Top Gear Leaving Europe Special

New plans have been unveiled to answer the call for England to leave Europe.

            Reacting to pressure brought through comments by on every news story on Yahoo (ever) the Prime Minister is rumoured to be announcing a historical break with the continent in the new year. Such plans go back many years of course, with the erection of giant propellers across anywhere in the British Isles (that previously had a good view) now having reached a sufficient number to propel Britain like a colossal swamp buggy about the globe. The idea is said to have come from Live And Let Die, or The Man With The Golden Gun, or Roger Moore anyway – whichever one it was where Bond flew around in a swamp, raft, buggy thing. Unless that was a speedboat (and I quote).

            The monumental cost of the project to move Britain out of Europe and into another continent has been offset by the whole being filmed as the central theme of this year’s (still under wraps) Top Gear special. In the two hour spectacular Jeremy Clarkson grumbles mightily about Europe, Richard Hammond falls off things and won’t eat the food, and in a surprise win for James May the home-counties are moved in a small circle with the aid of the world’s largest elastic band.

            It only remains for the Government to decide which continent Britain will eventually tie up to (and which is not Europe). A further rumour persists however that in the event of none of them being quite right Britain will ‘form its own continent somewhere not too hot, and preferably in the past’.

            Also, we won the cricket.

Parquet

Like anything of value to him he had lost all hope at sea. His rescue owed nothing to it, it was either fate or a curse that saw him here now; and there was no such thing as fate. It might have been better had the sea taken him too. Or perhaps it had for there was something of the sea story about the den. Dick knew it was 1860, though here it was the year tree scented ducks.

            “Frog,” said his benefactor, Truly.

            “Frog?”

            “They make most things, do the frogs,” she said. Her accent was the sort of soup that never ran out as each day whatever was to be had was added with more water to the pot. Something Spanish, something of the French, and even a little Dutch (though they spoke in English). Each word smoothed into the next, all the rough edges worn down by so much use and none of the languages her first. “Including time, and certainly the years,” it was an accent that crossed the world and one not unfamiliar to Dick. He had heard it in ports, aboard ship, anywhere that travellers gathered and crossed. And yet quite to the contrary everything he had seen so far suggested quite the opposite. This city, this island, this ‘Parquet’ as it was called kept its people jealously. There had been much here before, but there had been a Parquet for just a little more than three hundred years he had learned. The years descended from then. Trois cent un deux as they called it in the grander quarter Truly had named the Rules. Here in the Delves that made it tree scented ducks. Words were stale bread; they took the shape of the mouth the more they were chewed.

            Dick found by a fishing smack had been brought to Parquet. It’s old harbour overhung by the green rock upon which whose palaces and grandeur he had seen no closer once tossed to the quay with the lobsters. Here, and there was no sunlight. These were the Delves and they stank. And the Delves he had heard were by no means the worst places to be. Truly picking at the catch had picked at Dick. They drank a sour spirit from tiny cups. It tasted of burned paper. She had paid for the bottle with three wooden coins, well milled and thick varnished. The varnish had gone green. The spirit was foul and the light from the fish oil lanterns with their cracked glass cast fractures across the den.

There were only another two like Truly that Dick could see here. Their coats a better cut than the rogues that otherwise crowded, sang, boasted and sneered at one another (though the cut and the cloth made for someone else and shiny at breast and elbow). Those rogues stood apart from Truly not only for the poorer quality of their stained garments, the attempts at bow and frippery that Truly did not concern herself with, but because each and every one of them was armed.

            “They think of their selves as pirates?” said Dick quietly.

            “Picaroons,” Truly said the word with a flourish of her hand. “And once, si, they were pirates. Or not they, but they that were first such a thing. Above and our laws might change daily, but certain tradicion may not change. Picaroons were a part of what made our Parquet. These are those that have chosen that life. They may have either the long wand,” she mimed one of the each-unique guns that most wore at belt or in sash, “and the short bodkin,” this to the sword all possessed and again rarely with two alike. “Or the short wand and the long bodkin. Also you will note the hat? Their hats are very important to them. What wealth they have goes upon their arms, their hats, and the importance of living an outwardly very fine life. They are consequently almost always extremely poor. They might not eat for a day, but they should be seen to drink very well. You should not offer them offence, though not being of their kind they would mostly ignore you. You could not defend yourself and the price of a wound handed down by the Jug would be beyond most of their means.”

            He tried not to stare at them. Men and women, all shirts and britches, bows and sash, ribbons and ornamentation, and of course the very fine hats that could serve no better purpose other than to simply be that. Dick said, “There is war?”

            “There is work for one that would fight, si,” admitted Truly. “And work is what we should put you to. You must eat. You must have the wherewithal to at least take a rope for the night upon which to lean. You are a sailor?”

            “A whaler!” Dick corrected, the distinction was important to him.

            “There is no sailing here.”

            “But the smack that brought me here?”

            “Is owned by those that saved you, and sold you,” she added, “to me. And you must work. If you fall away then you shall be made to work, and for no purse, and that is a trap that once fallen into whose sides are very steep.” Dick thought on that. He made to answer only for Truly to forestall what he had to say with a raised hand. “No,” she said. “Whatever skills you might believe you possess are in the hands of others, of the Ordre. You must, my friend, start at the very most bottom. And what flows there, and from there?”

            “I work for you?”

            “Si, indeed you already do. You look strong enough, so tell me – have you ever shovelled shit?”    

Ghost Writer

I was astonished on my return to find the following waiting for me –‘

Dear, sir?

I say sir because I make that presumption from your pieces. Forgive me if that is otherwise, miss, or mrs. I write because my daughter Anne found my name here, I thought I had been entirely forgotten (which might not indeed be in any way a very bad thing) and it is her account I use to contact you. I am very flattered by what you have written about what were at the time first simple exercises in what we considered then to be a very new wave in art. Later of course it was a means to an end, and I had many debts, and the habit of making more whenever I managed to ruin those I had by paying them! If you have any particular questions I would be very pleased to answer them though you should be aware that I have no use for computers myself and like a letter left at my old address they will reach me whenever I see Anne, which is not as often I find at my age as I would like.
Regards to yourself and your friend Rob,
GD (Holbourne)
PS. You should know that whilst your picture of the foul MF Luther does not resemble the young man that inspired the character I now find I cannot remember him at all and now can only conjour your own image to mind! Please take that as a compliment.

Slide - Frayed String

A twist of dirty string.

            “Back then?”

            Strictly speaking, no. There are times when the slides slip only a little. You know the way it works; there are pinch points in all our lives. I’ve not long slipped back and I surprise myself to remember that I have at all. That’s important I think. It’s also unusual in that by now the threads that make up the string have twisted back together so much that I don’t think about the string at all. Or I wasn’t till now when there’s an inch of twine been left on the table.  It’s because I’ve made no decision, and the pinch point is still here. I have clear choices. I went away to get perspective.

This is something new. This slide is very similar to the last I knew and the changes if subtle are ridiculously profound. For the first I’m not looking forward to Christmas at all. That is so unusual I might as well be on another planet entirely.

“So what will you do?” Mme Roux doesn’t really care. She’s reading a copy of The Yellow Book. Beardsley is so beyond the current troubles that any symbolism is lost on me.

“Stay, go, or leave for good.”

Mme Roux nods. She looks up at last. She smiles, “Fight?”

“Too much collateral damage, as I think is still the current way of saying it?”

She doesn’t agree. She knows I don’t. She says, “Nothing that happens is now your responsibility. You have no blame to take. A choice forced upon you is a consequence of they that make you.”

“Very profound,” I don’t think.

“It is. You have honour. You have a strong moral code. The only person that may adequately judge you darling - is you. You can stay, because that is the right thing to do. You will suffer for that, because it is not the right thing for you from a choice where the wrong thing is not of your making. You can go, because that is the right thing for you. You can leave because that is always your choice, your right. I think you will stay.”

“I have not decided,” and I haven’t. I would always do the right thing, but here that is to give way to a tiny, small sort of tyranny. That is to be manipulated, to do what is right in the face of what is wrong. That is to condone villainy, however slight that might be. That is indeed to give way to a threat; and I never do that.

“You’ll smile, and you’ll nod but you can go one of three ways,” says Mme Roux. She rises to find the kettle. She hasn’t much of a facility with plugs. Not with kettles which should sit upon a gas ring. She calls back from the kitchen, “And what is the limitation of time in all this?”

“You perceive I think why I remember certain things?”

“I do,” she says before adding, “Clever boy.”  

On The Thin Ice Of A New Day

“Too many oddities?”

            She’s quite right of course. Mme Roux may flip through the years like an illiterate looking for the pictures in Great Expectations but I move in different ways.  I have a few years and then a jump, and mostly it fades, the thoughts and the memory of it. This time I’ve clung, and this time to here. It’s odd being back. The last two weeks have been something I’ve watched. I knew what was going to happen and listened to the script play out. Done it before you see, absolutely literally. If I can’t quite recall where I slipped from then I know I have. And now here with things to do, or someone to save, and I know who that is now. She can’t bear that I’m going away for almost a week. Last time and all that, I’ve promised her.

            I’ve got shit that has to be sorted out, and I’ve got mates to see to help with that. It’s odd that too, not the troubles for which this is not the place to discuss, but the friends. One’s a lot older in my memory, the other no longer around. I’ll only know how I’ve gone back when I see them really. It’s about finding my feet in this age again, back in 2012 and it’s been a while. I’ve not been up here for ten years, but I as was, was. It’s a foreign country and I’ll centre myself in Wiltshire, to where I always return, albeit often at best briefly. I slipped back here because it’s a pinch point, but I need to get settled in to deal with that in the best of all possible ways.

            But hey, nice to be back. Nice too to no longer have a script keeping me in tramlines.

            “Are you packed?”

            “Light.”

            “Of course.”

            “To see the future,” says Mme Roux, “you have to know the present, and that’s always found in the past.”

            That’s quite sweet. I ask her who said that?

            “You did, or will. And now perhaps because I did to you, you having said it to me. Don’t you just love the loops?”

            It’s all straight lines going out from a misaligned hub. But right now they’re all punched together, and that’s when they get slippery. I’m away for a week. No internet access, play nice. If I don’t slip again then they’ll be more.

If I do, then farewell.

Beano's Barge, 198-

‘I remember they took my bike,’ said Beano.

            ‘Stole it?’ Den tried to imagine why vagabonds would want a boys bicycle.

            ‘Not them, the council. They came round in this big flatbed, collecting for the king. I lost my bike and my Nan lost her bed frame. They took my da’s tools. He was annoyed about that as they were his Da’s, some older too but they were for the Effort as well. My da wanted to know what bloody use a garden trowel was unless they were worried about fascist weeds in the garden. No wonder there was a bloody revolution. Taxes to fight the reds in Russia, and raffles and dances to raise money for the Bolshies every second Saturday.’

            ‘You had fascists?’

            ‘For a bit. My nan and da only found out about it after we were no longer part of this new state. The Council too I reckon. Mr Poplar up Papcastle way, he was a fascist. He captured the village up there, let go with his shotgun too until he fell asleep. We had an anarchist too, but he fell off the bridge.’

            They were days into the journey, tied up now on the canal a half mile from Berkhamsted. Beano, who had been a middling drunk on every previous night, was a determined one now, scorning the pub in preference to a bottle of Hogarth’s. Beano had been stationed here for a bit back when the town had been an island for the baby Prince Edward in the name of the assassinated King Rupert. He told Den how he should have been home back then. But home had only been smuggled letters. But his da had been in the Loamshires. So then had he, and all over the county they had been sent as if no one had known what to do with them. Until the gas and the savagery of one afternoon in Salisbury and a fight for a hill fort whose builders had been thousands of years dead. There had been hundreds younger, fresher and probably with less idea of the why of it than those considerably more ancient ghosts.

            ‘Bloody kings, bloody parliament, and bloody governments. Bloody reds, bloody republicans, bloody communards! Murderers the bloody lot of them,’ said Beano. ‘This bloody place was where that devil William the Bastard got as far back in ten sixty wotsit. It was on that comic.'

            ‘The Hotspur, the Beano?’

            ‘No, that long carpet, that tapestry they’ve got in Reading. Saw it when we were based there for a bit. French, when the French conquered England. They got this far and you cockneys got your guts kicked in, circled you, here, Berk-bloody-hampsted.’

            Den (though he played it down) had once, and it seemed a very long time ago, been the toast of his grammar school and assured of a place at the State University College of London. He said, ‘William the Conqueror beat Haruld at the Battle of Hastings. He came here?’

            ‘So we were told. king’s men ourselves weren’t we? Here was where he stopped at first. It was later he came to Cumberland and killed bloody everyone there. My nan wouldn’t have anyone called William in the house and still celebrates that continental Ligny Day; lots her age do. I wouldn’t be French round Cockermouth for no amount of money. All the bloody-minded anger of anywhere thereabouts. But in Cockermouth we’re funny folk, what with reading books and stuff. You see all this? All this education and milk kids get now? Their trousers ain’t got no bums, but they can write a letter of complaint? That’s been Cockermouth for ages,’ said Beano. He drank more gin. ‘We had elephants once. Right down the high street. You got a letter?’

            Den started. He nodded. He lied, ‘I’ve got a job on down Bournemouth way after this.’

            ‘Gah, we get into Limehouse and paid off there’ll be lorries going down that way. You’ll get a lift, easy.’

            Good thought Den, because if Fred’s letter had been brief it had said enough that whatever was behind Den’s disgrace it was in Bournemouth. Or at least at an address in Sandbanks, which Den had never heard of but had to presume was close.  But now and drinking he the son of the last king’s executioner and a militia brat in the 60s swapped war stories with a Loamshire loyalist sergeant from the civil war of the 50s. This was the country he thought, right here on this barge, sharing the gin that cures all ills; the gin with the foil top so you couldn’t even put it by for tomorrow.

            Bottoms up, England.

Sip, Suck, a Linear Life

I had some trouble recently making sure I was quite where I was meant to be. What with the slides aligning I’m back here again, and I’m not completely surprised as I’m right at probably the most important pinch point of my life, or at least so far, and I’d bailed out of it, so I’ve come back. At least I’m younger again, though comfortable at having slipped back in the last day I’m not, because... you don’t know what I’m talking about. As long as I can work out what I should have done and do it, or did not do – and do, things will go well. Or if not, then onwards. You and your linear life. Not I.

            My keyboard has no keys. Or rather because I write all day, each and every day, there’s nothing printed on them any closer than between a faded ‘q’ and ‘]’ on the top and much the same on the bottom. As long as I do not look at them I can type fine. See, here I am. Fine, not fint which is what happens when I looked down and not at the screen. Of such things are anchors made.

            I’m at this pinch point again and let’s hope I make the right decisions. I’m just out of the early stages when everything sounds scripted and I know exactly what will happen just before it does. Almost.

            Don’t you just hate that?

            Well no, obviously. You have a linear life. That must suck.

            Not that sucking is itself a bad thing. Faced with a delicious boiled sweet then there is little better. Without sucking then a delicious cool beverage would grow warm if the only thing between it and I were a straw. A suck is just a more boisterous sip after all. And I’m all for the boisterous. Only, in its place. Not on, for example, the bus. The bus is for sitting and preferably reading. And reading does not sip. It is very much a boisterous suck. So you can be boisterous on the bus, as long it is with a book. And now the word ‘boisterous’ is losing its meaning.  So we can safely say that to suck is not a bad thing.

Nor then is your linear life; though it might sip a little.