They Will Make Cemeteries Their Cathedrals And The Cities Will Be Your Tombs

Added on 12 October 2011

One day nearer the launch of BLASTED HEATH, the forthcoming e-publishing company that seems set to obliterate the traditional book business in a clusterfuck of digital death. If you go here, you can sign up to the Blasted Heath newsletter, and in return they will - at 1 minute past 11 on the morning of 1st November - provide you with a free copy of the Barney Thomson novella END OF DAYS. Yes, free. The very best Barney Thomson book will be given away for nothing.

Obviously, as the author, when I heard that they were shipping out my finest work for fuck all, as if it's some piece of cheap plastic crap manufactured by three year-old children in Indonesia and dished out to ungrateful little bastards in McDonald's all around the world, I was shocked and upset. I got my people to speak to their people, but they remained firm, pointing to a short paragraph in font size 3, buried in the middle of our eight hundred page contract. I have since sacked all my people.

THE END OF DAYS tells the heartwarming story of Gordon Brown's attempt to take over the world, while Barney Thomson cuts his hair.

Here's a short extract:

‘Bloody Dubai,’ muttered the PM, tossing the FT petulantly onto the floor. ‘I knew it was going to crash. I said that, didn’t I?’

‘Yes, Prime Minister,’ said Bleacher, who was at that moment red penning the PM’s follow-up speech to the Afghan troop announcement, which he would deliver to a hopefully uncritical audience of five year-old children at a primary school in Kent later that morning.

‘I don’t get it,’ said the PM. ‘How can everyone be in debt? I mean, everyone? It doesn’t make sense. Who is it that they actually owe all that money to?’

‘Banks. That’s who people usually owe money to.’

‘But all the banks are in debt. God, I just don’t get economics.’

Bleacher raised an eyebrow, but didn’t look up.

‘And look. They’ve been going on at me about more troops, more troops. I announce more troops, and what do we get on the front pages? Spanish eggs. Some gumph about marriage, kidnap plots against Man U players, and now this Iranian thing. Holy crap.’

‘They are their own masters, Prime Minister, we know that.’

The PM grunted, his chin slouched further down towards his chest.

‘Look, how’s it going setting up the meeting with Obama in Copenhagen? I don’t want any of that scrabbling around the bloody kitchens like we had in New York.’

Bleacher took a deep breath. He had exhausted every favour he’d had to call in with the Americans while scrabbling around the kitchens of New York.

‘I’m on it,’ he said. ‘Currently, though, he’s due to be there ten days before you, so it might be difficult.’

‘And I suppose he might not make it after that car accident he had in the middle of the night,’ said the PM, staring out at a dark and frosty early morning in December.

‘That was Tiger Woods, Sir.’