the great wen: four
DESCRIPTION
A magaine of alternate londonTRANSCRIPT
No 1
or The London Sinister Exaggerator
In a move that sIgnals to many the inevitability of war, London’s tallest building, known to all simply as The Shard, is being quickly dismantled. Once disas-sembled, the entire edifice will be catalogued, then carefully trans-ported to a secret place of safety, possibly in the Chiltern Hills.
Minister of Attack Eric Blurdocks explained to us exclusively: “Since the secession of that little sod Sur-rey on Thursday we’ve been on a permanent war footing. This is manifested by the introduction of certain measures to protect any potential areas of possible enemy activity. We believe The Shard could become a prime soft target should hostilities escalate.”
Since Chief Sechele’s refusal to recognise the breakaway state and the reluctance of its leader Dave Jeffries to reach a diplomatic solu-tion, the prospect of war is pos-sible, if not probable, especially since a Port of London pleasure steamer was fired upon by rebels in Isleworth yesterday.
A militia has been hastily con-vened and all around the city’s western edges citizens are busy digging earthworks -- an action precipitated by rumours that the rebel army led by former high-wayman Robber Ely is mass-ing outside the breakaway shire’s newly declared capital, Richmond.
Shifting of The Shard to its secret loc
ation
Artist’s im
pression
@@@@@
@@@@@
“Wh en I b e ga n to re a l i s e h o w o f te n we q u a r re lled, how
often I picked on her w
ith nervous irritation, I became aw
are t h at our love was doomed.”
Illustration by artist in transference,
Eric Rave
nous (
)
aw
ar
e t
h
at
o nc e w e c r o s s t h e w a
nd
le
t
he
re Is no turnIng back .
olds constantly selecting and arranging words purely for the entertainment of mankind
the fog that has covered the north of the city for the last two weeks moved yesterday, a quarter of a mile south-east.
not sure about war
A The edge of the door B The end of the pike C
the d
og’s
tail
“to thInk they used to be our pal. Now every time I look upon a map of our fair city, all I see attached to its soft, south-western underbelly is a canker taut with treachery.”
So said an angry Chief Sechele, in his most bellicose speech to date. Standing on a recently erected scaffolding stage in front of the Banqueting House, resplendent in full, two-shirted, war regalia, he addressed a partisan crowd, call-ing upon, “every citizen to be pre-pared to tame, with torch, pike or gun, that odious, rebel, governance of Surrey.” Citing the secession as
“nothing more than rebellion,” labelling its self-proclaimed leader a “ninny” and its legality a “sham,” he continued in belligerent tone, fi-nally dispelling any notion of a dip-lomatic solution by labelling Surrey, “A benighted, tin pot, sheep shat shire of cheese, wool and slavery -- fit only to supply our beloved populace with milk and mittens.”
Asked by our own correspon-dent afterwards if he was worried Kent might join the rebel state to form a confederacy, he replied with confidence, “Kent’s fucked. It died with Horsa. It’s going nowhere.”
The breaking news in our previous issue
A Sergeant with his pike, going into an alehouse w
ith his d
og fo
llow
ing.
Draw
n in only three strokes by Billy Hogarth of S
mith
f eld
.
to avert beIng obtru-sive prey to feasible anti-aircraft fire, the Cha-meleoplane is this week sporting a camouflage exterior. Unfortunately, due to a programming error, the camouflage mix of duck-egg blue and battleship grey is appearing as riot-grrrrl-day-glo-grrrrreeeeeen and puki-punki-pinki.
a new football stadium is being hast-ily constructed just off Junction 24 of the M25. Teams of workers are toiling day and night to ensure it opens on time -- though no-one we contacted knows exactly when this will be.
Locals are viewing the developing situation with a mixture of interest and pride -- not to mention a large dollop of curiosity as to who will be actually playing there. Certainly not nearest team, Potters Barbarians, who record an average home gate of only 250, nor nearest big club, Tottenham, who have uncharacteristically shown no interest in en-quiring about the new stadium’s availability.
To make matters more mysterious, The Wen can find no evidence of who has commissioned this spanking new structure.
As to all things unfathom-able in this city we look to The Public Department of Safety and Health for guidance. Sadly, at the time of going to press their usually ubiquitous spokesperson Rob Spiers was uncontactable.
promenadin’ with
a r r i on
eed s
I Care for Lissy
a tragIc accIdent occurred yesterday within The Deep Sea Duct -- the two mile deep aquar-ium, commonly known as The Fish Abyss, housed within the Museum of Sea and Oceanogra-phy. A chain moving the aquari-um’s diving bell seized-up when the apparatus was fifty fathoms down, rendering the craft immo-bile and causing five people, yet unnamed, to perish from lack of oxygen. Despite the best efforts of museum diving staff to free the stricken vessel, it remains stuck fast. “Obviously our first concern is to retrieve the bodies said Under-water Deceased Retrieval Expert and Maritime Aquarium Risk As-sessor, Adrianus Air. He added it was, “imperative to bring the bell to the surface, as it restricts oxygen to the denizens below, who already have a depleted supply due to a malfunction of air pumps and fil-ters, damaged when the aquarium recently sprung a leak.” He went on to paint a bleak picture of what conditions were like below the ma-rooned, submerged craft, describ-ing it as, “a stewing, black soup of deoxygenated water and decaying sea creatures – an environment where only a few hardy species out of the thousands that were origi-nally housed will be able to adapt and survive. No-one really knows the full extent of what is going on down there in that benighted pit, but if you could see it, which luckily isn’t an option, it would be unpleas-ant in the extreme. One can only surmise it is a murky, putrescent hellhole of death, darkness and decay.”
However, The Sea Museum’s Superintendent and Director of Operations Professor Soames No-menclature was a lantern of opti-mism when we spoke to him ear-lier today. “The public are getting this out of proportion,” he said. “I agree the temporary blockage is impeding light and oxygen, but the top of the tank is still visible -- and, for a considerably reduced fee, families can come to see some lovely little fish and eels swimming around the aquarium’s surface.” Pressed about the fatalities, he con-tinued in a positive manner. “It’s never good when lives are lost ac-cidently, but let me assure every one of the deceaseds’ relatives we take these deaths seriously. So seri-ously, that their loved ones will live on in the form of a commemora-tive, brass plaque we plan to site in the future, next to the tank of neons in the concourse. But, please, I beseech you all, let’s get this act of Gush in context. Four times that number of navvies perished in the last year of the aquarium’s construction alone. For a disaster, a death toll of five is excellent.”
laurIe sorry was hanged at Brittleton Caper Gaol last Monday.
“His name sounded just too similar to Surrey, and we couldn’t afford to take the risk of nefarious, fifth column activ-ity,” said someone in a senior position somewhere.
In conjunct ion with the Morning Parp, Daily Blart, and Evening Toot we wish to an-nounce that con-jecture concerning the whereabouts of beautiful, miss-ing soprano Deli-cia Deepool (see previous issue) is now at an end. Furthermore, un-less in the unlikely event that her body is discov-ered, the story will remain dead and buried.”
y y stroll should have started at the Indian Bean Tree fronting St James’s Church in Piccadilly, until I discovered on arrival, that a gang of crazed and drunken Mohocks had seen fit to chop it down. That singular plant had been a meeting point for as long as I care to remember. Now, sadly, like so many legends in one’s lifetime, it has disappeared from sight, and very soon will fade from memory too. Who now recalls The Deptford Speckled Honeysuckle or Bow Albino Larch? And do any folk today even vaguely reminisce upon a ‘piss for luck’ ’gainst the long since poisoned Willesden Thorny Willow?
So ’tis with heavy heart and drooping foot I leave the space that noble tree once occupied, to plod by way of Piccadilly, the short but stuff-packed path to the Inglori-ous Charnel Tube of Trafalgar Square.
Looming almost instantly - the Circus itself. Lots of interesting things to say about this famous bit of London Town – and for anyone interested I advise a perusal of Wikipedia. But comprehansive as their descriptions are, they omit one major occasion in The Dilly’s illustrious past. An event during The War Of The Roses, precipitated by the Lancastrian army beating the ruling Yorkists in battle near the Hertfordshire village of Sidetache on Kneaded. The victorious Lancastrians, on entering the city, released Henry VI, their poor, mad king from The Tower and brought him straight here to be exhibited. Wrapped in blue, moth-eaten cloak and topped with new found crown, he pa-raded round the statue of Anteros fourteen times before a threadbare mob, supposedly in triumph, but resembling more to my mind, a sad, old, dancing bear.
Avoiding Leicester Square and its thuggish tourists, I turn off right and head down Haymarket - that ‘great pa-rade ground of abandoned women’. But it’s neither hay nor whore which occupies my memory now. My mind is filled with scenes of expectation. The expectation of a lucky few, back in the winter of 1968, who patiently wait to see the Greatest English Film Ever Made: If.... naturally. I f.... with its idiosyncratic, four dots rather than the traditionally accepted, irregular three. Here I’ll let my dear and trusted thespy pal, Malcolm ‘Maccy D’ Mc Dowell elucidate.
“I got this call from Lindsay on the Sunday. The film had opened on the Friday at the Plaza on the Haymarket, and he said, ‘Malcolm, you’ve gotta come down! Come down right now.’ So I got my dad to drive me. And we’re driving up Lower Regent Street, and there’s a line of people that went miles down the road, and I thought it was for the Odeon which was sort of two blocks down. And I thought, “Wow, what the hell is playing there? But then I realised as we went up with the traffic, no, no, no, the queue went right past that cinema. IT WAS FOR US!”
Where Haymarket meets Pall Mall East I espy a gorgeous bottom. So tempting to overtake and with sly and sideways glance, put arse to face, so to speak. But remem-bering I’ve only got around 200 words left I press on. In-stead I choose to see in mind’s eye the shackled survivors of a sad, defeated Kentish army - remnants of the last great battle of the Last Great Kentish War, fronted by a white and frightened Ex-King Horsa – shuffling down Pall Mall East towards their terrifying, public deaths. Wretched men, who upon reaching Trafalgar Square are confronted, not by the manicured and silly, war-glorifying, outer coating of what is now nicknamed Nelson’s Column, but instead a grim and sturdy, stone cylinder, sheathed by rickety scaffolding, standing godlessly alone.
In a fearful trance, persuaded only by the prick of spear, the spittle-spattered prisoners approach and then ascend. Its lid off, this long, thin canister of bones from bygone wars is ready to receive its latest offerings. The bashed and shackled train climbs slowly to the top. Then, accompanied by a whoop of joy from the crowd below, (not unlike that bit in Apocalypto) each soldier is cast in turn, into the pit. Whether it was preferable to go first into the darkness and be skewered by previous vanquished armies’ bones, or to lie upon the top, dying slowly, entwined amongst one’s bro-ken comrades is hard to say. But look today and you’ll see the outer casing built to mask the horror, has from the bottom where the bodies lie the densest, begun to crack....
olds constantly selecting and arranging words purely for the entertainment of mankind
“My baby takes the morning train
He works from nine till five and then
He takes another home again
To find me waitin’ for him”
9.5º 9.5º
SHINgIGGERYBipolar Blacksmith are spesh guests of Stressed-Out Serf at Shackles in Shadwell on Sat. Also on the bill: Slaves With Issues, Angsty Milkmaid and An-orexic Eunuch. The Walrus and Carpen-ter’s Arms hosts Mock-Filled Platitude on the 32nd, supported as always by Papa’s Pecuniary. Shrinking Boards and Al-batrosses steer for the Hope and Anchor-less on Sun. Also that night, Dr. Footlights is scheduled to shine ’pon Glib Tattoo Phrase at Camden’s Piss Bucket. There’s a rare outing too, for acid influenced Big Breadwinner Hogg, doing the hons at the opening night of new ven Curs on Thurs ...
And this just in ... Dainty Bentley show-cases her doub alb
, How Beautiful Upon The Mountains Are The Feet Of Him That Bringeth Good Tid-ings, next Mon lunchtime at The Midnight Bell. Warm up, Tony McPhee and his mighty Groundhogs.
TOM’S K I T E . T E M P L
E 2
22
plus men who
noodle about in photoshop
, ,
,
Tricorn
the rou n dhouse
steam h a m mer
THE BRU N E LSEinstür z e n d e N e u b a u t e n
crushed by w
heels
messenger serv
i ce
Crazy World of Arthur Rimbaud
the
the
the onLy ones
synThetIcS No time for the singles. it’s here!
Forged by fairies, borne by storkangels and heralded by sirens... since it arrived yest aft, Not Nearly Naughty Enough by the calafra-galistic Glass Eyed And Wooden Tailed Mother has been abs perm glued to the turn-ingtable. And for those with luckiness enough to catch them last month at the Conundrum...you know just how good they can be.
What makes The Woodentails so spesh, so diff, so divinely def, is imposs to fath. But from the opening chord of Kent Plains Drifter to the final tinkle of Requiem For A Small Teacup, this is ... and I do not use this word lightly (it is, after all, a word with god, go and od [needs another d really] in it )... good. Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens simply cannot hold a candle to this blessed, holey, plastic, round and thinnish thing of felicity and bliss.
The Woodentails. The nazz.
TOM’S K I T E . T E M P L
E 2
22
A very short story by Polly Porringer
way, way, way back, his great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, greatgrandfather was the one who knocked the praying arms and faces off the effigies in Ashby Polville Church. Swinging a blacksmith’s hammer with all the gusto a Puritan’s righteousness could muster. Crudely smoothing the stone of a church gone bad.
Now, as his hands begin to uncontrollably shake, an image from his own short history flicks into mind. A country walk. His striding father in charge as usual. This time, deftly swishing his walking stick down on a rabbit’s head. 1962 and myxomatosis is in full flow. Rabbits expire everywhere. Shuffling around in fields and woods with swollen heads and pus-filled eyes; dying in ugly agony. A big idea, recklessly released and out of control. His dad was only doing the right thing really. “Putting them out of their misery.”
Even though bashing was in his blood, so was restraint. He tried to stay calm whenever his conscience provoked. Like with the parrots – when his generation’s own mad scientists let Paraquash out of its tall, glass cage. Released one day into the country just like myxomatosis – just like the parrots themselves. Of course the perpetrator who turned loose that original fecund pair of parakeets could never have envisaged the trouble they would cause. But Paraquash? Had those clever men not thought it through? As the shaking subsides he hums that song from Children’s Favourites he used to listen to as a child:
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly, I don’t know why she swallowed the fly, Perhaps she’ll die.’
He moved to London the year that Paraquash took its hold. The first of a long line of countrymen to come to the city. A city full of dying parakeets. And magpies too. They also got hit. Now his son will never see a magpie. Like his father never saw the short-lived English parrot. Two breeds of bullies gone in a trice. Hard to believe, when recently he’d only had to walk back from work through the cemetery down by the Thames to see them twitching on the ground, where they’d fallen off the twig, were kicking the bucket, shuffling off their mortal coil, running down the curtain and joining the bleedin’ choir invisible. But it wasn’t funny, there were just too many. And all the while they died he continued to resist that antecedent urge to thwack. Besides, he had no walking stick. A manbag is not an efficient parrot culler.
He was relieved he hadn’t had to ‘dipatch’ as his dad had called it, even though he’d had plenty of temp-tation. You could hardly walk around that place without stepping on something feebly flapping. They’d been partial to life by the river, and that cemetery was Parrotopolis. But no sooner had they gone and rotted, than the new thing started. The thing with the pottery. The thing with the river and the headstones.
He didn’t realise before he came to live here, that the river this far up was tidal. He liked that link with the sea. It reminded him of holidays. And when he walked along the river bank, when the tide was out, he’d sometimes jump down to where he could walk along a strip of thin, exposed beach. Not a sandy beach, but a stony, muddy one – flecked with (if he’d chosen to take a closer look) little shards of pottery. Thousands of smashed fragments. Detritus from the last two centuries of urban growth.
Where he lived, next to the church, down by the river, had been a village once. But like the tide, the city had moved upstream, replacing the water meadows with houses. It was here in the churchyard – the only kind of field remaining locally – that after the parrots died, the pottery (or more accurately, crockery) began to sprout. As though bored with being sluiced and submerged for so long, bits had slithered through the bank and into the fertile soil of the cemetery. Once there, each shard chose a spot, turned in the ground to point its sharpest end skyward, and like dragon’s teeth of legend, grew.
Pointy bits of Victorian cup and plate pricked up out of the ground. Irregular, china shapes emerged, pat-terned with their own peculiar secret history – wisps of willow, shaves of fern, or a snatch of some extinct, botanical extravaganza. Many in their infancy, were cut down by clumsy, council mowing machines. But that only made the ones they missed grow quicker. In days, a shard of plate could grow to full size (about the same height as a normal headstone). And it was with the oldest, most crooked headstones the survivors especially liked to mingle – curling round them cavalierly, or tilting in a sympathetic counterpoint – artfully assimilating and surviving. Naturally, the contract gardeners noticed, but it wasn’t in their remit to remove them. Besides, the ten or so that made it to full height, merged in so well, it looked as though they’d been there ages.
But to him it really mattered. Those pottery imposters had no right to be there. He’d noticed them straightaway, and they didn’t belong. He hated the way they’d inveigled their vulgar, Victorian way into the home of the older, carefully carved, legitimately positioned tombstones, slithering around their hosts like ivy taking hold of an oak.
His urge to righteously bash finally broke free. He bought a hammer from Robert Dyas and one night set to work. They smashed easily. As easily as he expected giant bits of crockery would. It didn’t take long to bash it all down. The council couldn’t ignore this. Sharp, white ceramic shards and splinters littered the ground. The gardeners would have to sort it out – clear it all up. And then what? Would that be the end or would those things grow back stronger? He’d stopped shaking, and stood there sweating, hammer in his hand. A bub-bling mix of certainty and doubt. Though deep, deep down, he knew in his heart of hearts he’d done what he’d always, always had to do.
u a th ma h c u t y, by th v , th n, a th v u d, tw ty m f th a
u a th ma h c u t y, by th v , th n, a th v u d, tw ty m f th a
Sorry, I don’t know who he is.
advIce for out-of-towners? Don’t go to Garfunkel’s.
fave street lamp? They’re just there. I have no preferences.
fave mInt? I don’t like mints -- except toffee ones, but I never buy them.
mayor for the day? I wouldn’t care to have that much responsibility -- and I can’t really think what I’d do anyway.
most embarrassIng moment?I was reaching up to light a lamp near Buckingham Palace wearing some holey old trousers when my cock fell out just as Queen Victoria walked past.
secret shoppIng lIst?Most things I need, I get from Tesco. Apart from the coffee mentioned earlier, the only other thing is cream for my piles which I get on prescription.
who would play you In a fIlm?Someone that looks like me.
look, you haven’t really banged on enough and we’ve nothIng left to ask you now That’s ok. But what happens if there’s not enough words?
no worrIes we just pad It outIs it that easy?
absolutely no problem
starbucks or slaughters? I always take a flask with me brewed from whatever takes my fancy at the Monmouth Coffee Company in Covent Garden.
fave carel weIght pIece? I’m torn between The Silence and Anger.
who would you InvIte to your dream dInner party? I live in a hostel and its dining area is self service. It’s also a big room and a bit clattery, so it would be pretty impracticable.
when dId you last cry and why? I really would rather not say -- the whole thing is still very raw and painful.
guIlty pleasure? Occasional bouts of arson.
last book bought? Not sure... think it was The Catcher in the Rye.
If you were asked to be on desert Island dIscs whIch nIck cave track would you choose?
Lenny LAmbent
Gas lamps from Lampton to Lambeth -London’s last Lamplighter has lit them all. A love of fire, dusk, fog and solitude has led him on the daily path to conflagration.
But what, pray, enkindles his singular wick?
have to be mutually exclusive.
hIll? Corn. food? I like different things at dif-
ferent times and I don’t like it at all when I’m not hungry.
have you ever In the foggy dawn mIasma, caught sIght of spook or spectre, or at daybreak heard the rIver banshees call to sea? Er... Nope.
fags? Park Drive.
fIrst lon mem? Light possibly.
crazIest occurrence of your long, IllustrIous, lamp lIghtIng career? Nothing really.
strangest sIght seen through the mIsts of the early morn? Can’t remember anything in particular.
musIc? The Streets. Only kidding, he’s shit.
arthur wallIs or scottIe wIlson? I like both. They really don’t
explosIvacIous! Have just seen the soon to-be-released remake of An-tonioni’s classic, Blow-Up -- y’know the one, with David Hemmings as a trendy, Bailey-esque lensman, who finds he’s accidently papped a murder. Well, the remake turns up’n’comin’ snapper into venerated wood engraver -- bravely casting comic veteran Charles ‘Hello, My Dar-lings’ Drake as master of the genre, Thomas Bewick.
Drake doesn’t disappoint, bossing the role of the cold, yet simmering, yet fiery genius on a mission to elevate his craft by refusing to cut ‘on the plank’ and instead choosing to work on the hard end-grain of boxwood, thus facilitating the use of the copper engraver’s more delicate tools, thereby ensuring a vastly more intricate and elaborate end product.
The action starts when the fastidious Bewick notices a mark on the back-ground of one of his freshly executed, pastoral vignettes. On closer exami-nation (and here we witness bravura Drake complexity), he discovers he’s inadvertently engraved a garotting into the undergrowth. The plot trots,
lopes, canters, then finally gallops towards a thrilling climax. (There’s oats too - watch out for the engraver’s ‘saucy milkmaid’ model audition!)
Thomas ‘The’ Bewick himself was at last night’s screening and I man-aged to grab a few words. We know he loved the film but what did he think of London?
“It appears to be a world of itself, where everything in the extreme might at once be seen -- extreme riches, extreme poverty, extreme grandeur and extreme wretchedness.” Fair enough, each to his own, but would he possibly stay on for a bit of sightseeing?
“I would rather be herding sheep on Mickley Bank Top than remain in London if, even for doing so, I was to be made Premier of all England”.
Er, quite so. (Atch, I know for a fact he caught Band of Skulls last night at the Roundhouse.) Whatevs, bumpkin boy.Gravure of Garotte opens at the Regal in Leicester Fields on the 44th.
IdentIcally named conjoined twins Colin and Colin Kilpatrick are set to appear soon at the Pudd’n’head Gallery in Piccadilly. The controversial performance artists intend to mime the old Captain Beefheart number My Head Is My Only House Unless It Rains 100 times in one day, or until they get the words right. Said Colin: “Beefheart was a perfectionist and so am we.”
hIrem scarum’s Wild West Cowboy Whoop-’Em-Up hits Hackney Marshes all this week. Thrill to The Daredevil Donkey Rid-ers of the Beaconsfield Plain. Chill to Sidney, the Wild, Woad-Encrusted, Durotriges War-rior. (But don’t) Spill the beans from Chef Zhou Enlai’s chow-down tent.
Country music comes courtesy of Sentimental Drunken Murderess, singing (fings crossed) their classic: Beelzebub Went Down to Buckinghamshire.
Join the fun at the otter skinning workshop, or run for your lives from the nightly fennec stampede. Fearless gents can even brave a shoot-out twixt famed gunslingers, Ol ‘Why Does Every Two Bit Punk in Every One Horse Town Want Nothing But Trouble?’ Dunn, and cocky up-start, Pup ‘You Spilled My Sasparilla’ Squeak.
