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Yeah. It just wasn’t so good.
But then lightning rarely strikes, etc.
Hmmn.
Are you…? Am I…?
Let’s press rwnd for a moment, shall we?
Slow it right down…
Then just…uh…
…HOLD!
Good.
Freeze it for a second…
Yes…
Uh…
Oh. No.
Okay…
Just a couple of frames more…
Just a couple…
STOP!!!
That’s it!
That’s me. I’m just…
I’m very small right now. Okay? Bottom left-hand side of the picture…
If you could maybe…?
Bingo!
So we’re jumping around a little – the focus is all shot – the sound’s terrible. But I think if you look closely you can just about see me, hanging around, unobtrusively, almost lost in the background…
I’m sitting, slightly hunched over (my habitual posture – I have a clinical condition known as ‘Masturbator’s Back’), my free hand jammed deep inside my trouser pocket and my headset blasting (ODB, eff-ing and blinding for all he’s worth – which is quite a lot), and I’m thinking about Shane while I munch on my sandwich (it’s lunchtime). I happen to be straddling this gonad-freezing marble wall by the mother of all rivers (No. Not the Nile. You want Agatha Christie? Then look under C).
The River Thames:
Tah-dah!
In all her sweet autumnal glory. Tower Bridge is quite literally towering behind me – her huge, turquoise ramparts (okay, so I’m no whizz on architecture) flying out from between my two puny shoulder blades like a couple of crazy bat-wings (this image so very nearly works that I’m tempted to leave it in. Yes, it is a tad far-fetched – especially when you consider the angles and everything – but I think Jack would’ve approved. I think Jack would say, ‘You’re doin’ real good work here, kid; but just remember the story. Keep your mind focused on the narrative, because that’s what truly counts in this business. That’s what really matters here.’
Is this guy some kind of saint, or what?).
We’re in only the second week of Master Illusionist David Blaine’s spectacular Public Starvation Pageant, Above the Below (so how the fuck does he go about translating that into plain English, without sounding a complete twat?).
It’s day 8 or day 9 – I forget which (can’t quite read it on that handy 44-day digital clock of his from where I’m currently sitting) – but it already feels like it’s been going on for ever (we’ve had the golf balls, the eggs, the girls baring their breasts, we’ve had the paint gun, the fences raised, the security doubled and Shiraz Azam with his all-nite bhangra drum…).
Don’t think (for a moment) that it’s just some lucky accident that I’m perched here (right in the hub, you might say), because I work (as a clerical assistant, much against my will, my instinct, my inclinations) in the only building directly adjacent to this psychotic happening (you might’ve seen us – in all the design magazines – early last year): a huge, grey-green-glass Alessi milk-jug of a structure (a tipsy fat penguin): the Greater London Authority Building (we were the centre of the world till they went and built that stupid gherkin near Aldgate. Now we’re just last night’s chip paper. Modernity’s like a badly trained dog: try and make it heel, even for a moment, and it turns and bites the hand that fed it. Snap).
I’m sitting a little way along from all of the kerfuffle. The press are still very much in attendance, having their field day, ‘making’ all their pictures, ‘writing’ all their commentaries (uh, is it just me, or don’t they actually realise that this slightly chubby, very famous 30-year-old illusionist isn’t really going anywhere? Don’t panic, lads, you have about 36 more days to sort out your copy. Sit back, relax. Just do as the magician does).
It’s a tragic fact, but Blaine is definitely bringing out the worst in we Brits. I don’t know if this is what he wants (if it’s all part of the buzz for this American Christo-like) or if it’s what he expected, but he’s headlining it in most of the tabloids today. They’re calling him a fake, a cheat, a freak, a liar. They’re up in bloody arms, basically. And it’s a moral issue, apparently. Because it’s in Very Bad Taste to starve yourself if you have the option not to – yeah, so why not go and tell all those fucked-up, deviant Anorexics that? – especially (especially) if you’re calling it Art (and pocketing a – purely coincidental – 5 mill. pay-out).
Cynical? Moi?
Look, I’m just sitting on this damn wall and watching all the colour unfold around me. I don’t quite know if I’m loving it or loathing it (you’ll find me on the fence. I’m the kind of guy who used to actively enjoy leaning on his bike’s crossbar as a kid). But who (who?) can deny that it’s a big story? It’s a big setting – I mean Mary Mother of Jesus, how the hell did the council give permission for all this crap? Right here, on their doorstep? In the middle of everything?
It’s just a wild guess, but I’m definitely getting the impression that some poor bastard has currently got his nuts in a vice over this whole farrago.
‘Uh…’ he’s stuttering, ‘I thought it might attract the tourists, Mr Mayor. I thought it might be a nice…an impressive culmination to some of the other cultural events we’ve been staging in the park throughout the summer. I mean the kids loved the visit from the local city-farm, didn’t they? All the goats and hens and everything? And then there was that cookery demonstration in the striped marquee. That went swimmingly…’
The cleaners (let’s get down to brass tacks) are absolutely fucking livid (I’m not certain if they have the mayoral ear, but if they do, then that fall guy’s nuts are definitely for the high jump).
I’m actually on nodding terms with Georgi (Gee-or-gi. Twenty-two. Toothless. Romanian. Angriest man in the world right now).
Georgi already deals with a lot of shit (he sells me dope, the occasional E), because the life of a cleaner on this part of the river is not an easy one. The whole area’s paved – and enclosed – for one thing. And it’s a huge tourist draw, a landmark (the whole world feels like it already owns this view, and in some ways – if affection begets possession – it does).
It needs to look good – at all times – and because of the tons of dodgy marble and smooth cement and dramatic architecture, any stray detritus just – kind of – sits there. It stands out. It looks bad. It needs to be dealt with, and quickly (So fuckin’ jump to it, lad), else all we proud Londoners (okay I’ve lived here 10 years, so I think I qualify) start to look shoddy.
And we don’t like that.
But with the advent of Blaine’s box, things have started to go crazy. Is it Blaine himself? The excitement? The fury? The awe? Whatever the root cause, people suddenly seem to feel the powerful need to generate mess. It’s Goo-ville. It’s Crap-town. There’s old fruit, rotten eggs (British poultry farmers are just loving this situation. Fuck Sky, man. We really need to start seeing the colour of their sponsorship money), and worst of all, there’s the ‘human’ element.
Now don’t get me (or Georgi) wrong: people have always pissed in corners (a bridge – any bridge – almost demands as much from any man with a working penis), but the way things are currently, it’s like the embankment is a toilet and Blaine is just the scented rim-block dangling in his disposable plastic container from the bowl at the top. It’s getting completely degenerate. People are shitting everywhere. Man, it’s Shit-o-fucking-rama down here. Huge steaming piles of the stuff, in every alcove, every crevice, every corner. And then there’s poor Georgi – with his broom, his weak hose, his little shovel – being expected to clean all this crap – your crap – up.
But here’s the best part: He doesn’t blame you.
Uh-uh.
Not at all.
He blames the hungry (and decidedly shitless) bugger in the box.
Blaine.
‘Is him,’ Georgi gesticulates irately towards the pallid New Yorker with his broom, ‘tha’ stupid, crazy, dirty-fucky-bastar’ Jew.’
Yeah. So where the hell am I supposed to stash my sandwich wrapper?
I have an agenda. You really need to know that. I mean all this isn’t just arbitrary.
Uh-uh.
I have an agenda.
So my dad’s name – for the record (and this is pertinent; it’s the core of the thing, the nub) – is Douglas Sinclair MacKenny, and all things being equal, he’s a pretty run-of-the mill kind of guy. He enjoys gardening, Inspector Morse, steam trains and Rugby League. He’s into trad-jazz, Michael Crichton, elasticated waists, Joanna Lumley and lychees. When he was nineteen years old he swam the English Channel. But he doesn’t swim much any more.
He runs a sub-post office in north Herefordshire (where I was born, 28 long, hard years ago – not on the counter, obviously, let’s not be that literal, eh? – his lone progeny: Adair Graham MacKenny). He’s happily (well, within reason) married to my mum (Miriam), and he’s fundamentally a very genial, affable, easy-going creature.
(Fundamentally – so he doesn’t like black people or queers, but which underachieving 55-year-old, small-minded, Caucasian, Tory-voting cunt does? Huh? Name me one.)
Nothing bugs him (not even the long and inexorable queue of pensioners at closing). Nothing winds him up.
Well…okay, then. So there’s this one thing…it’s a really tiny thing…and it bugs him just a little.
Is that a fair representation?
No.
Fine. Fine. So this particular thing bugs him quite a lot.
He doesn’t like it, see? It pees him off. It rings his bell. It pulls his chain. It sits – it really sits, and it presses, hard – on his buzzer.
This thing is (has always been/will always be) a source of unbelievable distress to him. It’s a thing which he loathes / fears / distrusts more than any other. This thing (if you refer to it, idly) makes him clam-up, then blanch, then shake uncontrollably. He’s virtually lethally-fucking-allergic to this thing.
Any guesses?
Wheat? Pigeons? Lichen? Jasper Carrott? Dahlias? Lambswool? Beer?
Nope.
Douglas Sinclair MacKenny hates – I said he hates – illusionists. And with a passion.
Let me tell you why.
Great Yarmouth. Nineteen fifty-nine. The height of the Summer Season. My dad, still then but a boy, is down on the beach with a large crowd of deliciously rambunctious, candy-floss-speeding, bucket-swinging, spade-waving, snotty-nosed comrades. He’s clutching sixpence which his mother has just given him. He is planning to spend this money on – deep breath now, Dad, deeeep breath – a Magic Show!
The magician or ‘illusionist’ in question is no less (and no more) a man than ‘The Great Carrazimo’. Carrazimo is (by all accounts) fairly competent at the magicianing thing. He does some nifty stuff with doves. He can pretend – very effectively – to chop off his thumb. He can throw his voice. He even (and Dad still doesn’t know how) stole some little girl’s laugh. Seriously. He nicked it (she was temporarily hoarse) and then found it again inside her sticky bag of Liquorice Allsorts.
This is all good stuff (I know you’re thinking) so why the angst?
Here’s why: at the end of his show, Carrazimo pulls a stunt which leaves everyone agog. He gets the kids to dig a hole – a deep hole – in the sand. He climbs into the hole. He then tells the kids to fill it up.
That’s right. The Great Carrazimo is intending to get himself Buried 100 Per Cent Alive.
The kids – they aren’t a bad bunch – are slightly nervous at the prospect. I mean it’s been a good show. The little girl’s laugh is back. The thumb’s on. The doves are cooing. It’s very nearly lunchtime.
But Carrazimo insists. It’s the climax of his act.
The kids still aren’t entirely convinced. ‘And here’s the thing,’ one especially ‘responsible’ (read as: ‘opportunistic’) young ’un pipes up, ‘if you don’t come back, what’s gonna happen to the rabbit and the doves and all the rest of your stuff?’
Carrazimo grins. ‘If I don’t come back,’ he says, ‘then you can divide it among you.’
Two seconds later, Carrazimo disappears under a hail of sand.
It takes about ten minutes to bury the illusionist completely. Douglas Sinclair MacKenny has played his part – has even taken the precaution of patting the sand neat and flat on top. He’s concerned for the illusionist (yes he is), but he has one (very constant, very careful) eye already firmly affixed on the illusionist’s grand collection of magic wands. There’s a fat one (the very one he used to fix his thumb back on), and if the worst happens, Douglas Sinclair MacKenny is determined to have it.
When all the work is done, the kids sit down, en masse, and they wait.
And they wait.
Eventually (it’s now half an hour past lunch), one of the mums happens along.
‘What on earth are you all up to?’ she asks.
‘We’re waiting for Carrazimo,’ they respond.
‘Well where is he?’ she asks.
‘In the sand,’ the kids boom back.
Pause.
‘So how long’s he been under there?’ she enquires.
‘Thirty-seven bloody minutes,’ Douglas Sinclair MacKenny yells furiously.
Another five minutes pass. By now quite a crowd has formed. One of the fathers has asked the kids to indicate precisely where the illusionist is buried. The kids are still quite cheerful at this stage (if getting a little hungry), and they happily mark out the spot.
The parents start to dig (the poignancy quotient of this scene is presumably dramatically heightened by the fact that all these men and women have borrowed their kids’ tiny shovels). The atmosphere is grave (on the surface, at least), but then – 32 seconds into the rescue operation – an unholy scrap breaks out.
It has finally dawned on the children that Carrazimo might not actually be returning to collect his stuff, and everybody wants first dibs on the things he’s left behind. Douglas Sinclair MacKenny is – in his own mind at least – now first in line to get himself that fancy fat magician’s wand. But two other boys – at least – have their greedy eyes glued on this exact-same prize.
There is a brief halt to the digging as the tragic magician’s possessions are firmly removed from a host of small, grasping hands, and when the digging resumes, the children are duly frogmarched up the beach, on to the prom, and into the warm, distracting embrace of the funfair for ‘a couple of rides’.
It isn’t a long while after that Carrazimo’s body is pulled from the sand. Yes. He’d performed this feat a hundred times before. But it’d rained at breakfast and the sand – for some reason – was just slightly wetter than it usually was in summer.
He’d drowned.
Douglas Sinclair MacKenny was scarred for ever. Not just by the death (although that took its toll – he was, after all, an accessory to the illusion), but by the fact that he was cruelly denied that most tantalising, powerful and coveted of items: the magician’s fat wand. Carrazimo had promised, hadn’t he? The perfidious, two-faced, double-crossing liar.
Hmmn. Think there might’ve been any phallic significance in all of that?
I know what you’re thinking: it was all a very long time ago now (this illusionist stuff). And he’s just my old dad, after all – I mean if he happens to see me more than twice in your average year – Christmas / birthday – he starts to think the worst.
Suspicious?
