Free Sprout Mask Replica by Robert Rankin

but it wasn’t a success. There simply wasn’t enough room in the
back of the van. And once he’d paid the pianist and the barman, there was no
profit left.
    So my
brother, being an innovator, sacked the barman, a Mr Stringfellow, and the
pianist, a Mr Charles, tore out the piano, bar, tables and chairs and turned
the entire back of the van into a single dance floor.
    On the
ceiling he arranged a small mirror globe that turned by a clockwork motor and
he would sit in the cab, shining a torch onto it through the little hatch
behind the seats. To make things really special he got one of those torches
that will shine three different colours.
    Music
was provided by the van’s radio turned up full blast.
    Blinder!
    It was
a big success. And my brother was able, by studying the Radio Times in
order to see what was on the radio each night, to organize ‘theme evenings’.
Country and Western, reggae, psychedelic, etc. Forty people at least could be
crammed in on a good night, each picked up from home and dropped back at the
end of the evening.
    Blinder!
Blinder!
    Looking
into the future my brother foresaw an entire fleet of such disco vans, three
hundred at the very least, covering the entire length and breadth of the
country, supplying the night-life of the big city to out-lying rural
communities.
    Blinder!
Blinder! Blinder!
    But it
was not to be.
    There
were some unfortunate accidents. My brother lost his first van-load on an
unmanned level crossing just outside Orton Goldhay. There was a party of old
folk on board. Local Darby and Joan Club. My brother had discovered a radio
station that played nineteen thirties dance band music, and old people can’t
get out much to go to dances, can they?
    The van
was just crossing the railway line when the old folk took it upon themselves to
go into the hokey-cokey. They put their left leg in and their left leg out and
shook them all about with such enthusiasm that they turned the van on its side.
    In the
path of an oncoming train.
    My
brother and the uncle whose name I can’t remember, Uncle Charles (who was
driving), managed to scramble free of the cab, but the rear door of the van had
been padlocked on the outside to prevent the old folk falling out at
roundabouts. And the key to the padlock was on the key-ring with the ignition
key. And the ignition key was still in the ignition. And the train was coming.
    My
brother didn’t get paid that night.
    The
tragedy didn’t put him off though.
    He just
made sure that from then on he always got paid in advance.
    I asked
him later how he felt about all those people getting snuffed out like that. He
said, with a rationality unclouded by emotion, that although it was sad,
particularly about the money and everything, it didn’t really matter about the
old people, because old people didn’t serve much of a purpose in the community
anyway.
    I
mentioned this to a doctor friend of mine who deals a lot with old people. My
doctor friend said that he thought my brother’s remark was cynical and uninformed.
And he went on to tell me (in confidence, of course) that old people serve a
real purpose in medical terms. ‘Without old people,’ he said, ‘who could we let
medical students practise and experiment on?’
    And I
was stuck for an answer.
    My
brother lost his replacement van a scant three weeks later. He had fitted an
extra-large aerial to this in order to pick up pirate radio, which was very
popular at the time. On the evening of the disaster, John Peel was playing the
psychedelic good stuff and there was ‘A Happening’ taking place in the back of
the van. More than fifty proto-hippies were squeezed in and, unknown to my
brother, every time the van stopped at traffic lights a few more climbed aboard
to join the event and enjoy the good vibrations.
    The last
thing my brother recalls, prior to awakening in a hospital bed, was Peely
playing ‘Eight Miles High’ by the Byrds.
    Apparently
what happened was this: the number of proto-hippies