"Isn't life a terrible thing?... Thank God." Dylan Thomas

The Re-Formed Submission Party Piece.

From WKBC. Alive. On the radio. Off an audio cassette. In the slips. Under Kludge Bridge, wherein dropped catches are standard currency. Therein, there are no brakes in play. This continuous interrupted pace of the meta modern. Time passes no longer. It jerks along: a manual H- Frame stuck in second gear by an American accustomed to automatic drive; an absolute liability around roundabouts.

Stare hard at the wireless and listen. Listen well. Can you feel it? The grumbling discontent? The crumbling RAAC cement? The relentless scratching of the rodent?

Can you sense where doth the slipstream flow? The archaic craic of dissolution. The ruination of the overworn and the worn out. Sniff the jaundiced sweat patch at their arm pit that sings their song.

Can you not fail to smell them? Try. Detect the stench of the unacknowledged, the unavowed, the unassigned - who despite the slickly septic and the systemic sewerage - survive, and breathe.

The opening of scene: namely, another Kludge Bridge 99p Pound Shop.

On a budget, a random browser comes across an anomalous audio cassette box lodged in the only £0.50p CD rack and reads.

TRAILER TRASH Productions in Association with WKBC Radio Present...

UNDER KLUDGE BRIDGE

An Austerity Audiobook from The Kludge
(50p @ All Good Chazzas)

Starring Eponymous Imp
As the Mental Elf
And Molly Alone as Herself.

The sleeves note still more arcane detail.

Indeed, the browser finds the purported length of the tape unfeasible. Nor do they get the amusing pencil reference.

14 x 90-minute audio cassettes
Running time: 62 years 41 days
(Pencil not included.)

A selection of other re-fabricated titles is also unattainable at WKBC Audio Content on 8-Track Cartridge and on Long-Playing Acetate 33 RPM (only unavailable in puce.)

The browsing pound shop shopper skips the bibliology in favour of the historic present of the semi-autobiographic.

The operating surgeon at the urgent Caesarean gives Josef K. his first smack in the chops on the Hallowe'en of 1963.

Miseducated at Kludge Bridge Institute for Singularly Sexed Boys, he doesn't learn Welsh.

K. first begins writing doggerel while a feral teen. He continues dog ending fag butts in an inappropriate adult associate's spare room until the local authorities...

Browser attention wanes. The overshare weighs heavy. The pound coin in pocket rubs against thigh.

Mrs Organ Morgan is running in the 2.41 at the Beta Kludge Virtual Dog Track opposite.

2.38. Stimulated simulated greyhounds are rounded up for showtime, as the peruser takes another punt on the sleeve notes.

...when sometime during the Third World War, Kludge marries. The beginning of the end of the union unleashes the Mental Elf, who takes K. on a full-blown bender.

The next page is obscured by a massive £0.50p sticker. The difficult-to-read bit gives way to momentary clarity - until the torn corner rips away certainty.

Kludge is killed off in the spring of 2023. His ashes are carried in a Bag for Life for a while, then abandoned under Kludge Bridge.

His resurrection, barely noted, is left alone in a paragraph all to itself with only a parenthesis for accompaniment.

K. owes it all to his Elf. Radio Rentals and attention-hungry it may be - but neither imp nor Kludge ever truly lived in the first place.

The fixed income, low budget browser jams the cassette pack back in the rack, pats the pound coin in his trousers and backs away from the purchase.

The unspent pound goes on Mrs Organ Morgan, the number 4 dog. Bred in South Wales, it is joint second favourite.

Mrs M comes second. Virtually. The rabbit wins.

Again