A Prayer for Walkers on the Taff Trail

In which The Author gives you a sneak preview of the next entry

Our Farmer,

Who art in Cefn y Fan,

Hywel be thy name (possibly).

Thy farm gate come,

Thy stile is fun,

In Merthyr as it is in Cefn.

Give us this day some bloody signs

Or forgive us our trespasses

When we inevitably cross thy land.

And lead us not into Goitre Coed Road,

But deliver us to Abercynon,

For thine is the farmland, the flora and the fauna,

Forever and ever,

Amen.

The Incredible Vanishing Girl 2

In which the critic and broadcaster Barry Normal sees
the worst film of the century so far

Back in 2009, at just about this time of year, my so-called 'relationship' with a girl named Jenny was on very thin ice.

We'd met on my birthday, which I share with my good friend Hannah W. I'd been in Cardiff to see a film, and didn't get back to Aberdare until fairly late in the evening. Jenny was in the pub with Hannah when I got there; we started chatting, and found that we had a fair amount in common. She was tall, red-haired, very attractive, intelligent, well-read, a bit kinky (apparently), and totally my type.

She also turned out to be a pathological liar, as I found out over the next nine months or so. After a grand total of four dates and countless lame excuses for standing me up without any warning, I decided right at the start of 2010 that she was history. I was in the pub with an old friend (female) who was also being given the runaround by a guy she was keen on. Jenny texted me while we were discussing our respective situations, asking if I was around. I didn't even waste 10p on texting her back. Instead, I stayed out with my friend, had a few more beers, then went home and wrote New Year, New Start.

I knew Jenny read my blog, because she'd left a couple of comments on previous entries, so I thought I'd extend Paul Simon's idea into the new millennium. As we techies know, there are now at least 55 Ways to Leave Your Lover; the full list includes texting, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and Snapchat. Some of the rhymes are a bit forced, but my rewritten version is taking shape slowly.

Amazingly, seven years on from the disastrous original, Discordian Productions have released a sequel – or possibly a reboot, as the studios call them these days. My good friend Barry Normal went to an exclusive preview screening yesterday, and I asked him to write a guest review for this very blog. Here it is:

The Incredible Vanishing Girl 2 is a surreal postmodern rom-com with elements of science fiction, and – like the first outing – somehow manages to deliver much less than the sum of its parts.

It's a strange, complicated, baffling and bizarre rehash of the original story, taking some of the unresolved plot points to new heights of absurdity. The setting remains the same: a small town in the South Wales Valleys, populated by many of the characters who feature in the original. The basic premise is unchanged, too: a single guy in his forties meets a much younger bisexual girl in a pub, and ‒ despite the age difference – they strike up a friendship which could potentially turn into something more serious. The heroine's family background is one of the comic elements on which the story pivots: a broken marriage, adoption, an extended network of stepbrothers and stepsisters – all the standard features of the nuclear family meltdown.

From this straightforward beginning, the 'story' (which seems to have been scribbled on the back of a beermat after a particularly taxing all-day session) degenerates into an unnecessarily complicated knockabout farce.

The heroine meets another girl, and they shack up together. Soon after that, she discovers her girlfriend in bed with a man, and moves out. The hero becomes her sounding board and shoulder to cry on, and everyone expects things to develop between them. They spend a fair bit of time together in the ensuing weeks. He buys her drinks and treats her to a meal now and again, wondering how he's ever going to make his move.

However, just as in the original, disaster strikes. One evening, in the pub for karaoke, she drinks a mysterious cocktail which has an unexpected side-effect: at random intervals, she vanishes from the face of the earth without any prior warning and takes several days to reappear. These inexplicable disappearances are accompanied by a short-range electromagnetic pulse, which fries her phone and renders her totally incommunicado until she can sort out a replacement.

In the meantime, the hero meets another young girl, and they start spending a lot of time together. Many people in the town assume that they are an item, even though she tells him they'll only ever be friends.

By now the heroine has met a guy, and spends all her time on Facebook posting about how loved up she is, and how she can't wait to see him, and all that romantic crap that girls put online to make their 'friends' feel jealous.

But under the surface, all is not well. Her sudden disappearances have added to her mental instability, as nothing in her life is ever straightforward from this point on. She can't decide whether she wants to stay with him, or leave him for someone else. She wants to have a baby with him, but she also wants a new girlfriend. Her friends are starting to lose patience with her, and everyone tells the hero that he's wasting his time with her.

One night, after several beers have lowered her inhibitions, she tells the hero that if she wasn't already involved with someone she'd 'totally fuck him'.

That unexpected revelation comes as a shock to the hero, who has begun to despair of her by now. When he alludes to it a couple of days later, she tells him she was serious, and that she's thinking of leaving her boyfriend. He makes light of it, but secretly wonders if he'll finally get the chance to make a play for her.

After her next disappearance, things have changed again. The heroine tells the hero that they're 'just mates', and that things are back on track with her boyfriend. At the same time, the other girl warns him that the heroine is just using him. (Ironically, the heroine gives him the same warning about the other girl the next time she reappears.)

At this point, I was as confused as the rest of the audience. A fair number of people had already walked out, totally baffled by the haphazard plot, inconsistent and sloppy script, and the huge number of walk-on characters who play no part in the narrative, but merely serve to distract the heroine from her own storyline.

The film ends on a tragi-comic note. Shortly before Christmas, the hero gets a text from the heroine, asking if he'll help her with present shopping. They meet for coffee, plan out the day, and she tells him that it might soon be over with her boyfriend. Apparently she can see the warning signs, and fears that she's going to be dumped over the holidays. Almost in the next breath, she tells him she might be pregnant.

By now, the remaining audience were hooting with derision. This latest twist in an already unbelievable storyline was simply too much to bear.

The two of them go shopping, retreat to the pub to wrap the presents, and then decide to have something to eat. She catches the bus home to drop all her stuff off, and promises to meet him as soon as she's changed and sorted her hair out.

At which point she vanishes for the final time. He texts her in vain for the next couple of hours, realises she's gone for good this time, and goes home.

The closing credits are accompanied by the Beatles' hit 'Hello Goodbye', which seems a strange choice in the circumstances. Personally, I think the producers missed a trick by not using Soft Cell's 'Say Hello Wave Goodbye'.

There's a teasing tag sequence at the very end of the movie, too. About a week into the new year, he receives a text from an unknown number asking if he fancies going to the pub. I really hope that this potential sequel isn't given the green light, for everyone's sake.

If there's been a bigger Xmas turkey released in the last decade, it's passed me by. I'll give it 1 out of 10 for sheer audacity, simply because I can't award it a zero rating.

Be Careful What You Wish For

In which The Author's prayers are answered – sort of …

As I've mentioned several times in the course of my blogging, I was the victim of horrific and merciless bullying when I was in school. I'm not the only one, as it turns out. Quite a few people I know have talked to me about the abuse they experienced as kids. Maybe it's like being a member of a Westminster club – we somehow recognise each other, but we're not sure how.

Anyway, when I was about thirteen or fourteen I had a dream. At the time, I thought it was a Night Terror masquerading as a sexual fantasy. This very tall, statuesque, extremely beautiful, young red-haired woman, wearing nothing but her most seductive smile, appeared in the bedroom early one morning and sat on the end of my bed. I couldn't move a muscle – and she noticed that straight away.

'You seem rather pleased to see me,' she said with a wink. I was quite embarrassed, but she just laughed. 'I've come to you for a reason. I know exactly what you've been going through, Steve. I've been keeping an eye on you for years. I know you've turned your back on Christianity, and I can totally understand why. So, in the words of the song, I've come to talk to you instead.'

'Are you the Devil?' I asked, rather nervously. I might have been a lapsed Catholic, but I knew all about Temptation and stuff. I didn't really fancy jumping out of the frying pan and into the Inferno.

'Oh, no!' she said, sounding rather hurt. 'I'm not the Devil.' She laughed. 'I'm way more fun than he is. And I'm going to make you an offer you can't refuse.' She leaned in close and purred in my ear. 'Listen. I don't want sacrifices or tributes or any of that ritualistic shit. If you want to worship me, go ahead – it's water off a duck's back to the likes of me. You just need to tell the world about me and my powers, at every opportunity you get, and in whatever form you think is appropriate.'

She spent the next ten minutes or so telling me all about herself, and providing documentary evidence to support her argument. In fairness, she made a good case. Then she reached the end of the sales pitch – and it was worth waiting for.

'I'll give humankind all manner of signs and wonders to behold, and you just need to give me the credit,' she said. 'If you pledge to do that, I'll continue to watch over you and ensure your safety. I'll even tell you the exact date, time and circumstances of your death – on one condition. You know those guys who've been making your life a waking fucking nightmare? You have to promise to take all those cunts out beforehand.'

Well, how could I possibly turn down an invitation like that?

'Where do I sign?' I asked.

'No, there's nothing like that,' she said. 'No oaths sworn in blood or anything. I hate the sight of blood.' She took my hand. 'I'm a fairly laid-back goddess, really. Just don't piss me off, or I'll unleash my awesome and terrifying powers upon the world.'

'OK,' I said, 'you've got a deal.'

And she kissed me, stood up, and vanished.

Well, that all happened over thirty-five years ago. At the time I didn't know what to think. As I said, I thought it was just a particularly vivid wet dream, and tried to put it out of my mind.

But I was imprinting the Fourth Neural Circuit. My hormones were shot to hell. An experience like that was bound to make an impression. My fetish for tall, beautiful and mostly fucked-up redheads dates from that exact moment. After all, you never know which of them is going to turn out to be Her, do you? It's best to be on the safe side.

It was a good many years until I finally discovered exactly who she was. I was reading Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson's psychedelic cult SF Illuminatus! trilogy and damn me if she wasn't there, in the book: Eris, also known as Discordia. The sister of Ares. The Goddess of Chaos. The prime mover behind the Trojan War, and general Olympian troublemaker par excellence.

And it turned out that I wasn't the only person to whom she'd vouchsafed her revelations. There was a Discordian Church, and a sacred text called Principia Discordia, and all manner of other things connected to her.

Robert Anton Wilson's books finally enabled me to put the pieces of the jigsaw together. His Cosmic Trigger trilogy not only opened my eyes to the divine beauty of the Discordian faith, it brought me together with my crazy Goddess-fearing pal Vicki F. We wrote large chunks of Dodge This (the wittiest, wackiest, weirdest Western on the World Wide Web) with Eris in mind. Her mischievous influence pervades our writing then and now. At long last, some two decades after my mysterious religious experience, everything started to make (non)sense. I even had her tattooed on my back, just to be on the safe side.

I've never really had occasion to call on Eris until last night. I've invoked her name on many occasions, of course – writing for Goddess's sake, for example – but on the whole our relationship has been at arm's length. Last night, however, the karaoke evening drove me to call on her directly, via the medium of Facebook. (She's a switched-on kinda deity.)

Karaoke Update: 'Sex on bloody Fire.' Sweet Goddess of Chaos, I beseech thee to intercede now and smite these fuckers from the firmament before they start on the Phonics backlist. Come on, be nice to me. I've worshipped you unconditionally for years, and spread the one true religion widely and enthusiastically. Time you returned the favour.

A few minutes later Lucy G. (musician, artist, pagan, former lesbian) added a comment:

I could throw a curse their way if you like?

Nice offer, but I was looking for something more substantial.

However, the problem with Eris is that she doesn't do things by conventional means. The Old Testament God would have unleashed one of his popular plagues, or caused Aberdare to be razed to the ground by an earthquake, or sent a meteorite crashing through the roof of the pub and straight into the middle of the stage. You know the sort of thing he does: an according-to-Hoyle miracle.

The Egyptian pantheon could also have had a whale of a time, stealing the souls of these cretins and feeding them to Ammit, the Great Devourer, while Isis and Osiris looked on and laughed.

The old gods of Mesoamerica also went in for blood sacrifice in a big way. But I had to think about the poor girls who'd be cleaning up afterwards. Fair's fair, and all that.

Eris, on the other hand, has decided to torment the sceptics and the unbelievers by robbing them all of any sense of direction and/or spatial awareness.

I first noticed it at 9 a.m today, on the way to Spar to buy a paper. Mill Street lived up to its name for the first time in about two centuries, because everyone was milling around aimlessly outside the shops. They were even milling around outside the post office – and Martin retired about four months ago. Inside Spar was even worse, because everyone except me seemed to have forgotten how to form a queue. Inside the doors was a mass of people, wandering around blindly like the poor bastards in The Day of the Triffids. I bought my paper and legged it before they turned on me – either through sheer desperate panic, or because they needed someone with all their faculties to help them cope.

I walked to the bus stop, half-expecting the bugger from Merthyr to shoot out of the junction as soon as I got to the main road. But Eris is looking after me, remember. I'd only been waiting a minute or so when one came down from Hirwaun. I jumped on, found a seat about halfway down, and then tried not to laugh when we got to Tesco and a load of people boarded.

Bear in mind that the destination indicator read Glynhafod. This is the end of the road as far as buses are concerned – the very top of the blind valley where the aforementioned Stereophonics grew up. You don't want to go there without a valid reason. But that's where the buses go. Before they go there, of course, they have to go into Aberdare. That's a topographical necessity, in fact. So why the actual fuck did about five people seem shocked to learn that the bus was going to Aberdare? They wanted to catch the northbound bus, apparently – and they'd somehow managed to board the southbound one. My pal Jeff was on the bus, and I told him that today is International Celebrate Your Lack of Spatial Awareness Day. At the time I thought I was joking.

I called into Thereisnospoon for breakfast and to update my system. (I know I could have done it in the library, but with some eighty megabytes to download, I might well have used their entire data allowance for the month.)

While I was waiting to order my food, an elderly guy managed to completely miscalculate the capacity of his mug and pour coffee all over the place. Less than a minute later two of the barbints narrowly avoiding colliding when they were coming through the hatchway.

It dawned on me, reading the paper, that it's 23 September. Pace William Burroughs, Robert Anton Wilson was a huge fan of the number twenty-three. It turns up everywhere in Illuminatus! and Cosmic Trigger. I turned Paul E. onto the significance of the number some years ago, as a sort of introduction to Discordianism in general, and since then we've seen it everywhere. It assumed wider public significance in a terrifying film starring Jim Carrey, of course. The writers of Doctor Who and Torchwood also infiltrated it into the shows as often as they could. Russell T. Davies claimed that it was just an in-joke on set. Personally, I think Mr Davies might also have had a visit from a certain leggy redhead at some point in his life. Naturally she won't have had the same effect on him as she did on me, but we can't rule anything out at this stage.

I'm wondering how long this particular curse will afflict the people of Aberdare. It might just be a One Day's Wonder. Then again, given Eris's track record, this one could run and run …

Yet Another Security Leak From the Future

In which The Author finds the referendum result predicted in a classic science fiction novel

I've recently started rereading John Brunner's 1968 novel Stand on Zanzibar. I say rereading because I first bought a copy about fifteen years or so ago. Gollancz had reissued it as part of their SF Masterworks series, so I grabbed it as soon as it came into stock in Dillons. I didn't know anything about it, apart from the fact that it had won the Hugo award, and was regularly cited as one of the most important SF books ever written. I didn't even know that Mr Brunner had died until I read it on the back cover.

Thinking about it now, it was probably a good thing I didn't buy it when it was still in print in the early 1980s. I'd never have made it past the first couple of chapters. The dense, challenging story of overpopulation, eugenics, racism, colonialism, legalised drug use, industrial espionage and mental breakdown would have been way over my head when I was a teenager. Like The Silmarillion (which I did buy at the time), it would have gathered dust on my shelves for decades before I plucked up the courage to tackle it again.

Anyway, I read it and then lent it to Paul E., thinking he'd probably enjoy it as well. I haven't seen it since. I haven't seen him since Stuart Cable's funeral, come to that. I found a second-hand copy in Pontypridd Market a few months ago, so I snapped it up and started reading it again a few days ago.

I should explain that it's a linear narrative, but told in a non-linear fashion, if that makes any sense. While the main characters move through the story in a fairly conventional manner, their adventures are punctuated with brief sections entitled 'the happening world'. Made up of imagined news items, overheard snatches of conversation, advertising slogans, TV broadcasts and so forth, 'the happening world' sets the scene for the overall story. It seems that Mr Brunner pulled off a nice trick by capturing in print our channel-hopping habits of the near future. It also includes short snippets from an imaginary book by a renegade sociologist, The Hipcrime Vocab, some of which have already found their way into my other blog O'Gorman's Unfamiliar Quotations.

Considering that the book is nearly half a century old, you can probably imagine my surprise when I found another security leak from the future in 'the happening world (4)'. Subtitled 'Spoken Like a Man', it allows us to eavesdrop on the political framework which underlies the plot. Needless to say, the US military is engaged in another of its overseas adventures. While the countries may be fictional, the attitudes are very real – and can be read in any tabloid newspaper and heard in any Valleys pub on any day of the week. Here's the chapter, in full:

Confidential: Cases have been reported of the term 'little red brother' being used by units of the marine and naval forces deployed from Isola. Officers are instructed to remind their men that the officially-approved terms are 'chink', 'slit-eye', 'yellowbelly' and 'weevil'. Use of softass civilian terms is to be severely punished.

'What they could not hold by force of arms they are trying to win back by the power of their foreign money! We must drive out these parasites, these immoral bloodsuckers who corrupt our womanhood, mock our sacred traditions and scoff at our prized national heritage.'

KEEP OUT!

Allships urgentest allships urgentest following storm Thursday night mines are loose and drifting at approaches to Bordeaux Roads stand by till daylight and await go signal from units of Common Europe Navy.

'What I want to know is, how much longer is that damned government of ours going to take this lying down?'

PRIVATE!

'Our enemies skulk on every side, waiting for us to relax our vigilance. But we shall not give them the chance they seek to fall on and devour us. We shall stand firm, and our nation shall be purged of dross in the pure fire of self-sacrifice.

TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED

To all Party bureaux: Revisionism and backsliding has been noted with concern in the following Departments …

'Yeah, but what I mean, even if he does have clean genotype a guy with a proper sense of social responsibility just doesn't have five kids in this day and age! I don't care if he does get the Populimit Bulletin in his mail – that could be a cover, couldn't it? No, I say he must be one of these Right Catholic bleeders. And I want him out!'

BEWARE OF THE DOG

'What rightfully, legally and historically belongs to us lies groaning under the heel of a foreign tyrant!'

THESE PREMISES PROTECTED BY SAFE-T-GARD INC.

'It is not enough that we ourselves should enjoy freedom. We shall not be truly free until everyone alive can make the same sincere and honest claim.'

NO RIGHT OF WAY

'It is not enough that we ourselves should enjoy freedom. There are those in our very midst who extol the virtues of an alien way of life which we know to be evil, hateful and wrong!'

NIGGER DON'T LET THE SUN SHINE ON YOUR HEAD

'Dirty Reds—'

My country, 'tis of thee

NATIONALS RIGHT LANE ALIENS LEFT LANE

'Capitalist hyenas—'

There'll always be an England

BLANKES NIEBLANKES

'The wogs begin at Calais—'

Vive la France!

FLEMING WALLOON

'Bloody nignogs—'

Deutschland über Alles

YORUBA IBO

'Goddamn people next door—'

Nkosi Sikelele Afrika

YOURS MINE

'They're all mad bar thee and me and thee's a little queer—'

MINE!

MINE!!

MINE!!!

PATRIOTISM A great British writer once said that if he had to choose between betraying his country and betraying a friend he hoped he would have the courage to betray his country.

(Amen, brothers and sisters! Amen!

—The Hipcrime Vocab by Chad C. Mulligan)

This Sporting Life

In which The Author is on the run

Quite by accident, I seem to have invented a new sport. Unlike William Webb Ellis's famous departure from the rulebook at Rugby School, though, I can't see this one catching on any time soon.

I call it DODGEBORE.

I've actually been playing the game at strictly amateur level for about thirty years, but I started taking it seriously back in 2009. I reported on some of the matches during my university days in my other blog, starting with 'Freaks, Geeks and Space Invaders'. Over the past eighteen months or so, however, I've thrown myself into it with a passion and a devotion which I've found quite astonishing.

It's surprisingly easy to play, requiring absolutely no specialist equipment or regular training. All you need to do is identify people who are likely to bend your ear for hours about devolution/rugby/immigration/'the council'/trips down Memory Lane/the NHS/reality TV/public transport/Euro 2016/stamp collecting/the European Union/the Second World War/whatever, and then make up a perfectly believable excuse for running very quickly in the opposite direction. The winner is the person who manages to make it through a whole week without being captured by one (or more) ill-informed fuckwits.

For a comparatively small town, Aberdare has several first-rate Dodgebore pitches, including the Prince of Wales, Thereisnospoon, the Lighthouse, the Market Tavern … In fact, every pub offers the novice player ample opportunity to hone his/her skills against a huge number of vastly experienced, full-time, professional Bores.

For those of you who don't fancy a pint, fear not. The library has a large crowd of regular Bores (every morning between 10.30 and midday) who will give you plenty of scope to develop your Dodgebore abilities.

When the weather is fine, outdoor Dodgebore is a great way to spend half an hour. Simply park your arse on one of the benches in town and Bores will gather as if by magic. After a few moments a Dodgebore match will kick off around you, leaving you to work out an exit strategy without appearing rude or resorting to foul language.

Experienced players of the game have a number of 'gambits' (short strategic sequences) which can be employed whenever a Bore hoves into view. My personal favourites include 'I can't stop – I've got to catch a train' and 'I can't stop – I've got a doctor's/dentist's/hospital appointment.'

A word of caution: being busy with work doesn't deter the professional Bore. The prevailing belief in the Valleys holds that you aren't actually working unless you're down a coal mine, serving in the armed forces, standing on the production line in a factory, sitting in an office, or punching the till in a shop – and even that last option isn't a safeguard against being invited to play the game. Working on a manuscript in public is as good an invitation to play Dodgebore as anything else I've encountered so far in my sporting career.

Furthermore, Bores can find you anywhere, at any time of the day or night. Just this morning I had to play the 'train' gambit against a notorious Bore before I'd even arrived in Aberdare. There were gasps from the crowd as my quick thinking and nifty footwork enabled me to give her the slip with remarkable ease. (Admittedly, it completely fucked any chance of my going for breakfast in Thereisnospoon – but there's no such thing as a perfect strategy.)

In fact, I'm becoming so good at the game that I'm seriously thinking about turning professional. There won't be any money in it, of course, but I might be able to secure some corporate sponsorship to tide me over. When I become too old to play for real, maybe I can coach youngsters in the subtle art of telling certain people to go fuck themselves without actually using those very words. It's more of an art than a science, after all.