Mystery's Rainbows and Unicorns

ALONSO: Give us kind keepers, heavens! What were these?

SEBASTIAN: A living drollery. Now I will believe
That there are unicorns, that in Arabia
There is one tree, the phoenix' throne, one phoenix
At this hour reigning there.

ANTONIO: I'll believe both;
And what does else want credit, come to me,
And I'll be sworn 'tis true: travellers ne'er did
lie,
Though fools at home condemn 'em.

William Shakespeare (The Tempest. Act III, Scene III)

I WAS NOT AN ONLY CHILD, but I was an only son. I was never interested in my sisters' toys, the few that they had, except for a two-storey dollhouse our grandfather had created from a crate by installing a floor half-way up. My grandfather was not particularly creative, though he was a compulsive collector of bits of wood (and boxes) that washed up alongside my grandparents' cottage in Bermuda. The dollhouse was not painted (protruding nails had been removed, and rough edges sanded smooth) or decorated in any way. It just sat on a stool waiting for dolls to move in. In truth, it remained a crate, but for a few months it was the subject of dreams. Mine. They remained in my head. Eventually the dollhouse, the crate, was filled with other detritus and placed in the basement.

I'd seen wallpapered rooms, chandeliers, finely upholstered furnishings, carpets from distant places (some flown in under their own steam from Arabia), curtains, pictures on the walls, a staircase linking the upper and lower floors, doors and windows and fireplaces.

My first toys can be identified because at my first birthday party they were laid out on my grandparents' lawn, along with a cake and some family friends and relatives, and photographed by my father. I had a large metal horse (painted with lead-based enamel, I fear), a couple of teddy bears, large blocks, a merry-go-round. The horse ended up with Lancaster cousins, the merry-go-round went to younger Eldridge boys; both the horse and the spinning machine made me feel ill.

I was quite young when I was given my first Meccano building set. Meccano toys have been around since 1901, so my father may well have played with them when he was a boy in the 1920s. Metal beams and bars and planks, nuts and bolts. There were axles, cogs and wheels and bits of string. One might build a sky-scraper (I didn't have nearly enough bits of metal to do that, but I had my imagination) or a motor.

Another toy, and this might be the equivalent of a video game in which the boy is to annihilate the enemy invaders by blasting them into cyber-space, or lop off their heads with an electronic axe, was a John Bull Printing Set. I could play at being a compositor, slotting rubber pieces of type into wooden blocks, then printing my great words with an ink-pad and bits of paper. Great words: I only had enough letters and blocks for headlines and "by Ross Eldridge". The stories existed, I'd dream them up. It may have been only about 1955, but I moved comfortably across the Universe. I was into UFOs. We all were; they started appearing about the time I was born.

In the late 1950s I discovered another building system: Plastic blocks very similar to the LEGO System, but made in the UK, designed for building accessories for toy train sets. I'd always wanted a toy train. Happens I never did get that train, but I became a compulsive purchaser of small boxes of wall blocks, or windows, or beams, or roof slates. These plastic blocks were marketed under the name Better Builder. I believe their British patent was eventually sold to the LEGO folks in Denmark. Better Builder did vanish, but not before I'd amassed a considerable quantity of blocks. I'd built tiny cottages at first, a few inches this way and that. Then I built railway stations and platforms for the trains I didn't have. I moved on to shops and mansions. After that, churches and modest cathedrals and castles. And every building had a story.

My Better Builder blocks, jumbled together in a large box, were passed along to my half-brothers when I was at college. I actually rescued most of the blocks when my brothers were too old (they thought) for them, and the box sat in my cupboard until about 1990 when I handed the business over to my nephew, who would have been about five. My sister had other ideas (or, rather, no ideas at all) and the Better Builder blocks, by then an antique of sorts, went in the trash. I still, in 2009, dream that I'm building grand country homes with my blocks.

It may be that my interest in words, as building blocks to language, communication, stories and ideas, began in dreams as I fastened my bits of Meccano or plastic to other bits to create something bigger that was almost out of my imagination's reach. Almost. I've struggled all my life to reach a place where I might be comfortable.

I live in a small town (almost a village) by the North Sea in a part of England that is just full of history. I have been including in my regular reading histories and biographies that chronicle the events, places and people of Northumbria. There are ghosts, if you believe in them, as I do, on every street and by the River and looking out from our castles. Ghosts that once had dreams.

There are also the buildings I have tried to build these sixty years. The fortresses of my dreams that began in books and stories told me by my older family members; the abbeys I had visited with my Nan Eldridge as a boy, and, since then, alone; the stations and museums and monuments I've walked about and revisited in the guidebooks.

I don't really enjoy home decorating programmes on the telly, my mental trips around my sisters' dollhouse were less about furniture and fittings than I thought, for those were always physically unrealised. Rather, my interest is now in the characters that tread the boards in those sets, which play out the games of life and death.

For every church I built with my Better Builder blocks, I invented congregations; for cathedrals there were pilgrims. Stations and halts had the trains full of passengers that I created in my mind. Nothing was empty. My Meccano winches raised buckets to workmen that I really could see for a time, to build higher and higher. Words, fitted together so as to be most pleasing, became stories and love-letters. I was never short of unicorns and rainbows.

Word Tripper

My men like satyrs grazing on the lawns
Shall with their goat-feet dance an antic hay.
Sometimes a lovely boy in Dian's shape,
With hair that gilds the water as it glides,
Crownets of pearl about his naked arms,
And in his sportful hands an olive tree
To hide those parts which men delight to see,
Shall bathe him in a spring.
Christopher Marlowe. (Edward II. Act I, Scene I)

I HAVE REOCCURRING DREAMS. Rather, I have dreams in which I am visited by a childhood friend who I last saw in person in August of 1970. And in August of 1970 we had been out of touch for some years, at least five, as Bryan had moved away from Bermuda, as had I for a time, each in opposite directions. But that August, thirty-nine years ago this week, Bryan celebrated his twenty-first birthday, and came to Bermuda to throw a party on his parents' lawn. I was invited; I would not be twenty-one till November, Bryan was a few months older than I was. We had started kindergarten together, became fast friends, and, small as we were, those being different times, we thought nothing of walking the beaches and climbing over the dunes along Bermuda's South Shore.

The party was quite a big one, a huge ring of chairs under a Poinciana tree, a barbecue and tables with food nearer the house.

Bryan was by then working for a Canadian airline. He would actually be on board an aeroplane that made a crash landing a few years later and was badly injured. In 1970 many of Bryan's colleagues at the airline had flown in to Bermuda for his party. Other guests were family and school friends. We were a pretty lively group. Bryan looked young; he was young, only twenty-one. I never saw him again, not in person, and he was dead less than fifteen years later. He has been dead twenty-five years. AIDS.

And in my reoccurring dreams, Bryan walks through, still twenty-one, never speaking, though we recognise each other, and he always continues, alone, moving away, till I am watching only his back. He passed through the other night and I remembered it when I woke. Still twenty-one, bright and happy. He has no marks from the aeroplane crash of his later twenties, no marks of the disease that killed him when he was about thirty-four. I know of these injuries, these marks and scars, but I do not place them on his body as I dream; he is, rather, always in his prime. Perhaps Bryan's visits have nothing to do with what I am, what I do, but are honest representations. Night tripper.

When I read, which is nearly always in the daytime, if not always in the daylight hours (precious few of them in the winter up here), I usually recline on my sofa with Cailean alongside me. If I look over the top of the book I am reading I am facing one of the two windows in my front room, I'm facing the south. Outside the window, clearly visible if it's daylight, is a row of terraced houses, two storeys high. In the winter the sun is so low in the sky to the south that for months no direct sunlight reaches my flat, my windows, my courtyard, the sun is behind the opposite terrace. At the moment the sun scoots above the roofline and there is still a pool of light on my carpet for part of the day. Cailean will sometimes give up the sofa and stretch out in the sunshine. It cannot be particularly warm, but it's the thought that counts.

We had a rather splendid start to summer this year, and then July returned to form and we were in wettest ever days. August has struggled, a fair bit of rain to keep the locals and visitors on the hop. But most days have featured some bright sun, especially in early morning and late afternoon. Midday is dodgy. It is just after noon as I write this and we have light rain and completely cloudy skies, but I dried laundry outside earlier.

If I am reading on the sofa and the light dims outside as the clouds move in, I switch on a brass standing lamp behind me. A low setting with an energy-efficient, eco-friendly bulb. I can still see the terrace across the street through my window, though the colours and shadows change wonderfully as the light changes. The rough stones seem to age as they darken, and the terrace becomes more massive somehow, as if it was some great dam holding back the sunny weather to the south.

The other day we had an unusually heavy rainstorm. Not that English drizzle, but a deluge equal to some I have seen in Bermuda. We can get flash-flooding in such downpours. I happened to be on the sofa reading, and the changing light outside distracted me for a moment. I looked out and up and the rain pouring down the slate roof of the opposite terrace, towards me, had, in the light, become a molten thing. Together the rain and the slick slates had gained such volume and depth that it was as if a silvery mirror-like substance was rolling down the roof and overflowing from the gutters along the edge.

The building itself was approaching blackness, the chimneys thrusting towards a steely sky, and rain in the air above the road between my flat and the terrace. More rain ran down my window glass. The world was melting!

I remembered Aldous Huxley writing about solids flowing in The Doors of Perception. Huxley, of course, used mescaline and LSD to bring that on. I peered through those same doors. But on an August afternoon in 2009 the flow came without preparation, without warning. One just had to be aware, to look up. Day tripper.

I had a most curious dream the other night, unlike any that I've had before. It was brief, startling, and beautiful and I woke and wrote a little about it in case I might forget some detail. It happens that it is still incredibly clear.

In my dream I received a hand-written book, a kind of diary, with original painted illustrations. The book arrived in the post with no letter or explanation. The diary was not complete; rather it was a portion well into the period it was covering. Each page was numbered, the letters C/F and a number in sequence, which I understood to mean carried forward and the new page number. The handwriting was not familiar, and it was written in cramped longhand in gold-coloured ink. In the dream I puzzled over page C/F 2181 and wondered if a relative might have written the book.

Inside the front cover of the book was a book-plate showing a picture of a Buddha, and the words Uncle Eldridge. No first names.

That was interesting enough, but the dream ended with me skipping through the book's pages till I came across a painting of an aerial view of an island covered in palm trees, exquisite white-sand beaches meeting blue, blue seas. And as I looked at the picture of the island I realised that it had come to life, I was actually above the place, and brilliantly-coloured birds were flying up out of the palm trees below me.

And I can still relive that rather lovely dreamscape just by thinking about it. I first saw it as a night tripper, and now I'm day tripping there.

I love words; I always hope that one day I might attach several to one another and get something outstanding. In the meantime, I enjoy being somewhat overcome by what I read, perhaps a little afraid of the hold words can have on me. I actually weep at some of the words I read, they are so damn real, powerful.

Aren't Marlowe's lines, quoted above, extraordinary? He gave them to Piers Gaveston in Edward II. They tell us nearly all we need to know about Gaveston, and then some. Marlowe did not tell us how tall Gaveston was, or whether he wore a beard, and what colour his hair was. Instead he gave us Gaveston's dream. These words might even tell us something about Marlowe himself, a dream within a dream. All I could think, first reading them, was: Dear God!

Word tripper.

I Say! You Don't Say! Say What?

Dirty Bertie Lawrence



KATHERINE: Comment appelez-vous le pied et la robe?
ALICE: Le foot, madame, et le coun.
KATHERINE: Le foot et le coun! O Seigneur Dieu! Ce sont les mots de son mauvais, corruptible, gros, et impudique, et non pour les dames d'honneur d'user.

William Shakespeare (Henry V. Act 3, Scene 4)

THE LPA, the Little People of America, want the word midget to have the same status as the word nigger. So, the m-word and the n-word. Now, I know for a fact that there are people of extremely small stature outside of the United States of America, for we have at least three people in Amble by the Sea with achondroplasia. I am not sure whether they are related, I have seen the young female chasing the young male through the streets, yelling abuse, which suggests some sort of loving relationship, and there is an older gentleman. Achondroplasia is a form of dwarfism, and Amble's little people might prefer to be d-words.

The former midgets of America, dwarves and simply short folks can be little if they wish. However, in ten years' time, some bright, if diminutive, spark is going to take umbrage at the word little, as it belittles, and the issue will have to be debated again.

I've noticed that homosexuals, who now usually prefer to be thought of as gay, often don't mind being thought of as queer in 2009. Thirty or forty years ago that was offensive. Mind you, if you call someone who is either not homosexual, or who is in the closet, gay, queer, a poof, he is going to really find that objectionable. Watch the labels!

My father, who just didn't like people of colour, had an olive complexion and he was a compulsive sun-bather and, especially as he aged, was as dark as an Egyptian mummy. I once had somebody telephone me, after my father's death, to ask if my father's father (my grandfather) might have been a black man from Jamaica. I knew my pale, fair grandfather and had to disappoint my nosy caller.

Considering I spent a good deal of my life in Bermuda (I was born there), I do not write about it here all that often. I've been trying to write about the present and future as much as possible, and Bermuda has gone down the tubes in the past few years. I will tell you that there is dictatorial rule there. When the Progressive Labour Party championed One Man One Vote, I was naïve enough not to anticipate that it would be one man, Dr Ewart Brown, the Leader as he likes to be called, and that his vote is the only one that would matter. Dr Brown has a faithful henchman, Minister David Burch, the former commanding officer of the Bermuda Regiment. They have a radio station. Burch, famously, refers to people of colour that do not belong to the PLP, that associate with the few remaining white politicians in Bermuda, as house niggers. He uses that expression in speeches on the radio. And when he uses it, it's quite okay. If I spoke in public in Bermuda and referred to David Burch as a gay nigger (I've heard he is homosexual, but this may be based only on the fact that after he retired from the Regiment he grew his hair long and started wearing hoop earrings) I'd soon feel the wrath of the ruling class.

Are words and language divisible? Can certain people lay claim to certain words, and use and abuse them at will, while other people are denied the opportunity?

I say allow Hitler his Mein Kampf, at least we know where he was coming from. We'd certainly praise the struggle of a Nelson Mandela or an Elie Wiesel. The most dangerous book ever compiled is the Holy Bible.

When I was a boy, in Bermuda, the local Negroes, a word I cannot use there now, were called Coloured, a word I cannot use there now. Then they followed the lead of the Americans and became Black. From time to time, some voice from the Babel chirps up, usually in Bermuda's daily newspaper, requesting that the paper and all people stop using the word black negatively. No black sheep, no black as night, no black-hearted soul, no black-out or blackmail, perhaps no in the black for accounts.

When I worked for a few years in the hell that was Kit n Caboodle, a Bermuda convenience store that also had a passport photo service, many of my customers of colour, who almost certainly thought of themselves as black, complained that they looked, in their passport pictures, too dark, as black as Jamaicans. Which was not a good thing. Go figure.

Pity the gay, black midget.

When I was at school, we read Shakespeare's Henry V in an abridged format. Our Literature teacher, Frank "Buck" Rogers, suggested we go to the Main Library in town and look at a copy of the play to locate what was missing from the school edition. Shakespeare's audiences liked a bit of smut and were pretty smart if they picked up on the puns in the English lesson that Alice gives to Princess Katherine in Act 3, Scene 4. Asked what the English was for pied and robe, Katherine is told foot and coun. Foot is a pun on the French word for fuck, and coun (gown mispronounced by Alice) is the French for cunt.

My Spell-Check tells me that the word cunt does not exist. Perhaps the people at MS Word could read DH Lawrence. Lawrence did not invent the word cunt, he simply recognised the obvious, that it existed.

The brilliant film Atonement has a plot that evolves from the use of the word cunt in a short letter. The word is not spoken aloud in the film that I noticed, but one sees it on a page as the typewriter keys go down. The word is electric, it is more than that. Nuclear, perhaps.

We read a little of William Chaucer in our school Literature lessons, but it was our Chemistry master, Billy Hanlon, who read us The Miller's Tale in a concise modern translation. It was hilarious, of course. The same year that I'd felt a bit uncomfortable studying the British in India and putting the city of Lahore on our map, I nearly convulsed with laughter at the Miller's story of a bare bottom being kissed and the kisser receiving a fart in return.

A few months ago, Britain suddenly had an attack of the prudes. A few thousand viewers, out of many million, decided that the use of certain language and certain situations should not be financed by the television tax levied on households that gives us the advertisement-free BBC programming. Suddenly everything was stifled; presenters and guests alike squirmed during live presentations. The many other channels carried on as usual. No censorship, though there is an unwritten agreement to keep nudity and strong (a term that amuses me) language for the evening viewers. Blue Peter ain't what you might think! We do have life drawing classes at midday on Channel 4.

This week, however, there is a break in the nonsense that has clouded good judgement at the BBC. After the watershed, nine o'clock at night, the real world has returned. On Torchwood the gay characters can be gay: Captain Jack cradles his lover, the dying Ianto, and kisses him. And on the new series of Mock the Week, team members have been told they might not use the word fuck as a noun, according to panellist Frankie Boyle (who may be joking), but can use it as an adjective. So, last night, when Frankie had to improvise something that would not be heard in a Star Trek movie, he said: "'Why are you looking so sad, Captain Picard?' 'Because I'm a Shakespearian actor, and here I am having a conversation with the fucking King of the Worm People.'" You have to admit, the fucking helped make this joke a new classic.

Perhaps I have offended? Just words on a page. Get over it. Little People of America, you seem more concerned with a letterhead life than a real one.