Victor Shortt (With Three Ts)

Content Warning:

Strong language

Transcript

Victor Shortt (with three Ts)

I: Wind Chimes

EXTERIOR: Garden. Breeze. Birds.

VICTOR: Hey/(with an E)/that’s a greeting, not an exclamation/just so we’re clear/I would never want you nor anyone else to think I was barking at you/(them)/in an accusing sort of way/Hey/Hey with an E/Hey as in Hi/let’s not waste any/

Ping of notification from phone

Oh for god’s sake/another stupid email/at least it’s an email and not/I mean I should be glad it’s not fucking Barclay’s notifications/new payments declined/unauthorised fingers in the pouch/

I’m sorry about this/exactly a year ago today, I went on a pub crawl and in each pub I visited I signed up to the wifi, and each time I signed up I, regrettably, ticked the box permitting online communications about promotions and offers/so today I’ve just been/

Breeze. Flourish of wind chimes

We will come back to that-where was I/yes/I’ve been absolutely bombarded with one year anniversary spam and promotions/it’s depressing really/that tone, that artificially generated chumminess/that vacuously approximate grasp of human colloquialism/

Anyway/that’s really not important, all that/much more important/you’ve already had a taste of it/

I feel a breeze/I can feel/I’ve developed/I mean, you know/you/I mean “I”/I know when the air is taut with a feeling of imminence/it is imminent/wait/ 

Wind chimes

There it is/the next door neighbours have installed some wind chimes in their back garden/the smallest caress from the breeze and a symphony is uttered/I can’t even begin to convey to you how violated I feel/unbelievable/the balls of these people to hang wind chimes in their garden/

Chimes

It’s not an unattractive sound/but the impact on my life is not only significant but catastrophic/like percussive pan-pipes/incredible how harmful they are in our neighbours’ hands/my ear places them up quite high/hanging over the patio doors/double doors in the kitchen that open out onto the back garden/

These chimes/they are/absolutely penetrating/it’s like hearing laughter in a house at night/you long to identify the culprit/but, also, you want to understand the source of their laughter/what the, as they say, big joke is/

Very invasive/very percussive, metallic, grating, jarring/very disturbing, disquieting, thoughtless, thoughtlessly deployed, hung, drawn, quartered, chilling, eerie, unwelcome, uncanny, blackly comical, absurdist, deadpan, paraprosdokians on the other hand I have different fingernails fingers 2008 US Open winner double’s partner Red Lion Kings Arms Greene King Railway Queens Head George’s Arms Arms Arms    

II: Windrush

Overground car. Voices quiet; vehicle loud.

VICTOR: Windrush, Windrush, the, so called, the so newly-named, Windrush line/Shoreditch High Street/Hoxton/Highbury and Islington/Annerly/Brockley/West Croydon/I do love transport/London underground and overground city transit maps/Rotherhithe was the last stop/so bye bye Rotherhithe/Hello/Canada Water/Canada Water for to change onto the Jubilee line of course/I know that without looking at the map/I mean, in that regard my talents are meagre/I’ve a friend who has quite literally, photographically memorised the entire underground, overground, tramlink, Thameslink, DLR/literally he’s a walking TFL guide-map/not only comprehensive and reliably internalised/his recall is instant/he can get you anywhere you ask/he can offer up the quickest route from/I don’t know/Limehouse to/Elephant and Castle/instantly/I say friend, he’s not really my friend/my nemesis, if anything/Raymond French-MacCabe/I know where he lives/won’t divulge his name/but I do know where he lives/I don’t think he knows that I know where he lives and I have been there/I’ve stood outside the very address, window-watching/

Canada Water. A few people get quickly off.

Canada Water/Canada- hang on/what this?/

A strange figure steps on board and sits down opposite VICTOR in a newly available seat. “She” is playing music aloud. “Kiss Me” by Sixpence None the Richer.

Where do people get the audacity/I should say something/I’m afraid to say to something/why doesn’t someone else say something/surely there’s someone better suited than me to saying something/what the hell is even this?/it’s sitting opposite me holding a smartphone which is playing music aloud/no bag/it does appear to be female/the footwear is traditionally female, the trouser fashion more, well, more feminine than it is masculine at any rate/leather jacket/girly not mafia/the head is unambiguously non-human/can’t really tell what I’m looking at/it’s rather frustrating/I tell you, I would feel less frustrated if the miscreant had been, I don’t know, a woman with an abbreviated giraffe head/or maybe the unmistakable glisten and beak of a dolphin/I mean, is a woman a woman while she has another animal’s head/maybe the head is what matters/an aardvark with a homo-sapian cunt is more aardvark than woman/ anyway, this/this is altogether more perplexing/I wonder where she’s going/this strange-head/I’m a strange-head/but she is a/…a/…a stranger-head/I can describe the colour/it’s copper/a burnt or rusty copper/exactly the colour of actual coppers/as in one or two pence pieces/exactly that copper/god I need a piss/

It is very loud/headphone dodging/but this creature doesn’t have ears/I mean, not in the conventional sense/earphones are quite useless to her/headphones are out of the question of course/you could never attach headphones to that head/it’s huge against daylight/that head/huge in this train car/amongst all the other heads

Low rumbling sound, vague and unmelodic, half-heatedly joining in with the song. It’s “Creep” by Radiohead

Creep/by Radiohead/I do think Creep is a song for people with normal heads/I don’t think its province extends beyond the human species/I mean/if one’s alienation among humankind is so blatantly explicable/so easily explained by one’s physical appearance/the poetry, the enigma, the ponderous melancholy of the song is rather lost/What the hell am I doing here/I mean, she’s naturally going to run out the door if you have a big disc-shaped copper-coloured head/catastrophic hair/no eyes/vocalisation is possible/duly noted/I can’t see a mouth though.

It’s terribly eerie/quite frightening really/I’d rather not be frightened where I could be elated/I mean, going up/or do I mean down?/to West Croydon on the newly-named Windrush line/it’s a highlight/it doesn’t get much better than this/and there’s this cranially freakish female creature playing Creep by Radiohead aloud from her device, headphone dodging, the campaign launches next month, and singing along in her way to Creep by Radiohead and it’s all a bit much really/I should say something/I wonder how old she is/this copper-strange-disc-head-headphone dodger/do you know my favourite age?/twenty-six/twenty-six is a fantastic age for a girl/