OF MiCE AND MENSHEViKS

Trolley misses the poetry of the betting shop, the conditioned air of the public library, the steady hypnosis of consumption, the urban escalator that grinds to a halt at twilight when the zombies go home to change into their  vampire gear, feast on flesh and chips, and plug into the mother ship's mainframe before coffin time calls.  

Now they are more downwardly mobile than most, they have decided to re-locate to the twentieth century. As proud pre-millennials, they've had a gutful of the present perfect and long to return to when they used to matter. Put another way, Melon is considering a move to the metropolis. Trolley has been noting down the sub-text.

"Instead of Shank’s Pony, we can do it proper Troll. Now you’ve gone and taken the significant step of abandonin’ the trolley, you’re as good as weaned, as it were, and we have us, right here, two actual workin’ functionin’ human beans, and one and a half perfectly good bikes. It is to the capital, we must go. We ride to Buckingham Palace. We take up residence in the best unclaimed patch in SW1."

Since his access to female has been cut, and the summer is here, and his allergic reactions to commodity capitalism have subsided, the implicit message needs interpretation. When the happy green wears off, and the cider polish fades, and no amount of cloudless Spanish blue sky, or deep Irish green countryside will sway his mood, the subterranean emotional charge of repressed sexual energy in tandem with substance abuse….blah blah blah…

Trolley eats well and doesn’t believe a word. Fresh fruit and veg. They practically have to give them away. Beige carbohydrates, on the other hand. It's like the great yellow-aped one once said:  "Donuts! Is there nothing you can’t do? Doe!"

"Troll. Troll. Troll… You’ve gone into one again my mate. You gotta stop waking and baking. It’s already past half one. We gotta, at least, get out of Dodge today. "

Back in the land of the living dead, Trolley makes use of the most widely exposed sign language since Liam Gallagher made a telephone call to his ex-wife's solicitor.

"Victor Alpha Roger.. What're you on about, Troll?... "

"Big Fuck Off Telly! The next Mexico match. We need thousands of happy punters, a Mediterranean heat wave and a Zapatista revolution."

Of all his comrades’ crusades against international capital and the flight on reason towards Mars, this was his least fanciful, at least notionally. The overthrow of Nikolae Ceausescu has proved to Melon that to demand the impossible is simply to occupy the sensible middle ground, so certifiably inane is the zero option of there being no other alternative.

It's 1989 again! And Melon and Trolley have mounted mountain bikes and undertaken a solemn journey of intent to the most beautiful traffic islands in London, taking in Hatton Cross, the throbbing gristle of Hounslow, Old Street Roundabout, sauce for digi-gig economy boloney, and finally, The Westway - a living underpass of fertile resistance to the mainstream of contamination and corporate control of the capital.

FOLLOW THE YELLOW APED ROAD SIGNS!

When the fancy grabs the throttle, a left-wing Daily Mail on Anadrex, Melon's rhetorical devices galvanize opinion, even as Trolley's own joined-up discourse leaves him unmoved to act. It is one of many mysteries.

Trolley is too busy looking out for road signs to contemplate such enigma. He pines for the clarity of his Psychedelic AK47.5. Out of battery now. But charged up, it has the power to blow mind-sets. It works by concentrating all the lived wisdom of every cogitation ever made into one blast of psychotropic brain candy. Few can ever hope to derive anything actually useful from all those multiple layers of abstraction and truth. They mainly tend to cancel each other out.

“And where's the wisdom in that, Troll?” says his friend, Melon, a man of action.

Melon can rouse the peasants and the workers. Melon is instrumental. Melon is insurrectional. Melon is drunk.

Trolley remembers his Action Man, the bastard son of American's all-fighting lover man, G.I. Joe, who broke Barbie's plastic heart into smaller and smaller pieces, destined never to go away, but to sit sadly amid the tangle of fishing tackle aboard the world's largest ever floating raft of tat and toxic mesh.

When his man doll melted into Sindy in Trolley's garage, during the one hot summer in his life when he had closed in on the semi-detached nuclear family and a three-square-meals-a-day menu that didn't always come with mashed potato, custard, clips round the ear, Chinese burns, or shut down by insecure care workers on the verge of occupational burnout, he remembers feeling what feeling at home might feel like.

It is the nearest he has ever been to man love. Till now.

Trolley shall have to wait for sobriety to return. Melon is lost for the day. They may have to settle for a lay-by near Junction 38, the wind-up radio and Trolley's beaten up Spanish.

Viva La Revolucion Anti-Capitalista!