It comes as no surprise to me that we are in a pickle over the foxes and the war. If only you'd voted for the right party this would just be a fringe comedy. But, it's reality. Your pension schemes are being poured into ordnance, which in turn is being poured into the bodies of desert dwellers, unlucky enough to have been born above a vast lake of fossil fuel.
America, that once proud land of Lincoln Continentals, summer schools, bobby sox and bangs. The land of our merciful lord, Martha's Vineyard, Hollywood and pig pick'ns, has gone to the dogs. Now a sad, ragged, lugubrious sprawl of black ghettos and white trash trailer parks. The rich are behind razor wire and CCTV, the middle class confused as they walk a little dazed against the slow trickle of body bags flowing back from the misery in Mesopotamia.
The cunning, British, urban, ruling class, playing mind games with foxes to deflect from the Baghdad balls up. Men and women in tweed pants and riding breeches, hurling paint balls at Westminster and blowing their John Peel horns, arguing for the natural beauty of the canine demise of foxes, while their elected parliamentarians scream, unfair and barbaric to the lupus, yet daily allow the pumping of the hot metal of war into the flesh and blood of the women the men and the girls and boys of Babylon.
Where did dialogue go? Where did statesmanship and diplomacy slough off to? Blair, Bush and Sharon, the first three bovver boys of the 21st century. Blair, the boy next door, bling-toothed first minister with a nervous tick in his left ventricle wont hear of the fox hunt because of it's innate cruelty, but, as the commander in chief, is up to his elbows in the blood of thousands of collateral woman, children and men of the Euphrates.
You can't separate the foxes and the war. You can try, but it doesn't work.
In the meantime, in Milton Keynes, at the art gallery, which has been painted a pulsating magenta with a turquoise drawer on the front, there is to be a literary event. Organised by Burton and his. 'The Naked-Tongues Dancing Co'. Punters to be served with Midsummer Boulevard punch and Jelly Beans, presenting, Aussie professional spray can artist, David Fenton, who displays at the Slug & Lettuce in down town Milton Keynes and who will perform acapela rap. Nathan Korda, 19 yr old student of further math at Oxford who writes his own clarinet and piano jazz riffs will be backgrounding the event with a blast in the second half. OAPS to serve black magic chocolates.
We went to Edinburgh a couple of weeks ago. Edinburgh doesn't know if it wants to be British or Scottish. Royal is smudged all over town. Holyrood and the Royal Mile. That, 'We know who we are and you better fook'n believe it' attitude of the Glaswegian is clearly missing from the double decker city. It's so thick with tartan we could hardly breath. One concession is that Starbucks had cinnamon for the cappuccino. I imagine a good civil emergency would get the locals heads out of their bums for long enough to see what's happening, or not, depending from which angle they view it. Mind you, the angle at which one might view things immediately after having removed ones head from ones bum might prove a little to acute for the forming of good opinion, but worth a try don't you think?
The Black Watch are being moved up to Baghdad. Under American command. American Command of a military operation is a contradiction in terms. Refer to my last missive. By week five of the war, more Brits had been killed by friendly fire, (blue on blue), another hard to grasp concept, than by the wadi born boys of Fallujah. But, Hey… As long as I can listen to Oscar Peterson and eat fresh salmon washed down with a cold bottle of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand, who gives a toss.
Sunday and the bells at St Mary's are ringing in my ears. They've been ringing since 4.30am. Now they're peeling rather than ringing. Calling the good of Bletchley to worship. Calling the good to get down on their knees and pray for the soldiers of the Black Watch and commanders in chief. Encouraging them to make the right decisions in the theatre of war. Praying that the piece of shrapnel that goes through the boy's leg, and the lump of masonry that crushes the mothers head and the depleted uranium shell that ruptures the testicles of the tank commander will all have been worth it.
"And we pray for those in the theatre of war, that they might recover from their ruptured testicles and the death of the mothers and fathers of Nasiriyah and Najaf, and go on to fight another righteous campaign in the name of our lord, so help me lord in grace and in bits if bread and altar wine, and that we may all live to see our last sunset because of the brave acts of those who gave their lives while killing, shooting and terrorising our mortal enemy on behalf of our glorious and brave leaders who never ever stood in a puddle of blood, and who, quoting a million confusing words of legalese, and a pudding bowl of battered moral twaddle, offer the olive branch of, sleight of hand democracy to those ignorant other religious bigots and all who sail in her/it/him. And we pray for a plump increase in the bottom line profits at Vickers and all the other arms manufacturers because after the bottom line, who gives a shit, Amen."
Cecil, a 57 year old boy at heart, stood stock still in the back of the church. He fingered some worn coins and sniffed at the cigar smoke that lingered on his heavy jacket. The remains of a take away meal stuck to the lining of his back pocket. The uric acid from his earlier accident stung his thighs and mingled with the sauce of the meal. "Lord," he shouted. "Give me strength." Nothing happened except for a flutter of rooks escaping the west transept. He'd been a PARA. A special soldier for our dear lord, until the day he was discharged because his liver turned to mush from the insidious effects of the depleted uranium pension funds he'd been shooting at the boys and girls of Babylon. He walked three hundred miles home as a hobo and saw his wife, whom he hadn't seen for eight years standing on the far side of a small lake near their house in Fyfe. He waved. She waved back but it seemed to drain all her energy, and then, she just turned away from him, holding the two children by the hand, and walked up a small path between two low hillocks and disappeared forever. He was last seen in a small clean ward in 'L' Hospital de Notre Dame des Fleures doux de Coupabilite', (the hospital of our dear lady of the rivers of guilt), in Montpellier. He'd been picked of the street in parlous condition by the Red Cross and delivered at the back entrance to die. And when he did all he left was a piece of paper written on in English. 'Try to forgive us Lord, for we know exactly what we do.' At 11 o'clock that morning his fourteen year old son Liam walked out of school and went home and told his mother he'd had a strong sensation relating to his father. So, he packed a bag with a few essentials, including the last unanswered postcard from his father with a Toulouse post mark, that his mother had tried to snatch from him, and headed away like a hobo, down the M8 to seek his Dad and his destiny.
Three months later, just outside the chapel of 'L' Hospital de Notre Dame des Fleuves Doux de Coupabilite', he was handed a clear, sealed, plastic bag with a worn pair of fumigated shoes, a battered wallet, from which the money had been filched, but which still held a creased, well fingered photograph of Liam and his sister Anastasia, and a bunch of receipts stapled together for an Inter Flora arrangement of flowers sent on every one of Anastasia birthdays for the last 6 years and for six consecutive books of poems sent to Liam via registered post. Neither of them had ever received a thing. Suddenly Liam was confused as to how he felt about his mother who sat in the front room in Fife all day, smoking, doing jigsaws and destroying incoming mail.
Anastasia flew out to be with him. She wore a wrap over Peruvian cape with De Lascre slacks and tooled worn riding boots. Anastasia was tough and she rode the despair with Liam for a week in a pensione off the main plaza. It was a week of coffees and croissants. They didn't have the strength for the imagination to do any thing else. This wasn't two teenagers on vacation. It was the off spring of a warrior trying to come to grips with his and their place in the world. I think what tipped Liam over the edge was Bush's face appearing one to many times on television. And Blair mentioning WMD's until no one knew what they were, or cared and the fact that their father died alone from a blue on blue uraniumed liver on foreign soil with nothing but a few receipts, a pair of worn shoes and creased photograph.
Our hero returns. Thought Liam. Sargent Cecil Morgan, a spent bullet dropped down a crack in the landscape. A nobody and a nothing.
Liam's insanity was so pure no one could tell and he suddenly found he was surrounded by friends and Anastasia cooked his meals and stood guard over him from the curious as he built on his sweet, delicious anger. They lived from Anastasia's earnings at a sea front restaurant in St Michel and Liam wandered the beach front and jogged the coast road as though training for a marathon, which indeed he was. When they entered JFK with their muesli bars and trainers and looking spik and span they were welcomed as athletes, but Liam took the night train to Washington and shot Bush through the eye with a lucky shot from his 308.
What could have happened
If Kerry had got in the only truly significant thing that would have happened is, China's ascendancy, measured against America's decline would have been fractionally faster. But vice president Cheney stepped into the breach and vanished in a mire of trillion dollar deficits, razor wire, spooks, and a broken down relationship with the UN and the rest of the world. He guided the USA on the first few portions if its 60 year, gentle spiral down to third world status.
In the year 2064, The U.S.A. a major supplier of coal, coat hangers, tooth picks and engine parts. All the US WMDs impounded by the UN and China. All its political muscle wasted into a beggar's bowl.
NOW : Condoleeza Rice Davies, in imitation of Mandy. The progressive, bullet headed personification of raw ambition. Condoleeza with a crop circle on her head. "I'll stop at nothing" Condo. My hairdresser's a queer and costs a small countries GDP, but, hey, I'm bullet proof, and George and I go together like Barbie and Ken.
George took us back 30 years. Condo will help to hold us there. Christ almighty, I thought the 70's were over.
In the meantime a big, new ship called 'China Enterprise' chugs sweetly away across the high seas, growing in the water. The engineers are enthusiastic and inventive, so every day there's an improvement, a modification, a hand hewn bit bolted on. The passengers are busy sowing and sweeping and looking forward over the bow, straining for the future. Just up ahead the good ship USA, wallows in the water. The pipes are starting to rust up and the crew, an obese bunch of middle aged guys talking up the power of the vessel and using dreams and photographs of the past to fuel it. And the pudgey passengers watch the Chinese steamer, which is cruising just behind, with idle curiosity. They throw money down to the traders in the circling sampans and haul up great baskets of consumables, constantly rushing back to the money machine to borrow more and cat fighting over the escalating prices of the best cabins and sinking deeper into the water with the weight of junk and borrowings and bye product and trying to spend their way out of the trillion dollar deficit because spending is all they know how to do. In the U.S.A., Shopping is the new going to work. Borrowing money is the new home cooking. And looking back, some of them begin to fidget with their coat buttons as the shadow of the good ship, 'China Enterprise', draws closer.
It's raining. Constant drizzle. Low grey clouds and shiny roads. The cat smells like an old carpet. It's so autumn my bones feel cold and damp. There's steam in the windows of the cafes and the betting shop has a mildew of punters jammed inside, all fag smoke and vain hope. It's the time of year when we shop for silly food and wrapping paper. The retailers go purple in the face with expectation and the postie gets a shoulder from the weight of gifts. A billion turkeys are slaughtered for the table and a million families gathers for the annual war. Churches are full of mulled wine and street traders haemorrhoids are bursting from the shouting. It snowed last night. The house is cool this morning. I've put brown sugar in my coffee and have my hands wrapped around the mug while I wait for a yahoo document to unravel itself.
NOTE: (Posh pikeys are gypsies who live in houses.)
We recently had a weekend in Kent. This is my impression. It's a place of many faces. Parts of it function with rural ease, There is a gypsyesque charm, tempered by the miseries of the posh pikeys, who have given up the road for poverty and the NHS. It has an under-belly of bullet faced social climbers and the usual haul of eccentrics and suburban miracle men. It has a pleasant geography. Maidenhead is a mish-mash of buildings and traffic jams and the hops are only there to be photographed. We stayed at the Ramada Jarvis Hotel in Pembury. We ate at the Ramden Arms Pembury. We drove about.
On Saturday as we drove about, we passed through Barming and stopped at the lights. I looked up and saw a large sign in gold on the side of a pub. "Take Courage", it said. I thought, "Take Courage, Don't Drink." Well, at least not at The Fountain in Barming. A Lithuanian friend of mine stopped there on her way back from the hop farm at Paddock Wood. After about half an hour she said she wouldn't even recommend it to a ferret with a thirst and it cast a shadow over all of her subsequent visits to pubs on main roads in Kent towns. "The Fountain" at Barming, Like most other pubs, is trying to pass itself off as the 'Fountain of Youth'. But, let me assure you it is nothing of the sort. Yes, you may feel a little more youthful than your years after a couple of pints of Borthwicks 7.8% "The Mullet" . But you'll feel older than your years, for longer than you felt younger than your years, the next day. So in essence, the feeling of being older out-weighs the feeling of being younger and so, there at the Fountain of Youth Barming, you'll only accumulate months of elderliness. Don't do it.
The barmaid has a large mole on her lip, a cat on the bar, a dog in the back room and a tiger tattooed on her left breast. She's a veterinary nightmare.
"Ah so, it's you who's been digg'n up me lawn," said a posh pikey from Wits End to the barmaid.
"My dog goes nowhere where you'd be," she said.
"It's not the bloody dog I'm on about it's that mole on ya lip. It's big enough to plough up a rugby pitch."
She threw him out onto the A26 where his sudden arrival in the centre lane caused a shunt between a establishment farmers wife in a Range Rover and an acid faced, bullet haired social climber from Pembury in a Puma.
We were cruising the A26 when we were approached from the opposite direction by a horse trotting at speed towards towing a light weight racing buggy. Following close on its heels was a vanguard of four wheel drives, one of which was on our side of the road. It was blocking traffic from overtaking the horses from behind. This was a pikey time trial on a main road. The four wheel drives were packed with pikeys. Unshaven, mad staring, lantern jawed men gripped the wheels with big hands, a stickiness of kids filled the gaps between a pile of women with cardigans blond boufantes and moustaches. If only they knew how crazy they seemed racing down the road chasing a piebald horse and the jockey in the buggy had a sparking roll up clamped in his mouth, no hat, no shirt and not a care in the world. As they swept past, the four wheel drive coming towards us pulled in and immediately back out after we'd gone.
Ahhh…., paradoxical Kent.
Corks Pond, Colts Hill, Claygate and Mockbeggar. Laddingford, Snoll Hatch, Goose Green and Wateringbury. Blue bell Hill, Barming Heath, Brenchley and Beltring.
Sadly I put my foot in it on the first night at the Ramden Arms. We were seated next to a charming couple. She a blonde and he hardly any hair at all. His head looked as though it'd been scraped by a road surfacer. She was shapely in her pink cardigan and called him babe. He was a sort of toy boy. Apparently she had two kids and they were with Doreen. He looked like a second hand bicycle dealer. Dirty finger nails, Man U strip, insulating tape on one leg of his bifocals and a head you could grow barnacles on.
I was talking about a project I'm on and sadly let slip that one of the ladies on the project had let her self down with her working class attitude. The blonde overheard, and went quiet. As soon as they'd finished their scampi they moved to the bar. I'm sure they were regulars and knew the staff, because when I got my Apple Pie with cream for desert, it came with custard instead and the custard was way outside health and safety guidelines by the fact that it stood at about 500 deg centigrade and stripped the skin from the entire roof of my mouth a nano second after entering.
The next night we sat in a different area but when I got my "Chicken A la King". A la being, 'in the style of,' not necessarily 'fit for,' It had a holy cross laid over it made from two bits of chive. Now call me superstitious, but that made me sieve the; In The Style Of.' not necessarily Fit For a king, white wine sauce with a fine toothed fork the girls had for their 'Kids Bolognese.' The pert little Spanish servant asked me three times if everything was alright and I lied. I said I'd dropped a contact lens in it. She offered me one of hers. How would I look though, with one brown and one blue lens. It didn't make sense. She told Christy off for putting a log on the fire. The fire wasn't lit, but a sign on the mantel said, "feel free to put a log on the fire." I pointed out that she wasn't putting a log on the fire as there was none. She was merely putting a log on the grate. The pert little Spanish servant rushed into the kitchen crying and the 20 stone chef came out with a ladle in one hand and a bottle of what I could have sworn was crushed glass in other. "Please don't make my staff cry," he said, "it not only dilutes their efforts, it also dilutes the soup." We tipped them with a South American peseta and left.
The hop farm at P'Wood. Have you ever noticed that if you park at the far end of a car park anywhere in England, away from every one else, someone will park next to you. I tried an experiment at the hop farm. I parked the car at an odd angle in the middle of the huge empty gravel car park, leaving a gap of about 50 feet between me and the cars properly lined up in two rows near the entrance. The girls said, 'you can't leave it here'. But I did. And then we went into the hop farm.
What amazes me is how the British can cram a rusty tank and an armoured car into any unlikely corner of any play ground and pretend that kids will be really interested. So, here we are visiting a hop farm. Beer, heavy horses, pungent hay and iron wheeled wagons. My kids were all exited about smelling the hay and the horses. We walk through the gate straight into a scene from Baghdad. We are surrounded by tanks and army vehicles. We hit the dirt and put our hands on the back of our heads. We wait for the bullets to shatter our skulls. "Are you'se all roight," said a display hardened local. We dusted ourselves off and I started composing a letter of complaint. "Let the war go", I'm going to say. "Stop freaking my kids out with war things." We'd come to see the beauty of the living flesh not a display based on our inability to evolve. We came to see big faithful horses, 18 hands high with a name like Major and Billy. Horses that can pull iron wheeled wagons all day, heavily laden with tons of barrels of elderliness. Not a re-run of, 'A Bridge Too Far', Christy got to hold the reins behind Drummer and walk him around the ring. Then they painted dolphins in the pottery room. Jenni did an Easter egg and I did a duck lying on its back. It rained, and so while the kids ran about in the playroom we read the papers.
When we came out, there was a strange phenomenon in the car park. A ragged line of cars, roughly lined up with our car stretched out across the gravel car park leaving a strange angle leaving a huge vee gap between, our all new ragged line and the two neat front rows. The gap between our line and the proper cars, at the top end of the vee was about 80 feet. It worked. We now knew that we had visited a hop farm with a whole lot of sheep who actually drive cars. The next time you see a road accident, Call a vet.
Have you ever wondered why children stick their elbows out at the table. We tell them to put them in. But they creep back up. It's robotics. They can't get the leverage if they tuck their arms in. They're too short. They have to stick their elbows out to cut food. I watched my two struggling with the arms down proposition until I relinquished. It's the same as adults dribbling. Have you noticed that if you start to dribble at the beginning of a meal; say with the soup, it sort of breaks the seal and from then on, unless you go to the loo and hold your lips under the hand dryer they'll keep leaking right through to the end of the meal like a worn grommet. It's all robotics and grommets. I must admit that some of my grommets are getting a little worn. You see, I was telling the girls to tuck their elbows in when I broke my own lip seal and a lava run of gravy ran down my chin. I knew I was doomed. It was then I realised the implications of junior robotics. I'm thinking of writing a book on it. That and dribbling.
I was in the sauna at the Ramada hotel talking quietly to an old dear who had come in for the arthritis. Knees and back. Comes down once a week. 'The garden season's the worst', she told me. Coach loads in to see the open gardens. They swim and sauna all weekend. Flabby ladies, four abreast, up and down the pool talking polyanthus and red hot pokers, all with their solid, tungsten blue rinses clattering into the end of pool each time they turn and hogging the sauna, so my lady, whom I'm talking to, can't get comfy with her knees and back. Jenni arrived at the door with the girls. "Oh here's your grandchildren, aren't they lovely." "Oh well," I said, "must be toddling along." Three days later we were at the building suppliers with the girls in my truck. I stop to hand the Canadian security guard my papers. He wears a natty uniform with epaulets and a hat down low with white band like a sea captain. He has tanned skin, incredible blue eyes and a hill-Billy accent. "How are yo girrls? Sett'n along with grandpaw ta make show he keeps work'n huh?" The girls laughed all the way to the level crossing.
So, I'm old to be a daddy. But hey, Methuselah was 400 when he got married to a girl a sixteenth of his age, and they had kids. Did anyone call him Granpaw. I doubt it. It's the assumption I don't like. Like the assumption that every one in Winslow votes Conservative. We were there to day with our Chinese friends. Guess who was in front of us getting a tub of ice cream and some yoghurts? Why if it wasn't old Ian Duncan-Smith himself. Ex leader of the opposition. We knew he lived there abouts because someone we know took her kids out of our school and into a private school near Winslow and spent a month's salary buying a new dress and hat because she'd heard that I.D.S. would be there. She was a crazy bitch at the best of times. At Winslow today, I.D,S had jeans, leather loafers and a blue blazer with a light dusting of dandruff on the back and a nice sharp shirt with a blue speckled tie. For crying out gently, Jeans and a tie!! He drove off in an old Morgan. British racing green. You actually can't get more predictable. I can see now that he wanted to lead England into the twenty first century on Neck ties, dandruff and British racing green. It was never going to work was it?
The girls were in a show. They did that number by Elton John named 'Candle In The Wind'. This was not the Norma Jean, but the Lady Diana version. I don't suppose anyone figured out how that crazy guy got the two muddled up. Marilyn Monroe was a living land mine, Lady Diana Spencer detested the things. If you got too close the Marilyn she'd blow your legs from under you. If you got too close to L.D.S. she'd smile up at you through her English sheep dog fringe and sort of chocolate you with her eyes. No accounting, is there?
May you all find time for quiet reflection.
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