the English language, people usualy use it to explain why they're not going to do something. Examples include 'I'd take the dog for a walk, no problem, BUT I've got some some completely ficticious stuff that I've already arranged to do' and 'Yeah, I realise that this is a very important issue, BUT It doesn't effect me directly, so I don't care.' Do me a favour people, if you feel the need to use this word at all, use it in a positive way, as characterised by the axiomatic T-Shirt slogan 'I'm not a gynaecologist, BUT I'll take a look at it for you.' - Embrace the chance to do things, even if they're new, scary and have a medium to high risk of you getting slapped by a complete stranger. At least you'll be meeting new people.

I know that this has all been very flippant, because that's what I do, this is ostensibly a humour Blog after all. I do try and keep it light even when I rant.

And I understand that there are those people who are housebound due to circumstances beyond their control, for whom there is no available assistance, this was not directed at them in any way.

BUT, The rest of you, seriously, grab your life by the nuts and shake every single, solitary experience you can out of it - I'm fat, lazy, bald, not particularly attractive and don't have a huge circle of friends and even I've had enough experiences that I've thought are interesting enough that people would enjoy hearing about them here. (Rightly or wrongly).

Just imagine what things a svelte, vigourous, hirsute, beautiful person like yourself could get up to! - Don't hold yourself back with insecurity, propel yoursef forward with childishness and a blindness to your own inadequacies.

Just like I do!

If you do do this, feel free to tell me all about it via email and you never know, I might include your success story here, in these very pages.

The Philpott Fire

Originally posted on Facebook 31/5/12

OK Derby, I get it... We've had a pretty crappy time of it recently as far as kids being hurt and killed and feelings are running high... But some of the hate that's been pouring out of normally quite lucid people has made me wonder. I'm probably going to get pilloried for this but it's bringing to mind the old Frankenstein films with the torches and the pitchforks, and that's not a good look for anyone I know...

First of all, let's imagine that you're all right - A couple makes the concious decision to kill six of their children, by fire. If that's what happened then I hope they both burn forever in whatever portion of Hell that Satan reserves for people who commit any kind of crime against defenseless children.

Can you imagine doing that? Can you imagine looking into your own children's eyes (remember, that Jayden, the youngest, was only five years old) as you tucked them into bed, kissed them goodnight, all the time knowing that within hours you would start a fire with the sole intention of burning them alive? No, of course you can't, because you're a human being... You can maybe almost forgive the single mother who shakes her baby to death out of frustration and lack of support - But this is something so far off the scale of normal human behaviour... Unforgivable, completely - And if this is the case then I side firmly with the 'Death's too good for 'em' brigade.

But then, instead, imagine for a second that you're stuck, you're at your wits end. Maybe the bills are piling up, maybe you owe money to people at 2,476% APR, or even worse, to people who'd rather take the use of your legs away with a bat if you don't pay up. You're desperate, and you turn to crime... Not mugging old ladies, not doing over Post Offices, just a nice, quiet bit of insurance fraud. It'd be easy, take what real valuables you had to your mates house, the irreplaceable stuff.. Old photos, your Mum's jewellery, stuff like that, then just start a small fire...

Once you've tucked the kids up in bed, pour a bit of petrol by the front door, make it look like someone lit it through the letterbox. Why would the kids still be there? To make it look more believable of course - I mean, what psycho would set fire to his own house with the kids still inside? You let it burn for a while, after all there has to be some real damage. Then the fire takes hold... You never realised how fast cheap polyester carpet burns, or how difficult it is to put out, the flames spread to the stairs (all one piece of carpet, remember) and the wallpaper catches, the curtains smoulder and the poisonous smoke is filling the house. You shout for help, you yell the kids to wake them up... Maybe the smoke's already done it's work, it happens quicker than you think. You start to panic.

You try to make it up the stairs but the flames beat you back, you realise there's nothing you can do, then you hear the sirens and think everything will be OK...

But it's not, and it never will be again... How would you feel knowing it was all your fault? That through your own stupidity you'd accidentally murdered six of your own children?

Then again... What if they're telling the truth? someone HAD tried to burn down their house with them in it? And we're all so desperate for blood and spectacle that shouting 'Murderers!' is easier than thinking 'If it can happen to them, maybe it can happen to me'?

I don't have any association with the Philpotts and I know precisely as much about the case as 99.99% of other people - i.e. virtually nothing - But the above scenarios are as likely as any other one that's been made up using the freely available facts.

Rest in Peace, and I pray to God that justice is done.

By the way, when was the last time you checked the batteries in your smoke alarm?