Sunday 28 August 2011

The Return of Countess Geschwitz

I would apologise for my long absence if I were a different person. Instead suffice to say that, by goading ex-President Yushchenko into testifying against former Prime Minister Tymoshenko at the latter's show trial in Kiev, I have almost completed the task of turning Ukrainian politics into an Expressionist performance of the missing portion of Gogol's "Dead Souls".

I returned to Britain with our daughter Arianrhod this week to see how Boyo and young Bendigeidfran have been coping. My house is, of course, ruined. Which is why I sold it quietly to a Montenegrin gentleman prior to my departure last year. Boyo has, however, been quite busy.

After unglueing the laptop - never was a computer more aptly named - I casually accessed Boyo's files (password "ImmerAngela") - and found two screenplays.

As for the first - "Alien vs Predator vs Dalek" - I think the executive summary says it all: "The Aliens and Predators take out the Daleks, dress in their Dalek suits and duke it out for an hour like mad-bastard dodgems before an atomic bomb or something. NB to self - Sarah Hadland, catsuit."

The second is altogether more ambitious. "The Lion Tamer" posits a Britain in which "some liberals" have freed all the circus animals "elephants, horses, clowns, sea-lions, real lions natch" into the wild because of a campaign by Blue Peter.

It also means that various animal wranglers are now out of work and thirsting for revenge on bien-pensant Britain. The police fight pitched battles with ringmasters, Cossack cavalry and large-footed buffoons on tiny bicycles, amid scenes of seals rampaging through fishmongers, but one man stands alone above the fray - the Lion Tamer.

This alloy of Conan and Camus is clearly modelled on Boyo himself, if Boyo were a slab of marbled beefcake who lets his single-tail do the talking. He wanders the land, righting wrongs by applying his beast-baiting skills to the underclass and irrigating shireswomen with his brackish seed.

It gradually clots into the sort of pepper-spray overdose of sixth-form symbolism and cartwheeling limbs that passes for plot in male dystopias, although this one has a happy ending in which the hero saves our Home Secretary, Theresa May, from being mauled by a lion through, er, taming it.

He then rides the Home Secretary sideways, on the swiftly-flayed hide of the lion.

Cue credits over the fortunate Privy Councillor's flushed yet ashen features as a voice-over explains that Mrs May becomes prime minister, exiles the wild animals to Scotland, and appoints the Lion Tamer head of a "special forces force" made up of battle-hardened circus performers.

Who will no doubt feature in "Lion Tamer II: Mark of the Beast". There was little to show in the file thus headed, except the phrase "Louise Mensch, cyber MP".

Boyo's other major achievement was to teach Bendigeidfran to shout at the television.

"Воспитание происходит всегда, даже тогда, когда вас нет дома."