Don't Look Now Barry!

 after Daphne du Maurier




Barry and Ursula are in their room at the Lonsdale Hotel in Margate. 


 BARRY: 
Extremely difficult parking, not comfortable with leaving things in the car in this area. I'm tired now with such a lot of carrying required.

 URSULA: 
I've had a wonderful day though Barry. Not had so much fun since Mabel died. And check-in at reception was excellent. The corridors are a little pokey, as is this room - I hit my head on the TV.

 BARRY: 
The "water hammer" plumbing is well in evidence too. The lift had alarming door tendencies, so we won't use it again.

 URSULA: 
Well, it's ours for the moment, but no more. While we are in it, let's bring it to life.
Exit Barry to the en-suite. Barry turns on both taps in the bathroom, water gushes in the bath, the steam rises. He takes off his jerkin and picks up Ursula's diaphragm laying by the tap, shudders. He puts it back down.

 BARRY: 
(whispering) Now at last is the moment to make love to Ursula Pitt.

 Barry enters the bedroom. Ursula understands, opens her arms and smiles. Barry takes his teeth out. They make honest, real and perfect love.

       Afterwards

 URSULA: 
Shall we stay in the hotel for an evening meal? I'm not really that hungry.

 BARRY:  
God, no! All those rather dreary couples at the other tables. I'm ravenous. I'm also gay. I want to get rather pissed.

 URSULA: 
Oh go on Barry. I'm tired and I don't want to get lost tonight down one of those Margate alleys.

 BARRY: 
(Puts his teeth back in. Kisses Ursula) Anything for you baby,
      Later in the restaurant.

 BARRY: 
What is the dessert?

 WAITER: 
Don't know.

 BARRY: 
Could you find out?

 WAITER: 
Before I take your order?

 BARRY: 
Fool!

 URSULA: 
Barry! Mind yourself.

 BARRY: 
What wines are available?

 WAITER: 
Don't know.

 BARRY: 
Could you find out?
      Waiter disappears and comes back producing one bottle of red.

 WAITER: 
This is all that's available.

 BARRY: 
How much is it?

 WAITER: 
Don't know.

 BARRY: 
Can we agree a price?

 WAITER: 
Tenner?

 URSULA:
Let's Dance!

 ****

       Some days later

 BARRY: 
(On the telephone) I'm not in Swindon. I'm still in Margate.

 URSULA: 
(On the other end of the telephone) Still in Margate? What on earth for? Wouldn't the car start?

 BARRY: 
I can't explain. There was a stupid sort of mix-up...

 URSULA: 
What sort of mix-up? (suspicious)You weren't in a crash?

 BARRY: 
No, no, nothing like that...(silence)

 URSULA: 
Your voice sounds very slurred. Don't tell me you went and got pissed.

 BARRY:
 I thought...I thought I saw you, in a stretch limo, with Mabel Watson.

 URSULA: 
How could you have seen me with Mabel? You knew I'd gone to Bingo. And Mabel is ... dead. Really Barry, you are an idiot.

 BARRY: 
I'm not sure she is dead. I saw her last night disappearing into Margate caves wearing a little hi- viz rain coat and a pixie hood.

 URSULA: 
Oh Barry, catch the train back to Swindon, tomorrow, won't you?

 BARRY: 
Yes, of course.

 URSULA: 
I still don't understand what kept you in Margate...It all sounds a bit odd to me. However...thank God Roy is going to be all right and I'm here.

 BARRY: 
You better go (he could hear 'The Price is Right' in the background) My regards to the Brunel Plaza, and...Roy.

 ****

 BARRY: 
There has been a terrible mistake. I don't know how to apologise to you. I feel a fool.

 DORIS:
I don't understand. My name is Doris, I don't know any Mabel.

 BARRY: 
A mistake, that's all. Sorry love.

 POLICEMAN: 
So this is all a pack of lies? This statement.

 BARRY: 
I believed it to be true. This woman is the spit of my dead friend Mabel. I could have sworn on Michael's Work-wear that I saw her with Ursula Pitt last night. Now I realise I was mistaken.

 DORIS
I ain't been near no Ursula Pitt, I've been ill for days.

 POLICEMAN: 
So where is this Ursula Pitt now?

 BARRY: 
I think my eyes deceived me. I thought I saw Ursula but she's in Swindon, watching 'The Price is Right' with Roy, who's been sick, very sick.

 DORIS: 
Sick! How sick?

 BARRY: 
What's it to you?

 POLICEMAN: (Points at Barry) You, are a very lucky man. This woman could file a complaint against you - a very serious matter.

 BARRY: 
Sorry...she looks just like Mabel.

 DORIS 
No problem. Come on, I'll walk with you out of here.
       
        Barry and Doris exit

 DORIS: 
You did see me Barry. And Ursula too. But not last night. You saw us in the future.

 BARRY: 
I don't follow.

 DORIS: 
I'm psychic, but I can't talk here, don't want to go into a trance in the street. Follow me.

       Later

       Barry is down a dark Margate alleyway. He has seen the skinny woman in the yellow hi-viz rain coat and pixie hood again. He follows her.

 BARRY: 
It's all right Mabel. Come on, I won't let Spatz hurt you. It's all right.

 The skinny woman in the hi-viz raincoat and pixie hood is crouching down in the alleyway.

 BARRY: 
It's all right Mabel (holds out his hand) 

       The skinny woman in the hi-viz raincoat and pixie hood stands to her feet, the pixie hood falls to the floor. Barry stares at the figure, his face turning from incredulity, to fear. The figure grinned at him and snapped a shot from his mobile phone causing Barry to flinch at the flash. When he came to, the figure was gone.

 BARRY: 
Fool! What a bloody silly way to be caught on camera. 

Eplastic Head


after David Lynch 

Scene 1: The Harvey

BARRY: 
Are you Roy? 

ROY: 
Yes.

BARRY: 
Girl named Bianca called on the pay-phone. Said she's at her parents and you're invited to dinner. 

ROY:
Oh, yeah? Thank you very much.


Scene 2: Bianca's parent's house

Later 

BIANCA: 
You're late, Roy.

ROY: 
I didn't know if you wanted me to come or not. Where have you been?

BIANCA: 
You never come around any more.

Scene 3: At Mabel's house

Suddenly, the phone rings, Mabel picks it up, she listens.

MABEL: 
But Roy, I've never owned a pair of black gloves in my life....


ROY: 
That's not the point Mabel, I was just making pictures.

Does Barry Dream of Electric Ursula?


After Philip K. Dick

A huge cloud descended over Swindon. People were asked to relocate to other cloudless, safer towns such as Chippenham. Some refused to leave and were branded as 'Special.' No one knew what was in the cloud, but it contained an omnipresent dust of befouling filth and everyone who remained in the town suffered from a depression that could only be controlled by mood organs. Each household was given an electric person to cheer them up. 

Barry is in a pair of hi-viz pyjamas. Mabel is sleeping on the sofa. She has not touched her twin-tub in days.

MABEL: 
Keep your hand off my settings! I don't want to do the washing.

BARRY: 
You set your Penfold too weak, let me reset it? If you surge yourself high enough you'll be happy to do the washing. At setting C you'll be dancing with your electric paddle agitator again.

MABEL: 
Get your crude road-digger hands off my paddle agitator.

BARRY: 
I'm not a road digger, I haven't dug a road since the cloud came.

MABEL: 
You're worse. You make road-blocks to keep people from leaving this town. People that refuse to be 'special'.

BARRY: 
Only the electric people.

MABEL: 
They're still people. Ursula's on the roof. Would you stop Ursula?

BARRY: 
She was a real woman once, a lovely woman.

MABEL: 
I'd like a real woman friend again.

BARRY: 
Impossible.

MABEL: 
Exactly, which is why my schedule for today is a six hour self-accusatory depression.

BARRY:
What? Why did you set it for that? It defeats the purpose of the mood-organ. You might as well go live in Chippenham.

MABEL: 
Never, I'd rather have electronic depression thank you.

BARRY: 
Why are you so bent on being depressed? Who will do the washing?

MABEL: 
I saw that awful commercial again, the one for Hotpoint Lead Codpieces. I felt sad about the past and the direction Hotpoint were being forced to go in. So I shut off the sound and I heard the…(Mabel gestures to the houses next door)

BARRY: 
The emptiness, the silence?

MABEL: 
I was in a 382 mood, so although I heard the noise intellectually, I didn’t feel it. I was grateful for my Penfold at that point and stroked the twin-tub in deep appreciation, loading it with a pile of washing I had already done. But then I realised how unhealthy it all was, sensed an absence of life. I miss the real Ursula.

BARRY: 
But despair like that. You’ll end up in Reading!

MABEL: 
I’ve got an automatic resetting for three hours later. A 481: awareness of the manifold possibilities and joy in housework. 

BARRY: 
Let’s dial a 104 together, forget all this. Then I’ll set mine for collecting a skip, ready for work, then I'll pop up on the roof to check on Ursula.

MABEL: 
Look what happened the last time someone dialled what you wanted them to Barry. Ursula happened, she dialled for ecstatic sexual bliss and bang! The end of her. So I won’t be taking advice from a road-blocker, or skip-remover if that’s the job of the day.

BARRY: 
You turn into a bloody snob when you are depressed. You belong in Bath. Not here, with the Swindon Specials.

MABEL: 
Just keep off my settings and go to work.

After breakfast, Barry abandons Mabel in her six-hour self-accusatory depressive state and leaves for work. First, he goes to check on Ursula. Despite his lead, hi-viz codpiece, the cloud filtered in and at him, brought him daily as long as he refused to move to Chippenham. He was now, quite special. Doug, another Swindon refuserite had come to check on his human too.

DOUG: 
I’d give you five hundred pounds a month for your electric human. I do like her.

BARRY: 
But that’s my Ursula, I can’t sell Ursula.

DOUG: 
There’s none like her in stock.

BARRY: 
I had her specially designed.

DOUG: 
But for you to have a unique person, it violates the whole basic theological and moral structure of Swindon.


BARRY: 
Not really, if you didn't have your own human there on the roof, I’d see some logic in your position. And if I had two electric humans and you didn't have any, I’d be helping to deprive you of true fusion.

DOUG: 
I think Ed down the road had his wife made up into an electric one but possibly he’s just pretending. How did you get her done like this?

BARRY: 
When she was real, she dialled for some ecstatic sexual bliss on the mood organ and I came into the bedroom to find her lying on her back on the floor, legs in the air. I managed to lift her up but after a moment or two that was it, she keeled over.

DOUG: 
Women get strange reactions to this mood organ.

BARRY: 
Any organ.

DOUG: 
So what did you do next.

BARRY: 
We had her buried, as usual and Mabel and I started to miss her. No mood-dialling worked on the loss we felt. So I took her photo to one of those shops that manufacture humans. They made her up for us. Pity she can’t live in the house, rules are rules.

DOUG: 
It’s not the same though is it? Don't you dream about her?

BARRY: 
I have some funny electric Ursula dreams that is true. Some involving button 377. 

DOUG: 
Good lord! 377 ... no one goes on 377. I didn't know organs still came with that one. Better watch that Mabel of yours in there then, she could die like Ursula died. Keep a sticker over those settings. When you get home from work this evening, you might find her laid out, feet in the air, like a bug.

Barry strode off, car key in hand, and in silence plucked open the door of his hover-car. He had nothing to say to Doug.


Malevolent Ivy


after Daphne Du Maurier

 Mabel and Ursula are having breakfast together at the Queens Hotel, Blackpool. After Mabel's abduction by aliens, a mini-break seemed the answer. 


MABEL: 
Last night I dreamt I went to Swindon again.

 URSULA: 
You've been gone some time Mabel.

 MABEL: 
It seemed to me I was stood by the iron gates leading to Town Gardens, and for a while I could not enter, because the way was barred to me.

 URSULA: 
They lock it up after 5pm. What shall we have for breakfast?

 MABEL: 
Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed all of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed the barrier before me.

 URSULA: 
I'm having full English.

 MABEL:
I reached the rose garden with plants standing fifty feet high and with naked limbs.

 URSULA: 
That's symbolic.

 MABEL: 
Their branches like a strange embrace, making a vault above my head like the archway of a church.

 URSULA: 
Big rose bushes...hadn't anyone pruned them? 

 MABEL: 
And weeds had thrust themselves out of the quiet earth, along with monster shrubs and plants, none that I can remember.

 URSULA: 
It seems to me Mabel, you should stop the idea of this wedding with Mr. Tuttle, and any dreams of children, (although that might not be possible at your age of course). This nightmare of thrusting weeds and strange embraces is all about fear of your hidden female psyche Mabel and very unhealthy.

 MABEL: 
But then Ursula, vast and secretive, was our cafe with its myriad of chairs extending to the iron gates on the other side, so many chairs Ursula.

 URSULA: 
Weddings again ... cancel the whole thing.

 MABEL: 
Then those rose bushes came out of the garden like serpents and entered into alien embraces with the pansy displays that look so lovely in March.

 URSULA: 
Do I need to say any more? a bus driver and a poet...doesn't add up. It will lead to misery.

 MABEL: 
Then a primrose mated with a rhododendron!

 URSULA: Very crude. Reminds me of Sandra and Charlie, the babies they might have made if things lasted longer than a week.

 MABEL: 
Then to bind them, evermore closely, the malevolent ivy...

 URSULA: 
Hmmm, that'd be Barry. He introduced you to Tuttle at the Harvey. Always an enemy to grace! My kind of man.

 MABEL: 
I'll have a boiled egg.

Snubbed at the Meat Raffle

Ursula Pittposted toBarry Dicks
22 hours ago
Clown-faced pork luncheom meat was there, but were you?
Ursula PittBarry Dicks
You were invited to the meat raffle at The Harvey last night were you? I dreamt about Mabel Watson and she told me that you had won some tenderloin, is this true?
Like ·  · 22 hours ago · 

Delete all cookies, fire an empty biscuit barrel at the moon

An empty warehouse lit by a projected image of YouTube on the far wall.

A figure sits at a laptop with his back to the audience.

He is a wearing a hi vis jacket and woolly hat

A YouTube video of Big Arts Day 2011 plays

The figure turns away from the projection

We hear Barry Dicks’ voice shout ‘You fool’

The figure holds his head in his hands.

The figure reveals himself as Barry Dicks.

The video pauses.

He turns back to his laptop.

A browser history page opens, still projected onto the wall.

BARRY:
Where are you? Backspace, backspace, right click, save as.

Pause

Mabel’s disembodied voice loudly fills the warehouse.

MABEL: 
Just call Roy. Roy. Roy. Roy.

BARRY:
Watson is that you?

MABEL:  
Elementary my dear Barry.

BARRY:  
There’s a séance at Ursula’s on Thursday 8 for 8:30pm, be there, two knocks for yes.

MABEL:  
Find me Barry. I am have been shared beyond my ‘likes’ I am an invisible Friend Request, I have been retweeted way beyond Swindon to a dark place of freeze dried poetry and giant nappies.

BARRY :  
Are you in Oxford?

Mabel is Back 2: Death by Paddle Agitator

READ MABEL IS BACK 1 HERE

 Barry takes a small device from his belt and starts to adjust it when suddenly a large shadow falls over him from behind.  He hears a monstrous howl and turns to see an eleven-foot-tall shape towering over him.  It is the Mabel-like machine creature, lunging at him ferociously.

BARRY:
Aaargh!

Barry grabs for his spanner, but is hit flat in the face by a huge hand holding a paddle agitator.  He falls unconscious onto a Swindon pavement, and in a moment his milk-float makes a bang, then a smash as the wind-screen is broken.

The Mabel-like machine creature grabs Barry by one ankle and drags him away across the Swindon pavement.

EXT. SWINDON – MABEL’S KITCHEN - DAY

The Mabel-like creature loads Barry into her twin-tub and closes the lid, securing the spinner seal beforehand.

Enter, Ursula

URSULA:
All right, don't lose your temper. It wasn’t Barry’s fault you were abducted. We all thought you’d been murdered by a teapot. Until the massages started. Now stop right there and I'll come right over and give you a hand to pull him out.

Mabel takes up her paddle agitator and lunges at Ursula. Ursula sprays her in the face with some window cleaner and Mabel faints.  

MABEL:
(coming too … groans)
Ursula?

URSULA:
Yeah…Ursula! Any sign of life in that twin-tub? You put Barry in there. You'll know if he comes around!

MABEL:
Ursula, I've got to leave.  I can't stay any more. They've got Roy.


Ursula, is standing at the cooker nearby, is dressed in a short white combat jacket and pants.  Her hair is braided across her head in a Nordic fashion.  She seems somewhat distressed.
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