No Planet B - Part Four
or, The History of the World Backwards
July 2006
John and Teresa 2
Dear Teresa,
Now that we have found each other at last I can’t tell you where I am. Somewhere in Iraq, where I am in charge of high-tech communcications.
BACK-PROJECTION: SEMAPHORE IN DESERT
Dear John,
The news here is about the fallout from the Lord Mayor’s visit to Poland. ... apparently some ‘kapo’ of a forced labour camp got offended ‘cos the Lord Mayor of London told him that in a past life he would have been an ‘Evening Standard’ journalist.
Spent yesterday smashing up Spitfires and spot-welding them into pots, pans and kettles. It’s brilliant when everyone’s working together to stop climate change!
Dear John,
On Wednesday a landmine came down on a silk parachute and has wiped Cecil Road off the map. John we have lost our little home. And for now, it seems, each other.
Write to me care of Sis and Pop at Crooked Billet. But it costs too much to get out there often. How I wish we lived in our grandparents’ more romantic era of texting. Two hearts communicating instantly. No time for vowels, no look-in for censors. Thumbs on prayer beads always answered.
Dear Teresa,
I don’t want to believe you’ve stopped writing to me, so I’ll assume that all those ships lost off Abadan in the Shatt-al-Arab waterway weren’t torpedoed but sunk under the weight of your letters.
Hope all is well. I’m coming back on one-night’s leave next Tuesday. Don’t forget to check the tomatoes for greenfly.
SONG: SLOW LOVE
1.
Don’t go too slow there’s a war on,
We took our time
Me and you.
People say we’re not slow we are morons,
Let them keep the honey ones
We’ll have the harvest moon.
[chorus]
Slow love,
Babbabababa, babababababa
Slow love,
Babababababa, babababababa.
2.
Do those lovers who
tear each other’s clothes
fear a change of heart should they pause?
Strong is our love
that can fold clothes we take off
and pile them neatly on a chair by the bed.
The earth moves for us,
But when the earthquakes growing,
We won’t rip each other’s buttons
Cos we don’t like sewing.
And we’ve got all night
There’s no need to rush
You’ll lose every stitch in time.
[chorus]
3.
Last night we were bombed out,
Lost our home in the blackout.
Blue silk dress and your white shirt
That’s all we own.
[repeat last verse and repeat verse 1 over in round]
ROB: As war rages, people find escape from care and woe through the magic portal of cinema.
After the strictures of the McCarthyite 50s, there is a new sense of liberality in the 1940s. In The Searchers John Wayne and James Stewart star as gay cowboys who ride in to save a small town which has been plagued by poor interior design.
Wayne and Stewart are just two of the many successful actors of the talkies era who struggle to make the transition to the silent screen which become popular in the 30s and 20s.
Silent films are a product of the Great Depression after which there follows a period of not wanting to speak much.
Even the silent screen caption writers were a little depressed, although at first they seemed to be doing their job just as ever they had done - see graphic.
There was much to be depressed about. The USA went into the '45-'39 world war the richest country in the whole world, and emerges from it a pauper. Most of its pauperization, however, has nothing to do with the war, but with paying off 21st college students’ online poker debts.
The Women’s Movement
War made great changes to the life-experience of women, but after the war’s end, Emmeline Pankhurst leads a campaign to let women return to the home and stay there!
She calls a press conference by some railings to prove female ineptitude. ‘Watch me try to padlock my bicycle!’ she declares, only to succeed in padlocking herself to some railings. ‘Oh, I’m such a useless ninny!’ proclaims Pankhurst. ‘But this is what happens when we’re allowed to roam free without chaperones or male guidance!’ Seconds later a youth walks by and steals her bike. ‘See what I mean!’
Meanwhile Sylvia Pankhurst leads the Suffragette movement for electoral reform. Suffragettes march under banners which say: You Decide For Both Of Us, Dear. Says Sylvia Pankhurst: I’ll vote in the apple crumble referendum but anything else is beyond my competency.
A major turning point in this campaign comes when the nation is touched by the tragic fate of an unchaperoned lady who, confused among the noise and crush, the jostling and rough talk of a large crowd, spots what looks to her to be an empty lawn where she may sit a while and compose herself. But no sooner has she ducked under the fence than she is trampled by frontrunners in the Epsom derby!
Ironically it is the King’s horse Anmer that kills Emily Davison that June day in 1913. Holding the dead woman in his arms His Majesty makes an emotional plea to the men. ‘This, Gentlemen, is the result of our selfishly trying to get out of doing our share of the work of managing, shipping and finance, hoping ladies might be generals, bankers, farmers, lawyers just so that we could spend more time in biliard rooms. Something must be done. And so so that women cannot go more than a hour or two from their homes in any direction I hereby decree the removal of female toilets from public spaces. I shall allow some female toilets in theatres but not nearly enough, lest leaving the home should fail to become associated with discomfort, pain and the fear of imminent embarrassment and missing the beginning of the second half’.
Gentlemen complain that the new practice of having to hold doors open for women is ‘political correctness gone mad!’