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The Ninth Scroll Tim Hardin MP
During the high-rolling hubris of the late 20th century, Ireland chooses to expend some of its looted lucre on extending generous tax breaks to artists, foreign and domestic, in the hope of fostering some plausible simulacre of a culture befitting an imperial centre. Sadly, the bloated panjandrums of Leinster House have been beaten to this punch some years earlier by England, which has accomplished roughly the same effect by the expedient of providing heroin free on their National Health Service.
Among the troubadours tempted across the oceans by this largess is an American blues singer, who becomes so impressed by what he finds in England, or, some historians have argued, simply so addled that he cannot make sane judgements as regards what day of the week it happens to be, that he pledges himself to the nation's service. With a mix of guile and some cunningly fawning ballads extolling those in power, he is parachuted into a rotten borough in the far Southwest during the second Mosley administration.
In the manner of countless bored and stoned thill-seekers before him, however, the singer becomes seduced by the siren cry of rebellion. The cause is as ridiculous as it is doomed, but that matters to the singer not one whit, especially after the local hillbillies elect him Colonel-in-Chief of a nationalist militia, following an impressive demonstration involving false teeth and a yoyo. His march on London at the head of his gang of twelve-fingered mutineers barely makes it beyond the gates of Penzance before it is halted by a lack of maps. The singer is arrested and deported.
Back in Los Angeles, he solemnly observes the tradition upheld by many like him, adorning his body liberally with tattoos reflecting the mythology of his spuriously adopted Celtic homeland, and boring unwary tourists half to death in theme pubs.
During the high-rolling hubris of the late 20th century, Ireland chooses to expend some of its looted lucre on extending generous tax breaks to artists, foreign and domestic, in the hope of fostering some plausible simulacre of a culture befitting an imperial centre. Sadly, the bloated panjandrums of Leinster House have been beaten to this punch some years earlier by England, which has accomplished roughly the same effect by the expedient of providing heroin free on their National Health Service.
Among the troubadours tempted across the oceans by this largess is an American blues singer, who becomes so impressed by what he finds in England, or, some historians have argued, simply so addled that he cannot make sane judgements as regards what day of the week it happens to be, that he pledges himself to the nation's service. With a mix of guile and some cunningly fawning ballads extolling those in power, he is parachuted into a rotten borough in the far Southwest during the second Mosley administration.
In the manner of countless bored and stoned thill-seekers before him, however, the singer becomes seduced by the siren cry of rebellion. The cause is as ridiculous as it is doomed, but that matters to the singer not one whit, especially after the local hillbillies elect him Colonel-in-Chief of a nationalist militia, following an impressive demonstration involving false teeth and a yoyo. His march on London at the head of his gang of twelve-fingered mutineers barely makes it beyond the gates of Penzance before it is halted by a lack of maps. The singer is arrested and deported.
Back in Los Angeles, he solemnly observes the tradition upheld by many like him, adorning his body liberally with tattoos reflecting the mythology of his spuriously adopted Celtic homeland, and boring unwary tourists half to death in theme pubs.
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