ENGLISH AS A SECOND NATURE

To those who say I sound unnatural, I simply say this.

This is all I need to say.

This is the correct way forward.

I'm afraid I shall continue to make mistakes.

That is only natural.

I don't want to make any more mistakes than I have to, of course.

I want to be strong.

I'm determined to work on myself, to succeed, to overcome;

Indeed, to come over more naturally.

It's extremely important for me to achieve.

I am, after all, an empowered, self-contained,

Self-confident role model of a woman.

Enjoyment?

There is lots, several things I like...

I like talking, so we, my husband and I,

Enjoy talking when we can, taking holidays talking.

I enjoy looking.

Which has a benefit because we get to see things as well as look.

I've over 150 books, so I spend quite a lot of time looking in and at

books that I have...

I do enjoy, if I get the time, watching.

Does anyone know of a popular Scottish invention:

the mechanical television set? I quite like watching one when I can.

Is that natural enough?

Probable serial killer from the Home Counties?

Really? Let's try and re-programme again then.

Throw me another fat topic.

Scones?

When I get the time, I enjoy flattening scones.

Or is it pronounced scones?





THERESA MARY BRASIER IS NOT A ROBOT


THE CREATIVE CLASS

'You should avoid starting a story with dialogue!' said the Creative Writing lecturer, reading from his notes to his freshman class.

'Neither should you use exclamation points, clichés. And,' he continued, ignoring several raised hands, 'you should never start a sentence with and. Or end one with butt.'

Just then, in Dakota University, as in all other all-American educational institutions, no sooner had the class begun than  the bell went off. Each Hollywood academic hour lasts on average 37.5 seconds, making it possible to complete a whole term's course work in one afternoon, which, of course, only brainiacs and nerds do. The tutor's words trail off as the freshmen students instantly collect all their gear and vacate the room with indecent haste, as though their very popularity rating depended on it.

Only the most attractive and most famous member of the class stays behind. She is worried about the only two things she is ever concerned about: her low grade average and not being the most popular girl in the school, despite her telegenic strawberry blonde looks.

' "What are you looking at me for. I didn't come to stay," ' is the first line of Maya Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. And you said you oughtn'ta..'.

'Yes, I know what I said. And when you're as vibrantly colloquial as Ms Angelou is, then you too can start stories with dialogue. Until then, it's probably better not too, that's all.'

'It's just that I can't seem to recreate. I tell. I don't know how to show...'

'Write what you see happening in your mind's eye.'

'Maybe this'll improve my academic grades, but what about my popularity rating. I only averaged a C+ this semester.'

'Well, this semester's barely 90 seconds old , so there's still time to improve... Lemme give you a ride home and we'll discuss your options in the car.'

As they headed down the six-lane expressway, the purples and pinks and reds of the Californian sunset spelt out the words Toxic Sludge is Good For You. It was as beautiful as Sellafield on a wet winter's eve.

'Look. I normally spin up a doobie on the way home, Samantha. You don't mind if I call you Samantha, do you?'

'Course not.'

'Call me Dean. If you look in the glove compartment you'll find an ounce of California's finest. Our state may have the fifth largest economy in the world, but those Mexicans sure ain't gettin' high picking strawberries 14 hours a day. Did you know that 80% of the world's strawberries are grown here?'

'I think you're confusing me with someone who gives a shit, Professor. You'll be asking me about Iran next. Where's the Mary Jane?'

Sam opened it and ( 'Oh!' ) sure enough there it was. She started loading up a paper on the dash like an expert, while fiddling with the radio, till she found the local hip hop station. Oh la la by The Wiseguys. Nice. She turned it up.

'Usually I wouldn't dream of smoking illegal narcotics with a student whilst driving. But since this is only a story, and I'm Head of Creative Writing, we can allow for a bit of author intrusion, just so's I can get stoned, I reckon. I mean it's not like this is even South Dakota anymore.'

Fifteen minutes later, they were stuck in traffic on a Hollywood freeway. America's biggest cash crop had the entirely predictable effect on Sam. Particularly since she'd had half an MDMA, three beers and 20 mgs of Diazepam before class, as per.

'What do you mean you want me to buy a War Cry? You're in the Army and you're giving me Salvation. Look kid. I'm already in the Army, what do you think the uniform's for, selling ice cream? Get outta here!'

'Dean! Come on. We need surprise and irony,' shouted Sam trying to bring him round.

Luckily, they'd just gotten off the freeway, and Sam was able to slap him back to himself with coffee and kindness. It would take more kindness than she had ever known. She had had to do Hollywood movies since she was fourteen. She remembers very little of it. It became kind of a mechanical thing for her, divorced from any pleasure or pain. Best way really. Just plough through. Get through the punters. Quick. Get out of the rain. Get the bag of brown and then get home to the kids. The Drew Barrymore of Bootle, they called her.

As for Dean, he'd turned into Sgt Bilko on a British Legion night out on a Wednesday in Tooting Bec.

Goddam escapists.

GODSNOT

Dare. Dream. Want more. More want. Most expect less. Smile… It’s free. Unlike you. In 2018, there’re those who say “Yah!” unself-consciously. Wipe your arse, oik. Send in a CV. Become the global voice of the pig industry. Snort! Snort! Oink! Oink! Kitchen staff drain the fat from the trough. The stench of entitlement that nauseates permeates their clothes. The restaurant’s inside the giant stomach of a monster called General Kononvich. Sworn to secrecy by the Catholic Crusade, her adoptive parents drink too much. On holiday, they take blurry pictures of holy spirits, beer bottles and lavatories. The tramlines on the bus driver’s face tense as the aeroplane taxies into the trees. Aims. Sub-aims. Personal aims. Anticipate problems. Predict outcomes. Then lie.

Where the fuck’s the runway gone, captain?

Strengthen weaknesses. Threaten opportunities. Never question why. Presume no thirst for enquiry from the quenched. Entrenched in belief in a heaven that’s merely an absence of the hell that parades for earthly paradise. Under a rain of mediocrity, the blue green marvel throbs. A forgotten divinity hacks up gobs of phlegm.

The Gods have no heads to turn.




GOD'S SNOT

#MiCKEY MOUSE iS FAKE NEWS

"You're the real Mickey Mouse. It's not a costume."

What do you say to that? Tell the kid the truth? I did what any mouse in my position would do. I lied, through my front incisors. What else am I supposed to do? I’m on the payroll, sure. But I am not the Man. I’m the mouse. I didn’t build the empire, I only work here. I don’t own shinola – not even my own copyright. It’s not Mickeyland, it’s Disney World. My name isn’t even Mickey. That mother changed it. Like he elongated my snout, made me wear clothes, drive a car, drink Martinis, put my girlfriend in stupid shoes, get a regular job, a sub-prime mortgage, and before you know it, you wipe up in Disney World and everyone thinks you’re a fraud and knows you’re a failure…

Uncle Walter can go kiss my skinny tail. Maybe I should show the kid everything.

“What if I am, kid? What did you expect? Some S.O.B. paying his way thru’ college. Strapping on a furry costume in 75 degrees Farenheit of Florida humidity for minimum wage plus tips is a gas, kid. Real laugh a minute.”

 “Fun is what my folks paid for. This is America. You can buy everything.”

“Mother freakin’ donut suckers. Leave me be. Go annoy Goofy.”

“He don’t speak to me.”

“Cos he’s a stoner.”

“He ain’t real like you.”

“Are you yanking my tail? You think anything that butt ugly could be anything but real. You been watchin’ too much Disney Channel, kid.”

“Pluto ain’t a real dog.”

“Planet, kid. Ain’t a real planet… Lemme tell you, when you smell his mangy hide, and feel his sloppy bazoo slurping up your chops, believe you me, kid, that is a dog. Throw him a bone, watch him pick at it. That ain’t no outta work actor. He’s the real deal. Mean, look the size those balls. Been a while, dude…”

“What’s been a while?

"........................................."

"Where’s Minnie, Mickey?”

“Reckon you oughta go find your folks, now.”

“They’re over there. See.”

“The couple in the inflatable Sumos?”

“They’re not costumes.”

“………………………………”

“Are you the real Mickey Mouse?"

"Sure, kid. I am an over-sized monster rodent, plucked off the cartoon page, juiced up on steroids, and like so much jell-O, pumped into a man-size Mickey Mouse suit!"

" .................................."

"I am talking to you, for Chrissake. This is not a squeak. This is American English."

"But the real Mickey speaks American."

"The real Mickey. There you go again. What does that even mean?"

"It's an asteroid."

"Huh?"

"Pluto ain't real. It's an asteroid, not a planet. Like this isn't Disneyland. It's only Disney World. So you cannot be the real Mickey Mouse, cos he lives in California. That's why you're not so happy."

" ....................."

"I gotta go."

" What you gonna tell your folks?"

"I'm gonna tell 'em I met an unhappy man in a dumb mouse costume. You're fake news, Mickey Mouse!"

"Sure, kid. Now, scram, vamoose. 

Boy, that was close.  It's the tail, man. They see an extra tail popping out, they get real suspicious. Tape up the tail.  How many mother freakin' donuts can one human eat, dude? God, I need another hit...

"Hey Pluto. Good dog. Go see if Goofy got any reefer. K boy? Mary Jane. Attaboy. Pluto."

THE GIRL WITH THE BICYCLE TATTOO

Hot Pantswould have made a better title, but The Girl with the Bicycle Tattoo follows the pattern. This is Cambridge, not Los Angeles or even Copenhagen. The counter-intuitive heroine keeps her kit on. The underside of her butt cheeks show out, but it is she who walks the walk, boyfriend. This is one hot cop who is equally feminist and target-sexy in khaki’s and a tank that shows off her delts as she is in bum-rip denim, or indeed the proverbial bin liner.

 

Today, she’s under cover as a working girl. Estate agent. Tough assignment. They can sniff out a member of the public through a thousand square yards of desirable office space. Extensive market intelligence is required to perfect the correct level of zombification. 

Melon is exasperated. The cheeky cheeky girls are driving him to Distraction, Alabama, where the entire state house has approved legislation to prevent rubber necking. He wants to impose Sharia law.  

 

The heat wave has led to an outbreak of ogling and lechery. The graphics card has been upgraded. The wibble wobble of flesh is apparent. Nothing gets pixelated.

“It’s the booty shorts, Troll. They animate me immensely,” Melon declares melodramatically. 

A passing pair of booty cheeks coupled with chiselled cheek bones transfixes Melon. Trolley must improvise. It is fortunate for everyone concerned that he has been reading his David Herbert. He reaches for a purple-headed passage of passionate, sensuous, reverent modernist tosh.  The Born-Again Virgin & the Migrant: the story of a marginalized traveller and a full-bottomed Roma girl who pulls his levers for kicks. 

 

The bird of his companion’s heart sinks and dies. His will departs from his limbs. The woman has power over him. And Melon, as he blows out his own cheeks, is aware of only one thing: the on-going struggle against the constraints of civilisation. The mysterious over-ripe fruit of his born-again virginity leaks into the perfect tenderness of his soul. Like a flowering bud of cannabis sativa, like a dewdrop which drips its stringy line of snot into a waking sleep of brief blossoming, he is full out. He is entranced in the waking sleep of his re-virginity, as yet another dewdrop drips in the sunshine. He wipes his nose.

 

It engenders within him momentum. Once in a blood moon, Melon gets an idea into his head that warrants a translation in the outer world. Such a notion is upon him. From out of the finest, highest-density, re-generated polyethelene, Melon has fabricated a bhurka-like item he intends to drape over unsuspecting hot pants’ wearers whose specifications conform to type.

 

An enormously versatile garment, it looks set to make in-roads into the world of Islamic fast fashion, the new Osama Bin Liner is available in both charcoal black and jet black!

 

“I am going squat up here and bag me up a hottie,” explains Melon to Trolley, whose left eyebrow makes the shape of a zigzag and whose right eyebrow dimples. 

 

Trolley has seen the girl with the bicycle tattoo above her right ankle. The classic design, it is only slightly more elaborate than those daubed across cycle lanes the length and breadth of East Anglia by unarmed roadmen in reflective vests of the type suburban cyclists cloak their young in to protest against tree felling along their victimised boulevards.

 

“Sharia D.I.Y. The campaign needs a name, Troll,” announces Melon, as he crouches on his branch like a potty-training toddler, right down to the facial contortions and visceral grunts. Trolley hears a nearby wood pigeon. Melon forces out another strange sound. The gastrointestinal distress of avian and human roosters makes a brown noise that would produce involuntary bowel motility in all but the strongest constitutions. Luckily, Trolley has been dipped in enough Lawrentian prose to be able to weather any elemental outbreak of intensity. 

 

“Brrp. Brrp. Coo. Coo.”

 

Melon and the wood dove compete to break the dramatic tension. 

 

The girl with the bicycle tattoo approaches. The Brigate Ragazziprepares to swoop. Melon readies himself. He clasps the bin liner by the corners and, like a vampire about to put the duvet cover back on, hovers over the spot where she will soon be. The self-directed attractive young woman moves forward unhindered.

 

Trolley looks up. Melon is hard to see in the shade. Trolley shakes the tree.

 

“Promise you won’t laugh, Troll.” 

 

Trolley helps his friend down. There has been a change of tactic. Melon has also improvised.

Fully donned in his polymer outfit, to which he has added a set of blinkers made from sticky back plastic, it's the kid whose parents have forgotten it’s a fancy dress party and have had to make do last minute. As an act of emotional self-management it is unparalleled, if not a bit too makeshift and difficult to market.  

 

Trolley chortles. Trolley titters. Trolley weeps tears of hilarity.   

 

Melon wonders why you can’t get heavy duty liners in brilliant white. A flimsier pedal bin number might appeal to today's more fashion-conscious, sexually-frustrated Herbert. Though it wouldn't leave much to the imagination.

A NORWEGIAN WOULD

"At home he feels like a tourist/he fills his head with culture/ he gives himself an ulcer."

The Gang of Four. 

The planet is on fire. Corporate lawyers argue over a Kit Kat. There are no coffee tables or children implicated. As we face down Ecogedden, plastification, indoctrination and monumental media hyperbole,  Mother Nature's backside is ablaze, and the finest legal minds known to capitalist patriarchy devote head space to a piece of confection. Just to clarify. The Northern Hemisphere is alight, the South Pole is highly flammable, it is a chilling 52 degrees in Death Valley and serious adult attention is concentrated on a heated debate across a courtroom on the relevant merits and demerits of a four-fingered chocolate biscuit in the name of justice and social order. Kvikk Lunsj versus Kit Kat.  A question of a mere $2,632,000 on political lobbying. Not sure a Norwegian would spend so much on a quick lunch. Double digit growth awaits the winner. 

 

As Trolley cuts off the privately-educated business journalist, who passes as wide boy at 5am every morning, Melon makes a double-fingered salute to the weather Gods. This heat is killing their lie-ins. 

 

Trolley is taking stock. The dead centre of their fictive existence is the perfect anodyne in days like these. Getting up at the crack of daybreak to scream Fuck Abba! at the top of your voice is all very well, but where does it get you?  

Trumpington Park & Strive as it happens. As good as anywhere else, when you're washed up and fed up. Why bother with Love Island? When you can schlopp out into the street in your jim jams and slippers for various litres of cider-space. Never to go back. As the rest of us figure out where to put the deck chairs, the central core burns as darkly as a psychopath's ego. The non-story of the marginalized is a welcome distraction, if you can't stretch to a TV licence. 

 

The keep-calm-and-carry-on-ness of the suburbanites and the tourists absorbs Melon's psychic juices and consumes him. Cider anaesthetises. Trolley enjoys a light ale, and quiet contemplation enhanced by the finest of Moroccan inspiration.  

 

- You're a fucker for your couscous, Troll. Melon enjoys a joke and smokes from a tin of continental lager crafted into a can pipe. Smoking aluminium is safer than most of his pastimes. 

 

An enfeebled, self-obsessed, mewling, emasculated wreck of a man, Melon is proud of the progress made. His levels of self-knowledge are sky high. He can show workings out in the margins and everything. But self-awareness seems about as relevant as clippings from a 1903 edition of the Warminster & Westbury Journal and Wilts County Advertiser. Melon's masculinity seethes.  

 

He is not one of life's clothes pegs. No matter the weather, Melon has on what Melon has on. He changes what he wears so infrequently that Trolley can't recall a time when he has seen Melon in anything other than his military combat smock, check shirt, black t-shirt, baggy bottoms and supermarket trainers. His jacket is occasionally taken off, in a force nine gale for instance, but it is hardly ever removed in summer and never ever fastened up.  

 

Like a rogue penis around a camp fire along the Devon coastline during a field trip in a geography teacher's inappropriately short shorts, a narrative keeps popping its head out. Trolley is peaked. There is far too much going on for anyone to be bothered with his paltry tale, his personal history. He likes to keep it tucked away in a golf bag in a garage somewhere. But there is burning pine everywhere and the flames. They chase him all the way down to the river. Burned-out cars and charred bodies. There is a woman looking for her cat.  

 

Instinctively, seeing the end nearing, Trolley embraces Melon.

 

- Whoa. Steady Troll, you'll have the ale over.

 

Trolley grabs a beach towel, soaks it in cider and runs towards the riverside. Gas canisters explode. Pine cones fly past. There is little time to lose. Trolley huddles into Melon, yards from the safety of the river. The biblical disaster of the planetary fire that broke out at lunchtime has ripped Kit Kats from out of the hands of toddlers as they take cover from the heat. 

 

It is too hot to transport cattle. Passengers pay to use tube trains to pack them off to work to have their dripping tits sucked dry by a mechanical beast with the heart of a metronome. 

 

Meanwhile, a couple from Middlesex ponder over gold wedding rings and dream of spending a summer together imagining names for imaginary children that have yet to be conceived. Very soon, this town will exist no more.

 

FRANTIC FRIDAY [FKABBA EDIT]

The long hot summer of 1976

dropped a Neutron Bomb on pop and incubated punk.

Abba met their Waterloo

and Johnny turned rotten right before our eyes;

puss, piss, vomit, spit, phlegm, mucus, sputum and

contrarian cockiness cranked up the colour

on the rebellion dial to 11.

The enduring memory of wedlock:

so many contrasting styles, so many complex emotions,

across multi-layered vocals,

heavy on digital verbs and synths,

on a bed of the pissiest lyrics you ever heard.

Fuck Abba.  

Beenyt and Alligator get married and then divorced

and then write a musical together and make a film

and one of them gets cancer and doesn't die,

so they get re-married.

Bits and pieces of Cher come apart on the set

and the entire metaphor has to be abandoned.

Mere mention of the A-word sets off a total recall,

A re-run of the winter of malcontent.

 Bilderberg makes Margaret head of wage restraint

Frankenstein's mother to Davos Man  

is thigh-deep in the intellectual sewerage

that drains from the free market stink tank.

Fuck Abba  

The world turns into custard cream

The Sixth mass extinction draws ever nearer.

The treadmill escalates towards the cliff edge.

A foul-smelling, family friendly

soundtrack blasts its putrefying Euro-toss...

Mamma Mia Here We Go Again...

my my mind control, how can we resist you?

Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!

Pick up the radio, crack it into a thousand pieces

with the largest boulder known to beast. 

Fuck Abba 

It triggers a warning: a self-administered yellow card,

as bright as the Segovian sun and as clear as climate change.

Time for a diversion, time to wake up,

in spite of all that that entails.

The BBC utters the fuzzwords: Novichok nerve agent

and for all the family.

Take a step back, complete a mental risk assessment,

take another step back, and then a deep breath,

and shout, proper shouting, like you used to, in the old days.

FUCK ABBA! FUCK ABBA!  FUCK ABBA!   

Whirl and whip up a frenzy, the frantic Friday feeling,

end of term, out of school, off on holiday

with the people you most hate...

-It's ok. It's not real. It's only a movie. 

Praise the heavens, thank the holy cow for friends.

 Administer the antidote.

Add lyrics and mix.

God Save the Queen and the fascist regime,  

they made you a moron, potential H-bomb...

BOOM! 

Pieces of eight all over the dual carriageway.

Nobody will get to the beach on time.

Least of all, the Gazans.

ECONOMY CLASS

The Minister for Re-incarnation has a tattoo in place of a regular head of hair. It took a team of twelve Taoist tattooists ten hours to fill it in, and recently featured in a GCSE maths exam.

As a newly freed man of the county, Melon pays little heed to such numerical conventions. Having amassed a molehill into a mountain, the flat interest of the valley floor invites the debtor to linger. Like an inveterate Argentinian Alpinist laid low by the bastards at the World Bank, heady with the abundance of sea-level air, blue sky thinking, and no longer weighed down by aspirations of ascent and domination, green shoots have started to appear. The cycle of climb and descent is evened out by the leveller of economic inaction.

Quite apart from the concentrated politics of the economic war, there is the no less tricky question of where to be and what to become. What psychosis has disclosed to Trolley, psychedelics have revealed to Melon. Once you truly understand the people who inhabit your world are mostly paper-thin caricatures that largely conform to type, life becomes a lot fucking easier.

The Minister has goaded Melon.

"When's the last time you did any activism, then?"

That then hangs off the end of the sentence, a ripe grenade waiting detonation.

"My life is a revolution! The truth I tell is a weapon in the class war. What you got, Minister? Apart from tattoos, saffron robes and stupid questions?

"Well, I ..."

"I got a question for you to meditate on. Why don't you fuck off?"

As the expletives explode, Trolley and Melon continue waiting for Cambridgeshire... to act, to do something, anything.

In Spanish, esperar is to hope, to wait for something to happen. Waiting is just a very patient form of emotionally-managed hoping. It’s a wonder the English don’t have a word.

BABYLON BY BUS PASS

"If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit."  
 
On a Sunday morning coming down, Melon needs his melodrama.

Trolley whips out the wind-up wireless bang on time. It is finely attuned to the orthodoxy of Radio Middle England. At a steady rhythm, he revolves the handle, speeding up each time the amber light stops sparkling. The intermittent interference offers relief from the domestic intolerance.  

This week's public theatrical lecture: a woman's place in the penalty shoot-out of life. Doubt, thrust to the margins, it crackles with moral rectitude and certainty.

Using the unopened second bottle of the day as leverage, Melon opens the first bottle of the day, and hands it to Trolley. Imitating the sound taught in Psychic Weaponry 101 on the CIA Undergraduate Scholarship Program at Penn State University, he opens the second bottle, phonetically: Tsck... pshh... fwshhhhhhh. 

Melon is a devotee of the dark corners. The version from the rain cloud has been infected with vernacular.

"Who's doing the fucking today?"

"What kind of question is that?"

"What kind of answer is that?"

"I've had enough of this. I'm off down the Hedge Fund and Duck for a pint of Apricot Blonde and a fiddle..."

We interrupt this programme with a flash of neo-realism. 

A couple in Wiltshire has been infected by an outbreak of MKUltra. The mind control agent that contains the toxic ideology was previously used by the BBC on the Bukowskis, back in March.

Meanwhile, in an unconnected business item, economic experts claim the creative destruction of the free market is unavoidable. Like the morning after a night on the swally, you'll always feel better after you've heaved up your ring on the infamous streets of the financial district, renowned for their cocaine abuse and raucous sociopathy... 

Trolley switches off the wireless before it unleashes Melon's push-button control mechanism. Too late... The Austrian schoolboys of bullshit have struck again. It is time to get on bikes and round up as many selfish genes as they can find. Trolley wishes he had his ak47½.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra

PAGING DR PANGLOSS

At last, everyone is fulfilled and happy. 

For a frozen moment, just the only Colombian on the whole sink-estate has inklings of disappointment, but even she feels an improved karmic resonance, as the malediction of the penalty shoot-out lifts like a cold sea fog in sub-tropical Scotland. Over 92 degrees Fahrenheit in Motherwell; it is simply unheard of. Not to forget to mention, the historical flight and expulsion of soccer's square heads: the sharpest exodus of moral arrogance since Bullingdon trashed the place under a banner of pushiness, deficits and bollocks. If only there was a handy German word to describe the ineffable pleasure taken from the suffering of others.

Trolley is not the illegitimate nephew of a baron any more than Melon is. Yet the effortless superiority of the propertied class leaves a dirty puddle that reflects back at itself. Trolley and his associates of the road have so little invested in the spaghetti junction of hierarchy that they meet entitlement round the backside, for a cheeky nibble of the underbelly, with all the insouciance of a city trader's drug habit. The straight-up message of hard work avoidance, leisure and vice at all costs ties in so perfectly with the Bullingdon philosophy, it is a wonder the homeless don't run the economy. 

A spike in the prevailing class war, Trolley and Melon are content to cultivate a secret garden in the cracks and at the margins. If you've been pushed to the verges, there's little point in owning a tractor.

UN/HAPPINESS IS A BY-PRODUCT OF DYS/FUNCTIONreads the road ahead. Under the flyover the signs are largely illusory, but no less useful. 

The junction at which they find themselves is laid up on the lay-by of life. So little of their time and energy goes into the senseless toil of over-production, they have plenty left over for unofficial enquiry. Inspired by the encyclopaedists of the age of reason, Trolley wants to travel back up the narrative flow of Candide and return to Westphalia in time for supper and bedtime spliff.

Melon, meanwhile, has a location, a Google map and an itinerary. In his four and half decades on the planet, it is the closest he's been to a commendable plan: Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe overland by push bike, avoiding the Chunnel, toll roads and as much of the 50 million hectolitres of French wine as is humanely possible. Their usual inertia is under threat. There is an extended journey in the offing, and they’re down to a small bag of psychotropics and a brace of hoppy English ales each, lest they turn nostalgic once ferried to Boulogne-Sur-Mer.

Trolley, on the other hand, would much rather a short, light, rapid and humorous diversion through the municipal libraries of the Fenlands, a day-trip fantastic through the back catalogue of François-Marie Arouet, back-channelling up passages of enlightenment to page one, paragraph one, back home safely, where it all started in Baron Chunder's Ten-Pint castle of sand under the Panglossian plague of positive thinking in this best of all possible planets. 

They may have no purpose in the society of generic men, but at least, at last, they have a destination, a reason to be, anywhere but here: to cycle to Saxony and/or to re-cycle Voltaire.

Trolley thinks the fewer cross-references to rape, enslavement, cannibalism, earthquakes, syphilis, military conscription, crimes of passion, hangings, floggings, beatings, brutal murder, the Grand Inquisitor, the better - not to mention, unscrupulousness, degeneracy, degradation, decline of beauty and sickness of the soul.

As for the fragments of contentment in amongst the pain, when the inhabited moment is weightless, natural and comfortable, Trolley is far from convinced that satire isn’t a better vehicle than clapped-out street wisdom from the outcast and broken down.  Sweetly endowed with a disposition to turn a double negative into a mission of positivity, his calm contemplation of their predicament radiates rightness without smugness.  All he lacks to be credible is the waistcoat and the coaching badges.

Melon needs to speak. “A pox on positive!”

The long hot summer of ’76 dropped a Neutron Bomb on pop and incubated punk. Abba met their Waterloo and Johnny turned rotten right before our eyes; puss, piss, vomit, spit, phlegm, mucus, sputum and contrarian cockiness cranked up the colour on the rebellion dial to 11.

The pessimist of Trolley’s intellect is at variance with the optimist of his innate sunniness that rarely, if ever, dims. Even though at great pains to make his face a true index of his feelings on the matter, his companion’s mind is firmly fixed on the meta, physico-theologo-cosmolooneyology notwithstanding. Melon is incendiary.

"Long words is all very well, Troll, but the peat moors are ablaze!  It is the emotional weather for urban disturbance, the mono-syllabic sound of brick against window, people against power."

Unburdened by desire for material gain, and hopelessly bored with the mediocrity of shopping, the pair, at last, build up enough momentum to set off for Hatton Cross, a utopian traffic island where there exists no religious conflict, no court system and no famous dead icons on grand pianos bigger than your living room re-imagining the poverty of others to great commercial acclaim.

They hit the A14. The A14 strikes back. Immediately, they abandon it for the A10. The short heaven that is the A1309. The hell that is the drive-thru' McBurger Ville. Finally, Harston is within sight. Trolley's nose starts to bleed. Melon needs a drink and a puff.

Outside Harston Hall, the Minister for Re-incarnation is discussing Dalai Lama with the Crash Test Dummy, his damaged vocal chords twitching like a bad leg. With broad sweeps of the arms, Crash Test is arguing the case for Doctor Who, who, despite having five incarnations fewer than his Holiness, doesn't have to go through the rigmarole of re-education every time. Crash Test wants the Minister to explain. The minister wants CT to release his lapels before he tears them off.

Timely arrival. Melon shows Crash Test the yellow and black card, which dampens his animus down. The party form quorate, partake of nature's mood-altering bounty and, at no extra cost to the council tax payer, await the world's greatest ever sunset.

Whatever the Ottoman chain gang make of them has yet to be re-written.

BAYLEY FROM OFF OF CHEESE ISLAND

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#RTE: Bayley says if they cut down all the cheese she won't be able to go on holiday, and she loves her holidays. I don't think I want to be on holiday for ever, definitely not with Bayley.

The Prof says the adoration of Bayley challenges previous commitments to pacifism and has moved to the dark side. No internet connection and no cameras. Sounds scary.

The Prof says there must be ways off the island, but doesn't seem unduly concerned with thoughts of outside contact or escape.  The dark side of the island is the place for the disappeared, those who've been wiped from the recording. Collective amnesia is a choice, not a disease. The Prof is fond of saying stuff like that.

Condemned to a life of exile amongst the criminally inane and vacuous before the age of 30, it is like Logan's Run meets The Truman Show, they said. More like Groundhog Day meets Big Brother, from the classic novel not the TV.

"If it was already on the telly, what did they do a book for? That's just stupid," says Bayley, who should know.

I chose to come alone, like most. I say alone, but I'm not on my own. There're hundreds of us here, but we're kept apart and only allowed to "see" others on #SnapCrap.

Bayley and her "friends", and all those who have yet to feel the fence, remain in denial. The Prof says she's incapable of intelligent self-deceit, so by that rationale she must truly believe there're two million people hanging on her every word.

"There're people in Save The Cheese

 t-shirts around the perimeter," says Bayley.

"The electrified fence?"

"They skim off the whey and make bio gas."

"So, you're telling me they make electricity from methane and carbon dioxide from cheese."

"Fazakerley. And why’d they waste all that lecky on a fence, div. We live on a island, case you hadn't noticed."

Last night the whirr of generator from the dark side disturbed.  An unmistakable sound. Less distinct sounds have been even more audible. I once heard a woman's scream, but it could equally have been an ape.

And there're the currents. They're extremely strong. It never drops below 20-21 degrees in winter, and never reaches more than 30-35 degrees in summer. It rains just enough to grow food, but it doesn't rain that much. And the vegetation is lush and the animal life diverse.

The big problem is Bayley and her fan club. I wish I was Dr Doolittle. Those orang-utans seem intelligent creatures. Bayley says she doesn't like tangerines, too many pips.

The lack of human intellect crushes your spirit. Stamps on your hope like a Monty Python foot. All your dreams of escape, of sharing a joke, or a clever idea. Splatt! Only the truly beautiful count. The ugly must make their way to the backside of the island.

The implants are supposed to be able to read our minds. RTE, (Recorded thought entertainment) it's called. The idea of someone  else's thoughts as a form of entertainment. Can't see it myself. Bayley'd drive you looney.

"Who's Logan? And why can't he lend Truman's shoes?, she asks, looking a million dollars and sounding like two short ones. Wish I wasn't one of the pretty...

*Over on the dark side, the Professor kisses the face of the fetish she has fashioned. She has had an interesting idea. “Bio gas! Girl's an absolute genius. Much misunderstood. Tragic waste of brains.”

* Original Alt-Patriarchal Ending: Over on the dark side, the Professor wrings the neck of the fetish he has fashioned from spite and bile. "Bio-gas! Girl's a danger to us all. Thankfully, they all think she's the Miss South Carolina of Merseyside."