fascist rag 2

The Mail's letters page contains a few messages of support for the summary execution of Jean Charles de Menezes on the tube last Friday. 'This is a war', says one 'and in war mistakes are made.' Fair enough. Just don't start complaining when the U.S. air force drops a bomb on your house, under the mistaken impression that it's the headquarters of the Middlesex branch of Al Qaeda.

The other letter points out that if the immigration service had been doing its job, it would have noticed that de Menezes' visa had expired and deported him, so that 'he wouldn't have been here to be shot'. Yes, and if you'd been run over by a bus last week, you wouldn't have been able to write this pointless letter, it wouldn't have been published in the Mail, and I would never have been irritated by it. Which is, surely, an equally valid argument.

The Brain That Wouldn't Die

I haven't been to London since the 'incidents' (and what Talk Sport was calling the 'attempted incidents'). When would be a good time to go? Well, judging by recent history, not Thursdays, when you're likely to get blown up by a suicide bomber. And not Fridays, when you're likely to be shot five, six, seven times in the head by a policeman. Even a criminal mastermind's brain isn't that resilient. Luckily though, the police have apologised: yes, we're very sorry about that, and yes, it will happen again.

As for the 'attempted incidents', it seemed to be a case of tragedy repeating itself as farce - a very English comedy of embarrassment (can you imagine anything more embarrassing than being a suicide bomber who fails to explode?) Talk Sport were on the case again but it wasn't like 7/7, everyone was agreed on that. 'Any sign of panic?' the presenter asked, hopefully. But no, the best they could do was an 'eerie calm'. On which we had hourly updates ('Yes, it's definitely getting eerier.') Eventually, things got so dire that they actually started talking about sport.

I switched off.

attention channel five!

I had a dream the other night about a game show in which members of the public competed to see who could have the most bizarre plastic surgery. A Chinaman with two arses won.

fascist rag

Understandably the papers have been full of wild speculation about the suicide bombers. Who were these kids? What kind of careers advice have they been getting? And who can we blame? TACKLE THIS EVIL, MUSLIMS TOLD, said one Daily Mail headline. Perhaps because the words are spread across a double page, my eye was immediately drawn by the comma in the middle, and by the two words on either side of it. For a second, I was seeing the headline: EVIL MUSLIMS. Can this be deliberate? Knowing the Daily Mail as I do, I'd have to say: yes.

'If You're A Wizard, Why Do You Wear Glasses?'

Yes it was Harry Potter day again. By the time I got to the shop, at 8:30, the fuss had died down considerably. Two kids sat on a bench reading their copies. Probably in the employ of a national newspaper, racing to meet the deadline for their reviews.

There was still a lot of fun to be had. Or, in my case, avoided. Ex-Eastender Danny Moon was out in the chapel ruins, pretending to be the Prisoner of Azkhaban. There was face-painting - but then, there always is. One dissenting voice was heard. Local author Brian Evans (Romford Heritage, Sutton, £9-99) came in to deliver an impromptu rant on Harry Potter, calling it 'trash', and going on to mention 'brainwashing' and Al Qaeda. Less impressively, he closed by telling everyone that they could get it for £8-99 in Woolworth's. I felt he'd rather abandoned the moral high ground there.

Not that I'm a fan, though I grabbed a copy as soon as I could, just to turn to the final paragraph and find out who dies. Thus I enjoyed a crazy thrill of superiority to all those people who would actually have to read the bloody thing in order to find out what I already knew.

It didn't last.

clown of death

Apparently Dave called me 'a psycho' after reading my previous posts. Thanks Dave. I'll take that as a compliment.

On a quite unrelated topic, Dave (but not the same Dave)lent me a DVD about John Wayne Gacy. Gacy was the American serial killer who liked to dress as a clown. For children's parties, that is - not, alas, while pursuing his victims. The film is a mess. Poor editing disposes of more characters than Gacy does. The trailer, also included, is worse than the film, but it does highlight one memorable line. Gacy is afflicted by a nasty stench and bugs coming up from his crawlspace (that's part of his house, not part of his anatomy). When his young housemate hears a mysterious sound emerging from there, he's rightly concerned, but Gacy is on hand to reassure him. 'That', he hisses, 'is the sound of a million maggots!' The sound of a million maggots! I now have a title for that West End musical I've been meaning to write.

When I was at university I used to hang around with a would-be film director called Paul Hancock. We were always intending to make a film called 'Sherlock Holmes and The Million Maggots Horror' Or, at the very least, a trailer for it. It would have been fantastically cheap. Sherlock Holmes is out of copyright. And the maggots would have been played by grains of rice. Imagine Watson gasping in horror as rice is poured down onto him by an unseen 'technician'. 'Holmes! No - !' But artistic differences scuppered the project. We could never decide whether the rice should be cooked or uncooked.

missing the bus

I decided to walk to work, through the park. It didn't feel like going to work at all. It felt like going on holiday. The sun's rays dissolved the mist. The occasional dogged jogger or cyclist passed. A young couple wandered by, talking in what seemed disrespectfully loud voices (I murdered them).

In fact, pleasant as it was, a part of me felt like I was auditioning for Crimewatch. About to stumble across a dead body, or become one. On the other hand, I was probably less likely to bump into an on-duty suicide bomber here, for all that suburbia is now (apparently) crawling with them.

Not that even the most desperate suicide bomber would target the 565, especially now they've reduced the service. And are continuing to do so - I caught it going home and it had shrunk into a minibus, more redolent of care in the community than public transport. I should probably walk to and from work more, and I will. As long as conditions are absolutely perfect.

the bus

I listened to the events of the seventh in the backroom at work. The radio was tuned in to Talk Sport. Covering terrorist atrocities seemed to be exceeding their brief but I didn't have the heart to ring in and complain. The lines were busy anyway.

Barely-controlled hysteria was the order of the day. 'Can we have a reaction?', asked the presenter, and a pundit fled the studio, screaming. Things calmed down later. They were talking about the image of the 'iconic' red bus with its roof ripped off, like it was an exhibit at Tate Modern. How long before it actually is?

Paula at work marvelled at the amount of organisation involved in such an attack. 'We find it hard enough organising a weekend of Harry Potter-related events', she said. 'Yes, but it would be much easier if you were blowing the children up', I pointed out. I think I may have given her an idea.

terror planet

Mat lives in Sunshine House. He's in his mid-twenties, with a morbid fear of lipstick. He's into coffee, cooking, computers. He made me do this. His great enthusiasm at the moment is Google Earth, a virtual model of the planet. It could use some work, frankly: Las Vegas looks like a vast, grim industrial estate. London is flat.
Although, come to think of it, this last might be appropriate, given recent events.

sunshine house

We had an author in at work. Nobody had heard of her but she sold about 70 copies of her work simply by by collaring everyone who walked in the door. 'Hi, I'm the author who's signing today', she said. 'It's a true-life adventure', she went on, if they let her, and a surprising number did. There's a moral here for us all - if you're prepared to be a pain in the arse, and let rejection bounce right off you, you can get results.

I knew this already. It doesn't help.