Second Coming: + Other Upheavals

© 2012 J.L. Fiol. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted

by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 8/13/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-1910-2 (sc)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Preface

Divine Intervention

Strewn Pebbles

Marching As To War

Palmero Goes Wild

Sampere Unfrocked

Bunny Hops Off

The Other Nightmare

At Odds or Just Odd

Three Paintings and a Pasty

The Fairy’s Little Prod

Lost in Translation

Isambard Kingdom at your Service

No Speaky please, We’re Breeteesh

Second Coming

Is That It Then

APPENDIX

List of Works

For my family

There are more things in heaven and earth … than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Shakespeare, Hamlet.

Preface

One of my several fictitious fathers* was fond of saying that butterflies are the thoughts of the soul.

My own thoughts, insofar as they relate to the writing of these stories, tend to present more in the shape of moths. Usually around three in the morning. Whirring and bouncing against objects in the dark, they disturb slumber and bring discomfort from the bladder.

I go through the routine of ignoring them, but ultimately relent and stumble towards the bathroom. My next stop is my little room across the landing. Although a short distance, it needs to be covered on tip-toe and with due regard for the creaking floorboard. My sleeping wife is blessed with such hearing as to be able to register a pin, even before it thinks of dropping. The slightest displacement of air will automatically cause her to extend an arm to my side of the bed. If it detects absence, it will propel her to a sitting position with exclamation of alarm, perhaps imagining me to be lying prone on the floorboards, agonising in the grip of some nocturnal seizure: a surmise which, by disregarding the element of prone-ness, would have bearing on truth.

Should my traipse across the landing register on the Sonar, I feign confusion whilst purporting to have taken a wrong turning on the way back to the bedroom from the bathroom. If I make it to my room, I need only concern myself with my swivel-chair and slippers on the floor. These can turn traitor and, tripping me up, raise the alarm.

Given that I have to operate in pitch black, I rely on a system not unlike Braille in dealing with the task in hand. It does call for considerable tactile sensitivity. The first objective is to locate and select, noiselessly, a pencil amid the array of assorted pens, ruler, set square, bulldog clips, double-sided tape, rubber, scissors, Stanley knife, scalpel, screwdriver, correcting fluid and pointed pliers on my desk. Then follows a groping search for the window-sill, from there to detach a sheet from the pile of scrap paper.

Thus equipped, with one ear tuned to the whirring and the other to the bedroom, I can begin. The intention is to pluck and record key words or phrases from the whirring, which in the sober light of day can hopefully be given coherent form. The actual recording is something of a hit-and-miss affair, since in the darkness the writing hand has first to be guided to the paper by the other hand. Thereafter, as jotting begins, the writing hand needs to be constantly made aware of the confines of the paper by the other hand, if making notes on the actual surface of the desk is to be avoided.

On a busy night, it can take as many as five stealthy trips across the landing before the whirring stops. I have in the past, during periods of high activity, tried to be provident by having pencil and paper to hand at the bedside. But the ruse, like most endeavours, was subject to Sod’s Law. Except for one occasion, the moths never turned up. On that single instance my furtive scribbling was interpreted as the scrabbling of mice by she-who-hears-all, who promptly enquired as to whether I had also registered the sound. I felt compelled to feign deafness and to henceforth abandon the practice.

The stumblings to the bathroom prior to traverses across the landing are driven by a strident insistence in the pitch of the whirrings, which signal fresh ideas. Of late I am also occasionally visited by less urgent whirrings which are to do with alterations to work already in draft form. Such alterations can always be dealt with in re-drafting or, if it comes to it, at the proof-reading stage.

For such low-key whirrings I have a less demanding strategy. It involves a handkerchief which I keep under my pillow. I tie it into a knot and drop it, noiselessly, onto the floor in a conspicuous place, so as to come upon it in the morning and be reminded of its message.

The ruse works well providing there are no mixed signals from the whirrings. There is then the danger that, responding to the urgent variety, my bare feet come into unexpected contact with the knotted handkerchief and in my semi-wakeful state bring forth an uncalled-for expletive. This would bring she-who-hears-all to instant and complete wakefulness, leaving me no option but to feign a vicious attack of cramp. If no mixed whirrings come during the night, I duly find the handkerchief with its message in the blessed light of morning. Once released, the moths go to their mysterious trysts with the moon and, on clouded nights, seek solace in street lights.

The Appendix is not intended to have direct bearing on the stories. However, it can be assumed that, with both the words and the images coming from the same source, they are bound to inform on each other. In any event, the Appendix forms a useful catalogue.

In the preparation and presentation of the images in the Appendix, Kerry Glasier’s photographer’s eye has been an invaluable asset.

For a significant part of the work shown in the Appendix I owe a great debt of gratitude to Betty Jones for her contribution in making the probable possible.

J.L.F. 2012 Cornwall.

* That particular father is the Reverend Aleister Stoker, who collected and displayed butterflies. Referred to by the writer as ‘Aleister the Impaler’, he features in the story ‘Eat Your Greens’, published among a collection of short stories in the book ‘When It Was The War … & other conflicts’-Ed.

Divine Intervention

When the Reverend C Hesketh sought to diversify the nature of his ministry by taking up appointment as RE Teacher in a Secondary Modern School for Boys, he might well at times have wondered whether he had strayed into some unspecified level of Hell.

He entered the workaday world of Education at a time when Vicars of the Established Church felt encouraged to be of the Community. After all, if the mountain won’t come to Mohamet, what is Mohamet to do? The Christian Message, contained in the movement, veered towards a relaxed social conviviality, in the face of that of the more fundamental Creeds with their implacable and uncompromising options on offer: Eternal Bliss or Eternal Torment, decided by sticking to the straight and narrow or not. In the spirit of the times, Vicars took to wearing baggy sweaters and to strumming Folk guitars. Some, of strong missionary zeal, went even further afield than the intrepid Reverend Hesketh, working alongside their unconsecrated fellows on factory production lines.

There was no denying their sincerity, the Reverend Hesketh among them, or their intention for Good. Perhaps in the fervour of their faith, they could disregard the warning regarding good intentions paving the way to Hell.

Now. The dissemination of any covert Message to the unreceptive or unsuspecting requires some thought. If the disseminator inclines to the theatrical and is endowed with charisma, he comes well-equipped to make in-roads into indifference or even hostility.

In the absence of these desirable qualities, the would-be disseminator would do well to consider the use of well-tried practical devices in dealing with groups of individuals.

In certain situations, there is a disturbing and pernicious tendency in grouping which swallows up individual identities and forms an entity. There then can follow a pattern of behaviour quite incomprehensible at the individual level. There are examples to be seen in football terraces, militaristic parading and in American Presidential Electioneering Rallies.

There is no suggestion that such extreme traits were present in the thirty-odd pagans forming the entities to be confronted by the Reverend Hesketh on a daily basis. They were, however, subject to those pressures of association and intent which bind any given group. Driving the entities was the identifying of a common enemy together with a natural programming towards subversion and disruption at the slightest hint of weakness in the enemy.

Gnarled Educators, inured to the bufferings of the classroom, know and appreciate the value of presenting a severe aspect when first encountering the entities. For it is easier, less stressful as well as less time-consuming, to relax a firm grip than it is to tighten a slack one.

When Mr Knight took up appointment as Headteacher at the time of the Reverend Hesketh, he displayed an admirable grasp of that maxim. He walked into the Hall to take the Religious Assembly on his first day, followed by Staff. He wore the flowing black gown of his graduation. This immediately confused the four hundred making up the entity, whose only point of reference in relation to the gown was Batman’s cape. In the charged expectation of the gathered, Mr Knight mounted the stage to make his inaugural address. It was the expectation of the gathered, as was usual, to be told to be seated with an ensuing homily. Instead, in a curt tone, Mr Knight spoke thus:

I am Mr Knight, your new Headmaster. There will be no sweets given out today. You are dismissed. Go to your classes, starting from the back row. Suitably confused and wrong-footed, the entity exited the Hall in orderly fashion. Mr Knight was to emerge as a kind and caring Headteacher, who made sure that every individual pupil had access to his study.

The first mistake made by the neophyte cleric on taking up appointment was to abandon the use of the dog-collar. Like Mr Knight’s gown it would have been a useful aid in wrong-footing the pagan entities. Then, of course, there was that familiarity thing to do with names. Instead of the standard address of ‘boy’ or ‘you there’, the Reverend indulged in the use of names and not just the surnames, but the Christian names of the pagans. The admission that the ‘C’ in his deservedly Christian name stood for ‘Clarence’ was received with some merriment.

In fairness to Mr Hesketh, as he preferred to be known among colleagues, he was disadvantaged vis-á-vis his chosen subject. Along with Art, Craft and Music, RE tended to be a make-weight in the curriculum, affording relief or respite from set, or essential subjects. But even within that marginal group there were inherent problems with RE, partly due to its esoteric nature but also in lacking, unlike the others in that group, scope for activity and noise as a means of engaging the energy of the pupils.

As a gentle, self-effacing man imbued with the spirit of goodness, it is probable that Mr Hesketh would not have considered the use of any device for engaging the interest of his charges, perhaps feeling that the Message would be sufficient unto itself. But of course, the Message needed to be heard in the first place. And there wasn’t much chance of that with the conduct of the classes in general.

Lessons invariably started with unruly behaviour in the corridor as pupils waited to be admitted to the classroom, while the teacher made good the chaos of the recently departed and prepared for the incomers. In contrast, those timetabled for Geography in the adjoining classroom observed silent decorum as they awaited, in orderly line, the appearance of Mr Anderson from within.

When eventually given entrance, the pursuit of Religious Education ensued with the standard banging of desk lids, disregard of textbooks and animated exchanges on extraneous subjects. All to the kindly indulgence of Mr Hesketh who, in addition, had to accommodate the relentless thumping from above where construction work was carried out on the flat roof. The form of the lessons varied between attempted readings from Scriptures, Biblical anecdotes, rag-tag discussions on pertinent topical issues from a moral standpoint, introduction to the major world religions and quite a lot of written answers to questions set in the textbooks. Current popular music was played of the flavour of Eleanor Rigsby and The Streets of London by the Beatles. Some of the more violent episodes in the Old Testament found favour. Notably the Herculean exploits of Samson merely armed with the jawbone of an ass, as did Samson’s aptitude for demolition work. The more spicy tracts brought incisive questioning, although perhaps not with innocent intent. Under scrutiny, in particular, came the question of Adam’s expulsion from Paradise, with speculations regarding other possible causes, rather than a weakness for apples. The ‘Begats’ was also a fertile topic for discussion, as was St Joseph’s role in the Immaculate Conception.

Mr Hesketh endured with patience and without rancour, welcoming the respite of the half-term break. He returned to a situation which to his dismay, showed no signs of improving. The overhead thumping, if anything, was more insistent. After the brief taste of freedom, the entities were resentful and uncooperative in confinement.

Things were not as they should be and to add to Mr Hesketh’s distress, complaints from colleagues regarding the overspill of noise were on the increase. Reluctantly and against his natural instincts, the teacher gave thought to the use of sanctions, which at the very least might contain the unruly behaviour within his own four walls and not intrude on others.

The School operated a system of Demerits, by which the accumulation of three by any individual automatically brought after-school detention. The system had little appeal for Mr Hesketh since he could envisage the help of a full-time secretary to keep up with the writing of the Demerit slips at the rate he might be doling them out. Also, he felt uneasy about taking after-school detention, seeing it as just another opportunity for disruption.

Then there was the Punishment Book and the cane. His aversion to violence of any sort made the Vicar recoil at the mere idea of physical chastisement. Mounting daily frustrations increasingly dragged his thoughts back to the need of some form of sanctions to stem the

galloping indiscipline. After all . well there might be occasions when . last resort of course … an admission of failure … but then … under extreme provocation … did not Jesus Himself resort to force with the money lenders at the Temple. The Vicar dismissed such thoughts from his mind. He felt it was one thing to act in righteous anger, quite another to send an offending pupil to fetch the Punishment Book plus cane from the Head’s office and, after recording date, time, nature of offence and treatment prescribed administer the relevant number of strokes. He fell to thinking that there was something to be said for the times when a quick clip to the ear by teacher or policeman brought another