Now I can’t rule out industrial sabotage. However I’m more inclined to believe that Dromedary thought he could run before he could walk. Or, perhaps it wasn’t the machine at all. Maybe it was all those years of pent up frustration and he smashed his pelvis into seventeen pieces through sheer enthusiasm.
Still, they’ve managed to wire up the bits and he’s now wearing a rather fetching genital cast. So I guess the moral of this story is that taking your work home with you is a very bad idea.
Okay, so what do you want to know next? Bactrian? Yes, let’s have a little more on Bactrian. I think it’s important you understand the old order to understand why I took such dramatic action against it.
What? No. I prefer to use ‘dramatic’. ‘Vicious’ implies I wasn’t justified.
So, Bactrian sits in the office of Doctor Olyphant, consultant head-shrinker at a very discreet clinic. They’re here to discuss his impulse-control problems, his alcohol and substance abuse and his chronic sexual incontinence. Whilst all these things are just dandy behind closed doors, they’ve been causing chaos kerb-side recently and Malmot’s tired of the physical and metaphorical mopping up.
The therapy will start with a ‘get to know yourself’ session. But getting to know himself isn’t the problem. It’s a five-times-daily occurrence. It’s stopping that’s causing the difficulty. The P.M, however, is unrepentant and doesn’t want strangers running around the inside of his head, moving the furniture around.
“No sense stirring up the sludge, eh, Olster?” he protests. He certainly doesn’t need anyone telling him to empathise with a teapot.
“Remember,” Olyphant persists, “be like the teapot. The tea is stewing. You must pour it all out. Pour it all out for me, Prime Minister.”
“This isn’t tea, Oly-pants” answers Bactrian, patting his big belly. “It’s foie gras, caviar and wine so expensive the angels weep when they hear the cork pop. And vodka. Plenty of vodka!”
“Which is probably part of the problem,” Olyphant frowns before switching to a synthesized, sympathetic smile. You can’t tell a politician anything he doesn’t know. You can tell a doctor even less. “I assure you, Prime Minister, visualisation is a proven psychiatric technique. It…”
“Proven psychiatric technique?” Bactrian howls. “Proven psychiatric technique?! Mincing around the establishment with one hand on my hip, waving the other like a spout! I’ll tell you what comes out of my spout…”
“No need,” the doctor interrupts. “No need.”
The Prime Minister is making lurid hand gestures indicating the movement of fluids.
“Your mistake, Old Olly-Olly Oxen-free, is thinking I need to be cured. But why cure something that’s so much fun? Seems like a waste of a marvellous illness – the gift that keeps on giving, if you like.”
“But…”
“I tell you what your problem is, Olcoholic: too much of this Sigmund Freudy, Squeegee-puss I-hate-women-I’m-scared-of-my-own-nipples business.”
“Squeegee-puss?”
“You know the fellow… The chap with the hotsy-totsies for his mother.”
“You mean…” tries the doctor. But it’s no use.
“I don’t fancy my mother. Do you?”
“She’s very attractive for her age but…”
I don’t know about you but I don’t care for this topic. Let’s end the scene on a stunned silence and switch the action to our next medical establishment. You see, Malmot suspects that Bactrian’s problems are physiological as well as neurological. And so we find ourselves in Harley Street with a different set of medical professionals, including a nurse who won’t accept money to take her clothes off. As you can imagine, this has made the situation quite tense.
A spectacled man in a starched white smock sits stony-faced, dredging the depths of his mind for that all-important phrase. He’s searching for euphemisms, a subtle alternative to ‘dead within the week.’ After a pre-consultation conference with the specialists involved with the Prime Minister’s case, they came up with a popular phrase involving a creek, a paddle and a pejorative term for human excreta. Mr Bactrian is not particularly popular in Harley Street.
It’s an impossible situation. Doctors are difficult people to interact with at the best of times and Bactrian does nothing to smooth out the personality differences. His use of the word ‘quack’ repeatedly and at volumes varying from under-the-breath to bull-elephant-roar being a prime example. The doctor is not ‘a quack’, just mildly incompetent, so he puts his usual subtle sarcasm back into its box and sneers his way through the following:
“Well, Mr Bactrian, let’s start with your liver. Your liver is in a condition that we professional doctors would describe as – and I do not use the term lightly – fucked. Your colon’s so clogged it looks like it’s been pebble-dashed and the CAT scans of your brain resemble nothing less than Dresden in the grip of incendiary bombing.”
“Uh huh,” Bactrian nods, betraying no emotion.
“But this is the killer,” the doctor says, suppressing the urge to smirk. “The cause of your nausea: gangrene, stemming from what I can only describe as a penile concretion.”
“A penile what?” says Bactrian.
“A penile concretion,” answers the doctor. “It’s a new term. I made it up today.”
“But what the hell is it?!” Bactrian snarls, his face a contorted kabuki mask of angered perplexitude.
“Come now,” the doctor chides. “Surely you must have noticed that unsightly lump where your penis used to be? It must have aroused your curiosity when you discovered your manhood had disappeared and been replaced with a Stone Age club? You can’t have thought it was normal?”
“I’m the Prime Minister,” growls Bactrian, sweating brandy, “I leave discussions on the nature of normality to pseuds and students. Tell me what the problem is, tell me what you intend to do with it, and tell me now! I want to get tough on this issue!”
“Whip it out!” the doctor snaps. “Now look at it. Move it about a bit. No, you do it. I don’t want to touch it. The problem,” he continues, “stems from your compulsive, and may I say, idiosyncratic use of cocaine. This, coupled with your laissez-faire attitude toward personal hygiene in that area, has led to a build up of smegma on your organ. The narcotic crystals have mixed with sweat to form a cement. This cement has set into a firm shell, restricting blood flow. Some areas of tissue are dead. Others are in the process of decaying. The solution, I’m afraid, is immediate amputation.”
Bactrian considers his response.
“This is regrettable news. Go screw yourself, quack!”
“Please,” the doctor berates, “A man in your condition should stay calm. Are you calm? Well, try to look as if you are. That face unsettles me. Now… surgery really is the only option. ‘Bactrian’s syndrome’ is fatal if not treated immediately.”
“Bactrian’s syndrome!” the Prime Minister fumes. “Bactrian’s syndrome?!”
“Another term I made up today,” the doctor says curtly. “We have to call it something. And you’re the first recorded case.”
“Well, call it after yourself,” Bactrian snaps.
“No, I don’t think so,” the doctor asserts. “I’m not having my name associated with cock-rot.”