SCENE: Night, THIRST HALL, Main Entrance Hall (Lavish, Dark Marble, Peacock feathers etc…)

BUTLER: (Stone-faced) “The line is connected, Sir”

Butler hands black onyx and gilt candlestick apparatus to his master who clutches earpiece to his head and paces while talking into separate microphone bit.

LORD THIRST: (Irritable) “Hello, hello!”

FX: (Crackly electronic voice) “This is Not-Work Rail, we are sorry it is raining, if you are phoning because it is raining please press one if you are phoning because of you want to pay your bill please press two if you want to hear nothing please press…”

LORD THIRST: (Holding earpiece to head whilst dialling frantically with pinky finger) “Hello, hello you fucking morons answer the twatting phone why does nothing ever bloody work?”

MARY: (Electronic voice/over) “Bing bong, Notwork Rail, Mary speaking, good evening morning how may I help yoooooooooo?”

LORD THIRST: “Good morning, Mary. It’s Mister W”

MARY: (Not quite supressing a shudder) “Bing bong, thank you for calling Notwork Rail, how may I help you please thank you haven’t heard from you for a little while are they making a noise again, Bing bong?

LORD THIRST: “No, Mary, quite the opposite. I know it’s two o’clock in the morning but they aren’t making any noise at all so I’m phoning up to ask you to phone them and tell them how pleased I am. Usually, as you know, I phone to complain but credit where it’s due and tonight I am phoning to thank them for getting it right”

MARY: “Bing bong. Well it looks like your complaining did the trick after all, bing bong”

LORD THIRST: “Well, I don’t know about that - I’m just phoning up to say thanks for a change and please pass it on.”

MARY: (Puzzled) “Oh, Well bing bong thank you for calling Notwork Rail”

LORD THIRST: “Goodnight, Mary and my regards to all my fans at the call centre there.”

MARY: (Laughing) “Good night Mister W”

LORD THIRST: (Hanging earpiece back on receiver stand) “Time for bed, I think.”

BUTLER: (Impassive yet clearly wondering if world has gone off its axis) “Very good, Sir”

THE END

Sounds like a Vietnamese name but it isn’t at all. Mneh Mneh Mneh is the usual sound of witless twats that I have to put up with all the time every day of my miserable life. Mneh.

Mneh Mnnnnneh, neh neh nerr.

For. Fuck’s . Sake.

Mneh neeh Mneeeh, neeh neeh Mneh mneh.

How it all started was some moaning on the radio in the morning: It was so absurd that anyone would want unisex toilets in schools! How absurd! The very IDEA!

Except, shut up, - unisex toilets are a very good idea.

I, of course, knew this immediately and I had to put up with the stupidity on the radio (Mneh mneh mneh) and then I had to put my case to Trouty while we were waiting at the bus-stop to go to the hospital. Trouty’s misguided opinions are not her fault because when she went to school the boys and the girls had separate entrances to the school itself.

At the hospital I was dismayed to learn that the man who thinks he is my psychiatrist also thinks that children should have toilets separated on grounds of gender. He’d been listening to the same, pitiful, radio show.

Mneh mneh mheh ner ner mner

Tell you what; I am such a big fan of unisex toilets that I actually have one in my own house!

Mneh mneh mneh but what about….?

I AM SICK TO FUCKING DEATH OF PEOPLE DISAGREEING WITH ME.

If you are so stupid that you think I am wrong I feel very sorry for you. Fuck off. Fuck off right now because I am always right.

Toilets (not ‘lavatories’; I’m not the fucking Queen) are for going to the toilet. They are not for sex or any kind of ritualised behaviour. Children should have a private, small toilet with a door and a wash-handbasin and that is that. No ritualised, ‘hands up’ or gaps under the wall or the door.

Mneh mneh mneh

Yes, go on, raise another generation of coprophiles who confuse three things; sexual behavior, private behaviour and lavatorial behaviour.

I am sick to fucking death of being considered wrong when I am always right, of having guilt thrust at me thanks to Victorian, bourgeois sentimentality and completely sick of Mneeh neer neh.

No one, except me, has the slightest idea of what it’s like living with my mind. It’s like a wild fucking animal, that’s what. It has razors on and it hurts on the inside as well as the out so if you have any spare Nher neer mmmnheeeeeeers you had better keep them to yourself.

There must be order in all things. Without order…

I really can’t tell you how important order is to me. Look at these keys

and you will see keys.

They’re the boat keys and they have to be the way that they are. They just have to be. Trouty told me the other day that she had taken the BWB key (brass and Yale style) off the ring because she wanted to use the water point. Obviously that’s enough to make anyone feel sick.

Imagine my distress to hear this and then imagine what would have happened if she had tried to put the key back on the ring. Aaaaaaagh, emergency, emergency…

It would have been in the wrong place, that’s for sure, but probably it would have been UPSIDE DOWN!

There just has to be order or I go nuts.

Some plants at the station have been driving me nuts because they were not ordered for me. These were grey and lamb’s ear type plants about the size of a lettuce and I didn’t know what they were.

The other day I was reinterviewing these plants - I walked along their parade, until…

A MULLEIN! A flowering burst of yellow! Order restored!

The noise, the awful noise outside, drives me mad because it is not within the order of anything let alone the order of things. I am driven bonkers because it is not in order. It is hateful and sent to upset me. Try as I might, I cannot get the noise into order because of NetworkRail who are cunts.

Hmmmmm.

So, you see. A man with some keys and a look on his face. He wants to look happy for you but he can’t because you are doing something wrong. What can it be?

The only way I can explain it is this: Some things, but not everythings, have to be right or else there will be problems later on.

The only way for things to be right is for the order to be there and respected. On waterways it is more important than anywhere else and that’s why the boat keys are important. Obviously.

Some people might want to know about why order is the most important thing but then I expect they are a bit stupid.

Michael Holden is a journalist and broadcaster.

He writes for the Grauniad and the Daily Mail but I don’t hold these things against him. On the contrary, I have read a couple of his Grauniad articles on the Interweb, for free, and I thought they were great.

He was on the radio again this morning and I love listening to him. His delivery is deadpan.

On the Jenny Eclair show on LBC 97.3 he seems to be there to poke fun at the newspapers but he does much more than that for me.

What he does - and this is a fucking good trick - is rattle without missing a beat.

When I say ‘rattle’ I mean it in a couple of ways; like the train going on and on and like the snake. Trrrrsssssssssththththth……

What he does, for me at least, is to process all my thoughts and clarify them and then speak them. He actually says what I think but he manages to do it at a speed where I notice no lag.

He purifies my thoughts. He holds back where I would blunder forward and he is sharp where I am dull. A very clever man.

I have said on these electronical pages before that I find intelligent people attractive and Michael Holden is one of them. Today, he was accused of looking like Jeremy Kyle if Jeremy Kyle was a tramp. Whatever, I’m still there; moth to flame.

When he speaks I hear the rattle. I hear the rattle of the old-type arivals boards clacking through the letters; I hear the falling of dominoes…

What I hear is absolute precision in language and he speaks so quickly that it’s hard for me to keep up because I’m stuck, mid-savour…

Every word is the right word. Not an easy trick because he never dumbs down. What I hear is a mind on absolute fire with a complete and utter direction and with every word another brick falling into place and all the time he’s machine-gunning - cartoon gouts of yellow and orange just pouring from him.

When he gets pulled he knows where he’s been. He sounds like a nasty scummer but he’s so aware, he dances you see.

One day, Michael Holden, I’d like to buy you a pint. One day, maybe, we could have a little chat.

What a dogfight that would be!

Cheers, Michael! You’re a thoroughly great bloke and you’ve really cheered me up.

I have decided to start drinking again.

It’s completely great. It is big. It is clever.