‘Sounds nasty.’
‘Ho yes, sar.’
‘Good show.’
‘I’ve got my men hard at it in the Gents toilets on a scaled-down model of the prison made entirely from matchsticks ...’
‘Splendid. Splendid.’
‘... And tonight, sir, we drop sound-probes from the heliclopters ...’
‘What what!’
‘... We tried ringing the Governor’s office ... but a chap said something about a party and can we please leave them in peace.’
‘One last over of business before we bweak for a well-earned lunch …’ Fester Featherstonehaugh-Major, team caption from the Home Office, bowls down the wicket a video-disc stamped VISITORS: SECURITY — ‘… Say, have any you chaps come across — one moment — a — Plum and a Whiteshaw before?’
Squirming in the hot seat, the Chief Constable lets off a God-almighty string of backstreet expletives.
***
Before we crash London’s most exclusive party to judge how high hardcore doses of English literature can corrupt the body and mind of a young Rastafarian, we crash first the tenth floor of Norman Tebbit House to judge how high hardcore doses of washing and drying little monsters’ clothing can corrupt the body and mind of Benjamin’s blue-dreamed other half, Just Jennifer.
The severest half of your sentence served inside by your partner in the crime of Life.
The War of Washing self-waged to assuage a suddy conscience lemony from the downing of a bottle and a half of dry sherry the night before <—>
Milky’s Just the Way You Are leaks from Jennifer old-school black box.
Your street-savvy seven- and five-year-old in these Judgment days is not to be seen dead leaving home unless kitted in the correct labels (Prada, Versace), armed with full record of human rights, lunchbox chained to the wrist, pepper-spray, pheromone-spray, adrenalin shot, gas-mask, and audio-visual link to the family lawyer fire-wired directly to the skull.
Don’t stand there gawping at the monsters of norf London. Lurch into the living-room. Shake the nuclear dust from under your feet. How about a nice cup of tea? Now don’t be shy. A beer from the sideboard if you prefer. And let’s watch the news together.
Gawd blimy — Stone the Crows — How’s your farver — Shoot-’em-up Joe.
The night’s news on screen hardly depicting a prison warzone suffering squillions of pounds’ worth of criminal damage from violent thugs on the rampage. Experts are seeking to establish a dialogue. And the public can rest assured. Governor James bravely injured in the line of duty. All parties calling for an Inquiry. And one far-out politician suggesting the Inquiry should be made public.
Just Jennifer snatches the just-enough half-bottle of sherry and settles for the also-ran night’s news. Police have arrested two men who crashlanded a helicopter on the roof of a paint factory, close to today’s disturbances at Lower Springwood Prison. The two learner-drivers claimed to be unaware of the ban imposed on all flights by Air Traffic Control because of the freak end-of-the-world weather.
Jennifer’s vibrator of a devil’s black log dances in fit circles.
‘Hello, you don’t know me,’ drones a deliciously friendly female voice down Jennifer’s aural canal, ‘but my name is Persephones Knees.’
***
Inside the Block a galling outbreak of generosity, grace, the thrusting of photographs under the nose of your neighbour and being nice.
Democracy the order of the day.
Community chefs serfing over a hot stove. And even the vegan vegetarians are catered for.
No cutting. No baseball-batting the kneecaps. No slapping. No calling your neighbour a Whitney.
Or an Archer.
Which is worse.
A hardcore minority abuse their bodies openly with games of Monopoly, Scrabble, or for those of a firm stomach a lovely game of darts.
The DO NOT DISTURB edict hangs like wolfsbane over the private hippy bed of the Professor and observed for the first thirty-odd hours but then Gonzalez-the-Basque-Bank-Robber and General Chopper invade from their Room 101 Ludo marathon to poke and prod the cadaver, and satisfied there is still life left in the head of the nation’s foremost academic, off they trot.
Premier-Division villains by the score pilgrimage to the Fours to offer the General their Craven-cottage respect: the Kray Twins, Jimmy ‘Milky Tray’ Broil, John McTicker, Dale Winton, Arnie Schwitzer-Nadgers, J G Ballard, Electrodes Eddie, Harry the Hamster and hard man Hans Blix from SPECTRE (on a five-stretch for the malicious hiding of Weapons of Mass Destruction).
The culinary creative juices of the community chefs flow thick like gravy so keen are they to season the pot with the newly discovered Nazi from the freezer-room. Which should add a certain gamy flavour to the ensemble. A pinch of salt. Garlic for good measure. But it takes so long to defrost the Nazi they are scuppered in their plan by the newly woken Professor who saves the Nazi by refreezing him.
Not for nothing is the Professor a runny egghead, and he conjures a plan to season the pot with half the stash of everybody else’s cannabis.
Community chefs agree this is probably a custom among academics.
For which they are grateful.
And everybody is looking forward to marmalade seas and tangerine skies.
Which should make a nice change.
Maybe the odd lecture for a laugh.
Mmmm. Then again they are not sure they are willing to go so far.
But they are willing to try anything once. Even deep-frozen Nazi.
Three cheers for the nutty Professor! The only shame a shortage of cooking sherry.
To your left — the steel trap and flusher, a marvel of medieval Springwood plumbing, smells somewhat of country violets with a hint of heather and roses, having warmed the bottom of the Professor, that part of the anatomy the greater body of university professors prefer to speak from.
To your right — a Queen-Anne bureau set ready with fountain pen and fancy writing paper for the day the Professor’s eggy head extrudes a bony-fiddly lecture.
Benjamin dripping students’ papers over the bed like contaminated samples of alien sperm — ‘I do not approve,’ he says stiffly, ‘of punch-ups in your lecture theatre ...’
A faint flicker of academic life from the horizontal Professor.
Benjamin waves a single-page dissertation saved from drowning. ‘… Sisko …’ A wave of suspicion at Warp-Factor-Five.
Movement off the fluffy pillow from the crazy black curls, and the blue eyes and the crooked smile. ‘Sisko is an exchange student sent down from the Californian Academy of Proper Sciences.’
‘… Sisko wants a three-year doctorate in Las Vegas to prove God won the universe in a poker game and has been trying to get shot of it since.’
‘Stud or Texas Hold-em?’
‘Doesn’t say.’
‘Oh.’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Depends,’ replies Professor Jason Knees evasively, and studying a professorly spliff — ‘Sisko’s what? Private student or scrounging public wastrel?’
‘Err ... private student.’
‘It’s bold ... conceptual ...’
‘It’s bollocks.’
‘... didactic … dadaist ...’
‘I’m giving it a D-minus.’ Scholar Benjamin discards the single sheet into the mush-mound of student free-thinking rising alarmingly between the beds.
The lucky dip of a free hand. ‘Dax … wants a three-year doctorate blah-de-blah – fancy, again Las Vegas – to prove planet Earth is a defective copy of an advanced computer program ...’
‘Dax is a fully functioning femetrosexual,’ recollects the recalcitrant Professor. ‘Technically, a lady-boy-boy-lady.’