LIFE, THE UNIVERSE AND GOATS
Chapter 8
Wednesday 21st June London Rotten Borough of Lower Springwood
We are but dust and shadow
HORACE
A recording of the viscous outbreak of democracy, partying and solidarity, picked up by sound probes, replayed to the morning meeting of the ERROR committee and adjudged by the little grey man from the Home Office, Fester Featherstonehaugh-Major, to be against National Security and just not cricket. Belly bad form.
The Chief Constable calls for a measured response in line with the gentle persuasion of striking miners at Orgreave.
El Presidenté’s new Chief Medical Officer, Doctor Thysson, volunteers her second nipple, and declares her scented candles and whale music on standby.
The new Governor Blunkett responds by viscously attacking platefuls of hobnobs, jammy dodgers, and a Lemon Drizzle cake donated by the armed wing of Lower Springwood Women’s Institute.
‘High time we called out the Riot Squad,’ commends the Chief Constable Colin Dibble over steaming tea, and disapproving the decoration of crumbs down the jacket front of new Governor Blunkett.
Fester Featherstonehaugh-Major, little grey man from the Home Office, Chief Constable Colin Dibble, the Grim Reaper Doctor Thyson, and new Governor Blunkett squinting through dickie-spattered window panes, like Dickens’ boys, at a battle-line of Riot Squad Darth Vaders with black visors down, beating their shields with extended billy-sticks, and awaiting the crackdown on democracy.
‘Weady for the Bully-off?’
‘Ho yes, sar.’ And the Chief Constable is reminded of some ghastly off-the-wall leftover from a Michael Jackson video.
Hell rumbles the hard earth beneath the black boots of the Chief Constable, when suddenly like magic from Heaven at the far end of the concrete yard a black chasm opens like the treasure cave of Ali Baba. The Chief Constable with mouth agape and stunned by a mid-summer pantomime of an advancing Viking horned hat and mauve smoking jacket.
‘Sar!’
‘Hmm?’
‘You see that man there?’
‘Where? Hmm.’
‘Well that’s Knees, sar.’
The white cup and saucer smash to the floor. ‘Get that man!’ cries Featherstonehaugh-Major, the little grey mouse from the Home Office.
***
Bedlam.
‘Are you awake now, dear?’
Needles of light lance the jelly of the eyeballs and stitch pockets of nerves at the back <—> Pandemonium <—> Swallowing impossible <—> Disinfectant and cheap perfume power-punches your head down the drain of the Underworld <—> Drives vomit to the bridge <—>
‘You’ve had a breakdown, dear. Can you hear me? I said — Nurse, it’s no good.’
The cold tip of a glass tube burrows into the blue under-webbing of the tongue <—> A grape <—> Mushy black banana <—> Back bruised as target practice by the Romanian gymnastics team <—> Nurse Helen from Hell admires the pissbag like a golden trophy <—> ‘The Consultant wants a word with you about your crafty drinking habit. Tsch! Tsch! You naughty boy ...’
‘— ath oth! —’
‘... after he’s finished his golf round.’ Bedsheets constrict the chicken bones of arms and breast <—> ‘Now you be a good boy. Get some rest.’
Rest? Fat chance. Archibald James unclamps lashes as heavy as coffin lids, and squints at a steel cannula rammed into his wrist encrusted yellow and black and with black dregs around the spout <—> So <—> They have him rigged <—> Crook, line and stinker <—> A Hero’s punishment handed down by the gods <—> For the sport <—> For the Hell of it <—> And when Nursy-Nursy has pecked her pound of flesh, the Doctors will come to gorge on the bits that are left <—>
<—> Cold fingers plunge into the papery skin of the wrist <—>
Borg bitch.
‘It’s no good,’ shrugs Candida James, ‘I can’t get any sense.’
McDOGBURGER WARD
Proud Sponsors of the National Health Service. No Feeding the Wildlife
And where the hordes of highly paid Managers when you want to lodge a complaint? Up in their Ivory Towers. A Hero of the Governor’s high rank deserving a private room with fluffy pillows, potty, and television screen so he can watch the racing in peace.
Lids clamped and they can’t get to you. Mark them. Study their every move. And then Lady Luck will hatch a plan to escape from this public torture chamber.
Knees loading the dice from day one. And what are those numbskulls from the Home Office doing about it? Bugger all. Knees is taking everything. Not content with having won <—> now Knees is rubbing their noses in the dirt. Well stuff Knees. Stuff the Home Office and stuff the Lodge.
Revenge?
A soul to sell for a devil’s lick of revenge served sweet.
Hit the swine in the pocket. Where it hurts.
‘The Nurses have been ever so nice, dear. They even have men ones these days.’
A Hero’s effort wasted down the sewer-tubes thanks to Knees, and if those numbskulls from the Home Office refuse to listen to the country’s number-one privatised Prison Governor then boo-sucks. They can find out the hard way. Hopeless. Bliar on a bad day. The impenetrable thornbush of authority. Like banging your head on the Wailing Wall. A Hero’s best. They can’t deny him that. A brace of medals coming. Any day now.
And when Knees has secured a final victory he will stand high and mighty on a mountain of prison rubble that was once the rightful property of a Hero of the people.
‘If you get a moment, Missus James, I wonder if you wouldn’t mind filling in this customer satisfaction survey. And these consent forms. For some experiments.’
Not really listening. Stuff ’em <—> The liquid cosh lashes along leathery veins like irradiated lightning <—> A lickety-split soul to sell for a slurp of Scotch sticky-sweet Heaven <—>
‘I might pop in tomorrow, dear.’
Sleep slides the slippery slope to sluice cobwebs and fluff from the dungeons and vaults, empty chambers and back passages. And he succumbs. Fast asleep. Dead to the World.
***
And Benjamin, like Hamlet, is bequeathed a soul cleft in twain, a sickening dispiriting swilling of the stomach. ’Tis unmanly grief, brought on no doubt by a lack of sun, by an overdose of infectious literature. Alone. Banished from a sunshine suburb of Heaven to a dim ghetto of Hell where the rest is never silence. All hope of a Meaning of Life abandoned.
Perhaps the Governor will preserve this shrine content in the conviction of the Professor’s return after a twenty-eight-day fool’s holiday upon failure to repay the one-point-seven-five-million. Abandoned the Queen Anne bureau, the pot plants, the dust-covered books, the mound of academic mush mutating a papier-maché midden between the beds, mattress impressed with body contour, black box pumps Cygnus X’s Superstring, the hum of the man hanging a curious hint of lavender.
Rage. Rage against the machine. Rage against the monster — the Proceeds of Crime Act will suck every drop of your blood.
And bang on cue the invasion of Stormtroopers with snorting black visor-grills, crashing and banging and kicking and thrashing <—> And with a sunny hello by way of a merry ole swing of their London truncheons <—> Tickling as they go from customer to customer <—>
Bish! Bash! Bosh!
<—> Consider yourself rehabilitated <—>
***