The Apology Conundrum: Episode 01, The Prologue

Or; Cool and Counter-Cool, Tall Tale IV

Or; The Zero Complex: Chapter 00000

0

How Many False Starts?

Alert readers will have noticed that Monday’s opening episode of 'The Apology Conundrum: Episode I', has now been superseded with an alternative opening episode, ‘Episode 01’!

There’s nothing quite like starting a story all over again because you’re confused.

I bet you can’t wait for tomorrow’s opening episode, can you?

Episode 001!

Tomorrow’s episode shall feature my apology, at Vanitas, to the wonderful Mrs Prong!

As for next week’s opening episode, Episode 0001, who knows?

Who cares?

The Apology Knot

We have in front of us, dear readers, a Hydra-headed multiplication of apology-dilemmas! 1

As you know from the opening episode, Episode I, I’m still haunted by my non-apology to Miss Gold, but that might be cancelled out by that fact that I never apologised to Bishi Bhattacharya for sending her a photograph, many years ago, of my Muriel Spark books and accompanying it with the wrong preposition!

Now, Bishi came up to me and said ‘Hello’ at the last Vanitas, so I’m assuming that everything’s alright!

Strictly entre-nous, she might not have noticed the Muriel-photo-preposition-blunder, so I better keep quiet about it!

Now, as you know, keeping quiet is clearly what I should have done, at Wraith Club, about my Insta comment on Uncertain Journey’s ‘Goth-and-friendly-dog-combo photos’!

I landed myself right in the soup there, didn’t I?

...

If you’re not familiar, have a little sideways shimmy here:

That story’s high up in my Confessional Gallup Poll Hit Parade, by the way.

However, it has been toppled recently from its Silver Trophy position by the Allen TG and Kaori confession, who overtook it last weekend, driving a highly-supercharged-narrative-racing-car, here

(I imagine Uncertain Journey’s quite upset about the whole thing and probably has been thinking of nothing else. She’s probably planning ways to get her former position restored, but I shall rush to her aid because I’m kind like that.)

...

Now, my apology to Rachel Redfern at Slimelight: Alien Nation, which I haven’t told you about yet in detail, but briefly mentioned in the other opening episode, could be seen as not dissimilar to the infamous Uncertain Journey faux pas!

Travel backwards around the narrative roundabout here

I apologised to Rachel Redfern for something which she didn't notice, because she was probably preoccupied with twiddling EQ knobs and plonking about with Phaser buttons and shit, and I landed myself in a vat of refectory-quality soup!

As a reflective individual, I need to apologise to everyone, inclusive of myself, for not having learnt my lessons!

But, hold on!

Not so fast, dear innocent bystanders.

Things, or apologies, are not quite so simple!

Get this:

I apologised for my apology to Uncertain Journey at The Bat Cave, and it all came out rosy!

How about that then?

So, the pressing matter, apart from the overdue apology to Miss Gold (whose 7” Radio Edit of this 12" here was a disaster), is whether I should apologise for my apology to Rachel Redfern!

Will it be like the Uncertain Journey Round 2 Apology or more uncertain?

Thank God my apology to Mrs Prong went well!

I did feel bad about hogging all the photographers at the last le Boutique Bazaar!

Poor Mrs Prong didn’t get a look-in.

Hmm. I wonder whether I should apologise to Mika Katana for offering to purchase her some Whittard’s Loose Leaf Earl Grey Tea?

They say you should never make assumptions in the fetish scene, don’t they?

And here I go, assuming that Mika K. currently owns a tea-pot blessed with infuser technology!

I wonder if that apology will go smoothly like ‘The Strange Case of Mrs Prong’ or will it herald the kind of usual disaster like ‘The Rachel Redfern Rebound’?

Maybe Mika hasn’t noticed my teapot howler?

Maybe I ought to cover my tracks in case I bump into her at the next Vanitas?

Well, it took four earthquakes to destroy The Lighthouse at Alexandria, but with three overdue apologies, I'm certainly on my way!

I'm close to creating another one of The Seven Travesties of The Modern World!

I knew I was good for something!

Coming to think of it, now that I've unwittingly revealed the Muriel-Spark-photo-preposition fiasco to Bishi, I probably owe her an apology too!

That makes the required four!

Is Zara DuRose the only person who I've managed not to offend?

Mind you, there's plenty of opportunity tonight at ZDR!

It's her birthday too, so the timing's just right!

Let's hope her birthday gift doesn't arrive in time, or, if it does, she doesn't like it!

...

I tell you, it’s odd that Ricardo Castro keeps sending me invitations!

Maybe he doesn’t know what I get up to?

Maybe he doesn’t know how many people I apologise to?

Maybe I should keep that quiet too? 2

…

I wish Miss Kim Rub would tell me how to behave.

I’m a loose-apology-cannon.

It’s havoc out there.

…

Maybe Miss Kim Rub has told me how to behave?

Maybe I ignored her advice?

Maybe I'll regret that.

Maybe it’s none of your business, you nosy ruffians!

(Although I could tempt you with revealing a secret here: 3)

…

I tell you, I’m glad Dr Patricia McCormack asked to be mates on Facebook after Monster Queen!

Maybe she can explain to me what the hell I’m doing?

She probably wanted a sensible conversation about the JG Ballard book I’ve been writing (intermittently between my serial blunders), but she’s a long-way from getting anything so meaningful, isn’t she?

…

An epistle, if you please:

Dear purple peril,

As a brat, shouldn’t you be deliberately sowing the seeds of discontent?

You seem to be spreading violent social discord accidentally by means of collateral damage!

Your deep-seated need to be polite is really becoming a communal problem.

It’s a bit of a paradox, isn’t it?

Can you throw any light on the matter?

Yours insincerely,

London’s purple peril

Brat.

An Apology Double-Whammy and The Ivy Wreath

So, should I risk offering Rachel Redfern an apology for my apology?

Let’s take a peek at how the ‘apology-double-whammy strategy’ worked out to my benefit at The Bat Cave relaunch-party!

(No. The Bat Cave party, dear reader, not the exhibition.)

(Invitation only, darling, invitation only.)

(Any Tom, Dick, Desmond or Desdomona, could go to the exhibition, you know.)

So, I road-tested an apology-chicane-rebound conversational move on Uncertain Journey and it not only worked, but she also gracefully disclosed a telling-truth about her reading habits!

In so doing, she casually awarded me a wreath of ivy, as judges were known to do in ancient Athens for distinguished play-about-bawdy-upstarts, like Aristowhatnot and Menanderabout, for their ramshackle writing skills!

(You know, those blokes who, much to my consternation, wrote rude plays about upstanding willies.)

Little was I prepared that night to discover my 'Confessions' had gathered a hardcore 'cult following' from earnest workers in the financial industries, owing to the far-reach of Uncertain Journey’s broadcasting abilities!

It just goes to show, that you might think you’re about to lose your head in approaching, with too great a speed, an etiquette-hairpin-bend, but you can emerge unscathed with the creative carte-blanche of the Mulsanne Straight before your eyes!

The Foolish Footnotes:

0 Diligent readers of my work, of which there are understandably very few, will have noticed that this current chapter, rather cleverly I might add, is a strange intersection point between three different sets of tales! How about that? We’re in an interstitial zone, my friends! It’s just as if JG Ballard was driving about The Spaghetti Junction, lumbered upon a magical roundabout (that no one's noticed) in a clapped-out car, and started talking to himself in the voice of Bertie Wooster! It’s just the same. Anyway, so I can put you out of your misery and interminable boredom, let’s state the case clearly!

This chapter is the second opening episode, of which there shall be at least five opening episodes, of the new series called ‘The Apology Conundrum’, but it is also the next chapter, Chapter 00000, of my novelette ‘The Zero Complex’. But, in the strange abyss of time, you’ll remember that there is a further network of seven tales, of the shaggy-dog variety, called ‘Cool and Counter Cool’, and this chapter is Tall Tale IV of that very series. Readers who, as yet, have not been driven into the mouth of madness by reading my noble scripts, will recall that Tall Tale II has already been published, featuring the incredible tale of Miss Ruby Alexia (SG)’s cartoon sledgehammer, phantom curtsey, and jaunty-angled military cap! It's enough to leave one quite incredulous. [Return]

1 This is more baffling than when those blokes get confused on the battlefield because the other blokes all dress up as decoy-Kings, in Henry IV Part I! [Return]

2 Speaking of prepositions, maybe I should apologise to the reader for a sequence of three dangling prepositions! [Return]

3 You really haven't learned your lesson from the link at the end of Episode 5 of this notorious blog, have you? [Return]