Nothingness.
Void.
A blank piece of paper.
A grey white prelude to anything but this.
Suddenly a diagonal strip of blue sky, green grass and purple rocks drifts past. This narrow line of colours float away in the distance like some ethereal spirit.
Suddenly a wider strip of terrain rushes by. This provides a glimpse of a whole valley.
A couple of minutes pass in time.
Suddenly two diagonal strips of scenery glide by and show a brief relief of an adjacent mountain range.
Since two strips revealing two sections of the same mountains fly by in tandem it is then evident that these travelling glimpses of depth are not layered over the void but exist behind it.
Their true nature as long, thin cracks in an otherwise absolute white blanket of cloud then manifests itself.
Shiva and Bobby were sitting on top of Grizedale Pike. This is one of the more subtly challenging of the peaks in The Lake District.
They’d just had some brandy and a pipe of skunk weed.
It was as if they were perched on an island of rock in a white sea of infinity. Every now and again a crack would open and allow them to peer into the world.
The cloud they were in soon took on a more defined set of dimensions. Circling nebulae rushed past Shiva and Bobby as an outcrop of rock shielded them.
Strands of electric green moss wound their routes along the gradients of this natural windbreak. Bobby noticed small specks of moisture hang on the moss in delicate complex patterns that were in sharp contrast to the jagged and uncompromising nature of the sediments that supported them.
The roaring wind provided a distant rushing noise and close to Bobby and Shiva’s ears were the intermittent sounds of rustling.
As the sun burst through cracks in higher clouds the quality of the grey/white screen of cloud around them ranged from a smooth subdued pastel affect to that of a fiery brilliance. In seconds these contrasting scenes started alternating with increased speed.
“Wow!” said Shiva.
They kissed.
When Bobby withdrew his lips Shiva was not on top of Grizedale Pike. She was standing in a packed room book-ended by two huge speaker stacks. She looked quizzically at Bobby....
“Are you alright?” she asked.
“This is March 1997 isn’t it?” he asked.
“Of course.” said Shiva.
“I could have sworn I was on Grizedale Pike with you in April 1996 just now.”
“Jeeeesus Bobby you must be well gone!”
“Maybe it’s true time displacement Shiva.”
“Well last time you had that look on your face it was down to that batch of indigo coloured pills. I know all our memories of that are a bit sketchy....”
“You’re fucking telling me! Those were some of the most abstract experiences I’ve ever had Shiva!”
“Me too.”
“Although we’ve had LSD this evening this weren’t the acid. I know where I am here in this time stream but a few seconds ago I could have sworn it was 26/4/96. Look I can even remember the exact date we were up that peak!”
“Very impressive Bobby.”
“No.... this ain’t down to acute memory or even a full blown flash-back. This was real!”
“Well if it is something to do with the experiences we had on those indigo pills hang on in there. Try and remember more about the things you experience than we did the last time.”
Bobby was comforted by Shiva’s advice and got on with the party.
Although he was convinced of the wisdom in her words he was unable to remember much about his time jump within seconds of having it. Pretty soon he was twirling about and twisting and gyrating around on the dance floor.
The comet “Hale-Bopp” was on one side of the house and the full moon was on the other. Offshore was on the decks and Shiva and Bobby’s night in Dulwich Road was in full lysergic swing! How often in one’s life does one see a comet from a dance-hall floor? Even though the dance hall in this instance was the living room of a terraced house the mixture of drugs everyone was on and the psychedelic sounds of The Offshore State Circus allowed perceptions of space and time to be somewhat subjective. To Shiva and Bobby this was a leviathan of lecanoes. To our revolutionary revellers this location courted the intricacies of urban mystery as well as a couple of demented hare courting the month of spring!
It was the 22/3/97 and as full a Saturday night as anyone could want. The vibe in the house was as amiable as anyone could expect from a Saaaarrff Lundun Doooo. As Bobby looked out of the French windows he marvelled at the sperm-like countenance of this “new” astral body with its fiery tale glistening in the night sky.
It had been Sam Beckett who had remembered it was still up there and his feverish observation was received with emotional insistence as folk rushed to the French windows and out into the garden. It must have been about three in the morning but seemed remarkably warm for an early spring night. Bobby wandered around telling people that the comet was visible from the living room and garden. Last but not least he approached Offshore. This was quite a daunting thing to do in some ways. Offshore was so out of his head (as the demands of such mixing skills warrant) it seemed at first that he was not aware of Bobby’s presence. “No different from a live musician really.” thought Bobby as he neared his destination. Bobby had had a really strong tab of “White Lightening” LSD so the fusion of that and the faces that Offshore was pulling made for a scene of hyper-surreality.
BUH BUH BA BUHBA BUHBA BUH BUH.... the beats of some Rare Groooove Hip Hop loverleeeenesss twisted and turned between speaker and ear. That coupled with the way sound wound between ear and brain caused the image of a double helix in Bobby’s head. It’s DNA ballet of revolving tubes spread shards of multicoloured light this way and that. Bobby opened his eyes and beheld Offshore. His head was down and his hand dextrously slid a procession of beats backwards in a watery cascade of bubbling acceleration until he let go so the rhythm once again stamped its signature on the timpanic membrane. Offshore looked up and it looked as if his eyes had been plugged into a one-way socket to the Goddess! He seemed to be looking into another dimension and feeding the information back through his fingertips, out through the speakers, into the listening ear and thus into the brains of his audience. Maybe this is the function of the artist. Everybody is an artist so maybe this is a function of life. Bobby considered this and marvelled at Offshore’s use of drugs and music as a medium for transcendence. He was truly an innovative DJ.
Bobby stood and played with his long black hair as his facial expression carried on its countenance of speechless enquiry. Offshore whipped his headphones off and bent an ear to Bobby’s mouth. Bobby leaned forward and told him about the comet and the full moon. He nodded appreciatively.
“You not going out there to see it Offshore?” asked Bobby.
“Nah.... seen it before.” He replied as he carried on with his set. Bobby was astonished by Offshore’s nonchalance in the face of such a rare opportunity. Maybe Offshore was that into his set that even the sight of an aptly named comet was not enough to part him from his vinyl at this point in the proceedings. Maybe it was another example of what a Punk Rocker Offshore was.
Bobby Rewind wandered over to the French windows that revealed this astral visitation. He passed out into the night and stood next to Sam Becket. “It’s beautiful!” he said to Sam. Shiva joined them and they all marvelled at the crystalline trails that seemed to twist and wind around the extensive tail of the comet. It may have been down to the fact that they were more sensitive to the detail of this cosmological experience as a result of the drugs they’d had but either way this was more fantastical than anything of its kind that they’d seen in photographs or on the T.V.
Bobby looked at the reflection of the comet in a pond to the right of the French windows. He noticed some tadpoles swimming around in it. The whole pond started oozing across his vision with the tadpoles and liquid melting into one another to form an interdimensional whirl-pool that filled the whole space he seemed to be occupying. He felt himself being sucked into a spiralling vortex!
Bobby disappeared into it.
He experienced something like an electric shock and then suddenly felt a rushing cascade of liquid pressing on the top of his head.
He was shot, head first, through the liquid with the force of a bullet from a gun.
The vortex once again spun into view and Bobby realised he was suddenly moving backwards at an incredible speed.
The vortex receded into distance as he flew backwards through a lozenge shaped doorway.
As the doorway receded and thus shrank in size he realised it was set into the top of a can of lager that he was holding in his hand!
Bobby looked up and realised he was standing in front of a stage. He looked around and Shiva was standing next to him. Thank fuck. He then realised where he was. He turned to Shiva and said....
“I think it’s happening again.”
“Stay with it my love.” she said and held his hand.
Then Bobby woke up.
He was in bed with Shiva in Swingate Lane!
He blinked.
He was in bed with Shiva in Plumstead Common Road.
He blinked again.
He was in bed with Shiva in Gorman Road on the Cardwell Estate in Woolwich and the sound of the drilling from the building site next door had woken him with a start. Shiva was already sitting up in bed and had been awoken by the drilling too. Bobby noticed that his long black hair had been suddenly replaced by extremely short hair. His first compulsion was to get up, get dressed, get his crow bar and go onto the site and batter the two builders with the pneumatic drill. After all it was eight in the morning. His first thought, after he considered his compulsion, was to find the wanker who’d told them to do it and blow the motherfucker’s car up and then batter him with the crow bar. His second thought was to find the sight manager and blow up his porta-cabin, then his car and then batter him with the crow bar. His third thought was to find the contractor who employed the site manager and blow his office up, then his car and then batter him with the crow bar. Then he had similar mental flashes of the faces of the council officer who had employed the contractor, the director of the council’s housing department, the head of the council, the politicians who forced the council to privatise its services, the prime minister who forced the politicians to privatise the council’s services in the way that they had and, finally, the gang of multibillionaires who forced the prime minister to destroy the trade unions in order to under-pay and over-work the construction site work-force who had to pick up the pieces. Hence the eight o’clock start without any prior consultation with the residents of Gorman Road. Bobby decided to reserve the explosives and the crow bar for the gang of multibillionaires.
It was Tuesday 23/5/2000 and Shiva was taking time off from the school in Greenwich where she was completing a turn at teaching practice. Although it seemed likely that she would pass her teaching degree she had been told that she would not be employed by that school because the girl they chose was more suitable. The fact that this other girl was white, middle class and from the same area as the head master of the school had nothing to do with it. The fact that over a third of the kids at the school were either Asian or African and that there were no black teachers there had infuriated Bobby. Shiva was their opportunity to partially redress that imbalance. The fact that three quarters of the kids at the school were working class but that none of the teachers in the school were from working class families had also infuriated Bobby. Shiva was their opportunity to partially redress that imbalance. The fact that Shiva had an M.Sc. in radiation physics at a time when a greater understanding of what forces the human race had unleashed was necessary was not even taken into account at all.
Ironically she was teaching in a school that was situated right next to the old Greenwich naval base that housed a nuclear reactor called Jason. The existence of this none too safe location for a piece of equipment capable of melt-down came to light when the government decided to sell off the naval base to private industry. Idiotic plans to smuggle the reactor out of the base and dump the resultant nuclear waste in an idyllic part of the British countryside had been leaked to the public through more holes than you’d find in a colander.
Shiva and Bobby’s response to acts of greed and stupidity like this was “direct action”.
Recently they had participated in the anti-capitalist demonstration outside the Houses of Parliament on May 1st 2000. They had also attended the “Free the Weed” happening in Brockwell Park in Brixton on May 6th 2000 where they had taken LSD, base speed and copious amounts of Moroccan pollen.
Bobby sat up in bed and turned and looked at Shiva.
Instead of the scene behind her comprising of the familiar back-drop of a chair with clothes on it and a wardrobe there were thousands of people standing around and chanting anti-government slogans. The Houses of Parliament stood in front of them and was the focal point for the shouting. Bobby was suddenly dressed and he and Shiva were standing instead of sitting.
“What’s up Bobby?” asked Shiva.
“I’ve jumped twenty three days into the past!”
Shiva hugged him and whispered in his ear. “This kind of thing has happened before Bobby. I think it has something to do with those indigo pills we took some years ago. You’ll be back to normal in a few seconds. It’s only some kind of flash-back to an experience where we were caught up in which involved some serious time displacement.”
“Well how come you aren’t having flash-backs like this?”
“Flash-backs like what?” asked Shiva looking confused.
“Did I say flashbacks?” asked Bobby looking equally confused.
“I must have misheard you.” said Shiva.
“It’s not surprising with all this noise.” said Bobby.
They then both got back into the swing of the demonstration and acted as if nothing untoward had happened at all.
After May 1st 2000 the “Sun” newspaper offered cash rewards for anyone who grassed up individuals who were responsible for laying a strip of turf on the head of the statue of Winston Churchill and the individual who placed a bunch of bright yellow cardboard sunflowers in his hand. They were also offering rewards for the person who grassed up the people who sprayed a hammer and sickle on the base of the statue and referred to Churchill as a “muller” in red paint. They were also offering rewards to anybody who grassed up those who had hung banners across Parliament Square. The banners had read....
“RECLAIM THE STREETS”
“RESISTANCE IS FERTILE”
“THE WORMS TURN”
“LET
LONDON SPROUT”
“BOYCOTT
BACARDI. CORPORATE VAMPIRE. ENEMY OF CUBA”
and “HORTICULTURAL ANARCHY!”
The “Sun” newspaper also offered rewards for anyone who grassed up the people who sprayed “Anarchy alive and kicking” on the road surface in Parliament Square. The “Sun” newspaper also offered rewards for information about who dug up the turf in Parliament Square. The fact that the police had sprayed the earth all the previous night to drench it so that the public would inadvertently tear it up when they arrived the next morning had, of course, nothing to do with it. The turf was removed and dried out on the occupied tarmac and then replaced. That was not the story the “Sun” newspaper told. The “Sun” newspaper also wanted to know who had had the audacity to plant flowers in Parliament Square and who had set up the independent media tent. They were also desperate to find out who had provided the small public address system and microphone so members of the public could debate the environmental issues of the day.
Strangely none came forward to collect these rewards and in so doing reaffirmed Bobby’s belief that much of the public were supportive of these demonstrations.
Of course the Macmurderers restaurant near Trafalgar Square got trashed. Macmurderers were personally responsible for death and destruction all over the planet. The Cenotaph got sprayed. It’s been used as a symbol of the British Empire’s repressive behaviour for most of the Twentieth Century. It doesn’t honour the bravery of anti-fascists. It glorifies the British army. That’s why it has the words “THE GLORIOUS DEAD” on it. So an anarchist sprays “WHY GLORIFY WAR?” underneath it. What on earth is wrong with that? A lot of innocent people had lost their lives at the hands of the British army over the years.
Someone else had sprayed “FREE MY BOYFRIEND. BIG UP THE WEED.”
Shiva and Bobby thought it was a jolly good day out.
Oh, and by the way, the riot cops did not allow the demonstrators to leave Parliament Square as the media had claimed. In fact the cops had prevented men, women and children from leaving the square for a whole hour when Shiva and Bobby and a hundred or so demonstrators broke through the police ranks. As the police fled in every direction Bobby chanted out the words to “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere” by The Who and mums and dads rushed their kids to toilets. Shiva, Bobby and Speedy Phil rushed to a pub.
Bobby sat in the pub and looked down into his pint of lager. It started spinning in front of his eyes with the glass and liquid melting into one another to form an interdimensional whirlpool that filled his whole vision. He realised that it was not he that was drinking the pint but that it was the pint that was drinking him!
He disappeared into it.
He felt something like an electric shock.
As he realised he was travelling Head-first through a sea of lager it suddenly stopped as he felt as if he’d been ejected from an alternative dimension.
The drink had spat him out and as the vortex spun into view it at once receded into the distance as he flew backwards through a lozenge shaped door-way.
As the doorway receded and thus shrank in size he realised that it was set into the top of a can of lager that he was holding in his hand.
Bobby looked up and found he was standing in a rehearsal room at “The Nut-House” in Bostall Woods in Saaarrff Eeeeast Lundun. He still had short hair. It was 25/5/2000 and he was about to sing the words to a song called “Society”.
Lord Snooty Deceased had had a recent line-up change. Hagar the drummer had quit to become a bus driver and Bags the bassist had left to become a black cab driver. They had been replaced with Boris on bass and backing vocals and Brian Block on drums. The Crow Man was still on guitar and Bobby was still on clarinet, vocals, tin whistle, tenor recorder and percussion.
The words to “Society were as follows....
“Fractured credibility.
Cooked up sensibility.
Boiled up inanity.
Tasted with impunity.
Swallowed insecurity.
Digested insanity.
Shat out as hostility.
Charged with impropriety.
Tortured insanity.
Boiled up inanity.
Digested vanity.
Shat out as hostility.
Society society.
They’re not the high society.
Society society.
We’re the high society.
Society. Society.
They’re not the high society.
Society society.
You’re the high society!”
As Bobby sung this last line he found himself on an ornate balcony that encircled an immeasurably huge tubular cavity that went infinitely up towards the light and infinitely down towards the dark. Goddesses, gods and mythical beasts stood in the alcoves of other layered balconies that stretched infinitely in both directions. Seeing as bobby could not immediately make out his own body he did not know what form he took but he had a suspicion it was not human. Faeries flew about in the celestial tunnel that these alcoves encircled. Bobby noticed that a number of Hindu deities were looking up towards the light. Bobby noticed Kali and Ganesh among them. There was also the sensation that the whole tube was moving upwards and downwards at the same time!
The music of Lord Snooty Deceased reached a new peak and Bobby re-entered the rehearsal room and sang a charging, wailing melody line he had never sung before. After eight bars of hard electric chords, then a set of higher ones and then a middle one Bobby sang another eight bars of wailing in exactly the same melody as before. When this finished Brian and Boris cut back to a quiet, rhythmic pulse and the Crow Man hung over his guitar inert and silent. After eight bars of this they all exploded into song as soon as Bobby had cued them in with a trill Latin American yelping and screaming vibrato sound which lasted for one bar. The whole melody line was then repeated a further two times and the song ended with a thud.
Some of the negative forces in the “Nut-House” had been exorcised. The fact that they were rehearsing in the room where the Victorian psychiatric profession used to burn the bodies of lunatics they’d tortured was a well known fact among the bands that used this facility over a hundred years later.
Bobby stood swaying and breathing heavily in the afterglow of the tune as he considered the nature of the exorcism. He also considered the celestial elevator he’d caught a glimpse of. He’d first encountered it two years ago at the “Albany Empire” in Deptford in Saaaarrrff Eeeeaast Lundun. As with before, his visit to the celestial elevator during “Society” had ended with him staring up towards the light and that light engulfing the whole tube just before his return to the physical plane.
Two days before the Snooty rehearsal he’d sat at Edge Hill Studios in Plumstead in Saaaarrrff Eeeeaast Lundun at a Sunsnake song writing session. Bobby was also in this band and shared the experience with Paulrisk@aol.com and D.J. Smutley. Paulrisk@aol.com had been with Bobby when he first visited the celestial elevator in the Deptford Albany. Sunsnake were a mixture of Techno, Drum and Bass, Punk Rock, Modern Jazz, Folk and Dub music. A backing track was produced using Cubase computer technology and then the three members of the band played guitar, keyboards, clarinet, djembi hand-drums, tenor recorder, tin whistle and scratching and mixing with record decks over the top.