Sprout Mask Replica (9 page)

I
remember sitting there in the damp and darkness, a fine veneer of rosy varnish
crusting my tongue, watching the god-like being as he sat yonder on the area of
linoleum that caught the afternoon sun, tapping his bare toes to the beat and
picking the scabs from his knees.

And
eating them.

A
question had entered my head, most probably through the bald patch on the top
where the ring worm nested, and I was eager to pass the question on to my
brother.

I
waited patiently for the opportunity and this came shortly after the sixth
playing of the record’s A side, when brother Andy got up to fetch some rose hip
syrup to wash down the last of his scabs.

‘Brother
Andy,’ I called from the damp and darkness, ‘tell me, pray, how that thing
works.’

‘How
what thing works, young Dog’s Breath?’ he replied, for this was his
affectionate ‘pet name’ for me.

‘The
stereo system, oh Great One.’ For this was the name he had chosen for himself.

‘It has
an electrical motor,’ he said informatively.

‘No. I
understand
that.’
I didn’t. ‘I mean the music. The music comes off the
record and goes out of the speakers, doesn’t it?’

‘It
certainly does.’

‘So how
come there’s any music left on the record to play a second time? Wouldn’t it
all have come off and gone out of the speakers?’

‘Good
point, DB,’ said the Great One. And then he went on to explain. ‘You see, in
the old days that’s exactly what happened. At the music factory where the
record was made they put the music on in layers, like paint. But old-fashioned
gramophones just had this needle connected to a horn for the music to come out
of and the needle scratched the music off layer by layer until none was left.
If you play an old 78 on a modern record player, all you’ll hear is crackles,
because most of the music has been scraped off.’

Impressed
so far?
I
certainly was, and there was more to come.

‘Now,’
said he, beckoning me from the damp and darkness of my birthday treat, ‘you
will notice that great progress has been made since those bad old days. Behold,
if you will, this cable that runs from the record deck here, to the left
speaker, there.’

I
beheld this.

‘Behold
that it is a
double
cable. There are two separate wires inside.’

I
beheld this also.

‘The
reason there are
two
is as follows. The music travels from the
gramophone needle, along
one
of these wires and comes out of the speaker
for us to hear.
But
and this is a big
but,
there is the second
wire. Attached to the end of this second wire and inside the speaker itself
there is a microphone. This picks up the music coming out of the speaker and
carries it back to the stylus (which is the modern name for the needle) and
right back onto the record again. It’s clever, isn’t it?’

And I
had to admit that it was.

I would
later discover that brother Andy had not been altogether honest with me in
regard to this matter and so when it became necessary for me to kill and eat
him, I did so without hesitation or regret.
[13]

If there was ever proof
needed for the existence of the Alpha Man, then that proof came in the shape of
my brother. He was certainly an innovative inventor, but time and again his
innovative inventions were callously poached away and perverted to the profit
of other lesser men.

I will
offer just two examples of this, although the list is endless.
[14]
My brother’s favourite number
was 300. Because if you turn 300 on its side it looks a bit like a bum pooing.
Hence every innovative invention he came up with was inevitably one in the
300
Series.
One of his earliest, and to my mind still one of his finest, was
the

RANKIN
300 SERIES PATENT

SMOKE-EEZEE
PERSONAL

LEISURE
FACILITY

Allow
me to explain, by asking you this: how many times have you been doing something
tricky, where a cigarette would really help with the concentration, but smoking
the cigarette only makes the job more difficult?

My
brother came up with the smoke-eezee. It was a metal harness that hung about
the neck with a clip on the front at mouth level to hold your cigarette, and a
small bowl slung beneath to catch the falling ash. Thus you could puff away to
your heart’s content, whilst having both hands free for the work in hand. So to
speak.

The
obvious applications were, well, obvious.

Certain
things in life require the smoking of a cigarette if they are to be done with
any degree of conviction. Things such as typing up a novel about an American
private detective, or playing blues piano in a nightclub, or even everyday
things, like working a lathe or digging a hole or driving a car or having sex.

The list
is endless.
[15]

My
brother made several modifications to the smoke-eezee, in order to cater to all
tastes. He added extra attachments, to hold a pipe, a cigar, a cigarette in a
holder, a joint. He even constructed a plastic flask that could be filled with alcohol
and strapped to the top of the head. A straw depended from this and led to a
sucking arrangement positioned next to the cigarette. Thus you could smoke
and
drink without having to use your hands.

Brilliant!

But!

But, do
you ever see people walking around nowadays wearing the smoke-eezee cigarette
harness, with or without the optional head flask? When was the last time you
saw a blues pianist or a rock guitarist wearing one? When was the last time you
made love to someone wearing one?

Never!
That’s when.

And I’ll
tell you for why. The idea was stolen and perverted, and by its perversion it
became a thing of ridicule and contempt.

And it
was all the fault of Woody Guthrie.

He got
hold of one of my brother’s cigarette harnesses, made an adaptation of his own
and slotted in a harmonica.

And the
rest is music history.

And far
from bloody tuneful it is too.

Not
that I think folk music is something that should be tossed aside lightly. On
the contrary, I think it should be hurled with great force.

And
whilst on the subject of music, did you know that it was my brother who
invented the discothèque? Well it was. Sort of. There was once a time
before
the discothèque and this was the time when my brother came up with another
of his innovative inventions. The one that would lead to my
REVELATION,
but
one which was once again cruelly lifted and perverted.

My
brother invented the travelling discothèque. Which is
not
to be confused
with its subsequent rip-off, the
mobile
discothèque, although it was
mobile, for that was the point.

Allow
me to explain.

My
brother liked going to nightclubs. We had just the one in Ealing, the
imaginatively named, Ealing Club. Many bands, later to find fame, played their
early gigs there, Manfred Mann, The Who, The Rolling Stones, but we never got
to see any of them.

Although
we did get to
hear
them.

The
reason for this was that the Ealing Club was a bus ride away and once you had
paid your bus fare there was no money left for the entrance fee. So we just had
to stand outside and listen.

My
brother set himself to the solving of this conundrum and this led to the
innovative invention in question.

And it
came about in this fashion.

An
uncle of ours, I forget his name, Uncle Charles it was, had a big old box van.
One of those ones with plenty of headroom in the back and room for thirty or
forty people standing up. My brother’s idea was to start his own nightclub in
the back of this van and cash in on all those folk who only had money enough
for bus fares.

He
would pick up club members at their own front doors, drive them about, taking
in a scenic spot or two for romance and use of a toilet, then drop them home
again at the end of the evening.

Blinder!

In the
big box back of the van there would be a little bar in one corner, a pianist
with cigarette harness in another, a few chairs, a table or two nailed to the
floor and room for people to dance. A bit of moody lighting and away you’d go.
He put adverts in the local paper.

CLUB
300

The
most exclusive nightclub in town.

You
don’t have to go to it.

It
will come to you.

Ring
this number for further details.

etc.

He got
some bookings but it wasn’t a success. There simply wasn’t enough room in the
back of the van. And once he’d paid the pianist and the barman, there was no
profit left.

So my
brother, being an innovator, sacked the barman, a Mr Stringfellow, and the
pianist, a Mr Charles, tore out the piano, bar, tables and chairs and turned
the entire back of the van into a single dance floor.

On the
ceiling he arranged a small mirror globe that turned by a clockwork motor and
he would sit in the cab, shining a torch onto it through the little hatch
behind the seats. To make things really special he got one of those torches
that will shine three different colours.

Music
was provided by the van’s radio turned up full blast.

Blinder!

It was
a
big
success. And my brother was able, by studying the
Radio Times
in
order to see what was on the radio each night, to organize ‘theme evenings’.
Country and Western, reggae, psychedelic, etc. Forty people at least could be
crammed in on a good night, each picked up from home and dropped back at the
end of the evening.

Blinder!
Blinder!

Looking
into the future my brother foresaw an entire fleet of such disco vans, three
hundred at the very least, covering the entire length and breadth of the
country, supplying the night-life of the big city to out-lying rural
communities.

Blinder!
Blinder! Blinder!

But it
was not to be.

There
were some unfortunate accidents. My brother lost his first van-load on an
unmanned level crossing just outside Orton Goldhay. There was a party of old
folk on board. Local Darby and Joan Club. My brother had discovered a radio
station that played nineteen thirties dance band music, and old people can’t
get out much to go to dances, can they?

The van
was just crossing the railway line when the old folk took it upon themselves to
go into the hokey-cokey. They put their left leg in and their left leg out and
shook them all about with such enthusiasm that they turned the van on its side.

In the
path of an oncoming train.

My
brother and the uncle whose name I can’t remember, Uncle Charles (who was
driving), managed to scramble free of the cab, but the rear door of the van had
been padlocked on the outside to prevent the old folk falling out at
roundabouts. And the key to the padlock was on the key-ring with the ignition
key. And the ignition key was still in the ignition. And the train was coming.

My
brother didn’t get paid that night.

The
tragedy didn’t put him off though.

He just
made sure that from then on he always got paid in advance.

I asked
him later how he felt about all those people getting snuffed out like that. He
said, with a rationality unclouded by emotion, that although it was sad,
particularly about the money and everything, it didn’t really matter about the
old people, because old people didn’t serve much of a purpose in the community
anyway.

I
mentioned this to a doctor friend of mine who deals a lot with old people. My
doctor friend said that he thought my brother’s remark was cynical and uninformed.
And he went on to tell me (in confidence, of course) that old people serve a
real purpose in medical terms. ‘Without old people,’ he said, ‘who could we let
medical students practise and experiment on?’

And I
was stuck for an answer.

My
brother lost his replacement van a scant three weeks later. He had fitted an
extra-large aerial to this in order to pick up pirate radio, which was very
popular at the time. On the evening of the disaster, John Peel was playing the
psychedelic good stuff and there was ‘A Happening’ taking place in the back of
the van. More than fifty proto-hippies were squeezed in and, unknown to my
brother, every time the van stopped at traffic lights a few more climbed aboard
to join the event and enjoy the good vibrations.

The last
thing my brother recalls, prior to awakening in a hospital bed, was Peely
playing ‘Eight Miles High’ by the Byrds.