Mr. Morrison -- your trolley is in my aisle.

Dear Mr. Morrison of +Morrisons
Off the bat, do you mind if I call you William or, better yet, Bill? I appreciate this is probably rude of me considering that you managed to turn a simple egg and butter stall back in 1899 (Morrison history) into what is now a major (okay, you are number 4 of 4) chain of supermarkets; but as I occasionally haunt the aisles of your business,  I feel we do have a sense of familiarity. Either way, Bill, congrats on getting the business where it is today: I've been in the film business for thirty years and I'm still fighting red over black when it comes to bank statements and you don't even want to know what Hell it is trying to sell a novel out there.
Up front, Bill, I'm a +Waitrose man -- now that's not a class or money decision. On the contrary. I just like being able to amble down an aisle with my FREE trolley and peruse a variety (note variety here Bill) of foodstuffs. I like the fact that I can PAUSE in an aisle, Bill -- pause and reflect and realise that there are five, if not six, brands of rice in this world: realise that Morrison's did not invent the only pasta sauce and, would you believe Bill, that not all soon to be pork roasts are wrapped in blood soaked clingfilm? It is a wondrous thing, Bill, to be able to idly choose on what to spend your sweat stained pound on, rather than be given the choice of nought but your name brand. I'm okay when it comes to toilet paper and the like, Bill, but come on, Pasta Sauce,headache tablets,soap,baked beans etc etc........?? Give a man a choice and he will come back for more.
Now here is the bone of contention, Bill -- why in the name of Hell and its followers, do you choose to stock your shelves every minute of the day? Okay -- maybe I'm exaggerating, so let me rephrase, Bill -- why is it that every time I habituate your store, I'm not only fighting off obscene screaming mothers, screaming children, obese fathers and cellular phone touting teens, but a multitude of your staff and their unweilding effing trolleys?
I kid you not, Bill -- take a wander when you can. I want a pork pie. There's your trolley, your guy, right there, builder's crack and all, stocking the exact shelf. I make a detour for the tomatoes (what's with this recent dry ice effect going on with the veggies, Bill? I don't quite get it. I gave it a few moments of my attention and was expecting a rock concert but then I got rudely interrupted by a brat steering your one pound trolley) and when I arrive, guess what? Bang! Your trolley and two acne laced teens lazily tossing bags of onions and discussing their next smoke break. Right there, barricading the damn tomatoes, Bill!
So here's the thing -- I'm not saying Waitrose and the like don't have to re-stock their shelves during the day. But they seem to do it...well... in a clandestine manner. They apologise for being there. They ask if they can help. Your mob? Forget it, Bill -- my little one pound trolley is but a mere ant versus your tank; versus your over-stacked, rusty heap of piped metal on shaky wheels.
Get out of my aisle, Bill -- I'm there to spend money on groceries, not to attend a demolition derby.
P.S. Have you ever thought about selling books only published by self-publishers? I'm, of course, suggesting this for selfish reasons, but I do have an ulterior motive: if you did, at least you could offer a damn choice, Bill.
Think about it.

TO READ MORE OF MARK ROPER'S RAMBLINGS, PLEASE VISIT here.

Better yet, download a novella of his scribblings at a ridiculous low price!!!

Free Short Story - A coffin afloat

...a free short story. To read collected stories, read Two Feet by Mark Roper or visit his website. And feel free to comment. 

Stories by Mark Roper

A COFFIN AFLOAT

By Mark Roper

When I was sixteen I lived in Swaziland. It is a small, mountainous country tucked between the Northern borders of South Africa and Mozambique. In my time, Swaziland was a true monarchy, but from what I now understand I don’t think even the present King knows what the country’s political status is. Corrupt comes to mind, but I digress, which I have a tendency to do. I apologize.

My stepfather had rented a farm. It worked oranges, avocados, cotton and grapefruit. As my stepfather was nearing bankruptcy, he went off in his Volkswagen station wagon to sell cheap, American cosmetics and so-called organic house cleaning products and left me to run the farm. But that is not what this story is about, though it will, at some point in time, deserve a telling.

Across the fence, the neighboring farm was called Paradise Caravan Park. It was not Paradise. It was anything but. It tried to offer traditional dwellings to wandering tourists – six beehive shaped huts lit by a single bulb with sleeping mats on the floor. Spend the night as a Swazi does I suppose the logo would have read if there had been an advertisement. Unfortunately, the huts had been thatched with immature grass so the cattle came from across the river and, nightly, would chew into the structures, much to the alarm of the few foreign visitors. The pool was green. It was occasionally visited by crocodiles and getting a crocodile out of a swamp-like swimming pool is not easy, I can tell you. But, again, I digress.

P, who was a few years older than I, looked after Paradise farm. His parents Mister and Mrs. J. managed the caravan park. P had a very, very large Afro even though he was white. He occasionally wore mascara which collected the day’s dust when he was riding the tractor. P and I became comrades in arms – we tried to run our farms even though we both knew that an orange or an avocado was a fruit you ate and not how it was meant to be cultivated: such as it is, in a faraway place somewhere in Southern Africa.

Mister J died in hospital. It was rumored then, and now, that he had been anechoic for twenty-four hours before anyone noticed. This was no fault of Mister J’s family, but of the hospital staff. He had been admitted a week prior for an extreme case of piles and a capitulating kidney. What was meant to have been a brief visit to those not so sterile wards was, alas, the end of Mister J’s journey: such as it is, in a faraway hospital somewhere in Southern Africa.

Many full and glorious clear moons prior, Mister J had told all and sundry that when he was to snuff it and was to become fodder for many invertebrates, he wanted to be buried on a hill outside the town. He had chosen it. He had visited it on many occasions to seek sanctuary from his wife, Mrs. J. It wasn’t much of a hill: more of a grassy lump, a knoll. But it did require a bit of a trek to gain access to its rounded peak. It was a knoll wanting and waiting to be a hill. However, the view from the knoll, in those times, was spectacular: it offered a panoramic view of an undisturbed, inhabited veldt. Miles upon miles of waving elephant grass crisscrossed by meandering game paths and the occasional smoke signals from a cluster of distant, grass woven huts. Mister J had chosen his resting place well. His head would face to the West, his feet to the East.

The funeral was on a Saturday. It was well attended. Mister J had many friends, even though his recent, and final, attempt of breeding the New Zealand white rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) for the tables of the locals had become an item of dinner and bar gossip. An ill wind had torn through Mister J’s self-built hutches and had sent a few hundred rabbits scampering off into the stormy night to mate, one presumes, with the local leporidae, the consequences of which, I'm quite certain, have deposited a breed of rabbits yet to be reckoned with. But, yes again, I digress.

The coffin was simple. It had brass handles. The local farmers had secured a labourer or six to haul the casket up the path to the peak of the would-be hill. Mister J was buried and Mrs. J, adorned in her usual purple attire, wept politely as her husband was buried amongst the awaiting invertebrates. The sun began to set in the West and we all trekked back down the would-be hill.

A month later Mrs.J. asked her son, P, to drive her to the grave of her late husband so she could pay her respects and place a bunch of flowers. P invited me and, as I had been quite fond of the deceased, agreed. P drove the Ranchero without its canopy on that day. Mrs.J. sat between us. She cradled a bunch of yellow blossoms that smelt of musty honey. She wore purple – even her nail and toe varnish was purple. It had been raining heavily over the last few days, and the day in question was warning of further downpours. P, as usual, drove the Ranchero as if the world and its problems were up his arse. P wanted to be David Bowie and that transition was somehow not working for him and he was frustrated. Perhaps he needed a haircut, but I never told him that.

The Heavens opened up as P slid the Ranchero to a jaw breaking halt at the side of the dirt road alongside the hill that wasn’t quite a hill. The rain hammered down. We sat in the cabin of the vehicle and waited. P leant forward and looked out of the side window nearest to me. He peered through the deluge toward the hill.

“Shit,” he said.

I looked. “It’s the coffin,” I said.

Mrs. J leant across me to take a look, too. She screamed. “Argh!” she screamed. Then she fainted. Her head went forward into the bunch of flowers she was holding. Just like that: as if she had been KO’d by a heavyweight.

“She’s fainted,” I told P.

He started taking of his anorak. “That’s okay. She’s been doing that a lot lately,” he replied. He made a pillow out of his anorak and leant his mother’s head back onto it. “Oooh Aladdin Sane,” he started singing, his shade of mascara a matching purple to his mother’s toenails. Bowie soothed him so I let him sing.

Reddish brown rivulets of rain water were cascading down the hill toward our stationery vehicle.

“We can’t leave it like that,” I said. “It’ll wash away and bugger off down into the valley.”

“Shit,” responded P.

A quarter of the oblong shape of the casket protruded, like a tired obelisk, on top of the hill. Mister J’s feet were now pointing toward Heaven: towards the stars. It was a semi-flaccid and macabre silhouette against the brooding clouds. Globules of mud dripped off the coffin like warm ice-cream and even through the rain smeared window I could see the water bubbling about the base of the wooden box. Mister J, it seems, had been buried atop of an underground stream and now with the heavy rains, the stream was claiming its territory. The coffin had become a cork. It had, simply, popped out of the ground.

Mrs. J began to snore. When she exhaled, her breath stirred the tired petals of the yellow blossom she still clasped.

P and I were drenched with seconds. We slid and clawed our way up the hill toward the coffin. The mud sucked on our shoes and the rain flattened P’s Afro so that it looked like a badly knitted tea cosy. His mascara began to run and I wondered (seriously I did) what Bowie would have said. We reached the coffin that protruded like a drenched, inert, wooden missile.

The rain pelted down. P’s mascara became tears, so I thought. “We have to pull it out,” he told me.

“And then?”

“Load it up.”

It was his father in there. His mother snored in the cabin of the Ranchero, her breath infused with the scent of a yellow flower. “Pull”, said P.

So we pulled. We grabbed the coffin by its brass handles and heaved against the suction of the mud as the rain poured down and the scent of Africa’s earth bubbled in our nostrils: a scent like no other. We slipped and fell as we grappled with the wooden box and the dull thud of Mister J’s inert body within the casket was audible above the sound of the rain: like dull, sullen thunder.

With the coffin above ground, we stared at it. I looked down from the crescent of the hill toward the parked vehicle. Mrs. J was asleep; her head nestled in P’s anorak like a child in her comfort blanket. Out in the valley, the rain moved in waves, sheets, as it does in Africa. Cloaked in mud and water, the wooden box squatted defiantly.

“We can’t carry it,” P said. “It’s too heavy.”

“Uh-uh,” I agreed, the mud sucking at my heels as if it were a disorientated octopus. “We can slide it,” I offered.

A coffin, in mud and rain, is not a sled. From what I can fathom, the sled originated either in Holland or in Canada, but not in Africa. That is because they had snow. We had mud. Pushing a casket, downhill, even with the assistance of a deluge of rain and free running water, was no easy task. The box, weighted by old man J’s body, had a mind of its own. With P on the left and me on the right, we tried to guide the casket down the hill. It slew left and right and, at some point, even tried to overturn itself. In order to stabilise what was now becoming a projectile, P planted his weight onto it. He sat on the top of the coffin. He weighted it down. He sat on the body of his dead father and used his feet to guide, to stabilise the muddy projectile. This enabled me to steer it from the rear toward the awaiting vehicle, where Mrs. J was, alas, coming out of her stupor.

I can presume the sight of two men, one her son, sliding down a muddy hill, one astride the coffin containing her deceased husband, the other bent over like a hunchback, was suffice to knock her out again. She fainted, her head dropping forward into her bunch of flowers.

“All this fainting can’t be good for your mother,” I told P.

“It’s her medication,” he replied. “Anti-stress tablets.” P dug in his heels and brought the coffin to a halt near the Ranchero. Still it rained; still the mud clung to our boots and hands and P’s mascara ran down his long face in ink stained tears.

Between us, we carried the coffin to the rear of the vehicle. P dropped the tailgate and we managed, on the third attempt, to load the casket as if it were a medieval battering ram. The tailgate just managed to close with some argument as the wooden box wasn't a perfect fix. We managed to rectify this problem by putting the toolbox under the head of the coffin so it was raised, so it leant upward in the rear of the Ranchero. We slid our way back into the cabin.

“Where are we going to take it?” I asked P.

“The morgue I think.”

Mrs. J woke up a few minutes into the drive. The rain was thinning. We rode in silence. Then she looked over her shoulder through the small window that was there, looked back to where she could see the propped up casket that rattled against the metal toolbox.

“I hope he’s not getting wet,” she said. “He hates being wet. That’s why we left England.”

Copyright Mark Roper 2014.

Is God a Mechanic?

To read more of Mark Roper's writing, please read the novella, TWO FEET, available on this site with its link to +Amazon.com. For a mere pittance it is available as a +Kindle Fire download or as a paperback.

Feel free to comment and support this Blog. Your purchase will enable me to sharpen the pencil, or, at least, buy another! 

IS GOD A MECHANIC?

Meneer Gerber once said we were all marching forward on God’s road.

God was our engine driving us on.

God was our petrol fuelling us around the bends and up the hills and down the hills.

God was a powerful motor vehicle and we were his passengers.

I wanted to put my hand up and ask if God wore a crash helmet, as the racing car drivers do that I had seen pictures of. But I did not.

I wanted to put my hand up and ask if God’s car, as it zoomed along, also left behind clouds of red dust that asphyxiated bird and insect as it travelled. But I did not.

I wanted to put up my hand and ask if God’s car had any gears, especially a reverse gear. I was thinking that a reverse gear would be a good idea for God’s car because if there were any mistakes to be fixed, God could just reverse over the mistakes and then drive forward again. This way He could repair the mistakes and make certain they never occurred again. But I did not ask.

I wanted to put my hand up and ask if God’s engine ever broke down. But I did not.

But I should.

Was a submersible borehole-pump not a part of God’s engine?

I won't ask.

But if God was in control of an engine, any engine, then He would know how to repair it?

But I should ask.

A borehole was an engine. It had an engine, a pump. It was buried deep down in the shaft after the drilling machine – Clunk! Clunk! Clunk! -- had driven away leaving mounds of red clay and diesel and black oil stains on the grass. Yes, a pump engine that sucked the water from down there where it was quiet and still and dark. Immersed in the bowels of the earth, where the sun didn't shine and where the water was sweet.

I won't ask.

I will.

Will not.

Will.

I raised my hand.

“Meneer?”

Meneer Gerber had his feet up on the desk. He twisted his feet and separated them so he could get a view of me. He remained lounging back in the wooden chair that often creaked with the sound of a timid fart. He looked at me between his polished shoes.

“I did not ask a question, boy.”

“No, Meneer.”

“Then what the bloody Hell do you want?”

“You are in deep kak (shit), Rooinek!”That was Pisskop’s whispering voice. He sat at the rear of the class, but his words were like rifle shots in my burning ears.

Stand up, Feet. Make me stand. Please!

I stood on shaking knees trying to focus on Meneer Gerber’s shoes that partly hid his face. I was deeply flushed. I felt as if I was rolling in a field of stinging nettles. The soles of Meneer Gerber’s shoes were worn thin, and there was a patch on the left shoe. I spoke to the patch.

“Dust, Meneer. There is only dust now because the borehole engine has broken. In the vegetable garden where my mother is growing radishes, beetroot, cabbage and carrots so we can sell them at the road shop. (Breathe, chest in and out) Mister Kelly, he says the pump is old and worn, and he showed us the remains of some rusty pieces (cheeks hot, so hot)...so... so now there is no water, Meneer because of the pump so we...we are carrying water now from the dam in Mister Kelly’s jerry cans. (Bare-feet now sweating on the wooden floorboards and toes curling) We use a pole, Meneer, so we can carry the water on our shoulders, you see? But the grass on the hill is dry Meneer, and we are often falling and (hearing a dry chuckle from Pisskop)...and Mabuza is helping with some rope to pull the jerry cans up the hill, and my mother, she is really trying to show the water the way to find the vegetables. (No breath anymore. Sucking in air) Meneer, but it is not enough water without the borehole engine so...so...I...the plants are dying in the dust so I...so I...was thinking that maybe God because he knows engines, Meneer, can fix the submersible pump?”

Meneer Gerber abruptly swings his feet off the desk. He sits slowly upright in the wooden chair that makes a farting sound. He does not lose focus of me.

I remained standing. Sweaty, naked feet glued to wooden floorboards. A strong smell of chalk suddenly, a waft of Pisskop’s sour body odour. I sense movement from Max, the baker’s son, seated behind his desk. It is more of a nervous squirm, like someone waiting for a film to be projected.

“You are in deep, deep kak (shit), Rooinek,” whispers Pisskop from out there amongst the blurred faces.

Think:  mother on hands and knees in dust whispering to rivulet of tepid water. Solution: God repairs pump. Result: mother not necessary to be on hands and knees in dust whispering to tepid water.

“Are you...”His voice is shrill with pain, like the sound a rugby player makes when he is kicked between the legs. He coughs then again speaks.

“Are you are asking me if God is bloody mechanic, boy?”

I am I suppose, so I nod, and my head feels heavy, and I know the gesture makes me look like a dumb child with his bare feet glued to a wooden floor.

I am soon bent over with my head in the corner. Above my head, just a few inches away, is a small book shelf. It carries two heavy books – the A-Z of African Wildlife and Fauna and the A-Z of Places of the World. There is a layer of chalk dust on the books. They are not a part of the curriculum so are never read and are left to gather chalk dust.

When a child is bent over in a corner of a room, and he is given a caning, his first reaction is to recoil, is to lift up his head. That is what the bookshelf is for. When you recoil, you slam your head into the bookshelf. This way Meneer Gerber gets you twice with one blow. This way the A-Z of African Wildlife and Fauna and the A-Z of Places in the World also have some use.

I look down at my two, bare feet as Meneer Gerber lands the first of six strokes. He will land the second stroke half an inch above the first, and then the third will strike where the first landed. He is a master of his craft.

I wonder if God will try the reverse gear for me.

*****

A question I never asked:

“Daddy, how do I switch this on?”

*****

A question I never asked:

“Daddy, how do I switch this off?”

TO READ THE CONCLUSION OF THIS STORY, CHECK UNDER POPULAR POSTS ON THE LEFT!!!

Has Technology destroyed mystery?

An interesting article by author Matt Ridley:

http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/technology-will-not-destroy-all-jobs.aspx

...made me revisit the thinking behind The Bone Traders -- : for more visit The Bone Traders. When there is no future, all you have left is the past. Why? What happened? Look toward the sun.  

AN EXCERPT:

The once grassy plains have changed. All hint of greenery has gone. It is hot, dry and a lazy devil-wind spirals lethargically in the West.

The skyline of the city you named earlier has disappeared. Not even a shadow remains. Those people that survived have moved on to distant places.

The cause of The Event is simple. It requires no scientific explanation. Mother Nature has always walked with small steps, learning and progressing during her gradual journey through time. We humans have ignored that learning. We have outpaced our own, what should have been, measured strides. We have started running before we have truly learnt to walk.

Mother Nature has simply put the brakes on. She has shortened your stride. She has retarded life in the hope that we will learn to walk again.

The solar storm, you remember, lasted for eight months; in some areas, longer. The crust of the planet was left flecked like the hide of a spotted hyena; flecked with disaster zones, places where the few survivors, mainly the young, managed to migrate from. Some were fortunate, others not so.

The sun is now a white, hostile orb; iris burning.

Welcome to the town that your God, Law, Time, Nature and society has forgotten. A line of bungalows now stand brick deep in ever increasing mounds of shifting sand, their structures built from salvaged remains of brick, wood, plastic and metal. A shanty town that whispers of a past you may remember, but shouts of a sad present.

An army of salvaged wind-pumps turn angrily in the wind, their battle now to suck water from an unyielding soil. Three crippled wind generators turn in the stale air, probably creating enough power to light a bulb or two.

A hint of ill repaired solar panels can be seen perched on the crudely constructed roof tops.

A small Church offers its imperfect steeple to a cloudless sky. There is one shop, a general dealer. There are no cars, no gas pumps nor signs of children. The sight of a blossoming flower is rare. There is a monotonous twirling of dust and the ricocheting of bright sunlight off metal.

At the far end of the only street, outside a house, a group of people have gathered. There is also a cart and a donkey.

Inside the house, in a narrow bedroom, Reverend Dickinson, spectacled, stands looking out the window. He’s holding a Bible. Reverend Dickinson is stooped under God’s forgetfulness.  It is a heavy burden for him and the slope of his narrow shoulders demonstrates that.

Suddenly there is a woman’s scream from within the room and it scares the crap out of Reverend Dickinson. He spins on his heels.

“Well?” Reverend Dickenson asks the midwife that is bent over the prone body of the woman who is about to give birth.

The woman giving birth again screams. She is over the age of seventy and her wrinkled, sunburnt flesh contorts grotesquely. Rivulets of perspiration gather in the valley of her wrinkles.

The midwife, who is in her late sixties, glances quickly toward Reverend Dickinson. “It’s coming. Help me.”

“No!” The Reverend almost shouts his response.

The pregnant woman mumbles incoherently.

“I need light. Move away from the window.”

The Reverend Dickinson does, his glasses shining like mirrors in the heat. Through the small window, he can see the group of people gathered outside in the street. An elderly woman sits on a wooden stool. She is knitting a garment. It is pink and suited for a newborn child. The knitting needles click furiously in her hands.

The midwife works, her heavy face sweating profusely.

A bowl of bloody water is dipped into and out of.

“Please God,” whispers Reverend Dickinson, still hypnotised by the rhythm of the knitting needles. 

“Come on, Mary, come on...you have to push, Mary!  I can see the head!”

There is another scream and the tension shows in the Reverend’s shoulders. He wants to turn and look, but he cannot.

The midwife suddenly shouts. Her own breathing is heavy. “It’s out! It’s a...”

Reverend Dickinson spins on his heels. “It’s a what? Tell me.”

Reverend Dickinson makes eye contact with the midwife as he struggles not to look at the bloody mess that he knows the midwife must be holding.

The midwife holds the Reverend’s enquiring look momentarily, then she vomits.

Reverend Dickinson gulps in air and closes his eyes. He inhales and exhales and he tries to compose himself. He straightens his back, finding strength from somewhere.

“Wrap the...wrap it up,” he finally says with an edge of hostility.

Then he leaves the narrow room, the Bible clutched to his chest. 

Self publishing - costs and benefits

The costs and benefits of publishing your own books

An interesting article via the +BBC News on publishing your own book.

I don't know if I should weep or cry!!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-28268014

Any comments out there??? Your experiences as a self published author? This is an open Blog and feel free to comment!!!