Sea View Babylon: Sex, Violence & Spanish Verb Conjugation

Sea View Babylon

Sex, Violence & Spanish Verb Conjugation

Stan Arnold

Copyright © Stan Arnold 2013

ISBN: 9781301388042

Stan Arnold has asserted his right under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely co-incidental.

Novels by Stan Arnold

They Win. You Lose.

Sex, Violence & Songs from the Shows

Daring Dooz

Sex, Violence & Useful Household Cleaning Tips

Sea View Babylon

Sex, Violence & Spanish Verb Conjugation

Vampire Midwives

Sex, Violence & Warm Straight-Jackets

Botox Boulevard

Sex, Violence & The Art of Geranium Maintenance

Papa Ratzy

Sex, Violence & Straddled Chainsaws

Thunderbald

Sex, Violence & Feminine Sensibilities

Farewell My Ugly

Sex, Violence & Not So Safe Spaces

To my wife, Dee

Who supported me non-stop, while enduring countless hours acting as a soundboard for my character and plot ideas late into the night at the Tipico Canario restaurant, Playa Blanca, Lanzarote.

And for coming up with some hilarious phrases which, needless to say, were immediately filched and inserted into the books.

Sea View Babylon

Sex, Violence & Spanish Verb Conjugation

1

The Lanzarote Lizard Lounge had certainly changed. This was not the seedy Soho pub they’d grown to love and, so frequently, been thrown out of. There was no dark, cobbled alleyway. No traffic. No people rushing by with Costa Coffee cartons. No one on the corner selling the Big Issue. And the Rampant Regalia Sex Shop on the other side of Greek Street was nowhere to be seen.

As balding, overweight, award-winning video cameraman and would-be bon viveur, Michael Selwyn Barton and Mick’s lifelong friend, soundman and international-class whinger, James Redfern Chartwell were being lowered slowly down from the mother-in-law ship, it became obvious that the quasi-nuclear, fusion-driven, reverse-gravity vortex field, which was doing the lowering, had definitely been cocked up.

Mick accepted the mistake with a degree of fortitude, powered by his ‘They Win. You Lose.’ attitude to life, which basically stated that everything was pre-ordained to go wrong, so there was no point in getting upset when bad things happened. And, on those rare occasions when something went right, he could have a bloody good celebration and hangover combo.

When Mick had been talking to Basil Fawlty, he swore the coordinates were correct - and next in command - Abbot and Costello - had agreed. Mick generously supposed there were a lot of parts that could go wrong with a quasi-nuclear, fusion-driven, reverse-gravity vortex field. He only had to think back to the time and effort the man from British Gas had put into repairing the copper geyser in the bathroom along the corridor from the Soho offices of their minuscule, spectacularly unsuccessful, corporate video company, Implosion Productions.

Mick and Jim looked around. They couldn’t see much. The light could best be described, if you weren’t very good at describing things, as twilight-ish. There was a warm breeze, but nothing you couldn’t cope with. And there was oxygen.

But instead of the deliciously dingy, world-weary interior of the Lanzarote Lizard Lounge - three times voted Soho’s Most Unneeded Watering Hole - they were in the middle of a deep, sandy bowl, strewn with rocks and boulders. As they looked up, a dark, jagged rim ran around, 360 degrees.

Suddenly, the mother-in-law ship disappeared with a flash of sheet lightning. There was no point in shouting up, ‘Hey, this is the wrong place,’ By now, transportation beam operatives, Buster Keaton and Ernie Bilko, would be enjoying not-very-well-earned Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters.

Before Jim could display his phenomenal range of expletives, Mick pointed out that, as long as they were on planet Earth, they were quids in. They’d spent two weeks on board a giant spaceship, as guests of some very charming, little green creatures and, most importantly, Mick had taken hours of video footage.

‘Look,’ said Mick, ‘the satellite phone batteries are kaput. All we have to do is find a phone, then get on to the BBC, CNN, Fox, ITV, Sky and all the other bastards who never give us any work - start a bidding war for the footage - and, from then on, we just watch the moolah shimmying into the old oak chest.’

As usual, Jim was a tad pessimistic.

‘But what if we’re on planet Bog All Bleeding Minor - fuckin’ light years away from Soho?’

Preferring not to challenge Jim’s sketchy, flamboyant and rather crudely embellished knowledge of astronomy, Mick retorted with, ‘Here, Hercules, grab a handle and let’s get the gear up the slope.’

It was steep, and, as the sky got lighter, the temperature increased and the flight cases seemed to become heavier with every sweaty second.

About ten feet from the top ridge was a large boulder. Jim reached it first and flopped down, exhausted.

‘Come on,’ he called to Mick, ‘just a few minutes rest, then we can go for the top.’

At which point, his eyes rolled up into his head, and he fell back against the boulder and into a deep sleep. Although, given the speed with which his head fell back against the boulder, it could well have been a deep sleep with a hint of concussion.

Mick arrived about a minute later, and mindful of Stan and Ollie’s Oscar-winning, 1932 film, Music Box, placed some rocks under the flight cases to stop them sliding back down to the bottom.

Jim’s head wound was hardly bleeding, so Mick generously reckoned it was best for him to stay sleeping. He sat back against the boulder, rummaged in the pocket of his designer-wear tropical jacket, and took out a silver hip flask for what, he was sure would be his last ever interface with a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.

After a few slugs of PGGB, Mick became drowsy. He lay back and began to dream of the two amazing weeks that had passed since they left the 1943 PBY Catalina flying boat, walked along the disembarkation tube and into the unbelievable world of the mother-in-law ship.

2

The little green men who’d welcomed them aboard spoke perfect English. They bounced around their new arrivals, enthusiastically singing their praises, chattering on about their adventures, asking for autographs and seeming to be taking photographs, or whatever passed for photographs in their world, using only the palms of their hands.

‘Just put your heads a little closer together.’ Palm up. Flash. ‘Thank you.’

‘Just move over to the window so I can get the Catalina in the background.’ Palm up. Flash. ‘Thank you.’

Mick was still filming. Even though it seemed a happy occasion, he couldn’t help thinking of the vast amounts of money, fame and glamorous women this footage was going to bring in.

Similar thoughts, minus the fame and women, were running through another member of the Catalina party, Giles Montagu-Scott, CEO and Chief Executive of Daring Dooz and UFO News - the best-selling, international magazine. Until recently, Daring Dooz featured, totally fabricated trash about scantily clad bimbos fighting off drug-crazed hippopotamuses on icebergs by flicking them with their Brazilian thongs.

But all that garbage was well and truly in the past. A few months back, Giles had signed a contract for a measly £2 million for the rights to cover a series of real-life, extremely dangerous challenges. They featured Tallulah Hathaway, the svelte, sixty-year-old cleaning lady from the building that was home to Mick and Jim’s pathetic, lino-clad office. Mrs Hathaway had already achieved international fame when she was filmed disarming and dealing severely with a bank robber, in what became known as the Enfield Bin Incident.

Mrs Hathaway, who’d piloted the Catalina on their adventures, was, at the behest of Giles, reluctantly dressed as Lara Croft. She was a one-off. A self-taught martial arts and dangerous sports expert who’d learned everything she knew from correspondence and video courses delivered to her chintzy flat-gymnasium down the corridor from Implosion Productions.

The challenges Mrs Hathaway undertook as part of her Daring Dooz contract involved crossing the stormy Atlantic with a terrified drunk, fighting off great whites, flying up the Amazon in an aeroplane she’d never seen before, being caught in terrifying time warps, dodging MiG fighters, tightrope walking a dangerous waterfall while being attacked by ten-foot, sex-mad caimans, and machine-gunning her way out of the clutches of a gang of bandits - all supported by Mick and Jim’s video footage and photographs. Her exploits had trebled the sales of Daring Dooz and UFO News and made Giles even more filthy rich than before.

She stood next to the observation window, surrounded by little, green admirers and hugging her unlikely beau, Aubrey Capability Brown.

Aubrey was a vertically challenged, pig-ignorant, self-obsessed drunk who’d previously been the much-pummelled gofer for international crime boss, Charlie Sumkins. However, Aubrey, after a recent in-cell enlightenment, had discovered an amazing talent for playing bass guitar, and now had his heart set on two things - becoming an internationally famous musician and consummating his lust for the delectable Mrs H - both as quickly as possible.

The other visitor from the Catalina was Digby Elton-John, a soon-to-retire, clientless solicitor of dubious talents. Digby was, quite simply, in wonderland. All his life he’d fantasised about Dan Dare - the Pilot of the Future - as featured in the 1950’s comic The Eagle. And now, here he was - care of God knows what - in the very centre of a massive spacecraft with real aliens and real interplanetary fusion drives, or whatever.

This was just the compensation he needed after his recent realisation that his love for Mrs Hathaway was doomed. Although the little green men asked him friendly, enthusiastic questions, he was unable to reply. He just stood there with his eyes and mouth wide open, making little gargling noises at the back of his throat.

After ten minutes, one of the aliens, who seemed to be in charge, announced it would be a good time to visit the Captain of the mother-in-law ship. So the party was escorted into what can only be described as a teleport area. Everyone felt a little tingle, and, within seconds, they arrived in the Captain’s control room.

To Digby’s concern, and the confusion of everyone else, the Captain was sitting cross-legged on a small floating boat thing - exactly like Dan Dare’s sworn intergalactic enemy, the Mekon.

The Captain smiled and spoke, ‘Dag fer slatten ikipo glasqueron findle slegworpuse nok slavan deriut.’

He looked a little embarrassed and reached for a small green unit embedded in his throat. He pressed it a few times, then relaxed.

‘Awfully glad to see you all here - and on behalf of myself, the officers and crew, may I bid you a warm welcome to UGGLON W42:3. Please take a seat.’

A shimmering white metal boardroom-type table rose up through the floor, complete with integrated chairs. The Captain hovered at the head of the table and everyone sat down.

Digby was now much more relaxed, as it was obvious the Captain was extremely polite and did not possess the Mekon’s megalomaniacal, universe-taking-over, mass-murdering personality - and the little flying boat thing was certainly very nifty.

‘I feel,’ said the Captain, ‘as I’m sure you feel too, that I owe you an explanation. So please make yourself comfortable. Oh, and if you fancy a drink, a light snack or a cream tea with strawberry jam, just imagine it - and it will appear on the table in front of you, courtesy of our culinary telepathic teleport system.’

He pressed his neck button and whispered something to the little green man who’d organised the teleportation up to the control room.

Jim whispered to Mick. ‘He’s checking the bastards in the kitchen haven’t fucked off early, as per usual.’

‘Absolutely right,’ said the Captain looking straight at Jim.

‘The time-keeping ethics of ingestible energy preparation staff seem to be a consistent problem across the galaxy, as you’ll know if you’ve ever tried to get a shepherd’s pie at one minute past nine at any public house in your United Kingdom.’

Mick and Jim began to warm to the Captain. Which given the circumstances, was just as well.

3

‘So, why are you all here?’ said the Captain. ‘Two reasons. One: the wonderful Tallulah Hathaway. And Two: the fact that the Captain, officers and one thousand crew of our mother-in-law ship have been totally captivated by her adventures. We levitated your Catalina and brought you here simply to say a big thank you for all the excitement.’

‘You were watching it all!’ said Giles. He was genuinely surprised, but at the back of his mind he saw potential for another thousand green-person boost to Daring Dooz and UFO News’ circulation.

‘Yes, we were,’ said the Captain. ‘You probably noticed the sheet lightning - the ship gives it off at various times - I’ve no idea why. But it was all so thrilling. Of course, if things had become really dangerous, if you were in any serious trouble, we’d have stepped in to help. We have, as you say, the technology.’

Mick wasn’t so sure about that one. The tendon-wrenching impact of a 1,000-pound caiman on Mick’s vulcanised fibre box as it dangled over a 150-foot waterfall seemed pretty fucking dangerous to him. And Jim thought back to his confident walk through the Amazonian jungle, when all the time he was being stalked by a starving, hyper-aggressive, thirty-foot anaconda. But they were safe and well now, and accepted the Captain’s general idea, sort of.

‘But first,’ said the Captain, ‘a little bit of background.’

‘Naturally, before we set off on our intergalactic adventure, we were all placed in cryogenic pods. At some time during the flight, which I’m sure must have taken several thousand earth years, I suspect we passed close to a couple of massive binary stars which generated solar flares and geomagnetic storms around a million times stronger than the occasional whiffs you get from your little sun. And not to put too fine a point on it - all our records and the back-ups and the back-up back-ups were wiped clean.’

‘So, I’m rather embarrassed to say we don’t know where we came from, and we don’t know why we’re here.’

‘So why aren’t you still in them pods,’ said Aubrey, who was confidently exercising his new-found conversational skills, undeterred by the fact that Mrs Hathaway had removed his shades and flattened his Brylcreemed quiff.

‘Good question, Aubrey - by the way I liked your solo on Bob Marley’s Is this Love - remember - you played it as an encore at the Golden Legover on St Bernards.’

‘Oh thanks,’ said Aubrey. ‘I do autographs.’

Mrs Hathaway glared, and Aubrey fell silent.

‘Put me down for one,’ said the Captain. ‘But back to our story. We came out of the cryogenic pods right on time, and could detect the Earth in the distance, so we assumed that was our destination. Then we discovered the binary star wipe out, and, as you say with those automobile things on your planet, we slammed on the brakes and pulled into a lay-by.’

‘Eventually, when everyone had thawed out and was at their post, I decided we’d move in for a closer look. I think, in your Earth calendar, it was about 1940.

‘Not good,’ said Mick.

‘Absolutely,’ said the Captain. ‘We were horrified. So much death and destruction everywhere - even we felt powerless. I mean, we are really a peaceful lot. We sent down exploratory flying probes…’

‘Foo fighters?’ asked Jim.

‘That’s what the aircrews called them, yes. But it was hopeless. I mean this ship doesn’t even have weapons - just intergalactic-grade fusion drives, spectacularly advanced communications, unbelievable medical facilities and a pretty impressive internal and planetary hologram and tele-transportation system.’

‘So we left you to it, and went off to explore the rest of the planets around your little sun. Maybe Earth wasn’t where we were supposed to be. But despite it being a very interesting trip, we were always thinking about the terrible things happening on your planet.’

‘When we arrived back, it was even more depressing - we could tell you’d discovered nuclear weapons.’

‘Because our orders had been wiped out, I made up a mission out of thin air. I decided we would monitor your communications - Morse, radio, television, even film - and I mean everything - from every country. We could even teleport books and newspapers, strip out the words and return them within minutes back to the surface, with nobody suspecting a thing!’

‘I was hoping to discover something that would enable us to help you - because, without a doubt, you needed it.’

‘Of course, that’s an awful lot of data and, although we could easily process, classify and archive it all at the end of each day, I hadn’t set any clear objective for this activity, and to be honest, as you say on your planet, the crew, in the main, couldn’t be arsed.’

‘It was all lethargy, indifference and boredom. Not a happy time.’

The Captain paused. You could sense an impending revelation.

‘Then, there was the day that changed everything - The Spike Day.’

‘What?’ said Digby, who was drooling enthusiastically into the large scotch he’d thought up and had delivered by the culinary telepathic teleport system, ‘a spike in data?’

‘No, no, no!’ said the Captain - and he laughed so much he nearly tipped off his hovering boat thing.

‘The Spike’

4

‘The Spike. Spike Milligan. The Goon Show on the BBC Radio Home Service. You probably remember.’

Digby nodded enthusiastically - this was his territory.

‘You see,’ continued the Captain, ‘one of our global data scourers - one that could be arsed - had decided to scan for a strange response he’d picked up - it’s something we didn’t have in our world - laughter.’

‘So he scanned the communications we’d been uploading for ‘laughter’ and The Goon Show came out top of the list.’

‘Spike Milligan was the writer - and, as I’m sure you know, he played Eccles.’

The Captain then did a passable impression of a couple of Eccles’ catch phrases, and chuckled so much he nearly fell of his hover boat again.

‘The scourer became a big fan of the programme, and asked could he change his name from 1011010 to Spike Milligan. Pretty soon, it became the fashion for scourers to scan for, and listen to, or watch, all types of ‘laughter’ communications. Then the crew and officers joined in!’

‘Everyone started changing their names - it became a sort of fashion. So that’s why, instead of Captain 1110101, you’re talking to Basil Fawlty - isn’t it great when he hits his car with that branch!’

The Captain held onto his flying boat with one hand, made hitting movements with the other, and roared with laughter.

‘See,’ he said, ‘now, we can laugh too!’

‘So, we went on to discover television and film laughter communications - and virtually every one of the thousand or so crew members picked a new name.’

 ‘Wander around the ship and you’ll meet Charlie Chaplin, Leslie Nielsen, Delboy and Rodney, Jack Benny, Steve Martin, Woody Allen, Danny DeVito, Rowan Atkinson, Sacha Baron Cohen, George Formby, Billy Connolly, Morecombe and Wise and, of course, the late, great Les Dawson. We even named this mother ship The Mother-in-Law Ship in his honour.’

‘I love that one: You can always tell when my mother-in-law’s coming to visit, the mice start throwing themselves on the traps. Of course, I had to find out what mother-in-laws, mice and traps were, but, when I did, I laughed a lot.’

‘Sir Les Patterson runs our energy preparation area and is generally responsible for maintaining hygiene standards around the ship.’

‘Plus, you’ll meet crew members who’ve gone for up-and-coming names like Sudesh Lehri from India, Samba Yorro Pulo from the Gambia, Andrés Lara from Ecuador. This ship is like a total homage to your world of comedy. Apart from the fact that we don’t do politically correct, alternative or anything that’s appeared at the Edinburgh Festival since 1980.’

The Captain stuck two of his three fingers down his throat to make sure everyone understood.

‘But there’s a serious side to all this - maybe laughter is the answer to all the violence and misery we see on Earth. Maybe the answer is hidden in there, somewhere. All I know is I really want to do something good for your planet, but the coinage hasn’t dropped into one of your primitive water receptacles - not just yet.’

Explanations over, the Captain relaxed.

‘So that’s where we are - not much to say for a two-thousand-year journey, is it? But it’s all we have. Any questions?’

‘Lots,’ said Mick, ‘but we’re all pretty tired, and this has been quite a shock to our systems. Any chance of getting somewhere to kip, er, sleep?’

‘Of course,’ said the Captain, ‘your rooms have been prepared and all your things have been transported from the Catalina.’

‘One quick thing,’ said Mrs Hathaway, glaring at the mutton vindaloo