Is he Ys? Is he Rs!

Friday, 29th November 1996

That's what it says here: "A credit card with excellent benefits for everyone interested in STAR TREK... issued by a highly reputable race of bankers collectively known as Bank of Scotland... an easy way to show your commitment to STAR TREK." I mean, £ú@< off or what.

Good craic last night at the Three Tuns - soon to be renamed the 2,947 Kilos in harmony with Europe. I didn't have much at all to drink last night, and therefore was not full, yet I cannot remember a thing. Help please.

My cat's name is Mittens.

Chocolate Cereal

Monday, 25th November 1996

Morning tharr, arr.

How did Friday night go then? Any tales of embarrassing drunken debauched behaviour? Inquiring Minds Want To Know.

I haven't had any coffee yet and I feel strange, in the same way that finely corrugated sheet metal feels strange.

Today's Superghost starter is: V

Did anyone use the lottery numbers I predicted? Turns out I picked 5 out of 6, so that wasn't too bad. I'll see if I can get all six for you next week.

Pack the bowl

He Curses His Virtue Like An Unclean Thing

Friday, 22nd November 1996

Tomorrow's lottery numbers will be

2 7 14 39 43 44

And remember, you have to be in to win.


A priest strolls into a bar on a Sunday and orders a pint of lager. The barman isn't sure and says "Are you sure you're allowed to drink lager on a Sunday, father?" The priest says nothing, and pulls out a bell, a book, and a clockwork monkey. "Let me show you something by way of explanation" says the priest, and he lifts the bell in one hand, the book in the other, and I can't remember the rest of the joke but I fell off my chair in tears when I heard it, the punchline's got something to do with the monkey.

I Wanna Be A Drill Instructor

Wednesday, 20th November 1996

Scientists in Canada working on the communicative structure used by ducks made a breakthrough last week by completing their first translation. The completed sentence read: "This water's f***ing freezing".
-
Four blind men describing an elephant.
-
Copies of the videotape lifted by a construction worker from the home of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee showing the couple having sex will be available to purchase at lunchtime by the Coke machine. The quality of the reproduction may affect viewing pleasure, and to the untrained eye the content may look a bit like old episodes of "CHiPS", but at £9.99 a go this is a must have.
-
Got any salmon - sautéed!

Romanticizing the past

Tuesday, 19th November 1996

What I Was Reminded Of This Morning.

Going to work at Brick Lane Market at six o'clock one still-dark winter Sunday morning, the train for some reason stopped at Baker Street. Passengers were advised that there would be no service for another hour. Turning up late for stalling out wasn't popular, so reckoned I'd leave Baker Street and think of something else.

Cold, sleepy, worried and fifteen, on a freezing day when the sane world was in bed, I stepped out of the station onto the Marylebone Road, and I saw the snow.

It wasn't normal London snow, the kind you hoped would settle but never did, or the kind that there's too much of and gets in the way. And, you know, I'd seen snow before and snow was snow. But this was different. Christmas was just around the corner. The length of Marylebone Road, stretching off in both directions from the West Way to King's Cross, the roofs, the buildings, the lampposts, the bus shelters, the dustbins, the pavements, the road itself, all covered in six inches of picture-postcard perfect snow that still fell in festive arrays, filling the sky. There wasn't a car in sight, nor any evidence of them passing. I'd walked out of Baker Street into a London that only existed in movies, the world of Peter Pan and Father Christmas, or the London of Dickens, toy shop windows, where it is always snowing but the cold makes you smile, and everything is always and forever blanketed with snow, snow, beautiful snow.

I stood there and, for a few frozen, priceless minutes, took it all in before the first taxi of Sunday morning arrived and ferried me away, on time, to Brick Lane.

Psychotic Breakdown Double-edge Axe

Monday, 18th November 1996

Time pressure

My fourth year primary school teacher Mrs Bainbridge, at every opportunity, told us "more haste, less speed". She eventually left to become one of the first female priests in the country. Thus, sod it. Move at your own speed. You can rev it up but don't go faster than you feel safe. I wonder how much it pays, being a female priest...

Saw the Oasis calendar in Woolies yesterday, and it's bloody typical. The frontispiece is a photo of the band standing still but cracking up. The Arsetwat is pointing out of the picture and guffawing. The message is clear; not only does Liam not give a toss about the fans, he's laughing at them.

Tinfoil, see, the radiation can't get through, that's how you know it's safe to eat, she can't poison uz now......

Wet Cigarette

Friday, 15th November 1996

It's Friday. You know what that means, don't you? That's right: in three days it'll be Monday again.
-
Chris Evans' researchers aren't worth shite. "How Sweet To Be An Idiot" was either a Neil Innes solo song or a Bonzo Dog Band song - it was most certainly not a Rutles song.

Hey, and if Neil Innes could get an out-of-court payment for Oasis ripping his song off for "Whatever", then it's lottery rollover week for Colour Me Badd, the estates of Marc Bolan and Karen Carpenter, the Stones, Blondie, George Harrison, and probably about thirty other musos. Hope Noel's got deep pockets...

And the Smashing Pumpkins kissing Noel & Liam's sweaty, purulent arses on the MTV Awards last night - "oh, thanks for the Best Rock Band award but really Oasis should've won it, they're the best since the Beatles, oh, oh, I'm going off to write some poetry" - please Jimmy, put your tongue back in your gob...
-
"Get out your leadpipe pipedreams, get out your ten foot flags, the insects are huge and the toilets are full and the drugs won't kill your day job..."

And if THAT don't just say it all.

It's Too Darned Hot

Thursday, 14th November 1996

Anyone fancy a game of superghost? I'll start:

F

Here's the rules; you have to put a letter at the beginning or the end of the word being made without actually finishing a word. So if you were to put 'O' before the 'F', you'd lose because you finished the word 'of'. But with every letter you put down, you must have a word in mind, or your opponent can challenge you. If you don't have one, you lose. If you do, you win. Otherwise the game goes on until one player is forced to finish a word.
-
I've got Episode VII of "Danny Allegro" bubbling about in my head. Let me know if you're interested or not (ie mail me back or not).
-
And then... some
(This is crap, wot's on the uvver side?)

God Save Us All

Wednesday, 13th November 1996

How many roads must a man walk down? In my case it's eight. It could be seven but I'd miss my train.

Why did people suddenly stop wearing hats in the 1950s?

Where does Bob Monkhouse get off doing nob gags in front of the Queen? I saw him. It's a disgrace gawd bless er she does a wonderful job...

What will the Queen Mum get on her 100th birthday?

"Here you go, mum."

"Oh thanks dear. How nice, a hand-delivered telegram..."

And how many did YOU get right on "Never Mind The Buzzcocks" last night? I tell yer, if Phil Jupitus had me on his team instead of that edgy bint from the Sunday Show, we'd've knocked Richard "Right Said Fred" Fairbrass, Sean "Guitar" Hughes and Fat Bloke out of Dodgy
into a particularly cocked hat. I may not know much, but I know me pop.

Violently Happy

Tuesday, 12th November 1996

Remember that
Forever above the clouds
The sun always shines

Well, the move was a breeze (or was it a 60s pop combo?) and A and I are settling in fine. We've got a club and a 24-hour Esso within spitting distance, and the nearest pub is currently selling beer at 65p a pint. I'm five minutes from my favourite bookshop... what more can I say?

Love is the world and the world is love.

Songs from the New Album

Wednesday, 6th November 1996

overkill - short story.

....

The single got its UK release on the Monday after three weeks of airplay on national and commercial radio. "Beast" by The Riders was received by the musical community with some disdain at first, being as some thought a multi-sampled over-produced mishmash and, at first, a rip-off of "See Emily Play" by Pink Floyd. At first.

But the song was a grower. And no-one could deny that. NME described it as "eclectic", Smash Hits as "'Bohemian Rhapsody' for the end of the century" and Q as "*****". The song "Beast" seemed to take its references from modern pop, dino rock, classical, you name it, it was there. People reported playing other CDs in their collection and hearing echoes of "Beast" in all of them, then switching off.

A strange coincidence: during the weeks before the single was released, the music industry suffered its worst month for nine years. Companies which relied on radio advertising for its customer revenue experienced a slight downturn in profits. And possibly the oddest; Radio 1 lost three million listeners while Radio 4 gained two.

Our Price, Virgin, HMV, all the big chains noticed this inexplicable dip in sales. Shelves stayed full. Singles went unbought. As a leading statistician of his time was noted as saying, "you could hear the crickets in Woolies and see the tumbleweed roll through the Megastore aisles."

Then Monday came. "Beast" by The Riders, on a small independent label, came in and flew out. Re-order history was made. There was little doubt it would go straight in at number one the following week, and at this rate, stay there to be the first number one of the millenium.

Interviews with The Riders were scarce; they seemed to have disappeared from the address the label had on record, and no-one had heard from them since the recording of "Beast". The engineer for the session claimed the four-piece band had said little between the eight takes or the re-mixing and post-production. And then they'd left. Did they seem happy, the interviewers had asked him, did they seem sad? No, said the engineer, they just looked like they were doing their job.

From cities everywhere in the UK, and then Germany, France, and then Japan, and after a week, the US, reports of "Beast"'s similarity to other pieces of music avalanched in. A mum from Luton told of her sixteen-year old son throwing out all his records saying "it all sounds the same. It all sounds like 'Beast'". A Tokyo violinist said the noted conductor Daisuke Kimahoto had hurled his baton into the orchestra at random and caught her forehead by accident, before storming out shouting "that infernal song, when will I stop hearing that infernal song?" Everywhere people were burning their Springsteen, their Stones, their Dylan, their Mudhoney, their Tchaikovsky, their Hawkwind, their Velvet Underground, their Oasis, their Beatles, their Spice Girls, their Beethoven, and finally their Riders....

Within a month, music radio had proved unprofitable. Movies had become soundtrack-free. Nobody, anywhere, played music, nowhere could it be heard, nobody sung. The earth had been robbed forever of what one poet has called "the language of the soul". For perhaps six days it was very quiet everywhere.

And within a year, it was silent.

Alligator Sonnet

Monday, 4th November 1996

Blind, white, in tunnel darkness they parade
In New York City's festerance of sewers.
Now feasting, marching; those taken away
From Florida, from swamps in Everglade
And sold as "next new things" to faddish Pops
And given to the kids, given to play,
Then tired of. But a new water game lures
The kids to dangle over toilet tops
Their baby alligators. Flushed, and down
To feed on waste and grow fat on dead things
That float around. To march, and swim, and eat.

So don't play by the outlet pipe; don't clown
Around by manholes, else end up a treat
For New York's blind white alligator kings.

B (in under 9 minutes)

Gorblimey

Thursday, 31st October 1996

'Ere, it's a right old how-de-do an' no mistake, it's a jolly 'oliday wiv Ma-er-ry Puppins, chim chim cherooo, beat the wife, torch the pub, one careful owner she was an' I'm cutting me own throat, put a monkey on "Fanny Batter" in the 4.20 and 'kin 'ELL have yer seen the price of tripe, I'll 'ave yer yer bastard callin' me a poof or what, and you'd get change out of 'alf a crown, where's me washboard?

Orl tagevva naahh...

You'd Better Not Shout, You'd Better Not Cry...

Thursday, 31st October 1996

VI

Bryan McGovan had been in full operative surgery for 107 hours solid. Drugs had been pumped into his body through a drip that was once a colostomy bag to keep him awake but immobile throughout the surgery. The Surgeon himself had needed no drugs; he hadn't slept in quite awhile and was perfectly used to being consistently alert.

There was considerably less doner matter hanging in the antechamber to the instrument room. What was left twitched intermittently in the near-dark. The Surgeon knew what to retain and what to throw away, and Remnant, his assistant, was living lumbering proof that the Surgeon never really threw anything away.

Remnant ran a double-nailed finger over the Bryan's face. The touch was loving and kind, like a sister to her newborn brother. Remnant smiled.

"You're beautiful," it said in her choral voice - the girl, the man, and the crone. Remnant rarely spoke in all voices at once, unless he really meant it. She knew she wasn't beautiful.

It thought of the tales of missionaries who came back from Darkest Africa in the earliest days of the Age of Discovery, publishing fantastical woodcut drawings of men with no heads and faces on their chests, women with one enormous leg each, the misappropriations of features and limbs abundant. How these pictures haunted history, nobody for once believing the stories of these encounters were anything but fantasy brought about by hunger, thirst, or madness.

They were all true, of course. And the Surgeon was justly proud of his work.

During the Bryan surgery, the patient had been awake, screaming and whispering as the secrets had been torn from his flesh. Remnant, in her role as secretary, had filled eight ringbound pads with notes of the conversations Bryan McGovan had had with Danny Allegro, forming a profile of the man and his movements. The Surgeon had once told it that a man's life, however fascinating, however long, was still only a man's life and could be cut from the tree taking its secrets with it. And lost secrets, the Surgeon said, were a crime against life.

Life was a gift. Remnant should know. Especially today, the Day of All Souls. She bent over and kissed the Bryan on the forehead with her many-hared lip, her one mouth of three throats. The creature on the table stirred, the new soul of All Souls, thought Remnant, and it will lead us to Allegro, and the Surgeon will have a friend to talk to. Another "antidesomething" - Remnant was no good with long words.

Or at least that's what it had been told. He turned and headed for the door. Tonight was the only night of the year Remnant could leave the surgery. Her friends were out there, abroad, tapping shoulders, screaming, pulling people silently from streets, showing their faces and scaring them; Masilei, the Lone, Oddfellow, Sister Triplet, the Family October... all having a lovely night out.

Remnant switched off the light as she left the surgery, and in the crone voice, scratched and ugly, bade the Bryan:

"Happy Hallowe'en."

Last Resorts

Tuesday, 22nd October 1996

THE CAMEL

A large inflated camel
Is a surreptitious mammal
When found floating 'round the pools found in hotels
It lies undisturbed for hours
Eating Haagen Dazs and flowers
It will look at you and say "Oh, that's what smells."

But the camel, when deflated
Is not very highly rated
And indeed is rather boring to its friends
So it sings a sad lamenty
When the hotel pool is empty
And repressurises to avoid the bends.

A Finbarr Saunders Moment

Monday, 21st October 2006

The subtle nuances of the English language strike again. Maria Arbeitsplatz walks past my desk and sees me working on her project; a form document redesign which is proving problematic. Noticing what I'm doing, she says with Germanic directness:

"Ah, you are PLAYING WITH IT!"
(fnarr fnarr)

Spotting the "dooble ontondrer" I am at a loss for words, and manage to mumble "yes, and it's, err..." before she says:

"It's COMING!" and walks off.
(kyuk kyuk gibber gibber)

Those wacky Europeans, no?

Bad Dreams and Excellent Nightmares

Monday, 21st October 1996

Over the weekend I'd come up with so many epiphanous titbits with which to fill my morning messages that I've totally forgotten all of them. So I'm reverting to big words instead.

Here's a goody:

steatopygiosedentarily - pertaining to one sitting around on their fat arse all day.

e.g.

Yours steatopygiosedentarily,

B

Pop Goes Madonna

Tuesday, 15th October 1996

M...bongos...

Yes! After nine long months of waiting, Madonna has popped a sprog. Hurrah for reproducing hit artists! Mark Owen is currently proud of his "Child", only it isn't a baby human "Child", it's his new single CALLED "Child"! Yes! His first single since leaving Take That, and it's... it's... actually it's very good. The girly-haired one has come back from the Pop Dead sounding not unlike John Lennon, with a song that could have been written by John Lennon. Only it wasn't. But it could've been. But it wasn't.

Hurrah anyway.

Hypnotizing Chickens

Monday, 14th October 1996

Lying on the floor with his head for some reason propped up against his hand, King Movie's attention was distracted momentarily by the discovery of a new scab on his forehead. He ran his finger around its perimeter to gague the size, and was about to start picking when he thought: "hang on, something was happening just then, something not good, it's still going on...." King Movie felt a hand grab his collar, lift his body from the concrete, and watched as a blurred figure in front of him slammed a boot into his stomach. Then King Movie remembered. He was getting the shite kicked out of him.
-
He wasn't a bright boy by any stretch of the imagination, but in the time it had taken him to become a full-time smackhead and contract the plague, King Movie had it all pretty much figured out. The moment he had changed from a regular Joe into Charlie H Smacko. That had now become clear.

He'd had part of it figured out a while back, when he was in the room in Clapham; a mumbling idiot off his head at times with h, at other times with pain, and other times.... He couldn't remember getting to the room, or where he'd been before; he woke up and found himself being prodded by a girl with all metal bits stuck to her face, saying "Oi, King Movie, cup of tea?" Turned out the girl was called Sheel, he'd been found slumped on the steps outside the building, and through an act of extreme junk-inspired philanthropy (and horniness) she'd brought him inside.

She called him King Movie. He thought, that must be my name. He hadn't asked her why for a while, but that was just part of figuring things out, wasn't it? And all the while, at the room in Clapham, bits of his life were coming back to him, bits of his life before the experimentation with chemicals he could barely say let alone spell, and a face; a face on a man, the bald man in the long coat he could blame for his inevitable untimely demise. Then he left the room in Clapham and went on a search.
-
Having the shite kicked out of him was par for the course. It had nothing to do with himself or the man, it was just random and violent and of course it hurt, but he'd had a substantial hit shortly before and it lessened the effect. The thugs eventually got bored and threw him against a wall and left him. Everything was blurred, but it always was. Then eventually footsteps. A shadow outlined in the daylight that broke into the tunnel behind it, and a halo. King Movie squinted; not a halo, just the sun bouncing off a hairless head. King Movie smiled.

The shadow spoke. "Today I'm facing people."

And, not for the first time in his life, King Movie passed out.

Can't Say No to the Beauty and the Beast

Friday, 11th October 1996

Cold, alone and scared to the end of his wits, Bryan McGovan shivered in one corner under the thin blanket. He was finding it harder by the day not to retreat into madness and shut out the suddenly cruel world. The walls around him were untiled jagged cement which he couldn't rest against, the floor cobbled and uncomfortable to stand upon. Through the tiny window in the steel door came the antiseptic flickered glare of cheap phosphourescent lighting.

Days (weeks? how long was it?) ago, while he still had the courage to stand head height, he had looked out through the thick glass into what could pass for a hospital corridor, lined with regular doors, leading out of site, and not a soul to be seen. Then something moved into sight from the left of his field of vision, filling it in a second, and it took Bryan a moment to realise it was a face. Bryan jumped. It was the face of a woman, but it was all wrong. Her eyes, nose, mouth, cheeks even; every part in itself fair enough, yet in some places too far apart, too close together. Bryan remembered a book Danny had once lent him which explained continental drift; now as he watched this face, it moved, eyes and nose as continents and mouth a gaping abyss adrift on a sea of skin. He doubled over, retched and threw up, the face on him all the time; even when his back was to it, he could feel the eyes staring through him.

He had recovered himself, stood up and looked out again. A nurse in a clean white uniform stood two feet away, writing on a clipboard. She looked up at him; it was the same face as before, only settled and normal, quite pretty really. And a little tick shape to the ends of her eyebrows, which made her look very futuristic in a 1950s kind of way. Normal, but before ...

Drugs, he thought. They must've gave me drugs. Did she do it? Why?

The nurse gave a quick, nervous smile, turned on her heels and walked away down the corridor.
But that was only the first strange thing he saw, and it happened a time ago, an age, when he was still a man. Now he was a wreck.

Who were they? And why were they doing this to him?

A noise: steel on stone. The door opened. Bryan pulled the sheet over his face.

A child's voice said, "The Surgeon will see you now, Mr McGovan."

Bryan pulled the sheet down from his face and looked in horror at his visitor. He opened his mouth, and began screaming.

Changes

Thursday, 10th October 1996

Danny Allegro considered himself a regular at the White Wolf. Always a genuine, warm welcome; always a conversation to be joined; always good beer and spirits. Tonight was little different; his friend Bryan had obviously moved down to Devon like he always said he would "to run a smaller pub", and although it had been a number of months since his last visit, he felt relaxed. He had some business in Tavistock coming up and could track Bryan down then; tonight it was just him and the Wolf.

From his stool at the bar, he talked sporadically with the new landlord, a tall, golemic lump of a man from Cardiff named Tom. "I like the timbers," said Danny, indicating the stout oaks straddling the ceiling. "Where did you get those from?"
"Got those put up in the spring," Tom replied, stacking the empties on the bar. "Found them in the cellars. Good nick. Old. Sturdy."
"How do you think they got there?" Danny asked innocently, sipping his Guinness. Guinness agreed with Danny; since his stomach was sewn back up after the nasty business along the Auchtertour Road, he couldn't drink gassy beers. And he didn't miss them.
"Reckon they were up there before. Long ago." Tom the Landlord switched on the glass rinser; the TV in the corner went fuzzy, causing the football watchers to tut and curse. He turned the rinser off, and normal service was resumed. "Old pub, you know. Historic."
"Mmm, I know, I've been coming here a while." Something stirred in the cuffs of Danny's coat, he ignored it.
"Building's at least three hundred years old. Built when the old place burnt down. Same foundations. Pub. Same name."
Danny smiled at the thought of the old pub burning down, the landlord running outside with his doxy wench, cursing the jack o'lantern bastard who torched his livelihood.
"Thomas Grigg." mouthed Danny to himself. Then to Tom; "The last landlord told me; Thomas Grigg ran the White Wolf when it burnt down in 1686. Bryan knew a lot about this place, did he tell you any of it?"
"Never met him, sad to say."
"You should get in touch with him. He's a Guinness man, brilliant storyteller, great laugh. I ..." Tom was staring at him.
"You didn't hear about Mr McGovan, then. I'm sorry."
"What?"
-
Danny didn't say much for the rest of the night. "Suspicious circumstances". He thought Bryan had just moved to a different pub, he used to say as much. Landlords come and go at the White Wolf, but he'd known this one and trusted him. And Danny Allegro didn't have many friends left. Nobody knew as much about him as Bryan had.

Suspicious circumstances.

It was almost closing time.

Stuck Out in Heaven's High

Thursday, 10th October 1996

'Cha folks.

Saw a newsclip of the Tory Party Conference with John "Appropriate Nickname" Major in his shirtsleeves leaning against a podium on stage, basking in sycophantic applause. Then I noticed the guy standing to his left, very familiar, I thought "who is this man?" and then the penny dropped - it was our very own Billy Foster! [UK Director of Pharma Balimo]

Or someone who looked like him, I wasn't really concentrating, more interested in my Coco Flakes, to be honest.

Only one thousand, one hundred and seventy-eight days of the century left, folks. We are half way between there and 20th July 1993 - what were you doing then?

Hitting an all-time low.

Scary Monsters and Super Creeps

Wednesday 9th October 2006

Danny Allegro, coot-bald at twenty, black features on a white face, in a long coat of one colour, sat on the last train of the rush hour, which was packed in a semi-leisurely way with stragglers and office Joes who turn up ten minutes after the rest. Danny wasn't going to work. His seat was in the aisle at the back of a carriage, and today he was facing people.

His attention was drawn to a girl with Dan Dare eyebrows sitting down with a parcel wrapped brown and plain in her lap, and the old woman standing and smiling patiently next to her, an orange ribbon in her dust grey hair. As far as Danny knew, the girl had been on the train when he boarded, she wasn't moving for anybody, and this old bag could just stand there until her legs gave way, he imagined her thinking.

That was when she looked at him, briefly, but definitely. Then she turned to look for the first time at the old woman, who looked down to smile an old smile, then back up to stare in the direction the train was going. The girl with the Dan Dare eyebrows leant forward over her parcel. Danny squinted, was she kissing it? He was a good twelve foot away. Something in his long coat moved.

He whispered "shhhhh", stroking out a wrinkle he'd just noticed in the fabric, and craned his head back up to look at the girl with the Dan Dare eyebrows.

The old woman wasn't standing any more. A further check showed the old woman wasn't on the train any more, though he'd looked down for less than three seconds. He watched the girl smile.
She shifted in her seat and looked at him. The parcel in her lap was larger than before, and tied with an orange ribbon. The carriage lights flickered and went out.

Leonard Bernstein Leonid Brezhnev Lenny Bruce & Lester Bangs

Monday, 7th October 1996

Birthday party cheesecake jelly bean BOOM!
-
UXBRIDGE ON TV: on last night's "The Legacy of Reginald Perrin", through a restaurant window could clearly be seen that statue you pass on your way into Uxbridge, the one of three people jumping for a ball while fountains piss all over them. Otherwise, programme not worth watching.
-
Bob Dole is a man who likes to be seen brushing a non-existent bit of fluff off Clinton's tie and talking emotively about "crack babies" by an indulgent press and an easily fooled nation. He's got Nixon written all over him.
-
WARNING! According to a 14th century monk who predicted recognisable characteristics within popes to come until the end of the world, we've only got one pontiff to go after JPII! Hang in there, Popey!

Right? RIGHT!