London

Cold one day, foggy the next, grey the next, and the next and the next and the next. And then summer is over and winter is on its way. Winter in London is not for the faint-hearted. It can be tough going, unless you are one of those odd people who prefer a climate with no sun or light for months on end; like Swedes or Norwegians or zombies.

The only people who spend the (really) cold months in the English capital are hard-core tourists, international backpackers who want to experience a London winter, Queen Elizabeth, locals who don't know any better, and homeless people who can’t afford to move the hell out of there.

The tube is the only way to get from one side of London to the other in one hit and it is very easy to understand. Even people from Tasmania could understand it. For comparative purposes, it’s much better than the Paris underground system, because it makes sense, it runs like clockwork, it’s not full of French people and the station names are not in French. Other than those obstacles, the transport system in the French capital is tops as well.

I used to live in Kingsbury, near Wembley Stadium, which is an area that you would mistake for Macquarie Fields whenever Manchester City is in town to play, well, any team in the Premier League. Kingsbury is located in Greater London, which is on the outskirts of cool, inner city London.

In the spirit of the British, who love to segregate everything into class, Greater London is to cheap Indian restaurants, fear, hooligans, random knife attacks and tube station creeps as Inner London is to Chelsea.

Westminster Abbey is a homely little church in the middle of town that you may simply walk past if it wasn’t for the fact that it is about the size of a Westfield Shopping Centre.  It is GORGEOUS. The Abbey was founded in 960, which is mighty impressive, yes?

The Abbey is totally self-supporting, so I imagine its Investment Committee are extremely busy right now organising scone drives to cover the costs of Willy and Kate's shindig in April this year.

And then we have the Houses of Parliament, where a conga line of successive Labor Prime Ministers has spent alot of their time ruining the lives of ordinary British folk. This is my favourite landmark in London, with its beautiful limestone exterior that took 14 hits during the Blitz and still came off better than the other guy. Don’t even try to mess with it.

Kia & tennis balls

So I wanted to talk about the tennis today. Just because. But I’m at ‘K’ in my Alphabet Writing Challenge and what tennis terminology starts with ‘K’ other than the Australian Open’s main sponsor?

I love the Australian Open. I’ve wanted to head down to Melbourne for years, and I would have if it wasn’t so hot in January, if it wasn’t so much better to watch on Channel Seven, and if I didn't mind crowds of drunken hooligans throwing stadium seating and molotov cocktails at my head.  It would be like going to a Canterbury Bulldogs NRL game but escaping with all your limbs in tact.  Ah, multiculturalism at its finest.  Don't call me racist, I'm not the one hurling furniture around stadiums.

There are many cool reasons to watch the Australian Open.  I like Jim Courier’s entertaining courtside interviews with the players after their match.  I like how John Alexander gets all tetchy with Courier in the commentary box when Courier gets the answer to Alexander’s nightly ‘tennis brain teaser’ in about two seconds.

I wonder if Alexander will continue to commentate now that he is the Federal Member for Bennelong (which he won from Maxine McKew in the 2010 Federal Election after she stole it from John Howard)? I like how the female commentators do the bitchy thing some females do when they argue about inane little details, like whether the hems of men’s shorts are stitched or over-locked.

I like Andy Roddick. His appearance and sense of humour; his attitude problem not so much. I like how Roger Fedderer cries. I hate how Roger Fedderer cries. I like to ponder why Lleyton Hewitt is vilified and Pat Rafter is a demigod. I like how they make it look so damn easy. I like to think that I could play like this with a spot of training, a good pair of Nike sandshoes and some of that ubiquitous bling dripping off my body.

Um, so it turns out that Kia is a very generous sponsor. For the 2011 Australian Open, they will introduce the new Kia Grand Slam zoom zoom, for those players who are just too buggered to continue running around the court. They come equipped with fashionable lucozade holders, stylish sweatband seatbelts and an extra big glovebox for all your tennis ball requirements.

Jack Bauer - fighting tyranny since 2001

I'd just like to say that, despite the fact that he is fictional, Jack Bauer, played by Kiefer Sutherland, is awesome. Jack spent his television career fighting off all sorts of devilish criminals, from Islamic fundamentalists to Mexican drug lords to loose cannon, poker-playing Chechen militants with bad accents.

But by far, Jack's biggest opponents were often the left wing governments he worked for. Jack's show, '24', was produced by the Fox Network, traditionally a conservative news outlet, meaning they produce news that is fair and balanced, unlike CNN, who don't care terribly for facts and truth. And '24' was a pretty accurate summary of the international political environment - where the only way to deal with international terrorists is generally through a process of force and torture. Anyone who says this violates the human rights of terrorists needs to know this: you are an idiot.

Jack knew that terrorists aren't big on sitting around a table with a U.N. panel to discuss a fair and appropriate solution to their disagreements. Because a fair solution usually means the terrorists have to cede some of the power that they misuse, and start treating people with respect and dignity and stop using them for target practice, as human shields and for suicide missions. Terrorists much prefer blowing up the negotiating table, as Jack discovered in seasons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7.

But instead of fighting the bad guys, Jack had to spend alot of his time trying to convince one stupid democratic president after another that his way was best. And of course, the Democrats always agreed that Jack's way was best AFTER the deaths of hundreds of people.

I really have no idea why the American people vote for Democrats to run the country in the first place. George Bush spent the first few years of his first term cleaning up the mess that Bill Clinton could have prevented while he was in office. In the 90s, Clinton was offered Osama Bin Laden's head on a platter by Sudan. He could have locked up the mass murderer and tossed away the key, but he didn't want to look like he was racially profiling, plus he was far too busy having sex in the oval office to worry about international terrorism.

'24' was axed in 2010, midway through it's 8th season. Fox believed the new producers were veering too far away from Jack's character, and because their stupid storylines involved Jack heading out to have tea and cookies with Islamic imans to apologise for offending them while he was defending the United States from destruction at the hands of their followers.

Formula One memory lane

I'm on to Day 6 of my A - Z Writing Challenge - blogging the letters of the alphabet until the alphabet runs out. Math has never been my strong suit, but by my calculations, that will be around 26 days. 'F' is Formula One - that's the coolest sport in the world, not the hotel chain.

F1 first came to my attention in April 1994, when images of the death of three-time world champion, Ayrton Senna, were all over the news. Senna was killed after a 300 km/h smash into a wall on the straight at the San Marino F1 Grand Prix. I was shocked by the sickening impact, but I watching the next race because I was fascinated by these road rockets shooting around the track. It wasn't long until I was hooked on the thrilling, dangerous, exciting sport of F1, learning about the drivers, the teams and the complicated intricacies of downforce from the commentator Murray Walker. Walker was an entertaining commentator, full of fantastic 'murrayisms', and his love of F1 had me convinced in no time that the sport was as safe as houses.

I travelled to England in 1995 on a working holiday visa, and it was only a matter of time before I attended an F1 race. My favourite team was McLaren, with it's then red and white livery, and I saw one up close when I attended the Monaco Grand Prix that year. The colour, the fans, the screaming engines, the wonderful people on my tour and the beautiful mediterranean weather made this an experience I will never forget. It was the first of many races I would attend over the next few years.

I relocated to Oxford from London, keen to mix with the locals and live in the gorgeous English countryside. By chance, I met the Tour Manager for the TWR Volvo British Touring Car Team in a pub in town. He got me a job in TWR's PR area - a job I probably wouldn't have landed if I wasn't young, blonde and Aussie. I ended up travelling with the team for a year and a half around the countryside, and worked on occasions for their sister team, the TWR F1 team. I thought it was the best job in the world, but I had to leave as my visa was to expire - rather dramatically, but that's a story for another time.

Education

People often ask me why I get so wound up about left-wing academics. Well it's most likely because I have had to put up with them for the past six and a half years at university. I spent those years pretending to understand and vaguely put up with their never-ending, idiotic obsessions with Marxism, feminism and socialist ideals; ideals that fail to work in the state that I like to call reality.

Humans just don't possess innate socialist tendencies. When was the last time you heard about someone winning the lotto and separating the money EQUALLY throughout their community? Yes, never, it doesn't happen, because humans don't behave like that. It's just not the way we are.

Well, guess what? I’m free of uni and I’m not indoctrinated – quite the opposite in fact. I really had no idea how truly deluded from reality politics academics were until I began uni, and now I am feeling a new freedom in my life, and I'll never have to put up with them again, nor should anyone else have to.

The left-wing ("let us control the schools and in a generation nobody will be able to read") propaganda machine is alive and well in early education institutions as well. If I were a primary school kid these days, I would be pretty annoyed every day going into my state-sponsored torture chamber, more commonly known as a public school classroom, because I wouldn't be spending my days learning how to read and write, and by the time I got to Year 12, I probably wouldn't have a clue what Australia Day commemorates because the Education Unions insist that I'm taught things like how racist and anti-feminist the Constitution is.

And I wouldn't feel right about getting ahead in the world (see: getting a job promotion, for example), because the politically correct progressives who run my school would have taught me that no-one deserves to be smarter than anyone else.

Public education at any level in Australia is not about education, it’s about indoctrination. Teaching only a section of history and ignoring the rest that doesn’t fit in with their left-wing ideology (see: Marxism, feminism etc) has nothing to do with learning or letting the students decide on the facts for themselves. It’s simply about brainwashing, and it starts during the earliest years of schooling. Unfortunately, those cunning academics at the tertiary level have geniously created a system that protects them from having to do their jobs properly – it’s called “tenure”.

Defence recruits Summernats bogans

All the Queen’s Army and all the Queen’s men, are hiring Summernats bogans again. Ugh.

The Australian Army have been heading out to the annual Summernats car festival in Canberra for years in an attempt to woo some of Australia’s most trashy, yet car-savvy, young hooligans. Evidently, male bogan-filled environments are perfect breeding grounds for future Army recruits. Well it makes sense I suppose.

This year, the ADF wheeled in their aptly named, Armygeddon, to whip the boys into a testosterone-fuelled frenzy. I can’t decide if it’s a good thing or a bad thing to have these guys in charge of Army vehicles. I guess it’s a good way to turn them into real men – a bit of discipline, a bit of hard yakka and absolutely no access to weapons of any kind. Just so we’re clear - nobody’s giving them guns, right?

I do hope the Army keep an eye on their new bonehead recruits. War’s hard enough as it is; the last thing the Aussie troops need is a shipment of purple suped-up, turbo-charged V8 street machine tanks with stickers of women in bikinis on the side panels. What on earth would the upstanding citizens of the Taliban think? They would be forced to go and kill a bunch of innocent civilians because the West has, yet again, made them crankypants.

The Taliban and Summernats bogans have a lot in common when you think about it. They objectify women, love to burn oil and rubber, breed fear and anxiety on city streets, and a great number of people would be happy if we could just find a way to get rid of them for good.

Cats

Ah yes, the big ten hour round-trip to Moggy (Mogo) Zoo down the South Coast, where you pay 23 dollars to watch lions, tigers, and servals sleep all day. Cats invented lazy. When cats aren’t sleeping they are just obscenely lazy. Maybe we should take a leaf out of their book. ‘The Lazy cat’s guide to happiness’ by Deepak Chopra.


















Speaking of spiritual journeys, years ago I was blessed by a Sumatran tiger at Moggy Zoo. It truly was an awakening for everyone involved. I didn’t wash my hair for hours to allow the holy gift to infuse. You can only imagine the looks of worship and adoration I received from all those around me. I discovered that people can’t stand to be around such wonderment and started to scatter like flies. The flies also scattered, obviously overwhelmed by the greatness in their midst. Not everyone can handle the responsibility of being the chosen one, but at least I got to see most of the animals without marauding crowds.

I love Mogo Zoo. It’s one of the few places you can take your binoculars and zoom lens and focus on one thing for hours and hours without getting arrested. I must confess that I have a big crush on big cats. I took a couple of pics. It may have been around the 200+ mark, but who's counting.


Nail care is important to any self-respecting tiger. What's a little striped baby fluff to do while waiting for his siblings to wake up? File his nailguns of course by ripping apart a tree stump. Bless.




This little fella is 4-months-old, has a brother and a sister (I think) and it's really hard to take a photo of him not being cute. Bare your fangs you wild animal!! The three Sumatran tiger cubs are an integral part of a breeding program that hopes to prolong the survival of the critically endangered species. Tiger cubs seem to have a pretty fixed routine throughout the day. Sleep, play, destroy stuff, be cute, play, eat, play, destroy stuff, pester mum, play, sleep, sleep, be cute, sleep, destroy, pester mum, and so on…




A stupid, stupid man woke up this lion. Does the lion look particularly happy to you? He’s not, he’s highly displeased. He seems to be saying ‘fuck off’ with his eyes. He stared at his human alarm clock until he could no longer see him and then fixed his feline gaze on me. When they stare they STARE...But look how beautiful he is




Meerkat lying around being awesome.

Britain and Blogs

Britain 

Anyone would think the Old Blighty had put the globe into a state of world peace, cured chronic world hunger, and put a laptop into the arms of every Ethiopian child. Well no, they’ve won a couple of cricket games. You played well England, and we played appallingly. The better team won. If I cared about the Ashes I’m sure I would be devastated. But at the end of the day, Australians are the winners. We are the ones mother nature chooses to bless with sunshine, sunny winters and beautiful beaches. But well done England.

Blog

What to call my blog, I ponder. Play the ball and not the man is a philosophy I always try to maintain when arguing politics, but one that is not always embraced by my opponents. They would rather attack the man than the policy. This is usually due to the fact that their argument has no substance and is just an appeal to emotion.

How do you know if they are left-wing?

The left won’t argue with you. You need to be aware of this. Their idea of a battle of wits is to say “Bush lied!” in front of an adoring audience and be wildly applauded for their courage.

And when they do argue, they jump from one idiotic point to the next so you can never quite catch them out in a lie. It’s like arguing with a 5-year-old. And you will find their retorts will bear no relation to what you said; unless you were, for example, talking about your intelligence, your age, your looks, your morality, your personal obsessions, or whether or not you are a fascist.

So the name of my blog reflects my preference for playing the ball (and not the man) when discussing stuff.

Apple - the technology and the fruit

How much is that apple in the window? We all know that there is muchos overpricing of technology and fruit in the retail sector.  Australian fruitgrowers are battling floodwaters, but what’s Gerry Harvey from Harvey Norman's excuse?

Harvey, head of the Harvey Norman retail chain, has been blithering over the past few days (years) about the indecency of Australian shoppers who are choosing to desert his overpriced retail outlets in droves to shop online for products that are often a third of his asking price.

The Canberra Times reports that Gerry Harvey has made a sanctimonious emotional plea in an attempt to hoodwink the public – as usual – into thinking that he’s just a retailer trying to make a living. Harvey is upset that 17-year-old’s are calling him most unflattering names. Yes, the teenage mutant's are angry, but many of them don’t have the emotional maturity to get their message across in a way that doesn’t sound crude.

My question is this: why the hell is the head of a billion dollar mega-empire spending his time reading comments about himself on Facebook and Twitter? Well, he’s probably not, and he doesn’t really give two hoots.

Nobody is coming into Harvey’s chain anymore because the consumer has realised that it’s just plain uneconomical to do so. He seems to be constantly baffled by the news that the majority of Australians think he’s being ripping them off for years. That this is news to Harvey demonstrates how out of touch he is with the retail sector and consumer demands.

The game is up Gerry. Whether you like it or not, consumers have oodles of choice now, and we choose to abandon your outlets, for the most part, and browse the global online supermarket; a bandwagon that you should have jumped on years ago. Wonder if he still thinks online selling is a waste of time.

Rather than come out and apologise for his embarrassing outbursts, Harvey chose to make the situation about himself, to garner public sympathy, and to distract us from the fact that he’s going to continue to trade as per usual, which is years behind the retail trend.

A - Z of blogging topics

My new year's reso is to write more and write daily. In an attempt to force myself to write on a daily basis, I will blog about a topic, every day, until the alphabet runs out. Yes, I will. Apart from the dark force of zero motivation, how hard can it be? I always seem to have an opinion on all manner of issues, and it's my blog so I can write whatever the hell I want to write about.

So today I will start with the letter A.

The Titanic and my reluctant acceptance of James Cameron

Six and a half years ago I was required to provide a presentation on a topic of my choosing for my first ever university presentation. One evening I was in my local Public Library in Canberra, browsing the shelves, the old fashioned way, when I came across a book about sunken ocean liners, written by Robert Ballard, the man credited with discovering the underwater graves of many of the twentieth centuries great ocean liners.

I sat on the floor and read, glued to the pages, book after book; I couldn’t get enough information about the Titanic, Lusitania, Mauritania, Britannic, etc. And so began my inexplicable obsession with sunken ocean liners.

I created a visually powerful powerpoint presentation full of simplified diagrams of bulkheads, icebergs, keels and lifeboats. I spoke of tales of survival and of tragedy, and of the notorious mis-quotes prior to the maiden voyage, that are in retrospect easy targets for derision with the benefit of hindsight of the cause of the tragedy.

My new obsession turned the chore of completing the assessment into a remarkably simple task. After my presentation, I reluctantly returned my books to the library, and decided that I would continue this research when I had time. These ocean floor monoliths weren't going anywhere.

That was in 2004, and I have thought alot about these ocean liners since then. I have no idea why, or what forms the basis for my interest. It just intrigues the hell out of me. The fate of the Titanic is a terribly tragic story. The desperation of one man to achieve greatness and supremacy in the eyes of his peers, and the world, enabled him to envisage the most spectacular ocean liner ever seen, but it also contrived to push him to challenge the forces of mother nature and ignore all calls to logic and reason.

His vain attempt to make history by pushing his super liner through a field of insurmountable icebergs is one of history’s great dramatic ironies, and one of its most well-documented tragedies.

The Britannic was equal in size to her sister Titanic. And like Titanic, she did not take one paying passenger to their destination. Her life as a luxury ocean liner was never to be. Her exquisite livery and interior was stripped before her maiden voyage, when she was requisitioned as a hospital ship to serve her country in World War One. She now lies on the floor of the Atlantic, mortally wounded from a missile attack during the war.

I’ve recently watched the movie Titanic on DVD, for about the hundredth time. I unfortunately didn’t get to see it on the big screen when it was released for some reason. And, for the first time, I watched the commentary components, which were fascinating. The director, James Cameron, has a real passion for the wreck and paid great respect to the tragedy through film.

I’ve never much liked Cameron. Despite my admiration for the talents of various people in Hollywood, I tend to view their liberal political beliefs as largely hokum. When it comes to politics, I try to separate the man from the ball, but Hollywood people don’t make it easy.

Their views are largely devoid of any reason or logic, and if they could coherently explain their views to the public without resorting to completely incomprehensible gibberish that misquotes and ignores facts, most people would call for their heads.

Their political views are just an appeal to emotion; an unrelenting devotion and worship to the environment and any other cause that is popular with the Hollywood elite on any given day. (As opposed to an actual religion, as they are EVIL, as you must be an atheist to fit in with Hollywood types.)

Cameron is your typical left wing Hollywood windbag, who insists on dictating to others how they should live, the taxes they should pay, the cars they should drive, the correct toilet paper to use, the carbon footprint they should leave. I don’t care that Cameron is richer than God, that’s not my beef.

Just because you are wealthy doesn't mean that you can tell us how we should live; all the while flying around in your private jet, lighting up your own house like a damn Christmas tree, and rallying politicians to hit the peasants with ridiculous energy saving taxes that do little more than make the Hollywood smug-set feel good about themselves. It’s hypocritical and plain dishonest.

Anyway, so I read that Cameron has been to the Titanic wreck many, many times to film and has quite the connection to the sunken ocean liner. So now I am forced to like him, which is a great annoyance to me.

THE DESK

Jane leaned back in her desk chair, looking out at the commotion on the lake through her bay windows. The inexperienced sailor on the white catarmaran was yelling expletives into the wind in frustration at the calm conditions. Jane pulled across the sheer white curtains as they flapped wildly across her desk in the early spring breeze.

She closed her eyes and drummed her nails on the exquisite writing desk, a hand-me-down from her grandfather. These days his calligraphy pens, nibs and ink had made way for more modern tools that she actually knew how to use; like a laptop, a couple of portable hard drives and piles of newspaper cuttings.

She looked out at the man dragging his boat back onto dry land. She hadn’t even written a paragraph since he had gone out this morning. Jane put her fingers on the keyboard and bounced them atop of the letters, as if they would start typing meaningful sentences by themselves. She jumped as her mobile vibrated on the desk, excitedly telling her that Joan, her editor of three years, was calling for the hundredth time this week.

Sorry Joan, I know I promised you the intro, but I’ve been distracted by a boat for the past five hours.

I bet grandpa never had writer’s block.

Her grandfather had told her this desk had saved his life during World War Two. For years, she had imagined him tapping away at his typewriter until the planes were overhead, then ducking under his desk, as if the rickety old thing were some sort of nuclear bunker.

But he hadn’t meant it so literally. Writing became his way of distancing himself from the horrors of war. Grandpa had been conscripted into the army in 1939. During a training camp six months later, he was hit by a stray bullet that lodged in his spine. Unable to walk, he was honourably discharged, and had discovered writing, the one thing that kept him going through the dark years.

But it wasn’t working out like that for Jane. It had been almost three years since the death of her beloved daughter, Sarah, who was killed in a boating accident at 12 years old. Jane’s fifth novel, which she was still working on, had been due for completion two years ago. It wasn’t so much writer’s block, but human fear. Fear of letting go of her emotions.

© 2010 Elizabeth Neil All Rights Reserved

Lucky Escape

The steel door slammed shut, sending a deep echo through the dark room. Mitch slid along the ground, until his beaten face was inches from the crack under the door. He shuddered at the feel of cold concrete against the bloody welts on his cheek and the cool sweat dripping off his neck.

“We must move him tonight!”

From the accent of the loud-mouthed guard, Mitch guessed he was in an Algiers prison. And that was as far as possible from where he wanted to be. It was hard to tell with swollen eyes, but from the size of the feet, Mitch figured the bozo guarding the door would not go down without a fight. The latching mechanism on the door slid into place, and the guard moved away until his brown combat boots were just a blurry shadow.

This wasn’t a standard prison door. But Mitch wasn’t a standard prisoner. Since joining the team, Mitch anticipated he would someday be captured. But this was not going to go down well at the Pentagon. The Defence Secretary fought hard for this Special Ops mission.

Mitch’s captors had been torturing him several times a day about the chip. But he was trained to empty his mind, particularly of anything that may get him killed on its admission. But last night they had mentioned Emily.

Emily, his five-year-old daughter, had lived with her grandparents since the death of his wife. She thought her daddy was a travelling insurance salesman. Sure, he had a level of charisma and self-confidence, but a travelling insurance salesman?

They know about Emily. He vomited again for the third time in as many hours. His captors were not forthcoming with room service, so there wasn’t much left in his stomach.

Mitch didn’t know if his team would come rescue him. It wasn’t standard procedure, but there were big egos involved who wanted results. And they knew that Mitch was in the best position to deliver. He fell asleep for the first time in days, trying to empty his mind of Emily, and awoke to hear a rattle under the floorboards. About bloody time.
“Boss, it’s good to see you. We gotta get out of here. Got the chip?”

Mitch smiled at the rookie he had hired a few months earlier. “Give me some of the local water and you’ll see it in the next few hours”.
© 2010 Elizabeth Neil All Rights Reserved

TRAGIC DECISION

Most spring mornings Jane got up early. Before heading to work, she enjoyed the beautiful crisp weather, stunning mountainous views, vegemite toast and strong coffee, with entertainment provided by local magpies and their young.

One crisp Tuesday in November, Jane overslept; and with an early appointment in town, the routine went out the window. If she had been up early, she probably would have noticed a young man sitting out the side of her house. Maybe he was angry, or sad, or up to no good. Jane probably would have thought he was a bored young thug, with nothing better to do, just looking for trouble.

If Jane had not rushed that morning, she probably would have fed the birds over the back fence. She would have definitely noticed the young man then, walking along in a daze, high as a kite. Knowing her, she would have watched him like a hawk. But then she would have decided that he was too miserable to cause any real damage. She probably would have ignored him after a while.

If Jane had not rushed that morning, she would not have forgotten her lunch. But it was such a beautiful day, she decided to go home during her break to eat it outside on the balcony. As Jane drove up her street, she saw a police car.

With young hooligans a few doors down, this was nothing new. As she opened her back gate, she saw men in suits with clipboards on the hill out the back. A cluster of police officers. A big blue structure had been erected around a tree. Bright yellow police tape was attached to her back fence. Detectives. A coroner. Something had happened. A camera flashed behind the blue tent as the sun dipped behind a cloud.

If Jane had been up early that morning she may have noticed a depressed young man out the side of her house. She may have nodded in his direction. Or do something, anything, except ignore him. But knowing her, she probably would have just dismissed him.

She probably wouldn’t have noticed him looking at the trees; looking for a sturdy one. He picked one that she could see from her kitchen window. A tree on a busy firetrail. Jane hoped that was unintentional. Because nobody noticed the young man throwing the rope over the branch.

© 2010 Elizabeth Neil All Rights Reserved

On The Radar

Tom had graduated top of his class in the Junior Officer Training Program. Now here he was, fresh from the Farm, waiting for the action to come and find him. Who wouldn’t want to miss an opportunity like this? Right now, filing classified papers. Protecting fellow citizens. Clandestine and routine work.

Routine alright. The closest I’m gonna get to the action is holding one of the bureau’s pens.

Tom sat stiffly at his desk, trying to straighten a paper clip without leaving any trace of a kink. It snaps into two pieces and he tosses it into the bin. Blast resistant walls. Protecting secrets? They’re probably to keep me in here shuffling papers.

Bored with paperwork, he starts to read the introduction to the Interrogation Training Manual, and feels the deep breath of the old hack peering over his shoulder.

“Shouldn’t you be shuffling papers?” the man hoots, and the rest of the hacks laugh loudly.

Before walking away, the old timer whispers in Tom’s ear. “The coffee schedule. Watch”, and points to the boss’ office.

A kid, about Tom’s age, dressed in a power suit, was striding confidently into the boss’ office with a styrophome cup in hand. Tom had seen this happen every day. Some days the kid gets a pat on the back. Some days the boss snatches at the coffee. Last week she threw it at the window. But always the same kid. Once he’s in her office, he’s in the inner circle.

The trainers at the Farm told him not to drink coffee; it messes with your head, weakens your reflexes, or something. But life at the Farm had created an insatiable appetite for all the things he shouldn’t have anymore. And who needs quick reflexes to shuffle papers anyway? Maybe when a sheet slips to the floor. Gotta scoop it up quick smart.

Tom gets out his new notebook, and bounces his new spring-loaded pen into action. Timing is everything. Picking the right time is also about the temperature of the brew. He watches everything, notices the smallest details, like he was trained. Like the days when she has multiple coffee circles on her desk, and the mood swings when she doesn’t get her morning hit. He gets out his notebook every morning, noon and afternoon. Waiting for the coffee boy. Trying to get on her radar.

© 2010 Elizabeth Neil All Rights Reserved