Endland E-Book

Tim Etchells

• Herausgeber: And Other Stories
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 512

Beschreibung

Kings, lords, liars, usherettes, goal-hangers, gun-men and prostitutes, Whether or not these stories bear any relation to life as it is lived in Endland (sic) is not my problem and good riddance to all those what prefer to read about truly good, lucky and nice people – you won't like this crap at all.A comical and brutal weave of parables gone wrong, Endland holds a broken mirror to England. In its garish but strangely familiar world of empty tower blocks, 24-hour cyber cafes and bomb sites, a motley collection of misfits, wanderers and charmed drunks do their best to survive. Nothing is stable in Endland and what's more, the gods have started drinking at lunchtime, which can only lead to trouble. Conjured in a mix of slang, pub anecdote, folktale and science fiction, Endland is the nightmare unfolding just outside the window – a glitchy parade of aging bikers and ghost children, cut-price assassins and witless wannabe celebs.The world fashioned by Thatcher, Google, NATO, ICANN, Brexit, Big Brother, Bin Laden and Trump needs new narratives to make sense of it. In Endland, with feverish wit and a broken compass, Etchells unpicks the myths and strange realities we're caught up in.

Leseprobe

First published by And Other Stories

Sheffield – London – New York

www.andotherstories.org

Copyright © 2019 Tim Etchells

Introduction copyright © 2019 Jarvis Cocker

All rights reserved. The right of Tim Etchells to be identified

as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with

Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN 9781911508700

eBook ISBN 9781911508717

Typesetter: Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh

Photograph: ‘Robin Arthur in Forced Entertainment’s

Nightwalks’ by Hugo Glendinning

Front Cover Design: Tim Etchells;

Graphic Design: Steven Marsden;

Printed and bound by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall, UK.

A catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library.

And Other Stories is supported using public

funding by Arts Council England.

For my friends and fellow travellers at Forced Entertainment.

Contents

Introduction

Endland

About Lisa

Shame Of Shane

Who would dream that truth was lies?

Eve & Mary

Chaikin/Twins

James

The Shell Garages History Of Mud

Kelly

Morton & Kermit

Crash Family Robinson

Wendy’s Daughter

Void House

Jonesey

Killing Of Frank

Arse on Earth

The life, movies & short times of Natalie Gorgeous

German Fokker

Carmen by Bizet

They get you most all gone when you always alone

It is murky and opaque

intentions seem good

Cellar Story

I thought I smelled something dirty

Last of the First 11

The Ant and The Grasshopper

The Chapter

Mission of Jobbin

wanted to get a good look

Taxi Driver

Loose Promise

The children of the rich

The Waters Rising

#Dibber

Long Fainting/Try Saving Again

BureauGrotesque

Anger is Just Sadness Turned Inside Out

Maxine

For the Avoidance of Doubt

now not moving

A Note about Endland

Acknowledgements

Dear readers

This book was made possible thanks to the support of:

About the Author

Introduction

What’s the opposite of nostalgia? I ask that question because the stories in this book take me back to a time & place I thought I’d forgotten – but I really wouldn’t want to go back there.

I used to sleep a lot. I’m still fond of a good kip & will grab a snooze at the drop of a hat if the opportunity ever presents itself but back in the early 80s I really used to sleep a hell of a lot. Back then sleeping was my favoured method of escaping Thatcher’s Britain.

I left school in 1982 & went straight on the dole. I left home & moved into a flat above an old factory. My friend was the caretaker. The building had been divided into units that housed band rehearsal rooms, offices, a model railway enthusiasts society & two table tennis clubs (who used to take it in turns to shit outside each other’s doors). Abandoned takeaways left outside the rehearsal rooms attracted rats. Sleeping was a much better option than facing the day-to-day reality of living on Sheldon Row.

One morning (or maybe it was early afternoon?) I was rudely awakened from my slumber by the sound of shouting coming from the room downstairs. It sounded like a domestic argument – but that was impossible because we were the only people actually living on the premises. Plus, it was a little too repetitive & rhythmic. I was irritated, also a little intrigued . . .

That was my first encounter with the work of Tim Etchells. The noise I had mistaken for a ‘domestic’ was actually the sound of a Forced Entertainment rehearsal & Tim is a founding member of the theatre group that bears that name. The more I found out about Forced Entertainment the more my curiosity grew: I was intrigued by why they rehearsed during the day, I was intrigued as to how they had got rid of the food co-op that used to be downstairs (rat droppings were found in the muesli, apparently, leading to them being evicted), but most of all I was intrigued as to why a group of talented, creative people would move to Sheffield voluntarily at a time when the whole city was so obviously going down the pan. In other words: ‘Why the fuck would anyone move to a shit-hole that everyone else is trying to escape from?’

Only Tim himself could answer that question – or perhaps you’ll find the reason why secreted somewhere within the pages of this collection. I myself got some kind of glimpse the first time I saw Forced Entertainment perform live. They were doing a piece called The Set-up early in the evening at a local venue called The Leadmill. The Leadmill was (& still is) housed in an old bus garage – just about all the places I frequented in those days were based in places where things ‘used to happen’. I needed to find out what all this shouting was about. I had a right to know why my sleep was being disturbed. I’d seen some ‘street theatre’ at various local festivals & that was pretty dire so my expectations were extremely low. But as soon as the piece began I was transfixed. This was not Theatre As I Knew It. Minimal set, choreographed moves, most of the dialogue coming over the PA from a pre-recorded soundtrack that also featured some very interesting music. I was inspired – I wasn’t sure exactly what it was saying but it set off some feelings inside me. For some reason I am unable to explain I ran back home to the factory & got dressed in an acrylic star jumper that was two sizes too small for me & went back to The Leadmill. The play had made me feel like that Fall lyric from the song ‘Winter’ – ‘I’ll take both of you on, I’ll take both of you on’. Proper got me going. Theatre had never done that to me before.

I had no idea that these stories of Tim’s existed. Some of them even date back to times I have been describing. When I read them I was instantly transported to the Sheffield of the mid-80s & the lifestyles of those who haunted Sheldon Row: a factory ‘just off The Wicker’. It fucking terrified me.

These stories are the opposite of nostalgia – & this feels like the perfect time for them to appear. At the time of my writing this introduction we are once more ruled by a Conservative Party leader who has no problem with declaring war on at least 50% of the country that they are supposed to govern. & these stories tell you what it’s like to live in that kind of atmosphere for years on end. They are frightening – but they’re also necessary. Good things happen when you face stuff head on.

‘Endland’ is right – ‘Endland’ is where we are right now. But the fact that these stories exist at all shows that times like this can be survived – transcended even.

This book is dangerous. This book is a bitter medicine. This book tells it like it was & is.

I respect this book – but I never want to read it again.

Jarvis Cocker, hard shoulder of the M1, August 2019

Kings, lords, liars, goal-hangers, killers, psychics and prostitutes,

Whether or not these stories bear any relation to life as it is actual lived in Endland (sic) is not my problem and good riddance to all those what prefer to read abt truly good, lucky and nice people – you won’t like this crap at all.

Bear in mind it is not a book for idiots or time-wasters but many of them are wrote about in it. But let no one deny that it is a good laugh to hear about all the various kinds of mischief, curfews, wickedness, pixilation, indolence, rent fraud, roadblocks and general fcuking Hoopla! that went on in that place back (?) when Xmas really meant something.

For the rest – concerning the bad language, bad luck and low habits of the persons described or abt any dubious morals that remain implied or alleged in these tales – I make no apologies and, like the poets say, ‘welcome to Endland’ ©, all dates are approximate.

They replaced the lens in one (1) eye and I am waiting for them to do a operation on the other. Everything is fine. I am not an invalid.

Pax Americana,

Death to unbelievers,

About Lisa

a small bad story in twelve good parts

*

The boss at DAVE’S TOPLESS CHIP SHOP is called Harry Stannington. The shop is just a franchise and the real Dave is more of a marketing proposition than a proper person. Harry Stannington is a pathetic lying police informant who’s going to get his head kicked in and his tongue cut out, at least if you believe the graffiti which someone has sprayed up outside the shop.

*

Harry fancies a new girl that works in the CHIP SHOP who is called Lisa. Harry keeps asking her out but for at least a month she says no.

Lisa is basically an unlucky misery guts with a hidden gift for brilliant ideas.

Putting her top back on after work one day she finally caves in and agrees to go out with H. Stannington.

*

Lisa and H. Stannington go to the pictures. They have to walk thru something like a forest to get there only there seem to be cats stuck up in all the trees – yowling madly and miaoowing to get down.

When they get to the pictures Harry doesn’t like the film but pretends he does. Lisa also doesn’t like it but can’t be bothered to pretend.

*

It’s one of those films where the plot was just a flimsy excuse put together to justify a procession of different sentimental conversations – at hospital bedsides, on dusky beaches, in empty offices and at tearful breakfast tables.

That night Lisa’s sister gets murdered and Lisa blames herself – if she hadn’t gone out it would never have happened etc.

*

Each day for a week Lisa has to wear her dead sisters anorak and other clothes to reconstruct her last journey. Lisa gets to be on television. She likes acting and wonders about making a career out of it. The people from the TV station have her typecast as the dead girls’ sister though and won’t give her any other parts.

*

Time passes and the relationship with Harry comes to a natural end and he sacks her from the CHIP SHOP.

There are no leads in the murder investigation except perhaps Mike Foreman who’s arm is as thick as a porn stars penis (at least if you believe what the girls say) and who was occasionally having it off with Lisa’s sister.

Mike hangs around in the Bull & Patriot Pub – everyone knows he’s guilty but there’s no evidence.

*

Lisa has a dream where she wins the Eurovision Song Contest singing a song in Portuguese. Later on in the dream she is back with H. Stannington having sexual intercourse in the Chip Shop and he is imploring her:

“Speak Rwandan to me, speak Rwandan, I like it when you speak Rwandan . . .”

These kind of crazy dreams drive Lisa crazy.

*

One day Lisa sees Mike Foreman going down a side alley and knowing that the law is an arsehole and that Forearm is a murderer she kills him dead, with no regret.

The gods (such as they are) are pretty angry abt this and Zeus, Tesco, Venus, Mr Stretchy, Penelope, Kali and all the rest are all having a big row and making various wagers abt what will happen next.

*

The ways of the gods are mysterious tho. Lisa isn’t struck by lightning or by a satellite falling out of the sky. Instead her whole life just starts to go bad.

To start she has panic attacks, and many many long nights of sleeplessness. Her room is burgled (twice times), flooded (also twice times) and burnt a bit in a fire that is something to do with a bad persistent electrical fault.

*

Later (probably July) the automatic doors in all the buildings in the city seem to ignore her and no longer open anymore like they know she is no longer human or worse perhaps no longer a living thing of any kind.

Only by waiting for a stray dog to trigger the infra-red can Lisa get in anywhere.

*

Lisa gets more bad luck. She gets a skin complaint and falls out with her mum. Her new job at The Institute For Physical Research doesn’t last.

Before long Lisa can’t even see her image on the CCTV screens in town and she knows she’s disappearing and she understands quickly that this is the punishment the gods have meated out for her vengeance of her poor innocent sister.

*

People in the street try to talk to Lisa and try to act like everything is OK, but machines and most animals ignore her.

Lisa changes her name by deed poll. She calls herself something more suited to her age, race, sex and occupation. She calls herself SILENCE.

And from that moment on she lives up to her name.

Shame Of Shane

Once upon a time there was a mad biker, a dope dealing Grebo from Derby called Shane. Shane went in a pub where the barman’s name was Meniscus on account of how full he liked to fill the glasses with shandy and ale.

Shane was a thief, a misogynist and an intellectual pygmy. Meniscus was his friend.

*

On each third sequential Thursdays in the above mentioned pub they contrived to run a semi-legal Karaoke-lock-in with Meniscus as the compere.

Such nites were a great laugh and indeed Shane would gladly oblige all with a song. BRIDGE OF THE RIVER KAWAI by Vermin was one of his popular choices and his rendering of BUTCHER HEAD by Carlo Verbatim Alfonso is still a urban legend amongst the assorted biker scum and wanker proletariat of that area.

*

someone had wrote up in the wrecking yard of a old factory in Endland (sic) and this equation pretty well summed things up.

GENERAL HOSPITAL someone else had written on the same wall.

TRUMP TOWER and YOUR FLESH IS NIGHT.

*

To tell the truth Shane never had much luck like for example the time he arranged to meet some biker mates to go to a disco. Shane set off to the disco on foot but soon got lost and came to a clearing in the woods where a woodsman’s cottage stood.

Nosy, full of fools pride and lager, Shane went inside despite the signs which told him not to and upstairs he found a beautiful woman asleep in a bed.

Shane thought his luck was in.

*

PATH BLOCKED BY SLEEPING PRINCESS – it said on the wall of the room indicating the true nature of his entrapment – THROW A SIX TO CONTINUE.

Shane spent nine hours rolling the dice, unable to get a six in mounting frustration and missed the fucking disco.

*

Shane’s bike was a souped up NORTON INTERCOURSE 650 and when he road it in the mountains, with other bikers trailing behind him on their CARPARK COMMANDO 250s, then he felt free.

Shane had a woman (skirt) called Donkey on account of how many people had ridden her on the beach one night. Shane loved Donkey, at least so far as he understood the idea at all and anywhere he went she travelled pillion on his bike. Together with a load (outlaw posse) of other bikers they all went off in the hills of Nevada.

*

That night at Edale when the big hand was on the 2 and the little hand was on the nine Donkey walked away from the pack at biker campfire a little way and sat down.

Shane went over and a argument ensued about the plot of an obscure slasher movie, voices were raised and Shane was observed to strike Donkey and later, when he returned to the main body of the narrative, he was alone.

Shane was a murderer then.

*

Months, weeks and days passed and Shane fell out with Meniscus, partly abt the murder of Donkey and partly on the subject of ‘interllactual property’ (sic). Meniscus changed his voice to sound like Shane’s, he cut his lank hair the same way too and when Shane had a tattoo done in big green letters on his forehead what boldly declared I AM THE ONE AND ONLY, Meniscus rushed right out and had one done just the same.

Meniscus was a moron, a joker and a failure. Shane stopped being his friend.

*

Round this time in Endland (sic) the king passed a decree to decimalise time. Ten (10) hours in a day there were then and ten (10) day in a week and approximately ten (10) long months in a year.

Shane was one of the many unfortunate bastards what lost his birthday in the changes and from that point on his legal (and mental) age stayed exactly the same.

*

Shane watched his friends getting older but no changes happened to him.

Bob The Biker got fat and got a beer gut. Jo Jo had twins. Clinton got busted. Twig got a job and Meniscus rightly got sacked from the pub.

He it was that nicked fivers from the till, poured chemical waste in a black bloke’s beer and blocked up the urinals with bog roll, causing a huge eponymous problem in the gents.

*

Shane was still 25, you couldn’t exactly call him a Grebo anymore but he still wore jeans and a dirty tshirt.

Picture this: Shane with his stupid baby face while the rest of his olde crowde are pulling gray hairs from their genitals and sadly regretting the passage of ‘decimalised time’ ©.

*

Shane alone. Shane in the city.

Shane stood still at the cross-roads of time.

Shane reads all big books on human biology but it’s no bloody good. His pals all die and he’s still young. Like a vampire film. He rides the bike but gets no kicks anymore.

*

Shane visits a Shaman in the shopping precinct near Hillsborough.

In the empty shop unit, next to that one that sells cheap types of broken biscuits, in the gloom of a fluorescent light he consults with this bloke, lighting a candle to the old gods, speaking backwards language, squeezing drops of his own blood onto pictures of the Mighty Morphine Power Rangers and weeping in a Kleenex once owned by a cousin of the Queen.

All this to no avail.

Shane still 25 in Endland (sic), time stopped and ‘future endless’.

Who would dream that truth was lies?

true story of earth and the gods

When the goddess Helen and the god Apollo 12 gave birth to sons it was the talk of Heaven and the naming day for the twins (Porridge and Spatula) was a party that most would not easily forget and some would not easily remember. Wine poured out of the wine boxes like it had no end point and everyone laughed out loud and wore those necklaces filled with luminous yellow fluid what men sell on bonfirenight.

Towards the end of day when the babes were asleep and all older gods dozy with ‘medicine’ the younger Gods like Herpes and Vesuvius were fighting and dancing. The young Goddess Anastasia and a few others had opened their luminous bracelets and were flicking the fluid down thru the sky onto earth like a bright yellow rain. All over the world people were looking up and looking around – they knew that something wild must be happening in Heaven.

Now, upon the earth at this time there was living a very pretty girl called Naomi and as Porridge and Spatula grew up they both fell in love with her and made no secret of it – visiting earth and telling her so, sending flowers and fancy chocolates etc. In all aspects Porridge and Spatula were inseparable and friends – and together they loved to go joy riding, flying stunt kites and to funerals. But as time trickled on ther rivalry over love of Naomi grew too great and they fell out, the one calling the other a complete lying cunt and the other vowing never to speak to that dickhead again.

Of course other Gods – Scalectrix, Fudge-Packer, Chandelier and Rent Boy – all tried to reason with the twins saying it was not Godly to fall out over a woman thus and to ‘get things in proportion’ – all to no avail. Only when Porridge and Spatula had a big fight in a Yates’ Wine Lodge causing £100s worth of damage did their mother Helen intervene.

At her suggestion the twins agreed to stage a contest and that the winner of their contest would be free to woo Naomi while the loser of it would have to fuck right off out of the way and keep his bloody oar out. The principle of this she agreed with the boys and left it to them to sort out what the ‘exacting nature’ © of the contest should be. In this detail did the troubles truly begin.

In Endland (sic) at this time there was a dire and miserable gameshow called QUIZOOLA! that by law was forced to played on TV each Sat nite at 7.30 til midnight on every channel and repeated on Tuesdays. Everyone reckoned that to win on this piece of shit programme was better than being King or being in MENSA or like being Albert Schweitzer. QUIZOOLA! went the catch phrase. YOU BETCHA! went the audience and the whole thing was a degrading spectacle whereby knowledge itself was rendered to be mere information and every human capacity and imagination were redrawn as stunted and thwarted lies.

Anyway. Porridge and Spatula decided to solve their contest over Naomi by going onto QUIZOOLA! and playing to the death. When word of this reached Helen and others of the older crowd of Gods they were dismayed for of cause it was against the rules of the Immortals to compete in a human game show. Apollo 12 summoned the warring twins to his side and told them off, asking them to abandon the dispute but both men refused.

Come the day Spatula and Porridge both had a lot to drink in the pre-show VIP lounge and argued a lot, throwing jibes at each other and some other celebs. On screen and sat behind tawdry podiums the regular captains Fred and Rosie West introduced their guests/team-mates Porridge and a pale girl called Leah Betts on Fred’s team and Spatula playing for Rosie alongside Joe Haldeman, a minor and allegedly corrupt govt official from the Nixon era.

Spatula and Porridge both looked very much the worse for wear and from the outset it certainly seemed they were determined to outdo each other in bringing heaven and godliness into general disrepute with the studio audience. At many of their jokes and lewd comments Naomi (who had showed up specially for the filming in a nice frock) had to look away and of the questions they answered most of the time they were wrong.

Spatula did not know who had invented invisible barbed wire, or what was the capital city of Spain. Porridge did not know how many letters there are in a alphabet or even the name of the first Black Pope. By the interval all crowd was laughing at them and Naomi was covered in shame.

As the TV played commercials for Baby Sham (fake kids) Porridge and Spatula threw water and then crisps at each other in full view of the audience and a scuffle emerged. Lucozade (who was king of the gods at this time) took offence at this and finally decided to intervene, appearing in the studio like a flesh of lightening and causing an immense silence so great you could even hear the spiders spinning their webs.

In no uncertain terms he banished Porridge and Spatula from Heaven forever and told them off for using ‘strong language’. The audience clapped and the host of QUIZOOLA! (some vermin bloke called Dick Turpin) thanked Lucozade for all his help and inspiration. “Never, in the whole history of 100 years of crap on TV have we had such troublesome contestant as them 2” he sed.

Banished in the night, slung out the loading bay doors of Sheperton Studios and bumping into a huge skip full of rubbish Spatula and Porridge wept their first real ‘tears of regret’ © and the stars and satellites looked down and gave no pity, as was to be expected in those days.

Before long of walking through the city at nite Porridge and Spatula were set upon by merciless thieves who stole what little money, clothes and credit cards they had. “Stay your hand for we are gods” sed Porridge who was starting to sober up a bit but the robbers couldn’t give a fuck if they were alierns from out of space or if they wore their underpants on top of their trousers or anything. “Shut up Fart Breath” sed the robbers and “Avast Landlubbers” and “Chemical Cosh” and many other slogans of the day.

Shivering naked and with only each other to keep warm people yelled offensive and derogatory statements of the time at them calling out that Porridge and Spatula looked like a couple of queer bastards going to a bent kind of party, and laughing hahaha at how they were holding hands with each other and sobbing. Anyway. The 2 gods soon realised they had to put their trouble and all disputes behind them etc if they were going to survive in the cold heartless exile of real earth.

Of how they stole clothes from washing lines to dress themselves in, of how they begged yen and Polish coins in the subway and how they slept in a gutter and a car-park little need to be said here. And of how one night later they curled up inside the big big letters of a red neon sign to hide and shelter from the thick-falling snow not much need be said here either except to note that the sign bore the slogan:

JONESTOWN WHISKY: THE TASTE OF HEAVEN ON EARTH

which was ironic.

Suffice it to say that Porridge and Spatula did not die and they were lucky not to and that not being dead was their main achievement in all of three (3) months that passed from that date on following their terrible appearance on QUIZOOLA!

Let us now twist this narration to another of its subjects.

While the banished gods Spatula and Porridge wandered the earth all stripped of their powers and dressed in humble Shell suits their ‘truest love’ © Naomi at first did not mourn their loss. She was a modern girl after all and hip to a different kind of beat so with the gods out of the way she soon ended up going out with another bloke and took a job in the coffee shop at Woolworths.

Months of this passed – her cleaning tables and her bloke (who was a bit of a loner) coming in at the end of the shift and chatting to her as the male menopausal boss scowled on in disapproval. Naomi didn’t mind the cafe – in fact she quite liked all the sailors or lorrydrivers what came in there and told stories of far way places down the motorway which is like a freeway in the Endland only not so free.

Anyhow. At a certain point things began to sea-change for Naomi so that for example she put on some weight and felt bad about her self and body parts. Also 1 nite Naomi had a dream abt living in America, near the border with Mexico. In the dream she had to cross the border every day – once in the morning and once in the evening – and each time she crossed it she lost something useful (a light bulb or a razor blade), robbing her of her heritage and a will to survive. This dream upset Naomi no end and when she woke from it she decided to dump The Loner guy and try to patch things up with Porridge and Spatula. She looked for news of them in the free-papers and made enquiries at some certain niteclubs and amusement halls where they used to hang out. All to no avail.

In point of fact, in order to save themselves from regular beatings, the brothers had been forced to adopt of more normal human names and henceforth went abt their lives under the aliases of Crispin and Gibson and thus, like the poets say, for all the world it seemed like Porridge and Spatula had disappeared. Together the ex-gods ‘Crispin’ and ‘Gibson’ had abt as much luck as ex-miners, ex-paras, ex-lovers and ex-cons tend to do – i.e. not fucking much – and in general the two fell on hard times and fell in with a bad lottery. If anyone asked them who they were and what the fuck they thought they were staring at they told their cover story of how they were brothers and travellers from an antique land and how they weren’t staring at anything but only minding their own business on a visitation to Endland in order to purchase up some parts for a oil refinery.

‘Crispin’ and ‘Gibson’ did their best to fit in with life in Endland (sic) – staying at a Unheated Salvation Army Hostel and drinking sake out of bottles still in the brown paper bags. Of local customs – Fire Walls in winter, Spastic Bashing and plays by Harold Pinter – the 2 of them were meticulous observant and both adopted the habit of smoking a curly pipe. Anyway. All this disguisery did not stop them being beaten and threatened or having their clothes stolen many times and of curse no 1 would give them a job because in words of a Endlland racist song their skins were as black as de-nationalised coal. Only at Xmas time did anyone show them any niceness when a few of the other bus-drivers invited them round for Xmas dinner and a stripper or two.

New year 96 for the twins was a real fucking downer, to say the least, moving on from town to town and upon the road again like Jack Kerouac, and wearing only Co-Op Jeans (blah blah). Together in their misery P&S swore each other a mighty oath/New Years Resolution that if either one (1) of them were killed on earth then the other would marry Naomi and look after her forever. How the brothers wept when they said this and the sad cars thundered by leaving them to the hardshoulder and rain, just by the on-ramp to the M6 at the Toddington Services, Bristol. Of all this, of course, cos she wasn’t a telepath, Naomi herself was total ignorant.

Time passed, phone calls criss-crossed the world and babies were born, not much of it to do with this story or the lives contained herein. Only Naomi (long since neglected) on the whole planet thought much abt the twins. She tried to entertain herself in other ways – by getting addicted to heroine, by going to discos etc but none of it really worked. Each nite she sat in her kitchen, drinking instant coffee that she made with hot water out of the tap and trying to complete a 500,000 piece jigsaw depicting a field of blood, mud and barbed wire at the battle of the Somme and in which every piece of the jigsaw was shaped like the body of a dead man. Still she could only think of Porridge and Spatula and she couldn’t find ‘restful sleep’ ©.

One night, in her distress, Naomi called on the Gods for help, her hands shaking as she picked up the phone and dialled 0898 333 666 ETERNITY NOW and waiting through the various ‘obscene’ ads for other services until someone from ‘heaven’ came on the line.

LOVE CONQUERS ALL said the bloke on the other end of the phone.

THE POSITION OF THE PLANETS SHOW A GOOD PORTENT FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AND MASS PRODUCTION THIS MONTH

THE STARS ARE HOT HOT HOT FOR YOUR SEXLIFE THIS YEAR he added, in a thick Lancashire accent and a acting voice what bordered on the illiterate.

The next day the goddess Anastasia appeared in a shivering and shimmering vision to Naomi in her room. She helped Naomi a bit with her jigsaw (completing one of the really difficult bits which showed 3 blokes who’d been eviscerated by a landmine), exchanged diet ideas with her and then got round to the real point of her visit. Laying a map of Endland down on the table Anastasia pointed to it and told Naomi where the twin gods had been hiding, their names changed and their faces disguised. Naomi traced red roads over blue rivers on the map, her finger joining places with names like Rotherspoon, Cardiff and Nigeria. That very afternoon she set off to find her friends, her few possessions packed up in the back of a car. Sweet Anastasia waved her goodbye and goodluck.

By this time of the yr (April) ‘Crispin’ and ‘Gibson’ were at their luck’s end and surviving only by drinking rainwater and eating cardboard. Indeed ‘Crispin’ was working in a factory during the industrial revolution and safety was not its strong point. The walls of the factory were bedecked with slogans like LOOK BUT DO NOT TOUCH and WASTE NOT WANT NOT but this latter especially did not seem to apply to the workforce who were forever being maimed in interesting and barbarous ways in the machinery which, according to the management was for knitting the tangles and knots of wire and wool that people sometimes see in dreams.

It took several weeks for Naomi to track the twin Gods down and for a while it seemed like Spatula/Crispin and Porridge/Gibson were always one step ahead of her. She tried the Bureau of Missing Persons and tourist information and then, in desperation hired a crippled detective whose compromised manhood was a kind of complex state-of-the-nation metaphor bound up with issues of contemporary polymorphous sexuality.

Ironside (for it was he) did a good job helping Naomi and only charged her half the price he had on his business cards, smiling as he gave her the address of that hotel down near the Park & Ride Car Park where Spatula/Crispin and Porridge/Gibson were holed up. Naomi went down there early morning, the trees on the avenues all tangled in their branches with old audio tape and polythene bags hung in tatters.

When she got to the hotel Naomi bribed the bell-hop (three kisses) and then made her way up in the goods lift, hoping to be something of a surprise.

FREE KEN LIVINGSTONE said the graffiti in the goods lift.

MR BOOMBASTIC.

WHO WOULD DREAM THAT TRUTH WAS LIES?

In the room only ‘Gibson’ was there, lying in bed and watching a film called PIG TROUBLE (Soviet Kino 1935) while ‘Crispin’ was out at work in the knitting factory. Apparently even the actors on television stopped what they were doing in the middle of a scene and stared and started to cry when Naomi walked in and was re-united with Porridge/Gibson and apparently even the chamber maids in the corridor outside came running and danced and sang, and apparently even real rose petals ® fell from the ceiling and apparently luminous yellow stuff rained on the piazza from the heavens up above. N and Porridge/Gibson were overjoyed.

At six (6) o clock when Spatula/Crispin had not returned they were a bit worried and began to speculate a little in hushed tones. At seven (7) they were very worried and at eight (8) they knew for certain that something was wrong. At nine (9) there came a knock upon the door but neither Naomi nor Porridge had the guts to answer it. The person (or whatever it was) knocked several times, waited then knocked again but still N and P could do nothing cept sit still immobile there on the bed. They could hear the person get out a pen and paper and start writing something but still neither of them dare move to find out what was up. Their ‘hearts were in their mouths’. Then after a while a slip of yellow-type paper came slipping under the door and footsteps of the person went stumbling away.

In a silence wherein you could hear the beat of a butterflies wings Naomi got up and picked up the paper, unfolding it hurriedly and handed it to Porridge for she couldn’t read. Porridge read it out loud and for all its contents his voice box did not falter. The note sed:

The Person Crispin Killed in A Accident at UNilever sometime today. APologies. Sincerely . . .

And then there was a unreadable signature.

Naomi fainted and Porridge too felt a bit weak, as tho one (1) half of him had been taken away and would never return – like the cells in his body themselves were ‘rent asunder’ © and like the poets said, love, love will tear us apart.

A month of weird dreams. Rain clouds inside an office building. A glass cat. Two kids on a kidney machine. A man with dynamite taped to his chest.

In Porridge’s dream (recurring) the Gods are arguing about the ethics and codes of their behaviour. One group maintains that since no one believes in them anymore they are not obliged to behave in any particular way – to set standards or act like a mouthafuckin role model. A 2nd group argue that God-hood is an intrinsic quality whose essence has to be maintained regardless of changes in their perception (or non-perception) in the outside world. In the dream Porridge finds himself standing up suddenly to speak and crying out in passion thus:

“But surely fellow Olympians . . .” he says “But surely this is just chasing shadows, surely this is just the old Stones/Beatles, Blur/Oasis argument all over again . . .”

The other Gods (esp Zeus) look to Porridge like he is out of his mind. He looks back at them and only after a minute or 2 does he see the foolishness of what he has said.

Each morning Porridge wakes from this dream, covered in sweat, mouth dry, Naomi clutched to him, tears for dead Spatula in his right-wide-open eyes.

The Gods are just.

When Apollo 12 saw how much Porridge had suffered and how much he loved Naomi Campbell he sed it was OK for him to be a god again and they had a big party up in heaven and a wedding which is what all good stories end with. Anastasia was maid of honour and their old friend Rent-Boy was best man. All the gods were there – Asimov, Golgotha, Vinyard, Hologram, Mr Twinkle and Horse Radish as well as Barbie and Jupiter and many others too. It was a fabulous day and neither tears nor fighting did mar of it.

Only at one point did anyone cry, when Naomi and Porridge slipped away from the main party for a while and went down to that pool in the forest through which you could look down onto earth. There, thru the clouds and smog, they dropped a tear or 2 down onto the vandalised and unkempt grave of Spatula in Endland (sic). They missed him, of course, but kept their promises to him, and to each other, for ever and a day.

Eve & Mary

a very good story about two girls in 11 probably religious parts

Eve earned money washing blood containers in a hospital and later she earned money by going round planting trees for the govt after riots in ‘81.

Yrs later than that even she used to feel a gush of pride that the stunty wasted trees festooned with audio tape and poly bag ghosts were all planted by her hands.

Eve could get pride from anything.

*

After a long courtship Eve got married to the son of a hairdresser. Eve (at that time) was a blonde stripagram and he was an oily Tarzanogram and people sed they were a perfect match.

Some nites they stayed in together and practised their routines, drunk on gin and laughing like hyenas. Other nites they stayed in and assembled biros for piece work.

Times were good to them.

*

Eve and her husband/Tarzanogram bore one (1) kid – a girl Mary whose fave toy was a thing called MY LITTLE VOID. All night she’d stare in it, and all day if you let her.

Mary had what docters called “the faith of no faith” and many times dead birds, spiders etc were healed in her hands and their old TV worked better when she sat near to it or spoke and also she was double-jointed in an intriguing way.

*

At pay-school Mary soon got a reputation and her locker bore a big sign saying THIS IS A ‘PROHIBITED PLACE’ AS DEFINED BY THE 1989 OFFICIAL SECRETS ACT.

Teachers avoided Mary and other kids were scared of her but secretly loved her. No one knew what went on in Mary’s head.

*

Let us now change the subject.

At Mary’s pay-school there was also a boy of the species called Maguiness whose hair was long and eyes roving (etc etc). Maguiness was so dumb he didn’t even know he was alive. One day he got his hair caught in a new piece of experimental woodwork machinery (or something) and his head was damn near ripped off its moorings.

*

While Maguiness nearly died all the teachers and guards were in a panic and none knew what to do except switch on the school alarm bell and the sprinklers too and shout for help. Maguiness was rolling on the floor like a fish in quick lime, blood everywhere.

The crowd that gathered was as clueless as it was voyeuristic and desensitised to violence. Mary walked thru the crowd, and it seemed (at least to those who were there) as if the crowd parted for her.

*

What next?

Mary knelt by Maguiness and took his head in her hands, fitting it back on where the neck was, cradling him against her and singing softly an old rebel song from the Spanish Civil War.

Maguiness swooned, and drifted and smiled, caught up in the rhythm of her voice, and Mary smiled, a calm smile that most people only experience a few times in their lives.

When the doctors finally arrived Maguiness was already better.

*

When summer came Eve and Tarzan got jobs in another town and Mary had to stay home in a borstal. It wasn’t ideal but her parents wrote letters every month which said the place they went to was cold as hell and ice froze over all the trees, cars and climbing frames in the parks. There were tigers there, and mammoths and plenty of idiots too so there was a lot of work for stripagrams and tarzanograms.

Eve and her husband got rich, slowly but surely and joined the middle class.

*

Back home Mary did a few more cures and was soon pursued by journos and various cults. Everyone wanted to press the story of her miracle working into a story of their own devising but Mary wouldn’t let them.

When a kid phoned up sick from a phone box or when an astronaut panicked on the long climb back down from space, when a train crashed and a passenger was caught, when a bingo-caller got cancer of the throat or when one of the lads on her estate got a hangover Mary was always there to help. People soon called her Gods Doctor tho Mary herself never believed in anything.

*

The days and yrs passed, getting faster and faster. Mary’s life was like one of those gay musical numbers from a big Hollywood production only it was a kind of low budget thing and it wasn’t really gay.

People said that each cure she affected cost her dear in physical energy and that sometimes she cried herself to sleep. If any of this was true Mary never let it show. Only the healing of a whole load of burn victims after a big fire at the local B&Q seemed to take it out of her and then only for a few days.

*

When Mary died (Winter 1640) her body was examined by the local constabulary doctor who, by reputation at least, was something of an expert in curios and women’s anatomy. He found nothing strange.

Her house lies empty to this day and is often visited by gullible people from all over the world. No one can explain the strange rain of flower petals which falls ther each year and still less the words which appear as if by MAGIC in the damp of her dark cellar walls:

PEACE PEACE, UNEASY PEACE

Chaikin/Twins

NOTE: Some names in this story have been changed or omitted to protect both the innocent and the litigious.

Chaikin bought a couple of girls in Endland. They were identical twins, the daughters of an upper class family what had landed on hard times. Sixteen (16) when he bought them and pretty to die for, with ivory skin and dark eyes, beautiful lips, the girls were also ‘real virgins’ © and Chaikin was pleased with that. Taken together as a pair (for the father wouldn’t sell them as separates) the girls cost him £250,000 which is about 2,500 Danish Kroner.

Elizabeth and Jane got taken off to his house in ________, where his wife ____________, also lived. Chaikin treated the girls real nice for some time while he observed them at rest and at play.

After time and when they were ‘of age’ he began to perpetrate his plan upon them which went like this. He chose one girl and subjected her, morning, noon, evening and night to every kind of sexual act, perversion, demand and activity to which his mind and body were capable. The girl Elizabeth was, in this way, repeatedly sodomised, whipped, prostituted, made to crawl naked on her belly through the house, made to suck the servants cocks, used as a table for the eating off of food, made to stand for long hours half dressed and genitals exposed in the window etc etc and all kind of kinky things he had read about in a book or in twisted recess of his ‘mind’.

And all this same time the other twin, Jane was treated like a right royal princess, washed and bathed in Diet Lilt and made clean by servants, dressed in silk from H&M etc. Only once a day were the two girls allowed to know anything of each other, being kept in separate wings of the house – at 6 (six) each evening they were allowed to speak on the phone and tell each other their adventures of the day.

For six months this continue, the girl Jane cosseted and spoiled, falling to sleep on Sweet Dreams Pillows during massage ‘by one of the many eunuchs in the palace’. And at the same time her sister Elizabeth crying herself to a bitter sleep with the sperm stains, soreness and bruises of some fresh indignity still aching in her body. What a great laugh this was thought Chaikin.

Roundabout this time a bloke called __________ moved into the town where Chailkin held his domicile and opened a video shop. __________ was curious at the various reports he heard of the bloke who lived on the hill what had a wife and two apparently beautiful daughters or cousins or something staying at the house. So ____________ from the video shop went up a hill to the house and knocked on the door where Chailkin’s wife ___________ opened the door and bade him to enter at his own will.

Claiming to be a traveller who had somehow lost his way from the ringroad and who was just trying to get to ___________, ___________ (the bloke from the video shop) was given a room in which to stay the nite and his horses were put up in the garage.

Falling asleep in his bed ____________ was awoken at midnight by a terrible screaming. He crept downstairs and saw the most beautiful woman what ever walked the earth (in his opinion) getting fucked in the mouth by a whole load of lunatics from the local asylum (or something) and each one with a member as large as his brain was small etc etc. Powerless to intervene _________ went back to his bed and masturbated frantically before falling into a troubled sleep.

Next morning at breakfast ___________ saw the woman again and, taking advantage of a temporary alone-ness asked her if she wished to put end to her horrible mistreatment and escape from the Guest House with him that day. Imagine __________’s surprise when Jane (not Elizabeth) replied that she had no desire to leave the Castle and that her treatment there was every bit as fine and good as she might ever have wished it in a whole month of Sundays and that she was sure any other girl would give her right arm to be treated like she was.

Intrigued ‘beyond belief’ © ___________ contrived to stay another day at the Castle by saying that his car still wouldn’t start. He spent the day with Jane who, having been ordered by her master (Chaikins) not to mention her sister, did not and instead passed the time walking ___________ (the bloke from the video shop) around the Rose Garden and making small talk in Latin, French and Greek as was the fashion at that time.

By midnight _____________ (the bloke from the video shop) was no closer to working out what the fuck was going on and he went to bed in a mood of confusion. An hour later he was woken (as he had been the night before) by the most appalling of shouts and screams which, on investigation, looked for all the world as though the gorgeous Jane with whom he had passed the day most refinedly was being forcibly enjoyed up the arse by a large priest or Cardinal while a few buxom women in neo-Nazi uniforms (blah blah) held her down. Pressing his eye close to the keyhole ___________ was so engrossed in what he saw that a noise behind him failed to register.

When Chaken’s wife ___________ tapped _____________ (from the video shop) on the shoulder he jumped up at once and quickly made an excuse about looking for a toilet and getting lost. Chaken’s wife _________ told him where the bog was and excused herself, lighting her own way down the corridor with a long and unnecessary candle.

The bloke from the video shop (____________), made as if to go to the bog and then returned to his vantage point and watched ‘Jane’ getting used horribly in several more ways. After an hour _________ could bear it no longer and, utilising his memory of the House and its gardens, contrived to find a route into the chamber wherein ‘Jane’ was getting abused in this way. His route took him over rooftops, through windows, into ventilation ducts etc and left him, finally concealed behind an old type of curtain made from psychedelic curtain material (called an Arras) in the same room as ‘Jane’ whose cries of pain were pretty well drowned out by the groans of satisfaction coming from a whole sports team what had arrived as if this were entertainment laid on for them by Charkin.

Only when ‘Jane’s’ torment was finished and she lay tired on her bed did ______________, the bloke from the video shop reveal himself and implore her to speak with him about what was going on. Of course ‘Jane’ who was really Elizabeth knew nothing of ___________ from the video shop and thought at first his presence in the room was probably yet another cruel and unusual idea dreamed up by the insane Cherkin. In the end tho, after much talking, everything got cleared up, the bloke from the video shop got a tearful embrace and together he and Elizabeth hatched an escape plan to rescue her of the horror she had too long endure.

Just at that moment tho the door to the bed-chamber opened and Chaikin stood in the doorway with his wife whose pale face wore a slippy kind of smile. Elizabeth fell on her bed in a dead faint and the bloke from the video shop, powerless to resist, was carried off to a high dungeon and also incarcerated against his volition.

Several days passed in which the bloke from the video shop was kept imprisoned thus and it looked like he’d never escape. All he could think of was the indignities etc suffered by Elizabeth and the many hard-ons this gave him as well as how he wanted to save her and Jane. Only rats and other animals scurrying in the dirt of his cell were any company to ________ during this time.

Down in the town some of the people began to get a bit worried. The video store had been closed for several days and people were fed up watching the same stuff all the time plus worried abt overdue fines and other penalties. Besides all this _________ had not shown up at any of his regular pubs and bars and he owed several people a drink. Remembering a conversation about the house on the hill (etc) one of ____________’s pals organised a deputation to visit the place and search for news of ___________.

Just when he (_____________ ) was going to give up hope of ever getting out, saving the twins or eating human food again he looked out the winder of his cell and saw a torch-lit procession coming up the road past Tescos twds the house. It wasn’t long before the locals were barging down the doors with a couple of wheelie-bins and helping him, Jane and Elizabeth to safety. How their hearts sang etc and blood soared to be free.

All thru that nite (3rd Nov) Chaikin and his wife fled, trying to avoid mob justice but in the end they were caught and their bodies were torn asunder and thrown in a river by the Volga.

People in Endland (sic) still tell the story of _________ from the video shop and rescue of Jane and Elizabeth and how they lived happily thereafter forever and a day and how the shop they ran was a good one (not like BLOCKBUSTER which rented out many many defective copies of PINNOCHIO and CHAIN GANG) and how the Gods themselves (esp Zorba, Poseidon Adventure, Risotto and Mr Bumpy) were jealous of their pleasure, their hapiness and their lives.

AFTERWORD

Chailkan’s ‘experiment’ on the twins was certainly a cruel one but in many ways the results were surprising. Some readers have asked for details of how the 2 girls and _________ from the video shop ‘got along’ as it were and which of them was the horniest and most sexually adventurous and demanding of new forms of pleasure etc in later life. However this is a good book and one that respects privacy and it is not an intention here to cater to the prurient and voyeuristic needs of that class of reader who, lacking wild erotic events in their own life, would wish that they could read of them here.

James

OLD DAYS

It was November and cold. James thought he did not like a night-picnic and in the hurry to get into the car when the thunder really started he dropped KANGAROO and no one could find him in the dark. So then KANGAROO was lost and James only had DEAD SOLDIER to play with.

For the night-picnic Dad had stretched the blanket on the concrete near them old trees and the hi-rises with shell holes in them what looked like a skull and they all sat and Harry cried and Olivia saw that scary ghosts were stealing crisps from them when they looked away. That was when the thunder started.

They ate by the lite of car headlights and somehow pretended not to notice that Dad was slowly slowly slowly losing the plot.

*

In the car journey to home James said he was frightened.

Dad asked him ‘why’.

And James said ‘the dark’.

And then it was all quiet in the car and you could hear the rain and you could hear the moaning sound that DEAD SOLDIER makes sometimes when no one plays with him and James waited a long time for someone to say something and he waited and he waited and he waited and no one did.

*

They drove over Scary Mountain, thru the woods and the ‘sound of trees’ ©.

James asked: ‘Who can sing a song to un-frighten me?’

Dad didn’t say nothing.

And Olivia was quiet. And Harry was too little to really understand the question. And Mum was long gone. And there was no one else in the car.

*

After the night picnic things calmed down a bit (approx 1 month) and in any case Dad was back at work, in a big white building with long corridors that was always smelling of disinfectant (* probably a hospital or morgue) and the kids went back to school.

School was more corridors and also concrete and metal detectors, strange rulers and rationing, learning songs and actions to go with them and J made a picture every day.

*

Pictures:

Planets.

A jungle.

Gunship. A robot on fire.

Space vehicle.

Sky.

There was a picture of dad too – a blunt try at painting something tangible of J’s world but dad in the picture was blurred and waterlogged, lacking definition. Dad swamped in the green blue colour of bad dreams.

*

A week or 2 passed. J and O learned stuff at the school, Harry cried and Dad bought an illegal patch for DOOM that changed the faces on all of the monsters stalking its dark green corridors into his own face. No one mentioned the nite-picnic, no one mentioned the rain which really seemed to start on that nite and never found time to stop. And no one mentioned the loss of KANGAROO.

Dad’s patch for DOOM was a passport picture for the country of distortion and death, scanned in and replicated a thousand times so that in the hours and hours of his playing he killed himself a million times, splattering his own blood to four corners but playing and playing again. Dad all fucked out with lack of sleep, his own face wounded in the mirror of the screen.

There were no more night-picnics and no more songs. There were no more phone calls from Mum. But there was a spider web of tension in the house where the curtains were always closed, a spider web of tension linking everything, wound tite between the furniture and caught into their clothes.

One morning Olivia found Dad crying again at the breakfast table – there was a gun (or something shaped like one) in his hands. She were too scared to tell anyone.

*

Some conversations.

(a) Do you think he’ll make it type stuff.

J pessimistic. O trying hard.

Harry just crying.

(b) On the nature of physical reality.

J asking O questions. A dream he had one nite about a man whose eyes were spinning saucers like an olden cartoon.

*