One Three One: A Time-Shifting Gnostic Hooligan Road Novel (40 page)

BOOK: One Three One: A Time-Shifting Gnostic Hooligan Road Novel
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53. LAST PAGE

2.55pm, Wednesday June 14th, 2006
From the Fiat Panda 4×4, 131 hard shoulder north of S. Cristina

Myself still struggling along head down in the outside lane, I frowned and grimaced as the twenty-two wheels of The Reaper began to strain past me on the inside at 80 m.p.h. The Santa Cristina exit was imminent, but the crazy Reaper driver had long ago forgotten his destination, his entire thoughts crammed now only with
me
, thoughts only of ramming
me
: his dwindling yet unyielding farm hack adversary. And ram me he did at last, or rather clip my skinny rear-end and send me – bim, bam, bom – spinning on to my roof. Thus, only as the Santa Cristina exit was upon The Reaper did its driver strive at last to check himself and – far too late – now steered suicidally off down that right turn, sending his vast land-train and its monumentally overloaded cargo hurtling off along the straight too-short slip road towards the glass façade of Opposite. Meanwhile, myself and my capsized metal ladybird continued inverted at brutal speed along the Santa Cristina bridge, the whole weight of my body pressing down on my crushed neck, until a passing Renault transit van sent me spinning on my roof to the very edge of the parapet, where I teetered and rocked. At the very edge of the abyss, I stared upside down as The Reaper land-train piled at top speed into Opposite’s very public plate glass window, instantly obliterating Judge Barry Hertzog, Bugs Rabbit, Cowtown Unslutter, the Mackenzie Brothers, the lot of them. All done in by Urna Washington’s offspring. ‘Come Back
and Haunt Me’, motherfuckers! But now I glimpsed for one last moment of this life the white dress of my gorgeous lover running like a woman possessed out from under the 131 towards the impact zone. Hey Blessèd Anna, whoever before died in a Panda 4×4? And as gravity at last washed its hands of my situation, my teetering agricultural ride gave up the ghost and I plummeted off the bridge to my certain death.

About the Author

Julian Cope is a visionary musician, antiquarian and musicologist, whose three decades of work, first with The Teardrop Explodes, thereafter as a solo artist, marks him as one of British culture’s great innovators. Alongside his lectures at the British Museum, Cope’s vast studies
The Modern Antiquarian
(1998) and
The Megalithic European
(2004) have established him as an authority on ancient prehistory. His joyful music surveys,
Krautrocksampler
(1995),
Japrocksampler
(2007) and
Copendium
(2012), have all become required reading. His two volumes of autobiography – 1994’s
Head-On
and 1999’s
Repossessed
– were such an unqualified success that, despite having been brought up in the Midlands, Cope was, in 2014, voted 36th greatest Merseysider by readers of the
Liverpool Echo.

By the Same Author

Autobiography

Head On

Repossessed

 

Musicology

Krautrocksampler

Japrocksampler

Copendium

 

Archaeology

The Modern Antiquarian

The Megalithic European

Copyright

First published in the UK in 2014
by Faber & Faber Ltd,
Bloomsbury House,
74–77 Great Russell Street,
London WC1B 3DA
This ebook edition first published in 2014

All rights reserved
© Julian Cope, 2014

Maps by Andrew Johnstone
Chapter 24 Illustrations by the Author

The right of Julian Cope to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

ISBN 978–0–571–27043–9

BOOK: One Three One: A Time-Shifting Gnostic Hooligan Road Novel
8.69Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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