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.

 

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).

 

 

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.

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

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.

 

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.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

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 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: 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 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.

 

 

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 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.

 

 

 

*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
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