Jacko Holed Up In Blackfriars Street B and B? The day after he disappeared, rumours cruise the boudoirs and dens of Aberdeen. The offshore oilmen use up their annual leave and strain their eyes for a sighting. Look-a-likes flock to the city, best known for its granite fa�ade, its sightless glare. Mask-makers and dance instructors declare an unexpected boom, which takes their minds off the rising price of flounder and the small hole widening at the bottom of the North Sea. The oil-wives, two weeks on Local Woman�s Third-Cousin�s Nephew Foils Saddam�s Army two weeks off, had sprinkled their suburban lawns until the hosepipe ban. They stand by their taps and wait for the wind to change, the clouds to collide. Against all predictions Bosnian Clash Shock To North-East Economy hail and fog quench the Indian summer, and Jackson boogies down Union Street unhindered, spotted only by a sharp-eyed drunk outside the shopping centre around 3am. This city is best left to the gust of its self-induced bluster. �Who cares about the black Nationalist Councillor Apologises For England Oil Slur bastard? I lived through two world wars!� � some old fascist in the pension queue makes his logical connections. The wives pump up the hosepipes again now that the grass is wet, now that the husbands are counting the days back to work. This city is best seen at night next to a traffic light. He sings �Billie Jean� by the maritime museum to a group of adolescents who mistake him for Ali G. and ask him to cadge them Aberdeen Fishmonger Blames Rwanda Bloodbath For Doomed Love Affair twelve cans of Tennant�s lager. Rumour has it that when the oil drains away, the town planners will dredge up a new Aberdeen in Eastern Mauritania, with a bar and goldfish pond five miles down a sand-track. The wives forecast gales as helicopters rock their men to the next fortnight�s University Professor Spots Jackson Leaving Dyce Airport relief. Pressmen summon headlines, silhouettes, blurred outlines, unreliable witnesses, and conjure the evening�s final run. Jackson turns up next morning, asleep in a public toilet cubicle near Connecticut, best experienced as an act of imagination. Some say the attendant�s maternal great-grandfather may have swiped a bridie from a bakery on the North Sea coast. |