The Queen is a horse thief from a long line of horse thieves

A picture of the Queen in a tabloid. She is naked.

He finds it in the centre of a greasy-inked newspaper. The picture is the full length of a page. It is for cut-out and keep.

The face is a photo taken in an unguarded moment superimposed (via computer) on a body which is apparently a kind of realistic artist's impression. Her face is anguished and manic, with rabid little sharp teeth projecting from red gums. Her eyes behind her big glasses seem to roll insanely. She wears a light tiara.

She has a round, flabby, wrinkled belly, under whose rolls of flesh can be seen a growth of sparse, insipid pubic hair, like reluctant weeds. Her old teats are mere spent flaps of skin that reach her belly. Her thighs and upper arms are masses of ravaged, mottled flesh, that droop sadly.

This photo-spread in the centre of the tabloid has several purposes. It can be cut out and used as a prayer mat. It can be pinned to the inside of your cupboard and used as a dartboard. Ideally, it should be reproduced endlessly in chain form and used as bunting in the streets on jubilee days and important anniversaries.

M. wants to cut out the head and use it as a sticker. Put it on his desk drawer next to his sticker that says "The Queen is a horse-thief from a long line of horse thieves". M. having found the greasy old newspaper in his cupboard for the moment looks at the picture amusedly by the brownwood cupboard door.

He'll put the new head next to his sticker of the 77 safety-pin Anarchy in the UK Queen. Blankly reproduced in black n white.

Dream of February, 2001

Glancing from my bedroom window i notice suddenly that outside in the back garden there is a large fire, like a bonfire, which has been started accidentally and threatens the house.

I rush downstairs to put it out but by the time i get outside it has burnt itself out.

I stand and examine the remnants of the fire and notice among the embers twisted pieces of steel, and also large globules of molten metal, oval in shape like medallions, which contain fiery, twisting forms, and which also emit a continuous low sound, like voices coming through static on the radio. By bending closer to the almost extinguished fire i can identify what this sound is: the sonorous, long-drawn out voice of the muezzin, repeating over and over "Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar"...

Blacknwhite George/Impressionist

From a heat-filled family-filled summer room back in the early days in a black n white film the youngest moptop, George, escapes.

From his anxious sisters he shins up the drainpipe of his dad's council house in a middling area of Liverpool, wearing his leather waistcoat and white shirt. George was the youngest and most naive Beatle, anaemic and easily led, but harbouring depths. But here in the early days he was still grinning and wacky, shinning up drainpipes like a boy's adventure story, past the frosted glass window, the stone cladding, till he reaches the guttering and lays the flat of his palm on the rainwet tiles. The roof is a good place to be.

The neighbour watches, a potbellied retired factory hand. George has reached the pinnacle and now he can't get down. He will have to drop to a whitewashed milestone post, a debris-littered weed-strewn yard, full of sawdust and rubble. An adjunct to the semi-detached council house.

Imagine if black n white George went through time to his modern bedroom and found in his place a latter day hipster rolling up a big fancy joint. Reclining on a low bed, some unobtrusive dance track trickling from a shiny stereo. This geezer is an old raver, has a colourful T-shirt and a baldy head. He's delighted to see George and of course offers him a puff.

But this is early pre-hippy George in his leather waistcoat, and he pretends to be disgusted, sticks quite well in his naive role. An innocent working class lad, always up to high jinks but not into all that stuff.....

(That female impressionist guest stars in sitcoms and appears on chatshows. Camera angle below. As a spy as superwoman as a superhero sidekick. In the dressing room talkin to the comedy hero. What is she there for? Her versatility, her sex appeal, a certain token of comedic value.

But, then, says another voice, what is their relationship were to degenerate, and become that of the hooker and her client. And she becomes intent simply on getting the movie hero off, with a callous humour and disregard. Because the English sincere movie actor is a secret kerbcrawler and in this dingy dressing room sweats and opens his shirt and pants compulsively, his dark mop of hair in his eyes, to the shiny costume of the Impressioniste.

Dressing-rooms are anonymous spaces, like bathrooms, warehouses, alleyways. Full of shadows.)

Bus Trial of the Century

Bus drivers wanted for redbus metropolitan On the Buses 70's routes, in caps and flourishing smiles. Trainee drivers welcome, dahn at the job centre. Slim naked comedy women bus drivers for the trial of the century.

For a fat student girl with a brushed-over fringe who claims the driver has made her pregnant, and she now sits like a widow on the upper deck, clutching the steel railing in front... like the aggrieved party. The driver has a girlfriend back home. This student girl contends that they met in a club when both were in an inebriated state and that they went back to her's where their passions were consummated. Now is suing for child support and maintenance, sits silent playing the wronged woman.

Trial is to be broadcast live on TV; a relaxed format, a charming middle-aged French man hosts, a panel is referred to, and cameras click and whirr when witnesses take the microphone-laden witness stand.

I step up, relaxed, with my sunglasses, my black suit, my just-extinguished cigarette. I mildly put forward my case, and not unsympathetically, that i had heard from interested parties, the friends of the plaintiff, that the said plaintiff (and here i ask the judge to excuse the lapse into the vernacular) puts it about a bit.

This causes a furore among the assembled press, whose camera lenses constitute the only real arbiter and judge. One outraged woman reporter bitterly fires a question at me: "Weren't you young once? Didn't you go out and have fun when you were her age?" I concede the point, mildly, diffidently: "Of course".

The mythical trial on the doubledecker bus. A show that never got commissioned, that was dropped after the first pilot. But someone has to fight in the corner of the driver, who is incommunicado in Belize.

suburban garden

Then, the suburban summer back garden.

K. comes home from work and asks what i've been doing all day in the garden. "I had visitors. Meg came to visit. She sat with her legs curled under her, occasionally shifting to a cross-legged, hippyish position. Very shy, not saying much, smoking fags. Now and then though she smiled pleasantly. She has a beautiful face, i've often thought, round, modest, full of acceptance. I can see her there in her white top, stubbing out a fag.

But i was nervous and, attracted to Meg as i am, i was anxious to impress her. Restless i paced to and fro in the garden, now and then clutching or circling a washingline post unhappily. In an effort to impress her with my erudition and depth i hummed an old folk air, "Fordell Ball". She eyed me curiously, with an air of toleration, smoking a fag.

But then her brother Jack showed up. He looked immediately suspicious, paranoid, and ill at ease, grimly frowning beneath a large, floppy hat, and with a goatee and straggly black hair. He sat on the bench with an impatient eye on Meg, and, all too soon, had conceitedly whisked her off to another engagement.

But i wasn't lonely long, for, later, Britney came, and similarly sat in the grass with her legs curled beneath her. No makeup and with her hair carelessly tied back, chewing gum, her light voice, with it's rolling southern drawl, passing earthily from mundane reflections on the vagaries of life to naive flashes of humour or joy. In contrast to the silence of Meg, Britney starts up a monologue, and her style is very southern back porch philosophical, interrupted by yawns and platitudes, mundane complaints, or the beeping of her cellphone..."

suburban home

Back to my beloved suburban bedroom. The upstairs front master bedroom with its solid bow windows, so suggestive of calm and rest. You can even climb on the roof, the pinkish tiles, sit there and meditate on life looking out over the rooftops, a very relaxing place to be. Very private too. A place where can be seen, the broiling sun going down behind the far purple mountain top, illuminating briefly its august crags, or diverse weather conditions, glimpses of sun between drifting cloud, flashes of inspiration... and beneath stretch the polite and empty suburbs.

Where in drippy autumns i can invade discarded master bedrooms. It's instructive to measure the proportions of the casements to bolster your sense of ownership. Balance on the radiator, your fingertips clawing at the top of the sturdy windowframe, the trusty double glazing. If you swing it open you can see reflected the familiar sleepy street, but in reverse of course so it looks like someone else's street, someone else's slumbering driveways and chimneys and rainwashed tiles. Then when almost shut the mirrored surface, smooth and clear as a real mirror, shows an unexpected reflection; straight into next door's master bedroom, where the woman of the house is sitting. Outside black night has fallen, making the few lighted suburban bedroom windows blaze like so many jewels in the dark. She's a sturdy suburban brunette, she hunkers down by the bed to read the instructions of some self-assembly desk she's received. I see her thick white brastrap fall from out of her sleeveless top and remain against her plump upper arm, her face concentrating. My hand inches toward my fly.

Until i lose my balance and fall off the radiator.

O autumnal somnolent suburbs, plush-carpeted bedrooms, yellow lights in windows isolated amongst blackness, where the voyeurs stumble...

Boys on the Bus

On the bus, two boys are contending:

"Ye'd huv tae get past me. And that's a hard hing tae dae."

"Pit it this wey: I could batter anybody fae here or Ballingry. The only person i'm no sure aboot is Davey Gow. That's one hard cunt.

The last time i was up in Ballingry i goat jumped. Ah ken who it was eh, it was Davey Gow. We were walkin up the road and they started followin us. Ran after us.

He was pure screamin and greetin. They goat him on the groond and started kickin him in the heed."

"Fuck sake."

(later) "I've got a wee razor in my pocket".

Now talkin about someone else: "He's a fanny anywey. Wee fag. He's a poof".

"We were in the adventure playground, ken by that big wooden hing, an he was bein cheeky eh, so i ran up an smacked him.

He fell on the groond, and he went: "Ye dinnae hiv to bang me, like!" (this in terrified, crying tones) So i smacked him again."

"What age was he then?"

"...primary five..."

(later) "He's quite hard actually. He gave me a brilliant fight the last time."

(The way they talk, their excitement, it's as though violence has taken the place of sex. They never indulge in sextalk with the same level of exhilaration.)