The Man From the Diogenes Club

by Kim Newman

  A bearded face, upside-down, obtruded into his eye line. And neighed rather nastily.

  He shooed away the goat.

  XIII.

  After a bare five hours of morning, Skerra day was almost over.

  The radio crackled, but neither Stacy nor Jeperson were inclined to climb back inside the Sea King to answer it.

  A rescue chopper was on its way.

  Soon, they would be lifted off this rock. She would abdicate, turn the iron crown over to the goats. Placating them with chocolate bars, which they ate wrappers and all, she had already come to a truce with her vicious subjects.

  Jeperson was comfortable, not complaining of his injuries.

  She supposed she was bruised and battered, too. Two of her fingers bent the wrong way and she couldn’t feel them.

  Stacy sat by the man from the Diogenes Club.

  He handed her a Bounty. Sewell Head’s back-up stash of sweets had been in the Sea King.

  She ripped the paper and bit off a chunk. Chewing hurt. She thought she’d lost a filling – though not, Lord willing, any of her precious back teeth – while being knocked about.

  ‘What’s down there now?’ she asked.

  ‘A mess. And dead people. Mostly water, though. The apports haven’t lasted in coherent form. Adam Onions missed his chance to study a unique set of phenomena.’

  The rescue helicopter approached the island.

  ‘It’ll be good to be back,’ she said.

  ‘It is good,’ he responded, eyes flashing bright silver.

  GLOSSARY

  NB: many of these notes were compiled for American publications where editors felt some Britishisms needed explanation. Sorry to British readers for whom these arcana are everyday knowledge.

  The End Of The Pier Show

  nark – Informer, snitch, grass, stoolie, squealer.

  Peter Noone – Lead singer of the band Herman’s Hermits.

  bonce – Slang, head.

  mug – Slang, face.

  Docs – Doc Martens’ boots, often called ‘bovver boots’ (‘bother boots’). Form of footwear favoured in the 1970s by skinheads and others who thought they were ‘hard’.

  Fred Perry – The name comes from a tennis player.

  mod – 1960s youth cult, opposed to ‘rockers’, occasionally revived. The Who were originally a ‘mod’ band.

  skins – Skinheads.

  grebos – 1970s evolution of 1960s rockers – greasy hair, leather jackets, too poor to own motorbikes and become bikers.

  Pakis – Pakistanis, though people who use the derogatory term tend not to make fine distinctions among immigrants from the Indian subcontinent and use it to cover Indians and Bangladeshis also.

  nicked – Stolen.

  aggro – Aggravation, violent assault.

  put the boot in – A distinctively skinhead form of aggro, which involves knocking a victim down and then kicking him with bovver boots.

  DI – Detective Inspector.

  Hendon – Hendon College. The leading UK police academy.

  plastered – Intoxicated, drunk.

  6d – Sixpence, in pre-decimal coinage. 2½p in today’s money.

  nutter – Violent lunatic.

  Chu Chin Chow – Arabian Nights-themed musical drama, which opened in London in 1916, had record-setting long run, and was frequently revived between the wars.

  bints – Young girls – from the Arabic, imported into English via servicemen posted overseas.

  ‘when chocolate was rationed’ – From 1942 to 1953.

  Gormless – Stupid.

  Swan Vestas – A brand of matches.

  Crystal Palace – Fred is too young to remember the original structure, built for the Great Exhibition in 1851, which burned down 1936. The name persists to denote the area in South London where it stood, as well as the local football team.

  old pennies – As opposed to new pence. Twelve old pence (12d) made a shilling (1s), equivalent to five new pence (5p). In 1971 Britain adopted decimal coinage, but old money lingered in parallel for a few years before fading away completely.

  flick-knife – A switchblade.

  ARP – Air Raid Precautions, a civil defence unit of air-raid wardens active during World War Two.

  New Scotland Yard – The original Scotland Yard, so-called because before the Union of the crowns of Scotland and England it was a London residence for the kings of Scotland, was headquarters of the Metropolitan Police from 1829 until 1890, when they moved to New Scotland Yard on Victoria Embankment. From 1967, the Met has been headquartered in a new New Scotland Yard, which is the place with the revolving sign out front.

  Fu Manchu – Droopy moustache, named for the master-villain – who was clean-shaven in Sax Rohmer’s books.

  the King’s Road – A fashionable thoroughfare in Chelsea.

  Marks & Sparks – Nickname for Marks & Spencer, a chain of clothing and food stores.

  mac – Mackintosh, raincoat. Old jokes’ home. First man: ‘Got a light, Mac?’ Second man: ‘No, but I’ve got a dark brown overcoat’.

  ‘sign the Official Secrets Act’ – A formality for civil servants dealing with secret information, who give a written pledge not to reveal same to outside parties. Actually, passing on secret information one happens to come across is illegal whether or not you’ve signed the Act.

  HM Government – Her Majesty’s Government.

  topping – Excellent.

  take a spin – Go for a drive.

  Spirit of Ecstasy – The Rolls-Royce hood ornament.

  panda cars – Police patrol vehicles.

  Brooklands – Car racing track.

  plods – Policemen. The expression comes from Mr Plod the Policeman, a character in Enid Blyton’s children’s books.

  Pouf – Effeminate or sexually ambiguous fellow, which in 197— meant almost everyone with longish hair and a wardrobe. Closer to the Regency term ‘dandy’ than the homonym ‘poof’, which is a demeaning term – Australian in origin – for gay man.

  Rupert scarf – Distinctive yellow check scarf, as worn by the comic-strip character Rupert Bear.

  dolly-mixture – A brand of sweets (candy).

  the Festival of Britain – 1951.

  Jutland – Naval battle of 1916.

  new bug – Novice.

  panto – Pantomime – a Christmas theatrical tradition, not mime.

  Vera Lynn – Popular British singer of World War Two. That’s her singing ‘We’ll Meet Again’, her signature hit, over the explosions at the end of Dr Strangelove.

  ack-ack – Anti-aircraft fire.

  a jiffy – A moment.

  a rugby try – Equivalent to a touchdown in American football. ‘Converting’ is the rough equivalent to the American ‘try’.

  upped stumps – Died. The expression refers to the aftermath of a cricket match, when stumps are pulled up from the wicket.

  the Common Market – The EEC (European Economic Community); since 1992, the European Union. Great Britain joined in 1973 (when it was called the European Community).

  hot-pants – Short shorts.

  Hire purchase – HP. Paying on the instalment plan – the pre-credit card version of ‘live now, pay later’.

  ITMA – A wartime radio comedy programme. The acronym stands for ‘It’s that man again’. ‘That man’ was Hitler.

  tommies – British soldiers. The expression comes from ‘Thomas Atkins’, the name used in notices that showed how a form mandatory for all those entering military service should be filled in.

  Post Office Tower – A London landmark, now the BT Tower. It briefly featured a revolving restaurant on the thirty-fourth floor but that was closed after a 1971 terrorist bombing perpetrated by the Angry Brigade.

  Milton Keynes – A post-war ‘new town’. Sarah Pinborough lives there.

  inflatable chairs – Late 1960s/early 1970s artefacts – very comfortable, but they were prone to leaks that had to be patched like bicycle tyres.

  Sunday supple
ments – A UK publishing phenomenon of the 1960s, magazines included with Sunday newspapers. The pioneering rivals were the Sunday Times and the Observer.

  Top of the Pops – BBC TV’s weekly pop music programme from 1964 onwards.

  fifty-pence pieces – Replaced the ten-shilling note.

  Simon Dee – Radio disc jockey, then TV chat show host (Dee Time). Fell from favour overnight in the early 1970s.

  Edward Heath – Conservative Prime Minister.

  Germaine Greer – Feminist academic and media pundit, author of The Female Eunuch.

  George Best – Irish-born football player, a star with Manchester United, then tabloid fodder for alcoholism-related incidents.

  Cilla Black – Liverpudlian singer.

  ‘White Horses’ – A UK chart hit, it was the theme tune for a children’s television programme.

  Moon Moon Moon

  Dan Dare – ‘Pilot of the Future’ in the Eagle.

  Jet Morgan – Hero of the BBC’s radio science fiction series Journey Into Space.

  Lucian – Lucian of Samosata, author of A True History, the first lunar-voyage story.

  Francis Godwin – Author of The Man in the Moone, or a Discourse of a Voyage thither, by Domingo Gonsales.

  Cyrano de Bergerac – Author of The Other World: The Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon.

  Hans Pfaall – See Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall’.

  Baltimore Gun Club – See Jules Verne’s From Earth to the Moon.

  Hergé’s Tintin – See Destination: Moon and Explorers on the Moon.

  Heywood Floyd – Played by William Sylvester in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and by Roy Scheider in 2010 – though it’s hard to believe he’s the same character.

  Jonathan King – Something certainly was off about him, and he was jailed for sexual offences against minors.

  John Peel – Britain’s greatest disc jockey and pop savant. Many might think that the highlight of my career was doing a two-hour, two-handed radio programme with the late John Peel.

  Patrick Moore – Broadcaster, astronomer, author of juvenile science fiction, presenter of the BBC’s long-running The Sky at Night.

  James Burke – Broadcaster, science journalist, television producer. Burke’s magnum opus was Connections (1978), a ten-part, interdisciplinary documentary about conceptual breakthrough. Imagine any major TV channel these days giving prime-time airspace to the equivalent of Wired magazine.

  Edwin Winthrop – See Jago, The Bloody Red Baron, Secret Files of the Diogenes Club.

  the Wurzels – Somerset’s greatest band. In 1969, they still retained the authenticity of ‘Blackbird, I’ll ’Ave ’Ee’ and had not yet succumbed to the sell-out commercialism of ‘I’ve Got a Brand New Combine Harvester’.

  ‘Donald, Where’s Yer Troosers?’ – A 1961 novelty hit by Andy Stewart, which charted again in 1989. Rather surprisingly, sung to sinister effect by an evil robot from the future in an episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

  The Simon Dee Show – A talk show on the BBC. Host Dee, a star on a level with Johnny Carson in the US, fell from grace in 1970 – with a suddenness and lack of explanation usually reserved for heads of the Politburo.

  Rhine cards – Devised by Dr Karl Zener and J.B. Rhine at Duke University in the 1920s, used to test telepathy, clairvoyance or precognition. Each pack has twenty-five cards; each card shows one of five symbols (square, circle, wavy lines, star, cross).

  EVA – Extra-Vehicular Activity, NASA-speak for ‘going outside’.

  Sky-Ray lollies – Space-themed iced treat.

  I-Spy Guide – The I-Spy books – initially published by the Daily Chronicle, later by the Daily Mail and now by Michelin – are spotters’ guides for children on various subjects (churches, railways, etc.), edited by bogus Native American ‘Big Chief I-Spy’ (actually, Arnold Cawthrow). They made long car journeys more bearable.

  Wednesday Play – A BBC One drama slot. Among the most significant works broadcast under this rubric were Cathy Come Home, Up the Junction and Dennis Potter’s Nigel Barton plays and Son of Man. Too many of these dramas were wiped.

  Tizer – A uniquely British soft drink. Slightly less horrible than Vimto.

  Nicholas Goodman – See ‘Mildew Manor’. Or hear it, if you can track down the full-cast audio, which has mysteriously disappeared from the internet.

  Swinging Blue Jeans – A popular beat combo, m’lud.

  Ali Bongo – Magic advisor on the TV programme Ace of Wands.

  Sooty – Puppet bear, conjurer – perhaps a soul-sucking mass murderer (see Eugene Byrne, Neil Gaiman and Kim Newman, ‘Who Was Jack the Ripper?’ in Prince of Stories: The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman).

  Tich and Quackers – A television show with a ventriloquist (Ray Alan) whose wooden friends were a schoolboy and a duck. I remember being very annoyed when the BBC replaced it with something as trivial as the Prime Minister talking about the budget.

  New Scientist – UK weekly magazine.

  a Cyberman – They tried to conquer the moon in ‘The Moon Base’.

  Skaro – Home planet of the Daleks.

  You Don’t Have to Be Mad

  loud-hailer – Bullhorn, megaphone.

  bubble car – Blanket term for those tiny, three-wheeler automobiles (technically, ‘micro-cars’), like the BMW Isetta or the Messerschmitt Tiger.

  ‘the policeman on the comedy record’ – ‘The Laughing Policeman’ by Charles Penrose.

  Lichtenstein – Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997), the pop artist.

  Reginald Bosanquet – ITV newsreader.

  fizzog – Face, from ‘physiognomy’.

  glossy – Also known as an ‘eight by ten glossy’, a publicity photograph.

  ’Enery Cooper – Henry Cooper, British Heavyweight boxer, better remembered for two of his fourteen defeats – two title bouts to Cassius Clay (one very dubious) and his particularly brutal 1971 final match to Joe Bugner – than his forty wins. In later life, Cooper did TV commercials for Brut aftershave.

  barmy – Slang – slightly mad, daffy.

  ‘Cor blimey!’ – UK Expression of astonishment. Derived from ‘God blind me’ as in ‘God blind me if I lie.’FO – The Foreign Office.

  bonkers – Slang – mad.

  Dinky Toys – A line of model cars, introduced in 1934.

  over-egging the pud – Overdoing something.

  squaddies – Slang – soldiers, esp. privates.

  Pan’s People – Troupe of female dancers, regulars on BBC TV’s Top of the Pops.

  pre-fab – Pre-fabricated.

  Miss Lark (Dr Myra Lark) – See ‘Going to Series’, The Hallowe’en Sessions and The Ghost Train Doesn’t Stop Here Any More.

  the Black Watch – The Royal Highland Regiment, first raised in 1725.

  tannoy – Though a registered trademark of a specific brand, this is a UK colloquialism for any public-address system.

  Zebedee – A puppet character from the children’s television programme The Magic Roundabout; originally a French show called Le Manège enchanté, it became a cult in the UK partially thanks to wry narration by Eric Thompson (Emma’s dad). There was a film spin-off, Dougal and the Blue Cat (1970), and a needless CGI update in 2005.

  Ring-a-ring-a-rosy – A rhyme and a game, inspired by the Black Death.

  blub – UK slang – cry.

  the Gnomes of Cheltenham – GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters), which is located in Cheltenham, is the department of British intelligence charged with gathering ‘signals intelligence’.

  Whitehall – General term for the British Civil Service, whose offices are in Whitehall, London.

  Tomorrow Town

  Since the Yeer [Year] Dot – Since time immemorial.

  Wilson government – Harold Wilson was Labour Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1964 to 1970 and again from 1974 to 1976. A Maigret-like pipe-smoking, raincoated figure, he famously boasted of ‘the whit
e heat of technology’ when summing up British contributions to futuristic projects like Concorde. At the time of this story, he had been succeeded by the Tory Edward Heath, a laughing yachtsman.

  Raymond Baxter – Host in the 1960s of BBC TV’s long-running Tomorrow’s World, a magazine programme covering the worlds of invention and technology.

  BBC Radiophonic Workshop – The corporation’s sound effects department, responsible for Dalek voices and the Doctor Who theme. Their consultants included the Pink Floyd and Michael Moorcock.

  The Crazy World of Arthur Brown – ‘I am the God of Hell Fire,’ rants Arthur on his single ‘Fire’, which was number one in the UK charts in 1968. An influence on Iron Maiden and other pioneer heavy metal groups, Arthur was also a devoted surrealist-cum-Satanist. He never had another hit, but is still gigging.

  Auberon Waugh – Crusty conservative commentator, son of Evelyn Waugh, author of satirical novels. In the 1960s, his waspish journalism was most often found in The Spectator and the Daily Telegraph.

  Varno Zhoule – British sf author, most prolific in the 1950s, when he published almost exclusively in American magazines. His only novel, The Stars in Their Traces, is a fix-up of stories first seen in Astounding. His ‘Court Martian’ was dramatised on the UK TV series Out of the Unknown in 1963.

  Valerie Singleton – Presenter of the BBC TV children’s magazine programme Blue Peter. Well-spoken and auntie-like, she famously showed kids how to make things out of household oddments without ever mentioning a brand-name (a co-host who once said ‘biro’ instead of ‘ballpoint pen’ was nearly fired).

  Smarties – Chocolate discs inside shells of various colours, available from Rowntree & Company in cardboard tubes. Still a staple ‘sweet’ (i.e. candy) in the UK; similar to M&Ms.

  Kit-Kat – A chocolate bar.

  Tomorrow Town alphabet – Q and X are replaced by KW and KS; the vestigial C exists only in CH and is otherwise replaced by K or S. e.g. THE KWIK BROWN FOKS JUMPED OVER THE LAYZEE DOG.

  The Man in the White Suit – Film directed by Alexander Mackendrick, starring Alec Guinness. An inventor develops a fabric that never wears out or gets dirty, and the clothing industry tries to keep it off the market.