Cheerio, And Thanks For The Apocalypse

By Ian Hutson

It’s not easy being a vegetarian ray of positivity and social sunshine after the apocalypse. For one thing, meat’s easier to come by than broccoli.

Seven awfully English tales of life just that one step too far into your future. I went there so that you wouldn’t have to.

Once upon a time you could rely on death and taxes, but now it’s only taxes. Old age is rotten, life never ends and croaking it, turning up your toes, putting on the wooden overcoat, assuming room temperature, shaking that last double-six and even, not to put too fine a point on it, pushing up the proverbial daisies isn’t the restful release that you hoped it would be. Your last best hope is England’s two finest “popular television scientists” and their dog, each being granted three wishes by a troglodyte genie from Lancashire. You won’t believe what the dog wished for. I believed it, but then, you see, I knew the dog in real life, so nothing surprises me anymore.

This book is a celebration of old-fashioned language and unsubtle entertainment. It features strong male leads and no diversity whatsoever. This book won’t enlighten you and it certainly won’t somehow “educate” you. If we’re lucky, you and I, it might just distract you for a couple of hours. Imagine your brain as being made of soft rubber, being let off the leash in the park and running around on the grass with other brains, peeing up trees, chasing balls and then throwing itself down at your feet, panting – that’s the best effect that either of us can hope for from Cheerio, and Thanks for the Apocalypse.

Seriously. This is a book for blokes. A very unserious book indeed.

You’ve got to laugh, haven’t you? Laugh and the whole world will give you the wide, wary berth you always dreamed of, wondering what you know that they don’t. Cry and they’ll be lining up to poke you with sticks. I recommend laughing

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ian Hutson
• Release date: Nov 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463475089

Ian Hutson

Born during tiffin in the sea-side town of Cleethorpes, England, in the year nineteen-sixty. The shame and scandal forced the family to move immediately to Hong Kong. There spoke only Cantonese and some pidgin English and was a complete brat. At the end of the sixties was to be found on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Still a brat. Finally learned to read and write under the strict disciplinarian regime of the Nicolson Institute and one Miss Crichton. Then spent a year living in Banham Zoo in Norfolk, swapping childhood imaginary friends for howler monkeys and gibbons. Literally in the zoo, to get home he had to go through the entry turnstiles, past the wolves, past the bears and past the penguins. Didn’t bother with the local school for the entire year, and school was grateful.Found himself working for the English Civil Service. Was asked to leave by the Home Secretary’s secretary’s secretary’s secretary’s assistant. A few years of corporate life earned some more kind invitations to leave. Ran a few unfortunate companies. Went down the plug-hole with the global economy and found himself in court, bankrupt, with home, car and valuables auctioned off by H.M. Official Receivers. Lived for some years then by candlelight in a hedgerow in rural Lincolnshire as a peacenik vegan hippie drop-out. Now lives on a canal boat, narrowboat Cardinal Wolsey, rushing up and down England’s canals and rivers at slightly over two miles per hour. Wrestles with badgers.Dog person not a cat person. Dogs and cats both know this.

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Cheerio, and thanks for the apocalypse

Ian Hutson

Smashwords eBook Edition

Copyright Ian Hutson 2018

Published by

The Diesel-Electric Elephant Company

of England

Discover other books from Ian Hutson at

dieselelectricelephant.co.uk

This eBook is licensed for your personal use and enjoyment only.

CONTENTS

Bazza, Gazza, Shazza, Tom, Dick and Harry

Buttercup Towers and The Pams of Peace

A Better England

Belphegor and the six-inch nail

Elizabeth, Warrior Queen

And they think that I’m insane

Space, Time, and Pipsqueak

About the author

Other Ttitles by Ian Hutson

Bazza, Gazza, Shazza, Tom, Dick and Harry

London, thirteen and a half minutes after whenever your last memory of the place was.

A dreadfully pale man wearing a sandwich-board ran past, screaming hysterically and waving his arms about like a big, southern, metropolitan Jessie.

The end, it seemed, was nigh.

Very nigh.

The dreadfully pale sandwich-board man’s pet bulldog followed on behind, panting and looking anxiously to the rear as though the end was so nigh that it was about to sneak up and perhaps bite him on the bum. English bulldogs are not fond of being bitten on the bum.

Elsewhere in the delightful urban landscape an earnest-looking old gentleman in a white fall-out suit, white wellington boots and a dented white tin helmet cranked at the handle of a portable siren, the note falling and rising to match the movements of his arm. His arm had, for the most part, been trained in this motion by the lifting of pints of ale in the Cheerful Cockerknee public house. The nature of this training, and the gentleman’s arthritic joints, lent a slow, doleful cadence to the warning, as though even the siren realised that the day would not end well. His little white terrier watched him work, occasionally gulping in a deep breath and adding a howl of his own to the alert.

London bluebottles, when not looking anxiously to the sky or to their pocket-watches for the end of their shift, directed motor-traffic somewhat uncharacteristically brusquely, almost ordering the common people to return to the safety of their own homes as quickly as possible. Close inspection would have revealed that the safety-catches had been released on their whistles and truncheons, just in case of trouble.

Key commercial establishments of all kinds, the butchers, the bakers, the mother-of-pearl button importers, the eel-boilers and even the candle-stick makers, locked their doors and turned their window-signs to Sod off, guv’nor, we’re closed. Many forewent their customary double-counting of the coins as they cashed up and then scurried around to drop the takings into the Bow Bells Bank’s night-safe. The lady who works in the little cubicle inside behind the night-safe hatch snatched at each canvas bag, anxious to be on her way back to her own two-up two-down with outside lavvy and space for three bins and a bit of washing. She was worried about the prospect of an atomic war catching her with not a child in the house properly washed, and she doubted that anyone would have thought to light a fire under the outhouse copper.

Even the taxi ranks were almost empty. Some of the more apocalypse-savvy cabbies had pinned their hearts of gold on their sleeves, filled their cabs with anything that looked like it might be an orphan, and were even then driving to the coast, convinced that no-one, not even Johnny Foreigner, would be bothered to bomb Clacton or Walton-on-the-Naze. This conviction had much in its favour, not least the stockpiles of cockles, whelks and eel-pie ice-cream in place in the seaside establishments that would indeed have seen any survivors through the fall-out period, had Johnny Foreigner not in fact recklessly generously dispatched additional missiles with the sole intent of destroying the English seaside experience once and for all.

In their affordable terraced homes clustered downwind of Buckingham Palace, other, less-motorised but still murderously-cheerful Cockney types used internal doors and blankets to form shelters under the old apples and pears, had one last good tom tit in the outside lavvy, and crawled in alongside the trouble and strife, both waiting patiently to be brown bread, as indicated in the Civil Defence leaflets.

Trendy Camden types used their cycling-toned muscles to pump up inflatable anti-fallout tents made from reassuring-looking silver material. Zipping themselves up inside they then, generally, began to meditate for World Peace to extend, unusually, to the inclusion of peace and love for England and Englishmen too. Technically these meditations were known and catalogued at the Ministry of Martial Music as The Norfolk ’n’ Chance Chants.

The finger-bells weren’t a problem, but a lot of kaftans prematurely became shrouds as the serenity and love gave way to the incense fumes building up in such confined spaces. On balance, it was perhaps not the worst way to see out the day. Ching-ching, ching-ching, cough-cough, om mani padme cough-ching, ching-ching, wheeze-wheeze, hum ching-chi... black-out and the gentle thud of a late-model hippie hitting the Tibetan camping-rug, falling arse over karma one last time, so to speak. Camden types are nothing if not stylish to the last.

In Mayfair and Belgravia the more substantial people stiffened their upper lips with proprietary brands of upper-lip stiffener, and then carried them under permanently-offended noses into inflatable anti-fallout tents made from even more reassuring-looking gold material. These shelters had been inflated by gruff-looking chaps who ordinarily did the outdoor work, such as removing fatty blockages, hair and unwanted pets from the drains, or such as correcting the grammar of the graffiti on the garden walls, or removing squatter’s van-conversions and touring caravans from the less-frequently travelled of the several driveways.

Maids and footmen inked out little brown luggage labels with title, name, honours held and date of birth – in slightly shaky hands, it must be said – and tied them with fuzzy brown string to the fresh, bright pink toes offered up through the unzipped shelter doorways by their lords and masters and ladies and mistresses. Housekeepers and butlers then passed in the decanters and picnic basket hampers from Fortnums and from Harrods, before heading back to wherever it was that housekeepers, footmen, maids and butlers stored themselves when not actually in use. Probably somewhere close to where the spare flunkies were kept. Probably quite near the mops and things.

‘Dinner at eight as usual, Sodbucket, unless the apocalypse over-runs, in which case we’ll take a late cold collation in the library.’

‘Very good, my lord.’

‘While the family is in the shelter, Mrs Hughes, you might take the opportunity to re-wax the hallway parquet – I noticed one or two unsightly scuffs as we drove in. You might also ask Stench or whatever his name is, the chap that’s terribly practical, to remove the Range Rovers, the Bristol and the Aston Martin and to then mend the front doors and put them back on their hinges. We don’t want to encourage burglars, do we?’

‘Certainly, my lady.’

‘Oh, I almost forgot. Mrs Hughes?’

‘Yes, my lady?’

‘I shall be needing something suitably survivalist to wear tomorrow. Please ask Baxter to lay out my shrimp and watercress tweeds and to select a pair of comfortable, stout shoes to co-ordinate. I leave the choice of hat to you, but perhaps something with a medium-wide brim might be useful, it is likely that radio-active ash from the poorer neighbourhoods will be falling for most of the morning.’

‘Very good, my lady.’

‘Oh – and please tell Simpkins to fit the all-terrain tyres, bull-bars and air-intake snorkel to His Lordship’s favourite Rolls-Royce. His Lordship is already crabby, I shall encourage him to take a drive into the countryside tomorrow – fresh air for His Lordship, peace and quiet for One oneself.’

‘Very good, my lady.’

‘Oh, and Hughes, ask Barrow to pop a selection of Purdeys, and someone to re-load them into the Rolls. His Lordship can relieve some of his tension by taking pot-shots at any especially-ugly rural survivors.’

Mrs Hughes considered asking her ladyship for an unpaid half-day off so that Mrs Hughes might visit loved ones and then enjoy a brief spell with Mrs Hughes’ feet up, a cup of tea and a biscuit before the end of the world, but Mrs Hughes decided to not push her luck.

‘Very good, my lady.’

In short, to wit and to not put too fine a point on it, London was scattering like ants sensing a blast from a caretaker’s DDT spray, scattering like barristers caught in a ray of sunlight, running for dark hidey-holes like politicians faced with a Public Enquiry. London was hunkering down like a dog about to be whipped.

‘Oh, and Hughes?’

‘Yes, my lady?’

‘Remind the staff that I will have no running out into the streets in panic, nor any unsightly dying in the gardens. The staff may watch the apocalypse from the mews if they wish – but for no more than five minutes.’

Mrs Hughes considered telling her ladyship to swivel on it, but professionalism won out.

‘Very good, my lady. Shall I...’

The atomic flash lasted only moments, radiation infiltrating everything even before those in the open realised that they had been blinded. Heat, an unnatural, crisping, vaporising heat, rolled out from the centre, faster, much faster, than the 4:50 express leaving Paddington Station. Miss Marple, among others, would never see Milchester again.

In London’s better parks Nannies pushing heavy Silver Cross prams laden with the chubby, smiling babies of Kensington, Chelsea, Knightsbridge and Belgravia dissolved in a confused blur of charcoal, ash, and dust. Air hair lair, heir and a spare, gorn in ruddy moments they were, just no longer there, so unfair.

Her Majesty, The Second Queen of Elizabeth, died without seeing her end coming at all, the Buckingham Palace downstairs lavatory being windowless, and lit by a single bare bulb. One moment One was on the throne, considering the Magic Marker messages scribbled on the washable hospital green paint on the concrete walls, listening to the echo of the high cistern dripping, and tut-tutting over the yellow stains around the urinal (Philip’s aim was worsening with each passing year), the next moment One was history. Quite a lot of history, One grants you, but history nonetheless.

Philip, at that moment enjoying a relaxing whipping and a stick of crisp, fresh celery up his Arsenal Villa with one of One’s less-unsightly maids, barely had a chance to mutter ‘Oh bugger!’ before he was separated molecule from molecule without so much as being hanged, drawn and quartered first for the high treason of low infidelity.

Charles, in his day-cot in the nursery with his ears therapeutically (but ineffectually) stapled back, involuntarily swallowed his Koh-i-Noor dummy, felt the cold chill of the realisation that it was true, he really would never be Queen, and then left a very sooty outline on the colourful One’s Empire wallpaper (somewhere between One’s Taj Mahal and One’s Thirteen Colonies, north of One’s Keenyah but south of One’s Suez Canal). So much for Divine Right and the generally popular understanding that You Can’t Kill a King. He barely had time to mutter ‘Oh bugger!’ let alone to fill his nappy with the tangible evidence of royal disappointment.

Screaming winds then reversed the atomic heat-wave, blasting inwards with a howl, bringing ordinary flame and ordinary smoke along with them. Wolseleys, Hillmans, Jaguars and Standard Vanguards alike in the leafy suburbs lifted off their wheels, became burnt-out wrecks and having rolled over and over, at first towards the outer horizon, then rolled back towards the centre. High, high above the City stood the mushroom cloud, growing as though flexing its muscles, a towering alien god – but lit from within by fires borrowed from Hell itself.

Where once had been a lovely, lovely sprawling metropolis there now stood a single, cheery-red Post Office letterbox, smoke pouring from the slot as the love-letters, birthday cheques from auntie and Football Pools coupons within, stamped with first class and second class alike, crisped and smouldered, proving if proof be needed that it really was pointless to pay the extra. Where once had been a royal park there now stood a child’s swing, the chains and iron seat heated to a glowing red.

By no stretch of the imagination could it be termed a good day for London.

Nor could it be said to have been an entirely good day for sandwich-board merchants either. Oh, they had been proven to be accurate in their forecasts, but at some not insignificant cost to themselves. The dreadfully pale man with the The End is Really Quite Nigh, You Know sandwich-board was still running, still screaming hysterically, but his trouser-laundry problems paled into insignificance in comparison with the fact that he was quite seriously ablaze and trailed thick smoke as he ran, giving off an aroma not unlike that of roast pork.

His pet bulldog, seriously aflame himself, still ran after him and ran then with unaccustomed vigour, salivating and following the delicious aroma of the other pork.

London had been obliterated.

No, but seriously, you ought not to laugh. Control yourself. Seriously now - London had been obliterated.

Where once had been a pretty, approachable repository of polite, laid-back, human-shaped civilisation and deep, deep joy there now remained only a hot and blasted crater surrounded by a pastry crust made from everyone’s favourite boroughs, and with a dry river-bed running through it. Tower Bridge was, as usual, neither up nor down, and would never be wholly either again.

Tourism was going to be adversely affected.

Neither could the The Home Counties be said to be enjoying themselves. They glowed white, then sank back through yellow and orange to red, journeying towards a dull, matt, ash-black. Three cricket stumps burned like torches in Richmond Upon Thames, but of the players there was no longer the least trace remaining. Howzat? read the score board near to where the pavilion used to be, the signature of Mr Death scratched into the charcoal underneath. An expensive-looking rod and line dangled into the dried-up, boiled-away Thames but again, of the angler there was no sign. Death considered putting aside his scythe for a moment in order to scrawl Gone Fission in the ashes. Rather like you, Death found it difficult to be serious all of the time. Death had a job that would drive anyone slowly over the edge if they couldn’t find ways to add a little humour to their working day. Death played everything for laughs, when he could.

Horace Wilberforce Eugene Leslie Death rolled up his cloak-cuffs and moved on, singing Matt Monro’s On Days Like These to himself as he worked.

‘Questi giorni quando vieni il belle sole. La la la la la-la-la-la la la la la. On days like these when skies are blue and fields are green. I look around and think about what might have been... la la la la la la la la...’

If pushed, Death would admit that, depressing though it might be and inconvenient though it was to be on call at the whim of every fruit and nutcake with a few pounds of plutonium, when it really came down to it, his job sometimes wasn’t all doomium and gloomium. Death put on his favourite Dame Edna Everage-style sunglasses, took a swig from his bottle of Evian, and moved on towards the High Street. If you think that God’s so fast that he’s omnipresent, and that even the Devil is really highly manoeuvrable, you ought to see Horace Death moving after an atomic bombing. Sometimes he wondered if he ought not to buy himself a moped. Nothing fancy, just fifty cubic centimetres of cool, two-stroke motorised bat out of hell with ape-hanger handlebars.

Those few, those very, very few, who were not visited by Mr Death that day would, in time, to put it simply, come to feel a certain guilty negativity engendered by an understandable tendency to wonder if perhaps they hadn’t, in fact, copped the sticky end of the wicket when held in comparative juxtaposition to the recently deceased.

When blunt, atomic objects variously hand-daubed with Nous ne mangeons pas de fromage et nous ne sommes pas des singes de reddition and Für Dresden, so lange und danke für alle bomben and Quindi, Mr Bridger distruggerà ogni ristorante, bar, gelateria, bisca e nightclub a Londra, Liverpool e Glasgow, vero? and Esto es por la forma en que arruinaste a Benidorm had parted the clouds over the White Cliffs of Dover, the Prime Minister had been deep in conference in the Cabinet Room.

Prime Ministers were always in deep conference in the Cabinet Room, this was why the country was so well-run, and why successive governments remained above criticism. You didn’t think that Prime Ministers all ended their terms of office looking like knackered pit-ponies because they spent their days wining, dining and filling in the laborious paperwork for personal bank accounts in Sark, the Seychelles, Singapore and Switzerland, did you?

No!

The Prime Minister had that day been busy womansplaining how events, those events being events, would unfold in the next few days, to celebrate England’s fifty years of proud and eager membership of the European Economic Community, latterly termed the European Union or, more accurately, The Two-Faced Back-Stabbing All-of-Europe plus Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland Anti-England and Anti-the-English Club.

It was planned that there would be lavish wining and dining, and, in the evening, some banking gentlemen would be giving a talk on how best for politicians to manage the paperwork for personal investments in Sark, the Seychelles, Singapore and Switzerland. After that there would be more wining and dining, and then everyone would be taken out to Chequers to shoot things by moonlight. For those who didn’t fancy shooting grouse, some seriously old pit-ponies would be provided.

For the little people, street-parties had been mooted, of course, with low-sugar lemonade and biodegradable bunting. Smokeless bonfires were to be authorised, along with the outdoor baking of supermarket-sourced organic potatoes. Some sort of Mayoral procession (these things always thrilled the little people) through town was high on the agenda, provided that the necessary permissions could be obtained from Berlin (via Brussels).

One or two of those in the Cabinet Room weren’t convinced that London still had a Mayor, and the P.M., uncertain herself, asked that someone check. She refused to admit it as a problem, further womansplaining that they could always bung some green at someone from television to play the part if necessary. Richard Briers or Bob Monkhouse or someone. Was Alan Whicker still alive? ‘Check that too. Get Alan Whicker if he’s available – no, just tell him he’s available.’

‘What if he’s dead?’

‘Does it matter? It’s only the Mayor, and he’ll be in a horse-drawn coach for most of the time.