Out-and-Out Liars, Part 2; Swen Gnillor, Swen Gnikaerb and Other Monsters, Chapter 2, Part 3

The Breatharians, founded in the 1980s by Wiley Brooks, (an Ethiopian imigrant whose guilt-ridden gratitude at finding himself in the giant candy store that is America spawned this scorched-earth religion), held and still holds the belief that  in order to leave the gaudy superficiality of a 3D world and ascend to the Elysuim Fields, if somewhat parched, of an existence in 5D,  forgoing all food and water was not only  prerequisite for entrance into this paradise  but strict adherence to a life lived on fresh air and fresh air alone, an absolute. What they saved in toilet paper they gained in sanctimoniousness.

Evian Star was formed at the precise moment when the leader of the Breatharians began preaching, in a moment of cold-turkey-induced recklessness, the idea  that  McDonalds, namely, diet Coke and double quarter-pounder, with cheese was  now vibrating on the right frequency, 5D that is, and offered only  vital portal into that world. Faced with his leader’s sudden and craven volt-face Evian Star (real name James Sheen) would have vomited on the spot had there been anything in his stomach. Instead, gripped by a series of dry heaves, he lead his gastric band of brothers away  from the convoy of Breatharians heading for the distant great yellow arches on the horizon.

Teething problems presented themselves to the Western world-wide billionaire members of Evian Star at the outset ( 5D Workshops were charged $1 billion; a $100.000 deposit wired a month in advance) ; the same problem that plagued those who had lived on breath now visited those who lived on incremental sips of  H2o; When  Evian Star members  Australian-born Verity Linn,  Timo Degen and Munich pre-school teacher and Melbourne resident Lani Marcia Rosylne Morris all died in isolation (RIP)  while on the Evianarian liquid light ‘diet’ (a bargain at a cool $10.000 a bottle,) on Facebook, its charismatic leader denied all involvement in the three deaths, his evasive rhetorical post read;

Death has a psycho-spiritual, rather than physiological, source. Discuss!

When challenged further about a Swiss woman whose physical body succumbed to a lengthy regime of pure light after reading his blog ‘Love and Fresh-Air, Evian Star shut the door on all possible reproach to his leadership, declaring.

  

I cannot be held responsible for the actions of my followers. Those who died were not coming from a place of integrity and did not have the right motivation.

The Annual Evian Spring Gathering in Haute Savoie, France found a rag-tag army of Evianarians camped out on the former grounds of a Monsieur Cachet close to Sainte Catherine, the source of the great spring itself; A grade 1 listed  site, Le Societe Anonyme des eaux minerals De Cachet did not appreciate the appearance of the improvised Evian sweat-lodge, the phallic Evian Ice sculptures or the huge marquee housing a restaurant with Scratch-and- Sniff menus, upon its manicured lawns.

One night and toward the end of the ten-day Gathering a mild storm blew away some members along with tents; flattened biscuit and chocolate wrappers were found on the edges of  bleached oblongs of grass. Evian Star who had arrived three days into the festival cloaked in non-fee-paying nubile disciples, was horrified at this clear evidence of snacking. Not only were those guilty made examples of and cordoned off in another part of a field but the whole collective was made to follow a dietary regime more rigorous than the one they were already on. Evian Star also declared he was going on a long pilgrimage, alone, to purge the sins of his flock.

Evian Star also felt the compulsive, nay stomach-cramping urge to visit another fanciful sovereign, a pig-farmer, and self-styled emperor, a white Rastafarian by the name of Napoleon or Nappy for short. Nappy greeted Evain Star like a kindred Lord into his shabby bog-like realm and with the use of scraps of paper and felt-tip pens a manic joust of brinkmanship began as each drew maps colouring in territories conquered, one with a porcine empire, the other with territories flooded with Spring Water.

In the background, out beyond the pens the aroma of roasting pig was wending its way towards the nasal follicles of the two kings. The game of One-Upmanship had run out of steam with victory heavily weighted on the side of Evian Star due to his record-breaking feat of abstinence from all solids.  It was at this moment, the victor bathing in the afterglow of smugness that the host asked the guest whether he and his community could have the honour of tasting his honourable guest's famous Evian Soup.

From a large wide carpet-bag on the floor Evian Star produced an equally large black cooking pot or cauldron, of the kind self-styled wizards like to carry. From his seamlessly bottomless bag he also produced five giant bottles of water, the principal and sole ingredient of this benign and notorious dish. The pot filled, Evian indicated he was happy to assist from a seated position and Nappy donned an apron with repeated patterns of Miss Piggy.

“I am grateful for the opportunity to reward your fine hospitality and for the opportunity to lead your lost community out of the darkness of a 3 Dimensional existence and into the infinite 5th Dimensional frequencies of my soup.!”

To say a leaden pause followed would be understatement indeed; however, not willing to offend his guest helpers hauled the large pot onto the Arga, at the same moment the aromas of spit-roasted suckling pig wafted into the yard.

Like captives of the recital of very long and very bad poetry Napoleon’s fellow communitarians sat eyes glazed, the light from the Arga's flames rendered insipid by the very contents, or lack thereof, of the watery recipe simmering above. Darkness fell on the Kitchen as more corpulent members of the porcine fellowship squeezed through the door at the prospect of a feast.

Sat in serried ranks of shock, it was their leader’s duty to quell any insurgence; the guest was always right, this was tradition, and must at all cost receive due honour and the utmost respect. However this guest clearly needed taking down a peg or two. Besides, business always at the forefront of his mind, Napoleon had several kilos of Pork Scratchings to shift and experience had taught him that large already-formed groups were easiest to sell to.

As Evian Star sat rigid in anticipation of his watery soup, Napoleon approached the stove, lifted the lid and dipped a finger into the pot then brought it to his lips.

“Ummh. Delicious”, he exlaimed,"delicious, but may I suggest one thing?”

“Be my guest”. Replied Evian Star.

“It could do with a little salt”.

“If you think so”. Resolved Evian Star.

“I do” said Napoleon crushing a handful of rock salt into the pot.

This was followed by another long pause, after which Napoleon, once again dipped his finger into the pot and brought it to his lips.

“It is almost ready, but may I suggest one thing?”

“You may”, replied Evian Star.

“It could just do with a potato or two”.

“Oh, if you think so”.

“I do”, returned Napoleon tipping a dozen peeled potatoes into the pot.

A short pause followed. Evian failed to notice that a rosy colour was returning to the cheeks of all seated in the kitchen. Dipping a finger once again into the pot and sucking on it with a grand gesture, Napoleon declared.

“Your Evian soup is very near perfection, yet its sweetness could be enhanced with the addition of a few carrots”.

“Do you think so?”, queried Evian Star.

“I do”. Replied his host tipping a colander of chopped carrots into the pot.

As the Evian Soup simmered Napoleon weighed up his guest. He took a mouthful of soup, this time with the use of a ladle.

“Your soup is not only known nation-wide, but enjoys a world-wide reknown, and for good reason, but may I be so bold?, he said handing napkins out and receiving one back concealing a furtively tied Bouquet Garnis.

“You may”. Said Evian Star

“The tanginess of the zinc element could be slightly off-set by the addition of a few dices of pork”.

“Do you really think so?”

“I do”, said Napoleon as one of his members hurriedly entered with a bucket filled with  succulent pieces of freshly roasted pig.

As the bowls steamed before the company gathered, all waited respectfully as Evian Star lifted the first spoonful of soup to his mouth. A silence fell as the group assembled watched the founder of the Evianarians shovel spoonful after spoonful of Evian-based stew into his mouth.

Surreptitiously, Evian Star’s host edged a small jiffy-bag of Pork Scratchings towards his guest's bowl.

Out-and Out Liars, Part 2; Swen Gnillor, Swen Gnikaerb and Other Monsters. Chapter 2, Part 2

                                                                                  2.

NO BLACKS!

NO IRISH!

NO MUDDY BOOTS!

Notice in the window of the Welcome Arms Public House

A cavernous Beer Hall, a windowless bunker, a substitute house where young and old, kept out of sight, slaves to industrious side-show charlatans. “Variously Flavoured Vapours of Ethanol!”

On wooden banquettes the men and women  bowed, too sozzled to realize, in the still, silent penumbra of the County Beer Hall, that the 1824 Vagrancy Act is being re-instated for the Great Olympic Facade to keep them off of the streets, the gravel-voiced toasts of an empire that has long croaked its last, some toasts still veering dangerously toward pre-war and revealing more than the odd Black Shirt among the finger-food.

Bar staff double as benevolent bouncers as the odd regular is ejected through the double-doors, for dozing ‘Come back tomorrow  George!’. Foreigners and strangers are set upon viciously; at this level of evolution, ancient blood-feuds, watered-down cheap booze, the knee-jerk hatred of the ‘wrong kind’  surface in the catacomb-like unloveliness of the Beer Hall shut out from the apparent multi-culturalism outside.

The County Beer Hall  remains the polar opposite of bright; locked in a mist of sunless murk with only the cloven-hoof hops-stained sepia beer from unwashed pumps to strip the lining off the stomach and loosen the bowels, the 'denizens of his shivering realm' are indeed sick in soul and limb; life under the reign of the Weather-Vain King is reduced to this.

The atomized company of young and old, unhappy in their beer instantly clots the life-blood of one who enters the County Beer Hall,  dragged beneath an undertow of  gloom. Devoid of music or any other distractions, above the ossified bloodless wraiths of the crowning-glory of the industrial age, hangs a murderous cloud of resentment.

On a day of a seamless week in a featureless year the shadows of Swen Gnillor and Swen Gnikaerb creep along the walls of every Beer Hall in every county and crouch, like programmed death; begetter of hate, black as the masking tape that restricts all but one Channel in the dumb finality of an Old People’s Home.

Not so long ago Swen  was a welcomed guest into every abode bringing tales of far-flung lands and the chandelier sparkle of Dance Halls, but now- as Swen Gnillor and Swen Knikaerb install themselves permanently and stick fast to the fabric and structure under which the down-beat denizens of the Beer Halls cower -The Weather-Vain King, who has been expensively schooled in the art of setting the proverbial Cain against Abel for hapless cronyism -  bleats erratic hourly edicts, whispered him by his worm-tongued spin-doctors, and casts fear upon the realm with skaldic breath.
 

Prior to the insidious arrival of Swen Gnillor and Swen Gnikaerb it was not unheard  to hear tales of a far-flung  Hall, in time out of mind, in which everyone, in a fit of drunken peak,  had slaughtered each other. England’s first epic Beowulf  records the nightly visitations of the twin monstrous outcasts, the malformed giant Grendel and his vengeful Mother called to the Beer Hall out of a dark slumber, clarion-like from their primeaval marsh-exile tormented and frenzied by the glow-worm of distant merriment and mirth.

The tapestry of allegory is indeed thin to thread-bare and, as it dawns on a nation that, once again the unseen monster had returned; the monster that brought murder, manslaughter, outrage and carnage to the County Beer-Halls in this Age of Reason came, not from the insidious evil of Swen Gnillor and Swen Gnikaerb nor from any allegorical or mythical beast, but from the bankrupt souls within. With the coming of night, as Beerwolf rose in the Halls and the sneers ran, a foaming vicious pack behind a snide hunting horn, the Betting-Shop Frog Kings howled in muted pain; the madness took hold.

As of blasts that save outer walls but leave everything within splintered and shattered, thus was the outrage of the greedily rent limbs of the never-thirst-slaked. The previous night’s table-boasts now turned to national mourning.

Out-and-Outliars. Part 2; Swen Gnillor, Swen Gnikaerb and Other Monsters (Chapter 2, Part 1)

                                                           1

                    Swen Gnillor, Swen Gnikaerb and Other Monsters

                                 Those voracious beasts, who constantly need to be fed.

While most people’s wilderness period involves a sustained period of...well, wilderness, Mary Mary, celebrity drag chanteuse, and her beloved Chihuahua Mitzy were not so lucky. Enthralled in the labyrinth of ice by the melancholy if not down-right depressed Eyes, a creature mainly formed of two orbits six feet in diameter or the size of a grown man, with just a squiggle, like a rash of toothpaste suggesting a body somewhere in the dimmed hinterland of his acclimatized Arctic prison- Mary Mary felt the pin-point world-weary dread streaming empathetically from the doleful  Eyes  pursuing her along the chilly plasmas of the maze. That she had unwittingly become Eyes’ captive was clear. Unsolicited, Eyes had incrementally invited Mary Mary to snippets of impending gloom and doom; these tsunamis of emotion, like the Geo-Astro charts beneath Eyes’ glacial desk, were noisily projected along the pallid avenues through the frosted sheets of ice.

If the exercise was designed to make Mary Mary crave for a Halcyon time of tranquility and blissful ignorance, it was working. Perversely, she thought of the relative calm of the Western world’s use of heavy metal music played incessantly at maximum volume to Muslim captives locked inside freight containers  by trailer-trash in uniform; Meat Loaf on a loop was dulcet tones to Mary Mary, even water-boarding promised momentary respite in the face of this sensory overload. Through Eyes’ unfortunate squint the baleful misery was being distorted as all baleful misery usually is; as she ran through the maze with Mitzy at her heels, Mary Mary was convinced she was being chased by Eyes’  monstrous blood hounds Swen Gnikaerb and Swen Gnillor, for Eyes’ squint distorted sound and the unrelenting poly- and cacophonic call could only have come from the hysteria of ice-cold words floating on a blood-red river; like the native in the jungle who possessed the Complete Works of Dickens but who  had lost his sight and chanced upon a young and lost English explorer; Eyes did not plan to let the sole audience for his erratic enthusiastic expositions of gleeful woe escape.

Amid the lurid depictions of war, terrorism, hate, recrimination, beards, kurtas, suits, weaponry and a chart-topping medley of riots; the general racket of  little less than half a dozen species of coral on the move and vying for space, Mary Mary’s will was even more determined to get as far away from the invisible tide  she felt streaming like a toxic miasma through the byways, lanes and streets,  thickest, dun silver, at the labyrinthine cities, or junctions and main thoroughfare of expectation. She ran as the screams of Swen Gnillor and Swen Gnikaerb bore down on her unseen but perniciously inducing fear in whispering curlicues and soporific wisps.

She imagined Swen Gnillor and Swen Gnikaerb to be hounds for she also imagined that their names were being heralded and barked as though their very pronouncement was meant to stun the listener like rabbits in headlights. Lamped, Mary Mary could imagine being immediately dragged down by the drum-beat under-tow of fear and like billions of other sleepwalking coral bloom pulled toward The Great Pacific Garbage Patch of history.

Her mind as scrambled as her metaphors she made a perpendicular dash across a directionless intersection of dread heading towards a door marked ‘Waiting Room’. She picked up her beloved pet and barged her way through the door and into the early nineteen eighties and immediately wished she hadn’t. The baying of Swen Gnillor and Swen Gnikaerb ceased.

 

 

Sat around glowering at her were twenty septuagenarians; failed actors in the history of their own lives they were preparing for yet another apoplectic eruption at no one and about nothing in particular; they watched in horror as the stack of faded but fanatically arranged editions of Uebermensch Monthly began to topple .

As twenty pairs of hands stretched out to restore order to the impending disorder, through the collective prism of obsessive rectitude, (curiously missed by the Allies' Re-Civilisation Program), from inside the Waiting Room Mary Mary noticed as the letters, which had been pursuing her through the glacial maze, were now reversing in order; Swen Gnillor and Swen Gnikaerb, now read: ‘Rolling News’ and ‘Breaking News’ respectively.

Out-and-Out Liars, Part 2; Hillary, Tenzing Chapter 1, part 4

                                                                              4.

Kathmandu’s famous Gurkha regiment found themselves washing dishes out of sight of the customers in any number of the white-owned cafes aligning the recently renamed Joanna Lumely Square. To say these establishments standing in homogenized self-entitled and grim serried ranks was the harrowing example of middle-class mission-creep that has insidiously infected and now plagues places originally bustling with ethnic diversity, would be a truism. The self-styled middle-class intelligensia and uber-trendy-who poo-pooed the, quite frankly genuinely democratic Costa and Starbucks franchizes,-had endeavoured and succeded in turning Nepal's main Square into a self-congratulatory people-watching paradigm.

How a battliion of yummy-mummies complete with panzer-buggies and their children, super-charged tazers of  parental love- made it into the rarified air of the Himalayas is easy to observe. Middle-class mission-creep leeches all before it; in a bid for the genuine experience of ethnicity an avant-gard of trustafarians (white Rastas with Mum and dad’s trust funds)  move in to redefined an area as desirable. This avant-garde of faux-blacks is followed by artistic types whose demand for insulated bubbles of existence from which to observe the locals triggers the insidious land-grab of cheap property thus raising the prices as unscruplous landlords force the local colour out for the cash-crop that is whitification; the pinnacle of which is, apparently, a Whole-food Bakery. The Nigerian/Indian/Carribbean market street bleached of its former denizens in the endless stampede for the Up-and-Coming is now curiously defined by a high cafe-ideation-Quotient; without any sense of irony whatsoever  its new residents evaluate each other across the street sipping Cappuchhinos sprinkled with a mild dusting of angst.  

High above Kathmandu, over looking Joanna Lumely Square a yeti and a crested Macaque monkey were sat on an ice-bridge with panoramic views on the Himalayas clipping their toenails.

“White people piss me off!”’ said the macaque.

“I have as little to do with them as possible!”, said the yeti.

“If there is a black and a white  shop assistant, I go to the black one, ”, The macaque continued. “But the white one..”

Both: “...always butts in”.

A fibrous yellow toenail sailed into the deep blue yonder.

“Yeah, White people piss me off!”,  said the  macaque.

“I have as little to do with them as possible!”, said the yeti.

“You know wherever they go in the world they...”

Both; “...move in and push everybody out”.

“Look what they did to the Tasmanians”.

Both; “Bad business”.

“And the native Americans”.

Both: “Bad business”.

The yeti was having trouble keeping his blond fur away from the toe he was clipping, while the macaque had such a huge erect penis he had trouble reaching his own feet.

“Yeah. White people piss me off!”.

“I have as little to do with them as possible!” said the macaque. “Anything you can do..”

Both; “...they can do better!”. They laughed.

“And what they did to the Jews!”.

“They’re white aren’t they? Said the yeti.

Both; “Bad business”.

The macaque was having trouble with the toenail his erection kept on rebounding into his face;  a real struggle. The yeti paused to watch, then went back to his own feet.

“White people piss me off!”.

“I have as little to do with them as possible”. said the macaque. "I mean, the world did not need to be discovered but they...”

Both, “...take credit for everything!”.

“And look at that slavery thing”.

“Bad business”.

The macaque’s erection was so big it nearly reached his chin. He rested his nail clippers on top of its pink head. It was a beautiful calm day, from the snow  bridge he could see the Himalayan chain of Nepal, India and across to  China . They both stared at Everest.

“Bad business”.

"White people piss me off!”.

“I have as little to do with them as possible!”, said the macaque.” It’s so cold where they are from they had nothing else to do but invent things to...”

Both; “...make them lonelier!” again both laughed.

“Bad business”.

“Bad, bad business”.

The macaque looked over at the yeti’s thick blond coat and barely concealed jealousy coursed across his simian features.

“White people piss me off!”.

“I have as little to do with them as possible!”. Said the macaque.

“When you meet them you gotta say ‘Good Morning twice to...”

Both; ...”...address both their faces!”.

At the north-end of the ice-bridge a tiny fissure was opening in the ice.

“And what the white Russians did to Mongolia’s Shamans, they...”

“...threw them out of planes!”.

Both; “Bad Business”.

Here they observed a minutes silence.

“What do you call those people you find all over the world?” Asked the macaque.

The yeti looked blank.

“...you know, in remote cultures...codifying every move..?”

The yeti watched a toenail disappear in the chasm below.”...they write down everything before a culture is anihilated?”

Both; “Anthropologists!”

Cracks now appeared in the ice-bridge at the southern-end, the noise indistinguishable from the sound of shifting blocks. Powered snow swirled into the cold air, disturbed by the yeti changing focus to his left foot; his giant newly-clipped right foot hung over the precipice.

Though vulnerable to radiation in the depleted ozone layer the macaque admired the yeti’s pale blue eyes.

“White people piss me off!”.

“I have as little to do with them as possible!” Said the macaque. “You could live somewhere all your life, and they come along and...”

Both; “tell you what you already know”.

“Bad business”.

“Who got to Everest first?” asked the yeti.

“A black man!”

“Who saw Lake Victoria first?

“A black man”.

"Who discovered America?".

“A Black man.” replied the macaque.

“Florence Nightingale or Mary Seacole?”

“Mary Seacole every time” declared the macaque.

“Robinson Crusoe or Man Friday?”.

“Man Fri-day!”.

“Prospero or Caliban?”.

“Taliban?”.

“No, Caliban..not Taliban.

“Oh, Cal-i-ban, with-out a doubt!”.

The yeti had finished clipping his toes and admired them now dangling against the backdrop of the dark void. The macaque was still struggling to reach his toes obstructed by his huge penis.

An enormous report burst on their ears as both the north and south ends of the ice-bridge began to split under the weight of both the yeti and the macaque.

“Oh, hell” said the yeti.

Both;” Bad business”.

The ice-bridge shook violently jolting them both a few inches towards the deep.

“Well, this is it”. Declared the yeti, a sly eye on an over-hanging branch he privately judged just within his reach.

As the ice-bridge fell away, the yeti grabbed hold of the branch, the macaque securing a hold on the yeti’s legs.

“I am gonna shake you off”

“No please, I will do anything, he said his mind on his penis, ” begged the macaque.

Anything? Probed the yeti.

“Anything”.

The yeti’s gaze returned from the blue and distant peak of Mount Everest.The steely blue eyes of the yeti looked into the dark eyes of his companion the macaque and continued to observe him as he slowly began to slid down the length of his legs.

“Well", said the yeti. "I do have one thing that I would be delighted for you to do”.

“What is that?”t asked the macaque.

 “Kiss my feet!”. Said the blond-haired blue-eyed yeti.

Out-and-Out Liars, Part 2, Fallacy. Hilary,Tenzing, (Chapter 1, Part 3)

                                                                                3

Bartholomew Mayhew typed his account number and sort and security code into the appropriate fields and pressing enter sent one thousand and thirty pounds sterling into the ether, a small part of an inheritance bequeathed him from a recently deceased aunt. The airfare to Mongolia was understandably steep as Bartholomew  at thirty-seven, unmarried white, middle-class, well-educated, unemployed and in the prime of travelling life, had only made the snap decision to visit that distant country that morning over breakfast cereal while reading an article in the Guardian about the Nadam festival he thought he might like, peak fare and short- notice notwithstanding.

Bartholomew sat back in his large swivel ergonomic chair and read, 'Confirmation of your flight registration will be sent to your email address’. He loved this part and anticipated  finding a new message in his In-box with the barely muted joy of a child opening a present at Christmas. He made a cup of tea in his galley kitchen, briefly staring out of his second floor flat window to watch a new ex-local-authority Chinese resident negotiate the racial pot-pourrie of local authority children in the play area below, and sighed a sigh of gratitude that he, as a council tenant did not have to pay the high-rent and astronomical service charges of those arrivals who could not yet tell the difference between a council and country estate.

Returning to his laptop Bartholomew Mayhew exited Skyscanners typed yahoo in the URL field and navigated the mouse to mail in-box and scrolled up the fifty or so  ‘Confirmation of registration of flights, hotels, cruises, Adventure trekking, Trans-Siberian Express' notifications his gaze stopping at an unopened message immediately before the topmost still in bold letters. He shuddered.

‘Hello Barthe, Barth here. Having a wonderful time in Nepal.  Reached  camp IV this morning. (see attachment). Exhausted but exhilarated. Great to be here. Best line ever. Thanks Mate.

L

Barthe.

P.S  wish you were here!

Bartholomew Mayhew looked about him with hyper-vigilent dread as though some chink in the curtain permitted prying eyes while a secret part of him scanned illicit porn. The photo revealed a long line of tethered climbers,  several hundred meters long,  snaking up to what must be Mount Everest. Curiously Barthe never appeared  in these holiday snaps himself...always  the same. The message was dated  9/05/2013 and there was a three day gap between the last announcement of Barthe’s arrival in Kathmandu accompanied by a picture outside the American Express building in Joanna Lumely Square and this latest missive. Again, in this picture , there it was again.  Bartholomew had checked his travel itinerary to Nepal and previous destinations a dozen times and they all coincided with the merry notification of arrival, along with a photographic first impression from...himself.  Bartholomew checked the current day’s date in the bottom right-hand corner of his computer screen. 09/05/2013.

With unlimited disposable income and time he had begun spending an increasing amount of this time online generally and on travel and hotel comparison sites specifically. At first long weekends within the European Zone was all he dared allow himself and he quickly established that budget airlines delivered him far short of the desired destination, and furthermore the intricacies of whether it would be cheaper to travel with an empty bladder on some of the more assiduously grasping carriers fatigued him. He became deft at speed-reading reviews of previous travellers on the hospitality and hygiene of various European guest houses and developed an internal barometer for rating at a glance.  Once he had purchased flight and hotel reservation, the research part of the adventure,with the aid of Google Street Map, had been so thorough that by the time he was due to pack he felt he had already visited every nook and cranny of Prague, Amsterdam, Vilna and Crakow and felt that the actual reality of Prague, Amsterdam, Vilna and Crakow would pall compared to Google Map's detailed civic voyeurism.

Bartholomew’s bank statement  testified to a steady trickle then fitful flow in the direction of Atol protected long-haul flights, four and five star establishments, an opera reservation in Vienna, and increasingly, his quarterly statements began to itemize travel and residence in more exotic destinations; open-jaw tickets testified to flights with  Singapore Airlines, resurfacing with TWA, another resurface with Aeroflot with a return flight with Quatar Airways.  A sense that he was doing something wrong harangued him, vaguely; technically his carbon footprint was impeccable.  His aunt's money had not been gifted to feed flights of fancy, she would have reprimanded her nephew severely, but she would have been livid to the core to discover that these flights of fancy were in fact...well, flights of actual fancy; over fifty empty individual airoplane seats around the world were directly connected to the piles of unused E-tickets strewn about Bartholomew’s Mayhew’s grubby abode.

Having not left his flat in over five years Barthelomew was disconcerted to discover one morning, that someone else had not only assumed his identity but was enjoying the holidays he had, albeit impulsively, booked for himself. Who was this usurper that made him feel like he had discovered himself among the lascivious faces on a Thai orgy website? Why did this adventurous Doppelganger’s post scriptum,’ Wish you were here’ deride his sense of his own impotence? Surely the photos would give some clue to the identity of the man who so readily assumed his place, a reflection in a shop front, or in sun-glasses. Of course Bartholomew never once considered the possibility of giving up his addiction to ghost travel. He did however, in an attempt at revenge begin re-routing his Dobbleganger to war-torn destinations at a slight further cost. This resulted in emails of increasingly obsequious gratitude accompanied by yet more images, all with the same indelible theme. Yet what was it about these perspectives that linked them all?

Bartholomew settled himself in his chair with the determination of a Star Trek fan faced with a week of re-runs and proceeded to chronologically upload each and every attachment to photo gallery. There was the Vienna Opera  House’s impressive baroque façade, here a pleasure boat docked in Singapore harbour, another outside a Lamasery in Bhutan, a gallery of Third World images in wastelands with only a water pump or shack in view, and one of a severely bombed airport with what appeared to be the last flight out in the fore-ground. Bartholomew scrutinized the more recent images from Kathmandu and Mount Everest, and suddenly remembered a recurring hitherto incomprehensible sentence. ‘Best line ever’.

Bartholomew Mayhew, ignoring his own glaring weak spot, had discovered his Doppelganger's Achilli’s Heal. He had overlooked the language difference due to its similarity and read the word ‘Line’ as some esoteric jibe. His eyes floated along the images until he now saw clearly what he had failed to observe. The perspective of the photographer, in each and every image, was from one whose sole Weltanschauung or world-view was taken by someone who loved standing in queues. The ambitions of The Man in the Queue had clearly been exercised  variously in queues for cruises, entertainments, adrenline sport, reaching maturation in queues for bread and water in war- and drought-ravaged continents, all seemed now a mere prelude a rehearsal even for what would prove to be his Doppelganger's final photo taken at 27.000 feet at the end of the longest queue in the world snaking  several hundred meters long on The Hilary Steps up towards the summit of Mount Everest.

Out-and-Out Liars, Part Two Fallacy. Hilary,Tenzing. (Chapter 1, Part 2)

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On May 9, 2013, at  27.000 feet 500 climbers who had paid between $30.000 and $120.000 rushed the summit of Everest; there was only room for ten. From photos taken from the top and sent around the world it was clear that the view from the roof of the world was densely obscured. To say it resembled a macabre version of Ten Green Bottles would be an understatement, akin to rush-hour on the Tokyo Subway, in a volley of sharp elbows oxygen masks shattered, goose-down headed for the jet-stream escaping from rips in otherwise insulated parkas and pants, and while some were pushed, some simply stepped off the mountain blind-folded by a veritable Hitchcockian attack of  national flags. In a bid to win the global race, (whether racially, nationally or personally was anybody’s guess), the principal tippers-into-the void were from the tunnel-visioned inhabitants of that island whose young queen, 60 years previously would receive on the day of her coronation the two severely chilblain toes of the benighted Edmund Hilary.

The blackened corpses and piles of human excrement that lay strewn about the mountainside belied the myth that the dignity of human achievement was at play here. Snaking down some several hundred meters along the Hilary Steps a further 600 climbers, fearing that the slim window in the clement weather would close, permanently, spontaneously broke rank and, sluggishly headed for the mawkish party at the top. Those who through lack of oxygen stumbled and crumpled where they stood were stepped on; it was clear among some that this determination would have been recognizable in the clear-eyed bloody-mindedness, almost a century earlier of The Bright Young Thing’s pursuit of the next costumed ball through a landscape of starving miners.  Like the throng of oversubscribed middle-class entitlement at Womad’s Festival of World Music where being at the front of a recital by the revered Ravi Shankar resulted in an unsightly scrum of folding chairs, one could not get close enough, and indeed most, now firmly on the peak of the tallest mountain in the world, looked about feeling slightly short-changed and swindled, and wistfully eyed the earth's upper orbit  with a view to attaining an even higher vantage point on one of the larger pieces of passing space junk.

Meanwhile at base camp IV the Sherpas stood around and collectively wept; they had never quite gotten used to being shouted at by their blue-eyed guests and it was felt by the numerous Western-owned Adventure Outlets based in Nepal that these traditionally Buddhist and non-confrontational porters could benefit from courses in self-assertiveness. The evidence of the white man’s know-it-all burden now pocked the landscape in living tableaux of not-so-living stubbornness, guide book still frozen to the hand while a doubting-Thomas finger jabbed out at an exasperated phantom coolly. The self-assertive course began and ended with an attempt at role play. A selected Sherpa, donned a Dr Livingston hat, khaki shorts and shirt and was instructed by the consortium of Western-owned Adventure Outlets to confront the King of Nepal and proceed to tell him how to do his job. Whether desired or not, the exercise ended in civil war and, benefiting from the lacunae in the divide the country continues, to this day to be ruled by...well, a consortium of Western-owned Adventure Outlets.

A gathering of Nepalese elders, de facto members of the new puppet regime stared blank-faced as a representative of the consortium now explained how bar-coding each and every Nepalese citizen with the use of a tattoo on the right, or left shoulder and which could be scanned by a Ranger with a Smartphone would hurtle the populace into the modern age. “I have called it The Everest ID. Branded onto the skin the Barcode, or QR (Quick Response) code  would reveal instantly all pertinent information-  age, experience, health history, allergies, alliances, insurance, family, qualifications, emergency phone numbers, everything!” The view at the top of the world was looking no less Orwellian than its sea-level counterpart. “It’s health and safety really”. The elders gulped.

Branded, the people of Nepal were forced to collect 300 tonnes of detritus, shredded tents, oxygen masks, climbing gear and human remains under pain of being deleted from the Everest ID database. Being deleted from cyberspace was obviously a fate worse than frozen death, and being relegated to the status of non-person was an anxiety increasingly vivid throughout a world in which your actual existence was very doubtful and blurred evidence of your...well, actual existence. And it was these pioneers of glacial heights of achievement and OCD data gathering that now forced the Nepalese, along with the rest of humanity into the serried ranks of a tightly-patrolled autistic spectrum.