I’m one of those lucky people who owns a Kindle.

It was a Christmas gift, which I tell you only to impress you by continuing ‘I’ve only had to charge it once since I received it.’ Stand-by battery life is just shy of a month and a half, which impressed me at least.

Anyway, I’ve given it a fair amount of use over these two months; downloaded a number of ‘books’, checked out the note-writing system and all that jazz. It’s a beautifully designed device and system, very intuitive. One qualm I have is the page-turning buttons on the sides. Both sides of the device are adorned with a large ‘>’ marked button beneath a smaller ‘<’ marked one. At first I found myself hitting the right hand ‘>’ (or ‘next page’) button to turn, predictably, forward in the book and the left hand ‘>’ in an attempt to flip back a page, which led to some small confusion. It’s a small annoyance, and I adjusted quickly enough. In fact the dual-sided controls are proving to be a wonderful idea as I find myself doing other things while reading.

The screen is excellent. It’s virtually glare-free, so reading in bright sunlight isn’t the rage inducing shit-fest that a phone or tablet screen would tend to be (without accoutrements, anyway).
This is because of the ‘E-Ink’ system, which uses microcapsules of negatively-charged black pigment and positively-charged white pigment which can be arranged an re-arranged according to the whims of two electrode layers above and below.

Here’s a picture that I stole from Wikipedia of the microcapsules in question.

Research tells me a colour version has been available since 2010 that is capable of displaying 4096 colours alongside 16 shades of grey. That’s a real headfuck when you think about the science behind it.

Enough of the technical details, though, let’s talk about the experience:

Reading the Kindle is not unlike reading a ‘book’. Presumably that’s what the creators were going for. The display looks like paper for the most part, which gives you a little jolt when you spot a blinking cursor moving about on it because a part of your mind screams “BUT PAPER IS A STATIC OBJECT! GOD HELP US ALL!” for a split second.

The most striking thing I’ve noticed, though, is right up at the top in the title; I’m not reading any ‘books’ right now.

I of course mean that in the literal sense, I’m a voracious reader and tend to have at least three ‘books’ on the go simultaneously, which I do right now except all of them are virtual.

There was no change-over anxiety, there was no jarring sense of loss (or gain), there wasn’t even any recognition of the fact until just before I started writing this. I simply hadn’t noticed that I wasn’t using physical ‘books’ any more.
That’s not to say I won’t from now on; I love ‘books’. I love the way they feel, look, sound and smell. ‘Books’ appeal to me both aesthetically and in terms of their content, like I’m some sort of lovelorn fool besotted with some intelligent, beautiful, perfect woman.

All I’m saying is her, referring to physical ‘books’ as a singular feminine entity for the purposes of this metaphor (keep up), younger and sleeker sister, meaning virtual ‘books’ on an e-reader like the Kindle (Still with me?), is equally attractive. Or is that ‘are equally attractive’? I’ve ruined my own metaphor there.

It’s very helpful to a style of reader like myself who when travelling would normally pack a couple of oft chunky, frequently fairly weighty ‘books’ into a bag to the detriment of other, possibly more important, items. Like food, bug-spray or an anti-wild-animal knife. Having the ability to dip into roughly 1000 ‘books’ (according to the marketing spiel) on a device no larger than a couple of take-away menus stacked together is a life-saver. Not having to remember page numbers or find lost bookmarks is good too; when you close (leave? quit?) a ‘book’ on the Kindle it helpfully remembers exactly what page you were on, for every single ‘book’.

By the way, I’m putting ‘book’ in inverted commas because this whole experience has rocked the paradigm and now I’m unsure what to call either of these items. If a physical object with paper pages and printed ink is a ‘book’, then the virtual, ones-and-zeros, differentially-charged microcapsules type almost needs to be something else. The trouble with that is I find the term ‘e-book’ slightly demeaning. It’s the same content, compared side-by-side, and ‘e-book’ reminds me of some terribly formatted, childishly written guide to making bombs from bleach and tinfoil.
So basically they are both ‘books’ until I can adjust my brain into thinking of them both as just books.

Apropos of all this, here’s my view:

I felt strangely about e-readers when they first made an appearance on the market, because my love of physical ‘books’ set me at odds with the idea that one could transition without some gargantuan effort. I felt like switching would have a huge impact on a part of my life that I love dearly.

It has not.

If anything it has merely extended the ways in which I enjoy the written word, which is really all ‘books’ are for anyway, despite all my posturing and declarations of love for the objects themselves the content is what drives anyone’s love of reading.

So this isn’t the end of physical ‘books’ as far as I can see, not for some long time at least, but it isn’t a failed experimental attempt at sci-fi futurism either. It’s a system that works, and it works really bloody well.

It’s not a replacement, it’s an augmentation.

Plus, I just really like it.

I love ‘books’. Doesn’t matter how I read them.

A tinny voice from the cheap portable radio next to his bowl of boring cereal that came in a rainbow-hued box covered in flashing LEDs said that the rioters had breached the barricades and the police had fallen back. Christopher stared into the constantly flickering, ever changing nano-ads in the gossip-paper, not really seeing, just listening.

The riots had started a few weeks ago and grown in both number of participants and targeted brutality. Christopher once noted to a colleague that they were less like riots and more like an organised movement. To what end, he didn’t have the words to speculate.

The riots had started when the libraries had been made to burn all their useless books and replace them with vid-files. The riots had worsened when schools had started adding ‘Celebrity Studies’ to the curriculum. The riots had reached fever pitch when the TV channels stopped playing the news.

Christopher stirred his beige, tasteless breakfast, wondering if the rioters would come to his street. Whether he would be dragged from his bed and pontificated at, like his colleagues-cousins-friends-brother had been. The people on TV had never explained what ‘pontificate’ meant, but Christopher thought it sounded bad.

The rioters had adopted a name, ‘The Learned Minority’. Christopher and his colleagues had a good chuckle over this, at least when the boss wasn’t in the voice-chat.

“Honestly,” one had begun, “How can they claim to be so ‘learned’ when all they ever do is read old, stuffy books and never switch on the TV?”

Christopher nodded. Then and now, responding and remembering, respectively.

For a second his eye was caught by an ad for a new radio. This one had a bigger power-button than his current model, more lights too and a second liquid-crystal display so he could keep up on the gossip that was happening on channels he wasn’t tuned to. For only £500 a month, this struck Christopher as a good deal. He’d wait, though, until he knew what the Celebs thought of it.

It was around now that Christopher heard the first window smash. They were on his street now. No doubt they would be here soon. Christopher turned up the volume on his radio and tuned to CelebGoss FM. He had to know if he should be afraid.

“I can’t get enough of those slogans they have!” A voice drawled, excitably. “I’m going to mix a few into a new track and play it loud!” Hearing the popular singer’s catchphrase comforted Christopher. He allowed himself a small grin as he returned to his breakfast.

They were coming closer all the time, though, and apprehension reared its ugly head as Christopher checked the bolt on the door. He returned to the table just as something heavy and brown shattered his kitchen window, landing right on the radio set and sending the cracked plastic and still-flashing LEDs careening across the floor. It was a book. It had landed open on a list of words. ‘Pontificate; to speak in a pompous or dogmatic manner.’

Talking? Christopher didn’t know how dogs were involved, but he was pretty sure he could handle people talking at him. They weren’t Celebrities; he didn’t have to listen. He sat back down just as the bolt of his front door gave and people began pouring into his flat.

If they were just going to talk at him he’d just listen to his iPod instead. He was going to drown them out, he thought with a little smile, he was going to play it loud!

A small man in an ill-fitting suit passes, head bowed against the incessant drizzle, and shoots me a look; half confusion, half camaraderie. ‘Why are you out? Why am I out, at that.’

I am chased through the centre of town by sirens, distant but becoming less so, past the club staff setting out the smoking area. They talk in subdued tones, it’s hard work and they’re not going to be making much money on a night like this.

Stamping my feet, waiting for a bus I hear an argument from a nearby street. Some disagreement over money or love or both. It’s never anything else.
The bus arrives, flourescent lighting and a musty smell my companions as we pass through alternating pools of orange light that only serve to make the darkness around them darker. I disembark on a pitch black road, deafened by the wind which gains that much more power this high up and unhindered by buildings, and make the journey to my home.

I flop into a chair and wonder why I’m still here. Not long now.

Huddersfield at night.

It is the name given to a feeling or belief that one is simply ‘unable’ to write experienced over a period of time, anything from a day or two up to years at a time.

But what is it?

Some people believe that it does not exist. Acclaimed author Warren Ellis, the man behind the seminal comic Transmetropolitan, has stated “… [Someone with ‘writer’s block’] isn’t a fucking writer anymore. The job is getting up in the morning and fucking writing.”

This, while harsh, is a fairly erudite explanation of how it feels to be ‘afflicted’.

I’m of the opinion, seeing as I have a lot of time to think about this kind of thing, that writer’s block can be classified as a very mild psychological breakdown.

Let me tell you my experience(s) with this particular ailment:

I’ve run into writer’s block a couple of times and it has a very distinct feeling about it. It’s not even remotely similar to what one might feel in school, say, when faced with an essay or exam and cannot think what to write next. That’s a momentary frustration that can be overcome by remembering that you do in fact know the answer to the question.

Writer’s block is more insidious than that. It’s a slithery, slimy bastard that sneaks into your mind and squats there, nibbling on your brain every now and then when it gets bored. It’s sneaky, in that it makes you want to write, then stops you from doing it.

Now, I say ‘stops you’; there’s actually nothing physically stopping you from putting words on the page. There isn’t even anything hindering your vocabulary or fiddling with the way you write. It just feels like there is.

That’s why I’ve come to the conclusion that this situation is, or at least is caused by, a very low-lying crisis of confidence or even an existential one. I’ve gone to write something and caught myself thinking ‘What’s the point?’ or ‘Why even bother?’ The belief that you could write something, but it would ultimately be terrible, unreadable drivel is a prime factor of writer’s block.

I’m forcing myself to write this through a hefty bought of it, and I can tell you that the horrible little gremlin in my head is telling me to delete every word and start over. I can also tell you that if I did delete every word the gremlin would then tell me there’s no point in starting again, and I’d probably abandon the piece altogether.

It’s that aspect that is the most interesting to me, and I wonder if people who don’t suffer from writer’s block are simply happier, more enthusiastic, more optimistic people.

It conjures the image of the tortured artist, slashing yesterday’s paintings in a fit of rage because they are ‘awful’, even after a gallery has offered to buy them. As cliché as that seems, that’s roughly what one can expect to be going on in a writer’s head when they tell you they have this malady. It’s very cyclic, to the point that it’s almost bipolar.

As I said; it comes in waves. There are periods of time where, at least for me, I feel like everything I write is gold dust and I can’t put a word wrong. There are others where I feel like every single idea I have is shit or stolen or stupid or a stupid, shitty idea that I stole. It’s so hard to fight through that and produce something, because even if you do part of you still thinks ‘This is awful. I must destroy all evidence of its existence.’

There are vast novels floating in the void or filling the shelves of Deaths library with my name on the cover because I’ve written something then immediately confined it to oblivion. (I like to think destroyed literature ends up somewhere).

There are ways around it, however. Forcing oneself to write something, anything, is one way, as long as you can convince yourself to keep going and then not to delete it upon completion. That’s part of the reason I like writing in notebooks; it’s not as easy to delete a physical object. There are exercises you can find in books and online that claim to help with writer’s block. Any and all writers will give you no end of various kinds of advice, some of it useful, some of it not.

The trouble is it’s a very personal problem. The prevailing feeling is that you know you can’t write right now, even though people tell you that you can. The truth of the matter, however, is that those people are right. You can still do it, you just feel like if you try to you’ll produce something sub-par.

Maybe you will, but that doesn’t mean you can’t fix it. Or write something else.

Writer’s block is as personal as writing itself, in that you may have certain music you like to listen to as you write, or certain sounds or sights that completely throw you off kilter and stop you being able to think straight.

As though to provide evidence to myself, I’m really struggling to write this last paragraph. Something in my head is screaming that this is all self-indulgent nonsense and to get rid of it immediately, but I refuse to give in.

That’s really all one can do in this situation. Dig in your heels, bite down on a stick and force yourself forwards. Of course you can still write; you just need to remember that.

J Bov.

Cadejo was pacing. Cadejo always paced. You could tell how agitated he was by the amount of steps he took between each about-face and I often wondered if there was a way to annoy him enough that he’d spin in place like he was in a microwave oven. I imagine he’d turn a similar colour in both situations, too.

I sat in one of his uncomfortable foam office chairs, watching him skitter back and forth like I was watching a game of tennis, and waited. My hand was in my coat pocket, nervously fingering the ‘board Jackson had given me before I got called to the office.

“It’s those darn kids, again.” He finally spluttered, mercifully dropping into his own comfortable-looking leather chair and sighing. “They really stepped in the dog-doo this time.”

‘Just fucking swear, Sarge, it’s good for you!’ I didn’t say. What I did say was, “Kids?”

He leaned forward, elbows on his desk and sat back in the chair again in one swift movement. Only Tec-Sec’s Sergeant Eddie Cadejo could find a way to pace while sitting down.

“Those punk kids, the Gamers, they hack private networks to play their stupid little games. Well now they’re in real trouble.” He seemed genuinely excited at the prospect. Fully aware of what ‘those punk kids’ did for fun, I just stared at him until he continued.

“This time they jacked the internal service network of Remus Tech.” He got up and began pacing again, but this time he was smiling. If he was more inclined to the theatrical like Jackson I imagine he’d be literally wringing his hands with glee.

“We never catch them, though.” I chose to address his quartz paperweight rather than follow him around the room with my head this time. “Why is this time any different?”

He stopped, turned, regarded me and then practically skipped back to his desk to point at his computer screen.

“Because they just logged in! Remus Golems noticed them immediately and called it in.”

I stopped messing around with my semi-legal new ‘board and pulled my rolling gear from my pocket. As I rolled I asked him the question I knew he wanted me to ask.

“Why,” I licked the gum strip on the paper and tapped the cigarette on his desk, “would Remus Tech’s own Golems not shut them down immediately?”

They wanted us to catch these kids. They wanted them in the cells until they could sue them properly. So they gave them a wide berth on the network and called us, hoping we’d get there in time. That’s what Cadejo was saying, significant slower than I had thought it. They were sending out a clean-up crew, including me.

“You’re sending me because I need to get my footwork hours in, for my promotion.” I gave up playing twenty questions. I already knew all this.

“We’re sending you, too, because you…” He trailed off and gave me an annoyed look. I lit my cigarette and focussed on the paperweight. “Fine. Go to the bays now.” He began a wider path in his pacing, more relaxed now he’d palmed this one off on me. I set off for the parking bays.

—

On the drive to Remus Technologies’ enormous and ornate headquarters I thought about what was about to happen. I liked these kids. I’m part of the reason we’d never caught them. What can I say? Good adversaries are hard to find over the Grid, and this group were the best in The City. Only one had ever beaten me in a game before, but they put up a good fight.

One grunt nudged the identical aerogel armour of the one to his right and gestured my way. A wordless ‘what’s his deal?’ I payed no attention, I was decking in with my *Roam™ powered portable Grid-visor™*. Checking on Remus’ Golems.

Every major company has Golems. They patrol the networks night and day looking for intruders and kicking them out, sometimes with severe penalties. Since Remus Tech controlled the Roam™ system their Golems even had the power to ban you from being online at all, at least on all Remus owned services. Unfortunately that included the Grid; the fate of the internet of old, after Remus got their grubby mitts all over it, and ‘nothing happens off the Grid’ as the ads scream proudly. You had to be particularly malicious and stupid to get caught and full-service Hammered though. It didn’t happen often.

Using my Tec-Sec ID code I forced the Golems to give up the exact coordinates of the intruders, which I relayed to the captain of the little crew of officers. Then, using a little Remus ID I hacked up, I also forced them to leave me alone for a little while. I had to warn my adversaries in time for them to log out and scarper; it wouldn’t do to let them feel the full brunt of Remus’ legal team. Or teams, as it were.

“Hands off your tackle and eyes open. We’re here.” The captain called as the van rolled to a gentle stop.

Shit.

“Over reacting a little aren’t you, J Bov?”

Let me tell you something;

When you glance at the night sky on occasion, you see the beautiful points of light, shimmering in the firmament, and you pause.

You are staring up into the light from a billion other suns. There are stars so large if you replaced our star with them they would reach the furthest point of the orbit of Jupiter.  We can see whole other galaxies, hundreds of billions of suns spiralling in space, with the naked eye.

Our planet is a tiny rock, spinning in the dark. We’ve discovered a little over five hundred others through the years, none of them Earth-like. I will almost definately never set foot on Mars, or even our own moon, I’ll probably never leave this one insignificant mote of dust.

Small comforts are rarely afforded in this dark, lonesome universe.

But I exist. You exist. A ridiculously long, twisted line of history has led to chance meetings, from which sprung one of almost infinite possible new lives, who met someone else and did it again. This decreases the odds of my or your ancestors even meeting to incredibly low. More chance meetings and eventually, one of millions of sperm meets one of millions of eggs and from a huge range of possible expressions of that meeting it’s you. Wonderful, miraculous you and me.

Every molecule in your body can be traced to cosmic phenomena; you and I are swirling masses of space stuff that coalesces for an instant as us, then moves along. The odds of these things are so small as to be essentially zero, but here we are.

All this means that, against astronomical odds, you were born from the heart of a star. I was too. So too was the person, who I will never meet, who thought up Creme Eggs.

I could have been anywhere, at any time and it could have been anything that I’d forgotten I had, but it wasn’t.

So from all this mad, swirling, chaotic mess we can condence down to a single, shining moment wherein I find something in my pocket and tell you about it.

This very moment when I found a Creme Egg and it made me smile

and that, Sir or Madam,

that is very special.

Favourite TV Show:
Mystery Science Theatre 3000

MST3K is a wonderful show that I never caught on tv. I’m not sure if it was ever on in the UK anyway. Thankfully a lot of it is now online (if you’ve never seen it I suggest you seek it on YouTube) and it’s great.
I will come out and say it right now; I talk over movies. I’m one of those people that likes to amuse myself when a movie (or TV show) is failing to do so. If it’s good, I’ll clam up, if not then watch out.
MST3K is terrible old movies over which three guys make jokes. It speaks to me on a personal level and it’s arse-clenchingly funny. Seek it out.

Favourite Live-Action Film
I’d love to do this one by genre, but I’ve got two more film categories and I’d rather not inundate the post with movies, so:
Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb

Yes, that’s one movie, it follows the old tradition of naming a film twice.
This film is far and away the best comedy I have ever seen. It’s equal parts pantomime and understatement with a perfect ratio of comedy to seriousness. It’s not the constant laugh riot that Airplane is (Airplane being my second pick, consequently) but it never fails to make me laugh.
Parodied to this day, it’s filled with moments that you will have seen but never realised where they came from, most notably the nuke riding scene, which happens right at the end.
Every actor is fantastic, every joke is crisp and perfectly played and Peter Sellers can do no wrong by me.
Plus any film that ends with this;  Is doing it right.
Superb. Watch it.
“Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here, this is the War Room!”

Favourite Animated Film:
I would consider it sacrilege to say anything other than
Spirited Away

This movie is just amazing. The story is great, the art is beautiful and it just hits every mark available. It’s funny, it’s tense, it’s heart warming, it’s scary and it delights in being very very odd.
There’s no surprise then that it’s critically acclaimed and has a plethora of awards to it’s name including an Oscar for Best Animated Feature.
It also makes a good screensaver film. You can have it on while other stuff occupies your attention and it’s still enjoyable.
One thing I will say, however, is that if you watch it you should endeavour to watch the subtitled Japanese version, for the real experience and to avoid the main character’s incessant shrieking in the dub. Not too bad, but the Japanese voice acting is better in that case.
Anyway, It’s Japanese Alice in Wonderland and I love it so.
Plus, he was a river the entire time.

Favourite Computer Animated Film:
Wall-E

If you know me at all or you’ve read the rest of this blog you’ll know that I have a soft spot for robots and that this choice was inevitable.
What can possibly be better than a robot love story?
This film is utterly masterful in it’s scope and in terms of it’s emotional impact on an audience. I know people who like robots less than I and some who are blithely indifferent towards them who think this movie is great.
A great mix of a post-human scorched earth macrocosm, with all the desolate beauty that entails, and the curiosity and consequential emotional growth of a (ridiculously endearing) robot in the microcosm.
Mix that with a genuinely heart-warming love story and you’ve got success. The majority of this movie is free of dialogue beyond the occasional chirping of the autonomic protagonist(s) and that’s a choice I can heartily get behind.

Does it ruin the film when they introduce humans? Not at all, but I would have prefered if they hadn’t.

Favourite Comic:

Transmetropolitan

This choice will probably never change. Warren Ellis crafted a perfect vision with this masterpiece. The… ‘hero’… of the piece is Spider Jerusalem; a Hunter S. Thompson analogue channelled through an idealised version of Ellis himself, and while this may seem lazy and egotistical to some, it works so well that eventually you forget all about it as he takes on a life of his own. A righteously angry, offensive and abrasive life.

The awful world that Spider inhabits is brought to life, also, by artist Darick Robertson. With a style that looks sketchy but fully fleshed he really lends a layer of grime to The City that the writing alone couldn’t.

If you like comics, read it. If you like angry cynics, read it. It’s fun cover to cover and who knows, maybe you’ll learn something.

Favourite Album:

Knee-Deep in the North Sea by Portico Quartet

I had some trouble recently picking my nine favourite albums for a thread on a forum. My taste in music is subject to my whims and to-ing and fro-ings, but I settled on this choice for now for one simple reason:

Unlike most albums I own, there is not one track on this album that I would skip. Not. One. They are all great. Easy to listen to, fun and exciting by turns, modern jazz could have done a lot worse than these four gentlemen. I haven’t heard the second album yet but chances are it’s as good as this one and if that’s the case I will be one happy faux-beatnik.

Favourite Book:

Lord Of Light by Roger Zelazny

This section is as liable to change as the one above, but as of right now Lord of Light is at the very least in my top five recommended reads. Zelazny manages to spin a sci-fi world out of ancient Eastern religion in a way that’s both interesting and entertaining. I don’t want to give too much away but it covers the ideas of ‘religion as control’ as well as questioning our right as humans to suppress knowledge or repress each other on any basis. All through the lense onto the world of the (sort of) Buddha Mahasamatma, or Sam for short.

It’s a stunning book, you should read it.

So there it is, laid out before you for your judgement; a list of my favourite media as of January 2011 with some brief justification. It would bring me great joy to think that someone might go away from this list to seek out and subsequently enjoy my suggestions and I urge you to do so. Do it. Now.

J Bov.

Is it all bad? Looks that way, but when evil rushed from the box there was one thing left inside. Quivering in the corner right at the bottom, cold and naked, was hope.
We’ve learned that privately funded space flight is not just theoretically possible; it’s a viable option and probably the only way the layman will get off this rock. That’s exciting.
We’ve learned that a cure for HIV is closer than ever. So too, cancer.
We’ve learned that stem cells are essentially magic cures for almost any genetic defect, if only people would take the research seriously.
We’ve learned that at least some people care what happens to them and others.
We’ve learned that there are always voices from the dark telling us that we’re cared for and that we’ll be okay if we just hang in there.
We’ve learned that there are whole nations committed to making sure this planet doesn’t become a burned out, inhospitable Venus clone.
We’ve seen pictures of the Earth taken from the window of the ISS.
We’ve witnessed changing attitudes towards race and sexuality.
We’ve seen people seriously considering the medical and economic benefits of legalizing a substance that is only illegal in the first place because a man who hated Mexicans wanted to monopolize the paper industry.

We’ve seen great art created and people engaging with it.
We’ve seen kids becoming genuinely excited about reading books. Sure, shit books, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Personally I’ve learned something quite important. It’s the same as it ever was. We go around and around again and every time it gets a little bit better, we care a little bit more about people instead of things, everything gets a little bit easier.
We can have frank discussions about controversial subjects and we can research controversial topics with less incoherent, uneducated screaming.

So yes, 2010 is drawing ever closer to being an entry in history books. But despite how it may look right now, I think we’re going to be okay. If we just hang in there, we’ll be okay.

That’s why last nights dream struck me to my soul.
The world was ending, but my friends and family weren’t there. They were away on some exotic beach, being massaged by supermodels and chuckling to themselves, this I knew. Nor was I in a meadow. Instead I was on a bus, surrounded by knobheads, the reek of urine ruining my journey.
Occasionally someone would flick the back of my head and when I turned to glare at them I missed the crumbling city behind me, turning around in time to see just settling dust, a horrible grey in the garish yellow midday sunlight. The bus was now parked, but nobody got off.
From the window I could see the panic, hear the running feet. Here and there was looting, I saw a group of children repeatedly stabbing an elderly shopkeeper for a mars bar.
Over the din I could hear Jedward being played from some invisible speakers.
Then, projected enormously against the wreckage, began an endlessly looping video of David Cameron violently robbing a poor, old woman. Perhaps because it was projected onto an uneven ruin, perhaps not, he had taken on the aspect of a six-limbed monster bedecked in hideous spines and scale-like plates. From between two of the plates grew the constantly, sickly grinning face of Nick Clegg, like a tumor.
I could see both Milibands and the rest of Labour springing to and fro, wearing signs which read “the end is nigh!” While I couldn’t question the validity of their warning, I also couldn’t shake the feeling that they were slightly late to this party.

Suddenly I was on my feet; I grabbed and shook madly the nearest person to me.
I continued to shake him as I heard myself screaming; “No! This can’t be the end! It can’t all end like this, can it!? We worked harder than this, didn’t we!? DIDN’T WE!?”
His face remained impassive, staring straight ahead rather than watching the world fall apart around him.
He squinted at me through the pudgy rolls of flab around his eyes, unblinking, and without a word he put another handful of fries into his idiot mouth.
I began to yell incoherently, a wordlessly protest that any sane person would echo. I yelled alone. The insistent sound of a siren began then.

I awoke with a start, drenched in cold sweat, slapping my alarm to stop its wailing. I looked about myself; everything was as it should be, from my window I could see a thin mist, rising quickly in the bright but gentle morning light.
I breathed a sigh of relief and after my morning ministrations I made a cup of tea. I lit my first cigarette of the day and, mug in hand, waited for my jangled nerves to calm.
Sufficiently relaxed and now assured that what I had seen was only a terrible dream, I turned on the television. Eventually, bored of sitcoms, I made a huge mistake; I switched to the news.

I haven’t stopped screaming since.

It was early one morning,
As Friday was dawning,
That Mikey first started to run.
“It does barely tickle,
And it’s only a trickle,
But I’ll tell you, it isn’t much fun!“

A great, beefy man,
With a pie-vending van,
Met Mikey at that Summers Fayre.
“Well, you are what you eat!“
Cried the man with the meat,
But there was only a stick figure there.

Mikey Pinter, son of a printer,
Had a great fondness for ink.
His life must be boring,
Stuck as a drawing,
All thanks to a poor taste in drink.