To Die For

Yesterday, Christmas Day, was the second Christmas I've spent hiding out with my men, Mikey Freddy and Squeaky, in the basement of a demolished house on the outskirts of a city in Texas which I cannot name, for the police may have discovered this web-log, and be reading it every day, hoping it'll reveal clues as to our whereabouts.

You, who are first-time visitors to this site, should know that we have killed a number of people since we arrived in America from England a year-and-a-half ago, and are now on the run. For more background, click on to the "On The Run" label on the sidebar to this web-log. You will learn that these killings were forced upon us, but I'm not so naive as to think the police here in America will see things as do I.

Despite our fraught circumstances, we had a happy Christmas Day, for the weather was in the balmy mid 70s - not like the cold and snowy Christmas Day I would have spent in my little house in rural England but for this American episode. On the day before Christmas we had gone to a supermarket and stocked up on food suitable for a Christmas Day dinner, like two pre-cooked barbecued chickens, fresh vegetables and tinned gravy.

This may sound an inadequate Christmas dinner for you Americans, who spend all day cooking and basting your Christmas turkey, and preparing the stuffing, and baking your Christmas pudding, only to see it all disappear within minutes once everyone around the dinner table starts tucking in. But you should understand that in our underground home we have merely a hot-plate. The chicken, then, we had to eat cold, although our vegetables were hot, for I'd steamed them, and our gravy was hot too. We'd also stocked up on wine, so there was plenty to drink.

After our Christmas dinner, we drove in our SUV to a municipal park with a river running through it, and ducks on the water. We got out and strolled through the park and along the stream's bank, soaking up the warmth of the Texas winter sun. After that, we found an internet cafe, which - amazingly for a Christmas Day - was open for business. There, I was able to log into Youtube where there was a video of Queen Elizabeth's Christmas broadcast which she'd given to the people of England earlier in the day.

As I watched and listened, I felt Her Majesty was speaking to me personally, and I felt powerful emotions. Her Majesty has delivered her Christmas broadcasts for more than fifty years now, and I've listened to all of them. I've also watched her transform over these fifty plus years from the beautiful young woman she was when she first became our Monarch, to the dignified elderly lady she is now.

For you of the younger generation, it may be difficult to imagine that Queen Elizabeth was once young and beautiful - so beautiful, that powerful men like cabinet ministers and prime ministers, became smitten and fell at her feet. I, as a senior military man in the British establishment, was smitten too, and had Her Majesty asked me to die for her, I would have unquestioningly.

But even had she not been the Queen, I still would unquestioningly have died for the woman who is Elizabeth, for beautiful and powerful women have always had an explicable power over me. A beautiful and powerful woman has always been for me, the ultimate aphrodisiac. I am hers to command and to die for. Prostrate at her feet, I have no will of my own.

Dreaming of Lucille

Last night I dreamed of Lucille, who I had been so in love with ninety years ago. It's been some while since she last appeared in my dreams, so she was due for another visit. I wish she'd appear more often because hardly a day has gone by since 1917 when I haven't thought of her. For me, she will always be the beautiful twenty year-old she was then. The night of love we made before I had to return to the trenches in France, will be with me always.

You who are regular visitors to this site will remember I'd spoken in a previous posting of Lucille and our night of love, which turned out to be our only night of love. You will also remember my speaking of how crushed I was when I sought Lucille out on returning to England after the signing of the armistice, but learned she had returned to her home country of Martinique with another man, who would appear to have been her lover.

Why did Lucille appear in my dream of last night? Was it because, this being now December 2008, it was ninety years ago to the month, December 1918, that I learned of her absconding with her lover, and that she was gone from me for ever? Or was it because she realized how foolish she was to run off with another man before I returned at the Great War's end, and so told me - through appearing in my dream - that she'll be waiting for me when I cross over to the Other Side? I'm assuming Lucille is by now on the Other Side, since she'd be on the order of 110 were she still alive. However, since I'm 113 and still alive, why shouldn't Lucille, a mere 110, be alive too?

But, given that nearly all people of 110 are now dead, the chances that Lucille is dead too, are high. So she is likely dead, and is waiting for me on the Other Side. But when we do meet I will insist she explain why she didn't wait for me to return from the Great War, but went off with that other man back to Martinique. And had she made naked love with him while I was fighting in France? Lucille has much to explain.

What happened to her after she returned to Martinique? Did she marry the man she returned there with, and become a domestic frump with children, grandchildren and all of that? I know the man she married didn't become famous like me, because I've always noted the names of wives of the men who have risen to prominence during my lifetime, and none had a wife called Lucille. So the man she would have married was doubtless a nonentity, perhaps a boring government official, or a Lothario who subsequently left her for another woman, or he was a drunk who beat her, and from whom she fled in fear.

Had Lucille become my wife what a life she would have had, for I served in the British army throughout the Empire. I became a general and rubbed shoulders with the high and the mighty, and Lucille would have basked in my reflected glory. And what wonderful children she and I would have made together, for my loins were afire for her as for no other woman. I've always believed that children arising out of wonderful love-making, will, too, be wonderful.

Thus Albert, the son I fathered with my wife Gladys, turned out mediocre because the love I made with Gladys was never the most passionate. It was - not to put too fine a point on it - mediocre. It would follow, then, that a child arising out of such mediocre love-making would, too, be mediocre. Only after I'd been married to Gladys for some years did it occur to me, while making love with her, that I think of other women, so to add spice to the love we made.

I began, then, thinking of other women when Gladys and I made love, and, somewhat naturally, I would think of a naked Lucille more often than not. Consequently the love Gladys and I made would be over in next to no time. Since Gladys, who never enjoyed our love-making, had always asked me to try to get it over with quickly, she was happy I was able to accommodate her in this regard.

If only I'd begun the practice, when making love with Gladys, of thinking of other women like Lucille before the night Albert was conceived, he would have turned out the man's man I wanted in a son. But the die, so to speak, had already been cast.

All Happy Families Are Alike

Living in an underground basement of a demolished house is getting on my nerves. I keep thinking I hear heavy boots outside - policeman's boots - and that the police have finally tracked me and my men down and will march us off to jail for killing Jimmy and his men, and for killing the eight men who attacked us under the bridge.

We've killed between sixteen and eighteen men here in America in the short time since I flew in from England to settle matters with Jimmy, who had insulted my monarch, Queen Elizabeth of England, in a comment he left on someone's blog.

Our killing all these men in just the short time since my arriving in Texas from England might sound a bit much, but I consider we were acting in self-defense. However, despite my 113 years, I still have a sufficient grasp of reality to know that the upholders of the law in America might not see things as do I. Thus I decided we become outlaws rather than turn ourselves in.

To make it easier for you, who are new to this web-log, click on the "On The Run" label in the sidebar to catch up on all that's happened so far since I and my men have been.....well......on the run.

Last time I spoke of our laying out in a field the bodies of our attackers under the bridge, rather than burying them, for I felt it would be more environmentally friendly. Then we resumed our journey southwards through Texas. As I drove our SUV south I began, oddly, to think about my son, Albert, who died some years ago. I say "oddly" intentionally, for Albert and I had had no contact in the sixty years before that morning when he collapsed while waiting for a train at London's King's Cross station.

I assure you, dear reader, that it wasn't my fault that Albert and I had been estranged throughout the last sixty years of his life. No, the fault was Albert's, for he wanted nothing to do with me. I couldn't really blame him, though, for Albert was always a mother's boy. From when he was born, my wife Gladys (now dead) doted on him. In her eyes Albert could do no wrong. Always it was Albert this, and Albert that. Bestowing all her love upon Albert, Gladys had none left over for me. Thus whenever I demanded my conjugal rights she complied reluctantly, asking that I be quick.

I did all I reasonably could to make Albert a man's man like me. I tried to teach him to box, made him do military drill in our back garden, and made him play rugby and cricket at his public school of Eton, which I had also attended as a boy.

Albert was so hopeless at rugby and cricket, I felt humiliated whenever I watched him play. I felt palpably the derision from the other fathers attending these matches as they turned their eyes on me as the father of that unutterably clumsy boy out there on the field. Afterwards I would chastise Albert, telling him he was a disgrace to me. When he cried, as he did often, I would beat him with my cane, as I also did whenever he was sloppy in his military drill, or howled if I hit him too hard when teaching him to box. Lest you think me a beast, I should tell you it was as painful for me to beat him, as it was painful for him to be beaten. I was acting only in Albert's best interests.

Albert, more than my conjugal demands, was what drove Gladys and I apart, for I failed to convince her that my beatings of him were for his own good. I told her I just wanted Albert to be a man, essential to which is being beaten and not complaining. Instead, Albert went blubbering to Gladys, who, rather than telling him not to cry, gave him novels to read, enrolled him in violin and piano lessons, took him to museums and art exhibitions, accompanied him on nature walks, and gushed over the pictures he painted and the poems he composed.

There was created, then, in our little family, a schism, with Gladys and Albert on one side, and me on the other. Meals were always especially tense, at which conversation didn’t go beyond “could you pass the peas, please?” or “pass the butter, will you?”, all said with quiet fury. Otherwise we ate in silence, the only sounds being swallowing, munching, and of knife and fork against plate.

Whenever I was posted abroad for long periods in the 1920’s and 1930’s, as I was in Malaya and India, Gladys would often remain in England to provide a home to Albert so he wouldn't have to become a boarder at school. Gladys considered boarding school as barbaric, since she didn't think its bullying and beating of boys a good thing. My being overseas so often meant my opportunities to make a man of Albert were limited. I would so have liked for him to have made a career in the army as I had. But this came to nought when, after Albert left Eton, Gladys enrolled him at the Royal College of Music to further his studies in piano and violin.

Albert also consorted with pacifists and socialists, having joined the Labour Party, and also the Peace Pledge Union, which opposed wars of any kind, even the looming war with Hitler. And particularly bizarre, it was Albert’s Christianity which propelled him down this dangerous and treasonous road. He had the strange notion that being a Christian meant turning the other cheek when attacked.

When we English declared war against Hitler in September 1939, and conscription introduced, Albert obtained an exemption as a conscientious objector. Since I was rising to prominence in the British Army, the anomaly of my having a pacifist son was something the British newspapers couldn’t have ignored. I therefore had no choice but to disown Albert. He responded by changing his legal surname. However, he would always be the man who wasn't there, since Gladys continued to cling to him.

There is more of Albert I wish to tell, but this will be next time.

Buzzards Ants and Beetles

You who are my regular readers will know that I'm on the run from the police in America, because, in the summer of last year (2007), I killed an American, who, in comments I saw which he'd made on someone's web-log, had insulted Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth of England. As a loyal Englishman, I could do no less than demand that this scoundrel (he called himself "Jimmy") apologise, or he would pay a price.

Well, this "Jimmy" showed no contrition, so I flew to America from England, tracked him down and - to cut a long story short - killed him. Unfortunately I, and my men who helped track Jimmy down (in eastern Texas), killed a number of Jimmy's men too. Thus we were forced to become outlaws.

Although killing Jimmy seemed a good idea at the time, it no longer seems quite so. Had I not rushed to the defence of my sovereign I would still be living in comfortable retirement in rural England, instead of living with my three men in a very cramped basement of a demolished house in a Texas city - which I cannot name because the police may have discovered this web-log.

Last time I told of how I and my men, when we were sleeping under a bridge shortly after we'd killed Jimmy and his men, were attacked by eight men. To defend ourselves we had to kill them. What, then, to do about the bodies? I decided we take them with us and find a good place to leave them.

Accordingly we loaded the bodies into our SUV, and, with me at the wheel, we continued south down the highway. As I drove through the morning murk I thought of possible ways to get rid of the eight bodies without others noticing. It was a predicament neither I nor my men had encountered before. Of course, in the trenches of the Western Front in 1914-18, and in the desert of North Africa in 1942-43, many of my comrades, and men under my command, had fallen dead during battle. Their bodies were either just left there because to retrieve them would be too dangerous, or they were carried off by stretcher bearers where feasible.

When my wife, my dear Gladys, passed away, I simply called a funeral home. So, to get rid of not just one body, but eight, and with no official help, was something new for me. You are surely thinking, dear reader, that for a 113 year-old man like me, there'd be no problem I never would have encountered before. But life always presents new and unique problems no matter how long we live. It's what makes life so exciting.

Despite being an old soldier, I have a philosophic mind, so I thought about the non-human world of nature, and how the bodies of all those countless millions of dead animals are everyday got rid of. Whenever an animal knows it’s ready to die it goes off alone, lies down somewhere and simply dies. Immediately the buzzards are picking at its body, and ants and beetles are devouring it. After a day or so there’s nothing left, just bones. In nature nothing’s wasted. It’s all so efficient.

Now I had my solution. I turned our SUV down a side-road, and kept going until we saw a large piece of empty land. We carried the bodies from the SUV and laid them down, each one hundred yards or so apart. We removed the clothes to make it easier for the buzzards and ants and beetles to do their thing. After we burned the clothes, I turned our SUV back onto the highway and we kept on going south.

If I might editorialise, I think if everyone left the bodies of their dead loved ones in a field for the buzzards and ants and beetles to eat, it would contribute to the well-being of humanity. First, think of all the space taken up by cemeteries which occupy valuable land which might otherwise be used to grow food or to build houses or blocks of flats on. I’m aware it’s now the in-thing to burn dead bodies in crematoria, but this contributes to air-pollution.

If leaving the body of your dead loved one in a field for the buzzards and ants and beetles to eat, isn’t your cup of tea, you could always bury it in your backyard. This wouldn’t take up valuable land which could be used for something else, because a backyard will always be a backyard.

I don't expect that those who run funeral homes and operate crematoria will agree with what I advocate, because they would have to find other work. Unfortunately, one can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.

The fuss we make about dead bodies has always puzzled me, since a dead body is no different than an old skin a snake has shed. Just as the snake has moved on somewhere else, so has your mater or pater or old aunt also moved on somewhere else, who used to occupy the body you’re weeping copious tears over.

When I die, all I want is for my old body to be left in a field, so the buzzards and ants and beetles can enjoy a good meal.

The Curious Incident In The Nighttime

Writing this web-log keeps me psychologically grounded, for I feel I'm creating something which people will read long after I go to my Eternal Reward. While writing, I don't dwell on the seriousness of my circumstances.

So this web-log is a refuge, but, obviously, I can't hide in it all the time. Accordingly there are long periods in every day when I consider the situation I and my men, Mikey, Squeaky, and Freddy, are in, and realize that the odds of us evading the American police for ever are small indeed. And not just the American police, but the British police, and the police in any country I and my men might escape to, for the police forces of the world work together. I know this from experience. I was, after all, in the highest echelons of the British security and diplomatic establishments.

But I've never lost hope that I'll escape being caught before I die. Being 113, this isn't impossible. But it is more impossible for Mikey Squeaky and Freddy, for they are mere forty-somethings. Until we have better ideas, we'll continue living in our underground home, which is the basement of a demolished house in an area quite hidden away in a city in Texas which I cannot name because the police may be reading this blog.

Today, I'll continue telling of the events of over a year ago, in 2007, which led to me and my men becoming outlaws in America. Last time, I told of our killing of Jimmy and his men at his house in eastern Texas, and the beginning of our drive south, during which we robbed a gun shop of much of its weaponry. I considered it prudent that, after we left the town where the gunshop was, we keep driving throughout that night.

This is what we did until sunrise. Seeing the sun's rays of morning made me acutely aware that I hadn’t slept all night. I realized how easily I could fall asleep at the wheel of our SUV, and wake up momentarily afterwards as it wrapped itself around a telegraph pole.

I and my men needed to sleep, but where? A motel so soon after we robbed the gun shop would be too risky. Under a bridge out of sight seemed best. I turned our SUV down a side-road and soon we passed over a bridge, not too big, not too small. It seemed perfect for four very tired men to sleep under for the rest of the day.

After we camouflaged the SUV, and carried down to under the bridge our stuff, which, for all intents and purposes was our guns - and also flashlights - for it could be night when we next emerged. We settled down to sleep.

The next thing I knew I was awake because I felt a hard blow on my head. It was dark, so I realized I had slept well into the night. A man was standing over me and beating me with a stick. While warding off the blows, I saw the outlines of other men who were beating Mikey Freddy and Squeaky as they lay on the ground. I hooked out my loaded Magnum .37, which I had strapped to my body, and I began firing at my assailant. Mikey Squeaky and Freddy, who had, on my orders, also strapped guns to themselves before sleeping, were soon firing too.

After some minutes all became quiet, for our attackers were lying on the ground. We turned our flashlights on them, and saw blood oozing through their clothes and from their heads. They were not moving and we assumed they were dead.

From how these men were dressed, and their overall physical appearance, I concluded they hadn’t attained the American Dream – a split-level suburban home, with two-car garage and a dog and a cat. They were obviously of that class of homeless and jobless men whom no-one would ask about for a long time if they disappeared.

What to do with the bodies? of which there were eight. We ruled out just leaving them, because this place might well be the home of yet more men, from whom the American Dream had escaped. They might, on encountering the bodies of their comrades, become upset and tell the police. We therefore loaded the bodies into our SUV, which I drove back on to the highway.

At this point I'll conclude this posting because writing about this incident has revived my anger at our being forced to kill even more men than the ones we'd already killed. It had made the case against us worse should the police ever catch us. These eight men, plus the eight to ten men we'd killed at Jimmy's house, meant we'd killed between sixteen and eighteen American men in the couple of days since I'd arrived at Dallas Airport from London's Heathrow.

I'll speak more next time.

Straight On Till Morning

It's December already. Christmas again approaches. Will I live to see it? for, at 113, I take nothing for granted. When much younger I tried to live life in day-tight compartments; then when older I cut this to hour-tight compartments; now, at 113, it's minute-tight compartments. This makes bearable my being forced to live as an outlaw in the basement of a demolished house in somewhere Texas, since I'm being sought by the police in all fifty states.

If I lived alone it would be difficult enough, but I have to share my underground home with my three surviving men, Mikey Squeaky and Freddy. This is especially difficult, since our states of mind are not always of the best, so we frequently quarrel. It hasn't yet come to fisticuffs but I fear this won't always be so. What if I get into fisticuffs with any of my so, so much younger men, and I get the worst of it? I would be dethroned as our leader, which would be humiliating.

I wish today to continue from where I left off last time, when I began to speak of the events of last year, 2007, which led to me and my men becoming outlaws in America. You will recall that we had killed Jimmy and his men during the knife and gun fight at Jimmy's house, which was in a small town in eastern Texas. Only after we had returned to our SUV and were driving away from the house and all the dead bodies did I fully realise the fix we were in.

If, dear reader, you have always lived the law-abiding respectable life, you still may not have grasped fully how dire our circumstances were. Consider that we were visitors to America, British citizens, and had just killed eight, maybe ten American citizens in the most gory manner, and had left behind the dead bodies of two of my men, whose bullet-shattered heads were beyond recognition. Think yourself in our place. Do you understand better now, mmmm?

That American officialdom would soon discover it was us was a given. Also, contemporary society with its reliance on credit cards and computers and all its state-of-the art surveillance technology, makes life for the modern outlaw especially difficult. Each time we, any of us, use a credit card or a computer, we advertise where we are and what we're doing.

For starters, then, we effectively had no money, since our credit cards would give us away. Therefore we would have to rob banks, so we needed better weaponry than we had, which was merely knives and rather ancient pistols. We had had the presence of mind to take with us some of the shotguns which Jimmy and his men, being dead, would no longer want. But shotguns, being large and unwieldy, draw undue attention when carried into a bank. The most modern of handguns were what we needed.

We began driving southwards from Jimmy's little town. After some miles we entered another little town on whose main street was a gun shop. We parked outside and walked in. We took out our pistols and pointed them at the clerk behind the counter and at the handful of other customers. I ordered them to lie face-down, hands behind head. Then we gathered up as many handguns as were feasible to take, plus ammunition and user manuals.

Sub-compacts, compacts, full-sized, specialized, .357 Magnums, .44 Magnums, .380 ACP’s, 9 mm’s, 10 mm’s, Barrettas, Springfields, Derringers, Smith & Wessons……..You name them, we took them, and by the boxload. I’ve always believed, you see, that if you do something, no matter what, do it well, whether tending to your garden, killing a man with a knife, or robbing a gun store or bank. Doing to the best of one’s ability whatever one does, was what my mater and pater inculcated into me. It has served me admirably all my life, and I see no reason to change.

Before we left with our acquisitions I emptied the cash from the till. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.

Being in that gun shop, even for so brief a time, I became aware of how special America is, where the God-given right for any man to own as many guns as he wants is enshrined in the constitution. Nowhere but in America can an ordinary man visit a gun shop and be free to buy the gun or guns of his choice from the huge variety on offer. Semi-automatic pistols, service revolvers, six-shooters, pump-action shotguns, carbines, are there, waiting for a man to take home, to care for as lovingly as he would a dog or cat.

After we left the gun shop I drove our SUV down the town's main street till the end, then along an isolated side-road which led to some deserted ground with bushes. We hid there, and didn’t emerge until nearly midnight, whereupon I drove us all back into the town and pulled up near a used-car lot. We exchanged our SUV's plates with those of one of the cars in the lot, for the police would surely be alerted once the return-time of our rented SUV was overdue. As for the car-lot men, I felt confident it would be days, perhaps weeks, before they noticed the exchanged licence plate and informed police.

We continued southwards into the fathomless Texas night and kept going, sharing a fellowship of the highway with the long-distance truckers, those solitary men who haul their big rigs along the highways of America night and day, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the northern tundra to the Gulf of Mexico, from Boston Massachusetts to San Francisco California, from Fairbanks Alaska to El Paso Texas.

We didn’t stop till morning.