The London Gutter
London’s muck – on the hour, every hour.
27th July 2012, 1000
MISS ME, HARDLY: NELSON’S COLUMN FALLS
Nelson’s been torn down from his column, just missing a lucky commuter.
Bob Benjamin, 34, had his day interrupted by Lord Nelson falling right in front of him.
“Close one, that.,” he commented, before heading off to work. “Nearly made me late.”
And it’s bad timing, with the Olympic Opening Ceremony tonight.
“Before losing an epic battle you’d always get a bad omen,” said a man with a grinning picture of Jesus on his shirt. “Shooting stars, flashes of light, avalanches, stuff like that. This is ours.”
“Maybe we’re not gonna win many golds over the next fortnight,” he finished.
Not everyone minds Nelson coming down, though.
“This is it. This is the system falling down. Someone’s putting an end to the bad guys. I’m all for it,” said a man in fake army uniform.
No-one’s confirmed who it was that brought Nelson down. Witnesses report seeing a tiny man in a three-cornered hat wrestling with the statue, but they’re probably mental.
In other news
TfL release pics of Commuter Cheat – see inside!
It’s Raining! Celebs get their coats!
Opening Ceremony On Ice: athletes still giving the cold shoulder to pay deal
Sonnet Friday at the Globe, for all you culture vultures!
Explore Switzerland! Head down to Southwark Cathedral for quality Swiss merchandise!
This Hour’s Weather
Chance of rain: yes
Want more gutter press? Follow us on Twitter, just like we follow you!
The man holding the statue always liked his shirts too big.
They never quite hampered his movement – at least, they never tangled his legs, although they did sometimes catch his hands as they elucidated his diction – but Montgomery’s shirts always threatened a trip or two as he trod the boards. Today was no exception. Spectators in the Globe’s lower seats watched the shirt flutter as Montgomery stared, quite obediently, into the gathering crowd, shirt flapping, a great white flag of surrender.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he declared. He considered saying it again in a different language, but he wasn’t entirely sure he could. He had trained for Chekhov, not for compeering. His shirt – and arms – flapped some more.
“Ladies, gentleman, welcome to Sonnet Friday at the Globe!”
He paused for cheers. There were two.
“Shakespeare’s sonnets in 47 languages! And which, pray tell me, will win?”
He cupped a hand to his ear, as if listening at the door for Desdemona.
“Russian!” someone shouted, presumably from Russia. They waved a Russian flag wildly, just to reinforce their point.
“Russian!?” Montgomery repeated, challenging the audience.
“England!” shrieked an excited little girl. Her mother beamed proudly.
“Dutch!” Half the audience were in orange.
“Swahili!” shouted the little girl again, evidently forgetting her previous prediction. She had recently watched The Lion King.
Montgomery spread his arms wide again, winching his smile. He loved acting. Today the Globe looked more unreal than ever, a half-forgotten toy left behind by a wayward child, tipped slightly on one side. Doll faces stared at him from fragile wood.
“We’ll see if you’re right! 47 languages, only one winner. A representative of each language will walk out and read one of Shakespeare’s sonnets – William Shakespeare, our very own bard in residence here at the Globe – and you’ll vote on your favourites online. We’re broadcasting this all over the world – hello, Asia, Africa and the rest! – so everyone gets a chance to play! Are you ready for your first contestant?”
“Yes!”
“Okay then. Please welcome-” he checked his notes- “Italy! Italy, ladies and gentlemen.”
He made a mental note to find a translation for ‘ladies and gentlemen’. Montgomery strode backwards off the stage, clapping, catching his arms in his shirt, and turning to clap the contestant.
And on walked Lara, wearing a fake moustache.
Alicia and the bobble hat were looking for a disguise. The ticket inspectors would be quick, they knew, with the picture out in the paper. Too quick to run, said the bobble hat, changing her mind. They would have to find a disguise for Alicia.
Sure enough, around the corner came an inspector, kitted out in an orange-breasted jacket and black, clumpy waterproof trousers.
There was no way Alicia was going to stick around for the inspector’s penalty fare. Of a like mind, she and the bobble hat dived into the protest town below St Paul’s, as two songbirds, upon hearing the paisley mewings of an orange household cat, might swoop to the hidden branches of a garden tree.
The orange jacket disappeared from view, but still lurked somewhere, looking for them. The bobble hat was alert to opportunities.
“They’re all in the big tent,” she gestured. They could hear voices squabbling. “Let’s find you a disguise.”
The two fugitives ruffled open a flimsy tent, to find a grimy sleeping bag scrunched up like a rock. Alicia took hold of the bag with the tips of her fingers and lifted it, peeking beneath, half-expecting to find ants under the tarpaulin rock. What she found was very different.
“Army uniforms!” she exclaimed, “Fake army uniforms.”
Folded neatly, surprisingly so, given the state of the tent, were two khaki fighting suits. Where a regimental symbol would normally be, there was a turtle.
“Nice turtle.”
“Thanks.”
Bobble hat spied a small tub of paint – essential protest gear, paint – on the floor, and rubbed her hands together briskly. “Okay then, Alicia, let’s-”
“How do you know my name?”
“I borrowed your travelcard.”
“You’ve still got it. Give it back.”
“Not yet. We need to get out of trouble first. Now-”
“We’re not going anywhere until I get my travelcard back,” Alicia interrupted. She’d had just about enough of this.
“Alicia, there’s no time for games. We have to get out of here-”
“We don’t have to do anything. You have to get out of here. I can stay as long as I like.”
“You’re being chased by the ticket inspectors!”
“Who will find me, and it will all turn out to be a big misunderstanding because someone stole my travelcard,” Alicia pulled the note out of her pocket and waved it threateningly in the air. She wished she thought of this earlier, but, then again, she only found the note after leaving Tower Gateway.
“Give me the note.”
“No.”
“Note.”
“No.”
“Note!”
“You’re not getting the note, Bobble Hat, until I get my travelcard. And your name.”
“You’re not getting your travelcard until I get my note.”
“Deal. And your name.”
Bobble Hat folded her arms and stared at Alicia for a second.
“Why haven’t you gone already?”
“What?”
“Alicia, why haven’t you already gone back to the ticket inspectors? You found the note – eventually – so why didn’t you just hand it in, say it had all been a big mistake, and that someone had nicked it?”
“I wanted my travelcard back. I wanted to find out who’d got it.”
“Fair enough, I suppose – at first. But now you’re here, you’ve found out who’s got your travelcard, you could identify me. Why are you hiding now? Why didn’t you just walk up to that orange numpty with your sick-note?”
“I wanted my travelcard back,” Alicia repeated, a little less certain.
“But you’d have got it back then, or at least, it would have been replaced. They’d have accepted your story, you could have gone to work as usual, got on with it. But no, you decided to run with the fugitive. Why is that?”
Before Alicia could think up a response, the hat continued.
“I’ll tell you why. It’s because you want the chase. You want something a bit different today. Or maybe you cared a bit about the fugitive, on the run from the law. Either way, you’re not with the inspectors. You’re a rebel, kid.”
The bobble hat didn’t really look like a rebel herself, thought Alicia.
“And you can’t really run now,” the hat continued, “You’ve done what the note said, you’ve hidden from TfL with the girl who wrote it, and you’ve broken into a tent.”
Alicia frowned.
“I’m not backing down. One – travelcard. Two – your name.”
“Okay,” Bobble Hat smiled for the first time, “But here are my demands. One – I want the note back. Two – you put on the face paint on and come with me. I’ll explain as we go.”
“Deal.” Alicia didn’t smile back.
In the Olympic Village a Swiss canoeist wasn’t smiling, or making any facial expression at all. Part of the plan. The athletes had been squabbling over the leadership election for some time, and the Swiss group were keeping mum, staying out of it.
“So we’re agreed on a neutral leader,” summarised a tennis player. “What about one of the Swedes?”
No-one could find the Swedes.
“The Swiss! Everyone knows the Swiss are neutral.” All eyes turned to the Swiss canoeist who, being number 43 in the world at canoeing in a straight line, wasn’t used to all eyes turning to him. Nevertheless, he stayed completely still, unmoved, the very image of neutrality.
“Look at that, the Neutral Man. He doesn’t even have a facial expression. All in favour of this guy being leader?”
Roughly three-quarters of the group yelled “Aye.”
“Agreed!”
Stage One of the Plan was complete.
Lara, having left the stage, was removing her moustache. The Italian sonnet had gone pretty well, not that it mattered. It wasn’t as if she had any competition.
“Ladies and gentlemen! Or should I say, signore e signori?”
What Montgomery didn’t know was that he’d mispronounced it, and had actually said ‘Ladies and ladies’. An Italian gentleman in the upper tiers looked a bit left out.
“Now,” Montgomery continued, knowing he was supposed to get the crowd going, “Where are we all from?”
“Kidderminster!”
“Kidderminster! Nice part of the world!”
“Milton Keynes!”
“Bromley!”
This wasn’t having the desired effect. Montgomery changed tack.
“Who’s come the furthest?” He pointed to the person with the Russian flag. “Russia? Is that the furthest?”
“Actually, I live in Bromley too,” said the Russian. Montgomery inwardly cursed Bromley and all its kind.
“So Kidderminster’s the furthest so far…” he gestured to a family waving a gigantic Finnish flag. “Where have you come from?”
The father of the family, who had unwisely shaved his beard in preparation for a day of sightseeing, gave a contemptuous stare back. “Finland.”
“Finland!” That was more like it, thought Montgomery. “Anyone further than Finland?” There was a cough from behind the stage, signalling Montgomery to get on with it.
Lara, behind the stage, had quickly removed her disguise. It was German next, and then Florian was competing for French. She heard the compère call her, and strode back to her stage.
Whaltherh, striding down Haymarket, had been having a quiet morning. He liked to stride everywhere he went, pretending to be in a hurry, as if he had someplace to be, like the rest of this city. In reality, Whalterh had been dreaming up schemes, trying to think of a way to be part of his world. Haymarket. Maybe he could turn things into hay markets. Ay markets – no, they weren’t things. Whitehall was round the corner. He could turn all whites into white halls. No, that wasn’t particularly lucrative.
It is fair to say that Whalterh had never considered doing anything that didn’t involve adding the letter ‘h’ to things. He hadn’t tried very hard at school, and hadn’t really got on with the other kids. When they played ‘It’ in the playground he would inevitably be told off for hitting other children. In those days he thought that adding a letter to things would make him rich and famous, but nothing ever turned out that way.
It was in the midst of these woes that a horse suddenly appeared in front of Whaltherh.
It was Mr Curble’s horse, of course, accompanied by Mr Curble, although Whaltherh didn’t notice him at first.
“Excuse me,” Mr Curble said to the stranger, “I’m looking for the hay market.”
Upon escaping the meeting, Mr Curble had decided to get rid of the horse once and for all. Hearing that there was a hay market somewhere around the place, he had gone looking for it, hoping to leave the horse there.
“This is Haymarket,” replied Whaltherh, helpfully.
“I don’t see a market. Or hay,” Mr Curble sniffed, “I need it for this horse.”
Whaltherh put him right. “Oh, there’s no actual market here, or hay. The street’s just called Haymarket.”
“Well, that won’t do. Why call a street Haymarket if there isn’t a hay market?” Mr Curble wasn’t pleased. He’d walked all the way up Whitehall and round the corner, apologizing to everyone he met for the invisible horse they kept walking into, and now there wasn’t even any hay.
“I could make you some hay?” Whaltherh suggested, “Do you have any ay? Ya? Actually, maybe I can’t make any hay.”
“What on earth are you talking about? I’ve got important business to attend to, as soon as I’ve got rid of this horse, and you’re just gibbering.”
“I’m sorry, I can add the letter ‘h’ to things. If there was something called an ay, I could add an ‘h’ to it, and you’d have some hay. For your horse.”
“You can add the letter ‘h’ to things to make new things?”
“Yes.”
Mr Curble thought for a moment. “That’s not very useful.”
“No. It gets in the way sometimes. For example, I’m banned from ever crossing the Severn Bridge. I don’t think whales live very long in the Irish Sea.”
“No.” Mr Curble considered this for a moment, before remembering better things to think about. There were jobs to done, and none of them concerned this madman. “Well, thank you for enlightening me. I must be off. Business to attend to.”
He started to walk, but Whaltherh held him back for a moment. “Have an ‘h’ anyway. Never know, might help.” Whaltherh proffered his hand. Mr Curble, that immaculate English gentleman, shook it, more out of habit than politeness.
That was the last of Mr Curble. He had acquired an ‘h’, and suddenly the most extraordinary thing happened.
Alicia looked pretty extraordinary. Three lines of paint smeared down the sides of her face – yellow paint, inexplicably, was the only colour to be found in the tent – and a baggy, turtle-crested khaki suit tripped her with every step, making her look like a stumbling canary. The Bobble Hat – or Poppy, as it turned out – was explaining what they were going to do.
“We’re going to commandeer a tank.”
“A tank?” Alicia assumed she’d misheard.
“Why not? We’re dressed for it.”
In a sense, Poppy was right. They were dressed for it. Poppy had also chosen to nick a pretend army uniform and some face-paint, and now the two of them marched along the road, slightly at ease, awaiting further orders. As Poppy expected, passers-by were ignoring them, unable to recognise Alicia through the sticky yellow paint and oversized overalls.
“But, a tank? Aren’t we supposed to be hiding from the authorities? They’re bound to notice a tank!” Alicia said.
“We’ve got to stop the invasion somehow.”
“And where are we going to find a tank? They’re not just lying around Central London, you know-” Alicia stopped, suddenly processing Poppy’s words, “Invasion?”
Poppy was mental. She knew Poppy was mental. She should never had listened. Maybe this was going to turn out to be one of those internet scams, or something on a telly programme about psychological tricks.
“The Swiss invasion. That’s why I’m in the centre today. I nicked your travelcard to come stop an invasion.”
Alicia knew she should have gone to work.
Poppy continued, “Yeah, they hate the Summer Olympics, all the coverage it gets. They’re plotting to turn it into a massive Winter Olympics, make skiing the most prestigious sporting event there is. And we’re going to stop them. With a tank.”
Her companion – or captive, depending on how you looked at it – didn’t look so sure.
“How do you know all this?” Don’t raise your voice. Don’t upset the madwoman.
“I listen in on all these things. I’m connected. I’m on the internet,” seeing Alicia’s face, she searched for more proof. “If there’s no invasion, then how do you explain this?”
She unfolded the copy of the London Gutter she’d taken from the St Paul’s seller and opened it out. Half the pages were adverts for Swiss holidays, Swiss watches, Salopettes. “Look, they’ve got a Switzerland area opening outside Southwark Cathedral today, advertising Swiss products. And it’s the day of Sonnet Friday.”
“What’s Sonnet Friday got to do with it?”
“The Swiss speak all the languages, don’t they? Have you ever been on a Swiss train? The announcements are in French, German, Italian and English! They could speak all the sonnets in all the languages, and take over the very culture London is built on. We have to stop them, and the only way is to drive across the river in a giant tank. I’ll be the general, you can drive the thing.”
Whaltherh stood dazedly, stuck in a glue of awe and deep comprehension, staring at the general. Even for a man who is used to adding the letter ‘h’ to things and making therm something else, this was a new one.
“What… who are you?”
“Who am I? How dare you, peasant! Out of my way!” Whatever the middle-aged man had become, he certainly enjoyed shouting.
The new arrival wore a dark military coat, the stiff, regimental kind from the colonial era. His accent was thickly Germanic, and he had a crazed look in his eyes, lost in fires far away. Realizing that Whaltherh really didn’t recognize him, he stood to full height.
“I am general Gerhard von Blucher. And you, peasant-” General Blucher remembered how useful Whaltherh had been to him, and suddenly had a strategy, just like a good General should, “Will obey my orders. Go to a florists immediately, and bring me back all the flowers you can find.”
“Flowers?”
“Do not question my orders! Flowers, now!”
Whaltherh ran as fast as his legs could go. Blucher, the soul of a Prussian hero released from the flimsy civil-service body of Gerry Curble, leapt on his magical horse, which neighed with delight.
“Onward, horse! Let us scout this great city.” And with that horse and rider galloped round the corner, finding themselves in a great square.
Napoleon, having defeated Admiral Nelson by chucking him off his column, was in Trafalgar Square, quietly enjoying the scenery. Some pigeons flew around his head, considering a perch on the great Emperor, but none could quite bring themselves to sit on His Imperial Majesty. Napoleon was in fine temper. With Wellington and Nelson defeated, there was little to stop him now. He had two choices: go back to the National Portrait Gallery and snooze for a while – it was his retirement, after all, and he could sleep as much as he liked – or take over the known world again. Not an easy decision, and not one to be made lightly. He hadn’t really expected things to be so easy, truth be told.
It was at that moment he realised things weren’t going to be so easy. Round the corner, flying through the air on the back of a magical steed, came his third nemesis, Count Gerhard von Blucher, conqueror of Waterloo. This was not in the script.
Blucher, on his part, was surprised to see Napoleon. Especially a Napoleon so small, and so inexpertly crafted from canvas. He flew towards the Emperor, horse stopping on the ground next to the Emperor, in full of the steps and pillars of the looming National Gallery.
Of course history would repeat itself. Just when Nelson was defeated, when Wellington had been sent packing, Blucher shows up, Napoleon thought. He stared contemptuously at his Prussian foe. Rainbows shot out of the horse’s arse.
The foes caught each other’s eyes, smiling. There was the clink of cutlasses, the flash of tourist cameras, and the duel commenced.
Jezknee 