Sunday 25 November 2012


this might be charles darwin, but i'm not sure.

Wednesday 21 November 2012


the steve with no name  (part 5)


“steve? are you in there?”

the slightly bewildered voice was that of his co-worker, vince, who was now nervously peering at steve’s home-made fort whilst simultaneously trying to figure out whether or not steve might also have a shotgun in there, and who in the office he was most likely to turn it on first.

steve popped his head out from the roof of his little ramshackle desk fort.

“... i don’t have a gun in here if that’s what you’re thinking.”


vince thought this was hardly the greatest sentence in the world to instil a sense of trust about firearms, so had gone with his initial plan of trying to build rapport with him instead.

“you know, i’ve always thought your hair really suited you... ” he replied nervously.

steve wasn’t entirely sure how to take this seeing as he was currently bald, but had decided to take it as a compliment anyway and had invited vince inside for a look around.

once inside, vince was actually quite impressed with the ergonomic proficiency of what steve had achieved with the place, which had a surprisingly more spacious feel than the mere 1 metre by 2 exterior of the desk would suggest – something which steve attributed to going through a slightly awkward ‘feng shui phase’ as a teenager. in truth, he had only done it to impress a girl he liked who lived in a bungalow down the road, but his attempts at trying to induce "a sense of space" into her parents’ modest dwellings had merely come across as patronising, and steve had totally struck out with her.

“er... look... steve, we need to... oh!

vince was momentarily impressed by a rather fetching print steve had adorned on one of the desk walls 

"... is that a Hokusai?“

before recalling the initial point of his endeavour.

“... er... i mean, look... are you alright?"

steve sheepishly looked at him with the eyes of a man who desperately needed to believe he was still at least vaguely intact with reality.  

"what do you mean?"

"it’s just, you seem to have been acting a little bit more... ”

vince kind of wanted to say ‘crazy’, but thought this might come across as a little bit insensitive – especially as he was still trying to establish whether or not there was indeed a shotgun involved yet.

“... well... a bit more mental than usual i guess.”

steve spoke suddenly with a sense of purpose which had the effect of catching vince off-guard. 

“look vince – I know that we’ve never really talked that much, and I know I don’t really like you... but I think I might need your help with something... 

"... oh."

an awkward and unexpected silence followed. 

"... and it needs to be now.” continued steve.

eventually, and after some consideration, it was the sad intensity in steve's eyes that vince felt was the most deserving of reply.

"what? 'now' as in 'now', now?"

"yes. we should leave immediately." 

"... oh... right."

vince looked at him with a vague uneasiness, and wondered why he was even considering it. if he was perfectly honest with himself, it was mainly the idea of getting out of work which was appealing to him - and always had been - ever since he had first seen 'the mask' as a teenager and been impressed at jim carrey's ability to get paid for shouting and wobbling about lots, whilst occasionally 'doing a face'. to these ends, vince somehow found himself apathetically shrugging and simply saying:

“... alright then... i guess.”


Tuesday 20 November 2012


the steve with no name (part 4)


steve pulled himself from his thoughts and returned to the office he was currently pretending to do work in. the game of solitaire he was halfway through had suddenly lost its appeal with thoughts of accidentally killing his parents, and he decided to take the rest of the day off by building a little fort under his desk and trying to decide what he was actually going to do about everything. 

surely there must be someone still alive who could recall his actual name?

he seemed to remember the last living person who might have known would have been his aunty meryl, who had had the misfortune to die 13 years previously. unfortunately, this wasn’t much use to steve - or indeed to poor aunty meryl - and at her subsequent funeral, the only thing he could think of was how out of the blue it had all seemed and how he wished he had visited her a bit more in the 96 years leading up to her untimely death.

he also strangely seemed to remember thinking that the priest holding the sermon bore a striking resemblance to a picture he had once drawn when he was 8 years old. the picture had been that of a dog eating an ice cream and doing a cartwheel, which steve had been very proud of at the time, and had kept trying to hang on the family fridge despite his parents constantly taking it down again.

as it turned out, the unfortunate positioning of the dog’s tail had made it appear somewhat more 'phallic' than his parents felt comfortable with, and the resulting drips of ice cream the dog held had opened the picture up to an entirely more risqué interpretation than the one steve had innocently intended. but all of this was a little bit too much to explain to an 8 year old, so both parents had agreed that it was probably easier to carry on letting him think they just hated him as an artist: so that’s exactly what they had done, and steve had not drawn a dog or an ice cream since.


Saturday 17 November 2012


the steve with no name (part 3)


the fire had of course been his fault. he hadn't done it intentionally, but he had definitely caused it.

it had come after one particularly invigorating home schooled lesson about the essence of life and how everything around him was living, which had unfortunately resulted in steve trying to hug the family fire place and accidentally getting a little bit of fire on the carpet - as well as on his parents and the rest of the house.

his dad, who was wearing a shell-suit and drinking brandy at the time, perished instantly, but steve had somehow managed to drag his mother to the safety of the road outside, where they both patiently waited for the fire engine neither of them had called.

he still remembered her dying words. at some point through the soot and tears he had managed to ask her what his real name was, to which she had rather un-satisfyingly answered 
"... well... it's definitely not steve..." before rather selfishly dying on him.


for some inexplicable reason, steve still blamed himself for her death.

when the fire brigade eventually arrived at the scene, it was all the firemen could do to comfort him by constantly reassuring him it wasn't his fault - although in retrospect, steve still wished he hadn't laid her in the road for the fire engine to run over her in the first place.

the steve with no name (part 2)

"how does a 35 year old man get to that age with absolutely no recollection as to what his name might be?"

this was not an uncommon (nor seemingly unreasonable) question put to steve.

the answer was of course long and tedious, and steve had long since carved out the niche response of suddenly pretending to be asleep whenever posed with it - at least until the offending asker had got bored of looking at him with shut eyes or got confused and wandered off to make coffee or something.

the long and short of it all had tragically begun with his parents untimely death, which steve had sort of been a little bit responsible for.

as he had been home schooled until the age of 10 and had little-to-no contact with the outside world, the nature of him having a name that other people could call him had never really come up before.

'son', 'you' or 'boy' were the most common nouns garnered for gaining his attention, but despite their jobs writing romantic fiction for women's magazines, even steve found it hard to believe his parents would have had such little imagination as to call their only son something so nondescript as "you".


i kind of had this idea for the beginning of a book, but i don't really know where it's going... it only started off as a title really. i guess he goes on a quest to find out his name or something. anyway, here's the beginning bit.


the steve with no name

(part 1)

steve still couldn't figure out if he really did have a name or not - neither could the people who knew him. when people used to ask him why everyone referred to him as 'the steve with no name' he used to reply that it was because his name "definitely wasn't steve."

it was long ago since his parents had signed his birth certificate, and due to the fact he hadn't been present at the signing and his parents hadn't thought to pass this information on to him, he was now kind of stuck in the nameless wilderness he currently found himself in.

the people at work weren't much use either. they often used to remark upon the fact he "kind of looked like a steve", although when pushed for further information as to the exact visual qualities that someone of a steve-looking disposition would possess, the conversation tended to nearly always end with the exclamation that they were "too busy for this kind of shit", or that "something urgent in the next room" had just come up and it was now time for them to attend to it.

the "urgent" thing was nearly always coffee, and they tended to forget that steve could see them making it through the little window in his office, so after a while, he simply just stopped asking.