THE FEW CONTROLLERS
COMPLETE STORY (TO DATE)
PROLOGUE
'Presumably I can sit here?'
Headphones in he was tapping on his device before I'd agreed. One of those laptop jockeys in Botley's artisan coffee shop. A writer-in-residence of the digital future, swapping human failings for the icy perfections of code and spreadsheet.
The setting was perfect – for him. A mixture of faux-chumminess and industrial austerity; a Covid redoubt, haunted by the lockdowns its regulars enjoyed.
I stole his tablet and it couldn't have been easier.
'Is your milk allergy-tested?'
He peered into the cake display, reciting its tempting contents. The device sat open and unlocked. I took it without glancing, remembering Clemenza's words to Michael Corleone on how to leave Louis’ restaurant in the Bronx. Walk straight out but don’t hurry.
The bar at Botley's Premier Inn was perfect – for me. Its jarring interior sure to repel hipsters and digital workers; the purple and cream tones ensuring he’d never set foot there. His files revealed:
* A list of dogging locations off the A420 and A34. I'll initially spare you elaboration (his activities were lovingly chronicled).
* A database of Tesco superstores in the Oxford area, linked to programs for stock-levels. It was in edit-mode so I made random changes then hit 'Go Live'. Expect vast quantities of Tunnock’s Tea Cakes in your local store.
* A detailed inventory of his late-father's possessions, with likely values and ideas on how to ensure he - and not his sister - got them. Most were worth under £20.
* A local health authority database of Covid vaccination status for Botley's locals. I recognised many names, including my own. Scrolling through, each cell linked to information on voting habits, views on Brexit, ethnicity, race, qualifications, occupation…even where one shopped for food.
There was a link to 'preferred pronoun if realignment prescribed or promoted.' I edited my own information, until the program locked when I identified as a pan-sexual Muslim with a geography degree from Durham, seeking urgent and drastic realignment.
Later I returned to the artisanal oasis, wearing a mask, balaclava and great-coat - like a revolutionary from Dr Zhivago. I pushed the sorry item under one of the benches and almost collided with its febrile owner, ranting at a cowering barista.
'Surely you have CCTV? It was stolen and this is now a national security matter. I can have you closed and searched if it's not returned!'
And me? I tinker along.
It needed starting - a rebellion, of sorts.
CHAPTER ONE
'We know it was you.'
Laptop was queueing behind me in Home Bargains.
Was there anywhere I'd be less likely to meet him? Maybe he was checking toilet-roll stock against the Leave/Remain voter ratio in Botley. Or the staff were getting compulsory kindness training. I pretended not to hear, pondering his use of pronoun.
He then swung his basket into the back of my knees. An act I couldn't ignore.
I turned and rammed my thumbs into his eyes, kicking him brutally in the bollocks and smashing my basket over his head.
In violence - of which I have vague experiences - the vital thing is speed. More risky for him than me. I'm a disgraced teacher, exiled for crimes against gender realignment plus saying 'Islamophobia' is a synonym for common sense.
The checkout staff roared their approval.
'Get stuck into the shithead. He had me put on disciplinary for my checkout rate falling below 80% of regional average.'
The speaker was a defeated looking Sikh on an adjacent till.
Laptop staggered up, shakily extracting his mobile.
'Send in the supervisory team. I'm being attacked by a nativist!'
Management rushed to the checkout area but I made good my escape, into the Pets at Home superstore.
'I was at college with that twat.'
The young assistant pointed. Toy police and store detectives were gathering, unable to see me crouching behind a row of hamster cages.
Leading them was Laptop, barking for 'the immediate arrest of a far-right extremist.'
She led me further in, opening a door into the Vets' rooms.
'Mr "Social justice through control then rape". Universally hated, especially by women. But boy he did the woke talk.'
I sat flummoxed. The woman was oddly familiar.
'Misty, your cat - I do her jabs.'
My trust was won. Glancing at the CCTV, I saw Laptop and his Stasi crew wandering next door into Oak Furniture Land.
'I'm Julia. I won't ask your name, since you're cancelled.'
'Very wise. And who's my pursuer?'
'He's not called O'Brien. Rupert Howard, the vacuum created when ideology replaces God, man or morality. He studied Geography, of course. A monster to be ranked alongside Beria or Mao.'
Pretentiousness or profundity?
'He's a turd with open windows on dogging, supermarket management and lockdown - not Stavrogin.'
'My mother was Russian.'
CCTV now showed several uniformed police entering the shop. She led me through the back doors to a welcoming skip, crammed with flattened cardboard boxes and polystyrene packing debris. I felt strangely at peace and fell asleep, safely concealed by the retail-park detritus.
CHAPTER TWO
Why rubbish dumps and landfills are magical, I do not now. Since childhood I've relished any trip to the tip. The curves, seagulls, tatty characters lurking to scavenge.
One could be literary - God forbid - and link it to individual then societal collapse. But there's a purity in seeing so much discarded, covered over, awaiting festering bioprocesses and gas.
Anyone who's cleared a parental home starts with visits to charity shops then - as the scale of their possessions overwhelms - resorts to dumping stuff undifferentiated, desperate to be done.
How often I've sat in queues on the Wilton Road, Salisbury, laden down, crawling forward to disgorge my parents' books, pictures, letters, ornaments, photo albums - even clothes.
And now I was in a skip looking up into outer purity, entropy doing its job.
I just had to wait...
Destined for landfill in the indigo dawn of suburban morning.
I'd not even felt any jolting as my nocturnal abode was loaded onto a lorry.
Fast asleep, until the A34 congestion awakened me to traffic chaos.
Have you encountered the atavistic types who work on municipal dumps? Eyes alert for items of discarded value, speedy links to supply lines for stolen copper, lead roofing and knackered radiators.
I hopped out unseen - or so I thought.
But those on the adjacent site are ever vigilant, chained dogs announcing my arrival in the underbelly of by-passed Oxfordshire.
Before I could scarper, I'd been bagged and dragged into some static caravan. Seated in the steamy atmosphere were a couple of obvious Shiremen, beaming contentedly at an enormous tea-pot.
I'd read Ballard and imagined some nightmarish confinement, in a rewrite of Concrete Island. Or life as a white-slave in the English dystopia, traded between building crews and Bulgarian gangs traversing the south-east.
'Does he fancy a brew?'
'A cunt like this wants his skinny-late!'
I was handed an enamel mug swirling with two table-spoons of sugar. Drinking sweetened tea is no more possible than if salt and vinegar are added.
The closest thatch-head jumped up and opened my gob. The other Shireman poured the sickly stuff in.
'Now we're all friends,' cackled Shireman One. 'You'll need that sugar for energy, with what we've got planned.'
All my life, I had been expecting the bedrock of middle-class comfort and security to collapse beneath me. Now I felt relieved.
Perhaps our only hope lay in sudden violence. Or maybe my tea was drugged.
I was back in my Garden City childhood, vague poverty on the estates with underpasses to Shoplands and Harlands shopping precincts.
Socialism then didn't involve pandemic-fear and inculcation of mental-health collapse. Crime wasn't normalised and used for social control.
Such blinding insight! As always too late and no one to share this with. I could remember it all.
There was my primary school, dazzling plate glass and lawns to run down at lunchtime. A viaduct alongside, carrying the London line from Kings Cross. Council flats seen through the 70s heatwaves, all nylon, sideburns and heavy smokers.
Most of my teachers were lefties with no interest in indoctrination. Though I remember one who obsessed about overpopulation, the new ice age and nuclear testing in the Pacific. And shopping was different somehow; not as dominant and more expensive. Let's face it, the old elites were less ruthless than today's rootless 'experts' with worthless degrees who live online...
'Do you like your rubies?'
Don't let some left-liberal fool you into pitying travellers and their 'lives of poverty'. There's wealth a plenty, gold and gemstone opulence on open display when you get inside.
'Take a look at Dave's!'
An enormous star ruby - flanked by what seemed D-colour Marquise cut diamonds - winked at me. The grin on Shireman Two was pure gold.
'Surely that's not a find from the tip?'
Roars of appreciative laughter. All of these cultural shifts are exhausting - for writers and readers alike.
I was led into a comfortable bedroom and lowered onto a huge double-bed.
Drugged mental overwriting. Reverie and review, with me rationalising my rejection of liberal delusions in 'being on the right side of history'. Reification through retelling events from my lonely twenties, Liza-style underground-man abandonments on streets of falling sleet. True pity is the emotion we cannot fake.
'Surprised by such luxury?'
Sat in the corner was a hallucinatory figure in JJB sportswear. He handed me travel brochures and property listings for exotic locations.
'When cunts like you holiday in Southwold or north Norfolk, our Shiremen friends next door are booking cruises and buying second homes on the Costas or in Thailand. Gary Glitter started out with a market stall in Banbury and finished up there - on death row, as it happens.'
What was Professor Sports Direct suggesting? But I kept my mouth shut, keen for more monologues worthy of Ballard or Houellebecq.
'Covid vaccine spike proteins lobotomising the middle class. All good - their houses have never been easier to burgle. First visit as delivery driver, strike up a friendship, pop back to sledge hammer their patio doors in the small hours.'
I thought uneasily of my own back garden.
'Don't worry, anything worth taking from yours is long gone. Ask the cleaners - they gave us the keys.'
I now understood how my house had transitioned into a stark abode worthy of some Nordic noir thriller.
CHAPTER THREE
Professor Sports Direct became my confessor - though all three knew my life and history. Mostly me and him, trudging the canal banks north of Oxford, avoiding the narrow-boat dwellers epitomising the gentrified nonsense throttling things.
‘How did it come to this - angrily exiled from your class, education and acceptable opinion?’
‘I knew it would. It started with a bar-job during my DPhil, in the Lamb and Flag.’
‘I always hated that place.’
‘Or maybe it’s epigenetic. My Greek grandparents were ethnically cleansed by the Turks.'
‘Don’t be a twat.’
'Perfection bores me. Where did all the bastards go? Writers used to screw their half-sisters, machine-gun toilets or attack the Nazis for being philosemitic.'
'Byron, Hemingway and Celine, I assume?'
Despite declaring himself 'blissfully uneducated', his reading shamed my ex-English teaching colleagues, whose idea of great literature ended with To Kill a Mockingbird or The Kite Runner.
There was an evening in a Wetherspoons pub, Witney. Forget the Cotswolds of Cameron and David Beckham. Here was the real England. I'd no idea that nascent resistance to our left-liberal elite was stirring, attacks planned on their homes, hipster-bars, boats, gastropubs, LTNs and - of course - artisan coffee shops.
My own encounters with Laptop had been noted, so I entered to thunderous applause. I gave a short talk, outlining the target and his many crimes against humanity. Flyers were circulated with his dogging activities and suggestions on where to film then upload.
Later that evening, a group led by myself and the Shiremen crept into scrappy woodland opposite The Greyhound, Besselsleigh. The pub itself was one I'd not wanted targeting. The venue for many family meals and it wasn’t gastrofied.
We waited in silence. According to Laptop's notes 'things kick off about 11.30pm. Park alongside the copse then flash your lights three times to show you're trading!'
My Speedmaster showed a time of 11:32 as three cars pulled off the A420.
*
An ex-colleague of mine - a test-tube left-liberal - had his smugness punctured one Christmas. Under the twinkling lights, his wife left her laptop open on an unseasonal dogging site: Mrs Lecturer in Public Health Policy was popular with 'consenting adults in the Aylesbury area'.
His pieties on sexual freedom went into reverse and colleagues received frank emails explaining this situation. Like most middle-class lefties, he felt obliged to share his personal life, copying me poems and love letters he'd penned for the errant spouse.
If I sound callous, I am. Nothing surprises me about these clowns, facetiously wielding power but unfit to run a bath. The same deputy-head wore anti-Brexit t-shirts at GCSE results' days. When I was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, he consoled me with unsolicited lectures on NHS funding.
Waiting in the flickering darkness, I wondered if his disgraced wife occupied one of those cars, down from Bucks to meet Laptop. Our aim was to pinch the motors whilst the doggers were busy in their wooded love-nest. Who knows, maybe they'd stay and breed some colony of perverts, a Pitcairn island off the A420. Even Ballard wouldn't have used that scenario!
Although I'd never stolen a car before, my companions were old hands. One bloke - 'Gypo Geoff' - had a bunch of keys programmed for common cars and an App for everything else. Myself and the two Shiremen jumped into an Audi A4. Shireman Two drove us almost into the woods, headlights undipped.
What we witnessed is too horrific to retell in detail, but was recorded by Shireman One for posterity and posted online:
Laptop being 'spit-roasted' by two Village People types with handle-bar moustaches. His startled face was sadly blanked out from the Oxford Mail's image but the damage to his reputation was fatal.
In a final irony, he now works behind the till in Aldi, muttering obscurely at me when I occasionally shop there.
CHAPTER FOUR
West from Oxford, the driving is freedom itself. Especially up to White Horse Hill, with its precipitous cliffs of lumpy grass.
The whole area is perfect for aimless drives and long conversations. My daughter and I would spend hours occupied with nothing else, joyfully traversing the Berkshire Downs.
Now in a stolen car, I sat alongside Sports Direct and talked him through my obsessions with true crime, gemstones and the Sherlock Holmes stories. So intense was the last that I wrote tributes, pitting the horrors of educational wokedom against Holmes' indefatigable need to confront evil.
As we looked down over the Vale, he sat quietly reading my story about the madness enveloping our schools:
SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE TRANSGENDER PUPIL
I. THE ORDEAL OF MISS SPINDELLA DAVENTRY
Habituated as I was to Holmes waking me in the early hours, I nevertheless voiced my displeasure as he peered into my bleary eyes.
'Surely not again, Holmes?'
'The game's afoot, Watson. Dress quickly - I have need of a medical man.'
Slumped in our fireside armchair, a lady of dubious appearance slurped brandy and enthusiastically inhaled on a cigar.
'Watson, may I introduce Miss Spindella Daventry, late of the Northamptonshire Skinhead Dancing Troupe?'
I nodded at this outlandish figure, who rose uncertainly to her feet and made an exaggerated curtsy.
'Delighted, Dr Watson. Mr Holmes feels you may need your medical bag for some surgical intervention.'
My mind spun back to the case of 'The Engineer's Thumb'. Had our visitor similarly suffered horrific mutilation, now desperately in need of urgent treatment after staggering through a miasma of pain and blood loss?
'Perhaps you might fetch it,' Holmes drawled, gently pushing Miss Daventry back into her seat.
'Now tell all, neglecting not even the smallest of details.'
'Mr Holmes, I am a child of Northamptonshire, that county of spires and squires,' sighed Miss Daventry. 'My people have owned a hardware store in Brackley for generations past.'
'A fine town - solid - yet not without its understated attractions,' I noted, discretely placing my bag by the table.
'You would not say so if you had suffered the indignities visited on me,'
'Just recount the facts, Miss Daventry. Watson is versed in the horrors of warfare; nothing can shock him,'
'Ever since childhood, I have questioned my identity...now this quest has brought me here. My parents are Brackley Brethren, a stricter offshoot of the Plymouth variety. Yet I yearned always for the bright lights, away from the Brethren's nightly prayers, cold-water bottles and non-existent Christmas presents.'
'As any young lady would,' I reassured her.
'I managed to persuade my aging parents to send me for schooling in the neighbouring town of Bicester, a place feared and loathed by honest Brackley folk.'
'It is indeed a town of ill-repute, beset by perverts and drug dealers, avoided by the sturdy Shiremen of Oxon,' I remarked.
'Watson, pray stick to facts and refrain from such splenetic prejudice!'
'I apologise, Holmes...my cherished niece attended school there and is now living on benefits in Ambrosden, besieged by Afghan asylum seekers.'
'Dr Watson merely confirms the horrific reality,' affirmed Miss Daventry.
'Mr Holmes, I was a pupil at Bicester Neighbourhood College!'
Silence descended. Even in Baker Street, that terrifying establishment was a byword for loutish behaviour and threadbare teaching staff.
'Yet the problems actualised in my hometown. Mr Holmes, are you familiar with gay bars?'
Holmes's aquiline features registered a flicker of uncertainty before he confidently asserted:
'Whilst at the University, I heard vague rumour of an establishment known as "The Jolly Farmers". From what I understood, the activities there were far from joyful and had little to do with agriculture, even in its basest forms.'
I stared with incredulity at my friend.
'Fisting, golden showers, gloryholes?' I murmured in horror, without realising that Miss Daventry had anticipated my every word.
'Oh God, save me from such memories,' she wailed. ‘"Ma Transom's" was Brackley's only rainbow-flagged public house. A fearsome place, wherein were practised certain unspeakable midnight rites.’
To what heart of darkness was this leading? I looked closely at our visitor. Something about her jawline, Adam's apple and thick wrists gave me pause.
'Certain unspeakable midnight rites?' pressed Holmes.
'In Bicester, we were taught how gender identity is fluid and a matter of personal choice, dependent on whether one enjoys showtunes and the music of Jimmy Sommerville.'
'Poppycock!' I exploded.
'Maybe that as well,' she replied.
'Are we to assume you have undergone radical gender realignment?' asked Holmes.
'My mutton and two sprouts were torn off during a rowdy lock-in at Ma Transom's, then rushed to Hassim's kebab van.'
'Watson! A quick examination of her nether regions - on with the marigolds!'
It was a sight worthy of a Lahore butcher's shop, staffed by myopic lunatics. I whistled at the savagery inflicted on this epicene Northamptonshire youth. Nothing in my medicine bag - short of a magic wand - could reverse such emasculation.
'Was there no offer of conversion therapy?' I demanded.
'Our head of PSHE said that would be transphobic.'
Something remained unexplained.
'What is this "Northamptonshire Skinhead Dancing Troupe"?'
Holmes interjected.
'I think that requires a trip to somewhere you both fear, followed by a more pleasant visit to nearby Brackley. The train journey at least will provide Watson some peace, after his rude awakening.'
The terrified look on Miss Daventry's face subsided into one of fixed determination.
'I am in your hands, Mr Holmes. A train from Marylebone to Bicester at 07:50 serves us well.'
'There's little else we can do but seek out your educators, to teach them the meaning of that word I once saw scrawled in red on a Brixton wall.'
Holmes's reference to 'A Study in Scarlet' gave me hope of just retribution, yet a sense of ominous foreboding troubled my thoughts.
*
As Holmes had promised, our journey from London brought some relief from the horrors I'd seen. Confusingly, the train carried signs in two Chinese languages and numbers of jabbering Orientals, clutching empty bags.
Miss Daventry explained.
'Bicester Village is their goal. A vast retail outlet meeting their insatiable need for remaindered designer goods.'
We arrived at Miss Daventry's former school during its first lesson. Holmes wasted no time in finding a classroom where PSHE was being taught, employing his indefatigable nose for the egregious and inexplicable. As ever, his confident manner and commanding presence deterred any questions, though his deer-stalker and Ulster cape attracted many startled glances.
Those were as nothing when set against our incredulous stares, as Holmes emerged from a toilet cubicle in the N-block corridor. He was now dressed as a fully-fledged 'council-estate-gangster' ladette, loudly masticating on gum and flicking hair from a convincing blonde wig.
'I am, as self-defined, a troubled young lady: one Melissa Bartlett - Tik-Tok superstar and the scourge of Year Nine. No one can gainsay me that identity, however ridiculous it certainly is.'
With those parting words, he opened the door to N10 and strode in.
II. THE SCANDAL OF HAZEL NUTS AND OLIVER FIST
The door to N10 flew open and a class trooped out, Holmes lurking in the throng, flicking his blonde locks.
‘Hazel Nuts, Northampton's Foremost Drag Queen’ was due to perform a fully-inclusive Dickensian interpretation Oliver Fist, for the whole-school assembly. All apparently were welcome: Lesbian; Bi; Gay; Trans; Queer; Intersex; Asexual; Plus.
Plus what? Trepanned, presumably.
I'd noticed posters for this event, on our arrival in Bicester Neighbourhood College. One glance at the cast list had me shaking with righteous fury:
Oliver Fist: Hazel Nuts
Nancy Boy: Hazel Nuts
Fagin the Fag: Hazel Nuts
The Artful Dogger: Hazel Nuts
Bill 'Bull-Dyke' Sykes: Hazel Nuts
Mr Brownlove: Hazel Nuts
Spunks: Hazel Nuts
As we trooped across to the dilapidated Lower School Hall, a diminutive figure of disreputable appearance sped over to join us.
'Good Morning, Dr Watson! We are indeed honoured to entertain such an illustrious figure, from England's foremost comedy act.'
It was none other than Professor Moriarty, resurfaced in another of his deadly incarnations as the school’s Headteacher. Dressed in a cheap crumpled suit, speckled with dandruff from his loathsome, greasy locks.
'Might I ask if we shall also be seeing the organ grinder; or is it just the monkey who's made his way out to Bicester, doubtless attracted by Hazel's missing nuts?'
My last sighting of this disgraced figure was in London's dingy Regent Palace Hotel, engaged in the sordid act of blackmailing myself and Holmes over some photographs of youthful indiscretions, recounted in 'The Scandal of the Brown Parcels'. At the time, Moriarty was a pornographer; his alarming change in occupation was unsurprising, given Ms Daventry's shocking educational experiences.
Before the assembly started, the whole school was led by Moriarty in two minutes' silence for the recently deceased victims of a submarine accident when diving to explore the Titanic’s wreck. Hazel Nuts then performed a version of the Karoake classic 'My Heart Will Go On', gustily accompanied by the entire hall.
Holmes threw himself into this nightmare with abandon, his screeching soprano falsetto attracting the Professor's amused glances.
'As I suspected, the Baker Street bungler has made an appearance!' he chortled into my ear.
If anything, the ensuing performance of Oliver Fist was even more revolting. To what depths have we sunk?
Ms Nuts sang a series of torch anthems and then dry-humped a delighted Professor Moriarty, to the roars of the entire school. Fagin's Faggots was an especially inappropriate number, during which Ms Nuts enrolled volunteers for 'urgent gender realignment'.
Half the school rushed towards the stage, including Holmes. Moriarty produced a sheaf of forms to be completed, which was done without a single pupil reading what they were signing. No doubt their most delicate of regions were being promised to Hassam's Kebab van, or some other purveyor of egregious street comestibles.
As Holmes reached the front, he tore off his wig and leapt on Moriarty.
'Watson, I have need of your trusty service revolver! Quick man, I can't hold the bastard much longer.'
I rushed forward, Webley revolver at the ready. Holmes grabbed it and turned to address the hall.
'I will now teach you a proper history lesson. Edward the Second suffered an earlier version of this.'
He shoved the weapon up Moriarty's arse and pulled the trigger. Before any of us could react, he withdrew it then levelled the barrel at Hazel Nuts.
'Lead us away from this scene, on pain of your life.'
A stunned silence descended. Myself, Holmes and Ms Daventry left the building, proceeded by a shaken Hazel Nuts…
III. THE BEASTS OF OTMOOR
Between Oxford and the degraded market town of Bicester stretches a lonely countryside of sodden fields and sporadic villages, populated by thatched Shiremen and their dangerous offspring. A chilling miasma cloaks the desultory waterways and occasional spires.
It was to here that we fled. Holmes's indefatigable sense of direction led us into its watery depths, away from our pursuers and the distant sirens.
'This is Otmoor, Watson. A place famed for its bestiality, inbreeding and feral beasts - some of them animals.'
'Surviving the worst of Dartmoor, we can have little to fear in rural Oxfordshire?' I queried, my mind racing back to the phosphorescent Hound.
The look on Miss Daventry's face suggested otherwise.
'Mr Holmes is surely right to warn us, doctor. Entire villages here have undergone gender realignment. Others still maintain their skinhead dancing troupes, in a tradition dating back to Edward the Confessor - born in nearby Islip.'
'Gentlemen, I require immediate transportation back to Northampton!' screeched Hazel Nuts. A mere mention of those shaven-haired ruffians had terrified the drag queen.
We had by now stumbled into the village of Charlton-on-Otmoor and its single deserted street, empty save for a drunk staggering towards us. To my astonishment, a collection of lanyards swung lazily from his sweaty neck. On each could be seen a gurning mugshot image of this wretch, alongside meaningless job descriptions from his days in the education sector:
Geoff Lanyard, Senior Facilitating Director (Equity and Diversity), Acumen Educational Trust.
Geoff Lanyard, Director for End-User Platform Development, Acumen Educational Trust.
Geoff Lanyard, Lead Practitioner for Best Practice Benchmarking of Teaching and Learning, Acumen Educational Trust.
Geoff Lanyard, Net Zero Business Development Director, Acumen Educational Trust.
Geoff Lanyard, Lecturer in Applied Methodological Pupil Attainment Analysis, Acumen Educational Trust.
Geoff Lanyard, Director for Curriculum Planning and Outreach Coordination, Acumen Educational Trust.
Geoff Lanyard, Safeguarding Lead Coordinator for Multidisciplinary Teams, Acumen Educational Trust.
Geoff Lanyard, Director for Implementation of End-User Facing Learning Technology, Acumen Educational Trust.
Geoff Lanyard, Strategic Coordinator for Pupil-Oriented Outcomes, Acumen Educational Trust.
Geoff Lanyard, Director for Gender Realignment Counselling/Genital Mutilation, Acumen Educational Trust.
The lanyards dangled from rainbow-coloured necklaces, all jostling for position on Geoff's soiled and striped shirt.
'One of the truly legendary Otmoor beasts!' Holmes pronounced, not attempting to lower his voice.
'Ms Daventry, may I suggest you finish this sod off?' he added peremptorily, handing her my pistol.
She needed no prompting. Before I could intervene, we saw a repeat of the summary execution suffered by Moriarty. The door to an adjacent public house swung open, just as my trusty service revolver was fired up Lanyard's rectum.
'One less managerial shithead!' chortled a purple-faced Shireman, head heavily thatched.
Holmes slapped him on the back and led us into The Crown. A more cheering sight - after our flight across Oxfordshire's desolate moorland - could hardly be imagined. I wasted no time in filling my boots with several pints of the local ale, served brown and foaming in traditional porcelain mugs, bedecked with images of Charlton's delightful dancing skinheads.
I was excited to overhear a conversation between two leathery old puffins, informing me that the boot-boys were appearing at The Crown, that very evening! I wondered whether we could combine this fortuitous event with permanent disposal of the egregious Hazel Nuts? Her company was fast becoming intolerable. One look at Holmes's aquiline face showed me his thoughts ran in the same direction…
An hour later, the pub’s doors were flung open and the steaming skinheads arrived. I spare my readers the more gruesome details. Even today, many a lonely traveller claims to hear - tossed on a wild wind - the agonised and plaintive cries of some Jimmy Somerville showtune number, coming from deep beneath the forgetful waters of Otmoor's RSPB Reserve.
As Holmes had promised, we obtained revenge for Miss Daventry: ‘Rache’ was indelibly and bloodily carved into the fearsome local folklore. We safely returned the wronged lady to Brackley, where her family sheltered us from ongoing police enquiries.
Alas, it was beyond the limits of my own battlefield surgical experiences - let alone those of the foremost experts in the kingdom - to remedy the carnage inflicted on her nether regions by the trans-movement.
*
The Professor wasn't impressed.
'I got the point just from your title. It's an insult to the original characters and very childish.'
I admired his vehemence, and mostly agreed.
'But does it work?'
'Not as well as chasing the cunts round a pub carpark.'
I'd also satirised the grooming gangs targeting Oxford's schools. The caravan site provided an ideal venue for the spoken-word performance Sports Direct demanded, that very evening.
My strict instructions were to 'do the Police in different voices' - not that plod bothered with the actual scandal:
PRESENTS FROM MY BOYFRIENDS
PERMISION TO WRITE
Can I write an epistolary novel
on this pale working-class girl
groomed like an estate princess
with Primark’s luxuries then raped
in a circle by men of faith who offer
bargain booze when it’s over then
drop her by an empty shopping centre?
Of course not, the subject isn’t allowed.
You ask is that fair? Study their culture.
Britain’s rapacious rule of India where
a diamond was taken. Don’t bother me
with innocence, such natives have none.
Summer days when she swung up for the sky,
pushed by those who loved her and let her fly?
Just read my report, there’s nothing to say.
You fester in anger as this story drifts away.
I worry if my daughter with a penis which
swings between her legs will ever play
football that's not ridiculed or swim races
leading the pack. You want other concerns?
Which pronouns go on badges, how to address
students who are trans in Year 7 plus bipolar
then develop global-warming phobia when
a dealer gets killed in Minnesota or wherever.
I’m studying in my spare-time. I read
Times' articles – two in Nature – and now
wear masks everywhere, including my car.
Such girls spread it vaping or in their tears.
DAYS WITH DARK WATER
Prose is too viscous, but I cannot paint;
my words will have to work. I saw her first
going in and out of shops, cars, buses.
Nothing to note but there must have been
something or I wouldn’t be writing. Maybe
it’s not how people stand, but in the way
they move from place to place, skittering,
showing nowhere feels safe.
Flitting’ is the word I wanted.
Tuneless whistling of a delivery man
summoning her like some sad bird to
its rattling cage bars. Absurd to have
such fancies, but she tottered around
his van then hopped in the back.
I’ll write my first letter:
Dear Young Lady who Flits,
How odd to address you as such!
I must not rush; this may be my
only chance. Stay slow and calm,
I’ll keep telling myself.
I fear you’re in danger;
you already know it.
Notice how I used a
semi-colon there as
I was once a teacher.
Men from the east are
crueller than any even
you may have met. In
a local garden centre
I bought a paperback on
the Mongol conquests.
I’d recommend The Works –
it’s not just for true crime or
books of different horoscopes.
I don’t think those migration
Issues are from the past.
There is grooming and it
will have happened to you:
Days with dark water, summer,
but overcast, some gardens –
Derby say – by the wide Derwent.
You were Year 8, friendship issues,
so you walked on your own by
the open river, after school
on the last day of term.
Then in an abandoned house
on a dual carriageway?
The outskirts of all towns
in England have one.
Gaunt, high walled,
some barbed wire,
planks for windows.
Cars speed by yet
no one ever stops.
No one could see what
happened so I'Il let my
imagination run wild.
Will you write back
and say you're safe?
YOU ONCE KNEW
Dear Sir,
I say this as you were a teacher when I hardly did much school. You
write like I’m a sad child but it’s me in charge and you are surely
a paedo? I found some dumb poem by you about a place like that
river where I got caught. I don’t regret it now. It’s always too late:
Like a place you once knew but were seeing
somehow for the first time, washed clean in
clear sunlight without your worries. Be still my
memories, those permanent blocks; sudden
is the word needed for anything now entering
this field of view, be it birds or slight movement
in a tree by an empty sky in the late day’s blue of
impossible clarity, holding neither cold nor warmth.
I don’t think it’s no good but might be and would make no
difference. Not to you and certainly not to me. You could get up
and sing about me in some pub. Either no one would listen, or
everybody would and no one would care.
I used ‘would’ too many times – words like that say a lot about me.
I don’t mean Karaoke, which gets them crying, or two-for-one and
meal deal extra grill.
Even then I think eating is more important. Probably makes no sense
but write back where you left your first letter.
That house is not what you think. It’s still a kids’ home and good
people work there.
Those boys who lurk also bring takeaways – Tikka sometimes.
Who don't need it once every while?
LET ME IMAGINE
In our English towns, how it is to be poor;
staggering like in a Russian novel:
a girl alone with gaping strangers.
Maybe you could go to Greggs
as they do cheap sausage rolls
perhaps a corned-beef pasty?
I had one and vomited it on
the pavement in Kidlington.
When I dropped this letter off
I slowed on the dual carriageway
took a sharp left into closed gates.
Is that usual? I saw faces from upper
windows though not yours. Presumably
you don't live there anymore. A swift hand
from the gate grabbing for delivery. Thirty
pounds thrust in my palm, which I return for
some healthy food. Greek yoghurt is best
maybe bubble tea. I went behind the house
and saw a lonely garden, a broken swing and
scorched grass around a tin-tray barbeque
from a garden centre. Was there a party?
NOT MUCH ANYWHERE ANYMORE
Dear Sir,
It was my leaving-do not a school prom exactly but they did what
they could!! As you says parking is hard and access not good so
many friends couldn't make it to the house. And who are you to
laugh??
Sorry maybe you’re not but it’s easy to drive past and say who’d live
on some dual carriageway who’d have a barbeque in a garden with
nothing but a broke swing who’d live at all really.
One day I'll look at you find where you live sit and watch you'd
better be careful. I know how sick are all levels of men so don't be
fixed on those boys some who loved me as they knew best.
I can't complain if I could I'd be giving back so many things I never
had till they gave them to me for nothing really. I sound so angry
when I can't be now. It puts everyone off. No need to be some
nutjob who loses it in Aldi screaming down aisles shoving at the
checkout as eyes all around are rolling.
I don't understand any of your letters but it's better to get them than
not to so write again if you want to. Such will always find me but as
you say I don't live there not much anywhere anymore.
I HAD A FIGHT
If you find my letters so meaningless
maybe this will help. I was involved in
an 'incident' delivering this one –
I beat the shit out of some cunt who was
trying to intimidate me. Don't you
realise that most middle-class people
bubble with resentment, dissolved over
decades? So I struck first, a kick straight in
his cobblers, thumb into an eye socket
then rapid steam-hammering of the bonce.
Well, he lay stricken. If this was one of
your ‘boys’ then you say sorry for me. I
trust this message is intelligible!
You signed off with weary nihilism
so I thought this sign of my physical
willingness to fight in your cause, although
no longer a young man, would release you
from such hopelessness. I send now also
a pamphlet by a man named Nietzsche to
explain how my actions really might help.
POSTSCRIPT
Bad Sir,
You are a mad sod shithead. I got your pamphlet – wrote cowardly
under some dumb name – saying God is Dead and you have killed
him. It was in that hot garden, no shade, just me. Too much so I
went to the garage for Magnums.
One of my boys read it and no choice but to beat me near dead then
eat the salted caramel one.
He tells that’s why I need treating like they do.
There is only one God and that name is whispered in their ear when
born and when dead. He shouted it in my shell then had me hard.
Said I was lucky for that – next time I’d hear it when petrol plus lit
match through the letterbox.
Tell Mr Nietzsche, I can spell and he is not dead. He’s coming for you
if I tip him your name.
So what is it?
But be careful if you come here again. Eyes watch us all now – it’s
safer that way.
HIS LAST WORDS
Child, I pray you'll somehow always be safe,
never awake worrying through the night.
On this world's surface, how would I find you
if you'd wandered lost, somewhere all alone?
I'd wind my window down. The lonely moon
shining over scorched fields now cooling and
the taste of meadows after rain. Let the
wind alone whisper you this poetry –
doesn't matter where, long after I'm gone;
reaching your ear, taking you safely home.
*
Professor Sports Direct awoke and gave me his opinion.
'Thank God it's stopped.'
CHAPTER FIVE
'Our universities are monasteries with 'Wokedom’ as the new Latin. Flogging indulgences - absolution from the mortal sin of ‘not having a degree’ - and entry to the middle class.'
We sat in The Turf, under the walls of New College. I delivered my monologue whilst Sports Direct made roll-ups and the Shiremen ate crisps.
'Doubtless you've written some bullshit exposing this?'
'The follow-up to Presents from My Boyfriends. It's set in my old college at Oxford.'
'Jesus! I can't face another reading. Send me an online link if you want it read:
ROGUES' GALLERY
For legal reasons, I cannot provide further details on the epistolary sequence presented here, which came into my hands from a ‘whistle blower’ at our university and chronicles a bizarre sequence of events at one of its older colleges. Concerned readers are urged to press the university authorities for more information.
I. DEAR ALICIA
Welcome to the College!
We're so excited, writing to a fresher from your background.
I recently bought a copy of Rogues - from The Works - chronicling the picaresque escapades of 18th-century gallows fodder.
Your ancestors could so easily fill its pages!
One family's story haunts me; I trust my account doesn't trigger inherited trauma?
Cannibals resident on a vasty estate, consuming each other on a regular basis, until caught by King George’s men.
Post-Brexit, I saw a documentary of the 'left behind', resident in a north Kent coastal resort.
The resemblances were striking; education the only solution.
I link this to those brave miners in Billy Elliot, burning furniture - and pianos - to keep themselves warm at Christmas.
It pains me how few of you ever graced the Royal Ballet: your only dance being the Tyburn jig!
I watched you arriving in Garden Quad, like a young mother in a shopping centre, but struggling with textbooks not grubby toddlers.
Now, to the purpose of my letter.
Rest assured, I shall follow your every step through these exciting but daunting first weeks at Oxford.
May I offer you a welcoming drink in my rooms?
There's no need to inform others of our arrangement.
Your affectionate Tutor,
Roland
II. DEAR ROLAND
What a world such a name creates!
Sunlit afternoons of scattered liberal newspapers: tutting indignation over populism and terror of the masses; contagion in eating and sexual disorders.
Have you reviewed our new student intake?
Even to my jaded eyes, I see some outstanding ‘crumpet’ - as we once called totty, before awakening to contemporary enlightenment.
I hear that one such has been receiving 'additional tutorials', in your Garden Quad equity-based emporium.
According to those in neighbouring rooms, the sessions sound both demanding and exhausting.
Fill your boots, old son!
When I was your age, I bagged many an impressionable fresher - though naturally middle-class girls, not estate fodder.
Alicia is delightful!
Her interest in non-binary literary tropes clearly needs stretching.
Did you know that our new Outreach and Diversity Fellow - Penny Spukenfielder - is an expert on the 'grooming issue'?
She's written a robust dismissal of the supposed abuse suffered by working-class girls, at the hands of Islamic enlighteners.
A wonderful study, drawing on Edward Said's Orientalism, the English theft of the Koh-i-Noor, and the Amritsar massacre.
She demonstrates, in an evidence-based analysis, how the alleged ‘abuse’ was fake news, triggered by endemic racism.
Her exemplar fact-checking, funded by the Saudi University of Sharia Law, has featured on the BBC, in The Guardian - and on James O'Brien's radio show.
However, she may be less biddable if a similar fate befalls such types at the College…
Incidentally, I have just submitted a paper to the Journal of Pronoun Irregularities in Genitally-modified Pupils, of which I see you are an editor.
I trust publication is now assured?
Yours in anticipation,
Hubert
III. DEAR HUBERT
Many thanks for your letter.
I have no hesitation in rejecting your paper, which falls below the standard required for the Journal of Genital Hacking and Puberty Blocking.
As to Alicia, you have horribly misunderstood my intentions and the exhaustingly physical nature of my pedagogy.
Our relationship is Platonic, in the purest sense of that classical term.
Think of Socrates and his beloved pupils, before his unfortunate encounter with the hemlock
Your obsessions are disgusting; references to 'crumpet' and 'totty' fool no one.
You are Oxford's most distinguished homosexualist, with many years straining at the 'coal face' in the station bogs, Abbey Road, OX2.
As to your threat, I would welcome an encounter with that hag Penny Spunkenfielder; her bogus academic career is in need of a good kippering.
Yours in delighted anticipation,
Roland
IV. DEAR COLLEAGUE
Ours is an open and welcoming environment, committed to the highest standards of intellectual enquiry, through the pursuit of equity and diversity in their truest sense.
We have all agreed to this, through receipt of my letter, according to the following:
Equity means that all are seen to achieve, without reference to colour, race, ethnicity, religion, class, gender, sexuality, or physical status. None of this is open to discussion; any attempt constitutes proof of a hate crime.
‘Diverse’ is the term for any and all people who operate as outlined here, in a community thus based on diversity. All views expressed in such an environment show, by definition, diversity of opinion and freeness in expression. This is how the problematic and anachronistic term ‘freedom of speech’ must be understood.
There is a responsibility on all of us to ensure that we - and our colleagues - meet these requirements, both consciously and unconsciously.
This requires constant vigilance.
To encourage this, I welcome reports - to be treated in the strictest confidence - of any transgressions.
It is expected that a minimum of three such will be made by all staff, per term: I encourage you to show more commitment!
Failure to do so implies that you reject our principles, and cannot be welcome in our community.
With sincerest thanks for your assistance in this vital project:
‘Exterminate all the brutes…’
Penny
Professor Penny Spukenfielder, Fellow in Comparative Law and Equity, with responsibility for Outreach and Diversity.
V. DARLING ALICIA
AUBADE
Who can forget dawn over the colleges?
Even on days with Finals, that inky dark
into blue-gold stone...it's all gone now,
not the view but the content. We might as
well be staring over tower blocks in Hull.
Partly invasion, but more a collapse from
within - their decades long marching into
this hollowness - which an old man sees
but says nothing of, for fear it's getting worse.
I could go now and tear the whole place down,
but only in my head, which is failing anyway,
soon to be served them on a platter, in a
formal dinner for cannibals or verminous
natives, gaping at what was theirs.
See, you moved me to poetry!
How I envy your effervescent youth, even in these benighted times. Long ago I saw this Arcadian city - just once - in its pristine glory.
Beware one Hubert, Tutor in Urban Psychogeography.
HE MUST NOT SEE THIS POEM!
That rancid old fruit is monitoring us for Spunkfielder - the absurd ‘Outreach and Diversity fellow’ - to whom you owe nothing.
‘Mum’s the word’, as we English used to say.
All my love,
Roland
VI. DEAR PROFESSOR SPUKENFIELDER
First, let me say how much I welcomed your Open Letter to colleagues at College.
Like you, I believe battle must ruthlessly be joined, with those omnipresent forces of reactionary bigotry infesting Oxford.
To that end, I have been monitoring Dr Roland H, particularly his activities with a fresher named Alicia Swinedyke.
He has been sending the girl execrable poetry, dining with her at Wetherspoon’s - and playing her recordings of Nigel Farage berating Herman Von Rompuy - ‘Rumpy Pumpy the Belgian Perv’ - as he labels this distinguished European.
But my concerns about him long predate these latest events. He is an atavistic return to the dark days of monocultural Oxford.
A gin-soaked old sot, whose appalling behaviour saw him imprisoned for ‘fornicating with a fireplace’, whilst on sabbatical at the University of Aberdeen.
In Oxford itself, he narrowly escaped imprisonment for defacing a sign outside his local gastropub - from ‘All dogs are welcome!’, to ‘All w*** are welcome!’.
I beseech that my use of quotation marks and *** ensures I am safe? Can I also stress that I’m ashamed to be a honky.
Most appallingly, Roland has developed a loathing for the Keble expert on occultism and Congolese magic, Professor Deidre Pumkiss. He attended her lecture ‘Salem and denial of the female orgasm’ dressed as Vincent Price in Witchfinder General, then showered the distinguished Antipodean with cockerel blood.
For this, he was sent back to Aberdeen, on emergency sabbatical.
To assist with your proceedings, I have made clandestine recordings of Roland and Ms Swinedyke, wrestling with late-Victorian Romantic verse at all hours.
With warmest regards from your ever-vigilant colleague,
Hubert
VII. DEAR PENNY
In response to your and Hubert's allegations, please be assured, I have no intention of resigning my fellowship.
There's more chance of a D-colour diamond dropping glinting from my arsehole than that happening.
Now, I've been reading your publications, on 'Comparative Law and Equity'.
What utter buffoonery; you owe everything to bullying and fraud.
Through moral cowardice, self-deception and fear, the academic world pretends to accept you. It’s now in need of defenestration, corrupt and useless, as rancid and rotten as the pre-Reformation monasteries.
'One can wake a man who’s asleep, but one can’t wake a man who’s pretending to be asleep.'
I intend to fight you and all that you represent, without a care for the damage I suffer.
Rest very uneasily.
I already know many things about your bizarre activities, in the ‘Trans’ or ‘Non-binary’ world; the scandal that was covered up following a spate of High School suicides in Nebraska.
Do you remember the DeLillio family - now sadly minus their two sons? They certainly recall you with great clarity, if not much fondness. Their account of your involvement is now safely online; I have also sent copies to the University authorities.
I trust this approach is diverse, equitable and welcoming enough?
With greetings from a grateful colleague,
Roland
VIII. DEAR COMMUNITY
I have today initiated action to prevent trans-genocide occurring, in our very midst. My harrowing experience of this necessitates such firmness.
I have no hesitation in sharing full details from my past:
Whilst facilitating High School workshops in my home state of Nebraska, I took swift action for twin boys from the DeLillio family, ensuring their liberation from an extreme environment of familial oppression, blue-collar restriction and trailer-trash prospects.
They were freed from a truly deplorable environment, thanks to my intensive counselling.
Both individuals were assisted in rejecting their birth sex, in a discrete and painless surgical intervention, re-establishing themselves at my remote prairie ranch and clinic.
Sadly, repeated nativist legal harassment left them with no choice other than to 'de-life' themselves, making the ultimate sacrifice in their personal liberation.
The charges of assisted suicide I faced were dropped, on the personal insistence of Governor Ronald D. Gritman III (now known as Roxanna Spukenfielder II).
The College - and Oxford University - were fully aware of these events, on my appointment. Indeed, they were a contributing factor, when I was head-hunted for this crucial role.
Any further discussion of this is contrary to our principles of equity and diversity.
Have a kind day!
Yours,
Penny Spukenfielder,
Realignment Facilitator and Fellow in Comparative Law/Equity
*
'No wonder you're barking mad, writing shit like that. Or perhaps you need a holiday?'
The Professor's suggestion prompted explosive laughter and I was showered with crisp detritus.
'I went to an all-inclusive last August and only just recovered.'
I handed him my latest pamphlet, detailing this disastrous trip.
'I'm off to lay some cable so I'll take it with me.'
He headed for the Turf’s grim outside toilet, this reading material under his arm:
MASSACRE OF THE LANE SWIMMERS
I. EUROPE
Clear Oxfordshire skies, emptied of everything.
But they'll have to do or I'll never start.
September always does this.
Extending summer just when we know it's over.
A sadness resurfacing from those back-to-school days.
The Equality Diversity and Inclusion – EDI – psychiatrist has just left me.
He suggested this sequence was in diary-form – maybe he reads Turgenev? – then ignored me for his laptop, percussively typing and glancing in my direction.
My tales are of all-inclusive resorts – not as confessions but explanations.
We go abroad for that blissful day after arriving, the optimism of our first swim.
Mostly Italians and Germans staying, but even they're yet to appear.
Much better to see the early staff – half-asleep straightening the recliners, raising the bar shutters and smoking sweet tobacco.
The Med, welcoming me with grandparents born on its shores?
A Sunday supplement fantasy worthy of Cyril Connolly or Elizabeth David!
But I'm no longer pale, my skin tan confirms Hellenic ancestry.
Foreigners are perfect, when there aren't many of them. They cope so well with boredom. Entire cultures taming it: shouting; sipping; overeating; blocking toilets. I admire how they use relatives, meals, wine, then traipses through stifling streets, to occupy their days.
All my holiday dreams are of water parks, shortly to close.
A mother and her teenager. The girl looks across then carries herself in an English way: sloping; dawdling; eyes vaguely quizzical; sullen; smirking; attitudinal - our individualism shared by millions.
The mother seems Macedonian or Moldovan, possibly Croatian.
As the week progresses, I become obsessed with Teutonic lane swimmers and nocturnal volley-ballers. Our room has a pool view and balcony, disturbed by their feral yelping.
My national characteristic is to feel violence being provoked, wherever an Englishman stays on the continent. Every facet of life there, however cultured, is best set in stark relief by our love of things 'kicking off'.
I was determined to maintain this tradition.
II. THOUSAND BOMBER RAID
Lane swimmers in particular need action, those managerialists of the piscine world.
You arrive at a pool excited, your early rising instilling virtue and purpose. Only to be greeted by turbulence, thrashing, ceaseless traversing – preferable to dive into the penguin pool at Cotswold Wildlife Park.
A tiny area for the infirm is roped off, filled by floating geriatrics and submerged perverts.
I plan the violence from my balcony, smiling at the cleaners' aubade choruses of ‘buongiorno’.
The pool below is within projectile range, the area still deserted enough to hurl a recliner unseen over the balcony then slip into my room.
It crashes onto the shoulders of a company director from Essen.
That Anglo-Balkan couple stare up at my now empty balcony, the girl grinning.
I film the ensuing mayhem.
To my delight, one of the elderly cleaners dives in and drags out the dazed, mostly unharmed, but infuriated ex-lane swimmer.
III. BOURGEOIS BLITZ
A significant joy of all-inclusives is the instinctive dislike felt for them, by our horrendous middle classes.
I wonder: does this snobbery also affect bourgeois Europeans? My evidence is empirical; it seems an English phenomenon.
They feel the abundant luxuries on offer shouldn't be available to our lower orders, better suited to the concentration camp featured in Holiday On the Buses.
Many is the morning coffee I've sipped, chronicling the nauseating spectacle of these wretches. I particularly enjoy the incipient signs of marital breakdown, eating disorders and long-Covid. Most wear surgical masks, even on the beach.
Their rooms are especially good for my break-ins. But I'm not class conscious – any British tourist is of interest.
This occupies much of my time. To be clear, no break-in actually occurred in that Praia da Luz apartment. Whatever happened, the secret is to be found in the Leicestershire countryside
The subject is a recurrent one over pre-dinner drinks. One Essex family perform nightly reconstructions, the parents bearing a vague resemblance to Kate and Gerry McCann. Members of their extended group play the Tapas Seven. A lugubrious Bulgarian bus driver takes the part of the Judiciary Police's paunchy Portuguese detective.
If should be obvious how I use this as a chance to ransack their rooms, leaving copies of Goncalo Amaral's outrageous book on each coffee table. Some I enter discretely, others have the doors joyously booted in.
To my surprise, the group seems to welcome my unofficial role. The leathery old soak heading the family beckons me to join them, beaming and waving a copy of Amaral's libellous text.
IV. THE LEGENDARY BLUE LAGOON TAVERNA
My first all-inclusive resort was Sani, Greece, 2016 – just as an English civil war erupted, following our June referendum.
It was obvious that result wouldn't be accepted, progressives preferring denial of democracy for those they disagreed with – misinformed, duped, uneducated fodder, whose thinking they had 100% access to.
Their outrage was comical and sinister, confirming the ghastliness of our middle classes and my exile from their ranks. I got notification of this on the very day of our departure, waking to find my Jaguar doused with blue and gold paint and an EU flag fluttering on my lawn.
I returned to the birthplace of both democracy and my maternal grandparents.
My constant drinking companion was Geoffrey Jefferson, a desiccated veteran of the Mediterranean.
An old hand at such places. Geoff knew all the restaurants in the vast Sani resort, all of them sadly inferior to the legendary 'Blue Lagoon Taverna', Calymidia Resort, Crete.
'Think this is good? You should see The Blue Lagoon Taverna. A second-home to me, EVERYTHING FREE!'
'An all-inclusive?'
'Blue sea, sky, drinks, curtains, carpets, cutlery, napkins, uniforms, tiles…guess what colour the plates are?'
'You got me…blue?'
Geoff nodded sagely, tapping his leathery proboscis.
'It's the small touches.'
V. OUR GRAND INQUISITORS
Middle-class readers may want me skewered.
Roasted over a firepit at Billy Bragg's 'establishment-approved protest singer' festival.
Convicted of racism, homophobia, sexism, trans-genocide, global warming, rabies, galloping dysentery, road-rage flattening of centrist cyclists.
'Your comments aren't helpful. Can't you be kind?'
Progressives would have seen Salem judges as such.
On our Sardinian all-inclusive, the temperature reached 44 degrees.
I overheard a febrile table of NHS managers, discussing best-practice procedure for inclusively supporting serial killers working in their hospitals.
A pro-forma letter to the killer – signed by consultants questioning this diversity – was drafted. A grovelling apology from them for behaving unprofessionally, with a promise to reflect on their need to promote EDI in the workplace and retrain.
A full-scale enquiry was then role-played, so that lessons could be learned.
VI. MY INTENTION IS MORE THAN COMICAL
My intention is more than comical,
though humour is a balm to ease the pain.
I write to chronicle collapse – my own
and the truest thing we all ever know –
scientific and other knowledge, ripped
to shreds by madmen and us sat alone
sipping away somewhere, remembering
a past where education was something,
not just this sickening sanctimony.
VII: MY COLLECTION OF PURLOINED ART
Enough of such maudlin nonsense.
There's money to be made.
I watch Botley's falling rain, cataloguing my stash of museum goodies.
Swiped from the British Museum in Bloomsbury and sold to me in a car-boot sale.
The country's finished, elites preparing for Dubai or Brussels (which is worse?).
I took my pick of the Benin Bronzes, jostling with ‘tribal leaders’ carting the clobber off to seven-bed Summertown houses.
You work – so they don't have to.
I'm retired, so you can fund me too (all-inclusives aren't cheap).
Next up, a Canaries cruise - £10k - including Ricky Hatton/Tony Adams dinner date.
VIII: LOOKY LOOKY
Speaking of African clobber, I must mention beach vendors in colourful garb, braving the heat to offer balloons, hair braids, trinkets, headscarves, leather bracelets and flimsy gold necklaces.
To recline lazily, contemplating the teal seascape, then feel the hovering presence of a smiling Somalian or Ivorian, burdened by their load.
It produces feelings of unease, admiration, guilt – and wonder.
The methodical effort and detailed organization becomes apparent, from close observation and conversation.
Various 'boss men' distantly check the workforce, their presence indicated by nervous glances up the beach – especially from the women.
Of course, discreet enquiry could procure hashish, and no doubt more.
A phone call was made, Francophone jabbering into an Apple device then prompt delivery.
Also interesting were the differing European reactions.
Mostly the Italian security guards were tolerant, though sudden hand flaps dismissed any overeager sellers.
Apart from me, almost no one talks to these people.
It should be obvious that I neither wish to appear – nor in fact was – virtuous, for my fascination with this other world, lurking on the edge of week-long trips to paradise.
I was interested in the gemstones – especially fancy-colour diamonds – with which West Africa is blessed.
IX: FISTICUFFS AT MY EXIT INTERVIEW
I'm a believer in – and doughty practitioner of – the dramatic job exit.
Teachers anyway get bundled off under prison blankets, so this is now ‘best practice’.
The simmering resentments distil over many years, even decades.
But when that final drop of product rolls down the Liebig condenser, leg it.
The elixir is vital for anal irrigation, removal of ear wax – and optical cleansing.
I was stunned to find that I'd been pursued to Puglia by my appalling ex-manager, shithead husband in tow
Violence was my only option.
Verbal for her; steam-hammer attack by unknown swimmer for him; chicken war-dance walloping at the adults' disco for both.
I performed in a full-body Lycra suit, the sort worn by that GCHQ nut who zipped himself up in a holdall.
The entertainment manager mistook all this for party fun, posting pictures on the TUI website…
X: BOX-SET FINALE
At a Jesus College gaudy, I was surprised to discover how many of my year had emigrated, not just to escape from me.
It certainly contrasted with my not leaving the city.
Not for the first time, I reflected on failure.
Like boredom, this taboo haunts middle-class life.
A serial killer known only to his victims, though we all witness the stalking.
Nothing to be scared of – the lengthy process is interesting.
It's obvious Jack the Ripper wasn't Aaron Kosminski; Montague Druitt; 'Bonkers' Clarence; Charles Cross; Frances Tumblety.
It's vaguely possible Jack was George Chapman – Seweryn Klosowski – who worked in hairdressing amateur surgery.
But my candidate is Cornelius Edward Griswald, a dealer in stolen workhouse linen.
As to living abroad, being half-Greek, I always carried the foreignness with me.
And I've a horror of living with decent weather, surrounded by optimism.
My youth was wrecked by The Waltons.
How I'd pay to see John-Boy shotgun blasted then forest buried, courtesy of an Ozark wolf straying over to Jefferson County.
Just think what the Mexicans would do to the rest of the family.
EPILOGUE: BACK IN BLIGHTY
All day the weather rolled in and by nightfall, summer was replaced with autumn then winter.
Since childhood, this change had appalled and pleased him.
There's much to be be said for days spent watching the same thing – how many of us do it?
Coastal towns are entry and exit wounds for the trivial and vital – personal and national.
One small group had this entire beach.
Perhaps they'd crossed the channel, arriving to claim a hotel room.
They moved slowly and painfully up its expanse, towards his hut.
He knew how difficult that journey was – it took him at least twenty minutes.
Every step pulled you into pebbles and shingle, your tottering progress comical and sinister.
A last line of defence.
The coast and its hinterland willing you back to the waves.
*
‘I preferred the Oxford one. Take us to your old college!’
I was disconcerted by the Professor’s request. I’d no reason to feel reluctant but such a visit – accompanied by these three savages – seemed a dreadful prospect. Quite possibly he knew this and was testing the sincerity of my position. It was something I frequently asked myself.
The narrow mediaeval alleys one walks through to either Hollywell Street or New College Lane are a pure delight. We took the latter route. The Shiremen amused themselves by pretending to mug me at the narrowest point, yelling: ‘It’s kicked off!’ and wrestling me to the pavement. The Professor swiftly steam-hammered them with such severity that I then had to shove him over, fearing for their survival.
‘Good work!’ all three shouted, impressed at my effortless switch into violence. There seemed no animosity at all between them.
‘Nothing like a bit of beef after a few pints,’ explained the Professor.
CHAPTER SIX
I dreamt of flooded lifts in some corporate office where I'd worked.
Waiting in the lobby and seeing them arrive, people exiting drenched.
One of my Centrica colleagues - Jacek, a Pole - stood contentedly showering in the steaming water.
I asked him if there was any risk of drowning.
Scowling ex-teaching colleagues arrived in the next one.
'We're on long-term sickness and weren't scared.'
I'd known them as cowards, cowering before the forces of educational wokedom then seeking favour by informing on each other.
I awoke angry and depressed. My trip to Jesus College had left me a wreck.
So far this account has been picaresque, random things happening with something lurking behind them.
That visit mattered more. The college and university had once meant something...
Approaching down Brasenose Lane, I saw the outside of our recently added Fourth Quad. A hideous though well-integrated addition, designated as a 'digital learning hub' and funded by some Chinese toady to the central Communist Party.
Most of Oxford had been bought by forces inimical to free enquiry. My college made a fetish of this ridiculous place, which still stood empty and unused. A monument to the vacuity of our digital age and its worship of managerialism.
'Cheer up you sod, you're supposed to like it. Write a poem if that makes you feel any better!'
The Professor was in his oils as we strode into the Porter's lodge.
It's one thing to write sequences - four to date - on this horror. Managerialism, to give its name again. But those pieces fictionalise and energise the quotidian reality of anxious boredom.
That middle-class vice, slithering its tentacles everywhere. Nobody who's worked in a modern school, office or university can deny the terrible silence its church imposes. Orwellian is the use of 'woke' for the somnolent atmosphere, tolerable only through escaping into sexual perversions, alcoholism, drugs and mental illness. All of them are drearily omnipresent in our 'elite institutions' and 'culture'.
It's vital to realise that there isn't one hierarchical system behind this but a leaderless class, now controlling society. It has self-awareness, acting not strategically but through self-interest. Its leaders are figureheads, doing the same on a larger scale. They're hopelessly inefficient and corrupt but - just about - keep the lights on, though not the traffic moving nor the streets safe. No wonder they've outlawed criticism as 'hate speech'.
We stood in the small but perfect First Quad. Once liberating but now imprisoning. As if to mock my nightmares, each of us wore a dangling lanyard, describing us as 'co-workers in the normalisation of lived experiences visiting the digital hub to explore and develop future synergies'.
What that meant, I hadn't a clue.
We'd had them shoved over our necks by the Slovakian porter.
Not sure what to say after reading that! A rather amusing cry from the lost soul of a lost identity maybe?
Completely brilliant.