Month: July 2025

Porcupine Spirit by Dale Williams Barrigar

(Image of DWB provided by DWB)

Porcupine Spirit

For Montmorency County, Michigan,

USA

In a cedar swamp

one time, I saw

a gigantic

porcupine

standing up

on his hind legs

like a miniature

human. He was three

feet tall, and looked

like something out of

Star Wars with his incredible,

innumerable

quills

sticking out every which

way and his arms dangling

in front of him as he

stood there, his small face

unafraid of me and his whole

self refusing to move

off the path

which he

was blocking.

And indeed

he continued

to block the path

and watch me walk

away after I

gingerly

stepped

around him.

The forests up here

allow for many

moments like these –

vast, indigenous,

Germanic, huge,

mysterious, with little

to no

human habitations

for gigantic wild

stretches and nothing but

dirt roads. If you want

to be independent

on foot and wander

in a pine wilderness

like Johnny Appleseed

with a wolf,

you can choose

any direction

to do that

here

in the middle

of a place

that makes you

free.

Dr. Dale Williams Barrigar is a poet whose own poetry transformed his own life: suddenly, and then gradually. It’s good enough for him.

For the First Time by Dale Williams Barrigar

(image provided by DWB)

Through it all,

and during it all,

the vast collection

of poetry

he’d created

in the last

ten years

had turned into

a monster

like Grendel

that was now devouring

my life. William Carlos

Williams said:

since the imagination is

nothing, nothing

comes

of it. This lesson

was weighing

heavily. But Jack

Spicer

also said: the poet gets

messages

for her or his life right

from the act

of writing poetry. This

makes poetry

worth doing daily

in its own right,

regardless

of any outward

consequences, or

non-consequences,

that can be

immediately seen. I remembered

I was a person born

with a humble sense

of mystic vision

(since day one). Since day

one

I’d felt

the correspondences

in the world

and had

a certain sense that we

are all here

for a reason, or for

many reasons

and meanings, which we

can feel (sometimes), but not

clearly

see

or say (most of the time).

An ambiguous

mystical

seeing, since

the dawning

of consciousness:

the first memory:

opening the eyes

outside of her body

for the first time.

Dr. Dale Williams Barrigar is a poet whose own poetry transformed his own life: suddenly, and then gradually. It’s good enough for him.

A Life of Drama by Dale Barrigar Williams

A Life of Drama

His book

had become

its own living entity

unto itself. Every time

he thought it was

finished, and these times

were many, something else

was sure to change

again within a week

or so.

Among many other

gifts,

this book

had delivered

him

a life of drama.

This life

we live

is filled with

involuntary immediacy,

as Lou Salome

pointed out.

Now, with this book

in his life, every unexpected

arrival was a bigger

shock. Each departure

had a greater

reverberation. Words

between people

lasted longer

inside the mind.

Tiny details

took on looming,

symbolic

significance.

Every squirrel

he passed as he was walking

his pit bulls, then later his

Siberian Huskies, along the sidewalk;

every song playing

in the grocery store or from

a passing car;

every cloud;

every wind that blew

or door that slammed

shut;

every woman

laughing

down the street

and every man turning

the corner so you’ll never

see him again; was loaded with

spiritual significance.

The unseen

correspondences

that make up the real

layers and levels of

existence

had become

both

more meaningful, and

less important.

Everything

was important

beyond belief; and

nothing was, because

everything changes

and gets redeemed.

The religion of poetry, and he

suddenly

realized

it was a religion

that had become his,

left nothing

and everything

to chance.

Dr. Dale Williams Barrigar is a poet whose own poetry transformed his own life: suddenly, and then gradually. It’s good enough for him.

Elephant by Dale Williams Barrigar

(Image provided by DWB)

“A poet is a time mechanic.” – Jack Spicer

The poem sat

in the corner

staring at

his eyes

and heart

with the eyes

of a cat

and the body

of a lone

wolf.

Then it changed,

the poem, into

a dolphin,

trout,

gorilla,

shark,

monkey,

wild boar.

A horse,

then a camel.

A hawk,

peacock,

osprey,

owl,

sparrow,

eagle,

crow,

dove,

pigeon,

thrush,

another nightingale,

and now

an elephant.

It is undoubtedly the

(invisible)

elephant within

the room.

I can neither leave it

there

alone

nor take it with me;

the door

isn’t big enough.

Yet, I’m

in charge

of this elephant.

However, nobody

is really in charge

of this unseen

animal,

who is, truly, a creature

never really seen.

Its intelligence

and will-power

are incredible,

like a real

elephant.

But it remains

invisible, like my blue

butterfly, the one that

travels with me

everywhere,

hovering over

my shoulder.

And so

I toil, struggle, wrestle,

labor, study, save, caress,

create, rest, and renew,

daily. Daily life is

a struggle with It,

capital I, but I

struggling with the power

and the breath

in this way

am truly

my own reward,

every day and

every way.

William Carlos Williams

and Jack Spicer, the great

Jack Spicer,

were right.

A poet

is a mechanic

of time.

Dr. Dale Williams Barrigar is a poet whose own poetry transformed his own life: suddenly, and then gradually. It’s good enough for him.

Saragun Springs Proudly Presents: The Last of the Mohicans Still Exists by the Drifter

(Images “Last Mohican” and “Water Boo” provided by by Drifter)

Water Boo

“The most manifest sign of wisdom is a constant happiness.”

– Montaigne

In Russia there was a television program about an enigmatic drifter named Fenimore who visited a summer camp to tell the children tall tales: about Native Americans, but also about extraterrestrials visiting Planet Earth.

The unusual name, Fenimore, was so well-known in Russia that even children recognized it.

Fenimore was the middle name of James Fenimore Cooper, an early American novelist, creator of The Last of the Mohicans, who was so well known in Russia that “everyone” knew who he was (and he was especially well known by his unusual middle name).

Cooper is less well known in Russia now than he was a few decades ago. But he’s still far better known in Russia than he ever was in his native land of the USA. And at one point, he was very well known in his native land, one of the best-known writers in America.

The Mohicans believed that the purest and best creature on Planet Earth, among all the uncountable creatures here, was the white dog. For the Mohicans, a dog of purely white fur ruled over all other creatures because of its beauty, goodness, loyalty, and spiritual intelligence.

Modern city folk would be horrified by what the Mohicans did with the white dog in turn, because they believed it was the purest creature created by the Great Spirit: they sacrificed it.

What modern people don’t realize is that: one: the animal was sacrificed quickly and without pain; and two: the Mohicans believed the animal was instantly passing over into a world exactly like this one, except without the pain, as soon as it died.

The Mohicans believed the white dog was leaving this world of pain and going to another world exactly like this one except far more perfect than this one ever has been or ever will be.

This is a challenging paradox, even a contradiction: that there could be a world exactly like this one, except without the pain.

No more physical hardship, no more fear, no more boredom, no more sense of betrayal. No more endless feelings of injustice, no more nonstop struggle for existence and survival (mental, physical, and spiritual), no more loneliness, isolation and alienation, no more feeling of being abandoned by the Creator of the universe.

But the beauty we see, hear, feel, smell and taste here will still exist.

The sun on your head, the wind in your hair, the ground beneath your feet, the green, breathing beauty of the plants all around you would still nurture your soul, except more so.

The grizzly bear will still be there, but he will no longer tear your head off and devour you; instead he will roll around with you peacefully and playfully in the grass.

The fear of death, the one multi-pronged, many-leveled, myriad-layered primal emotion that perhaps generates all other emotions here in this world, even our sense of beauty, or especially our sense of beauty, will be gone there. But the sense of beauty will still exist. It will simply be increased, heightened to a level we can’t even imagine yet, here on Planet Earth.

I went camping this week with my kids and dogs, at Warren Dunes State Park in Michigan, ninety miles from where we live outside Chicago.

It’s only ninety miles away from Chicago around the bottom of Lake Michigan, but it feels like a different world where the raccoons outnumber the people ten to one.

There are a lot of raccoons in Chicago and environs but they still feel vastly outnumbered. Not so in the Dunes.

In the Dunes, I felt closer (or closer in a different way) to the sun, the wind, the ground, the green, the blue of the vast freshwater sea and the sky above it, the yellow sand, the raccoons, fish, and birds, and so was reminded of my own Native American heritage.

I have never had my blood tested. But as a child I was told over and over that I am part Native American. So for me, in spirit, no matter what the genetic testing would or wouldn’t say, I am indeed part Native American. Nothing could take that away from me now, not even science.

And since I’m also a lover of Russian literature, including a few of the great Russians who were nature lovers, like Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Turgenev, I have a love for the Russian love of Native Americans, the Russian love of nature, and the Russian love of James Fenimore Cooper.

Drifting along on an empty trail walk among wooded dune hills with my two Siberian Huskies and one pit bull, I was feeling the feeling of free discovery that can still be found, somewhere, in all fifty states of the USA, if you look in the right way and in the right places.

And I realized that the Indians really are still alive inside me, because I worship their worship of, and their belief in, the white dog.

And their dream of a heaven that is like home.

10 Questions Dale

(Header image provided by the Drifter)

Good morning Readers

Today we are debuting a new feature that yet has a name, but is part interview, part word association. I have presented Editor Dale Williams Barrigar with ten words (nine actually, the tenth is his choice). What follows are his replies. We hope that this might catch on and other lists will be given to other people in the future.

Leila

Ten Words

“The Drifter” (aka Dale Williams Barrigar, Doctor of Philosophy) has made these definitions as short as he could, knowing that brevity is the soul of wit.

Any statements he makes about “God” and so forth should be taken with a large grain of salt: because he’s not smart enough to pretend he knows what the Creator of the Universe is really up to – or why.

One: FEAR.

In many ways fear is the basis for everything in this world.

When we climbed down out of the trees, it was partly from fear (with a large mixture of curiosity).

And when we started running away over the ground trying to escape the Sabre-toothed Tiger, it was certainly from fear. (*See below.)

Hemingway called it “grace under pressure,” a paraphrase of which might be “not being a chickenshit.”

How one handles one’s fear/s is such a large part of “who you are” that it’s frightening.

ANXIETY, the much used modern word, is another term for fear.

Jesus nailed to the cross is such a universal image (even for “other people” on the other side of the world who aren’t “Christians”) because it’s based on fear (as well as compassion); and if you don’t know yet that we all get crucified in this life, one way or another, and usually many times, you’ve got a rude awakening in store. (Some of us know this as soon as we know anything.)

Fear of failure can be good, or bad, depending!!

(*The first time we escaped the Sabre-toothed Tiger on foot we realized we could escape, and almost felt free for the first time. And the first time we escaped must’ve had a large mixture of trickery involved, as well, since there’s no way we could’ve beaten the beast on speed alone, with only our feet. Call it: tricking the beast. And it’s just as important now as it ever was; usually, now, for different reasons.)

Two: HOPE.

Whales, wolves, and humans can all sing, but only birds can both sing, and fly. (I mean fly in reality, not in dreams or with mechanical assistance.) Perhaps some day “they” will create a drone that can both sing, and fly; but it will be an at least partially hideous thing; like Frankenstein with wings and tender vocal chords.

Emily Dickinson has forever made me think of a bird whenever I think of the word “hope” (“hope is the thing with feathers…that perches in the soul”) and without hope, the world wouldn’t be worth living in. Period.

Three: ART.

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (wildly, he always denied he was German and claimed to be Polish instead, which would be, in 2025, like an American denying he was American and claiming to be Mexican, instead, or Bob Dylan claiming to be an orphan cowboy from New Mexico instead of a comfortable Jewish kid from small-town Minnesota) said: “These earnest ones may be informed of my conviction that art is the highest task and the proper metaphysical activity of this life.” Another great German, Arthur Schopenhauer, agreed with him (before Nietzsche said so himself). So did Jim Morrison, one of Nietzsche’s most famous disciples.

We all know who “the earnest ones” are, if we think about it. They take themselves all too seriously, have CONSUMERISM as their religion, and are great at passing judgement on anyone just a little bit different from themselves; they appear in the White House, the halls of Congress, the pulpits of churches, the lecterns of all the colleges and universities, and even, or especially, in the book clubs and writing groups of all small, large, or midsized American cities.

REAL ART IS SOMETHING YOU HAVE TO BE WILLING TO DIE FOR. You don’t have to die for it; but you have to be willing to.

Four: LUCK.

“Luck” is all the good things that happen to us which we don’t deserve that help to turn us into better people – not monetarily richer, more fakely famous, or more “powerful” – but better. Often, with the best luck of all, we don’t even know about it until long after the fact. Maybe this means that we’re always lucky; or at least more lucky than we think we are, most of the time.

Five: FAITH.

Faith is the thing without which, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, said, he wouldn’t be able to eat his dinner. Because without faith, he wouldn’t have an appetite. He would be too full of fear, and it would make him not hungry. When I start losing faith in life, I know I’ve grown too tired again. For me, a lack of faith in life is the biggest sin there is.

It has nothing to do with believing we know just what God is up to. It has everything to do with believing there is always a reason to go on – even when we don’t know what it is. There is always someone watching you and cheering you on – even when you don’t know it. Don’t let them down. (If you don’t have a choice any more it’s a different story.)

Six: FUTURE.

The Future is everything. This is where, without doubt, all the most exciting things happen. Sometimes we forget that the Creator of the Universe has a plan, and it involves US. Our best moments in the present are lived in the future, if we’re doing it correctly. It’s not about escaping the present, it’s about intensifying it.

Like everything else it touches, modern American (hedonistic, nihilistic) CONSUMERISM, the religion of the United States, which has also devoured large chunks of the (human) globe elsewhere, both East and West, bastardizes the concept of the future.

It has nothing to do with what they’re trying to sell us yet again.

It has everything to do with what Art itself (at the highest levels, which are everywhere, even under your sandals) is all about.

Without the future, there is no Art, because as you work at creation, you’re always anticipating one or many moments in the future, near or far. Or you are unaware of what you’re doing, which isn’t art.

Seven: TRUST.

There have been people in this life I’ve trusted the second I met them – and I continued to trust them, even after they left me for dead in the dust.

There has been one person I’ve trusted the moment I started reading her fiction and her online commentary – and still do and always will trust, and even would and do trust with my life’s work: even though I’ve never met her in person. She’s that good of a good writer. And to be a good writer, you have to be good. Not perfect (because none of us are), but good. Zero exceptions.

Trust you to take it seriously is just one form of trust.

Eight: FAMILY.

Not all family members are blood related, though they’ve probably spilled the same kind of blood – of their own, I mean (mostly).

Nine: OBSESSION.

Obsession can lead to a compulsive disorder, or to the perfection of the Mona Lisa, depending on what one does with it.

Sensual/sexual romantic obsession is, by far, best for the artist when it’s sublimated. Leonardo and Michelangelo spent zero time scrolling through dating app’s while remaining obsessed with romantic beauty.

Ten: CREATIVITY.

It’s Everything (all around us), and it’s everything (worth fighting for).

Your life has to be your first art, even when (or especially when) you pour everything else into your art.

And when we do this, we’re imitating (in a good way, and possibly without knowing it) the Creator of the Universe.

And Now For the Good News….by Michael Bloor

(We conclude this week’s run of tales by Michael Bloor on what happens to be his birthday. Anyone who has been reading knows why we hope to publish more of his work in the future. Happy Birthday Mick!)

Davie Millar paused in the middle of the Faery Bridge, leant on the rail and stared down at the Blackwater. Like a few other things in the town, the Faery Bridge was misnamed. When it was built, it was first called the Ferro-Concrete Bridge, but ferro-concrete had been an unfamiliar concept in the town a hundred years ago.

It was the autumn, and the total official number of UK Covid deaths (including Davie’s granny) had exceeded the Hiroshima bomb fatalities. But that wasn’t why Davie was so woeful: he was sorrowing because he was on his way to meet Big Andy McBride, the town loan shark. Big Andy was barred by the betting companies (Davie could guess why), so it was natural for Big Andy to ask Davie to put a bet on for him. Fifty quid at 25 to 1. Davie, of course, hadn’t been in a position to refuse. Big Andy’s piggy-pink eyes had narrowed slightly as he handed over the fifty quid. ‘Dinna mess wi’ me now, Davie. The last guy that did that wis left tryin’ to pick-up his broken teeth wi’ a broken arm.’

‘Nae worries, Mr McBride.’

It was Davie that was worried. Last night, he’d had just enough cash to take Melanie to the Bond film, but when she’d wanted a (ridiculously big) bag of popcorn, he’d had to break into Big Andy’s winnings. And once that terrifying Rubicon had been crossed, it had seemed a minor matter to blow quite a lot more of Big Andy’s winnings on a couple of rounds of drinks at the King of Prussia and a taxi home. Considering the risk that the events of last night were now posing to Davie’s life and limb, Melanie had proved disappointingly lukewarm. He had to face up to the likelihood that, compared to Seb, the lead guitarist in the regular band at the Abercrombie Hotel, Davie was running a poor second in Melanie’s affections..

Watching a couple of ducks fossicking about in the Blackwater shallows, half a dozen lame excuses of the dog-ate-my-homework variety ran through Davie’s head. He sighed, turned away from the rail and headed across the bridge towards the old mill. His granny had worked at the mill til it closed, like some much else, in the 1980s. Now the building had been converted into bijou flats. The closure and conversion had happened before he was born and he suddenly realised that he had no idea what the mill had produced before it produced Edinburgh commuters. All he could recall being told was that it used to produce a lot of dust, which had eventually killed his grandad. The recollection didn’t improve his mood.

His pace slowed as he headed up the hill to the council houses. He was surprised to see an ambulance parked beside Big Andy’s BMW. He stopped fifty yards away and watched as two ambulance men manoeuvred a stretcher into the back of their vehicle. Davie turned to a nearby neighbour: ‘Is that Big Andy on the stretcher?’

‘Aye, Covid. Serve the bugger right: never wears a bloody mask in the Co-op.’

As the ambulance lights dwindled in the distance, Davie turned back towards the Blackwater. By the time he’d returned to the Faery Bridge, he’d realised that the remainder of Big Andy’s winnings would be more than enough to buy that elderly Alfa Romeo saloon on the forecourt at Macrae’s Car Sales (the unique noise from the Alfa Romeo engine block was one of the sweetest sounds on Earth). Apparently, when Seb The Guitarist needed a car, he had to borrow his mummy’s Ford Fiesta.

And he could maybe make a few quid delivering for the Chinese take-away. The two ducks were now battling gamely upstream.

Biography:

Michael Bloor lives in Dunblane, Scotland, where he has discovered the exhilaration of short fiction, with more than a hundred pieces published in Literally Stories, Everyday Fiction, The Copperfield Review, Litro Online, Firewords, The Drabble, The Cabinet of Heed, Moonpark Review and elsewhere (see https://michaelbloor.com).

The Unsung Freedom Fighter by Michael Bloor

It was a shock when old Andy Baranov died. Sudden deaths are always a shock: it was a car crash – brake failure on the steep, winding descent of the Braeport, near his house in Dunblane. As well as a good neighbour, he was my favourite opponent at the chess club. Although over-the-board chatter is frowned upon, the club is a friendly place and we had become firm friends, continuing to play at each other’s houses during the summer months, when the chess club was closed. Naturally, I went to his funeral at the crematorium.

Gordon, the chess club president, was also at the crematorium; we sat together. Gordon was surprised that the service wasn’t at the Orthodox Church. I explained that, although Andy was the grandson of Russian refugees from the Bolshevik Revolution, the family weren’t members of the Orthodox Church. They had fled the revolution because they were social democrats, opponents of both the bolsheviks and the church-and-state czarist regime…

Gordon muttered, ‘OK, gimme the history lesson later.’

The service was pretty grim. Afterwards, Gordon and I felt obliged to accept the family’s invitation to the Drummond Arms for afternoon tea. I have a weak bladder (age-related) and was fiddling with my half-empty tea cup, wondering when I could decently leave, when Andy’s daughter, Sophie, came up to have a word. Gordon and I were giving her our condolences, but she cut us short. Addressing me, she said, ‘It’s Frank, isn’t it? I was hoping to catch you here, I have to travel back to London tonight. Dad wanted you to have this…’

She fished a book out of her capacious shoulder bag, handed it over, and moved on. The book was Harry Golombek’s account of the World Chess Championship, between V. Smyslov and M. M. Botvinnik held in Moscow in 1957*. Gordon and I stared at the book, rather underwhelmed. A hardback, with its original, but torn, paper cover. I turned a page or two: Andy hadn’t written anything on the inside of the front cover. The book recorded all those 1957 world championship games in the old descriptive notation. A simpler algebraic notation had been universally adopted in 1981: for example, a pawn move to the fourth square on the king file changed from ‘P-K4’ to the simpler ‘e4.’ Only a few old-timers like me were still familiar with the old notation. So the book had little intrinsic interest or value. Gordon shrugged and muttered, ‘Well, at least it’s a memento of Andy.’ I nodded, slipped the book in my jacket pocket and asked Gordon if he thought we might leave.

When I got home, I changed out of my suit because I was planning to go down to the allotments and and sow some peas. As I was hanging up my suit in the wardrobe, the jacket slipped off the hanger and fell on the floor. When I picked it up, Andy’s book (already forgotten) fell out of the pocket and landed, spread open, on the bedroom floor. I picked it up and noticed what I perhaps should have noticed before, namely that a folded piece of paper had been sellotaped to the inside of the spilled paper cover. I separated the folded paper from the cover and spread it out. It read as follows:

Dear Frank,

I write this in haste. If you receive this book from my daughter, it will be because I have died suddenly, possibly violently.

I know you are a supporter of Russian freedom (even though you are a misguided follower of Kropotkin, rather than Kerensky). I have left a memory stick, hidden in an old spectacle case, at the back of the chess club cupboard at the kirk hall. Please take the memory stick and catch the 10.10 to Glasgow from Dunblane on May 1st. Board the second carriage at the door nearest the engine and take the second seat on the left. Push the memory stick into the seat upholstery. Leave the train at Stirling. A friend will recover the stick and pass it on to those who can make most use of it. Please do this in the cause of Russian freedom and as a token of our long friendship.

With every good wish,

Andrei Baranov

Shit!

I was shivering, and not just because I was in my socks and underpants. ‘… a supporter of Russian freedom… a misguided follower of Kropotkin’?? As an undergraduate botany student sixty years ago, I’d read Kropotkin’s book, ‘Mutual Aid,’ a Pelican paperback, a scholarly corrective to the popular view of Darwinist evolutionary theory: Kroptokin had pointed out that evolution was not just a competitive struggle of all against all, there were plenty of examples of the importance for survival of co-operation both within and between species. I’d enthused about the book to Andy one night in the pub, after the club had closed. And I’d then been surprised when Andy told me that Kropotkin had been an anarchist revolutionary who’d escaped from the Fortress of St Peter and St Paul in Czarist St Petersburg, and had written ‘Mutual Aid’ in exile in a London suburb.

I didn’t think that having read Kroptkin’s book made me an anarchist. Similarly, I wasn’t a fan of President Putin (who is?), but to describe me as a devotee of Russian freedom was quite a stretch.

Why me, Andy? Why the hell pick on me?? OK, Andy and I were the only key-holders to the chess club cupboard. But as a 75 year-old retired botany lecturer, I was hardly a match for the Russian security services.

I struggled to think clearly. I poured out and drank the last of the bottle of Highland Park, left over from my birthday. Then I realised I was still in my underpants and put some more clothes on. May 1st was tomorrow. Logically, the first thing to do was to find the memory stick. When I stepped out the front door, I couldn’t help looking cautiously up and down the street. As I walked off to the kirk hall, a builder’s van suddenly pulled away from no.22. I spun around like a whirling dervish, but it simply drove past me, down to the Perth road. Truth to tell, I then went back home to change clothes, as I’d wet myself.

Pulling on another pair of jeans, I wondered if I shouldn’t try and pass this whole thing over to Andy’s daughter, Sophie. But she would be already on the train back to London, I didn’t have any contact details for her, and I knew from chats with Andy that his only child didn’t share his interest in family history and politics. The obvious people to deal with this were the British security services (not that popular opinion viewed them as a match for the Russian security services), but I imagined I could only contact them via the local police. And I knew I’d have a better case once I’d found the memory stick. I set out again for the kirk hall.

I got there just after five o’clock. The door was locked. I pressed the bell – no response. I pressed the bell again, for several seconds. A large, elderly lady appeared and wanted to know my business. I explained I needed to retrieve something from the chess club cupboard. As I said it, I could see that I ought to have dreamed up a story which implied an urgent and important errand. Did I mean the cupboard in the large meeting room? Yes, I did. The Kirk Presbytery were currently meeting in there to discuss the accounts: I would need to come back later. This was said in a tone that brooked no dissent. I went round the corner for a pint in The King of Prussia.

Fortified by the pint, another whisky, and a plausible cover story, I returned to the kirk hall half an hour later. I rang the bell and I rang it again. Then I realised there were no lights on. Damn it, of course, they’d all gone home. Befuddled, I stood for a minute outside the kirk hall.

A helmeted and black-leathered motor-cyclist rode slowly down the street, stopped and parked the bike twenty yards away, and started fiddling with some straps. I panicked and walked quickly away. I thought about heading for the police station, despite lacking the memory stick. But home was nearer. And in my panicky, befuddled state, home seemed safer.

Jeez, what a pig’s breakfast I was making of everything. I set the alarm, though I was sure I wouldn’t sleep a wink. But of course, as an exhausted 75 year-old, I slept like a baby til I woke up bursting for a pee, had a pee, and then slept like a baby again.

I was at the kirk hall at eight o’clock the next morning – I thought there might be a cleaner there. But the door wasn’t unlocked til just after nine, by the beadle. I explained I needed something from the chess club cupboard. He followed me to the meeting room, but seemed satisfied once I produced my key to the cupboard. There was a lot of stuff in there – chess sets, chess boards, chess clocks, score sheets, old minute books, old photos – but I found the spectacle case eventually. I put everything back, locked up, shouted my thanks to the beadle, and headed for the station.

Dunblane is a terminus for Glasgow commuter services. So the 10.10 train was empty when it drew up at the platform. I was the first person into the second carriage and bagged the second seat on the left. Four other people entered the carriage and I found myself scrutinising them as they entered and walked past me. I discounted a mother with a toddler, and an elderly lady with a walking stick, but I fancied that a powerfully built middle-aged man with a shaved head gave me an apprising look as he walked past. I was uncomfortable that he was sitting behind me, where I couldn’t see him, but I didn’t dare quit the designated seat.

As the train drew out of the station, I laid my raincoat beside me and, under the cover of the coat, pushed the memory stick into the gap in the upholstery. The ticket-collector arrived; he didn’t even look at me or my raincoat, just at my ticket. Then I got a shock: I’d completely forgotten the train stopped at Bridge of Allan before it got to Stirling. Several girl students came into the carriage and one of them came and sat opposite me. I felt sick, my mouth was dry and I couldn’t swallow.

She ignored me and sat swiping her phone.

The train pulled into Stirling station, where there were a score or more passengers waiting to board. I got up, picked up my raincoat, and noted that the memory stick was invisible, nestled in the gap in the upholstery. The shaved-headed guy also got off the train. I didn’t linger at the station for a return train to Dunblane, I headed straight for the taxi rank – an extravagance, but I would’ve given half my pension pot for a quick getaway. To my shame, halfway home, I had to ask the taxi driver to stop so that I could pee into a hedge.

A year’s gone by. I haven’t been on a bloody train since.

*H. Golombek, ‘World Chess Championship 1957,’ London: Macgibbon & Kee, 1957.

Biography:

Michael Bloor lives in Dunblane, Scotland, where he has discovered the exhilaration of short fiction, with more than a hundred pieces published in Literally Stories, Everyday Fiction, The Copperfield Review, Litro Online, Firewords, The Drabble, The Cabinet of Heed, Moonpark Review and elsewhere (see https://michaelbloor.com).

The Second Letter by Michael Bloor

Charlie Robertson had spent his entire working life on the Kilblane estate. When he’d retired as head gamekeeper back in 2015, Sir Ewan had presented him with a silver watch and made a rambling but heart-felt speech about Andy’s knowledge of, and love for, the wild places. So it had been a shock after Sir Ewan died, when Charlie got a letter from the new estate factor, telling him that he’d have to quit his cottage. The estate was putting the cottage up for sale: someone from Edinburgh or London would likely buy it as a holiday home.

Charlie mentioned it to Willie Forbes, the postie, when Charlie asked Willie into the cottage to stand on a chair and change a light bulb for him. And then Willie mentioned it to the minister in the village. The minister was a nervous young man who’d previously served in the Castlemilk housing scheme in Glasgow: he explained to Willie that, once Charlie had actually been evicted, he’d then qualify for a council flat. The minister and Willie both knew what Charlie’s life would be like in a council flat in the town; Willie reckoned he’d be ‘like an auld lion in a circus.’ They agreed it was a bad business: Charlie would be much better off staying with a member of his family, but he’d never married and had no close relatives.

And that was how matters stood, on a warm spring day, when Charlie took a stroll up the glen, to see the primroses in full yellow bloom beside the burn as it tumbles and splatters over the boulders. Buoyed in spirit, on his return to the cottage he decided to open yet another official-looking letter that Willie had delivered two days previously. It was from a London solicitor and its contents took Charlie back fifty-odd years…

#

As the estate’s under-keeper back then, young Charlie had been despatched to look for the ponies that would be needed for the next day’s shoot. The head keeper had predicted (wrongly) that they would’ve taken shelter in Glen Ducheron (aka Gleann an Dubh Choirein, the Glen of the Black Corries). Charlie had wasted the whole afternoon walking the length of the glen without seeing so much as a hoof print. It was dusk as he returned to the mouth of the glen, and the track back to the shooting lodge. That was when he heard frantic shouting, but could see no-one. Then he spotted an arm waving above the dead bracken on the bankside of the Ducheron Burn. It was a woman, unable to stand: she had smashed her left knee when she’d slipped on a rock, trying to cross the burn. She was wet through and shivering.

Charlie took off his coat, wrapped it round her, and told her he’d hurry off to the lodge where there was a phone. She begged him not to leave her. Was it the hours of loneliness she’d already endured, the throbbing pain, or the sinister bellowing of the rutting stags that had drummed through the glen all afternoon? Maybe all three: at any rate, she was insistent and Charlie complied.

A few yards away downstream was a mature spruce plantation; Charlie quickly gathered two branches for a leg splint and a stouter branch for a crutch. In the early evening dark, huddled together for support, they set out on the two-mile walk to the lodge. The path, at first, was uphill, but at least it wasn’t uneven or stepped. Charlie’s auntie was the local midwife and so he knew about the soothing importance of distracting questions and chatter. He learned that her name was Millie and that she was a postgraduate archaeology student.

They paused for a breather. ‘And what were ye doin’, out on the estate in the middle o’ November?’

‘Well, there was once a Roman camp down at Callander…’

‘Ah, ye were lookin’ for the Roman ford?’

Surprised out of her pain and exhaustion, she looked up at him. ‘Yes, that’s right! How..?’

‘Well, yer no’ the first tae come lookin’. Robbie, the head gamekeeper, told me that a couple o’ Edinburgh professors were here afore the war, lookin’. The Romans made a cuttin’ in that steep bank beside the burn and lined the cuttin’ wi’ stanes. There’s a lot o’ history in these glens, if ye ken where tae look.’

The moon was now up and he saw her smile and give a vigorous triple nod. They set off again.

When they reached the lodge, the housekeeper phoned for an ambulance, put them in front of the kitchen range and fed them warm milk and oatcakes with loganberry jam. Away from the moonlight, Charlie could see that Millie’s eyes were brown.

A few days later, he received a letter from Millie (sent care of Mrs Laing, the housekeeper), with her repeated thanks and apologies, plus two pounds to pay for dry-cleaning Charlie’s coat. He kept her letter and wrote a letter in return, but got no further reply.

#

And, as Willie the postie told his audience in the public bar of The Drummond Arms Hotel, that was that.

[dramatic pause]

Until Charlie got the letter from the solicitor telling him that the Archaeology Professor had died and left Charlie her wee house in London, which the solicitor had valued at in excess of nine hundred thousand pounds.

So, that was why Charlie was buying his cottage off the estate. Willie had got a lot of quiet enjoyment out of telling the story to the new factor’s wife, when he’d delivered a parcel to the factor’s house that morning.

Biography:

Michael Bloor lives in Dunblane, Scotland, where he has discovered the exhilaration of short fiction, with more than a hundred pieces published in Literally Stories, Everyday Fiction, The Copperfield Review, Litro Online, Firewords, The Drabble, The Cabinet of Heed, Moonpark Review and elsewhere (see https://michaelbloor.com).

The Forensic Psychiatrist’s Tale by Michael Bloor

Bob Duncan, like a lot of ex-policemen, is of a philosophical turn-of-mind. He reckons that the Inverallan Allotments are a bit like the army in the days of the old National Service, where all sorts of people had to learn to mix in together. Misunderstandings might occur across the class barriers, disputes might flare up from time to time, but we all learn to jog along together in the common struggle against Mother Nature and the bloody weather. He was enlarging on this to Willie Brown and myself as we all took shelter from a sudden, vicious shower in the old allotment summerhouse.

Willie laughed: ‘All sorts, Bob? Well, I havena’ seen that Beyoncé on a plot yet. Nor the Duke o’ Buccleuch… Unless he’s that new fella in the blue floppy hat that’s got old Ellen’s plot, over beside the railway.’

‘Talk of the Devil,’ I nodded towards a man in a blue floppy hat hurrying through the downpour to the summerhouse.

He shook himself and gasped out a greeting as he came in the door. I shifted an old seed catalogue off the bench to make way for him. He introduced himself as Andrew MacSorley – a large man with a florid complexion. To be sociable, I asked him how long he’d been on the waiting list before he’d got a plot.

‘Two and a half years. I’m pleased with the plot, though. Especially the fruit bushes.’ He spoke with the long drawn-out vowels of the Scottish boarding schools. ‘And I was lucky, because I got the plot in October, just a month before I retired.’ This struck a chord and we all then spent a few minutes in a collective hymn of praise to Retirement. Then Willie asked him what he’s done before he’d retired. He replied that he’d been a forensic psychiatrist.

There was a moment of stunned silence and then I, rather lamely, said: ‘Wow. Interesting job!’

He stretched out his legs from the bench: ‘Terrible job. Before you ask me why, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you what was the final straw…

‘You’ll maybe know that an important part of a forensic psychiatrist’s job is that of assessing for the courts whether or not arrested persons are fit to plead. Well, this case I’m going to tell you about wasn’t all that untypical, but it was just one case too many as far as I was concerned.

‘He was a lad in his late teens. He’d gone into the toilets in the square in Crieff, the ones where you pay the attendant 30p. When he went into the Gents, the attendant noticed that he had a chisel sticking out of his back pocket. Well, there’d been a rash of graffiti and minor vandalism in the toilets, and the attendant got suspicious when this lad was a while in the cubicle and not coming out. There were a couple of cops on foot patrol in the square, so she called ‘em over to investigate.

‘Apparently, he took a bit of coaxing to get out of the cubicle and when he came out he still had the chisel. Now, there was no damage to the cubicle, but when the cops asked him what he was doing with the chisel, he said it was to protect himself from man-eating spiders. If he’d said he was an apprentice cabinet-maker – no problem. But to ward off man-eating spiders?? So…

‘They booked him – possession of an offensive weapon. When I saw him he’d already been in the jail for a fortnight, on remand. Was he in a good state of health? Emphatically, he was not. In his terms, he was caught in a giant spider’s web.’*

He paused. ‘Ah, the rain’s almost off, I see. Nice to meet you lads!’

Bob and Willie and I watched him go. Thoughts of jogging along with his fellow-allotmenteers seemingly suspended, Bob turned to me: ‘So whit wiz the polis supposed tae dae? Help the lad fight off they man-eating spiders?? Forbye, that’s nae the reason he’s nae longer working. Ma niece cleans his flat: he wis suspended cos he turned up fo’ work pished…’

*I heard the radical psychiatrist, R.D. Laing, tell the story about the man-eating spiders at a meeting in Cambridge in 1968. It’s stayed with me me ever since.

Biography:

Michael Bloor lives in Dunblane, Scotland, where he has discovered the exhilaration of short fiction, with more than a hundred pieces published in Literally Stories, Everyday Fiction, The Copperfield Review, Litro Online, Firewords, The Drabble, The Cabinet of Heed, Moonpark Review and elsewhere (see https://michaelbloor.com).