As if...As if...

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No stranger to the P45No stranger to the P45

-- The Movie The Movie --

Welcome to DanlandWelcome to Danland

As a writer of a book (see Book) it is oddly inevitable

that one day I would imagine meeting an individual eager

to adapt this shit for the screen. Don’t fret, dear friends,

it really is purely my imagination...

Shortly before the romper-suits and the pac-a-macs of

the guardians of convention bludgeon me into obscurity

with a biscuit and half a shoe, barely a moment prior to

hurling me into the back of a unicorn-drawn turnip and

whipping me away to yet another job in a shop, I thought

I’d take this opportunity to write a new introduction to my

book. Whyever not? I ponder aloud. And then

immediately realise that no one in this café has a clue of

what I’m talking about. A middle-aged couple stare at

me as if I’m mad. An attractive woman laughs with a

horsey-snort. Out of nowhere I emit a half-cough-half-

sneeze. I decide to call it a snough. And now I feel very

silly indeed.

In one chapter of the book (see Book) I describe - a

somewhat loose and rather inaccurate term - a brief job

on a million-dollar film. I began writing that piece by

imagining a scenario way beyond my pickled shock in

which I flog the rights to the book and the whole wodge

of this pudding-like nonsense is one day made into a

movie. Of course, there’s a great deal of spitting-out

both my dignity and whatever basic capability I have for

rational thought right across the table - much in the same

way that hearing of the sheer absurdity of the notion one

1

would splurt the crumbs of a croissant, or perhaps a slice

of cake. For now though, since I have nothing better to

do I’m going to pursue this stupidity and imagine the

scenario once more. This time I’m going to imagine the

movie as if it had a trailer. Sorry about that.

2

First, try and remember one of the most recent movie

trailers you have seen. If you were in a cinema try not to

recall how angry you were at paying such an absurd

amount of money for popcorn or even the seat, or if you

were at home the infuriating advert in the commercial

break that very nearly pushed you beyond mere rage as

some motherfucker tried yet again to embed a directory

service’s telephone number into your head barely seconds

after trying yet again to embed a directory service’s

telephone number into your head, barely seconds after

trying to embed a directory service’s telephone number

into your head... On and on it goes. And on and on and

on and on and... JUST FUCK OFF! IT’S NOT FUNNY. IT

NEVER WAS. I WOULDN’T EVEN USE YOUR FUCKING

SERVICE IF IT WAS THE ONLY POSSIBLE WAY IN THE

WORLD TO STOP THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER FROM

IMPLODING ALL ELEVEN KNOWN DIMENSIONS INTO

ONE ANOTHER IN AN INSTANT, THUS ELIMINATING THE

FABRIC OF ALL KNOWN EXISTENCE... FOREVER. IN ALL

HONESTY, IT WOULD BE SOMETHING OF A RELIEF

NEVER TO HEAR THAT SHIT AGAIN... AND AGAIN AND

AGAIN, AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND...

3

Oops. Where was I?

Oh.

Okay. Try to forget all that and listen to your mind’s

ear and to the deep, guttural, tension-building idiolect of

a movie-trailer voiceover. The trailer of No stranger to

the P45 begins thus...

4

[Blank screen, image fading in]

‘Almost forty years in the making... Across two

continents...’

We’re in a vast warehouse with cabinets and boxes

stacked a mile high. The warehouse stretches out as far

as the eye can see. There’s a gremlin sitting on the lid of

a dustbin and he’s playing the mouthorgan. He tips us a

wink and nods his head towards a box. It opens and

images leap out like fireworks. In one, a gentle wind

blows tumbleweed across a desert floor. The voiceover

continues...

‘One man stands alone... He’s thinking. He really

shouldn’t being doing that...’

Within the image the camera pans around and focuses

upon a distant figure gawping into nothing from the

summit of a rocky outcrop. It travels past him and

speeds way off into the distance. We’re suddenly at a

velocity similar to that of a fighter jet as both the ground

below and the clouds above rush by as if travelling far

beyond the speed of even time itself. We stop, and we

see that same distant figure. He’s closer now. And he’s

5

sipping a cup of coffee in the evening.

We’ve paused in an almost-gothic, city-centre square.

A horse-drawn carriage trundles past. Ronnie Corbett is

dressed in drag and has his arms around two pretty

waitresses. Moments later and we see our hero again,

standing in a doorway. A crocodile hurtles through the air

towards his head. Far away and a whistle blows as steam

billows out through the pistons of a sixties locomotive

somewhere in Eastern bloc Poland.

Suddenly another image flashes across the screen: it’s

the immediate aftermath of an armed robbery and the

police are in rapid pursuit as beautiful girls in cocktail

dresses fire AK47s out through the windows of a Ferrari.

A BMW explodes on another city street. The camera’s

shutter closes and immediately reopens revealing the

carnage of a thousand corpses of the undead scattered

about: zombies and chavs in pools of blood as a wide-

angle shot takes in the Royal Crescent being obliterated

by the vast fireball of an alien mothership.

A moment passes and then that same gravelly voice

of before speaks over scenes of beauty and calm; over

the lush green meadows of rolling hills, over sandy

beaches and moors strewn with boulders and gorse. It

speaks of narcotics trafficking, of mercenaries and of

international organised crime. It speaks of political

intrigue and the ‘World’s Most Powerful Man’. It speaks of

6

corporate fraud, of sex and champagne and of superstar

actors and musicians. Disco lights merge into the flashes

of the paparazzi while Russian mobsters mill about eating

bags of chips.

There’s passion, unrequited love and a great many

biscuits. Chilling, bloody violence fills the screen along

with a stealthy assassin and a homemade nuclear bomb.

Casino chips roll across smooth green felt as Bambi is

forced into a blender with a hammer.

Black-clad figures of the SAS drop from helicopters

and hurl flash-bangs through windows of a portacabin. In

the Oval Office our hero’s imagination very nearly

becomes the cause of World War Three. Sometime later

and it very nearly gets him shot by the US Secret Service,

too.

A surreal time-travelling incident, Gandalph, and a

rainbow of preposterous poodles flash by as if captured

within a dream. A marauding crowd of the mass

populace pursue our hero with burning torches and

pitchforks while waving copies of books by Katie Price.

A crescendo of orchestral music melts into a

heartbeat, slowing into a single tone as the camera pans

out from the mind of our hero: a man sitting alone in a

cafe, his face a gawp into nothing, his mouth catching

flies as a dribble of saliva drips onto the page of an empty

pad.

7

The camera pulls further out: out above the cafe,

above the City of Bath and beyond the Earth. With the lid

of the box in one hand, his mouthorgan in the other, with

the dexterity of a being of great skill the gremlin pushes

each of those images back inside the box. He turns to

the camera, gives a wink, a sigh and a shrug and says

simply, ‘Welcome to Danland’.

[Blackout]

And... CUT!

Hmmm... Okay... Sorry about that.

And... CUT!

8

And so, there it is: my imaginary trailer for a movie

concept so absurd that the mere mention of such a thing

almost invokes in me a snivelling mess of lunacy, not to

mention its inevitable resignation to the limits of the nor-

malities of the mass populace. At least it’s given me a

few minutes of preoccupation which, perhaps you: my

solitary reader (nay, bored sociopath with frequent, un-

controllable masochistic urges to read gibberish and

shite) may find of interest. You may be inclined, on the

basis of what you’ve read in these pages, to draw the

conclusion that this is absolute nonsense; that this is, in

fact, a work of complete fiction. It would of course be a

fair conclusion to draw were it not for the fact that every-

thing within is actually, to all intents and purposes, true.

Welcome to Danland. Welcome to No stranger to the

P45. And please, help yourself to a doughnut.

*

FOR AWARDS CONSIDERATION PURPOSES ONLY. FOR AWARDS CONSIDERATION PURPOSES ONLY.

(Ha, Ha, Ha!)(Ha, Ha, Ha!)

There is no chance that this will ever be a

SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERSUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

byby

Dan W.GriffinDan W.Griffin

No stranger to the P45No stranger to the P45

‘It’s not sh‘It’s not shiit t -- it’s Art!’ it’s Art!’ -- Marvellous MalcolmMarvellous Malcolm

‘Dan, you should be in prison’ ‘Dan, you should be in prison’ -- Mrs H.DowningMrs H.Downing

‘Buy this book! (or else)’ ‘Buy this book! (or else)’ -- Andy McNab, Author Bravo Two ZeroAndy McNab, Author Bravo Two Zero

WARNINGWARNING Contains strong language, bloody violence Contains strong language, bloody violence

and scenes of a sexual nature and scenes of a sexual nature

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for more excerpts from the book plus videos & games (including one about an ostrich and another about a yeti

thwacking a penguin with a bat) please visit....

www.nostrangertothep45.comwww.nostrangertothep45.com

Copyright © Dan W.Griffin

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The rights of Dan W.Griffin to be identified as the Author of this Work has

been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and

Patents Act, 1988

Downloading of this file is subject to the condition that it shall

not, by way of trade or otherwise, be reproduced, stored in

an alternative retrieval system, transmitted elsewhere or

otherwise circulated in any form or by any means without the

prior written permission of the author. This document is for

single machine viewing purposes only.

Sorry about that...