NB: Episode 13 will be posted in January. Merry Xmas!
Monday:
In approaching my dotage, I seem to have become a creature of habit. That is not to say that many of my days are completely ordered or free from outbursts of chaos and farce, but I have settled into a routine of sorts. One of these is to go online to have a go at the Guardian cryptic crossword as I eat my breakfast and before I venture out to get The Times. Today’s crossword has an advertisement running alongside it inviting members of the public to consider a career with MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service. I’m sure that they are looking for bright young Oxbridge things, who speak ten languages and can complete The Times crossword while they’re brushing their teeth. However, I think they could be missing a trick here. There is a group of people who probably have many of the qualities that the spooks are seeking: Musicians of a certain age.
Most of us have spent a lifetime frequently re-inventing ourselves and practicing the art of deception. Having dished it out for most of our lives, we can spot bullshit at a hundred paces and we have a keen eye for a bounder, since many of us fall into this very category. Lurking comes naturally to us after years spent doing fuck all in dressing rooms, the backs of Transit vans and cheerless provincial pubs. With a long track record of infidelity and sexual shenanigans, we might be less susceptible to the blandishments of a femme fatale, than a newly-minted graduate, whose experience might be limited to a hurried knee trembler behind the college library.
There are, however, some caveats to my idea. Guitarists might not be suitable as they are generally poor listeners and discretion is not always their forte. Similarly, drummers might not be suited to intelligence work. But probably the biggest drawback to using any musicians in MI6 is that they are without exception terrible gossips, back-stabbers and fantasists, who can never keep a secret. On the other hand, given the history of leaks, traitors and double agents in the intelligence services, these might be the very qualities that they are looking for.
Tuesday:
A curious incident this evening. Just as I’m settling down with a glass or two, there’s an insistent knocking at my door. I open it and there’s a young woman, probably in her mid-twenties staring at me. For a moment she says nothing and I realise that she’s clearly a lid short of a jack-in-the-box. She’s wearing make-up, but it looks as though she applied it in the dark. She also has one eye which appears much larger than the other. I ask her what she wants. The large eye swivels through one hundred and eighty degrees.
‘Winston sent me,’ she says.
I tell her that I don’t know anyone living called Winston and that she must have the wrong flat.
‘Don’t fuck with me, granddad,’ she says. ‘I’ve got the money. OK?’
Now she not only looks crazy, but also as menacing as a scrap yard Alsatian. I slam the door and double lock it from the inside. She bangs on the door a few more times and then, thankfully, there’s silence. Perhaps she’s one of the disreputable characters that Jason, the community cop, warned me about, or an undercover talent scout for MI6.
Wednesday:
I decide to try out the idea of having a very low calorie day. I breakfast on a hard-boiled egg and a banana and feel quite pious until mid-morning, when my stomach rumbles and I’m already anticipating lunch. By midday, I’m feeling faint, but I’m resolved to see it through. Lunch is a small apple and a plain yogurt which does nothing to assuage my hunger pangs. Now there’s the yawning gap of the afternoon to cope with. By two o’clock, I’m already fantasising about roast dinners and bacon sandwiches. By four o’clock, I’m ready to climb the walls. I’d be hopeless as a hunger striker, but I manage to hang in there until dinner, which is a poached chicken breast and some foliage. Now the evening yawns before me. No alcohol, of course, so I drink lots of water. Eventually, I go to bed feeling emaciated and waterlogged and dream of cream cakes, over-ripe Brie and boisterous pies. In the middle of the night, I rise in a trance-like state and wipe out the day’s abstinence with a cheese and pickle sandwich. I can only imagine that X-rays like Victoria Beckham and Paris Hilton have only maintained their sylph-like appearance because they have never eaten or enjoyed real food, or they’re bulimic.
Thursday:
A dark, grumpy day as I realise that I inflicted unnecessary suffering on myself yesterday. This mood is compounded when I go to my car and find a parking ticket on it. The back wheels were about half a metre over a yellow line, but in this sleepy neighbourhood, this has never been an issue and I have never seen a parking warden. I look at the ticket and see that it’s been issued by none other than Kryten, the bone-headed cop who lives in my block. In high dudgeon, I knock on his door. His wife, the Mouse, answers and I demand to see her husband. He comes to the door, looking smug.
‘What’s the meaning of this?’ I ask, brandishing the ticket. ‘I was only half a metre on a yellow line.’
‘The law’s the law,’ he tells me. ‘I can’t make exceptions, even for neighbours.’
I can feel myself losing it, probably because I’m still half-starved from yesterday’s experiment in calorie deprivation.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ I say. ‘It’s not as if I’m causing any obstruction.’
He stiffens and begins to caution me for using abusive language. Even in my temper, I can see that this might escalate and I could find myself on the wrong end of his boot at best, or living on bread and water in a place far removed from my comfort zone at worst. I tell him that I’ll appeal.
‘Good luck, sunshine,’ he says.
I go to the minimarket in high dudgeon. Satan’s Sister, the ghoulish assistant is filling a stand with masks, witches’ hats and various Halloween junk. Christ it’s over a month away. I’m surprised that they don’t combine it with Christmas. I try to avoid her eye, but she stops what she’s doing.
‘Hello, Dearie. Don’t forget to order your pumpkin,’ she cackles.
She has a strange green pallor and I notice that she has several rotting teeth. Given my bad humour, it’s all I can do to stop myself asking her if she’s already entering into the spirit of things.
Friday:
Another pub gig. I don’t know why I continue to punish myself playing a load of old shit. There’s only so much one can do with unremitting twelve bars and a cloth-eared guitarist, but I cop fifty quid and manage to stay off the booze. I correct this when I return home and make friends with a rather nice Cotes du Rhone. I sleep like a calorie-rich baby.
Saturday:
Listening to the radio this morning, I learn that an American drone strike has killed a large number of villagers attending a wedding in some remote corner of northern Pakistan. The Americans claim that among the dead were high ranking members of the Taleban. These drones are small pilot-less aeroplanes that can carry a lethal payload of missiles. The targets are selected by the CIA and approved by the President. They are “flown” remotely by ex-air force pilots from top secret locations in the United States.
I imagine such a pilot; let’s call him Chuck, leaving his home one morning for a day at the office. He’s replete with a good breakfast of a stack of pancakes, eggs over-easy and a toasted muffin, all containing more calories perhaps than any one his potential victims might consume in a week. As he leaves the house, he pecks his wife on the cheek and manages to catch the newspaper hurled by the local paperboy as he speeds past on his bike.
‘Attaboy, Dwayne. Nearly got that one past me,’ he shouts after the retreating lad.
Chuck stops by the local gas station and fills up his car, bemoaning the fact that despite gasoline costing roughly a third of what it costs in most other countries on the planet, the price has risen by half a cent. He buys a pack of chewing gum, because it helps him concentrate at work. Arriving at the former air force base where he works, he passes a dilapidated sign that reads, “Pardon our noise –it’s the sound of Freedom”, a reminder of the days when fighter jets and bombers once screamed down the runways.
He checks in with security and proceeds to his office, which apart from an armed guard at the entrance, could easily be mistaken for a small call centre, or a lawyer’s office. His colleague, Buck, is already stationed before his computer. Like Chuck, he’s a former fighter pilot.
‘Reaper in the air, Chuck,’ he says. ‘Looks like we got ourselves a live one.’
Chuck fires up his computer and is soon seeing a mountainous landscape through the eyes of the drone now flying at some thirty thousand feet above Waziristan and some seven thousand miles from where he is sitting. He and Buck check their orders and lock the target into the drone’s on-board computer. The also arm the Reaper missile in preparation for launch. Buck chews on some gum and belches, momentarily re-tasting the ersatz maple syrup with which he had earlier garnished his pancakes.
Meanwhile, in the village nearly five miles beneath the drone, preparations for the wedding are completed. Small boys in their best clothes are trying to stampede a herd of goats, one of whose number has recently been slaughtered for the wedding feast. Another boy, about the same age as Dwayne, the paperboy, flies a kite that is garlanded to mark the coming festivities. The guests most of whom will later be described as “collateral damage”, have assembled for the ceremony. There may well be some among them who are regarded as a threat to the Free World, but for the most part these are people gathered together for the simplest of reasons. Just as the good folks of Chuck’s town might do.
The ceremony is completed and the guests set about having a good time. The small boys, now hiding under the trestle tables, steal sweets that are reserved for later. Old men spit in the dust and bemoan the passing of the old ways, just as their counterparts anywhere else in the world might do on such occasions. As is the custom hereabouts, the women are separated from the men and they giggle, gossip and confirm for each other the secret primacy of their sex and the foolishness of men. Above them all, the drone is poised like a dispassionate buzzard waiting to stoop. As a robot it has no consciousness, knows no mercy, or the niceties international law. It merely awaits instruction, like a Starbuck’s coffee machine.
Chuck and Buck cross reference their authorisation codes. Chuck, using an index finger that he might absently have used to pick his nose on his way to work, launches the Reaper missile, which costs more than its eventual victims could collectively earn in a lifetime. They watch as the missile hurtles toward its target. When it explodes, they exchange high fives and decide that they deserve a coffee after this blow for democracy, the War on Terror and nation building.
Only the boy flying the kite survives the blast. He lets go of the string and the kite flutters skyward with his dreams.
O, brave new world
Sunday:
A pub lunch with an old girlfriend. We meet from time to time and marvel that we’re still above ground. We once loved each other passionately, but now that we’re past that destructive madness, we boast about our children and grandchildren. Our waitress is Polish and very attractive. I sip my sparkling water and ponder, as old men do when they are no longer a threat.
© David Sherrington 2012 All rights reserved.
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