Postcards from Kronk - the second collection of daily stories. (2025)

The press confernce began at 2pm, with the self styled jester with portfolio arriving on a BMX bike . T he kind of situation the world has grown accustomed to nowadays , as we move towards expert extinction . If the planet has no long term future we might as well have some fun being the current mantra of most world leaders.   “ And whilst the jetpacks never materialised, nor dinosaur parks with real dinosaurs we have been  a ble to study an algae from a time long before mankind existed.   Unfortunately , as I guessed at the time, it is pretty much the same as algae found today , near as dammit and therefore I am today announcing the disbanding of all science projects with the money saved going to making brown bread taste nice   and building really massive trampoline parks .

Twenty years or twenty days   When they find our bodies   Swollen and lifeless   No one will picture us dancing     As our September becomes someones  April we will float   You, who walked on the water and I who swam below.     This is enough  

 It happened at night, the metal shutter slid open and three slim figures paused a second before walking forwards, in what was later acknowled as the first meeting between mankind and a true alien species. Reports vary on the actual exchange, whether or not they spoke English at the beginning or made sounds rather like soft jazz, or as one woman claimed, like a bread knife slicing through a farmhouse loaf. Most however, are insistent that the conversation appeared cordial at first but deteriorated very quickly and ended with four people dead and a change in our lives so total that it’s hard to remember the past at all. Now, having been sorted and categorised humanity is beginning to embrace our overlords, even if the new enforced migration routes are causing some concern to southerners. Still you can’t please everyone

 I’ve booked but I’m not bothered about seeing the film I just had to get out of the house before I fucking killed my neighbour. She’s got a sinkhole in her garden. Well I’m sure you’ll enjoy the film, it’s very cool in there, everyone tends to get a bit fractious in this heat, don’t they? Not my neighbour she’s a fucking witch.

 Steve puffed on a cigar and tried not to cough before handing it to me. “Put that on, don't sit there, because I say so, be quiet. In the fifties I went to work aged 6, in a tie and a dress as me ma wanted a girl and it never did me no harm, so I know from experience. One day you’ll thank me. You’re what? A teenager? don’t try to confuse me, you’re a kid, a sprog and then you’re a man, all that time in between isn't real, and it’s about time someone had the balls to say so” We were hiding in the shed at a cousin’s birthday party, he was 14, I was 12. “That’s what they mean really, what they don’t say is more important than what they do.” My Mum caught us and made us smoke the whole pack of cigars; arms crossed; stern faced. “Don't you ever trust grownups,” Steve said later on, spitting tobacco on the grass, “they get spoilt somehow as they get older.” Steve only got a year older, and I miss my Mum.

A skinny adolescent smears himself through the town centre, a, sent ahead by older members of the group. It seems the most angry and impulsive are already gone, detained and made to make public statements, leaving the more cautious, the thinkers and those like Dale, the canary in an anorak who stoops down at the junction of Town Street and Jubilee Villas to draw a rat on the floor in chalk, unweighted down by ideology or context, who just likes causing mischief. On the other side, people with more power are trying to keep the peace, maintain what already exists, guarding against change. There are those who have lofty ambitions and those that like to win. There are rats and rat catchers everywhere across the country, across the world. The revolution won’t be streamed, but you can watch a trailer for it in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 seconds. 

 I have friends in Utah, Australia and Greece and countries I don’t even know exist. Right now I’m travelling down the River Danube  whilst watching a scandi-drama, time shifted and sped up. The Future is not as bright as it used to be, Bagpuss no longer sleeps, and neither do his mice, and what we looked forward to is nowhere to be seen but we will find it, we will bind it, we will stick with glue glue glue.