I Did It

Fireworks over Adelaide Oval after the Strikers win the 2018 Big Bash League Semi-Final.


If you like Bradism, you'll probably enjoy my stories. You can click a cover below and support me by buying one of my books from Amazon.

The woman with the fake tan stepped into my office, sat across from my desk and lit a cigarette.
At least, she would, sometime in the next 20 minutes. Smelling the future has advantages, but precision isn’t one of them.


Peaches 2

Finally, unless birds brave tomorrow's heat, I will have peaches to harvest in my own backyard. A dream I have had for over nine years.

image 1674 from bradism.com

Since 2014, Vanessa and I have raised this peach tree. Watered it, pruned it, kept it safe. In a way it's been like a child. And now, heeding the lessons we taught it, it too has produced offspring.

This is every parent's dream. We will pluck them one by one, wait for them to ripen, and then eat the grandchildren.

Second Level Support

Over the Australia Day weekend I put some effort into a few home maintenance tasks. I cleaned my air-conditioner filter, patched and painted some wall-holes, and re-sealed a leaky shower screen.

Finally, already picturing the beer I'd drink, I went through the motions of replacing the washer and valves in my shower taps. It had been dripping for a while, and the easy fix would be the pineapple on top of my handyman shenanigans. But, when I put the water back on, it still dripped. I tightened, rechecked, went up and down the stairs a bunch of times. No difference. I couldn't solve it.

So I did the mature thing and closed the door and walked away.

After a week of showering in the spare bathroom, I decided to tackle the problem again. I bought new valves and washers, essentially I would repeat the whole change process. A reboot. The first step in IT troubleshooting, turn it off an on again! And it worked! Finally, with the taps turned, the water stopped. At last, I could beer.

The next day, with water flowing, a high pitch whine started in the walls. I Googled it, saw the list of possible root causes... Plumbing is not like IT.


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The Skin On My Hands Feels Even Softer

It seems like only a week ago I was ending my days cleaning up a dozen open PuTTY sessions. Now I've got the same problem with open Word documents.

Life's Peachy

It doesn't matter how much time you spent watering and fertilizing, or the efforts to protect the leaves from sun, and the fruit from birds. Ultimately, a peach is a peach. It takes about a minute to eat. If you're reading something on your phone, or scrolling through emails, you might not even remember tasting it. You'll receive a little dose of vitamins and fibre, then it's gone.
The world has plenty of peaches. Some won’t even get eaten. Some won’t even make it to the store.

So it goes for most of life. Hours are invested into something, and if a tiny, unappreciated fruit makes it out the other end, you’re still not even halfway there.

Two things happened this weekend. First, I reached the nine year milestone of my wrist reconstruction. Second, I researched how to prune peach trees, and I discovered a fascinating thing about growing stone fruit. These trees never grow fruit on the same wood more than once. Over the next year, branches will extend and only then will new fruit come. If you fail to cut back in Autumn, the branches will stretch longer and longer in order to provide fresh wood for the flowers that become peaches that eventually become eaten and forgotten. The tree will become unbalanced. The fruit small and exposed.

The writer part of me wanted to find some symbolism for life in this fact. A lesson to improve an overcast summer sunday. Like, if I chopped off my arms at the elbow, would I be more productive by next summer? Successfully fruiting bigger accomplishments with smooth, baby hands? Was there anything I could chop around the house, or in the office that might yield more out of life in the future? Was there any dead wood in my mind or in my heart where the memory of fruit past prevented new fruit from coming? Could I slice those bits away?

This all seemed a bit dangerous, or too challenging to reach with a saw. Eventually I discovered one thing I could prune back today with a view to tomorrow. My peach tree! I knew I’d been googling for a reason.
Now next year maybe I’ll harvest more peaches than this one. Maybe enough peaches to eat that I’ll never forget the taste of them.
Then it will be time to cut again.

The Powder

In 2008, The Nail was a superhero, keeping Londoners safe from chavs on mopeds, and saving the world. Now, retired and gimpy, he has a chance to fix his leg, if he can outsmart his old enemy The Botanist.

My short story The Powder can be found in the The Worlds of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Volume III Anthology beside a bunch of other great stories. You can get it free (or pay what you like) for it by clicking the image below.


image 1677 from bradism.com

Summer Loving

image 1678 from bradism.com

Seems it was only a matter of time. The words written in the sand erased by the incoming tide. Another summer gradually swept away, one frothy white wash after another. The sun flees beyond the horizon, the smell of waffle-cone still on my fingers.

What better time to be alive than summer? Injuries, illness, isolation, mortality would all feel worse in the cold. Blue skies, warm nights, cell-shredding UV rays, a gush of tennis and cricket that never feels like it's going to relent. Have a drink, dunk yourself in the salt water, (both), the mere angle of the planet justifies it. It might make you feel better for a while.

Some summer days I think back to my youth and wonder if it's me or the world that's changed. Didn't I used to throw open the house to a warm night air? Where did all these bugs come from? Are there less pools in the world now, or are they on the other side of the fence for my subdivided generation? Has the sun always been this disgruntled? Was the ocean always so full of stingers?

Why do the once never-ending days feel so short?

Looking forward to wearing hoodies again though.