Welcome to Acerbia; population: π
This is the archive of the many and fabulous adventures of . Like a hard-bitten son of Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius taught to write by William S. Burroughs; continually reincarnated, debated over by intellectuals and literati at cocktail parties the author can't get invited to, the target of scorn and ire from women everywhere, frequently mistaken for a former member of the Warsaw pact, named after the Italian explorer Giuseppe Acerbi, slowly rewriting the Book of Cataclysm, this is postmodern fiction at its most playful and creative.
The Gloves Come Off
"Do a summer sport, it'll be fun, you can be outdoors and meet new people. You might even lose some weight, tubby. Look, its a mixed amateur league, you'll be playing against the top London advertising agencies. These people are desk jockeys that enjoy expensive lunches. Besides, we need someone with your height to play the out-field."
Kat persuaded me last year with a combination of flattery, teasing and persistence. I don't know why I signed up to the London Advertisers Softball league, I knew already that she was far more interested in Greven than me anyway. She had that exotic blend of cultures and a terribly posh English accent that I was just gagging to hear her say "fuck" with. As one of my friends says, exotic just means "highly fuckable".
Somehow we'd played our way through the bottom rungs and turned into a decent squad. The gloves had been a gift from the board and included the company logo on the back, a reward for reaching the quarter finals. Then we'd reached the semis. Now, with the autumn weather clearly on the trees there was the scent of success on the breeze and we were anxious to win.
Dumb Logic
Cute cat, what's his name?
"Laika"
Laika... as in the Russian dog that went up into space? That Laika?
"Yes"
Why the hell did you call your cat Laika?
"So that he has a good reason to keep seeing his pet therapist."
Tracking Pixel
Astoria's fingers found it eventually, although she hadn't been looking for it, just lying on the couch running moisturiser over the freshly-shaved smoothness of her legs. Perhaps through some subconscious knowledge of its presence she finally, consciously, found it.
At first she thought it was simply a skin imperfection, or perhaps a blocked pore that was brewing up under the surface, ready to break free as a spot. She had trouble seeing it as it was placed on the back of her thigh. Through persistent kneeding of the flesh however she managed to establish that whatever the subcutaneous lump was, it moved freely beneath the surface of her skin and ressembled a split pea in shape.
Intruiged by her discovery Astoria began to pinch at it through the layers of skin, trying to get her fingernails hooked around the back of the demi-sphere and tug on it. When she did so her toes flexed uncontrollably, as if the muscles were being zapped with tiny electric shocks and her ankle jerked spasmodically. After three attempts she became concerned and called her sister, a triage nurse at the Chelsea Royal.
Ass/Off
"Reichenbach!" I screamed out across the raging churning river that separated us.
"Reichenbach! I'm coming for you!" and I set off along the bank to find the nearest crossing place, my heavy boots kicking up pebbles and flecks of mud from the shoreline. The Alpine air seared my lungs as I charged ever closer down the river towards Innominata Falls.
It is, indeed, a fearful place. The torrent, swollen by the melting snow, plunges into a tremendous abyss, from which the spray rolls up like the smoke from a burning house. The shaft into which the river hurls itself is an immense chasm, lined by glistening coal-black rock, and narrowing into a creaming, boiling pit of incalculable depth, which brims over and shoots the stream onward over its jagged lip.
I glanced across the water crests and spied him there, equally hurrying towards the narrow crossing before the apogee of the falls. His movements were clumsy and laboured as he pushed his way through pine branches and only he who arrived first at the crossing would be permitted the brief respite necessary to catch his breath before combat ensued.
My nemesis for years had lured me to the Innominata Falls by means of a pleading e-mail from a long lost girlfriend, long since retired to Switzerland with nothing but a broken heart and a flurry of cats to keep her company. The tone had been suspiciously tender for such a distant and cold lover and I had become immediately wary, albeit deliciously tempted to get to the bottom of the mystery. I had come prepared.
Skin
I told you about dating Hitomi, right? She was over from Japan for three months during the summer while I was working in Claudio's vineyard down on the Atlantic coast of France near La Rochelle. There were maybe a dozen of us, all in our early twenties. We'd get up around dawn when Claudio's cockerel would squawk out his best rendition of Reveille and trudge into the rows of vines to pick the ripened purple grapes from the vines. Then we'd load up the crates onto the back of a Citröen truck he owned and two of us would drive them over to the barn and into the vats for trampling.
If you timed it right you could spend a good part of the day out of the sun with cool pulpy grape flesh oozing between your toes. It wasn't pleasant, but it beat spending half your day slathering on sunblock and discovering the areas you missed the last time. The money wasn't as good as any of us had been led to believe but we had as much wine as we wanted to drink from the previous year's produce and we were only fifteen minutes drive from the beach.
On the two days a week I wasn't working I'd accompany Jean-Luc on tours of the ruined fortifications of Hitler's Atlantic sea wall and the submarine pens in and about the city and we'd discuss history and the French tendancy to not feel ashamed for capitulating. He'd shrug and take a draw on a Gitane before blowing the acrid blue smoke into my face. Once he retorting "Its easy for you to criticise when you're isolated by water and bred from the same stock as them" and I started spending my days off on my own after that.
Eden
"Tempted?"
She held the apple out to me like an emerald, pinioned between her thumb and middle finger, resting it on the cusp of her hand and the curl of her index finger. The slick green surface was speckled with tiny white spots and I could see a distorted hazy reflection of myself in the polished skin. She twisted her hand like she was unscrewing an upturned bottle and my reflection seemed to skew and dance.
"Isn't this what got us into this mess in the first place?"
I folded my arms together in front of me and rested my head on them. The blanket beneath me ruffled and scrunched as I shifted my elbows and the grass beneath crunched. She cocked her head to one side and jiggled the apple up and down a few times but I closed my eyes and tried to ignore her.
"Suit yourself. You don't know what you're missing."
I heard the wet, brittle sound of teeth piercing the skin and the crunch and slurp of that first bite that's always so difficult with a hard apple. I thought of the sharks trying to eat James' giant peach and how despite their constant thrashing their snouts prevented them from taking a single bite. Eden's nose isn't nearly that big, although its big enough to make the occasional jibe about her Jewish ancestry.
"I thought you said the weather was always terrible in Britain. This is gorgeous, perfect for sitting in the park reading. You want to come stay in Tel Aviv one of these days, now that's oppressive weather. This, this is nice, there's the cool breeze, there's the warm grass. How can you complain about this?"
Shut up, just shut up, shut up.
Desert Island Redux
After writing last weekend's Desert Island Discs (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) posts I've become somehow more attuned to albums as a whole rather than a collection of songs. As such this week I have mostly been listening to fantastic albums such as Snow Patrol's Final Straw and The Divine Comedy's Absent Friends, recommendations of Pix and Mark's respectively. As such I'm enjoying myself greatly.
If you could recommend just one album, right now, what would it be?
Orpheus in the Underground
Ba-ba-ba-ba
Ba-ba-ba-ba
Stand clear of the doors
Mind the gap
Let’s all go down to Oxford Circus
Past Trafalgar Square
And then from Charing Cross
Right up to Euston
Then change to the Victoria
And then the Piccadilly
Takes us round to Gloucester Road
Kensington and Notting Hill Gate
Holland Park and Shepherds Bush
Ladbroke Grove and Westbourne
And Royal Oak and Paddington
Edgware Road and Baker Street
Great Portland Street and Euston Square
Barbican and Algate East
And change for Tower Hill
Fulham Brodway
Heading down for Wimbledon
Wimbledon Park
Now, we’ve crossed the Thames
Back to Earls Court
Right up to Victoria
Change for Green Park
Home in time for tea
To check the map to find the route to start again
Sooo, then after the tea we’re off again
We go through Swiss Cottage
Heading Northward on the Jubilee
We change to the Metropolitan at Finchley Road
Which takes us round to change at Rayner’s Lane
Sudbury Hill and Sudbury Town
Alperton and Acton Town
Chiswick Park and Turnham Green
And Stramford Brook and Ravenscourt Park
Hammersmith and Barons Court
West Kensington and Bayswater
And again Paddington
Then change for Maida Vale
Willesden Junction
Didn’t notice Kensal Green
Watford High Street
Christ, we’ve gone too far
Stop at Watford
Back again to Baker Street
King’s Cross, Moorgate, Northern Line to Bank
And then the escalator link to Monument
We jump the circle and we’re going round and
round and round and round...
All change!
- John Hudson
Originally from the movie Peter's Friends. Reproduced here because there just aren't enough copies of it available on the Interwebthingy for my liking. Annie Mole, take note.
Cold Lake
Celia was the first person to notice that I had gone mad. The next day she met with my wife and that's when things started to get difficult for me. Maybe she did it from genuine concern, maybe she did it to clear her own conscience, maybe she was passing me back as damaged goods. When your mistress throws you back at your wife you find out who your real friends are.
"This is your captain speaking, welcome aboard flight CT116 to Bogota. My wife is divorcing me, my mistress dumped me and I've gone stark raving mad" isn't the sort of thing that inspires confidence in your passengers so it was agreed that I'd be better off spending some time on compassionate leave. Between the divorce lawyer and the psychiatrist though I didn't feel very grateful for their compassion.
My biggest problem was that I understood that I wasn't mad. "Stress" I was told, "social pressures" were mentioned and "borderline sociopathic behavior" was scribbled down onto paper that eventually found its way into the hands of the divorce lawyer. With everyone looking to make their cut I was left high and dry, single and legally sane, my head shrunk to the proper proportions with a lot of psycho-babble about my inner child and the art of motorcycle maintenance.
Abigail's Party
Abigail, what's this?
"Its your P60. You need it for your tax returns. It was the end of the financial year at the start of the month and I forgot to give you yours, but here you go. Keep it safe. Wait, what are you doing?"
I'm opening it. I want to see what I'm paying in tax.
"You don't need to do that, that's my job."
Yeah, and I trust you of course... and... uh... okay, what's this bit here? This line that says Penguin Tax.
"Its a company policy that we all fund a penguin in London zoo. Hence penguin tax. Yours is called Webster, he's very friendly."
I'm paying a grand a year to sponsor a penguin I've never seen?
"I have a picture of him right here."
Cute. What does your one look like?
"This is Sissy, she's very shy."
That's the same penguin from a different angle.
"No it isn't!"
And the name-plaque in the background says his name is Hector and that he's sponsored by Patricia Maddocks of Natwest Bank.
"Those bastards! They've had me sponsoring someone else's penguin!"
Me too apparently. Now about this next line... where it says Corporate Racketeering Tax.
Riot Gear
"Stand your ground!" was the order and be braced ourselves for another volley. The pitter-patter of projectiles came moments later as everything from pebbles to half-bricks were thrown into our midst. There was a thump and a clatter as a shield was knocked from one man's hands and my grip tightened on the riot stick; they'd started using heavier projectiles.
The horses behind me were becoming more anxious, they could undoubtedly sense the prevailing anticipation on our part to get moving. Standing still you're just a well-disciplined target. We weren't even supposed to be facing this crowd, we'd been given what was deemed to be a "corridor of transit for the flow of the protest" by higher-up, but was it bollocks. I could see the ring-leaders right there six rows back from the front, barking and pointing, we all could. This was the flashpoint right here, just waiting to happen.
The first bottle was easy to spot, it sailed higher than the bricks. Thrown from the cover of the crowd it arcing over the front lines of masked protesters, becoming invisible against the sky it passed through the twisting smoke-cloud from the burning banners and crashed at the feet of the men to my left. Those who hadn't seen the bottle understood what the smashing glass meant though and almost as a unit we took a step back. Molotov cocktails; cheap and effective.
Three more bottles leapt out from the maw of the crowd and this time the range was judged perfectly by all three throwers. It wasn't until the moment the middle one hit me that I realised there was no flaming wick in the neck. The acrid taste of petrol washed over my helmet and I... no, wait... this isn't petrol. That was the moment I realised the protesters were taking the piss.
Trnasfrom!
There's nothing worse than having to explain your jokes. (I don't mean to get all meta this week, it just seems to be happening naturally, maybe this sort of introspective analysis is symbolic of something deeper and more... argh!)
I'm constantly having to explain why I said something that would have been funny if the person I said it to had shared my life experiences and spoke two languages and lived inside my head. There's the constant reruns of old jokes that I'm refining over time as if my family and friends were some sort of test audience. My jokes should have stickers that say "this joke was not tested on real humans" when I'm making them for the first time.
There is a reason for writing this of course. I'm setting you up for a joke you're not going to understand, see. Or hopefully you will once you've sat through the footnotes.
My very good friend Miguel over at Metamorphosism (formerly of Feral Living) draws an occasional four-panel comic strip based on his perception of his life as a Kafka-esque parody. He is The Bug, he talks in AmeriType with frequent typos (with some deliberate ones that add so much more to the jokes), he lives with his wife Alpha, and two daughters, Teen Bug and Little Bug (also known respectively as Beta and Gamma)...
...and I offered to do a guest strip and he agreed. The fool.
When Good Ideas Go Bad
Sometimes you think you've got a great idea. You've got one by the tail and you're not about to let it go. But you've been drinking over the course of the evening and its only afterwards that the idea doesn't seem like such a great idea. But it was a good idea, it just needs the right context, you reassure yourself. Only... it becomes more and more difficult to remember just what context you were thinking about when you had the idea as the lucidity the alcohol provided clouds over.
I had one such idea last night over dinner and I blurted it out straight away. It seemed funny, and I got away with it because it was a good pun. Sadly that's about all it was. As the process of trying to flesh it out into content became a rather sad voyage of discovery into just how bad an idea it was and I became less and less convinced that it was going to work.
You sit down and try and write a story about an elderly Jewish gentleman giving a young boy advice on the teachings of the Torah and the boy gets scarlet fever from the gentleman and an evil doctor says that he has to be burned alive... and you start to worry that this is all sounding eerily familiar. It's Princess Bride meets Schindler's List... and that boys and girls is exactly why I refuse to try and make a joke story post out of The Velveteen Rabbi.
Desert Island Discs - Music For The Jilted Generation
Because I don't always agree with Mike's (usually impeccable and non-gender or sexual preference biased) taste in music, and since it’s a four-day weekend here in the UK and I feel the itch to write some fluff content: the five albums I would take with me to a desert island that had a coconut-fueled CD player.
The Prodigy - Music For The Jilted Generation 1994
Before they sold out, before they became acceptable, before summer music festivals were labelled and packaged and turned into a nice weekend out for the teenagers, before Keith was ever allowed near a microphone and stuck out there like the figurehead on a roaring unstoppable Rolls Royce to date kid's TV presenters there was nasty, evil, anti-establishment Liam Howlett and his boys. Keith's supposed to be the dancer for feck's sake!
Intro says as much and gives you just the right degree of noir to enjoy what's about to follow. We're in Bug Powder Dust territory here and with Break & Enter's crashing glass and whooping vocals behind pulsing beats that make Leftfield seem tame it's a good start. Look, I'll admit that they've become shit, but this is proof enough that they were once-upon-a-time the best there was in break beats with a hint of trance.
Continue"Desert Island Discs - Music For The Jilted Generation"
Desert Island Discs - The Joshua Tree
Because I don't always agree with Mike's (usually impeccable and non-gender or sexual preference biased) taste in music, and since it’s a four-day weekend here in the UK and I feel the itch to write some fluff content: the five albums I would take with me to a desert island that had a coconut-fueled CD player.
U2 - The Joshua Tree 1987
Wait for it... wait for it... no, not yet... this is foreplay right here. You don't know what to expect just yet and you're going to have to wait for it. Are the speakers working? Yes? Are they? I just heard something in the back there, like the rumbling lower-end of a church organ. You can hear a guitar adding in now and then it starts to blossom out into something you can recognize. This is another Unforgettable Fire, only this time its going to last the entire album.
When U2 discovered the greatness of America they decided to sit down in a studio in Ireland and try and improve on it. Where The Streets Have No Name is exactly this, like Sinatra's New York, New York, its a pulsating ballad proclaiming a love for towering city blocks and nameless precincts and districts that's over too soon. This longing for discovery continues into I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For which could so easily have just become a refrain for Streets and instead stands on its own with a softer tempo and gearshift down in urgency. We're on a languorous voyage and being told to wait patiently for the album to reveal all to us.
Continue"Desert Island Discs - The Joshua Tree"
Desert Island Discs - Odelay
Because I don't always agree with Mike's (usually impeccable and non-gender or sexual preference biased) taste in music, and since it’s a four-day weekend here in the UK and I feel the itch to write some fluff content: the five albums I would take with me to a desert island that had a coconut-fueled CD player.
Beck - Odelay 1996
I may have had some trouble understanding the mad African man in Afro-Left but that's nothing to how Beck leaves me feeling, and he's speaking English! Right from the start I'm left wondering just what the hell a Devil's Haircut looks like and which satanic barber I have to visit to get one. And its over all that quicker and into the feedback-filled harmonic wailings of Hotwax. Nothing makes sense but somehow its working. There's disjointed styles and we're phasing through country and synth and blues and suddenly we end up talking to the Enchanting Wizard of Rhythm. My God, the man's insane.
A strangled scream announces the start of Lord Only Knows and by this point we're left not knowing what to expect. So its somewhat weird that this is the first track to sound like just some regular song. Its nice, its quaint and enjoyable. Beck's using his voice here rather than musical talent to carry the song and its all the better for it.
Continue"Desert Island Discs - Odelay"
Desert Island Discs - Leftism
Because I don't always agree with Mike's (usually impeccable and non-gender or sexual preference biased) taste in music, and since it’s a four-day weekend here in the UK and I feel the itch to write some fluff content: the five albums I would take with me to a desert island that had a coconut-fueled CD player.
Leftfield - Leftism 1995
Unfortunately and to my eternal regret Release The Pressure has been marred forever by those bastards at O2. Using this as their signature theme on all their branding has turned it from a fabulous opener to the track I skip past and right into the Afro-Melt combo. Sorry Release, wasn't your fault some coked-up advertising exec agreed with their under-sexed creative director and turned you into O2's little bitch, please stop asking for my change, next time I'll just drive over you.
Afro-Left is fantastic, I can't understand a single fucking word that's being said but it's insane all the same. That chorus, that robotic chanting, that thumping thundering baseline that drives us all the way through the seven and a half minutes runtime. I like to imagine that the lyrics are actually the urgent ramblings of some tribesman trying to impart upon us the secret of our origins but it really doesn't matter as, like Phat Planet on Rhythm and Stealth, this is an eardrum buster that makes your sub-woofer woof.
Continue"Desert Island Discs - Leftism"
Desert Island Discs - Screamadelica
Because I don't always agree with Mike's (usually impeccable and non-gender or sexual preference biased) taste in music, and since it’s a four-day weekend here in the UK and I feel the itch to write some fluff content: the five albums I would take with me to a desert island that had a coconut-fueled CD player.
Primal Scream - Screamadelica 1991
Immediate mood swing right to the top. The first track, Movin'on Up is a burst of good-vibe music with symphonic gospel in the background and a good lead into the harder thumping beats of Slip Inside This House. Only two tracks into the album and already you can't help but feel an urge to move around, even the disjointed party intro to Don't Fight It, Feel It and slightly off-kilter juxtaposition of the distant wailing and those weird tropical island chirpings can't dispel that your head is swaying and when it eventually gets to that piano riff you're lost in the music.
And then things start to get weird. A second ago you were listening to a pulse-pounding journey through some of the better drugs that music can produce and suddenly... the trip is slower and more like a drip-feed, gradually increasing. The lyrics filter through a heartbeat and the guttural growling of an asthmatic wolf. Occasional moments of synthetic brass and the urgent whispering of someone far off. Your situation doesn't improve when you get past Higher Than The Sun and into Inner Flight, you're still lost in space and you love it. But you're about to land on planet gospel again.
Continue"Desert Island Discs - Screamadelica"
Activism
Everyone has a tin-foil hat friend, right? One of those people who thought the X-Files was a documentary or who doesn't wash with anything but warm water. Someone you've bailed out of jail at three in the morning because they chained themselves to the railings of something the Department of Defence would really rather they hadn't. Even if you don't, you know the sort of person I'm talking about I'm sure.
My friend Otis was like this. He wasn't really a friend of mine, he was a friend of Christiane's, but simply by the fact that I was living with Christiane I had become by default a friend of Otis.
I couldn't tell you the number of weekends I'd wake up and find Otis snuffling through the mail, or rooting through the fridge to steal bacon and bread from us. He'd arrive before dawn in his orange VW camper van, which he called Custard, decamp all the contents into the main hallway of the building to turn Custard into his living space, and then steal all the food from Christiane's fridge. He was the sort of man who would throw a strop if you didn't buy recycled toilet paper but would never chip in for a pint of milk.
As anyone living under a flight path will tell you though, you can find yourself becoming anaesthetised to anything and eventually I let my guard down. To my own peril.
Sunday morning one weekend, I was searching for coffee filters through the kitchen cupboards. Christiane was wrestling with the duvet in her sleep in the master bedroom and... Otis was decanting the left-over wine from the various bottles on the table into a Jerry can. From the way he handled the Jerry can I would have guessed it was half full already.
"Morning Otis."
"Morning D. Any plans for today?"
"I thought I'd go and sabotage the local Trident Submarines by pouring sugar in their gas-tanks."
"Good for you. What are you looking for?"
"Coffee filters. I know there were some in here somewhere..."
"Um... small round crinkly bits of tissue paper, very absorbant, but don't let solids pass through?"
"That's them. Seen them anywhere?"
He paused and looked thoughtfully in the air for a moment before answering. "Best not to ask."
"Right... I'll make instant. Then I need to get up and go, the local opticians shuts at lunchtime and I have to go pick up my prescription."
Otis shot up out of the chair as if it was electrified. He gripped my upper-arms in his grubby calloused hands and stared into my eyes with the sort of wild hermit look that neighbors would later be heard to say "made him seem like such a quiet, nice man"
"Don't go to the optician's today"
"What? Why? Whyever not?"
His grip tightened and I realised I couldn't feel my fingers anymore. I also realised that what I had thought for the longest time were dreadlocks were in fact just matted and mangey clumps of hair held together with mud. And yet somehow his chin was clean-shaven. I suspected that my electric razor had been involved there somewhere.
"Just don't. Trust me. I have to confess something to you Dave..."
"If you're about to tell me you're gay..."
"No, I gave that up years ago. The point is that... well, its not cheap being a free-spirited anarchist and... well... sometimes you need to bend the rules slightly."
"Uh-oh"
"I've been using your name, Dave. And this address. And..."
That was when what I had discounted as imaginary sirens in the distance were suddenly joined with very real, very visible, blue and red splashes of light in the street outside.
"Otis... what have you done?!"
Therapy?
"So tell me what happened."
She clicks the top of her pen several times and flips it dexterously around her fingers like a majorette twirling a baton. I like this one, she's different, she's more like a high-priced hooker than my normal brand of therapist. She wears vivacious scarlet lipstick that always looks wet somehow and on my previous visit she had metal-heeled stillettos on which caused me no end of distraction.
I cried.
"You cried. Over the death of a fictional character."
I knew it had been coming since I started reading the books. The author had said exactly when the character would die and sure enough, he did. So, I cried. Great heaving sobs that left my chest empty and devoid of feeling, a hollow shell with only a thumping heart inside.
"Have you ever cried over the death of a fictional character before?"
I cried over Charles Schultz' death, more because I was going to miss Snoopy than Schultz.
"Yes, but in this case the author didn't pass away, he decided to end the character's life. How old was the character?"
I don't know, he was some sort of mutant who lived hundreds of years. He outlived every other character in the books. Although...
"Go on..."
...he's been around since the late seventies. That was when the books started.
"Okay. Do you think you might have found this made it easier for you to identify with the character? You two being of similar physical age?"
Perhaps.
"And now that he's dead..." she paused and ran the tip of the pen along her lips. "You said you'd recently been ill twice over a period of three weeks. You cancelled your last appointment because you had the flu."
I did have the flu.
"Have you starting to accept your own mortality yet?"
I don't know what you mean.
"You used to call yourself the Bulletproof Punk, which seems a very wild and free title to assume but entirely normal for a young twenty-something to come up with. Nowadays you're far more refined and civilised in your demeanor. You live in an upscale apartment block, you work a white-collar job earning a salary you yourself claim you can't believe and you've just passed the mid-way point in your twenties. So tell me, have you accepted your mortality yet?"
My uncle died earlier this year.
"I know, I read the file."
My father will be next, I can feel it inside. He's not got long to go.
"That seems fatalistic."
All part of my morbid fascination with death.
"Now give me the non-flippant answer."
I don't want to get old.
Go Boy Racer, Go!
The town of Mason is home to the UK's equivalent of the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab at Caltech. Although not nearly as well known or prestigious as NASA's JPL, it was instrumental in the 50's to the development of such British fighters as the Vampire and the Comet. Chuck Yeager famously burst an ear-drum in the otherwise sleepy town when he wanted to visit one of the production plants and had to delay a crucial test flight.
At one point the laboratory employed almost 60% of the town's population, with the remainder composed of family members and vital services functionaries like cops, doctors and streetwalkers (geeks need loving too). Although Britain is less involved with jet propulsion research these days and the town has diversified, Mason still retains that cultural heritage as one of the first places where man looked up and thought "I want to tear that big blue bitch above a new gash at supersonic speeds"
Batizado
I was at my Capoeira class this morning on time for once and the usual discussion of "what did you get up to this weekend" came up. So we're going through the motions and Dan's telling me all about his fantastic weekend, drinking, chatting up women, shagging one of them with outrageous embellishments liberally thrown in. Eventually we'd gone through the basic routine and the contra-master encouraged us to attempt a few improv moves.
The real mastery behind Capoeira isn't the ability to contort into impossible shapes, but to know your own physical limitations and to remain fluid at all times no matter what. Knowing your partner is very important too, as misjudging can cause either of you some nasty bruises or breaks.
Dan got round to asking me how my weekend was after a Mariposa combined with an aerial twist that I narrowly ducked and managed to deftly Au Sem Mao my way out and into some clear space. I trust Dan, but a couple of times he's left me with a scar on my cheek from a toenail or wrapped his leg round one of mine during a tough movement.
"I went into A&E on Saturday night on the advice of the NHS call center"
That got his attention. We paused mid-Parafuso combo and he gave me a look.
"You okay?"
"Yeah, they said over the phone I might have meningitis."
"Gum problem?"
"That's gingivitis."
"Bladder problems?"
"That's cystitis."
"Oh just tell me what the bloody hell is wrong with you then."
"Nothing. Nothing at all, turned out to be a 24-hour virus. Felt like crap, puked, lay around with stomach cramps and a headache, went to get checked out and within six hours of being told nothing was wrong with me felt fine again."
"Ah, the placebo effect."
"I dunno man, I got the feeling that the girl on the phone was more clued up than the girl in the hospital and its not uncommon for the symptoms to just vanish for a while..."
We got back to our routine, but I could tell that Dan was now nervous. Sure enough he's asked to partner up with someone else for the rest of this week, which, although it saddens me I can fully understand, cause who would want to be gyrating in wild and crazy patterns with the risk of diarrhea looming over your head five times a minute?
The Measure of a Man
"My liege! Someone hath stolen the Royal yardstick!"
"What? What varlet hath done such a blight upon our fair Empire?"
"Fear not my lord, for there is a woman from France who has perhaps found another way to measure distances."
"Really? Bring her forth! I can't wait to metre!"
Continue"The Measure of a Man"
The People's Republic of Acerbia
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
- Benjamin Franklin, 1759
The Galleria?
Since I doubt any of you are exactly champing at the bit and clicking daily on the icons to the right to see if I've updated the two missing sections I'll take a moment here on a nice sunny and quiet Saturday to say that I've put the old Flash title graphics gallery back up.
Long-time readers will remember the evolution of the site as it went from one strange semi-clad babe to another over the course of a year or so.
Be sure and right click and zoom in to see all the really interesting details like... uh... well like the nipples for instance. I spent a long time making those nipples.
More soon, hopefully. There are folders and folders of stuff that I really should get round to putting back up. Can't remember why I took them down... oh yeah! Bandwidth.
Why I Hate Rob
Rob and I met by chance one evening in a pub. He put money down on the pool table and I knocked it off by accident. The place was too packed for pool anyway but he didn't care. Rob gave me a polite but stern look and I didn't back down. He pushed my shoulder, I pushed back. He took a swing, I ducked and ended up knocking someone else's pint out of their hand. They shoved me forward straight into Rob and it turned into a brawl.
Fights are never like they seem in the movies. Most times after a few swings the combatants end up hugging each other and fighting dirty up close. There's no trading of punches like an exchange of barbed comments, with each manouevre meeting a counter-move and a skillful choreographed ballet of violence captivating an audience which invariably includes an astonished and beautiful heroine.
Rob kneed me in the nuts as I punched him in the kidneys, and we both ended up crumbling like jet engines made of sand. After that we were pretty good friends.
"What are you working on at the moment?" he'd ask and I'd be too busy attempting to impress him to make up a decent lie.
"It's a detective show, the main character has been thawed out of a block of ice after thirty thousand years and its about how he solves crimes and melds into our culture. Its full of situational comedy with him discovering how things work in a hilarious way. We just filmed the pilot episode."
"What's it called?"
"Cro-magnon P.I."
"Mate, that's awful."
"What are you working on?"
"The harrowing real life tale of a seven year old girl with alien hand syndrome who is committed to an asylum after she murders her parents."
"Sounds intense."
"Yeah, Zemeckis has shown an interest in the script and he's looking to start pre-production sometime this summer."
And that was when I started hating Rob.
Cubicle
The evening started off badly and pretty much went in a exponential curve downwards from there. I don't mean that it was a bad evening, it was a very fun evening to be truthful. It was just an evening filled with bad ideas.
After the first bar where we'd sat drinking pretty strong rum cocktails to "warm us up" we did that jaunty walk that the recently inebriated do which takes no notice of on-coming traffic in one-way streets and makes you wrap your arms around each other as the six of you try and continue moving in several directions at once like a schitzophrenic squid.
Bar two was emptier but somehow more expensive. The correlation slipped blissfully past us somehow and we attempted to mingle with the genteel folks of Hoxton as they sneered through their champagne cocktails at us. We were pilgrims in an unholy land, none of us had that trendy vibe of West Enders slumming it or the necessary East End wideboy clout to really make an impression.
As Bella and I slipped off to find a restroom, Jay slammed a fistful of twenties onto the bartop, causing a splash of whatever someone had spilled there earlier, and shouted for the barkeep. An unamused woman who looked like she would just as gladly beat his skull to cerebral jam as serve him a drink came over to serve him.
In the only available cubicle in the mensroom, Bella and I were doing naughty things. Someone kicked at the door and demanded to know what was going on inside. Bella was kneeling on the seat with her hands on the cistern and shouted back over her shoulder "We're fucking! Now piss off!" before powdering her nose. She pinched at her upper lip and ungraciously pivoted so she could sit on the seat. The cold surface and the fact that her miniskirt had ridden up gave her a cold sharp shock that made her say "eep" involuntarily.
Doing my utmost best to not comment on her lacey panties or the lovebite on her inner thigh, I leaned forward over her and finished off what she'd left on the cistern lid. Her finger poked at my gut and she pointed out what a lardy bastard I had become since splitting up with my girlfriend.
"We could be y'know" she said.
"Could be what?"
"Fucking"
"That's a very bad idea. Something not uncommon when the person who has the idea is under the influence of a variety of substances. People are always convinced somehow of the genius of their ideas when they're pissed or stoned and then in the cold harsh light of day it turns out to be a pile of fetid dingo's kidneys."
"That's a great mental image to come up with when I'm offering free blow and a free blow."
"Wasn't me, it was Douglas Adams"
"Well maybe he'd appreciate nine years of clarinet practice" she punctuated this with a flicker of tongue that would have caused a salamander to blush.
There was another kick at the door. This time serious enough to make us want to make a move. I unlocked the door and slipped out to confront the spotty little oik who was about as big as a pint glass, but then, when you're feeling paranoid even a loveable puppy can stare at you in a way that makes you feel guilty to the core.
"She's just... uh... she's... She'll be out in a second."
"I told the bouncer that there were people doing drugs and having promiscuous sex in here."
Bella yanked the door open, thankfully she'd also taken the time to pull her miniskirt back down to the tops of her thighs.
"It wasn't just prawniscus," she slurred, "it was voracious and filthy. He's an animal. At home I have to chain him up so he won't violate me at the most inopera-tune moments. He dragged me in here by my hair, he's left me all stretched out of shape and I won't be able to walk straight for a week now."
The oik turned a brighter crimson than I did but the call of nature superceded his discomfort and he stepped in and closed the door behind him, locking it briskly. I gave Bella a look that said she'd not be getting any help with her spreadsheets from now on and we headed back into the bar.
As the bouncer passed us, heading towards the door with its little abstract headless man symbol on it, I jerked one thumb over my shoulder and in my most polite Englishman voice said:
"Cubicle on the left. I believe he's got a whore in there with him. I could hear snorting."
And with that it was time to find another bar.
Porridge
In an impossible confluence of events I found myself standing in the book store, watching her. She was chewing on her bottom lip, sucking it in between her teeth, scraping the vestiges of a day's lipstick off in endless repetition as she ran her index finger along the spines of the books. Her left arm cradled a half dozen books on a variety of subjects, some fiction, some biographies, I suspected it was all reference material. Leander wrote intelligent pieces for a broadsheet under a male pseudonym.
I dithered for a moment, realising that eventually she'd turn and see me here, standing in the shadows of the history section. There would be a fragment of her mind that would recognise me before she remembered me entirely and for a fraction of a second her true emotions would shine through. Did I really want to get involved again? Would that one moment make it worthwhile, justifying everything that had gone before or was yet to come?
The decision was made for me as the violin quartet over in one corner of the bookstore started to play something soft and melodious. It startled me somewhat and I looked round to see the four women with their string instruments. I was in one of London's upmarket bookstores, replete with comfortable leather armchairs and freshly-ground coffee. It was not wholly unreasonable to expect that on some nights the patrons would appreciate some classical music.
I looked round and Leander was standing three feet away staring me down. I had missed the moment of recognition and couldn't read her expression anymore.
Her mother was from New Zealand, her father had served aboard the HMS Leander but had been somewhat lax in explaining that he had a wife and child back in Britain. She had a fiery temperament and no particular love for charming British men. It was amazing that we'd managed for as long as we did before the split.
Closing the distance between us she veered off to my left and stood beside me, facing in the opposite direction. Her focus directed solely at the quartet, she spoke slowly.
"I don't recognise what they're playing" she stated, matter-of-factly.
"Perhaps its a composition of their own" I replied, like a secret agent replying to a triggered codephrase.
I missed you
"When did you get out?" Her features reminded me of a young Sigourney Weaver. The curls of her hair fell in wild patterns to either side of her face. The bare and pink upper half of her lower lip contrasted with her ruby red lipstick, like the negative-image of a Geisha.
"About a week ago. Good behavior."
I really missed you.
She nodded, but continued to watch the four women in their smart black dresses playing violins, viola and cello. It felt more and more like some ridiculously awkward moment. I wanted her to either slap me or show me some warmth, the emotional distance was too much to bear.
I wanted to explain to her. I wanted to talk about the money and the duty and the hardship and the ins and outs. I wanted to explain the nights in the cell thinking about the last woman I'd touched and how much I could now appreciate what a rare and special thing that kind of connection was. I wanted to say so much.
Some nights the thoughts of you were all that kept me going. Take me back, please.
There was a disappointed frown on her brow as the swirling symphony of notes surrounded us. The smell of freshly-cut paper and ink permeated the air. Leander turned to face me at last and I could see tears in her eyes.
"Come home with me tonight" she said, and my world exploded.