An Evening of Lugubrious Music and Lopsided Prose: To London.

To London.

I enjoy train travel. 

Possibly because I travel off-peak.

Front-facing window seat with a table and I'm a happy man.

As soon as the train starts moving, instead of gurning out of the window at the peasant filled fields, I pull out my current note-book and start writing out all the song lyrics, again.

My concentration broken only once as the train stops at Gatwick Airport and subsumed by what appear to be angry lobster people continually shouting abuse at one another whist juggling suitcases and screaming off-spring.

After many more hilarious ups & downs the train eventually pulls into Waterloo Station.

I filch some sugar cubes from the unattended refreshment trolly and, on reaching the front of the train, give them to the pulling horse. 

I'd always assumed the Bognor Regis to Waterloo train was pulled by a pair and this may in fact be the case, one of the pair could have been unhitched at Clapham Junction and either rested or put on other duties.

I'm slightly nervous as I've been informed that I am to be met from the train my Mr. Key himself.  

I make sure the chin-strap on my helmet is extra tight this time.

Senses at full volume, I cross the barrier and crouch low, embracing the margins.

I light the Blotzmannscope and make a tentative sweep.

Locked!

Christopher Plummer?

No, my mistake, it's Mr. Key himself.

The Christopher Plummer moment is understandable when I explain that Mr. Key is wearing a smart Tyrolean Jacket, a jaunty Tyroean hat and clutching an alpenstock.

Piled around him are hundreds of brown leather suit-cases and wooden trunks.  

He is accompanied by a crowd of children, more urchins really, wearing clothes made from old curtain material and, stood alongside him, the most ferocious nun I've ever seen.

I was about to break cover when the nun's gaze fixed on me and suddenly I found it quite impossible to move.

She crossed the concourse in a menacing and deliberate manner, straight to my hiding place in the glass horse trough..

She stood over me and I watched her face ripple above the surface of the water.

She grabbed me by the throat, hauled me out and dropped me on the floor where I coughed and spluttered for several minutes before regaining my composure.

 "TAKE THIS!"  she said bendind over me shoving something toward my face,  "Mr. Key, in the unlikely event that he may have something to communicate to you,  will contact you using this device."

"Under no circumstances are you to approach within 2 metres of Mr. Key unless Mr. Key's life is threatened you will then be expected to throw yourself between Mr. Key and the assailant."

"DO YOU UNDERSTAND?".

I nodded, she turned on her heel and walked back toward the urchins.

I looked at the device I'd been given, it was a Metal Tapping Machine!

TrueIy I had arrived in the big city.  

I emptied the horse trough water out of my ukulele.

One of the urchins ran over and handed me a grubby piece of paper.  In nail-scratch font, it read:

At the sound of the Horror Horn you will join the rear of Mr. Key's entourage and be escorted to the limousine fleet.
You will join the last vehicle in the line for the journey to your destiny.

The Horror Horn sounded loud and long. 

Urchins leapt each to a suit case or trunk and hoisted them on to their backs. Mr. Key turned and began walking toward the exit, the nun fell in behind him and the urchins began to lumber in their wake.

When the station seemed more or less deserted I guessed it was my turn to follow on.

Outside the station I noticed the iMaxio cinema was showing 'Key! The Movie". 

I walked along the row of highly polished red limos and, at the end of the line, got into the back of an old white Transit-van-Morrison.

I peered through a hole in the van roof as we proceeded at a stately pace toward…..

And there it was!  

Gleaming!  

Twinkling!   

A beacon.

A sword of golden light thrust into the clouds,

Haemoglobin Towers!

2 hours later, after undergoing the various scanings, probings and interrogations that regular visitors to Haemoglobin Towers seem to take as a matter of course,  I am shoved, in non-to gentle a manner, into a lift.

The lift attendant turns to me and says, "To which level do you wish to proceed?".

"I dunno" I replied.

The attendant's face clouds over, "Is that problematical?" I ask.

"No, is not pro-blem-atical" he says, stretching out the word problematical in a pantomimic way.

"I know what level I now proceed you to".

That didn't sound good.

I watch the electronic level indicator. It's scale impossible for the lay-man to decipher, the needle flicking back and forth, this way and that, lights flashing, bells ringing, steam escaping.

The lift stops with a jolt and my head hits the ceiling before my knees hit the floor.

The lift attendant laughs and laughs and laughs.

"Your name's on the list, pal" I think to myself.

I step out of the lift into luxury as I have never seen.

 The exciting control hubs, the gleaming surfaces, the pods.

A pod tree to be more precise.  I reach up an pluck a blue iLeonard from it's branches.

From her reclining position, on a golden chaise-long in the shape of a pig on it's back, a be-turbaned flapper giggles and shouts over to a figure sat at an escritoire in the shadows, "Tonight's "offering" for the ceremony has arrived", she fluted.

The figure rose from the escritoire and started to walk toward me.  As the shadows fell away I knew it was him, Mr. Key.

I was ready, all the training, all the sacrifice, focused onto this moment.

Let him get close, let him get close, so close that there will be no mistake this time.

Mr. Key, hands behind his back, stalks across the marble tiles, I met his gaze head-on, he suspects nothing and suddenly we are face to face.

Now is the moment.

In one deft move I duck down, open my ruck-sack, whip out my cape and throw it round my shoulders, 

"Key!" I bellow, whist extending a potential hearty hand-shake.

Mr. Key reels back like a man who's seen his own ghost, the flapper, Pansy Cradledew no less, shrieks and drops several stitches from the alpaca vest she's knitting.

I reach into the folds of my cape and turn it up to full power. It billows pleasingly though there is no wind on which to do so.

"Spaceman!" they chime in unison.

"It is I" my lofty reply.

"We thought you had abandoned us" said Mr. Key, furiously pumping my proffered hand.

"All is well, all is well, Hooting Yard, Hooting Yard, Ha Ha and Gazebo!" trilled Ms. Cradledew as she did a frighteningly elaborate skippy dance around the room.

Mr. Key fixed me with the steely gaze that has been known to kill the smaller members of the rodent family and said "time is short, we have a helicopter waiting. There may just be enough time to get to the venue before some poor sod has his entrails ripped out by wailing Yardistas! "

We entered an altogether more pleasant lift, still the same attendant as before though.

The moment the etched crystal glass doors closed it revolved through 180 degrees to appear on the outside of the tower and shot toward the roof.

"I'll brief you in the chopper" Mr. Key shouted as we ducked under it's spinning blades.

"Give me a moment" I said, "I have some unfinished business with your lift attendant."

"You've got one minute and we're gone!"

I drew out my sharpest ukulele and headed back to the lift.

To find out what happens next tune into Resonance 104.4 (in the London area) or pick up the mp3 feed from the site at  6 p.m. on Thursday 22nd of December.

(The winter solstice y'know, oh, yes)