Southend on Sea
If you find this typescript, please preserve it, for it's not that bad. I dropped it down the WC accidentally and where it will turn up beats me. But if it's still intact, please return it forthwith to the address at the end....
My name? What business is it of yours? Suffice it to say that, if you knew my name, you would be none the wiser at this stage. You would be side-tracked so severely that you would not even bother to read the rest of this tract, too busy with looking up a variety of encyclopaedias and getting all entangled with the many cross-references stemming from my name.
Well, follow me. Don't dilly-dally and when I say jump, you damn well jump!
This tunnel closely follows the route of a new canal that wends its way several leagues above us. At times, it is close, to such an extent that you can hear the self-conscious chugging of the narrow boats, and, at others, so far, that you're nearer the core of the earth than to the surface channellings.
Jump!
That was close. We just crossed a crevice which goes deeper than anything you've known before and ends up on the other side of the universe, some say.
That dim glow, which allows us to feel our way, filters down along special tubings fed from the daylight way above us. They've got it on top - just watch. I turn this valve, and the deep richness of a summer sunset fills your face with a healthy flush. Look closer, old pal, and see what I look like. It is about time you saw my face which, after all, should be of more interest to you than my name, surely. It's deeply marked with age, you may note, but I'm younger than you, I'll be bound. It's got character lines fanning out from brow to brow, hasn't it? You don't say much about me: what's got your tongue?
Well, keep mum, man, just follow a little way more, just round that bend.
Jump!
Godforsaken gentleman. Failed to jump in time, I guess. Gave him plenty of warning, didn't I?
Halloo! Are you down there?
No. Well, he wasn't much of a conversationalist anyway, and I don't suppose he'd have learnt much. Even if he was still alive, he'd find it hard to call for help. Because shy he was. Shyer than a blushing bride on her first night.
Us ley-line constructionists don't talk much at the best of times. We're too busy following the natural courses of our brains. It's the veinings which count.
My old apprentice disappeared down a gullet and is lost for ever, no doubt.
If you find him wandering around some mocked-up London Underground, following his nose, as it were, silently seeking the by-ways for my friendly chump, send him back to me. Straight to the secret Inlet, part of the way beyond the Bill, until you reach the Cape at the head of the Flight of Locks, here to the Naze, half-way up the encroaching Creeks and Backwaters which face up to that mighty Peninsula, poised in the flushing seas of sunset, down the Essex way.
That's the address for all your sendings.
***
As a belated afterthought, you still want to know my name? OK, I'll come clean and I'll put it at the head of this typescript, like a sign-post to the better things below it.
Finally, all I can say is that we must find better ways....I'm sick to the teeth with it all.
(Published 'The Third Half' 1987)
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