(no subject)
I’ve been trying to post this entry all week, but LJ hasn’t been working properly, apparently due to DDoS attacks.
Monday 25th July, 2011:
Last night I had a long and complicated dream. Although I began typing this almost as soon as I rose, bits of it are already leaving my memory.
Most of the start of the dream has gone already. I can recall that I was back in Congleton, having made absolutely nothing of my life (even less so than I have in reality, I mean) and now being stuck there. There was something about being back at my old high school and removing sections from the stairwell just off reception, but most of that part is lost.
I then had a job interview at the Royal Armouries. It took place at one of those wooden combined-table-and-benches things you find in picnic areas in a beer-garden on the roof of the Armouries building, and was conducted by a female HR staffer and Dr. Tim Sutherland of the Towton Battlefield Archaeology Project, who was wearing full English foot plate (but no sallet) and cooking sausages on a barbecue beside our table.
The test during the interview consisted of being handed a very poor replica of a fifteenth century English single-hander weighted for thrusting, and then ordered to attack one of those big catering tins of cooking oil. I stabbed at it a few times - nailing it right on the label every time - explaining while I did so about how the sword was both a rubbish replica and far too small for someone of my stature, and how I’d personally be inclined to use a weapon that short as a messer.
Over barbecued sausages in finger buns, Dr. Sutherland and the HR woman did the verbal bit of the interview. Although they both seemed quite positive, I didn’t get the job. Someone, I don’t remember who, told me not to worry as it was only because of the swingeing funding cuts that have been imposed on the Armouries by the coalition government, but I knew it was because they didn’t like the interpretation of KDF that I had learned from Instructor Adam, which is far more fluid and usable than the rather clunky “taking-turns-to-hit-one-another-as-noisily-as-possible” bullshit beloved of reenactors.
I returned dejectedly to Congleton. I can remember wandering back and forth along Bridge Street a couple of times, before passing where Woolworths used to be (I have no idea what shop is there now) and turning left down the hill towards the bus station.
It was about now that I was approached, and then hired, by a guy in a grey chauffeur’s uniform. He did have a name, but I am afraid that this is one of the details from this dream that has already slipped away (I think it began with G, or possibly C, and had at least two syllables). He was in charge of an extremely expensive new Bentley in dark grey, and my new job was to accompany him down to Stansted airport and collect his boss, a chap by the name of Miles Pyx. I know I sat in the front on the way down, and in the back on the return journey to Congleton, but that is all I can remember of the journey.
I remember being left to my own devices at Stansted while the chauffeur (I suspect I am going to get very tired of typing that word. Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V) went to meet Pyx. I found myself killing time in an HMV superstore attached to the airport, and it was here that I discovered I had walked in on a Terrorizer forum board meet.
Over the far back right-hand corner of the store was an old-fashioned video wall comprised of CRT televisions, and there was going to be an in-store showing of a new Bad Religion DVD. The only person there yet was Beermoth, who recognised me and said hello. While we were talking, Robitusson and NegiJames (whose idea the whole thing had been) arrived, and we went to find seats. These were big, low armchairs in black leather arranged in two blocks of six. The first block was right in front of the video wall, three chairs facing it and three away. The second block of seats was in the same arrangement and orientation on the other side of an expanse of plain black wall, possibly the back of the checkouts, and was much further away and at a much greater angle to the screen. This was where I sat. I set my phone to act as a wi-fi hotspot and then got my laptop out.
More and more board members arrived and took places on and around the other block of armchairs, and as the DVD started a number of them asked why I had chosen to sit apart and away from the video wall. I can actually remember my reply verbatim:
‘Put your hand up if you’ve brought your phone.’
Almost everyone, myself included, put their hand up. I think the two exceptions were Was and Mali. A titter ran round the group.
‘Put your hand up if you’ve brought your laptop.’
Even more people put their hands up. I think Was was the only exception this time. Open chuckles now.
‘Put your hand up if you’re actually into Bad Religion.’
This time, everyone except me put their hands up.
‘That, gentleman, is why I’m sitting all the way over here.’
Open laughter.
When I got up to leave, I had to go to the back of the store, passing between the board members and the video wall. A sort of conference table had been set up behind the bank of seats, and the latecomers - including Richie, Symbolic Justice Wode, Sol and Morf - were sitting around it.
The next bit I remember was being back in Congleton, sitting in the back seat of the Bentley, which was parked half-on and half-off the kerb outside the Bull’s Head Hotel on Swan Bank/Mill Street. Pyx was going to go into the bar and do some business with the owner, and my job was to go in and just stand behind him and do a bit of looming. We went inside, and I had to wait at the bar while Pyx and the owner went off into some back office for a discussion. The grizzled old landlady behind the bar proceeded to tell be off for the amount of noise my boots made when I walked across her new wooden floor.
Things go a bit hazy for a wee while here. I must have been dismissed temporarily, because I can remember going for a walk around nearby bits of Congleton. I paid a visit to the house I spent the first five or six years of my life in, and I remember walking back across the West Street car park, beside the tennis club.
When I got back to the Bull’s Head, I found the Bentley had been moved to the car park, and that it was sitting there with the headlights on and the engine running, but that there was nobody inside it. I found that the doors were all locked and through the driver’s side window I could see the keys in the ignition. The boot was open though, and as I approached it I felt a sense of creeping dread that it would contain a mangled corpse, but the cream leather interior was completely empty.
One of the footwell floor mats - like a white bath mat - had clearly fallen out of the passenger door. I picked it up, folded it in half and tucked it under my arm.
I went back into the bar to ask after Pyx and the chauffeur, but after yet again being told off for the noise of my boots on the hard floor, I found that both of the other men were missing. The owner of the bar didn’t seem to believe that I had anything to do with the Bentley until he saw the floor mat under my arm, whereupon he pointed to a matching one on the bar in front of him. I asked if maybe the chauffeur had left a spare set of keys for me, and I persuaded the landlord to hand them over just for a moment or two so I could pop out and retrieve my phone from the glove compartment.
Back in the car, I found that my phone wasn’t in the glove compartment - it was in my right cargo pocket like normal all along. While still sitting in the passenger seat, I opened my door and pushed the car out of its space, turned it around and pushed it back in again. Why I did this at all, let alone why I didn’t just drive the thing, I still don’t know.
There is a bit of a blank here, but then I remember that the chauffeur returned and the two of us got into an argument with the owner in the corridor on the top floor of the hotel because Pyx had disappeared, somehow ripping of the owner in the process. Lots of people came out of their rooms to see what the trouble was, but I seem to recall that I just kept quiet and let the chauffeur do all the talking.
After the situation was defused, the landlord stormed off and the hotel guests went back to their rooms. I started to follow the owner, the chauffeur and most of the guests towards the stairs, but as I passed a gradually-closing door to my left, I espied a room full of girls.
Against the right-hand wall of the room there were two beds, one either side of a high window obscured by a net curtain. A pale natural blonde was on her back on the far bed, making out with a brunette with shortish hair on her knees astride her. On the bed nearest the door was a strikingly-attractive pornstar-looking lass, more tanned than the other two but with almost-white blonde hair that fell in loose curls as far as the top of her plain black bra. She was up on her knees facing out into the room as if waiting for someone (perhaps another woman out of sight behind the still-closing door).
I caught the door with my left hand before it was within a foot of the frame,, poked my head through the gap, and asked the three ladies if they needed any assistance. The couple on the far bed ignored me, and the peroxide blonde on the nearest bed said something I didn’t catch, but which was clearly negative. Nevertheless, I leaned further through the door and repeated my request. Her reply was again unintelligible, but the dismissive wave of her hand left no room for misinterpretation, so I pulled back into the corridor and allowed the door to finally come to. Denied!
I realised I could use this as a pretext for not following the other twittering guests along the hall and down the stairs. Instead, I about-faced and went the other way down the corridor and out of the fire exit at the opposite end of the hall. The fire door opened out onto the sort of metal fire escape you see in loads of American films, but rarely see in this country.
I looked down to see that all the other cars except the dark grey Bentley were gone from the car park, but in the space next to it there was what was quite clearly a severed head in a dark grey motorbike helmet. Even from my elevated position, I could see through the helmet’s transparent visor that the head wore steel-rimmed spectacles, and a look of extreme surprise in its wide-open eyes.
It was a neatly-done job - no blood or anything to be seen - and I knew that this meant the decapitating had been done elsewhere, and the detached appendage had just been dumped here. At that moment, the chauffeur came back around the corner from the front of the hotel and walked back across the carpark towards the Bentley. He got a lot closer to the head than I was before he figured out what it was, and he didn’t take it well.
I don’t remember getting down the fire escape, but I must have done because we were then standing over the head, trying to decide what to do next. Its presence was clearly something to do with the missing Pyx (it definitely wasn’t his head), and we both knew that in his absence it would be pinned on us.
At that moment, the still-irate hotel owner and two or three other people came around the corner into the car park too. I immediately whirled to face them, interposing myself between them and the chauffeur so the tails of my long coat hid the severed head on the floor behind me. I can’t remember what it was that I said to them, but I do know I was wishing fervently throughout that the chauffeur would get it together enough to do something, anything, with that fucking head, even if it was to just shove it into a bloody carrier bag and act like nothing was amiss. I’m not sure whether he actually did this or not, as he was directly behind me, but somehow I managed to persuade them to go away again in short order without arousing their suspicions.
I must have then climbed back up to the top of the fire escape again, because the next thing I can remember is looking down at the Bentley from above. The boot of the car and all of the doors on its right-hand side were all open, and the chauffeur was kneeling on the tarmac beside it. He had one of those “cool boxes” used for chilling drinks on picnics, and since it was open I could see that it was full of illegal drugs and old-fashioned medical paraphernalia - real rubber tourniquets, and syringes made out of thick glass and stainless steel. I knew right then that the chauffeur fully and deliberately intended to take a fatal dose of heroin. For some reason, we would have unable to prove that Pyx had ever even existed, and the chauffeur was taking the easy way out, dodging the repercussions of both the severed head and whatever it was Pyx had done to rip off the hotel owner. He was dead before I could even think of running back down the fire escape to stop him.
I was well and truly in the shit at this point. The disappearance of Pyx and the death of the chauffeur left me carrying the can both for the decapitation and for whatever it was Pyx had been up to, and I knew that the prosecution were going to try and pin absolutely everything on me.
The court case passed in a rapid montage of comic book frames. I remember the “camera” of my dream passing down a series of titles and bullet points, laying out the series of events as I portrayed them to the court. It seems I dealt with it by vehemently protesting my innocence while being aware that they didn’t believe in the existence of Pyx, but then leaving it until my own guilt seemed clear in their minds before even bringing up the dead chauffeur. Suspicion immediately switched from myself to him, and I was let off scott-free.
The dream then returned to my perspective: I was standing on Mill Street in Congleton. It was dark, and raining, and I had the collar of my long coat turned up. I was reflecting that setting up a dead man to take someone else’s fall was a low trick, but that it was better than me going to jail for something I hadn’t done, and vowing to track down Pyx (who I somehow knew had escaped to Europe) and bring him to justice.
I crossed the street and descended the steps that should have led to the car park behind the Bridestones shopping centre, except they came out in Radford in Nottingham. I made my way east towards the Hyson Green Asda. Now, it just so happens that in real life I really need to go and buy some new boxer shorts - too many of my existing ones have fallen apart at the crotch and I am starting to run out - so my dream self decided to pop in and buy some more.
I could hear sounds of occupancy from the back of the store, but a glance at the time told me that it was already 1.32am (that’s a detail I do still remember). I was surprised that it had already got so late, dismayed that it was already over an hour and a half after my scheduled weeknight bedtime, and would be closer to two by the time I got back to place, and then annoyed that this twenty-four hour, seven-days-a-week superstore would be closed at this, the only occasion in months I had been (or was likely to be) anywhere near it. Hooray for dream logic!
While crossing the carpark behind the store in order to head back to my place, I began to wonder where it was that Pyx, clearly a consummate con man, had got his start-up capital. The dream went into a series of flashbacks: Pym had found a framed antique map of the early British colonies in North America and picked it up for a quid. He had then taken it out of the frame, and concocted a cock-and-bull story about hijackers seizing the six Royal Navy treasure ships carrying six chests of gold to the first six colonies, but being unable to dispose of the “hot” gold anywhere within the Empire because it was too distinctive, and so they returned to the Americas and hid the gold somewhere marked on said map.
This bullshit prospect of six ships full of hidden gold was enough to scam a rich and gullible American into backing Pyx, supplying just enough money to buy the Bentley and hire the chauffeur - none left over for me to be reimbursed for my services at all. Realising that I was as much a victim of one of Pyx’s confidence tricks as any of the others had been, I was just deciding how I was going to reach Amsterdam and get off on his trail when I woke up.
Quote of the Day:
“Don’t give me that crap about ‘real life’ - there ain’t no such animal.”
- Ian Fleming, Thunderball
Monday 25th July, 2011:
Last night I had a long and complicated dream. Although I began typing this almost as soon as I rose, bits of it are already leaving my memory.
Most of the start of the dream has gone already. I can recall that I was back in Congleton, having made absolutely nothing of my life (even less so than I have in reality, I mean) and now being stuck there. There was something about being back at my old high school and removing sections from the stairwell just off reception, but most of that part is lost.
I then had a job interview at the Royal Armouries. It took place at one of those wooden combined-table-and-benches things you find in picnic areas in a beer-garden on the roof of the Armouries building, and was conducted by a female HR staffer and Dr. Tim Sutherland of the Towton Battlefield Archaeology Project, who was wearing full English foot plate (but no sallet) and cooking sausages on a barbecue beside our table.
The test during the interview consisted of being handed a very poor replica of a fifteenth century English single-hander weighted for thrusting, and then ordered to attack one of those big catering tins of cooking oil. I stabbed at it a few times - nailing it right on the label every time - explaining while I did so about how the sword was both a rubbish replica and far too small for someone of my stature, and how I’d personally be inclined to use a weapon that short as a messer.
Over barbecued sausages in finger buns, Dr. Sutherland and the HR woman did the verbal bit of the interview. Although they both seemed quite positive, I didn’t get the job. Someone, I don’t remember who, told me not to worry as it was only because of the swingeing funding cuts that have been imposed on the Armouries by the coalition government, but I knew it was because they didn’t like the interpretation of KDF that I had learned from Instructor Adam, which is far more fluid and usable than the rather clunky “taking-turns-to-hit-one-another-as-noisily-as-possible” bullshit beloved of reenactors.
I returned dejectedly to Congleton. I can remember wandering back and forth along Bridge Street a couple of times, before passing where Woolworths used to be (I have no idea what shop is there now) and turning left down the hill towards the bus station.
It was about now that I was approached, and then hired, by a guy in a grey chauffeur’s uniform. He did have a name, but I am afraid that this is one of the details from this dream that has already slipped away (I think it began with G, or possibly C, and had at least two syllables). He was in charge of an extremely expensive new Bentley in dark grey, and my new job was to accompany him down to Stansted airport and collect his boss, a chap by the name of Miles Pyx. I know I sat in the front on the way down, and in the back on the return journey to Congleton, but that is all I can remember of the journey.
I remember being left to my own devices at Stansted while the chauffeur (I suspect I am going to get very tired of typing that word. Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V) went to meet Pyx. I found myself killing time in an HMV superstore attached to the airport, and it was here that I discovered I had walked in on a Terrorizer forum board meet.
Over the far back right-hand corner of the store was an old-fashioned video wall comprised of CRT televisions, and there was going to be an in-store showing of a new Bad Religion DVD. The only person there yet was Beermoth, who recognised me and said hello. While we were talking, Robitusson and NegiJames (whose idea the whole thing had been) arrived, and we went to find seats. These were big, low armchairs in black leather arranged in two blocks of six. The first block was right in front of the video wall, three chairs facing it and three away. The second block of seats was in the same arrangement and orientation on the other side of an expanse of plain black wall, possibly the back of the checkouts, and was much further away and at a much greater angle to the screen. This was where I sat. I set my phone to act as a wi-fi hotspot and then got my laptop out.
More and more board members arrived and took places on and around the other block of armchairs, and as the DVD started a number of them asked why I had chosen to sit apart and away from the video wall. I can actually remember my reply verbatim:
‘Put your hand up if you’ve brought your phone.’
Almost everyone, myself included, put their hand up. I think the two exceptions were Was and Mali. A titter ran round the group.
‘Put your hand up if you’ve brought your laptop.’
Even more people put their hands up. I think Was was the only exception this time. Open chuckles now.
‘Put your hand up if you’re actually into Bad Religion.’
This time, everyone except me put their hands up.
‘That, gentleman, is why I’m sitting all the way over here.’
Open laughter.
When I got up to leave, I had to go to the back of the store, passing between the board members and the video wall. A sort of conference table had been set up behind the bank of seats, and the latecomers - including Richie, Symbolic Justice Wode, Sol and Morf - were sitting around it.
The next bit I remember was being back in Congleton, sitting in the back seat of the Bentley, which was parked half-on and half-off the kerb outside the Bull’s Head Hotel on Swan Bank/Mill Street. Pyx was going to go into the bar and do some business with the owner, and my job was to go in and just stand behind him and do a bit of looming. We went inside, and I had to wait at the bar while Pyx and the owner went off into some back office for a discussion. The grizzled old landlady behind the bar proceeded to tell be off for the amount of noise my boots made when I walked across her new wooden floor.
Things go a bit hazy for a wee while here. I must have been dismissed temporarily, because I can remember going for a walk around nearby bits of Congleton. I paid a visit to the house I spent the first five or six years of my life in, and I remember walking back across the West Street car park, beside the tennis club.
When I got back to the Bull’s Head, I found the Bentley had been moved to the car park, and that it was sitting there with the headlights on and the engine running, but that there was nobody inside it. I found that the doors were all locked and through the driver’s side window I could see the keys in the ignition. The boot was open though, and as I approached it I felt a sense of creeping dread that it would contain a mangled corpse, but the cream leather interior was completely empty.
One of the footwell floor mats - like a white bath mat - had clearly fallen out of the passenger door. I picked it up, folded it in half and tucked it under my arm.
I went back into the bar to ask after Pyx and the chauffeur, but after yet again being told off for the noise of my boots on the hard floor, I found that both of the other men were missing. The owner of the bar didn’t seem to believe that I had anything to do with the Bentley until he saw the floor mat under my arm, whereupon he pointed to a matching one on the bar in front of him. I asked if maybe the chauffeur had left a spare set of keys for me, and I persuaded the landlord to hand them over just for a moment or two so I could pop out and retrieve my phone from the glove compartment.
Back in the car, I found that my phone wasn’t in the glove compartment - it was in my right cargo pocket like normal all along. While still sitting in the passenger seat, I opened my door and pushed the car out of its space, turned it around and pushed it back in again. Why I did this at all, let alone why I didn’t just drive the thing, I still don’t know.
There is a bit of a blank here, but then I remember that the chauffeur returned and the two of us got into an argument with the owner in the corridor on the top floor of the hotel because Pyx had disappeared, somehow ripping of the owner in the process. Lots of people came out of their rooms to see what the trouble was, but I seem to recall that I just kept quiet and let the chauffeur do all the talking.
After the situation was defused, the landlord stormed off and the hotel guests went back to their rooms. I started to follow the owner, the chauffeur and most of the guests towards the stairs, but as I passed a gradually-closing door to my left, I espied a room full of girls.
Against the right-hand wall of the room there were two beds, one either side of a high window obscured by a net curtain. A pale natural blonde was on her back on the far bed, making out with a brunette with shortish hair on her knees astride her. On the bed nearest the door was a strikingly-attractive pornstar-looking lass, more tanned than the other two but with almost-white blonde hair that fell in loose curls as far as the top of her plain black bra. She was up on her knees facing out into the room as if waiting for someone (perhaps another woman out of sight behind the still-closing door).
I caught the door with my left hand before it was within a foot of the frame,, poked my head through the gap, and asked the three ladies if they needed any assistance. The couple on the far bed ignored me, and the peroxide blonde on the nearest bed said something I didn’t catch, but which was clearly negative. Nevertheless, I leaned further through the door and repeated my request. Her reply was again unintelligible, but the dismissive wave of her hand left no room for misinterpretation, so I pulled back into the corridor and allowed the door to finally come to. Denied!
I realised I could use this as a pretext for not following the other twittering guests along the hall and down the stairs. Instead, I about-faced and went the other way down the corridor and out of the fire exit at the opposite end of the hall. The fire door opened out onto the sort of metal fire escape you see in loads of American films, but rarely see in this country.
I looked down to see that all the other cars except the dark grey Bentley were gone from the car park, but in the space next to it there was what was quite clearly a severed head in a dark grey motorbike helmet. Even from my elevated position, I could see through the helmet’s transparent visor that the head wore steel-rimmed spectacles, and a look of extreme surprise in its wide-open eyes.
It was a neatly-done job - no blood or anything to be seen - and I knew that this meant the decapitating had been done elsewhere, and the detached appendage had just been dumped here. At that moment, the chauffeur came back around the corner from the front of the hotel and walked back across the carpark towards the Bentley. He got a lot closer to the head than I was before he figured out what it was, and he didn’t take it well.
I don’t remember getting down the fire escape, but I must have done because we were then standing over the head, trying to decide what to do next. Its presence was clearly something to do with the missing Pyx (it definitely wasn’t his head), and we both knew that in his absence it would be pinned on us.
At that moment, the still-irate hotel owner and two or three other people came around the corner into the car park too. I immediately whirled to face them, interposing myself between them and the chauffeur so the tails of my long coat hid the severed head on the floor behind me. I can’t remember what it was that I said to them, but I do know I was wishing fervently throughout that the chauffeur would get it together enough to do something, anything, with that fucking head, even if it was to just shove it into a bloody carrier bag and act like nothing was amiss. I’m not sure whether he actually did this or not, as he was directly behind me, but somehow I managed to persuade them to go away again in short order without arousing their suspicions.
I must have then climbed back up to the top of the fire escape again, because the next thing I can remember is looking down at the Bentley from above. The boot of the car and all of the doors on its right-hand side were all open, and the chauffeur was kneeling on the tarmac beside it. He had one of those “cool boxes” used for chilling drinks on picnics, and since it was open I could see that it was full of illegal drugs and old-fashioned medical paraphernalia - real rubber tourniquets, and syringes made out of thick glass and stainless steel. I knew right then that the chauffeur fully and deliberately intended to take a fatal dose of heroin. For some reason, we would have unable to prove that Pyx had ever even existed, and the chauffeur was taking the easy way out, dodging the repercussions of both the severed head and whatever it was Pyx had done to rip off the hotel owner. He was dead before I could even think of running back down the fire escape to stop him.
I was well and truly in the shit at this point. The disappearance of Pyx and the death of the chauffeur left me carrying the can both for the decapitation and for whatever it was Pyx had been up to, and I knew that the prosecution were going to try and pin absolutely everything on me.
The court case passed in a rapid montage of comic book frames. I remember the “camera” of my dream passing down a series of titles and bullet points, laying out the series of events as I portrayed them to the court. It seems I dealt with it by vehemently protesting my innocence while being aware that they didn’t believe in the existence of Pyx, but then leaving it until my own guilt seemed clear in their minds before even bringing up the dead chauffeur. Suspicion immediately switched from myself to him, and I was let off scott-free.
The dream then returned to my perspective: I was standing on Mill Street in Congleton. It was dark, and raining, and I had the collar of my long coat turned up. I was reflecting that setting up a dead man to take someone else’s fall was a low trick, but that it was better than me going to jail for something I hadn’t done, and vowing to track down Pyx (who I somehow knew had escaped to Europe) and bring him to justice.
I crossed the street and descended the steps that should have led to the car park behind the Bridestones shopping centre, except they came out in Radford in Nottingham. I made my way east towards the Hyson Green Asda. Now, it just so happens that in real life I really need to go and buy some new boxer shorts - too many of my existing ones have fallen apart at the crotch and I am starting to run out - so my dream self decided to pop in and buy some more.
I could hear sounds of occupancy from the back of the store, but a glance at the time told me that it was already 1.32am (that’s a detail I do still remember). I was surprised that it had already got so late, dismayed that it was already over an hour and a half after my scheduled weeknight bedtime, and would be closer to two by the time I got back to place, and then annoyed that this twenty-four hour, seven-days-a-week superstore would be closed at this, the only occasion in months I had been (or was likely to be) anywhere near it. Hooray for dream logic!
While crossing the carpark behind the store in order to head back to my place, I began to wonder where it was that Pyx, clearly a consummate con man, had got his start-up capital. The dream went into a series of flashbacks: Pym had found a framed antique map of the early British colonies in North America and picked it up for a quid. He had then taken it out of the frame, and concocted a cock-and-bull story about hijackers seizing the six Royal Navy treasure ships carrying six chests of gold to the first six colonies, but being unable to dispose of the “hot” gold anywhere within the Empire because it was too distinctive, and so they returned to the Americas and hid the gold somewhere marked on said map.
This bullshit prospect of six ships full of hidden gold was enough to scam a rich and gullible American into backing Pyx, supplying just enough money to buy the Bentley and hire the chauffeur - none left over for me to be reimbursed for my services at all. Realising that I was as much a victim of one of Pyx’s confidence tricks as any of the others had been, I was just deciding how I was going to reach Amsterdam and get off on his trail when I woke up.
Quote of the Day:
“Don’t give me that crap about ‘real life’ - there ain’t no such animal.”
- Ian Fleming, Thunderball