Robert Rankin - Sex and Drugs and Sausage Rolls

“But it’s not?”

“Certainly not. If such technology existed the police would have it first.”

“So where does that leave you?”

“It leaves me, Mr Distant, with a bloody great pile of photos on my desk.”

“Ah,” said Soap. “But why your desk ?”

“Because I am Brentford’s Detective in Residence.”

“I don’t think I quite understand.”

“No, and that is because there is something I neglected to mention. You see, we’ve plotted the routes taken by these moonlight strollers. Plotted them out on a map. Would you care to take a look?”

“I would,” said Soap.

“Then be my guest.”

The map was a big’n and was blu-tacked to the bookcase behind the crowded desk.

Soap gave the map a good looking over. There were twelve lines drawn upon it. Each followed the route of a motorway or A-class road. They began at twelve separate points of the compass, but all met up at a single location.

That single location was Brentford.

“Oh,” said Soap.

“Yes, oh indeed. The photographs were taken two nights ago and there have been no further sightings. Whoever, or whatever they are, they’re here. Right here in the borough.”

“Oh,” said Soap once more.

By the bound Victorian gasogene.

By the black slate memory board.

By the swish French cooking calendar.

By the shutters I secured.

By the rows of hanging plantpots.

By the slightly dripping fridge.

By the wibbly wobbly worktop.

By the dust along the ridge.

By the rack of grey enamelware.

By the strangely angled shelf.

By the larder door that does not close

That I also fitted myself.

By the ceiling lights that don’t light up.

And the dimmer that does not dim.

By the waste disposal unit

That bit my uncle Jim.

By the nasty Kenwood blender.

By the red tiles on the floor.

I’m obviously in my kitchen.

But what did I come in here for?

John Omally sat in his kitchen.

And a horrible kitchen it was.

It was a fetid kitchen. A vile kitchen. A foul and unkempt kitchen.

It was the kitchen of a single man.

Now, it might well have been argued that Omally’s kitchen was also an anomalous and contradictory kitchen, given the scrupulous personal hygiene of its owner. Omally was nothing if not clean. His shirts were always laundered, his jackets showed no neck oil and as to his underpants, these were free of wind-smear. His clothes weren’t new, but they were spotless and although he had never been a man of fashion, due to his ever-limited resources, he possessed a certain jumble sale chic that women found appealing.

So why the Goddamn horrible kitchen?

Well, when Viv Stanshall said “Teddy boys don’t knit” he was pretty near to the mark. Manly men don’t do the dishes.

This may sound like male chauvinism, but it’s not. In fact it is quite the reverse. It’s all down to women and what women find attractive in a man.

You see, if a woman finds a man attractive, really attractive, more attractive in fact than any other man she knows, she will like as not wish to marry him. If she succeeds in doing so, her next task will be to domesticate him. Purge him of his nasty habits, mould him into a loving husband and caring father.

This on the face of it would seem reasonable enough. It makes perfect sense. But it has a tragic downside. It puts an end to their sex life.

Because a domesticated man is not a sexy man. A domesticated man, who does the dishes and cooks the dinners and hoovers the carpets and mends the fence and redecorates the house, is anything but sexy. There are few things less sexy than a man in a pinny.

And so while he might be very good about the house, his wife no longer finds him sexually attractive. Because he is not the man she married. He is a pale and domesticated shadow of the man she once found alluring.

And so while he is at home in the evenings, babysitting the kids and putting up a new spice rack in the kitchen, she is out at her amateur dramatics, being rogered rigid in the back of a Ford Cortina by her toyboy called Steve.

Steve lives in a grubby bedsit.

And Steve don’t do the dishes.

Nice for the wife and nice for Steve, but what about the poor domesticated cuckold of a husband?

Well, he’s having an affair with his secretary.

So it all works out fine in the end.

So there you have it, whether you like it or not. Manly men don’t do the dishes, that is that is that.

Now, as well as dirty dishes, there are other things single men possess that married men do not. These are highly essential things and known as “toys for boys”. They include such items as an expensive motorbike, an expensive sound system and an expensive electric guitar.

These items will vanish shortly after marriage.

The expensive motorbike will be traded in for a sensible family saloon. The expensive sound system will end up in the garage, having failed to survive the assault made upon it by a one-year-old child with a jam sandwich.

And the electric guitar?

Goodbye, Stratocaster. Hello, Flymo hover-mower.

That is that is that.

Omally possessed no toys for boys. He would have liked some, but, having never done an honest day’s work in his life, for he valued freedom above all else, he knew not the joys of the chequebook or the loan that is paid back in monthly instalments.

He had his freedom, he had his health and he had his dirty dishes. But he dearly would have loved that Fender Strat.

When it comes to guitars, it can be said that it’s all a matter of taste. But when it comes to taste itself, it’s a matter of good taste or bad. And this is not a matter of personal preference. Some things simply are better than others, and some people are capable of making the distinction.

When it comes to electric guitars, the Fender Strat is king. For sheer elegance, beauty and playing perfection, the Strat has never known equal. When it appeared upon the music scene in 1954 musicians marvelled at its ergonomics, its sonic versatility, its tuning stability and its pure pure tone. The sleek new body form, developed from the original Telecaster, featured the now legendary double cutaway, or twin-horn shape. The advanced tremolo, allied to the three single-coil pickups, allowed the player greater playing potential. The Strat was capable of doing something new. And something wonderful.

One could spend all night singing praises to the Strat or indeed to composing paeans to its inventor, the mighty Leo Fender. That Mr Fender never received the Nobel Peace Prize during his lifetime and seems unlikely to be canonized by the church of Rome just goes to show how little justice there is in this world.

And that is that is that.

But Omally was Stratless. An air-guitarist he. Not that that fazed him too much, for, after all, he had no talent. He could strum a passable “Blowin’ in the Wind” without looking at his fingers, but anyone could do that and you don’t do that on a Strat.

On a Strat you play rock. On a Strat you play the twenty-minute solo. And if you cannot play the twenty-minute solo you should not step onto the stage with a Strat strapped round your neck. Leave the Strat to Hendrix. Leave the Strat to Stevie Ray Vaughan [2] 2Actually, Stevie Ray Vaughan got an even bigger sound out of his Strat by fitting it with heavier strings. Some even up to .013 gauge. (These things matter.) .

So that’s how John Omally left it. He left the Strat to the great rock legends, whom he joined onstage in his dreams.

But the point of all this, and there is a point, or else it would not have been mentioned, the point of all this was that Omally had recently heard tell of a rock band playing pub gigs in Brentford that owned to a Strat-playing fellow who could, in the words of one who’d heard him play, “make that mother sing like an angel and grind like a thousand-dollar whore”.