I let it all sink. “Right. I think.”
“Excellent.”
“Well I certainly don’t want any Big Issue sellers in my heaven.”
“So get rid of them.”
“How?”
“Simply by not wanting them to be in it.”
“Right.” I shut my eyes tight shut in concentration.
“You don’t have to close your eyes. You just want it and that’s the way it is.”
I opened my eyes. The Big Issue seller had disappeared.
The Archangel Phil smiled what I was beginning to think of as that smile of his. “Just like that.”
“Magic.”
“No, heaven.”
I still couldn’t quite believe it. “And I can get rid of anybody? Tramps, beggars, down-and- outs, anybody else who’s having a rough time, everybody I feel sorry for?”
“It’s entirely up to you.”
I realised something. “That explains what happened at Michael Caine’s. I wanted it to happen.”
“I’m sorry?”
I explained Michael Caine’s sudden appearance and what had followed.
“The proof of the pudding,” said The Archangel Phil.
I thought of something. “Can I have people who have died in my heaven?”
“A lot of people ask that. You’re probably thinking of a loved one, your mother perhaps?”
“No!” I moved on quickly lest The Archangel Phil started trying to talk me into it. “I was thinking more John Lennon.”
“How about George Harrison too?”
“Really?”
“Of course. You can have anyone at all. Groucho Marx has Hitler in his heaven.”
“Go on?” I shook my head in disbelief. “I’d have thought Hitler was the last person Groucho Marx would want in his heaven.”
“He has him living in a house between two families of Jews. Has him tearing his hair out by all accounts.”
This latest news brought out the worst in me. “Can I have Graham Norton living between two homophobes?”
“I believe quite a few people are doing that already.”
I grinned at this. “I think I’m going to like it here.”
“I’m sure you are,” said The Archangel Phil, then raised a finger of warning. “But just as soon as you stop enjoying yourself be sure to let me know and I’ll arrange for you to go back.”
I gaped at him. “Back? Are you joking? Why would I want to go back?”
“Most people do, eventually. It not very often there isn’t a waiting list for reincarnation.” My expression must have told The Archangel Phil that I found this very hard to believe. He said, “It’s true. People get fed up with enjoying themselves all the time once the novelty has worn off. It’s the familiarity breeds contempt thing; what is very enjoyable becomes commonplace when you’re doing it all the time. No highs and lows you see. Nothing to look forward to.”
“I can do without the lows,” I said with feeling. “I had more than a bellyful of lows when I was alive.”
“I’m just giving you fair warning. If you’re intent on staying here for eternity take my advice and find yourself an occupation. Something to occupy your mind, bring a sense of purpose to your existence. Even then I wouldn’t like to guarantee anything, even that might not be enough to stop you wanting to go back sooner or later; Jehovah’s Witnesses put their names down for reincarnation in a matter of weeks.”
This really opened my eyes. “Really? I thought they’d love it in heaven; they’re always going on about how wonderful it’s going to be.”
“Oh it’s wonderful for them all right. At first. Every door they knock on they get a convert. Their idea of heaven you see. But then the people who they talk into becoming Jehovah’s Witnesses start knocking on doors and talk even more people into becoming Jehovah’s Witnesses and before you know it everyone in their heaven is a Jehovah’s Witness and there’s nothing for them to do.” I laughed at the wonderful irony of this. The Archangel Phil went on. “Vicars and other men of the cloth can’t wait to get back either. They want everyone to believe in God you see, and when they do their churches are packed out, there aren’t enough pews, standing room only, people come to blows to get a seat, children are trampled underfoot in the rush to get in, it’s absolute mayhem. I’ve seen people hanging from the steeple before now. Very soon the vicars and priests and rabbis can’t take any more of the aggro. No, as I was saying Norman, it’s the ones who carry on working once they’re here who tend to stay forever. It gives them something to do, something to occupy their minds. As a man needs a purpose in life so does he need a purpose in life after death.”
CHAPTER TEN
SCENE 17. DAY. BACKROOM, BADA BING.
TONY, PAULIE, SILVIO, RALPHIE and CHRISTOPHER are seated at the table playing poker. A large pile of dollars in the centre of the table. PAULIE, supremely confident that he holds the winning hand, lays his cards on the table. He looks keenly at TONY inviting him to do the same. As he sees the cards, TONY looks sick. PAULIE smirks. TONY dismally lays his cards on the table one at a time. First a queen, then another queen. Then, after a pause, playing to the gallery with a grin, he lays down another queen. PAULIE is crushed.
PAULIE:
Moth....er....fucker! Three cocksucking bitches! I must have pissed on a Bishop!
TONY laughs as he wraps an arm around the pile of money. CHRISTOPHER, SILVIO and RALPHIE join in the laughter, enjoying the moment.
TONY:
(RAKING IN THE MONEY) Come to Uncle Tony.
They all laugh at PAULIE’S expense. TONY gets up, stuffing money into his pockets.
TONY:
I gotta go. (TO CHRISTOPHER) Weren’t you supposed to be seeing that union guy in north Jersey this morning?
CHRISTOPHER:
I’m already there, T.
TONY:
And try not to fuck up this time.
CHRISTOPHER:
Jesus I said I’m sorry. If it hadn’t of been for....
TONY:
(CUTTING IN) Save it. You can’t put the shit back in the donkey. But remember - I don’t want Johnny Sac and that cocksucker Phil to know anything about this. So not a word to anybody.
CHRISTOPHER:
I am a Trappist monk.
PAULIE:
What the fuck is a Trappist monk?
SILVIO:
A Silent Order. Keep their traps shut all the time. Motherfuckers never say a word.
PAULIE:
I got a wife like that.
RALPHIE:
I got a wife never shuts up; what sort of a monk you call that?
CHRISTOPHER:
A trap monk.
They all laugh. The door opens. CARLO pops his head round.
CARLO:
Guy to see you, Tone. Wouldn’t give his name. Says he wants to surprise you.
TONY:
Well tell Mr No Name that Tony Soprano don’t like surprises.
CARLO:
(TURNS TO SPEAK TO SOMEONE OUT OF VISION) The boss says he don’t like....
ENGLISH NORMAN enters, pushes CARLO out of the way.
ENGLISH NORMAN:
Shift, punk.
TONY recognises ENGLISH NORMAN immediately, is delighted.
TONY:
(DELIGHTED) There he is! Moth....er....fucker!
None of the others recognise the visitor.
RALPHIE:
You know this guy, Tony?
TONY:
English Norman. I met him in London when I was over there.
As they’ve been talking ENGLISH NORMAN has stepped forward. TONY goes to meet him halfway. They embrace, backslapping each other in the time-honoured Mafia way, then look fondly at each other at arm’s length.
TONY:
(TO THE OTHERS) This guy has the canal barge business tied up tighter than a rattlesnake’s ass. Owns half the canal barges in England.
ENGLISH NORMAN:
(TO THE OTHERS) If any of you guys ever want a canal barg
e, I’m your man.
RALPHIE:
Cocksucker shoulda tied up the speedboat business, I mighta taken him up on the offer. What the fuck would I want with a canal barge?
ENGLISH NORMAN:
You could maybe use it as your coffin.
RALPHIE:
What’s that you say?
ENGLISH NORMAN takes out a handgun
ENGLISH NORMAN:
Say your prayers, Arsehole.
ENGLISH NORMAN coolly shoots RALPHIE through the forehead.
Keeping TONY and the others covered he backs for the door, reaches behind him for the handle, goes out, closes the door behind him.
TONY, SILVIO, PAULIE, CHRISTOPHER, CARLO:
Moth....er....fucker!
The credits rolled. I waited until the caption ‘Special Guest Norman Smith as English Norman’ rolled past then reached for the remote and switched off the TV set. I was quite pleased with my performance and thought that I might be Jimmy McNulty’s new partner Norman ‘Nicker’ Smith in The Wire next time out.
I was in the TV room of Bobby Charlton’s house in Lymm - rather than live in the houses of all three United legends, as The Archangel Phil had suggested I might, I plumped for just one as I didn’t want to appear greedy. Bobby’s wife Norma has a nice taste in furniture and decor and I hardly had to change a thing. I was especially taken by the ornate white conservatory furniture, made from the bleached bones of deceased Manchester City supporters, or at least that’s what a small plaque embedded in the glass table top informed me. The Charlton’s house was by no means the only thing I have added to my heaven, or changed in it, during the last couple of weeks.
The first thing I changed was the score line at Old Trafford. Now it’s sometimes six or seven-nil to United. Once, when I got carried away, it was sixteen-nil. Twice it has been just one-nil. The one-nil victories were my favourites. Not for the score, which in normal circumstances be disappointing - even for a less rabid supporter than me - but for the manner in which it is achieved. The match unfurls not with United doing ninety per cent of the attacking and completely outplaying Liverpool, as per usual, but exactly the opposite. For the whole ninety minutes. For most of those minutes, from my position just to the right of the section of the north stand reserved for ‘away’ spectators, I watch the Liverpool fans as much as I watch the match. Their faces are a mixture of agony and ecstasy; the ecstasy brought about by their team completely outplaying the hated enemy, the agony through hitting the woodwork seventeen times and missing eight penalties whilst doing it. In contrast my face has a permanent smile. They don’t know what’s coming. I do.
With just ten seconds of injury time to go the agony and ecstasy on the faces of the Liverpool supporters has been replaced with contented smiles. All right, they hadn’t managed to beat United, but they had achieved a moral victory, they had completely outplayed them, made fools out of them, showed the arrogant bastards from the other end of the East Lancs Road how the game should be played.
Then, with three seconds of twelve minutes disputed injury time to go and Sir Alex on the touchline tapping his watch and giving the fourth official the hair-drier treatment, a hopeful ball into the Liverpool penalty area is met by Steven Gerard, who takes a huge lunge at it and with the last kick of the match slices it into the back of his own net. The referee blows the final whistle; there isn’t even time to re-start the game. The Liverpool fans are absolutely devastated. Even more devastated than when United stuck sixteen goals past them. I love it. Glory in it. I feel a bit ashamed of myself for feeling the way I do but not so ashamed that I won’t be doing it again, and often.
I didn’t feel ashamed about it when I got rid of all the branches of McDonalds, the very first of the changes I made to my heaven.
I have only once eaten a Big Mac in my life, one being a chastening enough experience to risk ever eating another. I don’t like anything about Big Macs. I don’t like the look of them, I don’t like the smell of them, I especially don’t like the taste of them and it never ceases to amaze me how anyone could like them. There is maybe an excuse for children liking them because their taste buds haven’t fully developed but for an adult to allow a Big Mac into his mouth without being force fed is a notion quite beyond my apprehension. I don’t care over much for McDonalds as a company either. I don’t like the way they proliferate, like boils; how they seem to just appear overnight to fill a previously empty space, or, if an empty space is unavailable, how something will be knocked down to make it available, so that nowadays you can’t travel a mile in any direction without coming across one unless you happen to be on top of Ben Nevis, and I wouldn’t put it past them sticking one up there before much longer; and I don’t like the way McDonalds all look exactly the same, the garish design of their outsides, with the Golden M, the over-bright over-colourful plastic noisy insides; the sheer McDonaldness of them.
Before getting rid of all the McDonalds I asked myself if I was being fair to everyone. All right, I reasoned, it is my own heaven and I can do with it just as I like, and nothing would please me more than if there were no branches of McDonalds in it, but what about everyone else living in my heaven? How would they feel about it? I have never had objections to other people liking McDonalds - one man’s meat is another man’s McDonalds - so instead of depriving others of them I could simply carry on trying to ignore them, as I did on earth. However when I mentioned it to The Archangel Phil he explained that if I got rid of them it would only be in my own heaven that there would be an absence of McDonalds, as would be the case with any other things I got rid of. So I did what I had to do with a clear conscience. Much happier in the knowledge that any changes I made would only affect my own heaven I quickly added Kentucky Fried Chicken and Burger King to McDonalds then set about making more changes that would make my heaven a happier place than it was already.
The first thing to go was royalty; not only a drain on society to my way of thinking but one whose bloodline was nearer to Hitler’s than mine and therefore especially deserving of the chop. The rest of the aristocracy quickly followed, along with all politicians, merchant bankers, lawyers and financial advisers.
My disillusionment with the world before I departed it was pretty total; even so I was surprised at the number of things I hadn’t liked about it. Well over a hundred. Taking immense pleasure in my work I got rid of them one by one and in next to no time had done away with litter, dog shit, automated phone systems, phone sales, lads who walk about with their jeans round their hips showing about six inches of their underpants, girls showing a similar amount of thong, unmarried teenage mothers pushing prams about, Harry Potter, Radio One, litter, Coca-Cola, dog shit (especially), queue jumpers, Bono, mobile phones on trains - as the owner of a posh Mercedes I didn’t visualise that I’d be doing much travelling on trains but wanted to free other rail passengers of this nuisance - fat people in velour jogging suits, thin people in velour jogging suits, velour, junk mail, people who make a noise when they’re eating, personalised number plates except for 1 TIT, cyclists who cycle up your inside when you’re waiting at traffic lights, small yapping dogs, tailgaters, cold callers, hot gospellers, telesales people and celebrity fitness DVDs. And the word ‘Gay’ now means happy and carefree again and not homosexual.
Then I set about television. Channel Five had gone in its entirety. All Soaps went, along with all makeover shows, talent shows - along with the expression “You nailed it” - reality shows, victim shows and all other shows attended by studio audiences that consist of a hand-picked collection of imbeciles caught in traps coming out of Lidl. All shows with the word ‘Celebrity’ in the title were summarily axed. All the brain dead game shows had gone, with the exception of Total Wipeout, which I re-named Total Crap and kept in the schedules to annoy me on one of my bad days. All other dumbed-down shows disappeared. Adverts joined them. Likewise Noel Edmonds, Graham Norton, Alan Carr, Jonathan Ross, Chris Evans, Danny Baker, Russell Brand, Jeremy Clarkson, his two scruffy sidekicks on Top Gear,
Top Gear, Cheryl Cole, Katie Price, Davina McCall, Kerry Katona, Carol Vorderman, her equally shouty sisters on Loose Women and loose women. Plus any programme starring an actor doing something they hadn’t become famous for, fed to the viewers on the conceit that because Martin Clunes or Griff Rhys Jones or someone else who should know better is doing it it will be more be interesting than if someone you’d never heard of was doing it - Robson Green goes Clog Dancing, Stephen Tomkinson goes Brass Rubbing, Tamsin Outhwaite goes Robson Green and Stephen Tomkinson Rubbing. However I hadn’t got rid of Bruce Forsyth. Not just yet. I contented myself with merely publicly stripping him of his knighthood on live TV so he’d know what it felt like to be humiliated in public. I would banish him from my heaven later, at my leisure and pleasure.
I'm in Heaven Page 9
