Confessions, Part 4

London, Thursday, 5 September, 1974 (continued)

Take a moment...relax...now that you're comfortable, think back, way back, to those antediluvian times before the dawn of pre-recorded history, when everything – including milk –was good for you. Yes, that was before the beginning, before they changed the water. That was before instantaneous alchemists on both sides of the big ditch developed that now familial process of mind-overdub. That was years (in the antiquated English system of weights and measures) before Hanna Milhous Nixon had her hysterectomy and put Whittier on the map. That was before the world’s fossil fuel supply trickled inexorably through the ventricles of modern motor media madness, giving birth to generations of insecticides and other small dying creatures. That was before the four lads from Liverpool dropped their great load on the compost heap of human knowledge.  As official Paisley House pornographer David Hume Kennerly once said, “Those were un-groovy times.”

But enough metaphoric mouthwash, hypodermic hogwash, and bicarbonate brainwash. The president and I both thank you for the insurrection. Please join us for Act III of “A Slice of Life”, starring the Reality Players, which is already in progress.

Warning: The Sturgeon General has proven that money is hazardous to your wealth.

Note: This lifetime and others like it are dedicated to St. Richard Milhous-Nixxon, the 37^th resident of the Subdivided States of Unconsciousness, without whom none of this would have been necessary.

To continue…Yesterday we had to clear the flat for the maid, so we took a motor trip (in Mother’s friend Pat’s Mini) through the winding cobbled streets of Hampstead to the old English mansion, Kenwood House. Originally Caenwood House, this example of Adam architecture was built in the early 1600s and was owned in those fallopian times by such dignitaries as the second and third Dukes of Argyll, the Earl of Bute, and the Earl of Manchester, among others. The many, many rooms which have hardwood floors, and are generously hung with fifty or sixty (at least) paintings from Old Masters, including Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Sir Joshua Reynolds. The Vermeer, “The Guitar Player” (alone worth millions) was recently stolen and held for ransom by a band of displaced desperados.  However, it was returned in good working order after its perilous journey around the tip of the Cape of Good Horn in South Armenia.

We visited Kentish Town and Camden Town (some of the poorer sections of London, which resemble Brooklyn), Golders Green (where the people of the Jewish persuasion hang out), and Hampstead Garden Suburb, whose three-story brick mansions make Bel-Air look like the slums. These palatial dwellings are inhabited by the noble aristocratic families of the capitalist ruling strata which go back many spontaneous generations. Hampstead, it turns out, has the most expensive land per acre in the world (probably excluding downtown Newark and Burbank).

Rain, the tears of the almighty grid, comes almost every day, bringing with it multitudes of umbrellas, macs, anoraks, and other vestments of garb, which prohibit the incursion of insipient precipitation. This is why the English countryside is so green. (That’s lucky for us, because if it were red, all the Chinese would fall off.) Now and again the shining face of the sun Helios pokes through the veneer of clouds, bathing the emerald hills in a sea of photons. This variable climate, though gloomy at times, is perhaps a welcome change from Southern California’s standard temperature and pressure (STP) Celsius monochromatic sameness. The staccato of thunder punctuates the magic bowl movement of life’s magnum opus.