Changing Channels

So? – what have you changed for the New Year?
(Doing some more writing for a start! – specially for Lynne)

"Hello!? Anybody about?"

Mike stepped inside the apartment, and listened. He could have sworn he’d heard a faint noise, muffled, distant, but now it appeared to have stopped. "That fridge’s getting noisy. I suppose we’ll need a new one soon."

He immediately started hunting for the remote for the TV. As usual, like all remote controls, it had attempted to secrete itself under a cushion. He was wise to its ways, however, retrieved it, aimed the priceless gadget at the set and pressed ‘On.’

He was waiting patiently for signs of life when the hallway door opened. "Good grief! Spencie! I didn’t know were home. Why didn’t you answer when I called out?"

"Called out?" Spencie looked startled, and her eyes darted round the room. "I didn’t… didn’t hear you."

"How come you’re not at the office?"

"Took the afternoon off. Things to do. Anyway, how come you’re home so early?"

"The international’s on live. England against Belarus. The kick-off’s four o’clock, so I thought I’d sneak out of work and catch it. I didn’t expect you’d be in for dinner till it was nearly over. Are you alright?"

"Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?"

"You seem a bit feverish."

"Do I?" She put a hand to her cheek, her fingers fidgeting upwards to cover her eyes. "I’ve just been doing a spot of gardening. Potting some flowers. In the bedroom. Why don’t you come and see?"

"That’s alright," Mike laughed, in the way that she had once found so appealing. "I wondered if you had a secret lover in there!" He moved closer to her and put his forehead against hers. "Hey, toots," he said, mock-Bogart, "I thought I was all the man you could handle."

She seemed to relax into his arms. "Why don’t you come into the bedroom anyway, and let me…" she brushed his cheek with her mouth, "… check?"

"Well, swee’heart… – what is wrong with this damn remote?" He suddenly snapped his attention to the still-silent television. "The game will have started! I think we’re going to have to get a new TV. And a new fridge too. I’m sure I could hear the thing buzzing when I came in."

She stared at him coldly. "The batteries have probably gone."

"Again?" he said, exasperated. "They’re always packing up. I can’t change channels on this stupid TV without the zapper." He snapped the cover off the back of the control and again he looked puzzled. "The batteries really have gone! There aren’t even any in here."

Spencie licked her lip and took his hand. "Maybe you don’t need to watch football after all."

Mike looked back at her, adoringly. "Spencie. Darling… It’s a qualifier – I’ve got to watch it. Have we any spare batteries?"

She pivoted on her heel and stamped off up the hallway to the bedroom. She returned, jackboot, and threw a pair of Energizer Extra Power at him. "I shall get a bunch of spares tomorrow," she announced, as if making a manifesto commitment, then retreated back to the bedroom, closing the door sharply.

It wasn’t until half time, with the score still nil-nil, that he wondered what she was doing in there.



There was an atmosphere in the apartment after that. Christmas was coming. To Spencie, this meant: presents, wrapping paper and decorations. To Mike, it meant a crowded fixture list in the Premier League. Negotiations were entered into, and a rapprochement was achieved – Mike would go shopping anywhere Spencie wished as long as this didn’t coincide with Manchester United playing at home. He would not attend away matches as long as highlights were shown.

It came to the Saturday before Christmas. Both had had a good day – a pile of purchases lay on the throw-rug before the couch, and Mike was secretly relieved to have an excuse not to travel to all the way to Fratton Park.

And so they ended up on the couch, Match of the Day seemingly sinking into the background as the two of them demolished a bottle of Pinot grigio. Even the highlights had lost relevance as Mike had already accidentally seen the results in a branch of Currys.

"I was wondering," said Spencie in her curiously circuitous way, "whether we might be thinking of an early night."

Mike looked at her and seemed on the edge of a decision. "And Carrick keeps feeding Ronaldo down the channels," the commentator was saying, "but the Portsmouth defence is holding firm."

"Well, change it," Mike yelled at the TV, "cross to the other wing!"

Mike wondered later at what point in the evening Spencie had gone to bed.



It was already dark on New Year’s Eve when Mike let himself into the apartment, with his now customary sheepishness. Spencie had become so volatile these days, so unpredictable, he had to be ready for anything. And, on this occasion, he felt pretty sure that he was.

Spencie confronted him in the lounge. "I was wondering when – or if – you’d turn up. Thought perhaps you had gone to see your precious United."

"Don’t be daft, pet – they don’t play on New Year’s Eve."

"I sometimes think you love Man United more than you love me."

Under his breath, he muttered, "I sometimes think I love Man City more than I love you."

"What!?" she bellowed.

"I said Man United aren’t as pretty as you."

"How can I be compared with a football team on the basis of who’s prettier!?

"Come on, Aspen," – he knew she hated it when he used her formal name – "change the record: ‘you’d rather watch a game than make love.’ When have I ever said that?"

Spencie seemed to coil like a serpent and hissed, "Do you know what is the one time each year we don’t make love?"

"When your mother visits?"

"No," she retorted, triumphant, "when it’s the football season. Well, not any more!" She strode out of the room and returned a moment later with a stranger, another woman, rather plain and shapeless in Mike’s view, with a blunt bob haircut. "Meet Geraldine – my new lesbian lover! So whatever plans you had for this New Year, I think you might have to change them!"

Spencie had imagined her announcement would have the lurid impact of a bomb in a paint factory. But it somehow landed curiously flat.

"I’m not so sure about that," he said, and fetched a male stranger from the entrance. "Meet Gerald, my new best mate. I just came back to tell you – we’re going down Canal Street for the evening to discuss a flat back four and two holding players over a few glasses of Bailey’s."

The End

Author’s note: several people were kind enough to offer constructive criticism of this piece and, particularly, whether the use of the word ‘Lesbian’ was necessary near the end. I myself agonised over this as I am all in favour of letting the reader draw his or her own conclusions and at no other point is gender orientation mentioned explicitly (why should it be?) I came very close to removing the word, but changed my mind, for the following reasons. Firstly, she is not just adopting a new partner, but making (apparently) a major life-style choice - the main interpretation of the piece's title, Changing Channels - as a consequence of her recent relationship. Secondly, she wants to emphasise this point specifically to annoy and prick the conscience of her former partner. Finally, and more trivially, she is probably lying! – she has in all likelihood, neither got a new partner nor adopted a new lifestyle – her outburst is motivated as an attack on her old partner. His response, however, is somewhat different…

Small Sacrifices

This story orignally appeared in Chorley and District Writing Circle's magazine Aware (issue 4, December 2008) where it was a prize-winning entrant in Aware's competition, themed around, "Flight." A jolly good reason to go a buy a copy too!

Otto stood at the edge of the high ground, the point at which it fell away most steeply, and felt the stiff breeze tug at his neatly cropped hair and beard.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Charles asked, in his head.

"Please don’t," said Miyoko, her voice catching in her throat.

"I have to," Otto murmured. "There is no other way."

"You realise how this is likely gonna end up?" said Wilbur, concerned.

"I promise you," said Otto, "I have keine sorge – no fear."

"Well…" said Wilbur, "it’s your neck."

"Not just yours," Charles murmured.

"It has been a pleasure to meet you, gentlemen, madam. But now, I must fly."

With that, Otto turned, broke into a run, hurled himself off the edge of the mound and into space.

The crowd below, men in frock-coats, ladies in their Sunday-best dresses, gasped.

The bat-winged-like structure of wires and fabric around Otto stretched and groaned as the updraft of air lifted him high over the heads of the people watching. His control of the craft was now well-practised; he could, if the wind was right, hover in the air. Adjusting himself against the triangular control frame, he called down to a figure amongst the spectators beneath him. "Make one of your pictures, Herr Anschütz!"

"I will! I do!" cried out Anschütz, from behind his apparatus, mounted on a tripod.

As Otto alighted on the ground, Wilbur and Orville ran to join him. "That was mighty swell. Whaddya call this thing?" Otto Lilienthal did not speak English, but his brother, Gustav, helping Otto out of the glider, answered in English tinged with both a German and Australian accent, "We call it the ‘Derwitzer.’ Derwitz is where first we made it."

"We read translations of your articles, back in Ohio. But to see it in action – well… that’s something else!"

Otto beamed with pleasure. He may not have understood what the two Americans had said, but their excitement was obvious. "It is a delightful distraction, to fly like a bird." Gustav translated.

"Hey, more than a distraction," said Orville. "It’s been man’s dream to fly like a bird down through the ages! We’ve been trying to solve the flying problem for years now."

"Yeah, we’ve made lotsa machines to test ideas," said Wilbur.

Otto listened to the translation before replying. "To invent an airplane is nothing. To build one is something. But to fly is everything."

"Maybe not the best thing," said Charles’ voice.

"What harm could there possibly be to fly like a bird?" Otto thought to himself.

"You have no idea," Charles Sweeney answered.

"No idea at all," Miyoko sobbed. "Not unless you become a hibakusha."

"So," said Orville, "how do you control the – whaddya call it? – the Derwitzer?"

"Ah, yes, gentlemen," Gustav answered. "My brother simply changes the centre of gravity by the slightest shift in his weight. That controls the direction in which the glider travels."

"The slightest shift?" said Wilbur. "Can just a slight alteration make such a big difference?"

"Believe me," Miyoko fought to bring her voice under control. "The tiniest things can have the biggest consequences."

"Ain’t that the truth," said Charles Sweeney. But only Otto, in his head, heard them. Gustav translated what Orville and Wilbur had said for his brother. Otto replied, "It is sufficient. I have made almost two thousand flights now, some as far as fifty metres."

"But what if you had an engine?" Wouldn’t you need some kinda control surfaces? And what about going further? And picking when and how you land?"

"It is true, the glider does not manoeuvre as would a bird. There is a tendency to pitch down, from which it is difficult to recover."

"But we are working on it," Gustav added, "and also are we working on an engine."

"Then we will be able to fly wherever we may wish, whenever we wish, for whatever purpose we wish. We will be as free as the birds."

"Not all of us will be free," Miyoko whispered.

"Come and see me fly again tomorrow," said Otto.

"Gee, I dunno," said Orville Wright. "Me and my brother have found you a great inspiration, Herr Lilienthal."

"But I think we wanna look at some other ways of doing things. We wanna powered machine," Wilbur added.

The next day, August 9th, 1896, as Otto Lilienthal took off in his glider from the great artificial hill he and his bother had constructed outside Berlin, he imagined the two American brothers were still there with him. Suddenly, the glider pitched forward. Otto struggled in vain to regain control, but smashed into the ground. His spine was broken. In his final hours, the voices he had been hearing in his head returned. With one final effort, he said to the Americans, "Kleine Opfer müssen gebracht werden."

"What?" said Wilbur. "What did he say?"

"‘Small sacrifices must be made.’"

Otto Lilienthal died next day aged 48.

Exactly 49 years later, the span of a man’s lifetime, on August 9th 1945, Major Charles W. Sweeney banked the B29 Superfortress as sharply as he could and at full throttle to get away from the bomb his airplane had just released over the Japanese city of Nagasaki. Forty-three seconds later it exploded, killing seventy thousand people.

One of the survivors, one of the "explosion-affected people," or Hibakusha, as they were known, Miyoko Matsubara, imagined herself talking with Otto Lilienthal. Talking, asking, pleading with him not to develop a flying machine. But all she could hear him say were his final words.

Small sacrifices must be made.

The End