Necrophenia

And allow me to say once more that they really and truly do not write songs like that any more.

A standing ovation, I kid you not, from a quarter of a million beautiful people.

And then I felt suddenly exhausted. And I could project no longer. And I sank into a kind of sleep and that was that for me.

I awoke upon the road to Liverpool. Then slept, then awoke once more, on the dock.

‘Where am I?’ I asked. And Andy answered.

‘Liverpool,’ said he.

‘Are we playing Liverpool?’ I asked of Andy.

‘No,’ he said. ‘We’re not.’

‘Then why?’ But Andy shushed me.

And I awoke once more to find-

America.

America!

Blimey. Our ship had docked in New York. I had slept for more than a week. Which had caused Andy some concern. But clearly not too much, because he had, apparently, had an extremely good time on the voyage over. As had the other members of the band.

When I awoke I was anxious to talk about the Hyde Park gig and how we had shamed The Stones with our musical genius.

But none of the other guys wanted to talk about it at all.

In fact they made it quite clear that they had nothing at all to say on the matter. And suggested that I ‘shut the f**k up about that’. And so I said no more. And the subject of what happened that day was never brought up again.

I don’t really understand why they didn’t want to talk about it. Modesty, perhaps.

But I wasn’t going to argue with them. I had had a very special experience. A life-changing experience. And if there was one thing that I particularly wanted to do, then that one thing was to talk to Mr Ishmael about all that I had remembered.

And all that I had seen in Hyde Park.

The dead people, and everything.

But, I was told, Mr Ishmael was not with us on the ship. He might or might not be coming over to America to join us on our tour.

Mr Ishmael was rather busy at the moment.

So I held my tongue and beheld New York. And I really took to the place.

New York was seedy in a ma

I am told that Shanghai and Singapore tried. But failed.

And Penge put in a bid. Came close, but lost upon population numbers.

The New York club scene was just coming into its own. Club 27, the now infamous den of sin and iniquity, had just opened and it was where the famous went to indulge themselves on all levels. For such is the reward for being famous.

We breezed in on a Thursday night, having first checked in to the Pentecost Hotel. Which was the place to check in to. Thursday nights at Club 27 were Shadow Nights. And so we fell straight into that.

‘What, exactly, are Shadow Nights?’ Andy asked of Neil.

‘Ah,’ said Neil. ‘I’m glad you asked me that question because I know all about Shadow Nights.’

I gri

But Toby had told me that he had no more such Bloaters and suspected that he might not be able to lay his hands on any more Bloaters ever. But then, of course, we were only in New York. We had yet to reach California.

‘So,’ I said to Neil, ‘speak to us of Shadow Nights.’

‘It’s an extra thing,’ said Neil. ‘Like the shrinking buildings.’

‘Not quite following you there,’ I said, ordering, as I did so, a bowl of strawberries from the waitress and a quarter pound of cocaine to sprinkle over them.

‘The woman from Croydon,’ said Neil. ‘You must have heard about the woman from Croydon.’

But strangely no.

And so Neil told us all about the woman from Croydon. And her co

Because I had never heard of her before. But her experiences fitted right in with my experience in Hyde Park and all that went before it.

And indeed was to come afterwards. Although, of course, I wasn’t to know that then. But it put things into place. And exposed a bigger picture and all that kind of business.

And so, I give you another aside, but again a relevant one.

I give you, indeed, the revelations.

Of the woman from Croydon.

35

There was a young lady named Clara

Who crashed in her new Ford Sierra.

The results of collision

Caused hoots of derision

And stays in a home, with a carer.

When Hugo Rune wrote of the soul-space, he also wrote of what he called the mental-mesh. The mental-mesh was a physical thing, in Rune’s opinion, and could be espied under a microscope within a dissected human brain. If you knew just where to look.

The purpose of the mental-mesh is to screen out the bad stuff that would otherwise interfere with the everyday ru

The question arose in Rune’s mighty mind as to what might happen to a man if the mental-mesh was removed from his brain. Rune experimented upon several of his willing acolytes and although he could not claim a one hundred per cent success rate, he described the results as ‘interesting’. And ‘not without some humour’.

But as Rune was to discover, it was not necessary for him to slice away at his acolytes’ heads in order to observe what happens when the mental-mesh is either partially or totally removed. There are some amongst us who lack for mental meshes, either wholly or in part. Or whose mental-meshes have become damaged or ‘holed’ due to some trauma or accident.