There were only five channels then, on terrestrial T.V, and most people couldn’t afford cable. The only satellite dish in the whole of the East End belonged to Tam Kaminsky who lived in the gable house on Garvel Road and he was renowned for being an especially unrelenting flash fuck. His wife ran away on Christmas Eve with a man who kept dovecotes and raced pigeons while Tam was out getting a designer haircut. I was seven in nineteen-ninety-seven when Tony Blair was elected Prime Minister of Great Britain and I was eight when he was beheaded on Channel Five by The Golden Path. We watched it live: my mother, my father, my brother and me. But it wasn’t just us. Everyone saw it. It was a shock at first. We were sitting with our dinner around the box watching the news when the picture went all static and spectral for a minute. It was like a strobe light malfunctioning until eventually it all levelled out and it was just Tony Blair with a jester’s hat on tied to a fucking barrel. I must admit, initially it was a welcome break from the habitual practised misery shovelled down our throats by the news anchor-Don McKray. ‘ HI I’M DON MCKRAY AND IN TODAY'S NEWS, MISERY’ . My da said something about oh look at him out acting like a clown trying to get the disillusioned nihilists back voting again. If anything is worth anything it’s the sound of your own laughter. My ma said don’t be so daft, he's only just got in last year and they nihilists don’t care about the telly, it’s probably the revisionists he’s trying to get on board. My brother said, he’s just trying to deflect cos he’s going to war in the Middle East – welcome to the Colosseum. I didn’t say anything. I had put my fork on my plate and was writing everything down. Then this guy walks in from screen left – a definite baddie of course. He pulls out this massive fucking sword and that’s when things got a bit sweaty in the old perineum for baby faced Tony. That’s when things got really real. Tony shat his pants. My maz jaw hit the nylon carpet and a whole chicken dipper fell out. Is this real? She guffawed or croaked or whispered. As real as that chicken dipper lying on the floor, ma da said. On reflection, the chicken dipper on the floor was real but the chicken in the chicken dipper was fifty-percent pork mix.
the Golden Path’s hand
expanded across Europe
surface modifications