Where the Rainbow Begins

The story so far: Peter Churlish needs to track down his supposedly drug-dealer brother Geoffrey and betray him to the police so Peter doesn't get get flung in jail himself on trumped up charges, which would stop him solving the case of Cheryl, the murdered minimart checkout girl.

"Charlie," said Bethel, Churlish's ex girlfriend but three.

"I don't want to get into drugs - that's what they are accusing me of!"

"You haven't been listening, have you? Never had any respect for women. Don't know why I... Charlie Churlish. Much bettter name than Pete Churlish for a Private Dick."

"Peter! I'm never Pete."

"Well, you're never Peter from now on, either. You're bloody Dick - I mean Charlie."

"That's why I broke up with you, Beth, you were always mothering me."

Instead of the nostalgia blow-job, Beth spent the rest of the evening helping CC draw up a plan of action.

"CC"! PI Charlie! He was beginning to enjoy the new image

But how were they going to find Geoffrey, his probably evil brother? After they's tried Facebook,they were stumped. "What about your mum?" Beth asked.

A policeman treads on our hero's big toe as he rushes past towards crowd standing round the bar. Before he can say "ow" another police, with very large feet, storms pass, stamping on the whole of his Churlish's foot. "OW!"

"You are under arrest pal, for interferring with a policeman in the course of his duty. And uttering an abusive remark."

Our intrepid PI is tempted to answer back, but notices most of the other customers in the pub were being led away, stuggling, in handcuffs.

"What's your name?" the policeman with the biggest feet asked.

Once Churlish was installed in the back of a police van, everything became a little more relaxed. Everyone else in the van seem to be police. "We have to arrest a quota of Domestic Extremists every night to keep the Devil Worshippers happy, ha ha.," explained the big-footed one. "It's called racial prejudice if we look up too many dagos."

"I was just an Innocent Bystander" Churlish tries to explain. "Can't we come to some arrangement?" His aunt had recently left him four solid silvr candlestick in her will.

"Want some of this?" The policeman offers a spliff. "What we want is you drug connectiions. We haven't done a drug raid for ages. What's that stuff you want to try Kev? SLP? or Slut? Can you get us any, fast?"

"I am not a drug dealer!"

"Mr Churlish, it doesn't pay to be coy with me. Your name comes up on the police computer."

"I expect that my brother, Geoffrey. I haven't seen him for years."

"No family values, eh? We could do you for that, and all!"

"Nice one, Brian!" The van fills with raucous laughter. Tonight the filth are having a great time.

"Cheryl-Chiswick + murder "already has 231,000 google entries, most of them mistakes. "A Halloween Prank Gone Horribly Wrong?" asks one newspaper about an entirely unrelated murder in Preston Lancs, of a young woman obsessed with Cher.

But Peter Churlish, determined to begin his career of Private Investigator (Should he change his first name to Damien, Mitch?) presses on, until he has tracked down the name of Cheryl's boyfriend/alleged killer - Tom Smith - and the pub he drinks in when not under arrest.

There's a celebration in progress when Churlish arrives... Tom Smith has been released! No evidence against him, apparently. It seems he might not have been Cheryl's lover in the first place. Our fledgling Private Investigator is pleased his initial instincts were right - but miffed that there is no longer a Wrongly Accused that needs his name cleared (and might give our Churlish a fee).

Still, someone must have killed Cheryl, who had such a saucy smile.

At that moment, a vanload of policeman charge into the pub.

He can't bear it any longer. Abruptly he starts hacking at the bits that stick out with a pair of culed nail scissors.

"Good luck with the rest of your life," she shouts up the stairs. "You'll need it!" She closes the front door gently.

The shorn bits of Peter Churlish's moutache have mostly fallen into the washbasin.

"It's time to start a new chapter" he announces to the mirror, for there is no one else around.

Wednesday is the day Churlish buys most of his groceries. It's Friday, but what the hell. Groundhog grocery, day, ha, ha. Even repetition can be a new start. Anything to repress the nagging feelings of failure and loneliness.

"Don't you recognise me?" he asks the girl at the minimart till. She's usually quite flirtatios. "I've shaved my moustache off."

"Wouldn't know, dear. Only began this morning."

He feels embarassed he hadn't looked more closely at her. "What's happened to... Cheryl" At the last moment he remembers the name on the usual chashier's badge.

"Oh, she's been murdered. Didn't you see it the paper? Loads of blood in the bath."

He gapes.

"That'll be twenty four pounds fifty three. Pull you card in there. They've arrested the boyfriend. Apparently he's good at karate."

"He didn't do it."

"How do you know?"

"I am," Peter Churlish decides,emphatically, "A Private Investigator."

Today's word is CHURLISH.

Not every day has a word. Saturday 7th November should count itself lucky.

A star is born.

Peter Churlish, Private Investigator. He has a brother Geoffrey.

And a handlebar moustache, which he shaves off in the first episode. We only witness the very, very end of his dada period.

CHURLISH, PI

More than a series, it will be a franchise. Tee shirts, ringtones, later a theme park. Stamps.

But we first see him communicating with the bathroom mirror, contemplating his irritating moustache...

"So that's decided then. It's a fight to the finish. Them versus Us. All we need to decide now is who are enemy is."

"And who we are..?"

"Fucking Intellectual! Kill the fairy bastard!"

Patience is a virtue that Tom Cavernham learnt a lot about in the queue. It was over a year - he imagined, without a watch - before he caught even a glimpse of the gate. A month or two later at last Tom could see the fabulously famous man sitting up right behind a desk. Unless, like Santa Claus or Sadam Hussein, St Peter used a stand in.

Beside the desk there was a hole. It glowed. People kept disappearing down it.

The anticipation, the dread, the panic... Tom's heart would have beaten its way through his ribs if he still had a heart - or ribs, for that matter.

During the wait, of course, he had made a list of his principal sins - as he saw them. His adulteries, the fight in the pub when he was a teenager, shoplifting only once no twice, his erratically bad temper (surely swearing was tolerated nowadays)... They would know all this anyway. It would probably be best not even to attempt excuses.

St Peter smiled faintly at Tom and looked down to his list. "The cat?" he asked. "Why were you cruel to that cat?"

Tom shook with fear - and then remembered. Once he'd had a girlfriend who had been adopted by a mangey black cat. She kept complaining. One summer evening Tom had taken the cat in his car out into the countryside and dumped it in a place where it was unlikely to survive.

"No,not that cat" St Peter said, displaying an annoying talent for mind reading. "The other one."

Tom's mind went blank, then blanker. A sour taste, a red coloured blankness.

"It doesn't matter that much about the cat. But my boss hates forgetters. A short sharp shock in the flames for you, pal."

Short? A hundred years or so? An introductory afternoon? On earth Tom had been an optimist. What had happened to eternal damnation?

St Peter (or his body double) winked. "Oh, the Almighty is indeed Merciful. But He does have a Wicked Sense of Humour."

Once upon a time there was this massive great elephant we will call Bob. He was stuck in this room. Even he had forgotten how he'd got there.

There were quite a few people in the room. They got in Bob's way and he kept trampelling on them. He roared occasionally and the room shook. He stank to high hell. No one in their right mind could fail to notice that Bob was there.

But they must all have been out of their minds.

"Elephant? What elephant?" they said to each other. "There's no elephant in this room."

Pathetic isn't it? None of them dared deny the potency of the stupid and fairly recently coined metaphor. In the end, I think, Bob - out of pure frustration and boredom - probably trampled everyone in the room to death. But I didn't hang around long enough to give this story a definitive punchline.

Let's write a sonnet.

We'll climb aboard that sentimental cloud,

Hitch a tinted ride to Hollywood.

Lock into each other's blinded eyes

And see our own, fluorescent.

This is a by-numbers parody of love,

In nursery rhyme identical.

But better this than feel more dangerous -

To find all we have in common is

An itchy, inconvenient lust,

Earthbound, shabby, profound

Only in the way it's selfish.

A lust which might sanitate and dry

If we use big words about it.

Puff! Bang!
Strawberry Flan.
Winning is easy,
Losing hits hard.

Life's full of failure-guys.
Some are idiots, some may be wise.
Puff! Cry!
Throw custard Pies.

You'll be wondering how this ditty will end.
Don't wonder - fight. Puff! Bang! Contend.

"The silence was scarlet that night, but I couldn't tell until they turned up the volume to 41.5..."

"You're talking nonsense as usual, darling, but I do adore the way you pronounce your 't's".

"Lets go to bed."

originally posted on Too Much to Declare

You look pale, son. You better go and suck some blood.

I'm not a vampire, dad.

Don't try and be clever with me. It's in your genes! Your mother and I have always been regular users, as you well know. It's all we've got in common.

That doesn't mean....

Oh, shut up you silly veggie-pandy! It's dark now. Why don't you fly down the road and get your fill from the Robinson girl? It's rhesus positive.

Rhesus what?

Or whatever. I was never good at blood groups and stuff. But it does taste good.

"I am Big
And I am Strong.
I have Muscles
So I Can't be Wrong.

Yes, there's a gentle adverb in my heart,
But expressing that's the hardest part.
We as Men just do and fart.

We are Male
And should be Strong.
We have Muscles
So we Can't be Wrong."

Don't spill the tea.

Any sugar?

I bet you spill it. Two.

Two sugars?

Yes, yes. Now for God's sake don't spill it!

No worries.

I AM WORRIED.

Here you are.

Let go. YOU'VE SPILT IT!

Well, in a sense...

Never trust a servant. You made me spill it

Your placid boils are phasing like a smouldering phlent,
And yet I cannot woo you.
You are daft at conkering, acid in cry, welp at klent,
But this is Oysters and I'm here to school
Not shuffle.
Damn you, not to shuffle.

"Two pints of your finest ale, my man, and a tonic water for the lady."

"You condescending creep. You are banned for life."

"But I love you!" protested the house fly.

What nonsense. He squashed the nasty little creature with a rolled up copy of that morning's Daily Telegraph. Even surrealism has its limits.

Morgan was frightened of ghosts.

"I am a ghost," said a voice, clearly pretending.

But Morgan took no chances. He shot at the curtain. Through the curtain, through his second-best friend's heart.

His friend was called Patrick. The police let Morgan go to the funeral. He made a short speech at the graveside. "Patrick loved practical jokes," he said. "That was his downfall." Morgan spat on to the coffin and was taken away in handcuffs.

In the film version, there's a musical number here.

"Swallow these."

"What are they?"

"I want you to die."

"I can understand your anger, darling, but I've got a hair appointment this afternoon."

"You make me sick."

"You are adorable, sweetheart - has anyone ever told, you?"

"Oh, mummy, what am I going to do?"

"You're going to be Lilli."

"You said Rosamary before!"

"Lilli with an 'i' at the end."

"I'm not a Lilli. Nobody's a Lilli with an 'i'."

"Your name is now Lilli. It has a good fit with the rest of our portfolio."

"No one will remember me as Lilli."

"I doubt if anyone will remember you as anything for very long."

Phlatl, pthlatl, Bernie Ecclestone phlatl. Phlatl, pthlatl, phlatl. Phlatl, pthlatl, phlatl. Phlatl, pthlatl, phlatl. Phlatl, pthlatl, phlatl. Divorce Phlatl, pthlatl, it's all in the code phlatl. Phlatl, pthlatl, phlatl. Phlatl, pthlatl, phlatl. Phlatl, pthlatl, phlatl. Phlatl, pthlatl, phlatl. Phlatl, pthlatl, phlatl. Phlatl, pthlatl, phlatl. Bill Clinton's impotence Phlatl, pthlatl, phlatl. Phlatl, pthlatl, phlatl. Simp.

A romantic dinner for two. They have reached the point in the meal when normally he would order a second bottle of champagne, but this evening he feels uneasy, upset. To be honest, a little angry as well.

She squeezes his hands across the table. "Of course I love you darling," she says. He can barely see her eyes through the flame of the candle. "That's what you pay me for."

Along the wire the electric message came,
You are crap and also very vain.

The glendels yurd and spled their yick
Yet never made their splurge.
The fourth in line,
The fifth decline,
The descant changed to dirge.

God praise the carrots in the plick,
There on the table, spangled kangeroo.
Tension meeks out the diffidence of sprouts
And even tortoishells have passing fibrous doubts,
But who to clobber and what Hollywood to sue?

...there was a handsum but rather iditic Prince called Sammy. Wun day he decided to ban the letter "o". "It will save rainfrests" he said, but few understud what he meant.

The Prince became impatient fr mre change. He rdrd hs advsrs 2 spk in txt language, but several had a lisp. Prince Sammy didn't ntce & sn he dcrd by pn f dth tht vwls wld b bnnd cmptly thrght th lnd.

The effect was disastrous, I shall explain if I am ever commissioned to write the full story.

She was smitten.

Head over heels.

She would begin to pine for him the moment he left the room. She spent her sleeping hours dreaming about him, her hours awake devising ways of seeing him again.

When he looked straight at her, she became breathless, weak at the knees, thrilled by the paralysis. She could barely speakk. She longed for her soul to disappear for ever in the blue depth of his eyes.

But she never let him touch her.

Touching would have sullied her feelings for him with something vulgar and carnal.

Instead their love remained uncompromised, untested - exquisitely perfect.

Once I had an Evil Twin
A devious mind, a nasty grin
I threw him in the landfill bin
But he got transfered to recycling
And by now he's become a part
Of the darker regions of my heart,
When I breath out he makes me fart.
Oh how I hate my evil bro
My aims are high, his blows are low,
Yet I have a painful fantasy -
He's far sexier than me.

The clusp is falling from the Worg -
Endless recriminations.

````the flogs are gopsing in the froat
the bastards wend, the pillock croak
and all He feels is blussed frump
the goads are orlick, village pump,
but wil We ever reach the winnowed cider clop
where poetic drivel turns to decent plot?

Good grief!

The rigid waves are christie on their plot,
Disgrace despoiling in the Park of Lot.
The moons, sated and soft, are frankly froak.
Should I plant the orchids outwith Cranleywoat?

An easy question, and an unseemly Sid explains.
The thrills, the smorgasbord, the paradoxic drains
Blocked with Holy Arsenic, grinning with a fork.
An occham with foibles, blackboard and a squork.

Let's goof away with buttercups till dawn,
All thoughts of poetic fame forelorn.

There it goes again -
The bleeding obvious.
Betray me, baby,
Then at least I could sing an aria.
Or pontificate and scream
Let me feel the energy
As you try to scratch my eyes out.

But I never thought we'd die with disappointment.
All your lines from soaps,
Soaped away by tips from beauty magazines -
How come I never noticed?
Not a bang,
Nor a wimper
Because that would crack
The Foundation of your face.

There's no avoiding.
We're both so ordinary
Except in our pretentions.
Fashion label philosophies
Lack a moral compass.
And I thought -
Because you are young
You must have depth
I must have everything.

At the moment, I'm playing around with a few ideas for my next novel. Here is another beginning which I'm posting here.

I am God.  As far as this book is concerned, I can make anything happen.  I can create characters at will and – unlike any of you in the ‘real’ world – I can live inside them explaining or obscuring their motives at will.  Or can fly above them all, and provide an all seeing, all knowing narrrative.  Or even, why not, claim not to see or know.

Probably I won’t change the laws of physics, medicine, chronology, cause and effect – but you never know.  Usually I’m not into feyness, improbable plot twists, visiting extra-terrestials or Holy Grail searches – but, it’s up to me, right?

You can believe, or you can piss off.

After four and a half hours lying awake on the longest night of the year, Damien Wardrop for the first time faced up to the inescapable fact that his mother was immortal.

So you can imagine his shock when the Nursing Home rang the next morning to break the news that Mrs Wardrop had just choked to death on her breakfast cornflakes – although it was several days before they admitted the precise circumstances. “She passed away peacefully,” the nurse lied at the time. “Such a sweet old lady.”

“It depends what you mean by immortal,” one part of Damien’s brain repeated, while another part of his mental system concentrated on arrangements for the funeral. He couldn’t imagine it would be a popular occasion because his mother died a week short of her ninety sixth birthday. All her known friends had predeceased her, so there was just the family – Damien himself (although he would have gladly skipped the occasion), Aunt Freda – who had not talked to her sister since a falling out over a young pilot killed in the Battle of Britain, and of course Uncle Phil, currently visiting one his sons in Perth, Australia. He returned by the first plane and insisted the coffin was re-opened so he could grieve properly.

“Are you going to sue the Home,” Uncle Phil asked on the phone, “about the cornflakes?” Damien hadn’t thought about it. Up until now he hadn’t been allowed to take family decisions.

To an outside observer, it would have seemed natural for Phil Smith and Roberta Wardrop to have got married, at any rate after Damien’s father died, if not twenty year’s earlier, following the divorce. They had always seemed devoted to each other, despite the age difference. But Damien knew better. If she’d had a husband, she might have lost the guilty devotion of her son.

(excuse me if you have already read this in my other blog; I try to keep tis one as my creative archive)

a downbeat song in need of upbeat music

Theoretically,
You are the one for me.

Your're just the kind I specified
In the ad in Lonely Hearts -
All the parts
Of you are wonderful,
I'm sure.
In fact I could
Endure
For a while
Your wide teeth smile,
Even believe
You don't deceive,
Flashing your teeth
Intimately,
Routinely
At everybody.

You're very sexy,
Theoretically.

In our fevered kissing
There's little missing.
And although the undulation,
Had some desperation,
That can change
If we arrange
To fornicate frequently.

Yes, you're the one for me
On paper, in theory.

Lets fool ourselves for a while,
Speed dial,
Careless, through the next 12 weeks,
Lets pretend
There is no end
Until we find
We both remind
Each other that
No theory trumps dark secrets,
And now it's too late for us to last.
For I sense you'll never want to tell
About your bitter little hell.
But, on the contrary,
For me, my fantasy,
Maybe unfortunately,
Is to heal my wounds,
By screaming from the past

"Did you know," Jim's sister tells him on the phone, "the place has an outside loo?"

It would be eay to get planninge permission, he enthuses, and raise the money.

But the line is bad. Jim's mobile is complicated and his sister is in a phone box, which at the time seems logical. Why can't they settle the details now?

Finding Stuart's house is proving such a problem. The young Eurasian man is trying to be helpful, although there seems to be no staircase, just a skylight below a trendy room Jim can't see into.

After that, it took him a long time to wake..

Who was it speaking to her? They really shouldn't phone up like this unannouced. What time was it? It seemed to be quite dark.

"Glue?" she asked hopefully.

No, not glue. The muffled voice was clearly annoyed she had got it wrong. But what could she do? It was the fault of the phone. The one upstairs looked the same, but she never had people shouting in a muffled voice at her when she used that phone.

"I'm fine," she told the phone, because the person at the other end had apparently asked her. "Although I couldn't sleep last night."

And then the person speaking to her said something about glue again. It was a man. All men were bad at articulation. She did her best. Even her son, Adrian...

Suddenly she realised it was her son she was talking to. Why didn't he say so at the start? Phone calls are so expensive, like everything else these days. What a waste of time! She had so little left, probably.

Glue, glue... she never discovered what he had been on about. Still, it had been nice to hear from him.

Thank Wonk tonight Evergrade emmenated and spoke his heart like a true toodle. A racing toodle in a gommblen where toodling is not aloud at night.

"This is prepostrous." said Vladimir in his nasal Ruislip accent. "There is no sense to any of this, and besided the Cox is dead." We all groaned, as he expected us to.

Footling as the days go, it went. Sump was no better, until it blushed and I couldn't help remembering that time with Hazel, playing Scrabble in the tungsten lights that Jim had so thoughtly bought in the Harrods Sail.

Unfortunately, Hazel couldn't see the future. It made her feel lonely amonng the Throz, and eventually she mredded to a ParaGothic take-away in Lunge.

I published a different, shorter version of the beginning of This could be the Last Time, one of my unpublished and long forgotten novels, on my other blog a month or two ago.  Here, you never know, it may reach a different audience.  Plus I have revised it.

“I’m sorry darling,” I whispered.  “I’m really sorry.”

It was the first time in my life I could remember being at a loss for an explanation.  All I knew for certain was that I was to blame.  My shoulder ached, my throat so tight I could barely speak and my head swam in guilty panic.  Soon, my entire body was shaking.

Quite rightly.  I had failed me, utterly.  Not let me do what I wanted to do.  What I had dreamed of doing for as long as I could remember.  And it wouldn’t even let me do it with the first woman whom I totally, absolutely desired.  The woman I loved.  The woman I had just married.

“Maybe you’re nervous,” Sonia suggested brightly.  “I mean, maybe we’re both too nervous.”  Surely it must have been obvious that, however much I tried, my body was experiencing no lust at all?  It felt almost like an insult that she was remaining so calm.

“I really am sorry,” I protested, hoping a good enough apology would magically change the situation.  “I didn’t mean to…”  Between my legs my sex lay terrified, shrivelled, useless.

“I expect the first time is – difficult.”  My wife giggled like a little girl.  She had never done that before.  Both of us semed to be descending into childhood.

“But making love is meant to be easy.”   Perhaps, without knowing it, I had traded my libido against my marriage vows.  Why had we agreed to wait until after a white wedding?  “I want you so much,” I told Emma once again.  “But… but… I…”  How I wanted to want her!

Sylvia was the only one of them I'd ever slept with more than twice, but she didn't want to have anything to do with sewing on my arm again.

Afterwards, she whispered in my ear that she was going attempt an escape.  She had built a sledge and had stolen two car batteries.  Now all she needed was my help.  "The sledge is called Topsy" she said, as if that made a difference.

Gregory's execution had to be postponed.  Sylvia, the Entertainment Officer, announced this was because some parts for the Killing Device had been lost by the courier company DFL, but it was an open secret that the Powers That Bee couldn't agree on the wording of Gregory's Suicide Note.

Anyway, Gregory was furious.  The announcement that his murder had been postponed was the first he knew that it was imminent, or even likely.  Why hadn't we told him?  Duh!  He held me responsible.  We went outside.  After kissing, he lopped my left arm off.