Bug out

Tags

Apocalypse, armouredcockroach, Arne Dahl, Arto Soderstedt, Bear Grylls, bivvy bag, bug in, bug out, dehydrated snacks, Elastoplast, Enid Blyton, Fatty, hallowe'en, kirby grip, mushroom cloud, non-PC, parador, preppers, rhetorical questions, Sawyer Water filter, sizeism, The Secret Seven, zombies

(Bear Grylls photo by jamiegrayphotography.co.uk)

Augustus looked at his ex-lover, Diana Fotheringay-Syylk

and raised an eyebrow.

He then glanced towards his current enamorata, Virginia

Fisher-Gyles and she shrugged.

Murgatroyd was prevaricating as usual. They were all ready

to go out for a walk and he was fussing around with some

man bag, or other.

Surely you don’t need that?  Gus was good at rhetorical questions.

He very rarely had the opportunity to use them in teaching as they

were open, rather than closed questions.  He quite liked the control

they gave him, if delivered with heavy irony, but he had been

advised at his appraisal that sarcasm was out of fashion in current

classrooms. What a pity.

I won’t be a moment.  I just have to fit the Sawyer water filter in-

somehow.

But we’re going to the pub eventually.  We won’t need water, Virginia

pointed out, sanely.

You can’t tell him, groaned Diana.  But I draw the line at taking the

one man tent.  It is big enough for both of us, but, even in a

nuclear incident, I wouldn’t want to be so close to him!

Oh, bug off! Murgatroyd was becoming irritable, as he felt they were

laughing at his expense.

Diana was starting to enjoy teasing him when the others were giving

her moral support.  I don’t think there are too many zombies around

here, darling. Just some SNPs.

Zombies?  It’s not Hallowe’en yet, Virginia commented, perhaps too

freely, considering she was addressing her host.

No, zombies who would steal your supplies while you were bugged in-

before you bugged out after the mushroom cloud, replied Diana, who

knew the lingo.  Or after we’ve been forced to leave the Union.

I don’t fancy these dehydrated snack things you’ve got in there, said

Snod.  I thought we were going to have a pie and a pint.

Murgatroyd knew he was dealing with unbelievers and not his fellow

preppers.

Hang on! Snod said suddenly.  Maybe you could take the mosquito net

with us.  I bags it if we encounter a cloud of midges.

Don’t unwrap it! shouted Murgatroyd.  It took me ages to roll it up and

fit it in to my bivvy bag.

I used to read ‘The Secret Seven’ when I was a kid, reminisced Virginia.

Fatty advised everyone to have an emergency tin with a piece of string, a

safety pin, a folded up piece of paper, a kirby grip, an Elastoplast and a

coin for the phone.

What was the kirby grip for? asked Diana, while Murgatroyd struggled

to put on his boots.  His back was still bothering him after all the scything

he had done.

Well, it worked in conjunction with the paper.  You see, if someone locked

you into a room while you were doing your detective work, you could put

the paper under the door and knock the key out from the other side and

slide it towards you and, hey presto! explained Virginia.

I bet Arto Soderstedt hasn’t thought of that one! laughed Diana.

Enid Blyton meets Arne Dahl, guffawed Snod.  Oh, come on!  It’s

going to rain and you haven’t got a brolly in there, have you?

Just leave it! Diana ordered.  If you hurry up we will get a table

and if you are very good you can let them watch armouredcockroach

on Youtube this afternoon, for some light entertainment before

supper.  Come on, Bear.

You know, it’s a bit odd.  Dru hasn’t been in touch since they went

to the parador, remarked Virginia, who carried a mobile phone in her

handbag, like a good PA and considered that her main piece of kit

for any emergency, or unforeseen event.  I hope they are okay.

Well, I don’t think there has been an Apocalypse in Spain, or we’d

have heard about it, sighed Diana.  It’s more likely that Murgatroyd has

had his phone blocker switched on.  He’s very anti-government, aren’t

you, darling?  Anyway, it serves him right as he blocked an e-mail from

the pub about their two- pies- for- one offer.  Shame.  Personally, I feel 

you have to trust the zombies sometimes.

Two pies for the price of one?!  Snod was intrigued and enthusiastic.

Come on, Fatty, Virginia quipped, linking arms, but Diana thought she

might be going too far towards sizeism and the non PC.

Delta NC Wikipaedia

Gey Thrawn

Tags

Apocalypse, Burke, Philistines, pikestaffs, rushlight, schiltron, Scottish Assembly, The Grey Lady, The Iron Lady, thrawn, Wee Eck

The rush light guttered.  It made for chilling reading.  Diana had borrowed

Mrs C’s copy of Burke and terrified herself by reading his summing up of

the aftermath of revolution.

They have found their punishment in their success.  Laws overturned;…industry without vigour; commerce expiring; the revenue unpaid,…the people impoverished;…everything human and divine sacrificed to the idol of public credit, and national bankruptcy the [likely] consequence.

Something cold touched the nape of her neck.  Bannocks!  That wasn’t The

Grey Lady, was it?  She wished it was a return of The Iron Lady, if only to

enjoy the spectacle of Wee Eck being told to stand in the corner- for a

couple of decades, with a dunce’s cap on his noddle.

It was late.  She shouldn’t frighten herself by reading any more.  She

would have nightmares. But she felt ashamed that she had not really

informed herself sufficiently, like many others, and now the Apocalypse,

like the Philistines, was practically upon them.

Aux armes, citoyens!  Wait a minute!  Whose side had they been on? 

She continued:

Were all these dreadful things necessary?  Were they the inevitable results of the desperate struggle of determined patriots, compelled to wade through blood…tumult to the quiet shore of a tranquil and prosperous liberty?  No!  Nothing like it.

The ruinations will not be the devastation of civil war; they [will be] ‘the sad but instructive monuments of rash and ignorant counsel in time of profound peace’…Not one drop of their blood have they shed in the cause of the country they have ruined.

Mrs C knocked on the door.

I’ve brought you a wee hot water bottle.  Well, it’s what we use.  Is

everything all right, dear?

Thanks.  Yes.  I don’t know.  Oh, Mrs C, listen to this!

If the leaders should be activated by sinister ambition, and a lust of meretricious glory, then the… Assembly, to whom at first they conform, becomes in its turn the dupe and instrument of their designs.  In this political traffic, the leaders will be obliged to bow to the ignorance of their followers, and the followers to become subservient to the worst designs of their leaders.

Och, the next bit is the one I like aboot inferior, mechanical members of their

professions who join projects which lay them open to lucrative deals.  He calls

such as they fomenters and conductors of the petty war of village vexation.

Nothing in heaven or earth can serve as a control on them.

Pretty pessimistic then?  Diana gathered her pashmina to her shoulders.

Weel, he says those who attempt to level never equalise and certain men ought not to suffer oppression from the state; but the state suffers oppression, if such as they, individually, or collectively, are permitted to rule.

Onywise, there’s little ye can do noo and ye huvnae the vote onywey.  The

Scots are never undecided.  You wait!  They’ll be gathering in their schiltrons

on Judgement- eh, polling day and woe betide onyone who dares tae meddle

wi’ their free consciences.  They can be gey thrawn and dinna appreciate

onyone assuming that they know whit they’re thinkin.’  Ah widnae like tae

be charging intae their solid line o’ pikestaffs.

Noo, wi’ a’ respect, put oot yer light and settle doon.

A Book By Its Covers

Tags

Apocalypse, Blind Date, Bowdlerise, Derren Brown, G Wilson Knight, John Carey, Midsummer Night's Dream, paintball, rude mechanicals

Juniper came home and threw her school satchel onto the kitchen floor.  She had been behaving a little better since her mother had sent her and her younger brother to Salisbury Plain for a Derren Brown-type Apocalypse experience where they were hypnotised and had to learn altruism instead of going paint-balling as they had thought.

However, her mischievous nature resurfaced as she complained:

Mum, we’re reading a book in school about

bottoms; a woman who bonks a donkey.

They all take drugs, swap partners, sleep.. I shout,

Trendy ideology..a junkie

English teacher!  I’m going to complain

about giving teenagers such obscene

reading matter. I’m glad that I refrain;

it dawns on me that Midsummer Night’s Dream

is what she’s referring to.  They just lay

on a floral bank, I elucidate,

and fell asleep.

Well, that’s what they all say!

she retorts.  She thinks of it as Blind Date

with Bestiality.  Maybe her view

of rude mechanicals-(geddit?)-fairies,

is right and critically overdue;

should rank with G Wilson Knight’s, John Carey’s.

This is worse than any poppering pear.

Pyramus, Thisbe should be X-rated.

Bowdlerise Arden, lest it prove a snare.

How can Shakespeare be exonerated?

I turn around; cooly say, Whatever.

I suppose you thought that very clever.

Apocalypse Now!

Tags

Apocalypse, Birmingham Crater, Crouching Tiger ; Hidden Dragon, Dan Snow, Derren Brown, Felix Baumgartner, Gregorian Calendar, Guy Fawkes, Highland Spring, paintballing, parkour, Pippa Middleton, Salisbury Plain, Yves Klein

Monday morning and so I sidled into Divas’ Deli and found Carrie there buying the Pippa Middleton book: Celebrate.

Thought this would be ideal for Clammie’s Chrissie prezzy, she beamed.

Was somewhat annoyed as I had been considering it for the very same recipient.  Still, if I buy one and very carefully open the pages, but don’t bend the spine, maybe I can get away with off-loading it on someone else, once I have noted down any useful tips on my Tablet. Didn’t say anything, but hinted that I wouldn’t mind finding it in my stocking, in addition to Dan Snow.

Carrie is over the moon that the awful Juniper is not going to be going to Clammie and Tristram’s Guy Fawkes party.  Her horrible little brother John is also not being invited.  Juniper’s behaviour at Tiger-Lily’s sleepover was reprehensible enough and none of us wants our children to mix with such delinquents.  I hasten to add that it is nothing to do with Juniper’s gender fluidity issues; it is just her utter self-gratification and her brother’s bullying tendencies that have upset us all.

Carrie divulged the reason for this joyous news: apparently Juniper is plastered- not in the sense that she was at the sleepover, however. No, she is in plaster with a broken arm.  She is crazy.  She jumped off the Art block roof.  Clammie’s daughter, Scheherezade, witnessed the whole event, or should I say, happening?  And she is not a girl to make up stories.

Juniper has been obsessed by Felix Baumgartner’s leap from 128,000 feet.  At her School for the Academically-Gifted they believe in a cross-curricular integrated approach to learning and so everything recently has been based on leaps: leaps of faith, Kiekegaard’s Semantic Leap, leap years and the Gregorian Calendar, French urban vocabulary, such as traceur/ traceuse etc.  Yves Klein’s Jumping into the Void was studied in Art History and in PE they learned about the training skills associated with parkour, that weird sport which owes its origins to military obstacle course training. It resembles some of the moves in Crouching Tiger; Hidden Dragon. One has to travel from A-B in as short a distance as possible and without one’s feet touching the ground. (In my childhood this was when a parent grabbed you by the scruff of the neck and marched you off to bed.  But I digress.)

Anyway, Juniper had been unusually attentive in the Art History lesson and afterwards she climbed onto the roof and shouted to some girls who were engaged in some artistic activity round the back of the building to capture her launch moment on their mobiles.  She threw down a scrap of cartridge paper which bore her bowdlerised mission statements, to wit:

You have to realise the impregnation of space by your own sensibility

and

Neither missiles nor rockets nor sputniks will render man- nor woman- the conquistadors of space.

The girls didn’t have a clue what she was talking about, but a couple of them managed to take a digital image of her as she jumped.  Scheherezade said she was shouting:

I’m not falling; I’m rising!

And then? I asked.

And then she went splat on the roof of Clammie’s 4×4, which had been parked there as Clammie had made an appointment to see the art teacher about Scheherezade’s installation.  There was a crater the size of Birmingham on the roof.  Cosmo said it was more like a black hole in his current account to cover his insurance excess and to have the bodywork restored.

Birmingham? I asked, incredulous.

No, there really is a lunar crater called that, she stressed.  Cosmo told me once when he was showing me round his observatory.

Beats etchings, I muttered.

Anyway, she continued, ignoring my sarcasm,  Juniper is now asking everyone to sign her plaster cast and she is going to submit it for her Art History Practical. She’ll probably get an A*.  It’s so annoying. 

So, it’s cost them an arm and a leg, I said, without thinking.

Just an arm, Carrie said, laughing and paying for the book.

And Juniper’s nasty little brother, John, isn’t coming to the party either?

No.  Their mother has also been getting fed up with their behaviour and so she phoned Derren Brown and arranged a personal mini-Apocalypse for them.  It’s a set-up where they are being driven to Salisbury Plain, thinking they are going to paint-balling, and then some tanks emerge and block the road and there is a mock-up of a meteor strike.  By the end of two days they will have been introduced to the concept of altruism as they have to share a bottle of Highland Spring and a bag of Kettle Chips, or starve.

Wow! That’s amazing! I exclaimed. I wonder if any other mothers would be interested in signing up their sproglets?

Apparently Derren Brown has been inundated by requests and can’t personally hypnotise or deal with them all, so he is hiring out Parent Packs of tanks, flame throwers and DIY nstructions.

Well, that should solve the problem of bored teenagers in the school holidays, I remarked, a shade too eagerly, perhaps.

Precisely, said Carrie.  We are sending for our packs tomorrow before they run out.