Paradise Regained

Here’s somewhere my girlfriend and I went on holiday. We were virtually all alone. We liked it alot. Can’t wait to go back. No, I’m not telling where it is.

Ps. Sorry the photos are so low-res, I forgot my camera and had to use the dinky one on the mobile phone.

Cold Turkey

As soon as the plane touched down, I realised why my Mediterranean holiday had come so cheap. Istanbul was unseasonably frigid. I had decided to take a vacation to escape the stresses of my emotionally draining occupation as a skiing equipment salesman in the sahara.
My little firm has a staff of one; me and like many small organisations, the working environment can get crushingly intimate. Being both boss and employee has forced the firm into a truncated corporate structure which makes dealing with conflicts of interest something of a challenge. Recently there was what would be modestly described as a mutiny at the office. The boss was making unrealistic demands on his employee, expecting him to single-handedly improve turnover in the next quarter for the first time in the company’s six-month existence and return a profit no less. The employee upon whom these demands were made just happens to be a cynical slacker whose apathy is legendary.
There was no way the CEO’s rabid realism could share a room with the staff’s mulish realism. There was a falling out and no matter how hard I tried to bring them together (literally) I’m ashamed to say I failed. Things came to a head one fine Friday in Timbuktu the employee quit just as the boss was preparing to fire him. Then they simultaneously booked a vacation in turkey with different travel agents (the twits!) and here we are, I playing the reluctant diplomat to a family feud.
Istanbul was freezing just as tempers were flaring.
It didn’t help that labour had packed suitable clothing whilst management had brought only swim wear along. One was too proud to ask whilst the other was too stingy to offer and don’t get me started on the credit cards and traveller’s cheques they had brought with them but were constantly bickering on what to spend the money on.
Coincidence? had it that we were all booked in the same hotel room at the Istanbul Orient. we too our baggage off the carousel and boarded the same taxicab. The animosity was so palpable in the rear that the initially chatty cabdriver hunkered down in his seat and turned the volume way up on his tinny radio. We rode int town to the sound of Arabic music; ‘ride of the dervishes’ would be a more appropriate term for that incident. checking in was like a waking nightmare, Management wanted to leave the doorman and porter a tip but labour was having none of it – at least not until he got a raise.

 

We are still in the lobby now, More updates as events warrant.

Nursery Rhymes

Ladybird ladybird
fly away home
your house is afire
and the brigade say they’re tired
your children are all gone
sold abroad for a song
all except one
and her name is Anne
she runs guns and peddles drugs
and is queen of a biker gang

Prodigal Prose

With that remark I realised she was about as sharp as a butterknife and I settled in for the long afternoon that lay ahead.
Most of the girls I knew could barely hold a glass of water. Eileen however, could hold an entire conversation.

She only had eyes for him and would gaze at him longingly, adoringly, unendingly. Her eyes forever sought his silent reassurance that he was different, not like the others before him, that he would not break her heart.
She found it. I knew it wasn’t there
She flung her trust at him, desperately hoping it would find something, anything to cling onto for to doubt him meant to be alone and that was something she could not bear.

She knew he was drawn to her beauty. She was breathtakingly beautiful and maybe that was all he was drawn to in her, she wasn’t sure. All she was certain of was that he wanted her to be his, to own her. She was afraid his desire would not last and so every day she dressed herself up for maximum effect then go out and tease him, mock him and provoke him with her body.
He was consumed by her. she filled his thoughts, his dreams, his prayers. He’d rather have been shot than ever let her know. It was a game they played, one which they hoped the other would lose.
She had to win before she became old and ugly and undesirable.
He had to win if only to remain sane.

I was bored and cold and lonely. I supposed she had been fucked by many men before and idly wondered if she would like to get fucked by one more. Would it make a difference to her ……………to me?

Ode to a fallen soldier:
They sent me to a foreign land
To deliver death to a foreign man