Games Makers: A London Satire Read online



 

  Credits

  Terrorism@Olympics meets the Unbearable Lightness of Being London 

  words Andrew Calcutt

  design

  Alex Cameron

  You are Director of the Cultural Olympiad. Three weeks before the opening ceremony and you are panicking: the Olympic Torch has failed to ignite the country, and London 2012 is shaping up to be a Mega-Non-Event.

  Surely you can do something to make London really excited about the Games?

  On a night out on the town with your long-lost friend, you recall that 7/7 – the suicide bombings that followed London’s selection as host city – was the last time Londoners came together as one.

  With the Olympic clock ticking towards Games Time, nothing can stop you trying to recreate that feeling of togetherness. If only you had been able to stop yourself....

  Games Makers: A London Satire chronicles the attempt to bomb London back to the Blitz spirit.

 

  This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

  To view a copy of this license, visit https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.

  Andrew Calcutt is the original ‘hackademic’

  (journalist turned academic). He has written a dozen non-fiction books. Games Makers is his first novel.

  Alex Cameron is an editorial art director and design writer.

  © AC2, 2012

  cbc publishing

  ISBN: 0954 261828

  Games Makers: a London Satire 

  Part 1. There's no there there 

  Prologue: courting appearances

  His face on screen. The familiar face of my best friend Tony, looking up at me electronically.

  But this is not iPhone4, face-time, intimacy-on-a-stick. This is the big picture I’m seeing. Breaking news, available now on a screen near you. And that’s where Tony is – on screen, in the news, broken. The Shock! Horror! stuff that’s right now – London, dateline 23rd July 2012 – is happening to him.

  Dear Reader, in the league of international hate-figures, my friend Tony Skance is currently ranked between Colonel Gaddafi and Osama bin-Laden.

  Every big news story must have its icon. In this instance it’s the police station portrait of Tony, splayed against the wall, taken when they brought him in. I guess it was leaked to the Met’s favourite blogger, and now it’s out spurting out through every media outlet.

  But the face in the mugshot is no bug eyed bovine.

  He ain’t cowed by the camera. This is Tony Skance, looking back, appraising you, Mr Police Photographer, and the millions standing behind you. Appraising himself looking back at you taking his picture.

  They’ll say his expression is cool, calculating.

  Already have: Tony Skance, alleged mastermind of Olympic Games bomb outrage (broadsheet version).

  Sicko Psycho (tabloid).

  ‘Alleged’ seems unnecessarily circumspect. Not as if Tony will be suing anyone for blotting his escutcheon.

  So here I am at East Thames magistrates’ court (name of Pete Fercoughsey – yes, say it fast to get the full effect), queuing for a seat on the Press bench to see my oldest friend remanded in custody, browsing the news while I wait. From the BBC to CNN to Al Jazeera, every website leads with the ‘outrage’ perpetrated by my childhood friend.

  Meanwhile, in the street outside, anticipating the prison van and its outrageous occupant, there is a small group of hostile onlookers, and a much larger crowd of professional photographers. Through the glass doors I can see police officers patrolling like sheepdogs: grouping the press, herding the proles; keeping the two cohorts apart.

  Doors opening. I power-off and fall in with the line of journalists admitted to court. I should explain, Dear Reader, that I once was a journalist but now I teach at a university in the East End of London. I’m being ushered in with the real hacks because my Press card isn’t out of date yet (‘Property of the National Union of Journalists, this card is recognised by the British Army, Metropolitan Police’, etc etc ). Also, I’m recognised round here for sending students to cover court cases (used to be that they would learn the ropes from full-time court reporters; now my students are often the only ones doing it), so no one’s going to knock me back.

  In the courtroom, we take our allotted seats. I know the routine and I know what it’s for. Recording court proceedings on behalf of the public, acting as the eyes and ears of the people, journalists are there to ensure that the judiciary observes the law which it is there to implement. Here endeth the lesson.

  Sorry about that, folks. It’s my new job to tell young people about my old job, and sometimes the job(s) take(s) over.

  So come on, then, Mr Professional Persona. Take me over completely. Save me from the sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach. Release me from the wrenching, churning, dreadful yukkiness now that the beast in the dock - they’ll bring him in at any moment - is my close, personal friend. The dearest friend I shall ever have.

  I close my eyes and think of Tony. I do love him.

  What else to call it, this mixture of loyalty, jealousy, and like-mindedness? We lived our early lives together. Now he’s Public Enemy No 1 and I’m so frightened for him I’m losing my concentration.

  An overdose of emotion can make you drowsy, or so I’ve heard...

  ‘All ri-ise’, intones the usher, his voice rising to emphasise the point.

  We duly stand for the judge to enter. So the defendant’s already here. How did I miss them bringing you in, Tony? Your grand entrance! Now we are both upstanding. We both, we both. Once there was always both of us. Who knows when we will be together again? In prison you’ll refuse to see me, I know, even if I’m granted permission to visit.

  It’ll be quick today. Read the charge. Plead (not that it matters how you plead). Remanded. Over and out. My eyes are hungry for you, now there’s so little time.

  From the Press bench that stretches along one side of the court, I see you in profile: straight-backed but not quite square to the polished brass rail.

  Decidedly at odds with this room of perpendiculars.

  Better to find your own angle, I agree; or the unforgiving light might strike you down, dead.

  The judge sits, so do we.

  Forty years ago you sat next to me for our first school photograph; when we were six. I have it on the wall at home.

  Every boy in white shirt and grey shorts; hair combed and parted, all eyes peering into the camera. Except your face was off-centre, turned a crucial inch to the right. Already you were watchful. Too wary of the camera’s beady eye to look straight into it, even then.

  From where I’m sitting I can’t see your eyes. I’m not getting the full effect of your carefully controlled expression. But I can guess which performance you have selected from your extensive repertoire:

  ‘Though the muscles in his face were tight, and his skin taut, Tony Skance managed to hint at a wry smile’. No cliché like an old cliché, you would say.

  I don’t want you to perform for me, Tony. I don’t need to look straight into your eyes. I already know why you did it.

  (1) Trying to connect you 

  Three weeks earlier Antony Skance stepped smartly through the doors of City Hall on the south bank of the Thames. Outside, summer sunshine glinted on the river like highlights in a shampoo advert. London, because you’re worth it.

  But what is London worth? More to the point, how can London show its worth? Little more than three w
eeks away from ‘Games Time’, less than a month until the sales pitch of the century (remember the Mayor of Newhamlet’s motto: the Olympics have nothing whatsoever to do with sport), and London’s presentation is sadly lacking. At least, that’s how it appears to our hero, the man in charge of the Cultural Olympiad.

  The countdown is continuing, but it feels like the clock has stopped. It’s happening here, but there is so little excitement about ‘being there’.

  Tony Skance longed for a cigarette, fondly remembered how it would light up the moment and burn it away. Instead he unwrapped a lollipop and stuck it in his gob, Kojak-style. Hands in trouser pockets, elbows out, linen jacket unbuttoned. There was even a thin, silk scarf around his tender neck.

  Was this a sixth former impersonating an impresario, or London’s culture czar acting the sixth-former?

  Tony would have acknowledged the conundrum, if you’d been able to ask him. But just then he was busy performing a jaunty walk along the south bank of the river. Achieving an acceptable level of jauntiness required considerable effort on his part.

  Tony’s mind was in turmoil. The problem was...

  nothing. Much ventured – much, much, loadsamoney much. Not much gained. Nearly four years into a programme of events dubbed ‘the Cultural Olympiad’, only 26 days away from the Olympics themselves, and London’s mood was little changed. Did the capital even have a mood?

  ‘Subdued’, Tony said to himself, anticipating the moment (it’ll come, it’ll come) when he could look back comfortably at this difficult period of nerve-wracking doubt. He did his best to sell it to himself: ‘Subdued atmosphere before the party started. Followed by a perfect storm of jubilation.

  Must be, must be, must be’.

  Tony inhaled the thought. For a second or two he heard London’s silence as the precious instant when the house lights go down and the audience bates its breath. He remembered it well (a past life, Dear Reader, of which more later). But where were the stage lights and the wall of sound? Above all, who or what were the headliners? Without something to make it come to a head, London 2012 was set to be not only a non-event but a Mega-Non-Event. And with his name stamped through like it was a stick of rock: Olympics Failure, Tony Skance; Tony Skance, Olympics Failure.

  Tony exhaled. Out (and never coming back) went the gossamer thought of London in a moment of hushed anticipation. Now he knew for sure it wasn’t true; it wasn’t going to be like that; it wasn’t anything like that; it just wasn’t anything.

  Of course, Games Time hadn’t actually started yet. There was still time for something to happen...

  (2) London united