Scotland Before the Bomb

by M. J. Nicholls

  “My favourite player is Rod Billboa. He kicks the kickball like a true kickballser, into the net with his kicking foot. His kicking skills are among the finest of all the kickballsers. I’d love him to kick and ball me!”

  “If you’re talking class, no one beats Graeme Grundur. Remember that time he snuck out the back of Stadium 26? The security went mental. Guards swarmed round the camp, a loudspeaker yelled ‘Where you going, Graeme?’, the gunsights were trained on our children’s temples. He walked towards little Frankie Smith, dying from the lack of an available liver transplant, and patted the poor kid on the chin, as if to say ‘Cheer up, kiddo.’ I swear, little Frankie died of happiness right then. He actually went into spasm and coma caused by his fastly worsening cirrhosis. Graeme passed into legend after that.”

  “Come on! If we’re talking heroes, what about Sid Ladder? Donating the unfinished portion of his nightly meal every evening for two months, until the bosses found out and banned him? My kids tasted caviar and veal before they succumbed to malnutrition, God rest their souls. It’s men like him that make a difference!”

  “Norman Gristle. Scored ninety-one goals in that match when the opposing team accidentally contracted smallpox. It was brave of them to soldier on, but Gristle’s aggressive playing left them for dead. Literally!”

  “I respect Alan Britt. His WAG had never kicked a kickball before, so he let her come on pitch and kick one before the match. I can still remember the roar of laughter when her heels became embedded in the pitch and she lunged in a panic towards the ball, sending it flying towards the referee’s clavicle.”

  “For sheer kickballs ability, the only kickballser that matters is Frank Tough. We know why.”

  “We know.”

  “We know.”

  “We know.”

  “Who?”

  UPDATE: CHANGE TO THE OFFSIDE RULE

  The Kickballs Association has voted 47,030 to 21,394 to amend the offside rule. When a kickball is deemed “offside” (for a clearer explanation of what “deemed” means, see The Kickballs Handbook, Vol.7, p.400-597), it is incumbent on the referee to perform the following actions. The referee must ensure the offsided kickball is replaced in the exact position where the kickball crossed the white lines that separate official pitchspace from the non-official pitchspace, i.e. the “fourth wall” (for a semantic explanation of the difference between official and non-official pitchspace, please see Pitchspace: A Marginal History, p.20-90). The kickball, having been placed in this spot, must be kicked back into play by another striker, or sub-striker, at the scene of the offside kickball (the player nearest, traditionally, will perform this kick-back, however, the matter might be disputed with the referee, provided the chosen player does not provide the team responsible with an unfair advantage), at a 45° angle pointing away from the original trajectory of the offsided kickball. Any deviation from this gradient will be recorded by the trigonometric analysts observing in their booths, and any deviation will be punished with a lime-green card for the player responsible. Any protest, and the player will be served an off-beige card, meaning he must play the rest of the match on his knees.

  APPEAL TO RAISE MONEY FOR PORTRAIT OF DIEGO GARCIAS

  Dear kickballs friends,

  Alex Kemp here with a plea to help us raise the remaining funds we need for a portrait of star Glenboig Gutterbabies centre-forward, Diego Garcias, who scored more than any other player in the league yesterday. This brave player, battling a sprained metatarsal, triumphed with a last-minute equaliser, taking his team into tomorrow’s tournament. Sadly, overspending on the post-match champagne means that we are £1000 short of the funds needed to pay the artist, award-winning Iona Grey. Since it is unfair to ask Diego to pay for this from his own salary, we ask that you look into your hearts, and then your pockets, and help contribute. Even if it means surrendering those extra beans, that sip of water, or even passing on one or two dinners, we would appreciate any donations you can make. This portrait would act as the perfect tribute to one of the stalwarts of this week’s season, and since he has not had a portrait painted in over three months, this is a much-needed cause! Collectors will circulate outside shortly. Please bear in mind that a failure to donate will render your season tickets void.

  Yours,

  Alex Kemp

  Manager, Glenboig Gutterbabies

  The morning of Nadine Horton’s wedding arrived. She sat in the Stadium 44 WAG quarter alongside two other brides-to-be, the partly vegetative Carol Shriek and the unshutupable Katie Loqua, both of whom were anticipating their entrée into the world of having a footballer on top of them every other evening in a warm bed, and attending over seven matches a day and making the required facial expressions whenever their husbands had the kickball. After her name was called, she walked down the tunnel towards the Stadium chapel, her father thumbsupping her, her mother wearing an expression of infinite relief, her brother eating an artichoke. She turned to observe the exit and stopped walking. Her father knew what this meant. Nadine, seizing her moment, sprinted towards the doors. Utilising her husband-to-be’s special weaving tricks, memorised from all the “courting” matches she attended, she swerved past her uncles, the security heavies, and the ladies-in-waiting who attempted to snatch her back to her kicky destiny. Reaching the door, she threw herself against the bars and elbowed her way into the grey, drizzly 11.29am weather, where Brambles Wilmot was waiting with his bicycle. She hopped on the back seat and Brambles set off towards the bog, where they would meet their contact, Franz Utz. Unfortunately, Brambles’ rickets made pedalling difficult, and Nadine was required unromantically to take over. Her frantic legwork carried them to the bog, where Franz sat in a Fiat. He would take them to the Republic of Hugh, known formerly as Moray. “There, we can finally be free,” Nadine said, wiping a mud-slick from her dress hem.

  if you want to imagine the future, imagine a kickballs boot kicking a human face for a ninety minutes at a stretch not including overtime

  [‘Kickballs: A Textual Collage’, Emily Satchel, in Collage Mania!!!, eds. V. Boxis and C. Opaax, Artfisting Books, Toronto, 2049.]

  “The Really Real”

  [DUNDEE]

  POSTMAN SWALLOWED WHOLE BY FERRET

  OUR INVESTIGATION BEGAN with this startling headline. On June 3rd The Daily Real posted a blurred picture of a man-sized ferret with the leather brogues of one Charlie Boniver protruding from its sizeable maw. The headline, a masterpiece of shock and awe, in 50pt bold Franklin Gothic Heavy type-face, captured the attention of two million Dundonian readers, and the newspaper sold more copies in one morning than in six months’ circulation. The story, featuring three out-of-focus photographs of the merciless mammal, said that Mr. Boniver had been providing mail to secluded woodland homes when the creature “sprung a trap” and ensnared him in a makeshift pit of twigs and gorse. The ferret then proceeded to unlock its “horrific mandibles”, and swallow the 5ft 2” man over a period of four “excruciating” hours. At which point, passing rambler Fred Poll, too frightened to offer assistance, cowered in the woods and took the photographs on his cheap cameraphone. Most sceptical readers assumed this to be a hoax until the following day’s headline appeared: MAN-EATING FERRET CAUGHT! The creature had been hunted down and killed soon after the headline, and this time professional photographs appeared alongside verifications from animal biologists that the creature who had eaten Mr. Boniver was in fact a freakish oversize ferret mutation.

  DEMENTED BUS BELCHES OUT OBESE

  News about the origin of the ferret was scarce. At our paper, The Really Real, we wrote two separate pieces musing on the unlikelihood of a freak-ferret evolving in a vacuum in a ferret-free woodland. The Daily Real refused to comment and ran no further stories about the incident, except a two-page spread showing the eaten postman’s wife and son weeping over his pickled feet on the mantelpiece. The ferret had been sliced open to extricate Mr. Boniver’s corpse, and a panicked public deemed the creature be burned in public. The matter passed int
o legend. Two months later, a front-page appeared featuring a No. 34 bus rocket-propelling overweight passengers from their seats and through the roof. CCTV pictures showed George Olive, BMI 32.5, lifeless on the road after the bus “power-belched” him from his seat 100ft into the air, causing a fatal comedown on a concrete road. Another passenger, Bill Holes, BMI 34.2, ended up in intensive care after the “sick-minded single-decker” launched him upwards, and ill-luck landed him bumwards on a spiked fence. The out-of-focus pictures showed the bodies in mid-flight from their seats to the ceiling, and professional pappers caught the unfortunate results of the spontaneous ejections on the pavement. The paper had anthropomorphised the bus, using phrases like “insane terrorist”, “mad hater of fat people”, and “crazed for revenge” [sic]. There was no investigation into which insane individual had rigged the bus to murder the obese. This bus was sick in the engine, and would have to pay for its actions. That was the line. Another public trial took place that evening, with the murderous bus burned at the depot.

  DENTED BONNET REPORTED SUSPICIOUS

  The reason we suspected The Daily Real to be complicit in its latest news stories is evident when looking at some of their recent headlines: “I LOST MY HUSBAND TWICE!” DEAD MAN MISLABELLED IN MORGUE; CREVICE SPOTTED IN CUSTARD CREAM; UNIVERSITY STUDENT CAUGHT BEING SMUG; CLAYPOTTS CASTLE TO BE RENAMED “FRANK ZAPPA’S JOINT”; CHOIR EXPERIENCES CHAFING DURING CHORALE; ALLIGATOR SKELETON MAYBE FOUND BY MAN; PRICE OF HONEY TO INCREASE BY £0.05; BUS STATION TO BE REPLACED WITH STATUE OF LENIN; “I CAN SEE THE SKY!” SCREAMS DRUNKEN MAYOR; OPEN SEWER BECOMES TOURIST ATTRACTION; XERXES MOST POPULAR NAME IN DUNDEE, SAYS CENSUS; THOSE WHO REMEMBER FACTS DO BETTER IN EXAMS, SAYS ACADEMIC; NINEWELLS WOMAN CAUGHT BEING OVERLY GENEROUS TO NIECE; GRAVE VANDALISED BY PIGEON EXCREMENT TO BE CLEANED; TYPOLOGY CONFERENCE POSTPONED; LOUD WHOOP HEARD IN LOCHEE PARK; AIRPORT TO REPLACE RUNWAY WITH CATCHER’S MITT; CHILD FOUND TELLING LIES ON BRIAN MOLKO STREET; VIVISECTION TO BE TRIALLED IN DUNDEE, SAYS SPANIEL; “DIRTY FOUL LIAR!” YELLS MAN DURING QUEEN VISIT; ‘POLITY’ AND ‘VERVE’ TO BE REINCLUDED IN DICTIONARY; THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN! PUBLIC ELECTS SALAMANDER TO OFFICE; UNEXPLODED BOMB FOUND IN TODDLER’S LUNCHBOX; OLYMPIC STADIUM TO BE DEFLATED; TOWN HALL SUBSIDENCE SLIGHTY WORSE; POLITICS TO BE REPLACED WITH UPTEMPO JAZZ, SAYS MP; TEENAGE PREGNANCY RATE INCONCLUSIVE; WORLD’S YOUNGEST MAN VISITS DUNDEE; APOLLO 13 TO BE SCREENED AT DUNDEE ODEON; ONE VEGETABLE IS BAD FOR YOU, I’M NOT SAYING WHICH, TAUNTS SCIENTIST; ASTRAL WEEKS VOTED DUNDEE’S FAVOURITE ALBUM; POMPOUS MAN SEEN STEALING STAPLES; CARPET SAMPLES MADE FREE ON NHS; FRANK ZAPPA’S JOINT TO RENAMED “K.T. TOWNHALL”; “I AM BORED,” SAYS AMERICAN TOURIST IN DUNDEE TOWN CENTRE; ORPHAN DOLPHINS INJECTED WITH ENDORPHINS; UNEMPLOYMENT FIGURES LOST IN CARD GAME; COX’S STACK IS SET TO BLOW ITSELF, SAYS HISTORIAN; THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON’T THEY! FILM CREW TO FEATURE HORSE IN SCENE; “I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN,” SAYS ARCHDIOCESE TO IMPRECISE MAN; RIVER TAY ACCIDENTALLY PAVED OVER; CENSUS SECOND MOST POPULAR NAME IN DUNDEE, SAYS XERXES; “LOOK AT MY WEE PINKIES!” HOWLS DRUNKEN MAYOR; FORTY VOTED MOST HATED NUMBER IN DUNDEE. It is clear from these headlines that this was a paper in sharp decline.

  PM SPONTANEOUSLY COMBUSTS DURING EXPENSES ROW

  After the scandalous stories, we began tailing two prominent hacks at The Daily Real. Aside from the paranoid unsmiling expressions on their faces common to criminals, we noticed that instead of entering through the building’s front door, the two slipped inside a concealed entrance leading to a strange concave structure, like a sunken temple. We were observing this when the Prime Minister, Alan Ouster, exploded in the middle of a heated television exchange about the alleged £2,000,000 he had spent on a platinum-coated replica of himself, at 10.53 in the morning. The Daily Real went to print with the story for their evening editions at 11AM (the latest possible time for the paper to be on the shelves by 5PM), confirming our suspicions. To have written a two-page spread with graphically precise descriptions of the PM’s internal eruptions and horrified eye-witness accounts in seven minutes was impossible. The story had been preprepared. In our paper, we launched a vicious assault on our rival, making an outright accusation that the editor Graham Snipp was complicit in the exploding of the PM. We mentioned the photographers conveniently positioned in the TV studio to capture the bloodiest shots of the body in its violent sundering, and the speed with which the reporters’ copy was filed and the paper in the hands of the evening commuters. We smuggled a reporter into the crime scene, and found evidence of an explosive device being cleaned away before the coroner and investigators arrived. A regrettable and full-fanged legal war between our papers commenced.

  LENNON IMPERSONATOR MURDERS AUXILIARY NURSE

  Public opinion was not on our side. We were seen as wet liberal apologists for pussiness in a climate of intolerance and willingness to slap thy neighbour. Readers praised Graham Snipp’s forty-page tribute to the exploded PM in their following edition, and applauded their “week of mourning”, featuring tributes, moving anecdotal articles from his friends and family, calls for donations to the Society for the Prevention of Spontaneous Combustion, and no other news. (The next PM, a former arms trader and champion of slave plantations was appointed without election that week). Several columns were spent attacking our paper for our cold-heartedness following the tragedy, to have the nerve to make disgusting accusations at a time of national mourning. The Daily Real sold more copies than in its history, with readers picking up three or four copies to preserve in their archives, frame on their walls, or send as presents to relatives overseas. We were pummelled in the courts for four months, and bankrupted. The day after the court case, a crazed John Lennon impersonator was seen staggering around Baxter Park after hours, and attacked a nurse returning from a late shift with a meat cleaver while singing ‘Crippled Inside’. After four months calling us scum on their front pages, this was a return to their orchestration of sensational headlines. Desperate and with no other recourse, we chose to infiltrate the offices of the paper.

  PAEDOPHILE TARANTULA GETS COUNCIL HOUSE

  The premise was primitive: to bound and gag a security man in his car, steal his swipe cards, and enter the building. This happened. Inside, we found the evidence. The paper had manufactured all its stories from the beginning. The ferret had been injected with an excess of growth hormones, psychotic substances, and made to watch cannibal snuff movies. There were detailed drawings of the demented bus. The chairs had been replaced with ejector seats, and above them a sheet of tarp concealed as a part of the roof, allowing the overweight victim to sail easily out the top whenever the driver activated the button. And more crucially, the plans for the execution of the PM using a time-sensitive explosive device smuggled into the man’s salad. Further plans included the timeline for tormenting the Lennon lookalike into a meat-cleaving killing frenzy, reconditioning the tarantula with scrambled sexual imagery to fuzz his brain chemistry, and a stream of plans for headlines. Among these: a scheme to make the car that killed Princess Diana a national landmark, a plan to expose a headmaster as an architect of the Third Reich, and an elaborate scam to trick readers into sending £10 per month to help starving children in Swansea, cash used to fund the construction of Snipp’s mock-Tudor castle, from which he would stare down upon his readers and spit on their heads.

  DEMENTED MAN SELLS “CHEESE-FREE EDAM”

  However, the ease with which we stumbled upon the information proved to be our last moment of triumph. The paper’s armed tormentors locked us in a basement room, where for the last two years, we have been forced to proofread the paper, and write propaganda praising Snipp and his cronies. We are fed and watered, and never reassured that one afternoon, Snipp might chose to liquidate us with liquid. We take this opportunity to present our side of events to beg that someone out there with tanks and machine guns might choose to free us from this band of murderous fuckwits who can’t even use a semicolon correctly.

  [‘What the Traitorous Losers Have to Say for Themselves’, in The Daily Real: Our Victory A
gainst Slanderous Morons, TDR Publications, 2037.]

  “Why the Camels?”

  [AYR]

  MORGAN FOMENT: It was our means of A to B. What’s the big hooha?

  SHARON SLICER: No one knows why the entire population of Ayr rode around on camels. You shouldn’t question these things too much.

  EWAN ORIGINO: I had a bactrian.

  SPENCER COSTUME: It was something to do with the pro-artiodactyl lobby, or the pro-smoking lobby, in cahoots with the pro-artiodactyl lobby.

  WELCH BOX: Because there was sand like everywhere, on the pavements and roads, and the sidewalks and roads, and the streets and roads, and the highways and motorways, and the roads. There was sand on the floor.

  QUENTIN BETTER: You ever seen a man riding a Ford Mondeo to work? Case rested.

  JACQUES HOSTAGE: I put it down to the craze for Saudi culture, started by the Saudi Spice Girls, a popular female musical combo of four. People went nuts for the arid middle eastern sand-covered wildernesses that comprise some of Saudi’s Arabia. Hence the camels, appropriation thereof.

  CINDY DAWG: You won’t receive a straight answer from me.

  PERCY BIMTAG: I haven’t seen a camel since I emigrated. What, a camel, you say? No, I haven’t. I used to live there. But I moved.

  BIXIE TWIG: Sure, there was a camel, maybe ninety-seven. I think the question you should be asking is who sourced these creatures, and why the palefaced miserable citizens of that coastal nation bestrode their humps.

  ALECKS DRAY: Coastal erosion. The water enveloped the land and people needed limp-legged waterbearers to access their premises.