Partner Piece

The idea behind this is that it be read out by two people - the writer and an unsuspecting "victim" - at a session of a writer's group. Copies will be printed out for the two participants and the all-important page break is as indicated below.

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A: Have you seen what we’ve been asked to do for this week?

B: Something called “Partner Work” I believe.

A: Do you know what that is?

B: Haven’t a clue. What do you reckon it is?

A: I think the idea is that you write a piece that works a bit like a play – a conversation between two people so you read half the lines and somebody else reads the rest.

B: Like a dialogue in a play, you mean?

A: Exactly like a dialogue in a play. As I said just now, if you’d been listening.

B: Sorry. So have you written yours yet?

A: I’m working on it.

B: What’s it going to be about, then?

A: That’s what I’m working on. I want it to be interesting and informative. I hold to the principle that one should always write from experience – you should write what you know.

B: That should give you plenty of free time, then.

A: Thanks.

B: Don’t mention it. But seriously, I agree with you  – you can’t just waffle on for page after page, like you’re doing now, if I’m not mistaken.

A: As I said before – Thanks. But I have got an idea. What I really need is a thoroughgoing mug – I mean a fine upstanding citizen – who can be my partner and read out all the lines marked “B” if I read the lines marked “A”.

B: Got anyone in mind?

A: Funny you should mention that. I reckon you might be just the right candidate.

B: Why do you say that?

A: Good clear speaking voice, somebody who might scan their eyes down the first page of my script and think “This is a doddle, no problems here” and never give a thought to turning over to Page Two.

B: What happens on Page Two, then?

A: Do you really want to know?

B: I think I do.

A: Have you ever been on Mastermind?

B: You’re changing the subject now.

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A: So I am. Here we go then.

B: Do we?

A: Your name?

B:

A: Occupation?

B: Scribbler.

A: Specialised subject?

B: Words, names and phrases that I can pronounce but not many other people can.

A: OK – here we go then. Two minutes on – what you just said. What is the name of the first railway station you come to after crossing the Menai Straits on to Anglesey?

B: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.

A: Correct – or maybe not. What happens near Edinburgh on a Sunday morning after you and your mates have been recovering in the cells after downing far too much amber nectar the night before?

B: The Leith Police dismisseth us.

A: A valiant effort. And the longest word to be found in the works of William Shakespeare?

B: Honorificabilitudinitatibus.

A: Nearly. And how would you describe the rapid emergence of eight alternately coloured commercial vehicles on to the A447 at Cadeby?

B: Red quarry lorry, yellow quarry lorry, red quarry lorry, yellow quarry lorry, red quarry lorry, yellow quarry lorry, red quarry lorry, yellow quarry lorry.

A: As you say. The longest place name in the world?

B: Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu.

A: Maybe. Oh dear, your time is up, which means that I can’t ask you for the complete chemical name of the protein titin, which as you probably know runs to nearly 200,000 characters and takes more than an hour to pronounce.

B: Oh dear, what a shame, never mind.

A: And will you be my partner the next time we do something like this?

B: Pass.

© John Welford

Identifying a Flying Object

I had always been highly sceptical about stories concerning visits from other worlds. There are plenty of people who swear blind that they have seen objects in the sky that simply had to contain beings from far away whose aim was probably to colonise our planet and destroy anyone who stood in their way.

There were even tales of supposed encounters with strange creatures that had actually landed and made contact with us. However, nobody could ever produce any solid proof of this. The tellers of these tales were almost always either off their heads or clever hoaxers who dressed up dead animals to look like corpses of aliens.

As for those inverted saucers in the sky, they could always be explained away as cloud shapes or reflections seen in aircraft windows. As I said, being sceptical was clearly the sensible way to go.

That was why I simply did not believe the reports that came our way about what some astronomers had seen in their powerful telescopes. They said that a strange object was heading our way that had to be of alien manufacture. It just could not be explained in any other way. 

It was of no great size, they said, so there was no way it could contain an invasion force of little green people. Indeed, it did not look like a vessel of any kind. It had a large white dish and lots of bits sticking out of it at odd angles. It could be nothing other than a set of scientific instruments and the means of relaying its information back to wherever it had come from.

Our leaders had to make a hurried decision, because this thing was travelling incredibly fast and, if we did nothing, it would pass us by very quickly and its secrets be lost to us forever. The chance had come to confirm, at long last, that we were not the only intelligent life forms in the Universe and that someone else was out there and was doing exactly what we had been doing for many generations, namely looking for other life-bearing planets.

As it happened, we had a spacecraft with just the right equipment for the job that could be launched immediately. This was done, and the strange object was caught in a net and dragged back to the surface, where it could be examined in detail.

One thing that soon became apparent was that this craft was extremely old. Examinations were made of the materials of which it was composed, some of which were radioactive, and these showed that the craft must have been travelling for nearly as long as our species had been developing. Our planet had nothing on it more intelligent than creatures dwelling in swamps and saying “Ugg” to each other when this thing had started on its way. It had clearly long stopped sending information back to base and therefore posed absolutely no threat to us.

But where had it come from, and what sort of being had sent it?

Then a remarkable discovery was made. The scientists found a disc, made of what was probably gold, that appeared to be completely undamaged despite the vast amount of time that it had passed on his journey from one world to another. This was unlike any of the other instruments on board and so did not appear to be for the purpose of gathering information. There could only be one explanation – this was a means of giving information, not receiving it.

For one thing, the disk was sheathed in a cover that was inscribed with information that was not difficult to interpret. It told us which solar system the host planet orbited, and also gave full instructions about what to do with the disc, which was a repository of sounds, images, and a host of other information.

The disc proved to be a time capsule of a complete alien civilization, or maybe that should be a group of civilizations, because what came across was a picture of a very diverse world, in many respects. The most intelligent beings, who must have been the ones that made the disc and sent the craft on its way, clearly came in many shapes and sizes, as did the other creatures that inhabited their planet.

There were images of landscapes that ranged from huge cities to barren deserts, icy wastes and mountain ranges, as well as land that was used to grow food and seas that were swarming with fish.

The sounds included voices that appeared to speak in many different languages, and sounds that said nothing but were presumably made simply to give pleasure – some of these were indeed very beautiful, others less so.

So there we were, the recipients of a gift from a world that was so far away that it could only be detected with the most powerful telescopes we could devise. These alien people presumably had another purpose when they launched this craft – maybe they only wanted to explore their own solar system, but reckoned that it might well escape and end up being seen by lifeforms of which they could know nothing but assume must exist.

The ironic thing is that our experts recently detected a huge supernova explosion in a region of space not far from the solar system in question. They calculated that the blast would have produced a massive amount of radiation that would have destroyed all forms of life on any planet even remotely close.

What this means is that, even if the civilizations that we had seen on the disc had survived in some shape or form to this day, they could not have done so any longer. In other words, we now have in our hands the only record that life, intelligent or otherwise, ever existed on Planet Earth.

© John Welford

Put That Light Out

(This story is loosely based on a real incident)

It might be thought that the idea of night-time blackouts as a form of civilian protection during wartime originated in World War Two with the legal requirement to hide all lights that might be spotted by would-be aerial bombers. Those who remember the TV comedy series “Dad’s Army” will recall the cry of “Put That Light Out” that was regularly issued by William Hodges, the long-suffering ARP warden.

However, something similar occurred during World War One, although the main focus was not to protect against Zeppelin raids in London and other major cities but, in smaller coastal communities, to meet a threat that came from a different direction.

The German Navy had a fleet of submarines that were known to patrol the seas around the British Isles. The danger they posed was brought forcibly to public attention when a submarine sank RMS Lusitania off the south coast of Ireland in May 1915 with the loss of nearly 1200 lives. Britain had few defences against such attacks, but the night-time blackout along the Channel coast was a measure that was strictly enforced.

The idea was that a submarine proceeding along the coast would be able to see the silhouette of a ship if the latter was marked out against a brightly lit background. If the lights were not there, neither would the outline of a potential torpedo victim be visible.

For example, in the town of Poole, which spread from the north side of Poole Harbour all the way to the clifftops next door to Bournemouth, police constables were soon on their guard against cyclists and the occasional motorist whose lamps were considered to be too bright for safety, and the local magistrates had a profitable time collecting fines from offenders, whether they were road-users or citizens whose properties were showing too much light to the outside world.

One such case involved the landlord of The Lord Nelson, a pub on Poole Quay. The idea that a German U-boat could make its way into the shallow waters of Poole Harbour at night and then fire a torpedo at a quayside ship, only visible thanks to the merrymaking at a local hostlery, might sound fanciful, but that is the way the official mind works.

Robin Giles, the landlord in question, could not say that he had had no warning. His wife, Molly, had provided plenty of that in the days before his appearance in court.

“This place is a tip”, said Molly. “Don’t you ever do any cleaning or tidying in here?”

She was remarking on the state of the bar shortly before opening time one Saturday evening in June.

“It looks all right to me”, said Robin, whose standards were considerably lower in this respect than those of his wife.

“There’s dirt all over the floors, half the tables are covered in dog-ends, and there’s hardly a clean glass behind the bar,” Molly said. “Three ships tied up today, full of thirsty sailors who’ll be pouring through this door the second I open it. You’d better shift your backside pronto and get to work for once”.

Molly had never minced her words, which is one reason why she was the driving force behind this successful dockside pub, with its rough-and-ready clientele, in the early 20^th century.

“And another thing”, she told her husband as he reluctantly got to work on the glasses, “I told you weeks ago to get some proper blackout shutters fitted. Those old beer-crates shoved against the windows will do not good at all.”

“Oh give over”, said Robin. “Nobody will notice. We’ll be fine.”

But Molly ‘s advice proved to have been worth taking. On Monday morning, first thing, a knock on the door brought a summons to attend the Magistrates’ Court on a charge of not maintaining a suitable blackout during the hours of darkness. 

“I told you so”, said Molly, her statement being one with which Robin could hardly disagree.

At the Magistrates’ Court, evidence was given by Constable Percy White, who, he said, had been having a quiet drink in The Lord Nelson – while off duty, as he assured the Magistrate – when he had noticed two things.

“Which were, Constable White?”

“Firstly, Your Worship, that my glass was extremely dirty, and secondly that the blackouts in the windows were just a few bits of broken beer crate.”

“And when did you notice this, Constable White?”

“I don’t follow you, Your Worship.”

“He means,” Robin interjected, “was that after the seventh or the eighth pint of my excellent best bitter?”

“Mr Giles, you should not interrupt,”, said the Magistrate, “but you are quite right, that was roughly the question I was going to ask next.”

“That doesn’t matter”, said the constable, clearly getting a bit rattled, “the fact remains that the blackout was not sufficient to block light from reaching the outside world through the windows.”

“And how do you respond to that, Mr Giles?” asked the Magistrate.

“I say it was perfectly OK”, Robin replied. “And if you come down to my pub tonight I’ll prove it to you, and throw a free pint or two of best into the bargain.”

“That would be an unusual move to take”, said the Magistrate, “but if you put it like that, how could I refuse?”

So that is what they did. As darkness fell on Poole Quay, the Magistrate, his court clerk and Constable White stood opposite The Lord Nelson while Robin and Molly turned on all the lights and put their blackouts, such as they were, into place. A minute later Robin came outside.

“How was that?” he asked. “Did you see anything?”

“Nothing at all”, said the Magistrate. “Not so much as a gleam of light until you opened the door”.

“You must have cheated”, said Constable White, “You’ve fitted some proper blackout shutters since this morning, haven’t you?”

“Not at all”, said Robin. “Come and see”.

So he led the party back into the pub where Molly explained the situation.

“The fact is, Your Worship,” she said, “That my bone idle husband does not only not wash the glasses properly or sweep the floors, but he hasn’t cleaned the windows for at least seven years. They are so caked with muck and detritus that not a chink of light could possibly get through, as you have just seen for yourself. For once in his life, he’s actually got something right”.

“Case dismissed”, said the Magistrate. “Now where’s that pint? In a clean glass, if you don’t mind.”

© John Welford