Holiday 2013 - Day Two

I usually start my blog post with a relevant photo. With these holiday entries, it would make sense to use actual holiday pictures. We have taken some, but don’t have the facility to get them onto my computer. So for now, I’ll just have to use text to paint a picture.

UUUUUUUU

IIIIIIIIIII

_ _ _ _ _ _ _

Look. That’s an accurate depiction of wine glass parts, before assembly.

It’s hot. How hot? So hot that you could fry an egg topless.

Our first day was a mixed bag. I'm not really interested in giving a full description of the resort and town, but it has nice food, music that’s too loud, a nice pool where the music isn't so loud, other people (none of whom we've spoken to, but they all seem fine), some birds, some insects, a spectacular mountain, lots of paragliders, a shingle beach, lots of touristy shops and bars, and a mysterious cat.

I don’t really like the idea of doing a serious holiday journal. It’s not just because of the reasons I listed on day one’s entry, but just because I get bored relaying things. I've lived them once, I don’t want to relive them in pithy sentence form.

It will probably make this whole thing unreadable. Then again, my blog has always been about nothing in particular, so this will just be a continuation of that. But slightly more Turkey.

I don’t really have enough clothes for this trip. I'm going to have to make some new ones out of local materials (kebab meat, fezzes and... oh I can’t even be bothered to be racist. It’s too warm, really. And now I'm stuck in brackets. How embarrassing.)

My problem is that I'm writing this on Day Four, so I can’t just share my current thoughts. I have to remember what my thoughts were two days ago. I can’t even remember what my eye colour was two days ago.

I’ll just skim over the past and get to the present.

CAN I BE THE NEW MICHAEL PALIN NOW PLEASE?

Holiday 2013 - Day One

I’m in Turkey. The country, not the supermodel.

But geography can’t stand in the way of a good blog post. It can’t stand in the way of a bad one either.

Don’t worry though. This won’t be one of those annoying holiday journals, full of sunny photos and descriptions of exotic meals. I hate those things.

As far as I’m concerned, anyone who willingly talks about their own holiday is a filthy scumbag. I don’t even want people to enjoy their holidays. But if they have to enjoy them, they should have the decency to hide that fact from everyone. Even if they’re directly asked how the holiday was, people should simply shrug and mutter something about mosquitoes.

When I see someone outlining the joys of their vacation, I feel sick. And as for people who post holiday snaps on Facebook? Vermin.

Worse than vermin. Liars. Lying vermin. It’s always an airbrushed, carefully edited selection. You never see photos of the corpses and cockroach vomit that comprise most foreign excursions. And to misrepresent travel like that does a disservice to Britain. If you chose the right pictures, even a weekend in Gosport can seem like a technicolour wonderland.

So it won’t be one of those. I’m not going to brag about the fun stuff I’ve been doing. If I mention an event and you think it sounds like fun, you’re wrong. It isn’t fun.

Nothing is fun. Holidays are always terrible, and this one is no exception.

Hmm.

I may have gone a bit too far in the other direction. I do want to avoid gloating, but I don’t want to go the other way and make it into a whiny confessional. I don’t want it to be disaster laden Watchdog misery porn.

It should be something in the middle. I’ll be even handed. I’ll give you the facts and you can make up your own mind. It will be like a David Attenborough nature documentary. Yes, there will be scenes of tremendous beauty. But there will also be brute facts of the natural world. Real life isn’t one or the other. It contains both heady highs and disturbing ant fungi.

I’ll start with the journey. I’ve just realised that I can write an entry for each day, boosting my post count. It will make me look prolific.

We got the plane from Gatwick, and we had a two-hour bus trip on either side of the flight. It was a long day.

At the airport, we saw professional know-it-all John Sessions sitting in Pret A Manger. It was probably the most middle class piece of celebrity spotting ever done. I’ve emailed the story to Heat magazine, but have yet to hear back.

The flight itself was four hours of being in the sky. We were flying at sunset, which I don’t think I’ve done before. We were travelling east, so the sunset was twice as fast. You can get things done more quickly if you work as a team.

The sinking sun made the evening look apocalyptic; big plumes of cloud like atomic candy floss. As night fell, the roads far beneath us glowed like rivers of lava. I ate some biscuits.

We were exhausted by the time we got on our connecting bus. We were told to put up the arm rests on the outside seats in case we were flung out at sharp corners. Lucy’s arm rest didn’t work, so I held on to her leg. I should consider seatbelt as a possible future career path.

We barrelled along the dark alien roads, hot and barely conscious. We passed strange signs in a language that seemed totally not English. It was as though we were in a different country.

We were discussing whether or not Turkey was in Europe. We hoped that it wasn’t, because it will sound more exotic when we tell people about it. But not you, dear blog reader. We know each other too well for me to invent minor geographical milestones. Except the time I went to Super Wales.

I’m pretty sure we drove past a shop called ‘Pedo’, but I don’t want to google it to check.

We arrived at our hotel at 2am and pretended to listen to what the receptionist said. Before being shown to our room, they stuck paper wrist bands on us. This was so we were identified as guests of the hotel, so we could get our free meals and wouldn’t wake up in a bath full of ice, sans kidneys.

I don’t like the wrist band. I don’t like wrist band as two words, even. How does the spell check feel about wristband?

It’s fine. I’ll use that from now on.

There’s something a bit demeaning about wearing it all the time. I don’t like being marked out. Wherever we go, people are judging us as clueless tourists. It’s true, of course. But I prefer the old-fashioned method of exposing my own ignorance through conversation and too much politeness.

The wristband makes me out as a member of a certain group. It’s oppressive. “Now I know what concentration camp tattoos must feel like,” thinks an appalling man who has nothing to do with me.

My first thought was actually the film The Running Man. Or is it just Running Man? I can’t check. The internet here goes in and out. That’s why I’m writing this in Word. You might find the font or formatting of this post unfamiliar. If so, it will give you your own flavour of exotic adventure. This is a reciprocal relationship. You’re feeling what I’m feeling, and I’m guessing what you’re feeling.

In Running Man, there’s a prison camp where the convicts wear explosive collars. If they leave the prison grounds, it detonates, and the wearer gets all blown up and that. I don’t think this wristband is explosive. But I have it on my left hand anyway, so it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

I keep wanting to take it off, but I can’t. It’s waterproof, so at least we can go swimming. But can we swim in acid? There’s plenty of time to find out.

We found our room, which is perfectly nice. I eventually got to sleep. Lucy didn’t.

That was our first day. It seems a bit negative, this post. I’ll grant you that.

But I’d like you to keep in mind a couple of things.

Firstly, we hadn’t yet seen the hotel or the grounds or the town. That was to come in the second day. So any negativity on my part comes from the inside of my head. You can’t blame Turkey for that.

Secondly, I’ve been re-reading Stewart Lee’s book here, and so I’m sure I’ve taken on certain elements of his writing style. He’s sarcastic and glib. I can’t imagine him writing a gushing holiday journal. Having said that, he does describe various interesting places he’s been on tour, interesting people he’s met, and life-changing experiences he’s encountered.

These are all explained through a veil of cynicism. But shining a torch on your life, even if it’s a critical torch, is still reprehensibly arrogant. Just because you’re glib, it doesn’t mean you’re not a dick. Just because your holiday journal is peppered with misery, doesn’t mean you’re not forcing strangers to read about it against their will.

It’s a lesson I have learned, and will continue to ignore. I need to keep this month’s post count up after all.

Stick Your Face In Something

A straw man takes off his straw hat, and conducts a straw pole vault. You can't argue with that. You can't argue with him. He broke the world record and the camel's back.

We could spend another two hours editing and honing that little vignette, but there are more important issues to consider.

More important than the straw hat, and whether he might take off the hat, and then "take off" in a jumping sense. More important than whether the camel was being used in place of a crash mat. More important than whether conducting a straw pole vault would require a straw pole or a straw baton.

There are bigger fish to fry. Don't get bogged down in the minutiae. It will only keep you from what's truly important. The poll has been conducted. The minutiaes are out of luck. The minutiNAYs have it.

Right. Those paragraphs should have weeded out a few readers. To have made it this far, you must have an iron constitution. Sometimes I'll begin a blog post with my most oblique writing, just as a test. I don't want anyone reading this who might be afraid of imaginative and linguistic experimentation.

Some people will come here thinking "I like blogs; I like reading about events and opinions". If that's what you like, you've come to the wrong place. Events don't interest me and I don't have any opinions. Events are like shredded carrot at the bottom of a pre-packed supermarket pasta salad snack. They fill up a lot of space, but nobody wants them.

Opinions are like the little collapsible compact black plastic fork you get in a pre-packed supermarket pasta salad snack. Everyone feels obliged to use them, but you'd be much better off just sticking your face in there and snuffling around like a pig.

This blog has no events and no opinions. It's 100% snuffle. And if you're too precious or too cowardly to stick your face in something, there's no place for you here.

My writing is a journey to the unknown. You have to be willing to take risks. You have to wander not just off the beaten track, but into an alternative dimension where nothing is beaten and tracks are extinct.

You need to be willing to follow me, even when I'm making no sense. For AGES.

Each blog post I write is a training exercise. They are training you to think in different ways, and to commit to things that no-one could possibly find useful. I'm pushing you in mental directions that don't show up on any compass.

I'm literally changing the shape of your brain.

That's why you're feeling so nauseous right now.

***

I'm back from lunch. I had proper salad bar salad. I didn't have any shredded carrot (though it was available) and I ate it with a full-sized metal fork.

Pretty standard, all in all. Pretty standard.

Beauty isn't always dewy tulips and Tea Leoni. Sometimes it can be found in the banal. The beauty of repetition, the beauty of the drudge, the beauty of the default, the plain, the nothing.

The beauty of slowly getting older, like a leaf unfurling, almost imperceptibly, into a urinal.

The beauty of a blog post, sagging further and further down the screen like

an

old

man's

eye

bags.

You just need to know where to look. It's everywhere.

The thing is, gentle reader, when I came back from lunch, I re-read that stuff at the beginning and resolved to be a bit more normal. I thought I'd counterbalance the opening nonsense with something that made sense. I thought I'd write like a normal person writes.

But it didn't pan out that way. I still seem to be the same person I was before lunch. I thought I might have had my madness pickled out of me by thousand island dressing, but apparently not.

I want to be coherent. I do. I want to be a member of society. I want to deal in events and opinions. I want to eat with a little plastic fork. But desire cannot change my course.

All of this is genetic. It's the fault of my DNA. 

The same DNA is going to force me to publish this, even though there aren't any good bits in it. Even the straw man thing at the beginning doesn't work. I wouldn't even tweet it - that's how bad it is.

But I've spent so much time writing that I can't afford to delete it all.

We've been here before. I'm covering old ground. That's what I do.

Who am I kidding? This isn't an anomaly. I should stop apologising for what I am.

I'm a person who writes whatever my brain tells me to. I always have done.

For me to claim that this is all "weird" or "unexpected" or "incoherent" is missing the point. It is me.

I can't disown this. It would be like Eagle-Eye Cherry disowning 'Save Tonight'. You can't throw your essence on the fire without getting charred.

I need to accept that this blog - the blog called Headscissors - is its own animal.

Cut its chains. Let it roam free. Put down a dish of water in case it gets thirsty.

AND STOP BEING EMBARRASSED BY IT.

Yes, it is naked. But animals should be naked.

Cats in jackets make me sick.

Nothing But Now

One blog post per week is the bare minimum.

Film Pitch: BARE MINIMUM - Sex comedy in which a "dorky" teenager (glasses, likes books, etc) must see a certain number of exposed breasts in one day, or he'll be thrown out of his fraternity/damned for all eternity by Billy Bob Thornton's hilarious demon character. I'm happy for either approach. Or both.

Film Pitch: BEAR MINIMUM - A bear is shrunk down to microscopic size and injected into the bloodstream of, let's say, another bear.

Film Pitch: FRÈRE MINI-MUM - Some schlub discovers his brother is really just a small version of his mother. Driving a Mini.

Film Pitch: DAMNED FOR ALL FRATERNITY - Demon bear invited to kegger. The rest writes itself.

I've been distracted today. It's been fun.

(Hilarious fact - I accidentally typed "It's been bun" just then. Imagine! It's been "bun"! Instead of "fun"! Imagine all the fun I could have had with that slip! Remember Bunno?)

I haven't been able to think about anything, and so haven't been depressed. Now I see why stupid people are so happy. Thinking about things has brought me nothing but strife 'n' ulcers. I'm going to start killing braincells.

What's the best way to do it? I can't think. I can't afford to.

Alcohol is said to kill braincells, but I don't think it can. Unless you leave braincells in a shot of tequila overnight. They might dissolve.

I'm moving on from this topic. It is not productive.

The thing is, second-to-second living is fine. I'm very lucky. I'm not in tremendous pain, I'm not hungry or thirsty or cold. I'm in a comfortable seat. My ulcers are metaphorical.

Each second is fine. It's when they're strung together that's the problem. It's like bees. One bee on its own is a delight. But when they're all stuck together in a horizontal line, ploughing through pedestrians like a buzzing hyphen, they're difficult to handle.

If my life wasn't a continuum, I'd be fine. I need some kind of amnesia ray. I could use it every second, as long as I remembered to keep it charged. I'd have to leave notes for myself. It would be like that film Memento, but less Guy Pearcey.

Now is heaven. Then and later are hell.

I need psychological blinders. Horses wear physical ones, and they get on fine. It stops them looking at stuff by the side of the horse road, like advertisements.

I need them in my mind. I'm terrified by the future, so I need something to block my view. I'd rather not even know that the future was there. It's too big. I can't carry all that weight.

Have I written something similar to this in the past? I suspect that I have. I just searched 'blinders' and 'blinkers' but got nothing.

That's the trouble with blinders and blinkers. I blocked out the past as well as the future, and now I can't remember whether or not that's new information.

I'm looking through a pinhole, and all I can see is a flashing cursor.

In fact, my pinhole is so small that I can't even tell that it's flashing. I can see the line or nothing, but never both.

This idea is too abstract, even for me.

Film Pitch: BARE MINIMUM 2: BARE MAXIMUM - The dorky teenager can only see a certain number of breasts. If he exceeds that limit, he will be thrown out of his fraternity/the demon thing again. Not wanting to ration his sexual consumption, he pursues liaisons with women who have had mastectomies. The characters, the actor, the director, and the studio heads are all unsure whether they feel comfortable about this idea, but they've already printed the posters.

In other news, "mastectomy" is spelled with two 't's. Learning this has justified the whole enterprise.

I'm going to try to keep living in the immediate present for the rest of the day. Which means NO PROOFREADING.

Hidden Depths

It struck me that I haven't done a tweet compendium blog post for a long time.

How are my tenses in that sentence?

Should it have struck me that I hadn't done a tweet compendium, or does is strike me that I haven't?

It's not important. Time was invented by fat cats in top hats as a way to sell pendula. Tenses are equally meaningless.

It turns out that I haven't done one since the end of last year. This is mainly because I haven't done much tweeting beyond pimping my blog posts and my jams. This twit-lull seems to be a permanent thing.

But I have done a few actual tweets. And I'm always on the look-out for content. So I'll compile the tweets of 2013 here. If there aren't enough of them, I might extend this post by analysing each of them in far too much detail.

I give my readers what they want. Nobody has said anything about not wanting that.

So buckle up for another edition of:

Thinly-Scraped Japes

(tweets in blue, analysis in black)

***

I'm starting this year as I mean to go off.

[Paul/Editor's Note:  It's difficult to imagine now, but this was topical then. I think I meant "go off" in the expired food sense, rather than the firecracker one.]

***

I can only be friends with people who are exactly as attractive as I am.

[Paul/Editor's Note:  I added in the italics, which I couldn't do on Twitter. This is an excellent tweet because it compels my friends to contemplate their own attractiveness in relation to mine. I wager that a lot of them immediately felt offended, insulting me by proxy. And now they feel bad.

Anyway, this tweet is factually accurate.]

***

Most tweets ending "True story." aren't really stories.

[Paul/Editor's Note:  A seemingly dull tweet, until you realise that the basic version would be saying that they "aren't really true". It's the word "stories" that makes this so effective.]

***

"You are!" "No, YOU are!" "No, YOU are!" "YOU are! *giggle*" - Me and my therapist discussing which of us is the most anxious.

[Paul/Editor's Note:  This has a lot of faults, but there's so much going on in the tweet that you get bamboozled into thinking it makes sense.]

***

Spend the afternoon tagging wine glasses in your friends' Facebook photos.

[Paul/Editor's Note:  I like tweets that are imperatives. I think this would be a genuinely funny thing to do, provided you could tag them as "wine glass". You might have to create a whole new profile for it, but it would be worth it.]

***

"Today's date is the first of March, nineteen ninety-four" is one of those phrases you just don't hear much anymore.

[Paul/Editor's Note:  A bit mainstream, this one. But you have to throw a few of these out there, just to please the less-discerning follower.]

***

A good plate is always slightly convex. My uncle used to work in the plate industry.

[Paul/Editor's Note:  The content of a tweet is only about 5% of its worth. It's all about the way it's structured. Here, the second sentence could have been put in parentheses. This would have made it unfunny. Similarly, the repetition of the word 'plate' (which was of course avoidable) adds an odd mechanical air to the whole thing. A real triumph of awkward phrasing.]

***

Just in case you missed it earlier, everyone was laughing at your accent.

[Paul/Editor's Note:  I think this might be the apex of my "in case you missed it earlier" series of tweets.]

***

I'm already applauding, just on the off-chance that your dog is called Aleister Growley.

[Paul/Editor's Note:  Phrase wordplay in an interesting way, and you can get away with something dreadful.]

***

My hips have never met, but I bet they'd get on.

[Paul/Editor's Note:  I don't have anything to say about this.]

***

Rollercoaster o'clock. Quarter-to-knifefight. Half-past Space-Olympics. Sex noon. These are exciting times...

[Paul/Editor's Note:  Hard work, but a worthy effort. I may have written about this tweet before. Though a solid conceit, it was fairly bog-standard until I came up with 'sex noon'. That's when the whole thing came together.]

***

I'm not willing to sacrifice anything to get anything. Net gain would be zero. THINK.

[Paul/Editor's Note:  This may take several attempts to understand. Try again.]

***

I'm worried that this giant magnet makes me look needy.

[Paul/Editor's Note:  Classic.]

***

I find the smell of Endor very ewokative.

***

That's why I don't try to do jokes any more.

[Paul/Editor's Note:  Quite.]

***

OK. So I've finally realised that DOB stands for Date Of Birth and not, as I previously thought, Death On Barrival.

[Paul/Editor's Note: Perhaps my pick of the bunch. It makes exactly the right amount of sense.]

***

4% of British landfill is made up of the missing ne'er-do-well "v"s.

[Paul/Editor's Note: I try to avoid this level of whimsy, but sometimes it slips out.]

***

I spent most of yesterday inventing fictional WereBears. My two favourites were probably 'Stabbz' and 'Murderer'.

[Paul/Editor's Note: True story.]

***

I wish people would stop judging me by my trident. I'm a complicated person.

***

You're wearing a shirt. Does that make you King of the Sleeves? No, it doesn't.

[Paul/Editor's Note: These two tweets go together as a pair. They require the reader to fill in the blanks. I might have been asking too much of people.]

***

"Ambulance" is one of only three English words to contain all of the invisible vowels.

[Paul/Editor's Note: I tried several variations of this, including "impossible vowels", "invisible consonants" and various different words. I'm not totally happy with the end result, to be honest.]

***

The subtext of the song 'Puff the Magic Dragon' is dragons have names.


[Paul/Editor's Note: Once again, this is all in the phrasing. Avoided using a catastrophic "that" before posting, and it's a good thing I did.]

***

I'm going to name my cat 'Something'. That way, I can tell people they look like something Something the cat dragged in or something.

[Paul/Editor's Note: Another tweet whose strength lies in the punctuation. Even a comma before the final "or something" would turn this into an ugly mess.]

***

Twenty-three.

That's not too bad.

I'll do this again in six months. I may not have any new tweets by then, but I can always re-analyse these ones.

Times and tastes change. I might be wishing I'd used that comma.

Cut

Yesterday, there was a power cut in our office. We were unable to do any work, so we all made our own entertainment. Some people drew pictures, some people tidied their desks, some people sat around and watched those people do those things.

I wrote the following:

***

There was a power cut in our building this morning. We have power now, but none of our systems are working. The internet isn’t working. None of us are working.

I’m bored, so here I am. Typing this into a Word document like some common urchin.

Urchins are everywhere. The rats of the sky.

You’re never more than ten feet away from an urchin. If you work for an Urchin Shelter, it’s even less.

And don’t get me started on sea urchins. The rats of the sky of the sea. Filthy. They spread disease and cover Atlantean monuments with their droppings. You can barely even see Neptune’s Column. We need a cull.

Besmirchin’ the urchin. That’s my bag. Deal with it.

Someone has come round to say that we may have another forty-five minutes of nothing. More than enough time to write and manually format a screenplay.

INT. CLINIC – DAY

A row of bricks and mortar. Pull out to reveal more rows of bricks and mortar, all stuck together with yet more mortar. This is a WALL.

An old fashioned rotary phone rings. It is answered by LLOYD BORL. He has brown coat.

BORL

Hello? What?

His hands shake. He puts the receiver back on the bit that holds the receiver, disconnecting the call.

NAOMI (OS)

Who was that?

BORL

Wrong number.

NAOMI walks into view. She is in her early twenties, and will be for another two years. Dark hair, blue eyes, smartly dressed, holding golf bag w/golf clubs (woods etc).

NAOMI

Are you OK?

BORL is as white as a white sheet. He is scared [ASK ACTOR TO COVEY WITH FACE].

BORL

Fine. I’m’ll be fine. Have you had

a chance to look at my proposal?

NAOMI

Not yet. I can’t find my glasses.

Must have left them at the 18^th.

BORL

Hole?

NAOMI

Yes.

The phone rings again. BORL gasps, but realistic. He waits.

NAOMI

Do you want me to get that?

BORL

No.

NAOMI picks up the phone.

NAOMI

Hello? (BEAT) Martyn!

With a ‘y’! How are you?

Great! Yes, he’s here. Hold on.

(TO BORL) It’s Martyn with a y.

He wants to speak to you.

BORL has since died.

CUT TO:

EXT. BICESTER – EIGHT

A red sports car races through the city streets. It flies straight through a red light, causing a bus to brake suddenly and break gradually. The driver shouts and waves his fist.

The car speeds on. To avoid traffic, it mounts the pavement. Pedestrians scatter. A dog climbs a lamppost; one of those newspaper box things gets all driven into.

Sirens blare.

A police car is in pursuit. Inside is the police officer CYRENS BLAIR. He’s the most attractive person in the car.

BLAIR

A car chase.

Static signals the beginning of a two-way radio message.

RADIO VOICE

Suspect has been confirmed as

JANE LEGGE. She’s wanted in connection

to last month’s farmers’ market

bombing, and should be considered

dangerous and extremely armed.

BLAIR

A radio message.

The sports car races towards the biggest suspension bridge in Bicester. It weaves in and out of traffic, the sun glinting off its shiny sections.

BLAIR’s police car is catching up. He skilfully avoids a pyramid of milk bottles that some school children have been building as part of a competition.

BLAIR

Milk bottles.

BLAIR’s car is almost bumper-to-bumper with the sports car. He shouts through a megaphone at the fugitive.

BLAIR

Amplified voice.

No response.

BLAIR pulls out his gun and fires at the sports car’s wing mirror.

The radio crackles into life again.

RADIO VOICE

Blair? Come in Blair.

What are you doing?!

Cease fire! You’re gonna

kill someone!

BLAIR picks up the talking-into bit of the radio.

BLAIR

Solution.

We close-up on the shattered mirror. The bullet has smashed it in such a way that the sun is reflected into the eyes of the driver. We don’t see the driver yet, but this information is conveyed using filming/cinematography and the orchestral score.

The sports car swerves one way, then the other, then clips the central reservation and (if budget allows) rolls over several times before coming to a stop.

BLAIR stops his car and gets out. He walks slowly towards the sports car with his gun raised.

BLAIR

(SHOUTING) Bridge encounter.

The door of the sports car swings open, and a leg steps out. The leg’s owner is JANE LEGGE. But as we pan up, we see that her whole head is covered in C4 explosives. 

There's a tiny gap for her to see through. So the whole sunlight blinding thing does work after all, Sarah.

LEGGE

Bmffff lmmmf grrrjjrr fffn.

(OR OTHER MUFFLED NOISE)

BLAIR

Amplify voice.

LEGGE

Bmffff lmmmf grrrjjrr fffn.

A helicopter circles, making bits of paper blow around a lot, and there’s a searchlight.

BLAIR holds his ground.

LEGGE takes one step forward. BLAIR cocks his gun.

A loud speaker from the helicopter blasts out.

HELICOPTER VOICE

Put your hands over

your bomb-head and

lie on the floor.

LEGGE looks up at the helicopter. Then at BLAIR. At least she seems to be looking – her face is obscured by the C4, as mentioned above. But the eye-slit lines up with the helicopter.

BLAIR looks up at the helicopter. Then at LEGGE. Slowly, deliberately, he lowers his gun to the floor.

He walks slowly forward with his hands outstretched in a gesture of not holding anything.

BLAIR

No ploy.

LEGGE looks uncertain through body language.

BLAIR walks closer.

LEGGE looks up at the helicopter.

BLAIR

Potential explosion:

undesirable.

LEGGE

Mmmff rrrrnnnnnnn

MMnnnnrrrr gnnnnn!

BLAIR is visibly shocked at this statement. He starts to run away from LEGGE, waving warning waves at the helicopter.

But it’s too late.

LEGGE’s head explosives explode in an enormous explosion. It takes out a huge section of the bridge. Its plume of fire hits the helicopter, which falls out of the sky, decimating the milk bottle pyramid.

BLAIR runs and jumps off the bridge, narrowly avoiding a huge shrapnel cloud.

BLAIR

Jumping.

He dives into the Bicester river, with chunks of concrete raining down around him.

He sinks beneath the surface. Underwater, he speaks a single word, which we can hear because of bubbles.

BLAIR

Martyn.

The ‘y’ makes a *special* bubble.

***

The forty-five minute estimate turned out to be way off. The systems weren't fixed before home time. Everyone had wasted their whole day.

Everyone except me.

I wrote a screenplay.

I do all my best work when I'm not contractually obliged to work.

I need to find out the name of a river in Bicester. Then I can send this bad boy off.

Bun

I'm thinking of taking a puppet show to Edinburgh next year. The puppet will be an anthropomorphic Irish rockstar bread roll called Bunno.

Like Bono, but a bun.

Yes, it would be better if he was called Buno. The double-n makes it look wrong. But people might think it was pronounced like Juno. Boo-no isn't funny.

I think I'll get around it by not writing his name on the poster. Bunno works just fine when said out loud.

Bunno.

He'll have sunglasses and a goatee beard, because that's what Bono looked like when I was last paying attention.

I haven't worked out the content of the show. Will he sing? Will there be baked-goods versions of the other members of U2, like The Edge and whoever the other ones are? Possibly.

I'll do the voice. I can do a passable (and not at all offensive) Irish accent, though I've never properly tried ventriloquism. I'm sure I can work it out by next summer.

I'm just workshopping the idea.

Me: Hi Bunno!

Bunno: Hi Paul! 'Tis a fine day and no mistake!

M: How are you?

B: Grand! I've just written a new song!

M: Is it about buns?

B: ... Yes.

M: Hey Bunno, I know you've done a lot of work for charity, but do you feel that some of your behaviour when it comes to tax evasion makes you a bit of a hypocrite?

B: Well Paul, that's a good question. Of course you're associating me with the musician Bono, even though I am clearly a bun. It's understandable. I have the goatee and the accent after all. But I'm happy to answer your question in his place.

Accusations of hypocrisy can be dangerous. Obviously, no-one likes a double standard. And yet there are differences between the ideals and the behaviour of everyone. No-one is perfect, ta be sure now! 

There's a real risk that fear of hypocrisy can stifle changes in behaviour. People are put off from trying to make a difference because they're worried their own faults will be cast in sharp relief.

It leads to a situation where a multimillionaire rock star who does nothing for charity, and lives a life of ostentatious selfishness is somehow treated with more respect than those who aspire to goodness but fall short of their own high standards.

My human namesake is at least trying to make the world a better place. He should be lauded for that. It would be easy for him to become complacent with his politics, just as he is with his TERRIBLE music. But he's out there. You might argue with his approach, but you can't deny that he's using his prominence to initiate change.

M: That's very interesting, Bunno. I'd never thought of it that way.

B: Of course you hadn't, ya eejit!

M: Bunno?

B: Yes?

M: Do you think your friendliness with the Pope might get you upgraded to a hot cross bun?

B: I... what does that even mean?

M: Because of... (MUTTERING) because of buns.

[ENTER A BAGUETTE VERSION OF LARRY MULLEN JR]

Larry: You had to look up my name on Wikipedia, didn't you?

M: ... Yes.

***

Obviously, it needs a bit of honing.

Good old Bunno.

The title of this post, "Bun", is also a pun on the U2 song "One".

One, pun, bun.

I'm taking the rest of the day off.