Another Day in Happy Green Forest

Narrator: It’s another sunny day in Happy Green Forest and Snappy Turtle the postman is out on his rounds.

Snappy is stood next to a large tree with a door in its trunk. There is a red mail box, with Sally Squirrel painted on it in Yellow childish letters, nailed to the tree.

A face appears in the doors glass and looks out inquisitively.

The door opens slowly, and Sally Squirrel wearing a white dressing gown and a towel ontop of her head like a turban peers round it at the Turtle in the post office uniform.


Sally (in a naturally squeaky happy voice) : Whatcha doin’?

Snappy (in a low, dull, slow voice) : Got some mail for ya’

Sally opens the door fully.

Sally(excited) : Yay! I love getting mail! Is it a postcard from my great uncle Vern?

Snappy: I don’t know I’m not allowed to read the mail, s’more than my jobs worth luv

Sally: Is it a letter from my Aunt Marge?

Snappy: S’in a brown envelope … s’probably a bill

Sally (dejected) : Oh can I have it then?

Snappy: Sure can, S’in the bag

Snappy gestures with his head to the heavy bags loaded onto his shell

Sally: I have to get my own mail out of the sack?

Snappy: Yup

Sally: ok … aaaand can I ask why?

Snappy: Sure can



Sally and Snappy stand looking at each other for a long drawn out moment






Sally (annoyed and through gritted teeth) : Why do I have to get my own mail out of your sacks? The mail you are meant to deliver

Snappy: I aint got no hands.

Sally: What?

Snappy: I aint got any hands, can’t pick things up when you aint got no hands.

Snappy waves his flippers at the clearly confused Squirrel.

Sally (slowly): I see so, why didn’t you ring the bell instead of just standing outside until I saw you?

Snappy: Can’t ring the bell

Sally: Because you haven’t got any hands?

Snappy: Nope, I aint got no legs either, can’t stand up to reach it

Snappy turns to waggle his even smaller flippers at her

Sally: So you just walk house to house and wait for the folks of Happy Green Forest to come and get their own mail?

Snappy: S’more of a crawl or maybe a shuffle, but yeah that’s pretty much the long and short of it. I go into the depot, they load me up and off I plod.

Sally: This is ridiculous, Just how did you get this job?

Snappy: I’m on a scheme

Sally: A scheme?

Snappy: Yup I aint allowed to claim jobseekers no more, on account of me being able to work its just peoples discrimination that stops me. It was this or the milk round but ... (sadly and with a loud sigh) I aint no milkman material.

Sally: But with the milk round you get the float!

Snappy: Can’t drive me no float

Sally: No licence?

Snappy: Aint got no hands can’t steer the wheel, aint got no legs can reach the pedals.

Sally stands blinking slowly with a dumfounded look on her face unable to say anything

Narrator: And so another day ends in Happy Green Forest, take care you.

Sally: This is so stupid …

Searching

Search high, search low

Searching won’t find it

Some things you seek, but you can’t find

It comes out of nowhere, it finds you

It has a strength; a strength that is hard to describe

Don’t look for one of the things you can’t find

As two stars collide they form a bond

A bond that is stronger than anyone can imagine

That bond is ours, that bond came without searching

Friendship is the one thing you can’t seek

The feeling of joy I get when I hear your voice

The knowing that I have a confidante

Someone with whom I can share my joy

With whom I can share my sadness

Someone that can’t be replaced

Someone that I would never have found

.

I never looked, but I found

The stars were on my side

Now you are by my side and in my heart

I no longer search and I am happy because found.

Pitch for a childrens tv show

Happy Green Forest is a magical place , where all the animals live in harmony every day is special and everybody has a song in their heart.

Narrator: Today is a special day in Happy Green Forest and look! Here come our two favourite bunnies to tell us why ….

Two rabbits, one white and wearing a purple dress the other Grey and wearing a tweed suit come bounding over the hills. These are Carla Hopkins and Beuford Bunny the stars of the happy green forest show.

Carla: “The sky is green, and the grass is grey
Look out world its opposite day!”

Beuford: “I loooove opposite day!”

C: “Do you? Or are you being funny?”

B: “I’m not being funny, I love opposite day, it’s not boring or tedious or annoying or anything!”

C: “Really?”

B: “Yes honestly, its fun, fun, fun, fun, fun”

C: “I’m confused; you normally don’t like things like this”

B: “Well I love opposite day, I love telling all the animals in happy green forest how much I like them, Take Postman Snappy, I think it’s a brilliant idea having the slowest animal in the Forest deliver the mail ”

C: “I think you are being mean, opposite day is meant to be fun”

B: “Ah thank you, that’s the nastiest thing anyone has ever said to me”

C: “you’re welcome … wait, I mean it, you are being mean! … Opposite day is a fun day, Look I am wearing socks on my hands” (waves hands at Beuford)

B: “So hands are the opposite of feet? That makes perfect sense”

C: (fighting back tears) “Beuford Bunny you are a mean hearted old thing”

B: ”Carla Hopkins please don’t cry I love you bouncy happiness it always makes my day”

C: “Why do you have to spoil everything? Remember Pirate day?”

B: “Yarr”

C: “You made Mrs Hoot walk the plank, you know Owls can’t swim”

B: “She was a scurvy wench”

C: (sobbing) “You always take things too far!”

B: (mocking) “You always take things too far”

C: (serious) “It’s not copying day, you even spoil that, I hate you Beuford Bunny I HATE YOU”


Narrator: And so the sun sets on another day in Happy Green Forest, see you soon children and take care you.

Beuford: (mocking) Take care you!

Insomnia

I just can't sleep again.
The mush in my head is unforgiving.
I am thinking too much.

I just can't sleep again.
Why is everything magnified in the night?
I am thinking too much.

I just can't sleep again.
All those words we said replay over.
I am thinking too much.

I just can't sleep again.
I roll over and look at him.
I am thinking too much.

I just can't sleep again.
Visions of him committing the ultimate betrayal.
I am thinking too much.

I just can't sleep again.
Far too many tears I have cried.
I am thinking too much.

I just can't sleep again.
He opens his eyes and smiles lovingly.
I am thinking too much.

I vow to sleep again.
My heart melts, I know he's mine.
I close my eyes tight.

Short story 50 word limit

Haven’t slept in days
Haven’t shaved in weeks
Lips are dry and cracked through lack of fluid
Stomach aches from its need for food
Fingernails are bitten down to the quick
Can’t rest, they’re coming
I see them in the shadows
They're everywhere
When you see them you’ll know too

The Worst/Best Super Hero EVER.

Behold! For it is I Antics Man!

With my faithful sidekick Vaguely Surreal Lad!

Together we fight crime and hunt evil, armed with my razor sharp wit and seemingly unending collection of non sequiturs and Vaguely Surreal Lads total lack of logic and reason.

We are almost unstoppable!

I say almost unstoppable, I have the attention span of a Gnat; do Gnats know they have short attention spans?

Or are they just content buzzing about all

“oooh look a field”
“ooooh look a field”
“ooooh look a field”

What is it about a Cows arse that is so attractive?

Goldfish are meant to have short memories as well but I think that’s a blessing really when you live in a tiny bowl and the only form of company is a plastic skull that blows bubbles, still at least you could do Hamlet.

Don’t be stupid it would never work, fish haven’t got hands they couldn’t hold the skull for the “Alas poor Yorick …” Bit.

So yeah anyway what was I saying?

Ummm as you can see Vaguely Surreal Lad doesn’t wear a mask to hide his identity he says its important people know who he is now, so he wears a disguise when he is going about his everyday business so as to not detract from his well known crime fighting alter ego.

Last week we caught the notorious crime baron Kevin “The Little Chef” Phillips, who had the disgusting plan of poisoning our great nations drivers with tiny portions of overpriced, over cooked foods.

On the way to his lair, why do villains always have lairs? And they are always mad, why just for once can’t we have a perfectly sane criminal who lives in a flat in central London, he wants to move out of the city but he feels the commute would be too much for him.

So yes fear us, for we will catch you eventually!

Grow up

All my life I have been told to grow up, it was the ex wife’s favourite put down but I have had it from teachers, my parents and once from the kind lady at the job centre who didn’t like the idea of me looking for a job that was fun.

Maybe its time you grew up?

Why?

I like to have fun, I like to giggle at cartoons and comics I know all the words to the Spongebob Squarepants theme tune and I think its important that comic book films get all the little details right.

I can talk to children on their level about things they like not just down to them and treat them as inferior people just because they are young.

I don’t sit staring blank faced at the soaps and I don’t care how “your” football team did at the weekend or who is in the final of the X factor.

I like to read actual books not trashy magazines about celebrities and what they are wearing.
I can quote Voltaire yet you think knowing the starting line up for England’s football team twenty years before you were born is somehow important.

I know that dna is Deoxyribonucleic acid, you know that it features a lot on Jeremy Kyle so must be important. I also know how a lie detector works and why it can’t be used as such conclusive proof

I know that when I die, my heart will stop beating, my brain will stop sending and receiving messages, I will be buried and my body will rot in short I will cease to be, you chose to believe that you will die, leave your body and live in the clouds with a bearded man who has been about forever and made everything.

I believe in free speech, I’m against censorship in all its forms (why hasn’t anybody from the BBFC ever gone on a rampage and killed and raped and maimed?) You believe what you read in the sport.

The only limits on what I think and do are my imagination your limits are scuppered with things like “I can’t do that I’m 26 years old now”

Life is for living and age is irrelevant maybe its time you grew up and realised this?

An Ending. A Beginning.

They sit in the bedroom after an argument, the air is thick with tension, they can’t look at each other. They both love each other, or at least they think so, so how could it have come to this- a showdown in their own three bed semi in the suburbs. Fifteen years of marriage, but is it just something they’re doing for the kids? Is it easier to stay together than to split? Is that what has got them to this point? He thinks he’s in love with a girl from work. That girl gets him, she’s smart and funny, she likes the same films, art, music as he does. He’s never shared cultural tastes with his wife, and that’s important to him- it wasn’t when they met, started going out, slipped into engagement, had the fairy tale wedding, when the first child came into the world, when the second came into the world. Or wasn’t it? At some point during all of that it became very apparent to him that it WAS important. But when?

He’d already had an affair several years prior to this, but in that case it had nothing to do with music, less to do with films, and exactly nothing to do with art. She was nothing more than an easy lay- someone who wanted him, and wanted nothing from him other than sex. He was working away from home alot, and his wife’s sex drive had diminished almost to nothing, but he was still a man, he still had needs, and she came along at precisely the right time. Or was it the wrong time. His wife had never found out about what had happened- it had only gone on for a few weeks before the guilt had started to eat him up. It was only when he began to lose his erection mid way through the sex that it occurred to him that the guilt was lurking in the back of his mind. His wife was a good women. Sure, they’d grown apart somewhat, but she’d always been faithful, she was an excellent mother, and kept an exceptionally tidy home, despite working herself. As wives go he’d found a good one, and despite how they’d got to this point, there was still a part of him that loved her. It was that last thought that was coursing through his mind on the last occasion he’d met up with her. She’d acted distraught when he’d broken the news that he was calling it off, but he knew she was seeing someone else anyway, so she’d soon get over it. Damn, how the hell did he end up risking his marriage- his LIFE- with such a slut. He meant nothing to her, nothing other than a handy fuck and free meals in nice restaurants.

So he finished it. He went home, he held his wife, she was glad of the attention, but was surprised by it nonetheless. The man she was married to went to work that morning, but the man she fell in love with came home that night. And that night they shared some of the most intimate moments of their marriage. Suddenly he was an attentive lover, where before he was looking for the means to an end. He paid attention to her, and in return she paid attention to him. She lost herself to the feeling, to the moment, in a way that she hadn’t done for years. And afterwards, when he went for a shower, she laid in bed and wept. Then she outright cried. She cried with relief.

Of course, it wasn’t a complete surprise to her. She knew he’d been seeing that slut. Despite what he thought, she had friends too. Friends that he didn’t know that dined in the same nice restaurants. She vaguely recalled once meeting her at his firm’s christmas party, she seemed nice enough- perhaps too flirty around him, but he was an attractive man. She knew though. She knew what was going on, and even if they hadn’t started their sordid little affair at that point, she knew it was going to happen sooner or later. She hoped to God that it didn’t. She hoped to God that he’d manage to stop himself, but it seemed that God had stopped listening to her, so what could she do but wait for it to happen, and deal with it at the time.

So it had happened. She didn’t say anything at the time, what would have been the point? They would have argued, they’d have fought, she would have driven him into her arms, and then all would be lost.

Of course, she blamed herself for it. If she had been a more attentive wife, instead of trying to be a perfect mother, perhaps his head would never have been turned. If she’d have offered all the she had, and more, this would never have happened. And so, on nights when was away on business, she would lay in bed and cry herself to sleep, huge sobs that left her without breath, fearful that he would not come home again, that he had finally found the resolve to leave her. But that day never came. After only several weeks of the uncertainty, he had come home, and the way he held her told her that she was safe once more.

But here they were again, in the very same situation they had been in before. Only this time she hadn’t seen it coming. Oh no, he’d been very good at keeping his thoughts and emotions in check. He wanted to think things through in his mind, he wanted to be sure that what he was doing was the right thing. He hadn’t embarked on an affair, not this time, he knew that he would only end up fucking it up again, and coming back through a misplaced sense of loyalty. He had gotten extremely close to her this time. She was younger, by some margin, but it didn’t matter, because age was irrelevant at his age. It was thoughts and experiences that were important to him now, and she had plenty of both. In all honesty, he wasn’t sure that she even loved him, but she was his muse of sorts. He knew they got on well, and it had cleared his eyes for him. He had been bogged down in a conventional marriage for too long now, and whether she wanted him or not, it was a good chance for him to escape.

But he was faced with a problem. He didn’t want to ruin the friendship he had with her. And so all of his calculations of the possible outcomes were based on assumptions. Despite everything, he at least had a secure life at the moment. He knew that his wife still loved him, she loved him dearly, as did his sons, his most proud achievements. And these were what had stopped him leaving sooner. In some respects he resented them, although he realised exactly how foolish that was. They had only been married for six months when she fell pregnant with the eldest, and the second had come four years later, fourteen and ten respectively, and they were dictating his life without them even realising. And yes, he did resent them. If they hadn’t come along, he would have been long gone, but he hung around because that’s what you’re supposed to do isn’t it? You’re supposed to stay together for the kids, no matter how loveless your marriage, because that’s what happens. The kids grow up happy and well adjusted, and you can be proud that you made them what they are. It doesn’t matter that inside you’re screaming.

But now, now it was different. The boys were getting older. They would surely understand about the concept of love, and how it’s not always straightforward. Sometimes people fall out of love. They would be upset, that was for certain- as far as he could tell, they had no suspicions, Mum and Dad were still happy enough. The thought of telling them was the one thing that was killing him. He knew his wife would be upset if he left, but when it came down to it, they didn’t really owe each other anything. He would pay his share towards the kids, they could sell the house and start afresh. But telling the boys wouldn’t be so easy. He was aware that what was in his mind had the potential to destroy his relationship with them, which, although not Hollywood perfect, was still pretty steady. He took them to the football every now and then, gave them their pocket money and helped with their homework when he could, but all of that could be irreparably damaged if they chose to see that he was about to betray and upset their mother, who they doted on. And that was what worried him most.

Of course, things weren’t right, she was starting to suspect that he was lusting after another woman again. It seemed that nothing she could do was enough to keep him. Well, if that was the case, then she was damn well not going to get an overhaul and become a Stepford wife just to keep him. She was sick of it, and she was starting to snap. She didn’t know what the hell he wanted from her. She cooked his dinner every day, she kept his house clean and tidy, making sure that all of his shirts were washed and ironed. She did everything for that bastard, and she was getting tired. What was the old saying, ‘You should be a goddess in the kitchen, and a slut in bedroom’, well, she’d tried, but she just wasn’t as into sex as he was. She enjoyed the intimacy, whereas he wanted things to be as kinky as he could get her to do. She liked making love with the light off because it accentuated the feeling, and made it more erotic, whereas he wanted the lights on so that he could see what porn moves he was pulling. She had never been interested in anal, but she had given it a go for him. She hated it, it hurt like hell and was pretty much the most degrading thing she’d ever done, and he KNEW that, but still he wanted it. She knew she didn’t have the best figure in the world- Christ, she’d borne two bloody children, how was she supposed to look like a supermodel? But still he insisted that she dress up in slutty underwear, which she only did for him, to keep him happy.

And it seemed that none of that was worth a damn to him.

And it seemed that nothing he thought was worth damn to her.

So he stood up, and without a word grabbed a suitcase. She sat there in silence while he stuffed his clothes into the case. He spoke only once before he left- to confirm that he was sorry for how things had turned out, and that he hoped she understood. He promised that he would call in the morning to speak to the children, turned, and left.

She sat on the bed, listening until she could no longer hear his car engine. She got up and walked into the boys bedrooms, tucked them in gently and kissed them both so very tenderly on their foreheads, and went back into her room. She put on her pyjamas, turned out the light, sank into her bed- a bed that seemed bigger tonight than it had ever been- and stared at the ceiling. There were no tears tonight.

They would come, she knew that.

But not tonight.

At Night

As I sit here, at 3:50 am, I’m drawn to wondering what it is I like so much about the wee small hours.

I know that I should have been asleep three hours ago, but I don’t care. Common sense dictates that I should go to bed earlier, so that I can wake up earlier and enjoy more of my day. The problem with common sense, however, is that it isn’t always right. It just so happens that between two and five in the morning is my favourite time of the day.

I suppose it’s easy to see why. There’s no one to bother me, for a start, and for some reason, music always sounds better at night. It doesn’t matter what I’m listening to, I can guarantee that it will take on more meaning to me when I know that everyone else in the house is sleeping, and I know I’m the only here at this time, at this place, to enjoy it. Squarepusher, although somewhat overbearing during the day, at night becomes a thing of beauty.

At 3:50 am, it doesn’t matter whether you’ve paid your phone bill, or whether you have a looming deadline. None of these tasks can be completed, so there’s no sense in getting upset about them. The only thing you can do right now is kick back, drift away into another world, and let your mind wander in time with the music you’ve chosen as your soundtrack.

But do you know what the best part is? You don’t wake up when it’s dark and cold, wishing you could still be in bed, and dreading the journey to work. When you finally rise, it’s sunny and warm outside, and the world is vibrant and awake. There’s no morning depression for you, just an inner joy that today could be the best day of your life so far.

You get up, you see your family, you see your friends, you spend a delightful evening, surrounded by people you respect, admire, and perhaps love- for love is something that you get to spend more time contemplating in the middle of the night. And the best bit is that you’re doing it on your terms. You know that at some point around midnight, these people will drift away to their common sense sleeping patterns, but your night is only just beginning.

And you smile, knowing that once again you will be alone with your thoughts.

Half Full/Half Empty

Half full, or half empty?

Does it really matter? Does it make the slightest bit of difference?

“Ooh, you just said the glass is half empty, that’s makes you a pessimist. I ALWAYS say the glass is half full, I always have. That makes me an optimist.”

Wonderful, you’re an optimist, you see the brighter side of things. You see refreshment where others see a resource dwindling. But does that make you a better human? Does that make you the second coming of whatever false deity you believe in? Will your life actually be any better, or simply more full of disappointment because you didn’t see the shitty way that you’re treated, until the last minute, because you were too fucking blind to take any fucking notice.

Will your life be any better than mine, where I’m hardened to the shit that the world throws at us? I understand that life isn’t all flowers and fluffy bunnies, I’m prepared for the shit storm that’s just over the horizon. I’m not going to drive myself mad wishing that everything would just be a little happier.

Well, because of that, I’ve trained myself to always see the glass as half full, despite being naturally pessimistic, and seeing the bad in everyone first.

Kind of pissed on your chips there didn’t I?