Christmas poem

'Twas the night before Christmas when in the depths of the house,

A creature was stirring and it wasn't a mouse;

A burglar had climbed through the window with care,

and gently put down a first foot on the stair.

He transferred his weight to test for a squeak.

The stair took his weight and didn’t complain.

All going well so he stepped up again.

Butch licked his hand, no guard dog him!

He carried on up, found his way in the glim,

the pale moon highlighting his massive physique

Old missus Thered, her instinct aware,

Had thought that she heard a tread on the stair.

‘Perhaps rain on the tiles?’ ‘That’s no rain, I’m clear.

Randolph Thered knows rain, dear,’

said her spouse, quietly. ‘Just listen, don’t speak.’

‘Hark,’ she whispered, ‘that sound on the roof,

could it be, can it be, is that a click of a hoof?’

He pushed back the blanket, no duvet for them.

Foot caught in the sheet, snagged in the hem.

He fell out of bed, he looked such a freak.

He turned himself over, looked up from the floor,

Who is this slowly opening the door?

‘Don’t make a sound, the children will hear,

They are so excited now that Christmas is near’

Said Randolf, before the stranger could speak.

‘What’s going on, you’re using the staircase?

You’ll miss your sherry we put in the fireplace

With your load of presents in that big sack,

shouldn’t you  be climbing down the chimney stack?

The children might see and think you’ve a cheek.’

‘I arrived on my sleigh,’ the big Santa said.

‘And there was a bird, searching for a bed.

Tonight your neighbours are due a new baby

The stork is asleep on your chimney, a bird B and B.

She bunged up your flue in a scorched fit of pique.

Ho, Ho, Ho, Happy Christmas.

The New Royal Baby

The new Royal baby.

            ‘Welcome to the Today program your Lordship.’

            ‘Thank you John, delighted to be here.’

            ‘You are, I believe, Lord Singeing Stephen, who is generally acknowledged as a constitutional expert?’

            ‘Yes, some people have called me that.’

            ‘Well, let me ask you a question about the constitutional arrangements then. ‘Will this baby, once she or he has been born, instantly become third in line to the British throne?’

            Firstly I would like to take this opportunity to offer my congratulations to the happy couple. Secondly, the answer to your question is ‘No.’

            ‘What!’

            ‘You may know that there has a been a lot of discussion within the Commonwealth Countries about this. Whether the succession to the British throne should be gender dependant or not.’

            ‘Yes, I had heard about that but I thought that was all settled during the recent Perth Conference.’

            ‘Well, yes and no.’

            ‘How do you mean?’

            ‘It has been agreed that gender will have no role in deciding who succeeds to the British throne in future and a bill will be passed in all the relevant parliaments to this effect during 2013.’

            ‘Well they had better get on with it then, they don’t want to be too late do they? Babies don’t wait for anyone.’

            ‘This is not an issue as the legislation will be retrospective’

            ‘Just like most things to do with the Royals’

            ‘Careful John, you don’t want to let your inner republican out of the closet do you?’

            ‘Well, OK then. So if that is all sorted out, why do you say that this child will not automatically become third in line to the throne?’

            ‘This is really out of our hands now as, since Gordon Brown signed the St Reatham treaty in 2007, we have to conform to the European Directive that refers to the use of Monarchy in non opted out countries - EUD/07/Rex/Reg/01 is the relevant document.

            This states that in any commonwealth of nations the Headship has to rotate between the members to ensure fairness and diversity just as the presidency of the European Union does.’

            ‘Are you telling me that any head of state of a commonwealth country can become King or Queen of England?’

            ‘No.’

            ‘But you just said…’

            ‘No, the result of this directive is that any head of state will become Queen of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Who it is in any one year will be decided by a vote of those heads of state. That person will then become Queen of the Commonwealth.’

            ‘Unless that head of state is a man of course?’

            ‘No, the bureaucrats in Brussels made a mistake and, although they insisted that the head of state will be gender neutral, they forgot to include the phrase ‘or King’ in the final draft as it has been so long since we had a King in Britain, although I am sure you are old enough enough to remember King George VI?’

            ‘Well, err, just, but moving on. Are you saying that a male head of state of a commonwealth country could become our queen?’

            ‘No John, the word is ‘will.’’

            ‘Do you know who the first one will be?’

            ‘Well, as long as you keep it confidential John, I can reveal that the first will be Robert Mugabe. He will become Queen of England, Wales, Northern Ireland, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the rest of the Commonwealth countries on 1^st January 2013 for one year. The coronation will be held in Hurryry – he is an old man you understand.’

            ‘Huh, you left Scotland out of that list!’

            ‘Yes, my good friend Bob insisted on that as a condition of taking the job.’

            ‘So, as usual, Mugabe gets off Scot free?’

            ‘Yes, I’m afraid so, he is very frightened of Alexander Salamander.’

             ‘I did hear somewhere that Mugabe comes from Yorkshire and used to work in a factory in Halifax making extra strong mints. Can you confirm this?’

            ‘Yes, in fact if you reverse both of his names, you will see it spelled out for you.’

            ‘Well, it all seems very strange to me but I guess we will have to accept that the world changes. Thank you for your time your lordship. By the way, is it true that all titles will be done away with in 2014.’

            ‘Yes, a very regrettable decision. in my opinion.’

            ‘Which wasn’t asked for, I assume?’

            ‘Err, no.’

            ‘OK, thanks Steve, see yu!’

Book Launch!

A writer friend, Kay Lawrence,  has just published her second volume of the QT Anthologies.

The second of the QT Anthologies comprises fourteen brand new stories of varying length and genre. Featuring the light-hearted experiences of a night school cleaner, the fable of Jack Frost, a thriller set in the mountains, storms, villains, and heart-warming tales, there's something in this collection for everyone. To help you choose which story to read next each title is listed with its word count, ranging from 500 words to 10,500.

Here is the link.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Anthology-Book-Unseen-Stories-ebook/dp/B009ZIJIZG/ref=sr_1_5?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1351759993&sr=1-5

The first volume is still available.

I am sure you will have a very enjoyable read.

Shampooing my geranium

I’ve just got back from holiday in sunny Herculaneum.

cycled across Europe on my bike made of titanium.

First I tried to make it from a type of cheap uranium,

looked it up and found that it is called actinouranium.

The tubes turned out too heavy and changed into plutonium

So giving me a headache at the back of my pericranium

Had to change from aspirin to a big dose of succedaneum

This quickly cured the pain so I shampooed my geranium.

Rufus

It’s hot in the sun but cold on the ice

The water is wet but drier is nice

The wind it blows, sometimes high, often low

Rain is not common but we always have snow

Sometimes I eat penguin, other times seal,

penguin’s ok but seal is more real

I like the Ant’ but Arctic is wetter

South is too far so I like North better

I wanted another but one cub is fine,

easy to feed and then keep in line.

Spring is the time that we leave our lair

pause digging out, sniffing the air.

Often I’m good but sometimes I’m bad

Sometimes I’m happy, other times sad

Warm in my white fur that many call hair

Hi there, I’m Rufus, the bipolar bear

Going to war in 1917

In Felixstowe Camp, waiting to go

Here since the call-up, what do we know

of the war, how’s it all going?

Winning or losing, no way of knowing.

‘But I need to go, to do my bit.’

The war has been running for three long years

Rumours we’re leaving, I prick up my ears.

We train with the signal lamp, morse is our friend

as we trim the wick and learn how to send

signals ‘cross mountains, received in a blink

We travel through Europe by ship and by train

Sun in the valley, snow on the plain.

I list in my diary the places we pass,

more than four days just sat on my arse.

The flowers and vineyards are all new to us.

We’re getting so close, nearing the fighting

‘Will I be up to it, is it exciting?

Will I stand up, as strong as my mates?

Waiting and fearing, what is my fate?

What is to come, how bad will it be? 

Sailing

None of us like the long leg across the Southern Ocean. There’s no land, see. The rollers go right round the globe with nothing to stop them, only the molleys to see them. We was close-hauled when it happened, Lascar Jim on the wheel. The off watch hands were asleep in the fo’c’s’le, the deck watch loafing topside, taking shelter in the lee of the deck house.

      Jim must have been caught napping, probably leering a goney. He allowed the head to pay off a few points to larboard so the squall took us full broadside, laying her over near to her beam ends. We hadn’t reefed the top gallants so she shuddered to recover with the weight of green in the scuppers and the pressure of the squall aloft.

       The Bos’n was at my back shouting,’ Get those topgallants reefed sharpish, sailing master, or I’ll have your guts for garters.’  I had to whip the watch with a turk’s head to get them up the mast and do my bidding.

      She slowly laboured back to upright, shaking the water off her like a dog after a ducking. She shuddered as the prow dipped into a trough but Jim had her back on course, head to wind.

      I told off the deck hands to let fly the halliards for the top yards to give the reefing gang a chance to beat the wet canvas into shape so they could throw lines around the sails and reef them in.

      We were now in a safe condition, not carrying too much sail and hove to until the sea state dropped. This would lengthen the voyage and cost the owners a packet but still less than losing the ship and cargo.

      The frozen mast monkeys clambered down the rat lines and took shelter. The bos’n ordered a tot for each man who had been aloft. We only lost two men in that evolution.

      The Bos’n beckoned me over and said, ‘Get Lascar Jim relieved off the wheel, take him to the grating on the poop deck and give him twenty lashes.’

      ‘Twenty will kill him, Sir,’ I argued.

      ‘He won’t do it again then will he? Just get on with it and make sure both watches are there to watch, unless you want a couple for yerself.’

      Jim was lashed down on the grating, a wedge of quid rammed in his mouth to stop his screams. The flogging started. He was unconscious after ten, the open wounds dripping blood off his back. The torment continued until the chorus from the hands reached twenty. Salt was rubbed into the wounds to stop infection, then he was cut down and taken below where he died later that night.

      I had the job of putting a stitch through his nose and sewing him in a canvas shroud before he was slid over the side with a marlin spike at his feet so as he didn’t float.

      No one had a prayer to say for his soul.

Murder in the morning

The church clock strikes eight, so those villagers who are awake know without checking that it is six. A cock crows. A body lies across the doorway of the church, a line of crumb-carrying ants marches across the fedora  covering its face. There is a serene, momentary quiet after the chimes cease. A figure ‘2’ glides past the church wall, before the silence is cracked by a baby crying.

      ‘I fear we have a cereal killer at work here, Watson.’

      ‘That’s incredible, Holmes, how do you deduce that?’

      ‘Two hours have gone missing, which will no doubt result in riots just as in the last century when the government decided to move the clocks forward to Summer Time. A witness has spoken of seeing a figure of two hours leaving the scene of the crime. The crumbs that the ants are carrying appear to be from a brand of breakfast food made from maize. I think you will find that the corpse is that of an American citizen from Cincinnatti. Only an American would wear a fedora in a churchyard at this time in the morning with brown shoes. Please be so kind as to check his pockets for any identification, Watson.’

      ‘By jove, Holmes, that is amaizeing, his driving licence shows he is Dr Kellogg from Cicinnati.’

      ‘Thank you, Watson, but please leave the puns to me.’

      ‘Righto, Holmes, old boy, but where does the cock come into the story?’

      ‘I would be very surprised that, when we turn the body over, if we do not find a cornflake packet there with the famous picture of the cockerel on the front.’

      ‘Would you help me roll the body over please, Sergeant Doodlegregg, my good fellow? asked Watson.

      ‘Certainly Sir,’ said the sergeant, taking off his cape and lying it on the damp grass. They rolled the body on to it with a great effort from the policeman.

      ‘Why are you out of breath sergeant?’ asked the good doctor.

      ‘Oi’ve been getting rather a large belly recently, sir so I’ve  been on one of those new-fangled  low carb diets.’

      ‘Those diets are a waist of time, if you ask me,’ affirmed Watson

      ‘No one is and I’ve told you before about those puns, Watson.’

      ‘Sorry Holmes. We have found the cereal packet that you predicted. I assume that confirms your suspicions?’

      ‘Yes, partly but I am wondering if there have been any other suspicious deaths in the village recently Sergeant?’ enquired Holmes.

      ‘Well not really, Sir. There was Mrs Scot, of course, who was found dead at her home in Alpen Crescent last week. She had been stabbed twenty seven times in the back. A clear case of suicide we thought.

      Ten days ago we found the bodies of three patients in the local mental hospital. We put it down as a random nut cluster at the time.

      Then, I suppose, we should include all bran stoker’s family who disappeared last year. That case kept us going down at the station for a while, I can tell you’

      ‘Thank you sergeant. Wait! Can you hear that noise?’

      ‘Do you mean that baby crying, Holmes?’ said Watson.

      ‘No, you idiot, that is just the new year. I meant the other sound, that is the crack of dawn if I am not very much mistaken.’

      ‘But, who killed all these people in the village?’ asked Watson.

      ‘I think you will find that our sergeant here has a lot to answer for in this case. Please check his breath. I think you will find that he has a very bad case of halitosis caused by his body burning fat and going into ketosis. His beath will smell of acetone. You will understand this better than me, Watson, being a medical man.

      I think a bowl of muesli will force a confession from him’

      ‘You are an incredible detective, Holmes,’ muttered Watson as he poured half a pint of best semi skim into the cereal bowl.

Writing challenge 1st September 2012

Choices – Light or dark?

I’d had the idea for a long time, perhaps ten years or more. It started out as almost a philosophical theory and then gradually morphed into a mechanical representation of that idea. It went something like this.

      You are sitting in your favourite chair reading a really good book. You know the one, the one you wished you had written but knew that you really weren’t capable of producing. It is one of those late autumn dreamy afternoons where the evening arrives earlier than you had expected. What happened to those long summer evenings that seemed to go on late into the night when you were a child, at home during those never ending, magical summer school holidays? It starts to get dark. It becomes increasingly difficult to make out the print so what do you do? You reach up and flick a light switch on and the problem is solved and you carry on reading for as long as you wish, regardless of the sun’s desertion to more southerly parts of the world.

      Later, when you have finished reading and there are other demands on your time, you casually flick off the light switch and darkness returns to the room. Is it just the lack of sunlight that makes it dark or is there an unseen dark star in the sky that produces the darkness? Call it, perhaps, anti light in the same way that physicists say that matter is balanced by anti matter and gravity is balanced by anti gravity. Confucianists have thought this way for millennia with the idea of everything in nature having a balance, as exemplified by the concepts yin and yang.

      Think back, to picture yourself sitting in the chair. Perhaps it is earlier in the afternoon and the sun is streaming through the windows making it unpleasantly warm and too bright for your eyes as the sunlight reflects off the page into your eyes, making you squint. You feel sleepy and decide to have a snooze but it is too warm and bright.You have only one option, pull down a blind or draw a curtain to screen you from the sun. Why can’t you lean over and flick on the dark switch?

      There would be many benefits if you could. One would be that you would not need to buy blinds or curtains. Another is that the dark, being antilight, would cancel out the light, and therefore the electricity used to produce it. This would mean that as your use of dark during the summer increased, it would cancel out the cost of the light that you used during the winter. You would become truly carbon neutral – for light and dark anyway – I’ll come to the rest of it later, maybe.

      I spent another five years working out the technology to generate, distribute and control this new dark energy. It was a lot easier than I thought as it was possible to use the National Grid to distribute the dark energy from the production sites, which were of course the same power stations that produced the electricity for converting into light. All it needed was a small modification at the power stations to produce the dark energy from the waste heat. Coal fired power stations are only about 33% efficient so there is plenty of waste heat to use.

      It was easy to use the existing grid to carry the dark energy in the same way as you can download an e mail while carrying on a conversation on Skype, using the same broadband connection, at the same time. I never have understood why the two don’t get mixed up and you end up talking to your e mail account – I am just happy that it works.

      I now had the idea and the system designed,. All I needed now were backers and customers. I decided to go on television and pitch to some millionaires on one of those animal alliteration shows; Sheep’s Shed, Pig’s Pen, Horse’s House or some such. There are many of them these days on television. My pitch went very well, Duncan and Theo started fighting over their bids as soon as they saw the full potential but it was Peter Meaden who came up with the best offer. I grabbed it and the rest is history, as they say.

      That is why there is a three way switch in every room in your house that gives you the choice of how light or dark you want the room.

      What next, you ask. Well, light switches sometimes have dimmers so I have developed a brighter system for the dark switches. It is now in production and will be launched early next year. I am now looking at heating and cooling systems and perhaps a secondary application of domestic water heating and refrigeration.

      I had a passing thought the other day about gravity. I was reading about Isaac Newton’s trinary mathematics system and I wondered if…

Writing challenge 25th August 2012

Theme - Time.

I looked up as a crow cawed excitedly from one of the tall pines. I remembered my Dad explaining to me that, ‘ if you see a rook, it’s a crow but if you see a bunch of crows, then they’re rooks.’ It didn’t make sense to me when I was a kid but I could work it out now. ‘With age and experience comes wisdom’, was another of his sayings, he was into heuristics even way back then. I cawed back a reply to the rook. Always be friendly to rooks, you never know who they are in real life.

      It was snowing as I walked through the trees, quicker than walking around them. It was the sort of lazy, big flake, snow that IKEA would put in their self assembly snowmen kits, if they decided to sell them. I could see my footsteps when I turned to look behind me. That was the first clue. As I completed the first 360 degrees of the turn, I saw there was more to go, I had to turn through 1080 degrees before I was back facing the way I was going.

I could feel the coldness running through my veins. I guess this is what prompted the snow dream. I gradually woke up. I knew it wasn’t the usual waking, after a short nap or even an overnight sleep because I had a beard, my hair was very long and my fingernails had grown to more than 2 cm. The ‘droid extensionals withdrew from my veins, arteries and brain where they had been feeding and monitoring my body. ‘Always look after your body,’ I say, where would you be without it? In one of those new fangled life extension nutrient flotation tanks without your body, just an existing brain. That’s not for me, my living will says that when my body dies, so will ‘I’.

      The stiffness gradually disappeared as I slowly came back to full wakefulness while taking care of the hair, beard and nails. Nearly felt human again. It took several cups of turkish to complete the job as I read through the briefing notes from my Oppo on the Holoread^® image floating in front of my eyes. I never did get on well with the Hypnoread^® system, where the words turn into thoughts in your head. I like thoughts to at least feel to be mine, not some stranger’s implanted in my brain. Mary thought she was a bit of a comedian so she always finished off her daily briefing report with a joke and a ‘Have a nice day’. Today’s joke was the one about the Indian guy and the polar bear in Mumbai. I am sure you know it so I won’t bore you by telling it again.

      I grabbed my icomm and started doing the checks around the ship. I dialled up the G a little. I knew it took a bit more energy but it suited me to have a it a bit stronger than Mary’s setting. I liked about 0.3g while Mary was happier with 0.15. I would dial it up later to 2.5 for a while when I used the gym. This made the exercise more effective without the ship having to carry any weights.

      I passed through the sick bay and gave the lab machines a little to do by letting them grab a blood sample from me. They were properly grateful and promised to have the report ready when I passed through after doing my rounds. They were true to their word and said that all was well with my blood balances, I just needed a top-up of Chronopeptide Hydrochloride. They insisted using ridiculously long words, everyone else in the universe that I know calls it Fast^®. This drug has the effect of slowing down the physical body while speeding up the perception of time. This is a similar effect to getting old as then time appears to speed up as your body gets slower because of muscle wasting. The difference here was that the dose I was on made time speed up by a factor of one thousand. This was essential as it made the trip to the Proxima Centauri system appear to last for twelve years rather than the twelve thousand or so it would seem to be otherwise.        My icomm told me that we nearing the half way point and that the Flip would happen on this shift. We had been accelerating at 0.0037g since leaving the Earth system about six thousand years ago and now we had reached our maximum velocity. We had to reverse the ship so that the ion motor would now start the deceleration that would continue for the next six thousand years until we reached orbit around one of the exo planets in the P. Centauri system. It also meant, of course, that we could now start to communicate with Earth for the first time since leaving – our ion trail had made any radio communication impossible. I wonder if they had forgotten all about us? It wasn’t a case of turning on the radio and saying, ‘Hi, it’s us.’ The telemeter system would send out a directed radio burst that had all our mission information compressed in it. It would take about ninety five years to reach Earth so, if anyone was listening and could be bothered to reply, we could expect an answer after about 190 Sol years. I wondered if it would be Mary or myself on shift when a reply came?

      We were the third in a series of life ships sent into the universe from orbit above the Euro space elevator at Kouru in  French Guiana. We were named ‘Curiosity’ after the Mars Rover that found the first extraterrestrial life in 2014. The first had been called ‘Asimov’ after the science fiction writer, who first proposed the possibility of using an ion drive for interstellar voyages. The one before us was named Heinlein after another science fiction author. He was the one who developed the concept of sleeper ships to reach the stars. The old launch site at NASA in the Americas had been destroyed in the food riots of 2123. It had been privatised in 2015, sold to some guy called Branston but he made a right pickle of it and finally went broke. The site ended up as a dump for space scrap that was contaminated with aluminium oxide from the spent rocket boosters.

      The Earth had been in a mess when we left and the only reasonable thing left to do to try and ensure the survival of our species was to launch a series of life ships, each carrying five thousand frozen young colonists to seed the planetary systems of our nearest star neighbours in our galaxy. It is thought that the probable success rate was less than 0.01% but the survival chance of the human race on Earth was put at a lot less than that. Humans had ensured that the sixth mass extinction on Earth was inevitable and, as top predators, they would be the first to be wiped out. Cockroaches, though,  had a good chance of surviving through it. Good luck to them, they had been through it all before and deserved better this time.

      There was nothing left on Earth for me, the car crash had taken everything I valued, so I volunteered for the life program. Because I had some piloting experience and knew a little about astrophysics, they offered me a pilot’s job. I grabbed it as it gave me a chance to explore some of our corner of the universe and a promise of what seemed like eternal life, well twelve thousand years seems like eternity when it stretches out before you.

      I had never met Mary, of course. Only one of us was awake at any one time. It had been decided by the Mission Psychologists (MPs) that it was better that way as they  predicted a that a twelve thousand year relationship between only two people had a 97.7% of ending in murder. Incidentally, the same equations could be used for marriage on Earth. I could see their point as Mary annoyed me even when she was asleep, with her silly jokes and artificial friendliness. I won’t kill her for it though, I think, maybe, at the moment.

      Fast ^® had been the second chronomorphic drug developed. The first one was called, wait for it, Slow^®. This had been developed to maximise the time perception when enjoying pleasurable activities. This minimised the cost in cash and resources of an over populated planet. This way, a five minute trip to, say, a museum would feel like two days but would allow a much greater footfall of people without overcrowding. Football matches were split into twenty sections of five minutes with a one hour break in between each section to allow the stadia to empty and refill with a new crowd. There was a cost to the individual of course in the wear and tear on the body as it carried out all its functions so much faster. A quick calculation will show that this results in a reduced life span. This helped a little with the massive overpopulation problems – but not enough.

      I started all my usual activities, I was getting quite set in my ways after all this time. I continued studying for my Open University degree in Creative Writing. This was one of the reasons I can’t kill Mary at the moment, however much she annoys me, as she marks all my assignments and will hopefully be awarding my degree, eventually. Perhaps I had better start laughing at her jokes… I spent some time in the gym, followed the personal workout planned for me by Brenda. After a shower, I ate one of my favourite meals from the 4D organic printer. Steak and kidney pie with roast potatoes and garden peas, with gravy of course. Banana custard for desert followed by a long read of one of the millions of books available from Brenda’s memory, with several cups of turkish. Not a bad life although somewhat lonely. I sometimes put on a holocube^® recording of my family but I find that increasingly difficult as time goes on. They are all long dead by now of course so it seems a little strange to be having a conversation with them, even though I know of course that Brenda generates their replies.

      There was a call from Brenda. ‘Alarm, the ship will be flipping in ten minutes.’ I didn’t have to do anything. Even though both Mary and myself had the title ‘Pilot’, the ship was run and piloted by Brenda. We were only there to follow her instructions if something manual needed doing that was beyond the reach of her extensionals. The flip was started as predicted, not that I could feel anything, the delta V was so small that it was below my perception and Brenda kept the g the same. The manoeuvre was planned to take twenty seven hours and then we would be decelerating, albeit very slowly, until we reached orbit around our new home planet. The ship was turned by small chemical rocket thrusters near the front of the ship while the ion drive was temporarily turned off.

      ‘Alarm, Alarm,’ warned Brenda, ‘bow thruster malfunction.’

I ran the diagnose app. It came up with a nonsensical result. Rocket  fuel level zero, it read. I ran the program again and got the same result. I asked it to detail the root cause and it showed, Leaking main fuel valve. The liquid rocket fuel had been slowly leaking into space over the last six thousand years until the tank was empty. This was very bad news as without turning the ship, there was no way of slowing down. It could only carry on at its present velocity or I could turn the ion drive back on and continue accelerating until the fuel ran out.

      Neither of these possibilities appealed to me. Brenda was only programmed for one trajectory and one destination and so would soon be lost, in space. The only positive thing I could think of doing was to wake Mary and share the problem with her to see if she had any ideas. This wasn’t as easy as it sounds as I had to override several computer safety systems to wake her early and to stop Brenda sending me to sleep. The most difficult thing, however was to prepare myself to meet a stranger who I had been sleeping with for six thousand years but had never met. I just knew she liked terrible jokes. A woman with hidden shallows as I described her to myself.

      It had to be done. I set out the problem and recorded it on a Holocube^® so that she could read about it and get used to the idea before she had to face the ordeal of meeting me. Yes, I am self aware enough to realise that, if I don’t like her, then she almost certainly doesn’t like me.

      Brenda put me to sleep for twelve hours. I hoped that would be enough time for Mary to read my Holocube^® and perhaps even come up with a solution. The three of us would discuss it when I woke up.

      I felt the cold liquid in my veins again so I knew it was wake-up time after a Fast induced sleep. This time there was a face floating in front of me. As my brain slowly started up on two cylinders, coughing and spluttering, metaphorically at least, I realised that, of all the women in the universe, this must be Mary. I searched through my memories for a creative, witty comment, found one, transformed it into audio speech and said, ‘Hi.’

      ‘Hi’, said Mary, she clearly was suffering from a similar brain block to me, but at least she didn’t start with a joke.

      ‘Can you leave me for about half a solhour, to give me a chance to wake up and become nearly human, I’ll meet you in the crew lounge, OK?’

      ‘OK, Dave’ she said and wandered off.

‘We can’t do that, Mary,’ said a male voice as I walked into the crew lounge.

      ‘Why not Steve, ‘asked Mary.

      ‘We have no reserves of liquid rocket fuel on board, so we cannot use the bow thrusters to change our orientation.’

      ‘Yes, we do, Brenda,’ I said as I poured a cup of my drug of choice.

      ‘Where would that be Dave,’ asked the computer in its Brenda voice.

      ‘How many space suits do we have on board,’ I asked the room.

      ‘I think you know that we only have one, Dave,’ replied Brenda.

      ‘What has that got to do with anything,’ questioned Mary.

      ‘A space suit has thrusters built into it. Calculate if there is enough thrust available in that suit to turn the ship, please Brenda.’

      There was a pause, obviously a complicated calculation.

      ‘If that thrust is applied right at the nose of the ship, there is only enough thrust available to turn the ship through seventy three degrees, we need the full one hundred and eighty to do the job so we only have just over a third of the necessary. It just cannot be done.’

      ‘Thanks for that calculation Brenda but you have got it wrong. What about using the dimension multiplying effect of a chronomorphic drug? You remember what happened in my dream in the forest when I tried to turn round to look behind me? That was in a Fast^® sleep. If the pilot in the space suit had taken enough Slow^® then the same available thrust could achieve a rotation of nearly two hundred and twenty degrees. We only need one hundred and eighty so there would be enough to propel the guy in the suit from the airlock forward to the nose of the ship and back again.’

      ‘That’s true, Dave,’ said Mary, who had been thinking about the other implications, ‘but that much thrust wouldn’t be necessary because it would be a one way trip. You have forgotten that the ship’s hull is radioactive from the ion drive and so the guy in the spacesuit would be dead long before he got back to the airlock and the safety monitors wouldn’t allow the door to be opened anyway, to prevent contamination of the ship. It would be a suicide mission.’

      ‘What is it now then? Who is going to get out of this alive if we don’t do something? We will both be dead and the ship will run out of power in about ten thousand years time. The five thousand sleepers in the cryo hold will then die without waking up and even Brenda, or Steve as you call him, will have no power and so will shut down.’

      ‘All this is true, ‘said Brenda. ‘What do you suggest Dave?’

      ‘I suggest Mary and myself have an enjoyable meal together while you carry out the make ready routines on the suit. You can then give me a calculated dose of Slow^® before I suit up and then get on with the job.’

      ‘That’s sexist Dave,’ said Mary, ‘why do you assume that you will do the job, why not me?’

      ‘Two reasons, Mary. The first is that I thought of the idea so I claim it as mine and secondly you would be a greater loss to the mission as you know more jokes to cheer up the colonist’s when you wake them up in six thousand years time and tell them they have got a lot of work to do. Now let’s decide what to have for dinner.’

We had agreed that Mary should be asleep while I got on with the flip mission. She would need to reserve her waking time for any issues that came up during the rest of the journey and there was nothing she could really do to help, Brenda would be able take care of anything that came up – hopefully. Brenda had checked over and warmed up the space suit while Mary and myself enjoyed our first and last meal together. Surprisingly, we got on very well.

      ‘OK Brenda, let’s get on with it,’ I said when we had finished eating, I didn’t want to string out any goodbyes.

      ‘OK, just don’t ask me to open the pod bay doors, Dave.’

      ‘Mary does the jokes around here Hal, remember?’

      Following the first rule of leaving a space ship, I clipped my safety line on to the rail running along the length of the ship and then nudged myself along to the nose with short bursts from the suit thrusters. Once in place I wriggled around, following Brenda’s instructions over the radio, until I was oriented exactly right and clamped on to the hull.

      I took my last opportunity to look out into the deep, cold, indifferent, infinitely lonely blackness then asked Brenda to start the thruster firing sequence she had calculated. Once the thrusters started firing she would use her in-suit extensionals to inject me with a fast acting narcotic to knock me out followed by a lethal dose of potassium cyanide. Better that way than slow suffocation as the suit’s oxygen supply ran out while suffering the onset of radiation sickness.

      ‘Goodbye, David. I love you and I’ll always be with you.’ I knew it was Brenda, the ship’s computer, speaking and she had just clipped and stitched some footage from one of my favourite Holocubes^®, but I kidded myself it was Brenda, my wife and soul mate, talking to me through the parsecs and kilo years that separated us.

      ‘I love you too Bre…’

Herding the iron yak.

Writing challenge 27th July.
Location - Outer Mongolia
Object - Black umbrella
Genre - Steam punk

Herding the iron yak.

I am worried, very worried. The Winter is passing into Spring and the snows are melting fast. There wasn’t much snow up here this year. This means there will not be much melt water and so there will be a shortage of grazing for my yaks and horses. If my yaks don’t have enough grazing, their milk will dry up and eventually they will die. That means we will eat them but what will we live on when that meat is gone? We will also die and our bones will join the others bleaching up here in the harsh sun and thin air.

      I leave my wife Zaya and children Genghis and little Khulan in our yurt, which I have set up in the best grazing area I can find. I take my best horse, Sodbileg, and set off on the long trip to the city, Ulaanbaatar. It is hell on earth for me. Everything is cold and hard, with concrete and people everywhere. There are very few animals so it takes me some time to find someone to buy my horse at a good price.

      It also takes me a long time to find the job centre. The clerk looks at me and sniggered. ‘We don’t get much call for yak herders here,’ he says.

      ‘My name is Genghis and at least I can herd more than a desk,’ I say. ‘How much milk does it give you a day and can you kill and eat it if you need to?’ There are a few chuckles behind me in the queue. I have made some friends but on the wrong side of the counter.

      ‘My name is Genghis too. Why don’t you go and ask if they want any engine drivers down at the locomotive depot?’ suggests my desk jockey friend. ‘You could fit it with a harness and stop and milk it now and again.’ The queue erupts with laughter again but not with me this time.

      ‘If you are Genghis Two, I am Genghis One,’ I retort, as I leave and go to try and find the loco depot. One of my new friends, from the queue, Genghis, stops me and asks if I know what I am doing.

      ‘No, but I am desperate, I need to get a job to earn some money to buy food for my family.’

      ‘OK, come with me then, I am an engine driver, I’ll introduce you to a guy I know, called Ghengis. He’ll give you a job if he thinks you will be good at it.

      As we walked through the streets of Ulaanbaatar, my new found friend explained what had been happening.

‘The Chinese have been investing heavily in Mongolia and have laid a railway track from Ulaanbaatar to Lhasa, a distance of about 2,400 kilometeres. To achieve a 50% saving on steel required for the track and because not many trees grow around here to provide the timber for the sleepers, they used the monorail, gyro stabilised system, that was invented by Louis Brennan in the early part of the twentieth century and further developed by Andrew Cadwith in Derby, England in the twenty first. The big benefit of this system, apart from the steel saving of course, is that the train will automatically bank to the inside of a curve so that passengers don’t notice any bends. This happens because of the laws of gyroscopic precession that you will, of course, be fully aware of.

      There was also a problem with supplying coal and water for the engine across the high plains of Mongolia so it was decided to not use a steam engine  but the fusion reactor system recently fully deveoped and proven at the JET laboratories in Culham, England. This drives a generator to provide power to the electric motors fitted to each of the wheels. These are also, of course, used for regenerative braking.

      This design would therefore provide smooth, fast transport across the distance between the two capital cities. It requires no fuel or water en route and it provides a comfortable ride because of the automatic tilting on bends. A great advance on the old Pendolino system.

      Everybody was happy, including the Chinese investors as the capital cost had been minimised. The system was built over the last ten years, using migrant Mongolian labour who set up works camps along the line as it progressed across the plain.

      It was opened with a lot of publicity to show that the Chinese led the world in massive engineering projects and in being a benign and developing influence on their empire – sorry, ‘colleague states’.

      Then the problems started.

      You will know that the high plains of Mongolia overlie iron-rich rocks. The grass that grows on the ferruginous soils is therefore high in iron and so the grazing yaks take in iron with the grass they feed on. Your knowledge of biochemistry will tell you, of course, that the iron will be chelated in the chitin of the hooves as magnetite. This results in the yaks all having magnetic hooves. This has not been a problem for many years, the yak herders just used them as compasses which resulted in the myth that yak herders never get lost.

      During the spring and autumn migrations to and from the mountain summer pastures, the yak herds have to cross the newly laid mono rails and some became stuck fast to the rail by their magnetic hooves.

      The trains were very fast and did not have time to stop and remove the yaks from the line so just crashed into them. You remember the old rhythmic noise you used to hear on trains before the days of continuously welded rails – the ‘clickety clack’ as the wheels rolled over the joints? This has now changed to ‘yackety yak’ as the train ploughs through the unfortunate animals. The yak herders claimed compensation of course. They had to validate their claim by handing in the yak hooves so there was soon a thriving black yak market in Ulaanbaatar for yak hooves. The Chinese had no use for the hooves so they slung them in a skip at the back of the government office, once a claim had been processed. Genghis, who had the contract for emptying skips – ‘Chinese takeaway’, as he was known around the town, was soon a very rich man. It is estimated that some hooves had been through the system more than fifty times before the Chinese government officials clicked on to the scam.

      The sun was very hot on the high plains so a sun shade had to be retro fitted to the passenger cars on the train. It only covered part of the train so was called a penumbrella.

      With their fusion power source and super cooled electric motors on each wheeel, the trains were extremely fast. They managed to get up to a fairly constant cruising speed of 500 kph. This is admittedly some 70kph slower than the French AGV record but it still caused the same problems in the tunnels under the moutain ranges. The train acts like a piston in a cylinder and so produces a shock wave which runs ahead of the train at the speed of sound and produces a double sonic boom as it leaves the tunnel. Comedians in the small towns near the tunnel exits started timing their jokes such that a punch line would be followed by a ‘boom, boom’ from the advancing train.

      After investing in such a grand project there was no money left so the Project Manager, Liam Genghis, decided to not build platforms at the very few stations across the high plains so, for health and safety reasons, the driver has to make an announcement at each stop, ‘Please mind the steppe’.

      Here we are at the locomotive depot. I’ll leave you to it now as I need to get back to the job centre to see if there are any better paying jobs at the airport they are starting to build in a couple of weeks time.

      Good luck and safe driving!’

      ‘Thanks, Genghis, maybe see you on the train I’m driving.’

I walk into the depot, stop at the reception desk and asked to see Genghis.

      ‘Whom shall I say wants to see him?’ asks the receptionist.

      ‘Tell him that my name is Genghis and that a friend of his, Genghis, sent me,’

He picks up the ‘phone on the desk.

      ‘Hello Genghis, it’s Genghis here on the front desk. A yak herder called Genghis has come to see you, he says a friend of yours, callled Genghis, sent him to see if you have any loco driving jobs.’

      ‘OK, thanks Genghis, send him in, we do need someone as Genghis has just handed his notice in. Could you delete him from the employee spreadsheet please?’

      ‘OK. Err drat and double drat,’ said Genghis. ‘I selected ‘Genghis’ and I have just sacked 97.5%  of our employees.’

      ‘Never happened to me when I was herding yaks,’ says I.

The Giant's Causeway.

The Giant’s Causeway and the National Trust.

You may have seen on the news that the National Trust is having to justify including the ‘young earth’ creationist view of the origin of the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, in its display in the new visitor centre.

      There are many myths associated with this spectacular sight of myriad hexagonal rock columns on the coast of Antrim.  I thought I would put the record straight and tell you the real story of their origins to save you from any confusion you may be feeling.

      Firstly, Flynn M’Kool, the giant, did not exist and therefore could not have thrown rocks into the sea to make a causeway across to Scotland. That’s the end of that one. Next you will be telling me that you believe in the Tooth Fairy, Father Christmas and Evolution!

      Secondly, it is obviously ridiculous that rocks melted and were thrown up from under the surface of the Earth some sixty million years ago. That was before my Grandad was born so clearly cannot be true. Have you ever tried melting a rock? Just get your cigarette lighter out and try it if you don’t believe me. Then, you may ask, who sandpapered them into their present hexagonal shape – Flynn M’Kool again? I’ve already told you that he never existed.

      Thirdly the ‘young Earth’ creationists say that there was an underwater eruption a few  years ago. The Earth is only 6,000 years old so it must have happened fairly recently. This is just as unlikely as the previous theory as again the rocks would have to be melted so we are back to the cigarette lighter problem. This time it is even more difficult to believe, have you ever tried lighting a cigarette under water?

      Now we have disposed of all those silly myths, I can tell you real story. My Grandad told me this so it must be true.

      It all happened when he was just a young lad. People in Northern Ireland kept pandas as pets but they had to build fences to keep them safe in their back gardens or the dinosaurs would get in and eat them. ‘Dinosaurs were mostly herbivores,’ I hear you cry? Yes, I know, but Pandas don’t eat meat so they tasted like cabbage to the dinos.

      You will probably know that pandas only eat bamboo. In fact they prefer the young growing shoots, or Panda Growth Tips as they are known to biologists.

      My Grandad well remembers the year when there was a very cold winter followed by a wet spring and cool summer. ( He can’t remember what he had for breakfast yesterday tho’.) This combination meant that the bamboo harvest failed and a panda famine loomed.

      Pandas are resourceful bears so they used their sharp claws to climb the older plants in the bamboo forests of Counties Down and Antrim to get at the tender young branches at the top. Everyone thought they were climbing up to harvest the twigs but it turned out that they were only taking the pith. This saved the lives of about half of the pandas, who then survived through the following winter until the new growth started in the following spring.

      As they slid back down the trunks, their sharp claws wore away the bamboo of the circular trunks, forming a hexagonal cross section.

      You won’t see any pandas in Northern Ireland now as the bamboo forests were killed off by the climate change that we all know about. The pandas emigrated to China on a pandle steamer.

      All that survives to this day are the fossilised trunks of the relict bamboo forest on the North Antrim coast with those peculiar unexplained, until now, hexagonal columns.

      When you go to the National Trust visitor centre at the Giant’s Causeway, I am quite happy for you to discuss this account with the National Trust ranger there. Ask him about the origins of the fossil forest you can see out of the window.

      I’ll send this history to the NT and see if they agree to give it equal prominence with the nonsense they have displayed already – 60 million years, giants, melting rocks? Pah!

      What happened to the dinosaurs, I hear you ask. They got very hungry because there were no pandas to eat so they all trooped across the Giant’s Causeway one moonlit night and found their way to Inverness where they learned to swim. I think you know the rest.

      So there you have it, the true story all laid out in black and white – just like the pandas. If you don’t believe it, just go and talk to my Grandad, but please don’t ask him about his breakfast.

The Coronation

Chris settled back in his seat as Dave brought over a couple of pints of Old Mouldy to their table by the fire in the Ferret and Firkin.

      ‘Thanks Dave, that will go down a treat.’

      ‘Yes, it’s better than that Double Diamond stuff they used to serve up here isn’t it. Cheers.’

      ‘Cheers mate,’ said Chris.

      ‘Doing anything special this weekend for the jubilee celebrations? Asked Dave.

      ‘Not really, but is makes me think of the time I was involved in a coronation in Tangibia back along.

      ‘You, involved in a coronation, I don’t believe it’ muttered Dave. ‘What was that all about then?

      ‘It’s a long story, are you sure you want to hear it?

      ‘I’ll force myself to stay awake if you get a couple of pints in first.’

Chris went over to the bar and brought back a couple of foaming pints of Old Mouldy. ‘It started like this. I was working as a contract cabinet maker for Prices, you know the furniture manufacturers in Grimes Street?’

      ‘Well I don’t know them but I’ve passed their works a few times, said Dave.

      ‘Well, one day we got a call from the Crown Prince of Tangibia. His father, the king, had died and he was due to be crowned as the new king. He was a modest man and so wanted to be seen as a modernising ruler – a king of the people, ‘The People’s King’, if you like. He didn’t want any ostentatious wealth so he lived simply in a thatched hut as did most of his people. This was all many years ago, you understand.

      There was one thing he did want though and that was that the centre piece of the ceremony would be an ornate throne on which he would be crowned. He had heard of Prices so he wanted the company to make it for him from local hardwood. Prices were looking for a volunteer to go out to Tangibia to select the wood. I said I would go.

      I booked a direct flight from Heathrow to Tangibia City and off I went. The Crown Prince was kind enough to meet me at the airport and we set off into the forest to select a tree that could provide enough suitable timber for the throne. I had the specifications as Prices design department had drawn up the dimensions and cutting list before I left Heathrow.

      We had decided that teak would be the best material as it would last for many years and was proof against rot and the local wood boring beetles because its high oil content. The Prince wanted to be able to store it long enough that his son could use it for his own coronation when the time came. We found a suitable tree, measured it to ensure it was big enough and then I left the country and flew back to Hethrow after leaving firm instructions and advice on cutting it down and it’s long term storageconditions.

      We made the throne to the approved design and shipped it out to Tangibia in plenty of time for the coronation. Prices allowed us to bring a television into work on the day so that we could watch the coronation in the afternoon – London time. It all went well and we were delighted to see the throne we had made being used at the centre of the ceremony.

      We thought that was the last we would hear from Tangibia but, three years later we heard on the BBC that the King of Tangibia had been killed in a domestic accident. We were sorry about this as he had been a good friend of the company and I, in particular, had got to know and like him during my trip to  his country. Eventually furhter details came through and we found out what had happened. He had been asleep in his thatched house one night when his throne that he had stored in the rafters had crashed down and crushed him to death while he slept. The throne was, of course, very heavy being made from teak and the rafters just could not carry the weight.’

      ‘That is a real shame, did you feel guilty about it?’ asked Dave.

      ‘Not really although I felt sorry for him and his family,’ said Chris, ‘but I had warned him you see.’

      ‘What did you say?’

      ‘There was only one thing I could say really wasn’t there?’ Said Chris.

      ‘What was that then,’ asked Dave.

‘People who live in grass houses shouldn’t stow thrones.’

Weekly Challenge 14th June 2012

Forgotten children

The government minister heaved his bulk into the radio studio. He sat across the desk from John, who was his designated interviewer today.

      ‘It will be about seven minutes before your interview starts minister. Would you like a cup of coffee while we wait?’

The minister eyed John’s mug of suspicious looking mud and refused the offer. He was used to some food with a drink and nothing was available. He passed the time listening to Evan who was trying his best to coax some English language from the lips of Robert who was reporting on the Euro crisis. He had done this many times over the last couple of years so he should have been word perfect but instead managed to managed to sound like a recent immigrant from Bakuu who was just starting his mandatory English lessons.

      Wilfred watched as the clocked slowly moved on and prepared himself for the usual cut and thrust with John. The Production Assistant on the other side of the glass in the control room counted down by folding his fingers down and then pointed to John to start the segment.

      ‘Thank you for coming on the Today program minister, to help us to understand your new proposal to help these problem families that you have talked about.’

      ‘No problem, John, it is always a pleasure to come and talk to you.’ He oozed, faking  sincerity with his usual skill.

      ‘Tell us, minister, how many problem families there are in the country and how much they are costing the tax payers.’

      ‘We in the government have calculated that, including social services and police time, it adds up to something like 238 million pounds a year John to pay for these 120,000 families.’

      ‘That is certainly a huge amount of money, minister, what is most of it spent on?’

      ‘A lot goes on social services taking children into care, rehab programs for drug users and alcohol abusers and, of course, the necessary police time to cope with the crime resulting from these abuses and the cost to the NHS coping with the consequent diseases.

      Our idea is that, by shifting some of this spend from paying for the after effects to providing more early support for problem families we will eventually reduce the money required.’

      ‘Is this something like “Sure start” , the child centrered initiative from the last government that the coalition has scrapped?’ asked John.

      ‘Not at all, the central plank of this new initiative is to get these problem families back into work by training them in the basic skills of time keeping, taking instructions and realising how industry and commerce works. If you have never had a job, it is very difficult to get to a place of work regularly and to understand what is required of you in the work place.’

      ‘So what happens to all these newly bright eyed and bushy tailed job seekers when they go out and find that there are no jobs to be had. We are after all, in a recession, you know.’

      ‘Yes, that is true, the last Labour government just threw money at the problem without sorting out the underlying issues so what happened?’

      ‘You tell me minister.’

      ‘It meant that unemployed people suddenly received a lot more money and so, when jobs became available, they were snapped up by recent immigrants allowed in from the EU under Labour’s lack of control of our borders. UK residents realised that they would be worse off if they took a job and so they stayed at home.’

      ‘Oh, I understand now minister, it is all the fault of the last government?’ asked John.

      ‘Not completely of course, but they certainly have a lot to answer for and the coalition now has to pick up the pieces and we are determined to get to grips with the problem. We have to do this while reducing the deficit so we don’t have any spare money to play with. As the economy starts to improve, we will encourage people back into work, so increasing their self esteem as they provide for their families. No one will be worse off taking a job. They will always be better off than staying on benefits. We will be setting up a task force to identify those dysfunctional families and put actions in place to help them. This will prevent the problem trickling down the generations.’

      ‘That sounds very laudable, minister, but how will you identify these families?’

      ‘There will be a range of identifiers, John. These will include, poor performance of the children at school, truancy, free school meals, unemployed parents, alcohol and drug abuse and poor parenting skills. No one of these items on their own, of course, show a problem family but taken together, we have found that they are a fairly reliable set of indicators.’

      ‘I see, so lets take an example, erm, say a family spends a lot of time in a pub with their young children, setting a bad example on alcohol use and then goes home leaving their eight year old in the pub because they had had too much to drink, presumably, to remember to take them home. Would that qualify as a dysfunctional family under your set of identifiers?’ asked John smoothly, trying to be helpful.

      ‘Well, yes, of course that is exactly the type of family that we would be targeting. Are either of the parents unemployed?’

      ‘In the example I am thinking of, the father has a temporary job but he is likely to be unemployed in a couple of years time.’

      ‘Well, in that case, even more so, it is essential that we target a family like that before they cause even more trouble,’ insisted the minister.

      ‘Ok then, if I give you the address of that family, would you get the officials in your task force to go and help them?’ asked John with an innocent look on his face.

      ‘Yes, I would be very keen to have that address and we will get started working with that family straight away.’

      ‘I have it here minister, it is 10 Downing Street, Westminster, London. Do you need the post code or the surname of the family?’

      ‘Err, umm, no, err, I don’t think so,’ stuttered Wilfred as he felt his ministerial career gurgling down the drain. ‘That is ludicrous, of course, there is no way that the Camerons are a dysfunctional family.’ He said desperately trying to regain some sort of dignity as his face turned red and sweat started dripping down his face. ‘You just proposed some spurious indicators just to trip me up.’

      ‘No minister, I just wanted to show you that if you are posh and rich, you can get away with anything. If that family had been poor and unemployed, I am sure your task force would have been around to sort them out and probably have taken their children into care  and put the parents into an alcohol rehab clinic before you could say Ian Duncan Smith,’ summarised John. ‘Thank you minister. Now it’s time for sport with Rob.’

Book launch!

A writer friend of mine has just launched her first book so I thought I would put the details here so that you can rush out and buy it - in fact it is easier than that, you can download it to your Kindle from the comfort of your armchair.
Here are some details of the book:-

Boldre Wood, a vast, wild, impenetrable forest, stretches from the eastern shores of the continent all the way to the west. Undisturbed by man, the forest is home to a miniature race of people who live in the ancient trees. Theirs is a dangerous world, where even the smallest insect is a formidable foe.
Shielded from these dangers by his parents during his early childhood, Barnaby 'Billy' Billicoot is brutally forced to face the reality of his world when he is orphaned at the age of fourteen.
As his mother lies dying from the viral infection raging through Angloak, she tells Billy of her belief that he will go on to make their world a better place. With his mother's dying prophecy ringing in his ears, Billy sets out to learn more about his home, only to be immediately attacked by the vicious stairway-men who rule the great stairs of the tree.
Can one young boy really make such a hostile world a better place, especially when he learns of a new threat facing Boldre Wood, more deadly and terrifying than anything they have ever seen before?

Here is the link to buy the book:-

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Billy-Boldre-Wood-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B007QWEP7E/ref=sr_1_102?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1333435904&sr=1-102

I am sure you will enjoy it!