TANKMAN JOHNSON’S PHANTOM ECHO REGIMENT

The fifth of January twenty twenty five, yet another not so cool southern Spanish siesta afternoon.

Sixteen years too late ghostly Tankman Johnson’s Phantom Echo Regiment of supercharged mother of pearl blue black Chieftains crewed by the sweet sexy Pretty Boys and Pretty Girls roar a symphony of tuned chrome trimmed engines and canon and machine gun fire across the shimmering dust fields of Almería, Sister Ray loud on the sound systems of each and every vehicle, deep into Al-Ándalus, and, ding dong, knock knock who's there?  Rescue The Transparent Princess, The Pretty Girl, with her oh so cute nineteen sixties style pageboy fringe and pony tail, from The Born Again Priest’s castle keep, The Stone Room. And all without suffering a single casualty, cuts and bruises, aches and pains apart, to the hoary hordes of mercenary priests and blind believers, martyrs of the Afterlife Paradise Enlightenment Salesmen.

“Help them all along on their way to where they want to go is what I say! Everyone Ok?! Cut! That’s a wrap! Shit, we’re all over exposed! Switch the time curves! Let’s get the hell outta here, kids!!”

The image of the Chieftain tank is a digital reworking by B. Sherpa of a 2008 painting, FOOTSTEPS ECHO, HUGE DUST ,by the artist David F. Brandon, taken from his website.(Click on the title here or go to "Interesting Places to Visit" in this blog to see the original.) Brandon used one of my original digital photographs as source material for his painting. B. Sherpa.

Sister Ray is a song from The Velvet Underground’s second LP record, White Light/White Heat, 1967.

WHERE THE MISSING CHILDREN GO

The pretty boy picked up the pretty clear eyed girl two doors down from the sordid looking bar discotheque, just outside the one direction to the other direction radar sweep of the bored, slightly amphetamined out bouncer, and the street was awash in rivulets of stale alcohol acid smelling urine, spilled wine and abandoned crumpled plastic two litre bottles part filled and abandoned with various different coloured liquids slopping around their insides, broken glass from flung and kicked beer bottles shouts and screams cries and modern electronic discotheque noise throbbed nonstop and the pretty boy looked into the eyes of the pretty girl and gestured with his head to two girls collapsed in the doorstep of number thirty five, one crying her eyes out in empty, almost silent, simpering desperation, nose running, legs outstretched and slightly apart and she’d wet herself plain for all to see, the other sat in a pool of wine coloured vomit, sick in her lap, with her unconscious looking blood drained head empty on her companions left shoulder, her palms outstretched at her sides a bit like a drug addict pleading for a stronger dose, for just any kind of dose at all.

“¡No puedo hacer nada! ¡No sé qué hacer con ellas!” Said the pretty girl with a sixties fringe of shiny light brown hair, wisps before and over her ears and a pony tail right at the back of her head, ¡No sé qué hacer!” she repeated as she gestured in turn at her two best friends and looked back into the pretty boy's dark brown eyes. “Quince años, y míralas....no sé qué hacer....”

“Vamos a ver, a ver....venga,” and he handed her a plastic bottle of mineral water, “¡Toma, toma!”

So The Pretty Girl did, she twisted the blue plastic cap on the little clear plastic bottle and heard the clear, clean sounding clicks as the cap broke free of the blue plastic seal, and she took a long, clean, cool, truly satisfying drink and the pretty boy put his arm round her slim waist, and they stood for what seemed to her to be a long while looking into each other's eyes, then back at the desperately sad looking best friends, then, she, into his eyes, his handsome face. She smiled. She had a brace on her upper teeth, but this instrument of torture, it only made everything else about her lips and face seem so much more attractive.

Then he grinned at her, left her and walked the three meters over to the doorway of number thirty five. He stood over the two girls, at a slight angle so that The Pretty Girl could see clearly what he was about to do, but the bouncer couldn’t, and then undid his jeans, lowered his fashionable, fake, stained white Calvin Klein underwear, took his penis in his right hand and urinated a stream of rich yellow coloured piss all over the sad looking best friends in the doorway, in their hair, in their faces, over their slightly over exposed breasts, a stream that, to The Pretty Girl, seemed to last forever. There was simply no reaction, then, perhaps, just a little flicker of their eyelids, a slight refocusing, whereupon he snorted several times and spat some slime on them both, just for good measure.

“¡Un regalo de navidad, lluvia dorada!” He spoke back to her over his right shoulder, as he put himself away and then retraced his steps back to her and put his arm back round her precious waist. “¡Feliz año Nuevo!”

The Pretty Girl’s wide eyes and slightly open mouth registered a certain shock she couldn’t seem to react to, and she was having difficulty catching her breath, which excited Pretty Boy, but he’d been told to leave well alone, or else no wages, or else....“Se te ha caído esto, querida....¡Cógelo, venga.....cógelo!” And he gently folded her cold and slightly trembling fingers round the inhaler. “Pareces necesitarlo....venga....” So, guiding her with his arm, he led her off down the narrow street, away from her best friends, away from her past....“Respira hondo....respira hondo....”

Pretty Boy came around to visit "El Castillo" in the afternoon for his pay, but what was due to him was to be his worst ever nightmare and his worst ever and final nightmare started with the large glass of whisky he’d been poured.

“Hey, there, come on now! Eh? There’s plenty of bait around not to need to be worried about conservation efforts, and the boy is exceedingly pretty, even if he is a little old at twenty and an ignorant, nasty piece of work, traitor to their cause to boot, just no style at all,” chuckled The Born Again Priest to the head of the Pick Up Squad, “oh no, no! No, not the girl, she’s a perk of the job don’t you know Inspector! Just leave her down there on the floor in The Stone Room, but cut off all those nylon restraints before you take your leave will you? Ok?”

“Understood, sir. Snap to it, lads!”

In The Stone Room The Born Again Priest had The Pretty Girl bare, nude, except for a pair of pretty white cotton Dusen knickers. Made in Spain. She was laid on top of him, on his chest, his left leg between hers in the middle of a king sized double bed covered in a suave black rubber sheet. His left hand hovered over and on the smooth silky skin of the left cheek of her bottom, under the stretched pretty white cotton, a finger on the fine indented rosy line between her upper leg and cheek where the elastic edge with its silver trim would normally lay and, as she slowly regained a semblance of consciousness from the quite hefty dose of floozy solution Pretty Boy had injected into her water, she began to move slightly, to tremble smooth and soft and so young and cool over his withered, naked body, a fringe of hair tickling on his jawbone, her pony tail gently brushing the blotched, loose, leathery skin of his left shoulder.

She opened her perfectly pretty eyes, her pretty eyelashes fluttered slightly, and The Born Again Priest caressed her nose with the middle finger of his right hand, neatly manicured but unmistakably claw like. He prayed constant gravelly sounding words in a mixture of English and shaky Spanish into her delicate little pierced ear. He saw fear grow in her sweet blue green eyes and savoured what he saw and savoured the feeling of blood beating in his veins, in his temples, but he felt it in his stomach most of all.

He had no erection. It would take a lot more than this to tease those twisted, swollen blue veins, that gristle, into a flaccid shape no way reminiscent of youth, but it would come, and he saw that The Pretty Girl was dribbling from the corner of her lips, and the spittle was sticky warm, then cool in the roots of the sparse white hairs on his scrawny chest and her sweet jaw moved slightly in a fruitless effort to articulate a sound and there were silent tears welling in her pretty pleading eyes and he luxuriated in her helpless panic.

Decisions had been taken in Parliament by the International Court of the Alliance of Civilizations, The Alliance of Civilizations, Department of Culture Equalization, under the watchful, domed eye of Miguel Barceló’s ocean, decisions that pleased The Born Again Priest no end, decisions that made him feel all warm and itchy inside, itchy for action, itchy for control, itchy for power.

“¡Está bien nena, muy bien, calma! ¡No ha acorrido nada! Floozy I call it, but no one else does! It’s a personal joke! You’re no floozy, calma, eres una belleza, preciosa, but your best friends are! Both of them ugly, cheap, dirty stupid floozies! You’re smart, I’ve read the reports! Floozy, you kids take it for fun in your discotheque clubs, but me, I order its use for far higher and mightier reasons, Rohypnol, flunitrazepam, black market of course, no dye in the solution so you never saw it coming, big dose too! Calma, calma, there there....but I have no use for anterorgrade amnesia because, we'll be seeing....tranquila, calma, the first week of January in together, nena....Oh, no no no....tranquila, calma, calma nena tranquila! Because, you know what? The real entertainment, tranquila....will only start when you’re wide awake! Happy?....There, there! It's all going to be alright....Happy new year, baby!"

TRILLIONS, TRILLIONS OF GODS

“I believe, I have faith, I have faith.” She recited under her breath for the umpteenth time. “I believe!” She prayed, as if, if she repeated it enough, it would magically turn into the truth, not just any old untrustworthy truth of hers, or anyone else’s come to that, but she prayed, as if “The Real Truth” would be revealed, would be visited upon her.

“There are gods, trillions of gods, trillions in the way back then, trillions in the here and now, trillions yet to come, in trillions of infected heads. In trillions of heads a different figment of a distinctly rusted imagination....” I whispered to myself and left it at that, because she had lost me and I her and, at long last, I had seen through to the corrosion that was eating away at her beauty, I had travelled back into a rusty sepia Sunday vision, and saw that it was not her fault, none of it was her fault, but I could no longer bring myself to feel anything for her anymore, no pity, no anger, no love, nothing.

It had been a lopsided kind of conversation, a lopsided relationship. I had, finally, been out manoeuvred by the ghostly goblins lurking in the shadows in her past.

Somewhere in my head William tried to console me, “You do look, my son, in a mov’d sort, as if you were dismayed: be cheerful, sir.”

She was a vision. I had first met her when I was six, in the inferno, amid the cinematic hell fires, amid all the heroic pain and death, suffering and guilt, amid tempests, plagues, and an occasional miracle, imparted and lived and believed in, as children will believe, in the passageways and cramped, dusty dark brown varnished offices that served as classes in the slightly musty Methodist church hall that was our Sunday school. She was truly a miracle and, in the end, over the years, I only wanted to go there to be in the presence of the miracle that she was. She was hope.

The white car had backed out across the pavement and down the kerb, making us check our step. It was rather over full of happy faces and movement, full of theatrical colour. It was an incident that seemed a touch sinister on that warm summer’s day months ago. It caused me a momentary shudder, but was quickly forgotten, filed away in one of those half empty cupboards floating about somewhere in the back of my mind.

By that time she had already numbered and labelled, codified me as “furniture” and, I had an inkling, offensive furniture no less.

“Well, who am I to argue?” I thought to myself.

“You have no faith!” she had lamented over and over in her soft, sweet, resigned tone of voice, and I had no words left to say.

“Our revels are now ended.” William rattled at me from somewhere in my head.

So, one day, when I was feeling particularly troubled and thoughtful, one sticky evening, facing yet another dreary, dusty Sunday school lamentation, I melted through the rumpled up sheets into our pale blue covered foam mattress with its little white flower design and, thus losing the power of speech, which never came that easily at the best of times, I was unable to utter a single word.

I was melting away, into and through things, and deep down in that foam mattress there was a vast sepia sea and a shadow, a misty rectangular shape, a mirage. “Perhaps Moses is bringing me a tablet,” said something in my head, but I had to work for it and I kind of drifted towards it and the closer I got the more obviously it became a holy book I began to remember from my childhood days.

It was coming for me too. The closer we got to each other the clearer the image became and the holy book was just there, in the corner, against the skirting boards, under the back, left hand foot of mother’s wardrobe, there so as to stop the thing rocking on the uneven floorboards of her bay windowed bedroom. It was art, with a grey cloth hardback cover, the Tate Gallery, Illustrations, from The British School, a nineteen fifties edition.

While pondering my slightly suffocating sepia tinted predicament, I arrived, by and by, at this conclusion,- I had always thought of furniture as accommodating, though not necessarily comfortable, but now it was all just simply empty.

I was empty but the furniture was full of me and so was my mother’s book and its images and so I drifted into Etty’s rippled sepia stream with the bather, at the doubtful breeze alarmed, as I had done so often as a child, because the bather was beautiful and somehow forbidden and I wanted to be with beauty and so I was, I was momentarily consoling beauty and I was at rest on page fifty, reference six one four, and it was definitely not absurd being naked and up to my knees in that cool sepia coloured stream soothing my alarmed bather, because it was surely I that had caused the ripple of alarm in the first instance.

Knock, knock! Knock knock, on the wardrobe door,-William again, “These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits, and are melted into air, into thin air.”

And I was empty, and alone with beauty, and I was free and it was not absurd!

Later, as Victoria and I walked on down the windy street toward some trivial chore, I suddenly felt she was missing. She had been following, just a step behind because of the crowds all going about their little businesses, but I could easily have held her hand, if I had so chosen. And so, quietly shocked and chilled by the sensation of emptiness, I glanced back to see her in the slightly, strangely familiar white and beige car I had seen over the weeks before, but which had never really registered in my memory, only in my nostalgia, and I felt the full absurdity of it all.

Then said William, somewhere in the back of my mind, “And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, the cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, and, like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind.”

I turned the sepia picture pages over and over again, on through Blake’s infernos, looking for reference sixteen forty, on and on pages more pages in the sepia lacquered rocking wardrobes of my nostalgia and then, suddenly on page fifty seven, Hope, and I was there and Watts’ Hope was blind again and somehow yet again so utterly, attractively, masochistic! So Hope’s beauty grew before my eyes, before my emotions, although blind and bound, because Hope’s hope was free while blind faith burnt forever in divine flames. I kissed her neck, I brushed her cheek with my lips.

William chided me, “We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep....”

Victoria was in the rear seat, kerbside, pressed awkwardly against the window of the two- tone Zephyr, with the absurd clowns applying makeup to her face and she shared with them such a beautiful smile, such an aura of contentment that I had to confide to myself, “Well, it must have been true. It must have been pretty irritating, to say the least, for her to have lived with the furniture!” But, now I was smiling because I was empty, and alone, and I was free and, for an instant, nothing seemed quite so absurd anymore.

I understood what William said when, just then, the next instant, he warned me, “Should be, but, it isn’t always the furniture men that do the moving!” Now, this was, of course, a bit strange because, as far as I could remember having read, he had never written anything at all like that.

References,-
Blake, The Simoniac Pope, Hell Canto 19.
Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus.
Etty, The Bather, At the Doubtful Breeze Alarmed.
Ford, The Zephyr Zodiac, 1954-1956
Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act IV.
Watts, Hope.

THE BLACK SHEEP BACK GARDENER’S SONG

Sings.-

I am your black sheep back gardener, lady,

sowing hard to get things to grow.

I am your black sheep back gardener, lady,

I thought you really ought to know.

Almost spoken word.-

Got this handsome white Arum Lily

wrapped in pink edged cellophane

specially, especially, purely for you.

Muttered.-

Oh, Beauty in the hands of The Beast.

Sings.-

I am your black sheep back gardener, lady,

but there is something to straighten out in my head,

I am your black sheep back gardener, lady,

although I am not ever going to get you into my bed.

(Fade out). The girls in the band sing a version of the old, old song, in mocking tones.-

Oh, his heartbone’s connected to his backbone.

His backbone’s connected to his headbone.

His headbone’s connected to his jawbone

and that’s what it’s all about....

Conversation.-

....jawbone that, girls, just another lily-livered fucking bonehead....

The girls in the band crack up into fits of laughter! The song ends on a fading note of feedback.

THE BLACK SHEEP BACK GARDENER’S SONG ©  JONE JOHNSON & THE BLUE ROADSTERS, 2008

SPACE TRAVEL, NINTEEN FIFTIES VINTAGE

Black and white nineteen fifties detective movies playing every night on late night television, on black and white valve televisions from memories before the age of the transistor.

The heavy rain, the street corner light illuminating a shadowy figure, coat collar turned up.

Voices are faintly heard in the factory of words, whispers in the cathedral of language and language burns, flaming, with its need to reproduce.

Footsteps are heard leading into that strange world of pre-sleep, pre-nightmare, of falling away, slipping away, that old fragmented historic sepia memory sound and sights of footsteps on damp October concrete, the scraping of gravel underfoot, in grit or green kerb mush in wet gullies, in long ago travelled alleyways, paths and roadways.

When the slow spaceship valves turn off, the picture fast finds distance as white watchface moon shimmering silver seconds in darkness and you travel into space, the deep space inside. It’s the peephole, and as you step on through the back door there, you might be looking at your final credits, but you are, in fact, really being welcomed by your past, by long before your past, by universal silver static dancing gaily diamond flashes at the front door of your spring.

Static. Background radiation. It’s the end of the film, the end of words.

Baby Belladonna waddles through the backdoor into the garden, nineteen fifties vintage spaceship in hand, into golden reds and yellows, autumn leaves fall on cool stilled air.

Two golden orange autumn leaves dance in the wind, find an eye to watch their ballet in someone’s daydream, find a home in a corner of another unknown eye.

Actually, a root dreamt of them and soon they will live in a velvet green corner of some new bud’s dream of golden sails set to sail on to the sunset where death dances gaily by the back door of autumn at The End of the Film.

The End of the Film.

The End of Words.

Rake them up, pile them on the bonfire, they don’t hurt anyone anymore.

JOHN DOE’S STORY. LIQUID VERSION. PART TWO

Seconds before midnight, the very end of day six.

John Doe throws his trembling hands to his temples, sweeps the Petri dish with its recalcitrant cultures off the lab table onto the floor with his right arm, and leaves.

The viruses and bacteria search out John Doe.

Last day, last minute, last seconds, last drops of warm blood left circulating in the last warm blooded flesh in the known universe, rotting in the beauty of a warm evening sunset all pinks and mauves and deeper purples.

Last man left standing, John Doe, a bruise on the face of the universe.

Last man left standing, John Doe, so riddled with suicidal cMRA that that was really all he was, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

Community acquired, of course, except there was no community left to acquire it from or to pass it on to.

Last man left standing, John Doe, just a host for the ultimate dregs of disease.

Last man left standing, John Doe, on the slide, on the slide into oblivion, the Petri dish a long lost memory.

Last man left standing, John Doe, the only disease advanced enough to actually think about apologising for all the destruction.

Not that it actually ever did.

No one left here to know the universe.

DEPRESSION AND BAD, VERY BAD, SCIENCE

Bug Eyed Peter Johnson is, well, depressed, and not just a little drunk....

What’s so damned precious about the dead? We got to dig them up, millions of years of them, and say sorry to them all?

Most of them should say sorry to us, the damned criminals, bringing us here to this.

Anyway and after all, they haven’t gone anywhere! Nowhere, except onto the universal damned pile of civilised bones that leads back to the biggest bloody mistake ever ever perpetrated.

They haven’t gone anywhere! There’s nowhere to go is there now? Nowhere.

The people who have gone are the archaeologists! The scientists have gone....investigating the whole useless mess.

The archaeologists are getting real close to discovering just what vengeful gene beat the sense out of our most distant, distant, distant ancestors, causing them, the idiots, to get up onto their feet, off of all fours, leaving them no bloody sense except beaten in bloody bloodthirsty nonsense.

So I guess we should all just pick up our picks spades and shovels and dig, dig dig dig right back to t=0 and put the fucking fire out! Right out! There and then! Out! Out! Out!

Now, that is what I'd call a real worthy obligation! Save us all a shitload of trouble.

Get to work you lazy sons! Get to it! GET DIGGING!

And don’t forget the bucket of water!

Bucket “Made in China” by my Chinese cousins! They got their part to play too, don’t you know?

....Douse the spark....

....Come on! Dig! DIG....

PLAYING ON THE SWING, PART ONE

....I’ll just put this stuff down over there I think. Ah! Damned back!

You alright? Cup of tea?

Coffee please. Smelt it as I was coming through the back door with that lot, so I won’t be able to get the idea out of my head, or the smell, ‘till after a couple of cups! Where’s Gabriel, then?

There you are....Wanna talk to him then, or what?

Nah! You know me, addicted to coffee and gossip, I was just passing and thought I’d pop in for a fix!

He’s just taken a walk down to the market with Anatoly. To the village. We’re totally out of veggies and he’s gotta pick up some other odds and ends too for the weekend or we’ll all starve!.... There’s a packet of digestives over there....

Great, thanks.... and, how’s it going with Anatoly? Bit of a mouthful, Anatoly, isn’t it?

Can hardly call ‘im Ana now can we?

Bit of a temptation though!

Yeah, yeah, well it’s fine for us and he’s picking up English faster than either of us would have thought possible. Doesn’t smile too much yet, though.

And the bureaucracy? How’s all that panning out?

Time, takes time but it’s almost all done. Just waiting for DCER to register his DNA fingerprint and there is some hitch or another with his sister. Her details have gone missing somewhere between the offices of CEREEA and our local branch of ICAC. In fact no one has a clue where she’s got to, let alone her rehabilitation documentation. It’ll get sorted, eventually. Can’t do a thing from this end.

Always the way! How’re the kids taking to him? Ok?

Vivien, well Vivien’s got himself a brother to play with, both nuts for football! Just look at the state of the lawn!

Price you have to pay for boys I’m afraid!

Vivien’s got himself someone who doesn’t think he’s just a little pain in the neck to be got rid of as quickly as possible. Dawn, well she’s living in a world of her own. Well, ‘nother universe more like it! Like, she seems to know Anatoly is there but just looks through him like he’s not. Actually, Anatoly reacts just the same. Like living with two ghosts sometimes!

She’ll snap out of it!

Look at her out there on the swing plugged into....Help yourself to more coffee....never know what she’s listening to and when I do, can’t understand for the life of me what she sees, hears, in it and she’s so morose all the bloody time.

She’s a teenager! Teenager!.... Mmmm, thanks!....Remember that don’t you! Happened a long time ago but I don’t think you’re an Alzheimer’s case just yet, No? Looks like some kind of Madonna out there, a Madonna with that sun shining like that through her hair. She’s beautiful, absolutely beautiful.

Madonna? Devil in disguise, if you ask me. You’ve never had to go through one of her shouting jags. Snaps at the whole world, tongue like a snake and it’s the only time you can actually understand more than a quarter of what she says! Damned thing’s plugged straight into her brain. Ears don’t come into it, not even close.

Methinks you two have had a tiny weenie discrepancy this morning, no? She’s beautiful!

Discrepancy? Discrepancy Yes!....Have to make another pot, that’s getting a bit low....I really love her you know.

No me Jodas, I know that tonta, I got kids too, remember?

Language! Language!

Sorry! But not very!....‘nother digestive, please....Work?....thanks....

Yeah, great. It all seems to be coming together again. Lost it for a while but, dunno, I’m getting a whole lot more feedback and feel like I’m doing something worthwhile for once, got renewed faith in it all, I guess. The system ‘nd all.

Mmm, how come the new positive you, darling?!

Been working with a new exchange group and my section has three educators and I’m head! Got three subjects on hand at the moment.

Like always then, isn’t it?

Got the twenty five year old wife of some dissident Chinese philosopher, can’t remember his name, or hers half the time. Can’t get my head round their names, you know! Don’t stick up here! Bit of a problem actually!

Oh yes! More Alzheimer’s, or what?

Idiot!

Language!

Then there’s the young son, twelve, of a poet, never read any of his stuff. Not likely to either! Kid’s called Arun....

Bit of a coincidence that, No?

Too right! That’s what I thought! You know, Gabriel really wanted to name Vivien after Elvis Presley, you know what he’s like when he gets an idea in his head, and I just didn’t wanna have anything to do with something as tacky as that. Put my foot down on that one! Compromised, but insisted on changing the spelling! Never ever even knew what it meant till a couple of days ago....

Well, don't keep me waiting, tell me then, what does it mean then, lista?

Sunrise!

Pretty!

Quite common where the kid comes from. India. It’s Hindi, apparently. Then we’ve got the daughter of a scientist from somewhere in the Muslim Federation of States, called Sahar.

Where?

Don’t know exactly. Muslim Federation....

Oh.

Now Sahar, she’s smart, same age as Dawn, real smart and she really is a sight to see. Slim, not, sort of dumpy, podgy pale English.

Dawn ain’t podgy, not by a long chalk.

The exception that proves the rule! Anyhow, where was I? Mmm, Sahar’s got this beautiful silky chocolate coloured skin, long shiny black hair and eyes that any English kid ‘d kill for, any English adult, come to that, so deep, so black. Intelligent, somehow. Scary!

More coffee please! Much more coffee! This is great!

Anyway, we’ve all been working very hard with her....Here you go....and after the first week we even managed to persuade the other two, Arun and Xiaofan fin fun or whatever, to get heavily involved in the process. We’re getting some very good high quality product out of it all and I think we could well pick up a whole load of sales. We get a commission you know!

Sounds just like real job satisfaction to me.

Tis, and I’ve been bringing some of the stuff home to show, you know, educate the kids, well, really to try and get Dawn interested in something that’s not piped directly to the few remaining neurons she’s got upstairs.

Joder! She’s a teeeenager! Teeeeeenager!

Sorry, can’t help myself sometimes. Anyway....Take another biscuit, for heaven’s sake....Anyway she seems to be taking an interest.

There you go then!

Taking an interest, yes,I guess, if you manage to decipher the monosyllables, sorry, sorry, her conversation. She’s gotta learn some discipline, some ideology and faith for god’s sake, start thinking about the future, though I have to say she seems to be taking more of an interest in the new materials than my older stuff. Seems to be developing an inkling 'bout what it's all for, what it's all about. Whys and wherefores 'nd stuff....It ‘d be nice if she followed in mother’s footprints, you know, keep it all, the trade, you know, in the family, and the ICAC pay’s not bad.

Job security too, no? Vivien?

It all frightens him a bit and he has the occasional nightmare, but he’s got to learn. Start early so it sticks right in is what I say. That was our mistake with Dawn, started too late, for delicacy’s sake I guess.

Never too late, isn’t that what they say?

True, but nobody ever tells you about the consequences. Anyway, how’s my big brother? The Children?

Don’t want to talk about it and you just really don’t want to know!

Ain’t giving much away today, ain’t talking much are ya?

Ha ha ha! Visit me the next time and I’ll blab to your heart’s content! Your kitchen your blab, my kitchen my blab, rules of the game!.... Neat coffee. Sorry I, erm, demolished half the digestives!.... Anyway, gotta be off or I’ll be reported Missing in Action. Pass me that stuff....Ta....Know what your brother’s like....

I’ll pop round maybe Friday, Ok?

Oh, going to the Priests concert on Sunday?

Date?

Twenny ninth, No, no, thirtieth, I think.

Love to! Could take all the kids. I’ll talk to Gab and let you know Friday. Got enough tickets?

Yeah, got a whole pile from the mission yesterday. See ya!

Right....

PLAYING ON THE SWING, PART TWO

ICAC/AC Standard Notification Document. CEREEA 7. Department of Culture Equalization and Rendition.

Reference; EUCAUC/F758362100402/REND

Reference; EUCAUC/M758363081106/REND

Reference; EUCAUC/F758364270804/HOLD

Secondary Reference; 135S. Economic Infringements. Tome 3, Section 48B, Illicit Copying and Media Transfer.

Date of issue of document/notification:

25/04/17

Projected date of receipt of document/notification:

28/04/17

You are hereby notified that A:

The Department of Culture Equalization and Rendition, section European Union (EU) of The International Court of the Alliance of Civilizations, in accordance with established Cultural Equalization and Rendition Educational Exchange Agreements, has determined that;

EUICAC4730UK, Mortimer, Melanie Hilda,

be informed in accord with section 24C of The Culture Equalization Tariff Laws of 7 January 2012, tome 7 ICAC document 874B49, that the afore mentioned reference,-

EUCAUC/F758362100402/REND, Mortimer, Dawn Roxanne, is being transferred to the MF Treatment Center 18SA for a period of twenty seven days of Temporal Education Exchange Treatment.

And that the following reference,-

EUCAUC/M758363081106REND, Mortimer, Vivien Arun, is being transferred to the MF Treatment Center 18SA.T for a period of fifteen days of Terminal Education Exchange Treatment.

That B:

Both Exchanges are judged to be in compensation for registered and proven illegal movement and manipulation of ICAC documentation and visual records (135S. Economic Infringements. Tome 3, Section 48B, Illicit Copying and Media Transfer) by the legally registered head of the Mortimer Family Unit and ICAC operative;

Contract Reference:

EUICAC4730UK, Mortimer, Melanie Hilda,

and the consequent decrease in margins of profit on sales of said documentation and/or visual records.

That C:

Legal grounds for an appeal against decisions taken by The Supreme Council of the ICAC have been deemed by the Court to be constitutionally unfounded.

No appeals will be accepted.

AC and ICAC authorities and their affiliate organizations have ample powers and the right and means to assure compliance to all court directives under articles 34B and 34D through to 39G of The Constitution of The Alliance of Civilizations.

That D:

EUICAC4730UK, Mortimer, Melanie Hilda,

will be expected to make arrangements and cost the return and rehabilitation of;

EUCAUCF758362100402, Mortimer, Dawn Roxanne

From;

MF Treatment Center 18SA

via Rendition Flights Ltd A-380 shuttle services, after having received the standard form,- Notification of the Termination of Temporal Culture Equalization Rendition Treatment, CEREEA 8.

That E:

EUCAUC/F758364270804/HOLD, Mortimer Hernández, Alba,

is being held under a Temporary Department of Culture Equalization and Rendition Order at EU Treatment Center 54SP in lieu of complete adherence and compliance with all ICAC court orders and requisites in accord with section 24C of The Culture Equalization Tariff Laws of 7 January 2012, tome 7 ICAC document 874B54.

That F:

Any irregularities on your part, or lack of cooperation in TEETs on the part of the aforementioned reference EUCAUC/F758362100402/REND or the aforementioned reference EUCAUC/M758363081106/REND and, or, if margins are not met on the sale of product produced during the periods of the above mentioned Culture Equalization Rendition Treatments/Temporal or Terminal Education Exchange Treatments, will automatically mean the holding status of;

EUCAUC/F758364270804/HOLD

will be revoked and a period of twenty seven days of Temporal Education Exchange Treatment will be confirmed for said reference at AS Treatment Center 23IN and will also mean the transfer of;

EUCAUC/F758362100402/REND

to a further course of fifteen days of Terminal Education Exchange Treatment after the course of Temporal Education Exchange Treatment has been finalized.

That G:

In accordance with the ICAC and AC Freedom of Information Acts, 2010/2011, digital visual sound and picture recordings and documentation of the afore mentioned TEET sessions will be made available for sale via ICAC and AC authorized internet outlets and AC embassies worldwide.

Addenda:

The TEET Programs organized via ICAC and its affiliates, are designed to be profit making. Profits are reinvested in further Equalizing Cultural Respectability Projects and your full cooperation in these and further projects is a requirement under internationally binding laws drawn up in compliance with AC Department of Public Entertainment Legislation, tome 9 ICAC document 125A69.

For, The Right Honorable High Commissioner for Respect,

ICAC/AC, Department of Culture Equalization, 25/04/17