Writing on the Wall

Jane in Heaven:
[Set in Heaven] And it is very unfair that the Great Plague of the 17th century is only attributed to rats and mice alone. Most of it was created by poor sanitary system. The population of rats and mice is growing and growing. There are many, many types. I know there have been many stories about rats and mice lately, growing and growing but, there you go... But there are many, many types...

Second John:
Come on Jane, stop smoking in my face!

Jane in Heaven:
Never happy! Small pause. Do you know how many rats and mice there are in the world?

Second John:
No, I don't know

Jane in Heaven:
I don't even know myself. There are the "House Rat" and the "House Mouse" that live in houses. There are the rats and mice that live in the boats. There is the "Air" rat and mouse that live on airplanes. There is the "Countryside" rat and mouse. There are the ones that live in sewers; the "Town Rats". And there are the ones that live underground... going in the Tube...

Second John:
Well, rats and mice. We cannot live without rats and mice...

Jane in Heaven:
Why is that?

Second John:
Because they carry diseases and we wouldn't be immune enough to resist them. It's a pretty good thing to have in your house.

[laughing]

Second John:
To have a mouse... I mean a mouse or a rat in our house, yeah!

Jane in Heaven:
I would recommend cats. I wouldn't recommend poison. I would recommend... Do you know what I would recommend? I would recommend a cat! A cat is all you need.

Second John:
Yeah. And get a few. Call the cat and hygiene your house! That's the best, however if you fancy them get one from the pet shop.

Jane in Heaven:
And the worth thing is the excrements. A soon as you find excrements... Clean everything in the house...

Paul:
[Set in exterior: Hoxton, London] At least we've lived there before it became all trendy.

Mary Jane D'Arbanville:
Trendy, my ass! Hoxton indeed! Bloody Old Street, Shoreditch. The price of an average run-down squat rocketed from 50 000 to 3 million... In spite of all this we have the muggings, burglaries, pollution and the local mafia shooting up in broad daylight.

Paul:
That's London for you! You do have to pay for live entertainment!

Mary Jane D'Arbanville:
[Jane's Story, set: interior, Candle-lit dinner] When I was 5, my mom and I moved from Knoxville, Tennessee to Downtown New York. It was quite a change. I grew up in the early eighties. My mom used to play Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker all the time and it has been playing in my head ever since, though not as much as it used to. Growing up in NY was terrific and the underground club scene was at its peak in the late eighties. I did a BSc in Psychology. I think it was the shittest thing I ever did. I ended up riddled with debts because my scholarship money had run out halfway through. In 1991 I won a Pepsi-Cola competition and won a holiday to London. The clubs were then tremendous. They retained a smell of thirties and fifties. I like that. In London I met X. X and I had our ups and downs, little sex, and many gay encounters, plenty to talk and shout about. We remained best friends ever since. I returned to NY after my holiday and never anticipated returning back. X joined me for a while. I returned unexceptionally in London in 1991, but not out of choice. If all the events took over 10 years to develop, this slow motion of being never occurred to me, as everything travelled at the speed of life. Only now I can be in a position to go back in time, maybe not in the right order, but then again things never turned out the way they should have been in the first place. I always had this dream about England, being Heaven in a little cottage in the countryside surrounded by roses. I wonder if that would be heaven, if I wouldn't be bored beyond redemption. The rest of the story need not be cut off in action and indeed would hardly need telling if my imagination wasn't so cribbed by the sheer lack of objectivity and lazy care for my demented surrounding. A surrounding filled with the 'ready to wear' slap-dash, cocky b*tches and pansies in which decadence keeps its toll of natural disasters. It is thus possible for me to interact in a more cohesive fashion. This is merely based on my own assumption that my life, or the decade we've just missed is easily moveable, adjustable and reshape-able, therefore flexible enough to be played with again and again. If ranting on the bitterness of Being wasn't a state of mind already invented, then this "Great Swindle of Being" so described by X would render the torrid notion 'so noble in the mind to suffer', so described by Hamlet into the biggest E ever conceived in the history of mankind.

Paul:
The nineties have absorbed the seventies. June 1993. Why is London so trendy? In a recent expose about the London dangers, we tackled the ever-never unresolved extremely growing problem of pollution. The killer smog well, well Raising his voice well above tolerated limits. Near Canary Wharf -The New London skylines city built in the East End as a result of the Eighties boom- the asthma levels among children are twice the national average. US health studies show that soot particles known as PM10s is killing 2000 people prematurely every year in cities like London, from heart attacks and respiratory problems. Sometimes the level goes as high as 140 to even 150 parts per billion. When levels of nitrogen dioxide across the big cities of Europe are beyond the national average, it prompts them to a curb and even a ban on traffic but it never ever prompts any extraordinary measures in London.

Paul:
In a town like London alone it is reported that the rat population is almost one billion, but who can really tell? A proper census would be rather difficult to conduct.

Paul:
Jails are like the good old days of chuckles and straw; moldy water and rancid bread. If the decor and the props may have changed, the principles remain. The beatings and abuses are omnipresent. There was a man who has just been released after serving a third of his life in jail. For allegedly murdering his neighbor when in fact the guy died of a heart attack. He was a healthy young man when he was sent to the reservoir dogs. On his release he was old, very old. He could barely walk. If he dies now it would be of a heart attack, ironic! He was lucky!

Mary Jane D'Arbanville:
Lucky?

Paul:
Yes, lucky! He was released by chance. Some researchers who investigated the case managed to access the body. Who would otherwise agree to take on a case like this after twenty-five years?