Extracts from the plague diary of Mark ne-Francois-Pepys
May 11th
Up betimes, well ahead of the ‘Stay Alert’ curve that I haven’t been to sleep after fifteen cans of Monster, and in over-stimulated agitation watching Slogan’s Run, a dystopian fiction about the remnants
1/8
May 11th
Up betimes, well ahead of the ‘Stay Alert’ curve that I haven’t been to sleep after fifteen cans of Monster, and in over-stimulated agitation watching Slogan’s Run, a dystopian fiction about the remnants
1/8
of a human civilisation that franchised it’s future to a catchphrase generator. At morning victual of further Monster went about ‘Taking control’ of the plague by gathering the used tissues and uncleansed chamber pots about my bed wherein a virus might dwell,
2/
2/
and with Peperami under arm and Sgt Major like authority did scream ‘tenshun’, ‘and ‘don’t multiply at the double’ at it, but dissatisfied to see with what secret cunning and variety of artifice the virus heeds me not and plainly sits in a smouldering heap, and so I
3/
3/
did court-martial it and turn on my Essex Mountain Rescue pager to discover whether or not I could carry out the weekend’s third fresh picked edict and ‘Save Lives’; Nothing and after a seventeenth can of Monster feeling somewhat vague about the boundaries of perception,
4/
4/
a knock at the door, and there find the new blood-toothed Neighbourhood Watch secretary Gunnhild Bloodaxe brandishing a rune carved hazel staff with severed horse’s head atop, incanting ‘to those nationalist-spirits that inhabit this land, I turn this insulting curse so they
5/
5/
go astray, they will not figure nor find their rightful abode, until they drive Corona plague from every gland’ and she shoved the pole into the crevice of my crazy paving wherein I bury my dairies and dairies and proclaimed henceforth, whatsoever the last name I am called
6/
6/
is, I shall become, and Hartley-Brewer comes to me about her business hollering ‘Mark what on earth is that mess in the garden and why are your brown chinos covered in Nutella again you great tit?’ and in the instant of our encounter I am transported into a tree hollow,
7/
7/
with several fledgling great-tits and we are all at cheeping and squabbling over invertebrates, and being the smallest in the brood I get none and that transmuting into a songbird is no fitting occupation for Britain’s Leading Patriot, in a great revulsion I try to scream,
8/
8/
but only trills escape my little beak and as I see a tit in bifocals with a great resemblance to Steve Baker swallowing a caterpillar, night overwhelms our nest and I wonder in horror at how I might proceed next...
