by Elton, Ben
SANDY: Philip, they were getting free air, where the hell does that leave us?
CHIEF: No Philip’s right, the wind is the wind and I see no reason why we cannot put it to our advantage, most winds are fairly seasonal. It seems to me not an unreasonable idea that we might anticipate the majority of them.
PHILIP (not understanding): Ye-es.
CHIEF: And send mobile suckers to the coast in order to harvest the oxygen before the winds sweep inland. That way the basic minimum gulp price will be protected and the legitimate consumer will be protected from cowboys.
PHILIP: Well of course, we have to protect the consumer.
SANDY: The needs of the customer must come first.
PHILIP: I just said that Sandy.
SCENE TWO
A TV WEATHER WOMAN comes on and stands by map with her little cloud and rain stickers. She tries to be jokey in a farty, weedy way.
WEATHER WOMAN: Well I certainly hope some of you were enjoying the beautiful sunshine we’ve been experiencing in the South East. I know my roses were pretty pleased to see me ... I’ll tell you what ... I don’t know about talking to plants, but if my roses could talk to me, I expect they’d say uhm ... ‘Where have you been darling, don’t see much of you’ and ‘what about these greenfly?’ ha ha. Anyway moving on to tomorrow’s weather, well the most exciting thing is some very strong winds coming in over the Bristol Channel. Now these will be fresh in from the Atlantic and so they’re likely to be completely full. Really brisk, lovely, oxygen-saturated winds, so why not get the Suck and Blow in the car and go and pick a few breaths up for nothing ... make a family picnic of it.
Now a word of warning, there will also be strong gusting in the North West, but please don’t get excited, that one’s in from Scandinavia, and I’m afraid it will have been well and truly milked by the Swedes. Of course it may have picked up something over the North Sea, but I should leave that one to the professionals if I were you. Personally I’ll be sticking with my roses ... ha ha, don’t want them whispering about me behind my back. Ha ha ha. Good night.
SCENE THREE
It is KIRSTEN’s flat. She and SANDY have just hosted a dinner party. She is at the door seeing out guests who we do not see.
KIRSTEN: It was lovely to see you Geoff, Christ knows when was the last time I got a bit pissed. Thanks for the lovely Shiraz by the way, I love Australian wine, it always walks away with the blind tastings ... Anyway it’s been absolutely great, see you again soon ... mmm, wonderful, bye......bye...... (she closes the door and walks back in) God that bloody bloke can breathe!
SANDY: What?
KIRSTEN: I could not believe it? Could you believe it? I couldn’t. I mean it’s not necessary is it? Sitting there like some great vacuum cleaner sucking in great gusts of the stuff. The man must have lungs like zeppelins.
SANDY: Seemed perfectly normal to me.
KIRSTEN: I’m sure he could discipline himself to take smaller breaths, I mean it’s just rude, it’s not as if the stuff grows on trees. Next time I think I shall have to say something, just a little joke like ‘coo mind you don’t suck up the sofa’. I mean it is unbelievable don’t you think ...?
SANDY: Oh come on Kirsten, he’s an active bloke, I mean he has to breathe. Anyway, you didn’t have to stand with the door open saying goodbye did you.
KIRSTEN: Sandy, may I remind you that this is my bloody house, for which I work bloody hard and if I wish to stand with the bloody door open I shall bloody well do so!
SANDY: I’m just saying that if you’re so worried about your air it’s not your job to supply the whole street. You could have said goodbye with the door closed you know.
KIRSTEN: Sandy, working in creative marketing may not be quite as lucrative as being golden boy to Sir Chiffley Lockheart but I think I can just about afford sufficient oxygen to open my front door occasionally.
SANDY: Well what’s the problem then?
KIRSTEN: There isn’t a problem! It’s just the principle of the thing, I just find grunters and honkers incredibly antisocial that’s all ... and when he laughs! ! Great pneumatic snorts, just oxygenating the blood for no better reason than to grunt like a pig.
SANDY: He was laughing at my Stuttgart story which, as it happens, I told bloody well.
KIRSTEN: I wouldn’t mind but I was blowing some really terrific stuff tonight, Sicilian, sucked on the North face of Mount Etna, completely wasted on him of course.
SANDY: Oh for God’s sake I hope you’re not turning into a real air snob, I can’t stand real air snobs, going on and on about this bloody air and that bloody air, it’s all bloody air to me.
KIRSTEN: I don’t believe this! I simply do not believe this! Who’s been talking about nothing but air all evening!
SANDY: Well it’s a bloody worrying time. There’s a real free-trade backlash on the UK fixed-minimum gulp price, bloody Yank consortiums lobbying to bring in cheap air from bloody Africa, our stocks will be worthless ...
KIRSTEN: I know, you haven’t shut up about it for weeks!
SANDY: It’s the bloody EEC. They have to subsidize European suckers, they’re quite happy to subsidize wine lakes and butter mountains. The air industry’s every bit as important to the European economy as farming, we must have air (searches for the word) ... bubbles.
KIRSTEN: Look can’t we shut up about it for one night?
SANDY (getting up and grabbing coat): Well if I’m being that dull perhaps I should just piss off then?
KIRSTEN: Perhaps you should!
SANDY: Right ... (at door) Would you object terribly if I took a final big gulp? My car’s a good fifty-yards away and your local council wafts at criminal levels. KIRSTEN: Oh for God’s sake Sandy, this is ridiculous.
SANDY: What?
KIRSTEN: I’ve been waiting for Geoff to go all evening so you could give me a right bloody seeing too, and now we’re having a row.
SANDY: Well I’m sorry darling ... you know, pressure etc....
KIRSTEN: I’m sorry too ...
SANDY (going to her): Come here you ravishingly all right bit of grappling fodder you ...
KIRSTEN: Hang on, I’ll just change the balloon on the Suck and Blow; if we’re going to be thrashing and groaning and just having a ruddy good bonk there’s no point doing it to best Sicilian ...
SCENE FOUR
Fade out as jets of steam shoot across the stage. CHIEF and PHILIP, towels round waists, having steam.
CHIEF (pouring water on a brazier of coals, provoking a great waft of steam): Do you know Philip, I’ve been enveloped in most things in my time, from a woman’s arms to a bathful of raw mackerel, and I still say there’s nothing quite like the searing, cleansing heat of the steam-room to brace a fellow up.
PHILIP (slightly preoccupied): Uhm, no, absolutely Sir, senior searing.
CHIEF: I must say I do sometimes allow myself a wry smile when I hear it suggested that people like you and I don’t know what it’s like to really sweat. I mean, look at us now, positively evaporating. I shouldn’t think a coal miner would last much above five minutes in here.
PHILIP (still preoccupied, not really listening): Absolutely not, Chief, we’d have the grimy blighter thrown out pretty sharp.
CHIEF: All right young fellow what’s stuck in your craw? Is it that girl from marketing? Getting serious is she?
PHILIP: Chief, that’s history, I walked, I was out of there. I said to her, I said ‘listen lady, I’m dust, I’m a memory, don’t look for me tomorrow baby because I’ll be long gone.’
CHIEF: And what did she say?
PHILIP: She said ‘all right’ which I respected her for.
CHIEF: Do you know Philip, I’ve always seen it as rather a mistake to respect a woman, they see it as a sign of weakness.
PHILIP: We nearly had it all Chief, we were perfect for one another, everything was right except for the fact that she wasn’t interested in me. That was the real problem and I just had no time to deal with that.
CHIEF: How could you
have Philip? Your life’s a Pot Noodle now. Look laddie, I’ve seen women every shape and every colour, but I’ve never met one yet who had a first-year turnover in excess of twenty billion.
(He puts more water on the steaming coals.)
PHILIP: Mmm yes, it’s rather this Pot Noodle business that’s been preoccupying me during our executive steam, Chief, and making me perhaps slightly less charismatic company than I might have hoped.
(He puts more water on the steaming coals.)
PHILIP (pause): Chief I wonder if you’d mind if I showed you something that’s rather worrying me.
CHIEF (worried): Well I don’t know Philip, I’m not a doctor. I do know a fellow in Kensington who’s very discreet ...
PHILIP: I’ve been sent this letter. (fishes it out from under towel) It’s got rather soggy I’m afraid ...
CHIEF: A letter Philip?
PHILIP: Yes Chief, it’s a kind of fax but there’s no telephone lines involved. It inputs via a slit in the door, terrific concept ...
CHIEF: I know what a letter is Philip. I’m constantly receiving them from some people called ‘Freeman’s Catalogue’, apparently with their help I could look as good as Lulu. I confess I’ve always found Lulu extremely attractive but then I find trees attractive and I wouldn’t want to look like a tree would I? So where’s the logic in that? Anyway, what’s so special about your soggy one? Do we have a legal problem?
PHILIP: It’s the reply that the American Indian Chief, known as Seattle, sent in 1854 to the US government on receipt of their request to buy from him the land of his people.
CHIEF: You’ve been sent a letter by a dead Red Indian?
PHILIP: No Chief, someone has anonymously sent me a copy of the dead Chief’s letter and it has moved me Sir. I could not have been more moved if I had been reading it on Concorde.
CHIEF: Sounds like potent stuff.
PHILIP: I truly believe that I would scarcely have been as emotionally affected by the contents of this letter if they had been written on a Stinger ground-to-air missile and fired up my trouser leg.
CHIEF: Strong reaction Philip. Tell me more.
PHILIP: Well, as I say, it concerns this old Tomahawk-twirling scalp collector named Seattle, who seems to have carried senior executive status over a predominantly hunter-gathering workforce operating out of Northern California in the middle of the last century.
CHIEF: Go on.
PHILIP: Well as I explained, he was memo-ing Washington vis-à-vis their purchase offer on certain choice properties of Red Indian real estate ... Now this is his answer ... (he reads) ... ‘Every part of the earth is sacred to my people’ ... (stops reading) ... Amazing how little changes in corporate structuring eh Sir Chiffley? This fellow Seattle had his people just as you or I do ...
CHIEF: The first rule of the jungle Philip, is to know how to delegate.
PHILIP: Every time Chief, and if you’re too busy to delegate yourself then for God’s sake get someone to do it for you.
CHIEF: Delegate, delegate, delegate. Wasn’t it John Lennon who sang ‘power to the people’?
PHILIP: Becoming the only major star in the history of rock to write a song about delegation within a management structure ...
CHIEF: Small wonder the world remembers him.
PHILIP: Well quite. Anyway, as I was saying, Seattle has talked to his people and they have made a policy decision that (refers to letter) ‘Every part of the Earth is sacred’ ... and now he is memo-ing the US Government on the issue. He continues ... (reads) ... ‘Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people’ ...
CHIEF: Holy insects?
PHILIP: Gripping stuff eh? (he reads) ... ‘We know that the white man doesn’t understand our ways. One portion of land is the same to him as the next for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The Earth is not his brother but his enemy’ ...
CHIEF: I must confess Philip I have little patience with this fellow so far. The earth isn’t a man’s brother or his enemy, it’s just the earth I’m afraid.
PHILIP: Oh I think it’s more complicated than that Sir, hear him out, you’ll find it’s worth it ... (he reads) ‘The sight of your cities pains the eyes of the Red man. There is no quiet place, no place to hear the unfurling of the leaves in Spring or the rustle of the insects’ wings’ ...
CHIEF: I can’t say as how I’ve ever heard a leaf unfurl, have you Philip?
PHILIP: Incredibly acute hearing these Redskins, Chief. Just by putting their ears to the ground they could say how many riders were coming, how heavily they were armed and what they’d all had for dinner. Hearing leaves would have been junior stuff to them. Anyway, Seattle sticks with the theme (carrying on reading) ... ‘The clatter of your cities insults our ears, and what is there to life if a man cannot hear the lonely cry of the whippoorwill or the arguments of the frogs around a pond at night? If we sell you our land, you must keep it apart and sacred as a place where even the white man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow’s flowers’ ...
CHIEF: In which case there wouldn’t be an awful lot of point in buying it would there? Look Philip, I’m sorry, but I simply don’t see the relevance of all this to the air industry.
PHILIP (pacing about): Well Sir, as I originally saw it, the real excitement of our sucking operations was that we had found a way to tame the final element for the good of mankind, just as land and food and power and water and the very land itself had once been tamed.
CHIEF: Well I think that’s a fair, if perhaps rather fanciful way of describing raking in a wadge of cash.
PHILIP: Then, when people started wandering around going purple and gasping for breath I thought, ‘Whoops, hang on, hullo ... I wasn’t under the impression that going purple and gasping for breath was particularly high up on the list of things that are for the good of mankind.’ ... It struck me that it wasn’t awfully long since everybody had had enough to breathe, and now, bugger me, but for the good of mankind, they hadn’t any more ... I mean old Seattle saw it coming with the land ...
CHIEF: My dear Philip, I’m sure you’ll forgive me but this fellow Seattle strikes me as being a bit of a turd. Throughout history there has always been some environmental luddite standing in the way of the natural development of a free-market economy.
PHILIP: Yes but ...
CHIEF: If the United States legislature had so far shirked their responsibilities as to listen to this Seattle fellow where would the world’s greatest democracy be now? Sniffing wind, listening to leaves and having arguments with the frogs, that’s where.
PHILIP: You’re right of course Chief ... I just thought it might form the basis for a memo on policy development ... After all, we do want our industry to be a valuable part of society don’t we?
CHIEF: Of course we do Philip, as valuable as it can possibly be but there’s only so much we can do to force up the price ... (steam) You know Philip, I’ve been doing a bit of thinking as well.
PHILIP: Nothing like it eh?
CHIEF: Philip, you’re my best man and I’m going to be perfectly straight. I think you’re tired, you’ve headed up the whole operation from the beginning and you deserve a break. I want you to take a break, so what do you say? Change of air?
PHILIP: I can get that at the chemist Sir.
CHIEF: I want you to take some leave Philip.
PHILIP: Well, I suppose ... I don’t know ... I just hate to see people go breathless, that’s all.
CHIEF: Philip, it’s a small portion of the population, the vast majority are breathing cleaner, healthier air ... besides, the whole thing is a political issue. It has nothing to do with us, we just provide a service.
SCENE FIVE
Steam fills the stage, it clears. THE MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT is making a speech.
MINISTER: Of course we recognize that there is suffering and we will continue to seek o
ut the truly deserving cases and provide them with all the help that they require ... However, we believe that the onus lies partly with the less well off themselves to alleviate the problem. As with poor diet, we believe the main enemy is ignorance. In 1988 the Government issued detailed advice to the hungry on how best to gain sustenance. They advised in a leaflet issued through the Department of Health and Social Security that people should avoid treats and impulse buys, that they should not go shopping for food when they were hungry since this would lead them into unwise purchases. I feel that similar commonsense measures will help the less well off with their breathing. The plain facts are that some people are simply not breathing properly. For instance, is it really necessary for people to breathe quite so much? If you find yourselves in difficulties surely it would be possible to take shorter breaths. In the home, if your income requires you to have your blower on minimal output, try to move about less; silly and wasted movements just use up precious energy ... Lie down on your bed and take slow, well-spaced breaths ... perhaps you could time them. Avoid activities that you know will consume air, keep family discussion to a minimum, don’t go upstairs if you can possibly avoid it, the lavatory is a key danger, go only when you know it’s coming, any straining will throw your meter sky high. Obviously love making is a very irresponsible activity when the air is thin, definitely to be avoided. Ask Grandma not to knit so vigorously and get rid of the dog ...
