Barking Mad in Amble by the Sea

RUSH

2011-12-28T15:56:00.002Z

“But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.”
St John 19:34

THE WIND IS BOOMING TODAY. Here in my kitchen, the sounds made by the changes in pressure on the chimneys on top of the building are no less than those of a relentless hurricane passing over the Bermuda Islands at the end of summer. In my life, I have experienced a number of those.

I have just walked to the corner shop, about a hundred yards away. Getting there, with the wind at my back, I had to struggle so as not to be pushed forward on my face. Coming back, with my carton of milk and bottle of apple squash, I tried to get as close as possible to the walls on my right, pausing several times in doorways, then pushing ahead again, gasping for breath.

I have a memory of my grandfather, Henry Charles Christopher Eldridge, stored away in September of 1961. Charlie Eldridge was born on 26 July 1894, which happens to be the same day that the English novelist Aldous Huxley was born. In 1961, my grandfather and Huxley would have been about 67. My grandfather died in 1962, and Huxley in 1963 (on the same day that JFK was assassinated, so that Huxley’s passing went pretty much unnoticed in the media). Cancer. They both died of cancer.

The two novels I have read most often in my life, and love the most, are Aldous Huxley's "Island" and D.H. Lawrence's "Women in Love". Huxley and his wife were at Lawrence's bedside when he died of consumption back in 1930.

My memory of Charlie Eldridge, recorded in late summer of 1961, is of a tall man bent over by poor health. Charlie could not, and did not, walk too far. Not without sitting here and there to catch his breath. He had advanced lung cancer. So, we are in London walking along a street that seems to feature many antique shops. My grandmother and I had to keep stopping to allow my grandfather to catch up with us. It seems remarkable to me that he would have gone up to London with us, which would have involved an hour on a train and then buses. I am glad he did, because I have had the memory of it for 50 years now.

About the time my grandfather died, I began writing letters to family members who happened to be across the country or across an ocean sometimes. I corresponded with family at first, but as the 1960s rolled on, and I left school, I tended to keep in touch with friends. I suppose many of my elderly relatives were dead or dying by the 1970s.

I have always enjoyed writing. It has been almost a compulsion at times, making things real. I came to write a newspaper column for a few years, and then, in about 2008, I began blogging. My blog was “Barking Mad in Amble by the Sea”. I use the past tense, because I expect this will be the last entry there.

I am done with writing.

I have finished reporting, finished remarking, finished with the news. I have finished preaching. I am done with writing. All the words I ever had have gone out of me. Done.

A fortnight or so ago, I received the sort of Christmas present one really does not want. The diagnosis of cancer. I have skin cancer, which started in my right side, then moved into the lymphatic system, both lungs and other tissues. Funny, I celebrated 30 years since I last smoked a cigarette last August, and the disease is in my lungs, of all places.

What can I say? If you smoke, then quit. If you are young and are tempted to smoke, it is possibly the worst thing you could do with your life to smoke.

I have that memory of Charlie Eldridge, walking slowly along a pavement in Chelsea. It was a sunny day, not windy, unlike today, 50 years on.

Yes. All the words have gone out of me.

Dreamland Pilgrim

2011-10-25T13:01:00.004+01:00

“The colour of truth is gray.”
André Gide (1869 – 1951)

SEVERAL MORNINGS AGO I stepped into my shower a Heathen. I washed myself, shampooed my hair, rinsed off the soap, and turned off the water. When I pulled the shower curtain back, I was still a Heathen (a clean one at least). Stepping down, I immediately appreciated that my bathroom floor was wet, very wet. Not just puddled, but under two inches of water, and this seemed to be rising. The Heathen paddled across to the bathroom door, up a slight step, and across the hallway. Every towel in the top of the wardrobe went onto the bathroom floor, along with the spare bathmats. Somehow, the Heathen won the battle; the dripping towels went into the laundry basket and then off to the washing machine in the kitchen.

The Heathen, which is to say the Writer, had dabbed at his wet body while flinging towels about, and was able to get dressed. On with the central heating to get the floor quite dry.

An experiment: A jug of water poured into the bathtub bubbled up through the space between the bathtub’s housing and the floor. Here was trouble.

I had cursed a blue streak, but calmed down enough to phone my landlord for advice. Unfortunately, he was out of town due to a family emergency. I figured I would wait a few days and make do with my bathroom sink and the hose from the shower, which could be used there.

When I was a boy, at my Nan’s home in Kent, and at my Mother’s family home in Lancashire, we did not have indoor plumbing. In the morning, Nan or my Auntie Maud would pour heated water from a ewer into a bowl on a washstand in my bedroom, and I would bathe in some fashion that way. The small child does not usually smell as much as someone does at my present age. Using my bathroom sink, I have washed myself incredibly thoroughly for the past few mornings. I had no complaints.

I shall tell the reader now, the first time I have told anyone, that my Mother, who lived most of her adult life in Bermuda in a house with good modern plumbing, never, ever, had a bath or a shower. She washed at the sink. Might she have been afraid of water? I never knew. In her last few years, she could not bear to be in a room with a closed door, and that included the bathroom. It was rather discomfiting. Her bathroom door faced across a hallway to the living room. One had to make excuses ... I think the dog needs a walk ... privacy should go both ways.

Was the Heathen, the non-believer, to be flung into the world of his grandparents and peculiar Mother, when it came to bathing in October 2011? For a few days it was interesting, gave me something to think about.

Yesterday, I had had enough. Was I getting all the shampoo out of my hair (the few strands remaining)? Could I be sure I was not malodorous? I was also missing the physical pleasure of a hellishly hot shower.

Then, last night, I dreamed that my Mother was telling me about a bolt in my bathtub drain. I doubt that my Mother had any knowledge of drains, taps or pipes or the nuts and bolts that hold them together. How did she get into my dream with the explanation that a bolt had fallen down my drain? I know so little of plumbing myself; I could not invent her words (could I?) I should point out that Mother passed away over 19 years ago, and has never appeared in my dreams with helpful hints.

I told a friend here in town about the bathtub drain, and he brought over two small washers. Told me he thought there would be a bolt somewhere below the drain and a screw passed through the washers would restore the drain. Well, the Heathen was not too much of a believer.

This evening, on my own, I shone a torch down the drain after lifting off the sieve plate, and way down I could see a metal ring with a ... wait for it ... bolt through the middle pointing up. It was awkwardly distant to be reached by fingers or pliers, but I had the sudden thought that a fishhook on a line might be lowered into the drain and the device below snared and pulled upwards. As if I had a fishhook and a line! However, after hunting through the many drawers and boxes in my flat, I found a long twist-tie with a thin metal centre coated in plastic. I bent the end to make a hook and lowered it into the darkness of the drain (impossible to manoeuvre a torch at the same time) and, praying “Please!” to no god in particular, pulled upwards. The hook had latched onto the bolt and its ring; it came up to the bottom of the bathtub. I quickly unscrewed the bolt, took off the corroded and worn washer on the end of it, dropped on the new washers, and screwed the bolt down again. This pulled everything tightly together.

The Heathen, with his dream, his Mother, his friend and (his luck?) had fixed the drain. He dared to run the tap for a good long time, and no water bubbled out from below the tub.

When I was younger (but older than I was at my Auntie Maud’s) I used to find religion, hints of God, in both major and minor events. The night sky might make me tremble and so might a few minutes of listening to sitar music. Words, especially, could turn me on. Words still turn me on, but they no longer seem to turn a god on. Not the way they did in the 1960s. I took drugs to try and find the way to God.

That said, I recently watched again, after a few decades, the television series “Cosmos” written and presented by Dr Carl Sagan. I recalled reading that Sagan, as he was dying of cancer, had pretty much decided that there was no God. When I read that, years ago, I was surprised. As a Heathen, watching the series from start to finish over a few nights, I had to ask myself how Sagan could have dismissed God while speaking of so many wonders in the Cosmos.

Haydn’s “The Creation” oratorio has the line: ‘The wonder of his works displays the firmament,’ which is pleasant to sing (which I did in school) and thrilling to hear. Happens that the original German does not make sense in English as commonly translated. It has to be ‘The firmament displays the wonder of his works’.

The works displayed so wonderfully by the firmament that Sagan wrote and spoke of had me thinking that maybe I had it wrong. Maybe there is a god, even a God.

“That the Mormons assume a right exclusively to the benefits of God will be a lasting witness against them, and the same will it be against Christians.”
Thanks to William Blake (1757 – 1827)

For me, I think the main difficulty with a belief in a deity is that people tend to create Him (or Her) in their own image. This exclusivity extends beyond the worship service, beyond the sacred image, beyond the promises attached to this or that god. The True God and his True Church (for there must be one, if just to collect tithes and offerings) can only succeed when all opposition is crushed. There was never a god that whispered to the prophets: “Tell the people to pray as they will, do as they would, be what they wish.”

At the present time, there is a run-up to the Presidential Elections in the USA. A year from now, Americans will elect a leader. One of the Republican candidates is a Christian, we are told, of the Evangelical bent. Another Republican front-runner is a Mormon. The Christians, the Bible Believers (dare I say Bashers?), are getting the word out that Mormonism is a cult, not Christian, and that a Mormon President would surely lead the country into the jaws of Hell. The Mormons, by the way, believe that when the American Constitution is “hanging by a thread” the Mormons will take over America (and eventually the world) and rule for the Mormon god(s). There will be a political kingdom of God.

A True Christian, and a True Mormon, cannot believe outside their particular Catechism.

JFK was elected President despite (we must assume) adhering to Roman Catholic doctrine, which differs from that of our Evangelical Christians almost as much as Mormonism. Except, so far as I know, the Pope was not pulling strings.

Mormons in their meetinghouses vote to sustain their church leaders by the sign of the raised hand. I have never, ever, seen a hand withheld, much less a hand raised in opposition, no matter how difficult a decision. Simply, the members vote for the candidates that the Church leaders tell them to.

Do not expect the voters in Utah to sing the praises of Barack Obama, the Democrat, or Rick Perry the Republican Christian. Utah Mormons (and those elsewhere) pushed The Osmonds to the top of the pops 30 years ago, and Brandon Flowers of The Killers is repaying his fan-base by backing the Mormon Republican Mitt Romney for President in 2012.

I would not back a Mormon candidate for high office because I know a little about Mormonism, and a good deal about what True Mormons are expected to believe and do. Mormons are expected to withhold information that might put their church and its leaders in a bad light, indeed, they can lie and it is quite all right. They do lie. I have lied for them and with them.

As I stood in my flooded bathroom the other morning, sending up the sort of prayer King Canute might have, that Noah might have, I did not really expect an answer. Dreaming of my Mother and the bolt in the bathtub drain was rather odd, and finding my answer in the dream was even odder. I am not going to found The Church of the Flood (that would be a very catchy name, of course) and get religion. I might put the clues together, admire the firmament, and feel comfortable with the casual thought that someone or something, billions of years ago, released everything into time and space, and that matter and energy flooded outwards in every direction. Did someone or something create the laws of nature, of physics? Perhaps they were inherited from an earlier incarnation. Let it roll.

The Heathen is enjoying his shower again. This is a rainy day outdoors too. Bless the drain that works!

Vanished. She was that Small.

2011-10-07T17:37:00.004+01:00

“I can never decide whether my dreams are the result of my thoughts, or my thoughts the result of my dreams.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885 – 1930)

MOST NIGHTS I TAKE CAILEAN FOR A WALK some time after ten o’clock. In the summer months, this would be in daylight, even as late as half-eleven. However, for most of the year, it is well dark and we rely on the city lights illuminating our main street to mark the way out and the way back. The glitter of the sign above the door at Euro-Pizza, the creamy glow through the fogged window at Taste of China, the twinkle of the cigarettes youngsters are smoking on the bench outside the Post Office may not be visible at the International Space Station (indeed, I don’t suppose the folks up there can even spot Amble by the Sea in the daylight), but for the dog-walker they are signs of light and thus life.

I remember Marianne Faithfull being interviewed back in the 1960s, might it have been on the Simon Dee Show. The singer was not talking about her song - she may not have managed one that month - but about light and thus life. In her somewhat growly voice, Marianne told us that a spaceship from some distant world on a reconnaissance mission in our galaxy would have been disappointed until they slipped into the skies above the side of the Earth celebrating night. There, in the dark, would be sudden pockets of extraordinary brilliance. Where millions gathered in cities, the street and vehicle lights and the lights from windows in blocks and homes, would tell our visitors in no uncertain terms that we are at home here, their journey was worth it. I dare say the aliens overhead might wonder if we were glowing creatures, rather than the dark lumps we actually are. Might we gravitate to the dark with our inborn light, rather than light the way artificially as we fumble about without it?

It is curious how one recalls a brief interview conducted 45 years ago on the same day one pops across to the corner shop to buy milk and bread, but comes away without the bread because one forgets what it was one needed (and no list was made).

Last night, at about eleven o’clock, I walked Cailean as far as the Post Office on Queen Street, and turned back when I reached the three under-dressed young schoolgirls who seem to be there every night, smoking and yelling obscenities at passing cars and into mobile telephones. I crossed the street and walked up the pavement on the other side and at the top I was slowed down by scaffolding around the building next to The Waterloo public house. Outside the pub were a half-dozen or more youngish people, males and females, smoking, some drinking, and all in loud conversation.

Over the past few years, my dodgy hearing has worsened and I have a hearing aid in one ear (I am waiting for a device for the other ear). I struggle to make out ordinary talking, radios and background sounds. I can hear loud birds (the feathered variety and the lasses) quite well, something about the pitch, perhaps. People yelling on a dimly lit street do register with me.

And so, outside The Waterloo, I heard:

“She was really small. Not a dwarf, like ... But really, really small.”
“I recall her too. Lost track of her.”
“Remember what people used to call her at school?”
“Oh, yes. Bridgette the Midget.”
“Even though she wasn’t a midget.”
“And her name wasn’t Bridgette.”
“She was that small. Well under five feet. Maybe four.”
“Don’t know where she went after school.”
"Vanished."

That I remembered this afternoon, though I forgot the bread.

A Rustle at the door: Autumn had Arrived.

It is very much autumn. Cold, windy. The multi-coloured leaves were promising after some unusually sunny and warm weather a fortnight ago. The wind seems to be sufficient to wrest the leaves from the trees, and to blow a good many of them into the North Sea.

We may well have snow a month from now, if the past few years have marked a pattern. In any case, we are wearing nearly the full complement of winter clothes, though I have not worn my hat and gloves yet. God knows, walking Cailean late last night I wondered why I’d not reached for a hat when I left home.

Last winter our pavements and all but the main street were blocked by snow for weeks at a time. My courtyard was under ice. This year I have a snow shovel, and hope to make pathways.

Last winter, and the months through to early summer, my mood was buoyant. My Manic-Depressive Illness has, more or less, highs (mania and hypomania) and lows (depression) lasting around nine months each. When I am up, I feel brilliant, I am something of a superman, a rising star. I cannot sleep more than an hour or two a night. I read several books at once, an hour of this one, an hour of that one. I also walk a good deal, which is healthy. My medications tend to get me to a level point between high and low, but it is not easily done and requires monitoring. Nine months of flying near the sun and feeling untouchable ends, and I come to earth. I slow and cannot keep awake. My appetite goes. My enthusiasm dims.

Winston Churchill famously suffered from Manic-Depressive Illness, and he referred to his depressed periods as “the black dog”. I have a black dog, but Cailean tends to guide me through the light and the dark, aware of my wobbling, and he loves me as much when I stretch towards the sun claiming it for myself as when I go to bed at noon and pull the covers up because the light hurts.

I have been south of the centre for about four months. I am heavily medicated, more than I have ever been when low. I am sleeping too much. I am reading one book, and slowly. I am watching less television. I stopped writing entries for my Barking Mad Blog a few months ago.

Today, despite the wintry feel without and within, the cold and the dark, and struggling to eat regularly (I sometimes forget to eat for a day), I had a short group of words come to my mind. Not “buy bread” which might have been helpful this morning. Rather:

Look to the left,
And look to the right,
And walk into the starry skies.
Walk into the night.

I have been watching Carl Sagan’s wonderful television series from about 30 years ago—Cosmos—and know that Sagan, before his death, seemed to stop believing in higher powers, gods, divine creation. As I have watched his lectures on the telly, I have found myself returning to a belief in something. Christians and other religionists might not think much of the belief that flickers within me somewhere (nothing as bright as the light on the sign at Euro-Pizza). I find myself somehow content to think that something may have set our universe in motion (and that is that, no further interference, the laws of physics were set at the beginning). There are some scientists that think we may dwell in one bubble in a vast bowl of bubbles, each bubble a universe. Who is disturbing the soapy liquid, blowing the bubbles?

This flicker of belief, sadly, has given me little in the way of hope. Hope is a religious principle, and it seems to be the promise in a rather unpleasant life. I am not feeling any hope that I will see my dead loved ones some day. I feel the light, I feel the dark, the highs and lows, and they are real, but there are no visions. One day, it seems to me, I shall look this way and that, then walk into the unknown. Perhaps I shall see well-lit cities as I go forward, and shall know there is life, light in the darkest night. Will I dare to land?

“Life is a travelling to the edge of knowledge, then a leap taken.”
D.H. Lawrence (1885 – 1930)

A Tumble in the Hay with Lord Krishna

2011-08-21T12:53:00.003+01:00

AS YOU CAN SEE, this is a picture of Krishna and Radha, a most exotic couple. In 2006, I bought some colourful postcards in a gift shop at the Bhaktivedanta Manor, the Hare Krishna Temple in Hertfordshire. These certainly are extravagantly dressed gods. I have not only been in this temple of Lord Krishna, but in a Mormon temple. I can tell you truthfully that the Mormons’ attire is a damn sight more peculiar, and not nearly so attractive.

The gods, Krishna and his partner Radha, use rather a lot of makeup. I like the clothing best. I am too old now—and too short and fat—to wear anything fancier than corduroy trousers and a Harris Tweed jacket, and the odd Liberty of London tie if I must. That said, in the late 1960s I fancied being more colourful than the few flower-patterned shirts I could afford to buy in Carnaby Street or on the King’s Road in Chelsea. For good or evil, I could not save up enough to buy myself raw silk jackets, in bright colours, that fastened with golden frogs. White trousers with huge belts and buckles. Pale blue shoes. I once prayed for a fur coat having seen they were “in” with the Beautiful People. “A fur, just like you wear, dear God.” In 1967, the “Summer of Love”, I had a vision of myself that I cannot now revisit comfortably. As all those who take a look back more than twenty years say: “What was I thinking?”

Visiting London for a week in 2006, in the hottest weather on the books, was perfect for trekking around the city on foot, and to go out by car looking for the countryside. It is there somewhere, if you can just get past the new housing estates and old neighbourhoods. I saw a sign that read: “Suburbs next 50 Miles.” No, of course not.

So, onto the highways and byways of old England. My friends, Nalini and Shekhar, had asked me if I wanted to pop in and “See the God Revealed” as the traffic had been so congested that we could not travel far and hope to be back in Wembley Park before dark, even with the long twilight. We had been wandering around the ring roads of north and west London looking for touristy places. I had no idea what I might be getting myself into. God revealed. Might this be like the film shown in a Mormon temple during the secret endowment ceremony, featuring gods and prophets and men and at least one snake-like devil?

We arrived at two large gateposts, with plaques reading “Bhaktivedanta Manor” and “Hare Krishna Temple”. Inside the gates, past neatly clipped hedgerows, finely boxed hedges, greenhouses, and brilliant flowerbeds, was an enormous Tudor manor house, white with black beams, at least three storeys, outbuildings, and with leaded windows big enough for a church, some with stained glass. God’s summer cottage, perhaps? He might kick off the shoes and stretch out on the lawn, sipping a cold beverage. What would God drink? Nectar? Mead? The first and last of the wine of Cana? We parked with many dozens of cars in a designated field. It would be muddy in the rain, but was brick hard in the summer of 2006.

“You’ve been in a Mormon temple,” I told myself again. “It just cannot be weirder than that.” Following the crowd, I too took off my sandals, putting them at the edge of the many outside the main door, wondering aloud: “If I find a nicer pair of shoes when I come out, can I trade up?” My joke was not appreciated. Too Church of England, perhaps.

The late George Harrison of the Beatles had presented the Manor to the International Society for Krishna Consciousness movement back in 1973. In June 2006, I wandered about the Temple, with lots of other pilgrims, they turned out to be worshippers, waiting for the God to turn up. I was one of very few whites in the building that afternoon; half a dozen others were dressed in the saffron dhotis we have all seen in airports. I tried to sense George there. He wrote and sang: “All I have is yours, all you see is mine.” This was quite a donation, quite a gift.

Most of the adult visitors were people my age or older, of Indian heritage, and beautifully and modestly dressed with sudden touches of colour. With them, grandchildren perhaps: Youngsters so unlike ours. These neatly dressed little ones walked slowly, did not call out or poke at things, and must have had some appreciation for the more sacred things in the Temple. No golden frogs on the visitors. Would the God have them when he was unveiled?

It was to be at four-fifteen. On time!

All the doors, throughout the house, on three floors, were closed. What you needed to do—were encouraged to do—was to open them as you reached them. A gentle push sufficed. You pulled the doors to as you passed through, and all closed gently, quietly, none locking. I examined a huge bathtub. It was very nearly the size of the baptismal fonts in the basements of Mormon temples.

I was given two small dishes of rice when I returned to the ground floor. One was plain, the other spiced with ginger root. No knives, forks or spoons. Paper towels. I was a bit peckish.

As four o’clock approached, I joined Nalini, Shekhar, and many others in a large hall that had no furniture. One end of the hall had a closed curtain from side to side and ceiling to floor. At the other end of the room sat a life-size—I thought it was a live person at first—figure. Nalini told me he was A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. That is a fine name. He had founded the Krishna Consciousness Movement. The statue was surrounded with flowers and clothed almost as oddly as I had wanted to be back in the 1960s. People—except for me—kneeled and bowed to the statue, some lay flat, face down, on the floor in front of it. I also saw adults prostrating themselves on the floor at the feet of young children. Perhaps, in sympathy, to remind the children that nothing ages quite like youth: “You could be our age in the blink of Krishna’s eye.”

All the people—adults and children—moved slowly. People smiled and nodded, but did not reach for your elbow to hurry you along to where they thought you should be. There was no running about. Even with four-fifteen closing in.

Nothing seemed too weird in the moment. Even the chanting was pleasing to a degree. In the room with us—I include the Swami—there were a couple of white men in one corner, wearing the robes you see Krishna people wearing in Airports. One man thumped a drum and the other worked a squeezebox. Here, in this Temple, these priests were quite unattractive. They are creepy in airports too, I think. What is that all about? I believe it is because I find their pallid, shaved heads and doughy bodies repulsive, rather than their Consciousness. Tanned and brown-skinned monks in saffron dhotis are wonderfully attractive. These acolytes in Watford would look so much better with a Mystic Tan. In addition, I thought wickedly, after a hearty meal at a Mongolian Barbecue. Clearly, I had much to learn.

Then, my hosts’ bowing over, we joined dozens of others sat on individual sized flat mats, on the floor facing—curiously—the closed curtain, and they chanted. As people lowered themselves, they picked up the Mantra.

There I was, sat on a mat in a dimly lit hall with about fifty people singing “Hare Krishna! Hare Krishna! Krishna Krishna”. To think I was—for over thirty years—severely limited by panic disorder. And then we watched the God unveiled at 4.15pm. Why 4.15pm? Two more shaved, robed men opened the curtains after a little bell rang somewhere. Is my mobile phone switched off? The Divine One had been behind the curtains all along: Or was he wheeled in from the wings? Actually, this Krishna was a sort of conjoined entity: They were very attractive if you like that sort of thing. They were life-sized, unlike Christian Gods, and very colourful, and draped beautifully with flowers as they sat at their altar.

This splendid altar held candles, incense, flowers, dishes of food, and drink placed before and around Krishna and his partner. Offerings over, there followed a thorough scrubbing of the floor within the holy place and then a careful dusting and polishing of the images. I wondered why the God’s place was so carefully cleansed after receiving gifts from his people. Do the gifts of men come polluted? I will write 250 words on that the next time I stay after school.

Chanting! Chanting! I am thinking of the line in “Absolutely Fabulous” when Edina tells her concerned Guru over the telephone: “I’m chanting as we speak.” Before the ceremony wrapped up, a large, wooden chest—that just did not fit in with the general decor—was placed where Krishna’s floor became ours. People went—on their knees and backsides—to the chest and slipped money into the slot in it. Mostly coins. Krishna would prefer the rustle of five and ten pound notes, I am certain; the Church of England does. However, clinking coins sounded good at a ceremony that was orchestrated with bells and other plucked or thumped instruments. Another draped man—they seemed to be getting paler the nearer they were to Krishna—waved a very large feather, perhaps that of an ostrich, to encourage the burning incense. To get the scented smoke up Krishna’s and Radha’s noses. Hare! Hare!

Quite suddenly, a bell rang somewhere off-stage, reminding Krishna—I suppose—that he had another appointment. Therefore, abruptly, the curtains were closed. Getting to my feet was not easy, the mat slipping about, and then fine dust on the floor, and only the flat wall to claw at. I ached all over.

Having withheld my coins and five-pound notes from the temptation of the ugly wooden chest, I headed outside, and noted my own sandals were the nicest in the heap, so I put them on again. I was thus able to afford some postcards and a string of love beads and a mango milk shake at the “Hare Krishna Temple Store and Café.” I bought sodas and biscuits for Nalini and Shekhar. I am wearing the beads today, so many years later. I cannot figure out how to release the clasp. A bit like some branches of Christianity.

Leaving the Café, we walked through greenhouses and past aboveground pools with water lilies in them, and little golden fish chasing bubbles and sparks. You could reach out to a lotus blossom without falling over and into a ground level pond. We could see the parked cars in the distance, but went through wooden gates towards the posted “Temple Farm”. Enormous cattle, water buffalo, gave us the eye from a field very nearly crowded with enormous multi-coloured wagons. Nalini explained—poor thing had been explaining before we ever left Wembley Park—that at times the oxen would be hitched to the wagons, which were then considered “chariots” and the teams raced about. I recalled the charioteers in “Ben-Hur” and laughed somewhere behind my Foster Grants. I could not imagine it here, and they had no postcard showing bus-size wagons drawn by burly bulls. How fast could that be? Do they smack their oxen to hurry them along?

A very large building had a sign reading “Temple Barn”, and as we walked in, we were asked to wash our hands. That is not a bad idea; for over an hour I had been pushing myself about on my mat on the floor of Krishna’s audience room, trying to get my folded legs under me bearable, and some feeling back in my lower body. I was dusty.

There were no cows in the barn after all that. It was milking time in another building, somewhere sterilised. This barn looked as pristine a place one might have. We found a ramp that went up to an elevated platform, higher than the barn floor, about six feet. Up I went. Outside a gate on the platform was a shining steel bin filled with exquisite, fresh, unblemished fruit and vegetables. Behind a stall door, lying on fresh hay, were two calves: Quite young and almost golden, coats brushed clean, no flies, no bits of straw, eyes enormous and brown almost as if they were wearing make-up. No manure in the stall, and only a sweet fragrance. A picture of total serenity. One calf was called Krishna, a common name at the Manor, and I cannot be sure the other was Radha. Their mothers must have been in the milking shed.

I crouched on my aching legs to reach in and touch the calf nearest me, who might have been Krishna, or the other one. I did not recall ever having touched a live cow. This one did not look as if it would bite me. I gave the creature’s ear a nice massage and did the same routine that works for dogs, cats, swans, budgies, lions and tigers, and everything else, including Lotus Europa sports cars. Singing:

Hello Baby! Hello Baby!
I would like to stroke your muzzle!
Come on Baby! Come on Baby!
You are such a beautiful Baby!

Someone below called out: “Would you like some very fresh ice-cream?” Of course, I would, as a chaser after the mango milkshake. I pushed down on my legs and made to stand up. That did not happen: I felt dizzy—I do that often with my dodgy blood pressure—and went sailing off into space.

My knapsack came up behind my head and upper back when I reached the concrete floor below the platform, protecting my head from a direct blow. Some loose, clean hay softened the fall of the rest of me. The barn was so immaculate, that not even a straw was out of place and in need of refreshment. Does Krishna actually keep a lookout for his followers and visitors? If he does: “Thank you, Sir.”

We then had the very fresh ice cream, again mango flavoured. I was but a little shaken by my fall. As I hit the ground, I had thought: “This will make a good story.”

The Waves

2011-08-07T13:51:00.005+01:00

He, doing so, put forth to seas,
Where when men been, there's seldom ease;
For now the wind begins to blow;
Thunder above and deeps below
Make such unquiet, that the ship
Should house him safe is wreck'd and split;
And he, good prince, having all lost,
By waves from coast to coast is tost.
William Shakespeare (Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Act I, Scene IV)

AT WARWICK ACADEMY, from time to time, the recess or lunch break on the playing fields would be interrupted by loud shouts of “Fight! Fight!” and suddenly a knot of boys would form here or there, encircling something unseen but understood. One boy would have taken umbrage at something another lad had said or done, and would launch an attack of fists and feet. Sticks, stones or knives simply did not enter into it.

The spectators would continue to call out their encouragement until one (or both) of the boys was bloodied; and then the knot would unravel rapidly, the gladiatorial ended, and runny noses, split lips and blackened eyes would be dabbed at in the toilets.

I do not recall teachers, or even prefects, ever breaking up a fight.

I might add that I do not remember ever seeing girls fighting, except by way of words and distant gestures. The girls were as adept with a rude finger or two as their older brothers were.

There was not a great deal of bullying at Warwick Academy, bigger boys lording it over younger or smaller pupils. That said, in my day, some of our young tin Caesars felt it necessary to dictate hairstyles and the length of one’s hair. As this demand for short hair was the same as that dictated by the Headmaster, I never saw people punished for ganging up on boys with hair a little over the ears or collars. Our Headmaster could never be accused of being fair.

Only once was I threatened with a haircut by my classmates, and that was at a party one weekend night. I simply slipped out of the host’s door and walked a few miles home in the dark. I can still remember the walk home, 45 years later. Slipping out of the house, slipping along the roads, and taking a longer route than I need have done so that if anyone came after me they would expect me elsewhere, slipping into my home after midnight and never telling my mother I had walked home. One or two friends at the party did worry when I had vanished, knowing I had no transport and four or five miles to get home.

The Headmaster bullied me over my “long” hair. Many the times I was called up in morning Assembly, and told to report to the Headmaster after our little services were done. In his office, I would be shrieked at by a man twice my size, who would go so red in his rage that one expected something to pop. I can tell you he lived into his nineties, possibly because when he retired from his position at Warwick Academy he grew his hair longer than mine had ever been.

Last night, very late, I watched rioters, looters, and arsonists attempting to level part of London, starting in Tottenham’s High Road. Apparently, a small protest over the shooting death of a bloke two nights earlier got “out of hand”. It appeared more likely that a peaceful protest was hijacked by mini-gangsters who wanted to rumble. Soon I was watching people fleeing, while a few males pitched rocks and petrol bombs at vehicles and buildings, and there was a live view of the arsonists’ younger brothers wheeling shopping trolleys loaded with electronic goods from shattered storefronts.

A reporter from the BBC seemed to have taken a position in the centre of a street, with fires raging in the buildings behind him, and rock-throwing youths battling mounted police nearby. Two teenagers, in jeans and T-shirts, came up behind the reporter. First, Yellow Shirt gave the viewing audience a bit of a dance and hand gestures that were offensive even to someone as out of it as I am. Punching fists, rude fingers, and thrusts. Then Blue Shirt jumped in from the dark and shoved Yellow Shirt, who stumbled about.

I was waiting to hear “Fight! Fight!” However, the shirts decided to play for the cameras, smiling widely and looking anything but tough. The BBC reporter did not seem to know what was going on two feet behind him, or was simply not going to be bothered by it. The camera operator narrowed the shot so that only the reporter’s face and some flames behind his left ear filled the screen. The boys were out of the shot. That is when the reporter got the push and other rioters and yobs went for the camera and the BBC van. The presenter back in the studio told us that there appeared to be some confrontation between their team in Tottenham and protestors. "And here are some earlier pictures ..."

Today, it is all smouldering buildings, streets covered in rubbish and ash, and police walking about looking for “evidence”. Walls of now-roofless Victorian buildings are tottering in Tottenham. The locals are homeless and some even have no clothing but that they wore to flee the fires in the night. Somewhere, one supposes, boys and their slightly bigger brothers are setting up splendid stereo systems and HD television sets. How do young kids explain the new 42” telly with a surround-sound feature in the front room to their parents? Do they even have parents, or people who parent them?

From what I can gather watching the Beeb, at first only about 15 police officers were on duty when the protest started. One of the Police bigwigs tells us they misjudged the size of the crowd and the emotions of those taking part. Several riots this summer have also been poorly anticipated. Our Government is busy reducing the police services, and our military, despite protest marches and gatherings and the heartfelt anger that the population seems always to feel during Tory administrations.

Right now, our Government is off on holiday. No doubt Cabinet Ministers travel well on the taxpayer. The world’s economies are collapsing, and the world’s leaders (all in their holiday digs) simply do not have a clue and no end of photo-ops will calm the markets.

Our Government’s huge budget cuts have resulted in the closure of youth clubs. Notably in the parts of London with the ethnicity of Tottenham. Is it not time to weigh up the many millions lost in riots and arson and looting against the cost of providing boys and girls with somewhere half-decent to go on a Saturday night?

In the television coverage last night I was amazed at the many different types on the streets, though must admit there were 9 boys to every girl. But there were whites and blacks, Arabs and Hasidic Jews, and people in all sorts of clothes, from conservative to rather sluttish. Nearly all, when interviewed, seemed to speak with English accents. Imagine the fun they could have at youth group events!

Yesterday we saw a posed photograph of President Obama of the USA chatting on the phone with his military advisor, being told that over 30 US soldiers had been killed when a helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan. Obama’s hair looks grey, he looks weary, and that is how he had to look. It was a single still picture, not a film. Did he also swear? Shake a fist? Curse the Taliban and their Allah? Did he shed a tear, edited out?

Could the economies of the great western nations be up shit creek because we are fighting unwinnable wars? Not just unwinnable wars, but wars that nobody seems to understand (or want) back at home.

Why are we bombing Libya, but not Yemen or Syria or Bahrain? Why not North Korea or Burma? Do we even protest at Cabinet level when a Saudi woman is the victim of Sharia Law?

Why are we being asked to send tens of millions of pounds of food aid to starving Africans who are forbidden by their Muslim leaders to accept aid from Infidels? We have to borrow to get the money to send on its lost cause. Why cannot rich Islamic nations like Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states send aid to their Islamic brothers in Africa?

Over the last 30 years, we have been accompanied on life’s journey by no end of video games. We have shot down Space Invaders, blasted dragons, and outgunned dark-skinned forces in a desert town. At the end of the day, we have pressed the “reset” button and all returned to normal. For 30 years, death has been brief and life restored in a click. Magic! No wonder boys shoot their mates without a second thought. Press reset a thousand times to revive your dead, and pull a trigger twice. What is the harm?

Civil unrest, military disasters, monetary mayhem. It is as if natural disasters, those typhoons, tornados, tsunamis and great rumbling earthquakes just are not enough suffering for us.

I enjoyed my late night walk home from the party that threatened to cut my hair in 1965. The air was cool and the lights sparkled on the water. I just left the hassle behind and enjoyed the new moment.

Waves.

Mentholated Dreams

2011-07-15T19:32:00.007+01:00

And while he lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters; the LORD being merciful unto him: and they brought him forth, and set him without the city.

And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed.

And Lot said unto them, Oh, not so, my LORD.

Genesis 19: 16-18

I WAS NOT AWARE of actually lighting my cigarette last night. I always seem to have a lit cigarette in my mouth, or in my hand. When I am not sucking on the thing, I am stabbing the air with it, an extension of my small, stubby fingers. It is quite possible that my constant waving is somewhat camp, more so when I am smoking one of those extra-long brands. More. Are they called More? 120mm wrapped in dark brown paper. Menthol, I have always smoked menthol.

In 1967, at school in England, I smoked Benson & Hedges menthol cigarettes, and then over the next few years Salems, and, finally Kools. Kools were so mentholated, so cold on the palate, and in the sinuses, that it was not unlike candy. I dare say that was the point of those minty additives, taste and a numbing sensation. What did my breath smell like? Did the raw tobacco fragrance come through? My clothes always smelled of tobacco, as did my furniture, curtains, hair. However, I thought that might be from the company I kept, I never attributed the foul effluvia to myself.

In 1973, I was chain-smoking in my office at AIG, drinking all the coffee the tea-lady brought round, and filling my ashtray several times a day. I do not remember whether I tipped the ashes into the bin under my desk, or if one of our janitors came round to tidy unpleasant things away.

In the autumn of 1973, I was investigating the Mormon Church (this was their wording, prospective converts were “investigators”, which may not be used nearly 40 years later when a careful investigation could catch the Latter-day Saints out) and through the missionary discussions (another of their catch-words) I chain smoked. Quite possibly leaving the young missionaries assigned to me with smelly clothing and watering eyes. I sucked up that mentholated smoke from my King Size Kools while I was inhaling the oddest doctrines and nodding and bobbing.

The Mormons encouraged me to quit smoking, but I was not having that wisdom forced down my throat. I could not join their church while I smoked (or drank alcohol, tea and coffee). The best part of a year passed. And in late summer of 1974, one night I had been to see a play (it was “Harvey”, performed by the students at the high school on the USNAS in Bermuda) and I was riding my moped home. I suddenly stopped my cycle, took my pack of cigarettes from my pocket, and removed the one I had been smoking as I rode through the night from my mouth and chucked them into a hedge. I did not smoke again for two years, and was baptized a Mormon during that time.

By 1976, I was involved in local theatre and it seemed that everyone smoked. I was no longer active in the Mormon Church. No guilt. The Mormons were sneaky and appointed me a member of the Branch Presidency, so that I had to attend and conduct meetings (three meetings on a Sunday at the chapel, and a Presidency meeting from time to time, and calls to minister to our flock). I did not smoke in the calendar year 1978.

Despite living in Salt Lake City, I managed to smoke in 1979 and the first few months of 1980. Back in Bermuda, cigarettes were certainly easier to find and buy than in Utah. I smoked heavily, at least two packs of Kools a day, at 55¢ each in 1981. That was about 30p, though cigarettes in the UK were further taxed so that a pack, purchased in England would set you back at least 80p. (In 2011, as I write this, in the UK a pack of cigarettes costs about £7.00, or over $11.00.)

In 1981, in July 1981, exactly 30 years ago as I sit here typing tonight, I was in a psychiatric hospital being treated for severe panic disorder. I was sectioned for about six weeks in late spring. I was taken off all the medications that I had been prescribed for a year or so, and those tablets I had managed to get on the sly. I was locked up to keep me from doing myself some harm. I sat in my tiny room with its tiny toilet and sink and chain-smoked. Night and day, I smoked. Then, in mid-July of 1981, one day, in the hospital, I ran out of cigarettes and was so anxious that I was unable to walk down the hill to the drugstore to buy more. I have not smoked since then, thirty years ago. I tend to suck on mint sweets.

Except in my dreams. Nearly every night I dream, and, in nearly every dream, I am smoking.

If I walk past a pub and there are people outside smoking, I try to hold my breath and walk quickly. I am aware that the stench of smoke attaches itself to one’s clothing so easily. I dislike that tobacco smell so much. So many very young people, as many little girls as boys, are smoking on the streets here, and the awful smell surrounds them. Sometimes one smells the breath of a smoker who is not smoking at that moment. It might be a stranger. It never goes away, no matter how much mouthwash and chewing gum one uses.

My doctor checks my lungs every year, because I had been such a heavy smoker over so many years. My father and one of his brothers, chain-smokers, died from conditions brought about by that unhealthy lifestyle. Died at around 70 years. My two grandfathers, smokers, died of cancer. The one of my grandmothers who smoked (now and then) died, quite young, of cancer. My mother, always surrounded by cigarette smoke (much of it mine) while not a smoker also died of cancer.

I do not know whether I might be at high risk as a former smoker, (has the damage been done?) or whether I just happen to be dealing with some genes that might give me trouble in, possibly, less than a decade.

In my life, until 30 years ago, and in my dreams as recently as last night, I am a rather flamboyant smoker. It is all fun. However, I wonder if the dream will come, in which I cannot catch my breath, which finds me wheezing beyond my annual hay-fever discomfort, that sees me propped up in bed and counting the last days out in tonics and tablets and cannulae.

Yes, it does occur to me that my crippling years with panic disorder in the 1980s might well have saved my life. I was unable to smoke and drink for financial and physical and psychological reasons.

Woo-Hoo!

I, PLATYPUS

2011-06-25T22:14:00.021+01:00

Portrait of the Art Critic as a Young Man

Hoy-day, what a sweep of vanity comes this way!
They dance! They are mad women.
Like madness is the glory of this life.
As this pomp shows to a little oil and root.
We make ourselves fools, to disport ourselves;
And spend our flatteries, to drink those men
Upon whose age we void it up again,
With poisonous spite and envy.
Who lives that's not depraved or depraves?
Who dies, that bears not one spurn to their graves
Of their friends' gift?
I should fear those that dance before me now
Would one day stamp upon me: 't has been done;
Men shut their doors against a setting sun.
William Shakespeare. (Timon of Athens. Act I, Scene II)

TO THE BEST OF MY RECOLLECTION my first paying job was mowing a lawn. About an acre, belonging to my mother’s brother. Our near relatives lived next door to us, on a hillside. I had mowed my mother’s half-acre for a while, and it was rather rocky ground, but not too steep at least. When I moved up onto the slopes, I really did begin to sweat. Seems to me that it was about this time that I first experienced body odour. My own personal stink.

I was saving money to buy a moped. I needed £100, and each time I mowed my uncle’s acre I brought home £1. It seemed that it might take forever. About that time, a second paying position opened. I washed dishes after dinner parties. I would arrive in the kitchen as the dinner was being plated, and start washing anything that was no longer required, working my way through the pots, pans, whisks, and ladles to the demitasse coffee cups and little crystal glasses that liqueurs had been served in. After two or three hours, I had clean fingernails, a moist forehead, and a pound note.

I believe I managed to save the £100 in less than a year. Not bad, bearing in mind I had other expenses. What I did not spend on haircuts, I did use to buy the latest pop records and some rather dodgy clothes. I thought I looked good in flowered shirts with my hair covering most of my face and over my collar.

One short-lived job was tending the bar at The Wheatsheaf Inn, in Ludlow, Shropshire. A lovely old building, where I lived in the attic. I had to remember to walk down the centre of the room and duck my head as I rolled onto my bed. Just above the bed was a flat window in the roof, and as I looked out, I could see bats and night birds flying around the inn’s chimneys. I did not much care for the bar tending, but joined a crew of house painters in the neighbourhood and did that in the daytime. I was paid £5 a week, plus breakfast and lodging.

I was interviewed by the personnel manager at a branch of the Westminster Bank in Maidstone, Kent, and, despite having absolutely no experience of banking and finance, I was offered a job. The Bank advised me to buy a suit or two, and to get a haircut. I might expect £10 a week, before taxes. This seemed rather grand, twice my pay at The Wheatsheaf Inn.

The bank job did not happen. I had put out feelers at the Bermuda office of American International Group (AIG), and flew off to see what that might offer me, a still-greasy teenager. My mother’s brother, the one whose lawn I had mowed some years before, happened to be the president of AIG operations in Bermuda; I also knew many of the employees through their children with whom I had grown up. I was offered a job immediately. In my defence, my uncle did not know that I was applying for a position in his firm.

My talents were judged most appropriate to work in the Accounting and Finance Department. I dare say this was not because I had some experience in an office, but I had never even had so much as a chequebook to balance. So why? I had managed to pass GCE “A” Levels in Mathematics, though only just. There was nothing of bookkeeping in those courses, just a few months of calculus, some statistics, a bit of applied mathematics and physics. I could have worked out something involving Newton’s three Laws of Motion (sometimes I still recall the equations, though not tonight), but I had no idea what a Debit or a Credit might be.

Happens, I learned a bit about bookkeeping, and I worked in that field, for a few employers, off and on for the next 30 years. My mind has now been wiped clean; I now have no real notion of what one might do to balance books, by hand or on a computer. I let the bank balance things for me, though I have a vague idea of what level of poverty I should be classed in.

I have many AIG memories, but the one that comes to mind first involves my boss in the Accounting and Finance Department. The Treasurer was a very large, bulky man, not too many years older than my parents were, but his children were old enough to have been ahead of me academically and socially. I knew his name, but nothing else about him. Mr Dale had a buzzer system that he operated from his desk in his corner office. A single buzz was to summon his executive secretary, two buzzes meant his personal assistant should rush in, three and his chief filing clerk had to get hopping. There were other buzzes that nobody seemed to understand. Had Mr Dale buzzed five times, or was it a two and a three? Had he rested a ledger on the button?

Mr Dale travelled to the company’s New York City offices frequently. We were all glad when this happened. The first experience I had of this was within days of settling into my chair near the Xerox photocopier that I was supposed to keep full of paper, and ink, and to dismantle when copies (frequently) jammed in the works. I was truly clueless. As the boss prepared for his trip, his filing clerk was on constant alert to photocopy everything and anything that might be needed in NYC. This before computers, of course. Hard copy days.

The morning arrived and Mr Dale’s secretary came and asked me to carry his bag to the elevator, and then out to the company car in the parking area. I crept into the corner office, Mr Dale looked at me as if he had no idea who I was (I do not suppose he would) as I reached for the leather straps on a large canvas bag. I hefted and the bag stayed on the floor. I lifted again and it moved just a little sideways. I reached with both hands, got the bag airborne and wobbled towards the door with it. I was sweating by the time I pushed it into the elevator. Downstairs, out of sight of Mr Dale, I simply dragged the bag over to the door and signalled the driver to bring the car up.

I asked for an explanation when we were all horsing around after the boss had headed to the Airport. Turned out the very large, bulky Mr Dale was on a strict diet and his doctor had passed him along to a psychologist. The shrink had told Mr Dale that he must purchase lead ingots equal in weight to the amount he exceeded his perfect weight for his height and frame, put them in a bag, and carry it with him everywhere. He was not particularly tall, and was mostly fat. There was the better part of a man’s weight in the canvas bag. Rather than lift it himself, Mr Dale had staff members lug it about for him. To the best of my knowledge, very little lead came out of the canvas bag. His excess weight remained steady, or increased. Books badly balanced?

I have worked in insurance accounting offices, at a supermarket, at a Peugeot motorcycle and bicycle dealership, for a landscaping firm, in a convenience store taking passport photographs, in a petrol station, and as an assistant to a friend who needed someone to take her dogs to obedience training. I even taught night school classes in creative writing.

Almost exactly ten years ago, late 2001, when George Harrison died, I phoned our local newspaper and asked if I might write an obituary on the former Beatle (my favourite, it happened) for the weekend edition. To my surprise, the editor agreed and I banged out a thousand words. They came easily. A thousand words still flow easily (we are nearly at 1,500 here). I have been writing since I was editor of our grammar school newspaper. I have always kept up a considerable correspondence with friends. It is easy for me. Computers made it even quicker, as fast as I can type with two fingers of my right hand; the words are always there.

I offered the occasional article for that weekend edition, and it would run something most weeks, at $100 a pop. They wanted articles about things I remembered. Things I had seen. As if I was so very old.

Then the art critic for that weekender died. I did not weep long, but offered to have a go in her place. That turned out to be an interesting experience, one I enjoyed. My family has artists on both sides, not just painters, but actors and musicians. I tried to paint when I was in my salad days, not terribly well, but mixed with a fair lot of artisans. I knew painters well, and that lead to set-painters in local theatre, which took me into producing a couple of shows on a small scale.

I attended gallery openings, and first nights at the theatre, and managed to knock out the required column in short order. I only ever struggled when commissioned to write a group of articles on motor vehicles; I was not used to re-writes.

I am reminded of an opening at “Kofu Hair and Gallery” in Bermuda. The hair salon was on a rooftop in a dodgy part of town (one might be gunned down there nowadays) and the owner, a Jamaican with a Bermudian girlfriend, did the hair of black women, and hung paintings on every spare bit of wall space. One was given a programme and, working around the clients, chairs, sinks, and hair-dryers, could study the latest exhibition.

My first visit to Kofu was surprising. The quality of the pictures on show was surprisingly good, even if most of them were the work of the proprietor. There were a few odd things, chairs with nails driven through the seats, hanging from the ceiling. Then the owner took leave of the matron he had been seeing to at the sink, and invited me to go in the “Private Gallery”. I was told that I could not review, or mention, these special pictures, but he would like me to see them to better understand his work.

We walked to a closed door in the centre of one wall, and my host unlocked it, switched on a light, and directed me into the narrow corridor inside. I could tell the walls were hung with huge canvases, some reaching from ceiling to floor, but seeing them was extremely difficult as the corridor was so narrow. One could not get more than a foot away from the surface of a painting perhaps eight foot square.

“What do you think?” The gallery owner asked, indicating a painting.

“I cannot really see it. What exactly would it be?”

Imagine a Jackson Pollock being sucked into a train tunnel. Or the open jaws of a feeding shark.

“It is my girlfriend’s pussy. Close up.”

Close up and eight feet across, at the end of my nose.

“You cannot write about this, of course. The police would raid us.”

This sort of thing might put one off, I dare say. I might have become a John Ruskin. Instead, I see the comedy in it. Ruskin, apparently, never got over Effie Gray’s pubic hair, or was it her menstrual blood, and I am guessing he never had a good laugh about it.

Nowadays I write blog entries. I am not paid, but for the occasional compliment. I also write Tweets, 140 character remarks, on Twitter. Moreover, on good days, I attach my blog entry to my Tweet, and somebody might wind up here.

How did you get here?

Concessionary Tale

2011-06-23T11:33:00.013+01:00

The years between 50 and 70 are the hardest.

You are always asked to do things,

and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.

T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

A FORTNIGHT AGO, some old friends of mine (so many of my friends are old now, and this is what keeps me so young) on their first trip to Great Britain arrived in my part of this other Eden.

Sue and Dave had driven up from London, taking a few days, with a stop in York to visit the Minster. I can tell you that some of these single attractions are alone worth the flight from the New World back into time and place. They had spent a good part of a day at Westminster Abbey in London padding about between poets and headless queens.

I have been visiting many of these historic sites for over 50 years, first in the care of my Nan Eldridge who knew what is what and how to get to what is what. Those were early mornings in the forecourt of a coach station, with a bag of sandwiches for our lunch. A muddle of people, most of whom seemed as old as my Nan, which is to say truly ancient, would gradually make their way to the appropriate gate and form a queue. Of course, these fossils, these relics of another age, survivors of the war and peace, were not, in fact, as old as I am now.

Once on board the coach, we would fiddle with the air vents, and I would look out of the window to watch familiar places fall behind us. Then, at about nine o’clock, everybody on the bus would open his or her boxed lunch and eat every crumb. At ten, the driver would pause at an inn somewhere for a toilet and tea break. Nowadays, the word to politely cover this is a “comfort stop”. We all watch full-frontal nudity and listen to shocking language on Channel 4 in the evening, but prefer not to be troubled by anything that hints at bodily functions.

I have a toilet story. A year ago, Sue’s brother, Richard, was in town on his first visit. We took the train down to Durham for the day and after a while I needed to use the toilets (Richard, in Utah, would likely call them restrooms) and we found some at the bottom of several flights of stairs in a small shopping mall. I left Richard at street level and followed the signs downwards.

It was a very nice, clean toilet. A few others were using it when I arrived. I went to the row of urinals and unzipped my flies, as one does. There was one other bloke at the urinals as Richard appeared. He had decided he had best get some comfort. I did not appreciate that it was Richard, last to enter. I finished, headed quickly to the sink, and then climbed the stairs back up to the shopping mall concourse. No Richard. I decided to stay in place and wait for him to reappear, thinking he might have gone into one of the shops.

Richard trots into view, from the door down to the public toilets. He indicated we might move along, seeming a tad flustered. Turned out that Richard had, while peeing, thought the fellow a few bowls along from him was I, and with the stream of urine being plentiful and powerful, Richard had remarked on it. “Nice and steady there! You won’t be having any prostate problems for a while.” Then Richard realised it was not me, but a complete stranger.

When Sue and Dave rolled into Alnwick, where we had decided to meet for a walkabout and to visit the Castle (I had taken the bus up from Amble), they were coming from Otterburn, inland, and were directed by their Sat-Nav to the Pottergate entrance of the Castle. I had disembarked on the far side, where the Alnwick Garden entrance is. One has to walk across some fields to enter the Castle.

We each expected to find the other in the same gate area of the Castle, but were on opposite sides of the massive building. Thank heavens for mobile telephones! I think that when I phoned Dave’s mobile (he would call it a cellular device) the call might have looped across the Atlantic Ocean to Maryland and back. No matter how well travelled our telephone signal was, we talked ourselves into a common area outside the gift shop.

There was a younger woman, perhaps 25, behind the counter in the ticket office. I approached, smiled, and asked for a single ticket for the Castle. The young lady smiled back and whispered something to me.

I am hard of hearing, and am presently using a temporary hearing aid before being fitted for something more powerful in July. I said to the counter person: “I’m sorry, I cannot hear too well. Might you repeat that?” Another whisper. Another: “Sorry. Louder.”

One might be forgiven for misunderstanding what I was being asked in this whisper. The woman had said, a few times before I understood clearly: “Are you a grownup?”

“What do you mean?”
“Grownup. Are you over 60?”
“In fact, I am. Would you like some identification?”

I had ID, and I was wearing a grey beard, bifocals and a hearing aid.

“No. That is okay. As a grownup, you get a concessionary entrance ticket.”

Therefore, I was charged a pound or two less than the many visitors a few years and more younger than I am.

It is good to be a grownup!

I am suddenly reminded of something that happened over 40 years ago. A friend (a young friend then) and I had gone to the cinema to see the recently released (and much hyped) film “Bonnie and Clyde”. We thoroughly enjoyed the picture (I have never seen it again, and do not know if it has held up at all well) and came out into the chilly night air, lighting our cigarettes and pushing through the crowds to get to the parking area.

And we walked straight into my mother’s parents and some family friends, a couple not much younger than my grandparents. They would all have been around the age I am as I sit here typing this account.

My mate and I were positively bubbling with enthusiasm about the bloody gangster film we had all just seen. My grandparents and their friends looked quite deflated, shocked even.

“We thought it was just awful.”
“We had expected it to be a Scottish musical.”

I am wondering if my grandparents, who would have been “grownups” by the current definition at the ticket desk at Alnwick Castle, would (40+ years ago) have got a discount on their theatre tickets.

Are there any attractions, such as historical sites, places of worship, films, plays, and books, that one can gain entrance to at a mutually agreed rate? If the Tower of London knocks one’s socks off, might one happily pay the full admission price (or more)? And if Owl World disappoints, can one ask for a few quid back (to spend in the pub)?

Alternatively, shall we just have the young, and grownups?

IMAGININGS

2011-06-08T15:01:00.003+01:00

So sure as this beard’s grey,
What will you adventure...?
William Shakespeare (The Winter’s Tale, Act II, Scene III)

IN 1978, I had a passport photograph taken in a shop in the Bermudiana Arcade in Hamilton, Bermuda. The proprietor sat me in front of a screen, took a photograph with a large camera on a tripod, and then took another picture after telling me not to move. My photographs would be ready in a week’s time.

I recall collecting four prints (and he gave me the two negatives), which would have to be trimmed down by somebody in the passport section of the British Embassy in Washington DC. The head, neck, and uppermost shoulders were the correct size, but the photographer had set his sights on my waist and everything above.

Happens I had a beard at the time. Not the first I had grown. I have had a moustache since I was in my late teens, and once I reached my twenties, I would grow a beard from time to time, depending on the weather. A cooler time of year would be more encouraging.

In 1978, when I was renewing my British passport whilst in Bermuda, I was anticipating a trip, my first, to the Rocky Mountains. I would have been 28 years old. My hair and beard were reddish brown, quite a bit darker than my hair was in a 1968 passport (taken in Gillingham, Kent). A passport in the late 1980s showed me with thinning, greying hair.

My current passport, issued here in Northumberland about two years ago, is that of a white-haired individual, with a white moustache. The same picture appears on my bus pass. When I was in the booth, having my photograph taken by a digital camera, my glasses seemed to reflect the light. I took them off, and so I am not exactly myself, as I always wear my glasses when I am out and about. I look squinty.

I spent a few years on the other side of a camera in the same shop in which I had posed for my passport picture back in 1978. It would have been the late 1990s. “Kit ‘n’ Caboodle” sold newspapers, cigarettes, junk food and soft drinks, and ghastly small toys at Christmas. One could have photocopies made. I never figured out how to work the enormous Xerox machine, and tried to be busy whenever a customer appeared wanting copies. As I recall, most of these customers were expatriate workers copying documents to submit to the Bermuda Government to enable them to retain their jobs another year or so. There were also a few poets who wanted no end of copies of their latest oeuvres. Expectant mothers would turn up wanting copies of their ultrasound scans, and would point out the important bits. The ultrasound foetus, one’s first passport picture.

At Kit ‘n’ Caboodle, I was mainly employed as their passport photographer. One would hold a Polaroid camera, and aim a beam of light at the client seated in front of a light-absorbing screen, and a tiny red dot of light could be seen on the client’s forehead. One learned where to aim the beam of light for the particular type of passport photograph. Different countries had different requirements. The United States passport needed one ear showing, so taken from slightly to one side (I forget which). The United States also requires passport photographs of even the smallest infants, with eyes wide open. This could take an hour and could reduce me to near-insanity. One had to stand leaning over the wee bairn, holding the camera out, but being extra-careful not to drop it (which could kill the kid!)

Our black customers nearly always hated their passport photographs, usually saying: “This is too dark. I look like a Jamaican.”

One woman with rather droopy breasts pushed them up from underneath and asked me to ensure they were in the finished picture. I explained that an acceptable passport photograph showed the top of the shoulders, neck and head. No breasts (neither pert, nor pendulous).

We also had an ID photograph service, creating personal identification cards that were, clearly, not legal. $18 would buy you a laminated card the size of a bus pass with your name, address and age alongside a photograph. The client would write the details onto the card. Nothing was witnessed. The client could create his own identity.

One day a young, light-skinned lad came into Kit ‘n’ Caboodle and asked for one of our ID cards. The boy looked, perhaps, 15 years of age. I dare say he wanted an ID to buy cigarettes and liquor, requiring him to be 21. This kid’s picture added nothing to his smooth face. Before I could glue the photograph onto the card on which the boy had written his inaccurate details, and then laminate it, he grabbed the photo, whipped out a black felt-tip pen, and scribbled a beard and moustache on the immature face. “You can laminate it now.”

The boy had it in his mind that if he presented a photograph of himself with a beard, even if he did not actually have one on his face, he would still be able to buy his smokes and Black Seal rum. He did not seem to have a notion that his hastily drawn beard was clearly just that, scribbled onto a picture. Oscar Wilde wrote: “Naïveté is like the bloom of a delicate, exotic flower. You touch it but once and it is destroyed forever.” One did not have the heart to spoil the boy’s day. I gave him two dollars change from his twenty-dollar note.

I have two personal activities that are, I dare say, hobbies. I research genealogy, which involves many, many hours following up leads back many centuries. I have around two thousand individuals in my “family tree”, all considerably detailed. Each relative has documented evidence attached to his or her file: addresses, dates, connections, photographs.

I also have a Nikon digital camera, and I spend time taking dozens of pictures that I tinker with on my computer, and that usually are deleted as the one or two satisfying snapshots stand out. If a picture is too dark, I can change the lighting with a few clicks. Nothing Jamaican about my photography.

Factory Flowers

2011-05-26T18:14:00.017+01:00

And the heart that is soonest awake to the flowers
is always the first to be touch'd by the thorns.
Thomas Moore (1779 – 1852)

I SOMETIMES JOKE that when I look in the bathroom mirror in the morning I find my grandfather looking out at me. Of course, I have two grandfathers somewhere behind the looking glass, two parents, my grandmothers and great-grandparents, all around in my lifetime. It might be more accurate to say that I look like one of my grandmothers, perhaps my mother’s mother. Bleary-eyed, as I get ready to brush my teeth and shave, I do not get into too detailed an examination of the fine (or not so fine) structure of my face; indeed, I cannot, for I do not have my glasses on.

Like both of my parents, and all of my grandparents, I discovered I required glasses to read (and, in my case, also to see distances) clearly when I was a young adult. Over the thirty years since my first eye-test and prescribed spectacles, my eyesight has worsened steadily. The vision correction has been complicated because I take some rather strong medications, and take different medications appropriate to the cycle my illness is in. Six months after an eye test resulting in new lenses, with different substances in my system, I might be straining to make out figures in a fog.

My mother, Mavis Lancaster Eldridge, wore glasses from earliest childhood. Born arse-first, in a clumsy delivery back in 1926, my mother suffered what we would call brain damage. In those days, it was just not mentioned. In fact, I did not know the circumstances of my mother’s birth until her mother told me shortly before dying at the age of 104. My mother, who had suffered with mental and emotional illnesses, and eyesight so damaged that reading was well nigh impossible for her (I never in my lifetime saw my mother read a book, or anything smaller than a newspaper headline), died young, my grandmother outliving her by over a dozen years.

My mother only took her glasses off as she got into bed. She suffered grand mal epileptic attacks and even then, one did not remove her glasses. One day, during the last week of her life spent in a cancer hospice, I arrived to spend the afternoon with my mother (she was quite lucid until the day before she passed away) and found that the hospice staff had propped her up (and belted her into) a recliner chair. My mother looked comfortable, but she was not wearing her glasses. Only when I spoke her name did she realise who it was taking a seat next to her. She did not know where her glasses had gone and was quite bothered. I went looking for the hospice manager. They had left Mother’s glasses off because she was not using them. They meant to read or watch the television, I assumed. I was rather angry and pointed out that there were other things to see, shadows to comprehend, the light coming through the shutters, the visitors. I found Mother’s glasses, put them on her, and that was not a problem again. My mother’s glasses had become part of her. I took them off on 28 September 1992, at 3.03pm, when she died. To close her eyes. The glasses went in a case, Mother went out in another. She was wearing them when she was buried.

My mother’s mother, Elsie Proctor Lancaster, who lived beyond her centennial, wore glasses all the years I knew her. As did my grandfather, William Lancaster, who died in his 70s, though he only wore his when reading. They were both avid readers, and spectacles’ cases were usually lying around their home. As very young children, we would ask to try one of their pairs on, and realise just what happens to one’s eyesight as the years pass. My grandmother, like her daughter, had a run-in with nursing staff in her last days. I was spending afternoons at my grandmother’s bedside in a care facility and found her without her glasses on, and without her hearing aid in. I had been taking some responsibility for the hearing aid, changing the batteries and fiddling with the volume. I had difficulty getting my grandmother to understand who I was, as she was literally in a fog of sound and vision. I raised hell with the nursing staff.

My mother’s parents were both sent off to work in a cotton mill in Harle Syke, Lancashire, just outside Burnley, at the age of eleven. That was a hundred years ago. The Queen Street Mill is now a museum, and it houses the last steam-powered looms in the world. If you saw the film “The King’s Speech”, you saw that mill. The King addressed his northern, working-class subjects there, at least in the Hollywood version.

The mills in Harle Syke (eventually eleven weaving firms with seven mills) were built in the years following 1850, when some men from Haggate built the first one. Haggate and Harle Syke blend into one another, the larger area is Briercliffe. The last mill, Queen Street, closed in 1982. Water came from nearby streams and coal to power the looms was mined in the Burnley area even after the middle of the 20th Century. There were no public houses in Harle Syke (my great-grandfather, Harry Lancaster, would catch a ride on a wagon, or walk, to a nearby town to do his weekend drinking). There was, and still is, a Church of England chapel in Harle Syke; my grandfather’s brother, James Arthur Lancaster, killed in the last days of the Great War, aged 24, is noted on the war memorial in the churchyard. His body, which we located recently, is in the Pas de Calais in a very nicely maintained cemetery.

I visited the Queen Street Mill some fifty years ago, as a boy, while staying with my grandfather and his sister, Maud Lancaster Roberts, in the house in Harle Syke that my great-grandparents had lived in. I slept in my great-grandfather’s bed. He had been alive when I was born, and for a few years after that, and would have had photographs of his first great-grandson. I eventually inherited a number of old pictures of my great-grandparents taken from 1900 until about the time my great-grandfather died in January of 1952.

In 1900, my great-grandmother, Elizabeth Geldard Lancaster, was expecting her third child, the one that would turn out to be my grandfather. Apparently, the childbirth experience had not been a particularly good one for Elizabeth and she had decided that this time she would not survive it. To mark her impending doom, Elizabeth had Harry, and the children, James Arthur and Maud, dress in their very darkest, gloomiest clothing and they went off to a photographer’s studio for a family portrait. Elizabeth was swathed in black cloth, the pregnant figure not being suitable to display, and the occasion being such a sad one. Harry was wearing a dark suit and looked very handsome in a working-class way. The children had only wide, white collars to indicate there was any hope for them.

Elizabeth survived the photograph, and my grandfather’s birth, but did not manage the winter of 1942, dying that December. Like many, indeed most, members of my family, Elizabeth did not reach the age of 70.

Harry Lancaster, my great-grandfather, actually reached 77. Both of his parents, my great-grandparents, John Lancaster and Ann Driver Lancaster, died in their early thirties, their young children subsequently being fostered by the Driver family. The Drivers’ own children worked on the family farm, the Lancaster lads were sent to work in the mill.

I had never been in a factory until my grandfather walked me over to the Queen Street Mill to see his sister, my great-auntie, Maud at work. It happens that Maud and her father had raised my mother’s brother, Jack Lancaster, through the Second World War years. As Jack left the UK after the War, he had been a teenager, and apparently had the same wavy blond hair and grey-blue eyes that I had fifteen years later when I turned up. Several people working in the mill cooed: “It’s Jackie, come back!” (In a marked Lancashire accent, of course.) There was soon a group around us, and people, who seemed very old to young me, pressed coins into my hands. Not pennies and sixpences, but florins and half-crowns. As I was off to the seaside for a fortnight, this loot was much appreciated.

My mother’s family, for the most part, are buried under the surface of the old Haggate cemetery, now grown wild. The collapsing Haggate Chapel has been pulled down. As a child I tended my great-grandparents’ grave. My Auntie Maud died at the age of 62, almost my present age, as we do. She went into her parents’ grave, the one we had weeded together.

All that said, I should mention my father’s family. I do look like Dennis Eldridge’s son, if not so tall and thin. I have wavy, blond hair from my grandfather, Henry Charles Eldridge, on that side too. However, there are a good many on the Eldridge side with dark, almost black hair, olive complexions and dark eyes. I have a paler version of my father’s nose to identify me. I can see my father’s looks, which I recall seeing when I was younger in my grandfather Eldridge, and grandmother, Charlotte Crow Eldridge, in my Eldridge cousins, and in their children. My father’s family could be generally described as better looking than my mother’s.

My father’s parents were not sent off to work in a mill when still children. However, the boys, some of them, did join the military, especially the Royal Navy, when still in short trousers. Happens that my father dropped out (as we might say) and became a naval cadet in his early teens, though he never made much of that as a career and was washed ashore in Bermuda during the last War where he unhappily married my mother, there with her father who worked for the NAAFI.

In addition, the family scattered to Australia, the USA, and Canada. Some returned, in the next generation, to the UK. One of my parents’ grandchildren lives in Mainland China, and his wife is expecting a child who will be, as we say, of mixed race. We have red hair, now and then, in my mother’s mother’s family. My nephew has that ginger hair; no telling how that will blend with the Asian genes.

We have a fair number of artists, actors, musicians and writers on both sides of my family. My cousins’ children have inherited those gifts. Fortunately, the youngsters are able to have educational opportunities and can develop their natural talents. Some members of the family made a great deal of money, some lost a lot. We have punk rockers and members of the Peerage in the family tree.

As for me, I tend to scribble things down. I also study and compile my family history. I live in a world of Post-It Notes, remembering, noticing, seeing and hearing.

I have poor eyesight and wear bifocals. Moreover, not generally known (I have not mentioned it in any Christmas card inserts yet) I am quite deaf. My hearing aids are being replaced in a month’s time and I am hoping that I will be better able to hold my own in conversation. I am not deaf, as my grandparents were, because of the dreadful noise in the mills that they were exposed to as very young children. I played a great deal of loud music, and found I sought louder and louder music as my hearing declined, compounding the damage. (You have been warned!)

I think it was my grandfather, William Lancaster, looking out at me from my mirror earlier today. In addition, his father’s moustache seemed like a true reflection. The words roll forth from generation to generation, and I reach out for all that I can.

A JEST'S PROSPERITY

2011-05-08T17:26:00.005+01:00

“If I revealed all that has been made known to me, scarcely a man on this stand would stay with me, and, Brethren, if I were to tell you all I know of the kingdom of God, I do know that you would rise up and kill me.”
“In your hands or that of any other person, so much power would, no doubt, be dangerous. I am the only man in the world whom it would be safe to trust with it. Remember, I am a prophet!”
Joseph Smith, Jr. (1805 – 1844)

I CAN REMEMBER THE BEGINNING almost to the hour of the day, easily the month and year. It is the ending that is unclear. It began exactly 38 years ago, and was over about 8 years ago, give or take a few years.

When people find out that I was a Mormon for over a quarter of a century, for most of my adult life, they often ask me how I managed to get involved in such a peculiar cult. How did a chain-smoking, drug-taking, manic-depressive and anxiety-ridden lad raised in the Church of England and on rock and roll end up singing “Come, Come, Ye Saints!” a couple of times a month, year after year?

Mormonism is, in 2011, a great deal easier to investigate in depth, thanks to the Internet, new revelations, confessions, books and personal testimonies. I dare say that a person aged 61 who has not developed dementia, and has had some experience of life, if just through conversation and correspondence and late-night television, is likely to question a great deal of what he is offered. Particularly when it sounds too good to be true. When I was 23 years old, in August 1973, I knew very little of the Church of the Latter-day Saints, except that Brigham Young had had a great many wives and over fifty children. I had not picked up that knowledge in Sunday school, but in conversation with my grandmother. It is worth noting that a recent publication of the LDS Church does not include the multiple wives and children of the Church Presidents. I dare say even the Third World nowadays, where the Mormons are seeking converts, might frown on Church history.

My grandmother had told me that when she was a little girl, which would be no later than the year 1910, if she and her siblings were naughty, my great-grandmother would tell them: “If you don’t behave, the Mormons will come and get you.”

My great-grandparents and their seven children lived near Burnley, Lancashire. Happens that in the years after 1830, when Joseph Smith Jr. founded the Mormon Church, missionaries were sent to Great Britain (and other countries in Europe) to convert white folks and get them to bring their families and funds to America, to gather to Smith’s Zion. Zion had to be reinvented several times as the Mormons, both homegrown and converted overseas, were hated and hounded, persecuted and driven out of street, town, state and finally the boundaries of the USA at that time.

Many of the English converts joined the Church in Lancashire, within but a few miles of the villages where my mother’s family lived. My great-grandmother’s threat of Mormons kidnapping boys and girls and taking them away to America was probably quite effective. I imagine missionaries in top hats, carrying strange scriptures and talking in unintelligible American tongues, would appear in and around Burnley. I have researched and studied my family history in considerable detail, especially the folks in the past 200 years, and, so far as I can tell, no member, naughty or nice, on my mother’s side in the North, or my father’s side in the Midlands and Southern Counties, ever converted to Mormonism in Britain, and none caught the ships in Liverpool and sailed away to the Promised Land to gather in Joseph Smith’s or Brigham Young’s latest City on a Hill.

We now know that Brigham Young (and other Church leaders) told the missionaries, lads in their teens, sent off to Britain and Europe, that they should convert attractive, young, unmarried women, who looked promising as child-bearers, in particular. Not as prospective wives for the young missionary converting them, for the girls must be set on the rough seas and dusty trails to Salt Lake City where they would discover they had joined a church that believed, above all things, godliness only comes with polygamy. Back in Britain, such practises would have been strenuously denied. The girls would be married to the elderly Brethren in positions of power in the Church who collected plural wives.

On trips to Utah, I have looked in telephone books and have noted that many surnames are typical of the people of the towns in the North of England. Men and boys over here also converted and followed the command to gather in America.

Among the converts in Scotland was an ancestor of a friend of mine whose family, in 1973, was still essentially LDS. James Campbell Livingston was born in Lanarkshire in December 1833. In 1849, young Livingston was baptized into the Mormon faith, and, in 1853, he left for America, by ship from Glasgow to Liverpool to New Orleans, over nine weeks at sea in all. He went up the Mississippi River to Nauvoo, the former Mormon city, where he met Joseph Smith’s widow, first wife, Emma. We now know that Joseph had at least 33 wives, most likely over 40. Joseph was fond of young girls who might be employed by Emma. Joseph would get a sudden revelation and the girl, one as young as 14, some already married, would be told that an angel with a flaming sword had threatened Joseph with death (!) if he did not marry the particular girl. James Livingston would not have known all this at that time, if ever in such detail, but when he arrived in Utah, he did take three wives and fathered 18 children. He was one of the quarrymen for the Salt Lake Temple where plural marriages took place. By the way, Emma Smith was not a fan of polygamy and always threw Joseph’s latest wives out, and Emma eventually claimed that Joseph had never practised spiritual wifery, despite her documented part in it. Lies beget lies.

In the summer of 1973, my LDS friend visited me while I was house- and pet-sitting in Bermuda. One day the two Mormon missionaries stationed in Bermuda stopped by on some errand to see my friend, and I met them long enough, as I recall, to nod my head. Elders Belnap and Mortensen came by again after my friend had gone off to the USA, and we chatted a bit. I chain-smoked and they told me in brief what they were doing in Bermuda. Self-supporting missionaries, two years in the field, working out of New York City. This interested me, the concept of lads younger than I was committed to a cause, even if I had no idea what exactly they believed in.

Could they come by another time and tell me about their church? Certainly. You don’t mind if I smoke, do you? It is not good for you. I know that.

It turned out that the missionaries had a very slick presentation kit, coloured pictures and charts that could be flipped over in a binder, and it did fascinate me. Apparently their Joseph Smith had been directed to some golden plates on which was engraved a book (of Mormon) which he translated using curious spectacles. The missionaries showed me paintings of Joseph sitting with his golden plates while his scribe wrote down the translation as Joseph gave it. Smith was not wearing his magical goggles, however, which I would like to have seen. The Urim and Thummim, they were called. There were no representations of Smith in one room with his face in his hat, in which was a peep-stone, or seer-stone, calling out his translation to someone out of sight, at a distance, and no golden plates. One now knows that this was the manner Smith supposedly dictated his Book, nobody besides Smith ever saw the golden plates uncovered, something was under a blanket at one time, but it was not revealed to any witness.

Smith’s visitations by gods and angels were recorded, re-recorded, and changed until he was murdered in 1844. Family and friends claimed different versions that had been related to them by the Prophet or amongst themselves. The stories became more and more convoluted and forced to fit the latest situation. The Angel Moroni, the keeper of the buried box containing the golden plates, was sometimes a white toad or salamander. Smith, like many people in that part of the world at that time, believed in folk magic. His line of work had been seeking buried treasure using a peep-stone. Treasure never found. Well, until the Book of Mormon.

If Elders Belnap and Mortensen had told me their Prophet translated by looking into a hat jammed on his face to keep out the light, there being a stone he had found while digging years before in the hat, on which words would appear, I would have thought it so much nonsense. Those missionaries would not have known all this either. In fact, I doubt that it is taught to potential converts in the huts of the South American and African countries where the Mormons are canvassing today. What pretty pictures do the Mormon Elders flip in their binders in 2011, say in the Philippines?

I did not feel immediately inclined to go to a church service with the Mormons, but I accepted an invitation to a “Family Home Evening” with some members of the Bermuda Branch of the Church. There were a fair number of people, all clean-cut, eating tacos and jell-o and drinking Kool-Aid, with prayers to start the gathering, bless the food, and to send everyone home safely. Everybody was rather nice.

This is what converted me. The toothy, smiling, happy faces. The abundant food.

Then the doctrine: Families are forever! That was an idea I rather liked as I had a few relatives I would be quite happy visiting in the afterlife. At some of the get-togethers there was one peculiar woman who had been having no end of miscarriages, but who firmly believed that she would be reunited with those children of hers and would raise them in the afterlife.

Without any reservations, I went through the course prepared for investigators and the missionaries told me to pray about it. Ask if it was true, Brother Eldridge. And I did, and got no reply. That was in the autumn of 1973. Nice parties, nice people, even if I had to smoke outside, God was silent. I should have listened to that silence! Belnap and Mortensen had mentioned that God and Jesus had bodies of flesh, had passions and parts. There was little mentioned concerning the key LDS doctrine that God once was a man, and that we men might become gods.

I was challenged to stop smoking, and drinking alcohol and tea and coffee. The missionaries and the happy people probably had not known that Joseph Smith and his cronies drank wine in their temples in Ohio and Nauvoo. Joseph served it to his guests at his home. Tea and coffee were used and went with the Saints to Utah. All this after the Word of Wisdom.

In the autumn of 1973, Elder Mortensen finished the Bermuda portion of his mission and an Elder Love replaced him. In February of 1974, Elder Belnap left and Elder Burke arrived.

I do not think I am subject to revelations or great knowledge, but I knew, somehow, that Elder Carl Burke was an unusual fellow. I bumped into a fair number of LDS missionaries in my time, but Carl was a special friend from the get-go. In addition, it was Elder Carl Burke who baptized me on 1 August 1974. I had given up smoking, tea, and coffee to make the grade, and was attending services in the chapel used by the Saints in Bermuda. Once I was baptized, Carl was transferred back to New York City to complete his mission. In 1975, he returned to Bermuda as a civilian, and worked in a motor garage on the US NAS for a few months, staying with me part of that time.

I had a close friendship with Carl Burke and his family, and was devastated when he died suddenly some five years ago.

Despite anxiety disorder, I was attending and taking part in some LDS church services. I learned how to conduct meetings, to give talks, teach classes. All using the very basic information available to us.

Until June of 1978, it had been doctrine of the Mormon Church that people of colour, if they converted to Mormonism, could eventually have their skin magically lightened. However, they could not, if they were Negroes, be anything more than a basic member of the Church, and could hold no offices or enter Temples. With Church officials unable to tell which of their prospective converts in countries like Brazil might have a trace (even the smallest) of black blood, which would make them ineligible to be full Mormons, a revelation arrived saying everyone could come on in. Fundamentalist Mormons, who tend to remain true to Joseph Smith’s teachings regarding polygamy, race, and the ways of heaven and earth, disregarded the latest change in the unchangeable word of the Lord.

I have travelled to Utah a few times and enjoyed my time in large and small towns. I have held church positions here and there, and went in the Temple in St George, Utah, to receive my endowments, and picked up my sacred/secret Temple name that I must never reveal (it is Dan), and appreciated how fragile many of the Saints are in Utah. So many on tranquilizers, so many depressed, so many trying to be on top in Ponzi Schemes. Moreover, so many choosing ignorance so as not to upset the scheme of things, believing and doing what the Old Men in Salt Lake City command.

“I have a hard time with historians because they idolize the truth. The truth is not uplifting; it destroys. I could tell most of the secretaries in the church office building that they are ugly and fat. That would be the truth, but it would hurt and destroy them. Historians should tell only that part of the truth that is inspiring and uplifting.”
LDS Apostle Boyd K. Packer, when interviewing a prospective member of the BYU faculty in 1976.

About 8 years ago, we started getting books by members of the Mormon Church and others that have uncovered some rather startling and unpleasant Church history. It has seemed to me that the Mormons I have known over the past almost-forty years simply could not, did not, know most of what we are learning at such a pace now.

I wrote to the LDS authorities and asked them to remove my name from their records, utterly and completely. It was easier than I expected. At least I hope so. I received a letter saying it had been done, but any time I wanted to return I should contact them.

Mormons are somewhat fanatical about keeping their numbers up. They canvas for converts in the here and now and in the hereafter. You may not know that they do baptisms for the dead, which is why they are out copying records all over the world. You may be horrified to know that Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun have been baptised, by proxy, in the font in a Temple basement so that they can chose whether to be Mormons, and to enable them to carry on and become gods.

It is not that I now believe Mormonism to be so much guff, and I do, but that I find no attachment to any God, Lord or Maker, any Creator, any Great Magician or Spoon-Bender. When I look out over the landscape on sunny days, or days like today (grey, a bit cloudy), I see the world as it is. I do not see it rolling forth out of time. If I have a feeling about it, it is the immediate warmth on my face, not the hot breath of gods on my body, or the Holy Spirit flaming up in my chest.

Do I regret my quarter-century in Mormonism? Not at all. I have learned a great deal, made some lovely friends, travelled about, and in reading the exposés have been entertained and my knowledge broadened. Somehow, fortunately, I do not feel to have been made a fool of.

For someone today, with access to libraries, bookshops, lecturers and the media, I can only say that you should not believe that Joseph Smith Jr. did what they told me he did when I was new to this, about 40 years ago. He has been shown to be something quite different. He and his followers changed their histories repeatedly, they changed their perfect books, and they changed their unchangeable gods.

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for something you are not.”
André Gide (1869 – 1951)

The ministering of angels might just be indigestion.

Ross Eldridge
8 May 2011

AN EARLY EVENING with The Nirvana Tabernacle Choir Playing on the Hi-Fi while Gertrude Stein hangs a Picasso

2011-05-03T13:09:00.010+01:00

CHAOS
(1) A condition or place of great disorder or confusion.
(2) A disorderly mass; a jumble: The desk is a chaos of books, papers and unopened letters. Much like my mind.

AS I NEARED THE PASSAGEWAY that leads to the courtyard behind my flat, I raised my right arm and twisted it so that my inner elbow knocked on the part of my jacket that holds the inside right pocket. And my wallet was there. Then I reached into my right side trouser pocket to remove my key ring. It was there. The ring holds my front and back door keys and what I think is a key to a post office box in Bermuda. It looks important, even if it is useless. A person cannot have too many keys.

I selected the key to the kitchen, which is marked with a green plastic tag, and adjusted the key in my hand, ready to fit easily in the lock. By then, I was entering the passage. It is always this way. In the winter, I do this by streetlight after three-thirty.

This is a routine. And there are routines within the routine. I take some sort of comfort in it. These are routines that I prefer to feeling compelled to pick up litter from the pavement and gutter. I did that for six months. It is very nearly the opposite of washing your hands repeatedly.

I inserted the already-aligned key into the door's lock, turned it, leaned on the door with my left shoulder and arm and walked inside. As I always do, I headed to the telephone. I pushed the 1571 message retrieval button on the machine. I rarely have messages. Sometimes a slight click and silence and then a hum. A caller not wishing to say much when he rang, perhaps.

I have to choose between continuing through to the front hallway to look for post and going into the WC. I have a weak bladder. Today the WC won out. There is always post scattered below the letterbox. Rarely mine, but my landlord uses my address for his copious correspondence. I do get clothes catalogues, and flyers from LIDL and the people at Cash for Gold. I gathered the envelopes up this evening and returned to the kitchen with them. My landlord's letters go on a pile by the electric kettle. I got some coffee going. As always.

Yes, there is comfort in it.

It is a luxury to be able to sit and write, live, just about whenever I want to. My hours are not just 9 to 5, but 24/7. The stories are right there, wherever there is at the time. Moreover, if I cannot actually type, I can write notes. Scrawl them. And stack them up.

Here I am, and this will be a conversation based on a few notes and whatever else might come along while I sit at the computer. Actually, it is not too different from therapy. Can one get online therapy now? Perhaps when one can pray online as well. One can play Poker over the Internet, and Bingo too, and both are religious sects involving a great deal of prayer and promises.

It is early evening on a Wednesday and I have just been deposited near my flat with a mind full of routines and habits to work through. I have had a day spent being supervised at Day Services by people who will wake me up in time to be returned home. I sit on a sofa in the Centre's main room next to a fellow I call "The Man in a Coma" for reasons you might easily guess. On the other side of me is a man who thinks I am a spy from Eastern Europe. At least the whispers in his head tell him I am a spy. The Bermudian accent, of course. So close to Ukrainian. Every schoolboy knows that.

Why am I at a day-care up to five days a week? My excuse is—I tell people who do not always ask or want to know—I am British and I am growing old. There is more to me than that, but we would be getting into very small fractions and I seem to have lost any aptitude for dealing with numbers.

This evening I am drinking coffee from the "World's Biggest Mug". Actually, it is not the world's biggest. I have another larger one that has "Coffee" on it in several varieties. One is cappuccino. A wonder I could spell cappuccino correctly the first time. It is spelled incorrectly on the sign of a bistro here in Amble. I spotted the error immediately, having been a proof reader in another life, and told the proprietor. She was rattled, but no correction has been made. Well, let us leave it at that.

My desk is such a mess. I have a simple filing system. Upwards. I make stacks of whatever needs to be shifted to make room for my big coffee mug, and build on them until they start to slide or tip over. Then they go on shelves near my desk. Stacked.

I have, now, near the top of one heap on my desk, back issues of Day Services’ “Newsletter". This is a monthly four-page effort. I contribute a story on something related to our activities for each issue. I made the front page this month. My article on a night we spent out at the greyhound races was edited. I had said that I placed a bet on the first race—winning £4.10—and then on the last race, the fifteenth on the card, which lost me a quid. The published version of my submission says that my second bet was on a dog that came in fifteenth. That would be rare bad luck. Of course, only six dogs race at one time. Our newsletter editor needs to get out more, see the track for himself. Smell the dog shit, beer, fags and BO.

There are bills and statements and DVDs piled on my computer's scanner-printer. In addition, two small stacks of telephone message pages and Post-it notes. These are covered in marks that even the Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith would tremble at. No Reformed Egyptian, my hand. Just so you know: The squiggles that Smith supposedly copied from his gold plates were not Reformed Egyptian either, never mind what he said.

By the way, I have been missing the Rocky Mountains lately, and many friends living out there, happens a few are still Mormons. At Day Services recently, a member of the group came across something about the Mormons in the newspaper out of Newcastle. And he mentioned aloud that he had no idea who or what Joseph Smith was. A Prophet, I announced in the style of an angel. In saying it, I appreciated that Smith was a Prophet to those who believed in 1830. Still is to the members who heed their leaders’ orders to stay clear of anything that might show the Church in a bad light. If the truth makes the Saints look bad, then ignore it. We all have prophets, leaders and visions when you think about it. You can find them in the London Underground and online. Why not?

For three weeks now, I have been taking a break from writing. (Except for the article on my gambling income. £4.10 is about $8.00, so I am not stacking banknotes on my desk.)

No creative writing at all, just the scribbles I fit on Post-it Notes and on the backs of old envelopes. Things to write about one day. Or one evening with music playing. I must have music when I write, played loudly. This evening I fiddled about in my computer's music library—I have some ten thousand tracks—and decided to go with the Requiem by Gabriel Fauré.

Looking through some papers here, trying not to spill the coffee, I see that I had thought to write about the Creation, the Big Bang, the Pop of the Cork and the Earliest Ejaculation. It seemed like a good idea when I wrote that Post-it. I actually write on the backs of Post-its as well, which seems sensible because I think the people at Post-it really want you to just use the front side, then move on to another page. Use up their product in half the time; buy a pad twice as often. Bad for Global Warming. I go round to the back. The Green Man.

On the two sides of the small yellow square I have noted untidily that I should look up a definition of chaos, to see if that came before, during or after the Creation. Well, you take your religion, you make your choice. Therefore, I scribbled around that note "The Rock Room" which does mean something to me, even with my decrepit brain. Let us tease it out.

In St. George, Utah, in the grounds of a Mormon Temple, a visitors' centre has been built which gives those without the all-important pass, a ticket to "The House of The Lord", some indication of what might be going on inside the sacred/secret Temple. One room in the visitors' centre has paintings, models and films of all sorts of cosmic places and things on every surface, including top and bottom, and very loud and booming noises. God might be playing pinball and ringing up the points. God has crazy flipper fingers. The first time I was struck suddenly deaf for a doubter. The room is nicknamed "The Rock Room" and aptly so. I would like to have heard Jimi Hendrix's "Third Rock from the Sun" playing on their hi-fi. Alternatively, darker, for the Prophet: “Hey, Joe. Where you going with that gun in your hand?” God?

If you are in St. George, Utah, go looking for the Rock Room. It really is worth a visit. Five minutes into the Creation should be plenty at the speed of light. You may find one of the more remarkable facts of life is that things repeat, follow shapes, sizes, and laws of physics and nature, and yet are always new somehow. Very big. Very small. All alike. A scientist always anticipates another particle, yet unseen, yet unfelt. Somehow, all those rocks flying about make sense; you believe it without thinking much on it. Fling a fistful of Utah's red dust in the air. The Rock Room. A fistful of star stuff. It is so real that it is very nearly knowing all without knowing. That is a good place to reach until you learn to exceed the speed of light.

Then walk outside, perhaps a little deaf from the Big Bang, and look at the trees in the Temple grounds. Look at the trees and that extraordinary and peculiar Temple building. What curious things we create. Who was Joseph Smith? Indeed!

Yes, things repeat. In Bermuda, I lived about ten miles from an old town called St. George's. In southern Utah, I lived about twenty miles from a fast-growing town called St. George. These few summer days in Amble-by-the-Sea, Northumberland, I wear a baseball cap with "St. George's" on it. I bought it in Bermuda, actually. However, here it sometimes gets a raised eyebrow. There is a large psychiatric institution about fifteen miles away. St. George's Hospital. I am smiling.

Broadcasting live from Amble-by-the-Sea. As I sit here, my neighbours upstairs are having one hell of a row. Usually she says little while he thumps and screams from room to room. This evening she is howling back, using language that would embarrass a sailor.

It interests me that my neighbour's screams are quite deep for a woman. I must do the research. Must women scream in a high-pitched voice? Find an illustration.

Out of the blue, I am picturing Gertrude Stein arguing with Alice B. Toklas while hanging some pictures. You just know, without being there, that Alice is shrill and Gertrude booms like a God in a Rock Room. Gertrude is holding a portrait of herself by Picasso.

"I'm tired of that one, Gertrude. You look so severe. Let's have the Matisse in here for a spell."
"But Pablo might stop by, Alice. There is no sin worse than ungratefulness. The damn thing might be worth something one day."
"If Picasso does come round, let's ask him to paint some cows."
"And Henri goes out on the porch."

All is quiet overhead. Through my kitchen window, I see the woman from upstairs has just walked outside into the courtyard holding a bottle of wine and a single glass. That says a good deal. Perhaps she clocked her partner with it before coming down.

A few more notes on the subject of Creation under my spectacles case. I recently read something about the latest ideas on the subject: Where did we come from? And there is a little we can study first hand. Red dust from St. George or a universe full of Voyagers’ Ways.

Did you know that many, most actually, dinosaurs in museums have been reconstructed from very small fossil fragments? A chipped tooth and a slipped disc and you have a "Nuoerosaurus Chaganensis" as large as life, even its diet, disposition and complexion described. Would you prefer to just look at the bits, in a tattered shoebox, or to wonder about and over the greater skeleton that holds them up, knowing there may be major flaws in that framework as reinvented by 2000 Man? Tough choice. What sells tickets and stuffed toys in the museum gift shop? The resurrected beast booming at its prey, the neighbours, family and friends. They think. Did you see the movies too? The puddles rippled. How do we know that? Laws of physics.

My flat is next to a small Roman Catholic chapel with a large freestanding Christ on the Cross in its garden. Very nearly life-size. You can walk behind it, have a look at the curve in Jesus' back, twisted in pain, and get a feel for His shoulder blades and the stress in His neck, bent forward as it is. Most people do not get to see past the front. In fact, they do not seem interested in going around the body.

The Mormons again—they should be giving me indulgences for the publicity—must be mentioned again. In a very large visitors' centre in Temple Square in Salt Lake City there is a copy of Thorvaldsen Bertel's statue of the Christus. The Maker stands, arms outstretched, below the vault of Heaven. You can walk up and down behind Him. In this room, the only sounds are whispers, hundreds of them. “See, the signs of the nails in his hands.”

Thirty-five years in therapy and I wonder if existential psychotherapy just creates a man who is only interested in being—finding—himself, and gaining the acceptance and management of his most immediate personal experiences. Dinosaurs' complete lives from Post-it notes in shoeboxes. Can people see my back? Will they bother when I am whole?

If it is a luxury to sit and write about life as it all comes to mind, observed through a quarent, a door in time, or seen through a kitchen window—my neighbour has returned to her flat, taking her bottle and glass—it is a luxury to stop writing when you want to. If you have that much control. The Midas touch. Can therapy fix that?

I still have a few lines to work through, jotted down days ago on the back of my Centre Newsletter. These are for me, I suppose.

Listen: When I was eleven years old, I won a school prize, at Warwick Academy, for mathematics. The only prize I ever won there. Of course, it was for simple arithmetic. I had not yet cracked open the blue algebra and red geometry textbooks. The next year we had those. Our arithmetic included working in pounds, shillings and pence. In addition, and deduction, parts of those pence. The price of one small bag of gobstoppers could take an hour to calculate.

Came an orange biology book. I can still recall the name of that particular text. Brocklehurst & Ward. The reproductive organs, just line drawings, shown three-quarters of the way through it, were those of rabbits. Why rabbits? I wonder. We did not have human health science. Ever. We eventually killed and dissected a rabbit in my last year at Warwick Academy. I was in therapy five years later.

Mrs Lorna Harriott read us wonderful books that always required that we reach up to grasp their meanings. I was that underdeveloped that I did not then wonder if she had been named for Lorna Doone. She read that to us when we were about thirteen. Her readings were spirited, fascinating, and most desirable. She did drink spirits, though I did not recognise it then.

Senior School French came from a green book and the fleshy lips of Monsieur Ron. Monsieur Ron was le mâitre, and we were les élèves, and he had to leave the staff of l'école he had just joined before the year was out. Le nervous breakdown.

We did in one of our mathematics teachers a year or so later. One day she told us all to rest our heads down on our arms folded on our desktops. Close your eyes. Calm down. This would have been better advice for herself at that moment. It was an afternoon and we were wearing our summer uniforms. Khaki shorts and brown knee socks. She slipped out of the classroom, it was Lower 4. Nobody saw her leave. It was the only time we ever did what she asked of us. Living is easy with eyes closed. We never saw her again.

As I walked along the High Street and through the passageway to my flat's door this evening, I recreated an image from one of Virginia Woolf's novels. Live people turning into so many small piles of grey ashes—right there on the pavements: men, women and children—with bits of gold residue from wedding rings, earrings and the dental fillings of the older of us sparkling in the dust.

Thumping my jacket—my wallet was there—and fishing out my house keys, I wondered if it is the ashes that we come with, or the gold we adorn ourselves with, that really matters at the end of the day.

Reprise: Why do I do this? Check and check again. My excuse is—I tell people who do not always ask or want to know—I am British and I am getting on. There is more to me than that, but we would be getting into very small fractions and I seem to have lost any aptitude for dealing with numbers.

10 September 2007 / 3 May 2010

HOUDINI'S ELEPHANT

2011-04-30T00:14:00.018+01:00

There live not three good men unhanged in England;
And one of them is fat and grows old:
God help the while!
A bad world, I say.
William Shakespeare, Henry IV Part 1

"I have never liked this part of Northamptonshire," broadcast—loudly—the unattractive woman in clothes that one might wear to muck out a stable.

Her accent was unusual for these parts: As Lancashire as "Coronation Street", as Lancashire as the red rose. More unusual, people usually refer to Northamptonshire as Northants. Most unusual, we were in Northumberland, not in Northamptonshire at all.

The bus was nearly a half-hour late leaving Alnwick and the light was already going by two o'clock in the afternoon. A few passengers whispered, as if whispering might not encourage it, the forecast was for snow. Would we reach our homes in time? Even with the bus's heaters on full we had our collars pulled up, scarves wrapped around and hats pulled down. Sitting, its engine switched off, in the Alnwick Bus Station for a half-hour, the bus was very nearly icy as we rolled onto Bondgate Without.

Ice and snow were not on the mind of the stranger from Lancashire, lost forty or so miles north of Newcastle. She wanted to give a running tour of what she did not like as she looked out of the 518 bus windows. She also made a few comments concerning those things that she approved of:

"Now, that is sensible housing. Easy care housing. Old people should be put in houses like that. All of them."

Did she mean all the old people, or all the houses? Should the nasty little boxes that I saw be available only to the old? Where I saw a row of brick shithouses, she saw a way to file away our seniors.

"No lawns to fuss over. Near the road."

But I saw flat, dirty, red brick fronts with squinting windows and broken concrete paths, certainly guiding the residents into the traffic, the only greenery being the few weeds pushing up through the cracks.

I do not know who lives in those unfortunate dwellings. On our side quite a busy road with a bus service, and behind and below them the railway line linking Edinburgh with London. I do approve of building houses near public transport. I believe in restricted private vehicle ownership. But nicer houses than these near Alnmouth Station. Houses should not be like, or look like, railway platform conveniences.

I may have told you this before: I love trains. I would very nearly live on a train if I could. When I win the Lotto, I shall have a suite in the Radisson Hotel in Glasgow where I shall store the clothes that I am not wearing that season, and the books I am not reading or needing for reference purposes. Many of my days and nights will be spent on trains.

Why the Glasgow Radisson? It is a nice hotel, extremely modern, with huge prints of the Beatles in "Sergeant Pepper" days on the lobby walls that remind me of my bedroom in 1967, when I had photos cut out of magazines taped to the walls; and the members of the Radisson staff have such wonderful accents. Eastern European, not at all Scottish. The rooms: They are all straight lines and right angles, mirrors and metal. Mattresses and cushions are firm, carpets and curtains are subtle. Electricity and electronics work from cards and switch-pads. Speakerphones. The bathrooms are huge.

My few possessions stand out in a sensible, tidy and organised atmosphere: I am the keeper of blobs and lumps, bags and heaps, unfolded clothes and opened books. Easy to find them in the Radisson rooms.

I actually like that for a time, being the standout stranger in the room. Nice as it is, I would not find it difficult to take to the rails. Of course, that will be my ideal world.

Now for something that might be useful to know. I am a giving person this morning; and giving is receiving:

"Retired people should be able to get mortgages for homes like that," continued the woman from Lancashire.

Just who was she talking to, besides all of us?

I remembered a class of insurance called "Mortgage Protector" that I used to deal with at American International Group. (You will have noticed their AIG logo on the front of Manchester United football jerseys.) You would be insured against the day you might have some misfortune and not be able to meet your mortgage payment. This works if you are twenty-five and have an income. As most elderly people have limited incomes, and more than a small chance of aching joints or worse, it is hardly good business to believe that most could support a mortgage, insured or not. Well, who would insure them?

I have told you this because one of you might think a Mortgage Protector policy is a good idea. I had never heard of such a thing until 1968. Personally, I have never had a mortgage and immediately sold a house that came my way so that I would not be tempted to borrow on the strength of the real estate market. I have lived in the rooms of others all my life.

One of those overused expressions that annoy me is "getting on the property ladder". Of course, it is a positive thing to want your own home, but—looking at the financial pages in November of 2007—houses are not as safe as houses. You might want to do what I do from time to time: Go camping.

The bus chugged a bit as we passed through the village of Warkworth, up the hill past the Castle. Yes, the Warkworth Castle that is the setting for Henry IV Part 1, Act 2 – Scene 3. Shakespeare's play, of course, though I would guess the great man never saw that particular castle.

By the way, the Shakespeare buildings in Stratford are remarkably cramped, the ceilings are low, the window and door lintels are low, and the doors are narrow. A very fat friend would hardly fit in. In order to enter one room, you usually have to walk through another.

One charming symptom of my mental state is that my mind wanders in time and space, and considerably so. I see ghosts. I commune with ghosts. I am a ghost. On the guided tour, as I walk through what appears to be a small, cluttered bedroom for a large family, I am interrupting something:

"Begging your pardon, Sir John Falstaff. Oh! And Mistress Quickly! And I thought you were only fictional characters. Just passing through."
"Go to, I know you well enough."
"You mean you do the lines as well?"
"You recognise the minor dialogue, Stranger?"
"Let's say I'm fairly well read. We have lots of rainy days in Northumbria."
"Go, you thing, go!" Falstaff is surprizingly firm for such a fat man.
"Say what thing? What thing?" asks Quickly, quickly.
"This is too cool." I head for the chink of a door on the far side.

Warkworth is a colony of Amble-by-the-Sea, where I live. Of course, you do not ever voice that opinion in Warkworth. I mentioned Warkworth to a friend from overseas and he said he thought he had stayed there once. A bed and breakfast on the main street—and it actually has only one main street that is, sadly, the route for all the traffic wanting to go up and down the coast on the scenic route—and at the top of the street, on the hill, a castle. Quite right.

In the summer time—several glorious months in 2006 and two days in 2007—every house, shop, pub and hotel in Warkworth has hanging baskets of flowers on the street side. There are planters, pots, and public gardens. A stone bridge crosses the river, herons and swans watch the traffic, and I am sure dragonflies dart above the surface of the rippling water. The village effloresces as only an English relic can. Milton Keynes does not. Nether Wallop does. You may have seen Midsomer on the television: people are dying to go there. Well, going to die there. Amidst the flowers.

I have discovered that one sure way of upsetting Americans is to mention them. They prefer to talk about themselves. Therefore, I will not. The other tourists who also visit and enjoy Warkworth are the Japanese. On fair days, the lanes are full of people with cameras.

"Take a picture with the castle behind me."
"Oh, mummy, do take a photo of that three-legged Border collie!"

I do not know how to write that in Japanese. I made up the collie.

Amble is picturesque in a different way. To be downright honest, the town looks as if it could do with a good scrubbing with abundant soap and boiling water. Nevertheless, we all love a grubby urchin, don't we? I never see people taking photographs of anything actually within Amble. Things that are not being photographed include the butcher's, the baker's, the greengrocer's, the fishmonger's, three chippies, many hairdresser’s, tanning salons, a couple of funeral parlours and an enormous sundial. The sundial must be fifteen feet high. Even at that height, sunlight is hard to come by. Nobody poses in front of our tiny post office that houses a bookstore with local titles on sale.

Time for a smile. In the window of the Co-Op Funeral Care at the bottom end of Queen Street, near that huge sundial, is a printed sign:

CCTV CAMERAS ARE IN USE
for personal safety
and security purposes.
Images may be shared with
crime prevention bodies.

I find the mention of "crime prevention bodies" connected to a funeral home rather a hoot. Dead coppers, maybe? Think of the movie plot!

Seriously, Amble is the perfect spot from which to take photographs. Look out to the North Sea for waves like mountains, look across the River Coquet Estuary (and bird sanctuary) for protected waters, and turn your lens on the boats, on Warkworth Castle a level mile along the River, on the Pier as the enormous waves smash around it. Face away from Amble.

I was a little concerned that the woman addressing the bus passengers might get off at my stop in Amble. She was not with anyone. When I talk to nobody in particular, I am hustled inside and someone pops a pill in my mouth. My flat, which is fifty feet from the bus stop, is across the road from the local, "The Wellwood Arms". People do get off the bus to take refreshment there. And within a few yards are a lawn bowling green, a Catholic church with a life-size Christ on the cross in the garden which seems like a good idea for security purposes (with or without a CCTV in His loincloth), an Italian restaurant, a dentist’s practice, apartments, terraced houses and the block of flats I live in. Yes, people get off at my bus stop.

The lady with the headscarf, scruffy coat and net shopping bag, and that thick Lancashire accent—my mother's family, the Lancasters, Cloughs and Proctors, come from Lancashire, I grew up hearing that dialect and can mimic it after a few drinks—stayed on the bus. A couple of other passengers stepped down and toddled off.

"Goodbye, stranger! This is Northumberland you do not like. Silly cow!"

I walked through the passage to the courtyard behind our six flats, the daylight was going, but at least the snow had not arrived. There were no birds coughing: We are all afraid of this H5N1 Virus, "Mad Crow Disease". I suddenly remembered seeing a black, man's glove on the path when I had left home in the morning. A nice glove, leather I think, though wet. I did not pick it up. Of course, I did think of O.J. Simpson. You would too. It had gone.

Earlier in the week, there had been a pair of blue denim men's shorts on the ground, not far from our street entrance. They looked new, they looked about my size, and they looked tempting. Blue is my colour. I wear shorts indoors. What do you do? I left them. I might have answered my front door to find a bloke there saying:

"I wonder if you've seen a pair of blue den … wait a minute! You have my shorts on. You perv."

In my "might have” world he would have been holding his hands in front of his crotch, bare to his shoes. Writers can think that sort of thing and get away with it. Talk about pervs!

Recently there was an entire, unblemished courgette on the pavement outside the flats. Unless a rabbit was carrying it under its arm and let it gently slip, I would have expected it to have fallen some distance from a shopping bag. But not a mark on it. How do these things happen? I was on my way to the ATM and decided that I would collect the courgette on the way back home. Fifteen minutes later, it had vanished. The rabbit, no doubt, had returned. We all do.

The tale I am telling is about homes, rooms, creature comforts and discomforts, and—going by the title—at least one creature. I have spent time in four small rooms in my life that I instantly recall, and, in each case, some sort of mental mechanism prevents me from remembering too much about the bad times in them, if I truly was suffering somehow. A safety device, I think. For your sanity, you may not remember those curtains you put up in the lounge when you were newlywed. Same fabric and pattern as your mini-skirt. And your husband's extra-wide tie and matching handkerchief. Ugh!

In 1981, the spring I think, though it was cold weather, I was committed to a psychiatric hospital named for an Irish saint. My room, like about two dozen others, opened onto a porch around an open-air grassed quadrangle. On the lawn, which was rather scruffy, were wooden picnic tables. A small booth at the entrance to this "en plein air" Somer's Ward housed the duty nurse. To get "outside" you needed to pass that point. Ken Kesey's "McMurphy" would have wanted to get through that locked door. Such was my drugged state, I could not be arsed.

So, I stayed in my room. It was about ten feet by four feet; a bed and a table were provided; the table was to put your folded clothing on. As if. There was a toilet with no lid to cover the pan, and the contraption was in the room itself, next to the door to the porch outside. The door to the room was so hinged as to make it impossible to close completely, and you had no privacy to sleep or—as the little children say—take a dump. The staff checked regularly to see if their charges were trying to top themselves. Showers were a communal facility, but you could go and take one any time during the day or night. Those with OCD would appreciate this.

I must have spent six weeks, perhaps more, in St. Brendan's Psychiatric Hospital. I know a little of my time was spent assembling calendars with a group, many members of which did not know that April was followed by May and not Norway. One morning I was sent to a large room where the profoundly handicapped permanent residents of St. Brendan's spent their time. I found myself in an ill-lit workshop with at least twenty small people. They were all adults, I think, but twisted, shrunken, and bent, and as they were unable to make intelligible speech, I could not communicate too well with them. They were all black. I was quite white, and feeling suddenly tall. I now know that their families had abandoned them all and their visitors were few. They were busy playing with red roses made from tissue and bits of wire, except for one woman who thought anything red must be blood.

"We thought we'd show you how to make roses, Ross," said the recreational therapist.

And so, at the age of thirty-one, I learned how to create roses. I was not permitted to take any back to my room. As I was the only person actually able to make roses in that workshop, my output was left for my fellows there to enjoy. Damaged as I was, there was still something I could do for others. There is a lesson in all that.

I spent most of the 1980s in a small bedroom in my mother's house, drugged to the gills. I was so crippled with Panic Disorder that for weeks and months at a time I actually would not step outside of the house. I did read a great deal, being blessed with friends who would drop off bags of books regularly.

My other form of entertainment came from a Sony Walkman. I listened to a "Lite-FM" satellite radio station out of Chicago, when not reading or sleeping, for very nearly that entire decade. As the station did not play current music, I missed everything from Madonna to Duran Duran to Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Almost everything. I was over-medicated and transported to the home of a friend on 13 July 1985 to watch the "Live Aid Concert" on television. Seeing the hairstyles and clothing I had been missing made the next five years alone in my room a lot easier.

Perhaps the oddest small space I lived in for a spell was a caravan in a snowy field in Salt Lake City in the winter of 1979-1980. In a way, its stripped-down appearance and design was not unlike a miniature version of the Radisson Hotel suite in Glasgow that appealed to me over twenty-five years later. Everything was functional. I used to pee in the snow.

Of course, one must look all the way back—according to Freud—to figure out the whys of life.

In the 1950s, when I was a very young boy, my mother's father worked in the purchasing department at a hospital. When things were replaced at that hospital, my grandfather would have a crack at getting them for himself for little or no money. You take it away by Friday and it is yours!

Therefore, I slept on an old-fashioned metal hospital bed with white linen sheets—that my mother did starch for a few years until it was well out of fashion to do so—and white coverlets and my curtains were hospital issue. I had a metal, white bedside table. There was no carpet on the floor.

These were the 1950s and the white paint on the hospital furnishings smelled of the lead base used in it. The odour filled the room. You could taste it on your teeth just by lying back and breathing.

I slept this way, in my ten-foot square bedroom, until the mid-1960s when someone gave me a sofa, second hand. That was when I put pop music posters on my walls.

2004 found me sharing a room in a filthy men's shelter only eight by eight with two recently released convicts. You may ask if I wondered about Christ and the two criminals crucified so near to him at Golgotha as I scrunched my eyes closed and tried to pretend I was somehow in a better place. I did not. If you scrunch hard enough, a louder and louder noise comes and sometimes you just pass out with exhaustion. That was all I wanted.

My flat in Amble-by-the-Sea is fairly large. I do not use all of it, the lounge is the perfect size for heating easily and living in, and has a comfortable sofa bed. This unit is a furnished accommodation and came with everything from the big bed I do not always use to a TV to three sets of crockery. There were also candles—though not spare light bulbs, which I could have used—and an ashtray with ashes, and lint in the lint trap. In addition, a full selection of kitchen spices. Isn't that odd? Spices!

I cannot pretend that my home is as neat as a pin—and pins and needles were provided, along with spools of coloured thread—and with my clothes, many books, papers and knick-knacks scattered about, as well as the Radisson dreams, there is some disorder here.

Just this week I decided I might have the last of my personal things taken out of storage in Bermuda and freighted to me here in Northumbria. It is a gathering of those parts of my life that have had to be put away elsewhere because I had no room to cope with them. I am nearly sixty and the Eldridges and Lancasters die young. Gather I must.

I have seen some of the files my analysts, therapists, psychologists, hypnotists, and pharmacists have kept on me over some thirty-five years. Heavy stuff! In the fantasy movie version, I will somehow get those files and take them to my suite at the Radisson. I shall open them, pull out the pages, and fling them about. Later I shall go to catch the train and leave instructions for the excellent staff at the hotel to dispose of those scraps of paper before I return from my latest trip:

"Just make it all vanish!"

The title, of course, starts to make sense. Magician and illusionist Harry Houdini is particularly well remembered for making a full-grown elephant disappear at the Hippodrome Theatre in New York City. Perhaps he invented "the elephant in the room" by doing this.

4 December 2007 / 30 April 2011

UNEASY LIES or THE HEAD THAT WEARS THE CROWN

2011-04-28T00:39:00.003+01:00

I DO NOT CLAIM, or even pretend, that I am in touch with your God. I am not in touch with my parents' or grandparents' God, or the one whose Holy Writ we studied in Religious Knowledge classes at Warwick Academy. The political God who watched over racially segregated Sunday school classes at St. Mary the Virgin does not attend me. The Anglican, Catholic, Orthodox and Mormon Gods have also abandoned me, at my request. No sign of the God of the Muslims. Does he have a long beard? Are we allowed to guess? I do not have the God of the Jews calling out from a doorway I had not noticed until then, as I pop a butterscotch sweetie in my mouth:

"Come on in. I will put words in your head. Words in your heart. Words in your mouth. Words on your page. I am a God, after all."

Still, I have something. Echoes move me. What a clever God to give us that second and third chance to hear exactly what we are saying, the opportunity to call again across some canyon or down a valley:

"Sorry. That came out all wrong! I will try again."

Echoes and pictures. While treating myself to some fine art and culture over the Internet, I discovered the face of Christ in Michelangelo's 'Pieta' (sculpted in 1498and 1499, presently in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome) this week. This is the most famous Pieta; Michelangelo created several. You will recognize this one. You might not know the face, and that is what moved me to write about it, the other faces of God, and the smug faces of men.

To be honest, my memory of this Pieta is a sense of a picture that is not so clearly detailed, but that has what we might call a sensory language, a psychological effect on the viewer. A man's body very nearly broken over a woman's lap. That is what I have been seeing for fifty-seven years. That might have been Michelangelo's intent. Yet it is not broken, if you look a little closer. There is, after all, no pain in it. I cannot feel anger towards anyone, even myself, for this expression of Christianity.

Christ's face is looking very nearly to the ceiling. A friend went to see this monument to faith and, just as importantly in my opinion, the genius who carved it. It is now behind a bulletproof glass wall, you cannot get much closer than thirty feet from it. You can, I suppose, see the body language, if not the face of the Lord.

However, someone has climbed onto a high ladder and photographed the face of Christ. Content in his mother's arms. His face looks like that of some noble-born man of the Renaissance. He hardly looks like some rough-hewn saviour, some Jewish carpenter with blistered hands, any man of the Holy Land. The expression on the face, the lips slightly open. Lips that you would kiss without fear should it come alive. I think there is God in it.

God also appears in the fog that visits Amble-by-the-Sea, where I live, quite often. All the straight edges become soft. The world is changed. Colours change. The presence of God makes things look very different. Things sound different too. Like echoes in the subway.

"TOUCHED"
I heard it from his lips one day.
It touched my heart
and moved me.
I believed there was no other way,
no other way but to stay and pray.
Everything I'd lost was found
Thanks to the busker in the Underground.
The busker in the Underground.
Performed by The Hoover Damsels

I was raised in the Church. My first book was a child's hymnal that my two grandmothers bought in a bookstall in Canterbury Cathedral in 1952. A gift for my third birthday. I still have it.

Even as a very young boy I wondered why each and every one of the black children had to file out of St. Mary's church hall and head up the hill to their neighbourhood before we might step inside. During Holy Communion, their parents could stay in the church itself, in a designated area at the back. Not quite so near our God. My father might nod his head to his house cleaner and her grown daughter. A smile would not have been appropriate.

It is the law, my father would have said. He approved of it. I suppose it was a law. If the lawgivers did not pray about it, I can only think the clergy did. Who shall we invite in? What else did they pray about? What answers did they get? What promises?

We used to pray for the Royal Family on our white knees. I recall we sounded most enthusiastic. We prayed for our leaders and were told prayer works—if not, why bother—and I guess white boys of an age in single digits unwittingly subscribed to some political kingdom of God. What did black boys in white shirts and little bowties, with their hair slicked down with pomade, and their sisters in pastel coloured smocks with hair pulled tight, braided and tied up in ribbons to match, pray for?

In 2007, should we pray for our boys in Iraq and Afghanistan? Should the British Royal Family, our Prime Minister and his Cabinet, our military leaders, and our young men and women bleeding out there in dusty places feature in the prayers offered at mosques here? If not, isn't something very wrong?

"PRESIDENTS AND KINGS"
Every Sabbath on his knees
with some burden on his back,
blinking in the lights,
dry mouth.
A broken smile
is what you see,
a common sort of courtesy.
No President can pray alone.
Our Kings were once in touch with God,
believed themselves divine.
Basking in glory,
from youth.
If only a King,
the President's always begging.
Then I might lead and pray alone.
Performed by The Hoover Damsels

In America, it seems to me, a considerable part of the population subscribes to a form of Christianity that centres itself on men. Sometimes women, though they must be subject to the men, of course, as the Bible tells us so.

To remake an old tale, a group of women sit at the foot of the cross weeping:

"He would not let us walk upon the water. We were not permitted to raise the dead. We could not break bread and feed the thousands. And now we cannot be crucified."

On television in America, religious frustration and friction becomes a fire. We are called to follow our host, the leader, the man selling the book, the man who shook the President's hand and promised him a passel of votes come November. Are you registered? If Ross Eldridge is not exactly godly, by belief or works, a man in a Hawaiian shirt and glasses on a chain, holding that book we should call in for, is positively glowing. Godliness boils down to a look, a ceremony, a backdrop, a blue screen, something that, actually, defies one's belief. Yes?

"TELEVISION EVANGELIST"
Why hide your light?
Why hide your light?
Why hide your light under a bushel, baby,
when a thimble will do?
Send us your money, baby,
and we will send one to you.
Performed by The Hoover Damsels

Fifty years ago, a friend of mine had his aged granny make him liturgical vestments to wear on weekends. He stayed home crossing himself and genuflecting at a mirror. My sisters and I went to the movies and followed the adventures of Flash Gordon. Flash Gordon, of course, wore odd costumes too. You should see Mormon temple clothing!

My friend drank himself to death before he was forty-five.

"PASSION'S FASHIONS"
As a boy, he had a cotta,
a chasuble and a cope.
He'd wear a mitre and an alb,
with a cincture of gold rope.
Solomon's glory!
Still singing boy soprano,
he got into his parents' wine
and blessed it to his use.
Blessed a Ritz Cracker biscuit,
you know.
A communion he could not refuse.
Performed by The Hoover Damsels

It seems to me that there is no greater divide than that between Science and Religion, yet they are constantly entwined. Like the wheat and the tares. Both are constructed by men from very little, and far-from-reliable evidence. When Michelangelo was chipping away at his Pieta, the world was flat, the sun, moon and stars spun around the Earth. Heaven was not immediately available; Hell was, but so was the last minute confession. A ledger full of indulgences added up very nicely. One quick postcard from Purgatory and on your way over the rainbows! Here they have a thorn. A church in Greece had a holy relic, a feather from one of the wings of the Angel Gabriel.

Can we be sure that it is all quite correct now? In balance? Can a Pope be absolutely sure that God frowns on cloning and euthanasia? Can even one person preach forgiveness, as many of us are told to, and be quite happy about criminals being despatched by lethal injections? Perhaps death is suitable for abortionists. Eyes for eyes. Injections prepared and administered by scientists. In addition, presidents hang dictators for the good of us all. Here is something to make you wonder, a mad creationist at work.

"FIRST A CLONE"
Where, oh where, does life
first come in?
Is it by the prick of a pin?
Does it go out by the very same way?
Death, where is your sting?
Grave … Is this your win?
Can a cloned man die
a thousand deaths?
Performed by the Hoover Damsels

There are peculiar notions, of both Christians and Muslims, as to our Fate. Where are we going, then? Should we pack a suitcase? Build a pyramid?

The notions are all about exclusion. A good Christian will not have to sit next to some dusky Arab chap on the cross-town bus in Paradise. Or Asians, or Africans. If they had converted to Christianity, as they should have, praise God, they would have been washed clean by the blood of Christ. Mormons believe that dark-skinned converts will have their skin magically lightened. The Jews will have converted too. Or else. Some believe that. St. Mary the Virgin's church might have been the template for the new Heaven and Earth when I was a boy on my white knees.

You only see coloured angels on ethnic Christmas cards. Be honest, white Christian folks, most of you would not buy and send out those cards yourselves. Or the black Jesus greetings.

Yet, we always—always—recognize Jesus when we see him, in any colour, no matter how uncomfortable it makes us. That is remarkable. Even recreated in our own images. That is the God in it.

Does a Muslim easily recognize Jesus in a picture, a piece of art? We are not to see Mohammed or Allah portrayed in a picture. That difference in beliefs, religious customs, is a big one.

I shared a room with two other homeless men a few years back and one was a Muslim. Well, he did not have the certificate, but he had changed his name. When I first went into a Mormon temple, I was given a new sacred and secret name. If I revealed that name to anyone, it would be the death of me. The name was Dan. That day, every man being processed in a Mormon temple was given the magical name of Dan. At confirmation, some take on an extra name. These things happen.

On the wall of our tiny shared cell, there was a large poster on a board. (Actually, the board was the back of a mirror; it would sometimes be taken down, turned over, and used for drug-taking involving fire. Scared the daylights out of me.) On the poster was a row of pictures, from paintings, of all the major Islamic prophets. Jesus was there. An artist's likeness. Actually, he looked much like the other bearded gentlemen, but fortunately had a name attached. I found that all rather odd. Prophets, the godly, are of a type.

As far as I know, Mormonism is the only religion that preaches that God had been a man once, and that men—so long as we buckle down to some hard work—can become gods. Why not?

"GODLINESS EXPLAINED"
You must be married for eternity,
sealed across an altar of the one True God,
and raise up children to that former man,
to become a god yourself.
They told me.
You must exercise paternity,
and if you hold tight to the iron rod
your every word will be a holy Word.
No stopping yourself
from becoming a god.
Performed by The Hoover Damsels

I think there is no man alive, no matter how godly, who knows a whole lot about a whole lot. We guess at things and robe ourselves in piety. Some of us. Others take up the sword, which is a form of piety if we believe the history books are honest accounts.

As I am not in touch with your God, and I am scarcely in touch with my own, I will tell you I think we have to enjoy the scenery, wherever it arises. A tree is godly, beautiful, yet you could lynch a black man from it with impunity in my lifetime. Still could, actually.

Bibles and the tongues—the words—of men, even prophets, are used to convict innocents if it is convenient. And to execute them. They are also used to excuse friendly fire and collateral deaths and damage. Greater love hath no one.

A president goes to church each Sunday, God bless him, and he may pray for us. That he might better lead us where he feels inclined to go. Even to Armageddon. With a Bible in his hands, shown on the evening news, some can pretty much accept that. Should we?

Can you take a Koran into a Christian church and not have it burst into flame? Of course, but it might be regarded as bad taste. I wonder if you might shed your shoes at the door of a mosque, and carry in a Bible. Maybe not.

A comedian's line about public transport:

"If the subway carriage is crowded in the morning rush hour, I just start praying aloud to Allah. Fifteen seconds later I'm by myself."

They are just books. Just words. However, the world might be changed if a president carried a Koran from his limousine into the chapel, and meant it.

The word of God, for me, is imprinted on my senses, usually suddenly, from time to time. Impressions. The Pieta. However inaccurate the face of Christ might be two thousand years after the fact, it moved me. I wrote some odd song lyrics during a discussion about a Christmas party, invented The Hoover Damsels to sing them, sat down here tonight and typed this out, and it seems to me that Jesus might not object if one greeted him with a kiss on the lips. Unless one is Judas. Even then, maybe not. Forgiveness. You learn things.

14 September 2007 / 28 April 2011

The Prints of the Nails

2011-03-24T17:06:00.006Z

“Every man's memory is his private literature.”
Aldous Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963)

I HAVE BEEN LIVING IN MY FLAT for five years now and I could not count the number of times I have approached my door onto the High Street, key in hand, to let myself in. Moreover, how many times might I have left home, turned to face the door from the outside so that I might lock it, and then walked away?

Five years, yet only a few months ago did a new friend, coming to visit for the first time, point out that next to my door, on the right-hand side, are six holes in the wall: Imprints of the nails, or screws, which must have once fastened a sign or plaque of some kind to the building. I had never noticed. Now I always see the marks in the stone.

This block of flats, created from a coach house that I have seen in photographs taken well over a hundred years ago, has three units on the ground level and three on the first floor, though the layout in any flat at street level does not match that above it. My flat has some odd angles with parts of two flats above mine. There is a passage through the building from the street to some garages and a courtyard. It is a narrow entrance and one can see damage inflicted by vehicles. (Aldous Huxley: “There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.”)

Once upon a time, so I have been told, there was a slaughterhouse, an abattoir, behind my flat. I dare say the piggies and lambs were herded through the passage, penned out back, and then killed and butchered in what is now a double-garage. Blood might have run across the floor and towards my courtyard because there seem to be a fair number of drains and I have heard the sounds of water trickling below the surface.

More recently, my flat may have been a dental office. That is somebody’s recollection, if not mine. I have wondered how the dentist’s surgery would have been laid out. I have an enormous kitchen (which I have subdivided into an office, and here I am writing this piece) and part of it may have been the heart of the surgery, seeing as the plumbing is located in this room. One would want to flush the spit and blood out of the building, and the drains that once serviced the abattoir outside my kitchen would have been an obvious choice.

My flat was renovated not long before I moved in. It is showing signs of wear and tear five years on. The roof on the back porch had a spell of leaking the winter before last and water got behind the wallpaper inside the porch, which now is becoming unglued. There are patches of dampness inside the corridor leading to the front door. The ceiling in the kitchen leaked for a day when my upstairs neighbours were having their kitchen or bathroom plumbing replaced. The damage to my ceiling was minor, but I always notice it because I saw it actually happening on the day. I ran upstairs to tell the workers what was going on; they were unconcerned, switching off something at their end, but not coming down to see what they had created below. I am grateful that I was in when the water started running through my ceiling, onto the counter top and then onto my floor: I was able to clean it up with a bucket, mop and a few towels. Left unchecked, I could have had a paddling pool when I got in.

The narrow road that emerges through the passage onto the High Street is higher behind the flats, and on two occasions during extremely heavy rainfall, the passage and the various drains in my courtyard and in the narrow road itself have not been able to cope with the run-off. Fortunately, I was at home when this happened and waded outside in over a foot of water and searched with my hands in the muck to pull up the drain covers. The water level had risen over my back step’s stoop, and was making its way across the inside of my porch and nearing the kitchen.

My flat came “furnished” and it had more than the basic furniture one might expect. There was a big bottle of talcum powder under the bathroom sink, cigarette butts in an ashtray, and every sort of Indian spice in bottles and packets on a top shelf in the kitchen cupboard. There were also tools, mops, houseplants, dishes, pots and pans, and a breadbox. Oh, and a George Foreman Grill. Yes, I had no need to buy curtains, pillows, sheets or a laundry hamper, or airing racks to dry the laundry on when I have washed it in the machine provided by my landlord.

This is a rather roomy flat, and I like a bit of clutter, so I have purchased a second, larger, television, several bookcases (and hundreds of books and DVDs to put in the bookcases), mats, tables, lamps and extra bedding, blankets and cushions. I installed a miniature dachshund puppy three years ago, and he has his own bed and heaps of toys, which are supposed to be under my desk. Cailean and his friend, Sasha, manage to distribute meerkats, turtles, snakes, footballs, and blankets throughout the flat in minutes. (Huxley: “To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.”)

I have a CD-player that also transmits sound in stereo from my TV and DVD-player, as well as my iPod. I do not have very many CDs now, but I have well over 600 albums on my iPod. I play music a good deal of the time, and sometimes the volume is higher than I intend because I have neglected to wear my hearing aid. If I notice the device on my bedside table I am a bit horrified when I put it in my ear and appreciate the fact that The Who are performing “Won’t Get Fooled Again” at live concert volume in my front room. I do have those upstairs neighbours only plywood away.

Now and then, I get post though my letterbox addressed to “Archway Cottage”. As the passage through the block of six flats is arched, I am guessing that the entire block or at least my flat is Archway Cottage.

Could the missing sign outside my front door have read Archway Cottage? It would have been a large sign, judging by the outline left on the sandstone block to which it was attached. It might have also read “Dental Office” and the name of the dentist and even his opening hours might have been noted on it.

I do not dream all that much about this flat, perhaps because I am busy living in it. I do not hear or see any ghosts: No dentists or their patients, or hogs, cows and sheep keep me up at night. Perhaps five years is not time enough.

Last night I dreamed of my mother. I have been visiting with her, as it were, regularly over the past winter. My mother has been dead for almost 20 years. And in last night’s dream I was at the house where I spent much of my childhood, stopping by to see how my mother was getting on (I am reminded of something else Aldous Huxley wrote: “Maybe this world is another planet's hell.”) and found that she had installed a fairly large fishpond outside her front door.

One of my sisters materialised (travel is easy in my dreams) and pointed out first tiny, grey fish no bigger than tadpoles, then one rather sizeable silver fish that was too big for the pool, its dorsal fin breaking the surface as it wriggled around trying to lift itself off of the bottom. That was a moment of sudden intense anxiety in my dream. To be honest, I had been having an anxious evening in what I suppose I could describe as my “real life”. A friend had been trying to get about, to enjoy freedom, and had been trapped on the mud, perhaps even the rocks, underlying his emotions. (Huxley again: “Science has explained nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness.”)

Should one be giving memories the time of day or night? Private literature sounds rather exciting, rather enticing. Alternatively, should one think on this last line from Aldous Huxley, a man born on the very same day as my own grandfather Harry Charles Christopher Eldridge: “Words, words, words! They shut one off from the universe. Three quarters of the time one's never in contact with things, only with the beastly words that stand for them.”

Perhaps we should just live fully in the Here and Now, Boys!

Water Worlds

2011-02-19T17:32:00.008Z

The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

I MUST HAVE BEEN NO OLDER than five when I noticed the rain rushing down the driveway in my mother’s garden at such a volume that it could not be absorbed or carried away quickly enough to keep it from flowing into our garage. In Bermuda we had sudden rainstorms, often with extraordinarily violent thunder and lightning, and if the Island had been having one of its frequent droughts, the ground would be packed down as hard as concrete. All moisture would puddle and flow, absorption might happen gradually, and saturation would take a great deal of time.

And I crouched in my bare feet, in my Bermuda shorts, in our garage as several inches of water collected on the rough cement floor. The water, I recall rather well, was warm, and there were bits of sand in it. It had a slight texture besides that of pure flowing water. I found some pieces of wood, remnants from the roof beams of the garage (it had been only recently constructed to replace an open trellis with stephanotis vines on it that did nothing to protect the car), and tried to get them floating. Some were too heavy, some too thick, to sail about easily on my own private inland sea. Some, however, became ships and boats.

As the rainwater continued to drain into the garage, the currents within it would move my wooden ships about. No need for me to guide them with my hands. Like some sort of lazy god I could watch my creation work itself out. Some of the ships sailed safely to ports within the garage, others snagged on the uneven parts of the floor, and a few were carried right out of the garage door and down the driveway to the lower road behind our house.

Many of my Eldridge relatives have served in the Royal Navy. A cousin is an officer in what remains of Britain’s navy at this moment. It is worth noting he was on HMS Manchester last summer when she was sailing off the shores of Bermuda during Hurricane Igor, in case the Island needed help when the storm had passed. As it happened, no help was requested, and one assumes none was required.

The closest I have come to boating was a spell of rowing a relative’s punt (called Swampy) in Hamilton Harbour on a weekend. My plan was to build up my scrawny body. It did not help.

On my travels I have seen a good deal of water, salt and fresh. I have sailed across Lake Michigan on a car ferry to Beaver Island. I have driven up a fairly shallow stream in the mountains above Salt Lake City in a Ford Bronco SUV, which was hardly kind to Nature. One of the most incredible rainstorms I have witnessed was in Hurricane, Utah, in about 1994. That is a desert area, usually dry as a bone, where tumbleweeds rolled down the gravel-coated Main Street and orange dust blew about and coated everything the colour of the landscapes in John Wayne’s western movies. One afternoon I was in a car with a friend at the junction of Main and State Street and a microburst opened above us. We pulled over to the side of the road and slowly moved into the parking area outside a Taco Time fast food outlet. The world vanished as the rain poured onto the Hurricane Valley, and in a minute there was a foot of water on the roads and low-lying areas in the centre of town where we were attempting to shelter. If the water had been much deeper it might have been a flash flood, but it was able to move quickly enough to even lower ground at the south side of town. Still, it was rather exciting, rather frightening.

Having lived through several major hurricanes in Bermuda, complete with tornados and water-spouts and deluging rain, I can answer the frequent questions I get regarding the Bermuda Triangle with my general theory that it just happens to be a part of the western Atlantic that has frequent and often sudden storms, and it is a busy area for shipping and air travel. I’m almost certain that there are no more UFOs near Bermuda than there are anywhere else. Wind and rain happen, waves happen, things go down.

Last Wednesday we had a spectacular day. It was so bright and sunny, and fairly warm, that we took the dogs for a walk by the River Coquet. We even sat in the sun and talked about the sparkling light on the water in the River and out towards the Harbour entrance. The dogs ran about at the end of their longest retractable leads and returned with clean feet. The bank of the River has been under ice, snow or mud since last autumn. This was the first walk there since then.

Since Wednesday, we have had steady rain. It is snowing on higher ground, but we’ve only had some sleet on the coast. Howling winds. Dark skies. Wet footprints (dog and man size) in the hallway.

To summarise: Summer of 2011 was on 16 February this year, and it was lovely.

This afternoon we went to lunch at The Fleece Inn up in Alnwick. The landlord opened the doors at noon and had a coal fire going. On a cold, rainy day this was appreciated. It is an old pub, full of character. It happens to have a men’s toilet (the Americans might call it a restroom) for customers only (reads the sign) that is the most hideous public bog I have ever come across. The walls seem to be running with moisture, the urinal is along two walls with a stinking trough at one’s feet, and the red-tile floor is puddled. The single cubicle does not lock. I am rather surprised that a business would present itself so badly, even if it may be that most of the lads who use the toilet are off their faces and cannot focus on anything at all. I can only guess that the toilet is so ancient that it is “listed” and cannot be renovated or replaced; it is caught up, trapped, in history. I like history well enough, but I don’t care to paddle across a toilet’s floor to reach a smelly urinal. To use the cubicle, to actually sit on the commode, one would have to push on the door with one’s feet to keep it shut while one did one’s business.

I recommend The Fleece Inn, but do relieve yourself before you leave home.

I can never decide whether my dreams are the result of my thoughts,

or my thoughts the result of my dreams.
D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930)

It is a little after five o’clock in the evening. I woke twelve hours ago having a peculiar dream about North and South Korea. In my dream the North had finally lobbed some sort of nuclear bomb at the South. It has not been mentioned during the day, I’ve not watched the telly though. I imagine the booming wind and the rattling sleet on my windows at daybreak may have turned my dreams to thoughts of war, or my thoughts of war to dreams.

There's high, and there's high, and to get really high -

I mean so high that you can walk on the water,

that high-that's where I'm going.
George Harrison (1943-2001)

It’s full moon just now and the water in the Estuary is as high as I have ever seen it, perhaps a foot more and the road to Warkworth will be awash. The pastures on the other side of the road were puddled this morning, and are pond-like tonight.

The sky is dark as I write this, the rain is merciless. I know there’s a spring and summer out there. The snowdrops are up and blossoming, the daffodils are several inches high. We don’t really do crocuses up here, not the way they do in, say, Hyde Park. We will have wild bluebells and then the cultured plants. I usually invest in daisy-like seedlings and petunias. Most years I am inundated with flowers on my side of the courtyard.

One has to remember all that when it is this grim. In this Water World.

Tea and Therapy

2011-02-17T14:04:00.003Z

Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.
Graham Greene (1904-1991)

IT IS MY HABIT, for better or worse, to hurry home from certain occasions and experiences that are interesting to me and to scribble hand-written notes on the subject and to write up conversations word-for-word. When it is convenient, I type the notes up and keep them as work-papers in my computer. Eventually, the particular event may be revisited. For me, this is a kind of therapy.

And so it happens that I have fifteen pages of typewritten notes created from impressions gathered at a November birthday party spent with about a half-dozen friends of mine, and a subsequent afternoon tea party in December to celebrate a book that one of the same group had just had published. This happened in 2002, and the notes have been waiting to see the light of day (and reason) for over a year. The birthday party will have to wait a while to be recreated, but the gathering of about twenty friends and acquaintances for a literary tea is about to go down on the printed page. I'll call it "Tea and Therapy" and hope to amuse.

[This article first appeared in Defenestration, an online literary magazine, in June 2004.]

You are going to meet some of my friends and a very odd therapist. If my lay friends are peculiar, and they really are, it is my experience that one of the strangest people I have ever encountered is a psychiatric therapist. More than a psychiatrist, this gentleman is a psychoanalyst, with, I imagine, a wall covered in diplomas and, I trust, a file full of "Thank You!" letters. My own therapist knows him, and recommends him as a colleague and an amusing personality.

I first met this curious fellow at a combined Christmas high tea and book launching, so let us go there now.

Several of my friends attended the party, and I've known the host - a Bermudian writer who specializes in local history books - since he wrote about the ghost that haunts a home my father lived in for a time. I had not appreciated that my friend, the writer, was in therapy. His guest of honour was his therapist.

When I walked into the rather grand old Bermuda home, I was met by the anxious author of the book being launched (or dedicated, autographed and handed out at least ... no books flew through the air) who warned me that I could not under any circumstances review his book in the newspaper. It was not because of my poor reviewing skills on other occasions; it was simply that the book was a personal effort, not for commercial sale or profit. Rather, a gift to the author's friends and, I think, selected family members.

The book featured family photographs with captions, the writer was identified and his picture shown on the cover. It seemed obvious to me that it was hardly a secretive document.

"It's about my sexual awakening," whispered the host.
"I see. I can imagine you don't want that reviewed!" I tried to create a bit of humour to lighten the atmosphere. Actually, I'm a bit of a smart-arse and I couldn't resist making the remark.
“A very limited number of copies and all will be handed out personally,” and he pointed to a cardboard box much bigger than a breadbin.

In a large room with an open-beamed ceiling and a blazing log fire in the hearth, the author started signing books from the box and passing them along to each of his guests, who were sipping tea, and nibbling finger sandwiches, slices of cake and dainty pastries.

Every adult at the party, and quite likely the two youngsters present, eventually received a copy of the book, autographed and personalized. Each recipient seemed to examine the cover, open the book to the dedication, flip to a page or two at random, and then would slip the book onto a side-table or onto the floor. There were no public or private readings aloud from the text itself, and the book was not openly discussed, if at all.

The dedication in my copy indicated that the writer appreciated my "wonderful messages", which the author had detected in my weekly newspaper column.

It is not my intention to review anyone's sexual awakening here, except to say this one detailed by my friend was loud to the point of having his neighbours at a noted boys’ boarding school banging on the walls and, apparently, was more than satisfactory for all concerned. As I am a bit hard of hearing, anything at increased volume gets my thumbs up!

Playing at being a therapist, I now sense that the book that I will not review was discussed with, and encouraged by, the author's own therapist. It reads like the revelations you might offer to your professional confidant and close friends, if not all your immediate family. The therapist had been invited to the tea for the wisdom and encouragement given the writer, and I don't think he had the meter running for the hour he spent with us all.

My friend with the tell-nearly-all book must have spent a fair bit of money for his therapeutic publication. It is a beautifully designed and printed hardcover effort. I rather liked the story too. The writer entertained his readers, added to the body of artistic literature in Bermuda, and had some therapy in the bargain, all under the watchful gaze of a psychoanalyst. And what a curious fellow this analyst turned out to be.

I was eventually introduced to the honoured party guest. A firm handshake, as you'd expect from a medical professional. He had his wife and two teenage daughters with him. I met them quickly, more handshakes and first names exchanged (and forgotten, I’m afraid).

"So you are Ross Eldridge?" asked the doctor. "I read your column in The Mid-Ocean News each weekend."
"Don't be put off by that," I replied. "I'm not such a mad or bad person in real life." (I forgot that one should never use the words "mad" and "bad" and "real life" around those in the psychiatric field.)
"But, Ross, you don't look at all like the photograph in the newspaper by-line." It's true, the photograph was many months old and I'd grown my hair longer and had quit wearing my reading glasses.
"It's me, it really is!"
"Is there a copy of this week's Mid-Ocean News here?" asked the doctor. There was. He looked at the newspaper and looked at me, and again at the newspaper. "It really doesn't seem to be you. Are you sure you don't write for another newspaper?"
And I thought to myself: "Here's a conversation to write down tonight!"

After that introduction, I sat on a sofa with my tea (in a cup and saucer that had arrived in Bermuda in a barrel of sawdust or flour on a sailing ship more than two centuries ago, which made my hands shake to think on) and noticed that our host-author was engaged in loud conversation with the wife of the psychiatrist. I could hear the words quite clearly. She was talking to my friend while listening absent-mindedly to a mobile phone held to her ear, and looking around at the party guests. That might indicate a broad mind, the kind I lack, the ability to multi-task.

"I say," she said to the author, "did you celebrate Hanukkah this year?"
"Well, no. This is my only party this month. It's for Christmas and, besides, I'm not Jewish."
"I understand. Hanukkah was very early this year."
One of the daughters gasped and asked, quite audibly, "Mummy-Darling, doesn't that mean Christmas will be early this year too?"
"I'm afraid so."
"So early! So early!" The young girl looked to be close to tears.
Her sister, however, turned to the analyst, asking, "Daddy, what jewels are you getting us this Christmas?"
"They will have to be rubies or emeralds, of course. It is Christmas after all!"
"I do so adore rubies, Daddy."
"For myself, I'm thinking of getting some star sapphires. One can get so lost in star sapphires. I might even have a diadem made for me." The analyst reached up and posed his fingers like a crown on his head.

I'd met quite a few therapists over the years, but never one like this. Of course, he was not sitting behind a doctor’s desk or alongside a couch on this winter’s afternoon. It seemed that psychiatrists might be people too. Weird people! The daughters, who I probably should not lampoon bearing in mind their ages and delicate sensibilities, then seemed to forget about jewellery and precious stones.

"We sat next to two virgins on the flight to Bermuda," one daughter informed us all.
"Yes, one was seventeen and the other twenty-five," chirped her sister.

At this point, I very nearly had to be a nosy reporter. "How," I wondered, "did they know these fellow passengers were virgins?" I restrained myself and figured that they probably simply asked, and were given clear answers to their rather personal questions. This sort of thing might not be strange in the First Class Cabin on British Airways.

The best part of an hour having passed, the psychiatrist and his family grouped together and prepared to take leave of the party, clutching their four copies of the book we'd received in a kind of Holy (or Unholy) Communion. Kisses and thanks were exchanged with the host; they were that kind of guests.

I thought the party would surely grind to a halt. Could a group such as this continue to function without a resident therapist? Yet, there were a few more public offerings and notes for me to take.

One guest was trying to convert an elegant young woman to the Animal Rights Cause. Cleverly, he used the description of the person stroking a warm bunny's fur to inform her how such things lower our blood pressure, get us in touch with nature, and benefit us in so many ways.

"Yes," replied the well-dressed woman, "I quite understand that. I have a fifty-two-inch mink coat and I love to stroke it." [I have a sudden memory of my blue, lucky rabbit's foot that I lost while on holiday at the seaside in England as a little boy. My luck never really recovered from that.]

The PETA activist immediately looked nauseous and almost speechless, and stuffed some angel-food cake into his mouth hurriedly with his stubby fingers. I know that eating is often a symptom and result of anxiety and distress for some of us. The man was somewhat overweight. "This needs hot custard! Hot custard!" and then there was a horrified silence.

When it came time for me to leave, my host whispered again the words he had inscribed in my copy of his book.

"I got the inspiration to write my story partly from some things I read in your newspaper column. I feel you are sending me messages. Thank you for the messages!" The host did not kiss me goodbye.
"I am not that kind of guest, or it is not that kind of party," I thought to myself. "But what do I know? I only write a newspaper column, not a tell-nearly-all book."

I'll mention all this to my own therapist.

Abstracts & Brief Chronicles

2011-02-10T01:40:00.008Z

This I wrote in 2005, about a year before my grandmother died at the age of 104. She spent her last few years at the Westmeath Residential Home, shown above. This article appeared in FRESH YARN, an online magazine.

THERE WAS A MAN, a composer of poetry, without a chin. He had lost it to a cancer. He kept some of his mind, however, and recognized an opportunity when one came along.

My grandmother, at 103 years of age, watches the other residents of Westmeath slip away, and most go down in the elevator to the ground floor, and then out the back entrance. I think you know what I mean here.

The man, the poet, stayed on longer than most; he seemed a prisoner of the past in the present. He had passed around a book of some of his poems that he had written during a love affair that had ended unhappily eighty years earlier. In his present deformity, he could hardly read them aloud easily, assuming poetry is to be spoken, heard and perfectly understood. I never heard him try. He feared facing the public so damaged as he was, this poet, and his only excuse for using what was left of his face was a certain hunger that remained. There was no starving to death by choice or through circumstance, only hunger.

His craving never eased as he allowed himself to be caped and covered by a large, moisture resistant cloth, because no matter how carefully he spooned his food towards his throat, it tended to slip down from where his chin once had been. He didn't want help with his difficulties.

He would walk up and down the corridor in the Intermediate Wing, such a tall man, he had been in the British military and it showed. An officer, I believe, but I didn't see the obituary.

For a time, a contemporary of the poet with his own cancer came to visit him and they were able to converse quite satisfactorily. There is much to be said silently between friends. And the friend from the outside died first. After that, the poet often got lost. Which door on a corridor might be his room there on the upper floor? How many paces to get you to the place where you belong? Right turn? Left turn?

The poet's room at Westmeath had a view through a south-facing double window directly opposite the door to the corridor. He found his room on his own at times, more by luck than calculation. Often he would step into another room and be ordered out with a "Go to your own room!" When he did end up in the right place, he could go and look from his windows to see orange trees, oleanders and a jacaranda across the lawns and below.

One morning, the poet raised his window, pushed out the screen, and slipped away to the concrete below. He did not die immediately, but days later in the main Hospital. His was a big body, he'd kept himself active: upright posture, no bending over a cane or walker. He'd have needed to push very hard to go through the window, and to go quietly as well.

My grandmother was not sure who might have gathered up the poet's clothes. His late friend had been his only visitor. Copies of a slim volume of his love poems had circulated among the residents who were well enough to see them -- if not to understand the revelations and sentiments -- but the poems slipped away too. I am wondering if, when my grandmother moves along, we might come across the poet's work, tucked away in a bag or parcel, or below some underwear she no longer requires. She wears diapers now. Perhaps hidden with something of hers that we had not known about.

The residents at Westmeath do not discuss those who have gone down in the elevator a final time. Rather, there is an empty seat in the dining area for a day or two, and then a new face arrives that few notice. My grandmother is the only resident on that floor with a functioning memory. She tells me all the gossip. She knew her neighbour, the poet, had slipped away, and how. We spoke of him for no more than a minute, and then she moved on. I found I could not leave it behind that easily -- I've tried to write poetry myself -- and wonder if these words on this page will mark the point of a departure.

I've assured my family members that I will not write about them -- as if they really had important or necessary secrets -- in their lifetimes. I'm afraid of losing my own memory, or my ability to convey my words. Sorry, folks.

Since she turned ninety-eight, my grandmother has lived in Westmeath. Five years have gone by; we've observed one crisis of health after another, one departing face after another. This former grand home is a desirable residence for seniors, with monthly fees that suggest some luxury of food, excellent medical treatment, care-giving, and companionship. Of course, I would be correct in admitting that most of the residents haven't a clue where they are, many don't even respond to their own name being voiced. It might be wasteful to feed them anything but macaroni and baked beans. They do better than that.

My grandmother has lived on and kept her senses because, I believe, she has many visitors. She reads the newspapers, does jigsaw puzzles, and converses about politics and religion, and -- very reluctantly -- how it was to work as a child in a mill in Lancashire. The memories of the cobblestone streets of Harle Syke are not lost -- we can pick things up where we leave off, and go into details. Sometimes I have to draw her stories out. We are hearing of events that most of us, in her family, had not a clue about. I feel I must mark these, get them on the page.

It is the latest missing face in the dining room, noted succinctly, that gets left behind as my grandmother and I continue our own journeys back in time, and in the present whilst draped in a cloak, a patchwork of everything that has happened 'til that moment. We don't look far ahead; I have no idea if my grandmother has given my uncles her preferences for when her funeral comes. Around me, she wishes aloud that there were a crematorium in Bermuda. So do I. When she is tired or bored, I offer to open her bedroom window just as I'm leaving. I'm making a joke. She says: "Don't bother, it might rain." I leave smiling, and she waves me out. That's what you do at 103.

Another writer showed me some of his poetry this week. I had felt impressed to try and contact him after many years. He had been a long time friend of my parents, an employee of the same bank where my father worked, and a neighbour for forty years. His late wife brought flowers each week from their garden to my mother who had such bad luck with her own. I felt that if I did not see the man immediately, I would have to admit, head bowed, to the memory of the poet: "I didn't see you, old friend, while you lived among us, but now that you're dead I wish I had."

So, I telephoned the elderly man, now in his nineties, and quickly told him I was coming 'round to see him the next day, and gave him a time. I felt sure he'd have settled for a telephone call if I'd paused on the line, and I wanted to avoid that. I still wondered if he'd be at home when I turned up, or hiding away, not wanting to answer the door.

As children, we had visited the couple often, until the wife died, and I always went to the kitchen door -- in Bermuda it is unusual to use a front door, no matter how grand the occasion -- and rarely stepped inside. Rather, we might be offered a cold drink on the back patio and a look at the friends’ cats. This week, with one part of me in the past and another part a bit worried about the present, I went to the kitchen door. It was closed, but there was a doorbell, and I pressed on it. I heard the "pong" inside.

A voice called out my name, "Ross, you'll have to go 'round to the front door, the back one's jammed shut." I walked through the garden, noting how overgrown it was, and how the house was in poor condition. The shutters were closed, and had missing slats and hung crookedly, paint peeling off them.

The closed shutters were not all that surprising as our police force and security people now tell us that we should not only close and lock our homes when we leave them, but also when we are home. We should lock ourselves in. As a boy, I believe I could have walked in and out of two dozen houses in our neighbourhood without worrying anyone and not needing to force a lock. I could call out: "It's Ross!" without frightening anyone. I might be given a biscuit and a glass of milk, from a real bottle, milk with the cream on the top. If it looked like rain, I'd take the neighbours' laundry in from their clotheslines if they were not home, or were taking a nap from the humidity of a summer day in Bermuda.

I rang the bell realizing that I'd never been through the front door at the old friend's home. His wife grew African violets in the reception area so many years ago. Those did not interest me then, though it might have been an emotional moment to find them now. The main door opened, and I saw it had been pushed into the closed position by several large bricks wrapped in cloth on the floor. We got the door open, and the reception room had no plants at all in it. Things change, I thought. Shaking a very firm hand, I stepped into the darkened room.

I was offered several seats, as my host settled back into his own reclining chair. I sat near him, and directly faced him. I knew he was blind in one eye and had limited vision with the other eye. We both felt awkward, and I wondered what to say to get things going.

"How's your health these days?" was how I started. I'd noticed that besides his firm handshake, he was well-dressed in clean, casual clothes, and had nicely cut hair -- more than mine -- and a trimmed moustache. There was no odour in the room, and I know about those from visiting my grandmother in her upscale residence. There was no dust on the coffee table in front of me, but there were several boxes on it holding medallions and ribbons below glass lids. I knew enough to appreciate they had been awarded to my friend's wife by the Crown.

"I'll start at the top," he replied. And we got through headaches, dodgy hearing, a blinded eye, sore throat, tummy troubles and gall bladder surgery. That was as low as I wanted to go. I mentioned that he'd certainly trumped any aches and pains I might confess to. And then I asked how long it had been since his wife had died. He told me the exact date and time, 17 years earlier, and in the darkened room I noticed that the house was not furnished the way an elderly gentleman might do it.

Everything was set in its place, upholstery was worn and split, photographs and portraits on the wall remained from the days I'd seen them as a child -- old men with beards, now I noticed they'd been done when the subjects were much younger than I am now -- and the paint on the walls was peeling in sheets. Curtains slumped next to the shuttered windows.

Odder still, were several quite lovely cigarette boxes and lighters -- his wife had been a smoker, and died of cancer -- I wondered if the boxes might contain cigarettes still, 17 years later.

There was something different, unusual: The dining room table was heaped in bottled water containers. He offered me a drink: "Water or Sprite?" He explained he took a diuretic for his blood pressure and peed a lot and needed to replace the fluids. The water in the tank under his house was not potable, and he only used it for laundry and flushing. He used bottled water for everything else.

At that moment, he went off to pee and I opened my knapsack and took out a newspaper and slices of plain cake and fruitcake, and rested them near all the water bottles.

"What's this?" he asked at his return.
"Ah, I brought the newspaper, thought I'd read it to you if you wanted."
"Can you leave it for me?"
"Of course."
"Cake?"
"I figured you probably were told not to eat cake, and you could enjoy some."
"Oh, yes."

The spell was broken. We talked about old times, really old times, when their home was built a few months after my parents' place. Neighbours that we shared. We quickly realized nearly everybody of his -- my mother's -- generation on that street had now died. But we raised them up for an hour.

This old family friend revealed that he only went to the grocery store once every three weeks with a volunteer who took him in her car. I asked: "Fresh vegetables?" and he shook his head. "Many visitors?" and he shook his head again. I'd noticed a radio, but not a television. He listened, he said, to call-in radio shows. I told him that I found those too confrontational. I confessed to having a home computer, one nine years old now. "I mostly write these days," I offered. "It's a compulsion. I have to get things down on the page."

He reached over to a table at the side of his recliner and drew several pages from a yellow pad. He studied them carefully, put a few back and finally handed two pages to me.

"These are some poems I wrote recently." He explained. "Would you like to read them?"
"Of course, let's have a look."

They were written in impeccable handwriting, in ink -- he had been a bookkeeper at the bank so many years ago -- and two lines into it I realized they were comedic. The first was about his poor, worn out body with everything broken or bent or missing, and all written in clever rhymes, and going south of the gall bladder that we'd discussed earlier. He'd written it very recently. I was reminded of a famous gravestone that reads: "I told you I was sick!" Might it be Mark Twain? No, don't think so, but worthy of Twain.

The second poem was a commentary on the loss of innocence in Bermuda: Crime, gangs, fear, high prices, shortages, rude children and their rude parents, and endless industrial disputes. In the poem he had not written in so many words that he missed his wife, though as I read his couplets, I appreciated that he missed her more than anything else, but was glad she had not lived long enough to see these days. The house they had lived in - closed and shuttered against time, the master of all thieves - is still as it was the day she died, only the dust has been removed.

I did not offer to open any windows. This poet had almost completed his love affair with his wife; it was still evolving. When I left, returning another firm handshake, I warned I'd like to come back soon.

"Yes. That's OK, Ross," he said.
"Don't forget the cake."
"Oh, I won't!"

Walking out of his garden that was so unchanged, I passed the house my mother lived in for 40 years until her death in 1992. I knew it had been rebuilt. The house itself had been rundown but the land was valuable. The hedge of bougainvillea and hibiscus that I'd planted for my mother was now so high and thick that I could not see the house behind it. I saw some children's toys in the driveway.

And I walked to the bus stop. Feeling good about love.

And on the Eighth Day ... They Wrote it Down

2011-01-16T16:31:00.011Z

A subject for a great poet would be God's boredom after the seventh day of creation.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900)

Creation destroys as it goes, throws down one tree for the rise of another. But ideal mankind would abolish death, multiply itself million upon million, rear up city upon city, save every parasite alive, until the accumulation of mere existence is swollen to a horror.
D. H. Lawrence (1885 – 1930)

ULTIMATE TRUTHS are those that we reject first of all. It is the Great Lies that one draws to one’s bosom and allows to burn there, a cold confusion, a universal counterfeit currency. I have seen young mothers whispering poisoned verses to their tiny, scarcely-formed children, held up to the crowd: “Tell them you know this [or that] is true.” Sometimes the little boy or little girl struggles and weeps, and refuses to speak, and must be put down to toddle back to its seat. There is wisdom. One hopes that the day or night will come when the child runs outside, stands below the sky, beneath creation, and listens not to its mother, but to all that it observes by eye, ear, taste or touch.

This week it has been reported that the Hubble Space Telescope is studying an enormous green blob in distant outer space. The news reports use words like “mysterious”, “bizarre”, “gigantic” and “strangely alive”, the panic headlines of a 1950s science fiction B-Movie.

The great green blob has a name: Hanny’s Voorwerp. The blob is the size of the Milky Way Galaxy, 650 million light years (each light year is six trillion miles, if you care) away from us, and it is giving birth to new stars as parts of the blob collapse and result in pressure enough to create stars. It’s mostly hydrogen gas swirling about from a close encounter with two galaxies, and is illuminated by a quasar, a bright object full of energy supplied by a black hole.

Ms Hanny van Arkel, a Dutch elementary school teacher, first spotted the phenomenon in 2007 while studying archived photographs. She says that the blob originally appeared to be a blue smudge; now it seems more like a vast green (wait for it!) dancing frog. If that worries you, take a deep breath, Ms Arkel has discovered that the frog not only has limbs, but eyes.

And there it is, creation observed over the past three or four years: A gaseous frog god named Hanny’s Voorwerp spewing stars, lit by a quasar powered by a black hole. If it had not been on the morning and evening news, one might have missed it. Worlds without end (or beginning). Amen.

Let’s talk about sexual creation. Hanny’s Voorwerp is a tale waiting to be told: grand green sex, but it is the business of the religious amongst us to sort that out; I just scribble on Post-it Notes and write a thousand or so words from time to time on what I might have seen or heard in the light or dark. I struggle free from my parent, and run outside in tears having not said: “I know this [or that] is true.”

The Ancient Egyptians were creative and inventive, and wrote things down. Their histories on the walls of their tombs and temples, and on papyrus scrolls that have survived the souvenir-hunting tourists and the uncomfortable, yet looting Victorian explorers, give varying versions of the creation of the Universe.

According to Egyptian tradition, the god Amun [also spelled Amen, Amon and Ammon] existed alone, all alone, in an aqueous sort of world before there were time and times. This First Being was described as an attractively-built, human-like male wearing a crown depicting a goat’s head. Amun’s symbol was the always randy, sexually insatiable ram. The eminent Victorian explorers, scientists and Egyptologists destroyed, damaged and hid references to the Amun creation cult. Here’s why.

Lonesome Amun created the universe sexually. He masturbated and ejaculated into his hand, drank his own semen and so impregnated himself. Following this monotheistic sexual act, Amun spat out Geb, the (male) Earth-God and Nut, the (female) Sky-Goddess, who then copulated heterosexually and produced the rest of the gods and their mortal offspring. That’s the way they saw it.

The Egyptian Pharaohs with their royal wives would re-enact Amun’s creation, the Pharaoh of the day would get inside a hollowed-out statue of Amun, including a hollow penis, and go to it.

You might find, in your research, that the First God was called Atum rather than Amun, and after ejaculating directly into his own mouth he spewed out Shu (male) and Tefnut (female), the rest of the story is the same.

The Egyptian priestly class was not the only one to act out the Creation Story. I myself have attended a session in a Mormon temple [in St George, Utah, if you care] which featured snakes and altars; Adamic-language chants; really strange, mysterious, bizarre clothing; signs and symbols (Mormon temples have been called the International House of Handshakes); lights and mirrors, washings and anointings. There are suns, moons and stars and many gods. This is called “Temple Work” and is considered to be surrogacy. One of the Mormon Holy Scriptures, The Book of Abraham from The Pearl of Great Price, was [Joseph Smith said] a translation from an Egyptian papyrus retrieved from the wrapping around a mummy in a travelling road-show. The Mormon Temple Ceremony is not quite as interesting as the Amun offerings would have been, but you are just as knackered after two hours of it.

We have scientists that postulate a creation from a Big Bang. From nothing to everything in almost no time at all (there being no time). This is akin to Amun, is it not? There are many religious folks who consider any form of science to be sinful. In fact, they consider anything outside the Christian Bible to be the work of the Devil. Never mind the Bible is convoluted, confused, contradictory and badly constructed. The latest translations have even destroyed the glorious language of the King James Version. Christian sects are at war with one another. A preacher threatens: “Tell them you know this [or that] is true. Or it’s hell for you!”

Run outside, boys and girls, and take your parents and grandparents. There are tadpoles falling from the heavens, and the sap is rising.

Living the Life I Lead

2010-12-30T18:24:00.009Z

Well, I was happy here at home
I got everything I need.
Happy being on my own
Just living the life I lead.
Well suddenly it dawned on me
That this was not my life.
So I just phoned the airline girl
And said: “Get me on flight number 505.
Get me on flight number 505.”
The Rolling Stones (Flight 505)

YESTERDAY A FRIEND WROTE TO ME (put your hands up, Richard) suggesting (with bleak January not so many hours away) I start my autobiography (to write it, not read it, for it has remained hidden from you and me). If that were not enough, I might also begin a novel. January could be awfully busy.

One has come across the remark: "Each of us has a book within us." I don’t believe that, not for a moment, and the proof is in the pudding (as they say). How many novels by driven (if uninspired) writers are clearly over-egged? One could spend January making a list.

Allow me to confess (sorry, Richard) that I do not have a storybook in me, not at either end. Novels should be, I’m thinking, new somehow. The novels that do haunt my mind are those that I have read, and they retain their novelty years, indeed decades, after I have read them. The Waves belongs to Virginia Woolf, and water carried her away, but not her words; Island is the optimistic child of Aldous Huxley (that novel altered my life in 1967, everything changed as I read the last paragraph); The Magic Mountain came on loan from Thomas Mann, a trip to the snow and the consumptive death there; André Gide’s Fruits of the Earth has nourished me without being diminished; DH Lawrence gave me (and you) Women in Love and he stands in the room watching me when I read it, or think of it, a bloodied handkerchief at his lips.

I have come across would-be novelists, wordsmiths, who seem to write to a formula. (The oddest goal was to write an entire novel of 50,000 words in the calendar month of November just gone. I wondered whether there might be a 20,000 word short story of some brilliance, or a 90,000 word oeuvre that was sidelined in the cause of high speed bad art.) I do understand the need to write, the need dictated by the necessities of life (food and electricity), having written a newspaper column and also having played at being an art critic some years back. In the more distant past, I tended to write the bulk of our grammar school newspaper (Quid Novi) that I edited; bulk being a good word to describe my contribution (ballast would work as an appropriate word too).

Not all writers can be dismissed on the basis of their writing schedules. One hears of noted, successful authors who go to the office (as it were) at a certain time each day. I believe Roald Dahl would head for a shed at the bottom of his garden and put in his hours. Virginia Woolf wanted a room to herself where she could stand at an elevated desktop. I hope those that shut a door behind them and in their secret (the Mormons would say sacred) chamber weave wonders do not force the pen or pencil across an unwilling page, or type for the comfort of the clattering keys; I hope that the Roald Dahls have heard a voice (and only when it wanted to be heard, not when its source was having its bottom pinched).

When we remember we are all mad,

the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

There are writers who come by their gifts in ways that everyday boys and girls might not wish to share. I have read the words, the beautiful words, words tending to degrees of genius, that are the silver linings to lives (some wit noted that every silver lining has a dark cloud) that most of us would attempt to run away from (or to escape by way of spirits and substances and transcendental obfuscations). These are not writers with a word-quota (1,666 a day in November, damnit), but with a struggle for being, and are wrestling with all the angels that life can fling down on them. These are the creators of words, chapters, stories, poems, plays that nearly break my heart (perhaps they really do break my heart, nothing nearly at all) when I see their flesh and blood sacrificed represented on the page (and no God to stay the knife).

No (Richard), I shall not write a novel, starting in January. A biography then? In my case, if I could conjure up the words of my life, they would be delivered in the mouths of so many ghosts. I try to live my live in the present day (Buddha said we should not dwell in the past or think of the future), however, my ghost-writers would be hard to avoid if I was looking at my personal story from “In the beginning...” My Mother, dead over 18 years, might materialise as I sit at my desk (or on the sofa, or when I’m struggling to sleep), reminding me, as I see her eyes wide and lost under her glasses, that there is madness in me; my Father, who passed away in early 1996 could pop up (wearing the naff smoking jacket, cravat and smoking a pipe that made him an embarrassment for me) with the details of my conception and nativity (thank Christ!); my much-loved Nan Eldridge, taken by the cancer almost 35 years ago, may suddenly pour me a tiny glass of sherry, ask if I have a spare tab, and relate the family history that her father told her in 1910. (I know people who see and hear visions; one thinks himself a simple psychic as he deals daily with very real dead people. A psychiatrist would have a longer name, difficult to spell, more difficult to understand, for the would-be psychic. I think all apparitions are real, even if one might put a hand through one’s late brother to reach a glass of spirits at the bar.)

Life is something to do when you can't get to sleep.
Fran Lebowitz (1951-)

In my writing, the blog entries and the smart-arsed remarks on Twitter, I do try to stay close to the now, even if I’m here and there. I worry that the real current life is no better revealed than in our shopping lists (I needed cranberry juice yesterday, and Brie cheese, and this, in algebraic form, actually tells me a great deal about my life on Wednesday, 29 December, 2010). “There’s more to life!” (than my diet lemonade and lettuce). How many writers, real and hack, have said that? But it is true. Pushing through the old ghosts, my life is rolling along in the books I am reading. I usually read three or four books, not at the very same time, but I pick up the story that best suits my mood in the hour and might best stimulate my mind. Yesterday I was in Germany in 1943, the British and Americans were dropping bombs, and ragged Jews were struggling on foot to take showers at Dachau; today I was on board the Pequod in search of that most famous of whales (the little children would say: “Free Willy?” And I would say: “Dick! Moby Dick!”).

My ghosts appear (I suppose I’m looking like an Ebenezer Scrooge now) and remind me that the males of a generation of my family, known to me personally, fought the Germans in World War Two (I ask them if they feel comfortable with Arthur “Bomber” Harris and the annihilation of Dresden, for I do not from the supposed security of 65 years). And my Great-Auntie Maud, in her wonderful Lancashire accent brings back to me the memory of clambering aboard a nineteenth century sailing ship on the front at Morecambe when I was very young, and the ship, built for a movie, was called “Moby Dick”. (If it had been named Pequod the average tourist walking along the promenade would most likely not have made a connection, would not have found the three pence for the ticket to climb up the steep gangplank.)

Last night I read a number of poems that a friend has written over recent years. I immediately realised that many had a subtle musical underpinning. There was beat, there was movement, there were highs and lows, and all done with words. I’d love to write poetry. Virginia Woolf told her nephew, and others, that things did not become real until one wrote them down. She suggested poetry. Looking back on my life, there are many musical songs (poems, if you like) that mark the path on which I have travelled. (Not with breadcrumbs, the birds have not misled me.) The Beatles turned me on.

My family members tend not to be long-lived, and good physical health seems to avoid us like the plague. My parents died young. One of my real passions is genealogy (combining my love of family traits, family connections, culture and history itself) and so often one sees Father and Mother having ten or more children, and six die. Several times they try to hold on to a daughter named (for example) Mary, and each one withers within a year or two. (I’d have been superstitious and would not have used the names of the dead over and over; the next Mary would be Eliza instead or Hermione.)

Looking at my family tree (which is actually better described as a fairly large computer file on over 1,800 relatives going back a thousand years in some lines), I wonder at the lives cut short by disease, accident, poverty and over-work. My great-grandfather James Henry Proctor was sent to work in the mill at age nine because he was a tall child and could fool the mill owners into thinking he was eleven, and he was dead before he was 50. One morning, early, my great-grandmother, Sarah, called down the stairs to her daughter: “Elsie, bring some brandy, your Daddy is dying.” The brandy was not to attempt to resuscitate James Henry, or to alleviate his pain and fear of the dying he was busy with; the brandy was for my great-grandmother. Happened that Elsie became my grandmother and lived to be 104, more than twice her father's age at death.

There is a great deal of artistic ability in both sides of my family, I have several cousins who paint, makes films, act, design and photograph in ways that I’d love to. (Perhaps my spell as an art critic was my attempt to stand with them?) But how many brilliant painters (or writers, or musicians) in my family have died young (usually without having had families of their own)?

Life is precious. To be a bit strange (I am permitted that, because I’m quite mad, as the Cheshire Cat would say: "We are all mad here!") one is something of a bivalve mollusc, an oyster. One might be rather rough on the outside (or at least feel that way), yet be smooth, iridescent, exquisite inside, and some have a pearl, the result of dealing with a tiny parasite, some have pearls forced upon them. Some pearls are beautiful, many are not so judged, but the oysters have all dealt with the irritant within their shells, amidst their soft tissues.

And another ghost whispers something that I’d quite misplaced (not forgotten, obviously, because here it is) for a lifetime: My two sisters had matching clothes for special occasions, like Easter Sunday church services, dresses with uncomfortable crinolines to make them stand out nearly like ballerinas’ tutus. Little straw bonnets. And pearl necklaces that were not complete, but were added to on occasion. Certainly the clothes were soon outgrown, perhaps given away to a relative or a thrift shop, but where did the pearls go? The oysters’ hard work.

Well, I sat right there in my seat.
Well, feeling like a king.
With the whole world right at my feet.
“Of course I'll have a drink!”
Well, suddenly I saw
That we never ever would arrive.
He put the plane down in the sea.
The end of flight number 505.
The end of flight number 505.
Alright.
The Rolling Stones (Flight 505)

Oscar Wilde said, perhaps a little cruelly, but he did almost everything for a laugh and cruelty is a common cause of laughter: “Youth is wasted on the young.” Looking at that, I can say that it is only now, when I’m getting on in years, that I can see all the good things of my (often difficult, troubled) youth. And when one looks back, one’s youth is always just behind us. My youth was last night. I was wonderfully youthful. I intend enjoying my youth tonight, and will hope that it seems delightful when I struggle awake on the (most likely) bone-chilling morning of the last day of 2010 ... tomorrow. My alarm is set for 6.30am.

Purple Lights & Prophets' Promises

2010-12-20T13:36:00.009Z

God depends on us. It is through us that God is achieved.
André Gide (1869-1951)

A YEAR AGO I MADE FUN of the public Christmas decorations in the village, in particular the lights on our main street which were outshone by the sign at Euro-Pizza; the parade to mark the holiday season also seemed unusual to me with its escort of heavy motorcycles and Alice in Wonderland theme.

It was too cold and chucking rain on the night of this year’s parade and I stayed inside. Our community newspaper reports that a good crowd turned out to watch a Cinderella-themed trek down Queen Street, again with the motorcycles, and drummers. Santa Claus (as we now must refer to Father Christmas) was in Amble’s new ice-cream parlour at the far end of Queen Street, an encouragement to the children to ignore the ghastly weather, struggle down to Spurreli’s, and place their gift orders with the Bearded One. Ho! Ho! Ho!

We are having a brutal winter up here in God’s Country again this year, and it has been looking a lot like Christmas for over a month. Not exactly like Christmas in the mountains above Salt Lake City (I’ve been there, done that, several times) where vast quantities of snow, dense fog and mind-numbing temperatures are handled fairly easily. Here in our frozen north, everything tends to grind to a halt as the first flurries begin. I think that Northumberland could do with some free enterprise when it comes to ploughing the snow from the side roads (it’s all narrow country lanes up here) and car parks. In Salt Lake City, people with trucks and tractors would attach ploughing devices and head off to make a few dollars. I went with a friend to clear some parking areas at Mormon chapels in SLC, and experienced the worst motion sickness I’ve had before or since; but there are people who enjoy that sensation (the same people who enjoy Disneyland’s rides, I think).

There’s a tree, barren of leaves, but well-lit by silvery fairy lights just outside my front door and twenty-five yards over to the right. It’s rather attractive, and I do not know if it is a public display or provided by the householder next to the tree, but it greets everyone coming into Amble from the north, from Warkworth. There’s a bench below the tree and I suppose a hardy soul could sit there and enjoy the glitter overhead. Well, there’s a foot of snow on the bench, so a very hardy soul with thick trousers.

The overhead lights on Queen Street are new this year, and are purple. Small, purple and plentiful. I have been walking Cailean after dark (which is not that late in the afternoon just now, think three o’clock) to the Town Square at the bottom of the street, with the world somehow transformed by the bluish colours above. Other lights are attached to the first floor outside walls on Queen Street, in most cases above shop-fronts. Several of our shops have lovely displays in their windows which can still be seen at about 3.30pm as the businesses are open. Shutters tend to come down at five and the village world is less beautiful.

Our pavements are not always clear of ice, and the snow on the road gradually gets filthy and shifted up onto the pavement’s edges, narrowing any pathways. One must walk most carefully. I plod along hardly lifting my feet. Cailean, in his dark blue or tartan overcoat pads along quickly on short dachshund legs. By the time we get home he’s shivering and his underside is very grubby. I’m cold as well, no matter how many layers I’ve dressed in, and even my sturdy shoes are soggy and need to go by the fire. For all that, we are enjoying our walks in the purple world.

When I went to get my fibre-optic Christmas tree out of the cupboard in the back porch a week ago I found it below no end of boxes, bags and bits of furniture. That cupboard is a catch-all. So I decided to empty the cupboard, remove the tree in its box, and then restack things neatly. And I did all that, in a little over an hour. There’s no heating in the back porch and it was not exactly pleasant work. My cupboard is now as tidy as one could get, the tree in its box is still in there, on top of everything; I was so tired that I couldn’t be arsed to take it out and assemble it. I’ve settled with arranging my greeting cards around the fireplace in the front room. Perfectly happy with that, I am.

There is a tall brass standing lamp with a very large pink shade in my front room. It looks like something I imagine a Victorian whorehouse might feature. This is conjecture; I’ve not been in a Victorian whorehouse. But one sees films. With the lamp lit the room glows pink. The electric fire is disguised as a coal oven, and that gleams nicely. With the greeting cards along the hearth, on the mantelpiece and around a large mirror, the room is very seasonal. If my curtains are open, there’s usually snow flying around outside and icicles hanging about. Yes, it works rather well.

I have put up some lights. This meant that I had to stand on the one chair with a flat, fairly hard seat; not something I like doing as I do not enjoy heights, ladders, wobbling and reaching. Two days ago my overhead light fixture in the bathroom suddenly made a popping noise, and one of its three bulbs went dark. A few hours later a second bulb blew. Now my bathroom is in the centre of the flat, and there is no window to the outside. There are no electrical outlets; one could not even take in a small lamp in an emergency. It is always like midnight in there! In the past I’ve only been able to get the particular bulbs from a shop up in Alnwick, so I was wondering how I’d manage that in the ice and snow. However, I was plodding past a little shop in Amble that sells electrical goods (radios, hair-dryers, clocks and TVs) and thought to go in. The shopkeeper now has light bulbs and (Hallelujah!) had the very kind I needed. A secular prayer answered?

I headed home with my bulbs (I bought extras, the darn things seem to burn out every six months) and got out my chair. A few unsteady minutes later my lights were up and the bathroom was well-lit once more. No peeing or shaving in the dark!

Yesterday the electricity went off all over the village. The snow was falling heavily and the roads had not been ploughed or gritted, and few cars had even tried to navigate them. Coast Guard, fire and hospital ambulance vehicles crawled past the flat, a helicopter was overhead somewhere, sirens going off. Despite the falling snow and cold, suddenly the street outside was heaving with people on foot heading down the hill after the emergency crews. Hours later the lights came on again, but I have not been able to discover what the brouhaha was all about.

For some, this is a most holy season. I grew up singing carols and Christmas hymns at grammar school and in church. We usually had a tree in the living room, and we had dodgy lights on it; if one burned out, they all switched off. Which was the bad bulb? An hour to try every last one.

Christmas Eve was reserved for a family meal. The turkey tended to be dry and for some reason we had nasty tinned Danish hams. A sherry trifle (without the sherry) was usually served for dessert. When I was in my mid- to late-teens I used to attend a candle-lit service at St Paul’s (Church of England) with friends at midnight on Christmas Eve, usually fortified with eggnog. Gifts were opened early on Christmas Day. We always had a tin of Quality Street chocolates. Christmas Day meant The Queen's Speech on the telly. Boxing Day meant more visiting with family.

I hardly think of Christmas in a Christian context now. I’m not really alone in that. I’m fairly sure not one of my greeting cards has featured a Nativity scene this year. I have had several dogs wearing Santa hats, which Cailean appreciates.

I think there’s no Christian church or sect that holds strictly to the belief that 25 December is the actual day on which its Jesus was born. The Mormons, I think, say it’s on their magical 6 April. If one believes the Bible (and I cannot say I do now) the indications are that Jesus was born in the spring.

It would be nice to mark the season as a time of peace. The birth of the Prince of Peace if you wish; though the Bible has him saying (prophetically, accurately) that he was not bringing peace, but a sword. Looking at today’s headlines, we seem further from peace than ever. The bright lights might well be explosions in the East.

Here’s a lovely bit of Shakespeare (Richard II, Act II, Scene IV):

The bay-trees in our country are all wither'd
And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven;
The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth
And lean-look’d prophets whisper fearful change;
Rich men look sad and ruffians dance and leap,
The one in fear to lose what they enjoy,
The other to enjoy by rage and war:
These signs forerun the death or fall of kings.

Shakespeare seems to have sad tidings, little comfort and joy. Despite that, the words he uses are exquisite. Little purple lights above a cold, dark street.

What to do? Back to André Gide:

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.

Today, at the Demonstration ...

2010-12-14T18:25:00.007Z

DUKE OF AUMERLE: Where is the duke my father with his power?

KING RICHARD II: No matter where; of comfort no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,
Let’s choose executors and talk of wills:
And yet not so, for what can we bequeath
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?

William Shakespeare (Richard II. Act III, Scene II)

WE HAVE HAD SOMETHING OF AN UPRISING here in England as students faced with university fees increasing threefold have painted banners, hitch-hiked, rented buses and otherwise found transportation to the main cities. London, of course, has been at the top of every protestor’s list; in particular the area of London, Westminster, near the Houses of Parliament.

A few weeks ago rioting students smashed their way into the headquarters of the Conservative Party. Watching the television coverage (Today’s riot will be shown from early afternoon until the evening, with little or no commercial interruption...) it seems to me that glass doors and windows can be smashed, demolished, breached rather easily. There seem to be a good many scruffy lads in hoodies and balaclavas taking to the streets with tins of spray paint, rather than fountain pens and artists' HB pencils, and the means to make hand-sized missiles from larger blocks, and to create flaming torches, which can be pitched at the overwhelmed lines of police. Some of these “students” have managed to get interviewed on the major television networks, out on the battle lines. Curiously, some speak little English, and rather than challenge the Government on its Education policy, they’ve ranted about the Middle East and Afghanistan. I cannot imagine this sort of behaviour being tolerated in the USA. Let’s not import anarchists!

Last week’s pitched battle in Parliament Square featured a good deal of damage. Winston Churchill’s statue in the Square was defaced. Up in Whitehall the Cenotaph was also desecrated; one of the thugs has been arrested and charged and he turns out to be the son of one of our more famous rock musicians. His eloquent apology, so heartfelt and beautifully phrased that I imagine the finest (most expensive) lawyers wrote it, was issued within a day. He claimed not to know what the Cenotaph was. As every city, town and village has a war memorial, and the Cenotaph in Whitehall is the focus of national attention every year in November (so just a few weeks ago), I find it remarkable that a university student could be so blissfully ignorant concerning its identity and purpose. During last week’s goings-on, the national Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square was attacked, and attempts made to set it on fire. Then Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, were set on in their car on the way to the theatre. Mobsters yelled: “Off with their heads!” The Prince has armed escorts, but no shots were fired. I imagine that sort of restraint would not be found in many cities of the world. Put President Obama’s children in a car in Washington DC and have dozens of thugs smash at it, and poke through the window, and spray paint about ... I’d not expect a royal wave. Security would take out the perpetrators.

Now, I sympathise to some extent with our university students, but the fees they are going to have to pony up are far less than those that students in, say, America do. I’m interested in scholarship opportunities. I’d rather see working class, but intelligent and determined boys and girls in our great universities than rich kids with parents who sit on the boards of our corporations who are in Oxbridge to party and punt and poke fun of the lower orders in footlights productions. The best, and not necessarily the wealthiest, should rise to the top.

I am in favour of peaceful protests. I know the temptation to play to the television cameras is overwhelming, and the youngsters probably feel strongly about the War in Afghanistan (Britain is broke, we hear day after day, yet we can pour money into a losing battle for a distant land with little but sand, scrub and opium poppies to offer us), but let’s talk about what the day’s banner is highlighting. I’d go to an anti-war rally and march under that banner. I cannot multi-task so well, the banner could get too large.

As our economic crisis and the increasing cuts in government funded programmes, and huge job losses, are felt, I expect the workers will join the demonstrations. We may be seeing only the beginning of a long, hard winter. Seems to me that if people dislike our governing parties, the Coalition of Conservatives and Liberal-Democrats, we should be getting rid of them at the ballot box, starting in the villages and towns, and then the counties and if parliamentary seats can be freed up for new elections by disenchanted electorates, that’s fine.

So, that’s a picture-postcard of Britain as Christmas 2010 approaches on icy feet. And I wondered what quotation I might use. One always associates King Richard II with a disenchanted populace. Richard II was born in 1367, became King at the age of about 10, and had to deal with the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381 when he was just a lad of 14. I dare say, as do the historians, Richard had a fair bit of help in putting down the Revolt. He actually gave in to many of the demands of the peasants and their noble supporters, but a few years later he got his revenge on everyone he could. Richard II was the first of our kings (and hardly the last) to be convinced that he was King by the Grace of God. He had a bit of a superiority complex.

Richard’s peasants were up in arms over three sets of Poll Taxes imposed to fund unsuccessful overseas wars (in Europe). Richard married the daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles IV, King of Bohemia, and started sending considerable amounts of money, raised by taxes, to his father-in-law’s causes in Europe. An EU of the 1380s, if you like.

Of course, if you’ve read your Shakespeare (and Richard II is a popular live production as it has some glorious speeches) you will know that in 1399 King Richard was overthrown by Henry Bolingbroke who declared himself King Henry IV, as one does. Richard, who had been something of a gourmet, who was fond of new and interesting foodstuffs, expanded the Palace kitchens and even commissioned a cookbook, was, after his abdication, a bit of an embarrassment and a focus for enemies of the new King Henry IV, and was gaoled and starved to death. Dead in 1400 at the age of 33. He did not lose his head. He eventually was buried in Westminster Abbey with his wife. They’d never had children.

If you are demonstrating in Parliament Square, you should notice Westminster Abbey over to one side. I suggest you go in the Abbey at the end of the day, you may be able to go inside for free (even more likely if you can persuade the doorkeepers that you’re going to attend evensong). Get yourself a guide and find the tomb of King Richard II. Pop round to Poets’ Corner too, and look up at the monument to William Shakespeare, who oversees all, and appreciate that it is probably Shakespeare who we should thank for our perceptions of King Richard II and the difficulties he had with his subjects, both high and low born.

Shakespeare worked hard, came from a fairly humble family but worked at his schooling. He phrased his opinions in words that we hug to our breasts 400 years later. He rose to the top.

Go to the demonstration, speak well (and learn how to do that, it can be done at home and at the public library), and deserve our support and respect. Represent us well.

At the end of the day, when night is darkest, we will all be gone. Our marks on the earth will dissolve and fade. Perhaps a few words will linger on for a thousand years (The Holy Bible and Valley of the Dolls come to mind). The best we can do, should do, is to teach those coming up after us to be an ensample, to create history from our footfalls.

Ice, with Tequila

2010-12-02T13:02:00.004Z

O, who can hold a fire in his hand
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?
Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite
By bare imagination of a feast?
Or wallow naked in December snow
By thinking on fantastic summer's heat?
William Shakespeare (Richard II, Act I, Scene III)

LAST NIGHT I WAS SAT in the bar at a luxurious hotel in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It was warm outside; I was protected against the heat by air-conditioning, behind glass doors. I knew I was in Santa Fe by the view, adobe buildings everywhere, including the upscale one where I sipped some sweet cocktail.

I’m just getting over a bit of a bladder infection, and got up and made my way to the WC (they seem to be called Restrooms in the USA) to relieve myself. When I’d done peeing and washed my hands, I wandered over to a window and pushed aside the curtains. It was quite dark, though I could make out the shape of the terrace across the street in the dim street light on the corner. Snow was blowing along the street, from east to west, as it had been for about eight days. Looking down and out, my window ledge was under a foot of snow (still) and the pavement was shimmering with crushed snow and ice.

Hardly Santa Fe in August.

I’d not been drinking some sticky, warming concoction in a bar. There was a mug by my bed with the remains of some hot cocoa (now long cold). I grabbed the mug and padded out in my bare feet to the kitchen, stepped into the back porch (no insulation on its roof, it is colder than Main Street in Park City, Utah, in January), reached into the cupboard that contains the controls for the boiler, and flipped a couple of switches. Back into the kitchen. I ran hot water, nearly boiling, into the kitchen sink, and rinsed my mug. That done, I filled the mug with milk and put it in the microwave for exactly 3.50 minutes. That gets it just boiling.

While the milk heats in the microwave, I hitch Cailean up to his harness and lead and push him out the front door. The back door (pictured this morning) is now blocked by snow. Cailean takes two or three tiny dachshund steps, squats, and widdles and runs back inside. Just as I put the small measure of Cailean’s breakfast into his bowl, the microwave makes its five loud binging sounds. I add an artificial sweetener tablet and a spoonful of coffee to the boiling milk. Then we go back to bed till seven, by which time the flat will have warmed up.

I get up and have a shower at seven o’clock. Cailean stays under the duvet on the bed until sometime after ten if we are home for the day. For the past eight or nine snow-days, we’ve been very much at home. I usually get a text or telephone call early in the morning from someone checking to see if I’m okay if I'm not collected to go out at the usual 8.00am.

I don’t eat breakfast if I’m at home. If I go out for the morning, or for the day, I will get something to eat while away from Cailean. He’s on a diet and if I have a meal in front of him (never mind he’s had his weighed-out portion of Adult Diet Lite Chow) he gets awfully anxious and whines a good deal. This spoils my enjoyment of my bit of toast, or bowl of cereal.

I’m writing about the days at home today, rather than my days out, as my longest journey has been to the pet shop. That same morning I got a haircut. Five aging men waiting for the one barber to clip her way through us. Waiting in the tiny barbershop. It was lovely and warm, almost steamy, and one could watch the telly or the snow blowing into the doorway at the bank across the street. The bank has been unable to open as the required number of staff for security purposes cannot get to town with the roads impassable. The girl in the barbershop lives only doors away, and was content to manage without her colleagues.

Our minimart has been getting food in irregularly, and each arrival prompts panic-buying. At times there’s no dairy or meat, no vegetables, but plenty of Cheerios boxed cereals and Kleenex tissues. Rather eager participation in the Lotto; I dare say people are thinking their first million will buy a house in the Seychelles.

I plodded along to the minimart this morning and managed to get fresh strawberries, freshly-made soup, pasta filled with buffalo mozzarella and salad greens. I also bagged two cartons of 1% milk from a dairy down in Yorkshire. Usually I get my milk from a Scottish concern, which is closer than Yorkshire, but right now one gets what one can. Yes, I got a Lotto ticket. If I win the £12,000,000 tomorrow, I’m not going to the Seychelles or anywhere overseas. However, I might pack a bag for myself and Cailean and have a week or two in a posh hotel ordering the fun beverages one might get in Santa Fe. “A tequila anything, if you please, with a wee umbrella. And a dish of pistachio nuts. Rawhide bone for my companion.”

I may well see snow from my hotel window. Unlike by flat, I dare say I could request that the heating be on before I wake up. No wandering in the near-dark to get the boiler fired up. And surely, for all the money I’d have from my Lotto win, there would be a place outside for Cailean to toilet that did not involve jostling with polar bears.

Images and Ideals

2010-11-20T10:58:00.003Z

It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.
Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)

A FEW YEARS AFTER MY FATHER VANISHED I dragged one of our dining room chairs into my mother’s bedroom, placed it in the doorway of her cupboard, climbed onto it, stretched out my arms, and pulled several items down from a shelf that had been well out of reach until that moment. I’d have been, perhaps, seven or eight.

In a box was a very large fishing reel. I don’t recall my father, or my mother, ever fishing. I’ve never seen photographs of them with rods and reels on boats or on the coastline. There was no line on the reel, and there was nothing else that might have some connection to the sport.

In another box was my father’s hand-gun. I recognized it, I recalled Dad shooting lizards on one occasion. Lizards on our bougainvilleas. The large, bright green Warwick lizards did no harm, and probably ate bugs that we’d be glad to see the back of. Why did he shoot them?

On the shelf in the top of the cupboard were also large, white sheets of paper. Artists’ paper. I pushed the fishing reel and the gun back onto the shelf and pulled the rolled-up pages out. I knew that my father had painted watercolours of landscapes, and sometimes cartoonish characters. These pictures had been given away as gifts. My father had also painted a large mural on one wall of my sisters’ bedroom. This depicted Snow White and I believe it owed a good deal to the Disney organization. For some reason the mural was short-lived, painted over. Looking back, it occurs to me that I’d have loved a mural related to my favourite book “20,000 Leagues under the Sea” in my small box-room.

The sheets of paper, when unrolled, revealed studies of female nudes. Somewhat more astonishing than the gun and fishing reel I’d rejected. I have some memory of these paintings, which depicted a sort of idealised woman, nobody I knew (or that anybody knew). Rather, a somewhat animated depiction of the perfected human form. The sort of cartoon females one might find in Playboy Magazine, though I did not appreciate this when I was seven years of age.

I was interested in painting. However, I was not permitted to use my father’s many tubes of watercolour paints which he kept in a drawer in the kitchen. I was given a box of Lake District coloured pencils, the sort that one could dip in water and get interesting results.

For some reason, some years later, my father abandoned original art and became a fanatic follower of the “Paint by Number” school. I remember the unpleasant smell of the oils to this day. One or two large Paint by Number pictures were framed and hung in the house where Dad lived with his second family. I believe they disappeared as he moved on to his third family. Towards the end of his life, my father collected paintings by one of my cousins, a professional artist. That cousin still paints, and lives not far from me. He has a portrait of my father (his uncle) hanging in his Northumberland home.

When I was young, my father would take photographs of me and my two sisters. We’d all be under ten, pudgy kids, out for a Sunday half-day with the usually absent parent. Dad had a theory about photographs: one must never look at the camera, but off into the distance so that the picture was always a side-view. It was also important that we formed a line, by height (so, by age). If possible the picture of the three children had some sort of setting that framed them. For example, a moon-gate or a wide doorway. In one home that Dad rented there was a very large fireplace, and one might be posed so as to be below the mantelpiece and within the sides, sat on the hearth itself.

Dad took slides rather than print photographs. We’d have shows from time to time using his carousel-type projector. I heard just the other day that my youngest brother has got his hands on what I believe are these slides from the 1950s and 1960s. He’s working at getting them into his computer, so I’m rather hoping to look at them soon, after forty years.

I took art classes at Warwick Academy. In fact, we all did until we were about thirteen. After that, one had to choose between a science and art & religion. Both art and religion. Art might have been fun, but the attached religion was off-putting. I went for Chemistry. In the art classes I had before the switch to the lab, we used cheap powder paints which we mixed in the aluminium foil trays from TV Dinners. Our art mistress, apparently, survived on Swanson’s rather unpleasant heat and serve meals. My father also ate these when he was between wives. Frankly, the art mistress was no better at her artwork than at food preparation.

At home, I collected the “Betta Builda” plastic blocks with a passion. If I could find the shilling, I’d buy another small box of blocks, windows, roof tiles. One might construct buildings suitable for a toy train system. I longed for a train, but never got one. However, I had a great many blocks, enough to build more than little railway stations and cottages. I was building churches and then cathedrals, offices, shops and museums and galleries. And here’s something curious: Almost fifty years later I dream of my Betta Builda blocks, my buildings. I still, some nights, snap so many bricks together and create places to house my imaginary people. I still don’t have a train, not even in my dreams.

Along with the plastic homes and villages, I assembled models from kits. Usually aeroplanes (of course, I had a “Spitfire”) and sailing ships (of course, HMS Victory).

At the Medway College of Technology I studied engineering drawing, and passed the course. I never took that any further.

In my late teens I had a go at painting again. In fact, I took part in a group show. I wasn’t too good at creating pleasant pictures and had the good sense to abandon this. Years later I had a go at being an art critic for a newspaper. I know what I like, and simply rated things on my personal scales. Now I have a go at photography. I have Photoshop installed in my computer this winter and hope to learn how to use it.

I have met another Eldridge Family artist recently, a cousin’s son, who is an animator, who makes films using puppets. This lad looks so like my father at that age (early 20s) that I was quite taken aback.

I keep paints and artist’s brushes in the flat. Now and then I dab a bit of watercolour or acrylic in a book. I'd love to have my Betta Builda blocks back from my dreams. One of my sisters dumped the originals, and the toy company that made them sold out to Lego (which was an inferior system, in my opinion). In truth, I prefer to build, sketch and colour with words.

Burning Issues

2010-11-12T17:45:00.013Z

Last Post

Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks.
The best you can write will be the best you are.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

I RECENTLY AWOKE in the wee hours with an unusual dream playing out in my mind; so curious a vision that, weeks later, I can still see portions of it, and it is no less vivid.

As I slept, I was sat at an old, manual typewriter. I recognized the bulky model; it was a Royal that would date back to the years shortly after World War Two. It was my father’s machine that he used when he worked as secretary-treasurer of the Co-op in Bermuda in the evenings, from home.

Some background. When my father finished his stint in the Royal Navy he decided to stay in Bermuda, rather than to return to his family in the United Kingdom. He worked for a time for the British government in the Colonial Secretariat in Bermuda’s awfully small capital, the City of Hamilton. I can remember, in the early 1950s, my mother starching my father’s white shirts and shorts. He wore Bermuda shorts and knee-socks, which was something of a mistake for somebody with legs best described as scrawny. I recall Dad working at the Department of Agriculture, in its offices in the Botanical Gardens. Then he moved on to the Bank of N.T. Butterfield, where he remained for over thirty years.

I should point out that when I was quite young, and my two sisters even younger, our father left the nest. My parents did not have a great deal, some of our furniture had been home-built with wood from, and I’m guessing, packing cases. My bed, and some of our chests of drawers had come, second-hand, from Bermuda’s Hospital where my mother’s father worked in Stores. Our bed linen was also courtesy of the Hospital. We had metal furniture painted with lead-based, hospital-white, glossy enamel. If the furniture was scratched or bumped one could smell the lead. If that was not unpleasant enough, my mother believed everything could be controlled with Flit. This was a vile-smelling insecticide that might have been directed at the abundant flies, roaches and mosquitoes. I remember an act of considerable cruelty when my mother would aim the Flit pump at the spaniel to get it to emerge from under an armchair (where it was probably hiding from the stench of the kerosene stove). My mother never could figure out why her canaries (she always had two, both males as the females do not sing, one in the kitchen and one in the dining room) were so short-lived. I could tell her years later that canaries were carried into mines as a warning against poisonous gasses. At the age of 65 my mother died a horrible death of cancer that was diagnosed only in its last stages; she might have had it for years. I could tell her years later about the cancer deaths that come decades after exposure to radiation (think Hiroshima) or asbestos (in buildings and boilers) or from toxic metals and paints and sprays. I could tell her, but she popped her clogs almost twenty years ago.

If my father left behind the poisonous hospital furnishings, he took with him his chain-smoking habit. I never saw him free of a cigarette. I used to have panic attacks when he’d be driving us in the car, steering with his knees while using both hands to strike a match to light another fag. This before electric lighters in the car’s dashboard. Used matches and cigarette butts went out the window; the ash-tray was tiny. Sometimes the still-burning butt would fly in again through the rear window.

My father was never a heavy drinker to the best of my knowledge. I don’t ever recall him being incapacitated by drink in any way. I’d be naive to think he never got off his face with one of his lady friends, but I don’t think he drank at home alone. He may have been a sad bastard at times, but not through alcohol.

My father’s second wife, who I liked a great deal, who was always kind to me even if she’d correct my diction and grammar (I appreciate that now), introduced us to classical music and good food. She was an excellent cook (my mother couldn’t boil a cabbage, though she tried often enough) and was always amused when I’d persuade Dad to treat me to a banana split at the Parakeet, an eatery in Bermuda that was a few clicks nicer than the Sea Venture Cafe, though hardly the epitome of fine dining. My step-mother was raised near Liverpool in the years between the wars and complicated ice-cream desserts were not to be had there and then. When I ordered a banana split, I had it with “the works”. My step-mother has been dead over twenty-five years; she died young, in her fifties. My step-mother drank herself out of her career as an extraordinarily gifted history teacher, and then to death; not over-night, I must point out, but I rarely saw her sober in the twenty-something years she was part of my family.

When my father died, aged seventy, which is a fair age for the Eldridge male (I know this from my family history studies), there was an autopsy as his death was sudden and unexpected. The results of this medical examination revealed that my father had been in dreadful health, his body was failing fast. Two aneurysms killed him on the day, but unhealthy living had taken its toll. The chain-smoking. For all I know, my mother’s dreadful cooking and the deadly paints and sprays that surrounded us when I was a child did their worst.

Three of my grandparents died of cancer. In my mother’s family, sixty was an exceptional age. With one exception, my mother’s mother lived until she was 104, and she died of extreme old age past the time of enjoying the business of living. She’d tell me she wanted to die, had just had enough. Working in a cotton mill at age eleven, and my grandfather’s lead-based paint must have toughened her up somehow. My grandfather chain-smoked and died of cancer, their home was always full of fumes.

My father’s father died of lung cancer. I remember him struggling to breathe, to talk, to walk very far. He did not smoke, so far as I know, when he was dying (and knew he was dying). My Nan died of cancer of the gut, I believe. When I was in my teens my Nan and I would play shove ha-penny or cribbage and she’d have one of my cigarettes, and she’d pour me a glass of sherry, or port, from one of her bottles.

I was a chain-smoker from the age of seventeen, smoking until I was thirty-one, with six months here and there when I’d quit half-heartedly. When I go to the doctor now for my annual physical my past as a smoker is reviewed, even though I’ve not smoked in thirty years. A month ago I applied for an insurance policy and the interviewer pestered me about my smoking. For me, it is important that I’ve not given in to the constant temptation to light up a cigarette for three decades. It is an achievement. The insurance contract notes only that I’ve not smoked in the last twelve months.

The man at the insurance company asked me how many units of alcohol I drink a day. I told him I probably had three small glasses of wine a year, and hadn’t really had a regular drink in thirty-five years. “But,” the insurance man said, “I need to know how many units that would be in, say, a week.” I got defensive and said that in volume it was about nothing. “But you do drink. So I need to know the unit.” I finally told him to put down one unit, whatever that is, a week. His form did not allow for less. I told the man I’d worked in the insurance industry for AIG and also for the Hartford Insurance Group and thought his forms with my inaccurate information were not quite fair to his employer or to me. I guess I could start drinking, but I honestly don’t much care for the stuff and only sip something perhaps three times a year when someone or something is being toasted and a drink has been placed in front of me without me necessarily asking for it.

Over the years I have taken substances that do awfully bizarre things to the mind, if not so much to the body if we’re talking wobbly legs and waving arms. I do not know if these drugs can damage one’s organs to the extent of shortening one’s life substantially. Obviously, I put my life at risk riding a scooter when tripping on this or that psychedelic. And it seems extraordinary to me that I didn’t let myself float away on LSD. I have taken some drugs in quantities that certainly put my life at risk at the time. If I’d died the coroner would probably have decided I’d accidentally topped myself. The man from the insurance company who quizzed me recently had few questions relating to drugs. I was asked if my blood pressure was normal and I said I took a particular medication which kept it steady, and I had it checked routinely. I gave him the required information about my other medical treatments, some of which are quite heavy duty. He was less concerned than I am. At the end of the insurance quiz he asked if I’d attempted to kill or harm myself in the past year. I told him that never in my life had I tried to end it all.

Back to my dream a fortnight ago. I was sat at my father’s old black Royal typewriter as I did as a child. In fact, I have used a typewriter starting with that one since I was not much over five years old. I’ve had both manual and electric machines. For the past fifteen years I’ve used a computer. I do hand-write notes on scratch pads I leave around the flat (buy mushrooms, look up meaning of the word novella, phone sister, book dinner at the Widdrington Inn), but when I do write, I use a keyboard. And I was sat at a small table in the middle of a sparsely-furnished room, the typewriter filling most of the table-top, and I was not typing, but looking intently at the old machine which had a sheet of paper in the rollers. Suddenly it burst into flames. Not small flames, but a raging fire. I reached through the flames and (not being harmed) picked up the typewriter and carried it across the room and placed it outside a door on a patio that I did not recognise any more than the room I was in. The machine continued to burn, without being consumed, out on the ground. I closed the door and walked across the room with its now-empty table, past that, and as I went through another door I woke up.

I’ve come across two projects that are affecting other people in the month of November. A number of men are growing moustaches this month, and are being sponsored financially for doing so. The muzzies can come off in December. I’ve had a moustache since I left school. I’m not messing with it, but when I make some donation to charity next, I’ll think “whiskers” as I sign the cheque, or drop the coin in the box.

Another group is taking part in a writing project. The idea is to roll out a 50,000 word novel in the month of November, in thirty days and no more. By definition of most people in the publishing industry, 50,000 words is the lowest limit of a novel. A novella would be 20,000 to 50,000 words, a novel 50,000 to 110,000. Apparently most publishers would not be interested in less than 70,000 words for a first novel. If you manage something over 110,000 words it might be called an epic (or anything by Stephen King).

In grammar school we wrote essay answers, we had no multiple-choice questions. In English we wrote compositions, a few hundred words on The Lawnmower or Life in My Town. We also might be given a 300 word section from some well-known book and we’d have to write a précis of it, perhaps 175 words.

In another life I wrote a newspaper column for a weekend publication, and that ran to about 2,000 words a time. I generally left that till the last moment.

For several years I’ve had this Barking Mad Blog. The entries run from 1,500 to 2,500 words; I’m not sure why. Perhaps I fancy a cup of tea after 2,000 words and the writing mood dissipates quickly. I never know my subject matter till the last word has been typed, and then I might think: “So that’s it...” This means I understand my meaning, and I’ve finished the damn thing. If I were writing a tale of some kind, 2,500 words would be in the short story category.

Now and then, over the years, I’ve written something that bothered somebody. When I was very young I think it was an effort to be a smart-arse. I’m no longer young and it seems to me that there are burning issues that I might tackle. Health, family life and personal history seem important to me now. I am also looking at politics and religion (Wilde said that one should not mention these in polite society) because I’m seeing some real problems in both of these. If my father was a Conservative because he thought he ought to be, despite a working class background, I tend to Socialism despite a fairly privileged upbringing. Perhaps I am a Champagne Socialist (though hardly a unit a week). Regarding religion, I imagine some think I go on and on about Mormonism too much. This is because what I was taught nearly forty years ago has been recently shown to be a lot of old cobblers. The missionaries didn’t know they were telling fibs and doctored doctrine, and when I held positions in the Mormon Church I had no idea either. A bit of a crusade to wage there, though it is interesting intellectually. How to fool millions of people for almost two hundred years.

Was my dream of a burning typewriter a warning of what might happen if I write on? Sitting down to write, starting, somehow, a fire? I’ve not blogged since I had that dream. Now I’m back. Will the typewriter be on my dream-desk tonight?

The Hungry Years Revisited

2010-10-22T16:08:00.007+01:00

I stand upon the shore of a wide sea
Whose unknown depths profound I soon must cross
When the last sand of life runs out for me.
The clouds have fled. I look back on my life
And find it brighter than I was aware.
David H. Smith (The Parting)

THE SEA VENTURE was a greasy spoon on the Harbour Road in Warwick, Bermuda, next to the Darrell’s Wharf ferry stop, and within walking distance of Warwick Academy where I was taking my GCE “O” Levels.

I never really mastered the art of studying for examinations; if I attended a class and took notes, that was it. I would not reread my notes or do further research from other sources, even if requested and required. I did not take schoolwork home. What I heard and remembered, and what lodged in my mind during the short time it took to summarise the lesson’s points in a few words, was all that I took into the hall or gymnasium where we sat in rows to write about Biology, or History, or Physics, or Chemistry. In fact, I sat eight “O” Level examinations and passed six, and only just managed those by the smallest margin. A year later I picked up the two GCEs I had failed at first: French and English.

Looking back forty-five years, I recall very little about the subjects, the information I was tackling so badly then. I do manage to revisit the classrooms, the looks of my fellow pupils, the teachers, and the layout of the rooms, the dust and the boredom. Right now I can picture my situation in every one of the forms I spent a school year in, and I sometimes dream of what might be thought the best years of my life, spent in grey trousers and a blazer in the winter, and khaki shorts and knee-socks in the warmer weather months. I would be hard-pressed to tell you much about Pythagoras’s Theorem now. In a right-angled triangle the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. Every schoolboy knows that, and that Henry VIII died in 1547. I must have been able to demonstrate that theorem in 1965, in a concise manner. One could not waffle about such things and get away with it.

I could tell anyone trapped by my words in 2010 (one would hope enthralled, dazzled by my genius) a fair bit about the Sea Venture restaurant on Harbour Road. Basically a hamburger joint, it began as a long, narrow room next to a shorter narrow room occupied by Betty’s Beauty Salon. The Sea Venture eventually nudged Betty out of the building and put a few tables where the accoutrements of the hairdressing business had been. The main room at the Sea Venture featured a long counter and one sat on uncomfortable stools there facing the Harbour. However, there were no windows, one looked around cake-stands at the grill and cupboards which housed the tools of the eatery business, and, I suppose, the comestibles that did not need refrigeration. There were three two-seater tables on the road side and one could look out at the passing traffic, but as I rarely went alone or with just one other person, we tended to sit at the counter or in the annexed room.

As a little boy, I’d been taken to the Sea Venture with my sisters on Sunday outings with my father. At home the only meats I recall having were chicken drumsticks, and minced beef made into a pie with onions and potatoes. We might have fish fingers on a Friday. My mother was a most unaccomplished cook. One of my sisters, to this day, tells me she believes our mother prepared nice food. That sister has inherited our mother’s and grandmother’s inabilities in the kitchen and I cannot eat the food she prepares. She can turn anything into sticks and sawdust. My father had not stayed with my mother longer than it took him to get residency status in Bermuda. Perhaps, if she had been able to prepare fine dinners he might have stayed longer. I imagine her bouts of insanity would have scared him off in time. My father never took us to the lodging house he might have been living in (I wonder if he was untidy, or ashamed at his situation) and, so, to the Sea Venture for a hamburger and a Coca Cola. We got to know the original owners of the restaurant, the DeCosta family, quite well.

The hamburgers at the Sea Venture were very good, juicy and not over-cooked, if not very large. One could not get a double burger in one bun, it was not on the menu, and Manny DeCosta would happily sell you two burgers on two buns, but he’d not fool with nature. The French fries, as they were listed in the menu, being what at home we called chips, were delicious and one lathered them with tomato ketchup from a plastic squeeze bottle. One could squeeze mayonnaise and mustard on the burger or hot dog one might order. Coca Cola or a milkshake to drink. They had pies and cakes for dessert, which could be served à la mode. If my father could be persuaded to part with another shilling, I’d have blueberry pie with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream. That did not happen very often.

Curiously, I managed to be awfully thin into my teen years, despite the burgers and fries and milkshakes. In fact, I was concerned that I was too scrawny and rowed a boat to try and build myself up. The exercise made no difference. I was introduced to steak, pork and beans covered in brown sugar, asparagus, and yams covered in marshmallows, and lavish desserts in the bountiful kitchen of friends, in my last year at Warwick Academy. I started to gain a little weight. I gained something more important: access to books, wonderful books, many, many books. That triggered a passion for reading that has not relented to this day. I often find myself skipping meals because I’m deep into a book. I can write while eating, but I cannot read and manipulate a knife and fork.

Manny DeCosta had sold the Sea Venture during my last year at Warwick Academy; the new owner, Carlos, another Portuguese fellow (we called them Gees, which is probably offensive), hiked the prices. With schoolmates skipping classes or at the end of lesson time I’d pop into the restaurant for French fries and a Coke. Burgers were too costly. I did find another burger joint across the Harbour in Hamilton. The Hawaiian Room had fishnets pinned to the ceiling, and nautical decor. Pretty ghastly, come to think of it. But I could rustle up the price of their Hawaiian Burger (it had a pineapple ring atop the beef patty) and a butterscotch sundae.

During my teens I was mowing lawns and washing dishes for a few pounds a week. Out of those few blue notes I managed to buy a long-playing record album for 31/6 (just over one-and-a-half pounds) and the odd shirt or pair of trousers. Odd, indeed. I was attracted to shirts with floral prints, low-slung denim jeans, suede waistcoats and outrageous flowered ties. I was growing my hair and starting the moustache that I have to this day.

As a child, in England, I’d sometimes go to Wimpy Bars. The little Wimpy burgers were the size of those at the Sea Venture, but, I thought, tasteless by comparison. At the Sea Venture one could ask for all sorts of add-ons: lettuce, tomatoes, onions, pickles, and get French fries with endless reserves of ketchup. In Bermuda there is an expression: “Don’t get foolish with the mayonnaise!” which means, I think, don’t go overboard with it. But it was a joke as everyone wanted as much mayonnaise as possible, and on anything.

I spent the summer holidays of 1971 in London, sub-letting an apartment in Earl’s Court. The apartment had an unpleasant and very small kitchen with a meter than was coin-operated. I made only coffee there. In Earl’s Court, near the subway entrance, was a new eatery called The Hungry Years. The frontage was striking: Embedded in the window glass somehow was a life-size picture of a bread-line from the 1930s. The sort of thing one associates more with North America than the UK, The Grapes of Wrath. I was drawn inside and found wood-panelled walls, a dark and quite large room. The Hungry Years served hamburgers. One could order the burgers by quarter-pound increments. One might have a quarter-pound patty (before cooking) on a roll, or a half-pound of meat. If you wanted a pound of beef, you could have it. The burgers were delicious and one could specify cooking time. Behind the bread-line on the windows the clientele stuffed themselves to the gills with what was probably more beef than was healthy.

I’d discovered McDonald’s hamburgers in the USA in 1970, and they were good. I eventually became a fan of the “Quarter Pounder with Cheese”. The burgers at The Hungry Years were better.

And in 1971, at the age of 21, I had my first anxiety attacks while in London. I never knew when I might be rendered immobile, there seemed no logic to it. One day I’d be racing around the English countryside in a friend’s roadster, or I’d be partying happily at a club till all hours, and then I’d try to step out for a morning paper and find myself vomiting on the pavement in a state of collapse. A year later the bad days had taken over, I had no good days.

As I finished school and blundered about in the accounting world, I felt compelled to search for the real meaning in life. For some reason, I thought psychedelics were that door to understanding everything. I wanted to know. I had to know. God might be anywhere. After my panic disorder set in, I looked to religion. A missionary posed the questions: Why are we here? Where did we come from? Where are we going? And these are good questions. Looking back, I think I’d have done well to ask other questions less sweeping, and might have built up my knowledge a little here, a little there, like GCE subjects, rather than accepting something branded The Word of God. However, I had some hunger for knowledge; if not the good sense to figure out what constitutes knowledge at the end of the day. I went for the biggest burger on the menu.

Some years later I was unwell to the point of being homeless. Not exactly without a roof over my head, except when I lost the plot completely, but in sheltered accommodation. That can be worse than sleeping on the beach or in a park or graveyard. I know. Some days and nights I just walked till I dropped. I ate mainly at a Salvation Army soup kitchen. The meals were nearly always spaghetti with three meatballs, and a reconstituted fruit drink. Only one meal a day. On Friday nights a wagon might bring soup and bread around the back streets. Always pea soup. On a Sunday night the Salvation Army kitchen was closed and a meal could be had at the Seventh-Day Adventist church hall. Always vegetables, no meat, sometimes a little pasta. I lost so much weight (over 50 lbs) that people did not recognise me. At the Seventh-Day Adventist hall the volunteers called me “Pops”. I was the only white person there, and must have looked beyond my years. I was not happy with my nickname.

I could afford to lose some weight, and I’m not sure that my hungry year did me much physical harm. Perhaps everyone should have a gap year like that? Looking back, I appreciate that my mind was well-stimulated by my difficult days.

Today I bring to the table experiences that I believe most of us have not enjoyed, or suffered. The big man cannot understand the hunger of the small man, though he might know the hunger of pure greed. To get bigger. Not just in matters of diet and physical size, but in philosophical matters, in business, in politics, in religion.

Happens I no longer eat meat. I won’t be looking for a better burger. I don’t smoke, haven’t for 30 years, but still dream I’m smoking and do crave a cigarette. And when I smell beef pies fresh from the oven at the Amble Butcher, or when the fragrance (the perfume!) of a bacon butty comes from Jasper’s Cafe, I find myself drooling. Like Pavlov’s dog. We all remember Pavlov’s dog, don’t we? Every schoolboy.

Life & Death in the Eclectic Choir

2010-10-08T13:56:00.010+01:00

You are the music while the music lasts.
T.S. Eliot (1888 – 1965)

I WONDER WHAT the first music I would have heard was. My father had a large wireless and he had it set to the BBC, and we were not to fiddle with the dials. Of course, we did give the various knobs a twirl and feigned innocence (untrue) and ignorance (quite true) while Dad had to try and get a clear signal again.

We did get to listen to radio programming from the United States: Jack Benny; George Burns & Gracie Allen; Amos & Andy. I’m not sure that I understood the humour, but the laughter was contagious. Gracie - playing the dimmest bulb – was once asked if her nursemaid had dropped her on her head as a baby. “Oh, no,” replied Gracie, “we could not afford a nursemaid. My mother had to do it.” The audience in the studio somewhere in America laughed, and I laughed in Bermuda. This was something I could identify with.

When I was four years of age I was sent to Humpty Dumpty College, the first pre-school in Bermuda. My father was teaching me how to read and write (I recall copying the word umbrella over and over below a picture of one that I’d made) and how to do basic geometry (drawing tangents and arcs). So far as I know, we did not have reading and writing lessons at Humpty Dumpty; we had stories read to us, which one would prefer, of course. What we did do, I know from looking at my report cards that survived so many decades in my father’s private papers, is sing and dance.

One’s nursery school teachers were not expected to tear into their pupils’ lack of ability, there was enough child psychology in the air even all those years ago, but Auntie Peggy and Auntie Norma had managed to note that I was not really cut out for a career on the stage. My dancing, even as simple a routine as the Hokey Cokey, was a struggle. I guess I’d put my left foot in ... and lose it. The kindest comment on my singing went something like this: “Ross does not manage to sing in tune, but he can sing very loudly.” That might qualify me for a career in religion or politics.

When I moved onwards and upwards to Kindergarten at Warwick Academy we began the day singing Church of England hymns; the simple ones at first such as “All Things Bright and Beautiful” but we were too soon muddling our way though “Holy, Holy, Holy. Lord God Almighty.” Christmas and Easter meant carols and anthems that one heard on the radio and played by the Salvation Army brass band on a street corner.

My father liked Broadway show tunes. Another five years of therapy for me! We had “South Pacific” and “Carousel” and “Carmen Jones” among the pile of classical records below a record player a relative had passed down to us when they upgraded to a Hi-Fi. The classical records came with the old record player, they were 78’s. I used to play Tchaikovsky’s symphonies and concertos, knowing not a thing about the composer except that his music set something off in me. (I know a great deal about the man now, and find I listen to his ballet music and “Eugene Onegin” rather than the melancholy work.)

We began more formal, and compulsory, music classes at Warwick Academy when I was, perhaps, eight-years-old. We had to sing scales, boys and girls together, all sopranos, while Miss Patricia Devlin pointed at charts with a ruler. Miss Devlin wore a full-length grey fur coat and dark glasses, and her hair was shaggy and spiky all at once. We were taught how to read music. Perhaps some were, I never, ever made sense of it. A sheet of music, to me, might as well be Greek. Except that I’d recognise some Greek letters and nothing at all among the notes and signatures that made up “music”.

When I was twelve, I joined Miss Devlin’s choir to sing the “Hallelujah Chorus” for a special Easter assembly. The choir was made up of boy and girl sopranos, altos, tenors and a few basses. I was still singing soprano. Perhaps “singing” does not best describe what I was doing; I was emitting some noises in the soprano register. My voice, moreover, was breaking. Our choir had one instruction from Miss Devlin: “Sing in tune, in your key.” We had a second commandment from the Headmaster: “Sing as loudly as you can.” I managed the latter.

Despite my complete lack of musical talent (I had been unable to play three notes in the right order on a descant recorder) I was actually invited to join the boys’ choir at the Anglican Cathedral. I attended one rehearsal, singing in my loud and cracked voice, and, at the end of the hour, was to be measured for my choir robes. I’d not thought of that when I let myself be co-opted into the Cathedral choir’s ranks. I told the choir master that I needed to pop downstairs to use the toilet first. I kept on going, all the way to the bus stop.

One might think I’d steer clear of choirs after that brief moment of horror, but twenty years later, in Salt Lake City, Utah, I signed up for the Christmas performance at a Mormon church with a musical friend. Not, I should point out, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I was making bass-like noises by then and we sang several Christmas songs, carols, which I did not know. I recall a little of one that began: “Dream! Dream! Dream! Dream! I can hear the falling snow!” A more psychedelic lyric (at church) I’ve not come across yet. My friend did not sing in the Christmas service, he went overseas for the holidays. As I could not read the music we were provided with, I had to memorise my bass line. I was unready and unsteady and did not sing at all loudly. “Dream! Dream! Dream! Dream! You cannot hear me, but my lips are moving!”

I have tried to pick out a few notes on the guitar and on the piano. I am remarkably inept. Whatever portion of the brain controls musical ability is not firing at all in my mine. Could I have been dropped on my head by my nursemaid as a baby? Well, my Mother would have had to do it. Not that unlikely, she was a grand mal epileptic.

One might think that I’d have spent my life steering clear of the musical mysteries, but it has been rather the opposite. I am something of a fanatic when it comes to music. I have it playing in my head at my every waking moment. I believe this began around the time I first indulged in mind-altering drugs. After a little LSD my life switched to the Key of E (for Ecstasy). In order to control the songs (most have words) I play music on whatever device is at hand. I listen to the radio (the BBC’s 6Music is my preferred station) and watch and listen to concerts, festivals and performances on the telly. This does not, cannot, fill my ears enough.

I have an iPod Touch and an iPod Classic. I ran out of space on the former. I’m approaching 350 albums on the Classic and could listen to it non-stop for a fortnight and then some before having to begin again.

My iPod Classic certainly has a variety of music for me to match up to any mood (or to create another mood if the current one is disagreeable). I started with the complete box-set of The Beatles, digitally remastered and released about a year ago. Then I begged, bought and borrowed many albums from my 1960s experience. The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Dave Clark Five, Jefferson Airplane, The Beach Boys, The Byrds, Bob Dylan, Donovan, George Harrison (my favourite Beatle), the Motown artists, and so on. From the 1970s there’s Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, Carly Simon, Cat Stevens, Simon & Garfunkel, David Bowie, T-Rex, Pink Floyd, some of the disco divas, and many more. Lots from the 1980s and 1990s: I like The Cure, Madonna, George Michael, The Go-Gos, The B-52s, Our Lady Peace, Beck, A-Ha, Erasure, Holly Johnson, The Verve, Blur, it goes on and on. The Kaiser Chiefs and Scissor Sisters do the trick as well. So can Franz Ferdinand, The Killers, Guillemots, Green Day and Darren Hayes.

On my iPod one will also find Tchaikovsky, Verdi, Fauré, Haydn, and Mendelssohn. There’s Billie Holiday and Liza Minnelli. There’s The Chemical Brothers’ “Setting Sun” and there’s Mozart’s “Cosi fan Tutte”. There must be a colliery brass band in the mix, and a few hymns.

Do I sing along to all this music? Very rarely. I have neighbours and friends I’d rather not annoy. I like to use the iPod if I’m on the train (I listen to Podcasts too, while on the move) and also (curiously) when I’m reading at bedtime.

I’ve been listening to a shuffled mix of all my Rolling Stones songs while typing this. I’ve not sung out a single note. I have been tapping my feet, though no telling whether it is in time. I could be lost in the Hokey Cokey.

The Refuge of the Rails

2010-09-29T15:07:00.003+01:00

Railway termini are our gates to the glorious and the unknown.

Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine,

to them, alas! we return.
E.M Forster

WHEN I WIN THE LOTTO, I’ve said I would buy an enormous country house. If I did go up to town I’d stay, I think, in a hotel: my usual suite at the Dorchester in Mayfair. I’d not be paying penthouse prices as I am not too fond of floors above, say, the third or fourth. Fairly easy to escape from on foot in an emergency and near the kitchens if one had a hot meal delivered to one's rooms.

Town and country sorted, then. And another thing, while I’m so incredibly well off: I’d like my own private train. My train, which would have several carriages as I intend to be quite comfortable, featuring a few sleeping compartments, a private bathroom (another for guests), a lounge and an office-cum-library. A connected carriage would have staff quarters and a kitchen, and storage. I think this fantasy comes courtesy of Sir Winston Churchill who, I have heard, tootled around the country in his private railway carriage during World War Two. I understand he would dictate letters as he soaked in his bathtub. On occasion, when the train happened to be in a station when he woke in the morning, Churchill would alight and, wearing his dressing gown, look for the newspapers. To be honest, my valet would be doing that for me; I’d feel a right Charlie making my way to W.H. Smith’s in a state of dishabille.

I have been a fan, a fanatic, when it comes to trains from the first moment I rode on one. I was a little boy with my mother’s father and father’s mother, off the coach in the BOAC Terminal in Victoria, London. We walked, with our modest luggage, along to Victoria Station, and bought tickets from someone behind a wicket. Single, child, to Gillingham. The train was not at all elegant, or attractive, and it was crowded. Back in the day the corridor was along one side of the carriages, very narrow, and small compartments branched off that, each seating six fairly comfortably (three facing three). One could slide a door closed and feel quite private. You’ve seen the old movies: the man reading a newspaper, others are smoking, two girls giggling. This is Third Class: the newspaper is a tabloid, the Daily Mirror. You want The Times? Walk along to First Class. Was there a Second Class?

Ninety minutes later I’d rattled into a state of wonder: the things to see inside the train, the actual physical motion and noise as we clattered to the south and east of London, the landscape outside the window which still featured crumbled buildings and craters left over from the War. Absolute magic. British Rail.

As a teenager I enjoyed days off to London by myself on the train. Getting there and back was almost as much fun as the gallery, museum, great church or film I’d see. In the city I’d travel on the Underground. To this day I cannot figure out the London bus system, but can nip about happily on the Tube.

I recall my first trip on a train with a steam locomotive; I was not yet a teenager and felt that it was quite okay to be totally over the moon at the experience. That was in Kent, on the Isle of Sheppey. Years later I took a night-time ride on a steam-driven train in the Rocky Mountains. The Heber Creeper took passengers on a trip from the little town of Heber through the Heber Valley to Bridal Veils Falls, and back again on the same track. The adventure I signed up for with friends was to last three hours, and we were advised to take picnics, and warned that the train (with its open carriages) would be attacked by a band of marauding Indians, who would be driven off by Cowboys called to rescue us, all on horseback. Alas, our train broke down in the middle of nowhere, without hostile savages or a life-saving posse for comfort. We sat in the dark (and surprising cold, never mind it was summer) for several hours. It was after midnight when we got home.

This summer I have taken two steam train trips, one in Yorkshire and the other in Cumbria: all the rattling, the smoke and the smuts from the engine, worn upholstery and weathered woodwork. Fabulous! My private train, however, will not be drawn by a steam locomotive, and my decor will be fabulous in a different way: well-posh.

This past Monday I was off to the Lake District on a tiny cross-country train that pretty much followed Hadrian’s Wall across the north. The wee Northern Express was more like two buses in tandem riding the rails than a grown-up train. The voyage out went off almost on time, a twenty-minute delay. Coming back at night the East Coast train from King’s Cross to Edinburgh, which I had to meet in Newcastle, was well over an hour late. Newcastle Station was bitterly cold with no enclosed waiting room on our platform. The loudspeaker messages in the Geordie dialect and echoing in the very nearly empty station made little sense to me. I had to keep walking to study a digital display screen. The delay was due to “security issues” on the train to the south of us. We shivered and thought “bombs” as one does these days. The Geordie voice repeated regularly his mantra about left packages in the station. They might be bombs. Don't leave any, and don't touch any. Robots will remove and detonate them.

The train eventually arrived and I noted there were not many passengers on it, few got off, only ten, perhaps, got on board. How many people simply go searching for other options? We set off at speed and then, ten minutes later, stopped dead in a dark place. So dark that I’m not sure whether we were surrounded by farmland, woodland or suburbs. We sat there in complete silence for ten minutes, and then a most apologetic voice explained that a train ahead of us, on our rail, had triggered some sort of mechanism which blocked the forward progress of all the trains behind it. Silence. Then a Scottish voice told us he was bringing tea and sandwiches (for a price) from coach B through to coach H, then he was done for the night. For the people up from London, already stuck on board for nearing five hours, one would have thought they’d offer them a free sarnie and soda. Nope.

Ten minutes more and the train began its travels again, remarkably slowly. I wasn’t sure we were moving as distant points of light seemed fixed, even though the carriage seemed to be throbbing a bit.

I had missed two buses that I could have connected with at my station, so I had to call for a taxi. My little dog had been home alone the entire day, and I’d expected to be back before the dead of night set in. Cailean had been in a dark kitchen. The welcome I got was incredible. Some dogs, fed up, might have thought to bite an ankle, but Cailean wagged his tail and ran about like a rat on crack.

Cailean, of course, will travel with me on my train. We might just stop where Cailean’s bladder dictates, rather than where the trains usually pause. Back to Churchill: Besides being somewhat well-known for his train, Churchill had what he called his “black dog” which was his name for the difficult, down periods in what I think we would now call Manic Depressive Illness, or Bipolar Disorder. I have a black dog, and the black dog. And a dream, a fantasy, of a refuge on the rails.

Enter the Whirlwind

2010-09-15T12:07:00.003+01:00

Change your opinions,
Keep to your principles;
Change your leaves,
Keep intact your roots.
Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

I WORE A SWEATER YESTERDAY, as well as my corduroy jacket, and did not feel over-warm. The ghastly metal seat in the Alnwick Bus Station was really rather cold on my backside; I shall soon have to get my winter trousers down from the suitcases atop my wardrobe where I store them for the two or three months that pass for summer up here.

Yesterday’s slight chill is today’s howling gale from the north, and genuine cold. The BBC weatherman used the “F” and “S” words. Ground Frost in Northern England by Friday night, and Snow in the Scottish Highlands by weekend. I live less than 50 miles from Scotland. The first visible sign of winter in Amble is usually an open flat-bed truck come down from Scotland with an unintentional load of snow. I should point out that one’s breath shows in the cold morning air well before the imported precipitation, and I’ve noticed mine as I wait for the car for over a week now.

We had wonderfully coloured autumn leaves in 2008, and then last year, in early September, we had a sudden violent windstorm which withered most of the leaves here on the coast in a day or two. The leaves fell to the ground and blew, I think, into the North Sea before the week was out. They vanished! Autumn’s lease, like that of summer, had all too short a date. One did see some colours in forested areas inland, but nothing compared to 2008. I am watching the plants in the courtyard being blown about; they are somewhat protected. The cables and power-lines above the street are snapping about in the wind, so it’s safe to assume that the bigger trees in town are shaking like a Hawaiian hula-dancer.

There were American and Japanese tourists on the bus yesterday, most of them dressed in summer clothes. Shorts, t-shirts and blouses along with their Foster Grants. The bus hauled a fair number of them from Alnwick (their shopping bags indicated visits to the Castle with its Harry Potter connection and the Alnwick Gardens) over to Alnmouth Village. The usual anxious questions from our visitors: “Are we there yet?” “Will the pubs be open?”

There was an English couple on the bus; I’d guess a husband and wife. Older, dressed for winter, and dressed in rather more formal clothes than the foreigners. I’ll add, to be honest, this couple looked rather shabby, unkempt. They were sat together across and a few rows in front of me in the seats indicated for elderly and infirm passengers. The woman pressed the bell and the couple stood up. The signs on the bus tell us to ring the bell, but to remain seated until the bus stops. I am the only person I know who does that; even the most wibbly of the wobblies insist on rising and making their ways to the door, even as the bus thrashes about. I noticed that the gentleman with his rumpled collar and poorly-knotted tie, old grey-green suit, and a yellow cardigan, had a white stick. He turned back my way, his eyes clamped shut, and it was obvious that he’d come to town without his dentures. His wife called out to the driver: “We can’t see. We want the stop across the roundabout, past the Royal Oak.” They moved along the bus. I knew she’d got it wrong, there is no Royal Oak in Alnwick, it is The Oaks Hotel. The driver brought the bus through the roundabout, which the old lady could sense, and she started calling loudly: “This is the one. This is the one. Stop!” though we hadn’t actually reached the bus stop. She was quite anxious. The bus jerked to a halt and the driver and everyone on the lower deck of the bus watched the blind couple feel their way out of the bus and onto the pavement. Once outside, the man held onto the woman’s arm and began tap-tapping his stick (it was an ordinary walking cane that had been painted white except at the curved handle). They shuffled away, as winter, while those of us on the bus, summer and autumn, rolled on towards Alnmouth.

Weekend before last I went on a day-trip to Bowness on Windermere in the Lake District. Somehow the weather cooperated and we had brilliant sunshine until late afternoon. We’d taken a coach to Haverthwaite where we boarded a steam locomotive and took a really, really slow trip over to Lakeside. In Lakeside we visited an aquarium, and then everybody except me and our coach driver took a steamer down Windermere to Bowness. I opted to do the drive as I do not like boats and with my brother dying in a boating accent last March I’m now totally boat-phobic.

On the train, and during the coach ride around the lake to Bowness, I had some wonderful views of the English countryside. So lush, so green, I have decided that when I win the Lotto I shall buy one of the large estates near Windermere that we passed by. I am wondering, of course, whether all those leafy trees will be as bare as ours in Amble in a matter of weeks. Trees and men are subject to autumn and winter.

On the way back from the Lake District, crossing the tops of the Pennines, we moved slowly through a barren landscape, just low scrub and rocky outcrops. The ubiquitous loose-stone walls were not in evidence, the only barrier between the land and the highway was fencing. There were a very few stone cottages, none looking habitable. A most desolate place. And we passed a small herd of camels. It must be pretty boring up there, even for a camel, as the beasts were standing at the fence watching the traffic go by. The camels would not be surprised by the cars and coaches, for that is their lot by night and day. For me, on the coach, listening to Jefferson Airplane on my iPod, it really was a most unexpected sight to look out at dromedaries. Will they be up there come the snow?

There’s an apple tree in a garden just along the street from my flat. This is the first year in five that the tree is truly burdened down with apples. They are starting to fall, in the grass and some onto the pavement. None are gathered up and I wonder if they are sour. D.H. Lawrence wrote a poem about the falling of apples to the ground in the autumn, making the point that it is only in the fall to the earth and the bruising of the fruit as a result that the seeds inside are released and the cycle permitted a complete rotation. I believe Lawrence was thinking, also, of the advancing years of man, and that it is the ripe, fully mature fruit that gives rise to the new tree in the spring. Lawrence was only 44 when he died back in 1930.

One sure sign that autumn is arriving is The Last Night at The Proms. That was last week. The Promenade Concerts from the Royal Albert Hall in London run through the summer, and some are televised. I rather enjoyed a concert devoted to Doctor Who. I noticed that the audience was more than half young children, nice that many were with their fathers (rather than mothers). I’ve been following Doctor Who, off and on, since the 1960s. I’m more of a fan now than ever. Are my years running in reverse here?

Every year, when it is time for the grand finale of the Proms, I decide I won’t watch as it will be a bit silly with toffs wrapped in Union flags, bobbing up and down to a hornpipe, and then breaking out into “Rule, Britannia” and “Jerusalem”. However, each year I do tune in, just to see who the female soloist will be. The soloist and the conductor always have a chat with the audience on the Last Night, usually something quite amusing.

So, I switched on my telly, dialled up the BBC, and listened to some rather nice pieces by Richard Strauss. The soloist this year, American Renée Fleming, was splendid, dressed up like a ship of state and beaming.

There were Union flags aplenty, and a good many English, Welsh and Scottish national banners. I’m not too good on flags of the world, but did spot a Canadian flag and some from “down under”. Ms Fleming had a small “Stars and Stripes”.

And the audience sang along with “Jerusalem” and not just in the Albert Hall, but in vast crowds outside in Hyde Park, and in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland, as well as at other venues in England. I used to sing Jerusalem at school; it was the only hymn we always sang loud enough for our tetchy Headmaster. Listening to Jerusalem the other night brought back the springtime of my life, when grass was green and tides were high. Now, summer is falling behind and autumn is upon me. My mother died in the autumn, 28 September 1992, when she was in the autumn of her life, aged 65. I tried to sing along with Jerusalem the other night, startling Cailean. It comes with too many memories now, which well up as tears. I wonder if William Blake ever wrote of England’s bleak and wintry land.

As I sit here, minutes from midday, the sky has clouded over completely. The wind seems wilder than ever, I can hear it booming in the rooftops, my chimney and fireplace played like an enormous musical instrument. There are the first bullets of rain on my windows.

The few flowers left by my kitchen door tend to be blue: lavender and hydrangeas and small blossoms that froth from my plant pots. Bees are fond of blue flowers, so there are still some of those around. Where do the honey bees go in the winter? Where will the people play?

Revolution Counter Revolution

2010-09-08T14:17:00.009+01:00

And the Pharisees said unto him, Behold, why do they on the Sabbath day that which is not lawful?
And he said unto them, Have ye never read what David did, when he had need, and was an hungred, he, and they that were with him?
How he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and did eat the showbread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them which were with him?
And he said unto them, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath:
St Mark 2 : 24-27

Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.
St Mark 2: 28

THE MASTER OF THE HOUSE sat at the western end of the very long table, his wife sat at the other end, facing him over the top of a silver cockerel centrepiece. The guests sat along the sides, facing each other. It was the mistress who was situated near the switch hidden under the carpet, and she could depress this with her foot and alert Dinah in the kitchen to the needs of the diners.

The courses were brought out, plates and platters and cutlery delivered up and removed, all controlled by the bell. Dinah prepared the food and served it silently, and the dinner table conversation was not interrupted. Dinah wore a uniform and soft-soled shoes so as not to disturb anyone.

I had fairly long and shaggy hair, and a reddish beard, and tended towards inexpensive clothes seen on sale in shop windows anywhere from Hamilton's Front Street to a High Street in England, and dear ties from Liberty of London’s archival collection.

The hosts’ daughter had invited her boyfriend, who was my close friend, and a few others to dinner. We had started the evening with drinks on the patio below the swimming pool, water splashing down through a dolphin's open mouth into a small fish pond. The younger folk chain-smoked and talked politics a little and Jesus a lot, and then moved on to Virginia (Woolf) and Tom (Eliot) and Vincent (van Gogh) who we all knew on a first-name basis.

We painted and wrote poetry. Pictures and words that seemed rather over-interested in embryos unborn and also adults in the womb, and angels falling, head first, to the Earth. I do not recall pictures of well-born, upstanding, healthy children or men and women. I cannot recall any angel rising to an occasion. Our pictures and words turned everything upside down. The colours tended to swirling purple and scarlet backgrounds and pasty flesh. Our generation was seeing this, I appreciate now, looking at old album covers. We painted and wrote with loud music playing, the sleeves of the records littering the rooms. I dare say much of the music was dark and mysterious at the time. Revisited, the music just might have been muddled.

I don’t ever recall drinking beer with my friends. It was not that I disliked the taste (I still cannot stomach it), we simply did not drink the stuff. We drank spirits, fancy cocktails if we could locate a bartender, Bacardi and Coke if we were at home. We did drink and drive. I never thought twice about hopping on my scooter after several lethal swizzles and some pills.

The first time I voted in a General Election (this in Bermuda) I went to the campaign headquarters of the political party that could best be described as Conservative in Britain, or Republican in the USA, after the polls had closed, and waited for the results to come in. No computers, no texts, just telephone calls from the counting places on the Island. And at some time after ten o’clock that night the man who would be Bermuda’s new Premier came into the room where many of us had gathered and said we had won. Actually, he seemed to be using the “royal plural” it seemed to me then. The man was not only the new Party Leader, but the first black Premier in Bermuda’s history. The whites had elected him in an unequal electoral system, the blacks did not celebrate. My father and my mother’s parents were not terribly fond of people of colour and did not know what to think.

In Bermuda, about forty years ago, the names of the ruling families were the same as sixty, eighty, a hundred, two hundred years ago: White families with considerable business interests, from banking to law to clothing to fine crystal. If you look at the roll in Bermuda’s current government, those same surnames appear. But something has happened: The leaders are black, they are the descendants of the slaves owned by the former white leaders, slaves who took their masters’ names. The blacks ruling Bermuda now are, for the most part, of a political sort that one might call Labour in the UK, or Democrat in America. That said, it should be pointed out that the successive black Labourite governments of the last thirteen years in Bermuda have lived well. Champagne Socialism in its most simple form. A small and newly privileged ruling class literally drinking champagne and having a Party-party at every opportunity, never mind recession or political morality. The only way such a clique can remain in office is to keep the voting population naive, to fool most of the people all the time.

In the past decade Bermuda has lost its tourism industry: The lovely hotels have gone and now cruise ships stop briefly so that passengers can buy a t-shirt manufactured in China and a fridge magnet, and go to the beach by bus if the weather is good (and if the buses are running). Something else has happened: Bermuda is now convulsed by gang warfare. In the eight months since 2010 began, seven people have been shot to death on the streets of Bermuda, over twenty have been shot and have survived (many others have been attacked with knives and machetes and clubs). I shall note that all of these deaths and gunshot victims have been black, and the generally younger men brought before the courts charged with gun-related crimes are also black. The witnesses, many of whom refuse to give evidence, seem to be black.

Before that dinner party so many years ago, my hosts had parted company with their cook, Dinah. I am not exactly sure what the reason was, whether there was any real fault or problem. My friend, back from boarding school, had found herself having to pitch in at home when it came to mealtime; it was all a bit chaotic. One day my friend telephoned me and asked if I would go with her to try and locate Dinah, she had no telephone, I'm not sure we knew her surname, but someone had come up with an address that might be helpful. Off we went on our mopeds and ended up in a neighbourhood that I’d not been in before. Bermuda was segregated in many ways then, not the least in housing. We were where poorer people of colour lived. We parked on the street and walked up to the door of a white house and knocked. Dinah answered the door. I had not met her before, and I stood back. My friend had a short conversation, then, all smiles, walked over to me and said Dinah was returning to work for her parents. Immediately.

The older folk must all be dead now, and the neighbourhood where Dinah had lived is now a no-go zone for not only whites, but for anybody who might be on the wrong side of the local gang.

I was very much a New Labour supporter back in 1997, and recall how thrilled I was when Tony Blair swept into office. It had been time (and then some) to get rid of the Tories. Of course, Blair let many (most?) of us down badly. I was certainly glad to see the back of him. Sadly (but not surprisingly) his successor, Gordon Brown, was just as bad as Blair. It was time to vote Labour out in 2010.

I tend to like the “outs” and hate the “ins” when it comes to politics. I do not like our Conservative-Liberal Coalition Government. However, for want of a better system, we had to vote Labour out to get rid of Gordon Brown. As E.M. Forster said: "Two cheers for democracy."

We had Beef Wellington at that dinner party I began this piece with, the wine, red, was an Aloxe-Corton, and we had brandied cherries over ice-cream for dessert. When it came time for coffee, the mistress of the house shuffled about in her seat. She seemed a bit agitated. Finally she called out towards the door to the pantry: “Dinah, are you there?” Dinah came through. The switch under the carpet had jammed; the bell had not rung in the kitchen. It’s always something.

In Madness, Religion and Love Timing is Everything

2010-09-01T15:40:00.012+01:00

If I revealed all that has been made known to me, scarcely a man on this stand would stay with me. And, Brethren, if I were to tell you all I know of the kingdom of God, I do know that you would rise up and kill me. Joseph Smith Jr.

THE FIRST BOOK I EVER OWNED was a small children’s hymnal from the bookshop in Canterbury Cathedral; my two grandmothers had gone there on a day trip. It was dedicated to me with both of their signatures - Nan Eldridge and Grandma Lancaster – and dated shortly before my third birthday. That book went into storage in Bermuda five years ago, in the bottom of an old shipping container, in a field that I believe has since flooded. I don’t expect to see it again. The memory, however, is fresh. I can still recall the rough paper and very simple illustrations with but touches of colouring; the United Kingdom may well still have had rationing of paper and printing supplies held over from the War years.

I was given two other books of a religious nature as soon as I could read; I was quite proficient by the age of five or six. The red and blue books had effusive Christian stories and testimonies, illustrated with photographs of famous paintings, rather than with all-new, dedicated artwork.

We sang “Jesus Loves Me” at pre-school, and once I was in primary school we sang from a Church of England songbook specially condensed from the large, heavy "Hymns Ancient and Modern" we used at church and Sunday School. At day school we sang responses and chants and prayers in the morning Assembly. Volume was everything: We were never praised or upbraided for our spiritual dedication and devotion, but if we failed to make a loud noise (joyful or otherwise) we were blasted by the Headmaster.

Church, Sunday School and day school were racially segregated. In case you don’t know, Jesus is a white English bloke who spoke and wrote Shakespearean English. This was confirmed to me a few years after I graduated from grammar school, perhaps by an unlikely source. Joseph Smith, the Mormon Founder and Prophet, saw not only Jesus, but God the Father, and they were both white and spoke perfect English in the style of the original King James Version of the Bible. The young Mormon Elders used flip-charts with gloriously coloured pictures of the wonderfully white Jesus.

The characters in the Book of Mormon tend to be represented as very handsome and muscular, in clothes that are a touch Arthurian. It’s all a bit gay. The Mormon Church’s illustrators may have been of that generation that went to gladiator films in the 1950s, and enjoyed “Camelot” secretly. I know it sounds a bit bizarre, but in Camelot...

Joseph Smith was in his early teens when he saw Jesus and God the Father while out praying in the woods. In 1820, where the boy lived, there were any number of religious revivals. Joseph said (years later) he had asked, in prayer, which of the churches in his neighbourhood might be the right one. Down came Jesus and God! “None of them!”

Three years later, Joseph had an angel beam into his bedroom one night. As the little farmhouse was crowded, I never quite understood how only Joseph saw and heard the Angel Moroni as he dropped through the ceiling.

Moroni told Joseph about some golden plates on which was inscribed a book written by Moroni’s father, Mormon, a warrior and prophet of olden days in the Americas. Apparently, Joseph was taken to see the plates which were buried in a stone box on a hillside in New York State.

Years later, Joseph gets to take the golden plates home and he translates some of them using a seer stone inside a hat. Looking into the hat at the stone, the words on the plates would appear. God does work in mysterious ways, of course!

More important, as Joseph Smith is translating the Book of Mormon, he has continued, steady visitations from angelic gentlemen that I, for one, knew from my earliest Bible stories. John the Baptist, Joseph Smith related, conferred an Aaronic or Lesser Priesthood on him. Later the New Testament apostles we know as Peter, James and John supervised the transfer to Joseph of the Higher Melchizedek Priesthood.

When the first Mormon temple is built in Kirtland, Ohio, any number of angels turn up. In fact, on the day of the dedication people outside of the temple saw angels walking along the rooftop.

Of course, the Mormons are more famous for polygamy, what Joseph Smith called Plural or Spiritual or Celestial Marriage. He denied having taken more wives than his first, Emma Hale. After Joseph had been assassinated in 1845, Emma also claimed that her husband had never had other wives than herself. The evidence to the contrary is exceptional. The Prophet wrote directives that he received from God, published as “Doctrines and Covenants”, and they clearly indicate that plural marriage is the only way one can become a candidate for godhood. Mormons believe, by the way, that men who do what the Prophet commands can become gods (with their many goddess-wives).

If Joseph Smith had over thirty wives, one would have expected a fair number of little Smiths apart from those he fathered with wife Emma. DNA tests have so far suggested that none of the women thought to have been Joseph’s spiritual wives had his children. A recent article does point out that Dr John C Bennett, M.D., may well have been the Polygamists’ Abortionist in the early 1840s when he was Joseph Smith’s Assistant Prophet. Bennett was such a sordid man, within and outside of the Mormon Church, and I’m wary of anything to do with him. Scruples he was certainly short of.

Many of Joseph’s so-called wives ended up married, sealed, to his successor, Brigham Young, and some had Brigham’s children.

It almost amuses me, as an outsider, to see the effort the present Mormon Church puts into supporting and opposing certain controversial social issues. In the early 1990s, while I was living in the south-west corner of Utah, the local Mormon chapels organized groups to regularly cross the state border into Nevada to spy on an “adult bookstore”. The church members claimed that Utahns were crossing over to visit the Pure Pleasure emporium for whatever might be going on there. The spies sent by God would note the license plates from Utah in the parking area outside the bookstore and attempt to name and shame. The Brethren in Salt Lake City claimed that this was not a church-sanctioned activity, this spying, but the rota lists were worked out in the Mormon meeting houses.

In recent years the Mormon Church has opposed, but claims not to have ordered active opposition to, same sex partnerships. I’m not exactly sure how the business of legalising anything gets done in the USA, there’s always a judge to send something back. Apparently, some states have legalised what the papers tend to call “Gay Marriage” and some states have not passed a law enabling it. Some states want laws absolutely prohibiting it. We have gay partnerships here in the UK, but I don’t know much about all that. I suppose if two men, or two women, want to be legally bound together, it’s their business. It does mean one has to consider children and various legal rights. I honestly think people should marry if they intend having a family, and a man and a woman seems like the best option. Should we be arguing with biology? But, more important, should one argue with love?

Did Joseph Smith love each and every one of his 33 wives? Did Brigham Young love each and every one of his 55 wives? Or is the business of spiritual wifery just that, a business? Can one indeed become a God with but a single wife? Has there been another revelation to change the unchangeable word of God? The Mormons did make a change to the Divine Rules and Regulations in 1978 when an influx of converts in Brazil and other South American countries could not be sorted clearly into white people (like Jesus and the Mormons) and black people who had been forbidden entry to the Mormon temples and to any office in the Church hierarchy. In 1978 the doors were opened to people of colour. More than a few white Mormons walked out in protest.

One hears from Mormons that angels continue to visit the Earth. Long-dead people also drop in. The veil is awfully thin. A rather fanatical Mormon who eventually went off his nut told me that at least one Mormon temple had a bedroom for Jesus to rest in when he was in town. The Mormons call each Temple “The House of the Lord” and my over-enthusiastic friend indicated that a house is a home.

Do I think Joseph Smith saw angels, Jesus, God the Father? Do I think Joseph saw the words written on the golden plates when he put a pebble in his hat and placed his face into the hat to keep all the light out so that he could see the text reflected on his seer stone? I’m not sure, because I know people who see and hear things that I do not. One might call people schizophrenic because of the voices they hear, the visions they have, and they might be psychics. In fact, schizophrenics are more believable than psychics, are they not? A schizophrenic is not likely to ask a hall full of people if anyone has a relative called Tom (or is it Ted?) who has passed over, as a psychic surely does. A schizophrenic will say he has been up all night talking to Moses, who is dictating a better translation of the Pentateuch. It might even be a work-in-progress in a jotter. Perhaps a schizophrenic is a genuine psychic.

Might Joseph Smith have been a schizophrenic as a psychic? If one strips away the fairly obvious nonsense, the copying, the sales talk, the expedient, there is the “problem” of Smith’s writing and lectures (he had most of what he preached written down, some of it is fantastic). Can a man really stare into a darkened hat and dictate a book? An ordinary man. Or is this all the work of what some might call a madman (and a current following of nearly fourteen millions)?

Are the Scientologists and the Moonies any madder than the Mormons?

Can we take as the Word of God anything that comes from a hat? Really? And where is that hat now? Where are the peep stones? Who is in contact? How?

Tripping on Henry

2010-08-22T13:41:00.007+01:00

All those lights were t-t-twinkling on Sunset,
I saw a sign in the sky,
It said, “T-t-t-trip a t-trip, I trip, trip.”
I couldn’t keep up if I tried.
Ah, we stepped down to reality company
To get some instant sleep.
And the driver turned. I said, “Welcome back.”
He smiled and he said, “Beep beep.”
Donovan (The Trip)

THE SILENT CAT crouched in the dark up against the wall along the front of our neighbour’s property. It was not a lion, dark as it was I could easily tell that. The form was different. It should be a tiger, people think they see tigers, don't they, but it would be a leopard there in the near dark. More slender than a tiger, long-necked, smaller head, it would be at home carved in stone at a great temple to men who thought themselves gods. In its powerful silence it watched me walking out into the night and I wondered when my spine would be snapped.

I don’t recall every trip I ever took. This is just as well, I’d never escape the past with trying to analyse why I saw what I did. Not all trips involved pills and tabs and spliffs or a hookah; some trips were triggered just by standing in the doorway out or in.

Time came that I couldn’t go through any door in my unease. I was not consciously afraid of the beasts outside, or inside, I was just afraid of moving from a moment of what seemed to be security, from unfeeling to feeling. When you move, things move past you, things move towards you, you approach right-angled bends in life. And so I stayed at home, in my room, listening to a Sony Walkman. I’ve had music playing in my head non-stop since I was in my early twenties, and I don’t need a radio, tape or disc, but I try to drown my own music out. I know people who hear voices. Jesus, John Wayne and Hitler come calling, come for a chat. I know that is real, for I have the music, familiar and created around the sounds of circumstance. The booming of the wind can orchestrate my life, and the lyric can be an anxiety or a moment of love or lust or loss.

For a person afraid of the dark and the light, I have muddled along fairly well. Routine is difficult; mornings do not always start the same way. I cannot fashion six-thirty to my needs nowadays.

When I was at school I would have been bathed and dressed in my uniform at six-thirty, probably doing the homework I’d neglected the night before. At eight I’d be on the bus or my bicycle. And when I worked for American International Group I might have got home from some bar or nightclub at two, riding home drunk, passing out for a few hours. I’d be at work making somebody a fortune by eight-thirty. And then that all stopped in London one August morning. I could not walk out of my door because I knew I was going to die (I was dying, I was sure of it). The crouching cats came after that.

The most mysterious trip that I am aware of (and this only from the reports of others) that did not involve the horizontal greys rising up to vertical melting rainbows as instructed by the gods in the room began in Bermuda and ended in Salt Lake City, Utah. Apparently I boarded a flight in Bermuda (how did I even get to the airport?) and flew to New York City, where I took a bus over to New Jersey and caught a plane to Chicago. In Chicago I caught another plane to Salt Lake City. A friend had sent me the tickets. He met me at the airport in Salt Lake, though I have no memory of that. Two days later I woke up, after the near-lethal dose of tranquilizers had worn off. I was rather surprised. There is one part of that trip that occasionally floats up to the surface of my mind. I hope it is accurate and not a complete invention. On the flight from Chicago to Utah I was sat next to a young Hasidic Jew and we had a pleasant chat about orthodoxy. I was representing Mormonism. I can, somehow, still sense that conversation. No doubt the young man’s peculiar clothing and accessories are a memory aid, and the fact that I’ve been in the close company of precious few Hasidic Jews my age since.

It might be said of me (so I might say it) that I have travelled through my life uneasily and often not at all. I have some regrets. I was invited to a family dinner by my father and stepmother in early 1996. I accepted the invitation, but, on the day, declined as I could not move myself through the doors between us. My brothers and sisters got there. Two or three weeks later my father literally dropped dead. The family gathered for his funeral, and I did get to it, propelled and propped up by a close friend. I was not collapsing with grief, but the handful of pills I’d taken to move about that day had made me more than a little unsteady.

And so to Henry.

Nearly every Saturday I spend the morning at a drop-in. Some play pool, some play cards. On sunny days some sit outside. I read the weekend papers. Now and then I join the card game. They play “Floaters” which seems an unfortunate name to me. At noon several of us go in search of a country pub for a meal. There might be an afternoon activity: This past month I’ve been to a music festival in Alnwick and on a coach trip to the Yorkshire Dales and Whitby. Sometimes I spend Saturday afternoon in Barter Books, an enormous second-hand books shop. I usually come away with as many books as I can carry, appreciating I have to catch a bus home, and the Saturday buses tend to be crowded with tourists as well as the elderly locals doing their bit of shopping in town.

Yesterday I’d not only a dozen books (including a huge, heavy, hardback copy of “Hymns Ancient and Modern”), but my friend who has visitations from film stars and Old Testament prophets (bless him) had given me a marrow. The marrow (which is on the menu for this evening) is of a size and firmness to be a lethal weapon. I’m reminded of the Roald Dahl story about the woman who clubs her unpleasant husband to death with a leg of lamb. When the police are eventually called in, she has cooked the lamb and serves them a helping.

I schlepped my two heavy bags out of Barter Books and along to the bus stop. I know from experience that the 518 bus on a Saturday is going to run late, at least 30 minutes late in an hour. Still, one feels sure that it will come along if one is not there on the roadside. So I stood in the warm afternoon weather, inhaling more traffic fumes than would be healthy, alone at the bus stop. There is no bench at this stop; I just shuffled about from one leg to the other.

I was looking directly across the street at the entrance to the book shop; the customers at Barter Books are most interesting. I enjoy people-watching at any time, but what fun to see which books the faces read. Suddenly a very old man walked between me and the kerb. The man kept on walking, out of the corner of my eye I saw he’d stopped about 15 feet along, a bit past the area marked for the bus. Curious. Then I felt something gently touch my lower left leg. I looked down to find the oldest Border terrier I think I’ve ever seen standing with his nose on my calf. Not looking up at me, the dog had just anchored his snout to my leg. I lowered myself at my knees and got close to the dog. He was once brown, now grey and white. His eyes were remarkably clear. He hardly moved. I love dogs and Border terriers are a favourite breed, so I petted the little fellow on the head, on his back. He looked at me, seemed to be quite pleased.

I stood up and called over to the very old man who was still a number of paces along from me and the dog:

“Is this your dog?”

The man moved towards me, closer and closer, and when he was so close that his jacket was touching mine, his face, his nose, were just inches from mine, he said:

“No. This is not my dog.”

That worried me, and I said:

“He must be a stray.”

“Oh, no. He’s not a stray. He’s my neighbour’s dog. I thought I’d take him for a walk.”

“Oh, I’m glad he’s with you. The traffic is terrible here.” I had noticed the terrier was not wearing a collar or harness.

“His name is Henry. He will be seventeen in two weeks.” The man moved towards me as I edged back. His breath (fortunately not a smoker) on my face. “His mother died in 2002.”

I remember an episode of “Seinfeld” in which, I think, Judge Reinhold played a man who stood too close to people, inches away. The elderly bloke walking Henry was standing much too close to me. No person would feel comfortable at such short range except, perhaps, a lover hoping for a passionate kiss. I was told a little about Henry, there was to be a bit of a celebration in early September when he reached 17.

“In a year and two weeks Henry will be eighteen,” offered my odd (and sudden) friend. “That is very old for a dog. Only a small dog could be eighteen. A Labrador would not reach fourteen.”

Rather interesting to be thinking ahead to Henry’s eighteenth. I dare say somebody with fewer anxieties than I have could look forward more than a year when the odds must surely be long ones.

Henry remained, nose on my trousers, alongside me, his neighbour, who had not offered his name, remained inches from my face. I was focusing on him through the lower lenses of my bifocals. Small talk about dogs. I explained that I was a miniature dachshund person, resisting the temptation to retrieve a photograph of Cailean from my wallet.

For no obvious reason the man suddenly leaned down, uncomfortably close to my trousers, and awkwardly picked Henry up. Explained that it was time to get him home. And I wondered if Henry was actually on a legitimate walk, or if he had been dog-napped. Off they went, Henry under the man’s arm. They crossed the street just as the bus was approaching.

I stepped onto the 518 bus, which was 40 minutes late, to find nearly every seat on the lower deck had been taken. There was one vacant place next to an old woman. Not exactly vacant, she had her shopping bag on it. I looked her in the face, and nodded towards the bag on the seat. The lady glared at me, put her arm across her bag as if to hold it firmly in place, not moving it at all, and turned to look out of the window. I muttered: “For fuck’s sake!” and moved to the back of the bus with my two heavy bags. The lady remained on the bus, never gave up the space her few groceries occupied.

The lady with the shopping bag would have been on the far side of seventy, she had badly-coloured, thinning hair, and she had a longer beard than Osama bin Laden. Oh, I exaggerate. But her beard would be longer than that of Osama bin Laden’s mother's. I’m talking several inches, a goatee, and quite dark hair. I wondered how one might treat that. Scissors for a start, perhaps some HRT. Did this bearded woman not have a friend who might offer some grooming advice? Or a mirror?

Great cats do not pounce on me. I even walk out in the twilight now and then. Ordinary people, your neighbours, mine, are for the most part delightful. However, now and then things get just a little weird. The topiaries come to life in broad daylight, not just in the dead of night as in “The Shining” and my t-t-t-trips.

Clog Tired

2010-08-01T17:54:00.005+01:00

You should make a point of trying every experience once,

excepting incest and folk dancing.

Arnold Bax (1883-1953)

IN ANOTHER LIFE, a fairly recent one, I would, from time to time, review the arts. This was in Bermuda, for the weekly newspaper, the Mid-Ocean News, that has recently been put out of business by the machinations of Bermuda’s dictatorial government. Now and then I’d write a review for the daily paper, the Royal Gazette, which is now in the cross-hairs and, I believe, struggling.

I had no training as an arts critic, or as a journalist of any kind. I’d failed my “O” Level English the first go round. I had been an amateur painter, very amateur. However, artistic ability does run in my family, both sides. I should not be allowed a paintbrush, but decades of writing letters made me dare to pick up the sword. I mean pen.

The Mid-Ocean News had an arts critic, and rather a good one. She died. I applied. Eventually I received $100 a pop and a pair of free tickets if I was to look in on live theatre or music. I simply wrote down my own personal impressions of the exhibition, the musical, the dramatic presentation, and I think I was honest and did not ever try to gild a turnip.

Well, that is history. And before I continue, a few words about beginning a remark with the word well. When interviewed, many (perhaps most) will reply to a question with “Well ...” and that’s frowned upon. I know that full well, but thought I’d bring it up here so that you know how to respond the next time a television or newspaper reporter approaches you and asks if you have anything to say about the show. Don’t say: “Well ... it was rubbish.” Just say: “It was rubbish.” Or you might roll your eyes heavenward and say: “Rubbish!” Or smile widely and cry: “Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!”

I was in Alnwick yesterday with some friends, under mostly sunny skies. This is unusual during the Alnwick International Music Festival, an annual event, which began yesterday in the Market Square. Seems to me that in recent years I’ve had to dodge degrees of rain and some of the performances have been moved inside with a resultant smaller seating situation and all the fuss of setting up the sound equipment again at short notice.

The host at yesterday’s afternoon performance told a large crowd the very same jokes to fill the gaps that he told a year ago, and two years ago. They were not original jokes when they entered his repertoire. Advice from me: Retire the one about the lady hugging the frozen cows, thus saving their lives, in wintry fields. You know the one: the mysterious lady’s name turns out to be Thora Hird. There are many tourists at the Alnwick Music Festival, and I dare say Dame Thora is a complete stranger to them. “Must be Geordie humour?” For Pete’s sake, Thora was from Morecambe, Lancashire. Not one of ours. The little children, the locals, won’t get it either. The host, by the way, is the Town Crier. He was not dressed up like Sergeant Pepper, but in clothes that made me think he’d been fishing. Nice clothes, but country-country, not country-town. Perhaps this is his take on folk? The same clothes (I’m not sure about his undergarments) right down to (up to?) his hat that he wore in 2009.

The main event yesterday afternoon was a group of Dutch dancers called De Speelluden. Is that not a wonderful word to roll off the tongue? De Speelluden. The group was formed in 1967, but they are hardly Sixties rock and roll. What these men and women do is perform the peasant dances of the Westervoort part of the Netherlands that were customary back in about 1900.

The men dressed in black uniforms that made me think of railway employees as depicted in the movies, complete with watch-chains. Railway employees anywhere in the West, from Santa Fé to the Swiss Alps. The women wore dark peasant garb with grey aprons, working clothes, and one might think of pioneers in the Americas. Rather over-dressed, as one was forced to be by modesty. How many Dutch women got hooked on the sails of windmills as their skirts billowed about? Odd lace caps. And the men and their womenfolk all wore whitewashed clogs. Great big heavy clogs. Lethal weapons. The English might fling Wellies, and they’d be no match for these clogs.

The visiting De Speelluden dancers were all getting on in years, at least one long white beard worthy of Rip Van Winkle. I was near the stage as they went on and they spoke in Dutch, and the one member of the group who read from an English script did so with a thick accent. The dances were all rather alike, perhaps 8 or 10 women spinning around with 8 or 10 men. There was a dance about a girl who fell in love, at first sight, with a boy who lived in a windmill. Nowadays she would fall for the son of an industrialist who was blotting the countryside with wind turbines. There was also a dance about sunflowers, celebrating autumn. Perhaps Vincent van Gogh saw his sunflowers as autumnal things, rather than window dressing. Van Gogh’s work is so often of a seasonal nature.

The lady, reading slowly from her papers, said they would dance “The Waltz of the French Beasts” for us. It tells the story of the terrible “tummy pains” caused by those “French Beasts”. This certainly made me sit up. Those bloody awful Frenchmen invading Holland, raping the women (getting them knocked up) and stabbing the Dutch men in their guts. The dance was a bit of a spin around the stage, the accordionists playing, it must be said, in ¾ time. There was no doubling over at the waist in apparent anguish, and I thought we might be getting the children’s version with so many youngsters in the crowd. I was disappointed. When the spinning stopped, the lady read a little more from the script and suddenly I realised that I had misheard. This was “The Waltz of the French Beans” and the abdominal aches would have been from gas and not from pointy weaponry.

Three pairs of men did a dance that seemed to be showing what Dutchmen do when the pubs get out and they are quarrelling over one of the pretty girls. They thump one another with their chests and shoulders and stick their thumbs in their ears and waggle their fingers at each other. Brilliant! If Michael Jackson had done this in his act he’d have really been acclaimed for his dancing.

The ladies showed us their covered backsides, and I have no idea why. They then showed us their knickers. Nothing that floated my boat, but enough cloth to make sails with. And the ladies pulled open flaps on the fronts of the men’s trousers to reveal the male equivalent. This must pass for entertainment in Westervoort.

Holland is not all that far from here. People go down and across to Amsterdam by overnight ferry. De Speelluden certainly seemed strange and exotic for something a few hours away by boat.

Should one go to see folk dancing in Alnwick? Why not? It’s a fun day out and (it’s raining today) something to take one’s mind off the usual English summer weather. Should one learn to folk dance? I dare say there’s an arts critic in Westervoort who would find a Morris Dancing group from Yorkshire totally baffling, quite silly with the sticks and bells, and lacking any references to wind (windmills or French beans). I should probably stick with what I know. Shuffling in a crowded disco.

Desert Island Dreams

2010-07-23T13:30:00.005+01:00

PROSPERO: By Providence divine.
Some food we had and some fresh water that
A noble Neapolitan, Gonzalo,
Out of his charity, being then appointed
Master of this design, did give us, with
Rich garments, linens, stuffs and necessaries,
Which since have steaded much; so, of his gentleness,
Knowing I loved my books, he furnish’d me
From mine own library with volumes that
I prize above my dukedom.
William Shakespeare (The Tempest. Act I, Scene II)

I HAVE PLAYED DESERT ISLAND DISCS often enough. One shares with friends one’s taste in music, particular music, for examples. And the game grows: What few books would one want in one’s exile? What artwork? What dwelling? What scenic view? What brief visitor? What long-time companion? What weather? What clothing? What foodstuffs?

The desert island must be far away. My front room can be ever so far away when I set my mind to it. I’m not sure how the term ‘desert island’ came about. Is it, perhaps, that island within a desert, an oasis, a place where one might survive? The spot where fresh water bubbles to the surface and a few trees give shade to a lush and green lawn. The spot where Asian food might be delivered in silence and secret, to be discovered newly arrived just when one has a craving for crispy king prawns in a Hong Kong style sweet and sour sauce. The spot where one could wear corduroys and tweeds and sturdy shoes, and a long scarf: Desert islands need not be on the Equator, need not be hot and humid outposts, they might be in the Orkneys (and mine might be).

If I was permitted my iPod, and could only have music by four or five artists, I believe I would take along Joni Mitchell as my first choice. Followed by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, in both cases just their music from the 1960s. I would also enjoy easy access to the Mozart "Requiem". I like just about any kind of music, though I’m wary of show tunes in case I should earn a reputation; I might request a recording of Tchaikovsky’s "Eugene Onegin".

I’d hang pictures on my island, given the walls. Anything by Vincent van Gogh. Really, that could be all and I’d be happy as a Sandboy. I love the landscapes with golden wheat fields, and that’s the outlook I’d choose if I was permitted a distant view from my oasis.

I’m not sure who I’d most like to have stop by to visit me. I suppose the other person I’m playing Desert Island Discs with would be polite and prudent. And, to be honest, anyone I was intimate enough to play the game with would be welcome.

A long-time companion: This would have to be a dog. Cailean. My little dog sleeps on his back, stretched across my chest (he’s very small) when I’m reclining while reading a book, and there’s nothing more one could want except having a dog pounce on one first thing in the morning and stab one’s eye socket with his cold, wet nose. Cailean fits the bill. The nose. We’d live, in our oasis, in a small shelter that is more bookcases than walls and windows.

It’s the books that would be most important in my hideaway. I’m truly hard-pressed to think what, say, ten books I’d settle for, if no others could magically appear on the desert island in boxes from Amazon.

I’ve been almost a compulsive reader all my life. I was nine years old when we got our first television set. The cinematic films I did see usually were represented on my bookshelves. When I was about eleven our English mistress, Mrs Lorna Harriott, bless her, did not attempt to bore our classes with the rules of grammar and punctuation. We did not have to write essays. We did not have spelling lists to learn. We did not have set books to read. Rather, Mrs Harriott read to us. Every day we’d have an English class lasting about 40 minutes, and, in her pleasant Canadian accent, Mrs Harriott read us everything from the poems of Robert Frost to novellas by John Steinbeck. We had “Jane Eyre” and “Lorna Doone”. Mrs Harriott created the atmosphere of Sherlock Holmes’s case of “The Hound of the Baskervilles” on Dartmoor, and the visitors from “Out of the Silent Planet” on the planet Malacandra, by CS Lewis. We had Thomas Hardy’s “Tess of the d’Urbervilles” and “King Solomon’s Mines” by Rider Haggard. Looking back, Mrs Harriott had the good sense to be reading us adventure stories with murder and madness mixed in with the love stories. I liked best, at the time, HG Wells’s “The Time Machine” and John Buchan’s “The 39 Steps”, and still like the films made in the years we were listening to Mrs Harriott; I think the books sent me off to those two movies.

Our next English master read us quite a few plays by George Bernard Shaw which I enjoyed at the time. I’ve tried to revisit them and find them awfully dated and not at all funny or interesting. We read poetry with this master, Frank “Buck” Rogers, and I liked only Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (it’s hard not to). Our set book for GCE “O” Level was CS Forester’s “The Gun” which I hated. (I still dislike CS Forester, who was one of my father’s favourite writers with the Hornblower novels. My father had, in his bookcase, EM Forster’s “Abinger Harvest” which is a collection of essays. I cannot imagine my father liking Forster, and have wondered if he got the book thinking it was by Forester.) Our Shakespeare play was “Henry V” which I rather enjoyed, having covered that period in history classes.

What books from my schooldays would I conjure up for my desert island? Shakespeare: as much as I might be permitted, a complete works would be super. I’d like, too, the writings of William Blake (we sang his words to “Jerusalem” often enough at grammar school). I would request the collected letters of Virginia Woolf, and also of Lytton Strachey, for my fix of “Bloomsbury”. DH Lawrence’s “Women in Love” is my favourite book of fiction of all time.

Most recent books (should I call them “modern”?) don’t draw me back, no matter how much I enjoy reading them the one time. I’m presently reading a cracking biography of TE Lawrence (“The Golden Warrior” by Lawrence James) which makes the film I liked a great deal 45 years ago pale by comparison. Much as I’m enjoying this read, I’d not want to tackle it again. However, I’ve got TE Lawrence’s “Seven Pillars of Wisdom” ready to read, and we did read (censored, I’d imagine) excerpts of Seven Pillars in school.

I have done in, happily, Bill Bryson’s “At Home” this summer. What a fun book, and educational too, I think. I count on Bryson to produce another, new, brilliant read every year or so. I would reread Bryson on language and grammar and Shakespeare.

One living British writer who I do revisit is Alan Bennett. Bennett writes wonderful plays and short stories, and funny essays. His screenplays are terrific. I enjoy Bennett’s diaries and potted memories, and he’s at his best when delivering eulogies. I’d like to have Alan Bennett’s “Writing Home” and “Untold Stories” which are, together, his autobiography up until a few years ago sent to my oasis. I could dip in those from time to time.

Some desert islanders would take along a Holy Bible. I’d hope the Gideon Society had left one under a stone for an emergency, and that it would be the original KJV. None of this jive talk I hear preached nowadays. It’s jive talk that would drive me to a life far, far away.

Re: Bus

2010-07-09T12:58:00.003+01:00

Every day I get in the queue (Too much, the Magic Bus)
To get on the bus that takes me to you (Too much, the Magic Bus)
I'm so nervous, I just sit and smile (Too much, the Magic Bus)
Your house is only another mile (Too much, the Magic Bus)
The Who (The Magic Bus)

TWO YEARS AGO, perhaps three, the Arriva bus company replaced most of the older buses on the Newcastle-Alnwick run. The new buses are roomier, the entrance can be lowered (pneumatically, I think) to allow people easier access, and there’s space for a wheelchair-bound passenger. For a few weeks the new buses looked terrific; and then the usual scratches and dirt spoiled all that.

Even in our current weather, mostly rainless to the point of drought conditions, the windows on the buses are usually covered in no less than a thin, opaque layer of mud. This spoils the spectacular views. We are having a warm and somewhat muggy summer in 2010 and the narrow part of the bus window on a hinge does nothing to relieve the heat when it is pushed open the permitted inch or two. I’m finding I feel a bit motion sick just now, the stuffy air.

In the rainy and snowy winter the windows of the buses tend to be so muddied that one has to guess where one is, and when to ring the bell for one’s stop. And the heating is inadequate, or difficult. One’s feet might be boiling, one’s ears frozen.

For all that, I enjoy riding on the buses. I like to watch the other passengers and to listen in on conversations. When Cailean travels with me, he makes friends quickly with everybody he can. Not many people can resist a cute "sausage dog" on a bus.

I don’t go all the way to Newcastle on the bus very often; I tend to only commute between Alnwick and Amble. This is the 518 route. There is another bus service, the 472 route that takes one between Alnwick and Amble (through Shilbottle) and no further, and it roams the country lanes. Usually a small single-decker bus suffices. These single-decker buses are old and liable to break down, and they are uncomfortable in every way. From the 518 bus one can see the North Sea (in theory, but depending on the thickness of the dirt caking the windows) and from the 472 bus one tends to just see over the hedgerows into farms and off into the distant foothills of the Cheviots. The other day I saw a hare in a recently-mown field. I’ve never seen one live before; I knew what it was immediately as it stood up and was clearly not a bunny. Made my day seeing that.

The bus station in Alnwick is rather unpleasant, being open to the weather with metal seats. In the winter the snow can blow through it and the metal seats are deadly. Actually, the Alnwick bus station can best be described as ugly. The noisy yobs that hang about in it don’t help. Most yobs are ugly (I think that’s why they become yobs). Some hanging baskets with flowers would help the bus station, but I think they’d be stolen or damaged unless some sort of security was laid on. Bus users signing petitions say there is a need for public toilets at the bus station. Actually, there are toilets only 50 yards away near the Market Square, but I gather they are closed in late afternoon and people do use the buses in the night, and bladders and whatnot don’t shut down at 5.00.

On the 518 bus I tend to be a giant, despite being fairly short. Many of the passengers are elderly, women rather than men, and bent over sticks and sometimes Zimmer frames. I’ve never seen a wheelchair user on board one of these specially modified buses. As the queue forms in Alnwick, the rudest, pushiest people tend to be the oldest ladies. I can only think they believe their time is short and that barging in front of others is permitted. Was it the White Rabbit that hurried past Alice, worrying over his timepiece? The little old ladies at the Alnwick bus station are so many White Rabbits. (Some of these ladies will also grab food that one is examining at the market, and push through to the head of the queue there, while complaining about the younger generation. And I’ve never heard one of them say “Excuse me...” My mother may have been a nutter, but she insisted that we be civil and have good manners.)

We do get a few odd folks on the bus routes I travel. Over the years I’ve come to recognise people. I’ve watched some younger travellers grow up; and some faces have disappeared, and those people may well have popped their clogs. Last Saturday a fellow boarded the 518 bus in Alnwick after the rest of the passengers had been seated; he leapt on and made awfully strange noises. This man may have been about 30, and he looked and acted like a throwback from a story by Tom Sharpe. Dressed in dark-blue overalls, this last passenger sat nearest the door and began making louder and louder sounds that may have been words. “Not in English ...” was my first thought. Then I wondered if he might simply have Tourette’s syndrome. As his words were not recognizable, though having some form as he hissed and growled them, I decided he must be a foreigner with Tourette’s and that he was cursing in another tongue. As the bus made its stops, the muttering man seemed to be drooling and leering and commenting in some horrible way at each and every passengers getting on or off. And then it got really weird. The man kissed the window next to him. Not a quick peck, he put some force and some tongue into it, and some time. When he detached himself his window was covered in slime. He kissed it again.

I was two seats back, and wondering where this creature was getting off. Just as I reached out to press the bell for my stop, the man pressed one by his seat. We got off at my stop. He went towards Amble’s Town Centre and I walked away from it. Might he be an Amble resident?

Yesterday I was walking Cailean and we were passing Amble’s humble bus shelter and there was the mumbling, ticking man, again in blue overalls. He was making all his noises and seemed to be with another chap of the same age, though not in a uniform. And they were kind of wrestling on the bench they shared. The noises were, as muttering noises go, friendly, pleasurable. They then jumped up and moved out into the street, the middle of the street, laughing (I think) with the one man’s arm around the neck of the other. No thought to traffic. They were soon down on their knees. Cailean and I walked on.

In 1980 I spent a few months on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. This is, basically, a long sandbank off the East Coast of the USA, with a highway down the middle and houses on stilts on either side. It is all only a few feet above a calm high tide. I was staying in Rodanthe. In that village there was a young woman, Gladys Something, who was daft as a brush. Gladys would go out onto the highway and turn somersaults down the centre of it. We called her “Mad Gladys” (as, of course, one must) and wondered how long this might go on. I was reminded of Mad Gladys as I left the Amble lads mock-wrestling on Church Street behind.

Before I reached the flat, the 472 bus passed me from behind. I could see the window-kissing fellow in the seat nearest the door. Headed back to Alnwick.

In Bible stories we’d have had Jesus curing such a madman, casting out a devil perhaps. Easy peasy. Two hundred years ago the man might be a Village Idiot. In 2010, a Fellow Traveller.