Economical With The Truth

The folk with the sandwich boards may be right. I don’t mean the folk in Oxford Street proclaiming “Golf Sale” with gigantic arrows on boards, though they are probably also right - it makes little commercial sense to lie about such things. Unless they are directing you into the knifepoint of some one-too-many-time-happy-slapped disgruntled youth trying to save enough money from hapless tourists and Chino-wearing golfers for their next fix of superglue. Incidentally, if you want to peddle golf equipment to people, I can think of better places to do it than Oxford Street where most people are listlessly pacing, chewing like drunken cattle, aimlessly spinning like tops into the path of buses in a vain effort to thrust themselves into some alternate Universe where life does not consist of supermarket queues, pickpockets and limpet-like shop assistants. Perhaps set up a golf range on Hampstead Heath with some tasteful caricatures of Gordon Brown or Wendy Alexander for the general public to aim at. Put the figures in those “Trust me, I’m not a fuckwit” poses beloved of politicians and the infuriated public will soon get into the swing of it. Groan.

Anyway, what I was referring to is those people with the “The End Is Nigh” billboards. You see, in a year’s time, that pound in your pocket – or anyone else’s – will be worth 3.3% less than it is now. Actually, it feels like things will be worse than that, perhaps the mighty Bank has been a little optimistic or perhaps that figure will be the start of a rollercoaster tumble featuring larger and larger numbers until we are lost in a whirlpool of scientific notation, lists of zeroes jamming down our throats as we hold a fuel pump pistol-like to our welcoming temples. Or perhaps not.

In an effort to find out what the fuck is happening, I went to the Bank of England Museum, which you can reach off Bartholomew Lane in The City. It was a strange mixture of Legoland and Imperial Celebration, what with springy toys demonstrating the link between inflation and interest rates, and all those 19th Century black and white sketches of wagon-loads of gold pilfered from the colonies trundling through the doors of Threadneedle Street while scantily-clad street urchins with chimney-soot faces dance endearingly to scores from Oliver with synchronized choreography.

Now, the museum is really great and all and I heartily recommend it, but it hadn’t caught up with events. In tone, it seemed self-congratulatory about how in over ten years of independence from the Government it had only failed on its inflation target in one month, information two days out of date by the time I visited. Dejected, I found another source, namely fiscal expert Lord Farquhar of Sotheby, and sent this blog’s fictional minion, Slug the Journo, to meet him at his orchard near High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire to discuss exactly which shade of shite we have collectively found ourselves in this time, and whether Dulux would be able to keep their promise to produce a paint of that colour to fittingly bedeck the innards of the London Stock Exchange come autumn.

The scene is a lovingly restored orchard. Restored, of course, after the catastrophic Great Scrumping of ’04 in which many newborn apples were needlessly slaughtered by tykes on unicycles. Slug and Lord Farquhar are deep in conversation about the serious and dour-faced economical woes facing the British economy today:

Slug: Lord Farquhar, great to have someone of your esteemed stature with us on this fine day.
Lord: This is my orchard, mine I tell you. You are with me. My secretary said that you were a professional.
Slug: Indeed, humble apologies. Now, you have been dealing with the economy for a number of years. Might I ask in what capacity you have been involved?
Lord: Indeed [brushes cravat clumsily to one side, though it immediately flops back to the front].
I have been involved in a number of ways, buying and selling and that kind of thing. Mainly buying though. Things like bread, milk, croutons. Though in fairness my secretary usually deals with it all ‘front line’. I can’t stand those newsagents as they call them, their musty air plays havoc with my lungs, they have been so feeble of late.
Slug: Now you are known as something of a giant in the economy, coming in at a hefty twenty stone which is pretty bloody heavy for those of you reading in metric, indeed it took three hours for the contractor to winch you into this apple tree in which you have insisted we conduct this interview.
Lord: Yes?
Slug: Well, is there a reason that you have chosen this setting?
Lord: Indeed. Now I don’t want to labour the point, but the economy of late has been a frightful fucking mess. I had my home repossessed by the Bank two months ago. Those forty or so seagulls you can see orbiting the mansion are the new tenants.
Slug: Indeed that is fucking frightful. What would you have us believe is the reason for this?
Lord: Well in the main, all this inflation is being caused by rising fuel prices and rising food prices. I personally believe that a few speculators have been buying in vast quantities of oil and taking it off the market, which has the effect of inflating prices for the rest of us. Of course that could be mere speculation on my part!
[Finding his own joke incredibly funny, he proceeds to guffaw in a raucous manner so that the folds in his stomach can be seen to quiver from under his waistcoat. The entire tree gyrates dangerously under his heaving weight before the trunk lurches to a fifteen degree angle].
Slug: How do you think these rising prices, combined with the credit crunch and the effect on house prices is going to affect us in the near future?
Lord: Well I know for a fact that the credit rating of a few of those seagulls is pretty poor, so I don’t imagine that they are going to be able to hold on to it for long. The wider picture is that with the price of fuel rising exponentially to an estimated ten pounds a litre by next year, and perhaps ten-fold for each of the following five consecutive years, we are going to have to indulge in some very unpalatable activities.
Slug: Such as…?
Lord: Please, do have an apple, you are my guest after all. Yes, I am talking about walking. In fact it is my prediction that we will evolve to have much tougher soles on our feet, like frogs, or trainers have. The human race has an enormous ability to adapt you see. Look at how we survived the meteorite that killed the dinosaurs using the never-before tried or tested ‘duck and cover’ method. The shape of the dinosaurs’ skeletons precluded their adopting that position. That’s what evolution did for us, baby.
Slug: Quite.
Lord: Also, with the supermarket cartel tightening its grip on the public’s wallets like the thieving claws of a soap-dodging street robber, other sources of food and nourishment are going to have to be considered. Won’t you have another apple?
Slug: Thank you. And what shape might these new foodstuffs take?
Lord: Well, there are always those biofuels that people are talking about. A couple of pints of that stuff will knock you cold for several days at a time leaving you incapable of worrying about the cost of food or fuel. My dear wife Dorothy unfortunately drank a yard of biofuel for a bet shortly before her sudden and unexplained death last year, so I can vouch for its potency. Also, we might have to resort to more drastic measures, food-wise.
Slug: You mean…
Lord: Yes, cannibalism.
[At this point, Lord Farquhar looks down at my thigh. It is exposed as my trousers suffered a large gash when I tried to climb into the apple tree prior to the interview and snagged the trousers on the deliberately sharpened point of a tree limb. On that same tree limb had been skewered four squirrels in various states of decay.
Lord Farquhar licks his lips and moves his head almost imperceptibly closer to my flesh. I try to combat an urge to ditch my journalistic integrity in favour of fleeing for my life].
Slug: So, do you see any other way out of this financial crisis apart from a human society defiled by excesses of drinking biofuel and ravaging each other like deep-fried chicken drumsticks after a particularly savage night out?
Lord: None at all. In the wayward trends in our economy, however, I do not see a reason to give up hope. Rather I see an opportunity. This is merely a stage of advancement for the human race, where we ditch currency and markets and economy and all the chains and morals that bind our society into our current primitive state and move in to a freer more equal society where we can feast on each other at will, lathering each other in peanut butter before gorging ourselves on street-side banquets fit for Zeus.
Slug: Lord Farquhar, thank you for your time.
[At this point, the tree collapses, and the aforementioned tree limb skewers Lord Farquhar through the heart so that he appears inanimate, like a fifth, obese, aristocratic squirrel, pierced and motionless, waiting for his slow demise by decay, never to view the dawn of the day when society would act out his words and devolve into a cesspool of horror and fermented wheat].

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LAST NIGHT, Kiran saw Radiohead in Glasgow Green which was so fucking fantastic that it defies words. At several moments he experienced joy so profound that he almost had a seizure. Indeed his left leg has still not fully recovered which makes using the clutch hard. Today is his last official day in Glasgow.
Experience some live Radiohead action for yourself – here is a snippet from a secret gig they played in London’s Brick Lane back in January.