The Belgravia Commission: Chapter Two, Wodehouse and the AI Scanner Button

Uncle Rod with one of his pigeons in 1986

RIP Uncle Rod. May you soar with your pigeons.

A story in two parts, in which Alison Aye continues to write in the style of Wodehouse and talk about herself in the third person; and will be proceeding, through no fault of her own, with this wankerish behaviour for a predicted couple of months (or until the Belgravia Commission is completed).

Part 1: Mayfair, four days ago…

Bertie was lounging on the sofa, feeling a bit like a squashed tomato after a rather lively night at the Drones, when the whole business blew up.

"Sir?" Jeeves appeared from thin air, carrying the tea, with as little uproar as a jellyfish (that’s a direct quote from Wodehouse. And I’m not sorry. I’m imagining his joy, as he coined it).

"Dash it, Jeeves," Wooster said, propping himself up on an elbow. His head was buzzing, and the light coming through the window wasn't doing him any favours. "I thought I distinctly instructed you to untangle me from that woman’s electronic mailing list!"

"I did attempt to sever the connection, sir”, Jeeves replied, his face a mask of solemn regret. “But I am from earlier times and I don’t pissing-well know how to do it."

"Well, the damage is done. She writes to inform us that, just yesterday, her Uncle Rod has ascended to the heavens, kicked the bucket, conked out (Bertie’s words, not mine). Her father's youngest brother, apparently. There are now only two of the brotherhood left standing. Was the deceased an Eton man, Jeeves?"

"No, sir. He hailed from... the other place. Furthermore, I understand he was a pigeon man, sir."

"A fellow who resembles a pigeon?"

"A pigeon fancier, sir. He engaged in the competitive racing of the birds and was, by all accounts, a preeminent figure in his chosen field. The zenith of his career occurred in the year nineteen-hundred and eighty-one, an occasion marked by Aye purchasing him a cigar from the local purveyor."

"In eighty-one? She must have been a mere slip of a thing, Jeeves."

"Precisely fourteen summers. She procured a single cigar, and it appears the shopkeeper raised no objection whatsoever to a young schoolgirl in uniform engaging in the tobacco trade. Mind you, sir, from what I gather, Uncle Rod had been puffing away since infancy."

"Capital! The good old days, what? Do read the rest to me, Jeeves, my eyes are bleary."

"During her first year at Goldsmiths’, sir, when it still had the apostrophe, she captured numerous photographs, depicting her father and uncles alongside their pigeon crees. Regrettably, upon her return to the hoity-toity college, she lacked the necessary fortitude to show them to the dons. Not, you understand, that she harboured any sensation of shame regarding her ancestral background, but she found herself so thoroughly intimidated by the arty London set that she failed to trumpet her heritage."

"Pigeon cree, Jeeves? What in the name of everything holy is a cree?”

"It is the regional colloquialism for a pigeon loft, sir. A term from which Aye refuses to retreat, lest it be entirely erased from the historical lexicon. It is the selfsame principle that dictates her refusal to address 'The Big Meeting' by its officially sanctioned title of the ‘Durham Miners' Gala’, sir."

"The Big Meeting? Has a solid, no-nonsense ring to it, Jeeves."

"Indeed, sir. To the industrious gentlemen who actually extracted the coal, it was invariably known as ‘The Big Meeting’, but the ‘authorities’ gave it another title, perhaps to eliminate any ambiguity regarding the exact nature of the gathering to an outsider’s ear."

"Which is, Jeeves?"

"An annual assembly, sir, wherein all the pitmen from every mine in the county would march majestically in a celebratory procession to the Cathedral, with some overthrow-the-capitalists speeches thrown in along the way. They were accompanied by their heraldic banners, brass ensembles, and families. Although, nowadays they hire an omnibus, rather than walk the route. The lady considers it a matter of paramount importance to employ the vocabulary of the miners. She credits even the uninitiated observer with sufficient intelligence to grasp the meaning, without administrative interference."

"Very proper, Jeeves. Good for her. Stand by your guns and all that rot”.

He shimmered out of the room, leaving Bertie to contemplate the extraordinary habits of the northern working man over his morning beverage.

Uncle Rod, 1986

Uncle Rod’s cree, 2022.

Uncle Rod’s cree, 2024.

Part 2: Mayfair, present day…

“A forlorn telegram from that woman, sir.”

“Right-ho, Jeeves. Deep breath and get on with it.”

“She has discovered the AI scanner button, sir, and is entirely grief-stricken to learn that twenty-one percent of our above exchange is deemed to have been generated by a machine. EVEN THOUGH SHE KNOWS THAT ONE HUNDRED PERCENT OF IT WAS WRITTEN BY HER OWN FAIR HAND. She has written that part in capital letters, sir, which I believe means she is shouting. It appears the artificial-human-detector searches specifically for words like ‘selfsame’ and ‘lest’ and ‘wherein’ and ‘zenith’ and ‘fellow’ and ‘furthermore’ and ‘whilst’ and ‘indeed’ and ‘nineteen-hundred and eighty-one’ and ‘ascended to the heavens’ and ‘local purveyor’ and ‘historical lexicon’; general phrasing and outrageous similes, she notes, that ‘real people’ do not use. She has been trying to rewrite it for days, completely obliterating our language, rendering the story crap, sir”.

“WTAF, Jeeves! Are you telling me we are not real people? And what’s more, she has used those words twice now, so she is making matters worse for herself with that AI-detector contraption.”

“Precisely, sir. And furthermore, it would appear that Mr. Wodehouse is not the comical genius we have always believed him to be. Aye ran several pages of his text through the scanner, as an experiment, whilst she still had hair, and it turns out the gentleman didn’t write a single word of us himself. We are one hundred percent machine-written, sir.”

“Wodehouse! The sly old bastard! My illusions are shattered, Jeeves. Fetch me a snifter, I’m going to lie down.”

The Big Meeting, 1987.

The Big Meeting, 1987.

Shitty Stitches, Inspired By A Shit Job

I’ve been wanting to document this work for months because it’s important to me, even if the actual stitching is abysmal.

It was inspired by a shit job in a top London art gallery. I worked there on a zero-hours contract for fifteen-ish years.

The staff hierarchy was bloody horrible. They didn’t even try to hide the ‘them-and-us’ mentality. And by that I mean that most of the ‘higher-ups’ considered themselves too god-like to acknowledge the ‘lower-downs’. And by ‘lower-downs’ I mean uniformed staff. And by uniformed staff I mean me. Those *curators were extremely important people. Too important to notice a single other human in a room. Too important to even look at, let alone thank, another human in the room who picks up their dropped pencil and places it back in their hand.

Anyway, at some point a new Superior decided to change the uniform shirt from red to blue. I forget why, but it was a really good reason that totally justified the huge expense and wastefulness. I took the discarded shirts home, where they have fulfilled my red fabric needs for years.

Which brings me to the stitching. It’s the banner I cobbled together for an exhibition I curated at Tension Gallery in July. I had such great plans, but in the end I ran out of time, as per. It took about half an hour to make. You can tell. I love it, though. The quality of the stitching may not be up to scratch, but the artistic intention, which was to include my colleagues’ shirts, remains.

A = Lanny, I = Me, R = Neruma, I = Carl, N = Bev and G = Rose. Each a diamond. I didn’t select them, they just happened to be at the top of the pile.

The ribbon, on which the banner was suspended by safety pins (for speed, obvs) was a gift from Julian and Nigel of the Weavers’ Factory.

*It’s not just the curators I’m talking about, but everyone at the top of the gallery chain, born into financially secure families with the right accents, mostly. This is an ‘UP YOURS’ to them. Also, it turns out that art curation is not rocket science. The people who do it aren’t special, just lucky. I don’t begrudge them (well, maybe a bit), I wish they’d be honest about the nepotism, rather than having ‘I-have-this-job-because-I-worked-harder-than-you-and-I-am-more-intelligent’ tattooed across their foreheads. I'm done doffing my cap to them.

Smash Thatcher

Christopher Madden is a County Durham born artist who lives in London. We were born in the same hospital. I was unaware of his existence until a few weeks ago.

In 1979, Chris drew a cartoon of Thatcher which was then used by the Socialist Workers Party for placards and posters. Other people copied the image for their own personal banners. In 1980, one such person drew the image, wrote ‘SMASH THATCHER’ underneath, and carried it to protest against the closure of Consett Steelworks (image above, full credits below). The Steelworks closed in 1980, with a loss of 3000 jobs. One of many closures, as Thatcher continued her axe-wielding across the North. The protest was photographed and printed in the Northern Echo, which is where I found the image. In 2022, I stitched it to ‘Shifting to the Moon’, a piece about greed and short-sightedness, the ridiculousness of the monarchy, how history keeps repeating itself, and how the posh lads are always in charge.

I grew up in Spennymoor which is 10 miles from Consett, and very similar. Nobody in my hometown liked Thatcher. Understandably. I’d never knowingly met a tory until I moved South.

In 2024, I submitted ‘Shifting To The Moon’ for consideration for the Royal Academy Summer Show. It was accepted. Alice Fisher, from the Observer, wrote an article about it, on account of me unsuccessfully trying to get work into the Summer Show for 30 years.

Chris read the article, recognised his cartoon, and got in touch via Instagram. Turns out he has a history of Summer Show rejections, too.

Credits:

Image 1- Consett Steel Workers’ protests, 1980. Northern Echo. Photographer uncredited.

Image 4 - Me with my work at the RA. Photo by Cassie Candle.

Image 5 - Chris’s original cartoon. A screenshot from his Instagram feed.