Sentence The Onehundredandfiftysixth
Tammy Shanter was beside herself – the attempted murder of her friend, her dulcinea, companion and lover, Bernie Westwater had plunged her into a spiral of despair and it had only been through a great exertion of willpower and the encouragement of her mother, Tabby, that she had managed to complete her work on 'The Stone of Scone Heist' which she hoped and prayed would prove to her colleagues on The Scotsman that it was on merit that she had been promoted to Chief Investigating Reporter, over several more qualified heads than her own, and not just because The Editor, Sorcha Macaliskey fancied the pants off her – it was no secret that Ms Macaliskey had used the 'casting couch' to great personal benefit in her own rapid rise through the ranks and had made it transparently clear that she intended to allow others to reap similar rewards (but not that she was restricting such advancements to pretty girls, like Tammy – for Ms Macaliskey was well-known for swinging both ways, and her own stable of young stallions was testament to her broad-mindedness: neither gender nor orientation, race nor colour, creed nor religion would ever be a bar while she occupied The Editor's Chair; her personal enthusiasms and stamina could be perceived in the sign which hung, bold and brassy, on her office door: Tantra in the Morning, Tantra in the Evening, Tantra at Suppertime,
it was her personal mantra and she expected all of her underlings to bring the same zest for life into their work – as she famously said during the Press Strike of 1984: “If you can't be upstanding under fire, there's no room for you in my Bed,” and though some interpreted this in a specifically sexual context, others have pointed out – most recently David Sparky, her biographer, in his long Analysis piece in The Observer: 'it must be remembered that in The Print, meaning all the trades whose primary function is the writing, printing and publishing of Newspapers, the 'Bed', always and only referred to that part of a printing press which held the metal type from which the text would be printed, and Ms Macaliskey is a Print Journalist to her short and curlies and don't let her ample femininity fool you – she has the nose of a foodie for news and the stories of today and tomorrow, and she has Balls of Steel,' and he would know, having been an on/off lover of hers for some 30 years; and now, seemingly at her own instigation, a thunderbolt had been unleashed, a veritable huwasi that raged around and inside Tammy's pretty head, and it's ramifications fell much further and wider than she had ever foreseen: when she looked out of the window of the bedroom she had shared with Bernie for the past three years, she did not recognise the cityscape which stretched before her – it was instead a Fata Morgana: like some fabled Babylonian City of Spires and Minarets, Hanging
Gardens and Crenellated Towers, a Xanadu, a mirage so real and detailed that she could even count the coloured panes in a window on the far side of the Pleasure Gardens below, and at another window, she saw the individual hairs in the sweeping crimson locks of a courtesan, brushing and brushing them for her next visitor – she missed Bernie and wept bitter tears; she would go at once to the Hospital and whisper of her woes into Bernie's ear, for the Consultant had advised her that even in the deepest of comas, the sense of hearing could still convey the sounds of outside to the slumbering brain; yes, she would go now, and she jumped to her feet, glad to find some motivation some purpose other than her miserable self-pity; but she was in for a big surprise, or rather, quite a shock!
Tammy Shanter was beside herself – the attempted murder of her friend, her dulcinea, companion and lover, Bernie Westwater had plunged her into a spiral of despair and it had only been through a great exertion of willpower and the encouragement of her mother, Tabby, that she had managed to complete her work on 'The Stone of Scone Heist' which she hoped and prayed would prove to her colleagues on The Scotsman that it was on merit that she had been promoted to Chief Investigating Reporter, over several more qualified heads than her own, and not just because The Editor, Sorcha Macaliskey fancied the pants off her – it was no secret that Ms Macaliskey had used the 'casting couch' to great personal benefit in her own rapid rise through the ranks and had made it transparently clear that she intended to allow others to reap similar rewards (but not that she was restricting such advancements to pretty girls, like Tammy – for Ms Macaliskey was well-known for swinging both ways, and her own stable of young stallions was testament to her broad-mindedness: neither gender nor orientation, race nor colour, creed nor religion would ever be a bar while she occupied The Editor's Chair; her personal enthusiasms and stamina could be perceived in the sign which hung, bold and brassy, on her office door: Tantra in the Morning, Tantra in the Evening, Tantra at Suppertime,
it was her personal mantra and she expected all of her underlings to bring the same zest for life into their work – as she famously said during the Press Strike of 1984: “If you can't be upstanding under fire, there's no room for you in my Bed,” and though some interpreted this in a specifically sexual context, others have pointed out – most recently David Sparky, her biographer, in his long Analysis piece in The Observer: 'it must be remembered that in The Print, meaning all the trades whose primary function is the writing, printing and publishing of Newspapers, the 'Bed', always and only referred to that part of a printing press which held the metal type from which the text would be printed, and Ms Macaliskey is a Print Journalist to her short and curlies and don't let her ample femininity fool you – she has the nose of a foodie for news and the stories of today and tomorrow, and she has Balls of Steel,' and he would know, having been an on/off lover of hers for some 30 years; and now, seemingly at her own instigation, a thunderbolt had been unleashed, a veritable huwasi that raged around and inside Tammy's pretty head, and it's ramifications fell much further and wider than she had ever foreseen: when she looked out of the window of the bedroom she had shared with Bernie for the past three years, she did not recognise the cityscape which stretched before her – it was instead a Fata Morgana: like some fabled Babylonian City of Spires and Minarets, Hanging
Gardens and Crenellated Towers, a Xanadu, a mirage so real and detailed that she could even count the coloured panes in a window on the far side of the Pleasure Gardens below, and at another window, she saw the individual hairs in the sweeping crimson locks of a courtesan, brushing and brushing them for her next visitor – she missed Bernie and wept bitter tears; she would go at once to the Hospital and whisper of her woes into Bernie's ear, for the Consultant had advised her that even in the deepest of comas, the sense of hearing could still convey the sounds of outside to the slumbering brain; yes, she would go now, and she jumped to her feet, glad to find some motivation some purpose other than her miserable self-pity; but she was in for a big surprise, or rather, quite a shock!
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