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Polish my Prawn!

Roger and Joe worked together harvesting cockles at Morecambe Bay, an area notorious for its tides, and scene of many tragedies over the years. Morecambe itself reminds me of Aberystwyth [see Story 6], and no doubt they have much in common.

Roger was very proud of the cockles he harvested, but his relationship with King & Queen Cockle, the previous owners, was classic love-hate.

King Cockle was Mr Charisma. Women drooled at the mere mention of his name. A text-book bastard, the kind loved by the media and tabloid press. With the odd exception, there was a queue of women who would hang on his every innuendo, wait patiently for the sly grin, and buy buckets of his sea food on the off chance of something more than “Take King Cockles home today. See if your man measures up!”

Queen Cockle despised her husband’s flirting, his heavy sexual innuendo, and seemingly endless variety of facial expressions [if you are old enough, think of Frankie Howerd] which suggested to naïve and vulnerable women they were in with a chance.

Roger didn’t know how to handle King Cockle. Part of him admired his vision, energy and drive. After all the Cockle’s shop was world-famous. In the early days, Roger learned all he knew about sea food from King Cockle. Cockle trusted him to harvest cockles in his absence, but no-one could sell the produce like he did.

Roger was happily married, but some of King Cockle’s ‘charm’ had rubbed off on him. There was no doubt who wore the trousers at Roger’s home; he used aggression and a permanently scowling face to great effect.

The stomach-churning, buttock clenching combination of sea and salt, shellfish and vinegar, fast tides and loose women, innuendo and facial contortions, fact and fiction, King and Queen Cockle was a heady brew. There’s no doubt it turned Roger’s head. He became a clone of King Cockle, but without the sex.

What Roger could never fathom was what he described as ‘pathetic’ women queuing around the block for a few shells off King Cockle’s table.

“I watch them, stood there, fumbling for change after buying more cockles than their whole street could eat, just for thirty seconds of his attention. It’s unbelievable.”

“He can be a lying, cheating sod, and although most of them don’t know that, I’m sure if they did, it would make them even more pathetic. Some of them would buy the contents of the damn shop!” he fumed.

For Cockle this was his personal conversion on the road to Damascus. The lobster was saved, and despite ten stitches in the wound, ‘Lucre’ ended up in his own tank in Cockle’s shop.

Of course, Cockle made the most of all this. After the usual innuendo about cockles, mussels, prawns and crabs, he would say to his female customers:

“Lucre knows he’s living on borrowed time. If one day my own cockles need a bit of a calcium boost, he’ll be in that pan quicker than you could peel my prawn.”

This had the effect of reinforcing his roguish image, and appealing to both those women wanted the ugly lobster to be boiled [and came in to see if it would be], and those who saw a softer side to the langoustine lothario, but secretly lusted after a flash of his macho mollusc personality.

“Wants to boil me does he?” asked Lucre in carefully crafted lobster-speak [how else do you describe the language a lobster uses? If Lucre wrote this story he would miss the nuances in his watery world], “Typical macho garbage. And Roger struggles to understand what makes these women act as they do?”

“You see there are one or two women who do [and for all we know have had] want his prawn, but for all the rest, it’s the danger that attracts them”

Lucre was in full flow: “A lot of the women can’t accept someone into their life who finds them wonderful. Self-acceptance is a problem for the ego. If you doubt this, how often do you mentally tell yourself you’re not good enough?”

“Cockle would never want a serious relationship with anyone but himself, because deep down he is the same. He puts on this front, like his crabs, which when you strip away all the bravado, keeps a distance between him and his army of ‘admirers.’ Cockle secretly hates himself.”

“Danger in a man gives a woman an adrenalin rush. You men have all heard about a woman preferring the dangerous rogue to the boring man who might actually love her. But this misses the point. This myth is a myth of the ego. Where do you most find the cult of the ego? In films, on television, in magazines and books.”

“Lobsters don’t need adrenalin rushes. We have the mother of all adrenalin rushes when you kill us. We are faithful creatures who accept each other for what we are, not some kind of fantasy. In your world, a surreal hyperactive playground, you are literally bombarded by stuff to appease your egos, but at your core, you know it is insatiable.”

“The alternative, to accept yourself, and to develop your capacity to love is too much for you, especially for those who have been conditioned by their upbringing they are unworthy and undeserving. So, lifetimes of ‘pleasure’, made even starker by the pain of failed relationships and stimulus overload [fags, drugs and rock and roll].”

“We can only see in others what we are ourselves. Cockle and his harem were made for each other. I’ll let you work out how Queen Cockle figures in all this.”

Roger woke up from his dream. Lucre the talking lobster! What was all that about?

But then he began to recall Lucre’s words, which intuitively made more sense to him in the one dream than 10 years of Cockle’s verbal sacks of excrement.

“Ego? Beating yourself up? Putting others down? Deserving of love?” His mind was whirling around with a force greater than the boiling cauldron of Cockle’s giant pans.

King & Queen Cockle abdicated. Cockle’s women no longer got any frisson with Joe, who was happily married and cared more about his customers than any number of raised eyebrows, oily smirks and the suggestive handling of unshelled tiger prawns.

Roger, through his own demons, wasn’t sure about Joe either. Lucre stayed. However, Roger became very suspicious of the loquacious lobster. The more he thought about this dream, the more it troubled him.

“Ego? Beating yourself up? Putting others down? Deserving of love?”

Roger started to doubt his dream. Cockle had been a waste of space, but at least he had women lusting after him, and had sold a successful business for a lot of money. Lucre was wrong, very wrong. How could he believe in a dream about a talking lobster? No, Cockle was OK. Lucre had to go…

Lucre the Lobster had picked up Roger’s vibes. However, ever since the near miss with King Cockle, he knew he was on borrowed time, and was unimpressed.

“So, Roger has joined the ranks of the Cockles, and thinks we lobsters are shells around a micro-brain fit only to operate our claws, jaws and rear end. Fair enough, you lot have to battle throughout your lives with your egos, we just live in the moment. It may take some time.”

“And yet I can’t get my head around how, when you lot are exposed to so much brainwashing, some of you actually are getting to know what’s going on in the world. I suspect it’s all to do with your increasingly short attention span. There is a conspiracy-oh, I can’t use that word, because it labels me and invalidates my argument-there is an agreement amongst the elite that kids should be hooked on sugar, fat, salt, aspartame, monosodium glutamate, and additives.”

“Yes! Some of your kids will get diabetes, some will get very fat, others will bounce of off the walls at school, and some will be on the fast tracks of ADD/AHD. If they can’t get you young, look what awaits you-fags, sex, alcohol, drugs, joyriding, violent computer games, and the national curriculum. To say nothing of wall-to-wall advertising and consumption of ‘safe’ drugs for headaches, stomach ‘upsets’, colds, irritable bowel, hay fever, allergies, spots, aches and pains, itching, farting, breathing, drinking…Then, as you approach adulthood, credit and debt looms”

“But they despair, because some of you even escape that lot! But this cult of celebrity is proving useful. You become obsessed with your looks, cutting bits off here and there, piercing yourselves, bleaching your teeth, having dangerous things inserted [silicon, buttox]; becoming dangerously thin or dangerously fat.”

“Oh dear, I’ve been on my coral [the lobster equivalent of a soapbox] preaching again. You don’t really want to know all that do you? Let’s return the case of Roger. I’m afraid he’s due a fall. Still, he won’t see it like that. He’ll blame someone else, think Cockle is OK, and completely lose the plot.”

Roger was still struggling with “Ego? Beating yourself up? Putting others down? Deserving of love?” He had decided Lucre was a charlatan, and plotted to get rid of him. And why couldn’t Cockle become the nation’s saviour?

It would be very easy to nobble Lucre. He would go into the shop one night, fish him out of the tank, take him home, boil him up and eat him. He’d let Cockle phone the police after seeing the empty tank and use the drama to generate even more trade. It could become a national story. Cockle would be grateful; after the dust died down, Roger would confess.

Again his hero, Roger also imagined how easy it would be to get Cockle to enter politics. Cockle was a great fan of Margaret Thatcher, and knew many people in the Conservative Party. Cockle could become a cult figure. His sexual innuendo was in line with popular tabloid culture. Millions of people were watching ‘Big Brother’. Sex sells, and here was an opportunity to get in before Labour & the Liberals.

Yes, we had Egwina Currie and several Tories in sex scandals before the dawn of ‘New’ Labour, and then we had Blunkett, Prescott and Mark Oaten. Years ago we had Profumo and Jeremy Thorpe. And didn’t Blair’s ‘spin doctor,’ Alastair Campbell use to write for soft porn magazines?

One night, Roger drank too many cocktails. He went round to the Cockles’ new abode, the ‘Wisterious Whelk’ and almost fell through the front door. After he had regained a modicum of composure he told Cockle of his plans for world domination:

“See you Cockle, with me behind you, you could become prime minister. Sex sells, and you have it by the trawler-load. I reckon we’re due another Thatcher figure, and this time, one who has libido plus. Even house improvement programmes are using sex to plug their offerings. Sex is everywhere. A nod and a wink. Innuendo rules. And you could make a nun blush.”

Cockle was flattered. He was worried about the state of the country. He was sick of people on the road in front of him, and those behind weren’t much better. Other people’s dogs were a pest. Cats were vermin, as were most of their owners. Every team in football was full of overpaid, greedy and stupid young men. Companies were run by idiots. Social workers were all homosexuals, and teachers were too soft.

“Tell me more,” said Cockle, feeling himself sit a little higher in the chair.

“You already know people in politics. Come up with a manifesto which exposes Cameron as the wimpish liberal he is,” Roger was almost sober.

“What you mean make smiling [unless done in a sexually suggestive way] an offence? Make prescription drugs compulsory, annexe Merseyside, and decriminalise bigamy? Ban gatherings of more than two people, create prisons for neighbours I hate, outlaw travelling while foreign, and make disagreeing with the prime minister when clothed a thought crime? You will do me. Let’s get started.”

Roger knew to do justice to Cockle’s campaign, he would have to resign from his job. He would do it when it suited him and not before. His tactic would be to model Cockle’s behaviour, and become increasingly, irrationally insufferable. Then, just as Joe needed him most, he’d go.

And so it was. Two fingers to Joe, who took the news surprisingly well. Cockle had the perfect slogan:

“Let’s Get Britain Cockling Again.”

Cockle was swept to power. Newsreaders were forced to appear naked. Kids were taught how to smirk provocatively in schools. Cockle created a list of those he didn’t like. Almost all the population was on it. Everyone was microchipped. Sea food became the staple diet. Travelling anywhere except to the local surgery or hospital was banned.

And Lucre had escaped…

Yes, the highs created by getting Cockle into No. 10 had made Roger forget about Lucre completely. Cockle had also exercised his prawn with Roger’s wife. Lucre was in hiding. He had become the symbol of resistance, and was the logo on their uniforms.

“So, they have allowed a molluscan maniac to take control in this fantasy world of theirs. They have given away all their freedoms to say free. They no longer need to aspire to heaven or hell, as hell is all around them, and heaven awaits…

Roger faded away. He had just missed being on Cockle’s list, and decided to become inconspicuous by working as a microchipper in the local surgery. A chance viewing of an old Dennis Potter DVD about a group of people living in the distant [controlled, repressive] future called RON’s [Reality or Nothing] had inspired him to wake up. And not a cockle in sight.

Yes, Roger was in daily silent communication with Lucre. He was re-programming the microchips. The new programming was very simple:

“Learn to love yourself; we are all connected. The world you live in is an illusion. Love is the only thing that is real. Forgiveness is the key to global salvation. You are one of the many.”

Lucre winked at Queen Cockle. The message conveyed between them was:

The prawn is leaving the building…

JS, September 2006