1: A Resumé of Events from the Fall of Man to the Dawn of Tuesday Morning

In the early hours of the morning on Tuesday the 12th, the coldest July on record had reached its shivering nadir. Snow was general all over London. It was falling on every part of the metropolis, on the rooves and the parked cars, falling softly upon the Downs and further northwards softly falling into the Thames. It was falling, too, upon Nick Smithers as he lay unconscious in a front garden in Tufnell Park furled in an old black donkey jacket.

Perhaps for a moment you feel compassion as you pass him, glancing over the low garden wall you observe him curled up on the lawn. Your compassion will no doubt fade when you remark that he is in a drunken stupor. In that case he deserves it, you say. He brought it on himself.

But he did not bring it on himself. He was merely obeying orders. The night before he had felt himself in the grip of an unseen force. A voice in his head kept giving him instructions and he knew that he must obey.

Nick’s Voice spake thus:
“You will go downstairs.”
It was an absolute imperative, so down he went.
“Go outside.”
He went outside.
“Go to a party down the street in Tufnell Park.”
Like a zombie he obeyed.
“Dance like an idiot waving your hands about a-rythmically until you get covered in sweat and can’t open your eyes.”
Nick followed these instructions to the letter.
“Go into the kitchen and drink eighteen pints of red wine out of a plastic cup on an empty stomach.”
Nick complied with the order.
“Now go and look for more wine.”
There isn’t any more.
“There must be, have you looked under the sink?”
Nothing there, and it hurts to bend down.
“One of the people at the party has just come back from holiday in Greece. He must have some Duty Free liquor.”

Nick was soon dutifully downing a heady cocktail of Ouzo topped up with ethanol which, if taken internally, metabolises into formaldehyde. In fifteen minutes he was embalmed.
“Now go home.” Said the voice.

Nick fell out of the house into the cold black night. He started toppling down the street but after twenty yards or so he sat on a neighbour’s garden wall unable to go any further.
“Go home!” the voice boomed.
“I can’t.” Nick protested, beginning a campaign of passive resistance, settling himself down to rest where he was.
“Get up and walk!” said the voice, though to Nick it sounded weaker now.

Nick’s defiance was successful. His tormentor left him where he lay in the front garden and he was conscious of a momentary elation when he realised that it was possible to be free; that with stealth and determination the Tyrant can be dethroned. Then blackness intervened and that is the last we shall hear of Nick’s consciousness for a while, as sleepy flakes gently tucked him into a thickening eiderdown of snow.



At daybreak London’s diurnal population awoke to find the buildings wrapped in dustsheets and the trees heavy-laden with cotton wool. As one they reached for their tellies and switched on for official confirmation that it was really happening, that they were not still dreaming. The TV AM weathermen could not understand why their predictions of sunny spells had been so high-handedly ignored by the elements. The tried to make post-hoc conjectures about Wind Chill and Low Pressure Zones, but they could conjure nothing to regain credibility. Meanwhile, with a resourcefulness and courage that hadn’t been seen since the Blitz, thousands of plucky Londoners rang up and told their bosses that they couldn’t get in for work. An Act of God had intervened and given everyone a few hours of unexpected freedom, a few more links had been added to the chains around their feet and they could run around for a whole day describing circles.

Nick woke up to find that his body had lost all sensation, his head, however, more than made up for this. There was apparently an iron brace around his cranium which had spikes on the inside. He was paying for his rebellion with compound interest, for while he had been sleeping the chains had been fastened around him yet more tightly. The Voice spoke to him without pity.
“Now get up and go home.”
Nick staggered to his feet leaving a green island of warm lawn in the shape of himself in the foetal pose, a dark moist question mark in the snow.
“Straighten yourself up!” said the Voice. “Pull yourself together!”

Nick pulled himself together, although this was easier for It to say than for him to do. A coltish specimen, Nick was mournfully thin, his skinny legs in damp black corduroy stiffly took him back to 93 Palmerston Road, Finsbury Park, London N4. Through the muted streets he trudged, his footfalls silenced and numbed, to resume his night’s sleep at home. Shaken to the core with cold, Nick opend the front door, took off his donkey jacket and hung it on the back of the door. He numbly tiptoed up the stairs to his mother’s bedroom, which since her departure he had made his own, and found the big double bed offering its customary brand of hospitality: A frosty reception greeted the first introductions as he insinuated himself into the bedclothes. Upon longer acquaintance the bed warmed to him and became a very welcoming host. Nick lay on his back preparing to fall into a deep and beautiful sleep.

Shutting his eyes, he saw a giant spindle whirring round in the centre of the room like the gyroscope from a spaceship. The whole damn room was spinning. With sudden panic he realised that attatched to the shaft of the gyroscope was one end of a piece of thread the other end of which was tied to his intestine. Sooner or later he would be eviscerated by a violent fit of vomiting. He tried to hold his intestines in place by means of sheer concentration, for the sake of his mother’s white carpet. He knew from past experience of spinning bedroom syndrome that his only chance was to ignore it and maybe it would go away. To this end he leaned over (with extreme caution) and picked up the book which lay beside the bed on a white melamine cabinet. He had been intending to read it the evening before when the Voice had intervened with its social obligations. Despite the fact that it was unsuitably large for a bedtime story, Nick heaved it onto the bed and opened the book at random.