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Authors: Julian Cope
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children whose playground was our middle-of-the-road. And as she drove, Anna wailed at me, wailed at herself, at anyone who might catch her words on the air.
ANNA : You were gone for ten minutes. You were no longer a human being. What can I do? I don’t even know the hind-leg manoeuvre. You died in the tomba di giganti. And I was more frightened for my life than ever I knew. When I was a little girl, I pretend to be from Naples like my dad. Now I know why my dad is suspicious of this island. You died there in the tomba di giganti. (
Getting squeaky
) How can you come back looking so good?
I hated to admit it. But I was feeling Bountiful. I was feeling great. Poor Anna. For her to have endured nursing me as a corpse was too much to bear even thinking about. But although that rancid experience of hers did call into question somewhat the quality of her current compliments to me, darn it if I wasn’t nowbrimming over with all the joys of spring. Indeed, I felt suffused with an incandescent glow, the like of which I had not experienced in a mighty age. And as Anna turned the Buick right out of the industrial estate and we headed up the hill towards Macomér town in the now darkening skies of the evening, I no longer felt utter terror at the very idea of returning to the place of my kidnap. At least for now, those deafening otherworldly shocks emanating from the Great Being, his seismic broadsides that had forced me to seek refuge at Puttu Oes, had died down considerably. Moreover, even as we began to ascend the ever-steepening mile-long incline into that grand medieval capital, I had sussed that the proximity to each other of both Being and Doorway could hardly be coincidence, especially in this Birori Valley wherein so much misadventure had occurred. I twisted my neck around sharply to the right and stared back down the hill across the industrial estate to the deserted farm of Puttu Oes, the ribbon of headlights that now glowed down along the 131 providing context and allowing me at all times to trace precisely my correct path back to its True Doorway. And even as we became every minute more drawn into the tight main streets of uptown Macomér, my new knowledge of that great cosmic ‘re-fuelling station’ just down the valley summoned within me a huge sigh of relief.
Navigating expertly up the clockwise arcing incline of the town’s wide main street, Anna suddenly pointed up to the green neon hotel sign ‘Su Talleri’, and our land-yacht slithered to a halt. She began as matter-of-factly as she could muster.
ANNA : Okay, I just changed my plan. But you didn’t know that plan so don’t worry about it. Right, when you died I planned to take you to the new hospital here. Even when we climbedthe hill just now that was my plan. But now I get a proper look at you, I don’t think the hospital would believe me because you look so great. It’s crazy. So tonight we will stay here at Su Talleri. She is a lovely landlady and always treats me so nicely. But but
but
(
suddenly looking very fierce
) you must stay in your hotel room and try to sleep. I will check us in and she will lend me her parking space for the night. And and
and
(
wagging her finger
) I have to exchange the Buick tomorrow morning early for my dad. In Cágliari. I promise to bring you to R.A.F. Decimomannu tomorrow. Tonight it’s impossible I think.
But as I paced my tiny hotel room that night naked from the heat, dousing myself from the water cooler and cursing the lack of ventilation, nevertheless I was, or so I believed, the heartiest Time Traveller in the whole N. Hemisphere. For such was the proliferation of marvellous magic upon this mysterious island that I had, in one admittedly insane day, stumbled upon a precise route back to the homeland of my Ancestors: to my father, to my noble people and to my destiny. And although my time ‘back home’ had been far too brief to enjoy – and was already partly evaporating from my present memory – now was
ANNA : You were gone for ten minutes. You were no longer a human being. What can I do? I don’t even know the hind-leg manoeuvre. You died in the tomba di giganti. And I was more frightened for my life than ever I knew. When I was a little girl, I pretend to be from Naples like my dad. Now I know why my dad is suspicious of this island. You died there in the tomba di giganti. (
Getting squeaky
) How can you come back looking so good?
I hated to admit it. But I was feeling Bountiful. I was feeling great. Poor Anna. For her to have endured nursing me as a corpse was too much to bear even thinking about. But although that rancid experience of hers did call into question somewhat the quality of her current compliments to me, darn it if I wasn’t nowbrimming over with all the joys of spring. Indeed, I felt suffused with an incandescent glow, the like of which I had not experienced in a mighty age. And as Anna turned the Buick right out of the industrial estate and we headed up the hill towards Macomér town in the now darkening skies of the evening, I no longer felt utter terror at the very idea of returning to the place of my kidnap. At least for now, those deafening otherworldly shocks emanating from the Great Being, his seismic broadsides that had forced me to seek refuge at Puttu Oes, had died down considerably. Moreover, even as we began to ascend the ever-steepening mile-long incline into that grand medieval capital, I had sussed that the proximity to each other of both Being and Doorway could hardly be coincidence, especially in this Birori Valley wherein so much misadventure had occurred. I twisted my neck around sharply to the right and stared back down the hill across the industrial estate to the deserted farm of Puttu Oes, the ribbon of headlights that now glowed down along the 131 providing context and allowing me at all times to trace precisely my correct path back to its True Doorway. And even as we became every minute more drawn into the tight main streets of uptown Macomér, my new knowledge of that great cosmic ‘re-fuelling station’ just down the valley summoned within me a huge sigh of relief.
Navigating expertly up the clockwise arcing incline of the town’s wide main street, Anna suddenly pointed up to the green neon hotel sign ‘Su Talleri’, and our land-yacht slithered to a halt. She began as matter-of-factly as she could muster.
ANNA : Okay, I just changed my plan. But you didn’t know that plan so don’t worry about it. Right, when you died I planned to take you to the new hospital here. Even when we climbedthe hill just now that was my plan. But now I get a proper look at you, I don’t think the hospital would believe me because you look so great. It’s crazy. So tonight we will stay here at Su Talleri. She is a lovely landlady and always treats me so nicely. But but
but
(
suddenly looking very fierce
) you must stay in your hotel room and try to sleep. I will check us in and she will lend me her parking space for the night. And and
and
(
wagging her finger
) I have to exchange the Buick tomorrow morning early for my dad. In Cágliari. I promise to bring you to R.A.F. Decimomannu tomorrow. Tonight it’s impossible I think.
But as I paced my tiny hotel room that night naked from the heat, dousing myself from the water cooler and cursing the lack of ventilation, nevertheless I was, or so I believed, the heartiest Time Traveller in the whole N. Hemisphere. For such was the proliferation of marvellous magic upon this mysterious island that I had, in one admittedly insane day, stumbled upon a precise route back to the homeland of my Ancestors: to my father, to my noble people and to my destiny. And although my time ‘back home’ had been far too brief to enjoy – and was already partly evaporating from my present memory – now was
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