The fish festers as it floats. Flies feast upon its silvery pink flank. The river reflects the world back at itself. Trolley sits and surveys the scene.
A pair of ducks stops sucking moss from off the side of a narrow boat. Making a ten-minute-past two formation, they paddle away to forage elsewhere. The nearest wood pigeon coos. A magpie flaps away from the willow opposite and flies across the river towards richer pickings. A band of young swans approach. The swan that has the skinniest neck paddles faster than the rest. The fattest-necked swan performs his chest-out, wing-flap wash-and-brush-up strut as he reaches the end of his patch. Under the weight of the long hyphenated clauses, he turns around and returns to domesticity.
Head Spanish distracts attention inwards. Trolley feels a Super Poke. Muy bien hecho muchacho! Sigue en tu rollo. He intuits that today's visitor is benign, even if the actual detail of the lingo leaves him cold. The rhythms of Manuel de Falla and Blasco Ibañez give him the thumbs up. Esto va sobre ruedas.
As his day begins, Trolley tries to establish if not mental clarity, some kind of useful focus. Engaged amusement. Oftentimes, the glitches in the programme don't make much sense. Origami with Wladimir Klitschko is better if you take off the gloves.
Today is a gloves-on day, but not in a bad way. Fascinated by inner space, rather than frightened, his wake & bake has left him energized. At the height of the 1963 Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK gives odds of three to one on all out nuclear war. Moscow might still be a good place to honeymoon. Where isn't? Prison. A psychiatric ward. Your parents-in-law. Trolley knows of what he speaks. At least he would, if he ever did.
There is no wipe-clean moment. Psychosis merely restores factory settings, the rest is up to you. Provided you don't overuse the refresh button...f5. The Radio Times kicks off. Trolley tunes in.
There is a voice. It reeks of sociopathy and private miseducation. Trolley's internal translator recognizes the launch of another attack in the open economic war. f5 f5 f5 f5 f5 f5 f5 f5 f5 f5 f5 f5. It has been officially confirmed by the usual method: outright denial by public-school psychopath. The soothing female tones deliver death messages via the BBC direct to your brain.
"I'm not a robot; everything will be done to protect the vulnerable."
Trolley is safe. He has declared himself immobile, as they say in the foreign office. An impulsive, low empath, easily provoked city council has taught him how to regulate his anger and take responsibility for his emotions. It is not easy, but he has a simple technique. The five-point plan: the four basic points of angry, sad, happy and afraid live in the corners. Trolley inhabits the centre. He is on stay-cation from the right angles that lead to pain, depression, deflation and explosion.
He knows all the vocabulary; stiff upper lip, man up, be more stoic, grow some nerve endings and the brutal Don't bring your shit to the table.
If you have to live in shit, oppositional defiance disorder is not a useful pathology. Dung dwellers need to be squat and stout. It is all very well for insects to rise up against the dominant social order, but if you walk past the flowers to eat crap, there are bound to be consequences.
"The sovereignty of the people is sacrosanct."
Trolley must translate the last statement before switching off. His Googlator throws out a definition. Sheeple (pl. noun) blended word.
Example sentence: Sheeple have a savage incuriosity about the essential character of the farmer's power.
Lanky bankers (not pictured) schlepp up mountains in Switzerland. While Amazon predicts a riot, the Pope prognosticates an outbreak of Protestant work ethic. Trolley is sanguine and Fennish. Usual service. Pretend we're not in and they'll Deliveroo to France instead.
Oliver Cromwell is just a statue in St. Ives.
Merde alors!
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