A 21-year-old Islamic woman was found guilty of stabbing MP Stephen Timms because he voted for the Iraq War. That certainly trumps my effort – I just sent him a turd in a Pringles tube. I suppose on the plus side, unlike other MPs, his dry-cleaning receipt was a legitimate work expense. Mr Timms, who followed Blair’s instruction to vote for the war, was lucky. Doctors think he could’ve been killed if he’d actually had guts or a spine. There are rumours she’d tried a similar attack shortly before. Crouching by the front door wearing a full burqa, unfortunately she forgot it was bin day.
The SAS are apparently to patrol shopping centres this Christmas in case of an Al-Qaeda attack. They need to make sure they are not stationed near any department stores, otherwise they’ll waste most of the day dealing with men pleading to be executed.
Hopefully, the SAS don’t have the same training for dealing with crowds as the Met police or else we can expect someone to be pushed over so they die every day till Christmas. They will target anyone holding packages and looking suspicious – looks like a lot of women will be getting that secret surprise gift straight from the coroner’s office this year. It can only end badly. ‘Why did I take him out, Sarge? He had a beard and a whole sackful of suspicious packages.’ Remember – if someone in a shopping centre asks you to stop, do not run! Unless they’re trying to sell you Sky Broadband.
I’m presuming this is part of SAS training in withstanding torture. Three weeks of strip lighting and being asked if they want a family portrait, and they’ll be begging to be waterboarded. Can you imagine the grief, to find out your son’s been killed in a terrorist incident, compounded by the fact he was found with gift-wrapped bath salts from Wilkinson. To know he was thinking of you just before he died, but not all that fondly. I’m glad the SAS are there. After two hours shuffling through all the mouth-breathing, track-suited scum with Slade, Cliff Richard and Band Aid as my soundtrack, I’ll just have to whip out an alarm clock taped to a pack of sausages and bang … peace at last.
East Midlands Airport shut briefly after someone there saw another suspicious object. But it turned out to be a book. I went through Heathrow recently and I was at that bit with the walk-through metal detectors. They made me throw my keys in a bowl … everyone else threw theirs in, I ended up shagging a pilot.
Then there was the hysteria over explosives found in printer cartridges. It’s terrifying you can get this stuff so easily on the black market. I googled it and got directed to Amazon. Apparently, ‘Customers who liked PETN also liked Semtex and Diaminotrinitrobenzene.’
We had to rely on an Al-Qaeda supergrass for this. Our spies should be infiltrating these organisations but budget cuts mean we now have to share elasticated beards with the Americans. I say the only way forward is to ban printer cartridges and reintroduce scribes. I said, scribes, Brother Matthew. Come on, keep up! You’re not going to Vespers till this is done!
It didn’t go off so maybe there was a mix-up. Maybe there was a real ink cartridge on board while a temp at a haulage firm in Swindon is currently trying to ram a hydrogen bomb into the photocopier.
Hiding a bomb in a printer cartridge could have been very nasty. Have you ever tried to get ink out of a corpse? There is a lot of speculation as to how the bombers came up with this plan. I blame that recent Al-Qaeda convert, the wee paperclip from Microsoft Word. Now he can often be seen popping up wearing a turban, a beard and a hook, shouting, ‘I see you are trying to defeat the West. Maybe I can help.’
As a result, all packages from Somalia were banned from entering the UK. Right now, my bed is unmade because my new housekeeper is languishing in a warehouse and, from her text messages, it looks like she’s only got about five more hours of air left.
You know – I’m starting to think there are some people out there who don’t really like Britain and the US. Of course, the whole terror thing is just a way of keeping us frightened and suggestible. More alarming is the view that after dallying with the idea of investing in green stocks and the planet’s future, international capital has fled towards investing in security. Rather than saving the world, the rich seek to turn the part of it they’ll be left with into a fortress. The security sector in the US has, post 9/11, gone from chump change to a multi-billion-dollar concern. With a passive Palestinian population to try their tear-gas launchers and body scanners out on, Israeli firms are cleaning up. Meanwhile, Britain has a quarter of the world’s CCTV cameras, each one relaying a feed to a sleeping minimum-wage security guard, leaving us safe in the knowledge that when we’re kicked to death by an escaped mental patient it’ll end up on You’ve Been Framed.
‘He starts pretending that he’s controlling her from the backseat and she jerks about like a robot’
I’m out in the shared garden bit in front of my son’s house. He’s trying to join in with the bigger boys, who’re about 8 or 9. One of them comes up to me to tell me I’m better than Michael McIntyre. ‘Yes, I am,’ I agree. ‘Everybody is.’ He says we can play for a few goals and the wee man runs alongside whoever has the ball, until he eventually gets dispirited. We take our own ball and kick it for a bit, then he grabs it and sticks it in the middle of the lawn. He makes me sit up on a wee bank with him and we both have to pretend we’re guiding some action with PlayStation controllers. ‘No more PlayStation for you,’ I say, but he’s already running towards the swings.
I’m telling his mum about it when I hand him back. She stays in the car, which always makes it feel like a Cold War hostage exchange. He starts pretending that he’s controlling her from the backseat and she jerks about like a robot and we all laugh. Later on, when I’m swimming, I think about that and whether laughing at something horrible just makes it bearable, and helps it continue. Maybe there is a laziness in laughing about stuff instead of doing something about it. I decide jokes should only be about things you canny change, only about disabilities and death and human fallibility and the eventual heat death of the universe. I’m in a Jacuzzi thinking this. Anyway, the wee prick is not getting on the PlayStation again. It’s fucking snakes and ladders from now on.
Gary O’Donnell, Facebook assassin, has been texting me in the belief that I am Amanda H. I’ve been fending him off and also, let’s be honest, leading him on. There’s half an hour to kill before the European Cup Final.
You watching the game, Gary?
Can’t wait! comes the reply. What are you doing/wearing?
Just bored, lying on my bed, trying to think of something to do with myself.
I have a few ideas!
I’m sure you do! Well, I have none, so I’m going to run a bath!
Send me a pic! Sorry, bit forward, pics!
That almost makes sense, Gary. I can see him looking forward to leering at photos of my pal Lindsay in her undies while watching the pre-match build-up with some cans.
I think Man U might have won last time if Fletcher hadn’t been suspended, I text – the most stupid opinion anyone could ever have about anything.
Agreed. Didn’t know you knew about football!
There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me!
Think how often this standard flirtatious sentence has been used. One of his victims probably said it to Jack the Ripper.
I hope so! says Gary, enigmatically.
I’m imagining you’re here on the bed with me, Gary.
I’m there in spirit! What are you wearing?
A blue dress, knickers, that’s all.
Send me a pic!
Desperate. He’s probably torn right now, because it’s nearly kick-off.
My nipples are getting hard, Gary.
A couple of minutes go by. He’ll be finding somewhere safe to beat off. My phone rings. It’s him. I dingy it.
I text. No calls Gary.
Gary texts. If I was there right now, I’d lift you up against the walls [sic] and slip my cock in and out of you as slowly as I could bear.
It has the air of a standard, something he says to all the girls.
What about your severely disabled daughter, Gary. I feel guilty.
Don’t. What are you doing now? Are you touching yourself?
I am.
Beautifully parried.
I’m touching myself through my knickers Gary …
Go on …!
I’m putting my hand in my knickers Gary …
Are you touching your pussy Amanda?
I’m touching my cock Gary, my cock is so hard for you …
What?
I leave it a couple of minutes.
What do you mean?
I’m pulling my cock Gary! I’m pulling my cock and imagining you’re lifting me against the walls!
A good five minutes.
You have a cock?
A big hard cock Gary!
I thought you were a woman. Is this Amanda?
I am a woman Gary, a woman with a cock. We should meet up … I can come down to Manchester tomorrow.
The whistle goes and the game starts. I go through to the stateroom and relax on a beanbag. The wee man is right, it does seem strange not to be controlling it. I’ll probably feel the same if I ever manage to watch any comedy again. Gary texts 20 minutes into the half, during a substitution.
You’re joking, right? I thought you were a woman … have I got the wrong end of the stick here?
YOU’RE A FUCKING TRANSPHOBIC CUNT GARY! I’M SENDING ALL YOUR TEXTS AND SHIT TO YOUR WIFE!
Fuck you! I’m no poof, I can find you you cunt.
A lot of couples get their phones on a contract together so the partner’s phone is often one digit higher or lower. One lower than Gary’s is a soft-spoken Bristolian called Carl. Gary’s wife’s is one higher. I forward Gary’s texts, as well as one from myself as a hysterical spurned mistress. Half-time is a blizzard of threats but after that I get into the game, the wee triangular movements and I switch the phone off.
Barcelona bring on this guy who’s just got over liver cancer and I think about how it would be funny if he was kicked in the liver so hard that he died. Or if he started glowing radioactively because of all the chemo and scored a screamer from 80 yards with a light trail behind it. I light half a joint Paul has left there. The commentator is saying these days there’s microchips in footballers’ shorts, so the manager knows how far they’ve run. How long before that finds its way into school? A computer decides not to pick you for five-a-side and a letter is delivered to your house on the day of PE.
I lay sprawled and twisted where I had fallen, sobs of fury at my impotence, my uselessness, my helpless, stunted, ugly body, wracking me. There and then, my face buried in the crook of my arm, I silently cursed – with every curse that the Trastevere gutters had taught me! – the nameless and malefic being who had imprisoned me in a cage of flesh and bone and mucus. I cursed him, his minions and agents, his principalities and powers; I cursed the pope, the pope’s cardinals and catamites and painted whores; I cursed kings and emperors and bishops; I cursed everything and everyone I could think of. And I cursed the suppurating, filthy womb which had propelled me, reluctant and screaming, into this abysmal world.
David Madsen, Memoirs of a Gnostic Dwarf
Chapter 11
Have you ever stopped to think about how stupid sport is? Have you ever thought how idiotic it is that the Champions League trophy is a really, really big cup, because it’s the most important cup? Remember how bored you were in school games when you didn’t have the ball? Perhaps you fell into a reverie where you thought you’d like to be sitting at home, ignoring your family, watching cunts doing this remotely, cunts you didn’t even know? Not that I’m entirely anti-sport. I always make a few quid on the Grand National – I’ve got shares in a dog-food factory.
The 2012 London Olympics will give the country the extra boost it needs to finally get us out of the recession and into a depression. The route for the Olympic torch was announced. The torch will first be handed over by China, once they’ve finished burning Ai Weiwei’s feet with it. The nationwide relay will end at the Olympic stadium in London, when a surprise guest will light a giant flame by pulling the rip cord on his suicide belt.
There’s going to be an Olympic cable car spanning the Thames. That’s just what’s needed. Now, we’ll be able to see Team GB getting thrashed from an entirely different angle. It’s 50 metres above ground – apparently, that’s the distance most people can’t tell bronze from gold. The big worry is that it’ll be redundant after the games are over. Nonsense. It’ll be a perfect viewpoint for security guards to make sure no one’s breaking into the boarded-up stadiums below.
It’s easy to knock our schools for not producing Olympic athletes, but I’m sure we’ll bag at least a couple of golds in the shooting. You can’t have an Olympics in the East End of London without a lot of gear getting nicked. I fully expect to be sitting on the Jubilee line with some guy in a leather jacket next to me with a horse. As host nation, we get to add an event, don’t we? What about diabetes? We could take gold in that, though they’d have to lower that podium a bit.
The Olympic opening ceremony is going to be drastically cut – all competing nations will now be asked to bring a dish to share with everybody. The athletes can look forward to standing on the winner’s podium and receive a medal made from sea shells and milk-bottle tops made by one of Seb Coe’s daughters. Looks like we’ve saved a few quid on the mascots Wenlock and Mandeville. Their background story tells how they were fashioned from droplets of steel left over from the construction of the Olympic stadium. Kids love nothing more than to cuddle up at bedtime with chunks of reclaimed steel. The runner-up design was a smiley face drawn on a breeze block.
When tickets for the London Olympics went on sale the organisers made sure that prices were kept down, so that people wanting to watch the games are only ripped off by transport and accommodation costs. The results of the ticket draw were released and lots of people were disappointed. Which should help soften them up for the games themselves. I’m lucky enough to be attending the 100 metres finals. Well, it’s pretty much definite. I’ve still to shave 28 seconds or so off my time. Of course, there is an easy way of getting right up close to the action – just disguise yourself as a small white square of paper with a number on it.
Less than a day into the job the Olympic clock stopped working. It couldn’t get any more British, unless at midnight every Friday it puked into Trafalgar Square. It would’ve been more reliable to have used Nelson’s Column as a sundial. There must be something more relevant than a clock. Perhaps an effigy of a London council-tax payer on their knees, crushed beneath the weight of a rucksack stuffed with coins, crawling towards a half-empty shoebox of bronze medals.
The Afghan Olympic committee has announced they’re sending female boxers to the games. Sharia law actually produces very good lady boxers. They’re more determined to win, as the penalty for losing is 40 minutes in front of one of those tennis-serving machines that’s been loaded up with dirty pebbles.
Perhaps the saddest thing in athletics recently was the pitiless attitude towards India’s hosting of the Commonwealth Games. Steve Moneghetti, Australia’s chef de mission, asked for a written apology from the organising committee, saying his team had been ‘treated like cattle’ at the opening ceremony. Not the best choice of words, considering that in India they worship cows as gods. He’d have been better saying that his athletes had been ‘treated like Indians’.
A study has shown that first dates go down by a quarter during the football World Cup. That makes sense – any man up for a date then is a repressed homosexual or Scottish. Either way, it’ll probably end badly.
Hey, my English friends. Think of what you achieved. 2010 was England’s worst-ever performance in a World Cup! That’s got to be a step up from not even qualifying for the European Championships. I think the England team could still have had a heroes’ welcome – if they’d diverted the plane to Glasgow airport.
I often get the England flag confused with other ones with a simple cross design, like
Denmark or Sweden. So if I ever need to remind myself, all I have to do is look in any rubbish bin shortly after the start of any major football tournament. People worry that the George Cross flag is in danger of being hijacked by extremists and I can’t help but agree. Heaven forbid if the Knights Templar, raising it high above Jerusalem all those centuries ago, dirt streets strewn with the blood and body parts of the vanquished Arab, could see how terribly it has now been discredited on car aerials.
The Scottish football squad celebrated the English defeat with a big party – in their lunch hour at the car wash. Various photos appeared of the England team looking ‘ashamed’ or ‘stunned’. These were obviously just pictures of the team’s usually blank and bewildered expressions, with emotions ascribed to them. Gazza said he was sure England would be back, even offering to be on hand to advise them in 2014. Presumably, only if they’ve got a wine glass and a circular table with letters round the edge of it. One thing to do is buy up all that hugely discounted George Cross tat and keep it in storage. Then just sell it next time England win a major tournament. Your descendants would make a fortune in Interplanetary Space Credits.
If you really have to replace Fabio, there’s only one logical choice: his interpreter, the only man who knows all of John Terry’s safety words. Fabio said that he only needs 100 English words to talk to his players. How far can a 100-word vocabulary get you? Just ask Danny Dyer. But don’t expect a coherent or understandable response. When you look at the record Capello’s team has had for running off with women, sometimes you wonder if he’s setting up a football team or launching a flotilla of Vikings.
Work! Consume! Die! Page 22