FORECAST / BROADCAST

It's been quiet around here lately. Why? Because BIKINI STATE BULLETIN has been going backwards, regressing from a 21st century medium to good old fashioned paper. Bikini State Bulletin One is now available via SPIRIT DUPLICATOR. Apart from 500 tins of beans and a sharp stick, it's all you need for The Crisis.

It costs £1.50. Yes, it is absolutely ridiculous. But there's other stuff you can buy to make it worth the postman's while, so please take a look, my partially sandpapered fingerprints are all over it. 

THE CRISIS IS NO LONGER EN ROUTE

I hope everyone has their smatchet to hand.

PARTY APOLITICAL BROADCAST

Back in the country, stockpiling tins of pineapple.

HOW MANY SLEEPS UNTIL THE CRISIS?

I don’t know. There’s enough for me to go on holiday, right? Right?

IN PRAISE OF THE BILLHOOK

The billhook is a tool with a long history and an important future. It’s been around since the Bronze Age, so, In Britain, that means over 4,500 years of continuous use. A billhook has a wooden handle (preferably ash) and a wide blade that curves out, ending in a sickle shaped hook. The top of the tool is usually dull and heavy, but is sometimes supplemented by a straight, shorter, projecting secondary blade. The tool is usually no longer than 16” long (including the handle), but can vary in length – and weight. In Britain, there are a number of regional variations that add or subtract to the basic design, and this is repeated across Europe. The billhook is both a general and specialist tool, and these area-specific refinements reflect this.

The billhook is traditionally used for cutting and hacking shrubs, branches and vines. When The Crisis comes, as come it must, finding secluded places to live and farm will become important, and the billhook will come into its own in clearing a path. But it is also a weapon of some note.  As we say in Essex: ‘no-one ever fucks about with a bloke holding a billhook’ (I can’t remember the original Latin), as it lends its owner a sense of unfuckwithability, which isn’t a word but perfectly encapsulates the sense of invincibility and confidence this wooden handled wonder can inspire.

Like the much later smatchet, the billhook is both a blunt instrument and a sharp blade, and can be very useful in hand to hand combat. In the middle ages, with much longer handles, billhooks were often used against attacking cavalry. Its use requires a little technique, but it can be effectively employed in a hurry without training, as long as you have brute strength and a will to win. It is a fearsome looking weapon, and brandishing it with feeling may be enough to defer conflict: it looks like it can do immediate damage, and few would relish the thought of being struck with either side of it. It is a great off-putter, or a putter-off-er, if you prefer. There is no stabbing point, of course, so be prepared for things to get messy if things escalate to an actual scrap.

Unlike the specialist (and expensive) smatchet, billhooks are readily available, especially if you can find an agricultural market. A well-worn, well-used second hand billhook is a thing of great beauty, an ergonomic wonder that will make you feel like you were born with it in your hand. Keep the blade sharp and clean, and the handle oiled. You might want to add a wrist strap to minimise the chance of it being used on you. When The Crisis comes, as come it must, your billhook will be your best friend, replacing the dog that you had to eat when times first got tough. Treat it carefully, deploy it decisively, it’s a tool and weapon of proud lineage and infinite usefulness.  

A SPECIES OF DOOLITTLES

I read recently that Japanese scientists studying the Great Tit had discovered that it used compositional syntax in its calls, i.e. it combined different noises to create new meaning and convey more complex ideas. This was previously thought to be something only humans do. It was an interesting study but the headline, however, was ‘bird talk just like humans’, which is hardly the point. It got me thinking about how mankind behaves like a solipsistic brat, utterly incapable of processing anything without reference to ourselves. Great Tits don’t talk like human beings, they use compositional syntax. Yes, this is something that humans also use, but it’s not something that we own.

Mankind has always been hard of hearing when it comes to nature. If we were to walk into a jungle, for example, we would be deafened by an array of animal calls. They all mean something, usually very specific. In this example, they may be warning each other about us. Yet, because we don’t understand it, we don’t value the sounds they make as communication, so we simply ignore it as noise. If, however, we can get a parrot to say ‘fuck off’ or a dog to say ‘sausages’ then we laugh and shake each other’s hands like we’ve just discovered fire. We’re idiots. A dog isn’t delighted if a human makes a barking noise, it just wonders what on earth they are trying to do and what they are trying to say. They probably get annoyed at themselves for not understanding, but then dogs are less intelligent than us, aren’t they?

Humans are obsessed with remaking the animal world in our own image. Look at social media: depressed cats, dogs in trousers, penguins on motorbikes, donkeys laughing, otters that look like Dominic Bumbercuntch. Even when people try and 'talk' to animals, like Johnny Morris, or Dr. Doolittle, it's a ventriloquist act, not a dialogue. The animals are given a human voice, and a silly accent. Is there any reason meerkats are Russian? Oh yes, because it's funny*. And all this is presented to reinforce the idea that mankind is where it’s at,  and nothing else matters unless it is serving, amusing or copying us. And where has this got us? The world, once a genuine paradise, now resembles a well-used football: denuded, disfigured, slowly losing shape and air.

Think about the Earth and how it was only a few hundred years ago. Think about the Earth as it is now. Think about how the Earth will be in a few hundred years. Yeah, I know, miserable isn’t it?

Now dry your eyes, because there is potentially good news around the corner. When The Crisis comes, as come it must, it may only destroy our way of life, not the world we live in. That seems fair: let human beings pay the bill they have run up. We are the only thing the world needs less of, and everything else will benefit from our misfortune: animal numbers will thrive, plants and trees will grow, the planet will compose itself itself, cool and clear its lungs. It will take a while, but it will happen. Most importantly, it will happen without any help from us, our input is simply not required; we’ve done more than enough. We measure everything in terms of lifetimes, as if a seventy or eighty year period has any cosmic relevance. Even a thousand years of human history seems like an impossibly long period of time. It’s pathetic. Our planet is used to the long game, and it has seen off nuisances before in its four and a half billion year history.

Post-Crisis, post-industrialisation, post-mechanisation, post-capitalism, post everything we know, perhaps those of the species that are left will be assimilated to the extent that they will have time and sensitivity and silence enough to finally listen to the world and the noises it makes, to actually hear what everything else is trying to say. That’s my hope. Evolution is an ongoing process, after all.

* It's worth pointing out that these 'silly' meerkats are the brains behind the UK's most successful price comparison website, so they're actually laughing all the way to the bank.

THINGS I WILL NOT MISS

When The Crisis comes, as come it must, it will signal a number of seismic changes to the way we live, especially the fundamental tenets of modern society that we currently take for granted. Paper money will only be worthwhile as kindling, for example, or, if you really want to know bitter irony, as toilet paper. Conversely, actual toilet paper will be so rare that it will become a type of currency. There won’t be any sandwiches either. I’ll repeat that: there will be no sandwiches. 

In my lifetime, the sandwich has evolved from something curly and white and slightly smeared with meat paste to a multi-layered, multi-coloured baroque masterpiece, a vulgar but wonderfully rendered piece of rainbow food art with up to sixty ingredients, some of which actually taste of something, others which you would be advised to wash your hands thoroughly after handling. 

Take a look at your store bought sandwich this lunchtime, and simultaneously marvel and recoil at the impossibly long list of sinister components, I speak, of course, about such life-affirming nuggets and unguents as niacin, thiamin, sodium nitrate, ascorbic acid, beryllium, sapphire, silver, steel and watercresss.

Actually, these ingredients may have been in sandwiches before, I don’t know. Perhaps ascorbic acid is in every slice of bread, part of the process. It may even be the tastiest bit. But my point is that, previously, no-one cared. They ate it, or they didn’t, they had no interest in what its constituent elements were. Also, very few people had allergies, and even fewer people cared about those that did. It was a strange and savage world in many ways, but you knew where you were. 

Being made aware of the composition of every molecule of every morsel you put in your mouth has not in any way been an advance. It has caused confusion and fear, and added another wrinkle to the worried and weary face of the 21^st century, a period already much older than its time.      

In any event, your worries will soon be over as most of this lengthy list of bromides, anti-coagulants and laxatives will not be available post Crisis or, rather, will be hoarded like rubies and used in bombs or added to stews as a means of removing unsuitable chieftains from power, so that's literally and figuratively one less thing on your plate.

Overall, however, I think that this is most definitely a good thing. As an office worker, I am so very sick of sandwiches. There’s something quite shameful about the average shop bought triple decker on artisanal halfmeal with pumpkin seeds and beetroot slaw – or, indeed, a good old fashioned cheese and pickle pile on cardboard bread in a sweaty cling film coat. A sandwich seems to rams home the corporeality of mankind, its grossness, its self-disgust. Only a KFC is more humiliating. The sandwich is designed to be devoured, shoved in, gulped down, quickly, easily, unthinkingly, in a hurry. Who amongst us hasn’t hastily gobbled a sandwich on a train, on the street, in a corner, in a corridor, like a rat in a bin, or a fox in a skip? Who hasn’t understood with every hasty bite that we’re nothing special, just  large, ambulatory lumps of meat that need to pump prawn and avocado into their guts lest they seize up? 

The sandwich, which always looks so attractive in the hand, goes down like excrement on the palate, because you are never more aware than with the first bite that, in purchasing this gilded turd, you have failed as a human being*.

So, yep, for once, The Crisis will actually facilitate a positive change: no more sandwiches, and no more sandwich shame. Don’t worry, though, you will have a million other things to be mortally disgusted with.

Finally, there is nothing wrong with the sandwich at the top of the post, despite its appearance. It's actually been put into pre-marked anti-theft bag. I don't know what's worse, a world where people steal your sandwiches, or a world where you can buy something to desperately try and stop them. Thank fuck for The Crisis, which will put an end to such dilemmas once and for all.

* This is especially true of awful outlet Subway where, despite being able to customise your bread roll with hundreds of different ingredients, the end result can only ever be one of two combinations: cold shit, or hot shit.

QUICK TIPS

QUICK TIP 001:

BACK GRIP

SIGNS AND PORTENTS

THIS DREAM I HAD

I don’t dream much, mainly because I don’t sleep much. But when I do, and can remember it, I make a note of it. I’m looking for clues, really. I know from bitter experience that there’s nothing more boring than being told someone else’s dreams, so feel free not to read this post. I haven’t tweaked any of the details, but I have, at least, tried to make it short and to the point.

I was in a holiday camp. It reminded me a little of the Butlins holidays I used to have as a kid, but it was all enclosed, so it may have even been a cruise ship, although it was apparently situated in Lancashire. At the top of the building/ship there was a large auditorium where loud but inoffensive techno music was playing. I looked at my phone and saw that the home screen had been replaced by a countdown – 29, 28, 27, etc.

When it hit zero, the room exploded with light and noise and I became weightless, as did everyone else. I wasn’t expecting it, and wasn’t quite sure what to do. Around me, people were enjoying the process and dancing and grooving in the air. It looked like fun, so I tried a few tentative moves. After sixty seconds we all floated slowly to the ground, all smiling. I looked at my phone, the countdown had begun again: 4.45, 4.44, 4.43…and I was filled with great excitement about shortly being able to fly again.

This went on for a bit and was very enjoyable, and I became ever more daring in my aerial choreography. Then a girl I used to go out with twenty five years ago came in and said she had a job interview and would I tuck her blouse in for her.      

ORIGIN STORY

Fifteen years ago, I worked for the Civil Service, in one of the huge provincial offices that used to be dotted around the United Kingdom like a necklace of bee hives. This one was in the North of England, but not to its farthest and fullest extent. The Department of Work and Pensions building was on a site where social housing had once sat, and, a few hundred years before then, it had been the hill where public executions were carried out, so there was a fairly high probability that it was haunted by at least one disgruntled working class ghost. Around 1,500 people worked in the building, and there was a shop and a pub and a gym and a canteen and a dentist’s and hairdressers and, right in the middle, a swimming pool. This building was a public sector citadel, a hub of hubbub, a palace of bureaucracy nicknamed (by me, it never caught on) ‘The Ministry of Love’.

As the staff swarmed in each morning, they were met by three immutable things: two chunky security guards, both called Ken, looking at every single ID, and a sign that, rather like the menu outside a bistro, displayed the day’s specials – the BIKINI STATE, the alert code that indicated how close the UK was to war, terrorism or civil disorder. The alert codes ran from white to red, white being stable, red meaning that shit is either coming down or is on its way, scudding across the clouds to take out this building and everyone in it in a flash of blinding light.

In the five years I worked there, the alert state was always at Black Special, an intermediate level that meant that there was an increased likelihood of attack, but no defined target. It could have been worse, of course, but, instead, was just incredibly sinister. Something awful was in the air, but it was also secret, unknown, undesignated, undiscovered. It was a constant, low hum of foreboding. But, ultimately, there was nothing you could do, so we did nothing – or, rather, we got on with our jobs, working towards a future we couldn’t be sure would arrive. 

The peril of the world situation has not improved since I left the civil service, but they have changed the way it is measured. The Bikini State was replaced in 2006 by UK Threat Levels. The Threat Levels rely on words rather than colours, and run from Low to Critical. The current level is Severe, and has been since August, 2014. This means an attack is highly likely. It’s worth quoting the expected response to such an alert, remembering that perhaps a hundred people were consulted around the wording of the definition:

‘Additional and sustainable protective security measures reflecting the broad nature of the threat combined with specific business and geographical vulnerabilities and judgements on acceptable risk’.

In other words, just do what you can and be afraid, be very afraid. In other other words you are probably fucked, but we’ll have to let you know. I preferred Black Special, with its cheerful pink lettering, slither of hope and diplomatic inversion of Lottery logic that, hey, with a thousand targets out there, it might not be you.

A WAIL OF A TIME

It is impossible to quantify the depth, breadth, height and area of man’s desperation to fill the gaping existential void of life with knowledge, with belief, with stuff. In some cases, this hunger may lead to positive things, like discoveries that benefit mankind, or sacrifice, or kindness, or greatness in the arts. These positive things cannot fill the chasm, but they can bridge it. Welcome as they are, they act only as appetite suppressors, sticking plasters. Mostly, however, this bottomless want manifests itself in manic but ultimately pointless activity, a time squandering fixation on trivia, ephemera and miscellany, a search for pieces of an infinite jigsaw that in no way resembles the picture on the box.  

I found out recently that there were human beings who were obsessed with warning sirens. This did not particularly surprise me (there will be someone somewhere who has every type of hoover bag, or collects the autographs of Micronesian heads of state), but it made me wonder. A warning siren is a harsh, horrible thing – deliberately so. You’re not supposed to like it, let alone stand there filming it go off for ten minutes before uploading it to YouTube to share with others. A warning siren evokes panic and fear – screams and disorder, children being trampled underfoot, short notice and long odds against survival. Yet, there are men (I’m assuming they are all men, I’m almost certainly right) who have made it their mission to seek out these clarions of chaos, and travel from county to county, country to country, to see examples, document them, and to place a tick against their name and location on a list. It seems crazy, doesn’t it?

And then I watched the films and heard the sirens for myself. They are extraordinary. I can’t say that they would ever become an obsession for me, but I felt more than a little of their baleful gravitational pull, and remembered that the original siren song was powerful enough to lure men to their death. These eldritch shrieks, infinitely varied, but all full of dread and doom, and the simple but effective convolutions of pipes and horns that deliver them, are utterly compelling – although I'd happily live my life without ever having to hear them again.

 

I don’t know the protocol, the series of events and orders that might finally set the sirens wailing. I don’t know whether they will serve as an actual warning or merely as melancholic countermelody to our destruction. Perhaps they will be the final annoyance on this infinitely annoying planet: we won’t even be allowed to die in peace. What I do know is that The Crisis is coming, and the sirens will have their part to play.

And therein lays the dilemma of the true obsessive. When the sirens go off, we are all finished. But there are those amongst us who will welcome this as a fair exchange for hearing those sirens en masse, for finally filling that hole within them, albeit for perhaps only a few seconds. Given the well-established link between extreme obsession and sexual stimulation, it’s horrible to think that, when The Crisis comes, so will these men, absolutely in their element, capturing the chorus of doom on their expensive recorders and furiously wanking their way into Armageddon.  

* My thanks to JPa311979 for the film clips. His interest is clearly sound in general, rather than simply being mad for sirens and, as such, he is absolutely NOT the target of this post.

MISSING PERSONAGES

This is Dr. Milton Zigo, Physicist, Academic and amateur cutlery bender. Zigo has been absent since New Years Eve, and was last seen weaving his rather unsteady way across the quadrangle at the University of Exeter, where he has taught for the last twelve years. 

Zigo knows stuff, science stuff, and we need him on our side or to be definitely dead. Please note: this photograph was taken at a party, so he is unlikely to still be holding a handful of twisted forks. 

BALLS II

I like women. I like women so much that I’d rather they ruled the world. I think they’d be so much better at it, and there’d be far less chest beating and tanks and genocide and things. During The Crisis, women will be at risk from their most deadly natural predator: men. Let’s face it, the female gender are in danger in our so called civillised society, so life is bound to be unpleasantly precarious for them once our law and order system is reduced to a educationally subnormal man-child who likes dressing up in uniforms and hanging out with a hungry pack of stray dogs. I am not in any way suggesting that women are incapable of looking after themselves, but nobody should underestimate the aggression and danger posed by ruthless men who find that they have nothing to lose. It worries me, it really does. 

The stock response, from sympathetic men and women alike, is ‘well, just kick ‘em in the balls’ and, to a certain extent, that pretty much sums up the thrust of this bulletin. But just kicking someone in the balls is the same as just slicing someone’s toes off with a smatchet, or just breaking their oesophagus with a big stick: easy to say; much, much harder to do. For a start, regardless of your gender, your first and smartest response to any kind of physical threat should be to get the fuck away from it. If you can possibly help it, don’t get anywhere near their balls. Run fast, and keep running, as far away as you can. If this isn’t possible, of course, you are going to have to scrap. It won’t be easy. No man is going to let you kick them in the balls early doors, they are born wise to it: male children are born cupping their testicles, a pre-emptive wince on their tiny, pink faces. To this end, it is vital that you have a few more moves than a ball kick in your repertoire: a gouge, a chop, a punch. Learn defensive moves. Grow your nails, especially the thumb. Know how to get out of holds. 

Most importantly, remember that this is a fight, and it's fight that you must win. All people contain hidden reserves of strength, and you must access this in times of trouble in the same way that a parent suddenly finds themselves able to lift a car from their pinioned child. Without wishing to become lurid, you must be aware that your attacker does not have your best interests at heart: he is not going to do anything other than hurt and degrade you, and he must not get away with this. Your first duty is to protect yourself. Your next instinct will be to hurt him, to nullify him. Only do this if you can do so without putting yourself back into danger.

So, The Balls. The balls is a rather jaunty term for that area of the male body that houses the penis and testicles, the reproductive organs that men think so very important (well, they obviously are, but not so much on an individual basis). A smack on the penis itself will result in little more than a shocked expression, so you need to focus on the undercarriage, the recess of the groin, where the testes hang like fat pink bats. This is your target, an area of great sensitivity, so much so that you can cause excruciating discomfort simply by flicking them with the outside of your hand. Catching them with a foot or a fist will cause great pain. Squeezing them will prove excruciating. Be emphatic in your grip and relentless in your pressure, they will get the message. If you are squeamish, please remember that, for the most part, the agony will only be temporary, although, as with any defensive move, there is a chance that you may permanently damage your attacker. Them's the busts. But don’t feel too sorry for him, he is YOUR ATTACKER after all. Who knows, you may have put him out of business once and for all. 

Always remember, the second he is incapacitated your best bet is to escape, quickly. If you can immediately find other people or angry animals you trust, you could set them on him before he has recovered. If you feel the need to take revenge on his recumbent, squirming form or, indeed, see yourself as a vigilante ridding a horrible world of terrible people, then you probably need to do something a little more definite, but this is always a matter of conscience. This is not a halfway measure, so if you can't walk away then you must either kill him or permanently incapacitate him. In the post-Crisis world, however, maiming or disabling will not be any kind of mercy, so be careful not to be too kind, it will be cruel. 

Take your revenge and, if there is a pitchfork around, use it, and leave his body out as a warning to the others.

BALLS

A PREMONITION

A few weeks ago I had a dream. It may even be considered a nightmare, although I was not so much frightened by it as profoundly unsettled. The dream-mare, which was in black and white and had a similar stylistic mood to an episode of The Outer Limits, featured a train compartment and a man who clearly represented me but had a much better wardrobe. The train was extraordinarily busy. I don’t mean that it was rush hour busy, with people stood in the aisle and rather uncomfortably wedged together, the sort of scenario accompanied by the smell of frustration and unwashed clothing: this was a different type of busy altogether. The compartment resembled an ant hill, a place alive with frenzied, seemingly random activity – or perhaps a slide seen under a microscope, full of swarming germs. People moved around the compartment seemingly without any control over their bodies, bumping into each other, rubbing up against each other. There was no eroticism here, this was horrible: an involuntary dance from which there was no peace, not a moment of stillness or a second of calm or quietude. 

In a corner, my avatar, clinging to a dangling strap, trying to distance himself but buffeted again and again by the other passengers, some of whom looked at him apologetically, some defiantly, but most as if he were not there at all.  The man pushed through the scrum of people and moved into the corridor, rattled the door handle. Locked. Very quickly, the corridor filled with the same helpless, hopeless people as before, and he found himself pressed into the door, his face squashed against the glass, half registering the indistinct outside rushing by. Then, suddenly, everyone disappeared apart from the smartly dressed man. The train stopped. There was no announcement, no punchline, but I woke up convinced that the man had finally escaped from the madding crowd in the way that people have been escaping misery and unbearable circumstances for eons: by dying.

I’m not a scientist, so I can’t be sure of what the dream meant. It came at a time when my life was full of pressure, and full of people, so it was perhaps influenced by that. The message, if there is one, is that life is relentless and restless and people simply won’t leave you the fuck alone. I don’t know what to do with this message. There is virtually no practical response to it. Perhaps it isn’t a message at all. It doesn’t require a reply. It is not a warning, as it is already happening. It seems more like a flat, fatal statement of fact, like ‘You’re never going to be a millionaire’ or ‘Eric Morecambe is dead’: an unpalatable but immutable piece of information that you simply have to file away and live with. So I’m living with it, but I can't help but notice now how many other people there are out there*. Tricky things these dreams, they continue to work when you’re awake.  

AN APPARITION

In the town where I now rather begrudgingly live, there is a neglected area that used to have something to do with the canals and is now largely deserted, apart from at night when it becomes a hotbed of vice and intoxication, of dogging, drugs and prostitution. It is place full of empty units, things that used to be something but are now nothing, less than nothing, and a little less every day. Almost everything seems to be under a bridge. The town’s prison is there, surrounded by a smooth, dirty brown wall and identified by a sign that says in an informal font (Mistral, thank you, Andrew Demetrius)) ‘Welcome to OUR Prison’. I wish I'd made that up, but it's 100% true.     

Just before you get to this fun factory / penal collective there is a bridge over a river. On one side, water rushes down a slope before meeting an abrupt but very definite drop. Here, in the broiling water, float a strange, eerie selection of tyres and balls of all shapes, sizes and colours, some free, others enclosed in the hollow ‘o’ of a worn out radial, trapped in groups of twos and threes, bobbing wildly but never breaking free. It is uncertain how these objects got there, how far they have travelled or how long it took them to arrive - but now they are stuck, having met an immovable object that resists the force that has carried them there. The worst thing is that this is not a case of arriving and, realising there is no way forward, settling. There is no settling. Instead, this is a relentless, exhausting existence, a never ending battle, like drowning all day, every day, but never sinking to the bottom. Without any outside agency the balls and tyres would butt up against the weir wall forever, or at least until the water froze or became thick sludge or dried up completely. It is a horror. It is horrible. 

At night, I think about the balls and the tyres and the branches and their pointless, endless struggle and I feel afraid. I see my corpse caught in the turmoil, stuck like Ahab on the whale, waving not drowning, deader and deader, but never at peace. I get up and turn all the lights on, as if to reassure myself that The Crisis hasn’t happened yet. It hasn't happened yet. Soon, I will flick the switch and nothing will happen.  

*   The Crisis will be a big help in this regard.

THINGS I HAVE LEARNED IN 47 YEARS

Life is like this.

WHEN CRYPTIDS WITHDRAW

I read recently that the Yeti hasn’t been seen by anybody since 2006, a conspicuously long gap after living in close proximity to human beings for hundreds of years. The Tibetans do not believe for a second that the Yeti is dead, but his absence worries his neighbours: what does the Yeti know that they don’t? And where the hell has the Loch Ness Monster got to?

Generally speaking, sightings of all cryptozoological creatures are down, and UFO reports are at their lowest since the end of World War Two. These complementary issues can be interpreted in two ways, neither of them particularly good. Let’s go back to the Yeti as our example for the first interpretation. Has he disappeared by default or design? Is it a forced migration or a tactical withdrawal? Or maybe he just got sick of us and our smells and noises and hissy fits and hydroelectric plants and simply wandered out into the wilderness, very deliberately climbing a little higher than we can follow. Perhaps he knows something bad is coming and wants to remove himself from the source of the problem: human beings. Yeti’s no fool, he’ll come back when it’s all over to make his bed on our bleached and broken bones. It’s the same for all the cryptids: they can smell bad vibes. So perhaps Nessie and Big Foot and Ogopogo and Chupacabras are keeping their heads down, just as Aliens are giving us a wide berth: they’ll be back to probe what’s left in due course. This is bad, very bad. How long will it be before birds fly south and just stay there; before bears go into permanent hibernation; before eels decide to give the Sargasso Sea a miss this year? Nature is backing away from us.

Conversely, let’s say that there’s no such thing as the Yeti, no such thing as Nessie, no such thing as aliens. With that in mind, it’s not at all surprising that no-one is reporting encounters with them. The issue is, however, that, previously, people were seeing them all the time: they had a major presence for something that didn’t actually exist. So, why aren’t people filing false claims about them now? Why aren’t people still pretending to have married Big Foot, or claiming to have been whisked away to Venus for intrusive medical experimentation? Is it a failure of imagination, or a loss of hope? When people stop making shit up, you know we’re in trouble.

As with everything on this blog, there are no answers, no solutions, no conclusion, just a bad feeling, and a dull ache about The Crisis to come.

NEW FILM NEWS

In a surprise statement, the ARTS-GOV computer has announced that, from now on, all British films must star Laurence Harvey. The Lithuanian born actor was unavailable for comment, having died in 1973.