A Life For Infinite Enjoyment

By B. S. Davies

Is this the real life, or is it just fantasy?
Freddie Ryan Emlyn Davis is just your average self afflicted loser bumbling his way through 1986 since his messy divorce, until he is shot and left for dead at an ATM.
He wakes up in the hospital of a secret organisation under the North Sea only to be told that he is the direct descendent of the magician Merlin; and using powers he did not know he had and has no idea how to use, he must overwhelm a powerfully evil witch from a different dimension bent on plunging the world into abject misery.
A message encrypted with The Mercury Code leads him and his friends to the final combat to decide the fate of the Earth at a Queen concert at Wembley Stadium.
Freddie has to beat the Witch – but he only has a feather duster; and the most evil entity in the Universe is his ex-wife.

• Language: English
• Publisher: B. S. Davies
• Release date: Mar 10, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370625017

B. S. Davies

B S Davies was born at a very young age on Halloween in 1958, the first offspring of Welsh parents. By the time his two sisters were born, the family had moved back to Wales, where his heart is (his lungs are in Norwich, his head is normally somewhere that does not appear on most maps). When he was old enough he joined the Royal Air Force, working in that well known contradiction in terms – Military Intelligence. He left in 1982 and worked at the University of East Anglia in Norwich as a cartographer. Life is a varied path from start to finish, and his has been no different, having worked as a frozen food packager, milkman, advertising executive, graphic designer, which once gave him the obscure opportunity of painting a check on the side of a cow! He is currently working as a freelance Graphic Designer and copywriter.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Bricks do not float very well.

Boats, on the other hand, are designed to do exactly that.

Therefore it was fortunate that the lone angler was sat in a rowing boat and not on a brick watching his float, patiently awaiting his first bite of the day. He glanced enviously at two Crested Grebes as they made successful dives for fish time and time again.

All was peace and tranquillity.

The calm was broken by the sudden noisy departure of swans, their flapping, splashing take-off sent birds scattering from the undergrowth. The angler barely noticed, his attention was on the lake itself. Concentric circles converged on the boat as if it had just been dropped into the water and somebody had filmed it and was running the images backwards. He was still riveted to this phenomenon as the broken sword was thrust through the bottom of the rowing boat.

The small wooden vessel sank instantly (rather like a brick, appropriately), and the angler found himself clinging to the female arm (clad in purest, shimmering samite, of course) which held the violated scimitar aloft, his legs kicking and splashing as he panicked in his efforts to prevent drowning. After a few moments the frantic battle for survival ceased as the faerie limb slipped slowly into the depths.

This action found the angler on his knees, up to his waist in the water of a lake that was only four foot at its deepest. Acutely embarrassed, even though there was nobody to see him, he stood up and waded to shore.

It was a long, soggy, way home.

Freddie slammed the book closed and threw it onto the threadbare dining chair, which served as a table-come clock stand, next to the single bed, that and the wardrobe with only one door, were the only other items of furniture in his dingy one-room bedsit. Load of rubbish! he muttered to the cover of the now redundant paperback. The cover just cheerfully blazoned the title of the book, THE QUEST FOR EXCALIBER! at him. No longer able to stand the confidant nature of the typeface, he flipped the book over only to read ANOTHER BEST-SELLER FROM NIGEL SCRACHITT! ONLY £7.99!

Oh, sod it! He thought, and he stuffed the Court letter back into its envelope. I’m going down the pub. It was another defeat of his already somewhat weakened will power. He had been trying, unsuccessfully, for a week not to go to his regular public house. But every night an excuse cropped up, or another logical reason appeared, as to why a trip to the watering hole was of paramount importance. Tonight’s totally reasonable justification was that he really fancied a pint with his mates.

Frederick Ryan Emlyn Davis, despite being acronymically symmetrical (even his initials spell FRED), was a depressed individual. Ever since the divorce he had sought refuge down his Local every night. He always told himself that it was the company, rather than the drink, that kept him going; even though the company he kept there had changed several times. The only constants there were Darren and Mandy Hughes, the Licensees, and his best friend, Chris Albert, whom he considered to be the closest he would ever get to having a brother again, since his own had tragically died a few years earlier.

They were the reason; them, and the lager.

Freddie had never considered himself a handsome man, in fact quite ordinary looking, he thought. For some reason, a lot of people thought he looked like the bass player of the rock band Queen. He would agree that his hair was very alike to John Deacon’s hair in the ‘Radio Ga Ga’ video.

Freddie was born in the town of Bridgend in South Wales on the fifth of May 1958. His father had been a Toolmaker in Borg Warner in Port Talbot making components for Jaguar gearboxes, and his mother, the archetypal Celtic matriarch, stayed at home and maintained a firm hand on the tiller of the Davis family.

His Grandfather had been ‘One of the Few’ in the Second World War and had spent the last two years of the conflict as a prisoner, languishing in the infamous Colditz Camp. He did not spend his time in captivity idling away the days; he escaped nine times.

In one heroic escape attempt, he tunnelled for two miles using only the upper plate of a pair of false teeth ‘borrowed’ on a permanent basis from a German guard to dig with, and tunnel supports whittled from animal bones salvaged from the Officer’s Mess dustbins. If it had not been for the smell attracting the guard dogs, the attempt would have succeeded. It had been a feat made even more impressive when you consider the fact that he had lost both legs, one of his arms and half his face. Not, as you would expect, coming second in some spectacularly heroic dogfight with a Messerschmitt F109, but in a bar brawl with some Navy ratings in a brothel in Southampton on leave. His captors had removed all his artificial limbs after his sixth escape attempt, but that only served as a bigger incentive.

Working only in the dead of night by the light of a three inch candle he had made from cooking fat and a shoe lace, he crafted a new pair of legs from wood obtained from an old grand piano he had found in the attic of his prison quarters, and a make-shift arm from a few cooking utensils and a tennis racket.

His valiant, and only successful, ninth escape was in May 1945. He had spent fifteen months building a gigantic kite from all the Monopoly boards that the Red Cross had been sending the POW’s. He had used the chewing gum, from the same parcels, to stick the whole thing together.

It was not until he launched himself off the roof of Colditz Castle in the early morning sunshine that he discovered the flaw in his brilliant plan.

Due to half of his face no longer being part of his head, he had found the chewing of the gum quite difficult, and, to assist him in facilitating a speedy escape, he softened the gum using another candle and a soup ladle. Unfortunately, the interaction of saliva was vital to the adhesive quality of the gum and, as he hovered above the wooded splendour of the Saxony countryside awaiting the gust of wind that would swoop him to freedom, the individual boards that had fashioned the diligently crafted kite parted company with each other, and Squadron Leader Edwin Morgan Bethesda Davis, DFC and Bar, plummeted to a near fatal contact with the Fatherland of his mortal enemy.

The mutilated remains of his almost dead body were retrieved by the approaching allied Russian troops and carefully placed in the medical facility in the now liberated Castle, it was the final day of the conflict and Germany had surrendered that morning.

His subsequent horrific injuries and resulting amputation of several remaining vital parts of his anatomy meant that the rest of the brave Squadron Leader’s life was spent as a head on a pillow in the Penyfai Hospital just outside Bridgend.

Not to waste his time there this plucky little War Hero, using only his remaining teeth, managed to fabricate a brass plate that could be fitted on his head to replace the half of his face that was missing. It looked splendid, when finished, and complemented the half-dozen medals that had been pinned to the pillow beside him; especially the bronze medallion from all his old friends at the Maesteg United Services Club. He had died of a particularly serious case of dandruff in ninety seventy-four, at the age of one hundred and three. Freddie still had the quarter inch bolt and wing nut made out of brass he had been bequeathed in his Grandfather’s will, nestled in his wallet.

South Wales did not really offer an adventurous life in nineteen seventy-six; so, head full of ideals and the heroism of the Battle of Britain, Freddie left home at the age of seventeen and joined the Royal Air Force. Originally he had wanted to be an Armourer, but after a bout of pneumonia laid him low for several weeks, his training slipped so far behind it was decided that he would have to retrain. He decided to train as an Assistant Photographic Interpreter learning to extract intelligence from aerial photography, a job that saw him travel all over the world. His last adventure in the Service had been in the Falklands Crisis when he saw action with the Task Force on the aircraft carrier Hermes. Freddie always thought this typified his lot in life, he had spent all his Air Force life training to operate from airfields, and at the first sign of a war- he was put on a boat.

When the Air Force and Freddie parted company amicably, he had worked as a Laboratory Technician at the University of East Anglia, maintaining their extensive library of aerial photography. He had been posted to Norfolk as his last posting and had fallen in love with the fine City of Norwich.

The attraction that Norwich had for him was that it had all of the facilities of a city but, with a five-minute walk you were in the country. His decision to live there had nothing to do whatsoever with the fact the Norwich boasted three hundred and sixty-five public houses; one for every day of the year (as a counterbalance, it also had, at one time, fifty-two churches; one for every Sunday). It was in one of the aforementioned hostelries that he had met his now ex wife.

The Bell Hotel occupies a central position within the city, and, in Freddie’s view, its biggest claim to fame was appearing in the opening sequence of Monty Python’s Flying Circus for a whole season. In nineteen eighty, having been a coach house at one time, it was a veritable maze of genuinely beamed passageways with little side rooms all over the place. Each room contained the latest in computer game technology that your ten pence could buy you five minutes of, Pac Man, Asteroids, Defender and pinball machines abounded. It was a busy pub, especially on a Saturday afternoon.

He had been drinking in the top bar of The Bell every Saturday with Air Force colleagues since he was stationed in Norfolk, over a year before. Always sitting at the bench seats in the huge old disused fireplace at the back of what must have been the Courtyard at one time. Alcohol does strange things like that. Such things like fooling men into thinking that they are kids, and kids into thinking that they are men.

On that fateful day Freddie had imbibed a lot more lunatic soup than he was used to, having just return from a three month tour of duty of Northern Ireland.

Sat with facing the bar, his eyes had lock onto a vision standing there waiting to be served. She was about five foot six, mid twenties with blond hair and wearing tight fitting jeans, and a not overly full white T- shirt. It was as close to poetry that Freddie could ever get.

The room went into soft focus with her in sharp relief. Armed with the alcohol and with a pounding heart and a lump that travelled between his throat and his trousers, he stood and walked up to the vision that was Portia Turnbull, ‘Blue Eyes’ by Elton John was playing on the jukebox and as Freddie got closer, he could see that they were Hello. He said simply.

They had married in the May of nineteen eighty two, had eighteen gloriously happy months, and were acrimoniously divorced in October eighty-four.

As the date stamp on the envelope that he had stuffed under his pillow confirmed, it was the first anniversary of the Decree Absolute which was another reason why he was on his way from the home he called hovel toward the hovel he called home; The Nestleton Arms.

CHAPTER 2

On one of the main roads leading to Norwich city centre, The Nestleton Arms was not much to look at from the outside and even less to look at from the inside. Even the view out of the one large pub window was of another, even scruffier, pub The Dog and Bone.

The Nestleton Arms was named after the explorer Sir Bernard Nestleton who was reputedly the man who discovered the alternative route from Terra Del Fuego to Montevideo via Washington, Southern California and Honolulu. During this epic journey, he claimed also to have discovered several extremely rare species of animals. One of them, the Cross headed Ant, Formica Posidrivus, was reportedly prone to infesting the homes of the nouveau riche in Mexico City and capable of dismantling an entire fitted kitchen overnight. It was an infestation that made Senor Gomez Rommel, the owner of ‘Cocina Rapido’, the second largest kitchen fitting company in South America, one of the richest men on the continent. So busy was he that his hobby of running several ant farms on the outskirts of Mexico City had to take second place.

Sir Bernard was declared mentally unstable after he published his book Weird Creatures: A Trip Amongst the Rarest Animals of Llama-Land. it was said that he hoped that nobody would have travelled to these remote foreign parts, and therefore would not realize that these animal did not exist. His alleged plan, however, fell apart as the expedition was in nineteen seventy-four, and the book published in nineteen seventy-five, when travel to South America had become commonplace. In the subsequent Court case he was declared criminally insane and sent to Rampton Psychiatric Hospital where he was thought to be trying to construct a model of the first London Bridge from his own hair.

The original building that was now The Nestleton Arms had once been two shops; one had been a public bathhouse and the other a butcher’s, and had been converted by demolishing the middle wall. The Nestleton, affectionately known as ‘The Nessie’ only had the one bar that ran along the longest wall of the pub. The main area was split into three by mock Tudor lattices atop two waist high walls, the middle section was the seating area for people brave enough (or totally innocent of the risk) to attempt the menu.

The decor of ‘The Nessie’ left a lot to be desired. The traditional gold and red flocked wallpaper was faded and so worn that it looked like even the moths had given up with indigestion. The light shades were adorned with alternating schemes of the ‘Corner-bits-of-tinsel-from-one-hundred-Christmases-held-up-with-drawing-pins’ line and the ‘Cobwebs-of-a-thousand-spiders-spread-tastefully-across-red-tassled-lampshades’variety. What remained of the once red carpet was held together by the adhesive qualities of the gallons of alcoholic beverages that had been spilled upon it over the years, there was more pile on the pool table; and shone brightly in certain light conditions.

The pool table was virtually antique; somebody with infinite jest had even scratched ‘USA out of Vietnam’ on the side of it. Freddie and his friends had spent many hours, and many pounds, playing on it. In the alcove next to the now obsolete fireplace was the jukebox, containing, due to constant, heartrending pleading an extensive collection of Queen. At the other end of the pool table was one of the two doors into the establishment.

It was through that particular welcoming portal that Freddie entered on that cold October night in need of companionship and alcoholic solace but not necessarily in that order. Freddie strode to the bar looking for familiar faces, but it was too early for most of them; not even Chris was there. As he stood at the empty bar he put his hand into his pocket to find he had no cash. He was searching for his cash point card when the Landlord, Darren, appeared with all the magical alacrity of Mr. Benn’s favourite shopkeeper.

In his hand was professionally clutched a clean pint glass, Lager? he inquired of Freddie.

Just a pint. was the stock reply from Freddie. And while it’s brewing, I’ll just nip to the hole in the wall for some beer tokens. Thankfully, for Freddie at least, the bank was only a little further down the street.

And this was where a strange dilemma had been laid for him. It was a predicament that most people would be glad of, and at times he was; very glad. It presented itself as he made the routine inquiry into his bank balance. He had been out of work for the last six months, he had several jobs since he had been made redundant from the University, but he was always hit with the ‘Last In, First Out’ curse. Although the severance payments had always been good, in fact he considered making a living of being made redundant.

That money ran out all too soon, but for the last six weeks the amount in his account had remained steadily at two thousand pound. If he withdrew three hundred pound now, the balance in the morning would read two thousand again. At first he thought it was probably a computer error, along with the thought that he should stay quiet about it. That, he realized, would be stupid, the bank would soon realize and charge him for the unofficial overdraft.

He had made inquiries; correction, he had tried to make inquiries. He had seen his ‘Personal Account Advisor’ with no result, he had seen the ‘Personal Account Advisor’s Advisor’, still no result. He was passed to the ‘Senior Loans Advisor’, whom he did not trust one inch, who passed him on to a Sectional Manager who washed his hands of the whole affair. A week later he received a letter from the Bank Manager offering a consultation with a ‘Personal Account Advisor’.

Because of the fact that he may, at any time, be asked to repay the full amount, this apparently serendipitous windfall had actually taught him monetary restraint. With this in mind he withdrew only ten pounds from the now inevitable two thousand balance and, after retrieving his card, returned to his awaiting pint.

The pint of amber fluid seemed to smile to him from the bar as he re-entered the pub. As he approached he held out the crisp, new ten-pound note for Darren. No need, said Darren, Your other half bought it. He nodded toward the pool table, which had been set up ready to play. His friend, confidant and erstwhile adopted brother, Chris stood smiling at the balk end of the table with a cue in his hand.

Wotcha, cock! cried Freddie.

Watch your own! the standard reply from near the pool table. Was that a new tenner I saw then? Chris asked Freddie.

Certainly was, that nice machine on the wall down the road just printed it for me.

I can show you how to make it worth more. Chris announced, slightly louder than was needed.

Freddie instantly recognized the tone and joined in, this was a wind-up. Worth more, you say, Chris? It worked; Darren sidled up their end behind the bar, polishing one pint glass very carefully. Darren always fell for their jokes, would he ever learn?

Probably not.

Please observe, continued Chris, I take this smooth, clean, crisp ten pound note and fold it in half. He folded the note length ways, Then in half this way, he folded it width ways. Noting Darren’s undivided attention, he folded the ten-pound note twice more; each time making sure the crease was nice and sharp. Darren was riveted.

Now I open it up, with aplomb, Chris unfolded the tenner completely. And you will find you ten pound note increases. Darren stared with a brow contorted with a frown, as Freddie and Chris doubled up with laughter.

Freddie tried to explain to him Increases? In creases; get it?

Darren smiled weakly and tried a half-hearted chuckle, he never really understood their humour, and it was always too cerebral for him, a retired police dog handler. They had him searching all over both sides of a five-pound note one night, looking for the hitchhiker that Freddie had told him you could see on it. He had given up after four hours and returned the note to Freddie, who gave it a cursory glance and announced that somebody must have given the hiker a lift.

Later that evening, after several games of pool where the result ended even, as always, and several downed pints of lager, as always, Freddie was sat on a bar stool on the corner of the bar, as always. He watched Chris chatting to two old ladies who sat on the padded bench seats in what was optimistically called the ‘Dining Area’. Chris was always able to talk to anybody that came into the pub, the only thing that Freddie felt the slightest tinge of envy about. He had never been overly gregarious.

In fact, that is how he had met Chris back in 1982.

It had been a few nights after he had received the news that Rhys, his half-brother, had died and he had just attended the inquest. Rhys Andrew Davis was two years older than Freddie and had become an animal activist in some obscure group or other, and had hatched a plan to steal two Bengal Tigers from Chessington Zoo and release them back into the wild.

At the inquest it was established that he had borrowed a Volkswagen Kombi with a dog cage separating the driving compartment from the living accommodation. According to the leader of the operation, ‘Ferret’, there had been no problem getting the cats into the van and the journey to Dartmoor had been quite uneventful.

Ferret, who had A real problem with open spaces, man, stayed in the passenger seat mainly because he also had A real problem with the confrontational aspects of vehicular interaction, man, meaning he could not drive, so he claimed that he did not really see what happened next. ‘Coypu’, his second-in-command and driver, took over the narration.

Apparently, ‘Muskrat’ (Rhys’s activist pseudonym) was worried about the lavatorial needs of the animals, leapt from the van. Without any thought of danger to himself, he flung open the doors and the female tiger pounced on him and dragged him into some nearby bushes. It was at this point ‘Coypu’ broke down in tears and had to be consoled by Sir Henry Cotswold-Smyth, her father. Soothed by parental succour, ‘Coypu’ (real name Felicity) continued and added that, it had to be the female tiger because the male was taking a shit in the van.

After the inquest was adjourned with a finding of accidental death, Freddie retired to The Nestleton Arms for a serious bout of alcohol-supported depression, which he told himself, was a wake for his brother. Being the sole surviving member of the Davis family weighed heavily on his shoulders.

He had broached the subject of starting a family with Portia about six months before the divorce but had met with a resounding rebuttal. She was a career girl and her job as a freelance holiday writer was far more important. The constant opportunity to jet off, all expenses paid, to a tropical paradise for three weeks at the behest of a Travel Agency, was quite enough to slow the ticking of anybody’s biological clock to a virtual standstill.

Well into the maudlin stage of his lager-fuelled mourning, Freddie noticed the operatic strains of Bohemian Rhapsody breaking through to his consciousness, and a figure sat next to him joining in tunelessly with the high bits. What the hell are you doing? asked Freddie, in a low, slightly slurred, voice.

The face that turned toward him had a hint of Orient and a strong mix of Italian and a twist of cheese and onion. The latter was explained by the bag that was thrust into Freddie’s face, Crisp?

Chris Albert was 25 going on 14, six foot four in his mind, but five foot eight in his socks. Due to the amount of time spent asleep in his bed he had a laid back attitude to life and his hair, which was tied back in a ponytail,. He only came to the pub in the evenings, although he had no job, and was running up a tab behind the bar that could be put to good use by some smaller third world countries.

Freddie turned down the proffered crisps with a shake of his head, and drained the last of his lager from his glass; Darren was on hand for a refill when required. Chris did not say anything for several minutes, and then he simply said, Tell me, what’s up? Chris had the ability to help people open up and unburden their troubled thoughts upon him.

Freddie told him all about Rhys’s inquest and his death, the fact that his marriage was about to run aground, and that he felt the urgent need to have offspring. But the only thing that Portia feels any maternal instinct for is her pet chicken. She takes him everywhere.

Really? said Chris, Has it got a name, this chicken?

Yes, it’s Clucking Fevver. Freddie informed him. I named it.

Chris’s response was tangential. I hate those self-testing pregnancy kits from chemist shops.

What? Freddie was puzzled.

They’re a rip off.

How do you mean?

Well, the woman buys it, uses it, and then, if the result says positive, the instructions tell you that to be certain, consult your doctor. Which they should have done in the first place, for free I might add, instead of paying good money in the shop. Chris was in full flow now, It’s like publishing a magazine with the times for television programmes in it, then stating that none of the programmes, or the times, or even the channels for that matter, can be relied on and to consult Teletext to be sure.

By the time that conversation had run its course, Freddie’s self pity and moroseness had evaporated, and a deep friendship had begun to blossom. A friendship that was to last and a friendship that was to become even closer in the near future.

CHAPTER 3

Huddled at the bar one dark and dismal Friday night in November Freddie, Barry and Darren were having a deep philosophical discussion about life, the universe and everything in The Nessie.

Piss off! Barry, who had always had a way with words, said.

Honestly, Freddie assured him, She is trained not to blink.

Freddie had postulated that the secret of eternal youth lay in not blinking, and had presented that the proof lay in the BBC test card. It came to me one night as I sat there watching it. he continued, At first I thought she may blink at exactly the same time as I did, so I videoed two hours of it. I fast-forwarded and rewound it several times, trying to catch her out. Then I suddenly thought to myself ‘You idiot! She works for the BBC she will have been professionally trained not to blink!’

Darren and Barry exchanged a look that said they thought they were witnessing a mental breakdown. But Freddie was getting into the swing of his hypothesis now, Then I thought, ‘But she’s been on the telly now for about twenty five years and she’s not aged at all!’ and that got me thinking. Everybody I know is getting older and they all blink. So, if you want to stay young, don’t blink!

It was at this point that Barry, who thought Willie Descartes was a van driver who delivered pornography, had eloquently voiced his opposition to this deduction. Darren, ever one to play the Devil’s Advocate, took a more conciliatory stance. Can you offer any proof to support your statement?

Freddie hurriedly swallowed a mouthful of his seventh pint of lager, I can indeed, sir. I offer as support to this theorem, the clown balloon! The other two started to look a bit more concerned. But there was no stopping Freddie now, How many times have you spent the day blowing up balloons for a party, only to find the next morning that they have shrivelled to the size of a used condom? he continued, ignoring the looks of distaste from his audience. But that clown has never shown any traces of deflating, and he doesn’t blink either! Quid Et Demonstratum. To punctuate this triumph of logic, he downed his pint with a flourish.

Knackers! announced Barry after a short consideration.

The discussion fell into silent reflection; Darren took Freddie’s empty glass and walked to the other end of the bar to refill it from the Premium Lager pump. As he returned he said to Barry, So what do you think the Meaning of Life is then, Barry, what’s it all about?

Alfie, replied Barry.

Is that your answer? asked Darren.

Yep, nodded Barry, Cilla got it right when she sang those words. ‘What’s it all about? Alfie.’ I just haven’t figured out what Alfie means, I think it’s an acronym, but all I’ve come up with so far is Aphid Liberation Front In England; I don’t think it stands for that.

Darren was not sure if Barry was joking or he meant it, but he made his offering Perhaps its ‘Alien Life Forms Invading Everywhere.’

Freddie just shrugged, Maybe it stands for A Life For Infinite Enjoyment. He took a sip out of his glass, That’s better, he sighed, it always tastes better before you’ve paid for it. he went to his pocket only to find a few coins, but not enough to pay Darren. I’d better nip down to the Hole-in-the-Wall.

You could always put it on Chris’s tab. suggested Darren.

Freddie shook his head, Not the done thing, old chap. Not when the bloke’s not here.

Where is he tonight, anyway? asked Barry.

I have not got the foggiest; he could be in bed, or at home. No idea, mate. I’d better go and get some beer tokens. Freddie got up, and took another sip from his glass, To die for! he sighed with satisfaction. Then he stood up from his bar stool, put on his official blue 1982 Queen Tour jacket and stepped out of the pub.

That was the last time that most people in The Nessie