One of them is in a village on the banks of the Congo River. She is being raped by a boy she has fancied since they were at Sunday school together.
One of them is in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She is being raped by a transgender artist from London who is in Haiti as part of the Ghetto Biennale Festival. S/he thinks s/he is being very liberal by having sex with a black girl who cannot speak English.
All three of the men think the sex is either consensual or their God-given right. There is no more to know about these women, but all three will be major players in the second book in this trilogy, and I thought you should be warned at this point that things may take a turn for the serious, before we get back to the Trainspotting banter of this chapter.
While Winnie sleeps, Killer Queen is listening to the voice of God and wondering if, in fact, she is the voice of God and thinking that every life form should hear what she has to say, not just a few other killer whales that like hanging out at the Maelstrom on a Friday night.
While Winnie sleeps, the death of Celine Hagbard is announced across all platforms. This is the first of the New Big Five to die. The first of the individuals who are publicly recognised the world over as those who brought about world peace, the end of pollution, the end of our reliance of fossil fuels, the end of nation states, the end of radicalised religion (or any sort of religion that represses its followers), the end of everything that is bad and dangerous and that we all hate. And the end of heroes up on pedestals ready for us to worship one minute and allow to become dictators the next.
This is bigger than the deaths of Kennedy, Lennon, Princess Di and David Beckham all rolled into one.
This is massive.
It is now 08:47 on 24 April 2023. The aroma of freshly ground coffee beans finds its way from the open door of the Dalston branch of Starbucks across the road and up to an open window on the second floor of Victory Mansions. Through the open window it is only two metres and thirty-six centimetres to the nostrils of the sleeping Winnie Smith, who is now stirring.
Another day beckons. A day that will change all our lives.
Barnhill
Jura
27 April 1984
Dear Diary,
I feel I am getting somewhere with this book. It is taking shape. I know where I am going with it. It has purpose. I will fax these last couple of chapters off to Dog Ledger with confidence. I will never take LSD again. I will not get drunk at the hotel bar again – or at least not until I have the book done. I will retain my dignity in my relationships with younger men. At least I’m skinny enough not to worry about losing weight. I do wish my breasts had not sagged so much though. I will go for a swim in the sea each morning before I do my daily chapter. I will not regret not having children. And I will forgive myself for not going home to my mother’s for Christmas in 1971, when I knew it would probably be her last Christmas here on Earth. I will not believe in God.
Love,
Roberta X
* The other one died from sniffing too much glue while doing his Airfix.
† £1 million is equivalent to 64 million ZitCoins at today’s rate.
8: WHILE YOKO DREAMS
08:59 Monday 24 April 2023
While Yoko dreams, all 23 copies of Grapefruit Are Not the Only Bombs reach their final destinations.
While Yoko dreams, The Tiger Who Came To Tea is strolling down Kingsland Road, about to turn into the Art Bar for breakfast of menemen with freshly baked Turkish bread. He will play over in his mind the events of the previous evening. Should he text her? That is the question.
While Yoko dreams, the former Czar of the Russian Empire, Vladimir Putin, picks up a package on his desk. He flicks open his stiletto knife (a gift from Mussolini’s great-granddaughter) and slices through the cardboard. It has not arrived in AmaZaba packaging. It contains a book with a yellow cover. He opens it at random and reads the Cyrillic script on the right-hand side of the page. Translated into English it would read:
Mankind needs War
Without War civilisation would not have evolved
It is your duty to further the evolution of Mankind
Make War Now
Putin closes the book and looks out of the open window.
The cherry blossom is already in bloom.
Chekhov would be pleased.
While Yoko dreams, the last but one Pope of all the world is sitting at his desk in his office in his apartment in the Vatican wondering what the point of anything is any more when he knows for certain God does not exist.
Being the first black Pope was a sensation back in 2019, but when his symptoms of agnosia were detected in 2020, the Papal Conclave had no choice but to quietly retire him for reasons of dementia.
He is quickly replaced by Pope Eloise, the first female Pope. She says all the right things. She is a believer. The media are no longer excited by a black Pope, they are excited about there being a female Pope. Those attending Mass around the world quadruple in as many months. Pope Eloise often quotes How to Be a Woman in her addresses. Then she too is retired quietly. Her symptoms are that of Lesbossis, a condition that has no known cure. Pope Eloise is replaced by Pope Anthony, a heterosexual Italian male with no known lapses in faith or fortitude. He only ever quotes the Holy Bible.
Due to poor administration within the Vatican, a package addressed to ‘The Pope’ does not arrive on the desk of the current Pope but on that of the quietly retired Pope before last. He struggles to open it with his arthritic hands.
It’s a book. Nobody sends him books any more. It has a grapefruit on the cover. He likes grapefruits. He has freshly squeezed grapefruit juice with his breakfast every morning.
He opens the book at random. And reads words written in Latin. If we could read them in English, they would read:
There is only one true faith
There is only one true leader of that faith
You are that leader for life
Pope Dionysius XXIII looks up out of his open window as a white dove lands on its sill. His faith is immediately restored. There is work to be done.
While Yoko dreams, Peppa Pig is recovering from her first night of snorting pure Colombian caffeine. It is better than she ever imagined, especially the sex, but now she is feeling shit and she has to have her ‘History of Sheep Farming in the Ottoman Empire (1647–1653)’ essay in by this afternoon.
While Yoko dreams, Michelle Obama is sitting at her breakfast table at the Greenway Hotel & Spa near Cheltenham feeling rather pleased with the work Damien Hirst has felt inspired to create. It shows off her assets to a welcome advantage. She is still not sure if Mr Hirst’s advances the previous evening were what she thought they might have been, but she is pleased with herself for ignoring them.
On a less vain note, she is very aware that to have herself presented as the muse to the world’s greatest living artist will further her position as the world’s greatest living role model to all women whose great-great-grandmothers were cotton-picking slaves.
And while she wonders what black pudding is exactly, the waiter approaches.
‘Excuse me, madam, but this package has just arrived for you. The courier was most insistent you receive it as soon as possible.’
‘Thank you, just leave it here.’
Michelle Obama opens it immediately, using the knife she was just about to cut the black pudding with. It is a book, a yellow hardback book. She opens it at random and reads the words on the page. They are:
You are a Siren
You are a Mermaid
You are a Weyward Sister
Find your other Sisters of the Sea
Then all Three
Find and pay homage to the One
Who is the Daughter of Nature
Await further instructions
Although she knows this to be new-age nonsense, she decides to keep the book because she is in a good and positive mood. She looks up and out of the open window at the clear blue sky. A crow is flying across it.
While Yoko dreams,
two local plainclothes officers, whom we briefly met in Chapter 1, turn up for work at Stoke Newington Police Station.
While Yoko dreams, a parcel that has been posted to Marcia Zuckerberg at FaceLife in Menlo Park, California, is dumped in the recycling bins like nearly all of the other many thousands of letters and parcels addressed to Marcia Zuckerberg. Life is too short for … A rat runs across the road. He would willingly share his secrets with you, if only you were fluent in Rat.
While Yoko dreams, she dreams of a pyramid. Sometimes it is a pyramid like the ones in Egypt. Sometimes it is a pyramid like the ones in Mexico. Sometimes it is a pyramid like the ones that you can only see in dreams.
While Yoko dreams, Arati, the seventeen-year-old married woman in Kolkata in West Bengal, is still being raped by her thirty-three-year-old husband. But to try to block out the reality of the pain, Arati recites in her head the words that were in the book that arrived in the post for her that morning. They are the only words in the book in Bengali. And if they were in English and here for us to see, they would read:
You are a Shepherdess
Your sheep follow only you
But now it is time for you to find
Your Sisters
Then all Three of you
Find and pay homage to the One
Who is to be the Shepherdess of all Womankind
There are pastures green
Where the worm has not turned the Apple
It loses something in translation, but so does Tagore.
While Yoko dreams, there are 176,463,251 living descendants of Mog the Forgetful Cat. Mog died in 2002 at the age of thirty-two. Although Mog herself only ever had two kittens and was spayed afterwards, none of her offspring ever were. These statistics are based on the facts presented on an A6 flyer that Yoko was handed yesterday. She never read the flyer before throwing it in the recycling bin. But she did have Mog the Forgetful Cat read to her when she was young. And when she thinks these sorts of things, she thinks she would have liked to have read Mog the Forgetful Cat to her child. If she had not had an abortion.
While Yoko dreams, her Mother sits in a kitchen in Liverpool, thinking about the daughter she left 23 years ago today. The daughter was only five years old. She has not seen or heard from her since. She left the home with nothing but the clothes she was standing in and the bundle that was her newborn baby daughter, who was so obviously not the daughter of her husband, the father of her five-year-old. Her baby daughter’s name was Elisabeth. Her five-year-old daughter’s name was Winifred.
‘Mummy, Mummy, please come back. I want to hold my baby sister,’ were the last words she heard Winifred say.
‘You can fuck off for ever with your half-caste mongrel,’ were the last words she heard her husband say.
But now she can hear a thud on the doormat. She goes through to the hall. There is a package on the floor. Back in the kitchen she opens it. It’s a book from Elisabeth.
‘Why does she still insist on calling herself Yoko Ono? It is bad enough that there is already one Yoko Ono in the world.’ She opens it at random and reads the words on the right-hand page. They are in English and they read:
Love your Mother
This Mother breaks down in tears.
While Yoko dreams, a nineteen-year-old man in a block of flats on Queensbridge Road, Dalston, opens a package that is addressed to the Aga Khan c/o his address in his block. He doesn’t know who the fuck the Aga Khan is or why this package has come to his mum’s flat. But he may as well keep it.
The truth is that Yoko stops a young Muslim boy on his way to prayers and asks him who the leader of Islam is, like the Pope is the leader of the Christians. The boy says it doesn’t work like that but some people think the Aga Khan is the leader. She asks him where the Aga Khan lives. He doesn’t know. She then asks him for his address so she can send him a book that he can then pass on to the Imam at his mosque and he can then pass on to the Bishop, or whatever, and so on up the chain of command until it gets to this Aga Khan. The boy gives it to her with a smile. She asks him if she can say a prayer for him. And he says it doesn’t work like that in Islam.
But she writes the number down wrong and it goes to number 355 instead of number 335.
So the young man who gets the book who lives at number 355 is not Muslim. His name is Henry Pedders. Henry opens the book at random and reads the words on the page. They are in English, so he has no problem. The words he reads are:
You give respect
And you expect respect in return
If that respect is not given
You have to take it
Without respect society does not work
A society without respect has to be torn down
And built anew
It is your duty to give and take respect
It is your duty to tear Babylon down
If the respect is not returned
You owe it to your children
And your children’s children
And your children’s children’s children
Henry did not know if these words were from The Bible or The Koran or some other sort of Holy book, but they made sense to him. We will hear more about Henry, and the lack of respect he feels he is due.
While Yoko dreams, Igglepiggle still sails across the sea in his boat. Clasping his blanket all through the night.
While Yoko dreams, the old Yoko Ono cannot sleep. It is almost 4:00 in New York, since they are five hours behind. She now regrets throwing the yellow book with the grapefruit on the cover over the railings of her balcony. Maybe there was a fan letter in the book. Maybe it would have been a good book. Maybe it would have inspired her. So little inspires her these days.
While Yoko dreams, M’Lady GaGa is sitting in the back of her Rolls and Parker is driving. They are on their way to the film studio, to film the strapping Vikings in their boat on a storm-tossed sea. M’Lady is looking into her iPhone, watching the stream count on her new track climb and climb.
Then, while waiting for some lights to change, a courier on a bicycle taps on her window. Without waiting for Parker to tell him where to go, she lowers the window and smiles at the handsome courier. He hands her a package. ‘For you, M’Lady, and I have to say, I love the new track. Back up where you belong.’ And with that he pushes down on his right pedal and he is off weaving his way through the traffic.
GaGa opens the package. It is a book with a yellow cover with a sliced grapefruit on it. She not only loves the title Grapefruit Are Not the Only Bombs, but Yoko Ono is her favourite artist in the whole wide world. She feels honoured that Yoko Ono has gone to such lengths to deliver the book especially at almost 4:00 in the morning. She opens the book at random and reads:
You are a Siren
You are a Mermaid
You are a Weyward Sister
Find your other Sisters of the Sea
Then all Three
Find and pay homage to the One
Who is the Daughter of Nature
Await further instructions
She knows exactly what this is about and why she is being given the book. She is a Siren, as will be obvious to everybody around the world later today when they have seen her new video. But she also knows Yoko Ono is a Siren too, since she saw her as a mermaid on the new Starbucks mug. And then only seconds before the courier handed her the book her iJaz News app had popped up with the story about how Michelle Obama had sat for Damien Hirst and will be presented to the world as the new Little Mermaid, but in gold.
M’Lady knows that Yoko Ono, Michelle Obama and her are the Triumvirate of Weyward Sisters, and all they have to do now is find out who, where and what the One is and to pay her homage. She will await further instructions. That said, M’Lady GaGa is not too good at waiting too long for anything.
While Yoko dreams, the two local plainclothes officers are now in their office looking at the brick that was thrown through the window of the pet shop. Attached to the brick was a page ripped from a book. On the page are t
he words:
Find a brick
Find a window
Throw the brick through the window
They are wondering if it is worth trying to find out if there is any DNA they can match up with what they have on file.
While Yoko dreams, a package lies unopened on the desk in a small and tatty office behind a Polish grocer’s in Brooklyn, New York. This is Celine Hagbard’s office. This is the beating heart of GoogleByte, although the rest of the world would not know. Even the Polish grocer who Hagbard rents the office from does not know he is the landlord to the wealthiest and most powerful person on Earth. And as yet, the Polish grocer does not know his tenant is lying dead in the back of an ambulance that is still blasting out ‘Hold On, We’re Coming’. If the package were opened and Celine Hagbard randomly opened its contents, she would read the words:
Enjoy the Trip
As it so happens, Celine Hagbard enjoys the trip, every last second of it.
While Yoko dreams, Jonathan King is remonstrating with his new colleagues Mike Stock and Matt Aitken in his new studio just around the back of Borough Market that just because ‘Everyone’s Gone to the Moon’ is in 3/4 time does not mean it cannot be used to replace ‘Telstar’ as the main theme in the rip-off mash-up version of ‘GaGa Joins The JAMs’ that is streaming out of control around the world.
‘Of course it will sodding work, just transpose the key and stretch the BPM. I have sold 358,000,000 records. I know what I am talking about,’ says King.
‘Even Pete Waterman was not this musically thick, not knowing a 3/4 tune will not work over a 4/4 rhythm without frigging it up. You wrote a tune in waltz time. Maybe you should get fuckin’ Mozart in, he might be able to use your tune. A kid doing first-grade piano lessons knows this,’ retorts Aitken.
2023: a trilogy (Justified Ancients of Mu Mu) Page 10