Deep Grouse

Harry is tormented to distraction by tragic ill-fortune and takes refuge in increasingly bizarre behaviour and imagination, rebellious, frustrated, and angry. Because of it he is suspended from his job as a school teacher, shuts himself away, and spends much time at the typewriter trawling through his immediate past, his current plight and visions of a nightmare future. Harry's personal crisis is intertwined with his biting criticisms of contemporary England and fearful predictions of where it is heading. He envisages total breakdown in a disordered and polluted land, where the means of safety and survival from general destruction and anarchy lie only in gated and guarded estates; or for some a doomed society under the rigid control of a sterile scientifically determined regime where people are monitored like mechanised automatons, and every possible aspect of life is regulated and controlled. He is frenziedly concerned that a continuous erosion of individual freedom with ever growing state control is pointing that way. Amongst other considerations Harry is appalled by the prospect that the England of which he is so fond is gradually losing its essential character through various shifts towards Americanisation, of the more vulgar aspects of common life taking dominance, of seismic cultural challenges presented by excessive immigration, and the stupefying effect of what passes as entertainment and technological advancement. These and more. Harry's misguided adventures carry him through both turmoil and danger, real and imagined. Even so his caustic wit never fully desert him, as he relays his fractured feelings through the typewriter, during which he confesses openly to his own past feelings and indiscretions, including those of an erotic nature. For him it is like emptying the barrel until he can start afresh if that should ever become possible. Eventually he thinks he finds the answer - or does he?