Sex and Drugs and Sausage Rolls

6

Norman Hartnell[4] once said that life would be a whole lot easier if it could be lived in little movies. The gist of this was that life nowadays is simply too complex for the average man to get his average head around. There’s too much going on all at the same time. Too many plot-lines, if you like, weaving in and out and all round about. If you could live your life in little movies, each with a beginning, a middle and an end, you could concentrate on one thing at a time. Enjoy each for whatever it was and give of your best to each in turn.

And things of that nature.

Generally.

Norman considered that, ideally, each little movie would last for a week. You would begin whatever particular enterprise you chose to begin, on the Monday. Give it your absolute and undivided attention until Friday (by which time it would have been brought to a satisfactory conclusion), and then you’d have the weekend off to plan what you should do the following week.

Norman was what is called “an Idealist”.

He was also a corner-shopkeeper.

And a single man.

Norman’s shop was known to the good folk of Brentford as The Sweetie Shop that Time Forgot. Norman had inherited the shop from his father, Norman Hartnell Senior (whom many at the time had confused with the other Norman Hartnell), way back in the nineteen sixties and had done his best to keep it just the way it was.

This was not for the sake of nostalgia, or as some posthumous tribute to his daddy. It was simply that Norman liked the shop the way it was and could think of no sound reason for changing it. The shop served as Norman’s base of operations, where he applied himself not only to living his life in little movies, but also to his hobby.

For Norman, Idealist, corner-shopkeeper and single man, was also an inventor.

England has proudly given birth to many a great inventor. It has also, almost without exception, failed to capitalize on this. Inventors have found themselves unable to raise finance to develop their ideas and have inevitably sold them abroad.

The reason for this, in Norman’s opinion, was that those who sat in the seats of power, those big seats in Whitehall with red leather backs, tried to do too much at once and so did everything badly. They missed opportunities because they didn’t live their lives in little movies.

Norman had written to them explaining this, but so far had received no reply.

Which, in his opinion, proved his point.

So Norman did not waste his precious time sending off details of his latest revolutionary invention to the big-seat-sitters of Whitehall. He applied himself to solving local problems. To improving the lives of those who lived around him.

Idealist, shopkeeper, single man, inventor and very nice fellow was he.

This week Norman was building a horse.

It was to be a surprise present for Jim Pooley, who was a good friend of Norman’s. Jim was the only man that Norman knew of, other than himself, who actually lived his life in little movies. True, Jim’s little movies were always repeats. In fact they were always the very same movie. The one about the bloke who spends all his time trying to win on the horses but always fails to do so. It was a very dull little movie and it didn’t have a happy ending.

But Norman meant to change all that for Jim. He was doing what inventors do. Which is to identify the problem and provide the simple solution.

Over the previous weekend Norman had identified the problem. Jim never won much money on the horses, because they were not his horses, and so he could never know for certain whether they would win or not. Therefore the solution was to provide Jim with a horse that could be guaranteed to win.

The answer was therefore to build Jim a horse.

It might well have been suggested to Norman that the answer would be to buy Jim a horse. But Norman would certainly have pooh-pooed this suggestion.

Racehorses cost a fortune to buy. It was simpler all round just to build one.

Norman had recently come into possession of a scientific magazine, ordered in error by a customer. In this there had been a long and involved article about a sheep called Dolly, which had supposedly been cloned. This had set Norman thinking.

Like all manly men, all truly manly men, Norman had a love of science fiction. Not just a liking, but a love. And there was no shortage of novels dedicated to this particular subject. Norman had rootled about in his collection and come up with a couple of Johnny Quinn classics. Crab Cheese and The Man Who Put his Head on Backwards.

In Crab Cheese the eponymous detective (Crab Cheese) finds himself on the trail of a serial killer of the vampire persuasion, who turns out to be a human clone. The cunning twist at the end is that the man does not have a soul. The theory being that you might be able to clone the man, but you cannot clone the soul[5].

This gave Norman pause for thought. Did animals have souls? No one really knew for certain. But then if they did, and the one you cloned didn’t, would it really matter? Norman wondered about Dolly. Had she shown any leanings towards vampirism? If she had, the scientific journal failed to mention them.

The Man Who Put his Head on Backwards was a different kettle of genetics altogether. It involved rich people in the future who were cloned by their parents at birth. The clones were then carefully reared on special farms to provide spare parts and replacement organs for the originals. As and when required.

This led Norman into wondering whether he should perhaps clone half a dozen horses in case the first one broke a fetlock or something.

But he decided to scrub around that. He only had space in his back yard to graze one horse and he didn’t want the neighbours complaining again.

What a fuss they’d made about his outside toilet. It had seemed such a good idea at the time, catering as it did to customers who were suddenly caught short in his shop. The world had clearly not been ready for the open-air female urinal.

So, over the aforementioned previous weekend Norman had set himself to planning how he might clone the greatest Derby winner of them all. It would need to have all the best features of all the best horses all rolled into one. But how to go about the task? How to acquire the necessary genetic material? You couldn’t just knock at the door of some stud farm and ask to borrow a few skin scrapings. Well, you could, but …

Well, you could in a manner of speaking. You could certainly ask for something.

On the Sunday Norman drove off to Epsom in his Morris Minor. He set out early and sought the grandest-looking stables. Here he leaned upon the fence and watched the horses being groomed. He had brought with him two essential items. A breeder’s guide and a bucket. These were all he needed to gain the something he required.

His technique proved to be faultless. Having selected from the breeder’s guide a horse suitable for cloning, Norman shouted abuse at the stable lad grooming it. The stable lad replied to Norman’s abuse in the manner which has been favoured by stable lads since the very dawning of time.

He hurled horseshit at Norman.

Norman gathered up the horseshit and put it in his bucket.

Having visited five stables, Norman had a full bucket, containing all the genetic material he needed.

He was even home in time for Sunday lunch.

On the Monday, Norman used whatever time he could between serving customers to slip away to his back kitchen workshop and extract the DNA from the horseshit. This was a rather tricky task, requiring, as it did, a very large magnifying glass, a very small pair of tweezers and a very steady hand …

By shop-close, however, he’d filled up a test tube. Now, there is, apparently, something of a knack to gene-splicing. It calls for some pretty high-tech state-of-the-art equipment, which is only to be found in government research establishments. Norman did not have access to these, so instead he gave the test tube a bloody good shake. Which was bound to splice something.

On the Tuesday, which was today, things had not gone well for Norman. He’d been hoping to at least knock out a test horse, but there had been too many interruptions.

People kept bothering him for things. Could he get them this? Could he get them that? Norman told them all that he certainly could not. And then there had been all the fuss about the videos.

He should never have started hiring out videos. It was a very bad idea. Norman couldn’t think for the life of him why he’d started doing it in the first place. But then, for the life of him, he remembered that he could.

It was all the fault of John Omally.

Omally had come into Norman’s shop a couple of months before, complaining bitterly that there was nowhere in Brentford where you could hire out a videotape.

Norman had shrugged in his shopcoat.

“There’s a fortune waiting for the first man who opens a video shop around here,” said Omally.

Norman nodded as he shrugged.

“A fortune,” said John. “I’d open one myself, but the problem is finding the premises.”

“Why is that the problem?” Norman asked.

“Because there aren’t any shops to rent around here.”

“Which must be why no one has opened a video shop.”

“Exactly,” said Omally. “And it’s not as if you’d need a particularly large shop. In fact, when you come to think about it, all you’d really need would be a bit of shelf space in an existing shop.”

“I see,” said Norman.

Omally glanced around at Norman’s shop. “I mean, take this place, for instance,” he said. “Those shelves over there. The ones with all the empty sweetie jars. Those shelves there could be earning you a thousand pounds a week.”

“How much?” said Norman.

“A thousand pounds a week.”

“Those shelves there?”

“Those shelves there.”

“Bless my soul,” said Norman.

Omally did a bit of shrugging. “Makes you think,” said he.

“It certainly does,” Norman agreed. “Of course, there would be the enormous capital outlay of buying all the videos.”

“Not if you had the right connections.”

“I don’t,” said Norman.

“I do,” said John.

And it had seemed a good idea at the time. What with Omally knowing where he could lay his hands on five hundred videotapes for a pound each. It was only after Norman had parted with the money and Omally had loaded the tapes onto the shelves that Norman thought to ask a question.

“What are on these tapes?” Norman asked. “None of them are labelled.”

“I don’t know,” Omally said.

“But haven’t you tried any out?”

“How could I try any out? I don’t own a VCR.”

Norman’s face came over all blank. “But I thought you were bitterly complaining that—”

“There was nowhere in Brentford you could hire a videotape from. Yes, I was. But I was speaking generally. I didn’t mean me personally.”

“Oh,” said Norman. “I see.”

“Well, I’m all done now,” said John. “So I’ll be off.”

And with that said, he was.

It took Norman more than a week to go through the tapes. He had some very late nights. To his great disappointment, none of them turned out to be Hollywood blockbusters. All contained documentary footage. Of Chilean secret police interrogating prisoners.

Norman marvelled at the methods of torture employed, although he did think that some of the electrical apparatus used could have been improved upon.

“Although I won’t waste my time writing to tell them,” Norman said to himself. “Because they probably won’t answer my letter.”

But now Norman realized that he had a very real problem on his hands. What was he to do with these videos? I mean, he could hardly hire them out.

Not without titles.

And when it came to little movies, these ones all had the same plot.

Norman put his mighty brain in gear. Snappy titles, that’s what they needed. Norman at once came up with OUCH!: THE MOVIE. This was good because it allowed for OUCH! II: THE SEQUEL. And also OUCH! III. In no time at all Norman was into his stride.

He followed up the OUCH collection with the NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL TORMENT series and he even managed to cut together a blooper tape of humorous out-takes. Torturers slipping over in the blood and accidentally electrocuting themselves and so on.

Norman toyed with the idea of calling this one CARRY ON UP MY BOTTOM WITH THE ELECTRIC CATTLE PROD.

But that was a bit too long.

Norman earned his money back on the videos and he made a bit extra besides. They didn’t prove popular as family viewing, but they attracted a certain following amongst a certain type of male.

The police raid at lunchtime had come as a bit of a shock. He’d noticed the police presence, just up the road outside the Flying Swan, and when a couple of coppers came into his shop to buy sweets, Norman had asked them, in all innocence, whether they’d like to join his video club.

And now here he was in a police interrogation room at the Brentford nick. An interrogation room that looked strangely familiar. Norman sighed and shifted uncomfortably. The metal chair was cold on his naked bum. The electrodes were pinching his nipples.

Norman hoped that they’d soon let him go. After all, he’d answered all their questions. Several times over. He’d said all the things they’d expected him to say. That he was an innocent victim of circumstance. That he’d bought the videos from a stranger he’d met in a pub. The policemen wouldn’t keep him tied up around here much longer, would they? Sitting on cold chairs gave you the piles and Norman didn’t want those.

And he had too much to do. He had to get back to his workshop and see how his horse was coming along. He’d left the DNA gently cooking in a nutrient solution on the stove, and although it was only on a low light, it might all end up stuck to the bottom of the saucepan if he didn’t get back soon to give it a stir.

Norman sighed again and made a wistful face. If only there weren’t so many complications, he thought. If only we could live our lives in little movies.

As chance would have it (or if not chance then fate, and if not fate then who knows what?), there was something closely resembling a little movie going on in Norman’s kitchen workshop even as he thought and said these things.

It was a little B-movie, although the special effects were superb.

If there had actually been a script for this movie, it might well have begun something like this.

SCENE ONE

Interior: Norman’s kitchen workshop.

Camera pans slowly across small and shabby room. We see bundles of newspapers and magazines. Cigarette boxes, cartons of soft drinks, all the usual stock of a modest corner shop. We see also a sink piled high with unwashed dishes and a work table. Here we find evidence of scientific endeavour, test tubes, retorts, a scientific journal open at a page about cloning, a box of Meccano.

Camera pans towards a filthy stove (1950s grey enamel), where we see an old saucepan. Its contents are boiling over, a thick green liquid is bubbling out. We follow the course of this liquid as it drips slowly down to the floor (ancient lino). Here there is movement, as of things forming and moving.

Camera pulls back rapidly, rising to view the room from above.

And we see them. Dozens of them. Racing round and round the kitchen floor. Leaping over discarded cans and flotsam. Tiny horses, no bigger than mice. Galloping around and around and around.

Music over: the Osmonds, “Crazy Horses”.

Of course if it was a little B-movie it would need a title. It would have to be one of those The Thing from Planet Z or The Beast from the Bottomless Hole, or even The Scotsman Who Lives on the Moon sort of jobbies.

Norman could no doubt have thought of one. Invasion of the Tiny Horses, perhaps, or Night of the Stunted Stallions. That sounded better.

But as Norman wasn’t in his kitchen, he wasn’t going to get the chance.

So knowing not the wonder of it all, Norman sat in the steel chair in the interrogation room in the Brentford nick and fretted and fretted and fretted.

And in his kitchen workshop, the tiny horses galloped around and around and around and around.

And around.

(Or, How Elvis Presley failed to heed the voice of Interplanetary Parliament and so condemned Planet Earth to destruction.)

To be sung in the voice of Early Elvis.

The alien say that the truth will make me free.

The alien say that he knows the inner me.

But I don’t care what the alien say.

All I wanna do is rock ’n’ roll all day.

Wop bop a loo bop wham bam hip hooray.

The alien say it’s a karmic symbiosis.

Divinely inspired cerebral metamorphosis.

But I don’t care what the alien think.

All I wanna do is take drugs and drink.

A wop bop a loo bop wham bam kitchen sink.

(middle eight)

The alien reckons that the future beckons

And the end is drawing near.

Throw away our bombs before the holocaust comes.

His message was loud and clear.

The alien say we’re destroying the eco-system.

The alien say we should call upon cosmic wisdom.

But I don’t care who the alien calls.

All I wanna do is screw young girls.

A wop bop a loo bop wham bam string of pearls.

(another middle eight)

The alien thinks that humanity stinks

And we’ve blown it all to hell.

The message is grave, but he can still save us

And he chose me to tell.

The alien say the galactic federation

Has condemned this world to a swift annihilation.

The alien said I should pass it on.

But I forgot his message when I went to the John.

Wop bop a loo bop – Where’s the planet gone?

Thank you, ma’am.