When I first started writing for theatre, back in 1972 or thereabouts,  I used to say that I was committed to reproducing the language of dreams on stage. Rather than concern ourselves with the tired and tiresome conventions of the well told story and the psychologically rounded character I declared that we would voyage into the chaos of the unconscious.

I find it quite embarrassing now when  I see old video clips of myself banging on about dreams and theatre.  Nevertheless, we developed a strong signature style and the work was unsettling, obscene and funny. Gradually we moved  away from hardcore surrealism towards imagistic work set in a territory of broken narratives and eruptive psychologies. 

I was walking down a street in West London and a bloke came up and asked me the time and I realised I’d left my watch in the bathroom so I apologised and carried on looking for this shop that was supposed to stock grub screws, the sort you screw door knobs on with.  They’re quite hard to find, surprisingly.

Then I bumped into  a woman called Teresa who used to live next door to us in Holloway.  She said she still had a book of mine that I’d lent her before she moved. She said if walked to her new house we could pick it up. I said okay and off we went.  I asked her if she knew of the hardware shop I was looking for. She didn’t.

I got the book off her and walked for a bit then found the hardware shop. I had a sample screw with me which I showed the man and he said he had some so I asked for a dozen, thinking I don’t want to have to come all the way back here again next time a door knob falls off. Then I went for a cup of tea.

My neck was aching. I realised I’d fallen asleep in my car. The sun was up. There was no need for me to stay in the derelict shopping centre any longer. On the way back I remembered I’d been dreaming. There was something about the dream that wasn’t quite right. I couldn’t put my finger on it.

Like anybody else, I expect,  my dreams were sometimes elating, often frustrating, intermittently frightening and always at least a little strange. On a good night they were very strange. The whole point is that nobody controls their dreams and therefore nobody can be described as a good dreamer. It’s just something that pays a visit from time to time.

But as I threaded my way through the rush-hour traffic at the junction with the M11 and the M25 I started to feel that something quite disturbing was going on. My dream, or at least that part of it that I could remember, had been unbelievably dull. It was, in fact, more than dull, it was completely devoid of any emphasis or colour whatsoever.

My understanding was that while dreams will freely borrow from everyday life they do so to make a point and in making the point they will transform any number of characteristics of the original scene so that it is recognisable and mysterious at the same time. This has the effect, sometimes,  of making us ask questions about the possible meaning of the episode.

There was no difference between my dreams and my waking life. Somehow my unconscious had suddenly become identical to my everyday mind. Clearly I still had an unconscious because something was producing the images. But I really had no desire to see everything twice.  Furthermore, where had my unconscious gone?

I didn’t feel dramatically different. As far as I could tell I was functioning the same as ever. I tried to remember everything I had read about basic Freudian psychology. Did he ever say anything about losing the need for the unconscious? Was there a situation in which it had done its work and simply faded away? Or maybe had been completely absorbed into consciousness?

If I had actually ingested my unconscious then there must be some way I could test this. The idea of taboo, for example. If I had become one with my inner depths then I would no longer have any taboos. I could, for example, freely imagine my parents having deep penetrative sexual intercourse. Crying out as the relentless pounding went on and on and on through the night.

I realised that in the act of thinking of this possibility I had already allowed it into my mind. What, then,  of the ultimate taboo? The taking of human life. In a deranged and frenzied bloodbath. Indifferent to the screams for mercy, intoxicated with the final freedom, every ounce of my being pouring into a single annihilating deed.

I told myself that merely being able to think of terrible things did not prove that I had somehow become miraculously disinhibited. There was another, quite different explanation available. I had gained wisdom. I knew myself. I was in touch with the deepest layers of my being. I had touched my inner Christ.

If this was the case then I should be able to heal the sick with my touch and perhaps even raise the dead. As I was passing Epping Forest I noticed a dead deer beside the road. I stopped the car. The creature didn’t seem too badly damaged. I ran my hand over its skin and, to my amazement,  it stirred. I was actually appalled.

Rising shakily to its legs the deer turned to me and spoke. Its voice was soft but deep. “David, I shall be eternally grateful. All creatures will be grateful to you. My only wish now is to return to my son Bambi before his grief impacts negatively on his development.” With one graceful leap she was gone.

I knew what I had to do. I ran into the forest and gathered up some nuts and seeds. Soon a blue tit landed on my hand. “Please tell the creatures of the air I have come to dwell among them. Tell the stoats, the fish, the fox, the adder and the vole. Tell them all that I can speak with them as I speak to you.”

After a few days not only did the animals and plants come to me but also brighter, flatter things. I saw paintings from the past,  images from newspapers and books, photos from all over the world. In every case I could simply step into them and walk around. I could feel and smell and taste just as if I were in the forest that was now my home.

It wasn’t that I had absorbed my unconscious. That had been an arrogant and mistaken assumption. I had been absorbed into it. It had flooded through me. I had drowned but I had not died. The animals brought me food. Far way I could hear the roar of traffic but it didn’t disturb me. I had left it all behind.

Previously on Peachy Coochy I had attempted to find a balance between softness and hardness by visiting Clint Eastwood’s house in Ladbroke Grove.  Who should come out but Lance Johnson, the young surfer from Coppola’s ‘Apocalypse Now’. Lance walked north to the outskirts of London and I followed him.

I knew that Sam was dead because he kept walking through things. It made it hard to keep up with him. He had a brain tumour. That’s why he died. Lance kept him going. Lance said “Sam, come over here, I’m on acid. It’s beautiful.” We were near St Albans. Lance didn’t understand that Sam was already dead. Lance would always be eighteen.

Someone joined us along the way. “Who are you?” we said. “I saw you going by from my house,” he said, “I’m Bluff Jack.” Lance said “That’s a beautiful house, man.” Bluff Jack said, as was his wont, “It is a beautiful house.” Lance said “I like you, man, you’re direct.” Jack put his hand out to shake Lance’s hand but it went through him.

As we neared Duxford Aerodrome we found Squadron Leader ‘Tatters’ Taytham and Group Captain ‘Taters’ Tatham sitting in deckchairs by the roadside. Bluff Jack was quick, as was his way, to establish that they, too, were dead. “We are,” they confessed. I asked if they were familiar with Coppola’s ‘Apocalypse Now’. They said that

they had admired Lance’s performance but found the drug references perplexing. Sam, assuming a protective attitude to Lance, told them it had not been a just war and they seemed to understand. I felt that they were soft in their hardness but this could be explained by their phantasmal bodies. They had not changed their clothes since 1943.

A large group of dead women pilots marched towards us. My mind began to race. If the women and the men walked through each other would the women become pregnant? Because this would be the ideal sex, where the bodies were light and there were no imperfections. The babies would form almost immediately.

But it was actually very cold. Several dead women passed through me and my brain silted up with snow. I heard Bluff Jack, the only other live man, moaning piteously. Then everything was quiet. I could not even hear my footsteps. I knew that I must keep going, though. Eventually I saw a steep pathway.

Sam was dead. Again. Lance, Billy, Jack, Tatters and Taters were nowhere to be seen. I felt sick and depressed. I knew exactly what had happened and where I was.  For reasons that were as yet unclear I had brought myself to a place where the only way forward was death or enlightenment. In other words a place of the utmost banality.

I was within moments of embarking on one of the most pointless journeys that life has to offer. Beyond cliché, beyond sentimentality:  the stairway to heaven,  in all its variants,  some less prescriptive than others, some involving actual death, some not, was  the single most debilitating prospect that any sane and healthy person could face.

Eager not to be absorbed into the eternal light, I went to a pub that sold Timothy Taylor’s Landlord. It’s an ale with a good head, malt aroma, fruit, a hoppy flavour, fairly dry and bitter. At 4.3% it’s obviously not as strong as, say, Director’s or Abbot, but it feels strong and delivers a beer buzz quite quickly.

My thoughts turned to Jade. I’d found her bullying and lazy racism pretty unpleasant  on Big Brother but now that she’d gone I had no ill feeling towards her and felt sorry for her kids and even the surly, feckless Jack. In a perceptive article in ‘The Guardian’, Madeleine Bunting quotes the psychoanalyst Susie Orbach, who suggested that

in Goody’s dying we are “grieving for the death of a fantasy world we have all been living in”. This was, clearly, the world of easy credit, happy motoring and limitless resources. Bunting also quotes another psychoanalyst, Andrew Samuels, who detects “a huge diffused anxiety”about the future spreading through society.

“Patients talk to me,” says Samuels, “of walking through a door into a room that has no floor. People fear the structure of their lives falling apart.” I ordered another glass of Landlord. It was clear that I had been mistaken in seeking solace in Clint Eastwood,  let alone Sam and Lance. I had been walking with ghosts.

I could see that ghosts were – to use a loaded term – spirits without bodies while zombies were bodies without spirits. I liked zombies – their single-mindedness impressed me. We’re encouraged to see them merely as the living dead but I think that’s unfair. Also unfair is the way that they are denied political status.

This zombie, for example,  is dedicated to a critique of the coercive cult of depression embodied in the colourful and manic clown.  The latter,  in its pre-depraved form, fails to address either the complexity of contemporary experience or the primal simplicity of the incontinent shitting and pissing upon which much slapstick is based.

Zombies also represent the obliterating power of religious belief wherein the sufferer, fuelled by the great light that suspends discernment, arrests experience and neutralises scepticism, subjects those of us still beguiled by the material world to the numb intimacy of the thousand yard stare.

What if the driven body of the zombie were somehow filled with the restless melancholy of the ghost? Surely this should result in a perfect balance of the softness and hardness that I had been pursuing! I needed to find a large open space to which I could attract great numbers of almost human creatures.

I hired a luxurious coach and filled it with uncooked meat  and a sound system playing Dutch gabber at 180 beats per minute. The coach had a capacity of 76, plus a driver – necessarily undead. It soon filled up. I would follow behind in my Volvo. We drove to Colindale in North London, a site of perfect melancholy.

Previously on Peachy Coochy: a Nurse had said that I could have an audience with the King if I could prove that I had conquered shame. I was keen to see the King so I split myself in two,  leaving the shameful part in a house in Hertfordshire. I walked through ploughed grey fields and took a train from Harpenden to King’s Cross.

Freed from the repellent side of my nature I felt that I had stepped aside from history. I felt light and open. People could see who I was at last. I realised that my shame had held me back all through my life. Divested of this corrosion I could feel great forces unfolding within me, like sleeping snakes shaken awake.

I soon found that relatively few countries in the world still had monarchs as heads of state.  Europe, however,  contained a number of small principalities. Luxembourg, for example, is a parliamentary representative democracy with a constitutional monarch, ruled by Grand Duke Henri. It is the world’s only remaining sovereign Grand Duchy.

Henri led me along one of the streets. “Why is the city so shadowy?” I asked him. He seemed surprised. “Is it?” he said, “Perhaps we do not notice it any more.” “It must be hard to find things,” I said. “Non, c’est pas difficile. It’s a small place – we remember where everything is. You will like where I am taking you.” The Grand Duke led me to a bright hall.  

“Do you like the Bee Gees?” he enquired. “Who are you?”I enquired. “I am Count Robert of Bedfordshire. Call me Bob,” he replied. “You know what,  Bob?” I asked. “What is that?” he asked.  “I love that high pitched melancholic shit. It puts me in touch with myself.”

“I looked at the skies, running my hands over my eyes / and I fell out of bed, hurting my head from things that I’d said.” (Unexpectedly accurate rendition of Robin Gibb’s solo vocal part in ‘ I Started a Joke’ (1968) continues until expiry of time frame)

No sooner had I rendered the couplet for Bob than his skull began to distend and reshape itself as if it had succumbed to a hideous tropical bone softening disease. His hair began to seethe and swarm, bristles burst from his jaw and when he spoke it was as if great machines were seizing up in dank subterranean caverns.  

Apparently her son J.T. had been driving his truck at night on the 285 between Encino and Vaughn in New Mexico. He had picked up a young woman hitch-hiker. She wore a full-length, cream-coloured skirt and a tight navy blue top with short, puffed sky-blue sleeves that were slashed and filled with red velvet. Round the back of her neck was a high white, stiffened collar.

J.T. asked her if she worked around those parts. “I clean houses and make them tidy,” she said. Her voice was high and clear like a young girl’s but she seemed to be in her late teens. J.T. was not a major conversationalist so he just said “Uh-huh.” Then she said “I brush the dust up and wash the dishes.” Then she laughed  – a short peal of notes that didn’t seem to relate to anything amusing that J.T. could see.

As they drove through the night J.T. noticed her hands. They had no moles or marks, they were unblemished milky white. So pale were they that he thought he could see the blood running through her wrists. As she shifted them in her lap they left a phosphorescent trail, a faint mist of light hovering in the air then falling gently into the fabric of her dress. 

The next morning J.T. froze when Cliff and Roy came into the bunkhouse at sunrise. She was sluicing the flagstones and singing. “This here is Mister Clifford Preece: ranch-hand. And Mister Roy Lennox. Ranch-hand.” Cliff and Roy, glaring  their suspicions at J.T., nodded and mumbled.

As Mary waded ashore Bob burst from the water snarling. Mary killed him with a fishing knife and his blood ran into the chill grey water. It seemed so long ago that I had sung a short snatch from a Bee Gees song and witnessed the unsettling transformation of Count Robert of Bedfordshire. Mary opened a small gift shop in the town and I flew to Luton.

I knocked on the great door at Count Robert’s place and it swung open. The butler, ashen-faced, was holding the body in such a way that it appeared to gaze at me disdainfully. “I’m afraid he has taken his life, sir,” said the senior servant. “But why..?” I stammered. “He said that the leakage  between the phantasmal and the mundane was turning him to vapour.”

I felt my body growing opaque. My desire to see the King melted away. I had to anchor myself. I had to plant my feet on the earth. A few miles away in Hertfordshire my shame languished in a damp, decaying house. It fell upon my neck and gorged on the fat of my new found freedom. As I pulled away it whispered “You’re tho nithe, tho very very nithe.” 

Previously on Peachy Coochy: I  had realised that I had been taking advantage of my executive  position within the Peachy Coochy organisation to present barely disguised accounts of my personal life. I regret taking advantage of my audiences in this way and now wish to make amends by restricting myself to statements that are plain and direct.

I remember a tremendous bang and a cry. I tumbled over and over myself like Charlie Chestnut Goes to School on an Icy Day. There were others all around me but I pushed my way through.  And then I joined up with Jane. She had been living in her mother’s house. We settled down together in a little place her mother had set aside.

As the months passed Jane and I grew so close that it was as if we were one. We decided to call ourselves Victor. All day long he received messages and information which he carefully stored. Soon the little house became too little. On several occasions a snake attacked the house thump thump like when Miss Sassify Berella and Smallene Toot saw off the Gump.

On one particular day I came under pressure to move on and, habituated by now to the warmth and dependability of the place, I found I was loath to leave. Pressure soon came from all sides and I was forced to climb down. The shock was considerable. I realised I had never been outside.

As I looked closely at the place I began to realise that it was composed of countless tiny figures. I gathered some of them up. They said their name was Alan and Margaret Edney. I didn’t know them. They called me David, saying that Victor was only temporary. However, what they then went on to tell me has made me the person I am today. 

Alan, who wore a blazer, said “All the good food that you eat turns to shit inside you. Why doesn’t it stay good inside you?” “There’s shit in you now,” said Margaret. I said “If I had a baby would I have a shit?” “Of course you would,” said Margaret, “There’s only one hole.”  “Does the baby hurt your bottom?” I asked.

“Of course it does. It splits it,” said Alan, fingering his pipe. “And then the shit is out all over the place,” Margaret went on. “Can you put the shit back?” I wondered. “No. It won’t go back,” they said together. “How does the shit get up the bottom then?” “People put it there.” “In the night?”  “That’s when they push it up.” “Is the baby shit?” I enquired.

Alan adjusted his tie. “It’s a big shit,” he replied. “The mummy carries the shit. That’s why she sticks out,” Margaret confirmed. Alan began scraping the bowl of his pipe with a blade. “The mummy grunts when the shit comes out,” he announced. “Does she love the shit?” I wondered.

“She very much loves it,” Margaret asserted roundly. “She makes it into a baby.” Alan tapped the pipe bowl into an ashtray beside his pint. “And the shit goes inside the baby,” he averred. “You can’t see it,” he added, “But it comes out.” “Like sick,” observed Margaret. “Can she sick the baby?” I questioned.

“Sometimes the baby is sicked up,” Margaret stated matter of factly, adjusting her necklace. I spoke “Does she put it back?” “She can eat it up if she wants,” Margaret spoke. “Can she stick it up her bottom?” again I wondered. “It’s better to eat it up. It’s quicker,” Alan responded then.

“The baby doesn’t die,” Margaret pronounced. “No. The baby never dies,” they said together. “No. The baby never dies,” they said. “No. The baby never dies.” I posed them a query “So where does the baby come from?” “The daddy,” they said together. I came up with a further enquiry, “Is the baby in the daddy?” Margaret looked at me. “The baby is in the daddy’s peepee,” she told me.

I touched my collar. “My peepee has peepee coming out of it how does that make babies?”  Alan puffed up some tobacco. “The baby is in the peepee,” he confirmed. “The daddy peepees in the mummy, David,” mentioned Margaret.”Where does the peepee go?” I wanted to know. “In the mummy’s hole,” Margaret came back.

“What hole?”  I queried. “The bottom hole,” “The daddy is full of babies,” “There are as many babies as the mummy wants in the daddy.” “Why doesn’t the daddy have the baby?” I shouted. “He gives it to the mummy,” Alan murmured. “The mummies are nicer,” smiled Margaret. “Does the baby shit?” I pressed.

“All the shit comes out of the baby.” By now Alan was puffing easily. I had to keep on, though. “Does the mummy shit in the baby?” I insisted. “Yes, David. The baby is full of the mummy’s shit. And then it comes out of the baby. Onto the ground. That’s at the beginning – when the baby is out of the mummy the mummy can’t shit in the baby.”

“The mummy’s shit goes on the ground. And the baby’s shit goes on the ground.” That was both of them together in unison at once. “Does the mummy shit in the baby?” I had to know. “Yes. The baby is full of the mummy’s shit. And then it comes out of the baby. Onto the ground.” “Is the ground covered in shit?” I ventured.

“That’s what the ground is. The ground is all the shit that has come out. People wear shoes because of that. Because the shit can go up through your feet,” Alan said. “The ground is a big shit. Done by all the people ever,” Margaret said. I posed my last question “Before people was the earth a big shit?”

“Yes. It was a very big shit in space. In the stars. And people came along and did their shit on it.” Alan drained his pint and shook my hand. I turned to Margaret, “Margaret, are you my mother?” “No,” Margaret said. Alan had quite an interesting car – a 1959 Series II Hillman Minx saloon with long handle floor-change gearbox and single dial dash.

I was feeling hungry. I had never been in a restaurant before. I ordered the all day breakfast. It actually only took 20 minutes to eat. The food was very filling  and quite greasy. I felt an urgent sensation at the pit of my stomach. I had not yet learned to control everything that happened in my body. I stood up and completely lost control of my bowels.

The nurse told me that the King was coming round to see people who had conquered their shame. She asked me how ashamed I was. I said I was not ashamed to see the King. She said “That’s not what I mean, cunt. Everyone wants to see him. He only wants to see people without shame.”

I realised that I was too wretched to see the King. He would be disgusted. Then I had a good idea. It was the beginning of my life, I needed something I could rely on, something I could use in everyday situations. I took a deep breath and split into two. I hid the disgusting half in a house in Hertfordshire. Then I went to London.

Okay, the gun was small. It was tiny. But it was all that was needed.  The small bullets would have a punishing effect on whoever it was that was going around. They would sting and they would  break flesh. As if to say “Excuse me,  do that again and the next time will be worse.” Not just a warning – an example of something.

This was where I needed to look. In among the ‘ordinary people’. In among these people would be the individual who was eliminating the children. The individual wouldn’t necessarily look un-ordinary. He wouldn’t stand out, he might use the crowd to melt away. I was going to have to be thorough. I wished the answer would appear in my hand, like the gun. But it didn’t.

I studied the crowds and melted into them. As I moved among them I glanced at the faces of the men. Only the men could have done this. The women are too marvellous. What was I looking for? What were the signs that might betray the thief of innocence? I must be careful not to fall in with my own prejudices. My mind turned again to the victims.

Their fragility was heartbreaking and electrifying. It could be stamped out so easily and the world turned from diamonds to ashes. If I could stop a man with  my concealed weapon, bring him to his knees with the sliver of a bullet then all the children can step forward into their full lives. They can gladly sing songs in their singsong voices.

They are the flowers and the rising sun and the silence of rivers and rain. If we destroy this earth they will rise through the ruins and this time they will get it right. They will go to the heart of things and find the souls that are hiding in the hills. Nothing must be allowed to stop them.  As they march together an awesome light trembles around them.

As I pondered the difficulty of my mission I felt the skin of my right hand break open. Droplets of blood oozed from the wound and a terrible pressure built up and I started to feel as if my bones were about to snap and slide up to the surface. My worst fears were confirmed as a hard, pale, glistening object emerged from beneath the flesh.   

I gazed at my pearl handled gun and wiped it clean. Somehow my body had come to my rescue. Not just my rescue – for I was of little importance in the scheme of things – but the rescue of the singing children. My gun was larger now and I walked calmly into the city where empty men avoided the eyes of others as they slithered through the shadows.

As I walked  I realised that the children were changing: the part of them that was untouched by the darkness of the world was growing stronger. They were getting ready to lead us to places designed under their laws,  places that were actually built to reflect the way they wanted the world to be. Only the men could stop them now and the men were full of fury.

I felt puny; a weakling among ferocious creatures. The city was cold. Snow swirled across deserted squares. Suddenly my arm began to pulsate and an unimaginable pain swept  in waves from my fingertips to my shoulder. I screamed into the blizzard and, in the corner of my eye, I saw wolves pacing restlessly in the side streets. My arm yawned open.

A heavy revolver  slipped slowly from my gash. It was a Reeder custom 510 GNR Hunter with octagonal barrel, red cherry grips and a considerable amount of engraving. A deluxe grade weapon with a five shot cylinder, built on a Blackhawk base, it could stop just about anything that cares to obstruct your passage. I wiped it down.

My wound had healed. I felt light, purged, ready. I said to the girl “Are you not cold?” She said “Soon I will be home.” Her voice was surprising, it was soft but it also had deep notes. I said “Do you fear the men?” She said “I keep them away, a long way away.” I said “You are wise.” 

I said “Is your body full of light?” She said “Yes, it is. That is the way with us.” I said “It is the light of the world.” She said “I carry it, I do not make it, it is with me, it is dimmed by experience.” I said “You shall not have experience!” I felt the flesh across my ribs tighten. A mark seared into me. I cried out.

Metal pieces showered out of me,  clattering into the snow. The child watched me closely. I held myself open. I was beyond pain. My stomach and my intestines began to harden.  I felt appalling shifts deep inside me. Something impossible and magnificent was about to spring from within me.  I threw my head back.

“He is the White Boy,” said the girl. “But he is empty!” I gasped. “He is taking us to our good place where we belong, where we  live by our laws,” she said. “He will die when  he reaches that place,” she said. “Not if I can help it!” I cried. I pulled at the sides of my gaping wound. I opened myself to my outermost limit.

…there was a faint chittering and gnashing to be heard at the back of his throat. I fired gloriously into the stars and, for a moment,  saw world peace.  The men were all round us, pacing, showing their teeth, making sudden movements.  An empty girl appeared. She said “My body has gone.” I pumped again and then I pumped again.

My gun grew bigger and my skin went thin. The men would know me now. The rasping and slurring of the glowing children drew beads of tears to my eyes as I escorted them to the edge of our laws. I turned and  showed the men my gun. “You shall not pick them off any more!” I shouted.

The men were in crowds.  I needed firepower. But I could not ask my body. I had to wait. If the innocence of the children could be preserved I was prepared to die. As my skin peeled away I began to shudder. Liquid metal poured from my mouth, my arms and my chest, hissing onto the woodland floor, congealing into silvery bullets.

I raised my spurting arms and eliminated the men. More would come but the children were safe now. As they walked into their land the metal in my body turned to water. I felt myself sinking into the soil. There was no point in fighting now. My shudders ran through the dead leaves and the wet, black branches.