Status Updates From Man-Eating Typewriter: Shor...

Polari is unorthodox to say the least, filled out with bastardised French, German and other Euro lingos. For a precise account of Merchant Navy and Theatreland Polari, Paul Baker has written a number of fabulosa books – and they were indispensable for the writing of this one.

[Footnote under the author's Thank You endnote.]

Joan was a fantabulosa role model for my Exterminating Angels – a cross-dressing palone-omi, a bona heretic in sparkly armour, maxi dedicated to a higher being, hellbent on ferricadoozing the anglos, and with an exquisitely high tolerance for pain and suffering – but when I mentioned the similarity to my devotees, the dolls just smiled thinly and tugged on their pouffed-up beehives regardless …

Under the innocuous screamline LE QUATRIÈME CHANT, some fungal frog named Jean Schuster – apparently toppermost doggy in the Surrealist grupa after André Breton’s mortification – declared in nix uncertain terms: SURREALISM IS DEAD. ... I savvied it was my duty now to solo-handedly resuscitate the exquisite corpse of Surrealism, to spread its gloriosa disease hither-thither, throttling awake all sceptics ...

The musica was typical anglo twaddle: longwinded fuzztone odysseys chanted by morose wizards, repetitive cosmic caca that may well have sent the donna to sleep anyway had the drogas not got to her first. As we spun each other daffy, she rapidly began to complain of a heavy tet and jelly-lallies, to which I retorted, ‘Come and gulp some aero with me, dear heart.’

Nonchalantly I retorted: ‘I’m nix piglet, comrades. In fact, I’m more bolshy than the lot of you put together. I’m a froggy libertarian, I’m a squatter, an anarchist, an arva-fiend. Je detest all authority! This unfortunate riahdo is no fash statement – only premature baldiness, repulsive as that may be.’

Yes, there was a pattern. Emily counted thirty-one rogue bold letters in each chapter, always following this sequence: g, n, i, n, e, t, s, i, l, f, i, t, i, n, i, r, a, e, n, a, t, n, i, r, p, e, m, p, l, e, h. Aside from a few words standing out (nine, nets, fit in, IRA, MP), she was unsure what to make of this stream of nonsense.

[An easy code to figure out 🤣]

As I paced around the workshop barking gildi orders at my receptive bambinos, I felt like the puppetmaster of some classic rags-to-riches liver – Doc Coppélia, Vic Frankenstein, Stephen Ward, the Prof from PYGMALION – reinvigorating these lost, easily led prole pooves and popsies, injecting them with natty skills and a nova bona education they could use to better themselves in the outside mond …

How did I acquire these clefs, I nelly thee screech? I admit it wasn’t the mostest convulsive or risqué chance encounter of my Surrealist lavvy: I’d clocked the trey-storey latty in an estate agent’s glossy chinka weeks earlier and parkered the property pronto in cash.

Quite possibly this was what the rosbifs thought us frogs listened to on our crystal sets: piercing accordion and kishka-curdling garlic-stinkering oompahpahpahpah.

Are we all not a pogi bit queer now and then? Is it not more perverse to blockade your multilove impulses only for fear of embarrassment, sneering eaglets or being vadared as somehow outside norm society? ACHTUNG, my dear chovis: to be considered normal is perhaps the coddiest insult of all, is it not?!

NOVAK. Ogling my gildi screeve, you’ll have gathered by now I’m nanti much of a love god. But be patient, comrade. Since I cannot prove a lover, I am determined to prove a villain, and hate the idle pleasures of our junos!
MERRITT. Sorry? Come again?
NOVAK. Billy Shaker. Dicky Trey.
MERRITT. Dick Tracy?
NOVAK. Nein! You’re a coddy detective, monsieur. Adieu!
The line went dead.

Once my naggy platters hit Nord Afrikkkan soil, I savvied I must change my clobber immediately. While the natives might not finger me as your typical exploitable Occidental pleasuretripper, the plastic caroon, hammer-and-sickle, sequins and mogue willets were nevertheless not the mostest discreet attire to mince around a nova foreign territory in unchaperoned.

it would not be unreasonable to suspect that this entire novel is the flight of fancy of a dreaming lunatic. Some of us imagined Novak as a dull, washed-up old hack, desperate for attention. Others had faith he was a bona fide madman with genuine criminal intentions, a dangerous Walter Mitty with a very accommodating ghostwriter. As far as Merritt was concerned, he wished the stream of nonsense would stop now.

The lav ‘gibberish’ comes from Gibraltar. Apparently natives of the Rock speak this meshigena spic-rosbif lingo that makes Polari seem like the Queen’s,* but – ALAS and ALACK – the daffy ex-pats in the Grand Columbia or Grand Cannibal Grill did not mince their lavs.

[Not an actual etymology for gibberish, according to Wikipedia.]

We live on a rock that revolves around a blistering sparkle. We schlumph down invisible gases to stay alive. We’re surrounded by everyday absurdity: war, jazz, belching cabooshes, politicos, caged monos, asylums, dinarli, pointless travails. What difference does a petty morso of skimpy fabric make?

‘The boy speaks any English?’ Spinks, the treacle-riahed omi asked as the crispy dawn lento dazzled through the fenêtres.
‘Of sorts. He’s learning,’ explained the Governor. ‘Certainly Raymond is slow for a fifteen-year-old, his brain seems tuned to a lower frequency, but remember this lad was more feral hound than upstanding gentlechild when we rescued him. These words he uses, it’s almost pidgin English...’

The reverbs were so thunderous I lost my footing on the rubble-willet, skittering downways on my corybungus, ripping the carnish from my thews and buttocks. Once I’d righted myself, I squawked for help with an oyster full of grit but, not knowing the exact anglo lav for ‘Help!’, I wasn’t expecting any dolly muscular hero to materialise.