Category: writing

Written in 365 Parts: 191: Worm-Hole-Breach

The drilling had lasted considerably longer than ten hours. The compacted rock was loosely crushed together on the surface but after a few metres it became much denser. Drick had taken a sample and discovered that it was mixed with a protective resin, obviously to increase the rigidity of the outer shell. It made the structure firmer, and more resilient to pressure. With the added benefit that a denser material would confuse sensor readings and make it appear more like a solid object. It also meant there was more resistance to their efforts to carefully drill a hole.

They had taken turns in monitoring the progress of the drill and cleaning machines. But it was a mind-numbing task as there were no real actions, besides observation, for any organic operator. The machines would do their task well with no interruption so all the lifeform could do was watch the monitor readings and wait. They couldn’t risk exposure to sensors so electrical activity was kept to a minimum, which meant no extra electronic entertainment or distraction.

They could not risk too much observation of movement so they had to sit in an uncomfortable position without moving. They each took turns to sit in a tent with the drill or the survival pod, using stimulation packs for nourishment and to keep them awake. The only time the dullness was alleviated was when a stray piece of flotsam impacted on the surface within sensor range. It was infrequent and was not accompanied by any fiery streaks of an atmosphere being disturbed, just the occasional puff of dust that signalled a strike. 

There was the possibility that the internal structure was pressurised, so they built an airlock system when the drill reached eight metres. This allowed them to hide the continued drilling procedures under not just the tent screen but the pressure lock. Even though their activities would be less visible from the outside they ran a greater risk from within. They took great care to go very slowly as they reached the end of the drilling. They would check air pressure before breaching the cavern inside just to ensure that they matched anything they might find. 

When they were a metre from breaking through. For the final two metres Drick had used a tiny robot to dig its way ahead of the main equipment, on its passage through the rock. It operated like a worm, filling the tunnel it made behind it with the substance it bored at the front. It was attached to a micro-thin transmission cable to securely send back data.

Drick’s concern over the cavern being pressurised proved to be wise. There was a breathable atmosphere inside and it was registering as a temperature of twenty-three degrees celsius. It was warm and it was breathable. There was no artificial gravity, but the localised gravity of the fake asteroid itself was enough to allow them to stand and move around, albeit very slowly. They would be using gravity assistance harnesses to help adjust to something more comfortable for normal movement.

Drick used a very low power on the cutting plasma with an invisible flame. It allowed them to make a hole without too much disturbance. They had erected a hologram simulator and programmed it with a view taken by the worm probe of the interior of the cave. As long as no one was too close it would look just like any other part of the structure. It would mask the plasma cutting even as it broke through the surface.

From the angle they came in they would be on the side wall of the cavern. It was about sixty metres from the cavern floor, if they took the top of the ship to be the ceiling. The floor was in the darkness below them at a steep angle of descent. It was not an unmanageable slope in the very low gravity, but it was an obstacle.

The internal superstructure of scaffolding that had been revealed by the passive gravity sensors was not visible to the small probe. The cavern was dark and the probe had limited range with its camera systems. Drick had enhanced the view as much as possible and thought there might be a column nearby. It was a dimmer blackness against the background so it was hard to be absolutely certain. They had decided that on breaching the cavern the first objective would be to descend to the cavern floor and then make as best assessment as possible of the environment.

Written in 365 Parts: 190: Asteroid Shell

Marsh stood on the surface of the asteroid and patiently waited as Drick slowly assembled a large tripod. The surface of the asteroid was made up from a thick layer of rock dust. No doubt remains from numerous impacts on its surface and the attraction of dust particles from surrounding space. Well the asteroid shell he corrected himself. As this was a shell and the likelihood was that the surface was as fake as the rest of the object.

The ship’s sensors had drawn a simple, but detailed picture of the rock, the internal composition from magnetic imaging, they revealed it was a shell that was attached to an internal structure. That structure was more dense than the asteroid, and in parts more dense than organic rock. It was in all probability a massive construction.

The shell of the asteroid was a composite of different materials. This much was shown by resonance sensors. The outside facing components were primarily silicon-based rock. Crushed and compacted, it appeared by multiple impacts, but in truth it was likely to have been done by machinery. The rock shell was a thirty metre thick shell of silicate, with some traces of iron ores. It looked perfectly natural until you studied it closely. 

The scans had revealed that the outer shell had thinner sections, most noticeably where the docking bay had opened. The silicon and iron ore covering of the doors was less than a centimetre in thickness and merely coated the surface.

Underneath the outer shell was a complex series of girders that held the surface in place and attached to the much larger internal structure. They had surmised that it was some form of scaffolding. Hold the shell in place, helping to support it against minor impacts and preventing it from breaking apart with the forces of rotation. This internal web gave rigidity to the whole structure. 

Inside the scaffolding, wrapped in a complex series of interlocking rings was a massive vessel. The instruments predicted that the vessel was principally ferrous metals and crystal. There were no accurate readings without risking detection. But it was likely to be a ship of glass and steel. 

Drick had remarked that the rings were very similar to the layout of a starbase dry dock. It had to be a cradle for the ship to rest within, while it hid on the edge of the system. Whoever had decided to hide the ship here had obviously planned for it to be for a considerabl;e length of time. This level of construction, and secrecy, was well planned. Maybe it was as old as the colony itself, maybe even older. Had this rock been constructed here, or brought here?

The tripod assembly that Drick put together held a small cutting torch. They couldn’t risk being discovered by blasting a way through the shell. Nor could they directly breach the docking bay doors without drawing immediate attention to themselves. There were too many unknowns as to what level of security might be housed beneath the rock camouflage or in the entrance to the ship. There was no way of checking what resistance they would meet once discovered. Drick wanted to attempt a more stealthy incursion. For now it would be wiser to use stealthy and learn more.

Drick had chosen a section of shell that was a good distance from the docking bay. It wasn’t the furthest point, but it was close. It was also sixty degrees round the curvature of the rock keeping it out of a visual line of sight. It wasn’t the thickest, or thinnest, part of the external shell, but it was a suitable distance from anything that appeared important on the interior from what they could determine from the readings gained from the scanner. The rock here was fourteen metres thick. The tripod held a plasma cutter that they had set to a broad beam, rotating in a circular motion, which would cut a hole slowly through the surface. 

Marsh assembled a small matter displacement field. This would charge the particles of the loosened rock that were being broken by the plasma beam and collect them. After letting them settle they could be deposited back onto the surface of the asteroid. They could also be used to make a plug for the hole they were cutting to hide its existence. This would allow them to enter and prevent easy exposure from casual observers.

Their small ship would take off on automatic pilot once they went inside and stay at a safe distance following the asteroid until they called it.

Drick finished erecting the tripod and moved slowly over to Marsh, their speed determined by the zero pressure and low gravity. Drick checked the work Marsh had done with the matter collector and the small robot assemblers who would make the rock plug. Drick helped him to finalise the construction and type in the settings for the machines.

After an hour of silent work Drick messaged Marsh using the local text directly to his internal screens. “Once we power these machines they will take over ten hours to complete.” Drick took a large roll from the backpack they wore. “Take this. It is an emergency pressured environment dome. It will auto inflate and attach to the surface by its own auto-firing pylons. It has a stealth blanket with it to cover it. You can get some rest. I will swap places with you in two hours. I will assemble a tent over the work area to mask it as much as I can. I will send the ship to a safe distance very soon.”

Marsh nodded his assent and moved away to a safe distance of thirty metres from the drilling site. He cleared a space, then inflated the survival pod and threw over the camouflage screen.

Shit You Just Made Up

Foreword

My mother passed away on the 2nd May 2021. She had been ill for a long time. Her diabetes and failing organs was taking its toll on her, but the loss of our sister, her eldest daughter, so suddenly seemed to be the final blow to her strength and resistance. What follows below is the Eulogy I wrote for her and delivered at her funeral on the 19th May 2021.

I should start by saying that this Eulogy should have an age rating, PG 13 may contain violence or bad language with scenes upsetting to younger viewers. And we are going to have to stop meeting here like this, there’s no bar.

So, mum would be annoyed right now, because she didn’t have the option to die first, or get to choose who went before her. Because she would be staring at me and saying, your last eulogy was beautiful, but you used up all the best words. This one is going to sound like a sequel, and they’re normally bloody awful.

I once spoke to my mother about her funeral. It was after the death of her friend, Mary. Her comment, I hate funerals everyone is always so bloody miserable. There’s so much sadness I don’t want to go like that. We joked about it, we finally decided that what we would do was leave her body randomly in a skip with two fingers raised up to the world. But clearly that’s illegal, I checked, you can’t dump a corpse in a skip and you cannot mail it to a political party.

The other thing she wanted aside from less sadness, was the poem by W. H. Auden from Four Weddings and a Funeral, Stop the Clocks. She loved a good tearjerker moment. Yes, she was a contradictory old bird, she wanted us to be happy but listen to this sad poem.

My Mum liked a laugh. In fact she was happiest when you’d make her laugh so much she could wee herself a little. She was less happy as she got older and more ill but there was still a twinkle in her eye.

I remember how she would play jokes, tricks and even exaggerate stories to amuse us. She sang to us at bedtime, often really badly, just to emotionally scar us. In truth, she gave everything for her family

A few weeks ago I had to write a Eulogy for my sister that was based around love. Because love and the balance of it defined her. But this one is more about the attitude. I hope I can remind you of my mother, of her beauty. And if not, this is going to screw you up. Because, like my mother’s jokes, and occasional choice words, her fondness for an insult and profanity, this has bad taste for a memorial address.

Let me tell you of a few of her exploits, those that won’t lead to legal cases. To raise a smile, in spite of the fact that she is dead. Because she’d want me to remind you of the fact that she is dead. Very dead. But happy to haunt you. She’d enjoy the look on your face if that happened. She’d laugh and say I told you I was ill. She’s swear for good measure and take a verbal swipe at someone. Somewhere she is prodding me and saying slip in a good line to shock them all. You know, they are not really going to expect you to say bollocks.
Some of this is as mum would have said it, is shit you just made up.

  • She had nicknames when she was a kid, they were Sheila the Peeler, Spud Bate, and the Happy Slapper
  • She once held down a boy, knelt on him, and carved her initials into his stomach with a switchblade.
  • She was the leader of a local street gang, like the Bash Street Kids but far more deformed.
  • Speaking of the bash Street Kids she once told me that when Simon was born he looked like Pug. She stapled his ears to his head until he was five.
  • She told me I looked like Brad Pitt, I’m lying she said I looked like Ru Paul’s ball sack.
  • Her youngest sister (Edie) was sent out each night to tell her to come inside and stop sucking on the boys heads, mum’s mouth was big enough to put the whole face of a boy inside it. The girls would draw straws to see who had to tell her, but they made sure Edie always lost.
  • She murdered one of my childhood friends in a ritualistic burning incident. My whole family gathered round to watch. I was distraught, crying my eyes out at the kitchen window as they exploded in the back yard.
  • In order to make her beehive hair stand up she would mix sugar and water and then apply a ton of sweet smelling hairspray. Curiously, it attracted bees. They would follow her around thinking that their queen had lost her wings and grown stilettos. She used to make honey from her head and often fermented mead from her right ear.
  • She was asymptomatic with most childhood illnesses, but she did enjoy passing infections on to everyone else while not getting sick herself. In fact she never told people that she gave them licky end, even though you only get it if you’re a sheep.
  • She stole my Auntie Dot’s best dress so she could impress her first husband’s parents. She brazenly didn’t care that she had done it as it was a good reason. She thought he was loaded.
  • She loved Elvis so much she cried for days when he died. She pretty much ignored one of her own children’s birthdays. Mine, he died on the 16th August 1977, 2 days before my 9th birthday. Obviously I am not bitter, I remember it with joy, real, real, joy.
  • She told me to never leave Liam alone with fruit, he has a dangerous look when he sees an orange, licks his lips in a weird way, and never let him stroke a banana.
  • Once she was pranked by a family member calling at midnight, they quickly ordered a pizza for delivery and hung up. She returned the favour by calling back at four in the morning to say it was ready for collection.
  • She threw a slipper at Grandpa Bill when he was shouting at her, she always regretted throwing it, but she was happy she didn’t miss. She once told me that the real problem was that she hadn’t used steel toe cap boots as then he would have taken her a lot more seriously.
  • She once painted the house purple, she didn’t just paint the walls, but the hinges on the doors – she liked painting hinges, in fact hinges, light switches, crockery, furniture, nothing escaped the brush. If it didn’t move it was fair game to be painted, it’s why we were never still as kids.
  • She invented the knee. Before she was born people had incredible trouble lifting heavy weights. Back injuries were rife. And running was impossible without spring boots.
  • She told me that we shouldn’t let Lesley drink Stella in Southport again, we can’t afford to be banned in another seaside town as a family especially not since her Budweiser binge in Newport, they still haven’t found all those steel workers, or the marrow
  • Mum, and her sisters, had a laugh when they went to view my Nan in an open casket because of the make-up the funeral parlour used. Nan’s daughters were wetting themselves at how she looked.
  • While on a family holiday in Scotland mum decided to rudely moon a family member through a window after an argument. We had arrived late the day before. Everyone was stressed. The next morning she was still annoyed about it. She thought they were alone in the garden, Also, she thought the high wall was at the edge of the garden, only glimpsed in the late evening the night before when we arrived. It was actually on the other side of the road. So she opened the curtains, bent over with a laugh, and a very naughty word. She flashed several cars and a tour bus along with most of the family.
  • A neighbour once refused to give her a ball back, she asked politely but they said it was theirs as it was on their property. So mum took, what can only be thought of as a mighty steamer onto a paper and mailed her own faeces through the letterbox and said they could bloody well keep that as well.
  • When one of her children was banned from a certain supermarket in the whole of the country her only words to the police were, ‘can I belt them stupid here or do I have to wait until I drag them home so you don’t see me’.
  • In her later years she kept a scorecard of people she outlived. Every time I saw her she would remind me of another one that had died. Sometimes with a look in her eye that suggested she had made sure of it. Her favourite phrase was always, you’ll never guess who’s dead.

That was my mother. It was never straight or ordinary, she was colourful and loved life and people. She married twice. She was a Bate, a Keating and a Schofield. In her heart she was always a Bate. She honestly shared so much with my nan, but she never stopped being Bill’s oldest daughter.

She married very badly. The first one had to have been good at kissing, she sucked his face enough. I truly think she married him just to annoy her parents. She was a rebel without a clue. The second one was the worst rebound decision ever. She had a good choice in words, and a terrible choice in husbands.

My mum was our cheerleader. Our audience. Our friend. Our support. We could do no wrong.

She was not a perfect person. She could be a shouty bugger. She had four children who were, for the most part, boisterous and often complete sods as we ran riot occasionally. At times in her life she raised four children on her own, those times felt like the majority.

My mother loved all her family, and her children. She loved all her grandchildren and had such a special place in her heart for her great grandchildren. They were her life. Her joy. For her, we were the best thing she did.
My last words were to her, when I saw her in the hospital was to tell her I love you, she said she ‘I love you’ and, ‘look after yourself cocker’.

And she wanted me to tell you one thing, “Life’s not so serious, fucking arses to it, remember to smile.”

Afterword

When Writing a Eulogy, as with writing anything, there are lines that you write and then take out. Some of this is because they just don’t fit; it might be that the text is too long; they may not match the tone of the eulogy; or you just took a story too far, were too revealing or crude. I have included them here as I think they serve as further illustration, they are out of context to where they appeared in the original but you should get a sense of where they may have been.

  • She was known for calling people inappropriate names. If she was annoyed you’d be lucky if you were just called shitbag, or dickhead, if she was really roused she would descend to what she called a ‘fucking few choice words’.
  • When she worked at Barr Bottle factory she re-invigorated the entire industry by suggesting a deposit on bottles. She was never credited but her line manager received shares.
  • She used to say ‘but that Kathy’, she knew we’d be confused as she had three daughters called Kathy and each one she loved enough to make you wonder which one she was talking about.
  • In later years she never drank that much. But I recall as a child she would have a glass of what she called Brandycham – it was Brandy and Babycham. A lethal combination. Her saying was. One would make you want to kiss someone, two would make you kiss anyone, but if you had three then you’d end up kissing everyone.

In fact when he was a child there was an incident with a fruit bowl, I don’t actually know what occurred but the FBI were involved and they don’t have jurisdiction in the UK.

They all laughed about how she was displayed, as they put it, ‘as a whore’.

Often she’d say, remember Jackie who used to live down near the school, she’s dead now. With a look that told you why she thought that Jackie had to be dead.

Okay we shouldn’t go there as it is the past, but we have to as it is her life. She really married arseholes. I mean absolute pieces of shit. It took some beating to match that bastard my father was, but my stepfather really rose to the challenge and was a total shite. But I am just quoting mum here. She called him fang, I called him wanker.

She’d want you all to know she knew that. She’d want you to remember. What she’d want you to remember the most is that she finally managed to divorce them. She never stopped regretting. She never felt she had paid enough for their failure.

Honestly though, I like to think it was a subtle plan for her male progeny, don’t be as much of a piece of shit as these two I married. It was a clever lesson. I hope as her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren we can learn itIf you have to marry badle, marry arseholes so that your kids eventually learn not to be like them. It’s not the best plan, but it is at least a plan.

Because, you know, they have a mother who would sacrifice everything for them. Which is what she did.
I think it was clever, my mum was often subtly clever. I am thinking of an example of this. The Name of the Rose. The first time I saw this movie I saw it with my mum. About halfway, maybe two thirds through, my mum said, I know how they are being killed. I said I know why and who (those two are pretty much intrinsically linked, once you know one you know the other). So we told each other our deductions. And I won’t spoil it, but we were both right. My mum saw the steps leading to a decision even if she didn’t change the outcome knowing it.
Sometimes my mother worked things out, she might not have the whole picture, she had the whole of a corner and it made her dig. I know I share that, I know my brother and sister do. It is why we are also bloody annoying. We keep digging to see what else is down there. But it is not the best gift she gave us.

She held grudges, I think it is a trait from her side of the family and not one I am that upset about. But her disagreements were not from spite but because of how much they hurt, how far could people fall. She rarely gave up on people, no matter the cost. She was always there. She was always on your side, even if she occasionally murdered your childhood friends.

My Mother was ill for a very long time. If the truth is told we started to lose her some time ago. She was a shadow of her former self in the final days of her life, but one thing held true. She cared about you. She cared what you did. What you felt. What you knew. She was always your cheerleader, you were always her champion. Her love was blind, because it was unconditional.

Her later years she became less like my mother, our sister, aunt, grandmother, great grandmother. Age and ill health overtook her and stole some of her mirth.

Her failing in partners was a failure of all blind belief. She believed in people. She believed them even if she could see the lies. She believed they wanted to be better. She believed they could be more. She had faith in people.

She would have said ‘our Mark is just itching for me to die so he can get away with saying “cunt” at a funeral’

The Balance of Love


Foreword

My sister died just before April 2021, it was sudden, it was heartbreaking. Due to the unknown cause of death there was an autopsy and a coroner’s report (without inquest). Today, April 28th, we had her interred at the crematorium in St Helens near to where she lived.

Below is the Eulogy I wrote and read for her and the poem I wrote that was read at the ceremony.


Kathryn at a Walking Day in the 1960s

Kathryn Keating: A Eulogy: The Balance of Love

I have to say before I start. When I wrote this, I wondered for a moment what Kathryn would want to say. She’d probably say: don’t make a fuss, don’t cry too much, or remember the happy times. No bad jokes or swearing. You know, don’t cock up the eulogy. 

When I think of my sister, I think of the fact that she spent most of her life living in, or near to, Warrington. She had holidays with family. She went abroad to France and Italy. She loved books. She loved science fiction. She loved fantasy and superheroes. She loved Doctor Who, but that’s because she was sensible. 

She loved music, seemingly when it contained androgenous boys, she was a huge fan of Adam and the Ants and A-ha along with Simon leBon from Duran Duran in the 80s and later IL Divo, I have a small story about that in a minute. She introduced me to New Wave and New Romance, but I don’t feel she approved of my choices when I introduced her to Punk, Goth, Metal and Thrash. 

She was too young to die. But, sometimes the brightest lights burn out suddenly. 

My sister was always happy for others, she had great joy for what the people around her did, or were doing. However, for all of my life that I can remember she carried a great personal sadness. A shame, a sorrow, a loss. A thing that she could not escape. Some people take the pain that is done to them and give it to others. My sister turned it to love. She would not give her sorrow, her anger at what happened, to others. She would always try to shoulder their sorrow instead, feel their pain, take their loss. She knew what it was like to feel the most dreadful anguish and could not bear to have others feel the same.

It defined her in many ways. 

My sister rarely got angry when I was younger. Oh she could be picky, ratty, or niggly about silly things. She could get frustrated. But not really angry. Not tear down the walls and howl at the moon angry. Which is rare for a Keating, apparently. It pissed me off because we are an egregious bunch. The only time I was ever able to get her really angry was over the lead singer of A-Ha. She had a major crush on him. When I read that he was engaged to a girl called Rose and there was a picture in the paper of him with a tattoo of a rose. I used that as a way of winding my sister up. I went to town. For no good reason other than I am an ass hat. She tried not to rise to the bait. But I was pretty persistent. I don’t know where I get that stubbornness from as I think of a family of Bates nearby. That was the day I ran out of a room and she threw a table at me. I got away but we had a broken door and a damaged table.

It was the only time I can recall her being genuinely mad, screaming at me level of madness. Because she was kind. It took a sweet natured soul like me to make her really mad.

How do we judge a life? How do we discuss how it was filled? How was it worth living? I was thinking about this because Prince Philip passed away recently and so there has been so much media attention, so much public outpourings, discourse and even some anger. So it made me think of how we often judge a person based on their achievements. Sometimes we might mention the love, or joy they brought to others, but mostly we judge people on what they did, not just who they were. So I thought of my sister.

Kathryn was the eldest child of Sheila. Blessed with a mother’s love, she also took on that role, to give love to others. When I was a young child she seemed as old to me as any adult. I was still three when she became ten. She would take me to the park, she would read to me, teach me numbers and tell me what the world meant. 

My earliest memories are of standing on the back rail of her tricycle as she raced through the streets, me holding on for dear life and screaming with pleasure. She filled my world, I can remember the feeling of her hair brushing my face as we raced along the pavement or when I was pushed on a swing on the park which we called the Cowfield.

She was that for all of us. She did not have children of her own, but she was like a mother, or more a grandmother, probably the best ever auntie to all of us. To my brother, Simon and his wife Cathey she helped raise Steven, Jenny and Liam. Then she helped, as much as she could, to raise Jenny’s children Joshua and Caitlin. She was there for me and Leigh for all of our children, Benjamin, Elliott, Asher. And to Steven and Sam’s son, Lewis who was a light in her world, he was her little man, they all were. Finally she adored our littlest Keating, Mila, daughter to Liam and Alex. She felt rewarded that finally she had another niece along with Kaitlyn. Another little girl in the family. She wanted to mother us all. To hold us, protect us, smother us with love and gifts, her every thought was for others.

We can judge a life on the balance of love. How much they gave versus how much they received. In that my sister’s life was flowing. It filled everyone around her. She loved us all deeply. More than some of us deserved. So much that we can only hold our breaths and miss it. She filled her life with her family. With her devotion to us. To our mother and to our sister. 

I think that might be the better value of a life. How much you give versus how much you receive. We can all do better, but the best you can hope for is a balance of the same in and out. Statistically it is impossible for everyone to give more than they receive, the average will shift. Some have to be worse, some have to be better or everyone has to be average. I know I did maths in a eulogy, and Kathryn right now would be raising her eyebrows, rolling her eyes, and declaring me to be a nerd. 

My sister gave much more love into the world than I think it could afford to balance. 

For my sister, Lesley, my heart aches. She and Kathryn seemed fixed together. Bonded as sisters with a deeper shared understanding, theirs was a friendship few will ever know. They should have been old ladies together, grey haired and wobbly, with a deep smell of Vicks vapour rub, tutting at fashion and laughing at the haircuts of the young, yelling at people to pull their pants up or try wearing a skirt and not a belt. 

We have been robbed of that double act, so we are all going to have to expect Lesley to play both parts and tell us what Kathryn would have said. I asked Lesley if there was something she wanted to say. Her answer: 

“Tell them the old git shouldn’t have left me alone without her, it’s not fair.”

So we say goodbye to Kathryn, my sister. But I think I have lost someone who was also like a mother, or a grandmother, a lover of people, a lover of family,  a confidant, a fellow geek. I lost not just a sister, I lost a part of myself, I lost a friend.

I feel I carry some inescapable sadness, losing so much love from her. I guess that’s a cost in the balance of love.


I call for you

I called for you,
You were not there.

I looked for you,
But there wasn’t even your shadow.

I listened for your voice,
But I could not hear it.

I waited for your touch,
And felt nothing.

No matter where I looked, I could not find you.
Not in any photographs,
Not in the many stories,
Not in words, not in letters,
Not in songs or any film we shared,
You were gone.

In the darkness, I thought I saw you,
At night,
When you’d just left.
But, it was just an echo,
Thoughts grasping desperately
Sorrow crafting phantoms.

A Hope,
Now Forlorn.

I needed you,
To be here.
I wanted you,
To hold me close.
Reminding me,
That it’s okay,
That it is all right,
That we’ll survive,
That you’ll be there

But. 

You’re not here.

And then I remembered,
A thing you said,
That was so long ago,
I barely remembered.

It brought back,
The laugh we shared,
That trip we took,
The song we heard,
The words we said,
The films we saw,
The books we read,
Those games we played,
Those things we shared,
The way you looked,
The way you cared.

And you were there.

(Mark Keating, April 2021)

Written in 365 Parts: 189: How Are We Going To Get In?

The huge lump of rock wasn’t an asteroid, it was a ship. Marsh marvelled at the sheer absurdity of that fact. Perhaps at some stage in the past there had been a rock this size in the system. There could have been surveys that recorded any object this large, but how detailed, or accurate, they would be was not something he knew. Maybe Drick knew, would they have checked that, were they as surprised. 

Perhaps some original asteroid had been destroyed to make up the camouflage. But it was no longer a rock, or an asteroid, it was a ship. It was a massive vessel that had been encrusted with particles of rock to make it look like a natural object. There was little chance that this was accidental. Someone had deliberately cloaked a ship by encasing it in the material of the Kuiper belt of this system. 

As the stealthed ship’s lights lit up the surface the higher detail showed the lines and structures of a ship’s docking ring. It was enormous, as large as one would expect from a vessel this size. It was clear that the stealth ship wasn’t going to attach to the surface, the ring was opening. The ship would easily fit inside. As they watched, hidden by the sensor blackout and camouflage of their own vessel, the ship they were following changed its direction slightly so that it would enter the docking area sideways. The ring would accommodate a ship three times its length with ease.

They would not be able to sneak their own vessel onto the hidden ship that way, there would be sensors and cameras and possibly even organics. They couldn’t just park up next to the stealth ship with a cheery wave and ask the directions to the nearest habitation.

Marsh noticed that their course had altered. It was slight, but their ship had rotated as well. They were now, similar to the stealth vessel, approaching the vessel sideways, mimicking its final approach. Marsh felt his eyebrows lift and his stomach churn, was Drick just going to land them right next to the other vessel?

There was a gentle nudge of acceleration and they started to move away from the other ship and the docking ring. Marsh hadn’t realised that he had been holding his breath until he allowed it to release in a long slow exhale. 

Looking out of the forward view screens it felt like they were moving upwards simply because of the orientation of the floor and ceiling inside their own vessel. What they were actually doing was going into a slow orbit around the hidden vessel inside its rock camouflage.

“Let’s take a look around this thing.” The message from Drick flashed across his screens. Text only and on the touch based communication channel. Drick had pressed her suit onto his slightly. This was a signal channel for suit to suit communication. It was fitted into the hard suits and prevented anyone noticing a communication, or scanning activity on the electromagnetic spectrum.

Drick was taking no chances with even internal communications. There was a strict rule while in stealth pursuit. Signals blackout except for essential communication, that to be delivered by text using the short data link. 

Marsh sat patiently as Drick instructed the vessel to make the orbit of the rock. Drick pointed out features on the visual scanners. All the instruments were still set to passive mode. Reception only. They didn’t want to give any indication of their presence.

The rock surface was clearly fake. The closer they flew the more detail the ship was able to scan and then composite into a diagram. It was amazingly detailed as, even passively, at this range the ship could determine the small regular features that hid under the surface. The sensors also detected that the rock surface was not actually rock below a depth of several metres. Other materials were present. It wasn’t uniform across the whole surface. Underneath the rocky coating there were structural supports and what was clearly a complex framework.

Drick was taking careful readings using a magnetic field analysis. This was another passive system. It could be coupled with a mass spectrometer, but that would require a sample which would be a more active approach. The analysis was enough to identify the different materials as they acted within the localised magnetic fields. There was also a detector for gravitonic distribution, but it was slowly gathering data as it needed thousands of points of reference to build a clearer picture.

“Looks like the ship is about forty metres down for the most part. Below the superstructure supporting the camouflage” Drick patched into Marsh’s internal screens.

“How are we going to get in?” asked Marsh.

“Let’s get a few more readings and see if we can find an entrance, or make one.” said Drick. They turned back to the instrument panels and slowly watched as the computer built a better picture.

2/n

Grief is an odd thing. (Honestly I would laugh at such a trite opening sentence but I wrote it.)

I mean it is horrid, and it is cruel, and it is frustrating, heartbreaking, really just add whatever words that feel like you want to tear your own heart out here, as that’s what it can feel like, it’s basically a bag of shit…

I am in my fifties, clearly this is not the first time I have felt grief. I am still grieving over the loss of a good friend from 4 years past. And in some deeply sarcastic coinciclasm that was also in fucking April. I am not over it and I will have to pass that anniversary while grieving for my sister, in fact before my sister’s funeral I have an anniversary of a time I still cannot get over, so many regrets and so much loss. 

So, I have compounded my grief. And now I have mentioned it I honestly don’t know which grief is truly which. I don’t know if I am feeling different things because  of this. I don’t know because I can’t separate similar emotions, and I don’t know if the more recent emotions bring fresh the past.

The recent grief or the memory of grief. And whether I should even realise that I am comparing how different they are, like it matters what the level is, is this in some kind of grading… more on that later…

But this grief is different. But all grief is different. This is the first member of my close family I have lost. Someone who has been there every moment of my life and isn’t any more.

Thankfully I have had the option of hiding away for some of the week to process my thoughts and feelings (I have to say ‘Thankfully’, because I am thankful for this. But I also think I am being stupidly selfish and almost vindictive, hiding away to shield myself from others.). 

I have also had to deal with funeral directors and the coroner’s office, my sister had to have an autopsy to determine the cause of her death. This just extends the process. It is as if we can’t let her go as there is no understanding as to why she died. The physical cause, I should not have to say. So dealing with the practical aspects is a blessing in that I can focus my feelings. It is a curse as I have to deal with it and then be the emotional gatekeeper of each new piece of information.

Does this affect the grief? A little but maybe not that much. Or maybe to a great degree. I don’t have the introspection to know differently. I think it is just a factor in the process but it isn’t a motivator for much. Some confused feelings, some anger at having to wait, to have no explanation, to have nothing to blame. Then when we know, anger, relief and sadness as if it was just a death. there is no easy anger. There is no fault that was obvious. There was just a long series of compounding factors. No easy route to blame. So it just makes it more conflicted, more unresolved feelings.

But the grief would have all of those even if the situation was clearer.

There is this thing where if you are sad, if you are grieving, it is like you shouldn’t be laughing, or enjoying something. that you shouldn’t eat, or drink, just mourn in quiet loneliness or beat your chest in an agony of despair, or something (please fill in a standard socially acceptable response at this junction). It can be a bit of a grief ritual, it can be a bit grief shaming, it can be a bit grief competition.

When public figures die we often see people giving extended diatribes on how the grief has affected them. The media and focus of others doesn’t help in this. But it feels as if we end up wallowing in loss that has nothing to do with what we lost. We also try to justify, qualify, or worse compete to show our grief.

I want to say it is sickening, and in some ways it can become that way, but it isn’t. It is just processing errors. the inability to be able to functionally interpret how to respond in each given social situation based on how others are responding. In other words, people make people worse when we grieve. We all grieve in similar patterns, but our grief is our own and we deal with it in our own way.

So grief has you laughing at stupid things that are not that funny as a release from the crying at the things that you just can’t fucking change at all.

* A brief interlude while I go away to be sad, like you’d notice since you get this all in one flow *

So there are seven stages of grief, you can go and look them up I am not going to Google it for you. I broadly see how they categorise them, and right now you should have guessed by this sentence that I don’t think that does anything other than help us rationalise this.

As if you can rationalise looking at a minecraft t-shirt and feeling deeply sad that it means something that would have lifted someone momentarily. A smile in a world that can sometimes be hard. That would make someone feel good about something they did. But that moment is now forever gone and the joy it would have brought is a moment of loss that it never happened. That’s grief. 

Reconcile it. 

I am not saying we can’t rationalise, I am not saying we can’t even gain comfort of closure from understanding how it is actually a beneficial memory (run it all to its course and it actually is) but it can’t be reconciled. It could only have been reconciled if the event had happened. It can’t ever happen. It just gets pulled into your moments of grief that you can categorise into seven distinct phases.

Like how I can’t separate my feelings between my grief at the loss of a friend who died 4 years ago (a few days from now) and the death of my sister who died two weeks ago. I can’t separate the feelings and so now I worry that I am doing some injustice to one of them.

I only know that they both meant a great deal to me.

They were both quite exceptional people.

I am begining to really fucking hate April.

1/n

Where am I right now?
I’m thinking, or is that drinking?
Oh I am absolutely drinking (I would say deinitely but I forgot how to pronounce it).
my sister was kind.
But where am I?
Somewhere in the land of the lost. Slightly dramatic. But that is where I am. Having to deal. Things are real. My sister died.
People die.
They do. There is no escaping it. Though saying it that way is like saying ‘all lives matter’, as in context M’FO.
Why am I writing this?
She died suddenly. Quickly. Heart-wrenchingly…
There has to be a coroner’s thing…
We can’t even register her dead and do the paperwork fully thing…
We can do some of that thing…
I am also the one doing that thing. I am not alone, I am just… taking the stance that my family are too heartbroken to take…
She was the oldest of my mother’s children. I am the youngest. I am also the one who does this sort of organising paperwork thing. I am the one who thinks in the straight line objective ways. I am critical. I am objective. Basically I can be a logical/rational/unemotional cunt (please excuse the gender-specific abuse and fuck the fucking-fuck-fuck out of any wankery about cussing).
I don’t have typical (neuro or social) habits, friends, family, close relations. In fact if you took a survey I wouldn’t hit average for pretty much everyone in my life. Except me, and I am not sure about me. Unless the survey had the question ‘does anyone in your life exhibit x non-typical feature’ as a standard base of inclusion…
I have also seen dead people before. Several. I have dealt in this area. I have a way of martialling what needs to be done. I can COMPARTMENTALISE.
I am also the one who would be angry if I wasn’t the one doing this as it is fucking stupid to make anyone else do it. On that note, my family would do anything they had to, they never made me do this. I pretty much manipulated the circumstances where I am doing this. And thank fuck I did. My heart is breaking at the loss of my sister. I would be fucking manic if that also meant my brother and sister were tortured by doing things that I can do.
I can do this and the act of doing with confidence counts against the pain.
My sister died suddenly, it was medical emergency so it was brutal. It was 4 days ago. And because of bank holidays (I am not judging here, I am not blaming, it is just circumstance), today was the first day I could go and identify her.
My other sister came along. She was initially asked to identify as she was listed as next contact due to living closer. My sister couldn’t do it.
I went alone.
I am glad I did. I am better knowing that my decision to do so was best. I don’t want them to remember her this way.
I knew something of what it was to be.
It wasn’t my first dead person.
But I am still in the land of the lost.
I did that. It was the best choice. There are so many other reasons and understandings I could tell you to explain how and why it is better this way.
I just hate myself for knowing it was the best choice. I hate myself for being so strong in all of this. I hate myself for not having anything more than those as the only reasons I need (I have more but this is about me and not others).
Where is this going?
Oh yes.
My sister died and today I had to identify her body after she had been dead for 3 days (4 calendar days).
Today I started the process of going through all her paperwork and a life that was spent giving love to others (I am not being kind, she was generally a person who gave a lot of love to others as she had experienced a fuck ton of abuse in her own life and turned it to kindness.). Today I started to accept her death and be rational about how we deal with her loss.
Where am I right now?
I am lost. But not really. I have things to do. I have things to arrange. A funeral, financial matters. Family matters.
Not really lost…
Feeling loss.
“Always try, to be nice and never fail to be kind.”

My Mummy

On Monday I decided to get the boys to write a poem about their mummy as a test. I made each of them answer questions and then we compiled that into verse. To be honest it was a bit of fun to keep them amused. It was just as much fun for me. I did most of the compilation but almost all the words are theirs, and certainly all the imagery.

Enjoy:

My Mummy

by Ben, Elliott and Asher

My mummy is a nice grass,
A love that is good
With arms and legs.

Her hair is like candy floss
Twisting,
Paper filled with naughty words.

Her eyes are hazelnuts
They can see fear.
They play a game.

Mummies nose is a cone,
With dinosaur’s nostrils.
Or a big fat poo,
A towel,
Made for glasses.

Her mouth is a lipstick’s stick,
Of fiery breath,
That shouts all quiet.

Her ears just hear my voice,
Like a giraffe
Always listening.

She has legs that I don’t know,
Filled with muscles,
And with bones,
An organ wraps around them,
Right down to the toes,
As they came last.

Her arms are like her legs,
But they put things into cups,
Press buttons,
And create.

Mummies brain is the best.
Very, very, smart.
Is for talking just like me,
Is numbers
And a game pad.

But her love is so pretty,
And very, very, strong.
She loves Asher, maybe also…
Daddy,
Elliott,
And Ben.
Simply, all of us.

Bollocks to DST BST

Why we originally adopted DST (Daylight Savings Time) is a mixture of reasons (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Summer_Time) but the actions were rooted in a time of war. I have thought it (un-ironically) a waste of time and an anachronism. It really isn’t needed in modern life, but it never overtly affected me until the last decade or so.

So, these days I really flipping hate it and the reasons are because I have kids and a more hectic schedule, let me rant on…

#1 Son

#1son is 8 years old and going on nine. He likes to get up at 6 a.m. and play some video games before school. This week he has only managed that once. Added to that he feels that we are sending him to bed an hour early (we kind of are as we want to re-establish his body clock as soon as possible and routine is good with that).

#1son is annoyed, upset and generally feeling that it is a personal attack on him, he is even surlier than when we told him he couldn’t have a week off school to play Mario Galaxy.

#1son is annoyed that the answer to why we have daylight savings is because more than a century ago we had a war.

#2 Son

#2son is 7 years old and Autistic. #2son likes to sleep in until seven in the morning when he is sleepily awoken and needs a little extra processing time to get to grips with the differences between the magic realism of his sleep and the neuro-typical realism of a world constructed for the differently abled.

#2son loves regular patterns as they seem easier to grasp. #’2son is out-of-sorts as some fucking idiot changed time and he cannot work out why they would do that and really cannot formulate properly how he feels about it.

#3 Son

#3son is a toddler, he is 2 years old. Ask anyone with a toddler, the changing of clocks is an auto-fuck-up to sleep pattern and sensibilities. It throws them all out of whack. It sends them all a little bit unfocussed and thus grumpy-McBastard is never far from those shores.

#3son was so disrupted by sleep schedules he took extra time to go to bed (including coming back down stairs which he very rarely does) and the next night he got up at 3 a.m. as his body clock switched itself to who-the-hell-knows and he had to come into mummy and daddy’s bed.

#Mummy

#Mummy is a very busy person who needs her sleep patterns to be regular as she spends most of her day in doctoral research and evenings switching between kids, work, hobbies and me. #Mummy doesn’t like BST DST as it fucks up her family and their routines.

#Daddy #Me

I get up most mornings at 04:30 (that’s when my first alarm is set for anyway) as I normally run/exercise between 05:00 and 07:00 before the rest of the house gets up. DST means my alarm now goes off at the equivalent time of 03:30 and my body is really saying fudge-that-shot … no I mean fuck-that-shit.

I am really tired of DST. It messes up my whole family. Very few people I know would actually want to keep it, except it seems #arsebowlers who believe it is British and not European (see the headlines in some popular press because Europe has decided to get rid of the stupid practice). I suppose some farmers might like it for some crop-rotation thing, maybe, or something, do the druids and pagans like it?

Oh well, let’s recycle this rant in October and March for some years if you please…

Let’s Grab Nigel and set him Alight

Who would have thought that four centuries after the notorious gunpowder plot there was a different way to blow up Parliament. All we needed to do was have a referendum on a politically divisive matter and the place exploded all on its own.

And as we rush towards a no deal Brexit as a worst case scenario (and a might be a deal but not what we wanted as an alternative) we have our own malevolent plotter, or divisive scapegoat (take your pick), in the Mister Toad of Twat Hall, Nigel Farage.

Heck Fawkes, Farage, the names are similar in a number of ways let’s be honest. I think that dear Nige’ would look good with the git-warmer facial hair and massive hat.

Brexit Night,
Everything’s shite,
Let’s grab Nigel
and set him alight…

(Mark Keating 2019)

One can only hope that the fate that awaits the premier crapmeister of this little fiasco matches somewhat his historical counterpart. But, that would be a pipe dream.

Will the future huddled masses of a post-Europe Britain huddle around bonfires on March 29th each year to celebrate the trashing of the country. Perhaps they will burn a number of different effigies and light miserable fireworks to mourn our collective idiocy. Or can doubters of the great and noble exit like me be mistaken? Will we celebrate these pioneers of falsehood and reward them as true architects of a Greater Britain?

For now, I can only ask, ‘Penny for the Nige?’