Bella Lasagne - Pawn in the Reign of Emperor Sam

Why is Bella Lasagne’s restaurant named Rivoli’s?

And why does Fireman Sam continue to let his young niece and nephew dine in her establishment when she’s constantly setting fire to it?  Rather than take his position in the local community seriously he prefers to wait for the inevitable accident to happen and then just lecture everyone afterwards.  Seems he’s just trying to keep the people of the village of Pontypandy within the iron grasp of Emperor Sam through fear and intimidation, they all know that if a fire occurs and only incompetent Elvis is there to save them then will surely perish.

So why is Bella’s restaurant named Rivoli’s?  I have a theory.

Emperor Sam in his bid for supreme power needed proof of the savage danger of fire, an icon, a victim.  Rivoli was the name of Lasagne’s late husband.  She lost him in a tragic firework accident, he’d bought a magnificent firework that lit the sky in the shape of a loveheart with which he intended  to surprise Lasagne.  He’d bought it from a man with a handlebar moustache and a habit of twirling it whilst muttering gleefully under his breath.  It was his gift to her on their fifth wedding anniversary, a token of his undying love.

He told her to go to the upstairs back window and look to the skies.  Patiently she looked into the night sky as her husband below lit the firework.  She patiently waited a bit longer.  Suddenly the garden below her exploded in ravenous flame, it streaked between the fences like napalm.  In the throws of wildest panic she dialled the emergency services, 999.

Elvis arrived minutes later and bravely fought the nonexistant flames in the cafe itself and dashed upstairs to get Bella out.  As he rushed back downstairs with Bella over his shoulder in the well rehearsed Fireman’s Lift, she screamed at him.

“My-a husband, he’s still-a outside in the fire!”

“Oh, bloody hell mun” panicked Elvis “Where’s Sam when you need him?”

Where indeed was Sam?  Visiting a sick Aunt?  On a well deserved holiday?  It mattered not where he was, rather where he wasn’t.  And he certainly wasn’t in Pontypandy.  He needed to prove he was indispensable.

When Sam arrived back in the village we can’t be sure what happened.  We can however assume that there was a conversation with Bella that went something along these lines:

“Oh Sam, it all happened-a so fast.  And Elvis, he-a… he-a tried, but he just couldn’t save him.”

“I know Bella, I know.”

“Oh Sam, I…”

“Hush now, Sam’s here now lovely.  You now know the dangers of knock off fireworks don’t you?”

“Yes-a.”

“Don’t worry, Sam’s not going to be leaving here again, I’ll make sure that nothing like this happens ever again.”

“”Oh Sam…”

“Shush now, at least one thing’s come out of this, you can start using your maiden name again.  I always did like the sound of it, such a pretty sing-songy name, Bella Lasagne.”

“Yes-a Sam…”

Presumably he then proceeded to take advantage of her in fragile state of mourning.  He probably cackled himself to sleep at night for weeks on end, his perfect scheme bestowing him complete power over the village.  Bastard.

Stereo!

If I hadn’t already had the snip I’d be off somewhere right now making ninjas-in-training, Pavement-kareoking babies like this pair.

Sorry broody indie ladies, what’s done is done.

let’s start with a toughie: time

My relationship with the passage of time goes back to my earliest memories. I was a pure sci-fi absorbing machine as a child, I blame this on my parents, who are unwitting sci-fi nerds the likes of Star Trek, Quantum Leap, Doctor Who, were all crammed down my entertainment hungry neck. Even on Saturday mornings when I had free reign of the remote control, most of the programming I selected had a fantastical element, but then that’s what kids enjoy. They like to see imaginative characters in mind-bending situations, or at least they did when I was one, seems like now they start off wanting to listen to oddly shaped creatures talk gibberish and then eventually progress to cheering people hitting each other with swords. I would spend hours each weekend constructing various time machines, cockamamie contraptions adorned with calculators and watches, attached with sellotape or blue-tac. Upon the ignition of that weeks contraption I could never be sure if I had travelled back in time or not, this being an age before I knew the significance of the hands on a clock.

I assume my love/hate relationship with time started at that point, but I only suggest this as it’s the first time I can remember questioning the constraints of time. As with most things of an emo nature, my gripes with time started during my teenage years, when my rapidly expanding laziness began to conflict with the seemingly quickening passage of time. The stock excuse of “There aren’t enough hours in the day” was merely code for “I can’t be arsed”, but as we all know, regularly used lies have a way of rooting themselves solidly in the field of the mind and becoming fake truths. And so it was that I came to curse the slow progression of the hands of a clock, each tick another second where I did nothing and each tock a following second where I regretted it.

Before the laziness came awe. The concept of a dimension, unlike the physical ones we take for granted, that could not be manipulated fascinating; time travelling paradoxical episodes of Star Trek, a basket of excitement and a can of questioning worms, all of them arguing and trying to be louder than that obnoxious worm on the opposite side of the can. Even today I’d rather watch old episodes of Doctor Who than almost any other television show. Of course, this is rooted in a compost of fantasy, the desire to be a master of time, a controller of destiny (specifically mine), must surely come from deep set regrets and general feelings of inadequacy? Well, probably, it is a power fantasy after all, and inadequacy can’t help but crush on power, gazing at it from the back of the classroom, drawing their names inside a love heart with an arrow through it on inadequacy’s notebook, when it should be paying attention to its coursework.

So I was very surprised when I experienced time which wasn’t linear A to B stuff. It was during my hippy, devil may care days of being a recent university dropout, a housemate and her chauffeur came home from a free party, still whizzing on MD and special K. So when they offered I had no choice to accept, after all, you can’t be sober and enjoy the company of the head fucked for a jealous man that makes. Why I said yes to a phat, 45” single long catch up line is still somewhat of a mystery, but up my nose it went. Sometime after it kicked in (it’s always difficult to figure out when you’re fucked on K, until the point when you become too fucked) I did my spiderman act, electing to clamber up the walls from the basement rather than use the stairs and with heavy set, wonky legs stumbled into the kitchen. It was there that I found the object I had been searching for all my life, a time machine; it’s form, a washing machine. Staring into the reflective barrel I became detached physically from time, I was stood in my room before my drugged up housemate came home, I was in the basement getting drugged up myself, I was having a garbled conversation with another housemate that hadn’t occurred yet. It was a hell of a fucking K-Hole, I couldn’t be sure if I was high or not, all I know is that linear time was a difficult concept to abide by until I woke up the next morning. And that’s where that story ends.

These days I don’t care enough to question time, or to manipulate it with substances and such. I don’t even care enough to study our great physicians, I’d rather wait for the simplified version to filter through to the storyline of a random science fiction program. I’d rather spend my time watching it go past whilst strolling around in my own head, at this very moment I’m perfectly contented with being lazy, so time no longer need be my scapegoat.