Archive for the ‘freddy fotheringay’ Category
the lonely death of duncan the vulcan
The problem of devil children continues to grow in our society. In some quarters it is considered to have reached epidemic proportions. Inevitably this has become a political issue and with an election looming each major political party has a position on the problem. Often such children are in cahoots with deviant adults, of course, and often they have transformational powers and can pass themselves off as small rodents. They pose particularly difficult challenges to carers. Last week I was in Stannington at Placements for a high level meeting to look at resources for such children. We are developing an innovative multi-agency approach under the rubric of SADCAP, our Satanic and Demonic Children Action Programme. We have developed a good evidence-based assessment tool and will monitor all cases at a high level through a group which will be called the SDCG. We are very hopeful that at a later stage this project will win an award and attract government money no matter which party is in power after May.
After the meeting I decided to hang around for a while and read my emails before heading off home. There weren’t many people in. I wandered through the magnolia and pale green corridors past the cubicles that are used as offices. I came to the office Tallulah shares with Betty. Neither were in. I sat down at Tallulah’s desk to use her computer to log in. Her desk was quite orderly but inevitably bore the mark of her personality. There was a calendar of famous squirrels, a small yellow frog pencil sharpener, a plastic fox, some aloe vera hand cream, a magnetic porcupine clad in multicoloured paper clips, a photograph of Nicole Kidman, framed and signed, a couple of Meg and Mog books, that sort of thing. There were also a number of documents of various kinds on her desk. Partly visible beneath an assessment report of some kind was a handwritten letter on deckled ivory foolscap paper. It was written in deep blue ink by a fountain pen. The handwriting was scribbly and urgent, angular, but also rhythmical. It reminded me of a record made by the needle of a seismograph. I lifted the report to one side and leaned forward to read the letter. As I pulled it towards me I saw that there were a couple of other documents beneath the letter; one of them was a cutting from a newspaper. I read the letter first.
Dearest T,
It’s strange, isn’t it, how suddenly a death can follow a birth sometimes. March has been the cruellest month for me, and despite what the poet says I know April will be far kinder. Until a few weeks ago it was as if I was unborn. At best I was dormant, and had been for so long that it seemed to me my natural state, a state not unlike death itself. And then our correspondence began. You came into my life absolutely unannounced, absolutely out of the blue, the way that an angel always does. My long dead limbs and other organs began to warm and to twitch in unusual, almost forgotten ways. It was as if I was being warmed by an invisible fire. My heart was awakening from a deep slumber. The eternal hibernation of my soul appeared to be ending.
As you can imagine I was initially a little confused by this turn of events, but very quickly became utterly cockahoop. Well, any man would, wouldn’t he, if suddenly blessed by the presence of an angel as unique and lovely as you? I found myself singing in my cabin, walking through the snow in the woods laughing and giggling like a foolish school boy. I found myself looking at my reflection in the head of my favourite axe and grinning at the grizzled old face I saw there. I found myself telling my reindeer about your emails and asking them how they would feel if they could pull you and I together on my sled, all the way down the long straight road to the village. I was happy, T, happy. I had forgotten what happiness felt like. Can you imagine how that must have been? I had been a dead man walking, T, I know that now.
And yet this joy began to fade almost as quickly as it came, much as the winter sun does in these high northern latitudes. I know it was my fault; I misunderstood you. I thought you must feel as I do. How daft can a lumberjack be? An angel doesn’t have the same status as a lumberjack, the same organs, the same purpose in life. An angel is a messenger, the bringer of a blessing she doesn’t own, so to speak, a blessing that is just something entrusted to her to bestow upon someone else. An angel doesn’t have a heart to give a way. An angel doesn’t have a heart like a lumberjack’s, a heart that is all too ready to be broken.
As you know, I came to see you as the Angel of the Volcano. I should perhaps have never told you this; I fear it may have been my fatal mistake and the single event which turned you from me. In using this phrase I was in effect calling into question your entire status as an angel. And yet what else could I think? In my younger days vulcanology was my whole life. Indeed it is no exaggeration to say that without it I would have had no life at all in any real sense, and that my entire being depended upon my relationship with volcanoes. How I loved the strange, powerful, virtually infinite interiors, the unpredictability and volatility. How I loved to hear the rumble and roar, the fuming and spitting. How I loved the unquenchable nature. To me beauty and desire were surely irrevocably volcanic.
I knew of course that in my flirtations and closer relationships with volcanoes I could be melted, fried or vaporised at any time. Of course I had to guard against the vanity and folly of heroic love, of becoming addicted to the risk and of seeing only myself in this adventure. While there is no doubt I sometimes did take a little pride in my composure and poise while on the slopes of such formidable entities, I like to think that this was never more than a brief and all too human weakness, and that for the most part what drove me was always my love of the volcano herself. Heroic love seeks admiration and needs to conquer and tame: it was never my wish to stifle or choke any volcano. To me a volcano is never a challenge: to me a volcano is a delight. My aim was never to subordinate, manage or contain; my aim was always intimacy. With intimacy came acceptance, with acceptance redemption, and with redemption, peace. This is something that those who don’t love volcanoes never grasp. The redemptive dimension. The radical reassurance and sense of wholeness that come from such willing intercourse with danger.
As the tone of your emails subtly shifted and cooled I realised that I would never now approach you. I realised we could never meet, never kiss, never touch. I realised then that what I’d feared and hidden from myself for so long was true: I will never again walk towards a volcano and reach my destination. I will never again be close to the fierce beautiful furnace in a volcano’s heart. I remembered now too keenly what brought me to these snowy northern parts, why I chose a remote solitary life among the snow. I realised that the purpose in my life has disappeared and that in pretending I can live without it I am fooling no-one but myself, athough given the isolated and reclusive life I have chosen to live here among these trees there is of course no-one else here I might have fooled!
Anyhow, I’ve gone on a bit. I’ve said what I needed to, I think. I hope I haven’t said too much. I am happy to have felt your warmth, even if it was distant, even if for the most part it was only a fire in my imagination. My life has been the better for that. What has happened to me in speaking with you has been rather like having my coffin lid lifted and having a beautiful hand awaken me for a moment. I felt a strange heat and it warmed me. I was blinded by the fierce light. And just when I began to believe this dream might be real the coffin lid closed over me again. The final nails are now being driven home. I hear them in the darkness. And yet for all that, it is true: I wouldn’t have missed these weeks for the world. I can now die with a living memory of true happiness. Thank you, T, my flame-haired friend, my angel of the volcano.
I must go. Do not think me cowardly or lacking courage. Discretion is the better part of valour, don’t they say? It is braver to know when to leave the ring than to remain there and fail. The reindeer will be hungry and wondering where I am. My axe will be going rusty. There are things I must do before this short day ends.
Thank you and goodbye, my angel.
Yours volcanically,
Duncan
Beneath the letter, written in the same seismic handwriting on blue deckled edged writing paper I saw what I recognised to be a couple of Emily Dickinson’s volcano poems. This was the first:
A still—Volcano—Life— That flickered in the night— When it was dark enough to do Without erasing sight— . A quiet—Earthquake Style— Too subtle to suspect By natures this side Naples— The North cannot detect . The Solemn—Torrid—Symbol— The lips that never lie— Whose hissing Corals part—and shut— And Cities—ooze away— .Beneath that there was a line, followed by the second poem:
The reticent volcano keeps His never slumbering plan— Confided are his projects pink To no precarious man. . If nature will not tell the tale Jehovah told to her Can human nature not survive Without a listener? . Admonished by her buckled lips Let every babbler be The only secret people keep Is Immortality. .I turned over the blue deckled paper to read the press cutting that lay beneath it. On the back of the sheet I found another of Dickinson’s volcano poems, again scribbled in the same hand, although this time in black ink, less evenly and at an angle across the sheet. It looked as if it had been added as an afterthought. Or perhaps it was a note he’d made earlier and he had forgotten was there.
On my volcano grows the grass,– A meditative spot, An area for a bird to choose Would be the general thought. How red the fire reeks below, How insecure the sod– Did I disclose, would populate With awe my solitude. .I picked up the press cutting and lifted it closer. It was dated from earlier in the week and was from a copy of The Journal. It read as follows:
MYSTERY WALKER FOUND DEAD ON CHEVIOT
Late yesterday afternoon a mountain rescue crew brought down the body of an unknown walker found dead on the northern flanks of Cheviot close the The Bizzle. The man, believed to be in his fifties, died of hypothermia.
Although police say there are no suspicious circumstances to his death, members of the mountain rescue team have told The Journal that the man was extraordinarily ill-equipped for the winter weather on the mountain, wearing only jeans and a lightweight orange fleece top. They also say the man appears to have been engaging in some sort of unknown artistic exercise when the weather caught him out.
One member of the team has told The Journal that the circumstances in which the man was found suggest he may have deliberately allowed himself to die. Our understanding is that the man was lying spread-eagled facing the sky, and that prior to his death he had scraped a large square and an overlapping circle in the snow. The Journal understand that both shapes were of very exact, near perfect geometrical proportions. We also understand that the width and height of the square exactly matched that of the man with his outstretched arms. It appears that prior to his death the man had performed a ‘snow angel’ in the snow and that the arc of his arms and legs exactly described the line of the circle.
The leader of the mountain rescue team, “Mighty” Ron Telfer, has said he is convinced that the man was attempting to reproduce Leonardo da Vinci’s famous drawing of the Vitruvian Man. As Mighty Ron points out, this drawing represents an ideal of human proportion – and of symmetry and order within the universe generally – that few would hold to in today’s society, where diversity and difference in people are welcomed and celebrated.
Detective Sergeant “Tinker” Robson of Northumbia Police described the man as “obviously a troubled individual who may have been suffering from Dysmorphic Body Syndrome.” Mighty Ron describes the man’s actions on the mountain as ill-advised and irresponsible and has made a plea to other walkers planning similar activities to think again.
The identity of the man is not yet known. The only personal objects found on his person were an unused postcard of Sicily and a card for Zefferelli’s restaurant in Ambleside. ‘We believe the man may not have been from these parts,’ Sergeant Robson said.
Police are appealing for anyone who thinks they may be able to identify him to come forward.
I put the documents back as I’d found them. For a moment or two I gazed into Nicole Kidman’s unblinking eyes. I decided not to check my emails after all. I was a little unsettled by the story of the death on Cheviot. I know that mountain well and I was pretty sure I know the spot where the man would have died.
As I was making my way over to the car park Jack arrived, rumbling across the gravel on his black Ducati. He scrunched to a halt beside me, got off the bike and lifted his black helmet from his head.
‘Yo, dude,’ he said, offering his gauntlet clad palm for me to slap. ‘How in the world are you, man? What brings you to this particular circle of hell?’
‘SADCAP meeting,’ I said, shrugging.
‘Oh, the old devil children business, eh? Was Freddy there?’
‘Yeah, he was there. So were an assortment of priests, a bevy of psychologists and a woman called Cymbeline McMurdo, who represents the local Pagan network.’
‘The usual suspects, then?’ Jack said, sarcastically, pulling up the collar of his leather jacket and flicking his pony tail over it.
I nodded. ‘Hey, I was sitting a Tallulah’s desk intending to look at my emails a few minutes ago and I came across a letter to her from a guy called Duncan. Do you know anything about that? Is he her latest flame?’
‘Oh, Duncan the Vulcan!’ Jack said. ‘Oh, yes, there’s no-one in the place doesn’t know about that poor sod. There’s a lesson for us all there, mate. I mean, man that could have been me, know what I mean?’
‘Yeah, you had the hots for her too once, as I recall.’
Jack laughed. ‘Yeah, man, I stared over that precipice so long my eyebrows caught fire! But, you know what, dude – I got wise? I stepped back from the brink.’
‘That’s not the way I remember it, Jack,’ I said, frowning.
‘Hey, hey, whatever, man,’ Jack said, irritably, adjusting his new Wayfarers on his nose. ‘The point is this – I could have been that poor sucker in the snow. She’s bad news, man, I tell you. She sucks you in and she spits you out, dude.’
I nodded slowly. ‘So you think the guy in the snow was Duncan?’
‘Oh, for sure. Who else would it be? It’s him for sure – Lady T knows it too.’
‘It’s ironic, isn’t it, that a man so obsessed with fire should die frozen in the snow?’
‘Ironic, dude? Ironic? It’s freakin’ tragic.’
When I got back to the car I rummaged around on the back seat and found my copy of Damien Rice’s album “O”. It’s a tremendous album and in my view one of the best albums of the century so far. One of the best songs is entitled Volcano, and that was the reason I wanted to listen to it.
I drove down past Plessey Woods and over Hartford Bridge. It was grey and had been raining a bit. The sky was a mess of torn and ragged black and white clouds. Volcano began to play as I was climbing the bank out of the woods. I turned left at the roundabout at Plessey Checks and down the dual carriageway that follows the course of the old wagonway to Blyth. I didn’t sing along, even though the chorus is almost irresistible and on any other day I would have done. I was strangely preoccupied with Duncan the Vulcan, the man who’d died in the snow on Cheviot. It was almost as if in my mind I knew the exact spot where he had been found.
I wanted to listen to the whole album, so rather than go home I drove down to the car park opposite the South Shore estate and looked out over the sea until it finished. As I drove home along Rotary Way I saw Tristan’s white PermaPlumb van coming in the opposite direction. At first I thought he was alone, but as we approached one another I could see that sitting next to him was a diminutive figure, someone barely tall enough to see over the dashboard. Tristan was laughing and talking in a very animated way to his companion and didn’t notice as I flashed my lights at him. As we passed one another I glanced across into Tristan’s van to see who was with him. It was none other than Mrs Byro. She was dressed to the nines. Gone was the charity shop ragamuffin look. She was now wearing a silky red dress, low cut with thin straps. Her arms were bare. She was wearing lipstick, fake tan and false eyelashes. She had combed her hair. She looked almost sexy! Although it was impossible for me to tell, she might even have been wearing black tights and a pair of black patent Jimmy Choo’s with five inch heels.
I drove home gobsmacked. Tristan and Mrs Byro: who would have thought it?! As I went in De Kooning came down the hall to greet me. Margaret wasn’t in.
‘You won’t believe who Tristan’s having a fling with?’ I said to De Kooning as I picked him up. ‘Mrs Byro! For Christ’s sake, Mrs bloody Byro!!!’
He rubbed his face against mine. I carried him into the kitchen and stood him on the bench while I looked for some prawns for him.
‘It just goes to show you never can tell, doesn’t it? People have hidden depths. You never know who the wild ones are or just who might turn out to be a volcano!’
I gave De Kooning his prawns, turned the oven on and got myself a pizza from the freezer. I put the kettle on. I made myself a cappuccino.
.
that goddam glib and oily art
J. D. Salinger died last week and Tony Blair appeared before the Chilcot Inquiry. Blair’s generation in many ways both embraced and constituted the spirit of Holden Caulfield and constructed their identities around the values he represents. I would guess that Blair has very probably read Salinger, and in fact it isn’t hard even now to imagine Tony turning up for the cameras wearing a red baseball cap backwards, oddly enough. I wouldn’t have been hugely surprised if he’d turned up at the inquiry wearing one. It’s exactly the sort of misguided, cringe-worthy, I fancy myself to death sort of thing he would do. Blair is a malign and manipulative man – nothing at all like Caulfield really. Holden is all too aware of his own motives, all too ready to admit his failings. Holden sees the inescapable phoniness of the world that is closing in on him and he recoils from it, desperate to hold on to what one critic terms his radical innocence. Blair no longer retains one shred of such innocence. He is radically corrupt, annihilated by his own narcissism, a man without authenticity.
I was in Morpeth earlier this week for a meeting about the implications for us of the high numbers of homes that are being invaded by mice because of the cold weather. The Twichell case combined with the current fears about child trafficking in Haiti have alerted us again to the transformation issue. Senior managers were anxious to ensure that we were alive to the danger that abusers might take advantage of the situation and to ensure we had a strategy to address it. Some felt it was a problem that could only effectively be addressed at a higher political level and argued that the right course of action was to lobby the government for a mouse licensing and registration scheme. Others felt that we needed to take a more active stance. John Sultan suggested that it would be helpful if social workers had sniffer cats available to them when undertaking challenging investigations. The Director agreed with him and it was duly decided that two adult sniffer cats would be bought and a select group of social workers trained in their use.
Gilmour was part of the meeting. Afterwards I sat with him in his office for a little while catching up. It struck me that as he matures he’s growing into a warm and affable man. The thing that was most on Gilmour’s mind seemed to be how annoyed he was with John Sultan. Gilmour and John have the same role in different halves of the organisation; they are rival princes in the line of succession.
‘Bloody Sultan!’ he said. ‘That sniffer cats idea was mine, you know! Did he acknowledge it? Not on your bloody life. He never bloody does!’
I nodded. ‘Yes, I thought it was a bit imaginative for John,’ I said. ‘A bit leftfield.’
‘I tell you, he’ll try to take credit for just about anything,’ Gilmour said. ‘He’s shameless. Last week he told someone that multi-systemic therapy was originally his idea. Just before Christmas I heard him say CBT was another idea he came up with.’
‘He’s a remarkable man,’ I said.
‘Oh, you don’t know the half of it, my boy,’ Gilmour went on, shaking his head in slow disbelief. ‘Antibiotics, string theory, nanotechnology, the electric violin . . . ‘
He gazed out over the rough winter grey grassland outside his office window. A few white gulls circled against the flat grey sky.
‘How’s your dad?’ I said.
‘My dad?’ he said, suddenly cheering up. ‘My dad is ticketyboo, thanks. Why do you ask?’
‘Oh, you know, just wondering. Is he still in the prize cattle business?’
‘Oh yes very much so. My boy’s following him into agriculture, you know. Did I tell you that? Oh yes. He’s driving the quad now.’
‘Really?’ I said. ‘It seems like only yesterday you were telling me about his first day at school. Doesn’t time fly?’
‘It certainly does. But how’s your dad, by the way? Is he well? He hasn’t retired yet has he?’
‘Retired, my dad? Nah, he’ll never retire. No, he’s still in the same line of work, dismantling old turbines in submarines and that sort of stuff.’
Gilmour nodded earnestly. ‘And his health?’ he said. ‘Is he is good health?’
‘Generally speaking, yes, he is,’ I said. ‘Yes. Like any man of his age he has occasional ailments, of course. He had a touch of scurvy just before Christmas and gets sciatica whenever it snows, but on the whole he’s not doing too badly. Is your dad well?’
‘Father is in the pink! Apart from his gout and the occasional bout of biliousness he’s the very picture of health. Not at all bad for a man who has already had more than his allotted three score and ten. But as you say, none of us is ague-proof. How old is your old man now, by the way?’
‘I’m not really sure,’ I replied. ‘My dad’s very secretive about his age. He always has been. He told me about twenty years ago that he was almost sixty. But that would make him about eighty nine now and I can hardly believe that. I would say he’s perhaps in his late fifties.’
‘Yes,’ Gilmour said, a twinkle coming to his watery blue eyes, ‘father’s like that too. Old people are funny, aren’t they? It has to be something to do with the way they deal with mortality, don’t you think? A little white lie they tell themselves to keep the nearness of the end out of sight. I’ll wager that you and I will engage in the very same self-deception when we get to their stage of life, eh? There are things we’d all rather not see.’
‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘My dad quite likes the idea of it all being over, I think. I think it’s something else with him. Probably sheer perversity, possibly simply vanity.’
Gilmour smiled and looked at me in what I thought was a rather paternal way. His smile then slowly froze and he returned his gaze to the wide field of winter grass.
‘Fiscal easing,’ he said, a note of horror in his voice. He was almost whispering, as if at a vision.
I nodded, slowly.
‘I’ve just realised Sultan claimed that one too.’ He turned his head and looked at me with almost exhausted astonishment.
‘You should have challenged him,’ I said.
‘I know I should. I know I should. But at the time you just don’t realise that it’s happening. He says these things with such absolute confidence – with such a sense of ownership of everything he says – that it never occurs to you that these ideas aren’t his or that they might not be true.’
‘You’re going to have to examine every word our John utters,’ I said. ‘Once he’s sold you the stolen goods it’ll be too late.’
Gilmour smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I like that analogy. A robber selling on his ill-gotten gains, eh? A perfidious charlatan, a fraudster, if you like. Yes, exactly. Caveat emptor must be our dictum in these matters. Beware Sultan’s dodgy goods.’
As I made my way across the car park a few minutes later I spotted Jack Verdi parking up the Ducati near a pile of old snow.
‘Hey, hey, dude, how’s tricks?’ he said, turning up both his black leather-clad palms for me to slap as a greeting. I complied, in a perfunctory manner.
‘I’m pretty good, Jack,’ I said. ‘As good as anyone can be after a morning with the management group.’
Jack took off his gloves and laid them on his bike seat. He lifted the black helmet from his head. He reminded me of Ivanhoe.
‘The management group,’ he said, as if slowly crushing each syllable he uttered. ‘Pah! A bunch of grey suits and sell-outs, you mean. Phony bastards, everyone of them, dude. Who was there?’
‘The usual bunch,’ I said. ‘Gilmour, John Sultan – that lot.’
‘Ah, Goneril and Regan,’ Jack quipped. ‘Was Freddie there?’
I nodded. ‘Yes, he was.’
‘I knew Freddie when he sold the Socialist Worker and was planning the revolution’ Jack said. ‘What price integrity, eh, man? Look at him now – Bungalow Bill. He’s a turncoat, man, a toad-spotted traitor, a Benedict Arnold, a Judas, a backslider, a deceiver, a defector, a dog-faced deserter, a double-crosser, a hypocrite, a quisling, a snake, a hollow square, a fink, a ghost, a google, a nark, a rat, a weasel, do know what I mean, dude? He’s a sell-out, man. Know what I mean?’
I nodded. ‘So what brings you here, Jack?’ I asked.
‘I’m at the Panel again with the Buttercup boys. Waste of bloody time, of course.’
I nodded again. Jack adjusted the red bobble holding his pony tail.
‘Is the band still going?’ I said.
‘Yeah, of course. I’ll be on the road for the rest of my days, man, I know that now for certain. It’s what I was born for.’
‘Born to be wild, eh, Jack?’ I said, smiling.
He laughed and put his Aviators on. ‘Hey, dude,’ he said. ‘Where do you think Joanna Lumley stayed when she came to Morpeth to open the Sanderson Arcade?’
I looked at him, narrowing my eyes. Surely he wasn’t about to tell me she’d stayed at his place? Surely that couldn’t be true?
‘I’ve no idea really, Jack.’ I said. ‘Where did she stay?’
‘I don’t know either, man,’ he said. ‘I’ve no idea. But I don’t think it would have been at the Anglers Arms in Weldon Bridge, do you?!’
‘No, I wouldn’t have thought so – but hey, who knows, Jack, sometimes – ‘
‘I bumped into Talullah down in the Arcade earlier,’ Jack said, cutting across me. ‘She told me that’s where Joanna stayed, in the Anglers at Weldon Bridge. I told her she was dreaming. We had quite a spat about it.’
‘A spat? Why?’
‘Because I told her she was simply wrong. I told her that I knew as more or less a certainty that Joanna had stayed in the Malmaison in the Town. I told her I knew Joanna and that I’d had a drink with her on the quayside the night after the opening.’
‘I didn’t know you knew Joanna Lumley, Jack’ I said. ‘You kept that one to yourself.’
‘I don’t know her, man. I just said that to our redheaded friend to put her in her place. And it worked! She was just so sure of herself, man. She said someone she knew from Rothbury had told her it for a fact. Bullshit, dude! She was blagging, man, blagging, and we both knew it.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought the Sanderson Arcade was your sort of territory, Jack. What were you doing in a place like that?’
‘I was going to Mark and Sparks to purloin a couple of Mexican Three Bean wraps. Ever had those, man? Delish!’
‘Yes, I like them too, they’re good.’
I drove back down to Ashington listening to The Duke and The King. The first two tracks on the album are pretty good – If You Ever Get Famous and The Morning I Get To Hell. When I got back to the office I told Lily that we’d be getting sniffer cats and she might want to think about whether to use one on the Twichell case.
‘I don’t suppose we get to choose the cats’ names, do we?’ she asked.
‘No,’ I said. ‘We don’t.’
Lily shrugged. ‘That’s a pity,’ she said. ‘It would be nice to call one of them Hercules. I’d call the other one Tim.’
I asked her if she’d like to do the training. She said she would.
When I got home that night Margaret was making batches of onion pate and turnip cakes to put in the freezer. I asked her how Brenda and Tristan were doing.
‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Have you heard something?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I was just curious.’
‘Oh, well they’re fine at the minute, I think. Brenda certainly seems a lot less dissatisfied than she was. I’m pleased about that. She gives a lot to others and deserves a little happiness herself.’
I went out for a walk before tea. I left Plessey Road and wove my way towards Links Road through the streets of South Beach Estate. At the corner of Curlew Way and Lapwing Close a couple were kissing beneath a streetlight. I went on past the pub, along Fulmar Drive to the traffic lights and then down to the beach road roundabout. I walked along to Wensleydale Terrace and Belgrave Terrace and down Ridley Avenue past the old police station building into Blyth town centre. It was quiet, almost deserted. I passed Blockbuster Videos, the yellow light swilling on the damp pavement, and up Waterloo Road as far as Coomassie Road before making my way back to Broadway by way of Princess Louise Road.
When I got home I went on to Amazon and ordered some DVD’s of film versions of King Lear: the Olivier version, the Paul Scofield version, and Grigori Kosintsev’s Russian sub-titled version. The Olivier version arrived a couple of days ago. Olivier is convincing and noble enough in a stolid sort of way, but for me Robert Lindsey steals the film with his callow, lithe, and slippery Edmund, sleek and shiny eyed, like a poacher’s dog. Like a viper.
.
on the day the clocks went back
The clocks went back last night. British Summer Time is over, the dark nights are here. It was a sunny morning, cool and windy. As I left the house to go for a walk and get the newspapers, Hugo was getting out of his car. He had a small plastic giraffe under his arm.
‘Here, mate, that tree of yours has suddenly gone yellow, hasn’t it?’ he shouted.
‘Happens every autumn, Fletch,’ I said, laughing.
Maureen and the Whelp were knocking on the Widow’s door.
‘She’s gone away,’ I said.
‘Oh?’ Maureen said. The Whelp gawped superciliously over her shoulder.
‘No, no,’ I said, seeing that my remark had an ambiguity which those who were religiously minded might find especially confusing. ‘I mean she’s gone to stay with her brother in Derbyshire. We’re not sure when she’ll be back.’
‘Oh,’ Maureen said again, but this time with a relieved smile. She got out her note book and wrote something in it. Perhaps she was noting that the Widow hadn’t escaped doing business with them by grabbing an early flight to heaven with the Methodists.
Boz went completely off the rails last week. He came to the office several times with one query after another about his children and his rights and the stupidity of the law. On Wednesday he was arrested for stealing seed from a bird-feeder in a garden on the Fallowfield estate. It appears that he had been reliably informed that commercial bird seed contains cannabis seeds.
Boz had estimated that there are probably about five hundred bird feeders in Ashington, mostly hanging from trees and bird tables in the new private estates. He reckoned that there would be on average a pound of seed in each feeder. If ten percent of that was cannabis seed that would be fifty pounds of the stuff. Boz reckoned a shrewd dealer would surely pay a tidy sum for fifty pounds of cannabis seed. All he had to do was to break the town into manageable harvesting districts – each district being about the right size for one night’s work – and systematically gather the seed from the gardens. He couldn’t fail.
On Wednesday night he found himself with his back against a six foot lattice fence in a garden in Magnolia Drive, cornered behind the garden pond by a Rottweiller called Dexter Dan. Dexter Dan’s owner, Geoffrey Harrison, a retired seaman and Chief Storekeeper by trade, shone his high-powered torch into Boz’s face and told him the police were on there way. Rather uncharacteristically Boz said nothing and instead began eating the seed from his pocket. He later explained that he’d calculated that trespass was a less serious offence than possession of more of a Class C drug than he could reasonably argue was for personal use only.
Boz was released the following morning and came in to see Lily at about lunchtime. He told her of the idea he’d had and how he’d been apprehended on his very first seed gathering expedition.
‘They kept me in a cell all night, Lil,’ he said. ‘The police have no right to do the things they do, you know. Do I look like a criminal to you, Lil? Do I?’
Lily shook her head ambiguously. ‘So did they charge you with anything?’ she asked.
‘They’re complete numpties, complete bloody wassocks.’
‘So you were charged with something?’
‘They charged me with criminal damage to a bird feeder.’ Boz looked Lily straight in the eyes. He was very serious. He was saying loud and clear that this was no laughing matter.
‘Well, that’s not serious, Boz,’ she said. ‘I mean, it might never get to court.’
‘They also charged me with the theft of ten ounces of birdseed with an estimated value of two pounds fifty.’ He paused.
Lily put his hand on his shoulder.
‘I’ll be a laughing stock, Lil,’ he said. ‘The numpties from Newbiggin will call me Birdseed or Pecker or something else just as stupid that they’ll think is absolutely bloody hilarious. I’ll never be able to hold my head up in Ashington again. Never.’
‘Forget about it,’ Lily said. ‘Listen, no-one will ever know about it in any case if it doesn’t get to court. And I’m sure it won’t, Boz. It’d be a waste of public money.’
‘Can I have the kids this weekend, Lil?’ Boz asked, very calmly. ‘I need them with me right now. You can come and inspect the caravan if you want.’
Lily shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Boz’, she said. ‘You know that can’t happen. It’s just not the right thing for the kids.’
Boz shook his head slowly. But he didn’t get angry at all. In fact, Lily felt he accepted this very easily. He looked very composed, as if he’d finally gained control of himself. As if, as Lily put it, the penny had finally dropped. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I just needed to ask you. You understand that, right?’
‘Yes,’ Lily said. ‘I do understand.’
What happened in the next few hours is somewhat unclear. However, at about eight thirty on Thursday evening the police were called to Bubbles where Boz was being restrained by the doorman and a couple of lads from North Seaton. Boz had gone into Bubbles and announced to everyone there that he was a suicide bomber and that he was about to blow the place up. He pulled open his jacket and revealed a belt which he claimed was packed with explosives. The doorman sauntered over, head-butted him and threw him to the ground. The lads from North Seaton then helped out by putting in the boot. They removed the belt and found it was packed with Rowntree’s Table Jelly.
The police arrested Boz and initially considered holding him under Schedule 8 of the Terrorism Act 2000. However, it struck the duty Sergeant that a man who had just one day earlier been arrested for stealing birdseed from a garden feeder and who at the time of arrest had nothing more dangerous on his person than some unopened packets of Rowntree’s Table Jelly, probably wasn’t a member of Al Qaeda. In fact, he probably wasn’t at all well. Later that night Boz was sectioned. He is now in St George’s Hospital.
On Friday night I went to a working men’s club in Cramlington for the retirement do for Rosie Lake, who has managed long-term placements for children since time began. I don’t like these sort of does and, while I like and respect Rosie, I would normally have given it a very wide berth. Unfortunately I was roped into being a late replacement for Jack Verdi, who was going to play the piano for some of Rosie’s colleagues who wanted to sing a few songs for her. Jack rang me up and told me that for personal reasons he wouldn’t now be able to play. He asked me to stand in for him. I reluctantly agreed. I said I was surprised that he wasn’t able to go as he and Rosie had once been rivals for the same post and had been through a lot together. He said he genuinely regretted not being able to play for her.
Jack Verdi used to be a professional musician before he gave it all up to become a social worker and raise a family. Jack was in a band that made one or two chart-topping singles. He lived the rock and roll lifestyle to the hilt and in his younger days had quite a reputation as a hell-raiser. The story of how he once threw the ironing board out of the window of the Chelsea Hotel is still recounted in music circles to this day. Jack was hot tempered and quite notorious for getting into fights with other musicians about apparently insignificant issues. One story relates how he once threw a pint of cider over a sound engineer who’d suggested that B-flat was a better key than G for a particular song. This propensity for fighting led to Jack acquiring the nickname of ‘Scrapper’, and again even now from time to time in Q or Mojo or Rolling Stone you will see Scrapper Verdi invoked as the paradigm for the wild man of British rock.
On more than one occasion in recent years Jack has been expected to play at departmental leaving does, but for one reason or another he has never yet done so. Some people believe this is because Jack very much prefers the electric organ to the piano, and because he cannot bear to play anything but a top class instrument. It’s said he has a really wonderful organ, but that it’s far too big to bring along to a do. Someone once told me it’s a Hammond organ – complete with bass pedalboard and every other bell and whistle – and that it once belonged to Billy Preston. What people say is that Jack’s reputation depends upon his organ and that without it he’d be very ordinary. They say this is the reason he never plays in public nowadays.
I think that may be a little harsh. Jack has in fact sometimes turned up at a do but when he has he has always done something other than play the piano. It is true of course that he has sometimes chosen to do something unexpected and slightly eccentric. When Sally Chaudry left the Adoption Unit, Jack went along to her leaving do, stepped up to the microphone and read aloud for her selected passages from Moby Dick. Then, completely unaccompanied, he sang in their entirety two long Greenland whaling songs. The urge to perform really is irrepressible in some people.
I went along to Rosie’s do at about seven. I checked out what songs we were doing with Betty Gormley, who was the main singer for the evening. Betty – known to her colleagues as “Butterbeans” – is a bluff sort of woman from Rotherham. As a young woman she worked in a textile mill and used to sing in local pubs at nights to make some extra money. Like Jack she got a taste for the limelight and even though she moved on in her life – she married a man who ran a betting shop and got herself an education – she too is still drawn back there sometimes.
There was a reasonable turn out for Rosie’s do, including one or two notable faces from the past. There were also some notable absentees, of course, not least among them Gilmour, who had told Rosie he’d be there for sure.
Once everyone had arrived Freddy Fotheringay, Rosie’s senior manager, made an amusing if somewhat predictable speech about the great service she has given the Department. He then presented her with her leaving present. Rosie took to the mike and did her bit, paying warm and generous tributes to colleagues past and present. She also took a few well-aimed shots at the pernicious effects that managerialism is having on the services provided for vulnerable children. Freddy smiled and took it on the chin. The Inspectors will be back soon and there’s not a blind thing he can do about it. It occurred to me at that point how Rosie suddenly looked older than she did just a week or so ago, and somehow much smaller. When someone’s working life comes to an end does something physical suddenly happen to them?
I took to the piano and Betty along with one or two of her colleagues took to the mike, most notably Talullah Hudspith, the youngest woman in the room, who has a strange penchant for feathers and platform shoes. We banged out three or four numbers from the Chas and Dave Songbook, which always goes down well this kind of audience. We then did one or two of Betty’s personal favourites – ‘When I’m Cleaning Windows’ and ‘Pedro the Fisherman’ – before ending with a rousing version of ‘Wish Me Luck (As You Wave Me Goodbye)’. Betty knew her audience well; it all went down perfectly.
Performance over, I sat at the back of the room with a plate full of crisps, the only guaranteed vegetarian option from the buffet table. I was sitting musing on the meaning of retirement and the loss of purpose that it sometimes brings. I was also musing about how suddenly it can alter our perception of a person, especially if that person has been powerful at work. That loss of power seemed to me perhaps the thing that stripped the person of their aura, that made them suddenly seem physically different. I was wondering if that is why my dad sometimes seems so small to me nowadays. He never did when I was a kid. Do we always instinctively equate size with power and does this affect our perception? Do we imagine a big person is powerful and therefore imagine a powerful person is big?
I was pondering how I might make my getaway when Butterbeans Gormley got back on to the stage and called for everyone’s attention. There had been a complaint made to the police and they were on their way over now. They wanted to interview Rosie, she believed, and possibly some others. No-one should leave the room. Rosie shook her head. She was genuinely aghast at this prospect. Everyone present was stunned into silence.
And then the policeman entered the room. He had his hat on and a truncheon at his side and walked purposefully into the middle of the darkened room. And at that point Butterbeans must have pressed play on the CD player. ‘You Sexy Thing’ by Hot Chocolate began blaring out. The policeman looked up and threw his helmet across the room.
It was Jack Verdi. One or two gasped, one or two covered their faces, one or two cheered. Most pinched themselves to see if they were awake and tried desperately to get their hands to make a clapping motion. Jack began gyrating sinuously in front of Rosie.
Jack looked flushed to me, but he was clearly still in remarkable condition, the result no doubt of the obsession with jogging he has had in recent years. He ripped of his Velcroed on jacket. We all know where he got this routine from, and it wasn’t Herman Melville. He ripped off his shirt, ripped off his policeman’s trousers. He writhed around shamelessly to the relentless music, dressed only in shiny black boots, black socks and a black leather thong. Jack was giving it his all, turning back the clock to give Rosie a send-off she’d never forget. There was only one question now: were we about to see the Full Monty Verdi?
Jack’s a friend, so let me spare his blushes. But I will say this: sometimes there’s a lot to be said for a Greenland whaling song. There’s a lot to be said for the Hammond Organ too.
Yesterday I finished my painting of Corby’s Crag. It has a certain roughness to it that I like, and the palette is wider than I’ve been using in the last year or so. I’ve got too many paintings lying around the house now. Perhaps I should try to sell some of them.
This afternoon I went out on the bike for an hour or so. I rode out across the reclaimed land from the old Isabella Colliery and then on up to Bebside and up the Heathery Lonnen to the Three Horse Shoes. It was hard work riding into the strong westerly wind, but it was a beautiful autumnal day. In places the roads were laminated with brown and yellow leaves and blowing down all around me. I rode up into Cramlington. It began to rain lightly and for a few minutes I stopped in a subway, where I read the graffiti and reflected again on Jack’s performance on Friday night. Once a rock star, always a rock star, I thought.
When the rain stopped I decided to head for home. With the wind at my back I flew down the Laverock Hall Road, past the bruised blackberry bushes and the tattered hawthorns. I came down Plessey Road with the late afternoon sun at my back and could see my long shadow pedalling ahead of me. In the pale blue sky over the sea there were a few ragged dark grey clouds. One of them was shaped like a West Highland Terrier.
I sat with De Kooning in the conservatory as I ate my rice and broccoli. I was trying to reset my watch, to turn it back an hour. It’s a complicated multi-function digital device and I still hadn’t discovered how to do it when Margaret came into the room. She was waiting for a pan of onions and turnip to cook.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘Trying to set my watch,’ I replied.
‘Oh, of course,’ she said. ‘The clock’s have gone back.’
‘So are you going to reset all the stopped ones?’ I asked. ‘Make then quarter past two instead of quarter past three? You should really.’
‘Why?’ she said. ‘The time on a stopped clock is meaningless.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ I said. ‘It seems to me that you’ve now got twenty two clocks that are all an hour fast.’
Margaret shook her head and tutted.
‘Well, what about the Napoleon in your room?’ I said. ‘Are you going to put that back to the same time as the others again?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think so. Some things are best left alone.’
Which reminds me, I must go out and see where Hugo’s put the small plastic giraffe.
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yammering 