The No.9 Bus to Utopia by David Bramwell

Author:David Bramwell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-fiction, Humour
ISBN: 9781783520367
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2014-06-24T12:20:10+00:00

Close to the end of my residency, our nucleo was asked to give a short presentation on stage after one of Falco’s Q&As. ‘Succinct but entertaining’ was the brief. We decided to say our thank yous then do a silly Egyptian dance. This was at the request of Christophe, a natural comedian.

Despite being guests that night in the hall, our nucleo were still asked to pay five Euros each. Unsurprisingly, Carel was absent.

Falco arrived in his trademark cardigan. He waved off the audience’s attempt to stand and seemed far more convivial than the previous times I’d seen him on stage in Crea. What followed was an hour-long discussion amongst the Damanhurians that seemed to be a game of one-upmanship as to who could spout the most esoteric New Age psychobabble. As far as I could gather, a man called Dingo was talking about building an astral library that would take off full of information, cross space, touch a series of orbits and return again.

At 8.30, Anaconda introduced our nucleo. We left our seats and walked onto the stage singing a song that Eroca had taught us. The audience gave a polite clap. Then we arranged ourselves into a line, Manuel included, ready to say our thanks.

It was then that we noticed Carel. Like the star of his own eighties pop video, he flung open the doors at the back of the hall, dramatically stubbed out a fag on the floor and came running through the auditorium in woolly hat, vest, shades and waving his walking stick. Before we knew it Carel had bounded onto the stage, grabbed the microphone and, twirling his stick above his head, began to shout:

‘I want to tell you a story. From a long time ago. It’s a story about Atlantis.’

The audience looked blankly at the drunken Belgian. Carel began to croon his favourite Iron Maiden song. ‘I’m not a number, I’m a free man,’ he warbled, pacing the stage. The sound man, taking this as his cue, started the music for our dance. Walk Like an Egyptian began to play. As Carel continued wailing his metal anthem, our ensemble, not knowing what else to do, broke into its Egyptian dance.

‘I’m not a number, I’m a free man!’ Carel continued screaming into the microphone, and began lobbing cigarettes into the audience. For the next three gruelling minutes, the rest of us wiggled our arses and conga-ed our way around the stage.

Afterwards, as we were leaving, a woman who’d been sitting in the front row came over to me and said, ‘I’m very sorry but I’m not sure what it is you were trying to convey tonight. Perhaps it was lost in translation?’

‘Perhaps so,’ I said. ‘I have similar problems with these evenings too.’

We headed back to our nucleo just after midnight. Fuelled by beers and the need to walk off pasta, we had left the van at Crea and opted instead for the precarious half-hour walk to our home along the left-hand side of the

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