The Senseless Counterfeit - a progress update

I am now writing Act 2 Scene iv of The Senseless Counterfeit. Not much progress this week, however, as I am presently spending a few days visiting my daughter in the Middle East. I return to the UK tomorrow night, and will try to finish Act 2 by the end of the week, before heading off to Metz, where I will spend several days attending a wedding.

Sleaze's Soliloquy from Act 2 Scene i of The Senseless Counterfeit

The Senseless Counterfeit, Act 1 Scene v

Act 1. Scene v.

(The covered terrace of the Cricketers. CHLAMYDIA at one table, with pub GIMPS. SULIMAN at the other table, also with pub GIMPS, although he is again reading poetry rather than bantering with those fellows. Enter SLEAZE. Ignoring SULIMAN, he addresses himself to CHLAMYDIA)

SLEAZE.

Chlamydia, we met outside the shell

of the Montpelier Snail.

CHLAMYDIA.

That’s Slime, Sleaze.

SLEAZE.

Sooth, he trails that vile commodity

where’er he crawls, which makes mud stick to him.

CHLAMYDIA.

Well Luvvertory like a dingleberry 5

sticks to the gastropod, and by coarse hints

insinuates some unbecoming vice,

the threatened ooze of which unmans that Snail,

preventing the eviction which I’ve urged.

SLEAZE.

That must be deeply inconvenient. 10

CHLAMYDIA.

Indeed, I could not bear that bearded git

who reeked of patchouli and of rotten eggs,

and made my home a den of ketonauts.

And now to find, when I move in with Slime

the limpet does outstay his welcome there. 15

SLEAZE.

Have you any intimation of

the basis of this blackmailing of Slime?

CHLAMYDIA.

That Snail for his part doth provoke unease.

He has a little tablet, which betimes

he privily extracts from’s draw-string bag, 20

and then will gaze at bulbous-eyed for hours.

SLEAZE.

Know you at what the snail’s antennae stare?

CHLAMYDIA.

He keeps his tablet very close, essaying

never to afford the briefest glimpse

of business pixellated thereupon. 25

Habitually he’s very back-to-wall,

and does disdain all close proximity.

Nevertheless, I did once see …

SLEAZE.

You saw?

CHLAMYDIA.

A fleeting glimpse …

SLEAZE.

Which disturbéd your repose.

Say nothing. I do understand. There’ve been rumours. 30

CHLAMYDIA.

Hell is the shell within the coils of which

Slime bathes in his lubricious sweating ooze.

SLEAZE.

What came to my ears - I forget exactly how -

is that Slime’s trail glistens all the way

to Horfield Prison, where he shared a shell 35

with that companion of your step-son Little Shit.

CHLAMYDIA.

Fukboi: a more conniving, vicious pimp

never disgraced the slums of Brislington.

I fear for Little Shit.

SLEAZE.

Quite reasonably,

perhaps. If I may draw you back to Slime, 40

I heard - although I don’t remember when -

that Slime, from bunking down in Fukboi’s cell,

did graduate with honours garlanded,

when knowledge of his research came to light,

to that sequestered institute or wing, 45

where live the persecuted hierophants

of that most recondite of disciplines,

I blush to speak its name.

CHLAMYDIA.

A sex offender then.

And this is Luvvertory’s hold on him?

SLEAZE.

I’m only passing on what I have heard, 50

for you to make deductions as you please.

CHLAMYDIA.

One day I’ll with amazement ask myself

how I did come to lodge with such a pair:

that nonce and that stinking blackmailing brute.

SLEAZE.

Slime’s not the only one. That Sufist there: 55

(indicates SULIMAN)

he lives next door to me in Brislington.

Concerning him, the rumours do abound.

CHLAMYDIA.

Pray, do not furnish the particulars

of his depravity. Slime’s trail’s enough;

to share the shell of that degenerate! 60

SLEAZE.

Fate’s lately dealt you several knavish cards.

Have you considered the alternatives?

CHLAMYDIA.

Alternatives?

SLEAZE.

I offered you a job,

don’t you remember it?

CHLAMYDIA.

A therapist?

I’ve absolutely no experience - 65

you do realise of course?

SLEAZE.

Of course. To me,

it sounds as though you in Catch 22 -

to whit, no job without experience,

and no experience without a job.

CHLAMYDIA.

You did say it’s respectable …

SLEAZE.

It is 70

a therapeutical environment,

appealing to a nice, mixed clientele

of spiritual seekers, new age freaks,

yoga-mums on pampering weekends,

and ordinary decent naturists. 75

CHLAMYDIA.

Sounds slightly weird, but still. Quite sure

no funny stuff?

SLEAZE.

I acknowledge it’s been billed,

as Sacred Sexuality, Chakra

Realignment By Our Therapists.

That doesn’t mean that it’s a knocking shop; 80

we approach th’erotic with deep reverence.

CHLAMYDIA.

(Aside)

I’m frankly dubious, but anyway

it can’t be worse than living with those two.

(Aloud)

Save for these two conditions, I agree.

I keep my kit on, and don’t offer hand 85

relief.

(SLEAZE & CHLAMYDIA shake hands)

SLEAZE.

Most happily this business ends!

CHLAMYDIA.

I will betake myself directly to the Snail

and extricate my personal affects

from his foul vaselined, adhesive clutch.

(Exit CHLAMYDIA)

SLEAZE.

(Aside)

My machinations will quite soon ensure 90

that she’ll be dancing to a different tune.

I wonder at this Persian straying from home,

who hates and spurns the profane vulgar mob.

If he’d intelligence of what’s to come,

he’d stick close by those nubile girls of his. 95

I’ll go straight home to see what ludic mice

get up to in the absence of the cat.

(Exit SLEAZE)

SULIMAN.

(Aside)

I came here seeking a brief hour’s respite

from Fort Apache Brislington. Yet here too,

drinking at this table set for gimps, 100

I find myself assailed by lunacy.

A vast interconnected web doth link

all of Bristol’s web-fingered denizens. 

I’m sure that with that local personage

Sleaze was discussing me, and this same Sleaze 105

will be discovered as the poisoned well

from which is drawn that sewage effluent,

which lately has begun to wash about

my ears. I have now the presentiment

that I must hasten homewards, and repair 110

the breaches of my dammed up decency.

Progress update about The Senseless Counterfeit

I finished writing Act 1 of the Senseless Counterfeit this afternoon. At the present rate, the whole play should take about 3 months. This is only guesswork on my part, as I've never written a play before. It's possible that my progress will accelerate over the latter half of the writing, as usually happens when I write a novel.

I'm away for a few days in August, at a wedding in Metz, and may also spend a few days visiting my daughter in the Middle East at some point in July. Apart from these commitments, there's really not much to prevent me focusing on the Senseless Counterfeit.

The Senseless Counterfeit - a Neo-Jacobean Tragedy

At the instigation of Gill Kirk, I've temporarily set aside Odour Issues in order to write my first ever play. The Senseless Counterfeit is a Neo-Jacobean Revenge Tragedy, written for the most part in pentametrical blank verse, with a contemporary Bristolian subject-matter, and featuring all the standard tropes of the genre - murder begetting murder, plays-within-plays, grief-maddened daughters, disguises, poison, cruelty, and ghosts.

Briefly, the story draws on certain events in Bristol's recent history, relating the lynching of an innocent and cultured man accused of paedophilia, this episode generating the torture-murder of a second man, this time genuinely a paedophile. The denouement centres around a tantric weekend organised by the sophistical villain of the piece, who gets his comeuppance courtesy of an LSD-tipped dildo encountered through a glory hole.

I've started writing Odour Issues

Since finishing Pretty Poli a couple of months ago, I've taken the anticipated break from writing in order to apply some Enlightenment landscaping values to the pestilential swamp masquerading as my garden.

However, at the same time, although I haven't been writing, I have been reading - most of Alexander Pope's translation of the Odyssey and about two thirds of Ulysses; as well as a couple of chapters of Leavis's Great Tradition, which persuades me that at some stage I'm going to have to stomach my distaste [sic?] and have another attempt at Henry James.

This week, I'm pleased to announce, I finally started writing the third novel, Odour Issues, in what is developing into a Bristol Tetralogy. I've written about 1500 words so far, and aim to be concentrating on OI for the rest of this week, before spending next week on the patio-laying stage of the afore-mentioned swamp reclamation project.

Bristol Central Library - a short poem

Bristol Central Library

The chair he sits in, like a burnished throne,

glows on the marbled fat librarian’s flesh.

Upstairs, through the door without,
insinuates the babbling of creche,
submerging the monomaniacs’ drone
and the profanities of louts.

The hipster who needs to blow his nose

snorts through all Eustachia his snot.

The paranoiac in his shell-suit seethes

and itches at a snow-capped scalpine spot

The sleeper, having woken, yawns and goes

through the circulating thieves.

Apollo’s been usurped. His temple’s now

a Pandemonium, or slough, or pond

where with spasms, signifying disease,

flail spiritual seekers in despond

in company with diverse clowns,

and harlequins, and chaps with fleas.