The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag Read online

  ‘Of course it isn’t. So, what do you say?’

  ‘Well...’

  ‘I’m harmless, aren’t I?’

  ‘Well...’

  ‘So I hear voices in my head. So did Joan of Arc.’

  ‘Well...’

  ‘And I’m a technophobe, I’ve got a thing about computers. So what?’

  ‘Well...’

  ‘And I suffer from delusions that only I can save the world. That’s no big deal, is it?’

  ‘Well...’

  ‘And I stir up a bit of insurrection, talk about blowing up a few computer companies. And assassinating Billy Barnes, the World Leader. History would thank me for it anyway.’

  ‘………..’

  ‘Er, you didn’t say “Well…” that time.’

  ‘Nurse,’ said the doctor, pushing a little button on his desk. ‘Nurse.’

  ‘Hang about, I was only joking about the insurrection and the blowing up and assassinating. You didn’t think I really meant it, did you?’

  ‘Nurse.’

  ‘Look, we’ve been getting along so well. Let’s not spoil it by calling the nurse. Let’s talk about something else. Who’s your favourite Spice Girl? I like the vicious-looking one with the big Charlies, I bet she really—’

  ‘Nurse!’

  The doctor’s door swung open, and a large male nurse loomed in the doorway.

  ‘Ah, Cecil,’ said the doctor. ‘Would you please escort Mr Woodbine back to his room?’

  ‘With pleasure, sir.’

  ‘No,’ I said, struggling to rise. ‘I don’t want to go back to my room. I have to get out of here. I really do. Everything depends upon it.’

  ‘Would you care for me to administer Mr Woodbine’s medication, sir?’

  The doctor nodded. ‘Use the big syringe,’ he said.

  ‘No, no, not the big syringe.’ I fought to free myself. But I was onto a loser.

  Male nurse Cecil caught me firmly by the scruff of the straitjacket. ‘Shall I use the very big syringe?’ he asked.

  ‘The great big one,’ said the doctor. ‘With the extra long needle.’

  ‘No, let me go. You’re making a terrible mistake. You have to let me go, I’m the only one who knows the truth.’

  As with the farmer in the poem, I began to foam somewhat about the jaw regions. I kicked out at Nurse Cecil, but I only had my hospital slippers on and he had his big shin guards. And his big boots. He stamped on my foot and he smiled as he did it.

  ‘Ouch!’ I screamed. ‘Set me free, you don’t know what you’re doing. I’m not mad. I’m not. I’m not!’

  ‘Come along now, Mr Woodbine,’ said Cecil. ‘There’s a good gentleman.’

  ‘It’s a conspiracy. You’re all in it together. You’re all in the pay of Billy Barnes.’

  ‘Come along now, please.’

  I was hauled, still kicking and screaming, out of the doctor’s office and along the corridor. Fellow loons, who had the run of the place, turned their faces away as I passed them by, and whistled nonchalantly.

  ‘You’re all in it!’ I screamed. ‘All of you! The lot of you!’

  ‘Quietly now, please, Mr Woodbine. Don’t go upsetting the other patients.’

  ‘You’ll get yours, you scumbag.’

  Back in the privacy of my room, I got mine.

  Nurse Cecil performed certain unspeakable acts upon my helpless person, gave me a sound kicking, and then employed the great big syringe with the extra long needle.

  ‘Good night, sweet prince,’ he said, as he closed the padded door upon me.

  I lay strapped to my bunk, effing and blinding and hurting and bleeding and waiting for the medication to kick in and plunge me once more into oblivion.

  But just before it did, I heard a little voice calling me. Calling me from inside my head. It was the voice of Barry, my Holy Guardian Sprout. Offering me solace and comfort.

  ‘That might have gone a little better, chief,’ it said.

  Adding later, ‘You prat!’

  Tall Tales and Jumping Beans

  ‘Drat,’ said the old enamel vicar,

  Kept for purposes of pleasure,

  Kept in the tiny sainted box,

  Handed down through generations,

  Spoken of by rising nations,

  Blessed at festive celebrations,

  And I use for my socks.

  Twang, went the Mexican jumping bean,

  Brought home from my travels,

  Carried over distant seas,

  Made venerable by Rose’s mother,

  Saying, not like any other,

  Teaching, thou shalt love each other,

  Which seems OK to me.

  ‘Bye,’ went Doc, as he boarded the plane,

  Bound for the Amazon Basin,

  Bound for the pygmies and tsetse fly,

  Off in search of the Holy Grail,

  Lost in the belly of Jonah’s whale,

  Personally, I think he’ll fail,

  But some say I’m a cynic.

  2

  The theory of Space and Time is a cultural artefact made possible by the invention of graph paper.

  JACQUES VALLEE

  In the year 2002 my Uncle Brian brought down the British book publishing industry. He had nothing personal against it; he had no axe to grind, no cross to bear, no chicken to stuff. But he did have an awful lot of right-handed rubber gloves.

  You see, my Uncle Brian had bought a consignment of rubber gloves for thirty-five quid from a bloke in a pub. Thirty-five thousand pairs. It seemed like the deal of a lifetime. One thousand pairs for a pound; you just couldn’t fail to make money on a deal like that. But what my uncle didn’t discover until some time later was that he had been done. He had seventy thousand rubber gloves all right, but that was the trouble, they were all right. All right-handers.

  And the method he chose to sell on these seemingly useless articles at a handsome profit brought down the British book publishing industry.

  Of course you will find no record of this on any database, and you can scan the pages of the History of the 20th Century on your home terminal until your eyes grow dim; Uncle Brian has no mention there. In fact the only place where you can learn of my Uncle Brian’s part in changing the course of history is right here and right now.

  And as all books will be destroyed in the great Health Purge of 2001 you must read here while you are able.

  Uncle Brian was a tall-story-teller (I speak of him in the past tense as he is now long dead, cruelly cut down in his prime in a mysterious incident involving a grassy knoll and a high-powered rifle). I come from a long and distinguished line of tall-story-tellers, and I would like to make it very clear from the outset that tall-story-telling is in no way to be confused with lying.

  Lying is a wicked, shameless, ignominious thing indulged in by crude evil folk, to the detriment of others and to the benefit of themselves. Tall-story-telling is, on the other hand, a noble art, performed by selfless individuals, designed to enrich our cultural heritage and add a little colour to an otherwise lacklustre world.

  So there.

  My father was a tall-story-teller, as my earliest memory of him set down now before you will confirm.

  It was my first year at infant school, and the teacher had asked us to paint a picture of what our fathers did for a living. I painted mine and it so impressed the teacher that she stuck it up in the school hall (a big honour, that). And when open day came around a week later, she hastened over to my father to engage him in conversation.

  ‘Mr Rankin,’ she said. ‘I wonder if you might consider coming into the school and giving a talk to the children about your occupation?’

  My dad, a carpenter by trade, asked why.

  ‘Because,’ said the teacher, ‘you are the first father we’ve ever had at this school who’s a whaler.’

  You see, several weeks prior to this my dad had given me a whale’s tooth as a present, and had told me a marvellous tale about having prised it from the jaw
of the slain creature during one of his many whaling voyages. He had never actually been to sea in his life; he was simply entertaining his young son with a tall tale well told.

  Now any ‘normal’ father, upon being faced with this teacher’s question, might simply have owned up to the truth and laughed off the whole affair. But not my dad. He had a duty to his calling. He agreed, without a moment’s hesitation, went home, fashioned for himself a makeshift harpoon to illustrate throwing techniques, and returned to school the following week to give his talk.

  I was quite a hero throughout my second term at infant school.

  And so it continued throughout my father’s life. He rose, at length, to the not-so-giddy heights of general foreman, but wherever he went he spread wonder. And never more so, nor with greater panache, than when many years later he finally went to his grave.

  His apotheosis as a tall-story-teller came at his funeral where he was paid a posthumous tribute to his supreme mastery of the craft. No-one really expects to leave their father’s funeral with tears of laughter in their eyes. But I did. My dad had the last laugh, and he let us share it.

  A slightly surreal incident at the start of the proceedings set the tone for what was to come. One of the pall bearers had a cold and pulled from his pocket an oversized red gingham handkerchief. Such an item wouldn’t have meant much to anyone else, but it meant a lot to me.

  The last time I had seen a handkerchief like that was nearly forty years before. My Aunty Edna, my dad’s sister, always carried one in her handbag. It was scented with lavender and I loved the smell so much that whenever she came to visit I would pretend to have a cold so she would let me blow my nose on it. I would bury my face in that hanky and draw in the marvellous perfume.

  The sight of the pall bearer’s hanky stirred some long-forgotten childhood memories. But it wasn’t just the handkerchief.

  It was the Polo mint.

  As he pulled out the handkerchief, a Polo mint popped from his pocket. It flew through the air and fell to the church floor, spiralling slowly forward until it came to rest beneath my dad’s coffin.

  And there it remained throughout the service.

  But the curious incident of the oversized red gingham handkerchief and the Polo mint was nothing, nothing in the face of what was to come.

  The vicar was one of those young, earnest, eager fellows, with the shining face of a freshly bathed infant. Why do they scrub their faces up like that? Is it the ‘cleanliness is next to godliness’ angle? I don’t know, but, all aglow and full of beans, he climbed into the pulpit, gathered his robes about him and began a discourse upon my dad.

  ‘I have only been in this parish for nine months,’ said the vicar, ‘and so I only knew Mr Rankin during the final stages of his long illness. But it became clear to me, through my many talks with him, that Mr Rankin was no ordinary man. He had lived the kind of life that most of us only read about. He had walked alone across the Kalahari Desert, sailed alone around Cape Horn, conquered some of the world’s highest peaks, and been decorated twice for deeds of outstanding valour during the Second World War.’

  My gaze, which had become fixed upon the Polo mint, rose rapidly upon hearing all this, and a look of horror must certainly have appeared upon my face. My immediate thoughts were that the vicar was talking about the wrong man. It was typical, wasn’t it, one old dying man looking just the same as another to a new vicar with his mind on other things: young housewives of the parish, probably! I was almost on the point of rising from my pew to take issue with the erring cleric when I heard the first titters of laughter.

  The church was packed, my dad had a great many friends, and the laughter came in little muffled outbursts from his old cronies. And as the vicar continued with tales of my father’s daring escapades, world wanderings and uncanny knack for always being in the right place at the right time when history was being made, the laughter spread.

  But never so far as the pulpit.

  My father had spent the last nine months of his life telling tall tales to the vicar.

  As I say, I left the church with tears in my eyes.

  But the best was yet to come, and it was almost as if my dad had planned it. In fact, looking back, I feel certain that he did.

  ‘Would you care to come back to the house for a cup of tea?’ I asked the vicar. ‘Evidently you were very close to my dad at the end, and I’d like, at the very least, for us to have a chat.’

  The vicar agreed and we returned to my dad’s place.

  And we hadn’t been there for ten minutes when it came.

  The vicar pointed to the large swordfish saw that hung above the fireplace. ‘Now, that can tell a tale or two, can’t it?’ he said to me.

  I glanced up at it. As far as I knew the thing had been utterly mute ever since my dad had purchased it in a Hastings antique market. But then it might have confided a tale or two to him in private, I couldn’t be certain.

  ‘Would you like to refresh my memory?’

  ‘Indeed,’ said the man of the cloth, sipping tea. ‘Your father told me about the time he was fishing for sailfish alone off the Florida Keys, and a sudden storm blew his boat far out to sea. He lost all contact with land and during this storm, which was, according to your father, nothing less than the infamous Hurricane Flora of 1966, his oars were blown overboard.

  ‘Your father thought that his time had surely come and, being the pious man he was, he offered himself to God’s tender mercy. There was a flash of lightning and at that very moment a swordfish burst its saw – that very one hanging there – up through the bottom of the boat. Using the skills he had learned while working as a circus strongman, your father snapped off the saw, thrust his foot into the hole and, using the saw for a paddle, rowed back to land.’

  To say that I was speechless would be to say, well, I was speechless.

  After the vicar left, my mum took me quietly to one side. ‘I think it would probably be for the best if none of this was ever spoken of again, don’t you, dear?’ she said.

  I nodded thoughtfully. ‘Trust me, Mum,’ I told her. ‘I won’t mention it to another living soul.’

  And I have, of course, remained true to my promise.

  My Uncle Brian, my dad’s younger brother, was not a carpenter or a general foreman. He was a fox farmer. I never even knew that fox farms existed before he told me about them. Apparently, without fox farms the entire British economy would have ground to a halt a long time before it actually did in the year 2002, with the fall of the British book publishing industry and pretty much everything else. But during the 1980s and 1990s, fox farming at secret government establishments kept it buoyant. You see, there weren’t enough foxes to hunt and so fox farms had to breed even more.

  Allow me to explain.

  As most folk will know, blood sports have, in recent times, become something of an issue and one which has deepened the divide between the rural and the urban communities.

  There has always been a divide, but this is to be expected. Country folk have long considered themselves to be a cut above the simple townie. Country folk feel themselves to be closer to nature, more in tune with its natural rhythms and custodians of the land for generations yet to come. Townies, in their opinion, are a bunch of glue-sniffing football hooligans, packed like lab rats into high-rise blocks, stunted both mentally and physically by a diet of McDonald’s burgers and traffic fumes. Gross, perverted and not nice to know.

  Townies, however, lean to a different opinion. They consider themselves a cut above the simple bumpkin. Townies feel themselves to be better educated and more sophisticated, having greater access to the arts and information technology. They look upon country folk as a bunch of ignorant, inbred sheep-shaggers who get off on cruelty and blood-letting. Gross, perverted and not nice to know.

  Both sides are, of course, way off the mark, although it could be argued that sheep-shagging is an almost exclusively rural recreation.

  So it comes as little surprise to find that the country
man and the townie disagree over the matter of blood sports.

  In the summer of 1997 almost half a million concerned country folk marched peacefully upon London to heighten the awareness of the public at large regarding the threat to rural England posed by a proposed Bill to abolish the blood sport of fox-hunting.

  What the dim-witted townie failed to understand, the country folk patiently explained, was that without foxhunting there would be no English countryside. Consider, they said, all those people whose livelihoods depend directly upon foxhunting. The saddlers, the grooms, the ostlers, the stable lads and lasses. The riding instructors, the vets, the manufacturers of horse pills and tackle and donkey nuts and stirrup cups. The blacksmiths and the blacksmiths’ apprentices, the horse-breeders, the makers of horse boxes and those who worked in the factories that produce those stickers you see in the rear windows of Range Rovers that say ‘I ♥ greys’.

  And that was only the horses. What about the dogs? What about those packs of beautiful cuddly foxhounds? They’d all have to be destroyed. Destroyed! Dogs destroyed! A national shame! And with their destruction would go the livelihoods of the Masters of Foxhounds, their apprentices and assistants, the whippers-in, the manufacturers of dog collars and dog biscuits and dog food, more vets and so on and so forth.

  Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of hard-working honest country folk would be doomed to lives of dole-queue misery only previously reserved for town-dwellers.

  Catastrophe!

  And worse, far worse, what about the land itself? England depended upon its farmland. Its farmland and its produce. The land! Dear Lord, the land!

  To put it plainly, there would be no more land. Without the efforts of the gallant foxhunters to keep the evil vermin that was the fox at bay, the English countryside would be no more. The fox, that hellish chimera of wolf, jackal, tiger and ghoul/demon/werewolf, would multiply, growing in unstoppable numbers, forming mighty packs and wreaking havoc across the land. Snatching infants from their cots, devouring entire herds of sheep and cattle in a hideous feeding frenzy, before moving on to destroy the towns and cities.