Knees Up Mother Earth

9

Jim Pooley felt decidedly strange. He sat in his bed at the Cottage Hospital and viewed tiny stars and sailing ships and sausages and sprouts.

“I can’t imagine why I’m seeing sprouts,” said Jim. “I’m sure it’s the wrong time of year for sprouts.” Jim gingerly fingered his aching head. Jim’s aching head was swathed in bandages. To the casual observer it would have appeared that Jim had taken up Sikhism.

“What would I know?” asked the casual observer in the bed next to Jim. “I only came in here to deliver a parcel and they’ve taken out my appendix.”

“My head hurts,” said Jim Pooley.

“You’re always complaining.” This voice belonged to John Omally, who lay in the bed to Jim’s right, the casual observer being in the bed to Jim’s left (looking in from the door, of course).

“I am unfailingly cheerful,” said Jim. “And I never complain,” he complained.

“Then I’ll complain for you,” said Omally. “Even though neither of us is little more than bruised, I’ll have that Neville for this. He will pay for the unwarranted violence that he visited upon us.”

“It wasn’t his fault, John,” said Jim, who, even on his bed of pain, was still a caring fellow. “He’d had a rough day. The professor’s choice of me as team manager came as just as much of a shock to him as it did to me. I think I’ll quit the job now before anything else happens. Will I get redundancy money, do you think?”

“I think you’ll get a smack from me if you don’t shut up.”

“It’s all your fault,” said Jim, sulkily. “You got me into this mess.”

“I had a dog once,” said the casual observer. “Used to chase cars.”

“Fascinating,” said Jim.

“Used to catch them, too,” said the casual observer. “Big dog, it was, the size of a small barn. Or Switzerland.”

“Which ward are we in?” Jim asked John.

“Which one do you think?” John made circular finger motions against the side of his bandaged head.

“Ah,” said Jim. “That ward.”

“So, are you a Sikh, too?” the casual observer asked John. “I see you’re wearing the same turban as this bloke.”

“No,” said John. “I’m a berserker. I suffer from a rare syndrome that manifests itself in bursts of uncontrollable violence when I’m questioned about anything.”

“How did you catch that?” asked the casual observer. “No, let me put that another way. Very nice to meet you. Good night.” And he turned upon his right-hand side (when looking from the door, of course) and feigned snorings.

“We have to get out of here,” said Jim. “I dearly need a drink. And a fag, actually.”

“I don’t think we’ll be drinking in The Flying Swan tonight.”

Jim shook his aching head. “This is a terrible business, John,” he said. “To be barred from The Flying Swan – that is as bad as it is possible for things to be.”

“There are many other bars in Brentford, Jim.”

“Take that back,” said Jim. “There is no other bar like The Flying Swan.”

“You are, of course, right.” John Omally leaned back upon his comfy pillows. “I think we’d do best to rest up here for the night. Gather our senses. Regain our vitality.” John reached out and pressed the little button on the wall beside his bed.

“What are you doing?” Pooley enquired.

“Summonsing the nurse,” said John. “Did you get a look at her through your stars and sprouts? She’s a rare beauty. I thought I’d ask her to give me a bed bath.”

“I think I’ll get some sleep, then.”

“Good idea, my friend. I’ll have the nurse put the screens around my bed. And I’ll try to keep the noise down.”

“Good night, then, John,” said Jim.

“Good night, Jim,” said John.

“Goodnight, Ma, goodnight, Pa, goodnight, John Boy,” said the casual observer, who was a fan of The Waltons.

Norman should have called it a night and simply gone back home, but somehow he couldn’t. He had no idea exactly what had come over Old Pete, nor why the haggard horticulturalist should have got himself into such a state at the mention of the Babbage Nineteen-Hundred Series computer parts. But Norman did feel somewhat excited about all those computer parts, particularly because all those computer parts were the sort of computer parts that Norman could really come to terms with. He’d never really got on with microchip technology. It was all too small. You couldn’t tinker at it with a big screwdriver. Valves and diodes and valves and more valves – that was what technology was supposed to be about. That was what it was all about when Norman had been a lad, when he’d read Popular Mechanics and Popular Science. Not to mention Modern Mechanix and Inventions and Mechanics and Handicrafts and Science and Mechanics. That Hugo Gernsback knew exactly what the future was supposed to look like. It was supposed to look BIG. Huge flying-wing aircraft powered by dozens of propellers, with folk supping cocktails on glass sundecks. And vast cars that seated a dozen well-dressed future folk, who also supped cocktails as they cruised along twelve-lane superhighways. Such cars had big fins on the back and a great deal of chrome. And domes on the top, of course. Everything had a dome on top. Your house had a dome on top. And your dog, of course, and you, too, if you were taking your dog for a walk on the moon. Near to the moon base. Which was inside a great big dome.

Norman sighed for this future that hadn’t come to pass. Hugo’s vision of tomorrow had been thwarted by the coming of the microchip. The future really should have been worked by valves. The future should have been BIG.

And so Norman returned to his lock-up garage.

He upped the up-and-over, switched on the light as it was getting dusky out, then downed the up-and-over and viewed the stacks of crates. It was a nearby viewing. Norman edged around the stacks, avoiding the half-sack of gone-solid cement.

“The thing to do,” said Norman to himself, “would be to dig into the crates, sort out enough bits and bobs to assemble a complete computer. Then whip them back to the shop in the van and piece them all together. But—”

Norman lifted a suitable tool from a rack upon the garage wall and took to prising the lid from an uppermost crate. “An instruction manual or book of assembly diagrams would be helpful.”

Norman peered into the crate he had opened: lots of waxed paper and lots of valves. Splendid.

Norman opened further crates and upon his opening of the fifth was heard to cry out (at least by himself) the magic word – Eureka.

“Eureka,” Norman cried out. And he drew into the light afforded by the naked flyspecked dangling bulb a clothbound booklet which had inscribed in gold upon its cover the words Babbage 1900 Series Computer Assembly Manual.

Norman leafed through the pages, oohing and ahhing to equal degree. And then he began to open other crates, marvelling at their contents and setting this, and indeed lots of the other, aside.

And when several hours had passed, Norman was done with all of his settings aside. He loaded all he had set aside into a number of emptied crates and loaded these into the back of his Austin A40 van.

And having turned off the light and secured the lock on his lock-up, Norman climbed into his van, donned his Meccano and Christmas-light helmet, keyed the ignition, swore loudly at his van and returned home in time to receive a good telling off for missing his dinner.

Night fell upon Brentford.

Neville evicted the last of his patrons, drew the bolts upon The Swan’s saloon bar door, switched off the bar lights and took himself off to bed. Where he spent a fitful night, his dreams beset with images of high-security prisons, where he was banged up at Her Majesty’s pleasure in a small and dismal cell, in the company of a tattooed Neanderthal lifer who referred to himself as “The Daddy” and Neville as his “bitch”.

Jim Pooley also spent a troubled night. His dreams were of football, with Jim being called on to the pitch to substitute for the Brentford striker who had been shot by a sniper during a penalty shootout with Real Madrid. And Jim was trying really hard to kick the ball, but his feet kept sticking to the turf and the ball wasn’t a ball at all, but a sprout. And the Real Madrid goalie certainly wasn’t a goalie, he was some sort of dragon.

And Jim kept getting woken up by all this noise coming from the bed to the right of him (when looking from the door). All this grunting and erotic moaning and—

Jim fell back asleep and dreamed some more about football.

Professor Slocombe rarely slept. He sat long into the night poring over ancient and not-so-ancient tomes. He pored over the Roy of the Rovers annual and Rommel’s How to Win Tank Battles Bedside Companion and the autobiography of Alexander the Great and The Necronomicon (naturally) and Death Wears A Tottenham Strip (a Lazlo Woodbine thriller) and a copy of Banged Up and Gun Totin’ that had been delivered with his morning paper by mistake. And at four in the morning he slept for an hour in his chair and dreamed an alternative and far cleverer ending to the last episode of The Prisoner.

Mahatma Campbell slept and dreamed, but what he dreamed of when he slept, only the Campbell knew.

Others slept and dreamed of Brentford. Old Pete, for instance – he slept and dreamed and his dreams were troubled, troubled by memories he had long suppressed. Memories of things which he knew to be true, but had spent a lifetime convincing himself were otherwise.

And Gwynplaine Dhark slept, but didn’t dream.

And John Omally eventually slept and did. And his dreams were of a pretty nurse and John enjoyed these dreams.

And so the folk of Brentford slept and mostly dreamed.

And the moon was in its seventh house and Jupiter was in alignment with Mars.

And eventually something cock-a-doodle-do’d and a new day came to Brentford.