Will Self - My Idea of Fun

’Plus ça change plus c'est la même chose — what goes round comes around, my dear boy, must you be so obdurate?’ The new scene seemed to have perked him up a bit, he'd even managed to find an old Voltiger somewhere in the pockets of the decrepid check suit, which at least had the virtue of being to scale with his hand even if it was rather tatty and coated with lint. He lit it with the feeble flare of a cheap disposable lighter.

We were in the reception area to the Land of Children's Jokes, the swimming pool off the Roman Road that The Fat Controller had obtained the use of by corrupt means, for even more corrupt purposes. The same advertisements for children's swimming classes and work-out sessions were stuck up on the noticeboards, we were sitting on the same tiny chairs, eight of them had been pulled out to form a ragged circle.

Doug got up from where he sat opposite me and the poor man banged his spade on the fire bell again: ‘Ting!’. ‘Oh for Christ's sake,’ snapped The Fat Controller, ‘can't you mind out for that bloody thing? I would have thought you'd managed to get the hang of it by now — surely it's like judging the width of a car.’

‘Well no,’ Doug replied, ‘not exactly.’ The impact had shifted the spade in his head and he was clearly in pain; nevertheless he got up and walked round to where Beetle Billy sat dead to the world.

To the world maybe, but not to the Land of Children's Jokes. Doug shook him by the shoulder and he stirred, groaned, blinked a few times and then sat upright rubbing his eyes. ‘That's better,’ said The Fat Controller. ‘Now, are we all here, can we begin?’

I looked around the circle, they were all there. Besides Beetle Billy and Doug, there was Pinky, the thin man, the baby chewing razor blades and another baby I hadn't seen when I was there last. This baby was about the same age as the red one and was sitting in the corner over by the entrance to the changing rooms. I couldn't see its face because it had a plastic bag on its head, filmed with condensation and tightly fastened under its chin. Despite the suffocating hood the baby was still breathing vigorously. With each of its inhalations and exhalations the bag expanded and contracted. ‘Sweet, isn't it,’ said The Fat Controller indicating the poor mite with the wet end of his stogie.

‘S'pose so, but what's all this about anyway?’

‘We need to think up a name for you, Ian, that's what it's all about.’

‘Yes,’ chimed in Pinky. ‘Now you're coming here to stay, to be with us permanently, you need to have a proper designation like the rest of us — ’

‘After all,’ the thin man broke in his sharp tones, ‘you can't be called plain Ian, that won't do at all, oh no, my precious.’

‘Come on, come on, there's a proper way to do these things, I don't want you all blithering away like this to no effect,’ said the Lama of Lost Souls. ‘Moreover, it isn't only a name that we need for him, we need the right Sisyphean pose to lock him into, don't we?’

‘Call me the Prometheus of the Painstyler,’ I quipped. ‘After all, you've been scraping away at my liver now for years — ‘ I was going to say some even more trenchant things but at that moment the progress of my naming group was interrupted by a commotion at the far end of the reception area.

A group of young men wearing the loose cotton garb of hospital porters were trying to manhandle something out of the door to the changing rooms. The thing could have been a cricket bag, except that it was far larger. ‘Get a move on,’ shouted The Fat Controller to them. ‘We've started already, so bring it over here right away.’ They ignored him but his order did coincide with them all giving an almighty heave that dragged the heavy load out into the reception area.

It was rather like a cricket bag in shape, coated with PVC or some other slick substance and leaking water from its gaping lips. Along the side I could see the word ‘PortoDolph’ emblazoned inside a fish symbol and then I realised what it was, a container for transporting large fish, small cetaceans or any other animals that needed to be kept permanently moist.

There were four young men carrying the PortoDolph, one at each corner; they staggered the length of the room spilling water with every lurching step that they took. ‘Dump the thing there, Mandingo.’ He wasn't even looking at the lead young man — who happened to be black — when he said this, he just threw it out cursorily.

The four young men walked into the centre of the circle and dumped the PortoDolph so that the sides of the bag flopped open — inside was Bob the quadra-amputee, lying in a bedding of coolant bags. ‘Less of the thing, will'ya, laddie,’ he cried, addressing The Fat Controller. At the same time he was struggling to get some kind of purchase on his slippery container; the double pits of his shoulders were a bright violet in the artificial light. Amazingly he managed it and wedged himself upright in the sharp prow of the bag. ‘Allreet,’ he said once he was stable, ‘ahm ready now, let's get on with it.’

Now there was another diversion to cope with. The lead porter, the black one The Fat Controller had called Mandingo, after setting down his corner of the PortoDolph, had extracted a switchblade from his cotton blouson. This he now opened with a loud ‘click’, which echoed off the walls.

‘No one gives me that kind of dissin’,’ he said to The Fat Controller. ‘I'm gonna have to fucking cut you, old man.’ He went over to where the bully was sitting, plucked the Voltiger out of his hand and threw it away. The Fat Controller sat motionless, saying nothing. The porter stuck his knee in The Fat Controller's chest and placed the point of the switchblade at his bullfrog throat. The rest of us sat stock still as well; even the thin man had left off surreptitiously waggling his cane and muttering under his breath, ‘Cha, cha, cha !‘ I waited for the outrage I felt sure was about to happen. What would he do?

Well, in his situation I would have deprived the young man of his blade and used it to slit its owner from sternum to pelvic bone. Then I might have cut the throat of one of his companions and stuffed his dead head inside the knifeman's dying stomach. I would have left them standing like that as a sort of bio-mechanical sculpture, a tableau, intended to drive home the message of what you get if you diss’ The Fat Controller.

But he didn't do this at all. I looked at his face and it was white, not with rage, with something I had never seen in him before, a sense of fear? No, it couldn't be, it couldn't.

‘I'm very sorry if I offended you,’ said The Fat Controller. ‘It was crass and insensitive.’

‘It wasn't fucking crass and insensitive, it was very stupid, old man, an’ I don't care if you ‘pologise, if you grovel, I'm still gonna have to cut you.’

‘Ian. .’ The big man's voice quavered. ‘C-could you lend me a hand here?’

I got up from my tiny chair and crossed the circle. The man with the knife moved round behind The Fat Controller, keeping the digging point of his weapon dead against where the obese old man's jugular might have been. ‘Don't get any closer,’ he cried, ‘or he gets it.’

‘Oh don't worry,’ I replied, ‘I'm not going to do anything. I got up to leave.’ I turned to face the children's jokes. ‘Doug,’ I said, ‘Pinky, thin man, babies, I'll see you around.’ I turned back to the Great White Spirit, the Manitou of Maleficence. ‘And Mr Broadhurst, although it may not have been that nice knowing you, it's certainly been interesting.’

As I gained the glass doors that opened on to the Roman Road he called out, ‘Ian?’ I turned back once more. ‘My dear boy, I'm so sorry you have to rush off, I thought all of this might amuse you.’ There was a pathetic, abandoned sort of note in his voice, a wheedling that undercut its normal basso.