“Where’s my story Jonny?” Mad Dog says as he grabs me by the arm. “You said that you were going to have a story for me by the weekend.”

“Chillax,” I says to him.

“It’s not even half six on a Sunday evening. There’s still time. Or even better, is it too late to tell you I lied?”

“Yes, it is.”

Hmmm, Mad Dog seems angry tonight.

“Well, me rant juice is back in the gaff,” I try, “and so is my thinky box. I’m just gonna call into the local for one, and show my face. That’s all. And besides all that, who the fuck are you to tell me what to do?”

“I’m your editor.”

“Ah, right.” He’s got me on that one.

“Good point. I’ll make it swift.”

“How are you going to get it to me?” Mad Dog asks. He still hasn’t let go of my arm. “You said yourself that your internet is giving you jib.”

“I’ll get it to you tomorrow.”

“No you won’t.”

He starts pulling me into the pub. That’s when I notice the bag on his back. At first I had thought that bump was just the hump that had been making him this way. Now that satchel is taking on ominous overtones for me. He elbows his way through the Sunday night crowd gathering for the weekly reggae and goes straight to the bar.

Two Powers and two Guinness are served. He picks up one shot and hands it straight to me. The other is left sitting on the bar. Paranoia is rising. Anger is just starting to tap me on the shoulder, and Regret has finished making coffee in the kitchen. She’s been following me since work, and she’s about to walk through that door. She’s just gonna remind me that it’s not such a good thing to call down and say hello to the local after work. And the worst part about the whole situation is that my muse is away. What’s she like, having a girlfriend and all?

“Get that into ye,” Mad Dog growls as he puts the shot up to my chin.

“You’re turning me into an alco.” I’m praying that this will work. What editor wants to see his investment ruined by drink?

“You’re in Ireland. Get it in-te’ye.”

“You are a fucking evil slave driving prick bastard,” I rant. I take the shot. He hands me a Guinness and the other shot.

“Take that round table over by the window. No one is there yet,” Mad Dog barks at me over the music.

Now, things have changed a bit. I’ve just gotten two free whiskeys and a free pint. This isn’t so bad, and besides, it’d be rude to just take his drink and walk away, wouldn’t it? I walk my pint over to the table. He follows close behind. He’s not going to give me a chance to run tonight. Not that I’d have the opportunity to go OTR on him. He’s got a better spy network than MI5. I sit down and he pulls out a laptop. It all becomes clear just how evil this man is. I loathe connivers. How did this man ever become my friend?

“That’s a mac,” I say to him.

“Mine’s a PC. I’m stuck in the realm of Bill Gate’s evil empire. I don’t know where to even start.”

“It’s a QWERTY keyboard,” he says to me.

“You type. I save and make any corrections necessary. I’m the editor. Write.” He powers the thing up and opens the word processor for me. Then he jabs a finger at the laptop.

“Write.”

“You bulldogs are all supposed to have rubber teeth on Big Rock Candy Mountain. I hope the battery dies. I was going to go home and draw some Pazyryk style animals tonight, you know, the ones where the back half is all twisted round and they’ve extra bits that look like the old Vedic aum. You know the one. It’s built of a watery line, three arches that look like scales, and a crescent moon on top.”

I realize that it’s no use, however. He’s pushed his way back through the crowd and left me to rant on my own. No sooner than do I contemplate legging it, and he’s back with more whiskey.

“Get that into you,” Mad Dog says, gesturing at the shot still left on the table.

I take the shot. It’s free.

“Write,” he says as he sets the other whiskey down.

“What sort of story do you want?” I ask.

“A coherent one,” he replies. Then he goes to say how do to everyone I was going to. Regret sits down at the table, interlaces her fingers and just stares at me.

So I have a mad bulldog of an editor named Finn. He wants me to tell a story. But it’s never quite that simple. See, there are certain fundamental principles that go along with a story, and they need to be set first. Now, by fundamental I do mean basic, and not religiously psychotic. Let’s keep that in mind. So we have certain basic principles that must be applied in different ratios regulated by what sort of story we are telling. And this rabid beast that is now my editor wants me to write him a story. That seems to make him believe that he owns me. He wants a truly brilliant story of mythic proportions from me.

Well he can go fuck himself. He’s not getting it tonight. There’s too much that needs to be done first. See, a good story is one that entertains. Now, entertainment is all event based. One goes to a gig. One watches a film that is based on an event, and is entertained. One, the circus strong man goes on a long search for his lost little brother that was kidnapped by the Cyclops and sold to a mad scientist’s artificial son that lives in an offshore oil rig. Now that’s a story. But it makes no sense as one sentence because it’s all plot. A story needs to be layered.

A story needs some grounding. It needs to be readily identifiable with its audience. Story takes time. It’s like a big warm fuzzy blanket that you wrap yourself in and slowly let it take you away to dream land. A story needs to approach one like a lover. Story needs to remind you the night is long, and we’ve plenty of time.

An event is absolutely guaranteed out of a night in the pub with free whiskey and pints flowing. There can never be any doubt about that. But it’s only a story ex post facto. A story needs an audience, not participants, and it needs pace. We can pace a night by pints, aye, but that’s not the pace of a story. Unless, that it, you’re telling stories about The Cardinal Puff. But not tonight friends, tonight we’re still concerned with stories themselves.

There’s a lot of value that needs to be attached to stories. They’re lovely. They’re a five minute break from reality if they’re short ones, and they’re an extended sunny holiday if they’re good. We’ve all been in a pub at some time, and we all know what pub stories are like. They’re the same sort of story you tell your co-workers around the water cooler, they’re just a bit bawdier.

“So a funny thing happened to me,” is what you’re saying. But in the office, you’re looking over your shoulder to ensure that the morality police aren’t eavesdropping to report you for having something other than a bland life. In a pub you know you needn’t even think about that look. It’s a pub. We’ve been drinking. We’re in a place where it’s allowed.

But it’s that funny thing that starts a good story. We’re all a bunch of curious monkeys that want to sit in the tree and see what sort of amusing suffering has befallen that poor sod over there. We all love it. A good story has something of that in it. The Germans call it Schadenfreude. Writers and critics dress it up in fancy names like plot and premise and climax - randy, dirt bird bastards that they are.

But a good story is based in reality. It immediately lets us know that we haven’t strayed too far from familiar territory. What we do expect from a story, however, is a bit of oddness. That’s alright, counting paper clips would be as dull and boring in a story as it would in reality if something didn’t come along and stir it up. You’d have coddle, not curry.

So a real story with oddness in it is a good story, especially if it’s humorous. Enter clichés about laughter being the best medicine here. But it is true to an extent. We remember and pass on the funny stories. The really funny and really odd stories are the ones we’re still going to be telling people in years. Donkey’s years. Those are the good stories.

The truly good stories will have a universal appeal within a community. Tattooists all around the world tell each other the story about Paul Rogers drinking from his rinse cup. The English still talk about Maggie bringing troops in on the miners’ strike back in the 80’s. A good story becomes part of a collective. A truly good story will stay with a community for so long that it is eventually gathered by some scholar somewhere and put down into a book under the mantel of folk history or some nonsense such as that. It becomes a fairy tale.

Herein is where a deep problem lies. A fairy tale has no appreciated value in reality. It’s a story immediately discarded by its audience as fluff. It has been shunted to dusty shelves because some brainy bastard decided that the letters of the story were more important than its connection. Some tweedy type bastard labeled the thing and cut it off at the knees. The story now becomes dead. It’s history.

But every now and again there are stories with such universal appeal and such strength that they become a fundamental (not psychotically) part of a people’s identity. These stories we call myths. These stories stay around forever and we love them. They’re Cuchullain tying himself to a stone so he dies standing. They’re Hanuman not knowing which medicine to get, so he tears off the top of the mountain to bring it back. They’re Musashi battling the entire sword school on a mountain. These are the stories with such connection that they continue to live and wrap people in their arms that no scholar will ever be able to slay them. Joseph Campbell understood that. May he rest in well-deserved peace.

I reckon this is what Finn wants from me tonight. He’s not getting it. I’m not in the humour. Not in a pub where all that happens are alcohol sodden events, funny as they may be at the time. They need their audience first. Then the stories need their lives. They need to be judged and accepted, and only then are they stories of mythic proportions. That isn’t going to happen over two pints and two whiskeys.

“You done?” Mad Dog asks.

“Yup.”

Finn spins the laptop around and starts reading. He’s gonna be a while and he hasn’t bought me more drink, the cheap bastard. I fight my way through the reggae crowd and get myself another. I’m in a pub. It’s allowed.

He’s done reading by the time I get back. I thought I read and absorbed things quickly, but this man is sharp as a tack. And conniving. I will never forget that now.

“What do you reckon?” I ask. He turns and looks straight at me.

“I think you’re mad as badgers, Jonny.”

“A badger attacked my uncle’s truck once. It was a big fuck off American pick up. Two tons of steel, and the badger didn’t give a fuck. It was going to take that pick up down. I don’t like them when they’re angry.”

“No, I wouldn’t classify you as evil, or a threat, but you’re not right in the head,” Finn says.

“That’s why I need to get some Iron,” I say.

“What?” Finn’s genuinely lost now. Lovely.

“I’ll tell you about it next week,” I say. “It’s nine. I want to go home and draw those Pazyryk dogs.” I look around and happily realize that Regret got bored some time ago and went off to bother someone else.

“Is this really what you’re giving me?” Finn asks. “There’s not much of a conclusion here.”

“It’s complete with cheese, but the reader has to supply the conclusion.”