Sure

It's been too long. I've forgotten how this works. Should I have done some blog preparation? Should I have sketched out an outline of my argument? Should I have an argument?

I haven't. But this is more about easing me back into the game. I need to shake off my ring rust, which isn't as disgusting as it sounds.

This year has been unlike any previous year. At no point in 2013 have a been able to find my bearings. In fact, not only have I not found my bearings, I don't even know how to spell bearings. It could easily be barings. Or behrings, for all I know.

It's difficult to live when you don't have a solid base to stand on. That's why astronauts lack ambition once they're in space. They're just happy to coast.

Solidity isn't fashionable, I know. But without it, what would we be? We'd be soup, that's what. And no-one would advocate that.

But I'm sure it will come. Soon, my cement slippers will harden, and I'll be as secure as a cat that's been nailed to the floor. Until then, please enjoy the following extract from my latest fictional work.

***

The Warmest Room

by

Faul Pung

The two small children wore identical caps, so they could be recognised by Helicopter.

Helicopter was their nanny. She was a fantastic nanny, but wasn't good with faces. She found it very difficult to tell one child from another. This blind spot wasn't just for siblings, but for all children. For her, they were all the same: all eyes and a chin. After puberty, people became more individual. They had beards and wrinkles. Helicopter could tell adults apart, but not children.

For most nannies, this would have been a handicap. Parents would be reluctant to leave their children in the charge of someone who was unable to recognise them. But Helicopter was incredibly skilled in the other childcare tasks: the teaching, the cleaning, the singing, the patience, the tucking-in, the playing games, the stern-but-fair manner. 

So parents still hired her. They just found ways to make their children more recognisable.

That's why these two small children were wearing identical caps. The caps had a bright blue brim, and were covered in luminous stars.

And so Helicopter, standing at the school gates, staring at cold sea of tiny chattering clones, could identify her charges. They were two twinkling beacons of familiarity in a grey gruel of humanity.

But the caps were identical. Though she could tell her kids apart from all the others, she couldn't distinguish between the two of them. When the cap scheme was in its embryonic stages, the parents had thought that their children should each have their own individual distinctive hat. That way, Helicopter would be able to see which was which. 

But the caps were expensive, and it was cheaper to get two of the same kind. "Anyway," said the father, "there's only two years between them, so they're basically the same person". Helicopter agreed. The children agreed. The mother agreed.

And so the two small children wore identical caps. And Helicopter continued to be their nanny. The children loved her, and grew into generous, imaginative people.

"Maybe we should have given them names," said the mother one evening, sitting in the late September sun. "Names... as well as the caps".

The father nodded slowly. "Hindsight is twenty-twenty," he said.

Helicopter became a vegan in her forties. That doesn't have any bearing on the story, but she asked me to mention it.

***

That was my submission for an upcoming series of short stories in which the main character is named after transport. The project is being curated by Jimmy Carr and Lawrie McMenemy. All proceeds go to a charity for victims of faulty bridges.

I have yet to receive a response.