A Daily Story Jim the Barman: “You drin

A Daily Story
Jim the Barman:
“You drink too much. Try choosing with your tastebuds, not your wallet. Support micro-breweries/local wine/ independent distillers, it’s healthier, invariably has more flavour and creates conversation. ‘What’s your cheapest__’ only buys you a hangover and my contempt.
I don’t enjoy cleaning up your piss, shite and puke, but I don’t have to – I get paid.
Laws exist for a reason – don’t argue about how drunk you incorrectly believe you aren’t, you only achieve becoming the target of ire created by today’s dickheads.
I have a Masters, and am more creative than your whole Company, so when I interject I’m bestowing a favour. If you bore me, I’ll get busy cleaning.
No, you couldn’t do this job, by claiming so you’ve proved you lack the necessary social skills and graft ethic. Yes, you earn double what I do, but I bet I have triple the fun.
You work WITH me, keep up or frig off.
One for me? Don’t mind if I do!”

A Daily Story Jim the Barman has spiked

A Daily Story
Jim the Barman has spiked my drink, he spat in my pie and mash, he has short-changed me, he has underpoured that measure, he has cut me off when I’ve barely had four pints, he’s called Security when I was only having a laugh, he’s dobbing me into the Police, he’s barred me and I was only asking her innocent questions, has beat me up outside for no reason except he’s angry and in a bad job, touches up his barmaids according to an ex employee, steals from the till says a mate of a mate.
Jim’s let me back in so maybe he’s alright, he knows his shit, he’s playing the tunes, he’s sound as a pound, he’s a right laugh, he’s a lad with the ladies, he’s spotting me pints, he’s my best mate ever, I love Jim the Barman.

A Daily Story If you can call it a story

A Daily Story
If you can call it a story. There was a man who was Sad, he Died, the End.
You want more? You want to torture our fictional man by hearing what he went through? This isn’t a true story, there are no existing facts to tell you. This man, would you like to call him Pete? Pete – every thing you wish to think of him, to have happen, to write into existence, is new as it happens. His first love (a little cliche, but perhaps you had to start somewhere) was more wonderful than she was beautiful. She inspired wonder. I wonder why she is so nice, he would think. I wonder how I can be so nice. Perhaps if I love her, it will rub off, thought Pete down deep in the dark and stupid shadows of his pysche.
Do you see what you’ve done? You’ve made a man and you’ve made him stupid, and jealous. Just to have a good reason to make him Sad. Couldn’t he have been Sad at World Poverty, or that his kitten died (which has now happened, congratulations, I hope you’re proud of yourself)? Not ‘real’ enough? That’s a joke. You know you’re making this up. You’re putting Pete up on a pedestal, making him as hopeful as can be, simply to destroy him. We know he Dies, what else could you concoct?

A Daily Story If you can call it a story

A Daily Story
If you can call it a story. There isn’t really a beginning, I think you’d agree, and very little happens before it ends.

A Daily Story Jim the Barman died. He sa

A Daily Story
Jim the Barman died. He sauntered up to the Pearly Gates.
St. Peter, looking in his big book of all bad or beautiful choices, slammed it shut and said, “Look Jim, you’re a nice bloke and all, but you ain’t getting in.”
“Why the fuck not?” Jim retorted, having learnt decades before from behind his bar that anger is the best defense.
“Language sonny. As for your tally – get a clue. Do you have any idea of how it stands?”
Jim the Barman was fairly adept at Tabs. On some level he’d applied a mental tally of the drinks he reckoned Jesus would owe him. Always being a good listener, even to the boring drunks; putting up with the flirting; the endless boke and shite he’d cleaned; never Till-fiddling.
St. Peter, being a Saint, and therefore a mind-reader, nodded, “Yeah, all very nice, but you don’t get paid twice mate.”
“What do you mean Petey?”
“Jim. You were paid once in money for that stuff. You’ve practically paid yourself twice with that glowing feeling of martyrdom you carry around. Up here, you don’t get paid twice, never mind thrice, for a job done once.”
“Ach, ballacks, sure, is that the reason for me not coming in? Because everybody said I done that thing I never did…”
“No. That wasn’t your fault directly. Venial only that one. Listen here, trust me, you don’t want to know. You’re better off going down the pits and feeling hard done-by. Maybe that’ll be some sort of consolation for a few millennnia. You know, a soothing balm to your bloody big ego.”
“Tell me.”
“You sure?”
“Pete mate. I never shied from a harsh word in my life, why would I start now.”
“Fine. You asked.” St Peter opened the book again, found the right page. Then, keeping the place, he flicked forward quite substantially, slowed, stopped. He pinched the wodge of pages, to show Jim.
“Keep in mind I’m summarising. I have eternity, but I’m not wasting it listing these in detail.
Approximately 50,001 broken hearts; 2,306 dysfunctional relationships, 143 unplanned pregnancies. OF WHICH, over 60 were-”
“Wait a minute,” Jim interrupted with, “I’ve only had under twenty shags. How’s that MY figures?”
“Oh no, Jim, we’re not citing those as how many you have done. It’s what the booze you sold has done that we’re quoting to you.
120,500 hangovers (21,480 of which resulted in sick days and loss of productivity in good deeds); 300,973 out of pocket people who in turn neglected charities, themselves or loved ones; 1,662 failed or failing livers; 563 broken limbs; 11 suicides. You get my point. Feck off.”
Jim sauntered off to have a word with the devil. He was probably a drinking man.

A Daily Story Hello world the baby cries

A Daily Story
Hello world the baby cries. Goodbye world the old man sighs. Why world the sick woman whispers. Fuck you world the rejected lad mutters. Go away world the ignored girl thinks. Where next world the rich couple cry. Enough for now world the poor person wishes. Oh world the first kissed kid lows. Thank you world the parent utters. How can I help world the just ask.

A Daily Story Once when I was older, wit

A Daily Story
Once when I was older, with less hair than I have now, and the grass was blue, the cows went quack, and everyone who was good deserved a smack, there was a boy who loved to read to the exclusion of all else. His meals passed him by, his parents passed on, his work passed him over for promotion, he passed others lives without affecting them, and eventually he passed on death (feeling it a trivial thing). So having forever with which to read, and realising that he could read for all time, as new books were written he would be there, the forever reader, never satisfied, always judging, he decided to write the story he was looking for in others’ pages. So he wrote, and ream after ream of prose he produced, perfect pages of poetry he polished, playscripts and epistles. Until he realised that no-one would live as long as he, and so no-one would ever have the time to read what he wrote. So after many years of neither reading nor writing, he decided to live. To live with the intensity and to the exclusion of all other things. He did so, and embraced all that he had previously shunned, loved all he had loathed.

A Daily Story 2nd May 2013 I knew a kiss

A Daily Story
2nd May 2013
I knew a kiss wasn’t going to happen, so I just wished her a good night.
“Go take a flying fuck,” she said. “Go jump down a well. Go hide in a freezer chest that only has handles on the outside. Go be someone else for a day and then have to return to the horror of what you are and be incapable of changing it. Go find a crippled orphan in a third world country and realise they have more of a function in the world, and a bigger heart than you.”
I asked her if a quick shag was out of the question then.

“Hello.” “Another drink?” “That’s

“Hello.”
“Another drink?”
“That’s fun.”
“I Love You.”
“Marry me?”
“I’m pregnant.”
“This house.”
“New job.”
“Bye kids!”
“Tea?”
“Hello again.”

A Daily Story 12th April 2013 Ding Dong!

A Daily Story
12th April 2013
Ding Dong! The Witch is dead.
Which old Witch? The Wicked Witch!
Ding Dong! The Wicked Witch is dead
Wake up – sleepy head, rub your eyes, get out of bed
Wake up, the Wicked Witch is dead. She’s gone where the goblins go
Below – below – below. Yo-ho, let’s open up and sing and ring the bells out
Ding Dong’ the merry-oh, sing it high, sing it low
Let them know
The Wicked Witch is dead

So sang Ella Fitzgerald, on the record player, while the winged monkeys cried into their beer once more. Harold, Eric and Clyde, the last three surviving winged monkeys from the forests of Oz.
“Those shitting green guardsmena turned, flipped like a pancake, onto Dororthy’s side, who of course ‘Hadn’t meant to kill her’. So, manslaughter’s no longer a crime?” screeched Eric from the window, flapping his wings angrily at the glass. Their Parole officer had nailed the windows shut personally. Clyde drank another drink. Harold could tell he was thinking of how the Witch used to scratch him behind the ear.
“What use was Dorothy? She had grabbed that golden cap from the melted Witch pool, and used it to command us, just as the Witch had, but at least SHE fed us! Dictators are all the same, regardless of whether they came from Oz. OR Kansas.”
Harold, Eric and Clyde drank into the night, singing soft songs such as they used to in the trees before Kings, golden caps, Witches of any compass direction, and little, bestialic Lolitas with ruby slippers.