John Moore’s first brush with notoriety came at a tender age as a drummer for the Jesus and Mary Chain. He then formed a less successful but highly lucrative act called John Moore and the Expressway. John was also responsible for the reintroduction of absinthe to the UK, serves as the principal writer for the pop group Black Box Recorder, and moonlights as the sports editor of the Idler magazine. He has appeared on Top of the Pops, University Challenge, Newsnight, 6 Music, and BBC Radio 4. He has been a columnist for the Guardian and Motoring Correspondent. He currently plays in the John Moore Rock and Roll Trio, which is releasing an album in February. When asked to describe himself, he replied, third person and all: “John Moore has the eyes of a poet, the wit of a demon, the mind of genius, and the liver of a corpse.”
The story he contributed to this issue is all about fecal matter, and the publication of it has made his mother extremely proud.
What caused the shit to come to life is not for me to say. I’ve got my theories, of course—I’ve been a sewer man for 30 years, and I’ve seen a lot of unexplainable stuff down there, but this, quite frankly, is beyond me. To me, a turd is a turd is a turd, well more or less—human waste. We all do them, and they’ve got to go somewhere. We know when it’s likely to get a bit crowded down there, and we take precautions. The day England reached the World Cup final, we knew we was going to have our work cut out at halftime. People are especially nervous when their country’s on the brink of repeating 1966, and most of them are holding parties and barbecues, eating uncooked meat and such and knocking back a skin full, so it’s hardly surprising the system gets a surge.
Of course, I was on duty when the call came, watching the game in the staff canteen on the big-screen telly we all chipped in for. I was a bit miffed when they called me. England was 2–nil up with ten minutes of normal time left to play.“Derek Grainger,” I answered into the mobile.
It was Jeff who was on watch at the slurry tank. I thought he was taking the piss.
“Get down here now, we’ve got an emergency—brown alert.”
Obviously that meant “red alert,” but sewage men have to have a sense of humor.
“Can’t it wait for a bit, Jeff, aren’t you watching the game?” I asked him.
“No, it can’t fucking wait, mate. The shit is coming to life.”
Well, as I said, I’ve been doing this job for a number of years and I’d never heard anything like that before. Obviously I assumed it was a wind-up, but then again, even Jeremy Beadle wouldn’t be daft enough to pull a stunt like that when the World Cup final was on.
I went down there, all the time thinking that Jeff was taking the piss, and I’d play along. He was quite a decent bloke and I thought that maybe he just wanted a bit of company. We could watch the rest of the game together on the telly in his hut; I didn’t mind.
Of course, the whole world knows what happened next. When I got out there, the smell was rank, and Jeff was just standing there, pointing at the tank. “Look” was all he could say. The whole thing was bubbling and gurgling like the crater of a volcano, shit splattering everywhere. I didn’t even think to run and get protective clothing, I just stood there openmouthed as the gallons of turd clung together and formed a bloody great shape, which became more and more detailed until we could make out that it was some kind of giant head—like a prehistoric monster, except entirely made of shit. It must have been all of 20 feet across… and then its body started forming.
“This ain’t right, Derek,” cried Jeff. “What them Pakis been eating?”
I should explain that Jeff is ever so slightly racist—he’s in the BNP, as it happens.
Now Slough does have a large ethnic community, and Jeff, bless him, has taken it upon himself to blame them for pretty much everything. As a sewage man living local, I’ve never had any trouble with them, and I know for a fact that they have a much healthier diet than us.
“It’s got nothing to do with them, Jeff,” I said. “Get a grip on yourself. If anyone’s to blame for this lot, it’s English football fans, eating all sorts of what-have-you and taking a load of fucking drugs.”
“No it ain’t, it’s bioterrorism—al Qaeda—they’ve flushed something down the bogs—it’s their scientists—another 9/11—there’s no way this is an English phenomenon.”
As we argued the ethnic origins of the monster that was forming before us, another huge wave of shit entered the tank.
“Germany must have scored,” said Jeff.
With every fresh gallon of turd pouring into the system, the creature was getting bigger.
As the senior staff member, the executive decision-making process fell to me, and it is to my dismay that I hesitated momentarily before deciding on the best course of action. I knew that what was before me represented the most serious problem in all my sewage career, and that it would have to be dealt with, but like Sir Winston Churchill smoking his cigar, or Sir Francis Drake finishing his game of bowls before defeating the Spanish Armada, I knew that England was five minutes away from lifting the World Cup, and that no Englishman would thank me for ruining the party. Football, as the late Bill Shankly said, is more important than God.
“Pretend we haven’t seen him, Jeff” was what I came up with.
“Let’s watch the rest of the game, then if it’s still there when we come out, we’ll take him down.”
Of course, in light of the events of this day, England is changed forever, but at least we went into our next course of action on a high.
In the 92nd minute, Germany had a controversial goal disallowed and then the ref blew. As the Krauts stormed off the pitch in disgust, Wembley went apeshit and the entire nation cheered. You could hear it all over, English men and women with their hearts gladdened and their spirits lifted, screaming for all they was worth.
Jeff and I agreed not to mention the slight delay in our call to action. After all, we are not qualified or trained to deal with an emergency such as this. After we’d finally stopped hugging each other and whooping, we knew that we had a job to do, and infused with the bulldog spirit, we got to work.
Of course, the full-time whistle and the waves of excitement and euphoria sent such a cascade of shit down the pipes that the thing was easily a hundred feet tall now. This is where triumph turned to despair.
As our colleagues rushed out of the canteen into the fresh air, filled with our 2–1 thrashing of Germany, they were unprepared for what they saw. You don’t think at a time like that, do you—you ain’t expecting a Tyrannosaurus rex tail completely made out of shit to swish across the yard and crush you to death?
The beast was fully alive now, and lifted its mighty form out of the slurry tanks and began to walk. The ground shook as its enormous feet pounded the asphalt, pulverizing everything in its wake. You would have been able to hear its roar as far off as Reading, it was that loud.
We took great pride in our work here at the Slough Water and Sewage Purification Plant, and we did our best to stop this Faecalosaurus from becoming a hazard to members of the general public, but it was no use. If our high-pressure hoses had been working properly that day, we might have been able to jet-spray it, but owing to maintenance issues and low water pressure due to the heat wave and drought, we were inadequately resourced to satisfactorily deal with the situation. Once it headed for the trees and broke out onto the M4, we knew we could no longer contain the situation.
I can hardly imagine the feelings of terror motorists must have had, to be bowling down the M4 at what should have been a particularly quiet time, then seeing this thing towering up in the distance, picking cars out of both carriageways and hurling them like a baby tossing toys out of its pram. My only comfort, and it’s a slender one at best, is that most of those killed would not have been loyal English football fans. Of course I know that not everybody likes football, and some people—like cab drivers and the emergency services, or asylum seekers—are forced to work whatever the situation, and my heart goes out to them.
However—and I do appreciate this—nobody was expecting something like this to happen. The emergency services, God bless them, were all geared up for football violence, and quite rightly so. If England had lost, the whole country would have kicked off—again, quite rightly so—so to say that their response was too little, too late is a bit unfair.
Can you imagine what people felt when the first news flashes broke into their World Cup celebration broadcasts? A lot of TV producers got a right bollocking for trying to stop them; and imagine the sponsors and advertisers, all that money they put in—they must have been livid—but when there’s a 150-foot-tall shit monster tearing up the M4, it’s a bit hard to maintain a news blackout.
Now, what the authorities feared most was an attack on Windsor Castle. They, in their wisdom, assumed that this was the work of terrorists, and the dent to the British way of life and Britain’s international prestige from having the monarch wiped out by a shit monster didn’t bear thinking about.
In an improvised joint operation, the emergency services and armed forces combined to defeat the Faecalosaurus, bombing it from the air, and blasting it with heavy artillery, yet always mindful that Slough is a built-up area.
Of course, as I’ve already said, I’ve nothing against our ethnic friends, but I must say that in this particular case, on this particular day, they were bloody unhelpful. Within no time, local leaders and elders, backed by half of Slough, were hailing this monster as some kind of deity and vowing to protect it—not giving a shit about the smell. Then a lot of pacifists turned up and joined in, claiming that we had no right to take the life of another living being—it was made of shit, for God’s sake!
Well, inevitably this inflamed a lot of people who were already emotional, and the BNP used it as an excuse, so apart from everything else going on, a whole effing race riot started. Pissed-up football fans taking everyone on, Muslim nutters with meat cleavers, bearded bloody lesbians, riot police—just when everybody should have been having a good time.
I got collared by a load of scientists, trying to piece together what I knew. I kept schtumm about watching the end of the game—for obvious reasons. Their tissue analysis didn’t add up to much. They concluded that it was made entirely of shit, which is what I told them in the first place.
Bombing the monster had very little effect. Whatever bits they knocked off seemed to grow back instantly, and when a couple of stray missiles, which people said must have been fired by Prince William, hit the Mars factory, aerial bombardment was suspended.
As night came, an uneasy peace fell over Slough. The chaos of the afternoon gave way to cautious calm—I think perhaps people were feeling ashamed of themselves. There was hymn singing and antiwar songs and a candlelight vigil, despite the fear of gas. The Archbishop of Canterbury turned up and, joined by leaders of all the faiths, led a service of thanksgiving and tolerance.
Despite a lot of folks doubled up with dysentery, we sang “All Things Bright and Beautiful.” Communities came together, and on this night, new understandings were forged, in the knowledge that something about the way we live our lives had changed forever. The general consensus was that we should still kill it, but that was tinged with an air of wonderment, that from the very humblest of beginnings, a new life-form had begun, formed from the bowels of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs, perhaps embodying the hopes and dreams of us all—a People’s Faecalosaurus.
Experts surmised that it was an intelligent being, a miraculous throwback to the origin of the species, causing us to ask uncomfortable questions about our own delicate evolution; perhaps the first of a new race, and then a breeding mate might be found.
For better or for worse, these questions never came to be answered, for on the stroke of midnight, the heavens opened and the drought finally broke. The tremendous thunderstorm did what the combined strength of our armed forces, emergency services, best brains, and government could not do. The rain lashed the monster mercilessly, and it was much to the credit of we as a people that we pitied its fate.
As the driving rain dissolved it, it stood proud and magnificent, raging yet powerless against the torrential assault from Mother Nature’s arsenal.
I can’t say that I was not relieved to see the back of it—especially as I felt partly responsible for its creation and the reign of havoc it brought down upon the nation, but I will have to live with that on my conscience.
I still sleep easily at night, although after the disciplinary tribunal, I am no longer in sewage. Firmer management structures are now in place to ensure that a situation like this does not arise again, but I say this: If it’s happened once, it can happen again. The genie—or Faecalosaurus—is out of the bottle. Until we start taking a bit better care of our dietary intake and are a bit more considerate about what we flush down the toilets, there is always a danger of worse to come. The British sewage system, great though it is, is mostly Victorian, and it is not equipped to deal with the modern world.
On a personal note, I would like to apologize to all those who lost loved ones in the crisis—especially Her Majesty the Queen, whose pleasure I am currently at. Had I been made fully aware of the potential loss of life and dreadful consequences owing to my lack of immediate action, I would have responded differently. I know that Jeff thinks along similar lines. Still, you can’t turn back the clock, can you?
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