SHE'S NUMBER ONE SHE'S QUEEN OF THE SCENE

Shattering and blasting its helldamned blare into the strange, strange dreams of beleaguered, befuddled Morgana DeVille came the titanic armoured figure astride a horned fanged steed of Twiddly Bouncy Extremely Irritating Tune that it takes you a little while to recognise as Caracamp Racetrack, shaking her queenliness from bizarre manifestations of deep-seated neuroses created by a brain that professed to know more than its owner was prepared to admit, but in fact knew much less, and forcing her into sufficient wakefulness to swing her right arm in a less-than-graceful arc onto the snooze bar, only she missed as usual and the offending box slid off the upturned apple crate that served her as a bedside table and bonked to the floor just out of reach. It happened every time. Now she would have to get out of bed just to turn the damn thing off. It was time to be about the world anyway, she was very strict with herself and never allowed herself to sleep later than one in the afternoon.

Rolling out of bed and falling the six inches between her mattress and the floorboards, Morgana:

i) slammed her fist onto the chirping radio alarm;

ii) started to stand up;

iii) sagged into a little ball against the cold;

iv) started to stand up again;

v) made it;

vi) studied herself in the full-length mirror;

vii) grimaced;

viii) covered herself with the old raincoat she used as a dressing gown;

ix) studied herself again;

x) grimaced again;

xi) and trudged out into the kitchen for breakfast.

Opening the cupboard, she discovered a choice of the dregs of a bottle of vodka, or the dregs of another bottle of vodka. She decided to begin her day with the dregs of the bottle of vodka which stood on the table, then modified her plan and opted for a cocktail, pouring all three dregses into her Acme Coffee Mug with the added bonus of some dregs of vodka in the bottom. With a single dainty sip she gromfed the lot, Bleeeaaarrrggghhh!ahthat'sbetter, and placed the mug with the other seventeen in the sink. Thus fortified, she found her way to the bathroom, looked in the mirror, grimaced, performed her ablutions, plundered her make-up bag and watched the gorgon in the mirror slowly metamorphose into a gorgon with make-up on.

"Now what shall I wear today?"

She decided on her black leather catsuit with black leather thigh boots and bullwhip in black leather holster, which after all constituted her entire wardrobe, but she still liked to pretend she might one day appear in public in a frilly pink dress. Ho ho! Not really! Fancy riding a motorbike in a frilly pink dress! Not that she had a motorbike, but she still liked to pretend etc. Actually she had a little hatchback, he lived in the rafters and rang bells all day, oh stoppit you're killing me! Who is this woman anyway? Damn these flies! Who's got the ruler?

In the street among the gawpfish, she wondered as always why they were all so strange. You'd think, after all, wouldn't you? These were the people who provided the lifeblood of the ways, among which were not wearing black leather catsuit and bullwhip in the street, which was rather odd considering. Automatic pilot took her round the corner, through the park, up the steps before the cool fumes of the city brought her fully to consciousness. On rare occasions this was the point where she realised she was going in the wrong direction, but the other way lay very little of import and this was not one of those days. Forget I mentioned it. Today as she emerged from the swirling miasma that always constituted her thoughts at this stage her internal calendar told her that it was signing-on day, so she set her compass towards Lyddon Street where lay the Signing-On Building. It was hours after she should have signed on so they would be expecting her soon.

She poked the button at the terrapin crossing, chanting the sacred mantra, "Bugger off red man, green man please." Five choruses later red man still hadn't buggered off. She rapped on the button box. The cover swung open.

"Oi! Stop that! That's my front door!"

She hadn't seen such an horrid little gobloid in all her life, in fact she had never seen a gobloid before. One blink and he was gone. Morgana resisted the impulse to shake her head; she hated double takes, they were so corny. Red man was still there, light on button box still on - it was one of those bloody-minded crossings that refused to acknowledge the existence of the pedestrians who provided it with a living. Traffic still trundled continuously past with all the speed and grace of a racing slug. What's a girl to do? Well, this girl leapt onto the bonnet of the nearest car and bounced her way across the lanes, leaving little spike heel dents in a Porsche, a Roller and a boy racer's XR3i. A particularly good haul. Then back to her normal regal stride.

Some people might consider this a reprehensible, irresponsible and ingranibblebibble act, but that's the sort of girl she was. Besides, she couldn't afford a Porsche or a Roller so it served them right. And as for XR3is… even now its strong, macho driver was in floods of tears as he surveyed the pinpoint blemish on his pristine baby, and the only reason Morgana didn't turn to gloat was because that was not the sort of girl she was.

What sort of girl was she, perzactly? We know already that she was the sort of girl who drank vodka for breakfast and habitually wore what some would see as fetish clothing, and that she had no respect for the property of those who had, after all, earned it either from the blood and sweat of the underprivileged or from sheer brute ignorance. What we do not know yet is that she was the bitchin' rock queen of Pilmo who sang with local smash metal merchants Trauma, but we do now.

Anyway, nothing much happened next, she signed on and went for a coffee but tonight's gig wasn't until ten (late licence), so meanwhile, somewhere else.

Adrian Van Enzyme stewed in his own juice, which was flowing quite freely as it was hot in here. He adjusted his plain white towel (white being absolutely the only colour for a towel, as they were utilitarian objects and the practice of adorning them with bright colours and pointless patterns was merely a capitalist plot to keep the price artificially high and further to draw attention to their wares so that unwary shoppers might be persuaded to buy unnecessarily - white, however, was also to be abhorred as it showed the dirt too much - but one must have a towel) and stared around him at the other moist bodies who shared the sauna. There was absolutely no excuse to let oneself get as flabby as that, he thought in the direction of several blubberies, and look at that guy, he's just too perfect, there's absolutely no excuse for being so fussy about one's figure. And who does he think he is over there with his arms and legs? This sauna lark was definitely a load of rubbish, but now he could criticise it from a position of experience. This was the train of thought which had taken him through several million words of purple prose, tweely unearthly characters and the Boring Journey Syndrome contained in the very popular Laird of the Weals which he now claimed contained the very worst last line in all English literature, which was "'Well, I'm back,' he said", and this is one of the rare occasions when he was right.

So, honour having been satisfied, Enzyme removed himself from the steam room and braced himself for the Icy Plunge which is generally supposed to follow a sauna. And indeed it did.

So it was that an ice sculpture was to be seen emerging from the door of Steamies wearing what could only be described as a satisfied scowl. That was the sort of guy he was. He was looking forward to tonight, for he had managed to bluff his way onto the editorial staff of "Seen", Pilmo's Only Entertainment Magazine, price free, produced by a co-op which went under the name The Co-op but was known locally as That Bunch of Ageing Hippies. Already he had written a brief critique of The Rockin' Gerbils, and tonight he was to review a local rock band. He had already selected a few choice phrases to throw in, eg "Guitarist (insert name here) played as though his axe was strung with spaghetti", "I've heard better percussion from alley cats searching through dustbins".

Van had a vast collection of records, tapes and CDs none of which he liked, which were stacked all around his room on futuristic metal shelving, which he found to be an appalling design. He also had an extensive library, which was stacked in a series of cardboard boxes underneath all the shelves. Each and every one of the books had tucked between its pages its very own Van Enzyme critique; he had lambasted every classic author in the English language, and many in other languages which had been translated into English. Although English was possibly the most idiotic language on the face of the earth, it was the only one he knew, because foreign languages are simply not worth learning as they only open oneself to further abuses of the communicative art.

In the little space remaining by the walls - the bed was in the centre of the room, as all other positions for it were mere clichés, although this position did have the disadvantage of being both inconvenient and wilfully eccentric - sat a television set and video, because although all television was at best a soporific, at worst a vehicle for stupidity and propaganda, one must keep one's finger on the pulse. Across the floor were scattered pens, pads, folders, document wallets and for some reason a little wind-up plastic penguin called Norbil. This was the room where Enzyme sat writing his impressions of just about everything one can have an impression of. It had the advantage of being His Space, and the drawback of not having a writing desk, so he worked seated on the bed resting on one of his clipboards (he had several, all in different colours as he wasn't sure which hue made him feel least nauseous) with pens scattered around him. The duvet was gaily decorated with rainbow splodges of ink, coffee and various sandwich fillings.

Into this room now stumped Van Enzyme, his brain already writing tonight's review, and there we leave him as it gets a bit boring after that. As if it wasn't extremely boring already.

Taking inspiration from one's surroundings is all very well, but how many songs can one write about sitting in a coffee bar? Such were the thinks that went through the thinkbox of Twitch as he sat in a coffee bar taking inspiration from his surroundings. It was a long time since he had first taken the world by breeze as singer in The Masked Martians and in the intervening years he had written 250 sets of lyrics about sitting in a coffee bar and the people around him, none of whom he knew, so he had to extrapolate personalities from their clothes, overheard conversation and what they had chosen for a snack. Bit like one of those logic problems; five people went for a coffee in the Grotto. From the information below, can you say what colour raincoat they wore, what they had to eat and how long they took for their break? Yes, twitch could, for he was an avid logic problemer, but he often wondered, why should he care? Sue wore a blue coat, ate a jam doughnut and sat there smoking for a good twenty minutes, but to whom could this be of interest besides Sue? 249 sets of the relevant lyrics had been consigned to the paper bank in one or other of Twitch's regular blitzes on his songs folder; the sole survivor was Sitting in a Pub Bored, which was about a pub, true, but had really been written in the Grotto which didn't scan properly. And here he was writing another one. He got as far as the first verse before he found himself forming a far-reaching resolution; he wasn't going to do it any more.

"Sitting in a coffee bar Looking at the people

Spilling bags of sugar ~~Climbing up the steeple~~

~~Wonder if that creep'll tepal[1] peepul~~[2]"

Even his rhyming dictionary failed him. He tore the page from his notebook and dropped the crumple into the ashtray. He did, however, continue to look at the people. They were many and varied, but all had one thing in common; their peoplishness. Twitch himself like to deny any peoplishness in himself; if pressed he would admit to being a person, but claimed personality in lieu.

The depth of his personality would seem to be this; songwriter by vocation, unemployed by trade, an agitated tic which travelled his body (currently residing in the right shoulder), caffeine addiction, cursed by the need to front rock'n'roll bands. That is rock'n'roll in the wide sense rather than the time-warped, thus covering most bases. Twitch was convinced that rhythm was the lifeblood of the universe, which was of course true from micro to macrocosm, but being immersed in pop culture liked to add to it certain aesthetic and emotional elements, which is why he wrote songs.

Of course, the only person he wrote songs for was himself. It wasn't easy to envision Algie Stangbarkle in his green satin suit and sculptured blonde pompadour singing Now I've Shaved My Head on Saturday morning TV, or Prix Mama Donna crooning The Elephants are Coming on the Saturday night gamblefest. On the other hand, can songs be truly fulfilled if they are heard only by the composer? Surely a song aches to be listened to by as many people as possible? If a chair were never sat on, that would be an intensely unhappy chair; if a floor were never walked upon, that floor would feel itself hard done by; and a song which never reaches an unbiased ear probably cries itself to sleep at night.

Thus was Twitch compelled to gather together collections of musicians, more often than not ill-matched in temperament and ability, and force them to crank through the noodlings of his addled creativity. The current line-up went by the name of … Life After Art? Each member of the band had written down their ideas for names, which were all entered onto a list. Each member then noted their first, second and third choices against each name, with names scoring 3 points for a first choice, 112 for a second and 17 for a third. After some thought, this was changed to 3, 2 and 1 point(s) respectively. The total points were then totted up and the winner was subjected to some umming and aahing, test-written in various size letters on mock posters and advertisements, and finally put in an ashtray and incinerated. Twitch then told everyone what the name of the band was going to be.

This was the process Twitch always used. It had been refined through a continuous series of personnel changes and was performed every time the previous name reached critical mass, a situation brought about by Twitch's constant reinvention of his music but mostly by the previous name's reputation spreading across the city and environs less in the manner of a knife spreading honey across a slice of golden brown toast, more in the way of a fly spreading what it spreads wherever it feels like spreading it. Therefore, and herepost, Twitch could be described as a founder member of all these bands: A Nice Walk by the Seaside, 3D Without Glasses!, Foolzgild, Phriquescheau, Box of Holes, Bats in Transit, In The Order Words Wrong, Plasticine Kettle, Kupkake, Make It Snow, Damn Fool Squad and Fdd. Among others, whose names will probably pop up now and then, as they did: eg "Weren't you in that Nataka Cha Kula[3]? Bloody awful, they were."

"Still pluggin' the same old groove?" It was Markyew, the impossibly young manager of the Grotto, with his brilliantined hair and young man's shirt and tie.

"There are those who follow the latest musical fashion, saying there's always been a stance[4] element to their music, and there are others who lock themselves into one era and style and could be fairly described as groove-pluggers, but I like to think I tap into the timeless and classic elements of pop and roll, whilst taking advantage of advances in technology and remaining aware of social progress to move on in musical terms," was Twitch's considered answer.

Markyew eyed the acoustic guitar on the seat next to Twitch's duffle bag, but decided not to challenge the advances in technology assertion.

"I was merely speaking in the argot of the hip; I was actually enquiring after your coffee, which appears to be the same one you purchased roughly three hours ago, in the hope of inspiring you to place another order."

"I believe that you were, in fact, employing the argot of the hippy, although you more resemble a greaser with your habit of dipping your crowning glory in the chip fat."

"Are you going to buy another coffee or not? For the past tumpty years you have been coming in here, buying one coffee, drinking half and leaving the rest to chill and congeal while you sit and scribble, or stare at the proper customers. I have overlooked it so far as your presence appears to persuade them to finish up quickly and make room for others, but I have recently been on A Course and now understand more clearly the conventions and compulsions of Young Management."

"And which of those confusions and contractions would apply in this case?"

"The summary evacuation of that section of the clientele who lower the tone of the establishment while contributing little or nothing to the Holy Profit."

Twitch's guitar played a startled approximation of Em11 (or was it an A9sus4?) as it landed beside him on the stone, happily cushioned by the duffle which had preceded it. Twitch himself, being the trailblazer, had not had this advantage and was unsure whether it was the mica in the paving slabs glittering merrily or the stars twinkling about his head which enlivened his vision. Rising unsteadily, he almost thought he saw through a gap in the clouds which encircled the giddy heights of the Civil Centre a tiny plummeting figure, but he also saw a large bird of prey wrestling with a helicopter, so he put it down to concussion.

Tomorrow, then, he would purchase his coffee in the Matchbox. Perhaps a change of scene would renew his muse. But for now, it would pay to be homeward bound and exchange his daytime rags for his evening rags, for tonight he was to make his fortnightly venture into Other Band Territory to keep an eye on the competition. This evening's recipients of his appraising glare would be Trauma, because he had never seen them before, and because while browsing in the newsagents he had seen a picture in the Levelling Harold of the singer, who certainly seemed like a girl with spirit[5]. Twitch liked a girl with spirit.

So off into what would have been the sunset if it hadn't been mid-afternoon walked the jerky one, his guitar beating out a rhythmic open chord as it bounced on his back, a distant scream from the sky barely breaking into his consciousness.

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[3] Translation: "I am hungry". Seen written on the steamed-up window of an Indian takeaway.

[4] Stance was a current fad, wherein pseudonymous artists electronically produced beatless music to which the floor filled with punters who took up positions which they maintained for the duration. Those who chose unwisely would at some point topple over and would be obliged as a matter of honour to remain frozen while prone until the end of the current platter.

[5] This particular spirit being vodka, as we have read.