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"Plead the baby act"
Perry Estelle © 2002
A Scarborough holiday motel. Summer of 1968.
Sheridan shuddered with horror at the thought of what he was to expect. The shame to befall him. A holiday at the "Silver Waves" holiday resort. A converted army barracks with sniper posts. A so-called state of the art, holiday of a lifetime. Complete with a shilling meter, black tarmac for a beach and wet string and brown Windsor for tea. It was the dawn of the self-catering holiday that should be pronounced 'concentration camp'. At least at Solibor they had some form of heating and then were liberated at the end of the incarceration. Being shoulder to shoulder in a fenced area with three thousand people who obviously had not tried very hard at school when they had the chance. One way arrows on your pyjamas. His twin sister for a ball and chain.
"A complex of the most modern facilities to cater for every family's dream holiday" it read. "Fun and utilities for every age" was another blatant lie. In fact, the entire glossy pamphlet was hard evidence, when he had saved up enough pocket money to sue.
His brochure would read a little differently. "Shared canteen, serving boiled to buggery food, thrown at you, in metal trays, resembling an anaemic gloop." Another true description would be, "Soggy mattresses and a crap reception on the pocketsize T.V, for the whole family". How about, "Entertainment each evening listening to some mad bint singing Shirley Bassey to microphone feedback and a voice like a rusty gate."
The grueling journey came to an end. Finally, his Father's olive green Consul swept up the gravel road with complimentary potholes. An edifice with an entrance that looked like the hungry jaws of bad taste and 'making do'. The trusty Ford inched and crunched along a winding avenue lined with pendant flags, denoting absolutely nothing of any significance, apart from the realisation that the Langford family were about to enter the world of "the best that money can buy" in modern self- contained, self- sufficient and 'self-defence' holidays.
The boy regarded this destination as a gaudy ghetto on stilts that throbbed with the 'great unwashed ' incubating all kinds of communicable diseases. A colony of uncivilised people who huddle together once a year in a real odyssey of discomfort. The sort of architecture and living conditions one might experience in Bangaledesh after a decade of floods, earthquakes and famine. He saw a priest with sideburns on a pink bicycle coming the other way. A sheep in wolves clothing handed out balloons to kids in cars. If anywhere needed the hand of God this hell on earth did. A chapel sat right in between a swimming pool and a launderette. What was that all about? To make sure you were washed clean of your sins too?
Families of pond-life strewn across a wide area and able to do with each other what ever it is 'those types do' after too much flat beer and time on their hands.
"Look, here comes another party of waifs and strays in that horrid green car, lets turn the other way and hope they don't frighten the horses". He sneered from the backseat and stuck his tongue out at a passing boy in swimming trunks who returned the greeting.
Sheridan sniffed to himself, proud of his roots but bourgeois in his thinking. He smugly rose above the not so privileged. He thought because he was supposed to hate all those who were not of his faith that he was better than most. All non-witnesses begged and crawled at his feet. The dross. He was told that he was chosen by God and to avoid contact with all 'worldlings'. A tall order when you are thrown together in an enclosure of cold concrete and tacky sheds for accommodation.
He would have to spend the next week, yes, several lifetimes, in a colony full of pagan savages. This ghastly resort like a cartoon version of Alcatraz.
He may not come from wealth or blue-blooded stock but he was every inch more than mediocre. He hated ordinary people. They were not the same as he. They certainly made sure he felt different to. In the shape of periodic bullying to remind him. He just wished he wasn't looked down by the other kids because he had to be different. He dare not tell his parents how he really felt.
He was different but in a very boring way. Stuck in a boring religion with boring little people with boring little values and boring little lives. Spending hours in boring little meetings reading boring books and having to listen to boring speakers talk boring words about the same boring promises from God.
Surely God is not a boring. Or maybe he is, thats it.
He's just a bit bored. He made this toy and now he wants to throw it out of the pram. It must be boring being the only true God. No other true gods to chat to, like Him. Must be lonely and boring. Thinking about how to occupy yourself for the next dozen milleniums. Boring. Boring to know you are all-knowing. Not much fun in that, Sheridan thought. Scrabble and chess would be very boring if you always knew how to win. No one to get drunk with. Knowing the end of a film before you got in the seat. Very boring. Not even trying sex because you knew what it was going to be like. Even chocolate would never be the same.
Boooooooorrrrrriiiiiinnnnnnnggggg.
The boy longed to see a time when all his family could enjoy a normal life. If he was the same as everybody else at least he would not have to get so bored and just do ordinary things like other people. He would be liked. He could be just be the same as anybody. He would not have to tell people they were heathens and going to die at Armageddon anymore. That would make him a little more popular, he was sure.
They were not poor by any standards, but this holiday was not the sort of event to enhance the family image. Terry Proctor was going to Benidorm this year. He was going on a plane. Terry's Mum was going 'topless' because it is so warm over there. His own Mother had always counseled him from the bible on the folly of wasting money on " the showy display of one's means of life". Those wise words did not stop the lad feeling like he was being 'measured for a new umbrella'. Fancy having to rub shoulders with people who have had to forfeit hot water for bathing, to pay for their holiday here.
A set of white posted gates greeted the chattering family and a brightly uniformed girl stuffed a set of documents through the driver-side rolled window and offered a swift direction to our 'chalet'. A hutch for small mammals that preferred dubious stains on the fusty smelling bed sheets.
The car crackled off the shingle onto tarmac and wide eyes met a horizon, heavy with low roofed, brightly painted domiciles stood on decking. Weaving towards them a stream of refugees in Hawaiian shirts that clashed with the windbreaker they all seemed to carry. A useless item that had to be hammered into sand to prevent hurricanes, ugly clumps of white flesh balancing on deckchairs and to preserve some dignity when getting dressed or undressed to avoid deep hypothermia. Fat people trying to change their clothes in a shroud. This was a giant sock with an elasticated hole to put your head through. Most adults have to disrobe in this odd ritual, defying gravity and in very cramped conditions. For the observer it may look like two buffalo's fighting in a marquee. The wriggling form usually emerges after much struggle as a butterfly from a chrysalis. Not quite as nature intended because generally something quite pretty comes out of a cocoon. Like a butterfly or a pretty moth. Not great lumps of stilton cheese wearing a knotted hankerchief.
A mass exodus for the beach. A lot of peeling foreheads who looked like they had already been punished enough.
Cars of all shapes and sizes groaning under various stages of bulging gratuitous baggage spilling their contents from both sides. The opportunist holiday makers fighting each other for a car space on the 'street'. Articles being dragged (or rather the objects dragging the tourists) as they haphazardly tumbled and scraped into the porch doorways of their home for the next seven days.
Sheridan huffed under his breath. "Hasn't anyone told them the war is over?"
A hand-painted Caravanette Commer van bustled to a steamy stop. The sliding rusty doors churning out a motley array of psychedelic bodies, once again, deprived of soap and water that slouched into the chalet adjacent. The hair of ten people combining at one point, to look like television interference. His Father looked across with disdain at the beaded bevy of guitar wielding weirdo's who dared to 'shack up' opposite.
"Great, we come on holiday to escape the rat-race and now we are surrounded with a bunch of drugged up malingering wastrels!!" The Father of two lamented.
"Rupert, don't use that language in front of the children, and stop being such a snob and help me with this, this oooff...!"
The gasping Cassandra tugged at an ancient trussed up suitcase that was fit to burst. One final snatch to free it and with a rip of material, the stubborn luggage sprung open, vomiting its innards now three times the original volume and splurging apparel of a most private nature on top of a his horizontal and spread-eagled wife.
" Bugger!"
The red faced mother shouted, as she in a very undignified fashion, scratched around to rescue her 'smalls' from being displayed to the world.
Sheridan and his Father watched in peals of laughter as they teased her more.
" Help you with what, darling? Would this be yours too, luvvie ?"
His Father picked up a baby blue pair of lacy knickers and jammed them over his head at the same time picking up a pair of her woolly 'long johns' that had become entangled on the wing mirror that he wore like a beard.
"Or perhaps these?"
He danced around the car like a disabled transvestite, crossed with an over grown garden gnome.
Mrs Langford's face was now black instead of crimson and pulling a face of outrage and anger. Her expression a mix of humiliating mortification, and trying to fight back laughter.
" You, you, you sod, just you wait, I'll bloody well have your guts for garters...!!"
The dishevelled 'Cassie' clambered to her feet with the wire hook from a matching bra grimly hanging from her re-arranged hairstyle. Her brand new pineapple cut was now very pear-shaped.
She had lost the plot. She had lost the ticket for the train now leaving the station, that she was supposed to be on. All, watched her fume from her feet with a certain apprehension.
" Guts for garters? I don't wear 'em sweetie, now whose to mind their language? "
The incorrigible clown. The feckless Father, found himself in more ridiculous garb and doing several laps of his vehicle with the even more ridiculous, now ferocious Cassie in hot pursuit. He snatched a half folded deckchair to defend himself. His 'ticked off a tad' wife was wielding a beach spade raining down as many blows, with both cheering children goading them on. As a crowd gathered to watch the cabaret, the two fell on the bonnet of the dusty Ford out of breath. Cassie connecting the odd slap or punch and Tony absorbing their force with a half-hearted Japanese strangle hold. The dual was over and no victors. Tearing the backside of a good prank as well as a good pair of knickers.
It was very soon after of this wonderful interlude of family frolics that Sheridan was fast losing the will to live. After the grand tour of the chalet that consisted of a sink, stove and only enough plastic foodware and cutlery for two people. The woodwork was in pillar-box red with yellow walls. Noddy's car was no where to be seen on the drive. The main bedroom was the lounge with a brown stripey bobbley sofa bed that converted into a sort of dungeon rack. It look like a giant Mars bar sliced longways. If you did not click back the stays properly it ate one or both of your parents. The occasional table was missing. Sheridan wondered on what occasion that happened. They would have to wait for it on another occasion, perhaps. The sheets were all nylon. His pyjamas were nylon too. On a restless night he hoped to power the chalet from his tossing and turning and save the family a fortune.
This brought him to the shilling meter which had the appetite of an overworked sludge gulper. One had to chose from boiling the kettle or financing third world debt. Lighting the hot water geyser led to Napalming your eyebrows and sending you through a wall. Sheridan intrigued by the carpet sweeper provided which evenly spread the previous holidaymakers crap all over the floor again.
Condensation? Not really that bad, at bedtime he tossed a coin with his sister for the shallow end. A Belling two-ringed stove that could boil an egg a little faster than it took for our galaxy to form and a small aluminium kettle that made tea taste like a nuclear accident.
The toilet worked in reverse. Instead of flushing it would fill to the brim and offer you exactly the same as you saw on the beach earlier, except at closer quarters and then the slurry would disappear reluctantly and return later without invitation or warning. The stench you could taste.
Breakfast the next day was held, as it was every morning, in the 'suite'. A large high-ceiling type of warehouse, that had large cabinets like empty fish aquariums full of curly sandwiches made of bleached bread. The fried food was brought in from a belch of smoke in the kitchen on large trays at shoulder height. The bacon slipped off effortlessly unless it was burned on and then tipped onto stainless steel hot-shelves. Poached eggs swam on a grey liquid, resembling the beginnings of life and there were sausages that had exploded, got re-heated and exploded again. A vat of beans looked like the scene of a murder and fried bread that had swelled with animal fat to such a degree they were moving of their own volition. Undercooked thick chips were welded together and each cup of coffee you could stain furniture with.
Sheridan had to queue at the crack of dawn on this conveyor belt of Typhus in order to have spotty youths in spattered overalls propelling sludge at him from as far away in the distance as possible. The only way this anti-matter could leave the serving spoon was if the utensil was flicked with some force and no degree of accuracy. He then had to endure sitting across from a benchful of old aged pensioners looking like a row of grumbling cement mixers. Occasionally ducking when half chewed missiles with only gums to hold them were aimed at him
Old age must be terrible, but it didn't seem to effect your appetite. They couldn't grab a pudding fast enough.
Kite flying was the first activity on the agenda that first day. On Scarborough beach.
To Sheridan this had all the appeal of landing at Dunkirk after the shelling had stopped.
Yes, Dad had bought his son a kite. A large triangular one of Miss Poppins fame. His Father had said red would be seen better. It cost eighteen bob and with an extra ball of string.
Scarborough beach was not a great venue. A stony, rocky place with a lot of unmentionable material being offered on the tide. Great globules of oil and doggy-do-do's, that, at intervals had to be scraped off with a washed up (as in 'beached' and not meant for any hygienic purpose)plastic cup, or lolly stick. Now he knew why they were called jelly shoes. Other curiosity items that dribbled onto the shore included strange economy-size finger-stools for very large people. The sand looked like the contents of a twenty year old central heating system that had been emptied and never cleared up.
It was cold. Cold as dead man's kiss.
His Father flew the kite for the entire event, allowing his son to hold the string for three or four seconds. Four photograph albums were taken by a 'Brownie' and Sheridan took every one. His Father was so absorbed in his own ability to defy gravity, he failed to notice his disgruntled son going back to the chalet to be totally ignored by his Mother also.
That was the thing with adults, especially British ones, they really knew how to have a good time. Give them anything apart from a ration book and a gas-mask and they are as happy as a nun weeding asparagus.
The 'Honeycombs' were playing 'Have I the right' on the 'trannie' the second morning of the living hell. Sheridan ate his lump of toast with a moving glacier of 'Roses' lime marmalade sliding off it. Rupert shook some 'Devil Dust' as Cass called it, that is, cayenne pepper, onto his boiled egg. An awkward silence prevailed between his Father and he.
"How about we try the kite again, Shez? The winds getting up. Where did you get to yesterday? It came down in the sea, you know." Rupert was oblivious to his tactlessness.
"Great, have you brought any 'Pledge' polish?" Sheridan slinging his crust on his plate.
His Dad gave him a dumb squint.
"What on earth do you want polish for, boy?" He had walked into uncharted territory in this conversation, to his cost.
"To dust me occasionally, of course……. You're same with all my toys. You have to have first 'go' with them. How would you like it if I did your crossword first? Eh? How would you like it if I used your razor first, or turned off the Telly during 'Peyton Place' at the best bit? What if I used your 'Vosene' and you had to wash your hair in 'Fairy' for a change? You always spoil my fun…….. Always."
Sheridan stood up sending his plastic moulded chair somersaulting backwards. He had seen this done in a western when someone cheats at poker. His Father sat like an empty suit.
His Mother piped up as Mother's do, to defend his Father. That weird psychology that requires parents to disagree with everything each other do or say until an issue is raised by one of their children. Then they close ranks like there lives depended on it.
"Stop your lip, this minute. One, you're lucky to have any toys in the first place, not like those poor mites in Biafra and, two, you should thank your lucky stars you have a Daddy that spends time playing with his kids. Your Father never met his Daddy, he was killed in the First World War, so think on, next time you get so possessive about a few stupid toys, do you hear me?" Her tone crackling as new wood on a fire.
"Oh, Green grow the rushes'o, that old chestnut, well excuse me if I get out the smallest violin in the world….."
His Father snapped vertically too, facing his son. Angelica put her nose deeper into her cornflakes and observed the scene taking cover from behind the box they came in.
"Do you know how many hours extra I had to work to bring you here? Do you know how I had to grovel to Mr Priors to get this week off, at our busiest time of year? Do you know what a place like this costs, you bloody ingrate, you? When, I was not much older than you I never had a home, let alone a holiday. I was bombed out twice, and your Grandmother, God rest her, couldn't afford to rent anywhere as a munitions worker in London during the Blitz………Father gone and…..and no roof over our heads. We slept on friends floors and in attics. You never had to spend you childhood in subway stations and holes at the bottom of the garden hoping and praying you weren't going to be blown to kingdom come………well,did you………No……..……you don't know you are born……..and sulking like a spoilt brat over a kite…what do you know? I bet you never had to spend Christmas trying to rescue a few belongings out of a pile of rubble, well, did you?"
At this point his Mother was crying. Sheridan should of apologised. That was his first mistake.
"I wouldn't know Dad, I'm a Jehovah's Witnesse, or have you forgotten? Unlike you, I've never have celebrated Christmas, so I don't get toys at Christmas, because nobody buys me toys at CHRISTMAS! That's why when I get a toy, all I ask is that you don't take it off me……. like……..like….. a bar of soap in the bath……..God, I hate this family… and the religion…….and that flaming kite……so 'stick it where the sun don't shine' for all I care and don't bother buying me anything again…….keep you stupid war as well………you make me feel its my fault……… grown-ups started it…….I didn't ask to be born…………I suppose its my fault your Father died…….well……good riddance."
Sheridan found himself pulled to the sink by his Pyrex number nine haircut and squirted in the mouth with washing-up liquid. The next episode of violence cost him a coat hanger across the back of the legs in multiples of three.
He ran out of the chalet snatching his toy yacht and blubbing.
The evening closed in. Sheridan returned. His dignity and calves very bruised. He poked his smutty head around the door looking like a hound who had enough of the dog-house.
The soggy and soiled lad bowed his head and said with a modicum of defiance.
"Dad…….I'm not sorry for the kite business,…….but I didn't mean it about you Dad…..so……I'm sorry….can I come in." To a cheer and the fawning of his Mother he buried his face in his Fathers stomach, who replied.
"Yea, and I'm sorry too…..stealing your kite……that is…..I should of grown out of kites by now, eh?" They laughed an squeezed each other as Cassie rubbed calamine lotion on his welts.
The holiday reached its ultimate moment. The dancing competition at the club. A 'hotspot' for a promise of entertainment. Unfortunately, the front door of the club was not exactly Hollywood Boulevard. The windowless bunker looked like a Soho cinema, with two fat penguins outside.
Full of fish and chips and after a shameless tour of the giftshop the family got dressed to kill. Sheridan's new shoes were certainly killing him.
He wore a suit that his Father had made him. A Beatle suit in light grey with no collar. He felt real sharp in it. He thought he might have to dive into a limousine to escape the hysteria of his fans at any moment. The price you pay for fame, he guessed.
Rupert had learned to make all the family's clothes. As a naval officer, he swapped rations of cigarettes for a heavy serge blanket to make a coat while on deck in the North Atlantic during his months away in wartime. Temperatures fell to forty below sometimes. Soon, all his sailor chums were asking for a coat just like it. So, when in Singapore he picked up a 'Singer' sewing machine instead of a venereal disease for a change.
Since he could walk, Sheridan could remember the dining room table had been home to great reams of French chalked material. He would make exactly the same outfits for his Mum and sister and could run up a few curtains at the drop a hat. Mother explained that 'running up curtains' did not involve a cunning stunt. His Father made some 'pedal pushers' for the women and he pedaled all night to make them.
Sheridan fell asleep, night after night, to the cheerless chunter of the 'Singer'. It would start off with a slow and deliberate clickety rumble and gather speed into a manic buzzing and squeaking, as it munched yard after yard of thick hems. It literally was his 'song' to sleep to. A lullaby that rang through the rafters right up through to his bunk. It was like trying to get to sleep with a wasp up your nose.
Sometimes you had to lose a little sleep to look good. John Lennon looked very smart at Wembley and he had lots of late nights.
Every other night Sheridan and Angelica had won the dancing heats. Their Mum and Dad entered the jiving contest also. They really wowed the crowd except for his Father twisting his ankle and slipping on a pool of strategically placed beer on the last 'leg'. A different leg to the one that slipped on the beer. They watched their parents attempt a jiving move that meant the female got swung between the legs of the man and flipped back up and sat on his shoulder. Just like in West Side story. That dance called 'every things free in America.' It was not at all like the dancing in the film but no less dramatic. Instead, his Mother got wedged with her dress over her head and they both fell on top of a group of handicapped people. Cassie left her dress in the spokes of a wheelchair to the hilarity of the crowd. To cover his wife's immodesty, Rupert removed his jacket to avoid further embarrassment, to a wail of approval by the audience, when before their popping eyes, her 'gown-less evening strap' broke and her left breast slipped from its moorings.
The children looked on with expressions of parachutists who had pulled the ripchord for the reserve chute and nothing had happened either.
"They don't dance like that anymore.." Sheridan muttered.. " thank God.."
"Serves them right!" His sister whispered.
"Pair of idiots, talk about show me up. Look at them, anybody would think they were still sixteen, the way they carry on. Nothing more off-putting, than two grown adults who think they can get away with this sort of thing on our holiday." Angelica sighed with a disappointed sigh, the variety she used for similar moments of revulsion.
"Come on Angie, aren't you going to be their age someday?" Sheridan defending his heap of parents still in a reef knot on the dance floor.
"At least they don't sit in the corner like that couple, the same age, miserable and ignoring each other. Don't worry they might grow out of it, you never know." Sheridan was only half convinced his sister was right and fifty percent sure he was not.
"Do you know? When they aren't ripping each others throat out, they are like a couple of delinquent rabbits." She stalked away with her arms folded and kicked the floor with her heel defiantly. Francis followed her out of the clubroom still trying to placate his furious sister.
" Hey, listen, you always act like you hate them when they enjoy themselves, and yet you gloat when they fight. What is it with you, sis? Afraid to see your parents happy or something? Are you jealous they might actually enjoy being Father and Mother to you, on the odd occasion? You are so sick….. do you know that? You probably hate being my twin because you have to share all the attention. You can't bear having a brother that steals you flipping show ,eh, is that it?"
Francis crunched a nerve and his sister bit back.
"Jealous of this farce of a family? Oh, grow up, brother of mine, you think I care about what you think of me. I'm sick and tired of watching you lot play happy families. Well, I live in the real world."Angelica storming at several knots and meaner than dirt.
"Hummph!"
She braked and tore her French plait out, turned and stomped her right foot in a puddle.
"Pretending to be footstep followers in the Kingdom Hall and then coming here and reveling with all the 'worldlings.' You can't profess to be one thing and then be the other." She hissed her hidden agenda from behind frantic eyes of frustration.
"Look at them in there, cavorting like a couple of Devil worshippers, lapping up the temptations of the flesh……putting on a wild show for outsiders. What would the elders think if they saw their antics? What would they think of my Mother showing off her tits in public, eh, tell me, go on? As for Dad, well, he's neither one or the other, he tells us how to behave when he's not even one of us. Does he care if we all die at Armageddon? Does he hell, he's too busy playing the field on both sides."
Francis looked at his shoes and then rested his palms on both of his sisters shoulders. He raised his eyes to meet hers.
"Look, we are supposed to be on holiday, for crying out loud, just calm down and have a bit of fun, its only once a year."
Francis spoke softly with tenderness and understanding, something he was allergic to in front of his sister, nonetheless it was a last ditch attempt to get her to see sense.
" Yeh, Christmas is once a year, but we can't enjoy that either. So, the same goes for birthdays, and dating…… all evil and bad. Oh, so its alright to take a holiday off, being a Christian…. when it suits them, yea? They can both use language that would make Max Miller pass out, but then in front of the brothers, its all very much a family show. Are they hypocrites or what, Sheridan? What is so special about them that they can ride two horses with one backside? When its back on their own turf they act like this charade is of some sort of tea-break and then its 'business as usual' on Monday, oh…….give me a break."
Sheridan looked a little defeated, he knew his sister was right. She carried on.
"Part time, fair-weather, off-base, fun and frolics as long as you don't get caught, yea? Well, excuse me for being thick, but I thought parents were supposed to be our role models and tell us to avoid worldly contact, eh,……answer me that then? They make their own rules to suit themselves and lie to God……. and to the organisation…… and lie to us…….. and the world and lie to…..to…..to themselves, they just lie in their actions all the time, they lie , lie, lie, don't you see?"
Angelica shook her shoulders and her head fell to one side in tears.
"Angelica, they are only having a blessed dance for Pete's sake. What about it? My God, even the Israelites danced from time to time. That's why the Psalms are songs to dance to. Not exactly Gilbert and Sullivan, I agree, but they knew about how to have a good knees up, girl."
Francis smiled and hooked his face under hers to search for some audience participation.
"Anyway, none of you care about how I'm feeling, I could be bleeding to death and none of you care, I'm really sick of this place and here you all are whooping it up, I hate you all, I want to die, just leave me alone".
A thirteen year old girl fled from the boys reassuring arms, clutching her turquoise party dress as she ran hysterically into the darkness. His sister could run. The dozen trophies on the sideboard at home bore witness to that. He yelled after his troubled twin slipping on a rain drenched lawn and spotting a strapless white shoe with the heel embedded in the mowed grass. He followed her cry to the beach where he found her weeping with the tide lapping at her feet. Chin in her knees. He quietly sat beside her.
"If your dying then, can I have your new bike and my camera back?"
Sheridan refreshing his bedside manner with great tact.
"It's not funny, Sheridan………..and if you bled from your bottom you would be scared to."
" Wha...?"
The boy gaped, trying to piece together some facts. The most important facts that boys learn about before girls. This knowledge of great mystery was imparted to him from a forgetful classmate, months before, who had unwittingly left his duffle coat in the school shower room. The other boy was the last to leave his class. A curious book poked out of the pocket in a bright red paper cover with large black letters entitled "The Human Zoo". Noticing a chapter called 'Sex and super sex' Francis felt the urge to find a cubicle and see if it was anything to do with his homework, that he really ought to know about. In this case, toilet experience for extra cramming came in very handy for this very occasion.
His giddy revelations from the pages of the book had put him in good stead with those less familiar with the functions of the flesh. How to deliver such mind-blowing material to his sister, who was at this moment fearing for her life, was indeed, another matter.
Over the next ten minutes her brother gallantly described to her in full detail why she would not die when most people would expect to, after days of haemorrhaging. He delicately revealed to his astounded sister the reasons for her mood and the hormonal changes she was experiencing were symptoms of womanhood and the advent of becoming a mature female. He explained the need to prepare herself for the menstrual cycle and carry the necessary absorbent accessories from now on.
The following pause was undoubtedly very pregnant.
Finally his sister broke the silence and almost her brothers jaw.
"You dirty, lying, filthy, filthy, filthy boy. You sick, perverted, foulmouthed little swine. You wait until I tell Mother about this." She proceeded to throw beach pebbles with several meeting the target, bouncing off in all directions.
"That's the point, stupid. She didn't tell you about the curse, and that's why you are so upset and confused. It shouldn't have to come from your own brother, but there it is. You've got the decorators in. Its normal…….. It's normal for you to gush blood from you stomach and out of your tuppence like a tap that won't turn off. You are a fully fledged woman. You can have babies and everything. You've grown up to be an adult. Its God's way of saying you are not a moody little cow, its just your period. For flips sake, at least you have pubic hair, I'm still as bald as a badger. Its like a boy getting to shave. Like when they have wet dreams an' all that!"
Sheridan had been overtaken with his opening subject. He had put his sister in the picture and now he had to colour it in.
"What do mean wet dreams? Like when you have a nightmare about leaving the bath running?"
Sheridan at this point realised that for a sister who was more sexually advanced physically than him, when stacked up, what she knew about the potential of the subject could be written on a cloak room ticket. He spent the slow stroll back to the resort clasping his sisters hand, having to draw some of the most challenging mental pictures on a very blank page.
They walked around the rear of club dance hall, bumping into the slightly drunk parental search party. Angelica ran and hugged her Mother spontaneously. Gripping her tightly, emotionally.
"Oh, Mother, its all right, I know, and I'm just glad we can go through this together. I'm just glad you are a woman."
The parents looked at their daughter performing at Oscar winning level. Their quizzical expression could not be blamed on too many gin and tonics. They looked at each other and then back at Angelica who was now looking at them again with an air of self-satisfaction. That look that Agony Aunts make when they answer callers problems for the benefit of the viewers.
"I know, I know, I know. Let's get back to the chalet. There's something I need to tell you. We have a lot to share and I hope you have something in your handbag for me, but I'm fine, its nothing for you to worry about. Its o.k, honest."
The parents simultaneously looked accusingly at Sheridan as if he had spiked his sister's ginger ale with hard narcotics.
Sheridan shrugged, which is the world's poorest alibi.
Rupert and Cassie won a spray of flowers and the coveted gold sprayed plaster of paris figourine of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. A trophy that looked from a distance that it had been cleverly moulded from a casted dog turd, stuck to a twig. Angelica and Sheridan left with the now very pubescent balloon, two bottles of Coke and Sooty and Sweep hand-puppets. The greatest of all spoils being a very large tube of 'Smarties' of which there was only one. After a certain amount of argument and most of the them ending up on the floor of the chalet, the now very tired parents of the feuding two, called a truce with the solitary award being shared out. A operation of extreme precision. Only then, could they be hastily consumed on the premises with the consequence of both his sister and he spending half the night taking turns draped over a toilet suffering an overdose.
A night he and his sister will never forget. It was apparent the nauseous two would be shouting such refrains to their porcelain friend at many intervals for what felt like an eternity. Sheridan gripped his stomach through the ceaseless agony. His lower abdomen felt like he had been disembowelled by a grappling hook.
He was unconcerned at his sisters present health. Period pain was nothing like this, he thought. Anyway, it was her first time and surely gorging chocolate to the point of projectile vomiting was far more painful. A gut disturbance he went through not monthly, but at least, weekly.
There was plenty more where that came.
He slumped back into his hiding place and clutched his stomach as it gurgled with anxiety. Never before had he felt more wretched. Like, he had gone through his entire life trying to perfect a dance like his parents disasterous one, that evening. Years of practice to learn it to excellence. The curtain goes up and the 52 piece orchestra summons him. A drum roll. He appears on stage, only to discover he had forgotten that both of his legs had been amputated as a result of a nasty hay-baling accident. His life was that complicated and tragic.
He would never emerge from his prison. The shackles of a religion that pulled him this way and that. A cult that manipulated him. The 'organisation' that expected exclusive obedience. The 'movement' that make him do exactly as they require. Threats. The worldwide corporation that had driven him insane.
That night in the bottom bunk of the last chance hotel.
He resorted to interfering with himself. He was playing with the Devil's instrument. Nasty, bad wicked willy. He had been beckoned by his filthy thoughts of debauchery ever since last years holiday when he shared a bed and breakfast bedroom with Sally his sisters friend.
It was another holiday with the same amount of thought and planning that went into this years . Except he was out-numbered by females and Angelica's friend had busty substances.
This idiotic excursion was supposed be in Dymchurch near Folkstone. A half-baked endeavour. He had spent the four hour journey next to Sally. Every bump in the road caused him to glance at her jiggling meringue swirls. Squashed in the back of his Fathers Zephyr six was heaven. The picnic hamper hampered his movement but did a great job concealing something a cat could not scratch the entire length of…the North Circular. Strangling his 'salami' was none other than fornication with a harlot and he should be stoned for his shameless temptation.
They arrived at a sort of hospital with coloured bulbs. Submerged in mud. The brochure said "only forty yards from the beach."It neglected to mention the forty yard high sea defence that stood between you and the briny. A walk of quarter of a mile to the stepped entrance led you a further quarter of a mile from anything mistaken for a beach. They all took one look at whitewashed walls and tiled bedrooms and jumped straight into the car and sped off to find digs sometime before midnight and somewhere in Kent.
He thought of Sally. He was trying not to enjoy himself too much. It was his only hot date. He felt stupid. Like he had a few pages stuck together.
The guilt ridden boy hung his head and for a short while he moped in disgrace.
He now knew what a Guinea pig felt like. He was God's Guinea pig. He took his mind off Sally, after wiping himself on the candlewick.
He thought about Guinea pigs.
An interesting comparison because apart from their use in live laboratory experiments the rodent was neither from Guinea or for that matter a 'pig', so is it any wonder the poor little cosmetic 'crash dummies' got such a raw deal. Imagine one day as a perfect little furry pet and then thrown on the scrap heap with galloping terminal cancer due to a series of unwholesome syringefuls of deadly toxins being pumped into you.
Sheridan imagined what good could there be in destroying one of God's sweetest creatures to test makeup on women who either do not need it, or for those who have a face like a roof-tilers nailbag and for whom it could only improve their unfortunate features. Sheridan had seen the use of two of sand and one of cement in queues at Woolies.
Like Cinderella's sisters in front of doting salesgirls.
At the cost of hundreds of caged animals that have had spent their brief and miserable existence with the worlds worst known irritants stabbed into every orifice.
Francis could not justify any further carnage, to produce a colony of painted dragons, who even the most fearless would not want to meet on a dark night.
The Nazis conducted cruel experiments on humans, not to advance the beauty and alluring qualities of lipstick, but to simulate the extremes conditions the Luffwaffe pilots may have had to endure if shot down. So hundreds of innocent Jews were killed like proverbial 'guinea pigs' in laboratory 'science' for the purpose of preventing other human beings being killed so those human beings in turn could go on killing other human beings.
Adult society had a peculiar set of values that were not dependent on argument or reason but evolved out of some sort of chaotic madness that based all its action rejecting any form of intelligence or straightforward logic of any kind.
The silent 'witness' concluded that having to trust his elders with his education, going by events that preceded him by several thousand years was like asking a kleptomaniac to do your shopping by handing him or her your wallet.
The boy wriggled from side to side and squealed as the crushing sensation of cramp set upon him with all the might of a being trapped in a lorry-cab engineering tool press. His left leg was twisted in muscular spasm and he desperately tried to apply vigorous friction to the underside of his thigh as it knotted like a double Windsor. The chalet bunk made it all the more impossible to move. The passage of blood had already given up and turned back. Drat the itchy blankets that would bring an Armadillo out in a rash. Eczema was not invented until he came to this godforsaken hellhole.
Sheridan felt no more relaxed in the chain-mail enmeshing him. It had occurred to him that this mattress was probably infested with the worlds population of scabies, when he thought of his own bed at home. Only Forty thousand three hundred and eighty minutes and thirty seconds to go. He dearly wished on all that was holy (not including his socks of course) that he had slipped into something more comfortable. According to his psychological state probably a coma would be appropriate.
Sheridan felt he was surgically removed from the material world without anaesthetic. A fugitive from reality. A hideous relic, in a never never land of grotesque accidents. A boy the universe wanted to forget. Lost in a cruel acrid desert absent of compassion. Paralysed with fear and uncertainty.
He knew one thing and this alone. His was not a common experience. A treacherous road lay ahead and he was sure that his chances of making the journey were few. He did not worry of the bumpy trip but all he wanted was a safe arrival.
Cassie had always said "Don't worry, son" in her all too simple voice of pre-recorded messages edited for her by the religion's information channel and perculated into a distilled dialogue.
" God will always protect you if you try to do what's right ." She cooed.
" Why, the good book says that 'He' will see to it that not a hair on our heads will be harmed and he knows every sparrow that falls. So can you not see, boy, how very lucky we are to be in the safe company of God's organisation?"
" Mum, how can the brothers and sisters believe that, after all the persecution in Mozambique?" The boy quizzed his Mother.
He referred to the latest graphic detail of terrorism a few years earlier where twenty thousand natives of East Africa had suffered the most obscene atrocities. These rapes, house-burns and murderous beatings were highlighted as a victory of faith and courage by the religions' paraphernalia. Steadfastness was demanded by the heartless regime.
Sheridan felt sick to his stomach each time an issue of the hierachy preened itself in the pages, boasting of how much a stand it had made against the Malawian congress party.
All this at a cost. The cost of these poor defenceless families that had known torture and watched each other die in horrible ways for adherence to the rigid unforgiving discipline of his own religion.
His sister was more enamoured than he with this complicated lifestyle of a new age religion and its strange ethos.
He had just started to think it was a shame they replaced their own common sense with such alternative methods to avoid facing reality. Such belief systems encouraging vast portions of the brains to clog with rapacious, superstitious crap. Sheridan brainstormed briefly, about the whole concept of religion, whatever its origin and kept coming back to a simple line of thought.
He allowed his mind to leave the ordered and tight control of his previous learning and created from the remains of an unscratched surface of human thinking.
He imagined as strange as it seems that what if he woke up in morning and every religion that ever confounded human kind ceased to exist. If for whatever reasons it vanished from our society as quickly as grease at a dry-cleaners.
In such an unlikely event of all religious rationale being erased completely from human thought and memory, would we all suddenly choke to death on our breakfast and our heads fall off? Would we all get an insatiable desire to take a mysterious pilgrimage to the Galapagos islands and throw ourselves off a giant cliff? Or for that matter turn into murdering rapists, one by one, looting and setting fire to churches?
Yes, it would leave a void in some peoples lives he guessed, but is the reason we are here to deny ourselves and worship invisible beings?
In a world of his own he began to reason on a forbidden issue. The fact is that most people are intensely devout and industrious with their belief system, whatever it may be. His own brethren are focussed peddling the word of God. Yet, if they were born ignorant, or never were contacted about religion or offered God, would they turn into primitives and cannibals? Would they give up all hope of becoming happy without God? Or would they spend their entire lives searching for a guru or leader to lead them through each day of their lives?
Why do we need to look up to a God or other supreme being as our master?
Like dogs regard us, we regard God. Obedience, worship, penance, preaching for the glory of a higher intelligence. What must be missing that we need to fill our lives, living not for ourselves . To have our destiny strictly governed by our allowance of certain choices. Why are we afraid to be free-thinking, liberated independent and happy people without God breathing down our necks.
Does God need us to get through his day?
Being a Christian has all the spontaneity of a reinforced steel joist.
Whole community's of squeaky clean, silky Christians who are solely in pursuit of eternal life and under the apprehension that being 'born again' is not for those who are 'born every minute.' Convinced of a higher plain, a reincarnation to a better world. A blessed and holy union with God to the end of time, clothed in immortality at the right hand of God. A little more special than others because they possess the 'truth'.
Sheridan hated the truth. The truth always hurt.
" Now, wait a minute." Sheridan took up the thread.
Does God know that he might be stuck with a whole cloudful of people who can barely pull on their own socks without a fervent prayer and meaningful study of the scriptures?
In the boys experience the, 'chosen few' were to be handpicked by the man upstairs like a bluebell from this worldly wood of evil and unrighteousness.
Surely, he would want to hang out with mortals earmarked for eternity who don't wear woolly hats, or collect saliva at the corners of their mouth when sermonising. Those sort that wear sock suspenders and do not wash often enough, in case, their hands get too accustomed to being 'a little too thorough' around the twiddly bits and impure thoughts should fill the head.
Too late now, he had already polished his helmet and was sure to die in Gehenna. Crucified for the sins of Babel.
He rubbed it again and muttered, "well, if you want to get brainwashed its because you already have a dirty mind, right?"
It was reckless to suspect that those who felt it their right to reside with the angels could get the impression that God would tolerate a herd of clones, who between them, if they put their heads together could not make a log cabin. Whose main fear at wholesome church social gatherings is whether they have potted enough ginger marmalade. Did God really want to invite his servants into his house with the dress sense and elegance of a body snatchers pickings. Whose conversation had all the vim of a medium with tonsilitis who had made contact with Helen Keller.
To be privy to our Fathers courtyard with an assembly of charcoal suited, shiny brief-cased remote control manikins who if they had a thought from their own invention it would of died of isolation.
Yes, he was all of these. It was him to a tee.
Sheridan was amazed that this late into the century, people still join the church because they cannot afford electric shock therapy.
He was one of these people. He was in some shape or form a follower of the Lord. A living legacy from his Mothers warped perspective. Was he like her at all? Did he greet people with an enamel smile that looked like he had just had a wet shave and reached for the after lotion and splashed on paraquat instead? Did he comment at Christian meetings and finish the sentence with an expression like he had just passed wind with such expertise as to remain totally undiscovered?
Yes, he did just that, all the time.
To spend entire evenings at Sunday evening barn-dances, averting your eyes and pretending to be interested in the brickwork while you watch ruddy-cheeked buxom 'sisters' do the Virginia reel with ripe young flesh bounced inside yellow gingham dresses determined to burst free during the dosey-doe.
Yes, he did that, standing to attention.
Sheridan thought it preposterous that so many people were going through this charade.
The bottom line was, they are so terrified of dying.
In the Roman Catholic religion were people that with faith, believed in hell. Yet, he was supposed to believe that after death and unrepentance held, eternal nothingness. To be deprived of life in a paradise earth. On the other side of the coin, he is promised throughout the literature of this long public relations exercise, that in heaven for as long as time in memoriam there would be 144,000 people reside with the heavenly Father forever.
Was it surprising that the people he rubbed shoulders with in the faith faced what he did and found his rebelliousness so incomprehensible?
He understood one thing, that whole groups of people act in different ways for different reasons. Could this be the reason why whole bunches of individuals act in such a truly glib fashion? To get a brownie point over the other guy and jump through hoops straight on the bandwagon, is that the reason he could not relate to members of his church? Was it more comfortable for him to believe, than face his inevitable death? Would he rather die, than hope and be disappointed anyway?
If God's hope for the kingdom was not what it was cracked up to be, it might just turn into Swiss cheese. Surely, thought the insolent boy, death, was indeed a beautiful thing and the very thing you could depend on in this confusing mush of, so called, human understanding.
Why construct the most erratic and schizoid doctrines to paper your brain with? Life can offer you nothing but frustration and aggravation.
Death is a cable car to a long lie-in.
It became clear to Sheridan that maybe members of his brotherhood acted that way because they spend all their spare time not meeting people. Yes, they spend all day knocking on doors, but nobody wants to speak to them. Or, who at least pretend to be out when they call.
If these "brothers and sisters" made Sheridan feel like having a cup of tea with them, was an eternity, then, how on earth, or in heaven, is he going to put up with them for the next countless milleniums?
Why, oh, why, did his Mother get mixed up with people unified in one goal, and that was, to be all unified in one goal?
What they believed was immaterial, as long as they all did the same, marching in step, then that what was of most importance. He sat their hour after hour at the meetings trying to piece together the most romantic moralistic theories that would make Alice in Wonderland utterly feasible.
He always felt like he was a person who was already incredibly ugly but spent the rest of eternity, playing hard to get.
Armed with the trusted propaganda, they would trudge in all weathers, in their duffle coats frozen right up their rearends, foraging for scriptures with fingers blue with cold.
He was one of these distributors from a very early age and nudged from door to door, to pester folk. Some choice stories flooded into his head but they could wait. If performing in the congregation would mean being totally selfless and unworthy, why not just stay at home and feel great, doing bugger all? Non-Jehovah's Witnesses and all their worldly pleasures and pursuits were the lowest of the low. Yet, in the confused brain of the boy, he truly would rather be on the outside unhappy, than in the faith and unhappy.
Christmas and birthdays, Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Mothers day, Fathers day, Valentines day, saluting the flag, buying from charity shops, giving to such charities, giving or receiving blood transfusions, reading anti- witness material or literature from other religions, engaging in higher education or pursuing a career. Not to mention dating girls, smoking ,or visiting nightclubs and casino's. To avoid hobbies, read or look at pornographic material. Never socialise in clubs or join groups like guides or scouts. Were no entry signs for Sheridan.
The upside of all this repression and suppression is that you get to survive Armageddon and into God's News system of things and live with all these boring jerks playing with the fluffy animals and never even being allowed to swear for at least, gob-loads of trillions of years.
You stub your toe you say "fffffffffancy that." You hit your thumbnail building your dream home on God's paradisaic planet and you are supposed to say with a glow of righteousness, " well dear me, what a bippety boppety blister I'm going to sustain, tsch, tsch, what a shame the blood has all rushed to this part of my body to cause me such unparalleled pain. I really must say that I do feel a trifle foolish."
Sheridan a little more familiar with human nature, felt it would be just a matter of time that every body would not give a rats arse for utopia and after a few thousand years probably end up a lot more decadent than we all are now.
He arrogantly perused a future very different to what the witnesses in their sugarcoated dreams perceived.
It would go something like this. Two kids would be chatting, when one would say.
" So what do you want to do tonight? "
The other would reply coyly as they stroll through a very beautiful part of the particularly perfect part of the sumptiously undefiled region of the astoundingly unmolested and pristine neighbourhood.
"Well, I thought we could go and pick bluebells and then, why, we could build a sanctuary for the rabbits and then, gosh, we could trip over to my incredibly young looking Grandma and help her make some scones for Mr and Mrs Shiny botty. Why, shucks, after such a wing ding of a time we could press our picked flowers and make blueberry jam, what do you think? "
The first kid replies.
" Nah, lets buy some fags, get blotto down the pub, start a fight and shag some bird
and her mate. Or if that's too boring, lets steal a car and fuck off to Brighton, yea?"
The young hypocrite was solving nothing. He was under siege in this cult and unable to tunnel out. Blasphemy is his crime. Afraid to shed his religion because of emotional blackmail. Why people like him had to suffer such pretense was all he could bear. Although he felt alone he knew he was not. As for his god Jehovah, what did he make of a witness being in a the religion because they just want to please others, more than Him.
He was a tourist of his faith but mainly just a phoney jackass.
He had heard that people down the 'Black cat' cafe drop acid and really see God. He longed for God to show him the way to his salvation without the use of such substances but he could understand why frustrated individuals turn to image enhancing additives when life was such a combination of trying not to trangress and in the process, doing just that.
How did the apostle Paul put it?
"Everything I wish not to do, I do, and everything I do not wish to do,I do." Boy, did he know what that feels like. Not only that, but sinning, was pretty hard on everyone else too.
Shez felt that he was slipping into some sort of blind alley that was a dead end, both ends. Why could not his Mother and the body of elders, spiritually defrost him?
He was never again going to underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
He wish he had a book apart from his Bible that could teach him how not to make big bad-ass mistakes in life, when you are always in the wrong.
"Please take me out with a legal drug and put my name on the prescription, instead of spending another ludicrous thirteen years playing this silly game,"
He screeched in his mind. It was certainly true to the destroyed boy that no secret is harder to keep than the opinion you have of yourself.
He would buy his postcards tomorrow. "Weather is here wish you were beautiful"… or perhaps better still "Don't try and find me….I'm doing find without all of you."
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