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Kitchen air, soap and heat, sweetness that means the Human has forgiven the kettle for being a kettle.A paving stone, cold as a coin.The Slug is halfway across it, a soft parcel of insistence, writing his sentence in silver. He has no pen and no one asked him.The Cat steps out. Not running, arriving. A blade with whiskers.The Grasshopper lands beside the Slug like punctuation with knees. “Morning, slime.” He says it kindly, the way kings say peasant. “I am going to be somewhere else,” he announces, as if distance were a rumour he could deny.The yard tightens without moving.“Danger,” says the Slug.“Danger is a bedtime story,” the Grasshopper replies, “for creatures who cannot jump. Race you. To the hedge. First to reach shade wins the right to be insufferable.”“I do not want that right,” says the Slug.“You get it anyway,” says the Grasshopper,&nbsp; “One, two.” He jumps on two.The Slug begins. Not heroically. Not quickly. Just forward, as if forward is a virtue and not merely a direction with costs.The Cat turns its head.The Grasshopper hears it late, because he is busy bragging. “Oh,” he says, “that is the slayer.”“Yes,” says the Slug, very calm for a creature made of wet.The Grasshopper becomes green lightning, a sequence of clean mistakes. Pot rim. Birdbath lip. Grass, too bright in daylight, too open for philosophy. The Cat follows by solving. Claws into leaves, a pounce that misses by the width of luck, and the Grasshopper laughs, breathless, delighted to be noticed.“Did you see that,” he shouts, as if the world is a theatre and death is a critic.The back door opens. A rectangle of indoor light falls across the yard. “Winston,” the Human calls, “come in. Do not bring anything in. Last time you brought in half a snake and acted like I should clap.”The Cat pauses. Duty tugs the murderer by the collar.The Slug moves.He finds the seam of shade under the hedge, cool earth, damp that feels like pardon.The Grasshopper arrives too, in a final flamboyant bounce, eyes wide, wings twitching with victory. “I made it,” he says. “I won.” The Cat, offended by schedules, pads back inside. The Human goes on believing the yard is his.The Grasshopper climbs a small stone and turns his survival into a speech. “Let it be known I outpaced death itself.” The Slug watches him inflate into legend.“If you insist,” says the Slug, “try making your speech under something heavy.”“Why would I hide,” says the Grasshopper, “I am the winner.”Above them the hedge shifts. Not leaf, not branch.A shadow detaches from the morning sky and becomes a bird.It drops like a thrown knife, silent until the last instant when the air tears into a thin scream.The Grasshopper turns. His celebration is cut mid syllable.Impact, wet crack, red mist, stippling the hedge leaves, insultingly pretty.His legs kick, still performing, still trying to argue the outcome with enthusiasm.The beak punches down, again, again, a clerk stamping forms.His abdomen opens. Something pale and glistening spills out.The bird eats first the part that matters.The Slug holds still and does not negotiate.The bird glances at him, black button eye, weighing effort against reward.Then it returns to the warm work, because winners are more tender.Tear, wet cloth sound, a short dragging up into leaves.Green fragments fall like confetti from the wrong party.In the open yard the Human makes coffee and thinks of nothing.Inside, the Cat curls innocent as a pillow.Above, the bird wipes its beak on a branch leaving a smear of red like a signature.The Slug travels deeper into shade, writing his quiet line, no brag, no leap, no speech.Only the slow, shining proof of continuing.F.S.F.

The Slug and the Grasshopper

Dust motes hung in the midday glare, a barrel rim baking in it, one man in the dirt wearing light like an old shirt. Breath slow as river stones that have forgotten the river. A shadow arrived before its owner. Hooves worried the ground into haze, spears clinked, bronze helmets took the horizon, rows of men sweating, rigid. The king at the centre bent down, polished, practised. Ask anything. Empires wait on your word. The man in the dust squinted at the heat. Move, he said, plain as thirst. You are blocking my sunlight. A hush went through the ranks. A boot scraped. A hand tightened on a hilt. Behind the king, a clerk held ink ready, trained for provinces, brides, gods. He waited. Then wrote, slowly, Sunlight. F.S.F.

Sunlight's Shadow

I am The Entrepreneur’s Dream. Not a costume for cameras. Not a poster. Not a pitch.I am a live wire in your ribcage. The kiss and the cliff. The map you draw while falling. Hope with dirty hands. Love with an invoice. A future I carry like contraband. A secret you whisper back because the world is loud with “no”. I do not start with permission. I start with obsession. The thought that will not behave. The thought that taps you at 2:11 a.m. like it owns your sleep.One small unfair advantage. One crack in the wall. Zero to one, that first illegal spark.Not copy. Not clone. Not safe. A strange little monopoly of meaning. A new door in a wall everyone stopped looking at. A future dragged into daylight by my teeth.I fall in love with the chase, not the applause. The mad romance of making a thing exist from nerve and notebooks, from a calendar that never sleeps. I am also the hard thing. The hard thing about hard things.The call I rehearse and still get wrong. The meeting where my voice performs. The night I stare at payroll like it is a judge, and feel the verdict gathering. Wartime mind. No easy answers, only consequences.I cut a plan to save a people. I cut a person to save a plan. Fluorescent lighting. A cheap chair. A face trying not to crack. My mouth saying words that do not feel like my mouth. Then I walk outside and the sun is rude. Cars pass. Birds keep singing. The world continues like it did not hear me.That is the horror. How normal it all looks after you cross a line you cannot uncross. Some days I am a hero in my own movie. Investors nodding, my name in bold, someone else’s deck quoting my words. I think I can bend time. I think I can bend the world.Then the floor drops out. Bank balance becomes a wound. You carry it into every room. People can smell it on you.The inbox becomes a mouth. Every subject line, another tooth.The product breaks. The partner ghosts. Promises evaporate mid-sentence.And my chest turns to concrete. Not metaphor. Concrete. Breathing becomes a negotiation.I learn a cruel arithmetic, not of money, of self. How fast the mind ties worth to outcome. How a “no” can sound like “you are nothing”. And still. Still I get up.Not because I am fearless. Because something in me refuses to die just because it hurts. We do not ask permission. We do not worship ceilings. We build. We break. We learn. Then build again. I live where you keep your people close. Believers who lend you their spine when yours is shaking.Guides who give you a tool, not a slogan. Proof, those scarred ones who kept going, so you can say, if they survived, I can.We become comrades. We trade sleep for progress. We trade fear for a handshake. We make family out of strangers.And yes, it can get ugly. The transactional itch. The ROI reflex. The moment you catch yourself measuring a human being like a line item. We do not ask permission. We do not worship ceilings. We build. We break. We learn. Then build again. Here is the truth. There is a moment after the war-room language where you meet yourself in a mirror and you do not recognise the eyes.You think you are building a future. But you are also building a person. And if you build the wrong person, the company wins and you still lose. So I write it. Not as virtue. As a restraint.On the mirror. On the day my voice scared me. On the day I realised I could become a machine that wears my face.Be kind. Be kind. Be kind. Not because it is pretty. Because love is the only thing that keeps this from turning feral.Love for the team. Love for the craft. Love for the kid I used to be who wanted to make something real, before I learned to measure everything. When the ceiling is gone and the sky feels empty, when the win tastes like metal, when the loss tastes like shame, remember this:We are not here to be safe. We are here to be alive. To sprint at the future with our whole voice. To make a door where there was only wall. We do not ask permission. We do not worship ceilings. We build. We break. We bleed. We learn. Then build again, together.You cannot unknow this freedom once you have tasted it. I am The Entrepreneur’s Dream. Risk and refuge. The loud yes inside your quiet doubt. The adventure that costs everything and gives you back your name.<h3>F.S.F. Fail. Stand. Forge.</h3>

The Entrepreneurs Dream  (A spoken word Anthem)

The carousel opens at 5:21am. Not with music. With a buzz in the mattress. A notification coughs in my hand. Good morning, champion. Your rankings have moved. I shuffle to the mirror. It lights up like a judge. My face loads. Spins. Buffers. Behind my eyes, a leaderboard scrolls. Sleep score. Income. Influence. Focus minutes. Unread messages. Tasks due. Tasks overdue. I am trapped on a carousel that pretends it is progress. A horse with a QR code. A plastic lion that whispers, Upgrade. Again. Again. Again. I win small prizes. A new badge. A tiny confetti burst. A number that ticks up like it owns me. For eight minutes I am acceptable. Then the glow dies. The brain returns it to normal like a bouncer removing a drunk from joy. The next task steps forward in a neat suit. It clears its throat. It holds out a clipboard. It smiles with teeth that are all deadlines. I refresh. I refresh like a nervous tic. Thumb down, thumb down, thumb down. As if the world is a one-armed bandit and I am due. My phone is warm. My thoughts are warmer. They pace the lounge room. They pick up old conversations and chew them into soft grey paste. I open the app that tells me how I am doing at being alive. It shows my soul as a spreadsheet with one cell that will not go green. There is always someone above me. Beaming in a kitchen lit for sale, not supper. With a calmer heart rate. With a partner who laughs on cue. I pretend it is motivation. It is comparison in gym clothes. I do not just fear the scoreboard. I love it. I love the clean cruelty of a number. I love that it never asks why. I love that it lets me turn my life into a contest I can lose on purpose and call it discipline. The carousel speeds up. The animals blur. The mirror throws my face back at me with the lights turned up. I see myself. I see a man taking score like a referee who hates the sport. There is a moment, sometimes, where the music drops out. Not silence. Just a gap in the feed. In that gap I do something inefficient. I sit on the floor. I put the phone face down. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Air. In. Out. No lesson. No meaning. Just a body performing maintenance. My mind hates this. It tries to sell me out of it. It says, You could be improving. It says, Just one refresh. I laugh. Dry, short. Like a cough from the soul. For a minute, the carousel keeps spinning and I do not. Then the phone buzzes again. Not a task. A medal. I flip it over. The screen is glowing soft and proud. Breathing session detected. New personal best. Under that, a button. Upgrade.<h3> F.S.F.</h3>

Upgrade

I fell asleep in my chair at 3:14 pm on Boxing Day. Brisbane heat sat on the yard like a hand. The grass looked offended. The Hills Hoist leaned over, tired of my family. A neighbour played a song that kept starting, then forgetting the next bit. My table held leftovers and regret. Prawns. Ham. Pavlova. A warm beer that tasted like someone rinsed a can in sunshine. Winston watched me from the doorway. He did not blink. He does that thing cats do, where they look like they already filed the report. My phone sat on my thigh. Its screen glowed. Two percent. That number has a special kind of menace. It makes a grown man bargain with furniture. I tapped it once, like that helps. I promised myself I would charge it after a nap. I made the promise with the confidence of a man who will not be awake. I did not always care about battery numbers. Then I missed a pickup message. It was a Tuesday at 3:06 pm. The school chat ran on panic. My phone died. I arrived late. My kid stood by the gate with a tight face and a brave wave, like she practised adulthood early. I smiled, I apologised, I made a joke. I drove home with my jaw locked. I decided the problem was the phone, not me. I made a rule. Battery first. People second. It felt sensible at the time. Sara’s laugh drifted over the fence. She lives next door. She borrows things in a way that turns “borrow” into a lifestyle. A shadow slid over me. The shadow stayed. A voice spoke above my head. It sounded like a memo learned to talk. “Magnus of Brisbane. You have been selected for corrective instruction.” I opened one eye. Three frog-shaped beings stood on my patio pavers. They wore uniforms with sharp seams and cruel badges. The tallest one held a clipboard. I tried to sit up. “Mate,” I said, “This is private property.” The tallest frog made a note. “Subject claims jurisdiction.” The shortest frog stepped forward and held up a phone charger, pinched like evidence. “Do you recognise this,” it said, “or do we involve the forensic sadness unit.” I stared at the charger. White cable. Standard plug. The kind that breeds in kitchen drawers. “Looks like a charger,” I said. The frog lifted more chargers and tipped them into a bucket. The tallest frog tapped the clipboard. “You borrow chargers. You do not return them.” “I forget,” I said. “I live a busy life.” A fourth frog rolled in a trolley. It carried a scan of my history. Photos flashed in a neat row. My desk at work. A hotel room. A mate’s garage. A car cup holder. Chargers, everywhere. None of them mine. The shortest frog hissed. “Repeat offence. Category Four.” “You abduct people over chargers,” I said. The tallest frog nodded. “A charger is trust. A charger is order.” My phone buzzed once in my pocket, then died. The screen went black. Two percent became zero. They guided me off my chair with a gentleness that felt like insult. A black ring opened above the yard, polite and hungry. My body lifted as if gravity received a new manager. Winston watched from the doorway. He still did not blink. Then the yard vanished.I woke in a room of metal and light. Cold air cleaned the alcohol out of my breath. The frogs stood around a pod that looked like a coffin built by someone who hated comfort. A visor hung above the pod. Cables waited like vines. The tallest frog pointed. “Enter.” “This feels like the Matrix,” I said. The frog nodded. “Humans accept dread better when it wears a familiar outfit.” They strapped me down. Belts clicked in calm steps. The visor lowered. The tallest frog spoke again. “Time moves faster inside. Seventeen subjective years pass for you. Minutes pass for us.” “I do not consent,” I said. The frog wrote something. “Subject uses legal language.” Light filled the visor. The world snapped.I stood in a city that smelled like hot plastic and burned toast. A statue rose over a square. It showed a man holding a charger above his head. People knelt at its base. They pressed chargers to their foreheads. They stared at wall sockets like they were windows. A sign hung over the square in neat letters. Welcome to Chargeria City. Charge is life. My phone sat in my hand again. Its screen glowed. Two percent. A siren screamed at me. A drone dipped low. Its speaker boomed with school-principal authority. “Unregistered device. Uncharged. Unauthorised.” Two officers grabbed my arms. Their uniforms read Cord Enforcement. Their faces held the joy of small power. “This is a mistake,” I said. One officer waved a scanner over my hands. The scanner beeped. “No charger,” he said. “Clean hands. That is the dirtiest thing.” “I borrowed one,” I said. “I will return it.” The second officer smiled. “Borrower is thief with better branding.” They dragged me through the square. People pointed at me the way people point at a rat. An old man clutched a power bank like a rosary. A teenager filmed me, shaking with moral excitement. A kid in a school uniform yelled, “Send him to the dead zone.” The officers pushed me into a small booth at the edge of the square. It had a chair, a camera, and a slot for signatures. A sign on the wall read: Summary Justice Unit. Please speak clearly. A screen lit up. A faceless voice spoke. “Charge theft detected. Social risk high. Sentence applied.” A printer spat out a slip of paper. Six years. No appeal. It felt neat. It felt lazy. It felt familiar in a new way. The officer shoved the slip at me. “Sign,” he said. “I want a lawyer,” I said. He pointed at a wall socket. “Talk to that. It listens.” I signed. They cuffed me and marched me through a door. The city vanished behind a concrete corridor that smelled of sweat and melted insulation.Prison smelled like fear cooked with plastic. They lined us up in intake. Men stared at me like they were checking if I had value. A guard shouted rules in a voice that carried no hope. A bloke with a shaved head stood in front of me. A charger was tattooed on his neck, like a warning label. He looked me up and down. “Name,” he said. “Magnus.” He nodded. “CJ.” I expected a tough speech. I expected a punch. CJ only leaned closer. “Do not say ‘borrow’ in here,” he said. “What do I say,” I said. He shrugged. “Say ‘took.’ Say ‘stole.’ Honesty keeps your teeth.” I tried to laugh. It came out thin. My first night in that place gave me the lesson fast. People fight over the smallest things when fear runs the room. The riot started over a cable. One cable. Half a metre long. Black insulation. A frayed end wrapped in tape. Men gathered around it like it was food. Someone reached. Someone punched. Then the corridor filled with bodies. A tray smashed into a face. A fist hit my jaw. My teeth clacked. I tasted blood and something sharp in my mind, like burnt plastic. I fell. Boots found my ribs. I curled in and tried to protect my head. The cable whipped past my cheek and snapped against the wall. It made a clean, cruel sound. CJ grabbed my collar and dragged me up. “Stand,” he said. Another boot swung at my stomach. CJ took it on his hip and swore like it was an old habit. “Stand,” he said again, louder. A guard fired a stun pulse. The crowd collapsed in spasms and curses. The cable lay on the floor, untouched now, like a dropped crown. CJ looked down at it and shook his head. “A bit of plastic runs the whole zoo,” he said.Later, I sat on my bunk and stared at my hands. My hands shook in little bursts. My chest felt tight. My head replayed the cable snap, again and again, like it wanted to drill the sound into me. Two percent is a number, I told myself. My body did not agree. Time in Chargeria moved like a conveyor belt. Days clicked past. I worked, I ate, I slept, I watched men argue over charging time like it was oxygen. I learned to keep my eyes down. I learned to keep my mouth shut. I learned that fear can wear a polite face. They ran a prison program called Community Recharge. The title made me want to punch the brochure. It turned out to be a work gang. CJ stood in the line with me, close enough to elbow me quiet. We wore helmets. We carried hoses. We got driven out in a truck with barred windows. The guard called it civic duty. CJ called it cheap labour.On my tenth shift, we got a call to a unit in a tower block. Smoke poured from a window. Plastic stung my nose. Heat pressed against my visor. My mouth went dry in a way I did not like. We kicked the door in. Flames crawled up curtains. A wall outlet spat sparks like a possessed toaster. A woman stood in the room holding a charger to her chest. She cried and rocked it like a baby. CJ shouted, “Drop it.” She shook her head. “It is my dad’s charger.” I stepped toward her. My own phone sat in my pocket like a stone. My old reflex rose in me with a sick familiarity. Protect the charger. Save the charger. Do not be the man at two percent. I said, “Your hand is burning.” She looked down. The cable had melted into her skin. The smell turned my stomach. It smelled like a cheap toy left on a stove. She whispered, “Charge is life.” “No,” I said. “You are life.” I grabbed her wrist. She fought me. She clung to the charger like it could answer her back. I pried her fingers open. Skin tore. She screamed. It was a sharp, animal sound. It cut through my jokes and left nothing behind. CJ swung the hose at the outlet. Steam hissed. The fire died with a reluctant sigh. We dragged her out. She sobbed into my shoulder. Her tears ran down my sleeve and mixed with soot.Outside, CJ sat on the curb and ate chips from a paper bag. I sat beside him and tried to stop my hands shaking. CJ watched my fingers. “It gets into you,” he said. “I hate this place,” I said. CJ looked at the street lights and the neon charger ads and the people staring at wall sockets. “They fear emptiness,” he said. “Two percent feels like death to them.” He chewed a chip. He swallowed. “Keep the people,” he said. “Let the plugs burn.” The line hit me hard. It sat in my chest with the tightness. It did not leave.A few months later, a prison officer called me to the desk. He held a clipboard with the boredom of a man who lived inside forms. “You earned early release,” he said. “Good conduct. Community Recharge service. Responsible Charging seminar attendance.” “I apologised to a wall,” I said. He nodded. “The wall accepted.” He handed me a plastic bag with my clothes. He gave me a thin smile that meant nothing. “Do not return,” he said. I walked out into Chargeria sunlight and felt my legs wobble. I looked for a bench. I looked for a wall. I looked for something to hold.Then the visor tore away from my face and the metal room returned. The frogs watched me like scientists watching a rat that learned a trick. The tallest frog made a note. “Education delivered.” “You put years in my head,” I said. My voice shook. “You made me hold smoke and fists and screaming.” The frog nodded. “Instruction works.” “It breaks people,” I said. The frog spoke in calm pride. “Next stage. The Ego Meat Grinder.” The name hit my spine. It sounded like a joke told by a machine. They strapped me into another chair. This one looked less like a pod and more like a confession booth. A sign hung above it in neat letters. The Ego Meat Grinder. Please keep hands inside your ego. My phone appeared in my hand again. Its screen glowed. Two percent. It blinked at me like a dare. The machine activated. My breath caught. My chest tightened. My skin prickled. The metal room fell away. The feeling of my own weight shifted, like my body forgot its job.I saw everything. Stars burned in silent swarms. Galaxies spun like dust. Time stretched and folded. Planets formed, broke, formed again. A comet crossed a dark space and nobody clapped. I saw Earth. I saw Australia. I saw Brisbane. I saw my yard. I saw my chair. I saw Winston as a white smudge at a door. I saw myself slumped there, mouth open, half-drunk, full of ham. I saw my life as a thin line. My mind tried to scream. It tried to find a railing. It tried to grab a story that made me important. It tried to turn the universe into a meeting where I could argue my case. My phone screen stayed in my hand. The two percent blinked again. My heart hammered. My mouth dried out. Sweat broke cold on my back. I felt small in a way that had no edge. It had no drama. It just was.A thought arrived, plain and hard. This is absurd. Not tragic. Not heroic. Not designed for me. Just absurd. The scale did not ask my opinion. The universe did not care about chargers. It did not care about my shame. It did not care about my Tuesday at 3:06 pm. It did not care about the way my kid tried to hide her disappointment. That realisation should have crushed me. It did not. My chest loosened a notch. The two percent stopped feeling like a verdict. It started feeling like a number on a screen. It could not run my life unless I hired it.Images flashed. Not grand ones. Not the kind that end up on posters. A wet laugh from my kid at a bad joke. Her damp hair brushing my wrist in the car, and her saying, “You missed a spot,” like it was nothing. Winston’s weight on my legs at night. The smell of sunscreen on my hands. A coffee cup sweating on a kitchen bench. Sara’s laugh over the fence. Small things. Plain things. I understood something simple. There is no grand score. Those moments are not filler. They are the whole thing. My breath slowed. My hands steadied. My stomach unclenched. The machine kept showing me the scale. It kept showing me my size. I stayed anyway.The frogs pulled me out. The tallest one stared at the clipboard like it wanted to be wrong. “Second known survivor,” it said. I laughed once. It came out rough. “You tried to break me,” I said. “You made me lighter.” The frog frowned. “Your response appears irrational.” “Good,” I said. “Your whole system runs on fake seriousness.” They dropped me back into my chair in my Brisbane yard.The sun had moved a bit. The radio still mumbled. The leftovers sat on the table like a dare. My throat still tasted like plastic smoke. Winston stood near my feet, judging me for leaving reality unattended. I sat up fast and knocked my beer bottle over. It hit the concrete and shattered. The sound snapped me back to the riot. Boots. Cable snap. The stun pulse crack. My hands went cold. My throat tightened. I stared at the glass like it held a face.Sara from next door called out from the fence. “Hey Magnus. You got a charger I can borrow.” The words hit me like the stun pulse all over again. My mind flashed the chant. Charge is life. My phone sat on the table. Two percent. It blinked at me, calm and rude. I felt the old urge. Fix it now. Plug it in now. Do not sit at two percent. My hand moved toward the kitchen drawer without asking me. The drawer that held things I “borrowed.” Chargers. Adaptors. Cables that did not belong to me. I stopped with my fingers on the handle. Keep the people. Let the plugs burn. I opened the drawer. It was worse than I remembered. A tangle of white cables. Three different plugs. A charger with my mate’s label still on it. A cable with a dog bite mark. A tiny power brick I took from a hotel and kept. It looked like a museum of my small dishonesty. I closed the drawer. I walked to the fence. “No,” I said. “Not today.” Sara blinked. “Right. Okay.” “I will buy you one,” I said. “Your own one.” Sara stared at me, then shrugged. “Fair,” she said, and walked back home.Winston jumped onto the table and sniffed my phone. He sneezed, like it offended him. My phone buzzed. I looked at the screen. A message from my kid. Did you feed Winston? Two percent still sat in the corner. I did not care. My thumbs moved on their own. Yes. He is judging me. Are you home soon? I hit send. The phone buzzed again. On my way. Feed yourself too. I smiled before I could stop it. I put the phone down and did not reach for a charger. I did not check the percentage again. I watched Winston stroll across the pavers like he owned the place.That night I slept in my bed. I slept deep. I still dreamed of cables snapping against concrete. I woke once with my jaw tight. I drank water. I went back to sleep. Days passed. Brisbane went back to its normal madness. Heat. Sweat. Magpies shouting like they ran the street. Sara watering plants at the wrong hour. I kept finding chargers in my drawer. I kept leaving them there.On the fourth day, I stood in the shower and let water run over my shoulders. Steam fogged the mirror. I wiped it with my hand and looked up. A mark sat on my left shoulder. A small circle around a dot. Under it, tiny script curved like it had been written by a careful hand. Two percent is not an emergency. My mouth went dry. I turned my shoulder. I leaned closer. The skin raised under my fingertips. It did not wash off. It did not smudge. It felt old and new at once, like it belonged to me and did not. Behind me, Winston pushed the bathroom door open with his head and walked in like a supervisor. He looked up at me. He blinked once. Winston flicked his tail, slow and offended, then sat with his back to me on the bathmat. <h2>F.S.F.</h2>

Two Percent

Every summer I sit on my couch, ready for the summer cricket, doubly so for the Ashes. I set up like it is a five-day festival. Snacks in range. Phone on silent. Chores on hold. Plans cancelled with pride. Then England turned up and stole the summer. Not with runs. Not with grit. Not with any interest in staying past Day Two. Perth lasted two days. Two days. The whole thing took 847 balls. I had a full week of cricket in my head. I had Thursday afternoons mapped. I wanted long spells. I wanted the slow burn. England looked like they packed a plan, then left it at Heathrow. The first ball jagged, and England chased it like a toddler after bubbles. That is the theme. Chasing. Fishing. A noble hobby, not a Test method. I tried to keep it calm. I did the Benaud voice. “Marvellous leave.” Then they nicked. “Marvellous nick.” Then another. I ran out of marvellous. Australia did not play perfect cricket. They did enough cricket. England did extra theatre. The souvenir shop was selling “Day 3 Highlights” DVDs. They were blank. I laughed, then checked my ticket, then laughed again. The internet kicked off fast. One group called it rigged. Another group blamed Snicko. A third group blamed the pitch, the umpires, the moon, and a bloke named Baz. Who flies across the planet for the Ashes and forgets the basics? England did. And the answer is still on my couch. Fast loss has no story. It has no middle. Fast loss leaves a man alone with his own chores. I did not ask for free afternoons. I asked for cricket that eats the day. So, I am left with the true villain of this Ashes. The villain is empty time. I sat there on Day Three, remote in hand, staring at sport that was not there. I refreshed the score like it owed me rent. I opened the fridge twice and learned nothing both times. England, you stole our summer cricket. You left me with silence, and a sink full of dishes. F.S.F

F.S.F

Writing, Poems and Rants

The Slug and the Grasshopper

Sunlight's Shadow

The Entrepreneurs Dream (A spoken word Anthem)

Upgrade

Two Percent

Baz Ball Then Dishes