Iain Banks - Dead Air

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Now, football.’

‘Oh good, we’re back.’

‘In football you often have quite a lot of time to think. Certainly often you don’t; a ball comes flying in, you raise your leg and first-time it and it’s away and you’re already running down the touchline doing the shirt-over-the-head bit with your arms outstretched. But, if you’re on a break-away, get the ball in midfield, there’s only one defender to beat and nobody up to support, you’ve got what will seem like a long, long time to run and think, and I’m certainly not accusing footballers of not being able to do both at the same time. So; you beat the defender, there’s only the goalie left, and now you’ve got time to think again. And this is where you see some guys, even at the very top, make a mess of it because they’ve had time to think. Their full frontal cortex or whatever it is has had time to go, Hmm, well, we could do it this way, or this way, or that way, or – but by that time it’s too late, because the goalie’s come out and you’ve hit it straight at him, or skied it to the ironic cheers of the opposing fans, or decided to go for a lob and hesitated and he’s had time to dive at your feet and grab the ball off you. This happens to perfectly good, highly paid professional footballers, and in a way it’s no disgrace, it’s just being human.

‘However. If you get a particularly thick footballer-’

‘You’re going to be horrible about that nice Gascoigne boy again, I can tell.’

‘Oh, come on; this is a man so daft he couldn’t even play air-flute without making a mess of it. But yes; Gazza is my best example. He is – well, was – a great, gifted footballer, but he was so intellectually challenged that even in all those seconds running in on the goalkeeper, he still hasn’t had time to think. Or if he is thinking, he’s thinking, Wuy-aye, that’s a fit-lookin bird behind the goal there, man. And that’s the difference; the longer you can go without really thinking, the better a footballer you’ll be.’

Phil opened his mouth to speak, but I added, ‘That’s also why golf and snooker are so profoundly different; they’re games of nerve and concentration, not reactive skill.’

Phil scratched his head. I hit the appropriate FX button. ‘Well, that was a compendium rant,’ he said. I’d already started the next track, playing the intro faded down. We had fifteen seconds to the vocals. ‘We started on football,’ Phil said, ‘diverted to tennis, then on to cricket and finally came back to the beautiful game… but then body-swerved into golf and snooker at the last minute there. All very confusing.’

‘Really?’ I glanced at the seconds ticking away.

‘Yes.’

‘You sound a bit stupid. Have you thought of becoming a professional footballer?’

‘So it’s definite?’ Debbie asked.

‘Yes,’ Phil said.

‘How definite?’

‘Well, definite,’ Phil said awkwardly.

‘Yes, but how definite is it? Is it fairly definite? Very definite? Totally one hundred per cent certainly definite?’

‘Well, no, it’s not that definite,’ Phil conceded.

‘Jesus Christ,’ I said, ‘I thought only films suffered from this on-off-stop-go-red-light/green-light/red-light bullshit. It’s only a fucking telly programme, not Lord of the Fucking Rings parts one to three.’

‘It’s delicate,’ Phil said.

‘So’s my head on a Saturday morning,’ I muttered. ‘I don’t make this fucking song and dance about it.’

Debbie’s new temporary office was almost as far down the light-well as ours. I gazed out at the white glazed bricks. It looked like it might be raining but it was hard to tell. This was Friday; the Breaking News thing was scheduled for Monday. Again. My great confrontation with the beastly Holocaust denier Larson Brogley, or whatever his name was, was back on again. In fact it had been on for over a month now without being cancelled, which was probably some sort of record. It might actually be going to happen. I felt nervous.

Of course I felt nervous, I thought, as Station Manager Debbie and Producer Phil argued the toss about how definite was definite like a pair of bishops trying to settle how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. It was okay for these guys; they thought the only danger was me making a fool of myself or bringing the station, or by extension Sir Jamie, into disrepute; they had no idea what I was planning to do (if they had, they would, of course, have been appalled and either tried to argue me out of it – and maybe warn the Breaking News production team – or just cancelled the whole deal and threatened me with the sack if I insisted on going ahead without their blessing. That’s what I’d do if I was ever in a situation like this… if, that is, the talent concerned had been daft enough to tell me what he was thinking of doing).

Fucking typical; usually these TV things came up and happened really quickly. If I’d had my brilliant but dangerous idea for any other appearance or even proposed appearance it would all have been over months ago and I’d long since have been dealing with the consequences, whatever they’d turned out to be. For various reasons, but especially 11 September, this one was running and running, and so I was being given plenty of time to stew.

‘… follow it up with a phone interview on the show?’

‘Hmm. I don’t think…’

Yeah, let the poor, deluded fools debate. They didn’t know how lucky they were, not knowing. Only I knew about my great idea, my great, risky, probably mad, certainly criminal idea. I hadn’t shared it with Jo, Craig, Ed; anybody. I’d started dreaming about it, though, and worried that I might say something in my sleep that Jo would hear. This was, certainly, better than dreaming about death squads raping Jo and leaving me dressed like a Nazi waiting to drown, but it still wasn’t much fun. I’d got used to having pretty mundane, even boring dreams over the years, and the last run of nightmares I’d suffered had been in the run-up to my last-year exams at school, so I wasn’t psychologically prepared for having bad dreams about Nazis in TV studios and being tied to a chair and people waving guns about.

On the other hand, I’d probably crap out at the last minute. I’d do the planning, take the equipment, but fail to follow through. Some Imperial Guard of good sense, still loyal to the idea of keeping me in a job and out of court and prison or whatever, would storm the gates of the occupied Palace of Reason and effect a counter-revolution, a coup for common sense and decent standards of behaviour. That was, if I was being totally honest with myself, the most likely outcome. Not by far the most likely outcome, but still the most likely one all the same.

‘Oh for God’s sake,’ I said, interrupting Debbie, who was faffing on about shared legal insurance against slander and who should pay what proportion. I almost wanted to tell her that me only saying something outrageous and criminal was the least of her worries, but I didn’t. ‘Let’s just do it, can’t we?’

‘Okay,’ Phil said. ‘But we’re holding out for an afternoon recording.’

‘Whatever. I don’t care. I just want it over and done with.’ They both looked at me, as though surprised at something like this getting to me. Whoops, possible security breach here. I spread my hands slowly. ‘Oh, I’m just getting fed up with the hanging around,’ I explained calmly.

‘Okay, then,’ Debbie said. ‘Monday it is.’

‘Halle-blinkin-lujah.’

‘Listen.’

And that’s enough. Here we go…

‘Jesus. Got enough wee funny lights in here?’

‘Rough, innit?’

‘Oh, totally rough.’

It was the Friday night. Ed and I were due to be limo’d to a gig in Bromley in an hour, but he’d wanted to show off his newly redecorated and refitted place, so I’d come to the family house; a much knocked-through and creatively mucked-about-with complex taking up two terraced houses in Brixton, one of them an end-terrace incorporating what had been a small supermarket on the ground floor. Ed could have afforded a mansion in Berkshire if he’d wanted, and I suspected he still kind of hankered after one, but I respected the fact he’d chosen to stay here with his mum and extended family, adapting the house he’d grown up in and buying the one next door too, plus the shop underneath, rather than get the hell out of his old ’hood the instant the money had started rolling in.