LACKLAND CANDLEWAX
When leather hasn’t been tanned properly, the stink of just one man’s tunic can clear an entire chapel. The smell has a peculiarity about it that distinguishes it from all others, in that it has layers and dimensions. The first of these to offend the nostril is a faint cheesy tang of vomit, but with a sweetness, as if the person getting sick has just gorged on Refresher bars. The second is a large wall of meaty dung, like the shit of a sick old sow. And the third is the bang of a recently defiled crypt, when a body has been there a week and the worms are young and the round corpse, bloated, bursts open and purges bowels that have turned iridescent turquoise, with weepy beige fat melting off them. Leather is tanned when the skin of an animal, usually a cow, is scraped of all its hair and flesh, has all its salt content removed and is soaked in its own piss for several days. The skin is then pounded with a mixture of dogs’ shite and battered goats’ brain. The correct procedure is to dry it slowly; the incorrect procedure is to dry it hastily near an open fire. That’s what the dodgy tanneries do, to produce more leather in less time. This is that pure cheap leather sold down underneath the stilt-bridge. A flame-dried skin hasn’t been aired, the natural processes that allow the hum to subdue haven’t occurred. Instead the stink festers and gets more acrid. Even worse is that the dry smoky leather traps the wretched malodour in. You can’t smell this when you buy it, that’s the point. But when a man decides to wear his brand-new badly tanned tunic to somewhere warm, somewhere sweaty, somewhere close and moist with the collective breath of a large crowd, a well-to-do crowd with rosemary sprigs under their armpits and down their arses, then the trapped rancid piss-skin stink rapidly emanates from the leather and into the ensuing surroundings. When this happens in a chapel, the stone floors, the walls, the seats, the altar and the statues have to be washed down, the relics removed, the vestments burned, the misericords buried, the tapestries aired. The stone has to be deodorised with a strong milky solution of chalk-lime that’d suck the skin off your hands. If the mason has snaked his patron by using acidic quartz or feldspar as a lampoon for pricey marble, then the chalk-lime wash releases an effervescent humour and discolours the stonework. Eventually this eats away at the masonry, rendering it burnt. If the sculpture is an effigy of a saint, or worse, a king, then the offending mason had better have a great escape plan to avoid getting sliced up and fucked in the river. And that was exactly the threat when King John Lackland visited Limerick in 1210, unreal chaos.
The bishop was so upset at the aftermath of the stench he scarpered on an ass and was seen bawling in a nearby woods, kissing an old black ankle-bone said to be previously owned by John the Baptist, but Fonsy Slattery with the dogs says it belonged to a prostitute who served the Dalcassians of the Shannon Mouth. Saying this out loud also meant getting sliced up and fucked in the river. The archers were on call to oversee the protection of the airing tapestries from the few Norse lads left on the other side of the island, each volunteering their bodies to shield the woven fabric from the rain. Even a slight wetting could shrink a tapestry to the size of a small man’s hat. The ordinary people of Limerick were thrilled to see the increased demand in white rocks of lime, with every boy in the city legging it to the quarry to dig them up, grind them down and sell it to the merchants by the punnetful.
Two men, pair of tight-arses, had caused this uproar, one a stonemason and one a king. John Lackland, King of Piss, Lord of Ireland, was a baby burly cunt, with a head of hair like Tina Turner and the eyes of a gannet, disliked by the Gaelic chieftains because he once said he’d like to wipe his hole on their long beards. The common people yurted in disapproval of him for divorcing his wife on the sly, in favour of a continental young wan. The nobles found him to be an unpredictable and unmerciful gowl with a fondness for flap. He gambled like a Spaniard in gammy backgammon caskets that popped up at four in the morning after the soldiers had feeds of bent titmilk, dripping gold from his paws like drunken piss, spilling it all over the game-table. Whether he won or lost didn’t matter, because he’d pure throw filthy eyes at bowsies who naysayed. Any prick fuck-acted and they’d have a blade wiped across their wrists and be lobbed in yonder Shannon with the eels. John hid coins in his jocks so no one would put them in their pockets. There was a stink of sour wine off him most of the day. He talked with an apologetic mumble, like a drunk father sitting on the end of an eight-year-old’s bed telling them how sorry he was for missing their birthday party.
John was taller than God. He was the one who wore the manky tunic to the unveiling of his own statue in the chapel, a cheap bastard who bought bad leather. It was about twenty minutes into the service before the crowds eventually had enough of the acrid bang and dispersed, leaving the whole gaff empty except for John, who was raging and looking for someone to blame. A knave scraped the tunic off the king’s back and it was paraded outside to be burnt, with all the cunty Paddy nobles looking on and throwing sly eyes at each other, mumbling a quiet tune of ridicule at the piss king who’d embarrassed his crown again. John hadn’t been to Limerick since 1185, a good few years ago. That’s why he sent the money ahead for the nobles to have a statue made of him. He was over for a short visit to get a squint at his massive newly built castle and to scoop loads of free drink and a get few rides in. Mostly he was in Limerick to escape the anxiety of the scenario he’d created for himself over in England. You see, in fairness to John, his dead brother Richard the Lionheart was considered a legend to end all legs. Him and a gang of lunatics rode horses bareback over to boiling Jerusalem and murdered Muslim boys with thick lumps of lead on the ends of chains. They shoved the Muslims’ heads on poles and did rave dances on the holy sand in the name of bould Christy nailed to the beams. There were songs and poems written about Richie Big. There were women who said he’d visited them in their dreams and they’d gotten pregnant off his thoughts. John was a crotch full of wet farts by comparison, and could never live up to a dead legend. Being labelled a rat from the start burnt his chest, so he’d get mouldy off a skinful of angels’ water and respond to the critics by becoming worse than what they thought of him in the first place, pure passive-aggressive self-fulfilling prophecy stuff.
Over in England, this led to a queer baronial situation where the country’s nobles were up in arms and ready to take John down. However, they were doing it in a novel fashion that hadn’t been seen before. The way it’d been done for years was that if a king was acting the prick, then a gang of nobles would pal together to tear his head off and fuck a puppet-king in his place. But this time they were doing it very differently. This time, they were drawing up a piece of paper with a set of rules and regulations on it, Magna Carta they were calling it, regulations that even a king had to obey, and if he broke them, then he was agreeing to get his head torn off. John was fond of issuing harsh taxes and pocketing the proceeds, and he loved sending rich lads to jail just so he could suck their wives. If he bowed and signed this Magna Carta, then there’d be no more of that carry-on. He felt intense shame about this development. His anxiety caused him to experience this as a form of castration. So he came over to Limerick, away from his barons, for one last mad session of uncontested power. He had his enemies here too, but they were more eccentric than brutal. The Clan Sweeney, for instance, once raided his wagons, kidnapped a tamed monkey gifted from the Alhambra palace in Granada and shaved off the poor animal’s nipples with slate, in response to the long-beard comment.
The night after his ignominious visit to the chapel, the king slushed around on his own in the swampy shit mud, clad in green copper boots, with a waster’s pace on him. His brow took on a Jack Nicholson quality as he fecked his tiny black eyes around the courtyard of the castle keep. Most of the tall walls were built with the local limestone. Too young for lichen growth, they had a pious paleness about them that was set off nicely by the odd fire lit here and there. He let out a snappy fart, which rose up to meet his face and smelled like burning chocolate bog-turf. In the centre of the courtyard, the new statue of John temporarily rested agin an ash barrel, where it was being deodorised of its leather bang. It was a daycent enough effort at a likeness of the king, considering the mason had only ever heard him described. Mad hair and small eyes, but a better set of shoulders and nicer arse than the real king. John had strong drink taken at this stage and it was the arse that drew him over for a more discerning gape at his replica. He involuntarily massaged his langer while looking at the lithic representation of his butt, which had clearly been modelled on the arse of a woman. John was impressed by this. His thoughts marvelled at the physical impossibility of trying to fuck his own hole, if his hole was as nice as the hole on the statue. The drink and thoughts of riding brought a small wave of calm across the king’s chest, and he felt an optimism he hadn’t thought possible after such an embarrassing day. Reaching forward with fat fingers and eyes closed, he traced a soft palm across the stone arse in front of him. He slowly moved the tonne of his body to the rear of the statue, and landed crotch first on the hard, peachy butt, with his belly resting on the shelf of the tail-bone. His entitled fists accosted the front of the bust, and for a moment he regretted that the mason had not represented his likeness with a set of fat milky tits too. He began heavily kissing the statue’s neck from behind, breathing like a sick Labrador with his tongue out. His fingers found their way to the facial features and he grasped passionately. To his utter disgust, the stone began to crumble in his digits. He could hear them plopping in the soppy muck below. John was no eejit, and knew well that this meant the earlier alkaloid chalk-lime wash had reacted with and eroded the acidic stone. This was evidently a cheap marble lampoon. A bastard stone had been used, a lower mineral of inferior moral density. Some prick had been robbing him deaf. John lost his sponty and he screamed into the ether. His regal wail slapped the attention of a nearby sentry who was resting in a doorway. He approached his king with enquiry.
John: What unmerciful cuckold etched me from a lump of gurrier’s quartz? This is an effrontery. Whose tools orchestrated this excommunicable sin? What hand has committed burglary on my likeness?
Sentry: One of the de Lacys of Cratloe, sir. The third brother is a mason. He received the royal commission. This is his statue.
John: A de Lacy, the dirty bowsie. Have him brought to me immediately. I’ll shit on his children.
John had been locked in a feud with Anglo-Irish leader Hugh de Lacy for as long as John had been granted Irish land. He smelled a yurt of deliberate sabotage against him.
Hugh’s nephew, Spanner de Lacy, grew up in the hills of the Cratloe Woods, a place a day’s walk north of Limerick city with its piney trees exposing their sticky turpentine trunks and needles that pinch your feet when you walk. Spanner was a lanky boy with mouse’s back hair, long arms and legs sprawling. He was 24 with a dead wife and two children: two girls, Jaffa and Sully. A third had been born with skin like a trout and only lived a week. His wife died of a broken heart soon after, the way a mother sparrow dies when you touch her eggs, so Spanner sold his children as sex workers to the Dalcassians of the Shannon Mouth. Spanner trained with the St Leger family of Cork as an apprentice stonemason from the age of twelve. He was shit at being a stonemason, and was mostly given the task of cutting square blocks, rather than any finer work that required detail and skill. Spanner’s father, a brother of Hugh de Lacy, had been banished from the clan for living his life as a woman. Gearóid de Lacy was transgender, and her suffering was such that she mutilated her own genitals in the mangle of a water-well to free himself of her male pronoun. Spanner’s biological mother, Aisling, was old Gaelic and belonged to a druidic people from Sligo, known for curses and necromancy. She left when her husband Gearóid began to transition gender. The Gearóid and Spanner sect of the de Lacys were officially forbidden from using the de Lacy name, by order of the patriarch. They technically had no family name, and were thus prohibited from owning property or engaging in any contract under Irish law. But Spanner said, ‘fuck that’, and used his de Lacy surname to get a foothold in the Limerick guild of stonemasonry, which is how he came to carve John’s statue.
Spanner was langers at the back of a whorehouse in Thomondgate when he got dragged away by soldiers from the castle, who pulled him by his hair all the way across the bridge. They tugged him up the windy stone stairs, past the murder-hole, and lobbed him in the cell. He’d been eating his money earned from the statue commission, but the rest was fecked by the soldiers. John had the horn for Spanner’s death, because of the statue but also to send a message to Hugh de Lacy. Spanner was battered from all angles. King John was waiting for him in the dark like a father whose sixteen-year-old daughter had come home late with a smell of vodka naggins off her.
John: Are you the mason who made the statue from the bad quartz?
Spanner: I am, sir.
John: And you thought you’d get away with it?
Spanner: I did, sir, quartz is a fine stone once you get used to it. But prone to wear if it comes in contact with hard water, I warned ye about that.
John: You were paid for marble.
Spanner: I was, sir, but the marble comes all the way from Carrera over in Italy. It would never make it past the hordes of Moorish highwaymen that line the route. Quartz was my only choice. You’d be looking at empty space if I’d have gone with the marble.
John: But you still charged for the price of marble? You cowboy!
Spanner: I did, sir, I’m pure sorry about that. I’d pay you back only the soldiers robbed my dollars.
John: And the fine fat arse on the effigy?
Spanner: The arse is from a different sculpture, sir, one I’d made years ago. ’Tis granite. I stuck your head on the statue in quartz.
John: Robbing my fucking money at every step of the process. Do you know why you’re still alive?
Spanner: I do not, sir.
John: I want to find the model who posed for my arse. I need that arse on my face within the next few hours. Get her to me and we’ll forget about the rest, I’ll let you walk. Who is she?
A flash of white terror imposed itself across Spanner’s brow as his introspections navigated the anxious quagmire the king had just presented him. Before his father Gearóid had attempted to physically remove his male sexual apparatus, she had lived as a woman for the majority of Spanner’s childhood. During this period, she consistently gorged on donkey’s quantities of alfalfa and flaxseed, as both of these crops contain vigorous accumulations of oestrogen. This regular dosage acted as a crude hormone replacement therapy. It had been moderately effective, with varying desired outcomes. It reduced the size of Gearóid’s voice box and gave her puffy nipples, but mostly inspired the germination of a gorgeous big round arse. Gearóid had modelled for the arse on Spanner’s statue when her son was just a young apprentice. The arse statue remained in storage for some years, sans cranium, where it was often used for the hanging of jackets or gowns. This year, Spanner finally put it to use by altering the granite body slightly, then sticking King John’s head on top, to save money.
Now he sat in his cell as a single ailing paraffin lamp lit the side of John’s rasher-like face. The king had a noticeable erection. He was crouched in a squat, boots flat, hands crippled under his bearded chin in a gammy clasp, while his rear bobbed like a whippet with an itchy hole on a yard of burlap. He was pensively waiting to attain carnal knowledge of the statue’s model. Spanner weighed up his options. His father was now an old woman, so he could present her to the king and hope for the best. But King John, with his penchant for face-sitting, would no doubt discover the scars of Gearóid’s mutilated testicles and have father and son killed. The other option was to come clean, let the king know that the arse belonged to his father and hope that His Highness was sexually liberated enough to lie with a transgender person. Spanner had no insight into John’s opinions on gender politics and had no reason to believe John to be sexually conservative – after all, John was openly admitting his libidinal entrancement with a hermaphroditic statue of himself. However, despite any potential sexual liberalism possessed by John, it was certainly not retained by society at large, who posited gender in strict binary terms. Trans people, like Spanner’s father, were outcasts, viewed as inhuman demons, stripped of title and rights. Were John and Gearóid to engage in consensual coitus, it was certain that both Spanner and his father would be personally murdered by John afterwards, to safeguard the secret. To say that King John having sex with Hugh de Lacy’s transgender brother would be a scandal was an understatement.
Spanner felt the sour curtain of dread that drags across a person’s body when they realise they are definitely going to die. It starts as a thumpy leaden dinge in the chest that ascends to the forehead, where it is expressed as a helium dizziness. He fell back. The cell was filled with a freezing north wind and he saw his breath catch some candlelight. His thoughts lay with his mother Aisling, who he had not seen since he was five. His memories stirred back to that calm time, when he felt a real happiness. Sweet waves of warm August sun broken by the thresh of long flax stems darted like tiny white moths across his mother’s face and illuminated her blonde hair, making it translucent. Butter-yellow flax flowers, pregnant with seed, hung their oily promises on the odour of the summer breeze. Aisling the pagan was whispering stories of the Sligo faeries, of the changelings by Knocknarea cairns and the Aos Sí Púcaí who drink graves. She was weaving flax fibre in intricate little bows and staining each with opaque earthy powders, teaching her young child Spanner of the casting of spells and how to speak with the world of spirits so that he may grow to become a conjurer or mage. Even at a young age, Spanner called bullshit on this, and knew his mother was just a mad Sligo hippie. He found her magick and stories entertaining, but that was where it ended. But despite this cynicism, he still carried with him the small goatskin pouch of charms she gave him when he was born, more for love and sentiment than for any supernatural radiation it might contain. The memories of his mother’s nonsense inspired a hot pang of inspiration that animated Spanner’s face, and a potential solution began to hatch. He would ask to be untied, so that he could perform a dazzling pagan magic trick for John. While the king was mesmerised by it, he would bash the king’s skull in with a chain and escape, rob him of his gold and jewels while he’s at it, win–win ... Spanner began to speak to the king.
Spanner: What if I could get you an eternal harem of women with arses like the one on the statue? I mean, I could have a lash at getting you the model I used, not a bother. But to be honest, the rest of her is in need of renovation, and the last I heard she had contracted TB from badgers, sir. What if I could get you arses like that from all over the world? Several plump bints with greased-up olive skin, whose only purpose in life is your pleasure, all at the same time? How about that?
John: You’re codding me, cunt. Where would you find that in Limerick tonight?
Spanner: I come from a druidic people of the northwest. I can act in vicarage of the gods, who’d be honoured to bestow such fuck-victuals on a king. I myself would be honoured to do these deeds in your service.
John: I’ve heard stories of that but is it blasphemy or witchcraft?
Spanner: It’s divine knowledge, Your Highness. The Vatican keeps this type of ritual under lock and key, so they can have it to themselves. But I can place you oxters-deep in foreign flap if you’ll let me do it for you ...
John the greedy prick began to imagine himself in an exotic orgy with multiple wet, tanned butts, each detached from their personage and humanity in an ebbing sea of hoop infinity. The type he’d read about on the walls of Pompeii when he studied Latin as a lad. The type his dead brother Richard probably had over in Jerusalem. He agreed to untie Spanner, who then lit candles in the cell, so that he could better see the words and symbols he was etching on the limestone walls with a lump of bright red burnt sienna that he produced from his mother’s goatskin purse. As Spanner began to carefully remove each little charm from the pouch, his scepticism about the ritual subsided and was replaced with a homely glow of love for his mother. These were her things, her memory fragments loitering in present reality. He could hear her voice in the shadow of his mind as he laid each separate item in a circle on the floor: ‘Crow’s bone suppository from the trees of Diarmait Mac Murchada’s orchard, Saint Brendan’s ambergris, Frankish hair gel, pigeon piss pig fist, gullet of Costner’s cockerel, darling bastard parcel, fluffy guff.’ This ritual gave Spanner a look of intense concentration, which did not escape the attention of John, who was surveying him in full entrancement.
Spanner instructed John to kneel, in anticipation of the sideways ceremony. John complied. Spanner took notice of his own hold on the cold brown iron chain that dangled from his wrist to his shin, tactile in his hand, smelling like blood when blood smells like metal. He became aware of the soft spot on the top of the king’s head that presented itself like a boiled egg before him. The ritual space in front of the king was an accoutrement of mad-looking trinkets and hurried pagan scrawls, of markings, numbers, letters, suns, moons, angels and ghouls, with fat wax candles fecked around the floor for full effect. All frivolous fart logic devoid of import. If you were a bird watching from a ledge, you’d have seen Spanner making John look like a pure eejit. Spanner dropped a palm-sized brass thimble in the centre of the letters and numbers and beckoned John to position his hand on this. Spanner’s intention was to pretend to conjure a sexual elemental who could transcend John to a far-fetched arse harem. He would do this by placing his hand on John’s, then subtly forcing the thimble towards the desired letters and numbers to create the illusion of divine communication. Fairly standard trickery of the gullible.
John: If this doesn’t work, I’ll have your head left on a pike at the gates of Limerick.
Spanner: It will, sir, just focus on the breathing, keep your eyes straight ahead at the symbols.
Spanner was positioned behind John, both men on their knees.
Spanner: Oh large tawny púca, I come here before you to present the Great John, King of Ireland and England, Prince of Angevin, son of Aquitaine, father of Anjou, His Greatest Highness in this mortal dimension. Can you hear his call?
Spanner gently pushed John’s hand so that the thimble spelled out ‘yes’.
‘Fucking hell,’ said John. ‘Ask him who he is.’
The board spelled out, ‘Declan Tent, managing director of the world’s attic.’
Spanner: Oh marvellous and glamorous Declan, what gifts have you for the king?
Thimble: Loads of girls’ arses, man, loads.
John: How many?
Thimble: A fortnight worth of hole, arse-lottery stuff.
Spanner: Oh Declan, what must great King John do to achieve communion with your arse farm?
Thimble: Close his eyes and stick his fingers in his ears for a small while.
John expeditiously responded to the instruction of Declan Tent with a servile obedience never before seen in a king. Spanner stood at his shoulder, grasping the heavy chain with both hands like a hatchet. He raised it behind his neck and gritted his teeth, his muscles tensed with adrenaline, his eyes were a fox watching a lame hare. His concentration was fixed on the cracky part of John’s head, while the potential force built up in his bones. As he prepared to splatter the king’s head open, John’s fingers left his ears and began to move wildly on the thimble, which appeared to be behaving autonomously. Spanner recoiled in shock and did not strike him. The thimble spelled out ‘yuge’. This was not Spanner’s doing.
In a separate shimmer of reality’s spectrum, a fat-fingered man with stained skin sat at a mahogany desk. The sun had set, the offices vacant except for a loyal few confidants. His lumpy suit whimpered in its leather swivel-chair. It was the colour of clouds that ruin barbecues. His terror-sweat rose like hot swamps and greeted the palates of others as fresh cat’s-piss pourri. The desk had many beautiful telephones, but the man was wiping an upside-down shot glass off an ouija board, surrounded by tea-light candles lit in desperate pentagrams. His desk was flocked with papers.
In Spanner’s wet cell, the thimble spelled out, ‘Anybody there? Please help. I need to speak to King John. Really sad.’
John flooded with adrenaline and fisted at Spanner’s shins like a scolded cat. Spanner, speechless, transfixed, placed John’s hand on the thimble and directed his attention back to the ritual, before retracting his own hand from John’s.
John: I am King John of Ireland and England. Is this Declan Tent?
Thimble: This is not Declan. I’m reading about you. You are a loser. Very low-energy king. Brother Richard Lionheart is best king, TBH. Sad.
John: Reading where? Who is this? Are you with my brother?
Thimble: On the internet. Reading about constitution. History. Wikipedia. Magna Carta. Real loser.
John: Who is this, damn you? What know you of Magna Carta? Is this the French? Are you a devil?
Thimble: You are responsible for this constitution stuff. Terrible idea. Needs new plan. Very difficult to progress. Needs better words.
Spanner: What is Wikipedia?
Thimble: It is a book of all known truth that anybody can change at any time.
Spanner was addled. His mother’s sacrament appeared to actually work. John was in contact with a very aggressive demon or jinn who was speaking in words they did not understand. Spanner tugged John away from the space. John could not understand how the thimble knew about the Magna Carta, which had not been signed or even spoken about outside of a confidential circle. Neither could fathom the dark force they had touched. They returned to the thimble to ask more questions. A shaking John gulped his enquiries towards the scrawls and trinkets.
John: Who are you? Where are you?
Thimble: I’m just like you but far away. I want to talk about Magna Carta.
Spanner: What time is it where you are? And what do you want from King John?
Thimble: 1.15 a.m., Nov 2019. I want to know how to beat a constitution. King John is a loser, his brother Richard is much better king. King John is a low-energy leader. Sad.
John erupted in snarling anger and kicked the candles and charms. He grabbed Spanner by the cuff of his gullet and gartered the chains around his neck. With bulging eyes and spit jumping from his teeth, he screamed, ‘Who is this futuristic prick? Where are my brown arses for riding? You fucking did this, you Cratloe cunt. I wanted to get my hole and instead I’ve to listen to this black-magic bastard tell me about how brilliant my brother is, from 2019 no less. They’re still talking about Richard in 2019. I’m not listening to this shite, you pagan gowl. You’ve signed your own death certificate.’
Spanner’s eyes darted around the room, searching for a solution: ‘I think I might be able to sort this but if you kill me you’ll never know what it is. I’ve a solution much better than arses.’ John let go, and Spanner continued: ‘Hear me out, sir. This lad we’re talking to seems fairly powerful. Maybe we can give him something he needs and he can give you something you need. If I did that, would you spare me?’
Fat John ran his tongue around his mouth as if searching for trapped meat in his gums. ‘What can this future eejit give me?’ said John.
Spanner knew that the only thing bigger than a king’s horn is his ego, so he looked at John and said, ‘This lad is a king from the future. I bet he can make you a legend and your brother Richard a gobshite.’
A lofty smile landed on John’s face that looked like it had been shot at him from a cannon. He eagerly returned to the ritual.
Spanner: You mentioned a week-a-pee-day-ah earlier. Tell me this, can you scribe John as a legend in this tome up above in 2019?
Thimble: Yes, I can get all my great men on it, make sure never changes back. I want King John to help me beat this constitution. Need to beat Islam like his brother.
John: You need monarchy, absolute monarchy. That is how you beat Magna Carta. You must prove that you and you alone have a blood-right to the throne. The right to a throne comes from God, no man can challenge it.
Thimble: Where can I buy this monarchy? You give me monarchy or else I will edit your Wikipedia to say that you are even more of a loser.
Spanner: I have a plan, lads. Describe to me exactly what you look like, in great detail. Spell it out on the thimble.
The man from the future began to tell Spanner about his wonderful golden hair and pouty lips, his beady eyes and Saxon chin.
‘Fetch me my tools please, Your Highness,’ said Spanner. King John produced the leather sack of chisels and a hammer that had been confiscated earlier.
In the corner of the cell, Spanner noticed a heavy block of limestone being used to secure a chain belonging to the door. He began to chip at it with a chisel, precise and careful, carving out the details of the future man’s head. Before long, he had masoned a full limestone bust that fit the dimensions of the thimble’s description. That night King John and Spanner replaced the head on John’s fat-arse statue with the new head of the future man. Under cover of darkness, they took this by donkey and cart to Thomondgate, beyond the castle. They dug deep and buried the statue where it wouldn’t be found for many years to come. They parted company, each agreeing not to speak of the events of the night. King John feared that Spanner could contact the man from the future who controlled history with his Wikipedia, and this ensured Spanner’s safety. Shortly after, the barons enacted Magna Carta on King John, stripping back his power, and the power of all leaders, from that moment forward. The next year, John died of dysentery. Spanner died by an honour killing, contracted by the de Lacy clan, and dumped in a north Clare bog at the age of 44. Their buried statue lay underground for centuries, as battles raged overhead, as Limerick was besieged, as famine ravaged the land, as Black and Tans trampled above, as Limerick became a free soviet.
In December 2019, the statue was excavated from Thomondgate by a team of US archaeologists by order of president Donald Trump. Its uncanny resemblance to Mr Trump was used as proof that he had a longstanding blood lineage to the kingdoms of Ireland, England and parts of France. The woman’s arse was shaved off by the CIA with an angle-grinder. The scheduled 2020 US election was cancelled as the United States army invaded Ireland through Shannon airport. President Trump was declared absolute monarch of the ancient Kingdom of Ireland, England and France. America was absorbed into this territory. Richard the Lionheart’s Wikipedia page was edited to read Richard the Loserheart.
