Feb 2015 - Nine Lives?

You will have noticed that I use these letters to let off steam. The last one expounded on the dangers of giving religious offence under the guise of Freedom of Speech, and the accusations of avoidance surrounding the TV debate in the run-up to the May election. A debate that will expand hopefully, to include more parties than the existing elite. Then there was an earlier piece about the call for devolution to spread around the English regions following its popularity in Scotland. Is this just letting off steam or am I predicting the future like Mystic Meg - with less alarming hair?

 

Today’s news (Jan 23), showed the pre-election debate has expanded to three debates that will include all parties - except the Ulster MPs. They are now complaining - and rightly so - as they have more members than the Scots and the Welsh put together who, BTW, are invited. Personally, I think they’re being excluded as no one will understand them, the accent being like a bastard file drawn across concrete. For those of a genteel nature, ‘Bastard File’ is a genuine term from carpentry. It is a file with extremely rough teeth. We learnt this in Woodwork as 11 year-olds. Imagine the sniggers when the teacher introduced that word.

Three days after I wrote the piece about the dangers of giving religious offence and getting a violent reaction in response, the Pope said exactly the same, making the front page of The Times. He  promised to punch the lights out of a cardinal if he insulted his mum, bucking the sycophantic trend to align himself with popular opinion - Je ne suis pas Charlie, more Je suis Ray Winstone.

Today’s news saw Manchester schoolgirls in conversation, Muslims and Jews, explaining and then comparing their views of God. Turned out they were identical; one God, all-powerful, Creator of the World (and us), eternal etc., just the name (and ownership) that differed.

A few months back I criticised PMQs as a waste of time, seeing it as nothing more than two blokes having a pop at each other, trying to be smart at the other’s expense, pretending it was about democracy and accountability but really just using that pretence to score cheap points. Last week, Nick Clegg described it as ‘a waste of time’ and today’s Times has an article about Ed Miliband describing it as ‘two men shouting at each other’ - time in his life that he ‘won’t get back’.

Also, I referred to UKIP as the party for bigotry. Today (Sunday 25th). The front page of The Times has an article about the PR chief of UKIP, where he claims that title proudly.

And that’s me for - One hundred and eigh-ty! So, just ‘letting off steam’ eh? Only got to get the ‘Home Rule for the Kingdom of Essex’ right and you’ll be asking me for Lottery numbers.

These letters started out about life here but have migrated into the conversations we might have if we met in a pub for lunch or dinner. Topics here result from conversations in your calls and emails after the last letter. Effectively, these letters are inspired by you.

Separately, some of you tell me of your own lives. What moves you - makes you laugh, makes you cry, people you’d like to kill, befriend, stalk, enslave etc., your music, hobbies, travels, kids… I’m glad I started these letters with that original naive intent of keeping in touch - as it’s brought unforeseen benefits. I now know you better than when we were in each other’s lives.

Which makes me think, how well do you know me? Really, probably not that well. My fault of course. I allow the public image to represent me. I doubt I have ever had a serious discussion with most of you. The things that really matter, my views and values, are generally kept to myself. Even what you get here is dressed down, then dressed up to close with something to bring a smile, clouding the serious content with an attempt to get a laugh.

In the early 90s, I met a woman who knew me intuitively. She was a soulmate. We talked a lot – several times a day, every day – also when we woke in the middle of the night. Exchanging thoughts was our joy. From the first date, she knew me better than anyone I’ve known. She saw beneath the surface. Apart from her and one or two others, most of you know the person on the surface and not too much about the Man in the Middle (to corrupt a Michael Jackson song). With that in mind, let me fill in a few gaps. They will only be ‘a few’ as I’ve lived a full 66 years and the stories this life has brought are like the aerial display of rooks at dusk, about to roost.

Let’s start with the times I’ve nearly died. Like a cat, I have dodged the Grim Reaper more than once. He’ll get me eventually of course - that’s a train coming, in a tunnel, with no alcoves. For now, here are a few of his botched attempts, more or less in chronological order.

When I was about 12, we left Basildon and lived in Shoreditch for just over a year. I went to Cardinal Pole Catholic school in Islington where a close friend, Fenelli Pasquale, introduced me to science. A growing interest led to me blowing the fuses in our flat with a magnificent bang after tampering with a light switch, shorting the power with a couple of bits of wire and a torch bulb, which, as it turned out, could take 240 volts, for a while. The subsequent court of inquiry led to a shift in interest to chemistry. Mum & Dad thought that might be safer. How wrong can you be?

At nearby Dalston Junction, there was a chemist shop selling all manner of chemicals freely (it was 1960) and I soon acquired a fine stock based mainly on colour. Sulphur – yellow, Potassium Permanganate - neon blue, with green, red and orange chemicals amongst my favourites. They were also happy to sell 12 year old me small quantities of Sulphuric and Hydrochloric acid. Imagine that today.

I’d been told not to breathe in the fumes of burning sulphur so naturally, being a curious 12 year-old who tradition demands, can’t be told, I set fire to a small pile in my bedroom, placed my face over it and breathed in. How bad could it be? Well, pretty bad as it turned out. I stopped breathing. My chest froze – it just locked up. I couldn’t breathe in nor out. Sticking my head out the window had no effect at all; surprising really what with all that fresh air out there. Time passed and stuck for ideas of what to do next, before I collapsed, breath found its way back into my lungs. This is the formula I developed: youthful curiosity + tiny error of judgement = narrow squeak + big lesson.

Between 15 and 19, I was in a group – The Sabres. This is us.

In ’64 or thereabouts, we were playing at a youth club in Stanford-le-Hope. The school stages of that time had tall mid-stage curtains made of thick velvet. By tall, I mean about 30’ or so, suspended from metal poles like scaffolding poles, all-in-all a pretty heavy combo. They could be dragged about in any direction to offer a selection of formations behind the main curtains.

Whilst on the stage, tuning up, doing our sound checks, a few helpers were pulling these half a dozen mini-curtains here and there to clear them from the centre with the noble intent of giving us space. Standing there, minding my own business, a curtain in mid-tug fell down. Due to its weight, it came down at speed, the scaffolding pole giving the top of the Fender Precision bass around my neck, a good clunk, bending one of the machine heads (tuning pegs). The crash made the strings vibrate madly and the roar generated through the pickups made everyone look around in fright. More alarmingly, the pole just brushed my fringe and landed at my feet. I was unhurt. Six inches further back and it would have crushed my skull easily.

Being a cool teenager, I was unmoved. The reality was - it took a moment to sink in otherwise I’d have been screaming and dancing about like a Big Girl’s Blouse. By the time I realised what had happened it was too late to make a fuss. I had to opt for the James Bond martini look; shaken, not stirred.

A couple of years later, we turned professional and became the resident band playing six nights a week at the Narracott Grand Hotel in Woolacombe, a holiday resort in North Devon, for the summer of ’66. Our days were spent rising at noon, going into Ilfracombe for breakfast (lunch for everyone else), then into Woolacombe to learn the latest songs or mess about on the beach with the other teenagers who were between shifts as waiters, porters, waitresses, and chambermaids. This was before the days of disco or Radio One -  live music was the norm. Every other hotel in Woolacombe had Light Orchestras. The Narracott was the only one with pop music. DJs were just starting up. The first ‘Pop’ DJs were still outlaws - at sea on Radio Caroline - whilst legitimate DJs broadcast Mantovani, Ted Heath, Billy Cotton and Joe Loss on the BBC Light Programme.

The hotel bar was packed night after night as we were the only game in town for teenagers, most music being geared to our parents’ tastes. On a Saturday, kids came by bus from as far away as Barnstaple, few our age being able to afford cars. Towards the end of the summer, the hotel booked big names from ‘that there Lun-durn’ to feature in the middle of the evening. We were the warm up for Billy J Kramer & The Dakotas, The Moody Blues, Brian Poole & The Tremeloes and The Swinging Blue Jeans, most of whom, although celebrities, were unpretentious and friendly - apart from the Swinging Blue Jeans who returned to London straight after the gig.

Woolacombe was a surfer’s town offering the best surf on that coastline.
One afternoon whilst on the beach after kicking a ball around with the surfers, some of us went in for a dip. The surf was low. You may know I cannot swim so splashed around in chest high water that allowed me to stand up when necessary. Cooled down, I waded out.

Woolacombe has a shallow beach making it a slow, easy stroll through warm treacle. Heading towards the beach I caught a playful but hearty slap on the back from a particularly big wave that had lurked out to sea till I wasn’t looking, sending me under. The natural reaction being to gasp, I swallowed a plop of sea water that stuck in my windpipe. As with Shoreditch, I couldn’t breathe in nor out and had to wait. Whilst a punch in the stomach or something emulating the Heimlich Manoeuvre might have done the trick there was no one around to offer such help. Eventually, it cleared. The wait seemed like an eternity, though was probably less than a minute. Like the Shoreditch Sulphur moment, I had no idea what to do.

Around 1978 I was returning from Basildon at 2:30 in the morning after having dropped a mate off after a night at TOTS. I was newly-divorced and part of the club that was ‘Over 25s Night’ serving the divorced, separated and Looking for a Bit On The Side (BOTS) community that was its Wednesday night clientele – BOTS at TOTS.

I’d been working 7 day weeks at Tractors and was burning the candle at both ends. No surprise then that I was exhausted – yet still driving, just four miles from home. A bit unwise but I believe the extent of my wisdom has already been established. The consequence was that on the long right-hand bend on the A127 just before the Rayleigh Weir, I fell asleep. This was the days before crash barriers had been erected on the grass verge between the carriageways. The “BANG!” of a wheel hitting the kerb as I mounted the verge woke me and I found a lamppost heading toward me at speed. My legendary cat-like instincts (a.k.a. panic), led me to pull the wheel to the right into the oncoming fast lane to try and avoid the lamppost. Unfortunately, the steering mechanism had been damaged and it was steering with just one wheel. Though moderately successful, the lamppost remained in play taking out a wing and realigning the previously-sleek aesthetics of the passenger door. The bright spot was that there was nothing coming the other way, a head-on was avoided and I live to tell the tale.

In Zurich 1980, on my first assignment aboard for Internal Audit, I hesitated to check for traffic before stepping off the kerb of busy Zurich High Street. As I stepped into the road, a huge Mercedes swept past me from behind. This was my first trip abroad for many years and while I checked for traffic, I looked right - as I would have done in the UK. As they drive on the other side, the Merc swooshed past from the left. The hesitation saved my life. That’s five escapes. There are more but essentially much the same. Clearly, I’m being saved for a greater purpose.

I mentioned my ghost in the last letter. Before we get much further, we should say what I think a ghost is. I don’t see them as the spirits of the dead. If that’s the case, I’ll have a great time when I go. Those of you who survive me can expect a visit. I already return to Essex frequently to visit you in this life. It’ll just be carrying on the tradition. I think I’d like to haunt in the style of Jacob Marley. If in the middle of the night you hear the plaintive strains of Tiny Tim singing “No Woman, No Cry”; that’ll be me. This is one of the joys of getting old, excusable confusion. Things get mixed up. That’s life.

Anyway, ghosts. I’m sure they exist but not as dead people. Do you think there could be other life forms occupying the same dimension in space and time as us? Today, my ghost is a cat. Don’t know why. It hasn’t always been - but it is now. I’m not a big cat fan but glimpsed a silver and white Siamese last week as I opened the front door. Made me jump. Intriguingly, the direction in which it ran was not possible as it ran into and thereby through, a wall of the house. A questionable sighting yet that’s the way it’s been since its unnerving debut in Keysland; a fleeting movement in the corner of my eye.

He’s a helpful fellow in that things I fret about having lost, turn up; unexpectedly, in a place I’ve checked many times before. More importantly, he assists with the growing forgetfulness, reminding me of birthdays via Facebook notifications, or dental appointments prompting the dentist to write to me a week earlier to confirm the date, that sort of thing. The most useful help is the shopping lists I find in the kitchen. Don’t know how they got there - but there they are. Time for my meds.

I suppose it won’t hurt to close with a bit about life here. You know I like to cook and a key factor in preparation is a sharp knife. At my sister’s at Christmas I cooked a bit and before starting, asked for a knife sharpener. She pointed to her electric can opener. As I puzzled over its obvious ‘can opener’ aspect, she indicated the slots at the top for sharpening knives. How cunning.

Until now, here at home I have used an old ‘wet & dry’ stone that Dad introduced me to as a kid. It works a treat – eventually, requiring no little elbow grease, technique and patience. Here was my sister showing me a better, easier way. When I got home, I disappeared into Amazon and for less than £15 found a fabulous device that looks like a toaster and purrs like a cat, sharpening to a scalpel-like finish. Cooking is so much easier when assisted by the culinary equivalent of Stanley knives during prep. The kitchen is enhanced.

That’s it; childhood, teenage and thirty-something memories of near-death experiences, a helpful ghost and my ‘letting off steam’ or ‘predictive abilities’? The next letter will include more memories accumulated in a kind and generous life. Travels have brought me a wealth of experiences, many captured in film and digital still photos. Let’s see if I can find a few more memories to entertain you. In the meantime, if you have something to share, I’d love to hear from you, imprisoned as I am in this Arctic waste that is Lincolnshire. (I must’ve told you a million times, I don’t exaggerate).