Buy ganja Pagudpud

__________________________

📍 Verified store!

📍 Guarantees! Quality! Reviews!

__________________________

▼▼ ▼▼ ▼▼ ▼▼ ▼▼ ▼▼ ▼▼

▲▲ ▲▲ ▲▲ ▲▲ ▲▲ ▲▲ ▲▲

Buy ganja Pagudpud

To survive he must depend on his wits, his courage and his enormous regulation moustache. Read it here. Having lost his master spy to assassination by scratch card, General Sir Eugene Nicks must lead the charge against the uppity indigenes of the savage and mysterious casbah known in the local lingo as Somerstown. When I tell people that I still think of Doni as my best friend they laugh at me. The important thing is that I still love him in spite of what happened and whatever he now thinks of me. I first met Doni when we were 10 years old on a trip to Saud Beach, Pagudpud my family had organized for the long Bonifacio Day weekend. What brought us together that day was our distaste for playing with the other kids. I guess it was natural that we should get talking. We decided to slip down to the beach, aware of the adults watching us from the picnic area where they were cooking barbecue on big black grills. The aim of the game was to throw a coconut far enough into the ocean so that it would be sucked away by the tide forever. In reality, though, our young arms were barely strong enough to pick up the lead-heavy fruit, much less pitch it beyond the first few meters of gleaming water. On the contrary, we found this pitifully one-sided battle of man — or rather boy — versus nature hilarious; after three rounds of the game, we were contorted with laughter. Doni started doing this mad little dance while holding one coconut between his legs and balancing another on his head. I have no idea what the adults made of this. His jagged brow and forced half-smile spoke of self-consciousness, even shame. We sat together on the bus back to Cubao. I marveled at everything outside so much that Doni asked me if I were in fact a foreign tourist and not the Filipino I looked and sounded like. I commented on the candy colors of colonial houses and the lanterns swinging from domed chapels, saying that I could imagine the ghosts of Spanish conquistadors roaming such places at night. Doni nodded and said that that would be a great premise for a videogame. He then started talking about many of the videogames that were popular at the time, analyzing their design, playability, graphics and generic traits with a technical knowledge that was truly precocious. Not all that interested in the subject, I semi-listened to him, just about staying in the conversation with the occasional murmur of agreement. I was more interested in the scenery, in the low-hanging stratum of clouds flecking the horizon like sea-spume. When night had filled in the day, the sparks of peasant fires burst out of that same horizon, illuminating a space in the darkness above. With the same authority, Doni discussed other aspects of technology such as his favorite cars, motorbikes and airplanes. We were college freshmen, Doni majoring in computer science at Ateneo, me studying art at New York University. There would never be envy or competition between us. In the late evening, Doni started talking about Ateneo. I have always been naturally upbeat — certainly compared to him — so I offered a pep-talk. Give it time. Doni immediately cheered up. Things felt just like they had ten years ago. However, this time there was to be one crucial difference: there would be a winner of the Coconut Game, and the winner would be me. I gathered a coconut to my chest and heaved it high over my head like a powerlifter. At that moment, the breeze that had been so soft against our cheeks accelerated, stirring twigs from dead camp fires into mini cyclones. I strained my eyes to watch the moonlight fragment across the freshly-disturbed water. With a Neanderthal roar, I hurled the coconut with all my might. It was too dark for Doni or I to see where it landed. Doni took out his torch, set it to full beam and shone it over a wide section of the sea. It looks like we have a winner. I met his palm with kid-like enthusiasm. Early the next morning, the telephone in our hotel room rang. Doni fought through his hangover to answer it. The volume at the other end was so loud that I heard everything the caller said. New hope, new challenges. Let God be your guide and make your life wonderful. Sir, do you have time to discuss the bible with me? Fuck off. Later on I went into the hotel restaurant for breakfast and Doni was there eating tapsilog over his laptop. A lot of time passed with nothing but silence between us, our fingers doing the talking to an ersatz social circle. I soon grew tired of this so I went down to the beach to swim and talk to real people. Thus he found himself with a lot of spare time on his hands, not having to get up in the morning, doing as he pleased. He revealed to me in his emails that he was filling this newfound leisure time by doing drugs, both at nightclubs in Malate, and at home, alone, playing online games. Almost everyone I knew was into that scene. Then things changed dramatically for Doni. His Dad suffered a debilitating stroke and Doni, as the only son, was expected to take over as CEO of the company. I knew this was stressing him out because he felt resentment towards him from certain employees who had been close to his Dad. His emails became less frequent and I took this to mean he had less time on his hands. I find it more relaxing than Boracay. I wanted to take the bus so I could sketch the scenery. Doni disagreed, the techno-snob in him now demanding that we fly, especially as we both now had the means to do it. I accepted without protest. We flew into Laoag airport and rode a taxi through the city and into the countryside. We were reminded that it was still off-season by the dripping walls of stucco beauty salons, the rotten complexion of electricity poles leaning at crazy angles and the moisture on the hides of caribous lounging in fields. We checked into a clean beach hut with air-con and a hot shower. That night we rented a picnic booth and cooked bangus, spring chicken and Porterhouse steaks on the barbecue. It goes without saying that plenty of beer was also consumed. At first, Doni was talkative and entertaining. Much later on, a party of Ateneo students joined us after recognizing Doni as the older cousin of a friend of theirs. It was me who had given them the invite while Doni had shaken his head very subtly. I thought some socializing would do him good. I was wrong. He spent the rest of the evening saying nothing and hardly touching his beer. I tried to give him opportunities to re-enter the conversation, asking him to tell our new friends about himself or at least just tell a joke. It was awkward to say the least. I recall now that Doni was looking sicker and sicker as the night wore on, his cheeks contracting behind his cheekbones, his sweat-sodden face changing color from red to white and back, over and over again. At two am, when there were only 3 of us still up, he excused himself with barely a word and without looking at me. I made a rolling motion with my hands, not unlike a gesture a basketball referee makes to signify traveling. But inside I was scared. What was wrong with him? In the morning, I persuaded him to walk down to the beach with me to play the Coconut Game. When we got there he changed his mind. He started sweating. So we did, under the fulsome canopies of the palma brava trees. While I waited for Doni to speak, I looked first at the sand beneath me, then to where the tide whipped the shore and then to the great vast ocean itself, reaching out uninterrupted until Taiwan to the north, Hainan Island to the west and Mexico to the east. The land and the sea: these permanent, timeless features upon which all manner of day-trippers, surfers, sunbathers came, here today, gone tomorrow. But the land and the sea never went away, never changed. As I mulled this over, I noticed Doni staring at me with wide eyes. I lost count of the number of times I asked him what on Earth he was talking about. While he went on like this, he spread his legs and arms as far as they would go, so that his posture was as wide as his eyes already were. He relaxed his limbs back to their normal position. He wiped the sweat from his face. You keep saying that people want to know about you. What people? That could have been someone snooping around. I can deal with it. My Mac got screwed up by a virus the other day. In an email you sent me the day before that, you mentioned a virus. I had to think about that for a moment. His squint grew even more intense. It told me that he was manifestly not joking. I felt like bursting into tears. What evidence do you have for that? I could feel the tears racing towards their ducts. I wanted to run because I was too proud and masculine to cry in front of him. But this never happened. This was the most chilling thing he said to me during the whole saga. I had no reason to come into your garden. If I had, your guard would have blown my head off with his shotgun. And you know damn well that I know nothing about computers. Now get real, Doni. He stood up too and moved his hand from his chin to his forehead. Had some bad, bad luck. Please, Carlos. That night Saud Beach was hit by a heavy storm. The foundations of our beach hut shook. The thunder was deafening. More than once that night, I feared that lightning would burn our hut. Doni slept through the whole thing. In the morning I was awoken by the seething chirrups of frogs and the slosh of water seeping under the front door. This whole area of the beach had been flooded and when it came to check-out time, we had to paddle our way to the road, ankle-deep in murky water. Doni followed me. While I was standing at the sink, freshening up, he stared at my reflection in the mirror in that wide-eyed way of his. No-one else was in the CR but us. Last night. In the mirror. In the hut. Very smart. He side stepped away from me and the mirror and put his hands over his eyes as if the sun had just risen from the sink. This time I could not suppress my anger. I shoved him in the chest so that his back was up against the wall. Will you stop qualifying everything? If you are hinting that I was watching you through the fucking mirror then just be fucking man enough to come out and say it. As your best friend I am begging you. Get some help. I tried to take my mind off things by watching the clouds, but I found myself unintentionally projecting my inner angst onto this bizarre terrain, discerning in that malleable whiteness the smooth sloping topography of Saud Beach. Then, half-sleeping, I saw the anguished face of Doni etched into a vast cumulus like the Presidents in Mount Rushmore. She told me that Doni was probably too far down the line of psychosis to heal himself. I thought this attitude to madness was, well, mad. I thought if I called Doni we might just argue, so I sent him an email restating how much I cared about him and pleading with him to come see my friend. I checked his Facebook account. There had been no activity since before our last trip to Pagudpud. I started to worry. I called his house and his Mom picked up the phone. He never did. A week later I called again. I decided to drive round to his home in Pasig. What was going on? I felt like pushing past her and charging the front door down. I had a right to know how my best friend was. I calmed myself down. There could be a million other reasons for the Salazars to want their privacy right now. Perhaps I should just tell Juanita everything that had happened between me and Doni recently. If his condition worsened and he turned dangerous, the people he lived with, the people closest to him, ought to know. But then again, what if his family did already know? If that was the case, what had they done to him? Locked him up here or someplace else? Furthermore, my talking to Juanita might be construed as gossip and this could bring such shame, such a loss of face to the Salazars that I dared not think about it. I finally decided to get back in my car and go home. I was shocked that he answered the phone this time. Is everything all right? I will remember it for the rest of my life. It frightened the shit out of me. You know me, Carlos, and my weird sense of humor, right? Not after what you said to me. You need to see a professional. Can you imagine me in a club? Mutual friends have seen you. Look Doni, my oldest friend, my best friend, you are a man of reason, of science. Just a few weeks ago you accused me of spying on you, of trespassing on your property and setting up some surveillance system. You had no evidence for that but you seemed pretty serious about it. They can give you the all-clear and I will be the one shown to be crazy, or to have been spying on you, or whatever. I have nothing to hide. Do you? When I first came to New York I had these panic attacks on the subway. My doctor told me this was due to me getting stressed out by a strange new place. I saw a counselor a few times and I beat it. No big deal. That was the last time I had any contact with Doni whatsoever. I resigned myself to having done the best I could to help him. It was in his hands now. I only hoped that my psychiatrist friend was wrong and he might conquer his demons by himself. After I returned to New York I asked those mutual friends Eddy and Buck to let me know if they saw or heard anything about him. The irony of me now getting these guys to keep tabs on Doni was not lost on me! After a week or so, Buck sent me a MySpace message about a rumor that had originated in the Salazar family business. Literally the day after this revelation, Eddy sent me a link to an Ateneo alumni blog post. It stated that Doni was missing feared dead, last sighted alone on Saud Beach drinking vodka. I thought that was odd because Doni always hated vodka. Anyway, this post went on to say that that night there had been a big storm, I guessed like the one that had struck on the final night of our last trip together. His parents had given it 48 hours and then reported his disappearance to the police. I felt physically ill reading this. What if Doni had ended it all by playing a final, fatal variation on the Coconut Game? I called Laoag City Police Station for more information. They had never heard of a Doni Salazar. The puzzle was finally solved when Buck sent me another message later in the day revealing that the blog post was some sick hoax with no foundation in truth. It had now been removed by the site manager. Apparently these kinds of prank are widespread, with the deaths of celebrities erroneously reported and so on. Their success depends upon people not bothering to fact-check them against other media like newspapers. And why would they? Everyone uses the internet now, it is our prime source of information about everything. So at least he was alive. I suppose had Doni really given himself up to the tide, it would have been too apt an ending to the story. In real life, he will live a life socially paralyzed by fear, rarely leaving his home, his parents unwilling to get him help because they grew up at a time when there was such a stigma around mental illness. As I said before, I remain hopeful. I will continue to regard him as my best friend as an expression of that hope. He is looking for the signs. All he needs to see are oddities or inconsistencies in the city he is so familiar with. The first day of the new millennium seems like a good time for it to happen. Will the signs be hidden behind the quotidian just to make things more interesting? Or will they be gaudily visible like the gold and green deities on pimped-up Delhi rickshaws? He has to be eagle-eyed. Plotting some course must surely be inappropriate. Instead he trusts in his instinct which pulls him this way and that way like a rodeo bull. The destinations smack of bipolar disorder. Wherever he goes he is surrounded by the melioristic skyline of rocketships licking the stratosphere. He moves in grey-suited anonymity, fedora forbidding positive ID. There might also be parties whose interest it is to preserve the status quo, to stop him detecting the explosive truth. He stands outside a luridly overpriced bar listening to the sotto offbeats and crosswind melodies of the gamelan. Nothing unusual there. The silicon god boxes to whom spotty acolytes prostrate themselves. He notes down the first possibility: the roof-hugging rollercoaster in Time Square is out of order, a first as far as he can remember. What can that mean? The correct thing to do right now is to listen and absorb. Near there a huge screen shows trailers for US action films all starring people who look distinctly like nightclub bouncers. High above in the sky the trails of aeroplanes almost form a cross but on second glance they are more crooked like a pair of scissors. He joins a crowd near Maharajelela station to look at a brilliant aura that has formed around the sun. He is disappointed to be told that this is an optical effect of ice crystals in tropospheric clouds. He wonders if the animals might know something. He once heard a spaced-out Dutchman talk on a relaxation CD about how whales have evolved a more complex language than humans and a more complete understanding of reality. In the zoo he studies the backs of cobras as they sleep coiled up in their tanks. An obvious destination — maybe too obvious — is the National Mosque. Might the old creeds and their talk of fate, divine intervention, providence and submission still have some relevance? He strolls between the precise, star-shaped fountains until he reaches the entrance. He has missed the public visiting time. It is conveniently close to the National Museum of History where he muses over the succession of maps made by explorers who came to region over the years. This was a kind of reality-making of course, and usually to strict ideological spec. The early cartographers consciously downsized India and Africa. Those globes on European desktops were always for closet megalomaniacs — touch and spin your very own Earth! A giant inflatable grouper fish promoting a cellphone company bobs along the roof of the new media plaza outside Bukit Bintang. Smaller fish, buoyed by helium, are released from the backs of transit vans and crowd together before taking leave of the ground forever, probably to be found days later deflated and wrapped round the blade of a helicopter. Some referential tuning fork is struck deep inside him. Fish multiplying. The signs might be going old-school. From it he can see the operations of perhaps the greatest world religion playing out on a big screen. Sculpted shamen work their magic and conduct time-honoured rituals inducing ecstasy in onlookers. He shoots, he scores! There are peculiar shops selling weapons like numchucks, silver-plated blowpipes and replica handguns. Traders offer him superhero T-shirts, military-style binoculars, belts, cigarette cases, intricate pen knives, scale models of the Very Important Towers. An Indian guy seizes him by the hand, makes as if he is about to perform reflexology but instead studies his palm. He keeps on through the afternoon. His route ends up a formless scribble on the map: next up is Jalan Tamingsari, then a swing back to KTM Station, then southwest to the Lake Gardens, a radical swerve towards the Merdeka Stadium, on to Jalan Davis, Jalan Raja Chulan and then a leap back into the core of the city, back to Chinatown and the Colonial District. Inner critics question his choice of location. Why not Angkor or Borobodur; some place sparkling with mystical tradition? But the new signs, if they are to be relevant to the modern mindset, are more likely to appear in a modern milieu. Night creeps up slowly in this eternal summer, so there is always a long intermission before darkness proper. He sees the omnipotent shine of the golden arches — there must be a record number in this city — and the guiding star of a sportswear advert projected against an office block. Pizzas and footballs and chopsticks: the hieroglyphics of seduction. A neon terrain of leisure lifestyle designed by the West, adapted by the East and known by almost everyone on Earth. A small part of him is jealous of those who can submit to all this with blissful ignorance, those for whom cosmology ends at the supermarket till. At five minutes to twelve he returns to his Chinese hotel where twosomes can rent rooms on an hourly basis. His quest to understand the signs forced him to change his life some time ago, to cut of the ties most normal people retain. Thus all week his phone has been beeping a symphony. Pleas by text message and mobile phone. He half-listens, half-cares. The messages are distant, unreal. These things will not be the decoys that throw him off the scent of the signs. He wipes the dust off the mirror and is shocked by his changed physiognomy. The key features — lips, nose, chin — have lost their association with one another and appear scavenged from different heads. The skin is the same though, its creamy ambiguity an outward reflection of the cultural slippage and identity confusion that set him on this chase in the first place. He needs to relax himself, eject the tension of the day. He strips down to his underpants now so worn that one of his testicles hangs out of a big hole in them. He passes a pythonesque shit into the toilet and admires its girth and length for some time. He comes on precisely the stroke of midnight as the fireworks are launched and the crowd goes untamed. The camera pulls back to show helicopters dropping powder paint in the colours of the national flag. People in the local dress of each state release balloons which are blown into an arcing pattern by the vagaries of the breeze. Presently he slips into bed. He will murder to dissect the truth of the signs which will only appear to him on their own terms. He must listen and absorb. But he has no choice when it comes to his dreams. Wheels of life spinning. Sacred pillars throbbing with significance. Arks and saints and sinners. A garuda with wings of fire eating a wild-eyed snake. Monkey tricksters. Deities manifested in all the elements. The signs continue to elude him into the new year and he enters a dark period of fretting over how they will appear. He needs to experience a major miracle, or a major disaster, something he could never conceive of himself. Which could be taken down as evidence? He starts to take out his frustrations on the unsuspecting. He makes a beast of himself. Back in that Chinatown food court he steals the tin from a beggar on crutches and sprints cackling into the night. He hangs around outside hotels to meet tourists who are about to go trekking into the interior. He gives them a few phrases in an entirely made-up language of his own devising. The schadenfreude of this keeps him mildly entertained and his mind off the profound questions, the signs. But he is soon thinking about them again…. Ten months later he is sat in a bar watching an audacious act of violence against a symbol of Western prosperity. Alcohol has always produced one or other of two feelings in him: pathetic empathy or icy neutrality. Tonight it is neutrality. A practical military victory was probably deemed less useful than a terrifying image, a sign…. His head zips back to the drummer beneath Petronas. Had that been a prediction and therefore a clue that he was looking out for the right things? The years go by, bringing with them more potential signs. There is more terror closer to home along the border with Thailand and in nearby Bali. An old schoolfriend loses his life in the latter incident. Then a cataclysm that could have been from the apocalyptic phase of a holy book — the tsunami that mercilessly sinks islands, drowns whole tribes. He is sure he would never have conjured so much suffering if he controlled the universe. The human subject might interpret the external world with its cognitive models but that is something quite different to creating the external world from scratch. So much responsibility there! So he plays with the scary notion that maybe there is a higher power and it is irrational and barbaric. But the alternative theory is scarier: that irrationality and barbarism is the result of random chance. That night he has the most vivid dream of his life. He watches himself roam an endless volcanic landscape. He calls out but only echoes answer him. He looks to the sky which is devoid of a sun, a moon or stars. Only a murky light allows him to see the scabrous ground underfoot. It is a sad, desperate place and he is compelled to cry desperately. His tears fall to the ground and become puddles which expand until they become lakes which in turn form tributaries and rivers. At the edges of the water he begins to sculpt the sand into little hills. They grow into vast mountains and craggy gorges and swooning valleys. He looks up again and now a sun has appeared and he feels warmth and the new world is illuminated in a rich range of colours. He urinates and the sky follows his lead, lavishing life-giving liquid upon the landscape. Crops sprout at an amazing speed as do herbs and flowers and trees. Soon there is a kingdom of animals. Feeling wholly satisfied he watches himself turn slowly translucent like a failing hologram, until he disappears altogether in a shroud of steam. The steam disperses upward into the atmosphere. The next day he decides to take his destiny into his own hands. He quits all his responsibilities in this city — not a difficult process — and travels to Java where the bus takes him through rutted slums with birdcages hanging from their barbed wire balconies, where laundry is drooped over power cables and babies sleep in hammocks made from old flags. There is an all-pervading smell of smoke. The countryside beyond cheers him up a little with its dramatic scenes of workers gathering sticks from manure-blackened fields sustained by groaning irrigation machines set in stone circles. He thinks about how different this is to home, how there is so much variety in the world. As soon as he gets to Bali he notices a better quality of light which shows off the lushness of the vegetation, organized vaguely by rows of canes and streaming white flags to ward off pests. People in straw hats fish in the marshy lagoons carved out by low tide movements. The gentle, stained-glass sea seems to be the backdrop wherever he goes, it is always the same, always there. With little or no regulation the traffic flows across bridges, down country lanes, along beachfronts. The vehicles nudge one another for pole position, a scooter sliding between a bemo and an oncoming farm truck, an old Mercedes cutting off a motorcade carrying Hindu youths in head bands. But there are no accidents, no hard feelings. Everything goes on. Everything is as it looks. Everything is as it should be. He arrives at a new, good, simple life. He will work at a beachfront bar, drink beer, smoke ganja, swim, soak up the sun and not think. He will unclutter his mind of meaning. He will accept the reality of appearances. That must mean that they will be destroyed by nuclear weapons. At some point in the 21 st century — the precise date is irrelevant — a man by the name of Bob J. Firbank was elected President of theUnited States. The motivation for his candidacy did not stem from an interest in politics nor from a desire for greatness. Bob did not have much of an ego to accommodate and was indifferent to the banal trappings of power. He was not lured to the White House by the perfumed scent of nubile interns. Neither was he turned on by the prospect of in-house catering and luxury furnishings. Rather, he had made a bet forty years previous with members of his college fraternity while on a hunting trip in New England. As the booze flowed, the conversation moved from girls to baseball to drinking then working out, before finally settling on politics. They had reached that argumentative stage of drunkenness; everyone believed they could set the world to rights. Frampton Keppel, whose dad was a hotshot libel lawyer from Chicago, mentioned that no less than twenty-eight former Presidents of the United States had once been members of their particular fraternity. A warm gust of pride swept through the young men. After an awestruck silence, Calvin Hooper, heir to the Dexco fortune, began to wax despondent about the general state of the nation. He warned that foreign countries were becoming increasingly hostile to the United States and would, within their lifetimes, unite to destroy it. The portents were clear enough. Old allies were deserting to form regional power blocs such as the European Common Market. Even public opinion in the so-called unaligned parts of the world was unfriendly to US aims and policies. Don Hartley, an economics major who was known for his religious zeal, protested that any good Christian need not worry about this. Come what may in this life, the kingdom of heaven was assured to every clean-living American. Bravado soon superseded reasoned debate. Bob joshingly posited a scenario where a US President pursues such an objective, and was shocked to find his friends taking him absolutely seriously. Between them they agreed a wager stipulating that, if one of their number ever became President which was historically likely , he should do everything he feasibly could in a four year term to quicken the rush to Armageddon. The nearest he got to a belief system was in his love of sport, its emphasis on immutable rules, personal dedication and fair play. A bet was a bet and a bet had to be honoured. The world had changed by the time Bob was sworn in, but it was no less dangerous. He rewarded his old frat buddies by installing them in his cabinet. They were more convinced than ever of their apocalyptic teleology. The crucial role America had to play in this was fully planned round an informal barbecue in the grounds ofCamp David. The friends swore an oath of secrecy about their true intentions. The advantage of this weapon was that it wiped out everything within a twenty mile radius without any risk of radiation fallout to adjacent areas. Predictably, there was an international outcry. Bob and his cabinet anticipated the critics with fabricated evidence which strongly implied that the Cuban regime had sabotaged US shipping in theCaribbeanand involved itself in organised crime inFlorida. Are you going to tell the UN on us? The long-established Axis of Evil was reappraised and expanded. Any minor nation that had wronged theUSover the last century or so, regardless of the temperament of its current regime, was condemned outright and economy-bombed. The Philippines were invaded and recolonised. Mexico was annexed by troops based in California and Panama. With the enemy list exhausted, Bob resorted to a systematic alienation of his allies. Diplomatic incidents were engineered acrossWestern Europe. An embassy aide flipped the bird to the Queen of England during the state opening of parliament. With the end of his term approaching and his approval rating at an all time low, Bob decided he had to work fast. Instead, they sat behind closed doors, their fingers itching on the red button. An attempt to impeach Bob by opposition senators tied him up in cross-examinations for several months. His maniacal cabinet continued the good work without him, conceiving of a final all-out nuclear strike on as many countries as possible, to be enacted the day Bob left office. They presented him with a baseball bat signed by a legendary Boston Red Sox line-up. Bob could hardly hold back the tears. So it was all worth it after all! Armageddon day arrived. When it was clear what the US was up to, every nuclear power was of course compelled to fire nukes back in the mad rush towards mutually assured destruction. Explosions pockmarked the earth like a watermelon used for target practice. The moment Bob exited the White House he had his limousine drive him straight to the baseball diamond of a public park. As mushroom clouds sprouted on the horizon and radioactive mist flooded the upper air, Bob J Firbank chewed his favourite bubblegum and hit pebbles for home runs. Amber gingerly laid out the toys on the floor as if they were a ritual offering to the gods. Emerald clay lizards in vinyl frying pans. Bear-teacup hybrids with furry paws for handles. She shrieked with high-pitched laughter the way children will. Then she gave him a look of playful cruelty. She leaned forward, flicked the monkey on its tail with her stubby index finger and giggled. Daddy turned his lips down glumly and struggled to simulate how a monkey might burst into tears. She sensed his difficulty with this and crossed her arms. He gave up. Some things just had to be explained, not badly acted. He had to admit he was bamboozled. Will the pigeon die one day? How do pigeons make other pigeons? She offered support by hugging his waist and kissing him on the nape. In the kitchen, Grandpa groaned above the TV showing a consumer rights programme. Mummy went to see if he was all right. You go out have yerself a nice time. Go on. Mummy put an index finger to her mouth. While watching the stories about dodgy builders exploiting housewives, he worked these items in his hand the way someone from a latter generation might use worry balls. Curry from the curry monster! She slumped down to the floor with tightly folded arms. Daddy played ventriloquist, giving the pigeon a guttural Brummie accent. Daddy kept a keen eye on it because its descent was much faster than he expected. Nonetheless he made an expert diving catch of it with the felt mouth of the pigeon. Amber burst into delighted laughter. Daddy winked at Mummy. Amber dithered, taking a diagonal step then taking it back. They organised a tea party with a diverse guest list. Brummie Pigeon drank from the bear cups and Zombie Mummy pan-fried lizards. Daddy mixed his real urges into the fantasy by making the pigeon munch with spastic speed. Amber laughed so hard she rolled on to her back like a baby. Zombie Mummy reverted to plain old Mummy. Five to eleven! Not for the first or last time, Amber and Mummy exchanged amused glances. Did your delivery boy get lost crossing the road? After that, he promised the food would arrive within ten minutes. Mummy went to the kitchen where Grandpa had fallen asleep to a rolling news channel. Mummy looked at the wine bottle and tutted. Her lips puffed out like marshmallows. Mummy agreed but offered reassurance. Never liked it. The sharp, cut-price wine made Daddy burp. This usually made Amber laugh. But not tonight. She was still worried about Mr Tickle. The TV in the kitchen declared that it was now midnight. Grandpa stirred, fell back to oblivion. For the umpteenth time that day, a slinky female newsreader pouted a bulletin. It would be attended by pupils and people connected to the franchise over the years: the original publishers, the actors in the spinoff TV series and representatives of Chorion, the company who now owned the rights to the characters. In the living room, Zombie Mummy was trying to wrestle the Mr Tickle glass of wine from the Brummie pigeon. The doorbell went, an urgent curry alarm; Amber could almost smell the chillis, the coriander, the fenugreek, the cardamom pods, drifting through the letterbox. The bell rang again. Answer the door! Brummie Pigeon took off around the room once more, eventually touching down on the toy box where it picked up more items for the tea party. Zombie Mummy made an erratic half-turn and grasped her daughter by her feet. When Amber was at the requisite height, Zombie Mummy blew a raspberry on her stomach. Brummie Pigeon dropped Trivial Pursuit wedges from its beak into the frying pan. She lay on her side and pointed at the door. It was. Amber was still pointing. Brummie Pigeon snatched the utensil away. Give eet eere. She watched them do their silly things in their silly voices. Two hours later in the kitchen, news was breaking loudly enough to wake Grandpa. Her register had moved up a gear from the dulcet of a pro to the squeak of an hysteric. Mr Gila had just signed on to write a new film adaptation of the first Mr Men book, Mr Tickle, for the American animation studio Pixar. He was due to attend an anniversary lunch here in the UK which was mentioned in our earlier round-up. Grandpa missed half the story due to a critical coughing fit. Would you fetch me me pills? He craned his neck to peek through the door but the gap was too narrow. Zombie Mummy was bent double, her hair rubbing the floor like a golden mop. She had been blowing a fart simulation through her lips for the last ten minutes. Brummie Pigeon finished its puke-mimes into the bin. She slipped past her engrossed parents to see what he needed. Should be in the bureau. Ta, love. She skipped into the living room, fished through the battered old bureau and took one pill out of the green prescription bag she found. She skipped back to Grandpa, snatching the Mr Tickle glass on her way. Amber considered this for a while, her arms open with uncertainty. That Mum of yours, what a hypocrite, eh? Cor blimey. Just for a bit can I pease stay here with you Grandpa? They thumped cards down like industrial stamping machines, the pile growing by the second. The doorbell rang. Ha ha ha! Brummie Pigeon buried his nose in the cards in a vain bid to stop Zombie-Mummy picking them all up. The doorbell fermata ended with a snap of the letterbox. He manoeuvred his wheelchair back round to watch the TV. The news just in is that young Shona has slipped into a coma. A newly-arrived health correspondent took up the baton. A hot flush came over Grandpa. Using the edge of the mantelpiece, he pulled himself up to the window for fresh air but felt his chest thicken with the effort. His vision disintegrated into a shattered glass effect. He reached for the pill, fumbled it and watched with panic as it plummeted to the lino floor, through a hole in the skirting board and down into the unknown cavities of this ex-Victorian poorhouse. Amber, love? Could you fetch me another? The newsreader filled in some background detail. He spent two decades in advertising, copywriting for companies such as Lindt chocolate and Pimms before writing the first Mr Men book in Amber ducked and dived past Zombie Mummy and Brummie Pigeon to the bureau, only to find that the prescription bag had vanished. She looked to Zombie Mummy. There was a spark of gall to her otherwise docile expression. Amber knew precisely what was going on. She darted behind Zombie Mummy and saw her hands clenched round the viridian parcel of drugs. Amber jumped at full stretch like a goalkeeper saving a chip shot. Pease for Grandpa! Memories of past predicaments — punch-ups, cuts with DIY tools, a motorbike crash in — came to him unbidden. They seemed trivial compared to the acute agony of the present. Zombie Mummy threw the bag into the air. But the advice was to be of no use. Brummie Pigeon shoved her aside to steal a textbook beak-catch. Amber sighed and ran. Grandpa was failing. His eyes were fastened shut while the rest of his body trembled like jelly. Amber thought grimly of a toy that was running low on batteries. She kept tugging him until she felt Zombie Mummy tugging her from behind and found herself back in the living room. Brummie Pigeon flew in to collect the Mr Tickle glass. Then, on his return, he shut the door for the umpteenth time, only this time he locked it. The game had now been going on for half a day. I want some real food like chewcumber samwidge with maymaise! Aunty Danielle came to the door, knocked and went while Zombie Mummy and Brummie Pigeon played statues. Amber decided not to call out. Although her parents worried her, she could hardly ask for help. They were all playing a nice game after all. As the afternoon rolled on, the trio played games of movement, Amber listless, her parents remaining steadfastly in character, their stamina unlimited. In the kitchen at what should have been teatime, there were new strands to the web of Mr Tickle stories. Guests at the Mr Men event at Sowerby Bridge School had panicked for reasons unknown and evacuated the building. An ambulance had been called when the actor Lionel Swadlin suffered a suspected cardiac arrest. Others were reported to be in a state of shock. There were more unheeded phone calls at around eight and ten. By The joints in her arms and legs throbbed from all the action. Whenever she was static for more than ten seconds, her eyelids clamped together and she started to nod off. At five to twelve, almost 24 hours into the charade, Zombie Mummy stopped passing the parcel and took a sip from the Mr Tickle glass. Brummie Pigeon did likewise. Zombie Mummy swilled the water in the Mr Tickle glass around and around. She closed her soaking eyes, felt the hard rim of the glass bump against her teeth and the lukewarm liquid hurtle unwanted down her gullet. Two hours later, the TV in the kitchen was still on. The breezy Welshman was rounding up developments since midnight. I simply do not know what came over me this morning when I caused such terror to the people I love the most in the world. I profoundly regret what I did. In the living room, Amber and Mummy were curled up on the sofa asleep. They had both showered and changed into fresh clothes. All the toys had been cleared from the carpet into the toy box. You were being so funny. Swadlin, 57, was rushed to Calderdale Royal Hospital in Halifax after complaining of chest pains and shortness of breath. Her smile revealed all. Daddy was about to set off home. Mummy glanced at the Mr Tickle glass, on its side in a pool of water. The fire has done little damage to the Egmont building and did not spread to neighbouring businesses along Kensington High Street…. This happened at exactly 12 midnight and doctors say that she seems not to have suffered any mental or physical disabilities. From all of us in the newsroom, congratulations Shona. George vowed not to be grumpy today. He had something to look forward to. But his good mood only lasted till he reached the breakfast table. He looked to the bust of Queen Victoria on the mantelpiece and felt better. He might be her boyfriend. Tim brought a mango to the table and sat down. George rolled his eyes. Whatever happened to good hard facts? Did you know, son, that the railway extends five hundred metres from Clifton to almost next door to this very house? Everyone fell silent as the black man passed through the room again. For a brief moment Tim and the black man made eye contact. The steep walk up Hinton Lane was tiring. George stopped halfway to take a painkiller for his arthritis. When he reached the Top Station of the Clifton Rocks Railway, his heart was pounding more from excitement than from the trek. A bearded guide spoke slowly to a queue of Chinese tourists. George joined it, looking at his watch with impatience. Once inside, he peered through the gloom into musty corridors and rubble-filled offices, at the stained brickwork of the auditorium and the grazed iron of the tracks. The guide rejoiced in the past. A vital artery of local life surging through the cliffs. In its heyday, whisking thousands between chic Clifton and the bustle of the river. By , defending the realm with an air raid shelter and emergency radio unit. George flushed with pride. He wanted to tell a Chinese tourist how great it was to be a Brit and a Bristolian. The queue shuffled into the pump room. On the ground George noticed a loose rock with a weird blue glow to it. He waited for the queue to move out and placed the rock in his breast pocket. It felt warm and stirring against his heart. He thought about the railway some more. What an age to have lived through. He lifted his walking stick, stiffened his back and marched. Nearing Hotwell Road, he felt increasingly bewildered. He frowned at the cars whizzing past, at an aeroplane in the sky, at a teenager on a mobile phone. He entered the house and bowed to the bust of Victoria. Audrey was sitting at the table reading. The fairer sex is congenitally incapable of any act of philological composition. That is empirically proven. This must be a wheeze of some variety, and there is no room for japery in this house. I shall do you the honour of disposing of it forthwith. George put his fingers in his ears. Tim removed his glasses. Tim looked hopefully to his mother. Audrey got up without looking at either man. George approached his son with a self-assured nod. I trust it is good, sturdy news, as you would not trouble a gentleman of my wit and standing with a mere trifle. Are you going up to Cambridge to read Mods and Greats or Divinity perchance? Come on, boy, spit it out. Tim was about to when Sarah entered. Her dreadlocks bounced against her camouflage vest. I can hear you all from my room. George tightened his grip on the walking stick. Do not forget that I have long been a stalwart of the temperance movement. On the contrary, child, it would seem that you are suffering from feminine hysteria. Melancholia too, perhaps. I advise laudanum or heathen tinctures from the Orient, but failing that, a restorative spell in Bedlam. There is one Dr Featheringstone based therein whose progressive methodologies involving the Padded Rotary Chair come highly recommended by both The Lancet and the governor of Newgate Prison. He raised his stick at each family member in turn. Tim started hyperventilating. Audrey took a step back. Sarah stayed where she was. Mine own blood going socialist on me, possessed by frightful hobgoblins? Do you want me to thrash the lot of you? Gluttons for punishment all, eh? And Tim really does have something to tell you. Tim caught his breath and took it in deep. He squared up to his dad, eyeball to eyeball. Got that? Audrey raised her eyebrows and smiled faintly. Sarah grinned with pride. A bugger! With his free hand, George brandished the rock from his pocket. His family gasped at its blue glow. Tim dodged and snatched the rock. George whacked Tim on the backside with the walking stick. He ran out the door, down the steps and into Hotwell Road. Workshy affiliate of the back-stair classes! Tim dropped the rock onto the pavement and jumped up and down on it. By the time George was a walking stick-length away, the rock had turned to dust, its blue glow gone. Some hours later, George awoke in the Bristol Royal Infirmary. His family flanked the bed, cheeks sore from tears. Audrey fell upon her husband, hugging him for dear life. The doctor asked some questions about where he lived and what year it was. George answered them correctly and was free to go. This was a wind-up. But then the police visited and confirmed his odd behaviour. Tim chose not to. Not for a man of advancing years. She brought him a mango instead of a bacon sandwich. He enjoyed it. That surprised him. Tim rushed into the room and sat down. He was shaking. I held it in my hands. Audrey touched his shoulder. And you were wearing gloves. I should avoid anything Victorian for a while. Might trigger a Dad moment. Search for:. At all. Like a code. Are you spying on me? Is there something wrong with Doni? Please just turn around and go. Please, Sir Carlos. Just been very busy working. Never better. First published in Taya Literary Journal But he is soon thinking about them again… Ten months later he is sat in a bar watching an audacious act of violence against a symbol of Western prosperity. What do I get for winning the bet? First published in Lunar Harvest, Without waiting for a reply, he did so. The doorbell stopped ringing. Brummie Pigeon added the baboon to the stew. I want some breakfuss. Yes he will. Clifton Rock George vowed not to be grumpy today. George scowled at her choice. It might give you the runs. He lifted his glasses and rubbed his eyes. George got awkwardly to his feet. Music sounded from the student flat next door. He was wearing cycling gloves. Have you been drinking? Are you talking about my depression? And do not bore me with trivia. George collapsed, eyes rolling as he fell. How did I get here? I was in the station and I took this rock as a souvenir. Then… well, nothing. He admitted all this to Audrey the next morning at breakfast. First published in Hidden Bristol Tangent Books , Subscribe Subscribed. Dr Tom Sykes. Sign me up. Already have a WordPress. Log in now. Design a site like this with WordPress.