It's All I Know

Day 264 (Friday)

Legal smeegal stuff is out of the way. Cath charged in. What a star.

Stage 4

Almost forgotten what the hell it was we were up to last night before the fan got hit.

The Rouge was extracted, exorcised and expelled. The plan executed with utter precision and unquestioning professionalism. The result? A total and all consuming redirection of Rouge's hate and retribution to a new recipient: The pesky YuccaMan.

Head is throbbing and my bandages are getting manky already. Starting to heavily scab over injuries and stitches, ribs and groin (?) hurting like billyo. I return to contemplation, to thoughts of the evil one. The Rouge. Future events are now fairly and squarely in the hands of that hate filled puss bucket. Delivered on a platter, a silver engraved platter, carrying a scroll parchment adorned with the name of her next victim. We trust in her very nature. The bait was set, the trap snapped shut, The Rouge starved for a time, the cage rattled after which we have generously provided her with:

·      Motive and motivation – persecute the irresponsible owner of “the monstrosity” that continues to sit outside her double glazed window and goads her. The Tranee has changed hands and yet it still sits there staring at her, taking the piss, winding her up.

·      Contacts - YuccaMan's name and address placed right into her gnarled hand.

Our team have no choice but to sit back and wait for the fireworks. Fireworks which unfortunately we may not be privileged enough to witness first hand. And in some ways we feel cheated by the lack of a viewing opportunity. But in our hearts we know that we have saved the innocent soul of Mr Fit and diverted a demon upon one of its own.

It is a critical and crucial moment. We're rocking on the edge, gawping at the pyramid stack of gold bars and hoping beyond all hope that they’ll slide our way. Credits roll. Perhaps we'll never know how it shakes out.

Day 267 (Monday)

Imagine a dumper truck liberally sprayed by an enlarging ray. It starts off normal, chunky size. All orange and covered in concrete dust. The ray is deployed. The dumper rapidly expands into a monstrous metal, beast of a thing. All of its six wheels bloat to three metres tall and are circled by gigantically oversized, deep treaded tyres. The cube of a cab is surrounded by what looks like scaffolding and aluminium ladders and is perched on top of a massive engine bay. Rusting exhaust tubes explode from both sides of the bay and dual towers reach up into the sky belching black smoke. A hydraulic ram, hidden for now, sits below an open-box bed which hinges at the rear. Right now, the open box bed carries a hugely expanded  load of three hundred tonnes of mixed household rubbish.

Zoom out.

Four of these behemoths trundle over rough terrain and are swallowed by the gaping maw of our local landfill hole.

Mobs of sparrows, starlings and black birds (and lesser numbers of grossly fat and crazed pigeons - surely these are fat rats with wings?) dart and circle this city of the broken and of the dead. The flying and diving of the birds is unsettling. The sweeping and turning together of thousands of dinosaur-like creatures, as they wait to feed, signals something I’d rather not think about. The wind swirls and I get a gut-wrenching wiff of the rotting, festering stink of the underground lair: the product of incredible technologies and the vast scale of our disposable lifestyles.

The incinerator siren sounds and I feel a vibration through both my foot on the ground and the saddle of my bike. The burning machine grinds into life. A drift of white and grey smoke puffs from grey, sky-scraping funnel. The smoke looks mostly harmless.

The landfill site is situated behind the Blue Lagoon park over near Water Eaton and the operators have been here for twenty years. They have a further fifty year license to operate at this site. Long enough to more than justify the investment in a new by-pass and stretch of dual carriageway to link up with the A5. Trucks trundle in from 7am to 7pm to deliver their loads to the over-sized dumpers.

That must be one super massive hole under the ground. I reflect deeply on that.

I shove off with my tingling foot and resume my journey. I feel like nothing more than an ant on the face of planet Earth for the rest of the day. Well maybe an ant with a big dustbin.