BUG EYED PETER TELLS THE BEDTIME STORY OF THE RESPECTFUL FAMILY THAT RESPECT KILLED

Once upon a time, so way back then that you can hardly even picture the time, a really rather together family decided to safari out across the savannah and the deserts and mountains, not only the physical deserts and mountains and ice fields, but also the hot and stormy deserts and mountains, the freezing expanses of icy ignorance, the seas and oceans of superstition because they felt, sort of, uncomfortable with it all.

They’d had some kind vision that they wanted to come into the light and comfort of reason and learning and, by and by, get a square meal inside of them all.

Without having to go to war and kill everyone for it, that is.

And this good family and its descendants spent millions of years travelling and reasoning and learning and shedding dark violent superstitions for a life of love and logic and cooperation, a life where they weren’t prey any longer and where they ceased praying and everything could be sorted out with words of wisdom and everyone minded their own bloody business.

One fine late spring day, with the apple blossoms just on the point of flowering, sun high in the sky, the Johnson family arrived in the pretty little town of Vultureville, just on the edge of the known world.

Vultureville, with its multifarious stadiums of worship, its palaces of legal drugs, its courts of industry and its picture houses and picture boxes of manipulated emotions and its blind belief in itself and its righteousness flowing from each and every window and door.

Like god's sunbeams from a terribly remembered Charlton Heston film.

Each and every door the Johnsons passed opened up to caverns of pious uprightness and sermons full of dead useful advice. Really dead advice, carved in gravestones.

Each and every door they passed, each opened to its host’s welcoming smile and an arm across the shoulder guaranteeing companionship and fraternity and love and support, and warmth, because these Vulturites had naturally selected in just such a way that they appeared to be the same species as their guests, except, of course, they were vultures in granny and granddad mourning garb, snow white hair, balding, scrawny necked, with sort of hooked noses.

Home baked bread and roasting coffee smells wafting from their kitchens included free of charge. Free of charge, so to speak.

At each and every door a different flavour was offered, a different kind of love and each love was, essentially, love yourself first and the mostest and the rest just better tag along or else. So, at each door was a different solution and all the solutions were incompatible but wisdom wasn’t to be listened to, or asked for, nor was it wanted and definitely couldn’t be found in sharing a conversation.

"That path isn’t the path to submission, brothers and sisters," whispered, hissing, the faithful.

The Johnson family, and those of their relatives, were a reasonable, respectable bunch, live and let live, minding their own businesses, keeping their noses out of the muck and were, of course, offered cringingly over the top hospitality and evidently forced smiles at each and every sunny threshold, and, having learnt to be respectful, swallowed, in doses just small enough to go unnoticed, a bite of bile from each and everyone’s superstitions, superstitions they’d spent millions of years turning their backs on.

"Sow those seeds! Sow those seeds, brothers and sisters, in the name of John Doe!"

Well, the Johnson family didn’t believe a word of it all, of course. Never had in millions of years. They didn’t believe a word of every host’s gifts of unreasonable potions for happiness and fulfilment, because they were already truly happy, and, though they didn’t believe a word of it, they were respectful, but, however, at each sign of respect a damned liberty was taken. Each and every demonstration of respect left them open to more and more pecking away at their common sense, at their idea of common ground, pecking away, pecking back in time, pecking back through millions of years of travelling and reasoning and learning and the shedding of dark violent superstitions, pecking back into dark, violent ignorance.

Right, so, of course, the Johnsons got themselves a pretty awful reputation. Got it quicker than you can catch a cold in a nursery school playground on a freezing January afternoon, real fast.

They'd become nasty bad evil mean people.

"Outlaws!"

I mean, they accepted hospitality without expressing enthusiasm, but didn’t want to make a single donation. They listened respectfully, but never learnt. They listened, and that showed respect and that was a concession one step too far and that was it.

"Where was their cash contributions?" Whined The Poisonous Faithful.

Even if they’d been charged and put on trial by The International Court of The Alliance of Civilisations, the ICAC, the outcome would have been the same.

By the time the family got to the end of main street Vultureville, they were just a pile of bones picked clean, nothing left for even a starving fly to buzz over.

A pile of bones, bleached white by the burning sun.

A pile of bones.

And that’s where Stanley Kubrick’s great ape came into the picture, isn’t it?

*Note, the photograph illustrating Bug Eyed Peter's bedtime story is a long distance digital shot of a fertilizer plant run on behalf of the ICAC in the suburbs of Vultureville by an organisation belonging to the sphere of action of The Born Again Priest and his cronies.

Extra information on the activities of The Born Again Priest can be found under "The Born Again Priest" tag.

FOR THE LOVE OF SAHAR

Dandelions and daises, dingle dell. I am a child again. When I was a child I used to ride in the rear, nearside passenger seat of my father’s nineteen sixty four Ford Zephyr Zodiac. Powdery green colour, neat angle to its wings. No seat belts used in those days and I used to rest my head against the window, ever so slightly cool on a summer evening’s drive.

We would often motor down to the south coast and back on narrow country roads, next to rich green hedgerows, through deep green tunnels of overhanging trees. Cool tunnels of darkness in clear summer evening light. I would watch myself outside the car, over there, running, floating at speed down the barely visible bridleways and in and out of the trees, always keeping up with the car, smiling and waving back at me from out there, flying my Airfix air force, commanding my Airfix army. I could never watch me from outside the car though.

Until now.

Now I can. Dingle dell. The car is just as ghostly as I was when I was running through the green woods, dingle dell, in nineteen sixty seven as commander of a squadron of Centurion tanks, cheeks ballooned out, engine sounds spluttering from my lips.

I can see me inside. I am the passenger in the back seat, face pressed against the glass. I am the four headlights. I am the sparkle off the chrome and I am the chrome. I am pistons pumping out their beat, the lead in the petrol and the exhaust melting into the sweet summer evening air. I am the smell of petrol burnt in nineteen sixty seven vintage engines. I am the damp smell of summer evening rain. I am a raindrop on the windscreen wiped too quickly aside, but I am good at being raindrops. I am the rain. I was there. I saw it. I see it.

I am the smell and colour of dad’s pint of Red Barrel. I am the dimpled glass hugging the beer. I am the little boy on the swing in the country pub garden. The Ship Inn. I am the pirate. I am the grass under my Tuff shoes. I am the to and fro motion. I am the little girl in plaits wearing a white flower pattern cotton dress, waiting for her turn to swing. I am her eyes, I am her spiteful stare at me and I see what she sees, I see what she thinks. I see what she means.

I see seesaw. I see it all. Out of the body inside the mind and it is more real now than it has ever been, and every time I journey it is more real inside here than ever, although it is never ever exactly the same, time and time again, crossing the ocean, golden sails glowing in the sunset.

Dad is dead now. So is his Ford Zephyr Zodiac. I often wear my father’s face like a mask. I move into my father’s face, I become my father’s face and, for an instant, see things from his point of view. Literally.

The thought often occurs to me that he might be telling me lies or that I might be lying to myself, crossing the ocean, golden sails glowing in a sepia sunset.

Fire and Brimstone. I am an adult. In the south, sandstorms, but I was the raindrop falling to the desert sand. We were two raindrops, Sahar. I was there, I saw it. I did it. I fell. I fell in love, Sahar, with you and you with me.

In the south you dare not open your mouth.

In the north, floods and I was a raindrop falling, wrapped around desert dust. I was there, I saw it. Sahar, Dawn, dawn, I had flown with her, floating over the dusty land, hand in hand with the desert sand. I was her tear, but I felt no fear.

I was there, I saw it, I had it canned even if they had it banned. I was there, I did it. I had consummated the lust and I felt no fear because I felt her trust.

They took Sahar away from me. They took her away. For ever.

I was our tender kiss but, then, the hydraulic hiss. I was a throbbing symphony, I was the wear and tear. I was the crack, the number one, I was the screaming track. I was a gear change like clockwork, the exhaust drifting blue black in the air.

I was the armoured steel, never, never ever to turn on my heel. I was the tank. I was the wear and tear. One hundred and twenty millimetres, I was the gun man, looking for fun. One hundred and twenty millimetres, I was the shell man, their trip to hell, fire and brimstone.

Sahar is dead now. When I remember someone who has died, more often than not I first see their face. From one side, from the other, face to face, from a little higher up, a little lower down, a myriad of angles. Once however, I wore Sahar’s face like a mask. I moved into Sahar’s face, I became Sahar’s face and, for an instant, saw things from her point of view. Literally.

Now I do it over and over.

The thought often occurs to me that she might be telling me lies or that I might be lying to myself more like it, crossing the ocean, golden sails glowing in the sunset.

Waves, on my last breath close my eyelids for me so that the sea has no time to wash away my sins.