welcome to long words

I should be able to hear that old wind chime I picked up at the antique fair. The night this storm hit, I was worried I’d lost it. I couldn’t hear it. I figured the wind had wrecked it. Next morning, it was fine. Every single morning, it’s been fine. No pots blown over either. The bins where I left them too. Every fence panel intact. How is that possible? Listen to it out there. That wind sounds like it should be tearing off roof tiles with its teeth.

No two men were more fascinating in the world of model fairground construction than Nigel Fairfax and Jacob T Kilburn. Not that you need me to tell you that. We live in different times now. Fairfax, Kilburn and the whole Tempo Generation are no longer the controversial figures they once were. We have come through far more interesting times since then. Times they held open the small, to scale door open for; waving them all through to a better future.

She sat beside his bed. A weak coffee clutched in her hand, when she liked it strong. She’d asked for it strong. Very strong. Incredibly strong. So strong it could’ve beaten her in an argument. Instead they’d handed her something milky enough to be mistaken for a late breakfast.

It’d been an uphill battle from the start. The place was teeming dinosaurs. Large, lumbering lizards with sweat marks under their arms and last night’s ale lingering on their breath. They weren’t ready for someone to come in and tell them how to avoid going extinct.

I should check my watch, he thought. Only he didn’t want to pull up any sleeves or pluck his hands from his warm pockets. That would let the cold in. That would let winter win and he wasn’t about to do that. This coat hadn’t been cheap. It was meant to be the warmest one money could buy. It was a camper’s coat. A hiker’s coat. The man in the shop had proudly declared that the army wore some version of it when they went on manoeuvres in The Frozen North. Wherever that was.

The scientists gathered that morning, as they always did. They parked their cars in their allotted spaces, after each battling their way through their own daily commute of roadworks, train delays or wrestling offspring into school uniforms. They made themselves a drink upon arrival. A few even had time to prepare a little breakfast. Nothing fancy. A slice of toast here. A bowl of porridge there. The occasional croissant or fad fruit sliced into yogurt.