Archive for the ‘gilmour’ Category
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.
.
a sort of macabre sweepstake
Last Wednesday morning I was at a meeting in Morpeth first thing. When I arrived back at the office about mid morning Jesse and Pippa from admin were in the team room talking to Michelle, Lily, Sally and Angie. They were discussing a game Pippa’s daughter plays with her colleagues at the place where she works.
The object of the game is to be the person who picks the well known person who dies before any of the people picked by anyone else. It seems each person can pick three people – let’s call them their Gees Gees (which could stand for Grim Gallopers) – and they pay £5 into a kitty for each of their Gee Gees. No two people can choose the same Gee Gee. The person who has picked the Gee Gee that dies first collects the whole kitty. At that point everyone in the game has the opportunity to pick a new set of Gee Gees. It’s a sort of macabre sweepstake.
A week or two earlier Pippa’s daughter’s workmate – Kathy – had won: Patrick McGoohan, the star of the one-time cult TV series The Prisoner had died. He was eighty. His demise brought Kathy a windfall of £540, or, to be strictly accurate, £525, as her original stake should be deducted from her winnings.
Pippa’s daughter had been sitting with Hugh Hefner, The Pope and Amy Winehouse. In the way the game is played at Pippa’s daughter’s company (sorry, I don’t know Pippa’s daughter’s name) on there being a winner everyone gets the option to keep the Gee Gees they hold or to throw in one or more. Pippa’s daughter chose only to keep Amy Winehouse. Rather than go for old people who might go on forever she decided to go for a full hand of younger people with dangerous lifestyles. She added Pete Doherty and Lewis Hamilton to her portfolio.
‘Why don’t we play that game?’ Angie said. ‘I’d pick Margaret Thatcher.’
‘That’s just wishful thinking,’ Lily said. ‘If that worked I’d go for Richard Madeley. He’d be gone tomorrow.’
‘Oh, no, he’s not very old,’ Sally said. ‘I think I’d put my money on Patrick Moore.’
‘Isn’t he already dead, Sal?’ Angie said.
‘No. No, he isn’t,’ Sal said. ‘I saw him on The Sky at Night just a couple of weeks ago.’
‘Yes, Sal, but was he alive?’ Lily said. They all laughed.
‘Don’t you think this game’s a bit sick?’ Jesse said.
‘Yes,’ Angie said. ‘It is. But isn’t that the point?’
‘Why don’t we make up our own variation?’ Michelle suggested. ‘What about trying to pick the next local authority to have a child death on one of their social workers’ caseload? Who bags Haringey?’
The others cringed and frowned.
‘Why stop there?’ Angie said. ‘Why don’t we just put the money on the kids on our own caseloads?’
‘Hush up, Ange,’ Lily said. ‘Don’t tempt providence.’
I made myself a coffee and wandered upstairs to my office. At first I was pondering the idea of tempting providence and wondered if this was another manifestation of magical thinking. Maybe it’s closer to the idea of speaking of the devil. Maybe it’s to do with the idea that God is not mocked. And yet what kind of insecure and fickle deity would it be that needed to throw Its weight around like that for such a trivial provocation? Maybe it’s just something to do with a primitive belief in the power of words.
I sat down with my coffee and looked out over the rooftops. I began to think about painting. I haven’t painted anything since I finished my canvas of Corby’s Crag. I have been thinking about painting somewhere more urban. I like Gillies’ paintings of Temple, and although it seems to be a village and probably quite rural, I want to find and show the beauty in the things beneath our noses. I want to say we don’t have to go far to find something worth looking at.
When I logged on to my computer I discovered I had received an email from Alice McTavish in Fort William. She was writing to tell me that there had been a fair amount of snow up there this winter and she was wondering if I was planning to come up for a few days skiing. She offered to make me a mushroom risotto. I wrote back and said that I couldn’t get any holiday until the end of February. I asked her to make sure none of the snowflakes melted before then.
At about lunchtime Tania picked up baby Davina during a supervised contact session and simply walked out of the office with her. Michelle followed her down the street, telling her she was being daft and doing herself no good. Tania was having none of it. Davina was her baby and she’d do what she liked with her. Michelle told her she couldn’t because we had a court order and Davina had to stay with her dad, who was now approved as her emergency foster carer. Tania just walked on.
Michelle was powerless. What was she supposed to do, rugby tackle Tania and wrestle the baby from her grip? She ran back to the office. She was in a panic. She rang the police and gave them a description and potential addresses Tania might go to. The police went straight out but had no luck. They visited Joe’s house too. His mother said she had no idea where he was. He hadn’t been home since yesterday. The plot was thickening. A young mother with no real interest in her baby had abducted the baby and gone off with a hare-brained youth. Maybe Michelle’s about to win the kitty, I thought to myself. I didn’t say it out loud, of course.
Next morning baby Davina and Tania were still missing and we had no clue where she was. I took a call from a police inspector and agreed to publicity. Later that day the missing baby began to be mentioned on the news bulletins on Metro Radio, along with pleas to the public to contact the police if they had any information about the whereabouts of mother and baby. The whole day passed without any news. Michelle sat in the office, unable to do anything. The rest of the team made her cups of tea and told her not to worry, the baby would be found fit and well, they were sure. Gilmour rang to see if there’d been any news. He also asked how Michelle was.
‘Not good,’ I said.
‘Let’s hope for everyone’s sake that this baby is okay,’ he said.
For a moment or two I imagined that the universe was indeed at the command of some perverse force. That things don’t ever go wrong by chance or accident. That they go wrong because the world is in the hands of providence, and providence is amoral and prone to mischief and cruelty. Providence is metaphysical spite. It’s funny that such a nutty belief will probably be reassuring to some people. We’d rather believe that we’re in the hands of a monster than think we’re in the hands of no-one at all. At least you can talk to a monster.
After tea Margaret was baking onion tarts. De Kooning was hiding somewhere. I went for a walk through the Isabella and over the reclaimed land to Tynedale Drive. I walked all the way to Cowpen Road and then down past the cemetary to the North Farm. I came back along Renwick Road, past the Thoroton Hotel and back along Broadway to Rotary Way. Later I went along to my dad’s to return the library book on the Cloughs, which was almost overdue. I drove up the Avenue and through Seaton Delaval on the way back. I turned on the radio and flicked through the stations. Alan Robson was on Metro. Hettie from Bomarsund was on the line.
‘Hello, Alan,’ she said. ‘It’s Hettie from Bomarsund here.’
‘Good evening, Hettie. What do you want to talk to us about tonight?’
‘Good evening, Alan. Alan, have you heard about that young lass who’s kidnapped her own baby? Isn’t that a terrible thing? I think she must be in a terrible state to do something like that, don’t you, Alan.’
‘Well, I don’t really know that much about it, Hettie. I mean, can a mother really kidnap her own child?’
‘Yes, but this bairn was being looked after for her by a foster parent, Alan. She’s obviously got needs, Alan. Don’t you agree, she must be a girl with needs?’
‘You might be right, Hettie. If that lass happens to be listening now, Hettie, what would your message to her be?’
‘You know what I’d say to her, Alan? I’d say, “Take your baby back, pet. People are just trying to help you. If you hurt your bairn you’d never forgive yourself.” My heart goes out to her, Alan.’
‘Thank you, Hettie. Let’s go now to line two, where we’ve got John from Westerhope. Good evening, John. What do you want to say to the night owls tonight.’
‘Hello, Alan. What I want to say is that with all due respect your last caller is exactly the sort of person who’s got this country in the pathetic state it’s in today. Do you know what my message to that girl on the run with her baby would be? It would be “Good for you, girl.” It’s the do-gooders who have taken away all our freedom and brought the country to its knees, Alan. Social workers only take people’s kids off them to give them to middle class couples who can’t have them or to put them with lesbians and paedophiles.’
‘Well, I’m sure there are a lot of people won’t agree with you there, John. Surely sometimes social workers are right to take children off their parents, aren’t they? What about Baby P?’
‘Exactly, Alan! Exactly! That’s proves my point, doesn’t it? If this lass’s child had really been at any risk of harm at home the social workers would have left her with where she was. That’s what they do, Alan. You can hardly open a newspaper these days without coming across the story of another poor kid social workers have left to die.’
‘I’m not sure you’re right on this one, John. But of course I respect your point of view. Let’s have another record. I’m sure there are plenty of others out there who want to have their say on this lass’s baby. We’ll be back after this.’
Chesney Hawkes came on. The One and Only. I drove past Newsham Coop and over the railway crossing, past the Black Diamond and the Newsham Hotel and around to the Willow Tree. I glanced over the grass where the Brick Row once stood and through the dark spaces where the Newsham Nightingale once piped, across to the anonymous little council houses beyond and the little yellow rectangles of their windows. Tania and Joe were probably holed up with baby Davina in just such a house tonight. They were probably with a bunch of raucous kids, drinking cans of lager and smoking cannabis, arguing about whose turn it was to be on the Wii, passing Davina round like a stray kitten they’d brought in from the street. A tattered-eared pitbull called Tyson was probably sniffing at her face.
As I drove into the top of my street Chesney stopped singing and Alan Robson returned to the mike.
‘So, welcome back, night owls,’ he said. ‘Tonight we’ve been talking about the girl who’s stolen her baby from social workers and gone into hiding with her. Right now on line four we’ve got Cheryl from Ashington. Hello, Cheryl. How are you tonight? This bairn’s from around your way, isn’t it?’
‘Hello, Alan. It’s Cheryl here. Yes, Alan, she is. I could tell you who she is, Alan, if you want to know.’
‘Oh no, Cheryl. No, no, I think we’ve got to respect this lass’s right to privacy, haven’t we?’
‘Yes, Alan, that’s true. But what you don’t know is just what’s going on around here . . .’
At that point I turned the radio off. The last thing I needed to hear was that baby Davina had been abducted by Robin Hood and his Merry Men and was being taught to use a bow and arrow in Bothal Woods.
I slept badly that night. I awoke at least three times. Baby Davina was on my mind. The first time woke up I was wondering who was feeding her. She was in a dark place crying frantically. She was completely alone. De Kooning made his way to the top of the bed and sniffed at my face. He began to purr. I pressed him back down on to the duvet and gave him a stroke.
‘Go back to sleep, De Kooning,’ I said. ‘It’s not morning yet.’
Next time I awoke I was thinking about Michelle. I knew she’d be lying awake. I knew she’d be worrying herself to death. If anything happened to baby Davina she’d carry the can. Her photo would appear in The Daily Mail. She’d be pilloried. She’d be destroyed. I heard De Kooning begin to purr again. I put my arm out of the sheets and rubbed his tummy. He gave my hand a little play fight.
‘Go back to sleep, De Kooning,’ I said. ‘It’s not morning yet.’
The third time I awoke I had been having a terrible dream. I dreamt I was King Lear. Or perhaps I was some other character from that play. The Fool, perhaps. Or Edgar. Or Gloucester. I was probably an amalgamation of several of the characters all in one dream person. I was caught in a storm. I was blind and stumbling close to the edge of a cliff. I dreamt I was gathering samphire. I dreamt I was gathering samphire and I heard De Kooning fidgeting. He was purring again, loudly, like a tractor.
‘Go back to sleep, Cordelia,’ I said. ‘It won’t be much longer now.’
.
the return of the muslim vampires
Yesterday morning I went to a meeting in Shiremoor. On my way back I decided to call and see my dad in Seaton Sluice. He’s getting his house refurbished – rewired, new kitchen and all that palaver – and I was wondering how things were going. When I got to the Sluice I saw Tristan’s white PermaPlumma van parked just around the corner of the Collywell Bay Road, more or less opposite the social club. I spotted Tristan himself in his white boilersuit and blue jacket, leaning against the fence looking out over into the harbour. It was sunny and cold, quite suddenly like winter. The white buildings on Rocky Island were gleaming in the sun and the whole scene looking north had a picture postcard quality about it. I parked up and went over.
‘Hey, Tristan, what’s happening?’ I said. ‘Have you got as job up this way to do?’
‘No, mate,’ Tristan said. ‘No job. Work’s dwied up a bit, I’m afwaid.’
He looked just a little despondent, a little stoical.
‘So what you doing in the Sluice?’ I asked.
‘I’m just getting out of Bwenda’s way,’ he replied. ‘She’s got clients all morning. I didn’t want to be under her feet.’
I nodded and shared the view with him for a few seconds.
‘Hey, so what do you think of the response of the Left of the credit crunch, Tristan?’ I said.
‘What wesponse?’ he replied, suddenly becoming more animated. ‘The so-called Left squats like a bullfwog on a log and cwoaks and cwoaks but never jumps.’
‘So what’s it waiting for?’
‘I dunno, mate! A sign, maybe, or a call from heaven.’
‘So what should it do, Tristan? What would it look like if the bullfrog jumped?’
‘You know something, mate, I don’t think this bullfrog knows how to jump. I don’t think it’s actually got the legs for it anymore. It isn’t organised, that’s the problem. Who are the Left? Who’s leading them? Without organisation, mate, this fwog ain’t jumping anywhere.’
I laughed and said that maybe this was true, but surely that it just begged the question of why there was no organised Left in the first place, why we had a frog that couldn’t jump.
‘Maybe it’s because it can’t see anywhere to jump to?’ I suggested. ‘Maybe that one smug log in the backwater is the only one this frog can sit on these days. There’s no other log for the socialist frog to swim towards, is there?’
‘This is a chicken and egg situation,’ Tristan said. ‘Pwaxis, mate, that’s the way to deal with this kind of pawadox. You’ve always got to be weady to jump. Jumping’s what changes the world. Jump and the future weveals itself! Wemember what Marx said: in the past it was the job of philosophers to understand the world, the job now is to change it. The fwog needs to get on with jumping, I say, and stop gazing at its navel and cwoaking. A fwog that loves the sound of its own cwoak is a fwog that will soon be dwowned in the tide of histowy.’
‘You make this frog sound a bit like Hamlet, Tristan,’ I joked. ‘To jump or not to jump, that is the question. A frog with its head up its own backside.’
I told Tristan I needed to be on my way. I found his position frankly a little undisciplined for a Trotskyist, somewhat lacking in theoretical rigour. But he is right, the Left’s response to the current global financial crisis has been remarkably passive, and you can only surmise that this is because they either don’t know how to respond or no longer have the capacity to do so. These two things are probably inextricably linked, of course. Marxists can gloat over their man’s acumen about capitalism, but which of them can tell us where to go from here? The Left seems to have lost the belief it once had that it can make history, and that it can even do so in circumstances not of its own choosing. The Left seems to be mostly comprised of Lutherans nowadays. They don’t need to be organised. All that’s needed is that each individual believes in the God of history. If everyone sits quietly in their soon to be repossessed homes praying to this God the revolution will inevitably occur. Capitalism will magically wither and die while they dream.
As I walked back to my car I mused on Tristan’s brave and perhaps slightly incoherent analysis, that the Left is a frog with no legs and nowhere to jump but somehow ought to jump anyway. Basho’s famous haiku came to my mind.
The old pond,
A frog jumps in:
Plop!
This poem has been translated by just about everyone, of course. The version I always recall is Alan Watts’ translation. I wasn’t sure how enlightening it was in terms of the Left and the global crisis in Capitalism, but it’s a fine little poem, isn’t it?
I called across to see my dad. His flat is upside down, polythene covering every floor surface, workmen coming and going, the door permanently open. My dad had his coat on and was obviously very cold. He offered me a sandwich; I declined. I told him I needed to get back to work and left. As I drove back down past the social club I could see Tristan. He was still looking out over the bay.
The schools are on holiday this week and it’s Halloween on Friday. Some of the kids in Ashington are using their cast off pillowcases as spook outfits and wandering from house to house knocking on doors. Just after I got back from the Sluice Gilmour rang me about this phenomenon.
‘We don’t have a resurgence of the Flinties, do we?’ he asked. ‘Tell me how worried we should be about this.’
‘Not at all,’ I suggested. ‘They are just kids trick or treating. They’re also wearing witches hats, Frankenstein masks and carrying pumpkin lanterns from Asda. Some of them have luminous plastic vampire teeth and fake knives through their heads. Do they sound like a bunch of Muslim terrorists to you?’
Gilmour agreed, they didn’t, although not without observing that stranger things have happened. And by chance he’d listened to Alan Robson on Night Owls last night and there had been some alarming calls from worried listeners in the Ashington area.
‘A lady called Hettie from Bomarsund rang up,’ Gilmour said. ‘This lady sounded quite agitated. She said to the presenter something like “It’s all happening again, Alan.” He tried to reassure her, but she was having none of it. He asked her if these children were throwing paper aeroplanes at windows again and then as a sort of Halloween joke he said, “Or is it bats this time, Hettie?” Hettie was not at all amused. “Alan, with all due respect,” she said, “this is not funny.” Alan apologised. Oh, Hettie wasn’t a happy bunny. Later a bloke called John from Westerhope came on. This guy was obviously some kind of conspiracy theorist. He seemed to think Ashington police were in cahoots with the Flinties to destroy the British way of life. The next caller was a drunken woman from Ashington.’
‘Oh, Cheryl!’ I said.’ Ha ha. Yes, we know Cheryl. She’d be complaining that the authorities weren’t taking her seriously, was she?’
‘Yes, that’s right. She said she’d seen someone dressed as – ‘
I interrupted him: ‘Robin Hood! Yes, she says that all the time!’
‘No,’ Gilmour said. ‘Not Robin Hood. The Lone Ranger.’
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘Anyhoo, my boy,’ Gilmour said, ‘It sounds like we don’t have to get ourselves into a lather about any of this, do we? So, tell me, how’s your dad doing? Is he okay?’
‘Yeah,’ I replied. ‘He’s fine. Still mending fuses in the factory and what have you. How’s yours?’
‘Oh, father’s absolutely chipper. He’s a bit worried that the demand for meat might drop off a bit if there’s a recession, and of course like anyone else he’s getting a bit nervous about property values and his investments. But all in all he’s very well, thank you. Oh, by the way, did I tell you my lad’s driving the quad now?’
‘Is he? The quad, eh? Hey, that’s great. He’s really coming on, isn’t he? By the way, how’s your daughter’s horse doing?’
Gilmour told me the horse and his daughter were both doing remarkably well. I then asked him why he didn’t turn up at Rosie Lake’s leaving do last Friday.
‘Oh, it clashed with something my wife had arranged,’ he said. ‘How did it go? Did they give her a good send off?’
‘Well, Jack Verdi did,’ I said.
‘Jack finally performed?!’ Gilmour said. ‘My goodness, miracles will never cease, eh? What did he do, the old hits from his back catalogue?’
‘Yeah, well, his back catalogue was certainly involved. Nobody’s told you about, have they?’
‘No. No-one’s mentioned it. Hey, it sounds like I missed a good night? I really wish I could have been there. I’ve got a couple of Jack’s old albums, you know. I like his stuff. Is his voice still as good as it was?’
I chuckled. Gilmour asked me why I was laughing. ‘Oh, I guess you just had to be there,’ I said. ‘I’m sure Freddy will give you the full low down when you see him.’
I think our call ended with Gilmour in much better fettle than when our conversation began. It certainly cheered me up.
Debs came up and told me that Mandy was in the office. She was thinking of trying to get a private tenancy outside of Ashington, maybe in Morpeth or Seaton Delaval. She wanted to live somewhere where Flinty might not find her.
‘If she found somewhere could we help her out with a bond?’ Debs asked.
‘Is running away from him the answer, Debs?’ I said.
‘Oh, come on,’ she said. ‘What else is she going to do? The man’s a nutcase. He’s never going to leave her alone.’
I looked at her and shook my head. ‘Aye, all right,’ I said. ‘It’s only money, I guess.’
It was another cold afternoon. As I drove down Alexandra Road at dusk the sky was icy blues, violets and orange. The streetlights had just come on. An old white Mercedes passed me going in the other direction. The driver was dressed like an Arab. I turned on the radio. On the five o’clock news I heard that Gordon had stepped into the furore about Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand acting like a couple of prats on Brand’s late night radio programme a week or so ago. Gordon’s the man with his finger on the pulse of the nation.
It was dark before I got home.
.
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.
.
a broken napoleon and a dead spider
Returning to work after a holiday is always a difficult transition, like stepping from a garden into a bullring. Transitions like this are often best managed by a ritual, and in my case this involves washing and ironing all my clothes, polishing my shoes, trimming my sideboards, and having a long bath. It’s as if the odour of recreation must be washed from me, as if to return to the old world I must make myself a new man. Going back to work is like rebirth. I must purify myself before my eviction from the womb.
Things have been surprisingly quiet at work. Sightings of the Arab have declined dramatically it seems (although Robin Hood may have become a permanent resident). Debs says that in part this is because Elephant Carmichael has been remanded in custody on charges of aggravated burglary and attempting to pervert the course of justice and Flinty’s keeping his head down. More significant though is that Flinty’s shacked up with Molly Armstrong in her flat at Rothesay Terrace down at the Station and is otherwise engaged, at least for the time being. What’s more, the schools are open again, the nights are drawing in a bit, and the weather hasn’t been good. The population of Flinties is dwindling rapidly, as if they’ve been nothing but summer migrants. I spoke to Gilmour a day or so ago and told him so and that I thought things were settling down. He told me that this was great news.
‘Looks like we’ve cracked this one, eh?’ he said. ‘I’ll let the Director know. Good work!’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘We do what we can.’
It rained heavily last weekend. Morpeth was flooded and Northumberland finally became the victim of freak weather and got the publicity and pity that for so long it has been denied. A disaster can be a cloud with a very silver lining. Eat your heart out the Vale of York: Charles and Camilla visited us today. They dallied a while, meandered along the loyal fringe of their postdiluvian subjects and shook a few of their damp northern hands. The television report showed them at a chip shop in Morpeth town centre. I think it was the Market Chippy on Newgate Street, next to the cheese shop. I like the look of Charles. He’s consistently odd. Somehow he reminds me of a gundog, one that perhaps lacks a little in the way of grey matter but who has an irrepressible sense of mischief. A springer spaniel perhaps. A one that would chew your furniture. He also sometimes reminds me of a bedraggled fledgling, an owlet perhaps.
The Widow Middlemiss hasn’t yet returned from Derby. Despite the heavy rain her property has suffered no further flooding. Griff has obviously taken steps to avoid another PR disaster. When I came in from work earlier this week Margaret was in the Widow’s garden dead-heading her French marigolds and hoeing the borders. I glanced across to see if Hugo was back. He wasn’t. I went inside and made myself a cappuccino. I was sitting in the conservatory with De Kooning pondering the realities of wage slavery when I became aware of a faint ticking. I followed the sound to the door of Margaret’s bedroom. I pushed it open slowly, as if I was about to find a bomb. What I found was a lot stranger: the ticking turned out to be the Napoleon Mantel Clock on her dressing table. It had come back to life. It was ticking enthusiastically. It had broken ranks with its twenty two silent and motionless companions. It now said it was almost five o’clock, which wasn’t right but suggested it had probably started working again about two hours earlier, at which time I knew Margaret would have still been at work.
‘The Napoleon in your bedroom is working,’ I said to Margaret when she came back in.
‘It can’t be,’ she said. ‘It’s broken.’
‘It can’t be broken,’ I replied. ‘It’s ticking.’
She went to the bedroom and checked. She was still wearing her wellies and green gardening gloves. She came back with her mouth hanging open.
‘How can this be possible?’ she said. ‘That clock is broken. The Greek said it was beyond repair.’
‘The Greek was obviously wrong,’ I said.
‘He’s never wrong. The Greek is never wrong. Never.’
My pizza was ready. I sat for a while eating and pondering the mysterious resurrection of the broken Napoleon. It had the look of a miracle about it. But it wasn’t, of course. I asked Margaret if it was okay if I examined it. I went into her bedroom and gazed at the ticking timepiece. I picked it up with both hands and looked deep into its face. It was now keeping perfect time. It had a sort of blank insolence about it. A smugness even. This was a clock that wasn’t about to give anyone an account of its baffling revival. I stood it back down on the dressing table, next to a copy of Eckhart Tolle’s book The Power of Now. Brenda had recommended this to Margaret a few days ago. I picked it up and flicked through a few pages. Zen meets narcissism. Absurd and incoherent. Pure Brenda. The perfect companion for a clock that rises from the dead, I thought.
I rang the Greek. He told me there was simply no way the Napoleon could be working. It was a broken clock. I told him it had. The Greek was puzzled.
‘Then I was wrong,’ he said. ‘It was never broken. A broken clock is a broken clock, and it cannot repair itself.’
I told Margaret I’d spoken to the Greek and that he’d said the clock must have been in working order all along.
‘If that’s so then why didn’t it start ticking before now?’ she said. ‘And why did it start now? There’s something funny going on here, I’ll tell you that. Clocks just don’t stop and then start again without reason months and months later. It doesn’t make sense.’
‘There’ll be an explanation,’ I said. ‘But we might never know what it is. Perhaps a dead spider was jamming the works and it has finally decomposed or its corpse has finally fallen from the cogs. That could have happened.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, yes, that’s very likely,’ she said. ‘The corpse of a spider falling from the cogs. I think I’ll give Brenda a ring.’
I glanced at De Kooning. He was washing his face with his paw. Behind me I could hear the television newsreader saying that a junior whip has come out and said openly that their should now be a leadership contest in New Labour. It was starting to rain and looking very dark outside. The economy’s in recession. I wondered what Gordon was doing tonight.
.
yammering 