In April 2015 I started writing ‘Pampas’, a series of short text and image pieces that I posted more or less daily on Facebook. After a while I decided to put all the posts on Strength Weekly where they would scroll seamlessly up and down in elegant surroundings. The posts should be regarded as a series rather than a collection of one-offs. Given the fading in and out of narrative characteristics, I understand that some may find the seriality of Pampas debatable.

The first Pampas entry was written to thank Facebook friends who had wished me a Happy Birthday. A couple of days later I decided to keep it running and see what might pop up.

04/04/15 In the course of the day I pampered myself with both soft and hard things. I sorted through light fabrics, tissues, creams and the damp noses of adorable animals. Then I took hold of massive bars and bolts, moving them roughly through hedges whilst swearing. I shouted hoarsely. I barged along shopping streets. I demonstrated qualities in such a way as to suggest robust focus tempered by great suitability for teams.

06/04/15 Now there are great sales. I ran again through the streets communicating my ideas. “In films all the actors should be stars! Not just the stars should be them! The lesser should be more too I cried out!” I had a cup of tea at the pavement – what a cuppa! I wanted to knit. To be in a railway carriage. Going past the White Horse with a sheep. I could see that a pedometer would be informative. It was, after all, a long street.

07/04/15 I ran so fast, gesticulating, that soon I had burst, heedless, from the end of Oxford Street and, via Marble Arch, was quickly in the countryside. I looked about the moors around. Now I could collect some animals! Standing still by trees in copses I jumped out unexpectedly and soon had armsful. I had tiny struggling birds, warm stoats and martens writhing, a vixen, a pig in shit, butterflies about my hair, at my feet in the grass a snake. And many others of all types peculiar to the area.

08/04/15 I had Ron Contray, Mister Double You, Miss Emily Posthene, Miss Julia Margaret Cameron, Mister Kevin Waller, Prince John of Andorra, The Family Jack and Linda, The Couple Tina and Lofty, All of the Bensons, Evelyn de Mure, Cowslip, Fatty, Strange Dick, Dash, Torrance the Saturnine, Benjy, Paulette, Esprit, Monty Pulciano, Peter the Erratic, Sissy Boyce, Ted Brothers as well as the Ted Brothers, Flannery Walker, Agravain, Jack the Lady

11/04/15 Tiring of the show I took my leave of those who had gathered. One man said “I would like to control Nature.” I said “It’s a slippery slope.” I made off in the direction of Thetford, anxious to expose the animals to an air base. Jets cracked above and Gauvain the lizard went still like wood. Shimmer rose. Flannery Walker said “I’m more of a city type.” How was I supposed to feed all these? And their la de da sensibilities. The F-15C Strike Eagle is hardly the stuff of buttercusp and davies is it?

12/04/15 “Every generation,” the airman declared “must pass down its shapes so that the young may rock out, bending these gestures to their own idiom.” “Shit,” I exclaimed, “I mean, I so agree.” “Look at the Egyptians – Hatshepsut, daughter of Thutmose – wild figurations!” So saying he turned about and within a moment was a wisp. I placed Geraint on my shoulder that he might communicate readily. Yet my charges were dispirited. Do animals dance? I don’t think so. Then again, the grebe…

14/04/15 I was distracted from this melancholic inwardness by the pushing to the front of Mister Double You, the pig in shit. Even animals are sensitive to caste and the excrementally compromised swine was given the widest of available berths. But what was Mister Double You doing? He seemed to be worrying something in his mouth. “What’s that in your mouth, Porky?” I said familiarly. He dropped it at my feet. It was a small, injured clown. “Long way from home, funny man,” I remarked, unpleasantly.

14/04/15 “Call me Bonkers,” said the entertainer. He noticed the pangolin Geraint on my shoulder. “Fuck’s that on your shoulder?” he said coldly, “Looks like it came out of the cheese.” I replied “Is that your humour talking?” He replied to me “A lot of people are drawn to it.” I picked him up, put him in my mouth, worried him briefly then bit him into various pieces. I swallowed his painted head then mindfully distributed the rest among the swarm. I won’t say he tasted funny. Things were looking up.

The clown rush is upon me. I feel it in its earliest stages. Despite the wretched demeanour of the now digested funny fellow, whose blown chunks litter the soil around my shoes, it is not his acerbic tone that lingers. Rather it is the essence of his calling, the parfum of his métier, that now floods my cerebral veins and begins to humorise the cackle of voices that we are pleased to call thought. What presently clutters my consciousness are the most banal of utterances. I don’t mind if I do. Rather you than me. If I say so myself. Better in than out. You have to be mad. You know you like it. I won’t say no. If my arse was like your face. I could get used to this. A man goes into a box.

17/04/15 I had seen dogs dreaming by fires near water on beaches at night their feet pedalling their jaws working. Yelping to themselves perhaps they see rabbits said someone. The supine swarm while not asleep was flushed with flesh and small animal jokes were animating their limbs and fins and wings. Such was my affinity with the intoxicated herd that I was able to decode their humour and here is how I present it now. With pigs they suddenly straighten the tail then let it recoil. With butterflies they unfold their wings, spread them to the sides and pretend to be drawn to wardrobes thereby imitating cloth-eating moths whom they legendarily despise. These things the various creatures find diverting but of course they do not laugh. They cannot.

18/04/15 At the height of the rush so much the ostriches of the ineffable I’m losing the platform it’s higlady piglady the fur is flying here come the jest What it is is the herds are sherding the sheds are shed. What it is is that I’m like blending with the flock they’re incoming and I’m going out and yes I know the difference between snot and broccoli I know it’s epping barking I know what Della What? When did that happen? Johnny Depp? You’re kidding. Are you dicking me? Are you my uncle? He took what?

18/04/15 Hi. My name is Johnny Depp. Yes, I followed David out of Oxford Street and saw him get animals then do some clown in a bunch with the animals he got. I saw how stuff got out of hand. Way out of. I saw the bear and I figured they’re not going to miss it. I always wanted one anyway and I figured for David they’re just like toys or like a herd of bagatelle.

19/04/15 Yes, I am Johnny Depp. I know you will think that I’m not, that it’s hard to believe. But there we are. I have put the bear, it’s small, on my shoulder so that it can tell my moods and I its. From my low hill that I found in this flat place there are all manner of divers creatures just, like, tripping. The worst is their self appointed leader or herdsman David who, frankly, is well out of it. Later this afternoon I am meeting my wife Angelina and we will go to Carluccio’s for a tricolore salad. We expect to bump into Ryan Gosling – a terrific fellow – and one of your English actresses the young Carey Mulligan, born in Westminster. What a talent there!

20/04/15 The place was packed but it had the typical bustle. The gang studied the menus. The waiter was Paolo. He said “Today we have the sharing platter with caprese bites.” Johnny looked up “Do you have anything Hungarian? I’d like Hungarian today.” “He’s a pretty Hungary guy,” quipped Ryan. Angelina leaned mesmerically in. “Look, Johnny, they have polpette. That’s meatballs isn’t it? Kind of Hungarian.” Johnny pursed his lips. “The Magyar husgomboc comes on a platter with buttered noodles tossed in poppy seeds. It’s a quite different thing.” Paolo brightened, “We have the platter…”

21/04/15 I came through the detritus of old joke ends broken catch-phrases to see you nice laid out as if on a poisoned sea bed with immortal plastics and looked out around about me and there were the sheep lowing and the cattle barking and the pigs in the trees and I put them into their proper places patting them and saying yes that was surely far out but now is the time to walk wiser forth and emboldened. And I realized that for some of them they were qualities in the mind and for others they were there, near Thetford where we were, in the flat places that spread you utterly butterly. Now we would sort the sheep of mutton from the goats of frail insubstance, we would walk embrightened by the clown whose life we had taken into ourselves and we would find and get back Edith Clever the koala bear taken by feckless Johnny Depp the film star.

22/04/15 I had to work out which of the multitude of creatures stood for something and which were innocent. I was familiar with Leach’s work on animals and swear words wherein he asserts that we tend to frame insults in terms of animals which we are close to in our everyday lives, for example: bitch, dog, rat, pig, cow, sheep, fox. Leach also suggested that the edibility of animals is an issue – we are uneasy about creatures that taste nice yet could be pets.

22/04/15 These concerns, I thought, would help me in the task of eliminating those who were not suited to the business of tracking down Johnny Depp. Yes, I had myself killed and eaten a clown but there was no way I would have considered the fucker a pet – he was simply unlikeable. No, it was clear the farm animals would have to go. And the dogs and the cats. Geraint could stay. Who ever called anybody a fucking pangolin? I rest my case.

23/04/15 Evelyn de Mure I said to the white-tailed golden horse You will always be a pal of mine. Lordy I said to the cock You crow but you are not a crow – think about it. I embraced the sheep Cheddar Plate murmuring History is not made by individuals. Keep it in your pants Flopsy I jovialised at the buck The Couple Tina and Lofty. With heavy heart I worked the line as the kittiwakes wheeled and their mournful cries scraped the slate sky. I kissed a cow, stroked a playful piglet under the gaze of its spattered mother. They were my almanac, my zodiac.

25/04/15 Now I had about me a lean team stripped of sentiment and symbol. I could test the deedscape unencumbered. My invective would stream from the black stream without the barnyard. I had about me Gauvain the reptile (“Who’s a halted boy then?”); Agravain the marten recently run from Runton; the carp Perlesvaus, cold, disdaining flies; Aquitaine now larval, soon to be pupal then Blooey!!; Sissy Boyce and Miss Emily Posthene, the lovebirds dancing slowly with Launcelot – gaunt, gauche, cackhanded; Strange Dick the edible dormouse; and caterers. As a bunch we were bostin, swank. Don’t steal from us.

26/04/15 From her perch on Johnny Depp’s shoulder Edith Clever (rhymes with favour) was beginning to feel quite the show business columnist with seeing charmed lives everyday and eating from the table of piled eucalyptus of various strains gathered for her by Leaves of 24th Street, Suppliers of Arcane Provender to Whomever Would, Like, Search Such Provision. But last night a group of explorers and the German actress Edith Clever (Die Marquise von O. (1990); Ein traum, was sonst? (1994)), now 74, came round for supper and now Johnny is washing up.

26/04/15 Neither the koala, Johnny, Angelina nor Edith Clever (born in Wuppertal) knew the koala’s name was Edith Clever because Johnny stole the bear and didn’t think to ask its name before so doing (don’t get me started!). The bear watched from the shoulder as Johnny squeezed in the Ecover (or equivalent) and set about the plates. Angelina wanted to dry there and then with a cotton cloth but Johnny said “Just let’em drip” so Angelina arranged them in the draining board. Then Johnny set about the knives and forks, holding half his lower lip between his teeth.

27/04/15 As Johnny was fretting over how do you get the last vestiges of potato out of the masher the phone rang and Johnny said to Edith Clever the bear “Can you get that?” Unbelievable or what? I mean, he actually thought that a bear could answer the phone for him! What is it like the world in which these people live? That they thought that an animal – one without opposable thumbs – could do such dexterity!

27/04/15 I went on a spring holiday to Stockholm once, round the archipelago, very nice, not cold and they had a deal where if you go without opposable thumbs there’s a 30% discount so I took it. Let me say: it was shit. You can barely eat! You have to crowd the food with your palms and let’s not even go where when you drop something you have to clap at it and kind of hope to scoop it up. Ridiculous. I got some lip plumper cream at the Åhléns City beauty centre in Klarabergsgatan, it makes your lips bigger and I smeared it on and after a couple of days I had some thumbs again. You know, I don’t want to dwell on it but Johnny Depp does have his own thumbs!

The Pickup Unplucked

28/04/15 I bunched the animals by the gate and made my way down the path and passed the trees and some heifers (not my ones I had got rid of them in a purge just ones like you would expect to see) and there was a dark red house that I hadn’t expected there were no window frames and inside a woman with her hair down and her arm stuck straight up in the air. She was still but across the dark room was a man ironing with his back not ironing with his back but with his back to me. I started to speak and he said without turning “I’m ironing willy nilly.”

28/04/15 I said “Good day. Can I ask you about the pickup please?” “You’re welcome he said evenly.” “Okay,” I commenced in a businesslike way, “How much do you want for it?” He folded a bib and reached for a creased lace tucker. He said “Is it for sale?” I said “Oh. That depends. Is it?” He said “What do you want it for?” I said “I’m taking some animals around and it’s a slow business on foot.” He said “I certainly understand that. Are they a variety or of a type?” I said confidently “Very much a variety. I dispensed with types.” He nodded, “I hear what you’re saying. Fifty pounds.” “I accept that I said.” As an afterthought I said “I assume she’s a runner.” He nodded, “Fleet.”

29/04/15 Which would have been fine. The pickup when I turned it over there was nothing. I opened the bonnet and there was no battery. I held Geraint with his exceptional sense of smell over the petrol hole. He was indifferent. I kicked the tyres. You guessed it. Ames and Cora, her arm down for a change, watched from the window. “I think we may not be gone some time,” I declared.

29/04/15 There was a bucket which I rinsed and filled at the old pump for the carp Perlesvaus which I put in and Gauvain immediately skittered to it and took up his whole immobile thing near it which encouraged the whole of the rest including birds not to mention Aquitaine now a marvelous marsh fritillary with the colouring to find their way into the open rear cargo enclosure. I took the pangolin Geraint from my shoulder and clipped him under the wiper blade that he might flick out his adhesive tongue for flies otherwise impacting the windscreen.

                                The flies adherent

Perlesvaus Immersed

The Fridge Vert

30/04/15 Cora, where Ames would say things, said single words that were not connected to the topics under consideration at a given moment. I said “Is there ham in your coldbox by any chance?” and she looked at me for a long time, with her arm in the air then said “Pierrette.” On one occasion Ames and I almost had a conversation about van Gogh. I said “What about van Gogh?” and Ames said “From what I can put together he is unbalanced.” I thought to myself “Come on, Ames, your wife’s got her fucking arm in the air!”

01/05/15 Aquitaine was weakening after her piercing by the parasitoid wasp Gaston. It was in the nature of the latter but a bummer nevertheless. Such beauty. In the second week I found a broken fax machine under the driver seat. Ames said “It is a kind of television.” Then he said “You should see the barn.” My legs were frail and the barn was dark. Using my hands I found a package wrapped in oilcloth secured by cord. On removing these I found a deep blue reflective polycarbon shell which, when pressed like this (I am demonstrating) fell into the halfshell exposing a film of seamless nanomesh bound tight around a pebblesmooth glassite container.

03/05/15 I was out of there. I herded the creatures onto the A11 and stuck my thumb out. Our first driver had a savagely capacious 4×4. I said “I’m David.” He replied “Richard. Richard Ostend.” It turned out that he ran an agency which introduced film stars to people with distinctive characteristics so that they, the film stars, might spend time with them, these people, learning to replicate their qualities. “That’s where the big money is,” Ostend asserted.

This gives a good idea of the space we had in the back

04/05/15 I asked Richard what if, in addition, the people studied the film stars and attempted to assimilate their qualities. “Collateral damage,” he said. We were passing through Mildenhall. Insofar as he might without taking his eyes off the road Richard turned to look at me. “David,” he asked, “You’re actually Johnny Depp, aren’t you?” I swallowed. The jig was up. I barely knew the guy but I felt I could tell him. “I guess I am,” I replied. “How is Scarlett?” enquired Richard. “She’s voicing the Jungle Book right now.” “You miss her, yeah?” I nodded. “I really do.”

                Richard’s car can be seen here

11/05/15 Richard Ostend was approaching the junction of the A11 with the A14 outside Newmarket. “What I don’t understand, Johnny,” he ventured, “is at what point the switch was effected.” I said “Maybe I can help you there. It was back in Oxford Road…” “Street?” intervened Richard. “Yeah,” I confirmed. “All the shops. I came out of M&H…” “H&M,” Richard corrected. “Yeah. I saw this guy running. He had a cup of tea. There was something about him.” Richard interrupted me. “Excuse me interrupting, Johnny. But the way you’re talking! It’s just like one of your films. Where the character sets the scene. And the voice…it’s very good.” “Well, you’re very kind,” I conceded. “No,” he said “I love it.”

18/05/15 Michael, with his genial way, eased the froideur. He said “I have recently celebrated my birthday.” A murmur ran around. Noomi said “How old are you?” People said things like “Whoa!” but jovially. Michael went “I’m 38. What about you?” Noomi goes, to the point as you might expect, “35.” “Okay!” says Ryan. “Yeah Ryan?” Carey responds to him. Ryan shrugs like it’s nothing “34. Carey, you’re 12, right?” This gets a round of laughter. “Old joke, Ryan,” Carey says, “I’m actually 29. And fuck off, by the way.” Oh boy. It’s coming my way. And I don’t have a clue. When was Gilbert Grape? 80s? 90s? Scarlett is grinning at me. I’m fucked. Am I older than Michael? Got to be. Jennifer comes in “He-e-e-ere’s Johnny!” Scarlett’s looking quizzical. I’m fucked.

19/05/15 “Johnny,” said Richard as he expertly went along the road. “I was recently trying to move a filing cabinet. It slipped from my grasp and crushed my toe. The nail detached but is now regrowing. As I was putting my socks on this morning in Snetterton I glanced at the toe and…” Richard hesitated. “I feel embarrassed to say this.” “Go right ahead,” I urged. Richard said “Do you know Sheridan Smith? The actress?” I shook my head, “Is she good?” “Oh certainly,” he affirmed, “but when I glanced at my toe I thought of Sheridan Smith.” I asked “She looks like a toe?” “God no. Lovely looking woman. But I thought of her.” I nodded slowly. “I know people who would envy this, Richard.” He turned “Really? Is it good?” I replied “It’s terrific.”

20/05/15 Richard Ostend, emotionally fatigued after his outburst on the A14 took the vagabond film star Johnny Depp for a coffee in Bury St Edmunds, a market town in England’s Suffolk area. Richard chose a restaurant chain in Auction Street. As Johnny Depp examined the laminated menu he found himself suffused with a troublesome sensation of recognition. His eyes misted over as a mysterious but profound sadness overtook him.

21/04/15 So from above looking down people are respectfully encircling Johnny’s table in the chain restaurant as he sits his wrists flat to the surface tears coursing down his face. “Was it Sheridan?” Richard asks softly. Johnny shakes his head. Two truck drivers step forward not too close “We so like what you do,” they whisper. Johnny nods distractedly. A girl asks her mother “Who is that Mum?” She bends to the girl’s ear “That’s Johnny Depp darling from Nights of the Black Caribbean.” The girl pushes her way through the crowd now some thirty strong watching. Gently she puts her hand on top of Johnny’s hand. “I’m sorry you’re sad.” As one a family towards the back bite their lips and breathe in then out. The father looks up. “What is that music?” The air was filled with such magnificent music.

22/04/15 The restaurant manager suggested that the large crowd and Johnny go to the cricket pitch where Johnny could continue crying and people could watch. He set up an armchair and led Johnny to it. The people continued to be respectful, maintaining the social space measure common in the west, that is to say between 4 and 8 feet (for newly formed groups). Richard and the manager invited the people to write their questions on file cards which they distributed. Each card bore the legend ‘Johnny is Present’. Among those in attendance were visitors to Bury from the outlying villages of Little Saxham, Fornham St Genevieve and Cattishall.

25/05/15 A silence held the place. The restaurant manager, Tom Spicer, walked over and put a plastic bucket of chocolates and toffees near Johnny’s chair, for anyone really. Some of the people were very quietly singing those lines from ‘Old MacDonald had a Farm’ – the title and the ee-aye ee-aye o bit – over and over. At the edge of the hedge at the side of the pitch a fox slipped the thicket and looked across. A baby cried once, possibly twice and way in the sky swooped a glider then soared to the sun. And now at the front Roy looked at Johnny quite hard to see clearly but that was the glare in our eyes.

26/05/15 Certainly Roy attracted lore. It was not that he was not the winds that passed through him. He is quoted, in fact, as saying “One thing I am fucking not is the wind that passes through me.” He hated that shit. No. He had his own impulses. Very much so. Nor was it that he didn’t get the codes. He said “I have them in my wardrobe. But it’s not all suits, yes?” There were times, he would say, when he would just step away. “Very few people know what I mean when I say that. Let me try to explain. We all love transparency, don’t we? We fucking love it, yes? Well, shall we just say, I’m walking through walls, all the time. No wardrobe. You should feel the wind out there, chummy.”

28/05/15 David, masquerading as his double, Johnny Depp, had so far evaded detection by Scarlett, his consort or, to be fair, Johnny’s consort and as a result found himself in social situations with such film stars as Bradley, Carey, Jake, Jennifer, Michael, Noomi and Ryan in alphabetical order in Ryan’s place for example. Light-hearted banter featuring the ‘outing’ of people’s ages had begun and it looked strongly like David was fucked because although he had Googled everyone on Scarlett’s laptop he had omitted to look up his own age or, to be precise, Johnny’s. What a div! He was loath to be seen through by Scarlett, he enjoyed how she would pinch his hand lightly whilst talking to him but without seeming to notice that that was what she was doing. And little things like that.

29/05/15 “I’m 41,” I declared. Maybe that would do it. I looked over at Jennifer as if, you know, “Yeah?” She raised her eyebrows and turned to Scarlett suggesting with her face “Hmmm?” I chucked the bear Edith Clever, (which rhymes with favour) ever attendant, under the chin meaning to mean moving on without a care. Michael bent down his head and looked up under his brow to be like a judge. He clasped his hands together which was a good detail. “Had you figured for a 60s kid,” he said, nodding three times. I turned from the bear like I had been woken up from something. “This guy,” goes Scarlett, “this guy is 52 next Wednesday!” She presses my knuckles against her mouth. “Carey, your grandpa is here!” shouts Ryan.

Walking away from Ryan’s along a shopping street Scarlett and I did this thing where we put all the men on one side of the street and all the women on the other side and they could walk freely along in either direction. I can’t remember how it started. Obviously people knew who Scarlett was and when she went up to women – in a completely friendly way that being generally what she’s like – she’d say “Hi, would you like to cross the street with me?” and they would. She would talk to them mostly about the state of the world – how thoroughly fucked it was – and then she’d cross back again. Obviously people knew who I was – in the sense that they invested in my close physical resemblance to film star Johnny Depp – but I did not necessarily have access to his charisma.

But I was familiar with the hypno-therapeutic work of Milton Erickson (1901-1980) who maintained that everyday consciousness was a trance state that could be deepened with low-key hypnotic interventions. Erickson would chat casually with his patients, using phrases such as ‘taking it easy’, ‘going along with’ or ‘letting the matter drop’. These would impact on the unconscious of the patient, facilitating the changes that were being sought. I stepped into the crowd, which was, thanks to Scarlett’s diligence and charm, already largely male.

03/06/15 Scarlett’s side was dense with women but I had yet to extract a single man. Clearly there was something not quite right about my use of Erickson’s subtle and unobtrusive techniques. As I walked past Sports Direct I began going over his phrases in my mind. I must feel comfortable with them. I should let go of my frustration. This should not be difficult. It’s what I want. It would be a good feeling. To do this well would bring good feelings. It’s full of promise. It would be comfortable. I can let things go. I can fall away from this. My shoes are down there. The street is down there. I’m up here now. I

04/06/15 Roy strode through the murmuration swirling about his head they did not dive or joust just clouded around his head and as he steadily strode he searched his pocket and to a gasp and breath from those to hand as he drew upon the distraught loco Johnny he drew from the trousers a glinting thing and gripped it grimly a can a can of Red Bull an energy drink he slipped off Johnny’s moccasins and from the other pocket pulled a struggling hare he snapped it sharply and wetted it from the can and bent and with it bathed the feet of Johnny gently.

05/06/15 Roy the known psychopath brushed Johnny’s calves with the damp hare fur and the caffeine an accepted stimulant and the taurine from the bull sign in the zodiac above made their mark. The active liquid moved through the minute holes in Johnny’s skin and sank into his central nervous system causing alertness. His shuddering sobs soon subsided and his thoughts of Scarlett such sweet sorrow so hurtful to his heart as his eyes swam into focus on the bucket of toffees beside him. He rustled among them and extended one to Roy. Roy said “We purchase roots from the farmed earth but who among us can describe their tops?” From those to hand applause arose

09/06/15 And so it was decided. Johnny, diverted from his melancholy by Roy’s gritty if elusive philosophy of life also, surprisingly, Richard Ostend, who saw in Roy the father he never had, resolved to invite the deranged but, it must be said, currently manageable homeless yet well groomed man to travel with them. A number of those to hand now stepped forward to grasp Roy and demonstrate their gratitude. Some gave small but thoughtful gifts – a number of ham sandwiches, a map, 100 millilitres of Jo Malone cologne (which Roy, to the startlement of the donor, and with some difficulty, opened then drank, exclaiming “Pokey! Not sure about the bouquet however!”), a mouth organ.

11/06/15 The presence of Roy in the 4×4 was invigorating. As he had been on the green so was he in the cruiser – resolute before a sickly wind that swept up all that was mould, gewgaw and disarray, reeking with the sweat of mangoes, the dung of lizards and the bright baubles of comfort. Roy, Johnny, Richard at the wheel, passed through this churn of light and clatter and it streamed around Roy’s head and in his wake was all this stuff made fresh, clear, edged, you could tell the sheep from the goats. There was a time and place for everything.

13/06/15 “Roy,” Johnny asked, “Is this like a Freudian thing? The depth thing?” As the 4×4 sped south on the A134 through Bradfield Combust, Roy turned “When one passes the night with rough and ragged moss, with many unhappy birds on bare branches that pipe piteously there for pain of the cold, one is not so au courant with the world of the paperback. But in the high streets below those dank woods I have heard snippets. Subtract the implicit optimism, the disdain for those already equipped with clarity and the preoccupation with making whole the hole and we might have a deal.” He said. Richard said “Where would you like to go?” Roy said “I want to go to London to launch my own fashion range.”

17/06/15 I could hear everything but it had become a soft roar with just the odd low or high note. The shops were more or less there too but slightly dark and not sharp enough. I seemed to be moving along without too much trouble though, despite the fact that my feet were not actually touching the ground. Or maybe the ground was very soft like eiderdowns. None of this was especially unsettling but I was aware that I had something important to do. Which was to find Keira. She was on the other side when I last saw her. So maybe I should cross over. I wouldn’t want to lose her. She was wearing a red dress, which would help.

The darkness didn’t help, I have to admit. Around me the others appeared to be getting along well enough so I continued to thread my way down the women’s side, looking ceaselessly about me. It occurred to me that if Keira too was struggling with the low light, she might have gone into a brightly lit cafeteria. I made my way past the perfume counters with their smart young sales assistants and was soon at the very top of the building. Keira was seated with a macchiato, her coat tossed on the banquette beside her. She leaned forward and squeezed my hand. “I knew you’d come,” she smiled.

20/06/15 “Where did you get to?” she said. “Oh, it was just kind of dark,” I said. “Where?” “In the street,” I said. She glanced towards one of the big windows overlooking the street then shook her head and grinned at me, “What?” “It slowed me down,” I said. Then I said “Isn’t it quiet in here?” Keira said “You like quiet, don’t you?” “Yes, I do. I do like quiet,” I said then I stopped talking. I just didn’t want to talk anymore. “What are you thinking?” Keira asked me. “I’m being quiet,” I said, “In my mind as well as out here. Both.” “That’s because you’re deep, Johnny.” “Yes, I am deep. I like to be deep,” I replied. She giggled again.

22/06/15 “You’re looking sort of cloudy,” she said cheerfully. “It’s like I’m in a corridor,” I replied. “You should walk to the end of it and see what’s there,” she suggested. I was familiar with the work of the anthropologist Kilton Stewart (1902 -1965) who, in a paper on the dream life of the Senoi of the central mainland of Malaysia, described a psychological technique practised in that group wherein if a child had a dream of falling and woke up to avoid hitting the ground he would be encouraged by the elders to fall all the way next time, in order to see what he might discover there. Keira clearly had something of the same wisdom; I got up and started to make my way across the cafeteria.

26/06/15 Oh dear, Keira thought. What is it with him? As Johnny shuffled towards the window he was raising his hands in the air and glancing shiftily hither and thither. Are we supposed to take this seriously? she wondered. The cafeteria was still empty. She jumped to her feet, sprinted the length of the room then, drawing on skills she hadn’t used since school, slammed her shoulder into Johnny at waist height, bringing him down in an instant. She tickled him mercilessly, shrieking as they rolled over and over. “He’s after my bike!” he yelled. “Why are you speaking in an English accent?” she panted. “In fact,” Johnny gasped “It was actually a trike!”

28/06/15 We made our way into the full sunlight of Kensington High Street a part of London. “So what’s he like?” she asked me. “Well,” I mused “He’s kind of quiet. Yeah.” “What class?” she asked. “Just a middle class guy.” Then I had a better one, “A salesman.” Keira said “So that’s quite interesting. What accent would that be? More lower middle? Where’s it set?” Blimey. “I’m just looking it over. They don’t even know I’m reading it.” “Still,” she said “Try something and I’ll give you my valuable opinion. Give me your David.”

01/07/15 DOUBLE SUMMER BULLETIN Part 1
The sudden requirement to deliver a professional impersonation of David via my ongoing enactment of Johnny which was itself, of course, a mere charade, teetered on the outer limits of practicality. The possibility of offering a version of David that was simply a full reversion to actual David might seem an obvious solution but were I simply to revert in this manner I would run the risk of becoming alarmingly and suspiciously credible to Keira in a way that would compromise my dalliance with her.

01/07/15 DOUBLE SUMMER BULLETIN Part 2 Keira would expect the legendarily versatile Johnny to construct a more than passable characterisation but it would not be based upon David because Johnny’s experience of David was fleeting at best. The challenge, then, was to present David as Johnny might have conceived him, based on Johnny’s perfunctory reading of a (non-existent) screenplay. Using David as a source of authentic material was beside the point. But given my limited skills it would be odd if I were not to draw upon my lifetime as this person. You could argue that Keira would be satisfied with anything that was believable but while Johnny had the technical wherewithal to compose such a persona, I didn’t.

03/07/15 Yeah, Roy just ate the koala bear Edith Clever. Johnny’s bear. Just fucking ate her. While Johnny was dozing. Richard goes “Roy, don’t you think…” Roy puts his hand on Richard’s knee. “Richard, please. You’re a good man, you have various qualities. But I’ve heard this shit. I heard it way back ago.” Richard, still on it, goes “What’s Johnny going to say when…” “Listen,” goes Roy, “You know when you’re in Borneo or some fucking place and a skinny ill looking European steps out of the dark no shirt with shorts held up with string no shoes. He doesn’t tell you shit. He has a bowl of rice then fucks off back into the dark. Are you going to think about it? Why would you think about it? What are you going to learn? Be empty Richard. It makes time fly.”

05/07/15 Johnny wakes up and is like “Roy, you’ve got hair all down your face and shirt. What is that?” Roy says “You can’t digest them. You might want to but you can’t.” “Where’s Edith?” Johnny enquires. “I don’t see her.” “She’s not here,” Richard sums up. “Roy ate her.” Johnny electrified leans right forward into between Richard and Roy. “You’re dicking me!” he declares. “What did she taste like?” This really pisses Roy off. “What do you mean like? Why should she taste like anything? Was she like duck with notes of carp? Was she teasingly reminiscent of young horse marinaded in shrike fat? Fuck like! Like is for losers, John! Like is for systems! There are no systems!” Johnny looking tired says “Yeah. I get it. You ate my fucking bear, Roy.”

07/07/15 Roy said to park the car by this cornfield near Alpheton in the Suffolk area so Richard did and they all got out, Johnny sulking because of his eaten bear but Roy and Richard walking through the cropside cornflowers, corncockle, corn chamomile whatever. Suddenly whoosh! and a whir and outflew two quail at speed and Richard just breaks into a sprint and he’s making these grunts like Maria Shaparova and he closes on a quail and leaps up and catches it in his mouth and crunch it’s dead. Roy says “Here, Richard, here!” and Richard runs over and drops the quail at Roy’s feet. Even Johnny the sulk is moved to say “Cool, Richard!” then Roy says “We all know about poultry but what about machine parts?” and starts walking back to the 4×4.

09/07/15 Basically Roy was anxious to demonstrate to his companions that their palettes and, by extension, their entire sensoria and thus the dimensions of their being in the world were needlessly restricted and urgently required exposure to the transforming sensations that lay beyond the savouring of humdrum nutrients. He lowered his head deep into the engine cavity and ran his tongue lingeringly over an oily and odorous section of engine casing. Even after years of extreme licking he was still subject to intense and irresistible shudders, involuntary shrill vocalisations and alarming rotary nystagmus featuring rapid circular movements of the eyeballs in their sockets. Thus enwrapped he motioned to Johnny. The intention was clear.

10/07/15 Rapt, Roy, reeling, raised his ecstatic head to Johnny Depp of ‘Pirate Plenitude’ [12]. “John. Johnny,” he croaked, “Dip your stick, feller.” Johnny licked his lips, more nerves than relish, grasped the rim of the well and found a screw on the side of a knot of pipes and pumps. Roy nodded his approval. “Take it out.” Johnny popped the slick stub in his uncertain gob. The magnesium really did it. Intensely bitter, causing a consternation of the salivary glands which caused his back teeth to screech and grind the fierce chemical ricocheted through nerve pathways neglected since the days when people used to tongue their swords clean of blood and guts. Johnny didn’t see it like that, of course, he just said “Will I die?” and Roy said “It’s an upgrade.”

15/07/15 Rolls Eyes looks up at sky. Clouds fly by. Rolls Eyes shakes like tree. “Christopher,” speaks Barks Like Dog, “Can you understand what I say?” “No,” Christopher just says to him “No. Can’t understand what you say, Barks Like Dog.” So Carries Soil in Mouth speaks but spills earth on earth. Rolls Eyes speaks to Carries Soil in Mouth “No John do not speak, do not spill earth.” Carries Soil in Mouth opens his mouth. It’s full of soil. You can see roots and creatures. “All things in his mouth,” says Rolls Eyes, “He is world child now.” “Aah!” cries Barks Like Dog, “Aah! He has eaten the world now he is Great Father as well as world child.” Christopher drives now. Three brave men sit with him. Under great sky. Going along.

16/07/15 And so Christopher, a good and kindly man, the rescuer of vehicles, took with him withal Roy the wild of gaze, Richard open of heart and John the bringer of great renewal and they came to J & L Motors and Leonard, the L of the concern, stated his regretful view that he had very few of the requisite parts and so must order them from Ipswich wherefrom they would arrive in at most three days and Roy, who saw the several stacked sacks of insecticide beside the coal and kindling said that they would make camp as night was nigh then good Christopher said my work for you is done and he vanished as in a puff.

18/07/15 As they lay in the lee of the lumber the dark had closed upon them yet there was little stillness for the nightsoil undulated as it streamed from John’s mouth and the waxy grubs the pale-pulsed eggs the aphids and the chittering ticks seethed over his chest. Surrendering a known and measured metabolism for something quite unearthly he shivered and as he did caused Roy, swathed in organophosphate fumes that mouldered through his motor centres, to swerve awake catch sight of John and mutter “My god, it’s full of stars!”

20/07/15 Johnny had barfed the badness of an obsolete value system onto his chest whence these contents had scampered off to get under stones where they felt more at home. As dawn broke Richard’s head stopped banging off and all that he saw was bathed in acetylene light, too bright for the eyes he used to have but now he could gaze unblinking into the sun for as long as he felt like it if he felt like it, no worries. Roy suddenly snapped his fingers and exclaimed “Brunt!” Then he added “By Roy.” After which he said “Ozonic.” “O what?” Johnny enquires. Roy explains “After the storm: the air.” Then he added “It’s all chemical.” Then, to himself, again “Brunt. By Roy.”

21/07/15 On the third morning packages came from Ipswich and their contents were entered into the car. Roy, who had no driving experience, picked up the basics and they headed off at a hundred miles per hour. Going along, Roy laid out his sense of the situation as it pertained. “Through a process of radical metabolic realignment we have thrown off structures of constraint that have confounded our species for millennia. In short, we have erased the unconscious. Using assaultive oral applications of hand-picked toxins we have dismantled neurochemical matrices that constituted what, with some understatement, we may refer to as a filter system. No longer will our foundational energies be obliged to communicate by obscure if at times poetic means. It is the end of art. It is the end of depth.”

The idea was that once in London Roy would seek venture capital for the launch of Brunt by Roy, a fragrance for Men & Women Who Are Prevalent. The blend comprises notes of musk, civet and ambergris which, initially at least, veil the unconventional elements in the accord. (The accord is a balanced blend of notes which lose their individual identity to create a completely new, unified odor impression.) The noxious or, as Roy would argue, radically transformative components in the fragrance would not be experienced as aromatically offensive consequently the absorption of the fine spray by the soft tissue of the mucous membrane would be unimpeded.

23/07/15 Obviously the only person that can stop the known high-functioning psychopath Roy from dispersing his mind-mangling fragrance far and wide and thereby loosing the discontents of our very lives upon us is David for at least he, by what can only be a fortuity of genetics actually looks closely like the even more well known Johnny Depp to the point where people go “Johnny! Wow! I really like what you do” at him in the street which gives him an edge in this particular situation because Johnny himself is – depending on your stance here – either a fucked and cancelled headcase or, Roy would contend, the ambassador for The New Behaviour.

26/07/15 David, regarded as Johnny by Keira, and Keira were walking hand in hand near the high bit in Notting Hill an area of London. David had been deep in thought but then he turned to Keira and said “I believe that stars such as ourselves who in our work present strong effective and dependable qualities are capable of applying these qualities in real life thereby eliminating the middle person.” They turned to the east, in the direction of Oxford Street. Keira then turned to the west out beyond Westfield a mall to the plains. I too turned. Keira tensed. She said “What’s that coming over the hill?” I replied “It is dark. We may be needed.”

27/07/15 And so, Readers, just at the point where Pampas is set aside until late August, some heavy shit is in the air. Will David and Keira be able to keep Roy out of Oxford Street? Will the toxified Johnny, the enchanted Richard and the compromised David-as-Johnny as distinct from the actual David, in their various states of possession and impersonation, be of any importance in the struggle to neutralise The New Behaviour? Or are these vaunted manners simply a less inhibited way of handling historically unprecedented conditions? Hey.

2.1 Kind of quiet in the Edgware Road. Johnny Depp is on the hubbly bubbly but Roy has an American Spirit Black Pack Perique blend filter that he requested from a tourist. Richard has a snus portion under his upper lip. When he spits, Johnny says “You don’t have to spit. That’s the point. The Swedes don’t spit.” Roy nods wryly as if yeah what Swedes ever spit? Roy has this look at the moment: a tee shirt that says ‘I Forgot My Hot Pants’ and a picture of some denim hot pants with sequins. Under a pin stripe jacket. Johnny, largely with kind of a Bedouin thing, nevertheless has a tee shirt ‘Sublevel Yachting’. Roy sees a dog, says “Ah!”, leans over and stubs his cigarette out on its arse. The actual hole. Fucking mayhem.

2.2 The lady who had the dog swung the hubbly bubbly at Johnny’s head at which point of contact it smashed and propelled him onto the pavement he was spark out even as he flew in the air face down. She took the jagged base and went for Roy’s neck but he was rising to his feet and caught it on the shoulder she reared back and kicked his chest with her heels but he caught her ankle and flipped her over she landed on her back on Johnny’s back the dog went fucking nuts and clamped onto Richard’s leg but he did a massive punt and it went vertically up and as it came down later Roy blood all down his look grabbed its ears and swung it so hard the ears came off in his hands. He put them in his breast pocket and pointed at them. He said “My hanky.” And yeah it was a striking effect.

2.4 “Where’s his turban?” Roy said. “I don’t think it’s a turban,” Richard said. “The head thing. Where did it go?” Roy continued. “It’s under that car,” Richard indicated. “Leave it. He looks better, yes?” Roy went. “The cheeks look a bit low,” mused Richard. “Only if you know him,” Roy went. “People do, though,” Richard remarked. A lady came over. “Is that Roy?” she opened. “Ruth,” goes Roy, “How is Mrs Atkinson?” Ruth says “She is as well as can be expected. She lost some clothing on a train and more recently her son was murdered.” Roy responds “Mrs Atkinson’s son was not of the highest cut, to be frank.” “Have you hurt yourself, Roy?” she notices. “Blood of dog,” he says. “That could be a fragrance,” Richard says. “More of a wine,” Roy says. “I think so,” goes Ruth.

2.5 Ruth took Johnny’s feet while Roy and Richard took the heavy end. They got him into the 4×4 where Roy took a couple of minutes reshaping his (Johnny’s) cheeks with small pinches. Then Roy drove to a lady’s clothier up the road with skirts and cardigans and similar things where he asked the assistant to show Ruth some skirts. She got a pleated one like a kilt in different colours and a cardigan in lavender. Plus some brogued walking shoes but the holes don’t go right through. Then in Church Street a street off where they were they got a denim jacket like Lee or one of those. Richard said “It’s a shit look, Roy.” Ruth said “Well, it will cover many situations.” And Roy said “See, Richard? Shut the fuck up.”

2.7 Roy folded down the three seats in the 4×4 and rolled Johnny towards the hatch back. He then invited Ruth to go and lie on the floor with him, next to Johnny. Richard sat in the front looking at the street. Roy and Ruth rose and fell energetically and Richard felt himself flooded with ancient memories. Once again pistol shots rang out in his head and he could not stop them. And he could not stop the pain that flared around each shot. The street darkened and Richard went blind. He touched his eyes and then he reached out to feel the glass before him. He sat in the dark although it was not exactly dark it was nothing.

2.8 When the vehicle was quiet again Richard said “Please excuse me Ruth and Roy but I cannot see.” Roy said “We’ll see about that,” glancing at Ruth for acknowledgment of his swift wordplay. He took the blind Richard by the hand and led him down the road in the Marble Arch a monument direction. “Among us prowl the reptiles, Richard, their skin rife with light-sensitive proteins. For millennia the mammals have have suppressed this knowledge in order to deflect criticism of the vulgar binocular system. Take a leaf from the gecko and the sublevel cuttlefish, use the skin of the head, wear shorts that you may savour the vision that flows from the flanks. See the world anew with your neck.” He led Richard to the middle of the road and walked back without him to the 4×4 with pale Johnny in it and Ruth.

2.9 Fucking Richard man. He’s what 100 yards from where Edgware Road hits the park so we’re talking major traffic coming through and he’s holding up his arms out with the palms out moving them around people are swerving and yelling then he drops back his head so his neck is pointing to the sky and he shouts “I see through my throat! I see through my throat!” and runs towards the park right into the oncoming and he’s dodging and they’re careening and you wonder How does he do this? It’s a matter of time before he’s dogmeat but then he spins round, heads for the pavement and he’s running along away from the park and there are some guys with hubbly bubblies and he’s got his head so far back the scalp is practically between his shoulder blades and he goes “Hey! Guys! Hello!” and some of them are clapping and saying “Hello how are you?”

2.10 “Take it round the park,” Roy says. Richard pulls off his shirt and vest in order to optimise neck and shoulder vision. At first with dermally distributed visuality you can’t process the inputs – the brain can’t stitch them together from so many perspectives. Entomologists have stated that young flies also have this problem. Ruth is intrigued by his head lolling over the back of the driving seat – his eyes, were they not defunct, would be peering at her chest. His throat is taut and he has pushed the seat almost up to the steering wheel. “I’ll just check Johnny,” he says, raising his left hand to the roof of the 4×4 so that with a twist of the palm he may periscopically survey the rear area and its insensible resident. “Still still,” he reports. “Anyway, Rockahula,” he says and takes off down Park Lane a rich road.

2.11 He does well. Takes it at a fair clip, mind you it’s pretty much like a short strip of motorway along there, using his hands in all these increasingly snakey moves, it’s like rear view mirrors but on all sides (he has one hand through the sunroof) but it isn’t because with a mirror you look in it but with this his hand is looking you don’t need anything more. “I’m getting into it, I’m getting into it,” he declares and he’s whipping in and out past the shit statues and Ruth says to Roy “This is quite exciting” and Roy says back “I can see you like it” and Ruth says “Can you see what I’m doing?” and suddenly Richard’s skin goes off, just when it was so good it just goes off and Ruth looks down and sees his eyes go on and she shouts “He’s looking at my chest!” and in that dark gap Richard mounts the pavement.

2.13 Roy was in the finals of a Shaving Competition with five other men who had not shaved for two days. They would sprint through a cornfield to a roar from gathered men and women who understood shaving and supported the Shaving Group’s waiving of the No Cut rule, which disqualified contestants who drew blood, however modestly, in the course of the high speed challenge. At the far side of the field were the shaving stations, each bearing a disposable razor, an aerosol of unscented foam and a small bowl of warm water. Roy enjoyed the No Cut Waiver because he had mastered the Single Sweep, wherein the shaver describes a series of unpunctuated undulating crescents across his face and neck regardless of nicks and gouges. But to his horror he could not move his hands.

2.14 And who should Ruth see in that bare corridor but Anne of Austria. “Who are you with?” Ruth asked. “I am with Hildegard of Halifax and the Lady Jean of Jarrow.” “Will you dance when you get to where you’re going?” Ruth asked. “We will dance all the way there,” said Anne in a deep metallic voice and the three royal women began to spin and as they spun they spat. Then comes Louis the Eleventh and he does some neat capers involving small jumps and tiny turns with the toes just so and Ruth says “That shit is so cool” but she can’t hear herself speak because now they are being abrupt with each other like those air guns for wheel nuts vootvootvoot and Louis the Eleventh he just barrels down through the floor and he’s gone and Ruth asks someone “I’m so thirsty” and they say “I’m afraid we can’t give you any liquid yet.”

2.16 We know from EEG that persons in coma are not brain dead. The comatose have brain activity, they are not flatliners. Their brains respond to stimuli by emitting an electrical impulse. But if Johnny were in deep coma they would not let him go home. If he were in a vegetative state, with modest reflexes and sleep-wake cycles, he could go home. But you wonder now if he thinks or sees pictures in this place beneath the sea. There is no way of telling. Is it a thought if there is no thinker? If there is no thinker then are there pictures floating down there and what are they of? Are they of things that we never see anyway even when we have the full box of waves?

2.17 Keira and I agreed that we had a sense of foreboding. As if a loathsome vapour or malodour were closing down the sky. “Perhaps we do need stars of the screen, Johnny,” said Keira, alluding to my suggestion (see Season 1:26/07/15) that actors should fully extend the scope of their impersonations so that they might step into everyday life and apply their strengths there rather than on the screen where people know it’s acting. “I suppose,” she continued, “there could be problems with getting carried away.” “In a sense that is collateral damage,” I opined. “In the world of entertainment we see many professionals, take Matthew McConaughey for example, who achieve remarkable verisimilitude. Such protean figures must, at this tipping point in the story of civilisation, make the transition.”

2.19 Just two days later Keira had gone. I was so sad. I knew that I would miss her dreadfully. For much of her life she had been feted as one of the beauties of her generation. She had a tremendous openness and spent much of her time in a state of delight. As she faded away I held her hand, her features softened and her breath grew light. “Can you remember when you knocked me over in the café?” I whispered. “No need to whisper,” Brogan said, “I’m not the nervous type.” “Hey, Brogan! What’s new?” I said. “Who are you?” she asked, matter of factly.

2.21 Brogan, I’m afraid I don’t know Harry, Amy or Paul,” I said to Brogan. She turned from the window and looked firmly at me. “David, because I have had largely unsatisfactory relationships in one way or another, both intimately also with friends and acquaintances, such as with John who has, I must confess, faded in my mind of late, I tend to focus my energies on the travails of others. This should not be seen as somehow explaining my activities – I have skills and they are, I can say this, successfully applied. I can cut to the heart of the matter. I am driven, if you like, but I have found in life what I can do well and it pleases me.” I felt warmth towards Brogan. “Yes, Brogan, I see that,” I said.

2.22 It was clear that Brogan was feeling cooped up. We went for a walk in the neighbourhood. She moved quickly through the knots of passersby, sometimes pausing to scrutinise individuals who, for reasons that were not apparent, caught her attention. As we passed The Amount of Beer a young woman seated with friends at a streetside table looked up and smiled broadly. “Brogan! Wow!” she cried. Her friends seemed similarly delighted. The young woman was scanning the street beyond Brogan. “Are you doing another one?” she asked. Brogan replied “Are you a friend of Amy’s?” “Er…no?” said the young woman. “I’m looking for Amy,” said Brogan. “With Johnny?” the young woman said, looking at me. Brogan said “Johnny’s not around. That’s David.” The young woman grinned. “Right,” she said.

2.23 Brogan told me that while she was keen to locate Amy in order to ascertain just what happened with Harry after the dinner with Paul, she sensed that for the next few minutes it would be a waiting game. She said “From time to time in this caper, David, there are little gaps and it is in these that I pursue my personal interests.” “Good idea, Brogan,” I said, “I’m the same.” Brogan said “I like ornamental gardens. I have a dog, called Andrew. I am fond of jazz. There are some cousins. I relax when I can. I am drawn to certain sorts of figurine. My mother is blind. I dislike people who search their pockets for no reason. Before John there was Frank, who was moustachioed. My little nieces love me and I them. My best friend drowned. There is no God. Picasso is admirable. Let me be clear. There is so much.”

2.24 We passed a house in flames licking high and screams coming from it of despair. Brogan tore off her coat which was rayon and therefore a fire risk. She ran into the house as I held the coat. From all the windows came thick smoke and cries. Was there a person in every room? It could not be ruled out. To my amazement Brogan appeared at a window holding a side table which she repeatedly dashed against the window frame. “David, stand back!” she cried and moments later came an armchair. “Position it, David!” she instructed hoarsely as it went hard to the pavement. I shoved the chair round so that the man thrown next landed in it. “Reassure him!” yelled the tireless figure. “And look in my coat!” There was a bottle of Cien (the Lidl own-brand) aloe vera lotion. I smeared it on the man saying “No worries. Shit happens.”

2.25 I was trying to get a sense of what Brogan was. For example, from where did her memories come? The moustachioed Frank – had she encountered him in the course of her entirely prescribed and necessarily episodic past? How could it be otherwise? Unless her psychology was such that she was able to generate material to fill the biographical gaps. But to use the term ‘psychology’ was itself ridiculous. And how would she recognise that there was a gap to be filled? I was familiar with the work of Anheuser & Busch on confabulation but to apply that to Brogan would be to pathologise this exceptionally resourceful individual. And, of course, it was also my belief that since our future was now in the hands of those whose psychology was largely extinguished our salvation lay with those most adroit in the management of surfaces.

2.26 After the Fire Chief had warmly congratulated her, and the burned man had clasped her hands, I resolved to traverse with Brogan the archipelago the waters of which might prove to conceal branches, bridges, aspects opening onto aspects, in short, a body not pinned with trinkets but itself full and fruitful. “What’s it like having a blind mother?” I asked her. “You are not seen. The silver of the mirror is blackened. You are not carried in her mind. How then could you carry yourself? There is no echo. All moves ever outward, fading into air. I made my own sandwiches. I cleaned my own face,” Brogan said.

2.27 She sat beside me on a bench and I was able to study her in repose. Generally she looked resolute but I began to notice something odd in the way she composed the muscles of her face. It was the fact that I found myself using the word ‘composed’ that made me pay closer attention. We are used to seeing people drumming their fingers on tabletops or nodding absently in thought but Brogan seemed to be cycling through a repertoire of small facial movements that had the effect of slightly altering her expression then returning it to its initial state. This state, that I have called ‘resolute’, would liquefy – momentarily assuming an almost expressionless condition – then reproduce itself. It seemed odd rather than neurotic, almost as if she were using her spare time to perfect something.

2.28 “What are you doing later?” I asked her. “It depends what happens,” she said. “What if nothing happens?” I said. “That doesn’t arise,” she said. “But would you go home? To your house?” I asked. Brogan reached for her bag. She peered into each of its several compartments, working from the smallest, which bore a pair of fastenings, to the most capacious, which would normally lie beside her hip. Then she returned to the smallest and removed from it an ivory comb to which she quietly said “No”, then from the next a purse of coloured sand to which she said “No” from the next a jar of white dried beans to which she said “No” and to the most capacious then to the smallest again and “No” and I said “Can you not find them?” and she said “I can’t find them.” Then she said “But they must be there.”

2.29 In this way she searched her bag many times. The narrow boats passed, one with a sleeping cat on the hatch. A phone rang. Brogan reached into the inside pocket of her bright rayon coat. “No,” she said. It was mine. I said “David here.” A voice said “David, it’s Amy.” I said to Brogan “It’s Amy.” She took the phone. In a honeyed voice she murmured “Amy.” Then “We will.” Then Brogan turned to me and said “Let’s get up and go. Amy’s coming round.” “Where?” I enquired. “Where’s she coming?” Brogan strode away from the canal. “To mine.” After a few minutes we were at hers. Brogan released the fastenings on her bag. She put her hand into the smallest compartment at the front and took out her keys. They were on a fob with some bright fur.

​

2.34 All at once Amy put her biscuit aside and curled up on the floor in a ball as if there were a fire there there wasn’t. Brogan (from the hugely successful ‘Brogan’) jutted her chin forward and gazed down upon Amy recently bereft. She (Brogan) walked from the pale space to an adjoining one and came back in with a stick. This stick was not dowel but pretty straight with like a handbrake kind of hand grip on the holding end and a knob of soft leather like I believe they are called percussion mallets in music at the other end. She prodded at Amy’s back and Amy said “fortunately” then at her neck Amy said “that question” then her thigh she said “de la rue” (of the road Fr) then her wrist she said “factory” then her navel she said “inasmuch Bobby”. It went on. I have to say, it was actually kind of okay.

2.36 I was beginning to understand the situation. If I could somehow intervene in the scheme that animated Brogan, in some way divert its fitful expressions so as to seize authorship then I might realise my ambition to visit upon the world beings whose perfection of intent would quite eclipse the stuttering endeavours of those who merely made things up as they went along. Were I simply to execute my own designs then matters of light and shade, considerations of tone and tenor, all manner of titrations and refinements would cloud if not wholly entangle my purposes. How much more inexorable would these be if Brogan, the embodiment of gung ho can do know how, were my proxy and prosthetic!

2.37 “Brogan,” I said to Brogan (yes the one from ‘Brogan’) “Do you have any small talk?” Brogan, wearing a sky blue duffle coat of felted duffel with the horn fastenings (the blue was of the purest altitude I had seen) and beneath it a lime shift, said “How is it measured?” I replied “Well, it is to do with matters of little consequence and often used to make situations pleasant and make time pass before you get to your floor.” “You see,” she said “all that I say advances me. There is no slack, no roll of chub. Who of us can locate the wellsprings of our utterance? Not me certainly David. Even when I say Can’t complain or Is she really? I am in a situation that moves things towards something.” Brogan paused. Her eyes welled with tears. “I would like to say something that was nothing.”

2.38 “Amy is in the past now,” said Brogan. “That’s why she’s asleep. She might not wake up unless she is needed. She might not be needed. I’m usually the last to know. It’s not a problem though, because I’ll forget her. And then it’ll just be her clothes. They’re usually left in a neat pile. She herself will have gone. I don’t know where they go.” “Are there lots of them then?” I asked. Brogan frowned. “I suppose so,” she said. “It’s not something I dwell on. Did you see I’m wearing blue?” “Are there sausages to be had?” I heard myself saying. They were in the cupboard. Pork and lavender. I fried six. Brogan put one to her mouth. But whereas I munched mine hers came out untoothed. Again.

2.39 We looked up and there was this guy on the sofa. “That’s Big Vague Michael,” said Brogan. “Does he have a key?” I asked. “He doesn’t need one,” she said. Big Vague Michael had an interesting way of moving. He didn’t move much but he was moving all the time but not leaving the sofa. His head was big and you know where sometimes with people you can’t see them but you’re looking right at them? Well it was like that. We’re not talking invisible or anything, it was certainly there and plus there was nothing to stop you looking at his head but when you did it was unsatisfactory. You thought this head doesn’t sort of hang together. It’s not like deformed or anything. It’s like you could look all you want but there was nothing coming back. That’s a good way of putting it.

2.40 “Mike!” goes Brogan. “Mike!” He’s just across from her. Big Vague Michael hears this but his eyes are kind of nystagmus (see Pampas: Season 1: #93 09/07/15) but then he clicks them to a stop and looks at Brogan. “He’s…he’s..” he goes. “It’s Brogan, Mike.” She turns to me “We haven’t met,” she explains. “He gradually composes himself,” Big Mike says. “Yes,” Brogan says, “You do.” And as I’m looking his head is tightening together like air is sucked out. “See that?” asks Brogan. “They all do that. Sometimes as men, sometimes as women. Or before that.”

2.42 “He came here to die,” I said. “A man comes in, heaves soot and snuffs it.” “No, he didn’t come here,” Brogan explains, “He is the next thing. We must search the body for identification.” She starts going through Mike’s pockets. “He’s Mike,” I said. “I know no Mikes,” she said. “Look…” She extracts from his inner breast pocket an oilcloth wallet and passes it to me. It was still warm. There was nothing in it. “I wish Jean and Max were here,” Brogan said. “I haven’t seen them in years,” I told her. Rather ruefully, Brogan said “They’re so good at this sort of thing, you know.” The doorbell rang. “Funny,” she said, “Usually they don’t ring.”

Readers: the Editor of Pampas would like to apologise for the uncharacteristically protracted gap in publication between the previous and the above. This is due to circumstances well within my control.