FRANTIC FRIDAY

“Everybody has a plan, until they get punched.”  Mike Tyson 
 

As excruciating as ABBA, the enduring memory of wedlock contains 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, that Trolley seldom accesses its 39 Greatest Hits in his already over-subscribed head space.  

 

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. 

 

As with all things Abba-esque, one must tread gently with Melon. The mere mention of the A-word will set off a total recall and, in some cases, re-run of the winter of 1976. Trolley's revolution takes place a few years later, when Bilderberg make Margaret head of wage restraint and Frankenstein's mother to Davos Man is thigh-deep in the intellectual sewerage that drains from the free market stink tank. 

 

Thankfully, both anti-heroes are indisposed. That way less damage is incited. The world turns into custard cream and 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!  

 

Trolley picks up the radio, a second before an awakened Melon can crack it into pieces with the largest boulder known to beast. Trolley switches track, just in the nick of Greenwich Meantime. 

 

Ahoy ahoy, you scurvy dogs of class war. You be listening to the Pirate Jack Show on 109 in the fm.  Avaste ye now. My good chumrades Trolley and Melon, them not be with us today 'cos them scurvy sons of biscuit dunkers, them bilge-sucking aldermen at the Shire Hall wants to hornswaggle my pals out of their rightful booty...with a hideous thing, them do call a council tax. A council tax! Landlubbing and having to pay for the privilege, whoever heard of such a thing... And now for the 147th time today, here's Johnny Kidd with Doctor Feelgood and the NHS Blues... 

 

Of all the 47 indigenous languages of Peru, Trolley speaks none, but then neither does Pedro Pablo Kuczynski Goddard, the former impeached president. 

 

Trolley lays the sounds out across his tongue. He tastes them. He savours the flavour of the internal rhyme as the delicate plosives pop against his flesh, he relishes each word: former; impeached; president; impeach; ex-president; former partner; bum like a peach; stop. 

 

Trolley 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 Melon, in spite of all that that entails. 

 

Trolley shakes his noddy friend. He jolts him sideways. He agitates a small phial of patchouli under his nose. He leans forward and utters the BBC fuzzwords: Novichok nerve agent and for all the family.  

 

Melon nods on, unstirred. 

 

Trolley takes a step back, completes a mental risk assessment, takes another step back, and then a deep breathe, and shouts, proper shouting, like he used to, in the old days. 

 

FUCK ABBA! FUCK ABBA!  FUCK ABBA! FUCK ABBA!  

 

Melon rouses. He is just in time to catch Trolley as he whirls and whips up a frenzy, the frantic Friday feeling, end of term, out of school, off on holiday with the people you most hate... 
 

-Troll. It's ok. It's not real. It's only a movie.  It's me, Melon.  

 

Praise the heavens, thank the holy cow for friends. Melon has already started to administer the antidote. He just needs to add lyrics and mix. 

 

God Save the Queen and the fascist regime, they made you a moron, potential H-bomb...

 

BOOM!

 

Trolley is in pieces of eight all over the dual carriageway. Nobody will get to the beach on time.

 

Least of all, the Gazans.