Elegy to Nigel Farage

Elegy to Nigel Farage

We saw you

and we hoped

you were a mirage

a trick of the light

the worst of human nature

given momentary substance

by the sunshine

that warped itself around

curls of beer sweat

rising from the tattooed shoulders

of a fat, shaven-headed man

with no discernible neck,

hunched over his

Wednesday morning pint

in the concrete beer garden

of a pub with a flat roof,

home to a roving Rottweiler

named 'Tosser' by its owners.

Batted back and forth

between the narrow horizon line

of the bar

and the border fortification

of a listing cement wall

about to snap off

from its foundations

Where the old sagas

have been bartered

away piecemeal,

diminished to watered-down

skirmishes between

rival football firms

and the Polish deli opposite

is feared as

the vanguard of some

encroaching army. 

Mr McGee remembers Prince

I first met Prince a few years before he obtained his royal title. Back then he was just an ordinary kid called Rogers Nelson.

I was running a five and dime store in Minneapolis. I had filed the paperwork to re-open as a quarter-dollar store. For my application to be approved I needed to demonstrate to officials in the city's chamber of commerce that we could move items priced at 25 cents.

We were making next to nothing on the five cent items so I required strong, motivated sales people to really push those ten cent impulse buys.

I employed Prince on a part-time basis because I had a gut feeling about the boy. I instantly regretted the decision. It seemed like he was always busy doing something next to nothing. I told him several times daily that I didn't like his kind. What I meant was that, as a business owner, I didn't appreciate employees who adopted a leisurely approach to their job, and lacked a decent work ethic.

There were clearly marked entrances and exits in and out of the Five and Dime. This was to cut down on disruption during peak hours when we had lots of customers coming and going. The out door could be pushed open from the inside. There was no way of opening it from the street. Prince would always rile me by anchoring it ajar with a bit of cardboard under the bottom corner.

There was this one time when a girl dressed in a raspberry beret, and not much more, came brazenly sashaying into the store through the out door. I don't think it was an accident either. I think that she wanted to make an entrance.

I looked over to where Prince was stacking boxes of Pussy Control cat litter into a pyramid. The boy was clearly smitten. After he clocked off I saw her climbing onto the back of his bike.

Later that afternoon, Old Man Johnson caught the pair of them making out in his

milking barn. Prince claimed that they had taken shelter in there from heavy rain but there ain't been no big storms in Minnesota for decades. The state can't afford the kind of fancy weather that you get in places like New York.

Old Man Johnson gave the pair of them a thorough dressing down and tried to set them straight on a few things:

“Milking barn ain't for intercourse. Bedroom with the lights off, on the first Saturday of any month with 30 days, is the correct time and place for those kind of shenanigans.”

One day at work I took Prince to one side. I said to him:

“Son, take a look around this store and tell me how many raspberry-toned items you can see.”

The boy looked around, and up and down all the aisles.

“Mr McGee, there sure is a lot of raspberry-coloured packaging.”

“When you see all these raspberry coloured items for sale in a five and ten cent store, what conclusion do you draw from that?”

“That raspberry is a cheap colour.”

“Now tell me how much purple you see.”

Again Prince looked around the place.

“Apart from the grape soda machine I don't see any.”

I showed him some recent sales figures from second hand stores in the U.S. and pointed out to him how they get less less purple clothing donated than any other colour.

“Purple is the colour of money. You stick with purple and you wont' go far wrong in this life,” I advised him.

The following week the grape soda machine exploded, showering the pair of us in sticky purple rain. I think Prince took it as a sign of the times.

The next day he handed me his letter of resignation, which turned out to be an early draft of the lyrics to Soft and Wet.

I saw him a few years later eating one of them fancy purple bananas that rich folk seem to enjoy.

Gastrography: Michelin star chef, Gavin Neweth, recalls his signature dish

My signature dish - the one that I literally use in place of a handwritten signature to identify myself on legal documentation, when writing bank cheques, or in the line at passport control - can be traced back to my early childhood in Lincoln.

It is a hand-baked artisan cauliflower, centred on a bed of wilted bluebell stems (curated by the English Woodland Trust), speckled with a bluebell purée, tented with a triumvirate of heritage ant-sugar tweals, and cloaked in a nostalgic radish haze.

The dish is a reinterpretation of a simple meal that I was regularly served as a young boy, elevated to the exacting standards of fine dining. To the uninitiated this means that the portion size has been significantly reduced, everything is deftly piled on top of each other, and there are weird dabs of sauce dotted all over the place. Also, you will be expected to drink expensive wine with it.

I grew up in a poor family. One evening, when I was four years old, my father announced that he was going to the pub. He never returned home, although I would sometimes catch glimpses of him, boisterous and red-cheeked, through the grimy candlelit windows of The Merry Bargeman.

My mother was faced with the uphill challenge of feeding seven children on a limited budget, in a cottage whose ground floor sloped steeply from the kitchen stove to the small dining nook. It is a testimony to her thrift, her culinary skills and her experience as a hill walker that we never went hungry.

The dish that she cooked most often is called 'Cauliflower served on a platter'. It is a traditional Lincolnshire recipe with as many variants as there are residents of the county. Everyone seems to have their own particular take on it, even newborns and people who have moved to this area from other parts of the world.

My mother would visit a local greengrocers where she would purchase the cheapest cuts of cauliflower, which, at the time, were the haunches. On her way home she would pass through an area of woodland where she would pick bluebells. She would blanch the stems in the boiling torrent of water that gushed from the outflow of a nearby enamel factory.

Occasionally she would attempt to manufacture a sauce from the bluebell flower heads. When this went wrong, as it invariably did, she would fly into a terrible rage and hurl the cast-iron pan across the room, splattering the walls in lavender-toned gloop.

In my Mayfair restaurant, Croissant? Croissant!, staff recreate this effect by pipetting dots of my bluebell purée onto the walls. To experience the dish in its entirety, diners must vacate their places at the table, forgo the cutlery, that has long acted as a barrier between restaurant patrons and their choice of food, and apply their tongues directly to the décor.

The addition of tweals to the dish was my mother's idea. Scattered around my childhood home were plentiful ant nests. Each of these would yield long, spiralling filaments of ant-sugar, which had been crudely spun by the workers of the colonies over successive generations. My mother would arrange these tweals in a pagan wigwam formation over the baked cauliflower. This sweetened garnish would sometimes end up impaled in the roofs of our mouths. Ironically, many years later, my older brother, William, lost his left eye after it was skewered on a tweal, while he was backpacking in Thailand.

In my re imagining of the dish I used heritage sugar tweals. The London Evening Standard recently claimed that these are the same antique tweals that were stolen last year from the London Museum of Tweals, in Rotherhithe. In my defence I would like to point out that, if the paper had any evidence of my involvement, either in the theft, or in the trafficking of stolen goods, I would be rotting in jail by now.

The most important component of the dish is the radish haze:

As a child my mother was given some radishes by the Duchess of Kent, who had been served them as part of a salad in a pub lunch. My mother never forgot the peppery flavour of watery pulp and wanted to pass this experience on to her children.

After setting the cauliflower down on the table she would exhale the memory of the radishes, that burned deep within her soul, as a phantom seasoning, infusing the dish with the pungent recollection of the small root vegetables.

To recreate this effect in the restaurant, I employ a woman, who bears a striking resemblance to my late mother, to dress in some of her old clothes, drink gin, and eat radishes all day. Our patrons love the theatre that arises from an inebriated women blowing invisible seasoning over a steaming cauliflower. Being subjected to drunken rant about what a louse my father was, and, every so often, being walloped around the back of the head for spurious reasons are all part of the experience!

After my father left, my mother smashed our china crockery. We could not afford to replace it. Fortunately she found a job sweeping the local orchard. The kindly farmer allowed her to bring home the fallen branches, which were re-purposed as plates. It's why today everything in Croissant? Croissant! (even the soup!) is served on branches that I foraged from Kensington Gardens.

Taken together, the dishes on my menu at Croissant? Croissant! tell the story of my life. The time my bike was stolen by older boys and thrown into a canal, is represented by a miniature pasta bicycle, served with a clear leek broth made from my own tears. Diners who wish to experience the mixed emotions I felt the last time I moved house are presented with a small cake, which is taken from them when it is half-eaten and replaced by a much larger, nicer cake.

When people express a fascination for my life journey and ask me when I will be writing my autobiography I direct them to my restaurant. When I am on the premises I will happily hand-sign, in biro, the individual ingredients of any dish, for an additional charge. 

(Gavin Neweth will stand trail for tweal theft in May, 2016.)

What does my virtual wife do all day?

(Screen caps are from the the original PC version of Fables: The Lost Chapters)

The kingdom of Albion comprises small pockets of land separated by brief loading screens. Within these unchanging parcels of terra firma, where it is forever Autumn, one is compelled to wander predesignated pathways, many of which are bordered by rambling stone walls, which are slowly falling into disrepair. You may wish to pause to admire the scenery that lies tantalizingly beyond the beaten track, yet it will remain eternally inaccessible. Sadly, the physical laws of the realm determine that, while your gaze may linger wistfully over faraway sun-dappled hills, you will never be permitted to explore them.

In keeping with my role of professional hero, I travel everywhere in this fairytale kingdom, either on foot or by teleporter, with an unfathomably large inventory of armour and assorted weapons. Chief among my arsenal are my numerous enchanted swords, all of which are impractical in both size and design; additionally many bear overcompensating monikers: The Bereaver; Avo's Tear; The Harbinger. There is a giant serrated vegetable peeler christened the Solus Greatsword that I purchased for an exorbitant sum in a shop in swanky, gentrified Bowerstone North.

In between quests, I found the time to wed. The courtship leading to these nuptials was brief: In the tavern at Oakvale - the village of my birth - I selected a maid at random. I plied her with beer, and the gemstones that I had harvested from the bodies of the trolls I had slain, until she succumbed to my charms. We were married soon after.

Periodically I would return home to find my beloved socialising in the tavern. I began to worry that my long absences were taking a toll on her; perhaps even driving her to seek comfort in alcohol, or in the arms of another.

She always greeted me with a smile and often with a gift of armour inferior to that which I was already wearing, but which was nonetheless appreciated. And yet I could not divest myself of the suspicion that her overtly smiley demeanour concealed a deeper sadness.

To allay my fears I decided that I would take some time off from the hurly burly of war and bloodshed that dominate my working life and spend a day getting to know my virtual spouse. This is what I discovered:

We need a bigger bed

I return to Oakvale in the dead of night to find the double doors of my bungalow flung wide open to the darkness. This causes me considerable disquiet. When I was a boy, Oakvale was raided by bandits. In this very house they executed my father, blinded my chocolate-obsessed, know-it-all sister and kidnapped my mother.

My wife, oblivious to my concerns regarding home security, snores noisily in our single bed. I find that I am unable to climb in with her and so wile away the nocturnal hours practising with my flaming sword (not a euphemism – an actual flaming sword) At some point I inadvertently break a window. 

My virtual wife is an uncomplicated woman of simple pleasures

Morning. A cock crows. My wife awakens, stretches and rises from the bed fully clothed. 

Instantly she is overcome by the same joy felt by every one of my real world partners. In this aspect Fable accurately portrays real life to an uncanny degree.

She stands before a small, east-facing window, adjacent to the bed, and remarks in quaint, rustic tones:

“Being in love is so nice. Hello trees. Hello sky.”

Having dispensed with her morning ritual she sits quietly by the fire in an upright chair. 

Later she will rise, but remain standing beside the hearth, gazing upon me with reverence and affection as I pace up and down our small, but impeccably decorated, one-room domicile, like a caged tiger who longs to decapitate a gang of bandits with an enchanted longbow.

INTERLUDE: Flirting and casual vandalism

Concerned that my presence maybe be unduly influencing my wife's behaviour, I venture outside to flirt with our next door neighbour, who obviously fancies me. However, I soon become bored by her platitudes and banal small talk.

In an attempt to alleviate the tedium I engage in some spirited shadow-boxing. This climaxes with me accidentally breaking a window in the house opposite. A guard is summoned and I am fined a small sum of money to pay for repairs and to compensate for my public disorder.

As the guard lumbers back down the hill, the owner of the vandalised property cheers and applauds me. In this town I can do no wrong. I am like goddamn Justin Bieber with a broadsword. 

My virtual wife is hard-working woman with a strong sense of civic responsibility

Evening falls. My wife, who has spent the day warming herself beside the hearth,  happily trilling odd lines from songs, abruptly leaves our home.

“Pub?” I inquire, as I follow behind at a respectable distance in the twilight. 

At the end of our lane she pulls a cord connected to a lamppost, turning on the light. She does likewise with the lamps on either end of the covered wooden bridge that crosses the gorge, and connects both sides of the village.

Having performed her civic duties she returns to our home and begins vigoruously scrubbing a section of the skirting board.

My wife is a good woman, hardworking and in possession of a social conscience.

My virtual wife is a love machine

Darkness falls. My wife sits quietly beside the fire. Suddenly her aura changes from dusky blue to green, indicating (as it does in the real world) a desire for intimacy.

For the third time in our long marriage I have sex with my wife, who remains blissfully unaware of my ownership of a bordello in Darkwood, from which I derive a modest income.

Following our dalliance we rise from the bed. My wife stretches and yawns repeatedly. Ever the gentlemen, I await for her to climb into our single bed, resolving to keep watch over her.

When she declines to do so, I climb in and pull the blankets over my platemail armour. As I lie there in the darkness, I resolve to spend more time with my virtual wife. I will be a better husband. I will cease visiting the bordello in Darkwood and letting Hedwig chain me to a rack in my union jack underpants.

I drift off to sleep.  

David Bowie's problems were more interesting than your problems

Pause for a moment in your daily routine and ponder upon the high concepts and accompanying dilemmas that lie scattered hither and thither throughout the varied lyrical canon of David Bowie. Then contrast these with the prosaic concerns that one finds cluttering the lumpen majority of contemporary pop music:

(1) A mother is no longer certain whether the child she has raised is a boy or a girl (Rebel Rebel)

(2) There's this alien who wants to visit earth. However he is convinced that merely by standing in our presence he will cause our minds to short circuit. The best that he can do is to offer words of encouragement from a safe distance, while strongly advising that we allow our children to boogie (Starman)

(3) Bowie attempts to explain to a friend that the return ticket from Suffragette City lies beyond their financial means (Suffragette City)

(4) Bowie has been made aware of a brand new dance but doesn't know what it's called (Fashion)

(5) Bowie gets his facts from a Benetton Ad, which is probably worse than relying on Wikipedia. (Black Tie White Noise)

(6) Bowie's girl was born in a UFO, but he was born under a stone. How will the pair bridge the gap between their disparate cultures, one terrestrial and the other extraterrestrial? (Born In A UFO)

(7) Bowie highlights the enduring social problem of homeless cacti (Eight Line Poem)

(8) Bowie's attempt to rid himself of a gnomic stalker by putting him on the train to Eastbourne backfires when the gnome returns with his cousin, Fred, and takes up residence in the chimney (The Laughing Gnome)

Changes: A novel By David Robert Jones (aged 11)

I wrote this piece of tongue-in-cheek steam punk David Bowie fan fiction several years ago. I think I originally posted it on the website of the now-defunct and sadly missed WORD magazine. I am reposting it here today in remembrance of David Bowie - a man who transformed his life into a magnificent work of art.

Changes: A novel

By David Robert Jones (aged 11)

In the celebrated history of the British Empire, and all across its expanding length, and widening girth, there can have been few careers more mercurial than that of Professor David Bowie. His rise from bare-knuckle pugilist,where he fought under the moniker Bromley Dave, to respectable man of science and intellect is a stirring tale for our age, and a timely reminder of those remarkable individuals who have been chief among its architects.

This young man’s extraordinary ascent, from what had been a base and brutal subsistence on the wharves of Greenwich, was, in part, subsidised by a series of boxing matches, arranged to slake the bloodthirsty urges that were barely-repressed by otherwise upstanding members of The Royal Society. Every Friday for two years the teenage Bowie would climb bare-chested into a rope-bound arena measuring just 24 feet square. There he would pit his strength and his wits against a succession of automata fashioned from raw chemical elements by the finest minds in all of England and her principalities. The end goal of these scientific pioneers: To create a Periodic Table in which the raw building blocks of the physical world were arranged not by atomic number, but in order of brute strength and guile.

During one such bout, a sharp left hook to the face, dealt by a golem fashioned entirely of Potassium Permanganate, resulted in a permanent violet discolouration in Bowie’s left eye. As disfiguring as this injury was to the young man, it allowed him to perceive the world in a lilac hue, paving the way for the numerous scientific discoveries that he would make thereafter.

It was before the fruits of one such breakthrough that the professor now stood. The Tin Machine was the culmination of a decade’s worth of research. At its heart was a patented Reeves-Gabriels engine. Its surplus hydro-energy was contained as miniature lightning storms inside a pair of giant Sales Jars. A labyrinth of gleaming metal pipes that completely obscured the walls of the cellar wherein the device had been constructed, funneled obliquely into the Quantum Field Chamber that occupied one corner of the room and contained an ornate full-length dress mirror, tilted upwards at a slight angle.

It was into the chamber that Dr Bowie, resplendent in a floor-length, sequined ball gown, now stepped, positioning himself with his back to the looking glass.

“I think that I am ready to proceed” he announced.

From across the room the Professor’s tousle-haired assistant - a man named Michael Ronson - performed a sequence of last minute safety checks. Satisfied that everything was in order he depressed the ignition button.

For a few moments a heavy silence that was pregnant with anticipation filled the confined space. Then, slowly, the engine began to stir, the mechanical throb, building in pitch and intensity, spreading clockwise around the cellar as, one by one, the Tin Machine’s components juddered into life.

Inside the dead-end street of the Quantum Field Chamber, Professor Bowie glanced at his pocket watch to find time running wild.

“515 the angels have gone,” he muttered. “I must prepare as best I can to gaze upon the strange.”

Swallowing hard, he turned towards the mirror, as if to face himself.

In that same moment the entire machine seemed to make a noise as if incredulous of the demands that had been placed upon it and the universal laws that it was being called upon to brazenly disobey. There was (the two men later agreed upon this order of events) a prolonged grinding noise; the rending sound of metal sheering from metal; a loud “POP!” as one of the Sales Jars shattered, followed by a shrill whistle as an adjacent boiler blew a gasket in sympathy, sending a scalding jet of white steam into the air. A small explosion of orange flame brought the proceedings to an abrupt halt.

As pieces of plaster began to rain down from the ceiling, Professor Bowie emerged from the cloud choking on the mildly caustic vapours and feebly waving his hands in an attempt at dispersing it.

“Damn! Damn and blast!”

He staggered to the centre of the room where the fumes were at their least dense. Broken glass crunched underfoot.

“Ronson! Do you still live? Speak up man!”

A head, crowned by an unruly mop of shoulder-length blonde hair peered tentatively from behind the console.

“Is it safe Sir?”

“Yes, yes... Oh for heaven’s sake, do come out Ronson. You are not to blame. The fault is entirely my own.”

The young assistant emerged from his makeshift refuge. Following in the Professor’s wake he busied himself as best he could, brushing the debris from the explosion from the pleats of the ruined ball gown. If Bowie was aware of this supercilious attempt at placating the foul mood that invariably ensued in the aftermath of a failed experiment, he chose to ignore it. Instead he paced the walls of the laboratory making a cursory study of the rent and ruptured pipe work; for the first time regretting his decision to construct the metallic parts of the tin machine from so flimsy an alloy.

“As you know Ronson, I devised this apparatus so that I might objectively quantify how an ordinary man, in possession of no great intellect, might perceive a faker, such as myself. Alas! If today’s experiment has taught me anything, it is that I am too fast to take that test. By the time the device has accumulated sufficient enough of a charge to document this quantum event, the desired image has long since vanished into the ether.”

Ronson continued to studiously brush the dust from Bowie’s garments, while inwardly he racked his brains for a considered response that might sum up the predicament the Professor found himself in.

“If I may say so Sir, you are renowned among your peers for your impetuous velocity.”

“Yes…Yes quite. Up until this day such god-gifted speed has served me well. Yet now my quicksilver talent hardens to reveal a double edge that impedes my research and by association hampers the very progress of science. For how am I to communicate how others see a faker, if my experiment cannot be replicated and dragged into the realm objective truths that are the currency of all rational men and a select coterie of masculine women."

He paused in mid-step, turning on his heel to address his assistant directly.

“Ronson: You are a man who has spent long hours in my company. One might almost say that there is none better qualified than yourself to describe to the high society how an ordinary working class commoner from the north of England might perceive a creature of my singular appearance.”

Unfortunately, and in common with most men, Michael Ronson’s visual cortex was only able to interpret the shifting chain of chemical reactions taking place across ten-dimensional space-time, that constituted the physical form of Professor Bowie as a nebulous cloud of shifting primary colours, bisected by a red lightning bolt and bedecked with an ostentatious plume of ostrich feathers. In vain he searched for words that might do justice to the spectacle, only to find himself quickly overwhelmed.

“I wouldn’t rightly know how to explain it, Sir. As you have remarked on previous occasions the enterprise is beyond language.”

“Yes… Yes, of course. Clearly something must be done slow down the faker in me – a distraction of some kind that will give the machine the opportunity to…”

A spark kindled in the professors left eye, his face suddenly animated by the wild fires of inspiration.

“Brilliance! Genius incarnate! Ronson, reactivate the Tin Machine at once. There is no time to attempt repairs.”

“But Sir...”

“Now, Ronson!”

Hitching his ball gown and its numerous flared petticoats above his knees, Bowie hurriedly made his way over to the quantum field chamber. His assistant returned to control console at a more reluctant pace than before and commenced the process of restarting the machine.

“May I wait in the corridor Sir,” he called plaintively from across the room as the wounded engine sputtered into life.

“I am afraid that will not be possible Ronson...” replied Bowie, raising his voice so as to be heard over the ascending mechanical din.

“...I will need you to join me inside the Quantum Field Chamber. My plan requires that I simulate oral sex upon your person!”

Speculative lyrics of a theme song for an as-yet unmade Scooby Doo cartoon

1969 Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc.

(Surf guitar)

Scooby Dooby Doo,

We search high and low

North, South, East and West,

to the four corners of the known world

and to the farthest reaches of the universe beyond

for your whereabouts,

for we require your assistance

Scooby Dooby Doo,

scion of Bartholomew Doo

of the noble Doo lineage.

It is regarding the matter

of a haunted fairground

and your tried and tested

methods of distracting

a pursuing monster

by way of improvising,

for example,

a scene from a barbers shop,

and convincing your tormentor,

be they ghost, mutant, or robot,

that they are in need of a trim,

before spraying shaving foam

in their face,

and running away,

so fast that,

for a few seconds,

your feet struggle to

find traction on the ground.

Or, if not a barbers shop,

then an Italian restaurant,

serving gigantic platters

of spaghetti and meatballs,

where you and your

stoner friend, Shaggy

are momentarily waiters.

We need your ability

to evacuate a

haunted ski resort

as part of a massive

ever-growing snowball

We are depending upon your talent

for concealing yourself in one

of a row of large vases,

only to reappear from

the neck of a different vase,

and to perform a similar trick

with the drawers of filing cabinets.

(15 minute trumpet fanfare)

Velma will be on hand

to ask the hard questions,

which are not your forte:

“Why would a swamp monster

require bi-focal reading glasses

and leave behind

footprints in green paint?”

we need you to

lift our spirits

by pronouncing

the name of the

actor, Mark Ruffalo

as “Rark Ruffalo.”

That never gets old.

We have Scooby Snacks,

whatever they are

- some kind of bespoke

biscuit tailored to your

specific nutritional needs, maybe.

Also, an improbably tall sandwich.

Scooby Dooby Dooby Doo,

are you mere dog?

a lab experiment

gifted with the

power of human speech?

a diluted Nordic myth?

the lingering residue

of a hard acid trip?

Or allegory for man,

as he unwillingly confronts

his basest terrors

in the most cowardly

manner imaginable.

(Surf guitar)