One bloke that took a fancy to Mellers and liked to bounce her pretty often in the castle was called Vortex, a man 2-thirds human and 1-third god. In fact according to many people he was also 3-thirds dickhead as well but that is by the by. Anyway Vortex was down at earth on a spell of banishment following a minor indiscretion he’d had with ************ the thin blonde German girl whose name no one could remember and who Zeus was nobbing.

Vortex used to talk to Mellers in proper Roman English and kissed her with his tongue.

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When Mellers was 21 she announced it to Vortex that she really wanted to leave her dad and be reunited with her mum who still lived on the other side of the world in ‘iceland’ or ‘freezer world’ or whatever.

Mellers and Vortex went to a party that had a fight, a break-up and people snogging in the toilet. While he was drunk Vortex sed he’d help Mellers get the airfare together to visit ‘freezer world’ but instead when sober he dipped into her savings and skipped off to Berlin to see a mate of his who was working as a site foreman at some of the recent building works at Potsdamn Platz.

Like the poets say ‘our private lives quite often get rewritten’ by the fallout of historical events happening hundreds (100s) even thousands (1,000s) of miles away.

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With Vortex (and her savings) gone Mellers became depressed. She cried herself to sleep some nites and stared herself out in the mirror some days, high on a drug called Dunblane, skull full of bad bad dreams.

Ill luck followed ill luck. Her dad died in bungee-jumping accident, his house got bulldozed to make way for a by-pass and the bouncy castle got deflated as winter approached, a stain of dank looking grass beneath it providing the only ‘poignant reminder’ © of where the joys and great screws of her life had once been conducted.

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Mellers began to collect books, esp the free ones you sometimes get at petrol stations. She liked PERPA-TRAITOR MONTHLY and another one called GODS BIG & LARGE WORLD OF NATURE but her fave of all was the SHELL GARAGES HISTORY OF MUD (part 1 in a series of 8). She loved the pictures in it and the words too, the sexplanations of what mud actually is, why we need it, how it helps make the world a better place and stuff like that.

A local dignitary took pity on Mellers and allowed her to move into his house. He lived out twds Santa Monica (so not really in La La Land at all) but he was still a decent sort who remembered ‘life before the curfew’.

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Life with the dignitary took some getting used to.