Irradiating Puclib Rodeo Presents: Confessions Of A Linoleum Eater

Music: Track Seven of "Col. Red Reeder's Boy's Anti-Tank Bugle Corps and Painting Subcontractors Play 22 variations on '76 Trombones', with the assistance of the 32nd Royal Mounted Sanitary Inspectors". 62 sec.

NARRATOR: Welcome once again to our daily tinting of the ether with either news, entertainment or just an excuse to fill the log so we can keep our license. Irrigating Punic Rolex is trying something new in this landmark and millstone programme. We will attempt to interview a real person in an unscripted attempt to fill time without any thought of constraints beyond the ones the sanitariums have placed on our producer and head writer. And so, on with it!

Music: Jascha Heifetz tuning new strings, 18 sec.

Narrator: We'd like to introduce our Interlocutor, Ian P. Blurd, but he's in the Lady's, because the Men's is out of order. Ian himself is feeling a bit under the weather. Ah... the assistant production trainee is banging on the coffee urn and waving a biroed
note on a damp serviette...which has now found its way into my Harrod's Tweed lap. Ah.. bear with us for a moment while they drill a hole in the Lady's wall and insert a microphone. We'll just arrange for a set of headphones, too, and then set up our guest in a booth, so everyone can hear everyone but no one can see, which is the whole point of radio in the first place, if you remember.

Music: "Death of a Sea-Sick Microbe", by John Cage, Phillip
Glass and Conlon Nancarrow, Et. Al. 162 sec.

Sound Effect: Under music. Drills, hammers, harbour buoys, Lotus Elise's dripping oil, grumbles, warbles and a lightly fried egg in a blender with two drops of Worchestershoostersheestershire Sauce. 161.5 sec.

Narrator: Ian, can you hear me?


Ian: Only in one ear.


Narrator: I'm not falling for that gag. Take the banana out of your other ear.


Ian: It's not a banana. It's a Morris Minor.


Narrator: This is not a comedy program. Whatever you have in your other ear, take it out.


Ian: Oh, okay. Unh...unh...

Sound Effects: Small air-powered wrench. Loud rubber and mechanical thumps. Sound of metallic creaking. Small two-cycle engine starting and driving away with squeal of tiny tires. 18 sec.

Narrator: Um. Well. I'll just introduce you to our guest and then leave you two to it, then, shall we. (I need a drink. Where's that medicinal radiator cleaning fluid when you need it?) Ah, Miss Aromatica Swill? Are you there?


Mrs. Swift: No, but Mrs. Alimentaria Swift is. Is that the party to whom youm werm referming?


Narrator: Um. Yes, ma'am. Slight problem with the secretary in the front office. She's deaf and she can't type.


Mrs. Swift: I AM the secretary in the front office. You lot can't afford anyone else, and I am on deferred compensation as it is. I'm starting to feel a little redundant.


Narrator: Oops! Pardon moi, M'amselle. Hold that thought. Are you there, Mr. Blurd?


Ian: I am.


Mrs. Swift: Hello. Your voice sounds familiar. Are you that idiot I almost picked up in that tiny little filthy pub in Nether Thong last year?


Ian: No, you addled cow, I'm your third ex-husband.


Mrs. Swift: I almost remember. Give me a hint.


Ian: We met in a bucket queue during the Blitz. For some reason, you were filling the buckets with Aaron's Patented Orange Ale from a busted bung and every bucket we flung on the burning chemist's only added to the flames and changed their color.


Mrs. Swift: That, I remember. 'Bout all that stuff was good for. What I don't remember is being married to you. How long did it last?


Ian: Through Tina Marie, Ian, Jr., Foster Pradlin Holliwell Aaron, Emily Elizabeth Erica Tiffany Lamp, and Jugdish Shiva Martinez. About four years.


Mrs. Swift: Ah, during that blackout period just after '44! I wondered who had been taking advantage of me. I'll prefer charges on you later, mate!


Ian: Taking advantage of? We were married in St. Ethelbert the Lame's Methodist Episcopal Bomb Shelter, in front of the whole perishing parish and your mum and your other mum and your dud and your suster and your brother! The Third Pantsless Aerial Observation Squadron flew their dirigibles in tight formation for us! We honeymooned in the air raid shelter at the Brixton Sheridan Garden Hotel for a fortnight and a day. You said I was the nicest fellow you had ever met and you kept asking me to fluff your pillows!


Mrs. Swift: That might explain a few of the bruises. Anyway, that's neither here nor there...


Ian: For some reason, you kept saying that, too, during the honeymoon.


Narrator: Something must have been somewhere, in order for you to have had four children...


Ian: Ah, go stick your nose elsewhere! They were budgies, weren't they?


Mrs. Swift: Were they? Then who did I have children by?


Ian: Arsenal?


Narrator: That's enough of that. It was my understanding that you, Mrs. Swift, had a poem to discuss.


Ian: Been plagiarizing graffiti, again, have we?


Narrator: Second Warning, behave. I don't need the Council For Uncivil Treatment of Women in Broadcasting on my back again.


Mrs. Swift: You shouldn't have told Mrs. Whitehead to button her collar when she wasn't wearing one! In any instance, it is not A poem, but a collection of poems that I have had published.


Ian: A chap book, is it?


Mrs. Swift: You and your filthy little mind! No. It was professionally mimeographed and stapled at the Lower South End Unwed Young Catholic Mother's Legal Assistance and Coffee Shoppe by a very well-respected retired Belgian lace washer from Munich. It is called "Confessions of a Linoleum Eater".


Ian: Why?


Mrs. Swift: Because, after my fourth husband, Mr. Cleft...


Ian: The chap who peeled a bundle with the patent on the collapsible dustbin?


Mrs. Swift: The very same. Poor dear, he departed during a live broadcast of a demonstration of his new invention, the glow-in-the-dark bog seat cover, on a Thames programme, "What Be That?"


Ian: He died?


Mrs. Swift: No, he went to St. Tropez with a dwarf trapeze act and just never came back. I found the divorce papers in a cereal packet one morning, in June of '67. The dew was thin upon the mosses, the crinolines were making wavy lines in my thighs, the mockingbird was being eaten by the neighbor's pussy in the back mews... And it was the last straw. I became an abuser that day. It took a 12 Stoop Program...


Narrator: 12 Step, perhaps?


Mrs. Swift: Sadly, no. If only it had been. No, it was a 12 Stoop Program. In order to bring me down slowly off the linoleum, they applied de-icing salts to concrete stoops and had me nibble on them as needed.


Ian: Argh. I hate to ask, but we all must make sacrifices to this government, so I will gird my loins...


Mrs. Swift: There he goes again! Nasty, nasty mouth that man has! I hope you've got this broadcast on a five second delay!


Narrator: I rather wish it was a five day delay or a five pint delay, or a bad dream I could awaken myself from if I just pour this hot tea in my lap... Urf! Aiigh! All that time I wasted saving for that vasectomy! Oooooh, ah, here's a glass of Irn Bru on the spot...eating a hole in my suit...and my skin...there goes the bone! My chair is collapsing!


Ian: Don't mind him. Go on, pet, read your screed.


Narrator: What a world! What a world! I'm melting! Me and my beautiful broadcasting career!


Mrs. Swift: Shouldn't we do something for the poor man?


Ian: He'll be all right. I heard from the staff he's got a hollow leg. Just raise your voice and drown him out a bit. Let's get on with it, I've got a court appearance.


Mrs. Swift: What'd they nick you for?


Ian: Oh, it's not that. I'm a photographer and balloon twister now, I do parties and sentencings. Got a triple murderer going up for life at the Queen's Pleasure this afternoon and the QC has ordered a cake and Morris Dancers and everything. Anyway, go on.


Mrs. Swift: All right then, if you're sure. (clears sinuses)(rattles butcher paper) Ode To A Laminated Bathroom Tile, by Inamorata In Flagrante Antipasto...that's my nom de plume...all the best writers have them. Did you know Charles Dickens' real name was Magnus Kerb?
Any way, the poem:

Thy foam-mottled form

enticeth me

Thy texture in my teeth

emboldens me

But I must spit

thee out, for thy art forbidden.

Finis

.....


Ian: That's it?


Mrs. Swift: Yes. Isn't it enough?


Ian: You're smarter than I thought.

Sound Effects: Sirens. Small aircraft landing. Tires screeching to halt. Door slamming. Feet running. Clank of gurney. Oxygen tank. Last rites.

Ry Cooder's arrangement of "Death and the Transfiguration" for french horn, banjo and kazoo under following

Producer: I'm sorry, kind folks and gentle listeners, but I regret that I have to inform you that our Announcer, Narrator, all around good fellow and part-time jelly stresser for the Royal Veteran's Candy Forge, P. Timothy Plew, has spoken his last upon these hallowed microphones. The priest has just administered last rites and the emergency crew is dressing him and applying his last coat of makeup. If we might have a moment of silence...


Ian: But...


Mrs. Swift: Aw, shuddap.


Producer: This has been an Irritating Public Radio production. Good night.

Sound Effects: spade work in sandy loam. Music: Ray Ellington's "You Thought You Knew Me, But You Fooled You" sung by the Janitor's Barber Shop Quartet of St. Martin's in the Loo. 52 sec.