Necrophenia

ON THE VERY LAST DAY EVER, EVERYTHING WILL HAPPEN The symptoms have been studied, the diagnosis is confirmed, the prognosis is bleak. The universe will cease to exist in just twelve hours – just twelve hours, during which time all of the loose ends must be tied up, all of the Big Questions answered and all of the Ultimate Truths revealed. It promises to be a somewhat hectic twelve hours. During which… a Brentford shopkeeper will complete a sitting room for God. A Chiswick woman will uncover the Metaphenomena of the Multiverse. An aging Supervillain will put the finishing touches to his plans for trans-dimensional domination. Serious trouble will break out at the New Messiah's Convention in Acton. And a Far-Fetched Fiction author will receive Divine Enlightenment. In TICK TO0CK KILL THE CLOCK, the world's leading exponent of Far-Fetched Fiction pulls out all the literary stops to produce a truly epic work of imagination: twelve interlocking tales, one for each hour left on the clock. Will the universe end with a bang or a whimper – or something else entirely, possibly involving a time-travelling Elvis Presley with a sprout in his head?

© Robert Rankin 2008

It was about a week after I’d almost saved mankind.

And I was having a lie-in.

It had been a late one, the night before, I so remember.

A reunion of old school buddies. The class of 63. Of course, there are fewer of us every year now. Not, I think, because we are dying off. No, I suspect that it is because we have, over the years and through the many past reunions, learned just how much we all truly hate each other. How little we ever had in common when we were at school together and how, with the passing of the years, that little has become less and less.

And less.

So fewer turn up every year.

There were just the three of us last night.

And we didn’t really have a lot to say to each other.

There was Rob, who is always jolly, come what may, and who is responsible for putting these get-togethers together. Rob is of medium height and about as broad as he is long. He is always jolly. Although last night he was less jolly than usual. This lack of jollity probably occasioned by the less-than-impressive turnout.

Rob is in advertising. He is a copywriter and he has, over the years, worked on some quite famous campaigns.

You can earn big money in advertising as a copywriter if you have the ability to come up with snappy catchphrases that touch the public’s imagination and through so doing subtly influence the public to purchase whatever product it happens to be that is having a snappy catchphrase applied to it.

You will no doubt recall the ‘Get Some Cheese’ campaign a few years back, with that bloke out of that series on the telly saying ‘Get some cheese’ to all kinds of famous people in unusual situations.

That was one of Rob’s. I never quite got it myself. But, like almost everyone else at the time, I would say, ‘Get some cheese,’ to some stranger on a bus, or the lady behind the dry-cleaner’s counter. To much mirth.

In fact, now that I come to think about it, I really miss saying ‘Get some cheese’ to complete strangers. I might take it up again today and see how it works out.

So that’s Rob, really.

And then there’s Neil.

Neil did really well. He went into radio, started as a sound engineer, became a DJ, then a producer. Started with the wireless, but later moved onwards and upwards.

As they say.

Neil is now a film producer.

And he’s promised me a part in the next film he produces. Not that I’m altogether keen.

There is something decidedly odd about the films that Neil produces. They aren’t ever shown at regular cinemas. They receive ‘special showings’ in art houses and the DVDs cannot be purchased legally in this country.

I have one of Neil’s DVDs. And I hope very much that what is shown on the screen is actually acting.

And so that is Neil.

And that is Rob.

Which leaves only me.

The Third Man, as it were. A bit like Michael Rennie, or indeed Orson Welles, depending upon which version you prefer.

And I am a bit like the Third Man. A bit. I’m enigmatic, me. I move in the shadows. I’m a sort of private investigator. A rather strange sort. You see, I developed this technique that I call the Tyler Technique, because my name is Tyler and it is my technique. If I take up just a moment to explain it here, it will save time later, when something will occur that will need an explanation, but in all the excitement of whatever is going on (and there will be excitement, lots of it, because in my business there always is) won’t get one and therefore may be found worrying by those who worry about such things.

Put simply (and there’s a lot more to it than this, let me tell you, but this will suffice for now), the Tyler Technique involves letting things happen naturally. Not pushing things. Not being the cause and effect of things. For I’ve found that things tend to work out for the best, eventually. If you leave them alone.

And so, with all that said by way of a brief introduction to myself – with a brief aside regarding my two ex-school chums Rob and Neil, for more will be spoken of them later – let us take ourselves back, back to where this story began and the events that led me to become the greatest detective that ever was. And how I almost saved Mankind as well.

I was a very musical youth.

I harmonised with hairdryers. And whistled along with the rhythm of life. There seems to be music everywhere when you’re young. And there certainly was a lot of it about back in the nineteen-sixties, when I was growing up. I know they say a lot of silly things about the nineteen-sixties now, such as all that rot that ‘if you can remember the nineteen-sixties, you weren’t part of them, man’. A lot of tosh and toot, that is. They were very intense and colourful, though. And very musical, too, and when it is said that ‘The Beatles tunes were the background music for an entire generation’, this is not without some truth.

But there was a lot more music about than just what you heard coming out of a dolly-bird’s transistor radio.

For instance, there were The Sumerian Kynges, who were my favourites. Still are, really. But then, I know where the bodies are buried, so I can have The Sumerian Kynges come and play at my house for free whenever I want them to.

Which isn’t often, because they’ve never really added much to their nineteen-sixties repertoire.

I was the lead singer with The Kynges for a while back in nineteen sixty-three, which is why I mention them here. I was in the original line-up when they formed. And not a lot of people know that.

The Kynges were a school band then. Because we were all at the same school together and the only instruments that there were to be played belonged to the school.

We couldn’t afford to purchase our own instruments because we were poor. And poor people cannot afford expensive musical instruments. You will note that whilst you may see many a drunken down-and-out jigging from one foot to another and engaging in a bit of the old unaccompanied singing, you will rarely, if ever, see a drunken down-and-out sitting in the gutter playing either the harp or a Bechstein concert grand. It’s a monetary thing. A fiscal thing.

The Kynges began as a ukulele band.

There were five ukuleles in the school’s ‘band room’. The band room was a large cupboard with a skylight. As far as I can recall, the sole purpose of the skylight was to admit the midnight entry of disgruntled scholars hell-bent on destruction.

Have you noticed that whenever schoolboys break into their schools at night they always destroy the musical instruments?

They always do. I wonder why that is.

My therapist says it is due to frustration caused by a lack of wish-fulfilment. I tell her that it is more likely a tradition, or an old charter, or something.

Mr Jenner, the music teacher, was evidently a student of human nature who well understood the schoolboy psyche. He kept the surviving ukuleles (once there had been a full brass section and two bass drums) under lock and key. Which is to say that they were locked in the ‘band room’ (the one with the skylight). But they were also locked inside a Cameo Mason Celebrated Percussion Safe. You don’t see many of those any more, but then they were all but impregnable.

As far as I know, only one boy in the long history of the school ever penetrated the band-room safe without Mr Jenner opening it up for him.

That schoolboy’s name was Otto. And there will be no more about him later.

So, five ukuleles and the dawn of The Sumerian Kynges.

If I recall correctly, and I do, it took a great deal of persuading on my part to convince the other members of The Sumerian Kynges that playing the ukulele could be cool.

Being cool was essential. It was almost a matter of life and death back then. And in my opinion it still is, even today.

It’s a given thing, really. An instinctive thing. If you are cool enough simply to know, then you simply know whether something is cool or whether it is not. And come on now, don’t we all, deep, deep down in our very souls, want to be cool?

Of course we do.

So, as to those ukuleles.

I knew that being up on stage and playing in a rock ’n’ roll band was cool. But then pretty much everyone knows that. And I did want to be cool. And I did want to play in a rock ’n’ roll band. But I was poor and the other guys in the band (notice that I use the word ‘guys’ here rather than, say, ‘schoolboys’, and also the word ‘band’ rather than the words ‘teenage combo’, which might not necessarily be cool) were also poor and we had no way of raising sufficient money to purchase guitars and a drum kit. Nor indeed a Marshall amp and stack system. But as Jim Marshall was only perfecting these things in the garage behind his shop in Hanwell at the time, that is neither here nor there.

So, regarding those ukuleles.

There were four Sumerian Kynges back then. The original Fad Four.
[1]
There was Rob, who would later become an advertising copywriter. Neil, who would later movie-produce. Myself, who would go on to find fame and misfortune in oh so many fields.

And then there was Toby.

And Toby was the odd one.

It was many years later that the rest of The Sumerian Kynges came to realise just how odd Toby really was. But by then the original line-up was no more. And it was all too late.

But more of that anon.

So back to those ukuleles.

‘Ukes are not cool,’ said Rob. ‘Harps are cool, but not ukes.’

‘Harps?’ This raised voice belonged to Neil. ‘We cannot afford a jews harp, let alone a real harp.’

‘Harp as in harmonica,’ said Rob. ‘Do try to be cool, Neil, really.’

Neil did grindings of his teeth. I came to recognise these grindings as ‘the grindings of discontent’.

‘We can afford nothing,’ said Neil. ‘We are poor.’

‘Tea chests and broom handles,’ said Toby. ‘They cost next to nothing. We could be a skiffle band.’

‘There is a steel band called The Skiffle Bunch,’ said Neil, who knew about all kinds of what was then called ‘ethnic’ music. ‘Steel pan maestros. Genius.’

‘Get some cheese!’ said Rob, as it was what he used to say when he had nothing to say. So to speak.

This conversation was being held in Toby’s dad’s shed, at the bottom of Toby’s dad’s and mum’s and Toby’s too back garden.

It was where we went for band practice.

For lack of instrumentation, it was presently where we went for a cappella vocal practice.

I entered this shed at this very moment.

A veritable Duke of Cool.

My hair was all ‘gassed back’ with Brylcreem. My school shirt was untucked from my school trousers (well, shorts) and its shirt tail protruded from the lower rear of my grey school jumper. This jumper’s breast being adorned with many beer-bottle-top badges.
[2]

My socks were rolled down. My shoes were unpolished.

And my armpits really smelled.

‘Hi, guys,’ I said, raising an arm in a parody of the Nazi salute. The guys fell to cringing and covering their noses.

Cool.

‘We need instruments,’ said Toby, as I lowered my arm and then lowered myself onto the half-bag of solid cement that in those days was to be found in every garden shed.

Not the same half-bag, obviously, although it was hard at first glance to tell.

‘Ukuleles,’ said I.

‘Uncool,’ quoth one and all. ‘We have discussed ukuleles. Ukuleles are not cool.’

‘On the contrary,’ said I. (In fact I said, ‘Ooh contraire,’ which was French and pretty cool in its way.)

‘Ukuleles are cool?’ said Rob. ‘How so, cheesy boy?’

‘Robert Johnson,’ I said. And I enjoyed the desired effect that the enunciation of this name produced.

There was an awed silence.

And then Toby spoke.

‘Robert Johnson did not play a ukulele,’ said Toby. ‘Robert Johnson played a Gibson L- 1.’

‘Of course,’ said I. ‘But we also know what Robert Johnson did down at the crossroads at midnight.’

‘Sold his soul to the Devil,’ said Neil, a-crossing at himself, ‘in exchange for musical immortality. And his day is coming soon, believe you me. All will know the name of Robert Johnson.’
[3]

‘Yes,’ said I, comfying myself upon the half-bag of solid cement, which was no easy thing, but yet I achieved it. ‘Well, one week after Robert Johnson went down to the crossroads at midnight, there was a fella over here who went down there too. Well, not the same crossroads actually. Johnson went down to where Highway Forty-Two crossed Highway Sixty-One. This fella didn’t go there.

‘He went down South (like Johnson), but down just south of Birmingham. He went to the Crossroads Motel. And there he met the Devil and he sold his soul to the Devil.

‘Right there and then.’

‘Who he?’ asked Toby.

‘George Formby,’ I said.

And then they beat me up.

Which was unfair. I was outnumbered. In a fair fight I could have taken any of them. Still can. I keep myself fit. And, as I mentioned, I’m well hard, me. Tough as old boots. And torn trousers. And naked knees on broken glass. And spacemen fighting for a drink at the bar. And so on and so forth and suchlike.

When they had tired of beating me up, I suppose they felt a bit guilty. What with all the blood and the broken bits of me and stuff. And so they let me go on with my talk of George Formby.

‘After Johnson sold his soul to the Devil,’ I said, in as steady a voice as I could muster, ‘it was said that he always played guitar with his back to the audience. But those who managed a glance over his shoulder swore that he played so good because he now had an extra finger on his left hand.’

Heads went nod. That was such a good story, it just had to be true.

‘Well, it was almost the same with Formby, according to those who have seen him play live. And he doesn’t play live in the movies, he mimes to pre-recorded studio tracks.’ (I knew so much stuff back then. Still do, really. More, probably. Mind you, back then Neil told me most of it.)

‘Well, those who looked over Formby’s shoulder while he was recording swear that he had an extra string on his little ukulele. And the name George Formby is an anagram of the words “orgy of Begrem”, which was something that went on near Sodom and Gomorrah, in the Old Testament.’ (I knew this without Neil’s help because I went to Sunday School a lot when I was younger.)

And then they beat me up again.

But I did talk them into making the most of the available ukuleles in the school-band safe. Because without them we would never be able to play on stage at the school dance and be cool in front of the girls. And so The Sumerian Kynges became vocal and instrumental.

Although at that time unplugged.

Nowadays, when I hear the word unplugged I reach for my pistol. But back then there was Bob Dylan and he was still acoustic.

And so we all took up the ukulele.

And we played on stage in the school hall at the school dance. And we were cool and we became famous. Eventually.

And the school dance is probably as good a place as any other to truly begin this tale (after a brief but necessary digression regarding the origins of our oh-so-cool band name).

This tale that tick-tock-ticks away with the tick-tock-ticking of the clock.

It was, in its way, the beginning of the end.

And if I am honest, and I truly try to be, I do believe that the very end of which I speak was partially my fault.