Sex and Drugs and Sausage Rolls (5 page)

“Come again?”

“Well, Soap’s got a bee up his bum that the Queen wasn’t assassinated and Geraldo thinks that John Lennon
was
.”

“Nineteen eighty,” said Jim.

“What about it?”

“Nineteen eighty was when Lennon got shot and survived and the Queen was assassinated. Same year.”

“People get shot every year,” said John. “It’s a tradition, or an old charter or something.”

“Or something. But this is a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it? Who is this Geraldo anyway, John? Where do you know him from?”

“I don’t know him at all. He just came up and asked for my autograph.”

“Why would he want your autograph?”

“I think he thought I was someone famous. He was terribly polite and sort of—”

“Sort of what?”

“Reverential,” said Omally. “That’s the only word I can think of.”

“This is all very weird.”

“There is nothing weird about it.” John gulped down the contents of his can and tried to look happy for doing so. “This is a music pub, Jim,” he said. “And the folk who go to music pubs are not your everyday folk. Don’t go getting yourself all upset.”

“I wasn’t getting myself all upset,” said Jim, who clearly was.

“Well, don’t. Soap is confused. Geraldo is confused.”

“Both of them?”

“Both of them. Lennon
did
survive, the Queen did
not
. That’s history and you can’t change history, can you?”

“Well …” said Jim. “I suppose not.”

“You definitely can’t. History cannot be changed.”

The invasion of the body snatchers.

The thing from Planet Z.

The big-eyed beans from Venus.

The fiend without an ’ead.

The wild wild women of Wonga.

Morris the human mole.

Loup Garou.

The man from the Pru.

The beast from the bottomless hole.

The phantom of the opera.

The lad from the Black Lagoon.

Vampires and umpires and pirates and poets,

The Scotsman who lives on the moon.

Turned up on my doorstep yesterday,

To say that they’d put up my rent.

I said, curse and damnation

(They had an Alsatian),

And that’s why I live in a tent.

Norman Hartnell
[4]
once said that life would be a whole lot easier if it could be lived in little movies. The gist of this was that life nowadays is simply too complex for the average man to get his average head around. There’s too much going on all at the same time. Too many plot-lines, if you like, weaving in and out and all round about. If you could live your life in little movies, each with a beginning, a middle and an end, you could concentrate on one thing at a time. Enjoy each for whatever it was and give of your best to each in turn.

And things of that nature.

Generally.

Norman considered that, ideally, each little movie would last for a week. You would begin whatever particular enterprise you chose to begin, on the Monday. Give it your absolute and undivided attention until Friday (by which time it would have been brought to a satisfactory conclusion), and then you’d have the weekend off to plan what you should do the following week.

Norman was what is called “an Idealist”.

He was also a corner-shopkeeper.

And a single man.

Norman’s shop was known to the good folk of Brentford as
The Sweetie Shop that Time Forgot
. Norman had inherited the shop from his father, Norman Hartnell Senior (whom many at the time had confused with the other Norman Hartnell), way back in the nineteen sixties and had done his best to keep it just the way it was.

This was not for the sake of nostalgia, or as some posthumous tribute to his daddy. It was simply that Norman liked the shop the way it was and could think of no sound reason for changing it. The shop served as Norman’s base of operations, where he applied himself not only to living his life in little movies, but also to his hobby.

For Norman, Idealist, corner-shopkeeper and single man, was also an inventor.

England has proudly given birth to many a great inventor. It has also, almost without exception, failed to capitalize on this. Inventors have found themselves unable to raise finance to develop their ideas and have inevitably sold them abroad.

The reason for this, in Norman’s opinion, was that those who sat in the seats of power, those big seats in Whitehall with red leather backs, tried to do too much at once and so did everything badly. They missed opportunities because they didn’t live their lives in little movies.

Norman had written to them explaining this, but so far had received no reply.

Which, in his opinion, proved his point.

So Norman did not waste his precious time sending off details of his latest revolutionary invention to the big-seat-sitters of Whitehall. He applied himself to solving local problems. To improving the lives of those who lived around him.

Idealist, shopkeeper, single man, inventor and very nice fellow was he.

This week Norman was building a horse.

It was to be a surprise present for Jim Pooley, who was a good friend of Norman’s. Jim was the only man that Norman knew of, other than himself, who actually lived his life in little movies. True, Jim’s little movies were always repeats. In fact they were always the very same movie. The one about the bloke who spends all his time trying to win on the horses but always fails to do so. It was a very dull little movie and it didn’t have a happy ending.

But Norman meant to change all that for Jim. He was doing what inventors do. Which is to identify the problem and provide the simple solution.

Over the previous weekend Norman had identified the problem. Jim never won much money on the horses, because they were not
his
horses, and so he could never know for certain whether they would win or not. Therefore the solution was to provide Jim with a horse that could be guaranteed to win.

The answer was therefore to build Jim a horse.

It might well have been suggested to Norman that the answer would be to
buy
Jim a horse. But Norman would certainly have pooh-pooed this suggestion.

Racehorses cost a fortune to buy. It was simpler all round just to build one.

Norman had recently come into possession of a scientific magazine, ordered in error by a customer. In this there had been a long and involved article about a sheep called Dolly, which had supposedly been cloned. This had set Norman thinking.

Like all manly men, all
truly
manly men, Norman had a love of science fiction. Not just a liking, but a love. And there was no shortage of novels dedicated to this particular subject. Norman had rootled about in his collection and come up with a couple of Johnny Quinn classics.
Crab Cheese
and
The Man Who Put his Head on Backwards
.

In
Crab Cheese
the eponymous detective (Crab Cheese) finds himself on the trail of a serial killer of the vampire persuasion, who turns out to be a human clone. The cunning twist at the end is that the man does not have a soul. The theory being that you might be able to clone the man, but you
cannot clone the soul
[5]
.

This gave Norman pause for thought. Did animals have souls? No one really knew for certain. But then if they did, and the one you cloned didn’t, would it really matter? Norman wondered about Dolly. Had she shown any leanings towards vampirism? If she had, the scientific journal failed to mention them.

The Man Who Put his Head on Backwards
was a different kettle of genetics altogether. It involved rich people in the future who were cloned by their parents at birth. The clones were then carefully reared on special farms to provide spare parts and replacement organs for the originals. As and when required.

This led Norman into wondering whether he should perhaps clone half a dozen horses in case the first one broke a fetlock or something.

But he decided to scrub around that. He only had space in his back yard to graze one horse and he didn’t want the neighbours complaining again.

What a fuss they’d made about his outside toilet. It had seemed such a good idea at the time, catering as it did to customers who were suddenly caught short in his shop. The world had clearly not been ready for the open-air female urinal.

So, over the aforementioned previous weekend Norman had set himself to planning how he might clone the greatest Derby winner of them all. It would need to have all the best features of all the best horses all rolled into one. But how to go about the task? How to acquire the necessary genetic material? You couldn’t just knock at the door of some stud farm and ask to borrow a few skin scrapings. Well, you could, but …

Well, you
could
in a manner of speaking. You could certainly ask for
something
.

On the Sunday Norman drove off to Epsom in his Morris Minor. He set out early and sought the grandest-looking stables. Here he leaned upon the fence and watched the horses being groomed. He had brought with him two essential items. A breeder’s guide and a bucket. These were all he needed to gain the
something
he required.

His technique proved to be faultless. Having selected from the breeder’s guide a horse suitable for cloning, Norman shouted abuse at the stable lad grooming it. The stable lad replied to Norman’s abuse in the manner which has been favoured by stable lads since the very dawning of time.

He hurled horseshit at Norman.

Norman gathered up the horseshit and put it in his bucket.

Having visited five stables, Norman had a full bucket, containing all the genetic material he needed.

He was even home in time for Sunday lunch.

On the Monday, Norman used whatever time he could between serving customers to slip away to his back kitchen workshop and extract the DNA from the horseshit. This was a rather tricky task, requiring, as it did, a very large magnifying glass, a very small pair of tweezers and a very steady hand …

By shop-close, however, he’d filled up a test tube. Now, there is, apparently, something of a knack to gene-splicing. It calls for some pretty high-tech state-of-the-art equipment, which is only to be found in government research establishments. Norman did not have access to these, so instead he gave the test tube a bloody good shake. Which was bound to splice something.

On the Tuesday, which was today, things had not gone well for Norman. He’d been hoping to at least knock out a test horse, but there had been too many interruptions.

People kept bothering him for things. Could he get them this? Could he get them that? Norman told them all that he certainly could not. And then there had been all the fuss about the videos.

He should never have started hiring out videos. It was a very bad idea. Norman couldn’t think for the life of him why he’d started doing it in the first place. But then, for the life of him, he remembered that he could.

It was all the fault of John Omally.

Omally had come into Norman’s shop a couple of months before, complaining bitterly that there was nowhere in Brentford where you could hire out a videotape.

Norman had shrugged in his shopcoat.

“There’s a fortune waiting for the first man who opens a video shop around here,” said Omally.

Norman nodded as he shrugged.

“A fortune,” said John. “I’d open one myself, but the problem is finding the premises.”

“Why is that the problem?” Norman asked.

“Because there aren’t any shops to rent around here.”

“Which must be why no one has opened a video shop.”

“Exactly,” said Omally. “And it’s not as if you’d need a particularly large shop. In fact, when you come to think about it, all you’d really need would be a bit of shelf space in an existing shop.”

“I see,” said Norman.

Omally glanced around at Norman’s shop. “I mean, take this place, for instance,” he said. “Those shelves over there. The ones with all the empty sweetie jars. Those shelves there could be earning you a thousand pounds a week.”

“How much?” said Norman.

“A thousand pounds a week.”

“Those shelves there?”

“Those shelves there.”

“Bless my soul,” said Norman.

Omally did a bit of shrugging. “Makes you think,” said he.

“It certainly does,” Norman agreed. “Of course, there would be the enormous capital outlay of buying all the videos.”

“Not if you had the right connections.”

“I don’t,” said Norman.

“I do,” said John.

And it
had
seemed a good idea at the time. What with Omally knowing where he could lay his hands on five hundred videotapes for a pound each. It was only after Norman had parted with the money and Omally had loaded the tapes onto the shelves that Norman thought to ask a question.

“What are on these tapes?” Norman asked. “None of them are labelled.”

“I don’t know,” Omally said.

“But haven’t you tried any out?”

“How could I try any out? I don’t own a VCR.”

Norman’s face came over all blank. “But I thought you were bitterly complaining that—”

“There was nowhere in Brentford you could hire a videotape from. Yes, I was. But I was speaking generally. I didn’t mean me personally.”

“Oh,” said Norman. “I see.”

“Well, I’m all done now,” said John. “So I’ll be off.”

And with that said, he was.

It took Norman more than a week to go through the tapes. He had some very late nights. To his great disappointment, none of them turned out to be Hollywood blockbusters. All contained documentary footage. Of Chilean secret police interrogating prisoners.

Norman marvelled at the methods of torture employed, although he did think that some of the electrical apparatus used could have been improved upon.

“Although I won’t waste my time writing to tell them,” Norman said to himself. “Because they probably won’t answer my letter.”

But now Norman realized that he had a very real problem on his hands. What was he to do with these videos? I mean, he could hardly hire them out.

Not without titles.

And when it came to little movies, these ones all had the same plot.

Norman put his mighty brain in gear. Snappy titles, that’s what they needed. Norman at once came up with
OUCH!: THE MOVIE
. This was good because it allowed for
OUCH! II: THE SEQUEL
. And also
OUCH! III
. In no time at all Norman was into his stride.

He followed up the OUCH collection with the NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL TORMENT series and he even managed to cut together a blooper tape of humorous out-takes. Torturers slipping over in the blood and accidentally electrocuting themselves and so on.

Norman toyed with the idea of calling this one CARRY ON UP MY BOTTOM WITH THE ELECTRIC CATTLE PROD.

But that was a bit too long.

Norman earned his money back on the videos and he made a bit extra besides. They didn’t prove popular as family viewing, but they attracted a certain following amongst a certain type of male.

The police raid at lunchtime had come as a bit of a shock. He’d noticed the police presence, just up the road outside the Flying Swan, and when a couple of coppers came into his shop to buy sweets, Norman had asked them, in all innocence, whether they’d like to join his video club.

And now here he was in a police interrogation room at the Brentford nick. An interrogation room that looked strangely familiar. Norman sighed and shifted uncomfortably. The metal chair was cold on his naked bum. The electrodes were pinching his nipples.

Norman hoped that they’d soon let him go. After all, he’d answered all their questions. Several times over. He’d said all the things they’d expected him to say. That he was an innocent victim of circumstance. That he’d bought the videos from a stranger he’d met in a pub. The policemen wouldn’t keep him tied up around here much longer, would they? Sitting on cold chairs gave you the piles and Norman didn’t want those.

And he had too much to do. He had to get back to his workshop and see how his horse was coming along. He’d left the DNA gently cooking in a nutrient solution on the stove, and although it was only on a low light, it might all end up stuck to the bottom of the saucepan if he didn’t get back soon to give it a stir.

Norman sighed again and made a wistful face. If only there weren’t so many complications, he thought. If only we could live our lives in little movies.