THE END OF THE KNOB

THE END OF THE KNOB

It was a strange mission and details of it were kept secret even from the

climbers. The team chosen were all experienced, veterans of the Himalayas,

and set about reaching base camp with a unifying sense of professionalism

and a common desire to get to the end, wherever it was.

At base camp they were told they were to climb Peter’s Knob.

‘Non heard of dis one,’ said Pascal Piste, the team leader.

‘It’s a penis, gentlemen,’ replied the Base Camp co-ordinator: ‘my name is

Peter and the penis is mine!’

The tent was silent for a moment for this was an astonishing thing to hear, but

then one by one the elite climbers began to laugh.

‘You can laugh all you like but tomorrow morning you begin my ascent. I

commend your aptitude and skill and wish you all the luck in the world.’

‘Mes amis,’ spoke Pascal. ‘Le Knob de Pierre, c’est dificile, mais un climb est

un climb, non? Nous must travail et succeed, oui, oui?’

‘Yes, wee,’ said the climbers and the next morning they allowed themselves to

be miniaturised and set to work.

It took seven arduous hours, jagging and faltering amongst bumps and

crevices, vein cracks and old love scars, but eventually they arrived at Peter’s

Summit, where they planted their flag.

Peter looked down at them disdainfully, and with a series of monkey like

scratches sent them plummeting into a dark abyss.

‘Never said anything about planting a flag you egotistical amateurs!’ he cried.

‘Are we in a cave?’ asked climber Two.

‘It’s warm and the odour is profound,’ said climber Three.

Climber Four kept coughing, and Pascal voiced what surely they already

knew: ’how do you say dans le postérieur dans Anglais, mes amis?’

‘It sounds almost the same in English,’ they said, before a terrible thing

engulfed them all.

FROM CHAOS

 

FROM CHAOS

From low, the semi-elongated-dwarf–bird-cat looks up at the absurd magnanimity of the metropolis and sighs. A cloud drops low and showers the steps before him. He will go no further.

Up in a bone tree in the high part of the city, a squat owl surveys everything. He has nothing wise or profound to say. He is looking for mice.

It is left to a parakeet busy sucking on the trail of a tsetse fly to explain but it’ll take a near eternity to hear his words, as birds either cannot speak or we cannot understand them if they do.

No matter, we know a bird who swallowed a fly . . . 

JAZZ ROCK

 

JAZZ ROCK

The cry of a trumpet: ‘I beseech you to go JAZZ’, it says and the spiky tail rocker transforms into a giant, pubic fuzz ball.

‘You is scrambling my brain in pussy weed, my horny friend,’ says the rocker.

The jazzster keeps blowing those difficult notes and the shaggy rocker rolls off, all hairy biker and tumble thatch.

‘Look at her go,’ croons the trumpet, suddenly sad and slow. ‘She’s got a bearded mass and a furry ass!’

‘Not she, I’m he,’ says the rocking fur ball, spitting hairs. ‘Just stop the jazz!’

And the horn is done.

LITERACY AND GOOD MANNERS (COUNT FOR EVERYTHING UP NORTH)

 

LITERACY AND GOOD MANNERS (COUNT FOR EVERYTHING UP NORTH)

The giant bad ass Penguin (call me Admiral) stomps forth.

On the way he meets a basking whale.

‘Heh, Penguin, where you heading?’ asks the whale.

‘Call me Admiral,’ says the Penguin.

‘Admiral, where you heading?’

‘Where am I heading?’

‘Yes, where are you heading?’

‘North.’

‘Give my regards to the Polar Bears.’

‘Yes, I will.’

The giant bad ass Penguin (call me Admiral) stomps north.

On the way he meets a spoilt child.

‘Heh, waiter, bring me lollypop,’ says the child.

‘Call me Admiral,’ says the Penguin.

‘Admiral, bring me lollypop.’

‘Bring you a lollypop?’

‘Yes, bring me a lollypop.’

‘No.’

‘Give my regards to the Polar Bears.’

‘Yes, I will.’

The giant bad ass Penguin (call me Admiral) stomps, and stomps.

The Polar Bears wait on an ice cap.

‘Heh, Admiral, it’s good to see you,’ say the Polar Bears.

‘Thank you for your literacy and good manners,’ says the Penguin.

‘Come closer so we can shake your hand.’

‘I’d be pleased to.’

‘Sorry, but this may hurt.’

‘Ouch, go easy if you will.’

‘We’re hungry, please don’t take offence.’

‘None is taken.’

CLOWNING AROUND

CLOWNING AROUND

Coco was more than usually annoyed; he was downright angry: ‘which of you freaks called me a clown?’ he barked.

It was Bum Face Martin but he was never going to own up so the swans confessed instead.

‘I knew it,’ said Coco. ‘Never trust a bird that’s named after matches.’

Bum Face Martin sniggered and whispered ‘clown’ but Coco didn’t seem to hear, he was busy banging on about swans: ‘evil critters with long beaks and stupid feet!’

Bum Face Martin wondered about saying ‘just like clowns’ but he thought better of it, there was no way of knowing how Coco would react when he was in this kind of mood.

After enduring a tirade of insults the swans flew off and Coco turned to Bum Face Martin and said: ‘I knew it was you, Bum Face, but I just don’t like swans!’

WaterWorld

 

An old lady and an old man sit on an inflatable sofa.

He said it was like 1938 to 1939 all over again.

I know.

Teetering on the brink, dithering in the face of disaster. All all too late, nothing to do about it, we were all doomed. Doooomed! No one believed him.

Not now.

Earth heating up, waters rising, washing us away in the swell!

Leave it. Let’s rest a little.

I worked for him after they put him in a nursing home, tight as a tack he was.

Was he?

He was! I put his dentures in a tin and shaved his whiskers with my fingers to save on razors.

Of course you did, makes sense now you say it. Now, are you going to buy me a drink, I’ve come a long way.

I don’t know you, do I?

You do, we talk ever day. My drink? Please?

Another one said Noah’s ark was real, found the planks and everything.

Everything?

Don’t need Noah now, and a boat would be a waste of time. They’re building rockets to Mars. Branson’s in on it; he’s one of them.

One of who?

The chosen ones, been selling tickets on shuttles to his rich friends for years; we’ll be left to fend for ourselves.

He wouldn’t do that. He’s got a nice smile.

Dinosaur teeth, they all have: Cameron, Charles, Camilla, Cilla.

Cilla?

Black! Cilla Black! My scrotum is litmus. All that itching, it senses things, can tell a bad one from a good one, it knew the deluge was afoot.

Rained 400 days so it must have been very itchy.

And 400 nights, sandpaper on nylon sheets. I’ll get you that drink now.

Daft sod, I was teasing you. Where are you going to get me a drink from?

Their sofa wobbles in a swell, the gloop of dark water twisting and spreading under the moonlight.

Could use a cup to scoop it out.

We don’t have a cup. And we can’t drink; it’s contaminated.

We’re done for then?

Of course we are.

Can you swim?

Can you?

Used to be able to.

There you are then. Why don’t we hold hands, have a kiss maybe, share some of the old air raid spirit?

My scrotum is telling me this isn’t going to end well

You don’t need your scrotum to tell you that. Now shut up and give me a kiss.

But I don’t know you.

We’ve been married for sixty years you silly old fool, now hold my hands and give me a kiss.

Bert takes Mary’s hands in his, and kisses.

‘Oh, your lips are dry, love’, he says.

And a wave suddenly moves them from view as a large rocket passes over the moon.

Pizza

PIZZA, PLEASE

Thing is, you always have to wait hours for your meal.  First, you have to wait for a waiter. It can take hours to get their attention and often they will look right through you as if you’re invisible, an empty wooden chair. You know better than to click your fingers. You try smiles at first, raised eyebrows, come here gestures with your body, your arms, your hands, your mouth (you mouth ‘come here, please’ and ‘I’m a hungry man, help me, please’) and you even gesture with your nose, a little vague nostril crinkle as if this were a universally understood language of restaurant etiquette. When you finally get a waiter’s attention by shouting ‘I’m over here’ you have to wait for them to bring you a menu. This can take hours. Then, when you finally have the menu in your hands, you have to wait for the waiter to come back and take your order from the menu. This can also take hours. And there is nothing worse or more depressing than waiting hours to order food, time slows to a melancholic mumble and you start to feel like you may never eat food again. When the waiter deigns to return he tells you he can only take your drinks order even though you know exactly what food you want to order. It’s a pizza restaurant for Christ’s sake and you want to order pizza. When you tell him this he looks at you as if you’re mad and says another waiter will come and take your food order. ‘That’s the way we do things in restaurants, okay?’ When other people in the restaurant stop glaring at you for daring to upset the staff, ‘they may pee in our coca cola now’, they stare towards the waiters like malevolent wolves in a zoo might eye their keepers, half hating them for being so slow but also pleading with anxious eyes and needy smiles for them to come near. Why should you plead with them or even smile at them? It’s their fucking job to come and serve you, and so you keep your back turned and wait. And you wait for hours. Literally for hours! You see these other people have their order taken; you even see some get their food. Pizzas! And they dive on them, tear at them, like they’re hacking away at the doughy carcasses of fallen flat pack monkeys. Sometimes they smile at you with bloody tomato paste around their lips to say ‘your time may come soon, fucker’. Their smiles initially seem apologetic and sympathetic, but you can’t help feeling they’re also triumphant. So you try not to look at them but you can’t quite help it, each pizza slice being crammed between their stupid lips causing bile to churn and then rise into your mouth. It doesn’t help that you’re eating alone. Like a lone man without a child sitting in a playground, you are an unwanted presence. It suddenly occurs to you that it’s possible that you might die here: of starvation, of loneliness, of neglect. You need to eat and you have a right to eat, god damn it! You’re not a bad person, you’re not anything really, and you’re not doing anything wrong. You feel a moral indignation, the sense of being left out of things taking over and you turn quickly around to voice your need, your order! And as you do, the wine waiter arrives and spills your bottle of wine over you. Damson notes, hints of tobacco and bloody carnage all over your bloody head. You look like an extra in Carrie. ‘Sorry, Sir,’ the waiter says. ‘I’ll get you another one.’ You’ve been here ten hours, you’re completely soaked in wine and the waiter has gone before you could say anything, probably never to return, and you still haven’t had your food order taken. You get up and start walking. The other diners crouch over their pizzas as if you’re about to steal them. But you have another idea and soon you are running and then bounding towards the kitchen. The waiters notice you. Four of them, fucking four of them! Where were they when you needed them? They circle you but you’re too quick and you bang into the kitchen. The chef hears you amidst the clamour and clatter of falling pans, and then sees you in your bloody shirt and your bloody face and he reaches for his cleaver. You duck but it’s the wrong thing to do and a swish of the blade meant for your midriff takes your head clean off. Now you have their attention! In folklore there is a minute when a severed head still lives and is able to communicate. Sometimes with a blink or a reproachful curse but in your case with a formal request in two sentences: ‘I would like a mushroom and pepper pizza. And I would like it now.’ The pizza is brought to you and a slice is cut and slid across the floor and into your mouth. It tastes delicious, miraculous even, but not quite worth the wait.