211: Lloyds

That Christmas morning after several highly intense episodes during the night – all hallucinations of flying cattle, and sort of airborne wagons, he leaps silently from his bedroom window, wearing nothing but a pair of stockings, judging by the pyjamas mingled in the detritus below the window cill. But prior to this, he’d seemingly attempted to leave up the chimney to avoid detection. This had been messy and didn't work in the slightest. But after he left that Christmas morning, we didn't see him for another year, more or less. And now here he was. Almost a year later turning up on our doorstep with the same maniacal comportment, only this time he had a gun, which we didn't realise until we'd let him in. But once we were seated on the sofas, watching one of the Mrs. Brown's Boys' Christmas specials from seven years ago, he reached into his satchel and pulled out a .44 magnum, pointing it squarely at me, while Mum and Thom recoiled in shock. “I swear to God, I'll fucking blow his brains out”, he said, "if you don't start prepping for the meal right now”. My mind was racing with panic, but I tried to keep myself relatively calm. “Okay, Edward”, I said. “Okay, we'll do that. Just take it easy now, bro, come on.” “Don't you fucking bro me”, he seethed, reaching again into his knapsack, from which he drew a swollen plastic bag and threw it at me. “No sudden moves”, he said, as I struggled to catch the bag, which, it turned out, was full of hastily prepared vegetable trimmings. Carrots and parsnips, red cabbage and sprouts, cauliflower, beetroot, aubergine, courgettes, bell peppers, mushrooms, yams, okra, plantains and coconuts … But all haphazardly chopped at various angles and thicknesses, and mixed sloppily together, apparently unpeeled and unpared. “Get these on the boil”, he said. "Walk slowly backwards. Keep your eyes on my face, and no funny business! Or you'll be leaving Christmas in a body bag. You hear me?” I stood up slowly from the chair and edged towards the kitchen, pacing slowly backwards through the double doors, grazing pine needles and baubles on my way. I backed towards the kitchen worktop, where I put the bag of vegetables down, glancing expectantly to Edward. “It’s the full five of our five a day for the whole twelve days…” Eyes flashing wildly, “That’s 300 Jesus Points, now put them on the fucking boil”, he repeated. So I fumbled in the cupboard among the pots and pans, keeping my gaze on Edward and the gun as he guided me to the appropriately sized utensil. “Not that one, not that one, no, to your left. No, your left. Okay, right. Yes, your right. That one, the big one, that's it. Bring it down.” I emptied the vegetable detritus onto a chopping board and started to sort through it while Edward filled the pan with water and set it on the hob. I soon realised it wasn't merely vegetable cuts in there. There were torn pieces of cardboard packaging, plastic casings, rubber bands and staples in the mix. “No time for that”, he barked. "Put it all in the water now."

LM Montgomery once wrote: “isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet”

But she was wrong. It might be nice to think that, but she was utterly mistaken. Tomorrow comes pre-loaded with all the mistakes of today, which comes pre-loaded with all the mistakes of yesterday, and so on and so on, all the way back to the Original Mistake.

Gallop on now. I snap out of my reverie and kick my heel sharply against the horse's flank and we gallop over the heath towards the outdoor rave. I pull a CD single jewel case from my inner pocket (Space Cowboy by Jamiroquai, disc missing) and set it between the horse's ears. From my breast pocket, I draw the mini bag of ketamine, snap it open and tap out a small mound onto the scuffed plastic. I take my wallet out of my right trouser pocket and remove my Lloyd's card and 10 pound note, which rolls easily given its recent and frequent deployment. I cut the powder into two fat lines and sniff the first one up through the money. It's a bumpy procedure given the trot we're running at. And by the time it's done, the second one has scattered and largely spilled and needs reforming. Once the remainder's been huffed, I slip the Space Cowboy, drugs and money back into my pockets and fix my sight on the horizon, which flickers and inverts as I meld with the horse, its motion and destination.

When I finally reach the scattering of vans, demarcating the threshold of the rave, a haggard looking man in Mayoral regalia, strides forth, hiding up a straw-stuffed glove atop a seven foot staff, and gesturing in a sweeping, rapid arc of the other hand for me to stop. I see a crowd gathered around the burger van, but they're not queueing for food. Their backs are to the van, and its shutter is closed. It's merely been reversed into place in order to break the wind whipping up behind the open moor and the suede-clad woman who is passing along the line, pausing to shake hands and receive tokens of admiration, and exchange awkward pleasantries. Her strawberry blonde hair is wonderfully coiffured in tapering cascades of wispy floss, and a camera crew follows her from subject to subject, the boom operator faltering in the mud as he sidesteps over cables and rocks(,) caked with lichen. She is clearly some kind of royalty, judging by her motorcade, idling by the speaker stacks. The guard’s radios are so loud, I can hear the commands barked by some disembodied sergeant over the line-checks… “...repeat: 13 minutes, we have 13 minutes! Prep Bo Peep for the roundup!” Whilst all this has been happening, I've dismounted the horse and following the mayor's gestures have led her to a shallow brook, sheltered by a copse of willows, where she sups ignorantly as the mayor strides out beyond the TV crew and stubs his staff upon the ground. “Hear ye, hear ye”, he bellows, pausing to noisily suck a full lungload of ambient gases into his bulk before bracing to squawk at the very top of his register, eyes bulging, ears flapping, whiskers exploding, ceremonial mitre leaping off his head… A would-be blood curdling message burgeons like a monsoon at his lips, but at that very moment is drowned out by the all-consuming white-hot plane of feedback from the Funktion-One, which seems to cut diagonally through all matter at every intersection of void and mass, whipping the resonant orbs of subatomic pleasantries into convulsive death cries, where the universe is simultaneously birthed and murdered by its own gargantuan, stillborn parents who buckle and curve at the edge of everything and they want you to do well and they want you to do well and they really, really, really do as everybody clasps their hands against their ears, and the Mayor’s spasming lips are tearing further and further apart, as the chaos clamours to out-pair itself, and the black hole of the present vomits time and matter and space and energy back out into itself, all at once, forever and never, in an infinite, infinith of a second, and at the full stretch of all possible time. The sound obscuring the arrival of a new character, running forth from over the horizon. A man, seemingly caked in lichen, running and shrieking, and wielding something short and stout, wearing nothing save for an apparent pair of pixie boots, and a wild bristling mane of tinsel.