by Ian Hutson
‘No. I’m here to visit...’
‘...Visit?’
‘Yes, if you’ll ever let me finish that sentence I’m here to visit a patient.’
‘A guest – as I told you, we have a strict policy of calling them guests. Patient implies that they are ill and may somehow be cured by some ruddy miracle. Look here – why have you been wasting my time if you’re just here to visit one of the loons? Why have you been impersonating an investor?’
‘I haven’t been – I just rang the bell and you dragged me in. I’m just here to visit my...’
‘...Look, you keep saying you’re here to visit but you never tell me who you’re here to visit.’
‘That’s because you keep interrupting me!’
‘Do not!’
‘Do so! I am here to visit...’
‘...Yes, yes, we’ve heard all of that part before – but who are you here to visit? Who? Who? Who?’
‘... My mother. I just want to visit my mother. Six-Five.’
‘Well why didn’t you say so instead of impersonating an investor and getting an expensive tour of the facility? Do you have some sort of mental health problem? Come through here – your mother is receiving the very best of therapy although I must wonder if you ought not really to take her place.’
With that the Director, Doctor Ozymandias, opened the door onto an unloved hangar of a room occupied by fifty or more souls in damp high-backed chairs, each of them knitting feverishly with rubber needles and an endless supply of wool spooling out from a central, industrial reel.
Two-Six scanned the room and waved. ‘Hello mother! Can you hear me, Mother?’ Six-Five set aside her knitting for a moment and waved back. She looked to be slightly singed around the temples. Two-Six coughed and was surprised to find that he had brought up all of his remaining emotion cams and the little system of levers that had hitherto functioned to give him any confidence in “professionals” and “The System”.
‘I’m surprised that you brought those up’ was almost all that Doctor Ozymandias had to say on the matter (the matter in Two-Six’s hand). ‘Do you have any other symptoms?’
‘None! None at all – I’m perfectly fine, thank you! Cogito ergo checksum. I’m sane. Perfectly sane.’
Doctor Ozymandias shook his head, disgusted, and retreated to his office, there to continue work on his ground-breaking and inoffensive thesis “On The Cost-Effective Installation of Self-Tightening Screws In The Common Lunatic”. ‘Nobody’s ever quite perfectly sane old chap, we’ll get you in the end and then you’ll see, you’ll see...’
* * * * *
Je pense it’s all going very bien
[back to table of contents]
England’s Primed Minister Mr Boris and Her Majesty Elizabeth, The Queen Person of England, Gibraltar, Lundy and Alderney were really being kept very busy indeed. Not so busy that they couldn’t take an interest in world affairs though; provided that they left the serving hatch open they could hear everything that went on in the World Government Chamber while they worked. There were great gobs of soap suds clinging to Elizabeth’s Marigolds rubber gloves as she listened, and One couldn’t help but hear that little advertising ditty going endlessly around in One’s head – Hands that dig ditches can feel soft as your face, with wild green Fairy Liquid. It had always been a mystery to One where wild green fairies might be found exactly, at least in commercial rather than merely social quantities. Boris was drying the mugs with a souvenir “Tower of London” tea-cloth and hanging them back on their little hooks in the cupboard. He took extra care while drying Angular Merkel’s “Ich bin das big Caesar around here” mug. Wouldn’t do to break that one eh!
‘Do you think they’ll be ready for some more snacks?’ said Elizabeth, changing the water in the plastic washing-up bowl for hot fresh, and blowing bubbles and making rude asthmatic-rectum noises with the nearly empty Fairy Liquid bottle. Fortunately, she had brought two bottles with her, and once One had rinsed this one out to make certain of using the very last of the contents, One would fetch the other from one’s tartan wheelie-bag.
‘Could be – the cream scones were going down awfully well when I took the last tray in’ replied Boris, checking on the Mr Kipling jam tarts he was warming in the oven – a tricky procedure, since tarts need to be just warm enough to put life into them but not so hot as to burn folk’s tongues. Not every foreign person knew quite how to safely approach a warmed jam tart.
‘Better go and check, Boris – we don’t want them to get hungry or thirsty. Take a fresh jug of Kia-Ora and one of Sunny-D with you, and do try to not get in the way this time.’
Boris excused himself through the foyer-crush, past Mr American President Obama (who had his hand stuck up inside a vending machine, trying to loosen the prawn-flavour crisps he’d paid for but which had refused to fall from their shelf). A Secret Service Agent wearing Aviators and a curly-wired ear-piece had his back to the machine, trying to rock it without making too much noise. The rest of the CIA were pooling their cash to see if between them they could just put the money in again and save any potential unpleasantness with the janitor.
Boris crept into the main room, trying to make sure that his plastic-soled shoes didn’t squeak. A security guard slipped the velvet rope back onto its hook after Boris had passed through, and accepted a decadent western Haribo sweetie in payment for his kind assistance, trying to get to the tasteless, gelatinous lump of pure crap out of the bag without rustling it too loudly. While Boris worked his way around the room clearing empties as he went he nodded to David Cameron. David was probably the most important person in the whole of the World Government Chamber that day. He was working hard in a corner, tugging at his punka-wallah string and stirring the warm air just as hard as he could. Gosh, trooper that he was he’d even dressed for the part and was very proud of his “pigeon head” movements.
The four-hundred-strong proportionally-represented Chinese delegation was proposing an all-out combined attack with the world’s nuclear arsenal. India’s nine-hundred strong proportional delegation favoured a Bollywood team of has-been space cowboys going up there with some serious C5 plastique and a few good musical numbers. The sole representative from the All-Africa Continental Alliance, Mr Pieter Van Niekerk-Pretorius, suggested that maybe suddenly stopping the Earth’s molten core from rrrho-tayting yah would allow the planet to sort of hop, yah, rright ovah the comet and then it could all be rre-star-ted somehow after-wards eh, peh-haps by lots of chaps with big sticks and some sort of lee-verr ah-rrangement you know? A lot of folk agreed that he was probably on to something there.
The greatest popularly scientific minds of the era: Osbourne; Minogue; Cole; Cowell; Barlow; Ramsay, Rhodes, Lawson, Vickery; Oliver and all of the others took notes and conferred and nodded among themselves, sagely. Stopping the core sounded like it had a chance but they weren’t sure that there was enough Unobtainium in the civilised world to build the necessary craft to take the necessary nukes and the necessary affirmative cross-section of Bollywooden-American stereotypes down there. Did it always have to be “down there” anyway? Down was so depressing a direction. They ventured that the operation would have better chances of success if they went “up” to the problem, possibly well-dressed and with nice haircuts and with an expedition anthem chosen by panel-overridden popular vote at £3 to £5 per text message plus the network cost of the text please ask a responsible adult before using the phone. They suggested the crew be culled from the entire cast of “Come Dancing Yeah?” for gravitas and for technical expertise with handling huge red-hot balls of iron-nickel alloy.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama stood to speak and reminded everybody present that the important thing was to blow that filthy mother out of the sky. It didn’t have to be a pretty solution, it just had to be a violent one. He wondered if some sort of flying scissors-kick followed by a chop to the Solar solar plexus might serve to re-balance Solar Yin and Yang, if he’d understood worldly scientific matters correctly.
T
he Sicilian Pontiff showed his support for His Holiness’s proposal with a high-five followed by the upturned flat palms gesture and a series of nods to all corners. Yeah, baby – work the room! When His Papal Holiness made eye contact with the Chief Rabbi his gesture turned, of course, into a less polite chin-flick. This was immediately re-wrapped in a warm “oy vey, it’s rude that you are” gesture and flung back at him with a dismissive hand. ‘It’s solutions shmolutions we need already, not violence – we got enough violence. Always with the violence.’
The various factions, fractions and fractious factions of the Middle East had a show of hands among themselves and immediately raised oil prices, to help out as best they could.
Lizzie came into the chamber help Boris collect the rest of the empties and she positively whizzed around the delegates offering an open black plastic rubbish bag for their paper serviettes and plastic cups. Why, why, why, she wondered, was there always so much fruit and jelly wasted and why did no-one ever eat their sandwich crusts? The pile of pilchard sandwiches seemed to be completely untouched for some reason.
It was agreed by the grown-ups present that the world was going to split the nuclear arsenal and try both of the favoured solutions. The Earth’s core would be stopped from spinning by popular vote and by nuclear fission while the rest of the arsenal would be lobbed as hard as possible in the direction of the big bright thing in the sky, yeah? The comet would thus dissipate like shares in a dodgy dot com start-up and our lovely blue marble planet would take a little hop in celebration over any remaining debris and land back exactly on target ready for the re-opening of the world’s stock exchanges. The planet’s core would then be shot to life again one day in the week following by plucky and heroic civilians with some quite large small-arms until it rrhotated yah correctly, just in time for a “the happy holidays” and some tax rises and more benefits cuts for ugly people. In a stroke of genius the film rights were to be sold with the sole proviso being that the film be a serious one and star Colin Firth and Huge Grant.
Boris and Lizzie came to the end of their shift and handed over the reins of the kitchen duty to Mr Vladimir who began to tie on a lovely gaily-coloured pinafore and announced that he was going to whip up a batch of nice hot Shchi and a tray of vodka-fudge brownies for later. He thought it important to keep the world leaders’ blood-sugar levels quite high while they were hammering out the more manly-man technical man’s man details of saving the world for Hugh Manity. As Lizzie bit off a loose thread from the lining of her old coat Vladimir took the opportunity to slap her on the arse, give her a hug and call her “tovarishch”. Well, I say “slap” but it really was more as though he was trying to work some heat into the royal gluteus maximusses, or smooth down some bread dough or something. The passion of the snog that followed quite caught Lizzie by surprise, even for an old queen!
As Lizzie and Boris quietly slipped out of the building via the “Volunteers and Tradesmen” entrance they gave discreet little waves, smiles and raised chimp-communication eyebrows to the delegates from the other third-world nations who were also hanging about, anxious to help the Germans and the Indians and the Chinese. Being careful to avoid causing unnecessary fuss they whispered their final end-of-shift pleasantries such as je pense it’s all going very bien and do please excuse us por favour, estamos das Ingles and bugger mim, mas minhas mãos são macias como ser uma fada’s arse verde do selvagem.
It was only when Boris and Lizzie were finally kicking their heels at the railway station in Brussels, waiting for an off-peak train that would connect with their cross-channel ferry that a plan settled between them like a friendly wet dog wriggling down on the settee.
‘Lizzie – everyone’s so awfully busy with all of these dashed clever plans with nuclear missiles and things that I do wonder if we’re not missing something, something rather obvious.’
Her Majesty clutched her enormous over-night handbag even tighter and looked up and down the deserted platform for some obvious mistake. ‘No, I don’t think we’ve missed anything - this is Platform 3, we can get to Calais from here if we change at Dusseldorf and Prague and pay the extra fare but the cheap train only runs once every four continental metric hours.’
The mere mention of Dusseldorf suddenly seemed like a friendly elephant in the room and they both broke out into the laughter of co-conspirators after which Her Lizzie The Queen had to dab her eyes with a Kleenex. Boris put it into words. ‘No, but seriously Maj, I do worry that we’re not playing our part fully in world affairs.’
That brought them both out in a spate of titters again and one of them had to rush into the Ladies to freshen their knickers. If only Boris hadn’t used the word “affairs”!
Boris fed a shilling into the Cadbury’s Chocolate vending machine (provided all over “Abroad” by the English embassies for the emergency succour of weary Travellers and Ex-Pats). He tugged out the heavy drawer under the stack of oddly-sized, over-priced Fruit & Nut. Her Maj accepted a piece and nibbled thoughtfully while she listened. Boris was awfully clever; when he spoke it was usually worth taking at least a moment to nod and cock an ear.
‘Do listen Maj, do - this could potentially be terribly good for the morale of England.’
‘Chocolate?’
‘No – well, yes, but I meant my idea.’
They were interrupted in state affairs by the slow local train arriving. It stopped at every station like some incontinent dog but it was the only connection that offered “Third Class” fares and was all that their official travel allowances would stretch to. Lizzie and Boris shuffled through the carriages with their bags, looking for a couple of seats together. The train was quite busy with ancient continental old ladies in widow’s weeds and rosary beads taking she-goats to market, and with enigmatic old chaps in striped jerseys and berets clutching greasy spare parts for “les Citroen Deux Cheveaux avec le cunning canvas roofings”. They found a couple of forward-facers and claimed them for England. Boris swept the garlic off the seats and Liz put their luggage in the rack overhead between a couple of “economic refugees” and some Belgian chap’s Puch Maxi moped with fitted basket.
‘Oh Boris – I’m knackered!’ expostulated Her Maj as she arranged her sensible reversible Mackintosh and fished in her pocket for a Polo mint (the de-luxe brand, without the hole). ‘Still, the show must go on – do tell One about your idea. Cheer one up!’
Boris lit his unpretentious Meerschaum pipe, the one with his own likeness carved into the bowl and a lid covered in a mop of real yak hair. He stroked his new moustache, preparing it to wax lyrical.
‘Ah yes, well – it’s a bit technical so as a girl you might not understand it all of course, but here goes anyway.’
By Dusseldorf they’d hammered out all of the less technical details and were eager to get home to put the plan into action. By Calais they were positively desperate for civilisation.
Finally, on the drizzle-bound ferry, Her Maj tied on a headscarf as they patrolled the upper windblown decks and Boris slipped his tweed cap into a pocket rather than lose it overboard in a gust. It was all jolly bracing and jolly refreshing after the cloying over-personal fleshiness of the The Continent.
‘Will Phil be meeting you off the ferry?’
‘I do hope so.’
‘May I beg a lift?’
‘Absolutely, yah. He knows I’ll have a couple of pints of duty-free and two-hundred ciggies with me so he should be in a shooting brake, probably the Jag. There’ll be plenty of room if you don’t mind sharing the back seat with the dogs.’
Boris was struggling to keep his pipe lit in the damp spray thrown up by the blunt ro-ro bow, even with the little lid with real yak-hair toupe.
‘Can you try to explain to One again some of the more practical elements of your plan? Someone will probably ask One and One doesn’t like to seem too ignorant on such matters.’
‘Oh. No. Yes of course. Well – and do stop me if I use any big scientific words, but it struck me that everyone’s awfully keen
on shooting things or blowing them up, on making the planet do somersaults, that sort of thing. I wonder if perhaps there might not be a simpler, less ostentatious solution to the comet problem.’ He paused again while Lizzie cupped her hands around yet another match for him. She inhaled some of the thick, blue tobacco smoke – all ladies of a certain age love the smell of good tobacco (when smoked by a gentleman of course, not by themselves or some pretentious oik). ‘I wonder if we ought not to send a couple of chaps up there to have a look and see what might be done – er, before the world’s combined nukes arrive of course.’
Her Maj turned back towards the thickly-painted rust-knobbled railings of the Seal-Ink ferry, deep in thought. She caught a strand of hair that had escaped from her headscarf and tucked it back under just as the White Cliffs of Audi hove into view on the grim, grey horizon (re-named in a lucrative sponsorship deal Kent County Council had made on the shush hush-hush, much to the annoyance of Essex). ‘However would we fund something like that? How much might it cost the nation?’
Boris stopped chewing on his pipe and sucked salty air through his teeth (at least he’d remembered to put them in). ‘Well – we could use the old Cold-War Morris Space-Traveller fleet, they’re in mothballs somewhere – in a hangar at RAF Mothbawlls, I think. It would need fifty or sixty gallons of fuel. Some space-sandwiches of course – you could knock those up, surely? I’m sure that the crew chaps would volunteer, if we told them how important it might be to everyone.’
Maj folded her arms and leaned on the rail, this time to face the smoke stack. ‘I don’t know, Boris – sixty gallons of fuel. Sixty! Even if we could get the coupons. Are we talking two, three, four or five star petrol?’
Boris stood in that decisive way chaps often do when they’ve made their minds up. He looked out to sea. ‘I still have some of my birthday money left over – I’d be more than happy to use that.’
‘Oh Boris – are you sure? Weren’t you saving up to go skiing or something?’