That Absence In Full

Whatever happened to willpower eh? What happened to the noble ethic of tying yourself down to a decent repetitive task and seeing it through to the end? It is with a heavy heart, as Robin Cook would say, that I confess that I have let this particular routine slip. The one of expounding half-truths and semi-chewed opinions using the fabulous medium of the humble weblog I mean. But I have an excuse. Oh yes. This is what happened, and you may want to sit down for this, for it is quite harrowing and I got really really wet.

About four days ago I was inspecting a manhole, for no other reason that that the lid had been partially placed on it at a jaunty angle, and it seemed vaguely artistic. Now, I have no pretensions of understanding art, but it may be that the awesome beauty of this everyday object tossed with gay abandon into an unfamiliar pose was enough to send me swooning and I duly collapsed into said manhole.

There it was dark. And wet, note earlier comment. At times like this, you have only a few options:

a) Weep uncontrollably – we’ll come back to this one.
b) Summon some kind of superhero using the rims of your spectacles to glance sunlight into a Morse code distress signal. Or better still, morph an image in the clouds of your chosen distress signal in plain English, if your glasses have this facility, so that even the Strathclyde Police may come to your help. Those of you with 20-20 vision or contact lenses are fucked at this point.
c) Using your nail file and/or pick-axe, dig your way out, causing untold damage to the pavement the fixing of which will be more than amply paid for by your outrageous council tax.
d) Holler like an orphan trapped in a water-wheel.

Of course, unbeknown to me, bounding across the fields and pastures of the PC World car park was a four-legged friend opening up exciting option (e): Salvation By Border Collie. Her timing was unfortunate. No sooner had she started to alert passers-by to the fact that there was an animal trapped in the manhole, than the hunger pangs began to bite. I had been down there at least 20 minutes. I promptly shot the dog and marinaded it in salsa sauce before ingesting it whole, in the manner of a snake, which did my digestion no good.

Later in the night, I slowly realised the horror of my situation. Had my hunger really been so burdensome that I would sacrifice my only hope of escape? Indeed. It was then I decided that weeping would be the way forward. By weeping enough, I would be able to fill the manhole with water, thus bringing me to a triumphant, and buoyant, conclusion to my adventures. As the murky saline sloshed against the bridge of my nose though, I realised that I was drowning, and decided that I would have to sacrifice the weighty boots dragging me down. With further disillusion, I noticed that the water was just draining slowly into the rock beneath me, and that I would never weep enough to float myself to the surface. In desperation, I tried to think of the truly upsetting injustices in the world, like impending global conflict, and that new one-way system on the South Side, but alas to no avail.

I wiped the leftover dog hair from my mouth and decided on a course of action. You may or may not know, or care, that there is a large belt of coal that runs from the Ruhr Valley in Germany, under the North Sea, through the northern part of Britain and all the way across the Atlantic to Pennsylvania in the States. This explains the geography of the coal industry in these regions. Anyway, by judiciously picking my way through the coal seams, I made my way westward towards the promised land, knowing that the only way I would ever see the azure sky, the bronze stone-lapping light of sunset and all those above-ground things we hold dear in our everyday lives, like orchards, wooded hilltops and pterodactyls, I would have to pick myself free, wherever the seam might take me.

The subterranean passage was a fantasy world of dark blacks, lighter blacks, and here and there the odd playful sparkle of charred black all set against the radiant background of pitch darkness. My eyes grew accustomed to the dark and changed shape accordingly. Somewhere around mile nine, the fingers started to become calloused and gentle bruises turned to scabs which sloughed off to reveal a reptilian under-skin. The fingers appeared to become more varnished and claw-like, grappling with the endless coal ahead and only occasionally stopping to feel nimbly around unexpected obstructions – the metallic clink of gas pipes, or the supple curves in the bones of a forcibly expired gang member.

Long story short, I made it to Pennsylvania a few days later, and surfaced through a disused raccoon tunnel that had fallen on hard times. I was welcomed into a rickety barn by a withered-looking man, but I had cause to mistrust him, for his beard was too short. He said his name was “Stew” but that people called him “Lumber” because he was as quick-witted as a felled tree trunk. He told me that he did not understand this statement and would I please explain it to him. Something must have got lost in the translation because he then imprisoned me for what seemed an interminable amount of time, feeding me on corn and threatening that he would send me to the guillotine if I didn’t lay an egg damn soon. But by now, my digging claws had evolved into machine-like tools of escape and freedom was cheaply won.

For a time, I lived as a wandering hobo, lankily making my naïve way with a song between my lips and a lightness of step (which comes from a diet of corn over many weeks). Hoboism is not nearly as romantic as you will suppose. People spit at you. They unravel that cloth that you have tied to the end of your stick and spit into that. They jeer at you, and spit at your boots. They spit in your food, and on your donkey. It is a low low life. Eventually, I thought that I heard home calling me, but quickly realised it was the rumbling sound of those oysters repeating on me. The gathering storm lay within, false signal or not, and I had to head home.

Luckily my facial hair was enough to convince those friendly people at customs that I must be expelled from the country as quickly as possible, and after only the briefest of cavity searches – they didn’t even use the Suction Device - I found myself passing the sweet Statue of Liberty herself on an ocean-going liner bound for Liverpool. Those were the heydays of steam shipping of course, back in mid-November 2007. After a brief mishap involving an iceberg and Kate Winslet, which was all sorted out with a bit of back-slapping, tobacco in the pipe, politely declined shrimp-on-sticks, a charming orchestra with a tasty bassoonist, and a toast to appease the Ice God, Thaw, I made it ashore on a plank of wood, where I emerged from the water looking like a male version of Ursula Andress, but with larger baps.

I write to you now in-between surgeries to have my long-suffering hands transmuted from Godzilla-face-tearer back into their original stumpy, human form. In manhole world, many months had passed, but I am surprised to note that, here in Glasgow, a mere four days have elapsed. Which is only long enough for four government scandals.

“Beware ye the lure of the manhole. In its darkness lies the ruin of pity” – Neil O’Pinion (2002), famous potholer and necrophiliac whose bestselling book, Me and My Stiffy is in all good bookshops now.