A Chariot

There she goes again. Running out of Boots clutching a handful of
lipsticks and wearing a Charlton Heston mask made from cardboard and an
old poster of The Ten Commandments. 'What a story it tells! What
majesty it encompasses! What love it unveils! What drama it
unfolds!'

Straight up to the CCTV camera. She knows where they're all hiding. And
she waggles around in front of it, thrusting out Charlton's chin,
waving the lipsticks like sparklers, before racing off, unapprehended
yet again.

She's getting good at this.

It started with quiz shows. All the usual suspects. She was good at her
numbers. Knew her floccinaucinihilipilification and had a good wodge of
trivia stuffed up inside her head.

But it was not enough. A little bead of panic threw her off balance and
she muffed a simple question on Fifteen to One.

Albert Hitchcock.

AL! BERT! HITCH! COCK!

She had to get back on, to repair the damage. She was sure she could
have done better. She knew it. And so she applied again, Camilla Lilac,
a cabaret singer from Newton Poppleford. Fake lashes, bleached hair, a
Gallic twang practiced with fanatical dedication.

As William G Stewart's stern, unyielding eyes gazed deep into her soul
she felt a sense of absolute terror. He knows there is something wrong.
That this connection has been made before somewhere.

In the bleu ridged mount-ains of Virginia.

And she is through and now she feels strong. And she can fend these
questions. Nagasaki. Showaddywaddy. It's the fleshy thing that hangs
down at the back of your throat.

And yet it is still not enough. A pie salesman from Abergavenny is
stronger still and it is he who gets on the leaders board.

Five more times she appeared on that programme. Guises spilling from
her like a desperate music hall act. And then she was caught, spotted
in a pre-show rehearsal, one ridiculous name too many, and had to
return her decanters, goblets and a plinth.

But by now she was a seasoned victim. Drooping her head and raising her
voice on a spectrum of chat shows where the injustices that had
befallen her were eagerly sucked up by TV producers. Childhood abuse,
stalking, crazy neighbours, twitching, she was the Queen of them all,
creating her devastated personas with a gusto that was thrilling.

The fall was, of course, awaiting as her tragic flaw spread it's
feathers. Invited on to Kilroy to speak about her crippling obsession
with cookery fads, wearing a pair of roasted garlic earrings, one of
the other guests turned out to be the presenter of a cable cookery quiz
programme in which she had appeared and caught his eye whilst drizzling
jalapeno sauce over a breast of chicken. For the rest of the show he
found himself with a terribly capricious penis causing havoc in the
editing room.

Seeing her again, bemoaning the amount of hours that she put in with
the pestle and mortar, unable to tear herself away in the name of
authenticity and showing the audience the welts on her hands to audible
gasps of astonishment, the libidinous presenter lost control and in the
ensuing turmoil dislodged several items of disguise which revealed her
to be the same woman who two weeks ago had sat in this very chair to
discuss her traumatic experiences with a bogus chiropodist.

'He did some terrible things to my toes'.

And so she was banished from the tube, her photograph sent to every
studio and producer in the country where it would hang alongside the
other habitual television lunatics. She went down the pan, moping
around and drinking white cider until she found herself propped up in
front of a programme of car chases and corner shop heists and petty
demeanours filmed through the eye of closed circuit television.

It was obvious.

She's being doing it now for nine months. Nothing serious at the
moment. She's not stupid. Just petty theft and then the run past the
nearest camera. The odd bit of vandalism. A couple of punches to old
people.

When she first made it on to television once again, a local news
broadcast nothing more, it was as though somebody had handed her back
one of her senses. And yet she saw that something was missing. Somehow
it all seemed so diminutive, so banal. One more low contrast moment to
add to the millions stored in vaults and watched over by temporary
workers, munching cheese butties to keep them awake through the
night.

Whatever happened to 'Spartacus'? And Kirk Douglas getting his eye
pecked out by Tony Curtis's falcon? Whatever happened to the epic? The
wide screen. Hitch me up on your camel Omar and take me to the bridge.
The bridge of sighs.

And so the masks. It's made her. She's on all the time. Burt Lancaster
legging it from Iceland with a frozen chicken under his arm. James
Mason pouring paint over a beggar.

And it's going to get better. She's after more expanse. Foliage and
fauna. She's thinking chandelier thoughts.

You should see the chariot she's building in her bedroom.