Welcome to the E-photo book about the London student protests of 2011.

Consider it the ill educated ramblings of a photographer but enjoy it

Kota a friend of mine had his entire family killed by the bear and that was the last straw for old Skrad, imagine if you were one of the finest hunters, and you knew that this bear was deliberately killing your people, he was about fifty but since this was the time before calendars and written histories he could been eighty for all that my child eyes knew. Not that any of that mattered as he had been losing his hold on his abilities and unlike his midwife woman, Skrad wasn’t the hunter he had been, so maybe his bravery was from his own fears of becoming useless in the moments of his now.

I remember the morning he left though, he gathered all of the children together and told us about his own fathers struggle with what you would call a hippo. Skrad could really tell a story as well, so we all gathered around and listened to him as he wove the fabric of his fathers particularly bad day one more time before he left. I will try and write this as well as he said it though, but to fully understand it you will have to she’d away some of your adultness in favour of that most childish of pleasures, imagination. His tattoos stretched wildly around his arms, two were of the largest of cats, and they wove there way magically down both of his arms, and in the torchlight of that predawn light he sat and told us his farewell story. It was a story of the hunter but much like life it was unclear who the hunter actually was.

So in a glade of a rich green forest his father was tracking the gazelles, like any place it is attached to a time and at that point his father was a very inexperience teen ager, this was his testing, that point when a young boy gets turned into a man, not by mutation but by the people around him, by his tribe. This all happened before he even got his tattoos. Which for us were badges of skill and merit, but for you possibly have little meaning. So the boy was tracking the gazelles and watching them cautiously, when he came face to face in the grass with another predator, a cat, it could have been a lion or what you call a leopard but both animals became aware of each other immediately and then it was claw and bone knifes as they lunged rolled and fought.

Now the gazelles were not stupid, they scattered and ran, which is what gazelles had done since the dawn of time but the boy finally managed to get his blade into the big cats throat and was covered in a garish waterfall of its blood. His arms were gouged and both his blood and the cats flowed into the ground bonding them both together. We rarely actively hunted those large cats, it was a group effort to take them on and that was on a good day, so unwittingly the boy had killed one of the greatest of prizes for our people, he had done it alone.

But!

There was a witness to these event, Hagra, the finest hunter in the tribe, was keeping a look out on the boy, as was our tradition, from his vantage point on the hill, he had watched the child stalking the gazelles and then seen the bloodiest contest of his career Unfold in front of him as he ran towards the fight to defend the boy. It’s hard to explain but back then there were very few of us human being around so we looked out for each other to extremes that modern man wouldn’t. However Hagra arrived to see the boy attacked from behind by the male cat, the females partner possibly, and the boy and the cat tumbled from the top of the hill into the water hole twenty feet below. They fought as they fell, locked almost timelessly in their fight, and then hit the water.

Hagra jumped after them and saw them submerged in the pool of water, locked in battle as they drowned. The morning light arched through the architecture of the brackish pond, but then he saw the boy fight dragging the beast towards the shore, and finally the lion gave up the fight and started to swim away. Finally the boy surfaced and then he realised he had landed in the middle of a group of Kruftsmeshtafts, now they are universally called hippos, the hippos were violently territorial and a constant danger for all that lived around them, and even old Hagra knew he couldn’t help the boy as he dragged himself to the shore, the mighty lion was also running out of luck and got torn to pieces, filling the pond with a stain of translucent red blood as it finally expired after its epic struggle with life.

However the boy was not yet as ready to give up the ghost as the lion was, so he dived to the bottom of the pool and watched the silhouetted hippos above him, and there in the middle of the pond was a large floating trunk of a tree, the boy saw the morning sun break like shafts of a rainbow around it and knew it was his best chance, so he kicked towards it and then slid silently onto the trunk. Hagra could not believe what he was seeing, and he thought that the lions blood had truly mingled with the boys as he slipped silently like the great snake Siloosgha along the slippery bark and wove his way through the chaos of broken branches. Then stopped, watching, he watched for a very long time and Hagra hid himself from their view waiting to see the magical hunting child’s next move, he had watched and looked at the pool from many angles but could see no way of reaching the boy, but he didn’t have to as the hippos finally clustered together and then silently the boy jumped from one hipo’s head to the next as he skipped speedily over them Hagra leapt to his feet. He did not believe what he was seeing and knew then and there that this child would not give up, he also knew that he was in the presence of the greatest of hunters, but by that point the boy had hit the shore running and raced so quickly up the hill that Hagra couldn’t have caught him if he tried.

He ran like the wind and did not stop until he reached the long dead lioness that he had killed earlier, it seemed like a million sunsets ago but as he stood over the dead cat, he knew his blood and hers were now forever entwined. The legend of the Hippo Walker was forged right there and then, and that was the story that Skrad told us as he went off to fight the great bear, it wasn’t cruelty or dilution that sent him on that one way journey, I remember the intensity of the morning as he hugged us all farewell and then left alone on his final hunt, I also remember crying as the old man had been telling that story verbally but with signs attached for me. We never saw him again but nobody was eaten by the bear again either, so our tribe at least knew what love was because I too would take that same course of action, and hoped that my name would be worthy of such a story too one day.

Copyright Steve Morrick 2012

TOPSY TURVY AND TURVY TOPSY

BY

STEVE MERRICK.

Once upon a time and it was a very long time from now, all of the people persons had adventured off into outer space, as they travelled through the great nothing they would have to scatter space stations like bread crumbs behind them, it was very very important that the people persons called astronauts did this, otherwise they would never have found their way home. Pretty soon there were more space stations than people because everybody knows that outer space is really really really BIG! So not having enough people persons to look after their shiny nice palaces, the astronauts turned to the animals and made them very very smart, they gave them all hands and taught them languages and mathematics. The smartest were the Octopuses, they were almost as smart as the people persons, then came the Dolphins but they were possibly smarter than anybody, so smart in fact, that all they did was play around all the time and never worked. Dogs were quite philosophical in their own way but obsessed with food, Kangaroos just loved to bounce, they bounced about breaking everything accidentally and the astronauts thought that cats were a bit of a disaster. None of the cat stations lasted very long.

The best animals of all were the rodents, Rats could learn and plan almost as well as the octopuses could. Squirrels although mischievous were very technically proficient whilst Hamsters were quite handy at lifting stuff and doing all of the hard work. Lemmings had it all in one package though, short, smart, hard working and above all expectations very clever. Which was useful for the people persons because they had a massive problem with some of the stations. They called them BLACK HOLES. Black holes were always hungry and can eat anything, in fact some of the astronauts thought that black holes would one day eat everything, which scared them all before they went to sleep. You know when you pull the plug on your bath tub and all of the water goes into the little pipe, that’s just like a black hole is, but a black hole would eat the whole bathroom for breakfast and most of your country for lunch. It could gobble up the sun in a week or so but the worst part is that it is always hungry. So the stations that were close to black holes were lived in and worked on by very very clever Rats and Lemmings.

Topsy Turvy and Turvy Topsy live on Bikini Station which is zillions of miles away from Earth. Their boss is Hogarth the wonder Rat. Now what you also need to know about black holes is that the closer you get to them the more bendy everything gets, Light bends, tables bend, time itself gets all curved and even a football will be a bit odd to look at. The people persons call the space close to a black hole the event horizon. Nothing can escape from it because a Black hole is so big that even Gravity can’t resist its call. Lemmings do have a sense of humour though because the call their black hole BM, Big Munchy. So Topsy is in charge of the engines whilst Turvy handles all of the power they produce and both of them were work happily together on Bikini Station.

 TOPSY TURVY AND TURVY TOPSY

IN

THE VERY NAUGHTY MESON

Big Munchy has a massive appetite, so big in fact the time itself gets slower and slower and slower when he is around, time gets so lazy that it may take me a hundred years to finish this story on Bikini Station. Not that I would have noticed the hundred years it would be a happy few hours of writing for me, but you would have grown up and had a lot of baby astronauts in those few hours, I should introduce myself to you though rather than confusing you with all of BM’s (Big Munchies) bad habits. I am Hogarth Exavier Sterling Rotwang the 3rd! But you can call me Hogarth the Wonder Rat. I am the commander here at Bikini station and I often watch Big Munchy Eating things, like planets and stars the same way he eats time. Think about that for a second what would you do if it was a hundred years to lunch from your breakfast, that wouldn’t be much fun would it? Luckilly a really clever man called Albert Einstein worked it all out for us and called it the theory of relativity, so time behaves differently depending on where you are. Its easy to understand, if you are on your planet far far away from Big Munchy then you will see that hundred years, but for me here at my very big desk that time will seem like a few hours.

Now you understand that. I have to explain that we go around Big Munchy in a huge oval shaped circle that the people persons call an orbit. So when we are closer to BM that’s when time starts to get wobbly. I can hear Topsy Turvy running down the corridor as I write, she runs everywhere so its probably not a big problem.

“Oh right its the naughty Meson again.” I will explain that Topsy Turvy and Turvy Topsy don’t speak in English or any people person language so I will have to translate her squeaks and whistles for you.“Captain Hogarth the Meson guys back and he’s causing chaos with the engines again.”

Now children firstly you must understand that I am in charge here on Bikini Station and as senior Rat I never ever make any important decisions without my big white captains hat on, it is a very important hat you know. I am a big white furry Rat and if I didn’t have the hat on you would just think “Oh Look Mom its a Wonder Rat!” Whilst what you should say is “Oh My Gosh Mom it’s Captain Hogarth The Wonder Rat!” When the people persons made us wonder rats no one ever thought we would become captains but I am the most highly ranking and Important Wonder Rat in the whole universe because my hat says so!  It’s so important that it can take me five minutes to put it on properly, I could see Topsy Turvy behind me reflected in the mirror, she was hopping from one foot to another which is what she does when she is nervous.

Then she saluted me and started to tell me the whole story, but before I say that I must point out to you how splendid I look when I am wearing my hat, I am a very handsome rat indeed!

“Skipper, that meson guy is back and he is getting all of the other particles upset with his ideas, they are all slowing down too, and if we don’t do something fast then we will be Big Munchies breakfast in no time, I don’t want to be eaten up by big Munchy Captain Hogarth! Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeellllllllppppp!”  

It was then that a skittering scratchy noise started down the corridor and Turvy Topsy raced into my bridge so out of breath that he forgot to salute me! “Skipper all of the systems are slowing down and the corridor has gotten longer and longer because of the time dilation, and dinner is at the other end of the station and we may take twenty years to reach it. I think we are going to be Big Munchies Lunch if you don’t figure it out fast and I don’t want to be Big Munchies Lunch! SOB!”

Sometimes a  rat has to stand up and be counted, defending the ship from a radical meson means that I have to be the right rat at the right time. Such is the responsibility that rest upon Captain Hogarths shoulders some times. As brilliant as my two Lemming friends can be they are not very good scientists, they are fabulous fun to be around but every now and then they will panic, like now and sometimes their tails curl around their legs and they will cry huge tears. I as Captain however only cry when I am on my own in the bridge, seriously sometimes Bikini Station can be a very scary place, but you must never tell Topsy Turvy and Turvy Topsy that! Ever!

“Hogarth! Do something we don’t want to be big munchies dinner!” Weep!” They said together.

It was then that I knew I had to visit the engine rooms and as we were closer to Big Munchy I also knew it would be a very long tricycle ride, when topsy and turvy got into the box on the back I had to check their helmets were on properly, and that they were secure, fortunately for all of us I remembered to throw fruit juices and snacks into the back as well. Its part of a good captains job to look after the crew and I take that job very seriously.

The closer we get to Big Munchy the more distorted everything else gets, my little room is eight foot long but as we pass through BM’s range it can sometimes become eighty feet longer, whilst it can also make me flatter longer or shorter, luckily my legs got a lot longer today so the peddling of the tricycle got really easy. We were going really really fast when the stations size changed again and all three of us crashed into the engine rooms door.

“Gosh Captain I am really glad you made me put the helmet on!”said Topsy, but Turvy was squashed underneath her and said “Mlooonger whooomph heeelmet on! Skipper.” So after a short while disentangling our selves we all finally stood in front of the now tiny engines. Now as you may know Space is a very very big place, so big in fact that if I shouted to you from one end of the universe your great great great great a million times great grandchildren would hear the me, because sound travels at a fixed speed, so it would take a very long time to reach you. That is what is called normal space, in normal space there are very fixed rules about how stuff happens. Big Munchy though breaks all of those rules every minute of the day, so think of him as a very naughty and hungry black hole.

In Normal space the engines are each the size of a house but today they are about the size of your lunch box. It can be very confusing sometimes, so I picked up the malfunctioning engine and shouted at it. It started to squeak back at me, and in that moment I knew I was talking to the very naughty meson herself. I must point out to you that our engines do not normally talk, apart from when there is a very big problem.Now everything that has mass, like you or even myself, is made of atoms and they gang together to make molecules, without them you would not be looking at such a splendid rodent as myself, but the atoms are made up of a collection of particles and it is those tiny weeny particles that power Bikini station, with our normally massive particulate engines. So I found myself listening to the naughty meson explaining why she preferred to hang around rather than powering our engine.

She has a squeaky high pitched little voice and she said this to me. “Good morning captain Hogarth, I like it when time slows down and it makes me feel like I can live forever.” I being a very clever rat jumped away and forced myself to think about my reply. It was then that I spoke to Turvy as she has much more experience with particles than I do.

Turvy had her tail wrapped around her legs as she spoke to me. “Its like this Skipper, the meson is a very old one it has lived now for three hours which makes it the oldest meson in the universe, and normally they live for a few seconds at most, but because time is bending here it doesn’t want to go back at all.”

I gave her my very best calm look and then decided to eject the meson into BM where it could live for thousands of years before being eaten. So I marched to the engine and told the very naughty meson what we were going to do. It was just as I was about to pull the eject switch that time slowed down noticeably, which resulted in myself pulling the lever for a very long time.

The last thing I heard as I was pulling it was this.“Thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnkkkkkkkkkkkkyyyyyyyyyyyyoooooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuu,Ccccccaaaaaaaaaaappppppppppppttttttttttaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnn.”

Then as I finale pulled the switch, time suddenly went back to normal as the engines went to full power and the last thing the very naughty but rather polite meson said was “Hogarth.”

I turned and found that Turvy had fainted from excitement. So Topsy helped me to place her on my tricycle and off we went back to the control room on the bridge.

Later we all had mint choc chip ice cream to recover from our rather hard days work, then having tucked Topsy and Turvy in to bed i read them a story then I left them dreaming about the day.

Now since it is obviously way past your own bedtime dear reader I will wish you sweet dreams as I know have to write a very long report to the people persons.

Untill our next adventure have lots and lots of fun.

Captain Hogarth

Bikini station

Andromeda nebula.

traffic river and co2 emissions
copyright Steve Merrick 2012

One of the first ever women scientists who was also a leading astronomer of her day was murdered and mutilated for witchcraft by a mob of zealots, and the great library of Alexandria which I think she would have loved was burned to the ground, all of that happened in the final days of the Roman empire and her name was Hypatia. Now we all take it for granted that the earth revolves around the sun, most of us understand that it is a combination of all of those planetary bodies pushing and pulling against the suns gravitic power, all of these elliptical orbits work in our small solar system beautifully. Yet that was not always the case, for hundreds of years the idea was suppressed and even Galileo the father of modern science was tortured by the inquisition and found guilty of gross heresy, for simply writing about what he saw not what he believed should be there. Consider it a sign of the times back then, but knowledge was kept under lock and key and anything that disavowed those systems of religious and political rule was to put it bluntly destroyed. Mercifully Galileo got off with a lifetime sentence under house arrest, which leads me gracefully to the point behind this article, well via Charles Darwin.

Even today we have a lot of similar mechanisms to our less educated ancestors. Right now many people have chosen not to believe in the theory of evolution, like the idea that the Earth revolves around the sun, people around the world are terrified of this, as it flies in the face of their ideas about gods. Once many years back I got one hell of a beating from a man who screamed. “Are you calling me some kind of monkey!” His fist flew and my teenage crime had been talking with a friend about evolution. Ok I didn’t help matters much by pointing out that we all share fifty percent of our DNA with a banana but his highly evolved fist hit my face and yes the forces of gravity resulted in me hitting the floor. I had asked him one question, if you believe why cant you accept the mechanisms that your god works by, the rest of that story is a blur of psychology and physics but the lesson that I learned was this, anyone that says they know what god is playing at is having a delusional laugh. I am nearly ready to expose the point behind these seemingly random words, via another concept called atheism.

I don’t have a soul, I have a lot of spirit and I am willing to bet that that is worth much more than a hypothetical soul could be. That said I see god as a hypothesis, on a good day its a harmless one but a hypothetical god is possibly more dangerous than a real one could ever be, this hypothesis stops us all from experiencing paradise today in favour of after we die. I have to ask where is the logic in that? Now I should write the usual disclaimers here about how many good religionists I know, which is quite a few, or maybe about us all having religious freedoms and how even an atheist would defend that, but thats no the point of these words at all. These words are about global warming. Climate change and extinction, but mostly they are about denial and stupidity.

Climate change is still being denied, just like the good old days with Galileo, its not happening at all, the arctic melts are not our fault they are a part of some planetary cycle that nobody has noticed before. This time though the forces that are denying climate change are those of corporate economics, capitalism and that good old boy power. The tragedy is that even as we are hearing the arguments that CO2 has simply accelerated a natural process, the de bunkers out there are abundant in their numbers, as are the shady people paying them to deny what their eyes see. Its the same pseudo science that Ptolemy manufactured, he was a scientist who ignored what his eyes saw, when he was looking at the way light refracted in water, he was also the brains behind proving that the sun went around the Earth, and richly rewarded by the standards of his time for deceiving himself. Which truthfully doesn’t bode well for our environmental woes.

Last week I read an article on Yahoo that asked. Environment, have we reached the tipping point? Now as a 46 year old photographer and writer I have known that global warming was coming for most of my adult life and the truth is that I like many others failed completely to make any difference at all, even these words are ten years to late, because we are so far beyond the point of no return environmentally that the best we can hope for is to minimise the harm caused. Damage limitation on a planetary scale, to protect a battered ecology, to save a stranded ecosystem and possibly a huge number of species other than our own. Yet this is all about saving our own species because without that ecology we as a species wither and die very slowly. We are facing a massive and dangerous proposition, if you look at the way weather systems are behaving, or at the way species are dying, or at the way the ocean is suffering, or to the way that the ice caps and glaciers are melting. Then listen to many the failed arguments for inaction, for increased productivity, for a consumerist fantasy land where everybody is happy, well we have to accept that that comes with a cost. That will be in lives lost, and species lost, it will be a completely decimating transformation of the ecosystems that live alongside us on our small planet. That is what is happening right now, today.

Ask yourself this if it took us several hundreds of years to accept the way the Earth moves around the sun, or the fact that we are still having problems accepting evolution conceptually, what chance do we as a planet of peoples have when it comes to climactic solutions. Listen, during the late thirties the atlantic fishery stocks were dangerously depleted, because of the second world war no fishing vessels could reach the fisheries because of the submarine threat. When those fishermen returned after a five year break they found the oceans bountifully re-stocked with fish. Thats just one random fact from our history, its right there in front of you, we can change the way we use the planet, manage our own proclivities towards self destruction. Which finally leads me to the point about these words. Denial gets us nowhere. We have to believe what our eyes are telling us, not what we want to see. Definitely not what we want to believe.

Today here on sunny old planet Earth we have massive levels of poverty, wars, starvation and of course the financial crisis, but believe me when I say that this will look like paradise in comparison to what our children and their children face. If nothing is done today to slow down this slow motion suicide that humanity has embraced then maybe we have only two choices left to us. Is it every one for themselves, or do we face it together.

Like any realist I can see that there will be winners and losers with climate change, but it doesn’t have to be like that, billions do not have to die and sea horses do not have to become extinct. We can slow this all down, minimise the processes that we as a species have single handedly accelerated and possibly even awakened. Its either solution time or extinctions a go go for us as a species, right here and now, today.

Which leads me back to Hypatia, like any good heroine there must have been a decision to stick with science or as it was called by the mob witchcraft, there must have been a way to avoid that mortal outcome, but she chose science and paganism over her safety. That resulted in her death, Galileo must have thought of keeping his mouth shut, Copernicus and many others in our history have chosen truth over the fantasies our societies create, and that mechanism that is buried deep with our human psychology is one of conflict. All that it takes is for one person to open their eyes to the truth, and to share that truth with others. So possibly its time you dear reader opened your own eyes to this one truth. The danger is close, its real and its today. Global warming should now be called global reality, and we have to embrace that one fact.

Copyright Steve Merrick 2012

Jester always felt there was something intimate about the smaller shuttles, she felt more in touch with the stars that flowed past them, and then when she entered the Kuiper belt proper, she let out a girlish gasp as they sped past all those asteroids that surrounded the solar system, and were home to the enormous space station. It was something Charlie enjoyed and kept to himself because the skipper inevitably had her nose pressed to the port holes as she tried to drink in the chaotic scene of rock and ice. He also loved this bit of space he was flying through, the journey was into its second hour and they had to traverse the asteroid graveyard for another three before they would reach Kuiper station, so he added fifteen minutes to their journey by ascending above the rocks and giving them a view of the Ort Cloud majestically framing this huge belt of rock, these rocks in their zillions became an ecliptical border for the little Solar system that was home to humanity, from their angle the cloud, the icy and massive collection of rocks reflected the suns weakened beams in an almost magical show that had been put on just for the two of them.

Then he heard her giggle and knew she was kicking off her shoes. “Charlie. Off the gravity mate.” She checked that her things were secure and then felt that lightening and tingling in her stomach as she became weightless, floating she quietly watched the asteroids tumbling hapahazardly beneath the shuttle. Finally she heard music coming from the cockpit and with a yell she cried out. “Hoi Geezer! Up the Volume!” Knowing charlies tastes for twentieth century music she wasn’t surprised it was a remix. The Gorrilaz banged out softly from the speakers and she found herself humming and singing melancholy hill to herself. It was a nice moment for Jester as with it she remembered her husband, he had gone into the great nothing and was listed as missing, but just lately she had been remembering his life and not focussing on his death. “Up on melancholy hill sits a man at peace love.” With her singing Charlie smiled, it was nice to have his skipper and friend back, to hear her forgetting the hurt for this short time made him smile and he sang along with her. “Just looking out on the day of another dream.” 

Copyright Steve Merrick 2012

Chaos during the London rush hour during the recent terrorist attack by alien squirrel people.

Extract From the New Novella The Faulty Alien, coming soon.

Cpt Bloodstains of the 2987^th SAS recon troop stood up and turned off the Tv set, then stared at the young detective in front of him. “Are you shitting me?” It was very frustrating to realise that this was a true story, “I mean what the hell am I supposed to make of this?” He said and threw the file of paper work down. The death of the Prime Minister had surprised every one who had been involved. Psychotic alien squirrel people, coagulated meson annihilators, it bugged him that anyone who could accidentally cause this much damage whilst armed with a WW1 Lee Enfield rifle should be terminated. “I don’t suppose that there is any chance that this Harvey fucker is real is there?” The detective was a woman in her twenties, she squirmed transparently and then shrugged, it was when she finally shrugged that he saw the same official exasperation as the rest of the country was expressing. “Tell me he is locked away and secure.” She nodded.

This was a bigger cluster fuck than Basra had been and Bloodstains was now in the land of SNAFU again. He had seen it all, then realised that in this current crisis, he had yet again seen some shit that he didn’t believe he had seen himself, and he was there. The detective was now sat next to him in the helicopter and she was obviously enjoying herself, which for some unfathomable reason made him even angrier than usual. “Whats making you smile?” He yelled into the handset, it was frustrating as hell as she had a whisper quiet voice.

“I’ve never been in a helicopter before.” She said to him in her mildly polite cockney accent.

“Oh great so your bloody site seeing!” If this day didn’t improve he was definitely going to kill someone. “Listen this is a total fucking balls up and if you think you have time to enjoy the view then you should get a replacement here fast.” She looked at him and smiled and then looked like some hippy peace chic. “What the hell is your name again and why are you here and not any of the special branch?”

“I’m Dr Jeanette Himmler, and I am the only particle and astro physicist at the Yard mate!” Then the bitch shrugged again and he looked out of the other window.

“Himmler! What are you related to Goeballs or something?”

“No I said Dr Himelier, its belgian you know like Poirot.”

“I have heard of him isn’t he the homicide guy in the anti terrorist section in Watford?”

She suddenly had a very rigid smile, “Yeah something like that.”

“So why does a scientist join the plod and why are you qualified to be here instead of Poirot?”

“Because I studied with this guy Steve, and know him, also I am the only person in this chopper who actually knows what a meson is.” She smiled and leant towards him, it was then that Bloodstains realised she was probably the only one in the chopper that was armed as well. “Also I get on with him as he is not that crazy, if you take Harvey out of the equation.”

“Oh just shut up you talk to much!”

Copyright Steve Merrick 2012

Hamra

RESCUE

IN

BEIRUT

BY

STEVE MERRICK

Nobody noticed them arrive, the shiny dark blue flying saucer glided effortlessly above the Hamra, the patrolling Syrian soldiers didn’t acknowledge them at all, as they strolled past the foreign couple by the Green line, we were arm in arm and heading for the Place Des Martyrs, a restaurant next to very ancient ruins, I did feel a bit dizzy at one point but that could have been the vodka gimlet or the luxurious heat or her, Jodie. “I don’t know whats happening to us, ” I didn’t either, everything was falling apart, and it was all my fault, my head would writhe agonisedly, and still we strolled. secure only with her, whilst my mind would unravel, almost paralleling the middle east peace process. Her eyes fixed upon mine, “Steve I really love you,” I still love her. The aliens shadowed us for a long time, whilst we drowned in each others inadequacies, they watched, when i fell and saw her and my sons faces getting smaller and smaller in a nightmare, they watched, when in another nightmare I saw her die, they were above me monitoring my mind, and I was oblivious of the scrutinising bat like little bastards right up until I trod on one by mistake.

That was the night I hid myself behind a sofa, we couldn’t speak without anger, I was as angry with myself as she was with me. Even now after all the brain surgery, I still cant believe it, a brain tumour, in combination with extreme events, and what moments they witnessed. Bats are dancing everywhere every night in Beirut, as the heat and dust of the day settle in that delicious lazy humidity of the night, all different kinds of fruit bats emerge, and they do resemble a bat in many ways, imagine a chimpanzee the size of your thumbs, then give it proper hands, and rubbery wings that stretch between their wrists and torso, they are almost bronze in colour, just like a bat. The immense resources and almost unbelievable technology, don’t help much. What really hurts is that technically they are not mammals, since they have no brain at all. Needless to say they rule most of the universe, needless to say they could crush our species like a bug. At least I crushed one of them, I was heart broken, I had accidentally squashed a bat, but somehow I linked that with my friend, Robert Kramer, I had deliberately killed him. Somehow the death of the small bat bothered me, as we lay pennilessly on the couch that evening watching Frasier on Lebanese cable, we still loved each other, Jodie was as unaware as I was that she was sleeping with an amnesiac murderer, I was oblivious to the fact that I loved a fantasist compulsive liar, even the aliens acknowledge that we were, and this is in their own words, “Quite a pair.” Going insane was quite effortless for me, almost natural, and for Jodie it was me and the rest of the world that was mad. The Battish leadership agrees with her too. The bastards!

For Jodie, all she knew was that a terminally ill friend of mine had spent over two months begging me to help him kill himself, as if it was my fault that HIV aids was retailing everywhere. finally after a major life upheaval, Falling in love leaving my son, the death of the man who was my father figure, I had had a very trippy weird night in Amsterdam, Bobby my victim, actually died the following monday, my incomplete memory didn’t acknowledge the fact that the police found him, on that day and oddly he died on the sunday I was visiting him, nothing of that night made sense, now however with a complete memory I can tell you that it still doesn’t, I just no longer care, and anyhow this is a story about how Jodie saved the planet from imminent invasion. I just wanted you to know that no relationship I ever heard of had such a string of bad luck attached to it, up to and including my as yet undiagnosed brain tumour, and having confessed that I am positive she is really jinxed up by Buddha or Allah, or any one of the spiteful little fuckers we call gods, why do I miss her so much.

So there I was sitting on our balcony, I was really getting into the swing of this nervous breakdown, it was my fourth one, practice does make perfect, I am in love, and when she isn’t talking utter bullshit or just exploding I am really unbelievably happy, this however is balanced by the worst isolation I have ever known, Jodie sleeps a lot, she was in our bedroom dreaming her dreams of me, you know that dream where your the fox and there are all these lovely people on horses who want to eat you, sometime I thought of her as my Bavarian atom bomb, she always had a hair trigger. This is something the aliens failed to appreciate. Listen before I write one more damned word I should tell you that the saviour of humanity wasn’t a big muscle bound hollywood type but a teeny weeny beautiful Bavarian jewish blonde, in heels. It wasn’t a glowing example of scientific sterile logic like the guy’s in Star Trek. In fact there is no movie in the whole world where the planet got saved by a self obsessed compulsive liar. Accompanied by a delirious shell shocked and wrecked newspaper photographer, not that I should underestimate my role in the aliens downfall either. Mostly I wish I could forget! and so as our life fell to bits, I was sat on the balcony of our unbelievably luxurious flat in Beirut, Lebanon.

When a teeny weeny flying saucer materialised in front of me, I think I blinked cos it wasn’t there when I closed my eyes, and I spotted loads of eyes watching me, it wasn’t long before a ramp came out of the ship, it was rusty and kind of made a screeching noise that managed to get our crippled and terminally ill kitten crawling pathetically for cover. I know that I wasn’t surprised by its arrival, lets face it if I was going to describe my brain at this point I would say, “Just like the Titanic, to many brain cells for the lifeboats.” So I just sat there, waiting, I think I smiled. finally and without ceremony a bat walked out of the ship, it wasn’t a quick and graceful bat, but a geriatric one. Hunchbacked almost, as it limped down the ramp, it had a bodyguard with it, 6 tough looking little customers with spears, and a 7th one carrying a chair. Also Beirut appeared to have a daylight bat situation going on, zillions of them were flocking to our balcony. My cameras were in our bedroom and i didn’t want to risk waking Jodie up yet, that would have been real trouble. I mean what would you have done, when it wasn’t women’s oppression it was politics, or some fantastical calamity, because the world was picking on her, we both ate a lot of chocolate and food was a good subject, in between all of this we had a lot of fun. But would you have woken her up.

It took the old one about fifteen minutes to walk the two and half foot to my cushion, I had Mtv playing on the TV, it was Moulin Rouge, Yipee Yipee I I Yaaah, and two more of them came down the ramp struggling with a PA system. Our kitten was called Raushia, she was looking at me wild eyed from under the coffee table, she had two broken legs, and her expression was just like Jodie’s, her thoughts were to, “Do Something,” Idid, I lit a cigarette, and watched them. By now the sky was black with them, as they swarmed around our apartment. The old one was out of breath when he sat down in front of me, but even though he couldn’t speak or breathe properly, I knew he was their leader, I thought of just squashing him, maybe they were like red indians and would surrender, but then I thought about it, I wouldn’t have surrendered, why would they. The two finally got the PA set up and it wined tooth shatteringly into life, one of the bodyguards passed the old one a microphone, he being to out of breath waved it away looking at me, I think he tried to smile but its so hard to tell with aliens nowadays it could have been an insult, but I did smile back encouragingly to him. he was coughing and hacking away for a while, and it was obvious that he wasn’t very well, he lit an itty bitty little pipe and puffed smoke all over the place, finally he drank a glass of liquid, dark and black and hot liquid, and my mind had a strange thought, “I like this guy”.

A small crowd of the bats had been gathering in a huddle near this scene, they had fedora hats and trench coats on, I looked really closely, there were minuscule Press Cards in each hat band, and all kinds of microscopic camera’s, I was about to speak, actually talk to an alien news photographer, I had picked it up very gently by the trench coat collar and popped him in the palm of my hand, It pointed a Nikon at me, I smiled, a flash popped and and I watched as he threw the bulb away and very quickly replaced it, it was about the sixth or seventh photo, that something that sounded a bit Prodigy erupted from the spaceship,

they all leapt to attention with their wings outstretched, as it played on and on, The old one just sat there, he winked at me. Finally the music stopped and everyone relaxed, they were obviously pleased, but i was wondering what the point was, Mtv decided to musically reply, JLO burst in with her love not costing a thing, the old one looked at me, I Spoke, finally man spoke to an alien species, the words that came from my mouth were, “I’ll just turn the TV down.” the old one nodded to me, “I’ll calm the kitten down as well.”

The Little Crippledy Kitty Cat.

Putting aside the agonising pain of her broken hip, Raushia was actually quite a happy kitten, regular food helped, and she was going to live another day because the vets was shut. When I first met her she was wailing from under a car, sort of squashed, sort of oil stained, sort of ideal for Jodie, the perfect subject for a Bavarian rescue mission, a bedraggled flea infested little ginger kitten, a terminal case that was doomed by the cosmos before we had stumbled upon her. I am not wanting to come across as some cynical shyster here but sometimes it is what it is, and in my case Jodie was in denial. At least Raushia was in agreement with me about the bat invasion. In fact her little high pitched mewing added up to one feline thought aimed at her human, “Get shot of these guys now Boss!” I meanwhile picked her up very gently and strolled back onto the balcony, noticing that U2 were where the streets have no name. It summed up beirut perfectly and begged the quicker question I wanted to ask my new bat like friends. “How did you find me, I have enough difficulty living on a nameless street?”

The older bat waved to a younger bat in a white coat, this little guy had a stutter, “wee ho h ho ho homed in o on your bra br br brains al alph al alpha waves and th the re rest was easy!” He nodded to the older bat who then stood up shakily.

“Why me?”

After a briefer coughing fit he grasped the load speaker and finally spoke to me. “We have traversed eight parsecs to find you, many dangers have been overcome on our journey here, to rescue you!”

“What me. Listen Jodie’s a nut job but she’s not that bad.” I have been aware since the day I was born that I am to good for planet Earth but hell this was a development that shocked me and staring at the little bat fella’s, I was struck by their seriousness in this matter, also I suddenly had a massive doubt and gulped deeply. “Is she?” I mean she wouldn’t want to kill me would she?

Exhausted by this huge effort the older bat fell back wheezing into the chair. Coughing a lot he looked apologetically at me then said. “In your calender it was in 1973 that you screamed for help, it took us ten of your years to build the ships to mount the rescue, then another 30 years to reach your backwater of a planet!” Suddenly he stood up. “We have journeyed countless amounts of your Earth miles, to get here to rescue you.”

I was aware zillions of pairs of eyes watching me as I remembered 73, looking around I was glad to have the broken kitten to cuddle. I remembered Saigon and the relief of the explosion and the deafness that followed and thought of that crazed colonel for the first time in many years. “Oh right that scream.” Suppressing memories could be considered a specialty of mine. “Yes that day.” It was odd to be squirming inside of myself as I remembered that day. “Much like today it all started out so normally.” Then came that brief and difficult journey back into reality, the present had yet again been interrupted by the past. Which resulted in a question. “How could you know about that?” I paused and looked almost theatrically at my massive audience. “I was seven and a half, how could you know about that?”

My asthmatic friend waved to the scientist who stumbled his way through an explanation, luckily I had kept up with my physics or none of this would have made any sense at all. I discovered also that the leaders name was Uther, and that his son Arthur was the new king of their planet called Avalon, putting aside the cosmic irregularities of Arthurian legend it seemed nothing more than a bleak and mathematically disharmonious coincidence. Raushia chose this moment to start mewing in that squeaky kitten way and I could have sworn that the tough looking customers with the spears went ahhhh. None of which explains to you why we were about to be invaded by minuscule bat like aliens. Its all to do with foam, quantum foam to be exact, it surrounds our quantum universe. Ok two facts that will help you understand what I am trying to recall here, The relativistic side of the universe is very very BIG! Planets, nebulas supernovas all that jazz is massive, meanwhile the quantum universe is very very small, yet in its totality I reckon the quantum world is even bigger than the relativistic.

So that foam is in the smallest measurable region of space, that is called by scientific types the Quantum Foam. Now that particular environment is pretty stable-unstable, everything from micro worm holes to massively tiny storms happens there, even time itself appears to have nervous breakdown in there. It is a wild and often unpredictable space, so when I screamed back in 73 my voice was carried through a micro wormhole, a distance of 734 light years to Avalon where due to the absence of logical time in the quantum foam, the Avalonians experienced eighteen years of earth quakes and other massive upheavals. Since I am the only person on Earth with this somewhat ludicrous super power, Uther and Arthur felt that I definitely needed rescuing and set off building a small fleet to save me and their own planet. It took them 29 years to actually make the journey, 29 years to get here to save me or so I initially thought. It was at that point that Jodie stumbled from the bedroom and hugged me, oblivious to our audience. After quite a passionate kiss I watched as she headed to the kitchen. Now one amusing fact about my beloved is that the girl is as blind as a bat without her contacts or glasses on, seriously I watched her flag down a red fire engine at a London bus stop once, I was to in love to stop her, so awestruck was I that all I could do was watch my angel looking at the firemen and blinking and squinting at them, as she elegantly gripped her bus pass. Minuscule aliens wouldn’t have stood a chance of being seen. I turned to the chief scientist who’s name was Merlin and said. “She’s not being rude she has really bad eyesight.” He knew this already and nodded, in fact if Jodie had had decent eye sight she wouldn’t have gone near my ugly mug in a million years.

Fortunately I have just re-read all of this and if I don’t up the pace you will probably fall asleep, so heres the point after 29 years of planning and travelling the Avalonians had misjudged one part of their pseudo rescue mission, I being a massive mammal would never fit in their largest ships. It was then that the Uther muttered “We need the weapon!” Which startled me more than you would think. I mean one minute I am talking pleasantries with an alien race then they use the word weapon.

“What weapon, why use a weapon? You don’t need a weapon guys.”

He stared at me with steely bat eye balls and said in a voice like ice. “You are the weapon you fool.”

Then I found out about another clan of bats that were lead by some creep called Morgana Le Faye, “Are you shitting me?” They denied it, and I discovered that she was an evil mad scientist who was hell bent on taking over the whole universe. She was also winning the war and had taken Arthurs city of Camelot by storm and siege. After a huge space battle near the planet Camlan. Putting aside the fact that some guy in the 17^th century had foretold all of this in a book called La Morte D’Arthur I quickly ascertained that I was to be terrorised into unleashing my super power upon her forces. “So let me get this straight Uther. You want to torture me for an indefinite period so that I can attack Morgana Le Fayes forces with my scream power?” Uther nodded. “Great and when she is finished off who else is there?” It was an alarmingly long list, as the Avalonians have a lot of enemies. Also the honour guards feet were tapping in tune with MTV’s latest choice, Warda’s Harramt Ahebbak, which always got jodie dancing which is where the troubles really started. Holding a steaming coffee and wearing her heels and favourite skirt she stepped onto the balcony with a towel on her wet hair.

“Who are you talking to?”

“Put your glasses on now.”

Imagine a pair of beautiful green eyes, then sit back and watch them expand in shock, she looked at me then at the bats then sprang for the kitchen. Now anyone who knows Lebanon has to be in love with something called Piff Paff, seriously this will knock the toughest cockroach down with one spray, it has more toxins than any other insecticide I can think of and is probably banned in Europe. Jodie stood fiercely framed in the balconies sliding doors. Her heels dug into the ground and I stood slowly then pulled her into the living room for a private chat, once I felt incorrectly that we were out of earshot of the Avalonians, then I spoke and filled her in on the situation. Now when Jodie gets angry her nose gives her away, I was watching as her nostrils got redder than when I had gotten us lost in a local refugee camp. She glowed with rage and stepped out onto the balcony and picked up Uther, then put him in her hand bag next to her Marlboro Lights, without any warning she pulled out the Piff Paff and screamed at the honor guards. “This is Piff Paff, its probably the most dangerous insecticide on the planet, I used it a lot last night, (which was true as we had had an airborne cockroach attack) and in all of the excitement I don’t know if I used fifty or sixty squirts, so what you punks have got to ask yourselves punks, is do you feel lucky!” Now having been trained as a dancer she turned gracefully and looked at me with utter feminine contempt. “I leave you alone for five minutes and aliens invade, I mean what kind of man are you?” I knew certainly that I was a photojournalist so my skill base with alien invasions was of course to photograph them, but Jodie then took over as she was a highly trained socialist revolutionary. “Keep them all covered with the Piff Paff whilst I have a private chat with their boss.” I had of course been taking pictures of the whole thing so I had to change tracks pretty quickly and pointed the Piff Paff at them. It was quite deadly stuff and I felt bad that I was making my new friends squirm with it, but how could I become there dream weapon. I am clumsy and trip over anything in my way and that is on a good day. Today was not a good day at all. So I could have fallen of our 7^th story balcony.

Muffled shouting and swearing was coming from our bedroom and all of us relaxed a bit, in fact the guards sat in a circle playing with a tiny deck of cards and some dice and as Jodie negotiated I learned how to play a very difficult card game called haemorrhage, The two were at it for more than a few hours and during that time the conscripts from the Lebanese army showed up. Once they worked out it was an alien invasion and not the Israelis again they also learned the card game. Whilst Uther was having the argument of his life with Frau Jodie in the bedroom.

I could bore you with more irrelevant details including a very confusing chat with the Hezbollah and the local rep of the United Nations but lets be honest you want to know what was going down in the bedroom. Jodie has obviously filled me in since then and I will tell you what she told me. Whilst our neighbors son went and brought more Piff Paff for me she was negotiating with Uther. Just in case you have forgotten because sometimes I can just waffle with the keyboard as much as I can with my mouth. Uther is the former king of his people and the father of their new king. I turned out that he was asking for permission to remove my brain and nervous system to take me back to Avalon in his ship. I wouldn’t have fit in any of them otherwise. Now she had insisted that Uther head home and make bigger ships or that he could give her the plans to one and we could come for a holiday sometime after we had built them. Now Jodie was a s mercurial as she was radical, she knew we could have retired with alien tech to sell so she pitched him her idea. He turned her down but informed her that his race could live for several thousand of our years, it also turned out that a space war is a very slow thing so he had three hundred years to play with before Morgan could invade.

It was decided in a flash the two of them agreed that the Avalonians would build a bigger ship and return it would take them 29 years for their new ship to reach Earth. So Jodie had put off a great personal disaster and stopped us all from being involved albeit remotely in an inter galactic war. Then with that sorted all of the bats left in quite a rush, leaving the two of us happily alone in our flat. Needless to say we inevitably split up, Raushia was put down and then the Israelis bombed the heck out of the neighborhood again, but for that one night we were oblivious to all of our future turmoils, and at least we did love each other. So with relief we watched the real bats swooping around outside of our bedroom and then slept.

The End

For twenty nine years at least.

Copyright Steve Merrick 2012

Copyright Steve Merrick

JO’s School Report.

What I did in my summer holiday’s

I went for a wild ride on Dads spaceship and got to ask an alien loads of questions because a time war is going to destroy our reality which Dad doesn’t think is real anyway, I normally visit him at his pad in the Trumpton Mental hospital but this time I sneaked up on him as he went for a stroll in the grounds with his girlfriend Ngwan who is a schizofrenic fighter pilot, the `RAF had to put her in the hospital because the voices have nothing to do with radio traffic. I saw dad entering what looked like a shed but was actually a very streamlined spaceship called the Snoopy. Its the very same spaceship that crash landed into Stone Henge last week when it was being chased by some very nasty squirrel people. Those are the same people that attacked Salisbury but Dad wouldn’t let me fight them as I am to little. We went to a place called the Andromeda nebula and dad launched a coagulated meson particle annihilator destroying the squirrel peoples ability to time travel which made them very cross, so they declared a holy acorn war upon the entire human race and chased us all the way to Orion.

Dr Danai eats a lot of Smarties which are specifically for diabetics, they are called Prozacs and I wish I was diabetic. She also told me that Dad was being very naughty because even time travelling psychotic squirrel people have rights. The grey and rubbery mammal prisoner that had tried to strangle Dad was over the moon because it was a victory for his whole people, Unfortunately he kept staring at Raymond the security chief so he had to have his head chopped off, which made Aunti Albert Einstein throw up all over the control panels of the Snoopy which is why we crash landed. The skipper was this really old sea captain but he got captured doing a recon of the grey rubbery peoples planet, because the coagulated Meson annihilator had be guided by a laser. So I was left on my own for three whole hours with the onboard Xbox which was fun. Dad and Dr Danai both got speared quite painfully rescuing the skipper and they swore as much as the Prime Minister did when the Squirrel commando’s raided downing street. But they both lived where as the PM didn’t survive the squirrels. It was on this mission that Raymond told me that the Dr went off on a berserker with a Winchester and assaulted the MOFO’S single handedly, accidentally spearing dad when she ran out of ammo.

When we got back mom said she was going to kill him but I am in the doghouse and hope that next year we can do some more exploring.

JO.

Copyright Steve Merrick 2012

PEOPLE PERSONS

TOPSY TURVY AND TURVY TOPSY.

BY

STEVE MERRICK.

Once upon a time and it was a very long time from now, all of the people persons had adventured off into outer space, as they travelled through the great nothing they would have to scatter space stations like bread crumbs behind them, it was very very important that the people persons called astronauts did this, otherwise they would never have found their way home. Pretty soon there were more space stations than people because everybody knows that outer space is really really really BIG! So not having enough people persons to look after their shiny nice palaces, the astronauts turned to the animals and made them very very smart, they gave them all hands and taught them languages and mathematics. The smartest were the Octopuses, they were almost as smart as the people persons, then came the Dolphins but they were possibly smarter than anybody, so smart in fact, that all they did was play around all the time and never worked. Dogs were quite philosophical in their own way but obsessed with food, Kangaroos just loved to bounce, they bounced about breaking everything accidentally and the astronauts thought that cats were a bit of a disaster. None of the cat stations lasted very long.

The best animals of all were the rodents, Rats could learn and plan almost as well as the octopuses could. Squirrels although mischievous were very technically proficient whilst Hamsters were quite handy at lifting stuff and doing all of the hard work. Lemmings had it all in one package though, short, smart, hard working and above all expectations very clever. Which was useful for the people persons because they had a massive problem with some of the stations. They called them BLACK HOLES. Black holes were always hungry and can eat anything, in fact some of the astronauts thought that black holes would one day eat everything, which scared them all before they went to sleep. You know when you pull the plug on your bath tub and all of the water goes into the little pipe, that’s just like a black hole is, but a black hole would eat the whole bathroom for breakfast and most of your country for lunch. It could gobble up the sun in a week or so but the worst part is that it is always hungry. So the stations that were close to black holes were lived in and worked on by very very clever Rats and Lemmings.

Topsy Turvy and Turvy Topsy live on Bikini Station which is zillions of miles away from Earth. Their boss is Hogarth the wonder Rat. Now what you also need to know about black holes is that the closer you get to them the more bendy everything gets, Light bends, tables bend, time itself gets all curved and even a football will be a bit odd to look at. The people persons call the space close to a black hole the event horizon. Nothing can escape from it because a Black hole is so big that even Gravity can’t resist its call. Lemmings do have a sense of humour though because the call their black hole BM, Big Munchy. So Topsy is in charge of the engines whilst Turvy handles all of the power they produce and both of them were work happily together on Bikini Station.

TOPSY TURVY AND TURVY TOPSY.

AND

THE VERY NAUGHTY MESON.

 TBC

http://www.amazon.com/The-Navigator-Awash-Starlight-ebook/dp/B0085UMBAY/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1338209034&sr=1-1

Finally The Navigator is on Amazon, it can be borrowed or brought via the Kindle lending library…..

So just click on the photo above to find it…….

Steve