The Friends
of Plonk by Kingsley Amis, author of I Want It Now http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/10/i-want-it-now-by-kingsley-amis-author.html and another seventeen or more
masterpieces
This short
story is absolutely hilarious and original, somebody has called it a new genre,
SF- Drink, https://www.prosperosisle.org/spip.php?article209 and indeed, together with The 2003
Claret, this tale explores the progress or otherwise of making and indulging in
Plonk, as the future arrives and brings changes to drink, habits, rituals and
the surroundings of the people who take to alcohol in the following decades
We have
seen Simpson in the previous tale, The 2003 Claret, travel through time and he
is sent again to see what the new world looks like, one thing they want to know
is who won the presidential election in America, where a Rosicrucian fellow is sent
to the Black House – presumably it will have been Black by then.
His
Serenity Sir Kingsley Amis is clairvoyant and though he moved the figure, the
USA did have a calamity in the still White House, the ‘very stable genius’, as
he calls himself, elected by almost all the evangelicals…his promotion to the
most powerful position in the world (maybe we could argue over the fact that Xi
and Putin are not restrained as tyrants, but then neither has Trump shown
respect for guardrails) was incredible.
If I were
to see a movie in which you have a character like Trump elected to be president
of The United States of Erica – I think it was in Lake Wobegon Days that I have
read about the name, it would have been more appropriate to call them USE,
because Erik of Norway had a more important role than Amerigo Vespucci http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/08/lake-wobegon-days-nine-out-of-10.html incidentally, this is the book
where you find the Wobegon Effect, a majority of people think they are better
than average drivers and so many other things, which is an oxymoron – I would
say come on, it is incredible.
You have to
read The book of Saints for the movie business, Adventures in The Screen Trade
by William Goldman http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/02/adventures-in-screen-trade-by-william.html who is the winner of two Academy
Awards for Best Script, for Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid and All The President’s
Men, and find that there are impossible situations that happen in life and it
is hard to put them on screen.
William
Goldman gives two examples, one is included in The Crown, the Netflix series
where we see the event, one man finds himself on the wrong side of the fence,
among the multiple rooms of the palace, he gets to the ‘right one’, all the
guards, the personnel are absent, or he does not cross them anyway, and then he
is face to face with the most important person, which if we see on the screen,
we dismiss.
Only this
happened to the Queen of Great Britain and the other realms, and the other
example comes from World War II, where there is an attack on the Nazi forces,
and during the crossing of a river (maybe it was the Rhine) the fog they had
counted on, or some other elements go wrong and the wave of soldiers is
massacred, while the next units prepare to and then cross in the same
circumstances…
William
Goldman had this and other problems to deal with for the script of A Bridge Too
Far, where notwithstanding the reality of this double attack, the screenwriter
has to contend with a public that will rise from their seats in the cinema
theater, if they are presented with a story they do not find credible…
I was
talking about the Friends of Plonk and somehow ended up far and away, on a
tangent for which I should excuse myself, only this kind of game is the regular
fare on these pages and then, one needs an audience to ask forgiveness from,
and few if any read these lines, which is for the better, since the ones that
do not reach this far do not really miss anything, they are better off doing
something worthwhile.
Revenons a
nos moutons, Simpson finds that there will have been a nuclear war – something
which is possible alas, Putin and his goons keep talking about the probability
that their Ukraine calamity could escalate to the use of atomic bombs and if
they are cornered, pushed back more, the stakes are higher, and seeing that
Ukraine has been winning on the front lines recently (and suffered losses too,
with a third of its energy systems damaged, people are suffering from the
freezing temperatures, articles in The Economist argue that tens of thousands
will die throughout Europe, not just in Ukraine, because the high energy prices
will cause more to die this winter, and who knows about the next) if they reach
Crimea, the tyrant in the Kremlin might feel his position is threatened and
then he will not stop.
In the
nuclear war from the short story, an area about the size of Europe is obliterated
and crops will have vanished, vines, barley and much more, besides, another
Prohibition will come to effect and that, together with the annihilation and
the loss of tradition, make the drinks available so terrible, it is hilarious
to read about it.
However,
some people get together and form a society called The Friends of Plonk, they
look at a film they have found from two hundred years back (around 1945, for
the date in the future when Simpson makes his landing is 2145) and try to
overcome the adversity, lack of traditions, ingredients and make some alcohol
from…shoe polish and other ghastly materials, the result being similar to
‘having a tear gas shell explode in your mouth’ for one ‘drink’ and then it is
like ‘having your face pushed into a bath of acid’ for another in this society
which was ‘Established 2139 for the drinking of
Traditional
liquors in traditional dress and in traditional surroundings’, as alternatives,
you find at that time ‘Martian manatee drink, Iapetan carnivorous-lemon juice,
while the Beaujolais has become Boojly…when Simpson is leaving, his new friend
is asking ‘what, you’re not staying for the coal gas in milk? Turns the brain
into absolute jelly…what a wonderful, spectacular short story this is
http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html
http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world
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