Good eh morning Mister eh eh ahh eh
D you mean the beast?
Yes ah eh ehhh ah ah
The fucking double-barrelled shotgun?
Yes eh
Because ye see ya auld fucking conniving bastard ye I’m resigning my commission and then after my dog’s fucking bit ye I’m gonni fucking shoot ye! Okay? So there! Stick that in your pipe and smoke it! But god, it would be nice to just leave the motor at home this morning, to just walk it the whole road there, and get the nut sorted out, a bit of mental equilibrium, get the fucking brains operating properly, some kind of fucking synchronicity. Because at the moment
At the moment! There was no at the moment. There was no at the moment. How could there be when it was so bloody damn difficult to gain any idea whatsoever of this coming fucking on-the-carpeting. If he could maybe work out a list of possible occurrences, a contingency list.
Patrick couldni find a pen. It is most odd indeed how objects disappear in rooms wherein the only moveable entity is oneself. Scary. And not at all the
On the sink next to the fucking dishes.
1) When your man enters the office the headmaster screams: Get out ya anarchist fucking bastard or I’ll send for the MI5.
Which is where a knapsack comes in handy and Patrick just happens to have two of these efforts, one for long journeys and one for short yins. So he can fill the latter with a set of emergency goods and chattels. Renew the Youth Hostelling membership card, the passport and so forth, remember the driver’s licence.
2) A posse of polis awaiting his arrival within the grounds of the school, the entire area having being cordoned off. And as soon as he drives into the carpark the barricades come down behind him.
So, he would drive round the back and park in a sidestreet, with a belaying pin and a massive rope coiled over his shoulder, and toss its looped end high round the topmost chimney of the main school building, and swing from an adjacent tenement roof, straight across all their heads, softly alighting in through an open window on the upper floor, surprising the awestruck staff and weans down in assembly as you sneaked ben the corridor and down into the office of the terrorstricken Old Milne. The image of a pair of frogman’s flippers and a black SAS balaclava cum falseface, and crying to Old Milne: Your number’s up auld yin! Say your prayers to the congregation and make your peace with the Christian God whom for the sake of common decency I’m begging the existence of this morning and just awarding the capital, ‘G’, as in ‘God’. Okay okay get off your knees, I hate to see a guy humiliating himself in company.
3) Milne!! Yes you! I’m addressing you. You are an arse. You are a total arse. Aye, you heard alright — capital A R S E arse.
And what about going back to bed and staying there for the rest of the morning. Patrick had also considered that. Then he could sign off sick altogether, go and visit the doctor and maybe find out that his mental state, his nervous disposition, certainly warranted a six-month leave of absence the which he could fill by travel. It would not be difficult. He could make a phonecall to the secretary’s office, at ten to nine, just to give her a fair chance at getting some other bastard to do his registration with poor auld 2e. 2e!! What a poor wee bunch of fucking bastards they were! Never mind. They would have to get along without him. Old Milne might actually be grateful if he went on the panel. Because it could render Friday’s astonishing absence null and void. How can it be otherwise? Here you have a bloke being taken ill and having to sign off sick. So how the hell can you hold him morally responsible for an action, when that selfsame action was governed by the deterministic machinations of a bone-coffin? In other words sir he wasnt really being disrespectful to the forces of law and order in the classroom. He wasni really fucking doing something that was fucking quite upsetting in many ways that at first sight appear unimportant but in actuality, as you and I both are aware, is the very stuff of which the strongest citadel may ultimately crumble and fall into disrepute.
Now,
and after that, Tenerife. Tenerife! Does the sun shine in Tenerife on Marchday mornings! No doubt — these foreign bastards get all the luck, the sunny climes and belly dancers. And afterwards, afterwards
How come these afterwards aye rear their ugly mugs? What about Goya? go there, he lived in Saragossa and they’ve got no a bad football team. Christ it’s great to have money, ye can just fuck off wherever you like and take a fancy to. What about Velasquez and auld fucking Rubens. Where did they dwell? Was the climate luscious. Did oranges fall off the fucking trees. Carlos Williams’s grannie? Handgrenades? And of course El Greco who was a sixteenth-century chap from the isle of Crete.
There is no time that is not the present and if Master Doyle is to break out of his life then this early hour of a Marchday morning is ripe.
A boiled egg, a pot of tea, a couple of water biscuits. Picasso was a multimillionaire communist. So what. And then as well you’ve got Galileo.
Arse.
Patrick was having a bath; it was twice in three days and a new all-comers record. He had a selection of books in with him although he was actually wanting to have an uncluttered think. He knelt in the water. It was quite hot, thus he was not yet able to sit down. He uplifted a knee, it was redly pink. A book setting the limits of geography in a freemarket economy was lying on the floor. It was him responsible for having brought it in here. It was like a form of self-torment. Next to it was this novel he started last night which was so horrendously boring that fuck it, he couldnt be expected to continue any further, not even on behalf of 5b, one of whose members had thrust the yarn upon him. Horrendous books are difficult. Patrick objects to being forced to complete them. There again but it isnt only horrendous fuckers he fails to complete. If facts are to be admitted even while one is bathing then let the following be admitted: that the latter chapters of books are often the more difficult to finish and upon the higher shelves of both the walls of the parlour and kitchen you will find a plethora of works that are yet terminated incompletely. This has nothing to do with existential psychology although, having said that, when he reaches the three score and ten mark perhaps he will bring them all down and get them terminated completely, read all these last chapters, get them all over and done with.