"Robert Rankin - Raiders of the Lost Car Park" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robert Rankin)

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There are exactly twenty-three really wonderful things in this world, and to be in the right place at the
right time is one of them.
Happily this still leaves twenty-two others for the rest of us to share. And amongst these is Rock `n'
Roll.
Now Rock `n' Roll may not be to everyone's taste. Some speak highly of Classical Music. In fact,
some speak highly of Classical Music and say things like, `Of course, Classical Music was the Rock `n'
Roil of its day.' Which is frankly a load of old tucket. Classical Music was the Classical Music of its day.
Bawdy ballads were the boogie. Let me make the ballads and who will may make the laws, wrote
Andrew Fletcher in 1703. And two hundred and fifty years later Jerry Lee Lewis would drink to that.
And so today would Mickey Minns. Not that Mickey needed too much of an excuse to up-end a
pint pot. Mickey was an old rocker and the downing of large quantities of beer, went, as they say, with
the territory. He'd once jammed with Jeff Beck at The Marquee and had Mickey been in the right place
at the right time he would have played bass on `Hi Ho Silver Lining'. But he wasn't, so he did not.
Minns had been draped across a saloon bar counter during the recording of that particular Rock Anthem.
And he was currently draped across one now. Different counter, different decade, but the song remains
the same.
Back in the Sixties he'd had a full head of hair and a twenty-eight-inch waist and he'd owned a
guitar shop. He still owned a guitar shop. It was situated just off the high street and called Minn's Music
Mine. Mickey had considered changing the name on many occasions over the years. But the way he saw
it, fashions come and fashions go, yet the British still love a shop with a stupid name. And his was slightly
less stupid than most.
The part-time barman called last orders for the lunch-time session and Mickey raised his head from
the counter to order another. He didn't have to rush back. Not now he'd got the new assistant and
everything.
The new assistant's name was Anna Gotting and she was a rare beauty. Blond of hair. Blue of eye.
Independent of spirit. Seventeen years of age and five foot eight of height. Valid arguments against the
inclusion of such a being in the list of the twenty-three really wonderful things have yet to be heard.
Mickey Minns, for one, could find none against employing her. He considered Anna ideal for the
position. Ideal indeed for any number of positions, several of which sprang immediately to his lecherous
mind. After all, it was just remotely possible that the teenage siren might harbour a secret passion for
balding old musos with beer bellies and bad breath. Well, almost anything was possible. Almost.
But the tank top of stupidity did not hang in the crowded wardrobe of Mickey's failings. He had a
teenage daughter of his own. And he had a business to run. In Anna, he saw a valuable asset. She'd only
been with him a month and the weekly takings had already doubled. Never had so many guitarless young
men purchased so many plectrums.
Mickey sighed inwardly, belched outwardly and stumbled away to the Gents whistling `Beck's
Bolero'.
He was blissfully unaware that this parting pee and that postscript pint were about to cost him very
dearly indeed.
Because at Minn's Music Mine, the first link in a fantastic chain of events was about to be forged. A
chain which would lead from the mundane to the miraculous. From the humdrum to the phan-tasmagoric.
From taedium vitae to terra incognita. From the crambe repitita ... and so on and so forth. The way
some of them do. And it would all begin with the tuneless ting of Mickey's old shop doorbell.

Now it must be stated fairly and squarely, that Minn's Music Mine was a proper guitar shop. A
guitar shop in the grand tradition. The genuine article. If asked to describe itself to some young and
impressionable customer-to-be and suddenly finding itself with the wish and the ability to do so, it might
well have said something like this. In a rich American accent, no doubt.