At home with the Proctors
The Proctors had been banned from moving around Oxford. A foul up in police paperwork had placed the entire family on a list of militant animal rights protesters, who were banned from coming within one hundred yards of an Oxford College or a university facility. The ban could be enforced if it was deemed that an individual was protesting or causing a public disturbance.
These constraints made freedom of movement a mythological right, similar to myths such as a Spice Girls and All Saints collaborative album, Tom Cruise as a heterosexual and the ultimate urban fashion myth that sideburns, accompanied by doubtful stubble and flipflops, maximises sex-appeal. The constraints had been particularly inconvenient for Ron, who had been working as a bricklayer on the Animal Lab site.
Morrissey, who has always taken himself rather too seriously, told Ron, in no uncertain terms, that “we will get you”. Morrissey went on to say that Ron was “the shame of England”. As Ron was wearing a white shell-suit and a baseball cap at the time, whilst necking copious amounts of Extra Special Brew, Morrissey’s pious assertions of moral patriotism were not inaccurate. However, Morrissey’s auto-rant was far from finished.
He then said very pointedly, and with his usual Messianic lilt: “If you agree with vivisection go and be vivisected upon yourself.” Ron merely inquired whether Morrissey was “that fucking suicidal misery of a pop star, the ponce with the violin on his album cover”. Morrissey, never one to leave the limelight, did not deny it, and started signing autographs.
In view of all these alarums and excursions, it seemed like the perfect opportunity for the family to visit Alan, who was in a lunatic asylum, and Brian, who was serving time at a Borstal. Alan and Brian lived in close proximity to one another. They lived in a “detention complex”. This facility had been modelled on the standard Gulag-esque hotel developments at Faliraki, Torremolinos, Benidorm, Magaluf and Lanzarote, and it was constituted by a quadrangle of detention centres.
There was a Madhouse, an Asylum Seeking Centre, a Borstal and a Collective Commune full of clapped-out hippies and ageing perverts. The development was similar to the worst provincial shopping centres and was reminiscent of the new Oxford Castle development. It was simply hideous. Alan, fatuous and censorious to the last, had been incensed to hear that his patients’ council had affiliated his mental hospital with a retirement home for deranged ex- Fatah operatives in Gaza.
Sally had suspected that her husband’s disapproval originated from a desire not to seem anti-Semitic; there was nothing else behind it. Brian needed some care and attention after his ‘creepy’ warder tried to push horseporn on him. The whole Proctor family were united and they got into their car and drove off to have lunch at a local pub. It would be the first time they would all sit at the same table together. Their car swerved to avoid a cyclist and careered into a wood.
They were all killed. A table for six went unused that afternoon.
8th Jun 2006