Читать онлайн «Meatspace»
Автор Nikesh Shukla
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This ebook first published in Great Britain by HarperCollins
Copyright © Nikesh Shukla 2014
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FIRST EDITION
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This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007565078
Ebook Edition © June 2014 ISBN: 9780007565085
Version: 2015-06-02
Why I Sent a Lamb Chop Into Space
Whenever my best mate and I have stood in line at Tayyab’s in East London, our nostrils tingling with burnt mustard seeds, we’ve ogled the wall of fame – from Daniel Craig to Talvin Singh – and wondered, how in the name of all things sacred do we get on here? I mean, a novelist and an artist, we may not be in the same league as James Bond or the guy who won the Mercury Music Prize in the 90s when being Asian was last cool – we knew whatever we did had to be a cut above.
So it was lucky that I had a book called
Meatspace is what people who live their lives online call real life. Meatspace.
There’s something so strange, odious and fleshy about the word. It shows that we’re just a collection of wobbly brains living in meat pods. Nick (Hearne – he’s an artist) and I thought it would be funny to take the word literally. And send some meat into space.We were sat waiting for roast dinners at Hackney City Farm, enjoying the faint, malt-y mist of pig shit and chicken feed seeping through the windows when we had the idea. What could be more ridiculous than sending some actual meat into actual space? And how easy would it be?
Pretty easy, it turns out – all we needed was a weather balloon, some helium and permission from the Civil Aviation Authority and we were good to go. We bought a GoPro camera, made a makeshift pod out of its packaging and forked the sizzling lamb chop.
We took the lamb chop 88. 8 miles from Tayyab’s in East London and out to the Cotswolds, filled the air balloon with helium and let go. The original idea – sending some meat into space – was just the tip of the iceberg, though. What followed was a lesson in endurance.
