William Ottoway’s Utopia concerns the dream of a man who seeks to escape stresses of everyday life for promised ease in this world’s tropics; to his dismay, he is unable to flee influence of the one appliance which has arguably shaped all our experience in the last half century, the humble television set! William is a good man, but will he be ravaged and ruined by his brother Tom who brings discord and disharmony to his island paradise?
Rick With A (Bipolar) View details the experience of a young man suffering from bipolar disorder who wants to be a professional DJ. Unsure whether or not the repetitive beats of electronic music and his obsession with trance and techno may be the cause of his illness, he nevertheless accepts offer of a Friday night gig and 'takes the roof off' the nightclub, coming down back at home in glow and reflection of his achievement.
If all this sounds too intense then do please head over to Break Out the Bubbly!!, a comic piece set in a supermarket whose Manager is acting in very strange manner indeed. The initial boredom felt by our hero Emily is quickly shattered by Carol’s arrival and subsequent farce as she seems intent on closing the shop during opening hours to conduct inquisitions in the boardroom! The champagne keeps going missing, you see, and she needs to find the culprit. Is he, or she, a little closer to home than everyone thinks?
Fantasy for the next story, Saman’s Revenge, in which our titular hero is seriously miffed with the Earth-goddess Thera; she’s punished him an aeon ago for misdemeanour which he firmly believes really wasn’t his fault at all. Anyway, when you’re immortal and old as the hills themselves it doesn’t bother you too much to wait a few millennia before exacting your revenge on modern day teenagers Jack, Roxie, her boyfriend Mark and his brother Norman. But what is the young people’s relation to Thera, and temple ruins on top of the village hill, Shadyridge?
Which leaves Young Shakespeare, my imaginative retelling of some of Will’s ‘lost years’ when he reached London; after all, who wouldn’t want to fall in love with Anne, listen in awe to Sir Walter Raleigh’s perorations on, well who knows, meet his future friend and rival Christopher ‘Kit’ Marlowe, then cogitate at length upon the Reformation against whose profound change the budding writer begins to conclude he might wish to work?
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Rick With A (Bipolar) View - Chapter 8
Friday.
The nightclub.
Its resident DJ is building to the end of her set.
This is the moment I’ve been waiting for.
She beckons Rick to the turntables.
He glances round nervously, heading over.
Stands in the booth.
Blinks out at the crowd.
And that’s it.
I’m in control.
I start slowly, but the occasion soon overtakes me, and before long I’m letting rip with some belters, playing one thumper after the other.
Long, low, deep rumbling breaks.
Building higher and higher.
I’m teasing the crowd.
Lifting them up.
Bringing them out of themselves and along with me on my sonic odyssey into trance.
The atmosphere’s electric.
It must be a hundred and ten degrees, with the sweat dripping off the walls and people pouring water all over themselves to cool down.
Three o’clock.
Three in the morning, when all the drunks have left the pub, had their kebabs and fights and passed out on their sofas, and all the commuters are safely tucked up in bed with their partners, after dinner, a bottle of wine and a film about this crazy world we live in.
We’re going mad.
Mental.
Taking ourselves away from what’s outside.
To a place where everyone loves each other.
And the beat is ruler of all.
I bring my set to a crescendo, finishing with a manic crash.
The crowd gawp.
Clap.
Cheer me to the rooftops.
