Episode III: The Jaunty Cap. Cool and Counter-Cool, Tall Tale II.

Cool and Counter-Cool:

Or; On Not Necessarily Being Uncool

Tale II

Episode III: The Jaunty Cap

Keeping My Head

Oh, look, look over there! There’s Miss Ruby Alexia (SG)!

I’ve jumped the narrative gun again, haven’t I?

So, it’s a month later at Slimelight’s March Mayhem; I’ve just about recovered from the previous month’s inter-planetary-Dave-oddity-odyssey at MQ-LBB.

It’s my birthday and I’ve got twelve pals in tow. I’ve persuaded my ‘TG Wrecking Crew’ to bless me with their company while I do what I usually do.

What I always do, actually.

I wander off.

I just fuck off.

I get immersed in another inner psychic quest!

‘You sort of go off into your own bubble, don’t you?’ says Red at NNYE TG, ‘It’s sort of “Hey, hi Peril” for two hours and then “Oh. Bye Peril” for the rest of the evening!’

I think Red might be right.

I do a retreat-into-self on the dancefloor, don’t I?

When I go clubbing without my mates I get a debilitating Zero-Complex, and when I go clubbing with my mates I fuck-off anyway and bless myself with an entirely unnecessary Zero-Complex!

Think about the rummy affair of the Slimelight Dark January! You know, the evening I suffered from all those paranoid delusions? What a ballroom blitz that was!

Oh no, you can’t think about that, can you? I haven’t written the confession yet!

There’s one not to look forward to.

Actually, I haven’t written the confession about the Zero Complex either so you probably don’t know what I’m talking about.

Mind you, I do feel reassured that I’m not the only one who does this ‘hey’-hi’-wander-off-and-fuck-off-move when you’re with your pals. The painter, Adam Espira, assures me at the Curses/C.A.R. gig at The Lower Third in late March:

‘Oh, I used to be like that. I’d go off into my own little world.’

‘Looks like we’ve got a deal, Adam! See ya later!’

Anyway, let’s resume…

Oh, look, look over there! There’s Miss Ruby Alexia (SG)!

She’s accompanied by the tough-looking-Trashville bloke and her crew-milieu.

Now, I can’t missile-launch a monologue of relentless questions and queries about 5-string basses or phantom curtsies, can I? It’s 4:00 a.m. and anything that requires even the most simple syntax is, sadly, beyond my linguistic capabilities.

Mind you, that might be fortune smiling upon me. If I did missile-launch another monologue, Miss Ruby Alexia (SG) might mallet me sideways this time instead of boosting my street-cred and that tough-looking Mr Trashville might eat my head.

One swift clean bite.

Mid-monologue.

Now I need to keep my head in both senses: I rely on my talent for wobbling on to pay the mortgage, fund my book-purchasing habits, and fuel my addiction to building a Mount Everest of bass-pedals which I have no fucking clue how to use.

Why am I the only chap on the planet who manages to make my Bass Fuzz Pedal sound like Gargantua and Pantagruel having an epic contest over who can rupture the cosmos by breaking wind the loudest?

Fuzz-wind-thunder-lightning-rain or not, I still need to keep my head…

The Jaunty Angle

Now, speaking of keeping one’s head,- oh, look; look at what’s balanced on Miss Ruby Alexia (SG)’s head!

Ooh, I must confess, I threw you headlong into that headstrong transition, didn’t I, reader?

That was the narrative equivalent of automobile whiplash.

Don’t lose your head over it.

Anyway… Look; look at what’s balanced on Miss Ruby Alexia (SG)’s head!

Miss Ruby Alexia (SG) is wearing… a jaunty cap at a military angle!

No, I’ve got that wrong, haven’t I?

Ok.

Miss Ruby Alexia (SG) is wearing… a jaunty cap at a jaunty angle!

Nope, I think I’ve got that wrong too.

Right.

Miss Ruby Alexia (SG) is wearing… a military cap at a jaunty angle!

Phew!

Got there in the end.

I tell you something though,- I certainly knew that Miss Ruby Alexia (SG) wasn’t wearing… a military cap at a military angle!

I should know because I’m something of an expert in the field.

You might remember that I was once packed off, in the sensitivity of my younger years, to the only boarding school in Britain that had a compulsory Combined Cadet Force. Obligatory C.C.F.? What next? I mean, where do you stand with the authorities when you’re a conscientious conchie with crimped raven hair, eh? You can’t reason with a forty-year old man wearing a steely moustache who was clearly deprived by his mates from participating in playground-war-games when he was four, can you? You can’t negotiate. So I dutifully skived the C.C.F.! I hid myself away in the double-bass room every Wednesday, rendering myself entirely unlocatable from the flawed forces of pseudo-military surveillance! However, I wouldn’t want you to overlook my significant contribution to the C.C.F.! I (with quite some effort I might add) managed to collect my Air Force outfit from The Armoury on the first day. For the following week I studied this military costume-garb carefully, with increasing nervous apprehension, before letting divine Fortitude win the argument! ‘Courage,’ I said, ‘courage should always emerge victorious, but I’m more than happy to let cowardice win the battle on my side!’ (One of the wisest ways of resolving a problematic diplomatic dispute, don’t you think?) So, if you consider for how long I examined that Air Force regalia-gubbins, and with what intensity, I’m sure you have no doubt in agreeing that I know a thing or two about military costumes!

So, to put it briefly, I’m assured that Miss Ruby Alexia (SG) was not wearing a military cap at a military angle. Trust me. No room for error there. Argument water-tight.

Case closed, your Honour!

But, the funny thing is, at Slimelight I experienced one of those uncanny superimpositions again.

Now, everybody knows that my three favourite places in the world run along these lines:

1) The Torture Garden

2) The London Library

3) My Sitting Room (which is really just a microcosm of The London Library except the library has better armchairs)

My three favourite places on the hit parade right there; that is, - apart from my own imagination, daydreaming, and Shakespeareland! But I’m talking about places as in places rather than spaces as in places or places as in spaces.

Mind you, TG might be a place in a space or possibly a space in a place!

But let that go.

The Jaunty Angle Intersection

Anyway…

This whole Miss Ruby Alexia (SG) jaunty cap angle business put me in mind of a photograph of our new President at The London Library! Our old Library President, Tom Stoppard, has stopped it, and he’s been removed and renewed by the perky English Rose, Helena Bonham-Carter. Now, immediately after the Helena Bonham-Carter Presidential victory was announced, The London Library released the news with the aid of a Medium Close-Up photograph of Helena, positioned in the back stacks of the library, wearing a spot of Victorian costume and a Victorian top-hat that was jauntily off-bonk. I’m sure you can conceive, dear readers, the full impact of the plot! This Helena Bonking-Carter photo-move was a real tour de force in the bibliophile world and a conclusive coup de grace to poor playwright Tom Stopit.

Now, I’ve been up and down and down and up those London Library back-stacks again and again in the hope of having a chat to Helena Bonham-Carter but I couldn’t find her anywhere. It’s almost as though her wearing a jauntily-bonked-top-hat in the back-stacks was a titillating one-off event organised for the purposes of publicity rather than being a permanent installation. Strangely, after circumnavigating these back-stacks numerous times, I always ended up back where I started, returning empty-handed from my quest in distress, right by the shelf labelled - ‘Fools’! I must say, I might have to threaten to rescind my membership if the library keeps playing this joke on me and refuses to redress my labour in some way.

Well, you can imagine, can’t you? At Slimelight March Mayhem it was information overload. There I was, needing to clear up the matter of whether Miss Ruby Alexia (SG) is someone who curtsies on occasion, and I’ve got this whole Miss Helena (BC) jaunty Victorian top-hat and Miss Ruby Alexia (SG) jaunty military cap symmetry going on. It’s really too much for a man’s mind to cope withal! I haven’t got capacity. It’s like a full-scale military occupation of cognitive territory. With this kind of uncanny double-vision bowling along between these two hat-angles, there is just no neurological room for considering a solution to The Strange Mystery of the Phantom Curtsey!

But there’s a snag anyway, because there’s always as snag, you see:

If I ask Miss Ruby Alexia (SG) whether she is wont to curtsey on occasion, and if, in meeting her again, she curtsies again, I’m so blasted on my birthday I’ll never find out the truth of the matter! We’ll just be back to the whole ‘is-it-real?’ or ’is-it-a-hallucination?’ or ‘is-it-a-supernatural-event?’ debate!

I’ll be dumbstruck once more with all my difficulties compounded, condensed, and recomplicated.

It’s now 4:30 a.m.

I can’t form a sentence. Were I to do so and miraculously mouth a monologue I shall be beheaded.

The situation is unfathomable in its labyrinthine complexity. Even Odysseus couldn’t get out of this one, with or without Athena’s help.

The options don’t look too rosy, if you ask me.

Well, I’m a man who knows my limits.

I am.

Thankfully, on rare occasions, I can be sensible. Not cool necessarily, but not necessarily uncool either.

I let Fortitude win the argument.

Musical Outerlude

I said hepcats, sinners, BRATS,

Suck on this for sunshine,

This is the resurrection

Yea, of the good times...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dTuOjfjM-w