I've spent the last few months working on my sixth novel, Woking Pox, the writing of which, after a somewhat desultory beginning, is now gathering steam. It's a high burlesque parody of or homage to Camus's La Peste, which I read a few months ago in the original French. Here is chapter 5.
Chapter 5
That evening, Constable Wifebeating-Cokehead stopped off at Patchway in order to appease Sergeant
Rainbow-Knee with one of his trademark broadly upbeat but specifically noncommittal assessments as to
the prospects of apprehending the Clifton Gimp. Emerging passably unscathed from this colloquium, he
found himself however put to the inconvenience, and more than somewhat to his consternation, of
providing transport to Trinity for his senior colleague Superintendent “Gloucester” Oldspot and his junior
colleague PCSO Troilus Penis.
The polychrome rodents were much in evidence at vespertide, the more so as the trio passed beneath the
Arches in Constable Wifebeating Cokehead’s Pride-logoed BMW. The evening was humid and the
Constable, lowering his window in order to air his armpit’s sweat patch as he inched down Cheltenham
Road and Stokes Croft eyed absently the creatures waddling between the isles of garbage decomposing in the puddled filth.
Hominids abounded here also, gargoyles haggard with heroin’s lack peered from the windows of Bar
Wanque, dipsomaniacs dry-heaved between the overflowing bins, ghastly fops with waxed moustaches and
torn hose discharged in flagrante publico their widdle, laughing in the faces of the civilians hurrying past.
PCSO Penis, an unkempt individual redolent of joss sticks and patchouli and with several days worth of
sparse wisps struggling to establish themselves upon his callow jowls, gazed with evident longing at the
phantasmagoria.
“Wouldn’t mind bein’ dropped off ’ere if that’s kushti,” said he, “me shift finishes in fifteen minutes,
an’ it don’t make no sense makin’ me walk all the ways back ’ere innit.”
“All things considered,” replied Superintendent Oldspot in his considered and somewhat lugubrious
tones, “I do think you may reasonably be expected to complete your shift as per,” and “drive on, Constable.”
The traffic inching forward now brought them now between The Ghastly Hipster Opposite Turbo Island
and Turbo Island opposite The Ghastly Hipster Opposite Turbo Island. Upon Turbo Island opposite The
Ghastly Hipster Opposite Turbo Island, a bonfire was underway, throwing against the pretentious cafes
shadows of the grotesques lounging there, the vomitous street drinkers and the wan demimondaines and the
deliberately uglified upper class spawn with their facial tattoos and septum piercings. Here from the bosom
of a coterie of scrofulous poets stepped to the kerb that most excellent matron Lady Valerie Inhali who,
rapping on the window behind the Constable, cried out
“Well fuck me gently! Do I espy darling Glorster?”
Superintendent Oldspot exhibiting some reluctance lowered his window, and muttered
“Er,” and “hi … er … Val.”
“It’s epsloot fucking bedlam here,” drawled Lady Inhali gesturing at the Sodom unfolding behind her,
“I’m with all these megnificently shitty poets. No sense of lyric whatsoever. I fucking love it! Can’t I tempt
you to let your hair down?”
“Duty calls, I’m afraid … er … Val,” said Superintendent Oldspot, again very quietly, and “with the
best will in the world.”
“Oh well,” said Her Ladyship, not overly disappointed, “nothing fucking ventured, wotwot. Byesie
bye and sarofuckingnara darling.”
“Give my regards to Gerry,” offered Superintendent Oldspot wanly, but Lady Inhali had already turned away and crossed the road,
and was even now being reabsorbed into the foule combling Turbo Island opposite The Ghastly Hipster
Opposite Turbo Island.
Superintendent Oldspot raised once more his window and slumped with a sigh back into his seat, which
with an exhalation like unto a silent fart welcomed him into its embrace. Constable Wifebeating-Cokehead,
regarding the Superintendent through his rearview mirror, thought fit to bestow upon his superior officer
his aperçu.
“Fit-looking bint, Super.”
Superintendent Oldspot winced inwardly at this affront but held his peace, considering it better not to
acquiesce in the overfamiliarity of his inferiors by disclosures regarding his participation at Cliftonian Fish
Suppers.
“Mind you,” continued Constable Wifebeating-Cokehead blithely, “not sure as I would, wot wiv that
potty mouf wot she’s got on ’er,” being so good as to add “no hoffence.”
Whilom persisting in his quietism, Superintendent Oldspot made a mental note relating to certain measures
to be undertaken at the Constable’s next six-monthly performance review.
Some few minutes later, the Pride-logoed BMW being admitted into Trinity’s backyard compound and
being suffered to disgorge Superintendent Oldspot and PCSO Penis, and Constable Wifebeating-Cokehead
having been put to the further inconvenience of completing an amount of rilly rather tiresome paperwork,
the latter gentleman was finally at liberty to make his way home to Knowle.
The good Constable was somewhat disconcerted upon his arrival at the threshold of his bower of bliss by
the wholesale changes which had been wrought upon the place since he had left for work that morning.
His front door, hitherto limning after a manner that he had always found reassuring the border between grey
and brown, had been glossed a markedly fey shade of pale pink, which exhibited the recentness of its
provenance by transferring itself to the palm of his hand.
The door withal yielding, Constable Wifebeating Cokehead was immediately assailed by a trio of
ankle-high canines, one in the TikTok habiliments of a fish, one of a unicorn, and one of a tyrannosaur.
These set up a furious cacophony, while nipping at the Constable’s trouser legs and micturating upon his
size 11’s. After some minutes of impotent rage, the Constable found that, by dint of drawing his truncheon
and menacing the creatures with this instrument, he was able to cleave a path through their midst, and
thuswise advanced down the vestibule, upon the door at the end of which a legend, picked out in a female
felt tip cursive and much festooned with smileys and botanical images, commanded all who would enter to
dispense with their footwear.
The Constable pushed on through ignoring the directive, whereupon the uproar behind him immediately
subsided. He now found his wonted man-cave transformed into the anteroom of a bordello. Gone was his
black neoprene couch and his neoprene black office chair. Instead a chintz chaise longue broadcast an
aesthetic - one might almost call it an ethic - of pink pastel and aquamarine. Upon the four walls poltroon
pink blushed up to the dado rails, and brush-moist mauve glowered from above. Here and there upon little
tables, dainty little pounce boxes opened their little mandibles and exhibited their little piles of pot pourri.
In the corner where once had stood the Constable’s bookcase, doing nothing to disguise its being the
veriest essence of medium density fibreboard and serving only to display the six or seven thrillers and the
six or seven dozen artistic photography magazines constituting the totality of the Wifebeating-Cokehead
reading experience, there now glowed a vermillion contraption with turquoise trimmings and a horizontal
surface sufficient to accommodate two or three vases filled with comely bouquets. Upon the corner shelf
once dominated by the Constable’s widescreen television, there now perched a fan sedulously antiqued in
pink bakelite, which wafted unto the grateful organ olfactory gentle zephyrs laden with jasmine and
lavender and hibiscus.
The next focus of the Constable’s investigation was the kitchen. Here, the familiarities of untreated pine
had been effaced by more pink and more mauve and more aquamarine. Gone from where it had … er …
squatted on the sideboard was the microwave in which it had been his pleasure to reheat the chicken
vindaloos and the lamb kebabs he acquired most evenings on his way home from the takeaway bistros
proliferating the length of Wells Road. In its place, and bookended by a pair of ceramic kittens, a
horizontal twenty inches of cookbooks exuded a smuggery of mediterranean and orientalist veganism.
The Constable turned his eyes from this affront and, opening now the refrigerator, beheld therein the boxes
of chia seeds and blueberries, the sourdough loaf and the extra virgin olive oil, and the unconscionably
green legumes and the bottles of Babycham and coconut liqueur which had replaced his white slice-bread
and bacon and protein powder and Horst Wessel marching lager.
Things were no better in the bathroom, where the medium-sized white goods in and into which
Constable Wifebeating-Cokehead did his business had been replaced by - abomination of abominations -
an avocado suite. The minor consolation of familiarity afforded by the continuing presence of the wall-
mounted medium density fibreboard cupboard-with-shaving mirror was promptly purged by inspection
of the contents: instead of the Constable’s venerable toothbrush, his much-loved bottle of Jison poof-juice,and his collection of liniments and soothing creams for jock itch, ball scratch, wanker canchre etc & so
forth, there now reposed upon the two shelves an assortment of feminine hygiene products, wellness
creams and unguents, and a solitary Eunuque GodemicheTM.
“What the akshul fuck?” demanded Constable Wifebeating-Cokehead with in his tones that of the
plaintive.
As if in answer to his entreaty there now emanated from his bedchamber sighs of human provenance,
betokening the sublimest sensual satisfaction. The Constable wasted no time in striding to the door thereof
and flinging it open, and now beheld a vision beyond all foulness. The rotting double mattress upon the
floor, the grimy sheets, the unclad pillows whose semen-stained stripes might have recalled - at any rate to
a taste more perspicacious than the Constable’s - the pyjama tops of concentration camp inmates - all that
was familiar to the Constable’s aching eyes had gone. In its place was now an actual bed, super-kingsize
and rejoicing in throws of brocaded chinoiserie, pink as ever, and purple and gold and pea-green,
depicting dragons cavorting with lady dragons, peasants in conical hats harvesting rice from paddies,
cross-legged Buddhas dispensing homilies to their callow acolytes, and roistering gentlemen in
gowns indulging in venery with lissome courtesans wearing chopsticks in their hair. Reposing upon
this arrangement and also sporting a gown of similarly brocaded chinoiserie, Mrs Wifebeating-Cokehead
was just at that instant in the act of feeding grapes to a similarly clad and exceptionally insolent-looking
youth.
“Kinnell Akrasia,” said then Constable Wifebeating-Cokehead, and “you fuckin’ slag.”
“I finally got a non-molestation order,” replied that excellent matron, “so you can sling your farkin’
’ook,” adding by way of afterthought, “this ’ere’s Lord Edge. ’E’s a posh cunt.”
Lord Edge raised an eyebrow and then a little finger, and drawled through grape,
“Enchanté, my dear chep.”
Constable Wifebeating-Cokehead immediately set about rectifying matters. He seized Lord Edge by the
ear and, ignoring the protestations of that cove - “I say, steady on old chep!” - dragged him from the
bedchamber, and through the lounge, and then along the vestibule where both were again assailed by the
yapping and nipping fish, and the nipping and micturating unicorn, and the micturating and nipping
tyrannosaur. Once more the Constable’s truncheon smoothed a path through the mêlée, enabling the pair
to reach the front door which, as the Constable thrust from the bower the callow lout, once more left its
imprint upon his paw.
Having for a third time suppressed with his beadle stave the respective combinations of nipping, yapping,
and micturating of fish, unicorn, and tyrannosaur, the Constable set about restoring his ancien regime. In
the living room, he broke prodigious quantities of wind upon the chintz chaise longue, and emptied the
pounce boxes of their pot pourri, and trod them into the floor with his size 11’s, and knocked over the
vases and trod them into the floor too, and picked his nose and wiped the secretions on the dado rails. In
the kitchen, he smashed to smithereens the ceramic kittens, and tore out the pages of the cookbooks
and folded them into paper aeroplanes, and emptied the chia seeds and blueberries and extra virgin olive
oil and Babycham and coconut liqueur into a bowl, and crumbed the sourdough and ground up the
fragments of ceramic kitten and emptied them into the bowl too, and whisked the resultant concoction into
a froth which he emptied all over the pink and the mauve and the aquamarine. And in the bathroom
he emptied the medium density fibreboard cupboard of its feminine hygiene products and unguents
and wellness creams and poured them all into the avocado suite, and used the Eunuque GodemicheTM to stir the unguents and wellness creams into sticky paste which he smeared all over the tiles and the
shower curtain, to which as a thoughtful finishing touch he stuck the feminine hygiene products. Finally,
arming himself with a bowl full of pot pourri, nasal secretions, ground up ceramic kittens, chia seeds,
blueberries, extra virgin olive oil, Babycham, coconut liqueur, crumbed sourdough, unguents, and wellnesscreams, he advanced into the bedchamber and used the Eunuque Godemiche to anoint with his princely
concoction the brocaded chinoiserie, and each individual dragon and lady dragon and peasant and
Buddha and acolyte and roistering begowned gentleman and courtesan, and also the brocaded chinoiserie
gown of Mrs Wifebeating-Cokehead. And when at last he paused and caught his breath, to that excellent
matron he spake words, and the words that he spake were,
“Make us a sarnie, luv.”
