DISTRACTION #1

I like this poster. I found it just now. But, for me, it should read ‘Nightmares At Work Mean Peaceful Nights Later’. I don’t really care for the idea of bombs heading for my private parts as I enjoy my peaceful nights, but the overall design and the sentiment appeal as an example of wartime propaganda.

See, I’m distracted already.

You know how it is. You are writing something intense or disturbing or nasty and you have to turn away from the page and look for distraction. Those of us who write horror, crime or thrillers and are still relatively sane, do this a lot.

The darkest parts of human nature and the nature of reality are the memes of such lost souls.

Right now, the darkest coffee and the nature of caffeine have assumed more immediate importance , so away with you, Richard Dawkins: you and your foolish memes.

Then we come to the rub.

There are only so many cups of coffee one can ingest before the trembling begins and you can’t see the keyboard, let alone punch the keys to produce anything resembling coherent text. That’s not exactly true. I don’t need coffee to achieve incoherence.

But, I’m proud to say, I’m rarely distracted by anything when writing and… look, a wood pigeon! Never seen one of those before.

I muse on the smallness of a pigeon’s head and the hugeness of its droppings. If people did droppings in the same ratio we would need much bigger toilet paper… and possibly a wheelbarrow, when performing our ablutions.The pigeon is making that repetitive, idiotic, cooing noise and it’s copied by another identical pigeon sitting about ten yards distant. The notes, tone, cadence and duration are exactly the same.

1^st Pigeon: Hello.

2^nd Pigeon: Hello.

1^st Pigeon: Hello.

2^nd Pigeon: Hello.

1^st Pigeon: Hello.

And so on…

Or…

1^st Pigeon: Good morning, Clarence.

2^nd Pigeon: And a glorious one too, Edgar.

1^st Pigeon: I believe I may have solved the mystery of quantum string theory, yesterday evening, after a particularly fine supper of organic corn.

2^nd Pigeon: Really? That will be one in the eye for the collared doves, clever buggers.

1^st Pigeon: It will. Kings of theoretical physics, huh! I say, can you see that chap over there, looking at us in a manner that quite disturbs my equilibrium?

2^nd Pigeon: Ignore him. He doesn’t have a gun. Or organic corn.

1^st Pigeon: I wonder what goes through their brains?

2^nd Pigeon: Not much, I would imagine. Such tiny heads and huge bodies.

1^st Pigeon: And a distinct lack of wings.

2^nd Pigeon (nods) Indeed. It’s like being disabled, or rather un-abled, as we must say nowadays. Always last for the corn, I should think.

1^st Pigeon: Sad.

2^nd Pigeon: They can’t even speak properly – just that incessant noise, exactly the same each time, in note, tone, cadence and duration.

1^st Pigeon: True. Ah well, can’t stop here chatting with you. We’re helping the crows mob a quite disingenuous buzzard – she has simply awful social habits – at nine-thirty.

2^nd Pigeon: Isn’t that rather dangerous? Crows and buzzards are much more acrobatic than you, my friend. You are rather…ahem…portly?

1^st Pigeon: What’s life without a little danger? Even for us fatties. Better than that poor sod down there. He spends all his time in front of a computer, writing crap, instead of dropping it on cars, as normal people do…

And so on…

Now, the horrific calls and I have to threaten reality once again with vague gestures and an empty coffee cup, so the anthropomorphised distractor pigeons will have to wait their turn.