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Last time we left him Grandpa Simon was contemplating just how far he had come in the article Moon Heaters.

So how could he convince people to go back to something that they hadn’t liked very much? That was the problem. In the old days when people hadn’t had enough to eat then it was a very personal problem, and now although everyone knew that eating the cheese was causing the whole moon to fall away it was somebody else’s problem. Simon knew that everybody else thought that somebody else was going to solve it, and there was no motivation to bother. Because why bother to come up with a solution when eating the cheese right now isn’t going to harm anyone. That was the problem, each slice of cheese wasn’t hurting anyone by itself, it was just when everyone took a slice three or four times a day that they had started to run into trouble.

Everyone was hoping somebody else was going to solve the problem, but now Simon realised that if anything was going to happen then it would have to be him who would solve the problem.

He thought about taxes, that might be an idea. A way of rationing the cheese, by saying that people could only have a slice after they had done a day of work doing something else. But how would you enforce it? The whole planet was made of cheese, they could just bend down while working and eat a piece? Or more likely just eat at home and not work.

If only there was some way of trying to cover the whole planet some way of stopping them from getting at the cheese. But how would you do that? Maybe, Simon thought suddenly he didn’t need to stop them from getting at the cheese, what if he just made it so that they couldn’t eat the cheese any more. What if he could poison the cheese?

There was, in the armoury from the old days of war huge vats of mouse poison. If he could get it into the source of the cheese then he would be able to stop everyone from eating the cheese. The cheese did grow a little bit each year. It grew out from the centre of the moon. The aristocracy had always kept it in check by eating enough never more, never less. They had maintained the balance.

But how to get to the core of the moon? That was going to be tricky itself? But Simon had an idea, he would appeal to the greed of the mice. He would tell them that the core of the planet had the greatest tasting cheese of all time in it, and that if they could dig down to it then it would mean great cheese for those that had done it. He would have to get together a band of these Moon Miners but he knew with the promise of tasty cheese and a lie saying that that they would have rights to own the land down there would be enough to tempt them down.

He knew what he was doing would destroy the aristocracy as everyone would have to work, and he didn’t mind that too much. Although he had now a new found respect for them as they had realised something far more important than he had about the way to keep the moon in balance. But he knew more than the aristocracy he would be destroying himself. There is no way he would survive. He’d be killed for sure.

Will Simon succeed? Tune in next Friday for the final instalment.

The last time we left Simon he was contemplating his future. If you don’t know about Simon and what he was contemplating then you might want to check out the first half of the story which was called:

Moon Eaters

The common mouse was ruining the moon. That’s what was happening in one way. But on the other hand what was happening to the aristocratic mouse? Before they had lived off of the moon and had loved every fat second of it. But now they were going crazy. They still felt the need to show that they were better than the common mouse, and although Simon had tried to introduce other foodstuffs into the court as a way of stopping the slippages the rest of them were simply consuming more and more. Some of them had started melting down the cheese and bathing in it. This was simply the most preposterous idea Simon had ever heard in his life! They were bathing in cheese, which was dangerous in the first part because the temperature was so high, and then those mice that survived had to take a regular shower in one of the rain towers anyway.

But what could Simon do? The whole idea of a Mouse utopia where every mouse could concentrate on higher things because they had food enough to eat had backfired. Instead of what he had planned where mice had everything they needed, and they then looked towards the more scholarly world to enrich their lives, instead of that they had all become lazy. It was terrible.

Simon picked up a piece of stilton and looked at it. He thought back to the world of his youth. Who could remember what life was like back then. After ten years of everyone eating cheese, after thirteen years of him eating cheese it was difficult to remember what it was like the very first time he had seen another mouse do it. But he could.

It was later in the day after he had helped the prince win in the fight. They hadn’t really spoken about anything other than fighting and women. The prince was a dignified man in the correct social circles, but after that fight he was ready to talk as men do. Mainly he spoke about other fights and women, but he also mentioned drink and food. This last point interested Simon more than any other. Because Simon had a very distinguished white spot in the middle of his back which had made him rather a success with the ladies, and so he wasn’t much interested in conversations about how to get girls and what to do with them once he got them. Because for Simon that was something that had always come naturally. But food was a different matter. Simon had never been truly able to apply himself. And he had always had to rely on the help of strangers. So food was always at the front of Simon’s mind especially on that day in particular when he hadn’t eaten for at least three days.

So as Simon looked at this Stilton. This cheese that he had just picked up out of the ground, and was considering putting into his mouth he remembered just how far he had come.

Tune in next Friday for more from the Moon.

There once was a family of mice who lived on the moon. Their entire lives had been devoted to that moon ever since they could remember. Their family history told of generations and generations of moon miners. That was just the way that their family had always been.

But now things seemed to be changing. That’s what Grandpa Simon had to admit, and he didn’t want to. He had to realise that things had changed these days. That people didn’t need the moon to just wax and wane like it had before. How much moon did people really need? There were a lot of mice around now. And people needed more things. Those little creature comforts that made life just that little bit easier. So what if the moon waned a little bit more than it used to? Who was Grandpa Simon to stand in the way of progress?

Grandpa Simon was a great big long grey mouse who knew a thing or two. He was old and crotchety and had thinned out more than he really liked people to see. He knew he was old, everyone else knew he was old, but did they have to talk about it the whole time like it was suddenly the latest fashion on the block?

Simon, lifted himself off of some straw his nephews and nieces’ decedents had laid for him, and he waddled over to the centre of the room. He didn’t have to waddle any more, he’d been thinning out for a few months now, but he knew that those around him would literally think less of him if he didn’t. What was he going to do? The moon was dying, the moon hadn’t been so green before? It was definitely greener. And the story that Jennifer had redecorated was getting old fast. He needed to get them to do something. But what?

Why didn’t they notice that the world around them was crumbling away and the only way to fix things was to go back to the old ways. But the old ways were hard. The new ways made things easier for everyone. In the old days someone like Simon would have had things no different than he had things now. But in the old days he’d have been the only one. In the old days people would have gone hungry and the moon wouldn’t have supported all of these people. Whereas now people were free-er. The moon was fairer now. And everyone could do what they wanted always knowing that there was a moon shaped safety net underneath them to save them if they never worked again.

It was all his fault, Simon had ruined the moon and he knew it. He had been seen as the great saviour. The free-er of the masses, but in the end what had he really done? The ruling class had, he had to admit now, known about the problems of balance. They had been eating the moon for years. They had been living off of it, enjoying it, but never – ever – revealing its secrets to the masses. But then suddenly one of the masses had got in charge: Simon.

He had been walking alongside a parade one summer, the stink was high at the time, and everything felt like it was leading up to be a great summer when suddenly Simon found himself in a fight he hadn’t started. He was just between these two men who were at each other like it was the end of the world. And Simon, in a split second, decided that one of them had kinder eyes than the other. And he took sides. He was hailed as the saviour of the royal family because the one with the kinder eyes had been the future prince. And Simon was promoted to the aristocracy. And the minute he had been promoted he learned about how you could eat the cheese.

For three years he survived under the prince out of respect for what he had given him. But then the prince died and Simon had no further allegiance. So he decided to tell the moon what had been kept from them for all of this time, they could eat the cheese. He thought it would free the common man from the tyranny with which they had been oppressed. But in the end it had lead to havoc.

Now nobody worked. Now all everyone did was eat the moon that they lived on. And now the moon was almost gone. The last great moonslip had happened a month ago when four thousand mice had slipped over the edge. The only person who could save them was Simon. He knew. He had to think of something…

Check in next Friday for more Moon action.

“Why do you look so lonely?”

“I don’t know, maybe because I am lonely”, the lonely looking guy looked up from his beer after he’d finished speaking. He slightly chuckled to himself in a way that sounded like it meant the subject was being closed.

Helen continued to stare at him as he looked back down at the bubbles forming on the top of his beer. The brim of his hat touched the rim of the bottle. She made a decision.

“What’s your name?”

He started to answer, he opened his mouth to do it. But before he could say anything he was ceased by a smile. A grin really, and she knew from that grin that he was a good guy.

And kinda interesting too.

“Bill. Bill,” he paused to chuckle again, a slight half chuckle which told Helen that, if she could have seen his eyes, they must have sparkled at exactly that moment, “my name’s Bill. What’s yours?”

Bill looked up and turned. He still didn’t look quite at her. But he certainly was paying more attention to her than his beer. As if to redress the issue he lifted up his beer bottle and buried it’s neck somewhere under his moustache.

“I’m Helen”, she thought for a second. And then another. She knew through both of these seconds that it would be possible to go with this man. This man that she found attractive, this man that she could love. But for every second that she remained thinking about it she knew that it couldn’t happen. Consider, she considered, the practicalities of the situation.

Could she really go out with a guy now? Especially a guy that she’d just met? She knew that for every second she kept thinking about it then she wouldn’t go for it. And she knew that she’d keep thinking about it until it was no longer a possibility. She was her own worst enemy, and she hated that. But at the same time she knew it was her best defence. If she could just keep herself thinking then she didn’t have to commit.

Why was she so bothered? She’d not gone out with people so many times before? And she didn’t even like men with moustaches! The only thing that bothered her was the realisation that not going out with people was easier in the short term but that easier in the short term almost certainly didn’t mean happiness in the long term.

It’s a thing that Helen had been thinking about more and more recently. That the things that gave her the most happiness in the short term, drink, drugs, sex… were very rarely related to long term happiness. In fact every single thing that was an easy way to be happy today was an easy way to be miserable tomorrow. And the opposite was true too, the things she was most proud of in her life had been real hard. They really took an effort, but she had never looked back on an effort and thought that she had wasted her time.

“I sound like a PBS special”.

“What?”, Bill looked confused, and suddenly he looked directly at Helen. “What did you say?”

“I said, I sound like a PBS special. I had had this whole conversation in my own head. Like it could have been in somebody else’s head I guess, but there it was in my own head, and then at the end the next thing I needed to say to myself was to tell myself that I was sounding like a PBS special, but unfortunately I thought that thought too loudly and ended up saying it out… well to you.”

“I like PBS, and I like you.”

“Okay, well I like you too, so what are we going to do about it?”

“Well I’m going to buy another beer right now. Just one more but I’m going to do it. And I’d like to buy you a beer too. Or whatever it is that you’d like to drink…”

“Beer’s fine.”

“Right, well I’m going to buy both of us a beer, and then we’ll just see how that goes. But there’s one condition”.

“What’s that?”

“I want you to talk about who you are. Because I’m interested in who you are. But I need to know from you before I buy you this drink, that when you talk about you, you won’t sub-vocalise anything. You’ll just tell me exactly what you’re thinking. Because while you might think that what you’re thinking is the most embarrassing thing in the world. To me it’s the most interesting thing you can say.”

… Martha and Paul were at the top of the stairs of Paul’s apartment where he’d invited Martha back to look at his etchings, but the evening had taken a turn for the unexpected when…

Martha took her gun from her purse, pointed it at Paul, and said, “in a very real sense, that’s true”.

If you haven’t read part one then maybe you’d like to:
“I think that’s it for me”.

Paul, keeping his cool like a Amcor AMC 10000 Air Conditioning unit*, simply said “If you shoot me then I’ll be dead, and you’ll never see those etchings, those etchings are under lock and key, and you don’t have the key and you don’t even know where the lock is, in fact even if you put that key in that lock which you’d happened to find then you’d still have problems as you’d have to type a sixteen digit code into a box which doesn’t even look like it accepts codes typed into it, and then you’d have to speak into a microphone a special phrase that you don’t know using my voice that you won’t have and then when you finally see those etchings, those etchings that you so desire that you’re willing to kill for them, you won’t understand them because you won’t have me to explain that they have been influenced by a number of great artists that I don’t care to mention right now because if I don’t mention them then you’ll have slightly less reason to kill me. And that, amongst many other reasons, is why you shouldn’t kill me”. And he said all of that before he realised that all of the things that he’d had to say had been a little more complicated than he’d intended at the start of his simple sentence.

Martha lit a cigarette with her gun-shaped lighter, tilted her head back and laughed a laugh which seemed to say “why does it all have to be so complicated”, but actually she said in verse:

“Paul, your etchings sound lovely,
they really do,
but to see them sounds complicated,
so shall we just screw”.

* **

** I honestly haven’t been paid any money by them, I just put “air conditioning unit” into google and clicked on the first link that came up and ranked the resulting units by rating and picked the first one.

“I think that’s probably it for me”, Paul turned to his left and put out his cigarette in his beer. It flew in at an angle with a hiss and stuck to the side of the glass. A bearded drunk from two stools down looked on at the waste of beer with a mixture of disgust and calculated longing as though he was asking himself the question, “how much do I hate my insides right now”?

Paul hopped off the stool with more composure than a man who has been in a bar all night should have. He looked to his companion and asked the question she’d been waiting for all night, “do you want to come back with me and see my etchings”?

She nervously laughed and smiled, this was it she thought. She could become a hero tonight – if only she kept playing it cool – she instantly remembered herself and tried to forget the seven gins and tonic* she had drunk. She tottered off of her stool, but in a calculated way so that she was slightly off balance on her heels. She was exactly as off balance as she needed to be so that he could catch her if he was suave enough but that if he didn’t notice she wouldn’t fall flat on her face.

He noticed and rebalanced her. She laughed and flicked her head back so that he saw her smile, her cleavage heave and so that her hair just barely brushed against his ear. He grinned and said, “okay lets get in that cab”.

They walked outside and the cool air cleared their heads faster than a turd clears a swimming pool. A taxi was floating past, Paul whistled and she put her hand out. The cab stopped and Paul whispered, and then shouted, his address to the mildly deaf taxi driver. They got in and squeaked into the leatherette chairs while the soothing sounds of the Eagles plagued havoc with their emotions.

They drove for what felt like ten minutes and eleven minutes later they were standing outside Paul’s place.

“Would you like to come up,” Paul knew exactly what to say.
“Yes,” she said, “I’ve always been fascinated to see a loft apartment”.
“Well don’t get too excited, it’s just like any other kind of place”.
“Except,” she whispered into his ear, “that it’s at the top of the pile. Kinda like you Paul”.

They both walked up the stairs uneventfully, and as they reached the top Paul turned and said, “this is it”.

Martha took her gun from her purse, pointed it at Paul, and said, “in a very real sense, that’s true”.

Dum, Dum, Dulallalalaallala! Will Paul be shot? What’s Martha’s agenda? Will Paul ever get to show Martha his etchings? Tune in next Friday…

* I know it looks weird, but it is right.

He lit the cigarette that he found behind his brother’s ear.

It was difficult to concentrate with all of the noise going on but he tried. He tried to concentrate on the stuff he needed to concentrate on but in the end he needed to – first and foremost – concentrate on trying to keep this cigarette from canoeing as he drove down the road at something like 90.

Then just when the nicotine had made things start to seem clearer. John shouted really loudly and he dropped the fag.

It didn’t go out of the window.

Where it did go was right into the hole which the seatbelt comes out of. This seemed to be something of a problem.

John was still shouting, and for a while he was shouting about the usual John things that John usually shouted about but then after a while he was mainly shouting about the way that smoke was pouring out of the drivers door frame.

She pulled apart her scrapbook some years ago. At the time there had been a point to it. She had needed the pictures, the postcards for something. Whatever it had been it had obviously seemed important at the time.

Important at the time. This book had once been important at the time. She had won a prize for it. It had been the best one. And now there was just the echoes of the book itself. The one line notes. The coloured-in map. And the holes that stared back at her. The glue, unseen to her as it had been smushed up behind the pictures, had formed into little streaks which looked now like tears. As though the book had cried when it had been ripped apart.

She realised that she had been holding her breath while she had been thinking about it. She exhaled and the breeze she produced moved a piece of tissue paper. She took the paper and wrapped the book back up in it.

She wouldn’t have to cry if she hid the book away again. She hid the book. And cried anyway.

The car travelled by slowly enough for me to get a pretty good look at him. And suddenly as I was looking I realised that car window glass is just like regular glass. It works both ways. You may think that that’s a pretty obvious thing to realise and so do I. So do I now. But then the revelation dawned on me only slightly more quickly than a British train.

But now I moved quick. There was a wall about three feet behind me and I moved over towards it. It was only a little short thing about a foot high. And I remember thinking. This wall seems pretty stupid. It was so short that I pretty much threw myself over it. It was about two second later that I realised what the wall was for. It was to demark the edge of a sudden drop. A drop that in a very real sense I was about to experience first hand. Except I had managed to catch the seam of my jacket on a piece of metal that was embedded right into the wall. I was hanging, quite literally, by a thread.

I thought about whether I should think of something to do. Yes. That’s right dear reader. I did not think of something to do but instead I debated internally whether it was better to think about what to do or just do something. I had just about got to the point of realising that by just simply having had this thought I could no longer just do anything when I started hearing footsteps.

Before I could think of anything else I felt a hand grab me. Whoever it was they were strong. They picked me up by the top of my jacket. Lifted me up into the air and held me there.

He looked like a perfectly normal big guy. I’d love to say that he had a dangerous scar. Or that he had deep set eyes. Or that his eyes were too close together. Or well anything. But actually he looked nice enough. Albeit a bit angry at present.

He threw me to the ground on the altogether more pleasant side of the wall and while my eyes closed automatically I heard him walk off and get back in his car. And then I saw him drive away.

He looked over at me. He was hunched over and scowling. He gave me a look which said something to me that was much plainer than he might well have been able to articulate into words. His expression said, “If you think I’m angry now then imagine how angry I’ll be if you go to the police.”

And so I didn’t go to the police dear reader. Instead I simply went home. And that is where I am now. All of these events happened earlier this evening, and if you are having trouble deciphering what I have written then it is only because of how much my hand is shaking.

I wanted to go to the police obviously, but I was too afraid. I came back home and tried to sleep but I could not. And so I have decided to write down what happened That way I can relieve myself of the burden of what happened tonight without having to tell a living soul. Wait. There is someone at the door.

It was him at the door. And he’s still here now. He’s sitting on the opposite side of the desk. Staring at me. He’s asking what I’m writing. I tell him hat it is my journal. He asks if I usually keep writing in my journal while somebody else is in the room with me. I mention that I have but I’m usually not writing about the person who is sharing the room with me. He’s looking at me oddly now. Differently than before. I think I might have read him incorrectly before because this look looks more like angry than that look of his before.

He’s walking towards

As I hung on the corner of the crescent moon,
I thought to myself. Really? So soon?
So I hung on that corner of the crescent moon,
And sang to myself in the language Walloon.