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Organisation Man: Chapter 25

2012-02-02T18:18:00.000Z

Claire and Lexa meet an old acquaintance, but find him much changed.

"Will you join us, Mr Ryan?" said Sigismund Grieg.

"I would love to, Mr Grieg". Barry Ryan sat down at the table's empty seat and poured himself a cup of coffee. Then he also helped himself to a pain au chocolat. "Mmmm, these are very good, Mr Grieg".

"So Ryan, you've turned?" said Claire.

"Turned?" said Ryan.

"You’re not one of us anymore, I can see that. "What did they do to you? How long did you hold out?"

"They didn't really do anything to me", answered Ryan. "Mr Grieg found the time to have a few chats with me, and the more I talked to him, well the more I found myself thinking that he was the man with the answers. I looked back on the work we do for the Organisation, and I could see how pointless and futile it was. But being given a chance to fulfil my potential with Mr Grieg – that was an opportunity to really do some good, to help make the world a better place. I don't feel like I've been turned, Claire. That would imply some kind of coercion, or that I have been brainwashed or been forced into some kind of breakdown. That's not what has happened at all. I've just had a chance to reflect and to think about what I'm doing with my life – and what I want to do is help Mr Grieg in his great work".

"You've really swallowed the kool-aid, Ryan", said Lexa.

"It's not like that at all!" Ryan protested. "I'm not some kind of brainwashed automaton. I know what I'm doing. And if Mr Grieg is able to talk to you, well then you'll know what you're doing too. If you think about it all you will realise that what we are doing is not just right, it's necessary".

Grieg smiled indulgently at Ryan. "I find false modesty worse than arrogance", he said to Claire and Lexa. "So I must tell you that what Mr Ryan is telling you is correct. I have generally found that when I talk to people about my plans, well they end up wanting to help me achieve them".

"I don't buy this", said Lexa. "There must be something funny here. Brainwashing, drugs, some kind of neural reprogramming".

"There's nothing like that", said Ryan blandly. "I simply listened to Mr Grieg and reflected on what he had to say".

"Oh come on!" snapped Lexa. "You're saying this isn't some kind of mind control cult, but if it isn't what's with the moustaches?"

"Eh, what do you mean?" said Ryan, sounding a tad defensive.

"You know what I mean. How come everyone who works for Grieg has moustache?"

"Well I don't think everyone who works for Mr Grieg has a moustache", fumbled Ryan.

"No not everyone – most of the women don't. But the men. The men all have moustaches. You didn't have a moustache at home, Ryan, but now you do. What's that all about?"

"A moustache just like Grieg's!" added Claire, doing her stating the obvious thing.

"Well, I don't think it means anything…" said Ryan. But he was clearly a bit confused and now gave the impression also of feeling a bit on the spot. "I mean, I just started thinking I'd like to grow a moustache… they look smart, that's all…" He trailed off.

"There's not really much to it", said Grieg. "I have a moustache. I like them. I've always liked them. I know they are a bit unusual these days and that they have certain connotations, but that doesn't bother me. So I have a moustache. But I've found that the people I take onboard, well with the men anyway, a big part of it is that when they start appreciating my goals they don't just want to follow me, they want in a sense to be me. It's not always entirely conscious, but the moustache is the easiest way for them to take on something of my appearance".

"What about the women?" asked Claire. "They don't start wearing comedy moustaches. Don't they want to be you?"

"It's a bit different with the women", answered Grieg. "The men want to be me, but the women, well, they want me. I said earlier that I hate false modesty so you will understand that I am simply telling the truth when I say that as women get to know me and my plans they increasingly feel an attraction to me. From a photograph you wouldn't think me much, but in person, while I just somehow seem to have something. For whatever reason, heterosexual women find me irresistibly attractive – as I think you are beginning to find yourselves".

Claire and Lexa squirmed uncomfortably. Grieg smiled.

There was an awkward pause. Eventually Claire spoke. "I still don't understand what you are doing here – why would a technology entrepreneur feel obliged to abduct Ryan here?"

"I am so much more than a technology entrepreneur, Ms Maguire, though I will give you that I am one of the most gifted computer scientists and electronic engineers the world has ever seen. I have considerably wider interests, both scientifically and also politically. That shouldn't surprise you. I am working to re-make the world, to make it a better place for everyone. Technological baubles are all very well, but I realised some time ago that if I was to change the world I would have to control it. Mr Ryan was unfortunate – or perhaps fortunate – in that he stumbled accidentally onto one of my more covert operations in London".

"You are behind the passport forgeries?" said Lexa.

"The passport forgeries? Oh no, nothing of the sort. That kind of petty criminality really is beneath me. Mr Agaskayon is the front man for a criminal operation stretching back to a couple of crooked civil servants in your passport office. I have nothing to do with them. No, with Mr Ryan it was your organisation's choice of where to have him stay in London that brought him too close to my operation for comfort. You see, the Cartwright Friendly might look like an ordinary low budget hotel to you, but it is one of a number of such establishments under my control across this city".

"So what, you are some kind of fleapit entrepreneur?" said Lexa. "And you kidnapped Ryan because he was going to expose you as a secret hotelier? This really is a bit outlandish".

"Would that it were so simple, Ms Hackett. No, it's a bit more complicated than that. I mentioned that my scientific interests go beyond the electronic. Another area in which I have made numerous breakthroughs, which I have chosen not to publicise, is in the area of the mind and psychic energy. Something I discovered some time ago was that it is possible to tap psychic energy from people while they sleep. If this is done carefully then the 'victim', so to speak, does not even notice, especially if they are only tapped for a short period. And another of my discoveries is the simple one that it is possible to store this psychic energy and keep it in a reservoir for later use. Unfortunately, it turned out that your colleague Mr Ryan here is a latent sensitive. When he was in the Friendly, the presence of all that stored energy above him fed into his dreams and led to the strange hallucinations you may have heard of. My people realised this but let him be, thinking that it was just a coincidence that a sensitive were to find himself in the hotel. When he returned, however, they jumped to the false conclusion that he was actually investigating them, so they took action".

"That's why I was abducted", said Ryan. "It may sound terrible, but I realise now that it was the best thing that ever happened to me".

"Yeah whatever", said Lexa.

"|t was all an unfortunate misunderstanding, but it does mean that Mr Ryan is now realising his potential with my organisation", said Grieg.

"I see", said Claire.

"Look Grieg", said Lexa, "you're losing me now. I had you down as one of those megalomaniac geniuses who come up every so often, trying to use your skills with computers to make yourself rich and powerful, but with all this psychic crap – well, you're obviously barking mad. Next thing you'll be using evil Reiki to strike down your enemies".

Lexa's comments caused a sharp intake of breath from Barry Ryan and all the armed men that Grieg had standing around the room. There was another awkward pause in which she felt it not impossible that she would soon find her body riddled with bullets. Grieg himself just looked at her intently and then smiled indulgently.

"Oh Ms Hackett!" he said. "I forget that you have not been in my presence for that long and so have not yet come round to my way of thinking. I remember when I was making my own breakthroughs in the psychic field, I was astonished that something that seemed like such pseudoscientific nonsense could turn out to be real. But it is real, as the world will soon see when I make the most spectacular demonstration of the uses to which psychic energy can be put".

"What do you mean?" said Lexa.

"Think about it for a bit", said Grieg. "Put aside your scepticism and accept for the moment that what I am saying is true. Now, what have I told you? That I have discovered how to tap psychic energy and that I have discovered how to store it. But what would I be planning to do with all that energy".

"I really haven't the faintest idea", said Lexa.

"It's quite simple. My establishments have been draining people for years. The reservoirs of energy they contain are enormous. And what am I going to do with it all? Why, I am just going to release it".

"That does seem like a bit of a waste of all that effort", said Lexa.

"Oh not at all, Ms Hackett. Think back to the 1940s, when the American scientists discovered how to release the energy contained in the atom. When they released this energy, they did not just pour it down a drain – they used it to destroy cities. It is a bit like that with my psychic reservoirs. When their vast store of energy is released then it will send a psychic shockwave across London. It will incapacitate everyone here for twenty-four hours, apart from those of my people who will be wearing special helmets I have designed to resist such a shockwave. After twenty four hours, the victims will be right as rain again, though I do accept that there will be some fatalities, say from people who are driving when the psychic bomb goes off".

Claire and Lexa did not know what to make of this. On the one hand, it was the most outlandish thing they had ever heard, so it was something that would be easy to dismiss as the ravings of a madman. But Grieg seemed so matter of fact about it all, and seemed to sincerely believe the nonsense he was saying, that maybe, just maybe there was something in it. If so then this new truth was disturbing.

"Alright Grieg", said Claire, after letting his revelation sink in for a few minutes. "For the sake of argument I will accept that what you are saying is true. But why? Surely there are easier ways to demonstrate your psychic breakthroughs?"

"Oh of course, of course, but incapacitating London for twenty-four hours, that provides me with an unparalleled opportunity".

Claire and Lexa now found themselves thinking of a city of people dead to the world with only Grieg and his cronies immune. All kinds of opportunities presented themselves.

"What are you going to do?" said Lexa. "Rob banks, raid art galleries, use this huge disaster you have created as an opportunity to enrich yourself?"

"Oh no, Ms Hackett, nothing so vulgar". Grieg smiled again, now looking almost beatific. "I am not a monster, nor am I a criminal, even though I admit that what I am doing is illegal, at least by the laws now in force. When I said I want to make the world a better place, I was not lying. So I do not want to loot London, I want to conquer it. When people wake up from the coma the psychic bomb engenders, they will find that the Transition is over, that instead my people rule here".

"Now you really are being mental", said Lexa. "We've gone through this building, we know how big it is. Even if everyone here is one of your zombified minions, there is no way that the couple of hundred Grieg Industries employees would be able to rule over a city the size of London".

"Of course not, Ms Hackett. But I have many more bows to my quiver than Grieg Industries. Where did you think the money for all this was coming? I get some from technology investors, but the psychic reservoirs cost far far more to run than this humble technology company. Private investors do not have resources of that kind. But governments do. And a government would be happy to throw money into a project that would allow them to conquer the United Kingdom, particularly if the UK were the last real barrier to their dominance of the Eurasian continent".

"What government are you speaking of?" said Claire, though she already knew the answer.

"Do I have to spell it out, Ms Maguire? If I were to tell you that a vast fleet of airships was even now massing in the North Sea, waiting for the psychic bomb to go off so that they can fly in and take control of first London and then the rest of this country -would you know who I was talking about then?"

"The Zeppelin Confederacy", said Claire, and shuddered.

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Organisation Man: Chapter 24

2012-02-01T18:17:00.001Z

Claire and Lexa in the belly of the beast.

Claire and Lexa peeled off their black cat suits to reveal more normal clothes underneath. Now they were dressed like nerdy office workers who for some reason felt the need to come in at the weekend and work in the middle of the night on some important project. If they were caught walking around the building on an internal CCTV camera then, hopefully, no one would think twice about them. The black outfits folded up neatly into the small bags they were carrying.

They went through the door and down the steps into the building. Despite the lateness of the hour, the corridors were fully lit, so there was no need for torches. Claire and Lexa silently thanked Grieg Industries' profligate use of energy. The stairwell they climbed down seemed designed for no reason other than accessing the roof. The walls were bare and unadorned. On the wall below another door brought them out into what seemed like the central services column of the building, with lift shafts and stairwells leading down to the rest of the building. They took the opportunity to quickly slip through the rooms on this floor, which appeared to be a succession of well-appointed offices for the senior people of the company. From all their walls photographs of Sigismund Grieg looked down, sometimes smiling, sometimes looking stern, sometimes looking like he was trying to help the viewer achieve their potential. Or something. They found what appeared to be Grieg's own office. It had his name on the door and was the only room they had looked in thus far that did not have his picture on the wall. Sadly there was no document on his desk outlining a six-point plan for world conquest. They thought of snaffling his computer, but it would have been a bit big to carry and they reckoned that someone like Grieg would have enough computer security stuff installed here to prevent a hole-in-the-wall outfit like the Organisation from cracking his PC and learning his secrets. So they moved on.

The floor below boasted nothing more exciting than a series of large open plan offices at which an army of computers sat idly, albeit with a few partitioned off rooms no doubt for local managers. Again the walls were festooned with pictures of Sigismund Grieg, both photographs and what appeared also to be reproductions of painted portraits. His luxurious moustache seemed to follow Claire and Lexa around the rooms. They satisfied themselves that, as with the floor above, there was no space for a hidden room on the floor where Ryan might be secreted. So they moved on to the floor below. Which was almost identical to the one above it. The only difference here was that there was some young guy (with a moustache, obviously), working at one of the computers. Some sad fucker with nothing better to do on a Saturday night than work on computer software, thought Lexa. Something similar crossed Claire's mind. They waved at him listlessly. He waved back and went back to his coding. Claire and Lexa then tried to appear like they were looking in the room for someone else and then left as though they were doing so because they had not seen whoever it was they were looking for. What they had ascertained was that this floor, like the ones above it, did not appear to have anything that looked like a hidden room.

So they went down again, to the first floor. The layout was different here. This seemed to be where the company had its meeting rooms and cafeteria. There was more to check here, but Lexa and Claire were able to move through it quickly. There was nothing unusual here either, though Claire did help herself to a small cake in the kitchen – stress situations always made her hungry.

Downwards they went, to the ground floor. Lexa led the way here as her visit in to meet the man from Human Potential had given her some sense of the layout here. She steered Claire away from the reception area – if there was anywhere that would have security guards still on duty then that would be it. It was also somewhere not really worth checking, as a secret holding area for prisoners is not something you would want adjacent to the main entrance, somewhere that almost by definition is the most public part of any building. What was more interesting was the back of the building, as the homeless guy had told them that someone who was possibly Ryan had been brought in through a rear entrance there. They moved as quietly as possible in that direction, albeit in a manner that was meant to look normal and unsuspicious to anyone catching a glimpse of them on a CCTV screen. When they found the rear entrance, they were not surprised to find that it was closed and locked, looking like it might be alarmed. But what made them think they had hit the jackpot was finding a small door beside it leading downward – a separate stairwell down rather than the main stairwell in the central shaft. This would be an ideal way to bring someone down into a hidden underground area without having to go through areas of the building where prying eyes might be encountered. If there was a secret dungeon then this surely was the way down to it.

They went through the door and followed the stairs down. Somewhere at the back of her mind Lexa wondered why a stairwell leading to a secret dungeon would be accessible through an unlocked door. She chose not to dwell on this anomalous thought.

The stairs went down. And down. And down and down. They lost track of how many steps they took, but they felt certain that they were now down lower than the level of the car park. Then the steps stopped and another door opened out into a corridor. They gingerly stepped through and moved down away from the stairwell. Doors opened off the corridor, and another faced them at its end. They crept along, unsure whether to go for the one at the end or the ones along the way.

The first door they tried opened into a darkened room. Claire went first, but she was unable to find a light switch. Thinking that this might be something of importance, she turned on her torch and gestured at Lexa to follow. They moved into the room, which was bare apart from another door at the other end. A quick play of the torch beam over the wall suggested that it lacked even the customary portrait of Sigismund Grieg. They moved through to the other door. Claire opened the door, carefully. It led into another darkened room. She played her torch over it carefully. It was as bare as the one they were in now. Again there was no sign of a light switch. Again there was no picture of Grieg. And again there was a door on the other side of the room from their doorway.

They moved carefully into this room too… but when they were in its middle the light on the ceiling suddenly sprang into life, drenching them with harsh, blinding light. Their hands instinctively went to cover their eyes, but they were not so disoriented that they did not hear the sound of feet pounding on the floor behind them. Though half blinded by the sudden brightness they could just about see the door ahead of them open. A man came through it – a man with a moustache. A man they had seen before, but only in photographs and portraits.

"Sigismund Grieg?" said Claire, uncomprehendingly.

"The very same", said Sigismund Grieg. "And you must be Claire Maguire and Lexa Hackett? You're a bit later than I expected. Please, come this way. It's a bit early for breakfast, but I'm sure you must be famished".

Claire and Lexa hesitated, unsure what to do. Should they try to retreat back the way they came – back in the direction from which they had heard footsteps approach? Or should they try desperately to attack Grieg, in the hope of catching him off balance?

Grieg seemed to sense their indecision. "Please ladies, I advise against any awkward moves you may come to regret. Your options are at this point somewhat limited. I don't mean to be impolite, but a glance behind you might give you some sense of your circumstances".

Claire and Lexa looked over their shoulders. The room from which they had come was now full of tough looking men with moustaches. The two women realised there were pistols trained on them by the ones in the doorway.

Grieg smiled again. "I know what you're thinking now. Given your training, you are contemplating doing something daring like perhaps throwing yourself to the floor suddenly in the hope that the fellows behind you will open fire, miss you, and instead take me out. But I urge you not to do that. I would not be so foolish as to meet you now if I was not wearing a bullet-proof jacket. You may also be thinking of trying to jump me yourself before my colleagues here can take you down. Again, that would be most unwise. These rooms are triggered so that on my voice command a nerve gas will be released into the room – a designer nerve gas fatal to all human beings, save for one person whose genetic markers make him immune to its charms. Can you guess who that person is, ladies? I'll give you a clue – it's not any of the chaps behind you, and it's neither of you two either".

"Alright Grieg, you win", said Claire, not exactly holding her hands up but certainly keeping them where they were clearly visible.

"You win for now, anyway", said Lexa.

"Oh I like you", said Grieg. "I had always heard that you Irish women were feisty".

Lexa glowered back at him. She would like to show him just how feisty she could be.

Grieg continued to smile in that smug and self-satisfied manner of his. "Oh don't be like that, Ms Hackett". He beckoned her and Claire to follow him into the room in whose doorway he stood. "This way please. I think it is about time we got to know each other a bit better". He backed into the room.

"I think you should follow Mr Grieg", said one of the armed men behind them.

"I think so too", said Claire.

"In the absence of any better options I feel I must agree", said Lexa.

They went into the room after Grieg, with the armed men following at a polite distance. Grieg was seated at a table on which a variety of pastries, bagels, breads and cereals were laid out, together with jugs of orange juice and milk, and also what looked like flasks of coffee and pots of tea. Two more armed men stood politely in the corners of the room behind Grieg. And there were three more spaces set at the table. Grieg gestured to Claire and Lexa to sit down. Not really feeling like they had any choice in the matter, they both did, albeit not without wondering who the empty space was for.

"Please", said Grieg, "tuck in". As if to show them the way he grabbed a croissant and started to take bites from it.

"What is this, Mr Grieg?" asked Lexa. "Are you just trying to be Darth Vader or something?"

"Darth Vader?" said Grieg, adopting a faux-hurt tone of voice.

"You know, with the food and the guys with guns standing around us. It is a bit Empire Strikes Back, isn't it?"

"I suppose it is a bit like that" Grieg responded, "but the truth is that I wanted to see you myself and get your measure, but I didn't know how long it would be before you arrive and I always get very hungry when I'm waiting, so I thought I would make sure to have a little something ready for when you did arrive. And I thought, I bet they'll be hungry too, what with all the stress and everything, so why don't we all have an early breakfast while we get to know each other. So please, have something – you both look like you're hungry".

"Given that you have us at your mercy, Mr Grieg", said Claire, "I think it is safe to say that the things you have here are not poisoned, so I will help myself to a bite". She piled some pastries onto a plate. "And I'll have some coffee too. And orange juice". She poured herself drinks into a cup and glass respectively.

Lexa did likewise. But both she and Claire remained guarded. This was not a good situation to be in.

"I really was beginning to think that I would never have the pleasure of your company", said Grieg, before taking a bite out of a pain-au-chocolat. "My people were meant to bring you here earlier today, which I think would have been better for everyone, really. I mean, it would have been so easier to have this conversation in the early evening rather than the middle of the night, don't you think? But my fellows disappointed me somewhat, so I had to hope that you would come here of your own volition. And you did".

Claire swallowed the last of the Danish pastry she was eating and washed it down with a swig of coffee. "Look Grieg, what's this all about?"

"What's what all about?"

"This! All of this! These people with guns. The attempt to kidnap us earlier today. What are you up to? What are you trying to do? And what have you done with our colleague?"

"Ah", said Grieg. "You mean your colleague Mr Ryan?"

Claire and Lexa looked back at him awkwardly, still unsure as to how much Grieg knew and how much information they should concede to him.

"Our colleague", said Lexa. "The one who was abducted from the Cartwright Friendly. The one we understand to have been brought here in one of your vans. What have you done with him?"

"There's no great secret", answered Grieg. "In fact, it might be handiest if he told you himself". He turned to one of the armed men behind him. "Could you ask Mr Ryan to join us?"

"Yes Mr Grieg". He went out through another door.

"He'll be here presently", said Grieg. There was an awkward silence then, as Claire and Lexa had no idea how long they would have to wait. It turned out, though, that they did not have to wait for long. The guard came back with Ryan after less than five minutes, so they must have had him waiting in a nearby room.

"Hello Claire, Lexa" said Ryan as he walked into the room. He looked different from when they had seen him last. His grooming was better, for one thing. And he had a nicely pressed trousers and jumper outfit on. He no longer had the long hair he had been sporting the last few times they had seen him around the Organisation's office – his hair now was cut short in a neat and functional style. And the scratchy beard he had started growing when he had started investigating the strange music publication the Chief had given him, why that was gone too.

Ryan looked very different to when Claire and Lexa had seen him last, but it was not the clothes or the hair or the absence of a beard that now struck them. It was the moustache growing on his upper lip – a moustache just like that of all the other men working for Grieg, a moustache that was clearly an imitation of the facial hair of the great man himself. Claire and Lexa realised with horror that they were far far too late to even think of trying to rescue Ryan. He was one of them now.

26/11/2011
An inuit panda production

When Wake The Morlocks

2012-02-01T10:39:00.000Z

The pictures are from a website put together by people who have been exploring the closed off spaces underneath London, from abandoned Tube stations to the now shut-down Royal Mail line for transporting post. I urge you to have a look at their website, where there are more pictures and accounts of the most amazing urban adventures. There is also a certain amount of blah blah situationist stuff, but I suppose you can get away with that if you are travelling down the forbidden paths of the Under City.

An inuit panda production

Organisation Man: Chapter 23

2012-01-31T18:15:00.000Z

In which a truly daring course of action is pursued.

Lexa Hackett was astonished by the suggestion of her colleague that they should that night launch a raid on Grieg Industries.

"Is that really such a good idea? They know we're onto them – wouldn't going there be like entering the lion's den?"

"I suppose, but it's the last thing they'll expect. Catch the lions while they're all fast asleep. No problem".

"But –"

Claire cut her off. "Let's eat first. We'll talk about it later".

It was one of the stranger meals that Lexa had ever experienced. The food was good, but as they ate and chatted she was conscious – as was Claire, she was sure – that there was a great unspoken subject about which they could not speak for fear of being overheard. This conceptual elephant hung over them like an ominous cloud, making Lexa feel like she had sunk into a terrifying world of mixed metaphors. Claire seemed in better form, but then she had made a decision she was happy with and had the feeling of relaxed confidence that goes with that.

After eating they went for a stroll to discuss what they were going to do. "I really don't know about this", said Lexa. "It seems like we are putting our head in a noose".

"It could turn out badly, I'll give you that", answered Claire, with an air of unnerving calm. "But I don't think we really have any other options. What else can we do? We're pretty certain that Grieg Industries are up to something and we've good reason to think they have Ryan. So if we are following our mission we have to investigate them further. Our only other option is to just abort the mission and go home as failures".

"As free and living failures".

"That's not really the spirit", said Claire.

Lexa reflected. Claire was right, there really did not seem to be any other option. It was either admit defeat and go home, or have a crack at the mysterious company. And admitting defeat would mean abandoning Ryan to his fate. Lexa had never had any great fondness for Barry Ryan, but when you worked for the Organisation it was drilled into you that you never abandoned your own. Lexa liked to think that if she ever found herself in a tight spot then the Organisation's agents would do whatever it takes to extract her. She realised that she had no option now but to do her utmost to rescue Ryan.

"No, you're right", she finally said. "This might be a terrible mistake, but it's a mistake we have to make. So – when?"

"Small hours of the morning tonight. That's when the least number of employees will be there. Any security guards will be half asleep and busy looking at porn on their computers".

"And how?"

"The derelict building next door. We can force an entrance there without setting off an alarm. Once we're on that building's roof we can easily climb up to the Grieg Industry roof. And breaking in from the roof of a building is always easy".

"Right. Let's go back to the hotel and get kitted up".

As they entered the Hotel Moonlight's lobby the creepy receptionist gave them his customary leer. Lexa wondered if he had been looking at the same jazz mag every time they had seen him. She did not really want to find out. And she found herself thinking that if tonight's mission went horribly wrong then she would probably never see that repulsive individual again, which would almost make up for having her life end or spending the rest of it in an enemy torture camp.

As they had a lot of time to kill and would be going out in the small hours, they rested in their room for a bit, trying to catch enough sleep so that they would be reasonably alert when they went to do the job. Of course, the magic of chemicals meant that they would not be falling asleep when they went to Tottenham, but the less enhanced they had to be the better.

Lexa's sleep was disturbed. She found herself dreaming about being chased by a malign coalition of clowns and men with moustaches. And they were giant clowns and giant men with moustaches. She could not shake them off her tail. Every time she thought she had left them behind and she stopped to catch her breath then they would suddenly appear behind her again. If she stopped to try and get someone to help her – why they turned out to be a clown as well. Or someone with a moustache. And for some strange reason this was all overlaid with a raucous version of the Benny Hill theme, which somehow made it all the more disturbing. The streets assumed an increasingly nightmarish character, the upward line of the buildings seeming to no longer be at right angles to the ground. Indeed, the buildings themselves seemed to be swaying and moving around her, pulsating and vibrating to the demonic music. It became harder and harder for her to find paths through the streets that would allow her to stay ahead of her pursuers. And the pursuers were getting ever closer, the clowns in particular marking this with their eerie chuckling. Then she realised that she was in a dead end – and there was no way back other than through her pursuers. They stopped now and leered at her malevolently. She was caught… caught… but maybe she could climb up and over the wall? There seemed to be handholds, but as she climbed she heard the sneers of the hunters. Climbing was difficult… there was something wrong with the wall, and something wrong with her. She couldn't grip the wall properly, but, worse, it seemed to be moving. Handholds were sliding out of reach, and then she realised what was more terrible again – the wall was now starting to lean over towards her pursuers, whose eager hands were reaching up for her. They were about to get her now, there really was no escape…

"Hey, wake up". It was Claire, speaking gently to her. "Are you OK? We have to go now".

"Urrgggh", said Lexa, groggily. "Give me a minute, I'll be fine". She stumbled from the bed to the bathroom and splashed water on her face. "OK, I got this", she said, coming back into the room where Claire was already up and getting dressed.

When Norbert Shunter on the reception desk saw the two women heading out he was not particularly surprised. The Hotel Moonlight was the kind of place where people came and went at all hours with no questions asked. That did not stop Shunter from speculating, though. Looking at the two women he found himself wondering just why they were wearing what looked like figure-hugging black leather catsuits under those coats. Maybe they were going to one of those fetish clubs, Shunter wondered. He had heard about those and the kind of thing that went on at them. He started imagining the two women at one of those clubs and the things that they might be getting up to there. And he smiled, putting down his copy of Playground and letting himself drift off into this appealing reverie.

Claire and Lexa were of course not wearing black leather to excite the imaginations of people like Mr Shunter nor because they were fetishists but because black clothing makes you harder to see at night and because leather gives you some protection against violent attacks by enemies not equipped with firearms. Leaving the Hotel Moonlight they engaged a taxi to bring them up to Tottenham, enduring the driver's ranting about how he was no racist but the country had really gone to shit since they let in all those Canadians. They thought of paying him extra to shut his mouth, but that might have drawn undue attention. Lexa did perk up slightly when the driver maintained that he had it on good authority that 90% of all clowns were recent immigrants from Canada, but she found it a bit outlandish – the whole clown mindset seemed rather alien to the miserable worldview of the Canadian. Besides, when she lived in Brighton's Jokerville the Canadian influx had not even started then, yet the infestation of clowns seemed as great as it was now.

"Don't get me wrong", added the driver, "I'm a supporter of the Transition as much as the next man, but they've got their priorities all wrong. I mean, going after the West Country when we got all those Canucks here in London – it don't make sense".

"Who gives a shit?" thought Lexa. She could see, meanwhile, that Claire was thinking of giving the driver some of that "I have Canadian friends and they're actually very nice" stuff, or maybe even something a bit more of that hippy live-and-let-live talk she had come out with when the subject of clowns had arisen between them. But she could also see that Claire was thinking better of it and biting her tongue. Well done Claire.

The taxi driver dropped them in Tottenham, near the train station they had arrived at the previous day. It looked even uglier at night, with the dead-eye youths in hoodie tops now clearly all drunk or worse and given to shouting incomprehensibly across the road at each other. It was obviously not the kind of place you would expect two women like Claire and Lexa to be heading, but the taxi driver was so caught up in his rant against the Canadian menace that he seemed not to notice. Or if he did, he kept his noticing to himself.

Claire and Lexa moved through the streets, feeling like ghosts. They were so alien to their surroundings that the locals instinctively avoided them, so they did not have to fight off the bestial advances of feral youth or resist the attentions of people looking for a fight with random strangers. Being women and looking weirdly out of place helped considerably here, especially when combined with their clear confidence and lack of concern as to the situation in which they found themselves. Any would-be thug or harasser who cast a look in their direction saw in them something that suggested they were not easy prey, deterring any unwanted attention and diverting it towards easier targets.

As they got closer to Grieg Industries the streets began to less closely resemble a painting by Hieronymous Bosch, but there still seemed to be as many derelict or boarded-up buildings. They were able to slip down into the back street that ran behind their target without attracting unwanted attention. From there it was not far to the empty building they wanted to enter. They had no problems forcing the door – someone had done it ahead of them. Somewhat superfluously, Claire signalled to Lexa to be silent as they made their way into the darkened building, lighting their way with pencil torches. Claire led them through the darkness. They could tell they were not alone in here – there was an omnipresent smell of urine and an occasional tang of excrement, together with the sounds of people trying to sleep or muttering away to each other in low voices. But they knew the drill with homeless people – to those of us who have homes and warm places to sleep at night they are sinister and dangerous, but Claire and Lexa knew that unless riled up the people sleeping rough in this building would not be a serious threat.

They found a stairwell and began to ascend. The stench of bodily waste was particularly pronounced here, suggesting that by tacit agreement among themselves the vagrants inhabiting the building had made this their latrine of choice. For all that the two women had to take care to avoid the occasional unfortunate who had chosen the stairs as their place of rest. They tried to focus on their mission but they both could not but wonder what had brought these people to this terrible pass, and how they might make sure that nothing similar ever happened to them.

Eventually they reached what had once been a doorway. The door had long since fallen off its hinges and the opening now led out onto the derelict building's roof. Once out here they both breathed a sigh of relief, as they were now free of the foul miasma of the building's interior. Now to get from here to the higher roof of the adjacent Grieg Industries building. First, though, they slipped on their face masks, to make them unrecognisable to anyone observing them and to prevent a flash of their white faces drawing attention to their otherwise dark forms. Lexa smiled to herself, thinking of how like gimps they both now looked. She really did not want to think of what the Hotel Moonlight's receptionist would make of them.

Claire threw a grappling hook up to the roof of the adjacent building. It caught. Good. She tugged at it and gave Lexa the thumbs up – the line was secure enough to hold their weight. She climbed up first and then Lexa followed. The roof of the Grieg Industries building was flat and littered with various pieces of electronic equipment – what looked like satellite dishes, aerials, and various other items whose use was not even remotely clear to the two women. They looked around for CCTV cameras… and saw that the only ones there were mounted on fixed heads, looking down to the front and back of the building. There was nothing scanning the roof and nothing looking down on the building they had climbed in from.

There was a door onto the roof. It was locked, of course, but Lexa set to work on it with her lock-picking tools. No one expects a forced entry from the roof – this kind of lock is designed to stop curious employees from wandering out. So it presented no special challenge to her skills. It took less than a minute of tinkering to open it. Now she gave the thumbs up sign to Claire. The door was open, there was no alarm going off. They were in. It was all proving to be so easy.

26/11/2011
An inuit panda production

Organisation Man: Chapter 22

2012-01-30T18:11:00.000Z

In which things rather predictably do not go as planned.

Lexa Hackett looked around the square once more. Nothing seemed unusual. People lazed in the sun. Some clowns were playing pat-a-cake. A drunk was dispensing wisdom to three young men sitting on a bench who were enduring his attentions with a stoic politeness. Lexa's suspicious gaze tried to overlay everything she saw with an air of tense expectation, as though everyone in the square was waiting for Claire to show up, but she knew this was just projection.

Claire arrived a good twenty minutes ahead of the time agreed with the woman from the Friendly. Lexa had to hand it to her – for all their earlier disagreements, Maguire was a pro. She was almost dead centre in the square before Lexa clocked her. Even then she would not have recognised her if she had not known her so intimately, so unlike her usual appearance had she made herself look. It was only when she reached the square's centre and took off the hat and sunglasses that she became definitively herself.

And it was then that Lexa heard the voices. "There she is". "OK, let's get the bitch. Move". Voices coming almost from right beside Lexa. She had fallen victim to the oldest trick in the book – so carefully was she scanning the square and its environs for trouble, she had ignored the other people sitting outside at her café. And now she saw a group of four tough-looking men with nasty expressions rise from their seats as one and start away towards where Claire was standing. Four men with moustaches. This was not good.

Fortunately they too had fallen for the oldest trick in the book, failing to check the café's other patrons for someone like herself who was watching out for Claire in the square. They were clearly unaware of her presence. But what was she to do? These guys looked like they could move fast. Lexa would not have time to warn Claire, so instead she picked up her coffee cup, still half full of un-drunk cappuccino, and threw it with all the force she could muster at one of the four men. Crack! It hit his head with considerable force, enough to stun him momentarily and cover him with hot coffee, though the blow had not obviously done him serious damage. Still, his comrades hesitated, looking to see how hurt he was, looking to see where the blow had come from.

"Rebecca!" Lexa shouted. "Run!"

That was all she could do to warn Claire, but it was enough. She had heard the cry and was making her exit. Lexa herself knew that she was now in danger of becoming the target – she would have to make a quick escape. She tipped over her table and its accompanying chairs to block the path towards her of the four men and started running in the opposite direction, mouthing an apology to an indignant waiter who saw just that she was leaving without paying.

Lexa ran. Two of the men came after her. That meant that the other two were going after Claire. Well, Claire could look after herself, right now Lexa had to think of herself. The two men coming after her were fast, but so was she. And she was lighter than they were and more able to turn quickly. She had also spent some of the time before Claire's meeting memorising the street plan of the Soho back streets through which she was now running. She kept making abrupt right angle turns, know that her pursuers would lose time following her. And she made sure not to let herself be caught by any dead ends. She felt herself beginning to pull away from the men. Good. And she counted her lucky stars that they were not shooting at her.

For Lexa the chase began to assume a Zen-like quality. She was living in the moment and yet was detached from it. Her heart was pounding and her body pushing itself to its limits, but her corporeal self was working automatically. Her mind was calm and able to reflect on what was happening. She was even considering what she would do if certain eventualities occurred. Suppose she ran into the police or a National Security patrol? They would stop her, sure – there is nothing more suspicious than someone running. She would maybe be able to play the Woman In Peril card, turning the cops on her pursuers. But it would be messy. Any involvement with the authorities was dangerous, as they might start asking questions about who she was and just why these two men were chasing her. She hoped the eventuality would not arise.

After a series of zig zags through the back streets she began to think that maybe, just maybe, she had lost her pursuers. Lexa slowed her pace to a brisk walk, not something that would attract the suspicion of any cops who crossed her path. Permitting herself glances behind her she realised that, yes, she had shaken off her followers. She walked on, careful to check that she was not being followed. This was a skill learned in the Organisation and honed with careful practice. Lexa made frequent stops to look in the windows of the many shops that dotted the streets, allowing her ample opportunity to look behind her without drawing attention to herself. The moustachioed men were nowhere to be seen. She had escaped.

Claire and Lexa had arranged a rendezvous point in the event of something going wrong in the square. That rendezvous point was, naturally, a pub, albeit one some distance away – the Calthorpe Arms, near Euston Station. The safest way to get there was on foot, so Lexa walked the not inconsiderable distance there. It goes without saying that she checked along the way that she was not being followed and deliberately took a somewhat roundabout route. When she arrived, there was no sign of Claire, so she ordered a pint of ale and took a seat, pretending to read her book while she worried about what had happened to her colleague.

This was always the worst part of her work. When you were separated from a colleague like this there was nothing you could do to help them and no way of finding out where they were. She could have telephoned, of course, but it was strictly against the rules in this kind of chase situation. The last thing you wanted when you were running through a crowd was having to deal with a phone ringing in your ear. No, she would have to wait and accept what happened. If Claire did not arrive then she would have to assume that she had been captured; if captured then the enemy could be using all due methods to extract information, so Lexa could take it that their hotel was too dangerous to return to. She would have to abandon it and either continue her mission alone or improvise a return to Ireland. But if Claire had been captured, then this pub might increasingly be a place of peril for her, as it the enemy would want anything it would be to apprehend her accomplice. That was always the problem with this kind of thing – the tension between waiting a reasonable length of time and waiting so long that you were making it easy for the enemy to find you. So while she waited and pretended to read, Lexa was having to scan new arrivals in the pub to see if they were likely agents of the opposition. Fortunately they just seemed to be a succession of people joining friends for a drink or people coming in for a quiet pint on their own.

It was heading towards that witching hour that would make it officially time for Lexa to make herself scarce when Claire arrived. She looked somewhat flustered. "Alison!" she said, seeing Lexa. "Sorry I'm late. I ran into some friends in Covent Garden and I lost track of time". So she had led her pursuers into Covent Garden but been unable to shake them off. "Have you been waiting long?"

"Not too long", said Lexa. "I got here early. Made a connection I normally miss". So now Claire knew she had been able to slip away from her pursuers with relative ease.

Claire ordered herself a beer, which she knocked back quickly. Then she and Lexa had another. They were both pretty rattled, but still coasting on adrenaline. Lexa knew it would not be wise for them to stay in the pub and get hammered, not now, so half way through Claire's second she suggested that they head off to Drummond Street for a curry. On the way they were able to have a quick conversation.

"I couldn't get rid of them… they were like bloodhounds", said Claire. "Every time I thought I had got away I turned around and there they were again. But I had a stroke of luck".

"Yes?"

"They caught up with me when I got caught by a busy road, but when they tried to grab me, some labourers nearby turned on them. I think they thought they were muggers or something, and they started to really lay into them. I slipped away and left them to get the shite kicked out of them".

"Nice. Well anyway, I suppose you admit now that arranging to meet the woman was a mistake?"

"Not at all", said Claire, smiling. "We've learned a lot. We know now that they know we're onto them. So we have to move fast. Tonight's the night. We go into Grieg Industries and extract Ryan".

24/11/2012 – 25/11/2012
An inuit panda production

Organisation Man: Chapter 21

2012-01-29T18:09:00.000Z

In which a course of action is decided.

Claire and Lexa ate in silence. Neither of them wanted to revisit the incident with the hoodies and the clown. They were both too sure that they had acted correctly while simultanaeously being conscious that they had somehow failed. But the incident hung over them like a cloud, making it impossible for them to talk about anything else.

As a way to avoid the awkward tension between them, Claire fidgeted with her mobile phones. First the one she carried everywhere and always had on, then the other one, that she mostly kept turned off so that it could not be used to track her.

"Mmmm", she said, "A message".

"What?" said Lexa.

"A message. Someone's sent me a message on the backup phone. Oh, it's just one of those one's saying you've got voicemail".

She dialled a number and listened as the phone gave her the message.

"It's… the manager of the Cartwright Friendly. She wants me to ring her, says she needs to tell me something. Oh, and her name is Joan".

"It's too late to ring her now", snapped Lexa irritably.

"I know", said Claire back, annoyed at Lexa's stating the obvious. "I'll ring her tomorrow".

"Don't ring her from our hotel", said Lexa. "We don't anyone being able to track us back there".

"I'm not going to, I know the drill".

"I was just saying".

"Yeah sure. Look, I'm not a complete idiot and I am able to remember my training".

"Well then you wouldn't be talking in such a loud voice".

"No louder than yours".

Lexa did not respond. They went back to eating their food in silence while the giant portrait of Princess Diana smiled down beatifically at them.

* * * * * * *

Norbert Shunter looked up from his copy of Jiggle to see Claire and Lexa coming back into the hotel. They ignored him. They looked like they were ignoring each other too. He thought better of saying anything to them, after the bollocking he had got last night. Anyway, he did not like them anymore. His latest theory was that they were lesbians, but not the sexy kind of lesbians, the other kind. He went back to the more pliant contents of his magazine.

After breakfast next day Claire and Lexa went for a walk in the park to ponder their next move. Things were still uncomfortable between them.

"I think I will call back the Cartwright Friendly woman", said Claire.

"Why?" said Lexa.

"To see what she has to say", said Claire, who felt that this was the obvious reason why you returned a call to someone who had left you a message asking you to ring them.

"Well what do you think she's going to say?"

"If I knew I wouldn't need to ring her", she snapped.

"She's just going to try and trick us. I think she's working for them. The student said she was there when they took Ryan away".

"We don't know that. It could have been another woman".

"What other woman could it be?"

"I don't know, some other woman in the hotel. Anyway, we don't know that the student was telling us the truth".

"He was right about the moustaches".

"He might have known about the Grieg people and their moustaches, and just thrown in the detail to make his made-up story sound more convincing".

"But why would he lie to us?"

"I don't fucking know", said Lexa. It was her turn to snap now. "Why does anyone ever lie? But we can't do this job if we assume that everyone is telling us the truth all the time".

"Well I'm still going to ring her".

"For fuck's sake, Rebecca", said Lexa, who seemed to only use Claire's codename with an inflection that suggested extreme irritation. "What if she is working for them?"

"What harm is a phone call going to do?"

"I don't know, but what good will it do? If she thinks we're onto them she'll just feed you some bullshit to confuse us. Or trick you into revealing how much you know".

"I won't reveal anything to her. And even if she is working for them and trying to bullshit us, hearing what she comes out with could still be useful to us".

"No it won't".

"Oh stop being so negative! And stop treating me like shit just because I helped that stupid clown last night".

"That's got nothing to do with this", said Lexa, who was nevertheless stung by the reference to the previous night's excitement. "Though what you did then was wrong. You're showed a serious lapse of judgement, just like you are now. Don't call that woman".

"Look, Alison", said Claire, repaying Lexa in kind and talking in a tone of steely determination, "I can do whatever I like. Perhaps I should remind you that I was put in command of this mission? So if I decide to do something, we do it".

"It's a mistake. You're putting our mission in jeopardy".

"Your objections are noted. Now shut up".

"But – "

"Look, do you want to be reported for insubordination when we get back home?"

"I would like to get home, when this is all over. I'm worried that you're going to put us in danger of finding ourselves stuck here".

"That's for me to decide", said Claire, icily. "Now be quiet while I make the call".

Lexa glowered at her but said no more. She chafed at many of the restrictions imposed by the Organisation, but ultimately she understood the importance of discipline, particularly in the field. Claire's decision might be the wrong one, but their ability to function as a team relied on her obeying the decisions of her superior.

Claire took out the special mobile phone, turned it on, and dialled the number.

"Hello, Joan? This is Rebecca. You have something to tell me?"

A moment of silence while she listened.

"I understand. So where do you propose we meet?"

She listened some more.

"I don't think that would be wise. In fact, it would be best if we met somewhere else entirely. Somewhere a bit more public".

Claire paused while waiting for a response. Lexa felt that irritation experienced by anyone hearing just one half of a telephone conversation.

"No, I've a better idea", Claire said, after the other woman had apparently been speaking for some time. "Soho Square. This afternoon, at 3.00 pm. Right, see you there".

She hung up and turned off the phone.

"Well?" said Lexa.

"She said she had something to tell me. She couldn't tell me over the phone, so she wanted me to come to the Friendly. I said no, so she suggested Russell Square. I reckoned that anywhere she suggested was too dangerous – she might have cased it out. And anyway, Russell Square is a bit too near the Friendly. So I said Soho Square".

"Where's Soho Square?"

"In Soho, obviously". Claire relished the opportunity to state the obvious. Near Tottenham Court Road. Just south of Oxford Street. It's a small square".

"I still don't like it. What if it's a trap? We'd be putting our head in a noose".

"We won't be putting our head anywhere".

"What do you mean?"

"I'm going to meet her on my own".

Lexa was flabbergasted. "Have you finally taken complete leave of your senses?" was all she could bring herself to say.

"Not at all", replied Claire, smiling. "I'm going to meet her in the square. You're going to keep watch. First sign of trouble, you ring me and I scarper. It's an open square, plenty of roads leading off it into the rabbit warren that is Soho. They'll never catch me".

"Jesus, I don't know…"

"Don't worry, Lexa", said Claire, deliberately using her colleague's real name. "I have every confidence in you".

Lexa went along with Claire's wishes, feeling that she did not really have any alternative. The plan they worked out was a simple one. They would arrive separately to the square, Lexa first and then Claire. Lexa would be wearing a wig to disguise herself and make it less likely that the woman from the Friendly would recognise her. She would sit at an outside table at a café that looked onto the square, pretending to read a book but actually scanning the square for any sign of trouble. Claire would arrive later and make her way to the centre of the square. If all went well, she would meet the woman and hear whatever she had to say. If there was any sign of anything untoward, Lexa would text Claire to abort the meeting, or ring her if the situation was desperate.

As the time of the meeting approached, Lexa made a last attempt to talk Claire out of the meeting, but she remained adamant. And Lexa was secretly not disappointed. The game was afoot and her blood was up. She was getting high on the adrenaline now, feeling tense and jumpy and yet super confident and capable. She felt alive. This, she realised, was why she worked for the Organisation – not to sit at a desk and process information, not to meet grubby sources and hear their lies, but to do put herself in the way of danger and live to tell the tale.

She found an outside table at the café and sat down. After ordering a coffee and a slice of chocolate cake, she pretended to read. Glancing around her, everything looked normal, but who knew what lurked beneath the surface. Here we go, she thought.

21/11/2011 – 22/11/2011
An inuit panda production

Organisation Man: Chapter 20

2012-01-28T18:07:00.001Z

Dear God, will the horror that is my 2011 Nanowrimo ever end?

Claire Maguire was sitting at the café across from the British Museum where she had arranged to meet her colleague Lexa Hackett. Lexa had not arrived yet, so Claire occupied herself with a book she had brought over with her from Ireland. It was a detective novel. Claire liked detective novels, but she was not sure about this one. Why did so many of the characters in the book like wearing furry animal suits? It seemed a bit on the weird side. Claire sighed, registering that basically she liked the more formulaic and intellectually less challenging end of detective fiction. That said, she felt that this book was not so much intellectually challenging as just weird. Or maybe intellectually challenged.

Lexa arrived, saw her and came over to the table.

"Rebecca! Good to see you again".

"And you, Alison, it's been too long".

Code-names a go-go, just in case.

"Do you want a coffee?" said Claire.

"I could do with something stronger. I think there's a nice pub round the corner, are you with me?"

Claire finished her coffee. "Let's go".

As they walked along Claire said: "How was the interview?"

"Weird. They're all freaks in that place".

"Did you find out anything?"

"Apart from them all being freaks? No. I wasn't able to look around on my own".

Over a pint of ale (for Lexa) and gin and tonic (for Claire), Lexa described her visit to Grieg Industries. She carefully made it sound like she was describing an actual conversation about employment to her friend "Rebecca", in case there was anyone listening in or for fear the place might be bugged. She made no effort to hide how strange the whole experience was.

"They're like Google crossed with the Scientologists run by David Icke" was how she ended up describing the place.

"Jesus", said Claire.

"I wonder do they all start normal enough and then end up like that?"

Later, when they were walking off to find a restaurant to eat in, Claire said, quietly, "I take back one thing I said earlier. From what you are saying, I reckon that everyone in the company could be in on it, whatever 'it' is".

"Yeah. They've all swallowed the kool-aid".

"What could this be about? A whole company like that is too big for it to be the passport forging operation".

"God only knows. I think we should find out. That's what the Chief would want us to do".

"He sent us here to find Ryan".

"Sure, that as well. But I reckon we'll recover Ryan if we work out what those weirdoes are up to".

"Let's hope so, I'd hate to think of anyone stuck with them".

They walked on. Where were they again? They had been hoping to get a curry on Brick Lane, but they had got a bit lost in the side streets from Liverpool Street. They were now in a less appealing part of town, not the kind of place you would want to be walking through if you did not know where you were going. And not the kind of place where you want to take out a map either. Claire remembered that this was the part of town where Jack the Ripper killed his victims. The thought was dwelling on her mind when she heard the sound of fist connecting with flesh and bone from down an alleyway, followed by moans of pain and the grunting of a person or persons administering a beating.

She looked at Lexa, who shook her head and pointed down the street in a "not our problem, let's keep going" kind of way. But Claire could not leave it be. She went to the alleyway and looked down it to see three hooded youths beating up a clown. "Not so funny now, eh?" said one, as his fist connected with the clown's chin. This one was made up as a happy clown, but Claire felt that she had never seen anything that looked more sad.

Lexa was behind her, whispering "No" and trying to pull her back but she pulled away and walked towards the scene of violence.

"Leave him alone!" she said in what she hoped was her most commanding voice.

The clown received a temporary reprieve as the thugs turned to face Claire. Their faces registered initial confusion that this woman was implicitly threatening them.

"Fuck off, bitch" said one, a tall youth with a ring through his nose.

"This joker had it coming to him", said another.

"I said, leave him alone!" Claire said.

"You gonna make us, bitch?"

"Go now while you can still walk", said Claire. She was aware of how unconvincing a threat this was, but she felt that she ought to give them a chance.

"Mouthy bitch, I'm gonna – " said the nose ring, lunging forward to give her a slap, only she used the judo training from the Organisation to dodge the blow and then grab and throw him. The impact of his face on the alley wall made an unpleasant noise.

A second hoodie lunged at her, but this time she sidestepped him and stuck her elbow in his face. While he was still dazed she brought her knee into his crotch and watched him double up in agony.

The third hoodie realised now that maybe the one-at-a-time method was not the best form of attack here. And he realised that with his two mates out of action it was too late for a change of plan. So he legged it.

Claire helped the clown up to his feet. "Are you alright?" she said.

"Yeah, fine, thanks", he said. Then he went and kicked the second hoodie in the face with his oversized shoes. "Laughs last laughs longest, eh? Parp parp!"

"Jesus, Rebecca", said Lexa, now approaching this miniature scene of carnage. "Was that really necessary? We're not here to be vigilantes".

"Your friend's a real barrel of laughs!" said the clown. He knew he was not being very funny.

"Leave it", said Claire. "She's not a friend of clowns".

"Are you a friend of clowns?"

"Well, I don't know", Claire answered.

"You are now", said the clown. "But I gotta be going. See ya, babe".

He held out his hand for Claire to shake. She took his hand and, of course, received a mild electric shock.

"Ouch!"

"Ha ha! Gets em every time!" said the clown, as he ran off into the night past Lexa.

"Come on, you fucking idiot, before that guy comes back with more of his friends – or the cops. We're not meant to be getting ourselves in trouble. We've got a fucking job to do and we're meant to be professionals". Lexa was angry.

"Oh leave it , will you? Maybe you can walk by while someone has the shit beaten out of them, but I can't. We're meant to be professionals, but I also want to be a human being". Claire was angry too.

The moaning of the two hoodies faded away as they walked on in silence.

20/11/2011

An inuit panda production

Organisation Man: Chapter 19

2012-01-18T18:49:00.000Z

In which Lexa Hackett attempts to realise her potential.

Lexa Hackett walked up the steps to the Grieg Industries entrance and through the door into the lobby. Two women smiled at her from behind a reception desk. Ignoring the moustachioed security guard who was eyeing her specially, Lexa went straight to the reception desk.

"Welcome to Grieg Industries!" said one of the receptionists.

"How may we help you|?" said the other.

"Hello, yes", said Lexa. "I was wondering if I could talk to someone from Personnel. I'd like to know what's the best way to go about applying for a job".

"We do not have a Personnel Section here in Grieg Industries".

"We have a Human Potential Nexus".

"I see", said Lexa. "So could I talk to someone from, eh, Human Potential?"

"Well it is more usual that people send in their CVs. Then Human Potential contacts them if they think that they have what it takes to Grow With Grieg".

"Here's the address to send your CV to", said the other receptionist, handing Lexa a card. "And the URL for our Human Potential Nexus website, where everything is explained".

"I understand", said Lexa. "I know that would be the more usual way of doing things, but it's just that I happened to be in the area anyway, and it seemed handiest to drop in. I don't have a CV with me, but is there any possibility at all that someone from Human Potential could meet me just for five minutes? I would really like to get an idea of what kind of people you are looking for here."

The two receptionists looked at each other, unsure what to do.

"Could you ring Human Potential and see if there was anyone free to see me? I know it's a terrible imposition, but it would be great help".

"OK", said the receptionist on the right. "I'll ring Human Potential. Can you give me your name, please?"

"Alison Quinn", said Lexa. Like she was going to give her real name?

The receptionist had picked up the phone and was already dialling, and then she was talking into her phone. "Hello... Yes, this is Suzie on reception. There's a lady here, a Ms Alison Quinn, she was wondering if there was anyone there who could talk about our absorption process… Yes, I told her that, but she was saying it would be…. Alright, I'll let her know. Bye". She put down the phone and smiled at Lexa. "Please take a seat, Ms Quinn. Someone from Human Potential will be with you shortly".

Lexa sat and looked around the lobby. It was tastefully decorated in a minimalist style, with the walls displaying some abstract artworks. The only representational item on the wall was a large photographic portrait of a smiling Sigismund Grieg.

There were a couple of magazines lying on a table in front of Lexa. They all seemed to be in-house Grieg Industries publications, with all but one boasting a picture of Sigismund's smiling face on the cover. Flicking through one of them Lexa still found herself at a loss as to what exactly it was that Grieg Industries did.

Then she was conscious of a smiling man in a suit walking towards her. He, naturally, had a moustache. "Hello Ms Quinn!" he said cheerily. She stood to meet him and he shook her hand. "My name is Toby Marshall. It really is a pleasure to meet you. Please come this way and we can have a chat and get to know each other".

"I really am very grateful that you've been able to find the time to meet me, Mr Marshall".

"Oh please, call me Toby, everyone else does. And I'm always happy to meet new people". From the way he beamed at her Lexa thought that he might actually mean it. She followed him into a small meeting room and they sat at a small table.

"So, Ms Quinn –" Toby began.

"Oh please", interrupted Lexa. "Call me Alison."

"Sure, Alison. Well Alison, I'd like to start off by thanking you for your interest in what we're doing here at Grieg Industries. We're a company here that is really trying to make a difference, and you have no idea how happy we feel when we see someone who understands what we are trying to do".

Lexa smiled back at him. "Thank you again for seeing me, Toby, I'm sure you must be a very busy man".

"Oh I am, I am. We're all very busy here. This is not a place for people who want to sit back and do nothing, Alison, as I'm sure you know".

"That's certainly what I've heard. And believe me, I am not a person who likes to be idle".

Toby pointed at her with the index fingers of both hands. "Nice! And you're looking to join us?"

"Yes, I am. I was trying to find out what's the best way to apply for a position here, and what kind of vacancies you have".

"Well Alison, we're not like other companies. We don't have a Personnel Section or a Human Resources Unit, we have a Human Potential Nexus. That's where I work. We help people to fulfil their potential. So when we look at people who want to come and join us, we have to look at them and see what their potential is, then see how they could achieve that potential here at Grieg. We don't have vacancies or jobs that we try and fill here. We look at the person who comes to us, and we create the environment in which they can do what they need to do. Every person we take in, we create a unique working experience for them, so that they can maximise their ability to achieve their potential. And we do that after we've found the person we want, not before. There are no roles here independent of the person filling them".

"I see". Lexa was not actually sure that she saw anything.

"It's all part of our philosophy. Part of Sigismund Grieg's philosophy. And I don't just mean that as a figure of speech. When I say 'philosophy' I mean more than just the way a company works, I mean a real philosophy, a real view of how people can live and work together, how we can all make this world a better place. Sigismund Grieg, he's not just some computer whizzkid with a head for business, though he is that as well. He's a visionary, a man who can see beyond what the rest of us see. The kind of guy who comes along once every thousand years. He has a vision for a new world, a better world, a world we can all play our part in building. That's what guides what we do here, Alison. That's what we're thinking about all the time. How to push things forward, how to help people. This isn't about working and earning a salary, and it's not about making and selling products either. This is a whole new world we're creating. It starts here in Grieg Industries, and then we bring everybody else onboard with us".

"Oh yes, Toby! That's what I want to do – I want to help build this world!"

"Yes Alison, yes, you can do that. You can join us. I think you have what it takes". He took her hand in his.

"I hope so, I really hope so".

Toby exhaled and released Lexa's hand. "Well Alison, I've got to get back to building that better world. But I think you'll be building it with us soon. Suzie gave you the card with our e-mail address? Good. Send your CV in, say what you can do, and tell us how you want to help us. I think we can release your potential".

"Thanks Toby, I'll do that".

He stood up. She did too. The short meeting was over. Toby walked Lexa back to the lobby, shook her hand again, and bade her farewell. He walked away into the building. Lexa turned towards the door out of the building, and then turned around again to approach the reception desk. The two receptionists were smiling at her, albeit with a questioning look in their eyes. Lexa smiled back at them, nervously.

"I was wondering", she said, "if there was a bathroom here I could use?"

The receptionists continued smiling, looked at each other, and then looked back at Lexa.

"Yes there is", said the one on the left.

"John will bring you there", said the one on the right. She summoned the moustachioed security guard and said, "Can you bring Ms Quinn to the ladies bathroom?"

The security guard nodded. "This way, Ms Quinn". He led Lexa out of the lobby, down a corridor, and to the toilet for women. He indicated the door. "I'll wait here", he said.

"Oh, no need, I can find my own way out".

"I'll wait here".

Lexa went into the toilet and then came out again after what she judged would be a reasonable length of time to be in there. The security guard was still waiting. He smiled.

"This way, Ms Quinn".

He walked with her to the lobby.

"Bye now!" said the receptionist on the left.

"Bye now!" said the receptionist on the right.

"See you later!" said the security guard.

"Bye!" said Lexa, trying to get into the Grieg Industries spirit.

She walked down the street from the office building. When she felt that she had walked far enough she took out her phone and rang Claire.

"Hello Rebecca!" she said, realising that she was still being as cheerful as all the people in Grieg Industries. "Are you still free to meet for coffee? Great!"

20/11/2011

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Organisation Man: Chapter 18

2012-01-17T18:45:00.000Z

In which Claire and Lexa visit the hell that is Tottenham.

Claire and Lexa went to Tottenham. Grieg Industries was located in one of those bits of London not served by the Tube, something outsiders always find a bit confusing. They had to take a train up there, and leaving the Tube system made them feel like they had gone off the map and were now in "Here Be Monsters" territory. Arriving in Tottenham they were struck by how different it was to the parts of London they were familiar with. The streets here seemed grimy and dirty, with almost every second building burnt out or boarded up. The people on the streets seemed to be all from ethnic minority backgrounds. Claire and Lexa were unusual here, in that they were not veiled. The policemen and National Security personnel at the station were a lot more pushy and aggressive than their counterparts in central London, even than their counterparts in Ealing. Hooded youths loitered on street corners, glancing suspiciously at people like Claire and Lexa with whom they were unfamiliar. The two women were left with the sense that this was a place of tension and barely suppressed violence.

"A pretty odd place for a computer company", said Claire.

"Yeah. Though I bet rents are cheap".

They walked through the ugly streets towards the address they had found for Grieg Industries. The area improved slightly. The street Grieg Industries was on was that bit less dilapidated and did not have quite so many shifty looking young lads hanging about. Some of the shops looked like they might even have things in them you would want to buy. The cafés were almost appealing.

Grieg Industries itself occupied a fairly anonymous looking office building, but a large one that was a bit out of scale with its surroundings. This was not the kind of place where you would normally expect to find a five storey commercial premises. There was a café across the road. By unspoken agreement, Claire and Lexa went there and took seats by the window, from which they could try and get the measure of their target.

It was coming up to lunchtime. Workers from the building were already starting to leave for their lunch breaks. One thing was immediately apparent to Claire and Lexa – all the men who worked for Grieg Industries seemed to sport moustaches. Not beards, just moustaches. And they seemed to be doing this regardless of obvious ethnicity, so it was not just that the company for whatever reason was only employing people from countries where moustaches are common. And although they all had moustaches, their choices of clothing and even hairstyle was not uniform. Some wore suits, some jeans and t-shirts, some had long hair, some short, some mullets, some skinheads, but they all had moustaches. There did not seem to be any feature like the moustache that was common to all the women. And there were women, in the kind of numbers that would be proportionate for a company of that type.

Steps led up to the building's entrance, with a ramp to one side for the wheelchair-bound or for people who otherwise find steps problematic. They could just about see through the entrance into a small lobby inside, in which receptionists and at least one security guard awaited anyone who tried to gain admission that way. And to one side there was a shuttered entrance to an underground car park. The building's windows looked like they were of the unopenable type, so there did not appear to be any possibility of gaining unauthorised access by that route.

Some of the office workers came into the café, sitting in small groups and chatting among themselves. From what Lexa and Claire could hear, their chatter was the usual kind of talk from people who work together – general stuff about TV programmes, sporting events, gossip about colleagues, and so on. No one mentioned anything about the company having a secret dungeon where people were being held for mysterious reasons. Nor was anything said to suggest that Grieg Industries was involved in some kind of covert plan to take over the world. If there was anything noteworthy about their chatter it was that they all seemed very enthusiastic about their work. Claire and Lexa recalled, however, that this was not unusual for people in the high-tech sector.

Claire and Lexa left the café and went walking to talk over their options.

"It's a bigger place than I expected", said Claire.

"Yes".

"It's too big for it all to be a front for something else, I think", said Claire. "I mean, there are too many people there for them all to be in on whatever is going on. So there may be some kind of cell within there who know what's really going on".

"If there's a closed-off area inside that only some people have access to… well that could be where we're looking for", said Lexa.

"Or it could be somewhere else entirely".

"Yes".

"Seriously, though, what's with the moustaches?" said Claire.

"The head guy has a moustache", said Lexa. "Maybe he likes everyone else to have moustaches? Like the Chief and beards".

Their apparently aimless strolling took them round the back of the building, along a backstreet that was a bit less salubrious than the front.

"If they brought the van in the front, then if they still have Ryan here then he probably is somewhere near the car park", said Claire in a low voice.

"True. Or there may be a back entrance. Shhh".

They were closer to the back of the building now, and there was indeed a back entrance to it – but it was closed and looked like it could not be opened from the outside without setting off alarms. The windows to the rear had the same closed character as the ones to the front.

Walking a bit past the rear of the building they were suddenly greeted by a street person calling to them. He was lying in pile of cardboard boxes he called home, nestled into a recessed on the opposite side of the street to that of Grieg Industries.

"Hey there ladies, any chance of a few pence there for a cup of tea?"

Lexa made to ignore him, but Claire had an idea. Going over to the homeless man she gave him a fiver and said: "There you go get something warm into yourself".

"Cheers missus, much obliged, god bless you".

"It must be tough sleeping out here on the streets".

"Oh it is, it is, but sure what can I do".

"Do you always sleep here in this doorway? Would you not think of going to a hostel or shelter?"

"I couldn't be doing that missus, you wouldn't believe the kind of people you meet in there. Nah, old Billy sleeps here. It's cosy enough with all me cardboard and stuck in here the rain can't get me".

"I suppose it's quiet enough here… you wouldn't get traffic disturbing you?"

"You wouldn't get that much now, I'd have to say that".

"But if a car or a van did come down here, would it wake you up?"

"Well you never get a deep sleep on the streets, now let me tell you, so whatever comes along would wake you up".

"Tell me", said Claire, her voice moving from one of general inquiries expressing vague concern for the plight of the homeless to something more direct, "have you ever been woken up by a van delivering something to the back of the building there?" She pointed over at the back of Grieg Industries.

"Well, I might have". He was more guarded now, realising that there was a bit of point to the woman's questions.

"Think clearly", said Claire, handing him a twenty. "Like did you see anything going in there in last couple of weeks?"

"Well", he said, trying to think clearly but already a bit distracted at the thought of all the Special Brew he would be able to buy for a twenty. "They don't take deliveries in the night there much".

"But they do sometimes?"

"Yeah, yeah, they do".

"And recently?"

"I woke up in the night a week or two back, and a van had pulled up at the back door there. And the door opened for 'em, from the inside".

"Did you see what they brought in?"

"I didn't see nothing, I was just trying to get some kip. Didn't look like they brought in anything, just some guys went in and then the van drove off".

"Right", said Claire, digesting what he had said. "Thanks. Look after yourself". She and Lexa walked on.

"So what have we learned there?" said Lexa.

"Maybe something, maybe not much", said Claire. "It could be them bringing Ryan in the back entrance – maybe they were able to manhandle him in. The homeless guy didn’t see them bringing anything else in".

"But he wasn't looking too closely. And he could be bullshitting us".

"He could be bullshitting us, but I'm not sure. If he was being led by my questions he would have said something more definite about something being delivered, not people going in".

"Well", said Lexa, "if they did bring Ryan in through the back door then your theory about him being in a dungeon off the car park may not apply".

"Yes. Worrying. We might have to go through the whole building".

"Great".

"Did you notice that low-hanging fire escape ladder on the empty building beside Grieg?"

"I did. Are you thinking of using it?"

"It has crossed my mind. Climb up that onto the roof… would be easier than trying to sneak in any other way".

"Could be. When would we try it?"

"I think over the weekend", said Claire. "You know those computer types, there will always be someone there, but if we came by at, say four a.m. on Sunday morning then there really will be hardly anyone there".

"Still seems a bit risky. It's a big building. What are we going to do, search it all?"

"Do we have any other options?"

"Well, I'd rather not end up in the same dungeon as Ryan if I don't have to. Or find myself handed over to the tender mercies of National Security until the Chief gets round to exchanging us out".

"Sure. But we can be careful. Anyway, we can think on for now, we've got a while to go before we'd be going for it".

"Fuck it", said Lexa. "I'm going to chance my arm with a direct approach. Walk in the front door, see what I can get away with".

"Is that wise?"

"It's not unwise. I mean, they're hardly in the business of just imprisoning people who show up in their lobby, are they?"

"I hope not".

"I've got my phone on. Ring me in an hour's time. If I don't answer, you'll know I'm being prevented from answering".

"So what should I do then?"

"Well", said Lexa, smiling, "they'll probably be torturing me or something, so you'd want to get out of dodge as fast as you can".

"Mmm, OK, as long as you don't think I'll be coming in to bust you out, all guns blazing".

"I wouldn't expect that. OK, look, we should split up now. I'll head in, you go and loiter in the charity shops or something. I'll ring you when I get out".

"Right. Good luck". She touched Lexa's arm for a moment, then turned and walked away. Lexa took the road back towards the front of the Grieg building and started thinking about what she would say when she got there.

20/11/2011

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Brave Dog Escapes Avalanche

2012-01-17T10:57:00.002Z

Mr David Gaillard and Ms Kerry Corcoran Gaillard were backcountry skiing in Montana with their dog Oly when disaster struck. An avalanche buried Mr Gaillard, whose last words were to encourage his wife to escape to the nearby trees. When the snow stopped falling, Mr Gaillard had been buried and there was no sign of Ole, who was believed to also have been entombed.

However, four days later the brave little corgi appeared back at the motel where he had been staying with David and Kerry – four miles from the avalanche site. No one knows whether the avalanche somehow missed him, or if he was buried but managed to dig himself out. Either way the return of the brave little dog has been one bright spot in a sad time for the Gaillard family.

More (Christian Science Monitor)

More (Billings Gazette)

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Organisation Man: Chapter 17

2012-01-16T18:43:00.000Z

The world thought I had stopped posting chapters from my 2011 Nanowrimo attempt. The world thought wrong. In chapter there is further discussion of clowns and a change of career is suggested.

On the train back to their hotel Claire went through the Andy McNab book, carefully checking whether Ryan had written anything in the margins. Eventually she sighed and closed the book.

"Anything?" asked Lexa.

"Nope. Nada. Nothing. Well, except that he seems to have played pretty close attention to the sex scene on page 54, as the book falls open there. Look".

She held the book with the spine down and sure enough it seemed to open on a particular page.

"Give us a look", said Lexa, taking the book from her. She opened it and started reading.

"Holy Jesus", she said, closing the book and handing it back to Claire. "I've never read a sex scene that was so indistinguishable from a military skirmish".

"That seems to be Mr McNab's thing".

"McNab – that is a rather unusual name, isn't it?"

"Yes", said Claire. "I gather it's a pseudonym. And he never lets himself be photographed either".

"Why? Is he pig ugly or something?"

"No, apparently a lot of terrorists want him dead, so he has to hide his identity".

"I didn't know that terrorists were enemies of bad writing".

"No, stupid!" said Claire. "He used to be in the SAS or something, so he would have been involved in bumping off terrorists and stuff, so now they want revenge. Or so he says".

"If I ever write a book I'll have to change my name so that clowns won't be able to track me down".

"You really don't like clowns, do you?"

"No. Look, I know a lot of people talk about how it's racist or something to not like clowns, but I know what I'm talking about. When I was small my family lived for a couple of years in Brighton. The area we were in was full of clowns. Jokerville, they called it. And when you can't walk the streets outside your home without fear of practical jokes and physical comedy, well it does rather turn you against those painted morons".

"It's hardly fair to judge them all by a couple of bad apples who crossed your path when you were young".

"They're all bad apples, Claire", she said sharply, and then she stopped, annoyed that she had used her colleague's real name while on a field mission. "They're all bad apples. If they're not dicking you over now, it's because they're waiting for when it would be funny for them to mess you up. According to their stupid sense of humour, I mean".

"Mmm", said Claire.

Back at the Hotel Moonlight the sleazy receptionist was on duty but they rebuffed his attempts at conversation and went straight to their room. Once there, however, they found that a note had been left for them.

"Hi dere,
Pardon me 4 writing 2 u. I was wondering if u ve ever taught of trying a bit of GLAMOR MODELLING. I tink u wd be good at it and cud make bit of money. I have camera and things u cud wear + some ideas for shoot. So cud help make portfolio for u. Call down to me at reception and let me know if u r interested.
Norbert"

"Good god, that creep gets worse", said Claire.

Lexa said nothing. Instead she reached for the room's phone, dialled a number and then said: "Norbert? We got your note. You fucking perv. Don't ever leave us a note like that again. Or any kind of note. And don't come into our room again either. If you do, I'll stuff your severed balls down your throat". She hung up.

"I really hope that's the end of it", she said to Claire.

"So do I".

"Tomorrow, though, we're going to have to think about how much longer we'll be here. I think we'll be in London longer than the four nights we booked in here".

"So do I".

"We'll have to decide whether we want to stay here or go somewhere else. Somewhere else won't have Sleazy McSleaze downstairs, but it may have its own attractions".

"I can live with Sleazy", said Claire. "I don't mean that literally. I mean I think we should put up with him and just stay here".

"OK, we'll do that".

The following morning they got up early and had their breakfast, being greeted in a typically cheery manner by the happy woman who looked after reception duties in daylight hours. When they extended their stay by another four nights she collapsed into a paroxysm of chuckles.

After breakfast Claire and Lexa left the hotel and went to a public library. From looking at telephone and business directories they were able to establish that Grieg Industries appeared to only have one premises in London. That premises was located far to the north, in Tottenham. They had less luck in working out just what kind of business Grieg Industries was engaged in. It sounded like some very non-specific kind of computer software manufacturer, the type who wants to make their very everyday products sound like they somehow represent the next stage of human evolution. The company was headed by the twenty five year old Sigismund Grieg, yet another of those precociously rich nerds who had swept the world in recent years. A photograph of him in a news story revealed him to be a dark-haired young man with a serious but open facial expression. And a moustache. The financial backers of the company were unknown.

Then they went for a walk to ponder their next move.

"We could go out and check out this Grieg Industries", said Claire.

"We could", answered Lexa.

"But maybe we would not find out much there".

"We'll only know when we get there".

"Of course. And I don't think we really have any other options".

"Not at this stage, no".

"We'll need to be on our guard out there, of course. If they have Ryan there, they may be expecting someone to come looking for him".

"Yes. They might. If they know where he's from they might be particularly on the look out for Irish people. So it might be a good time to use the amazing accent related abilities they gave to us back home".

"Excellent idea is that", said Claire, adopting a strange and mysterious accent.

"Where in the name of Christ is that meant to sound like it is from?" said Lexa.

"I'm not sure. Somewhere other than Ireland".

"It might be enough".

19/11/2011

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Penguin Excrement Menace For Panda Viewers

2012-01-16T10:53:00.002Z

The BBC reports that penguins have been defecating on people queuing to see the pandas in Edinburgh Zoo. It appears that the penguins are not jealous of visitors going to see other animals. Rather, the curious birds have merely been climbing on the wall of their enclosure to have a look at the people waiting to see the pandas. Due to an unfortunate design fault that does not inspire confidence in the zoo's ability to adequately house its animals, when the penguins then expel their bodily waste it drops down on the would-be visitors to the pandas.

According to an unnamed visitor who saw someone in front of him struck by the penguin excrement, the guano is "oily and stank of fish" and "looked like it would be really hard to clean off".

More

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Richard Thompson live – a short review of a concert from last year

2012-01-15T18:37:00.002Z

I went to see Richard Thompson playing solo in Vicar Street, along with a load of others who were mostly older than me. Result. The support act was a local singer songwriter who was not very good, for all that the audience generally seemed to like her. Fail. Mr Thompson played tunes from his own solo career and one Fairport Convention song written by his former bandmate, the late Sandy Denny. I am relatively unfamiliar with his solo output, but I recognised a few tracks from when I first saw the bearded and bereted sensation some years back, including the wonderful motorbike death tune '1952 Vincent Black Lightning', a track that had me thinking that he should really have thrown one of the similarly themed Shangri-Las songs onto his 1000 Years of Popular Music covers album.

I wrote another, far longer piece about this concert, but I don't think it contained any information not in the above, apart from the quip that I once thought that Fairport Convention had a song called 'Meat On The Ledge', which dealth with the importance of food hygiene.

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Afrocubism

2012-01-14T18:30:00.000Z

What is Afrocubism? Why, it is collaboration between musicians from Cuba and Mali. Maybe it should just have been called Malicubism, but that does not trip off the tongue the same way. These collaborative Cuban and Malian musicians were playing in the National Concert Hall, where I went to see them. This was ages ago, but I am only getting round to posting about them here now. Such is life.

There was a support act comprising a bunch of Irish fiddle players and a kora* player from Senegal (sadly not playing as Senegal-irelandism). The Irish guys were a group called Fidil, an amiable bunch from Donegal. The kora player was one Solo Cissoko, who played standing up, with straps around his neck to hold the instrument in place. Fidil played Irish tunes, with Solo improvising against them, and Solo played Senegalese tunes with the Irish guys improvising. It all worked very well musically and was an enjoyably interesting melding of traditions.

And so to Afrocubism. I understand that the Buena Vista Social Club project was originally meant to be an African-Cuban hoedown, with the very Malian musicians that we were saying tonight, except that visa faffology prevented the Malians from making the recording sessions. At a conceptual level, the Afrocubism project makes a certain amount of sense, given the long history of cross-fertilisation between African and Cuban music. However, I do not think that historically there has been much interaction historically between Cuban and Malian** music. And I do not think that many people from what is now Mali were transported to Cuba as slaves (as Mali is a bit too far away from the slave ports and a bit too low in population density to be a useful source of slaves), so the ancient African traditions of Cuba must come from elsewhere. And the African country where Cuban music has been most influential, ultimately filtering back to Cuba in a distorted and developed version of its music that proved very influential to Cuban musicians, was the Congo (sometimes also known as DR Congo, Dr Congo, Zaire, the Belgian Congo etc). So my impression is that getting Malian and Cuban musicians to play together is an example of throwing together different traditions as bizarre as getting a load of Irish fiddle players together with a Senegalese kora player. This was something that could only work as a juxtaposition of completely different styles and would not be anything like a joining together of traditions from a shared well of experience***.

And who were these musicians? Well, they were largely people I had never heard of. On the Cuban side, some of the older people were ones who had made their way onto Buena Vista Social Club films and records (the originals of which have somehow not yet crossed my radar). Grizzled old campesino guitar player Eliades Ochoa comes across as someone who surely must have appeared on that record. He also kept it real, Cuban-style, by yapping away to us at great length in largely incomprehensible heavily accented Spanish between each song. Claro, claro. The younger Cubans were broadly playing he kind of instruments you expect from a troupe of musicians from that country. The Malians, meanwhile, were playing a fascinating melange of instruments traditional and modern, with Toumani Diabaté (who is quite famous) on kora and Djelimady Tounkara on electric guitar (and many others on all kinds of things). Toumani Diabaté favoured the sitting down style of kora playing and probably was the person present who spoke the best English, while Djelimady Tounkara's guitar playing seemed intriguingly to reference the Shadows rather than the janglisms of Congolese guitarists****. That said, he sounds a bit more jangly on record.

I suppose in some ways this was like a scaled up version of the Fidil-Solo Cissoko set – they either played Cuban tunes, with colouring from the Malians, or Malian tunes with Cuban colouring. It felt a bit like two world music concerts for the price of one, all very enjoyable. It all worked, without coming across like a forced throwing together of incompatible styles. It was also pretty dance-tastic – by the end of the night whitey was getting down in the aisles, no doubt to the dismay of the National Concert Hall staff.

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* The kora is a tall stringed instrument from West Africa, played upright. You probably know this already.

** Not a lot of people know this, but Africa is divided up into many different countries and regions and does not have a single continent-wide musical tradition.

***after writing the previous paragraph for the readers of Frank's APA I discovered that this Afrocubism thing was not the first instance of Mali-Cuban musical collaboration. Although it is now a democratic country, Mali for a while had the kind of state socialist government seen in Cuba, and there were some cultural exchanges between the countries in the interests of building socialist solidarity and all that. These links seem to have persisted even after the transition in Mali.

**** I always like to think of every village in the Congo having a statue of Johnny Marr in it, with there being some remote areas where he is revered as a deity, but I suspect that the jangly guitar style of that country probably precedes the emergence of the Smiths and influenced Mr Marr, rather than the other way around.

Organisation Man: Chapter 16

2012-01-09T16:42:00.001Z

In which Claire and Lexa receive some interesting intelligence.

Claire Maguire and Lexa Hackett walked on.

"What makes you think we're being followed?" said Lexa in a low voice.

"Sound of footsteps behind us", whispered Claire.

"Could be someone going to the station, just like we are".

"Could be. Or maybe not".

"One way to find out". Lexa turned into a side street, without looking back. Claire went with her.

"I still hear footsteps", said Claire.

"So do I", said Lexa. "OK, let's do this".

They slowed slightly, imperceptibly, and then suddenly turned around to charge and grab a fresh-faced young man who had no time to react. Before his surprise abated enough for him to do anything they pushed him into a convenient doorway.

"Are you following us?" said Claire.

"Yes! Yes, I am", the man spluttered.

Lexa clocked him as someone who had been in the pub, but not one of the students they had been talking to. "Do you often follow women home from the pub?" she asked.

"No! It's not like that. Listen, you were asking about Dave in the pub?"

"Yes, we were", said Lexa.

"Well, I might have something for you. I didn't want to tell you in the pub, because I didn't want people to find out what I knew. But you… you're his friends, right?"

"Yeah, we are", said Claire. In a manner of speaking, she thought.

"Well he didn't just disappear, and he didn't head off on his own either".

"So what did happen to him?" said Lexa.

"Eh, could you let go of me first?"

Claire and Lexa exchanged a look and then released the young man, moving back slightly from him to give him room to breathe.

"Thanks", he said.

"Tell us what you know", said Claire.

"Well, your mate Dave – I knew him from the pub. He came out of nowhere and then for a week or two he was the life and soul of the place, buying everyone drinks and giving us all the pleasure of his company. I got a good few drinks out of him, but I can't say I knew him well – it was the girls he was after, mainly. But I liked him. There was an air of danger and excitement about him, and no one knew where he had come from or what he was doing here. Well, we knew he was from Ireland, obviously, but what had taken him away from there was a mystery to us all".

"Go on". As someone who knew Ryan from his working life, Lexa found the idea of him being a mystery to anyone a bit comedic.

"Then he went away, and we all started wondering what had happened to him. Pulled in by National Security was one theory, while others reckoned he had some kind of shady past that had caught up with him – you know, old gangland enemies had tracked him down, or something like that. But some of us also reckoned he had just been over here on holiday and had gone home".

Claire and Lexa both nodded.

"And then he was back. But he was in terrible form that last night – not seeming to want to talk to anybody, not wanting to do anything but pour drink into himself. Then he started throwing his weight around, insulting anyone who came near him and accusing people of looking at him funny. When he deliberately bumped into someone and knocked over his drink the barman threw him out, but he looked for a moment like he was going to go ape-shit and wreck the place. But he calmed down a bit and went off, and we never saw him again".

"You're not really telling us anything we don't already know", said Claire, trying to sound more like she wanted to draw him on rather than expressing the kind of disapproval that might shut him up.

"There's more. We never saw him again… in the pub. But I saw him again, later that night".

"Yes?" said Lexa.

"Yes. It was after pub closing time. I'd had a lot to drink that night. I think after the trouble with Dave being thrown out, I had a few too many to overcompensate. Then after chucking out time I was walking off and… well, I was a bit caught short".

"It could happen to a bishop", commiserated Claire, wondering if it had ever actually happened to a bishop.

"I couldn't really think what else to do. I mean, I couldn't go back to the pub, it was closed, so I climbed into the gardens, Cartwright Gardens, to… well, you know".

"I think we do", said Claire.

"And what happened then?" said Lexa. "Apart from the obvious".

"Well, I saw a van pull up outside one of the hotels there. A man ran from the van into the hotel, and then came out with two other guys and a woman. They were carrying Dave – I could see his face clearly. He seemed to be unconscious".

"The van, was it an ambulance? Maybe they were bringing him off for medical treatment?"

"No, it wasn't an ambulance. And there was something moody about the whole business. They were all looking around suspiciously, like they wanted no one to see what they were up to. So I kept well still where I was and hoped they wouldn't see me".

"And did they see you?" said Claire.

"No. To be honest, I don't think I'd be here if they had. Those guys looked like they meant business, and I think if they'd seen me I'd be wherever Dave is".

"Do you think they might have been National Security?" said Lexa.

The young guy shrugged. "How should I know? But I don't think so. National Security wouldn't be so furtive about hauling someone in. And National Security were all over the shop a couple of days later asking about Dave, so I don't think they knew anything about where he'd went".

"Did they all go off on the van?" said Claire.

"No. The three men did, with Dave, but the woman went back into the hotel".

"Would you recognise these people if you saw them again?" asked Claire. "Or would you be able to describe them to us?"

"I'd know the woman again. She was old, maybe in her 50s. Grumpy looking, seemed to be telling the others what to do".

Sounds like the Cartwright Friendly's manager, both Lexa and Claire thought.

"And the men?"

"They were pretty non-descript looking. Darkish hair. I don't think I'd recognise them again, to be honest".

"Mmmm".

"Though they all had moustaches".

"They all had moustaches?" said Claire. "Did they look like they might be Middle Eastern or South Asian or anything like that?" She tried to think of other parts of the world where men stereotypically have moustaches.

"No, they looked European. Or British. Apart from the moustaches".

"And you didn't think of reporting this to the authorities?" said Lexa, perhaps a bit more sharply than she intended. "I mean, it sounds like a pretty blatant case of abduction".

"It crossed my mind, but National Security are trouble". Then he continued in a quieter voice, "And I'm not exactly a natural supporter of the Transition".

"Yeah, I know how it is", said Claire.

"So you're Dave's mates… do you reckon you'll be able to get him out of wherever he is?"

"Well I don't know", said Lexa. "You've told us he was abducted from the hotel by some men with moustaches, but we've nothing to go on about where he's been taken".

"There was something on the van, maybe that would help".

"There was something on the van", said Lexa. "What? What was on the van?"

"The name of a company. Grieg Industries. Something like that, anyway".

"OK, that is useful. Anything else?"

"I think that's everything".

"Well", said Claire, "thanks for all this. If we're able to find Dave we'll let him know who put us on his trail. Here's something for your trouble".

She proffered two fifties, but the young man held his hands up to indicate refusal.

"No thanks, I don't need your money. I've got enough drinks out of Dave. I just don't want to see him come to harm".

"OK, thanks", said Claire.

"Cheers", said Lexa.

"You'd better go back the way you came", said Claire. "Just in case. We'll go on this way. Oh – if you think of anything else, ring me at this number. Leave a number I can call you back on". She handed him a piece of paper.

"Thanks", said the man. "Be seeing you".

The two women and the young man went their separate ways. As he walked back to the pub, the young man took the piece of paper out of a pocket, looked at the name and number written on it, and smiled.

more NaNoWriMo action coming soon

19/11/2011

An inuit panda production

Organisation Man: Chapter 15

2012-01-08T16:40:00.001Z

In which the narratorial voice starts referring to Claire Maguire and Lexa Hackett by their first names.

Claire and Lexa walked into the pub and made their way to the bar, unobtrusively trying to take the measure of the place. It was clearly not an establishment for people like them. Claire and Lexa did not normally think of themselves as old, but they were very conscious that this was a pub for people far younger than they were. They could tell this from the posters for hipster bands and films on the walls and from the scattering of trendy young student types in for a late afternoon drink. The music blasting from the PA system was also very much the kind of thing that young people like.

They sat at the bar and were approached by the barman, who seemed to be the only other person present who was older than twenty-one. "Alright ladies, what can I get you?" he said. He seemed like a genuinely friendly type, but then it was his job to be friendly.

"Gin and tonic for me", said Claire.

"Do you have any real ales?" said Lexa.

"Sorry love, we only do lager". The intonation on the word "love" did not carry any sense of it being used in a patronising manner.

"OK, half of Carling for me, then".

The two women sipped at their drinks and talked inconsequentially in a manner they had been trained for by the Organisation. When their drinks were finished, they caught the barman's eye and ordered another round. As he was giving back their change Maguire said, "I hear a friend of ours used to drink here".

"Yeah?" said the barman, non-committally. A lot of people drink or used to drink in my pub".

"Yeah, maybe you'd remember him?" she continued. "An Irish guy. He was a bit different to most people who came in here. Would have been in his mid thirties, long-ish hair, scratchy beard. He would have been here a bit a few weeks ago".

"Are you from the cops? Or National Security?"

"Oh no", said Claire.

"Well where are you from then?"

"Well, it's complicated. Let's just say we're friends of his".

"Very good friends", said Lexa, sliding over a fifty pound note to the barman. He carefully took it and pocketed it.

"I think I remember your friend", he said. "He was also bit flash with the cash. David, he said he was. I think I called him Dave".

"Our friend has gone missing", said Lexa.

"I heard that", said the barman.

"We're trying to find him".

"Do you remember anything about him?" asked Claire. "Like, anything he said or who he who he talked to? Did he come in with anyone else, or did anyone else meet him here?"

"I mostly just served him drinks. He was a sociable guy, full of chat, but he was guarded – the kind of guy who says everything and nothing, you know what I mean?"

"That's him alright".

"I thought maybe he was, you know, in some kind of trouble. Lying low for a bit".

"But you didn't report him to National Security?" said Lexa

"No", the barman was uncomfortable now. "Not trouble here, I mean back at home in Ireland".

"But aren't you meant to report anyone who seems a bit suspicious?"

"Well I suppose I am", said the barman. "Like I should probably report two birds coming in and asking a lot of questions. But National Security don't like having their time wasted, and if I reported everyone who comes in here and says something a bit funny then they'd be filling in reports from now till doomsday".

"Don't worry about it", said Claire. "Those guys do a good job, but I hear they can be a bit… over-zealous".

"Yeah, I can't run a pub if all my customers are off in Paddington Green". He was a bit agitated now, wondering if these two nosey women were likely sources of trouble.

"Sure", said Lexa. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have mentioned it. But who did our friend talk to when he was in, or did he drink on his own?"

"I told you, he was a sociable guy. Liked to buy drinks for everyone, and the students love someone who'll buy them drinks. So he talked to a lot of people".

"Anyone in particular?" said Lexa.

"Well…" said the barman, and then paused. "Well, I don't want to speak out of turn. Are either of you, you know, his missus?"

"Oh no", said Lexa.

"We're just friends", said Claire.

"Well that's alright then, because I don't think his missus would like to hear that he was all over the young girls who come in here. Especially keen on buying them drinks, he was. I'll be honest with you, I had to keep an eye on him with them, in case he tried anything on. Last thing I want is for my pub to get a name as somewhere sleazy old guys go to pick up student girls".

"You wouldn't want that", agreed Claire.

"But it wasn't a problem, the girls here know how to handle themselves. They let him buy them drinks, but he didn't get even a whiff of any how's-your-father, though I think he might have got a sympathy hand shandy under the table once".

"Really?" said Lexa.

"Well, I'm not sure. But that's about the size of it. Your mate came in here, bought everyone drinks, hung out with the students, tried it on with the girls, got nowhere – "

"Apart, possibly, from a hand shandy?" said Claire.

"Right, apart possibly from a hand shandy. And then he'd go home. He didn't have any other mates who came in with him, and no one I didn't recognise ever came in to meet him. Here – you want another round?"

"Why not?" said Claire. "Having one yourself?"

"Bit early for me", said the barman, "and I'm working. But what the hell".

He fixed them their drinks and came back with a brandy for himself.

"So that was really the size of it", said the barman. "Apart from the last night he was here".

"What happened then?" asked Claire.

"Well", said the barman, "he was in a bit of a state. He seemed a bit cut up about something, but he wasn't telling anyone what it was. Instead he was just buying a lot of drink, mostly for himself. And then he started acting aggressively, like he was trying to pick a fight with someone, with anyone really. I can't be having that in my boozer, so I threw him out, told him I'd call the cops if he came back. He wasn't happy with that, I can tell you, and for a moment he looked like he was going to have a go at me. Now, I'm not the kind of guy who starts fights, but if one starts I know how to handle myself. But I'm telling you, your mate, when he looked like he was going to turn on me, well, I was shitting myself, I was, literally shitting myself".

"Literally shitting yourself?" said Lexa, who was prone to pedantry.

"Literally. But then he thought better of it and he slunk off. And I never saw him again".

"Mmmm", said Claire, wondering if what they had heard would lead them anywhere. Probably not.

"Hey", said Lexa. "Any of these people here, would he have talked to them when he was in?"

"Sure", said the barman. "See that lot over there?" He indicated a table at which three young women and a spotty faced young man were nursing pints. They all looked of an age where they should really be drinking lemonade or Ribena. "He used to drink with them a bit. Had a bit of a thing for the blonde-haired girl".

"It wasn't her who…?" asked Claire.

"No, he's not here tonight".

Claire looked quizzically at the barman.

"Long story. You really don't want to know".

"We'll take your word for it", said Lexa. "OK, what are those four drinking? Set them up with another round".

"On us, obviously", said Claire.

Claire and Lexa joined the students, who liked having drinks for them and were happy to talk about "Dave", the weird old guy who for a week or two came in an bought drinks for everyone before disappearing, only to show up a few weeks later only to be thrown out for outrageously drunken and disorderly behaviour. But they did not hear anything of substance bar speculation as to who might or might not have bestowed a hand shandy on Ryan, with several names being mentioned being mentioned and heated argument on the subject erupting between the students. Eventually the students drifted off into discussing the latest popular TV comedy programme and re-enacting routines from it, whereupon Claire and Lexa decided that there were limits to the generosity of Organisation. Bidding farewell to the students and the barman, though not before Claire gave the barman the same number she gave to the manager of the Cartwright Friendly, they took their leave of the pub that Ryan had frequented and started on the walk down to the Tube station.

They had not gone far when Claire said, "Don't turn around or anything, but I think we're being followed".

19/11/2011

An inuit panda production

Organisation Man: Chapter 14

2012-01-07T16:39:00.000Z

Claire and Lexa visit the Cartwright Friendly.

There are a number of hotels and guesthouse in Cartwright Gardens. Some of them are attractive looking places, ones that someone walking by would find themselves thinking, "I'd like to stay there". Some of them are a bit more mediocre but still are not-uninviting places, ones of which a passer-by might say, "it would not be the end of the world if I found myself staying there". And then there is the Cartwright Friendly. Its dilapidated exterior hints at the horrors that lie within – peeling wallpaper, endlessly subdivided room reduced to a tiny fraction of their former size, ghastly décor that even the most exploitative slum landlord would consider a bit much, bathrooms either tiny or so oddly shaped as to be semi-unusable, and staff notorious in the hospitality industry for their complete antipathy to anything approximating to customer service. As Hackett and Maguire approached this dreadful place they found themselves thinking that bad and all as their hotel was, the worst they really had to put up with was a sleazy receptionist they could tell to fuck off. In contrast, the entrance to the Cartwright Friendly looked like a portal into hell.

"I think Ryan may have drawn the shitty end of the stick", said Maguire.

"Indeed", said Hackett.

They pushed in through the door. The reception area was dimly lit. A portly individual of indeterminate gender sat behind a desk, staring vacantly in their general direction. He – or she – did not react when they approached. Eventually Maguire spoke.

"Good afternoon. We're here to inquire about a friend of ours. He was staying here, but he seems to have disappeared. His name was… Daithí Ó Cionnaith. Do you remember him?"

The receptionist grunted and shook his, or her, head.

"He would have been in his mid-thirties", said Hackett. "With long-ish hair, for a man, and a bit of a beard. He was here twice – for about ten days, about a month ago, and then again two weeks ago. Ring any bells?"

This elicited the same response.

"Our understanding is that he stayed one night here last time, but then was reported missing", Hackett continued. "We were told that the police were here, possibly also National Security. Do you remember that, or even hearing about it?"

The receptionist paused, as though trying to think of something, and then grunted again and shook his, or her, head.

"OK", said Maguire. "Maybe a picture would help. Do you recognise this man?" She handed over a photo of Ryan, and a fifty-pound note.

The receptionist pocketed the money and then studied the photograph in a manner that suggested it had qualities that were a tad confusing. Eventually the receptionist grunted, and with a headshake handed the photo back to Maguire, before resuming his or her vacant staring.

"Mmmm", said Maguire. "Is there maybe someone else we could talk to? Someone who might remember a bit more of our friend?"

"Preferably someone who isn't a moron", Hackett added helpfully. The receptionist turned to face her, now looking both perplexed and perhaps annoyed.

"Perhaps the supervisor or manager?" Maguire hastily continued. "Would he or she be around?"

Now the receptionist eyed them suspiciously. With a grunt, he (or she) slid back into a recess behind the desk, picked up a phone and dialled a number. There followed a conversation conducted in a low grunting voice, while the receptionist continued to look carefully at the two women. Eventually the phone was hung up and the receptionist rolled back to the desk, nodded to Maguire and grunted again.

"So… what? The manager is coming?" said Hackett. She was clearly annoyed, but Maguire signalled her to be quiet. They waited, for what was only a couple of minutes, but it seemed like an eternity, with Hackett becoming ever more tense, Maguire become more concerned about what Hackett might do, and the receptionist staring tranquilly ahead. Eventually the silence was broken by the arrival of a woman, somewhere the wrong end of middle age, who looked carefully at Maguire and Hackett from thin eyes that seemed to have seen much. For all that this evidently was the manager of the Cartwright Friendly, her face had a distinctly unfriendly quality to it. Indeed, she gave every impression of liking nothing less than having to interact with people, especially people like Hackett and Maguire.

"What d'ye want?" she said, in a clipped Irish accent. "You're asking a lot of questions".

"We're friends of Daithí Ó Cionnaith", said Maguire. "He was staying here, but he seems to have disappeared. We were wondering if you could tell us anything that might help us find him?"

"Are you cops? Or National Security?"

"Well, no", said Maguire. "Nothing like that. We're friends –"

But she was cut off by the manager. "Didn't think so. Well, if you're not cops then I don't have to tell you anything, so fuck off out of my hotel".

The receptionist grunted in agreement.

"Sure", said Maguire. "You don't have to tell us anything. And I don't have to give you these two fifty pound notes".

The manager snarled. Her face seemed to be computing the advantage of just throwing out these two nosey parkers versus the pleasure of taking those two fifty pound notes her own. Eventually greed won over pride. She grabbed the notes and said: "Alright, what d'ye want to know?"

"Well", said Maguire, "what do you recall of our friend?"

"Not much". She spoke guardedly, her eyes darting round as though looking for hidden listeners. "He arrived and checked in. I didn't deal with him on the desk, but I heard he seemed a bit agitated. I did see him go out in the evening, and he didn't look the best. I don't think anyone saw him come in and he didn't come down for breakfast the next day. But one of the cleaners went into his room, and he seemed to have slept there. So he must have slipped out early, leaving all his stuff. No one thought much of it. People come and go as they please here".

"When did you become concerned?" asked Hackett.

The manager looked somewhat guilty now. "It was when he'd reached the end of the days he'd paid for. We'd have to tidy up the room for the next guest, but all his stuff was still in it. And we realised that no one had seen him since the first day. So we didn't know what to do. In the end we called the cops, and they came and started poking around, and next thing National Security were all over the shop poking around".

"I see", said Hackett.

"What kind of things were the police and National Security doing?" asked Maguire.

"Looking at your friend's stuff, asking everyone questions about him – who'd been talking to, where he'd been going, that kind of thing. Like anyone here knew or gave a shit – he could have been talking to the Zeppelin Confederacy for all we knew. Then they took away all his stuff and told us to let them know if he came back". She paused. "Or if anyone came along asking about him".

Maguire handed over two more fifties to the manager.

"Enda here'll need something too", the manager said.

Maguire gave another fifty to the receptionist, who chuckled excitedly.

"Do you have anything else to tell us?" asked Hackett.

"No, nothing to tell you", said the manager. "But maybe something to give you. Or something to show you. You see, the cops took away all your friend's things. At least, they thought they did. We found one thing they didn't, and I have it inside if you want it".

"What is it?" said Hackett, trying to sound vaguely threatening.

"It's a book. Do you want it? If you catch up with your friend he might want it back".

"OK, give it to us".

"Well, I can't just give it to you. I was thinking more of… selling it to you".

"Haven't we given you enough money?" said Hackett, sharply.

"Do you want it or not?"

"We want it", said Maguire, handing over another fifty.

The manager smiled. "Wait here", she said, and she went off through a door from the reception area and then came back with a book. "Here you go", she said, handing it to Maguire.

"You've just paid fifty quid for the latest Andy McNab", said Hackett.

"It might have sentimental value for your friend", said the Manager, a slight sneer in her voice. "Now, anything else I can do for you?"

"No, you're grand", said Maguire. "Thanks for your time. If you think of anything else, ring me at this number". She handed a slip of paper with a scribbled phone number to the manager, who took it diffidently. Maguire continued to Hackett, "come on, let's go".

"Bye", said Hackett as they left the Camden Friendly, hoping never to return.

Outside, as they walked away, Hackett said to Maguire, "Jesus, fifty quid for an Andy McNab?"

"You never know, Ryan might have left a message in it. Hey, it's book-marked". She opened the book and they looked at what it said.

" 'You look fucking famished', said Ned.

'Yeah mate, I need some nosebag bad' said the marine.

'Get some nosh here fast!' shouted Ned. Then he asked the marine, "What happened to you, mate?'

'Bhaji ambush. IED took out our APC, then they were on us with – "

Maguire looked up from the book with a disappointed facial expression.

"Any hidden messages there?" said Hackett.

"Doesn't look like it. Not there anyway. But maybe somewhere else in the book… I might need to look through it all. Ryan could have scribbled something in the margin for us".

"I hope you don't get distracted by the riveting prose".

"I'll try not to".

"And you gave the manager your phone number". There was a slight questioning inflection in the tone of Hackett's voice.

"Don't worry, I gave her the number of the backup phone, the one I only turn on for messages when we're well away from the hotel. Even if she gives the number to National Security they're not going to track us down with that".

"Sweet".

They walked on.

"So what now?" said Maguire. "The antiques dealer seems to have shut up shop. The Friendly has nothing for us but this amazing book. Where does that leave us?"

"I don't know. Maybe we're running out of leads. Maybe not. Hey, here’s a pub. Let's go for a drink and think about it".

"Mmm, yeah, let's. But wait a minute – here's a pub, just down the road from the Friendly…"

"Yeah?" said Lexa Hackett.

"Well", said Claire Maguire, "If you were staying in the Cartwright Friendly and you came out the front door in the mood for a drink, where do you think you might end up?"

"Aha. Let's check this place out".

18/11/2011

An inuit panda production

Organisation Man: Chapter 13

2012-01-06T16:38:00.000Z

In which a further trip to Ealing is made and Claire and Lexa discourse on the subject of clowns.

Maguire and Hackett got up later the next morning. The happy woman on the reception desk was there again, laughing away to herself when they came down for breakfast. After another barely adequate morning meal, they headed out from the hotel. As they did not want to arrive out in Ealing too early, in case Agaskayon only worked afternoons or some such, they walked around the area of the hotel for a bit and then got the Tube up to Hyde Park and strolled around there. Maguire saw a number of squirrels, which made her excitable in a manner that even she found a bit embarrassing. Hackett kept a careful but unobtrusive eye on the other walkers, checking that they were not being followed. It was, of course, hard to tell. Even before the Transition, London had a lot of people in it who occupied themselves by keeping an eye out for suspicious behaviour (broadly defined) and following around anyone they thought might be up to something. Now there were, clearly, a number of plain-clothes operatives from National Security at work in the park, but as far as Hackett could make out, none of them were following her and Maguire. Maguire's obviously unfeigned delight in the antics of the park's squirrels was probably a help here.

"Oooh look, there's another one!" she exclaimed, pointing at a furry tailed rodent. "He's eating something!" And the squirrel was eating, holding what looked like a human's discarded apple core in his paws and munching away at it in a manner that even Hackett had to admit was kind of cute.

Eventually, though, Hackett felt able to say: "I think we've killed enough time. Let's go to Ealing". So they did. As they were still a bit early they stopped for a coffee. While in the small local café, two clowns came in and ordered from the counter in the miming way beloved of those strange painted people. The clowns sat down at a table together and drank their coffees, but everyone else was now tense, uncertain as to what the unpredictable comedians might do next. Maguire and Hackett looked at each other, their eye contact communicating that they were not going to be intimidated. They sat there slowly sipping their coffees (a mocha for Hackett and a latte for Maguire) and continuing to make small talk, in an attempt to convince both themselves and the others in the café that they at least were not afraid of the oddly dressed new arrivals. But when their drinks were finished they did not linger, making their way out onto the street. As she left, Maguire somehow caught the eye of one the clowns. He was made up as a Sad Clown, but he seemed to be smiling at her, though it was hard to tell under all the make-up.

"Fucking clowns", said Hackett, once they were out on the street. "We've got our problems at home, but at least we don't have clowns. If I lived here I really would be wondering why National Security aren't doing something about those jokers. I mean, what's the point of the Transition if it can't get rid of freaks like them?".

"Woaah there, Lexa", said Maguire, so astonished by Hackett's comments that she broke the Organisation's cardinal rule and used her colleague's real first name and not the fake one she was using for the mission. "Maybe if Agaskayon's open we should get you some of the Nazi stuff Ryan mentioned in his report. Some of that SS underwear would go well with what you're saying. Those clowns seemed harmless enough to me".

"You know, I could engage with what you've said, but by mentioning the Nazis you've just lost the argument".

"Oh really? I suppose when you set up your Clown Concentration Camps you'll say that anyone who compares your policy of clown extermination to the Third Reich has also lost the argument?".

Hackett did not respond. She could to an extent see the point Maguire was making, but she really hated clowns.

They turned onto the antiques dealer's street and walked up to the shop. It was still closed.

"Arse", said Hackett.

"I don't think we can keep coming back here day after day indefinitely on the off chance that the place will be open", said Maguire. "Let's see what they say about when the shop was last open". She indicated a small corner shop across the road. Hackett nodded and they went over.

"Hello!", said Maguire to the South Asian woman who eyed them suspiciously from behind the cash register. "That antiques shop across the road – Agaskayon's – we were told they had some good stuff there, but it seems to be closed".

"Yes, it is closed", answered the shopkeeper.

"But is it just closed today?" said Maguire.

"It was closed yesterday as well".

"I see, but how about before that? Has it closed down for good, do you think?"

"I do not know these things. It is not my shop".

"Right", said Hackett. "But sitting across here, you would surely be able to notice when it is open and when it is closed. So do you remember when it was last open?"

The woman thought for a bit and then reluctantly spoke. "It was open last week, I think, early last week. Maybe Monday. Or Tuesday. I was here and I could see it open. And then in the afternoon, early in the afternoon, the shop man came out of it with some other men and pulled down the shutters, and then they went away. I have not seen the shop open since".

"Have you seen Mr Agaskayon, the antique dealer, since?" asked Maguire.

"No", answered the woman.

"And do you remember anything about the men he went away with?" said Hackett.

"No".

"Did he seem to be going away willingly with them?"

"You ask a lot of questions".

"Yes, but we're just trying to find out whether the shop is likely to be reopening again soon", said Maguire. "We heard they had some things for sale that would really have suited my friend here".

The shopkeeper looked at Hackett in a manner that suggested she was thinking about what items Agaskayon had that might suit her. Then she said: "He seemed to be friends with the men, but I was not paying close attention. I do not work for National Security". The last sentence was polite but contained a slight barb.

"Well thanks", said Maguire. "Sorry to have taken up your time". And then to Hackett: "Come on, let's go".

They went for a stroll, pondering their next move.

"I think Agaskayon was tipped off that we were onto him", said Maguire. "His pals advised him to shut up shop and he has scarpered".

"That seems likely", said Hackett. "So, should we try and track him down?"

"How would we?"

"Oh, the usual. There are probably some kind of publicly accessible records associated with the shop that could give us a home address for him. Or we could get the phone book and contact some of the other Agaskayons and see if they know him. I mean, it's not a common name, they're probably all related. And maybe one of the shop's neighbours has a forwarding address for post".

"I don't like it", said Maguire. "Any of those could draw attention to us. If Agaskayon's people have any links to the authorities here, they'll notice someone poking around in public records looking for his home address. And contacting his friends and relations through the phone book will definitely set off alarm bells. They may even spring a trap on us".

"I take your point", said Hackett. "But that leaves us with few options".

"We do have some other lines of inquiry. There's the hotel Ryan was staying in. The Cartwright Friendly. We've assumed that this is all to do with Agaskayon, but maybe there is something fishy going on there. Or maybe they just know something that would help us work out what happened to Ryan".

"OK, let's go there. Now. But we'll have to be on our guard there, I think".

"Just like everywhere", said Maguire, with an air of bravado that even she was somewhat convinced by.

18/11/2011

An inuit panda production

Organisation Man: Chapter 12

2012-01-05T16:36:00.000Z

Claire Maguire and Lexa Hackett begin their investigations. Events take a somewhat meta-fictional direction.

Maguire and Hackett did not stay out late. They had a lot to do the following day and they wanted to be on top of their game for it. They did not know what had happened to Ryan, but they knew it could be that he had fallen into the hand of the enemy. If so then the enemy could be watching out for them too, so they needed their wits about them. They did at least take the opportunity of walking the streets, planning their next move in a low voice, sure that they were far less likely to be the subject of surveillance while on the move than back in their hotel room.

"So we'll take them by the throat", said Hackett. "Tomorrow we go straight out to the antiques dealer. His lot are the most likely culprits. We slap him around until he talks – either tells us where Ryan is, or tells us who is next up the chain from him, and we go to them and give them the same treatment".

"It's as good a plan as any", agreed Maguire.

"If it is the passport people, we'll need to move fast. Once they know we're onto them, they'll strike back. So we'll have to move before they know what hit them".

"Right. Anyway, I'm tired. Let's go back to bed".

Once back in the Hotel Moonlight, they returned to their room and quickly began to get ready for bed. But then they were distracted by the sound of a knock on the door. Hackett signalled to Maguire that she was going to open it; her colleague tensed, in case flight or fight would be required. But when the door was opened it revealed none other than the receptionist, who smiled at them ingratiatingly.

"Good evening ladies, I was just wondering if you wanted a turn down service, or if there was anything else – "

"No thanks!" said Hackett, slamming the door in his face.

Shunter sighed and trudged down the stairs. Back to Razzle, he thought.

The following morning Maguire and Hackett came down early to sample the hotel's breakfast. Shunter's place at the reception desk had been taken by an older woman who grinned at them as they came down the stairs. She greeted them with a cheery "Alright darlings! Sleep well?" followed by a bout of chuckles that may have been suggestive or threatening but perhaps just indicated that the morning receptionist was the kind of person who found everything funny.

Breakfast was uninspiring but not comedically awful. Maguire had the full English, while Hackett had scrambled eggs on toast. They did not linger and were out of the hotel well before nine. Consequently it was still not late when they arrived in Ealing and found themselves at Agaskayon's antiques shop. The shutter was still down.

"Mmmm", said Hackett.

"We could wait for him to come and open the shop", said Maguire. "But that would look a bit weird. If I was a shifty shopkeeper with secrets and I saw too strangers loitering outside my shop, well I would think it a bit suspicious".

"Yes", said Hackett. "Let's go away and come back. We can explore the sights of Ealing".

"There are sights of Ealing?"

"Oh yes. There is what was John Soane's country mansion, not in a park and open to the public".

"Oh… and who is John Soane?"

"He is some architect. He designed the Bank of England building. I think he collected stuff, and the stuff he collected is all still in the house".

"Oh well, I suppose it beats standing around here looking like we are… well I don't know what we would look like. Let's go".

So they spent an hour or two looking at the house of John Soane. Then they went to a café and had some tea and cake.

"That John Soane guy had a lot of crazy stuff", said Maguire in a somewhat superfluous stating-the-obvious kind of way.

"Indeed", answered Hackett.

Then they went back to Agaskayon's. It was still closed. They walked past it, trying not to give the impression that they were paying it any intention. When they were a safe distance away, Maguire said: "Still closed. Maybe the bird has flown".

"Or maybe he doesn't work Wednesdays. Could be a religious thing".

"Could be. Well I don't think we should stay loitering around here. How about we head into central London and see the sights there, and then come back again tomorrow later in the day?"

"That sounds like a great idea. We should stick together in London, though, just in case".

"Well", said Maguire, "you're welcome to join me while I go looking for shoes".

"Maybe we don't need to stick together. I'll meet you back at the hotel at six?"

"I don't want to go back there on my own. That receptionist might be there again, and I'm afraid of what I might do to him".

"Saucy".

"I mean it might cause us problems if I were to hospitalise him".

"OK, so let's meet at the entrance to the British Museum. Reckon you can find that?"

"I think so. What are you going to do?"

"The Tate Britain, I think. There is an exhibition of stuff by Schiele on".

"Schiele?"

"He was an Austrian painter", said Hackett. "A contemporary of Klimt. Mostly pre-First World War. His stuff is quite intense – often having this transgressively sexual quality".

"Mmmm, maybe you'll meet our friend there. Doesn't really sound like my kind of thing, I'm afraid. I will stick to my shoes".

When they met later, Maguire was laden down with shopping bags.

"I've bought loads of shoes!" she said. "On the company's money!"

"Mmmm", said Hackett.

"You don't sound impressed".

"Well I can't say I am. You're in one of the biggest and most exciting cities in the world and what do you do? You go shoe shopping".

"Well what's wrong with that?"

"It's just it's so clichéd. If this were a novel your shoe shopping would mark you out as stereotypical shallow female character".

"Just because I like nice shoes doesn't mean you can say I'm shallow. Anyway, you can't really talk about me being shallow".

"What do you mean?"

"Come on, listen to what you are saying. Do your words really mark you out as some kind of complex character?"

"I feel complex!"

"I'm sure you do, but do you act like you are? I mean, how really different are you and I? Apart from our hair colour and my fondness for shoes, well how would anyone tell which of us was which?"

"That's a bit much".

"Not at all. Just think, if this were a novel and someone was reading what we were saying without our names being attached, would they be able to tell which of us was saying what?"

"I don't accept that at all", answered Maguire. I mean, answered Hackett. It was definitely Hackett who said that. But she had to concede the point and was a bit perturbed by it.

"Come on", said Maguire, "let’s go back to the hotel. I want to dump off these shoes and then we should go out and get something to eat".

Back at the Hotel Moonlight, Norbert Shunter was roused from his copy of Full House by the arrival of the two sexy ladies from the night before. To some extent they were interchangeable objects of desire to him, but he did think of them as being different. For instance, one of them had red hair and the other brown. And he liked the red head's tits more, but thought the brunette had a nicer arse.

Still, individual or not, the two women looked a bit out of sorts. Maybe he could cheer them up.

"Evening ladies, how about –", he began, but they ignored him.

Now Shunter was annoyed. A few minutes later, the two of them came back again, still looking like they were not in the best of moods. Shunter reckoned he would be able to sort them out, if only they would stop and listen, but they breezed past him. So he went back to Full House. Although he was in some senses not a content person, he did at least lack any sense that it was only his obsessive interest in low-grade British pornography that gave him any individuality of character.

Hackett and Maguire went to a nearby Indian restaurant and ate, largely in silence, with Hackett rebuffing Maguire's attempts at conversation or responding monosyllabically. Eventually she said: "I really am a bit concerned about your thinking I lack a distinct personality".

"I didn't say that", said Maguire. "I've known you a couple of years now, I know you have your own individual identity. I was just saying that what we would seem like two very thinly drawn and largely interchangeable characters, if what we had been saying to each other had been written down and presented in a novel. It's like we were characters in, say Dr Who, where dialogue originally written for one assistant suddenly had to be farmed out among two or three because of the addition of largely superfluous extra characters".

"I feel like I have fallen into a world of dreadful postmodernism", said Hackett morosely.

"Oh well, let's talk about something else. How is your food? What is it you ordered again?"

"Vegetable dansak. It's very good".

"Vegetable dansak. Oh I remember. Are you a vegetarian?" asked Maguire, in that tiresome way that non-vegetarians insist on doing to people they see eating food that does not contain meat.

"I suppose I am", answered Hackett. But she was now worried that her vegetarianism stemmed not from any fundamental concern for the welfare of animals but was instead a weak attempt to make her somehow distinct from other people in general (and, right now, from Maguire in particular). "And yours?"

"Lamb korma", said Maguire. "It's good". She was no longer troubled by the kind of existential angst that seemed to be weighing down Hackett. If she lacked true individuality and real depth of character it was not something she was going to worry about.

"Lamb korma… of course", said Hackett.

"What do you mean, 'of course'?"

"Oh nothing, it's just that lamb korma was apparently Osama Bin Laden's favourite dish".

"You are mistaken, madam", said a waiter who happened to be passing at that moment. "Mutton korma was the favourite meal of that terrorist. As a mark of respect to those who died on eleven nine and to all victims of terrorism we have removed that dish from the menu". He went on to serve some other customers, leaving Maguire and Hackett so stare at each other and ponder the strangeness of the world in which they lived.

16/11/2011 – 17/11/2011

An inuit panda production

Organisation Man: Chapter 11

2012-01-04T16:35:00.000Z

I'm as shocked by it as you are, officer.

Norbert Shunter sat behind the desk in the reception area of the Hotel Moonlight. He was bored. Not even the copy of Razzle, through which he thumbed in a desultory fashion, was able to banish his sense of the monotonous awfulness of life. He would not want to knock the fine publication that was Razzle, but he had seen too much of the pictures in this issue – the pages were now a bit sticky. And while Razzle was all very well, he could do with seeing some real tits for a change.

And then it seemed as though Norbert's prayers might just be answered. Two women came into the lobby of the hotel and approached the desk. One had dark hair that seemed to be tied in a ponytail, while the other was a redhead. And the red head was wearing a relatively low-cut top that revealed just enough cleavage to Norbert's gaze. He was the kind of man who divides women into two categories: fuckable and unfuckable. And being a naturally generous character, most women ended up in the fuckable category. But these two, there was no question about it. They were definitely fuckable.

"What can I do for you, ladies?" said Norbert, in his most charming voice. He was also the kind of man who tended to stare at women's chests while talking to them. Being faced with two women and their chests his eyes had no real option but to dart frantically from side to side.

"We're looking for a room. For the next four nights", said the brunette.

"Well I think we have some free", said Norbert. "What kind of room would you be looking for? One with two beds, or one with just the one? That would be nice and cosy". He smiled and briefly looked them in the face before his eyes dropped back down to where they were more comfortable.

"We'd prefer one with two", said the brunette.

"But we aren't fussy", said the redhead.

"Well let's see what I have for you", said Shunter, rummaging through some documents on the desk, not making any effort to hide the copy of Razzle. He thrust two forms at the women. "You'll need to fill these in. And I'll have to take a copy of your documents".

The women handed Norbert their passports, filling in the forms while he copied the passports on a small photocopier behind him. He handed back the passports and pointed to the notice explaining the suspiciously low tariff. And then he held up a key.

"We'll put you in room 5. It's a nice one. First floor. Come on, I'll show you where it is".

He led them up the stairs to the room. And then, when he unlocked the door to show them the room, the women grabbed him and pulled him in. They swiftly undressed while simultanaeously running their hands over his body. Kissing him, and each other, they ripped open his trousers, unleashing his enormous and eager man-root. Shunter felt himself being pushed back on the bed. The brunette got to work on sucking out his love-juice, while the redhead climbed up on the bed, straddled him, and then lowered her juicy sex onto his face…

Well, that's what Norbert Shunter was hoping would happen. Instead the redhead grabbed the key from him and said, "I think we'll find our own way up, thanks".

And then they were gone. A disappointed Shunter went back to his Razzle.

Once in the room the brunette said "Oh Jesus, that horrible man! I need a shower".

"I'll let him know. Maybe he'd like to watch… or he could help scrub you down", said Hackett, for it was she.

"Urgh, you are sick!" said Maguire. "I'm putting a complaint in when I get back. I shouldn't have to work with pervs".

"Hey, sorry", said Hackett, reaching out and briefly touching Maguire's arm. "Don't let him bother you. If he tries anything on just kick his nuts up into his oesophagus".

"Oh I will".

"Nice room we have here", said Hackett. It was not a nice room.

"And just the one bed. Great".

"It's just for four nights. We'll manage. Come on, let's go out and get something to eat. We can forget what we're here for tonight and just go and see what the city has to offer us".

They went down the stairs and headed out, not bothering to acknowledge Shunter's feeble greeting as they stormed past.

15/11/2011

An inuit panda production

Organisation Man: Chapter 10 (part 2)

2012-01-03T16:33:00.000Z

Claire Maguire and Lexa Hackett are trying to work out what has happened to Barry Ryan. They have just read a document he had been looking at.

"Do you think there might be anything to this?" asked Maguire.

"Oh yeah, can you not see all the hidden references to all our state secrets? This is obviously the work of some kind of seriously dangerous outfit who would stop at nothing to get what they want. I bet they have Ryan stashed in a Fritzl cellar somewhere".

"Mmmm. I like the photos".

"Why, do you have a thing for blurry shots of hairy rockers?"

"Hairy rockers, nom nom nom. Let's read a bit more". So they did.

"We also liked hairy Dublin rockers Wizards of Firetop Mountain and were fascinated by the pixie rock of Circulus. Circulus also became an object of fascination to the people I work with, after I had mentioned the name of the festival I was going to… on my return Circulus were the only band they asked me about, not because they had previously heard of them but because their Wikipedia page made them sound like escapees from a 1970s episode of the Old Grey Whistle Test. And I suppose in a way that is what they were like, with their funny instruments, talk of odd tunings, and Mr Circulus' between song chat suggesting that he was channelling Whispering Bob Harris. I think I would like to explore their music further.

"We missed almost all of local psyche-folk-rock-improv-etc. band United Bible Studies, in fact just catching their last song, an extended cover of the Planxty tune ' "P" Stands For Paddy I Suppose', done here as a demented rock out tune about love gone wrong and the like. I thought it was amazing, the frenetic music suiting really well the lyrics of obsession and failure, with the look of the band (they were dressed in Halloweeny costume as a variety of ghosts, zombies, vampires and liches) adding to its doomy vibe. But trad purist Irene thought it was rubbish.

"Like GNOD, United Bible Studies seemed to have most of the festival's funny characters in their line-up, including harpist Aine O'Dwyer, who had played a charmingly minimalist set in the church on the previous day. Her write-up in the programme seemed to have been written by a deranged stalker fan; the barring order is still in place. UBS featured so many other random festival weirdoes that I started imagining that maybe I would see myself playing with them up on stage. Dude".

"I really don't think we need worry about these people being a threat to national security", said Hackett. "Unless they are planning to undermine the state with shite avant garde music".

"You're probably right", said Maguire.

"I am right", said Hackett. "And you know it". She threw the document back into the cupboard. "Enough of this shite".

Just then a figure approached them, a look of concern spreading across his wide face.

"Hello there girls", said Lyon, for it was he. "What are you up to at Barry Ryan's desk".

"Lyon", said Hackett. "Do you know what the minimum age for starting work here is? In case you don't, it's eighteen. Not fourteen or nine, eighteen. So I don't think we have any girls working here. I myself haven't been a girl for quite some time. Now, I have to take all this girl and cailín crap from the Chief and Kearney, but I don't have to take it from you, so shut it".

Ryan rolled his eyes and tutted as though he was dealing with some kind of prima donna (a turn of phrase which itself involves the gender-based stereotyping of leading women performers in the opera) and then continued, "well whatever, I was just wondering what you were doing at Ryan's desk. There hasn't been any… news about him, has there?"

"Look Lyon", said Maguire. "What is this I have here? Why, it is an official pass key and we are using it to check the contents of Ryan's cupboard".

"And why do you think we are doing that?" said Hackett. "Because we've been asked to by the Chief. But beyond that we really can't say. You've been here long enough, so I think you get the idea".

"Well it is most unusual", Lyon answered. "He's been away a while on his mission. He's not under investigation, is he?"

"Would I tell you if he was?" asked Maguire. That shut him up. Lyon slinked away.

They poked around a bit more, not really finding anything of interest. Eventually Maguire said: "So Lexa, it must be interesting for you having to track down Barry Ryan. Word is you are a bit sweet on him".

"I beg your pardon?"

"Well, you know, people have been saying that you have a bit of a thing for him".

"Have people really been saying that? I don't know where they've been getting that idea".

"Well it is what they say".

"I think they've got the wrong end of the stick there. He is not my type at all, though I think he was being a bit over-familiar at the last Christmas Party. Maybe people drew the wrong conclusion?"

"Maybe".

After deciding that there was nothing in Ryan's files worth pursuing, Hackett and Maguire did not really have any reason not to travel to London at the earliest possible opportunity. The longer they waited, the colder the trail would be. So they spent the rest of the day learning off their temporary names, memorising code words, and studying Ryan's report and Kearney's notes on the debriefing session. And the next morning they were off. This time round the higher ups decided that the roundabout route was out, as the risk of it being compromised was too high. Kearney had explained earlier that the Chief had considered flying them to Denmark and then having them take a ferry to England, but that was dismissed as being so outlandish that it could not but set off alarm bells along the way. So instead they were going to try a double bluff, flying straight into Gatwick in the hope that it would be the last thing anyone would suspect (and flying to Gatwick because flying to Heathrow would just be ridiculous). Thus they found themselves making their way through the airport concourse to the train station that would bring them to central London.

"Hey, look at that", said Maguire, pointing to a newsagent where every newspaper seemed to be running the single headline "VICTORY".

"Well, that's that then", said Hackett. "The other lot must have finally thrown in the towel".

"Look's like no one is going to be reversing the Transition any time soon", said Maguire, before adding the following in for the benefit of anyone listening in, "which is a good thing, obviously".

14/11/2011 – 15/11/2011

An inuit panda production

2011 Favourite Albums

2012-01-02T16:49:00.002Z

I have been thinking about what were my favourite new to me records of 2011. And the following are the ones I came up with. A fuller write-up of these will appear soon in the pages of Frank's APA and ultimately on Inuit Panda. Where possible I have linked back to my original reviews of these records.

Jane Weaver
The Fallen By Watch Bird [2010]

My favourite record is this piece of somewhat psychey neo-folk from Jane Weaver, Bird Records supremo. If strange folky sounds are your thing then check this out.

Bo Hansson
Lord of the Rings [1970]

Mr Hansson wrote his own musical accompaniment to the Tolkien-classic back in the past. He seems a bit more interested in the dark and sinister aspects of the great book.

The Flaming Lips
Embryonic [2009]

Some say that the Flaming Lips have become dull and mainstream. They may not have listened to this.

Broadcast & The Focus Group
Broadcast & The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio Age [2009]

Spooky electronic music from this interesting collaboration, lent a certain poignancy by the recent death of Trish Keenan of Broadcast.

Dean & Britta
13 Most Beautiful: Songs For Andy Warhol's Screen Tests [2010]

A series of tunes recorded to accompany showings of Andy Warhol screen tests, some covers and some original. Sonic Boom has some production input and it does all end up sounding a bit neo-shoe gaze, but in a good way.

Tom Tom Club
[Untitled First Album] [1982]

Funky side project band from Talking Heads rhythm section, together with input from their friends and relations. Impossible not to like.

Richard Thompson
1000 Years of Popular Music [live] [2006]

Mr Thompson and his two lady friends perform tunes from the last thousand years, including quite a few pop tunes of the last 100 years. Given that this is Richard Thompson we are talking about, most of these songs are a bit sadface.

Black Mountain Transmitter
Black Goat of the Woods [2009]

This seems to be an Irish-made record, so I am for once doing my bit for Team Ireland. It is like a soundtrack to a low budget 1980s horror film, and all sounds vaguely Lovecraftian. Iä! Iä!

Magnet & Paul Giovanni
The Wicker Man OST [1973]

A collection of original neo folkie tunes and creepy instrumental pieces from the film that made people think twice about trips to isolated Scottish islands.

v/a nlgbbbblth CD 11.14: Níl sé anseo [CD-R]

Mr Nlgbbbblth's offering is a rare example of a CD-R that deserves a commercial release, painting as it does a picture of Ireland in the late 1970s and early 1980s from musical pieces, TV jingles, snippets of news programmes, and so on. Also features priests.

v/a Rajasthani Street Music [CD-R]

This is a version of something due to appear on Sublime Frequencies at some stage. It is a selection of pieces recorded by Mr Seb Bassleer on a trip to India and is delightful to the ear.

Ween
Thom's Ween TOAD [CD-R]

This CD-R from my old friend and quaffing partner Thom has been my introduction to the music of Ween – and I like it.

An inuit panda production

Organisation Man: Chapter 10

2012-01-02T16:31:00.001Z

In which we make the acquaintance of Claire Maguire and Lexa Hackett. They're new characters, so you don't need to know anything about them.

The Chief was sitting behind his desk, looking perturbed. Things were not going well. To his right, at an adjacent chair, sat Kearney, with the same look of displeasure that he always sported. And in front of the Chief's desk sat two women, their faces suggesting that they shared in the general sense of bad fortune.

"A chailiní", began the Chief, "Ba mhaith liom sibhse atá anseo, ach tá brón orm ar na rudaí atá muid ag caint. An- "

But at this point one of the women interrupted him. Her name was Lexa Hackett, and this is what she said: "Chief, sorry to interrupt, but I went to a Protestant school, and I don't want to sound anti-national or anything, but it would aid my understanding a lot if we were to conduct this conversation in the one of our official languages that everyone here can understand".

The Chief looked somewhat pained, but this did not stop him acceding to her request, albeit without acknowledging it.

"Unfortunate occurrences have unfortunately occurred", he continued. "Ones about which I think we will all be most concerned. You will of course be aware through office gossip that our colleague Barry Ryan is away conducting some fieldwork. You may also have noticed that he has been away for some time now, perhaps thinking that his mission was a long one. Well, I can reveal to you that it was nothing of the short. We expected him back long before now, but he has not returned".

"I see", said the other woman, whose name was Claire Maguire.
"Have we heard anything from him?"

"No, we have not", the Chief answered. "Not a peep. It is most disturbing".

"Mr Ryan seems to have vanished", said Kearney. "We sent him to London, to execute a task arising from a previous mission there. But he has not returned and he has not sent us any message".

"Well, could he just be taking his time?" asked Hackett. She had the impression that Ryan was something of a slow worker.

"I said that he seems to have vanished", said Kearney, glacially. "We made inquiries through the usual consular channels. He checked into the hotel we had booked for him, but he did not show up for breakfast and was not seen there again".

"It is most untoward", said the Chief.

"Again, through consular channels we contacted the British authorities to see if they knew anything of the Ryan's whereabouts. Though of course we gave them the name he was travelling under. They knew nothing, beyond his seeming to have vanished from the hotel. Or nothing they were letting on".

"I think they know more than they are telling us", said the Chief. "That's the way the Brits like to play it".

"And has London Station been of any assistance here?" asked Maguire.

"No", answered Kearney. "We do not want to risk compromising them in this matter".

"So where do we fit into this?" asked Hackett, though she already knew the answer.

"You're two clever girls" answered Kearney, permitting himself a slight smile. "I'm sure you can work it out".

"In a nutshell", continued the Chief, "We want you to go to London and find out what has happened to Ryan. And we are giving you full discretion to sort it out. I know some people here like to moan about the Organisation, but one thing that we have always prided ourselves on since long before I rose to this position, it is this – we never leave one of our own behind. So if you can extract Ryan, do it. If you find where he is, but can't get him out, let us know and we will ransom or exchange him".

"And there's another thing, of course", said Kearney. "The Organisation does not tolerate turncoats".

"Yes, I think that is something we can all agree on", agreed the Chief. "If you find that Ryan has gone over to the Opposition, well, I think you will know what to do".

Hackett and Maguire looked at each other.

"You know what I mean, girls?" said the Chief, trying to sound as ominous as possible. "Make sure he tells no more of our secrets, one way or another".

"I hope it won't come to that", said Maguire. Hackett nodded her head in agreement.

"It won't come to that", said the Chief, trying to lift the mood. "I know Barry Ryan, I know the kind of lad he is – he's an Organisation man through and through. He won't let us down. Just concentrate on finding him and bringing him home".

"But", said Kearney, now definitely smiling, "if he has turned, you will have to sort him out".

"Now girls", said the Chief, smiling and trying to sound as cheerful as possible when you have just asked someone to be ready to kill one of their colleagues should the situation warrant it, "I have some important matters to attend to, but Mr Kearney here will be able to fill you in on everything you need to know before you head off on your mission. But I'm sure I can count on you. I think I can safely say that you are the two best girls we have working here".

"Thanks Chief", said Hackett, trying to sound only partially sarcastic. "You can rely on us".

"And Miss Maguire", the Chief continued, "I believe you are the most senior girl here, so I am appointing you commander of the mission".

"I'll do my best", said Maguire.

"Aye aye skipper", agreed Hackett. The Chief looked quizzically at her.

Kearney stood up and moved towards the door out of the Chief's office. "Come this way, please", he said. Hackett and Maguire followed him to his office. Once they had left the room the Chief took the newspaper back out from his briefcase and went back to the crossword.

Kearney briefed Hackett and Maguire on Ryan's first trip to London – why they had sent him over and what he had done there. He described the salient points in Ryan's report of his trip and his encounter with Agaskayon, and then he gave them a copy of the report to read at their leisure; likewise with his own report on his debriefing session with Ryan. He outlined to the two women the practicalities of their trip to London – how they would travel over, what names would be on their travel documents, how much money they would be able to bring, and so forth. He also flagged to them that Ryan had been working on another matter for the Chief before the passport issue had come to light.

"I don't think it's relevant to the matter in hand", he said. "In fact, I think it's little more than a wild goose chase. I mean, an enemy spy ring using a music publication to transmit intelligence, how likely is that. But you know how the Chief is on things that take his fancy. And you should still look into it. Just in case". He gave them a passkey to Ryan's lockers and said that he had arranged their access to his computer files.

Kearney also made clear that his opinion of Ryan differed somewhat from that of the Chief. "You will have heard the Chief sing Barry Ryan's praises", he said. "You will not hear anything of the kind from me. It is quite possible that Ryan's cover was blown and he was taken out by the Opposition. Or maybe he has indeed gone over and is even now selling us out to the Brits. But I think it is far far more likely that he just made a stupid mistake and fell into a hole he couldn't climb out of. But keep your minds open to all possibilities".

On leaving Kearney the two went and poked around Ryan's computer and in his desk locker. "Here's that music thing", said Maguire, pulling out the dog-eared sheaf of stapled papers from under a stash of used envelopes. She held it by the spine to see where it flopped open.

"Let's have a look at it", said Hackett. They started to read.

"The real daddy of the funny vocal music was one Dylan Nyoukis. He just stands on stage and makes funny noises, without any obvious sign of electronic treatment or sampling. He had already started when I came into the Dock he had already started, and for the first few minutes I did find myself wondering whether this really was the kind of nonsense that gives avant-garde music a bad name. But then I noticed that some of the small children present were laughing their heads off at him (in a good way), so started appreciating what he was doing on a less poncily cerebral level. What he does is both very impressive and very entertaining, though one might argue that he sails a bit close to the ethnically stereotyping wind.

"When Mr Nyoukis finished his performance, some people suggested that he had not played for long enough, with the small children being particularly vehement on this point. So he invited anyone who wanted to have a go up on stage, and they (children and adults) all shouted away for a couple of minutes. It was a bizarre moment.

"What I think was striking about all the voice stuff in general was how high quality it was. One could easily imagine some chancer being inspired by this kind of thing to get up onstage and start making ugly grunting noises in the hope of finding themselves added to the bill of some weirdo music festival, but all the voice performers had an air of polished technique that buried any "Sure anyone could do that" scepticism. This was especially true of Jennifer Walshe, for all my ambivalence about how her work fitted with that of Tony Conrad.

"Another big element in the festival's line-up was what might broadly be called psych-rock. Or just rock. Dublin band Seadog did their twin-guitar thing, managing to sound like a post-rock Thin Lizzy with occasional nods towards the motorik sounds of Neu!. I liked them a lot… must establish whether I did actually buy one of their albums which I then never got around to listening to.

"GNOD were also entertaining with their tunes calling to mind the likes of Hawkwind and other purveyors of weirdo space rock. Their line-up was rather large, and it was noticeable that it included quite a few of the odd festival characters who had been wandering around at Hunters Moon beforehand. Their drummer swigged from a flagon of cider while playing, and looked momentarily non-plussed when it seemed to have been moved beyond his reach by one of the other members of the band… fortunately he was then able to access his backup drink source, a bottle of Jägermeister.

"GNOD also saluted the passing of the great Jimmy Saville by incorporating the Jim'll Fix It theme into their set".

"Do you think there might be anything to this?" asked Maguire.

This question will be answered in the amazing part 2 of chapter 10, which is coming your way real soon.

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Organisation Man: Chapter 9

2011-12-18T21:32:00.000Z

Barry Ryan returns to London. Things happen.

Ryan had to endure another briefing with Kearney about the practicalities of his mission – the name on the passport he would be using, how much cash he would get to bring with him, and so on. He asked about travelling to London, inquiring as to whether he would be able to travel by a more direct route this time. He would not. Kearney always gave the impression that he did not take pleasure in anything, but he did seem pleased to be letting Ryan now that he would once more be travelling to London via Athlone, Belfast, Glasgow, and Aberdeen. Ryan hoped he would not get the singing bus again this time.

Unlike with the passport retrieval mission, they were not sending him to London straight away. So he had about a week to prepare. But how do you prepare to kill someone? It was not something Ryan had had to do before and he had never seen it as anything more than the most theoretical of possibilities. He spent a lot of his time in the gym, trying to harden himself up again physically. And for want of anything better to do he played a lot of first person shooter computer games, in the hope that this would inure him to the idea of killing people.

And then the time came for him to leave. This journey to London was broadly similar to his last – just as time consuming and a similar selection of random incidents along the way. King's Cross was still crawling with National Security and cops when he arrived. He noticed from a newspaper headline that Bristol had apparently been recaptured. If this was true then maybe all the unpleasantness would soon be coming to an end and the Transition would become permanent. But this was no concern to him.

His thoughts were all on his mission. He remembered Agaskayon. He could not decide whether he liked him or not. Unlike the Chief, he did not have the same sense of nationalist outrage about the forgery of passports. Maybe it was a bad thing, but he found it hard to get worked up about it. He worked for the Organisation not because he wanted to defend Irish freedom, but because it was a well-paid job. He had not even twigged when applying for it that it was anything other than an ordinary civil service department, and he had worked there for several months before realising the true nature of the Organisation's deep work. Up to now the work had mostly been routine – processing information and writing reports – with occasional forays into fieldwork and the covert meeting of sources. That had been exciting in its way, but it was no preparation for murder. The thought of bringing an end to Agaskayon's life filled Ryan with dread. He saw the antique's dealer's opaque face in front of him and tried to imagine himself bringing death to it. Whether he thought of strangulation, bludgeoning, or a knife attack he found himself coming back to one terrible truth – he really was not sure that he could bring himself to kill the man.

He walked to the Cartwright Friendly, where the Organisation had once more booked him. The sour-faced woman on the desk looked at him suspiciously, perhaps recognising him from his previous visit, perhaps not. But she was still happy enough, or at least willing, to take his money. She gave him a room key and grunted him in the direction of the stairs. He was in a different room this time. It was smaller than the last, and the rooms seemed to close in on Ryan, making him feel like he was in a tomb. He left the Friendly and went walking the streets of London. The area around Cartwright Gardens is not really what one would call the mean streets of London, but Ryan increasingly felt that they were the by-ways of hell. But if it was hell then it was one of Ryan's own making, with the killing of Agaskayon seeming to have damned him even before he had committed it.

He ended up in the bar near the Friendly and began to drink heavily. He was buying drinks for anyone that came near him. But he could not buy company tonight. His student friends sense the darkness of his mood and were repelled by it, so had to drink alone. Perhaps because of his anxiety over his mission or perhaps because of the effects of a lot of drink on an empty stomach, Ryan found himself mutating into a belligerent drunk, eventually finding himself being thrown out of the pub. He was almost going to deck the barman when his training kicked back in – the last thing he needed was to find himself in the cells facing an assault charge. So he swallowed his pride and slid back to the Friendly.

That night was most unusual. He was in a different room on a different floor of the building, yet the ululations that had plagued him on his last stay were now in the room next to him. The strange moans, suggestive of a cat in heat being impersonated by someone with an intellectual disability, went on and on, with their maker undeterred by Ryan's banging on the wall or his occasional shouted threats of violence. His interactions seemed only to spur on the ululator, who would tease Ryan with a brief pause and then return to the moaning with a renewed intensity.

Ryan had however drunk too much alcohol for the moans to keep him from a fitful sleep. Instead they fed into his dreams, in which he found himself repeatedly striking Agaskayon's face with a crowbar to a soundtrack of depersonalised ululation. Ryan rained blows on Agaskayon's face. Even in the dream he could feel the bar connect with the antique dealer's head. But the blows did nothing to him. Ryan hit him and hit him again, but Agaskayon's features remained unmarked and he continued to stare back with that enigmatic face.

A more intense burst of moaning brought Ryan out of his slumbers. The ululation was so loud that it seemed like it was coming from within his very room. And then he realised that the sound had changed – the moaning was no longer coming from next door. Somehow the bestial moans were coming from a few feet away, no longer separated from him by a wall. His eyes flicked open. It was dark, but in his room he could see a presence. It towered above him in the bed. He tried to move, but he could not. Something came down over his face. As the darkness consumed him he wondered if the sound of inhuman moans would be the last thing he would ever hear.

Could this be the end of Barry Ryan and his mission? There is only one way to find out. Well, there are several ways… you could come back for later instalments, but if you give me fifty quid I will tell you how things end up.

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13/11/2011

Organisation Man: Chapter 8

2011-12-17T21:31:00.000Z

Barry Ryan returns to Dublin and receives a new assignment.

The Organisation insisted on a similarly tortuous route back from London to Dublin. To throw the opposition of the scent, it had to be a different route. So it was that Ryan found himself travelling to Paris by bus and boat (using his Ó Cionnaith passport, as he did not quite trust Agaskayon's yet). After a layover in a fleapit he caught a morning train to Cherbourg and from there another ferry to Rosslare. From there he caught another bus back to Dublin. He did not go straight into work – if nothing else, he stank after his journey and really needed to change into clothes that had been washed more thoroughly than in the less than generous sinks of the Cartwright Friendly. The next day saw a scrubbed and suited Ryan back in the Organisation.

"Well look what the cat dragged in! Thought we'd seen the last of you! And my, the Chief's going to love that beard!"

Lyon had to be the first person he met. Great.

"Hello Lyon. Any excitement here while I've been away?"

"Oh, nothing much, nothing much, but I'm sure you've been having some real adventures out in the field".

"I suppose I have, but I can't tell you anything about them. You know how it is".

"Need to know, Ryan – don't I know it".

"Well I'd better let the Chief know I'm back. Be seeing you".

Ryan made his way to his desk, logged into his computer and sent an e-mail to the Chief letting him know he was back, mentioning that the weather had been very good in London, the agreed code phrase indicating that he had obtained the passport.

In due course Ryan was called into the Chief's office. Ryan did not meet him alone – with the Chief was Mr Kearney, a senior figure in the Organisation. He was a cold-faced man for whom Ryan had previously formed a strong dislike.

"A Barra! Failte romhat isteach ar Eireann" said the Chief, obviously.

"I understand that you have the item you were sent to retrieve", Kearney said, in a typically clipped voice.

"Yes. I have", answered Ryan.

"Let's see it, Barry," said the Chief.

Ryan handed the passport to the Chief. He looked carefully at it, opening it up and going through each page one by one. Kearney left him to it, staring at Ryan with his basilisk eyes.

"It looks – very good", said the Chief finally. "I don't know if anyone could tell the difference between it and a real one".

"It will have to be forensically examined", said Kearney. "We can't just go on looks".

"No no, of course not, of course not", said the Chief. "But it really does look just like a real password. You haven't given me the wrong one by mistake? I mean, this isn't the one we gave you to travel over with?"

"No chief, look at the name. Pawel Przeworski. The one you gave was Ó Cionnaith".

The Chief went back and checked the name again. "You're right, of course. Maith thú, a Barra, maith thú".

"It will still have to be checked". This was Kearney. He was naturally declining to congratulate Ryan.

"Yes yes, I will look after that. But Barry, I just want to say, you've done very well here. These passport forgeries are a threat to our nation's sovereignty. Bringing this document back here allows us to check just how far advanced this threat is. Now, I am going to organise the forensic checking of this document. Mr Kearney here will fully debrief you on your time in London".

"Let's go to my office, Ryan", said Kearney, a thin smile on his features.

The debriefing was in no sense an enjoyable experience. Kearney plied Ryan with an endless series of questions – how he had got to London, what had happened on the way, what he had done in London, what he had seen in London, how had he spent the Organisation's money in London, what his impressions were of National Security Britain, how he had obtained the passport, and so on. And it felt like an interrogation rather than a debriefing, with Kearney's questions jumping from one subject to another and backwards and forwards along the time line as though the object was to catch him out on something. What exactly Kearney was trying to catch him out on was not clear. Eventually, after listening to Ryan describe the appearance of the Nazi uniforms in Agaskayon's shop for the third time, Kearney said: "Well Ryan, that's enough for now. If I need anything else I know where to find you".

Ryan went back to his desk. He was at a loose end now, deflated after the successful conclusion of his mission. For want of anything better to do, he dug up the Chief's music document. Perhaps now he would be able to see the patterns here, with the time away allowing him to come at the problem with a fresh mind. He went back to a passage that had perplexed him earlier.

"Other stars of funny voice music included various people from the Sheffield-based Singing Knives record label. There seemed to be a small group of these people who combined and divided into several bands on the bill. I particularly liked The Hunter Gracchus, who created a rather spooky and unnerving soundscape from their vocal samples combined with various other instruments. The weird film compilation of low budget schlock horror films accompanying them added a lot to their performance, with the giant blob of horror appearing in an operating theatre during a gynaecological examination being a particularly gruesome moment. As with Herv, I could not be sure whether or not The Hunter Gracchus were playing against the film or not, but their music went very well with it and it did seem like it was paced in time to it.

"Partly because she used the same film, I liked the performance by Blue Yodel, a solo performance by one of The Hunter Gracchus. Ms Yodel did more or less the same kind of stuff, though it has to be said that I enjoyed her set more than my less easily pleased colleagues."

Thanks to the magic of the Internet, Ryan had been able to hear music by these people. It really was not the kind of thing that was ever going to trouble the hit parade. Ryan found himself thinking again that maybe a trip to Sheffield would be in order. He simply could not believe that this so-called music was on the level – it simply had to be a mask for something else. Going to Sheffield and performing a bit of covert investigation on these Singing Knives people… well it would surely reveal something, he just was not sure what.

Ryan did not get to go to Sheffield. After a couple of days spent reading and re-reading the music document, he was called back to the Chief for another meeting. When he arrived in the office, Kearney was sitting in a chair beside the Chief's desk, smiling in a manner that did not bode well. The Chief had his important face on.

"Well, a Barra, tá nuacht orm", the Chief began, pausing to let Kearney continue.

"We've had the passport examined. The results are very interesting. It seems to be a very good piece of work. Worryingly good, in fact. It is indistinguishable from a real passport. The paper is good, and the printing, and the lamination. The encoding. Even the number is real, though it is number issued by the Passport Office for another passport entirely".

"These passport forgeries are a terrible threat to our nation, Barry".

"Yes", continued Kearney. "Anyone could travel on this document and no one would ever suspect that the document was false. The only way anyone could tell that this was not a real passport would be if they somehow had access to the Passport Office's database and looked up the number".

They paused. Ryan felt he should say something. "I see".

"We cannot tolerate this, Barry", said the Chief. "This kind of thing is an affront to our national freedom and a threat to our economic livelihood. Once it becomes known that any gobshite with twenty grand to spend can get an Irish passport then our passports won’t be worth shite. Countries will stop taking them, or start holding Irish people on entry and exit while drawn out inquires are made to the Passport Office here. You know what this means, Barry? People will start looking for British passports again, and we can’t have that".

"Certainly not", replied Barry, trying to indicate that he too was appalled by this dreadful prospect.

"No, we can't have that. And we're not going to have it either. These passport forgeries are going to be stopped. So you know what this means, Barry?"

"I'm not sure I do, Chief".

"What the Chief is trying to say is that you will be going back to London".

"Yes Barry, I'm sure we can rely on you to sort it out".

"Sort it out?"

"Yes Barry, sort it out. You know, permanently. This is a wet job, Barry. No more games".

"What the Chief is saying is that you are to go to London and to end the forging career of this Mr Agaskayon. Permanently".

"Permanently?" asked Ryan, though by now he knew what the Chief and Kearney were getting at.

"Yes Barry", the Chief answered. "This Mr Agaskayon, by forging Irish passports he has declared war on the people of Ireland. Well, if he wants war he will get it. Barry, you are to travel to London and – an Agaskayon a cur go marbh".

"I… I'm not sure I'm the best man for the job, Chief".

"You've had the necessary training", said Kearney, coldly. This was true, though Ryan had never envisaged that he really would have to use the many methods he had learned of killing people with his bare hands or an improvised weapon. And he had not really paid that much attention in the class anyway.

"I have every faith in you, Barry", said the Chief. "You're the best man for this job. You know Agaskayon, you've been to London recently and know the lay of the land. There is no one who could possibly make a better fist of this than you".

"But is taking out Agaskayon really the best idea? I mean, he is surely just the front man for a larger operation. Would we not be best trying to investigate them and work our way up?"

"It's not for you to make decisions" began Kearney, but the Chief cut in front of him.

"Don’t worry Barry, we have thought this all through. This is definitely the best way forward".

"But how will I get the job done? Bringing a weapon into England, that won't be easy".

"You won’t be bringing a weapon into England". Kearney again.

"No Barry, no need for a weapon. Or no need to bring one from here. You're a resourceful fellow, you'll find a way over there".

"Can I expect any help from London Station?"

"No".

"No, Barry", the Chief continued. "Staisiun London are not to be involved in this".

"But shouldn't I go back to the other case… the music people, the one you thought might be some kind of enemy spy ring here?"

"That can wait, a chara. This passport business is more important".

"Well Ryan", said Kearney, "you've been given your mission. Now I think you should go and carry it out". His tone indicated that there was no room for further discussion".

"Good luck, Barry. We're all counting on you and we know you can do it".

11/11/2011 – 13/11/2011

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Organisation Man: Chapter 7 (part 2)

2011-12-16T21:30:00.000Z

Barry Ryan works for The Organisation. For reasons too boring too explain he now finds himself in an antiques dealer's establishment in Ealing.

Mr Agaskayon opened the book. The interior pages were of stiff card, separated from each other by some kind of soft paper. The antiques dealer lifter the paper to reveal old photographs carefully mounted on the pages, old black and white photographs of women in various states of deshabille, some of them completely naked. Their pudgy bodies were a world away from the hard forms that graced the pages of the modern publications Ryan was used to, their smiles coy despite their naked state and unambiguously sexualised poses. Nineteenth century erotica, thought Ryan. Great.

Agaskayon turned the page. Now the photographs showed couples (mostly men and women, but some with two women and one of two men) engaging in various kinds of sexual activity. He turned the page again – more of the same. And again, still pretty much the same thing, albeit now with a threesome among the couples. The pages kept turning and Ryan's world becoming a blur of black and white images of coupling. But then he started recognising some of the faces. Were some of these people famous? He wished he had paid more attention in school. That man with the beard – Ryan had definitely seen him before. Wasn't he the king of Germany or an American Civil War general or something like that? And that woman – Ryan thought maybe she had written one of those books they had made him read at school. He would have read the book more keenly (or at all) if he had seen her doing that.

The pages turned on. Ryan gasped. There was no mistaking the stern features on the man and woman engaged in the most intimate of activities.

"My God! It's Queen Victoria!" he exclaimed, then remembering that he was meant to sound like he was from Eastern Europe. "And famous her husband!"

"Yes sir, it is", answered Agaskayon. "I knew you would be impressed. I can assure you that the picture is entirely genuine. And I am sure you will agree that it would take pride of place in anyone's collection".

"Is incredible, incredible. And is for sale?" It was the kind of thing the Chief would like, he thought, so why not buy it for him from the Organisation's spending money?

"It is for sale, sir, though as you can imagine, an item of this kind will not sell cheaply".

"What kind price are you looking for?"

"Sir, I will not beat around the bush. This kind of unique image, believed to be the only one of its kind in existence, well – it could not be sold for less than thirty thousand pounds".

"Ah. That is good price, but little high for me. It would leave me short for other item I wish to obtain from you. I like pictures, Mr Agaskayon, but I did not come here for photographs".

The antiques dealer looked at him, then nodded and closed the book of photographs. "I understand, sir. I had you down as a true connoisseur once you entered the shop". He returned the book to its place under the counter. "Come into the back room, I have something there you will be very interested in".

He led Ryan through a door into a smaller room. Then he opened a full-length wall cupboard and slid out a rail on which was mounted a full length Nazi uniform of some kind.

"You see what this is, of course", Agaskayon began. "The uniform of a captain in the Waffen SS, complete with ceremonial dagger. Notice the famous – or should I say, infamous – death's head insignia on the collar. For most dealers, this would be the pride of place in their offerings, but for me it is nothing. Merely a palate cleanser". He slid the uniform back into the cupboard and went to another locker, opening it and sliding out a board on which a succession of frilly lingerie items were displayed. They were all emblazoned with swastikas, death's head symbols, and images of Adolf Hitler (sometimes looking stern and unyielding, sometimes smiling kindly). "These are very special items", said the antiques dealer in a quiet tone, trying to convey the impression that Ryan really was very privileged to be seeing these things. "They are the regulation issue underwear for women auxiliary members of the SS. They are very sought after, and I am sure you will agree that they would make ideal presents for any special lady in your life". He smiled slightly. "And of course, completely genuine. Each item comes with the biography of the woman who wore it".

"They are wonderful, but is not exactly what I came here for", was all Ryan could answer.

"Ah, yes, sir, someone has obviously dropped you a hint about the article I have been keeping for my most respected clients". He slid away the Nazi lingerie and then brought out another mounted uniform, not immediately dissimilar to the first one. "And here we have it. At first glance, you may find yourself saying 'Oh, it is another SS uniform'. Then maybe you realise that this is the uniform of an SS Sturmgeneral. That alone would make it much more valuable. But only when I tell you whose uniform it was will you realise the opportunity you have in front of you. This really is a once in a lifetime offer, sir. Once this man's uniform has been bought, I do not think it will ever come on the market again".

"Whose uniform was it?" asked Ryan, mesmerised.

"Why, it is the uniform of the famous Reinhard Heydrich, Heinrich Himmler's right hand man, head of the Security Police, and the Gauleiter of Bohemia. And there is more. This is not just any one of the many uniforms belonging to Herr Heydrich. This is the uniform he wore when he chaired the celebrated Wannsee Conference, at which he organised the extermination of the Jews of Europe".

"My God! Is incredible".

"No sir, I assure you, it is definitely that very uniform. I can provide certificates of provenance that will dispel any doubts".

"I am amazed, I am amazed. But I am afraid I did not come here for uniform. Mr Agaskayon, I am in unfortunate position and I understand you can help me".

The antiques dealer looked at Ryan quizzically, perhaps showing the first sign of emotion since he had entered the shop. He spoke in a guarded tone.

"I can help you? But how?"

"I have travel problem. I have lost passport, but I need to leave UK. I am not British citizen so cannot get passport here. And I have problem with own country – I do not wish to ask them for passport".

Agaskayon slid Heydrich's uniform back into the wardrobe and spoke slowly. "And why, good sir, have you come to me for help?"

"Because, Mr Agaskayon, I have heard that you are able to help people like me". He went on in a whisper: "I have friend who had problem like me. He came to you. And you gave him passport. Good Irish passport".

"Who was this friend of yours?"

"I cannot give name".

"What you are saying is most unusual. And what you are accusing me of is highly illegal".

"Illegal, yes, but you would be helping me. And I can pay good money".

"But even I were engaged in this nefarious activity, how could I trust you?"

"I have something here might convince you". Ryan fished in the bag he had with him and brought out a wad of banknotes. He thrust the notes into Agaskayon's hands. "Is three thousand pounds. Down payment. What is cost of passport? I can pay it".

Ryan's bona fides proved most acceptable to Mr Agaskayon. There was some discussion of the practicalities of making a passport for Ryan. A photograph would be required, which of course Ryan had with him. Agaskayon also asked for Ryan's age, so that the passport would give a date of birth that was close enough to the actual one to not raise suspicions. "It is better if I do not guess that one", Agaskayon explained. He also went on to say that the passport would be one for the Republic of Ireland and that it would give the place of birth as Waterford. It would be up to Ryan to come with a convincing reason, if challenged, as to how an obviously Eastern European gentleman like himself had come to be born in Ireland's south east. And of course, Agaskayon needed a name to put on the passport. "As a travel document it would be no use for it to carry a name like Mick O'Mahoney and then have you talk in your accent, sir", he said, before asking Ryan what name he wanted the passport under. Ryan had prepared for this too. He asked for the passport to be in the name "Pawel Przeworski", making clear without saying so directly that this was most definitely not his real name. After being told that it would take a week to ten days to have the passport ready, and that it would cost him another twenty thousand for the finished document, Ryan bade farewell to the antiques dealer, though not of course without giving him the number of a clean mobile phone he had with him.

Now Ryan did not really have anything to do but wait. He had noted that some of the writers in the Chief's weirdo music publication were based in London, and he had thought about checking them out. But the Chief had expressly forbidden any sideline activities that might distract from the main mission, so he had to let them be. So he spent the next few days walking the streets of London, exploring the great city. He also caught up on his reading of the Andy McNab book, something he was finding increasingly engrossing. It dealt with this guy called Ted Steele, a squaddie in the British Army out in Afghanistan. Steele was about to be sent home for punching an officer's face in – that Rupert's incompetence had cost some of Steele's mates their lives. But the brass had realised that he was the toughest of the tough and recruited him into a crack team who were going in behind enemy lines. The Bhajis had captured three British soldiers, one of them the husband of Steele's sister. Now Steele and his team were looking to find and rescue their mates before their beheadings were all over the Internet. The writing was so riveting that Ryan was almost finding himself transported to Afghanistan. But then, McNab was a guy who really knew what he was talking about.

Ryan found other ways to pass his time. He had the money to spend, so he started spending time in Soho strip clubs. Sure, they were sleazy places, but there was a lack of bullshit about them that appealed to him. And yes, he did climb up the greasy pole, progressing from strip clubs to lap dancing establishments and then to – well you can work it out yourself.

He also continued to drink in the bar near the Cartwright Friendly. The students were fun to hang out with and they enjoyed his company, but he did not take advantage with any of the young women students there. Whores were one thing, but sexual encounters so close to where he was staying spelt danger.

Eventually he received the phone call he had been waiting for.

"Hello, is that Stefan?" said Agaskayon, using the name Ryan had given him for this purpose.

"Yes, is Stefan".

"Good. I'm just ringing to let you know that I have been able to locate some more of those coins you were interested in. Should I keep them for you?"

"Yes, thank you, I will come and see them".

When Ryan arrived out in Agaskayon's, the antiques dealer closed the shop and ushered him into the back room. Leaving him there, he went to another room again and came back with a passport. Ryan took it and opened it. It seemed to be completely indistinguishable from a genuine Irish passport.

"I think you will find this entirely sufficient", Agaskayon said.

"Yes… yes… it is good, very good. And you will find this sufficient too, I think". Ryan reached into his bag and produced some more wads of cash, handing them over to Agaskayon.

"Oh, thank you sir. You will not take it as an insult if we count the notes out now?"

"Is not problem".

They sat at a table while Ryan watched Agaskayon counting out the bank notes. They came to slightly more than the agreed twenty thousand.

"Keep change", Ryan said generously. It was not his money, after all.

Now Ryan was done. He made his way back to the Friendly and let them know he was leaving. The woman on the desk grunted and then said that he would not be entitled to a refund for the days he had already paid for. Ryan collected his things and left the Friendly, preparing to quit London and return home.

9/11/2011 – 11/11/2011

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Interspecies Love

2011-12-16T10:05:00.000Z

Changmao and Chunzi live in Yunnan Wild Animal Park. They appear to love each other. However, they are not of the same species – Changmao is a ram and Chunzi a doe. Although they have a close bond, their relationship is not exclusive, and Changmao recently became a father with one of his own species. The park keepers decided to separate the two lovers so that Changmao could devote himself to his parental duties, but the plan went horribly wrong. Once parted from his true love, he became violent and abusive towards his offspring and its mother. Chunzi, meanwhile, was trying to lick at Changmao through a fence and had apparently squeezed out of her enclosure to be near him. So the park authorities have relented and are now letting the path of interspecies love flow freely.

More

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When Pandas Paint

2011-12-15T21:55:00.002Z

Pandas Mei Xiang and Tian Tian have acquired a new hobby – thanks to the enrichment programme in their Washington DC zoo, they have become artists. The zoo supplies them with non-toxic paints and lets them paint pictures on boards. The two Pandas currently favour an abstract expressionist mode of painting, though they they are apparently thinking of giving portraiture a go.

They also like the smell of the paint and have been seen rubbing it around their ears.

Source

Which reproduced the information from Giant Pandas

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Organisation Man: Chapter 7

2011-12-15T21:22:00.000Z

Nanowrimo 2011 continues. In this chapter Barry Ryan arrives in London and makes some inquiries.

Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity, the train pulled into King's Cross. Ryan's seemingly interminable journey had finally terminated. He was in London! There was always a certain frisson of excitement in that city, a sense that there was far more going on here than in the pokey Irish capital he had left, what, two days ago? Ryan knew that he would be able to enjoy himself here, that in the downtime from his mission he would be able to throw himself into the life of the city.

Still, it had been a while since he had last visited the city. Time had not been kind to it. He remembered that, of course, his last sojourn here had been before the Transition. Things were different now. There is nothing like being greeted by parked tanks as you come out of a station to bring home a sense of change. The National Security operatives aggressively patrolling the station also brought home that sense that this was a city now far less at ease with itself.

The station was a relatively short distance from the cheap guesthouse the Organisation had picked for him. Ryan decided to walk. This was just as well, as several of the Tube lines seemed to be closed. The area around the station was as seedy as ever, despite the best efforts of the authorities – some things seemed unchangeable. But after a few minutes he was in Bloomsbury, a part of London that seemed refreshingly untouched by the new dispensation. He stopped in a café for a tea and a sandwich, listening to the voices of the other customers – an odd melange of foreign languages and the more cultured English accents of the kind of people who attend central London institutes of third level education.

And so on to his hotel, the Cartwright Friendly. "Friendly by name, friendly by nature" claimed the worn sign outside this grim establishment. The unsmiling woman at reception booked him in for a week, taking payment in cash up front and taking great care to log his passport details correctly. Then she threw him a key with room with a number four on it, indicating that he needed to go up the stairs. There was of course no lift. The room seemed well enough proportioned, especially given the price, until he looked at the bathroom, which seemed to have shower, sink, and toilet all crammed into the space of a small wardrobe. Ryan was by no means a tall man, but it was not immediately apparent that there would be room for his legs when sitting on the toilet. Such matters would have to be improvised.

It was far too late to even think of doing anything about his mission. Instead, Ryan went out to the first pub he found and started drinking. It was a student place. Being blessed with the gregariousness the Organisation imparts to its operatives and having a wallet full of cash to throw around meant that he soon fell in with some students on a night out. Ryan maintained a certain vagueness about his reasons for being in London, which only seemed to add to his cachet with the young people. Some of the student women were rather tasty looking, and Ryan could tell that his shtick was engendering a certain fascination towards him. But he remembered his training. In the films, spies are always getting it on with glamorous women, but on a real mission that kind of behaviour is the path of madness. When the pub closed, he went back to the Friendly, alone, stopping only for a bag of chips on the way.

That night, Ryan's sleep was disturbed by strange sounds coming from the neighbouring room in his hotel. The Cartwright Friendly seemed to provide wafer-thin walls at no extra charge to its residents, so to Ryan the strange ululations seemed to be coming from right beside his bed. Were the moaning noises coming from a man or a woman? It was not at all clear. Nor did they sound properly like the kind of noises people make when undertaking sexual activity, at least not sexual activity of any normal kind. It really was too much. Ryan banged on the wall, but this seemed to have no effect on his neighbour, whose moans continued unabated. He banged on the wall again. "Put a sock in it, you cunt", he shouted, and he banged some more. But there came no halt to the ululations. If anything, they seem to increase in intensity.

Ryan was not going to take this lying down. He jumped out of bed, pulled on a pair of jeans and stormed out to the door to the adjoining room, pounding on it with his fists until it opened. Now, Ryan was no racist, but he was a bit surprised when the door was opened by a man of not obviously foreign looking appearance, who was wearing pyjama bottoms and a dirty looking vest.

"Ha?" asked the man, clearly tired and only somewhat awake.

"Keep the fucking noise down, I'm trying to sleep here".

"Ha?" replied the man. He seemed not to be having trouble understanding Ryan's injunction.

"You'd better put a sock in it, or I'll put a sock in you". As threats go this was not one of Ryan's best, but he tried to sound as menacing as a sleep deprived drunk can sound. His target tut tutted, rolled his eyes to heaven and shut the door in Ryan's face.

Ryan hoped that he had got the message and went back to his room. But fifteen minutes later, the moaning started again. Ryan banged on the wall a few more times in a desultory fashion and thought about going round to punch the neighbour's face in, but he did not want the trouble with the authorities that this could lead to. He dug out some earplugs, wrapped his head in a pillow and tried to sleep.

The next morning he was hung-over and tired. He crawled down to breakfast, where there was no sign of his neighbour. Which was just as well, though it did not improve the taste of the sorry excuse for a cooked breakfast that the Friendly's less than friendly staff served up to him – bacon fried to a crisp, cracking into tasteless pieces in his mouth, burned sausages, a fried something that may once have been an egg, a dollop of the cheapest own brand baked beans (which, unlike everything else, were lukewarm and undercooked), and a couple of mushrooms which for some inexplicable reason had been boiled until they were almost completely lacking in any mushroom-like flavour. Ryan was unsure as to whether the hot liquid he was served was tea or coffee. He made a note to skip the Friendly breakfast and go out for something in future.

It was the day he would head out to Ealing and investigate the antiques dealer. He tried to dress like the kind of person who might be looking for a fake passport, but not someone so sketchy looking that he would be hauled in by the cops while trying to cross London. It was easy enough with the scratchy beard he was now boasting. Combined with tatty jeans and a cheap jacket that had seen better days he felt that he looked every bit like someone who might have problems travelling on their real name.

The tube took him over to Ealing. He soon found the side street that the shop was on, and then saw its sign – "H. Agaskayon – Antiques and Collectibles". He made his way in. A man in the latter part of middle age sat behind a counter, wearing a dark coloured suit and a fez. His features were unusual, but in a subtle manner that did not suggest an origin in a particular part of the world. The man's eyes followed Ryan round the shop, but his face did not suggest any suspicion as to his motives. Nor did the shopkeeper's face suggest any other emotion.

Ryan pretended to browse through the shop, but it was hard for him. He hated antiques. The shop seemed full of good for nothing crap that people would pay money for because it was old. He had not the faintest idea what made one piece of old crap valuable and another worthless, and he could see nothing in any of the various wonky chairs, worm-eaten tables and rotting collections of books that he could imagine anyone wanting to pay money for. He knew people there were people who paid dearly for this kind of thing, but Ryan would have to be paid to take any of these valuable antiques into his possession.

After a respectable period of browsing he approached the shopkeeper. Adopting his best generic shifty East European accent he said: "This is good shop - you have much good things here".

"Why thank you, sir", the shopkeeper answered. His voice betrayed no more than his face.

"Is your shop? You must be very proud".

"It is my shop, sir. I do the best I can with it".

"So you are Mr Agaskayon?"

"I am, sir".

"Yes, you have many good things here. But –" (and now he dropped his voice, even though there was no one else present) "– I hear you have special other things for sale".

"Why yes, sir, I do. I thought you might prove to be a man of discernment. I do indeed have some items which I believe you will find most interesting". He came out from behind the counter and went over towards the door. "I think it would be best if we were not disturbed, yes?" He locked the door and turned the sign from "open" to "closed". "Now let me see, where is it I have the special merchandise?" He returned to the counter, and from underneath its rear brought forth a large hardbound book. Placing it on the counter he turned it to face Ryan.

What horrors will be revealed in Mr Agaskayon's book???? Come back next time to read the second part ofOrganisation Man: Chapter 7.

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Organisation Man: Chapter 6

2011-12-11T22:08:00.002Z

Barry's journey continues. He makes some new friends.

Ryan was hoarse from singing when the bus pulled into Belfast. With his new friends he repaired to a friendly hostelry for a round of drinks and another sing song. From there the party went off the beaten track to a hole in the wall establishment of somewhat dubious legality. Here, over cans of Tuborg the singsong continued. Portraits of Robert Mugabe, Andreas Baader and Napper Tandy stared down, looking like they would join in the revelry if only someone were to hand them a can of Denmark's finest. It was late by the time Ryan left the place, later still when he got back to the rundown boarding house the Organisation had booked him into. It seemed like he had only put his head upon the pillow when the alarm was calling him up to catch his bus to Scotland.

There seemed to be some kind of football event on in Scotland that meant that a load of coarse-looking individuals in team colours were packing out Ryan's bus. Their guttural chants were incomprehensible to him, but he knew enough to keep a low profile and above all to keep his mouth shut and hide as much as possible that he was not one of them. He managed to find himself a window seat and inwardly cheered when a Polish woman, and not one of the football fans, took the aisle seat beside him. As the bus pulled off for the ferry he allowed himself to slip into dream-like state where things around him a surreal atmosphere. He was still thinking of the musicians in the Chief's document, for all that he was meant to be concentrating on the mission that was bringing him to London, so he had an iPod filled with the strange approximation to music that the performers at that festival had been producing. Their sounds could be discordant, but they could also be oddly soothing, and they assisted his drift into an odd state of mind that was neither fully awake nor properly asleep.

The Polish woman did not speak to him, nor he to her, but he found himself becoming fascinated with her. For all that he had not really been able to see her face properly before she sat down, he began to think of her as a being of almost supernatural beauty. He did not know whether she was young or old, but she became to him a figure of divine femininity. In his visionary state, he started seeing himself as being put on the Earth to serve her. He would abandon his mission, leave behind the Organisation and give up his past life, dedicating himself instead to her service. He yearned for her, in a manner that could not simply be considered sexual.

Then he abruptly came back to reality as he realised that the bus had stopped. They were on the ferry now and everyone was getting off the bus. In fact, almost everyone else had got off the bus. The Polish woman was gone. Ryan followed the last stragglers off the bus and made his way up from the car deck, looking for somewhere he could get a drink. His hangover was kicking in badly now and he felt the need for an alcoholic beverage to ease himself into the day. But alas, the bars on the ship were all serving nothing but soft drinks, perhaps because of all the potentially violent football fans (who in any case were clearly drinking from their own beers that they had smuggled on). The crossing to Scotland for Ryan was a journey of pain.

As the ship approached the port Ryan and the other passengers returned to the bus. The Polish woman was seated ahead of Ryan. As she let him into the window seat, she shot him a look that suggested that she was not interested in his devoting his life to her service. He sighed inwardly, before drifting back to something approaching sleep while the bus crawled off to Glasgow. This time his thoughts were not focussed on the Polish woman but rather on the Chief's document and the musicians who had been playing at that festival. He started to imagine that he had been there with them, that he was one of them. He both was himself there and was external to himself, able to see a bearded long-haired Barry Ryan being accepted by the festival-goers as one of their own. And he was not just there as an attendee, he was a performer. He would soon be going up onstage (to do – what?), with his performance being surely followed by his initiation into the mysteries of what the festival was really all about. But the bus arrived in Glasgow before his dream revealed to him the secret of the festival-goers. Instead he had to dismount and shuffle off to wait for the next bus to Aberdeen.

Nothing much happened on the way to Aberdeen, which was something of a relief. Once there he found his way to a bed-and-breakfast, picked at random to throw off the scent of anyone who might somehow be following him. Here a woman as grey as the city she lived in informed him that breakfast was normally served from 6.30 am to no later than 7.30, but that as the morning would be the Sabbath (and thus a day of rest), Ryan (now travelling under a different name entirely, of course) would be able to have a lie in and eat his Scottish fry up until precisely 7.45 am. Ryan thanked her for her generosity in a tone of voice that he could plausibly deny was sarcastic. He found a quiet restaurant in which to eat and then bought a bottle of cheap whisky to drink in his room in the bed and breakfast while watching whatever awfulness the television decided to throw at its Saturday night viewers. He availed of an early night, but not so early that he did not roll down to the breakfast room on the dot at 7.45 a.m. and refuse to leave until the old wagon had served him up his cooked breakfast. And then he was gone to catch his train to Glasgow, there to make his connection to London.

Ryan liked to think of the train as a more sophisticated form of travel than the bus, but finding himself sitting near a gaggle of schoolgirls playing brain melting pop tunes on their mobile phones did rather disabuse him of the notion. The train on from Glasgow was a bit less horrendous, at least initially. The schoolgirls seemed to have been replaced by some young women who felt obliged to chatter away to each other and to other friends and acquaintances on their phones simultanaeously. It was almost fascinating in its awfulness and Ryan was almost sorry when they got off at a station not far over the English border.

The train rolled on, stopping occasionally at stations. People got on, people got off. A group of clowns boarded at one stop. Ryan tensed up, expecting trouble, and could sense the other passengers doing the same. But the clowns sat quietly down and kept themselves to themselves.

At another north of England station a couple boarded and sat across from Barry. The man was smartly dressed, but there was an air of menace to him. He looked like a chained dog who, by constant pulling, is about to work himself free. The woman, who was sitting directly across from Barry, had centre parted blonde hair and a babyish face with lips that were surprisingly sensual. Her most striking feature (or features) were however lower down. She wore a low-cut top that seemed barely to hide her generously proportioned chest. Indeed, her breasts seemed to strain against their confinement, looking like they could break free at any moment. Barry struggled to keep his eyes away from her cleavage, but it was not an easy battle.

Then, with a start, he realised that the man was saying something to him in an incomprehensible regional accent. The tone was clearly hostile.

"I'm sorry…?" he replied.

"Oo lookin' at wife's tatties?" the man said, enunciating the words that bit more clearly.

"What? No, sorry, certainly not…" Ryan answered, awkwardly, part of him focussing on the social awkwardness of the situation while another pondered where in the world people had such a strange accent.

"Saw oo did I", the man continued, his tone still accusatory, "Saw oo".

"Look, I'm sorry, you must be mistaken".

"Nice tatties". The man's voice was a bit quieter now, less threatening. "Nice tatties".

Barry did not know what to say to this, so he said nothing.

The man continued, now in a conspiratorial whisper: "Want go on wife? Forty quid?"

The woman looked at Barry and licked her lips, thrusting her chest forward. Beneath the table, her leg rubbed against his.

Barry was indignant now. "Do you mind? Certainly not! Stop this carry on or I'll call the guard!"

The woman's leg slid away. She adopted a sulky and hurt facial expression. The man was angry again. "Oo poofter, eh? Oo poofter". He was not talking quietly now. The other passengers in the train were clearly now all paying rapt attention to the conversation while pretending not to, wishing that they had splashed out and travelled First Class but clearly glad that they were not involved and clearly not going to do anything to spring to Barry's defence.

"Oo bloody poofter!" the man continued. "Bloody hate poofters!"

Ryan had a number of options in this kind of situation. One would have been to nervously deny being a homosexual (perhaps awkwardly adding that there was nothing wrong being a man who was sexually attracted to other men). Or he could have indignantly gone off to fetch the attendant and given him the job of dealing with this rude man. But both of these options would have left him feeling weak and intimidated, so he tried something else. He stayed something else.

"What's it to you?" he said, staring directly at the man, using what his trainers in the Organisation called The Look. If the Organisation had thought him one thing it was that in many conflict situations one can achieve victory without having to resort to violence if you can convince your opponent that you would in fact be quite willing to trade blows, and that if blows were traded it would not be you who would be left looking for an ambulance.

Ryan and the man stared at each other. An eternity of time seemed to pass. The carriage went quiet, as everyone was absorbed in this moment of crisis, with the tension engulfing even those too far away to have heard the initial exchanges or to have even seen either of Ryan or the man.

And the man blinked first. "Bloody poofter… bloody poofter", he muttered, stepping into the aisle from his seat. "Out Shelly, go nother bus with no poofters". The woman followed him out of the carriage.

Barry affected an air of nonchalance and went back to the book he was reading (Cold Blood, Warm Guts, the latest from Andy McNab). People around him exhaled and relaxed, glad that the disruptive element had left the carriage. Barry could sense some of them smiling approvingly at him, but he affected not to notice. He could not however ignore one of the clowns coming over and pointing at him, giving two thumbs up and nodding while a second clown parped enthusiastically.

"Eh, thanks", he said, hoping the clowns would not decide to become his new best friend. Fortunately they did not, returning to their seats.

Ryan assumed that now he would be able to relax with his book or stare out the window at the passing countryside until the train arrived in London. But his assumption was wrong, as an announcement came over the train's PA:

"Good afternoon passengers, please be advised that for your safety and convenience the train will be making an unscheduled stop at Barnstoneworth. Please do not alight from the train and make sure to have your identification papers ready for the National Security personnel who will be boarding the train".

Great, a security stop. Ryan tried to affect an unconcerned air, but he was worried that his fake passport would somehow set off alarm bells. He had already had to show it when he was getting on the bus for the boat in Belfast, but that the bored PSNI man had given it only the most cursory look. Still, there was no real reason why National Security would spot anything unusual about. It did not have Ryan's real name on it, but it was otherwise indistinguishable from an authentic passport, having been obtained for him through the Organisation's contacts with the Passport Office. Still, he feared that National Security would smell a rat. The fact that he was now sporting a week of stubble and had a passport with a non-anglicised Gaelic name (thanks to the Chief's policy with regard to such things) added to his concern, as it made him look like a stereotypical member of a rejectionist Republican organisation. Still, said rejectionists would surely not advertise their hard-core beliefs by holding travel documents with Irish versions of their name?

The train pulled into the station. National Security goons infested the platform. Ryan tried to look innocently vacant as he watched investigators come into his carriage and start checking people's documents. They were scanning each ID that came their way with some kind of device that presumably checked it off against some kind of national database. Hopefully if no one with the name Ryan had been given was on that database then he would have nothing to fear.

Eventually the investigators reached him. He handed over his passport. They looked at it and him quizzically.

"Irish, eh?" one of them asked, in a tone that implied a certain level of suspicion, but which was unclear as to whether this was a special level of suspicion for him or just the general level of suspicion they used when interacting with all members of the public.

"Yes", he replied. "I'm Irish".

One of the investigators scanned the passport. The other stared at him for a few moments and then spoke: "On the train from Scotland, eh?"

"Yes… I was over seeing the sights… now I'm on my way down to London".

"So, what sights did you see then? In Scotland?"

"Oh, eh, you know, the usual… that big art gallery, those shops in the city centre… the big square, Greyfriars Bobby… the Gorbals… you know?"

This elicited no reply bar a raised eyebrow. Then the investigator who had been scanning the passport handed it back to Ryan.

"Have a good time in London, Mr O Kai-onn-aithe".

"It's Ó Cionnaith", Barry replied, glad that he had remembered the name on his passport but trying to sound apologetic. Oh-Kyun-Ee.

"Whatever you call yourself, Mick", the investigator grunted, and then turned to check the documents of another passenger.

Ryan went back to his book, though he snuck a few peeks out the window at the suspicious characters the investigators had herded off the train. He wondered what would happen to them. The ones who did not have their IDs with them but who were otherwise of good character would get an administrative slap on the wrist, no doubt, but the ones whose IDs triggered something on the database – well, they were in trouble.

The people taken off the train did seem to be a rather motley crew. Ryan was not surprised to see that there were quite a few men of south Asian appearance. There was no sign of any of the clowns however, nor of the man and woman who had accosted him earlier (though they could of course have disembarked at an earlier station). The rest of those detained were a bunch of non-descript looking men and women with varying degrees of worry on their face, perhaps reflecting how well they fitted into the current British dispensation, or perhaps reflecting their familiarity or otherwise with having their collars felt by National Security. One person who cut a rather unusual figure was a sheepish looking vicar, his sheepishness perhaps related to his not wearing any trousers. Why did he have no trousers? Ryan could not tell, though he suspected that if the vicar really was a vicar then he was being held because his ID had disappeared with his leggings.

Then the train pulled away, leaving behind the unfortunate vicar. Surely now his journey to London would continue without interruption?

7/11/2011 – 8/11/2011

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More Organisation Man coming soon. No wait, come back!

Organisation Man: Chapter 5

2011-12-10T22:06:00.001Z

In which Barry Ryan embarks on a journey.

If someone wanted to travel from Dublin to London they would usually go to the website of an airline and buy a ticket from Dublin Airport to one of the many airports ringing London. If they had a bit more time at their disposal and wanted to travel in a more relaxed manner (and in one that was substantially cheaper and one for which the ticket of travel could be bought on the day), they would travel by ferry to Holyhead and then by train to London. Neither of these was the method used by the Organisation when sending its employees to London on official business. It was taken for granted that the Opposition would have the London airports staked out, so that the risk of anyone travelling by air being spotted and identified (and possibly even eliminated) was simply too great. It was also taken for granted that the enemies of Irish freedom would have operatives based in Holyhead to keep an eye on the Organisation's agents leaving the country that way. So the Organisation could not send people to London by air or by sea, at least not by the direct routes.

Still, London was the kind of place that the Organisation would always want to have people go to from time to time. It had a large Irish community, who were both a source of information and also a possible reservoir of the potentially disaffected whom a foreign power could convert into turncoats. London also housed a large Irish embassy, whose diplomats would periodically have to be monitored to ensure that they were not betraying the trust that had been placed in them. And London was still an important centre for international politics, somewhere in which the Organisation would want to keep an ear to the ground. The Organisation had to be able to send people there, yet if the direct routes were unusable, the question was how?

The Chief had of course worked out an ingenious solution to the problem. The direct routes were too obvious – so the Organisation's people travelled to London by an indirect route that was so insanely meandering that no potential enemy would think them stupid enough to take. Thus it was that after his briefing on the name and address of this potentially sinister antiques dealer Ryan found himself heading down to Busáras to catch the afternoon bus to Athlone. He had suggested to the Chief that maybe seeing as how this was an issue in London then perhaps the Organisation's London station could handle it, but the Chief said no. He wanted one of his top people on the case and that meant Ryan. This was one of the real problems of working for such a two-bit outfit as the Organisation. In other countries, the Organisation's better-funded equivalents could afford the luxury of having a functional divide between field agents (who went out and did the messy work of gathering information) and desk agents (who then processed and evaluated said information). There was none of that in the Organisation. While Ryan had always been primarily a desk officer, he knew to never get too comfortable at his desk, as there was always the possibility that at a moment's notice he could find himself sent off into the field.

An afternoon bus to Athlone was not Barry Ryan's idea of fun, but if this is what it was to be then so be it. The plan was that from Athlone he would get another bus to Belfast, and from there he would get another bus again that would bring him to Scotland after crossing the Irish Sea by car ferry. And he would not just go to anywhere in Scotland, he would go all the way up to Aberdeen. From there he would finally be allowed get the train down to London. It was felt that no foreign agency would ever consider staking out Aberdeen for Organisation operatives travelling to London.

In some respects, it was nice to be out of the office and doing something. The Chief's document had rather been preying on his mind and he was running the risk of becoming dangerously obsessed. Yet that way also lay the rub. He felt he was on the brink of getting somewhere with those weirdo music people, and being taken off the case like this made him worry that the enemy would slip through the net. The Chief had not taken the document back from him, so he had not reassigned the case to anyone else. The heat was off the enemy, they could relax now. Still, they probably did not know that the heat had ever been on them in the first place, which was just as well. Let them sail on oblivious to our attentions, thought Ryan. When this London thing is over, we will nail them.

The Irish midlands are a depressing region of flat lands and grim towns, made all the worse for the fact these godforsaken centres of local population would count as little more than oversized villages in any other part of the world. And the bus crawled through every one of them, dropping off passengers whose family backgrounds meant that they had to periodically return to these undead centres. To add to the unpleasantness of it all, the bus driver insisted on tuning his radio into some horrific Country and Irish radio station and then blasting out its treacly approximation to music at the passengers, with the volume turned up so loud that no iPod headphones could compete. Ryan founded himself again thinking about the weirdo music people in the Chief's document. Listening to the shite the bus was imposing on him he wondered if maybe all their dustbin lids and tuneless squawking was not quite so bad after all.

The bus arrived in Athlone. Ryan disembarked and it pulled off, bringing the remaining passengers on towards the West and its final destination in Galway. Ryan checked the timetables. He had just an hour to wait for the bus to Athlone, which was itself also coming in from Galway. An hour was too long to hang around in the bus station, which seemed to be a haven for the very worst elements in a town not particularly known for its urbane sophistication. So he went for a stroll, found a nearby pub that looked like its denizens would not immediately punch his face in, and went in for a pot of tea and a couple of double whiskeys, the latter a perfect way of making the bus to Belfast go by that bit quicker. Reading his Irish Times did rather make him stand out as a bit of a city slicker (the locals were mostly reading either betting slips or the Athlone Trumpet), so Ryan did find himself facing some rather suspicious stares and overhearing some unfriendly mutterings. But he resolved to brazen it out. And he put his Organisation training to work, surreptitiously scanning the room to see if any of these drinkers were taking an interest in him that suggested anything other than just a general dislike of Dublin folk. But no, there was nothing indicating that any of these people were in place to keep an eye on the Chief's preferred route to London, which was not particularly surprising. Ryan doubted that any intelligence agency could pay people enough to stake out a shithole like this.

And then it was time to run back to the bus station and hop onboard the coach to Belfast. It was dark now, and people on the bus were trying to sleep, even though it was not that late. The bus driver seemed determined to keep them awake, however, though not with the usual Bus Éireann diet of Country and Irish. This one seemed to have more particular tastes and instead was subjecting the passengers to what appeared to be a collection of German beer drinking songs. Ryan found himself sitting beside a portly gentleman who seemed rather taken by the choice of music. The bus had barely pulled out of Athlone when the fellow started humming along to the music and then air conducing the imaginary band.

"I like this one!" he said to Ryan, who grunted back in that non-committal way of public transport users who wish to indicate that they have heard a stranger's attempt to communicate with them but that they have no wish to engage in conversation with them.
When the next drinking song came on, the most unusual thing happened. The people who had been on the bus when it arrived in Athlone all stated singing along to it. Ryan shuffled uncomfortably in his seat. Glancing around the bus, he could see the couple of others who had got on with him were also shuffling uncomfortably. It was going to be a long trip to Belfast.

6/11/2011

An inuit panda production

Organisation Man: Chapter 4

2011-12-09T22:04:00.000Z

In which Barry Ryan continues to investigate, before events take an unexpected turn.

Ryan spent the next week reading the Chief's document. He studiously looked up the names of all the artists mentioned. He found that with any of the ones he checked, it was possible to download music made by them. If they were not real musicians then someone had gone to great lengths to make it look like they were. That said, a lot of the music did seem to be tuneless squawking and the sound of people banging dustbin lids together, perhaps treated by some kind of electronic device to make it sound a bit more serious. Still, Ryan found himself thinking that maybe this kind of thing would not be too hard to put together. He reckoned it would not over tax the resources of any competent intelligence agency or subversive organisation to create music of this sort as a way to make an agent's cover as a musician more convincing. In fact, he found himself thinking that he would not find it that hard himself to make this kind of avant-garde music. Maybe this would be worth pursuing as a way of trying to establish which of the artists mentioned were really musicians and which were sinister figures doing the bare minimum to pose as such. Other possible uses to which his musical experimentations could be put also began to suggest themselves to him.

He was however no nearer to ascertaining what was the nature of the secret messages the Chief felt were embedded in the document. It was clearly not the kind of cipher that involves the substitution of each character for another character according to some kind of complicated key system. This was just as well, as codes like that were extremely difficult to crack; foreign intelligence agencies would be able to prepare codes of that kind that a hole-in-the-wall outfit like the Organisation would never be able to break. The problem with that kind of codes, of course, was that they produced material that looked like it had been encoded – random strings of meaningless numbers and letters. If the Chief's document had been full of that kind of thing then we would have known what we were dealing with and what to do about it – haul in all the people involved and blowtorch their nads until someone squealed. But with the document as it was, there was always the possibility that it did not actually contain any covert information. That left the Organisation in an awkward position, as they could not really afford the negative consequences that would arise from interrogating of members of the public on spec.

Still, there are other kinds of codes. Perhaps when the writers of the articles in the document chose to mention artists in a particular order then perhaps they were signalling something to other agents or their controllers. After all, it could have been agreed that one sequence would mean one thing, another something else. This kind of meaning would probably be impossible to discern from the document itself. Some kind of fieldwork – surveillance of the writers – would probably be necessary to see whom they were talking to and what information they had access to. After all, if we do not know what they know, we do not know what they could be telling. Still, that kind of routine fieldwork was not one of Ryan's preferred activities, and it was not something he had been given a mandate for in this case, so he stuck with reading the document, researching the artists, and trying to spot connections between them and the writers. He also started compiling charts of the artists mentioned by different writers in the document, to investigate whether there was any pattern to the ones they mentioned and their ordering.

Ryan continued on this basis until he came back from his lunch break to find Lyon loitering by his desk. Fortunately Ryan had followed Organisation procedure by locking up the Chief's document before going out, but it was still disconcerting to see him there. He had been avoiding the canteen, as a way of avoiding that idiot, so even aside from the possible security risk he represented his presence was unwelcome.

"Guess who is looking for you!" said Lyon cheerfully.

"Oh, was Jennifer Anniston ringing for me again?" said Ryan, sarcastically. "I've told her it's over, but she just won't listen".

"No, silly – the Chief! Seems pretty urgent, he was well miffed that you weren't here when he came by. Bad day for a long lunch break, naughty Barry!"

"I'd better go and see him".

"Pity you don't have time to tidy up first – you do look a fright. Still, I bet you've got plenty to tell him about your 'important project', eh?"

"You're one to talk. Alright, fuck you, I'm off to see his nibs".

Ryan stomped off down the corridor, leaving Lyon to chuckle all the way back to his desk.

Knocking at the Chief's door elicited a gruff "Dul isteach!" Entering, Ryan found the Chief standing in the middle of the room, adopting a somewhat Napoleonic pose with his right arm tucked inside his jacket. "Ah, A Barra, maith thú…", he began, and then continued in a somewhat startled tone: "Níl tú ag feach go maith, a Barra, cad atá ort?"

"Sorry Chief?" replied Ryan, who had a bit of a knack for all languages other than the Chief's own version of the first national tongue.

"Your appearance, Barry, it looks somewhat less than professional. Is there a problem? Something we can help you with?"

"What? Oh no, nothing's wrong. It's just… I've decided to grow a beard, so I haven't been shaving".

"Ah. Ah, maith thú Barra, maith thú". The Chief stroked his own beard and nodded sagely.

"It's to do with the case you have me on, Chief. I've started thinking that we might need to do some infiltration of our own. I'd need a beard to fit in with those weirdo music people. Not that it's only weirdoes who have beards", he added hastily, "but they seem rather common among that lot".

"Ah", said the Chief, somewhat disappointed. "And how are efforts with regard to that document going?"

"Well, I've been reading it over and over, checking up on what it mentions. I'm getting a lot of information together, but I can't say I'm only closer to working out what is going on. I'm not getting any sense of what the secret messages you think it contains are. But the whole thing seems like a pretty slick operation. All the artists mentioned seem to check out – someone has gone to great lengths to make it look like they actually exist, setting up websites for them and posting up sample music from them you can download. Some of them even have what appear to be fans, though of course that could all be simulated".

"Very good, very good. And the next step?"

"Well Chief, I don't really know what I'm looking for here. You said you couldn't give me any further information on what you had on the document…"

"And I'm afraid I can't, Barry. That remains classified for the eyes of a higher level than yours. You know how it is, Barry – need to know".

"Of course. That leaves me in an awkward position, then, as I have nothing much to go on. That's why I was growing the beard. Maybe next time there is one of these weirdo music events I might head along to it, see if there is anything obviously funny going on – beyond the music, that is".

"Well done, Barry, well done. Admirable foresight".

"I was even thinking I might try and front it as a musician. The kind of avant-garde crap these people put together, I reckon it would not be too hard to make something similar myself. It might help me fit in there and get closer to the heart of the matter if I was another musician".

"I admire your dedication, Barry, I really do. So I understand the disappointment you will feel when I tell you that, for the moment, you are off this case".

"Off the case?" Barry was shocked. So he had been growing a stupid beard for nothing?

"I'm afraid so Barry, at least for the moment. But stick with the beard. I'm not taking you off the case as a sign of disapproval. Far from it. Instead I've got another little matter I want you to look into".

"I see". This was ominous.

"We've had a tip off from the Brits, Barry", the Chief continued. "There's apparently a purveyor of cheap antiques in Ealing who is making a little bit on the side by selling high quality counterfeit Irish passports. This is a most serious matter, as I'm sure you will agree. Ever since that Israeli hit squad bumped off yer man in Dubai while travelling on fake Irish passports, well since then our travel documents have acquired a certain reputation in international circles. The two fellas on the wall there did not die so that every gobshite in the world could traipse around the world with a harp on their passport". He indicated O'Connor and Pearse, whose stern facial expressions indicated the disdain they had for the forgery of Irish passports.

"Of course not, Chief. So what are we going to do about it?"

"Well, that's the thing. The Brits asked us what we wanted them to about it. I suppose they would like to haul in this antiques dealer for us, so that we could tug our forelock and be grateful to our former colonial masters. Well I'm not having that, Barry!"

"Definitely not", Barry agreed.

"There was also an implication in their message, that maybe we would want this fellow left alone, that maybe he was actually working for us – that we were using him to give out passports to friendly criminals and to raise a bit of cash for the nation's empty coffers. I think they reckon we really could sink so low. Well I'm telling you, Barry, Ireland might be going through a bad patch, but there's no way this great little nation will ever sink to selling passports to random chancers on the back streets of London!"

"Definitely not!" Barry agreed again, trying to calm down the Chief whose face was now getting so red that he looked like he might burst. "So what will we do?"

"Well, well Barry", said the Chief, "I want you to check this out. The Brits could be having us on, after all. Maybe this antiques dealer is what he says he is, just someone who sells overpriced bits of old shite to gullible collectors. But maybe what they are saying is right, and he is selling high quality counterfeit Irish passports, the kind he would only be able to produce if he was the frontman for a criminal operation that stretched back to some bad apple in Foreign Affairs. I'm telling you, it would make me happy to see one of those stuck up West Brits exposed as the thieving grasping little bags of shit they are, so we'll have to look into this ourselves. I want you to go to London and see what this antiques dealer is about".

6/11/2011

An inuit panda production

Organisation Man: Chapter 3

2011-12-08T22:00:00.000Z

In which Barry Ryan undertakes some investigations.

The problem with the Internet, of course, was how easy it was to let it distract you. Barry Ryan started off looking at how foreign intelligence services handled their web presence, or if they even maintained any web presence at all, but he soon drifted off into reading material about foreign intelligence services. From there it was easy to start reading all kinds of paranoid screeds about the all-seeing nature of these agencies and their pernicious role in the affairs of the world. But the more Ryan read, the more one worrying fact became plain to him – there was a lot of material on the web about the other intelligence agencies, much of deranged and delusional. True, some agencies had more written about them than others, with the CIA, NSA, FSB, MI5, MI6, COC, MOSSAD, BNV and the like attracting far more comment than the intelligence services of somewhere like Switzerland. But what Ryan was struck by was that there was nothing at all on the Internet about the Organisation. Was the Organisation too secret? If no one, no one at all, knew it existed, could it carry on its business? Could a completely unknown organisation even be said to exist? This kind of thinking led in worrying directions. Ryan started to wonder if he should post some kind of paranoid rant revealing the Organisation's existence on one of the world's more outré message boards. Obviously, he would have to do it under a pseudonym and would have to post from an Internet café, one nowhere near his place of residence, taking care to be gone from there the moment he had hit send, but maybe it needed to be done?

Still, this was of little relevance to the task at hand. Ryan picked up the purported music publication and read on.

"Other top folky stuff at the festival included a performance in the church by Sharron Kraus. I was sorry to catch only the last few tunes by her, as she has an impressive voice and sings the kind of melancholic folky death tunes I wuv. In fact, I am kind of kicking myself for not picking up any of her recorded output, as it really does strike me as being the kind of thing that is right up my alley, with potential for her to join Cate Le Bon and Jane Weaver in the ranks of my girlfriends."

Ryan recognised none of these names either, though he did not find this particularly surprising. A quick glance at the Internet suggested that they were all actual musical performers, or ones for whom the appearance of a real existence had been created. One or two of them even seemed to have some fans, though that too could also be simulated.

What, though, did the author mean when he was talking about recruiting the first named signer as another of his girlfriends? A figure of speech, perhaps, but this was the kind of thing that could easily be code for something else, something far more sinister. Maybe the writer had no interest in music and was not writing about music but instead was running some kind of white slavery enterprise and was posting here to advertise to his degenerate customers that he had acquired a new woman with whom they could slake their bestial lusts? The overall tone of the rest of the publication made this an unlikely proposition, but then people traffickers would hardly be upfront about their foul enterprise. Maybe this was what the Chief wanted him to uncover? But surely not. People trafficking, white slavery, a terrible business to be sure, but at the end of the day a matter for the Guards. This was not the kind of existential threat to national security that the Organisation dealt with.

Ryan took a deep breath, exhaled, and tried to focus. He was in danger of losing the run of himself, seeing connections that were not there. He read on.

"The one folkie I was not so gone on was ironically one of Irene's favourites, one Stephanie Hladowski. She has a great voice and sang an impressive array of doomy folk tunes, but I felt that her decision to sing unaccompanied by any instruments left the music she was making sound too sparse."

This was obviously not a foreign name, but it struck Ryan as being a bit too obvious, even for the less subtle foreign agencies, to just refer to their agents by their real names in a coded report like this. Or a coded report like this might be – Ryan reminded himself that there was still nothing firm suggesting that this was anything other than an account of some weirdo music festival by a fan of that kind of thing. Even if it was some kind of espionage related communication, the writer would surely disguise the names of foreign agents to make them sound less, well, foreign. Ryan reckoned he could take it that this Hladowski actually was a musician of some sort or else was a patsy.

"I mentioned laptop music above, one of my great bugbears for its visually boring nature and the complete opacity regarding how it is produced. I was expecting a lot of laptop music at this festival, and ended up getting virtually none, which…"

At this point Ryan was interrupted by Lyon poking his thick stupid face into his office.

"What's that you're working on there, eh?" Lyon asked, smiling in a typically gormless manner.

"I really can't say", Barry answered, doing his best to cover up the publication with some other envelopes he had on the desk, remembering the Chief's injunction that Lyon in particular was not to be informed as to what he was looking. "Need to know, you know how it is".

"Big job from the Chief? Well no matter man to see to it through, eh?"

"I'm doing what I can. Now, I really need to get back to this, so don't you have your own work to be doing?"

"Oh I do, I do. Fascinating stuff it is too. Not sure if there is really much to it, but I have to follow up all lines of inquiry. We got a tip off that there was foreign infiltration in the… well, let's just say that it is a body whose tentacles stretch over the length and breadth of the country, one with all kinds of access to the people of Ireland. Not the kind of thing we want a certain African country getting its fingers on, now is it?"

"No, surely not", Ryan grunted back irritability, "so I suppose you had better make sure it is not happening".

"I suppose I should. Well, see you at lunchtime!"

Lyon waved goodbye and left Ryan to his reading. The document continued:

"I was expecting a lot of laptop music at this festival, and ended up getting virtually none, which was a pleasant surprise. Maybe because of its scarcity, the one piece of purely laptop action I caught seemed rather enjoyable. This was by one Mr Herv, one of those names I see on bills a lot but someone I think I might just have never seen before. He was playing what one might broadly describe as dance music on the Sunday night in the Dock. Some of the more usual laptop problems were avoided by having him playing in front of a film or TV documentary featuring loads of clips from old 1930s horror films (it was Halloween weekend, remember). I am not sure to what extent Mr Herv had picked the visuals or whether he could even see them himself, but it did seem like he was timing his music to go with them. His set also featured the amusing sight of a load of people in unheimlich fancy dress costume dancing in a spookily undead fashion."

Ryan tried to imagine what this was purporting to describe. So this person who went by the name "Herv" was making music on a laptop. People were dancing to it. People were dancing to it while dressed in horror-themed fancy dress. And while this Herv was making his music, there was a screen behind him showing scenes from horror films. It made for a bizarre picture. And again, for the perfect cover. Suppose some curious member of the local constabulary had wandered into the venue to check that nothing untoward was happening. He would surely have been so distracted by the sight of all these weirdoes dancing in fancy dress and pretending to be zombies that he would not have noticed a government minister lurking the shadows handing over the most sensitive state papers to the agent of a foreign power.

His eyes returned to the Chief's document.

"So Hunters Moon did not feature much in the way of laptop music. What it did feature a lot of was people doing funny voice stuff – either making strange noises with their voices or using electronic treatment and looped samples to build abstract tunes out of vocal sounds. One of the bigger name artists they had along doing this was Jennifer Walshe, recent Wire cover star. She joined Tony Conrad on the first night, accompanying his violin stuff with a vocal performance that seemed to have been inspired by Tourette's Syndrome (I mean the involuntary tics rather than the swearing). I was a bit ambivalent about this – it seemed like her contribution was running against Mr Conrad's attractively droney sound and making the piece more abrasive and less conducive to relaxing avant-garde snoozing."

Now he was confused. Avant-garde snoozing? What could that mean? How could you sleep in an avant-garde manner? The ways of these musician types were mysterious. But surely sleep was just sleep. You either slept or you didn't. You could not sleep in a manner that showed off how avant-garde you were, because once you were asleep you stopped being able to perform to an audience. It had to be some kind of figure of speech. But again, what? The term did not suggest anything to Barry, even as a metaphor. The Internet on this occasion was unhelpful.

The reference to a "Wire cover star" also confused Barry. He had been a keen watcher of that popular programme and could not remember a prominent character in it played by an actor of that name. The Internet, however, was able to clear up this particular mystery. It seemed like there was some kind of magazine for people who liked weirdo music called The Wire, and someone of that name had indeed appeared on its cover. Of course, this did not mean that that person had really appeared at the festival being described in Chief's document, or if she did that that she was not part of whatever it was that these people were up to (if they were up to anything). And this Wire magazine, maybe that too could be part of it all? Or would that be too much?

written 6th November 2011

An inuit panda production

Organisation Man: Chapter 2

2011-12-07T21:55:00.002Z

More NaNoWriMo action, in which Barry Ryan is given an assignment.

Ryan made his way down the corridor to the Chief's office and knocked on the door. A grunted "Dul isteach" called him in.

"Ah, Barra, maith thú," said the Chief, looking up from some papers on his desk. "Is mhaith liom tú atá anseo. Suigí síos, suigí síos".

Ryan sat in the chair indicated for him. Its low design was almost certainly arranged deliberately so that from behind his desk the Chief (a man not over blessed in height) could tower over any visitor.

"So, you were looking for me, Chief?" asked Ryan, using English in the hope that it would divert his boss into a language he could actually understand.

"Yes, Barry, yes I was," said the Chief in the tongue of Ireland's enemies. The twin portraits behind him of Padraig Pearse and Rory O'Connor looked down disapprovingly. "Strange things are afoot. Tell me, how are things with you at the moment? Are they going well?"

"Oh yes, well I can't complain, not that it stops me". Ryan wondered where this was going.

"Do you have much on at the moment?"

The Chief fixed Ryan with a steely gaze. This was always a worrying question. It signified either that the Chief had some kind of new task for him or that he suspected him of slacking off. Given that Ryan was slacking off, he had to be careful how to respond. But if he were to claim that he was incredibly busy with all kinds of non-existent activity there was the danger that the Chief might take an interest in it and ask him for a full report on where his investigations were going.

"Well," he replied, playing for time, "I'm collating information from a number of informants and sources".

"Anything out of the ordinary? Anything juicy?"

"Well, it's pretty routine stuff, to be honest. Low grade data, nothing anyone would get too excited about".

"I see, I see". The Chief paused, staring into space as though pondering some weighty question. He started to hum a song to himself. Ryan recognised it as having lyrics involving Black and Tans, the Flight of the Earls, the infamy of Diarmuid McMurrough and the heroic victory of Fontenoy. It was one of the Chief's party pieces and he always made sure to sing it at the Organisation's Christmas party, forcing everyone to join in on the chorus.

The Chief kept humming his song to himself, now seemingly oblivious to Ryan's presence. When he switched from that to a ballad listing all of Ireland's fallen heroes Ryan began to wonder if it would be acceptable for him to leave, or if perhaps he should call a doctor. Instead he made a slight cough to remind the Chief of his presence. This snapped the great man out of his reveries. He appeared somewhat confused.

"Cad atá isteach?" he muttered. He then noticed Ryan, looked at him quizzically, and then recollected himself. Nodding sagely, the Chief picked up a bundle of papers and handed them to Barry. "What do you make of this?" he inquired.

Ryan looked at the bundle. A4 size, bound with two staples in the spine, it seemed to be somewhere between 50 and a hundred pages in length. The cover had a photocopied image of some black circles and some text while the back had a crudely reproduced photocopy of a typewritten text. None of the writing meant anything to him.

"It doesn't look like much to me, Chief", Ryan answered.

"It's not meant to, Barry, it's not meant to. But I have reason to believe that what you are holding in your hand is a threat to the security of the State". The Chief imparted this information in the most solemn tone a short bearded man can muster.

"Really?" said Ryan, trying to sound like he was open to the suggestion that the photocopied papers represented some kind of existential crisis. "What makes you think that?"

"I have my reasons", answered the Chief. He was smug now, confident that his simple statement was enough to dispel any doubts on the part of his subordinate.

"And what is the nature of the threat they contain?" asked Ryan, wondering if it might not be too late to put in a transfer to a proper Department where the senior management were at least somewhat competent and blessed with some kind of understanding of where reality ended and fantasy began.

"Well Barry, that is what I want you to find out. Stop what you are doing immediately, and take this document on. Read it carefully. Carefully! I have my reasons for believing that it contains coded messages – signals between foreign powers and their agents in this country, as well as communications between subversive elements. Find out what's going on here, Barry!"

The Chief was emphatic. Barry was still somewhat confused.

"Would it be possible for you to, | don't know, fill me in on your reasons for thinking that this document contains such coded messages?"

"I'm afraid not, Barry". The Chief was smug again. "Need to know, a chara, need to know".

"I see".

"Well Barry", said the Chief, in a tone indicating that the conversation was over, "I can't keep you from your important work any longer. I know I can count on you on this one".

"Thanks Chief" said Barry, making his way to the door. "You can rely on me".

"But Barry!" said the Chief abruptly just as Ryan was leaving. "Keep this under your hat! Don't let anyone else know what you're working on. This stuff is dynamite. We can't let the Opposition find out that we're onto them. Trust no one. Tell nothing to anyone. Least of all to that gobshite Lyon. There's a question mark over him, if you see what I'm saying".

"I'm with you Chief", said Ryan, secretly pleased that there was some prospect of Lyon being exposed as a double agent and despatched to the Organisation's holding facility in Belmullet. "Be seeing you".

* * * * *

While Ryan had been having this conversation with the Chief, Lyon had gone back to his desk smiling happily to himself. He enjoyed his chats with his colleague Ryan, their friendly banter being a large part of what made working in the Organisation bearable. He could tell that Ryan was grateful for having been tipped off that the Chief was looking for him – forewarned is forearmed, after all. He was a good fellow, was Barry Ryan. With people like him on the case the country was in safe hands.

So Lyon mused as he went back to work on his investigations into Ethiopian intelligence infiltration of the Library Association of Ireland.

* * * * *
After surfing the Internet for the best part of an hour Ryan reckoned that maybe it was time to start looking at the document the Chief had given him. A quick skim suggested that it was some kind of amateur publication dealing with music – or so, on the surface, it appeared. The font and layout seemed to go through abrupt changes from one part of the document to another, corresponding to the purported authors of each piece. A list of contributors at the beginning confirmed that they were located in Ireland, Britain and the United States, with one in the Netherlands. But Ryan noticed one thing that made him wonder whether maybe, just maybe, the Chief might actually be onto something. The various musical performers mentioned in the publication were not what one would call household names. Ryan did not think of himself as a keen music aficionado, but he did listen to the radio and felt that he was reasonably au fait with the latest happening sounds. In the Chief's document, however, there seemed to be a succession of references to performers that he had never heard of, usually named as playing kinds of music that sounded distinctly fictional. This would be an ideal way of hiding coded messages. Might the Chief not actually be delusional?

He opened a page at random and started reading more closely.

"The first band I saw were Nuada, some English-Irish folkies (two women and a man) who perform in (faux?) period costumes and play various olde instruments. They were playing when we arrived in the Dock on the first night. I think I liked them because I had not realised that the festival was going to be featuring anything other than guys fiddling with laptops, so they signalled that the event was going to be a bit more musically varied. I saw them again on the Sunday, when they began their set in the church by parading in playing bodhran-like drums and pipes. On this occasion I was struck by what rofflers they were."

This was accompanied by an indistinct photocopied picture of three people dressed like extras from the Lord of the Rings.

Looking back, Ryan saw that this piece of writing occurred in a discussion of a music festival – not the kind of music festival like Oxegen or the Electric Picnic that you hear about on TV and in the papers, but some kind of festival for people who get their kicks listening to music you never hear on the radio. This kind of thing would an ideal front for foreign agents and the like to get together, thought Ryan. Something this boring would never run any risk of random members of the public wandering in, and the Guards would never think of sticking their thick heads anywhere near a festival of unlistenable hippy music. It really was perfect, thought Ryan – except that the Chief had seen through the plans of these enemies of the nation.

Did these musicians even exist? Ryan went back to the Internet and searched for this Nuada group. After wading through several pages dealing with terrifying Jim Fitzpatrick art, he found that, yes, there was actually a group called Nuada and that they did seem to be the people in the grainy photograph. Or, at least, there was a website run by people calling themselves Nuada on which they claimed to be a group of musicians. But, again, that could all be a front as well. That was the thing with subversives and foreign agents. When they created a false identity they would go to great lengths to make it look as real and as thorough as possible.

Ryan then searched for the festival this Nuada group were purportedly playing at. It seemed to exist, in that it too had a website and there were various other references to it on the Internet. Not too many, mind, but then it was purporting to be a small-scale event. Everything was consistent with it having been an actual event that had recently taken place. The enemy was clever. A fake band with a fake website playing at a fake festival, with everything set up to look like it was not fake at all but real, as real as the Organisation Ryan worked for.

But then Ryan stopped. The Organisation was not real, at least not in the sense that it had any presence on the web or that anyone outside of its corridors had ever heard of it. Maybe they were going about things the wrong way. If they wanted to be really secret, perhaps they should put up a billboard advertising the Organisation outside their headquarters and set up a flash website with a mission statement and a listing of personnel. That would throw the Opposition off the sent. Ryan would have to suggest this to the Chief.

The thought distracted Ryan. He started looking on the Internet for the websites of the Organisation's analogues in other countries. What could be discerned from them? Was there a pattern to how they used a public presence to mask their real purpose?

written 5th November 2011

An inuit panda production

Organisation Man: Chapter 1

2011-12-06T21:49:00.002Z

What is this? Why it is chapter 1 of the novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo 2011. I am going to post a chapter of it a day for the next while, with chapters typically being somewhere between one and two thousand words in length. I am posting them so that the curious can see what a novel made up as the author goes along reads like. If that is not your thing then check out some of the other amazing posts Inuit Panda has to offer.

Please be warned that this is a largely uncorrected first draft. I have removed any obvious typographical errors that leaped out at me, but I have not proof-read it properly or corrected stylistic errors.

I'm as unimpressed by the title as you are.

Barry Ryan worked for an organisation that did not exist. As it did not exist, it did not have a name, and was known to those aware of its existence simply as the Organisation. The Organisation did of course exist for Ryan in the sense that he worked for it, that it provided him with a desk to sit at, that he had colleagues and a boss who instructed him on what to do. He even had some juniors he could get to perform mundane clerical tasks for him. But if Barry were to mention his employer to anyone, they would look at him blankly or think he was making some kind of joke. The Irish parliament did of course vote monies to the Organisation each year, but the amount was deliberately kept so low that no actual body could credibly exist on its official budget, and for all the monies voted for it the Organisation never delivered an annual report (at least, not a public one) and maintained no official premises or presence. The Organisation instead maintained a shadowy existence, nested within one of the less glamorous government departments, drawing parasitically on it for resources. Barry and his colleagues existed on paper as a division within that department, one whose purpose seemed at best unclear to the rest of its staff. This notional division operated out of an anonymous office building in central Dublin whose other occupants were from a different department entirely. They had no inkling of the deep work being carried out in the building they worked in.

Barry arrived into work on what seemed like it would be a morning like any other. His unctuous colleague Lyon was loafing around his desk.

"Well well well, Mr Ryan, you're a bit late, aren't you?" Lyon asked in an accusatory tone.

"I think not, I swiped in before the deadline", replied Ryan, taking off his coat and wishing Lyon would fuck off to any someone else.

"Well I'm not sure the boss would agree – he was down looking for you an hour ago".

Ryan noticed a sticky on the monitor of his computer, with a handwritten scrawl in the distinctive pidgin Irish favoured by the Chief:

"A CHARA, DUL SUAS MÉ A FEACH ANOIS, MAS É DO THOIL IS MISE ETC. – P"

"Thanks Lyon, I can read". Ryan sat down at his desk. "Any idea what this is about?"

"No no, but the boss seemed very agitated. I bet you're in big trouble, better get up there sharpish". Lyon sniggered.

"I suppose I should", Ryan said, trying to affect an air of nonchalance but actually worried. Having to deal with the Chief was always difficult and often involved such unpleasantness as being given work to do. "But don't you have things to be doing? Maybe you should fuck off to do them?"

Lyon adopted a facial expression suggested a highly exaggerated sense of hurt at Ryan's expletive and retreated away, though as he disappeared behind a partition Barry was blessed with a last glimpse of his grinning maw.

I'd better go and see the Chief, thought Barry.

written 4th November 2011

An inuit panda production

Manic Street Preachers "Generation Terrorists"

2011-12-06T10:40:00.002Z

Time has not been kind to this first album by the Manics – it is basically a collection of unappealing cock rock tunes that only managed to acquire a following among discerning music aficionados thanks to the band's striking visual look, ability to talk a good game, and the general cloaking of the turgid music in an envelope of radical slogans and faux intellectualism. There are some good tunes buried in here, but the slick big rock production does them no favours.

I rescued this from the collection of old vinyl in my parents' house and, frankly, I wish I hadn't bothered.

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The Damned "Damned Damned Damned"

2011-12-04T10:31:00.002Z

The Damned famously released the first UK punk single, the wonderful 'New Rose', complete with its Shangri-Las inspired intro. This was their first album, and while I do not know if it was the first UK punk album I do know that it is a stormer, 12 high octane tracks that speed along relentlessly. I get the impression that the Damned have maybe become a bit of a musical footnote, but this amazing record should be played to anyone inclined to dismiss them.

In case you're wondering, this is another record from my parents' attic.

is she really going out with him?

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The Blue Aeroplanes "Friendloverplane"

2011-12-02T10:22:00.000Z

I am still writing about records I have rescued from the pile of vinyl I have in my parents' house. This compilation of singles, b-sides, and so on comes from all the way back in 1988.

The Blue Aeroplanes were somewhat unusual for an indie band. One odd was just how many of them there were – their line-up seems so big that they were almost like an indie Earth, Wind and Fire, with built-in redundancy meaning that every possible instrument had several players in the band (for example, the sleevenotes list seven different guitarists). They also boasted a dancer at a time when it was neither profitable nor popular, with Wojtek Dmochowski serving up an engagingly amateurish brand of interpretative dance. The actual music is rather appealing too.

Most of the tracks seem to be written or co-written by lead vocalist Gerard Langley, whose singing style has a certain clipped beat poet delivery, with the musical accompaniment having the kind of broader sound you would get on a record featuring nineteen named contributors playing twenty different instruments (but not everyone and not every instrument is featured on every track). It makes for an intriguing stew and I am in some ways sorry that there are no longer bands like this. I suppose in some ways this Blue Aeroplanes album is a relic of a time before indie music went in one of either two wrong directions – the money chasing vacuousness of Britpop or the facile self-defeating loser music of people inspired
by the C-86 sadcore axis.

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The Orb "The Blue Room"

2011-11-29T10:15:00.000Z

Another vinyl record retrieved from my parents, this is officially a single (and a 12" single at that), but it is basically the length of a short album and I have always approached it as such, for all that it is one track over the two sides of vinyl. This is also is famously the longest record ever to make the top twenty or something, as it is exactly what was then (in 1992) the maximum length permitted for a single. The whole piece is a dub influenced slice of ambient house (remember that?), with an insistent bassline, an unintrusive drumbeat that you could dance to if you were completely mashed on drøgs but would ignore otherwise, and a general aquatic feel. I gather that the Orb promoted this on Top of the Pops by playing a form of chess on a spherical board. Anyway, this is still a classic and I am very glad I own it.

(sadly not the TOTP version)

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Play Me Old King Cole

2011-11-26T16:08:00.002Z

Genesis Trespass
Genesis Nursery Cryme

I made a recent trip out to my parents' house to retrieve these two Prog Rock classics from the vinyl records I have out there.
I've been thinking a bit about Prog Rock recently. These are 1970s Genesis records from the period when the band was still being fronted by Peter Gabriel. Trespass is astonishingly early, the band's second or third album, so early that non-public schoolboys Phil Collins and Steve Hackett have not joined on drums and lead guitar respectively. Listening to it again I have the same feelings I had on first acquiring it in a death-of-vinyl sale in the later 1980s – it is pleasant enough to listen to, but nothing about it really grabs me. Maybe it is the sound of a band still struggling to find their sound, or that of a band that will only really shift into high-gear when the arrival of new musical members kicks things off (which is not to knock the people they replaced, with many being great admirers of Anthony Phillips' guitar playing, both in the music he made with Genesis and after he left).

Nursery Cryme, though, this is still an amazing record. In the past it was the two long tracks on side one ('The Musical Box' and 'The Return of the Giant Hogweed') that most excited my attention, and they are still stunning pieces. 'The Musical Box' is sung from the point of view of a rapidly ageing homunculus reincarnation of a boy killed in an unfortunate croquet accident, said männchen emerging from the titular musical box. Peter Gabriel's lyrics capture the unfortunate boy-man as he moves in the length of the song from being a child to having the desires of a man and a desperate attempt to procreate himself before his death. The epic music manages to do justice to the bizarre lyrical theme.

'The Return of the Giant Hogweed', meanwhile, is the apocalyptic tale of an England invaded by the terrifying and poisonous weed, only this giant hogweed is sentient and consumed by a malevolent desire to extirpate the human race. Again, the music (which is largely led by Tony Banks on mellotron and various funny keyboard instruments) is able to do justice to the lyrical theme, sounding sufficiently apocalyptic until the coda, where the giant hogweeds themselves sing about how happy they are to have wiped out humanity.

The second side previously made relatively little impact on me, but this time I found myself enjoying it a good bit more. 'Harold the Barrel' (a song about someone called Harold who is not actually a barrel, as Wikipedia helpfully informs us) bops along in an easygoing manner that you would not really expect from an album of prog rock mentalism like this, and 'The Fountain of Salmacis' is also rather entertaining. But for me this is still primarily about the first side. I suppose the one real problem with the album, though, is that you have to engage a bit too much with the lyrics to enjoy the music. That is not so true of the second side, so I could see why someone might prefer those pieces.

My rediscovery of Nursery Cryme has led me to acquire a copy of Foxtrot, about which I will write something in due course.

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Hunters Moon: Part 3

2011-11-19T11:30:00.002Z

I'm still writing about this Hunters Moon festival in Carrick on Shannon. Previous episodes talk about folky music and weirdo vocal electronic music.

Another big element in the festival's line-up was what might broadly be called psych-rock. Or just rock. Dublin band Seadog did their twin-guitar thing, managing to sound like a post-rock Thin Lizzy with occasional nods towards the motorik sounds of Neu!. I liked them a lot, and would maybe have picked up their record if I had not been seized with the false idea that there as already an unlistened-to copy of it lying around in Panda Mansions.

GNOD were also entertaining with their tunes calling to mind the likes of Hawkwind and other purveyors of weirdo space rock. Their line-up was rather large, and it was noticeable that it included quite a few of the odd festival characters who had been wandering around at Hunters Moon beforehand. Their drummer swigged from a flagon of cider while playing, and looked momentarily non-plussed when it seemed to have been moved beyond his reach by one of the other members of the band… fortunately he was then able to access his backup drink source, a bottle of Jägermeister.

GNOD also saluted the passing of the great Jimmy Saville by incorporating the Jim'll Fix It theme into their set.

We also liked hairy Dublin rockers Wizards of Firetop Mountain and were fascinated by the pixie rock of Circulus. Circulus also became an object of fascination to the people I work with, after I had mentioned the name of the festival I was going to… on my return Circulus were the only band they asked me about, not because they had previously heard of them but because their Wikipedia page made them sound like escapees from a 1970s episode of the Old Grey Whistle Test. And I suppose in a way that is what they were like, with their funny instruments, talk of odd tunings, and Mr Circulus' between song chat suggesting that he was channelling Whispering Bob Harris. I think I would like to explore their music further.

We missed almost all of local psyche-folk-rock-improv-etc. band United Bible Studies, in fact just catching their last song, an extended cover of the Planxty tune* '"P" Stands For Paddy I Suppose', done here as a demented rock out tune about love gone wrong and the like. I thought it was amazing, the frenetic music suiting really well the lyrics of obsession and failure, with the look of the band (they were dressed in Halloweeny costume as a variety of ghosts, zombies, vampires and liches) adding to its doomy vibe. But my beloved, a trad purist, thought it was rubbish.

Like GNOD, United Bible Studies seemed to have most of the festival's funny characters in their line-up, including harpist Aine O'Dwyer, who had played a charmingly minimalist set in the church on the previous day. Her write-up in the programme seemed to have been written by a deranged stalker fan; the barring order is still in place. UBS featured so many other random festival weirdoes that I started imagining that maybe I would see myself playing with them up on stage. Dude**.

I will now mention one last act, who do not readily fit in any of the schematic divisions of the players at Hunters Moon. They were Lacey & Vogel. I know they sound like the eponymous members of some US cop show, but they are actually makers of extremely stripped down electronic music. Their set seemed to be long passages of silence interspersed with the sound of something being hit against something or an electronically generated tone. I feel that it was so completely lacking in either melody or rhythm that it cannot be considered as music. That is not really a criticism as such, however. Once you start thinking of their product as sound art it is possible to appreciate it in a different way, with the spaces between the sounds allowing for John Cage-like contemplation.

And that was that. Oh dear, I seem to have gone on for ages and ages talking about bands you have never heard of after all. Just in case you think I have ended up describing every act we saw at the festival, I will list the others that I saw and enjoyed: Toymonger, Boys of Summer, Neural Spank Pony, Akke Phallus Duo, Blood Stereo, Woven Skull, Bela Emerson, and Raising Holy Sparks. Guess the one I made up.

Overall it would have to be said that this is one of the best festivals I have ever been to – the range of (weirdo) music on offer was rather broad, the atmosphere was relaxed, the setting was congenial, and so forth. I don't know if they plan to have another one next year, but if they do I will definitely be there. Maybe you will too?

I have actually been thinking about acts that would fit well at a Hunters Moon type festival. I reckon that people from the Finnish Fonal label would go down well. And as well as providing an intriguing range of freaky folky sounds, the Fonal bands also have the advantage of overlapping membership, so you could bring along six people and get four or five acts. I also reckoned that my equally beloved Jane Weaver and Cate Le Bon would fit in, with their odd take on contemporary folk music being likely to win over the most cynical heart. But what would I know?

* Not sure if this is a trad arrrrr or an original composition. It is on Cold Blow And The Rainy Night, the Planxty album with the non-classic line-up and was sung there by the grumpy new guy.

** I should point out that actually this was one of the least drøggy festivals I have ever been to. Only Indie tracks could really match it for hardcore abstemiousness towards anything other than the booze. As with Indietracks, the attendees at Hunters Moon did actually manage to exhaust the bar's stock of craft beer, though that should not make anyone think that either festival was full of raucous drunks.

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Hunters Moon: Part 2

2011-11-17T11:54:00.002Z

In which I continue talking about the recent Hunters Moon music and arts stuff festival in Carrick on Shannon.

I mentioned laptop music last time, one of my great bugbears for its visually boring nature and the complete opacity regarding how it is produced. I was expecting a lot of laptop music at this festival, and ended up getting virtually none, which was a pleasant surprise. Maybe because of its scarcity, the one piece of purely laptop action I caught seemed rather enjoyable. This was by one Mr Herv, one of those names I see on bills a lot but someone I think I might just have never seen before. He was playing what one might broadly describe as dance music on the Sunday night in the Dock. Some of the more usual laptop problems were avoided by having him playing in front of a film or TV documentary featuring loads of clips from old 1930s horror films (it was Halloween weekend, remember).

I am not sure to what extent Mr Herv had picked the visuals or whether he could even see them himself, but it did seem like he was timing his music to go with them. His set also featured the amusing sight of a load of people in unheimlich fancy dress costume dancing in a spookily undead fashion.

So Hunters Moon did not feature much in the way of laptop music. What it did feature a lot of was people doing funny voice stuff – either making strange noises with their voices or using electronic treatment and looped samples to build abstract tunes out of vocal sounds. One of the bigger name artists they had along doing this was Jennifer Walshe, recent Wire cover star. She joined Tony Conrad on the first night, accompanying his violin stuff with a vocal performance that seemed to have been inspired by Tourette's Syndrome (I mean the involuntary tics rather than the swearing). I was a bit ambivalent about this – it seemed like her contribution was running against Mr Conrad's attractively droney sound and making the piece more abrasive and less conducive to relaxing avant-garde snoozing.

We missed Jennifer Walshe performing on her own in the church on Sunday, but those present were very impressed. She was recreating the experience of living in New York and tuning randomly from one radio station to another. Cynical me cannot but wonder whether an actual recording of someone channel hopping could do this more effectively.

Other stars of funny voice music included various people from the Sheffield-based Singing Knives record label. There seemed to be a small group of these people who combined and divided into several bands on the bill. I particularly liked The Hunter Gracchus, who created a rather spooky and unnerving soundscape from their vocal samples combined with various other instruments. The weird film compilation of low budget schlock horror films accompanying them added a lot to their performance, with the giant blob of horror appearing in an operating theatre during a gynaecological operation being a particularly gruesome moment. As with Herv, I could not be sure whether or not The Hunter Gracchus were playing against the film or not, but their music went very well with it and it did seem like it was paced in time to it. In some ways they reminded me a bit of Double Leopards, another band of voice experimenters that I saw some years ago in Glasgow.

Partly because she used the same film, I liked the performance by Blue Yodel, a solo performance by one of The Hunter Gracchus. Ms Yodel did more or less the same kind of stuff, though it has to be said that I enjoyed her set more than my less easily pleased colleagues.

The real daddy of the funny vocal music was one Dylan Nyoukis. He just stands on stage and makes funny noises, without any obvious sign of electronic treatment or sampling. He had already started when I came into the Dock he had already started, and for the first few minutes I did find myself wondering whether this really was the kind of nonsense that gives avant-garde music a bad name. But then I noticed that some of the small children present were laughing their heads off at him (in a good way), so I started appreciating what he was doing on a less poncily cerebral level. What he does is both very impressive and very entertaining, though one might argue that he sails a bit close to the ethnically-stereotyping wind.

When Mr Nyoukis finished his performance, some people suggested that he had not played for long enough, with the small children being particularly vehement on this point. So he invited anyone who wanted to have a go up on stage, and they (children and adults) all shouted away for a couple of minutes. It was a bizarre moment.

What I think was striking about all the voice stuff in general was how high quality it was. One could easily imagine some chancer being inspired by this kind of thing to get up onstage and start making ugly grunting noises in the hope of finding themselves added to the bill of some future music festival, but all the voice performers had an air of polished technique that buried any "Sure anyone could do that" scepticism. This was especially true of Jennifer Walshe, for all my ambivalence about how her work fitted with that of Tony Conrad.

* It was suggested later that these might actually have been his small children; if so then I suppose they must be used to their father and his funny ways.

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Hunters Moon: Part 1

2011-11-15T21:40:00.004Z

I will now say a few words about the Hunters Moon festival. This was a new event being held in Carrick-On-Shannon, up in Co. Leitrim, on the Halloween bank holiday weekend. Its bill featured a range of local acts from the world of funny electronic music and vague improv, together with a few better-known international names from broadly that world, together with some psychey rockers. I bought a ticket to the event, and then was immediately gripped by buyer's remorse – would it be some kind of horrendous occurrence where the rest of the audience would be ghastly trend people who all knew each other and the music would be served up by a load of boring laptop charlies? The fact that Carrick seems to have become the stag and hen party capital of Ireland was also somewhat ominous, as it raised the spectre of being kept awake all night by the drunken antics of those unfortunate people.

But actually, no, it all worked. It actually more than worked, this event was a big bag of unproblematic fun. The festival organisers managed to put together a bill that would delight any lover of weirdo music, the attendees* were actually interested in music (as opposed to just being yappers and event people) who were happy to give even the craziest avant garde nonsense a listen, and at no point were any of us attacked by an over excited hen party. And best of all, we (my beloved and I) were sharing living accommodation with a former Frank's APA superstar and man about town**, a man with extensive connections in the world of Hunters Moon attendees and performers (who, in fairness, do largely know each other), providing a handy entrée for us into that world.

A few words on the setup. The evening events took place in the Dock*** Arts Centre, a venue I remember from attending a wedding there a couple of years ago. In the afternoon they had concerts, typically of a more acoustic nature, in St George's Church. Everything was conveniently located close to each other and within the town, so there was no great loss of time in moving from accommodation to venues or in nipping off for a bite to eat.

I am not going to a chronological trawl through all the people who played at Hunters Moon – that would leave you having to keep scrolling down to read about people you've never heard of and whose music you are never likely to hear. I cannot even just concentrate on the artists I liked, as I found pretty much everything of some interest. So maybe I will attempt some kind of random sampling process.

The first band I saw were Nuada, some English-Irish folkies (two women and a man) who perform in (faux?) period costumes and play various olde instruments. They were playing when we arrived in the Dock on the first night. I think I liked them because I had not realised that the festival was going to be featuring anything other than guys fiddling with laptops, so they signalled that the event was going to be a bit more musically varied. I saw them again on the Sunday, when they began their set in the church by parading in playing bodhran-like drums and pipes. On this second occasion I was struck by what rofflers they were.

Other top folky stuff at the festival included a performance in the church by Sharron Kraus. I was sorry to catch only the last few tunes by her, as she has an impressive voice and sings the kind of melancholic folky death tunes I wuv. In fact, I am kind of kicking myself for not picking up any of her recorded output, as it really does strike me as being the kind of thing that is right up my alley, with potential for her to join Cate Le Bon and Jane Weaver in the ranks of my girlfriends.

The one folkie I was not so gone on was ironically one of my beloved's favourites of the weekend, one Stephanie Hladowski. She has a great voice and sang an impressive array of doomy folk tunes, but I felt that her decision to sing unaccompanied by any instruments left the music she was making sound too sparse.

* People boasting the most astonishing collection of beards ever seen in one place.

** Aren't they all?

*** Carrick on Shannon is not a coastal town, but it lies on the mighty Shannon river, and so has something approximating to a dock. Hen and stag parties traditionally go for boating excursions while visiting the town, supplying the occasional sacrifice to the River Gods.

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Dublin Contemporary

2011-11-15T10:32:00.002Z

So I went to Dublin Contemporary, this big exhibition of contemporary art that was on here in Dublin. Somewhat unusually for art things here in Dublin, you had to pay into it, so I took the afternoon off work to make sure I got my money's worth at it. The exhibition featured artists from both Ireland and the rest of the world.

I enjoyed my visit to Dublin Contemporary, but I ended up thinking that most of the art was not that great. This may be a side effect of having recently seen loads of great representational and non-conceptual art in Naples. But what I really loved about the exhibition was the building itself. It used to be the home of University College Dublin (with the chessboard floor patterns in the lobby familiar to anyone who has read At Swim Two Birds) but now seems to have been taken over by the National Concert Hall. There seems to have been no renovation since UCD left, so loads of rooms still have the names of the professors or descriptions of their original purpose over the doors and peeling paint inside. At least once I was looking at some bit of stupid modern art and then realised that actually it was just a bit of the wall.

The whole place went very well with the Chernobyll piece, as the Earlsfort Terrace itself feels like it was hurriedly abandoned 20 years ago.

For me also it was fascinating to go the library there and look at somewhere I used to work now transformed by the addition of a monumental piece of modern art, a giant glass thing by Jota Castro. Thanks to its sheer size it was one of the more impressive pieces in the exhibition.

The advance of video art was interesting, as production values here have advanced so that instead of getting a grainy digital video image of the artist rolling around in the nip we were instead treated to well shot properly lit pieces with actors and the like. I suppose if performance artists are like unfunny stand up comedians (or boring actor-playwrights) then video artists are mutating into makers of films that would never make it to the cinema.

For all that, it was mainly the video-film art that impressed me at Dublin Contemporary, perhaps because it is a bit more immersive. Film instantly suggests a meaning in a way that a "pile of crap in a room"* piece of conceptual art often does not, so it is easier to get to grips with, once you are willing to give it the time to watch it unfold.

One interesting film piece by (I think) Javier Téllez featured some Mexican psychiatric patients in the border town of Tijuana parading from their hospital to the beach, where their country is separated from the United States by a huge wall. They were carrying posters with various slogans affirming their dignity as human beings and the like. Some of them were wearing animal masks. At the border, they staged a kind of circus event, with one of the patients taking on the role of ringmaster and holding up a large hoop through which the people with animal heads would step. Some of the people involved seemed a bit confused. Then things took an odd sidestep, with the appearance of an American guy (he showed everyone his passport). He was not one of the psychiatric patients but a human cannonball – and he then used a cannon to fire himself across the border, apparently becoming the first person to cross the Mexican-American frontier in that fashion. I do not know what this could be said to have signified, but it did make for interestingly bizarre viewing.

A longer piece by, I think, Omar Fast dealt with those unmanned drones that fly around Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, killing people their American operators think look a bit funny. It featured what appeared to be voiceovers from interviews with drone operators, but also filmed aerial shots of scenes in America corresponding to the foreign sights being described by the drone pilot. So while he would be talking about how he could use the drone to surreptitiously follow someone down a street, the screen would show an aerial shot of some kid cycling through an American town.

So far so good – the piece was making us think about the way drones work and the use of American settings would remind American viewers that the drones' real-life targets are actual people, albeit foreign ones. But the film had another element. As well as what appeared to be the actual voiceovers from interviews with drone pilots, it had these filmed interviews with an actor pretending to be a drone pilot. In these, he would tell a story (sometimes about drones and sometimes not) with his voice acting as a narrator to a filmed version of these stories. This was all done with high production values and what looked like professional actors.

These filmed scenes were quite striking, particularly the one in which the story of an Iraqi family who get killed by a drone strike on some militants they are driving past, with that story transposed to the United States, making it an all-American family being taken out by a missile attack on some redneck extremists. But they did make me wonder if there was something a bit wrong with them, in that they were taking a serious real world issue (drone strikes) and turning into slick contemporary art. At the end of the day, would the real interviews with the drone pilots have been better used in a documentary about drones rather than in a contemporary art exhibit? And did the marrying of real interviews with fictional material muddy the waters and detract from any political point the work could have made, turning the real experiences of the drone pilots into trite entertainment? I do not know.

Some of the other films seemed like they would have been more at home in a cinema rather than an art gallery. Like what appeared to be a feature film from Ghana – the IFI would surely have been a better place for this. I'm not so sure about a piece by (I think) Hans Op De Beeck, which was a series of vignettes or filmed portraits of people on a cruise ship. It lacked the kind of narrative drive that would make it fit the cinema (and the crude CGI used for the ship's exterior would have been a bit laughable in that context), but the interior scenes were far better filmed and acted than would have been the case with the kind of classic low grade video art you used to get in art galleries. It was interesting to watch, but I don't think it really worked as either art or as film – it was not conceptual enough for art and lacked enough meat to work as a film.

The war on terror/occupation of Iraq/generally troubled times in which we live featured in a couple of other non-film pieces. I was struck by how a collection of unpleasant photographic images of charred corpses (or not corpses) by one or other of Dan Perjovschi or Thomas Hirschhorn (their stuff was in the same room but I do not recall who did what) was primarily repulsive and gross, devoid to me of any kind of point or meaning other than that horrible things happen in the world.

I was a bit more struck by some photos by Nina Berman, though probably not as much as I would be if I had seen them for the first time. They show this young American couple Ty and Renee. Ty served in Iraq, where he was caught in an explosion that blew off his arm and burnt him so severely that he is now almost completely lacking in facial features. There is something terribly sad and human about the photographs of their wedding and their life now. They remind me of the cost of war to its participants – some of them come home in body bags, others return changed by their experiences, either by what they have seen or done or, in Ty's case, with their bodies transformed in a way they will have to live with for the rest of their lives. I don't know what the future holds for Ty and Renee, but I fear that Ty's time in Iraq might well end up blighting the rest of their lives. Still, you can ask yourself whether it was exploitative or not for the artist to use their private misfortune as the basis for her work.

I mentioned the Chernobyll exhibit above, which was a reconstruction of the big wheel in the funfair of the abandoned town of Pripyat, together with the temporary evacuation notice issued to Pripyat's residents. I had somehow got the impression in advance that the big wheel recreation was life size, so I was a bit disappointed to discover that it was smaller than I was. Oh well.

There was other stuff that was at least somewhat interesting while I was looking at it even if I do not have much to say about it in retrospect. As I was saying above, wandering around looking at all did make for a pleasant afternoon, and the exhibition was just big enough to make you feel like you were doing well on the quantity size of things without crossing over into terrifying museum fatigue territory. But the real star for me was the building, with its chequered floors, peeling walls, name plates on doors, lecture theatres, and smell of oldness.

*I am indebted to my colleague Mark Winkelmann for this useful phrase

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Good News From Facebook

2011-11-13T09:28:00.001Z

"You currently automatically import content from your website or blog into your Facebook notes. Starting November 22nd, this feature will no longer be available, although you'll still be able to write individual notes. The best way to share content from your website is to post links on your Wall."

This means that you will no longer see posts from my amazing blog in Facebook. If you are reading this on Facebook and will want to keep abreast of all the latest Panda news then there are a number of things you could do.

1. You could keep checking Inuit Panda every couple of days or so.

2. You could follow Inuit Panda in a reader thing like, say Google Reader. I gather that Google are stealing a leaf from Facebook and doing their best to make Google Reader unusable, but I understand that it retains some functionality.

3. You could stop reading Inuit Panda, though this would make the Pandas sad.

In other news, this Giant Panda's name is Po, and he is a year old. He is apparently very cautious, being suspicious of any new object not first touched by his mother.

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FBI Declares War on fans of Insane Clown Posse

2011-11-12T19:22:00.002Z

The Insane Clown Posse are a group of hip hop musicians known for dressing up as clowns. Their fans are apparently known as "Juggalos". These Juggalos adopt a subculture that sees them consuming non-alcoholic beverages, listening to the music of the Insane Clown Posse and similar acts, and also wearing face makeup similar to their idols. However, the FBI's National Gang Threat Assessment for 2011 reports that many Juggalos go further, with the Insane Clown Posse fans adopting behaviours that are gang-like in character. This follows media reports that some Juggalos have been involved in a number of crimes.

The Insane Clown Posse themselves are reported to find magnets confusing and are somewhat bemused by this characterisation of their fans.

The FBI's move represents part of an ongoing campaign against music-fan based extremism. Earlier this year a series of raids on fans of Scottish band Belle & Sebastian led to a number of arrest on people-trafficking and drug smuggling charges, while a crackdown on partisans of evil metal group DEICIDE uncovered several overdue library books.

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a prescient early report into the terrifying potential for violence of the Insane Clown Posse and their fans

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Summer in London – part 3: This is Hell and We are in it

2011-10-26T10:12:00.000+01:00

There is maybe not too much more to say about our trip to London. We visited the new Gosh comics on Berwick Street. With the Soul Jazz shop round the corner and Sister Ray probably still hanging in, the Berwick Street area may become once more a gravitational centre for any trip to the big smoke. And we went to Shakespeare's Globe (TM) to see Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus.

I love visiting the Globe (a reconstruction of the theatre in which Shakespeare's works were originally performed). It has some winning features. Firstly, the plays are staged in something vaguely approximating to how they would have been in Elizabethan England, which is fascinating to someone like me who is interested in theatre history. Secondly, you can get in for a fiver if you are willing to stand for the performances' duration – not a problem if you are as used to standing at gigs as I am.

Doctor Faustus was a particular draw for me, as it is one of the classics of Elizabethan drama and so of theatre generally. As you know, it concerns this fellow Faustus (a doctor) who hits on the bright idea of selling his soul to the Devil. The Devil grants him an extended life in which he will have the demonic prince Mephistopheles as his servant. The play follows first Mephistopheles luring Faustus into the pact and then distracting him with fun stuff (like kicking the Pope or letting him shag Helen of Troy) to prevent him from renouncing the pact and throwing himself on God's mercy. For comic relief, the idiot servants of Dr Faustus also dabble in the black arts, with hilarious consequences.

I suppose what makes the play work so well is its sense of gothic doom and of the dreadful awfulness of the damnation to which Faustus has signed himself. You can tell that the demons are all miserable – there are lovely scenes where Mephistopheles and even the Devil himself wince whenever God is mentioned or respond in pained tones whenever they are asked to describe Hell ("This is Hell and we are in it", or some such replies Mephistopheles – when you no longer behold the Countenance Divine then everywhere is damnation). For all that Faustus is meant to be one of the great brains of his age, he is clearly not the sharpest knife in the drawer if he is willing to align himself with this bunch of malevolent losers. We know this will end very badly for him.

One amusing thing about this production was that Mephistopheles was played by Arthur Darville – a man probably better known for his portrayal of Rory From Doctor Who. Rory From Doctor Who has a certain gormless quality (albeit a loveable gormlessness that goes with a character a bit more fully rounded than might be expected from Gormless Boyfriend Of Doctor's Assistant) but Darville showed here that he is not just a one trick pony by being able to convey the melancholic and malevolent qualities of a Prince of Hell. Paul Hilton as Faustus was also excellent, though I don't think he has ever been in Doctor Who.

And that was almost that, though we did also find time to meet people in a pub and visit Highgate cemetery.

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NaNoWriMo 2011

2011-10-25T21:40:00.003+01:00

NaNoWriMo is this world wide writing exercise where people try to write novels of at least 50,000 words in the month of November. Pure quantity is the only ground of success – if you write 50,000 words, you win, even if your so-called novel is complete nonsense. Some have criticised NaNoWriMo as adding to the world's mountain of bad writing, but I think they are missing the point. Sure, the novels finished on 30th November are all going to be pretty poor, but for the writer they are useful exercises in actually getting the words out, in forcing him- or herself to sit down and write day in, day out. Even writing something that is very bad is a useful exercise for would-be writers, so long as after the fact they are able to recognise what was so bad about what they spewed out.

I think also that the process of just banging out the text must be of some assistance in generating ideas. While there is nothing to stop NaNoWriMo writers from plotting novels in advance, the process of trying to reach 50,000 words in a month encourages a kind of breakneck writing that leads the author easily into tangents, some of which may prove promising for future development into proper works of fiction.

Another reason for trying NaNoWriMo was outlined to me by one Mr Dale Cozort. He said that many people think they would like to try creative writing sometime, but that right now is not a good time for it. However, it turns out that now is never a good time. With NaNoWriMo, you just accept that while now is not a good time to start writing, you are just going to do it anyway and see what happens.

If you are doing NaNoWriMo, you need to write an average of 1667 words a day through the month of November. That is quite a lot, but if you get onto a roll you can expect to produce a lot more than that on some days, so it is perhaps less daunting than it initially sounds.

My own experience of NaNoWriMo is mixed. I have attempted it twice, in 2008 and 2010. In 2008 I succeeded in producing the required number of words, hitting a groove early on with a basic plot that kept suggesting new episodes. It did of course get increasingly incoherent and outlandish, with early hooks never being resolved and strange leaps of logic being required to bring things to a conclusion, but that is the kind of thing you tidy up in subsequent drafts. As the writer of that piece, what I found most interesting about the process was being able to write 50,000 words of a novel for which I only had the vague premise "detective story about missing wife" before sitting down to start writing it; an inquiry from my beloved as to whether it would feature pandas before I started writing pushed into a whole other direction.

In 2010, on the other hand, everything went wrong. I had the beginnings of a plot worked out beforehand, but the writing process proved much more difficult. I was slow off the mark for a variety of reasons and then I found that the words were not flowing for me. One problem was that I started losing confidence in the outline plot I had come up with in advance, and another was that the economic situation at the time was depressing me. And my perhaps unwise decision to attempt to pastiche 19th century novels made the words far less easy to spew out. Eventually I gave up when it was clearly no longer even remotely possible to write the required number of words by month end.

I am not sure what this indicates. Maybe I just got lucky first time round, but I think the lesson really is that to complete NaNoWriMo you need to get in there and start writing from the word go, and to write sufficiently quickly that you do not have time to start doubting the quality of what you are producing. In any case, what you are producing will probably just be rubbish anyway, so get on with it.

I posted my 2008 NaNoWriMo book on my blog for a limited period and then never got round to deleting it. You can see part one here. Or ask me for a PDF copy. I never posted my 2010 attempt anywhere, because I hate it.

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Summer in London – part 2: a concert… by Oneida

2011-10-23T10:03:00.002+01:00

We went to one concert while we where in London – the ever-popular Oneida, who were playing in the Lexington up in riot-torn Islington. And we met two of our pals there, scoffing some burritos beforehand in a charming local eatery. The support band at the concert were called Mugstar, and they are apparently from Birmingham. They played a kind of largely instrumental experimental rock music most notable to me for its ear-splitting volume (which may have resulted from their playing early, when the venue had not yet filled up that much). I thought they were interesting enough, but would maybe have liked them more if I had remembered to bring earplugs.

And so to the main event. For the benefit of readers who are unfamiliar with the O, I will briefly outline their modus operandi. They play largely instrumental music that maybe tends towards the stoner rock end of the musical spectrum but is perhaps a bit more interesting than that sounds*. They do use a fair amount of guitars, but the music is maybe a bit more led by drums and keyboards than would be usual. Before coming over to London, I was trying to describe the band to a PFW. I said something about how they tended to rock out. "Oh, like AC-DC?" he inquired. "Well, no, it's more like they rock out in a kind of nerdy indie way". Maybe that helps.

The other thing Oneida are famous for is appearing in an Onion article about some guy who ruins a concert for everybody else by enjoying himself**. The article satirises the unexcited nature of concert audiences for indie rock bands by referring to people standing around with their arms folded, having a great time. Well, there was a surprising amount of that carry on in the Lexington – maybe from London event people who wanted to check out the O or people who do not like surrendering to the rock. Whatever. Unfortunately I found myself stuck behind some really tall arms-folded guy, which was really harshing my buzz, so I had to push past him up to where people were getting down. Live the rock.

Oneida recently brought out Absolute II the third album in their linked triptych of releases collectively entitled Thank Your Parents. I think the current tour is partly to celebrate the triptych's completion, and they have done some shows where they played Thank Your Parents in its entirety (which takes a while – the middle album is a triple). They did not have time for that this time round, but they did open with the first of the three albums, Preteen Weaponry, played in its entirety. It is a brooding continuous work whose tracks flow into each other, and unlike a lot of other records it actually gains from the consecutive treatment. After that they played a succession of tunes, old and new. But, rather heroically, they did not play what I think of as the hit – 'Sheets of Easter' from Each One Teach One, the one with just two chords that runs over you like a train.

The line-up for this set saw Drummer Guy, Guitar Guy, and Keyboard Guy (whom I think of as the three core members of Oneida, whose names may be Kid Millions, Hanoi Jane, and Bobby Matador, though I am still a bit vague as to which is which) joined by a second guitarist and a second keyboardist (perhaps to fill in for Keyboard Guy if he were to get a bit too *relaxed*). I am a bit unsure as to whether the other two are permanent members or not. They did not seem as excitable as the main three, but the second guitarist in particular had an air of quiet confidence that made me think he might still be in the band after the tour ends. In terms of chops, it was the drummer that particularly impressed this time round. I don’t think I have paid him enough attention on previous outings, but here I was stunned by his amazing ability.

So, all in all a truly awesome gig. I was only disappointed that as this was the last date on their European tour they had no t-shirts left to sell me. Also saddening was that neither of our burrito buddies were able to stay to the concert's end. One had been blasted out of it by the volume and had another indiepop club night to go to nearby, while Oneida proved to not be the other's thing, leading to his slinking off home. But on the plus side, we bumped into an old Frank's APA pal, who had come down from Oxford for the gig. Woaaaaah!

*Reader's Voice: "But dude, what could be more interesting than stoner rock?"

** Reader's Voice: "Given that you mention that article every time Oneida come up, I kind of get the idea now".

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Special Needs Puppy Seeks Special Home

2011-10-21T12:19:00.000+01:00

Bailey is a little puppy who seems to be a cross between a dachshund and a cocker spaniel. The staff of the SPCA's Aberdeenshire Animal Rescue and Rehoming Centre at Drumoak, near Banchory, are trying to find a home for Bailey, but it is proving difficult, because the loveable puppy has special needs. Little Bailey has an enlarged oesophagus, which makes it hard for him to swallow. He needs to stand upright to eat and drink from his special bowl, and then after eating he has to be held upright for 15 minutes or so to make sure the food all goes down the right way.

Apart from this condition, Bailey is capable of leading a fully normal puppy life. The SPCA are hoping that an appreciative owner can be found for him.

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Summer in London – part 1: Museums

2011-10-20T21:51:00.002+01:00

Join me, gentle reader, as I take you with me on my recent trip to London, capital city of the British Empire. Eschewing the variable charms of the Bloomsbury guesthouses, my beloved and I planted ourselves in Kensington, where Imperial College lets out student accommodation over the summer to holidaymakers like ourselves. The facilities here proved most agreeable, and I would recommend any readers from outside London looking for a more cost-effective accommodation in the big city during the summer months to seek out this place.

We were in London the week after the city was torn apart by rioting. I had been a bit worried that feral youth would once more rise up against The Man while we were in the city, but this was not to be. In any case, we would have been able to sleep soundly in our beds, as it seemed like half of South Yorkshire's police force were billeted in Imperial College.

We were not in London just to hang out with men in uniform. A variety of cultural activities were on our agenda. Using our membership, we visited the British Museum to look at the exhibition there on mediaeval reliquaries (objects used to store relics of saints, said relics being anything from bits of their clothes to chips of their skull). Compared to some of the other British Museum things I have been to, it was surprisingly quiet – maybe people are more interested in exotic foreign religion and stuff than in the Christian heritage of Europe's past.

The reliquaries exhibition more or less ended with the Reformation, when the emerging Protestants took against relics big time and shamed the Catholics away from the more lurid excesses of reliquary reverence*. You can see the point of the Protestants, but they did come across like a load of kill-joys – religion may have become a bit less crazy but it also seemed to have had a lot of the fun kicked out of it.

We also made two visits to the exhibition on science fiction in the British Library – more or less a journey through the form's history using book covers as a means to throw out discussion points. It also had some fascinating audiovisual input, of which my favourites would be the snippet from Orson Welles' radio drama of The War of the Worlds, a clip from the recent silent and faux expressionist film of 'The Call of Cthulhu', and a short clip from the 1950s TV version of 1984. That last one seemed to have been a hoedown of British talent of the time – Nigel Kneale wrote the script, Winston Smith was played by Peter Cushing, and Syme (the guy who shites on about newspeak to Smith) was played by Donald Pleasance. No wonder Prince Phillip liked it so much. It is a great pity that the holders of copyright on this work have deliberately kept it from public view.

*unless they are living in Naples.

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Important Animal News

2011-10-12T15:01:00.002+01:00

The Guardian Newspaper has found a picture of a mother Tortoise carrying a baby Tortoise on her head.

And here are two Lovebirds who wuv each other. Lovebirds are a class of parrots who form very strong pair bonds and are highly affectionate (though they can reputedly be aggressive to birds and other animals with whom they are not pair-bonded).

Short Notes On Records I Really Should Review Properly Some Time But Probably Won't

2011-10-10T10:35:00.001+01:00

Magnet
The Wicker Man OST

Faux folk music from the film adaptation of The Golden Bough. 'Gently Johnny', 'Maypole', 'The Landlord's Daughter' – the gang's all here, together with some pieces of incidental music and some quite unnerving sections of dialogue from the film.

Richard Thompson
1000 Years of Popular Music

This is the live double CD version of Richard Thompson's trek through a millennium of music. The two standout tracks for me are 'Bonnie St. Johnstone' (a grim song about child infanticide and damnation that does not appear on the studio version) and the celebrated cover of 'Ooops!... I Did It Again' which manages to sound like so cynical a love song that it amazing to think that he did not write it himself.

The opening track on this is 'Summer is icumen in', which also features on the Wicker Man soundtrack. Richard Thompson seems not to have concluded his version with an onstage human sacrifice.

Franco et le TPOK Jazz
Francophonic Vol.2

Franco: the late guitar-playing sensation from what was then Zaire. He comes from the jangly guitar school of Congolese guitar players and likes playing very long tunes. It is impossible not to feel like dancing with a big stupid smile on your face while listening to this music.

v/a
Psych Funk Sa-Re-Ga

What can I add to accounts of this already much reviewed album of funk music from Bollywood films? Maybe it would be best if I didn't bother.

v/a
Indietracks Compilation 2011

I don't expect it to be very good and indeed have not even listened to it yet. I bought it to give money to the Midlands Railway Centre, your honour.

Vangelis
Antarctica

Liking Mr Gelis' soundtrack to Missing I thought buying this would be a good idea. Big mistake. A cursory first listen suggests that it is cheesy rather than ominous.

v/a
Freedom Rhythm and Sound: Revolutionary Jazz & The Civil Rights Movement 1963-82

A great many people already have this Soul Jazz compilation of jazz music relating to the struggle for Black Freedom in the United States of America.

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Puppy Saves Drowning Man

2011-10-09T15:57:00.000+01:00

Wilson the puppy was walking on a beach in Wales when he noticed that a swimmer had got into difficulties. The clever puppy, who is himself somewhat afraid of the water, ran to the sea shore and started barking, alerting his owner to the swimmer’s plight. Somewhat fortuitously, Wilson’s owner is a volunteer with the local lifeboat station, so he was able to run over there, launch the boat and rescue the swimmer.

This is not the first time that the swimmer’s life was saved by a dog. Some years previously he got lost in the Black Mountains when a sudden mist descended. “A sheep dog came out of nowhere I followed him down the mountain,” he reports.

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Big Brother Is Watching You

2011-10-07T20:54:00.002+01:00

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BEAR UP BISON!

2011-10-06T10:27:00.002+01:00

Do you know Shonen Knife? Do you like Shonen Knife? They are this Japanese all women three piece who play punky pop music and have been going forever. I think they sprung onto the Western world musical scene in the early 1990s, at a time when they had already been going for a while in their home country. Artists like Nirvana and Sonic Youth championed them and their nice dresses and good looks meant that they were always going to get some attention. They had songs with titles like 'Twist Barbie', 'Cycling Is Fun', 'My Favourite Town – Osaka*' and 'Bear Up Bison**', all sung in heavily accented English as a second language, which meant that to some they were easily fileable in the novelty to idiot-savant continuum. Some even saw them as a typically rubbish J-Pop act who had lucked out by attracting some undeserved international attention.

And then we stopped hearing about Shonen Knife. Maybe the novelty wore off, maybe they stopped touring outside Japan for the various reasons that lead to bands taking it a bit easy, or maybe the demise of grunge and the rise of Britpop (dread word) meant that there was less interest in a naïve pop-punk act that had been championed by Americans. But now – they're back! Shonen Knife (or The Knife as people sometimes call them, particularly if they want to mix them up with the popular Swedish electronic act) played an ATP a year or two back (or earlier this year, or something), and then a concert in Dublin (part of a long European tour) was announced. After some humming and hawing, I decided to go along to the concert, in Whelans, accompanying my old friend and quaffing partner Paul W---- who is a massive Shonen Knife fan***.

First we had a support act. They are from Tuam, and are called Slow Cow, or something like that. Paul W---- had said that they were some kind of indiepop act, and I think this might have coloured my perception. I started imagining them playing one of the stages at Indietracks. Musically they would fit right in, but they lacked a certain something in the visual department. Indiepop is one of those forms that likes to think itself as being above the fickle dictates of fashion and uniform appearance (witness the railing against the NME's support of bands who look flash in indiepop stalwart Pete Greens' classic tune 'The Best British Band Supported By Shockwaves'), but there is very much an indiepop look, and Slow Cow did not have it. Still, I reckon that if they were scrubbed up and fitted out with some new threads they could be the new Just Handshakes Please, We're British. That really does sound like damning with faint praise, so I should add that I thought Slow Cow were definitely good at what they do and displayed genuine talent at playing their instruments, particularly in the rhythm department area. However this is not really my kind of music.

And then Shonen Knife themselves. Time has dictated some line-up changes. Of the original members, only guitarist Naoko is still in the band. The other women on drums and bass are far younger and, it seems, far better musicians, though all the recent songs are written by Naoko. They start by standing together at the front of the stage, holding up sweatbands bearing cryptic Japanese characters. Then they launched into their music. The first track or two sounded distinctly ropey, making me think that this was going to be much more idiot-savant than actually good, but they picked up – maybe the Whelan's sound munter was on the case or maybe they just had some weak tunes to start off with.

And yes, this was a bag of fun – amiable poppy punky tunes like momma used to make. As well as the old classics they also had a song about everyone's favourite giant rodent, the capybara, perhaps inspired by the one in Osaka zoo who has taken to giving lifts around to squirrel monkeys. They also had some songs about the current world economic crisis and they encored with tracks songs from their Osaka Ramones album of Ramones covers. What was most striking about them, though, was their boundless enthusiasm. In Naoko's case, she has been doing this kind of thing for over twenty years, playing not particularly enormous venues. Yet she still seems to love playing and connecting with the audience, and the younger players also come across like they are having a blast (unlike the kind of session muso wankers you get padding out line-ups in Western bands). It was noticeable, indeed, that it took forever to buy anything at the merchandise stand, because the band were selling their stuff themselves and insisting on signing (and drawing pictures of cats and dogs) on everything people were buying. It is basically great to see a band playing who are so obviously in love with what they do.

If you were cynical you could wonder how calculated this all is, whether the Knife are creating a front of naivety as a ploy to sell records. I prefer to think that they actually do love capybaras and cute things generally. I know I do.

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Capybara Monkeys

Capybara Shonen Knife

* Somewhat conveniently, Shonen Knife are from their favourite town.

** A song about visiting a zoo, seeing a bison who looked a bit sad and then trying to cheer him up.

***Paul W-----'s musical tastes are endlessly fascinating and entirely unpredictable.

Leonard Cohen "Greatest Hits"

2011-10-04T22:18:00.002+01:00

What can I say about this that has not already been said? As you know, this is a compilation of relatively early tunes by Laughing Len, from the late 1960s and early to mid 1970s – basically from before he went electronic.

A couple of things strike me here. Firstly, from reading the sleevenotes about how the songs came to be written, one thing is clear – Leonard Cohen will get up on a slow dog. Secondly, for all that people go on about what a great songwriter Cohen is, what really impresses me about this record is the production and sound engineering – there is a real quality to the way the voice and acoustic guitar have been recorded that creates an enveloping musical atmosphere. It may not be for nothing that my favourite tune here is 'The Partisan', a cover of a French resistance tune from the Second World War (and already known to me in the storming version by Electrelane) – it is more evocative of real situations and terrible emotions than the various accounts of the notches on Mr Cohen's bedpost.

What does this all mean? Well, it makes it unlikely that I will ever throw away my money trying to see Mr Cohen live – the local enormodome is hardly going to reproduce the dainty sound of these recordings. I also doubt that I will ever want to explore any of his dreadful electronic records; hearing some of them once in a taxi made me wonder how Cohen managed to retain a recording career. In fact, I probably will not bother with any of his actual albums at all – this really is all the Leonard Cohen I will ever want.

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The Man With The Four Way Hips

2011-09-21T11:43:00.002+01:00

The Tom Tom Club were playing in Dublin. You may remember these people as being the two members of Talking Heads who are neither David Byrne nor Jerry Harrison – Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz. I was undecided about going to this. On the one hand, the music the Tom Tom Club made back in the day is amazing – or at least their first album is. OK, so you do get a bit of lamer white guy getting down with Chris Frantz's vocal contributions (particularly in the live Tom Tom Club track on Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense), but you can't knock the toe-tapping nature of the music. The fear with things like this, though, is that seeing them many years after their heyday will mean you get a band that are a sad shadow of their former selves – tired oldarses going through the motions to top up their pension funds.

That kind of fear kept me from buying a ticket for the concert in advance. However, I had heard good reports on the grapevine about recent Tom Tom Club performances, and check on YouTube suggested that they still have it. So on the day itself I decided that I would go, and was lucky enough to meet someone on the way who had an extra complimentary ticket. So I got in for free – wahey.

I felt obliged to repay my generous friend by buying pints in the bar. This meant that we missed the support band. At the time, this did not concern me, as the rubbish support act at Richard Thomson (see later) had put me off whatever rubbish local act Vicar Street would serve up. However, I later heard a lot of good things about the support act from people who did see them, so I will quickly mention them. They were called Tieranniesaur* and featured a lot of boys and girls hitting things as well as playing more conventional instruments. They seemed to be both avant-garde and fun at the same time – an ideal support act for the Tom Tom Club, in other words.

While waiting for the Tom Tom Club to come on, I couldn't help but notice that the venue was not exactly full. And from talking to other people it seemed like hardly anyone had paid in, which could have proved that we were in for a concert of bored yappers. Yet it was also clear that everyone there was rather excited about seeing the band. The auditorium was filled with a sense of expectation from the people present, who all were hoping that this would be an exciting night out rather than an embarrassing example of a band pissing on their legacy.

And actually, yes, this was amazing. The band are as funky as ever. The line up now is Tina Weymouth on bass and vocals, Chris Frantz on drums and occasional "James-Brown!" vocals, another woman called Victoria Framm on vocals and occasional guitar, some young lad on keyboards, guitar, and percussion, and another young lad (who turned out to be the child of Weymouth and Frantz) on turntables. They played a load of different tunes, not all from the first album which meant that many of them were new to me – but all of them were tracks that you could not keep your feet still to. The place was soon full of people dancing their little socks off and smiling like lunatics.

I am going to have to investigate later Tom Tom Club albums, as the first one does not have what proved to be a complete stomper live – 'The Man With The Four Way Hips'. This led to some discussion – what would it mean to have four way hips? They would go forward and sideways – so that's two, but what are the third and fourth? The vertical axis might somehow be a third, so would the fourth way be an ability to move your hips through hyperspace?

Back to the concert - one thing I was really struck by was how uncompromisingly old the band were. OK, a lot of people are old, but they are usually a bit more restrained than this or else they are frighteningly made up and plastic surgeried. But Tina Weymoth and Victoria Framm were completely unrestrained and yet seemed largely untouched by masklike makeup or the surgeon's knife. And old people do not usually wear tiny dresses and funk out like they did. If you have ever seen Stop Making Sense you will be aware that 1980s Tina Weymouth was one of the great heart-throbs of New Wave – well she still has it, but in a mad for it older lady kind of way**. Chris Frantz, meanwhile, has greyer hair but generally looks surprisingly like he did back then, though he was giving it a bit less of the "James Brown! James Brown!" – maybe with the wisdom of age comes a certain self-consciousness. Which was a bit of a shame, as we were all looking forward to agreeing that the late Mr Brown is still the Godfather of Funk (y'all), and that this information would need to be checked out.

After the show I hung around for a drink or two. And then, in a stunning stroke of good fortune I was leaving the venue just as Tina Weymouth was. So I got to tell her that the show was amazing – which means that now I am her best friend in the world.

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* Their name comes from main member Annie Tierney, who was in almost famous Dublin band The Chicks, whose unreleased album was produced by the Royal Trux.

** I hope I am not coming across like the kind of gentleman who interviews Helen Mirren.

A Trip to Cork, Part 3: Booty

2011-09-19T10:45:00.000+01:00

How about quick reviews of two records I acquired in Cork? These two corkers were acquired in the Plugd record shop, now located in Triskel Arts Centre.

Oneida Absolute II

This is a recent album… by Oneida. It is the third of their Thank Your Parents triptych of releases. It is an unusual record, in that it features none of the rock freak out action that people have come to expect from the O. Instead, the tracks are pretty minimal, often featuring a bit of noodly electronica and odd soundscapey stuff. And it is only four tracks long. The opener, 'Pre Human' sounds the most Oneida-esque, like the kind of quiet song they might do before launching into something that would then roll over you like a train. The rest feature what sound like tone generators and odd random bursts of noise. Oddly, I think that what this at times sounds the most like is some of that Trio Scordatura-Ergodos stuff, though I am guessing this is more an example of parallel evolution rather than direct influence. Still, it conjures up the fascinating prospect of Bob Gilmore appearing with Oneida next time they play live.

Black Mountain Transmitter Black Goat of the Woods

On the cover we have a distorted picture of the sun shining through trees and a spectral figure of a person with the head of a goat. A sticker gives the name of the record and the title and then tells us this: "the soundtrack from some lost low budget horror movie, rediscovered on an old and faded VHS cassette found mouldering in a deserted house in the depths of the woods". How could I not buy this? And it turns out to basically do what it says on the tin, being a collection of ominous synthesiser sounds combined with strange creeping sound effects to give a feeling of terrible and inescapable doom.
That said, one thing makes this record different from the horror movie soundtracks it is trying to evoke. They would be divided up into lots of relatively short pieces, to be used at different stages of the film, but Black Goat of the Woods is one long track – a journey into the night from which there can be no turning back. "Searchers after horror haunt strange far places…"

the goat with a thousand young

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more my other blog action

2011-09-18T13:39:00.000+01:00

in an astonishing series of developments, I have posted for the second time in a couple of days on my other blog. If you want to read what I have to say on the Palestinian's bid for UN membership, click here

A Trip to Cork, Part 2: Kaleidoscope

2011-09-17T10:38:00.002+01:00

After the show we drifted off to Callanans, a nice pub on the quays that has become one or our haunts in that city. One thing Cork is famous for is having two different mass produced local stouts, Beamish and Murphy's*. I started off with a pint of Beamish, the inferior of the two. While quaffing away I noticed an older gentleman in a baseball cap leaving, and realised that he was none other than Steve Reich. Now, why was Mr Reich down in Cork? For the simple reason that the Reich Effect, a festival devoted to music by, inspired by, or vaguely related to him, was taking place in that proud city. And indeed, even though he had taken his leave, the pub still had various members of the Crash Ensemble and the Dublin avant-garde classical music scene knocking around in it. I overheard a bit of barman chitchat about the composer, which went something like this:

Barman A: So that fella's well known?

Barman B: Oh yeah, he's a famous composer.

Barman A: Jaysus. And did he drink his Murphy's?

Barman B: He gave it a go.

The Reich Effect taking place while we were on our brief visit to Cork was convenient, and we arranged to attend the Kaleidoscope Caravan club night on the following evening. I may have mentioned this before – it is a Dublin club night run by Cliodhna Ryan and Kate Ellis (both of the Crash Ensemble and other things) where chamber music old and new is played in the intimate setting of the upstairs club space of the Odessa restaurant, where people can drink cocktails or more normal drinks in a relaxed fashion while listening to delightful music.

This kind of thing is self-evidently a good idea and so much the kind of thing I like that it is amazing that my attending their visit to Cork represented the first time I have ever made it to a Kaleidoscope event. My failure to make it to their Dublin events tends to stem from a combination of my own disorganisation, their nights clashing with nights I have to work late, and the small venue always being full of the Kaleidoscope performers' friends and relations by the time I try to get a ticket. But in Cork I had my beloved on the case, and she picked up tickets for us online.

Five pieces were played. First of all, we had a Bach sonata in G minor. This was introduced as being one of Bach's less performed pieces, which was odd as it sounded very Bach-like to me. But it did make me think that I really must further explore Bach's music, as there is an astonishing beauty to it and he does seem to deserve his reputation as one of the three greatest composers of all time.

After that we had a famous piece of Javan Gamelan arranged for western instruments by Ergodos superstar Garret Sholdice, which made for an intellectually interesting juxtaposition of styles. That was followed by a beautiful performance of Igor Stravinsky scored Russian peasant songs, sung unaccompanied by Michelle O'Rourke and other singers whose faces I recognise from this kind of event. A John Zorn piece saw cellist Jeffrey Ziegler of the Kronos Quartet joining the Irish performers, which led to excitable screaming from the young ladies in the crowd. My notes on this piece, however, contain the cryptic phrase "Fiddler on the roof?". The concert finished with White Man Sleeps, a Kevin Volans piece for sting quartet, for which my notes say "Pan-Pipes?".

After that we could have stayed for music DJed by Donal Dineen, but it had been a long evening and I was feeling a bit *tired*, so we slunk off back to bad. And that, pretty much, was that. It was an enjoyable evening, though there was the slight sense that all the other performers and audience members were on the most intimate terms.

*Dublin only has one.

Panda Caravan

An inuit panda production