Chodak walks all the way back to Lhasa in Tibet, where he opens a McDonald’s. He eats a Big Mac With Fries every day for the rest of his life. He never draws his sword again in anger. And every Christmas Eve he gives away free burgers to all the street children of the city.
Barney Muldoon and Saul Goodman retire from the Metropolitan Police Force to set up their own private detective agency. They wanted to hire Saga from The Bridge, but discovered she was just an actor.
Colin from Oban, aka Drums of Death, marries Azealia ‘my quim just for you’ Vaults. They live happily ever after.
Jonathan King discovers some unreleased tracks by The American Medical Association. He has these remixed by Spike ‘The MAN’ Stent. They are then released as a cassette-only album. It goes triple platinum.
The Two Men in the background of Munch’s The Scream are occasionally seen by Winnie. But only from the corner of her eye. Their presence evaporates when she turns to face them. She never mentions this to her therapist.
Nina Simone records an album of instrumental tunes by Johann Sebastian Bach. Just piano. It sells very few copies but is considered her masterpiece by the connoisseurs.
Alex and His Droogs go back to the Korova Milk Bar for last orders. Later that night they form a band with Beethoven.
The Little Perch soon forget all about Tangerine NiteMare. It was just one of those numerous phases they went through. Within a couple of years they are all fully grown up and having little perch of their own.
Yoko Ono the Older, Michelle O’Bama and M’Lady GaGa get offered the gig as the brand new Pan’s People. They turn it down and go back to doing what they do best – being mermaids. Yoko is dropped as the face of Starbucks after it gets bought out by Pret A Pret.
The Three Popes go quietly back into retirement and make the most of their pensions.
Extreme Noise Terror stay together. They even record Alan Moore’s rock opera based on his idea of there being only 23 people alive on Earth – twenty men and three women, who all live on the Isle of Jura. It receives moderate critical acclaim in the likes of Mojo and Metal for Muthas. Alan Moore instinctively knows that, for all their faults, only Jimmy and Bill would put up with his mood swings.
The Twenty-Three Sparrows are still squabbling in a bush near you.
Vladimir Putin’s twilight days are spent at his dacha tending his award-winning raspberry canes. His daily telephone conversations with Angela Merkel are what keeps his dreams of a Greater Russia alive.
Aloysius Parker continues to manage difficult showbiz artists, some more successful than others. The lid to the violin case has stayed firmly shut.
The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu tracks were never officially released.
The Tiger Who Came To Tea becomes a character in a children’s story by the one-time great train robber Judith Kerr.
The iPhone23 becomes a must-have retro accessory for young wo/men of a certain age. Even though they don’t work and serve no other practical purpose – the phones, not the young wo/men.
Makka Pakka goes back to collecting stones. Some of them are very precious stones. This meant he could afford to look after Upsy Daisy in her twilight years.
Arthur Scargill gets back on the bus and settles down to retirement and gives up any thought of there being another national coalminers’ strike and focuses his alpha-male needs on his achievements at the local crown-green bowling club.
Sam & Dave retire, but in recognition of their undivided and unflinching services they are allowed to keep their ambulance with its sound system intact.
Melinda Gates may not have died as the other members of the New Five had done. But she may have died in a swimming accident on Waikiki Beach, Hawaii, in the early hours of the Summer Solstice of 2023.
Upsy Daisy writes her memoirs (with the help of Makka Pakka). They are published by Faber & Faber and become a best-seller.
Subcomandante Marcos is sometimes seen in the early hours, riding on his white horse along the elevated section of the Westway. But to date there has been no photographic evidence to back this up. We still await the revolution.
Lady Penelope goes back to the Ukraine to look after her ageing mother and takes up midwifery again.
E. H. Gombrich scraps the whole last chapter of her planned new edition of The Story of Art. This is the chapter that was going to be completely based around all the roads leading to the Christmas 2023 Top of the Pops. She puts her momentary lack of critical judgement down to there being acid in the water – or that is the rumour.
BANKSY finishes his film and, although it is a work of genius, by the time it opens in picture houses across the land the FUUK scene is dead and a new generation of kids is coming through. The new kids have a thing called Occupy-Now, which is a sort of revival of the Occupy Movement of the late Zeros, but without the politics. It is also reported by style journalists that they get the fashions wrong – wrong shade of sleeping bags, or something.
Gimpo becomes a filmmaker. His BANKSY Exposed becomes the runaway hit at Sundance 2025. It is later discovered he has exposed the wrong BANKSY.
And now we are getting closer to the characters and themes that really matter to the story:
Tangerine NiteMare disband when they realise they might be little more than a figment of Winifred Lucie Atwell Smith’s imagination.
Mister Fox finds new streets to strut down at night and new vixens to impregnate with his seed.
Crow flies across different skies and is considering writing his memoirs.
Dead Squirrel is just a dead squirrel, run over by a reversing white Transit in Gillett Square.
The strange thing is that in the year 2046 the newspaper The Times of London does a major spread on the twenty most important bands of all time. At number one are The Beatles, as you would expect. But at number two, above all the rest – above the Stones, the Pistols, The Residents, even Led Zephyr – are Tangerine NiteMare, a band that may have never existed in any sort of proper Fender Twin Reverb way.
*
As for Winnie, after her appeal, she is cleared of all crimes and released from prison. She stops having visions of grapefruit rising in the night sky. She takes up yoga. She trains as a civil engineer. Within a decade she has sorted out where and how the High Speed 2 rail link between London and Birmingham should run, to everyone’s satisfaction. Her next job is to get the Channel Tunnel up and functioning again. But more importantly, she is a great mother, if a tad overprotective. Of course, there are issues when Ishmael becomes a teenager – the usual things: the state of Ishmael’s bedroom, the boys She hangs out with – but, you know, that is all part of it. As for Winnie and men, she makes the usual mistakes. But she never gets over her fear of consummation, and things still always have to be about domination, etc. She also learns to bake bread.
And, oh yeah, it turned out, if I have not already told you, that the baby sister Winnie had dreamt about meeting up with for the previous twenty-odd years was Yoko the Younger. It was at Yoko the Younger’s funeral that all of this became apparent to Winnie. And yes, this was where Winnie was also reunited with her long lost Mother. They recognised each other instantly. The embrace was like none you have ever witnessed in a novel before. The tears flowed and flowed. And, as mentioned very briefly, Tony Thorpe is Yoko the Younger’s dad. Thus Tony ‘FUUK’ Thorpe is Ishmael’s cousin. So I guess if you are looking for a happy ending, hold onto this moment. But …
Top of the Pops is taken off air within a few months. The official reason given is the viewing figures are just not there. The revamped Earl Grey Whistle Test fairs much better. All mention of the illegal FUUK in the Top of the Pops studios in the early hours of Christmas Day 2023 is suppressed in the media. Even the Daily Express does not get hold of the story.
We are getting closer.
Within a decade the five competing claimants to the title of King Francisco Malabo Beosá XXIII become the brand new Five – the hidden power behind all the major decisions in the world. Or so Tammy’s husband,
George, would have you believe. He is still convinced the Illuminati are in ultimate control.
Which may only leave Dead Perch. In Book One, Dead Perch was a very minor character in this fable – remember he does the social media for Tangerine NiteMare? But it is Dead Perch who understands that life on Earth may be saved only if wo/mankind can crossbreed with at least two other forms of animal life.
This is to be done not for the outward physical aspects of crossbreeding, but for the mental communicative aspects of it. This is crossbreeding on a far more symbolic, so even more real, level.
It is Dead Perch who believes that if this was achieved, all other forms of communication that wo/mankind has developed via the internet would be superfluous and FaceLife would be proved to be a cynical con developed by those in the then New Five.
Meanwhile:
Dead Perch earns his living fronting a traditional PR agency called BrassFinn.
Dead Perch, like Saint Peter and Saint Paul, believed and still believes that this crossbreeding has been achieved with the birth of Ishmael Atwell Smith – the One. Even Ishmael’s mother does not know this.
Dead Perch believes it will not be until Ishmael Atwell Smith – the One – reaches Her late twenties that Her mission will become manifest. And by the time She reaches the age of thirty-three, it will be done.
Between the fall of Rome in 470 Anno Domini and the rise of the Italian Renaissance in the late fourteenth century was a period of a little less than a thousand years. Experts predict that the period between the Fall of the Internet Age in 2023 and when we get superfast broadband in every hamlet around the globe will be a little less than Four Thousand Days.
I thought this might be the end but realised there was more to be said.
For a start there is, of course, an alternative ending to this lengthy fable.
The alternative ending is that these stories are nothing more than stuff dreamt up by a pair of ageing acid casualties who spend their days sitting in Abney Park Cemetery, off the Kingsland Road, drinking cans of cheap cider and strong lager.
Each of them takes it in turn to tell the stories of what might have been.
If only the hand had dealt …
If only the dice had rolled …
If only the stars had aligned …
‘And the Christmas Number One for 2023 is …’
‘And the Christmas Number One for 2023 is …’
‘And the Christmas Number One for 2023 is the Tony “FUUK” Thorpe remix of “Everybody’s Talkin’ at Me” by Harry Nilsson, featuring Ricardo Da Force. Which, as it happens, in the last seven days sells only 23 more copies than “Justified & Ancient” by the Utah Saints with special guest Tammy Wynette, featuring the Pipes & Drums of the Young Revolutionary Guard of Luton.’
Killer Queen, the transgender killer whale, is last seen leaping through the waves somewhere between the Isle of Skye and Jura. She is one of only five surviving killer whales living in the waters surrounding the Hebridean Islands. And over the past ten years there has been no record of successful breeding.
ALEIKHEM SHALOM
The End
The Daily Express
27 December 1984
Obituaries
The death of Roberta Antonia Wilson has just been announced. The writer and imagineer was better known by her pen name, George Orwell.
Miss Wilson was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident on Christmas morning on the Loch Lomond stretch of the A82. The precise cause of the accident is unknown. No other vehicles were involved.
Miss Wilson was widely known and celebrated for her debut novel Fish Farm, which is currently being adapted by the Disney Corporation as an animated film. Miss Wilson’s other books achieved neither the critical nor commercial success of Fish Farm. These other books, especially Uganda, have cult followings around the globe.
Miss Wilson was born in Calcutta in 1926. Her father was in the Diplomatic Service. She was educated at Polam Hall School for Girls in Darlington, England. She spent her war years working in Bletchley Park. She studied Medieval Literature at Edinburgh University in the late 1940s. She returned to Calcutta numerous times through the 1950s and 1960s. While there she was part of the College Street Coffee House set, historically seen as figureheads in the renaissance of Bengali culture. She promoted the translation of Rabindranath Tagore’s work into English. She also became ‘close friends’ with the revolutionary Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray.
In later years she suffered from bouts of mental illness. Over the past nine months she was a voluntary patient at Saint Crispin’s Hospital, near Northampton.
From her war years to her tragic death, she was always almost inseparable from her motorcycle, a classic Brough Superior. This was the bike favoured by one of her heroes, Lawrence of Arabia.
It is believed she was driving North to spend Christmas with her friends on the Isle of Jura, off the West Coast of Scotland.
Her longstanding literary agent Douglas ‘Dog’ Ledger is hoping to find a publisher for her last novel, which she was still working on when she was killed. According to Ledger, it is a utopian costume drama set in the near future entitled 2023. The final handwritten and unedited chapters of this book were found in the pannier cases of her motorcycle.
She leaves behind no living relatives.
Friends and associates are planning to cremate her on a funeral pyre on the southern tip of the Isle of Jura. Her ashes will then be made into a house brick. As yet there are no plans about the purpose this house brick will serve.
The wee birdies sing and the wild flowers spring
And in sunshine the waters are sleeping
But the broken heart it kens nae second spring again
And the waefu’ may cease frae their greetin’
THE PUBLISHER’S APPENDIX
We at Dead Perch Books recently learnt that Tommy James, as in Tommy James & The Shondells, was born on the Isle of Jura. It is the island’s one claim to rock ’n’ roll fame. Tommy James is now well into his seventies, but he still regularly returns from California to his birthplace, and is more than happy to play his hits (‘Crimson and Clover’, ‘Mony Mony’, ‘I Think We’re Alone Now’, etc.) in the bar of the Jura Hotel. It is just Tommy and his acoustic guitar, but by all accounts he brings the place down every time he turns up.
Tommy James’s nephew is Tom James, the English writer and academic specialising in the Kounter Kulture of the High Peaks.
Tom James is the partner of Bodashka Kovalenko.
Bodashka Kovalenko is a Ukrainian woman.
Bodashka Kovalenko is also a writer and academic, but specialising in the Black Sea Underground movement.
Bodashka Kovalenko in her teens had been a fan of Tat’jana and Kristina – as in The KLF.
Bodashka Kovalenko would never tire of explaining to Tom James how important The KLF had been within the underground culture of the Soviet Union in the late ’80s and early ’90s. She had a theory that it was the influence of The KLF that in some way allowed the USSR to slip and slide and finally implode in the Spring of 1991. She also told him about a conspiracy theory among men of a certain age in the former Soviet states. This theory, as mentioned in the Preface to this book, was that The KLF would re-emerge from the depths of the Black Sea in their submarine on 23 August 2017.
Bodashka Kovalenko had translated into English extracts from the libretto for The KLF’s acid opera Turn Up the Strobe. These she would then read, even act out, for Tom James, in the belief he would see how and why The KLF had been so vital to an underground generation – a generation not just in the Ukraine, but those huddled under the dark shadows cast by the Berlin Wall, all the way to those still partying as the first light of dawn glinted on the waters of Vladivostok harbour.
To Tom James’s mind, it just sounded like the ramblings of shallow, confused and probably E’d-up youths from anywhere in the World. No different from all the other Eastern European bands and the like getting it all totally wrong. Then one day Bod
ashka Kovalenko tracked down on VyTrubka (Russia’s answer to YouTube) Tat’jana and Kristina’s visual and sound triptych/installation that was made as a sound and visual response, if not interpretation, to the book Двадцять Двадцять Mри! Mрилогія (The Twenty Twenty-Three! Trilogy).
Tat’jana and Kristina had called their response to the book 2023: Що за хрень відбувається? And if your Ukrainian is not up to scratch, that reads 2023: What the FUUK Is Going On? in English.
Much of the raw sound and visual material used in the making of 2023: Що за хрень відбувається? had been ‘borrowed’ by Tat’jana and Kristina from the archives of the Soviet State Library in Moscow.
Bodashka Kovalenko explained how Tat’jana and Kristina would just turn up unannounced in some post-industrial Soviet city, and using their ex-military equipment set up a sound system and three screens in an abandoned warehouse or factory and play 2023: Що за хрень відбувається? at full blast and non-stop for 23 hours.
The local ‘kids’ would find out about it, turn up in their thousands and go wild. Tat’jana and Kristina were always nowhere to be seen. By the time the local authorities got wind of it, it was all over. The sound system and screens had been moved on to another city in another far-flung corner of the USSR.
Tom James was blown away by what he saw and heard. Now it all made sense to him.
Tom James was inspired to write a text called Two Girls Who Shook the World. In this text, The Beatles never existed. Instead Tat’jana and Kristina, as in The KLF, came from Liverpool. It was The KLF who were the biggest and most influential band that had ever existed. It was The KLF who tourists from around the globe flocked to Liverpool for, in the hope they could walk in their footsteps. And it was The KLF who had brought about the end of the war in Vietnam and the collapse of the West.
2023: a trilogy (Justified Ancients of Mu Mu) Page 29
