Sprout Mask Replica

  ‘So none of it’s true? In fact nothing is true.’

  ‘There are no ultimate truths.’

  ‘But what about me?’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I have this gift, or curse, or something. I compensate, all the time, I’m the butterfly of chaos theory in reverse, big events reflect upon me, I balance them with small events. I’m doing it now.’

  And I was. To compensate for the angle of the sunlight coming in through the front room window I had placed my saucer over my tea cup and orientated my armchair three degrees towards the north.

  ‘Ah,’ said my uncle. ‘Well, you’re different. You’re as different as it’s possible to be.’

  ‘But what does it really mean? Why do I do it?’

  ‘We all do it to a certain extent. We all try to impose order upon chaos. In universal terms, order out of chaos may be nothing more than a passing fad, but in human terms, we all prefer order to its dire alternative. For the most part people don’t take risks, risks incur the possibility of chaos. For the most part people are unambitious, ambition leads to all manner of chaos. For the most part people do not question what they are told, be it by their “superiors” at work, or by the media, or by politicians or by priests. To question orthodoxy is to risk chaos. The status quo exists to maintain order, those who create chaos within it are dealt with severely.’

  ‘And who determines this status quo, who decides what order should be and what should be defined as chaos?’

  ‘That, my boy, is the big conspiracy. Is it a who? Is it a what? Maybe it’s God.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s God,’ I said.

  ‘Nor do I. After all, God is the divine creator, but which divine creator created that divine creator, and who is the divine creator who created the creator of the divine creator and—’

  ‘All right then, it’s not God. But I’m as baffled now as when I came in here. Possibly more so. You still haven’t explained to me why I do the things I do.’

  ‘You do them because you’re different. That’s it. That’s the reason. Each person is more than just the sum of their inherited genes. Each person is an individual, unique. All right, so some people get a bad deal. They’re the bottom feeders in the gene pool, but others, my oh my, others have enormous potential. Potential to change the status quo, possibly even to come up with a minor truth or two. Possibly you do the things you do because you are one of these. Or possibly you do it out of nothing more than a personal need to impose order upon chaos. You don’t actually compensate, or reflect, or balance, you just think that you do.’

  ‘So which is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Probably the latter,’ said my uncle. ‘You always were a bit of a weirdo.’

  ‘You haven’t actually been the slightest help to me at all,’ I said, rising to take my leave.

  ‘Only pulling your leg,’ said Uncle Brian, gesturing me back into my chair. ‘You are different and you have enormous potential. You could do great things, wonderful things. You do have a gift, but it is chaotic, it’s all over the place. You’re at least two degrees out on the orientation of the armchair and this is a Friday, so why aren’t you wearing a red hat?’

  ‘Thursday is a red hat, Friday is one black sock.’

  ‘Just testing,’ said Uncle Brian. ‘You seem to know your stuff.’

  ‘So you do understand why I do these things?’

  ‘I have explained that we all do them to a certain extent in an attempt to impose order on chaos. You do them to a major extent and actually impose order on chaos. It’s cause and effect. The cause filters down to you and you produce the effect. The buck stops with you. Without you to stop it, it might go on and on and we would have chaos.’

  ‘You might have explained this earlier,’ I suggested. ‘To save time.’

  ‘What, and had you miss out on all that esoteric wisdom?’

  ‘Well, it was certainly esoteric, as I’m the only one here.’

  ‘You have thought about trying to reverse the process, of course?’

  ‘It has been mooted. I only became aware of this last night.’

  ‘Well, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility. We might experiment. If you were to put yourself totally in my hands, let me personally manage your career, as it were, there’s no telling what might be achieved. The potential is there, have you considered just what you might do with it?’

  I shrugged in a casual manner. ‘Aid mankind, end wars, feed the hungry, that kind of thing.’

  ‘Hm,’ went my uncle, thoughtfully. He looked unconvinced.

  ‘Is that not a happening thing?’

  My uncle shrugged, even more casually than I had. ‘Perhaps a tad ambitious,’ he said, ‘something you could work up to.’

  ‘My thoughts entirely.’

  ‘Ah,’ said my uncle. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Show business,’ I said. ‘I’ve always fancied show business.’

  ‘Yes,’ said my uncle. ‘Show business, right.’

  ‘That’s why I really came to you.’

  ‘What?’ went my uncle. ‘Not for all the esoteric wisdom?’

  ‘Nah,’ I said. ‘I recognized you in The Flying Swan, you were the mystery contestant on talent night. I want you to teach me how to do those back flips.’

  SWAN SONG

  Out of his case came General Tom

  Onto the knee of Dicky.

  Out for his final curtain-call

  Doing the dashed and tricky.

  Drinking the pint without getting wet

  While you’re saying the alphabet.

  All dolled up in your moth-balled schmutter.

  Saying, ‘gread,’ and saying ‘gutter’.

  Getting the laugh with the well-timed pun.

  Saying, ‘Who’s a son of a gun?’

  Saying, ‘Give us a song then, son,’

  Saying, ‘Isn’t he the one?’

  Saying, ‘Everyone having fun?’

  Then back in your box and put away,

  Till the Christmas matinée.

  What a bl**dy cock-eyed existence it is,

  Being a b*^^*%g dummy.

  8

  SHOW BUSINESS?

  All right, I know what you’re thinking. you’re thinking, Show business? He wants to get into show business? What’s all that about? He might have the power to do literally anything, but he wants to get into show business!

  But you have to understand, I didn’t know anything for certain. Not then. It had yet to be proven whether the process could be reversed. Whether I could actually make things happen.

  And you learn things in show business: self-confidence, how to project, timing, stagecraft, how to put yourself across to people.

  And it’s a good bird-puller too.

  And let’s face it, this is my life story and I haven’t had sex once yet. In fact, apart from my mum, who only got the briefest of mentions, there hasn’t been a single woman in this at all.

  And that’s not healthy.

  I was fifteen; my loins were stirring.

  ‘This is Julie,’ said my Uncle Brian. ‘She’ll show you the ropes.’

  They were nice ropes. And between sessions, when she taught me tap and ballet, Julie let me tie her up with them.

  Things were looking up already.

  Julie taught me escapology.

  Things weren’t really looking up.

  ‘You haven’t been in for a while,’ said Fangio as I entered Fangio’s Bar. ‘Word is you’ve turned in your trench coat and taken to treading the boards.’

  ‘Watch this trick,’ I told him. ‘Now you see it, now you don’t.’

  ‘I’ve seen that one before,’ he replied. ‘But all right, I give up, what did you do with the Statue of Liberty?’

  ‘It’s right here.’

  ‘Very clever.’ And it was.

  ‘Care for some chewing fat?’

  ‘Don’t mind if I do.’

  Fangio passed me over the plate, then that look came into his eye once more.
I’d seen that look before. I’d seen it the last time he’d given it to me.

  ‘What does that look mean?’ I asked him.

  ‘It means there’s been some guy in here asking for you,’ he said, tipping me the wink.

  ‘A promoter?’ I tipped the wink back at him. Word was probably already out on the street regarding the talents I was daily acquiring. I could already juggle six sprouts, mime being trapped inside a phone booth and sing ‘Orange Claw Hammer’ with a spectacular emphasis on the “cherry phosphate” line.

  ‘Looked more like a Fed to me,’ said Fangio. ‘He left his card.’

  He passed me the item in question. It was a questionable item. I questioned it. ‘Is this the item?’ (I questioned.)

  ‘You’ve lost me,’ said Fangio.

  I examined the card.

  Mr J Smith

  Department 23

  Ministry of Serendipity

  Mornington Crescent

  It rang a bell somewhere.

  ‘Is that last orders?’ somebody asked.

  ‘Not that bell,’ said Fangio.

  I further examined the card. This card felt bad. Well, not the card as such, but something about it. Something felt bad. Something smelled bad. Smelled very bad. Smelled very very bad. Smelled—

  ‘Get a grip,’ said Fangio. ‘It’s only a piece of card.’

  ‘Something about this smells bad,’ I told him.

  ‘I dropped it in the slops pail. Give me a break.’

  ‘You know,’ I told Fangio, ‘although I’m dead keen on show business, what with it being a potential bird-puller and everything, I like being a private detective best. You get to stand about in bars and talk a load of old toot. That’s what I call having a good time.’

  ‘You might one day have to solve a case.’

  ‘Yeah, that could be hairy.’

  ‘A hairy case? Surely that would be a sporran.’

  The bar went silent. I looked up at the clock. It was twenty to nine. Have you ever noticed that when the conversation suddenly stops, it’s always either twenty to something or twenty past something?

  No?

  Well, it must be me then.

  ‘The Ministry of Serendipity,’ I said. ‘I wonder what that’s all about.’

  ‘Possibly some weird parapsychological unit,’ said Fangio, tipping me yet another wink. ‘And Department 23. 23 is an illuminati number.’

  ‘In the TV series, Tony Hancock lived at number 23 Railway Cuttings,’ I said (knowledgeably).

  ‘And Mornington Crescent is a railway station,’ said Fangio (perceptively).

  ‘Ooooooooooo-weeeeeeee-ooooooooo,’ chorused the patrons about the bar (tunelessly).

  ‘So did this J. Smith guy say anything?’ I asked (enquiringly).

  ‘He said he wanted to book you for the Christmas staff party,’ said Fangio (cop-out-endingly).

  ‘We’ll take that booking,’ said my Uncle Brian, who had entered the bar (surreptitiously). ‘And why all the adjectives in brackets?’

  ‘It’s a private eye thing,’ I told him (genre-istically).

  ‘Yes, well, we have to go. You’re on in eighteen minutes.’

  ‘Got a gig?’ asked Fangio.

  ‘Why do you think I’m wearing the gold lamé catsuit?’

  Fangio made the face that says, “Listen, just because I’ve never seen you with a girlfriend, doesn’t mean to say I think you’re gay”.

  ‘How dare you!’ I said, striking that face with my fist.

  ‘My face never said that,’ complained the fat boy from the floor. But I didn’t hear him, because Uncle Brian and I were off to the gig.

  We didn’t take the free bus. We took the limo. Well, you have to, first impressions are everything. Come on like a regular superstar (as Mr Bowie once sang) and they’ll treat you like a superstar. After all, as Uncle Brian had explained, nobody really knows anything. So they’ll believe what they think they see.

  Small Dave drove the limo. As he was too short to see over the dashboard, Uncle Brian gave directions. I sat in the back chewing my fingernails and repeating the cherry phosphate line over and over to myself with ever-increasing spectacular emphasis. This was to be my night. My big night. I wasn’t going to blow it.

  As the limo weaved to and fro across the road, passing through red lights and scattering pedestrians before it, I felt good inside, nervous certainly, but good. I would achieve great things. I would become a superstar. I would pull birds. Lots of birds. Lots and lots of birds. I wouldn’t fail. I couldn’t fail.

  Of course, if I’d known then how things would turn out, I wouldn’t have gone. I’d have stayed in the bar and talked toot.

  But I didn’t know.

  I didn’t know what horrors lay in store.

  And.

  And, well.

  And, well, listen. I can’t talk about this here. It demands a chapter to itself. Quite a long chapter. But a significant one. It’s the next one. I can’t talk any more now. I have to take another tablet and get some sleep.

  But I do want to say just this: IT WASN’T MY FAULT.

  DONER KEBABS

  Hoorah for the doner kebabs

  Loved by the drivers of cabs

  Loved by the porters

  And post office sorters

  And profs in their underground labs

  All hail to the doner keboobs

  Admired by the men on the tubes

  Food for the lift men

  And cut-price-glass-gift men

  The tailors and cutters of cubes

  God bless the doner kebobs

  Good for the gourmets and snobs

  Tipsters on courses

  And owners of horses

  And others in dubious jobs

  Shout ‘Aye’ for the doner kibibs

  Foodstuff for me and his nibs

  Toast of the Tommies

  The Aussies and Pommies

  The Indians, Dutch and the Gibs

  Sing ‘Ah’ for the doner kebubs

  Eaten by sailors in subs

  Yearned for by waiters

  Who fight alligators

  And scout troops and Brownies and Cubs

  They’re a very popular dish.

  9

  SECRETS SECRETS SECRETS

  My Uncle Brian munched upon a doner kebab and spoke to me through the lettuce. ‘The journey will take precisely five minutes. Do you want to compensate for that at all? Put a bead up your nose, or stick your hat on back to front?’

  I made the face that asks, “Are you taking the p*ss?”

  ‘Not at all.’ My uncle flapped his hands and spat tomato over my body stocking. ‘Just trying to be helpful.’

  ‘Well, don’t be. I can manage fine. I’m learning to keep it under control now.’

  ‘How?’ he asked, and I dodged an air-borne gherkin.

  ‘If I concentrate my thoughts, really hard, on, say, a piece of poetry. If I recite that poem again and again in my head. Or if I listen very carefully to what someone is saying, really think about it, not do as most people do, just amble through a conversation, trotting out the rehearsed lines and not really listening to what points the other person is trying to make, I can stop compensating. I think it’s okay.’

  My uncle went, ‘Hm,’ which involved some tomato. Then he scrunched up his remaining kebab, wiped his hands and face on the paper and tossed the greasy item out of the window.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Well, we now have four minutes, thirty seconds remaining, so concentrate your thoughts on this. I’m going to tell you a little story.’

  ‘Why?’ I enquired.

  ‘To pass the time and so you don’t have to do any compensating, fair enough?’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘All right.’ Uncle Brian settled himself down into the rich tan leather of the limo’s celebrity seating, composed his fingers in his lap, pursed his lips and hand-bagged his eyebrows. ‘This is the tale of a secret,’ he said, ‘and how this particular secret keeps the
village where I grew up very happy indeed. There’s a moral in the story, of course.’

  ‘This story isn’t a parable, by any chance, is it?’

  ‘Certainly not!’

  ‘Go on then.’

  ‘Right.’ Uncle Brian took a deep breath, stared wistfully out of the window, let out a little sigh and then began to speak. ‘There was once a teenage girl who loved a teenage boy in our village. But this girl was very shy and she didn’t know how to approach the boy. And also this girl wanted to have sex with this boy, but she was a virgin and she had heard terrible tales of just how bad teenage boys are at having sex. Teenage boys generally being drunk by the time they have it.’

  I sighed a little wistfully myself.

  ‘Well, the shy girl didn’t know what to do for the best and then she remembered the village wise woman. This venerable lady was old and blind and very wise and would answer any question asked of her. The teenage boys used to disguise their voices and ask her rude questions. And she answered them all. So the shy girl went to the old blind wise woman and told her of her problem (in a disguised voice, of course).

  ‘The old blind wise woman smiled and said, “Many young women throughout the years have come to me with this problem and I have a secret tonic prepared for just this purpose. What you do is to pour some of this tonic into the young man’s tea, he will fall asleep, but while asleep he will still be able to respond sexually. And he will awaken later remembering nothing. Thus you can enjoy completely uninhibited sex with the young man, do anything you please.”

  ‘The young woman grasped the possibilities of this immediately. With such a tonic she could have sex with any man she chose. Any man.’

  ‘I thought she was just in love with the one boy,’ I said.

  ‘She was. I was just stressing the possibilities.’

  ‘Fair enough, continue then.’

  ‘All right. So the shy young girl receives a small green bottle of the secret tonic from the wise woman. Then the wise woman asks, ‘Young woman, are you a virgin?’ and the young woman (still in the disguised voice) admits that she is. ‘Then it would be best if you allow me to deflower you,’ says the old woman.’