finishing alice

"Well, Mr Snuggles," I say to a waistcoated hedgehog, in a sing-song baby voice that makes me want to throttle myself, "I think we have real star quality here in Alice." I pick up a different toy. "But how, Tobias Turtle, are we going to get her properly out of her shell?"

Alice's explanation of the Electromagnetic Spectrum differs from Einstein's

Marilyn Monroe, I tell her, was just a girl from the country to begin with. At my place over the last few days, I've been corrupting Alice with VHS. And we've been to see Batman. I've even (risky) taken her to the Curzon to see a Truffaut film. I get her to take the ribbon out of her hair and wear it down. I encourage her to make sexy starlet poses.

Then I tell her my cousin is a film-maker. I say I've told him all about her: Her...freshness, her vivaciousness, her individuality, (her gawky retard version of a 'come hither' look), her joie de vivre. I think I can get her a screen test. I can't promise anything beyond that. Truth is, she'd been simmering for a while before I came along. She was ready to melt.

Back at base, her virginity overcome, I feel obliged to complete the job and get her that screen test. I've just been on the phone to an 80 Marlboro voice from "Wet n Wild Films". She's booked in for next Tuesday.

more wanky poetry

Stacy's mum's first draft of her love poem to her boyfriend, Roger.

They have all set sail
For other shores
And here am I
a smuggler's cove
worn to dust
A wide expanse
A sad beach

They plundered me
and I thought
I was a wreck

until you came
with your smart parley
and your charm to the britches
with eyes that spoke honesty

and now we have cleared up
that misunderstanding
about your secretary
and the cleaner
and the girl next door
and the au pair
and Judith
(Silly me! but you know how it looked
with her in only her bra)
and the interior designer I forget her name
and that lying cow from the Drum and Bush
and Alison
and Phoebe
and the girl from the newsagents

I realise
I have found a good man
at last.

alice

Alice is new to the sixth form, just moved from a tiny village. I think she has only ever read about towns in a book. She's never seen them on TV - they don't have one.

Alice believes all thoughts turn into butterflies

I've decided to take her under my wing. I took her around some of the sights, booking in the process a backstage pass to her bedroom, a place so frilly and virginal it would make Laura Ashley puke.

Alice introduced me to her teddy bears individually. I shit you not. Introductions over, I told her that there was something special about her, that she had a freshness, something different, a real aura, presence, a stellar personality... if only she cast off her shyness. I told her that I was in awe of her, charmed, captivated.

She looked at me in amazement with her big blue saucer eyes, never blinking once. Tongue tennis and a squeeze of her breast is a start. She's a work in progress.

wanky diddler

I didn't mind camping with Stacy, or her mong friend Simon, since Stacy was supplying the drugs and Simon the four-person tent. Trish, however, turned out to be intolerable.

Her babygurgling over every creature as "kur-YEWWT" (duckies/ickle sparrows/puppy with adORAbibble eyesiwies/birdiekins having an ickle bathy-wath) was bad but dismissable,

Cute lambs. After the first hundred thousand, the novelty starts to wear off.

her jolly insistence on a game of I-Spy during the slightest moment's silence was annoying but bearable, her half-hearted non-effort in putting up the tent or washing up or collecting firewood was infuriating but overcomeable, her enthusiastic squelchy masturbation each night was nearly as amusing as it was awkward, and her treatment of Simon as non-existent was merely an accurate reflection of his charismatic presence (and, in fact, it was her one redeeming point: her non-exchanges with Simon and his subsequent annoyance providing a little amusement). But the endless mentions of Gerald near drove me to murder.

A Trish story about Gerald would be cued by almost any mundane event, such as rain, and would proceed as follows:

"This reminds me of the time I was camping with Gerald. And it started to rain. Well, wouldyoubelieveit he touched the side of the tent even though I told him not to and we got wet. Then we did something, I don't remember... O yes that's right: We played I-Spy with my little eye something beginning with w which was water and that is so Gerald well we laughed and laughed it was so funny I tell you that's Gerald all over."

Gerald (Artist's impression)

Her Gerald stories would end with her donkey porn laugh and there would be a nanosecond of silence before she told another Gerald story, most of which involve I-Spy; or she would suggest a game of I-Spy here and now. One day she was going to put all her Gerald stories in a book, and everyone would buy a copy, and then, having read one to two stories, swallow their own eyeballs to prevent themselves accidentally reading any more.

Day six, and we were driving through the village of Big Shitting, which is distinguised from Little Shitting by the fact it has a large shop cum post office. "Aww look at the ker-YEWT ickle lambikins" said Trish, not for the first time, as we passed a field identical to a thousand others. Trish had to stop to get a stamp and post a letter (I think it was literally one letter) to or about Gerald - who was on a French exchange or got shot during the 1919 uprising or was tragically crushed by a camel while liberating the arabs.

Trish went into the large shop while we waited in the car. After a couple of minutes I said "I spy with my little eye something begin with F."

"Freedom!" I shouted, while accelerating out of there.

Stacy wouldn't talk to me for fifteen minutes.

wanky trip

So I passed my driving test. Some mong friend of Stacy's asks if I will take him for a ride. Stacy can't come because she's crocheting bodywarmers for orphaned ladybirds.

I'm actually quite happy to drive around for as long as he wants, so when he says he wants to take some acid that's okay by me. I make sure I am driving very slowly past Highgate Cemetery when he's coming up. When we hit town again I turn the radio on and wait for the news.

		"Shit. Oh my fucking god." I half-scream, "Can you believe that?" "Believe what?" "We're at war with Russia. Perestroika, Glasnost... it was all a trick. Gorbachev - You bastard." "What?"

"Weren't you listening to the news? Yeah. It's all fucked, man."
I lean back and hit the steering wheel hard.
"SHIT!"
"Calm down, dude." he says
"Calm down? Calm down? The Russians, dude. War!"
"Really?"
"We could have just minutes left," I say, "Everything you see - all the cars all the shops, this carriageway, this car, us... it could all be dust by nine o' clock... Shit!"

We stop at the lights.

"Buddy, do me a favour," I say, "Just give me a quick hug, will you? Good to know you. Really. I'm sorry."

I pull away from the lights and let that sink in for a bit. I glance at him. He's frantically chewing a shoe lace. He's still wearing the shoe.
"There's only one thing to do" I say eventually.
His eyes are popping out of his head now. He's at Defcon One.
"What? WHAT??!!"
"Drive to Las Vegas" (We're in Stoke Newington now).
"Yeah!"
"The spinning wheel! Round and round! Yeah! Faster! Faster!"
"Yeah! Wooo!"
"We'll put it all on red."
He looks worried again.
"Why red?"
"Your blood."
"What? What about my blood?"
"It's turning black."
He's clawing at his skin.
"WHAAT?"
"It's okay. Don't freak. We'll just put it all on black instead. We can't lose."
"Oh. Of course."

Oh yes. We've got all night, my lovely. All night.

no wanky elephant

Saw xxxxxxxxxx today. She was with the motorbike guy. He's so gormless. They're an accident waiting to happen. She said it was nice to see me. Was it? It's not as if I was spinning plates or making an elephant disappear. Did she mean that my mere image on her retina causes her mild pleasure? If so, why is she with the motorbike guy?

If I could make an elephant disappear, I would disappear it up the motorbike guy's arse. I'd like that. Not a lot...

I'd send Paul Daniels there too. And all the evils of the world. Jim Bowen. Jim Davidson. Stan Boardman. Tarby. Nice to see you to see you nice. At least Brucie will be dead by the end of the century.

wanky birthday to you

If your mum is a hippy, you don't get a Mega Drive for your birthday. Some jewellery made of bat guano, perhaps? A giant bean curd patty? Well, Stacy got a poem. She had said she quite liked the thought of a poem, but once she had read it she left it on the table and went off crying to her room. In a way it was so you To be pushing on my bladder Kicking me from inside But I embraced the natural way of the cosmos You put me in touch with the agony-ridden she-wolf and the sadness of the moon I pictured the face of Ganesh As I pushed you from my uterus You were angry wrinkled blue covered in cheese but I forgave you I see you now and think of that sickly bug-eyed pale thing suckling my teat and I wish your hair would behave but you are more than looks to me

The megadrive Stacy didn't get for her birthday

wanky moon

The moon hung heavy over Camden Town. It was a night to lighten with alcohol. Stacy was fawning over me and introducing me to some people made of wool. She told them I was her boyfriend. All I had said to her was I would stay the night (Her mum was away), on the condition that she burned no joss-sticks. Some ridiculously lusty but crusty farmer girl who I wanted immediately to wash at low temperature (although I certainly was not inclined to handle with care) was telling us how we made a lovely couple.

The moon

I knocked the edges off this low-soap world with shots of vodka until even the farmer girl didn't seem too badly in need of a bath. Somehow I wandered off down the canal and she was there too and then we were fucking by the side of the lock. Once wasn't enough for her, and I couldn't smell anything after eight or nine shots, so we went on a fucking tour of the borough's squares and graveyards. If there was a bush and a patch of a grass, we fucked there. Every time we crawled out of the bushes, the full moon was there, now not so heavy but rather like one of her full creamy breasts, reminding me to forget all about Stacy and do it again at the next bush.

I don't know how late it was by the time she leapt onto a night bus. Now alone, I remembered I was staying at Stacy's. When I got to her hippy hovel there was no answer. Her front door has a stained glass panel, of The Great Elephant Giving Birth To The Universe (or something), so I knocked a piece of glass through. It smashed pleasantly on the hall floor. I pushed my hand through the elephant's womb up to the wrist but I still couldn't quite reach the lock. After a few minutes I gave up.

This morning, Stacy called round. She said someone had tried to break into her house before she got back from the pub. She was worried and wished I was there. I told her it's okay I'm here now, and not to bother calling the police because it was obviously just some opportunist.

wanky bands

Saw a few bands at the Highbury Garage last night. Most of them were forgettable shapes in T-Shirts singing about how floppy their fringe was. The only notable ensemble were called Manic Street Preachers. A bunch of Welsh boys all punked up. Punk and glam. Lots of eyeliner. Well, sort of a cross between punk and glam and Mrs Slocombe:



I liked their attitude. They were sneering at the other bands (Actually, maybe it's just because they've never seen non-Welsh people before) and they jumped about the stage like they were the best band ever. They have one really good song, about a motorbike.

The lead singer said they were the only "real" band there. Maybe so, but in some hilarious alternate reality of their worst nightmare they'll sell out and end up as a blue-jeaned stadium pop band. A Welsh Simple Minds, raking in the cash with anthems that fit well to DIY adverts. Music to buy a sofa to. That kind of thing.

Not likely, but amusing to imagine.

pisces*

When I was ten our teacher, who had the kind of craft earrings that set off alarms in rational minds at five leagues distance, asked us to write horoscopes. My parents were called into the school over my entry for Pisces. I'll just give you the summary: "...All in all, it's such a bad time for Pisces you might as well kill yourself."

Like many people, my teacher could not distinguish healthy satire from genuine advice. As it turned out, she was a Pisces.

Hippies. Never were a good idea, and never will be.


* Esperanto for "wanky"