Bumper Book of Lies

The mind can play tricks when you least expect it. The universe can do the same, for those so inclined to read between the stardust (vulcano dust?) and moonlight. A friend once brought up the concept of the inner jukebox, music you hear in your mind, a fascinating phenomenon in its own right, how we’re able to “hear” and “see” in our mind.

The inner jukebox had me play Married, Broke or Gay, a song from the Fabulous Breithaupt Brothers songbook this morning, sung by Shelley McPherson who is also married to Jeff Breithaupt. It’s a very humorful tune with humorful lyrics. Shelley sings “He’s married, broke and gay. He scored a hattrick when he married Patrick”.

It’s the hattrick idea that kept lingering. Everything Must Go.

A few weeks ago I received an email from Chris Bell, a writer in New Zealand. We once found one of his short stories, The Boom On Mizar-5, that matched perfectly with our own modest circulation on the internet back then. Chris wrote to let me know he was going to stop writing stories and that his latest story would be available for free and if I would want to notify anyone among friends and foes who’d be interested in reading his work.

CHRIS BELL was born in North Wales in 1960. He studied going-slowly-all-the-way-around-the-outside in the playground of Old Park Primary School, Holyhead, which was later demolished to make room for an Unemployment Benefit Office. One of his secondary school reports read: “This boy shows no interest in music.” He has since worked as a musician, record company runner and a song lyricist, and since 1997 has been living and working in Auckland, New Zealand. His hobbies include baby-wrangling; tinkering with a bass guitar plugged into a Korg ToneWorks Pandora PX4D; drinking single malt whisky; and irregular blogging. He gave up ironing but nobody noticed.

The Bumper Book of Lies is his only collection of short stories and this is a very old photograph.