Today Cromer stands weary and sodden, viced between grey clouds and grey surf and held fast against the idiot rocks of Great Britain by great straps of sideways rain and booming North Sea gales. Faded remnants of a time when Queen Victoria sat on the posh toilet no longer adorn across the seafront, they're just there in tribute. It's like a bad cover band of a seaside resort. The pier, once seen as a phallus of empire, jutting into the bodies of water which we held to be our own, now stands flaccid and diminished. Washed out plaudits for the pier of the year award from years ago range across the archway at it's beginning. The promenade from which it spurs is just as violently lifeless. It's one of those 'I'm not angry, I'm disappointed' type of places. The arcades and funfair, taking the brunt of the sea surge at its terminus are enough to make you kill yourself, or at least gloves and a balaclava.

Up at cliff level around the cursive loop of its one way system is a town swollen in the perpetual damp by charity shops and cafes selling all day breakfasts and crab buckets. In one of which, Jane's Pitstop; sea glimpses, vaguely dirty coffee cups and an unending circling of gulls above, stands Jane herself. Former glamour model, now hardcore post-everything feminist and proprietor. Sweating lank strips of bacon and the bleakest of black pudding in a pan shuffled by a hand within thin blue latex gloves almost splitting where they meet with the angles of her elongated Burberry painted nails. Forty eight year old Jane Elizabeth had always been, when it came to fashion; #Zeitgeist

Even when emancipating sisters across the world it was important to stay on the shoulder of the latest cardigan, that's what makes people listen. That's what made 44k subscribers. And that put value in life. This greasy spoon, although safely in the middle range of eateries around town, had not been the life that she had imagined back when the body was firm and emotions soft. The future had promised much but its arrival, almost imperceptible in its reversing into the present, gauged only by the creep of grey hairs and collapse of poise, had disappointed. The modelling jobs dried out, the suitors thinned out and the lifestyle bottomed out. There had been a decade and a half of self destruction, the usual. But and after all, the ego insisted on being sated. She had finally washed up on the east coast, woke up and cleaned up and opened up the Pitstop and then the swell of feminism that had swept the country fired her up.

And the stray man who has escaped from somewhere else is very polite and smells a bit like straw.

"Opiates, opiates, bring me my opiates."

Was that Shakespeare? Rolls up to the counter and orders; "I'm ready for my opiates."

But he talks how he looks; half dead with palsy and soaking through with floral patterns; shying away yet multiplying with a shaking brand of hard anxiety. Mysteriously he thinks it makes him look younger; the shirt, with its mauves and creams and blues and such. It doesn't.

"Roy, you're not in Gods waiting room now."

"Young lady, what are you talking about? It's time for my opiates."

"How about a nice cup of tea?"

"Oh, that's a promising idea."

"How many sugars today?"

"Five."

"Take a seat and I'll bring it over."

This was a familiar game. Jane watching him stagger to a window table, takes a step back and taking the phone out of the cradle that's hanging on the wall she dials from memory, Poppyland Care Home.

The train coasted into the station, wheezing through beaded curtains of precipitation, hydraulic brakes steaming as it slowed and stopped and gently nuzzled the very end of the line. A riff of tremolo alarms played along its flank as the doors nervously opened and deposited their load. Bundles of pushchairs and anoraks, overnight bags and over-week luggage, of walking frames, packed lunches and status updates all tumbled off. Families trying to and failing to influence the weather with industriously milled smiles and deep mined laughter.

Killer Ken, prefix newly attached, was last off the last carriage, Daily Flail rolled and wedged under his arm like a social thermometer, counter-balanced by a single brown case held in opposite hand.

How much time, he wondered, must pass for a tradition to become traditional? A year or two? Five? A decade? And how many people must buy into it? The unknowable mechanisms of bank holiday weekends and of history whittled and withered until it fits neatly onto a page within a chapter. And from there forgotten by most. Perhaps the world had always done and will continue to just do the same things over and over.  Perhaps the sheer depth and complexity of it all could only be truly known through some higher combination of formula and equation, something quantifiable and tangible but nonetheless unknowable. One shouldn't speculate overly. He was certain, however, that something had to change and he alone knew what that was.

The crawl of passengers, freshly unpassenged, down the hill towards town like molasses, in damp darkened hats and coats, began to break into streamlets and puddles as nuclear families and circles of friends branched off into supermarkets and Ice Cream parlours and public toilets. Killer Ken, as was usual on these trips to mother, headed at first straight down towards the front, to the very edge of the country.

Mr Jones, alternatively sucking his teeth and chewing his pen, built a fore and middle finger paradiddle on the edge of desk into his nervous rhythm. The spreadsheet he surveyed over the top of his impractically tiny spectacles offered little by the way of good news. In fact aside from marginal savings in the columns labelled 'Refreshments' and 'Cleaning Products', the news was exclusively on the wrong side of neutral.

"I'm afraid to say that I really cannot see any other solution. It's simply not sustainable. We're in a pickle, I'm afraid to say. We are stagnating."

On the other side of the desk Julia and Martha visibly stiffened in their respectively uncomfortable chairs.

"Mr Jones, these are people not customers and not objects."

"I'm afraid to say that customers is exactly what they are, Martha. Paying customers no less. And what are we all to become in death but objects?"

With no rebuttal forthcoming other than a muted sigh of despair disguised by Julia artfully with a yawn, Mr Jones continued; "No life force, no circadian rhythms to keep the dancing parts moving, no consciousness. At the onset of death, we become albeit newly inanimate, inanimate nonetheless, objects. It is very clear to me, I'm afraid to say that Poppyland Care Home has been in crisis for some time now. We must innovate to compensate."

"What about the families? They won't go for it. It doesn't feel right, Mr Jones. I'm sure the residents and the families just won't go for -"

"The residents here are in our chance and subordination, they instil in us, from arrival to departure a sense of trust that we will invariably make the right choices for them. As for the families, I'm sure that the opportunity for a one stop shop, so to speak, will ease the burden of a challenging time, both financially and emotionally."

"Instil in them." Julia said.

"What?"

"Wen instil in them." She said again, eyes turned downward towards her hands now steepled in her lap but restless. Mr Jones looked up at her and blinked his raisin eyes.

"I think it works both ways." Said Martha who always looked to defuse situations before they became worse situations. Perhaps his eyes were more currant like.

The duty manager phone began to cheerfully hum Auld Lang Syne from Julia's breast pocket, illuminating her robust bosom in digital green.

"Hello?" She said squashing it against her face.

"Yeah, hi. It's Jane from Jane's Pitstop; good food, reasonable prices."

"Hi Jane, it's Julia."

"Oh. Hi."

"Hi. How can I help?" 

"You still hanging out with those Women's Institute wimps?" It could be said that the two J's had a certain history of a certain animosity.

"Yes, thank you. How can I help?"

"Still making jam?" Julia could almost feel the contempt warm and breathy against her cheek.

"How can I help, Jane?"

"Roy is here again.

"Again?"

"Again."

"Okay, we'll send somebody down." She sighed and hung up and re=pocketed the phone. Martha looked at her, Mr Jones looking mildly nonplussed at the interruption asked; "Problems?""

"Roy's escaped again."

"Oh no, oh dear." Said Martha who always looked to catastrophize situations before they became catastrophic situations.

"How? Why wasn't he being watched?" Asked Mr Jones, exasperation flushing his cheeks and colouring his tone.

"We're all in here, Mr Jones. You called a meeting. I'll go and get him."

"We're stagnating." He said almost entirely to himself. "We are definitely stagnating."

The sediment of a dream lay gritty upon his cerebellum when he woke up and almost immediately he fell off the bar stool. He lay there for a moment and then another. The desperation was thick and sticky on the carpet in this place. This place being at this precise moment, The Smugglers; arguably the oldest and definitely the seediest pub in town.

"You alright Spencer?"

"Uh huh." He said picking himself up and righting the stool and sitting back down, elbows parked on the bar, head in hands.

"You know, Spencer; the whole point of us opening early is so that people can eat breakfast before they booze themselves onto the floor." Len the landlord said, his voice stalled at some previously undiscovered waypoint between pity and disdain. "you look like shit."

"Uh huh." Rubbing his eyes with the heels of his palms. "Screwdriver." He pushed an assortment of coinage across the bar.

"Big breakfast?"

"No."

"Mega breakfast?"

"A Screwdriver. Please. A double." Spencer looked around, momentarily disorientated. "Why isn't the Jukie on?"

"You know the rules; no music before two." Replacing glass to bar runner he eyed the rubble of coins with something approaching disgust. "Gets people rowdy."

"Yeah, well, it's a ridiculous fucking rule."

"Rules often are. And gesturing palm up and open at the money he added, "Governments often are. There's not enough here, have you got a note?" Spencer looked at him and then the coins and then at him again. "There's enough."

"I'd just prefer a note." He shrugged impatiently. "You'll need the change for the Jukebox. At two."

"Put the television on then. I just had this terrible dream that we were having a conversation." And shaking his head he handed over a fiver.

"Sure."

North Norfolk it turned out was nothing like California. Not in psychic sickness nor in weather. In fact, if indeed beauty is in the eye of the beholder,  then still nobody thought it was a beautiful summer's day in Cromer, or anywhere else at all. It was late June 20- and it was Independence Day on Hysteria Island.

Thirst things first.

First things thirst; You will never use long division in your life. You will get drunk and you will buy rounds and you won’t give a fuck about dividing it equinely about the group. You just won’t.

Pint on the bar, a pound in the jukebox.

I can’t even remember which elements go into that pint of yours. I’ll bet ya one that you don’t care.

They told me Shakespeare is important but I read Clapton is god on a cubicle door and smoked ten cigarettes inside just for the kick.

Pint on the bar, a pound in the jukebox, and a shot.

E=mc² they said, but I found that E=MDMA, if you ask around enough. There’s a line on that toilet seat and your name’s in your nostrils. There is no conversation about blockades and new deals and wars in the fridge.

I still don’t wanna learn French.

Glass of water and a pint on the bar, a pound in the jukebox, and a shot for me and a shot for him.

That man over there, that one with the limp and the eye patch has just asked me to play Fly Half for his rugby team. He didn’t though.

That was just drama.

I know where I am within a half mile of consciousness. I know that the ground is hard and it’s getting harder.

Glass of water and a pint on the bar, a pound in the jukebox, and a shot for me and a shot for him and let’s make it doubles.

I know that I learnt these things to achieve letters.

I know that at that point you couldn’t even get a J and a D in the same class.

Glass of water and a Gin on the bar, a pound in the jukebox, and a shot for me and a shot for him and one for yourself.

We never did get around to discussing Middlemarch, or the postmodern elements of The French Lieutenants Woman. I guess we were talking about other things.

But at least we all agree on what is diegetic and non-diegetic.

Two glasses of water, a vodka and orange and a vodka and coke on the bar, two pounds in the jukebox, and shot for me and a shot for him and one for yourself and one for that guy that’s slumping.

Not doubles.

I’ve learnt that one pound turns into three songs on the jukebox. But two pounds into seven. I changed and put a twenty in and it felt like profit.

I’ve learnt that the best intentions are the ones that sting.

A vodka and a pint, an apple and a pint, one glass of water on the bar, all the change in the jukebox, and a shot for you and a shot for him. Where has that guy gone?

I’ve learnt that the world is a ride and that it’s easier to buy a round than it is to buy a ticket. I’ve learnt that it’s probably cheaper too.

I’ve learnt that there is hell to pay when you finish school. And that there is slightly less when you’re during.

I’m beginning to suspect that life is just a metaphor for detention.

It rained today. Just like last year and the year before and the year before that. It’s almost become a joke;

Knock, knock

Who’s there?

It’s going to rain on the twenty third of June.

I was never much good at jokes. But ever since they made it a bank holiday they pretty much guaranteed rainclouds. Christ; chances are they’re hiring those Russian made weather drones, those cloud pushers, with the boner intention of making it rain. After all, what could be more British than a sodden bank holiday?

A damp cynic, perhaps.

But of course we don’t use the word cynic anymore, we’re not supposed to anyway. We are not cynical people. Now we’re supposed to say that we are pragmatic. This is; a clearer reflection of our national character. I mean, I get it; in real terms these things are pretty blurred together, it makes sense in a Faragian way of thinking.

If you do something long enough it becomes a tradition. Apparently it takes about ten years. When they figured out that breaking away didn’t mean that there were any more fish in the ocean, they decided that everybody should go to the seaside on this, our day of independence, to provide a perennial cash injection to the struggling coastal regions. They even emailed everybody ice cream vouchers as incentive. What better way to celebrate British independence other than going to the seaside and spending your ice cream voucher in the pissing rain?

After a couple of years the Existentialists forgot to question it. After five they forgot that they forgot and just accepted it. Small victories; the aggregate of margins; somebody wins, some you lose.

But, see; and this is what really pisses me off. I live at the seaside. Some no postcard abortion of a coast town called California. Butting out ugly against the North Sea, this is nobody’s Riviera. Nobody wants to come here apart from on the twenty third of June. So, yeah, seeing all these people roll into town and knowing, just knowing that they have no intention of spending anything other than that one crummy ice cream voucher. They don’t even hire deck chairs anymore. They bring their own; the hyper deluxe lounger with charcoal blasted support struts. The lightweight steamed bamboo chez-lounge.

Garden chairs.

Dining chairs.

Kitchen chairs.

I’ve seen all kinds of chairs, man. And they sit there on the beach in the rain and sing Rule Britannia as if casting it over the wild browns of the North Sea and onto a continent that stopped listening years ago. They congratulate themselves on their courage and their bravery whilst the rest of us crack rhythms with bubble gum and chase joints around in the car park behind the cinema, or engage in other useless displacement activities.

But, see; that’s not who the Existentialists were back then, there was something more, something other to them. I know this because my parents were there at the beginning. They rose up, albeit giddily, albeit briefly and others like them. What with the parliamentary opposition self-immolating on what my parents described as a weekly basis, the Existentialists were the only visible resistance. There were uprisings and sit-ins and bombings and outings and for a few years things got pretty rough. So then they legalised Weed and the revolutionary noises piped down.

So now, when my parents aren’t at work they’re all blissed out and playing nicely. Every now and again they’ll say over dinner about some or other rumour that Corbyn is going to ride down from Scotland and lead the charge but other than that there is no talk of disquiet or agitation. Jimmy says that he’s dead anyway. Molly says that her dad says that he went mad and lives in a monastery out on the Hebrides. Sometimes you have to do things for yourself.

You might think that what with us being here first, the California that you’re thinking of is named after us. It’s not. We are named after it.

1898 and some frigate carrying four thousand gallons of yellow food colouring runs afoul on an outcrop of unfortunate and the cargo is split. This happenstance turns the surrounding water into a deep gold colour and somebody says; it’s just like California. And the stupid name stuck, as stupid names often do.

So when they said they were gonna build a zoo around our neck otw everyone was pretty made up about it. People fuelled their imaginations with pride about having the California Zoo. They said it would put us on the map for something other than food colouring. The Suits, as is their nature, spotted an opportunity. There was a secret ballot based upon a shortlist of three. I’m not old enough to vote. My parents were too stoned to vote but why would you call it anything other than the California Zoo?

It was a shoe-in.

It was a cert.

The Iain Duncan Smith Menagerie and Zoological Gardens of Economic Growth and Stability opened today. Turns out nobody really cared about the name. They say it’ll bring in even more business. We say it’ll bring in more ice cream vouchers. Sometimes you have to do things for yourself and for others.

But, see; they reckon this zoo is something else, a real Kardashian of a place, so they say. Nothing else like it in the world, a real triumph of British ingenuity and endeavour. Amongst all the lions and Tigers and Monkeys and all the other animals showcased on the strength of their points for residency exam results, there are two crowning jewels. The first is controversial on account of it being not quite real. And when I say it’s not quite real, I mean it’s not fucking real.

A holographic Dodo.

Using all the latest bleeding edge technology, Digital the (wittily named) Dodo appears to be a real life example of the British glory of the extinction reanimation process.

They even have little packs of shit strung out along the parallax barrier to provide that authentic dirty bird smell.

Everybody likes technology but not everybody likes the idea of it belonging in a zoo. It’s not like a cd skipping. It’s not like a cd skipping. There is too much money involved. If it fucks up we’re fucked. These days half the appeal of seeing animals caged up is the anguish in its eyes and the distressed timbre of its cries. Caged things now soothe the populous; make them feel powerful, respected and superior. Sometimes, early morning, when my newsfeed is quiet I wonder if our self-ordained insulation has been very good for our national psyche.

But the second jewel…

Well, that’s a whole cum in your pants social orgasm of a victory for Britain and the British people and everybody that ever stood up for what is right at home and throughout the world.

Ladies and gentlemen; we have Tandy.

Tandy was a big fat and dumb thing. Tandy was also the last Giant Panda Bear in the world. Made us look like the good guys. The caretakers of a species already halfway down the fire escape. There was some long hashed out and expensive deal with China, the details weren’t disclosed. Details are cynical.

We’re a pragmatic people.

So, anyway, on this rainy day in late June, some ten years on from where you now sit, everybody is getting real excitable about the opening of the Iain Duncan Smith Menagerie and Zoological Gardens of Economic Growth and Stability. The roads that spider web out of California like the busted capillaries of some alcoholic’s nose are more congealed than ever. What could be more British than a traffic jam in the pissing rain on a bank holiday?

I should probably tell you about Grandma Soup.

Her name wasn’t really Soup but she really was my great Grandpa until he lost his shit and decided that he wanted to be a Grandma. The only sustenance that she could manage was soup and thusly born be the suffix. Anyway she always carried the pistol that he was issued during the big war. Even in the kitchen, sweating over giant vats of soup, the pistol invariably in holster and holster welded to hip. Even at the dinner table, steaming spoon in hand, pistol there in holster on hip.

Grandma Soup died the other day and in the Faragian School of thinking that means there’s more room for us. It seemed a sad way out to me; one cardiac arrest with a side of face in scalding minestrone. My parents said that’s how she would have wanted it.

So anyway, I figured that living so close by, I’d get me down to the grand opening. What with it being my town and all I figured I had more of a right than most.

So, anyway, there I went. Up Nigel Farage road, cutting across the angle of Nigel Farage Park and joining Nigel Farage Lower Street at the point where it bisects Nigel Farage upper street and Onward. Skipping past Nigel Farage close and crescent I turned right (obviously), onto Nigel Farage boulevard and climbed westward onto Nigel Farage bridge. I paused at the crown and looked out to admire the snarled traffic and the snarled faces within. In the distance the slate grey road bled into the road grey sky like some bleakly textured Mobius strip. And I thought to myself; what a wonderful country. So much space!

They chopper in all the biggest suits for things like this. These are not the people who sit aiming the dashboard fans at their armpits in endless traffic jams. These are the helicopter class.

How do you know if you’ve seen a member of the helicopter class?

You’re not with them.

I was never much good at jokes. But here I am.

But here I am.

These days it’s all about lining up. And what could be more British than lining up in the pissing rain, on a bank holiday?

There is no crush to see our leaders. There is no excitement. There are ripples of polite applause, there are three cheers. I line up quietly as is the duty of a British citizen to God and to the King.

I remember things.

I remember being a kid and my mother making and building and making me this replica of a twentieth Century farm. It had cross stitch vacant dirt fields. It had running stitch fields of crops with upturned staples wrapped in fine yellow thread for corn. It had model tractors from toyshops and charity shops. It had pipe cleaner sheep.

It had nativity Jesus done up as a milkmaid.

A robot shepherd.

A coke can ring pull in half a cork as a boot scrape.

Shit man, it had character. It had this special gate that forced the cattle into the shed one by one, like some strung out metal funnel.

Oh, the memories that this setup sets up. And the CD almost, but not quite skips again.

So, anyway; I should probably tell you about the gun.

You line up calm, you line up pleasant, you line up in tradition but you don’t feel very proud of it. You line up wearing your reading glasses so you look like less of a threat but you line up with a gun in you backpack. At the top of the column, at the entrance you see the big suits shaking hands and handing out rosettes congratulating all on being there at the opening of the Iain Duncan Smith Menagerie and Zoological Gardens of Economic Growth and Stability. You try not to think in names because you know that they popped a reaper memory chip up your nose before you were two weeks old. You’ve trained yourself to think in abstract.

You see the fat one.

You see the purple one.

You see the lame one.

You see the one who wishes he was king.

And you lose your fucking nerve and shake each hand extended and you mumble something about inclement weather and before you know what’s happening you’re inside with a big purple, red, white and blue rosette stuck to your heart like a frilly tumour.

So, anyway, about the gun…

If you come from middle class stock as a rule of thumb you’re middle of the road. You’re bred to be average. You’re taught not to rock the boat. You’re taught that this is how we rule the waves. We live in the age of plastic; of disposable celebrity, of designer label tampons. We’re doped on religion and sex and TV.

Grandma Soup’s gun seemed to represent something other. Hard and black and deadly; some relic of a previous time when things weren’t so superficial; when ambition wasn’t so bland; When someone could strike out against something tangible and solid. These days everything is soft. We live in the carbonated bubble world of social media and flavoured tranquiliser pills. Sometimes it’s a real drag being average. In the congealed minestrone aftermath of Grandma Soup’s death nobody noticed the moves of a child or the sleight of hand that conjoined kitchen table and school bag.

Meanwhile down some other avenue of consciousness…

Sixteen hundred.

That’s how many of my kind were around in your time, the time you are in now. But it’s not your fault, it never is. And now, forward into my time and the number is one.

And it’s me.

But here I am.

Apparently my name is Tandy. Apparently I’m important. More importantly I’m famous. The whole world knows my face and I know your kind crave that sort of thing. I see it in your eyes; those lustful jealousies as you imagine all the autographs that I can’t sign and all the photographs that I can’t smile for. From sixteen hundred you let me drip away into one. You made me who I am. You and every black eyed Panda previous to me who was too lazy to fuck for years on end.

But here I am.

But here I am in my barred kingdom with my forced grown shoots of bamboo and my imported grasses and my little cherry red pills that smooth the edges of my thinking. My bed charged with voltage during daylight to keep me out of it.

I sit as still as I can and imagine I’m floating down some river in some land that I have never known. But those hand written ripples aren’t real and you people pour by my lonely kingdom and I stay where I am.

A Panda without a purpose is no Panda at all. You all go by with your camera phones to your faces with your thoughts transcribed into status updates. You are no more alive than me and I am no more dead than you. I know how you work; I know your dreams of bestiality and Panda bondage.

This kid here, this kid is different. When you’ve been gazed upon as often as me you get a feel for people. He pauses and the river breaks around him.

And his bag is off his back.

And he’s rummaging in it.

And I’m mildly curious.

And he pulls something from it.

And I’m thinking that if we are all carbon based life forms then really we’re all made of stars and maybe reincarnation is just the recycling of atoms with something residual attached.

I’m thinking maybe we all fade to black eventually.

I’m thinking that doesn’t look like any camera I’ve ever seen before.

I’m thinking –

For some reason the recoil makes me think of Grandma Soup’s frail wrist. For that split moment between Tandy being alive and otherwise I see a sheen of surprise in his black eyes. The air above him seems to wobble like looking through the vapours of spilled petrol.

There are screams and the river of people scatters and shatters around me and I realise that I am the first and the last of me. And I realise how completely alone I am. And I realise how completely alive I am.

I sit down on the ground and take off my glasses. I realise that I can’t think of a single joke.

Apart from...

Apart from one that Grandma Soup told me the week before she died.

What’s black and white and red all over?

But I forget the punch line.

By now you’ve been sitting here for hours. Time has become a type of static energy measured out as if by metronome by that flashing cursor beating ceaselessly against that white blank space.

You think to yourself; how do I define me?

You suppose you’d start at the start.

You fell out somewhere around Cambridge, in February, the bleakest month, in 1985. 

Just some cosmic hitchhiker who overshot his true temporal destination by some forty years.

Oh well, shit happens. Your first and most defining thought.

Your first memory probably isn’t true. More, it’s a mosaic made up of impressions, sensations, disinformation and connotations. A child’s first snapshot, when everything was abstract. You remember it snowing the afternoon they took you home. It wasn’t snowing. Your mum is certain it wasn’t snowing.

You grew up listening to The Beatles and Dylan and reading anything you could about everything you should and shouldn’t. You reckon that by about sixteen you were able to think.

On your first day of college a bunch of people crash a couple of planes into a couple of towers and redefine the Western concept of freedom. On your second day of college you think that freedom is being able to wear jeans.

And still you’re sat here, thinking and remembering and juxtaposing. You think about lifting lyrics of favourite songs and passages from favourite books and pasting them together

That would be cool. You say.

That’s just a gimmick. You say three hours later when all you have in front of you is I was born in a crossfire hurricane. That false memory thing about weather again.

By now Bob and Bob and Jimi and Jim have led you into the drunken waltz of the undernourished existentialist. Half-cocked and half-cut.

You study Art, English Literature, Film Studies and briefly Psychology. You go to the bar down the road and get really good at pool. And the world keeps changing around you. From the hysterical rages of the Daily Flail and The Pun, to the hardcore pornography and charity work of the internet; the twenty first Century was breached at birth.

You go to study Creative Writing at Derby, the wasted heart of the country. You suspect the bubble could burst at any time.

You think it’s just an age, sex, location type thing. A favourite colour, lucky number, shoe size, brand of smokes type thing.

You think; Do my cigarettes define me?

You finish University and you think; Fuck a career, I need a carer. And as your thinking matures you think; Fuck a carer, I need a car.

You get a summer job stacking shelves. You get a car.

Your summer job becomes and autumn job becomes a Christmas job becomes a job. You watch your friends settle down and give birth to careers and develop babies. You think; I don’t need any of that, I’m built out of words,

You fetch a beer from the fridge and return to the computer where all your stupid ideas have gathered in concert. You try and forge yourself in the crucible of the empty page. You think; Maybe if I had a kid or an interesting job, I’d have more to write about.

Along the way you meet some good people, some bad people and some people. By your mid-twenties you’re throwing away a week a thousand words. Sometimes you forget who you are. Sometimes you write the final chapters of novels you never wrote just to throw them away. Every so often the chorus of wasted potential pipes up. And that band plays on.

You move to the coast and smash up your television.

You write a novel.

You smash up another and don’t write a scratch for six months. Blank pages haunt your dreams; a flicker book of nothing.

You wonder if it was a one shot thing. You’re thirty one now and you’re wondering how to define yourself.

What words do I associate with me?

You smash up your smart phone. You smash up your laptop. You decamp to the beach with a pad and a biro and a beer and a cigarette. You decide to write something for the sheer bloody minded hell of it.

When you get home you could swear that it had been snowing.

When you get home you still can’t define me.

OMGTBHLOLWTF/

The kingdom of hysteria stretches as far as the eye can see. From the grey plains of printed media through to the decadent and delirious realms of social media, everything has become drenched in it. The twenty first Century unravels in increments of technological advance locked in step with social decay and depravation of every kind. There is rampant solipsism on one side and earnest politicking on the other, there is a grey area of a very loud nothing very much in the middle. Exaggeration defines the discourse of everything from holidays to sickness, to social ills and injustice. Words such as humble, humility and mild have become redundant; there is no volume to the meek. In the kingdom of hysteria it is he who shouts loudest that gets the most likes.

This Century really began when two planes smashed into two towers and changed the world. Everything before 9/11 was just millennial hangover. In terms of global events September eleventh was without precedent. Never before had such a spectacular and devastating event been seen from so many angles by so many. The precursor, of course, is the Zapruder film which captured the Kennedy assassination and electrified a generation. One minute and twenty six seconds of low resolution camerawork heightened by its uniqueness, singular and almost mythical in its depiction of a culturally significant event. 9/11 was bigger. Multiple angles repeated from multiple media platforms, wall to wall coverage for weeks on end. This was disaster and atrocity packaged up neatly into one coherent package, the ultimate news story set against an impossibly cinematic clear blue sky. And put on repeat. Everything after is, on some level, just trying to be bigger.

Brutal wars and economies that bloat and burst and roll back leaving only scummy residue at the high water mark, causes fought and forgotten, holidays in the sun; all of it important. All of it not as important as what comes next. We’re in the pressure cooker now, on the up-ramp and everybody is shouting about how great their lives are or how shit their job is. Nobody is just doing alright, at least not that they’ll share. It’s not relevant to be alright, it’s just not as important. Nobody takes a selfie in a mediocre room unless it’s too show off how great they look or how gruesomely injured they are. Everyone has an agenda which is infinitely more important than anything anybody else could possibly have to say. The days of discretion are as jobless as VHS, an angular lump with no slot to fit. There just isn’t the machinery for that flickering kind of romance anymore.

Intellectuals and that define ours as the age of information and information saturates our everything. It’s blasted at us from all sides with increasing hostility and we adapt to it in the way that people do but the voice of reason is a quiet one and easily drowned out. So too are the voices of morality and decency. The internet, the web, the matrix, the whatever you call it, is in its adolescence and it’s loud and it can turn in an instant. This is a new frontier for humankind one that will fast become tamed by the suits and the smiles and harnessed for “the greater good” whatever that maybe and whoever that may serve. We are crying out to be manipulated in one way or the other. We’ve become a people whose compassion is momentarily piqued by tragic photos shared down a newsfeed and then cast off in favour of Candy fucking Crush. It’s all the same, it’s all just pixels. It’s about shouting the loudest and that is all it’s about.

In the kingdom of hysteria the Daily Flail is the most popular newspaper and every morning it screams something terrible about something or other. People, it seems, need this kind of energising just to get through the day. Why is that? It’s almost as if focusing everything down into a newsprint slick arrow of a headline allows that hysteria valve to wheeze open; if everybody else is buying into it… And from here the only way is bigger. More outrage, deeper sadness, higher class scandal, higher pitched support of the flavour of the month. A million dead children if it sells the rag.

Late Capitalism has revealed itself to be nothing more than a carnival barker selling tickets to the freak show concealed in the house of mirrors. We’re trapped in the kingdom of hysteria alright and we’re going down shouting as loudly as we can.

He looked at me funny, the delivery van driver I mean, when he realised that the only things that I had ordered were canned food and bottled water. I just smiled politely like I’ve learnt to do. After I had closed the door I opened the logbook that I keep on the little table by the phone and wrote the time and the date followed by the words; Tesco man acting suspiciously.

I watched out the window until he drove away and then I stripped down to my underwear and began putting everything away in its right place. Once that was done I vacuumed the whole of the downstairs paying particular attention to the doormat and the couple of foot of carpet onto which the man had stepped. After I had done this I ran myself a shower as hot as I could stand and scrubbed myself down for fifteen minutes.

These are unusual times we’re living in.

When I had dried myself I dressed in my favourite pyjamas and put the towel into the machine and ran it at a high temperature.

In my bedroom the television is always on. And I mean it is always on. And it is always on the twenty four hour news station. I think it’s important to keep up to date with what’s going on in the world. When I go to sleep I turn the sound down and watch the people mime out the stories of the day. I have taught myself to sleep with my eyes open, always watching. This way I don’t have to worry about missing something important. You never know when something important is going to happen.

I take a bottle of water upstairs with me and sit on the end of the bed and watch for fifteen minutes just taking in the headlines.

The Hospitals are overcrowded.

There are more cutbacks to the Police force.

There is another suspected case of Ebola in Scotland.

They are predicting more extreme weather over the next six months.

The terror alert is still on orange.

The terror alert has been on orange for three hundred and five days. Orange means severe. Severe means an attack is highly likely. This doesn’t seem to bother people as much as it should. Orange is one colour removed from red and red means that an attack is imminent.

It is important to be prepared.

Sometimes I think I’m as prepared as I can be but then something else happens and I realise that I’m nowhere near as prepared as I should be. My mother used to say “To fail to prepare is to prepare to fail.” That still sounds like good advice every time I say it.

When I’m finished watching the headlines I sit down at my computer which is next to my bed so I can still see the television and I look at the twenty four hour news website, just in case there are any details that they have missed. Or in case there is another story that they haven’t shown that I should know about. It’s important to be proactive about the news; you need to do your own research. Everybody has an agenda it’s just a case of figuring out what it is.

I do this for thirty minutes.

I only drink bottled water. Two litres a day, every day without fail. It is important to stay hydrated. The human body is approximately sixty percent water. The average human being loses about eight cups of water a day through urine and sweat. It is important to replenish the amount of water in your body everyday otherwise you will get headaches and feel tired. I don’t drink tap water because, and you should know this, because it contains fluoride and fluoride is very bad for you. They started putting fluoride in the water, and when I say they I mean the government, in the 1950’s. They did this because it makes your brain soft and susceptible to suggestion. Soon after they did this adverts started to appear everywhere and I mean everywhere. People stopped being just people and they became consumers. People started buying things just because they could and the whole world went mad.

Tap water also gives you cancer.

I know this because Sophie used to drink a lot of tap water and then she got the cancer and then she died. Sophie was my wife. Sophie was my friend first and then she was my wife. We got married on the fifth of September 2011 and she died the year after. I still miss her. Sophie used to say that it was very important that I look after myself so now I only drink bottled water. Two litres a day.

At exactly midday I eat lunch. I usually have soup. Today I had tomato. Tomato soup is my favourite because it is smooth and it tastes good. Canned food is the safest food in the world and it lasts a long time too. I once read that a boat called the Bertrand sank in the Missouri River in 1865 and it was carrying a whole cargo of canned peaches. When they raised the boat up in 1974 they did tests on the cans of peaches and found that they were still perfectly safe and fine to eat. One hundred and nine years old and still good to eat. I can’t remember where I read that but I haven’t ever forgotten about it. My cupboards are filled with canned food. You never know what is going to happen next.

After I have eaten my lunch I wash up the bowl and spoon and leave them to drain. They look untidy there on the rack next to the sink but I know how many germs get harboured on the average tea towel so I don’t use them.

The letter box opens and from the kitchen I can hear letters scrape through and fall down onto the doormat and I hold my breath. A week after 9/11 there were Anthrax attacks across America. Nobody ever remembers this. I go to the cupboard and pull out the claw thing that I keep in there. I don’t know what you call it. It’s what people use to pick up litter, a claw thing on the end of a stick with a trigger on the handle that controls the pincers. Next I put on a disposable facemask, like the ones that surgeons wear and I pick up the plastic box which I keep next to the little table by the phone.

They never caught whoever sent those Anthrax letters.

Slowly, very slowly I walk over to the little pile of letters and one by one I pick them up and very carefully place them in the plastic box. There’s a lot today. When this is done I take the box outside to the passageway down the side of my house and empty the letters into the black bin followed by my facemask.

I can’t remember anything before 9/11.

I had just shut the door behind me when I hear the phone ring. I feel my heart beat quicken up and the blood buzz hotly in my ears. Slowly and quietly I creep over to it and watch it until it stops, after this I go around the house and make sure that all the curtains are closed. You can never be too careful. Once I have checked the curtains I open the logbook and I write the time and the date followed by the words; Phone call.

Do you know about the Mayans?

You should probably know about the Mayans. They were an ancient people in South America and they’re all gone now. But the interesting thing about them is that they predicted the end of the world would happen in 2012. Of course it’s now 2015 so you probably think that they made it all up or were wrong or whatever. I have this theory though, I have this theory that something happened in 2012 that will lead to the end of the world, like something was put in motion back then only we don’t know what it was. Not yet anyway.

It’s my birthday today. I know this because first thing every morning I cross out another day on the calendar on my wall next to my bed. I don’t celebrate my birthday anymore, I used to when I was a little kid but it doesn’t feel right to celebrate things, not these days.

In the living room I sit down in my favourite chair which has one of those plastic covers on it and I just sit for a while and listen to the comfortable noise of the clock ticking and stare at the empty fireplace.

I do this for fifteen minutes.

I open the top drawer of the chest of draws next to my favourite chair. Inside there is a stack of sealed envelopes. The one on top of the pile has 2015 and a kiss written on it in pretty handwriting. Very carefully I open the envelope. Inside there is a card with a picture of a frothing bottle of champagne and HAPPY BIRTHDAY! written loudly in capitals, in an arch, like a rainbow but without all the colours. The background is blue and the writing is white and the bottle of champagne is dark green. I open it up and read what’s inside.

“Happy Birthday Bobby, hope you are having a good day and have done something nice. Remember when we went and fed the ducks? That was a really good birthday. I enjoyed that a lot and you did too. I’m sorry I’m not there with you to celebrate but know that I am always looking over you. Please look after yourself and stay healthy. All my love always, Sophie.

P.S. remember to take your medication.”

It’s nice to get a birthday card from Sophie. I read the message over and over for fifteen minutes. It’s a funny thing, I can remember when we fed the ducks but I can’t remember what medication she means. It’s a funny thing memory.

I put the card up in the middle of the mantelpiece above the empty fireplace and go back to my chair and look at it until the clock chimes one.

In my bedroom I sit on the end of the bed and watch the headlines. There is nothing new and I begin to relax a little bit. I allow myself to flop backwards and lie there just staring at the ceiling with my legs dangling off the end of the bed. Suddenly I feel very tired and I think about taking a nap.

Downstairs the doorbell rings.

My body twitches and stiffens up. My breathing becomes shallow and I can feel panic fluttering around in my chest. I sit up and breathe deeply for sixty seconds, counting it out in my head.

The doorbell rings again.

I stand up and put on my dressing gown and stare at my hand until it stops shaking and then I go downstairs.

I can see the distorted silhouette of somebody standing the other side of the frosted glass and each step I take to the front door feels heavy and straining and final. I force myself to take one last deep breath and it judders out from my chest like crumpling paper and then I open the door.

There’s a man standing there who I don’t recognise.

“Hello mate,” he says, “Got your shopping delivery here; do you want me to bring it through?”

These are unusual times that we’re living in.

THE END

Terra Trans Terram they say

Meaning land beyond the land

We’ll build them an island faraway

With our machines and work-worn hands

Our rich earth we’ll give to them

Measured out by the ton

We simply haven’t the room for them

There’s nothing else to be done

We’ll build them Terra Trans Terram

A place for their own dreams

Over half of them are on the scam

Not as desperate as they seem

We’ll fashion an island just for them

And we’ll even give them clothes

They’re lucky we’re doing this for them

In their swarms and their droves

They make me feel a little unwell

I’ll be glad when they are gone

That horrible sticky immigrant smell

Those nasty refugee songs

Look at all we have done for them

And look at all we give

I haven’t heard a thanks from one of them

Even though we help them live

Terra Trans Terram’s afloat

Square miles of our charity

A British built arc, an island boat

Our compassion in clarity

Homes and hope we give to them

Filtered water and their crops

Lord above we’re good to them

Our goodness knows no stops

A truly exceptional people are we

There’s no one on Earth like us

To take a people and make them free

With the minimum of fuss

Perhaps we’ve done too much for them

At the expense of all our own

We wouldn’t want to soften them

I quite fancy a brand new home

Let’s leave behind this slate grey place

Let’s leave behind our jobs

Let’s start a Terra Trans Terram race

Without those immigrant slobs

It wouldn’t be right to give to them

Now I don’t want to sound too harsh

It’s not our place to give to them

Terra Trans Terram is ours