Man: Twitter isn’t all I’d hoped it would be. Nor is the internet. I wasn’t all that impressed with the Library of Congress, Paris in the Spring or the animals of the African Savannah. I think the splendours of The American West are over-rated. I didn’t feel the awe I was promised I would in Machu Picchu because it’s too hot down there and the authorities haven’t provided enough concession booths. Europe’s greatest Cathedrals were a disappointment because it was chilly out, which nobody had thought to tell me, ruining that whole expensive vacation. That Mozart dude, in my humble opinion, was just a noise-maker, an amateur. And, I fully expect the new iPhone to be crap.

Woman: Oh sweetie! Poor you!

Man: It has all left me feeling archly superior towards my fellow man. My doctor told me yesterday she thinks I have “Appreciation Deficit Disorder with features of Inflated Expectations Syndrome” brought on by a privileged life of instant-gratification in which I am bombarded by impossibly idealised images and of a sense of my own entitlement to have other people exceed my every possible demand. Which means it’s all other people’s fault.

Woman: Oh dear. I mean, is that bad? The doctor’s right, you musn’t assume any personal responsibility for this. I expect it’s your parents’ fault and the fact that your brothers all earn more than you. You can hardly be blamed for your own outlook on life in the current social climate. And besides, a vocal demand for excellence in all things is just the sign of a super-discerning personality. Introspection shows insecurity, middle-management’s taught us that, if nothing else. You musn’t beat yourself up for your attitudes, sweetie! Easy self-indulgence is our right as citizens!

Man: That’s what I thought, but apparantly it’s leading to inflammation of the scorn and supercilious glands filling me with an overwhelming sense of disappointment with everyone and everything and the doctor says it’s turning me into an Asshole. It’s a common enough condition, she tells me, mostly affecting the people who were most charmed by the banal narcissm of the L’Oreal ad for hair colour declaring “Because I’m worth it!”

Woman: Darling!

Man: I knew you’d understand but I can’t help wishing you were prettier and that our children were more easily categorised as The Cute One, The Smart One and The Funny One.

Woman: But what has she prescribed you?

Man: Talk therapy at dinner parties.

Woman: Of course. You must purge yourself of these feelings in long, rambling monologues at table with people who can’t criticise you because it’s your house. I shall arrange to have one immediately. Who would you like to ask?

Man: I don’t know. I despise almost everyone except myself and the children and occasionally you. They probably should earn less than me though. I feel like impressing someone with smug humility. Oh and I want you to have the caterers do a better job of the steaks this time. Now come here and hold me. I have a need to cry that I don’t understand and an awful revelation about myself is beginning to moulder greenly at the edges of my mind. I would rather not pay these things any attention, but rather lose myself in a fog of willful misunderstanding.

Woman (softly): Oh, baby.

One advantage of holidaying in a National Park in 100+ degree weather is that you hardly have any available body water to pee into the parks loos, the smell of which, in high summer, is nostril rape of the most brutal sort. Date nostril rape, they’d call it since you willingly went into the nose-rape situation. It’s like having your nose picked by Death.

But, even when it’s hot, now and again you have to go.

By myself I’m fine – I tiptoe in and out as quickly as possible, touching as little as possible and then a quick shuddery, jowl-juddering jog about in the fresh air to feel clean again. It’s not pleasant but, of course, I understand that to plumb every potty in the US parks system would necessarily wreck all the nature we’re there to see. I am not for wrecking nature. I am a Nice Person.
With two little girls though, it is impossible to be this cavalier and nippy. You might think that with the 3 of us in there, proceedings would take roughly 3 times as long, right? Let me disabuse you of that ridiculous notion. It takes 8 times as long. A full third of this time is spent at the door trying to persuade one or other child there won’t be a slavering bear in there (Technically, this is my my own fault, having convinced them with ghastly tales on the 250 mile journey up there, that there would be bears crouching behind every tree and bush, waiting to gobble up any nice juicy humans that the mountain lions hadn’t already picked off. I was just trying to instill a sense of nature red in tooth and claw and such! A healthy respect for wild, raw nature. God knows modern kids get veal-fed massive doses of the tender, fluffy side of nature in bowdlerised books and cartoons. (Do you know the wolf in Goldilocks no longer eats Grandma, but locks her in the cupboard, is given a stern talking to by the woodcutter and skulks off shame-snoutedly determined to address his people-eating issues?) Where’s the balance? I was aiming for savagery.

Next the small child has to be actively persuaded to use the “stinky toilet! Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!” even as she hops around with steam coming out of her ears in her desperation to pee. She wants to know what the unspeakable stains and “bits” are round the rim and down the sides, and I can’t speak of them because they are so unspeakable. We all know what they are but it takes PC2 to say it.

“Poo! It’s Poo! Eeeeew!

By now, I have broken my own promise not to look – my vow to notice anything, everything in that chamber of horrors apart from the diabolical throne itself. My own horror kicks in as I envision my sweet, pinkly clean(ish) children clambering around over a hole easily large enough to swallow them whole. Whole and forever – because I sure as hell amn’t jumping in there to save them.

And then I realise I would jump in after them, of course I would, and it becomes all the more important to prevent them from even touching the filthy thing. The thought of them being anywhere near the excreta of 78 year old Mr I’ve Just Eaten Iowa with his surgical-support hosiery, his acres of leisure-shorts and his troubled expression, who has just exited the loo a moment before, fills me with bilious dread. I look at the toilet and before my eyes it turns into a heaving, seething mass of writhing germs, fanged bacilli, horned spirulae and streptococcal flanges. The walls move. The floor is alive with slithery treacherous pathogens. I command one girl to stand in the corner with her hands out in front so she doesn’t touch anything, and I hoist 40lb of other daughter up and hover her over the steaming mouth of hell.

We wait.

“What do you mean you can’t go?

“I can’t!”

“OK, we’ll try you again in a minute then. Problem Child 2, your turn.”

Problem Child 2 has both hands clamped over her nose. The temperature in the wee-wee hut is somewhere in the low
100s and the stench from the toilet pit is eye-watering.

I tell her to have a stout heart and hover PC2 over the loo. She goes! I sort her out and try again with PC1 who is now gagging convulsively and goose-bumpily, despite the infernal heat. We try again and this time she accomplishes the mission. Oh God, nearly there! My turn and then…! Then we three flee out into the sunshine running around with exaggerated shivering and Ministry Of Silly Walks bounding, shrieking with glee that the monstrous toilet chasm didn’t suck us alive. Bears! Where are you? You don’t scare us any more! For we have seen true horror. We have looked into the vilest void, the filthiest fumarole in the Sierras and lived to tell the tale.

I Purell the bejeezus out of our hands and we hike on. I think fondly of camping in good old Scotland where we just went behind a bush.

Now, by and large, park loos are fine, perfectly adequate and I’ve caught more germs from hospital canteens. But this little hut was the putrid anus of a kebab-sick dragon. When I think of all the bottoms that have swung over that yawning pore of hell – the sunken cadaverous cheeks, the vast dimpled buttocks, the smooth flat sheets of rear, I run and run through the extraordinary woods, the dappled sunlight with its lazy motes of forest fluff, the sweet good air and I thank God in His heaven for Mr Armitage and Mr Shanks.

But this isn’t just a post about lavs. No this is an existential post about lavs. For if three people pee in the woods and nobody hears them scream, did it really happen?

Glee! Great glee is upon our heads in a tongues-of-fire Pentecostal painting type way, but with fewer beards and more blasphemy. We’re going on our hols tomorrow, folks!

This will be the first family holiday we’ve had where we’re not visiting relatives or bound to any special timetable or obligations. Not that we haven’t enjoyed those in the past, but for the next few days it will be just the unbidden 4 of us in Yosemite and King’s Canyon and I can’t wait.

The girls are of an age now where they can appreciate a whole lot more and can last a whole day’s out-and-abouting without getting too tired or grouchy. Even just last year, at 5, there would have been over-wearied tears before mid-afternoon, far less bedtime. Off on Tuesday, back weekendyish. It’s not too far away – 6 hours or so by car – but a world apart with places and things I can’t wait to show the chidders.

My main problem will be keeping the problem-husband from adhering to too rigid a schedule. His “Print” -button finger is itching to print out itineraries and ETAs and all manner of confuddling unnecessaries. I’m sure he’ll do it anyway, in private, with his office door shut, feeling seedy and ashamed at his lack of lack of control.

He’s a lovely man in a million and six different ways but also a “Right! Seen it! Chop-chop! Back in the car and onto the next thing a mere 4 hours away!” sorta fella. Efficient. I’m more of an idler and a snooper and a long, long walker. In hols past, his way has usually won out because I couldn’t really think of any better reason to deny him getting in all he wanted to see, other than a vague “Oooh, just a wee while longer!”. Don’t be thinking of me as any type of a pushover though! Phthoo! We have a deal that if one of us feels much more strongly than the other about something then we’ll do that. I feel strongly about not leaving milk out on the counter and that oregano makes everything worse etc., and he obliges me so it all pans out.

This time, with the kids along, we’ll be forced to slow it down a good deal. Hoo-ambling-ray!! And there’ll be a whole lot more piddle-stops. Whoop-de-bladder-relieving-doo!!! Not that I’d use my children as tools against my husband in a matter as fundamental and sacred as our holidaying styles – Nopety-nope. Not me. Certainly not. But on this trip, I reckon he’ll want to take it all a little easier too.

See you in a bit, then. Have a happy week, you non-vacationing unfortunates hahaha! all.

Be good, and if you can’t be good, please blog all the details.

Look! Donald Trump visited his mammy’s old house in Lewis! And it’s in papers other than the Stornoway Gazette!

Fame! Fame beyond our wildest dreams! God, I hope we comb our hair before the tourist hordes arrive. And tidy up the sheep mooching around all over the place. Oh God, what’ll we give them to eat? Do you think, you know – being Americans – they’d like homemade millionaire’s shortbread or would anything less than billionaires shortbread be insulting? Will we just play it safe with a nice selection of Mr. Kiplings, then? It’s so hard to know the customs of peoples who aren’t from our immediate surroundings, people from the mainland and beyond(!), people called exotic names like Sarah and Adam.

Should we talk up our famous son, The Donald? Ah, right you are, we probably shouldn’t mention him too much. Jeez though, what’ll we do with them on Sunday? There’s nothing open for a cup of tea even. Maybe we can sneak them into the Sea Angling club before the seminary’s out and feed them there. We could have people on alert with walky-talkies outside the churches to make sure stray coorumachs aren’t sneaking out early and seeing us.

O mo chreach! My nerves! Quick! Where’s the hoover? Will somebody please put these sheep in a box or something! The hordes won’t know about sheep in the road and that’s just plain dangerous because tourists are known to drive awfully fast. The last thing we want is dead hordes on our hands. They can’t spend any money if
they’re in the belly of a plane on the way home for their funerals now, can they? And in these times of credit-crunch and rocketing food and oil prices we need to impress the money right out of their foreign wallets, into our hollowed out bibles and then straight under the mattress with them. We can count it when they’re gone. But if Lewis is to make it through another winter, we need to impress like the wind this summer, Sunny Jim. Like the gale force 10 wind. The impressing is all!

Right. What else? I know I’ve forgotten something, I know it. Oh hey, maybe we could get the council to pretend they don’t really tie up the swings on Sunday just til the season’s over. There’s no need for visitors to know a thing like that. We don’t want them thinking we’re backward and joy-killing. Ooooooooooh! I know! We should sell miniature standing stones with money off and a free beanie-baby midgie if you buy the whole Callanish set! Oh, we do that already? Huh.

Run over to the mainland for some arugula and cherry tomatoes, would you? Holidaying masses love them. And don’t tell Skye or Ullapool who they’re for otherwise they’ll be over here nosing before you can say “Holy timely
economic uptick, Batman.” If they ask, just say it’s because we’re trying out a new Delia recipe. And leave your shoes at the back door when you get back. I’ll have hoovered from Ness to Luskentyre by then and I don’t want your muddy footprints all over before they start arriving.

Oh and stop at the co-op for some bottles. They’ll spend more if they’ve had a few. And if they’re hooched up a bit maybe they won’t notice the crapped-out buses-turned-greenhouses in people’s gardens. There are always a few who let us all down. You know who I’m talking about. Never mind. We’ll just drive past these houses extra quick and point out the other side to the glorious beaches or the quaint black-houses, whatever. We’ll have to remember our “quaint“s and “glorious”es. And we’d best throw in a good few “authentics” and “it’s not catching, honest, it’s just a hereditary skin condition”ses.

Oh heck! I’d better give the rooms a good airing and put fresh sheets on the beds. So much to do!! Isn’t it
exciting! You know if Lewis can pull this off and woo all these international Donald fans, soon we’ll be able to go to Inverness and buy as many Mark’s And Spencer’s frozen meals as we can carry back on the ferry! We’ll be living like kings!

*Runs off to find duster and Pledge.*

The Library

Dramatis Personae:
A love-struck boy
A girl
Dr. James D’Iago
4 Security men

ACT ONE: The library. Boy and Girl present.

BOY: All my heart is torn asunder by your cold, indifferent heart! Why must you toy with me like some cruel seagull toys with a lamb’s eyeball? Can’t you see I’m dying for love? Can’t you see I’m slain? I’m almost dead now but I just have time for a few more reproachments with my last breaths.

(Sinks to knees)

Oh, girl, so frosty in your looks! So wintry in your heart – the icicles on your wintry one are as daggers unto my soft purplish one. Look! What have you here? “The Waves”. Such a chilly title.

(Shudders)

GIRL: Look, I don’t know who you are, but if you don’t go away immediately I am calling the police.

BOY: Don’t pretend it never happened! You can’t deny it! You caught my eye over by Tolstoy and at Byron you
shyly smiled recognition of our twin-souls destiny entiwined together in both soulful and bodily ways.

GIRL: Eew! No! You were staring at me like a madman at Tolstoy, and by Byron I was grimacing recognition of an utter looney. Grimacing.

BOY: But I saw you weep with the ache of desire outside the Ladies!

GIRL: My contact lens fell out. Look, I won’t tell you again – piss off, you freak!

BOY: Oh ho-ho, you saucy minx. I was reading about this “playing hard to get” convention of young ladies over in the Dewey 100s yesterday. Dewey! Just as your eyes are dewy; 100s! Just as you’re 75 years younger than. Oh it’s all falling into place!

(Reeling for joy)

I am revived by your freshness in these complex games of love! You have saved my life! Come! Let’s go to a meadow
I know and walk together talking of tears and sorrows and unloved rabbits whom nature has cursed with crooked,
laughable ears, but whose hearts are all of gold!

GIRL: Hey, let go of me!

(A brief struggle)

Security! Security!

ENTER SECURITY AND SYRINGE WIELDING DOCTOR

(A scuffle)

EXEUNT SECURITY AND BOY, SLUMPED.

DOCTOR: Don’t worry miss, this fellow is known to us. He won’t be bothering you any more. He won’t be bothering
any young ladies any more.

GIRL (startled): Oh hey, look! Don’t be too hard on him. I mean, he was a pain but… Where are you taking him anyway? What was in that syringe?

DOCTOR: “Anti-Love Potion Number 6.” Developed by myself et al. for use on earnest, sensitive males in the Arts Faculty. By eventually getting all the girls about 10 years after graduation when they’ve stopped being so insufferable, they perpetuate their kind and make it harder for the progeny of young male scientists and computer engineers to be born. Society needs quantity-surveyors and business-managers, not art.

GIRL: What do you me…? – Blimey, did you really just say “et al.”?

(Aside) What a tosser!

Wait, Doctor – what is your name? You’re not with the university are you? Who are you? Doctor! DOCTOR…!

EXIT DOCTOR LEAVING LIBRARY DOORS SWINGING… The GIRL LOOKS DOWN AND FINDS A CARD ON TOP OF HER BOOKS.

Girl (reading):
“Call me! Dr.James D’Iago. PhD (psyc). Entrepeneur and Outstanding Graduate in the Department of Applied Psychiatry (2006) “More looneys binned than with medication alone!” (The Daily Mail)
Are you a successful but dull man struggling to get a date? Call for reasonable rates on Arts-student removal from the gene pool. Get ‘em now, while they’re easy to institutionalize! Also binning enthusiastic science-faculty males, charismatic math-boy majors and rogue cool engineers, starting in July.”

(Turns card over. Reads)

“Dinner tonight? 8pm. My place – Basement flat, 2 Creip Street. Soundproofed for our privacy, heh-heh. Bring wine.”

(Girl flings card away)

Jesus!

THE END

Most people want to be legends in their own areas of special interest. Or lunchtimes – whichever has the most glory. Lunchtimes can be pretty damned glorious if you’re a top lunchmaker. Awards ceremonies and that.

It’s true. No matter how they may protest that “No no no, I’m very comfortable devoting long hours to my cross-stitch with not a shred of recognition, thank-you very much, even though I know by rights I should have won the state fair last year for my witty rendering: “Jesus On the Cross-Stitch“; Or how they cry “Ha! Not for ME the thrill of international acclaim for my radical new potting-shed organisational model – you can KEEP your glossy magazine features and jolly well tell these adoring Women’s Guild masses to stay right away with their flung panties and all“; No matter what they say, there is a small part of every person who cares about anything at all that would like to be noticed for something positive every now and again. Not always, but just when the subject comes up. Like:

“Well in the field of lawn-bowling, Roger, no-one has ever out-bowled the legendary Travis Tee. His blasting kisser on the respotted rink-head at the 1967 Tokyo world championships has never been equalled, has it Sheila?” And all the women in the bowling world will want Travis, and all the men will want to be him.

*

Well, it may come as a matter of some surprise to you to know that I am actually a legend. Yes, it’s true! In a very hush, hush sort of way, of course. In fact not many people know about my being a legend at all, but I choose not to hold their ignorance against them. That’s one of the things I’m legendary for.

I’m not legendary every day; it’s a part-time thing – Tuesdays and Thursdays mostly, which works out well with the girls’ schedule – but, if you are interested at all in the legendary lifestyle, here is how I go about a typically legendary day:

They say that on pale blue morns, I rise at dawn to the music of a silvery gong played by an unseen gong-player, and, as I open the curtains, all of Nature gasps at my beauty even – get this – even if I have partied-out panda eyes. For I am that freaking lovely, so they say.

Some claim I breakfast on milk-thistle omelettes and tincture of wisdom but the truth is milk-thistle makes me feel bloated and I think a good source of fibre, such as Post’s Shredded-Wheat Bite-sized, is more important first thing in the morning. Scours you out.

The next few hours of my day are shrouded in mist and mystery. All that is known is that they utterly transform me and afterwards I emerge like a Fury onto the streets to stalk and wail and frighten young and old alike.

Shall I tell you what I’m doing in these lost hours? I am getting stuck Polly Pocket’s Stable Fun accessories out of the hoover and reading news, pigeoned me from afar. (Nowadays, this means going on the internet but it wasn’t always so and I am of course, like all legends, a very great age indeed, so great that no man may tell of my age at all, without getting a good slapping for it).

These polly Pocket accessories have I been getting out of the hoover every Tuesday and Thursday for thousands of years, and it’s not bloody easy while you’re shrouded in flipping mist, I can tell you. My knuckles have been scabbed over so many times they look like ten raw baboons bums on my otherwise legendary sylphy-soft hands. This enrages me, but what enrages me more is the news and, if you can show me anything more likely than the daily news to turn a mild, minds-her-own-business-legend into a screaming roiling banshee of ferocious, earth-rupturing rage, then you must suffer from a minor sneezonal allergy for which there is, as yet, outrageously (!!!), no pharmacological relief and not even any serious bloody research into electioneering-intolerance being done…

(…And breathe… gasp through it deeply… thaaat’s it -wheeze it all out now…There we are… )

Around about lunchtime, they say, I gallop through the town on a proud, snorting pony, dressed in a lady-form suit of armour with my flaxen tresses streaming out behind me a la righteous pennants and Godly streamers and a terrible, terrible smile like a knife slash, crimson across my ashen – but still very beautiful – face. This is all true, except I’ve taken to wearing a headscarf of pattern paisley because untangling flaxen tresses for hours after an outing dothn’t become a legend much, and I’m not a rich enough to have a wood-nymph to do it for me. Legends feel the credit crunch too.

As I gallop and gallop about, the fearful people ask “Why? Why does she gallop and gallop about?” They have to – it’s in the contract for all bit-players in legends to act like morons – all very union, of course.

Anyway, I gallop and gallop, up hill and down, sparks flying from Bobbysock’s hooves and sweat flecking her withers. And I urge – oh how I urge! – the people to wake from their waking dream! Which puzzles us all as to how exactly waking from a waking dream is to be achieved. Legend has it that Bobbysocks turns and whickers “Eh?” to me right then.

Anyway, I’m still galloping, right. Scattering pamphlets about worker’s rights and registering to vote. And bit by bit, my armour comes flying off, killing unlucky cats and pigeons metally, all around me. And underneath my armour my skin is covered with tattoos of prophecies in a strange, foreign tongue known only to a very few as Pointish.

They say then that, as I streak towards the crossroads, I scream and wail such ghastly noises as would curdle the contents of both the sperm and blood-banks in the next county over’s hospital. It’s the most wounding part of my legend for this is in fact my singing voice.

At the crossroads, there gathered are villagers – some warty, some hunchbacked, some just waiting for the bus. Some villagers don’t believe in me; most do, because I bite the noses off the ones that don’t, snarling with bloody fury, as I toss my head in rage, sending noses and snot arcing through the air to catch the sun and make tragic rainbows in their dying, mucousy swan-songs.

It is said that, once the screaming is over and the noses found and put on ice for possible surgical reattachment, that I grow sad then and dismount my steed. I wander here and there softly singing snatches of songs about wildflowers and about how it’s “Hot In The City Tonight.” I might ask people solicitously about their pets or their grannies in a distracted sing-song way before seizing them by the shoulders and shaking them unhingedly until they promise me they won’t vote for John McCain. For, I vow, if they do – and if they do, I’ll know it – I shall return and flambe their babies.

Some of the old ones say that I am this way because someone tried to eat me as a baby and the memory of it still gnaws at my soul and a bit by my knee. Some say I can never be stopped, that noone should even try if they want to keep their noses. But the truth is, I just get really pissed off when I read the news some mornings.

Oh you might want to try waving amulets or garlic at me – there are some ridiculous theories out there – but only by surrounding yourself in a mound of marzipan and oregano will you ever hope to avoid my wrath when I have an ire-on in the fires of world news.

And so,the legend goes, I am doomed to repeat this embarrassing performance until the day the Isle of Lewis sinks into the sea, the sky turns blood red and I am reunited with my lost love.

But in the meantime, when it’s all done, when I have made my point and strewn my righteous pamphlets, I go home and have a legendary cup of tea.

Ha! cried the woman, Hha hhahhhahahhhahhahha! cried she with great gusty gusto, her ample bosom wheezing and squeezing out sounded air like an accordion. Bombshell she was not.

Ha! cried the bombshell from her corner. Hahahahahahahhaha, countered she with all the confidence of youth and beauty. But her hahas were wrong. All wrong, bombshell not withstanding.

Thus is beauty oft undone.

But don’t pity or despise the bombshell, nor admire or despise the unbombshell too much. For in her beautiful folly, one’s beauty was made more sad and wise: and beautiful for it; and in her scored wisdom the other’s beauty was made more triumphant and empty: and beautiful for that.

We all get a wee something, don’t we.

It is a dark night in the little town of Ojai. Some say Ojai nights are darker than nights in other places not so far off, like Santa Paula or Taft. The people that say that were called things like Lloyd and Gerard, people who have sideburns and pointy heads, people who know a thing or two.

What accounts for this extra darkness? People like Lloyd and Gerard, people who knew a thing or two, suggest it is simply an extra lack of light. But there are other people, people called Susan and Colin and they have another theory. They said something that, if it’s true, could alter the way we Ojaiwegians see our dear little town forever.

There. That got your attention, didn’t it? And if it didn’t, it should have because this could happen in your town. Or your’s. Or your’s.

They said that the town itself was making it happen. And as they laid out the evidence, a Sure Certainty of the truth in what they were saying stole over my bones and nicked my marrow boldly, and with a straw.

(I could never prove a theft like that in court, of course – it’d be pointless to try. If your versus-person, your opponent, is a sworn Sure Certainty by your own admission, you will find you don’t have a leg to stand on, my friend. Neither of your legs can be stood on and you can’t borrow another one because the fascists won’t let you. But when you try to explain that the reason you don’t have any legs to stand on is because the Defendant, that smirking Sure Certainty bastard in the dock over there, sucked the living marrow from them with a straw (with a bloody straw for Chrissakes! I mean if you made it up noone would believe you) they will say that that doesn’t matter because the Defendant is a Sure Certainty.

And you will scream because Kafka was right. And if Kafka was right you will have no other recourse as a sane human being than to try to pluck out the eyes of the court-reporter. And that will get you a big hypodermic in the bum and a new career in the drooling sector as a certifiably insane person. The institution you spend the rest of your life in will no doubt have pleasant gardens and a nice OT but you will never get over the injustice of it. And you will weave all your baskets into the shape of Sure Certainty which you will stab time and time again with your plastic spoon. You will probably end up murdering your “designated companion” nurse and that’s just not cool.)

Anyway, what the other people said – the people called Susan and Colin who knew a different kind of thing or two – was this: The extra darkness was not caused by any mere extra lack of light. No. It was caused by rare dark-emitting diodes or DEDs and the acronym there is appropriately sinister.

For you see, the last people in a town that you would suspect of evil intent on a town-wide scale, would be the committee in charge of municipal traffic. The people called George and Ursula etc. That’s what makes their scheme so diabolical. By switching half the diodes in the traffic lights from LEDs to DEDs and by using a sophisticated system of cameras and switches, the committee are able to only switch traffic lights on when a pedestrian or a car approaches. The rest of the time the DEDs are on, beaming out blackness so black it would make coal look as pale as a Polo.

But why? Why would they do this, these Georges and Ursulas? They would do it so that they could see the stars better and when people in this town want to see the stars as better as all that, it can only mean one thing. They are astrologers. Astrologers have taken over the traffic-flow committee of Ojai City Council! Now, as every astrologer in the tri-counties has his or her own full page newspaper column, they are in a position to influence us all in ways we can barely discern as we race eagerly, dressing-gowns akimbo, to our driveways every morning to see what the paper tells us the stars have in store for our signs that day.

Big deal, I hear you say. Well, what if I also told you that 9 out of 10 registered members of the American Astrological and Asshead Association (AAA) were also members of the secretive Dot-To-Dot Enthusiasts And Temperance League? You may well suppose that anybody mad enough to join a dry join-the-dot league is just mad enough to join the stars whatever twisted vision they want and to pass that on to the people in daily astrology bulletins designed to shape the world to their crackpot ends.

How else would you explain our extraordinary – one might say astronomical – per-capita consumption of services in this town pertaining to: Reiki; and crystals; and Tarot; and Sacred Goddess classes; and Guardian Angel gifts and collectibles; and “Wisdom of Loving Your Colon With Tincture of Willow Leaf” Seminars; and The Cancer-Curing Powers of Hand-Beaten Tibetan Singing-Bowls Symposia?

All of which are run by guess who? Yes! The Astrologers! The daily horoscopes are full of advice to see your chakra-prober, your herbalist etc. The power-crazed AAAA are in it at every level and they’re making a mint (of the sort that isn’t a Polo but is still sweet), and attracting even more of their kind – people called Storm and Cloud who will tell you straight out that they moved to Ojai for the lack of light pollution and ability to see the stars. All of them, all of them with a dot-to-dastardly-dot book in their fringed bags and none of them with the decency to have anything more than a decaf twig-tea at a party.

How else do you explain all these things? I ask you. They are DEDening our lives, our brains and our critical abilities with their false horoscoping and their tea-leaf-reading mumbo-jumbo. Just the other day, I found myself buying a bottle of Zen water and a sachet of “spirit-nourishing” Bliss drink. It has to stop.

Meanwhile, it’s another dark night in Ojai…

So I got to thinking about the little things tonight. But they were too little and scrabbly, and they moved too quickly and hurt the back of my eyeballs.

I thought I’d try thinking about the big things. But I couldn’t walk all the way around Love to get a really
good look at it so all I can report is that it’s kind of lumpy in some places and spiky in others. It’s many-hued. Awfully, awfully black’n'blue and achy-breaky in some bits, with electricity arcing between scuffed nerve-ending-looking things; and in others, it was more the tranquil yellows and comfy greens of an old bruise that it feels good to keep pressing. To remember the thrilling shock of the initial injury, or something. But that’s straying too far into middle-sized things and I tasked myself to think big. BIG!

The next big thing I looked at was Anger which was more of an installation art piece with forks and ankle-bones and hair-choked plug-holes. The most interesting thing about it was that I didn’t see any red in it at all and I was expecting a lot of red. It was black in the main with yellow flashes a bit like go faster stripes. Or fume faster stripes I guess they would be.

Despair was droopy and impotent looking. And the colour of a grime-smeared Band-Aid. And the smell of a municipal canteen. And the sound of nothing at all. It turns out that Despair sounds of absolutely nothing at all.

Appetites were pretty interesting. One Appetite was represented entirely by a life-sized portrait of Marlon Brando on the pigeon roof in On The waterfront.

Fear was in a room of it’s own with a smelly smell of its own seeping out from under the door. Pooeey, I noticed my nose was thinking and, congratulating myself on being so sensible as to have a provident peg to hand at all times, I walked on.

All in all and after a while, looking at the big things was giving me skelly-eyed, museum fug-head. My looking glands were over-stimulated and running low on the production of intelligent response hormone causing a scratchy sensation in my frontal lobes.

I think I’ll try thinking on the middle things from now ’til bed-time for the brain-coolingity of that. I have a splosh-glug of Chianti in a glass and I think it quite suitable to accompany my middle-things-looking, which comes with a rich cream-sauce, hinting at depth but with lively, populist flavours – like what Jon Stewart must taste like. And my choice of salad or fries.

‘Night then, cold, indifferent internet. Take it easy, ya hear? Rest up. See ya tomorrow.

What am I talking about. I’ll probably still be awake in 2 or 3 or horribly 4 hours time and possibly still peering at something essential I had to look up right away . This insomnia’s killing me. The circles under my eyes are Love-coloured, pining for unrequited Sleep, and the rest of me is grime-smeared-Band-Aid-coloured. I wonder what the collective noun for insomniacs is. Probably an unearthly wailing of insomniacs. I expect that’s it.

My erstwhile rogerer, the one I was telling you about from the British Library, in the last post, remember? Well he has been studying the Cnoctic Gospels for almost a year now and, although he is nowhere near ready to publish a paper yet, the tiny fraction of the fragments they have managed to piece back together have already revealed a startling new picture of Jesus. A picture one can well imagine the early church wanted hushed up.

For The Gospel of Peadair and The Twelve offers us a sullen, teenage Jesus, conflicted and resentful of his duties as the Son of God and rebelling in the classic way, through upsetting hairstyles and music. Mary is depicted as being at the end of her tether with him.

In a few stunning verses, unprecedented in their intimate portrayal of Jesus’s domestic life, we see the family seated around the breakfast table:

9. And the breakfast was of toast and lo the toasts were good
10. And Joseph said unto Jesus, “Arise and go forth, bring me the date preserves, for it is meet and right so to do.”
11. But Jesus spake thus unto Joseph “Thou can’st order me about! Thou aren’t my real dad!”
12. And a great hurt came into Joseph’s eyes. And it happened that Joseph did turn away and his eyes did fill with tears.
13. Then did Mary scream unto Jesus,”Thou ungrateful wee toe-rag! What hath Your “real” Father ever done for Thou? Eh?” rageth she. “Hath HE sat up lo these many nights when the scary dreams did trouble Thine brow? Hath HE given unto me, even one time, the shekels wherewith to buyeth Thee sandals and meat?”
14. And Jesus was shamed. And his brother, James, sniggereth unto himself and did enrage Our Lord. Therefore did Jesus rise and smite his brother with a hammer of wood and, lo, a great weeping was heard from Mary.
15. And Mary leapeth to her feet and, gathering worthless James unto her bosom, crieth unto Jesus “O, what is it all about? This life? This dusty existence? Thou! Thou art meant to be the one with all the answers! Thou tellest me!
16. And, Jesus! Look at the state of Thine hair! Thou’st brought us nothing but heartache, mine boy. It’s Thy fault that mine name is rubbish in this town! Which among us could swallow that story of a virgin birth? Not the women at the well, I’ll telleth thee that for starters!
17. O what is this burden you have brought upon us? When shall we see the bounties of bringing up the Son of God? He did promise me a nice house and a housekeeper, that night long ago. Go asketh Him what did happen to all that, eh?”
18 And Jesus turneth unto his mother and the light in His eyes shone with…

And then there’s a big smudge.

Later in the same Gospel, there is a fragment which shows the young Jesus much troubled with the burdens of his role on Earth. In the way of many teenagers we are told that He lets his pain out through His music. Still young and confused here, He does not yet appear to have one style He favours over the others, although later fragments suggest He gets fairly deeply into grunge. The passage here show Jesus playing around with different genres, mostly show-tunes, opera and folk with a nod to death-metal:

18. And at that time in Canaan there arose a great dust storm. And all the people of the land fell and their eyes and ears were filled with dust, yea, and their mouths too, until it came to pass that noone couldst say a thing, nay, not even mumble.
19. And the dust storm lasted for one day and one night.
20. And behold, the only mouth not filled with the dust was the blessed mouth of Jesus. And a frenzy took over our Lord and He did run and run and run so far away, e’en unto… (Text missing)…

(Text missing)…came unto the Mound of Olives and did fall over curse and writhe on the bare ground for he deemed unto his own eyes that he was no longer righteous.
13. Then did Jesus rise and spread his arms unto the vast sky and such beauty did then pour from his lips as he sang.
14. “O holy mio, I am the Son.
15. I shineth on you/ With my sun pun.
16. Oooooh – I’m in your eyes,
17. Best wear sunglasses
18. When you’re outside….” (Some regrettable weevil damage here)

And:

“…two, three, four, Tell me more tell me more/Father what is in store?
30. Tell me more, tell me more? Oh please don’t let it be sore!
31. Summer preaching, had me a blast…
32 People loved me, I kicked Satan’s ass
33. Met a girl, she held my hand
34 Oooh we got sacred way down in the sa…” (more weevils)

And later:

…40. “Diddle-ee i i i, diddle-ee i i i. By the power o’ me Daddy O, there’s wine in Cana’s jars.”

Then in the next chapter:

Chapter 3.
1.” …Oooooooooooooooh! Oh yeah!
2. Uh-huh (uh-huh) Uh-huh (uh-huh)…”

And that’s all the Gospel my friend could tell me for the time being.

There’s no need to tell you the sensitive nature of this material so please don’t go gabbing to the papers. The investigators will only deny it and you will appear to the world to be a fool. One day soon though, when the studies are complete, the truth will be known, and you will know you were privy to a secret history as it was unravelled.

For now let us be content to learn from this knowledge for the lesson here is an important one. Our God is a jealous God, especially when it comes to ticket sales. Note well, friends, what happened to John Lennon after he said the Beatles were bigger than Jesus.

Here endeth the report.

Come with me back in time, loyal readers! Come all you adoring millions and fly. Fly with me o’er hill and glen and Perth services and some other hills, yea, e’en unto the sea that was known in the time of Our Lord as the Minch. There will be a toilet break in Skye.

Back in time we go…back…back…

*Noo nee noo nee noo nee noo nee swirly twirly noo. STOP!*

The year is 2007 and a startling discovery is about to be made in a cave by the shores of Loch Erisort on the island of Lewis in Scotland. A peasant of the land is out walking with his ipod and a quantity of fungi when some unAtlee-an weather sets in. Taking shelter in the cave ‘neath Mac Hammadi’s cleft, known to the locals as Big Bum Boulder, our young mycology enthusiast unwraps his fungi, gobbles a few and settles in for the duration of the storm.

Very soon – can you see? No pushing at the back- he begins to experience feelings of bliss and relaxation, all too quickly followed by feelings of clammy fear and moist anxiety. As paranoia creeps in through his head-holes, you might want to look away as he punches a giant spider to death. He does this because he has observed it nobly trying and trying again each time it fails and refails to spin a proper web on the wet rocks. This giant spider is mocking the boy, he knows it, and who are we to interfere? It scoffs at him to the insufferable tune of “I’m A Little Teapot (Nashville remix)” for giving up too easily in life; for not finishing his exams; and forgetting again to post his CV to the fish farm people; for always throwing in the towel at the first hurdle; for mixing hs metaphors, and perhaps worst of all, for proving his pa right.

But don’t be too angry with him, fellow lookers. He does not see that the spider is smaller than his thumbnail, nor that he looks like a doofus. He is in thrall to much higher forces than himself. He feels only The Old Rage Of The Rubbish ‘Shroom.

Now watch, time-pilgrims, watch carefully as, cradling his minced fist, the boy stumbles further back into the cave where it’s dry. See him lie down with every intention of being sad until the long, bad journey is over…

…But now… unexpectedly (“!”), the wonder sets in. See him rise and look around him as if he were a full-bladdered puppy in a fire-hydrant factory. Everything appears to him to be way cool, coolest ever. Wow! At about the same time the wonder hits his brain, his saucer-pupilled eyes alight on a series of primitive earthen jars. Oh, man! These are the best primitive earthen jars EVER! He goes to the awesomest one and pees in it. And then the next one. Drained, he tips a third jar upside down because he’s in the mood for that. From it falls a scroll, an ancient codex of some sort. Like, whoa! What ancient codexy shit is this?

The light is dim back in here but please refrain from flash photography, ladies and gentlemen. Even when I tell you that you are witnessing history – the uncovering of a secret 2000 years old. For what this glaikit-fizzogged youth has found is none other than the Lost Gospels of Mac Hammadi, soon to become known as The Big Bum Gospels then hastily renamed the Gospels O’ The Cleft then The Crevice Gospels and finally, after an emergency naming meeting, they were dubbed the Cnocstic Gospels on account of being found under a Gaelic hill.

These texts include The Apocryphon of Iain, The First Apocalypse of Seamus, The Second Apocalypse of Seamus, The Gospel of Mairi-Agnus and the Coptic Cnoctic Gospel of Donnie-Alec. Unfortunately, as we’ve seen, some of the precious documents, having being brought back by the heretofore unknown Lewis disciples; then guarded for centuries by those fearsome warrior ministers, the Knights Teuchter; and having survived, seemingly impossibly, the dumb, insolent snufflings of sheep and otter for these 2000 years – after all that – succumbed to the acid in the pee of our young fungus-eater.

Now lets all fly back to our homes and computers and I’ll tell you how the story ends.

*Noo nee noo nee and what have you*

Shroom-boy gets flown to London and interviewed by the BBC where he meets a wealthy “cougar” named Bridget who falls in love with his broad shoulders and his disinclination to converse much between vigourous coitus. He, with time, accepts her shameful second navel and they marry, move to the country and he never, ever invites his father to his posh house to watch the football on the massive High-Definition telly.

The mysteries of the Cnocstic Gospels are still being unraveled. There’s a lot of new stuff on Jesus, his likes and dislikes – couldn’t stand the sight of loaves or fishes, apparently, so that whole parable was personally very trying for him as they just kept multiplying all around him like that. Nightmare. And, although this is just hearsay, there are some quite juicy bits about the shepherds watching their flocks by night – all very shoosh-shoosh but known in scholarly circles as The Brokeback Fragments.

Luckily for us, one hot summer in the 90s, I had a torridish affair with the man who is now the chief curator of the Gospels, in the History Of Butterflies back-room of the British Library. Back then he was just in charge of the Insect Illustration (17th-19th century) section but he got promoted and we’ve remained close. I am therefore deliciously privy to some exclusive information on the Cnocstic Gosels, and have a report coming to you, gorgeous readers, on the most complete of the surviving codices, The Gospel of Peadair and The Twelve.

Bye.