"Robert Rankin - Snuff Fiction" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rankin Robert)

Billy said that down in BlotтАЩs lair amongst the heating pipes, he drank his tea from the stokerтАЩs
skull-cap and sat upon an armchair upholstered in human skin.
As it turned out at the trial, Billy wasnтАЩt altogether wrong about the armchair.
But the trial was for the future and way back then, in the time that was our now, we hated Mr Blot.
Hated his boiler suit and matching cap. Hated his woollen muffler and his onion head. Hated his loom-ing
and his sniffing and his smell.
The time that was our now was 1958 and we were nine years old and plenty of us. Post-war baby
boomers, forty to a class. Weetabix and orange juice for breakfast, half a pint of milk at playtime with a
straw. Spain for lunch, and tea, if you were lucky. Bovril and Marmite and Ovaltine before you went to
bed.
Our teacher was Mr Vaux. He wore a handlebar moustache that he referred to as a тАШpussy-ticklerтАЩ
and a tweed sports jacket. In our youthful innocence we naturally assumed that pussy-tickling was some
kind of exotic sport indulged in by gentlemen who wore tweed. We were right, in essence.
Mr Vaux was a gentleman; he had a posh accent and had flown Spiffires in the war. He had been
shot down over France and the Gestapo had tortured him with a screwdriver. He had three medals in his
desk drawer and these he wore on Empire Day.
Mr Vaux was something of a hero.
Mr Vaux and Mr Blot did not see eye to eye. In the winter it got very cold in class. We were
allowed to wear our coats. Mr Vaux would turn up the radiators and Mr Blot would come in and turn
them down again.
But it didnтАЩt seem to be winter that often. Mostly it seemed to be summer. Our classroom faced the
west and on those summer after-noons the sunlight fell through the high Edwardian windows in long
cathedral shafts, rich with floating golden motes, and put us all to sleep. Mr Vaux would try to rouse us
with tales of his adventures behind enemy lines. But eventually he would give it up as a lost cause, open
his silver cigarette case, take out a Capstan Full Strength and sit back, with his feet on the desk, awaiting
the four oтАЩclock bell.
It was Mr Vaux who got us into smoking really. Of course in those days everybody smoked. Film
stars and politicians. Doctors and nurses. Priests in the pulpit and midwives on the job. Footballers all
enjoyed a Wild Woodbine at half-time and marathon runners were rarely to be seen crossing the finishing
lines without a fag in their faces.
And how well I recall those first pictures of Sir Edmund Hillary upon the summit of Everest sucking
on a Senior Service.
Those indeed were the days.
But faraway days they are now. And in these present times, some fifty years later, in these
post-technological days of heavy food rationing, riots and the new Reichstag, it is hard to imagine a
golden epoch in the century before, when smoking was not only legal, but good for you.
And yet it is curious how, in so many ways, those times mirror our own. Then, as now, television
was in black and white. Then, as now, there were only two stations and these run by the state. Then, as
now, food was rationed. Then, as now, there was conscription. Then, as now, there were no computers.
But then, and unlike now, we were happy.
It is certainly true that the old often look back upon the days of their youth with an ill-deserved
fondness. They harp on about тАШthe good old days, the good old daysтАЩ, whilst filling in the pock holes of
hardship with the face cream of faulty recollection, and no doubt papering over the cracks of catastrophe
with the heavily flocked and Paisley-patterned washable wallpaper of false memory syndrome. While this
may be the case, some times are actually better than others. And most were better than ours.
As I write today, on 30 July 2008, a mere eight and a half years on from the great millennium
computer crash, with the world gone down the pan and halfway round the old S bend, it is easy to
breathe out a sigh for times gone by and wonder where they went.
Up in smoke is where they went, which brings me back to fags.
Mr Vaux, as IтАЩve said, smoked Capstan Full Strength, flavoursome and rich in health. As children,