Chapter 20

This morning Gregory folded his clothes neatly in the basket. They were fresh off the line and he then decided to make sure that everything else that he did, that morning, involved some of sort of cleaning. If he were to be totally truthful…he hated cleaning up. It was a personal nightmare. It felt like he brain was slowly eroding away with each menial step he continued to take. Although he’d now learnt that phrase “Someone’s got to do it”. It rang in his head like an equally annoying alarm clock.

While cleaning up his radio blurted out Bon Jovi’s song, Living on a Prayer. Although whenever the chorus came he bellowed out “aaaah-ha living on my owe-hone”. It seemed to comfort him now that he was making his own way in the world. It wouldn’t have been his first choice, but he was starting to like some of the choices he was starting to make.

“Fuck you.”

The following song was a Katie Perry song, and a pet hate. He abruptly turned off the radio, and continued to shuffle through his pairs of socks. Since cleaning up and washing up after himself, he’d started becoming a lot more forgiving with certain knit-picks he’d had in the past. For example, he’d had an issue with socks. Gregory was by no means a perfectionist, although socks had started to wander into that category. Gregory had had the belief that socks had to match…no matter what If he ever saw some forgetful person wearing to different kinds; he’d mentally berate them for being so sloppy and untidy.

Since he’d moved out of the house, a lot of Mr. Tweedle’s opinions had begun to change. Unfortunately the subject of socks was one of them. This is because he simply couldn’t be arsed to fold them up so they would look pretty for a week or two. There wasn’t enjoy time in the day to spend an extra twenty minutes, going through the of sock folding. Instead Gregory he came up with a much better idea. The idea was to have a sock bucket. One little bin where you clean the clean little soldiers ready to be unleashed upon the world. It was far more creative, not to mention that everyday now had an element of surprise in it.

Gregory threw everything in his sock bucket, and left. He had business to do.

 

PhilosopherPoet

Chapter 18-19

18

Gregory had an ugly confession to make. It was the kind of confession you’d rather be mumbling to someone well-proportioned with a gun, or some spindly-legged 18 year-old American teenager who hadn’t taken his pills…or to be more specific to no one at all. Gregory had to have a few swigs of his favorite brandy before even having the interview with the Narrator.

The fact was that Gregory was ‘over-estimating his age and responsibilities’. These were the word that bounced out of his father’s mouth with the ferocity of a paper shredder. His poor mum simply shrugged off two tears teetering on the tips of an emotional outburst. To be even more honest, Gregory wasn’t a professional programmer. He did love computers, and electronics…but the only major success he’d had in his short-lived adult life were the few comments anonymous people threw at his blog.

Gregory was a reasonable lad, and this sort of confession was normally far beyond any twenty-four year old…but the inevitable had landed on him. This was probably more painful to admit than his previous fabrication of his identity.

Mrs. Tweedle had a dear a fragile face. Gregory had once heard that ‘a face is nothing without eyes’. He thought about this, and decided that Mrs. Tweedle had fragile eyes, careful hair, and a tightly worn mouth. Come to think of it, it could only be the eyes that were fragile because everything else in Phillipa Tweedle had had the urge to resist gravity as much as possible. To be more specific Phillipa was one of those people that words like toilet, sex, slippers, bath, and hike were seen as fearsome challenges rather than exciting possibilities.

Despite this she waddled over to the foot of Gregory’s bed one evening. She sat down rather promptly and in her dear voice said, “Munchkin…there’s something we need to discuss…”

His blood went cold. This was not because The Wizard of Oz has given him nightmares fifteen years earlier, or because she had taken control of his legs and voice at the same time. His blood turned violently cold because she spoken that ‘cursed phrase’ that hadn’t come out in a very long time. Every time she spoke it, his dignity rarely lived to tell the tale (or in most cases, the saga). Soon after the morbid introduction Gregory came to learn the following…he was to move out of the house.

His mum had made it sound so simple and silly, that he’d hesitated on uttering ‘yes’ to her rhetorical phrases and suggestions. Basically he’d learnt that they were doing a lot of kicking…and he simply had his hands in the air like a criminal. This wasn’t a misrepresentation either. A few weeks later – still fuelled by the injustice – Gregory had crawled into an internet café and posted his thoughts on his blog.

 

20 ways to leave home, get a job and become a psychopath

 

Recently I was kicked out of house and home. By recent I actually mean that I got this news a good couple of hours ago. It’s so fresh in my head that I still have to remind myself I’m moving out tomorrow and being banished from freedoms, and thrown into the chains of commercialism and the claws of capitalism. Allow me to demonstrate with a list resulting from three magic words, no well-meaning citizen should ever hear.

They kicked me:

1. Out of the house.
2. Out of my warm bed and blankets
3. Onto the grimy streets that await me.
4. Into the company of people (drunk and hung-over). I heard that one of them studied Philosophy soon after he had memorized ten shooters from the eight clubs he’d been to.
5. Into unemployment, and millions more strangers staring at me.
6. Into a house full of people. They politely call this a ‘Communal Dwelling’ which feels more like a concentration camp of chaos.
7. Away from the Internet (which was my intellectual warm bed and blankets).
8. Away from my parents. Despite my swearing at them, this means I’m still going to have no one to drive me to the bus stop every morning.
9. Into the murderous rain. This is due to pt. 7 and other ways that they are telling me where to stick it.
10. Into Laundromats, filled with the lower class somberly staring at the cycle of clothes and suds. All I was thinking was: Where The Fuck Is There Telly Around Here
11. Into dirty newspaper stands. Because after a few evenings in the pub you forget about the news, and because you’ve spent you hard-earned money drinking…you now have to squint at the headlines of The Guardian, through the rain and with a hangover.
12. Into the hands of the Coppers. (see pt. 18)
13. Into a fast food store. The most words you’ll ever say over the phone are “Please stop shouting at me, I’m only a cashier.” And then very occasionally, “I can’t make the cooked-spider disappear from your fries.”
14. Away from people that had a good sense of hygiene, and table manners.
15. Far away from any kind of domestic animal. The only thing I can pet is my drunken roommate when he’s throwing up in the toilet bowl and not my sock drawer.
16. Away from people who have a sense of moral decency to remain sober. (The opposite is equally frightening – see pt. 4)
17. Away from a clean fridge that stops food from going off. (i.e. it never malfunctions)
18. Out of the reach of my favorite breakfast cereal. The last time I saw it was in a supermarket. It was the very last one in the aisle, and so it was between me and the old lady.
19. Onto the street (with millions other people who don’t mind poking you in the eye with their umbrellas when you forgot yours in the door of a train).
20. Into dirty internet cafés (where I’m typing this and trying not to think about the yellow stain on the left-button of the mouse).

 

19

Months later another computer geek got hold of this very post and decided to email it around to every school mailing list he could hack into. This did not go down well for Gregory. Within a period of a few days he was subsequently armed with a psychologist, a psychiatrist, a lawyer, a dietician and two social workers. When a tabloid reporter later asked the reason for all of this he replied, “My Mum’s eyes are the only thing about her that is fragile.”

After a year bulleted by, the newspapers (thankfully) had now found another Tsunami to investigate. It left Gregory to his lonely devices of drinking, insomnia, gaming, smoking, and watching late night TV. When one stray reporter did remember to do a follow-up…Gregory gave him the number of his shrink. Which made the newspaper read:

When I asked about the condition of the infamous Kick List Conman, his psychologist reported that “[Mr. Tweedle] is in an emotional, but stable condition.”

 

PhilosopherPoet

Chapter 17-18 (S.S.B.)

 

17

Gregory was a very peculiar person, even by his own standards. He didn’t watch the football his friends did; he didn’t smoke the fags, or even drink the same beer. He had a habit of being different, and this seemed to excite him. He enjoyed being different. It was something he was good at. Insults and comments on his eccentricities only seemed to dampen everyone else’s mood.

Mr. Tweedle was perhaps a little too different from the rest of the crowd, and he would occasionally feel a few pangs of loneliness late at night when he lay in bed watching the fan. Although the flip side of some uncomfortable feelings was indeed some equally eccentric friends he could really count on. Peter was one of these people.

Peter worked in a video store about two blocks away. It was a small business venture that he’d begun as a teenager, and didn’t feel the need to stop. It was a corner shop with everything in it. Peter was a video junkie. He enjoyed films and fiction so much that he’d convinced the Manager to keep all the VHS tapes. He reckoned that a classic was worth looking at, even if you couldn’t use it.

Peter enjoyed the old films. They were a bench mark for the modern-day mish mash of computer generated people and special effects. He could list off actors, and his favorite lines. If you took out a video and had made a bad choice, he’d tell you why and sell off something lurking in the Bargain Bin. There was only one problem with Peter at the dirty video shop, around the block. He was Obsessive Compulsive.

Now that Gregory thought about it, this was most probably why the store was dusty and unkempt. He enjoyed him though, in small doses. If ever he drove past the store in the evening, Peter would still be there counting the films, and straightening the signs. He almost felt sorry for the guy. Some things just weren’t worth explaining to some.

 

18

It was morning. One of the mornings, that Gregory had to live through. Nothing in England, early in the morning was beautiful. All those stories told to your about “the picturesque morning of another day in the British Empire” was a lie.

No one liked it.

Everyone one was either cleaning, arguing, getting dressed, burning the toast, shouting at the children, swearing at the traffic or abusing a domestic animal to be worried about whether today was as delightful as the previous week. Gregory understood that not everyone was English. You could speak a form of English…but being English was a different paradigm all together.

If there was one piece of advice Gregory could give to the masses (concerning English), it would be to never give it to an American. This was already too late, just like The Twin Towers, Vietnam, Coke, Microsoft, and Rap Music had been too late. At least if you gave it to a cockney he had the advantage. It might use it in pubs, and around suitcases of drug money, although he could still throw in some puns, and casually joke about the way they tortured information out of their terrified victims.

God forbid if you let it anywhere near a Southerner. He would (traditionally speaking) use it to kick stray cats, swear at his wife, and yell to his animal-skin-clad children to “Fetcha annuh-therrr beeee-her, yew use-lair-us care-ids!” (Fetch another beer, you useless kids!) Now this would not be right at all. Anyone could see that the man was using terrible English, and drinking what will most likely end up in burping, fat rolls and obesity.

What brought Gregory to these morbid conclusions, was reading a newspaper, early in the morning…at a Starbucks. Realizing his somewhat apparent abhorrent verbal behavior, was most probably the confession he was now about to avoid. He took another sip of his Double Espresso, and stuffed the paper into his leather brief case.

Reading the newspaper was never good for your mental health. This was because news was a collection of cheaply-bound and easily sold unconfirmed reports. No one really cared though, simply because it would be a useful conversation starter in the form of “Have you heard that…”

Gregory paused, as he was walking out the shop. He had this habit of thinking too much, too early in the morning. He swung around, now more awake from the coffee.

He went to pay the bill.

 

PhilosopherPoet

Chapter 17 (S.S.B.)

(For those who aren’t sure what S.S.B. is click on the Category Cloud – on the right hand side of the main window.)

Gregory was a very peculiar person, even by his own standards. He didn’t watch the football his friends did; he didn’t smoke the fags, or even drink the same beer. He had a habit of being different, and this seemed to excite him. He enjoyed being different. It was something he was good at. Insults and comments on his eccentricities only seemed to dampen everyone else’s mood.

Mr. Tweedle was perhaps a little too different from the rest of the crowd, and he would occasionally feel a few pangs of loneliness late at night when he lay in bed watching the fan. Although the flip side of some uncomfortable feelings was indeed some equally eccentric friends he could really count on. Peter was one of these people.

Peter worked in a video store about two blocks away. It was a small business venture that he’d begun as a teenager, and didn’t feel the need to stop. It was a corner shop with everything in it. Peter was a video junkie. He enjoyed films and fiction so much that he’d convinced the Manager to keep all the VHS tapes. He reckoned that a classic was worth looking at, even if you couldn’t use it.

Peter enjoyed the old films. They were a bench mark for the modern-day mish mash of computer generated people and special effects. He could list off actors, and his favorite lines. If you took out a video and had made a bad choice, he’d tell you why and sell off something lurking in the Bargain Bin. There was only one problem with Peter at the dirty video shop, around the block. He was Obsessive Compulsive.

Now that Gregory thought about it, this was most probably why the store was dusty and unkempt. He enjoyed him though, in small doses. If ever he drove past the store in the evening, Peter would still be there counting the films, and straightening the signs. He almost felt sorry for the guy. Some things just weren’t worth explaining to some.

PhilosopherPoet

Chapter 16 (S.S.B.)

Despite Gregory’s continual blogging, and computer projects he rarely told people what he did. If some ever asked over a meal he’d mutter ‘computers’ and ‘programming’. They come out as soft echoes, as if Gregory himself was not yet sure that he actually did these things.

The fact was that he had a secret. I was a long, tedious and heated mystery he kept to himself. He was so secretive about it that he’d only once mentioned it to a single person. When he did it he felt relieved. It was that same feeling you got after finally getting the hang of giving a woman her type of orgasm (and not yours).

This person was a therapist about three blocks down from where Gregory stayed. When discussing this with the Narrator, Gregory had been most determined that the ‘was’ be emphasized. He said this because just like Mrs. Hennington was a therapist, she also was an avid smoker, talker, and cat collector.

Gregory could remember whoever he met. He was told once by a mad girlfriend, that he remembered too much. She replaced the phrase with the word ‘grudge’ and other bits of punctuation that didn’t seem to make sense at the time. She was either mistaken or (as he had put it) mentally ill. The girlfriend was struggling to accept both sides of the arguments, and so in a fit of confusion she dumped Gregory with the rest of the topic onto the tarmac, at thirty miles an hour.

All of these were facts were true at the time. It all made sense if you could sit down and reason it all out. Reason seemed to be a metaphorical spanner that jammed up emotions, and the general movement of a relationship. Gregory was still miles away from realizing this, and even if he wasn’t…nothing would have stopped Stephanie behind the wheel of her new Beetle.

Events moved with a hidden momentum, sometimes days afterwards. Images came back, and your focus was a few more days old, but five years more mature. There was clarity from the anesthetized hospital bad he lay on. The dragging days, the dying patients and the endless soap operas blaring through the television sets seemed to focus your mind a little.

 

PhilosopherPoet

Chapter 15 (S.S.B.)

(If you not sure what S.S.B. is, go to the category and find out )

15

Before Gregory could nibble another Buttermilk Rusk, it was morning again. The fact that surprised him was not the rapid passing of the days. He had overslept this morning, given his morning schedule awaiting him, this was very serious indeed. Gregory had last done this when he was sixteen and had brought a stoner girl friend around for supper. That was a) a very long time ago and b) something in which sex took over and was more a problem than the oversleeping itself.

Something was wrong this morning. Gregory realized this when he fell off the bed, and didn’t feel the usual thump of his morning erection (slowing him down). Gregory went and took a shower to wash away his pornographic dreams. He liked to stand in the shower and watch the soap and bubbles spiral away into the plug hole. It was as if he was peeling away the skin of the previous day, and climbing into a new suit.

Gregory had a bathroom big enough to keep yourself clean, but far too small to keep tidy. He thought, anyway, that the first was the more important priority despite many intense many arguments with his mother (and the occasional girlfriend). So, while he watched his old ’skin’ run down into the pipes and tiles, he thought about his good friend Johnson.

It was nothing hugely important that brought up the subject into his mind, he had just started to reminisce over the time he saw him at the park. Johnson had made an impression on Gregory since they had first met back in a Science class in High School. Thinking back to the pond, it struck him how Johnson was always so peaceful. It didn’t take much to do it either.

All you really had to do was throw him a patch of grass to sit on, and a furry little animal to run around. That made him content. He could be in the same spot for hours, and when you came back he’d be just as happy as when you left him there.

Gregory needed to build up his own sort of environment to achievement that level of enlightenment. This (understandably) involved a forest of cables, keys, lights, bleeps, and the drone of about five fans doing 8000 rpm. This didn’t seem odd to him either. He came to the conclusion that friends were sometimes more likable because they were so different. And, not to forget that so-

The phone rang. A sudden jolt leapt into Gregory’s body, and he tumbled out of the shower like a hairy ballerina. He grabbed a towel in the process, and that only real sound was made by his willy slapping his thighs like a wet fish…and the phone of course.

PhilosopherPoet

More from my Novel S.S.B

(The abbreviation stands for Sausages, Shrubs and a Blogroll. Although I’m thinking of changing it! Please readers offer some suggestions, if possible.)

12

The next morning was an unusual one. This was so because Gregory woke up early. He was up before the Skype went off; he even beat the annoying birds chirping at Prestbury Crescent which was adjacent to his road. Gregory could not for the life of himself figure out why he was so lively. Maybe because he had a dream which involved stupid policemen and axes, or maybe because he had been commissioned to renovate a new website.

Whatever the reason was, it was a good one, and Gregory knew already he was going to be drinking a lot of tea. This also reminded him why he liked being British.

Being British meant it was alright to wonder around the house all day with no shoes and drink tea. It also meant you could become whiney and annoyed with life’s banalities like the weather changing, or your football team losing. Most of the time when you reached this level of annoyance you’d use words like ‘bugger’ and ‘bloody’ instead of normal profanities.

Gregory put the kettle on. He numbly watched the steam rise from the chromed spout. He was still trying to figure out the simple early morning riddles like which hand to stir the coffee with, where the cereal was last put, and why he could only find his comb five minutes before he had to go somewhere. He considered himself fortunate with the latter. Many people had a quick glance at the paper and then were up and out of the house for the rest of the day. Gregory spent it ambling to his computer, and occasionally down the road to the café to buy the paper and cigarettes.

After a very large cup of tea, Gregory found himself in front of the mirror, shaving. What had always seemed to amaze him, was why human were obsessed with hygiene. Of course he knew that it meant you’d live longer, and that if you were careful you’d only catch a cough instead of tuberculosis. Being clean didn’t only mean you were socially acceptable, but also that there were a hundred more things your mum could remind you to do, and half as many to remember on a date.

While the concept of cleanliness rose in Gregory’s mind, he began to realize that being dirty was really out of the question. The most he do was pave his lungs with tar. He been criticized for smoking, but he deftly replied that if he was going to hell he rather have a smoother ride.

13

Gregory was in the local café. He’d grabbed a coffee, a muffin and Gadgets magazine. As he flicked through the pages something struck him; it was the word ‘wireless’.

“Bloody hell,” he exclaimed.

One or two people turned to look at him in surprise.

Everything is becoming wireless. It was supposed to be a convenience, but it also meant you have to stock up on batteries. Gregory missed the old-fashioned cable. There was a thrill of plugging it in, the skill of hurdling them without tripping or making a console fly out of someone’s hand.

Thinking about cables also made him remember the good times, of playing video games as a kid, in front of the television. There was always a passerby dangerously juggling a mug of hot chocolate and biscuits. This is was like driving, you had to keep your eyes on the road, but still negotiate with the external factors in the environment.

The best part was when you mum brought you tea and biscuits, and smiled at you with much affection. You weren’t noticing this of course, because any break in your concentration would result in missing a high score.

Cables were like roots, pieces of attachment. What was a phone without a cordless to curl around your index finger? Why have a TV with no plug for an angry wife to pull out? Cables and cords connected our hopes and regrets. For Gregory, batteries were more admin than ease.

14

Gregory went home. He had decided that humans were fundamentally stupid and unpredictable. With this single thought he made some filter coffee…and slumped behind his computer’s monitor. He gripped a chewed pen that remained bonded to its friend, the scribbling pad. Now that he had a few rantings out of the way…began.

The 5 Day Creation (for the Modern Man)

Blog Posted: 26 February 2007

Day 1

In the beginning God created the heavens, the earth, and the internet. No one knew where these came from, where they were going, or how they ended. However, they were all universally accepted as sources of life. God was pleased, and it was good. It was in fact so good that God gave a big “Who cares” and ran around in his undergarments.

Day 2

It was not the beginning anymore. Gad had realized this so he took Photoshop out and got creative. He created great birds of the air, and great scaled thingummies that for centuries would make incensed men hop around on boats with poles and string. (Later on, he made a note to decrease the amount of deaths of fishermen.)

Day 3

The schedule was becoming tight, and God was running out of ideas. He was bored and so he created plants, animals and sex. He simply saw it as making a profit on what he had, and you have to keep the customer satisfied. No one was always happy. The fish complained about the birds, the birds about the animals. Although sex was never entered into the box of complaints; none of the creatures were unhappy about it. This was because no one was old enough to find it a problem.

God leaned back in his chair and for the first time saw how abundant life had become. Everything was in a natural flux. The reality was some saw a sorter end to their existence than others. They were ok with it though, everyone was committed to the end for the sake of others. God was pleased. He threw in Communism and Natural Disasters to warm things up a bit.

Death didn’t seem to have a party going, so God grew friendly with him, and all beings were divided equally among them. (Both of them came up with: The Keeper of the Underworld, and the King of Kings. They mutually decided on these names so they could be properly introduced when the time came.)

God was nearing the end of the third day. He was excited with the way all operations were running. He knew his allegiances, and on which side his bread was buttered. Caught up in all the events, he had failed to hear the bleep of his cell phone. It was text message sent from one of the highly ranked angels, it read:

WARNING: Global Warming = End of the World. This could b yr only weakness, lol Gabe

Day 4

God created humans, they had all the resources waiting for them to suck up and exploit. God also created acronyms. He realized that Gabe had jumped the gun somewhat in his message the previous day, he gave a sigh and brushed this under the carpet and distracted everyone else with a miracle. God had made an unspoken rule that every being had to be cursed with an aspect of idiocy. He made up a few languages along the way, this added to the confusion.

His grand gift to the human race was not acronyms or the language barrier. He had given them a brain. This was a brain that defied instinct and would take a few millions years to learn how to use the whole god damned thing. He was now thrilled that he had made his last major achievement. Everything else would still be discovered, and brought into existence. He’d laid down the ground rules, and principles.

Everything was done. God was so excited that he grabbed some cherubim, threw them into his chariot and went out and got drunk.

Day 5

God had invented the hangover. It was made worse by the fact that he had to endure it. His head was exploding, and imploding all at once. He got out of bed, and yelled through he bedroom window to the animals to keep it down.

So on the fifth day God rested. Well, recovered would be a more appropriate word. He stayed curled in his bed the whole day. He swallowed headache tablets and drank coffee.

PhilosopherPoet

Sausages, Shrubs and a Blog Roll (Continued)

9

Gregory hated a few things in life, although this didn’t make him an unhappy person. He just found it good to discharge unwanted feelings. He hated the way the black part of his toast broke off. He also became rather annoyed in the morning when he had to reach for the fridge, and his arm got in the way of the radio reception. On this list he added barking dogs, crying babies, corrupted hard drives, computer viruses, golf, bugs in the basement, fat people and the Chinese.

Gregory seemed content with everything else, or he at least coped with it. The mornings always brought there own set of difficulties. This very morning he was confronted with two of his pet hates: barking dogs and crying babies.

Mr. Tweedle walked to the park this Tuesday morning. He walked past dogs who assumed he was a misplaced tree, and barked at him. Previously he’d been told to freeze when a wild animal confronted you. He’d done this twice, the first time the dog tried to have sex with his leg, and second he been urinated on. Now on every other occasion (despite his instincts) he continued to walk.

Gregory thought dogs to be the most idiotic domesticated animal. A cat could at least choose where to pee, and a budgie could make a pleasant chirrup. A dog could only bark, roll in the mud and decide to share its mud-rolling experience with you.

10

Gregory came upon Johnson who was gazing a little earnestly at the ducks on the pond. As usual he had he pencil poised and roughly sketched and scribbled.

“Morning,” Johnston.

“Why the fuck are you staring at ducks?”

“Hmmf.”

His voice thinned out to a squeak when he asked questions.

“I’m studying them. An’ why you making such a big noise this morning?” He small eyes poked out his glasses like a cartoon character.

“Um, you’re sitting gob smacked by flapping feathered things on the water.”

“Yes well, I think the ones near the reeds eat differently, an’ fly less.”

“Oh.”

Gregory sat down next to Johnson on the park bench. He too was now in danger of staring at the water a little too intently. He took out the paper.

“I’ve always found it strange how parks attract people,” Johnson began.

“You’ll find the most mismatched people, walking around feeding the ducks an’ doing bugger all. It almost like people want to stand on the little patch of green they can find, even if it means shagging on it at night.”

More pencil scratches followed.

“And why ducks?”

“It’s the most harmless of creatures you’ll find in a pond ecosystem. Others get bigger and messier with things.”

“They also make a nice squawk, if you get close enough to kick one,” Gregory couldn’t resist and killed the serenity with a comment.

PhilosopherPoet

Sausages, Shrubs and a Blogroll

1

This is the story of Gregory Tweedle.

Gregory did not have a pocket watch. He did not have an alarm clock. Gregory did not even have angry taxi drivers that hooted down his road at six o’clock every morning. Despite this Gregory continued to wake up at exactly five past six every morning of his life.

Mr. Tweedle loved to drink tea. His morning breakfast consisted of toast and a spot of jam. His fridge contained about a dozen different jams. Breakfast ended off with Earl Grey tea, and a buttermilk rusk.

To a normal English person all the above would lead on to a morning activity, such as reading the newspaper, brushing teeth, shaving, or getting dressed. Gregory’s day began with the computer.

The reason Gregory awoke at five past six every morning, was due to his friend Johnson. Johnson Timothy had always told his mother that his mother than his name was the wrong way around. He’d also always been woken up by angry taxi drivers at six o’clock every morning. Following this Johnson had always crawled to his notebook, and Skyped his friend, Gregory.

Gregory did not have a pocket watch, but he had the internet, and for the moment that was good enough for him.

2

Gregory was a recluse. Every morning he began with the same activities, keeping the order of them intact. An outsider would look at the life of this Englishman and say it was rather predictable.

At this point Gregory would shrug and nonchalantly say,

“It works for me.”

He had lived behind the keyboard, every day. His mother considered him to be a cyber concert pianist. Gregory knew he was different. His friends were lawyers, teachers, doctors, businessmen and consultants.

Gregory was an undercover programmer. All his work happened at 23 Gooseberry Ave. behind his 22” Toshiba flat screen monitor. Usual Programmers were unkempt, noisy, and apathetically nerdy. Usual programmers had no girlfriends, and compensated with volumes of pornography and heavy metal.

Gregory resisted this category with little effort, and many cups of tea. His friend Johnson had steadily agreed with his colleagues that Mr. Tweedle was in fact a freak of nature. He was a missing evolutionary link.

Johnson was not a programmer. He was a good friend, and one of the only people Gregory could withstand seeing. Johnson was a friend and coincidentally neither a doctor, lawyer, consultant nor teacher. Johnson was an rather eccentric Scientist.

Johnson kept a Latin dictionary in his breast pocket. He also kept his hair groomed and a pair of thick-rimmed glasses that never left his face. He kept little else that lived outside of his laboratory. Once Gregory had realized this, he reached into his trousers pocket and noted this on his pocket pad, underneath other daily observations.

3

Today was a Tuesday. Gregory was working on a project for a Nature reserve. He was updating their website, and adding a photo gallery along with an extra widget onto the page’s menu bar. A widget (Gregory had explained to his previous girlfriend, Claudia) was an ‘interactive block’ on either the right or left side of the web page.

Widgets provided quick access to a feature that saved the effort of loading a new page. Gregory was coding a gallery widget that could allow you to browse thumbnails of the Nature reserve’s photo gallery before viewing larger versions of them.

Gregory grinned as he began loading the thumbnails. It was comforting to see work take form. He lived with a lot of structure in his life, although this part of the day was totally unplanned and unexpected.

The internet breathed life and new opportunities into him. For many the internet was used to make small talk in chat rooms and to study copulation and the female anatomy. He realized that of course there were business people doing business things, but ordinary people just wanted to sit down and watch everything done for them, including having sex.

He carried on doing various things others would have had done for them. Gregory also had a blog. A blog was an online diary. He could right about his day. Gregory mostly wrote reviews on the different jams he was trying. Occasionally he decided to post a scientific fact given by his eccentric friend. This would normally generate a good few comments, many of them disputing the claim. Every time he replied with the same five words, “I am not a Scientist.”

There was much irony in this statement. The first was that he had been converted, and bent in that direction by a certain someone. The second was apparently obvious. He was saying that human lungs could be blown up to match the pressure of a car tire. He posted these opinions, and denied the clear fascination with them.

Gregory was, however, please to see that he had a single fan who responded with much enthusiasm to his statements…Johnson.

4

Malaysian Mango Jam

Blog Posted: 12 February 2007

I tried my most expensive import today. It cost me about three times as much as the Canadian Blueberry, although I’d have to say it might just be worth it.

As jams go, this one is unique. This is simply a fruit salad ingredient morphed into a sweet contender. Most jams are made from the usual fruits, and for a very good reason. If you cross that line you’d better have a good back up.

For example my grandmother makes brandy balls. These are basically chocolate muffins with raisins inside, soaked in brandy, and coated with chocolate and sprinkles. My point is that if you ate this and didn’t enjoy and raisin/muffin combination, the brandy would convince you.

Main Rule

Jams are made from berries:

• Strawberry
• Youngberry
• Gooseberry
• Wild berry.
• Blueberry
• Cranberry (seldom)
• Mixed berries (a combination.)

If this is not the case, then jams are made from fruit with an edible outer skin, such as plums and apricots. Sometimes neither of these is true and then you get a rare combination. All the above are generally sweet jams. If you start using other ingredients, a stronger flavor emerges. It might be a tang or slight twist or tingle.

Take marmalade as an example. You’d be daft if you dug into an orange skin once you’d finished with the inside segments, although people think it’s a perfect idea to throw it in a jar, along with some sugary extras. After all the dillydallying you spread the bitter skins on your piece of toast, and devour it.

Marmalade is the only jam that makes me nervous. I rather relish the taste and different approach, but eating the firm skin of a fruit, makes me feel guilty. Even melon jam is intimidating, because I think of this creature which protected it against the outside world by its skin. Then we go along and slaughter it. Of course, this time around there is no skin thrown in it. I still see the same thoughts haunting me.

Now onto our Mango with an Asian twist. I’ve tried this type of jam before, although never from so far away. It was very interesting. The syrup was measured correctly, and it spread like a soft hand across the toast.

This is often a warning to how your experience will turn out. The secret is in the spread. Squashing everything down to the same size shows you what you are about to eat. The viscosity tells you how rich the flavor will be, and how healthy it is. If there are chunks of the jam instead of ‘thick syrup’ it won’t be consistent although the taste will be stronger.

Think of your self as a soil scientist tunneling into the earth and extracting a tube of soil reflecting all the elements/ingredients in the earth. Most people though, are just thinking of their breakfast.

G. Tweedle

He clicked post, and sat back to read through his ranting.

Not too shabby, he thought.

5

There was one social activity Gregory did choose to take part in, this happened to be pool. If there was a game to play, he could throw in a comment to the meaty men, and flirting women. It was normally his college friends who accompanied him.

He friends complained somewhat, about his sleeveless jumper, and his checkered shirts. Gregory seemed to have no trouble shrugging this off. Their comments seemed more of an oddity than his appearance.

There were a two reasons why he chose to play pool. The people gathering around these events grew more intoxicated as the night continued, and people loosened off their weekly stress, so they enjoyed themselves and paid more attention to the game than Gregory.

He found this to be a gentleman’s game. Polishing the ball, chalking your stick, and the precision of each shot enthralled him. He tried to forget the drunkards hanging on the table, their beers swinging like pendulums.

Most of the time Gregory won his pool matches. He enjoyed this. One can say that Gregory Tweedle of 23 Gooseberry Avenue never played to win the prize. He had a chronic aversion to the stench of alcohol. This had seemed to work for him. The prize for winning pool at the bar was always alcohol. It seemed to range from a bar tab to free drinks for the hour to a large bar tab. Gregory with out fail passed these onto his friends, and then drove their corpses home.

Once a particular drunk gentleman, who had removed his shirt during the course of the evening, leaned over the table and hollered:

“C’mon Greg dude. You’re the Man!”

He blinked, and pushed his glasses up his nose.

“It’s Gregory,” he said.

The crowd burst out laughing, and he lowered his queue for the next shot.

6

Tonight sausages were being cooked, at 23 Gooseberry Avenue. They were pork sausages, which with the sound of radio distortion, emitting trails of smells that could make your stomach gnash its teeth.

In the pot beside it Gregory boiled potatoes, which he would later turn into what most people called ‘mash’. Bangers an’ Mash is what a low life cockney might spit out his throat. He found this term to be crude not to mention distasteful. The dish he mulled over he saw as Sausages and Potato Fluff.

Far more elegant…and British, he thought.

7

On Wednesday morning, it was eight o’clock. Gregory was already done with his immediate and menial duties (like washing and scrubbing himself). He sat of the sofa and stared at the television, with no entertaining idea inside himself. The reason was that Gregory was tired today.

He become a bit tired of the Skype message going bing in the morning. The jams could still suffice, due the variety and long-lasting addiction. One drunken colleague had once remarked (while losing a game of pool) that Gregory was more fascinated with jam than men were of a woman’s vagina. He huffed, having no possible answer why such a thought had sprung into his head this morning.

He turned his attention back to the television. Staring at the telly at eight in the morning, could only suggest one thing to him…he was due for a break from his dwelling. Gregory was tired of the routine. Although the work did on the computer offered some creative escape. He was tired of the half-grown adolescents talking noisily on the radio. He was tired of feeling like he was being watched when he was all by himself.

Gregory was tired of the Narrator.

8

Everyone has that voice inside their heads that tells them what they should be doing. It’s a comfort through the rough times, and doesn’t always agree with you. This was why Gregory had no problem living a solitary life. There was always someone to talk to and argue with. Despite going out once a week to play pool, that didn’t seem to make him any less sociable.

Sitting on the couch this Wednesday, it was now half past eight. It was then that Gregory did in fact feel a tremendous urge to leave his home. Generally when he heard the word leave he assumed it was time taken off work, since the alternative made him quite terrified. Today it ran through the head with ease.

Gregory pushed that aside for now. He got up, tightened his bath robe, and went to make a cup of tea. ‘It clears the head,’ he’d once said. Many had said the same to him about smoking, and he’d simply retorted that if death came he would want it to be a surprise. Once the water was in he beat up the teabag quite considerably. Gregory then performed the ritual of pinching the sugar (much like salt) and sprinkling it in. He reason was that your fingers never lie.

Now he felt at the content end of things. He could not feel guilty, for sitting arbitrarily on the sofa. The mug rested in his hands. The steam wafted off the mug. Gregory let the scent encompass his head before diving into it. Left now with time to mull over the idea he came to a conclusion.

He would leave the house for the day.