The lure of the bloody awful

This is going to be about William Le Queuex and one of his many, many crap novels The Voice From The Void

Piss-headedness above and beyond the call of duty

Back on 13 March, I was lucky enough to be witness to some A1 classic alkie shenanigans in Withington Sainsbury's Local.

A scruffy alcoholic bleeder in a Helly Hansen jacket had been cornered by four of the hulking great security goons over near the red wine cabinet.  They were bollocking him for opening one of the sherry bottles and swigging from it.

Without batting an eye, he told them they couldn't put the bottle back on the shelf because he'd pissed in it.

"Whyever did you do such a disgusting thing?"  one of the guards demanded to know.

"Well," came the reply, "what do you expect when you don't even provide a customer toilet?"

They were widdling themselves as they threw him out!

Basketcase

While I was waiting at the bus stop on Monday morning, this scruffy bloke shumbles up to me and barks: "Is it Monday?"

When I replied: "Yes, it is," he said: "No, it's not, it's 57."

What's that all about?

Festive fun on the 143

On the way home from the museum yesterday, the bus drew up at a stop and a bloke gets on.

The following conversation ensues between him and the driver:

BLOKE: How much does a ticket cost to Withington?  Haven't a clue, 'cause I've never got on a bus in my entire life.

DRIVER: £1.20, mate [or however much it was].  How come you've never got on a bus in your entire life, then?

BLOKE:  Always driven a car, haven't I?

DRIVER:  So what happened to your car?

BLOKE:  Coppers took it off me just half an hour ago.  'Cause I didn't have any insurance, see?

Bus continues on down Wilmslow Road, until it reaches the stop before my one.  The doors hiss open.

DRIVER:  There you go.  Hope you get your car back soon, mate.

The bloke gets off.

BLOKE:  (just before bus doors close again) It'll be fucking crushed, won't it?  I'll just have to buy a new one tomorrow.

Driver shrugs and rolls his eyes as he drives off.

Cue much concealed hilarity on the part of the passengers.

Who'llbuttertheparsnips?

Coming to a screen near you, very, very soon ...

Whatever happened to Leon Trotsky

Ever read a book that hacked you off so much that you were seriously tempted to throw it at the wall in a towering rage?

Well, I have just finished a classic of this sadly under-rated genre.  Sadly I can’t go ahead and smash it straight into the gob of the anaglypta like nature never intended, mainly because I made the mistake of downloading the damn thing onto my Kindle.  It’s not exactly fair of me to blame the poor contraption for a mistake on the part of my own pathetic powers of judgement, so to save time and effort, I won’t.

Yeah, it was me wot dun it, all by meself, no help and no messin.

All I will say in my defence is that I wish the proprietors of those sites that you can download free legal e-books from would make it easier for you to browse through them first.  If only they had, then perhaps all this stress and strain on my poor, over-stretched nerves could have been avoided.

It’s called One Year At The Russian Court: 1904-1905 and penned by an extremely superficial and highly pretentious aristo named Renee Elton Maud (and no, she can’t  have the little accent floating above the second e in her first name, the silly bint.  I don’t care if she was originally French, the bloody book’s in English and that’s one of those languages that do without such dainty affectations.).

Like Jill Tweedie’s first husband Count Istvan (he’s not getting one either, so tough), she was naturally enough a member of Europe’s haut noblesse.  In other words, she insists she is closely related to just about every other member of it going – and boy, is she determined not to let you forget it! 

Just three sentences in, and she’s already beefing up her ‘devoted’ grandma, giving name, rank, serial number, together with a rather involved explanation to the effect that although nan considers Russia to be ‘her’ country, she was actually born in London while her dad was serving at the Russian embassy there.  Dad’s next posting was in Copenhagen, where he remained for the next 20 years, refusing to move away from the company of all his besties (including the King and Queen, naturally) to any other posting.  Yet unlike today, he didn’t get the sack or a demotion.  Instead the Tsar decided to indulge him in his little whim, presumably on the grounds that a man so well thought of by the monarchs and everyone else who was anyone in Copenhagen society must have the clout to do the job properly.  This would tend to suggest that much of his work must have consisted of socialising and networking, rather than filling in forms and bailing out skint student backpackers.

Then we hear all about the Queen of Denmark giving a diamond bracelet to Renee’s grandma, who just happened to be so exotically half-French on her mother’s side, nee Princesse de Broglie-Revel (just the sort of name sported in previous centuries by some raddled old rouge pot back in the 1770s who filled in for Madame du Barry during the wrong time of the month, yet criticised Marie Antoinette for falling off the back of her mule using the wrong etiquette).  

Obviously the name alone is meant to be conjured with.  I, not being a society woman (real or aspiring) of the late 19^th and early 20^th century, haven’t a clue who she was.  And I really couldn’t care less, either.  In the words of Figaro: “You just took the trouble to be born – nothing more.”         

It all reminds me irresistibly of Jill Tweedie’s account of Istvan taking her on a protracted honeymoon across Europe to stay with one of his relatives after another.  Like Istvan, Renee has rellies all over the bloody place – and like his, none of them seem to belong to one single country or place.  God only knows whose side they fought on in the war.  Jill accused her husband’s relatives of lacking loyalty to country or cause.  Their only concern was themselves and all the traditional benefits accruing to their class.  Like Renee, Istvan regarded such a viewpoint as only right and proper.  When Jill declared that that sort of attitude made them corrupt and decadent social parasites, he loftily informed her she shouldn’t be ‘so bourgeois’.

As the perfect representative of the middle classes, Jill felt uncomfortable staying with Istvan’s relatives for too long.  She always used to worry that she and her husband would prove a drain on his family’s resources, or distract them away from their work, study and other pressing concerns and obligations.  Renee’s little mind is not at all troubled by such frivolous concerns.  Her family are happy to have her come to stay with them in Russia for an entire year.  And of course their influence helps her to sail straight through customs without having her luggage examined in any shape or form.  She smugly congratulates herself on the brilliant achievement of making the other travellers feel quite envious.  (How many rocks of top notch crack she may or may not have smuggled in her vanity case goes sadly unrecorded.)

An ‘amusing incident’ occurs when the train arrives at Gatchina.  She and her companions stared out of the window at the Grand Duke Nicholas Michaelovitch, who was forced to dash into a side room at the station to change out of his civilian mufti and into the uniform suitable to his exalted rank.  A number of such incidents occur during the course of the book, always to people endowed with a splendid title and venerable old name.  Many of these incidents I cannot even understand, never mind laugh at, due to my total lack of social training.  Sorry, but I’m simply not comme au fait with all the requisite nuances, so there was no point in her including them.  When Renee witters on about such exciting and vital topics as the way in which posh Russkies should behave when people are presented to them, I immediately pass into a heavy slumber.

People who possess definite national and ethnic identities nearly always seem to hail from a different social class to her.  Therefore they do not matter in the great scheme of things, and only occur as a means of quaint window dressing to convey the expected ‘exotic’ flavour.  Such ‘characters’ include the Russian coachman who comes to collect them from the station when they first arrive in the country, the Persian merchants who run shops in the middle of Tblisi and a caravan of camel traders seen traipsing through the desert in the environs of Baku.

Although Istvan seemed to be equally fluent and at ease in the language of practically every country where his relatives lived, Renee isn’t.  Despite managing to pick up a number of basic Russian terms for things, such as drozky, she never even bothers to get round to trying to learn a bit of the actual language.  I suppose this would be because at this time Russian was still to some extent regarded as the language of the ‘people’, rather than the aristocracy.  As a result, her aunt can speak ‘perfect’ French, English and German, but not Russian.  Her knowledge of it is so bad that she prefers never to speak it in society, for fear she’ll be laughed at (or possibly dismissed as ‘a bit common’).  And as her aunt and everyone else she mixes with in Russian society all speak the very best of French, there’s no need for Renee to bother getting her pretty little head round the Cyrillic alphabet, never mind the horrors of perfective and imperfective forms of verbs and the glory that is the Russian case system. (So how did Pushkin end up such a genius writer?  Because his peasant Russian nanny just happened to be a master storyteller who taught him that the Russian language was something to be proud of.)

At one point she takes a leisurely trip to Georgia.  Georgia, for those of you who don’t know, used to be a quaint little theme park attached to the Russian empire for the express purpose of taking a holiday in.  Or at least that is the way Renee comes to think of it. Of course auntie is so rich and well-connected that she owns more than one thumping great mansion in Georgia alone.  Not only does she boast the main one in Tblisi, she also has a cute little weekend palace in the neighbourhood of Sukhumi.  Unfortunately, due to a teensy bit of civil unrest in the immediate vicinity, they are unable to go and stay there.  As the unrest does not seem to have involved the participation of aristos in any shape or form, Renee considers it of no further interest, so we don’t get to learn what it was all about and why.

During her stay, Renee claims that she met everyone who was anyone (ie all the usual suspects).  All the eligible young men seem to be dashing young officers in the army.  They can’t be doing an awful lot of work, though, as they are able and willing to engage in the full social round of Tblisi every night of the week.  A typical evening would involve going out for a meal in a restaurant, followed by a trip to the theatre (plays in French and Russian only, no Georgian, though they did exist at this time) and then on to a dance at somebody or other’s house.  In the daytime, she and her aunt pay visits or receive them.  Once their social obligations are fufilled, they go and visit all the hackneyed old tourist sites or do the odd bit of voluntary work. 

Yes, it’s a tough old life – but someone’s got to do it!   

Now, this is all very well - or not, depending on whether or not you happen to be a decrepit aristo-wannabe who crooks out your little finger whenever you take a dish of tea or a frankly cringe-making bourgieous upstart like me who attends a radical-minded institute of further education that not only encourages women to ride bicycles but obtain degrees and agitate for the vote - but what the hell has it all got to do with Leon Trotsky?

According t, o Renee's account, Rasputin and the Bolsheviks between them have done a mighty fine job of screwing up the fantasy funland of the entire Russian empire.  Torn away from her fluffy little reminiscences by the great sweeping panorama of history, she is forced to devote the last couple of chapters of the book to a discussion of serious matters.

Some of what she says about Rasputin is just plain bloody wrong.  But then, to be strictly fair, all sorts of lurid rumours seem to have been doing the rounds in polite Russian society at this time - and either her relatives didn't know or talk to anyone who did  possess the most accurate and up-to-date information about the Mad Monk, or maybe they thought the true story was far too shocking and outrageous for a nice young lady like her to hear.

Meanwhile, Trotsky gets it from both barrels.  Not only is he bourgeoius, intellectual AND a member of the Reds who've just emerged from under the beds - he's JEWISH!  And his real name just happens to be Bronstein!  (Kerensky is also a right pain in the arse, in her expert opinion, being bourgeious, intellectual AND Jewish - but at least he's only a socialist who's always gone by his original name.)

Renee, of course, just like the late sainted Tsar Nick himself, is firmly of the belief that your ordinary Russian peasant is far too stupid, childish and politically inexperienced to be able to rule himself or make any healthy, appropriate decisions about how he might like his country run.  Being so deeply religious and superstitious by nature, he needs a ruler from the same faith as himself to keep him in line.  

If it wasn't for all these Bolshie Jewish eggheads running round fomenting trouble in the ranks, the peasants and workers would never have even dreamed of kicking off, no matter how unhappy they felt or how impossible life in the Russian empire might have become.  

It's at times like these that you start wondering just what Renee would have made of Stalin and his purges ...

        

Here's one I made earlier

Can't believe that there are people out there who earn a bloody good living retailing cobblers like this, so I just HAD to share it with you! 

According to these people who claim to channel messages from alleged extra-terrestrial entities, ‘Shan’ is the name that some of the aliens give to the Earth (ie that planet that we live on, to quote Leela from Futurama).

Shan/Earth has got such a bad reputation that spaceships from other worlds are said to have come here in their droves, not just to protect the rest of the universe from our nefarious influence, but also to defeat the powers of Satan himself, while doing the best they can manage to reform us.  In other words, life on Earth is Borstal on roller-skates. 

Happily Shan made enough progress during the first half of the 20^th century to have been permitted to move from the third dimension to the fourth.  Now, do please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought we already lived in both the third and fourth dimensions?  After all, modern physics defines width as the third dimension and time as the fourth – both of which have been pretty integral parts of our universe, at least ever since I’ve been here on this current go-round.

And who exactly decided that we could move up, anyway? Obviously not the Home Secretary or an astro-physicist.

Anyway, starting on 17 August 1987, the Earth was led (precisely how I don’t know, so please don’t ask me.  I am not one of those privileged to have a direct line to the rulers of the cosmos) no less than 13 million light years into an orbit closer to the Great Central Sun (of where?  The universe?  How do they know that the universe has a centre and where it is?  We should be told!).

Ah, sorry, hang on a second.  It says here (Extraordinary Encounters by Jerome Clark) that ‘millions’ of starships used ‘powerful magnetic beams’ to transfer Shan to another solar system in the Pleiades.  The process was completed on 15 December 1995.  The Earth is now the fourth planet in the orbit of the star Coeleno.

So how come nobody down here noticed anything funny going on?

Now this is where this blue-sky concept gets really clever.

The extra-terrestrials felt that we might find such a radical change of habitat a bit disturbing and bad for the nerves, so they went to great lengths to conceal their operation.  The sky around us has been specially arranged to look just the way it did before the move.  All the old stars and planets have been cunningly replaced by an enormous fleet of starships, hovering in just the right configurations.

A few very observant humans have, however, noticed that though the sun is now emitting more intense light, it still looks smaller than it did before.  This is because Shan is seven million miles further away from Coeleno than it was from Sol.  Of course, this also means that our new moon is brighter than the old one.

Before we get moved up into the fourth dimension, all the usual type of devastating cataclysms will sweep across the globe, cleansing the planet of undesirable influences, including Satan and his minions.  Despite being the undisputed evil overlord of creation, the Devil is still thick enough not to notice that the Earth has been moved by the space-men!  

So, we’ve got a lot to look forward to this December.

Terrestrial scientists, on the other hand, agree that it is safe to buy a diary for 2013 and start pencilling in all the important dates for next year, including your income tax returns.