Nat – Natalie O'Connor

Your Children Will Be Next

I listened to one line of a song on the radio and thought about transphobia, Gaza, and my guilt.

I’m driving back from my appointment with a Work Coach at a job centre. I was very ready for this to be a degrading experience, in which I would be questioned about why I wasn’t applying to jobs that would cause me to become ill and kill myself. It has been that in the past. This wasn’t that, so this blog isn’t about that.

I realise too late I didn’t take my pills this morning. They have an appetite suppressant effect (a side effect, but a welcome one) so without them I’m ravenous. I get some Nik Naks from the corner shop and pull into the apartment block car park to eat them. My phone is out of batteries so I turn the radio on.

“…that is the News at Twelve O’Clock on BBC Two…now, Jeremy Vine. GOOD AFTERNOON, Girl Guides have banned trans girls from becoming new members, is this fai-”

Nasty little pissant. Let’s tune around a bit. This bag is huge. Too many calories. Probably all I’m going to eat today, I’ll take the pill when I get in. Let’s find something else.

“…and on the street tonight an old man plays; with newspaper cuttings of his glory da-”

I turn it off.

You probably know the background of ‘If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next’, the best, or at least more enduring, song on the Manic Street Preacher’s 1998 album ‘This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours’. To refresh your memory, the title is from a poster propagated by the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. It depicts a dead child below a sky full of bombers. The song’s lyrics are themed on that war.

It’s a good song. It’s currently the most played song by the Manics on Spotify. I think A Design For Life is better, but probably just because it’s on a better album. But whatever. This blog isn’t about that.

I wish I could feel numb to the feeling of having the erosion of transgender life, especially the life and prospects of transgender children. I don’t. After I got into my flat, I saw that the Women’s Institute was also going to ban trans women. I wasn’t ever going to be a member of either organisation. None of this is going to effect my personally. It still feels as though I am slowly being vivisected, in the middle of a stage, while the audience shouts that I’m sick for making them do this.

So I felt that feeling. I turned off the music, I ate my Nik Naks. Then I remembered the context of the song, and felt another familiar pain.

What right do you have to compare this to real suffering?

I have a project on the go. I have many projects on the go, the lion’s share dormant weeks and months. It is a visual novel of sorts, in which the player has to transcribe professional, friendly work emails perfectly while they listen to my voice performing a monologue at them, giving more than a little tip of the hat to Davey Wreden’s ‘The Beginner’s Guide’. At certain points in the script, the email that the player has to transcribe are replaced with text detailed the atrocities committed in Gaza.

If the player makes a mistake a loud harsh noise plays, the monologue is rewound to the beginning of the current passage, and the player must start it again. The game, partially stealing its title from a tweet that stuck with me from a few months ago, was to be called “40,000 people are dead and you need to do your emails”. That was the death toll in Gaza when I first thought of the concept. It’s more than 70,000 now. 18,000 children.

I finished the monologue, I started the coding. Then, I thought better of it.

Shortly after I conceived of the project, I got invited to resign from my job, because I was simply too depressed to get up and do my emails. That is why I was at the job centre today, performing my duties so that I could receive Universal Credit.

I opened the monologue to write this blog, to see if I could give a sample here. But it’s meandering. It’s whiny. It’s about the struggles I was having with staying employed while the world turned to evil, a problem that ultimately just resulted in me asking my friends and loved ones for money and sitting around playing video games for a month until I was well enough to look for work.

Nobody was going to drop bombs on me. Nobody was going to make me bury my child. I have a warm home, I am fed.

It’s obscene for you to mention your ‘pain’ in the same breath.

I realised this even when writing the monologue. It talks about transphobia, it takes about Gaza, it talks about simple not being able to get up in the morning. It’s a personal piece. It wasn’t intended to have anybody come away from it feeling happy, or fulfilled, or to even have a new perspective. I was miserable. I wanted other people to see the misery, and share in it.

Acknowledging how self-absorbed it is to be primarily affected by distant atrocities in terms of not being able to do my email job, I shelved the project. Occasionally I think about going back to it, until I remember why I decided I can’t. It felt too much like I was co-opting something. Sure, thousands of children have been murdered, but did you know I’m sad sometimes?

I acknowledged this in the monologue, but that wasn’t enough. You don’t get away with acting like that just because you recognise it.

So it’s a good thing I never completed it.

There are people in the world with real problems

After I turned the radio off, I came inside, I put on music, and I started writing this. I have been trying and failing to write blogs for days now, in between job applications. Of course the one that I actually manage to write is about me.

My flat is warm. There’s music playing, I have fresh flowers in the window. I have my medication and food if I want more.

Nobody is going to take these things from me. These attacks (and why does it feels wrong to call them that?) will not affect me (but they will affect others – can’t you just feel empathy?). I will never join the WI. I am decades too old to be a girl guide.

There are no bombers flying overhead. There are no missiles come to kill me and everybody I love.

If You Tolerate This, Then Your Children Will Be Next

I hate that these things cause me so much pain. It feels unfair. Selfish. And that guilt, that self-flagellation, becomes a part of it.

How dare this become part of the cacophony that caused me to lose my job, when there are so many worse things happening?

How dare this actually be the more dominant one, when it hasn’t actually affected me personally Losing a job was the worst thing to happen to me recently, and that wasn’t even because of transphobia.

The cumulative effect of the horrors of the world – mostly, selfishly, the horrors closer to home – simply meant I stopped working. They had no choice but to fire me. I wasn’t even fired. I was invited to resign for my health after my sick pay ran out, rather than go through the capability dismissal procedure. There you go again, pretending you have it worse than you do.

If You Tolerate This, Then Your Children Will Be Next, Will Be Next, Will Be Next, Will Be Next

What good do there emotions do? What good does writing this and publishing it do? Do I hope that somebody will come and absolve me? Or is this just a private confessional, as in all likelihood friends will perhaps open it, recognise the tone, and decline to continue?

Or do I hope that friends will see it and recognise some of this in themselves? That I’ll be speaking to some kindred souls?

The pain isn’t uniform and it isn’t rational. The song by the Manics makes me think of the trans children who will grow up isolated and in agony. Which makes me think of the children who died in the 1930s, and feel shame for implicitly comparing the two. Which makes me think of the children slaughtered in Gaza, and the shame intensifies.

I want to examine these parts of me and come out a better person. And I want all of the children, living and dead, to be held close by loving families, and to be able to have a future. I believe that I do want that.

I believe that is the source of all of this pain.

I want to believe that it isn’t all about me.

The Fogbank

For over 15 years, I have had debilitating fatigue. It has been impossible to get this taken seriously by medics, or for many to even admit there is a problem.

For over 15 years, I have had debilitating fatigue. It has been impossible to get this taken seriously by medics, or for many to even admit there is a problem.

This is going to seem a little like a stream of consciousness, for obvious reasons.

Throughout my time as a skinny queer coasting my way to straight-As, I spent most of my time in my Sixth Form asleep in the common room or asleep in lessons. I slept on the way to school and back home (until I was driving myself – which I did until I had a fatigue-related motorway accident), I slept or zoned out in every moment that I could. I got away with this because my mother was a teacher and my grades were perfect. It came naturally to me.

At 16, I first realised that I was not merely sleepier than most. I sought medical help and was told I was depressed. I was, in fact, also depressed, which muddied the waters. I took anti-depressants, it did not help. Since then, I have routinely begged various of GPs to take this seriously and see if there is anybody that they can refer me to, or anything that can be tried. ADHD medication, B12 injections, new different antidepressants, a referral to some kind of specialist service.

I have been told the following:

“It’s normal to have fatigue as you get older” (ignoring that I have always had this)

“It’s probably because of your HRT” (I had these symptoms since before I transitioned)

“It’s because you aren’t exercising enough” (I had these symptoms while still very active and climbing mountains on my holiday)

“It’s stress”

Because this is comorbid with depression and stress – a lot of which is due to the struggles of living my life while wading through a thick-soupy fog – the issues are usually attributed to these. Anybody who spends much time with me immediately realises that my fatigue is profound and all-reaching. I have had friends and partners come to appointments to advocate for me, and get brushed off with a sneer.

Much of the reason for this dismissal, I think, is that I have managed to muddle my way into just about surviving. I managed 5-ish years as a House of Commons clerk (with an extreme amount of long-term sick and periods in which I could get nothing down at all, culminating in a nervous breakdown, a divorce and resigning). I have since bounced from short-term job to short-term job. I earn less now, even in nominal terms, than I did in 2017.

In every job I’ve had since them, I had been told – at various levels of overtness – that the perception is that I am slumming it, that I am “too good” for whatever admin that I am doing. This is sometimes given as the reason for my disengagement, lack of focus, inability to knuckle down and do work. Take this week for example – I have a lot of work to be getting on with, but even during my waking hours I find it impossible to corral my thoughts. During leisure hours I mindlessly open a game on steam, find I can’t focus on it, close it again, watch a video on youtube for 30 minutes, find I can’t concentrate, close it, go to lie down. I am literally slack-jawed. The work piles up and it is only the occasional jolts of terror at the prospect of losing my job, again, and therefore losing my home that means I keep doing work in the nick of time, at the weekend, at low quality.

But because I keep holding on to jobs – helped by the fact I find it relatively easy to *get* jobs, mostly because of my job history. Given the unstructured time of unemployment, I can craft an excellent application. I get a burst of energy when I start new jobs that lasts about a month at most.

People used to say to me that I am clearly too mad to work, and that I should look into getting on Government support. But I know that is not an application that would be successful. The fact of the matter is that some of the time, I can work. But employers are rarely sympathetic to the idea that I might be able to work for a few hours a week, and while those hours will be extremely productive I cannot predict when they will be. I can mostly feed myself (I wouldn’t say ‘cook’ for myself), I cannot keep my living space tidy. But I appear functional enough, and feel functional enough that I will not be applying for Government support.

Because this is episodic, I can do an impression of being well for weeks at a time, in a good year. Then, apparently without warning, I become useless. I start letting people down, I miss commitments, and I am unable to give an estimation to people for when I will be well again. And that is when I start losing jobs.

There are times, often, when the thickness of the fog bank causes me to go into the deepest despair. Now is one of those times. It has put me in a position of wanting to try something – anything. I don’t know if I have ADHD but I would love to just *try* the medication. Just *try* a B12 injection. On spec. That should be allowed. Hell, I’ll pay for the damn things in full.

I said this would be an unstructured mess – I find that streams of consciousness like that are something I can do, it’s not true focusing as I am barely refining my thoughts as I type them. There is a great weight in the back of my head, keeping my thoughts depressed and my ambition low. There are so many people out there with so much potential that is not realised because something in them forces them to live their lives walking through a fogbank.

Lancashire Mariner, Part 1: Why Mariners?

Baseball does not have a firm foothold in the UK. While MLB has been holding short series in London for the last few years, taking the lead from the NFL in that respect, you are far more likely to find somebody more interested in offensive yards gained than batting averages.

To be a British baseball fan is to accept a certain amount of isolation. It becomes an idiosyncratic answer to questions at work about what sports I enjoy, evoking a mix of mild interest and puzzlement. Good for breaking the ice at a new job, not so good for having much of a shared basis for continued conversation.

In varying degrees of bluntness, I’m asked: “Why?” Why baseball?

And why, of all the teams to support and follow throughout a 162-game season, why the Seattle Mariners?

The West Coast of the USA is eight hours behind my home. Day games start at a respectful 6pm. More often, first pitch is around 2am. Even when I do find other baseball fans around me, or manage to successful instil a love for the game in my loved ones, most of the time my chosen team simply plays too late for watching to be a communal experience.

There has to be a reason for me to love the Mariners. Otherwise, why would I?

Like many others I was drawn to the Mariners by Jon Bois and Alex Rubenstein’s 2020 documentary. In the first couple years I downplayed how much this was the reason for my affinity for Seattle taking form, but I’ve since gotten over that. The portrait of the team in the 6-part, 3-and-a-half hour long documentary (since released in a single part for convenience) was compelling – a lovable underdog team with a lot of heart, rejecting the boom and bust of the rebuild cycle for something else. If you haven’t watched it, you should.

I did not want to watch the Yankees machine or the Angels clownshow – after running the team in OOTP a few times, I watched some games and fell in love.

The 4 years since then have shown that heart. Julio Rodriguez has shown he is every bit the superstar we wanted him to be. J.P. Crawford has risen to be the rock of the infield, the team’s emotional heart. Kyle Seager worked his arse off, putting his all into getting the Mariners back to the playoffs after a long drought, ultimately failing to do so before he retired. Mitch Haniger mashed, then left, and has now returned in 2024 as a much-needed injection of skill.

But now, the drought is over. The Mariners are no longer the team that didn’t make the playoffs in years. That’s a .500 or over team. Does the team’s heart survive not being an underdog anymore?

The 2023-4 offseason was poor – there’s no getting around it. Dreams of the Mariners competing for Ohtani’s signature proved to be just that, and aside from Mitch Garver the changes to the roster have been mostly without any real eyecatchers even with due respect given to the aforementioned returning veteran Haniger.

For me, the real heartbreaker was the loss of Jared Kelenic. A true development story, he struggled in the starting roster, was sent back to AAA, but then came up to be one of the surprise sparkplugs in the lineup. Seeing him grow and thrive despite his struggles – that was the heart of the Mariners. In the offseason, he was traded to the Atlanta Braves for Jackson Kowar and Cole Philips. Philips is in the minor leagues, and Kowar was diagnosed with a torn UCL before opening day. He won’t play this year.

That’s baseball for you, people will say. It felt like a stab in the heart. Perhaps the trade had more to do with his lengthy absence last season for a self-inflicted broken foot, obtained by kicking a water cooler in anger during a game. Or even the earlier contract disputes with the Mariners in 2020. To me, it was the end of a surprise story that could have caught my attention this season.

Because my expectations are low this season.

Let’s move to last night’s game – The Mariners hosted the Red Sox. Luis Castillo, the star of the Seattle starting rotation, started on the mound. He wasn’t that sharp, allowing six hits, two walks and four earned runs over five innings. The bullpen didn’t help much, allowing about two.

In the Mariners’ starting lineup, we saw a line drive double from Julio, another double from new acquisition Garver and home runs from Haniger and Dylan Moore. Otherwise? A game with a promising amount of pops off the bat, but ultimately a loss, 6-4.

There are 162 games in a baseball season. One loss doesn’t matter.

There has to be a reason for me to love the Mariners – otherwise, why would I? I don’t live in Seattle. It’s chronologically inconvenient. I don’t have a strong baseball fan community here. The team is not going to win the World Series.

This year, the Mariners will demonstrate that reason again. And I, in a meandering, diarising blog post like this one, will share it with you. After every game.

There will be more about the game tomorrow, but this one was written hungover.

“They Do it by Gas”

(Digging through old writing. This is a fragment from a cancelled horror-erotica project in 2021. It’s about the time I started to become increasingly discontent with writing micro/macro and vore pornography for money, and started to despise my audience. I wanted to write something upsetting. The fragment doesn’t make a lot of sense out of context, but I want to preserve it)

They do it by gas.

A bramble of smashed limbs in a foil bag. Muted sobbing from those smothered by the others before the nozzle even made a tight seal above them. The technician was slow, and there’d be nobody to complain. Rough hands smashed flesh and bone into broken, brittle fragments through the coloured foil, letters and spectacle of branding occluding the terror of each life within.

They’d chosen this. Consent was given. Consciences assuaged; contracts signed. In lieu of running, and a worse-still fate, each one led gently to the back room. Assured that their end would be painless, a blissful stupor as protection from the horrors that awaited the ones that ran and struggled.

It smelled like old gum, cloying, its sightless spread throughout the foil prison spreading silence down amongst the damned. Struggles became jerks, muscles responding to oxygen starvation by nervous twitches. Another silence is among them now, deeper and yet more shallow. The complexity of human reason resolved down to a simple point, all of that will, all that was wanted or yearned for or desired. The gas sooths, it removes and plucks away.

It is often thought that the pacified become unconscious to the world around them. This is untrue. After the treatment is complete and the nozzle removed, those remaining in the bag as the thin aluminium foil is sealed are completely aware of their surroundings. They feel the thin air inside clouding their vision as the gas neutralises during their transit. They can touch those below them as they twitch in death. Throughout, only the shining bliss of a single purpose can coalesce through the ruined meat that had been their mind.

To lie there and smile. To smile through blood, and pain. To smile with a detached gaze and limp, broken limbs. Marionette bodies cut off from glory for a chance at peace.

Here was Marion, a self-surrender after 12 months unemployed. She was so tired all the time. Could force herself awake at nine if she had to, if she could bare wanting to toss herself in front of a train for the rest of the day. If she could bare not being able to think until the evening. Was never going to get a job that way. Was never going to meet her potential. Was never going to be what she was meant to be. All of that pain forgotten, now she’s here. Lightly salted with a hint of paprika – it was never good to eat these things unflavoured, after all. A distant smile to go with shallow gasps at breath. She won’t be tired anymore.

Here was Julie, running for months. She did what she could, she said. Here and there, a ragged and desperate soul would be let in, to climb on to her palm, to be soothed with warm tea and gentle words. She would listen to their troubles, to how they came that way. She would raise a fingertip to run it through their miniature locks. And when she’d heard their last, she would pick them up in her warm, soft skin. Shower them with love, smother them in affection. Let them know that there was no gulf between them, not through their size, not through their circumstance. She would close her slender fingers around their struggling body and weep for what could have been. Sobs would fill the air as she clenched her fists to shut out the screaming, and let the blood of the innocent souls pour out from underneath. She only ran. From home to street to rattling train. To be reduced was to die, and she knew that if she was caught, she would run no further.

Here was another, and another, and another. Each surrendered, each gave up. Each now one pack among many. TruTaste Pacified (Paprika Flavour), guaranteed fresh for two weeks before all within succumb to dehydration, the gas itself providing just a little longer than they would have normally, artificial moisture maintaining artificial rapture.

They are one pack among many, another ten percent crushed by force of gravity (within acceptable grounds), another five precent have their mouths (and other parts) filled with flavouring powder as it settles among them, choking out what life remains. In a stupor that are only vaguely aware of their extremities shutting down, of their toes growing cold and

“I Was More” Or:

“what doesn’t kill you doesn’t automatically make you interesting” (A story-scream)

(I found this story while looking for something else, I wrote it two years ago as a twitter thread. I put it here now.)

On this day 7 years ago’

The reaction, immediate. I must dismiss it, before it takes hold. Raising my hand, I make the error of full perception.

Scale-stretched skin, creases banked by polystyrene callouses. Gnarled humps once tender, nails lined with dead tendrils of broken skin.

A cruel contrast to Her. Smiling eyes and well-tanned skin. A dress that I could wear on TV and not be ashamed, now crushed and forgotten at the bottom of my wardrobe.

Her hand, smooth and moisture-nourished, waving back at me through blue glow. The sun never setting on her smile.

“Oh love, how you’ve befouled us. You remember when you were I. I of the satisfaction-soft cheeks and love-bright eyes. Of tongue and pen and firm embrace.

It has not been so long since you were this. My love, what did you do to me?”

I try to shake away the razor voice. Wise, well-educated, well-bred. A life pulled across the whetstone, coming out with a cleaner edge than all.

I am nothing, to Her. All stuttering voice, cracking at its edges. She has me in her grip. I am helpless.

“Bouyed and charmed. Cocktails after work, a twinkle in your manager’s eye. Letters after his name, he knows you were born to this. Of course, usually a boy’s club, of course, though they’ll make an exception for one such as you.

The world in your soft palms.

Oh, but you had stories. How you held court at parties, speaking of youth and grimy excess. ‘Take our hand and guide us to the underworld again!’

Pass the port and tell them of twinks and bears and alleyways. What larks, to have so much to tell, here in the safe and warm.

Escaped the pit, didn’t you? Crawled out with bloodied fingers, broken nose, choking back pus, crawled up and out and away from the damage.

Of course, so tragic, so inevitable you’d fall back down again. Of course, I could only ever be temporary.

Sorry, my love. I know the truth of it.

Ever the same. Wouldn’t life be more fun if you had more damage? Wouldn’t that make you more interesting?

Accept every offer, take everything, fuck everyone. This’ll make a good story later, we’ll all laugh at this later.

Sad stories are always better. You’ve always known that.

Like when a teenager, sneaking from middle-class suburbia to suck piss-dripping cock in the car park after dark.

You’d whisper your legend to enraptured ears.

Paint yourself an exile from heaven, tell them you’re alone, tell them you’re broken, that you’re less than you are.

It was just a holiday.

You’d wipe the cum from your lips, back home before your mum gets worried, she’s just put the kettle on, would you like a cup of tea? Yes please, two sugars. Did you enjoy your walk? Time for bed, night night sweetheart.

Do it again tomorrow.

Of course, you’d speak of each encounter later on, when you were I, like the explorer returned from the wilderness.

A little affected sadness here, a nod and a sigh there. ‘Oh, of course, I didn’t know what I was doing’

Was your damage special? Silly boy, that was just puberty.

You had to kill me. What you had become did not fit so neatly. A comfortable life, respected by all, loved by many.

And now, poor thing, you’re here again. Broken and twitching, fallen from grace, cast aside in your disfigurement.

You ever think…

You ever think…”

The proposals begin. She enters her flow, my body in rigour, thumb white against Her picture. She is at the pulpit, speaking the honest truth, the ignored law. Shining searing light on my deceptions. Reducing me, annihilating me, picking me apart, shattering every axiom I hold.

AXIOM I

ARE YOU THE TRAGEDY OF LOST POTENTIAL, THE ‘GIFTED KID’ OF EVERY INSIPID SELF-PITY POST. NEVER GIVEN A CHANCE TO BLOOM?

OR DID YOU DISCOVER THAT IT’S EASIER TO WEAR THE MASK OF THE BROKEN BIRD, ALWAYS READY TO HAVE A ‘CRISIS’ WHEN ASKED TO MAKE ANY EFFORT AT ALL?

AXIOM II

ARE YOU A LIVING COMPENDIUM OF DISORDERS, A CO-MORBID MESS OF A SCRAMBLED MIND AND SHATTERED BODY?

OR DO YOU HUNT FOR EACH, NO MATTER HOW POOR A FIT, WEARING THEM LIKE A TALISMAN, A WARD AGAINST SELF-REFLECTION?

AXIOM III

DO THEY IGNORE YOU, THE CRUEL, THE FAIR, DRUNK ON SELF-ASSURANCE? ARE THEY WITCHES, MOTHS AND FAE, DELIGHTING IN PAIN ON SOFT THINGS LIKE YOU?

OR ARE THEY WISE TO YOUR GAME, WAVING YOUR HURT AROUND LIKE AN EXPOSED ASSHOLE, DESPERATE TO GUILT SOMEBODY INTO FILLING YOU?

AXIOM IV

ARE YOU DRIVEN BY COMPULSION, BY ADDICTION, BY FEVER, BY MEDS? WORKING THROUGH A MIST, LUCKY TO ACHIEVE WHAT LITTLE VICTORIES YOU DO?

OR DO YOU ADOPT THE TRAPPINGS OF THE SICK, WANKING OVER THE AESTHETIC AND PITY AND STRUGGLE?

AXIOM FINAL

DON’T YOU THINK THAT THE MOST DISGUSTING THING IS THAT YOU’VE BEEN IN CONTROL ALL THIS TIME?

DON’T YOU KNOW YOU HAD THE CHANCE TO BE MORE, AND CHOSE THIS INSTEAD?”

I tear at the picture, I break her comfort-soft face, I chew and swallow and digest her whole, the Past Me, the Dead Me, the ashes and bones of what was More. I heave my carcass to the wall, take my knife and inscribe the words into my skin again.

YOU MADE YOUR BED NOW LIE IN IT.

‘Little Red Lamp’ (flash fiction competition)

Did not win this week in the flash fiction competition, but did get an honourable mention for a creative take on the prompt, which was “include technical instructions for a job, any job”. Story below.

851 words

Little Red Lamp

IF WARNING LAMP IS LIT: The operator, upon confirming aurally that growth is not abating or likely to abate in the enclosure, shall perform the following actions:

Depress the plunger and hold.
Wait.
Release the plunger when warning lamp extinguishes.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

It was just the two of them in a room designed for one, and a somewhat modest person at that. Raz rather regretted bringing his fish supper to the orientation session, as it would be his colleague who would have to put up with the smell. Zaq’s mood, already seething, would suffer.

“That’s outrageous!” Zaq blurted out, waving the single page of instructions in one hand, his slender fingers threatening to crush it. “An essential role, they called it! ‘Impossible to automate’! You could train an ape to do this!”

“Dignity, please,” Raz said around a mouthful of barbel, gesturing at Zaq with a little wooden fork. “You know if the boss could have automated it, he would’ve done. It really is an essential part of our work.”

Zaq slumped in the institutional chair he would be graced with for this post, mouthing something obscene and potentially seditious to the side wall. Metal wheels scraped across the crystal floor, friction sending up sparks and licks of green flame. In the cramped surroundings, his knees stroked against Raz’s, and the two of them awkwardly looked off to the side, taking a renewed interest in each individual muon set into the starfield-pattern table.

“It feels like I’m being punished for wanting my job back. Or set up to fail. There must be something more comprehensive than this rubbish.”

“That rubbish took an age to write.” Raz scooped up more of his meal, keeping his eyes down on the schools of fish coalescing into solid, cooked flesh on the infinite lake shore around his chips. “I was on the committee that wrote it, do you know just how agitated the boss can get about the difference between ‘will’ and ‘shall’?”

Zaq shot him a look, then reached over and snapped close the takeaway box. Both it and its contents blinked out of existence in a shattering explosion: fish, chips, miniature lakes and mountains all collapsing into nothing. The space between the two filled with tiny flashes of atomic fire.

“Rude.” Bereft of his meal, Raz pouted and waved a hand to dismiss the lingering ozone scent. “Anyway, it’s not a punishment. And there really isn’t any need for the manual to be any longer.” He reached into a gaping wound in the tabletop and brought forth a thrashing carp, twisting it around his hands like a balloon as he spoke, eyes locked on his underling.

“The point of the system is that we don’t have to go down and speak to the poor wretches and make a judgment. The system does that for us, but only we can bring the curtain down.” The carp took on a glassy quality until it formed an identical takeaway container, this time as though carved from obsidian, full to the brim with spiced fish and chunky chips. “If you think it lacks gravitas, call the plunger a trumpet. Have a little fun with it.”

Raz set the fresh meal on the table as a peace offering, though it went unacknowledged. Slumped in defeat, Zaq turned towards the infinite compartments set against the wall, each one topped by a dull red glow ready to burst into flame.

“I’ll leave you to your work,” Raz said cheerily, beginning to phase out of the room. “It looks like you have your first customer. And do try the food, there’s plenty of it!”

A red beacon was flickering to life above one of the compartments, demanding Zaq’s attention. Shooting daggers at Raziel’s coy smile as he disappeared, the younger Watcher drew the container towards him, the stars within growing to fill his field of vision. He placed his ear to the translucent barrier, and the cries of a million trillion souls rose through the twisted thicket of folded space-time between the universe and the world of the angels. With each passing moment the cries grew more numerous, growth unending. A clear requirement for action.

“Goodness, I wonder if I can remember what the ops manual told me to do,” muttered Zaq bitterly, tapping on the divide with a finger to dissuade one of the more errant galaxies inside from colliding with the universal limit.

Depressing the plunger set above the compartment, the angel named Zaqiel barely glanced towards the countless stars in countless galaxies, instead turning his attention to the gift of a fish supper left for him. The sentients within the doomed creation would have subjective millennia to see their universe collapse in on itself, and yet in all that time would be incapable of perceiving what lay beyond.

And yet, if by some freak accident of circumstance one of them were to pierce the veil, they would see neither malice nor disdain in their deliverance, but the crushing boredom of one waiting for a little red lamp to go out.

“Duty Visit” (Flash fiction competition)

This week’s entry into the weekly flash fiction competition was horribly, horribly rushed (I.E. I wrote it 2 hours prior to the deadline) and I expect to lose, but, I’ll post it all the same. Edit: I actually won this week with this, ha

Duty Visit

1000w

Cathy

The retirement complex has its own tiddly little bus, a single-decker that goes all about the houses. Half the other passengers already look dead. Garnet, who doesn’t give me a moment’s peace the entire way. Always her stomach aching or her phone not working.

I give her a clip around the ear, and she screeches. My face burns, people turn, people were staring with those awful, sunken, coffin-dodger eyes.

“People are looking!” Shut up, shut up! Why is she doing this to me, why does she make everything so hard? “Sit down! Sit down and be quiet, do you want them to throw you off the bus? Eh? Do you know how to walk home by yourself?”

The old man a couple rows behind, I can tell he’s fixing his disgusting rheumy eyes on me. He’s thinking, what a beast, what an awful mother. No idea, not a clue what I’ve been through. Every day the same, spittle and runny noses, cornflakes and school sandwiches and has the old bat ever offered help? Has she ever, spending all day gorging herself on cake, can’t even lift up the phone but to say to me, oh Cathy you’re doing it all wrong, that’s never how I was to you.

One more visit and I’d never have to look at her again.

Filthy tip of a place, disgusting that anybody lives here. All institutional redbrick and peeling pastel paint, the building looking about as decrepit as the half-ghouls that call these rooms their crypts.

The old cow is sat on it all, perched on what’s mine. She’ll tell me where it was, she’s give me what’s mine, what was always meant to be mine, what I deserve.

Thea

Somebody visiting. Come to ask for something, either money or time. Not that I have much of either. Not now, too tired, sendthem back. They never let me sleep, those girls. Always calling to complain about their awful lives and absent boyfriends.

“It’s your daughter, and granddaughter. I’ll just let them in for a moment, ok?” The nurse doesn’t wait for a reply, so in they come. Here comes Cathy, proud as punch, always righteous, forever strident. And in tow, little Garnet. Eyes red, head low.

It takes Cathy digging her fingers into the girl’s shoulder to bring out a sullen “Hello Granny”. Thinks that she’ll get more out of me by dragging her along in a cheap chequerboard frock. She looks like she dressed in the dark.

But ah, she’s animated now. She lifts my hand off the chair and squeezes it, I suppose the nurses think it affectionate, but her grip is strong and my fingers brittle. It won’t be long until you’re here too, girl. Your hands may have more lotion, but in time they’ll be parchment too.

I let my eyes lose focus. She was always like this, even at Garnet’s age. So many questions and ambitions. How she drove me to despair, her father to drink, her sisters to rage. Never satisfied with all that we gave to her, always grasping for unearned praise. I was too soft.

I know what she wants before she mentions it. She wants to know where I hid it, thinks that it’s her just reward, thinks that a few visits to me will mean I can forget the agony she put me through.

“You’re ruining that girl.”

That shuts her up. I make sure everybody in the lounge hears it. Silly old fool, they’ll think, doesn’t know how loud she’s talking.

“You’re ruining that girl and she’s going to end up just like you.”

That’s right, girl. You want to cry, don’t you? I can see it in your eyes, the glowing red in your cheeks. Just like you did every day as a brat, every time I told you “No”, every time I caught you stealing. Cry, let everybody here see what a pathetic little girl you are.

You want to know where my treasure is hidden? Well, you can’t. It’s mine, and that means I get to decide who gets it. You are a selfish girl who needs a cold, hard lesson in how the world works. It’s mine and will be mine until the day they pack me away from here in a coffin, and there is nothing you can do about it.

Garnet

Mummy keeps saying we have to go and visit Granny, which isn’t fair because we can only visit her on a Saturday and it’s been every Saturday for weeks and there’s nothing here and it smells and the bus always makes me feel sick, but I complained about it last week and Mummy got upset so I don’t complain about it anymore.

The other girls spend their weekends round each other’s houses. When I asked why we’re visiting her so much, Mummy said that I was a nasty girl who didn’t care about her poor old Granny. Granny doesn’t say much and scares me.
Granny and Mummy have just finished talking. I don’t understand what they’re talking about, there’s something in the old house that Mummy can’t find and she keeps asking if Granny knows where it is. I keep saying that if we asked my Aunties to help we’d be able to find something.

We’ve only just got here when Mummy grabs my arm and it’s too hard and it hurts and we’re walking too fast too fast and the nurse tries to hand me something but we’re already leaving and we’re already gone.
I don’t say anything on the bus, Mummy’s too cross and I know not to say anything when she’s cross.

I go to my room and wedge myself into the gap between my wardrobe and the wall. Mummy doesn’t know about my secret place, about my hidden door and my special treasure, about the loose wall behind the wardrobe or the special room. She’ll never know because it’s my secret, it’s mine, all mine, and will always be mine.

“Outstanding Contribution” (flash fiction)

Outstanding Contribution

Little bit of flash fiction I did the other day for a weekly flash competition I’m in. The prompt was to do with realising you’ve made a terrible mistake, and the word limit was 1,000 words.

999w

I should like to give you some background first. It’s unbecoming to brag, but between you and me I have a terribly important job, and I am rather good at it.

The entire village works for the Ministry in one way or another, it is no secret what I do. Geoff at the market asks me how my day was when I buy vegetables, and I give an annual talk for Deirdre at the primary school about the necessity of our expedited prison system.

We all understand, you see. The world may not work the way it used to, but my job is no different from Geoff, from Deirdre, or even yourselves. It isn’t as though this job is a new idea; this country had an official executioner until the 1960s. The crisis of the last few decades might mean that our methods are somewhat rushed, but I like to think I bring professionalism to the role.

You’re quite right, I’m getting off the subject. Please, there’s no need to be rough, we really are all on the same team.

It was the bum end of an early shift. I’d performed seven disposals that morning when the Minister arrived with his aide. Couldn’t tell the aide from Adam, they come and go all the time. As I can see you’ve checked, they signed the register and made their way to Cell 23.

No, I most certainly did not listen to what went on in there. We do not get involved in interrogations. I do what I can to ignore the sounds, a little sudoku here and a crossword there.

I was trying to tease out “Dull river crossed by fish (4)” when the cell opened again. The Minister walked swiftly down the corridor, his back turned and hat replaced. The aide made his way to my desk, face pale. Not, I suspected, a successful interrogation.

The young man told me the Minister would like me an Expedited Disposal on the occupant of Cell 23 immediately.

Now, I understood the procedure well enough, and this was a deviation. If you would check my records, you will see that I am one of only 30 per-cent of Disposal Associates to achieve a rating of ‘Outstanding Contribution’ for each of the last three years. I know, if I may say so, my onions.

This gentleman did not act like he was on a spot-check. A forced laugh and a patting of pockets came before a theatrical slapping of his forehead as I reminded him of the process. Of course, he said. How silly of me, he said, such an instruction must only come from the Minister.

Although, he said (and here his lower lip turned up into an desperately pathetic sulk), the Minister had left for an urgent meeting with the Security Service and was incommunicado for the day. He briefly went on a tangent about the Faraday cages these meetings were held in, before stopping bashfully. Ah, youthful enthusiasm.

The young man sighed, bloodied knuckles tapping on his teeth. How were we, two professional Crown servants, to solve this conundrum? And then, with a speed that caused his gore-soaked tie to flick dull red spots onto my desk, he threw his finger up in triumph.

Of course! The Minister had signed the order. He produced the note (yes, this same note, stains and all). Signed, proper and official, with His Majesty’s seal.

He wrung his hands as I inspected it. And oh, gentlemen! You should have seen the wretch. Ill-fitting suit, cheap glasses, ruined white shirt (awful decision in this work). I took pity on the boy. It doesn’t do to be a roadblock to Government, not in these times.

He made sure to take my name as he left. That’s how you know they’re going to put in a good word.

Once he left, I did my duty. They must have really roughed up the fellow this time: they’d gone to the trouble of putting a bag over his head. He didn’t move at all as I raised the barrel to his forehead, sat limp in the chair in a too-large prisoner’s uniform.

I called down for the cleaner as I usually do. Paula (nice girl, thick as a post) said that she didn’t think there were any more booked today. She didn’t understand, and I had to explain twice. That girl couldn’t think her way out of a paper bag.

It’s curious how some things only come into focus when explaining them to another. The Minister had dashed down the corridor in a dreadful hurry, and a hat indoors? And hadn’t Cell 23 been quite a stout man?

Once Paula agreed to do her blasted job, I took another look at the slip. Ministers must be frightfully busy, I’m sure it’s normal to photocopy a signature. And the Royal Seal.

I sat there for a spell, and it was then I elected to end my shift and amble home for a late lunch.

There was a queer atmosphere around the village, silent but for Ministry cars barrelling down the street. I was grateful to shut out the world and sit in my lovely cottage, turn on the television and try to relax. University Challenge, an all-Oxford matchup, Balliol facing Wadham. I couldn’t focus on it.

Doing my best not to think about what had happened, I fell asleep. I told myself, as mum would say, it will all come out in the wash.

I woke when your boys knocked my door in with a ram. Unnecessary, though I suppose forgivable, given the circumstances.

And that brings us to the present. I’m very sorry to hear about the Minister, really I am, and I do hope you catch that rascal from Cell 23. I hope you can see that this was a rare lapse in an otherwise stellar career and allow me to return to work. After all, my job is terribly important, and I am rather good at it.

90 days is a perfectly fine length of suspension actually

I’m now well used to my time as a parliamentary clerk being well behind me, but I still have thoughts about goings-on – and specifically I have some thoughts I want to share about Standards and Privileges, suspensions from the House, and the House’s penal jurisdiction. I worked for the House for ~6 years non-continuously, primarily as a Senior Clerk, so I have some experience to draw on here.

I’m going to address a few things that I’ve seen people say about the 90-day suspension recommended by the Committee on Privileges for Boris Johnson.

1. “This is too short a term”

The Committee in its initial report said that if Johnson had indeed committed the misconduct that he was accused of, they would recommend to the House a suspension long enough to engage the provisions of the Recall of MPs Act 2015.

Let’s be clear – this is effectively saying that the Committee would recommend his seat be vacated and up for by-election.

When the 2015 Act was making its way through Parliament, some raised concerns that it would lead to a situations where the House would feel constrained in how it applied suspension lengths due to the Act. This is an example of the Committee being highly aware of the Act, but using it as a benchmark, not a constraint.

Before the 2015 Act there was no way for a Member to be forcibly removed from the House short of a motion of expulsion (not done sine 1946-7, we’ll get to that) or becoming disqualified for other reasons. Before this Act, Members were suspended for months at a time and remained Members. Long before he

The Committee was effectively recommending his expulsion, but leaving that choice ultimately up to his constituents. That is the right and correct thing to do – the threshold for a recall petition is so low that if the provisions of the Act are activated, it only takes a tiny portion of the constituency to recall the MP.

The 90 days is effectively symbolic, but would have also meant he would have likely been suspended until the end of the petition period, meaning he would not have returned. It would also have been the 3rd longest suspension since the 30s, behind Keith Vaz’s 6 months and Rob Roberts’ six weeks.

2. “It should be a motion of expulsion, then.”

and 3. “He should not be able to return to Parliament”

So the Recall of MPs Act means the Committees can recommend expulsion without explicitly recommending expulsion.

However, this is not to say that prior to the Act the committees were willing to expel Members. The House last expelled a Member in the 1946-47 Session, on a finding of Contempt. At the time, there were grave concerns about the use of this power, and it has not been used since.

I will say outright: The House should not be able to permanently disqualify people from being Members. An expulsion does not, in fact, do this. Charles Bradlaugh, when he was expelled from the House in 1882 for refusing to take the oath on account of being an atheist, was re-elected multiple times. The power to return Members to Parliament lies and must lie solely within the electorate. There are disqualifying criteria under the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975 and the Representation of the People Act 1981. For example, if one is imprisoned for more than a year or is an active member of the armed forces. The armed forces provision – and those like it that prohibit current judges – are constitutionally necessary. However, I believe that there is an argument for the provision against electing current prisoners to be overturned.

Bradlaugh, again – the House expelled him despite the wishes of his constituency. His constituency re-elected him, the House expelled him again, and so on. Manifestly undemocratic – and precisely the reason why the power to expel should be wielded extremely rarely if ever. And even if it were used, the reason why an expulsion must not lead to future disqualification if a constituency wills it.

4. “He should face more punishments – the remaining punishment of removing his former Members’ pass is laughable”

This comes to the House’s penal jurisdiction – I.E. should the House be able to punish non-Members. Johnson became a non-Member and thus removed himself from the House’s jurisdiction.

The House law exercised its penal jurisdiction on a non-Member in 1880. It would be ridiculous to argue to return to a situation where the House can commit a non-Member to prison, or apply some other sort of punishment. The only punishment that the Committee could have applied to him as a non-Member is to remove his former Member privileges, which they did recommend.

5. “It doesn’t matter if the *House* should be able to punish him. There should be an Act making these kinds of things illegal.”

That would be a massive change to the constitutional settlement. That alone isn’t an argument against necessarily, but I would argue it would be a negative one. Johnson was investigated and reported on solely because of his actions in the Chamber. This is separate to any police investigation and subsequent fines for the acts themselves.

If there were an Act of Parliament giving the courts jurisdiction over the conduct of people in the Chamber, this would institute a massive chilling effect on how Members spoke in the Chamber. Free debate would be stifled massively. This was an investigation into truthfulness. The reason libel laws don’t apply in the Chamber is to maintain that freedom of debate.

We do not want a situation where everything that a Member says has to go through a lawyer.

The Committee was well aware of the possibility of a chilling effect in its investigation, and talk about this in the full report. They proceed having decided that the contempt shown to Parliament is major enough to warrant punishment, despite the risks.

Conclusion:

I think the current situation is fine. The electorate ultimately make the decision on an expulsion via the Recall of MPs Act, the courts stay out of parliamentary debate, and if the electorate thinks that a Member ought to be elected again despite their misconduct they can do (For example, Ian Paisley Jr. faced a recall petition and ultimately did not get recalled)

I struggle to envisage what people want to have happened to Johnson here, from Parliament. Either you think that the covid laws should have been more draconian and he should have faced more than a fine (I would disagree most strongly, but, different argument), or you think Parliament ought to be able to met out a stronger punishment, or you think that there should be a law against lying to Parliament. The truth is that ‘law’ exists, but here is the law that is followed within the mechanisms of the protection of parliamentary privilege and the punishment of contempt.

The Talent and We were promised honey! – Theatre reviews

HOME Manchester Theatre 2 summer season

On the day I went to see The Talent, my employer released a communique on corporate communication. The tone being struck will be familiar with anybody who has seen advertising from . Friendly, open, and very occasionally levity. Talking like you’re mates.

On the way home, I pick up a ready meal from the Tesco down the road. All but the most committed have long since stopped noticing the voice of the automated checkouts, but I find myself tuning in to one aspect – the twinkle in the eye. The sound of a smile behind the words.

I thought of how long it may have taken to record that line, for producers and PR experts to pore over the exact inflection which really makes a person feel comfortable as they buy their pasta.

The Talent opens with a voice actor named Gemma (performed by Gemma Paintin), sitting in a recording booth set up in the middle of the stage. Behind glass for the entire show, Gemma is instructed to perform voices for advertisements, video games, spam calls and train announcements, all at the whims of two distant producers whose instructions leave both Gemma, and the audience, puzzled.

She’s already in there before the show, as we file in. Taking advantage of having got there early, and with limited inhibitions, I sat in the front row. A couple metres from me is Gemma’s booth, and Gemma herself. The booth is a tiny space with two microphones – one for standing and one for sitting – and dark grey acoustic baffling across the walls. We never hear Gemma’s voice naturally, only how it comes through the microphones. I wouldn’t be surprised if the booth was mostly soundproof.

The set is excellent. I loved that the lighting was entirely isolated to the booth, and things were done with this lighting throughout the show that made the most of this. Hearing Paintin’s voice through the microphone created a delicious sense of distance that maintained an otherworldy, oppressive feeling to the piece. As a presentation gimmick, it’s top-notch.

I’m enraptured by this from the beginning. With the glass between us, I feel able to simply stare at the woman in the booth. I was delighted by this as a way of setting tone. Already she is made less than human, an exhibit, before saying a word.

To set the tone, the first recording that Paintin gives is one of those distinctly British adverts where the voiceover seems to be winking at you, claiming that $BRAND knows how complicated and difficult life is, but we are $BRAND are willing to infantalise you until you’re all happy and cosy and lovely, eating our breakfast cereal or using our bank or whatever.

Side note – I used to watch a lot of NFL, and half of the enjoyment was watching American adverts. They don’t do this in the same way. The tone of voice that British adverts take is very distinct in how they speak to customers.

It is funny. There’s laughter. It’s funny to see somebody in a box, talking enthusiastically about a cereal on demand. We recognise the “that’s great Gemma, but could it be brighter? You know, like, you know life is complicated, but that’s alright?” as the kind of direction that would actually be given in this situation.

But, wait, hang on, do we? How many of us have actually been in recording booth and know what direction in those circumstances involves?

I’m getting this out of the way first despite – as will become clear – me enjoying this play. This is not a character piece. That’s fine, I did not expect it to be. But the humour in it comes primarily from two sources. First, watching somebody voice acting often appears absurd, and that’s funny. Secondly, the producers are the standard “showbusiness moneymen who give vague directions.”

They’re stock characters, and stock characters we’ve seen dozens of times before. And we’ve seen that so many times before, that the humour comes from reference. We’ve watched TV shows of films set in Hollywood where that kind of director is everywhere.

How genuine is it? Maybe it’s completely genuine. But given that these characters aren’t fleshed out at all, it seems lazy to include this humour and a blemish on an otherwise fine script.

Not least because The Talent is not a comedy. I decided fairly early on that this was a horror.

“Glitch horror” is a genre of computer games and spooky online folk stories where the reader is unsettled by a computer program glitching out. These started out as copypasta about haunted video game cartridges and are now fully-established in actual games.

It’s understandable. As we spend more of our lives at computers, programs glitching out in unexpected ways becomes less like a broken-down appliance and more like our sense of reality distorting.

Gemma’s world gets actual glitches eventually in the form of her connection to her producers breaking down, but long before that this production bears the hallmarks of glitch horror. She is taken at breakneck speed from her cereal commercial to a Commander Shepherd-like character, forced to repeat over and over increasingly more ridiculous death noises. Her producers come across as not-quite-human, indifferent to the feelings of the eponymous talent and talking amongst themselves about how to use the human part of the machine.

From this we move to Gemma recording each line of a robo call, directing only by a beep to send her to the next line. Some lines are simply light-hearted, reassuring laughter. Others are standard “Um yeah I’m told you’ve been in an accident?”, before eventually glitching out on reassurances to the future scam victim that she is human.

“I have blood in my veins.” Beep.

“I have blood in my veins.

I have blood in my veins.

I have blood in my veins.”

It’s impossible to talk about this play without talking about two elephants in the room. The first is that this has elements of a pandemic piece. The producers aren’t in the room, they’re on a call. There are references to some unspecified tragedy. The call occasionally drops and there are technical issues. I’m torn on this part – like the comedy, it adds some elements to it that an audience may find familiar but ultimately don’t do much to serve the underlying point.

The second room-elephant is AI. This is not a story about AI. Gemma is the human in the equation. She is, at least for now, required in order for her producers to capture that human element needed for their projects.

From the beginning, though, when she was a zoo animal for me to stare at, she is not treated as human. She may be even less human that the disembodied voices of her producers on the call, at least in their views. A single pot-plant in her booth does little to obscure the fact that she is a cog in the machine, and that her job is to carefully inject a human voice into faceless corporate communications, ultimately to manipulate, whether benignly or maliciously, other humans.

Inevitably, the system breaks down. The glitches become more frequent. The lighting in the booth – excellently changing from moment to moment to make Gemma appear strident, feeble, or isolated depending on the moment – starts to strobe aggressively as the stage is flooded with repeated, out of context lines from the producers.

This is not a show about AI, because we do not need AI to be dehumanised. We have done it to ourselves.

We were promised honey! Is very different. Performed in the round in single-file seats, I briefly had the horrifying feeling that I would be sat with two seats empty to either side of me, having chosen to sit in the corner nobody else was but being one of very few who had come alone. This did not come to pass, but given the performance that was about to take place, it would have been quite funny if it had.

As we sit, an recording of a conversation between Air Traffic Control and a pilot is playing alongside dream-like, ambient music. I have a lasting interest in ATC and immediately recognise it, immediately telling one of my seat neighbours that I think this is a recording of “that mechanic that stole a plane and flew it without experience”. The neighbour politely thanked me, saying this was useful information he wasn’t aware of, and looked away. Going to the theatre alone turns me into my parents.

Sam Ward, the founder the theatre company YESYESNONO and the performer here, rises from among the audience. A well-worn technique, but still effective, Ward brings an intoxicating energy from the get-go. His unassuming, practical trainers, t-shirt and shoulder bag immediately put me in the mind of an enthusiastic hike leader – half wilderness guide, half cult preacher.

Ward explains to us that we are listening to the conversation between Richard Russell and Air Traffic Control, and that he was a ground handling agent who stole a Bombardier Q400 and flew it, without piloting experience. I allow myself a small point of pride at the accuracy of my recognition, and shame at having misremembered Russell as a mechanic.

He tells us that this story is not going to have a happy ending, and says that for us to proceed, one of the audience will need to say “I would like to hear this story”. Otherwise, we can sit in silence.

At first, the show seems as though it is going to be something akin to improvised comedy. Billed as involving communal storytelling, I was not prepared for how much audience participation there was. As well as repeatedly being asked to affirm that we really did want to continue, in three parts Ward involves members of the audience, using them as props, additional actors, and eventually simply asking two of them to read from the script into the microphone.

Memories of a classroom full of people awkwardly not wanting to be the first volunteer, I was the first to put up my hand for the first part. Clearly intended to introduce the concept to the audience gently to the concept, all I had to do was provide yes and no answers. This section felt like improvised comedy, though a look at the script afterwards does, of course, show that it was anything but. Entirely scripted, my answers were ultimately meaningless, but this gentle introduction allowed the audience to get the awkward laughter out of their system as a self-selecting outgoing person – myself – was the centre of attention for a little while.

It was somewhat surreal hearing my name said over and over by the only performer in a one-hander, Ward making eye contact with me throughout. While knowing that this was not truly improvisational, it achieved its goal of creating a feeling of communal storytelling. This feeling carried into the second and third parts, where the thrust of the piece really took hold.

It’s all laughter until a certain point in the second part, when it becomes clear that as well as not being improvisational, this is definitively not comedy.

This story will not have a happy ending.

The Talent depicts a world where emotion is sanded down, portioned out, and mechanised in the service of capital. Paintin’s booth is claustrophobic, its lights blinding. Watching it, I felt as though she, I, and all of us were trapped in these booths, that we have created a world where genuine experience and expression cannot exist. I’m reminded of a quite well-known quote from The Great Dictator when I think about this kind of mechanisation – “machine men with machine minds and machine hearts.” It felt overwhelmingly bleak. There is no escape. Humanity has been suborned to capital. It is hopeless.

We were promised honey! is apocalyptic in a different sense. Once the piece gets up and running, it dashes through great spans of time. The periods that Ward says are passing is meaningless, his eyes bright with his cult leader energy as he tells us breathlessly what will happen one hundred years, two hundred, one million years from now. He describes what we happen to each of us in that time, relationships failing, worlds crumbling. Past, present and future mixing together into a meaningless soup, every choice that we have made amounting to nothing in the face of unyielding, brutal time.

“This story will not have a happy ending”. Richard Russell crashes his plane. He does not survive. Eventually, everything we know and all that we love will be forgotten. Our choices will be meaningless.

And yet, repeatedly in this show we affirm that we wish to continue.

It’s not a unique message, but it doesn’t have to be. We were promised honey! rejects the hopeless, suicidal impulse of a meaningless life. Both plays look into this meaningless during their “breakdown” segment. The Talent has Gemma’s producers glitching out, her lights flashing, as it becomes more and more clear how she is lost in the machine. But she does not escape, and we are not left with anything other than horror at the world that we have made.

When Ward breaks down in honey, it’s with a frentic energy, that of a plane in a tailspin. We can see the ground coming towards us but are exhilarated by the rush of our flight. And after the wreckage, we are allowed to pick ourselves up. In a final flourish that for plays that had not done the communal groundwork would have seemed absurd, the audience is asked to sing, despite the indifference of the universe, and to do so alongside our friends and strangers, in spite of the unhappy ending that we all face. I think the choice of song – Country Roads – was a little odd, but I can see why it was done. Everybody knows the chorus.

To be clear, I enjoyed both plays. But I am going back to think about honey’s script and message more and more – I bought the script on the way out, which I don’t think I’ve ever done before. The Talent is a far more interesting technical achievement, but ultimately says less and is somewhat unbalanced when it’s trying to be funny. Both are more than worth the £16 that I paid for one hour of your time, and I would recommend seeing them if they’re in your city.

The Talent has ended its UK tour and will next be performed in the UK Edinburgh at the Horizon Showcase at Summerhall, 22-27 August. European tour dates can be found here. I saw it at HOME Manchester on 1^st June 2023.

We were promised honey! (YESYESNONO, written by Sam Ward) will continue at HOME Manchester on Sunday, then move to Liverpool and Keswick. Tour dates can be found here. I saw it at HOME Manchester on 8^th June 2023.

Next week I’m trying out a new theatre and seeing HAVE A BREAK, HAVE A KIT KAT at 53two – this time at the start of its run so the review will be in good time!