Author: Rob

The Craziest Laws in America

If there’s one sure way to get me angry, it’s to talk about “the immigrant question” as if it’s something that has a simple answer. Here’s my position: this country has been built, nurtured and inconceivably strengthened by the people that have come across our borders and called it home over the centuries. Whining about economic migrants coming over and “stealing” the jobs that no-one else wants to do, and “Queue-jumping” the lists for council houses which frankly doesn’t happen at a quarter of the rate that the Daily Mail would have you believe is behavior that will have me wordless with rage. And that’s not a good position for a writer to be in.
I wanted a simple answer to shove at the ninnies and blowhards who want to close the borders to asylum seekers. This was the best I could come up with. I wrote it back in 2002 for a human rights fiction competition, and I remain foolishly proud of it. It’s an alternative history (which are always fun to write) with a simple message – “walk a mile in their shoes.”

Margaret’s God

Ten more came in today. Three families, three little huddles. Mother, father, daughter. Son, daughter, father. Mother and three girls, triplets, none over four years old. Three families, all missing someone. A parent left behind, a child abandoned. An unendurable loss, borne as the price for survival.

As they came through the gate, I saw that the coastal patrols at Calais were up to their old tricks again. The families were damp, shivering and obviously starving. Rather than supply dry clothes and food, they’d simply bundled them into a truck and sent them down the bumpy mile-long track to Sangatte. I could almost see the Gallic shrugs. Let the rosbifs look after their own.

The mother and triplets left the group of newcomers. Uncertainly, they came towards me. The mother looked like a child herself. Barely into her twenties. Thin. Lank blond hair. Exhausted.

“Excuse me,” she said. “We were told there’d be food here. Dry clothes for the children.”

Her voice was faltering, weak. Wide, trusting eyes. I could say anything. It would be so simple. I could have her on her knees behind the supply sheds at the back of the compound in ten minutes flat. She’d thank me for it if I got her kids some bread. There are plenty of predators here, behind the wire.

I’m not one of them. She was lucky. I led her and the girls away. As we moved off, a couple of the Aldershot boys moved in on the remnants of the group. Their smiles were wide and toothy.

I didn’t look behind me as they closed in, and I made sure the girls didn’t either.

Like I said, she was lucky. There were free beds in the family compound. The Poor Clares from the nunnery over the road from the camp had come through with clothing. Old, sure, but clean and more importantly dry.

Better yet, our Good Samaritan at the local market had brought in a load of cheap lamb. Too close to the sell-by date for the public, but we were black-market at Sangatte Camp, and desperate. “You know what this means,” Colin told me. “Shepherd’s pie for dinner tonight.” Colin, who ran the kitchen with his partner Derek. One of the bravest men I know, the last man out of Canal Street before the Manchester Purges, enthusing about the simple pleasures of a meat and potato pie. The saddest thing was, I knew exactly where he was coming from, and the very thought of shepherd’s pie was enough to fill my mouth with juice and my eyes with tears. It’s always the simple things that spark it off. Shepherd’s pie. Jesus wept.

“My name’s Justine.” It was a few hours later. The sun was low and red behind the water towers. Colin and Derek’s wonderous creation was warm and solid in our bellies. The girls, starfished and dozing on our bunks were warm and dry for the first time in days in their nunnery-blue. The mother – Justine – had relaxed enough to tell me her name, and her story.

“We got out of Birmingham as the Purges were moving south,” she said. Her voice was low. She cast a nervous glance over at her sleeping girls, worried I suppose about them being woken to tales of an ordeal they thought was over. “The Renunciation Brigades were everywhere. They knew just where to look. Where the churches were. It didn’t take much to get the priests to tell them where to find their congregations.”

I already knew the rest, although I didn’t want to bother Justine with how many times I’d heard the tale before. The choice given to any English Catholic in the 22nd year of the Minister Prime’s rule was simple. Renunciation, or internment. It was a central tenet of the Thatcherite creed. All true-born and loyal Englishmen are Protestant. If your faith is different, well, then sorry, so are you.

And if you don’t worship like a true-born Englishman, then I’m afraid you can’t entirely be trusted. Better just pop you in an internment camp. For your own good, you understand. Nice places, the camps. Never a bad word said against them. In fact, you didn’t really hear anything about them. Quiet places, really. Surprisingly quiet, considering how many people they were supposed to be holding.

I came out of my reverie, realising Justine was still telling her story. The car that died on her on an isolated roundabout near Watford. Nowhere near enough money for trains, even if she could have found a service that was running. Hitching, then, was the only option, with three terrified little girls in tow. Sleepless, fear-filled nights sheltering in hedgerows as the patrols thundered past. Saving every penny of her pitifully meagre savings so she could hand it over to a French sailor at Portsmouth who said he could get her onto a container ferry bound for North Africa. Seven hundred pounds got her, her kids and six other unfortunates dumped in a dinghy a mile off the French coast and into a refugee holding camp just outside Le Havre. I didn’t need all the details. Like I said, I’d heard it all before.

“Be grateful you never made it to Algiers,” I said, when she had finally wound down. “The Africans don’t have any patience with English refugees. They hate the idea of infidels sponging off the African Free States. They don’t have holding centres. You’d be dumped in an Algerian jail, and forgotten about. I know it might not seem like it, but winding up here’s probably the
first bit of good luck you’ve had since you left Portsmouth.”

“I thought the French hated the English,” she retorted sourly.

“No, the French hate Protestants. They’re perfectly prepared to tolerate English Catholics as long as we sit at the back in church, and don’t sing the hymns too loudly.” I flashed what I hoped was a winning smile at her. “Look, you’re safe here. You’ll be clothed and fed. And you can start to build a case for you and your kids. The paperwork’s a sod, and you have to watch yourself at the induction hearings. But a lot of luck and a wheel-barrow full of patience should give you official refugee status in the protectorum Gallicia of the Most Holy Roman Empire.” I grinned, spreading my arms wide, trying to make a joke out of one of the most soul-destroying experiences on God’s earth. If you’ve never been certain of the existence or the banality of hell, then French bureaucracy will set you straight on the matter.

Justine smiled back at my clowning. A tired smile, but it lit up her face in ways that automatically added a couple of Hail Mary’s onto next weeks confession.

“You’re funny,” she said. “Were you a comedian or something? Back in England, I mean.”

“No”, I said. Suddenly I couldn’t find anything worth laughing about. “I was a history teacher. I worked in a secondary school in Lambeth.”

Justine’s eyes went wide. “You were in London. Oh, no. How did you … I mean, how could you…” She faltered to a stop. It was understandable. Not a day went by that I didn’t question how I’d got out before the Ring Of Steel dropped over the capital.

“I was lucky,” I said simply. “By the time the Renunciation Brigades began firebombing the outer boroughs, I was well clear. We’d had time to prepare, seeing the Purges coming down from the north. A lot of churches had banded together, formed a network. There are a string of safe houses we used, took us down through Surrey, into Kent, then the South Coast. A fishing boat put me in the tender and merciful hands of our French brethren, and it only cost me two thousand pounds.” I paused for a moment, fighting the memories down. “But I’d seen the clampdown coming for years.”

“What made you realise?”

“I’m a history teacher, Justine. I realised as soon as the stories in the textbooks I was teaching from started to change. Do you know there are people who think there was a free election in 1979? Because that’s what they’re being taught! People like me have spent the last twenty years spreading her lies! No-one remebers the Thatcherite putsch. No-one remembers James Callagan, let alone what she did to him on Parliament Green. There are kiosks in front of Portcullis House selling postcards of the gibbets she had built, and people think they’re just a tourist attraction!” I could feel the bile rising within me, the anger I’d hidden for so long boiling to the surface. I was fully aware that my voice was rising. I didn’t care. This was coming out, and damn the mess and the aftertaste.

“We’re scapegoats, you and I. We’re to blame for everything that’s wrong with England, if you believe her. We’re collaborating with the French, the Iberians, Rome, keeping England down, keeping it small and weak, squashing any trade deals the mad old witch thinks she’s made. Do you know, she thinks she’s got a claim on the Scandinavian oil fields in the Nord Sea? It went to arbitration, not that you’ll have read anything about it in the Sun-Times after the Svenheads confettied the paperwork.

“Same thing with the invasion of Jersey last year. A task force of fifty men. Against Maginot-built fortifications. I don’t imagine you heard much about that either.”

“There was something in the news,” Justine faltered. “A memorial service…”

“And who did she blame for that? Seditionist Catholics tipping off the French authorities! As if fifty men could ever had lasted against the Channel Legions! No, she scarificed those men so she could weaken the Catholic position!”

“Isn’t that a bit paranoid? You don’t think she’d plot against her own?”

“We’re not her own!” I was screaming in her face now, oblivious to the fact that her kids, no, the whole dorm, had been woken by my tirade. “She says we’re all foreign agents. She says our priests are all paedophiles. Our faith is one step away from witchcraft. We’ve been demonised in our own country, and when we try to find shelter abroad we’re either ignored, or they just think we’re after a handout and an easy life. They don’t realise, Justine, no-one does! What do you think goes on in the internment camps? Back home, we’re being murdered in our thousands, and it doesn’t even make the news!” I was dimly aware of the wetness on my cheeks, the hoarseness of my voice. it was too late to stop now.

“We live on an insignificant little rock on the edge of the Atlantic that hasn’t meant a thing to anyone since America went over to the French and Victoria died in childbirth. As far as Europe’s concerned, we’re just a crackpot island dictatorship with a human rights problem, and the only reason Rome doesn’t turn us away at the border is so that the Empire isn’t seen to be turning it’s back on needy pilgrims. If they thought they could get away with it, they’d fortify Calais and blow anyone who tried to make the crossing out of the water. They don’t care about us, Justine. We’re just an inconvenience. A drain on the welfare state…”

My voice broke, and I was in Justine’s arms, sobbing my heart out. I’d forgotten how much it hurt to cry. As I wept, the weak pale little mother cradled me in her arms as if I was a child.

It took hours for it to stop. Once it had, she asked me the question I’d been hoping for, and dreading.

“Where are they? your family. Did you leave them?” I looked up at her through red-rimmed eyes.

“They’re safe. I think. I left them with people I trust. A village on the Kent-Surrey border. A quiet life. Mary helps out in the post office. The girls go to the village school. And every Sunday, they go to the pretty little village church, and they denounce their faith, and they pray for their lives. To Margaret’s god.” Justine stroked my hair, and her eyes asked the question she couldn’t put into words.

“I thought it would be easy. I’d claim refugee status, then I could petition to have Mary and the kids join me. We’re good, pious Catholics. The Holy Roman Empire protects her children. I thought.”

I let a shuddering breath out. “That was nearly a year ago. I’m knee-deep in paperwork I don’t understand. Every form generates three more. Every meeting takes me back a step. And no-one I speak to, no-one seems to realise that today could be the day that the Renunciation Brigades make it to the Kent-Surrey border, and some evil little fuck with a hard-on for Maggie does a sus search on Mary, and finds the rosary she always keeps in her pocket. The one I begged her to throw away.”

My voice thickened again. “I’ve lost them, even though I know exactly where they are. Thirty-three miles away, as the crow flies. If someone built a bridge or a tunnel, you could drive there in half-an-hour.” Justine winced. She could feel the bitterness in my voice. A tunnel between England and France. What would be the point to that?

Night fell and I slept, fitfully, guiltily in Justine’s arms. I dreamt. I saw black container ships steaming across the Channel, heading for the camps. I couldn’t tell if they were coming to take us back, or if they were finally bringing our loved ones across the sea to us. All I could feel as I looked at them was the same mix of hope and dread that I’d lived with ever since I’d stepped on board a dilapidated fishing boat at Dover eleven months ago. And along with the feeling, the awful knowledge that it would always be there, twisting in my gut. Just as I would always be here at the camp, telling my tales, seducing girl after girl with my frantic little lies, filling in the same forms, waiting, forever, in limbo, watching for black ships that would always be on their way, but would never arrive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 License.<!–

–>

In recognition of National Storytelling Week, I’ve decided to dig some choice nuggets out of the archive for your readery enjoyitude.
First up’s a nasty little piece of work from the mid-90s, written while I was holidaying in the Canaries. Yeah, the hotel was quite a bit like the one I describe here, and I spent a great deal of time on our balcony that week.
I was better behaved than the protagonist of this tale, though.

FROM A HOTEL BEDROOM

We were very lucky with Room 423. Our primary concerns had been for privacy and space, and in that we were more than adequately served. It was one of the largest rooms in the apartment complex on the island, a light, airy space paved in cool, marble tiling. We were close to the hotel amenities, directly facing the lifts to the lobby. If we’d wished, we could have spent the entire holiday without needing to meet another resident.

423 was set off to the left hand side of the complex, and the balcony looked over the bar and pool area, two floors below. It was tucked off-centre, enough that anyone on the balcony simply wasn’t noticed from below. For me, the most important part of the room was that balcony. I do not consider myself a voyeur, but once I realised that I could view the activities in the social hub of the hotel while remaining unobserved, I’m afraid to say that my curiosity quickly overtook any sense of propriety. Soon, I found I was spending all my time there, sat at the cheap white plastic table set provided by the hotel, watching life unfold below me. I bought a notebook and a supply of pens from the hotel supermarket, and began to fill it with my observations.

The entertainment evenings were the most fertile for material. If I moved the table to the far left of the balcony, under the bedroom window, I could easily see the cabaret and a large portion of the audience at the pool bar.

The acts were little more than karaoke, a shiny-faced girl or over-made-up boy fresh from the club circuit in Leeds or Middlesborough belting out standards through the hotel’s underpowered PA systems. They worked so hard, putting so much effort into every crappy Motown cover, piling teeth, eyes and tits into every overwrought moment. They were faced with stony-faced indifference from their audience, blank-faced proles swilling grimly on unfamiliar lagers and cocktails, or wild enthusiasm from a group of pissed pensioners who spent the whole evening hollering for Elvis.

I tried imagining the things going on in their heads. “I got to the second round of X-Factor, and this is the best I could get. And I had to fuck the tour director.” Not that I had to imagine too hard. I could see their faces when they turned away to slot another tune into the playback machine, and let the mask slip for a moment. The rage, the disappointment. The awful realisation that this was it, this was as good as it was going to get. That the nice things Louis Walsh had said about their performance would be the highlight of their professional life.

There was one girl. Julie, a Borough girl. Glossy, Pantene-perfect hair, sparky feline eyes. Her voice was a rich, honeyed instrument, with little of the nasal quality that many of her counterparts effected. She was bold, experimental. She tried out a few R&B covers that went down like a handful of cold sick with the punters. I could see the life being drained from her day by day. She was having trouble with a pair of 12 year old twins from Manchester, undersupervised brats who delighted in yelling at her to get her tits out while she was singing. They were indulged by their parents and the guests in general. They were destroying Julie in increments.

One night, she beckoned them over at the end of the show, and moved them to a quiet corner directly underneath my balcony. There, she introduced them to her boyfriend, Carlos. Carlos stayed in the shadows, and I couldn’t get a decent view of him. But I heard him perfectly clearly, and the Mancunian brats were certainly listening when he told them that any further interruptions to the show would be met with their discovery the following morning face down in the hotel pool.

I wish I could have seen the look in Julie’s eyes then. Her performances took on a fresh relish from that point on. She did her own thing, and became much more entertaining for it. She started every evening with a bouncing cover of “Fish Gotta Swim”, and directed it at the boys. They were not seen at the bar after that.

I soon realised that holidays bring out the worst, cruellest aspects of children. I lost count of the times they were thrown into the pool, often by their parents. For every one that paddled back squealing “Daddy, again!” I saw another struggling back to the edge looking hurt and confused. They were learning lessons about the harsh nature of trust.

They were yet more brutal to each other. Holding each other upside down in a metre and a half of water. Richocheting footballs off each other’s heads. Attempting to choke the lives from a despised sibling. All the while, their doting parents sat by the hotel pool, befuddling themselves with cheap sangria and offering the occasional “Wayne, put your sister down” in the general direction of the killing floor.

I have watched in horrified fascination as one five-year-old held his younger sister under the surface of the kiddie pool, an act of revenge for the heinous crime of making him drop his lolly. Mummy was there, but too engrossed in the latest copy of Take A Break, wired into her iPod, to notice. I still wonder what would have happened if, in a rare pang of public-spiritedness, I hadn’t dropped an empty beer bottle on her to wake her up. Frankly, it was the unfair odds I couldn’t stand.

As the week oozed by, and my notebook filled, I found it harder to leave the balcony at all. My infrequent trips to the hotel bar, in hat and shades, normally lasted no more than half a bottle of San Miguel before I had to stagger back to the room, nauseated, agoraphobic. Everything was too close, too loud. Without the distance and the boundaries of my balcony, it was too much to bear.

Friday, fryday, hot as hell, was new intake day and the pool area was solid with reddening flesh. Sweet Julie was there, basking at perfect ease, glossily brown. On the sunbeds next to her, two new arrivals, giggling girls, cast a jealous look at her flawless beauty before casting off their bikini tops and thrusting their breasts bravely at the merciless sun. They would be tomato red and in agony by the end of the day.

Everywhere, it was the same story. People were paying good money to come and roast themselves under an unfamiliar sky. Safe on my balcony, I found it hard to see the point.

There was a soft sound from behind me. The shush of bare feet on a marble floor. My wife, newly awake from her midafternoon siesta. She despised the sun as much as I. We were not here for that. She moved in behind me, and slid her soft arms around my chest.

“I am starting to feel neglected,” she said in a mocking, accusatory tone. “I can’t believe you’re still out here.” She laid her cheek against my back, and I felt her gentle smile.

“Why don’t you put the gun down and come inside for a while?”

I grinned from behind the telescopic sight. The rifle was an old M-16, the stock silky from decades of use. It had a tendency to jam, and even at full tilt I’d be lucky to get two rounds a second out of it. But I was fond of it, and it was always fun smuggling it through customs. Besides, the slow rate of fire simply meant that I’d have to carefully pick my targets. I thought of sweet Julie, and stifled another smile.

I clicked the safety back on, and turned to face my beautiful wife. I stood, and took her outstretched hand, taking one last look out over the balcony as she led me back into the cool dimness of the room.

“You’re right,” I said. “There’ll be plenty of time for that before we leave.”

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.<!–

–>

I’d like to say a few words/ In defense of our country/
Whose people aren’t bad nor are they mean/
Now the leaders we have/ While they’re the worst that we’ve had/
Are hardly the worst this poor world has seen
Let’s turn history’s pages, shall we?
Take the Caesars for example/
Why within the first few of them/ They had split Gaul into three parts/
Fed the Christians to the lions/ And burned down the City/
And one of ’em/ Appointed his own horse Consul of the Empire/
That’s like vice president or something/
That’s not a very good example, is it?/
But wait, here’s one, the Spanish Inquisition/ They put people in a terrible position/
I don’t even like to think about it/
Well, sometimes I like to think about it/
Just a few words in defense of our country/
Whose time at the top/ Could be coming to an end/
Now we don’t want their love/ And respect at this point is pretty much out of the question/ But in times like these/ We sure could use a friend/
Hitler. Stalin./
Men who need no introduction/
King Leopold of Belgium. That’s right./ Everyone thinks he’s so great/
Well he owned The Congo/ He tore it up too/
He took the diamonds, he took the gold/ He took the silver/
Know what he left them with?/
Malaria/
A president once said/, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”/
Now it seems like we’re supposed to be afraid/
It’s patriotic in fact and color coded/
And what are we supposed to be afraid of?/
Why, of being afraid/ That’s what terror means, doesn’t it?/
That’s what it used to mean/
The end of an empire is messy at best/
And this empire is ending/
Like all the rest/ Like the Spanish Armada adrift on the sea/
We’re adrift in the land of the brave/ And the home of the free/
Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.

from the cats at Word Magazine
who must be feeling very smug about getting Neil Finn to pretty much admit he was reforming Crowded House back in November. That was news that got me and Clare jumping around and cackling, anyhoo.

I watched and enjoyed Darren Aronofsky’s long-delayed The Fountain today. A thoughtful and moving piece of fantastika (Warren Ellis meme, it’ll be big this year, trust me) – it will therefore vanish from the screens of the nation quicker than that same nations love for Jade Goody (ooh, cross-post contextualisation! Didja see what I did there? Didja? Didja?). Catch it while you can, as it deserves your love and attention.
There is a plot point within the story involving the loss, and eventual replacement of a wedding ring. And it got me to thinking. My wedding ring desperately wants to get shot of me. I’ve lost it twice so far, once in a bed of thyme in the garden, once by the bicycle racks at Reading station. And the girl who found it, posted the found note on the wall by the racks and eventually brought it back to me will forever have a place in that warm spot in my heart where I keep all the nice stuff. But anyway. It’s a chore keeping the darn thing on my finger, which seems to shrink slightly in cold weather. (That’s just my finger that shrinks by the way, you bunch of pervs…) I am led to muse thusly: if marriage is supposed to be so permanent, why is the symbol of that union so easy to lose? Wouldn’t it make more sense to make a mark of your enduring love that won’t fly off your hand in the middle of a gesticulatory argument?
Clare’s already made the suggestion, and I am in the market for some new ink this year. Could it be something like this?

Meanwhile, John at Whatever tells a fine story illustrating the dilemma, as well as making me feel better about my klutziness.

and finally…
just realised. This is my hundredth post. Good grief. I think it’s turned into a habit.

Much as I shudder to think of The Most Annoying Show On Telly being mentioned in the Houses of Parliament, ferchrissakes, if the boiling row over Fatty, Sclubby and Cheaty ganging up on the fragrant Shilpa Shetty can leak as far as our august home of democracy, then frankly dammit I can spit in the barrel too. (Boy, there’s a mixed metaphor for ya.)
It’s not about racism. Let’s be realistic. It’s bullying, plain and simple. It’s ganging up on the girl who looks a bit different. In this case, ganging up on the prettiest girl in class just to make up for one’s own shortcomings. And if there’s one thing that annoys me more than Big Bother, it’s bullying. I now have even more reasons to hate the bloody thing. As far as I’m concerned, it’s good for nothing but switching off.
So the news that’s really tipped me into a steaming rage (boiling, steaming, you can tell I’m writing this while I’m cooking, can’t you) is that David Bloody Cameron agrees with me now.
GAAAH.
Can there be no end to this horror? Why does anyone view this nonsensical farrago, this parade of wannabes and hasbeens, as worthy of even a nanosecond of their attention? Will there have to be a murder in the benighted house for things to return to sanity?
Here’s the plan, people. Vote vote vote on Friday. Get Shilpa out of that rat’s nest. Then nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Oh. Sorry. Probably should have mentioned that earlier.

cos, as my readership is no doubt aware, here at th’Ugly Truth we are on the cutting edge, nose to the news, reporting the latest stuff before it even happens. Zeitgeist – we shit it.
So, apparently, Apple have a new phone now. Great. Just what I need. Of course, looking on the bright side, I’m locked into an 18-month contract which means I won’t be able to look at getting a phone until Christmas this year anyway which MEANS …
birfday and Xmas are Apple-based again this year. It’s lucky I’m almost masochistically patient.
And as long as it syncs phone numbers more successfully than the Robfone, which happily ate all mine on Sunday, leaving me needing to resync everything number by number and have I mentioned how much I hate Motorola lately. Oh, by the way…

Sorry. Probably should have mentioned that earlier.

In related news: who knew Steve Jobs was a Trekkie?

Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing has just posted a chunk of short stories from his new collection Overclocked through a Creative Commons licence. There’s some good writing and some good reading in there. Check it out.

Yet more horrorful goodness. Snatching Time is a smart, funny and scary piece of work from the finest minds working in horror today … oh, okay, the Sick Puppies. Lauded at Frightfest last year, this little jolter is just the opening salvo in our assault in 2007. Prepare yerself, world…

Fortean freakiness in NYC