THE DRENCHING ARMS

THE COMPLETE NOVOIR (A MASSIVE POST)

This is the final draft of my hybrid novel/memoir (‘Novoir’). It’s very long - not intended for reading in one go - but I needed it all in one place.

Needless to say, this stands no chance in the woke publishing world. It’s extremely ‘offensive’ and would be seen as ‘hate speech’.

I’d welcome comments, above all on readability, for anyone who gets through it. The contents are as extreme as they have to be, in extraordinary times, but the experience of reading isn’t meant to be!

THE DRENCHING ARMS

A NOVOIR

by Paul Sutton

---

SONNETS AS PROLOGUES

But there is no fairness in time, only

air, space and clear water if you're lucky,

gorgeous open rooms which you somehow left,

not knowing then things always end like that.

Old houses have joined hands, carrying you

head high through crowds and grey birds scattering

to glinting flint rivers then gravel pits,

white sailboats still beating for windward shores.

---

I look at old pictures (which mean nothing

now) and can't recall what they were or why

they were taken, just seconds in making

but enough to know that it all happened.

This girl goes on her own to some old town

where she's lived all her life, and gets reborn.

*

What cunts you are in this stratifying

city, sipping daft coffee, pretending

reading literature matters anymore.

But this isn't to grab some attention.

I don't care if each newbuild that’s coming

gets raised over your bones. Behold my tale,

to be told in the third person lost voice

of Edmund Raven – who fought for St George –

---

sat drinking on yonder bench, all he owns

in his rucksack. You dread finishing up

like him, so hurry past with your eyes shut

and rush off home, avoiding the roadworks;

right foot down, flicking V-signs at red lights.

Made it back? So join us by reading this.

CHAPTER ONE: EXILED TO NORFOLK

Rain fell and his world was made of water.

Raven stood manacled to a broken seawall. The mounting waves would anyway soon drench him, though he'd escape drowning. Perhaps that was lucky.

Across the pot-holed car park lurked the pub where he drank. A deceptively cheery place beset with undertows of dislike and frustration. Class was the issue. Never more than now, with EDI emblazoned on every public building – even in some lost English outpost.

Yes, most likely one of its better regulars would persuade Worzel to relinquish the key so that, at closing time, he'd be unshackled and hauled back into The Drenching Arms, where a rough towel would be thrown over him and a pint of mulled cooking lager poured down his throat.

Such kindness still existed!

The obvious question was why he tolerated this? But his options were limited socially, and he'd never needed more than a pub and a book. Unforgivably, conversation to him was pointless without any content, so he often overstepped the mark in intellectualism when talking with the grizzled regulars.

Worzel was an ex-hairdresser who brooked no interruptions, during diatribes on the insights gained from various Cambridge academics whose hair he'd cut. Years of queasy subservience and familiarity had left him resentful but provocative, on the extensive range of topics he knew nothing about.

Mostly Raven kept schtum, but tonight he'd felt the need to pipe up when the man's lectures on global warming had become intolerable. Needless to say, he'd then himself been accused of interruption and lecturing - tendencies he harboured - hence his freezing confinement on the seafront after being dragged from the pub. And since Raven himself hated ‘experts’ and middle-class ownership of ideas, he was hopelessly conflicted.

Last September, he'd been expelled from the Party for hate crime, after disagreeing with a Muslim colleague who’d claimed Father Christmas was trans and probably pro-Hamas. But Raven’s crimes were existential and had been tabulated over years in teaching. He'd gone down explosively, posting an image in the staffroom of Santa in a red and white kaftan, pouring burning petrol down a snowy English cottage’s chimney.

Retribution had been swift. He'd been stripped of his middle-class membership and exiled to this Norfolk seaside resort, ostensibly to oversee diversification of fast-food outlets and net-zero compliancy in failing pubs and hotels. As always with managerial tasks, this meant little actual work.

He was now failing at that too.

Despite the gathering storm and vast stretch of North Sea facing him, an inflatable dinghy seemed to be nearing shore. What looked like Kurds and Arabic tribesmen were peering at him anxiously.

Raven laughed grimly but genuinely for the first time in many months. Just as he spotted them, a Congolese tribal elder was defecating delicately in the alley alongside The Drenching Arms. The bloke was in no hurry at all, standing slowly then peering back through his legs to admire the lengthening coiler.

Difficult to watch this then debate the benefits of multiculturalism.

‘Thanks,’ Raven muttered, to the weeping sky.

*

Done for! Of course he was – they all were. But where else could he go, except The Drenching Arms? It was one of those pubs where absolute regulars sat deep inside, no matter if the weather was crystalline spring or torpid summer.

Next day, all was forgiven. Raven was welcomed like some prodigal son and encouraged to discourse on his favourite topic: gemstones. Whatever wealth he had was invested in rare lapidary beauties, particularly Burmese Rubies, Sri Lankan Padparadschas, star corundum, Russian Alexandrites and – his favourites – fancy-coloured diamonds.

Easily transportable, holding their value as treasures to stare into through the sleepless hours by the grey and greasy North Sea. Who said the same about share certificates – or even gold?

He always carried three. Worzel encouraged him to show tonight's cargo: a fancy-light pink-purple diamond, a melting sunset padparadscha and (boxed safely in his pocket) an extremely fine Burmese star ruby, with pigeon-blood colour.

'Nice enough. You had them made?' Worzel was being oddly reverential, which Raven neither liked nor needed.

'Not the fancy-purple one. Got that in the Diamond District, New York's W47 street.'

'Hm, I went to Sri Lanka for its emeralds.' Worzel was back on the defensive.

A rambling account followed, of some daft stunt to smuggle these through Heathrow in toothpaste tubes then sell them in Covent Garden. Worzel meant Hatton Garden, where Raven had spent happy hours chasing his jewel addiction. But he nodded and laughed, also ignoring how Sri Lanka is famous for many gems – especially padparadschas – but produces no quality emeralds. Surely everyone knew the best were from Colombia, Africa, and then Russia?'.

'Whatdoya think of the idea – you in?'

Stumped for an answer, he saw his three rings being carelessly passed round the busy pub, then out to the kebab van in the carpark. Since childhood, he'd loathed his stuff being handled by strangers, let alone carted off who knew where.

He was on the verge of fainting, exploding into violence or smashing his head onto the packed table.

'We’re getting you an evaluation' laughed Street-fighting Dave the Second – a kinder regular, despite the fearsome moniker. ‘Think of it like a friendly auction!’

Intentionally or not, Raven had been wedged into the pub's snug. When the rings arrived back an hour later, they'd had labels attached, scrawled with £250 MAX!!!!!!!!!!!!

On the star-ruby cabachon ring, some idiot had also explained: ‘utterly shit stone, not even faceted!’

Surprisingly, although purple is – after red – the rarest colour for a diamond, the fancy purple hadn’t impressed whoever appraised the 0.13 carat beauty as: ‘smaller than a flea’s nads, and not worth setting.’

Do fleas have testicles? Thankfully, his delicately orangey-pink padparadscha had fared better, earning the appreciative comment: ‘pretty enough for a confirmed pooftah or shirt-lifter.’

Not unamused, he extracted his loupe and carefully checked each of the stones – in total worth over £4,000 – for damage. Nope, but the rose-gold rings and gems were all generously smeared with ketchup, mayonnaise and kebab grease. Polishing them, he looked up to find Worzel’s hirsute face hovering.

'Happy with those figures?'

'A bit light,' he struggled out, 'but then it is a buyer's market.'

And the evening's gemstone event wasn’t over.

A pinheaded old lady arrived at their table; Worzel's ridiculous sister, Lauren. She carried a tray of ten rings, tat purchased from Cable TV jewellery shows, all the gems 'rare beyond belief and sold at insane prices.'

He'd no choice but to examine each and feign his delight and envy, Worzel thumping his back in appreciation and commiseration at his own ‘cheap rubbish’.

'Fancy us doing a swap, for your tatty ruby?' Lauren suggested. She picked up a dreadful ring, with its central stone fashioned from what looked like beige fish-gravel or cracked beach-glass.

'Erm, I'll certainly think about it.'

'The deal's only good for tonight; I must be mad! Had a few Baileys.'

‘You really are a shithead, if you ignore her offer,’ advised Worzel.

*

In London and a few of the largest cities, things sometimes seemed to work. That vague and misleading impression was what mattered, in the 'knowledge-based society' where no one really knew – let alone understood – anything.

Beyond, in the Edgelands, languished most of England! Here was a return to pre-Enlightenment, a feudal even monastic era, in a perverted modern form. Technological dreams were replacing harsh realities. Most of life was lived virtually and online, so that the average person understood less about their world than some rickety 13^th-century turnip-picker. No one wanted to swap with him, but today’s fantasies were addictive and growing exponentially, creating an England of serfs.

And over the horizon, reality hadn’t disappeared in our implacable enemies, arming themselves and arriving daily. The only hope was in remembering that somewhere, truth still followed physical laws which no ideology could budge.

But that was impossible for the cultural elite, kneeling charlatans who welcomed the idiotic waves capsizing the western world. Our supposedly educated were collapsing in intelligence; their distinctions and fiercely held privileges depended not on ability but on adding to the madness. That was how they – for the moment – escaped even mild drenching.

These tiresome thoughts were how Raven occupied his mind, touring the failing hotels, burger, kebab, and fried-chicken outlets. His role was to deliver incomprehensible questionnaires on – say – energy policy, and return in a week, to complete them himself. These showed how everyone wanted a sustainable future based on net-zero emissions of carbon dioxide – presumably preferring to spend their winters basted in seal or chip fat, praying for the sun to return.

One thing was sure, about his life here. He'd more time than anyone could fill. That was deliberate, boredom imposed on him, in the hope it created madness or recantation – much the same things, anyway.

Gazing over Cromer, sadness rising from the sea, not in clouds but as a constant flow, perhaps even charged particles as some cranks claimed. His past, anyone's past, tended to centrifugal flinging out to these edgelands. Hovering offshore, sometimes absorbed but more usually wafted back.

There was that cleanness here, whatever the state of destruction or desolation. A sort of shoving out, entropic and chaotic, but also preserving. His thoughts were so often just as unfixed that he could do little except allow the breeze and today’s simple beauty to stir whatever it would. It was that seaside weather which one second suggested heatwave – many locals always wore shorts – and the next sempiternal midwinter. He liked that, its variety a quick cure for ennui and always the best way to talk to anyone.

Between Cromer and Sheringham, a tiny toy theatre and the horse outside had kept them entranced as a young family. Maybe even then this piebald speckling of cloud, greenery and seascape had stirred an aching worry for his child, some day to be adrift out there. Happiness was really all you could give them – not just in their little lives but by living that yourself.

Even now, perhaps. And if not, at least implacable laughter.

The same process the following week, on gender realignment, mass immigration, and so on. Each return to his controllers had to show a high level of public support, for policies of liberal (and literal) insanity. Fortunately, repetition of the same questionnaire wasn’t a problem. Regular updates, showing growing enthusiasm, required that the same forms were excruciatingly completed, again and again.

Nevertheless, it was important to identify 'bigots' and ‘right wing elements’, in need of further attention. So many jobs in government, the media and the education system depended on castigating these wretched types.

That was easy. He just picked random individuals from the swelling population of Somalis, Yeminis, Afghans et al who'd supposedly survived rubber-dinghy excursions across the mutinous North Sea. A maritime miracle, enabled by British and French naval vessels, then the RNLI, moored just over the horizon.

Selecting these immigrants reduced the hatred many locals rightly felt towards Raven, for involvement with progressive fantasies in a town where people could barely support themselves. But the government’s threats to his family meant he’d had little choice other than collaborating with their lunacy. His other justification – a flimsy one – was that it was all being chronicled by him.

Christ knows who for though.

Presumably the future – if they could ever choose a different one.

CHAPTER TWO: NEW YEAR'S EVE

A museum of yesterday’s rainbows,

guarding the memories of car lights by night.

How the tide of the whole world is changing,

even in this corner, where a tired wind

rattles a battered pub door and only

I glance up to see if some ghosts arrive,

blown in past the broken-down wind turbines

now sheltering seagulls and my people.

---

So writes Raven, spending his New Year’s Eve

adrift in the emptying Drenching Arms.

The pub karaoke bursts into life

and a recent boat refugee belts out

I will survive by Gloria Gaynor,

cheered by a pensioner dressed as Hitler.

*

He still loved the English, just for how many insisted on being left alone. Our hatred of the intrusive; over-enquiring; data-base making; opinion polling; power-point presenting; rainbow-flag hoisting; ‘be kind’ posting.

Raven was one of numerous recusants from this, exiled to the collapsing coastal towns around England. Every month, this crew had to join a Teams Meeting, on the ‘evidence-based enquiries’ they were forced to conduct.

As ever, today’s host was some progressive zealot, Rip Harding, who kindly reminded them that:

‘In Stalin’s Russia, you’d have been digging the White Sea Canal or extracting gold in Siberian mines – worked to death then relatives charged for your burial in a mass grave. We just ask you to join us making this world fit for everyone – even yourselves.’

‘I would prefer not to,’ a lugubrious voice chimed in, from somewhere over the aether.

‘Bartleby!’ Raven typed onto his feed, receiving immediate upticks.

The literary reference was lost on their host, who’d an English degree from Exeter.

‘Please stick to your full names, and titles, then inform us of your recent highpoints and any problems!’ he snapped.

‘Barnardine’s reply?’ wondered the chap from Clacton.

Then came the joyous Shakespeare quotes, all completely beyond Exeter:

‘Oh, full of scorpions is my mind!’ was a bleak view from Blackpool.

Burnham-on-Sea suggested:

‘It is a tale
told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing.’

Their feed informed them they all had six months exile added. Laughing emojis showed how little this mattered, to men marooned but sharing Shakespeare.

Just as the meeting was pulled, Margate sneaked in some John of Gaunt:

‘England, bound in with the triumphant sea,
whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
with inky blot and rotten parchment bonds:
that England, that was wont to conquer others,
hath made a shameful conquest of itself.’

CHAPTER THREE: RAVEN AND THE PAST

It’s true that in England, our past isn’t even an earlier time. It’s oxygen, mother’s milk - and gold.

Progressives hate it and see only a crime scene. But the True Crime was their murder of this country - slow, deliberate and shameless - and the evidence is piling up daily. Our towns are filled with abused girls, their rapists empowered by an establishment of diversity cretins enforcing an ideology of callous absurdity.

Raven sat staring into his battered laptop. He was too depressed even for the Drenching Arms, which lurked nearly empty beyond net-curtains and a lonely milk bottle rolling down Fore Street in the spring gales.

Onscreen was a YouTube video, of 1935 London. He remembered that solidity, the purpose and unassertive self-assurance, even from his 1970s childhood. Left-liberals - many with no memories of the place nor roots there - painted a stygian pit of prejudice, basted in Dickensian poverty and monochrome ennui. But the bustling images, the impressions of freedom and innate belief, negated their cartoonish dismissal.

Our elite’s obsessions with such ‘evils’ had now reduced London to an uneasy shell, showy yet silly - and painfully aware of it.

He reread the opening chapter of Our Mutual Friend, in a first edition inherited from his father. Maybe the city would survive, the Thames slowly carrying away the bodies of its wreckers.

As for his own writing, he’d just completed a belated Christmas ghost story. Not exactly an M. R. James setting, but Raven’s exile to East Angla had jolted him into writing it.

A year later, The Spectator – who sometimes used spooky Xmas tales – returned it as ‘enjoyable but problematic in its violence to women’. Raven laughed outright at the over-reaction. He’d once gently closed a classroom door on an arguing ‘pupil-pastoral manager’, to the hilarity of his pupils. The woman claimed he’d hit her on the nose. For once, CCTV came to his aid and revealed her lie:

A CHEERY GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMASTIDE

By Edmund Raven

Somewhere that I'd driven past a thousand times but never entered. Reassuringly there, without the need for any thought or analysis: The George, a roadhouse outside Andover on the way to Salisbury.

Who's ever written about it? But whenever I saw the place, I'd imagine an evening's drinking. Entering without expectation and slouching into some 1930s tiled corner - unseen, seen or even scrutinised - it wouldn't make any difference.

This Christmas, I pulled over. My Jag seemed perfect for the pub and I'd not driven past since acquiring it.

And how my country has now vanished! What one always thought was bedrock - igneous, metamorphic, Jurassic, whatever - isn't even sandstone, just playground stuff which runs through your fingers.

The area is military. Dunkirk then D-Day troops once drank in The George. No nostalgia from me though; I've even given up watching Remembrance Sunday. Whatever their sacrifices, we've been invaded via invitation.

The place was full of ghosts; at Christmas everywhere now is. Except not figures from my past nor ones many young people would recognise. Maybe they'd know the column but who can see him on top? He was drinking Spanish lager in the corner, unmistakable with his hat, eye patch and wild hair. Ignored by the Polish bar staff let alone the public-sector office crowd in paper crowns, unleashing party poppers. Horatio was muttering to himself, one eye focused on a crumpled document:

I am a friend of Peace without fearing War; for my politics are to let France know that we will give no insult to her government, nor will we receive the smallest. If France takes unfair means to prevent our trading with other Powers, under her influence, this I consider the greatest act of hostility she can show us.

Stirring words, as I told him without reservation.

'I sent it to Theresa May's government when she was surrendering all that I fought and died for.'

'Did she reply?'

'I got a postcard of wheat fields, some Waitrose vouchers and an application form for Disability Living Allowance.'

'What are you even doing here?'

He switched his eye-patch so I was met with the blank socket, looking wrinkled and soft to touch. Before I could stop myself, I'd reached out and confirmed this.

'I'm in the area to go riding with Emma Hamilton, on Porton Down.'

At last, a link to myself! I'd been told how the couple would meet on that bare scrubland - almost savannah like - around the road to Porton. My father had been a director of the microbiological lab there, and his father had headed wartime research on gas attacks, at field stations in the wild grassland.

The door slammed open with that deafening crash, heard in pubs throughout the land when Christmas drunks enter.

Of course it was Sir Winston Churchill, completely bladdered, propped up by a squinting Rudyard Kipling. He chucked a box of his namesake mince pies at the office party group, landing on their table apparently out of thin air, glasses flying. The looping trajectory suggested only I could have thrown it.

'What's his fucking problem?' a huge Shireman hollered, advancing with fists ready to deliver a steam hammering on my puny frame.

Churchill had one Doc Marten back-lifted, about to crush this oaf's testicles. But my invisible protector wasn't needed. An enormous middle-aged woman, lanyard dangling, directed 'Geoff from Maintenance' back to their table then turned on me.

'I think it's time you left. We'd all prefer it if you went home then reflected on your actions.'

I'd rather have a steam-hammering than hear this management speak. To my delight, Kipling was also apoplectic from the horror of his beloved language being mangled and tortured. Although a reasonably short man, he was built like a bull. Ominously, he slipped off his spectacles and handed them to Sir Winston.

An unseen whirlwind enveloped the table of these Yuletide revellers. I was reminded of some jinni in one of his Plain Tales from the Hills.

'Even Joseph Conrad would struggle to describe that,' quipped Gigger, as all four of us stared in wonder at the devastation visited on the HR department from some Local Authority office.

As a child, if humiliated I'd relive in my head that scene from A Fistful of Dollars, when his mule demands retribution on bandits and Clint Eastwood slaughters them all. I left The George elated, although aware that my victory was likely to be temporary. Sure enough, I heard Old Bill's sirens approaching. Urged on by my three jubilant companions, I stepped in front of a thatch-headed Hampshire plod.

'I've had my Islamic faith insulted with pork scratchings chucked all over my meal-deal Hunter's chicken.'

He informed me how I'd suffered a hate crime and urged that I pressed charges. As I completed the paper-work, I saw several of the less critically injured being frog-marched into a riot van. Ambulances then arrived to remove the more serious cases.

I fired up the Jaguar and thanked a lone evening star for the Ghosts of Christmas Past, somewhere looking over us still - if we dare to ask.

CHAPTER FOUR: RAVEN IN WELWYN GARDEN CITY AND OXFORD

The childhood house he was haunted by still existed, nightly in his dreams and half-wrecked in this now-affluent area. Raven had driven to see it. As with any distance from childhood, the actual mileage was much smaller than he'd achingly imagined.

And on the drive, he'd suddenly known exactly what was wrong with him and everyone else. Their online world had replaced reality, flattening the joy in beauty, knowledge - and discovery. Every experience, insight and idea got mediated through a human vastness – a uniformity – which meant that nothing felt real. So obvious was this, he almost dared not think it.

It was why literature didn't exist anymore, replaced by competitive virtue. And how writers from the past - Dickens, Dostoevsky and Celine - did; they weren't in the past now. That was the only way through – and his redemption. This digital existence had inadvertently abolished time, so he'd no need to live for today nor compete on its terms.

What if he moved into this Welwyn Garden City house? One look in the garden reified things. Trees actually growing - huge ones - through the shadowy back-lawn. Like the scene from Where the Wild Things Are, the sleepy boy waking to find woods around his bed.

Except now he was outside and could barely see the room where he'd slept. And men were working, clearing the mess around the house.

*

Raven was at Oxford station, hours early for his reprogramming session. As ever, he was constructing fictional scenarios for the shabbiest looking people - including himself - wandering around this dismal place.

Pity was what he wanted to feel but anger was his unavoidable reaction, at what his country had become rather than the individuals he saw. Still, neither seemed possible starting points for literature. That was his limitation, not the world's. Hadn't some philosopher said we always confuse the two - presumably only the true artist could reconcile them.

What would they make of the man sat opposite, checking his watch constantly then staring at it with open admiration, even love? Possibly nothing, although the inconceivable filth of his clothes and the stench from them were incredible. No doubt this was why Raven had found an empty seat at his table.

'Nice watch!' he ventured.

'Couldn't you at least have attempted to disguise your surprise?'

The stinking man's voice was educated, almost aristocratic. Raven peered closely at the timepiece shown to him. To his delight, it was a Dirty Dozen British Army watch, clearly original, with patina and fading radium lume.

'Worn at D Day?'

'Possibly - everything they fought for has been lost.'

*

Raven's 'kindness counselling' was the first Monday of every month in his old Oxford college – despite being exiled in Norfolk – or because of it. His car had been seized after his Welwyn Garden City epiphany and handed over to a 'boat person' (some Somalian drug dealer), so this re-education now necessitated an excruciating cross-country rail trip. If he refused, his beloved 15-year-old daughter would be moved from her current school into one notorious for bullying and drugs. His meagre pension would also be cancelled.

Monday was picked so that he had to travel up on the Sunday, staying overnight in some shithole run by the authorities. Usually this was in London but last night he'd been forced into an Iffley Road guesthouse, notoriously the preferred venue for Oxford’s Pakistani rape gangs. Of course, he had to pay for this travel and accommodation.

Last session, he'd been set the task of using three ‘key-concepts’ in a PowerPoint presentation, explaining dangers from the ‘far-Right’. The specified words were equity; diversity; inclusion. He’d added two of his own: ‘desultory’ and ‘deracination’.

The first was one of his favourites; for some reason, it evoked his school days. As a child, he'd had few friends and none he actually liked. Sundays had stretched out endlessly, ending with the comfort of a Vosene hair wash.

He made his way into Oxford through the commuters, beggars and homicidal cyclists.

CHAPTER FIVE: BREAKFAST IN WETHERSPOONS

At some time, everyone needs to walk away, break loose, light out for the territory. Maybe just metaphorically, deliberately failing to arrive for something important. Walking out on an obnoxious class, or people who hate you and find ingenious ways of showing it.

So, Raven's decision to drop into Wetherspoons can be rationalised. He was due in college at ten and left the station at nine. Typically for him, this made it just possible to consume a small breakfast and be on time but introduced anxiety into an already vile morning. Because he was always thinking of watches and time. His sight of the Vertex Dirty Dozen on the stinking man had both cheered and disturbed him. What its proud owner said - defiant but defeated.

Aeons ago he'd studied science at college and time's dimensionality had delighted him. He'd long felt some force weaving his life in more dimensions than could be comprehended, other than through feelings and beliefs. It was the nearest he got to anything spiritual, somehow linking the people and things he loved to something larger which could – and hopefully would – preserve them.

But there seemed no way of reconciling all this with society now. The bedrock feeling of permanence had gone. Previously, whatever the inevitable cascade of events, that sense of solidity had existed, however illusorily. It was even true in the 1980s, when he'd been at Oxford. Then Blair arrived and the systematic destruction began. Degrees, doctorates and entire ideologies ‘justified’ this, in terms of historical wrongs - some of them partly true. But you can't destroy a country's past without destroying its people.

‘But what does that even mean?’ progressives would sneer. Easy. A country’s people have been destroyed when they no longer feel they are its people.

What a joy Wetherspoons pubs are! Such a horror to the middle classes, with their loathing for unabashed Englishness and boozy camaraderie. The last remnants of our 'chop houses' and market pubs, open for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and frequented by everyone except prim progressives. How relaxing to see pints of lager being unashamedly necked and even the occasional punch-up erupt.

Raven checked his Murph 38mm Hamilton. Of course, no messages from the future - on interstellar planetary escape and rebirth - were moving its second hand. Yet the still-ticking beauty emboldened him.

He was off - after breakfast and a couple of pints. But not to some punishment meeting in his old college.

CHAPTER SIX: A GIRL AND HER DAD

With anywhere one knows well, the sense grows that it's watching you. When so much of your life has been spent there, something living forms. It doesn't matter if this is internal - 'just a feeling' - or personification. Time's accumulations and destructions stare back at you. There's no need for some Nietzschean abyss. It might be a street corner or a shop that's changed its name, again and again.

Raven could still lose himself in Oxford’s old stone and layers. That weird alley linking George Street with the top of New Road was a favourite, also Beef Lane off Pembroke Street. Hours of wandering until some refreshment and downloading became urgent.

He'd by now traipsed west, uneasily wondering how this indulgence would affect his daughter's schooling. Staring into the Manley Hopkins darksome burn of the Thames at Osney, a heron perched by the bridge. So many times he’d done this, staggering back from drinking in the Lamb and Flag.

Turning over his time in teaching, he sometimes experienced pupils surfacing from his memory so clearly that he was back in the classroom or at a parents' evening. Running water encouraged such reverie. Perhaps it was the river's churn and disappearance, the drama subsiding into its relentless flow downstream.

*

One of his final appointments, though she'd not booked a slot. Something in her stance and downcast eyes - weariness and wariness - was heart stabbing. Shaking with embarrassment at Raven's offered hand and her father’s tremulous grasp at it.

Raven slipped into machine-talk on projected grades and 'stretch' targets as the inebriated man blinked and nodded his head. He said nothing as his daughter spoke for them, saying more than she ever had in a lesson. She mapped out her plans and Raven forced himself to be cheerfully optimistic, overdoing reactions whilst pretending not to notice the father's whisky stench.

To his shame, he recalled nothing on what she’d hoped to become. Had the alcoholic dad insisted on attending or maybe she’d begged him to, praying he’d somehow be sober? He couldn't bear to think of her being ashamed. All he now remembered was standing up at the end and saying the bloke should be proud of his daughter. And they were gone.

The horror and terror of all this, for her. His tracking data and its colour coding had said nothing; what did EDI monitoring care about this child? Indigenous suffering was never discussed in all his years of teaching, let alone during training or 'continuous professional development'. He hated his profession for its progressive idiocy, wrapped in self-congratulation but blind to so many English children.

By the Thames now, he thought of Jenny Wren in Our Mutual Friend.

What help was literature, when it came to it?

*

Raven despised those who sat in cafes, tapping away - ‘laptop jockeys’ he dubbed them. But he sat writing a six-part sequence on True Crime, in a Botley coffee shop, mixing memory and desire. He knew his obsessional interest was spurred by an inner rage and need to avenge childhood cruelty. Raven never censored his poems, especially now this was happening to every vital part of English life.

Without doubt, his poetry seemed crude and terrible to many - and the cutting away to it a juddering structural shock. There was no choice; he’d change style only if his world allowed it.

How many people carry knives routinely now? They were a commonplace at the dump of a school he was terrified his daughter would get exiled to, as revenge for him bunking off the 'meeting' at his college.

He carried - for artistic purposes - a beautiful brass Japanese Higonokami pocket-knife. Digging it into his palm was a vital and hidden spur.

Perhaps the garden city house now gleamed white above its lawn.

He sent the completed sequence to a London poetry magazine and (of course) never saw it again. Who knew if it was any good, or even if he’d any talent? But then, that wasn’t enough; one needed permission to have talent. And with his sort of writing, it wasn’t likely to be given:

I. TRUE CRIME

His recurrent childhood nightmare was of getting caught burgling a house. He recalled the alien smells, the feeling of suffocating in the noisome dark, a certainty he’d lost any security forever.

Then he’d be awake, safely stretched in bed.

Now he was planning to make this reality. He was clearly mad. The place he’d chosen was a detached house, way up Cumnor Hill. It was to be a ritual desecration, a revenge attack on the class and character of its owners.

Talk with such types had become circular; nothing could breach their liberal certainties. Words no longer held any meaning for these people. It was pointless to contradict this through more argument. An empirical representation – an objective correlative – of his opposing thought was needed, for himself and for them. Hadn’t the husband unknowingly demanded it?

‘You’re a right-wing wanker. Worse than a Nazi.’

He was mad but not responsible for making himself so. His class was the target. To wear a Balaclava was essential, not to avoid recognition but from 70s memories of drying them on school radiators and images of terrorists.

*

You’ll need to know the details, what I took.

A penknife: small; portable; collectable.
I’ve kept some from my childhood,
lost the flick-knives from trips to France.
I waited at least an hour on the sloping lawn,
hidden from the house, the incline so steep.
The expected security lights didn’t activate.
Of course there was an alarm – I welcomed it.

Have you been inside a house when one goes off?

Sickening disorientation and five-minutes’ panic.
Time for me to smash up some pictures,
piss in a wicker basket and their boots,
tear off a coat-rack then grab the knife.
I was filmed jumping over a hedge.

*

He sat and dug under his finger nails with the shining blade:

The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.

Presumably the soil he removed was ‘forensic evidence’? In a true-crime documentary, trace-element analysis would pinpoint the Cumnor ridge and its famous clay.

His urine would obviously yield DNA.

But he doubted this bourgeois burglary would divert the police from queuing in Greggs or surfing internet porn.

He was safe.

II. SONNET ON STEALING A CAR

At fifty-nine I’ve stolen my first car.
In films it’s done with the utmost of ease –
glancing round, ruler down the driver’s door,
a rapid twisting of wires and away.
Reality? Smashing my way in then
electrocuted getting connection.
Alarm blaring, me waving and mouthing:
‘Don’t worry, it’s my car – temperamental!‘

Meanwhile, that burgled berk from Cumnor Hill

is bustling back, swinging his Waitrose bag.
Eventually it starts and I soak him,
aquaplaning through water, a puddle
for him and his wife. I flick salt-shaker
gestures and he feebly attempts to chase.

III. RACHE

Like A Study in Scarlet, red ‘Rache’ carved

inside their lives. He saw them smiling and
decided how to; who to trust. But the
rash sharing of an obsession was why
many got caught. If he acted alone,
only his thoughts had importance. He could
live inside those and switch to some dagger –
if he dared to – then slash without warning.

You think this mad but the pain seen in her

should not be forgiven. To know they had
enjoyed it ’caused his monstrous behaviour.’
True-crime documentaries said that and
‘Nobody thought he would ever do this.’
Each step was easily traced, if you tried.

IV. UNMASKING OF A SERIAL KILLER

In the old Truman brewery, Brick Lane,
the world’s leading Ripper experts sipping
champagne while ruminating on some wretch;
Isaac Dipski – the mad kosher butcher –
lifted crusts from gutters, believed he was
conversing with Abraham using farts.
Five witness reports of him running past
Chapman’s death scene on the way to Nando’s.

The killer is named, to thundering applause:

‘Charles Allen Lechmere, found there in Buck’s Row,
we’ve tracked his mobile phone. Early for work –
claimed he thought it was on old tarpaulin –
standing by Polly Nichols, freshly slain.
And there’s six minutes lost he can’t explain…’

V: AMONGST THE HALF MAD

I’m not complaining –

it’s where I’m meant to be.
An Internet discussion board:
Casebook: Jack the Ripper; I’m barred!

Was it him – Francis Thompson – my quest.

London, up from autumnal tree-tunnels
to border areas of Holborn, the City, those
streets I walked once, bored, lonely. no one.

Up past Newgate, St Mary-le-Bow down to

Watling Street with its views of St Paul’s.
St Stephen Walbrook, my days have
wandered then become a joke, his

‘have crackled and gone up in smoke’.

Praise God no tourists, just sentinel
towers from Wren dwarfed by capital.
It’s beautiful to live on visuals,

memories – bits of a building, a

childhood scout-hut, some adventure
playground. Schools are here, one
on Mitre Square where I’m going.

A lone muttering, others the same.

London can be taken by trackless
steps. Odd to arrive in Bevis Marks,
into Dukes Place & down the passage –

St Botolph Church, burial place of rebels.

So was I banned for posting my research:
‘I may have hitherto hidden my dismay,
at the seeming shambles that is “Ripperology” –

Simple experiments and observations.

It’s sorted! Took me twenty minutes on site.
Discovery of a new (highly unsavoury) ‘clew’ –
bagged and sent to forensics. All done after

a leisurely stroll from Drury Lane, through

old Holborn/City (some Wren churches) to
Mitre Square, where I solved the case!
I don’t want to be critical;

but what the hell have you all
been doing for these 135 years?’

VI: THIS BITER GETS BITTEN

Let's be honest about economic reality.

There are Slavs who'll work till midnight

in awful restaurants, places where you'd ask:

who can eat here? Then they take the

last bus and so do you. The English get

anywhere, to any place even when roads are shut –

our history says so. We might seem to be absent -

we're there. Those ribcage towns in hopeless dawns,

I can’t describe them nor Oxford (its pale lights

on cobbles) glowering high-rise block monoliths

marching through snow. They're here for the children,

not yours, they'd take yours and show them what’s worse.

I shouldn't be saying that and I am. Maybe rebirth happens in

sonnets? Or the whole thing starts again in something else.

*

It's at this point the decent reader wants

to see this writer receive what he's doling

out so here's a rambling account of how

I escaped through alleys and slippery

courts not in Oxford or London but

somewhere too Gothic to be safe as when

I went there it wasn't for tourists but exile.

That was just before the Berlin Wall fell

in Prague 1989, the country in freefall.

You know the old Eastern block cities

had terrible crime under Communism?

Actually it was more dangerous since

the causes couldn't be admitted as

social in a perfect society I went

for a walk along the river away

from anything picturesque towards

distant tower-blocks such numbers

of them all in a line like that scene from

the Bourne film where he visits the Russian

girl – Moscow I think – whose parents

he's killed. Anyway on I wandered into this

Czechoslovak night lights were bright and

high up I think then I was hit from behind

and expertly robbed in a smell of vodka or

schnapps the bloke took very little since I

grabbed his legs and pushed him over easily.

The fear, I ran without wondering why it

was raining with no drops on the river – blood

of course from my broken head - sunrise back

in the Hotel Bristol reception called this doctor

who nodded uninterested and said ‘only a

fool walks to any of those places since now

the whole state is failing.’ My money was

gone only worthless Czech stuff I'd bought

at five times the official rate. It's not much but

I can say I've suffered from True Crime just

like we all have though I'd forgotten it and

how a friend from university got murdered

by a whack across the head in Battersea Park.

CHAPTER SEVEN: REBELLION

‘Presumably I can sit here?'

Headphones in he was tapping on his device before Raven agreed. One of those laptop jockeys; a writer-in-residence of the digital future, swapping human failings for icy perfections in codes and spreadsheets.

The setting was perfect – for him. A mixture of faux-chumminess and industrial austerity; a Covid redoubt, haunted by the lockdowns its regulars enjoyed.

Raven stole his tablet and it couldn't have been simpler. It was easily hidden under his own.

'Is your milk allergy-tested?'

The annoyance peered into the cake display, reciting its tempting contents. The device sat open and unlocked. Raven 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 Raven. Its jarring interior sure to repel hipsters and digital workers; the purple and cream tones ensuring his nemesis would never set foot there. The 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 Raven 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. Raven recognised many names, including his 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.' Raven edited his own information, until the program locked when he identified as a pan-sexual Muslim with a geography degree from Durham, seeking urgent and drastic realignment.

Later he returned to the artisanal oasis, wearing a mask, balaclava and great-coat - like a revolutionary from Dr Zhivago. Raven 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!'

It needed starting - a rebellion, of sorts.

*

Raven had loved living in Botley, before the free-speech clampdown and his exile. Of course he’d been a regular at its pub, The Seacourt Bridge.

This redoubtable local had seen 28 years of him as a pub bore, occasional wit and irascible git. And the place attracted much weirder misfits than him, ensuring middle-class people avoided it. The 1930s estate architecture was characterful but not picturesque, and its unpredictability meant nights could be more depressing than a New Year’s Eve spent with Keir Starmer or wilder than an East End pub celebrating Saucy Jack’s retirement.

Indefinably English, in its random magic mix of the rough and relaxed, which few noticed but many would miss when gone.

Botley itself was an undistinguished and likable suburb, perennially an Oxford joke and ‘the next go-to area’. Thank Christ that would never happen. In fact, it wasn’t in Oxford but the Vale of White Horse, which was ‘old Berkshire’. But the area somehow felt almost West Country, from its lingering yokel-accent and thatch-headed types, terrifying any invaders away.

The isolation had been added to. It was now marooned, without road access into the city. A geological-timescale redevelopment at Oxford station, 1.5 miles to the east, meant buses terminating at Osney Island then residents navigating the frenetic work underway, leisurely vis-jacketed types strolling around, holding up signs advising when to cross the traffic-free Botley road. The jokers were paid £30/hour to surf their phones and arrange for families in Afghanistan, Somalia or the Congo to join them at the Botley coalface. Unknown to many taxpayers, it was Britain’s largest aid project, completion due five years after the diversity festival first started.

Early doors Friday, in the Seacourt! Pissed (occasionally brawling) builders; ‘all-dayers’ like Street Fighting Dave the First and his slippery Weymouth mate Houdini; baffled tourists wondering where Sebastian Flyte was; a younger crowd of coke-snorting druggies; Raven’s table of ex-jail birds, middle-class burnouts (Raven, buddy Pete - and occasionally a neighbour Dave, a jobbing optician), Raven’s fabulous gardener Dave and wife, various apocalyptic Oxford Utd fans - often called Dave.

As the beer flowed, talk luxuriated over the collapse all around. Trusted regulars could saunter up to the side bar and play tracks on the Indian landlord’s laptop - though the range was limited. But No More Heroes and My Generation had regular outings. Then it was various 80s disco-trash and 70s favourites, all sung along to with gusto. Raven’s version of Wuthering Heights also got a sporadic airing, causing mayhem and dispersing the crowds. Edge of Seventeen brought his silent tears.

Topping things off on balmy evenings, there was a local tradition of barbequing progressives and Remain voters, in the garden area. A huge fire-pit was lit, over which these wretches were slowly roasted, yelling in their agony that Britain needed to ‘reset relations with the EU’ and ‘restore the Erasmus scheme for IT workers.’

*

'We know it was you.'

Laptop was queueing behind him in Home Bargains. Raven had been staying for a week at the Botley Premier Inn, revelling in his anonymity but reluctantly avoiding the Seacourt. Remarkably, his daughter had been left untouched at her current school.

Was there anywhere Raven would be less likely to meet Laptop? Maybe he was checking toilet-roll stock against the Leave/Remain voter ratio in Botley. Or the staff were getting compulsory kindness training. Raven pretended not to hear, pondering his use of pronoun.

Laptop then swung his basket into the back of Raven’s knees. An act that couldn't be ignored.

Raven turned and rammed his thumbs into Laptop’s eyes, kicking him brutally in the bollocks and smashing a basket over his head.

In violence - of which he had vague experiences - the vital thing is speed. More risky for Laptop than Raven. He was 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 Raven made good his 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 Raven crouching behind a row of hamster cages.

Leading them was Laptop, barking for 'the immediate arrest of a far-right extremist.'

She led him 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.'

Raven sat flummoxed. The woman was oddly familiar.

'Misty, your cat - I do her jabs.'

His trust was won. Glancing at the CCTV, Laptop and his Stasi crew were wandering next door, into Oak Furniture Land.

'I'm Julia. I won't ask your name, since you're cancelled.'

'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?

'Surely he’s just a turd with open windows on dogging, supermarket management and lockdown - not Stavrogin?'

'My mother was Russian,' she replied, smiling or grimacing.

CCTV now showed several uniformed police entering the shop. She led Raven through the back doors to a welcoming skip, crammed with flattened cardboard boxes and polystyrene packing debris. He felt strangely at peace and fell asleep, safely concealed by the retail-park detritus.

CHAPTER EIGHT: REBIRTH THROUGH LANDFILL

Why rubbish dumps and landfills are magical, Raven did not know. Since childhood he’d 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 he’d sat in queues on the Wilton Road, Salisbury, laden down, crawling forward to disgorge his parents' books, pictures, letters, ornaments, photo albums - even clothes.

And now he was in a skip looking up into outer purity, entropy doing its job. He just had to wait...

Destined for landfill in the indigo dawn of suburban morning. He'd not even felt any jolting as his nocturnal abode was loaded onto a lorry. Fast asleep, until the A34 congestion awakened him 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.

Raven hopped out unseen - or so he thought. But those on the adjacent site were ever vigilant, chained dogs announcing his arrival in the underbelly of by-passed Oxfordshire.

Before he could scarper, he'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.

He'd read Ballard and imagined some nightmarish confinement, in a rewrite of Concrete Island. Or life as a white-slave from the English diaspora, traded between building crews and Bulgarian gangs traversing the south-east.

'Does he fancy a brew?'

'A boy like this wants his skinny latte!'

He was handed an enamel mug swirling with two tablespoons of sugar. Drinking sweetened tea was no more possible for Raven than if salt and vinegar got added.

The closest thatch-head jumped up and opened his gob. The other Shireman eagerly 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 his life, Raven had been expecting the bedrock of middle-class comfort and security to collapse beneath him. Now he felt relieved.

Perhaps the only hope lay in sudden violence. Or maybe the tea was drugged...

He was back in his 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.

He could remember it all. There was his 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 his teachers were decent old-style lefties, committed to fairness rather than indoctrinating children. But he remembered 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 Raven. The grin on Shireman Two was pure gold.

'Surely that's not a find from the tip?'

Roars of appreciative laughter. The cultural shifts were exhausting, his separation of internal and external worlds had collapsed.

He was led into a comfortable bedroom then lowered onto a huge double-bed. Drugged mental overwriting followed. Reverie and review, Raven rationalising his rejection of delusions of 'being on the right side of history'. Reification through retelling events from his lonely twenties, Liza-style abandonments on streets of falling sleet, maybe composing his own Notes from Underground?

Diversity was England’s state religion, ruthlessly enforced, tolerating no dissent or human failing. No pity, individuals crushed in brutal demonstrations of worthiness. Pity, the emotion one cannot fake. Still there - if it somehow survived - in England’s Christian faith.

People walking their dogs at night, waiting at bus stops. Any of them mattered more than ideology. Raven hallucinated, reciting, semi-conscious next to a recycling site.

The only Christian left in the west
lives at small expense in a hidden flat
above squealing lorry wheels and brake lights.
He gave up sending himself Christmas cards
years ago - they were always being pinched -
not malicious but curiosity
in neighbours who prayed five times every day.
The country was bursting with believers
agreeing online in those empty realms
from which he served a lifetime's banishment.

The head of his church and its worshippers
he’d dismissed as secular heretics,
so he said to the doctor, complaining
that people always seemed to barge into
him in the city’s streets which now all stank
constantly of marijuana without
any believable explanation.
He'd stood still today alongside All Souls
and been floored by an aromatic reek.
Surely it wasn't being smoked in there?

Infinite complete trivialities
required competitive claims of belief.
He preferred exile beyond the gas-fired
kebab burners lining the Cowley Road.
Alone one Sunday night he sat sad and
crying for what had vanished from his world
behind twinkling lights of traffic flashing
red then blue and constant sirens circling.
They'd not be coming for him to be sure:
vaccine coronaries were so common now.

Simplicity was everything he had.
Any demands for diversity caused
him anxiety or sudden madness.
People assumed he hid a shameful past.
All he'd done through life was open his mouth
but out came the truth on all that he felt;
inside lurked monsters demanding exit.
Language could disguise them as ideas
then he'd stare in surprise at the tearing
those creatures delivered without caring.

He'd gone unnoticed by the crowds chasing
credit up and down. The office party
jockeys lubricated yet still fearful
that a wrong word spelt instant damnation.
Sex was in fact everywhere yet rationed.
The one advantage in age was pissed girls
beaming at this blurred stricken vision of
Father Christmas penned by Dostoevsky.
Poor Liza - ‘apropos of the wet snow’ -
vanished but perhaps she got saved somehow.

Maybe if we understood the logic of dreams, we’d never want to go to sleep - or wake up again.

Next, Raven was manically narrating a Youtube channel, trawling around council estates overrun with recent immigrants, exploring the wreckage of utopian dystopias, garden cities, new towns:

What stories do they tell themselves on

why they moved to this country and who

they are, when even a street here makes

a difference and identity is everything?

I know the lies from economics, claiming

the English can never do anything.

Perhaps it's true we're overrun and

I wish so many hadn't come.

I didn't want to feel abroad,

sitting alienated by violent

jabbering on buses, harsh

elbows, hints of aggression.

Poets never say this though

it's not a poem, thank Christ.

---

New towns and garden cities are now despised but

a young child could go to Wimpy on the day before

starting secondary school and be on the verge of

newness in drab browns and oranges that weren't

dated then because you didn't know the decade you

were in and neither affluence nor want were felt as

judgements but lived through to say so now gets me

shot I just see Woolco and new shops the glass safe

yet to read about it today would say my parents and

others thought the country was doomed with money

evaporating and worries worse than old trains but

it doesn't seem so bad it's known what was true

plus the separateness gave us enough space

maybe this now plays somewhere just the same.

---

If I went back to those fields of childhood

would I know anything there? Of course not,

they don't exist anymore – although I'm

sure the old stretches of barbed wire wildness,

with horses no one seems to own or ride,

will still reach down to that chalk river with

its rubble banks and bridges unnoticed

by anyone but me. Worn stones under

which I caught Miller's thumbs or sticklebacks?

Still there for children from schools in summer

to know on those day that last forever,

before online worlds take them off nowhere.

---

It’s a fact; middle-class people talk too much.

I’m one, but checked by this old git who lives in my memory.

My first encounter was in Welwyn Garden City’s biscuit-brick cinema, aged about eight. The film was that colossal bore - Disney’s Fantasia - my interest finally awakened in the dinosaur fight.

I proceeded to narrate the exact characteristics of Tyrannosaurus and whoever he was devouring, for the benefit of an entire auditorium.

A nicotine-stained relic looked at me, an ex-spiv relocated from Stepney to the council estates by Nabisco’s.

‘Turn the volume down mate.’

How he lurks in the mind!

That ever-present policeman in peripheral vision, class rejoinder, vigilante of bourgeois incontinence.

Shame-faced I have fled cheerful public houses and desolate suburban trains, legging it through twilit council estates with their lurking bovver boys.

Just last week he resurfaced in my local as I was discoursing on Oxford’s traffic.

One word too many and he pounced.

‘Turn the volume down mate.’

I was forced out to meet a grisly fate.

Lastly, he was watching a documentary on Dickens’ unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood. The location was Gloucester yet - annoyingly - no solution was offered in the laconic commentary, although some link was made to a wicked uncle, whose dukedom was with the famous and now ruined city:

It would be crass to say they fell as a hard rain, yet glittering, bouncing - sometimes shattering - the diamonds descended without warning on Tredworth, the most depressing of many such areas in Gloucester.

Perhaps they came from Jupiter, where such storms are common? Most people assumed it was summer hail. If this famous place had ever coruscated with gems, they were now found only in its magnificent Gothic cathedral; a treasure hemmed in by drug use, boarded-up shops and feral kids on bikes.

Most people that is but Jasper, who understood the riches strewn amongst the overgrown gardens, junkie parks and vandalised cars. He'd been named after a drug-addled choirmaster and possible murderer, in a similarly decaying cathedral city on the other side of England.

Years earlier, two notorious serial killers had buried most of the locals under patios, in torture-cellars or bedraggled Cotswold fields. The few survivors staggered through the town - it cannot be called a city - blinking in surprise and clutching cans.

Its most famous local resident was in fact buried in the cathedral, rumoured to have had a sizzling poker shoved up his arse.

Middle-class relocators took one look at the place and screeched off, desperate for Cheltenham or Tewkesbury. A few mistakenly moved to Cinderford, where certain unspeakable midnight rites are still practised in the public houses. The Forest of Dean hides their ashes - a reminder that left-liberalism can be dangerous folly.

Jasper gathered up his crop in a Lidl bag and went online. But prices in the wholesale diamond market had recently collapsed. Perhaps he could flog his booty in the Quays street-food market?

'Things can only get better!' was booming from a festival stage as he entered this site of gentrification..

*

'Surprised by such luxury?' A cheerful voice jolted Raven awake.

Sat in the corner was a hallucinatory figure in JJB sportswear. He handed Raven travel brochures and property listings for exotic locations.

'When fools 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 he kept his 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.'

Raven thought uneasily of his own back garden.

'Don't worry, anything worth taking from yours is long gone. Ask the cleaners - they gave us the keys.'

He now understood how his Botley home had transitioned into a stark abode worthy of some Nordic noir thriller.

CHAPTER NINE: PROFESSOR SPORTS DIRECT AND THE SHIREMEN

Raven sat in the caravan's bedroom, watching a documentary on the Great Plains. His three new companions were out, scavenging on the tip.

Sunset over vast fields, then sandhill cranes landing on a Mississippi tributary which could dwarf the Thames. Whenever he saw America's pristine landscapes he imagined the contrast with its cities, places he didn't know except that in one - somewhere and somehow - he'd a lost son.

A 1980s Oxford coupling then a bombshell letter from St Louis, with a baby's picture. Two meetings at a hotel off the M25 then a legal document, informing him the boy had been adopted - 'for his best future' - and Raven could never have contact. His legal rights were non-existent. He didn't even know if the boy's mother had married and the husband was the new father or if the child had gone to a random couple, somewhere in the vastness of the USA.

Raven had spent many thousands and years searching. His only leads were to the Mid-West, where the trail irretrievably stopped. No way of finding the name the boy went under. Not a week he didn't wonder then banish the thought, only for it to resurface by night. The ache, then an emptiness, bottomless, beyond representation. It seemed impossible he'd contained such pain, but he had.

He obsessively watched documentaries on US urban decay, praying the boy hadn't finished up there. A lifetime's obsession with tramps, from childhood glimpses at King's Cross of meths drinkers or the subterranean encampment under the roundabout by Waterloo station.

Coexisting squalor and affluence, the constant elements in English life. He'd never forget his daughter seeing a collapsed man, dog on string, outside The Randolph:

'Dad, he looked so sad.'

*

Professor Sports Direct became his confessor, though all three knew Raven’s life and history. Mostly Raven and him, trudging the canal banks north of Oxford, avoiding the narrow-boat dwellers with their gentrified nonsense.

There was a frankness about this bloke which meant you could discuss anything. Terrible stuff from your childhood, things seen and now always there. Inexplicable in meaning, other than by accepting homo homini lupus est.

Raven recounted an event he’d witnessed aged nine. He and his friendship group were whispering happily in assembly and got hauled to the front – except for him. He kept schtum and the others were too terrified to speak.

Dreadful clarity surrounding it, a mechanistic clicking into place and the event taking on a life of its own. Endless replaying down the years then created something immutable. A cruelty ritual had been enacted, participants and witnesses falling into their roles, instantly aware of the significance. An unquestioning acceptance? That ignores those equally disgusted but doesn’t affect the loneliness Raven knew as he watched.

The bitch deputy-head made the classmates form a neat column – eight of them – and went slowly up the line, carefully rolling down their socks, taking her time by reciting their names. Those were the days when boys wore shorts, well into the autumn. She made them wait, explaining how they'd regret daring to talk while she was. But whatever the pretence, she wasn’t angry.

Then she knelt and smacked the first child repeatedly around his little legs, working methodically and vigorously, whipping from side to side, enjoying the growing terror in those awaiting her inexorable waddling down the line. Halfway along, she stood up and took a breather. Was he imagining she rubbed her hands – or that the cunt even spat on them? The proud sadism of this woman would always terrify Raven. It was sexual – he realised – and he’d witnessed a ritual display of child-abuse. She’d clearly have done much worse, given a chance - and probably had.

A few of the boys cried uncontrollably, more from the public humiliation than the actual pain. But many of those watching enjoyed it, not least some giggling girls in his class.

'You went into teaching, after witnessing a max execution?' asked the Professor.

It was the first time Raven had seen him show surprise or exaggeration.

‘But she sounds like a typical female teacher – they were always the worst. Surely you know that?’

'Thirty years later; I’d happily kill her if she stood here now.’ Raven instinctively fingered the Higonokami knife in his left pocket.

‘A Guardian-reading old crone? Probably a corpse already – same thing, anyway. I could tell you much worse from my schooldays.'

Thankfully, he never did.

*

‘How did it come to this - angrily exiled from your class, education and acceptable opinion?’

‘I always knew it would. Starting with a bar-job during my DPhil, in the Lamb and Flag.’

‘Always hated that place.’

‘Maybe it’s epigenetic. My Greek grandparents were ethnically cleansed by the Turks.'

‘Don’t be a twat.’

'Perfection’s boring; where did all the bastards go? Good writers used to screw their half-sisters, machine-gun toilets then accuse Hitler of being philosemitic.'

'Byron, Hemingway and Celine, I assume?'

Although claiming to be 'blissfully uneducated', Professor Sport Direct’s reading shamed Raven’s English teacher ex-colleagues, whose idea of great literature ended with To Kill a Mockingbird or The Kite Runner.

*

I must speak of our two Shiremen – as yet unnamed.

Perhaps snobbery or some sly point being made?

What if we called them Stuart Dayspike and Dave Dreamspan.

Don't lie! You shudder thinking they’re human.

Physically, you already know them.

If not, stop reading and pop down to Home Bargains or Aldi. Buy an enormous multi-packet of crisps or a mammoth load of kitchen-rolls. That chap by the biscuits, patiently restocking; he's Shireman One. Instinctively edging in as your trolley grazes his back. Smiles up when you ask for Garibaldis, an overflowing shelf of Tunnock's Tea Cakes above his thatched head.

Shireman Two works in the cafe, on all-day breakfasts. Thumbnails in beans when nibbling your toast. He glides with a speed seen in some of the obese.

Complicated families; the first is uncle to the second – but younger.

You’re back? OK, well forget ideas of progress. Take yourself up to medieval England and the bucolic environs of Rose Hill.

No need to drive, the traffic's impossible. Imagine two village idiots, spitting apple seeds to attract local maidens at harvest time.

A council flat?

Heaven alone knows what their ancestors did. So goes ‘progressive’ thinking; ethnic replacement is safer.

*

There was an evening in a Wetherspoons pub, Witney. Forget the Cotswolds of Cameron and David Beckham. Here was the real England, where nascent resistance to the left-liberal elite was stirring, attacks planned on their homes, hipster-bars, boats, gastropubs, LTNs and - of course - artisan coffee shops.

Raven’s encounters with Laptop had been noted, so he entered to wild applause. He 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 them.

Later that evening, a group led by Raven and the Shiremen crept into scrappy woodland opposite The Greyhound, Besselsleigh. The pub itself was one he'd not wanted targeting; the venue for many family meals and it wasn’t gastrofied.

They 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!'

Raven’s Omega Speedmaster showed a time of 11:32 as three cars pulled off the A420.

*

An ex-colleague of Raven’s - 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, sending Raven hilarious poems and love letters he'd penned for the errant spouse. This Deputy Head wore berets to department meals, and – most horribly of all – in pubs.

If Raven sounds callous, he was. Nothing now surprised him about these clowns, facetiously wielding power but unfit to run a bath. The buffoon flaunted anti-Brexit t-shirts at GCSE results' days. When Raven was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, he’d consoled him with unsolicited lectures on NHS funding.

Waiting in the flickering darkness, Raven hoped that the Deputy Head’s disgraced wife occupied one of the cars, down from Bucks to fuck Laptop. The aim was to pinch their vehicles whilst the doggers were busy in their wooded love-nest. Who knows, maybe they'd stay and breed some colony of mutant perverts, a Pitcairn island off the A420? Even Ballard wouldn't have used that scenario!

Although he'd never in fact stolen a car before, his companions were old hands. One bloke - 'Gypo Geoff' - had a bunch of keys programmed for common cars and an App for everything else. Raven and the two Shiremen jumped into an Audi A4. Shireman Two drove them almost into the woods, headlights undipped.

What our heroes 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 Raven when he occasionally shops there.

Don’t despair. These people can be defeated.

CHAPTER TEN: HUMOUR IS THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF TRUTH

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 made for aimless drives and long conversation. Raven and his daughter would spend hours occupied with nothing else, traversing the Berkshire Downs. Seemingly sculpted contours, perfect for his Jaguar and every aspect of the native English in their ancient landscape. Even a distant view of wind turbines hadn’t yet destroyed the fragile beauty of this vanquished land and its people.

That famous hill was a fort, a redoubt, built to repel invaders and unapologetically celebrating that determination, in its equine carving. Now in a stolen car, he sat alongside Sports Direct and talked him through his obsessions with true crime, gemstones and the Sherlock Holmes stories. So intense was this last love that he wrote tributes, pitting the horrors of educational wokedom against Holmes' indefatigable need to confront evil.

As they looked down over the Vale, the Professor sat quietly reading a 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 – or even 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, when he reviewed this piece during another of their lonely canal walks. Something about the calm reflections and still water, the cloudscapes over open fields and underseen views, seems perfect for beguiling summation, however complacent this activity inevitably is.

Because canals are oddly incapable of being ruined, even in the worst industrial landscape or by the most uninspiring motorway interchange. The temptation to go down and just walk for hours becomes overwhelming. No need for plans, maps or ideas– nor timings. For a man obsessed with time, they’re the one place in England where it seems to mean absolutely nothing.

'I got the point just from your title. It's an insult to the original characters and very childish.'

‘Humour is the secret language of truth!’ said Raven, although he admired the Professor’s vehemence and mostly agreed.

'But does it work?'

'Not so well as chasing the sods round a pub carpark.'

As they walked, Sports Direct delivered apercus on middle class failings which paralleled Raven's thoughts.

'Comparing - constantly comparing - everything and everyone with everything and everybody else. Nothing is enjoyed in itself. Every meal, holiday, book, film, friend and school. The standards they judge against don't exist and they themselves have no values - and so no value.'

'Is that a left or right-wing verdict?'

'Who gives a shit.'

Yet the Professor showed amazing kindness over Raven's beloved daughter. She'd been banned from contact - 'for her own good' - on his exile, on pain of being moved into the sink school and put up for local authority adoption (she was 15). So, the Professor insisted on somehow visiting her Oxford school, as the conduit for messages between father and daughter.

'How would that work?' Raven asked nervously.

'You can do anything with these people, by fronting up and showing no fear.'

'You can't simply walk into a school and talk with her.'

But he did just that, posing as some government official enquiring over her welfare and checking the strict no-contact rule had been followed. The Professor's brazen cheek combined with the hopeless incompetence of anyone in authority made this ironic contact route perfect. He even faked documents and reports, in case anyone checked – but no one did.

'Now you can see how all those Oxford school girls got gang-raped,' he noted, confirming what Raven had long known: 'safeguarding' was a tick-box management process for protecting them and not the children.

Raven had pilloried the Muslim grooming gangs targeting Oxford's schools and the wilful blindness shown by the authorities. The caravan site provided an ideal venue for a spoken-word performance of this piece. His Dickensian instructions from the Professor were that ‘He Do the Police in Different Voices' - not that any plod had 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'll 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 lout 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.

---

HER LAST WORDS

Dear Sir,

I write age of seventeen pretending you'd remember me just to say I'm here older and flown away to a place you know well by the sea.

Upped and left the city where I was raped like you guessed I'd been and I said not.

Now I've imagined you make it down here one day we meet and I read you this poem I wrote:

---

I can't believe you found me like you did.

Somewhere on the coast where I went to hide.

That girl's all gone and done but life's still here.

---

Just like the white-winged gull sings her song sounds

like she’s singing for the raven, to say:

Come away – I’ve flown away – come away.

---

Let me show you around what I call home.

Where others not yet grown will walk and laugh

and men like the boys you warned me about

---

comb the cold streets for lost girls all alone,

steering them to destruction – life in the

edgeland here by a screaming English sea.

*

Raven knew he could never write anything better.

The rest was silence.

Professor Sports Direct awoke and gave his opinion.

'Thank God it's stopped.'

‘It hasn’t.’

CHAPTER ELEVEN: ALWAYS ANOTHER GENUINE TURKISH BARBER

Always those other talkers – anywhere and everywhere – he couldn't help listening. So many evenings ruined by him hearing, reacting, taking part in his head then walking over – uninvited – to argue with progressive shitheads who'd invaded what was his – their innocence of meaning to irrelevant.

Always these people do it – any pub, beach, car park, restaurant, village, footpath, author, band, London, Cornwall, train carriage, motorway service-station.

Always worse if you were one of them, once. How they try and beckon you back – he'd never been to a dinner party – wine – pop-ups – hopeless chocolates in pigeonhole.

Always it cheered him how he'd an empty one. Not even Ferrero Rocher or coconut Quality Street.

*

Boarded-up shops, pubs and offices were so common that he barely noticed a new one. People expected them to appear, like graffiti or potholes.

Raven peered inside the Thai restaurant where he'd eaten his thirtieth birthday meal. It stood vacant now; surely not this place too? He'd once taken his parents here and proudly paid.

Looking in again, he saw movement at a table, deep inside. Yes, a large oriental family were sharing a meal, dishes politely passing from hand to hand. He watched enchanted at the dignity of this simple scene, at odds with the anomie of closed businesses and the decaying city around them.

Then one man was standing, delivering a speech. Several of those seated were rubbing tears from their eyes; an old woman had her head in her hands, shoulders shaking convulsively. Behind was a silver banner celebrating twenty-five years of success.

He'd never thought much about the loss in stopping something one's done well and for years. The sadness of it ending, dropping away, then gone. Far from thanks or gratitude, he'd been turfed out from teaching, threatened then exiled. But perhaps that was easier than the aching closing ceremony these Thais were following. Their place had been fabulous to his western eyes. Carved wooden fittings. Buddhas, costumed waiting staff bowing in that praying way, smiling constantly.

No one admitted the crimes committed in gleefully 'locking down' the country. At an instinctive level, progressives had always wanted to do this - to assert their control - and they still did.

Raven, Professor Sports Direct and the two Shireman walked on down Hythe Bridge Street.

'Another genuine Turkish Barber!' laughed Shireman Two.

And a new bubble-tea place next door,' smiled the Professor.

'Where's the new vape shop?' wondered Shireman One.

*

Raven was without homosexual tendencies yet felt they were sometimes imagined in him. Actually, the thought of men having sex with each other was ridiculous - let alone the mechanics - so it caused not his repulsion but incredulity. He revelled childishly in this response, vindicated and validated by the myriad, often charmingly archaic, slang terms. It couldn’t be denied that his ribald perspective honoured a venerable English tradition. Just ask Wiggins, Uncle Monty, or Lord Rochester…

And he had the same view on heterosexual promiscuity, especially adultery. Taboos and stereotypes obviously existed for a reason; they were required and true, whatever cheap credit got grabbed by ‘rejecting’ them.

That Raven had close friends who were homosexual made no difference, since he wasn’t laughing at them as individuals but at the contortions their sexual needs required. Homosexuality always has this daft aspect, let alone the preposterous trans-movement. The more people pretended otherwise, the clearer it became.

Better to not discuss such things and let English privacy restore sanity. Yet the opposite approach was now taken, with Oxford a centre for doublethink. To that end, he felt obliged by his instinctive contrariness to recount a hyperreal nightmare, as they walked up George Street crossing the cobbled alley separating Wetherspoons from Zizzi:

As I navigate this oddly named lane, jostling and enthusiastic homosexualists approach me from the opposite direction.

Keen to appear inconspicuous, I flatten myself against its medieval walls, only for hidden doors to open and eager hands haul me in.

I am mounted by a hefty lesbian - or perhaps a pan-sexualist - sporting an enormous ebony ‘strap-on’. Wincing in pain, I notice a poster of my MP - Layla Moran - grinning down toothily.

Worse is to follow. The mob arrives and members take turns 'spit-roasting' me. Throughout, I have rainbow college flags draped on my quaking frame and the event is recorded for Oxford's Pride Month.

I am to be unveiled as 'Raven Gaylord', with the video then used for promotional purposes in local schools and Oxford's two universities.

Eventually, my ordeal ends.

I am escorted out, lavishly hosed down with lavender water, then treated to a meal at The Four Candles.

‘Metaphorical buggery, or maybe symbolic. What about the Lib Dems?’ wondered the Professor.

‘The party of perverts, jail-birds and dog-shooters!’ quipped both Shiremen.

Raven started in surprise, impressed at their insight.

*

The Professor took exception to three Pakistanis, who'd apparently been smirking as they walked past St Aldate’s police station.

'They're mocking your grooming-gang fears.'

'Those three?'

The blokes seemed to be grinning in that harmless way many Asians do, arms around each other’s shoulders.

'Obviously.'

Raven and his chums had been drinking hard in The Head of the River, he and the Professor comparing notes on the spectral impossibility of deciding between teal or turquoise, for the translucent Thames’ colour.

'Probably covered in ghee, but I'll fight the fuckers!'

Before Raven could react, Sports Direct ran into the blokes, arms wind-milling in what's called 'a chicken war-dance'. This was almost outside the Old Bill's Oxford lair but no one inside stirred.

The Shiremen also launched into the melee, leaving Raven an anxious onlooker. It was as brutal a case of sudden violence as one could imagine yet somehow precipitated by years of progressive idiocy, though saying this is unacceptable.

'Help us please. Summoning policemens for immediately assistance.'

Under the belly of England’s multicultural blowback...

He'd been badly beaten up once or twice. Englishmen of his age always had, and he sympathised – the sudden pain, as if it’d just been invented or you'd fallen through ice into this – what existed before now wasn’t there – forever.

You’d wonder who's watching, how long will my shame be remembered – would it become part of local folklore?

If you were foreign, maybe you’d ask yourself what you'd done, if this was traditional?

If you were English, you’d instinctively know things kicked off, anytime, a reversion to the mean.

Fights at the start of secondary school, his group of three attacked by some random trio from a different primary, exploring the pecking order...

As soon as started, finished. The three assailants charged off, speeding past Christ Church then right, down Blue Boar Street. As in a 'dine and dash', Raven had no choice but to do likewise, leaving the concussed men staggering after him.

'Damn you bastards all!' one yelled.

Raven found himself laughing genuinely, ashamed of feeling better than he had for years.

The three scarpering villains ducked into The Bear where Raven followed, glancing back to check no one was following.

Sports Direct was already at home in the snug, feet up and mobile out, intently watching some Afghan family sitting down to a meal celebrating the end of Eid.

Installing burglar alarms, he'd left hidden cameras monitoring immigrant houses across the city.

‘The sods always have them – even council blocks. Gold, drugs and pimp money to be protected.’

Raven thought nervously of his own alarm system, fitted by a charmingly eccentric Indian chap named Bas.

‘Oh, you’re being watched, no doubt about that.’

The Shiremen nodded in confirmation.

‘And I'm tracking these nutjobs, even if security services aren't,' pointing at the onscreen Afghans.

He then yelled into his phone:

‘Allah Akhbar and roll out the barrel! British Bulldog – one, two, three!’ His command was heard to terrifying effect, the family rushing to the window and peering down some tatty street.

The Professor switched to another camera, looking from overflowing bins onto their house.

‘Let them worry,’ he chortled.

It was clearly time to discuss immigration.

'All this I see as belated border control. And payback for those girls.'

The Shiremen grunted in agreement.

'Mind you, I probably liked my Asian neighbours,' replied Shireman Two.

'The Biryanis or the Bhunas?' asked Shireman One, to hysterical laughter all round. Several college porters smiled over.

Raven would once have made some half-arsed protest but now felt no desire to. Let's face it, multicultural ideology and diversity preaching had created more racism than ever previously existed, not least in him.

To his alarm, he made a mental note to read Enoch Powell’s famous speech and Renaud Camus’ seminal study: The Great Replacement.

*

Naturally, Sports Direct had once been a college porter. That servile role, basted in delusion and obsequious ritual, appealed immensely to his contrary nature.

He was soon deep in discussion with some chum from those days, one 'Dr Customer Service'.

Sports Direct proudly introduced Raven to the dandruff dandy, whose views made the Professor's seem like Guardian editorials. Dr CS had 'worked in retail', becoming a disciple for his workplace-bullshit moniker and pursuing studies in comparative ethnography:

'I live and breathe Customer Service. It’s the core of what I stand for, forty years grafting at it and diplomas from all major utilities. I now oversee a degree course at Brookes University.'

Incredibly, Dr CS spoke without irony.

Raven nodded, bemused by this appalling tripe.

'Asians take to it naturally; most are charming. Just pop into Currys - it's well named. Place is like one huge Paki shop. Some are too flavoursome though, however much Lynx they spray on. Ghee gets in their pores and oozes out. Muslims don't actually wash – seems Allah ain't too keen.'

'Sharp as a blade your average Paki is though. Slices you into a Biryani quicker than you can say chicken bhuna.'

Sports Direct chuckled along.

'Tell Raven about your college tour.'

'Bold as you like, some Stani walks in the lodge and wants to see the Dean. Claims his daughter is due a place. I took him through Tom Quad and out to the Gate of India, on the High Street.'

'Now tell us what you think of Oxford's dwindling Pride Month,' beamed the Professor, setting down five foaming pints of ESB.

Customer Service switched into lyrical mode:

'The tawdry detritus of this pervert fest is a delight. Every deadbeat 'progressive' crawls out, hopeful for attention.

Alas, the phlegmatic English are bored sick of weirdos who cannot halt the inexorable decline, the ennui of their solipsism.

Whither (and wither) the raving pervs? Shoving their multi-coloured arses at people who couldn't care less.

Boot-boy culture of the 1970s had its advantages! No way they'd have lasted. A good kicking is what the berks want. They'd love it - anything for victim status.

Does anyone like progressives?’

And now they drunkenly revelled in their shared hatred.

*

SEND ‘EM HOME

When the world is lit only by lightning,

dreaming of blue skies brings down darker clouds –

or is it Darcus Howe?

Because there's a pube in your pint and sand under your foreskin.

A human turd on your rose beds too.

We have a climate crisis alright, but not from bullshit on traces of a vital gas.

We've forgotten that pouring in people from stifling countries – stupefied then 'plenty Congo' with their heat – is tipping steaming kettles over our testicles.

Those places are hell holes; everyone wants out. If you live where they’re heading, pull up the drawbridge and lay on the burning oil. I reckon a convert can be twice as eager! You enjoyed the siege of Helm’s Deep – think of me as Gandalf; you can be Aragorn or that chubby Elf.

Ah – so you thought you'd avoid the invaders, send them to Luton?

Not likely, with eight billion in the pool

and water-taxis, Calais to Carfax.

*

In Cornmarket, Raven – however much he tried not to – always had those shocking thoughts, shamefully amusing, laughing to himself.

Right on cue, as they walked past the oldest building in Oxford, an Afghan or Syrian was begging, yelling: 'mercy, misters, mercy, mercy!'

When had his faith shown any – even to him?

Shireman Two was more direct: 'No pittas on me mate. Or is it Peshwari nan?'

Shireman One had a more creative contribution:

'I come boat Dover Oxford, Circles Line Calais Dover and now place please at Year 6 discos. My beard is down to my nuts, plenty crumpets for me to marry so long as bitches not grandmothers.'

The Professor feigned outrage and pretended to do a 'Citizen's Arrest', just as some Community Support Officer was strolling past, face buried deep in a Gregg's pasty.

'Officer, do you represent a civic force in this warzone?'

'How can I help?'

'This chap begging wishes to be enrolled in some local Primary School. Can you assist?'

No sooner asked than a call was made to someone in authority and the matter sorted.

'Lock up your daughters!' the Professor advised enraged passers-by.

The grateful beggar stood and embraced them, bestowing a powerful aroma of cardamom and cumin.

*

Next stop was an organic deli and cafe, ‘The Plum Tree’, where his three companions were greeted warmly. The range of allergy tested foods and numerous daft milk options immediately annoyed Raven, to the Professor’s delight.

‘You’ve never known how time was taking you, this lot replacing your angst with enjoyment and smiley faces.’

‘Like food allergies and dairy neurosis?’

‘I come here all the time. Those are my paintings above the gluten-free display.’

Sure enough, a row of Munch-like screaming faces stared out from crudely daubed Oxford locations, variously wearing turbans, veils and other ethnic clobber, each with a speech-bubble declaring: ‘This is my city!’

‘Oh Lord, they sell. One-hundred quid to me from each one. I reckon diversity is my strength...’

‘What about those blokes you just beat up?’

‘Oh, smashing memories for them. All education. Ten years from now, they’ll be happily telling their grandkids and doing diversity assemblies at your school – greeted like Rosa Parks.’

A couple of hipsters purchased the Professor’s picture of a speech-bubbled woman in a rainbow burka, claiming ownership of The Jericho Tavern.

‘QED,’ Sports Direct muttered to Raven.

*

'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.'

They sat in The Turf, under the walls of New College. Raven delivered his 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.'

'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!

Sunday 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 suggestion prompted explosive laughter; Raven was showered with crisp detritus.

'I went to an all-inclusive last August and only just recovered.'

Now it was time for the Professor to deliver a monologue.

‘Poor sods went there to get away from miseries like you! The middle-class can’t escape itself – gap years, gites, teaching English to cannibals in Papua New Guinea, second homes in north Norfolk – you're still there. Ever noticed how all the locals scarper when you lot arrive?’

‘How do you put up with me,’ said Raven, almost hurt.

‘Comedy gold, and you don’t know it.’

Raven handed the Professor his pamphlet, Massacre of the Lane Swimmers, which detailed trips to various all-inclusives, most recently in Puglia. He shoved it in a back pocket and headed for the Turf’s grim outside toilet.

The Professor was the only person Raven knew who revelled in using pub bogs – the worse, the better – especially for ‘a longer visit’, where he sat utterly oblivious to the door-rattling of those waiting in mounting desperation. Some he’d actually reviewed on TripAdvisor, including the notorious Tardis kiosk outside Earl’s Court Station. In short, the man suffered no embarrassment whatsoever. People often summoned pub landlords to extract him from some cubicle where he’d taken reading material to ‘enjoy over a long and leisurely dump’.

An extraordinary range: Kafka; Shell County guides; railway timetables; Bleak House; In Cold Blood; American Pastoral; American Psycho; The Sound and the Fury (left in cubicle); Commando magazines from the 70s; bird-spotting guides; T. S. Eliot first editions; Brighton Rock; The Collected Sherlock Holmes (a shared joy with Raven); Orwell’s complete essays; His Dark Materials (attempted flushing and blockage); Of Human Bondage; all the Ripley stories; numerous Oxford guidebooks; Bibles; hysterical self-help manuals; serial-killer biographies; serial-killer autobiographies; Mr Crabtree fishing books; Tintin; Shelley; Lovecraft; Kant; C. S. Lewis; Stranglers lyrics; footballer bullshit biographies; bullshit footballer autobiographies; Gary Lineker’s political treatise Worship Me BBC; Gary Neville’s Philosophy for Morons; Notes from Underground; Devils, Crime and Punishment – and now Massacre of the Lane Swimmers.

He’d eventually leave with an alarming but accurate warning for the next occupant:

‘I’d give it twenty minutes,’

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 as an Englishman I stay 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 desiccated 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 become 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 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 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.

CHAPTER TWELVE: TWILIGHT OF THE MANAGERIALISTS

‘I preferred the Oxford one. Take us to your old college!’

Raven was naturally disconcerted by the Professor’s request. Once he’d have had no reason to feel reluctant – even accompanied by these three – but now as a fugitive, it seemed a dreadful prospect.

The narrow mediaeval alleys one walks through to either Hollywell Street or New College Lane are a pure delight. They took the latter route, the Shiremen amusing themselves by pretending to mug Raven at its narrowest point, yelling: ‘It’s kicked off!’ and wrestling him to the pavement. The Professor swiftly steam-hammered them with such severity that Raven then had to shove him over, fearing for their survival.

‘Good work!’ all three shouted, impressed at his 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, ominously. ‘It’s my favourite form of exercise. I’ve given up on gyms, since quitting the corporate world.’

A disgraceful account followed. Eerily, this linked but contrasted with Raven’s own private-sector experiences. Would he find that, for every stage of his life, Sports Direct had created Gilbert and George performance art, enacting what he’d felt but not properly articulated?

The Professor had worked as a geophysicist, for a major oil company. As is usual, a casual-dress day was permitted on Fridays: suits and ties exchanged for chinos and crisp Oxford shirts. He delighted in doing the opposite, wearing the dingiest, filthiest office-clobber Mondays to Thursdays, then arriving in an immaculate pinstripe suit, brogues, spotty top-pocket handkerchief – plus furled umbrella - on the Friday. His entrance was greeted with cheers, a Savile Row display in deepest Slough.

He also insisted that the office carpark was far too dangerous for his vintage E-type, so parked three miles away in a leafy street, arriving in the office mid-morning at the earliest and leaving no later than three-thirty. His ruthless and cowardly boss was outraged but fumingly endured things, until getting him fired for recruiting others to his ‘Smart-Friday’ club.

‘I was told to clear my desk, but I clung on.’

‘You got a final warning?’

‘I wedged myself under the desk, barricading round it with those partition things, old computers, oil field charts, core samples – you name it. They called security who tried to wheel me out, but I grabbed hold of pot-plants and water-coolers. Even a coat-stand some clown had brought in. Cabinets and files went flying and a crowd arrived to roar me on!’

‘What use was that?’

‘I got a hangnail and claimed assault; the thing escalated to board-level. They paid me off and I went into the recycling trade with my muckers here. And we now receive thousands in green-energy bungs from my old firm!’

‘An English version of Lester’s exit in American Beauty?’

‘Better than yours into teaching.’

*

Raven often dreamt of flooded lifts in the corporate offices where he'd worked.

Waiting in the lobby and seeing them arrive, people exiting drenched.

One of his Centrica colleagues - Jacek, a Pole - stood contentedly showering in the steaming water. Raven 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.'

He'd known them as cowards, cowering before the forces of educational wokedom then seeking favour by informing on each other...

So far this account has been picaresque, random things happening with something lurking behind them.

The visit now mattered more. The college and university had once meant something...

Approaching down Brasenose Lane, Raven saw the outside of the 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. His college made a fetish of this ridiculous place, which still stood empty and unused – a dumb 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 or fantasy if that makes you feel better!'

But it's one thing to write sequences. Those fictionalised and energised managerialism’s quotidian effect: anxious boredom; that middle-class vice slithering tentacles everywhere.

Nobody who's worked in a modern office, school or university can deny the terrible silencing of truth through ideological conformity. Orwellian is the use of 'woke' for the somnolent atmosphere, tolerable only through escaping into the sexual perversions, alcoholism, drugs and mental illnesses now omnipresent in our institutions and culture.

And it's quite another thing when you realise that there isn't one hierarchical system, just a leaderless and grasping class, 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 – for now – just about keep the lights on, though not the traffic moving nor the streets safe.

No wonder progressives have outlawed criticism as 'hate speech'.

They stood in the small but perfect First Quad. Once liberating for Raven, as a student, but now imprisoning. As if to mock Raven’s feeling, each wore a dangling lanyard, describing them as 'co-workers in the normalisation of lived experiences visiting the Digital Hub to explore and develop future synergies in a multidisciplinary environment based on principles of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion'.

What that meant, Raven hadn't a clue; nor had anyone alive. The halters had been roughly shoved over their necks by a Slovakian college porter, as if they faced the gallows in some post-war eastern European execution. He then overheard his name, in a hushed phone call made from the lodge notifying someone of his much-delayed arrival.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: WAITING

Possibly you can learn more from this activity than any other. And who ever writes about it?

They sat for over an hour in a ceremonial college room, waiting for whatever. To Raven's surprise, the place was packed with similar groups. In fact, didn't he recognise some of the people? Various writers and activists from the gathering backlash against wokedom had ended up in his alma mater, all of them wearing lanyards for the Digital Hub.

His mind drifted to that scene in Taxi Driver, when the camera tracks various hoods in a diner staring at Travis, one tapping a finger as if timing something. Perhaps the approaching descent into violence?

Professor Sports Direct was reading an article in the College record: 'How to eat apples correctly for self-advancement'. Such meaninglessness made the title Oranges are not the only fruit seem like gritty realism. An egotistical book he'd taught with horror, its archness more dated than Punch cartoons lampooning trench warfare

*

Tommy Edgell was the College's diversity officer, newly appointed to this luxurious sinecure. By one of those coincidences which plagued Raven's life, he was an ex-teacher ‘with a passion for EDI’, according to the college’s website.

Who better to be the 'reprogramming lead professional', whose sessions Raven had now skipped for weeks? Tommy projected cheerful tolerance whilst nurturing existential hatred, for those challenging his foundational progressive beliefs. One such was Raven, whose sequence Rogues’ Gallery he sat reading, noting with delight the constant offences against permitted expression.

Just as damning were Raven’s appallingly scatological satires on the Sherlock Holmes stories. He flicked through a volume of these with incredulity at the unrestrained attacks, on every tenet of his left-liberal faith. Especially concerning was what seemed unashamed hilarity at the diverse sexualities he’d promoted.

Because Edgell's homosexuality was something his pupils had had to celebrate relentlessly but without discussion. An impossibly cruel demand for pubescent teenagers, naturally fascinated with anything sexual. His classrooms were covered in rainbow flags and LGBTQ+ posters. Lessons involved him prancing around like a kids’ TV presenter. Throughout these exhausting ego-shows, they were made ever aware that 'homophobia', 'racism' and 'transphobia' were verdicts waiting to be pronounced – and not just in classrooms. Children frequently went to him with denunciations of ‘offensive’ comments made by their ‘friends’, which he used as fuel for his fearsome ‘kindness consultations’ and ‘name and shame’ whole-school diversity assemblies.

When he'd first encountered Edgell, Raven had thought it deranged someone should be so obsessed with sexual identity. He'd never dreamt such solipsism – and nonsense on gender – would become things pupils were indoctrinated with, together with dichotomies between their own supposed ‘white privilege’ and disadvantage in everyone else. Class was never discussed. Most teachers benefited from its privileges – unlike those they taught.

No doubt this bullying climate motivated Raven’s Holmes stories, alongside his deep love for the originals and an inherited tendency from his pathologist father, for lavatorial humour. A simple antinomian reaction, in the non-religious sense, meant to celebrate freedom and produce laughs.

Both things education did less and less of – not that Raven's pupils had been shown the stories:

THE FORBIDDEN ESCAPADES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

May I crave fresh indulgence from admirers of Sherlock Holmes, in again presenting his unpublished escapades for their surprise and possible enjoyment?

Attempts at getting them into print have proved fruitless, with a splenetic response from our progressive literary establishment claiming that the accounts are ‘both vulgar in style and revolting in content.’

I then rapidly received a visit from my local constabulary - hotfoot from queueing in Greggs - demanding that the texts were destroyed. Refusing to, I was frogmarched from my Botley home and remanded in Bullingdon Prison, until Chief Inspector Lestrade belatedly secured my transfer to this ‘half-way house’ in Bicester where I currently reside, surrounded by a frightful town and its vast retail parks, ringed with new-build homes of terrifying uniformity.

Despite these indignities I remain, Sirs, your ever committed chronicler and servant,

Dr John H. Watson

1. THE MYSTERY OF SKIDMORE HALL

Of all the adventures I shared with my friend Sherlock Holmes, few fill my dreams with such horror as the events at Skidmore, Shropshire, in late November 1886. My experiences of the Afghan campaign had hardened me to much that is unsavoury, but I was left both shattered and weakened by our experiences in that ungodly border-country. Only now, with the recent demise of the last actor in this dismal story, can I reveal the truth behind our sudden departure from England, in early December of that year.

It was a gloomy evening of late autumn. Holmes – much exhausted by his recent unmasking of the Boston Butcher – lay in an apparent trance. Long acquainted with my friend’s methods, I was not surprised when my reading was peremptorily interrupted.

‘Events suggest a Study in Brown, Watson. Make of this what you will!’

He handed over a telegram, dated that same afternoon.

Come immediately, events of the utmost delicacy, urgent assistance required. Brownsword.

‘Lord Brownsword is the scion of one of our greatest families,’ I remarked. ‘His residence at Skidmore Hall the very pride of the Marches, renovated at prodigious expense with the latest conveniences.’

‘Indeed. His Lordship is a man whose curtness of manner is matched inversely with his vastness of fortune.’ Holmes had already retrieved his much-battered copy of Bradshaw’s guide. ‘We can take a fast train at 9:10, from Euston?’

My few commitments being then at a low ebb, I agreed immediately.

Next morning, an early breakfast and a rapid two-seater saw us leaving Euston and heading north, through London’s dreary suburbs. Holmes occupied his time in perusal of a monograph on the efficacy of various rapidly ingested metallic poisons.

It soon became apparent that his research was not merely of a theoretical nature. On passing Kettering, a sour and spreading aroma indicated that Holmes had filled our compartment with arse-vapour. I fear my consciousness was soon lost and awoke to find my companion’s anxious face peering into mine.

‘My dear Watson, I shall never forgive myself. I had no idea the cadmium I laced both our breakfasts with acted so quickly. May God have mercy on poor Mrs. Hudson’s movements!’

The rest of the journey passed in a miasma of volcanic eruptions and scribbled notes – Holmes meticulously noting the frequency and forcefulness of our embarrassments. It was only with difficulty that I dissuaded him from attempting ‘flame testing’, with a lighted taper. A disastrous experience during the siege of Peshawar, suffered by a junior subaltern after an excess of Camel Pathia, had alerted me to the terrible risk of ‘blow-back’ and buttock scorching.

It was with some relief that our journey ended, the Shropshire hills and dripping woodlands announcing our arrival at the isolated rural station of Skidmore Halt.

A groom awaited, and we were whisked away. The cold country air soon cleared my head and I watched with interest, as our carriage entered the splendid gates of Skidmore Hall. The house was originally Tudor but had been so thoroughly ‘Gothicised’ as to seem a more recent construction. Of particular note were the many down pipes, somewhat disfiguring its elegant façade.

‘His Lordship takes great pride in the provision of individual water closets for all his guests,’ remarked Holmes, following my glance.

‘Of no small relief to us both, you can be sure,’ I replied, with some asperity. Although my bottom had achieved some temporary respite, I could only imagine what my first evacuation would involve. Holmes nodded, a smirk on his hawk-like features the only indication he heard my testy words.

To my surprise, Lord Brownsword awaited us in his entrance hall. A more unprepossessing example of the English aristocracy it would be hard to imagine. At first glance, he resembled a minor accounts clerk or draper’s assistant. An unmistakable gravy stain was visible on his tweed jacket and the faint aroma of old cabbages – or even Jerusalem artichoke – lingered around him.

‘Gentlemen, you catch me on the hop,’ he muttered, signalling for us to follow him up the grand double staircase. His movements gathered pace into a headlong charge, as he rushed for the nearest privy door.

We awaited his return in silence. I noted the ascending portraits of his departed ancestors, each a stepwise, atavistic return to the brutal reality of baronial squat toilets over castle walls. Holmes was clearly impatient. The Duke emerged and ushered us into an enormous upper hall, entirely papered in brown.

‘If your Lordship would furnish us with all the details. Omit nothing, however seemingly trivial,’ my friend instructed.

‘Mr Holmes. I have heard good report of both your discretion and your indefatigability.’

Holmes nodded his approval, encouraging the Duke to continue.

‘You see around you a monument to English scatological emancipation. I am a well-read man, despite my somewhat insignificant appearance. For generations, the Brownswords have been cursed by lavatorial misfortune. And still, in all my studies, I have yet to encounter any other great family so similarly troubled.’

‘Blockages?’ I hazarded to suggest.

‘If that were the problem, Dr Watson, I would scarcely have inconvenienced so busy a man as Sherlock Holmes!’ he replied. ‘No, we face a more deadly and persistent terror.’

‘Pray continue,’ encouraged Holmes.

‘I am a light sleeper, Mr Holmes. The house, as you no doubt saw, is in the traditional ‘H’ shape, with four wings and this connecting gallery. There are, all told, some two dozen chambers, each with an ensuite Armitage Shanks.’

‘Your Lordship is most gracious,’ I assented.

Somewhat confused, Lord Brownsword continued.

‘For the last two weeks, I have been awakened by persistent flushing noises. On entering each chamber, and proceeding to the convenience, I have found…marks.’

‘Marks?’ enquired Holmes.

‘Mr Holmes, they were the skid marks of an enormous turd!’

My friend tilted back his head and church-steepled his narrow fingers.

‘To what degree – a one, two or three striper?’

Brownsword produced a crumpled paper, which he handed to my friend. It was clearly a tabulation, of dates, toilet locations and associated ‘skid widths’.

‘This appears to be in some sort of code,’ Holmes muttered. ‘I will need time to study it, over a number of pipes.’

‘I am in your hands, Mr Holmes,’ replied the diminutive Duke.

‘If your man could show us to our rooms, I can then report back to you after dinner.’

‘Excellent. I have asked Mrs Fisher to prepare us one of her mystery meat feasts. We dine at eight – dress is casual.’

With that he was gone. The gaunt figure of Jeyes, the butler, escorted us through the gallery.

‘Holmes, what do you make of it?’ I remarked, in utter confusion.

‘There are dark things at work here, Watson. And yet I see a glimmer, a sign that the four-ply paper is not yet finished.’

‘Gods preserve us from the Izal! But I still confess to utter bafflement.’

‘You noticed the Duke’s saddle-sore walk?’

‘A keen huntsman, no doubt.’

‘Arse-grapes, more likely. A hereditary curse of long-standing. The fourth Duke missed the Battle of Waterloo, thanks to them. His late father had to be carried into the House of Lords, grimacing on a raised dais of duck feathers.’

Holmes issued one of his mirthless laughs and was gone.

*

Dinner was a gloomy affair, partaken in the semi-darkness of the Great Hall. To my astonishment, we were served from what can only be described as a ‘hygiene wagon’, wheeled from end to end of the table by a marigold gloved Mrs Fisher.

The food was quite inedible and, as course after course appeared, I resorted to throwing it under my chair. His Lordship ate both heartily and messily, interrupting his mastication to discourse on the Hall’s elaborate plumbing work.

‘A quite extraordinarily fascinating history, flushed away daily, but revealing man at his most basic.’

‘Quite so,’ agreed Holmes. ‘When one considers how disgusting the average Englishman is – dragged down the centuries through wild boar, goose and pig shit – the beacon light of scientific advance blasting away this messy matter is the Fiat Lux of our day.’

‘And yet all is now lost,’ our host wailed.

‘Have courage, my Lord. Approached through the lens of reason and deduction, even a thousand skid-marks can never win.’

Later, over brandy and cigars, Holmes elaborated his findings.

‘I commend our host on his rational approach to the matter. Many a lesser man would have taken fright and ignored the data on which our case will rest.’

‘Holmes!’ I ejaculated, ‘You mean the identity of the Skidmore Hall skidder is known to you?’

‘All in good time, Watson. I have my suspicions, but a night’s observation – in the presence of yourself and your trusty service revolver – should bring matters to a head.’

Brownsword’s features showed a momentary twitch of anxiety.

‘Do I understand you intend to tackle this faecal fiend?’

Holmes turned his aquiline features in profile and stared into the falling embers. ‘Watson and I have many years’ experience of nocturnal reconnaissance. This is the last night on which your porcelain will be subjected to cable laying or giant otter attacks.’

He left the room.

*

A freezing vigil in the upper gallery was punctuated by those nightly disturbances encountered in England’s grandest residences. From somewhere came the persistent scratching of mice in the wainscot. The wind shot its gusty fingers down numerous chimneys. Outside, a screech owl patrolled the vast lawns.

His Lordship’s room was obvious from a cacophony of snoring and fevered tossing, audible even from our position, crouched behind a suit of medieval armour.

At just past 4am, Holmes touched my shoulder.

At first all was indistinct, but in the gloom I saw a faint procession of two-dozen masked figures, ascending the grand staircase. The lead figure was holding aloft an enormous stiff-haired toilet brush, like some monstrous perversion of the holy cross.

A dull chanting, almost a liturgical drone, steadily increased in intensity as the procession made for the first chamber.

‘Quick Watson. Not a second to lose.’

Holmes leapt into the fray. A pandemonium of toilet duck spraying and urinal cake throwing ensued. As we fought our way through to the first chamber door, I saw a dark shape emerging.

‘My God, Holmes, the Skidder of Skidmore Hall!’

‘We have it Watson!’ My friend grabbed the toilet brush and proceeded to smash the fleeting shadow. To my horror, pure excrement flew everywhere, pebble dashing us both and liberally coating our surroundings.

What were we facing? A creature of some dozen feet in length, topped with piercing yellow eyes (I later discovered these to be pieces of sweetcorn). Over the centuries, this monstrous turd had inhabited the pipework, emerging only at night to leave its distinctive markings in the Hall privies and terrify the constipated occupants.

With a final agonized sigh, alike to nothing so much as an enormous fart, the creature subsided and died.

By this time, our host was awake.

‘Holmes! What is the meaning of this?’

‘I had rather hoped you could explain,’ drawled Holmes.

The Duke was dressed in what appeared to be a monk’s habit, with a headdress made from Izal toilet tissue.

Slumping onto the stairs, he revealed the sorry history behind these outrageous events.

‘It can little profit me to hide the truth. This matter stretches back, like some grotesque faecal tape worm, to the fourth Duke’s disgrace. As Dr Watson can testify, many an Englishman has returned from our Indian possessions with a liking for curry.’

‘Indeed,’ I averred, ‘My own weakness was for a Chicken Karachi!’

‘The fourth Duke took his fondness to extremes, kidnapping the entire catering staff from the Maharaja of Jalfrezi. In so doing, he brought down – on himself and his unfortunate successors – the Holy Brahim’s Curse of the Curried Arse.’

‘I feared as much,’ muttered Holmes. ‘Indeed, the code you handed me was an ancient Sanskrit text, promising anal agony for any who insulted the honour of the Jalfrezi family.’

‘On returning to England, my ancestor was plagued by a near biblical infestation of winnuts, tag nuts and dangle berries. The more furiously he wiped, the more persistently his arsehole was attacked by those monstrous blighters.’

‘Until the Duke expired, after laying this enormous coiler we see before us,’ completed Holmes.

‘And since that day, it bided its time, alive in the growing plumbing installed by successive generations of Brownswords.’

The three of us looked in horror, at the ruin of a once mighty estate. The Duke explained how this foul creature had demanded nightly penance, with his loyal staff deputed to clean the terrific skid marks left on its nocturnal visits.

Holmes and I had removed the curse, but at what cost to this great house? We departed the next morning, amidst futile attempts to employ the latest steam cleaning and sand blasting techniques. A sickly brown cloud seemed to hang over Skidmore Hall as we took our leave.

On our return to London, we received news that the Duke had set his ancestral home alight and moved into a council flat, in nearby Telford New Town. The ensuing scandal – with questions in the House and virulent press attacks on Holmes – led us to our current retreat, amidst the unchanging splendours of the Upper Nile.

2. THE SCANDAL OF THE BROWN PARCELS

Sherlock Holmes’ relations with the fairer sex have been the subject of much comment and speculation. Some declared him at once both a misogynist and a man of the highest chivalry. Certainly I witnessed him handle a duchess and a lady’s maid with the same mixture of polite detachment and marked disinterest. In truth, aside from occasional groaning noises emanating from his bedroom, I assumed he was entirely uninterested in such matters.

It therefore came as a surprise when I returned to Baker Street one evening, to find my friend engaged in vigorous intercourse with a young lady.

‘Watson, may I introduce Lady Davinia Greenslaw, recently married to the Honourable Humphrey St John Hartley?’

Lady Davinia shyly advanced a gloved hand.

‘Pray continue, Lady Greenslaw – Watson is entrusted with any secrets and…delicacies which come my way.’

In a hesitant and sobbing voice, our visitor resumed her account.

‘From the first, my husband’s interests in the feather trade caused frequent absences from our home in Rickmansworth. As I am a daughter of our colonial possessions, long hours of separation seemed none too remarkable. Indeed, my late mother so infrequently saw my father that he became almost a…physical stranger to her…’

I offered my monogrammed handkerchief, and Lady Davinia (after a quick check) dabbed her almond eyes.

‘What has caused me most distress is Humphrey’s extraordinary behaviour when we are reunited.’

Holmes showed an immediate intensity of focus.

‘However painful this is, your Ladyship, please omit no detail – however seemingly trivial.’

How many times had I heard Holmes utter this commanding yet reassuring phrase?

‘Mr. Holmes, are you familiar with…materials which arrive wrapped in…brown paper?’

As an old India hand, I felt a shudder of apprehension. My mind went back to lonely hours spent in the heat of a Lahore evening, the rhythmic exertions of my punkah wallah matching the hellish tattoo of my own wrist movements.

‘At what frequency, and with what postal details?’ probed Holmes.

‘Always monthly, and with exotic stamps from Cairo. Each parcel is marked “Strictly Private, for attention of addressee only.” I know Humphrey awaits these with trembling hands, for he can scarcely contain his urgency to quit the breakfast table and barricade himself in his study.’

‘Has anyone in your household read any of this fascinating correspondence, so eagerly awaited by your husband?’

Was I wrong, or did Holmes’ aquiline features show an almost school-boy smirk?

‘Humphrey is the most secretive of men. His study is remarkable for its double doors, the inner of which is of steel construction and has a combination lock. However, last week I happened to pass and, to my surprise, found both open. No…it is too monstrous, Mr. Holmes!’

‘Watson! Quick man – the brandy!’

After downing a generous tumbler, our visitor continued.

‘On his desk, I found a letter in code. Alongside was Hartley’s deciphering of the message: “Pay up, Hartley, you tragic wanker, or Lady Cold Cunt hears all the details!”’

A terrible silence, punctuated only by the heartbreaking sound of female sobbing, descended on 221b.

‘How was this disgraceful missive signed?’

‘Mr. Holmes, with the simple phrase “The Professor”. I can only imagine it to be a prank from one of Hartley’s old Cambridge chums.’

Holmes brooded in silence.

‘I fear it is not that simple. It seems our old friend Moriarty is back – and has descended in the criminal world. Blackmail, your ladyship.’

‘How can we prevent a scandal? The feather trade – despite its ludicrous connotations – requires the utmost propriety.’

‘Leave the matter with myself and Watson. I trust you have now quit the marital home, and are residing here in Town?’

‘I have taken rooms at the Regent Palace Hotel. Humphrey keeps a set there, on a permanent reservation. Naturally, I have ceased all contact with him, until the matter is resolved.’

Once more, Holmes seemed on the verge of smirking. The dubious reputation of that hotel did indeed make it an incongruous location for our demure visitor.

‘I hope to have news for you by tomorrow evening. We shall call there at six.’

*

Holmes requested that I spent the following afternoon in reconnaissance of the hotel, whilst he pursued his enquiries at the Mount Pleasant Sorting Office.

Those sordid streets of London's most cosmopolitan district amply repay description: street Arabs; ragamuffins from the four corners of the empire; loitering men in ankle length gabardines – all wandered its dripping thoroughfares and alleys. A khaki fog, almost a miasma of Windsor soup and cabbage greens, enveloped its flickering denizens.

I was no stranger to such observation. As an old Lahore hand, I steadied myself to watch for patterns of furtive but repeated movement. I was soon rewarded.

A hobbling figure, almost blind behind bottle-green spectacles, ambled into every ‘private shop’. From each he emerged with a yellowy grin, clutching yet more parcels...all wrapped in brown paper. With mounting excitement at my discovery, I made detailed notes for Holmes.

Our suspect was a figure of indistinct height and girth, wrapped in an ankle-length overcoat. It scarcely needed my years of medical experience to offer an immediate diagnosis: persistent and disastrous self-abuse. This wretched cripple could hardly walk, so bow-legged was he from a lifetime of onanism.

My thoughts returned to those terrifying lectures at prep-school and nightly vigils by ‘thrasher Perkins’, patrolling the dorms for any suggestion of squeaking bedsprings. Yet we boys still shared our illicit daguerreotypes of alluring ankles and knees. I shuddered to think how I escaped with only minor physical and moral damage – clearly, others had been less fortunate.

Brushing past me, I detected the unmistakable odour of crotch-rot. I followed this veteran fist-pumper into the garish interior of the hotel lobby where, to my astonishment, he crudely gestured towards a scarlet-curtained side room, and announced:

‘Watson! How good of you to be so punctual.’

I reeled. Before I could demand some explanation, an avalanche of one-handed reading material fell from under Holmes’ coat: Secrets of the workhouse kitchen; What's in the scullery maid's draw?; Innocent Annie meets the Stevedore.

Then to my horror, a saurian figure scuttled into the room, sniffing out this stash.

‘Quick Watson, your shooting stick!’

Holmes pinned the creature down.

‘Good afternoon, Humphrey St John Hartley!’

I was immediately transported back to Stoke Moran and the speckled band. But this was no snake. It was the pitiful wreck of a once-proud feather trader, now reduced to the status of a serpent, slithering its days away in Soho’s mean courts.

In a tremulous voice, our prisoner read us an account of Innocent Annie’s ordeal:

‘Massive as a tea-clipper’s mast, the Stevedore’s proud member plunged netherward, probing Annie’s sacred sanctuary. She gasped as he entered the inner sanctum. The brute spared her none of his salty roughness and she bridled like a filly in the St Leger Stakes. The gallop was on.’

Holmes’ face was a study in aloof fascination.

‘Enthralling, but altogether of a rather native flavour. Perhaps you could quote some of your more…exotic material – or do we need to request a sample from Professor Moriarty?’

However melodramatic are those pulpit-warnings on masturbation, the effects of this solitary vice on Hartley were remarkable.

We both stepped back in horror, as a monstrous apparition from the depths of Bazelgette’s subterranean world reared itself up in full.

He was dressed in a shocking combination of purple and yellow, such that his skin merged imperceptibly with his clothing. His drooping jowls and coal-shadowed eyes belonged more to the opium fiend than to the fevered imbiber of hand-shandies.

‘Gentlemen, you have the advantage on me. Of whom do I have the pleasure?’

‘We represent the wronged interests of British womanhood. Your wife is my client, and I, Sherlock Holmes, act in her interests. My colleague, Dr Watson, will endeavour to provide much needed relief from your disastrous obsessions.’

What was Holmes suggesting? Had he deduced my shameful Raj habits, having examined the depths of my shipping trunk, currently secreted in our box-room at 221b?

‘Holmes, the meddler, the Scotland Yard monkey!’ snarled Hartley. ‘Who are you to come between a gentleman and occasional hand relief?’

‘Hah! An unfortunate collocation of infinitive verb form and rhythmical movements, I suggest.’

I judged this quip well below my friend’s normal standard of repartee.

‘You may not realise it, Hartley, but this shady establishment is owned and managed by none other than Professor James Moriarty. You have fallen into his piteous grasp – from which no man emerges unscathed.’

The scarlet curtains opened, revealing Holmes’ nemesis.

Holmes’ premise was correct. Moriarty had indeed descended in the criminal world.

There he stood before us, like some disgraced minor solicitor, caught in flagrante with his housekeeper in a sordid Southsea guesthouse.

‘My interests now encompass the wonders of moving image reels and photographs of a most revealing nature. Charges are entirely reasonable, and certainly less onerous than the costs of inevitable public disgrace.’

‘Moriarty, you disappoint me,’ drawled Holmes. ‘Even Charles Augustus Milverton never stooped so low as to procure incriminating evidence with his own hands.’

Moriarty ignored the rebuke.

‘May I interest you gentlemen in a discreet private showing? I guarantee you will find my material engrossing, and of considerable personal interest.’

He beckoned us into another side room.

A creeping sense of anxiety became one of horror when I recognised my own image, in a Lahore ‘rest house’, firmly in the saddle of a Punjabi princess. To my amazement, Holmes could scarcely contain his amusement as the figures started moving.

Furthering my disgrace, the Professor’s associates had added sub-titles:

‘The doctor fills his boots, with a ride and a sip from the stirrup cup.’

‘Young love triumphs amidst the splendours of the East – but comes at a price.’

‘The treatments are painful, and expensive.’

This last had me crossing my legs and wincing, in agonised memory of the ‘penile umbrella’, plunging into my manhood.

Even the Professor was doubled up in mirth.

And then it was Holmes’ turn.

*

My readers often debate which of our ancient universities Sherlock Holmes attended. Viewers of Moriarty’s film are left in no doubt.

A sunny Oxford scene, youths in blazers, whites and sporting caps.

A familiar figure walks jauntily towards the camera.

The caption beneath reads:

‘By night, the Butcher awaits his students in the sordid alleys behind Oxford’s Covered Market.’

A large man of military appearance, mutton-chop bewhiskered, ushers Holmes into his premises. Wasting no time, he bends our hero over the counter and deftly removes his plus fours.

A vigorous rodgering occurs, with close-ups of Holmes’ grimacing, yelling features:

‘The master of deduction is certainly not the dog that fails to bark in the night!’

‘Years before Silver Blaze, Sherlock Holmes appreciates the finer points of a stud’s anatomy.’

Much to my shame, I confess to epileptic fits of laughter. I have seldom seen my distinguished friend look more discomforted. Moriarty joined in heartily, pounding my knee in delight, at his great foe’s utter humiliation.

But the most shocking of all revelations still awaited us.

The images changed to a delightful rural scene, captioned:

‘Within twenty miles of its great city, rural England still enchants both men and women.’

A delightful young lady is seen entering a stable. All three of us gasped in amazement, on realising it was the youthful Lady Davinia Greenslaw.

‘A keen animal lover, blossoming into adulthood – what could be more natural than her affections taking a more physical turn?’

The ensuing scenes still haunt my memory, tainting forever my faith in the gentler sex. A succession of farmyard animals was led in, each to copulate enthusiastically with the future Lady Davinia St John Hartley.

Most extraordinary of all was a baleful looking donkey, its dear tail swishing innocently, as this Babylonic harridan expertly manipulated its private parts.

‘That’s my girl. Now I know why I married her!’ chortled her delighted husband.

‘And now perhaps we can discuss my terms?’ the Professor icily remarked, as the lights went up.

The brutish Hartley resolutely refused to offer a penny – indeed, he welcomed the opportunity of sharing in any profits, should Moriarty release the evidence of his wife’s rampant bestiality.

‘The Duke of Clarence would pay a good thousand to own it!’ he exclaimed.

Holmes and I had little choice but to meet the Professor’s demands. He settled for a portion of our respective professional profits – with Holmes generously agreeing to underwrite my share.

To this day, my friend and I have yet to discuss these events, which I present here solely as a warning to the curious. Moriarty maintains his stranglehold over our reputations, but I know Holmes will eventually release us from his hellish bondage.

Holmes and I left England shortly afterwards, for a much-needed recuperative break.

I refused his suggested destination of Cairo.

There are indeed deep waters flowing through all human lives. Sometimes it is better to remain above, a mere skimmer over the deceptively attractive surface, rather than plunge into their murky depths – where monsters truly dwell.

3. THE SQUATTING THOMAS AFFAIR

I returned to Baker Street for several weeks, during the bleak winter of 1895. My beloved wife's Aunt Agatha was breathing her last, after an interminable struggle with dropsy, phlegmatic fever and vaporising delusions. As an experienced medical practitioner, I had long despaired of any improvement, but Mary felt obliged to decamp for the wilds of Bridport, where the nonagenarian glowered in grim isolation on the Dorsetshire coast.

Holmes was himself then at a low ebb, much frequenting the meanest opium dens of Limehouse and Shad Thames. As I stared gloomily out at the London miasma of traffic, yellow smoke and huddling humanity, my friend moved for the first time in several hours, passing me a stained and tattered manuscript.

'Brother Mycroft has sent me this account of disturbing events in Weymouth, written by a semi-literate graduate of Durham University – one Cornelius Griswald – now reduced to tutoring pallid adenoidal youths.'

I immediately devoured this extraordinary document, punctuated as it was with curry sauce blotches and tiny fragments of fried fish batter:

The Legend of Squatting Thomas, as recorded by Cornelius Griswald, GRADUATE, MA Hons (Geography) Durham.

Be himself so good, the Lord Mycroft, as a fellow varsity man to read and note my warnings – herein disclosed forthwith – in hopes that my deplorable unluckiness be relieved by more than a fish supper and litre of cooking lager.

My student days having finished, and employment inexplicably being unavailable at any remotely respectable establishment, I had no choice but to return to my childhood home. Indignities multiplied, and your honourable geographical servant soon found himself sleeping in bathing huts and subsiding on Pease Pudding detritus.

Fortune smiled on me, at last, when Ma Gypsum's Academy for Wretched Youths advertised an opening for a downtrodden sod to school imbeciles and near cretins, prior to their departure for some arse-end of the empire, therein to give the natives a damn good leathering.

'Holmes!' I ejaculated. 'Is there any point to this rambling and offensive document?'

'Pray have patience, my dear Watson. Events will soon gather pace.'

Somewhat reassured, I recommenced my perusal.

My only comfort, from a lonely garret room overlooking the broad sweeping bay, was to watch the crimson moon kissing those constant waters. Many is the night I have beheld its cheeks – sometimes damson, sometimes ivory – sink into aquatic slumber, only for your tireless writer to join it in welcome oblivion.

Of late, however, my dreams have been disturbed by unaccountable horrors. Nightly it is that I am awakened by trumpet blasts, then the sight of those once delicate cheeks hovering over my gasping face, as I struggle for breath. It is as if the very moon itself has returned from Neptune's deeps, to scream and breathe foulness into the depths of my soul.

So shaken am I by these events, I have had no choice but to quit the Gypsum household and seek temporary sanctuary, at a newly built Premier Inn, in Weymouth's disreputable outskirts.

Alas, my lunar nemesis has now followed me even here! Amused locals have jeeringly informed that I am being hunted down by none other than Squatting Thomas, the much-feared progenitor of Spring-heeled Jack. This fiend preys on alumni of lesser universities, particularly those who dabble in execrable late-Romantic outpourings having reached the dizzying eminence of a degree in Geography.

I beg you to forward this epistolary plea to your distinguished relative, a Mr Sherlock Holmes.

I am forever in your debt and write as a gentleman.

CORNELIUS GRISWALD MA (GEOGRAPHY, DURHAM).

'The outpourings of a confirmed – probably syphilitic – lunatic?' I drily observed.

'Possibly, but I am minded to take the unfortunate Griswald's case – if for no other reason than to swap our London confinement for anywhere that can better distract my stagnant mind, however briefly.'

Holmes' much punctured inner left arm provided me with the only justification needed, for sending a swift telegram to the Premier Inn, informing our Durham man that his pleas had been heard.

The following morning found us gazing out at the wild but beautiful English Channel, its waves crashing over Weymouth's delicate Esplanade.

England's watering holes hold a certain grim majesty during the winter months, but it saddened me to see how far this Georgian beauty had declined into a late Victorian maelstrom of slapdash boarding houses, encrusted fried fish outlets and teetering scholastic establishments 'providing individual tuition by university men of known repute.'

Foremost in terms of decay was the fearsome sounding Gypsum Academy, to which Holmes – with his nose for direction and dereliction – led us in haste.

It would be difficult to imagine a more disgraceful establishment: the truly desperate would surely hesitate, before entrusting any offspring there. The redoubtable sounding 'Ma' was clearly combining pedagogic services with a thriving kebab outlet. Even at that early hour, a crowd of disreputable types could be seen, besmirching the morning air with fearsome eructations, littering the once proud pavements with their foetid detritus.

As an old India hand, I am horribly familiar with the street food eaten by our lower orders, yet even my constitution could not have stomached Ma's offerings. As if in some grotesque parody of higher education, the various comestibles were named after the constituent colleges of Griswald's ridiculous alma mater.

My attention was soon drawn to a jauntily dressed young man. His boater and blazer could not have provided a more incongruous sight, set amidst the drab greys and browns of that loutish assembly.

'I believe we have found Mr Cornelius Griswald, MA (Durham),' chortled Holmes.

Griswald bounded towards us, proffering his 'Castle College' kebab, eager as a young puppy with a rubber ball.

'Any news on your nocturnal hauntings, Griswald?' queried Holmes.

'Alas, this very night I was visited by Squatting Thomas!' wailed the unfortunate wretch.

'Let us dispose of that disgusting kebab, then you can provide all the details. Omit nothing, however seemingly trivial,' commanded my friend, reciting his time-honoured mantra.

We then found refuge in a lugubrious seaside cafe, catering to sundry mutton-chop whiskered revenants from the night-time economy. To my surprise, Holmes ordered full English breakfasts for the three of us, having thrown Griswald's vile snack seawards.

'Mr Holmes, I intend to speak frankly. Having reached the very pinnacle of scholastic achievement, my current predicament is proving intolerable!'

'Indeed?' drawled Holmes.

'My sole respite is the poetry of Algernon Charles Swinburne, consumed in prodigious quantities, whilst gazing over the boundless ocean lapping this small fragment of an all too sordid terra firma.'

To my amazement, Holmes suddenly delivered a ferocious steam hammering, pummelling Griswald's puny frame. Signalling me to join him, we drop-kicked the shit from this insufferable arse, with all his grotesque affectations and half-digested poesy.

In joyous scenes, which I now find difficult to recount without slipping into maudlin emotionalism, I saw my friend cast off his deplorable addiction, to revel in the innocent pleasure – the stout yeomanry – of pure English yobbery.

The entire establishment, realising things had 'kicked off', enthusiastically joined us in beating this snivelling pseud into oblivion.

In a coup de grace worthy of the London stage, two aging homosexualists hoisted Griswald onto the Formica counter, then spit roasted our gibbering geographer; an outrage fit to shock even Mr. Oscar Wilde and his entourage of Piccadilly decadents.

The doors finally swung open, revealing Griswald's nemesis.

Buttocks parted, Squatting Thomas – fresh from consuming several donners with chilli sauce at Ma Gypsum's – performed his unspeakable rites, over the semi-conscious Durham graduate.

I now understood the lunar references, as those shining moon cheeks opened and a sound – akin to a sail ripping on a four-mast tea clipper – rent the reeking air.

TripAdvisor provides a succinct yet reliable review of the Weymouth Premier Inn, where we later escorted the unfortunate Griswald. A power shower and several mugs of hotel hot chocolate all that were required, for his return to the rudest of health.

He now teaches Geography at a secondary school in Sutton-on-Sea, Lincolnshire – cured forever of his disastrous poetic habits.

4. THE DISAPPEARANCE OF A LOCAL YOKEL

Following our murderous activities in Bicester, Holmes used his genius for disguise to forestall any possibility of facing capital charges.

All told, we had – with clear justification – slaughtered three people: Moriarty, Geoff Lanyard and the egregious Hazel Nuts. Only the last named prompted in me any feelings of remorse, which I dulled by rationalising his death as a necessary casualty in England's Culture War – a conflict not of our making.

Holmes not only had bolt-holes all over London but in all of the major English cities. Oxford was no exception. We arrived in the unfashionable suburb of Botley on an evening of autumnal splendour. The spires glowed fragile in the distance, lit by the embers of a westering sun, their glory visible from our 1930s semi on Elms Rise.

Botley was the redoubt of displaced Shiremen, aspiring managerialists, laptop jockeys and anxious left-liberals, praying for 'regeneration'. Holmes knew the area well, having taken lodgings here in his time at the Varsity. As was typical of the man, he found it stimulating, effortlessly blending into a culture of boozing, fast-food consuming, feuds and sporadic brawls.

Holmes was still remembered by the moribund Seacourt Bridge regulars, many of whom had barely left their seats in the years since his departure. He proudly informed me they'd since hung his picture beside the bar, posing with the gurning Aunt Sally team.

On our first evening, we entered the pub as the weekly 'Meat Raffle' was in full swing. This atavistic ritual had Holmes doubled up with mirth, as various threadbare figures yelped with delight when their numbers were called, staggering off under huge joints of beef or pork, waving them overhead as if attending some Viking or Saxon battle feast.

Holmes was dressed as an Oxford United fan, in yellow sports gear and tweed cap. I was in a burgundy blouson, cream slacks and tasseled 80s loafers, refusing his suggestion of Pringle golf-jumper and mustard-coloured Chinos.

Yet when this carnivorous excitement was over, the place emptied. 'Desultory' would describe the ensuing atmosphere. No one had recognised their famous prodigal son, returned to a microclimate of chips, idiocy and barely concealed aggression. Nevertheless, we'd attracted glances from one particular table, led by a boulder-headed bully with a squeaky Oxon accent.

'I remember the fights best. Had to be done. The First Years expected it – happened to me until I joined in, picking on the weakest ones,' he gloated.

To my amazement, Holmes led us over to join this group, plonking himself opposite the annoyance, whose high-pitched blustering continued with another grating defence of bullying. He turned to Holmes.

'What's your take – enjoy a bit of beef do you?'

'Oh no, I'm afraid I've no taste for unnecessary violence,'

'You're wrong! Kids need to be tough or can expect to get the shit kicked out of them; even if they are wearing Oxford shirts.'

The table collapsed into forced mirth.

'Well, my tastes are mine and can't be really "wrong". For example, I don't eat celery and wouldn't be able to, whatever your eloquent views.'

Boulderhead pulled a puzzled grimace, thoughts visibly but slowly forming behind his dense brow.

'That's impossible! It's the essential ingredient in Spaghetti Bolognese. No Italian will ever eat it without his fried celery.'

'I rather suspect your knowledge of Italian cookery ends with tinned spaghetti hoops on white sliced.'

Furious tapping on the Boulderhead mobile ensued, then a grunt of 'Aha' and a Jamie Oliver recipe page shoved under Holmes's aquiline nose.

'What's it say there? Go on, READ IT OUT AND ADMIT YOU'RE WRONG!'

Holmes pretended to look, then grabbed the device.

'Watson, this is a "dine and dash", like Varsity days!'

We were out of the Seacourt before Boulder had even started squawking. Both of us convulsed – there's something inherently hilarious about being chased. But you'll easily get caught by stopping to laugh, as I remember from schooldays.

He was now in full pursuit, breathless and – for once – mercifully silent, other than sporadic gasping and incoherent obscenities. Holmes brandished the purloined phone aloft, like one of those tour-guides holding up an umbrella for oriental tourists.

Up Westway; onto Cumnor Hill; right onto the Eynsham Road; past all the newbuilds then under the A420. We entered the bungalow territory of Farmoor and turned left, soon arriving at the magnificent reservoir.

In the near-darkness, its inky waters were silent and still, inviting Holmes to hurl them the stupid phone with a fast-bowling action of which I'd been unaware.

Boulderhead arrived as it hit the water. He dived in and thrashed around, unable to reach the still illuminated Nokia. It descended, a ghostly vanishing of this modern-day curse.

'Watson, you're the literary man; is this an Excalibur moment?'

Far from emerging triumphant, this Shireman wasn't even able to get himself back up the steep concrete banks and onto the narrow causeway. He spluttered and trod water as Holmes extended a Doc Martin boot, slowly lowering it towards his canon-ball bonce.

'Watson, it's an old one, but...how do you stop a Shireman from drowning?'

'This is no time for jesting Holmes. Rescue the wretch!'

'Taking one's foot off his head is the answer, I believe?'

Holmes's boot slowly descended and submerged the local yokel.

Eventually a bloated but silent figure broke through the black water, rotating until it floated, face up and almost at peace. There was no possibility of that Wurzel voice ever again defiling the Oxfordshire night.

'A settling of scores on a bully, Watson. Of course it's regrettable. This place provides thousands with drinking water.'

I turned and walked back down the causeway, stunned at how Holmes's violent streak – hitherto controlled – had now overwhelmed him.

To what new horror was this latest episode leading us?

5. SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE AMERICANS

Sherlock Holmes was above all things a Londoner. Wherever he ventured, my friend carried the essence of the world's greatest city with him: its capacity for illumination from the tiniest of details; the happy coexistence of order with chaos; above all, the impossibility of anyone asserting ownership. It should be no surprise that he bridled at attempts by newcomers to do so.

It was a long-established breakfast routine at Baker Street, for Holmes to read aloud from the most egregious of our morning's correspondence. Nevertheless, I was surprised early one November at the anger in my friend's voice.

'Mr Holmes, I am not a Britisher, so you must take my forthrightness of tone as part of the honour found in dealing with a freeborn man of our United States of America; one long resident in, and thus supremely well-acquainted with, your dark city of the fading Old World.'

'Holmes! What in heaven's name is this annoyance driving at?'

'Such presumptuousness has long characterised some of our trans-Atlantic cousins,' he drawled.

'Your final prefix is somewhat unfortunate, given our gory travails in rural Oxfordshire!'

I chuckled at my arch reference to those recent escapades. We had returned to London grateful for its anonymity, easing memories of the crimes committed by ourselves when battling trans-gender ideology. Less readily excusable – though equally humorous – was Holmes' nonchalant dispatch of the thatched Shireman, under Farmoor's inky waters.

There followed, in the prolix words of one Mason Dwight Cockenheimer, an exhausting account of how this elbowing tourist had attempted to unmask the terror of Whitechapel, known to all by his gruesome nom-de-guerre of 'Jack the Ripper'.

'That now makes twenty names, for our ever burgeoning file Watson!'

I glanced at the letter Holmes floated over to me, which narrowly avoided my pile of devilled kidneys on scrambled eggs. To my astonishment, I saw the name Mycroft scrawled in scarlet ink and underscored.

'Great Scott Holmes, the impudence of this colonial explains your batey tone!'

'Watson, I intend to teach the buffoon a lesson he and his countrymen will forget no more easily than they can our torching of the White House, in 1814!'

'Is Cockenheimer aware of your brother's extensive girth? His enormous figure could scarcely have passed unremarked in Spitalfield's alleys, even if he were capable of entering such spaces!'

Had I trespassed too far onto Holmes' reserves of fraternal loyalty?

He roared his appreciation.

'Mycroft is a lard-arse of truly international calibre. My dearest brother cannot have seen his own knob for at least a decade!'

Holmes was a man of verbal exactitude, his emphasis on 'own' entirely deliberate. I'd heard rumour that his brother frequented the more private of London's public conveniences, at peculiar hours.

'Watson you read my thoughts exactly! Mycroft is the least likely of candidates for a Grand Guignol starring role, both from his physique and those Piccadilly predilections. Nevertheless, our imperious American demands a meeting this very evening, at stop-tap in Whitechapel's Ten Bells public house. I trust you and your service revolver are available?'

I readily assented and suggested Holmes took along his heaviest knuckle-duster, to assist us in our punitive mission.

'I think a sword-stick will be more of use, given the mire into which we're descending,' he retorted, to my vague consternation.

*

River mists crawling, consuming all who ventured into the East End. One was thankful for their obscuring of the residents – less wholesome lifeforms than the scabrous rats, darting for cover as we approached the Ten Bells public house.

From within came sounds of drunken debauchery. I glanced at Holmes' hawk-like features, set firm from his years of experience in entering such dens.

'Have no fear Watson, I frequent a place in Limehouse compared with which this is the Cafe Royal.'

Reassured, I followed him into its flickering interior.

Immediately inside sat John Merrick, busily sketching a scene worthy of Lautrec or Emile Zola. Scant attention was being paid to him, yet I recoiled in fascinated horror from that visage.

'Gooddddeeeeverrrrrning Mesterrrrr Hollllllmmmmesss,' he spluttered.

'Ah Merrick, I was hoping to find you here – any news?'

Holmes seemed to understand his reply, but all I could discern were the words 'Dr Tumblety' and a withered hand gesturing into the far corner.

Seated there was another extraordinary figure, of the type normally found in travelling circus shows. The sort of places where 'The Elephant Man' had been cruelly exhibited to gawping drunkards, for them to guffaw at the horrid frame into which the unfortunate man had been born.

'Tumblety, so good you to come.' Holmes extended a slender hand, to which the seated figure clung as if rescued from a shipwreck.

How to describe Dr Francis Tumblety? A florid face attested to many years of close intimacy with the port or gin bottle. A nicotine-stained moustache, resembling some twisted snake basted in English mustard, extended a foot on either side. Precariously perched on his enormous head was a battered Prussian pickelhaube, its spike tilting towards us.

'I come on the advice of an esteemed fellow countryman of mine, who I believe has honoured you with some correspondence?' announced Tumblety, as if addressing some parliamentary hustings.

'You share Cockenheimer's inability to speak concisely,' snapped Holmes. 'What have you brought to show me?'

'Alas Mr Holmes, I can feel my throat sanding over and urgent lubrication is required.'

Tumblety shoved his empty gin bottle towards me.

'I shall need the ten-shilling Old Wapping mix, Dr Watson.'

I fought a way through to the bar, using all my brutish Afghan experiences when forcing aside the myriad dockers, ladyboys and street vendors. A toothy crone slammed down a bottle of the oily liquid requested by Tumblety and grabbed my money.

'A third bottle for the good Francis? she cackled. 'Lord help those poor girls tonight if he takes one of his turns!'

Bemused, I returned to find Holmes and Tumblety deep in conversation. To my disgust, a stoppered exhibit bottle – replete with bobbing organ – sat on the table between them.

'A kidney, shall we say?' asked Holmes.

'I am impressed; maybe you noticed the section of renal artery?'

Was Tumblety engaged in the disgraceful yet profitable procurement of vital organs, for the medical establishment? I knew from my days at Barts how demand far exceeded supply, ensuring a thriving black-market in purloined body parts.

'Might one ask what your source is?' queried Holmes.

'Mr Holmes, I am like a good journalist; I never reveal my sources!'

'And what role does the insufferable Mason Dwight Cockenheimer play in this?'

'Cockenheimer became aware of my activities and agreed to find me a buyer for my exhibits, in return for a share of the profits.'

At that, Holmes leapt up and unsheathed his sword from its stick.

'Let me clarify matters, Francis – or should I call you Jack?'

A look of horror froze his purple features.

'Cockenheimer is none other than my brother Mycroft, who agreed to track down the Whitechapel kebab maestro whilst I was pre-occupied with matters in rural Oxfordshire.'

The mists slowly cleared from my mind. Had I been mistaken when assuming Mycroft’s name appeared on our morning’s correspondence as a suspect?

As ever, Holmes read my thoughts.

'Indeed Watson, the letter was one from my brother to me, as a satire on the more pompous Americans who grace our city. It was mere child's play for him to persuade this quack to attend tonight, and thus deliver himself into our hands for swift British justice!'

With that, Holmes raised his sword and hacked the man to pieces, before announcing to the surrounding drinkers.

'Ladies and gentlemen, I give you "Jack the Ripper", now ripped himself and rendered suitable for feeding to any cats or dogs you may have who need nourishment!'

Within seconds, the scattered parts of the dismembered serial killer had been scooped up and rushed away, for grateful consumption by the hungry felines and canines of Whitechapel.

Holmes himself was hoisted aloft by the gathering mob. I caught a glimpse of Lestrade's furious face as he rushed in, having been summoned from Scotland Yard by a telegram from nearby Leman Street.

'Good evening Lestrade; I'm afraid you have missed the main course! No longer shall the delightful ladies of this neighbourhood walk in fear.'

We made our excuses and left, after refusing the offer of a 'knee-trembler' from some toothless hag as reward for 'services rendered to the local sex industry'.

This then is the untold story of how Saucy Jack's reign of terror came to a fitting end. Needless to say, the many Americans who still obsess over the legend refuse to accept it was solved and sorted by England's greatest detective – and my dearest of friends – a Mr Sherlock Holmes.

6. THE SCANDAL OF THE STOCKWELL STAIRWELL

It is now beholden on me to explore my friend's regrettable propensity for the reckless consumption of numerous narcotics and stimulants. I explained the reasoning behind this habit in The Sign of Four, but there are other episodes on which – painful though chronicling them may be – it is my duty to provide details. Of particular interest are the many unwholesome wretches Holmes cultivated, whilst scouring the city.

Prominent amongst these was 'The Boss', Belsize Park, whose Haverstock Hill opium emporium was the nearest such outlet to Baker Street, and thus more convenient than the Limehouse den mentioned by Holmes in our last adventure.

Boss was nominally a shabby schoolman, tutoring pale youths from the seedier districts of Camden and Kentish Towns. His own addiction was to the street food available there – consumed in the company of tattered-clothed boys – none of whose clothing was in that state before they made his acquaintance.

A graduate of Bangor University, he taught both in the classroom and on the sports field. Working as a games master allowed him to freely indulge in his crimes, making indiscreet daguerreotypes of scantily clad youths for sale to London's underbelly of prowling perverts.

Holmes was of course monitoring these extra-curricular activities, all the while enthusiastically consuming his oriental pipes. It was regarding the former that one pleasant spring evening found us heading up Haverstock Hill.

If one has never kicked down a door, the first time provides a rush of excitement and satisfaction even Dr Freud would struggle to explain. The sturdier and more prosperous the entrance, the more thrilling it becomes. Both myself and Holmes beamed with boyish joy as we booted in the quivering black panels, less concerned with gaining entry than in outraging the Boss by waking his neighbours.

Eventually a large gap appeared, containing a cannon-ball head.

'Mr Holmes! You know my hours of entertainment. Whatever your needs, I will not tolerate such uncouthness in this respectable neighbourhood.'

'The same delightful one which housed the late Charles Augustus Milverton? Open up immediately Boss, unless you wish to suffer his fate!'

The battered door swung open and we rushed in.

Holmes was a master pugilist, even without his beloved knuckle-duster. Armed with it, he was more lethal than a Mohammedan force-fed pork scratchings.

'Now Boss, you are to desist from your disgusting pedagogy, or I shall return with a home-delivery of my main course: raw beef in all its sanguinary glory!'

The dazed Boss spat out several of his teeth but remained silent.

'I need the names of your co-conspirators in this board-school scandal, a list of those befouling the beacon lights of youthful advancement to satisfy their sordid depravities.'

Our host was dressed as if in tribute to the late Jimmy Savile: lurid burgundy shell-suit, dangling medallion – a fake medal from the recent Afghan campaign – and hair dyed nicotine yellow. As a wounded Kabul veteran, I ripped the bogus decoration from his neck then added a hefty knee in the bollocks to his recent discomforts.

Boss eventually produced a tomato-ketchup bespattered list of 'customers', for his vile prints.

'As I suspected,' murmured Holmes, 'this coincides with many of my dealers in recreational substances.'

I was unsurprised at Holmes' frank admission.

'The game's afoot, Watson! We venture into the wilds of south London – Clapham, to be precise.'

'Pray God Mr Holmes, you surely don't intend to confront Brixton Breath?'

'Indeed I do, Boss. Have your stableman get a horse and trap readied. We intend to travel under your livery colours!'

*

More able chroniclers than I have explored the marked differences between north and south London. Crossing the river, one enters at once more open yet less navigable territory, lacking apparent focus or landmarks. Of particular note are the many Commons dotted throughout this random sprawl.

One such is Clapham. The wide expanse was still peopled by occasional figures, no doubt making the most of a mild evening. As ever, Holmes seemed to know immediately where we were heading. Leaving the carriage by some ornamental park gates, we walked into its very centre.

Holmes held up his right hand and I knew to crouch behind the nearest tree.

Stood just yards from us in deepest conversation were an unlikely pair of strollers. A huge Rasta dwarfed a diminutive Welshman.

'Brixton Breath is selling his wares,' Holmes whispered. 'If it's one of the Boss' prints, we shall pounce'. He was still wearing the knuckle-duster, freshly flecked with the latter's blood from his punishment beating.

But nothing changed hands.

'At a dinner party with boyish entertainments? Well, I'll need this to be discrete; just call me Rod in front of them.'

The Rasta nodded back at the man, putting an arm around him. The unlikely pair then wandered off, unaware that we were following. A glinting hand was then dug into the small of his back. He was now a hostage, in the tender-care of Brixton Breath!

As always in London, neighbourhoods change with the crossing of a street. After twenty minutes, we entered the badlands of Brixton then Stockwell, towering blocks alternating with regenerated rows of Victorian houses. Brixton Breath forcefully led the man into one particularly stark monolith; I could read terror in his every faltering step.

We held back as he was pushed towards a vandalised lift. Holmes clearly feared precipitate action would risk the man's life.

'What a charming location for that most splendid of repasts: the south London dinner and drugs party!' My friend was in his most acerbic of moods.

We stayed in observation for over an hour, concealed behind utility shedding. Then I rubbed my bleary eyes in utter astonishment. Standing in the stairwell was our Welshman, 'stark-bollock naked' as Mr Henry James would say. He cut a pathetic figure, mercilessly lit in the fluorescent lighting, piles of mutton-fat flesh exposed to any in south London who should chance to pass.

'Robbed, robbed, robbed!'

Holmes rushed forwards and threw his cape over the shivering figure.

'Sir, such immodesty ill becomes this neighbourhood!'

'I have been robbed and stripped at knifepoint! What more have I to lose?'

*

A swift exit took us back to Clapham Common and the Boss' carriage. In no time, we had the man safely ensconced beside a roaring Baker Street fire, recounting his extraordinary tale.

'Mr Holmes, I am an esteemed Member of Parliament who found himself at a loss for company in this city. I felt my mood oddly listless and was unable to settle. Somehow, I found myself wandering in a local park and so happened to encounter a charming Caribbean gentleman who – discerning my vacant mood – invited me to a late-supper in his nearby flat.'

Holmes could hardly contain his mirth at this preposterous yarn.

'Pray continue. Both myself and Watson are long experienced in the most outlandish of tales!'

'No sooner had I accepted than I felt a knife dug into my lower back. I was rudely marched, on pain of instant death, into the very depths of the night. Somehow, I found myself in a grimy flat where I was relieved of phone, cards, pin-numbers and £1,000 in cash.

'I was then stripped naked and thrust into an echoing Stockwell stairwell, where I was fortunate indeed to encounter yourself and Dr Watson.'

Holmes sat motionless, deep in thought. Minutes past and I was growing increasingly uncomfortable in the ominous silence.

'It is a most remarkable story. I have only heard of one similar case, which involved a distinguished member of the Brazilian political class, in a park well-known to Sao Paulo residents for strolls by gents late at night. I have just one question to ask, if you will permit me?'

'Of course, Mr Holmes, I am in your debt for rescuing me from an innocent misunderstanding.'

'What was dinner like?'

My friend collapsed into childish hysterics, which I found it impossible to resist joining.

'Anyhow, I know exactly the man to assist with your nightly needs and help in any scandal that may engulf a public figure like yourself.'

Rod nodded his approval.

'My brother Mycroft will be delighted to offer both accommodation and company on any further nocturnal perambulations.'

Holmes' brother arrived within the hour, and we saw no more of this strange figure.

Months later, I read of his unfortunate arrest whilst 'badger spotting' in some woodland near an M4 service-station. The police – and his constituents – were baffled as to why he seemed more interested in the many parked cars and was again found wandering 'in a state of considerable undress'.

Holmes passed me the press-cutting, to file alongside The Scandal of the Brown Parcels.

'Have no fear Watson. There are many other names on Boss' list for us to hunt down, in God's good time.'

Little did I know how Holmes' words would provide an opening, into perhaps the most dangerous of our escapades yet.

7. SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE JIHADIST PLOT

Holmes was a man for whom political discussion held no interest. He was intensely patriotic but in no way jingoistic, frequently criticising this country and its government. Occupied constantly with ineradicable human faults and evil, he saw politicians as having 'a full-time job in keeping the peace'. Reshaping our society was clearly beyond their limited abilities.

He actively disliked social unfairness and inequality but regarded those as matters for individuals to transcend or battle. Claims that such injustices could be addressed systematically and theoretically – for example, through the ideas of a Mr Marx or the socialists – struck him as implausible and dangerous. The sacrifices required, in diminutions of cultural freedoms and individual liberties, were too great.

Nevertheless, he was acutely aware of the public mood, through his obsessive familiarity with London and its people. No public meeting or riot escaped his notice. Indeed, few such disturbances were even denied his presence, discretely yet minutely observing events. I'm not sure what role he played for his brother Mycroft in this, but that he assisted him, I was in no doubt.

Needless to say, he enthusiastically adopted a range of disguises whilst attending: bespectacled German intellectual; Cambridge undergraduate in flat-cap; robed follower of the Mahdi; begrimed matchgirl; pugnacious dockworker.

Throughout October 1899, Holmes was almost a stranger to Baker Street. When I did see him, it was in the extraordinary attire of an Islamic Jihadist, replete with dazzling robes and murderous daggers. Such figures were more frequently seen on London's streets than might be hoped. Indeed, Holmes once remarked that it would not surprise him to see caravans of Saharan camels, traipsing through Oxford Street towards Hyde Park and then to our lodgings at 221b.

Sitting at the heart of a vast Empire, London played host to many dangerous fanatics, hailing from the disparate British territories on every continent. In particular, events in Egypt and the Sudan focussed our minds on the perils from the Jihadi Islamism taking hold there.

Followers of this creed were interested in only one thing: spreading their religion through mass slaughter. In that sense, it would seem obvious that the only possible reaction was to either avoid them at all costs or – when necessary – fight them ruthlessly and win.

However, this is to neglect the ingrained stupidity of our intellectual classes, in particular our worthless academics, journalists and bourgeois do-gooders. Quite incredibly, such types urged us to tolerate and even encourage calls for mass-murder, since not to do so would be 'disrespecting another culture' and 'failing to sympathise with victims of British imperialism'.

As an old India hand, the naivety of such views appalled me, having seen piles of slaughtered children proving that 'when the Hindoo or Christian sharpens his argument, the Muslim sharpens his sword.'

By some quirk of fate, the area around Edgware Road was a centre for this cult. It was within ear-shot of Baker Street and we'd hear the 'call to prayer’ from its various mosques. Bayswater itself was awash with idlers on housing benefits – from Arabia; Sudan; Egypt; the Levant; Afghanistan; even the Punjab – smoking hookah pipes and impatiently snapping fingers at multiple wives, summoning up tea, young girls, hashish and sweet-meats.

Holmes himself frequented a tea-shop known as Alli's Parlour, where he gave Koranic lessons to the faithful. He of course sneaked in his ribald humour (mocking a faith lacking the slightest trace of it) even convincing an Omdurman tribesman that 72 eager virgins occupied the basement at Whiteley’s department store, waiting patiently to reward his valour in battle. The priapic Jihadi was arrested for dragging shop-girls into an underground drapery depository.

In early November, I returned from an aimless walk to find the two brothers locked in dispute.

'So, a plot has crystalized?' Mycroft whimpered.

'We can expect an attack next week, when Her Majesty opens Parliament. Their intention is to proclaim a full Jihad on British soil.'

Mycroft was clearly dumbfounded. He'd long played the role of 'useful idiot' for the Islamists, in his capacity as a Home Office advisor on community relations. This was his reward.

Holmes had months ago explained to me what those advisory activities actually involved:

'Mycroft meets with “community leaders” and promptly agrees to whatever they demand, out of funk and the misguided belief this proves he is both progressive and enlightened. His reward is to bask in sanctimony and receive praise in the teenage scribblings of one Owen Jones. He's also become a favourite of our dubious Mayor, Mr Sadiq Kahn.’

I had been stunned at Holmes senior's abnegation of duty.

'Incredible! Is he unaware how these Islamists treat confirmed bachelors like himself and Mr Jones? It involves a swift descent from a tall building, headfirst onto the pavement below!'

'Mycroft is an incorrigible sybarite. Provided these self-appointed leaders feed him curry regularly at the Cinnamon Club – and appease his vanity by praising his "enlightened tolerance” – he shows the wilful blindness that all our governing classes do.'

Months later, I could see for myself the result of such decadent complacency. Mycroft sat immobile, unable to muster even the feeblest response to Holmes' warning.

'In short, my dear brother, whilst you and the Government may not be interested in Jihad, it is most definitely interested in you. Might I ask what you intend to do? I remind you we are unflinching in our willingness to fight for England; if only our governing classes – of which you are a flabby exemplar – had shown the same determination!'

Stung into responding, Mycroft snapped furiously:

'This is a matter requiring nuance and sophistication, not intemperate prejudice. I have been in constant discussion with experts in the Foreign Office and the SOAS, who concur with my approach, praising its promotion of diversity and the sound evidence-base from which all policy must originate.'

'And here we are! I see nothing nuanced or sophisticated in beheadings, suicide bombings, grooming of teenage girls and subsequent gang-rapes – though they do provide an unarguable evidence base for the horrors we now face.'

I silently cheered the knock-out blow Holmes delivered. Mycroft collapsed groaning into an armchair, requesting a large port and extra-large pork pie to ease his suffering. In disgust, Holmes and I left him gorging and made our way to Alli's Parlour.

However hopeless the situation, neither of us would surrender to the forces of barbarism without a fight – whatever the risk to our safety.

8. SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE DONOR KEBABS

As we left Baker Street and headed towards the Edgware Road, Holmes enlightened me on Alli's Parlour, the hookah, tea and kebab emporium where he instructed the faithful on how best to procure 72 eager virgins, whilst in fact spying for Mycroft

'It is modelled on those establishments we visited in Cairo's Islamic quarter, after our mishaps on Lord Brownsword's Shropshire estate whilst vanquishing the Skidmoor Skidder.'

I shuddered on recalling that grotesque affair and steeled myself for some equally unsavoury encounter.

We passed by reeking kebab outlets, decaying 'continental stores' and garish shops offering cheap mobile phones or beard trimmers, to the local Mohammedan youth lurking on every corner, clicking and whistling at any English girl foolish enough to enter their quarter.

'Notice Tony Blair's residence,' motioned Holmes, as we skirted a large and vulgar house, bedecked in EU flags and grinning images of the disgraced narcissist.

I was somewhat relieved to see one had been disfigured with an enormous penis and hirsute testes, alongside the words:

'Suck on these, shithead!'

'Somewhat lacking in wit yet one cannot fault the sentiment,' chortled Holmes.

'I fear the imminent attack on Parliament has been facilitated by another such, a notorious Labour Party funder.'

We entered Lord Alli's Parlour, where Holmes now passed unrecognised. As said, he usually attended the place disguised as a Sudanese fanatic preaching Jihad and offering advice on gaining citizenship, council accommodation and any of the numerous grants available to enemies of this country.

Anyone who's ever visited the Islamic world will be familiar with its heady atmosphere. Hashish and other aromatic drugs were being openly smoked, the clientele having no need to worry about police attention under England's notoriously 'two-tier' justice system. Recent public executions of 'far Right' rioters had only strengthened the correct impression that our Labour government both hated and feared the beleaguered native population.

Holmes motioned at the serving counter. A corpulent figure waddled over.

'Do you serve bushmeat skewers?'

'Plenty good, Mr David Sammy himself eat Congo portion!'

'Ah, our distinguished Secretary for Foreign and Imperial Affairs is gracing you today?'

'Mr Sammy in thunder box!'

Groaning noises from the toilet confirmed what he'd said. Eventually its door swung open and a foolish-looking man emerged. It beggared belief that he represented this great country and its imperilled empire.

'Mr Sammy?' Holmes drawled. 'Might I have a word in your shell-like?'

Holmes then took himself off to his table, where large quantities of disgusting looking cuts were piled, half-consumed. Subtly inclining my head, I heard their every word.

'I understand that you enjoy lavish funding from a long-term Labour backer and confirmed bachelor of many years standing?'

'We are the party of change and England is back, following years of cronyism under Lord Salisbury!'

'Might I ask if this benefactor’s generosity extends to providing kebabs to be consumed at next week's State Opening of Parliament?'

'Donations are a private matter, Mr Holmes, but all the correct rules have been followed. Our distinguished Prime Minister insists on such propriety.'

Holmes roared with laughter at his humbug.

'I am more concerned with their explosive nature. Each one will have been smeared with enough nitroglycerine to blow yourself and the government even larger arseholes than you already appear to this nation.'

Not waiting for our befuddled Foreign Secretary to understand, Holmes beckoned at me to follow him out.

'Surely we cannot trust this blockhead to avert such an outrageous plot? That man can barely be trusted to find his own backside with both hands!'

'Have no fear Watson, I shall appraise brother Mycroft of the sordid details. Now, I fancy a few pints in the more wholesome environs of a Marylebone public house.'

I needed no prompting and we ended the evening at our trusty local, The Saracen's Head, mocking the Prophet and his followers with comic turns at the call to prayer – much to the delight of the solid English folk frequenting the place.

Holmes naturally received no thanks from his idiotic brother for averting the plot. Instead, Mycroft basked in how his ‘dialogue with community leaders' was vindicated and a nuanced policy of appeasement and prostration had triumphed.

*

Edgell put the volume down with surprising satisfaction. He was a Durham man and nursed feelings of inferiority towards Oxford. The contempt for his fellow Dunelm – Cornelius Griswald – required retribution and thankfully Raven had placed himself beyond redemption, with offences too numerous to list.

He could thus safely exult in the destruction about to be unleashed on this recusant, posing as an injured saint reluctantly consigning a wretched sinner to the cleansing flames.

Metaphorically only – unfortunately.

Edgell had also been sent an appallingly tasteless article from some True Crime magazine, in which Raven celebrated serial killers as if they were figures from English folklore.

No serious writer would ever discuss such things, let alone explain them in terms of offensive stereotypes. It would be more outrageous than analysing smutty cartoons, the correct brewing of tea or the best pubs to drink in:

THE ENGLISH TALENT FOR SERIAL KILLING

Alongside the native English genius for science, literature and mindless yobbery, England has produced the world’s finest serial killers. They’re hugely popular cultural figures, with frequent shows on dedicated TV channels and legions of followers.

No other country can match them. In the UK itself, the only Scots one thinks of are ‘Bible John’, Nicola Sturgeon and Dennis Nilsen - who performed in the archetypally dreary north London suburb of Muswell Hill. Wales and Northern Ireland simply fail to qualify.

In Europe, Italy has its moments but the serial-killing concept seems at odds with the cultural warmth of any Mediterranean country. Eastern Europe is awash with homicidal maniacs, cannibalism being especially popular in the countries of the former Soviet Union. But the grim history of industrial-scale state slaughter, set against endless steppes and forests, makes this seem unremarkable and inevitably part of the landscape.

Germany and Austria suffer from similar political and historical limitations. The French are far too serious and pretentious to stoop so low, though their deranged imitators the Belgians make an effort. Only Scandinavia offers genuine potential, but its stark modernism and grey cloudscapes - well-captured by 'Nordic Noir' - make such events seem already fictionalised. The genre lacks any spark of the individuality so notable in English crime capers, especially serial killing. Further afield, Japan seems far more promising.

On that note, Uncle Sam is the world's leading producer of serial killers. But they're mostly an unamusing and unassuming crowd, nearly anonymous in many cases. True, the landscape offers local character. But the sheer weight of this vast consumer culture, above all its worshipping of success, overwhelms all. Even Ted Bundy was indistinguishable from some West Coast news-anchor or tiresomely grinning 'no win, no fee' attorney.

Americans are good at body-count but they lack that instinctive English ability to combine horror with absurdity and picturesque pathos. Deplorable though it is to admit, there's often a hint of likability in an English serial killer - something completely lacking in his American counterpart. Perhaps it's our class-system combining with love of grimness, pessimism and gallows' humour.

I'd an American friend who was delighted by our English taste for negative cosy bleakness. He'd never heard that ubiquitous phrase 'I can't be arsed', until he suggested we crossed the road to another pub. He found it so refreshingly different from the 'Hey! Great idea!' demanded in his culture of optimism.

Anyway, as Orwell famously observed in Decline of the English Murder, there’s something unmistakably and reassuringly English in setting and style for this grisly crew:

1. ‘Saucy’ Jack the Ripper: What can one say? The founding father for true crime weirdos, a creature seemingly created from the swirling East End miasma, a nostalgic misery of cobbles, gin, and toothless crones waiting patiently to be eviscerated. And Jack was definitely English. I reject absurd theories about Polish hairdressers or Russian anarchists. His ‘Dear Boss’ letter is funnier than most sit-coms and can only have been written by an Englishman.

2. Harold ‘Fred’ (to friends or victims) Shipman: A damn good doctor, if one avoided his legendary 'flu jabs. Thank God he was pre-Covid, or the death toll might have approached that suggested by the clown Ferguson, at Imperial College. Who can forget Fred’s blustering appearance - emerging from his Volvo in a green gilet - when the gloomy Hythe surgery was finally raided? His delightfully named wife Primrose completes the picture.

3. John ‘acid bath’ Haigh: A true gent, if one wasn’t being slowly dissolved in sulphuric or hydrochloric acid by him. Terrific sense of humour. He went to the gallows with a note in his jacket pocket, requesting the suit was donated to Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors.

4. John ‘just a whiff of gas’ Christie: Who doesn’t relish Richard Attenborough’s performance in Ten Rillington Place, as he administered the ‘Carbon monoxide or - as we call it in the medical profession - C O two’? Truly hilarious, until one was walled up in his grotty kitchen. But it has to be said, a more likable figure than most who now live in Notting Hill. On the gallows he complained of an itchy nose and hangman Pierrepoint quipped ‘don’t worry, I can fix that’, pulling the lever.

5. Fred West: Half man, half werewolf he may have appeared, yet the ladies loved his cheeky grin and 1970s sideburns. Expert builder, whose terrifying hooker wife Rose completed a model family, where games of 'sardines' had messy endings. Fred was a typical Shireman, a warning to idiots who eulogise rural England.

6. Dennis Nilsen: Honorary Englishman and Stranglers fan. Keen on home cooking, Dennis annoyed the local sewer-men with what they thought was an addiction to KFC; human bones and skin blocking his drains. One time too many, and the rest is history. Less dangerous than many Scots.

*

But Edgell was still beyond incandescent, over a disgraceful satire he’d printed years ago from Raven’s nativist Substack. Incredibly, this ridiculed the trans-movement which had landed Edgell his meaningless position in the college where this enemy of EDI was educated, long before contemporary enlightenment.

This piece was the first of many he’d urgently flagged to Raven’s school, when sneakily keeping tabs on him. He’d also regularly interrogated pupils about what was said in Raven’s lessons, keeping a record of the many unorthodoxies they’d had been dangerously exposed to.

Steeling himself, he reread the thing, glancing for comfort into the fire crackling in the corner of his Second Quad room.

A STUNNING FIND IN MY LOCAL

An Oxford Spring breathes life afresh, into our once dead land.

Despite the deepening gloom from public affairs, my tatty quarter of Botley is graced with cherry blossom and spring bunnies, hopping merrily through the lengthening evenings.

I sat musing on this annual rebirth, sipping a pint in The Seacourt Bridge, when a scrap of yellowy parchment wrapped itself around my left ankle.

To my amazement, it was an unpublished poem by John Keats. That angelic but consumptive poet seemingly made occasional visits to the hostelry, during his tragically brief spell in this enchanted realm.

I believe his earthy joys were never better captured than in this lapidary piece, freshly uncovered and so presented uncensored, hoping to soothe many a fevered brow.

ODE COMPOSED AT THE SEACOURT BRIDGE

There was a trans-lady named Mary

whose arse was incredibly hairy.

One look at her cock

gave women a shock

and her bollocks were even more scary.

(John Keats, The Botley Poems, edited and introduced by Edmund Raven, forthcoming from OUP, 2026)

*

Edgell wandered over to his open fire and stirred its embers - a delightfully Oxonian scene for this grifter to occupy - using a poker moulded into the shape of some mythical dragon.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: UNLUCKY FOR SOME

Raven was shown into Edgell’s oak-panelled room, just as his entire corpus of written work was being heaped onto the flames. Its executioner turned smiling benevolently and assured him that this was a kindness, both to him as the author and the ‘wider community’.

But what now worried the EDI officer was some rumour – doubtless untrue – that a factual account existed of Raven’s days in teaching. Could he confirm that no such document had been written?

If not, then the consequences would be ‘incalculable but catastrophic’, both for Raven and the education system he’d besmirched.

Raven assured him only a fool would attempt such a thing:

DREAM STATE: TEACHING IN THE ENGLISH CULTURE WAR