Experiments in creative writing. I describe a road trip to Jerusalem. That really did happen in September and October 2018. The war and political instability around Syria and that region meant I could only drive from England to Turkey (via Europe and the Balkans). I had to fly from Istanbul to Israel. I write about this in the form of what looks like postings on FB (the essence of them are). I did sleep in the car on most nights as described. I use a fictional character, Johnny Kidman to play myself making this trip. I write a parallel story about a group of characters living in the Leeds of 1980. The focal person is Joan, a single mother and occasional prostitute
Leeds. EnglandSunday 24th August 1980She hasn’t got long. He only naps for half an hour in the afternoon these days. The boy is like a racing car all the rest of the time. From before dawn till at least nine o’clock. Just racing all the time. Even on his little mattress, fast asleep he is still on the move. He never shuts up either. Even asleep his little mouth is going.
Getting the presents for Pateley’s birthday had been like a military operation. Those who have got money don’t know how complicated life is when you have ‘nowt’. She had got just half an hours Donald Ducking film work in the flats last Friday. Chaz and Baz, the two brothers that made the films had a younger lass doing the main bits. They only did a back view of her with some feller from up York Road. That was only deemed to be worth a tenner. She argued with that but got nowhere. Told them to ‘fuck off’, they grinned and she had stormed out the door, money in hand and went straight to the post office and got a £5 postal order. That had been for the clothes catalogue. The other fiver was for Pateley’s birthday. This year he was three and knew a little about birthdays.
She had him in at the Pentecostals playgroup every Friday, 9-12. With all the pissing about with her money, she didn’t get out of the flat till 10.45, or the post office till 11, that only gave her an hour to get into town and back. So it had to be laying out bus fares instead of walking. No option. So a bus to Eastgate in town left with just £4.50 left for the presents. Time whys she had a bit of leeway with the Pentecostals but not much. The ‘War on Want’ charity shop on the road behind Eastgate, in Little China Town, was her plan. A lot of folk who signed on at the DHSS went there so it was very much hit and miss if there would be anything decent in after so many people had picked over what was on the shelves and tables. But Friday was often a good day. It was the stock top-up day. A lady had told her.
And thank God it had turned out that way. But she had been worried. A fast scan and run-around got a couple of nice storybooks and an action man with a wonky leg. But the quantity was important. The boy had to wake up on his birthday and see lots of things. Make him excited. There had to be at least one more thing. Something a bit flashy.
The panic had been rising. The bus was due and the presents were not enough yet. There had to be something big, and eye-catching for the lad. Just then a box of recent drop-offs by the curtain over the backroom door, got her attention. Balanced on top was an ‘Etch a Sketch’ toy, It was red, looked like a flat telly and it had two nobs and a slide thing what you pulled across. The screen was silvery. She has one as a little girl, and had loved it. You drew by twisting the two nobs. One did up lines and the other across ones, twisting them both together gave you a sloping line up or down. Then when you wanted to do another picture you just swiped across with the slide lever and it wiped the picture out. This one needed four big batteries, heaven knows what for. The one she’d had never did but maybe this one did other things as well. Action Man, the books and the ‘Etch a Sketch’ added up to £3, so she came out one and a half-pound ahead. That would get a fair enough cake. Then she had raced back to the playgroup with all the stuff in a Lewis’s bag. This had been the first chance since then to do the wrapping up. She had trailed a bit of superglue around the top of the Action Mans leg. His left leg would not shift anymore but she would tell Pateley it had got hurt in a battle.
An Etch-a-Sketch like the one Joan bought
When she got to the ‘Etch a Sketch’ she remembered that the four Size D batteries were needed. That would have to wait until she got the £5.40 Child Allowance on Tuesday. Her Giro cheque from the Social would come on Thursday morning early, but she would need to go begging to the brothers again for more work. Best to swallow her pride, and get that out of the way at the start of the week. Otherwise, she would have to go up Chappletown Road on Saturday. Leeds were playing at home to Leicester. If there was a win that might be okay as there could be a lot of post-match punters ‘on the look’, but best to get some Donald Ducking film money in hand any road. Chappletown was not the place to work at the moment till the coppers had got that Ripper feller. All being well her and Pateley would have a day out at Roundhay Park on his birthday. Make the day special best she could. So 31st August. Roundhay Park. The Little Lads Birthday. Pateley now three years old. Bloody hell, how did that happen? The last three years had been like a tunnel, starting with meeting Barry Bridger and then getting the hell away from him at any cost. Then just living and working for Pateley. Nothing else in the world, just moving along down the tunnel-like that. It would be just her and him for his birthday. That’s how it was. Certainly best without his dad but it would have been nice if Gaynor and her mate could have come. They had been a little like aunties. Looking out the window at the weeds between the cobbles, Joan felt a rising panic in her stomach. Since Johnny and Cheyanne had gone from next door, and the daft old lass (love her) from up the street had been dragged off, there was only this house left in the street still being lived in. Number eight Lincoln Avenue. Two up and two down, back to back brick terrace. Six pounds a week from Edison’s. Scheduled for slum clearance. Soon to be dust. No date yet but it wouldn’t be long now. She, Joan needed something to happen and quick. And same as always no bugger was going to help so it had better be her. Joan tapped three times on her forehead and repeated the words. ‘Don’t forget the batteries’. This boy better grow up behaving right to women
Blackbushe 1978. The Big Picnic. Johnny Kidman and Cheyanne are there somewhere
-2- Saturday, July 15th 1978 The Big Picnic Blackbush Airport Hampshire It had been the Saturday before when he asked her out. His birthday. He was posing for a photo, sat astride his Suzuki 100cc motorbike in the cleared lounge of the nurse’s home, where they all lived. He was a second-year student, and she was getting to the end of her first year. He had seen her around but they had never talked much. He was in his underpants. His body covered in heart shape glitter. Sandra had made him lay on the bed while she drew the shapes with a bottle of Gloy Glue. Then sprinkled Christmas card glitter over him. Waited fifteen minutes, changed sheets, laid on his front and done it all again. So he, Johnny was covered in glitter hearts (and a few stars). She said it would look good when he drove into the big downstairs lounge. Lights off at first. Then three of them would point powerful torches which would catch the glitter, and then he would rev the engine and they would play …what else, ‘Born to be wild’. Pete Welby had called him an attention seeker afterwards, but the man did not get the scale. This was bigger than that.
A blue Suzuki 100cc Motorbike something like the one that Johnny rode at the party
He had driven around the room once (wishing he had put some toilet paper down the front of his underpants) and then stood in a kind of star shape astride the motorbike. The photos had taken a little while (all angles needed, this was his 21st Birthday and posters were going to get made) and by then another record had come on, ‘Whole lot of shakin’ going on’. Jerry Lee Lewis
Jerry Lee-Lewis. The original wildman of Rock and Roll
He had got right in and started singing it (people used to think he was on drugs, cocaine or amphetamines but he wasn’t), and her eyes lit up and she joined in. Standing four square and screaming out the words. And that how he met the woman he was going to marry. Johnny knew right away that he wanted this woman. And she had a funny name, Cheyanne and that made it better. And she was a Jerry Lee fan. That meant she would probably be into Chuck Berry as well Not a lot more went off that night. Just a lot of dancing (at first in his underpants and then with a sheet folded around him) and then some end of night snogging. Then Cheyanne went off with the other Mauritian girls. He did ask her out though. Would she like to go to a festival in Hampshire, called the ‘Big Picnic’? A place called Blackbushe aerodrome. About eight of them were going in a Bedford van. She grinned and said yes, that would be great. In the week he had got her ticket from a music store off Briggate in Leeds, and then borrowed a copy of the music paper, Melody Maker. There was a full-page advert about the festival. He tore that out and slid it into her pigeon hole in the mailroom at the back of The Mansion, where all the staff picked up their hospital mail. He wrote on it. ‘See you on Saturday. Here are the people playing. Looking forward. The Big-Bopper aka Johnny Kidman’. And he got a little frisson doing that. And they were big names: Dylan, Clapton and Joan Armatrading amongst others. The spelling of the name of the airport looked wrong. There was an ‘e’ at the end. Blackbushe, not Blackbush. But things were in motion. He finds it hard now to remember the names of the people in the van. Paul was there, and he was driving. Just back from working in Libya on the oil pipelines and now employed at the artificial limb workshop at Chapel Allerton. He looked and talked like a druggy. He was but maybe not as much as he looked. He did wild things and they had got to be good mates. All the other faces are gone, but they would have been young men and women from Meanwood. Mostly nurses in training in what was then called Mental Subnormality Nursing. The next thing in his mind is laying next to Cheyanne in two joined up sleeping bags among 200,000 people. They were about a hundred yards from the stage, front and centre. By lunchtime, they were hundreds of yards from the edge of the crowd. There was no possibility of getting to the bathroom, even if there had been enough to get to. He and Cheyanne never did drugs but everyone else was. But they were intoxicated on each other. They sort of got high on resting against each other and every so often the music broke through. There was Dylan in a weird suit and a top hat singing Rainy Day Women, or Clapton’s doing Layla. Everyone stood up apart from them so it was like being in a forest of people. They were so into each other that neither noticed when a dog cocked its leg and peed over Johnny. Funny as hell, but can’t remember now how he got clean. Maybe someone had brought wet cloths. God knows Then next thing Cheyanne and I are in the back of the Bedford Van. Everyone is drinking except Paul. He has a joint in his hand. How crazy were we to trust his driving? Amway’s the Pink Floyd album was playing and Paul was on the Dark Side of the Moon track, or maybe another one, but the one where an alarm clock goes off. A police car overtook us and signalled to pull in. The officer came to the front passenger window (someone wound it down) and he was standing there. He wanted to do a Breathalyser on Paul, but the music was playing and they could not hear each other. Then the alarm went off in the music and the policeman dived to the ground. He probably thought it was a gun or something. We were all scared of IRA terrorism then (with good reason). But anyways he is on the ground, and it was funny as hell (which was not fair, the man was trying to do his job and we were idiots), but it was known forevermore as the time the copper dived into the ground. That policeman will be in his mid-sixties now. I wonder if he remembers like I do. And what he thought about us. So like tonight when I’m sat with a bottle of Primativo and listening to tunes. I think about how Cheyanne and I started, I think about those three things that happened in the seven days between my twenty-first birthday and the festival at Blackbushe Aerodrome. The love we both had for Jerry Lee Lewis, and how I hoped she would get to love Chuck Berry. Cheyanne had been seeing a man who was trying to get into Catholic Seminary College, but she told him some lies, and then we moved into a stinking flat above hairdresser soon afterwards. Four months later we got married. I’m sitting here now more than forty years later when it seems just about everything has happened that ever could do, I think on that attraction we had. What was such a beautiful Mauritian girl, with a craving for Jerry Lee Lewis songs doing at my Twenty-first birthday party, and what did she see in the almost naked pale, lanky skinny idiot covered in glitter riding a Suzuki 100c motorbike. And then I have to think about if we had never met, would life have been better for her. Or maybe only a different shuffle of the cards. Less me more her, it would have been better for her. But we don’t get to know that do we?
-3-
All Saints Church
Blackman Lane
Leeds
December 1978
Revd Bob’s Church on Blackman Lane in Leeds
The man looks like Bernard Manning, the comedian, the one that lots of people hate because of the kind of jokes he tells. If you don’t know of him (he is not around anymore) here is a picture for your head. A man around sixty still got all his hair, and it’s still got all its colour, heavy set (outsize, barrel-shaped), gravelly voice, Jowly. Looks like his skin has got too big for his head. A faint smell of Brylcreem styling gel, a bit of the north in his voice. That could be Bob. Reverend Bob, Vicar of All Souls, the soot-stained millstone grit Victorian Church on Blackman Lane in Leeds. A lot of people really did not like Bernard. I try not to judge too harshly. His jokes sound very bad now (very much on the racist side…strongly racist even), and he told them with a knowing look like he was telling the audience ‘we both know what I mean’, a bit of a wink. Okay, that’s not good at any time, but in the 1970’s it was not particularly shocking. I don’t know why I’m going on so much about Bernard sodding Manning because Bob might have looked a lot like him (almost as if they were twins) but character-wise (and note: I suspect Manning was very different from his stage act in private) they were nothing alike. Bob was everything the stage, Manning was not and visa-Versa. So there you have him. Bob looked like Bernard Manning’s twin but it worked out that in life he was the polar opposite.
This could be e Bob but in reality its the comedian Bernard Manning. They looked so much alike
If you had to pick out two or three words to describe Revd. Bob, they might be kind, hesitant. Generous has to be in there, and if I was allowed one more with an inappropriate hyphen I would choose ‘over-thinker’, a bit too much on the philosopher side. The kind of man who would miss a bus because he would be too preoccupied with thinking about the nature of buses to actually get on the thing when it stopped for him. So what we have is a case of an object which on the outside is nothing like what it is on the inside. And I’m not making assumptions about Bernard’s personality. I suspect he was a very lovely man… when he was off stage. The resemblance between Bob and Bernard was so strong that on three distinct occasions Bob had been approached by strangers who shouted: “Bernard what you doing dressed up as a fxxxing vicar”? Twice in the northwest but once in Cornwall as well. And he did not have an answer to that. Bob would have been good at ‘Banter’ if he had been allowed more time to formulate his answers. This day it was cold, as of course it’s supposed to be in December. And in 1978 before we got global warming, that how December was: bloody freezing. He was outside in the cold looking up and down the lane for two reasons. He was trying to find his wife, Ida and he was angry-scared. He would have been at the church hall for 1pm to help set up for the Sunday School children’s Christmas Party, but he felt drained of any strength or energy and so had begged off. People knew why. He didn’t have to say, and anyway, he was not really needed for that. Bob had left Ida sleeping on the Zed Bed in the spare room (they had not shared a bed for months) and he now wanted a few minutes to think so he had gone into the garage to where he had his wicker chair and his thinking table. It was Maddy, one of the churchwardens and a beautifully kind woman who had come and found him, then woken him up (he, of course, had fallen asleep). That always happened when he stopped moving these days (and thank goodness he had not had the whisky out). She said, “Sorry Bob, Ida has done something you need to come and see”. When they walked in through the door of the church hall nothing looked wrong. Bob looked around a second time and still, nothing looked out of place, then Maddy pointed at the tall Christmas tree, which filled the far corner of the entrance extension. Instead of shiny baubles, it had Tampax’s tied by their little strings to the branches. And each un-sheaved Tampax was a different colour. Bob got closer. They were coloured by ink, calligraphy ink. It looked like each tampon had been dipped in one of the little bottles. That had been her hobby. Writing special cards for people. Dormant (no lost) for at least a year now. Like a lot of things. She had suddenly stopped doing it Bob wasn’t shocked anymore. These kinds of things happened every day. At first, he had been horrified and enraged, but all that emotion just wears you out. Now, these crazy humiliating things just accumulated their weight and pressed down on him (and if he was honest, that’s how he felt. I mean it had mostly come down to Ida’s effect on him. He hadn’t considered how Ida had felt for a long time. When she first got ill there were these little rushes of panic that she got when she did something like The Farting Song, and a window opened in her mind and she thought ‘what am I doing’. She had gone well past that point where she got that she had done something awful (although now and again there was maybe a little flicker of recognition). So these things that Ida now did were totally unsurprising. If they had stopped, that would have been the surprising (and joyful) thing. Now he just wanted her to get to the point where she got bedridden and semi-conscious. That would be simpler. Bob knew what was going on or at least as much as medicinal science could supply a satisfying answer. The front of one’s brain is important. It carries out diverse roles. It organises you, it’s what you plan with, it monitors your own behaviour and crucially only allows out into the world properly vetted utterances and behaviour. It gets involved in working out what other people’s behaviour is about. Get that wrong and you are a big stakes loser. If you put a tumour in amongst the bits in the front of your brain it by necessity takes up ever more space in what is, after all, a closely compacted district. As it grows it presses up against its neighbours. Squeezing, squashing and then infiltrating. That’s what was happening with Ida.
A large frontal lobe tumour of the kind that Ida had
The tumour is inoperable as it has been growing, in secret for a very long time. The doctors had warned him of ‘potential personality changes to come’. These mean nothing. It is not the real person doing and saying these things. And right on cue, they arrived; cruel, disinhibited, impulsive, fatuous. Irritable. Shameless. Then came the ‘not recognising him’, or their children, finding herself lost in what should have been familiar places or adding lard to the weekly wash (catastrophic). And the more his wife went down that path, the more he thought about her when she had been a young woman. Just plain Ida Redman when they met. Bob was newly demobbed from service as an Army Chaplain in Palestine, and then at the Normandy landing and drive-through Europe to Germany. He was a lover of folk and country music and something of an idealistic Christian Socialist with a wish to serve back in Southern Africa where he had spent time before the war. Ida and he had met at a very earnest folk club in the Rising Sun pub on Kirkstall Road in Leeds. Ida was jolly and easy to talk to and had a lot more self-possession and confidence than the other women. So much so that Bob was a little worried at first. Some women saw him as a curiosity or even more devilishly as an odd trophy to be bedded. There were such women, and they were characterised by their confidence. He had known them before the war. They targeted the theology students at parties and tried to de-rail them. No Ida was not like that but she was electrically charged and possessed of a shimmer. (Bob always looked for shimmer in women. It was a concept of his. Most women did not have shimmer, and others had it by the truckload. Ida was one of those). He had walked into her (literally that, walked into her) in the Rising Sun (the shimmer had blinded him), she fell over and then he had hurt her again with an accidental kick, and then he poured lemonade over her head when he bent down to help her up from the ground. The obsessive, magnet-like attraction had started then. Some lads had got up to sing Ida Red, which everyone thought was a cowboy song. Ida had grabbed him and said, ‘cowboys be buggered, this song belongs to me’ (Bob understood, he felt the same way about ‘Fields of Athenry’). She later claimed that grabbing him, had been nothing to do with him as such. She just needed someone to dance with. It had been hearing her song that got her excited, not any particular interest in him, but as slow as Bob could be he knew that she was teasing him a little (and it felt nice). She was beautiful, in a highly sprung, gymnastic, and leaping over gates and fences type of way. A little taller than him, and one of those types alien to his sort, that is she was one of those people who lived in their bodies as well as their minds. The word was ‘lithe’. That was the word he wanted to use but these days kept forgetting. She was lithe and full of life. Red (even crimson) hair. She grew it long and sometimes piled it up. She looked at people sideways on (a result of a slightly lazy eye, which went its own way). But you needed that. The little supposed imperfection set her off. Ida employed it and that made her even more attractive. Red hair, lazy eye, springy lithe (that word again) body and an in your face frankness. Keen…like a razor blade intelligence. A fast talker. In days his head had been altogether taken over by her. He loved fast talkers, who were also fast thinkers. In turn, Ida studied Bob carefully and watched how he operated amongst people. Years later she talked about this period of study. Some intellectual types at the Rising Sun sang what they called ‘Negro Spirituals’. Many of these people were Communists and deniers of God. It didn’t matter if they had a religion or not they still murdered the songs, and employed the most appalling stereotypes. Ida would cringe. Bob would gently put these headstrong people right without them knowing they had been corrected. More than that, he left them feeling good. He was just that: good, but also gentle, rational, reflective, seeking to understand other perspectives and wholly unselfish. People genuinely loved him. Even the most ranting, hating ones. Ida mentally noted all of this. He was unusual and of a strange type, and she liked him very much. And they had rapport. They got married What caught him by surprise (shocked and shamed him even) was how, thirty-five years later when she now needed him, he found himself hating her. Life had been busy. Very few things had been wholly good or bad in all that they had seen and done as a couple over the decades, but one thing was crystal. He loved her. No dilution no alteration, love without fading. Absolutely and totally. He had loved her, but this thing in front of him now was a parody and he had to stop himself grabbing the shell of Ida by the shoulders and shaking this crazy woman until her proper normalness came back. When someone is close to you and they are mad you get terrified. It’s like suddenly you realise that you are standing on nothing but a stack of boxes piled high and they are rolling away under your feet. And you are flailing. There had been one time fairly soon after he diagnosis when she had sung the ‘Ida’, song and made it sound lewd and obscene just with her (pelvic) movements (the words alone were a little bawdy but harmless) and that had marked the point when the strands snapped in him. They’d had the song ever since the times at the ‘Rising Sun’. They both favoured the Woody Guthrie version. It felt more authentic. And it had come to represent their togetherness. They (softly) sang lines when the lovemaking was gentle, and some phrases then felt like a sacrament. Unlikely but true (and precious). So when she made it lewd in front of old friends it was not the social embarrassment that stung. She could have been out in a field by herself, and he would have felt the same. The transgression was that she had pissed on the thing between them. Of course, Bob knew in his head it was not really her, but something the tumour had done, but never-the-less the memory became corrosive. And there is something one was not supposed to even think about. It was supposed to wain and go naturally, and anyway it was selfish to be thinking of that. He was thinking of sex and making love. It had been their big brilliant thing. He had to face it. That part of his life was gone. He had made love for the last time and he could not even remember when that was. Never the less he was in mourning for the loss of sex. God knows what people would think of him if they knew that. Having sex with Ida as she was now was unthinkable. She was damaged, and it would have felt something like rape. He told himself to put those thoughts away. The remarks and the crazy accusations were starting to get funny they were so awful. Or they would have been if people had understood. Ida was not mad, but her brain had been taken over by a tumour and it was destroying what she had been. It can be hard to believe such explanations at times. It is not something within the normal experiences of most of us. Maybe the illness was just stripping away her deceit and exposing how she had really felt. That felt more likely than talk of filter loss and randomly generated thoughts with no reason or antecedents. Maddy pulled on Bob’s arm again. Ida’s uneven voice was coming from the big room through the next doors. He noted how she had even lost control of that. Rapid and slow in the wrong places, up and down at the wrong times. Now she was going squeaky. Like a mouse might sound if you squeezed it. Sprightly Maddy was ahead of him and got the picture before he did. Bob stopped short of the door and so just got a partial view of his wife on the little wooden platform that served as a stage at the end of the room. She was wearing a short-sleeved, cotton print dress featuring pale pastel flowers. The belt was untied and it was evident that she was not wearing a bra. There were carpet slippers on her feet. In her hand (he noted now it was twitching) was a white, cotton sun hat. As Ida spoke the hat jerked. He knew the dress. It was the one she had sometimes warn for the little social events they had at the mission and its school in the Transvaal, near to the southern Rhodesia border. All of thirty-three years earlier, in the first months of their marriage. Bob inched forward through the double doors and took in the wider view. About thirty, primary school-aged children were sat on the floor in a half-circle around Ida. Their parents lined the walls. People of many nations or at least five or so. Mostly immigrants but one or two-second generation. The walls and ceiling were thick with festive decoration. The Christmas tree was a glorious thing. That was Lithuanian Ona’s project, completed with the help of her children every year. The eight-foot tree looked spectacular, with everything to the max. Her kids had filled every inch with (incongruous) objects. When had unicorns become Christmassy? But they were there and so was a cowboy, and an Eskimo. Bob knew what he was doing. He was parking his attention on the tree, and Ona’s work so he did not have to look at Ida. Odd how his mind was working these days. And then a line of Ida’s words from the stage broke though into his consciousness, ‘No, I said she’s fucking Goofy’. Bob guessed that was a Disney themed play on words joke, but there were just shock and no laughter. Ida giggled at her own punch line but it sounded strained, and she looked awfully frail. ‘Muscley Maddy’, the daughter of a Jewish Hungarian wrestler who had survived the death camps pushed him gently again, but Bob did not really need it. He weaved through the chairs and stepped up onto the stage where he stood beside his wife. His arm around her back and tucked under her right arm, firmly. The words came out ‘My wife is not well, we need to go now’. Everyone smiled and tried to look at both of them with compassion, and to make sure Bob felt it they felt it; that is everyone except one person who wrote to the bishop and said Ida was a lewd inebriate and looked like a Chappletown slut. Furthermore, there were anti-Christian symbols on the Christmas tree and Revd Bob had done nothing about it. He sometimes smelt of whisky and Sharps Extra Strong Mints. The bishop called the woman an evil cow in his mind but he went ahead and did what he felt he had to do. And that’s what led Bob and Ida to end up 133 miles away in the village of Godmanchester, near Huntingdon. A lovely rural place but one which Bob viewed with an absolute lack of interest. And he felt guilty about that (after all he was ‘here for God’, not for himself and he ‘better get on and serve’). At near on sixty Bob figured that this was the place that he was likely to end his days, or at least his working life. And that would have been fine just lately there was nothing in him anymore that wanted to do it…be a priest. And that was bad twofold: people were relying upon him, and also because of the other problem. Bob the vicar had a secret.
Ida Red- The Woody Guthrie Version
Ida Red, Ida Red, Can’t make a living for Ida Red Ida Red, big and plump Eighty-four inches around the rump Ida Red, big and plump Got eighty-four inches around the rump Ida Red jumped the fence I ain’t seen my Ida since
The killing of a good man.The assassination of Robert Kennedy, 1968
-4- Thursday 6th June 1968 The day after US Presidential Candidate, Robert Kennedy was assassinated Hunslet Carr Primary School Hunslet. South Leeds
The new headmaster, Mr Garrat, had them all in the hall just before dinner time. He has stopped the lessons and told the teachers to bring all the children right away. He had something to tell the whole school. Barry Bridger sat with the others from his class at the back. The fourth years sat there because they were taller than the other children, and so could see over the heads of the younger, smaller ones. They were almost all now eleven and so would be off to the secondary schools after the summer holidays. A few would be off to the Grammar, but the rest of them were down for the Secondary Modern which his mum said was fine. He would be able to leave when he was fifteen and earn some brass. Barry had decided the call to the hall would be about the stealing that was going on. People’s dinner money was getting taken out of satchels and somebody had nicked the big jar with all the pennies for Africa in it. Then he saw they had a big TV on a trolley. The one they used to watch the schools programmes on. This was probably not about stealing then. Mr Garrat clapped his hands together and called out for everyone to be quiet. This was a bad day for the world. Somebody in America had shot a man called Robert Kennedy who wanted to be President. His brother had been shot almost five years earlier and was dead as well. This was very sad. A lady teacher then put the TV on because they had stopped the school programmes and were talking about Robert Kennedy getting killed. The TV was not working right and was just making a lot of noise instead, so Mr Garrat told the lady teacher to turn it off. He picked up a card from the table in front of him and said he wanted to read out something that Mr Kennedy had said a while before he was shot. Kennedy had just found out that another man, a black man called Martin Luther King, who was trying to make things better for other black people had been shot. Kennedy was being a very good man and trying to help the people who were getting upset about the black man’s murder. Barry was to forget most of Kennedy’s words voiced in the hall by the Headmaster, but one line stuck itself in his head: ‘Tame the Savageness of man and to make gentle the life of this world’. He remembered that. That evening at the cubs when Akela asked if anybody had anything important happen that week, Barry had said he had heard about the Robert Kennedy being shot and that people had to ‘Tame the Savageness of man’. Akela laughed and looked surprised, and then grinned and nudged the lady who helped. Later on, there was a special ceremony they had when you got too old for the cubs and it was time to be a scout. Everyone stood in a circle and Barry stood in the centre. At the front, there was Akela again and next to him the Akela for the scouts. He, Barry had to recite the Scouts promise he had been learning and then the cub Akela had said what Barry had done in the cubs and what a kind of person he was. The cub Akela said that he, Barry ‘tried hard and was very good-natured and did his best to overcome his difficulties’. Then Barry was a Scout. He didn’t have the uniform yet but he told the Scout Akela his mum was looking. When cubs finished he set off to walk home back home by himself, and on the way, he pondered what the cub leader had said. He knew that people thought he was slow or backward as they called it. His mum said he was a slow learner but everyone also said he had a heart of gold all the same. Mum had told the teacher not to put him in for the important 11 plus selection exam, as it was pointless and would just make him feel bad. Mum went on about how he would do well in other ways. The ones that would count for more in the end. But sometimes they almost made it sound like being ‘nice’ was a sign of being ‘backward’. That he was too stupid to be nasty almost. A happy, nice simpleton. And with that unsettling thought, he walked on. The last stretch before home was through the derelicts. The houses waiting to come down because of slum clearance. Barry had on occasions got ‘a hiding’ there. You only had to be a little different and that made you a candidate for ‘a hiding’. He was small for his years, and his shorts too long and baggy. The girls would laugh at him, and then the lads would debag him, pull his kegs down and run off with them so he had to go home bare arsed. It had got a lot worse since one teacher had started calling him, ‘Namow’. Mr Potter, who took them for sports and woodwork gave him that name. ‘Barry Bridger, you’re a ‘Namow’, a bloody ‘Namow’. Now ask me what that means’. Barry’s eyes would fill up but he did as he was bid. ‘What is a Namow, Mr Potter’ he barked in imitation of the teacher? Everyone would laugh because they knew what was coming. ‘It’s a backward woman, Bridger. And that’s what you are. A Backward Woman. You should be at the spastic’s school or with the ESN’s’. Even the girls laughed, and so did all of the lads he thought were friends. Barry knew they had to or Mr Potter would get them next. It was going to be worse at the secondary. They had lads there who were fifteen. Some stayed on till they were sixteen. And he, Barry would be bottom of the pile.. He had seen the letter his mother got from the Secondary Modern School. He was going to be in a class called ‘A8’. An older boy told him that the ‘A’ meant he was ‘a first year’, and the eight meant he was remedial. That is somebody who is thick. Eight was the very bottom class. So there were seven classes above him who were cleverer and none below who were worse. And that’s not counting the Grammar School kids who were better even than the ‘A1’s’ The kids in ‘A8’ got called ‘Spazzers’, and there would also be lads in his class who were toughies. Boys like John Busby who sometimes had fights with the teachers. and stole a car from the airport and drove it to London with the police chasing him. Truth be told Barry was not stupid. In time people would find he outstripped a lot who were supposedly smarter than him. Instead of stupid he was two things. A slow developer and wholly literal. A teacher had said that last thing. Barry had thought it meant he had done something wrong in Religious Education, and that caused some upset for a while. Most teachers are rubbish at understanding child development. They don’t get that children develop at an uneven pace and that some kids are a little like tortious (of tortoise and hare fame) but in a uniquely different way. They are slow all the way through but keep going, when everyone else reaches the winning post, they peak a good year or two after the others but typically out of view. They certainly did not succeed across the board, no not at all. They often stayed odd for example…but in specific areas (as was to be the case with Barry) they did well because they got a special love. For Barry, it was to be books, poetry and songlines. Unfortunately, by then so many of these slow and uneven learners are so angry and chippy or just so weird that they can’t function anyway. Barry felt that one of his special powers was ‘niceness’.
The bad lands of Hunslet
Hunslet like many parts of poorer Leeds in the 1960s was not a place where they valued niceness. Whilst London and down there was all peace and love, Hunslet and such like favoured meanness and spite and sometimes sadism. It was in possession of a love of hurting things (that is if the district had been a person). You saw it without searching. Local lads walking off to moor edge in search of mixy rabbits to bray with cricket bats or tormenting a Mongol lad who peed himself or terrorising the old and eccentric. It felt to Barry that if anyone stuck their neck out, or acted differently or showed weakness then that made them a target. When he was smaller the women might intervene and stick up for him but now they said he had to fight back. Stick up for his self…but Barry doubted if it was in him. Hunslet was ugly and it smelt of rotten eggs and car fumes. It gave you a catch in the throat. Made you spit. Leeds had places like it all around its southern and eastern rim, at about a mile from the city centre. Hunslet was to the south and little below the dead and toxic River Aire. Pubs, terraced houses and the gaping spaces left by slum clearance gathered around unloved industrial premises. Hunslet had engineering, locomotive building and Tetley’s bitter. It had the second biggest gas works in Leeds. Proud boast. It had cream glazed pottery of no merit but its cheapness. Hunslet would never go away, but it would get uglier every year. It was like a seeping boil on the backside of Leeds that never got better with creams or potions and stained the cities trousers a yellowy, ‘brown red. In pristine Norfolk market towns, civic minded people would scrabble about on their hands and knees if they accidentally dropped a scrap of paper. In Hunslet they would let it be, cough up some phlegm and then spit on it, and then tell jokes about shop doorway whores, VD, bodily functions and the fucking Pakis (or Irish, or Jews or …). Eleven year old Barry; walking home from his last night at the cubs, on the day he heard about Robert Kennedy, was again about to witness the ugliness and meanness of this place first hand. He heard the dog before he saw it Yelping and whining. He followed the sound out of an instinct of concern. When he turned the corner he saw a small crowd of boys hurling lumps of rubble at an emaciated dog cornered it what had once been someone’s cellar. The creature struggled to get up on its feet; the bones of the hind legs were smashed. There was terror in the dog’s eyes, but rather than drawing pity from lads it drove them on. The boys were only a couple of years older than Barry but they were already aping the mentality of the cruellest of the cities grown men; whilst vying with one another in callousness. Barry ran right for the middle of the group. He gathered a half brick on his way, leapt slightly and then brought it down with force on the tallest boys head. The youth buckled at the knees and dropped like a sack. Barry’s rage was not blown. He grabbed a rust sheaved length of railing and lunged with a great outward swipe at another boy. It caught him on the tip of his chin and sent his head pivoting backward in a brutal, jarring movement. He too fell. Barry turned and now swung the railing like a baseball bat at the head of another child. But this time the blow was wide and the lad ducked and ran, quickly followed by the two others. Little Barry had felled or driven off five boys a full head taller than himself and he felt righteous and strong like an avenging super hero. The two boys were moving now, and would maybe be okay but places had been traded. They were now the scared ones. Barry decided he had done well. Like Robert Kennedy. He looked over at the whining, broken creature and cried. Now he had to be brave like Kennedy as well. He picked up another brick and smashed the dog’s skull. It was something that a good person had to do even though it might seem bad if you didn’t know the whole story.
‘Getting in touch‘ is a story I have created. I’m in my sixties, with no great writing ambitions but all the same, find myself setting the alarm for 3.30am each day, make some coffee then write for three hours. The words just come out of me. No big effort.
This story is an imaginative fusion of fact and fiction. I’ve been playing with some events from the 1980s and some more from 2018. Treat the account as partly true and partly fiction, as that is what it is.
I describe a road trip to Istanbul, which I extended with a short flight onto Jerusalem. That really did happen in September and October 2018. I write about this in the form of what looks like postings on Facebook, which is essentially what they are. I did sleep and live out of the car as described for about six weeks. I use a fictional character, Johnny Kidman to play myself making this trip. He is about fifty per cent me, and the rest made up.
I give a parallel story about a group of characters that belong to the Leeds of 1980. The focal person is Joan, a single mother and occasional prostitute. She existed and was a friend of mine. Her son, Pateley is also real. Names have of course been changed.
The other people in the story are amalgams of people I have known. They all, with the exception of Bob the priest, existed but have been bundled up with facets of other people.
Everything I write could have happened in those days, even when it didn’t. The desperate Leeds of 1980 I portray is absolutely true.
An unlikely portal of communication opens up between Joan in 1980 and Johnny in 2018. They had been the best of friends in 1980. Joan is still there and is aged twenty-three, Johnny is in 2018, and in the last part of his life making an odd trip in a big white Berlingo car. Joan discovers through Johnny that she is to be shortly killed whilst out on a date in town.
The story is about one question. Can people change their futures? Joan who is heading toward her own murder but also a bunch of others who are likewise going down toward a bad end as they used to say in Leeds.
Johnny also wants to know how much freedom we really have. Its been troubling him all his life.
Everyone in this story likes popular music, and can’t help quoting from some of the best and worst songs of the late twentieth century. There are scores of these sweet tunes along the way.
I hope you enjoy the story.
David Kitchen
29th April 2019
This is the real Lincoln Avenue portrayed in the story. Joan and I were neighbours in the second and third house up from the road on the right-hand side. After working away from home during the week, I finally moved to London in the spring or summer of 1980. Joan and her son Pateley were the last residents on the street. In truth, I don’t know what happened to them, but times were very tough all around. My book is an ‘imagination’ of what could have happened next
Thursday 25th October 2018. Day 37 Jerusalem to Diss Weather. More comfortable last night. About 12c. High of around 16 during the day. But hey it’s raining. Miles driven so far: 4426 Note: Waiting on a plan from a friend but not getting it. Will not feel at ease until I do. You know who you are. Let me know what’s going on your side of things. My plan. Driving to Dijon where I started from almost six weeks ago… so big circle. Then on in the direction of Calais. The toll roads are costing a fortune but the distance increases by a third and time driving by two fifths if I don’t use them.
Last night slept well but still feeling weak and yuck. Resting my stomach so just had a banana and porridge yesterday. A stand in Santa is covering my gig today back in Diss
Just 400 miles to Calais if I stay on the toll road. Will use better D roads where I can.
Onwards. 9.20 Just noticed that I almost feel normal again. Don’t cope with feeling ill. Smile back on my face😎😎😎 12.10. Decided to visit the war grave of my great uncle, Isaac Kitchen. He is buried at Ecoust St. Main not too far from Calais. It had always been part of the plan to go there but was not sure I would manage. He was killed on the 2/9/18 just over two months before the armistice.
Brother Eddie named his first son after Isaac. Eddie was very angry about the war. Felt they had been conned. He and his other brother Rowland passed that onto my father, also called Rowland who became a Conscientious Objector in the 39-45 war. The second Isaac became a prisoner of the Japanese, also in the second war. Came back weighing only 4 stones although that seems impossible. He ran a pub called the Oddfellows in Yeadon. One night in the late 1970s my wife went in there with a Korean man. They had been selling double glazing and wanted to have a drink while they tallied up their leads. Isaac thought the man was Japanese…and so bodily picked him up and threw him out. That’s a rambling story!
The authorities and the public had a debate at the end of the first war about bringing all the war dead back to Britain. It was decided to leave them buried where they had fallen. All 850,000 of them. Of course most of families never got to visit their loved ones as France, which now seems so close, felt impossibly far away back then.
Joan/ Scott. I am looking over for a notification alert on my phone constantly, and its making my driving bad. Phone resting on the passenger seat Get in touch and tell me what’s happening. If I have an accident it’s your fault.
Parked up for the night at another Aires or parking area with facilities. Am 20 miles south of Reims. Just 202 miles from Calais. The rain is falling like it’s the time of Noah. France has got rain.
Saturday 25th October 1980 Narrator here.
It feels like one of those dead days. Probably a wrong choice of word there. I mean a day where there is nothing happening until the last part of it. So you get up in the morning. Do what you have to (eat, wash, dress and take out the rubbish) but then there is a great gulf of time before the next thing which is in the evening.
Now that evening thing may be great. Really enjoyable. Something to take out the photos about years later and laugh and have a chat about. Good times. But today there is also a threat. Something might go badly wrong, but you are on the boat, and it’s going down the river and maybe you can’t get off. The day can go either way. That brings back a memory of going down the Zambezi in the direction of Victoria Falls on a ferry boat. I tell my daughters that we might go over the edge of the falls. They look worried. I laugh. Why the hell did I say that?
So you have the great gulf of the day in front of you. You try and fill it with pleasant things and endeavour to not think about the evening. Half in the moment… half not.
Saturday 25th October 1980 10am Joan, Scott, Patley and Sagz Golden Acre Park Bramhope. Leeds
Golden Acres
This place, Golden Acres was marshland back in the early 19th Century. There are accounts of it being used for religious revivalist meetings. It was much the same when Leeds City Council made it nice in the 1930s but its conception is of the time. Not a grandiose Victorian Park, and not a modern, barely worth the effort park. It’s an in-between the wars one. The country was is in a mess; economic stagnation, mass unemployment, a suppression of grief for a gross national loss (850,000 British lives taken in the First World War. How did that legacy work itself out into the world?). The authorities in the city explain they can achieve three good things by one action at this place on the edge of the dales. Drain a marsh, give men jobs and make a decent space for working people to enjoy weekends with their children.
So Diversion Number one. The family (for that is what it is now) go for a walk around Golden Acres Park. Scott walks hand in hand with Pateley and then carries him when he whines about the long walk. First the woodland side and then under the road to the lakeside and the café. They stop for hotdogs at the café. Scott has backache, feels like the middle of his spine is out of flaking rubber. Pateley can’t finish his hotdog. Scott greedily helps. That was all nice enough and it’s got them to 12.45
Driving back into town they pass Lawnswood Cemetery. Joan makes a joke about them all being there in a week or two. Sagz snaps she shouldn’t say things like that. Everyone is feeling on edge
And then the rain comes down. Sagz challenges others to suggest a word scale of rain intensity from low to high. They battle between themselves but settle on drops, spitting, drizzle, showers, steady rain, heavy rain, drenching rain, soaking rain, downpours, torrential rain. The rain outside the car moved through all of these stages in quick succession until it gets to the last one and then becomes persistent-torrential rain. Pateley says they have not said wet rain yet. So it’s wet-persistent-torrential rain and it continues all the rest of the day. 2pm Scott and Joan go to bed and make love and then fall asleep. Sagz thinks about writing to her mum, whilst at the same time watching over Pateley who is sleeping on the couch. She has not been in touch with her mother for a long time. What do you say to a woman who was supposed to be watching out for you but didn’t do the job right? That’s how she had thought about it to herself for a long time.
But these last weeks had been shifting that. Her mother’s fault had been in trusting a priest. Just about everyone did at the time, priests were respected except she got unlucky and it was her child who became the exploited one. Sagz brings it to mind. The thought has been there, hovering at the edges for a few weeks but she has not until now permitted its expression. It’s simple. Her mother, naïve yes, stupid or uncaring probably no. And all these years she has been going through the mill as well, just like her.
There are really very few big truths in the world. That whole business is greatly overdone. But the truth that her mother is all that’s left from that time and the good times that came before that is a complete truth. At the end of the day if she loses that relationship the priest had broken two things, and she, Sagz has collaborated in one of them. Okay it is time for a letter.
Scott’s House near Becket Park
At 4pm the house gets busy again. Joan nips around to Margaret’s house and invites her for lunch the next day. Everyone’s getting ready for the big night. Showers, makeup, hats dressing up. Joan talks to Bob and Diane on the phone around 5pm. They coordinate. Then earlier than planned they leave the house at 6.45pm to drop Pateley off and then proceed into town. The young boy is staying with the family that runs the White Stag pub again. Joan is going to mention something but then changes her mind. It would be odd indeed to tell baby sitters that one might not be coming back. 7pm. The mood is sombre and that’s not going to work. The three adults have to find their mojo. They have a little spare time to pull over onto an empty plot of land where once rows of terraced houses had stood. Rubble is visibly now embedded in the ground. Essentially they have to fake the right kind of mood till they make it. Success of their planned operation depends upon mood and vibe. Scott’s open out the Etch-a- Sketch, finds YouTube and selects SHAFT. And the tune comes out, Quaky, funky, bendy instrumental.
Electronic strings overlay, brass entre, some kind of wind instrument (all of this was probably done on some kind of electronic gizmo). Rhythm changes. Sense of expectancy, lots of repetition. Instruments sample in turn. Husky Smokey voice, a big man’s voice. Women short interjection. “Shaft…No one understands him but his woman”.
You can’t just hear music it has to be embodied. You have to get up and out of the car to do that. So there are three people, Scott in middle. Sagz and Joan either side. In a line. Synchronised (Synchronamatic?) moving to the tune. Five minutes of that on the rubble in their fancy going out to a casino gear and they are in the mood. Back in the car. Hang onto that feeling and drive.
Then they cruise into town behaving like Bonnie and Clyde. Scott a walking cliché in his white Fedora and Tuxedo, Sagz white, shimmy, frilly dress with pearls and Joan out loud and tartish. Body hugging, red brazen-hussy dress (as near frontless as backless) and wet-look red heels. All of them…a visual high explosive bomb. TNT with Tits and Isaac Hayes for the day.
Saturday 25th Daytime Barry
He was looking through the Bible in the night. Holding it in his hands. Reading, dozing off, waking and reading again. It was hard trying to exclude everything else from his mind but the essential things: what he had to do this coming day, and this channel to his living God. The Bible.
Around 7am he gets out of bed. For now he only has one set of clothes but they have been rewashed, and last night ironed in readiness for this day. He allows himself water but no food. He needs to be clean inside and out.
By 10am he is hungry and decides that the right kind of foods in themselves can be cleansing. He heads out for a full English.
Barry feels flat. He thinks of himself as just moving through the world toward a distination
The Regent was a well known Irish pub in Leeds
At 12.15 he finds himself in an Irish pub, the Regent on Regent Street near the Quarry Hill flats. He is drinking a fizzy orangeade. A man in a heavy worsted coat and a red scarf is selling Phooblacht, the IRA newspaper. Some of the older people in the pub are buying it as well as dropping coins into the tin he carries. ‘The men behind the wire’ comes on the Jukebox. Barry, a former British soldier, someone who has patrolled the streets of Belfast and been a supposedly ‘legitimate’ target for IRA snipers feels nothing.
At 1.15pm he leaves the pub. The rain is heavy and soaking. In seconds he is drenched. He pays the discomfort no mind.
The Men Behind the Wire: One of the IRA songs Barry heard in the Regent Pub. It fills me with disgust. Three thousand people murdered
Barry walks back through town. Chrystal Palace football supporters…drunks all of them… are arriving off the train and are streaming across City Square. Leeds are mid table, Palace at the bottom. That makes violence all the more likely. Barry walks autonomic like through a thick crowd of shaven headed men. Oblivious
He enters the large, 1960’s style café at the left of the railway station. They are still serving frothy coffee more than a decade and a half after its time. Barry walks to the Juke Box. Closes his eyes and makes a random selection with the index finger of his right hand. His finger has found the charts listing. ‘Killer on the loose’. Thin Lizzy. Number 12 in the Top 20 this week. This machine is the only thing cared for in the room. Barry puts a coin in the slot and selects the record
Now he feels a little frazzled. He walks towards the Draganora Casino. There is the big time singer, Tom Jones coming out of a side door. Barry engages the man in conversation. Begs him for a line or two from a song. Jones is irritated but see’s the man is not well and so reluctantly gives him an acapella verse of ‘Green Grass of Home’. Shakes his hand and walks off with a friend in the direction of the car park.
Barry continues in the direction of Mick the Bakers flat. Its 2pm, Just under five hours before he must get in place.
Back at the flat he undresses down to his underpants and hangs his clothes to dry over a heater.
It’s important now to focus all of his mind, and so be ready. He finds the folded page in his traveller’s bible and reads the lines again-
Gratitude
“10-But I rejoice in the Lord greatly, that now at length you have revived your thought for me; in which you did indeed take thought, but you lacked opportunity.
11- Not that I speak in respect to lack, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content in it.
12 I know how to be humbled, and I know also how to abound. In everything and in all things I have learned the secret both to be filled and to be hungry, both to abound and to be in need.
13 I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me”. St Paul. Letter to the Philippi.
Letters, spaces, marks. Close and special analysis. All give comfort once decoded by him 25th October 1980
Bob and Diane are at the third point of the triangle (well 3rd of 4 if you count Johnny). Their plan is to seek out Barry. Everyone else is pursuing other goals. Its only they who want to see Barry and talk with him.
But first they want to get out of Leeds .Have some time out. At Breakfast Bob tells her of a nice walk in the place where he comes form. A mill town called Yeadon about eight miles out to the North West. He tells her they can do it as kind of themed walk. He has a story to tell her. Diane groans
They drive out to the town and park up in a place called the Albert Square which is set between three pubs, Bob tells some stories about how it was growing up in this place before the war. He summed it up for once succinctly. “You can come out of Yeadon and be stupid but you have to work bloody hard at it. I am saying nothing on that”
“Okay but I have got a story about a man called John Yeadon. Name same as the town. Just let me do the spiel and get it out of the way. It’s about productivity”.
“John grew up here as well but in the later 18th Century. Born 1765. Died around 1844. Almost entirely self-educated. He kept a diary from his mid-20’s onwards”. Bob is talking like a telegram because he can see from Diane’s face she wants to interrupt. “He had fourteen children, eleven of whom survived. In three generations his descendants probably numbered in the three digits. This man was fertile. Plus-plus. His poor bugger of a wife died young though, in her forties”. He looks at Diane again. “SSSShhhhhh, it’s my turn, I’m talking. It will only take two minutes.” Bob continues “Well John joined up with the Methodist church here, but were really taking off at the time. Maybe about a third of the towns people were involved. All encompassing. Big thing. Revival meetings out in the fields, as big as football crowds. Places near here, one now called Golden Acres, was called the Breary back then. People really did have religion. Being a preacher was a touch like being a rock star. Sunday people flocked in from all the villages to hear preachers”, Joh, self-educated but mentored by the chapel became a lay preacher. Serving congregations as far away as Keighley. He went everywhere on foot. That’s eleven miles or so each way over the moors. Probably covered thousands of miles and in all weathers to deliver services in out of the way God Forsaken places. Wild and windy villages on the spine of a hill, the poor house at Carlton, services in people’s homes. He and his mates walked to Haworth and other places in the district to see John Wesley, the guy who founded Methodism”. Bob paused and looked over at Diane. She was biting her lip but seemed to be relenting and listening more. “So imagine all of that going on for years and years. There’s tons more. Nursing his little granddaughter, my great, great grandmother when she had Smallpox. Heart rending stuff but she survived. Well if she hadn’t I wouldn’t be here and you would be all on your own. Did I mention John was my ancestor? Well he was, and I have his diary at home.
The title page of John Yeadon journal
I can show it to you. The writing is tiny because the ink and paper are so expensive. This man was seriously skint. Anyway all this stuff went on and then he got tinnitus in his ears, Well you can’t have it anywhere else because Tinnitus means ringing in the ears, and it never used to go away back then. It got so bad that he had to stop preaching, it was so hard to follow his own thoughts and listen to what others were saying. The chapel were nice but very firm. He had to stop. John got very down, he had no money, and he was taking care of a daughter with mental problems who he thought might end up in the work house, and of course that scared him witless. A man called whatsit, one of the elders of the chapel, helped John out of his own pocket. Bought him a warm winter coat and some other stuff. All very sad really and there is probably a chance that his daughter got raped.
The first entry in John’s journal
Anyway one hot day when he was 72 he decided to do this walk, the one we are about to do, one last time. Its only four kilometres, I mean miles be we have to climb to 600 feet. Wait on we are at 680 feet now, so that’s a little down and then go down again to ground level again. I mean sea level. There are lots of little ups in-between the two downs though. He walked over what is called the Chevin, and got to Otley where he dined with two publicans he had known for donkey years and the three of them had lived two hundred years between them. And that’s a true story”.
Diane looked at him. “So come on, why are we doing the walk? I’ve listened through gritted teeth but I am still no wiser. I’m fine doing the walk but what’s our theme then? No more than ten words”
Miller Lane. The track followed by John Yeadon on a hot summer day in thje 1840’s and by Bob and Diane on a rainy day in Octoner 2018
Bob did grin. She had a point. He had not really worked it out. “Okay it was a very hot day, he was seventy two and he walked both ways, the toughest part was coming back. Climbing from zero to 600 feet in a matter of half a mile or so. He kept having to stop and get his breath. He was a tough old bugger but you’re worrying for him when you read his account. And he had probably had a big lunch and been drinking. Anyways when he gets back he writes in his journal that was probably the last time he would see Otley, unless he went by horse in future. And I think he wasn’t just meaning Otley but also all the other scores of places he had trekked to, and for that matter no more preaching either. Your only twenty one Diane, all being well you won’t be thinking in those terms for another half century”,
Diane sneered a little and it did not look attractive. “Why does everything have to be so deep and meaningful? That’s a bit narcissistic you know. Thinking whatever you do is so important and meaningful. Why is it not possible just to have a walk and take pleasure in what’s around us? Why do you have to be thinking all the time?”
Bob replied “I like to get inside people’s lives. Get to what is in their core. Then I try and think about them from the inside looking out. So John is walking down this road. What is he looking at, what might he be thinking? I know for a fact that as a child in the 1770’s he used to get bathed in that big patch of water across there. It’s called Yeadon dam. At age eight he lost his footing and almost drowned. Years after he decided God had saved him for a purpose. Who does that remind you of? Clever bitch, with a nice arse from Huntingdonshire?”
Diane let out an involuntarily snort at that and some mucus shot out of her nose. And then she laughed. “Okay, we are going to do this walk, pretending we are John Yeadon. Your something Revd. Nob-head, I have friends at home who are at this moment taking hours to prepare for some big night out in Cambridge or even London. And here I am walking up a road in some mucky mill town in sodding West Yorkshire”
“Back there”, Diane points in the direction of the square they started out from “is a little street called “Worlds End. You walked past, but I saw it. They are even calling the streets after the end of the world. And look here, this Cemetery Road we are on now. What is wrong with people up here?”
Bob laughed. Edmund Hargreaves’s lived at Worlds End. Head Spinner at Murgatroyd’s Mill. His best spinner, I’ve forgotten her name, lusted after him all her life. When he died, she bought the plot next to his, so his wife couldn’t get it. We will be walking past it in a moment. At the cemetery of course. He was another great grandfather. I’ve got lots of them, BUT I won’t talk about any of them or anyone else. It will be just you, John Yeadon and me”.
So they walked on like that. Diane making silly remarks. “Oh there is an airport across there. I bet John Yeadon liked that”. Bob responded with incontrovertible facts, “it’s the 15th biggest airport in the country and the highest in England, a feature that often leads to its closure in bad weather”.
They walked on like that. Past a crossroads, past a disused factory with metal helmets from the war stacked three feet high, through puddles and on through some trees. The road dipping and rising. Clouds were racing across the sky. There had been a downpour the night before. It looked like more rain was coming but for now the sky was a watery blue, and its light brought out the features of all that it touched and gave them glory.
Eventually they came to a main road heading east-west. Bob told Diane he could tell her a story about a masonry wall to their right but he was choosing not to mention it. They went left and soon branched off again to the left onto York Gate. Other walkers continued on to a pub that was in view, but Bob directed Diane off to the right, to a track called Miller’s Lane “John came this way. I know for a fact because there was bugger all else around here in the 1840’s apart from a farm where the pub is now, and this was the drove road to the market at Otley from Yeadon. He would have come this way”
Yeadon Dam where John Yeadon bathed
.
A few hundred yards down the rutted track the pair came to a point where the land falls away sharply. Far below them was the River Wharfe, its valley and the town of Otley laid out like an aerial photograph. In the distance rows of rounded hills and valleys. Then a rocky place and further over the town of Harrogate. Bob struggled up onto a rock and spread his arms [I show you “all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them”}. Diane looked askance. “What are you on about? Let’s just stick with it being very nice up here, and I am trying to think about John”.
The view down into Otley and the river
A line of great leaden clouds was rolling across the landscape from west to east. It cast a clearly defined margin of shade upon the land below as it occluded the autumnal sun. More clouds pushed up from behind and deposited water like great, billowing watering cans. Vertical steams of rain fell. It reminded Bob of a time he had seen cascade of silvery fish falling from the sky under a water spout in the tropics. Odd out of control thoughts.
“That rain will be hear in five minutes” Diane said in a flat voice. “Then we will get wet” said Bob. “Its warm rain, and as such not difficult. We can’t change or prevent the thing, so we might as well find a way to enjoy it”.
By the time they had walked down to the valley bottom and along the road into town, their clothing was drenched and their inadequate footwear comically pumped out little splashes of water as they walked.
Otley Bus Station. Fish shop through the arch!
They found the little fish shop through an arch from the bus station. Not wanting to sit inside around the little tables and chairs provided, they walked back to the station. The fish shop café area had been too muggy and anyway they wanted a more generous space. And the air tasted nice. They settled themselves on the curve backed, wooden slatted benches set into the wall. Polished over decades by thousands of travellers. The rain was still falling heavily but they were under a small overhang, and so protected so long as the rain did not come in sideways on the wind, which it did occasionally. The bench had no right to be comfortable but its craftsmanship made it so.
Somewhere back up in the direction of the Market Square they could hear Irish Uilleann pipes. A sound alien to the setting but still seductive. And they had a thirst on from the chip. Pied Piper fashion they followed the music all the way to the Black Bull Inn on the square. Bob said he had a fantastic story of war, desertion, death and consequences over generations tied up with this pub but he was not telling it. Diane thanked him.
They settled in with their drinks and listened to a couple of jigs by the assembled musicians. This was a Saturday afternoon jam session. Most of the players knew each other (two were dressed down solicitors from Bingley) but not enough to start and finish a tune together. But there was a temporary comradeship between them all, formed from a love of the music.
Diane had a devilish grin. “If I could show you all the songs of the world, and the glory of them, of course. Which one would you choose? Limit that to Britain, Ireland, colonial and nineteenth century North America please”
Bob was straight in. No hesitation. “The Fields of Athenry”.
“By a lonely prison wall
I heard a young man calling
“Nothing matters Mary when you’re free”
Against the famine and the crown
I rebelled, they brought me down
It’s so lonely round the Fields of Athenry”
Porcelain white skin, black dress, red hair and blue eyes. She shimmers and by the close of the song, she radiates
Black Bull pub on the Market Square at Otley
Saturday 25th October 1980 5pm. Griffin pub and hotel Leeds.
The pub on the market square closes at 4pm. and Diane and Bob are forced out into the rain again. They catch the number 35 bus back into Leeds, getting off on Wellington Street and then walking to the hotel. Bob phones Joan and they co-ordinate their plans for the next few hours.
Diane and Bob, then change out of there wet clothes and rest on the bed for an hour in fluffy dressing gowns provided by the hotel. Just power napping.
By 7pm they are both ready to leave the room. Bob steps back from the door, and picks up a plastic tray on which the complimentary tea, coffee and biscuits are resting and places it down the front of his vest. Then grins. Diane puts a small handful pf little plastic UHT milk pots into her coat pocket. She feels over the other coat pocket. The small spray canister is in place. The seller said it’s not pepper spray and so is legal. Diane does not over worry that point
They step into Bob’s car and pull away, pointing the car in the direction of the Draganora Casino.
Johnny Kidman On the A26 Highway somewhere near St Quentin, France. 26 October 2018 · Day 38 Jerusalem to Diss Tune of the Day: Give me a while. That’s a request not a song Weather. There’s been a sudden change. Suddenly feels like maritime North West Europe! High of 12c and rain. I fairly enjoy it though. I actually have energy.
Distance to go and miles travelled. Two hundred kilometre to Calais (about a 120 miles). Four hundred kilometres to Diss (240 miles). I have driven 4872 miles. (Plus flown and sailed another two or three thousand).
So the final shape of the trip will be a big circle. The toll roads are costing a fortune but the distance increases by a third and time driving by two fifths if I don’t use them.
Last night slept well but still feeling weak and nauseous. Resting my stomach so just had a banana and porridge yesterday.
A stand in Santa is covering my gig schedule for today at the garden centre in Bressingham near Diss. Glad I don’t have that to worry about at the moment
The past couple of nights I’ve parked up on an Aires, which are large, landscaped parking areas next to the highways which have basic facilities. At night they are mostly used by long distance truck drivers who sleep in their cabs. They arrive between 5-7 and leave from 5am onwards. I’ve felt safer being surrounded by them. Like a protective girdle all around me. 9.50. St. Quintin. In 1972 Steven Girt, my best friend and I hitchhiked through here. We were fifteen I remember being stuck outside the town in the baking heat and unable to get a lift.
What surprises me now is that we had no idea that we were stood in the middle of an infamous battle field, and every bit of the land had been pulverised by artillery shells. And at points there was bones below our feet. 12.00. Visited the British military cemetery at Ecoust St Mein which is not far from Cambrai. My maternal great-grandfather was killed only a few miles away. Im in this place to visit the grave of my great uncle Isaac. It took me three attempts to find the right cemetery. The village of maybe a few hundred people has at least four devoted to those foreigners who fell in the fields around about over the course of a few days in 1918.
British military cemetery at Ecoust St Mein
His name is Isaac Kidman. It’s a small cemetery. He is in the front rank of graves, toward the left side. All are beautifully tended. I am aware that I am almost certainly the first person from our family to visit Isaac in a few days over a century. He has never been forgotten in all that time, but his family and descendants would never have considered making what would have seemed an odd journey. People have been named after him (one also suffered greatly in war) and his death shaped the attitudes of others. His brothers initially but then his nephew, my father. He became a conscientious objector in the second war. I’ve not brought any flowers. Id forgotten, but I am also so short of money to get home that I couldn’t have bought them anyway. Maybe I could have taken some flowers from the woods I walked through earlier. (Just weeks later, at the centennial armistice day I will lay flowers beside his name on a war memorial, and for the great-grandfather who also died. The latter is commemorated in another village just a mile or two away.
There is a reason the ground is so flat here. It was fairly level before, but it had to be landscaped after the war and the hundreds of shell craters filled in. Of course the trees were all blasted to hell. So the landscape had very few other features except those created in the decades since. Photos from the time show the village to have not looked unlike the inverted skeleton of a sheep.
The best song about The Great War is the one by Finbarr Furey. I’ve put it in the comment box below.
5 pm. Parked up for the night at Steenvoorde. It looks like a prosperous market town. It has a bourgeois feel in the original sense of that word. Of course I only see slices of the place. It might be very different around the corner
I am forty miles from Calais. It’s cold and wet. I am having tomato soup for my tea. Comfort food. The car feels like home!!! I’m going feral. It probably smells like socks.
I started the evening parked up on a central square, but figure I would get little sleep in such a spot. I drive around looking for somewhere better. There is on street parking in-between a council building and an old three story stone building which has been subdivided into flats. My aim as always is to be anonymous and invisible. If people notice me I am doing it wrong. Once we get past around 6.30pm the windows to my left, the apartments, light up one at a time as people arrive home from work. A few curtains are undrawn. The colours a reds and brown, some yellows. From around sever men and women pull up in mostly small cars and unload musical instruments (still in their cases) from the back seats. I joke around in my head, these are gangsters. They are mostly in their late twenties and thirties. A few older men (not women). They all head for the pathway that runs around the building to a side entrance. Thursday evening in Steenvoorde is band practice night. It’s all very matey. People kiss on the cheeks before walking down the path. Young and old. There is a lot of cheek kissing going on.
I am watching all of this from the darkness in my Berlingo. The front seat and then later from the sofa cushion in the back.
I have rarely been in a place at night (or rather early evening) which looked so much like a happy community. Of course there is the seer as well as what is seen. I’m probably feeling a bit lonely and out of society. It would be good to have someone around to night who knows me.
I have friends. I can’t tell you anything about them other than they are far away, and are ignoring my increasingly panicky messages. That’s not because of any fall out. It’s that they might get hurt tonight and either don’t want to worry me or just don’t know what to say. Either option is not a good reason for not being in touch. How about some updates. This is not the middle ages. Just factual stuff if that’s easier. Message me!
I’m trying to stay awake. Even though it’s unlikely I will hear anything tonight. Not now. They will have more urgent things to deal with, those people who are on my mind. But it would feel like a betrayal if I went to sleep
Belated tune of the day.
‘Momma you’ve been on my mind’
The Rod Stewart version Jeff Buckley, George Harrison, Johnny Cash have done brilliant ones as well. And of course there is the original Bob Dylan take on the song.
Saturday 25th October 1980 7pm Barry. Carpark at the rear of the Draganora Casino
A 1970’s photo of the car park at the rear of the Draganora Hotel and Casino.
The loose strings knotted around the two corners at the left end of the white sheet, are now looped around the ‘Customers Only’ parking sign. Lengths of fine string run through folded hems on the top and bottom edge of the banner and are tied in place around the legs of the near side of the sign. When the time comes, all Barry will have to do is grab the end of the sheet and pull it along its guide strings. Everything is in place for when Scott’s car arrives. Not only does Barry know the car now but also Scott’s name. The security and door staff are all around the front of the building. This space will be clear and belong to him for a minute or two. All he has to do is call out the man’s name and unfurl the banner so that both he and the bitch know why they are going to die.
On the ground beneath the bush Barry is hiding behind are two 8” Commando knives with serrated, zig-zag edges. They are handle uppermost and set a little apart.. Laid across and lightly touching the handles of the knives is an 18” Rounder’s bat. Laid at the same angle but below the paired knives is a powerful dragon torch, capable of lighting up the sky, or signalling to a ship at sea but also of temporarily blinding and disorientating an adult at close range.
Barry sits cross legged before this arrangement of weapons. He has selected a spot where he has an uninterrupted view of the entrance to the carpark. The entrance is just thirty yards ahead, but incoming cars have to slow in order to negotiate are narrow chicane. Some of the pepped up gamblers have been known to enter the car part with a little too much speed. In both senses of that word. The zig-zag arrangement means they have to crawl in at little more than walking pace.
Barry has borrowed a thermos flask from Mick the Baker. It is filled with tomato soup. The first punters are already arriving. He saw Tom Jones again a little while ago, but the star had not seen him this time. The rain abates. Barry is worried about the painted letters on the banner. There is no reason for the oil paints to run, none at all. But it is still a worry.
He knows the words off by heart, but the point is they should also know them before they die if their deaths are to be meaningful in the way intended. The key words are highlighted in red. Saint Paul had been in prison when he wrote those words. And so had Barry. In some ways their positions were very similar.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
And it’s typical of the mental disease that has taken procession of Barry’s mind that the justice of his actions will be seen by all, he will be lifted up as one who is a rare thing. A clear seer, and a man of swift and perfect justice. He only has to do these few things in order for these truths to become visible. It will be then that the greatest injustice of all will be rectified. His son Pateley will be returned to him.
The public like their monsters. And of course such people do exist, but they are as rare as snow in August. Barry is a sad looking figure sitting cross legged on the ground. The seat of his trousers wet His banner drenched, and reliant for its efficient unfurling upon a mechanism which might have been the product of a ten year olds imagination. His brain was operating under the most chaotic internal conditions. Scarred bundles of nerve cells were transporting waves of amplified and misdirected electrical energy toward dysfunctional intersections. A little like riding the dodgems at a fair but on a nano scale and with lots of little explosions as well. It would take a lot of forbearance for most people to understand that what was about to happen was the product of misfiring nerve cells, producing chemical disequilibrium’s in a young man with a damaged brain caused by driving into a fucking great big bolder in the Yorkshire Dales. And all the falling off the edges that had happened before that injury and subsequently. But in truth, Barry wasn’t bad, it was just his brain misfiring. Try selling that idea to the public but it’s a lot truer than most of the stuff we here. But irrespective of the mental state of the man holding the two eight inched knives, they still cut.
Saturday 7.35pm 25th October 1980 Scott, Joan and Sagz.
It would have been even better with the top rolled down but this car of course couldn’t do that. It was a family saloon, an upmarket one, yes but not a roll back roof sporty type of thing. But the windows did wind down, and one could spin the volume on the in car tape deck to 11. And then Scott’s pal at the carpet shop had shown him how to string up speakers to the in car music system and hang them in net shopping bags onto the wing mirrors. That really did boost the sound and get people’s attention. The choice of tune was perfect. The theme from Shaft pulsating out into the night. All of them in the car tense but also exhilarated. This was stand up and don’t be scared time.
Coming through traffic lights into City Square they had created the most surreal scene. Two hundred Crystal Palace supporters, many in red and blue striped soccer shirts spontaneously adopting the stereotypical posture of a flash black man driver driving an even flasher car. Left arm held our like it was resting around a woman’s shoulders. Two hundred people, same moves. All strut and swagger, driving with their right arm, left arm around an imaginary woman. Joan shouted across to Scott. “Fucking hell man, you have made it. You are a smooth, cool ‘dudish’ black man at last!”
They progress in stately fashion through City Square at 20mph, then continue onto Neville Street. As they pass through the tunnel under the railway, the sounds move and out and bounce back off the grimy brickwork and concrete. Then the voice of Isaac Hayes breaks through and it’s telling Scott to “Ride on”.
The Casino is coming into view. Scott slows some more in readiness for the right turn into the service road that leads around to the carpark, but there is some kind of commotion going on. The men with shaven heads a bulky shoulders in tuxedo’s are all in a group at the side of the building. They are looking at something happening out of view for Scott but he can guess what it might be.
It had seemed a good idea last night when they all met around the table at the house. First of all Barry might not be there. His life was so chaotic, he might be a hundred miles away and not even thinking about them at all. They only had a news report from what might be one of dozens of potential futures. There are had been differences so far, there was every reason to assume the evening would turn out to be just fine with no trace of Barry. Or he might be there but greeting them with garlands of flower. No one fucking knew really.
But if Barry was there in the car park, and was feeling hostile toward them it was far better that the first people he saw were Bob and Diane, who he had got to know and trusted. That had all sounded perfectly reasonable last night. He, Joan and Sagz could still roll in like musical thunder, but they would no longer have to rely upon something called ‘shifting the dynamic, by doing the unexpected’. It might still be useful if Bob and Diane needed some help but it was no longer the only weapon in their armoury.
In any event, they had not backed down and slunk away.
Saturday 25th October 1980 7.20pm Car park at the rear of Draganora Casino Diane and Bob.
“Well do we pray first”, Diane asked. “Is there a prayer for walking right up to somebody who had a weapon, maybe a knife and saying “hey you know who I am, let’s talk.”
At the previous night’s meeting, and then again for most of the day it had seemed a reasonable thing. They would arrive at the casino before Scott and everyone, and because they had a good relationship with Barry things would be fine. They would talk, get a plan and he would get treatment in hospital.
Well it all felt a bit different now.
Bob had a different take on the situation. “What we do is our prayer, it’s also our sermon and probably the hymn as well. My chap Woodbine Willie knew that and he went out into no man’s land, and faced machine gun bullets. If he could do that then we can take on a confused and unwell young man. I also used to do a bit of wrestling as a young man, before I put all this weight on. And don’t forget I was the beach at Normandy”. Diane, laughed and answered back “and so was the fucking sand”.
What happened next is best understood medically. You need to appreciate what happens to the pupil in the eye when we get old. The pupil is the opening to the eye. It is the portal through which visual information enters the brain. In conditions of darkness, the pupil has to open wider in order to take in the necessary visual input for us to know what the fucking hell we are doing. As we get old that reaction to darkness gets a little sluggish. Then driving in the dark can feel like driving in the dark wearing sun glasses. And if it’s raining as well, then we are truly buggered .And that was part of the reason why Bob got confused whilst driving through the chicane into the car park, burst the nearside front tyre and then mounted the curb and hit the raised drop down barrier, which then fell onto the top of the car and created a diagonal deep dent across the roof. The passenger door was trapped shut by the barrier mounting. It was all a bit of a bugger up really. Bob opened the driver’s door and swung his legs out, ready to pull himself up and stand. It was at that moment he was blinded by a searing light from some powerful source originating from directly in front of them.
He heard Barry’s voice shouting “look at the banner, that’s what you need to read now”. Bob was bent double and shading his raw eyes from the output of the Dragon Torch “Barry, it’s me, Revd. Bob. Diane and I are here to see you, but we can’t see sod all, let alone your banner with that thing shining in our eyes”
Barry switched the Dragon torch off. Picked up the two knives and walked over. Bob stood up but there was still an ‘after-image’ of the light in his eyes, and he still could not see properly. He sensed though that Barry was walking toward him. Then he heard Diane shout out, “he has a knife”, and then he felt something on his tongue and his mouth, There was no pain initially but his mouth filled quickly with a warm fluid. Barry had stabbed him in the cheek. Bob fell backwards onto the driver’s seat, his seventeen stone bulk effectively blocking Barry entry into the three-door car. For that Bob was grateful. Barry pulled out the knife from his face. Shocked by the sight of what he had done, the frenzy went out of Barry, for the moment. He screamed at Diane, “Where are Scott and Joan. I know you all part of the same thing, and you’re doing the stinking devils work. I know all about you now. You are each as bad as them. You stink of hells sulphur”.
Blood was running out of the side of Bob’s mouth onto the floor. Diane thinking the knife had severed a major artery pulled him forward slightly to ensure the blood ran out rather than back into his throat where it would obstruct his breathing. She was terrified but still thinking. “Barry, they all decided not to come as they had heard you had been seen around here. They do care about you, and want to talk but asked us to come and speak to you first”
Barry was obviously frustrated. Beating the fist on the bonnet of the car with his one free hand. He counted these two people in with the rest of them. They had drugged him in Huntingdon and God knows what would have happened if he had not got away. But they were not his main targets. They were lesser demons.
Despite all the blood Bob’s injuries were not especially serious. His tongue and its attachments had not been severed, and the wound in his cheek, where the blood supply was rich, was more dramatic than dangerous. He pulled the knife out himself and threw it on the floor of the car beside the foot pedals. Then he wished he hadn’t because the serrated edge of the knife cut a longer slit in his cheek. Uppermost in his mind was Diane, and how to get Barry away from her. If he was out of the car she could lock the door. “Barry pull me up and I will come and see your banner, and we can talk about it”. At that moment his assailant found this appealing and pulled the fat old man to his feet.
Bob’s sight was clearing now, although his eyes were still watery. He spat a mouth full of blood onto the tarmac, and then pulled out a hanky and stuffed one corner of it into the whole in the side of his face. Diane thought this was one of the oddest things she had ever seen. She reached into her pocket for the Mace Spray
A few yards in front of Bob was a white sheet about 6’6 feet long strung between the two legs of a large ‘Clientele Car Parking Only’ sign. He later remembered thinking how odd and incongruous it all looked. He did recognise the words though. He knew them well from maybe a hundred services.
Gratitude “10-But I rejoice in the Lord greatly, that now at length you have revived your thought for me; in which you did indeed take thought, but you lacked opportunity. 11- Not that I speak in respect to lack, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content in it. 12 I know how to be humbled, and I know also how to abound. In everything and in all things I have learned the secret both to be filled and to be hungry, both to abound and to be in need. 13 I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me”. St Paul. Letter to the people of Philippi.
He read them again, and then glanced over at the man who had stabbed him. “How can I help you Barry? Do you know the remains of the town of Philippi are in what we now call Greece? I was there for a few weeks during the war. Just ruins now of course but I’ve seen the church they built for St Paul. It’s in the middle of the ruins. Philippi was the first Christian settlement in Europe. I’ve sat close to the church of St Paul. It’s octagonal you know. And it’s got a mosaic in the floor that is still visible even after being out in all weathers for two millennium. Never go on a hot day like I did. It was baking hot and I was puffing and panting. I sat down in the shade on a tumbled down wall and spent ages watching a tortoise work its way across the grass and rubble opposite. I have a photo somewhere. I must pull it out and show it to you. The whole town stands at the foot of an incredibly steep mountain. Once seen, and never to be forgotten I can promise you. Is there anything to sit around here?”
Barry said that this was not the time for sitting down. “I saw those words when I was in despair, and they comforted me. God had not forgotten Barry and he wanted me to do something special for him. And then he gave me all the strength which I had been lacking. Made me two feet taller as well. And strong with it. He told me I was right, that there were servants of the devil here at work in Leeds, and not only had they stolen my son they were spreading evil to the whole of the city. I wanted to save my son, but God told me I had to save the city as well. I thought I could trust you and Diane but then I found out you were trying to drug me. For what purpose I’ve not yet worked out but you were”.
Bob had glanced over at the car. Once he was certain that Diane had locked herself in, he answered responded whilst careful sidestepping the talk about drugging people, “I can see you have been concentrating on the first bit and the last bit of the passage, but I would like to talk about the middle bit which to my way of thinking is the meat in the sandwich if you know what I mean. I’m feeling a bit giddy headed though, and could do with a chair to sit on. I’m guessing we both could. Maybe those people across there would be able to get us a couple of fold out chairs. Is that the kind of thing they have in Casino’s? Can I walk over and ask for some chairs? And here he turned and looked Barry in the eye and said. ”I’m not going to leave you, at all”.
Barry nodded his ascent to Bob’s request. The older man moved a few yards in the direction of a line of smartly dressed people behind Bob’s car. “Could someone get us a couple of chairs? Fold up ones if possible. I think we are going to be here for a while”. Without the hankie stuck in the hole in his cheek the air would have escaped and his voice would have been weak and a little like a whistle. The hankie prevented that but it did waggle up and down as he spoke and made him sound a bit like Winston Churchill.
The muscle bound men in Tuxedo’s had been assertively moving the punters away, but one now stepped over and offered his chair seeking services. As their heads came close together the man asked Bob if he wanted him to deck Barry when he brought the chair back. Bob said “no but let’s see how we get on. Please hang ready if you don’t mind though”.
There was something else on Bob’s mind, and he should have told the Tuxedo man about it. Any moment now Scott would be arriving, dressed up like a gangster with his molls and some tune he (Bob) had never heard of blaring out of speakers hung at the side of the car. “Oh Bugger” he whispered to himself”. He had to be quick. He made a move to ask the Tuxedo man to get someone to watch out for and stop the car before it caused a problem but the chap had already turned his back and was walking away.
Bob took a deep breath and turned back toward Barry “If I was to ask you which was your favourite Hank Williams song what would you say?”
Barry grinned. “It’s gotta be ‘Lost Highway’. Do you know it? Bob laughed it. “Leon Payne wrote it, and then Hank covered it, and made it famous. Payne was blind you know. Met his wife in a blind school as well. A friend who went onto to be Bishop of York sang it at my wedding just after the war. My wife liked it”. I’ve just remembered Payne wrote that song when he was having a rootless time, working as an itinerant labourer around California. He got to hear that his mother in Texas was dying and so set off to hitch hike home but couldn’t get any lifts. Eventually he approached the Salvation Army. My daughter used to call them the SALIVATION Army. Clever girl. Good with words. Anyway they helped him. That got the idea of the song in his mind.
Lost Highway. Leon Payne
Bob looked again at Barry. “I’d sing the song but the words don’t fit so well with the present moment. Interest though the chap wrote the song whilst standing next to a road and trying to hitch hike but getting no rides. That was when he asked for help, when he was down and desperate. Not for himself but for someone else. And some people went out of their way and helped him. Let’s have a look at your banner”
The Tuxedo man was waving his arms from just beyond the barrier. He had got the chairs. Bob asked Barry to hang on whilst they got the chairs. Bob whispered to the chap. “Car coming, playing Shaft out loud. Stop it, He must not hear it.” Tuxedo man, just looked and stared for a moment and then he got the meaning.
Bob set up the two chairs facing the banner. Barry turned the chairs 90 degrees so he could still see what was happening but then did sit down. The second knife was still in his hand though and the rounder’s bat just four feet away.
“Thinking of a Paul Newman movie for reason he could not fathom Bob said “I think what we have here Barry, is a difference of opinion. There are four bits in that quote. You have highlighted in red the first and last bit, which I’m guessing you think are the most important. They are about God remembering you, and about being strong because of Christ.
They are important but if you will let me say this, the meat in the sandwich are the two lines in-between. The sandwich is meant to be eaten as a whole and not picked apart “Bob takes his index finger and draws around what he considers the meat.
“Not that I speak in respect to lack, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content in it”.
“I know how to be humbled, and I know also how to abound. In everything and in all things I have learned the secret both to be filled and to be hungry, both to abound and to be in need”.
That’s the big thing for me, especially the part about “whatever state I am in, to be content in it”. That reminds me of the idea of Stoicism but the Stoics also talk about how we conduct ourselves when we are tested in such a way. It’s a big call I know, but they used to go on about ideas of dignity and bravery, calmness. Taking whatever life threw at one on the chin, but all the while keeping on and building ones character. Yes, I’ve always found that idea interesting but God knows I’ve failed, again and again…”
Just then they heard Scott’s music booming out over and around the side of the Casino. Rolling toward the two men was like a tsunami of sound. Seconds later there was shouting and then the music stopped abruptly. Barry suddenly looked like he was under attack. He swung around toward Bob, and shouted “what was that?” Bob froze for a second and there was panic in his eyes. Barry saw this and made a bad judgment. He raised the long knife and brought it down in Bob’s chest. The point sliced through clothing but then struck the imitation silver tea tray and was deflected down into his left middle thigh. The wound gaped and bright red blood gushed in a pulsing stream out from his severed femoral artery and soaked his trousers in second. Normandy Bob knew he only had moments to act. He was bleeding out. Very quickly he would lose all strength and seconds later would go unconscious. He placed his hands around d the back of Barry’s head and pulled it down with all the force he could muster onto his knee, and then fell away. That’s when Diane, who had been moving up around the edge of the carpark dropped the pepper spray and picked up the rounder’s bat and walloped Barry’s right knee with it. She could see what Bob was trying to do, fog up the conflict and diffuse the younger man’s rage but she knew intuitively there had to be a Plan B ready and at hand. The sound of Scott’s arrival was the point where she moved. Bob had lost control and Barry was going to lash out. Her plan had been to pepper spray Barry but then she saw the Rounder’s had. Rounder’s had been her big thing at school.
Diane folded her scarf, and bore down with all her strength on the seeping wound. The man in the Tuxedo pulled out his belt and prepared to tie a tourniquet just above the wound but Diane said that would not help. He ignored her and tied it anyway. “Every bit helps” he said. Diane knew that neither stood much chance of saving him.
A CCTV SHOT OF JOHNNY KIDMAN ON THE MARKET SQUARE AT DISS
Friday 26th and Saturday 27th October Day 39 Jerusalem to Diss Tune of the day: Weather. High of 9c.Low 6c…but feels a lot colder. Heavy rain. Wind speed 25. Miles. Currently- 4872 miles. Another forty miles to Calais and a then a further 140 miles from Dover to Diss. Then home. Plan. Catching ferry to Dover from Calais at 23.15pm tomorrow, Saturday. Then drive from Dover to Diss . May stop for a sleep on the way. My night driving is rubbish. Short of money. Not sure if I will have enough diesel to get from Dover to Diss. I need to recount how many days it has been since I left on September16th, but my brain is too weary to attempt that now. Maybe I will do it on my sofa at home in a couple of days. (INSERT) In putting together this account I’ve found that the notes for the 26th sort of ran into the 27th and became one posting. I was very tired and there was not a lot going on for the first day apart from driving in the rain. My mind was also on other things, as we will see. Today was just a short drive really. Fairly none descript. If it was a chess game it would be about putting an important piece in place ready for crucial move that will follow. It rained all day. Solidly. Just a continuous downpour. I was on the highway, playing my tunes and looking out through the rain hitting the windscreen. That’s been the day really. Tonight I’m parked up in a little triangular car park at the side of the road. There is wooden structure in the corner that looks like an outsize garden hut. That’s a toilet of sorts. Not even a proper sink to wash my hands. No other facilities of any kind. It’s just the local town’s gesture at providing for passing traffic that is unlikely to bring any direct financial benefit to the place. Space for about twenty cars, on crushed limestone. Large puddles have formed everywhere. Getting out of this vehicle feels like venturing out into a hostile environment, especially in the dark. I’ve been living on not much more than cuppa soup, cheap muesli, and bread with peanut butter for the last couple of days. I am skint and it’s not certain I will have sufficient diesel to get home, so holding onto every bit of money that I can. That anxiety is hanging on me. There is no spare capacity left. Every slice of bread or pack of dried soup counts. The best way to think of this trip is as a holiday of a car life time for The Big White Berlingo. I am just the friend that came along. She has driven across western and central Europe, and then down through the Balkans to Turkey. Got a well earn rest-up for a week in a luxury parking station in Istanbul before driving homeward via Greece, Italy and France. There was never a Plan B. Thankyou Big White Berlingo. I love my car. Don’t know what I’m going to do when I get back. I’m skint and need to earn some money. The Santa gig will be good but I need to work all winter. The rest of those thoughts can all wait for Monday and the sofa at home.
Johnny Kidman did go on to play the role of Santa Claus at a local garden centre. HMRC over taxed him, as a consequence of assuming it wa a fifty two week a year job.
The next planned trips are walking Hadrian’s Wall, and then a section of the Spanish Camino in the spring. I think it will be something like year six or seven at the Spanish walk. It really is very special. Can’t imagine a year not doing it now. But first earn some brass. As a child, and up to my twenties I worked as a pedlar aka sometimes called a street trader. In the early years with my dad, selling at the traditional Gala’s across the north of England. Later further afield. In 1977, when the Queens Silver Jubilee was going on we travelled and sold all year. We earnt as much in a day as most got paid in a week. Good times. My brothers and I in a van. Selling flags and sleeping over in the back alongside the stock. I could get a license and do that again. I will take some time and see. Maybe that game has had its day. I suspect so. Things are more controlled, and ordered than they were. But there’s always choices.
First job up is to get home, get clean and see the grand-bairns. I got some news overnight which I had been waiting for. Came through after midnight. I awoke to my phone rattling against the metal step in the back of car. The news has good and bad elements. It’s complicated. I could not be further away from where it’s all happening, but the people there know what I will be thinking about today. Sorry to mystify everybody else. Just about everything gets in this journal. I can’t go into detail but it would have been dishonest not to mention that there is a lot more than just the road and packets of Tomato Soup on my mind. Onwards. (Inserted. Saturday 27th October, 2018).
City Hall at Calais. Watching the weddings
8. 30 Am. Arrived in Calais. Parked up at the city hall where I hope to spend the day. It’s a place of unofficial street entertainment. Every hour a couple and their family and friends turn up to get married. The best ones are those who make it a big party. Bands, over the top outfits and lots of car horn blowing as they go around the roundabout of sorts on which this wonderful building is set. I will try and get some pics. Wedding number 1…has just happened. Bells ringing. Wedding party number two has just drawn up.😎😎😎All great fun. This will go on now until at least 4pm. Pics below. 10.15. There is a Jane Birkin exhibition on at the art gallery. Opens at 1pm. OMG Bob Johnson. Date line Calais, France. https://www.thegoodlifefrance.com/jane-serge-museum-of-fin…/ 12.15- After buying a little diesel, I spent my last two Euros (in very small change) on a giant bag of chips (French Fries) from a street stall. Pleasure! That’s blown the Jane Birkin exhibition at the art gallery. Rest of the afternoon, reading, napping and watching wedding parties arrive and leave. 17.45. Whilst driving toward the car ferry came across about 40 pop up tents on a patch of sodden ground at one side of a suburban street like mine at home. It was raining and then hail stoning hard and some of the tents had been uprooted or blown flat. Their occupants were asylum seekers. I saw others later moving across waste ground and trying to bypass police patrols. They were heading in the direction of the ferry port. Mostly young men in their late teens but also a few young women. All dressed poorly for the weather. Scenes of absolute misery. The big settlement of thousands of Asylum seekers which was nearby has for now been cleared but there are still these little encampments on this side of Calais. I feel chilled by the cold here in my Berlingo. The people standing in the rain or making their way toward the port look haunted and wretched. 23.30. Ferry leaving Calais. Just worked out I’ve spent 13 weeks of this last year in Europe but outside of Britain and about 21 weeks in all travelling for periods of four days or more. Got off the ferry before midnight. Had just a quarter of a tank of diesel left? Torrential rain at Dover. The roundabout outside the docks is partially underwater. It might have been wiser to park up for the night but I want to get home. Head out, find the A2 and drive in the direction of London. The rain is just as heavy so only able to drive at 40. Other drivers shoot past me like they were driving in perfect conditions. The road is closed to traffic a few miles on. Possibly because of floods. I’m diverted through what I assume is the upper side of the Ashdown Forrest but maybe something else. Fairly thick woodland and smartish villages I take a dislike to. A little too tea cosy like, Very poor visibility. Watching the fuel gauge all the time. Feeling wrecked. Sure I’m getting night blindness. Other cars getting inpatient with me. All I can see now on this journey is the yards in front of me. Everything from a few feet out beyond that is blackness. Avoiding broken branches in the road. Pulling over for a minute every so often to let the trucks get past me. I am directed to re-join the M2 motorway (no longer the A2) after an hour of this. Feeling relieved. I have felt jaw achingly tense since leaving Dover. Dog tired as well but carried on. If I was to stop I would have no money to spend. So would just sit there. Probably can’t sleep now. I have a CD of upbeat tunes to keep me going. It really does feel like I’m driving through a cave. Then I see the rains slowing. I sing along to ‘Trukin’, by the Grateful Dead and then the Waterboys doing “And a bang on the ear”. A dose of audio joy. A song about smiling at the past. I get into Diss and want to do a selfie next to a one of those black and white rectangular town signs. I try three roads into the town. All those signs are gone. I sit in the car and ponder on this. I have to arrive somewhere and have a photo.
28th October 2018 00.30 Possibly near the Ashdown Forrest Kent/ Sussex At one of those laybys in what might or might not be the Ashdown Forest I get a longer message from Joan. I’m guessing it may have been sent hours earlier but the message could not find me on the ferry out in the English Channel or even in the rain outside of Dover. “Hi Johnny Kidman. It’s the Monday here after the Saturday if you know what I mean. I don’t know what that day is for you. A lot has been happening. If I was going to tell you about it on here it would take a long time. What do you think about me phoning you? If you give me your number I will hang onto it until this day, i.e. 28th October in 2018. Then I will give you a call, and we can talk about what happened on the night of the 26th here. Sounds complicated? It’s mixed. Some good, so bad. If you don’t like that idea I will write some notes because you deserve to hear how things worked out. So what’s your thoughts? I message back straight away. “Hi Joan. It’s just become Sunday morning here. I think your message might have got held up by a few hours. I was on a ferry boat. It’s going to be odd talking to you. I can see your still alive, which to be honest I did not really expect. That has implications. Anyway let’s talk. Here is the number, 0717832537”.
Joan came back. She was either awake late or I’ve awoken her.
“I don’t think that number can be right. It has no dealing code number. They all start 01, don’t they”. I tell Joan about mobile phones. She has come across the concept on the Etch-a-sketch but had not absorbed the practicalities. So I’m sat there in the lay-bye waiting for a call which might come now or hours later or not at all. If it happens its being made by a woman I’ve just sent the number to in 1980, but IF she phones back she will be thirty eight years older. I think it’s maybe not right to take these risks. If I’m honest she had not felt wholly real over the past six weeks. My brain was not allowing the whole of the idea in. That was understandable. It had never happened in that brains experience before and did not fit with everything else about the world it knew. Then I start worrying about if there will be network in these woods. Then I think again, and see these are rich people’s houses spotted around. Of course there will be network here. Twenty minutes goes by and there has been no call. I do the permutations. Beginning with the big one. There may be more than one 2018. She is in the one where she did not get killed but it’s also the one that saw the development of the foot phone. You just sit down, waggle your toes to spell out the recipient, and off you go and talk. They went straight from phones on a stand in the hallway to bio-telephonist devices and anyway the connection between realities is not great at the best of times. I reach into the back and pick up my laptop, and turn it on. This has connection of some type with Joan’s Etch-a Sketch some where. The device goes through its opening sequence and does the grand little burst of music thing. I’m on the Etch-a-Sketch link up. But it’s taken much longer than usual. Then a disembodied arm and hand appears on a green screen. Makes a waving gesture and then looks to recede away into the distance, Down to a dot, and then that just fades out to a nothing. Panic gets me. RRRhhhhh, Rrrrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhhhh. My phone is balanced on the dashboard as that amplifies the vibration of the ringing phone. I am a bit deaf like my dad. I look at the screen. It’s somebody who has not called me before. “Hello, is that Joan. Bloody hell. How have the last 38 years been?” Sunday 28 October 2018 · Day 40 Jerusalem to Diss Time: 3.20am Location: Johnny Kidman is in Diss, Norfolk. Journeys end. Market square Diss in the belting rain. Miles. 5085 in The Big White Berlingo, and another 3000 miles or so by ferry and plane. Probably more. Total journey. 8085 miles The Berlingo says she is happy to be home. And I’m grateful to this lovely car for getting me here.
Rain started again. I take a selfie that ends up looking like a still from CCTV. I look like a TV Crime Watch programme celebrity criminal. I look around. Thats about it. I get in the Berlingo and drive half a mile to my home. Its over.
Sunday 28th October. My home in Diss. 8.30am Waking up. Plan for the day. Not moving much and drinking coffee. Big moment at 11.15am I get a message explaining last nights call from Joan. She had bought her first mobile phone in 2007. And the first thing she had done was type my number in. She knew that she would have to wait until the 28th October 2018 to give me a call, but it was a reassurance that the time was coming. Bloody hell. That is one hell of a thought to think about. I lay in the bed and look at the ceiling, and re-run last night’s layby conversation. We talked for maybe half a hour. There was a lot that I had not known. These characters Revd. Bob and Diane were all new to me, and when I heard about the plan they had all cooked up together for that Saturday night in the carpark behind the Draganora, I was aghast. What possessed you? (I spoke plainly). Bob had been lucky. The paramedic who arrived with the ambulance was South African and had combat experience before he had walked out on his country in June 1976, and knew out to handle a bleed out from a femoral artery stabbing. Bob still went into a kind of organ failure thing where there was sort of an insufficient volume of blood to keep everything going. His heart when into a crazy rhythm as well and he came close to dying. Took him many weeks to get better. Although he had been very pleased with himself since. Barry had been restrained by the security people. He was still trying to hit out even when he was writhing about on the ground with a bloody nose and a shattered knee cap. The police wagon people strapped him onto a kind of stretcher and took him to the cells at Millgarth, where he was seen by a police doctor. He ended up in St James’s Hospital, and then got seen by psychiatrists as well and was sectioned under the mental health act and moved to the Psych block. Diane got in there and told the people about Barry’s odd kind of epilepsy and gave them the name of the consultant at Addenbrookes in Cambridge. Understandably she couldn’t do anymore for Barry at the time. Too frazzled up. Joan went on about how daft she and Scott had felt when they arrived at the Draganora and all this commotion was going on. Dressed like they were and all the noise blaring out of the car. They had known straight away what had happened, and even felt they might have known a little bit in their hearts that this would be the outcome. It was like Bob had given his life for theirs but got lucky when a South African army drop out medic ended up being on shift that night. We couldn’t talk much more than that. But two more things got decided. We were going to have a big meet up soon, and just about everyone from 1980 would be there. Except Bob and Margaret of course. They had died in the interim. She was hoping to get Diane, but the woman had a crazy schedule. Joan said it was the wrong time to explain about that. She told him they had chosen Whitby, a wild and windy sea side place in North Yorkshire. Joan had already made the bookings and everything was paid for. It would be a three day weekend, Friday to Sunday, and they could all talk then. The dates were the 9th to the 11th November. Armistice Sunday weekend. Not planned for that date but it was the nearest weekend everyone was available.
Joan in 2018 looking a lot better preserved than me.
Finally Joan said everything had turned out good for her. Her life took off, Lots of good things. I had to Google something called “Beauty on a Scooter”. She said it rhythmed. I told her it didn’t.
One of Joan’s Beauty on a Scooter operatives. A photo taken for a 2016 campaign
Scott was apparently good. Lots to tell there but that would take a lot of time. Maybe Google him as well. Surname Wiggins. Scott Wiggins. Unusual name so won’t be hard to find. There had been one name we had not talked about, and it was sort of hanging in the air between us. There was a hesitancy, but I broke the silence first. “What about Pateley?” Joan sort of snorted and said that is the weirdest one. I had to listen to Desert Island Discs at 11.15 on BBC Radio 4. That would explain all. They had pulled strings to rearrange the date. Another long story. If I listened to the programme I would see what she meant.
I joke with Pateley that the stress of coping with his mother took all his hair early. Desert Island Discs photo 2018.
She was going to send me a form. I had to write in all that I had been doing for the last 38 years. This form filling stuff didn’t sound like Joan, but she said now and again she would allow a bit of it. Everyone else had done the same re filling the form in, and Joan was going to send them out as a booklet so we were all up to date with everything when we met. So she needed mine by the end of the day No excuses.
“And Mr Useless, don’t forget Diane knows nothing about the ‘Etch-a-Sketch’, so don’t let on”. Last of all. She had booked a pub and set up a rock and roll tribute guy. He did them all. Little Richard, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Johnny Cash. The guy that did Matchbox. All of them. No blacking up though. It came into my head to ask Joan to give her life a score out of ten, or she could use an A-D scale if that worked better .Before we ended the conversation I wanted to get an overall idea if it had worked out okay. She said that she would give me three scores. One for when she was a kid, one for those years when we knew each other, and a third for the rest of her life. It was 6-2-10. I said that made me glad. A six, two, ten was not at all bad overall. But could she have had a ten if she had not had the two, or the six for that matter. Joan said she and me had to discuss that soon. There was some things to talk about but we had to have a glass in our hands when we did it. Sunday 28th October. 11.15am My kitchen in Diss. Listening to Desert Island Discss. My Sunday morning ritual is normally pretty extensive. A lot of sitting about reading books, drinking strong filter coffee, messing about on Facebook, playing tunes and eating high salt, high-fat foods supposedly without guilt. But today I got moving. By 11am I was sat in the £5 round backed wicker chair in my kitchen, with everything in place for the final countdown to 11.15. I was on ‘tenter hooks’ as they used to say in Yorkshire. I’m tense and got lots of anticipation. Want to know things but also have some worry on board. At 11.10 I set up the coffee and the two pecan slices from Aldi. I don’t like the music at the end of the Archers, the radio soap opera that has been preceding Desert Island Discs for maybe half a century. But today I put the radio on at 11.12 despite this dislike of the Archer’s end tune. I’d be worried that I’ve missed something otherwise. At 11.15 we go the desert island tune (another annoying theme tune. My life is haunted by them). Then the Scottish woman, Kirsty Young, her voice comes in. She is the one that compares the programme now. She has been the best in my book. If you don’t know the programme it’s been around for ever. Lasts about forty-five minutes or so. They pretend to take some person who is famous or otherwise has had an interesting life, to a Desert Island, where they are going to be on their own. The subject has to say what eight records they would take with, plus one book and a favourite object. Kirsty uses that structure to get the person to talk about their life. Most folk link up the tunes with particular times in their life. “Oh, this record by Queen was playing at the dance hall when I met my husband. We danced to it and for ever more it’s been our tune”. Okay, that is a bit weak. It’s normally better than that. People often cry or get somewhat emotional but not in a celeb way. Much more ordinary weeping, maybe the kind that you do in your own front room when you’re on your own. Maybe it’s the mixture of talking about one’s life and playing tunes that does it.
Here we go- “Hi I’m Kirsty Young. Welcome to Desert Island Discs. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury item they want with them if they were cast away on a desert island. My Castaway today is the author, playwright and social entrepreneur, Pateley Bridger. The person who 100.000 people voted Britain’s Force of Nature, 2018. Welcome, Pateley Bridger. And then there is his voice. You would not know he was from Leeds. The accent wasn’t strong though. The man had been around. He just said “It’s good to be here Kirsty”. Thats all I needed There is a slight pause and then Kirsty asks “Well I want to try my luck by asking the question you always get asked but always defer to answer. How did you get the name? And seemingly to everyone’s astonishment, he does tell the story. I ask myself if this man has been famous how come I’d never hear of him. Then the penny drops and I feel like I’m standing on a high cliff and I’ve got vertigo. A feeling like that. Last I heard this boy had become a head teacher and was in charge of a school in the next town to me. But that was because he had been adopted, as his mother had died. Killed by his father. Now he is an author and all those things. There was a question there. What made him become an author instead of a teacher? He told the stories about his early years. How many people would go on national radio and say their mother had been a part-time prostitute and his father had tried to kill her. It wasn’t confessional stuff. The way he spoke, everyone knew about it. This and lots of other things from his growing up were now public property. Of course, I knew most of the stories about his first few years, but it was the oddest thing hearing it coming out of my radio on the surface above the washing machine. I had to think of that racing car of a little boy, Cheyenne and I used to watch over on an evening. The rest of his story was about how it was to grow up with a team for parents. With permission, and with a bigger purpose in mind fragments of them had become characters in his plays and books. Sagz, Joan, Scott, Barry, Diane, and posthumously Margaret and Bob. Then there was the place itself Leeds. A mucky old place, even now after all the money that had come into the city, still not a place that had been altogether tamed. And there were others who he had never met but whose lives he had heard about. A woman named after a Native American nation and a chap who had been the longest distance of friends to his mother (me, but no mention of the Etch-a-sketch). His grandparents. All of it was a well to draw from. As a young man, he had gone to University and done English. Then didn’t know what to do. Just ‘slobbed’ around for a while. Did a few pissy kind of jobs, and then seemingly woke up one morning, made some coffee and started writing on a notepad. Kirsty asked her usual question, about was it fair to write about people’s lives. Surely their stories were their property. Scott said, “yes, but in Leeds a bit of larceny is acceptable”. Kirsty wasn’t deflected easily. She said “joking aside”. Then Pateley said “No, I wasn’t joking. I’m just missing something important out. I think of these stories as being like hymns. A song to give praise to the act of living or maybe something different, a kind of sacrament”. Kirsty wasn’t letting go “But why make the stories funny. Some of these things you tell us are tragic”. Pateley quoted David Beddiel from a previous programme, “Comedy is the only way to combat death”. You got Beddiel to explain what he meant. He said something like humour was not denial, it was a way into a subject. Death being the biggest of all, but there are lots of things where the same premise applies. Anyway when you got close up very few things did not have their funny bits. I allow space for sadness as well, but it would be untruthful to say all these things were just tragedy. My dad, Barry driving into that big rock in the Yorkshire Dales, because his mind was not right and he believed he was smiting a rock for God. You have to laugh at that. He laughs at it to this day, but you also respect the tragedy. I’m not making circus clowns out of people. There is a way of doing it, and I’m scared to analyse it.
If I was to overthink the method I might lose it. But Im just saying this one thing. The chaos, the ironies, the hubris and every odd story that emerge out of the time of passing through life (like a bird flying through a hall.In one door and out the other) is special. A hymn to what it is to be human. I’m no Hemingway, and I’m not comparing myself for a second but like his work, the kind of writing I like to do hopefully celebrates our blessed humanity. And it is blessed even if like me you have no religion”. “We think of privilege as being about wealth, status, access to power, school ties etc. I would say that’s an upside-down kind of thinking. Privilege is to have been presented with circumstances that bring out what is best in you. I’m not going to quote Nietzsche because he was a tosser, but keeping it short and simple, a good life is not an easy life. There is a phrase, and it on the tip of my tongue “the gift of…” I shout at the radio like a crazy man. “ADVERSITY”
Pateley’s eight records 1-Puff the Magic Dragon-Peter, Paul and Mary (1963) 2-Chantilly Lace. Big Bopper (1958) 3-Wild side of life-Hank Thompson (1952) 4-Boogie on Reggae Woman- Stevie Wonder (1974) 5-Living next door to Alice. Smokie. Featuring Chubby Brown. (1995) 6-What’s made Milwaukee Famous (has made a looser out of me). (1967). 7-Wish you were here. Pink Floyd (1975) 8-Lost Highway. Leon Payne (1948)
Record saved if they were all being washed away by the sea-
Book As I walked out one mid-summer Morning. Laurie Lee (1969)
Luxury item Lambs Navy Rum (endless bottle)
Monday 29th October 2018 09.00 Email From: Wiggins69@yahoo.com To- Johnny Kidman, Scott Wiggins, Barry Bridger, Sue Bridger, Pateley Bridger, Mutton dressed as lamb Bridger, Sagz Summor, Benny Summor, Diane Bentley, Bob Bentley Attachment: PDF File. family’s bio & Whitby weekend Hi All, please find attached the info re our Whitby weekend, 9-11th November. I’m looking forward to it like a visit to the dentist, but I’m sure I will feel fine once we have got onto the wine. The Resolution Hotel does not have a carpark, but you can park higher up in the town and walk down. It’s cheap and the views from the better bedrooms are great. Sorry if someone is in number thirteen but 18th-century brick walls can also be interesting, once you learn to appreciate the cultural history embedded in every brick. The big advantage of the hotel is there’s plenty of space for the band, and it being November and no one wants to stay there, we have just about got the place to ourselves. With Pateley and Mutton’s kids, we are somewhere close to the twelve mark, all being well. There might be other guests but they will get scared and avoid us. We have got the multi-gifted, all genre Shape Shifter Band, I can tell you they are brilliant. You are going to love them. I have done a request list. Sorry, it’s full. Please have a look at everyone’s little bio’s. Okay, why have I done these? First of all for reasons that get complicated Johnny does not know most of you first hand, then secondly it’s just interesting. A lot had happened in thirty-eight years. I think its time to take stock. Some of us are well into our sixties now. And if we are truthful some of us know Diane is a goddess these days but don’t wholly know what she does. Her biography will be a stunner. Pateley had promised not to mine any more of our lives by stealing the info. I wouldn’t altogether believe that though. Read the bio’s now before you do anything else. They make me smile. Seeya Soon, Joan
The Resolution Hotel in Whitby
28th October 2018 Monday Morning Coming Down My home in Diss 9am
I have been home about thirty hours or so. Sunday was about unpacking the Berlingo and doing the big clean. The car and what was in It. There is still has an ‘organic’ whiff hanging about the thing which I might never get rid of.
Oddly or maybe not so, my long time back pain has returned after being almost wholly absent from Day 2 of the trip. That’s despite sleeping around and between boxes on a five foot, 1970’s sofa cushion all that time. Today I’m back on the Paracetamol in the morning.
I have waited for my brain to have some clarity before I attempt to mentally review the trip. With the help of some high octane coffee, that time is now.
I think I mentioned somewhere that driving to Istanbul and back is not so unusual. Truck drivers do it, as do families relocating across the continent. Migrants from further afield as well. They do it in overloaded and poorly maintained cars, with even less cash money in their pockets than me. And of course with babies and children, and riding andd sleeping in the car along the way. I saw lots of them.
The truck drivers are only a little different. The vehicles may be better, but they are racing the clock and under big pressure from their bosses. There will be people dying and getting hurt to provide our ‘just in time deliveries’. European Union driving time regulations or not, these men (and some women) drive exhausted. They sleep in the cabs or slung on hammocks in the back of their trucks. No access to toilets or water except at motorway service stations or trucker’s stops. Eating only the cheapest and most monotonous food. To get it you have to understand that any money spent on the trip is a deficit against their wage. As a truck driver on these routes through the Balkans, I tell you they need to live on fresh air.
So I have no doubt these people are the heroes. People like me are dilatants in a way. Who would do these long trips if they didn’t have to?
So why am I doing it? I can’t really fully claim it was for the charity, which was the angle I pushed so strongly. Despite my families cynicism (and concerns about fraud allegations) that was fairly genuine, and I’m proud I raised that money, and that it has gone to something I do care about. The amount is just short of £700 for a charity that helps young people coming out of care. But raising that money was not my primary motivation.
In a way, it’s about proving that I’m still alive. That’s an odd thing to say I know but I will explain.
I had a brother who was gifted in some ways. More clever than me. He went to a Grammar school. His real talents were those of an artist. He went to one of the best art schools in the country. His life got off to a fairly good start but then problems came in his thirties and then he died suddenly at forty-one. It was shocking that he died.
I had another brother who was closer in age to that other brother. He got worried that he might die suddenly. He found a photo of that other brother and stuck it on his computer, as a reminder that life is short and not to waste time.
That brother died at 68 but he went off a bit like Forrest Gump in the movie, when he went on that running kick. It didn’t happen right away after our first brother died, but it came on gradually and then took off when this other brother hit sixty. This brother didn’t run across countries but he did walk. Many thousands of miles. Living for weeks and weeks at a time on tracks across Europe (and once in North Africa). He was proving to himself that he was alive. I’ve no doubt about that. Every day had a tangible result. He was like that for eight years. Half the time walking. Half the time at home feeling guilty that he was squandering time.
And there is irony there because we used to have these odd pseudo philosophical disagreements that would get heated and close to violence. Essentially he was all in favour of the hedonistic life and I was a bit more for the striving kind of existence. So many times we were close to using our fists about Confucius, Socrates, Existentialism and Stoicism. He was big on the first two and I aligned myself with the last two. We would swap back of the book sound bite like quotes He claimed to be a “Human Being Not a Human Doing”. Then he would prattle on about an “unexamined life is not worth living”. I would say that was elitist crap and so we would go on. I would tell my brother that he and I were creating ourselves every day. By being a ‘human doing’ I was creating and defining myself. It didn’t happen by laying under a tree and contemplating the clouds, or rather if it did then I was not very much (that enraged him). I would shout across his tiny front room that one had to be out in the world and be doing.
Maybe he started to agree with me more than he let on because he started doing all that walking. Eight years he was fucking doing it. He was scared of dying at home by himself in bed. If death was going to come he wanted to meet it on his feet and far from home. And that’s what happened. He died walking a long distance path in Spain. The one that comes out of France and over the Pyrenes and then across northern Spain to Santiago de Compestela. We think it was the eighth-time he had done that particular one. It’s something like 850km long if you start from France. He was sixty-eight. as I’ve said…sort of
My two brothers and I as children. The walker is on the left, and the artist on the right.
Now we have sort of swapped over seats.
It makes logical sense (and therefore the most obvious necessity) that if you don’t believe in an afterlife then you have to get very busy in this here one. I have to get out of my comfortable chair and see as much of this world as I can do. To not understand and fail to act upon those twin truths would be insane. When I was young I got a school atlas and outlined in pen all the places in the world that I wanted to go. It started feeling more urgent a little time back. There was not great stacks of decade in front of me anymore. So that’s why I’m in a hurry. Like Lynyrd Skynyrd there are so many places I have to see. But these realisations are not comfortable. I don’t know why the whole world is not on its feet running around. Why would anyone spend time in Wallmart or Boots the chemist or clean their shoes?
Freebird: Lynyrd Skynyrd
This trip got odd because of that Etch-a Sketch link up with Joan. Unique doesn’t even tell it. I rarely mention such things because it sounds weird, but there has been one question that I have been thinking about all my life. Am I in charge of it, or is it in charge of me. That’s where ‘it’ is everything, and ‘me’ is everyone. Does a proper understanding give us the ability to shape the world, maybe change our predicted futures or is all that an illusion. That’s been on my shoulder ever since I can remember. Are we adventurers in our own lives or are we victims. Viscerally, (that means in my guts) I don’t want it to be the latter.
And you need to know I haven’t got a spiritual or magical-mystical bone in my body, but this trip it was almost like someone was serving me up a lesson on the subject.(I don’t think there was a person or even a see through type entity. Im just saying it felt like that,) I got to find out what happened to Joan. I left her in 1980 with things looking pretty dire for both her and Pateley. Then I learned she had died and Pateley had been adopted and did really well in life. But what I wanted to know was what would have happened to him if his mother had lived and he had stayed with her. I want to believe we, all of us are not victims. We can act upon our interface with the world and change our stories. I wanted to have it confirmed to me that adversity can be a gift. And fucking hell it was.
So two things remain for me. We are not victims. We can get up in a morning and make change. For ourselves and for others. Joan is my example on that. I’ve done a few things myself as well. Inevitably though we do run out of time and have to find a way of parting with life on good terms. I won’t stop trying to see as much of this earth as I can but there is a bargain to keep. I have had a Life and at some point I am going to have to let go of it. With peace and with dignity.
I’m going to leave it at that. I won’t publish this post. I think its best that I keep it to myself.
A couple of things.
1-a painting by the first brother, the artist.
2- An interview conducted on the Camino by a woman he met along the way.
3pm 9th -11th November, 2018 The Resolution Hotel Whitby
Whitby has a left and a right side, with the harbour and the River Esk in-between. The right side was the original fishing settlement, with the very important abbey above it on the cliffs. The left side is the early 19th century side at lower levels Part business and residential expansion. Further inland or as you head uphill towards the West Cliffs, it’s a place of the later nineteenth century and grander accommodation for tourists. Drivers coming into the town from the hills of its hinterland see a neat cup shaped bay.
The Resolution Hotel is on one of the Georgian and early Victorian streets that slope down toward the harbour on from the west side. Its follows the contour of the hill on which it is set. Nothing remarkable about it really. The lounge bar has a window that runs around two sides of the building and gives partial good views. It’s an old hotel which has been updated periodically in a piece meal fashion. Nothing wrong with that.
Whitby is still a working fishing port, albeit much reduced from its past. The mixed smells of sea air and fish are everywhere. It’s a fishy place. It never just became about tourism like Scarborough and Bridlington further down coast. It kept its dignity and working purpose.
Whitby. Left and right
Pateley and his wife and children had come up from London on the train. Or rather train, bus then train again. It had not been the best idea. Then he had been too mean to get a taxi at the station and made them all climb the fifth of a mile up zig-zag streets to the hotel carrying their heavy bags.. Not far but steep. Sometimes this trait of Pateleys of sticking to real world values was a pain for everyone else. They were puffing and panting when they got to the door, and feeling frazzled. The kids, a boy and a girl both in their early teens were not keen on the trip and were being difficult. Dad went on about this odd set up of a family, but they found it all a bit freaky. Grandma was nice but she had been a prostitute, and the whole country knew about that because it was in the books. And she had been on TV and told outrageous stories. Their mother had insisted on private schools. That had made the whole thing a bit easier. Some of their classmate’s parents were much worse but both the kids wished their dad would stop boasting about it.Its like he had no filter, and did not care what people thought,
Mrs Bridger, or Mutton Dressed as Lamb Bridger, as everyone called her ‘got’ the idea of The Family but could only deal with it in small doses. She let Joan give her that name in good humour ,and she even liked her most of the time but these Leeds people could be a bit waring after a couple of days. It felt like you were in the human equivalent of a cock fight. It was easy to imagine oneself in a pit, with a whole load of merciless insults, jibes, outrageous mimicry and psychological poking in the face going on. This weekend (as always) it would be a matter of whose turn it was to get placed in the pit and be psychologically shredded. So long as it was not hers, the kids or Pateleys turn she would get by. Sagz was okay. More normal than the rest. She would try and hang out with her. No pun intended.
Poorly trained and inexperienced psychologists might say that Pateley was a little over invested in the idea (the myth?) of his family. But that was how he had made his living. Writing about them and how they had made their way in the world. And when all was said and done the myth was not too far from the truth. He was proud of it. There was a problem now though .He was mid-career and needed to find another subject. The family had been done to death. And he was feeling a little at a loss about what to do. And it had been six months of zero output. New book wise.
Mutton and Pateley’s family was there first. Time to settle in a wait for everyone to arrive.
Pateley had high expectations which was always a dangerous thing when approaching a family weekend. And where were Joan and Scott? They should be here to greet everybody, them being the sort of hosts of everything. Maybe everyone would be feeling a little tense this time. And then there was this Johnny Kidman character. Mum had always skirted over that connection. He had been involved with the family (apparently him and his wife had even baby sat him when he was a little one). Then disappeared for a long time and then was found again a couple of weeks ago. Pateley had felt that he was not supposed to ask about it. A heavy feeing settled on him. He needed to get out for a walk.
He stepped outside. The hotel was on a sort of at a half way point. Up Roads and down roads intersected there. A little group were gathered in a huddle in an alcove, the informal smoking place for guests. He didn’t feel sociable but it had started to rain and he wanted a cigarette before he set out on his stroll. Pateley sidled over and squeeze in at the end of the line. There was a beefy guy with a shaven head, and a woman around the same age who presumably was his wife. Then there was a young Dutch sounding couple in their early twenties. They chatted as it was hard to ignore each other. The younger couple said that had come across to appear at a folk festival the previous weekend but then figured it would be good to stay on for a week and have a mini break. Bob told them these were mad, but seemingly Whitby had all kinds of literary and cultural connections he had never heard of. The beefy guy was looking at the wall intently and ignoring the talk of Whitby’s cultural threads. He looked angry now. His wife looked uneasy. The man announced loudly “I don’t want to look and sound like a stereo type of a brickie but that wall offends me. Without any explanation he steps out into the road and gives the group an impromptu lecture. He was pointing at some feature in the brick work gable end facing them. A friend had given them the nod about the lovely brickwork that was visible from Room 13, and they had booked it especially. It was no fault of the hotels but the sight of the ruination wrought upon that lovely gable offended his eye. He might even have to ask for a change of room as he kept being drawn back to the window to look at it. It was like having a splinter in your finger. He could not relax until it had been dealt with. Pateley was drawn to the man. He was his kind of person. “I know nothing about the issues. Could you explain it to me? I am interested.”
The chunky, beefy guy examined Pateley for a moment. Looking for signs that he was taking the piss. Then he stepped out into the road and pointed at the gable end. That is the best brick work from the early 19th century. Look at the texture and colour of the brick. That had provenance. If the sun was going down now it would glow. Look how perfect the symmetry is. The corners are like artisan carpentry. At that point a shaft of late afternoon, sodden November sun did appear, lit up the wall and brought out the hues. It reminded Pateley of how the science of lighting operates in an art gallery.
The man went on. “At some time, probably in the last thirty years the wall had been fixed and the modern ‘brickie’ has not really cared about what he was doing. Look, there is a discontinuity between the good brickwork and the careless stuff”. The man continued his lecture. Spoke about where the old brick had come from, how it was produced. Hints about the ‘brikies’ origins that could be garnered from this style. What the scaffolding would have looked like around the building. A good ten minutes worth of beautifully communicated information about an obscure, but engaging subject. If it had been set to music it would have been like a love song. Pateley decided then and there he had his next book. He shook the man’s hand, and said he would buy him a drink tonight. He was a writer and he had a proposition. Handshakes were done all round. The Dutch couple looked a little awed. Pateley could see they were mentally composing their next Facebook post. Maybe the heading would be birth of a book.
Then looking down the hill he saw Diane in a plastic mac, looking like she was carrying a body strapped to her back. As she got nearer Pateley could see it was a life size, flat wooden model of Revd Bob in his vicar’s gear. She had said she would be bringing a surprise guest. Pateley ran over and grabbed her’ wheely’ suitcase. She said the other Bob, her son would be coming in from Leeds later, then something about a research ethics committee. A familiar sound in the wind turned both their heads. Coming down the hill, all in line like a bunch of rowdy teenagers heading out for a night at the fairground, were Joan, Scott, Sagz and Benny Summor. They had bumped into each other in a wasteland of a car park high up at the back of the town. Had a couple of drinks in a funny sort of a pub and now felt like royalty. Everyone came together in a huddle. Here were most of his family, apart from Barry aka one of his dads plus his Mrs, and this new chap Johnny. Pateley had grown into an exceptionally tall man. Close to 6’6”. That gave him a wing span (arm stretch fingertip to fingertip) of exactly the same length. That was anatomy. Just about everyone was like that. He needed that kind of span to get his arm around them all. It was a stretch but he made it.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The Buck Inn is the timbered building on the harbour side. The Resolution Inn is higher up and several rows back
Johnny was in the bar of the Buck Inn, on the harbour side and close by the bridge over the Esk. Just a few minutes’ walk from the hotel. It had announced itself as place for a “Bucking Good Time” on a pavement sign outside so intrigued Johnny had come inside. That and to avoid going to the hotel and people these people just yet.. Outsize photos of patrons on what looked like damn good nights out were affixed on an overhead beam that ran around the long bar. Friday night was Karaoke. Starting at 9pm. Johnny was sad that he would miss that. Maggie May was his speciality, but they would all be in the hotel bar. He knew it and that’s why he was here.
He had parked up the Berlingo three hours ago, left his bags at the hotel just after 12.00 when he knew nobody else from this group were going to be there. Then he had disappeared himself asap and taken a very long walk around the town. Then walking back in the general direction of the hotel he felt suddenly peckish and had come in here for a Lambs Navy Rum, a packet of Seabrook Cheese and Onion crisps and a pork pie. He now considering getting another rum
If he was frank with himself he was nervous. On one level it was the normal social thing. He was a stranger invited for a weekend get together, where everyone else knew each other. But then there was the whole Etch-a- Sketch thing he had been told to keep quiet about. He was scared that he would mention it without thinking. And the more he told himself not to mention it the more likely it was to happen. The fear had become a little devil in his head.
The Etch-a-Sketch thing had just packed up and stopped working minutes after he got a Facebook friend request from Joan on that first morning back in Diss after the Jerusalem trip. The little hand on the screen had just waved and was gone. Okay some folk knew but Pateley didn’t know, and of course Barry and Diane didn’t either. It was best to leave it that way in order to avoid further kinks in history. That’s what Joan had said. So there was those two reasons for feeling on edge but there was also a third. The only person he had really met in person before was Joan, and back then she was a woman in her mid-twenties on the run from a boyfriend who had been beating her up. He, Johnny had been twenty one and recently married. Joan used to perm his hair for him, and try and get Cheyanne to go out to the pub with her and pick up fellers.
All these other people were just stories for now, but he was about to meet them in real life. He would not turn around and go home, but he knew that he was taking a risk of some kind. In a short while the two realities would be merging off line. In the real world.
The couple across the room were getting his attention. They were in their early to mid-sixties. The chap was drinking a pint of orange squash. She was on Guinness. The man did not look happy. The woman was being sympathetic but strict. He was reluctant but she was giving no quarter. Johnny heard the words “you know that you will be fine once you get there”. The man got up and walked over to the old fashioned juke box, gave Johnny a polite smile. Dropped his money in the machine. Then turned back to the woman. “Sue, do you fancy a bit of Hank Williams?” She smiled and nodded. Like she was affirming her chap was back on the right track.
The record drops and there is a hissing sound before the strange blend of jaunty-lugubrious guitar comes in, then there’s Hank singing “I’m a rolling stone…
Lord God this record has earnt its keep over time. The man rests his arms on the glass and looks into the guts of the machine. He is waiting for something
“…Just a deck of cards and a jug of wine… “
The man turns and grins “Can’t beat it. Lost Highway, an oldie but a goody”.
THE END
AFTER WORD
(In effect post script to the story)
Updates for Whitby Weekend 9-11th November 2018 Resolution Hotel Whitby
Thanks all of you for agreeing to do these little updates. I know we didn’t do them for last year’s weekend, but as Johnny is joining us this time I figured it would probably be helpful for him
An old photoshoped picture of Sagz
Sagz Summor: The year 1980 was the one that my life changed. My head had been messed up for years by a priest who refused to acknowledge me as being his daughter, and my mother’s acceptance of that. She felt it belonged in the past and did not want to jeopardise the man’s standing in the church. So after doing a lot of stupid things that was the year I did three things. Wrote to my mum, for the first time in years asking if we could meet up and try and make a better job of the future. I wrote to the priest and told him to go fuck himself (That was one way of putting an end to always hoping that he would have a change of heart and get in touch). Thirdly I got a pedlars licence and started selling kids novelty toys outside Leeds market, and around Yorkshire. In ten years that developed into Sagz and Co. That made me a lot of money for thirty odd years until Amazon and the internet sunk us. No tears about that though, we did well for a long time.
All three of those things came out of meeting Joan and Scott at a crappy talent contest at Pontin’s Camber Sands. We became a family for a while until I got on my feet. Will always be grateful for that. Lord knows what would have happened to me if that had not happened. It might have taken years to break out of the cycle Id got into
It’s not all been easy going since then. As you know Benny and I have not been able to have children but we have fostered God knows how many (I refuse to keep a count, just like I refuse to read the leaflet about side effects of any medication I take. It gets you into the wrong frame of mind. ). I also changed how I thought about my Saggy Tits. In a way, they were how I got to where I am now, so I want to say thank you to both of them. Saggy Tit left, and Saggy Tit right. Thankyou Saggy Tits. I would not be here now if not for you. To be clear that is a serious statement.
Scott
Scott Wiggins: I was 29 in 1980, and it was like my life had never got going. I’d got into the carpet business to stop my mum worrying I would be a Blackman who would go to the bad. I loved mum but she was in danger of sending me mad. Then at the back end of that year I ended up with Joan, and we sort of helped each other out. One day I tricked somebody (Barry) who was unwell. I felt guilty about that, and felt some good had to come out of it what I’d done. In a kind of ‘no idea of what I was doing’ kind of way I signed up to train to be what is now called a Learning Disability nurse. That turned out to be my niche in life. I have always been hopeless at most things but I was one of the lucky people who found out what he could be good at. And that was thirty eight years ago. If I could talk to my miserable self in August 1980, I would like Alan Bennet once wrote, tell him that everything is going to be okay.
I became, along with Barry the shared dad of Pateley, and that along with the OBE (did I mention that) represents the big honours in my life. Oh yes, there is one more. If you type Scott Wiggins into Google along with the words ‘violence’ or ‘aggression’ you get me. In fact I’m the first thirty four results that come up. Now not everyone can say that.
I’m turning sixty seven this year, and have just retired. Probably should have done it a few years earlier. Life has turned out a lot better than I expected. I thought the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who had help screw up my mum as a lonely single mother, had well and truly buggered me up as well. I’m hoping to get involved in doing some work for a group called ‘The Cult Information Centre’ which gets information and advice to people who want to get out of a cult, and to their families and to their families as well.
I am also a male stripper touring groups and facilities for the elderly. “What a long strange trips its been.”
Diane
Diane: In 1980 I was on tramlines to being a lawyer. Thats where by life was heading. That was alright because I wanted to a lawyer, and as it worked out it was something I enjoyed. Especially the intellectual side of it. I knew I was bright and wanted to be a high flyer, make lots of money and get my face on TV and in the newspapers. I had had a hero, George Carmen. I wanted to be like him. And I did do that. I became a high profile defence Barrister for hire and I made a fortune. Something happened in 1980 which influenced my plans though. Even before I had that success. I’m the only lawyer I know who forward planned to drop out when I hit forty five. Saying I dropped out is an exaggeration but I did change my speciality and go into an area of the law which is not high profile and the money is lousy. So my second career is in mental health law. I represent clients at their mental health tribunals and I write text books on the subject of mental disorder and the law. This sounds dreadfully dry. Not at all rock and roll or exciting. I had plenty of that doing the celebrity defence lawyer shenanigans
That second life plan came out of meeting two people. Revd. Bob who is no longer with us and Barry. They both changed my life. Bob used to say we have two lives. The first life where we think we have all the time in the world, do the essentials but also fritter our time away. The second life is when the penny drops that we only have one life. I miss that man very much.
I got to know Barry when a stupid uncle of mine asked me if I could help out the towns vicar (Bob). That involved taking care of a young man who was ill and staying with him plus some general housekeeping duties. That only lasted a few days, and proved to be the biggest adventure I’ve had in my life. I learnt a lot from being around Barry then, and in the years since. We do some patient self-advocacy work together now, and we are in the process of writing a little book about it.
Sorry it’s all so dry sounding but it has given me a lot of happiness. There is one other thing.
I did get married for a while, but surprise, surprise that didn’t last. But one good thing did arise from that. I have a son Bob, who thinks Oliver Sacks, the Neurologist and writer was the God of Neurology. His mission, he tells me is to fuse the science and art of medicine with a 360 degree phenomenological narrative approach to diagnosis. If you can explain that to me I will buy you a drink.
Johnny:
I’m from Leeds. I trained as a Learning Disability Nurse at Meanwood Park Hospital a few years before Scott i.e. 1976 to 1979. Whist a student there I met a woman called Cheyanne and we got married in November 1978. A few days before the wedding we moved into Lincoln Avenue and that’s how we met Joan.
After completing more courses in London we moved to Diss in Norfolk in 1985. That where I spent my entire career. Rose up the Ladder, became a Director or Nursing at a small hospital. Got bored with that and retired in 2012.
My wife Cheyanne left me in 2000 and moved to Mauritius with a female Jerry Lee Lewis impersonator. Still makes me smile to type that. I didn’t take it personally and was happy to see her happy. Then she got murdered. Awfully, unspeakably sad if I’m to be honest about it.
We had two daughters who were just starting to get to know her again when she got killed. I have been around the ‘Grab a Granny scene’ a few times but eventually settled for Archaeology and studying medieval churches. I am really as boring as I sound.
The big exciting time for me was the house in Lincoln Avenue in the years 1978 t0 1980. I went to start a course in December 1979 but used to call back at weekends until Cheyanne moved down to London in the spring of 1980. Joan used to perm my hair. She used to also try and get Cheyanne to go out to the pub with her and pick up fellers. We were incredibly skint all that time. Someone broke into our house and left empty handed. There was nothing to steal. They didn’t see the fox fur coat which was hanging behind the front door. Literally the only item of value in the house. That image sums up that time for me.
After we settled in London I lost touch with Joan. Phoned a few times but the phone wasn’t working. Then gave up.
Then all these years later we are back in touch and it’s very nice.
Since 2012 I have been trying to prove that I’m not as boring as I sound. Have been working my way through an old school atlas. When I was about fifteen I coloured around the edges of all the places I wanted to visit. Didn’t do much of any of that until I retired. Since then I’ve been working way through all those highlighted countries. Got a very long list now, but it does mean I have blown my entire pension in six years. In September and October I drove to Istanbul Turkey and back, plus spent a week in Jerusalem. That cleared me out. For the last year I have been doing zero hours contract steward type work. I’m going to be Santa later this month and December at a garden centre
That’s me.
I hope you are still awake. Sorry to disappoint. Feel very much outshone by you all. Joan has been telling me about each of you.. Am looking forward to the Whitby weekend. My parents and I used to go for holidays there in the 1960’s.
My hobbies and interests are archaeology, medieval churches and travel. Joan was hoping to perm my hair again on this weekend, but sorry to disappoint. I’ve been bald since 2009.
Am looking forward to meeting you all. (Joan, I’ve tried to make it sound as boring as possible, so as to put off awkward questions. Please edit and make even more boring if you think necessary. Then delete this message).
Joan
Joan:“Joan Bridger nee Joan Ackroyd. (Joan of Arc-Royd. Jokey name given my dad when drunk)
Born: 1955.
Grew up on Delph Mount in Woodhouse Moor, Leeds.
Left school at fifteen. Served a hairdresser apprenticeship. Actually stopped attending school from age 13 or 14.
Mother. Irish immigrant. Father Leeds Barman. Mother returned to Ireland and set up mobile fish and chip van in County Mayo and decided she could “Never get away to come and visit”. Joan was fourteen when she left. Dad had developed Korsikoff’s Syndrome and lived in a special unit where it’s forever the late 1950’s. [Korsikoff’s is a kind of dementia caused by alcohol. It takes away the middle memory. That’s how I think about it. He could remember most things for up to ten minutes and then generally speaking it was gone forever. He could also remember things from year ago, but that was slowly going away. Hence all the interest in Rock and Roll he had. I used to visit him all the way through my teens and we would listen to Jerry Lee Lewis records. Or the Big Bopper (aka JP Richardson). Sometimes Chuck Berry, Fats Domino or Chuck Berry. Certainly Little Richard and Johnny Cash.
It says I was at school till I was fifteen. Thats a little creative. Thirteen or maybe fourteen at the most].
All of that is true. Except for the rock and roll stars. It’s what I copied from my case notes. A social worker left them behind on my sofa. She realised and cam fifteen minutes later, but I had time to copy that down. I swore blind I had not seen the file up to that very second.
It also said that we were “a family well known to Social Services. Father alcoholic. Mother petty thief and one time prostitute. Twin elder siblings in care. Subject not aware of this”.
So I saw those notes a few days before Johnny Kidman and Cheyanne moved in next door. I was thinking how long is it going to be before they took Pateley into care. Bit of a family tradition it seemed. They moved in November 1978.
To be clear I was working on the verges of the sex trade (funny term). I was making Donald Duck movies in the flats nearby. Going up Chappletown Road, leaving Pateley unattended all that stuff. And he would have been only two then. That makes me shiver now.
I have to be straight. I liked having a good time. Going out. Leading fellers on. Weekends at the Draganora all of that. I certainly wasn’t any kind of angel. I didn’t want to lose Pateley though. Sounds a bit mundane, but sex work fitted in with my child care issues.
I was on my own because I had left Barry. He had been violent. I could see there was signs of him getting unwell. So with the help of two friends I took off.
I also shiver when I remember this was the time when the Yorkshire Ripper was going around killing women like me.
So it was a mess. And I was sort of kicking the can down the road, trying to put off Pateley getting taken off me. Thanks to Pateleys books you all know how I met Scott.
So that was the state of play in 1980.
It really took only one thing to go right for me to get out of that mess. Okay I cheated and found a fantastic man. That was verging on the impossible in my situation. You could get chaps. Even well off ones. But they were no good.
I don’t want to dwell on the big incident at the Dragonora. It takes me weeks to get over thinking about it, each time it gets discussed. But after all that. I wanted to stay with Scott but earn my own money. Margaret gave me the idea for the business, and Scott funded it. It started with a discussion one Sunday lunch time. I said to Margaret, “do you know how many Prossies are hairdressers”. That’s as far as I got. It sounded funny as hell when I said it. And we just laughed but that was the germ of the idea. I was the first one but then we made it into a system to get women off the streets by providing them with a motorbike and side car, hairdressing gear and child care. It was a side car set up to begin with because all the old lasses wanted perms, and the gear for that would not fit in an ordinary pillion box.
Anyway that was thirty seven years ago and now we have two hundred prossies on Scooters going around and giving old folk, the disabled, people in hospitals and prisons hairdressing “at home.”. The company sets them up, and the women then give me 10% for dealing with the legal and admin side. Made me a fucking fortune. But I was the first one to go mobile with the hairdressing but Scott and Margaret did the child care.
I’m not sure I would have stayed with Scott if not for that. I mean the independent work. I wanted to be with him for sure but I’ve always been around men who made you reliant. Somebody once said “Prostitution is short term marriage, and marriage is long term prostitution”. I was sort of assuming that a time would come when he would start treating me like he had bought me. I was wrong. Scott does not have it in himself to be like that. But I only knew that later.
So that’s how my life got sorted out. And now thanks to Pateley every bit of my life is famous. I’m like the Jackie Onassis of dirt poor Leeds. And I’m also a business mogul, and I have been on TV five times (and BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. I told them on air, to stop making women feel like victims. They were very nice about it really, and I’ve noticed a bit of a change to their output subsequently).
I wish I could get hold of those Social Work notes and do an update about myself. This client became a rich bitch and a global superstar. She also had a really good life. Thats a thought now. Im going to apply to Leeds Social Services for access to them notes. That would be the absolute topping.
An oldish photo of Barry
Barry:
I started out as a coal man heaving sacks of coal from a truck to peoples coal hole (as they used to call them). Then went into the army at 18. Got pushed out after about 18 months or so. They said I was psychologically unfit for military service. A friend did teach me how to play guitar so I did have something to show for those months. Spent time in Northern Ireland when things were bad with the IRA. To be honest I’d signed up for twenty years but after being around Londonderry in the 1970’s I was glad to get out.
With the guitar playing I thought I could be the new Hank Williams. And it sort of did amount to that in a scaled down. Teach a man to play a guitar and sing Hank songs and he will never be hungry.
I won’t dwell on all the stuff that went wrong between me and Joan. Everyone knows about that. Suffice to say, I regret it very much
What came out of all that business was that I have a unusual kind of Epilepsy that can produce seizures which change my brain chemicals and I end of acting like I’m Schizophrenic. Before I really got to understand that I stabbed somebody, and almost killed them. I was totally off my head. I could argue that therefore none of it was my fault but I don’t altogether believe that. Right now I measure it as being about thirty percent my fault. That goes up and down a lot.
Once I got diagnosed, and started treatment under somebody who knew what they were doing I got well really fast. But then a few weeks later I got ill again. In fact it took at least two years to get myself properly well and stable. And during all that time I had not worked. Then I got down about having an illness which meant that I was not the person that I had imagined myself to be. It wasn’t just the idea that I had a chronic illness. It was also these wonderful ideas about Hank Williams and the special meaning of things was all wrong.
I am one hundred percent certain I would not have got through all of that without the help of the man who I stabbed, Revd. Bob. He got a good lawyer sorted out for me at the trial for the stabbing. I didn’t go into a prison or a secure hospital (that judge was making an enormous leap of faith, but a lot of that was jump was faith in Bob).
Bob and me lived together for all that time and was like some kind of personal, full time angel that looked a lot like Bernard Manning. That can be scary when you are hallucinating
At first for reasons that might have been to do with the epilepsy. I found it very hard to play or be around music, but the genius of a Neurologist somehow sorted that out. So for the last thirty five and a bit years I have been a musician. Nothing big. Sue and I met up when I was playing regular sessions in a pub in Temple Bar around 1990. Got married a couple of years later. I’m step father to her children.
It was around 1990 that Bob got in touch with Joan and Scott and set up some kind of meeting. He didn’t tell me about it, because one thing you don’t want to do to somebody who has (for good reason) had to learn to live without their child, is to reignite hope and then have to dash it again. There was a lot of trust building (Scott’s term) that had to go on, but I’m happy now to be back in touch with Pateley and to have played some part in his life.
Bob and I did some work with people who were going through similar things to what I’d gone through. That was at Highroyds Hospital in Menston and at St. Jimmy’s psych unit in Leeds..
Diane carried on some of that with me when Bob died. We are looking at writing a book about all I have just written about here plus the advocacy stuff, in The New Year. I’d like to link it up with a Youtube video but these are just ideas at the moment
The nice thing is I can be in my sixties, making my living playing music and talking about such ambitions.
Last word.
“All hale country music”
The ones who did not make it to the meeting
Revd Bob
Revd. Bob Hayling
Motto “I’m Hayling nowt” Translation. “I’m ailing nothing”
Entry written by Diane. Bob died in 2000 aged 85. I knew him for the last twenty years of his life. So that was my main source. The rest of the information comes from a bit of on line research.
Born- Yeadon, near Leeds. 1915. Father, C of E vicar at St Andrews Church, Yeadon. We used to go on walks starting out from the town. Most, memorably one over the Chevin into Otley when the rain came down.
School: Guiseley Church School and Aireborough Grammar School. Both about two miles from his home.
On leaving school he spent two years in South Africa assisting with a mission school there. These were voluntary schools that provided education to mainly black children
University: Followed his hero, Revd. Geoffrey Studdert-Kennedy* (aka Woodbine Willy) and did Divinity at Dublin. Graduated. 1938. Then went onto Ripon Clergy College at Boars Hill near Oxford for a year
Hobbies: Keen amateur boxer in his teens. Knocked out by a man who subsequently became a Conscientious Objector as for a few moments the man believed that he had killed Bob
Curate: at St Mary’s. Mabgate 1939-1940. Quarry Hill in Leeds. A notoriously poor area of Leeds. Studdert-Kennedy’s father had been vicar there.
Joined army as a Curate (grade 4, i.e. bottom grade) in 1940 aged 25. Served with168th (City of London) Light Field Ambulance Crew, Present at the Normandy landings. D-Day (June 1944), Arrived D-Day + 3.
He was sited in a field hospital about one mile from the beach. Previous to Normandy he probably served with the same field hospital group in Palestine, and then North Africa. Not sure of details. Subsequent to Normandy June 1944 he followed the allied invasion all the way to Germany,
Bob was aged twenty-nine by the end of the war. He married Ida Belen Redman, daughter of Robin Redman and his wife Mia, who was half Spanish. Belen is a Spanish name meaning Bethlehem. Bob and Ida went out to work on a school mission station in South Africa, forty miles north of Pretoria. Ida taught, He was the minister. They were there twenty years. Came back to England 1965. Bob used to say he felt like a fish out of water when they first got back to England. He often talked about the years in the Northern Transvaal as being the best of his career.
Bob served at All Souls Church on Blackman Lane in Leeds. Large Victorian church. This was one of the poorest areas of Leeds known as the Leylands. The BBC broadcast their Look North programme from the Sunday school rooms up until 1973. Bob used to talk about bumping into well-known people who had got lost trying to find the studio. Bob and Ida left Leeds in 1975 or more likely early 1976.
Ida died of a brain tumour in 1978. I think Bob was very much still grieving in 1980 when I met him. She was only sixty years old when she died, and really she had not been herself for a while before that. She had shown some personality changes that Bob found hard to manage, and I suspect that may have been part of the reason they moved to Godmanchester. There might have been some kind of incident in Leeds that led to the move. She used to say things that were very unpleasant. Bob found it hard to believe it was the illness talking and not the real Ida.
Their favourite song was a thing called Ida Red, in part because of the obvious name link. It was the 1938, Woody Guthrie version not the Bob Willis 1951 they liked the best. Bob used to be very hot on that. It really is the kind of song you dance to. Swing each other around and do a wiggle back and forth. That’s how Bob described it, and that’s how I visualise Ida and him now. They had three children. Two now live in South Africa, and the third is in America. I’ve written to them about a project I’m working on (see below).
Bob and Ida had moved to Godmanchester and taken over the lovely parish church in late 1975 or early 1976. It had not been a happy place for them as Ida became obviously ill soon after they arrived in the town. And it was there that Bob first began to doubt his faith. That upset him tremendously.
As I understand things (Maybe Barry can help here) Bob first met Barry early one morning in the porch of the church at Godmanchester. Barry had slept there overnight, and Bob walked into him as he was about to do the morning service. That started a companionship that lasted twenty years until Bob died.
It’s a cliché but a true one, helping Barry get better gave Bob a sense of purpose. Bob’s faith came and went, almost by the day but it somehow got tied up in being like the hero that I’ve mentioned. Woodbine Willy.
At the start of 1981, Bob went to go and see his bishop and had a conversation which resulted him taking extended sick leave. Of course he had been injured in the Draganora incident but it was also about wanting to help Barry get back on his feet again. He was sixty five so was eligible for retirement which he eventually did give up the church.
Bob moved back up to Leeds and got involved in helping people who had a mental illness get back to a normal life. That was his natural niche as it worked out. He did that work for the rest of his life. Eventually being given an office on the site of High Royds hospital in Menston and later at the psych unit in Leeds. Highroyds was the districts main psychiatric hospital before it closed. He was known there as ‘Bob (I will cut you up) Hayling’ or just ‘Scarface’ on account of the scar across his face. Few patients or staff knew his history but there was lots of rumours about how he got the scar and they all added to his legend. He made himself a feature of the place. In a good sense.
I felt that I only really got to understood Bob when I read about Woodbine Willie, his hero. There is a lot more to his story, but here are the essentials. Google him for more info. The story is the weirdest thing.
Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy aka Woodbine Willie
*Woodbine Willie could not rest until he’d given every bloke a final smoke.”
That line is from a song by ‘The Divine Comedy’ and just about sums it up.
Essentially Studdert-Kennedy was a curate who came from Leeds. He ended up on the front line in France during the First World War. He was somebody who might be called a Christian Socialist nowadays. In any event once he joined up as a curate he became very close to the front line soldiers. He did not go to back to safe lodgings after he had done his days’ work. He stayed with the men. Sharing the same conditions. Being present in the trench as they were about to “go over the top”. I think of him as having tremedous moral courage but at the same time unable to change a light bulb for his kak handidness. At one point he was even teaching them bayonet technique. That would have been a sight to see.
His views about the rightness of the conflict changed as the war progressed.
It’s hard to put it any other way than to say he had a thing about helping wounded and dying soldiers under the most dangerous conditions, and in a seemingly odd but actually very logical way. When a soldier was wounded or dying, maybe in a shell crater out in ‘no man’s land,’ he would slither through the mud on his belly and sit or lay beside the man. Often he would offer them a cigarette. A Woodbine. He would then either drag the wounded man back if he could or stayed with him until he died.
He was awarded the Military Cross for doing something like that at Messines Ridge
Someone worked out he bought 865,000 cigarettes for sick and dying soldiers. That cost him £43,000. His children tell how that ruined the family’s finances. Of course it was some of the best money ever spent. I hope they realised that.
After the war he was vicar of a London Parish but became troublesome in regards both to his views about the war, and the poor. He moved to being a factory based priest with the Industrial Christian Fellowship He died at age 45 as a result of weak health but also overwork.
He was refused burial at by the Dean of Westminister Abbey as he was considered by the church establishment to be a Socialist. Thousands went to his funeral in the midlands and put packs of Woodbines on the coffin as a kind of gesture. The man is fast becoming something like a modern day saint in the Church of England. He already has a special day dedicated to him in the church calendar.
He was obviously a very impressive man, and it’s easy to see why Bob almost used him as a model for his own life.
Now as you might have guessed I have got a bit of a thing about Bob. He made a big impression on me at time when I was trying to work out what to do with my life. I came from a fairly privileged background. I was clever and good looking. That sounds immodest but I don’t see it that way. Those were things I was mainly born with and which were nurtured by my very expensive upbringing. Claiming credit for them would be like a tree claiming credit for having green leaves. At times I almost felt that privilege was a handicap. I wasn’t really getting any sense of direction and was scared that I would drift along and do the conventional thing. Become absolutely average for a person of my background. A couple of weeks and then a twenty year friendship with Bob changed all of that.
Barry and I are going to start a charity to work with people who have mental health problems linked up with some kind of brain injury. It sounds like there should already be something in place for that, but incredibly there is not. It will be called the Hayling Trust. There is already a Hayling Island Sailing Trust. We are going to have get around that somehow.
I will be bringing Bob Hayling masks to our weekend in Whitby. I thought we could also maybe have a Bob Hayling themed quiz as well. Or maybe brain storm fifty reasons why Bob was a great man. (Am not being serious. Much).
Margaret
Margaret
By Joan
Pateley will confirm this is true. The other day I asked him what was his first memory. He said “watching Margaret come down the stairs”. Of course I had assumed it would have been something to do with Sags, Barry, Scott or me. No, it was Margaret.
They got on really well. Margaret loved to play with him. Bit her lip and didn’t scream when Pateley bashed into her (she had very painful Rheumatoid Arthritis). She didn’t want him to feel bad.
Margaret once said something that has stuck in my mind ever since. She said “only get angry or make a fuss about the small things. When it comes to them getting into a big mess, make no fuss at all. Switch off all the drama, and just be matter of fact about it. That was her giving me parenting advice after Pateley had broken a window at her house throwing stones. I had gone Beserk, but she just put her arm around the boy.
For those who don’t know Margaret, she was one of our neighbours in the house near Becket Park, in Leeds. Me and Sagz ended up there when we made our exit from Lincoln Avenue. Margaret invited us in for a drink one night. Gin I think it was, and she told us a very sad story. She had grown up in a mill town. Wanted to marry up in the world. Met an office manager. Really nice chap on good wages. They had two kids. A boy and a girl. There was nothing wrong with that man, but she got discontented and had an affair with a Rugby League player as you do. Her husband found out. There was a very big upset and then her daughter caught Meningitis and died. The affair and the daughter dying got linked up in her mind.
She knew that was a daft idea but she couldn’t shake it off. And it really stayed with her the rest of her life. The husband died soon after the daughter. I forgot to mention that. So it really was the biggest Shxxstorm.
Margaret didn’t judge people. There was no song and dance about that. She just chose to think kindly about people. We have a choice she used to say. At first she sounded a bit wet about it all, but the dignified way she did it grew on me. And lord knows she could have chosen to have judged me. She knew my story, and there was never a scent of disapproval. She would have words if I gave Pateley a crisp sandwich instead of a proper meal. But harlotry of every type and persuasion was not worth commenting on.
Margaret became a big part of our family over the next five years or so. She stayed at home until the end. Enduring so much pain that it used to make me ill just watching her.
And finally, the idea of ‘Beauty on a Scooter’ was her idea. (See my notes). It was also her idea for Sagz to do street trading (that thought has just come into my mind).
I will be bringing an album of photos to the Whitby weekend. I want you to take a special look at her face in these pictures which were mostly taken around either of our houses or at Kirkstall Abbey. She is normally in the background or at the side but she is always looking at Pateley.
Margaret gone and very much missed.
-And the song that she asked that we play at these events
Friday 17th October 1980 The Parish Hall in Godmanchester “Together they would travel on a boat with billowed sail…”
That’s a line from Puff the Magic Dragon. The childrens song recorded by Peter, Paul and Mary.
We are used to being either awake or asleep. More or less. Barry right now was neither. If he was positioned on a ten rung ladder of wakefulness, he would be on the fifth rung. Neither awake nor asleep. In effect in a fog, where some of the objects and people were runny like treacle. No better analogy. They were a bit like treacle in the fog, but they also had the property of being there and not being there at the same time. They appeared and disappeared seamlessly. The dream world in his head was in an equal dominance to the real world outside his head. Pictures and voices swam in and out. He would try and sit up and attend but then slump back. In short, he was poleaxed. And in this foggy, treacle, indeterminate world that song …what do you call it…was in his head. It had been his favourite when he was four. The little boy Jacky Paper goes and visits a great magic green or orange dragon called Puff. They hang out together. Maybe on an Island. Anyway, it’s called Honna Lee. Pirates are scared of Puff and dip their flags. All that kind of thing. Ditto Kings and Princes. One important fucker of a dragon. He and Jacky are the best of mates. And it goes on for a long time, and then one day Jackie paper don’t come no more. And that big scary dragon is scared and sad and goes off to his cave. A very unhappy dragon. He, Barry used to cry and that so much might have cheated on the last verse sometimes. Then his brain swims across to Teddy Bears Picnic. That was some scary shit.
And that’s where Barry had been these last few days. Not psychotic, just watching the pictures go by in a heavily medicated world. Now and again he felt he ought to be worried. Time was slow or fast. People were walking in and out. Things happened but twice remove. And his body felt weird. Like a tinny robot that needed WD40. Muscles ached as well. And he spoke like ‘Bill and Ben’, The Flowerpot Men. Phalidalump! The words didn’t get from his brain to his mouth properly and then they got all mashed up in there.
He tried to count the people who had been to see him. They divided up between old men and a young woman.
She handled him like life-sized a doll but was nice. Talked all the time. Didn’t really know what she was saying but it felt nice. She didn’t worry him at all. The men were different. One he sort of knew but the other two (or was it one) was a funny looking bugger. Made him think about ‘Up Pompeii’, that TV show about the whatsit people, soldiers, Romans, Frankie Howard.
But today was a bit clearer. And he needed to get out of here. The next time Diane came in with his tablets, Barry dropped them under his tongue, and she didn’t know to check. When she turned her back he spits them out and put them under the pillow. “You’re looking a lot better today,” she said. “Progress is being made. Dr Mason said he would call in later”. Friday 17th October 1980 Scott (“Oh what a name)” Wiggins Meanwood Park Hospital. Tongue Lane. Leeds. 2pm
Scott had never had much to do with ‘mental people’. That is properly mental people. Okay, his mum got depressed and was full of crazy ideas from the JW’s. While most folk read the Sun or the Mirror, Scott’s mum got all the news she needed to know from The Watch Tower. Or that was what she said. That was crazy but not mad. The only mad person he had really known was Barry, and that had all been more or less second hand or, when dressed as a fake knight, in the two minutes he marched him to the taxi. Despite all that lack of knowledge and preparedness, here he was parked outside the first building on the left on the driveway into Meanwood Park Hospital, which as far as he knew was a mental hospital. He was waiting to see somebody and this meeting, he expected would lead to spending the rest of his life taking care of mental people. Well, he had known bugger all about carpets when he started up, this can’t be so different.
He had been told to wait in his car, just there and Alan would come out and find him. This was the Nurses Home but around the back apparently was the School of Nursing and that’s where they would be heading. He wondered if they would show him round the hospital. It looked rather grim. Why was there no people to be seen?
That institutional grimness was all laid out in front of him in two big circles, set side by side with a large stone building in-between that looked like a left over from a country estate. The whole site looked like a butterfly with a big black head and red wings. The house was the head and the wings he supposed were the wards, or Villa’s as they seemed to be called. He had surmised that from a blue sign in front of him listing them all. 1-17 (and an 8a) and one named ward, Alexandra Wilson Villa. Then there was the various departments. Kitchen, Maintenance. Industrial Therapy, League of Friends. The Mansion (administration, visitors and admissions)
One of the wards at Meanwood Park Hospital
It was then that he heard a rising whinnying sound, coming from an open window at the side of the building on the first floor. The car window was down as he was smoking. The sound rose step fashion, became ever more urgent. “Awwah-wawwah, awwah-wawwah, awwah-wawwah, and then there was a god almighty scream…aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh”.
At that moment a tall man, with loose curly hair flounced toward him. “Don’t worry, that’s only Florence the Meanwood Park Screamer. Real name Francesca. That’s her room, she is a student nurse. Her chap works in the kitchen. You will see him walk past in a moment. You can tell him by his buck teeth and his chef’s whites. They are regular flyers, regular as clockwork, tween 1.45-2pm, every weekday. Bit longer on a weekend. . Look, the bedroom window’s wide open for the world to hear as well. I just think they are showing off. They think it’s the bloody sex Olympics. Hello, I’m Michael. Are you the man about the plants?” Scott, a little overwhelmed and confused said “no I’m here for big toe through, eeeeerrrr bugger-sod, interview. Job interview. I might be a nurse.” Michael smiled broadly and made a single finger pointing sign at the side of his own head, “Sozz”. They’re drooping, and the leaf edges are dying back. I don’t know why and nothing helps. A friend of a friend is supposed to be coming over to help me. He’s a house plant specialist, and used to know Sandy Shore, you know the singer. Does all her indoors. Can you imagine? Don’t worry about the interview. You will get in. Everyone gets in”.
Then, just as it turned 2pm an unhealthily, thin looking middle aged man with glasses came around the corner of the triple storey building, clocked him in the car, and did a little detour. Scott wondered how the chap had known it was him. They exchanged greetings and Scott walked in step with him back the way he had come. Scott turned slightly and gave Michael a little wave in lieu of saying bye. Alan, the nurse tutor and Scott walked across the grass, and then at the back of the building they came to two doors. A feel of heat and the smell of food wafted across. The furthest door had a neat blue and white rectangular sign saying ‘Kitchen’ and the nearer a similar sign that announced that it was the door to ‘Leeds (East) School of Nursing, Meanwood Park Hospital. They walk through that one and then went upstairs. Alan said “I suppose you heard the screaming. It’s all put on you know. Must be”.
Francesca’s room was on the first floor nearest the central drainpipe. Lesbians and Bisexuals were on the ground floor. Male nurses of all orientations on the top floor.
The place was bigger inside than it had looked from out on the grass, but still the floor space was less than Scott’s showroom. Much less. A dark haired man who reminded Scott of a beetle walked by, carrying a motorbike crash helmet. Scott noted that his tutor and this chap did not acknowledge each other. Alan and he got some tea off a set up on a tray and then went into an untidy office. Alan explained that he was the senior tutor for the Subnormality Nursing part of the school. The chap with the helmet was Charlie, the senior tutor for the mental nurses and the overall boss of the whole school. He didn’t say they had both wanted Scott, but that he, Alan was faster off the mark. He didn’t know though that Charlie would have been out there in the car park as well, but had knocked over his pen stand and stopped to pick it up, and then got side-tracked into tidying his desk. The desire for the symmetrical had caused further delay. And that was how Scott became a Subnormality Nurse rather than a Mental Nurse. Alan could live without ‘symetricallity’ and so got there first.
Half an hour later, Scott came out of Alan’s office. He had two things. A job as a nursing assistant at this hospital starting Monday, and the start date for his nurse training, Monday the 24th August 1981. Simple as that.
They gave Scott an ‘Order of the British Empire’ when he retired in 2017. ‘Service to Learning Disability Nursing’ was the tag. That’s true. The name for the job kept changing but essentially it was the same one he started training for that next summer. but there was a lot of changes to come. He had felt a little uneasy about the empire bit, but he took the medal, and him and his wife enjoyed the ceremony. The fuss. A bit like being a rock star.
Thursday, 18th October 2018
I might enjoy travel, but it makes me anxious. The reasons are easy to recognise. I’m’ operating outside of my normal grid; off-grid in actuality. It might be possible to write these blogs from the perspective of that feeling. Maybe call it, “How did Mr Anxious get on today?” Well I did that, today would have been like this (but in list form for the sake of brevity)
1- A tyre will burst and I won’t have the ability to change it. Ditto any kind of other car failure. Listening and feeling for such things all the time.
2- Money won’t come into my account as it is scheduled to do so. So no money or delayed money. Either is a disaster. Literally sometimes. If there is a toll to get under a mountain and I don’t have the money, the barriers mean I can’t turn around so I’m stuck. I’m operating on the shoestring budget, where there is zero scope to cope with unexpected expenses. Maybe fat, arthritic, sixty one year old men should not be operating like this. Taking unnecessary risks about small things. I’m hoping that unplanned expenses don’t occur. They feel like bombs dropping, and I have to dodge them.
3- I’m supposed to be getting back to Diss in time for the preview Santa gig. Probably not going to be able to do that, although I will of course be there for the main ones. Need to find the back bone to write that email.
4- Getting ill is a constant threat, and not only major stuff. Heart attack, stroke, Smallpox. In some ways they would be ‘anxiety relieving’, because they stop the game entirely. Everything that is worrying is taken out of my hands and given to full qualified medical professionals, and my daughters (okay I don’t like the daughters being involved). No its not major illness, its anything short of that, which prevents me from driving. I’m self-medicating like a fully-fledged hypochondriac. Any abnormal signal from my body gets hit with one of three kinds of over the counter medication. Surprisingly my arthritis has been a lot better than it was when I was home. Using a five by two sofa cushion for a bed or not, my bones and joints are behaving.
5- There is the whole big existential angst thing. The global anxiety about everything, but that’s there all the time so is it in or out of this list. I will include just for sake of completeness. Tidy.
Day spent pleasantly mooching about, as far as I can remember. Other info missing from fb post.
I looked at this post later, and shocked myself. I had not thought about the upcoming murder (certain /potential) murder. That’s a fairly big thing to be anxious about. Okay, I would never have mentioned it in a Facebook post, but why was it not on my mind. “Crazy crazy none-thinking”. Either it didn’t feel real (when of course it should do) or Joan’s bluster had somehow reassured a part of my brain that should not be so gullible.
Just the normal universal angst
Saturday 18th October 1980 5pm Causeway Godmanchester
The rather upmarket fish shop in Godmanchester
Revd. Bob called into the fish shop, the one next to the pub, and across from the river. No one made fish and chips around here like they did in the West Riding of Yorkshire, buts this places output was probably the best for miles around. For someone who looked as chunky as Bernard Manning, he should not really be buying fish and chips but it was his regular Saturday treat. A kind of reward in advance for carrying out his Sunday duties. The mechanics of the Sunday services were not a chore. The ritual and the show side of the service he actually loved. He was good at sermons. He could do gravitas one second and be ‘down with the dudes’ the next. He just said that to make himself smile. He could do neither really. A bit of self-parody. He did it a lot these days. Mostly only in his head, but now and again out in the open for everyone to witness. That’s one of the big crossroads of getting old. Some folk get pompous and self-important, and others lose all of that. Stop caring about being important, or even good at things. Wasn’t significant to them anymore. So of course he was never ‘down with the dudes’. How silly would that look? He was just his bumbling self. And people seemed to let him be like that, so he and the world got on in that respect. And actually very well. The ‘other’ became more important than oneself, especially if they were younger or poorer or ill or less well educated. He could boast, he has seen and done a lot, but he took pleasure in omitting to do so.
Ritual and process fine in a homely, bumbling way. The hard part was believing what he said and did.
And that would be fine, or at least less crucial if he was a postmaster or worked in the library. There you didn’t have to believe that you were serving God. Maybe the old chap in the library did think he was serving God in his own way, but it was not the number one Performance Indicator in his job specification. Bob drifted off and imagined an appraisal interview with the Angel Gabriel, but then slapped himself. Was all this lack of focus, and facile silliness the sign of a brain tumour? He wanted to be serious in his actions and believe wholly again, but it was like pushing the proverbial rock up the proverbial hill.
Bottom line he was having one of his days where he did not believe in God, and they were tough because his whole life had been built on the premise of serving God. And these thoughts tended to come to the fore on a Saturday because that day comes before Sunday when he had to get up and say what he believed. It came in the most beautiful English. He wasn’t required by church practice to say it at every service but for the last years, he had made himself speak the words each and every week.
The Apostles Creed-
“I believe in God, the father
The almighty; creator of Heaven and Earth…”
If he could get past those two lines, without his mouth turning to sand his spirit was quiet.
On a bad week he had to keep giving all the time like some manic giver. And that’s why he was in the fish shop. Barry and Diane would like a fish and chip supper, and Barry likes curry on his chips. Don’t judge.
“It’s the giving that makes us what we are”. Bit like Woodbine Willie
Back at the Parish Hall he was surprised how wide awake Barry looked. The Zombie Barry had gone and been replaced by something like the Barry he knew. Maybe Dr Mason did know what he was doing after all. Bob had felt a little dispirited after Mason’s visit the previous night. He and Diane had tried to fill him in on all their concerns, Barry’s Zombie state, the problems in getting him to eat (to chew even) and drink, and all the other worrying things, but he just said, “fine” and “Jolly good” and “it’s to be expected”, and then invited Bob to a special showing of the film Spartacus at the Roman Society meeting on Downing Street in Cambridge, at the museum.
The doctor’s whole demeanour changed as he explained the attraction to Bob, “the ‘traddys,’ as we call them go on about all the factual errors. They try and make it into a kind of inquisition but the rest of us have a laugh. Picking out favourite lines. Pissing ourselves “I’m Spartacus, no I’m Spartacus”, no you brigand, “I’m Spartacus”. God I sit there, tears rolling down my legs. Bob begs off claiming he wants to give Diana a break for the evening.
As Dr Mason went out the door, Diane whispered the words “Stupid tosser” under her breath and smiled at the reverend. Then felt the need to explain. “My dad’s his brother, but nothing like him. We are the same family but my father would be horrified, at his brother’s crassness”. Bob nodded in acknowledgement.
Bob turned to Barry and put on his best mock Leeds accent. “Hey-up lad, how’s tha doing. You look to be mending”. The humour just flew over Barry’s head, he just said “yes I’m feeling a lot better today, I feel like I’ve been out of it for days. My legs are feeling a bit shaky. Is that me cured then?
The vicar forgot that people don’t know that some mental illnesses are forever…or at least they are a companion for life, and you had to learn how to get on with the thing and manage it. That applied to psychosis every bit as much as some kinds of Depression or very serious anxiety problems. Barry was thinking the ‘it’ that he had could be cured in much the same way as taking antibiotics for a chest infection. Nope, Bob thought, “that’s not going to happen, not in this lifetime”.
“There’s a bit more Barry, you have to talk to the specialist doctor and see what comes next. We will get that sorted next week hopefully”. Let’s crack on before this stuff gets cold. Cod, chips and curry sauce for you Bazzer, here’s yours Diane, let’s enjoy our treat”.
Barry wondered why Bob had called him ‘Bazzer’, that wasn’t his name and he had never said it before. Something was going on.
Saturday 18th October Kirkstall Abbey Joan. Pateley, Scott, Margaret and Sagz 11am
It had taken sometime for everyone to get organised, and were running an hour late, but they had got here. All considered that was an achievement. Pateley at one end of the age scale and Margaret at the other.
Her wheelchair had only just fitted in the boot. A lesser car would not have been sufficient. Pateley sat between his mum and Auntie Sagz on the back seat. They had started calling the car, ‘Puff the Dragon Car’ after the song, and Scott said he, Pateley was ‘Jackie Paper’, the clever boy in that song.
Pateley liked the story apart from the last bit that made him sad, but they now always changed that bit and made the fall out into a happy make up again where the dragon and the boy used to go on boating trips until they were very old people. He wasn’t fooled but he let Scott be nice. Lots of things were getting nicer. Mum was around more now and she had all these friends. She didn’t go out at night without him, and she was much more happy and smelled nice of special soap that cost a lot of money. She still shouted but it didn’t scare him so much. And there was lots of funny things now. He missed his old house, and he still wanted someone to play with but the new house had a big garden at the back, and Scott had got him a pedal car, He had to be pushed as the pedals were still too far away. The car was red and shiny. Scott had got him a dragon transfer, and put it on the front of the car. It was a green dragon not an orange dragon like in the book
The riverside path near Kirkstall Abbey
Today they were out for a picnic. That’s where you put food in a box and take it with you and go somewhere nice. The old lady was in a chair with wheels on, and Uncle Scott was pushing her. They were next to a big, broken building called Abby. A bad king had pulled some of it down and the people who had lived there had to find somewhere else to live. The stone was very black and tall up-to the sky.
There was a hard path and there was grass. He had his sandals on and wanted to walk in the grass which was very green and tickled his toes in a nice way. Mum said “watch out for the dog dirt”. Today was sunny but still a little bit cold and he had to keep his Leeds United football jersey on. Scott wanted to do races. Run to that big stone and back. He could see Scott was not trying his bestest. Then he ran on his own without his sandals on. There was a lot of nice trees and leaves. He wanted to kick the leaves but mum said there was worms in them and he might squash them.
He was hoping there was jam sandwiches. Auntie Sagz sang a song about them, and he had been learning it-
“There is a happy land farm, far away,
Where they eat jam and bread, three times a day”
She said it was a church song but children sometimes sang it like that. So he sang that for a while and Sagz helped him. An old man, walking by said he knew that song and he, Pateley was singing it very nicely. And it had made his day to hear it.
Sagz was carrying some flowers for the old lady. She was going to put them somewhere because she had liked someone very much. Pateley and his big family walked on.
Kirkstall Abbey in early March 2019
The tarmac path that ran alongside the ruins of the Cistercian Abbey curled around to the right, and then followed the River Aire, in the up-stream direction. Margaret had not been down here in so many years. Lots of things had changed. She could not remember how far the Canoe club was, and anyway in those days she was a young woman who used to run down here, on her way to see her fancy chap. All the quicker to have more time with him.
The River Aire near Kirkstall Abbey.
Pateley stopped singing when he saw the river. He had never seen one before. Mum had said there was a river, and that was a lot of water, but he had thought it would be like a big bath. He had seen the big sea when they had a holiday but she had said rivers were littler. It had yellow snow on top even though it was not snowing on the grass.
They walked for a long time on the path. Sagz held his hand. She said the river had come a long way from the big hills and was going all the way downhill to the sea. She said there was sometimes fish in rivers but not always. They looked and couldn’t see any.
The old boathouse by the river.
After a long time they came to a broken down looking a little wooden house with a flag on top with some people in a little boat. Its smelled wet leafy. Sagz said they were going to have their picnic dinner there. Sagz was nice but he wanted to see mummy as well. People were looking funny. The old lady was crying. Pateley wanted his dinner, but Sagz said he had to wait a few minutes, and maybe they might be having it on one of the tables near Abbey the Abbey instead now. Pateley had decided an ‘Abby’ could be a person or an old building, There was a little girl called Abbey whose mummy was friends with his mummy.
Mummy and Scott lifted up the old lady by her arms and helped her walk. It was only a little way but it took her a long time. Mummy had got her some running shoes. Trainers. They looked funny on the old women’s splotchy legs. The lady looked like she was hurting a lot. Auntie Sagz was holding the flowers now and she gave them to the old lady who put them on different parts of the seat, all over. And she was kissing them. She said, “Here you are ‘Bernie Hot’”. Pateley pondered how could flowers be ‘burny hot’. That’s what soup was, burny hot
Saturday evening. 18th October Scott’s House
Beckets Park Crescent Headingly 8pm
Pateley is in bed. They had just taken Margaret home whilst she could still stand. The rest are set around, supping Lambs Navy rum. It was Scott’s new fave.
Margaret had got some details from her niece about the wholesaler in Leeds who sold cheap kids toys. She had also explained that you had to have a thing called a Pedlars Licence. Now of course Margaret knew nothing about this certificate. It came from Victorian times but its routes probably went further back. Maybe to the highways, byways and narrow streets of Tudor England. Street and travelling pedlars, were somewhere between the second and fourth oldest job in the world. And Sagz (with the occasional help of Joan) was about to join this detested fraternity. “Move on”, were the most common words she would hear from coppers. For now though her view of the trade was a little idyllic.
The right to work as a pedlar, came with certain historical leftovers. You were supposed to travel with a beast of burden, such as an ass (and many of us have been moved on by laughing coppers for want of an ass).Your goods were not allowed to touch the ground. If they did the police could arrest you (and confiscate your stock). Such pedlars are not the same as Hawkers and Barkers. The former often plied their trade on behalf of someone else and were mainly pushing out a single item or street food. Barkers pitched to a crowd, sometimes with an assistant. Pedlars were on a higher perch in this mid-19th century menagerie.
Sagz’s Pedlars Certificate would have looked something like this. The format change very little in the 20th century.
Your narrator was once a pedlar, as was his father. I remember it fondly. Sagz though was entering the profession in the very last years of its existence, before complaining rate payers, municipal Byelaws and corporate ownership of shopping precincts drove us out. My children now know nothing of the things which dominated my early life. It’s absolutely incompressible to them although through inheritances from their grandfather they have been beneficiaries. Although this pedlar’s world was about to die that does not mean that it did not provide a step up for thousands in its last years. In a sense though Sagz was about to step onto the last ever ‘bus’. I have stories but this is not the place.
In the absence of a ‘Beast of Burden’ , Margaret told of how the niece’s husband hung a sturdy cardboard box around his neck using a kind of expensive, thick, smooth string that didn’t cut into ones shoulder or the back of neck… too much.
The box could rather cleverly be turned into a kind of shop window with the aid of a turnip or large potatoes and a bundle of canes. The cane bundle was strapped into one corner of the box. Three canes were then drawn out to form a tripod. They were each pushed into the vegetable equidistantly. That was in effect became a kind of shelf. Then toys were tied individually to single canes which were then pushed into the vegetable, and dangled like fish on a line. The assemblage was called a flash, and your takings a bunce. The flash caught the attention of passers-by. Even more if it was colourful and more again if you barked out what you had and said what it cost.
Sagz asked “did the niece tell you all of that?” The old woman laughed and said “yes and no”. The woman had reminded her, but she had also seen the man working outside Roundhay Park in the summer one year. Also outside Kirkgate market in town. “It was an extraordinary arrangement but it did the job”, She produced a pencil drawing that she got from memory. “It’s the secret of his success. Effective, cheap and disposable”.
Margaret went on. “The wholesaler is called Greenbaum. He was an old Jew who came over from maybe Lithuania or somewhere before the first war, Has had a place since the 1930’s. He won’t trust strangers just turning up but if you say Mr Rollo sent you, and that you’re sort of related, but just starting up. Doing the same in Leeds as Rollo does mostly in Bradford. If Greenbaum still queries it get him to phone my Niece’s husband in Guiseley, Here is the number, 01943 876755. There was a red circle drawn around it. If you pay cash and don’t need a receipt, then you don’t pay VAT, and that saves you a lot”.
This photo predates Sag’s visit to Greenbaums by many decades but the scene was much the same in 1980. The steps down to the underground warehouse are just out of sight at the left of this picture
“The warehouse is hard to find though. Here’s a street map. X marks the spot, but it’s only a gate, you go through and down a lot of steps and you come out into a room half the size of a football pitch. Massive. It’s like the 1930’s down there, but Greenbaum is a good chap and will treat you right once you get his trust” All you have to do then is chose a spot, and get started. If the police in Leeds give you a hard time, which they might do, try one of the smaller towns. Dewsbury, Morley, maybe Halifax or Harrogate. Stand outside empty shops or in front of the markets. Avoid pedestrian precincts; they are owned by private companies who employ security staff to patrol them”.
Margaret had some advice about the events in the warmer months. “There is a tourist type book in the library that lists the dates of everything, starting with the Gawthorpe Coal Carrying Competition at Easter. Write them all down and then buy the Yorkshire Post on the day to confirm details. They have their “what’s occurring page”. They had been well briefed by Margaret. They knew what to do.
.
Day 32 Friday 19th October Jerusalem to Diss Miles 3760 Weather. Just none stop hot Diss to Jerusalem: Tune of the day- Anchored in you. Shawn Mullins
Today’s plan. Ferry boat to Ancona in Italy. See map. There has been a bit of back and forward about this decision. Should I go further north and cross from Durres in Albania to Bari in Italy. Bari is at the top end of the heel of Italy. That’s the far south of the country which I have always wanted to see. That’s Option 1, and it gives me a chance to see southern Albania and almost the whole stretch of Italy’s Eastern seaboard.
Otherwise I could stay in the Balkans and continue to the north of Albania, then further into the Balkans as a far as Croatia and Slovenia before going over the top of Italy into Western Europe. A couple of countries enroot are rated as dodgy by the British Foreign office, but that would have been Option 2. One never considered seriously. Option 3 is where I am now; physically and in terms of the choices.
The overnight ferry trip to Ancona
It’s Igoumensita in Greece to Ancona half way up Italy’s coast. There are three choice determinants, and in reverse order of importance they are risk, staying within the EU and keeping its benefits, time and running out of money. Okay that’s four, but the last one trumps all the others. The long jump up the Adriatic to Ancona will save me a lot of money. And it’s far from clear if I will get home, without asking for help if I don’t do this. Those were two headache making paragraphs, but nothing to the pain of the reality. There was a lot I wanted to see that I was going to miss out on, but I have to get home before my money runs out.
So Italy today, and then onwards across France. I’m about 1,400 miles from home
The reality of this kind of travelling is that the longer you are on the road the more it becomes about the logistics of the journey. The things you want to see are all there, but most time and energy is taken up with this change in your life. Being… ‘in motion’. Each day, and most of it, you are ‘In Motion’. And that’s more than the words might seem to suggest. It’s a way of living. Always in motion. Moving across the earth. And I like it Jerusalem to Diss. Tune of the day. Anchored in you. Shawn Mullins.
Onwards….
Pics and updates as the day goes on.
Desperate for a shower today. It has been a week (although I take a standing wash every day, in whatever odd place I can find privacy). I’m parked up on this causeway of land, maybe call it a sand spit with a solid middle, which sticks out into the sea. The further I drive out the more abandoned and derelict the beach huts and facilities look. There are beach showers ever four hundred metres but I try six and none of them work. So I drove to the very end of the land looking out for anything which would drop clean water over me, and also serve as a spot to do my laundry. These views are wonderful. To my right there are tidal wetlands, all sun baked, languid trees and salt water grasses, and on my left the open bay all around to a rocky headland opposite. The town in the middle. I keep on driving at around 10mph and loving it all with my tunes on.
My laundry hanging out to dry
At last, just before a steep sided enclosed ring of land; which might at some time been a quarry at one time, I found a beach shower that worked, or rather a heavy hose emerging out of the sand, that had once been connected to a beach shower stand. I was so yearning for a shower that the wasps nest under the duck board didn’t put me off. Hundreds of the beggars flying back and forth around me. There was limited give on the hose so I found the trick was to keep my body moving around it. So naked on a remote beach, showering under hose pipe arrangement, dancing around to avoid the flights of bees whilst keeping the weak water jet running over my body. All the while my eyes on the little up road. No plan what to do if a car did appear. Water cold but hey, this was luxury.
Put on my khaki walking shorts and a top (the sand needed to dry and fall off me). Then set about doing some hand washing in a plastic bowel using squeezy. I’m out of laundry liquid, and can’t risk spending money on it, in case I get short up ahead. As Che’ Guevara used to say…”the plan is to improvise”. Did just two days’ worth and hung it out to dry on suitable bits of the car.
Then I got in the car and snoozed. That was my last day in Igoumensita, and Greece, and it was to become a good memory. Snoozing under the shady trees 23.30. On board the ferry to Ancona in Italy. The loading process felt crazy. The crew were shouting and waving their arms about. No clear reason, just hysterical like. Drivers crying. Very odd. I got a meal from the restaurant. Cost an astronomical amount. Shocked. Has left me even more short of money. The food was rubbish as well. Swimming in grease.
Sunday 19th October 1980 Godmanchester Parish Hall 6pm
Diane was helping Barry with his tea when it happened. Revd. Bob was doing Evensong. A cold meal is traditional on a Sunday evening. Ham, pork pie, some nice cheese. Tinned pears and ice cream. Diane observed he was eating nicely. On paper she and Barry had little in common. A young woman from a well off family on the fast track to becoming a barrister, and a Leeds lad from Hunslet, where the pigeons fly backward to keep the muck out of their eyes. That was the oldest joke ever, but still funny and Diane had not heard it before. Well you wouldn’t in Huntingdonshire or Cambridge.
You can divide up the human population in many ways, the one relevant here was that Diane was possessed of curiosity. Some like her have it, and others don’t. If you dropped Diane down in the Sarah desert, in two days she would be an expert on all things Sahara. She had been getting Barry to tell his life story. It had been a little like pulling teeth when they spoke about Hunslet, but once they got to his service in Northern Ireland, he came alive. Whilst she had been doing her ‘O’ Levels he had been lying face down in dog muck, terrified witless and waiting for a bullet to blow the top of his head off. More categories. Another observation. You can divide the children of rich people into three groups. Those who feel guilty and are always finding ways… overt, and covert to apologise for their privilege, those who don’t give a toss and are deaf and blind to such things, and those who do care, are interested but don’t apologise. Diane was one of the latter. They are the only ones who feel like proper grownup to people like me.
She wanted to know all about Barry’s time in the army from the day he signed up until he was medically disabled out. They had been talking for days, in little half an hour slots when she called in between her house keeping responsibilities.
The young woman stayed a bit longer tonight as Barry was talking about dealing with the aftermath of a car bombing, and it would have been wrong to break off. It was just as well she had stayed because it was in the time where she would have normally left, that he started feeling funny in the head, and then almost immediately gone into a full blown seizure. Diane had never seen an epileptic fit before but recognised it for what it was from a first aid course she had done in the girl guides. This one went on longer though, Barry’s face was ‘slaty’ blue. Fits do that, ie cause cyanosis but there was also food trapped in his mouth and he was in danger of choking. Diane waited for a lull in the convulsions, grabbed Barry’s far shoulder and rolled his body toward her. It took all of her strength. She knew not to put her fingers in his mouth but placed a rolled up pillow just below his ribs, and then sat on his back. A partially chewed sausage roll, propelled by the expelled air from his trachea shot out and hit the floor. His colour improved immediately but then he started fitting again.
Fortuitously there was a phone extension in the hall. She, plugged the phone cable it into the little socket, and then phoned her uncle, Dr Mason, but he just said ring 999. He didn’t say if he would be coming out.
Barry fitted on and off for the next ten minutes until the ambulance arrived. The man looked God awful and she was convinced he was going to die. The paramedics were brilliant. They knew instantly what the problem was and gave Barry an intravenous injection of a drugs to suppress the convulsion. They noted the semi chewed sausage roll at their feet, and asked Diane how it had got there. She said that she jumped on his back to get it out of his throat. The paramedics laughed and said, “Well you saved him from death by sausage roll”.
Diane didn’t want to disturb Revd. Bob’s Evensong so instead wrote a note and pinned it to the Rectory door.
“Barry ill. Have gone to Huntingdon County Hospital. See you there”.
That’s where they went, A&E at Huntingdon County on Brampton Road. The doctors there asked questions about Barry’s medical history leading up to “ Had he ever had a seizure before”. Barry’s answer was “no”, and that made the situation more serious than it first appeared. People generally don’t just have a seizure for the first time in their twenties unless something else was going on. Diane only knew a little about the scooter crash, and that she had been told that he had been behaving oddly over the last few months. Having odd ideas. Being paranoid etc. The doctors were incredulous and angry when she said that her GP uncle had agreed to treat Barry in the parish hall. She had been mindful enough to bring Barry’s drugs with her, and on seeing the Haloperidol one doctor turned to the other and said the words “epileptic threshold”. Diane in her ‘not shy at coming forward’ kind of way; asked “what’s epileptic threshold? Has that caused the fits?” The senior doctor spoke succinctly “we all have the potential to have seizures, Barry’s potential is much higher than most peoples because of his head injury, and taking Haloperidol, or possibly taking it and then stopping it would make a seizure more likely. Any competent doctor would know that”. Diane felt a sensation like a heavy stone dropping in her stomach after hearing those last few words.
The plan was to put Barry on an intravenous drip of the same drug that the paramedics had given him at the parish hall, and then when he was stable, transfer him to the Neurology Department at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, That would probably be in the morning. Bang, Barry’s feet kicked the end of the bed. Everyone turned. He was into another fit. God knows how many there had been that night. A nurse and a junior doctor stepped into help. The senior doctor added. “These repeated seizures, we call it ‘status epilepticus’, they can put a massive strain on the patient’s heart and potentially cause a cardiac arrest, We need to handle this very carefully. Who was the GP who agreed to treat Barry in the hall, we nee to get a baseline medical exam?” Diane had to push the words out “Dr Mason, at Godmanchester. My uncle”. She noted the look on the older doctor’s face, when he heard the information. It was like someone looks when they hear that the last train of the day has been cancelled.
Diane asked to sit with him all night. She explained that Barry was very mistrustful and took a dislike to strangers based on no good reason at all. Things would go better if she, as a familiar face stayed there. It would be safer. The doctor acknowledged her point and agreed. The nurses were only too happy for someone else to take the risks.
Bob arrived in full kit, having come straight from Evensong. His face looked blank white. He had a pack of twenty woodbines in his hand. He addressed Barry. I don’t suppose you nor I, can smoke in this place. Oh bugger! Sunday 19th October 1980 11am Hyman Greenbaum’s Toys and Fancy Goods. Wholesaler Between Leeds market and Leeds Bridge
Scott, Joan, and Sagz plus Pateley were there on the pavement in front of the sign. Joan was giggling. I thought the Hyman was what got broke when you lost your virginity? Sagz giggled, that’s your Hymen, H-y-m-e-n you stupid Trollope. That what they had taken to calling Joan recently. Joan d’ Trollope. Like Joan d’ Arc, It had been Joan d’ Arcroyd to begin with, then Scott had called her a trollop after a remark she had made about Mick Jagger, so it became Joan d’ Trollop. They would have to start keeping notes about all these name changes.
They didn’t want to go into the wholesalers and spend too much. Scott had his wallet with him, and it was looking chunky but he wasn’t going to throw his money about, “The whole project might come to nought so we have to take it steady”. They had made a list. The helpful comments are mine, your narrator.
1- Union flags one gross (that’s a 144, Scott reminded them) 2- Windmills. Four dozen 3- Balloons. One large bag. Balloon are complex, they come in bags of two hundreds and at any given time there are at least twenty varieties to choose from ranging from those with old redundant advertising slogans, right the way up to the six foot long Caterpillar balloons with faces and erupting tentacles, and then there was the grey silvery flying Zeppelins but you needed gas for them, and that was heavy to carry around. 4- Inflatables, plastic, mixed. Three dozen. They were recommended by name. Big seller, big profit margin. You had to have a product for each age and price spread. Inflatables allowed you to address the better off two year old demographic. 5– Returning balls. (Ball on an elastic string). One gross. These got you access to the 5-10 years group, with mums who were almost skint. They were cheap and cheerful and if you weren’t too rough, lasted at least ten minutes. 6- Jumping frogs. These were lovely plastic moulded frogs stacked up on a sucker and a spring. You pushed down and the sucker holding the frog stayed in place on its compressed spring. Then, under the pressure of the said spring the sucker peeled off, and in one instant sent the frog into some poor kids face. A bit like a firework might. These jumping amphibians were for the 7-10 year old semi feral delinquents, especially those with younger sibs.
List in hand, minus my notations they set off down the narrow, flagstone steps which Dickens might have glanced upon if he had every walked that way (which he hadn’t). The flags were worn smooth, one might easily slip and fall in the wet. Sagz said to herself Lord knows how they would be in the ice and snow. Pateley jumped feet together down each. At the bottom of the steps they were faced with an open black metal concertina gate and a sturdy wooden door. Beyond them was a poorly lit corridor; no more than five yards long with ancient marketing fliers stuck to the wall with Sellotape. . At the end was a less sturdy door which gave then the same information as the sign outside, but on a yellowing paper, baring stencilled letters. Tentatively opening that door they came into a great long room with a low ceiling, lined on every side with metal shelving stacked to the ceiling with toys, mostly in boxes with Chinese lettering. A smaller section was designated for ‘Fancy Goods’. Some called it the great unknowable
The place was lit by spread of lightbulbs unequal to the task. The walls at either side were barely visible. Five feet above their heads was a main road, but this room was as silent at a catacomb. At the far end was a long wooden counter and a short balding man wearing unbuttoned brown overalls over an old suit. He had been standing there five days a week since 1935. He bawled out “Hello, who are you, we only sell to trade”.
Sagz stepped forwards and said “good morning Mr Greenbaum, My name is Sagz. Mr Rollo sent me”. And that’s how her career in retail began (which in time led to her own chain of shops, Sagz & Co, She was wiped out by the internet in 2017, but nothing lasts forever and by then she was ready to retire with her cat called ‘Co’ and a husband with the surname Sumoor or something like that).
Saturday 20th October 2019 Day 33 Jerusalem to Diss Weather 20c. I’m several hundred miles further north, so cooler, just of itself Song– ‘Talk to me of Mendocino’. Kate and Anna McGarrigle. (My head full of ghosts).
Each afternoon around three or four I start thinking of where to pull over and park up for night.
I aim for small towns or large villages. Places which will have some basic infrastructure but are large enough to feel slightly impersonal. In small villages you’re everyone’s business. And there will always be somebody who will not approve. There is a lot more factors that influence this choice. Access to water, some privacy, avoid isolated spots…there’s a science. I should write a paper on it.
Sometimes though it’s just a matter of something catching your eye. Decades ago someone gave me a record from their car boot stall. It was by two women called the McGarrigle sisters. It turned out a lucky find because there was half a dozen great songs on it. One in particular got stuck in my head but it’s been years, so I forgot about it. Then today on the highway for I saw a sign for this town, Montemarciano.
The name is not the same as the song but similar enough. So I came here. Then I couldn’t remember either the name of the song or the singer! Half an hour on YouTube and I’ve found it (see tune of the day. ‘Talk to me of Mendocino’. See, nothing alike really).
I parked near this spot in Montemarciano
But it was serendipity again because this place is on a lovely coastal highway, SS16…a lot nicer than the monster turnpike. Okay it has some tatty property development to the landward side, but the sea view is good. So that was good luck! Tomorrow I will continue on this better road for a while. Am heading for Rimini, which I’m told is a classy Italian resort, and one where the Italians go.
I travelled overnight on the ferry to Ancona. That puts me more than half way up Italy. Tomorrow I’ve to decide to go to the left or right to get around Switzerland. Think I will take the left fork and go up through central France to Calais.
The ferry was comical in a Basil Fawlty, losing control kind of way but am too tired to write now. This is the kind of tiredness that gets a bit like Narcolepsy.
Do checkout the song.
Forward planning my way into France from Italy
Monday 20th October
Johnny Kidman 9am
I get a message from Joan. The woman called Sagz is going to be a street trader and Scott is going to be a Mental Subnormality Nurse, and a very old woman called Margaret has put some flowers on a canoe club bench near Kirkstall Abbey, in memory of a man she loved, and Pateley has got his own FB page. I challenge the latter. How can a boy not yet four years old have a Facebook page, you have to be at least thirteen and have parents’ consent, but she tells me that in the world where Facebook is now i.e. 2018 he is a middle aged man, and anyway he can’t read and write, so she will be doing most of it with him. Just then there is a ping, and I get a friend request from the little lad aka middle aged man. The photo gives me the shivers. Beautiful little lad. Fuller faced and happier looking than I remember him. That tuft of hair still doesn’t stick down, and so makes him look like a little Unicorn Boy. It was one of those photos that make you ache in the chest.
Ping another message came in from Joan. It seems obvious now but felt totally unexpected when I first read it.
“Goose, I want you to think about this and not answer straight away. What would you feel about me tracking you and Cheyenne down in 1980 and going to visit you? Don’t say no straight away. Of course I can see ‘cons’ as well as my own kind of ‘pro’s’. My big thought is should we tell Cheyenne to be more careful in Mauritius? Okay as I’m writing this now I can see lots of problems, but we should at least consider it. The Genie is out of the bottle if you know what I mean, and because we know the future, maybe we ought to save her. All of this is your fault in a way for telling me what happened to her (of course I don’t mean that, but knowing things changes lots). And if Cheyenne survived it doesn’t change your life in any significant way because you and she would be totally separate on different continents (can you say Mauritius is on a continent when it’s an island?)
I write back, “Mauritius is at the intersection of the African and Asian continents, but is normally identified as standing on the African continental plate. Culturally it’s a fusion of African and Asian influences, as well as French and British. I will think about the other thing”. Monday 20th October 1980 Barry is in the Neurology Ward at the new Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge
The Neurology consultant. Dr Sertan Mann had not dilly-dallied with the investigations. Barry was in the ward at Addenbrooke’s by 9am, and by 4pm all the main tests had been done, and where appropriate reported on. And this was a Monday, not a great day to arrive in a hospital ward. Monday’s are roughly half catching up with the stories and unfinished work from the weekend and half dealing with the rush of new work that comes at you from all directions, always excessive but at the same time the long established normal pattern for everybody,
As well as a scrupulously conducted physical examination in front of medical students, Barry had his blood taken and urine collected for analysis, and had been measured for length and weight. At 12.00 he was having an Electrocephlagram (EEG) to check out his brain waves. The doctor had explained that variations in patterns of brainwaves can show if a person has epilepsy and where the in the brain the seizure starts out from. There can of course be other causes of seizes, but Barry’s EEG trace print off as clear as it could be. Right there in his right frontal and temporal lobe, his brainwaves, were dancing about in ways they really should not be. He had clear ‘epileptic foci’. Several of them. And in a sense that was good news. It made this seizures that much more treatable.
The obvious cause for what was probably something that could be thought of as scarring, was the head injury he sustained on Joan’s motor scooter, but it was important to exclude tumours or anything else not assumed. So Barry had a skull x-ray. The consultant would have liked to have done one of those new brain scans, the ones known to the public as C.A.T. scans, but the health authority was reliant upon a charitable group raising the cash, and they were not at the target yet.
Diane got Barry through the morning. She had the invaluable skill to imagine how Barry was seeing things. To get inside his head and make a very good guess about his view on the world. For example she had learnt enough about Barry to anticipate the consultants name would be a problem. Barry in his idiosyncratic way would decode Dr Sertan Mann, as Doctor Satan Man (certain). And she had the spirit and the nous to have a quiet word with the doctor after he completed Barry’s physical exam, to explain all of this. He did two things. He removed his name tag immediately, and then filed away the information for future (but fairly imminent) use. This neurological phenomena i.e. the epilepsy was producing psychiatric symptoms. That complicated treatment slightly but it also made a happy outcome more likely. Dr Mann, felt a surge of excitement. This was one of his areas of special interest. In the last few years a lot had been happening in the field. New technology (shame they didn’t have one) like CAT scans had helped. The delusions and odd thinking were very treatable, and one drug, Carbamazapine was having excellent results in these kind of cases. Yey!!! They had a drug that actually worked really well. Neurology in the 1980’s could be a little depressing but this thought cheered Dr Sertan Mann up. Barry was almost certainly going to get a lot better. This was a good Monday.
As the Consultant left Rev. Bob came in. Puffing and panting from the steps. They passed each other outside the Nurses station. The Rev, gave doctor a professional nod. He had called in briefly to see Barry and Diane (Miss Saucy Shimmer) the night before at Huntingdon County. That was Revd. Bobs guilty private name for Diane. The note on the door from her had turned his guts to water. Truth be told it had just been the sight of her handwriting and name that had done that. He took a deep breath and admonished himself. “You silly, stupid old man. Stop it, stop it, stop it!” Then he read the note, and the annoying Saucy Shimmer infatuation and twinned self-loathing had turned to terror and he had to run inside and be sick in his toilet there and then. Bob was even more scared than he had been on the beach at Normandy.
But he had been torn between two obligations. His duty to Barry and his duty to old Mrs Palmer (Doreen) who was on her way out, and so would not be going with her friend, Lilly to Huntingdon for tea and bacon sandwiches anymore. The old lady had to win out.
It was typical of the village (okay town but it felt like a village). Four people had got in touch to tell him about Doreen in the space of a few minutes. He had missed three of them. The niece who was up from London, the district nurse who was in and out of the ladies house all of the time, her distraught friend and companion Lilly and Doreen’s chiropodist. He might be too pushy for the Godmanchester inner circle, but he knew imminent death when he saw it in someone’s feet. They had all phoned the rectory except Lilly who had come to the door looking like someone about to have a great chunk of herself amputated. Bob had just rinsed his mouth and brushed his teeth after retching into the toilet bowl but the second he saw Lilly he knew what was happening and where he had to go. The messages from the other three on his answer machine just confirmed it. Doreen Palmer needed him most. A lot can change while you doing Evensong.
So he’d only been able to see Barry for a moment last night. Diane had been a brick, assuaged his guilt and told him to get on his way to Mrs Palmers. Diana was one impressive young woman. And she definitely did shimmer, just like Anglo Frenchy Jane Birkin.
Now back again, and after a brief talk in the corridor he sent her home to have eat and have a sleep. Despite his firm instructions she had said that she would be back in tonight.
At 4.30pm the consultant came around again and sat at Barry’s bedside. Dr X, as he now thought of himself liked to come in sideways with his questions. He found it was a bit like looking at the picture on the box of a jigsaw before tipping all the pieces out. “Hi Barry, I’ve got all your test results back, and have spent some time this afternoon working on a plan. Before we go through all of that I just wanted to ask how come you ended up crashing your scooter into a big rock in the Yorkshire Dales” Barry was barely listening, instead he was frantically trying to decode the doctor’s first name, and so Bob had to touch the patient on the arm, wait for eye contact and then repeat the question.
Barry sounded like a beat poet. “I like to think about country songs, and road trips, think on about crossing the Great American Continental Divide, the feel of the road under my wheels, and the wind in my face. I was singing the Bob Seeger song. ‘Roll me away’ out loud and proud. It’s not country music but it’s where rock and country meet, and anyway I was singing that song when it all sort of fused with Moses smiting the rock, so that there would be water for all the people. The land had been in drought, the reservoir high up on the great divide between Yorkshire and Lancashire on the road out of Ilkley toward Skipton, and heading in the direction of Burnley was all but dry and I felt it was my job to act as God’s instrument. I didn’t have a hammer or anything but I had the bike, so I drove into this great rock I saw at the roadside so the bike could be like a hammer hitting the rock. I mean I drove into the big rock you can see from the road there. The one that’s as big as five houses on top of each other. So that’s how it happened. I was trying to let the water out.
Dr Mann loved listening to Barry speak. It was just perfect like in the text books and research papers. A neurological disorder that presented like florid mental illness. He was dying to ask to what degree, or how firmly Barry believed in any thoughts of divine influence. Maybe use a scale of 0-10. Classically these patients say they have doubt, where as those with Schizophrenia don’t, and would probably refuse to discuss it. Mann saw a narrative case study for publication in the making, but he must not push too hard.
Some doctors see themselves first and foremost (some exclusively) as scientists. The part to do with the patient as a person was what the nurses did, the explanations, saying what things meant. There might be adjustments to be made, or on occasions some facing up to dreadful facts to be done. That was left to the nurses. A doctor might tell the patient they had a malignant tumour on their bladder which had spread to adjacent structures and they might expect to live for 6-12 months. But then the nurses take over and deal with what comes next. It was about playing to ones strengths.
These doctors believed said the best doctors were those who could be disengaged, dispassionate, focussed upon the disease process, analytical and evidence based. Lots of tags like that. Nurses could do the rest. Okay if a patient was middle class and educated their doctor might take time to give some eye contact and communicate but otherwise the pronouncement, the smile and a nod at the end of the bed was enough.
Dr Mann (now aka Dr X) was not like that. He was one of a new breed who were returning to the belief that the practice of medicine was a weave of science and art. Providing care to the whole person, not just the disease. His believed his job was not complete until the patient became a partner. Lot of high sounding principles. When listening to the right kind of music he had thoughts about diagnosis being an extended case study; seeing the patient’s current difficulties as the culmination of diverse narrative strands that run through their (and our) biography. A little giddying but that’s what Bruce Springsteen could do to one.
He did his best. He spoke to Barry directly whilst also including Revd. Bob who Barry had nominated as a kind of next of kin figure. “Barry you have a ‘small’ kind of epilepsy for most of the time. Doctors called these kind of fits, focal or partial seizures. They just effect one or two parts of the brain, and in a way are ‘under the surface’ fits because they are not obvious, but they do show up the EEG trace and do have a subtle effect upon you. The EEG. That’s the test you had when the technician put wires on your head. It shows these small fits actually happening. These change the chemistry of your brain, and because your brain works on chemicals they change how you see things. Usually just small differences, just a little out of kilter but these can build up and become significant. Sometimes, like with you, they cause symptoms that look at first glance like mental illness… but they are not in the real sense. There’s good news. We have an excellent medication, Carbamazapine, which could help a great deal”. A sliver of excitement and a portion of joy entered into Dr X’s voice. “In a sense Barry you have got ill just at the right time. We know much more about this kind of thing now. Much more than even five years ago. It could take about a month to get you fully well though and if things go as expected there is no reason why you cannot stay like that with the right kind of follow up care. That’s when you might need some help from my colleagues with getting set up again. Job, house, working out how to manage this illness”. Dr X paused to assess the impact his words were having. He had found making such judgments was like watching a penny falling through the workings of a vertical mechanical maze. From yes, to no, then back to maybe, but then oops, its falls into the final slot, the one tagged ‘oops-inscrutable’. Barry was so hard to read just on his body language.
Dr X went on. The reason for the big fall down seizure you had, was that one of the drugs you were taking, Haloperidol lowered the point at which his brain had a seizure. In fact it had caused something called ‘Status Epilepticus’, which can be very dangerous. That’s where you have one fit after another and don’t properly come out of them. It was a very good job that your friend Diane had been there in the hall with you when it started”. The doctor glanced over at the reverend, good god the man looks dreadful. He went on. “Now this is the most important bit Barry. Even if everything goes to plan you may need to stay on this drug for the rest of your life. If you take Tegretol, we can keep you well”. The doctor failed to notice he had unwittingly used the commercial name for the drug, not the proper chemical one, Carbamazapine. That undid just about everything he had said before that point.
Barry was hiding his terror. All kinds of things were wrong, and he felt like a dog cornered by wolves. One minute he had to take a drug call Caba-something, the next he had to take one called Tegruttall. He had thought Bob was a friend but he had so arranged events that he, Barry ended up in the belly of the beast being given mind control drugs by a Dr Sertan Mann. You didn’t have to be a genius code breaker to sort that one out. Certain-Satan-Man.
Bob was having the same feelings he remembered having when he was fourteen and his dad announced to the family there was a ten shilling note missing from his wallet. Bob had taken it to buy Woodbines but didn’t let on. His face burned and he didn’t know where to look. Then the Reverend thought about the concept of guilt itself and that took him not to the bible but to the Disney Pinocchio film, and a scene where the naughty puppet stole money to buy cigarettes. Or something like that. That’s how he remembered it. His internal voice, which was sounding more and more like a spy on the run these days spoke out, “God I’m all over the place, I fucking fluxed”
Then a saner voice chipped in. “It had been a giant balls up by Dr Mason, and he had been stupid to have started it all off, but no permanent harm seemed to have been done, and here they were at Addenbrookes with a top consultant, hearing potentially positive news for Barry health and future. With this whole God thing there was a lot to study and understand and how many years had he been trying. “The God thing operated in the most mysterious ways”. The calmer voice won out.
The doctor said his goodbyes and shuck both the men’s hands. Good grip and full eye contact. Barry believed he had grinned and nodded and looked happy whilst this so called doctor was talking. Of course he hadn’t at all but in any event it was only an act so that he would leave him alone and it had sort of worked. And he had the drugs sussed. Okay when he first came in they had pumped the drug into his arm with that thing called a drip, but they had fairly quickly taken that out and thank God he had not been swallowing those pale yellow tablets they had been giving him. He would have been helpless in the hands of these monsters otherwise. The next job was to get out of here as soon as possible and get back to Leeds, but they had these guards on him. Diane and Bob. That was clear. He had thought the friends but they were just friendly guards. Once the doctor left he laid back on his bed and told Bob that he needed to sleep. His body was still getting used to the medicines
Bob answered “That’s okay I will get off home as well. I can take your clothes with, and put them through the washer. I will send them in with Diane when she comes in tonight along with more PJ’s and toiletries”.
Barry protested, but Bob says he is happy to do it and then he is out of the door. Barry lays back and screams “bugger” to himself. How can he get out of here without clothes? Day 33a. Note. I’ve lost track of how many day’s I’ve been away. I’ve counted and recounted. Something has gone wrong somewhere, but rather than strain my brain, I’m going to call this Day 33A. In another way it’s a bit like February 29th in a Leap Year
Sunday 21st October Day 34 Diss to Jerusalem and back again Weather. Cooler…which I’m enjoying. High of 16. Overnight 12c. Rain showers yippee! Miles 3787. If I add in flight and ferry miles that would be 6500
Trip today. As far as Rimini on the coast road, then toll road in the direction of Bologna. No way of sensibly avoiding the latter.
Enter a caption
I’m into the part of the trip now where I just have to cover ground before my money runs out.
Days decision…as illustrated by the artwork…do I go left or right of Switzerland to get to Calais on north France Atlantic coast. Just 20+ miles from England.
Tune of the day: When I paint my masterpiece. Bob Dylan
Countries so far France, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia (but only for 45 minutes or so), Serbia, Turkey, Israel, Greece and Italy. Then France again. I entered Switzerland four times without knowing. God knows how that happened (it showed on my Satnav and phone). It was when I was trying to go from France into Germany. Right back near the start of the trip.
The drive up through Italy from Ancona. Rimini is the X in from the right
Wiki tells me Rimini is the place Italians go for their hols. The beaches are the best in the country. That’s lost on me but apparently the Roman Archaeology is ace, and I do like that. Ruminations-
The most common question I get asked comes in a single word. I’m finding it’s one of those international language words like ‘STOP’ or ‘TV’. The word question is “? Solo?” The question mark can be fore or aft. Either way it’s a question. It means are you doing this on your own. The Turkish policemen back at the Black Sea, when questioning me via Google Translate thought this astonishing. They asked it in a various ways but the word solo was always in it. “Why are you doing this solo?” To me the answer is obvious. No bugger else would want to do it. And that’s before you get to the practicalities about space and my snoring.
When you are young and middle aged you spend a lot of time compromising with others. Friends, partners, spouses, children. My daughters will tell you how I bent over backwards to give them comfortable family holidays doing what they wanted to do. Yes I’m pretty sure they would say that. Now I want to do only what I want to do. No compromise, no surrender.
I do spend a good half an hour a day ‘in touch’ with family and friends…which by the way now seem scattered to every corner of the world. I’ve had WhatsApp conversations some nights with people on three continents. I get a thrill with that. Feel a bit awed.
The rest of the time I’m happy with the two minute conversations that I get with bar-tenders and shop-keepers. I’m happy to know that what I’m doing is not being an imposition upon someone else. I don’t have to keep someone else happy. None of this means that I won’t be happy to be back home with these those people I am close to. That is until a few weeks go by and I want to go somewhere again. It’s nice to be mainly satisfied with your own company.
I need to write some notes on how important coffee is. Maybe tomorrow.
Onwards. Hopefully the cooler weather will give me more energy.
Ps. A measure of how tired I was last night. I slept 10 yards from the main Italian east coast railway line, and I didn’t wake up once.
I’m not allowed; that is I’m specifically banned from mentioning the family members name, but congratulations on her… far from, ‘pre-packaged, sanitised, and made safe’ adventure in the Andes…and the achievement of it all. 8 Am. keeping clean when your living out of a car (being essentially homeless as my eldest daughter calls it) gets weirdly complicated and takes up between 1-2 hours a day. That includes the car and washing clothes. Of course I’m not really homeless, and its warm and I’ve got a real home and life to return to…but its gives a tiny insight into the difficulty the near homeless have of keeping up appearances. 16.20. I’m Euphoric. Two reasons. 1- I’ve found a self-service launderette (as opposed to an expensive full service one). I was just driving down a street in Rimini trying to find the famous sea front, and there it was on the left, under the trees. Four Euros means a week’s supply of clean clothes.
2- There are high winds and driving rain so the car gets a wash as well. This means more than I can say! Goose@fresh.com. I had a difficulty of understanding. I put the coins in a machine which I thought was the washer but turned out it was the machine that gave you’re the tokens for the washer. A grateful ‘shout out’ to the young lady with the toddler who trusted a wild looking stranger enough to spend three minutes with him, demonstrating the ropes. And all done by gesture as we spoke none of each other’s languages
This is Rimini. It might as weeas well be be Blackpool for all I saw of it. For meRimini will always be the sight of a tree linedd street being battered by a storm, a launderette and a young woman with a child who trusted a stanger (me) amd showed him how to use the machines even though we knew nothing of each each others languages
Apart from the clean-up, today has been very frustrating. I’ve only done about 60 miles because we had a powerful storm this afternoon and it’s been unsafe to drive. Terrible strong winds, rain like BB gun pellets. So I’m stuck here in Rimini for the night…Italy’s favourite resort, but apart from the wind blasting this afternoon and a slightly less windy walk to a takeaway this evening, I’ve seen nothing. So I’ve taken a forced tactical retreat to a cheap little hotel that has seen better days.
It has some charm though. The chap on reception looks like the ‘Go Compare’ add man. At breakfast the 17 year old daughter waited on under the watch of an ancient looking grandmother. All wrinkly in widows black, and no teeth cackling. Granddaughter respectful and attentive to her… (Mine take note please). Wednesday 22nd October 1980 Joan, Pateley, Sagz and Scott. Becket’s Park Crescent, Headingley
Homemade meat and potatoes pie for tea. They are settling into a routine for meals. Monday’s was sirloin steak, baked potatoes and carrots. Tuesday, Fish and Chips, Wednesday the wonderful pie, Thursday, sausages and chips, Friday, pork pie, ham and salad, Saturday meat and potatoes pie, without the pastry but with vegetables, and Sunday, Roast beef and everything. And for sweet, tinned pears and ice cream. Standing arrangement to have neighbour Margaret around, at least when her son was away with the team. Joan figured this routine would simplify shopping as the shopping list would be the same every week. And all that time she would have spent thinking could be used for something else. This kind of ruggedly individualist thinking had made the British Empire (she said). No one asked where that term’Rugged Individualist’ came from. Joan was coming out woth all sorts of odd stuff these days.
“Belief in ones own responcibility and POWER. Joan’s mind was wandering through some odd things these days
Scott waited until they were drinking their tea, before broaching the subject. His first instinct had been to chuck the invite in the bin. Firstly they had only thought to invite him, when they realised that the take up was going to be poor and an important sponsor had dropped out (that is arrested and imprisoned). The Big Hippo Casino Charity event at the Draganora Hotel (and Casino) had been getting promoted by Leeds Hippos since at least June. Probably May, and he knew the original planning had been back in March. And the bastards had waited until just three days before the event to think of inviting him and his plus one. He was a member of the Rotary Club, and the Hippos were a kind of off shoot of that. He knew the people involved, they always behaved nice enough toward him but he had his suspicions about his true standing. He might pay his dues and get to attend Rotary meetings. Everyone was nice at the formal events, but he didn’t get invited to the none-rotary shindigs. The Hippos were a bunch of piss artists who liked to be seen as ‘Big Charity Men’, always posing with their cheque books. But in the end he had taken the invite, signed up as a ‘Big Twenty Sponsor’ .A big shot donor that put up a grand. He had not made a fuss about the other thing. He did emphasise though that his name and face was not to appear on any promotional materials. The sleazy type who was drilling him for the cashing laughed at this (“Why do charity if your name is not up there? It’s only your due. Remember ‘hands washing hands’ Scotty”)
The carpark at the back of the Draganora Hotel and Casino. This is what passed for glamour in the Leeds of 1980
Scott knew that he was supposed to get his brains beaten out at the Draganora and he had been wondering how it was going to happen. Up until this morning, they had no plans for going out on Saturday, and he and Joan sort of figured they had side stepped the predicted big last scene with Barry. After all the last time they had seen the man he was stepping into a taxi and going to meet God to backing from Boney M. It was hard to think of that poor wretch of a man being a threat. Barry could be a hundred miles away. They had interfered with the path he had been on so who knows what new direction that had produced. The Draganora Hotel on Saturday night was probably the most unlikely spot on the planet where Barry would end up.
So that’s why Scott spoke up as they were drinking their tea around the table. “I got this today from the Hippos. It’s an invite to a charity casino night thing at the Draganora on Saturday. Fifty quid each and formal evening wear. Tom Jones is on the bill and so is that dick head of a comedian Jim Davidson. What do you think? I would get a plus two, Sagz, so you would be invited as well.
“I will say three things”. This is a very serious Joan talking. “1- I’ve no doubt that Barry is still a threat toward us. He went off that day, but that’s not the end of him. 2- I like the idea of an all-star casino night, Tom Jones is brilliant, and if twat face Jim Dickhead starts telling his nigger jokes we can throw food at him. I’m serious. I won’t have it. Hippos or not, he will have me to deal with. 3- I want to be a person that does not back down. If someone is going to shoot a bolt at me or brain us with a baseball bat I want to find a way of dealing with it, rather than running off. We can get a plan, but one thing for sure, now that I know this event is on I won’t be spending Saturday evening here”.
Sagz says “we could get a suit of armour each. Turn up like the tin man. Okay maybe not real armour but we could improvise”. Joan turns toward Sagz and says “what the fuck are you taking? Is that what going to a private church school does to your common sense?” Sagz came back at her. Imitating a TV character they had been watching on YouTube. Deep and gruff “Watch it you slag”. Joan came back again. “Watch it you slag”. Even better. Scott took his turn, stretching out the words “Waaaatch it you slaaaags”.
Pateley didn’t understand what they were laughing at, but he had a new Dinky toy fire engine with an extendable ladder that reached to the top of the shoe box if you laid it sideways. That was their house, and he was playing ‘rescue mummy, Scott and Sagz’.
Wednesday 22nd October 1980
Diane had been a little worried. Barry had sort of felt a little brittle. They could not have their normal conversation, i.e. the one where Barry told his life story, because they were in a long ward with twenty-nine other patients. There was barely space to put a chair between the beds. They talked a little. Just about the events of the day but that’s when Diane first felt he ‘was not right’. Fragile was not enough, the right word was brittle. Like when you tap (ever so lightly) some kinds of toffee with the bevelled side of a pin hammer. It shatters. That’s brittle. He was evidently having problems being coherent, stringing together a sentence. His speech was sort of all over the place. And there was a look in his eyes which said “I know I’m not right, but please don’t say anything”. Or that’s how she read it anyway. Awfully sad.
She had slept across two chairs. The second chair borrowed from the chap in the next bed who looked to have Parkinson’s. He didn’t smile (she knew about the Parkinson’s ‘no smiling mask’, her grandfather had it) but his eyes were kind and twinkly. Old men seemed to like her. Nothing pervy, more, just like they were looking at a beautiful painting. Diane knew she was an off the scale stunner, but carried it well. It was not a particular source of pride. it was just how it was. That absence of vanity added to her attraction. She asked the old guy if he minded if she slept on the chairs in-between his bed and Barry’s. The door to the toilets and the bathroom was on the other side of Barry’s bed. If she sat there it would partially obstruct the door. He had nodded. Eyes sparkly.
Barry waited until he could see the night staff with their feet up in the nurse’s office. He slid out of bed. Diane did wake for a moment, but he told her he was just going to the toilet. Everything he needed was in the bag. Clean clothes, his wallet and papers, toilet bag. Shoes and coat. The lot. Two minutes later he was out of the toilet and ‘tip-toing’ down the long Nightingale Ward, shoes in his left hand. The nurses were fast asleep. The door to the corridor was open and he was gone.
Ten yards from the door he could be anybody. Maybe a son who had been staying over with a dying mother. Now bereaved and leaving. Monday 22nd October 2018 Late evening
I’ve been putting off responding to Joan’s message from days back. On one level her proposal about getting in touch with 1980 me, and warning of what is going to happen to Cheyanne makes sense, but then it would also have unintended consequences.
I write to Joan, “Hi Joan. I have been thinking about your proposal carefully. At first sight, it seems an easy decision. Of course, we should send me and/or Cheyanne a letter if it might save her life. Easy decision. But then I imagined it. “Hey Cheyanne, I’ve just got a letter from Joan, that woman we used to live next to in Leeds. She says be careful, that nutter you used to go out with at nursing college is going to turn up in Mauritius and kill you…in a couple of decades times. She knows this because…well, I don’t know how she knows it really”. That’s crazy, crazy, crazy. But yes if we know that Cheyanne is going to get murdered then we should let her know. It’s about when though. I think we should wait until just a year or so before she is due to get murdered and then tell her. That has two benefits. With that option we only change a small bit of history; not a big bit. If Cheyanne had known she was going to end up a lezzer (no offence) and living in Mauritius she might never have had kids with me. Two people i.e. my daughters would not be alive now. And that’s awful. The other reason is that both Cheyanne and I will spend decades knowing what’s ahead of us. And that could ruin both of our lives. Is this making sense?
I’m suggesting you wait another twenty odd years and then write to me. Of course, that relies upon you not getting killed this (1980) Saturday evening. It’s less than three days away. I’ve not forgotten and I’m assuming you haven’t either. So here is my deal. If you get killed on Saturday I will write to 1980 me right away. If you don’t get killed then you must write to me in a quarter of a century. That sounds a good plan to me.
Let me know what you think either way. I’d also like to know what your plans are for (your) Saturday”.
Yours in Rock and Roll
Jonny B. Kidman!!!
Joan took one look at the email and said to herself “dickhead” and “shit for brains”. She picks up a pen and paper and starts the letter.
“Dear Cheyanne. I hope your well. This is Joan. I need to tell you about something….”
Joan knows the address from sending Johnny a Birthday card in August-
Even Flat,
Middle corridor
Orpington Hospital,
Orpington.
Kent.
BR6 9JU
Day 34 Monday 22nd October 2018 Jerusalem to Diss Weather 16c. Less trusting of local forecasts after yesterday’s tree snapping storm. The one that was supposed to be only a light shower. Miles.3870. Plus 3000 by plane and ferry.
Well after yesterdays forced rest I’m going to have to be very self-disciplined and just drive. No deviations or two hour coffee supping from now on.
Maybe an hour later. Its 900 miles from here to Calais. Id very much like to be back in Diss for a Santa gig on Thursday as I’ve given a commitment, so that’s a lot of driving. Not pleasant. I will see how I get on. Maybe a ‘Plan B’ is needed.
On the upside I’ve got clean clothes after yesterday’s magical launderette.
Lessons learnt. Continued. If you find yourself on a Conservative Party supporting website, whose members are talking about racial and cultural segregation as being necessary to preserve our (i.e. British) way of life, run…do not get into an argument with them. They are not people to argue with even if you’re sat in a Launderette in a storm in Rimini. They are dangerous people. I may have to change by name. And they were supposedly Tory party members! Felt more like the SS.
Seriously. Just about all my friends are Conservatives and they are decent, friendly people. The zealots on yesterday’s FB discussion group were not. There is some odd things happening in our society and its pulling in some nasty people in from the margins and they are making dangers. There is going to be a cost at some point. The same is happening on the left.
Lesson number 2. Stay away from those who celebrate Trafalgar Day by naming the neo Fascist, Tommy Robinson as their 2018 British hero!! That was a health and safety comment…not a political one. I won’t mention it again but FB tells me someone has been trying to access my Messenger account! I suspect a connection. Strange world.
Moving onwards and upwards. Sadly today will be mostly views from a six lane motorway. That’s six lanes either side!!! Time and money is running out.
. 12.15. Stopped for lunch.
Observation: Italian men leaving service station toilets don’t wash their hands BUT do stop to adjust their hair and designer sun specs in the mirror.
Mental games whilst travelling.
I keep my mind busy with little games. Today has been about creating a ‘Top Ten of Travel Writers’. But there are rules. It’s about writers who travel through a landscape AND a culture. They might use fiction or reportage (sic). They create a near sensory experience and a vibe that makes it easy to feel you are there. They sketch away. A few comments on the basic of life. What passes for smart in this place? A man’s/ woman’s tricks of the trade e.g. if they are a street beggar how do they operate. Those kind of details. Nothing spiritual or New Age. Good God no.
So here is part of my list-
1-Steinbeck
2-Hemingway
3-Jan Morris
4- Can’t miss out Laurie Lee
5- Jack Kerouac
6- Louie Theroux’s dad. I once got to the station in Patagonia where the Patagonian Express train goes from (and the subject of Theroux book}. It was New Year’s Day. The Driver had put a card in the window. He was taking a day off.
7- Che Guevara. For all his personal faults, ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’ is special. I have followed it through Argentina as far as the Chilean border where my bank card would not work anymore, and I had to do a u-ey (that is a turnaround if you are under 25)
8-Daniel Defoe. A Tour through the whole Islands of Great Britain (1720). William Cobbett did something similar and that’s also a goody.
9-There are books of first European eyes to see America. Obscure books with original drawings and maps. Stories from the first travellers
10-Only one space left. I’m offering this one out for suggestions (I didn’t get any).
1.25 Four miles until I’m at the four thousand mile mark. It will be on the A14 Turnpike just outside of Bologna going toward Milan. 2.45 How exciting. They make the fancy pasta here that I sometimes buy in Tesco.
Okay this motorway driving is not providing great subjects for my pics. 5.15pm Sun was low and I was driving directly into it. Effectively couldn’t see where I was going. Pulled off the highway and headed for the nearest town. So I’m in the region of Lombardy, in the district of Parva and settled for the night in the town of Voghera. And it’s a lovely town. Tree lined streets and wide avenues. Mid-19th century, sun baked crumbling houses, shuttered windows. Could be a film set. I need to visit this district. My view from the highway. A landscape dotted with 18th century farmhouses, now grown from such humble beginnings. Lots of deciduous woodland and the light makes everything look good. A few castles. Am cursing I can’t spend a few days here.
Today only did 225 miles. Minimum target is 300. One excuse is I get distracted, the other is the pain in my right knee, so I am having to take 5 -10 min breaks every 1.30 hours. Trucks going to France look to outnumber cars. Feel a little vulnerable when sandwiched between them all, where effectively the drivers can’t see me.
Need to look at my plan for reaching Calais in 3 days. Tomorrow I’m driving on to Lyon in France on the other side of the Alps.
Apart from the landscape which I couldn’t get out and see, and the lovely boulevard like street I parked up on, this has been a dreary day. Feeling annoyed that I’m having to rush so. It’s because I’m running out of money Jerusalem to Diss. Day 35 Tuesday 23rd October Weather. Around 20c. About 8c at night. Dry. Miles: 4052. Error from yesterday corrected. Ferry and planes another 3000 miles. About 1000 miles to Diss.
Plan B time. Can’t get to Diss for Thursday. I needed to do 300 miles a day and these toll roads are full of mega trucks heading for France. Tolls e23.50 yesterday. Breaking my finances. Have re-planned, and just booked the ferry for late Saturday (the 27th October).
I am in the Parva District of Lombardy. I must come back and look at these places when I’m not in such a rush. They look incredible. You can almost smell the medieval.
My FB messenger has been hacked. Facebook are checking what has happened but in the meantime I can’t receive messages. Frustrating and worrying. There was some very odd characters on that FB group I fought with in Rimini. Have got a feeling it might have been even more than what it seemed.
Today’s target is Lyon which is on the other side of the Alps. I’m a nervous driver anytime but mountains turn me into a jelly. What is fear of mountains called?
Joke. What was the Beatles most famous song about mountains? Answer ‘Alp’. Think about it.
I know my spelling and grammar is all other the place. Thanks for being patient. I normally have software that does it all for me but it’s only on my home computer. Without it I’m beggared.
Next bit is not serious. Just a comparison between Bruce Springsteen and me. He really is the 21st Century Bob Dylan. His lyrics are like word viruses.
In recent times he often times ends his concerts with the song ‘This Hard Land’ and he prefaces this with a reference to a line in the last verse.
“Stay hard, stay hungry, stay alive (if you can) and meet me in a dream of this hard land”. He shouts it out loud to the crowds. Declaims it like a Kennedy even. Maybe a Martin Luther King.
I was playing that song a lot yesterday and I thought it’s okay for the ‘Man God Bruce’ singing that, but what about us Big Fat Lads who used to come 104 out of 105 in the cross country and was demoted to the Ball and Hoop team at sports day (when at Junior school).
I’ve done a ‘Fat Boy-Old Man’ analysis of Bruce’s lines.
1-Stay hard. Well any muscle tone I had went decades ago, but maybe I can think of it as tolerating discomfort. So days at a time without beer or wine. No hotdogs or corn chips on a Friday. And no battered sausage and chips on a Saturday (now not since early September).
2. Stay hungry. Well never a problem with that in one sense but it might also be taken to mean appetite for life and new experiences as well. Not getting jaded or negative or voting Brexit like BFJ. (A friend of mine). So what new experiences?
3- Stay alive. I’m keen on this but more than just ticking over. It’s important to keep pushing outward. Not dangerous sports or thinking I’m 28 again and walking across Lesotho and sleeping in a garden refuse bag. Na, it’s moving my creaking body, alien body out of its home zone…and letting the randomness happen.
Bruce. We need a new song for the chubby arthritics!!!
Post script.
The boy who used to come 105 in the school cross country was called Sambo by the stupid teachers He was of mixed race. His mum was in a cult. Lots of crazy stupidness (sic) used to go on
We auditioned for ITVs Junior Show Time as a comedy duo when we were around age 13. The chap in charge saw David’s potential but sadly overlooked mine (it’s one of the five things I try not to think about…excruciating).
I know David became a DJ, and was on TV for a while as well. He also worked the night clubs. The boy was even more dyspraxic than me, but nether-the-less he became a DJ doing his moves on the twin turn tables! I love the unlikely stories with all my heart.
Viva dyspraxic fat bastards viva
1pm. Entered France. Shocked. Forty five euros to go through the Mont Blanc tunnel plus I have to count in the other tolls I’ve been paying all day. I’m scared to think what I’ve paid out over the last few days. And I am seriously short of money now. If I get to Calais at all, it will be with less than 20 euros in my pocket and barely enough diesel to get me from Dover to Diss. That’s the optimistic synopsis.
Countries so far UK France, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey (twice) Israel, Greece, Italy, and now France again. 18.45 In the small town of Cognin not far from Chambery. The nearest big city is Grenoble. I came through the Alps. The most difficult parts are bypassed by 1-5km long tunnels and the roads themselves have high barriers and other safety features. You can’t see the drop much of the time. This mostly soothed my tricky vertigo. There was just a few moments where it kicked in. I would never have managed it years ago where it was unprotected roads winding round mountains. The toll fees were shocking. Forty odd euros for the 5km under Mont Blanc. There was several more of 10 and 12 euros. Shocking really but you have no option but to pay or add hundreds of miles to the journey.
I have felt a little nauseous this afternoon. Had to lay down for a bit but it passed. Each time I’ve felt a little ill I’ve done a quick mental checklist. Is this country in the EU? If that’s a yes then I’m allowed to be ill as treatment is covered by my little blue EU health card. I’ve got good medical insurance but it mostly requires that I pay up front and claim back later. And that would sink me.
Just 618 miles to Calais. My ferry is Saturday evening late.
I have been feeling ill at ease again. Like I was in Bournmouth, the day before I started out. Just can’t seem to get a feeling of comfort. Clothes feel ill fitting. Body aches. Feel a little nauseous. All of that plus a feeling of alienation. Call it being a sour-puss about everything. This town of Chambery, and the little one of Cognin isn’t right or more likely it’s me. Not a feel good day at all. Barry Thursday 23rd October 1980 Morning and early afternoon Adenbrookes to Cambridge, out on the trunk road and across to the A1.
Getting out of Addenbrookes was easy for Barry. He then walked for a long while in the direction of town and then around breakfast time caught a bus. Then walked and hitched short rides to the A1. He took a cardboard box. Tore off an oblong and wrote on it. “Ex-soldier. Going to Leeds”. Things got easier after that.
To his shame he dipped into the inside pocket of a truck drivers jacket and found a wallet with two hundred pounds in cash. Then claimed nausea and asked to be dropped off at the next services. He has a feeling that he wants to stay in the Griffin Pub and hotel tonight. A lovely old Victorian place, not far from the railway station in Leeds. He likes that bar. All mirrors and chrome. He had walked past it many times when he was on the skids. It looked like a palace of light when he was down in the existential scuppers. A very inviting place. He would make up for the theft. He had Gods work to do.
Thursday 23rd October 1980
Diane and Bob
Around 6am
Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge
Diane had woken and seen that the man in the next bed, the chap with Parkinson’s was dead. Obviously so. Jaw hanging. Eyes blank. Flesh hanging now from prominent bones. She wondered why the nurses had left him here like that, then she thought maybe they have not been doing their checks. She felt sad for the man to have died alone, and here in hospital rather than somewhere else with family and friends (if he had them). The beefy Angels of Mercy in the office snoozing.
Then she turned toward Barry’s bed and saw a bulge under the covers but no head at the top. Her brain was still waking, but then the realisation came “That shape is just a couple of pillows, oh bugger, sod and bastards, he’s gone”. Then she looked at her watch. Six thirty Am. The day was only two minutes old.
Diane knocked on the nurse’s station door and told the two women there that one of their patients had died and another had done a runner. She asked where the nearest public telephone was located, and then walked off in that direction. The women looked entirely unconcerned.
“Morning Bob, sorry to wake you but I thought you would want to know straight away. Barry has done a runner. I’m sorry. He said he was going to the toilet, and then I fell asleep again. He must have gone then”.
Bob was kind “Don’t worry yourself. You were not there as his nurse or prison guard, and everyone needs to sleep. I will be there in half an hour, and we can make a plan”.
Diane went back to the old man who had died. Touched his cold cheek and then squeezed the equally chilled hand. The nurses still had not pulled the curtain around the bed so she did it herself.
Revd. Bob was there by 7am. The nurses had glared at Diane when they saw the drawn curtain, but were leaving the man for the day staff to sort out. The night staff had not seemed concerned about Barry. Diane did not ask if they knew his diagnosis and risks, but if the women did know then they were not taking any of that seriously. They said the doctor had been informed and that was that. If he had gone that was his decision. He should have done the form though. The one for refusing hospital treatment. That’s going to cause problems. He should not have gone without doing that. The vicar and the young woman looked at each other looked at each other as if to say “what the fuck are they about,” and then walked out the door without a goodbye.
They decided the first priority should be to drive up and down the main road. The bus station, the trunk road and the little train station were all more or less in one direction but Barry would not know that, so might have gone right but they could cover that as well. Those were the most likely options. The pair guessed if he Barry was going anywhere it would be Leeds.
Driving up toward a roundabout they saw a man who might have been Barry climbing into a car on one of the off roads. They tried to follow. All that was left at the spot was a rectangle of brown cardboard with some writing on it. They could not stop and read it as the traffic was now busy and there was no space to pull over into. After that there was no signs, and an hour later they headed back to Godmanchester for a think. What should be do next?
Despite everything a good breakfast was important. They had to pace themselves. Today was going to be a difficult day. There might not be chance for a decent meal. They needed to stoke up the furnace before beginning, so it was a full English breakfast and lots of coffee. They talked and then they went off and arranged to meet back at the Rectory an hour later.
Diane then took a pen and a sheet of A3 paper from the church photocopier and made wrote up their thoughts-
1-Barry in not well and probably has delusions again. We know that in the past he has wanted to kill his wife when he has those kind of thoughts.
2-We have to assume the worst. That he is heading to Leeds because he wants to hurt his wife and her new partner.
3-We don’t know where she lives except that it was near a hospital. (Revd. B’s local knowledge =St James hospital more likely. Residential area/ low rent. The Infirmary was near the city centre and mostly amidst official buildings and shops).
4-??What has Barry got with him? +/- twenty pounds some toiletries and PJ’s. No change of clothing. So he will have to stay in a shelter or sleep rough somewhere. Unlikely to go back to the house where his wife lives (but keep poss of this open).
5-Need to be inform police, so wife warned (? Joan Bridger unless she has gone back to her maiden name. Her new man is called Scott, is black and runs a carpet shop). Bugger. Should have phoned police earlier.
The points were mainly Diane’s doing. She had a clear mind which liked to take information and split it up into parcels, before putting it altogether again and hanging the parcels on a mental tree. That’s how she described it.
Bob marvelled a little. This was a young clever brain unclouded by the fog of decades. A joy to see in action. On impulse he asked her to name all the books of the bible. She did so without any hesitation, and in the correct order. He asked her if she was religious, she said no. Then he asked her why she knew all the parts of the bible. She said that it was something to be known. Then he asked her why she chose to do good if it was not for reasons of religious belief. She again replied without hesitation. I am a human. Humans have consciousness, and we have autonomy. We can see choices. We are able to conceive of others as creatures similar to ourselves. We are able to imagine standing in their shoes and because of that we have fellow feeling. We are joined and part of a whole. It is not an abstract idea. It is from our core. To feel for and thus aid others. You can call it a kind of love. I have made it a matter of thinking but in truth it is or becomes something like an instinct.
Then Bob said how do you know all of that and only be twenty something? And she said it’s just how it looks to me. I look around and that’s how the world fits together best. It’s the best fit and it works.
Bob tells her he wants to be a whisky priest. Sit and drink and listen to good Irish music. He can’t keep thinking anymore.
They then leave the house, lock the door and get into Bobs Mini Clubman. Heading to Leeds to find a man they both care about before he kills somebody. Diane sees a Bob Marley tape, and checks the track listing on the back of the cassette box. Fast forwards and plays ‘One Love’. She turns toward the old man, “Revd Bob. You are okay. Just think you could have been like that twat of an uncle of mine”.
Bob laughs but then pulls up sharp. “We have forgotten to phone the police in Leeds”. So the pair, turn around and drive back to the Rectory. There they phone Directory Enquiries. Bob asks for the number for Millgarth Police station. He remembers the dark, ugly, central police station near the market from when he was a child. An infamous place. Stories about coppers kicking people around. The place being ‘old school’ and out of control. An infamous copper called ‘Rocking Horse’ who was a terror on the streets. He phones and gets put through to a desk Sergeant. He knows his story is going to sound odd but he does his best. He uses the Revd. Tag. Gives a little authority. The policemen laughs when he hears the name Joan Bridger. “Yes we know Joan well”, “Yes I will get an officer to check where she is living now and call in to warn her. Do you have a photo of this man, Barry Bridger”? The answer of course was no but Bob gives a description. The officer sounds bland and entirely, completely, wholly and absolutely uninterested.
Diane had picked up most of the conversation. “Doesn’t fill you with much hope or confidence do they? I bet your call will result in nothing at all. The sergeant will file it under ‘More squalid lives of the scummy people’, and forget about it immediately”.
They get back in the car and Bob drives off. “Diane, you might look Jane Birkin in her prime, you might know all the books of the bible, and in the correct order but you forgot to phone the police, just like what I did. Aaaah so there Miss Clever Working Brain. What do you say to that? Are you so clever now? Diane tells him the car won’t go any faster until he releases the hand brake. They chuckle and tease each other all the way up the A1 to Leeds. Diane puts on some Leonard Cohen. Fast forwards to ‘The Sisters of Mercy’, and sings along.
“The Sisters of Mercy are not departed or gone
They were waiting for me when I just thought I cannot go on
And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song
Oh I hope you run into them you who have been travelling so long”.
Bob comes back at her and they’re doing ‘battling verses’.
“Yes you who must leave everything you cannot control
It begins with your family and soon in comes down to your soul
Well I’ve been where you’re hanging. I think I can see how you’re pinned
When you’re not feeling holy, your loneness says that you’ve sinned”.
Thursday 23rd October 1980
Interlude
Time to pause and take stock for a moment. Get a coffee. Put on a record. I recommend WOLD by Harry Chapin. (more likely find it on YouTube)
All our pieces are in motion. Our story is moving toward its last chapter
Johnny Kidman has come through the Alps and is about to cross France, and so enter on the penultimate stage of his journey. His song of the day is the one above, WOLD and it’s got this line “I sometimes get this crazy dream that I just take off in my car, but you can drive on 10,000 miles but just stay where you are”. He its thinking on that. He had first heard it played by a Canadian man called Duggy Gardiner back in the time when he had first known Joan. Duggy was waiting to find out if he had a degenerative neurological condition called Huntington Chorea. He had a one in two chance of developing it, but would only know in his mid-thirties when the signs were known to typically present. He was then thirty three. Duggy had the record. He wouldn’t lend it out but would reluctantly let Johnny come into his room and listen to it.
Barry is travelling the A1 to Leeds. Lost in swirly clouds of delusion. Some of the time he is thinking that he is like Saint George, heading off to slay the dragon
Bob and Diane are in pursuit. Bob just wants a drink.
Joan and her odd family are in Leeds. She and they are moving every closer to the day that had been predicted. They are living an experiment. Can the future be changed?
Others such as Margaret, our lovelorn arthritic lady are watching from the side-lines. Our incompetent doctor in Godmanchester is about to wonder where everyone has gone before treating himself to a little archaeological field walking. Bugger the surgery.
The nurses are going home from their night shift. The elder of the two is ticking off the days to her retirement. The younger is thinking about when would be a good time to separate from her husband and empty his bank account. That requires some good mapping. Our Camber Sands Pontins Boykie from the Orange Free State is wondering where he can spend the winter now that the season is almost over. Another guy, a young up and comer got the Christmas and New Year slots. He is thinking maybe he should quit talent show comparing and “start that record store”.
And this is the point to retract our telescope and observe these actors from an imagined positioned miles and miles above the surface of the earth.
Thanks to the special dual vision apparatus recently made available to us, the globe looks like a great spherical theatre inhabited by billions of ant like creatures with developed consciousness and the ability to communicate through a range of mediums. Stories going on. Lots of them. All the time. People in motion and then working out a narrative as to why. Their eventual obliteration the only certainty. Their lives lived out beneath that knowingness. “Its gonna happen” they say “I just don’t know where or when”.
There is one person on that globe who has been told the answer to that question. She is walking toward that day with only the hope that she has earnt an extension but no earthly reason to assume she has. We might say something like this down a very long telephone line dangling from our position in space to the table at which Joan is sitting. “You have got to ask yourself one question Joan “Do I feel lucky. Well do ya punk?”
Thursday 23rd October 1980
Bob and Diane
Oh what a day!
The three door run-around was a little underpowered for speed. Bob bought some extra strong mints at the petrol station for the trip as they helped him stay awake, but soon found they gave him flatulence in the car. He and Diane had taken the decision early on to just drive through every service station along the way. If Barry was hitching, the onramp’s back onto the highway from these place was the best spot to find him. The A1 has lots of service stations, road side café’s and of course roundabouts. Bob worried that Barry may have gone further along the A14 from Cambridge and chosen to use the M1 to hitch north. It was Diane’s bet that anyone hitch north from East Anglia would take the A1, unless a lucky early lift took them all the way to Leeds in one jump on the M1. The A1 though came first, it went in a straighter line to Leeds, and on balance was probably best for hitching. But all the checks at potential hitch hiking spots were both fruitless and wearying. Trapped wind was causing Bob discomfort and not a little fear. The bowels of a man in his sixties are copious in their wind production. Even without the mints, certain driving manoeuvres were high risk, sharp left or right turns chiefly among them but of course getting in and out of the car itself was heavy with anxiety. This is how we live sometimes. Doing the most important of things but thinking only of embarrassing bodily malfunctions.
It’s a 131 miles from Godmachester to Leeds. That should be no more than two or two and a half hours driving time but with all the checks and contrived fart breaks it took a lot longer. And then the problem with the broken key in the petrol cap, made it nearer seven hours.
As they got closer to Leeds the size of the problem at hand clarified in their minds. The city has a population of well more than half a million. And all the information they have to go on is that Barry’s former wife’s house is somewhere near a hospital and her new partner is black and runs a carpet shop and showroom. Bob figures the hospital must be St James as that’s out of the centre of town and in a low rent residential area. Bob suggests the only plan can be to drive around and ask people they see on the street. “Does someone call Joan live around here”? Then mention her son.
But Diane, in her rational way makes him see the way to proceed is to call in at Millgarth Police station first and check on progress with the Barry hunt. There might be more helpful officers on duty today and possible the sight of the people making the enquiry might result in them being taken more seriously. If that don’t pan out, then step two is to get across to BBC Radio Leeds and persuade them to do a missing person appeal. The dog collar will do the persuading. Then if none of that works there is creative use of the yellow pages and telephone books. It’s cheaper on petrol and potentially quicker in producing results. Bob tells her they will still end kerb crawling the streets around St James’s in the dark and that might not be interpreted as intended late in the evening. Even if they were a vicar and a lawyer in training.
The call in at the police station did yield some useful info. A young constable who happened to be passing the sergeants desk when they made their enquiry, said Joan lived somewhere off the hill in the Lincoln green area. Just above that dodgy pub. The Apple Tree or something like that. He had given Joan a life back one time in a police car, but he wasn’t going to mention that.
BBC Radio Leeds at the time Diane and Bob visited
Radio Leeds were not keen on doing the public appeal. A produced explained. “Once you start doing that service you got overwhelmed. Scores of people go missing every month, and maybe they don’t want to be found. That means legal complications, and all the time you don’t really know what’s motivating the people involved. Abuse and exploitation could be going on”. Bob told them this was different. “This woman’s life is at risk, a man is tracking her down and she needs to take action to protect herself immediately. The police are involved and they are combing the city for this lady”. Bob told himself this ‘amplification’ of the truth was justified but then he did a straightforward unambiguous lie. “The police know and have Okayed the message going out on the radio”. He took his coat off to make his clerical collar more visible. It worked. Bob gave a presenter the telephone number of the Griffin hotel. That’s where they were going to be staying. As he and Diane stood up to go, Bob let out a loud fart. Not deliberate it was just the act of standing and the impact of the mints that did it. They were in a producers tiny glass fronted office. Bob walked and another fart came out. He walked again with his knees together this time and the same thing happened but at a higher pitch. The ranting idiot in his head voiced-
Luke14:11. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted”.
He could have added “for all those who lie as well”.
Back in the car Diane pulled out the Leeds A-Z they had bought at a petrol station and insisted they do at least a reconnaissance of the Lincoln Green area. Bob would have rather have gone straight to the hotel and had a drink. He reminded the young woman that they had not yet checked in at the hotel. Diane exerted discipline. “Come on Bob, this is why we are here. Time counts. Moments make a difference. How would he feel if Joan got killed for the sake of a neat whisky? And you did book the rooms on the phone didn’t you?” Bob did not answer.
The search for Joan’s home was much easier than it sounded. Most of the houses on the hill in Lincoln Green had been pulled down. Maybe only four streets remained. There was a pub at the bottom of the hill called the Cherry tree, so yes a pub named after a fruit baring tree. The streets were empty though and that was disheartening. Could a vicar and a woman go knocking on strangers doors in this district at night? Diane said yes but Bob pointed out it might have certain risks. They took one last swing past the pub and called in.
A talent event was in progress. A poster on the wall showed there was one every Thursday (‘Talent Thursday’. The winner’s prize was a five pints of Tetley’s bitter credit on your bar tab, the losers compensation was a single pint for all participants. (Bacardi and Coke or equivalent for Ladies). Then at the bottom of the A4 hand produced poster, the legend “Bring your own backing tape, or chose from the establishments extensive range of contemporary music”.
The landlady introduced a man as ‘Leeds’s own Tom Jones’. A hefty man in his forties with long sideburns got a shove up onto the 3’ by 6’ stage and did an emotional rendition of Green, Green Grass of Home. A drunk old lady mouthed the words along with him. A young couple giggled. People swayed in their seats. The smoke hit the back of Bob’s throat and made him want to buy some fags again. Diane had never been in a place like this. It felt a little menacing.
“The old home town
Still looks the same
As I steps down from the train,
There to meet me
Is my mamma and papa”
It was hard to make oneself heard at the bar. Bob spoke to a good looking young chap, with precision combed back hair behind the bar. “We are trying to find a woman called Joan who might live round here. She has a little boy called Pateley. Her boyfriend is a black chap. Can you help us? We need to let her know about something quickly because she is in danger of getting hurt. We have come up from Cambridgeshire to let her know”.
The young man’s face changed at least twice whilst Bob rambled his way through all of that. He had noticed the dog collar straight away. He looked all alert and on the defence at first and then that changed to “we have got some kind of nutter here”. Diane picked up on that and stepped in. “sorry I know this sounds odd, but we have found out that her X has tracked her down and want to give her a hiding. Maybe more”, The Cherry Tree was the kind of place which would never get involved in the marriage fights of its customers (that could take a lot of time and energy up, and lead only to trouble and lost custom), but the man knew a bit about Joan’s story and just said “Are you for real. I don’t want to be helping anyone who might want to hurt Joan”. Bob said “oh no, I mean yes we are real. We have never personally met Joan, and we don’t judge people (Diane groaned) but her husband is definitely going to give her a good seeing too”. That last line was Bob trying to communicate in the local lingo. Diane chipped in again “He means the man will beat her up or worse if we don’t warn her”.
The Cherry Tree pub where Diane spoke to the barman. It is now a mosque
The landlady’s son spoke kindly but with an aftertaste of menace “Joan is a great lass and her new feller looks to be good guy. Some discriminate, I don’t. They deserve some happiness. I will take a risk on you and say what little I know. If you’re messing me about and it causes trouble, I will come after you. No fear. Dog collar or not. They have moved somewhere in Headingley. It’s In-between Kirkstall Road, Beckett Park and the rugby ground. She were describing it but she lost me in all the convolutions. Somewhere around there any road. Don’t know where exactly. I have forgotten the boyfriends name but he has some kind of business on Kirkstall Road. Can’t recall the location exactly but past Yorkshire TV but before Kirkstall traffic lights. I’m not a 100% certain because you are only ever half listening in this job, but pretty sure”.
Bob looked at Diane and did a thumbs up. Diane grabbed his hands quickly and pushed him toward the door. She then turned back and leant over the bar and said “thankyou” to the man. “We want to make sure she and Patley are safe, we have been travelling all day. Excuse my friend. He is worn out with worry”. The mention of Pateley was a kind of shibboleth for the barman. If they knew Pateley and were worrying about his safety, then they were good people. Bob would have liked to stay for the music but Diane grabbed his arm and pulled him out the door.
The Griffin Pub and Hotel
Next stop was the Griffin Hotel and pub. Diane noted that Bob had not booked ahead, but there was two rooms available, and they were the more expensive ones and to give the man his due, he did not hesitate. Out came a wad of cash and everything was paid for.
They went to their respective rooms, did the necessary and then met up in the scruffy little lobby forty five minutes later. Bob was dressed as a civilian. They went out onto Boar Lane, had a take-away at a Chinese place and then looked around for things to do. It was gone 9pm but Diane said she had a second wind. Bob looked confused and thought for a moment they had a shared problem but then caught her drift. “Let’s go somewhere for a drink. I can’t do trendy but there’s a Yate’s Wine Lodge across there”, Diane sighed audibly. It looked like it had seen some good days, and these were before 1960 but then lost the plot and was just hanging on. A tatty sign above the door bore the legend ‘Moderation is True Temperance’.
They climbed the stairs to the lounge. Downstairs sounded a bit rowdy. Somebody was singing along to Sinatra doing ‘My Way’ on the juke box. The décor and furnishings were a fusion of Victoriana and 1960’s Habitat store. Diane’s sensibilities revolted against the incongruence of just about everything around her. But never-the-less they found a nice curved sofa like seat in the corner and Bob went to the bar. Diane worried again when he came back from the bar. Her Gin and Tonic was fine, but he was on the near rum, and he had bought two packets of something called pork scratchings. He explained what they were, but she passed on them. Bob ate both and then went to the bar for another pack and a second rum. He looked kind of agitated. Half an hour in he calmed and started talking like a normal human being might do.
Bob asked who her heroes were. “I bet you’re a Churchill Girl”, Diane shook her head, “or maybe a pop star. No that would be too shallow. I know, I bet it’s a lawyer, and if it is it will be that chap who defended the Liberal Party leader. What’s his name…., little guy…George Carmen”. Diane was taken aback. She checked her memory and that confirmed she had not mentioned the fact. Bob had it right. Carmen was her contemporary legal hero, she reluctantly told him he had got it in one. But then explained he was just the light, clever, flawed and funny one. Her other more heavy duty legal heroes were two of he men who defended Nelson Mandela in the 1963 Rivonia sabotage trial, Joel Joffe and Bram Fischer who assisted. “Reading about them got me interested in the law to begin with”. Bob noted how animated she got when discussing these things. Bob then laughed and shouted out in a geekish kind of way, “Snap and bingo”, I have met them both. I spent time in South Africa running a mission in the Transvaal. That’s the big province at the top of the country. The husband of one of our natives was working on the Rivonia farm in Johannesburg when it got raided by the security police. He got dragged up in the net, and ended up being accused of being a terrorist. The man was only a gardener and I thought at the time he had no idea of what was going on. Turns out he was a kind of Trade Unionist and was fairly important. I went down to speak on his behalf at the trial. A kind of character witness if you like. It all got a bit difficult because. Well it just got difficult. I met Joffe and Fischer though”. Both fine men although I didn’t like Fischer’s Communism. We had discussions and I think he was a good man. You know he had done a big thing turning his back on his high up Afrikaans background and doing what he did”.
Newspaper report of the Rivonia trial
Diane lost all composure. “aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh, oh my God. Oh my God, Oh my God. You were at the fucking Rivonia trial. The one for Nelson Mandela. The sabotage and uprising trial where he made the speech. Don’t. Please don’t say you are kidding me”. Bob was a bit taken aback, and thought for a second that Diane had gone mad with all the stress of the day. “Yes I was there in Pretoria, Only for a few days and most of that was spent sat in the park near the court, waiting to be called. Jofe sent me a copy of a type up of Mandela’s speech done by his legal assistant from shorthand. I have it at home somewhere. I was very touched at the time. I wasn’t in court for the speech of course. That was before I got there. I can recite it though. Well bits of it anyway-
“During my lifetime I have dedicated my life to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all people with live together in harmony and with equal opportunities…”
The two talked for a long time. They each had five more drinks. Bob told her about his hero, Woodbine Willy, the pastor who served in the First World War and crawled out to the trenches to give dying soldiers comfort and a cigarette. Then they went down stairs and joined in the sing along next to the juke box. Diane did a perfect Nina Simone. ‘Aint got no- I got life’. It felt to Bob like Nina was inhabiting Diane for the duration of the song. Movements, the tilt of the head. Everything.
“Got my hair, got my head
Got my brains, got my ears
Got my eyes, got my, got my nose
Got my mouth, got my smile
I got my tongue, got my chin
Got my neck, got my boobies
Got my heart, got my soul
Got my back, got my sex
And then
I’ve got life, I’ve got my freedom
I’ve got life
I’ve got the life
And I’m going to keep it
I’ve got the life.
Then they walked out into the night and looked around
Wednesday 24 October 2018 · Jerusalem to Diss (heading home) Weather. Cooler. Around 14c. Around 12c at night. It was down at 3 C near the Alps Miles. 4426
End of Day- I am at the Aire de Jugy, near Jugy, north of Macon. That’s a traveller’s rest area off the highway. This one has minimal facilities. Just a toilet, small playground and picnic benches really.
Tune of the Day: The Sisters of Mercy. Leonard Cohen. (The mood sits well with how I’m feeling).
I’ve added a picture of the best fish shop in Norfolk. One of the first things I’ll do when I get back is head in there. I have truly missed my weekly treat. Battered sausage and chips,
The last 18 hours have been not very good. A stomach bug. Dizzy and nauseas. I need to get functional and stay at that level as have to be in Calais for Saturday.
Inconvenient to get ill at this point. Also I have not slept much. Am driving poorly because of this.
Johnny’s favourite fish shop in Diss
Not many posts today. Need to get a plan how to get across France. 8 Am. Filled myself with every pill and potion that I’ve got. Supermarkets in France are not allowed to sell everyday medication as they do in Britain. Pharmacists have a restrictive monopoly. Paracetamol which would be 40p in Tesco, is more likely to be 10 times that amount here.
1pm just slept for two hours at a service station. Started out for Lyon three hours ago. Only an hour’s drive…and I not even half way there. Nice sleeps though
3pm trying not to use the toll roads. Incredibly expensive. Every payment is around 11 euros and there are at least three of those a day.
Still got a temp and nausea but filled myself up with potions for every symptom and kept myself functional albeit with lots of breaks. End of day. Have pulled over at one of the Aire de whatsits they have here. Rest areas but with only basic facilities. At night I normally go into small towns a short distance from the highway but want to keep it simple tonight. Just stay here. Feel like I can’t make any effort which is surplus to what is unavoidable. Overnight in these places can feel vulnerable. Armed robbery that kind of thing. Psychopaths in cars. You’re isolated, and gettable, and they can make their escape fast on the highway. But I’m just too drained and exhausted to go any further. I am reassured as the evening goes on. Large trucks pull up for the night. By 9pm it’s like they are in a large circle around me. Mine is the only car. No one talks to each other but I feel safer/ protected in what looks a little like a Boer Laager (protective encirclement of wagons).
No pics or stories I’m afraid. Just slogging through. Slept well, Awake at 5am as the truck driver’s start up their engines. They don’t drive off immediately. Instead, the men make their morning ablutions, change clothes and check their vehicles. Then they are drinking coffee in their cabs. Probably munching on pastries or something too wonderful like that. I’ve got coffee but my stomach feels tender. I look rough as hell, and have that noxious ‘lived too long in the same clothes’ feel.
Thinking about a friend from another time, and hoping she can make a revolution. Song for her
Tracy Chapman. Revolution Song
24th October 1980 7pm Orpington Hospital Cheyanne Kidman
She is walking back from the hospital kitchen to her and Johnny’s little hospital flat. She works there as a general dogs body. Some food prep, some clearing. Handling the trays in and out of the hot trolleys. Johnny is on a late shift working in Accident and Emergency. Just four hundred yards away he won’t be home before 7.45pm. Probably nearer 8pm, if they have been busy. She has got some time to make a call.
It been a week since her and Johnnie had bought one of those pregnancy test kits it was now possible to get from the chemists. The little ring had appeared. Tentative at first but then clearer. She had then gone to the doctor and done his tests. So doubly confirmed she was definitely pregnant. It was nice that Johnnie was excited about it all, but it was a pain also that he was nagging her to give up the job. He worried about the heavy lifting, carrying and pushing. Scared it might bring on a miscarriage. She would wait till she was thirteen weeks and then tell her supervisor. Hopefully get some help from him.
Then day before yesterday she got the letter from Joan. It had started off by saying there was something she needed to tell Cheyanne, and there was no simple way to get into this. She would have to take it at face value or not. It would sound incredible but all of it was true. Joan had hesitated before passing this information on, and Johnny had been against the idea but she felt it would be wrong not to give Cheyanne the information. No matter what effect the information had.
She, Cheyanne had been sitting there after a morning shift in her green polyester overalls, vaguely smelling of roast lamb and trying really hard not to think about smoking (she was down to just five a day now. She was doing it for the baby), when the white envelope with the poorly formed writing came through the door, postmarked Leeds.
Only bad news ever seemed to come from that place. She made herself some milky coffee and picked up a couple of Mcvities digestives, and then sat down again and opened the envelope. It did not occur to her for one second to not believe the information contained therein. It made immediate sense, and almost said “what else did you expect, Donald Tipper is going to kill you in a place called Mauritius after you left Johnny and took up with a Lesbian, and set up a business organising wild gay parties”. Even that other bit of information, the second bit was not too much of a surprise. The third bit about the parties, yes that was a little surprising but it made he smile and was now growing on her. She had been asking herself what would Jerry Lee Lewis do?” Well it was obvious. She needed Great Balls of Fire in order to deal with all of this, and she had until the year 2000 (Joan was not certain off the date, but it was that year plus minus one or two) to get a plan. So what was there really to worry about? She would just let things play out and take evasive action at the last minute. She had enough info to know when it was time to do that. So no problem really.
She believed Joan implicitly but still wanted to talk to her. She wanted to know how her child, maybe her children were going to be. What was Johnny up to on his own (was he on his own even. Maybe he was with Joan. He always had a bit of an eye for her). All of that. It was not essential information, but it was more than just ordinary curiosity. And she would ask how Joan came to have the information. She remembered that almost as an afterthought.
Now tonight this was the second time of phoning Joan’s house. Still no answer. Maybe she had been cut off. No money to pay the bill. So Cheyanne had also been phoning the call box on the hill. Hoping somebody would pick it up and do a favour and call Joan. The older people around Lincoln Green still sometimes did that. It was something that bedded in when people didn’t have phones of their own, and of course people were always getting cut off for not paying the bill. Getting in touch was always a bit hit and miss.
No joy again tonight. No answer from Joan or the call box. She needed to find a place to keep that letter. It would only be a matter of time before Johnnie would be poking around in her things when she wasn’t at home. She knew he did that. God knows when, but she could guess. All men were the same. Felt their women were up to something with other fellers. Cheyanne took down the Red Fox fur coat. The one that had been hanging on the back of the front door when some deadbeat had broken into their house on Lincoln Avenue. It was the only thing of value in the house and worth stealing but the crook had not seen it because it was at the back of the door, and with it being open and pushed back the thieving bastard didn’t see it and he had not looked either.
Cheyanne took her sewing kit out. It was 7.35pm. Johnny might be home in ten minutes. She unpicked some stitches where the cuff of the coat folded back on itself. She then took the single piece of paper and slipped it into the little pouch she had made, and then sewed it up again as quickly as she could. When Johnnie walked in with his white coat still on, the fox fur was back up hanging on a peg. It would not be seen again by her or any other human being for seventeen years.
Friday 24th October 1980
“Nothing happens until you do it”. That is Sagz’s motto for the day. “The first step in the journey of a hundred miles” is another one”. “The tough get going when the going gets tough” was employed briefly but then rejected. “What does not destroy you totally buggers you up instead is her (alternative) favourite”.
Today is the day when Sagz becomes a street trader. The ability of Leeds City Police to issue a Pedlars certificate is unimpeded by its need to conduct the biggest serial killer hunt in history. They proceeded side by side and the efficiency of the former is incontestable. Sagz has the certificate inside a few days and all for the cost of a £1.10. She has been proved to be of good character. That was easy. An officer nearing retirement had looked through a set of box index files for a record of criminal conviction (coincidentally the same technology employed for the now infamous Yorkshire Ripper hunt that was running in parallel, but those index and cards filled a room. Tragically, one individual had several unlinked cards and he was the one doing all the killing.
Sagz had no index card so she was given a Pedlars certificate. So, in the space of only a week she had her stock that is the things which were to be sold. She possessed a sturdy box, bundles of 18” canes from a garden centre, and a length of smooth, half inch diameter platted rope and a ball of knicker elastic from a craft and haberdashery shop. Sagz was good for go. The sun was shining and there was a benign, autumnal feel to the air. A fire had recently destroyed a Victorian era indoor market near the city centre. Builders had subsequently put up a temporary wooden palisade and walk way around the site. She was heading to a stretch that linked a main thoroughfare with the cities central bus station (the Green Station as it was usually termed). And it was just, on that unemployed strategic spot that Sagz was going to stand and sell her toys and fancy goods. Good street trading is as much about understanding patterns of pedestrian movement as anything else. It was a practical course in social geography.
Scott, Joan and Pateley had come along for moral support and to carry out ‘visible credibility and sound checks’ as Scott termed them.. A young man, accompanied by a dog on a string was sat against the fence fifty yards downstream, begging. That was not helpful. He looked like a druggie and that promoted fast and focussed walking. She needed strollers. People who were dawdling and enjoying the sunshine.
The virgin street trader had been reluctant to come out of the café in the bus station. They all had a bacon sandwich and coffee. Then a Kit-Kat and another coffee. It would have been nice to have just gone home then but her friends formed a kind of friendly press, and moved her out. There was a plan to meet up at 2’Oclock in the same café but for now she had to get on and be brave.
This was the moment of truth. Her friends stand nearby in readiness whilst Sagz sets up the little cane tripod display. She had dressed for confidence. Fox fu
:eeds City Bus Station. Sagz was trading at the far end and to the left
r coat, body hugging top (strong bra) and ‘spangly’ trousers with a silver effect Disco belt. Red patent leather ‘step-in’ shoes grotesquely inappropriate for the task in hand but they made her feel like an empowered woman. Houston we are good go.
Sagz had been practicing her bark (spiel, shout, patter) at home in front of a mirror. She heard herself sound like a squeaky little girl. Scott taught her to lower her voice. Slow it down. Find her own rhythm. Control her breathing along with it all. Now she was out on the street and doing it for real.
Sound check time. Sagz launches out, pushing the words from her chest “Ten pence, 10p you’re returning balls”. The ball was tied to her middle finger by a yard length of elastic. She threw it out under hand, like she was tossing a brick into a pond. The elastic stretched and brought the ball back with a happy slap into her palm. Then she learnt to do it repeatedly. Out-back-slap, Out-back-slap, Out-back-slap. Then overarm as well, out –back-slap. Then finally she managed to do everything at once. The spiel and the actions. Joan and Scott gave the thumbs up, and then moved off. Rather hastily in Sagzy’s view. Five minutes later she had her first ever customer. A little boy on his way home from a speech and language therapy session at the Leeds City Education Department offices near the town hall. Today had been about overcoming his stammer by throwing his voice out with force. The lady therapist had made him throw a ball at a wall and simultaneously shout out a sentence. “Three packets of mints please”. Ball slap, wall, and back. “My name is Ian”. Ball-slap-wall and back. “I live in hore hore hore Horsforth”. Ball-slap-wall and back. The little boy’s mother had seen Sagz from across the road, and it immediately felt like good fortune was shining on her and and the precious boy.. She bought ten Returning Balls. Then whistled Van Morrison’s, The Bright Side of the Road all the way to the Green Bus Station.
It was only then that Sagz realised she had nowhere to put her money. The spangly trousers had no pockets and the fox fur ones tilted the wrong way. But she was on her way.
By 2pm she had sold a gross of Returning Balls as well as a scattering of inflatables, windmills and flags. Gross takings, £25.40. Net profit £19.00. Not fantastic money but still something like two days’ pay in five hours. It would get better, she knew it. Sagz experienced that best of feelings for the first time first time ever. The one that’s about pitching up with nothing very much, and walking away with a good profit. She was hooked. Then she caught the vibe that it was a little like being on stage as well but this time keeping her clothes on, and that got her double hooked.
She headed for the bus station café once more. The box felt much lighter. 2pm Friday 24th October Leeds City Bus station (The Green Bus Station) Café. Strategic Planning
Cornish pasty and chips. Unacceptable weak, milky, frothy chicory coffee
Joan, Scott, Pateley and Sagz.
Sagz saw them way over yonder at the very far end of the café, but it took a few moments as the place was packed to overflowing. Joan’s first words to Sagz were “Did you see him on that bus going out? That bastard Barry is here. We saw him waiting in line earlier. That’s why we came right back on this side so he couldn’t see us. Sod it and buggery to hell. It’s time to talk and do some figuring”
She and Scott had enjoyed their morning in town. They had called in at a suit hire place and got an incredible white tuxedo for Scott. If he had to be a token black then he was going to max it up big time. Then they had walked along the Headrow and found a gown shop they had been told about (Joan didn’t know what you called them). She had chosen a bold (loud?) red tarty one as near frontless and backless as cheek and Elastoplast allowed her to get away with. They were going to get noticed at the casino.
Then they had seen Barry and felt frustrated. Two moods, the happy one from the Headrow and the needling one from seeing Barry fused just as Sagz came in the door. Pateley, unmonitored poured sugar from a special condiment onto his fish fingers and chips whilst the three grownups put their heads together and made a plan they christened, ‘Operation Shock and Awe (Rapid Dominance)’. Joan had seen the phrase on the internet when she was reading about 1993 and noted the words down in a little red, Silverline notepad she had taken to carrying in her handbag.
“To effect the will, perception and understanding of the adversary to fight or respond to our strategic policy ends through imposing a regime of Shock and Awe”.
Joan said “It’s all about re directing the energy, or not doing the predictable or both”. Scott noted the changes building in how this woman was speaking these days. Between the three of them (and Pateley), a sort of plan emerged for how they would go to the Casino and do so without getting killed. Sagz said there ought to be a ‘possibly’ in that sentence. Okay less than a plan but more than inaction. In fact more of an existential boogie leap from taut, coiled springs embedded in their thighs. A leap to survive. “Get busy living or get busy dying”. So many clichés in so many films and so little time.
They all leave the café and head across town to the cities flashy side and then get busy. A white Fedora hat for Scott, a tape of the theme from Shaft by Isaac Hayes and a (hired) silvery white frilly Shimmy Shimmy Dance dress, and pearl necklace for Sagz.
“The Supreme act of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”
Bessie Smith St Louis Blues (1929)
Friday 24th October.
7am
Barry is waking up at Mick the Bakers home in Hunslet, south Leeds. He reached Leeds late afternoon on Thursday, or at least the end of the M1, just south of Leeds. Then walked along a link road and up through Hunslet to the city centre. The route had taken him past the Draganora Hotel and Casino, but he had crossed to the other side of the street as did not want to draw in the tainted scent of sin which he knew would pervade the place. He then opted for a cut through into Boar Lane before he reached City Square. Didn’t want to revisit that think about the taxi drop off just a week or two back. He had been mesmerised somehow and taken for a fool. Such a lot had been going on in that time, but he had figured out the games and got away, and was now back in Leeds to deal with Satan’s bitch.
It’s getting dark now and the city is showing its night face. Bars and restaurants are opening up, the work-a day people are heading home and evening ones will be travelling in soon. And there in front of him is the glowing Griffin Pub and Hotel, which he had many a time walked past when he was living rough. On cold nights he would look in through the windows and imagine the warmth and ease that resided within. Long bar, rails and antique spittoons, chrome and brass, mirrors and lights. Victorian dark woods. A place for portly men and serious drinkers. Men who wore braces and whose bellies stood out above the water like a little hairy island when they bathed. There had been better days for the Griffin but it still drew in enough good spenders to pay the rates, and turn a modest profit. And tonight again from the street the view felt for a moment to Barry like a portal into a happier world.
It might have been the erratic consumption of prescribed medication or his disturbed sleep the previous night, or maybe the long day of travelling or just the emotional strain of all that had been going on, but at this moment Barry experienced one of those hidden epileptic seizures again. The interconnected bundles of desynchronised and misfiring nerve cells sent out wild electrical impulses along the nerve wires, which found routes into unfamiliar parts of the Barry’s brain. Like cannonballs dropping with all their heft through interconnected channels, the unharnessed electrical energy crashing into fragile structures and whacking his brain into a state of catastrophic disequilibrium.
Barry’s brain sought to restore its functional electrical balance and integration by venting the excess. In an organ wired for perceptions this produced a wild and vivid, multi-centre, multi-sensory climactic experience. A big bang of a complex seizure that bombarded Barry’s clouded consciousness with lights and smells and sounds and the creeping of invisible things over his skin. The next two hours were lost to him. He had walked all that time in a state close to unconscious. In this near fugue state he had crossed busy roads, mumbled incoherently to strangers and even tried to make phone calls. People had taken him for drunk or deranged and stepped in the road to avoid him. He emerged out of this miasma around 10pm on a bench in City Square. His mouth tasting of undiluted vinegar and his hands smeared in ketchup. As he looked blankly over at the windows of the Queens Hotel opposite, his brain re-configured a reality, and where there was gaps inserted an account that seemed to explain the experience.
After another thirty minutes of rebooting he decided he had to go somewhere. An old army friend who everyone had called ‘Mick the Baker’ lived over in Hunslet somewhere. Barry needed to retrace his steps and try and find Mick’s new bakery. Army mates took care of each other. He had not seen him in at least two years. All he remembered was that it was somewhere near a pub.
It was Mick who ended up finding him. Barry was walking past the Station Pub in Hunslet at around 11.20 when Mick tripped down some steps in front of him, pissed as a newt and barely coherent. He was the last to leave the bar after a folkie evening. The musicians were already outside put their gear in a Bedford van.
Mick had to get up for 4am to get baking but the beer and the music had seduced him. The pair walked back to Mick’s place above the bakery. Oddly it was Barry who got the bed. Mick roll up cigarette in hand made a forlorn attempt to fold out an old Z-bed, gave up and fell dead drunk into an old leatherette sofa. He slept face down, fully dressed and with his boots on. Blind and deaf to the world. The cigarette presumably snuffed out by the pressure of his body. His old army mate just yards away.
Mick was not there when Barry woke up. There was just a torso and face shaped impression remaining on the leatherette. Barry pulls himself up on the pillows and replays the events of the night before. It was plain. A war has been joined. Joan and the Blackamoor, with the aid of Satan’s familiars knew that he was back in Leeds. He had been knocked asunder by some force, but he had resilience and came back with Gods help.. Now he had to prepare for what would be the final battle. After a few more minutes of imagined battle scenes, the sound of a metal tray being dropped in the bakery below shook him out of his reverie and drags him into the day. His brain feels clear. Everything has a certainty. That door is a door. Indisputable. Joan and the Blackamoor are the Angels of Satan, undoubtedly.
He needs eat, to get more money, to find the devils, and he needs to kill them. The stolen money he will put in the first beggars hat that he sees. To not do so would make him stink in the face of God. He has to be clean. He could remember all of that without a pencil or paper, but he writes it down in his new notebook just in case. “I need to be clean before I do battle”.
Barry pokes around but there is no food in the flat so, he needs to get out and find some. He puts his head round the baker’s shop doorway and says hi to Mick who is stacking the metal tray shelves and preparing to open up the shop. “Can I stay over for a few days whilst I sort some family business out”. Mick looks pleased and said “of course, it’s not much but feel free”. The old sad friend hands Barry a brown paper bag full of freshly baked sausage rolls, and says “Breakfast”. The smells are wonderful
Friday 24th October 1980 Diane and Bob. 7 Am. Griffin Hotel and Pub. Leeds
Bob is awake. He knows there was two problems but he can only remember the second one. That had been the big sag on the middle of the bed. The mattress was a broad ‘V’ kind of shape and no matter how much he wriggled up to the outer edge once he relaxed he went back to the middle, and that’s where she was. Female, warm, soft, nice smell, skin electrifying.
He audited his own body. Vest, underpants check. No shirt, trousers or socks. And of course no shoes.
Bobs inner voice posed a question. “If I don’t have shirt trousers or shoes on does that mean I had sex with Diane last night”. He tried to run a probability calculation but the workings kept disappearing into a mist, and he had to start again. Shame, his brain had worked once upon a time.
It had happened before. The waking up and not knowing thing that is. Bob had slept with someone (this was before he got married) and then in the morning could not remember if they had sex or not. It had seemed impolite to ask. “Pardon me madam, but did we have sex last night”. Oh God no, that’s not good. His inner voice was getting judgemental.
At that moment there was a tap on his shoulder. And then Diane’s voice. “Don’t worry, it’s not like it looks. You didn’t do anything bad. Except vomit over me, the carpet and furniture and yourself. That’s why you’re in your underpants. Ditto me, I mean underwear”. Bob recognised the scenario. That was the first thing he could not remember, the one before the mattress issue. “Oh God in heavens no”.
Diane’s voice came over again. “We are going to act like the vomiting and no-sex sleeping together never happened. I rinsed out the clothes and got the chunky bits out of the carpet last night. You can finish off the job later. Get some cleaning stuff from the market maybe? So you can stop taring yourself to bits now, and turn back into the lovely kind, respectable but eccentric vicar of Godmanchester. I’m going to get out of this bed now, put a bath towel around myself, pick up my room keys and do a runner. Do not look. I will meet you downstairs at eight for breakfast.
Bob felt the mattress lift as Diane, swivelled around and stood up. He turned his head without thinking. She was glorious.
Diane shouted without turning. “Stop looking!” Margaret Thursday night and Friday morning. 23rd and 24th October
Margaret was rinsing out her soup bowl and listening to Radio Leeds. The radio was her constant companion. She heard the message about a woman called Joan who was in potential danger just before the 7pm news. That was her Joan they were talking about. She had to let her know to phone the radio station.
Most days Margaret’s awful arthritis was worst in the morning and then got slightly better as the day went on. The other side of the coin though was that she only had energy in the mornings. That was the only time she really got things done. The later the time the less energy she had. By 5pm each day it like all the essential juices had been drained out of her and she was no more than a floppy puppet. Never the less she made the mammoth effort. There was no lights on in Joan and Scott’s house, but she would write a note and put it though the letter box. That meant first finding paper and a pencil. She kept both in post-war, utility brand oak bureau in the corner. But the top drawer was jammed. She struggled and struggled but couldn’t shift it. With no deliberate intent she fell asleep in the chair whilst she was regaining her breath and digging up more energy for the fourth attempt. Next thing she knew it was morning and the pain was bad and worse because of how she had slept. She had to get around to Joan’s house. If only she had asked for their phone number but it had seemed unnecessary.
Wednesday 24th October 2018 Johnny Kidman messages Joan.
Late on, Johnny is under the unzipped sleeping bag, with his head resting on a single pillow jammed up against a folded driver’s seat. Just minutes from sleep
“Busted flat in the Aire de Jugy, heading for the coast. Feelin nearly faded as my jeans”.
Hi Joan, do you remember that song. Bobby McGee. You might know the Janice Joplin version better. I’m sat here playing about with the words in this motorway rest area in the middle of France. The song has lots of good lines but the best is “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose”. One of my daughters used to substitute ‘eat’ for lose. She was a clever and insightful little girl. She sort of made the connection. Whenever I talked about freedom we ended up being hungry. She can’t have been more than eight when she started singing that.
Kids pick up on patterns faster than we imagine. I’m older and take longer.
Well you have been talking a lot about freedom and not being afraid. It’s all very seductive. After all its feel good speech, and I hate being a party pooper. But what’s the plan about tomorrow, Saturday in 1980. Are things shaping up to look like the description of your demise in the newspaper (I’m even using facetious language)? Are you now planning to go to the Dragonora Casino for any reason? That would be a good starter. Do you know anything about what’s happening with Barry? That’s another goodie. It would be nice to have a situation update. You know, be considered at all in events.
Thanks for being understanding about not contacting Cheyanne. I do think it’s for the best, and I’m not just saying that for selfish reasons.
I’m sitting here in the middle of France in the gathering darkness, feeling poorly and living on tablets to stop myself vomiting or doing the other. I probably need to get home now, but am still a few days from that. I feel a bit like the dirty, smelly sock at the bottom of the wash basket which keeps on escaping the washing machine. My complexion is taking on the look of a blotchy parsnip-beetroot hybrid. There are lumpy insect bites and the car smells of cat wee (I think a cat got in whilst I was doing the packing). I do feel pretty proud of myself coming all this way. I know others like truck drivers and migrants do it all the time, but they are not big, fat, ‘achey’ old bastards like me. I’m allowing myself a little optimism now that I’m going to make it to Calais and then home, and some pride that I’ve carried this broken old body all that way.
Okay I’ve been chatty and nice, now tell me your plan”.
Joan gets the message as she is looking at the gown and the other gear for the big event set out on the bed. Well if she does get killed Barry will be killing a damn fine looking woman. She pushes an image of herself battered, cut and bloodied in the dress from her mind…but with difficulty.
She did have a plan of sorts, but it was a bit like when you mum asks you how you intend getting home from some party or other. You know the question is valid, you have a few vague thoughts on the subject but not enough to offer up for scrutiny.
Johnny’s message and the invasive thought of a potential bloody end did make Joan reflect on what she was doing. Life is complicated, pretences at rational plans are in fact a delusion. Each moment as it happens in unique, the product of inestimable other events. The only thing approaching a predictable constant we have are self-belief and a trust in our instincts. Succinctly put she will think of something when the time arrives, and she has to have a confidence in that. A bit like the stand-up comedian who goes on stage with no thought of what he or she is going to do. She see’s something, a person or an object and she is away with the instinctive stuff. That does not mean one is without worry, but fear certainly kills it. Got to keep the self-belief. Planning makes you inflexible, makes you suppress your instincts.
All of that was true. But it was good to have a reminder, something like a lucky stone in your pocket. Just something to remind you of how it’s done. The one she had for Saturday was…
“The Supreme act of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”.
Times were changing for this lass. These days she was quoting classic writings on war from two and a half millenniums ago. A long way from making the Family Allowance last from Thursday to Monday. Failing and so being forced to go up Chappletown Road. Joan had heard the line on a TV documentary about some Chinese guy. Sun Buggeroo or something. She had been only half listening because she was on the carpet with Pateley, trying to build a bridge out of wooden blocks and books. The words sort of hooked her though. That’s as near as she got to a plan. That and the song and tune from Shaft.
Joan sat at the Etch-a-Sketch thinking how to reply to Johnny. She wanted to say that she now felt like winner, after years of being the stupid one, and that would get her through together with some words from an old Chinese general. Writing that down would probably jinx it though and it would not look good anyway. Best to not respond at all for now, and then just boast if it all went well. Barry Friday 24th October 8am
It was not an unpleasant walk into town if the sun was shining and you are in a world of your own. Okay the streets were shabby and grim. The district that had once been a poor but lively working class community was now just a patch of urban dereliction intersected by over laid, disconnected and alien routes to the central hub of the city. This was the arse end of Leeds. Commuters coming in from the south spent hours of their week sat in cars looking out on this fossil landscape of crumbling red brick warehouse, canal sides, left over shops and seedy. The now lonely and detached street end pubs could occasionally still be lively in a dance of the dead’ kind of way. Most of the people were gone and it was just the old ones and the desperate types of the various persuasions who were left.
Barry walked faster than the cars creeping along in the direction of city square. He was thinking why would anyone try that? Why not park out of town and just walk in. It couldn’t be any slower. Despite the greyness and aura of wasted time sat in near stationary cars, he was feeling happier, stronger even. Firstly the sun was out, and the air felt soft and warm on his skin. And then Barry felt he was on top of events. Yesterday seemed like something close to Hells Gate, but today was going to be a good one.
And so in that happy frame of mind, the man did not feel like crossing the road when he got to the Draganora hotel. No devil scent from that place would get to him on this morning. Set between the squalor of inner city south Leeds and the backside of the cities railway station, the 1960’s Casino development still felt like a cheap mans a Las Vegas, so long as you could block out the view peripheral views.
This morning it had the look of left-over debauchery about it. Leeds folk believed all sorts about this place. They said it was a fur coat and no knickers kind of place. But it was as near as Leeds got to good-time glamour. Barry looked for any sign of life. There was no tuxedo wearing muscle bound types on the door this morning. Not even an elderly man in uniform to hail you a taxi. This place did not exist much in the day.
Barry stepped out into the road and stood four square in front of the place. A taxi driver rolled down his window and screamed profanities, but Barry was not unaware. You had to look the devil in the face. Fore square and face on. Eye to eye and afraid of nothing. People who loved God should never cower across the street or avert their eyes. That gave up their power up to Satan. Barry was giving the Devil a two minute glare. Nothing else mattered the cars could wait. They were not going anywhere, anyways. Arms horizontal, palms up and hands flexed at the wrist. He was staring down the devil. Chest puffed out. Oblivious to the blare of car horns.
When he was good and ready Barry strode back toward the pavement like a champion boxer. He walked right into a man size poster encased in a chrome and glass frame. Filled half the right wall beyond the steps. It was the face of Tom Jones that got his attention first. Then he opened out his look and took in the whole poster.
Big Time Casino Charity Night
Leeds Hippo Club
All Star Charity Gala in aid of Childrens’s Cancer Charities
Come along, do some good and dress your part
Special guest starts, Welsh and international entertainer, Tom Jones and that man Jim Davidson, and much more.
Tickets £40 in advance or £50 on the night
Our motto is ‘children are the past, the present, the future and even beyond’. Danny Boyd. Founder and President of Hippo International. We are never eclipsed
.
Barry didn’t notice the type. The bit that caught his eye was the block of sponsor’s acknowledgements at the bottom of the poster. There he was at number two. Scott Wiggins. With a head and shoulder photo right next to his name with stars all around it. Barry recognised Scott from the talent show at Camber Sands. Oh God that seemed a life time away. The picture gave him Scott’s proper name and crucially an address, because there is a bracket was the man’s business detail. WIGGINS CARPETS OF KIRKSTALL.
Barry bowed his head and said “Thankyou Lord for your special help in this my service unto thee.”
The post office on city square did not open until 9.30am. There would be Yellow Pages and ordinary Leeds phone books there. They would give him the location of Scott’s carpet business and possibly a residential street address as well. Maybe not everything but enough to give him the chance to find the man. He would go up first to Lincoln Avenue to check if Joan was still there, but even if she wasn’t he now had this opening to find her through Scott.
First he needed to earn some money. He had the stolen £200 but there were no beggars around to give it to at this time in the morning. He put the money in a pocket he did not normally use. That meant it was designated not to be touched. He will find someone to make happy later.
Just now he needs to make his own clean money. Ge heads to the train station entrance. It’s almost facing the City Square but he is clean now. So the place don’t scare him anymore.
Nobody likes his songs though. It’s too early maybe and people are in the wrong mood. They look angry. Everyone looks angry like there is some offensive going on. Then he gets it. He is pitching his tunes to those coming out of the station and so heading to work. They are not happy and miserable people don’t give buskers money, often. The last thing they are going to do is stop and drop some coins on the newspaper he has spreads out.
He does a medley of Carter Family songs but they get nothing, so he moves onto the strongest card in his pack, Johnny Cash and a song that honours the country music tradition, and of course his wife was a Carter. These thoughts are in Barry’s head as he changes tack and launches into ‘Will the circle be unbroken’
“I was standing by my window,
On one cold and cloudy day
When I saw that hearse come rolling
For to carry my mother away”.
This tugs at the heart strings of a Millgarth Central Police Station sergeant going home from a night shift. He drops a pound note onto the newspaper. That was Barry’s breakfast. The sausage rolls could wait for later.
Then he switches across to ‘Danny Boy’. It’s clear he needs to pitch at the night workers going home. An Irish Nurse gives him a smile and two ten pence pieces. ‘Carrickfergus’ gets him 50p from an old man, a ginger haired hospital porter with watery eyes and a limp.
By 10am he had covered all the home nations five times over and was set up for a few days, money wise. Next step was the central post office across the street. In ten minutes he had an address for both the carpet showroom and Scott’s home. Just the street, no number. Barry thought it odd that the man did not go extra directory. What about all the people who were unhappy with their crappy carpets. Surely they must beat a path to his door. By 11.30 he was back at Lincoln Avenue.
And that was a sad place. Barry’s memory of leaving was all scrambled but just the look of the little street was lonely. Those last few houses were in the Marie Celeste phase. The people had left, but for now it looked like they had only just got up and gone. In a few weeks the same houses would look long abandoned even though nothing much had changed in the interim. Barry felt a little shiver for something he couldn’t remember, but then headed for the bus stop at the top of the hill beyond the hospital. From there he could go directly to the green bus station in town and then then out to Kirkstall road to look for Scott’s showroom.
By 12.45 he was in café a café across from the market. Fish and chips with mushy peas, and a slice of apple pie with vanilla ice cream. Then coffee. The food was weak to middling. The coffee was crap. He had seen the Birds Mellow Coffee jar next to the kettle seconds after ordering, but the boiling water was on the foul powder before he could change his order. These places had had their day and were just waiting for the bull dozer and good riddance. One upside was the record stall in the open air market. Barry picked up an old Jambalaya recording, not a first release but early, by Hank Williams. Cost a bit but it was a treat for his ears. He was looking forward to hearing that when he got back to Micks place. His brain played the song for free in the interim.
“Goodbye Joe, me gotta go, me oh my oh
Me gotto go pole the pirogue down the bayou…”
Classic!
Our man walks down to the Bus station but enters it in between the toilets, the café and the board walk where Sagz is pitching her wares. As a consequence they don’t see each other. The space for the Kirkstall Road bus is half way down the long crescent shaped stand. Unbeknown to him, Barry has just walked within a few feet of Scott and Joan. Just a half turn of his head would have put them in his field of vision before they dive into the cafe. As we have seen they saw him and dived into the café and hid away in the far end of the café and waited for Sagz to come around from the board walk. A very near thing indeed. And that near miss sharpens their focus. Makes them apply their minds. Barry’s bus leaves at 2pm, does a half circle around the roundabout and then heads west along the Headrow. The city’s main east to west traffic channel.
Barry gets off the bus just about opposite the Yorkshire TV studios on Kirkstall Road. He remembers thats where the various shops, showrooms and other businesses begin. Before that it’s just warehouses, concrete and tarmac, and the Yorkshire Post building. He walks in the direction of out of town, under the viaduct and past the resilient and ever popular Rising Sun pub. Only a short way.
Modern photo of the Rsing Sun Pub. Scott’s carpet shop was where the white car was parked. The shop is no longer there
And there it is. Across the little street and next along from the pub. Simple. He has found it. Scott’s carpet showroom and shop. A bare basics kind of place. Three small shops knocked into one to create the necessary floor place, two long plate glass windows, and a street facing edifice with all the hype, paint and Scott’s name in big and bold letters. Barry looks around for signs that Scott might be in the store. It was all street parking around here, and there was no sign of Scott’s car either on the main road or up any of the side streets nearby. Still it was too risky to stand at the window and peer in. The day had its second achievement now. First the money made outside the station, and now he knew the Blackamoor’s place of business. Rather than catch the bus again to get to his next destination, he chose to walk up through the densely built red brick terraced streets in the direction of Becket Park. Hundreds of two up and two down houses in an area not much bigger than ten football pitches. Cobbled streets, flagstone pavements, adverts covering end house walls. Crossing Burley Road and skirting the Yorkshire Cricket Ground. Half an hour later he was at the end of the crescent of houses close to the greenery of Becket’s Park. This was amore prosperous neighbourhood.
The phone book has given him Scott’s street address but not the house number. He now had to rely on ‘nouse’ and the gentle nudge of the hand of God. And there it was just before turning into the street he saw a bike laid across the pavement. Its owner, probably a young lad had left a shoulder sack of newspaper balanced across the front wheel. God was working for Barry, clearing his path, making an opening. He only had to see the potentials and run with it.
Barry picked up the bag and strode into the Crescent. There was no car to give away which was Scott’s house but the newspaper satchel would give him the excuse to walk up front paths and look in windows.
He notices an old woman watching him. Hanging onto grab rails which run alongside the path from the front door to her gate. The woman, our Margaret calls out “you’re late. I’m waiting for me Evening Post and the pull out section they have been going on about. The one about Leeds RL. What’s been keeping thee, you’re normally here for 2 O’clock, and now it’s almost 3”. The woman didn’t really want to know. She was just having a happy moan. Barry took a chance. “I’ve got a new address on here. It’s a Mr Wiggins, but the shop have not put a number on it. Do you know which one he lives in?” The old lass replies, now full of good nature and warmth. “Of course love, he is just there. Next door. I think they’re out in town getting kitted out for a big charity casino gala thing tomorrow night, but there’s the letter box at the front”.
Tick. Barry mentally records this next achievement in a mental note book. Third achievement of the day completed. Whilst he is pushing the thicker than usual Yorkshire Evening Post through the letterbox, he glances in through the front window. There are a young child’s wooden building bricks piled up on the carpet in front of the fire place. He stands still and looks at these for maybe thirty seconds, his heart aching. He sees the paper lad looking perplexed at the end of the road. Barry walks around to the back of the house and throws the papers and carry bag right over a hedge.
The site of Pateley’s toys had saddened him. Made him feel like a stranger in the world even more than usual. But it had also hardened his resolve. He was a father, and he would save his only child from the influence of Satan’s Angels. He could at least do that for him.
By 4pm Barry has walked down to Kirkstall traffic lights. He knows a hardware store there, just over the bridge and around to the left. They will have what he needs.
Barry is back on Kirkstall Road at the bus stop for town in less than thirty minutes. In his arms he has two large reinforced paper carrier bags. In one is a heavy masonry hammer and couple of long handled screw drivers. In the other bag is a white double bed sheet in its packaging, and three small tins of paint and a narrow headed brush. The kind you use for skirting boards and door frames. Achievement number four, ticked off
Barry crosses the road to the road and positions himself at the bus stop for the various city centre buses. And that’s when he sees the towering bill board. The type that stand as high as a double decker bus. The writing was probably denser than was sensible for tired and bored humans being passing at thirty miles an hour. Barry had time, a pen and paper, and wrote it all down. Grattitude
10-But I rejoice in the Lord greatly, that now at length you have revived your thought for me; in which you did indeed take thought, but you lacked opportunity.
11- Not that I speak in respect to lack, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content in it.
12 I know how to be humbled, and I know also how to abound. In everything and in all things I have learned the secret both to be filled and to be hungry, both to abound and to be in need.
13 I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.
St Paul. Letter to the Philippi.
Revd. Pointing and the community at St Chads, Far Headingley look forward to meeting you at one our regular Services of Worship
Barry writes it all down. Tick, Number five.
Back in town and on the road walking out to Holbeck Barry nips behind the Draganora Casino to take a look at the carpark at the rear. Checks out the bushes, trees and angles of view. Essentially a recognisance. He is pacing the ground as a security man comes trotting around the building and chases him off. Half a tick.
Friday 24th October 9.30am Bob and Diane Griffin Hotel, Leeds
After breakfast, Revd. Bob nips to a little shop at the edge of the market and buys cloths, a plastic bucket and a bottle of star drops along with some little plastic bags. It takes him half an hour to clean up the bedroom. Despite all that effort at washing away the results of his bad behaviour he still won’t look the staff in the face. No, that will be impossible.
Then he worries about the Sunday Newspaper.
“Elderly Vicar and his night of debauchery, lust and sin with twenty one year old law student. Parishioners claim they saw the signs. Erratic behaviour at village church”.
His mind beats him up like this for a good half an hour until Diane shouts STOP IT! How did she know what he was thinking?
In the morning they go around the homeless hostels; checking with supervisors and staff if Barry has stayed over in recent days. Negative results. They all know him well but none have seen him in many weeks. All of this was not feeling good to Diane and Bob. Time was running away, and along with it a chance to prevent someone being hurt or killed. They had to do something radical in order to get a break and find the man. It was time to switch angles of approach. Diane said, “Maybe if we can’t find the potential perpetrator we need to remove the prospective victims.” They stand against a wall and review the situation. It’s almost mid-day on Friday. Barry has probably been in the city since probably Thursday afternoon. By now he will know that Joan has moved away from Lincoln Avenue. He will assume she has moved in with her boyfriend. All he has to do is find him in order to find Joan. They need to change tack and do the same. But they have little to go on. The sum total of their useful facts from talking with Barry, and the landlady’s son is-
1-Joan and the boyfriend are probably in the district called Headingley
2-The boyfriend is black
3-He runs a discount carpet showroom
Diane sums up. “Applying the sharp knife of reason” (Bob lets out an involuntary laugh, looks embarrassed and touches his head three times in ritualistic kind of way) we are looking for a black man who runs a carpet shop. He might be youngish and Headingley might be important, or it might be totally irrelevant to the location of the shop. They head to the Post Office on City Square just opposite the railway station and take down a copy of the Leeds Yellow Pages. Leeds has twenty eight carpet shops. That’s just the stand alone discount ones. Bob makes a move to rip the list out of the directory but Diane slaps his hand and asks him, “Who is your neighbour? Remember! Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy self, or does that not apply when you are trying to find a carpet seller and his girlfriend”. Bob gets churlish. “And who died and made you an expert on the Ten Commandments?” Diane laughs and slaps him again, this time on the top of his head “the same chap who died for all of us, plus the Ten Commandments are inherent in English Common Law”. Bob pulls her hair at the back and retorts “that idea is a lazy fallacy, and you are making things up as you go along. I can spot a bullshitter from a mile off”. They both grin and Bob begins to writes out the details in his notebook.
He then takes out their copy of the A-Z street maps and looks for the summary page. He counts eleven main arterial roads out of Leeds. Just eight major ones. He divides the map into eight pie like segments based upon these, then numbers them clockwise beginning with the Headingley slice. Diane watches with a grin ion her face. He is feeling on a roll. Bob finally speaks, “Okay smart arse, you need to remember I was on the beach at Normandy on D Day. We are going to go into that phone booth and phone each of these in turn beginning with the showrooms on the road out through Woodhouse and into Otley”.
A map similar to the one Bob used
They squeeze into the little wooden telephone booth between the outer and the inner door of the Post Office. Diane giggles and accidently lands some spittle on his nose. Then she laughs some more. Bob looks annoyed. “What is it woman. What’s so funny”? Diane snorts like a pig, strains hard to catch her breath and finally gets the words out. “Watch out for my smart arse” Bobs face turns to red. A deep red. Reddest red.
Two minutes later, the priest has completed the first phone call. It did not go well. His face first tells the story, and then he speaks plainly. “Okay we can’t get on the phone and ask somebody we don’t know if the owner of a business is black, and if so are they in their late twenties or early thirties. We have learnt somethings. That’s not how you start a conversation that is going to end well”. Bob looked weary, “shouldn’t the police be doing this? They have the resources and credibility, people will listen to them”. Diane mindful of where they are, and the sensitivity of the cities people silently mouths the words ‘Yorkshire Ripper’. All colour drains from Bob’s face, “you don’t think Barry is him do you?” Diane lets out a laugh, “Good God no, but it’s The Ripper we are competing with for attention. Don’t you see? Leeds and West Yorkshire police are conducting the biggest serial killer manhunt in British criminal history. Somebody is going around this city viciously killing women. Behind the scenes that’s all the police are doing; searching for that man. Bugger all else in happening in Leeds when it comes to Policing. I hear even the criminals have called a truce for the duration out of respect. I can actually understand the attitude of that desk sergeant. He must feel we…me and you are living on a different planet. Our concerns count for nothing compared to what is going on behind doors at Millgarth station. Bottom line, we only have ourselves to rely upon. We have to get in the car and drive up and down each of your little pie slices and physically look for carpet shops and ask those stupid questions. We start where we think Joan and her chap are living and then work our way around clockwise”. And that’s just what they do. The conversation is still difficult but Bob’s dog collar helps as does a fabricated explanation about trying to track down a missing son, whose dying mother wants to see one last time before she spins off on her roller skates. Bob classifies that lie under things he will have to do a ten day stretch in purgatory for. He doesn’t believe in that transitional space between death and heaven where we serve penance for our sins before being allowed into Glory, but he will make up for that sin somewhere here on earth later on. Incongruously it reminds him of putting money in a charity box after he has done bad thoughts about one of his parishioners. It’s a kind of offsetting. Weary, weary, tired and bloody weary. He must get his mind back under control, it is going to some odd places. And what for fucks sake was that dying woman wearing roller skates for?
The conversations with the people they meet at the carpet showrooms go as well as can be expected, but are not producing any results.
That’s why three hours later they are driving down Regent Street by the Quarry Hill Flats. Bob tells Diane that he calls this patch hiss Curate Land, because its here he served his curate time. The same place where his hero Woodbine Willie was born. Its 2pm and they are just about to enter the roundabout opposite the Green Bus Station, when they catch a glimpse of Barry with his face squashed against an upstairs bus window. The bus turns off onto Eastgate and in the direction of the Headrow. The city’s main east-west commercial street. Bob pushes his little car out in front of another green bus in order to follow. What luck? All they have to do is follow this bus until Barry gets off. Then they notice the destination board on the back. Kirkstall. There are only two interpretations for this occurrence (these problems are getting easier Bob tells himself). Either the board is telling the truth or the driver could not be bothered to change the roll up board from a previous trip. They have got a fifty-fifty. Progress! He explains this excitedly to Diana.
They are happily following the bus when it slips into an exclusive bus lane and continues on in the direction of the Town Hall. They are directed left by no nonsense signs into another road. Bob automatically obeys the law, and turns left. Diane screams “great God you stupid man. Follow the fucking bus. We can pay the fine later”. But it’s too late. The car has passed the cusp and is now jammed in the lawful option by the cars behind. Diane pushes the passenger door open and runs out into traffic. She shouts back “I’m going to try and catch the bus”. Bob watches her turn inwards and run in the direction of the Town Hall. He swings the car over onto the pavement and nearly hits a man selling newspapers. He jumps out of the car, but before running after Diane he shouts at the terrified street seller.” I’m a vicar. Tell the police I’m a Vicar not a bad man. I will come back”. He then sort of jog-walk-runs after Diane. A hundred yards later he catches up with her, shouting “fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck” into the sky. There are maybe twelve green buses in view all driving at speed away from them. Bob walks up to her and says “It’s fifty-fifty on Kirkstall. Let’s get in the car.”
Diane turns on him. There is now a little crowd including oldish ladies watching them “You are a good man Revd. Bob, but there are times when you need to forget doing the ‘good thing’ and instead do the ‘greater good thing’. ” She pulls him into her chest and folds her arms around the old man. Bob can’t breathe but that’s not important.
Bob is a little blue around his lips when Diane lets go. She laughs and tells him “Don’t die on me you silly man”. The ladies watching nudge each other and giggle. “That’s a story for the Methodist Young Wives Club on Thursday, You see all sorts in Leeds”. The women have not been Young Wives since 1947 but the club has kept the name and the Minister at the chapel doesn’t mind.
Forty five minutes later Bob and Diane are dealing with Margaret, at her garden gate. They had driven out to the Yorkshire Post roundabout and then continued slowly down Kirkstall Road. Diane had taken over the driving and Bob did the directions. As the Rising Sun pub came into view on the right he told Diane about all the fun he had in there with his Christian Socialist Group before the war. They had a special drinking game. She told him to shut up and concentrate. He did and that’s when he saw the carpet shop. Plain as day. A young black man was shutting up shop. Bob judged that no one bought carpets after 3pm on a Friday. Diane cut across the road, in front of an oncoming truck and mounted the pavement…again, this time scraping the underside of the car. She jumped out and ran at the man even before Bob could get his seat belt off. “Are you Joan’s boyfriend? Please say you are. You really need to be. I can’t take it unless you say you are”. The young man looked a little scared. He had been told to watch out for a man called Barry in his twenties, and to tell him nothing. These people did not fit that profile but maybe they were helping him. Diane saw the man’s look and said we are nothing to do with Barry. We are trying to find the boyfriend so we can warn him about Barry. Are you the boyfriend?
Petr (for that was this man’s name) replied “Okay, I just work here but you are after Scott Wiggins, he is the owner of this place. He told me someone might come around, but most probably it would be a chap called Barry, and he would be very bad news. Are you sure you’re Kosher?” Diane nodded vigorously.
The young man gives them Scott’s telephone number. They all troop into the tiny office at the back of the showroom. Bob notices a pile of port magazines in a box under the table. He unthinkingly says “they are porn magazines” in the voice of an automated weighing machine. The young man, Petr, (he is half Czech, Leeds in like that) says “yes but they are on their way to the bin, but there was a hold up”. Diane says “let’s get on with this”. The phone rings for thirty seconds and then a plainly West Riding voice comes on saying he is out but can they leave a message or maybe sing a James Brown song. “The choice is yours”. They have caught up with the ‘Scott’. Petr helps them find Scott’s address in the phone book. It’s just a street name, no number. Becket’s Park Crescent.
And that’s how they end up half an hour later, after a few false turns face to face with Margaret.
Margaret has had a funny morning. She woke up in the chair feeling crippled. For ages she was thinking there was something she had to do but had forgotten about. Then she remembered the broadcast on Radio Leeds about a woman called Joan who was in danger and had to contact somebody in a hotel. Queer business but still it might be ‘her’ Joan they were on about. That’s when she got stuck trying to find the pencil. Next thing she knew it was morning and she hurt like Billy-ho. All that forgetting and then remembering palava had taken up all the morning. Then she had to have her dinner because she couldn’t have her tablets unless she had some food first. Anyway there was no point in rushing now because Scott’s car wasn’t there. By 2.30pm she was feeling a little easier in herself. She had a little packet of energy each day. It might only come half way through the said day, and the trick was to grab it when it came. So she wrote the note to Joan, telling her about the radio broadcast and then set off out the front door and down the path. Tiny shuffling steps. Little rests when the pain rose up. Wait a while then start again. The forty yard trip to Scott’s front door and back had taken her the best part of half an hour. It was just when she got back in her gate that the Evening Post chap turned up and she remembered her Leeds Rugby supplement. She had been pleased with the little interaction with the young chap, telling him where Scott’s house was. He was obviously a bit new at the job, and Margaret told herself we have all had lots of first days where things have not gone to plan. Then she thinks about the offices at Kirkstall Forge and how things were after the war.
It was then that she had the thought. If that broadcast was about her Joan, then that Yorkshire Evening Post bloke might have been the feller who was trying to track her down and cause her harm. The thought sent chills through Margaret. She swore repeatedly under her breath, not in the least like anyone who had worked in the offices at Kirkstall Forge. Margaret told herself plain. “Look here lass, people might be getting hurt because of you if you don’t watch it. Wek up and get thee wits about thee and watch out for Joan and Scott getting home. They needed to know what had been going on”.
It was then that she saw an old man who looked like a vicar and a young woman walking up and down the street peering at the houses. They were looking at hers now. This was all too much of a coincidence. The Yorkshire Evening Post feller one minute and then this pair the next. Something was going on and these people were summat to do with it.
That’s why Margaret shouted out to them in her best Kirkstall Forge office voice. “Can I help you at all? Are you trying to find somebody?” Bob had trotted across in his hop a long kind of way. “Hello we are trying to find some people called Scott and Joan. I am a vicar and this is Diane who is going to be a lawyer when she is older. We have some good news for them. For Scott in Particular.
Margaret felt it right away in her guts. That feller earlier and these two were acting together. There was something going on. Thinking clearly now, she has to get them off the street in case Joan and Scott arrived back. “Please come in. It’s complicated. I will explain”. Diane tries to intervene but Margaret tells them she is in a lot of pain, and it would be easier if they could speak inside where she could sit down. Bob and Diane walk up the path and follow the old lady inside. Margaret notices that Bob has red eyes and looks a little worse for wear. Probably hung over. Been drinking spirits. All this confirms her suspicions. She needs to slow things down and act daft whilst she can think what to do. She is certain that these people are killers or helping that other chap who is the killer. Margaret offers them tea, and then pretends she does not hear them when they anxiously decline the offer.
The conversation is all a bit like that. Bob and Diane being anxious and polite, and Margaret pretending to not understand what they are going on about. After about fifteen minutes though she feels she is running out of rope and the two are about to leave the house anyway. She has to do something drastic. That’s when she has the heart attack. Not a real one but she does a very good impersonation of an old lass having a heart attack. If she can get them to phone an ambulance she can tell the fellers that come that this couple are killers, or at least working for a killer
And that’s what happens, Diane phones 999, and fifteen minutes later an ambulance turns up. Bob has by then left Diane with Margaret, and waits out on the street to meet the ambulance. He tells himself he might have helped the medics on the beaches in Normandy in 1944 but this is different.
As the two handsome and dashing paramedics walk into the kitchen Margaret turns on the symptoms again. As the younger chap bends over her she whispers. “These people are killers. You need to help me. They are trying to get my neighbours. There was a warning on BBC Radio Leeds about it last night”
And that’s when Joan and Scott put their collective heads around the door and asked what is going on.
Friday 24th October 1980 3.45 pm Margaret’s Kitchen in her house on Becket’s Park Crescent, Leeds A meeting. Present:
Margaret, Scott, Joan, Sagz, Pateley, Diane and Bob.
“Well it’s been a very difficult 24 hours”. That’s how the old lass Margaret started off the meeting. “You were all on Radio Leeds last night. Not you Pateley and Sagz, but the rest of you. Now that I’ve got everyone’s names and details I can see that I’ve made some wrong assumptions, but I’ve been doing my level best to do the right thing. It just got a bit back to front”.
Pateley wrote about what happened next twenty years later. He hadn’t done much since getting the English Degree at Bradford University. Didn’t know what to do with it other than go into teaching and that did not really appeal. Couldn’t find himself really. Did odd jobs around the country, even dabbled in a fast food business that belonged to a friend, but could not settle to anything. Then one Saturday morning he woke up, made himself a tall flask of coffee, took out a legal note pad from Woolworths and started writing. And this image of most of his important people around that table was the very first thing he wrote about. It was the first retained, memory image apart from something about rice pudding. It was Picture Number One. The next thing he wrote about was what happened the next day. That was a memory in motion. More like a video but labelled Picture Number Two.
Diane and Bob left Margaret’s house an hour later. Calmer now but emotionally drained as well. They wanted to ‘get out of themselves’ before going back to the hotel. Get the mad day out of their heads. They drove into town. Only one film at the Odeon looked appealing. The Blues Brothers. Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi. “It was a ‘jol”. That’s what Revd Bob called it. He explained. That was a South African word. Remember geek woman, I used to live there”. He had taken to calling her Geek Woman. It’s the one insult that got under her skin. Nothing else did.”Jol is about having fun. It means having fun. Do you remember that idea? ”.
Afterwards Diane drove them back to the hotel and they parked up in the street. Bob still wasn’t ready to settle for the night so they went into the bar for a drink. She tried to get a conversation going but it was hard work tonight. He had been fairly pepped up by the film but now the man looked like a deflated balloon. She asked him if he was okay. He came alert “Yes, I’m fine. Just very relieved that we have found the people and warned them. Still it would have been better if Barry had not got out of the hospital and managed to get here. That’s neither of our faults exactly, certainly not yours but the whole plan of trying to treat him at home in the parish hall was definitely a stupid decision of mine. And that’s it. I’ve been thinking my judgment is not good enough anymore. And that not a temporary thing. The last few years have taken too much out of me. I’m not up to it anymore. I mean being a priest. And then there is the whole problem of not believing in God at least half of the time. I believe in him tonight but he will be will be gone again in the morning I can tell you that. He might peek around the corner before lunch and then go on walkabout for the rest of the day”. Diane looked at the vicar who might be mistaken for Bernard Manning and could see he was unravelling.
Bob went on “I’m not really fulfilling the terms and conditions of the job description am I? When we get back I need to go and have a talk with the bishop. If I tried to carry on I’d be looking more and more like a torn flag in the wind. It’s time to call it a day. I have no bloody idea of what I’m going to do. That’s just the practical angle. Then I have to ask myself was all that time in the church a waste of time. God that would be crushing if I thought that.. I’m tired tonight and am not at my best. Best to call it a day now”. He was actually droning toward the end. Like someone about to go unconscious.
Diane had not really interrupted the monologue but now took him by the arm and led him upstairs. She disengaged at his door and gently pushed him forward. “Get your flannelette PJ’s on in the bathroom. I know you have them you sad bastard. I can guess that much. I will wait here, get on with it” Bob came back into the bedroom two minutes later still looking like Bernard Manning but in blue and white stripes. Diane was in the bed but almost fully dressed. “You didn’t think you were going to get lucky did you? Silly man”.
Bob fell asleep in her arms and dreamed of cowboys…
“I’m a son of the prairie
And the wind that sweeps the plain
So, I’m going to Arizona
Just a rider in the rain”.
The road to Drama. The remains of the ancient city of Phillipi are at Filippoi near the centre of the map
Sunday 14th October Day 29 Jerusalem to Diss Miles: 3268 Weather. Cool. Cloudy. Bit of rain which is nice
Just crossed the border into Greece from Turkey near a place called Upsala.
Today driving from Markara in the direction of Thessaloniki which could take a couple of days.
Jerusalem to Diss song of the day: ‘I get a kick out of you’. Gary Shearston version. No real travel references except a mention of flying too high on a plane. I don’t place the bar very high for these songs.
Navigation
The first time I travelled abroad was with my best friend, Steven Girt. We were both 15. Our passports were a single sheet of card, bent in the middle with just our name, DOB and address on plus I think our National Insurance number.
We crossed the channel on a boat train and then hitch-hiked around France, Belgium and Holland staying in youth hostels. In Rotterdam, the warden would not let us stay. He said “No English people speak like you. You dodgy people”. We got kicked out.
Now this is the point. We only had one map. It was a single page torn out of a school atlas (sorry Benton Park Secondary).
This is a map of the route to Jerusalem taken by the Crusaders. It broadly shows the route taken by me in 2018 as far as Constantinople (modern day Istanbul) and back
Now I’ve got stacks of maps…large and small scale for every country. Comprehensive Satnav at hand for every country from Iceland to Turkey…and where it gets tricky finding a place like a hostel I’ve got Google Maps on my phone. Then there is the specialist aps for when I need a hostel or a cheap hotel, I can book on the move. I’m armed and loaded when it comes to navigation aids.
At fifteen of course you get by on luck.
I’m getting old but keeping at it. Night driving is mostly out because I get disorientated but still have a good sense of direction in the day. Satnav makes it all easy.
I’m driving across a neck of land between Turkey and Greece called Thrace. I know next to nothing about this land other than its one of the great places in world history. The Turkish government keep shutting down Wikipedia for political reasons…what they call inaccuracies. Wiki is my oracle so am feeling a bit stuck (okay lazy). I do know that Alexander the Great was busy around here and this has always been a sea and land route. Think of it as being the M1 for southern Europe. The long distance walking path from Durres in Albania to Turkey, the Via Egnatia covers the same ground. I spotted it three times today. It’s based on a First Century BC Roman road. I walked the first section in Albania a few years ago.
The ancient Via Egnatia path across southern Europe. Created in the second century BC by the Roman Empire, Saint Paul walked the route east to west
Once we left the coast road yesterday the landscape and the horizon changed. Hills, then perfectly flat planes, fewer settlements. The Turkish roads were perfect and it felt prosperous. Here in Greece the infrastructure looks neglected.
The Greek customs chap screamed something like “Figaro Figaro, at me. Like I was supposed to understand. Maybe he was a Freddie Mercury fan. Ha ha. I just held my hands up and he treated me like an idiot.
Turkey right and Greece left. My route generally followed the Agean cost until Thesalonika, and I then cut across to the Adriatic
Am enjoying the driving again after escaping the traffic in Istanbul. No one will ever believe how dangerous and mad that was. I’ve got the tunes on and I’m going to find out all about this place, Thrace now that wiki is up and working. Most of the pics below were taken around 7-8 this morning as I drove toward the boarder.
Onwards…
6pm. Parked up for the night at Paramos, coastal village with a castle. Lots of tourist apartments but off season now. I’m parked up in a little side bay next to the castle. Just feet from the sea. Hope no one tells me to beggar off. The castle and the view out over the bay, and the village are lovely. I take lots of photos on my phone, and curse I don’t have a decent camera. It would be nice to wake up to this.
Today after the hill and the planes I’ve mostly driven along a wide flat bottomed valley with towering mountains at either side. I knew I would have to cross them. I get the full on ‘vertigo collapse thing’ so I had been worrying. All worked out fine. It was a wide road with sturdy metal barriers, and just staring straight in front got me through.
Shortly before that was overtaken by a car on the motorway. A bike fell off the roof rack and I had to swerve wildly to avoid being hit. Driving at seventy that would have hit me hard.
Paramos
About to have my delayed Friday evening treat. Hot dogs and corn chips. This trip is all about eating Hot dogs and corn chips in strange places.
Greece feels gentle and benign. I’m noticing lots of ways in which it is lovely.
Tuesday14th October 1980 Near Beckett Park, Headingley. Leeds.
Scott Wiggins was driving a different loop every evening, coming home from his carpet show room. It added half an hour to his journey but he judged it essential to Barry not tracking him and his new little family down. It would be a disaster if he found their house. That must never happen,
Scott had been doing this neat little trick since the house move on the 9th. He had a plan for the journey home each night. Set out north, south, east or west. Choose at random, then do a figure of eight, through several junctions and traffic lights. Choose a side street to pull over at some point, to shake off any car that might be following. The once he had completed those four or five levels of precaution he felt safe in heading directly home. In a morning Scott mostly approached the shop at 90 or 180 degrees, only occasionally the way he had come from home. Short of changing his car for one that was more common he could not think of anything else he might do.
Kirkstall Road, Scotts carpet showroom looked something like this
Today had torn down all that self-reassurance. Whilst locking up the showroom he glanced up and saw his name above the door. Right next to his brash price promise. “We will not be beaten on price. I bet my name on it”. Then there was his name. Big letters. Scott Wiggins. Surrounded by little silver stars. “Bugger, bugger, bugger. If Barry has got my name he can look me up in the phone book, and that will give him my address”. He had been two minds about going ex-directory when he first moved to Beckett Park, but he knew that his mum took out the phone book sometimes and looked him up. Beckett Park was respectable. She felt reassured by seeing and touching his name and the words. She was dead now but he had just never got around to changing his phone book entry. “Sod it”. He would have to tell Joan. Scary woman.
Back in their new home Joan, Pateley and Saggy had been getting things sorted out. Lately here had been a couple of fine October days and all three of them had sat out in the front garden. Today they had kicked a ball about with Pateley and then tried doing Hula Hoops, dancing to a tape compilation of Saggy’s stripping tunes. They had looked over and saw the old lass in the next door front garden. The woman with bad arthritis. She shouted over. “Sorry but I was enjoying watching you all so much. Nice to have a bit of life again in this crescent. We haven’t met. Do you fancy a cup of tea and a cake? I’ve got lemonade for the lad. I have it in for my granddaughter, but I also use it for my tablets. Takes the taste away. Come on round, don’t trip on that first flag stone”.
The old woman wasn’t nosey but Saggy and Joan found themselves being more open than they had meant to be. Not telling everything of course but just that they had all become pals after some bad times and thought it would be nice if they could share a house. They were trying to stay clear of a chap called Barry that Joan had been with. He was a nutter. They wanted to put roots down here and get themselves sorted out.
It came out that Scott sometimes put the old lasses bins out for the bin men, and always cleared the snow when it came. He had also sometimes done her shopping when her son Steven was away reporting with the football teams. He worked on the Yorkshire Post and covered all the local teams, but mostly Leeds United. “You’ve got a nice feller”, the old woman had said. Joan felt it was like getting a reference off of the Queen for somebody. The woman was different. On one hand a little genteel, even with the Yorkshire accent and on the other she was easy to talk to. Like she had seen a bit of life and still liked people. Most striking of all…at least to look at… was her elaborately styled hair and how she puffed away on Menthol cigarettes like a 1930’s Hollywood starlet. Holding them out between her fingers, at an angle like she was giving a V sign to people behind her. Or maybe the past.
She had told her tale. Her name was Margaret and her husband had been an Ernest but he was dead now. He died at only fifty eight. A nice man. Quiet, hard working, careful with money, He had bought this house when others were still in the back to backs. Worked in the offices at Kirkstall Forge, the engineering firm on the big road at the bottom of the valley. He ‘came up from nowt’ to be office manager. A really good man. They’d had two kids Steven and Charlotte. Dad a big Leeds fan had taken Steven with him to Elland Road. That’s where Steven’s interest came from, and that got him into the reporting. Then Margaret added “and I’ve been here all these years… twenty two years all told on my own, with this galloping arthritis. It can get you down. Everything just gets ten times harder, leaves you utterly drained and you forget how it is to be without pain. Then you spend too much time on your own, looking out of windows. I’m going daft I think. Get things wrong. Spend too much time thinking and dwelling. A little Doolally Tap if you’ve heard of that. It’s an army word from India. Means you’re going mad.”
Kirkstall Forge
Joan knew not to ask about Charlotte, and was just going to offer to make some more tea, but Saggy just launched in. “You haven’t mentioned Charlotte. Does she live near?”
Margaret turn her head, slow like a tortoise, the skin of her neck hanging in long creases, and spoke to Joan who was half out of her chair. Do you want to get a bottle of gin down? It’s in the top cupboard. The tonic if you tek it is in the bread bin. Joan said “oh bugger” under her breath, “what is it about me that makes people want to tell their life stories”. She glanced back. Saggy was on the edge of her chair, leaning forward.
Margaret launched into her story. “You know I even turned Catholic so I could go to confession. That’s how much it was on my mind and taring me up. Charlotte had worked in a building society on the Headrow in town. She walked out that door one Tuesday morning right as rain to catch the bus at the end, same as always, but never came home. She’d got a really bad headache at work and kept saying the light was too bright. Give them their due, the people at the Bradford and Bingley didn’t mess about and drove her right off to the infirmary. Martin Hepworth the manager went with her. That’s how highly thought of our Charlotte was. They said at the hospital she had Meningitis with bacteria. I don’t know where she got them from, she was always fastidious in herself and I’ve always kept a clean house. In a couple of hours she was in a coma and never came out. Died three days later. Only twenty one, had all her life in front of her. Finished her dad off. He were dead inside two year. He was already reeling from the other thing”.
They all had a glass in front of them. Pateley was on the carpet playing with the coal tongs. Joan knew what was coming next, and so tried a little too hard to divert Margaret’s direction of travel. “Who wants tonic”, adding with mock formality “we don’t have any fresh lemon at present, but I can oblige you with a squirt of our baking juice from our top notch, plastic lemon”. It didn’t do the job. Margaret and Saggy were locked in. Joan’s little inner voice spoke “does anybody’s life ever turn out happy, I swear I can’t take any more. Is it just here in Leeds or do you get the same in Hampshire”? She poked Saggy in the shoulder but was ignored. The woman with the low slung breasts asked why Ernest had been reeling. Joan groaned out loud. Pateley was wiping the coal tongs on the white fluffy rug
“I’d been seeing a Rugby League player. Gorgeous man. Lovely chap as well. And it wasn’t his fault what happened. It went on for eight months. Every Wednesday we would meet up somewhere. I didn’t work. Women didn’t go out to work in those days if their husbands were in the offices. It went on from early spring to the autumn. We went on lots of half days out, Temple Newsham mainly, a drink at Apperley Bridge one time but our favourite place was the River Aire, just upstream from Kirkstall Abbey. There was a club house and shed that belonged to a canoe club. We would sit and talk out front of that. They had a wooden overhang on the building with nice benches and little tables underneath. The club was only used on a weekend or sometimes evenings in the middle of summer. It was a very quiet spot on an afternoon, midweek if you see what I mean. If I tell the truth they were very happy times” She said that with a little smile. “We finished up when his wife found out. Earnest never did know until she phoned him at work, which I still think was very spiteful. And that sent him reeling as I said. After that there was no warmth between us. Then Charlotte died. It was like life was piling in on us. Then he died. Cancer of the Colon. Bloody nasty thing it was. I can see him now on the carpet behind that sofa with his knees up to his chest screaming. Poor sod.
I sometimes think “what caused all of this. In some ways I know. Romance magazines. My friend used to pass them onto me when we was about twelve. They unsettled me”. You see I had two sisters and a brother. I was the youngest. We lived over in Guiseley, which as you know is a little mill town…or was. They all went in the mill at fourteen. My brother was there all his life. My sisters married chaps from the mill and then worked there part time themselves once their kids were in school. You could work all the hours God sends and still have ‘nowt’. My mum blamed it on the penny romances, but I wanted something better, and set my sights on a man who worked in an office. That’s why I went after work at Kirskstall Forge in the Invoices Room. I thought there would be more chance. I’d been at the grammar school and that got me in. It was a slow tram ride there and back each day but it was one route. It’s funny to think now but Leeds seemed glamourous in those days. Marrying a chap who wore a suit and tie to work certainly was. And I think that was my mistake, or at least a daft idea that led to mistakes. Maybe I should have noticed there was something wrong with Charlotte that morning, and got her to the hospital but instead I was distracted. My mind was not on things that it should have been on. I feel guilty saying this but I knew that Ernest was a bit of a cold fish when we were courting. There was nothing much to dislike, but at the same time there was nothing much to make me happy either except he got a good salary for the times and we got this house. It might have turned out better if I’d married a chap from the mills but with a bit of blood in him. Who knows and chewing it over all the time like this doesn’t help”. All the same letting them go would be like dishonouring them, so I’ve got those things on the mantel piece. It’s like a little alter. Margaret pointed at the tiled fire surround. On the top below the hanging mirror stood three objects. The old woman explained each in turn. In the middle was a child’s coloured in drawing showing the four seasons. That was Charlottes, her name was in the corner. She had made it at school. On the right was an Tetleys Bitter ashtray and a plastic Rugby League player in the act of completing a drop kick. And on the left a photo of her and Ernest in the back garden, standing against the wall. Just slightly apart. The young children in front. The husband resting his hand on the girls head. Margaret said “theres nowt more Leeds than Tetleys Bitter”.
There’s nothing more Leeds that Tetleys Bitter
Joan screamed silently. ‘I can’t stick it! Sad bloody sad. Miserable, dreadful bloody things. And this poor old cow locked up in this self-made, self-flagellation cell’.
That was unfair, she knew but she wondered how many times Margaret had told that story, and to how many people. It had become her career. She had nowt else except beating herself. A purpose for living. Joan suspected it was like a tape that played all the time, but you can’t judge a person. If you do it might become you one day. That’s what fate seems to do. (‘But there is no fate, and you know that Joan Arcroyd’). You get these crusts of mistrust building up. You see bad things and blame the person they happen to. She had forgotten how to take things at face value and instead made sour assumptions. But then there is a problem another way, when you do know and try and understand, you end up making a rod for your own back. You start thinking too much. It all becomes a bit like a self inquisition. ‘And then its all what are you going to do about it?” It’s exhausting. God, please switch it off. Tuesday 14th October 1980.11.15pm Message Joan to Johnny Kidman.
When you get born Kidman it’s like you get thrown into the world. The worlds been going for ever and there are ten billion things happening but you sort of have to scramble and find your feet and hang on for dear life. Plant yourself. The whole thing is like a carousel or better maybe a fast spinning Waltzer. Speeding round and there isn’t no straps. You have to hang on to whatever is nearest at hand and hope its set firm. Every so often some poor bugger goes flying off when their grip loosens or a bit of apparatus comes unstuck. That’s how I’m feeling. It’s like everyone I meet has been fired out of a cannon and landed in shit. My word for the day is ‘Thrownness’. We get thrown. We are thrown. We were thrown, and in the end we end we get thrown out.
Mr Heidegger’s Throwness
For all your daft talk I think you have the right idea. We can’t live with death on our minds all the time, but every so often you have to face up to it. Being dead is how it all ends up. I’ve got to put my mind to what needs to be done, and if life’s bus doesn’t come here you have to locate the right pick up point. And then stick your hand out. Aye and with the right change in hand or the buggers won’t let you on these days.
Can you tell I’ve been drinking? Spent the afternoon getting pissed with a neighbour, an old lass who likes her gin. Lived the last twenty odd years taring herself to bits about a bucket full of nonsense. You ask yourself why such people don’t move on. Don’t they realise how little time they have left? Why are they wasting it, going around and around in pointless circles in their mind?
Enough of that. I am reading your posts. More out of a sense of duty than anything else. They’re okay but not any kind of adventure story are they. I thought if you were driving across Europe you would be getting into scrapes. Avoiding disasters, meeting unsavoury types, even getting laid, but all we get is this valley was the M1 of the ancient world. Who fucking cares!
I’m being harsh. It’s been the saddest day…because of that woman and I should want to weep but instead, it makes me angry when there is no one to be angry at …at least here in 1980. There are just crumbly human beings all around. That’s how I think of them. Sand people. So you’re getting my ire all the way over there in 2018. I can list your failings, beginning with fucking deluded. But you’re not crumbly. You’re bouncy like me.
I messaged back. “So what had the old woman been tearing herself to pieces about?”
Her daughter died, and she thinks it was her fault because she had an affair with a Rugby League player, whilst married to a man who she thought would give her a leg up in life. Socially. But turned out to be bloodless.
I came back “that would do it”.
An old photo of Johnny Kidman with a staue of Woody Guthrie in the latters home town of Okemah, Okfuskee County. Oklahoma. USA
Then another message back to Joan. I feel privileged that you consider that I have bounce. The music and the laughs does it for me. Today I’ve been listening to this song by a chap called Woody Guthrie. Billy Bragg (look him up) took the unrecorded words and added a tune to it, long after Woody had died. Do yourself a favour, read about Woody. Get on your ‘Etch a Sketch’ and Google him. Now that man really did have bounce. PS I think your turning into a softy. Someone is thawing you out.
Way over yonder in the minor key. Billy Bragg’s rendition of a Woody Guthrie song
Best verse-
“She said, “It’s hard for me to see”
How one little boy got so ugly”
Yes, little girly, that might be
But there aint nobody that can sing like me
Aint nobody that can sing like me.
I’m owning that one. Day 30 Monday 15th October Jerusalem to Diss Miles so far. 3332 Weather: Looks like a hot one.
Jerusalem to Diss- Tune of the day. Wall of Death. Richard Thompson
Today’s plan. Nea Paramos to Thessalonik, then onto the most North Westerly part of Greece or alternatively due north to Albania. Can’t decide until the sun comes up. Need daylight to look at maps! My specs are in the car somewhere but I’ve no idea where.
Wall of Death- Richard Tompson
THE NEXT FEW PARAGRAPHS WERE WRITTEN WHEN I WAS IN A GRUMPY MOOD. LOOKING AROUND THE VILLAGE LATE IN THE EVENING . IT’S NOT AS BAD AS IVE MADE IT OUT BE. IM NOT WRONG BUT NOT AS RIGHT AS I THOUGHT I WAS.
It’s tempting to go into the big city…Thessaloniki…the archaeology is brilliant but it’s the second biggest place in Greece and I know that it will be a lot of hassle. Decided to stick to my plan and only go to towns the size of Diss or Yeadon. That way keeps it easy. No time stolen in traffic etc. etc.
Serendipity is best. Finding good places and things by accident…So today I will watch out for the brown info signs and pull over where ever the impulse directs.
I’ve got to the point where I hate tourism or places which rely upon visitors for survival. It started off when I lived on an island which is considered paradise and kept for the elite. The islands government fixed hotel prices and airfares at an incredibly high level. Only two airlines were allowed to serve the island. There was no economy flights. I worked in the hospital, but just about everyone else was in either tax evasion/ avoidance or tourism. And it created an unpleasant culture. People who work in tourism hate their customers. They see them as cash cows to be milked. That attitude becomes a sense of entitlement. “How dare that tourist not give me a tip”? And of course providing what tourists want changes the place itself until it becomes just like everywhere else. It was a great place to live if you knew where to go. But it put me off tourism culture for life. In three years I could not afford to go into a bar as prices (and assumed tips) were aimed at the First Class tourists who came to us before spending winters in Aspen for the sports! Three years without a sodding drink in a pub or bar!!!!
I spent last night in the village of Nea Paramos on the Aegean Sea. This place has at one time really been paradise. Think Zorba the Greek, the book and movie. I got here late afternoon and headed for some castle ruins and the beach (see pics). I could see the village itself had been ruined by tourism blight. …and whatever had been interesting has been replaced by stacks of concrete apartment buildings and fake Greek Tavernas. And there are still more apartments going up but the first signs of decay are already here. Some buildings less than 20 years old have now been left to rot. It has been a boom place that the developers will move on from once it’s ruined.
Okay enough grumpiness. My policy of avoiding tourist attractions is best. And it’s cheaper and less hassle.
I’ve got more mountains to drive over this morning…no doubt causing more wild vertigo. I also need somewhere to get cleaned up. Access to a washing machine and maybe a shower!
6 Am. The grumpiness has got me somewhere. Have decided on a detour, and a day out to a place called Filippoi, which 3,000 years ago was Philippi. An important city in world history and one that controlled this region.
I’m off down to the beach to see the dawn. Cup of filter coffee in hand.
7.15. Re getting cleaned up. The obvious thing is to go for a dip in the sea. Someone in frogman gear has just turned up but I’m sure he won’t mind.
Onwards…
15/10/18
Lord Rave-On Jerusalem Big bonus special.
The ampitheatre at Philippi.
(This is a special treat at no extra cost to your patience (?) IM ON THE ROAD TO DRAMA
See map above
I’ve decided to take the morning off to visit the ancient city of Philipi, established in 365BC and abandoned in the 14th Century. Modern name was allegedly nearby village is Filipoi)
This means being a brave little soldier as there are MOUNTAIN roads.
Greek people are being really nice to me. Just been in a bakers for fresh breads and they gave me a bag of little cakes. All for nothing. Must feel I need fattening up.
Will add as the day goes on.
11.20. Arrived in a hillside village that I’d calculated would be near the site. What looked like the whole village was out, dressed in black and processing to the church. The walled road was solid with people. It was a funeral and like an oaf I caused an obstruction with my car, and they had to shuffle around me like sheep in the Yorkshire Dales. I quickly moved and everyone was pleasant. Wonderful as well as a sad sight. Everyone walking. Dressed in black. Hats. Carrying flowers. 12.55. Not found the site yet. Going around in circles. Having spinach pie for lunch as I did once before in Elbasan …Albania…Popeye? 14.00. Am at the site. Saint Paul the disciple was here. First Christian site in Europe. This was one of the centres of the ancient world. A battle was fought just below in the plane that changed world history (brought the Roman Republic to an end. Hallowed ground…in a secular way.) The town its self was built on the side of a hill which rises up steeply to a very narrow point. There is some kind of structure up there.
Evening. Too tired to write it up. And battery gone on my phone. Posting now only because it’s hooked up to the lighter socket, and the engine is running.
PS Drama is the name of a town near Phillipi. Id meant to go that way, heading north but when I was in the ruins at Phillipi the mountains looked so high in-between, so I turned around and went back to the coast road, keen to avoid drama. As it happens I’ve got a terrain map in front of me know, and the road I would have taken avoided the mountain, by going around it.
16/10/18
Note.
I got to go to a place yesterday which has a very special place in world history. It’s now only a set of very fine ruins but for half a dozen centuries it was the crossway of the known world. A road called the Via Egnatia, built by the Romans passed through it. That road runs from Durres at the coast in Albania to Constantinople (modern day Istanbul in Turkey). I walked the first section in Albania a couple of years ago and was in Istanbul last week in my mighty Berlingo.
The ruins at Phillipi
A lot has happened at Phillipi. Saint Paul and Saint Luke brought Christianity there just a few years after Jesus died. From this point the religion spread to Rome and throughout southern Europe. There was the battle on the planes of Philippi around the two hills on which I strained my back late afternoon. Upwards of two hundred thousand people fought it out here. On one side Gaius and Brutus on the other Mark Anthony and Octavian. The latter won and the Roman Republic was ended. (I can neither stand up nor bend down this morning).
The site of a battle in the distance
Alexander the Great came through as well but I’m hazier about that.
St Paul wrote letters to his friends at Philippi from Rome where he was at one point imprisoned. They became part of the New Testament. History does not get any bigger than this. It gives me shivers. Then you see a very bored attendant sat beneath a rock, flicking her way through a book and it grounds you a bit. I have never seen someone look so bored. Glancing at her mobile, scrolling through Facebook when she is feet away from the mosaic in a church built by St Paul. I suppose if you sit all day and every day in the same spot, history’s interest wears thin.
The whole city is there to see, built below an exceptional narrow but steep mountain which comes to a point. I watched a man and his wife climb it. She looked at me and rolled her eyes as if to say “This man, my feller is crazy”. If it hadn’t been so hot I would have loved to have done the climb, but slowly.
The couple did get to the top where there is some kind of stone structure. The view would have been incredible. All the way from Turkey to Albania…with Greece in between.
I spent half an hour, sat in the midst of the fallen stone blocks of a church, in the company of the little chap or (possibly female) in the photo below.
Wednesday 15th October 1980
My friend at Philippi. Yards away is an early church built in honour of Saint Paul and Saint Luke
Barry and Bob
Bob looks in at the hall in his garden. Barry is asleep on the spring loaded, fold out Z Bed. He has slept twenty hours on and off on these new tablets. Haloperidol. Dr Mason had warned about of that. He also said that Barry might get stiff in his joints and have problems with slurring his speech but some other tablets would help. So there was two lots of tablets. Haloperidol and the side effects tablet, Procyclidine. Haloperidol was for the psychosis. The thinking problems, and the odd ideas. Maybe hallucinations. That’s not clear. Then if Barry got agitated, he could give him some Lorazepam, which was a calming drug like Valium but worked faster. He had not needed to do that. The biggest problem had been to get Barry to eat, drink and use the toilet as well as get washed and keep clean.
Sam Mason, the GP had referred Barry to a Psychiatrist at Fulbourn Hospital on the other side of Cambridge. That was a Dr Smarter. He had agreed to treat Barry privately, but not a lot seemed to be going on from him. Bob had written down all he knew about Barry and anything which he had said that had seemed odd or worrying. Sam had seen Barry for five minutes to do a physical examination, and what seemed a very brief psychiatric interview. He had also asked him if he, Barry felt like hurting himself, and if he ever heard voices or suspected people wanted to harm him. How long these symptoms had been going on and when had they first started. Bob had been there during this assessment and had been a little disappointed. It didn’t go very deep and Sam was talking in the wrong way to get anything out of Barry. Overly formal, almost mechanical. The notes had said Barry was guarded and suspicious, but that wasn’t really true, it’s just, if he was frank Sam had not been very good. One thing Barry wasn’t with most people was guarded. Barry had been almost childlike in his trusting, but had only answered exactly what he was asked. Barry was like that. He didn’t expand or explain spontaneously but he certainly wasn’t guarded. You just had to ask the right question. Then you would get a complete, unfiltered package of information back.
A replacement Chinese bridge in 2019
It became clear afterwards why Barry had immediately trusted the doctor. It was his name, Sam Mason. “Don’t you see, he said. Look at the name. It works two ways. I’m still looking for the third. The messages always come in three’s. I’ve seen that inscribed stone in the Council Office wall, near the Chinese Bridge.. The writing is difficult, so I could be wrong but I think it says M. Godson, but if you look at the letters in a different way it might be W. Gadsby. So I’m not counting that one. Yet anyway. No, far better is the doctor’s name. First message is “Sam Ma Son”, switch it around and it becomes Ma Samson. That’s number two”. This was worrying Bob, Barry after a few days where he had seemed fairly normal was talking in this way again. He had explained this to the GP, who had written the words “Thinks things like my name are a message from God”.
Godson or Gadsby
It had been Bob who had mentioned the GP’s first name, but now regretted doing so. They were not big friends but in a place like Godmanchester, the professionals sort of linked up with each other. The minister, the head teacher, the solicitor, the dentist, the accountant and the GP. The town had a pushy chiropodist but he had not made headway, and the estate agent had been rather rudely snubbed. No one really likes them. So it was just q gang of six. Bob didn’t feel comfortable with these kinds of clichés getting together and pulling strings behind the scenes. Didn’t feel very democratic. They had dinner parties at each other’s houses. The women socialised a lot, and the men (they were all men) made the occasional effort. There had been the archaeology field walking. Sam had been the instigator. The archaeology had been half the reason he moved to the town. Godmanchester had been a Roman, three-way, crossroads town until the Saxons came. It was a ‘Mansio’ place apparently. Something like a coaching inn place, but on a bigger scale. Anyway, they had spent all afternoon one drizzly day in October trudging across a ploughed field in a close line, with nothing to show for it other than a few shards of pottery, which Sam said was Saxon but Bob thought more likely to be bog standard mid-Victorian. Even a bit of Woolworth stuff as well.
After Ida had died, Sam had told Bob to do weightlifting with him. Lose some weight, get on the treadmill as well. He said it would shift the hormones. Get the right ones coursing like they ought to. Sam was the fanatic. He had a heated outbuilding in his garden full of the equipment. He collected it like some men collect classic cars, and it became like a cave full of odd looking, faintly sinister, metal machines. Sam in unguarded moments preened himself in shop windows, He wore tight shirts and kept his jumper off even in cold weather. Silly sod. But that was how he knew Dr Sam Mason. Didn’t like him. Thought him shallow and Narcissistic, but they knew each other. The problem arose when every time he tried to talk to him about Barry, Sam would change the subject to Roman and Saxon Archaeology. And it was not for reasons of patient confidentiality. The man talked about all of what he called his loony patients. Cringingly so. In time Bob decided that the doctor was rather tired with being a doctor, and quite possibly had never been really interested in the first place. Instead, there was some kind of bodybuilder- Roman Centurion axis mental link up going on. And there was always a lot of grapes in the house.
Sam was always excited by rumours of future excavations. There had been none since 1969, and that’s all that Sam seemed to want to talk about. So that’s where they were at. A GP who only wanted to talk about Roman body armour, and weight lifting, and a Psychiatrist who consulted by handwritten notes. If he allowed himself to be chippy, Bob felt the psychiatrist, an old school type lost interest the second he heard Barry’s Leeds accent. Barry had stopped being a paying customer-patient and became just one more run of the mill, bog standard Schizophrenic. Maybe only middle-class patients had ‘interesting diagnoses’. Everyone else ended up in the default bag, Schizophrenia. There wasn’t a lot of clinical curiosity or effort.
So that where they were at with the doctors. There was no talk about when the medication would stop and Barry wakes up. In fact, Bob did not really understand the plan at all.
One good thing. Dr Sam had a niece, and she was nice. Around twenty-two and waiting to start a job in legal chambers at Cambridge, in January. Nothing high flying. Some kind of work experience for the upper middle classes. She would be a high flier one day, but now was now young and skint, and had time on her hands and needed money. Her parents knew the worst thing to do is give their kids money. Far more valuable was life experience, and they had put this job her way. They knew about Barry. He could teach her something.
The ‘girl’ was going to come in for five hours a day. Housework, cooking and some taking care of Barry in between. Bob had even given her a bit of training. The lass had been worried about how to shave the in house patient so they had found a bag of balloons left over from the Sunday School Harvest festival celebrations. Bob had lathered them up with shaving soap and got Diana (that was her name) to shave them with a Gillette razor. He had seen that being done in the field hospital, in the war. He had done it himself. That’s how they had taught the orderlies to shave the soldiers who were too ill to do it for themselves. If you nicked the balloon it went pop and the soap-lather splattered all over your face, so it taught to care.
And that what had happened to Diana, but it had been a laugh. And that had done it. Just the laughing and the look. Bob had always been a sucker for young women laughing, and back in his youth, he would have been interested. Never good looking, he just got by on pity and alcohol but he got lucky, often. There is a lot of compassion around and his theology studies made him a trophy of sorts. Okay, that live interest had all but gone. He was an old man, but it was still nice to be reminded. Nothing ‘pervy’. It was just an honest pleasure being around something so beautiful. And, with her looks, the beauty (her shimmer) was not in a conventional way (that had always bored him). She was quirky and fun. He could swear she was Jewish. He loved Jewish women. How they talked and thought and talked so quickly. Their mind bouncing around. Flipping from one thing to another. Right there on the verge of Hypomania. (Maybe he could retire to a Kibbutz and be around Jewish women all day long. He had liked Palestine when he was there in the war). The house needed someone like her around. It had got gloomy. It needed a human light source. Good God was she Jane Birkin (ish) or not (as well as Jewish). That said it. A Jewish version of Jane Birkin (who was Anglo-French although that does not preclude Jewish).
If you don’t know who Jane Birkin is, go to YouTube and type in ‘Jane Birkin Je t’aime’. But take your tablets first.
Bob was getting happy again.
Day 31 Jerusalem to Diss. Tuesday 16th October 2018 · Igoumenítsa, Greece. Weather. It’s always the same. Sunny 21c. Pleasantly cooler at night.
Jerusalem to Diss-Tune of the day- ‘Jane Birkin Je t’aime’. But take your tablets first, before listening.
I’m in a perfect spot in the town which Satnav lady can’t pronounce. On a spit of land about four miles long, that sticks out into the Adriatic Sea. The waves lap ten yards away and I’ve heard them all night. There are other autumn migrants here in Motorhomes/ RVs. A few, at a little distance, are useful. I feel a little uneasy at 2am if I’m entirely away from any kind of help if criminal types turn up.
The plan today is to organise my ferry from here to Ancona in Italy tomorrow night. If you look at a map of Italy, Ancona is halfway up on the right side. The foreign office is advising people not to go through some of the countries north of Albania, which I had intended to do. So I have to jump land masses.
Ferries at Igoumenítsa in Greeece
The other big event is I had two cans of lager and watched Bruce Springsteen on YouTube last night in total, absolute blackness…apart from all the stars. I’ve not been drinking at all because I’m with the car…but this bit of land is technically an open campsite, so I was not breaking the law…it gets complicated. I think I will do the same again tonight.
Archaeology…the town that can’t speak its name is like an outdoor museum. There is a Roman theatre, largely intact near here. That’s for this morning.
The pics are from dawn on the beach this morning plus various ancient sites in the scary mountains near the Albanian border. I went to them all.
A couple of map pics as well. One showing where I am now and a screen shot of an interactive map showing little dots from here to Ancona, the route. I find that satisfying.
Onwards.
The theatre at Gitana
Late morning. I’m backin the third century BC (or was a little while ago), visiting the ruins of a Greek city called Gitana, which has been unearthed in a remote spot along a narrow valley close to the Albanian border. It’s been known that there was buildings there for a long time but it turned out to be a whole walled city occupied for around 800 years, and a regional capital which had been supposed but never found. I watched them excavate the theatre site in the heat. See pics. Getting here was a creeping slow drive down a concrete pavement between high valley sides. They held the heat in and it felt not unlike the Bushveld in South Africa. A sense of heat pulsating, a cacophony of insect sounds, air so dry is takes any moisture out of one’s mouth and nose. One stretch was lined with colourful bee hives but the landscape was mostly low bushes, small thorn trees and sharp grasses, At points there was nowhere to turn around. I was worried maybe Id missed a turning. I crossed and re-crossed a blue-green river several times on bridges only a few inches wider than my car. Then the land opened out and there was a low hill to onside. A high gate was in front of me and an abandoned office. A sign gave the name of the place, and announced that the site was locked up at 12.30, and if you were inside still, then tough luck. I went in anyway. I had thirty minutes, but I cut it fine to the second. I could have spent the night in a First Century BC Greek City with nothing to eat or drink. And there was probably snakes.
One of the narrow bridges
The heat sucked any energy out of me but there was a party of field archaeologists labouring away with spades, trowels and wheel barrows. The structure, a little amphitheatre was emerging from the ground. I glanced at one of the diggers and she nodded. I was allowed to walk around on the wooden duck boards. There was writing scratched on the seats. “This seat belongs to so and so”. We all leave little scraps behind for history. This person had left a seat reservation.
I indulged myself a little. It was a scary, unnerving thought but this place had probably seen some of the first showings of dramas that have come down to us over three millennia. That seemed an impossible idea, and unnerving. 13.30. Back in town. Having lunch on a bench beside a central park. Thinking on how my elder brother and I would go on these kind of trips when I was around fifteen. Not archaeology sites. He saw no interest in that at all. No the Beatnik and hippy trips. A point would come when he would say “Right Daft Bugger (that was my family name) it’s either shoplifting or starvation and no fags (English for cigs)”.
We came from an ultra-respectable ‘Methido-Marxist’ background. My skin would have turned inside out rather than go off nicking stuff but he had overcome that. NB he did the stealing not me. He would do the deed. Other times he would fill up at petrol stations and then shout “hold on tight” and we would drive off at speed without paying. In time it stopped being a surprise.
All of these things require specialist skills and the ability to control your nerves. If I knew where these places are/were I would go back and pay the people. I’m not condoning what he did (or what I benefited from) but it does make me smile… he fancied himself as Paul Newman’s, Butch Cassidy and I was the ‘Re-tread Kid’. He would sing that Bonnie and Clyde song and act out the last verse (the shoot up one). It was always a good laugh in the end… 19.45 I’ve had the corn chips and hotdogs. My Friday evening treat. Listening to Bob Seeger with a 2 Euro bottle of wine. Looking at the sea and watching the fishing boats all lit up in the dark. All is good.
View out over Igoumenítsa from my beach that night
Thursday 16th October 1980
Bob came into the hall first. Barry is dozing, on a pop-up bed in the corner. Not awake or asleep. Somewhere in-between. That was the Haloperidol. The priest notes the man’s lips were dry and cracking, and his tongue, greenish when he speaks. Bob feels a little guilty about agreeing to nurse him here in the parish hall. The man is not getting proper attention.
He touches Barry lightly on the inside of his left ear. That’s a way to gently wake people without causing a big surprise. He had learnt that in the field ambulance (along with much else). “Barry hiya lad. Can you hear me? Bob hear. I want you to meet somebody”.
Barry’s eyes open, they are caked in sleep. He slurs, “It’s in the wardrobe with the car”. Barry was still talking nonsense and his speech was bad, like he was talking with a mouth full of pebbles. The man’s tongue was protruding between his lips slightly. He had been told by Dr Sam to expect that. Still unnerving though. Barry looked awful.
“Barry, I’ve got a lady here called Diana who is going to be helping me take care of you. I will still do the very personal things, when you can’t do them yourself. Otherwise it will be Diane doing your food and making sure you drink enough, doing your tablets and everything else”, Barry answered “Yes that’s fine”, but it was obvious he had no idea what he was agreeing to, or probably who Bob was. Bob was thinking “he’s more Dolally than he was three days ago”.
Diana came into the room, she was taller than most women and carried it well. Some people move with hesitation, others smoothly with confidence. She was one of the second, and there was an impression of physical commitment in whatever she did from opening a door to giving a hug. Like a magnet clamping on to iron. The continental, willowy looks were a lie. She might look like Birkin stationary but when she moved it was Jacky Pallo the wrestler. In a good way.
Barry seeing her pulled the covers back and tried to stand up. He was naked from the waist down. Bob gently prompted Barry back to the horizontal and covered him up, then glanced over at Diane. She was un-phased. He made a mental note. That was some kind of test passed. This woman is no delicate flower.
‘Hi Barry, I’m Diana and we are going to get you sorted out’.
Bob, gave himself a pat on the hand. He had got lucky. This woman (not a girl at all) would be just perfect. If the medicines did their part then we would soon have the lad on the mend.
16th October Sagz and Co Leeds
If Joan and Sagz were seeds you would say they were early sprouter’s in the seed tray that was Scott’s house. They had moved in on the 9th, taking a few days to unpack and orientate (the world looked very different from Beckett Park) and then had done a head to head. It had not included Scott. Whatever the women did, it had to be a project that was capable of standing on its own. Not needing Scott’s ongoing support. They were a little family and Joan loved the man to bits but any relationship between them would have to be about liking each other not dependency.
So the two women reviewed their options-
1- They had no work record. Prossies and strippers don’t generally pay National Insurance.
2- They didn’t have off the shelf skills they could just slot into. Okay Joan had trained as a hairdresser but nothing interested her less now. Sagz had all the private girls’ school finish when she chose to show it, but that stuff was like a coat she didn’t want to wear anymore.
3- Joan had a child who was about to turn four but he wouldn’t start school for almost a year.
4- No bugger would employ them and anyway who wants to be employed and get pushed around, preyed upon and exploited all at the same time
So the conclusion was they work for themselves. Sagz would do it full time, and Joan and Pateley would work as well whenever it was feasible. They had not decided what they would sell though.
In the afternoon they were across at Margaret’s for Gin Cocktails, and they raised the subject. “We want to work for ourselves Margaret, but we are getting a bit stuck about what they should do. Scott will lend us some money, but we don’t want to take much and if its selling stuff it needs to be gear that you don’t have to know much about in order to sell it”. Margaret laughed, and asked the two women how tough they were. ”Listen on, if you are serious about this you could have a go at doing what my niece’s husband does. Street trading. He sells cheap kids novelty toys. Balloons, windmills, flags, plastic ducks, plastic frogs with a sucker that jump off a spring and returning balls”. She looked across at Joan waiting for a comment but all she got was “I can guess, balls on a bit of elastic that you throw back and forward, zig-zag fashion”.
Margaret went on “The stock is dirt cheap, the mark up is up to ninety percent. Okay in the winter its freezing cold if you’re on the street selling outside the market or Marks and Spencer’s but in the summer you get to go to all the Gala’s and carnivals around West Yorkshire. This relative starts off with the Gawthorpe Coal Carrying race around Easter and then works at an event of one kind or another all the way through to Leeds Lord Mayors Parade and Halifax Gala at the back end in September. The best is Halifax Gala which is sometime in June. He can make a week’s wages in a day. Then you have Royal Visits on top of that. Some sell football badges, hats and caps as well”.
Sagz and Joan were showing some interest. Sagz asked “How do you get to know about all these events? We would have to be busy to make it worthwhile. And where would they buy the stuff?”
Margaret was getting excited. This was one of the things she had wished she had done instead of sitting and home and moping all those years. Lots of things had put her off, but it had boiled down to “what would Ernest have thought, and it’s not the kind of thing women do”. Well, there had been far too much of that kind of thinking over the years. “Sagz (she had had started using the name, because that’s what Joan called her, but didn’t know for sure why, but could guess. Not that it matters two hoots. Anyway it would be confusing if there was two Margaret’s in their little group), I will phone my niece and find out. It can’t be hard because her chap has been doing it since the war, and they have bought and paid for their own house in ten years, even though on paper he is only a mill hand. I suppose the alternative is being a drug dealer”. Margaret was getting her sense of fun back.
After three Cocktails they decided it might be nice on Sunday to get Margaret down for a walk beside the river, in the direction of the Canoe Club. She would need her wheelchair but they would make a plan.
Scott (oh what a name) Wiggins
That’s what he had taken to calling himself recently. If Sagz could have a tag why couldn’t he? He was in the pokey little office at the carpet showroom, surrounded by stacks of carpet sample books and porn magazines. It was time to get rid of them, the porn mags, seems a shame to throw them out, but he couldn’t think of anyone who might want them.
He’d been thinking the place could almost run itself. All he would need to do is get a good manager in. Pay them a wage and a share of the net profits, and then just call in for a few hours a week to do the buying, sign the cheques and make sure he wasn’t being fiddled.
That idea about being a mental nurse had been growing. It had started with the day he got Barry into the Taxi. He had been down to the central library and looked at a careers book. It seems there are four kinds of nurses, and they all do different courses, but they all lasted three years. You got paid when you were studying but it was a crap wage. Ideally they wanted people with at least one A Level but you could get in by doing a thing called a D Test which was something like an intelligence test. The book said that life experience was especially important for this branch of nursing. Well he had some of that.
And now he was on the phone to the school at Meanwood Park Hospital. He knew that was some kind of asylum up by the ring road beyond Headingley and Scott Hall Lane. He has assumed the training would be based at one of the big general hospitals. He had phoned the switch board at St James and they had passed him onto a Miss Woolridge over in the on-site School of Nursing. She said the Subnormal and Mental Nurses trained over in a building at Meanwood Park. The mental nurses did their placements in the psych unit at St James and over at Highroyd Mental Hospital in Menston and well as a bit in the community. She gave him the number for the School of Nursing at Meanwood Park. He was still wondering what a subnormal nurse was.
A Mr Clarke answered the phone. There had been a bit of a talk about that issue. What branch of nursing would be best. He was a tutor for the Mental Subnormality Nurses. It was an old fashioned term, and they needed to get rid of it, but they were a little like Cinderella. Anyway did he want to come out for a talk with him? And that was it. He was booked in to see Alan tomorrow (by the end of the conversation they were on first names). Scott found a sturdy cardboard box and started loading the porn mags into it. He had not even talked it over with Joan, the training not the magazines. He would do it tonight at tea. She might think he was gay though.
And that’s how the conversation started off that evening at tea. Scott just came out with it, “I’m not gay but I want to train to be a nurse. Not sure which kind yet but it will be mental or submormal. If I get in, I will get a manager into the shop. Keep that running at the same time, so I don’t get short? The course lasts three years. What do you think?”
Joan just said “You will be good at it. Maybe talk to Johnny K. Send him a message on the Etch a Sketch. He used to do that before he retired. And he trained up here only a few years back.
And that’s what Scott did. Message to Johnny first. All positive except a comment about it knocking the stuffing out of him, before putting it back in. And he would start talking like a Twat. Didn’t really understand the first comment and he figured the second was a joke.
So 2pm, 17th October. Appointment with Mr A. Clarke. Meanwood Park Hospital. It was only then that Scott properly registered he didn’t know where it was. Joan showed him a think called Google Maps on the Etch-a-Sketch. That was so neat.
He flipped across to YouTube. A song had come into his mind-
“Don’t wanna be a bus driver all my life.
Seen enough of Brixton town in the night.Fly me away on Coconut airlines, fly me high, Barbados Sky.Oh I’m going to Barbados”.
The band had been called Typically Tropical and the sound was full on black man.
The video came up. “Bugger they are all whiteys, apart from two black fellers at the back with a tambourine and some maracas.
Typically Tropical
Barbados.
Joan was thinking that she had better make sure her chap didn’t get his brains bashed in with a hammer if he was going to be studying.
Where the Orient Express reached its destination. The station is now sadly derelict or at least not in service
CHAPTER 8 “AND THE WALLS OF JERICHO CAME TUMBLING DOWN”
“So the people shouted when the priests blew with the trumpets: and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat”. Joshua 6.20 King James Bible
“You may talk about the men of Gideon
You may brag about your men of Saul
There’s none like good old Joshua
At the battle of Jericho”.
Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho
Mahalia Jackson
Joshua fit the battle of Jericho. Mahalia Jackson
Thursday 4th October · Day 20 Diss to Jerusalem Tune of the day- By the Rivers of Babylon. Boney M.
I did a lot of posts yesterday but on the wrong privacy setting. Even a video! You can see them now.
Temp- 19c. Which would be fine but don’t believe it. Feels hot and humid.
Big Message. Happy Birthday to my good mate Sonia Howson. A day in Istanbul.
The Blue Mosque with the lovely Bosphorus in the background
Plan for the day. Walk down to the waterfront. See the Blue Mosque which is very close. Then just have a free and easy wander. Find a museum with air conditioning later. Then find Taxim Square. The place where the riots happened a couple of years back.
Just had an early breakfast on the rooftop terrace of my backpacker’s hostel. Great view out over the Bosporus. Splendid. The lights all silvery and the water shimmers. Ships, ferries and boats are busy even at this time. And for once I’m not reconstructing in my mind how the place looked in the past. This city has the feel of ‘epic’ now.
My flight to Israel is only on Monday so I’m going to take a drive out to Troy Saturday and Sunday. I was supposed to go last year at this time but the Serbian Rat bit me and made my leg into a tree trunk.
Onwards and upwards.
I will update as the day progresses.
7pm. Well, I could write a paragraph or I could do 20 pages. I will do a paragraph and let the pics do the talking.
I generally dislike tourist places. There were many hundreds of people in the mosque and surrounding gardens. Also, dozens of touts grabbing you by the arm. Tried really hard to filter that out and concentrate. Got there eventually. It is a special place. I don’t normally do ornate but it was thousands of glazed tiles. Got annoyed at one of the Mosque officials who went berserk at a woman who put her shoes on a yard too early as we were leaving. I understand the importance of reverence but if there is a God she has more important things to worry about. The bullying was seen by dozens who mentally made a note.
Then walked miles along the waterfront. I repeated to myself “I’m walking next to the Bosporus”!!! I, Johnny Kidman have brought my body here. Some commercial anglers let me watch them fish and take pictures. The light and the shimmering water, as well as the crowded buildings along the banks, make this place special
My back gave out after a few miles so I turned around and caught a cheap cruise up and down the waterway. Passed under the famous bridge…twice. Everyone on their feet taking pictures. Two gay Turkish men hugged and kissed, and no one paid it any heed. Not what I expected in a Muslim country (Ataturk and the secular constitution notwithstanding).
Then on the way back to the hostel, I took a look at the old railroad yards and the Sirkeci station from a high vantage point near the Golden Horn (the M1 motorway of ancient history). The buildings and layout are all 1890’s. Splendidly grand. This is where the Orient Express terminated but now the station looked abandoned. Trains parked up in all directions, waiting to be used again. There was a signal box with ‘Istanbul’ painted across the front. It could have been from a 1940’s Hollywood film. I enjoyed that sight as much as anything.
MESSAGE FROM JOAN SATURDAY 4th October 1980 9pm
It’s been a few days. Got back to Lincoln Avenue last night. Woke up in the middle of the night with a plan. Told you I would get one, and I didn’t need no charts or pencil and paper. Just a good brain.
I’m not going to tell you what my plan is for a while. I have to get things ready first. But here is a clue. Joshua 6.20.
Day 21 Friday 5th October 2018 Diss to Jerusalem The second day in Istanbul Weather. High of 21c. Partly cloudy.
Diss toJerusalam Tune of the Day:
Before Istanbul was Istanbul it was Constantinople, and before that Byzantium. Some of the oldest stories that exist were written about this place. Troy of Trojan Horse fame is just down the road. I know very little of this history.
This city is amongst the biggest in the world. Fifteen million people live here. The fourteenth biggest city in the word. That’s the population of a country the size of Cambodia.
All I can do is chose maybe two or three things to do which give me the sense of that long history. A friend has sent me a pass which gets me into a former Sultans Palace which is now a field archaeology site and on a good quality bus tour round the city.
First up this morning is competition for the bathroom and then the incredible breakfast on the roof terrace looking out over the Bosporus. The Muslim call to prayer goes out over the city at dawn. That was 5.50am. I’ve been awake since then. I’ve not moved this past hour because I don’t want to wake anybody…but at 61 that’s difficult! I’m waiting till 7am.
They are a funny bunch in this traveller’s hostel. Everyone is totally silent (a couple of exceptions). I say hi to people and they look terrified.
Onwards and upwards.
Will update as the day goes on.
8.15pm. busy day. The oldest town in Britain is Colchester. It was established before the Romans so it’s around 2000 years old.
When Colchester was established there had been a substantial trading city here at Istanbul for 3000 years. Smaller settlements had existed long before that.
All the planning for the day went out of the window because of glitches of one kind or another. So am going to keep it even simpler.
This morning I was at the Archaeological Museum. I’m guessing they had at least half a mile of corridors covering their history from 10,000 BC up until 1750. I counted out how many metres were devoted just to the town of Troy…200m!!! I’ve posted a lot of pictures, but only a tiny fraction of what I took. It made our Museums look very humble.
This aft. I went to a 5th-century church the size of St Pauls. Every stone and wood surface was polished by the millions of feet and hands that had been through the place. I was very brave and went up to the high balcony to look at the frescoes (alt spellings are available). They still glow and shimmer after more than a thousand years (I think the artists put ground up coloured glass in the paint…I could be wrong).
Tomorrow I’m heading off to a village on the Black Sea. The waiter at dinner told me it’s very select…that’s me then. I also have to call in at the airport and sort out with the customs people where I can store the car for the five days I’m in Israel next week (Increase on four previously planned)
I’ve been away three weeks tomorrow.
In one version of the none planning that I was doing, I’m supposed to get back to England before the 24th of October. I’m going to be working in a local garden centre as Santa Claus from mid-November and then December. The 24th October is the preview gig. The regular stuff doesn’t start till the latter dates November. I’m probably going to miss the 24th. Bad Santa.
Israel prep. I’ve just booked into a traveller’s hostel 5 minutes from the Temple Wall in Jerusalem. It’s officially described as basic accommodation by the hostel site that I use. Got a 6/10 rating which means it’s pretty awful. I’m in a 16-bed dormitory and it’s £9 a night. The customer remarks are hilarious on the website but it’s in the old city…and it’s appropriate to rough it. I would be paying four or five times that amount at Travel Lodge in an M1 Service Station in Nottinghamshire. The one near the East Midlands airport. And that medium range for Travel Lodge but it does have their speciality fluffy pillows, and the good night sleep guarantee.
Sunday 5th October 1980 7.20am Barry
It’s very hard to saw and hammer quietly. At first, he had thought it was a good thing to have two windows he could get out of. If one was blocked he could jump out of the other. Or if both were blocked he could get up the sides of the broken staircase to either of the bedrooms and from there step out onto the window sill and pull himself onto the roof. From there he could then run down the end and slide down a drain pipe. Like any good field soldier he had considered all of this but now his thinking had upended itself. If the police came to shoot him, he wouldn’t try and escape. It would be better to go down fighting. He had tried to get hold of a gun but that was a total no go. There were guns to be had but it meant either going to see someone for the black gangs or dealing with the psychos in the white gangs. The ones who want to be like the Krays, but have a legal front. They were never going to talk to him. So he had opted for the crossbow. He’s got it from a military hobby interest type of second-hand place, but one that also did medieval weapons for the weirdos who acted out battles from the Middle Ages. The weapons had been made safe, but he had got the crossbow, and it was the easiest thing to make it unsafe again.
So now he was making a snipers nest out of what had been the front room of the house. The upstairs might have been better but the floors were unsafe and the roof leaked. He’d pulled up planks from the bedrooms and using a rubber mallet had hammered these in place over the door and windows when Joan and her Blackamoor were out. The curtains were already hanging over the kitchen windows, a left over from the last ever tenants. The boards just went over the top of them. Already, after only two days of much-interrupted work, it was starting to look good. And when he had finished it would be like a weaver bird nest, such as they have in Africa, but hidden away behind the walls of the house. Weaver birds weave their nests in the most intricate ways so when complete they look like a ball made from fine twigs, leaf fibres and grass, each entwined with every one of its neighbours with just one little door just off centre of the base. The birds hang upside down on the lip of that and swing their bodies in. And that’s what he had done to the room, and the window, now smaller, would be his swing in and swing out hatch.
People think crossbows are slow to reload, and they are a bit, but he was going to get a second one. Both would be set up and loaded. Fire one bolt, drop the crossbow, pick up the other one and fire that bolt. A metal-tipped bolt can go right through you. Then he had a rounder’s bat. He would jump out through the hatch and beat them both brainless. Already dead or not.
Barry had not really faced up to why he was there. His head was full of divine mission, asserting what was right and retribution, but like a puddle with a thin covering of fragile ice there was a pool of dirty water beneath. Cloudy with mud and grit of its own. He had been with that woman, Joan and they had a child. They had a house and they were working on their ambitions. He had felt they were soul mates who talked to each other…with a deepness, like reaching down a well and pulling out the most precious and fragile things to share He had felt that he had found someone he could be with without any walls or barriers. Then the scooter crash happened, and he had all that trouble getting well, and rather than standing by him she left. He had just come home one night she was not there anymore. No word of explanation and she had stolen his child away.
Those next months had been awful. Joan and Pateley just sat in the front of his mind all of the time. He could not put his efforts to anything because that big thing was filling every space. It had been no wonder that his life had fallen apart and he had ended up on the street. Thinking about the army again it was like he had been wounded, but this was the thing you couldn’t touch and get hold of. And it wasn’t just the front bit of his mind it was his soul as well. Ripped up and pissed on.
Truth be told, sitting here just ten yards from her and Pateley, felt like closeness again. It soothed him. Of course, he hated her but there was still a pull like a magnet, and he stopped churning. He thought about when he was a kid and held a magnet under a sheet of newspaper and made an old Dinky car move up and down the paper to show his big sister. Joan was a bit like that magnet. Where ever he was she was the invisible thing which moved him up and down. Took him places and brought him here.
Other people got all they wanted, why couldn’t he?
Sunday 5th October 1980 Lincoln Avenue. 9.30am
Joan and the growing family are having breakfast. Scott had nipped out earlier to the little shop two streets down where they sell Walls Bacon and got a pack as well as some soft white bread rolls, and a bottle of milk. That particular row of houses is still occupied, every house, but in a year or two it will be all gone, and in fifteen years it will be replaced by a five-a-side football park enclosed by a high fence. Young North African and West African men will play frenetic games of soccer under floodlights late at night. The Cherry Tree pub, the place where Saggie used to strip will become an odd looking Mosque but the high rise flats where Joan went Donald Ducking are still there. Cleaned up and now surrounded by grass with neat paths. If walls could talk.
Whilst Pateley played up in his bedroom they talked about what was happening across the street. Saggie had heard the hammering and sawing noises whilst the others were out on the previous Saturday afternoon. The curtains at the kitchen window don’t hang free anymore. Something was pinning them in place. Scott figured Barry was building a kind of half-assed fortified space. “The question was what did he intend doing with it. It was either a place to defend himself or one to attack from. Scott said they all needed to move to his house straightaway. Today. Staying was unsafe. The crazy bastard probably had some kind of weapon or at least was trying to get one.
Saggie had first been appraised of the situation with Barry first when they were at the holiday camp, and then again in more detail the previous night. She told them that she had spent most of her adult life around crazy men. Some were lazy as well and some got into fights and hurt people. None of this was really new to her. It was for the others to decide what next. It was nice that they had offered her a home but she didn’t want to get in the way of any plans to do with tackling the Barry issue. She would of course help if that would be useful as well.
Joan listened all round and then said her piece.
“First up this man is not going to force me to do anything. If we do go to your house, Scott that can only be after we have beaten the twat. I’m not going to be the one who runs away from him.
I think we have to bring the situation to a head, make it hell on earth for him to live there and produce a confrontation. I don’t think he has a gun, it’s probably something he has got hold of like a bow and arrow. This man could not ride a scooter in something as big as the Yorkshire Dales with crashing into a fucking great mountain. When the is wound up he struggles to tie his shoelaces. The army kicked him out as being unfit for anything. We should not make this clueless twat scary. He is a sorry twat. A useless mess of a twat and a half, but also a gobby twat without no substance. The way to deal with folk like that is to call them out and look at them right in the eye and say “look here twat face, fuck right off. Take your sorry little self a thousand miles from here you great bag of rancid, rotting offal. If you don’t get going now, this second we are going to brain you”. We need numbers maybe, but not an army. And if he doesn’t go we just break his arms and a leg with a cricket bat or something.
Scott laughed and said “this is pure Joan Arcroyd. How are you going to bring it to a head?”
Joan got five books from a shelf and made them into a little house on the carpet in front of the gas fire, just like a seven-year-old would do. Four walls and a roof, but with a little gap at the front for a door. She then reached over and got a plastic cowboy from Pateleys fort and placed it in the book house (taking the roof off for a moment to do so). Then she asked Saggie to pass the transistor radio from the tiny sink side, placed it an inch or two from the book house and ranked up the volume on Radio 1 till it felt like the air itself was vibrating. Then she grabbed five civil war era, US Cavalry plastic soldiers and placed them one foot away, and said “you have to imagine they are holding baseball bats. First thoughts that’s me, you Scott, Saggie as well plus Gaynor and Michelle from the massage parlour. Don’t forget they’re Welsh. It’s only just over a hundred and forty years ago that women were working down the pit there. They’re tough”.
Saggie begged Joan to turn the radio off. It was painful. The point had been made. She asks “what happens next if he doesn’t come out”. “Simple”, says Joan “we board up the window opening. The door and everything else will be battened down already. Then just wait until he cracks”.
And if he does come out we will be standing in a half circle and run at him from all sides. I want to be the one right in front of him. We can even have shields just in case he gets lucky and fires off an arrow. Dustbin lids would do it. We can beat on them with our baseball bats, like the Zulu’s in that Michael Caine film. Scare the shit out of him, then we all charge in from every direction, like the head and horns of a bull. It’s my bet he will run off. If not we break his legs, and maybe an arm. It really can’t fail. We just need to get over being scared of the twat and see him for what he is”. Scott laughs out loud and starts to quote Roosevelt “We have nothing to fear but fear itself”, but Joan slaps him with the back of her hand. “I’ve got a better quote”.
“There is a tide in the affairs of men, which if taken at the flood, leads onto fortune, omitted all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures”.
“That comes from when Brutus talks to Caesar and tells him to get his arse into gear,” she tells them. “It’s Julius Caesar, a Shakespeare play. That’s shocked you. It was in my school prize book just that bit. I’m getting to use that book more and more”. She starts to well up but then slaps herself, and continues “The record we are going to play at volume ten on repeat is ‘Joshua fit the Battle of Jericho’, by Mahalia Jackson. Scott, does this remind you of anything?”
He laughs. “Yes I get it, but something else. I bet you didn’t remember I’m half Zulu”.
Diss to Jerusalem Day 22. Saturday 6th October 2018 Total miles so far- 2840 Today’s weather- high of 22c. Overnight low 14c. Sunny. Slight breeze (always welcome). Tune of the day. (Retrospective). All that I remember. Christy Moore.
I’m looking forward to being back on the road today. I’ve enjoyed Istanbul but find the task of being a tourist hard work. The places I’ve seen have been magnificent but the standing in line, the constant barrage from street touts, the ill manners of petty officials such as those manning baggage checkpoints as you enter buildings …and of course the crowds and crazy drivers… wear you down.
On the upside the chap on reception here at the backpacker’s hostel has been patient and helpful, giving me lots of advice…and made no attempt to extort money from me.
Ditto the waiters at the cafe where I eat. Once I got past the silly banter they put on for tourists, it was a pleasure to chat with them whilst I ate. Of course, they live in a dog eat dog world and are working like dogs themselves to support families. The job for them is as much showbiz as it is serving food. The tourist like the silly act and they come back the next day. The meals were cheap and of good quality.
The best places in Istanbul are the parks with good shade, a coffee kiosk and fancy cakes. The one at the open air Archaeological Park is full of ancient statue fragments. They somehow create a benign atmosphere. I could have taken out a book and read for hours or indulged in napping. The air and scents were like a sleeping potion.
I had underestimated how near the Black Sea Istanbul is (okay Istanbul it’s partly on the Black Sea but you can fail to notice these things if you’re not watching out for them).
The Black Sea is the body of water between Russia, Turkey and Ukraine (and the Crimea). You’re out of Istanbul and in pleasant seaside places in just an hour’s drive. I’m going to spend the weekend there. Back sleeping in the Berlingo. I’m told a village called Sile is a good place to wander about and drink coffee and look at the sea. I’ve got books that need reading. And I still have not written those two paragraphs for my local paper, the Diss Express.
A lady across the street has done my laundry. Of course, I’ve been hand washing my clothes in sinks where ever I could but they were in need a deep wash. My near rags came back ironed and sweet smelling.
The cloud hanging over me is the customs arrangements for the car. Generally, if you enter Turkey with a car (which is noted on your passport entry stamp) you can’t leave the country without it unless one’s car is parked in a special customs zone at the airport for the duration. I’m going to the airport this morning ahead of my flight on Monday to Israel to check this out. Contributors on traveller’s forums have warned me that the customs zone parking can be hard to organise because of the language barrier and the fact that airport officials are usually not aware of this arrangement.
Onwards and upwards. I will update as the day goes on.
1.30pm the car issues at the airport re customs etc. are exhausting but not as bad as I imagined. To be fair very few people drive here from the UK so that caused some confusion. I was flailing but then one chap, in particular, stepped and told the others what to do. It took two hours of waiting and frustration with my phone internet, but the picture is clearer now. There is a lot of forms to fill in and they are linked to the boarding passes…but these are only available tomorrow. I could go on about the waves of anxiety that roll toward you doing this kind of thing…but that’s life.
Okay, time to get in my Berlingo and drive to the village of Sill, .then I have to get back here to Ataturk Airport early Monday to sort out all the customs issue. All this angst is making me hungry.
5.39pm sat here in this tiny street restaurant (more off a takeaway with seats) having a lovely multi-coloured meal of goodness knows what. There’s vinegar and olive oil in it, and a tasty bread of some kind. And lots of add-ons that come in little dishes and are very spicy. Some have dots on them. 10/10. The people are treating me like a film star. The owner himself is bringing me the food
Earlier this afternoon I was speeding in synch with all the other cars on the highway across the city in the direction of the great suspension bridge over the Bosporus (The 15th July Martyrs Bridge as it’s officially known). The one you see in every Sunday evening travel programme. Operating a car here takes very strong nerves. Drivers do every incredible thing. Effectively there is nothing that cannot happen on a fast road in this city. I put on Christy Moore, the Irish singer. I listen to one of my faves with a lot of volume ….’All I Remember’. It’s a new CD and I’m still in that lovely initial phase of falling in love with some of the songs.
‘All I remember’ has the line “When they made me for better or worse the fool that I am and the wise man I’ll be”, which lights up a whole bunch of synapses in my head…bright, and bold and flashing like a Las Vegas neon sign
The song is a clever, funny, up-tempo remembrance of childhood and of the time he, Christy was still learning to be a man. A grandad Turk and his wife pull into place and drive alongside me in the next lane. We are doing seventy. We have a shouted conversation. The old man had mistook my song for Country and Western music…and was clapping along. No hands on the wheel. I shouted back “Irish, Irish, its Irish”. It was a nice little touch in the Whacky Races that was going on around us. The highway on the brow of the hill before the straights is like a three-lane, Scalextric race track with barely two yards between each vehicle. I see some have spread newspapers on their laps to read whilst they drive. I glanced forward and there ahead of me was the Bosporus and the spectacular suspension bridge that spans both it, and the continents Asia to Europe. The old couple is clapping their hands to Christy Moore and I am here.
I’ve arrived in Sile just as it was getting dark so I need to get parked up somewhere fairly quickly. Near the sea would be best, but the road bordered cliffs and I’m scared of sleepwalking. So I came a little inland and park up in front of a small park in the midst of some very grand houses, all decked out with the most advanced electronic security devices.
8pm. Two Turkish police officers pulled over to check me out. An older and a younger officer. The older chap asked for my passport. He thought it very funny. The pages show lots of foreign travel to out of the way places. Then I showed him pictures of my grand-children, using Facebook and WhatsApp. Instinctively feeling this might reassure them that I was just an oddball and not some kind of cat burglar. We had none of each other’s languages so used Google Translate to communicate. I thought at first I was going to be escorted out of town or worse but it all ended up very nicely, at least as regards the older officer. The young chap still looked like he wanted to beat me up. Before leaving, the older man tried to teach me the Arabic phrase for “Go in Peace” (which I think is اذهب في سلام). I kept getting it wrong and using the Hebrew equivalent. He did a bit of mock anger and then laughed. He knew I was going to Israel and had earlier said that he did not approve. There was genuine warmth in the man toward me, which caught me unawares and got to me a bit. Turkish policemen don’t have a good reputation. I think the outcome would have been a night in the cells and worse if the younger officer had been the boss.
I have the strangest of days sometimes.
9pm. It’s Saturday night. I’m now in a hotel room (after the issues earlier), I’ve got four cans of cheap Turkish lager and I’m glorying in the Rolling Stones. Brown Sugar, Honky-Tonk Women, Let it Bleed.
Monday 6th October 1980
Lincoln Avenue Leeds. The gang of three plus one
It’s a busy day coming up for Joan and the gang. Scott figures the plan for the day has three components.
1-Weaponry. One baseball bat and four rounder’s bats
2-Personel. The gang of three plus Gaynor and Michelle. Also, someone reliable to take care of Pateley during The Siege of Lincoln Avenue
3-Equipment. Record player with plug in speakers. Extension cord, and record (‘Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho’) plus a carpet offcut to cover the electric line. Dustbin lids. Loud referees whistles in lieu of trumpets. Bike helmets (afterthought)
Rather than split up and pursue one set of goals individually they went around like a pack. Saggy didn’t know Leeds outside two or three pubs and some other strip venues, and it was a matter of transport as well. Scott’s car would save time.
They started off with the weaponry. A sport shop on Briggate in town supplied all the bats they needed. Then it was onto the market for the Mahalia Jackson record. This was going to be the hardest task. It could have been any song maybe but this one appealed to Joan. She ‘got’ its special power. Nothing magical but for some, it reaches the parts other songs cannot. Just like in the Heineken beer ad. The best place to go for that kind of gospel record was the Geordie guy on the market who sold old Jazz, blues, folk, soul, Rockabilly, country and gospel records, and sure enough, it was there…in abundance. You could take a choice of five. All a little scratched but for once that was not a problem.
They head for the great second hand emporium of a place, down near the railway bridges and the Scarborough Hotel or Scarborough Taps pub as old Leeds Loiner’s call it. A great place. It was hard to walk past there and anyway by now it was lunchtime. They dine on Tetley’s bitter and pie and mushy peas. They have a second pint and third. Then onto the shorts. Whiskies. Rum. Gin and Bacardi. Their bodies ease into the seductive seats and they get lost in talk, and bad jokes and clouds of Embassy Regal cigarette smoke. The autumn sun makes darts through the smog around them. Forearms are resting on tables, not worried by the little puddles of spilt beer. Saggy tells tales of the northern strip circuit and the girls who work it, the big lasses like Thessalian, the Amazon Warrior Woman who had been a Saturday afternoon wrestling star in her twenties but now continues her career as a big-boned stripper who keeps her boots on.
The three of them pooled their change on the table and fished out the 20p’s for the jukebox. And without word being said they made it a session.
Saggy put on Stay with me’, the Faces song. Lead singer Rod belted out the words, and the three of them stood to scream along in chorus
“Stay with me, stay with me, for tonight you better stay with me”
Then a Boogie Rock poem-
“In the morning don’t say you love me, as I’ll only kick out the door.
I know your name is Rita. Cause your perfumes smelling sweeter than when I saw you down on the floor”
(And even better)
“Red lips, hair and fingernails
I hear you’re a mean old Jezebel
Let’s go upstairs and read my tarot cards”.
Then the barman who once has played Rugby League for Wakefield Trinity steps in and says they “are a great lot” but “now need to leave …right now”.
They are out on the pavement near the bridges. The suns in their eyes and they’re feeling like Viking heroes who have been slung out of Valhalla.
Rod Stewart and the Faces
Stay with me
Then Saggy says “do you remember that film, Bonny and Clyde”. So they sing the song and walk in step like the two cool hoodlums have become three. On through the long blackened tunnel of the railway bridge and across the River Aire, bear right and walk up to the wharf, on the Leeds-Liverpool canal There is an old warehouse there seeing out its days as a second hand and antiques place. The red brick in the wall is crumbling. There are gaps around the window frames. Odd metal shapes stand out from the cobbles. Remnants of the buildings former life. Joan trips on one of these and almost ends up in the water. That jolt sobers her up sharp, and she has got a feel of familiarity with the place. She used to bring punters down here in the early days. Down that path, and a little beyond. Sad bastards and horny, disgusting sales execs. Gut churning hate fills her belly now. Her mouth forms the words “Never again”.
They find the place and quickly buy the record player and speakers. The guy selling says all the wrong and irrelevant things, the reputation of the manufacturer, how new it is, how little it has been used, how long it will last, and the fine quality of the sound. Of course they don’t care about any of that. Joan instead asks how waterproof it is and how loud it will play. She takes out the Jericho record and plays it. They conclude with the guy, “Have you got a box”. Joan grins and stands too close to the man.
Day 23 Sunday 7th October 2018 Diss to Jerusalem Temp. Bloody too hot for me…so seeking out deep, cool, gentle breezy shade. Miles so far. Day off, so almost the same as yesterday. Diss to Jerusalem: Tune of the Day. Gulf Winds, Joan Baez. Or it could be ‘Jerusalem Tomorrow’ by Emmylou Harris
I love waking up in places where I’m the ‘alien’. Nobody looks and talks like me, and you get the ‘interesting oddity’ treatment. All the stuff of the day are different and the simple things have to be relearnt…and all in a foreign language.
Silly examples- I have just bought a coffee but in a way, I’ve never done before. Two successive lines to wait in and a rugby scrum at each counter. At the second I had to shout out “Americana cupa, Americana cupa” and wave the special chit in the air that I got from the first counter. That’s all learnt by studying the scene before joining in. You make mistakes but everyone is nice because you are an Englishman.
Checking in online for a boarding pass for tomorrow’s flight to Tel-Aviv took two hours. I chose the English format but after two minutes it switches back to Turkish and asks for my Turkish ID number. So you have to problem solve and manage the rising panic
By the end of the day, I crave familiarity, Tetley’s bitter and my front room sofa but you wake in the morning wanting to see ‘the different’ again. Okay, I know this is not heroic stuff…climbing mountains or crossing deserts but it’s a way of living where one needs to be sharp and learn quickly. Living a little bit on one’s wits.
After all that traveller petty angst I jumped in my Berlingo and came here to Sile. It looks like Turkish people sit in great tea (?chi) places, play, a game that might be chess and do the hookah pipe thing. That’s the old men at least, and they are loving it. They dress like the 1950s but look cool.
I’m on the Black Sea. Russia and Ukraine are across the water. As far as I’ve seen so far I’m the only European here. Someone is getting married. The scenery is breath-taking in a cliff top…vertigo-dizzying kind of way.
Back at the car, I’m having pork hotdogs for my tea, from a glass jar from Morrison’s in Diss…but am being discrete about that. I hide the food whenever someone walks by my car.
If you have not read the account of my laughing policemen from last night please see the end of yesterday’s post. Lessons learnt. If you show people pics of your grandchildren, people like you.
Tomorrow… very early I drive about 70km to the airport and deal with all the anxiety stuff again. Then Israel if I can get the right forms for my car before 6pm. Even if I can’t I will give it a go. 2.45. It’s a personal tradition that where I can in the world I buy nice local dresses for my granddaughters (sorry not Hannie…none in her size). Here I bought them from an ancient woman minding two rails of clothes in a shop dim with shadows. She was surprised to get a customer. The transaction is all done by gesture. I notice her teeth are better than mine.
6pm spent the afternoon sat on the long harbour wall, reading and watching the commercial anglers. They stand on a rock outcrop just a few clear of the waves, catch a basket full of fish I don’t recognise in quick time (kept cool by ice), then stride off to hawk them around the town. A man much older than me leaps between rocks with his basket. Sure-footed where I would be close to being on all fours. Families came out to promenade as they used to in England on a Sunday evening. Some look to catch my eye and smile.
7pm packed my rucksack for Israel. Same 20 Euro hotel. Five of everything. I may have to wear shorts. It really is not a good look.
Tuesday 7th October 1980 Barry’s Nest. 7am
I’ve been talking for a while now and its time I properly introduced myself. I’m The Narrator aka, Lord Rave-on Da Goose of Dollaly tap. I’ve been mucking about in the writers head for a long time. Just a whimsy thing. A character for silly posts on Facebook, but now The Writer Man has roped me in for this steady job. Room and board and all the coffee I can drink.
Today I’m watching Barry weep. He is holding a photo in his hand and balling his eyes out. It’s of the Little Lad Pateley Bridger. His son. And the man is crying because he has to kill him. If he doesn’t boy the boy will belong to the devil one day. It’s already happening so he must act soon. That’s what Barry believes. Entirely and wholly. I’ve watched these things often and in many places. Putting the process into an image, it’s a bit like you stamp your foot in a puddle on a sunny day. The reflection on the water’s surface is broken but then comes together again and a new picture forms. But this time, in a damaged mind world whilst having all the same atoms the water shows something quite different, then something might be there but it looks so different. A dog walking by now looks like a monster, your face looks bloodstained, the sky has eyes like diamonds. Anything is possible. And that’s how Barry feels right now. A picture of the world, and its hidden reality is forming on the puddle of his mind. He feels glad to have been chosen by God to be his instrument, and to be able to see such things but is also heartbroken about what he has to do. But it’s the bigger kindness. He is learning about such things these long days that he sits here in the Barry Nest.
Of course all this is delusion, but one that is so clear and compelling that Barry trusts in it with every fibre of his being. He knows that like Job he has been called upon to live but lose everything. And worse. Even by his own hand. But he will not lose his love for God. And for that reason as well as saving his son in the other sense, he has to kill him.
The newspapers will call him a monster and talk about pure evil. Of course, people are horrified and run to the radio and turn it off every time a news bulletin comes on. They can’t bear to think of a young child being killed by its father. Others post on Facebook that the man should be tortured before he is hung, and they feel so strongly they would do it themselves. And anybody who feels differently is just as bad as this wicked creature
But I know it’s just the last act of a tragedy. There are certainly bad people in the world but most look nothing at all like Barry.
The Barry’s become lost in a world where things are not real. The circumstances of their lives conspire to piss on their being. They are mad but not bad. If you know such people that much is clear. It’s just an awful misunderstanding that’s been going on, aided and abetted by neurochemistry. Normal people out in the world are surprised when the tragedy happens because they can’t be expected to expect such actions… that run against the grain of being human. To understand you would have to get inside the individuals head and see the world through his eyes. Then it all does make perfect sense. The action of killing a child is abhorrent to me and you, but in Barry’s mind it has become the inverse. By killing the boy he is saving him.
Of course, by far the greatest proportion of people who become psychotic never hurt anybody. In reality, they are far more often the victim of violence than a perpetrator. But every so often, just a few times year there is a Barry. Sometimes family, friends or professionals recognise the potentials and they are headed off. Now and again though, they get through and awful things happen. I’ve seen things I can’t say. I block them out of my mind
We give such people medications that take away or lessen the ‘truth’ of their delusions, and they get to see some of the reality of what they did. Or at least shades of it. Of course, some of these types are bad as well as mad. And they can live with the appalling result of what they have done. Others live with a sadistic, tormenting monster in their minds for the rest of their days.
The 8th of October is the day that belongs to St Pelagia. That’s her feast day. She is sometimes called Margaret on account of the magnificent pearls for which she had so often sold herself. The name is derived from a Greek word for Pearls. Her story is that she was an actress at Antioch in 4th or 5th who made a deep impression on others with her beauty, her wealth and the wicked disorder of her life. She redeemed herself, sought baptism and reformed her ways before becoming a hermit on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. Living there dressed and living as a holy man until her gender was discovered at death.
Barry had read about her in one of the shelters. Palagia was a harlot who had repented, given everything she owned to the poor and then lived out her days in some kind of hut or cave in the Holy Land. And that sacrifice and true redemption saved her soul. Joan too was a Harlot but unlike Pelagia, had turned her back on God’s love and was leading her son into the arms of Satan. It was, therefore, appropriate to choose this day of Pelagia to act against her and the Blackamoor. At first, he had wavered about the child but it had then become clear that he had been so tainted by the actions of his mother that only death and god’s urgent intervention could save him. Tomorrow he, Barry would wait ready for them all to leave the house.
7th October 1980 8am. Tuesday. 6 Lincoln Avenue The Gang of Three plus One.
Joan had phoned Gaynor and Michelle last night. Explained a little of what was going on and asked for their help. They had been entertaining two 1st Division footballers but would come across first thing in the morning, once they had got rid of the men.
She asked another friend to take care of Pateley. The couple at the White Stag pub on North Street were friends. Joan had got to know them when Cheyanne worked there. They had a little boy Pateleys age. With some luck and a bit of a lie from Joan, the couple would let their eldest daughter take care of Pateley for the day, along with their little one.
Saggy went around the streets neighbouring Lincoln Avenue and found four dustbin lids, which together with the one at Joan’s house would give the gang a pretty good shield each. They were not stolen. Those houses were now empty and the poor buggers who once lived there had no more use for a proper dustbin. They had gone to the High Rises.
Whilst Scott made scrambled egg on toast for each of them, Joan messaged Johnny Kidman.
“Hiya Kidders, don’t have much time this morning. We have got something big on. I will tell you about that in a minute. Just wanted to ask you a couple of questions first. If there was somebody else I would ask them, but you’re the only friend I’ve got who has had the relevant experience, and who is available to talk to.
I’m with Scott, and it’s lovely. There’s lots of good stuff in the sack. We have fun by the bucket full, and I think he has feelings for me, even though I jump down his throat if he tries to talk about them. The last few weeks have been like a whirlwind. So much going on. Meeting up with Scott, finding out about Barry, going to the holiday camp. All the stuff which went on there, I’ve not altogether told you about (where’s your curiosity?). Then coming back here and putting together the plan that we have now got (the Joshua one). So when he gets luvvy-dovey I jump down his throat as I say. I’ve seen people getting loved up and crazy with their hormones. It only lasts a few weeks or months at best, and then all the ugliness starts coming out, the same as ever. The love- doves break up and act like it never happened, or actually hate each other, then go onto the next feller or woman. I don’t understand it all.
The reason it’s worrying me now is that things are changing in my life. It’s getting a lot better, but I’m not sure if it’s him, Scott or me, Joan doing it.
Now, this would all be easy if I was in love. But when you have shagged and done everything else with hundreds of men you don’t know what up and what’s down anymore. I thought I was doing pretty good recently actually enjoying sex. I used to think about it in the same way that a miner must feel going down a pit and doing something nasty for a few hours so that there’s money for their family (in my case a family of one, Pateley). You will laugh at this. I even used to find myself singing the dwarfs song from the Snow white Disney film as I went up Chappletown whoring
“Hi-ho it’s off to whore (I) go
Except, now in my current instance I’m grumpy at the end of the line when it comes to kissing Snow White goodbye. Except Snow white is now black and I don’t go off whoring anymore. I’m mixing the film all up now. Forget that. You have to know the film to know what I’m talking about.
When you shag hundreds of men that bit of you stops feeling. The feeling bit goes dead. Actually, I’m never sure it was ever alive but recently there has been a change and I’m feeling something. But I don’t know what it is. I need some information
You have been married. I want to ask three things.
1- How does it feel to be in love (does it exist or not)?
2- How do did you feel when she (Cheyanne) left you for another woman?
3- How did you feel when that mad feller killed Cheyanne?
Keep it short. None of you’re droning on for pages. Imagine you’re writing a telegram to someone about to go into war, and you have only got a few minutes.
Joan @ feeling 10/10 but worried.
It’s only when I get the message that I properly realise that I have not really had much from Joan in about a week or so. And I’ve not felt the compulsion to get in touch with her. I sort of think of her as being low maintenance. Or maybe, under my skin, I am only about fifty per cent convinced she exists. Answering the message is easy-
1- I was in lust with Cheyanne but not properly in love. There was nothing wrong as such. The hormonal luvved-up thing is great. Even better with booze but it wears off. In my case in a few months. Then we just got into a kind of partnership. I was very fond of her, and enjoyed being around her…at least most of the time. But it stopped being an obsession like it was when we had the lust thing going on. I have been in love though. But it was with someone I met after Cheyanne…and after a few others ;-). We had that lust thing like rocket fuel, and it kept going. Okay, it got a little less (otherwise we would have died) but was still very much there. But what you have as well is this kind of bond. It’s like you’re fixed together with a metal bar. Solid. And then part of that person is always on your mind. You touch their skin in your mind and you feel better. You don’t just have a meal. The meal is better because that other person is there. Same with films. You’re not totally fused but neither are you totally separate. You can enjoy things on your own. That’s a marker of not having lost the plot. Some people aren’t right and they go overboard and suffocate the other person. And they do it again and again with different people. There is something wrong with them, and they are always either high or low. Never just normal. And they spend half their time bawling their eyes out or doing crazy things. Getting drunk and broadcasting their life to Facebook. Adding a link to ‘Nothing compares to you’ on YouTube.
When me and this person I really loved broke up (don’t want to go into why here but it was to do with Lambs Navy Rum as a cure for painful tooth abscess). It felt like I was going mad. It lasted two years. I had to drink a bottle of wine a night to sleep and the person was in my head all the time. At the front of my brain. Whatever I did, I had to do whilst thinking about her at the same time. Then it started to slowly get better. Then we spent two nights together, argued and then broke up again and I went mad for another year. Almost as bad as the first time. Despite all of that I count it as one of the best things that ever happened to me. I don’t want to overdo this but it was fantastic sex and a kind of adoration thing going on. Some of it was just skin on skin and feeling nice. But it didn’t go away, at least on my side. The woman…well…I don’t know. Something had messed her up at some point years back and she had a kind of Midas thing going on, but whatever she touched turned to shit! And still does.
2- How did it feel when Cheyanne left me? Well, this is going to sound bad, but I actually got really happy. Like a kid in a sweet shop. It was like I was free to go crazy again. I saw lots of people for about a year, then met the love of my life (as previously described). And I’ve already talked about that. Some people have asked if I felt demeaned at being dumped for a woman. I can honestly say it never crossed my mind.
3- How did I feel when Cheyanne got murdered? Well, it was a big hole of sadness. The way I thought about it was, someone had stolen her life and future. She had got onto a good track in her life, and that twat stole it all away. Her daughters (our daughters) also had a mother stolen from them. We don’t talk about it but I know they feel it.
I have days where I get a bottle out, put some music on (you can guess what) and just think about her and nothing else. I wasn’t in love with Cheyanne but I still was happy seeing her happy. It was a big transformation, her going to play for the other team, but in the end, it just made me wonder why she hadn’t done it sooner. I mean turn lezzer.
So no it wasn’t love but it was like having a person in the world that it was my pleasure to care about and watch out for. Feel especially close to. So angry no. Sad and a big hole. Yes.
What has all of this taught me if anything? You have to take chances. I think of a bit in the Julius Caesar play about tides and going with them but you said to keep it short, so will leave it there.
So what’s the big thing going on today?
Johnny xx
Joan came back with a much shorter message. “There is a long or a short version of this. You’re getting the short one. Read the passage in Joshua. Me, Scott, Saggy and two mates Gaynor and Michelle are going to be the Israelites. The house across the street is Jericho in Canaan, and Barry is a Canaanite (the only one). I’m Joshua, but Scott says he is. Still working on it. Do you remember Gaynor? Wasn’t there that issue where she dumped your or a mate of yours for a rugby team at the massage parlour or at her house. I can’t remember.
This morning we are going to fix speakers to the wall of Jericho aka Barry’s house and play the record, ‘Joshua fit the battle of Jericho ‘at top volume. On repeat. That will drive the Canaanite, Barry crazy and he will come out. Probably with a bow and arrow but we are going to get him. We have shields and rounder’s bats, but most likely he will run away and be out of our lives forever. But anyway we are going to move to Scott’s house this afternoon and live there. That’s our plan
Wish us luck.
Joan”
And I wrote back.
“Okay, I see. Keep me in touch then.” What else could I do?
The Battle of Lincoln Avenue, but just like the Battle of Jericho 9.30am 7th October 1980 Lincoln Avenue, Leeds 7
Scott put a tray against his chest and abdomen, held in place by a string around his belly and a string around his neck. Then put on several jerseys, then his donkey jacket back to front. He had found a motorbike crash helmet with a visor and was wearing that plus a cricket box (groin protector) and wicket pads. All of this of course totally useless against a crossbow bolt. Ditto, probably the dustbin lid he was holding as well.
It took him ten minutes to set up the record player on a card table just out of sight of Barry’s spy hole to his left, and the leads running across the street to two shaky looking speakers propped up against the wall. Then taking a two yard by three yard carpet offcut from the back seat of his car he covered the cable that was strung our across the road. Just in case a car came by. There hadn’t been one for weeks. There was nowhere to drive to up that road but maybe the electric board or somebody might want to get access to something. Of course, there was going to be a lot of noise, but then again, there was no one but them and Barry to hear it. If it went on for a while or there were complaints they could set up a couple of mattresses either side of the record player to absorb the noise. And that what they ended up doing. The music had been drifting up to the flats across the way and was getting in the way of a film somebody was making.
Joan and Gaynor positioned themselves up the street, and Saggy and Michelle a little way down They expected to be a while so brought chairs, drinks and snacks. The women didn’t have all the protective gear that Scott had but they were sideways on to any fight that might happen. And so they just had the shields, the rounder’s bat and a colander full of dried peas. The latter was psychology. If you were being attacked by somebody the best thing to do was to throw a couple of pounds of dried peas in there face. It was the disorientating effect that did the job. Nothing else. The person is thinking “they are throwing something at me> what is it> its dried peas> why are they doing that> there is something here I don’t understand> maybe I’m in big trouble”. And the person gets put off the attack that they are doing. Apparently, CIA operatives in South America used it in extremis. Dried peas were now standard issue for covert operatives”.
The gang felt like they ought to have got in some kind of celebrity in to turn on the record player. Maybe Morecambe and Wise or more likely a minor celeb off Radio Leeds but they could imagine that instead.
The speakers were good. One second there was just a little crackling noise. The next a tsunami of sound hit the wall, windows and door of Barry’s Nest. THUMP. Like a musical sledgehammer.
Everyone put the cotton wool balls in their ears, sat back and waited for the something to happen. . It might take five minutes or five hours but the music would certainly flush Barry out of his hole and then they could deal with him. An image of a fox poking his nose out of the ground came into Saggy’s mind.
9am. 7th October 1980 Barry’s Nest. Lincoln Avenue, Leeds 7
Barry didn’t often laugh, but he was laughing this morning.
There was one woman to the left, he didn’t recognise. Her tits looked a bit saggy though. She was with that friend of Joan’s from the massage parlour. Michelle. The lass from Wales. She was the one who got pissed in nightclubs and danced with her own reflection. Even making that bent arm lewd gesture at herself. Totally potty. If Michelle is here then so it Gaynor probably.
Barry lent across to the far left and looked up the road. He could only see the lower legs of one woman, crossed at the ankles like she was sunbathing at the beach in a deckchair. He was pretty sure it was Joan but Gaynor was definitely there. “Red hair, lips and fingernails. A wicked Jezebel”. He laughed at memories. Despite the dreadful noise, he could imagine the Welsh valleys lilt of her voice. She could give a wonderful hand job. The thoughts and the words just came into his mind, and then Barry was mortified. That was the devil or one of his dark angels. Inserting wicked thoughts into his mind. That riled him. Brought him suddenly to the boil. This was a battle for his soul as well.
A green, yellow and orange, Yorkshire Electricity Board Van turned into the street and pulled over outside of Joan’s house. Scott had gone inside for his baseball bat but hearing the vans breaks went back to the door. The crash helmet visor was up but everything else was in place. The driver wound down his window. And shouted loudly “I’m trying to find a Mrs Rawlins at number 9, Lincoln Road. Is this it? I couldn’t see a street sign”. Scott never missed a beat. Didn’t have to. A man asks a question, you just answer it. “This is the avenue mate. The road is what you have just turned off. I think number 9 will be down the bottom of the hill, near the Foresters Social Club”. The van did a three-point, the driver waved and he was off.
Barry saw all of this and drew his own conclusions. They were somehow going to use electricity. He would have to act before they got the wires in place, or maybe they already had.
He pushed his head out of the window. And shouted something. Scott flipped the off switch and the record droned out. Barry shouted again “don’t let them use the electricity”.
Years later I, Rave-on saw something similar in South Africa. An old white woman, very small, about 4’10” was in a psychiatric ward. She had delusions. Or at least part delusions. In truth, she was married to a leader of the Mozambique Communist Party, and the Apartheid South African Defence Force did have him on their Maputo hit list, but she also believed that she used to fly every night on a magic carpet to see him.
We had a bomb scare at the hospital. It was common in the late 1980s. Ex-patients would phone up and say they were from MK, the armed wing of Mandela’s party the African National Congress and they had planted a bomb on one of the wards. We would have to evacuate every one double quick. This one time we got everyone out apart from this one old woman, who thought it was a plot to abduct her. I don’t know what came over me. I just walked into the ward and told this woman I was a Soviet Soldier and had come to rescue her, our beloved comrade from the Apartheid state. I picked her up in my arms and carried her to the assembly point a few hundred yards away. All the while talking in what I imagined was Russian accented English. She wasn’t very heavy and had by now become very cheerful. Her comrades had not forgotten her. All the time she spoke to me in a language which certainly wasn’t Russian or any other language known to man. Neologisms. That means made up words or language. That’s what she was doing, but in any event, she was happy to have been rescued. There was no lasting harm. Thirty minutes later she had forgotten all that had happened.
And that’s what Scott did with Barry. It was a purely intuitive thing, and you know you have got it because it feels like an especially complex jigsaw piece slots effortlessly into place. And this is the defining property. You know a second before that it’s going to work. And sublime confidence gets into your bones and muscles and mind. It feels a little like dancing. Scott slapped down the visor and strode across the street.
He knew what crazy religious fanaticism looked like in somebodies eyes. Barry had it, and so Scott needed to address him in that place, the words just came out of his mouth. “He sent me”. Barry climbed through the wind, Scott turned around and gestured Barry to jump up. Nothing of Scott was visible to Barry, but he felt good and safe.
Barry wasn’t that heavy, and anyway, they didn’t have to go far but the wicket pads made the walking straight legged like a battery-driven robot toy.
Barry rode piggy-back to the end of the street. At that moment a taxi drove down the hill from the direction of St James hospital. The window was wound down and Boney M’s ‘Rivers of Babylon’ was blasting out. “Oh from wicked, carry us away from captivity. Required from us a song. How can we sing the lords song in a strange land”.
Scott waived it down, and astonishingly the driver stopped. Scott put £40 in Barry’s hand and £20 in the driver’s hand, and then said: “please take this man to the train station He has to go home to his father”. Barry was crying and kissed Scott’s visor.
The song continued in Scott’s mind, and he mouthed the words he had known from being a kid. “So let the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts, be acceptable in thy sight, here tonight”.
There was moral ambiguity there (Scott felt it) and it came from all directions. Barry was a sick man. Scott had taken advantage of his delusions to extricate him from the house. You could argue that was a complicated good. It would have been more of a good if they could have got Barry to the psychiatric ward less than half a mile away up the hill, but instead of helping the poor sod he sent him away in a taxi. Scott did feel guilty when he thought of that. But then he remembered violence had been avoided because the man had been given a way out. And his (Scott’s) actions had possibly saved three people’s lives, including a child’s. It was at now that becoming a nurse first entered Scott’s mind. (He was to excel and go far). A good had to come from what he had just done. Everyone else was laughing and calling him a genius. He felt a bit sick.
Joshua had fought the battle of Jericho, but he would not slay every living thing within the fallen walls.
Istanbul in Turkey. An island in the Bosporus Strait
This is a book in the making. The stoy is partly true, and partly fiction. Please leave your comments and suggestions in the box at the bottom of the page
CHAPTER 7. “I GUESS THEY CAN’T REVOKE YOUR SOUL FOR TRYING”.
That’s a quote from the song ‘Trukin’, by the Grateful Dead
Golden locked herself in the stage side toilet. It took half an hour to get her out. Joan told her she has some Bacardi back at the chalet, the bolt on the door made a noise, and the door opened. Pateley wandered over and joined the two women. The lady who had been minding him had run off screaming when the rats were released. Joan pulled him close and said “this is Golden. She is coming to live in our chalet for a few days”. Pateley said “hi, I’m Pateley Bridger, what’s your name? The woman hesitated and after a moment said. “I don’t know at the moment. Ask me again later”.
The three of them went out back to find Scott. He was still sat on the brick wall, where Joan had left him forty-five minutes earlier. Helmet in place but reading a newspaper. The man looked up, took in the scene and said: “I guess this means the helmet was a waste of money”.
Back in the chalet. Scott got to do his act but without any flames. The women got well into the Bacardi. Later Scott and Pateley made fish fingers and chips and all of them danced to the Bob Marley tape until it was time to get showered and dressed and head out for the big attraction at the hall. Joan lent Golden a dress to save a walk back to her chalet and dealing with the useless boyfriend. That could wait. Maybe he would have choked on his own vomit by then.
Pateley came along to the hall. They could put two chairs together and cover him with a coat when he got tired. Golden held the little boy’s hand as they walked. They were a little late. Its 8.10pm but these things always start late.
Barry
20.30 hours
Barry had spent the later afternoon pondering the programme for the talent show. The devil always tells you what he is doing. Sometimes in plain sight, other times cryptically with little clues and messages.
He knew that psychotic people went on and on about hidden communications just for them. He had seen them in the hostels. If you believed what they said every newspaper headline, billboard advert or TV news broadcast had covert messages, hidden meanings that only a few could discern. One guy claimed those who smoked Benson and Hedges were agents of the devil. Seemingly that was signalled by the three sixes in each pack’s barcode. Barry knew that was just confused and delusional, but he also knew the devil was real and also did such things. And he had known it for a long time. Long before the scooter accident so the doctors were wrong in claiming that had changed him. He had the special knowledge when he was in the army.
For instance. The name Kitson signalled that guy in Armagh was a bomb-maker. All he had to do was reverse one syllable and leave others alone. So kit became tik, what goes tik, a bomb and son was an obvious contraction of soon. So man making a bomb, fixed with a timer and it was going to explode soon. That decoding had worked a few times in Northern Ireland but he was only a teenager then. He had honed the skill in the years since. Especially since he had become Righteous…and so much more had been revealed since he had chosen the path to glory. People still thought him a thicky. One more school failure joining up. That weasel officer had it in for him but then everything starts to make sense once you realised what is really going on. It was no accident that his name was Deville.
He was a cowboy for God. A Righteous Cowboy for Good. And that says it all.
He would one day travel through this land with a Bible and a gun
Bary had torn the programme from the notice board outside the hall, and now he was studying it-
Programme-
Try a little tenderness (Otis Reading) Honey Van-Trap
Soul Man (Sam and Dave).The Macclesfield Moocher Boys
Bringing it on home to me (Sam Cook). Sandy Camber
RESPECT. (Aretha Franklin). Golden Echo
The God of Hell Fire. (The Crazy World of Arthur Brown). Smokin Scott Inferno
It had been hard at first to decode this one. He had gone through all the techniques one by one and got nothing. Then when he rested his pen on the page, sat back and just had a smoke and the message became clear. The pen divided the page in half and what he needed to see was to the left of where he had dropped it.
“Try a little soul man. Bringing it on home to me. Respect the God of Hell Fire”.
A Soul Man is a black man. The Black Man is this man Scott. Add ‘ish’ and you have the word ‘Scottish. Then convert the word Blackman into Scots Gaelic its ‘dubh dubh’. He had looked that up in a translating dictionary he found helpful. Dubh Dubh is the sound that a drum makes. What is a drum for but to march to? And why do you march if not to fight and conquer and take what belongs to your enemies? And right there was the first telling of the message.
Satan’s message though is many-layered. It’s told, as always in three ways. The first words in the title of each song, the literal meaning in the language indicated by his name, Scott. To March. But the third way had been the hardest to discern. But then it became suddenly obvious. The devil had seen that he, Barry (a man who had come to Righteousness) was onto his plan and so at the last moment the devil had hidden his own name (The God of Hell Fire) and that of his agent. Scott Inferno i.e. Scott of the land of the inferno i.e. Hell. Scott did not perform. He just disappeared from the programme. And that Whore of Babylon, Golden Echo the Jezebel whore of lascivious distraction was thrown in our faces so that we would not notice the devils sleight of hand.
Then that other Jezebel, Joan (nb. same initial letter) had wrapped a cloak around the Jezebel. That was the second act of hiding but also a message in its self. I am hiding the thing which distracted you from what was hidden.
And it was like two circles which at first only partially overlapped, but now with his efforts one entirely eclipsed the other. Perfect, complete and satisfying.
And when something fits like that Barry felt affirmed by his true father, the lord god.
Pateley would be in the chalet. Setting fire to it was not a murder but rescuing the child and his immortal soul from Satan (and his agents Scott and Joan). Joan would be distraught. The world would think it wa’s for the loss of a child, but in reality, she would weep only because the child was saved by God and so lost to the devil. An invisible battle is being fought in the world between good and evil.
He took out a scrap of paper and checked again. He knew the details before he looked. The Chalet was on Row D and was Number 2. Barry felt in his pocket for his penknife. It would be this blade that he would slide between the ill-fitting windows and lift the loose fitting latch with. He had a plastic, straw effect shopping basket. A young child’s toy. Something a boy Pateley’s age might have. Barry would take some sheets of the newspaper and shove it in the basket, then set light to it with a lighter and drop all of that through the window. Then close it…firmly. The fire investigators would surmise the child had woken up and found his mother not there as often was the case, he played with her lighter and then had a game of setting fire to the paper in the shopping basket. 20.35. Evenings were short this time of year. It was properly dark by 20.00 hours. Tonight’s act, The Fatback Band started at 20.00. Joan and Scott would have gone out leaving the child by now. Barry set off with a ‘Mace the Grocers’ carrier bag. Inside was all that he needed.
The Fatback Band
Bus Stop
Day 13 Friday 28TH September 2018 Diss to Jerusalem in a Very Grand Frenchy Car (the last four words are a pun on a Status Quo classic line. I wonder if anyone will spot it).
Tune of the day. Ripple. The Grateful Dead performed by ‘Playing for Change’. Best line…”No simple highway” Miles so far-1875
Weather: It’s getting warmer again now as I drive due south. Around 25c during the day and 9c overnight. Sunny skies and brilliant light.
Ripple. Performed by ‘Playing for Change’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHo1fNnXFVU
Today all being well I cross over into Serbia and head for Batajnica which is 20 miles short of Belgrade, the capital.
Serbia is probably going to be the most difficult part of the journey. Firstly it’s not in the EU so they are not forced to let me in. The urban centres look reasonable but out in the country, it might be the early 20th century. We are used to living in a country where there are rules and regulations. The rule of law. That all went with the collapse of Communism and the explosion of a vicious Nationalism which in turn led to a genocide. Most Serbians see the allied interventions from 1994 as a war crime but objectively it saved thousands of lives. The Serb people take a very different view. They believe themselves the victims. Being British in Serbia means being sensitive about what I say.
The food shops are poor and the roads (and drivers) dreadful. And I need to watch out for street criminals. On the upside, if you want to experience how the Balkans looked before the First World War, Serbia is the place to be.
Yesterday an old friend, David Bullman told me to look out for a statue of the traveller, Andras Jelky here in Baji, Hungary. He is a national hero. Primary school children are given stories about his adventures…a bit like our Robin Hood but Andras was a tailor who became a traveller. In summary, he lived in the late 18th century. He travelled throughout Europe, the East Indies and the rest of Asia. He was kidnapped twice into the army (escaped each time), sent to jail and then kidnapped by pirates (but made friends as the pirate’s clothes needing fixing and Andras was a skilled tailor). It’s got the ingredients of a good traveller’s story. Humble beginnings, twists in fortune, adventure, happenchance, faraway lands, and a twist in the tail
His statue stands on one of the main intersections in Baja…right next to the Spar shop. I found it last night. It shows him atop a globe and striding out with his stick and a special hat.
Andras Jelky stiding out across the world
Andras is one more for the collection of Travellers’ tales- all travellers have good stories to tell …partly truth…partly fiction. That’s one more quote from a song. Its title, The Pilgrim makes me uncomfortable, because it sounds religious or whacky…but it’s not. The song was written by the great, Kris Kristofferson. He says it’s about all the country singers who sort of stagger along for decades, brilliant but flawed people, living erratic, chaotic lives…and drinking too much. Kind of everyday sinners and a bit more. Sinners and pilgrims of a sort. I find them interesting but I know if I got too close they would make me angry because they can only do what they do because of someone else baling them out.
Last night I stayed in a traveller’s hostel. I got my good shower…although it was icy cold… and a real bed. That’s spoilt me a bit. My body wants to stay with comfort and is raising complaints.
Need to get the Berlingo sorted out for the border crossing…give the best impression possible to the border guards. Then get back to roughing it. Hotels and hostels can only be an occasional luxury, and then only for a purpose… like getting cleaned up.
Onwards and upwards. Will update as the day goes on. 9 Am. At the high school next to the traveller’s hostel, a class of 15-year-olds are doing warm up and mobility exercises on a patch of grass. Then the teacher (it could have been Potter or Bush from Benton Park Secondary circa 1972) sent the boys off on a cross country run along an avenue bordered by trees beside the Danube. I automatically looked to the back of the group for the big fat lads bringing up the rear. That was always future DJ David Pearson aka Dave Silver…(he got on Top of the Pops once) and myself. There were NO BIG FAT LADS on the run today although there were a couple who might have been smokers. Looking a bit loutish with long hair…typical types.
9.30 Am. I’ve got to write a short article…with pictures, for the Diss Express. Writing it all on my tiny Smart Samsung phone. It could take a while.
Okay off to Serbia now.
Message from Joan and Scott- 10 AM. Sunday 28th September 1980
“There is just so much happening Kidman. Don’t know where to start and if I told it properly it would take up pages. So just telegram form.
The talent contest this afternoon got disrupted by ‘My New Best Friend’ formerly known as ‘Margaret from Manchester’ and ‘Golden Echo’. She is deciding on a new name but taking her time. She did a strip to an Aretha Franklin’s song! Can you imagine that? Anyway, it brought the contest to a sudden halt.
We have sort of teamed up. Pateley, Scott, me and this stripper lady. We are a funny looking bunch. All of us went to see the Fatback Band last night. Bloody brilliant. Pateley likes them and was copying their moves. Watch them doing Bustop on youtubee. It was just like that. I need to send you a photo of Pateley doing the main thing. (Things are feeling good, Kidman. I’m smiling all the time. Scary!).
Then we hear a chalet two rows down from ours caught fire late evening, yesterday. The police are suspicious. Two shirt lifters were staying there, but were out boogying with the rest of us. A Blue Coat saw the flames and had the fire out in seconds. Looks like arson. Odd really. It was all started by burning newspaper in a kid’s plastic shopping bag. A lighter was with it, and neither of the guys smoke. A lot of folk don’t like gays. I’m cool but there are some nasty types around who hate them.
We have got a few more days here then we will figure our next moves.
Am reading your posts. There is not a lot of action is there. Went out looked at a statue. Had a shower. Went to Serbia. Not really gripping stuff. Is there no women there”?
I didn’t get as far as reading the last lines. He messages right back after the fourth paragraph. “What was the number of your chalet, and that of the two gay chaps?
Joan comes back. “They are both number 2. Why?”
I hesitate. What do I know for sure? Not much. So there was a fire, and it was not far away from where Joan and Scott are staying, and both chalets had the same number. But then I can’t not say anything if there is a chance that what I suspect is true. That it was Barry. And if it was arson, then maybe the arsonist was trying to dress it up like the fire had been started by a small child playing around. And the arsonist, possibly Barry intended to kill the child or he did not care one way or the other. Plus the two gay men were on their own. They would have no need of a kid’s toy shopping bag. I’m fairly sure this is arson but the bastard doing it got the wrong chalet.
“Joan, is there any way that Barry might have known that you went to Camber Sands? Don’t just say no. Think about it”.
Ten minutes later Joan comes back. “Oh Kidman. Why am I so cursed with that man? There was a map on the passenger seat of Scott’s car overnight. We had put a cross on the map next to Camber. Oh FUCK! I bet the twisted bastard followed us down. If he wanted to hurt us it would be perfect. It would not get traced back to him cause he could say he was up in Leeds and living homeless on the streets. I feel sick”.
Day 15. “Saturday 29th September Weather: Diss to Jerusalem in my Goose-mobile. Tune of the Day. Bob Dylan. When I Paint My Masterpiece I’ve done 2400 miles. Another thousand or so before I get to Turkey.
When I paint my masterpiece.
Bob Dylan and a friend.
https://youtu.be/IP_mg3RJ1wg
Drank some local drinking water this morning. Even after boiling, it still made me very ill for about 15 minutes.
Internet still a problem. Didn’t post once I got past the Serbian border yesterday. Serbia is not in the EU so big roaming charges and basic network premium charges kick in for using the internet. Cost £5 for 15 minutes so have been abstaining. Now found a bar with free wifi (which is not common here) so can do a post over a coffee. Remember I’m typing on a key board just three index finger widths by five, and without my glasses so no bad thoughts about my spelling and grammar.
Crossing the border from Hungary into Serbia yesterday took ages. There was a fifteen mile tail back of trucks waiting to go through boarder customs. They filled the right lane of the highway for miles. The drivers were out playing football, and BBQ-ing meals. Much fewer cars so we got to the front of the line fast in the left lane but then everything took for ever. The border was a building site. The Serbs are building a very gran crossing point but for now you get diverted down a mud track to a prefab double hut. All the men looked bored witless. They got a young woman to come and search my car. I felt sorry for her having to rummage around in my living space in the back of the car. Dirty laundry, mattress, cases of food, other odd things in boxes. In contrast to her male colleagues she wore a proper uniform and took a diligent approach. I was just embarrassed. She was mainly interested in seeing if I had boxes of hi-tec stuff hidden away.
Once over the border I stopped at the first town to buy Serbian currency from a bank. Now you have to know the last time I was in Serbia…a year ago I got bitten by a rat in a traveller’s hostel in the capital, Belgrade. My left leg swelled up to twice or more its size. A clinic thought I had a dangerous blocked blood vessel in my leg and wanted to admit me to hospital for observation, clot busting drugs and possible surgery. I knew their diagnosis was wrong (the teeth marks should have proved it) and the medical bills would have been humungous. I had medical insurance but you are required to pay a large amount up front. I was scared of getting stuck and ripped off here so I refused medical treatment and got to the station as quick as my now useless leg would allow and caught the first bus to an EU country, Bulgaria I could find. If I was going to be ill I wanted to be somewhere where my European Health Card would cover most of the costs.
So arriving in Serbia this time I was acutely aware that I must not get hurt or ill. I saw a bank and headed straight for it. Stepped off the paved road onto a grass verge and my foot went down a hole and my other ankle twisted over on itself. I’m a big heavy man these days with problem knees. The wind was knocked out of me by the fall and I had to rest for a few moments to get myself together for the next effort… standing up without out support from anything. Gratefully nothing was really damaged but people were looking at me. Concerned. I spoke in English and said I was okay. It took all my effort to get to vertical and it was not graceful. And I was so relieved that I wouldn’t be needing a doctor. I told myself. Welcome to Serbia.
Today has been a lovely day. Driving south to Nis. Serbia has an extortionate toll road which runs from south of Belgrade to near the Bulgarian border. I avoided that. Instead I used the free and very old (i.e. Roman-20th century) road which meanders through the rural districts. What I mean is it was laid down first in Roman times as a military road, and connects the places that were important back then. You can probably see bits of this first layer that at points, courtesy of the Antiquities people if you try but I didn’t have time for that (money is short) The road has been used and rebuilt by every age, culture and technology. It now just looks like a road that goes through every village and settlement, avoiding the major cities but this is the route that people travelled for all those centuries. These were the important places then. I got to love it today…riding along the nearly empty Route 158. It’s like a Serbian Route 66, in its current reincarnation taking you back to a 1920-1960’s’s kind of world. Few cars. Mostly makeshift trucks, old motorbikes, push bikes and old Communist era cars (the Yugos) which look like sardine tins and can’t go any faster than 50 km an hour. Villages where little is made out of stone. Wood, corrugated iron, reused crumbling brick and thatch. Essentially peasant places that sprung up next to the road to make a living, and never got around to being entirely permanent.
I’m staying in a brilliant white, instant build hotel in Aleksinac, right next to 158 and in view of the turnpike. Its costs 15 euros and has a picture of President Tito on the wall. I didn’t reach my target for the day but its Saturday and I want to chill and have a beer, Experience being in a Serbian town on a night when people go out and enjoy themselves
Tito. The picture that caused the slight unpleasantness
Tito was a 1940’s Yugoslav partisan leader who became head of an independent minded Communist government after the war. He was big mates with Sophia Loren, the Italian actress. She taught him how to cook pasta. The man was one of my heroes as a kid. I know. Odd.
Sorry, not any photos of these wonderful sites along the road. I didn’t expect to be posting tonight. 4pm. forward planning and making bookings (hostels/ ferries) for Istanbul and Jerusalem and the long journey back home via Greece, Italy and France. I want to visit the grave of my great uncle Isaac who was killed in September 1918 in a battle not far from the channel ports In France. It’s going to take weeks and my prospective employers want me to do a preview Santa event for the press at the end of October. What it is to be such a rock star. It only hurts when I laugh!
Have decided to fly to Tel Aviv. It will give me á chance to see the ancient port of Jaffa. Then hopefully walking part way to Jerusalem…arthritic feet permitting.
Driving was often made dangerous by overtired truck drivers in a hurry on poor roads. These guys are taking a rest
Photos. Getting shaved in the car. A border town, relaxing in a bar in a small town near Nis with a local beer.
PS being in a room with furniture and a bed (plus shower and toilet) feel odd. Like I’m living in a stage set. I know that it sounds off but I think I’m going feral”.
Thoughts-
Lots of people make this road trip every day. I’m setting myself up to be doing some kind of epic journey but truck drivers, migrants and returning migrants do it every day. The latter in grossly overloaded old cars. I’ve seen them with the kids and mother at the back pushing their dying cards across borders. Making it into a game. In Albania man, woman and very small child climbing onto a barrow shelf on the underside of trucks to get onto the ferry at Duress and across the Adriatic to Barri in Italy, a gateway into the European Union. Heading for the UK.
The truck drivers are up and down this road, running loads between Germany, central Europe, the Balkans and Turkey. You can identify their home bases by their place of registration plats but they spend little drivers. They are in motion. All most all the time. They have two drivers. They sleep in the cabs, and they look and drive a little like cowboys. And they have to drive fast against a clock. Stopping is a defeat.
Okay, I claim. I’m sleeping in my car and living out of it like it was my home. But of course so are they. I have the conceit that I’m here to see the places and not just drive through them. Find little things in order to study their ways. Small things that tell of the bigger thing. I’m a fraud. Most of the time I’m just engaged in the routine activities of the day. Eating, getting clean and studying routes and maps, sleeping. The stops are mostly to get food and diesel. I might wander around two towns in each country. Hovering over rather than penetrating the surface of places I pass through.
Seeing the last days of good weather in central France. Late September 2018
They take risks all the time. The migrants putting their children in cars that are not roadworthy. The truck driver, running these roads at speed for years and years. I’m taking risks. I live in dread of a punctured type. I have no road assistance insurance and I couldn’t get down and change the wheel even if I knew how to. A friend gave me a fifteen minute tutorial on this before I left. I couldn’t do the job though. My hands are arthritic and no longer have grip or strength. So a single burst tyre would sink me. As I’m driving and I think of this I touch my head three times for luck so it does not happen. That all that guards me, against a petty misfortune which would mean disaster. So a bit of an all-around fraud. But an honest one to myself. Just need to be the same all around. So as long as I don’t claim this trip is anything more than it really is, then that’s okay.
I look at my phone. It could be the mountains blocking networks but Joan has not been in touch. 29th September 1980. 2pm
Barry waits until the afternoon to go and look at his work. He doesn’t want to stand out in any way. Look like an arsonist and a killer visiting the scene of his work. If he allows himself to be caught it would mean that he can’t complete the task that God has given him. It’s hard waiting though.
His excitement last night had been incredible. He couldn’t sleep for hours. So much of him wanted to sneak out and take a look but with Gods help he had held firm.
Breakfast was some fairly dry Madeira cake and the last of his water. The taps were off in the chalet. He would have to stock up today if he was staying. Depending on how the camp was he wanted to stay around long enough to see Joan and her Blackamoor. Then head off for part two in Leeds, when he would get them. Give it maybe a month or so. Enough time for the pain to shred her.
Barry went to the chalet via the Utility Block where he gave himself a good wash and brush up. People don’t trust those who look scruffy and unwashed.
He hung back a bit at the end of Row D. There was a guy in a Fireman’s uniform and somebody who might have been a copper but in plain clothes. Probably some kind of senior detective. And there was cover. Kids and their parents and some men on their own. Probably fathers as well walking by and looking. He walked forward.
And the first words he heard was “thank goodness the two fellers are alright”. That was somebody who was making himself an expert talking to two other chaps and anybody in earshot. He continued. “They were at the music. So I say thank goodness. Gay or not they are still human beings. I’m not a fan of men like that, not at all but who would want to kill them? They are saying its arson. Look pretty obvious. That’s what the copper was saying. I heard him and the fire chap talking”.
“Through a glass darkly god leads you. It’s not for you, Barry to know or discern his plan but it has fallen to you to follow his bidding”. Those were the words that he heard. A new voice, Not his own. His whole body felt infused by a warm light. And he was glad. This thing in front of him was just a step. God would lead him on to the next and the next. Hallelujah”.
Day 16 Sunday 30th September Aleksinac (Serbia) to Kostenets near Sofia in Bulgaria. Miles so far 2400 Weather: mid 20’s and sunny. Tune of the Day. Zorba the Greek
The Serbian dancing was a little like this.
https://youtu.be/2AzpHvLWFUM
Last night there was Serbian dancing to a traditional band (cross between oompa and Greek) in a bar. It was a private birthday party so I didn’t go in but instead ate a giant local style Hamburger out on the terrace. All the men wore white linen. The women dressed as westerners would for a night out. Everyone linked arms over the shoulders and danced like Zorba in the film. Each dance started slow and escalated to a frenzy over about 15 minutes. Lots of shouting went on.
Western Europe feels bland these days. Serbia for all its faults is real. And it’s not a show for tourists because no one comes here! Everyone chains smokes, the men drink like fish, its garish in the cities and dirt poor in the country. There is street life…and people are sociable. Oh, and it smells a lot some of the time.
After a couple of beers earlier in the afternoon I was keen to show the bar staff my extensive knowledge of the man whose picture hung on the wall, Tito aka Jozif Broz. He had fought the Germans as a partisan during the war, and then established a Communist government which refused Stalin’s ‘helping hand’. He held a new country, Yugoslavia together for decades. I thought the young bar staff would like that a westerner knew about their countries great hero. They did not and with one waiter the atmosphere became uncomfortable. He approached me later and chatted. He said something like “the old people like Tito, the young people no”. I wanted to know if that was for reasons of regional nationalism or ideology but decided to be wise and keep quiet. We talked about the upcoming party instead.
This morning the father saw me taking a photo of Tito’s painting. He was all happy and gave me a free expresso. Big grins and thumbs up.
15.45. Just arrived in Bulgaria and so back in the EU. Therefore can afford to use my phone again Have had a great morning. I’ve uploaded lots of photos. Will comment on each later. In short, the route from Serbia takes you through a canyon. Special kind of borderlands. Feeling excited with it all. I need to get further into Bulgaria. It’s turning 4pm here and I’ve got another 75 miles to go. May stop earlier though as its dark by six.
6pm Road closure hell around Bulgaria’s capital city, Sofia. Getting dark and stuck on the motorway. I took an off ramp and looked on Google for a local cheap hotel. Used an App and made a plan to stay at a training hotel on campus at the University of Sofia. Hotel of Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Hard to find
The Hotel Training School at the University of Sophia in Bulgaria. Notice the abandoned cars next to my white Berlingo
The academic buildings look sad and neglected. Abandoned cars scattered around. You can spot them by the broken windows and flat tyres! My rooms okay but the hotel has no food (bar and restaurant closed after 7pm). Clean and safe…and will do for the night.
7pm. Went out for a walk to buy some dinner aka crisps. No other food place open, so sourced my food from a petrol station. This city is still one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. The first impression is of faded glory…and looking a bit shabby apart from all the crass designer clothes outlets. Broken pavements, but grand wide avenues. Remnants of wrought iron fixtures benches, railings and tram stops. Stone built apartment buildings. An air of past culture and elegance. Café’s and subways with shops. Now closed.
Notes re this morning’s journey to the Bulgarian border. The road ran along a lip carved out of a canyon wall. It was a single lane road used heavily by mega trucks running between the Balkans and Turkey. The official speed limit was between 30-50mph but truck drivers ignored that and drove with their hand on the horn. There was an emergency pull over bays every mile or so. Used them to get out of the way of the trucks which were doing 60 plus….and the road followed the contour. I’ve no idea how they managed to not go over the edge. A railway ran alongside a river in the valley floor…a long way down. After 30 minutes of this white knuckle driving I got through the worst of it and pulled into a truck stop for lunch. A wide-open expanse after the panicky claustrophobia and vertigo of the road. Pommies fritas ie chips.
Earlier in the morning I stopped off at a Serbian Orthodox church. No one was around, and I felt a little like a trespasser (there was also a priest’s house) then a Yugo car pulled in the gate. I got talking to the driver, a young priest called Stephan who was very enthusiastic about what I’m doing even when told him I was none religious. We talked a lot about how the British Special Forces operated during the Second World War in the area in support of some wild looking Chetniks partisan groups. He had photos. The wall murals in the church are being painted by a local artist. Stephan thought we were all decadent in the west because of gay marriage and female priests. Despite all he was a nice chap but living in another age. In the UK he would be an object for hate or derision, but here he is bang in the middle of mainstream. Stephan is not a bad man, just a creature of his time and place. Have a look at the pics.
Stephan sends his regards!
The chair in my room has just collapsed under me. That was a not feel good moment.
Stephan the priest standing in front of the unfinished frescos
Day 17 Diss to Jerusalem Monday 1st October Miles driven: 2331 Today-Sofia to Parvomay.100 miles. Only setting off at lunch time. Weather- high of 23c. Overnight 8c. Partly cloudy. Chance of snow (just joking). Update. Low cloud and drenching rain instead!
Diss to Jerusalem Tune of the Day: My Heroes have always been cowboys. Willie Nelson https://youtu.be/OMko5LelBdA Note on photos–
Distance board picture. The distances are in Kms and I’m in Sofia now.
A thrilling road sign
Arrived in this village around 4.30pm. Went for a walk for an hour or so and took pictures. Nowhere looks good on a wet Monday afternoon so I’ve not uploaded most of the shabbiness photos. Instead I’ve concentrated for the most part on the attractive bits. It’s a large village (13,000) in a good agricultural district but if you just looked at the housing you would think it very poor indeed. It reminds me a little of Bradford but of course on a 1:10 scale!
There are four distinct historical phases. Some wonderful late 19th and early 20th century public building and homes. The landscaped park is wonderful. Lots of civic pride.
Then you see a lot of 1950’s-1970’s housing. I’m guessing a lot of the town was damaged in the war. Mostly apartment buildings these are crumbling and neglected. Half of Bradford is like that. Poor housing was thrown up in the two decades after the war.
Alongside that you can see the signs of optimistic municipal Socialism. Libraries, grand museums, a lovely school, the railway station. People have taken real pride here. Ditto Bradford.
Then there is bit of a disaster sometime in the 1990’s (I’m guessing). There are signs of a booming economy which came to a sudden halt. Lots of half completed buildings. Some in use.
There are three designer clothes shops for every grocery store now. Only the young people dress smartly though.
The best part of the town is its central park. That’s the only public space or building which has been cared for. Otherwise lots of neglect and lack of investment in the infrastructure of the place.
War memorial statue in the town depicting an AK47 clutching Soviet soldier
That goes for the half dozen or so towns in Bulgaria that I’ve visited.
FB won’t let me comment on the photos so you will have to guess which are which. Look carefully at the Soviet war memorial. Notice the AK47 and the Russian soldier being greeted by grateful Bulgarian peasants!
How the rest of the day went.
Waiting till mid-morning to set off as Sofia traffic is awful at rush hour. I was here last year and experienced it. Instead I’m going to spend the time drinking coffee, booking a hostel with a car park in Istanbul (Turkey) and a flight to Tel Aviv (Israel). Bookings made for late this week and next.
12.00 Easier getting out of Sofia than expected. Am now heading south on the main road to Turkey. Here in Bulgaria a lot of the exits from this paved road go directly onto rutted dirt tracks so you have to de-accelerate from 70mph in seconds.
Are international truck drivers the new cowboys? I spent time in a truck stop yesterday and watched them on the mountain highway. They drive like there are no rules at all. Many drive huge articulated vehicles which we don’t seem to get in the UK anymore. They operate with two drivers (one resting and swapover), and they are covering a thousand mile plus route between Turkey and central Europe through the Balkans. I’ve not yet seen UK or western European reg. plates. They are not easy going tolerant people…I guess because they are racing a clock…and do not operate to driving time restrictions which we do in parts of the EU (I can’t prove that but I see trucks weaving back and forth like the driver is trying to stay awake). I do admire them though. I watched a group yesterday eating pommes frites and they could have been cowboys. I will dedicate today’s official song to them…even though they scare me witless😎
This link is to a map of the geography ahead of me tomorrow as I get into Turkey. More on that later.
(I slept in a parking space on the road next to the park. Lots of homeless people congregated in the park after dark. Also the town’s teenagers came out and drank in group from large bottles and smoked).
This message came. I rest my phone a foot from my head in the step space. The ping wakes me up and I reach down for the phone.
Message from Joan and Scott. Wednesday 1st October 1980 9pm
Hi Goose. Just a short one. Feeling like a flat tyre and also angry. I only knew Barry a few months before knowing he was a mistake, and then I got out quick. It looks like the man’s going to follow me forever. And I can see he is going…or has gone crazy. I think you’re probably right about the fire. I hate that the bastard has got me living like I’m under siege plus he has got into my head and set up home.
We are still having a good time. Just being careful and making the next few days a good memory for Pateley. Golden Echo is still thinking about a new name. The beaches here are lovely, and almost empty now. We have made a fire again (did I tell you about last time?) and we do what the Aussies call cook outs. Pateley grins ear to ear. Back to Leeds in two days.
I still say you’re wrong about big and detailed plans when it comes to Barry. I still come down on the side of reacting to things as they happen, and trusting my instincts. They are not saying anything right now though but that may change when we get back home on Friday (or whatever day it is your side).
Golden Echo is going to stay with us for a while. We went to her chalet on Monday. Her scumbag of a boyfriend was laying in filth. Started raging right off when he saw her. We told him to shut right up. The little twerp looked so scared but just shrugged his shoulders. He was using her of course. Like a louse sits on your head and sucks the blood out of you till you get the shampoo and the special comb. And that’s what we are. He had the cheek to shout out the door as we walked off that he had been about to dump her because her tits were saggy. I want to shout back. Whose he kidding, they have always been saggy but that wouldn’t have helped any.
Then we (me and Golden) got talking. People have the oddest stories in life. She is the bastard daughter of a Catholic Priest who paid her mum off, and then put her through private school but never came to see her himself. Her tits have been saggy from the word go. Like socks with a bit of sand in the bottom. They just got to be like longer and longer socks. And she just got into this mental thing of getting up on stage, taking all her clothes off and swinging her tits around. And pretending that everyone lusted after them. And she has spent years doing it. And hanging about with deadbeats who leached off her. She is not on seriously bad drugs but she certainly hasn’t been anywhere near the real world for a long time. All this fucked up stuff got her kids put in care for fucks sake. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Her head is starting to clear a bit, but not enough yet. She said yesterday she was going to get a job, earn some money and then have a tit sorting out operation, then her life would get better. I lost it. I said “what is fucking wrong with you. You are not your tits and your tits are not you. Get over your fucking tits and get on with your life. That bastard tosser of a father has done a real job on you. Decision time. He either continues to fuck you up or you say fuck him and get on with your life and get happy for Christs sake”.
Half an hour later Golden spoke up and said “I’ve got a new name. Its Saggy Titus. Get it. “Saggy Tits ® Us. I’ve taken over the name, and its mine now. Feels right”.
We are going to stay together. Scott, Pateley, Saggy and me. At least for a while. I’m not a lezzer and there is no kinky stuff going on or anything but who says four people can’t live together like this. I like having Saggy around. Scott thinks it’s funny. He says “we are becoming a family but what a mixture- a darkie, a prossie, a one-time tit swinging stripper and a great kid”. I say it sounds fine. Am a bit surprised he said that about me being a prossie. It was never more than casual/ part time. I don’t think it’s on his mind though. Seems he is okay with it. Or maybe that’s his way of telling me its okay. The thought that it wouldn’t be never crossed my mind. I’m not worrying either way. I’m getting happy I think.
Funny old world eh? But it’s getting better all the time. Just like the Beatles song
Anyway greetings from the beach. “Wish you were here”. Had an impulse to write that. Like we sign off postcards from the seaside but I suppose you are family as well. Now that is weird …having close family in a different century and being in touch!
J
Day 18 Tuesday 2nd October 2018 Diss to Jerusalem
Today’s trip. Parmavay in Bulgaria to Babaeski in Turkey. That name, ‘Babaeski’ has a story’. The Ottoman Sultan, Mehmet the Conqueror came riding by one day with his armies on his way to lay Siege to Constantinople, (modern day Istanbul). He asked an old man what was the name of this place. He said “Eskidireski”. The last syllable means old. The Sultan then asked the man how old he was, and he replied Babaeski, which means “the father is old”. The Sultan decided to rename the town just that. Babaeski. I like that I am going to be in a place where you can talk about Sultans and Constantinople and such exotic things.
Anyway today’s trip is fairly short because of the border crossing. Just about a 114 miles of driving. It’s the last bit of Bulgaria and then into Turkey. The part on the European continent. In effect the last bit of Europe before Asia. So I will have crossed a whole continent North-west to South East. I’m being a bit cheeky claiming that. Some would say I’ve taken a short cut across one corner of the continent. I’m settling for the bigger claim. I’ve gone from the Atlantic Ocean to the Black sea and that’s good enough. I like the idea you can get in your car one morning and drive across a continent. And it truth, with very little preparation or planning, that’s what I’ve done. I want to go on about freedom and eulogise it but I will let you fill in the spaces. Weather-partly cloudy. High of 24. Overnight low 14c Miles so far 2542 Diss to Jerusalem Song. Today it’s a bonus special. Two for one. 1-‘It’s getting better’, by the Beatles. That’s for J. 2- Freebird by Lynyrd Skynrd.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxIWDmmqZzY
Up and busy from 4am. Lots to do. Most of it involving using my basic model smart phone to communicate with the world. Before 6am I had communicated with people and organisations on 4 continents. Astonishing really. Okay not them, but their computers. Still incredible but it has become every day.
I’m spending the first part of the morning applying for an e-visa on line for Turkey. Cost £20. This is the only border in the entire trip where I will have needed one. That includes entry into Israel and Serbia.
My Satnav showing the way to Turkey
Turkey is a country that straddles two continents. The smaller, upper part is in Europe. The much greater lower portion in Asia. They are divided by the wonderful Bosporus straights but connected by a bridge. I want to stand on that Bridge if I can.
Just across that bridge is the bigger part of Istanbul, previously known as Constantinople. One of the great cities of the ancient world. I have booked a hostel bed for three nights there. They don’t let the over 40’s sleep in the dorms. What’s that about?
I’m also going to park up the Berlingo for a while and explore the city on foot. It will feel odd not climbing into ‘the cab’ of the Berlingo each morning and driving for five hours.
It feels remarkable that I can organise most of what I do from an electronic object much smaller than a cig packet…and record it all…just so long as I keep the battery charged.
Onwards and upwards.
1,30pm. (Measured) ten mile tail back of trucks waiting to get through customs and enter Turkey. Five miles in the other direction. Incredible site many hundreds of trucks. Portable toilets in place, and BBQ’ stands set up for drivers to cook out on. Had to weave in and out of groups of drivers who were in the road playing football. All normal for here. Ditto but less so in Serbia. Only six cars waiting to go through.
2.30pm. got lost but eventually found where I’m staying tonight. I need some food. The shops are not great nearby.
My travellers hostel in Istanbul
I have made it to Turkey. I wonder what Mr Dolby, my geography teacher would say. A rare good teacher who got one interested. Saw Levi’s as a sign you were in with the wrong crowd and were damned, but was interested in his pupils all the same. I always think of him when I go somewhere. Big time in Patagonia a couple of years back. I remember him talking about the pampas and where our corned beef came from😎. Do you know Fray Bentos is the name of a town in Uruguay? Almost got there but problems came up. It’s now deserted as a food factory but is some kind of tourist place.
My car was searched at the border …all over. You can’t help but feel embarrassed as every item is checked. I’ve taught people how to search others and their property. Everyone should experience it first though. Nice woman doing it but I think she wished that it had not been her turn to do searches😎 that took an hour. Nerve wracking. They could just have put two slanting lines across my entry stamp and that would have been trip over. Couldn’t take any pics. All very strict…as of course it has to be. They would not let me drive any further until I paid out a fortune for their special Turkish car insurance. I can’t really moan. My car insurance didn’t cover Turkey but paying out on the spot at the insurance franchise fifty yards from the border post has left me over budget
The heat and the trials of the day…plus the city driving has worn me out. I’m too jiggered to jump up and down but am grateful to be here. Some people need thanking for their practical ways of helping. I will leave it at that. Stacks of food. Jars and jars of hotdogs. Stacks of wet wipes. Beer money from our Ru.
I also put my family through a lot of worry….but they still let me do this. If they said no I wouldn’t do it.
The sunset picture is the view toward Greece. That’s where I turn next after Turkey and Israel.
Day 19 Wednesday 3rd October 2018 Diss to Jerusalem Weather- Not recorded Totals miles so far: Not recorded
Today’s journey. Babeiski to Istanbul. Just under a hundred miles. Down through the neck of European Turkey to the Bosporus Straights and across into Asia Minor, specifically the city of Istanbul. Population 17 million. To my right will be the Sea of Marmara and to the left the Black Sea. I want to smile a lot. To have brought my body here across all that way.
Plans.
I’m staying for three nights at a traveller’s hostel which is about 1.5 miles from old city. The temptation is to try and see ‘everything’ but there is no pleasure in that as you just get frustrated and exhausted. My two priorities are The Blue Mosque and the bridge between Europe and Asia over the Bosphorus.. Then just a bit of wandering.
There are also practical things to work out. If I leave the car here whilst I travel to Israel that’s technically importation of a vehicle. I have to go to the airport in advance and talk with the customs people and say where the vehicle will be kept for the four days…or possibly have pay to have it in a customs compound for that time. I didn’t work that out in advance because I was far from sure that I would get here, and what’s the point of worrying about things which are not in front of you yet. (I’m sounding like a friend of mine, who I criticize for saying things like that).
Exploring Babeiski, the town this morning. Ancient place. It was here when the first crusades to reconquer Jerusalem came through as well as all the attacks and counter attacks since. So there should be lots of history, and archaeology here. I go to the tourist information office, and enquire. They say they don’t know anything. All they have got is hotels with swimming pools and trips to Istanbul, so I walk around the town and do some food shopping for the day. The street kids look at me like I’m an alien. Maybe if I’d stayed longer and done my own exploring I would have found what I had expected of a place which has seen so much history.
From now on…until I re-enter the EU I will at best only have internet access where there is Wi-Fi. I will try and update morning or evening were poss.
Onwards and upwards.
Will update as the day goes on.
7pm perfected my well-being approach. A glass of beer and I’ve got wellbeing. First drink in days (can’t drink when I’m in the Berlingo).
I imagined a very dramatic approach into the city. Instead it was a 70mph traffic helter-skelter and then into a tunnel to cross the straights. Then an 8 mile drive through a rush hour where not one traffic law is recognised. Each time I’d seen the worst something else happened. Cars driving on pavement, speeding up one way street, use of a bus as a weapon. Each time I missed a turning or it was blocked by randomly parked cars I had to spend another 30 minutes going round the same circuit of streets again and again. Near crashes +++ .You need the concentration of a Red Arrows pilot and deaf ears to all the blaring horns. I could not understand the district and street naming system but I typed my best guess into Sat Nav and it incredibly brought me to the front door of my traveller’s hostel. I could have kissed it.
In all this driving round in circles I got repeat views from odd perspectives of the Bosporus, the bridge from Europe to Asia and the Blue Mosque. Most things with a big name in this world are rubbish close up. These things exceeded expectations. Just big wow.
The hostel I’m staying in is just 15 minutes’ walk from it all. A car journey would be much longer. I’m now I’m enjoying my first cooked meal in two weeks and I’m on my second beer…a Kurdish beer with a kick.
Tomorrow I’ve got to get into problem solving mode and work out how I can meet the customs regulations about my car being in Turkey when I’m in Israel. It’s complicated but I’ve got a stamp in my passport which says I’m accompanied by a car. That can cause problems at the exit border if it’s not with me. Anyways that’s tomorrow. Tonight I’m all enthused and full of wellbeing.
If we very respectfully and lovingly disregard Ireland, I’ve driven all the way across Europe from North West to south east. Just short of 3000 miles.
20.20. Watching the waiters work the US and British tourists. No harm being done, and it’s all consensual. Everyone’s happy.
Johnny Kidman is in Istanbul, Turkey. Barry Pateley Friday 3rd October 1980
Barry is catching the London Victoria National Express coach, Then onto Leeds, and back to the derelict house opposite Joan’s on Lincoln Avenue. It’s an 8.25 AM departure and a nine hour journey. He’d left the camp site on Thursday morning and busked in Hastings for the day. Made enough for the coach fare back to Leeds and four or five days eats. He was due to sign on at the DHSS office down Eastgate next Monday. A woman that used to be his friend lets him use her address so it all worked out perfectly. He thinks out loud. “The Lord prepares my way”. If I say that it happens and it did. Whatever I say happens if God so wills it. God loves me and the signs are everywhere.
He got into Wellington Street for 9pm. The coach was on time to the minute. A Blackamoor got on the coach at Victoria, he gave them a look and the man sat elsewhere. They know when you know what they are. He is using that word Blackamoor, now. That is a word honoured by history. It tells the world that the blacks of the world are the slaves of the world, and that was because they are the children of Ham. When we use the word it reminds us every time. Barry ponders on this as he walks
The evening was mild, and the walk to Lincoln Green was fine. Their car was in the street. No road maps out this time. The upstairs light was on, but the street is almost entirely dark. The last street light, up at the top of the short road makes little impression on the night. Barry lifts the door and pushes. Then he is back into his place. A little coffee table and chair. The three seater sofa somebody left behind. The torch for his light (always cupped by his hands) The Primus camping stove, a simple one with the little fold out legs. He loves that thing. Odd but he really did love it. If an object can be said to take care of a person that thing does.
Barry does not know what to do next about Joan and her Blackamoor. But he knows that God will drop a plan into his mind when the time is right. All is well. Friday 3rd October 10pm.
Joan and Scott are laying on the bed in the house at Lincoln Avenue. Pateley is in his little room, and Saggy is sleeping on some sofa cushions in the front room. Scott is looking at the ceiling and having one of those stream of consciousness spiels where ones tongue can barely keep up with the thoughts flying through one’s mind. He has driven them all back from Camber, two hundred and sixty miles. Tired now but his head is still buzzing and he wants to talk. Joan lays on her right side and listens.
“I’m twenty eight Joan, and I have never been really happy before. Even when happy things happened there was always a gap in me, and I was sort of behaving automatically. I would be thinking “Okay this is the part where you smile” but I just didn’t feel happy. It was always a step back.
I spent a lot of time worrying about my mum. People were bastards to her in the village. She had been with a black man, and surprise, surprise he had left her and gone back to fucking Africa. It was like she was soiled in some way, and she was always lonely. Just living her life for me. So I would turn out okay. People around were neither unpleasant nor pleasant to me. They just pretended I wasn’t there.
When I was eleven I had a friend called David. We were in class together at school, and he had started a street football team called Banksfield United. We were crap, mainly cause I was in goal. Mum saw I had a friend, and kept inviting him round for tea. David stammered and used to get bullied at school as well. We always came 104th and 105th every year in the school inter-house school cross country running team. We were the big fat lads who always came up the rear. I was keen on swimming, until the bastard sports teacher told me in front of the class that I was making the water dirty. All the men teachers called me Black Sambo, and went on about Golly Wogs and jam jars. I was the only black kid in a school of 1200. Anyway mum saw I had a friend and she got us to work on an old fashioned comedy duo act, something like Mike and Berny Winters. Then she took us down to Yorkshire TV on Kirkstall Road, and made us audition for a programme called Junior Show Time. It was like a corny talent show for kids. They liked me but not David, because his stammer made him useless. This man who produced it tried to take me under his wing, in a good way. Put me in touch with people who would help develop my talent. Mum got all scared and stopped it. I do wonder what could have happened. I had ideas about being a DJ and radio and TV presenter. But it didn’t happen.
Mum was one of those kind of people who are scared all the time. She thought that because I was black and was sometimes given a bad time that I might end up feeling a misfit. Not in the white world or the black world, and cause of that I would go to the bad. Get into crime and drugs and that.
She would sit down, just me and her and read bits from the bible. Even at fourteen or fifteen I was going along with it like I felt I was the parent and had to take care of her. The only friends she had in the world were the Jehovah’s Witness lot who were creepy as hell, and could always spot people who were lonely or were out on their own. They would pull them in and be a kind of family for them. And that way they had them dependent. Anyway, mum and I would have these bible evenings at home. Just me and her. And she would read from the bible and then tell me what it meant. I’m guessing now that she thought all of this religion would be a kind suit of armour which would stop me going bad.
That’s why I got into the discount carpet business. Just to make her happy and to show I was not going off to the bad. So that’s my secret of being a great carpet entrepreneur. Be mixed race,and have a lonely sad mother who joins a crazy religious cult.
But I think this way of growing up screwed up my head. There I was at aged twenty eight. All this money and everything and the nearest I had to a relationship was phoning sex chat lines every night.
Here is the big example from my being a kid of how me and mum were sort of in a little cell together. But it was nice a lot of the time.
One of the nicest things I can remember is mum telling me the story of how Joshua and the Israelites brought down the walls of Jericho. Marching around it for six days and blowing the trumpets and all of that. Moses had brought the Israelites out of Egypt to Canaan and this was the Promised Land that they had to take for their own, as god had made it there’s but they still had to take it, and anyway Joshua was the commander and he brought the walls down. And that was the first town in Canaan.
Then she would get me singing an old gospel song by a woman, Mahalia Jackson called Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho. She was a big gospel singer in America in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Even the Rolling Stones liked her.
I’ve got the words
“You may talk about the your men of Gideon
You may brag about your men of Saul
There’s none like good old Joshua
At the battle of Jericho”.
And then mum would say you are going to be like Joshua, and bring the walls down. And she had this little plastic trumpet and she would give it to me to blow on, and then she would pretend she was a wall at Jericho and fall down.
Joan reached over and pulled Scott towards her, and said susshhhh.
In the early hours Joan’s eyes lit open like there was a sound somewhere, but then she knew it was something in her mind. It was that song, and then she knew what they were going to do
This is a book in the making. The story is partly true and partly fiction. Please add your comments and suggestions in the box at the bottom of the page
CHAPTER SIX I AM THE GOD OF HELLFIRE
Message from Joan and Scott. 1.30pm Saturday 27th September 1980
“Well, we were all signed up for the talent contest. The guy organising it, a feller called Rudie Valentine. He tells everyone that he was the personal roadie for Wilson Pickett on the 1967 Stax tour, but I he’s lying. I’ve checked. Pickett was never on that tour so the guy is just a faker. Anyway, Rudie goes into a kind of speech but talking like a cockney robot “The God of Hell Fire. Artiste- The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. Charting- number 1 in August 1968. Genre- Psychedelic Rock. IE NOT SOUL MUSIC. Sorry, but people come here for soul music. You can’t do bloody Arthur Brown.
Fire.
Arthur Brown
I’m all set to go beserk, but Scott steps in “You telling this black man what Soul Music is. I know the man, Ardur Brow, I see him at his place in Whitby. He’s cool with me making his song soul music, man He says things can’t stand still. The instinct for people is fusion. For the music’s of all the wold to sort of rise up and mingle. And keep on being born and again and again”. Scott says all of that in a sodding painful Yorkshire- Jamaican spiel. Then switches voices and is all Yorkshire “We have med that song soul music and people are gonna to love it. I’m doing the helmet. It will set the place on fire. Get it. And Rudie does. I can tell he is seeing pound signs in extra bar takings and maybe a repeat performance to fill the dead space between 7.30 and 8pm, afore the evening show. He says “Have you got a tape in case Rod Bassman’s lads in the band don’t know it. It’ll give them a chance to listen through and get the gist. If push comes to shove they can mime it.
We hand over the tape, and right away I feel we are going to win. Rudie would not be making the effort if we were the lads from Macclesfield wanting to do Soul Man. They’re in the contest as well. Ones got a really nice bum. Maybe worth a quickie. Just joking ‘cause I know Scott reads the stuff I do on here. (What are my hands doing behind my back?).
I did get second thoughts. We could have done a duo, River Deep Mountain High (Ike and Tina) but we’re settled now.
We have no chance of trying out the helmet. Probably for the best. It might not survive two goes. I’m going to be lighting him up out of sight behind the curtain. One minute into his routine he will come back to me, and I will lift off the burning helmet with some oven gloves we have got hold of. I’m hoping we are the last act on. Fresh in the judge’s minds but I’m figuring Rudie will have a word anyway, as I say.
Scott’s got nerves. He’s spent half the day in front of the mirror with two screens open on the Etch a Sketch. Arthur Brown on one, and Sam and Dave, on the other. Words from one, and moves from the other. I’m telling him to repeat the words. “I can, I wish, I will, I’ll do, I’m going to be a black man” again and again, and wiggle about when he’s doing it. Give the ladies and those of the gay persuasion something to look at. Lots of them. Ones doing ‘Try a little Tinderness’. Get it boom-boom, just like Basil
As far as I can make out the line-up for the contest (copied from the board) is –
Try a little tenderness (Otis Reading) Honey Van-Trap
Soul Man (Sam and Dave).The Macclesfield Moocher Boys
Bringing it on home to me (Sam Cook). Sandy Camber
RESPECT. (Aretha Franklin). Golden Echo
The God of Hell Fire. (The Crazy World of Arthur Brown). Smokin Scott Inferno
I’m worried about Golden Echo. She doesn’t look right. She has got a look about her. She looks familiar from somewhere. Scott’s name is my creation. He wanted to be Ta Zan, The Yorkshire He man. He sometimes is not sensitive to the vibe.
We will be drawing lots about the order we go on. Shortest first. I got a feeling we are going to get the longest.
A little burst of butterflies there. Lots of people walking past the window. Looks like the whole campsite is going to this show. Scott is throwing up in the bathroom. Well if he does it now it won’t happen later. Or least not as much, always look on the bright side.
(We are happy Johnny Kidman. Don’t let nothing bad happen. I’m waiving my tits at ya for luck).”
1.45pm Rudie is snorting vodka from a teaspoon in the gents. He has got his sparklies on. The tight jump suite. Bit of a squeeze but everything’s in. He’s thinking… “Not looking bad for a Boykie from Bloemfontein…at forty. It’s been a bit of a long trek from the Free State, South Africa but no regrets. The music set me free. People should know this…when the city first got traffic robots (Rudie still uses that term for traffic lights when he is in conversation with himself) people drove a hundred miles to sit and watch them change. God’s truth, that says it all about the Orange fucking Free State. Buying that first record from the ‘Okay’ started all this. Now I’m Rudie Valentine. People think it’s a made-up stage name but I wink at myself because I know it’s almost real. Rudie is Rudolf but hey who wants a Reindeers name. That record. That was my own personal atomic bomb going off. Milly, ‘My Boy Lollipop’ 1965.
Millie- My Boy Lollipop
I dumped that shrivelled goat, Adiel aka the human ironing board and caught that midday train to Joburg, and made a plan. Earnt big bucks in the mines then after a year I’m heading for swinging London and learning to talk like Michael fucking Caine. If not for Millie I might still be working on the till at the OK Bazaar on Milner Road. Fuck that was a bad place. Thank you, girl, for saving me.
Okay. Party time. Here we go. Chest out, stomach in-
Rudie speaks to himself out loud now…” say the words for luck, Boykie”. Rudie taps the centre of his head three times and then says the words three times. “My boy lollipop, you set my world on fire. My boy lollipop, you set my world on fire. My boy lollipop, you set my world on fire.” 1.45pm. Barry Bridger
The man is torn. If he was wise he would hang low and get totally out of sight until tonight. But he has seen the notice board outside the hall, and it confirms what the silly young lass said this morning. Someone is doing Arthur Brown, that crazy man. He was way before his (Barry’s) time but the message is in the title of the song. God of Hell Fire. That’s got to be the Blackman. Satan isn’t a god but he will claim that in order to confuse the unwary. And today one of his disciples is hiding in plain sight. Barry thanks the lord for his clarity of seeing.
Now he is standing in front of a see-saw in the kid’s playground. One hand resting on either side of the balance point. Unthinkingly his actions mirror his thoughts. Push left- push right, go in, don’t go in. The see-saw rocks wildly. A three-year-old asks her mum “what the funny man doing, mommy”?
Barry poses a question to himself “what would Hank have done? The answer comes back clear but in the words of a fine Hank song. ‘My son calls another man daddy …the right to his love I have been denied’.
He has to go in. He waits until just after two when the lights go down. Takes a seat, fourth row from the back and behind a pillar. Remembers his hat and places it over his lap. A short, chubby man with permed hair and wearing a stars and stripes nylon jump suit, steps out from behind the curtain and takes the mic. Then raises his arms in a V, and proclaims “Alright, what do you want, well here I got it, what do you need, here I’ve got it”. He does a spin on his heel and drops his voice “what do ya lurv Pontin Campers, what do ya lurv Camber Sands”.
Rudie tells the people about the five delights coming their way, he shows them the clap-ommeter, a device copied from a TV talent show. “The more they like an act, the more they should clap, and the higher the needle on the device goes. The dev-a-stat-ing-ly beautiful Serenity Jones will transfer that needle-swing to a score on the big board so that everyone in the room can see”.
Rudie, as always is glad to be over the dodgy bit without people shouting out the obvious flaw in the system, now he wants to get them excited. Whip them up like a Tupperware beaker of banana flavoured Angel Delight. He stands steady, feet apart, centre stage and adopts his most sincere look. “Look people. It’s all about the clap. Tell me brothers and sisters, have you got the clap, Yay!!!! Then give these talented people your clap. Let’s try out the clap now. Put your hands together and give me all the clap you have got!!! The room is silent. One or two older women tentatively put their hands together and then others join in. Rudie notes overall there is not a lot of claps. Surprisingly little clap for Sussex. He will need to ‘work’ this crowd hard this afternoon. No problem, I’m known for pumping the people up, from Southport to Camber sands and Lowestoft to Weston-Super-Mare. Everyone knows about Rudie. He’s a legend on the holiday camp Soul music weekender circuit. The best of them all and that’s including Butlin’s and the independents as well.
If somebody had whispered the Afrikaans word ‘geslagsiekte’ in his ears and told him that he had just been imploring five hundred people to pass it around. He would have said “Ag nie problem nie” but in a cockney accent. Rudie had learned to bounce, and not break.
He calls out the first act. “Do you know Camber Sands, we all need to Try a Little Tenderness now and again. That’s what our first contestant Honey Van-Trap wants you to do!!! Give him your biggest clap-
First the familiar ‘low and slow’ brass intro, then a brickie-foreman from Dagenham with a hint of Shirley Bassey about his voice gives the people some magic. “Oh she may be weary, and young girls they do get weary, wearing that same old shaggy dress, but when she gets weary try a little tenderness. Boom-boom …his voice soars and he is away and giving the tune some Essex Boy umph. The world is a good place, and everyone is grooving like its 1966 and they’re eighteen all over again but much better this time. No spots and they have some money in their pocket
Rudie, slips quickly slips onto the bench next to Serenity, and her Clapometer, cups his right hand to her ear, and whispers “Scott Inferno plus ten, this feller plus five, and all the rest minus five”.
Some parents have sent their children forward with a packet of crisps and a bottle of fizzy to sit on the floor directly in front of the stage. They will get a better view and give mum some peace. The lads want to look up the women performers dresses and make farting noises.
Joan and Scott
The couple and Pateley are just outside the backstage fire door. Scott’s getting the finishing touches treatment. Joan won’t pour the lighter fluid onto the cotton wool ring resting in the pie dish until the act before them goes on. Scott says it out loud “That lass Golden Echo doing Respect. That’s that’s my cue. You put your head around the door, I come inside and up the steps. You pour the lighter fluid on the cotton wool and then we wait for fat twat to give us the intro. You then you light me up. The flames are what will do it. It’s the shock value. And it’s only going to last a minute or so. I then go on to do the leaping mystical dancing and the hand jabbing. Oh, Joan, this is better than pushing carpet offcuts onto couples furnishing their house with DSS emergency payments. He reaches forward with puckered lips and gives her a light kiss. Joan comes right back and gives him the full tongue in the throat experience. Joan shudders a little. This is too good to last.
The Macclesfield Moocher Boys are a few yards away sharing a fag before going on. They hear Honey building up to his crescendo and move briskly toward the fire door. Scott and Joan give each of the lads a ‘hi 5’. They are all wearing a red and white striped Stoke city football shirts, white shorts, with white plimsolls. Each one with a great red heart painted on with felt tips. Scott got it. These boys were going to do Sam and Dave’s special moves, and the audience’s attention would be attracted to their feet by the red hearts and white pumps moving around like fireflies in the dark. “God that’s smart,” he tells Joan “and all looking the same as well. Game on!”.
Rudie Valentine
Rudie is standing in the wings and wondering what his life would have been like if his great-grandfather had not been a fiery Italian Nationalist, a follower of Giuseppe Garibaldi who fought for the unification of his country, and if his youngest son, seeking to emulate his respected father had not caught a passing boat to South Africa to fight on the side of the Boers in the Second Boer War against the imperialist British in early1900. Then married his grandmother, the ugliest ducking in a Boer brood of eighteen children. His father, the youngest had undoubtedly been the best looking of and smartest Ouma and Oupa Valentines children but had wasted his chances and settled for working in the Okay Bazaar on Milner. Then when he Rudie left school he was told that was where he was going as well. Italian freedom fighter, then a Boer Commando fighter to shelf stacker and till man at the Okay Bazaar in three generations. Lots of history there but it stopped with his grandad.
But he had broken out. Must have been Groot Oupa’s (he still liked using these Afrikaans words) genes coming down through the line. Everything works out for the best in the end. If it hasn’t yet then it’s not yet the end! He limbers up in readiness to introduce the next act. He glances at the prompt sheet. Not a great name for an act sounds like an overeaters group. The thought gets stuck and he introduces the moochers as the munchers.
“Thank you, Honey. What a blast. What a blast. This show is gonna be good. Next up we have some down and dirty soul men. Lots of clap for the Macclesfield Munchers. Wowza, wowza …oh and they do soccer as well”.
The white pumps glow in the dark. The five boys move in perfect synchronicity. The red and white striped shirts suggest a hint of toothpaste. Steve and Bazzer taking the parts of Sam and Dave, the other lads handle the Da da da’s. The house band lags behind toward the end and that disrupts the moves, so they lose they lose their mark don’t all finish together. Steve looks confused. Great start and middle but It all felt a bit bum note at the end. Rudie nods at Ray and Phil on the drums and Hammond organ.
“Thankyou…thank you guys. Wowza Wowza. Cheshire has got soul!” Rudie is learning his counties. Next week he is onto Cumbria, Devon and Dorset in the AA Book of the Road.
He is pleased with the next bit of placing. He has put Sandy Camber, the most serious contender, and the act doing the best song before the interval. People will start drifting off to the bar, and others will be restless. She will only have the full attention of half the audience at best. The gut twisting yearning of a song like ‘Bring it on home to me’ gets to people when they are pissed. If she had been fourth or fifth down the running order the contest would be hers. But nothing is certain in this game.
Sandy Camber is a looker but not you’re off the shelf looker and that’s always worth ten points. She is singing in bare feet apropos (one of Rudie’s words of the week) Sandy Shore and she’s a solo act. Together that’s worth another five. She does the song in the style of Eric Burden and the Animals which is a little too bluesy for Camber Sands, that takes away five. Rudi still feels worried. He can’t play about with the scoring too much and oh God she is doing a big meltdown ending. People have turned around from the bar. Serious worries. Then one of the boys below the stage makes a tremendous farting noise and Sandie goes over on her ankle, and it all becomes farce. Rudie thanks, God.
It’s a long interval. Twenty minutes. That’s to give people time to get a second round in. And it stretches out the afternoon. Makes people feel they are getting what they have paid for. There’s a big queue for the women’s lav. Rudi gives it another five.
Margaret from Manchester is limbering up. Early thirties, five feet four, a little pear-shaped. Motorbike helmet haircut. Today she is her creation, Golden Echo being her hero, Aretha Franklin doing a song she considers her anthem. RESPECT.
Johnny Kidman saw Golden Echo in late 1978, at the Hoffbrauhaus Beirkeller lunchtime, none stop Stripperama show. The place was just alongside the Merrion Shopping Centre in Leeds. Everyone was discovering it back then. The management put on entertainment, the lager and limes were cheap and there was no door charge. Johnny had been celebrating payday with a bunch of mates from work.
Golden in her new Mata Hara get up was introduced by a sleazy MC with a fondness for painful rhyme as “Miss Echo from Manchester, brought to you by British Rail Inter-City, now let’s all see her lovely… titties!” Johnny had been appalled that what followed was allowed. The woman was entirely deluded. She thought herself a Blaze Starr character, the infamous and glamorous New Orleans stripper who had an affair with a Senator and caused outrage. In reality, she was three kids too late for that and anyway she looked like she was on drugs. Her eyes were sort of clouded over. Pretty soon some pissed up Tory Boys, slumming it on a day out in town, were on their feet giving her the thumbs down and shouting “look at those fucking stretch marks” and “what back seat prossie”, “shag bag” and similar rugby club bar talk ”. An older chap in full Leeds football kit was telling them to sit down and shut up. It could be great in here some days, but today was not one of them.
Margaret aka Golden Echo lasted barely two minutes. Spent 30 seconds trying to find all her clothes and then walked off the stage like she was going down a coal mine. Johnny turned to a friend and said: “fucking hell, I wish I’d never seen that”. The next lass on told the Tory Boys to “fuck right off”, and then slew the entire room with a great routine with a soccer theme and imaginary Leeds United players past and present. Jackie Charlton, Billy Bremner, Peter Lorimer and careless hands Gareth Sprake and more. And that just made Margaret look all the more pathetic and sad.
The penny had dropped for Joan when she watched Margaret limbering up at stage side in the hall at Camber. She had done the same kind of golf swing kind of movement at the waist, during her strip act in the lounge bar of the Cherry Tree pub, and that had not made her breasts look good. It had been a Sunday lunchtime. Joan went there with Cheyanne. They would have a laugh at the men who bought them drinks and thought they were going to get somewhere. The tables were all pulled back. Margaret had her back to a slot machine as she performed. The bar staff had not even bothered to turn it off. It was all a bit like a bear pit.
She started her act wearing a two-piece cheerleader kind of outfit. Always a second or more behind her song, she strutted around in a circle. Stopped at the same point each time and flung something off in the direction of her open hold-hall a couple of yards away. The fourth bit of clothing to go after the pin on the silver paper crown was the bra-like top, and, oh God no she had tassels attached to her breasts, and then she couldn’t make them rotate. The men acted like animals and it had all been up close because the nearest of them was only three yards away. Joan was no sensitive flower but that was ugly. Watching men who were fathers and husbands acting like the worst of people.
Joan couldn’t see why the woman would put herself through all of that. The taunts about her sagging breasts and the stretch marks on her thighs and stomach, and the uneven haircut (done by her sister). But it was like the woman wasn’t there. She went through her two minutes thinking she was Aretha Franklin but it could have been an empty room for all the attention she gave the drunks. The audience in actuality was herself. If there had been a full-length mirror she might as well have carried it around with her.
Here at stage side, Camber Pontins Joan guessed at what had been going on back then. Margaret was not seeing the world the same as everybody else. It wasn’t drugs. She was just radically away in a world of fantasy. All the booing, the chants and crude remarks never reached her. Joan was used to watching people fall and was able to watch and feel nothing just as if each wretched person was just more worthless debris going by on life’s trash removal conveyor belt. On its way to the great council tip of imploded lives. That none reactivity wasn’t her nature but it had become her necessary practice.
Today Joan was going to thaw a little and maybe there would be the first showing of Snow Drops in the snow. Its form would a mother hen like instinct to gather up and protect. And that meant she was going to live…and have a good life, always dodging the great swinging hammer of total disaster right up to the day she pressed her own off button at the End of Life Centre, in Shanghai, China aged ninety-five and three quarters, whilst a chimeric Jerry Lee played the Wild Side of Life on his honky-tonk piano.
“Well you wouldn’t read my letters if I wrote you
You ask me not to call you on the phone
Well, there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you
So I wrote it in the words of this song…
I didn’t know God made honky-tonk angels…”
For Joan-
Do yourself a favour. Take five. Listen to Jerry Lee and think about Joan.
And Oh God…Joan remembered the tape cassette Margaret gyrated around to in the Cherry Tree was RESPECT. The same as today’s.
That second Joan knew with what felt like a bodily thump what was coming next. She wanted to grab hold of the wretched woman and stop her but she was five yards away by then and all Joan could do was clutch a fold in the curtain tightly and watch the crash.
Golden Echo began her act in a wrap-around gown and high heels. The shoes went first. Kicked high into the wings and narrowly missing Rudie, next the hair came down with a pull of what looked like a kabab skewer and a shake of the head.
The tempo of the song was all wrong for a strip act. And a strip act had no place at a Soul Weekender talent show, but none of any of that was on Golden Echo’s mind. She was singing in a throaty kind of way-
Respect. Aretha Franklin. Moving good
“I aint gonna do wrong while you’re gone
Aint gonna do you wrong cause I don’t wanna
All I’m asking is a little RESPECT…just a little bit, just a little bit”.
Rudie was tense. This did not look good. It was fine and even a little bit classy for a gutsy female act to kick away her shoes and collapse her hair. That’s sort of telling people she is going to rock…soul wise. But he felt uneasy. The woman didn’t look right.
Golden went to centre stage, spun around to give her back to the audience, and then stood plum still from the waist upwards but her bottom half was going like the pistons of a steam engine. Her arms reached around her middle and released the dresses fabric belt, letting the garment fall open. Each hand then took a hem and pulled the dress wide apart like a bat spreading its wings, and in that moment she spun around to face the audience with her arms extended and the dress pulled wide apart. It was the most grotesque thing Joan had ever seen. Goldens legs were still moving piston fashion and now, breathless from the great exertion her chest was heaving like someone in the last throes. But all the time her eyes were on the back wall of the hall.
Her arms moved, again like wings folding backwards and the dress fell to the ground in a heap which then got caught in her feet, until she kicked it away at the second attempt.
An over tight pair of gold lame short shorts dug into her fleshy legs. Her breast hung liked pendulums. And of course there was tassels affixed to the nipples. And that’s where the golf swing movements came in. Golden put her hands on her hips and pivoted wildly in the middle sending the formless breasts slapping back and forth. And for five seconds Golden was the saddest thing in the whole of the universe. Joan was simultaneously angry and strong like she had not been since she the time she punched a punter who laughed at her and made to walk off without paying. She reached Golden in three steps, flung the dress around her and dragged her bodily off stage. But that wasn’t enough. Joan pushed her again towards the women’s back stage toilets and changing room. And that’s when Joan’s life changed.
“We are our own saviours…it’s only the giving that makes you what you are”.
Jethro Tull
Wond’ring aloud
There had be gasps, some nervous giggling and a few loud crass remarks but Golden’s surprise act would not have meant the end of the show. It was the action of two boys, bought and paid for by a young man and his girlfriend that did the job. The couple were all loved up and felt they could do anything …and wanted to. A little like Bonny and Clyde.
The pre-pubescent boy, the one who had unsettled Sandy Camber with a farting noise, and who one day would be in charge of Council Tax Assessments at South Norfolk Council, tipped five fancy pet rats from a Fortnum and Mason wicker picnic basket out into the aisle. He just said “Oh look” and that was enough to tip the first dozen dominoes.
It was the compound effect of the boys release of rodents, plus an innate impulse, (genetically imprinted from our time in migrating hunter-gathering bands, wading through the head- high tall grass of the Kenyan Central Highlands …to follow the person in front of us when not sure what to do. Those things and the playing of the National Anthem by Malcolm, the young man on sound and lights who finding himself without instructions simply deployed the next standard operational procedure, and played ‘God Save the Queen’.
Rudie crumbled. Just like his dad had done in the Okay Bazaar on Milner Road in Bloemfontein. Just more quickly.
The River Danube down stream from Passau in Germany, but over the border the border in Austria
This is a book in progress. The story is partly true and partly fiction I would like to hear your comments and suggestions. Please use the box at the bottom of the page
Chapter 5 HEADING FOR THE SOUL WEEKENDER
I wake up in the Lidl carpark. Need to get out of the back and into the driver’s seat before the employees arrive and park-up. First wee of the day was a mistake. Never piss into the wind. (Another candidate for my gravestone inscription)
Back into the rear of the car in a befuddled state. Wriggling out of the wet, brown cord trousers and pulling on the baggy hiking trousers on. I chose them because they’re easy to get on when all you can do is lay flat under a cover and shimmy. I do wipe my inner thigh down with wet wipes carefully and so I at least smell clean. I promise myself that I will use services on the highway later to have a full on head to toe wash. I’ve got a bin- bag full of laundry. I must camp somewhere tonight in a place with a washing machine. Back in the driver’s seat I curse the wind that came across the field from Switzerland and made me pee myself. One more reason for a list of many for why I don’t like Switzerland.
After the coffee and the muesli and the little high both give me, I read through my list of yesterday, decide it’s brilliant, copy and paste it into messenger and press send.
Inflated by my own thoughts I then write the FB post for the day.
Welcome to the 22nd September 2018
Day 7 Diss to Jerusalem Current Mileage- at the end of the day, 1100 miles. Forgot to record at the start Weather- Partly cloudy. High of 18c. Overnight low of 8c. Autumn coming but we are also getting to higher altitudes. So cooler for the two reasons Today’s destination Reidlingen in Germany. Now following the River Danube on and off until I reach Budapest in Hungary. Today’s distance is 193 km
Diss to Jerusalem tune of the day- Girl from the north country. Bob Dylan song. Clip from the movie Silver Linings.
Apologies for distance travelled being in miles and the days target in Kilometres. My car records miles and my satnav uses KM’s and I don’t know how to change it,… and am scared if I try I will mess it up and be unable to sort it out.
Overnight I was just a 100m from the Swiss border. This region had been absorbed by the Nazis into Germany between 1940 and 1942. Much of its population enthusiastically supported this and young men served in the German army. Very much on my mind was how those hunted by the Nazis tried to reach that Swiss border and safety. Shadows from those events are everywhere. I noticed there is no war memorial in this village. I’m guessing that’s because the population is split between those of German and French ancestry and it would have been too raw a subject in 1945. There is also no memorial to partisan and resistance fighters which most French villages have for the summer months following the Allied invasion of June 1944. Maybe I caught the town on a bad day but it did not feel good, or maybe it was my mood when thinking about the events of those years.
My view of Switzerland from the French supermarket car park I slept in overnight
Phone call from my good friend Gary last night. He is in Portugal and doing something called ‘Rocking the Waves with his board like a good-un”.’. These baby boomers are a funny lot. We have all dumped work and the idea of working till we die and headed for the hills in our own way.
Tonight I’m hoping to camp again. It helps me catch up on routine chores and it means I can have a drink!
Onwards and upwards.
I will update as the day goes on.
This border town was an odd place (as such towns often are). This one seemed to have a thing about Disney and other cartoon charectars
8.55. It is possible to lose a whole country. I started the day by driving by accident into Switzerland twice and Germany once. It’s a lot easier than it sounds. I then lost Germany for a whole hour and the Satnav wanted to take me to Switzerland again.. Resorted to going into a cafe and saying “I’ve lost Germany. Can you help? The Turkish owner got my attempt at humour and pointed me the right way. (English must have been his third language at least).
10am. Just crossed over the Rhine. All sparkly in the sun! Crazy world where you’re not able to stop and take a picture. Autobans mad. You will have to imagine it 1.10pm cliff roads and scarey bridges. Have just pulled over to let the push bikes get past me. 7.30pm sat in a field drinking my €3.50 bottle of organic farmers market Vino Tinto. It would cost at least a tenner in Diss. Lovely day. Up in the Alps. Had a walk round the old town this evening. Lovely as well.
All is well with the world
Oh bugger its started raining. Never mind”,
End of post.
Note. No word from Joan today.
The tent and my trust Berling.Got some washing done
Day 8 Sunday 23rd September Diss to Jerusalem Current mileage 1100 Today’s weather. High of 25c. Frequent showers and thunderstorms. Today driving to Vohburg in Bavaria. About 150 miles, which is the minimum I have to do each day. German drivers scare me. Every road is a 50km/hour or go as fast as you can, option. And we are talking about mountain roads some of the time.
In driving through Ulm, the place where Albert Einstein was born. He was a big name but I suppose its relative.
After last night’s rain there is an odd smell in the car. A bit cat like my cat ‘Tiger Feet’ was watching me pack the car before I left. Maybe he sprayed without me knowing.
I hope not.
According to Wikipedia the most famous person to come from Vohburg was Agatha (of Vohburg). She married a king and had two children in the 13th century. That’s all Wiki says about her. Anyone know anything else?
The place is set in its history. From the Medieval to the early 20th Century. The war memorial is large and full. I notice a little plaque on the town hall wall dedicated to a civic leader who defended and sheltered Jews during the bad years of the 1930’s. The River Danube is lovely. Im following that now for a few days. It’s a kind of milky green here.
The villages and landscape around here glisten and sparkle in the sunshine…just as if they might if it had been through a dishwasher. My poor phone camera can’t do the sight justice. So just think of everything being very, very clean and sparkly.
Onwards and upwards.
Will update as the day goes on.
Pleasant day. Southern Bavaria is lovely…just some of the villages are a bit Stepford Wives. Had a nice walk around Vohburg. Lots of wall murals of Agatha. She is still their number 1 celebrity,
Regional elections going on. Lots of posters for the AFD party (Alternative for Deutschland Party), a neo Fascist group who came close to holding the balance of power in the federal parliament earlier this year. All feels a bit sinister. Fascists these days look like dads off a Father’s Day card
Neo Fascists that look like Fathers Day cards.. The Alternative for Deutchland Cadidate in Vohburg
STRICT Sabath observance around here. Nothing open all day apart from a petrol station. I’ve dined on pot noodles and a banana this evening. It was actually okay.
6pm. Parked up to eat my food on a gravel area. After 15 minutes I noticed the other cars all looked brand new and had no registration plates. I was in a car sales area.
7.30pm. Parked up for the night at a sports centre. Storms on their way.
9.25pm. settling down for the night in the back of the Berlingo. Torrential rain beating on the roof but I’m well sorted and surprisingly comfortable. All good”.
Note. Still no word from Joan Day 9 Monday 24th September Diss to Jerusalem Miles so far 1287 Weather. High of 13. Overnight low at 3c Today’s journey. Still in Bavaria but heading from Vohburg to Passau near the Austrian border. That’s about 160 miles.
Diss to Jerusalem. Tune of the day.
End of the Line. Travelling Wilburys
(“Just glad to be here. Happy to be alive”)
Passau is a town of 50,000 plus people. A third of them are students at the ancient university.
Am holding up generally pretty well (fingers crossed). I’m planning to continue the 2:1 arrangement. That’s two nights in the Berlingo followed by one night camping. That gives me access to showers and washing machines and so on.
Bavaria shuts down 98% for Sundays. Here in Vohburg there was a garden centre, a petrol station and a bar open. That meant I had to fall back on a Pot Noodle for my tea. Otherwise I’ve eaten fresh food every day. That will change in Serbia. They have some pretty dreadful food stores. Maybe I’m overstating it, but food poisoning one time from one place, creates quick and overblown generalisations
As a foreign person here I keep getting small cultural things wrong. I often nod or say hi to strangers. In Norfolk or The Famous Town of Yeadon that’s normal. Here people look terrified. If I let someone go first through a door they look confused. Last night though I parked in a Car sales lot by accident. It looked like an ordinary car park but then after about 15 minutes I noticed all the cars were shiny and new…and had no reg plates. It wasn’t my fault. It was just a different kind of set up to what I’m used to. That’s what I’m telling myself. Upside though leaving there caused me to find this sports arena where I parked up for the night. And it was a great place to watch the violent storm that came over (and washed my car).
The roads are perfect…they have the feel of a Lego landscape but the drivers do crazy speeds. I just slot in behind a truck and use him for my slow speed of only 70mph. It’s common to see cars doing (estimated) 140.They come past me in a flash.
Morning routine now…then onwards and upwards.
8.50. Just bought 6x 2 litre bottles o of fizzy water …to make my coffee with. Problems of not being able to read German.
3pm. I spent the afternoon in Passau. Lovely place. You can only sample one small part of a city in that amount of time. That’s why I’m generally staying in small market towns on the Danube. You can get a feel of them in a few hours.
The Danbe in Passau
Sad bit. For a lot of people born from say 1920 up to about fifteen years after the end of the last war, coming to Germany or Austria has an uneasy feeling about it. I know some people who still won’t come here. Particularly Jewish friends. The war was a big issue even in the early part of the lives of my peers and of course myself. We grew up with stories from the men and women who fought, and those who sat underneath the falling bombs at home. Weekend afternoon TV was dominated by war films and details of the extermination of the Jews (and other groups) was becoming more widely known (Sources like the ‘All our Yesterdays’ and ‘The Nazis: a lesson from history’ documentaries in the 1960’s and 1970’s). It’s silly but I almost feel like there should be big boards everywhere in these two countries saying “We are sorry”.
I’m exaggerating for effect. It’s unfair to feel like that and of course no country can live in such a way. The people around me are the grandchildren and greatgrandchildren of the war time generation. Hitler was born across the border in Austria but his family moved here when he was two or three. Whatever the city does, it will have that fact in its biography.
Modern German governments have worked hard to make amends and take a positive role in the world. Angela Merkel is a hero of mine for what she did to assist hundreds of thousands of refugees coming out of Syria. That’s real moral leadership and I sense for her it was doing something pragmatic about past horrors. This afternoon I have seen Nazi symbols scratched and painted on walls. It looks like some of the younger people have to read their history again. Okay politics over.
Heading for the border with Austria now.
Graffiti on the walls in Passau
4.30pm. the border was just the German and Austrian flags standing two yards apart. Nothing more …and that’s how it should be.
I drove 30 miles on a road that ran alongside the Danube to this village where I am now. I have fallen in love with the river. It still has a genuine life apart from the tourist hubs. The huge mountains at either side have a disorientating effect. Lots of lovely little churches and herds of the purest white deer. And again the light is special. Things sparkle. I keep thinking of adverts for lemon brand washing up liquid
I am in the village of Engelhartszell for the night. Population 1000. I park up outside the town hall which has decent toilets built into its exterior wall. And are open all night. There is some kind of men’s group going on in the upstairs of the hall until almost 11pm. That delays me settling for the night as their cars are parked either side of mine. The light is at their backs up in the room so I can clearly see them standing and talking after whatever meeting it was. They are a diverse group in regards to ages and social backgrounds. I range through the possibilities as to what it might have been about. Probably too big for AA in a place as small as this. Maybe a council meeting. But all men? Neither option is a good fit.
Sorry for the wild spelling. I don’t have spell check on the phone…and as always my spelling looks great to me (but I assume it’s not really)”.
Diss to Jerusalem Song of the Day
Maggie May,
Rod Stewart and the Faces
October 1971
“I suppose I could collect my books and get on back to school
Or steal my daddy cues and make a living out of playing pool
Or find myself a rock and roll band that needs a helping hand
Oh Maggie I wished I’d never seen your face”
A young man looking out on a world that is opening up for him
An old codger driving across Europe listening to the song!
Maggie May
Rod Stewart
A message from Joan comes through just as I’m being forced to drive at a 100mph on the Autobahn. I’m tempted to peep at it but that against the law and might well get me (and possibly others) killed. I hold off until my next rest break.
“Hi Tosser Kidman.
I’ve got your list
What are you on?
I’ve put it in the glove compartment of this lovely car without reading a word of it (okay I lie). I’m not going to look at it properly for at least a few days. You really don’t get life do you? There is no neat logical order. Two add two rarely equals four in the real world darling. There is always complications and a spur of the moment action can be better than all your tower building. That’s what it reminds me of. Pateley building towers out of his bricks. You do the same with ideas. Both fall down for the same reason.
We are on the road to Camber.
Big hugs with my gorgeous breasts against your chest -)
I know you mean well. You’re just a late developer, and a slow learner”.
On the same day in the late afternoon Barry Bridger, the man in the greasy Parka coat checks into the homeless shelter at St Georges Crypt on Great George Street, up the road from the back of the Town Hall and library in Leeds city centre. He talks to an older man, a long-time volunteer who carries the trace of a Highland accent. Barry tells him that he wants to travel to Hastings and visit a cousin who might help him get back on his feet. He doesn’t want to go scruffy though. Do they have any clothes for him and any chance that someone could cut his hair? The man’s wife was once a hairdresser, and she does the. She notes the scar that runs across the right forehead and temple.
Two hours later, Barry looks a different man. The evening is not unpleasant. He knows some faces, from other nights he has spent here. Men who had also been in the forces. They could in better times have headed off to the Vic Hotel down the street, a great Victorian palace of a pub, all mirrors and polished brass across from the town hall. Joan and he used to go in there for Pie and peas and rums. If he’d known now what he knew then? Slut and a bitch.
The lovely Vicrtoria Pub behind Leeds Town Hall
“Day 10 Tuesday 25th September 2018 Diss to Jerusalem in my ‘Mick Jagger look-alike Berlingo car’. Distance so far 1486 miles Today’s weather. Sunny. High of 13c. Overnight down to 3c…but my sleeping bag is warm. Today’s Diss to Jerusalem Tune of the Day- ‘My Heroes have always been cowboys’ by Willie Nelson. It’s a kind of country music hymn.
Today’s journey: I’m driving across Austria in the direction of Hungary. Overnight I’ve been in Engelhartszell. The destination today is Zwentendorf. I may drive further. I have to get some miles in. You will notice from now onwards there will be a lot more ‘z’s in the town names.
I will be driving alongside the River Danube. The scenery is simple. Towering mountains that make you feel like an ant, all covered in trees and set off by the most intense sunlight to make it all crystal clear. Every ten miles or so there is a village of about 100-1000 people…on slightly elevated land but still hugging the river. Everything is in order and perfectly maintained. No inconsistency of perfectness. (Slightly worrying somehow but let’s not go there).
Its feeling cold out of the sunshine even in the early afternoon but I’ve brought plenty of warm gear
My church picture is from late yesterday afternoon taken with my economy model Smart phone. Eat your heart out high spending photography nerd Dave Bullman.
Onwards and upwards
I will update as the day progresses.
An old church on the banks of the Danube River
9.40. The power story. Part of my ever growing list of tasks each day is powering up all my essential devices-
1- The re- chargeable ones
Phone
Back up cheap phone
Backup power packs x2
My tablet (full of BBC Radio 4 podcasts. I’m learning all sorts).
Satnav
GPS gadget (backup if Satnav breaks)
2-Others
Kettle
Food warmer gadget
I’ve just got one power point in the dashboard for all of them. And of course that only works when I’m in motion.
Spelling issues. I’m going to do a one off apology about my creative spelling and odd grammar. I normally depend on spell check and grammar correction software but I have neither on my phone which is what I’m using for all these messages and posts. I do an edit in the evening but most of the time it looks fine…when sometimes it’s not. Ps I caught Bob J. Spelling que with a C this morning. He was talking about cewing up for something. Der…. 17.00. Changed destination today. The place I started from had a swarm of road closures so I was forced to take a wide detour. Long story short I ended up driving further on the detour than I planned so am now in Hainburg on the Slovak border instead of being in Hungary. It’s not a problem really. All these roads sort of connect up anyway.
I got some serendipity though. You might be aware that Richard the Lion Heart (of Robin Hood fame) passed through here in the 13th century on his way back from one of the later crusades. He was put in jail by locals until his brother John paid the ransom. After a year or two the money came through and Richard was released. The cash was used to build a defensive wall around the town I’m now in. So my spot for the night is an area next to Richards’s wall. Thursday 25th September 1980 Leeds, London and Hastings
That morning Barry had found a spot at the top end of the covered market, the one furthest from Milgarth Police station. He does an hours A cappella busking, all Hank William songs. His voice is not bad. ‘Your Cheatin Heart’, ‘I’m so Lonesome I Could Cry’. ‘Take these chains from my heart’, ‘I’ll Never Get Out of this World Alive’, ‘Mansion on the Hill’, ‘Love sick Blues’ and everyone’s favourite ‘Jambalaya’. Country music fans give with their hearts.
Barry feels like he has found himself again. He stops in at the Levis Jeans shop behind Millgarth and buys a cowboy hat. The man is back. He whistles the tune to a much loved country music hymn. My ‘Heroes have always been Cowboys’, The Willie Nelson song
And then mouths the words-
“I grew up a-dreamin of bein a cowboy
And lovin the cowboy ways
Persuin the life of my high ridin heroes
I burned up my childhood days”.
“Well I’m back in the saddle and I’m riding out”. He says the words out loud as he walks past the people at the bus stop.
He doesn’t know exactly where he is going except he figures its somewhere near that town, a place on a sticky out bit of coastline. There are a few candidates. He has a map in an old Letts pocket diary he keeps for its phone numbers and addresses. He goes into the Town Hall library and looks at some bigger scale maps as well, tares a page out of a 1970 town guide in the reference section. It includes local attractions around the town. Feeling flush from the busking he buys some chips from a place outside Vicar Lane bus station before walking across town to Wellington Street coach station for the 1pm bus to London Victoria. He will connect there with the bus for Hastings, change at London Victoria.
The route to the coach station takes him down Kings Street, and past the Bank Wine Bar. Now that he is a modern day cowboy again, he thinks along these lines. The bar is a place for fakes and city posers and their girlfriends (and no doubt a few pansy boyfriends). All got cushy jobs in the insurance and money places. A guy called Tony runs the bar. That’s where that other slut worked. Cheyanne. What a fucking name for a Paki. Her and Joan hang out together, and go in that pick up place, just a little ways down from Lincoln Avenue, The Cherry Tree. All sluts and ‘prossies,’ the lot of them, and I was taken for a fool. “Well this drifter is back on his horse with a purpose and a ridin”. He says that last line out loud this time to a lady with a poodle although he doesn’t register her presence.
Barry changes coaches a little late at Victoria and doesn’t get to Hastings until 10pm (or 22.00 hours as he calls it. Staying true to his army training). He settles himself on the lee side of a sea front shelter. He is feeling good as he eats the last of his ham and crisps rolls. Then turns to the can of Barley Wine, and drinks it down in five tilts of his head, and waits for the warm feeling. No one is living finer tonight.
Out of season now Barry figures nobody will bother him. The coach ticket was £8, and that’s left him skint but he can earn a few bob tomorrow busking and at the same time get a feel of the place. Give his instincts space to breath. He is freewheeling. The cowboy hat helps with the punters. That’s a winner.
Thursday 25th September 1980
Hi Goose. How did you get that name? I see people on Facebook calling you that. You don’t like that Jeremy Corbyn guy do you?
First the important News. We are at Camber. I still think it would have been better to have gone to the one at St Anne’s near Blackpool. It’s less than a third of the distance. It was a hell of a drive down here to Sussex. Two hundred and sixty six miles. Pateley was screaming his head off half the way. Odd but I realised that he has never been in cars much. It’s always been buses or a couple of times on my lap when I had the scooter. Anyway on the good side Scott’s car was doing a ton half the way, so it was faster than you might think. Scott says we won’t get as much fuss about being a mixed couple as most of the folk at Camber Sands will be down from London, and anyway it’s a Soul music weekend so there are bound to be black people there. Well he was wrong about the last bit, he is the only Blackman here!
Pontin’s treat you like sheep when you arrive. There is a great big hall were you have to get into lines A-Z to get your chalet key. Hundreds and hundreds of you. The noise level is awful and everyone is bad tempered after travelling long distances. We have got one of the better chalets though and it’s all inclusive. Fry ups every morning, fish and chips or Steak and Chips every night for us.
The bar is fantastic. Half the length of a football pitch with lots of tarty lasses serving on. Scott fancies himself as a Robin Askwith type in ‘Confessions from a Holiday Camp’. That’s what he says to try and wind me up. Then I tell him with what I’ve got I can get ten of what he’s got. That takes the wind out of him. He looks like a hurt puppy sometimes. Then I feel I should curb my tongue.
The Soul Weekender thing runs (I told you about it didn’t I?) from Friday afternoon at three till early hours Sunday morning. They say they have got some big name acts but I don’t know anyone of them, but so long as they do covers and not their own stuff I will be fine.
Saturday afternoon there’s a talent contest. I’m trying to get Scott to enter. The prize would pay for the holiday. He is useless as a black man though. Knows nothing about Soul music. He says he will only do it if he can do the ‘Crazy World of Arthur Brown’ act and that song ‘I’m the God of Hell Fire’. Do you remember him from the late 1960’s? Came from Whitby of all places. He used to look like the devil and act crazy with a burning bowl of petrol strapped to his head. We have got the words off the juke box. It starts off-
“I am the god of hell fire
I’ll take you to burn”
Scott says you have to be different and get people’s attention. I tell him the song is not a Soul one. Sounds more like druggie rock to me. He says he can do a Soul reinterpretation. He makes me laugh. We are having fun, I seem to never stop laughing when Im around him and Pateley has got more about himself as well.
Ps Pateley puked over the drum kit they had set up. I grabbed him and kept quiet.
So we are off into Rye this afternoon to see if there is a second hand shop. We are after a leather Balaclava that straps round the chin, a metal bowl we can bolt onto the hat in some way, and a pair of fire proof horns. If there’s nowt there we will after go into Hastings.
The beach looks nice but we haven’t been yet. We should do for Pateleys sake. He has never been in the sea or played on a beach.
About your list- And I’m only going to say this once. I will deal with Barry in my own way when I’m ready. I’m doing no planning now, and I probably won’t do any to speak of then. My experience is complicated plans don’t work. You like them but you are thinking about the world arse way round. In life you are far better just dealing with dangers as your instincts tell you at the time. You have the, instincts that is, for a reason. The way I see it, my worst odds (and Scott agrees) are fifty-fifty on surviving and if I do, it will be plain to anybody that Barry is the bad one, and he will get locked up for the rest of his life. Your underestimate me Kidman, like a lot of people do. I’m full of surprises. Watch this space. All I need to do is put on the Tina Turner song beforehand, ‘Simply the Best’ and I’m like Superwoman. It’s a goody. I found it on the 1991 YouTube hits thing. I’d have done that song with Scott but its ten years or more in the future. On the way to Tina’s video I saw a film of you speaking at some kind of conference. I can see your man boobs but you aint got tits like Tina!
Seeya Tosser XXX”.
Day 11 Wednesday September 26th 2018 Diss to Jerusalem Weather. High of 16. Overnight low 3c Today’s journey Hainburg an der Donau on the Austro-Slovak border to Tarjan near Budapest, Hungary via Bratislava in Slovakia. Number of miles so far-1620. I think that means I’m more than half way to Turkey Diss to Jerusalem, song of the day: Simply the Best. Tina Turner.
I’ve found out that in the 1980’s a radio station in the north east of England used the song in a jingle add for ‘South Cleveland motor garage’. Just a place where you go for your MOT and to get your car fixed. I like that. I know somebody else who could use it. It’s all yours J!
The plan was not to go to Slovakia but I missed a turn off south of Vienna and so ended up here in Hainburg. But it supplied some serendipity (finding out good things by accident). I’ve been parked up outside the walls of this town. They were paid for by the hostage money extracted from the English for return of King Richard 1st (Richard the Lion Heart). He had been captured by locals as he returned from a 12th century crusade to Jerusalem. It took England almost two years to pay up.
I’ve chosen a noisy spot to park. From 3-5 am the traffic was as busy as Victoria Road in Diss at 8am on a weekday. Mostly cars and shabby looking minibuses. I figured at first the Austrians must be a hard working lot, but then I realised these were Slovaks coming over the nearby border to work for the day. One chaps car broke down last night. A mini bus full of workers tried to tow him away but it was a shambles. They had nothing to tie the tow rope onto, and so they used the cars bumper and it buckled.
Its 6am and the traffic from the border has slowed to a trickle. Mostly trucks.
I’m now over the half way driving point to Turkey. Doing this trip has been a lesson in human geography. It’s obvious when you see the route on the ground. The first highway across central and South-Eastern Europe was the River Danube. The establishment of the first towns and villages followed the course of the river. The first roads came later with the Romans. I noticed yesterday around here the train lines follow the roads…side by side and so for part of their stretch the river as well. Neat.
So far this trip has been through the highly developed side of Europe. Austria and Germany look a lot smarter than Britain. Even the industrial bits.
The countries coming up have modern urban centres but in the rural districts it might as well be the early 20th century or possibly the 1950’s. It varies. Rural Serbia is the best example of that as I saw last year (before the rat bit me).
Onwards and upwards.
I will update as the day progresses 7 am. The borderland between Austria and Slovakia is Gordy. Casinos, brothels, massage parlours, night clubs (one advert was as big as a three storey house). The women look Thai. All oddly set against a rustic farming backdrop which made me laugh. It was like a mini Las Vegas had been dropped on a Norfolk village or Yorkshire market town, a Garboldisham or an Otley. Masseurs taking a break for a fag by the village pond.
Driving toward Slovakia was driving right into the rising sun. And it was on a single lane road. I slowed down as I couldn’t see but all the drivers behind me got angry. Why would they even consider doing 50-60mph when blinded by the sun?
Driving the inner city motorway in Slovakia’s capital, Bratislava is a high Adrenaline experience at 8.30am. Everyone thinks they are an urban warrior. Lots of shouting, revving and blaring of horns. 9 Am. You can’t judge a nation by the customers in a motorway service station. If you did Slovakians would all be twenty something, trendy types in designer clothes. Their cars would be new speedy little things, and their dog’s muscular or fluffy rare breeds. Everything is shiny, clean and works. Everyone looks a lot happier than they did in France, Germany and Austria. They were miserable buggers back their now that I think back.
9.45 Entered Hungary. Lots of border guards checking covered trucks and cars for illegal migrants at the fully operational border post (despite Hungary being in the free movement area of the EU). One glance and they waved me through. As rough as I look I obviously didn’t match the STOP profile.
My priority needs are to get cleaned up and then buy some Hungarian Florins. I use the disabled toilet at one of the road side rest areas to do the former. Wash myself head to foot with a Jay Cloth and a bar of soap. Then use lots of deodorant. My clothes fell off the hook onto the floor. It’s hard to feel clean.
I end up in a small town called Tarjan for the night. It’s the perfect place to stop. I’m guessing it’s an absolutely average place for the region and the country. If I walk around it…which I do I’m getting to see a slice of real Hungary, and I like it. I walk the whole town and sort of relax into the place. The community is in a valley surrounded by tree covered hills that rise steeply up. None off the shops in town are above the size of a couple of rooms. People look comfortable rather than well off, but they are out on the streets and talking to each. They look different from the people I’ve seen on the days before in two ways. They look happy and laugh and talk to you. And some of them look a little like red Indians.
Takimg a stop to look at the mountains
There is a memorial in the churchyard for those who died in the failed 1956 uprising against the Soviets. There is no war memorial for those who died in the second war, and at first that confounds me a little then I remember that Hungary had a Fascist government and fought alongside the Germans and Italians in the war. These thoughts, the memorial to the men who fought the Soviets in 56’ and the absence of a memorial for the men who died fighting for Fascism gives me a little shiver. This is an embodiment of history right here in everyday things. And that’s why I do these trips if Im honest. I’m looking for evidence of change in everyday things.
Another trace is a path through the village. I am still following the route and sketch map from the book written by the American Quaker who walked to Jerusalem from Dijon in France. He came through here. On the outskirts of the town, besides a lane that looks out over wooded hills and farm land is a building with separate rooms arranged around three sides of a courtyard. I’m guessing from a board illustrated with maps that this place might be some kind of hostel and information point for walkers going south-east or west. The route was established centuries before the Quaker came through. The lane at this spot is the present representation of an ancient pilgrimage track that links up many hundreds of miles to the west with several of the Spanish Camino routes to Santiago de Compestela in Galicia, and south eastwards runs through the Balkans and onto Jerusalem via, Turkey and Syria. This is only an educated guess because the inscription on the board is in Hungarian and German, but the maps were clear so I surmise all if this.
Hungary was more prosperous than I expected
A few minutes previously I had come close to crashing into a badly driven motorbike and sidecar on an elbow bend near a farm. I was still shaken up by that, but the thoughts of the route calmed me. All those thousands of people walking through here over the centuries. Right on cue a couple of cyclists and a walker came past whilst I was sitting on a bench and having ‘A Contemplate’. Just to confirm my guess.
To be frank up to this point I had found the countries I had passed through a little disappointing. Either the scene they presented was over familiar or just naturally bland in and of itself. From this point on my interest grew. The people seemed more alive and happy. Rural Bavaria had felt like Stepford Wives in Lego land. France looked tired or just smug. Hungary and its odd looking smiling people felt intriguing. My surroundings were sufficiently different and unique to bait my interest, and the people didn’t mind taking a risk and talking to this odd looking, unusually tall and slightly smelly Englishman.
Maize at the end of its season
Barry Friday 26th September 1980
Barry awoke just before first light. He had slept just about all the way through. His body was used to being in exposed places. He swung his feet over and had the first cigarette of the day. He kept his tobacco in a little leather pouch tied up with a draw string. Fresh orange peel was mixed in with the tobacco to keep it moist, otherwise it’s a devil to roll. The hit of the first smoke is welcomed. The day looks 25% better already.
He wet shaved by touch using the water from a fountain at the centre of a fading formal sea front garden. Brushed his teeth, wet his hair in order to brush it back. Today it would be important to look his best. He broke his nights fast with a dry bread roll. Next up he seeks out the first coffee of the day. And then another cigarette. All that was completed whilst the rest of the town still slept. Anything else would have to wait until he could busk some money. To fill the time and just on the off chance, he tours the phone boxes and cigarette machines, checking for uncollected change in the little metal trays. Nothing.
The pages he tore out of the Hastings guide in Leeds Central Library has details of the towns market. It opens at 10.15 and it’s in a hall next to a church. Mostly fresh food but also general goods, and some second hand, bric-a-brac. The address is there as well. Barry feels tempted to busk outside the railway station for half an hour first but there will likely be police there and he will get moved on. The same could happen at the market, but the police will only respond to a complaint so that gives him more time.
He has got good at waiting since he’s been homeless. It’s all a matter of seeking comfort, just find a bench, drop your chin and look out at the sea. Just empty mindedness really.
Barry hopes it doesn’t rain. That puts the kybosh on people being generous. Sort of dampens down their mood. Makes them shrink inwards.
The walk to the market takes him past the Tourist Information Office. The window is full of posters under a bold heading, This Weekends Attractions. (He had forgotten it was Friday). Further down and across the window a sub-heading ‘Nearby Attractions’ there was a single handbill.
“Pontin’s. Camber Sands Holiday Camp. THE FIRST AND THE BEST GREAT BRITISH SOUL WEEKENDER. 26th -28th September. None residents welcome. Day entry or weekend saver tickets.
Just as one knows the key you hold is the right one for a lock a half second before you try it, Barry knew where Joan and Scott and Pateley would be that weekend.
He takes the cowboy hat out of his hold-hall and strides with real purpose now toward the market hall.
He will kick off with the Roger Miller song-
“Ah, but, two hours of pushin broom
Buys an eight by twelve four-bit room
I’m a man of means by no means, king of the road”,
And then “I know where I’m going”, Judy Collins. Not really country but Irish, but it will work a treat to loosen the pennies and maybe some silver from peoples grasp. And the suns out.
At twelve Barry gets moved on. Someone has complained. The copper is not unpleasant but is also not up for a negotiation. No hassle, he has made enough. Fifteen quid. It’s the hat that does it. People know he is real.
Barry calls in at a sit down fish shop and treats himself. Cod, chips, peas, two slices and a pot of tea. Then he walks out of town on the road toward Rye and Camber. Positions himself at lay-by up from the Camber exit on the first roundabout he finds and starts hitching. He covers the sixteen miles in two lifts and then buys some supplies from a grocery and general store. The makings for sandwiches, a bag of nuts and raisins and a Victoria Sponge, A Daily Mirror and half a dozen Barley Wines. And some lighter fluid and matches.
The weekend’s campers are parked up in line at a kiosk on the road into the camp. Waiting to show their booking receipts to gain entry. It’s simple. Barry just walks up the off side, and shielded by a plumbers Bedford van full of pissed up thirty something ravers from Macclesfield singing ‘I’m a Soul Man’, he walks into the camp. These places are on the decline. There will be chalets in mothballs waiting for the upturn in popularity. Just got to figure where they are. Best guess furthest away. Will know them by the stacked up mattresses against the windows. Joan and Scott- 5pm. Message form Joan-
“Couldn’t find nowt in Rye. Went to a second hand market in Hastings. They didn’t have a balaclava’s (who wears them now) but there was one of those stalls that sells military and ex-army stuff. They had a pilot’s leather helmet…proper name is Aviator caps. And it was perfect except it had a peak, which might turn out for the best. You wouldn’t have thought it but really hard to find a metal bowl of the right size. They were all too big. In the end we settled on an enamel pie dish. A lovely chap from Lutterworth who was part of Little Richards Sax section when he toured the UK in November/ December 1966 helped us out. He had a stall making jewellery out of battered copper. Big dangly earrings and so on. He made us a wraparound crown with flat horns, and then fixed it onto the aviator’s hat with two discs and a little bolt. And that is what is going to give us the edge over everybody else in the contest. He knew about Arthur Brown, an old girlfriend had been his tour driver. She told him Arthur had learnt from experience lighter fluid was better than petrol for purposes of the burning helmet. More controllable. The trick was buying it in large enough quantities, and having a supply of wicks. The kind they use to light fireworks at big displays.
Pateley likes it. We are making one for him out of a cowboy hat and a Tupperware dish using water obviously, not lighter fluid. Scott bought a tape deck from a shop in town, and then we went to Woolworths and got a number one hits of the sixties tape. We are being lucky. Or maybe having some money makes you lucky.
And then we practiced all afternoon. In our chalet. Scott is almost hopeless as a black man. His stage moves are like a robot on a zebra crossing but Ive got him on a programme. So we have been watching Soul Man by Sam and Dave…and doing the moves again and again and again. Reminds me of that film The Full Monty. We watched that for homework too. Like it was a guide book. Fancy all that industry going from Sheffield. One time you need to tell me what happened.
And tonight we are going to get out and enjoy ourselves…and get totally wrecked. I don’t know any of the bands but once we have settled Patley in his bed we can head out and groove to the toons. They have microphones in the chalets for those who have kids, and special Blue Coats listen out for kids crying and do an announcement over the Tannoy, so the parents can run back to the chalet and sort the kid out, or bring them down to the Entertainments Hall. My heads racing. A proper night out. Scott has bought a homburg hat. He says it helps him look black”.
And then another message from Joan at 1am.
“Famous boxing quotes. “Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the mouth” Mike Tyson (Scott and me are time travellers on the internet)
“Tonight I’m going to party like its 1999”. Prince is WOW. Love from Scott and me. PS how was your end of the century.
PS. Cigarettes and whisky and wild, wild women. They’ll drive you crazy, they’ll drive you insane”. Just saying”.
I wrote back
“Last night of the twentieth century I drove up the A1 to Leeds after work. The road was totally empty. I stopped in the fast lane south of Doncaster and ate a Gamesters Cornish Past and necked a can of Orange Tango.
My mum had dementia for years but that day she had a heart attack. Ended up in Bradford Royal Infirmary. Confused out of her head. Jumping out of bed when she shouldn’t do, and walking up and down the ward. In her head she was minding a loom at Moons mill at Guiseley in 1940. It was the oddest thing to see. My mum aged 14 (in a way…that had been her age in 1940).
I stayed over in her house. At midnight I was in bed, fully dressed with some miniature brandy bottles watching the fireworks out of the window (it was my bedroom when I was a kid). Most folk said Millennium Night (that’s what they called it) was a big rip off and a disappointment. I’ve never met anybody who enjoyed it”. Diss to Jerusalem Day 12 Thursday 27th September 2018 Miles so far: 1732
Today’s trip is from Tarjan to Baja which is the last big town in Hungary before Serbia.
Weather: it will getting warmer from today as I’m heading south. At Baja it will 25c (9c overnight. Last night here it was 1c).
I’ve booked a campsite tonight. That gives me a chance to clean the Berlingo out and get my washing done (and for myself to get a proper long, hot shower). I dream of these things.
HISTORY AND ETHNOLOGY NOTE
I’ve been educating myself. Hungarians call themselves Magyars. Originally they were different to every other European ethnic group as they migrated from central Siberia and the Urals between the 5th-8th centuries BC. The other people around here were Slavs. That wasn’t one big trek but lots of smaller leap frog like journeys made by seven tribal groups over scores of generations. Over the last two thousand years they have inter married with the Slavic people who were already in the region but essentially of course they are still related to the Siberian peoples who went to the Americas via Alaska. Present day Native Americans. It would be silly to go too far with that but it’s a good story.
I’ve had my Y chromosome done and over thousands of years my male ancestors have moved across Europe to Galicia in Spain and then onto North-western Ireland. They turned up in Liverpool, England in the early 1800’s and were working as hairdressers (yes I know). My nearest gene match lives in upstate New York and is called Cogan. That begs a question.
I like the idea that we all move around and have done so since we came out of Africa.
On the odd side I got a phone call from a man called Peter in England who asked if I wanted to increase the premiums on my life assurance policy. I told the man I didn’t have one and asked how he got my details. He rang off. Obviously a scammer but he spoke very nicely and must have gone to a good school.
Onwards and upwards. I will post as the day goes along. 2.30pm arrived in Banja…and by the wonders of Google maps, I found the campsite in minutes. Right next to the Danube and besides an avenue of trees on a footpath. Works out the owners also run a cheap travellers hostel with single rooms for only a couple of pounds more than it costs to camp. Feels decadent but I opted for a real bed. Done some washing in the sink (against the rules) but I was down to my last outfit. Going for a walk around the town now. Got to find a statue of a man named Andras Jelky…
It’s the suggestion of an old friend David Bullman suggestion. Jelky was an explorer and traveller from Baja who travelled the world in an accident prone way in the early 19th century. I will do a proper write up tomorrow when my brains working. I’m a bit shattered.I get so tired that I can barely add two and two.
I found the statue next to a Spar shop.
A little later after a can of Hungarian beer.
I like the oddness/ garishness of border towns. This one is a little distant from the border with Serbia so might be more respectable. Someone needs to write a book about borders. I once got ‘arrested’ near the town of Livingstone in Zambia. I’d been taking photos of a famous bridge over the Zambezi near Victoria Falls. It was the 1980’s and the border guards thought I might be a South African spy (there had been concerns the bridge would be bombed). I had to pay a R50 ‘release fee’ aka bribe.
I’m going to have a Youtube evening with a Soul Music theme. First up Mustang Sally, Wilson Picket. Me and three more bottles of Dreher (I should have bought export instead but too late). BARRY Saturday 27th September 1980
Friday night went well. Barry had found two rows of chalets near the far fence that had been mothballed. Flimsy locks. Easy to get in. The rooms were stacked up with mattresses still in their plastic covers as well as bits of furniture. Barry made a space in the middle of the mattresses. Looks a little like a nest. He figures anyone checking won’t see anything. Just got to make sure the outside door looks normal from a distance.
Yesterday, during the day he had a walk round a got the details of today’s programme. Studying it again now. Nothing much on this morning. This aft some kind of talent show, then tonight the weekends big acts, starting at 8pm. He feels tempted to try and get in the Dining Room, It will be a full English breakfast and he could murder one, but it’s probably a risk not worth taking. Better just to keep a low profile and focus on why he is here.
He needs to find our which Chalet Joan and that black man are in. That means either finding in whatever they are doing, and then following them back to the Chalet or getting their chalet number by asking somebody at the desk. Otherwise he could spend hours just wandering around looking for signs of them and be no wiser at the end of it. Simple is best. There was some risk but not as much as say hanging outside the restaurant for up to two hours and hoping to catch sight of them as they go back to the chalet after breakfast. He just needs an excuse to be asking at the front desk about where Joan Arcroyd, a little lad and a black feller are.
And that’s the point. She hasn’t just run off with anybody. She has run off with a black bastard. They had a name for women like her when he was in the army.
Each should stay true to their own kind. That is the law in the rest of nature. Squirrels don’t mate with Rabbits or horses with elephants. So neither should blacks lay down with whites. It’s there in Genesis, in the bible. “And God said let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seeds, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its own kind on the earth” and so it was.
And the blacks are cursed. That’s also in the bible. About how the blacks are the descendants of Ham, and they have got a curse from God. Barry opens his bible and touches the page. In Genesis. The Table of Nations. Ham was a son of Noah but did something to Noah and god said that all four of his sons, and their descendants forever would be cursed. They would be known as the burnt or black people and live in Africa and would become the slaves of the world for as long as this world lasted.
They don’t teach that in church anymore but he had read it for himself and its obvious when you think about it. The blacks were always slaves. And that’s because their begetters sinned way back in the times of the flood and Noah.
He, Barry was righteous and he had laid with Joan and that made her righteous (even though she was partly unrighteous before) but now she had laid with a black man and was no longer righteous (in fact entirely unrighteous) and unless he did something he would be infected by her stain. It would flow backwards to him. Some days he felt it.
But it was not enough just to kill her. She had to know the hurt he had felt all these months, before she died and went to hell. He would take away the most important thing she had in the world. Then when she went insane with grief he would abolish her life in its entirety. And his, the Blackman as well. He knew what he was doing. Seeking out a white woman, and staining her. The world had gone to the wicked, but righteousness would prevail. One person at a time. Amen
He, Barry would then retain all his righteousness and God would give him some more for doing his work. It’s an imperative. That means something you have to do.
Barry placed the Cowboy hat over his eyes and preyed
10 am. It was all very easy. Barry stepped over a painter knelt over a skirting board and entered the Reception office
“Hiya . I’m trying to find a mate, and her chap, a Jamaican feller. They came down here from Leeds beginning of the week. Her names Joan Arcroyd. I think her sons here as well. He’s called Pateley. After Pateley Bridge in Yorkshire. You’ve not been there. Gods own country. Great little market town, lovely streets and Nidderdale all around it is beautiful. Tell them Hank sent you!!!
Anyway we were supposed to meet up this morning for…”
The helpful young girl on reception interrupts… (She’s a looker Barry thinks, even with the gap in her teeth) “Is that for the talent contest this aft. We have all been laughing at their get up. Bloody Brilliant. They are in B4, up in the Supreme Class chalets. The little lad’s brilliant as well isn’t he”.
Barry agrees, touches the rim of his hat and tells her she has been a darling, and thanks her ever so much, then heads out of the door. Pulls out his red Silverline note pad and writes… JA D4. Supreme Class. Talent Show. Message from Joan and Scott 10am on Saturday 27th September 1980
“Bloody hell Kidman, I’m sore. Sore from laughing, sore from dancing and sore from passion shagging. I’m walking like John Wayne and talking like Fanella Fielding in Carry on Screaming. All husky and femmy fatal. Do you remember that gag where she is seducing the detective Harry H. Corbett, and asks if he minds if she smokes. He says no problem then all this smoke starts rising up from her body. Classic.
Brilliant night last night. Booze boogie booze boogie booze boogie solid till 2am. The last band was doing Soul Man, and these crazy fellers from Macclesfield (we got chatting) were doing the moves all in a line, and in sequence. Brilliant guys.
Pateley, the darling slept all the way through. Up bright and early this morning though. Wants to go for a donkey ride on the beach. I’m gonna need some sun glasses.
Talent contest this aft. Starts at 2.We are going to nail it. I feel it.
PS got a joke for ya. Two VD germs on a train line. They hear a train coming. One says to the other “I’m a gonna here”. Get it. Gonorrhoea. Boom-boom. Oh god I’m turning into Basil Brush now.
PS Daftest of all I’ve woke up this morning singing that old Roger Miller song, ‘King of the Road’. You know…”Trailer for sale, or rent, room to let fifty cents…”
Funny how your brain works.
Catch you later.
J”.
it’s called Honna Lee. Pirates are scared of Puff and dip their flags. All that kind of thing. Ditto Kings and Princes. One important fucker of a dragon. He and Jacky are the best of mates. And it goes on for a long time, and then one day Jackie paper don’t come no more. And that big scary dragon is scared and sad and goes off to his cave. A very unhappy dragon. He, Barry used to cry and that so much might have cheated on the last verse sometimes. Then his brain swims across to Teddy Bears Picnic. That was some scary shit.
Finding Joan Again 