Free One Three One: A Time-Shifting Gnostic Hooligan Road Novel by Julian Cope Page B

stalls. Bummed and never fed. I got beaten up every day and never fed. The munter that did the bumming had a hacking cough that reminded Mick of his old chemistry teacher Colin Best. So, before each bumming, Mick recited this poem to calm himself down:
Faster than a speeding ticket, headlong to disaster, cheesy as his middle wicket, dreadlocked as a Rasta. No choice as you bend-and-scrape that mad Jap’s Eye, it
will
dislodge
your kack. Why? Besty’s back!
And every time I’d sat in my white stall, listening to that plaintive chant ringing out from the full six-foot-three frame of my dear friend the poet Goodby, how I’d resented even one of his dubious rhyming couplets being wasted on such evil, twisted endeavours. I didn’t want Mick to make a cult character out of Besty. That evil Bum Chum deserved a surly sorry saddo’s name – not fucking Besty. But as my own sphincter had remained intact, I’d felt an obligation to grant ye Bard his metaphor … and held my peace.

13. SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL
    4am, Sunday June 11th, 2006
Room 6, Hotel Su Talleri, Macomér
    Lying inert in the heat at Su Talleri, as Macomér’s sunrise birds piped each other a Sunday greeting, I pictured Mick asleep at his mother’s house in Manchester, tossing and turning endlessly on the narrow travel mattress under the stairs where Gabriella used to keep her Brasso. After the kidnap, Mick had initially sought the refuge of his old teenage bedroom, still be-stickered with
Peanuts
cuttings and comforting sayings from E. E. Munkey. But as the novelty of the kidnap had faded at last from those T-Zers columns of the national music press, still the ignominy of that mysterious Sardinian Affair could be experienced every day at a simple buying-fizz-down-the-corner-shop level. Moreover, the notoriety of the Brits Abroad case and the curious, scurrilous, almost ‘tut-tut’ Victorian manner with which the press had reported it had ensured that Mick nowadays – rather than do battle with the outside world – found it far easier to hole up under Gabriella Goodby’s stairs with his fizz, his promo poster of Lou Reed’s
Berlin
and fifty-plus Charles M. Schultz paperbacks. By the late ’90s, the sociopathic M. Goodby had begun to be considered whacked-out enough to be press-worthy, especially after a Thames TV crew headed north and filmed a second documentary of him under the stairs. But when Mick, in lieu of payment, had accepted the TV crew’s offer of a Green Screen paintjob for his dugout, they had humiliated him throughout the film, cheap video FX portraying him as though flying Arabian Nights-like througha starlit sky. Worse still, they even got vicious blobs of Chroma-key green on his beloved
Berlin
poster, for fuck’s sake! After that debacle, nearly half-a-decade passed before Mick re-emerged in any public capacity. Oh, it’s Oz! Oh, it’s Gong! Oh, it’s God! Never knowing what uncalled-for harshness might be expectorated in his direction should any cruel randomers stray his way during a corner shop fizz offensive, instead, Mick refused to take risks any longer, malingering in his dugout under the stairs and letting the fizz wagons deliver right to his door. Vimto, Corona, Kola Bear: everyone delivered. Six-foot-three and taking up no space at all. And then out of nowhere, around 2003, came Exercise Club. All Mama Gabriella’s doing apparently. Fed up with Mick joking and mimicking her yoga kriyas, his tiny spitfire of a Sardinian mother told him to wake up, that he was good, that he should start taking it seriously. Still making a big joke of it – as Mick is always wont to – he nevertheless secretly joined a yoga class and got great at it. Within the year, Mick had convinced half the women in his street to join his own ‘Exercise Club’, emphatically denying the presence of yoga or anything spiritual in his teachings. Smartest move ever. Attendances soared and locals started to have more time for his madness. Even better for his