2023: a trilogy (Justified Ancients of Mu Mu)
Page 5
On 1 September 1969, without telling their lawyers, accountants or even their WAGs, The Beatles withdrew all the money left in the Apple Records coffers. They insisted on having this in $1 bills. Then they flew in their private Learjet to Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, disguised as nuns, with all the dollars stuffed into forty plain hessian sacks.
In Saigon they bought four Chinook helicopters for cash. With a Beatle in each Chinook they flew North, with ten sacks of dollars in each helicopter. The journey North was low over the paddy fields and jungle. All the while they were blasting ‘All You Need Is Love’ from PA speakers strapped to the undersides of the Chinooks. After getting lost for several hours, the Chinooks finally landed at a prearranged clearing in the jungle. There they met up with Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the Viet Cong (the side the USA was at war with).
This was the deal The Beatles offered for both sides to end the war: they would hand over the forty sacks of dollars to Ho Chi Minh in exchange for him agreeing peace terms. As for the Americans, President Nixon had to pull all his forces out of Southeast Asia. Nixon also insisted The Beatles announce their cessation of all collective activities for a term of 23 years as of 1 January 1970, and hand over all the rights to their recordings to him, including all future royalties.
All parties were in agreement.
Between John, Paul, George and Ringo they pulled the forty sacks full of dollars off the helicopters and piled them up in the clearing. Then each of the four Beatles shook hands with Ho Chi Minh and climbed back into their individual Chinooks. Their job was done. The ’60s were complete. World peace sorted.
They then took off and, while circling the clearing before heading South back to Saigon and the awaiting aftershow party, they could see the very old and frail Ho Chi Minh himself throwing a lighted torch onto the bundle of sacks. All forty sacks were soon fully ablaze.
The next day, Ho Chi Minh was dead, The Beatles did not announce their cessation of all collective activities on 1 January 1970, so the war in Vietnam dragged on for a further five years, The Beatles released a shit album and John Lennon got shot, and George Harrison died in mysterious circumstances. The fate of Paul and Ringo is yet to be sealed.
But more importantly, back to the fate of one of the major characters in this book – Hagbard Celine, as he still was back then. You would think Hagbard would be pretty pissed off about The Beatles squandering all their assets on such a vain and foolhardy escapade, but in fact he was mightily relieved. The truth is he was very scared about the idea of spending time in a tin can underneath the ocean waves. He found it hard enough being stuck in a lift for the time it takes him to get to any floor above the second one.
The most important thing for Hagbard was his computer, FUUK-UP – First Universal Uber Kinetic-Ultramicro Programmer. George Harrison donated 50 per cent of all the royalties from his 1971 ‘Bangla Desh’ charity single to make sure FUUK-UP got up and running. At the time it was the biggest computer in the world. And in a sense it still is, as it is what powers the whole internet.
The deal between George and Hagbard meant that in the future FUUK-UP would somehow bring about world peace, so George did not have to feel guilty about siphoning money off the people who got caught up in the flood (or was it a famine?) in Bangla Desh.
Back to the Starbucks in New York, 2023:
Celine Hagbard orders another double espresso and opens Grapefruit Are Not the Only Bombs by Yoko Ono at random. She is confronted with the word ‘no’ printed in lower case, as small as you could have printed it, in the middle of an otherwise blank page.
She then turns the page to find the next page printed solid with the word ‘NO’. If she had been bothered to count them, she would have discovered there were 666 ‘NO’s on the page. She then turned to the next page …
Meanwhile:
In an artist’s studio near Stroud in Gloucestershire, England, Michelle Obama is posing semi-naked for a sculpture that the world-famous artist Damien Hirst is making. Mr Hirst’s idea for the finished work is that it will be a pure solid gold, life-size statue based on the world-famous Little Mermaid statue that sits on a rock in Copenhagen harbour.
This version of the statue is going to replace the one that is already there. It will be the only solid and pure gold public work of art in the world. Damien Hirst chose Michelle Obama not only because she was the first ever female President of the USA, she was also the last ever President of the USA (2020–21), before AppleTree bought the whole of the United States of America for the price of the nation’s debts to the Democratic Republic of China. What he had not told Michelle Obama yet was that AppleTree had commissioned him to make the work.
Meanwhile:
Someone read the following quote scrawled on a warehouse wall in Liverpool: ‘I found myself in a dirty, sooty city. It was night, and Winter, and dark, and raining. Then I saw an ice-cream van pull around a corner and pull up beside a derelict building.’
Meanwhile:
Vladimir Putin, the former last Czar of the Russian Empire (2017–21), sits in the Winter Palace poring over the details of the contract for the world tour he and Michelle Obama are going to give on the international lecture circuit. As he had been in office as the leader of Russia for much longer than Michelle Obama had been President of the USA, he felt he should be getting the lion’s share of the fee, instead of it being a straight 50/50 split.
Meanwhile:
Winnie decides not to hit ‘Send’ and instead goes for her daily seventeen-kilometre run.
As she closes the door to the balcony behind her a crow lands on the railing.
Barnhill
Jura
23 April 1984
Dear Diary,
I have now introduced all the major characters in my new novel and set up the situations. This will undoubtedly keep the reader riveted as the story unfolds and finally resolves. Or this is what I had hoped until I faxed the third chapter to Dog Ledger earlier today. I got a fax back from him within about thirty minutes. And I quote:
‘The characters are shallow. No one will emotionally commit to any of them. If Winnie is supposed to be the protagonist of the novel, we have to feel far more of her pain. You can’t just tell us her Mother walked out on her when she was young and then her dad died and leave it at that before making up a load of rubbish about The Beatles. And who gives a fuck about The Beatles in 1984? It should be Southern Death Cult or Killing Joke if you want the youth of today to connect to your book.’
He says no way can I get away with lifting whole paragraphs from Eric Blair’s 1948 and Robert Shea’s Kosmik Trigger, that no publisher would touch it. He also thinks I should switch Fernando Pó for Jura. He says if I want this to be picked up for a film option, I should make all the locations ones where film companies would have no problem with insurance, etc. Right now I just don’t give a damn about that sort of stuff. That said, I have edited out some of the bits I have lifted wholesale, and maybe I will edit some more of them out as I reread what I have written.
For some reason, Francis Riley-Smith was refusing to speak to me this evening. In protest I decided not to order another dram of Jura’s finest and got a double of Laphroaig instead. That’ll show the locals. There is nothing they find more offensive than a tourist drinking an Islay whisky while on Jura.
On a more positive note, Dog tells me Classic Biker want to do a feature on me and my Brough. It seems they just love that photo taken of me on the bike in the late ’40s and they can’t believe I am still riding the same Brough in 1984.
I bet Francis Riley-Smith will be all over me once he knows I am going to be on the front cover of Classic Biker.
Love,
Roberta Antonia Wilson
Postscript: it seems Walt Disney is not dead after all and he is considering coming out of retirement to oversee the making of Fish Farm.
4: SEVENTEEN KILOMETRES
11:54 Sunday 23 April 2023
It’s always that first stretch from her apartment down t
o the canal that’s the worst. She hates that she is doing it. She hates the fact that she knows if she were to stop running exactly seventeen kilometres every day, it would be the beginning of her slide back into her previous addictions. She knows the running is just another addiction. That in one sense she is still on the first of the twelve steps. That this running is no different to the cocaine in her late teens, then the two bottles of Rioja an evening in her early twenties. It just exists to blot out the anger she feels at the world for her Mother leaving her when she was only five and then her father dying of cancer when she was twelve.
The world may have sorted out its problems, but she knows very well that all of us as individuals have some way to go.
And all the work she has been doing for Celine Hagbard is also part of the addiction. And now it is all done – well, all done bar hitting ‘Send’ – when she does hit ‘Send’, it will leave a massive vacuum in her life. A vacuum that can only be filled with … what? Alcohol? Drugs? Hacking? Violent sex? Whatever it is, it won’t be good for her.
She gets to the canal bridge on Kingsland Road and takes the path down to the towpath and heads East. It is always on this part of the run that she can feel the negative emotions start to slip away. It is on this part of the run that her mind starts to open up and thoughts and ideas start to surface. It is this part that almost becomes dream-like.
Spring is in full mode. There are already flotillas of baby ducks scooting after their mallard mothers. The reeds and rushes are shooting up, the hawthorn on the far bank in bloom. There are other runners doing the same. The canal towpath is always popular with runners, but what they are thinking about we do not know or even care about because they are not in this book.
Winnie no longer feels the soles of her feet or the joints in her knees or the muscles in her thighs. She runs. And she stares down into the water at her right-hand side while she automatically dodges runners or fathers with buggies coming the other way. And in the water she can see her Mother’s face looking up at her, as if her Mother is under the water following her along. And in her Mother’s arms is her baby sister. Whatever happened to her baby sister? Her Mother left with her sister as well. It was just her father and her. And then her father left. But he left to go to hospital. And then he left to go to Heaven. And she was left alone.
Meanwhile:
On 23 January 1892 an artist in Norway wrote in his diary:
One evening I was walking along a path, the city was on one side and the fjord below. I felt tired and ill. I stopped and looked out over the fjord – the sun was setting, and the clouds turning blood red. I sensed a scream passing through nature; it seemed to me that I heard the scream. I painted this picture, painted the clouds as actual blood. The colour shrieked.
Meanwhile:
Winnie is still running along the side of the canal. If you are interested in knowing which canal, it is called the Regent’s Canal – I guess you could look at it yourself on GoogleByte’s WorldNow. I guess you could even watch Winnie running along it in real time, if that technology still exists when you are reading this.
Winnie is thinking about hacking. Hacking is the addiction she fears most. At the age of thirteen she thought hacking was clever – and it was clever. WikiLeaks and everything … But by the time she was sixteen it had completely taken over her life. It was then the cocaine came to her rescue; with cocaine she could hack for longer. If the cocaine was good, she could hack for thirty-six hours straight with no Mother or father to tell her to stop.
It was the influence of Celine Hagbard that helped her to stop the hacking and the cocaine. The red wine came later.
Winnie could see her Mother’s face among the baby ducks staring up at her.
She could see that boy’s back. She wants to drag her nails down his back. She wants to hammer nails into his hands. She wants to—
Winnie keeps running.
Meanwhile:
In November 1970 in Totnes, Devon, a fourteen-year-old boy draws a picture of an old woman with a massive bundle of kindling strapped to her back. This boy is very good at drawing. He is the best in his school. He might be the best in the whole of Devon, maybe the whole of the country. He is even better than his big brother. The character he is drawing is based on a character in a book he saw at school called Titus Groan. This boy’s favourite LP is Led Zephyr Two, the one with ‘Whole Lotta Love’ on it. Led Zephyr Three was released the previous month – it was shit. The boy’s name is James Francis Cauty. People call him Jimmy. Jimmy plays the guitar.
Meanwhile:
In November 1970 in the Guildhall, Northampton, a sixteen-year-old boy is watching a band called Titus Groan play. They are one of four bands playing that night. But it is Titus Groan he wants to see as that is the name of one of his favourite books by his favourite writer, Mervyn Peake. It only cost one penny to get in and watch all four of the bands. But the boy is bored with the band and instead is thinking about an idea for a story he wants to write for a magazine he wants to put out called Embryo. The story is about the two men in the background of a poster of a painting he has on the wall of his bedroom at home. The painting is called The Scream. The boy is called Alan Moore. Alan plays the drums.
Meanwhile:
Two rows behind Alan Moore sits a seventeen-year-old boy who has just started at Northampton School of Art. But he is not thinking about art. And he is not really thinking about the band Titus Groan who are playing. And he doesn’t know where the name Titus Groan comes from. He is thinking, ‘Why are all of these bands playing for one penny? There are no more than 240 people in the Guildhall and there are 240 (old) pennies to one pound, so there can be no way this makes financial sense.’ The boy thinks that maybe someone with a lot of money is paying for this to be done so we in the audience will be bribed into buying the records that have just been released by these four bands. This boy decides not to buy any of the LPs by any of these four bands. Atom Heart Brother by Magenta Floyd was released the previous month. This boy thinks everything about this record is brilliant. It is the best record ever made by Magenta Floyd. This boy’s name is William Ernest Drummond. People call him Bill. Bill plays the bass.
Meanwhile:
Winnie keeps running. Winnie notices a dead fish, floating belly up in the canal. If Winnie knew about fish, she would know it was a perch. But she doesn’t. She does know the canal is now cleaner than it has ever been since it was first opened in 1820.
Winnie is thinking about what killed the fish.
And death.
And her death.
And the end of death, if she only hit ‘Send’.
Then Winnie tries to stop thinking and just runs.
But this lasts less than sixty seconds before she is thinking about Wikipedia. Winnie has not updated her Wikipedia page for five years, but it keeps being updated. Everybody updates everybody else’s Wikipedia page – an exaggeration, but that is the way it feels for Winnie at times. Every ex-boyfriend, every new boss, everybody that has ever wanted to sell you something has an interest in updating your, and anybody else’s, Wikipedia page. John Lennon’s favourite ice cream was a Mr Whippy, according to his Wikipedia page, just because The Beatles wrote that song about travelling the world in an ice-cream van.
Winnie is thinking how everything she ever did between the ages of fourteen and twenty is there for all to see on FaceLife. But on her Wikipedia page it has gone in a different direction. Maybe only subtly, but it is shifting. And in 2023 Wikipedia is always used to know what happened in the past. It seems like the past is both always there to confront us with all our mistakes and always shifting.
Winnie is now running along the towpath of the Hertford Union Canal by Victoria Park. She likes this bit. A kingfisher flies past; all Winnie registers is the flash of electric blue. Kingfishers mean the water is clean. So clean you could drink it. Nobody throws empty cans of Diamond White or Coke Zero into the canal or anywhere else these days. Litter is a thing of the past.
Out of the corn
er of Winnie’s right eye she sees the Shard. The Shard is the tallest building in London. But she not only sees the Shard, she sees a massive eyeball spiked on the top of it staring back at her. Winnie knows this eyeball is only in her mind. Winnie hates the Shard. She has no reason to hate the Shard. But she feels the Shard is watching her. Winnie hates the Shard in the way she used to hate bankers or politicians when we used to have bankers and politicians.
When she was very young there was a politician called Tony Blair. She can remember her father telling her Tony Blair was one week younger than him. Her father thought this significant. Somehow her father dying of cancer when she was twelve and Tony Blair are linked. She blames Tony Blair for her father’s death. She still hates Tony Blair, even though he is an old man who does nothing but good things and even helped sort out the problems between Israel and Palestine.
She keeps running.
Meanwhile:
A killer whale called Killer Queen swims the narrow sound of water between the Isle of Islay and the Isle of Jura. Killer Queen is a lone whale: she bred once but her child was killed by getting caught up in the propeller of a passing ferry. Killer Queen likes to eat seals. But she would rather eat humans. Killer Queen is beautiful. Or that is what people think on the Askaig to Feolin Slipway ferry when they see her break water. Killer Queen thinks many things. One of those many things is, ‘I wonder why the sea is so much less polluted than it was when I was young?’
Meanwhile:
Winnie is still running. Winnie has never seen a killer whale. Winnie does not even know killer whales live off the coast of Albion. Winnie gets to the end of the Hertford Union Canal where it joins the Lee Navigation. She crosses the bridge by the Crate Brewery & Pizzeria and then goes down onto the towpath on the East side of the Lee Navigation.