No Neck Monsters

Beasts....

There is no reason to say that the stereotype or cliche should loose its power just because of repetition - despite what structuralist critic par excellance M. Roland Barthes claims in one of his impenetrable essays (and lest we forget, he was not bright enough to avoid being run down by a milk cart in Paris). No the stereotype retains its power to shock or amaze, Grump can assure one of that. Take, for instance, the image of the village idiot.

Grump elaborates: The village fool, the inbred, slow, mentally and physically challenged, freak show, gurning loon straight from the cherished pages of Cold Comfort Farm. He has been watching a perfect example of this stereotype in action for the last year. Infact, a whole family of them. Through his window he can often see an interchangeable gaggle of village 'types' pass by (you have met some of these already: Fat Lady on a Horse, Noisy Dog Lady; Inept Postman...) but most disturbing of all are the No Neck Monsters.

If one is lucky, and this is entirely subjective of course, one might witness the slow, inexorable progress of a family of spasticated characters shuffling along Main Street. Once in the morning around 8.35am and again around 3.30pm. Grump enjoys these shows, but there are those of you who may, how to put it delicately, be horrified by this display of regressive genetics. We have here, in the Village, an extended family of special needs 'people'. How they have bred is a question of taste frankly too disturbing even for Grump's perversity. He recalls Mr Goldblum's comment in Jurassic Park that "life finds a way".

A matriarchy of mongs... you never see a male family member older than 5 years, and a fearsome, wobbling, shuffling Queen leads the pack. She only ever wears black - even on the hottest day. Loose, tent-like garments cover rippling, pasty flesh. Her hair is dyed a gothic, unnatural black. Her face is an alien moon, red and cratered. Big Mamma, as we shall call her, shuffles along with her own daughter - a younger version of herself, who slowly orbits Mamma - and her four grandchildren, off to primary school each morning. The kids, barely formed slabs of flesh in tatty school uniforms, a remedial sculptor's attempts at human form, gibber and hoot like monkeys. They walk by Grump's cottage, sometimes stopping to stare blankly at the horses from the stables across the road. The kids fix their beady black button-eyes on them. Suddenly, in a flurry of comprehension, they jab sausage fingers towards the horses, yelling excitedly in some barely comprehensible, guttural tongue. No, Grump has never seen the progenitors of this delightful family group; he does not try to imagine the nightmare romance that created this.

Grump notices that it is almost time for their return journey. He quickly settles in with a cup of tea to watch the circus arrive.

Grump Returns

No excuses offered; no explanations provided.

The Grump has been away for over a year but now he has returned. Where has he been? What sights have his jaded, red wine-hazed eyes taken in? What adventures has his chaise longue-stiffened body been thrown into? Well, it would be all too rude to interject reality and thereby upset your own fruity scenarios of his perversions and predilections... needless to say the truth of the matter is that Grump's divided self, at once capable of incredible laziness and frantic bouts of energy, needs to express itself. And these days his own wistful repose avec livre et vin is being threatened by an increasingly frantic rage. He has never been more angry at the mundanities and intrusive demands of life!!! Sanity is threatened. He cannot rest or resist the urge to tell all once again. Oh yes misery loves an audience. Thus it is that he returns to the electronic terra incognita of the online blog to vent forth (after forgetting his own password!) The blog is cheaper than therapy, and Grumpydoctor knows no psychiatrist who offers clients wine....