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January 29. Historic Wigan mills regeneration plan approved

 Frank scans the beer pumps, looking for something to take the taste away, Forgetful Summer or Wandering Peasant seem to be the best options, but he settles on a pint of Swallow Dive and tries to pay with paper money, as always, an ongoing protest on behalf of others that can’t use contactless. The Broken Collar is the oldest pub in town, no tv, no music, just a fruit machine to drown out the past, the racists, and the nimbies. He adds a cheese and onion cob as a side and takes his seat towards the back of the bar, which provides him with a good view of the main door, and close enough to the side entrance to leave unnoticed. He’s worn out, on the floor he crunches bits of old crisps into chalk. Last week’s vote had been close, the councillors had seemed more confused than suspicious, but seven days is too long for them not to have worked it out. He drains the last of his pint and places it back on the bar seeing in the distance outside, a taxi door opening and a tangle of disgr...
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January 28 Where can I get help during the power cuts?

 She works the flecks of mud into the shagpile with her foot, her guilty dog looking on waiting to be fed, tail wagging, marking the curtain. The bed was made, in a way, most of the sheets were covered by a mound of duvet and the previous few days clothing, worn so not hung back up, but clean enough not to be thrown in the washing basket. It’s only Tuesday. Leaving the fish fingers till tomorrow she makes poached egg and avocado on toast, but the egg is stringy and watery, and the toast is burnt on the edge. Another five hours to go before bed. She scrapes the plate and rests it on the side, for later. A bottle of vitamins sits on the table, vitamin D, for bone health, the label claims they help the maintenance of the body. Even language is getting further away now, time seems to be endless, each minute another to get through, a mark on the wall. When the list of things to do is longer than the list of things you want to do, then you know you are awake. Outside someone is...
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January 27 Peterborough squad are too soft - Ferguson

In a last-ditch attempt to revitalise the fortunes of the only sandcastle team league in the UK, drastic steps have had to be taken, including allowing some teams to name ex-players as substitutes and for others to use only even numbers if numbers are low. Peterborough’s proposal for using an all-dough squad, however, is a step too far, a spokesman has said, from his window. So that’s that.
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January 26 Investigation after 'vehicle driven in forest'

 Dumnorix lifted a stone, moved it over a darker stone into a square drawn in the dust, removed the darker one and grinned in the face of his elder. He was starting to win more frequently, and it wouldn’t be long before he’d have to play another member of the community, but right now, he enjoyed the moment. Some of those watching shouted with excitement. It had been a long winter, they’d lost half of people to the cold and disease, two others had been slain by animals, but they had survived to the thawing time. The shouting was continuing outside and as Dumnorix rushed to find out why, Aodhán burst into sight, screaming and pointing to the sky. The dogs thought it a game and ran to him, almost tripping him over, he kicked out at one and the others skulked away, whimpering. Grabbing a stick he started drawing on the ground, a diagonal line, the width of a hand, which then veered off at an angle, before after another hands journey adapted back to its original path. People gathe...
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January 25 Night without power after 93mph winds

 It takes me a full ten minutes to free myself from the furniture and the rest of the day to put the house back in order. In doing so I find matches everywhere, hundreds of them, clusters in corners, taped to the underside of tables, in hinges and heads pressed between floorboards, like cat eye’s. This was definitely the wrong place to take shelter in, thank God the expected lightning strikes never happened.
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January 24 How to make oxygen on the moon

 Breathe in. The air is different here, it fills our lungs in a different way, as if heavier or something, like diesel in our petrol bodies. We’ve gone over it enough now, still it is our only conversation, even when silent. If everyone had talked more, drank less, heeded signs and counted to ten or twenty, perhaps things might have worked out differently. When we touch now there’s a film over our skins, that we scrub and rub at until it’s almost gone, almost but not quite. Day by day we are learning to breathe again, learnt our lesson, matched our appetites to our bellies, and escaped to here. Exiled but together, and if anyone ever comes for us, we’ll deal with it head on. Breathe out.
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January 23 Met Office issues yellow weather warning for rain

 We are living in the post-post resurrection times, after we decided to put an end to allowing the dead to come back to life. Obviously, this ill thought-out experiment had led to a complete breakdown in society, a hatred of scientists and cordoned off bunker living. The world simply didn’t have the capacity for everyone and initially lacked the leadership to put the life returning genie back in the bottle, but finally, thankfully, after the uprising, we did. Of the four to five estimated thousand ex corpses, some have found fame on the television circuit, some slotted back into their families, and many more opted to start again and of the few famous born-agains, Frank Zappa, is now a junior meteorologist famed for his jokey forecasts and tired efforts to remind us how funny he was in the first place. He was annoying back then, and many feel his bulletins are divine punishment for getting above ourselves in the first place.
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