by Ian Hutson
A split second later, Novelty seemed to leap off the rails like a great iron monster with gaping firebox-maw, heading directly towards the sponsor’s enclosure of Platform Two. Sans Pareil hit the barrier, Hackworth cried “Oh bugger for England, for Harry and ruddy Saint George” and they both flipped arse over bogey wheels into their bath-chaired “money men” sponsors. Perseverance, cab doors flailing after the bail-out, hit, turned sideways for maximum carnage and slid like a stolen BMW 3-Series as some dickhead with a – ooh, cor luv-a-duck what will they think of next – night vision camera cried ‘He’s crashed, he’s crashed, he’s crashed...’ into a cctv show fade-out.
A pair of singed and torn red underknickerglorybockers had settled on Branson’s head for some reason as he lay face down on the Monarch, as one did in time of National emergency or at the official start of the London Social Season if cordially invited.
Among the fluttering ashes and clattering wreckage he tugged them off, flattened his hair back down and helped Vicky to her feet, flicking dust and debris off her shoulders with the mystery underwear. She giggled and said “Oh – One seems to be a little bit plastered” and pulled bits of building from her own rather disturbed hair.
A similar scene was enacted in formation a couple of thousand times over in the public gallery to the side of the station as everyone, naturally, copied whatever Royalty did or had had happen to them. Several months later when reports reached the Khyber Pass a minor local uprising was interrupted to allow for yet another re-enactment, this time over the suckling pig and the local Fakir. It caused quite a carry-on there.
Where the end of the station should have been was a vast, smoking, post-apocalyptic pile. Beyond that the flattened Salvation Army Hostel that had been so popular with thrifty Members of Parliament eking out the Public Purse had been, like, totally destroyed, you know? A lone figure rose from the rubble, looked across and waved, weakly.
‘It’s OK – I’m Nu Labour’ the staggering survivor said, just before the original nameplate from Tinkerbell re-entered the dust-laden local atmosphere and landed with remarkable political precision (right between the eyes).
‘That’s that then, Vickykins’ said Branson. ‘In my haste to appease the Ladies’ Committee for Insistence upon the Prompt and Satisfactory Prosecution of the Primary and Secondary Industrial Revolutions and for the introduction of Billiards Cues in Women’s Sizes I have just ended the Industrial Revolution before it was properly begun. I should have asked for brakes. Anchors at the very least. Platform buffers of some sort mayhap. We shall have to start all over again, but this time install giant springs at the end of each railway line. It’ll cost a fortune. What a disaster.’
He pointed towards the massive pile of broken bricks and broken politicians, and the ruined spaces where the four richest sponsoring professions had been seated to watch the competition from the ends of the platforms. ‘Tragedy. Pure unadulterated tragedy. Look – hundreds of politicians dead and all of England’s finest Merchant Bankers, Estate Agents, Lawyers and Health & Safety Inspectors wiped out in one fell swoop.’
There was a huge roar and rapturous applause from the Public Stand and Branson, unaware that his tin megaphone was still switched on, turned to see just what might have caused it.
The public were rushing out, eager to get into the new factories and to begin making things.
Somewhere close by in one of the Portalavatories a penny dropped.
Tentatively, Branson raised the megaphone again and tried an experiment.
‘Oh look – one of the Pension Company Hedge Fund Managers has survived.’
The public stopped in their tracks, dropped their heads and began muttering, indolently and quite without profit or material progress.
Raising his megaphone once more Branson shouted ‘Oh, my mistake, each and every one of them is horribly dead after all’ and the public began rushing out again, eager to begin spot-welding, riveting, wind-tunnel testing and general manufacturing for universal export.
‘Oh hurrah! A surveyor specialising in buy to let properties is rising from the ashes!’
The public stopped in their tracks and started to kick their heels again and consider random vandalism.
‘Oh my mistake again – he’s dead too.’
Hats filled the air and the queues to leave the station swelled once more.
‘Hmm.’ Branson made as though to raise the megaphone for one last, possibly conclusive, social experiment but found himself being gently restrained by The Queen Victorian. She was shaking her head and then nodded a message rather imperiously to the remnants of the military band (“play now or die” was the message). The piano was at a dodgy angle but the notes were true enough and the Royal intro gave the choir time to have a quick gargle to get the dust off the old vocal chords before they began.
‘One one one one one one one ...’ They were all far too polite and well-mannered to sing “me me me me me me meeeee ...” for their warm-up. Cough, cough, shuffle, here goes.
‘When I find myself in piles of rubble, the old Queen Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, from a tree. In One’s hour of darkness she is standing right in front of One, speaking words of wisdom, lettuce pee, oh lettuce pee. And, when One’s broken hearted people, living in the foreign world agree, there will be an Empire, let it be, oh let it be. There will be an Empire, oh let One’s people be...’
The soon-to-be Empress of India played the air-organ keyboard with artistic pain on her face while the choir dived into the chorus with emotional gusto and under the very real threat of Hubert von Karajan’s stolen baton wielded by a very happy Lady Constance Mann-Bighter.
Vicky pointed between stanzas (musical, not Datsun) towards the George & Dragon and gave the internationally accepted hand-signal for “Jeez, I need a round of whiskies and a pig’s arse butty with heaps of HP Sauce, all followed by ten pints of lager and a proper curry, how about you load of big Jessies?”
As Victoria, Albert, Branson, Dr Beeching and Mr “I’m just a faithful manservant really” Connolly carefully picked their way over the rubble towards the pub they came across the broken body of a poor young solicitor (yeah, right, “poor” my arse). He groaned and rolled over, reaching for them (or it might have been for their purses, it was hard to tell in all the brick dust and the fog-like arterial spray of his extensive injuries4U).
They paused. The soundtrack for the closing scenes of the first day of the Industrial Revolution was playing in the background and it was really obvious who was calling the tunes now – Lady Constance Mann-Bighter launched into her Suffragette-City remix medley while the lone survivor of the legal profession sang like a super-grass canary.
‘Help!’ he sang. ‘Help! I need somebody! Not just anybody! Help! You know I need first a-a-aid. Help! When I was younger, so much less injured than today I never needed anybody’s blood in any way, but now those days are gone I’ve found my legs are not secured, now I find, I’ve, like, changed my mind and need to find I’m cured. Help me if you can I’m lying down, and I do appreciate One looking down. Help me get my feet back on your ground, won’t One please help me. Help me. Ooh.’
Next to him were scorched papers upon which the business header “Nowin O’Fee, Jusste Klaymitt & Screame-Whipplashe” could just be read in dusty smudges. There was a briefcase, broken now and open, in which lay his scanner for listening in to ambulance radios and his supply of banana skins for those customers who required a little creative help with their evidence of negligence.
Victoria planted one very recently re-slippered royal foot on his neck, reached into her garter belt and decorated his forehead with an Order of The Bullet. Then One addressed One’s entourage.
‘One has plans, gentlemen, One has plans and one’s plans do not include compensation culture and no-win no-fee no-scruples no-testicles solicitors. Buy One a cold pint and a bag of Cheese & Onion crisps and One will tell you all about them and what’s in it for you guys...’
The band changed its tune
again when Vicky snapped her fingers over One’s shoulder. For the second time in a rather surprising day in what had been a very busy week, and promised to be a hell of a century or two, Victoria blew the smoke from the end of her new pistol, played an air guitar with classic bad back and weak knees stance and then dance-stepped over the rubble, singing her way towards the pub, a pint and the future of England and The English Empire.
‘Aaaaaaaaaaargh! You say you want an industrial revolution, well, you know, One really wants to change the world. Darwin tells me that it’s industrial evolution, well, you know, One really needs to change the world, but when you talk about deconstruction, don’t assume that you can count One out ...’
‘Vicky, it’s going to be alright.’
‘Alright?’
‘Alright!’
‘Alright?’
‘Alright!’
‘You say you’ve got a real solution Mr Branson, well, you know – One would love to see your plans. You ask One for a contribution, well, you know, Royalty’s doing what it can. But if you want money for people with inventions that are late, well all I can tell you is, loyal subject, they’ll have to wait.’
‘Vicky, don’t you know it’s going to be... alright.’
‘Alright?’
‘Alright!’
‘Alright?’
‘Alright!’
‘You say you’ll change One’s constitution. Well, you know – One just might chop orf your head. You tell me it’s the Establishment Institutions, well, you know, you’d better free your mind instead. But, look, if you don’t get One’s canals built right now, you ain’t gonna make it with One anyhow.’
‘Vicky – don’t you know it’s going to be...’
‘...Alright?’
‘Alright!’
* * * * *
The day the Earth took tea
[back to table of contents]
Lord Sir Rear-Admiral Doctor Professor the Most Reverend the Honourable Mr Blair, X.P.M., D.S.O., O.B.E., G.C.S.E., O Rhesus Negative, Lactose Intolerant [all information retrieved from his “Rambo” dog-tags] was as fatigued as a canine after another long night shift at the Great Osmonds Street Hospital, comforting sick children with the word of the Lord. He used only the first of his titles when talking to sick children, as in ‘Hello sick little pre-Voter, I am the Lord...’
However, even pooped as he was, his driving was still exemplary and his reactions silver-spoon sharp. He slammed both of his sandals onto the brake pedal of his G-Wiz L-ion electric car so hard that his nylon socks slipped down, his bamboo crucifix got tangled up in the steering wheel and his dhoti rode right up unto the crack of his Arsenal Villa are doing awfully well this year, don’t you think?
Several trays of uneaten lobster left over from the previous day’s Simple-Meals-on-Christian-eco-wheels run through the poor of Kensington Square might have fallen right off the rear nodding-dog & parcel shelf had there been an anywhere to slide into. As cramped in the vehicle as it was, two claws and a delicate butter sauce still got loose and hit the inside of the eco-windscreen.
Fortunately for his emergency stop manoeuvre it was barely Sparrow-fart o’clock, so his was still the only moving car on the road in central London and there was no need for any motoring “oh I say” battles or “do please excuse me, parp-parp” wars, and certainly no-one needed to remove their string-backed gloves or to swerve while glowering incandescently.
Sparrow-fart o’clock is about a quarter past seven-twenty a.m. on the Imperial O’Beaufort Scale. Blair got out to peer at the spectacle before him through his little round horn-rimmed zero-prescription spectacles, the ones that went everywhere just before him since they were attached to his nose. Leaving the car door wide open he pulled up his socks and pulled down his unbleached Fair Trade organic cotton loincloth just a little. Easing his badge of office thus allowed him to dip to genuflect without cutting off his European Presidential election prospects. Spectacles, testicle, coin-purse and watch out, there’s some slow chap on a fast bicycle.
Eric, the chap who plugs in the third rail of The London Tube System in the mornings, was on his way to work and almost wobbled his fast sports-bicycle into the side of Mr Blair’s car, abandoned as it was on the new-fangled yellow cross-hatch mechanical traffic-light controlled junction and humming to itself like a red EverReady D-type battery on wheels. Eric put a hand on the roof of the car as he slipped out of his bicycle clips, popped them in the basket on the handlebars and then went to stand alongside the Lord Sir Rear-Admiral Doctor Professor the Most Reverend the Honourable Mr Blair and so forth.
‘G’morning Tony.’
‘Oh, hello Eric.’
Just then a Hollywooden film director gentleman came hurtling down the deserted Mall [the parade-ground stroke roadway The Mall, not a foreign shopping centre]. Surrounded by a cloud of dramatic tension he was moving at a quite headlong jog towards the very junction so unexpectedly gridlocked by a G-Wiz L-ion, a parked bicycle and – the latest insurmountable addition – a stately feral foraging family-pigeon, foraging in its most feral family state.
Still looking entirely to his right, as he had been for the whole of the previous three paragraphs, merely glancing at the road and only then in-between delivering complicated vital plot-dialogue, he suddenly found his somehow inalienable human right to a clear “freeway” violated. His god, for this gentleman’s god was not the same god as Mr Blair’s god, was caught quite on the hop, as gods apparently often are during Earthly emergencies. The Hollywooden Almighty desperately spun the gentleman sideways in defiance of all adult common sense but in complete submission to the rules of adolescent game-play footage aesthetics and photographic composition.
Smoke poured from his tortured Nike Airstream Numpty-Nukes as the best rubber that Hollywooden Footwear Inc could come up with entered a life or death struggle to wrestle his speed down from an inhuman but obviously technologically advanced Hollywooden six or seven miles a jogging hour (6 or 7 MPJH). Spinning wildly the gentleman tragically hit a small piece of gravel, flipped emotionally into a fundament over insurance-claim apex cartwheel, twanged the floppy “dog’s tail” aerial of Blair’s G-Wiz as he flew over the top and then landed upside down in an innocent tree. There his clothing promptly burst into non-homeland foreign-terrorist fanned flames and quickly spread to the peace, patriotism and lost Hollywooden-National innocence of the nearby god-fearing mid-west boy-meets-girl girl-gets-pregnant happy-ever-after-in-a-Ford-Pinto family-pavements.
‘What on earth do you think it might be, Eric?’
‘I think it’s a load of dismal Hollywooden film-nellie who was scouting locations for a “movie” about demon-possessed Chevrolet Corvairs and their effect on a regular god-and-state-fearing semi-mixed race mixed-sex natural and intrinsically attractive, valuable and worthwhile Mom and Pop Hollywooden family who’ve moved to Ye Olde Englande to live as is their right because one of the children has only decades to live and they need to find the cure in a magical quasi-religious fairy fountain in European Tuscany but can’t actually live there because it’s not on any London signposts even though it was closer on the map than New York is to Florida and anyway they once left the dog home alone during a super-hero glut when the Hollywooden President wasn’t very nice but saved the world anyway because he was a jet pilot and a nice god blessed Hollywooden and the Hollywooden “way of life” that we’re all apparently insanely jealous of but haven’t got the wherewithal or the political balls or firepower to get for ourselves a-men ready mit der lights und der camera und der action.’
‘Yes, yes, the English God and I both bless Hollywoodenland and Tinsel Town and desperately risible cliche combined with lowest common denominator commercialism and implausible violence leading to dehumanisation, but I really meant that – up there’ said Tony, pointing to the large flying saucer parked very neatly over Buckingham Palace like some vast tin dustbin lid.
‘Oh that. That’s a flying saucer. It was there last night at about ten o’clock when I turn
ed The Tube off and locked up. I spoke to the constable about it and he says that England Yard will be sending a car down sometime this morning to investigate.’
‘Oh. Well so long as someone knows about it. That’s the main thing.’
The jogging Hollywooden director chap had by then extricated himself from the tree (by simple dint of falling out of it) and was running around the road, ablaze and in search of decent Hollywooden supporting props. A “gas” station preferably, complete with a refuelling hydrogen-hybrid school bus full of orphaned Carmelite ex-prostitute angel-faced nuns taking disadvantaged African-Hollywoodans to visit their sage old relatives in a Tennessee care-home before it is turned into an abandoned toxic spider mine by a thou$and-millionaire (a billionaire is a quite different thing) who wants to re-start the Hollywooden economy by mowing down the world-dominating Bolivian drug cartels with space satellites made from rare Indestructium by people who are supposed to be scientists and engineers but who haven’t in fact mastered puberty yet.
In the Hollywooden gentleman’s commercial dreams maybe a pair of crusty (Caucasian, always Caucasian) survivalists might go down well too if he could find some, especially if they both loved or looked like Dolly Parton, or had been Dolly Parton before surgery following an aeroplane crash. Better yet if they had guns, were founder members of the National Uzi Association and their camouflage-painted Chevrolet Patriot Citation Homeland Suburban Town-Car 6x6 Pick-Up GT was broken down in a zombie enclave at dusk on a fresh flesh-eating lava-flow caused by stolen nuclear weapons being ’sploded in a downtown Los Hollywood retired Policeman’s apartment block where racial tensions were already running high, a wonderful non-paedophile Priest had just been shot during an Indo-Chinese Greek/Jewish wedding and the Republican Mayor had just cut the power and water and air-conditioning off. Something nice like that. Anything believably tragic, just to offset the unbalanced and oppressively unsophisticated atmosphere of his current overseas foreign non-Hollywooden location in the Not-Hollywood.