Relay

Somehow April seems to have passed me by in a haze of bank holidays and getting considerably less done than I rightly should. Another month lost to the ages with the grand total of naff all to show for my continuing and ignoble quest to valiantly not die. This month has not been about achievement or meeting goals and targets, it has largely been about subsisting, maintaining the holding pattern that allows me to pay my rent and buy the inordinate amounts of tea I pour into my face in order to dull the horrors of existence. In all honestly, it hasn’t been a terrible month but then again it hasn’t been amazing. it has been a litany of average. And I’m okay with that. Average is acceptable. I can live with average. Average is a month when you’re not stressed out by the minutia of adult life. Average is a quiet weekend on the sofa watching television. Average is something we don’t appreciate enough. The lofty highs and glorious days of our lives are transient and fleeting, but average? Average is here to stay. It’s the average days that ultimately keep us going. And if that’s not enough for you, here are some short stories.

This month’s image of choice was the work of Steven Renn we were back onto the sci-fi, hard, dystopian, boiled or pan-fried. Now it will come as no surprise that I am a big fan of sci-fi. So obviously I’m massively disappointed in myself, because god lord I didn’t half phone it in this month. Once again my wordascope is the fevered results on night-writing on the last Saturday of the month; a grim and foul soupy sludge of pseudo-philosophy and tenuous segues that are in danger of becoming my signature style. It’s average at best, but as I mentioned earlier, average isn’t so bad.

Once again I am joined in my efforts by the stalwart souls James and Nthato. Overall I’d say we paint a fairly dark picture; the sort of gritty and empty hopelessness that warrants the italicisation of the word. But if we’re going to mix sci-fi and slightly eerie looking technology we were hardly going to get something that was all sunshine and lollipops were we?

James Clayton – Blissful Existence Beneath the Meru Mountain Complex, Brought to You By Moksha-Co. International

A-Scribe to Describe – High Priest of High Tech

The Rogue Verbumancer – Knowledge is power

Remember to check back tomorrow for the start of May’s Pictonaut Challenge!