Ianâs Prints - Original Stencil & Spraypaint Art by...
The front cover of a tract published by Evangelical Tract Distributors, Edmonton, Alta., Canada. Undated.
BBC - Languages - Weekly tips - Online courses in 12 weeks
Blogs: Purchase PonderingsFile this in the “idle window shopping for stuff I don’t need” category.
BUT.
If can anyone see any gaps or improvements to the following (and yes, I am largely going with Apple because it is easy to setup and I have no desire to hack, configure or otherwise spend ages of my time to get the thing working), please let me know. You might save me a lot of money.
Not that I’m gonna be spending anything on any of this, no no, that’d be silly and I have more important items to buy soon, like a bed, that kind of thing. This is purely and utterly an academic exercise, a small indulgementation if you will to keep me from going stir-crazy in this house.
So, the proposed new system is as follows:
- A Mac Mini – which will be hooked up to the TV
- Drobo S – which will (in the short term) hold two 500GB drives from my PC with music/photos/movies/work stuff
- Airport Express – so I can stream iTunes to a set of speakers
- Karmon Soundsticks – because they look and sound good
I’ll pick up a wireless keyboard and mouse for the Mac Mini as well. Which means that, when version 2 of the iPad comes out, I can slot that in for ‘casual web usage’ and the like.
My thinking is that I want a quiet and energy efficient machine that I can stream music from, and do a little web design work on too (with a nice big 40″ screen!). The Drobo allows me to easily add more storage space (just slot a new drive in), and if I want music elsewhere I can always buy another Airport Express (or stream through my iPhone/iPad?). Mind you, I’ll be moving to a flat so not much need for that in the near future.
Yes, it’s a bit pricey as it’s Apple equipment but it gives me a system that SHOULD just plug and play (previous experience suggests this to hold true), and is expandable to meet my needs. I could probably get the same with another (cheaper) system but having looked into it, PC/Linux equivalents require a level of configuration that I just can’t be arsed with any more, happy to pay more to have it just work.
Am I missing anything? Performance wise the Mac Mini will be more than enough for me for many years, and they’ve good reliability. The Drobo I’ve heard a lot of good things about and I’ve used an Airport Express before with my PC. I think it’s about as future proof as it can be, add in a USB hub for things like card readers and whatnot and I don’t think I’m losing out on anything.
Well, apart from the money to buy it all with…
What do you call your documents? What is the first thing you do when you start writing? What is the last?
All these things that you do without thinking about, the basic automation that your brain easily handles, over and over again, these things are, to you, so basic as to be forgettable. You don’t tell anyone else to do them (they must know, right?) and you probably don’t remember where you learned how to do them.
You bulid your own mental checklist and that takes care of that.
Need to provide a PDF of a document for someone? No problem, generate it this way, name it in this manner to keep it sensible and consistent and put it THERE (as you know everyone has access to it that way). And so on and so forth. All these things locked away in your head.
That mental checklist is made up of many things, from coping other people, reading books, and learned from mistakes. Without it you’d be lost, and with it you retain value as you are the person who knows how to do those things.
But that also means you are the bottleneck, the only person who knows X and Y, and can help with Z.
Better to share that information, let others learn and improve it (and they will). It allows them to do more, and lets you do other things. More power to the team, and a better service to the rest of the company, further cementing the value you bring to your organisation.
Friday night, beer, an ex-colleague. He remembers me, I can’t for the life of me remember his name.
In my happy drunk state I just flat out said that I’d forgotten his name, I don’t think he was offended or at the very least he was polite enough not to show that he was. Turns out he has a very memorable name (one of those forenames that is more normally a surname).
Shame on me.
Still, Friday night was a good laugh, good food, good company, good beer and I even managed to get the last train home so was a good Saturday morning with only a little bit of fuzzy hangoverness to take care of (a can of Irn Bru sized bit).
Saturday lunch featured something very tasty and delicious, thick wedges of smoked Yorkshire ham, then a few things wot needed done got done (more on that later) and then through to see the olds which ended up with a nice chicken balti for dinner.
And today? A day of quiet pottering and thinking back over good parts of the weekend in an effort to lock them away in my memory, with a side helping of ponderment on the future.
Yes, I think I’ll mark this weekend up in the WIN column.
How was yours?
Dear reader, there is some risk of spoilers if you keep reading. So, if you want to your forthcoming viewing of Inception or Toy Story 3 to be sans spoiler, stop reading now.
I’m now going to continue writing and presume that at least one person is still reading. It’s a vain hope but a familiar one.
Inception first then. The mind-bending thriller directed by Christopher Nolan, featuring the new Robert de Niro (except he’s not really new now, is he) Leonardo di Caprio. It’s a story about people who can influence and enter dreams (by and large) and has lots of levels and is really confusing.
Except it isn’t. Well I didn’t find it all that confusing, and in a way I was a little disappointed as I was expecting something akin to a Memento/Donnie Darko type experience with added BIG HOLLYWOOD BLOCKBUSTER THRILLER scenes. It certainly delivered on the latter with some genuinely stunning special effects, the fight scene in the hotel corridor was superbly done and thankfully didn’t rely too heavily on the fast-cut edits that seem to have become the norm recently.
It’s an excellent thriller, don’t get me wrong, and the premise is a clever one, well executed I just think I got a bit caught up in the hyperbole surrounding it.
Top tip: what age are the children you see? do they sound that old on the phone?
Definitely a movie to see on the big screen but, for me, I don’t think it will enter the hallowed halls of the ‘cult’ movie. Or maybe I just need to go watch it again.
Toy Story 3, on the other hand, is already assured a place in the box office hit list. It’s the franchise that can do no wrong and, once again, the team at Pixar deliver a smart, well written movie which allows kids to have fun, whilst adults nod along and may, or you know, may not, shed a tiny tear or two… I couldn’t possibly comment.
Dealing with the reality that Andy has grown up, Woody has to come to terms with how his life is changing (given my current circumstance it was oddly familiar in a way). On the way, due to various circumstances, he ends up leading a daring rescue mission to save all his friends. Story wise it’s simple enough, but managed to have me laughing along and genuinely on the edge of my seat at one point.
We actually saw the 3D version which was good but Pixar don’t overuse the technology, preferring to simply allow it to offer some depth without going for the “oh my god it’s coming out of the screen at me” moments we saw in Ice Age. I don’t think you’d be losing anything seeing the 2D version (and you’d save yourself a couple of quid).
I know await the Bluray boxset of the trilogy and part of me really hopes they don’t succumb and do anything more with this franchise. Time to let Woody, Buzz, Jess and all the others retire peacefully.
Woody and Buzz
Just write, they say.
Once you get into the habit it’ll just flow, they say.
It doesn’t matter what you write, just that you write, they say.
They are starting to grate. They are starting to annoy and irk and leave me breathless and angry and incapable and pathetically unable to think about anything else except that I need to write but can’t start to write until my head is clear of them and no matter what I do they are in there, yakking away, spewing forth their tips, sharing the habits they’ve spent years cultivating and which they expect me to just adopt without the realisation that if I could do that I would’ve already so saying it over and over, just write, just write, just write, just write, just write, is pointless. A waste of energy.
Even now, as the keyboard clacks and the words slowly start to form, letters falling into line as they should, they are still paused over, deliberated, deleted and retyped. Over and over and over and over and over. The same cycle. The start and the pause and the edit. The start and the pause and the edit. The start and the pause and the edit.
It’s not the words that he has fault with, nor the order they appear, but the direction they take.
The lack of purpose.
Loss of meaning.
Just write, they say, but what? Words are only words, no matter the order they appear they spend their life meandering. In his mind he watches them pass, grabbing those he relies on and placing them on the pages before him but all too soon they are gone, resigned and regretted.
Just write, they say.
So he does.
Even though he isn’t sure why.
It’s a simple enough question really, and one I’m trying to answer at the moment, how do we know what we don’t know?
Part of the work I’m doing with our Information Pyramid (which I’ve mentioned here before) is to try and map the content we do have into some sensible groupings. That will allows to see where there are gaps within the content set we already have, for example if group A has a whitepaper and data sheet, but group B only has a whitepaper, but it still doesn’t tell us what we don’t know.
The obvious answer is to ask our audience, which we do, but there comes a point that even they don’t know what they need to know until they need it.
There are a couple of avenues we are looking at to try and find some answers. One is to analyse our support calls, try to get to the root of the problem and whether or not they are information based. Another will be focussed around a new addition to our community website, a Q&A style forum which we hope will let us see which area of the product generates the most questions and hopefully allow us to use that data to improve the documentation.
The latter is a couple of months away but I think will make the biggest difference. So much so there is probably a case for dedicating a resource to monitoring the forums and likely acting as a community manager of sorts, not something I’d anticipated although maybe I should’ve as it was only in January of this year that I said:
“even if you donât think social media will impact your own professional circumstances, I have no doubts that it will change the way our profession is perceived.”
What about you? Have you looked to social media to help solve a problem or improve your service?
For a while now I’ve been toying with attending a certain rather well known music festival. Highlights on TV are one thing but there isn’t anything quite like experiencing the atmosphere of these things first hand. This is also the reason that, unless there is an extremely good reason, ever attend a gig at the S.E.C.C. as it lacks one of the key components of live music, atmosphere.
I’ve pre-registered myself and will wait the day when tickets go on sale so i can, finally, haul my ass to Glastonbury.
I’m hoping that we’ll have sold the house by then!
Music is an important part of my life, always has been, and one thing I am already considering for when I move and get my own flat, is the location. How close to a reasonable gig venue is it?
I think of heading to the West of Glasgow, the West End preferably as that puts me within walking distance of Oran Mor and will offer me the opportunity to get some cheap (less than a tenner) tickets for gigs by people I might not have heard of. I may be romanticising slightly, of course, but I think it could be quite fun.
And when I go home, I’ll use my iPhone to turn on my Sonos sound system for even more music.
I don’t own it yet though, but I will. It’s crept up the list of “things I will need to buy when I move” and is very near the top, right after things like a bed, a microwave and maybe a sofa.
Mind you, given that I’ll be heading to Glastonbury, I should maybe leave a little room in my budget for a tent (or better still, leave a lot of room in my budget and do it in style!).
Gordon added 'The Pretender'There is one thing I haven’t done here for quite a while. It’s rather remiss of me so please accept my apologies.
Quite simply, I wanted to say thank you. To you. Yes YOU.
Thank you for visiting this blog, and more importantly, thank you for coming back and visiting again. A lot of the ideas I talk about here are made better by your comments, and I continue to find blogging to be a useful way to work through some of the thoughts and random ponderings that float around in my head.
I tend, like many, to do most of my blog reading through RSS and I know that making the effort to comment on a blog is something that not everyone will do, and which some blogs can struggle with. It continues to amaze and delight me that anyone reads this blog, let alone takes the time to share their own hard-earned thoughts.
So, sincerely, thank you.
So we’ve switched Estate Agents, and taken a different approach with the price. Fingers crossed it gets us a result although, on the news yesterday it was announced that the housing market has slowed again so I guess we will just have to wait and see.
Life continues, of course, and last night I was at the Klaxons gig in King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow. It’s a small, sweaty venue and when the band finally decided to come on stage it was a fairly short if manic gig. Good stuff indeed.
Hopefully this weekend (if I can fathom my way to the bottom of the Odeon online booking system) I’m off out for sushi and to catch Inception which is getting rave reviews. I’m seeing mention in comparison to Memento, one of my favourite movies of the past 10 years, so it should be good!
I’ve got a few other nights out, including a brewery tour, coming up soon which should all be fun and will be heading through to Edinburgh for some festival fun at some point as well. Ohh yeah, and I’ve signed up for Glastonbury next year as well.
All in all things aren’t going too badly.
Mind you, I’m not mentioning the fact that I went to join a gym near my office the other day, had a tour of the facilities and it was only when the monthly rate was mentioned that I started to realise I was in the wrong gym… no I’m not mentioning that AT ALL.
Shush.
(note to self: stop with the jokey bad grammar, peoples might think you cant be writing good)
I’ll say this quietly because I’m a little apprehensive but, for the next few months, it looks like we will have extra resource in our team. Basically we are ahead of the curve when it comes to recruiting so, until the rest of the R&D team catches up, we are one technical writer up!
Which means that we are taking the opportunity to both get ahead with some things, and catch up on others, and one of the things we’ve never tried here is to have a formal editoral review of the content. Peer review is one thing and whilst the technical content we produce is excellent, the differing writing styles and approaches each writer has does show through.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not all that bothered by this, simple business reasoning dictated that we concentrate on improving the accuracy and timeliness of the documentation and so, now we have done that, we can turn our attentions to other areas including findability and clarity.
The latter finds me taking on the role of Editor (I want to write Editor-in-chief just to conjure up images of a smoke filled newspaper office in the 50s), casting an eye over all of the content we produce and using our lightweight Writing Style Guide to prod and cajole the content towards something that, without being too restrictive, has a level of consistency for the reader.
As we haven’t had anyone performing that role before, it’s taking a bit of adjustment and the jokes about the “red pen” are already flying. Thankfully I work with smart people and it’s not taken long to see the results come to fruition.
What we need to figure out is how we change this model in the future so that we can all consistently edit each other’s work, lest I become a bottleneck in this process.
Updated: 15th July 2010
Not all of the sessions are scheduled yet, so I’ll update this as and when but, if you are wanting a quick print out of the session to, for example, convince your boss to splash some cash, then hopefully this PDF will do the trick:
Technical Communications Conference 2010.
It was a large tree, all leafy and green as a tree should be, standing tall and proud at the top of a small hill. On the ground beneath it spring flowers were bursting into life their vibrant colours proclaiming new beginnings, fresh growth, a new season full of heady fragrances.
The tree was old and wise, with countless rings and scars testament to the experience it had gained, the life it had lived. Every now and then the tree would think back, reliving each moment when it had grown a little more. It knew it was governed by nature, that it wasn’t in control, and was more than content and willing to submit to the whims of the breeze.
Like all trees it understood that sacrifice was envitable, leaves had to be shed, rotten branches had to fall. The boughs would break.
Looking out over the fields and hills that lay beneath its roots, the tree was happy and content in the moment.
But an ill wind was blowing.
At some point during the summer, the tree realised something was changing, that something was different to how it had been before and at that point it knew that time, as far as the tree knew it, was coming to an end. Basking in the summer sun, the tree prepared itself, soaking up the energy for one last push towards autumn.
It was with a mighty crash that the tree fell to ground, but as no-one was around the tree decided not to make any noise.
As it lay there, the tree realised it had a few moments left and took those seconds to enjoy the change of view, the closeness of the grass, the blueness of the sky above, silhouettes of birds flying to pastures new. And, with that, the tree was finally at peace.
Months passed and slowly the tree started to wither and rot, feeding the ground beneath it. Soon enough fresh saplings poked their heads through the soil and started their long slow climb up towards the blue. The tiny trees thickened and spread their wings, repeating the cycle once more as the world continued to turn.
He stands back and looks at the scene, a young man surveying the carnage of the broken man seated before him. Something doesn’t fit here, something isn’t quite right, misplaced or forgotten, he’s not sure which and knows that it is too late for such worries.
A dull moan from the chair, scarlet red lines fall from vivid wounds, slashed through flesh. Blood seeps from him in a slow gentle ooze, a dozen or more thin lines adding to the macabre vision. He looks down at the man, tortured and throbbing with dark pain, spent and pleading for his executioner to end it, pleading for release, pleading for his life. He watches as the man makes another exhaused attempt to free himself and once more is met with the same resistance as before, the bloodied ropes cuttnig ever deeper.
He turns to the table behind him, takes a sip of cold water then turns and throws it over the seated man. Another shock of cold, a gasping breath.
He is puzzled now and closes his eyes for a moment, gathering himself. He revisits the plan, the training and a spark of guilt flares within. This isn’t what was meant to happen. This is wrong.
Concentrating hard, he casts his mind back, how did he end up here?
He remembers some details perfectly, breaking into this apartment, waiting quietly, patiently until they came home. It should’ve been the simplest of executions as they sat down to watch TV. Two shots and then he’d turn and leave. Yet, he was still here.
Squeezing his eyes tight he can see arcs of red as she slumps forward, can hear the cries, instant shock and anger, as the man succumbs to fear and rage. He can see his own arm outstretched, can feel the weight of the gun and yet, nothing. That is all he has, until now.
He reaches out to hold the mans face, fingers on slick cheeks, cupping his chin. He looks him straight in the eye.
“Who are you?” he asks. A simple enough question.
The man in the chair looks up, confused, startled at the softness of the voice.
“Who are you?” he asks again, already growing weary of all of this.
The man in the chair starts to speak, his mouth opens but no sound is made.
He is growing tired now, and can feel the light in the room changing. He was told this would happen, but still something isn’t right, this isn’t what was meant to happen.
Slowly he walks behind the man, reaches down and starts to untie him. In a soft quiet voice he starts to mumble.
“I don’t know why I’m here, I’m sorry for what I’ve done, this isn’t right, I’m sorry for what I’ve done. I don’t know why I’m here. You should go now. I’m sorry for what I’ve done. I should go now, I should be somewhere else now. You shouldn’t be here. Are you sorry for what you’ve done? I will go. Do you know why I’m here? I’m sorry for what I’ve done. You should go now”.
He stands back and lets the ropes fall, and watches the man rise unsteadily and without looking back, stumble out through the door. He hears him start to scream, a low beastly noise that makes him smile. He can feel the light and warmth in the air on his skin, and turns to the window to bask for a moment in the sunlight.
He steps closer to the window and watches as onlookers turn and stare, their eyes searching for the source of that awful noise.
He smiles. He knows this isn’t the way it should be, knows that something has gone wrong but each passing moment tells him something has changed. He hears the man screaming as he leaves the building, dashing out into the busy street below. And finally he realises what is wrong.
His mind skips back to that building, the long corridor, the cramped office and the young man sitting behind the desk, telling him the stories of the building, telling him that nothing is ever truly right in this world. He can remember the dulling darkness that descended after that day, that he walked in for so long with the sunlight unable to penetrate. He can remember it all.
He looks down again at the street, watching the man stumble onwards, the onlookers starting to point as the man stumbles out into the road. A man still alive.
He smiles.
He closes his eyes and lifts his face to the sun, feeling the warmth spread across his cheeks, he too feels alive, so very alive. His senses reverberate anew, and he wonders what will happen next.
Down in the street the man falters and falls forward. A bus driver slams on his brakes, more screams fill the air.
Stood at the window he looks down, all of this happening in an instant. The bus skids, the brakes fail to hold. The man lies prone, no-one can save him.
And then he remembers the inscription above the door of the office, throws his head back and screams.
In a small cluttered office a young man sits behind a desk. He rarely speaks, for he has no-one to speak to most days, so he just sits there doing his job. His gaze remains flat as he monitors the goings on of the building, the to-ing and fro-ing of his working day, the machinations that play out at his behest.
Suddenly he looks up at the doorframe, and with a contented sigh reads the faded inscription once more.
“Trust in Fate”.
It is a ramshackle place, half-closed blinds filter streams of dusty sunlight across the threadbare carpets. Somewhere a breeze creeps through a gap and dances through the hall, ruffling the thin trail of smoke as the joss stick quietly smoulders.
The furniture is old, loved and carefree, a random matching of patterns and leather. Echoes of parties and laughter remain but are quickly fading. The painting over the fireplace is offset by the tiniest fraction, remains of the last fire lie in the grating.
It is time to move on.
From upstairs the sound of drawers sliding open, doors banging shut as the occupants hunt for the key. As soon as they have it, they will pack up and go their separate ways.
Gordon posted a photo:
Dammit. Peeled off the Post-it to reveal this. No fair!
P.S. You lost The Game too
bookshelves: to-read
“This time it will be different, it will, it will, it will.” She repeats her promise over and over, the needle jumping inside her head.
“This time I will be controlled and calm, I’m sure he will notice”, she thinks, “He must notice and if he doesn’t, I will make sure he does!”
She laughs out loud at the thought.
Heads turn, she blushes and turns away to face the window. Outside the rain falls and sparkling droplets race each other down the glass as the sky rolls and roars above.
“How apt” she murmurs.
As the bus slowly winds its way through street after street she revisits her journey. She remembers how each passing footstep changed her view, how every moment brought new understanding and that moment when it all clicked and became real. Achingly, painfully, wonderfully real.
With a sigh she reaches into her bag, digs out her notebook and jots down another idea knowing it may languish there for sometime but feeling better for capturing it. She slowly flicks through the pages, enjoying the memories as they flood into view. She pauses now and then as the turn of a page recalls a moment of magic with such vibrance the rest of the world is whitewashed from existence, another page and the hue changes from white to blue, butterflies explode from the folds.
Here and there she dabs at the pages, flourishing her pen like a quill, embellishing ideas and images, tiny details to tweak the reality held within them. She smiles contentedly.
Lost amongst the fibres and ink, she doesn’t notice the man sitting across from her, studying her, fascinated by her fascination. He watches the corners of her mouth twitch, the casual turn of her wrist as she trails ink across the page. He can’t make out what is written there and decides that he is content that it will remain unknown to him, for now at least.
His eyes watch as she lifts her head, the clouds break overhead and sunlight fills his view. Dazzled for a moment he closes his eyes and, when he opens them, she is gone.
He wonders what she has written, and then reminds himself that his pleasure was in surrendering to the unknown. With a telling smile he reaches down and from the depths of his bag, retrieves his own notebook.
He opens at a fresh page and waits for the words to arrive.
bookshelves: to-read
Nicely paced and wonderfully descriptive, the decadence of the Forbidden Palace leaps off the page. Anchee Min doesn't seem to take sides, even with the subject (Orchid), presenting her story in an even handed manner. Plenty of intrigue and twists and turns.
Off to order the next book!
He shivers in the sterile air, pristine and shimmering as the last light of the day clambers over the rooftops. The yellow-pink hue setting a million and one diamonds ablaze, ice and snow twinkle in the embers of the day, crackling underfoot.
Each steps snaps through the silence, echoing against brick and stone, gravel and mortar and his breath barely escapes before falling to the ground. A flare of light as a car slides past, careful on the icy road, and again he wonders why he is out tonight, why he is trudging against the biting cold.
Pulling his coat tighter still he steps on.
He thinks of the future, resolutions drift through his mind and he discards them wantonly. He knows which one he is waiting for and with the patience of solitaire he continues to deal with each one as it comes to him.
Lose weight, the card says. He chuckles at the banality, far too obvious.
Read more books, it says. He considers this a worthy aim but knows all too well that if that were to happen, things would stay the same.
Keep in touch with your friends.
Keep in touch with your friends, it repeats. He forces it from the deck, knowing it to be the best of all yet fearing how it will play as the year unfolds.
He turns the next card in his mind.
He is resolved.
Building on the trails from the first book, this one soon heads dashes off into a murky world. The character of Lisbeth Salander becomes all the more fascinating and the pacing of the book is excellent.
I would suggest you have the third book to hand, waiting and ready, though, trust me, you'll want to start it immediately!
As he walks towards the entrance the nerves swell in his stomach. He remembers a phrase his Dad used for such occasions, “healthy fear” he used to called it, uttering it before every football game, exam and even on the night of his first date.
He reaches for the doorknob just as the door swings open, and a tall dark haired girl totters past him, heels clicking on concrete. He turns his head to catch a final glimpse of her as he steps forward through the open door.
The dull light of the corridor mirrors the smell of age and he wonders again why he is here, why he said yes after all those strange questions, why he found himself accepting the job without fully understanding what it entails. At the far end of the corridor a small light flickers and he walks toward it.
Upstairs, sitting behind a large dark wood desk sits an ageing man. He has been sitting there for some time now, quietly contemplating the past, considering his future and has come to realise how soon the end will come, far sooner than he’d been told. He accepts his fate willingly as he knew it would arrive someday and so he counts off the hours, then the minutes until his death. Quiet solace that he has done all that has been asked of him.
He knows that by the end of this day his chair will be filled by another, a younger man, fresh and confused, just as he was on his first day in this strange job. He smiles as he recalls his first day, the nerves building in that long elevator ride to the 31st floor, the slow steps along the creaking wooden corridor and can almost feel the weight of the door to the very office in which he now sits.
He listens intently and recognises the faint rattle of the elevator door opening, hears every groan and croak of each footstep, and finds himself holding his breath, his eyes fixed on the cold metal doorknob as it slowly starts to turn.
“Ummm hello?” says a voice from the other side of the door, “anyone here?”
“Come on young man, the door is not locked”.
The door swings open and, finally, the office is complete.
Standing in the doorway, Alan looks around the cramped office, bookshelves piled high and at the centre of the mayhem a large wooden desk, behind which sits Mr.Bachman.
“Ohh hi Mr.Bachman, sorry if I’m a bit late, but there aren’t any signs so … yeah I wasn’t sure I had the right office..”, nervously he glances round the tiny room.
“Ahh, but you found your way here nevertheless, a good start I think, yes yes, a good start. Now tell me, have you had breakfast? Would you like some coffee, perhaps? Or are you a man who likes to charge onwards, I think, yes yes, I think perhaps you are, so please sit and let us talk of this place”.
And so they sit, both men, young and old, at opposites sides of the desk and so the story begins.
His footsteps tread heavy on this path, twigs crackle and splinter under him as he wearily walks on. He surveys the land around him, the sunlight playing through the trees as the last remnants of life wither and die in the early winter air.
He has always enjoyed these walks, the solitude revealing more to him than any conversation or sound, his emotions raw and real, unfettered by implication, speak to him in a clear voice, offering a clarity he knows is false but enjoys all the same.
His steady pace never falters whilst his eyes cast around catching movement in the undergrowth, a flickering shadow here, a gently bending stalk there. Tiny moments of life that continue regardless, and again he is reminded of the future and his dreams rush back to meet his reality. He walks on through the wood, past places he has visited before, knowing that he will soon find something new.
He takes a fork in the path, making his decision and wonders where it will take him. The air changes around him, a gentle breeze carries the chill of the sea.
Elsewhere she is drowning, clawing at the surface with her fingers, desparately casting around for something, anything, to stop her going under. Her fingers brush something only to push it out of reach, but she is in luck and the tide brings it back, a dark looming shadow above her and as she reaches up she swears it reaches down for her, pulling her up until her head is clear of the water and her gasping lungs gorge themselves on the night air.
She clinges to the log as best she can, slipping on the slimy surface until day breaks, and the warm sun helps her grip tighter and tighter until she can start to haul herself from the dark water, head and shoulders first, until soon she is sitting on the log, floating high. She throws her head back to feel the warmth of the sun on her face, and a smile slowly emerges.
Her feet dangle in the water, aware of the current beneath, feeling it’s pull and drag, the old familiarity. She resists, and watches the soft pulls of cloud slowly pass overhead as a gull floats high above, cartwheeling elegantly through the sky as it watches the world slowly spin below.
‘Why not’, he thinks as he circles the advert in bold red ink, ‘I’ve tried everything else’.
Wanted: People who can find lost things.
He’d always been pretty good at figuring things out, liked reading detective novels when he was younger, and he never failed to find his Christmas presents no matter how ingeniously his parents hid them. Yeah, this might finally be the job for him. God knows he’d tried just about everything else, and had the scars to prove it.
With nothing else catching his eye, he scoffs down the last bite of his pastry, washes it down with the last of his coffee and hustles over to the payphone in the corner.
“Yes?” a brusque voice answers.
“Ohh hi, I’m.. eh.. phoning about the job advert in the paper today?”
“Which one?”
“Well it just says ‘Wanted: People who can find lost things’ so, I guess, that one?”
“Ahhhh yes, of course,” the voice softens “yes yes, when can you come speak with us? Are you free this afternoon? It would be great if you were as we are very keen to get people started, especially smart and on-the-ball individuals like yourself.”
“Ohhh right, well I’m free all day so, yeah, I can meet with you this afternoon if you like.”
“That’s wonderful, yes yes, tell me, do you know the cafe on Mitchell Street, just up from the laundrette on the corner of 4th?”
“Well sure Mister, I’m standing in it right now.”
“You are! Ohh how delightful! Yes yes yes, I wonder, yes, perhaps I could pop over now and have a chat with you? Would that be acceptable? I realise it’s very short notice but time is always of the essence, isn’t it Mr. … Mr…??”
“Finch, Alan Finch.”
“Excellent, Mr. Finch, so if I could trouble you to order me a coffee, black, no sugar, I’ll be over presently to have a little chat. Yes yes this could work out quite well I think”
“Sure thing, you want anything else with that?”
His question echoes down the line and the dial tone confirms the reply.
He hangs up and as he walks back to his seat he realises that he doesn’t know who he is meeting, or what he looks like. He turns to eye the street outside, looking for… well he doesn’t know who but he looks anyway.
The waitress idles over and he turns and orders two black coffees. As she leaves she glances down at the paper, the advert circled prominently and as the hint of a smile starts creeping across her face, turns to fetch his coffee.
He is still staring out of the window when a voice interrupts him.
‘Mr. Finch, Mr. Alan Finch?’
Startled he turns, his elbow catches his empty coffee mug and sends it hurtling towards the floor. The man standing there deftly reaches out and plucks it from the air, then places it firmly down on table.
‘Wow, Mister, good catch!’ he says, only now looking up and into the face of who he presumes is the man he spoke to on the phone mere moments ago.
‘Yes yes, I suppose it was, just a reaction thing I guess, always been quite good at that kind of thing. Do you mind if I sit down?’
As he sits he draws a business card from his pocket, holding it out with long powerful looking fingers, ‘My name is Bachman, Richard Bachman, thank you so very much for meeting me at such short notice’.
The business card has the same name on it, with the same phone number listed for the advert. Nothing else.
He takes the business card, flips it over and back again, looking for some sort of clue of what this might be about. He is just about to ask that very question when the waitress arrives, steam billowing from white china mugs. She plonks them down on the table, and in a flat drawl tells them to enjoy their beverages.
Alan looks up at her as she turns to walk away and he’s sure she winks at the man sitting opposite. Alan turns his attention to the strange man sitting there, taking in the thin yet powerful looking body, and the weary looking face offset by the most piercing grey eyes he’d ever seen.
‘So young man, I’m guessing you are wondering what the advert is all about? Yes yes I can see it in your eyes already, itching for knowledge, for answers. Well don’t worry I will tell you everything in good time, but first a question for you, do you mind if I ask you a question Alan?’
‘Of course not, fire away’.
‘Alan, and I need to you be very very honest, if you lie I will know and that will be the end of the interview. OK, you do understand that, don’t you Alan? I do not like time wasters and have seen enough to know when that is the case, do not lie to me’.
‘I won’t, look I need a job, you are advertising for… well, something, I don’t know what, but I need the work so I’ve no reason to lie, do I?’
‘Excellent! You are quite right, yes yes of course you have no reason to lie, yet people do for a myriad of reasons, right and wrong. But yes, you are candid and honest, good qualities, ones I like and that have taken you a step closer to being successfully chosen for this position. Yes yes I feel this is going very well already, now that question, it may sound odd, it may sound … what is the word now, oh yes, macabre, yes a delicious word but not one you’d hear at many a job interview, is that right? Yes of course it is, so, yes, that question, are you ready for the question Alan? Ready to answer truthfully?’
In his mind he was already beginning to regret making that phone call, and that the man sitting opposite him might not be completely sane… but what other options did he have? None, he knew it and he sensed this odd man sitting across from him knew it too. He had no other choices, no cards left to play.
‘Yes, I’m ready to answer truthfully’.
With that the man leans forward, his face hardens and his eyes seem to glow. In a low clear voice he asks the question. The question that will change everything.
‘Alan, have you ever looked into a dying man’s eyes?’
Find me online …
Professionally:
Personally:
onemantales.co.uk
flickr.com/photos/gmclean
gmclean.tumblr.com
last.fm/user/snowgoon
Instapaper RSS Feed
delicious/snowgoon
goodreads.com/gmclean
gordon.mclean [at] gmail.com