121

The old soldier tramped wearily across the marsh. The pain in his body was piercing, yet somehow fitting, for it was the pain in the soul that was truly consuming. The hopes shattered, the peace forever lost. His mind wandered back to those far gone days when life reverberated with promise, when all was either passionately exciting or serenely beautiful. Oh, long lost happiness! Oh, cruel, bitter world!

He thought of childhood days of innocence, at the zoo, and watching Blue Peter. The days when his father seemed the greatest hero on earth, his mother the very womb of the world, the font of all love. He thought of all the women he had known in his life, the moments of pure exhilarating union that seemed to transcend time, the warmth of the female caresses that soothed a thousand aches, the deliciously illicit pleasures of the body, with mayonnaise and so forth. And all the times he had seen Leeds United play at home. Gary Sprake, Jackie Charlton, Peter Lorimer, Johnny Giles. And all the great television programmes he had watched: The Generation Game with Bruce Forsyth, Sale Of The Century with Nicholas Parsons. And oh, The Golden Shot, and Celebrity Squares. And Blankety Blank, initially with Terry Wogan, later with Les Dawson. All those happy memories of the family gathered as one, engrossed in It's A Knockout.

And Boney M, who somehow seemed to encapsulate it all: Ma Baker, Brown Girl In The Ring, Mary's Boy Child, Daddy Cool. And Rasputin. Before he knew, his voice was singing out, with a peculiar defiant joy:

There lived a certain man in Russia long ago
He was big and strong, in his eyes a flaming glow

His whole body seemed to pulsate, possessed by musical fever:

Most people looked at him with terror and with fear
But to Moscow chicks he was such a lovely dear

His whole life became a 1970s disco, as the very marsh itself joined in the verses:

He ruled the Russian land, and never mind the Csar
But the kazachok he danced really wunderbar
In all affairs of state he was the man to please
But he was real great when he had a girl to squeeze

A ghostly chorus of old soldiers, living and dead, friend and foe alike, danced deliriously to the chorus:

Ra-Ra-Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen
There was a cat that really was gone
Ra-Ra-Rasputin, Russia’s greatest love machine
It was a shame how he carried on

There was a cat who really was gone. Yes indeed.

Anyway, while all this was going on, a UFO landed on the marsh, and out of it walked an purple alien, with three heads and fifteen feet. He abducted the soldier and whisked him off to an intergalactic zoo, where he was to spend the rest of his days in a cage, shared with a snake from the planet Venathos, whose eye was five times larger than the rest of its body.

120

Ludwig van Beethoven is good.

119

Apparently, my voice sounds like Jools Holland's.

118

ping

117

So where are they now? The visionaries and the saints, the poets and the painters, the fearless, the outcasts and the audaciously beautiful?

So where are they now? The lovers and the referees, the custodians of the verities, the heroes and the narrators, the substitutes and the subterraneans, the Romans and the Greeks, the dancers and the usherettes, the masterminds and the six billion dollar men?

They were here just a minute ago.

So where are they now? The musicians and the Chancellors of the Exchequer, the self-contained, the officers, officials and officious people. So where are they now? Peter, Paul and Mary (and Philip)?

Yes, where are they now? The Jefferson Airplanes and the Samantha Fox impersonators? The Joe Gormleys and the ding-dong-ding-dong-bells?

Where on earth can they be? Julius Caesar and Tony Blackburn, the surveyors and the hopeless cases, the push-me-pull-yous? Where are they now? Lester Piggott, A. J. Ayer, Mr. and Mrs. Watkins and William of Orange?

In Poundland.

116

Shave half your beard off.