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

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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.

Out-and-Outliars; PART 2, FALLACY. Hillary, Tenzing (Chapter 1, Part 1)

                              

                                           Hillary, Tenzing

       

                            “It was obvious he was likely to die. It was not the mountain’s
                               harshness that almost killed him, but his own hubris”.

 

In May 29^th, 1953, on the southeastern ridge of a mountain at an altitude of 28.776 feet a very conscious Norgay Tenzing stretched out and, with Herculean effort dragged a semi-conscious Edmund Hillary to the summit of Everest; there is no reason at all why the route leading up to the summit of Mount Everest is today called The Hillary Step.

Before two of Hillary’s frozen toes were sent back to England to Queen Elizabeth II on Coronation day as both present and proof of gallant ardour, the summit of Everest did not, like America and Australia, need to be discovered by short-sightedly grandiose caucasions; it was already there.  Indeed, at least two hours prior to the moment Norgay made the decision to help his dangerously ungrateful and eternally whiney climbing companion to the top and stick the flag of Empire through the permafrost, Nepal’s own flag had been fluttering away merrily at the summit of the world making a curiously mischievous tittering sound as it did so. It has been mentioned in subsequent largesse at The Royal Geographical Society lunches, that the two men hugged each other on simultaneously reaching the top; this was an out-and-out lie, Sherpa Tenzing hugged himself.

Due to a mix up in the boot department leading to the loss of nineteen toes even before the team had left base camp, Sherpa Tenzing was already au fait with the unBuddhist  Western doctrine called The Hierarchy of Death, traces of which are still flagrantly on display in such recent Soft-Power-point entertainments in supremacy in the film Impossible about the Tsunami in Thailand in which we are invited to believe the survival of one white family is worth pursuing and rooting for, over the factual deaths of two hundred and forty thousand among the Thai population;  Norgay knew, if any of them made it to the top, where he was supposed to stand . Some initial deaths among the Sherpas occurred as some returned along a narrow icy- ledge burdened with yet more more luggage; the white climbers simply did not know how break the rule of White of Way and would not, could not stand aside for their coloured helpers, it was deeply ingrained ; loss of luggage and the death toll among the Nepalese was deemed lamentable; but strictly in that order. Hillary, a remote and strange temperament was as yet unknown to the world around him and might have remained considering the lack of bonhomie -Hillary and Tenzing-did not get along.

The patriarchical claim Hillary had on the climbing glory of human endeavor was to be seen and loudly heard. At Camp II at an altitude of 21,240 feet a summary court house and jail was established to allay paranoid fears of insurrection bought on by thin air. This jail house was where the Sherpas were forced to weather several days of storm and without trial while the legitimate climbers enjoyed the shelter of an improvised tavern and the relative luxuries of a general store. Sherpa Tenzing had escaped imprisonment by dint of taking refuge inside a dead sacred cow a climber had shot dead out of bloody-minded boredom and in order to incite...well, an insurrection. One of the Sherpas complained about their conditions. The climbing team had an effective if somewhat brutal word with him. To the Nepalese helpers the trashed store was indeed a reminder; these were not pleasant people.

One night, in order to sharpen their Anglo-Saxon wits, the team devised a game of strip-poker heavily rigged against their porters, at 25,938 feet it could only have been an acute sense of sadism which overrode common-sense as prerogative, snide laughter laced with Schadenfreude emanated from the roof of the world. Half frozen, the Sherpas accused Hillary’s team of cheating and challenged them to a wrestling match. In a flurry of snow gunshots rang out and as the tiny Nepalese sat stiff in the snow staring at the holes in their chests, the remaining climbers retreated to the general store and smoked roughly hewn Havanna cigars. Tenzing was profoundly insulted and told Hillary so. That night one of Tenzing’s cousin attacked Hillary’s tent. The two men clashed outside. In the gunfire Little Tensing was shot and killed. Hillary’s men then went to Tenzing, their last and only guide, and ordered him to drag the body of his cousin away. He refused, “The most dangerous thing about Everest is everyone who is trying to climb it, you!”, He said pointing up to the peaceful peaks above.

Things quickly went from bad to worse. In a burst of altitude sickness Hillary became murderously delusional; he was convinced his friends were out to ambush him and turn him off the mountain-he flipped - killing them all. In the ensuing gunfire he shot off the two toes received by the Queen on the day of her coronation. While reloading, Hillary heard Tenzing coming after him. In the fight Tenzing’s respect for Hillary died. While Hillary rode upon Tenzing’s back tugging at his beard with one hand and firing into air with the other, a group of journalists at base camp were fleeing an avalanche, in vain. There were places on earth, far below at sea level, where people strove to live in harmony; Hillary and Tenzing were not among them.

“ Stop”, Tenzing shouted in a voice that resembled Hillary’s mothers’. Tenzing grabbed the gun from Hillary’s frozen dead fingers and tossed it over the side. “It’s not the mountain’s harshness that kills, it’s your own hubris, ”.  Sherpa Tenzing was to be first in a long line  to become acquainted with the ring of gunshot; the job would hereonin come with the expectation of a certain percentage of insanity-induced suicides. Hillary decided to say nothing and live. The rest, as they say, is history. 

Out-and-Outliars. Of Ice, Fur and Fire. (Chapter 4, Part 11)

                                                                              11.

Floy, the Macaque-crested monkey who invented the 0 1 binary code used in computers all over the globe, could no more retain the shape of the teacup, saucer and teaspoon into which he had been sung than he could keep from mischief-making. Having leapt through the membrane of an Oxford street store during the magical witching hour with the escapees from the exotic pets department, he had merely followed the commuters of liminal London attracted to and guardians of beautiful things.  He had had the requisite whimsy and desperation to conceal himself, Karen Smith and his exotic cohorts, in the various gleaming designs on display in John Lewis, but in the cold light of day he found he was struggling with his shift and there was the very real threat that at any moment he would burst, fully formed from the teacup, saucer and spoon and scare the customers away.

The liminal twin-spirited queens who inhabited by day the shiny objects within the famous shop had been practising concealment since the realization that they were different came crashing in on their developing minds like a sudden surge of migraine, and it was this difference in shape that they had each and everyone, become watchful for shades and nuances that might betray in the world of the ‘’normals, though the innate opportunities for making a difference and balancing the brutal polarities of an otherwise mediocre world with beauty remained an undimmed imperative. An inherent knowledge of the ‘Designer’, earlier witnessed being sung out of his draughtsboard into his revolving chair, offered instant refuge for individuals who, in former times and cultures would have had such a position of prestige as to have been detected as special from inside the mothers’ womb three month prior to birth, and even earlier and cause for much jubilation. These beauty-makers, were impalpable objects of desire signifying desire itself, sign-posting the correct direction of male towards female, female towards male and the proto-mythical direction of the tribe itself. Now, after two thousand years of vacuous religious and colonial patriarchy, initiated and sustained by the rampant and dunderhead jealousy of a fist-wielding brother plotting tirelessly against the atmosphere of specialness showered upon his sibling’s…well, specialness, in a consumer society, the only refuge of that specialness was in beautiful things.

Floy’s shape now strained against the very porcelain in which he was constrained and it was only good fortune that the black woman browsing the shelves with her husband and her husband’s best friend, who was also secret her lover in tow and the store's security not far behind- for curiously the liminal shape-shifters, though they were themselves in constant flight from persecution, exuded from within their designs a blinding snobbism which betokened fear- the woman purchased Floy just to get the suspicious store detectives off her back and regain a modicum of self-respect. As Floy, in the form of a now packaged teacup, saucer and spoon was carried out of John Lewis he was aware of the pandemonium that was unleashed within the store as Karen Smith, the young lady who had auctioned off the UK, concealed within a saddle in the equestrian department, an elephant wearing the skin of a Lavazza Coffee Machine, a female Macaque-crested as leopard-skin rug, and various alligators disguised as Le Creuset cookware, a giraffe blinking within a lamp stand… under the strain of metamorphosis all burst into their true identities sending customers screaming for the various exits while the old boors in a nearby gentleman’s club, on hearing the breaking news, raided the gun room declaring open hunting season.

At home the teacup, saucer and teaspoon were unpacked and placed in the centre of the coffee table while the two men sat down best of friends. This amicable state was not to last. The woman was in the kitchen preparing food and was blissfully unaware of the trouble brewing in the other room. Floy was aware that the follicles of his hair were bristling dangerously and threatening to sprout; he was desperate to find an opportunity for a diversion. It came when the husband got up to put some music on the stereo, his back turned to his friend.

“Your Mama’s so fat I took a photo of her two weeks ago and it’s still developing”. Came the voice, an exact imitation of the seated friend.

The husband swung round. “Well”, said the husband, taking up the challenge, “Your mama so poor, I saw her kicking a can down the street, and when I asked what she was doing she said ‘Moving’! ”.

 “But I…” The bewildered bestfriend was about to say the voice had not been his but instead he smiled. “Well, your mama’s so fat she went to KFC to get a bucket of chicken, they asked her what size and she said ‘The one on the roof!”.

The husband laughed and retorted. “Your mama’s so poor she goes to KFC to lick other people’s fingers!”.

“Your mama’s so fat when she sits around the house, SHE SITS AROUND THE HOUSE!”

“Your mama’s so poor your family ate cereal with a fork to save milk!”.

Meanwhile, during this exchange Floy could feel the tips of his fur beginning to grow out of the cup, saucer and teaspoon.

"Well", said the best friend. “Your mama’s so fat she jumped in the air and got stuck”! Both men laughed.

“Your mama’s so poor I walked in your house and three cockroaches tripped me up and tried to take my wallet”!

Pulling himself back from the bestfriend's returned. “Your mama’s so fat when she was born she gave the hospital stretch marks!”

Again both laughed. “Hang on, hang on, my turn next, just let me put some music on". The moment the husband’s back was turned Floy mimicked the bestfriend’s voice. “Your mama’s so fat when she was having sex her partner he didn’t know if it was in her butt or her boobs”!

At this the husband swung round, and there was only a faint smile on his lips. “Your mama’s so poor the last time she smelled a hot meal was a rich man’s fart”!

Once again bewildered and a little anxious and insulted the husband’s best friend tried to declare the game over. The husband agreed and once again turned to choose some music. Once again, no sooner his back turned, Floy threw his voice around the room, this time louder and with urgent vitriol. “Your mama’s so fat we’re in her right now!”

The husband took hold of the stereo system and yanked it off the wall, swinging around on his heels he hurled it at his best friend, who defended himself with his raised arms, the hi-fi, crashing against a wall landed on the floor in smithereens.

When the woman came running into the living room she found her husband and his best friend dealing each other open blows to the face to a volley of ‘your mama’s’ emitting from a teacup, saucer and spoon that had grown a full coat of fur. She screamed and at that moment and for a moment only they stopped fighting and stared at her.

 

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you I've been sleeping with him earlier !", she yelled. "I TOLD  you not to tell him!" the bestfriend had just enough time to look bewildered again, before the husband dealt him a blow that broke his nose and knocked out his teeth. In defence of her husband the woman joined in the affray.

The police were called by a neighbour and entered the flat with the customary disproportionate force, prized the best friends and woman apart and giving the strange furry object on the table a cursory glance lead the blood-bespattered party off to the station for questioning.

Out-and-Outliars; Of Ice, Fur and Fire, (Chapter 4, Part 10)

                                                                          10.

“The sky is never as brighter than when a mighty ship goes down; the chaos of flares to the background of creaking metal mingled with the panicked screams of its passengers, the sudden increased brightness of the gas-lamps illuminating the elite rigid at tables barking ever louder the ship’s invincibility as the whole slips away and the screams of the poor rise under a brilliant moon and are jettisoned into the shimmering sea".

"Before one astrological signs moves towards its end within the five day period of the cusp, it will characteristically, on the dying days display one last surge of power, a blazing ember before its fire goes out. The land you come from is in such as period”.

Eyes blinked down at the Geo-Astrological chart spread out on an ice-blue table made of…well, ice. “You see, right here,” he said while Mary Mary, celebrity drag chanteuse who had travelled to the Arctic in pursuit of her pet chihuaua Mitzy, braced herself for yet another onslaught of dire emotion.

 

We left Mary Mary and Mitzy standing side by side in a flotilla of crying angels flying towards tens of thousands of isolated and atomized individuals, couples and families who found themselves foul of the hot and fetid breath of a dying toothless mastiff and its own particular delusional whimper and were now, unbeknown to Mary Mary and Mitzy, dancing on the air below cold-stiff-upper lips in the pin-point after-glow of the 2012 Olympic Games .

 

Mary Mary and Mitzy, content in each others’ company had suddenly realized they were freezing  and might in fact die now that the fervour of the chase was wearing off. Mary Mary scaled a sloping but high glacier to better see what lay ahead. She scanned the tundra. Directly below and on the other side from their former position sheets of vertical ice gleamed back at them. Each of the walls that made up the maze reached over three metres in height, each frosted, and although the day was bright Mary Mary could see that as her gaze traced a zigzag and serpentine path back and forth and eventually towards the centre of the glass maze the light diminished so that its centre was bathed in permanent dusk. Housed within the tenebrous and oblong  space Mary Mary could make out two huge orbits, obscuring what must have been the means of propulsion, a rhubarb and custard coloured streak, or squiggle an artist might make with a brush of medium thickness. The circumference of the huge eyes, for as far as she could see, almost reached the ground; she estimated, at a distance, to be approximately metres in diameter. A wide white perimeter framed a pair of irises and pupil of an tensely depressing chromatic blue from which emanated, nay irradiated the most wretched despair Mary Mary had ever seen.

Between the sheets of ice in the corridor’s of the maze the celebrity chanteuse and her pet noticed that it was not only becoming darker as they navigated the twists and turns of the labyrinth, but warmer; whatever lurked at its centre was warm-blooded.

“I’ve been expecting you”, said the eyes from apparently no mouth at all.

“Eyes,” the vision said.

Mary May did know what to say, so said nothing. It was hard not to look pass the configuration of veins and the general whiteness and marble smoothness but it was especially hard not to be washed way by the waves of melancholia flowing from the blue irises and soulshaped-blackness of its pupils.

“Eyes, that’s my name”, said eyes in a tsunami of sadness.

“Oh yes,”, stammered Mary Mary remembering her manners. “ Mary Mary and this is Mitsy”.

“In my charts,” Eyes continued looking down on an icescape of lines and circles. A table that had hitherto been invisible stood out as Eyes seemed to rise as he seated himself on an equally invisible chair.

The Swarovsky diamonds in  Mitzy’s collar fractured their new companion’s reflection into a many-eyed gorgon of a grief so deep that the diamond’s natural sparkle retracted becoming as lacklustre as an oligarch’s final moments.

‘You think I look funny’ Thought Eyes as it watched the rat-like dog and its strange bearded bee-hived, eye-shadowed companion who was removing five cardigans. Eyes was a tad short-sighted which had the effect that when Mary Mary spoke he thought the words came from the being lower down on the ground.

“Sadly”, and Eyes emoted this sentiment so succinctly that, once again, the travellers were in tears. Eyes warmed to his guest’s ability to empathize and  made a mental note to take them to visit The Vale of Dead Explorers. “Sadly, it’s over”, Eyes continued, “the end. Look again , this is my geo-astro chart and the land from which you have travelled…no, escaped rather… lies on the sign of Capricorn and its time has run out. See here, the last period period before your period is the Sagittarian lands, geo-astrologically here”.  Eyes indicated Italy on a cobalt blue map imbedded in the ice beneath the table. Its last period, the period of the Hell-Raiser..the slaughter, extinctions, self-sacrifice, the fractured and desperate indomimtablely last stand”.  A tear formed and in its centre appeared Hadrians wall, north-facing; a lament issued forth ‘We weep, We weep, They will not let us home, We weep, We weep.They will not let us home'. 'Ah, homesickeness", Eyes said relishing the ache of that particular debilitating emotion “Only the Aborigines of Tasmania matched the Celts for homesickness”.

Mary Mary, who was surprised she was experiencing only a mild nostalgia for her garden patio, hadn’t a clue what Eyes was talking about and was even more disconcerted as this prophetic melancholic tirade was being directed at her pet. She looked at Mitzy through the fresh eyes of Eyes and tried to imagine that her tiny skull might conceal a consciousness that might extend beyond a meal, diamonds and polar fur.

Mitzy did indeed seem engrossed as Eyes drew her attention to a cross-section of line, circles and signs. “The combative day of the Generator heralds the first period of Empire. This period here, The Day of the Heavywieght is, like that of the Hell-Raiser before , its swanson.  Swansong, one of my favourite emotions”, and Mary Mary was awash with a kind of scintillating poetic yearning of almost unbearable aesthetic beauty. “That one and Sehnsucht”. Eyes went on picking up on Mary Mary present state.

“The climatic period of the Heavyweight is the end of the climbing glory of your particular climb, you are soon to be back in the onscurity of the foothills, look up at the peak, relishing the idea of another stab at the summit; it is how you navigate this period which decides whether you bow out gracefully or implode for there is implicit in this time all the crimes this period has committed in the name of ambition, and as with old people who walk with the ghosts of their every deed, at times muttering to old friends, resolving unfinished argument, pledging unpledged love, or taking imaginary revenge, yes your land could be seriously harangued by a avengeing jury of a belated truth and reconciliation tribunal in this period of vivid senility.

This is a period where images in the mortal mirror reflecting your lands deeds are at their starkest…and darkest. Here Eyes pupils vertically disappeared, Mary Mary suddenly felt both powerful and at the same time frightened as though the urge for  power were about to sweep her into an unquenchable thirst for yet more power and through layers and realms of violence and while experiencing the utter raggedness of its victims to attain it. “So, much greed and suffering", she muttered to herself as Eyes pupil’s came to rest, once again on Mitzy.

"The Division Bell has been heard in your land and to this tune every man and woman becomes a microcosm, as it were, of its waning dominance; and will brook no compromise of their plans casting family, friends, neighbours, associates co-workers in antagonistic positions against themselves. Class divisions will crack and sub-divied and sub-divide as until…” Here a counting-house loneliness beamed out outlining a crouched shadow play figure in an ivory hovel and the frosted walls of Eyes’ abode moved in and darkened to opaque black mirrors shattering into opposing fragments of imprisoned snarling faces. Mary Mary felt a heady mixture of the apatride isolation of those in solitary confinement mingled with a miserly distrust and a vertiginous panic that she was about to lose power, like a formerly grand and now derelict cathredral and with it a furious sense of losing herself. The overwhelming floodlight of loneliness and ebbing tide of overweening lack of confidence retracted. “Divide and rule is at its most intense on its way back through the prism”.

Mary Mary was at a loss to think of why anything concerning her land and its history should concern her; she was a tax evader by dint of simply feigning her death and being there; and the fact that she was in unstinting pursuit of polar fur was a sign that she had already splintered off onto her own brand of narcissism, an off-off-shore selfishness she, quite frankly resented sharing with a nation; hours and hours of watching Russian It girls swan around in fur on television had set her self-seeking resolve in stone.

Out-and-Out Liars: Of Ice, Fur and Fire (Chapter 4, Part 9)

                                                                            

                                                                                 9.

It is  none of these. A shoe found at the water’s edge, caught between not-quite night and not-quite morning in search of the author standing in a killer rain. In a London black fog-shaped buses thrown from steep hills passing. Homes call him as non-memory assails his homeless cries.

The smog, or London Particular shapes a group of exotic animals and carves also a twin-set limping woman breathed hurriedly in and out. Waiting for the life-blood goods shimmer awake behind membranes, sleepwalkers rush bleary-eyed to be reunited with half keys jangling to release dreams in design. The author does not notice the fog give way along Oxford street. In the gloaming Delftware blinks awake, a gross Lavazza expresso machine yawns in a corner shelf, sofa beds concertina themselves upight and the chandeliers wipe their myriad eyes for new misdirected lies as the draughtsboard, an early riser, spins out the designer into a studious chair, he vainly pats loosely-hanging hair back over his bald pate.

 

Night crawling shamans, still hungover, danced by music and drums, drunk by licensing laws, sensually stroked and prodded by promises skid through reverberating skeins to the otherside. The sun is coming over the edge and over the edge  the twin-spirited ones hunted by the denizen of daylight, called by their respective departments, jump out of form into lampstands, Le Creuset cookware, bales of cloth, a nubian queen owns Egyptian cotton as haven, the night’s DJ high-fives a hi-fi and disappears, an uppity queen recharges in a tiara his best friend a jade necklace.

Animal wet foot prints seek out unvacated caches, a saddle in the sequestriana, a supple haven takes Karen Smith, the leather creaks a sighing relief. A dainty coffee cup sings Floy in, Zelda consumed by leopard skin shoes.

A chorus sings in the dawn arrivals; the workers will arrive soon. John Lewis fills up, then empties, opening time has yet to be. All along Oxford street, the restricted, sung into Tie-rack, the parochial and patriotic sung into souvenir shops and tea rooms, the natty and prissy sung into suits and cashmere coats, the mincing into stilettos, the street is still silent, and a thousand muffled sounds as a thousand doors are drawn shut form inside wardrobes, dressers and the making sure they are all safe inside.

The author wakes up in a dream to find himself home, the objects and furniture are overjoyed with gratitude; A knocked door, the house lets them in. Unseeing the revellers, old friends, pass through to apartments he does not recognise, a new space, not hostile but indifferent. A party of friends to uninvite him, conversations to ignore him, plans to exclude him, children who make no attempt to place the author.

In fixing the lock he breaks the key, the door is now open. He jumps into an antique set of quills the tip, a wine barrel ink-stand qlimpses adventures had, between the quills the sharp-toothed pike's head guesses at concealment; the author now vanishes over the edge. They are planning their day; the shops will be open soon and the sleepwalkers will descend on Oxford street where behind vast windows mannequins also abstain from the spree settling into regained poise and unblinking fear. Crouched, shiny, chrome, metal, steel, plastic, teak, oak, cedar, walnut, ceramic, bakelite, Beautiful Things, as still as Christmas night, hopeful for a new life.  A cyclonic junk yard fathoms deep, in a murderous watery dance, whirls towards Oxford Street beneath a rising sun.

 

In a Greenwich vintage shop nostalgia queens hang back behind the empire line, taken care of by the security of fur; the young twinks beaming from tiny-sized bright thick pullovers eager to be taken home to snuggle up warm to the firm bodies of youthful men and leap from bar stools and cloak rooms. “Without us you’d be on the rag pile or the shredder”, they taunt the rows of cardigans and suede fronted Cecil Gees on the railing below, “We pay to keep you faded old wall flowers”.

It was the foreign imports who were being picked on especially tonight.

“Coming over taking our rail space”. They were Indian Sweat Shops dresses discarded off-cuts from larger international companies, vintage copies, they hung in identical twins, triplets and quadruplet, bottle green, floral, burnt orange and black stripes, newly placed in the window that day, sweeping down like new arrivals off the Empire Windrush.

“We don’t want you here”, said a malevolent Philips 1950’s record player and went back to humming  A Nightingale Sang in Berkley Square

“Why, do you try to look like us?  I knew the genuine article, swingers back in the sixties”, said a sweaty faded queen haunting a canary yellow viscos dress;

A Brazilian flat-fronted pipes, the latest thing in raised hemlines said  “ darlings, my rise is your fall. I’m going back to Brazil.”, Against the Made in Englands protests, the India Sweat Shops and the Made in Chinas concurred.

A huge black red-silk-lined Cromby concealed a Churchill-loving-back-in-my-day professional preditor said. “Shut it, I’m the Oswald Mosley of opinion around here. We got a consignment of redundant uniforms coming in, to bulk things out, now if they don’t find a place to sleep…well. I know for a fact, cos, I was in the store room with one  just arrived from Afganistan, well, he said they’re all English Defense League, so you imported cheap shit will find yourselves dead or back where you came from”.

A liberal pollar-neck concealed a brooding waspishly frail thing said “ It is my observation that once  the foreigner is removed, “every last one of them” as you are constantly saying, the English we will be left behind with…well  the English, who will simply turn on each other... again. Remember, we weren’t particularly nice to each other before the Made in Elsewheres arrived”.

“You're making more noise than sense!” barked a parliament of middle-management double-breasted suits.

“Well, we’re going out… Better than  listening to you boring misogynist lot", said a trio of mini-skirts scantily sheltering three heavily made-up Cilla, Sandy Shaw and Lulu drag queens respectively, and with a three-part harmony rendition of Downtown they stepped through the membrane into the night.

“I’m not being funny”, said a nicotine-stained crochet knee-length cream top whose refrain was a bitch to sing in or out. “ I’ve just arrived and though I am glad to be here, I miss the up-to-date gossip of the IndianSweat Shops and the Made in Chinas. I mean. I was bought by a Lithuanian girl and though I couldn’t understand a word she was saying, we were always out and about, and although she got peanuts she worked hard,  harder than the last lazy old cow who wore me before…always on the moany old sofa on her moany old fat arse”.

“Taking our jobs”, Said one of a group of old coats in a dark corner still smelling of old tobacco, these housed the regretful queens, forced by fusty convention to marry with memories of a first world- war army chum ;a  love to burst the heart,,,and make it sour. “See those trouser’s over there?”

“You’ve already told us!” Intoned the whole shop.

“Belonged to a pole in Dagenham undercut some of our local lads on a building job”. Continued the old coat. “Took ages to get the bloodstains out, didn’t it Polack, where we knee-capped him” The trousers in question withdrew into itself.

“Up until last week, I worked in the House of Common’s, security, sixty years”, said a shiny buttoned uniform who housed a deferential cottage queen into geriatric parliamentarians before being finally gazumped by his own increasing age. “The second-hand rags are all being moved up north, Saudi’s and wealthy Nigerians don’t believe in wearing other people’s clothes’.

“So what are we?” asked a bewildered halter-neck.

“We’re vintage dear”, consoled a tie-dye flared-sleeve tee shirt. “We don’t do class tourism”.

“Choose whatever allegiances you want; we’re all second hand now, no matter what airs and graces”. A collective whimper rippled around the shop, a 50s lampshade gulped.

“Westminster, that House of Drunken Managers, for that is what it is, is managing us out of London and all up north” The uniform went on,  “I hear from some of the new Made Elsewheres that people are walking into supermarket up there, in gangs and just taking food, clothes and walking out without paying. Other uniforms tell me, they can’t do anything about it…too many of them. And some of the uniforms are on their side, especially if they are single mothers!” Here, he chuckled “Once all you Nylons, Orlons, Viscose and Arcrylics get into the mix, it’ll all spark off…literally”.

“We don’t care about anyone or any thing except parties and fun. !” Chanted a rack of cream floral 1920s silk ball gowns pointedly.

 The suede fronted Cecil Gee kissed its teeth, while two tribly hats headbutted each other and screamed "Ouch!"

A time-set lava lamp in the window sung in by a mercurial shape-shifting queen, announced, as it had done at the same time every night before switching off,” Omies and palomies, I am the centre of the universe, and when I close my eyes, it is night!”.

As they stepped from garments and vintage objects through the membrane to regale themselves or simply water plants, feed cats or catch up on gossip until the gloaming, or ecoup in a deep armchair, on the counter a beautiful pin cushion that had seen more pricks than …well, a pin cushion and concealing a new breed of passive-aggressive queen, called out “Can I come too?”

Out-and-Out Liars; Of Ice, Fur and Fire. (Chapter 4, Part 8)

                                                                                    8.

Five minutes after he had freed  Zelda, a female Crested- Macaque, from The Exotic Pets Department in Harrods, Floy realized he had done the wrong thing; she was a consumer addict with not the slightest idea of how to delay gratification. She launched into the various halls of neatly arranged luxury goods and demanded, in a tone she could only have picked up over the years from ogling visitors to her department and from a entitled clientele ranging from as far afield as Highgate and Golders Green. “ You’re not going to buy for me that its-so loverly –everyone-will-say-what-a-caring- husband-he-is- lime green floor-length Zandra Rhodes coat?. You want I should escape in rags?”.

The fact they were not married and not likely to ever be, notwithstanding, when Floy pointed out she could have anything for free as it was the middle of the night and that her companions were already marauding through the hangers, more by accident than by design, acquiring incongruous bits of out-fit and had collectively acquired a ‘look’ that wouldn’t have been out of place at a grunge party had they not been wildlife, his new potential mate protested. “So, you want I should become a thief. So, you're an expert on prison manicures all of a sudden?". Then, " Now give young Benjamin here your most expensive smile, or I’m speaking to management". This last sentence was delivered in a clipped entitled High Clapham voice, for the culmination of watchfulness and long periods absorbing speech and behavioural patterns of the wealthy had left Zelda with more personalities, all of them insufferable, jostling within her than nature intended. “If we pretend we slipped on this puddle Lizzy dear, we can sue this place.  Yes Richard, we have somewhat drunk our wealth away.” It seemed Zelda had picked up a tad more than terms of endearment and bescreeching requests.

Floy used a system of designer ties to get all the escapees and now colourfully dressed menagerie out of the store. A single driver, drunk enough to think he was sober enough to drive was the only soul about who, (the Highway Code being the gossamer thin line between civilisation and utter barbarianism,) slowed to a halt at the zebra crossing to witness an ape leading an elephant in jogging pants and tweed stalker hat,  two lions in gold and silver sequin boob-tubes, a Crested-Macaque sashaying in lime-green coat and Russian fur hat, a snake with a rainbow Cashmire Pashmina, and two bonobos in hoodies and top of the range pumps. Three alligators took up the rear in an assortment of bangles, one whose mouth was clamped shut by a Rolex and Giraff with a Gucci handbag dangling from its neck and a foot wedged in bespoke toaster.

Meanwhile in the Arctic Mary Mary, celebrity drag chanteuse presumed dead, had caught up with her beloved Swarovski-collar wearing Chihuahua. Their respective modes of transport had run out of fuel, the septuagenarians and bankers having, to a last man succumbed to the rigours of sub zero temperatures.Clad in knit-ware the bearded drag queen and her toy dog now stood blissfully content side by side in the tundra. Blissful indeed not because they were finally reunited but because, immediately above  and all around them they were treated to a most wondrous and awesome vision:  the dazzling sight of tens of thousands of beautiful young men of all hues borne along by giant white wings where arms should be. In slow motion the white angels flew gracefully and soundlessly overhead with the focus and determination of migrating swans; they were going south.

It would be a while before Mary Mary would make the connection between the unending fleets of white angels that sailed, unseeing, passed her and the utter distress of her country-men, -women and -children back home on their knees praying for the next meal, heat or both. Now standing there in the snow, a single feather fell in a slow gyratory motion and landed in the palm of Mary Mary’s outstretched hands, anchoring the vision in reality.

She realized she was crying, her tears washed by what she initially thought to be rain; the angels were weep, their tears comingling with her own amid the vast, silent, light snowfall.