Wilhelm Squirrel

January 1st 2022 This made me laugh far too hard.

Squirrel: Arghhhh!! Pigeon: You OK Hon?

Chase Me! 13-12-2021

The two boys having a chase. Food was guzzled fairly quickly – seems to be their night for a feast after Fatbum hoovered up a dinner yesterday.

Long-Tail

This is Long-tail the male fox. he's enjoying some dog biscuits and egg here. Just look at that saliva and listen to the crunching..

The egg gets taken away for later.

The female is “Fatbum” and she's seen here enjoying some cooked chicken whilst Long-tail tries to get to the bowl too. These two appear to be a pair as he's patiently waiting for her to finish eating (he came back later on his own).

Compare this rather gentlemanly behaviour (or fear that she'll whoop him one) with this squabble with Junior the other male. Junior has a rather distinctive Mohawk on his head and he's slightly smaller than Long-tail.

Verse 1

Opening Black Leather Books C#m G#m Neatly marked with favourite ribbon sheen F#. E B. C#m Lay that story of creation Was the human soul obscene to be? Laid aside for thousand years Open now in your great time of need.

2 bar bridge / C#m B

Verse 2

In a castle paved with velvet Growing flowers upside down it seems You remember every sunset Keep a record of your children's dreams.....

2 bar bridge / C#m B

Chorus

All of your children waiting in slumber C#m B C#m. B All of your children waiting in slumber Sad golden children waiting in slumber (oh when...)

#Instrument bridge middle 8 (Inst. verse with acoustic guitar and piano)

2 bar intro

Chorus 2

All of your children waiting in slumber All of your children waiting in slumber Sad golden children waiting in slumber (oh when...)

Chorus 3

All of your children waiting in slumber All of your children waiting in slumber Sad golden children waiting in slumber (oh when...)

Chorus 4

All of your children waiting in slumber All of your children waiting in slumber Sad golden children waiting in slumber (oh when...)

The Lovin' Spoonful

v1

Didn't want to have to do it Didn't want to have to break your heart Didn't want to have to do it I kept a-hopin' from the very start

But you Kept on a-tryin' And I knew That you'd end up a-cryin' And I knew I didn't wanna have to do it at all

v2

Didn't want to have to do it Didn't want to have to be the one to say it Didn't want to have to do it I kept a-hopin' there'd be somethin' to delay it again Yeah, but then

No, I didn't wanna have to be the one to say “the end”

Middle 8

Was a time that I thought our love could fly And never never fall Why should I suppose we were never really meant To be close to each other… At all at all at all..

v3

Didn't want to have to do it Didn't want to have to be the one to say it Didn't want to have to do it I kept a-hopin' there'd be somethin' to delay it again Yeah, but then

No, I didn't wanna have to be the one to say “the end”

#Instrumental break – guitar solo

v4

Didn't want to have to do it Didn't want to have to be the one to say it Didn't want to have to do it I kept a-hopin' there'd be somethin' to delay it again Yeah, but then

No, I didn't wanna have to be the one to say “the end” – Cass Elliot goes off on a lovely harmonic variation here

Where the crane flies through the marshes And the turtles sun their shells Where the water rat goes swimmin' That's where my swamp girl dwells Where the sunlight never wanders And the moonlight never falls Where the water's black with the devil's track That's where my swamp girl calls What did she say there The girl with the golden hair To make me follow her down there How did she look when she took me by the hand Tonight her hair will float in the water And the gold will no longer shine It will spread like a fan in the water While she makes a mysterious sign I have seen that sign before Her eyes aren't like the whippoorwill And her eyes aren't like the frog Her eyes are like the damned bat Stretchin' in the dawn I have seen her face in the water And the chilling look in her eyes And if you see her, then you must flee her Never follow where disillusion lies Or will you go to the girl with the golden hair Down there where her work is done Will you embrace the night And turn your back on the sun She'll say its better there in the water Where it's cool and calm and serene She will call you to come to the water To a world made of emerald green I have heard that call before I can hear it when I'm teary I can hear it when I'm old I can hear it when the joy of living Seems to have lost its glow For my Swamp Girl lives inside of me And she leaves me pale and wan She dares me, she tears me Like paper dolls are torn Calling “Come to the deep Where your sleep is without a dream” (Come to the deep where your sleep is without a dream) Calling.... (Come....)

Written whilst waiting for Geir to turn up to see Howe Gelb, or was it Robyn Hitchcock? At the Union Chapel in Islington. One of my favourite venues in London. I did walk out of a Residents show I went to there, but then, everything had been going wrong that week and being shouted at by a mad man in a cow costume wasn't helping my mood.

The Compton Arms is a small pub off of a small side road in Islington. It’s been there a long time and by it’s very nature of being in a small side road, time has left it alone. I walked in there on Tuesday evening to wait for a friend to turn up. The nature of an old pub means that a lot of dead ex-drinkers like to still go there, particularly if there is nothing too vulgar or modern. The Compton Arms is this type of pub. On walking in, the small bar is occupied by a handful of locals who have been clearly drinking for most of the day. The dead prefer the slightly quieter tables to the side of the bar. On one of these tables sits the ghost of George Orwell quietly nursing a pint of brown ale whilst watching the living at the bar. To the table opposite him is the Earl of Compton, clearly worse for wear and smelling of the river Thames. He has duckweed in his hair and fronds of pondweed draped across the epaulettes of a once smart frock coat. George Orwell idly picks at a pack of ready salted peanuts.

I order a pint of Bonkers Conkers. The bar lady asks me about me choice.

• Bonkers Conkers? Have you had it before? • Yes, but I can’t remember when.

Man at the bar asks me:

• What does it taste off? • I suppose, slightly like Conkers. Have you ever licked a conker? That slightly metallic autumnal taste? • Sounds delicious.

At the living end of the bar a tired married couple in their fifties are clearly ruined. They have been drinking for England for the whole day. She clutches a half drained glass of white wine. He is wearing a brown trilby and sports a neatly trimmed moustache. They are accompanied by a lady clutching a small sleeping dog and a large man with a shaved head and tattoos.

Tattooed man turns to his audience.

• I read it in the paper today. They have a tablet they are proposing for the working man to curb drinking. They say it will be prescribed for anyone who drinks over three pints a day.

Brown Trilby replies:

• Three pints? I know how many pints I’ve had by counting my change at the end of the evening. I know I get a twenty pence piece change for every round.

He reaches into his blazer pocket.

• Hmm.. Nine pints. Time to go home I think.

The bar lady nods in agreement.

• Just mind the bloody stair carpet this time.

I join George Orwell at his table and watch on. George isn’t saying much. The Earl of Compton is saying even less. Thames mud is grained deep into his forehead and his shoulders are sloped forward. George Orwell eats another peanut slowly.

The lady with the sleeping dog hears a tune from the speakers above their table. It is not intrusive but there if you listen. Too loud and the ghosts would not stick around.

• Oh I like this one. It’s a soul singer? What’s his name?

Brown Trilby briefly wakes from his alcohol slumber?

• Soul? • How do you turn a duck into a soul singer? • You stick him in an oven until he’s Bill Withers…

His wife makes a decisive move. Time to go. They slowly stagger off to the door and leave.

I ask for a refill of my Bonkers Conkers. It’s tasty and refreshing. I make a hand motion of a tipping glass to George Orwell. He nods quietly and I bring a pint back to the table for him too.

Five minutes pass and the music changes again. It’s someone imploring us to do the Hippy Hippy Shake. Neither George Orwell or The Earl of Compton appear to be much in the mood for The Hippy Shake. In fact, the Earl of Compton looks positively ruined. His clothes emit a haze of foul Thames water.

The pub door opens. It is the man with the brown Trilby hat. He sits down next to the Earl of Compton. George Orwell smiles at him and raises his pint in his right hand.

• Stair Carpet.

Says the man in the brown trilby.

George Orwell carefully takes a peanut out from the packet. He skilfully takes aim with a curled index finger and thumb and propels the peanut in to the Earl of Compton’s pint. It sinks slowly in a cloud of bubbles.

In memory of John Cleary

Kilburn: So I’m stuck outside a house for an hour waiting for someone to turn up for an appointment and I gaze up idly to the first floor windowsill of one of the flats. A truly enormous and weird looking bird looks down at me with a look of complete contempt. This bird looks as close as it is possible to look, like an avian version of an obese Las Vegas period Elvis. He has rather filthy white plumage on his chest and back and what looks like a black quiff of feathers on his head. He can barely move he is so fat. His feet I notice are webbed and very dirty. Beside him there is a metal tray which he lazily pecks at. He scowls at me with a look of arrogant boredom, spreads his filthy tail feathers and craps extravagantly over the parapet of the front door porch.

An elderly lady walks past and notices me looking at this debauched avian Elvis:

‘Ah, so you’ve met my friend. Nobody knows where he came from but he’s been here years. He’s some sort of foreign sea bird who got lost in Kilburn years ago. He used to perch on the church opposite but he has moved over to this house as the people in that flat feed him and sometimes let him in to their flat’.

‘Everyone on this street knows of this bird, he’s been here years’.

And with that she slowly walks off. And I’m left looking up at this sickly Falstaffian feathered celebrity who scowls back at me and unleashes another showering torrent of crap.

Dexys Midnight Runners’ made a cover version of “Jackie Wilson Said” by Van Morrison. In 1982, They performed it on Top of the Pops, but in front of a picture of Scottish darts player Jocky Wilson. There remains some debate as to whether it was a misunderstanding or a deliberate act.

My Beauty is a solo album by Kevin Rowland, lead singer of Dexys Midnight Runners. It was released in 1999, eleven years after his solo debut The Wanderer. It is notable for the album cover on which Kevin Rowland is inexplicably wearing a Basque. It did not sell well.

In the early 90’s I attended the Fleadh festival in Finsbury Park in North London with my older friend Jim.

It was an unusually warm and sunny day and revellers moved between the stages with their plastic pints.

I’m enjoying an Australian band in one of the side tents but Jim is anxiously nudging me to go catch “Van The Man” on the main stage. I’m in no hurry, I’m several pints refreshed and I’m enjoying the band. In the corner of my eye there is a slightly short and very thin woman with dark curly hair, unusually long flat shoes, a floral frock and just a hint of a face I recognise. I tilt my pint and move out to the field of the main stage.

By now Van the Man is in full swing with his band. He’s playing “Caravan” and he’s giving it the full soul treatment. Nah-nah-nahs and a call and response with the sax player.

By now I’m horribly drunk and I’m not feeling it.

I then do something so stupid that I live in fear for my safety to this day.

There’s a pause in the music.

I shout out: “Play Brown Girl in the Ring!”

There is a stunned silence in the crowd.

Jim mutters: “Oh Jesus Christ. No.”

Van the Man is frozen in front of the microphone. From beneath his fedora there is a vein in his neck that is pulsing.

He stands there for what feels like a minute.

A white knuckled hand balls tightly into a fist. He snaps the headstock clean off of his acoustic guitar and the strings curl out in the exctasy of sudden release.

The sax player moves towards him: “Van.. please.. not now”.

Van is a short and portly man but he springs like a gazelle from the main stage.

It starts as a walk and the crowd part nervously. The vein in his neck beats a faster tempo.

He is now running towards me at surprising speed.

“Run!”, Jim shouts and I drop my plastic pint glass.

I’m through the main gates of Finsbury Park, revellers flee in chaos. I’m heading off as fast as I can along Finsbury Road and towards Blackstock Road. I’m breathless and terrified but I hear the heavy rasping breath and pounding feet of Van behind me. He’s not letting up.

A whispered voice from a side street; “Quick! This way!”

I follow a short, thin lady into a side alleyway and she knocks on the side door of an old pub. “Too-tye-aye”, she whispers to the door and behind the door, the latch opens and we are led down a dark corridor, up a long staircase into a large dark room.

As my eyes adjust, I see a group of women in Edwardian dress, but they are all tall and some have the trace of a five o’ clock shadow.

At the locked door we can hear Van Morrison, hammering and howling like a wounded bull.

A candle is lit in the room and to the rear of the wall there is a large poster of the darts player, Jocky Wilson.

I look closer at my rescuer. The short thin lady I had met earlier is in fact Kevin Rowland and the group of women are Dexy’s Midnight Runners.

“Big” Jim Paterson, in a long floral frock, clutching a trombone case speaks first:

“In 1982, we performed ‘Jacky Wilson Said’ on Top of the Pops, but in front of a picture of Scottish darts player Jocky Wilson.

It was all a terrible misunderstanding

Van Morrison has NEVER forgiven us.

To this day, we hide for our lives as women.’

Kevin Rowland looks at me with a sorrowful but kind expression:

“It’s ok, you are one of us now. Too-tye-aye sisters”

‘Too-rye-aye”, the band chorus together.

I am handed a dress.

With apologies to Hunter S.

We were somewhere around the Brenzett straight on the edge of the Dungeness when the Battenburg cake began to take hold. We can’t stop here, this is Trilobite country!; Shouted Pam Ayers through a mouth crammed with Battenburg, spilling sticky crumbs on the dashboard of my open top Morgan. Good people eat good cake! She continued, pounding the melamine dashboard for emphasis. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of Greatstone and the world. Whatever it meant. Strange memories on this nervous night in Romney Sands. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. Dymchurch in the middle nineties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . . History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened. My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Bailiff’s Sargent, half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big Austin Allegro, across the St Mary’s Bay drainage outlet at a hundred miles an hour wearing Flared trousers and tie dyed shirt jacket . . . booming through the Folkstone ring road at the lights of Brookland and Lydd on Sea, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. . . . There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across St. Mary’s Bay, then up the New Inn or down 101 to The City of London Pub. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . . And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . . So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Hythe and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

For anyone who knew me in Romney Marsh. See you on the other side.

Reflecting on this piece it was written before the EVENTS of you know what. It still makes me laugh in a an odd way as it was based on a lunchtime discussion with work friends when I worked in an office in Central London. How were we to know that this was going to happen.. for real....

It’s the first week into the global catastrophe that has wiped out most of the population apart from a small group of survivors at Croydon IKEA.

One group of survivors has commandeered the bedding and soft furnishings department. Their leader has stockpiled all of the IKEA meatballs. He is a big stocky man with a commanding presence and no one in his group of survivors would dare challenge him for more than their share of a meatball a day. Today he is on edge. There is something out there moving beyond the soft furnishings. He is holding a large pair of binoculars and scanning through a shower curtain. This man is survival expert Ray Mears.

From behind a futon, a nervous pair of eyes is hiding from him. It is a scout from the rival surviving party. He is a tall thin man with long dark hair, a goatee and the remains of a floral shirt which has been partially ripped to fashion a sweatband to tie back his long flowing hair. It is interior designer Lawrence Lewellen-Bowen and he is fighting for his life.

The rival survivors in the kitchens and garden section of IKEA are nervous. Their leader is a short thin man with a quick and tactical mind. For days they have survived only on IKEA Dime cake and the sickly sugar desert has quickened their nerves and rotted their teeth.

Lawrence looks across anxiously to their leader and nods. Their leader nods back. With the stub of an IKEA pencil he gouges out the sugar rotted stump of a molar tooth. Tonight they will bring the attack. Tonight they will dine on IKEA meatballs but for now they will wait for that right moment. This man is survivalist Bear Grylls.

Ray Mears refocuses his large binoculars and frowns.

Something is out there beyond the shower curtain.

An extremely tall, physically robust elderly woman is standing in the portico front of Romney Bay House Hotel. She smiles beatifically and wipes her large hands on her gingham pinafore whilst gazing out to the Littlestone dawn light.

She reaches for a small pouch of tobacco in her apron, pulls out a dark brown liquorice cigarette rolling paper and expertly rolls a cigarette without once locking down.

She lights and inhales, blowing out the smoke through her large fleshy bulbous nose.

Romney Bay House Hotel is an attractive 1920s seaside house that was first designed by architect Sir Clough Williams-Ellis for the American actress and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper.

Now a 10-room hotel set just paces back from Romney Bay, it delivers nostalgic charm and uninterrupted views over the Channel.

It is also owned by this unusually tall and physically imposing lady. A lady who once led a very different an unconventional life but as this is Romney Marsh and some things are just normal for Romney Marsh nobody enquires as to what this past may have been. All but the most keenly observant would have recognised Gladys Mills as she once was or now indeed as she was now. Not least of course because in all conventional senses of reality, she was supposed to be very dead indeed.

Gladys Mills, as we shall reveal in her most earthly and recognisable incarnation, finishes her cigarette and waves to her hotel guest. A certain very short Japanese man who is dressed as a bumblebee as he sets of from the hotel along Madeira road, heading off towards Greatstone.

She has warmed to Trash Kawasaki. Although he shared little knowledge of English language, he was clean, polite and respectful. Gladys Mills didn't ask questions of Kawasaki and he asked none of hers – but for a quizzical eyebrow he raised at an old photograph kept in the hallway.

There was something oddly familiar about this photo. Indeed in 1967 when it was taken, Gladys Mills or Mrs Mills as she was known then was very famous indeed.

This photograph was a revelation of this past life. As time had passed Gladys Mills had amused herself with this revelatory clue; almost as if to test the theory that is was indeed possible to hide in plain sight.

While working as the superintendent of a typing pool in the office of the Paymaster General in London, Mrs Mills performed as a honky-tonk pianist in the evenings and weekends. She was spotted by a talent scout while playing piano with a semi-professional band at a dance at the Woolford Golf Club in Essex. At the age of 43, in December 1961, she made her first television appearance on The Billy Cotton Show.

By the end of January 1962, she would be a household name, rising to fame during the same period as her stable-mates The Beatles, with whom she had shared space at Abbey Road Studios. It was here that she was introduced to the delights of initially Marijuana and later to industrial quantities of LSD.

She was signed to a management contract by Eric Easton, who later went on to manage The Dave Clark Five and The Rolling Stones, and then signed a recording contract with Parlophone.

Mills was also a successful recording artist overseas in territories where there were large numbers of expatriates from the UK, including Australia, Canada and Hong Kong. As an older and somewhat genial but physically imposing lady, she became an extremely reliable and efficient provider of psychotropic narcotics to many in the world of show business.

Her oeuvre consisted of British and international standards, plus cover versions of contemporary hits. Her covers included “Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend”, “Hello, Dolly!”, “I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles” and “Yellow Submarine”, all of which were re-released by EMI in their 2003 compilation The Very Best of Mrs Mills.

However, the circumstances of the photograph in the hallway of Romney Bay House are almost completely unknown until now.

In April 1967, Mrs Mills by now had undergone a profound psychological, spiritual and philosophical change from her experiences with potent LSD, Ayahuasca and Peyote buttons.

Gone was the desire to make yet another light entertainment album of honky-tonk piano.

Earlier that year Mrs Mills had won a significant asset (won in a game of bridge with a bitter Rolf Spießer), which is proudly displayed on an album cover for an album that was not to be released or as we shall reveal here, made to disappear.

“Look Mum, No Hands!” proclaims the photograph, an album cover found in the hallway of Romney Bay House.

Mrs Mills is pictured – arms aloft, in full psychedelic revelry, in front of a Theremin and behind her gleam the lights and loomed cables of an enormous Moog Synthesizer.

When the album was submitted to EMI/Parlophone in 1967, the radical artistic shift from light Honky Tonk piano covers to...

To a full blown synthesizer interpretation of György Ligeti's Lux Aeterna was, to be frank, too radical a change in artistry, even for the heady days of swinging 1967.

Mills of course was broken and devastated at this rejection of her finest artistic statement, having poured months of work in to this masterpiece and insisted that she would not record Honky Tonk piano favourites again.

There then followed a year of stand off and legal threats. Mills, having signed a deal with EMI had certain contract obligations and debts to fulfil.

But what Mrs Mills also had was a certain cunning, shrewdness and an address book filled with her many, many clients of some of the finest narcotics in the business.

As a settlement, out of court, out of sight and out of all public knowledge, she was paid a substantial amount of money and given a new identity as the proprietor of Romney Bay House Hotel. A remote coastal hotel where she would simply disappear.

Buried deeply in the vaults of EMI, there may just be the original master tapes of what Mrs Mills intended “Look Mum, No Hands” to be.

Instead, aware of a loss of a ready market for Honky Tonk arrangements of popular favourites, Mrs Mills was replaced by a body double who re-recorded “Look Mum, No Hands” with only the album title remaining to hint at what could have been. No trace of psychedelic experimentation of dalliance with one of the most important avant-garde composers in the latter half of the twentieth century.

Mrs Mills crumples her rolled cigarette underfoot, smiles to herself beatifically, and returns to the warmth of her hallway. She delicately brushes a thin layer of dust from the photograph.

Kylie Unlikely awakens early:

The storm outside has passed and there is a fresh smell of ozone and seaweed in the air. Fingered shafts of light flicker through dust motes in the upper room of the water tower and there are lucid green and yellow reflections on the ceiling of the ripples from the Caleocath's tank.

She wraps herself, naked in a white sheet and squints through the window to the sea wall outside.

Although so early, she could see a small figure of a man. A very small figure of a man. A very small figure of a man, dressed as a bumblebee, making his way along the sea wall.

The short man pauses his walk, taps at a small canvas satchel at his side, and reaches inside. He sets himself on the edge of the concrete sea wall, small legs dangling and swinging. He pulls out a small triangular snack; a parcel of rice wrapped in black nori and chews with enthusiasm whilst gazing out at the distance. A horizon marked by the monolith of the Mulberry Harbour, an abandoned war relic submerged a mile away in the low tidal mud.

Kylie looks on from the tower, still half asleep and clutching the sheet around herself. A thought takes shape; she recognises this man. But why?

The diminutive figure of Trash Kawasaki finishes his rice parcel, rubs his hands together, taps his bag as if to reassure he has remembered something.

Inexplicably, he feels a sensation of being watched. He turns to look upwards towards the large Victorian water tower behind him but the sun from the reflecting glass windows makes him squint and shield his eyes. Just for a moment he could imagine the figure of a tall woman in a white sheet, darting backwards from the upper window.

He tucks his long black ponytail into the back of his black and yellow jumper; brushes crumbs of rice from his long thin drooping moustache. From the canvas satchel he retrieves a combination of scarf and bonnet, black and yellow, to match his jumper. The bonnet is fitted with small black antennae.

The solitary bee, he decides, on this fine October day, has important work to do. He was a good three miles from his destination. The Sentinels would be here soon. He had warned them but they were insistent.

Trash Kawasaki sets off. The sea front is again still and empty.

---

From the large tank in the top of the water tower, there are bubbles from the Caelocanth. The trouble with telepathy was that at some point, Kylie Unlikely would register the recognition of what he had picked up outside: A small Japanese man. A small Japanese man dressed as a bumblebee. Namely; Trash Kawasaki.

He could mask this thought from her for now, as Kylie Unlikely was showering; the morning music a gentle ambient remix of an old classic and favourite of hers – “Burp” by Billy Roberts.

Bryn Neon fidgeted in his studio chair, shuffling a pack of pornographic playing cards as he was wont to do in moments of deep thought.

Damn these cards.

They had cost him a fortune many times over, not least with the Spießer brothers, that Unlikely woman and the incident with the Caelocanth. He loved and hated that damn fish. Best years of his career and some stupid gamble and then; gone. A stupid and foolish bet, but was there any other type of bet?

Neon looked up at the studio clock. Things were not going so well. Perhaps it was time to break open the “Oh, Bleak Strategy!” cards. Always a risky move. The last time he had broken them out, Frigid Ludo nearly split up.

The card had said: “Pretend the drummer is invisible”. They carried this instruction on for a week until the poor man broke down and set light to his residential studio chalet. The album sold well though, although the drummer was since arrested trying to smash the singer's car windows with the bassist's face.

Neon flicked a switch on his studio console to speak to today's useful idiot in the vocal booth: Fat Billy Roberts.

“O.K. Billy, let's try this now.”

Billy Roberts was bored, stoned, drunk, and an unhappy man.

Billy had it all and didn't want it anymore. A career in a boy band, a mansion, expensive cars and a drug habit. Billy was the Golden Goose who could only lay golden eggs.

Today's session was for Billy's fifth album. The previous four had gone multiple platinum and almost the entire music industry waited with bated breath for this album. He could do no wrong.

Except Billy very much wanted to do wrong. He wanted out. He wanted sabotage, failure, anonymity; and mostly he just wanted to stay indoors with his model trains and take drugs.

This is why Bryn Neon, the most expensive and unlikely

.. No, don't think of her..

That's not going to help.

The most unlikely producer, for a mainstream pop star that is..

Bryn Neon was hired by Billy to make a record that would get him fired from this Faustian record contract.

“Ok Billy. Ready?”

Billy took a huge gulp of his soft drink whilst he was chewing on a mouthful of soft mints.

Billy belched; richly and sonorously into the expensive studio microphone. Bryn Neon, having picked an “Oh, Bleak Strategy!” card from the deck that morning did as they instructed:

All of your effects units: At once.

Nearly ten minutes of looped belch. Stretched, chorused, flanged, echoed, reverbed, bit crushed warped, distorted.... He had to admit, this was interesting stuff.

Billy Roberts by now was already unconscious in the vocal booth, drool dripping from the side of his open mouth and the floor strewn with countless sweet wrappers.

To Bryn Neon, it was just another job, one admittedly that kept him in pornographic playing cards for life.

To Billy Roberts it was a catastrophe.

The record was released to initially confused reviews.

Slowly but surely; it was hailed as an avant-garde masterpiece: The damn record sold more copies than all of his previous boy-band records and his solo career put together. He was the toast of the music industry again and was hailed as a tortured genius. Everyone wanted a piece of Billy Roberts and that extraordinary sounding record. He was more depressed than ever and rich beyond his wildest comprehension.

Everywhere he went, people asked him how he achieved that sound.

Kylie Unlikely is listless. The wind howls outside of the water tower and it is a dark and moonless night. The Caelocanth glides next to her in his tank, watching her through his slightly cloudy eyes. Spread in front of the tank are copies of Angler's Weekly, an effort Kylie made to make him comfortable in their new home. There are soft bubbles from the tank, but she can sense her friend is not at ease.

Kylie reaches for her TV remote; scans through the channels and settles on a music documentary:

“Die Spießer”, a documentary on the German synthesizer brothers from the late 1960's.

Rolf Spießer and Heinz Spießer are on a low stage in front of an audience of about four hundred students. The footage is in black and white and this is some sort of student gathering place and everyone here is studious in not showing any emotion or any hint of having a good time. The room is full of cigarette smoke.

Rolf and his brother Heinz are in black polo necks and both are making some interminable droning noise from some indistinct boxes in front of them. They occasionally frown at their contraptions and adjust dials from time to time.

The music pauses. There is a ripple of barely interested applause.

“Danke.” Says Rolf.

Heinz looks towards his brother and nods.

They start a new song. A bandsaw like drone fills the room. Rolf hits the panel of his instrument with a regular beat and notices that his brother jerks spasmodically to the beat. The audience are now interested and are up on their feet. The music gathers in intensity, Heinz's hands jerk erratically and his eyes are rolled upwards – there are beads of sweat forming on his forehead.

Rolf has disconnected an earth wire to Heinz's instrument panel. It is a petty revenge for years of sibling rivalry. The voltage passes through his brother's body in time to his frantic beating of his fists on his own instrument panel.

The audience are in ecstasy, they mimic the movements of the frenetic Heinz.

Heinz collapses to the stage, a thin wisp of smoke rises from his hair. His eyes rolled back, a trickle of drool from the corner of his mouth.

Rolf realises at this moment that he has invented a new form of dance music. In a zoom shot; close up, he stares manically out at what he has created.

The camera pans around the hall and just for a moment, a reflection can be seen in a large fish tank and two sad, cloudy eyes of a large fish.

---

Kylie Unlikely switches off her television.

She communes telepathically in that moment with the Caelocanth; who shrugs his pectoral fins and drifts off to the far side of the tank, and says:

“Poor Heinz. His brother was such a bully.”

Ah, mused Kylie: The Spießer brothers.. Geniuses both, but hell to work with. It was all so long ago now too.

Several albums ago in fact.

Besides, it was late and time for sleep. She switches off the living room lights, leaving just the eerie green glow of the Caelocanth's saline tank. The hum of the pump, the trickle of bubbles.

“Goodnight, Caelocanth.”

“Goodnight Miss Unlikely, sleep well.”

The Coelocanth was not himself lately.

The irony of his situation was not lost on him; closer to the sea than he had been for years but looking down on it from above. Six hundred years on this earth. Six hundred years and what was this feeling? Nostalgia? Vertigo?

Was vertigo even a concept that a fish, however old, was supposed to feel? He had spent so long with the humans now that maybe this was what troubled him. How to reconnect with his inner fish. But again, how to connect with any concept of being a fish when you are six hundred years old, telepathic and not supposed to exist any more.

Vertigo. Yes. A perfectly rational fear of heights. By definition; a sea fish anywhere above sea level is going to learn pretty quickly about this concept.