En-Route To Birmingham

'En-Route To Birmingham'

by Adam Gripton (alias Gippy el Carnagio)

24th March, 2000

Here's my second: never publicly released, but make your own judgments. Read on.

Friends, before I begin, I should like to point out to you that no-one ever said that every person has two books in them. Except for Jeffrey Archer, of course, but he doesn’t count – he’s not a person. (Confused yet?) Therefore, I can accept no responsibility if you get so bored reading this that by the end of Act Eight you are feeling a bit suicidal in your torment. Sorry! Just send the book back for a full refund. We’d be happy to shut the door in your face. So here goes…

Act One: Difficult to Impossible

A puzzler if ever I saw one. Let’s see. Difficult to impossible, maybe. Utterly stupid, quite possibly. Pointless, most definitely. But I feel that I should anyway, if only for once again annoying a glut of I.T. teachers desperately trying to make me conform to their ideals and be a model student for once, instead of a real student. Oh well, if that’s the way it goes… a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. Don’t tell me I’m not a man, that’s just nasty. Take that back this minute! And large it up for the biggest and baddest (the word is worst, darling) Ibiza garage mixes of the millennium. Can’t wait – I’m almost itching to inject myself with a tonne of heroin and dance naked in the middle of a seedy club right this minute. Antisocial? I guess, but that’s the nineties for you. And I wish that this bloody computer would stop getting at me for using apostrophes – it’ll be telling me to include words like ‘moreover’ next. Like a blinking English essay. Yeuch. Shut up, will you?!

Should I be controversial this time round or not? You see, I’m worried that I’ve become less extremist than last time. True, I still hate the oppressive regime we know as ‘school’, and parents blaring out 50’s music in poor little innocent children’s ears, among a cavalcade of other things (but mostly just 50’s music – can’t see anything even mildly good about it; that goes for a frighteningly large part of 60’s music as well). But I’ve stopped insulting for the sake of insulting – you know, on second thoughts, it’s probably good. It’ll allow me to include some funny stuff in here as well. You see, this book isn’t going to be all my own work this time – more a complete cross-section of what makes the master race we live in be a very amused master race indeed. And for that I need suggestions from the public, and for that I need to speak to people. I’m already scared… but everything’s gonna be alright. Well, I think so anyway. Don’t argue with me – you’ll lose. Unless you’re good at arguments… there may be a philosophy behind that, but somehow I doubt it. In any case, I’ll probably fail miserably if I am forced to write another sixteen stinking pages, so I am openly appealing to you the reader and queen of the rats and cockroaches (not really, didn’t mean it, sorry, won’t do it again) to feed my aching tum with literary fruit cake and lemon meringue. Go on, have a crack. Please!

Hmmm… no response. Must have gone through a tunnel. I’ll call you back just when you’re about to go to sleep. Nothing will get in my way, not even the largest radioactive strawberry. This time I’ve got a gun. Good, eh? I’ll blow your friggin’ head off! Snide comments to be sent to my pet hamster’s house in Kenya. With your help, thousands of rodents all around the world (na, na, na, nanana etc…) can live and sleep tonight. Hamsters don’t want to live on handouts – all they need is the tools necessary to make their own treadmills. So please, give generously with your lumps of steel.

No, on second thoughts, I’ve done this alone once before, so as sure as the capital of England is E, I’m gonna do it again. If you’re doing something right, keep doing it, that’s what Ray Nightingale says. Inspiration’s what I need, ‘cos I’m gonna be a record breaker. I’m gonna be the biggest windbreak the world has ever seen. And I’m not going to keep one person away from the cold British wind: the whole of Birmingham will be united under my cover, damnit. I will not stop until I achieve my goal. And with your help, I can achieve more goals than bloody Man Utd ever did in a year. So I must write, or our next monarch may just be Alex Ferguson…

Right, so where were we? Wherever you like. Somewhere way out West, on the outskirts of Torquay (or Aberystwyth, to please all our Welsh viewers). I’ve gotta pull myself together – there’s one hell of a lot of poo I’ve gotta write. So, to begin…

I won’t argue about things for the hell of it – it’s not my style, okay? It may be that of other, failed dictators, but not this one. Yes, I’m not yet over the idea that taking over the Universe would be an excellent idea, in fact I may include it later in this book, I’m just trying to ease off the scent for a while. Metaphorically cover it with deodorant, if you like your sausages that way. The spur of the moment, they tell me. Is this enough spurs for you? Or are you of that breed of animals who prefer Arsenal? Is that it? Are you going to tell me that it’s either Red or Dead? Well, we had that quote in the last book, so die in your agony !!!

Aah, that’s relieving. Here we go, once again at the place at which I was previously spouting off about engulfing all the ugliness of Manchester, but this time we’re refreshed and relieved. I’ve had a mental shower, and I highly recommend it to any of you who want full, spiritual enlightenment. No, I’m not turning all tree-hugging-hippie-crap on you, I’m just saying that otherwise you’ll stink. Nobody likes a stinker: it’s proven fact and I am the expert to back it up. Use deodorant, wear sunscreen and brush your teeth three times a day. That’s right, even at high noon, in the toilet at work, just when you’re in the middle of that delicious cheese and tomato sandwich. That’s why they say three times a day: to make you buy more cheese than you need. More tomatoes as well, of course, because the fresh, minty flavour would have killed that off as well, but the most important part of the equation is that Cheese equals Profit squared over Mass cubed. Understand? Or are you ferduddled already? I am, so I’m suddenly tempted to stop. Why does this writing not fill up paper? What a mystery. Whose idea was it for the word ‘lisp’ to have an S in it? Innit? And all that? Why is abbreviation such a long word? They’re trying to waste our energy on saying long words! Then we’d have to buy a lot of cheese to replace our anaerobicalismic oxygen debt to Africa (or something), or we’d die, die, die in cold blood, you fiend and not-very-nice-person. Sorry, just fantasising…

And maybe that’s why the Germans are so fat. They’ve got a load of absolutely mammoth words (such as Kraftfahrzeugreparaturwerkstatten – impressed?), so they’re forever puffen und panten und asken vor mehr cheesenwissenschaften. They must eat! Eat! Chomp viz your schmall mouth und tellen mir tis cheesy! And so they blow up like balloons, which always fly away because the little kiddies didn’t realise that they had actually bought a cheesy German instead of a Happy Birthday From Comet balloon. My word, I hate it when that happens.

Spur…spur…spur… ah yes, no maybe not…spur…spur…spur…bugger it, I’m going home.

Sprouts, though, might well be something to talk about. I know that I hate writing about specific, Pacific subjects, but I want to turn over a new leaf. It’s been over fourteen months since the last thing began to take shape, and theoretically I should have matured since then. Yeah, right. Dream on, man, while you’re in your comfy bed, all snuggled up with your teddy and your night cap. Dream on, while the night surrounds you and the terrors of the day are crushed. Dream on, dream about the colours of your thoughts swirling around in a giant crystal ball in the sky. Dream on, don’t be afraid, for sleep is true liberation. Dream on, and soon you will find the path to where you are headed. Fantasies will never be resolved in human life – only in the most intricate and fantastic dreams. Dream on, my friend and beauty queen, and the world will be your oyster. Dream on, and you will wonder why you never knew yourself before. Dream on, and enter a world where peace prevails. No more evil. Got it?

Hey, I almost feel like stopping now. But I won’t, trust me. I’ll continue being blissfully ignorant to the issues of the day, and I’ll say proudly that I don’t give a pig’s ear about politics, don’t give a whistle about war, don’t give an igloo (?) about issues. I’m young, free and immortal. Not immoral, though, so I won’t start spouting off about the graces of xenophobia. Well, I might, if you ask me nicely. What’s in it for me? Who cares? I sure do. And I’ll write just what I want. Go ahead, stop me. It’ll be difficult to impossible, you mark my words. Try and make me see sense; on the other hand, maybe it’s only me who’s making any sense at the moment. Fifty pence a go to laugh at the funny clown. Hit him where it hurts and win a yellow balloon.

And so, as I dock in at Dover port for this first act, I am left stranded and lonely, without a soul or a teddy to guide me on my travels. But hey, I’ll manage. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine. As long as I get some encouraging words along the way, I’ll be at my prime by 2080. But just before I burst out crying in a mess on the floor, I must pull myself together. There may be trouble ahead – but while there’s moonlight, and music, and love and romance… oh, you know the rest. Let’s christen this ship “The Rather Curious Pig”.

Act Two: Dazed And Confused (a.k.a. The Rather Curious Pig)

I may be, but aren’t we all in our own little ways? Come on, wouldn’t you just love to admit that, at the end of the day, you’re no less dazed and confused than the next person? Hey, don’t worry! It’s perfectly healthy – in fact, if I had my way it would be encouraged in all state schools. It’s a necessary state of mind in which a person can ponder aimlessly about anything at all, and answer meaningless questions about why life ever exists in the first place. We all do it – so don’t you worry your mind about it, my darling. But as far as writing a book about it is concerned – well, that’s a whole different kettle of mad cows. True, personal feelings are necessary assets to the human mentality (and separate us from earthworms as well), but really, should I be pouring out my metaphorical cup of emotion onto you unsuspecting, innocent reader? Nah. I’ll leave that to you, man. I’m sure that with enough help, you’ll know what I mean. So what do I talk about? Good question. I guess that rather curious pigs could be a strong favourite with the voters, but since when have you wanted a Vietnamese Pot Bellied to be Mayor of Chichester? Ambitious, at that. Mind you, they’re rather intelligent animals, but that’s pushing the boat out too far. They’re likely to get a slap in the face from their girlfriend, amid rumours that the only reason they ever were in there was a fetish about chat lines. No, honestly. Pigs can do that if they want to. I once saw one. Yeah, just an ordinary pig, no frills, common or garden (but always muddy) pig. Fascinating, it was. Compulsive viewing – you really ought to see the quality tripe Channel 5 are broadcasting.

And if you’re wondering by now what exactly has hit me on the head hard enough for me to notice (and believe me, I’m a hard-headed woman), it’s some sort of primitive idea, not yet developed enough for my brain to take safely yet, but still proving that life on Uranus does exist. Trust me, the only reason we assume that there ain’t none is that it’s too obvious. They reckon that the nearest life to us is ten squillion (technical term, of course) light years away – has anyone stopped to take a look at that asteroid which they say is gonna destroy us all in 2028? It’s absolute madness! Look, the powers that be are virtually handing the ignorant citizens of this doomed planet a perfect chance to switch homes (as long as we do it rather quickly), but all we’re saying is that we’re all going to die. Well, I guess that’s a fine illustration of just how pessimistic we all are. Lighten up, man! Nobody ever liked a scaremonger. But everyone likes their local fishmonger – I think. So tomorrow, walk down your local road to your local fish store and buy a hundredweight of haddock. That’ll please him.

Et maintenant, as the French put it so Frenchly, I’ve run out of ideas. Which must clearly be a bad omen: if I can’t think of a single thing to write about on page three, what the hell is it going to be like on page 16? I’ll be drivelling, dribbling and drab. But that’s not gonna happen, now, is it? Innit? I don’t know – answers on a postcard. Send it to your penpal in Essex. Well, they say that it’s a different language they speak down there anyway. I should spend a year in Essex as part of my studies – maybe then I’ll be fluent. Don’t be a merchant banker, guv!

But not only in writing, I tell you straight – we are all (OK, maybe it’s only me) confused in life itself. Listen, I’m not gonna start pouring out all my innermost thoughts, hopes, fears and fantasies to you unforgiving public, but instead I’ll say this: Life is the most confusing part of our existence. Not only eating, drinking and sleeping – no, that’s the easy part. But I have asked many independent sources what the meaning of life is (yes, I am sounding like a business report now), and most of them simply replied that it is to live to the best of your ability, enjoy life and make the most out of our all-too-short span on Mother Earth. OK, I’m lying about most people thinking that, but it seems to be the clichéd answer. So how, I ask you, does anyone live a full life? Drink and smoke a lot? Not necessarily – you’ll die younger that way. Become some sort of mega-spiritualist and live in the mountains? Well, alright if you’re that way inclined, but a beginner would just get bored. Invent something? Yeah, that’s really simple. Exercise a lot and keep healthy? Fine, but you’d spend far too much of your life running around in Lycra, and putting up with little kids laughing at you and saying ‘Mummy! Mummy! Look at that freak over there with the fluorescent yellow skin!’. So unless you’re a masochist who thinks that they need to be abused, I don’t really have an answer to the above dull question. How inconclusive of me. Somebody should slap me on the wrist this moment and send me to bed without any supper. Because I’ll kick and scream and hold my breath until someone tries to reason with me for once. Honestly, it’s not that hard! What is wrong with you people? I don’t need you! Who ever needed other people in order to survive? Well, I guess that lack of others would kinda make reproduction a little tricky, but let’s not go there. Because otherwise this thing would just be made disgusting, graphic and gratuitously yuck. Lovely, I know. But it had to be done – at the end of the day, it’s for your own good. So lie down on my bed of nails whilst I inject you with the metaphorical arsenic that is the rest of my book. And you will read, and you will understand, and you will comprehend my inferences, and you will write a discursive essay on it by Monday! Verstehen Sie? I am your leader!

And I’m having second thoughts about writing for the self-proclaimed institution that is the school newspaper. Maybe it’s not that bad – or am I just lowering my standards? I should not, my friend, be subjected to this degrading nonsense – all I want to do is write for myself! Not for anyone else – although it is an idea, I suppose. Writing for other people? Does that suggest making my writing mean something really untoward, inferred, deep-and-hidden-meaning time? Love poetry? Yeah, I’m really gonna do that for a living. Songs? Leave it to the experts. If you don’t dig my style, don’t stinking read it. It’s just that there’s so much scary white paper, and it’s enveloping my brain in a mass of whiteness, and I need to fill it so full of black, black ink (I see some paper… and I want to paint it black) that there is no evil white to be evil anymore !!! Understand? No, didn’t think you would. Maybe you’re just shallow – or maybe you’re deeper than the Pacific itself: you may just be hiding your unseen talent under a masquerade of ignorance. Trust me, many people do. It’s sad, really – so much to offer the world and one must spend it under a wheelbarrow, going back and forth over their knees, day in, day out, always wishing to kick it off – BUT WAIT, I hear you say, isn’t that easy? Not when you’re kicking nowt but air. And it’s aggravating – I know, I know – and it seems as if you’ll never, ever get out of this paradox. But soon the grass will turn purple, and the sky will go red, and Little Missy’s swing will transmogrify into jelly which will feed your family and the Smiths down the road as well. And everything will turn out nice again – that is, until Wheelbarrow Man comes along, knocking at your door with a call of ‘DADDY’S HOME!!!’ He will wreck your life, don’t doubt it for one second, otherwise he’ll jump in there and eat you for supper. It’s happened to me many times before. I’m mentally disturbed because of it – so I guess that’s why I’m writing this right now. Lousy in life, lousy in love, this is all I have. Sad, ain’t it? Nobody’s there, I’m just a worm who’s living in this crazy world of technology, without even an optimistic thought to my name. Nobody knows the pain, but it’s there. That’s for sure.

Today, said the marsupial, I’m gonna get me a motorbike… and it’s gonna be a big, black one, just like the one my old pappy once bought… yup, and it’s gonna have a horn, a nice, big red one that makes a kinda parpy noise… oh, yeah, dig those rhythmic vibes, man.

Oh bugger, it really looks as if I can’t stop myself from writing crap whenever something like this is begun. It’s a sad state of affairs, really – the very fact that nothing by way of an idea has flicked by my mind for the last couple of months must reflect on the situation the world is in. Because I am the centre of the Universe – and you know it well. The raw, naked truth is thus: again I haven’t got anything like the draft sketches of an idea. One needs inspiration to write – but if I’m inspired then you’re a Dutchman.

Just remember, oh good reader, that although they may fund research into alternatives, it doesn’t necessarily mean that your cosmetics haven’t been rubbed beforehand into the genitals of an unsuspecting rabbit. What a lovely thought. But I’m sure that the integrity of high-street stores is not to be questioned. Or possibly it is. I don’t know, I think I’m being a little too deep for this time of year. It’s just way too cold and far too diseased. This world is like the house of the living wounded, trust me. I’ve seen it – and it’s a jungle out there. Which kinda puts everything in perspective, and shows me just how much sanity I’ve already saved, without needing the help of a counsellor. Don’t ask me how I did it, I’ll just throw a wobbly on you with the excuse that I’m going through ‘hard times’. Oh yeah, it’s all true, baby. Don’t be a-fiddlin’ if yer can’t take the fiddlin’ yerself. Just think long and hard next time you reach for the toilet paper: William Hague is sure to be hiding under there somewhere, listening to Ace of Base songs and chewing on Chomp bars. My advice? Always check inside the roll first. I hear that it’s his favourite hideout. Apparently, there’s an army of William Hague’s somewhere in the Middle East, just stationed there to stop any terrorist flare-up by boring them all to death before they get the chance to shout something in Arabic and kill another sixty-eight goldfish freedom fighters. Damn, I hate it when that happens. Goldfish have never done anything to them! It’s just not fair, I tells you! And it’s also just not far… that is, until the end of this doomed chapter and onto the next chasm. And if you’re gonna live forever, it’s also possibly not far until the next millennium. Just send me a photograph of how your 3000 celebrations were, should the world still exist. Which I doubt. Let’s face it, can we keep this planet open for business for another thousand years? Not if I’ve got anything to do with it…

Act Three: Lemons and Lycra Shorts

I shall begin this beautiful chapter with a quote. Not from any of the great thinkers of our time, but instead a lesser-known prophet who we have all grown to respect: the Bard himself, Tim Chung. And no, I’m not going to respect any copyright or permission laws here, because using other people’s material was the original idea. The whole reason why I haven’t been over the last four pages is simply because I can’t speak to people. I’m a shy, timid person really, no matter how many other people may try and convince you otherwise. So, anyway, on with the immortal quote from Tim which struck me as rather profound:

“We are all small, little, sometimes colourful, fishes in the murky depths of the deep, black and lightless ocean. We are swimming amongst the rotting and dead, souls being the ‘ghosts’ and dead remains of eels and little squishy things. I’m out there.” Hope you enjoyed it. I did.

So anyway, as I once again get cooking on my small camping stove which always makes a distinctly toast-like smell whatever’s cooking (doc) with gaseous remains of various vaporised plants and priests, I am left wondering: what is it about lemons that makes your eyes screw up should you be unfortunate enough to eat one? No offence, they’re lovely actually. You really should try one. They’re almost as nice as apple juice, if that’s possible. Which again is highly doubtful in my opinion. So anyway, that doesn’t happen with other fruits such as the noble grapefruit, which may be just as acidic (man, I dig those citric blues), but then again, things like that should be left well alone to drown in their own vomit.

And what with Lycra shorts? What is it about them that makes your eyes screw up? Well, I think we may all guess that one: especially if it’s some 50-year-old encased within them. What a lovely thought. Meat and two veg? Ooh, don’t go there, Gippy… ease off now. OK, my master, whoever you are. I shall stop pieces of my face falling off and reset my sense of taste. An apple a day, however, keeps the doctor away (obviously), so why not a lemon? Or a lime? Have you ever tried eating a whole lime without sugar to cushion the blow? So how the hell do you know that it doesn’t keep the doctor away as efficiently as an apple? I want to live in a country where a crisp is a bloody crisp! Where Diet Coke is Diet Coke! And where Haribo is not rationed, for the sake of my great uncle’s false teeth!!!

Till I wander over yonder I shall ponder with my Honda to abscond a transponder to be a responder to a chinless wonder, all I shall eat and drink will be made of milk and vegetable extracts. But don’t jump – yet. Not until you’ve read this…

‘Razors pain you, Rivers are damp, Acids stain you, Drugs cause cramp.

‘Guns aren’t lawful, Nooses give, Gas smells awful, You might as well live.’

And as you may have guessed already, that was on the wall in one of the offices in Norfolk Social Services. It speaks for itself, really – but I like the philosophy myself. Kinda puts you off your plans for full-scale suicide for a moment. But then you hear Madonna’s bastardised American Pie on the radio yet another time and you’re wondering what the point of life is once again. It’s such a sorry state of affairs, and I wish that I could do something about it. But alas, I’m here to witter, as wittering is what I do best and is all I am supposedly paid for (apart from pressing the buttons to decide who I will have a deathwish against tomorrow – it could be you). I’m a loser, I’m a winner, I’m a lover and I’m a sinner. And the race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself. They say that the race is only fun whilst you’re running it, and after you’ve taken home ten gold medals you wonder what the hell you did it for in the first place. Personally I wouldn’t know, but sources of tomato and HP Fruity tell me otherwise. I would have thought that anyone would be rather chuffed to win anything – let alone anything which isn’t just a metaphor for something completely different. Such as this paragraph, for example. If you haven’t spotted the hidden meaning by now, then you can’t frankly know me that well. Yes, that means you. I’m a frustrated being – frustrated with the joint favourite horse which I thought was a dead cert being edged out by a few light years by the other joint favourite. Heck, judging by the length of this race, who wouldn’t be glad to finish? They say it’s not the winning but the taking part. Well, what’s the point of taking part if you didn’t want to win? It has been said in the single most important book of a very popular religion that at some point in the vast expanse of time we see before us, that the last shall be first and the first shall be last. Well, I’d like to see that day right now. And what on earth would happen to the poor sods in the middle? They wouldn’t move anywhere. While all of the others were country dancing around them like little kiddies around a Maypole, they’d be stuck in the middle, forced to spend yet another eternity in ‘mid-table obscurity’ until someone wrote another holy book saying that the first shall be last and everyone else will move up a bit to fill the vacant space. Now, you see, that’d be a good idea. It would simply give every person their moment in the sun – their fifteen minutes of fame. And if it means a day trip to Coventry, then so be it. I’m still up for it. Anything for a little interest once in a while! I’d gladly go and speak to some Brummie to achieve it, or even an American! Oh no, let’s not get into that, now, we did that last time and look where it got us. But not this time round. Heck, it’s part of the reason that I’m writing it in the first place. But why get all melodramatic and depressed where one can WITTER? Is that the sole purpose of my life? Oh, sorry, we’d already established that – to look weird and behave with a quirky nature. Yeah, I’m so crazy, I am.

So, my friendly fiends, did you have a nice holiday in Paradise? Stick together, and don’t form a union against drivel. Sellotape and long notes are also helpful, but don’t get your guitar chords all stuck together. That’s murder, you know. Right-wing dictatorship could be considered for a little while, but beware the banana revolution. And as for making yourself king… well, it’d be an easy life, but you’d get bored! Wouldn’t you rather go to the match on Saturday and not be bowed down to with every step you took? You’d also stand a much higher chance of being assassinated. Or ‘disappeared’ and erased silently from the picture by a Government conspiracy. Scary, eh?

And now you tell me I’m wrong. Ooh, aren’t you the cleverest? What’s so wrong with a little speculation once in a while? Heck, it makes things like this flow by a little better – with the emphasis very much on the word ‘little’. At the end of the day, it hardly matters… but make sure that whatever you do, ask the person who pays the phone bill first. Otherwise you’ll be thrown into a dark prison cell full of raspberries and locked in for the next seven whole minutes. Could you bear it? Well I couldn’t. There wouldn’t be anywhere to move, because of some displacement theory. Archimedes, your time will come. Just because you ran down the street naked while screaming ‘Eureka’, doesn’t mean that everyone else has to be subjected to overflowing baths. Anyone can strip off and run down the street if they want to, they have the perfect right. But they may get chased by the police, or people disguised cunningly as police. But hey, some people may actually enjoy it. Why should we listen to these people? I’ll tell you – because they know where it’s at. They know what’s in da house. They know how to play the game. We’d be hovering on the brink of destruction had it not been for these blatantly weird people showing us the way.

But don’t let it get you down if you consider yourself to be normal. Because listen to me this time (as if you have a choice)… nobody is normal. We’re all quirky in our own little ways, and as Tim put it at the start of this chapter, we are all fish anyway, so what does it matter? Set up camp in the middle of Milton Keynes and try to look ordinary for one moment. I can tell you from experience, it doesn’t work.

But then again, am I just spouting clichés? Is this just repeating all you’ve heard from adverts from the Samaritans and BUPA for the last ten years? Should I be taking a different approach, saying that you’ll probably get knocked over by a train tomorrow – so live for the day? Or will that just breed suicide? Or just meaningless questions devised for the soul purpose of filling up a meaningless paragraph in a meaningless book with no sign of a hidden meaning to save its life? It’s like a second album – to be honest with you, even I was surprised at the success of my first book. But will a second work? Or will it flop as badly as ‘Be Here Now’ itself? I sincerely hope not. And yes, I know that it was their third album. And it wasn’t all that bad. But enough. I’m just faffing again. This thing will flop, I’m sure. But at least I should allow it to flop with dignity, and go down in a blaze of glory. But how?

In any case, I’ve never touched these dizzy heights before. I’ve never written twenty-six pages off my own back before. So don’t blame me! I only wrote the thing! I’m only the poor sod of an author who needs inspiring but is confined to writing about pigs and flying things! And lemons, of course. But what’s so amusing about lemons? (snigger…) I mean, no-one laughs when someone says the word ‘lemons’ (hee hee…), now, do they? Since when has the punchline to a half-decent joke included the word ‘lemons’ (ha ha…)? Hmm? What about ‘sausages’? Or ‘cheese’? Or ‘bobbin’? All very unfunny words, I’m sure you’ll agree.

But Lycra shorts? That’s just disgusting! Why did I ever consider that in the first place? The average rubbish bag contains half a pint of liquid. And that’s true! Oh dear, it must be bad when I’m resorting to useless facts. Someone help me! I’m already running out of steam, and that can’t bode well for rail travel in the future. Yup, I’m up the proverbial creek without a proverbial paddle. Sailing through the land of metaphors without so much as an ampersand to ward off the adjectival monsters and the flesh-eating commas. I should be more spontaneous. Less is more. Less is more. Less is more. So why am I writing things in threes? To fool the readers. Uh-oh. Sorry! Whoops. Better stop this chapter as soon as possible, methinks.

Act Four: Dead… Or Even Better

No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. This chapter will not die. This chapter will live. This chapter will be better than life itself, which isn’t difficult. I have an inspired section title for once, and two beautiful pages of pale white to cram full of candy floss and poisoned cheese sandwiches. So first I need a guardian angel, a member of Culture Club, a toilet roll, an old coat hanger, an old coat, an old goat, a dirty old man, some ordinary household bleach and an unlimited supply of sticky-back plastic. Failing that, I’m sure that I can ask for a moon rocket for Christmas. I’m sure that my plan shall work – I’ve already taken a look at the Norwich branch of the Association of Dirty Old Men to see which ones are suitable. There’s some pretty good ones coming through the ranks, that’s for sure. They’re men, they’re all ridiculously old and they’re very dirty. But they’re not dead, and this I find disappointing. Apparently, the A.D.O.M. told me that they would charge a £50 service charge for killing included. And fate would have it, I didn’t have the money on me at the time. So no guinea pigs for this experiment. But it’ll be alright, OK no it won’t. I’ve already established that the world is screwed up like party hats from a Christmas cracker, so how can there be nothing to worry about? Moreover, why would we bother to worry about it anyway? It’s quite obvious that it’s all going on in this planet of ours, but why not let Nature take its course and let everyone die? It’d be no fun on your own, anyway. Why not join everyone in the Afterlife, and not bother to try and survive nuclear war? Why would anyone bother? There’d be no-one to talk to, for a start. I mean, have you ever got an intelligent conversation out of a cockroach? No, didn’t think so. But this is already rolling downhill faster than a generous cylindrical dollop of cheddar cheese, so I think that I’ll ask some people what to do next. Wish me luck. I might freak out before I even get the chance, but I may emerge from my hideout for a few minutes on Friday night. But when I go back in, it’ll be forever. At least I think so.

So, as I scour the bins along Inspiration Street for some tasty morsels to feed my brain, is it getting better? I was certainly never doing this before. And yet I’m meant to be making the excuse of a departure. Yeah, they’re gonna buy that one. But honestly, I hate to rabbit on about how I can’t think of anything this early in the book. Heck, even in the other one I didn’t do this until the fifth fit of agony. Oh well, life passes, shit happens. It’s as simple as that. But solvent abuse can kill instantly. And so can petrol/match abuse. Hmm. Seems like a good idea right now, you know. Get on him! Get on him! Am I going crazy? Tu sais la réponse.

Wait, they say. But since when have I waited for a green man, when not in Germany and not doing as the Germans do? Since when have I waited months for Fate to slap me in the face and say ‘Wake up, Gippy! Your dinner’s ready!’? I want to see the world, not sit in this stuffy room and write an endless piece of writing which I can’t see a point to anyway. So what chance do you have? Will I ever publish this anyway? There are way too many questions. And most of them unanswered. It’s a sad state of affairs. Story of my life.

Dead? That’s bad, isn’t it? Well don’t say that I should have known, I must have been away when we covered that subject. I was most probably near death at the time. The light was shining so close to me, and I heard a voice say ‘Look, Gippy, you really don’t want to live in this crappy old world, do you?’ And you know what? I was tempted. But I didn’t go, and it was all for the sake of you people who are reading this now. Permission granted to feel privileged and unbelievably inferior to the system which lies like a bureaucratic tiger above you. Oh yes, we are all slaves. No-one is an individual apart from those who are stigmatised. And all this is getting way too profound for my liking, but hey, it’s a departure. A lounge, if you will, full to the brim with people from Birmingham awaiting their flight to Torremolinos or Ibiza or somewhere which it is impossible to have fun as a result of the overcrowded tourists. The whole population of this stinking country are nothing more than sheep. And yet, try and be anything more than a sheep and you’ll be laughed at until the goldfish come home. And when the aquatic animals are home to roost, they’ll laugh at you even more. So if you, dear reader, choose not to be a fluffy Welsh farmyard animal, good luck to you. You choose to do it at your own risk, and I respect you for that. But don’t be surprised if they put you down so far that you don’t think you’ll get up again. But then again, should you be determined enough to stay an individual, you’ll get back. I know you will, because the readership of this A-class piece of crap is actually quite intelligent. And they’re probably feeling bloody disappointed at the moment. Oh well, life goes on incessantly, and it gets on people’s nerves, but we live and die with it, just like the tide relentlessly rises and falls every day, never allowing Germans with their beach towels to get in her watery way. And neither should she, because people should learn to treasure this land, but the problem is intelligence-insultingly simple: we just don’t. We don’t, and that’s a major reason why the planet’s so screwed up in the first place. Whose fault do you think it was, for Pete’s sake, Nature’s? Oh yeah, that’ll wash in a court of law.

But everything’s beautiful, when it comes down to it, except for your vision of yourself. Just think for a moment: how many times have you felt as if you couldn’t possibly be any uglier if you tried? Unless you’re the vainest person in the world, the answer’s quite possibly once or twice. Any more and you’d be overly depressed, but the point stands: we all see ourselves as insufficient and wildly inferior to at least a few people who we know, and yet we manage to get along alright. A high self-esteem is blinkin’ important, and so is optimism. Love yourself and others will love you too. But that, as we all know, is the hard bit, as Rolf Harris so famously put it. But he was talking about paintings at the time: the real hard bit was for everyone to figure out what the hell he was actually meant to be painting in the first place. And if you ever feel the urge to walk on to a train without any trousers on, hey, just suppress it and stop yourself from being so stupid. Because although many people will have sympathy for someone who is feeling down – and quite rightly so – people will always laugh at someone who walks on to a train sans pantalons. So don’t try this at home. Please.

Of course, you’re not ugly at all. Let’s get that one straight. If I was to receive letters of complaint from the family of people who read this so-called ‘book’ and committed suicide through extreme depression, I’d have to migrate to Nepal. And that wouldn’t do, would it? I’d have to pay for the plane journey, for a start. And they’d probably catch me up and tickle me with a feather until I said sorry to all those concerned. But that won’t happen now, because I’ve said it. You’re not ugly, you’re not incompetent, you’re not subhuman, you’re not thick, you’re not smelly, you’re not ridiculously obese, you’re not German, you’re not innocent, you’re not alone, you’ll never walk alone, you’ll never get round to swimming the English Channel, you’ll never get round to watching Channel 5, you’re not a duck, you’ll never be out for a duck, you’ll always be out, ‘where?’, ‘just out’, you’re amazing, you’re sickening, you’re tall, you’re short, you’re ingenious, you’re clichéd, oh heck, you’re you. And I’m in no fit state to fight in court against that statement. So enjoy whatever it is you’re doing, because sure as blue is red, you won’t be doing it in a few years. And don’t get depressed, or I’ll hurl insults at you to drive you over the edge. Ich bin kein Berliner.

Ah, Birmingham, young, innocent Birmingham, how thy roads entice me, how thy moonlit morns invigorate the very soul… ah, Birmingham, dare I walk into your tender centre and feel your very essence surround me in a vertigo of pure urban mystery? Ah, Birmingham, let me feel your karma like some hippy desperate for a drag on a seventy-year-old Brummie who should have died years ago through intoxication on the smog which hangs like a noose over the doomed part of the Black Country we so affectionately refer to as Middle England. Ooh, yuck. Oh, well, when you’re en-route there you’ve hardly got a choice, but then again, I may break my way out of the gift wrapping at Madrid station. Hmm… happy days…

Unhappy yet? Feeling more than slightly disappointed and unfulfilled yet? Well I am. I really ought to take an inspiration break from this. I should get on a train right this minute and buy a ticket to the middle of nowhere (or South Walsham as they call it round these parts), run into a field and… yes, you know the rest, but it would certainly help. In any case, there’s lots of fields in Norfolk. A little too many for my liking – but then again, what’s the alternative? Birmingham? Manchester? London? Newcastle? Screw all of the above for a box of chocolates, guv. I’d rather live in Wales and learn the lingo once and for all. I’d be speaking complete drivel before the cows (or sheep, but show me a Welshman that can tell the difference and I’ll show you a miniature model of the Eiffel Tower) come home that respective evening. I might learn to pronounce that most wonderful of place names, the immortal Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. And yes, that is how you spell it.

Right, we’re once again half way there, look at me, I’ve written twenty-four pages of utter crap. How wonderful. When I could have been revising for some pointless test or catching up with my huge coursework debt (a bit like oxygen debt, but it aches more), I’ve been writing something which no-one will ever bother to read. How very clever of me. That must be the most ingenious idea anyone ever came up with. A baby could write better shit than this. A hippy could smoke better shit than this. A constipated moose… let’s not go there, it would just be way too vulgar. But amusing all the same.

And so far, I’ve called this piece of writing ‘crap’ on three occasions – obviously, the night is still young. It may be all I write in the next eight pages. Congratulations. You’re half way there.

Act Five: Basingstoke – And So On

Here we go again. Stranded, my friends, on the runaway train that is life, waiting for it to plough into the buffers at Norwich station with a half-asleep driver who can’t for the life of him work out why that button over there says ‘brake’. Waiting for, yet expecting, the glass bottle chucked onto the railway track by a depressed young individual at South Walsham station, in disgust at the world around them and how bad people really are. Would you, should you have a bottle of disgusting mineral water and a convenient railway track? Remember: nobody’s perfect. Everyone has the perfect right to experience urges such as the above: it’s what makes us human. If we were to force ourselves to drink the disgusting substance and not care about what our poor liver may be feeling at the time, then I guess we’d just be following along with the rest of the blades of grass and bricks in the wall. Don’t let anyone tell you that we live in an oppressive society – the problem is simply that we’re too unimaginative to realise just what our potential actually is. We all dismiss ourselves as having no potential: you know, those people whose sole purpose in life is to depress others by saying that they never had an ambition, and they’ll probably end up in Peterborough Social Services earning peanuts for shuffling a few papers here and there. Well I say to these people: if that’s what you really think you’ll end up doing with your life, then good luck to you. We don’t want people like you spoiling our beautiful planet, so I hope that you end up like a statistic.

No offence, of course, to the many charming civil servants who roam the streets of Britain – I know full well that many of them are ambitious, adventurous, kind, compassionate people and they’re underestimated by the public. But it’s the 90% minority of this breed who give it a bad name, I’m telling you here and now.

Personally, I’ve never been to Basingstoke, but I wouldn’t trust a town with a name like that. Or maybe I’m just prejudiced against towns which aren’t the most famous, publicly credible settlements that anyone knows about. In fact, I’d rather live in Basingstoke than Glasgow. In fact, I’d rather live anywhere but Glasgow. Or Manchester. I want to live in the sea and swim with all the little fishes. Ah, the good life – you can’nae beat it. Trust me, I was once submerged for years on end. And I’ve got the gills to prove it. Here, let me take that rubber ring off your hands. I’m sure that you won it in a competition which really didn’t mean anything in the first place, so why bother keeping it? It’ll only cause you endless grief, because you’ll be paranoid about people jumping into rivers and wondering what your next move may be. You’d live in hell, I’m sure of it. But not really. I wouldn’t want that. Knight to Queen’s Knight Seven. And that’s checkmate. Try it, I’m sure it works every time. If only Gary Kasparov had listened when I tried to tell him, it’s always the same. ‘Just move your little horsie’, I tried to convey using the medium of a five-year old, ‘to that black square over there.’ But would he listen? Listen, mate, is one thing he did not do. It pains me to tell you this, but it wasn’t the first time, that’s for sure. I tried to inform David Beckham that there was such thing as a left foot, but he cast me aside as he chewed on his Rusk. And would Stephen Hendry listen as I tried to explain about the importance of spitting on the pink ball before a frame? No, he just carried on rocking on his horse, squealing in agony like a three-year-old having the time of his life. It’s shocking, truly shocking. But you’ll listen to me, won’t you? OK, maybe not. But that’s your prerogative, and if you don’t want to learn about the offside rule, then so be it. But that last one, my friend, should never have been called. It’s a shame: it brought a good move to an end. Chain him down and shout in his ear: ‘JUST LISTEN!!’ Then maybe we’re getting somewhere.

And if you think I’m giving up here, you’ve got another think coming, geezer. I’m not backing down from your intricate trap. I’ll just keep on fighting until all my arms and legs have been chopped off. I’ll carry on riding on the main line between Basingstoke and Colchester: no-one will notice me. C’est la vie. But I don’t mind. Since when have I ever conceded to a green man? Since when have I had a truly excellent strike disallowed? Since when have I ever looked up to any sort of farmyard animal? I can’t talk, I know. But I give you this: the world is not your oyster, but your fatal disease. Don’t let the bastards grind you down.

Aren’t people crazy? I don’t mean this in a really heavy, melodramatic, political-statement way, but isn’t the general population of this country just screwed up something chronic? Honestly! I’ve never seen a race with less sense than the people which are intertwined with all our everyday lives. They spit when they cough, they’ll, erm, ‘make love’ to anything that walks, etc., etc. I don’t know. People confuse me. Especially teachers. Especially teachers who set way too much coursework. Especially the people who decided in the first place that all the coursework would be necessary to get someone a job with the Social Services. Especially whatever Brummie came up with the idea of ‘qualifications’ way back in the year dot or something. I don’t know. But what I do know is that the people that we all know are not as known to us as we may know of liking to know to think. I hope, I think, I know that people aren’t as stupid as we may like to imagine – it’s just that many people have a lot more to them than meets the eye. And if your eye is made of meat, you need glasses. Or a knife and fork. Or some SENSE pounded into you from the depths of the River Nile, because eating eyeballs is dangerous and should not be attempted without proper supervision from a parent or guardian. To receive a leaflet of terms and conditions for eating the aforementioned eyeballs, please send a cheque or postal order… blah, blah, blah, shut up, Gippy, it’s getting boring…

Sorry. But I’m really confused. Life’s too short to get stressed, right? Well, in that case, why do people get stressed in the first place when they know it’s pointless? And when they know just how pointless all the stress was when everything turns out nice again, they’ll just get even more stressed when they see just how unnecessarily stressed they were beforehand. And then they’ll chuck themselves off a multi-storey car park before they get any urges to write a book like this to take all the aggression out on. Grrr… grrr… I wish I could fly, right up to the sky… but I can’t. But that blackbird over there could, I’m sure. Wonder how much a return ticket to the clouds would set me back? What about a return ticket to Basingstoke? What about a nice pork pie so one may forget about the whole incident? Yes, a pork pie would go down strangely well right this moment. Vive la pie de porque. You’s a-callin’ me a pig? Snort your way into the corner of the room and squeal for me, boy.

Perverse? I should like to think not. I’m just simply misunderstood. I’m just swimming around in a sea of nothingness, limbs grappling around and trying to find a solid mass somewhere in the expanse of space that is life. But perish the thought that I’m perverse. Only perverse people are perverse, and one can be whoever, or whatever, one wants to become. Otherwise one has no choice, and if one wants to move to the mess of Basingstoke and so on, one will not be one to stop one. Get it yet? Because I sure don’t. But I don’t really think I’ve given enough airplay (as it were) to why people are crackers. Why don’t the rich give to the poor? Why don’t the clean give to the dirty? (On second thoughts, scrap that one…) Why don’t the happy give to the sad, and the loud give to the quiet? Why do we go around in our own little worlds, expecting the world to notice us being just like everyone else and fitting in like pieces of the jigsaw masterplan which Europe and America have planned in unison to take us all over? People never notice a sheep when they’re living in a world of them. Let’s face it, consider this situation. I’m not (heaven forbid) taking a pop at the Welsh here, but as we all know, Wales is full of sheep. And they all look the same. So if someone was to take a leisurely stroll through the Welsh countryside one day, one would expect to find a fair proportion of the land taken up by white, fluffy matter. And the one thing that one would not consider doing is pointing out one from the thousands, and saying ‘Ooh, what a white sheep that one is!’ Because you can guarantee that if it wasn’t an especially painted sheep, it would look just like the rest, and people would pass it by. No matter how hard that particular sheep was thinking about being whiter than all the others, as long as it didn’t take measures to make itself the whitest, it won’t ever be whiter than the masses. Do you get my metaphor? Don’t ever lose your sense of faith, either. True, people can be stupid, obnoxious or daft, and you can feel like you’ve had quite enough. But human nature will always prevail. So know who your friends are, and make sure you keep them. Don’t kill each other for trivial reasons, but I’m sure you wouldn’t anyway. But you might on a lesser scale, so don’t get freaked out about anything, don’t ever keep yourself to yourself, don’t involve yourself too heavily in other people’s business (I’ve made that mistake before…!) and don’t ever become a statistic. And if the people of Basingstoke, Hampshire, feel they’ve been unfairly treated, take heart – I’m sure you’re lovely people really. Just a shame I had to pick your town, but it had to be done. I’m sure it would work just as well with Aberystwyth or Conwy or Llandudno or Caernarfon…

- And remember, nobody likes a nerd.

- Except for members of the League Of Pro-Nerds, which doesn’t exist anyway.

- On second thoughts, it probably does on the Internet or in Texas somewhere.

- But none of us care about either of the above, now, do we?

- We’ve got BIGGER things to worry our little minds about.

- Like conforming to society’s ideals and wearing the right clothes.

- And wearing clean clothes – don’t forget that. Otherwise people will understandably turn their noses up. And I wouldn’t blame them.

- So don’t play on your computer too often, and don’t surf the bloody Internet too often, and don’t spot trains, and don’t develop a fetish for lamp posts: people give you strange looks.

Act Six: The Ultimate Nostril

Well, I see you’ve read this far – but how much longer can you hold out for? Believe me, it can’t be doing you the slightest bit of good, all this reading. All reading and no play makes Jack a dull lad – and it doesn’t do Jill much good either. But it’s an eternal conspiracy, just WHAT it was that led them to go ‘up the hill’ in the first place. Let’s face it, you’d just go to the nearest tap to fetch a pail (the word is BUCKET, dear) of water. Hmm. I reckon that Jack was having a secret affair with Jill – but secret from whom? Maybe his mother disapproved of their relationship. Possibly she was a xenophobe or something, and Jack was a German. I don’t know – but I don’t particularly want to find out right this minute. I’ve got bigger fish to fry, sausages to sizzle and pails to fill. But it would explain why he fell off… let’s not go there.

But you’ve got to admit, it all sucks a little bit. Where would we be if there was nothing to complain about? I mean, would you want to live in a land full of happy people? Mind you, I wouldn’t particularly want to live with a population of sad people – I’m just considering what would be worse. Possibly if one was an extrovert, happy, easy-going personality who just wanted the world around one to feel that much better about themselves and their lives (I hasten to add that I am not), it wouldn’t be too handy to be lumbered with a load of manic depressants whose sole aim in life was to commit suicide. But a population full of shining happy people who always smile at one another and are generous and kind and loving and caring and giving and generally Moomin-like would only be mildly amusing for a few seconds. After that you’d just get annoyed and want to kill them all with a very large gun. It’s an idea – and you never know, I just may carry it out one day.

Yet alas, this is the Naughties, and we find ourselves weighed down with the strains of living in a society who think Madonna’s American Pie is the original version, and henceforth send it straight to Number One. Now, where’s the sense in that? Where’s the taste? Where’s the intelligence? I mean, God forbid that anyone in Britain actually has a fully functional BRAIN – oh no, that would just be way too much to take in. As I said way too many times in my last book, the masses are asses. Which is a lovely sound bite if ever I heard one. Do you actually know any intellectuals? I’m not saying that one has to be one of the great thinkers (Dave, Dee, Dozey, Beaky, Mick and Titch) to be slightly capable of one valid thought – but yet, it seems that people we know personally are comparatively bearable. And yet, give them a choice between Don McLean and Madonna and they’ll go for the cheap imitation all the time. It’s unbelievable. It really is – nay, it’s scandalous, I say to you. Hmm. But what can I do? Beats me – I’ll just have to hold a quiet protest against the population of this so-called ‘country’. And I believe that I’ve already been way too controversial for a book such as this – and besides, I’m getting hassle from other people to let them write in this book. But you know what? I don’t particularly want to anymore. I don’t want to go to war! Why can’t we just have peace on earth like we said we would? You know what I wanted for Christmas – and from way down here I can see what an empty promise it really was.

But should I give in and let people write their contributions in here?

Ooh, that was a rather scarily short paragraph. It almost gives the impression that I can actually write properly. But I’d better steer well clear of plunging to those depths, as I don’t want to send out false signals that there’s actually an ounce of talent in this carcass you see before you. J Ach. It’s a bummer, that’s for sure – but we all have to put up with our nostrils and damn the consequences. Which kinda leads me to question the relevance of nose-rings: and what possesses people to draw the public’s attention to what is predominantly not an attractive part of the face. Especially when one sneezes. But I’m sure that it’s been discussed millions of times before, so I won’t go on for too long. Promise. And yet people say that they look nice on some people! Well, unless you’ve got a strikingly attractive nose, I doubt it. I know how to find out: take a picture of yourself, cut out everything but your nose (or just your nose if you see it that way) and see for certain just how beautiful it really is.

So, who on Earth would have guessed it? On a total whim I seem to have written eleven more sides of A4 paper which would otherwise have been in a tree, helping the poor, defenceless little sapling to grow and be just like Old Father Oak over there. But alas, the global need for paper had to be satisfied, and it came to pass that lumberjacks stormed into the wood whilst en-route to Birmingham, and upon seeing this small tree, they proceeded to chop the life out of it. Yes, my friends, this is a tale of much woe. Much sadness and grieving, but at the end of the day, it’s all for a good cause. And that is…? Well, there is one – I know only that. And if you’re thinking of drinking yourself silly down the nearest gay bar, think again, Mr. Clever Brains – you may be frowned upon by society. Whose fault do you think it is that this paper couldn’t be used for better effect? Whose fault do you think it is that the tree was ever cut down in the first place? Well, it’s not mine – I’m sure that way over sixteen pages are being used for the Government’s next pointless bill and all the photocopies necessary to satisfy all the MP’s in Britain. So don’t YOU try and blame me for all the suffering which goes on in this world! Can’t a man have sixteen pages to himself?!?

What a depressingly uninspiring title this chapter possesses. What a depressingly stupid machine this computer is. What a depressingly depressed world we live in. What a depressingly big potato that is over there. But think for a moment – what would the ultimate nostril look like? What makes anything look to be on a par with perfection? What is it about some faces that make them look generally more attractive than others? Can you spot the exact differences? It’s an interesting thought – we all have two eyes (OK, most of us, but I don’t want to give a disclaimer at the end of each point, so shut your mouth this minute), we all have one nose, we all have two ears, two eyebrows, two lips, a mouth in between them (I hope so, anyway), etc., etc. So what makes some people predominantly ugly? And equally, what is it about attractive people that make them so? It’s a weird old point to explore – have they got ultimate nostrils? I doubt it, somehow. Everybody sneezes. Except for people living in places with no dust – you know, those sterile centres they use for especially sensitive people, where everything has to be cleaned every minute, and a speck of dirt would kill, like, ten of them. Maybe it’s a huge Government conspiracy. Maybe they’re trying to get us all into these centres, so that sneezing can be outlawed, so that we all develop ultimate nostrils, so we can smell the Apocalypse before it comes. Well that won’t ever work, because we’re going to get hit by an asteroid in 2028 in any case. Which kinda nulls and voids the whole point. Ha ha ha. I’m clevererererer than someone in the House of Commons. Pas difficile.

Isn’t it weird that I’ve written this far and should be doing so many other things? I’m honestly up to my neck in unfinished schoolwork, but for you people out there who have the perfect right to read this and throw it back in my face with the reasoned explanation that ‘it’s a load of crap, mate’, I’m still writing. Isn’t my life sad? Come on, it must be pointless if this is the sole thing I have to do to take up otherwise wasted time.

And do you know something? So far I’ve begun TWENTY sentences with the word ‘Well’. How unimaginative am I? I really should go to writing classes, because this cack is diabolical. On second thoughts, though, I might get back to the serious shit I was doing before, involving putting marble chips in acid and watching them go fizz. Ooh, it’s riveting stuff, I can tell you now. I was intrigued for the whole eight minutes while we devised a way to sufficiently doctor our results to impress the exam board. But ultimately, it won’t, because life’s a bitch. Or maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m the real bitch and life is just trying to manage without all the coursework that I choose to dump upon it as its Lord and Master. But I doubt it. And I really should stop beginning sentences with a conjunction – it’s becoming a real habit. The last thing you need, after all, when reading a book as bad as this is annoying habits which the author may possess and is adamant that he proves this point every stinking sentence.

So tell me, is everything going to be all right? Or are we all condemned to die in a pit of raspberry jelly while the fittest, the happiest, the most productive, and generally the most perfect specimens of the human race tuck in and devour the brains of the rest of us? Or is it going to be all right? Or are we all going to end up in a large vat of milk while the cows and the pigs and the bastards and the freaks drink us all up guiltily while the chickens come home to roost? Or is it going to be all right? Or will the masses rise up against the asses and the oxen and the innkeeper’s wife, and simply brush them aside with one swipe of a knife? Yes, they’ll consign them to a mere footnote in the history books of our time, which is a very screwed up time indeed. None of us have metaphorically taken even the first step towards making our ‘nostrils’ any more perfect than what we feel contented with. Should we strive towards perfection, or simply be content with what we are? In an ideal world, everyone would say the latter for purposes of individuality – but it’s not all like that. One may say that one wants to be one’s own person, but one will be caught fingering through the clothes racks whilst looking for the most fashionable name on the market. One will not be deterred by one’s enormous price tag, because one is subconsciously becoming a conformist without even being told, or herded up by Old Farmer Giles. And do you know how useless resistance really is? Got it in one: depressingly so. However, this is not meant to be an obituary to the thinking race of Britain, and I really should begin my penultimate chapter with an altogether more light-hearted theme. I’m sure there’s emerging talent coming through the ranks which could theoretically deal the ideal knockout punch to finish this book off with style – I might launch a competition with the top prize being a Thomas Cook holiday voucher. Or maybe not.

Act Seven: Any More And She’ll Blow!

So here I am, and once again my mind lies blank at the bottom of the pit of oblivion. So hey, what better relief for my aching brain than to hand more than a few paragraphs to other, like-minded would-be-philosophers? It may turn out better than we dare to expect, so expect gold and ye shall find. My first book was saved on two occasions by invaluable contributions from other sources, so I’d best see what should arise out of this supposedly unlucky page.

"HA HA HA HA", No, not really. But what dehell? Anyway, I just wanted to point out that I am NOT AMERICAN, but I do find that the American accent is quite cool, and it is definitely better to say than the British accent. Anyway, it's time that I did some of my famed languages:

oh sorry, someone just told me to talk about the birds and bees, and maybe tomato sooooup. Sorry, tomAto soup.

Grrrr, je pense que les langues sont tres difficile a apprendre. Je vais parler en Chinois…..

Nin hao ma? Ru guo ni men neng ming bai wo shuo de dong xi, na ni men jiu jen de shi han zhong men na!

Ha ha ha - again. Au revoir, adieu et merci de ta attention!

(If you think that this contribution was going to be very typical me, then you have evidently thought wrong RASPBERRY) (Courtesy of Tim C.)

Tres bon. So now, while our ideas are still fresh in our small minds, I must once again start about wrapping this crap up. How would I go about that? More importantly, who would I send the aforementioned faeces to once it was all nicely wrapped and sellotaped up in beautiful Christmassy wrapping paper? No, I'm climbing the wooden staircase to the dreamland in the sky. I'm virtually at last orders at the moment, calling for everyone who isn't pissed already (or pissed off, should that be the case) to hurry up and achieve that state of well-being before the policemen invade the Sacred Holy State of Bilchu and begin to persecute against all the well-meaning people who were just in there to have some fun, they never expected this tonne of bricks to be landed upon them… oh, well, c'est la vie, and that's the way it is. Some things will never change. Stick your head in a pail of water to turn pale with water - cold water, that is, and you'd never be able to drink another drop. Well, I suppose you wouldn't really want to, after all that apple juice. But it's really addictive, trust me in this turnstile right away. Apart from the ones that bash you on the back of the head. Turnstiles, that is. Not apples. They'd never do that. You'd sooner see an apple playing in defence for a local Sunday League side than one up in court for grievous bodily harm. They're just too gentle, too calm and collected to even think about it.

People! I need some inspiration !!!

N0oooo not gonna read it I refuse profusely. All I would like to say is that if this is as odd and psychopathic as the last it will be long, odd and suicidal. Yeesssss well don't topics have been covere3d but I'm going to an Iron Maiden concert and I am very excited very indeed. Inddeeeeeeeeddddd. HMMPH. (Courtesy of Joe B.)

Well, if that's not gold dust I don’t particularly care what I is like nor nothing like it not like I'm a bucket of chicken dippers or anything, it's just that I'm confused and all I need is the smoke that I breathe and to hate your guts. Nice. What do guts taste like? Well, never having dabbled with cannibalism before, I'm sure that my life is incomplete in this respect, but since when have I cared? Hey, I'm just reading and writing and pleading and fighting. Fighting for a place in which I can safely rub noses with the powers that be and not simultaneously look stupid and horrible and a real bitch. Oh well, it can't really be helped. Yeah. So why the hell do we try? Do we actually want to go completely mad? I don't know, I can't get inside your mind. But I can get inside your mouth. Just watch me. I have friends in high places, and your boyfriend may just be a secret spy getting paid by me for the privilege. Think about it for a minute, it'll all make sense in the morning. I have cameras in nether regions you wouldn't even think of looking. And once again I reiterate, I can see you. And I'm laughing my head off.

Why has the world gone mobile phone crazy? I can't understand it! True, they may be handy for use in emergencies – like fire alarms, for example. But excessive use makes one weird and antisocial. It's the honest truth. Don't ever fall into the trap, man. Use a payphone, for Heaven's sake! They're just as easy - and probably cheaper. I wouldn't bet against it, put it that way. And as for those annoying little ringing tones… don't even ask me about those annoying little ringing tones. In this room, about six just went off at once. You don't know how stinking annoying that is. These people just don't realise how much it really sucks. The masses are asses, no doubt in my brain about that little one, my little one. These waters run deep, it's clear. Et cetera. Hmm. It's a weird old world, yes I know. But we have to take it.

And if you think I’m going to go all spiritualist and humanist on you this time, think again. I did that last time, and didn’t particularly enjoy it because I felt that I was bringing way too much happiness into the sad lives of way too many people by saying way too much unnecessary crap which would never have been allowed in public for fear of mass displays of vomiting, even on a BUPA advert. So I’ll revert to my normal, tough-skinned self. Yeah, right. If I’m tough-skinned then Tony Blair’s a German, but you know, why should I be caring whether the readership of this marvellous work of art go drown themselves in a river or not? As long as the publishing rights go somewhere near my direction, I won’t be particularly bothered by any of it. I’ve got too much trouble of my own to start involving myself in saving other people from suicide – it’ll simply reduce the population. I’d love to say that this piece was courtesy of some extremist fascist, but hey, it’s how I’m feeling at the moment. Why should I ever be obliged to take the world in my arms and tell it that everything will be alright? Why should I be the one who spends his life’s savings on helping some old beggar in the street? Yes, I’m being controversial, and yes, some may completely disagree, but I have the right to write whatever I want. It’s my effin’ book, for crying out loud.

But oh, no, Gippy – this is a family book. This book should be suitable for little children. No, no, no, Gippy, it shouldn’t be done like that – that way you’ll never even show signs of being a believable author. Oh no. You’ve got to be politically correct. You’ve got to please all the nice people at the censorship office, and NOT say that everyone who feels like lumbering their depression on you as a defender of the faith should be strung up and shot. No, Gippy, that’s bad. There’s now officially a difference between good and bad you never knew about, Gippy. Yes, there is. And you’re gonna fall foul of it. And we’re all going to laugh wildly at you, looking down in utter elation as you fall deeper and deeper into a pit of your own mixed-up words. We’re going to chant death throes so merry as you scream out for help and utter disappearing cries of sorrow and remorsefulness, yet we’re going to block out our ears until Judgement Day finally arrives and you, Gippy, you so-called writer, are tried along with the rest of the nobodies. And how we’re going to laugh at you. Ha ha ha. You’re so vain. You probably think this book is about you.

But what is the meaning of anything anymore? Has it all just been jumbled up into one great big ball of shit and been rolled down the hill of fate, hoping that it’ll soon hit the ground and taxes will rise again? Is that really it? Is there really not going to be this supposed rise of the masses? Can we no longer believe in the Manic Street Preachers with their philosophy of the masses against the classes? At the end of the day, I really don’t think we can. The poor will always be poor, and the rich will always be rich. And a modern-day Robin Hood – that is, if ever one existed in the first place – will never be born. He shall be thrown into his own jail and made to live his whole life in isolation before he ever gets near to being the hero of the story of life. And behold, the rich will become richer, and the poor will carry on the endless vicious circle of becoming poorer, and we shall all get crushed under the jackboot of society in the end. Life is out to get you. Don’t you see that? Can’t you comprehend that one little fact? We’re all fading slowly away into conformists to what the powers think we should behave like – which is a sight less individuality than even sheep get on a farm. Should these most stupid of farmyard animals, for example, not particularly like their style of coat – they may think it’s too fluffy, for instance – they can always go up to the farmer and bite his heels until he is persuaded to shear off their woolly coat so they can grow a newer, better one.

But that never happens with humans. Let’s face it, all this bollocks about democracy and the people always getting their own way will never apply to the ordinary human being. They may get it cushy at the top, but we don’t. We have to suffer, each and every one of us. And that includes you, dear reader, you too will be shot down by the regime which awaits you. No matter how good you may think you are, we’re all in the same boat. There are so many restrictions, we’re less than even sheep. Isn’t it a pity? I think it is. And yet, what am I going to do about it? What business have I to write about it in a rebellious fashion when I know full well that I’m never going to get, or take, the chance of making a real change to the system? It’s so hypocritical of me. Why are you reading this? Did you think it would be entertaining? You ain’t seen nothing yet. Wait for me at Zoo Station – I’ll be there with the gun of conformity and the medal of a man whose life no-one will ever understand, or at least likes to think so. I’m perfectly understandable. It’s almost ironic. What’s so beautifully weird about ME?

Act Eight: Thank You And Goodnight

Well, that was nice. Very nice indeed. Yes, of course. I love them – every single one of them. Thanks for that, and hey, if I am still alive by the time the apocalypse happens again, I might just be persuaded to see it alongside you guys again. That was pleasing. Yes, I know, we’re all dead and burned in a wave of almighty heat, but then again, that’s just a minor inconvenience. Why do you want to complain when you can see what lies up ahead? Trust me, you’ll be complaining when we hit the ground. But that was simply lovely. Just thank yourself for a great night out and stop all of this talk about death, doom and gloom. If the world was as melodramatic as that, no-one would ever get anything done because they’d just be too busy complaining… but that, now that was nice. There’s a slight difference – it just takes an educated mind to realise it.

And now, I suppose you’re going to come out with some sweeping statement like ‘we’re at the end of the book again’, are you? Well hello Mrs. Higginbotham from Number 69, we are. And what a fine reader you are. A refined reader, if nothing else, who hopefully refrains from unnecessarily criticising something which I happen to have put a lot of time and effort into writing. Or maybe you hate the thing. I don’t know. All I know is that I’m glad it’s all over, I really couldn’t stand writing it. Writing books, after all, is closely linked to life. When life gets on one’s tits, so does trying to write a piece of work like this. It’s a real drag, and you don’t think you’re ever going to get to the bottom of each page. And I’m not, I’m sure of that this time. The bottom’s simply too far away, and I can’t possibly make it.

But then again, it could be worse – I could be writing all of this for some sort of University degree, in which case a) it would have to be one hell of a lot more interesting and less aggravatingly repetitive, and b) it would have to be about twenty times as long, which would be depressing at this stage. This is because writing this has sapped all of the energy I ever had from my aching limbs and replaced it directly with fifteen thousand words of complete drivel to mull over and analyse just how painful I feel right this moment. Not physically, apart from a minor irritation in the shape of an amputated right leg: I’ve learned to put up with that one. But as for the pain on my mind – well, that’s a lot more serious, and a lot less easy to talk about, and even more difficult to make even slightly interesting. So I won’t bother, and just attempt to fill up the dying lines of this with something which resembles interesting material but will probably just turn out exactly the same way the other fourteen pages did.

I think, children, that we have learnt a very valuable lesson today – past performance is no indication of future prospects. Let’s face it, from the number of people who read my first book and all the great comments which I received, it was obvious that it was a total hit – even though I personally think that I’ve seen better things come out of the wrong end of a pig. But hey, that’s the way it goes, some you win, some you lose, even Mike Tyson’s been knocked out before (on second thoughts… bad example). But this one I evidently won, and it made me contented because I brought reading pleasure (yeah, right) to many people. But this one… well, this one is a little dodgier. Mind you, saying this one is a little dodgier is like saying that water can be a little moist at times. It’s drier, it’s more crumbly, it’s like soggy Cornflakes after they’ve been left out in the open in an unsealed bag for the best part of a week. It always reminds me of the joke with the man going into the monastery and mistaking Cornflakes for the remains of old circumcisions. And yes, that joke always makes my toes curl, because it’s disgusting. No other reason, not because I’m a sick-minded little bastard (or at least, the two facts aren’t directly connected), not because of my perverted mental processes, but that’s all too much the case these days. People try and analyse your thought processes. When you say something, you’re immediately put before seven or eight members of a biased jury who tie you down to a rough piece of wood and start probing you until you explain exactly what you meant by that comment which someone may have found slightly ambiguous had their brain been demagnetised and their thoughts thrown out of sync. And this ambiguous comment could have been taken by the above-mentioned nutter as slightly offensive towards his step-cousin’s auntie’s friend’s electrician’s long-lost-brother’s girlfriend, and you’d be instantly carted off to the nearest high-security prison for insulting a lady. And you’d hate yourself for the best part of your ninety-year sentence, because you said that one thing way back when you were young and the air was clean, and sheep were sheep and people were people, and the two never intermingled or were ever compared for the sake of cheap sexual innuendo. Those days are all gone now, but one thing’s still true: when I look, and I find, I still love you. And that means you. Yes you. Nobody else but you. Et cetera, that song’s way too obscure to be mentioned in a book as stupid as this. That would just be a cunning ploy to confuse the readership into submission, and they may at last admit that the whole reason they ever dipped their noses and their modifications of the ultimate nostril in was because they mistook it for a Jeffrey Archer novel. Oh well, I’d hate to waste any more of your time, but can we still be friends? It wasn’t really that bad. I think I’m on the mend, after all. And there were never any untoward statements anywhere in this book, and I’m deeply sorry if you thought that was the case. But I just need a focus in my otherwise empty and pathetic life. There’s way too much suffering in the world, and yet I don’t seem to be doing much about it. True, I’m no Superman, but I should at least be doing something. Or maybe they’re dealing with it already, in their own little ways, and they don’t need my custom or my pound of flesh from the deep recesses of my leather-clad heart. Maybe they’d be better off not dealing with such a predominant lemon. I don’t know and never will, so I should stop saying that I don’t know and get on with my ode to the sandwich. Never saw the point of them, though…

I want to be within that number! It’s really all I command of you, my saint, until the cows trample over all the fields of Hampshire and run into Basingstoke – and so on, you know the rest. But it’s a real paradox. What? I don’t know, I said it for the sake of saying it, and possibly also because I’m wildly trying too look mildly intelligent in the face of all the rabbit droppings that are being hurled at me from all directions. Maybe I don’t even know what the word ‘paradox’ means. Or maybe I do, and I’m just saying that to fake ignorance and thereby get more of a sympathy vote, which let’s face it, is difficult to impossible anyway, considering how little a store of material I’ve got left to work from.

So with the end of this hell just out of sight, I’m left stranded and gazing into the nothingness like an affected personality, agape and with eyes wide, as you simply put this book roughly down on the edge of the table and hop in your convertible sports car, before driving off way into the sunset with your favourite person in the whole wide world. Armed with merely a water pistol and an acre of land handed to me by some cousin whose name I can never remember, I drive the other way. Down the M4, approaching Swindon, with my suitcase in my hand and emptiness in my heart, I cough out the last bars of a sad symphony that is my supposed individuality. Dazed and confused, my brain turns to the remains of cat-eaten dumplings after being invaded by the eighth division of the Liechtenstein Army. My emotions and feelings are cruelly erased in a misty, heady daze of the jolly pastor, obsessed with his lemons and Lycra shorts. Yes, it’s a bit of a bugger when that happens.

But we all live with it, at the end of the day, don’t we? Don’t we? Are we all too weak or blind to see the sense that is staring us all equally hard in the face? Well, I don’t, and I wonder when I ever will. It’s getting near to Bristol, and suddenly my car stops, short, never to go again. I get out and give it a good kick, but it hurts my toes far more than it hurts the rusty shell of the clapped-out motor. But nevertheless, it works, and within sixty half-seconds I am once again en-route to Birmingham, that great workplace in the sky which promises so much yet delivers so little. I am with many others when I say that it’s better to be Red than dead, as after all, I mentioned it some place else, I can’t for the life of me remember where.

Most people, however, do not possess the right to this most Communist of choices. Unless you have an extortionate amount of money and can afford to buy your way out of anything, you'll simply be called up to the gates of the most annoying radio station in the world on Judgement Day, and the terrible DJ who greets you will simply say: dead… or even better? It wasn’t exactly what you had in mind, in fact you begin to complain that this was not what was advertised in the brochure. But he listens not, and soon you are walking the corridors of power once again, wondering how far away the next Valentine’s Day is and simultaneously pondering if you really have made the most out of life.

A machine stands before you. You wonder what the hell you’re doing here anyway. It seems to be old, dilapidated and malnourished, yet still you can make out the remains of what was once a blood-red button on the side. And you can make out some writing: the word ‘ON’ is still there, clear as day and twice as bright, imprinted in lettering of the finest silver in the kingdom. Those two letters are the most beautiful things which are on this holy carcass of a machine. An eerie and ominous silence envelops the room as you see a scrawled note hanging from one of the levers: “Don’t push the button! Any more and she’ll blow!” You ponder for a moment, before spinning around to see a large, stupid person with blood on his face walking unstoppably towards you. He pushes the button, gives a small, hushed, timid snigger and rushes out of the room. You hear the sound of a lock in the door before the machine begins to smoke, and the flames climb high into the night, to light the sacrificial rite, and you see all your enemies laughing with delight. Your heart turns yellow, and for a second you see what it was all about. But then the beat stops – and the eternal ticking begins…

Credits

Joseph Beames – Contribution on page thirteen, window into reality

Tim Chung – Contribution on page thirteen, pocket of unreality

Becky Tataryn – Maintenance of sanity; demi-goddess, make-up co-ordinator

Toby Royal – Co-founder of original idea, dosage of surreality

Various other people – for encouraging and insulting comments

Chemistry coursework – giving me something not to do instead

The game of football – for being a medium for letting out one’s frustration

Muzzy Izzet – for having such a funny name

Frank Dobson – for having such a funny face

Basingstoke – for being such a good sport of a town

Norwich City – for beating Ipswich

My family – for hammering sense into my brain on many an occasion

My cats – for looking cute

Screwball icecreams and Hall’s Soothers – for tasting nice

My less-than-active social life – for creating above frustration in the first place

Oasis, the Offspring, the Manics, U2, Semisonic – light musical relief

The rest of my friends – for said friendships

Anyone who read my first book or intends to read it in the near future

Anyone who just read this book and intends to insult it in the near future

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

You know who you are.

You are, in my book, all worthy people and all deserve an honour of some sort.

And hey, that’s all that matters in the end.

Life sucks… but it has to be lived.

Make sure your own name goes down in history – ‘cos mine sure won’t.

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

This ‘ere book was written by Adam Gripton, alias Gippy, in the long time period culminating with the conclusion of writing on Friday, 24^th March, 2000. All rights, including the right to speak my mind, are very much reserved. No unauthorised copying, distributing, adapting, selling, hiring or defacing of this book permitted. No writing in here while borrowing to read, on pain of death. Apart from that, look after the world for me. Keep Britain tidy, and I’ll see you later.

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