hung it up carefully. It was, after all, a suit with a London label, from a shop on Portobello Road, even if he had bought it at a Minneapolis department store.
Next he took off his imported English leather shoes, his imported English wool socks, and his Union Jack ‘Standfast’ underwear. He crawled into bed to meet his insomnia.
That Englishman, Sir Somebody, had laughed at him! That was the worst part. They all knew by now:
He hadn’t been to England at all.
The nearest he ever got was buying something English, reading a travel guide, or corresponding with his pen pal, a ten-year-old boy in Scunthorpe whose hobbies included collecting American stamps. The little snot was blackmailing him: information on the English scene for batches of stamps.
This wasn’t jolly hockey-sticks at all. He’d have to get to England itself, no matter how.
England! my England!
he thought.
England’s green and pleasant land. Swinging England. Land of hope and glory. Little Olde England, where the sun never sets…
He gazed on the picture over his bed, a dazzling picture of the Queen, while his right hand moved under the covers in a familiar and traditional rhythm, old as the rhythm of the waves over which Britannia rules.
Eight: The House
NUMBER ONE TAKES CARE OF ITSELF
………. noun is a replacement for the pronoun I wonder Bob wonders this man wonders how the hell long he’s going to be in here trapped here in an abandoned mind shaft (and are the psychiatrists still digging out there?) and buried under tons of crushing self buried a back number: ‘They have parsed my hands and my feet, they have numbered all my bones’ now there’s a thought more noughts than crosses though a crucial difference that essential plus
Old numb copybones the headbone connected to nothing really the fingerbone maybe that digit in my nostril really is one and ‘hands and feet’ are measurements too they have me here the integers, trace, fear, sank, sex they (la enemy Hymeneal, read me any way I’m still an em wide) have fed me right into their number mumbling machine I’m
That’s me all right, the old inchworm. And my winding sheet is
ROBINS ON COURSE
Luckily I managed to rescue from the shipwreck an inflatable house, miniature bulldozer, seeds, farming implements, swimming pool kit, prefab bomb shelter, guns, ammo, libraries and lab equipment for geology, botany, zoology, horticulture, medicine and chemistry, instructions for building and operating generators, miniature manufacturing systems of several kinds, ‘Hints for the Amateur Fanner’, supplies of fuel and food for at least five years, a wilderness survival kit and guide, carpenters’, plumbers’ and machinists’ tool kits, a selection of light novels (neither depressing nor the kind that make civilization look too good), several hundred pounds each of wood, plastic, metal stock, glue, epoxy, nails, small standard machine parts, an abundance of copper wire and electronic parts in all sizes, several radios, televisions, home appliances of all descriptions (all portable and with extra batteries), a one man oil-drilling rig, a small tape recorder suitable for memoranda and recording bird cries, a barbecue hat, briquets, etc., etc.
The thought of escape is not so tasty as the thought of keeping what I’ve got. The crash-priority projects must be:
(1) a first-line defense system (alarms, mortars, shelter and perhaps short-range rocket defense).
(2) hygienic water supply and sewage disposal.
(3) oil refinery.
(4) swimming pool and barbecue pit.
(5) drugs from local flora (the supply of Noctec, Miltown, Somnos, Librium, Equanil, Trancopal, etc., is alarmingly low already).
These should keep me pretty busy for a few months, after which I’ll be able to get up trie NO TRESPASSING signs, ser up the printing press, maybe run off my own currency.
The island is snug and comfy already. The only thing (besides lack of sex and the old nagging headache) that really bothers me
Next he took off his imported English leather shoes, his imported English wool socks, and his Union Jack ‘Standfast’ underwear. He crawled into bed to meet his insomnia.
That Englishman, Sir Somebody, had laughed at him! That was the worst part. They all knew by now:
He hadn’t been to England at all.
The nearest he ever got was buying something English, reading a travel guide, or corresponding with his pen pal, a ten-year-old boy in Scunthorpe whose hobbies included collecting American stamps. The little snot was blackmailing him: information on the English scene for batches of stamps.
This wasn’t jolly hockey-sticks at all. He’d have to get to England itself, no matter how.
England! my England!
he thought.
England’s green and pleasant land. Swinging England. Land of hope and glory. Little Olde England, where the sun never sets…
He gazed on the picture over his bed, a dazzling picture of the Queen, while his right hand moved under the covers in a familiar and traditional rhythm, old as the rhythm of the waves over which Britannia rules.
Eight: The House
NUMBER ONE TAKES CARE OF ITSELF
………. noun is a replacement for the pronoun I wonder Bob wonders this man wonders how the hell long he’s going to be in here trapped here in an abandoned mind shaft (and are the psychiatrists still digging out there?) and buried under tons of crushing self buried a back number: ‘They have parsed my hands and my feet, they have numbered all my bones’ now there’s a thought more noughts than crosses though a crucial difference that essential plus
Old numb copybones the headbone connected to nothing really the fingerbone maybe that digit in my nostril really is one and ‘hands and feet’ are measurements too they have me here the integers, trace, fear, sank, sex they (la enemy Hymeneal, read me any way I’m still an em wide) have fed me right into their number mumbling machine I’m
That’s me all right, the old inchworm. And my winding sheet is
ROBINS ON COURSE
Luckily I managed to rescue from the shipwreck an inflatable house, miniature bulldozer, seeds, farming implements, swimming pool kit, prefab bomb shelter, guns, ammo, libraries and lab equipment for geology, botany, zoology, horticulture, medicine and chemistry, instructions for building and operating generators, miniature manufacturing systems of several kinds, ‘Hints for the Amateur Fanner’, supplies of fuel and food for at least five years, a wilderness survival kit and guide, carpenters’, plumbers’ and machinists’ tool kits, a selection of light novels (neither depressing nor the kind that make civilization look too good), several hundred pounds each of wood, plastic, metal stock, glue, epoxy, nails, small standard machine parts, an abundance of copper wire and electronic parts in all sizes, several radios, televisions, home appliances of all descriptions (all portable and with extra batteries), a one man oil-drilling rig, a small tape recorder suitable for memoranda and recording bird cries, a barbecue hat, briquets, etc., etc.
The thought of escape is not so tasty as the thought of keeping what I’ve got. The crash-priority projects must be:
(1) a first-line defense system (alarms, mortars, shelter and perhaps short-range rocket defense).
(2) hygienic water supply and sewage disposal.
(3) oil refinery.
(4) swimming pool and barbecue pit.
(5) drugs from local flora (the supply of Noctec, Miltown, Somnos, Librium, Equanil, Trancopal, etc., is alarmingly low already).
These should keep me pretty busy for a few months, after which I’ll be able to get up trie NO TRESPASSING signs, ser up the printing press, maybe run off my own currency.
The island is snug and comfy already. The only thing (besides lack of sex and the old nagging headache) that really bothers me
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