tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89638354220941028792024-03-14T05:17:54.969+00:00Marathon DiaryMarathon Diary.<br><br>
I will be running the London Marathon for the first and probably only time on 26th April. Until then, this blog will be me banging on about it.
Includes music reviews, landscape photography, and hopefully not too much about groin and armpit chafing.
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If you can afford it, please <a href="https://www.nspcc.org.uk/what-you-can-do/make-a-donation/">give to the NSPCC</a>.Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14263300799761107648noreply@blogger.comBlogger30125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963835422094102879.post-54513065418754647302020-04-30T09:30:00.001+01:002020-04-30T09:31:10.743+01:00image (no map)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14263300799761107648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963835422094102879.post-35148927533602071112020-04-30T09:12:00.001+01:002020-04-30T09:16:45.284+01:00image map<!-- Image Map Generated by http://www.image-map.net/ -->
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Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14263300799761107648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963835422094102879.post-8379754575910088372020-01-30T23:51:00.001+00:002020-01-30T23:51:47.229+00:00Marathon 5: Guns And Dinosaurs<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">50 mins Steady Run.</span><br />
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Most half-marathon vests (you get given one after the race - I don't have a fetish) include "half-marathon" or "13.1miles" in their lettering. Birmingham's didn't this year, which was prescient because the race ended up being 11 miles long, having missed out Cannon Hill Park after they found an abandoned car there. Possibly an over-reaction, but as I always say, better safe than blown up by terrorists.<br />
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Also better safe than being flattened by a livestock lorry. It is cattle market day and the Carrs, with no pavement or speed limit, is no place to run with earphones on. Thus a 50 minute run gets a 30-minute soundtrack.<br />
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<span class="s1"><u>Location</u>: Whitby - The Carrs, Sleights bank, Barker's Lane, switchbacks, Castle Rd., Stakesby Rd., Ruswarp bank. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><u>Weather</u>: Mild.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><u>Outfit</u>: 2019 Great Birmingham Run vest, worst shorts, black trainers.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><u>Music</u>: <b>Ed Woods - Soundcloud demos</b> 35 mins.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">A Steady Run is supposed to be quite fast, but a slow heave up Sleights bank is as steady as you're going to get from me today. My playlist lights upon <i>Clean And Jerk, </i>which is what got me here. Ed Woods had advertised it on Twitter. I'd forgotten who he was and only later saw that he was the composer of <i>Chess Club</i>, my second favourite new song of last year.</span><br />
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<span class="s1"><i> Clean and Jerk</i> takes on the old story of childhood friendship dissipating in adulthood. The characters are glimpsed in the blinking light of a Transit van, in a teacher's dismissive description; their story is told via a double-tracked vocal and guitar with minimal embellishment.</span><br />
<span class="s1"><br /></span>Then we're in the strange and beautiful<i> Chess Club, </i>a Christian hangout 'where darkness meets the light.' The narrator begs an apostate to return to the club with its 'pieces for Jesus,' sounding half like a forlorn lover, half like a cult honey trap with sweet harmonies and a hint of Salvation army brass.<br />
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It is a hard song to follow. Thank heavens for the jokes among the relentless military metaphors and unlikely rhymes in <i>Code Name Isobel</i>, which would otherwise, even with its Beach Boys chord changes, be a long seven minutes.<br />
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David Bowie is referenced in <i>Mission To Mars</i>, although it is hard to imagine Major Tom asking Ground Control:<i> </i>"What should I be taking? My friend Kevin has a tent."<br />
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In this oversharing world (wait until I start describing my blisters and groin strains) it is a rare treat to hear a songwriter sing in character. Better still is to hear songs full of humour and self-awareness that aren't 'comedy songs'.<br />
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I look forward to hearing more. He's from Stockton, so maybe I'll get to see him one day.<br />
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Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14263300799761107648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963835422094102879.post-57984567074125194232020-01-23T22:30:00.003+00:002020-01-24T09:04:05.867+00:00Marathon 4: The Miniskirt Waddle70 mins Easy Run. <span class="s1">It says a lot about the state of the Gazette these days</span> (probably your local paper too) that I didn't notice a picture of myself on the back page until someone told me about it. The photo came from last Saturday's Great Run Local (a Parkrun tribute. We don't have an actual Parkrun here; the park is on a hill that would be classified as a cliff if it were nearer the water.) The disturbing grin is me laughing; the photographer was telling jokes as we ran past him.<br />
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The training plans I've had from the London Marathon and from the NSPCC warn runners off doing weekly races, owing to the injury risk of over-competitiveness. I can't see it myself, but best to follow the plan, so the picture is the last one of me doing a Parkrun until spring. I like to think that when I start doing 5ks again I'll be massively fit, having trained for and run a marathon.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jSQVrZEj9_w/XibbSyvN6bI/AAAAAAAAAZk/gRM49hSRBZs3M5xz1CTTFu7q91ejBMo2wCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/gazette.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="723" data-original-width="1600" height="144" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jSQVrZEj9_w/XibbSyvN6bI/AAAAAAAAAZk/gRM49hSRBZs3M5xz1CTTFu7q91ejBMo2wCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/gazette.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span class="s1"><u>Location</u>: Whitby - Ruswarp Woods, cinder track, Hawsker Lane, Green Lanes, Church St., Larpool Lane. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><u>Weather</u>: Mild, muddy underfoot.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><u>Outfit</u>: Whitby Running Club vest, almost-matching blue shorts, black trainers.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><u>Music</u>: <b>Elvis Costello and the Attractions - <i>BBC Sessions 1977-83</i> (bootleg)</b> 70 mins.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">Someone should put this out. Elvis: The Pre-Eclectic Years.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">Elvis Costello</span> has spent decades trying to be a different artist on every album he makes. This became more prevalent from the late 1980s onwards, as he started using different bands, but he was fond of the <i>volte-face</i> even in his youth. By the time he had his first hits, he had already been in a folk duo and a country-rock band, and had played solo with electric guitar like an apolitical Billy Bragg. When he formed the Attractions, they proved willing participants in the game of musical dressing-up.<br />
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But that wasn't the whole story. In 1977, the newly-formed band were touring behind the album Costello had made with the Californian band Clover. The earliest tracks show the Attractions wrestling the material away from their predecessors and stamping it as their own with bullying drums, busy basslines and bumper-car organ. Only <i>Blame It On Cain</i> sounds like it did on <i>My Aim Is True</i>, and gives an idea of what the Attractions might have sounded like, had Costello not found himself lumped in with, and to some extent been inspired by, contemporary punk and new wave.<br />
<span class="s1"><br /></span><span class="s1">From then on, Costello was writing songs with the band in mind. <i>(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea</i> would just be a mean-spirited rant without Bruce Thomas and Steve Nieve's mazy duet of a bassline suggesting the confident walk of This Year's Models parading down the Kings Road, set against Costello's stuttering guitar as the 'miniskirt waddle' of a young girl out of her depth in such company. </span><br />
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As one gets older, ones interest in a particular artiste's personal journey, in which he "confounds expectations" by sounding different, writing a different kind of book, or painting in a different shade of green, diminishes. It is a pleasure sometimes to hear the songs in a different context - or in no context, just as songs. Sometimes rough in execution, these performances represent Costello and the Attractions as an imaginative band with a consistent sound, enthused by new material, playing songs rather than making artistic statements.<br />
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Occasionally it gets too rough. Costello's fourth album <i>Get Happy!!</i> was scrapped and then redone in a northern soul style after the initial recordings sounded a mess. A 1980 Peel session suggests that this was wise; good songs are buried under cymbals and slashy guitars. Much better is a Kid Jensen session of country covers - like the contemporary <i>Almost Blue</i> LP, but played with none of that album's Nashville cleanliness (or that might be because it was recorded off-air from Medium Wave.)<br />
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Scattered amongst the original material are a Merseybeats B-side, a Dusty Springfield hit, a trampling of Ray Charles' <i>Danger Zone</i>, Costello's own <i>Shipbuilding</i>, 'covering' Robert Wyatt's version, and the Beat's <i>Stand Down Margaret</i>, which reminds you how long ago all of this happened.<br />
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It ends with <i>Pills and Soap</i>, an abstract expression of disgust at the media, which reminds you of how little has changed since then. That one sounds modern too, deliberately cut-and-pasted in the way that none of the other material is.<br />
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Not a cheery end to 70 minutes well spent.</div>
Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14263300799761107648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963835422094102879.post-13117989834025582152020-01-20T00:21:00.004+00:002020-01-20T00:21:41.351+00:00Marathon 3: Sweet Soul Music40 mins Easy Run. EJGH is running too, slowly, after over a year injured.<br />
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<span class="s1"><u>Location</u>: Whitby - Links View, Upgang Lane, sea wall, Promenade, extra bit from the Spiders Web to the White House and back. 5.5km</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><u>Weather</u>: Windy but dry.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><u>Outfit</u>: 2019 Poultry Run shirt, best shorts again, black trainers.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><u>Music</u>: <b>Hit The Road Stax - NME Cassette (1983, recorded 1967)</b> 50 mins.</span><br />
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Green Onions: Booker T & The MGs<br />
Red Beans and Rice: Booker T & The MGs<br />
B-A-B-Y: Carla Thomas<br />
Sweet Soul Music: Arthur Conley<br />
Raise Your Hand: Eddie Floyd<br />
Knock On Wood: Eddie Floyd<br />
Last Night: The Mar-Keys<br />
Philly Dog: The Mar-Keys<br />
You Don't Know Like I Know: Sam & Dave<br />
Hold On I'm Comin': Sam & Dave<br />
Respect: Otis Redding<br />
Try A Little Tenderness: Otis Redding<span class="s1"></span><br />
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<span class="s1">I lost my copy of this tape in a house move, so thank you to whichever illegal download site I got the mp3s from.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">The album was intended, I assume, to represent a typical night on the Stax/Volt Revue tour of the UK and Europe in 1967, although with hard-panned 1960s stereo and some brutal edits, it is clear that the recordings come from different concerts. As such the music is better suited to a single speaker on full blast than to earbuds.</span><br />
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It kicks off, as I guess the concerts used to, with Booker T and the MGs' <i>Green Onions</i>. I've seen contemporary videos where the band rushed through the tune, which was an oldie even then. Perhaps the compilers had to trawl through the recordings to get a decent version for this album, but they found a cracker - faster than the record, but not hurried. Duck Dunn's bass is an excited heartbeat and Steve Cropper's guitar is an electric shock. (I could go further with this metaphor - something about paddles and "Clear!" It would get dull.)<br />
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Even with the obvious edits, it's not hard to imagine yourself in the audience of this show (I use the term advisedly. This is a show, not a gig.) Vocalists file onstage, introduced by Emperor Rosko, and some of the performances are literally marvellous - full of marvel at the joy of life, love and sex, full of pain at the very same things. Even so, the MGs are the focus, the singers almost incidental.<br />
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On side 2 of the tape - after the interval at the show - the Mar-keys take over as the band, and the sound gets a little thinner as a result. Sam and Dave and Otis Redding are anything but incidental. It might just have been a weedier recording.<br />
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<i>Hit The Road Stax</i> has far more hits on it than Stax's own record of the tour, <i>The Stax/Volt Revue</i>. I can't find it on the web at the moment, but I'm sure someone will upload it again soon. In the meantime, numerous recordings of live 1960s Stax shows are circulating on the semi-legal/is this out of copyright? market. As a guess, I'd say hear them all. I may run to one of them, later in my schedule, just for the academic interest</div>
Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14263300799761107648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963835422094102879.post-17496984279137853482020-01-16T23:33:00.001+00:002020-01-19T23:31:01.026+00:00Marathon 2: Desert BluesStill week 2.<br />
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30 mins Easy Run (the talking one, no one to talk to.)<br />
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<span class="s1"><u>Location</u>: Whitby - Links View, Upgang Lane, sea wall, Promenade. 4.5km</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><u>Weather</u>: Fine with high cloud, cold wind.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><u>Outfit</u>: 2019 Scarborough 10k shirt, best shorts, black trainers, Colorado souvenir socks.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><u>Music</u>: <b>Etran De L'Aïr: <i>Music From Saharan Whatsapp</i>.</b> 17 mins.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">The wind makes white horses on an otherwise calm North Sea. Stumps of an old pier are visible in the sand beneath the pavilion. Everyone is walking a dog - not the same dog. I have to stop twice to avoid treading on pugs.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">I'm doing the beach run, a route that EJGH worked out before I joined in running, and which we've both been doing for ten years. My best for this is 25 minutes and a bit. I'm a long way off that pace these days, plus I'm taking it easy as I'm supposed to, so call it half an hour.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">Lesson of the day: Don't try to stream music whilst doing the beach run. There's no phone signal at the beach; I already knew this, so I don't know what I was playing at. The plan was to listen to Etran De L'Aïr on the way down, get into a running groove, then follow it with <a href="https://headoflightentertainment.bandcamp.com/album/periphery-ep" target="_blank">Head Of Light Entertainment's latest EP</a> on the way up, being buoyed along by melodic sunshine pop. A quarter of an hour each way, job done.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">As it was, </span>Etran De L'Aïr fell silent just after I reached the sea wall, and didn't re-emerge until I was past the Crescent on the way up - which was a shame because the skittering rhythms were, if not putting me in a trance, then certainly getting me in a good frame of mind to run. Desert blues is mesmeric or it is nothing. Melodies don't go anywhere, a whole song can go on one chord; Etran De L'Aïr favour two chords and a drone with a djembe rattling along in the background. Riffs are endlessly repetitive, yet never played the same way twice. Tiny variations sound momentous. The vocals on this EP are quiet, possibly not miked up. According to liner notes, it was recorded directly onto a phone, then Whatsapped to the record company, hence the title.<br />
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I know what this sounds like: first-world business people and white cultural tourists demanding some sort of gritty authenticity from black African performers. Hard to argue with that, except that the music is genuinely meditative, and the performance is really charming.<br />
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That's all I have to say. If you're running, this is 17 minutes of good running music.<br />
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Click here for <b><a href="https://etrandelair.bandcamp.com/album/music-from-saharan-whatsapp" target="_blank">Etran De L'Aïr: </a><i><a href="https://etrandelair.bandcamp.com/album/music-from-saharan-whatsapp" target="_blank">Music From Saharan Whatsapp</a>.</i></b></div>
Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14263300799761107648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963835422094102879.post-55195490967454238432020-01-15T18:06:00.002+00:002020-01-19T23:30:24.707+00:00Marathon 1: Breathe<style type="text/css">
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Part of me has wanted to run the London Marathon ever since I watched it on TV (filling the gap between the Grand National, the Boat Race and the Cup Final) with my dad in 1981. All that business about the Cutty Sark, the desolate Isle of Dogs (younger readers might like to watch <a href="https://youtu.be/k33gU7ApT_Q?t=12" target="_blank">The Long Good Friday</a>), the run up the Mall; crowds, people dressed as chickens, a dusty spring Sunday, Dad getting choked up seeing disabled runners hobbling over the line, the first two lads finishing hand-in-hand. Now a list of clichés, it was new then. The part that wanted to do it was a small part of me, a fraction of my cerebral cortex, or possibly my lizard brain; the rest of me thought it a stupid idea. But now I’m living in North Yorkshire where running is a thing that normal people do, I spend a couple of days a fortnight in London, so there’s a connection; I have several Great North Runs behind me, I’m 54 and if I don’t do it this year I never will.</div>
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I should pretend this is week 1 of training, but it’s week 2. Week 1 barely counts as anything - 30 mins Easy Run, 20 mins Jog, 60 mins Easy. “Easy” means you can talk while running. I’m running on my own so that would be evidence of a personal problem. Easy running is not really possible in Whitby for more than a few minutes at a time, owing to the hills. Anyway I did it, and it was 20 minutes of jogging more than I do most weeks. My once-beloved grey Nike Airs have deflated, so I’ve got a sore left heel. Arthritic right knee is a given, but it’s OK - wakes me up maybe once a night, but not for long and fine while running. Otherwise injury and disease-free.</div>
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<span class="s1">Today is 40 mins Steady Run, during which I should be “slightly out of breath; able to talk, but only in shorter sentences,” which reminds me of a lot of people I know.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><u>Location</u>: North London - Regents Park, Camden (picture taken from Primrose Hill).</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><u>Weather</u>: Pissing down.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><u>Outfit</u>: Clapton CFC away shirt, second time round shorts, new trainers, Swedish Chef socks, cap </span>(see weather), plasters on nipples (ditto).</div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><u>Music</u>: <b>Sturgill Simpson: <i>Sound And Fury</i>.</b> 41 mins.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I wanted to like this album. It’s new. It's the right length for the run. It has drums on it, mostly machine-generated, but they play a beat, not the elongated, compressed-to-lifelessness <i>thhhhhhoccck </i>noise that so many artistes employ to indicate that even the act of keeping time is part of a Significant Emotional And Cultural Statement; which means that these drumbeats help me paddle along London’s burst-drain thoroughfares in a running sort of way. I like Sturgill Simpson too. He’s country and he’s smart; note the title of his first album, <i><a href="https://sturgillsimpson.bandcamp.com/album/metamodern-sounds-in-country-music" target="_blank">Metamodern Sounds In Country Music</a></i> - I mean, come on, the references! This time he is referencing William Faulkner, as all educated southern Americans have to do sooner or later. (Don’t get me started on <i>The Sound And The Fury</i> though. I can’t get started on it - it’s as impenetrable as it is miserable).</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The sound is not that of the two-lane blacktop and the Marshall stack; it is that of analogue synths, washy or siren-y, in the vintage style of Düsseldorf, Sheffield and Basildon, overlaid with practice-amp lead guitar, vocals hiding behind the guitar, and nowhere near enough bass. However, try as he might to hide it, the style is mainstream modern country rock. The thing about Sturgill Simpson is that he thinks he’s an alternative to that, but he isn’t. He is just better at it than all the people who give it a bad name. He plays good muscly lead guitar and has the requisite gravel voice of a blue collar American artist; his set-up / knock-down verses are actually funny or moving, rather than sounding as if they’ve been knocked together in a writers’ meeting.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>‘Having one-way conversations with the darkness in my mind</i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>He does all the talking 'cause I'm the quiet kind.’ (Remember To Breathe)</i></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">There’s a lot of this, stuff that wouldn’t be out of place on, but is a cut above, any workaday country album.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>‘Well, you know daddy likes his alone time</i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>That's why he doesn't have any friends</i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>Yeah, but watch and see, you'll be lookin' at me</i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>The last man standing in the end.’ (Last Man Standing)</i></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">It would have been nice to have heard words like these when I was running, rather than reading them on the train home (where I’m writing this) having suspected that there was something worth hearing under the distorted squall.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The best-sounding song (<i>Mercury In Retrograde</i>) has the worst lyrics. I won’t quote them, but Taylor Swift got away with stuff like this for years because she was young and female; it doesn’t do for a grown man to be moaning about ‘haters’ wanting his autograph. However there is melody here, and dynamics in the synthesiser lines which are lacking elsewhere.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Got to hand it to him for making the effort though. Sometimes he sounds like Suicide with real songs; most of the time the sound-concept gets in the way of the material.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">A shame to start on a downer. Might have been the rain. It’s 30 mins Easy Run tomorrow, so I’ll need to find something short. Might go for an oldie. Wary of getting into the idea that new music = bad, old stuff = good. <i>Sound And Fury</i> isn’t bad; it’s an experiment in breaking out of Nashville musical habits without giving up on Nashville songwriting. I don’t think the experiment worked, but the next one might, and good luck to him.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The new trainers are holding up. They don’t keep out water at all, but my feet were OK at the end, so presumably they “breathe” or do whatever trainers are supposed to do when you splash through mucky rain in them.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">More tomorrow.</span><br />
<span class="s1"><br /></span>
<a href="https://sturgillsimpson.lnk.to/singalong" target="_blank">Sound And Fury</a></div>
<br />Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14263300799761107648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963835422094102879.post-16162091915722439762018-04-15T07:28:00.005+01:002018-04-19T15:53:41.120+01:00Recyclable Letter<span style="-webkit-text-stroke: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: inherit;">Dear Mr/Mrs (<span style="font-size: x-small;">PRIME MINISTER’S NAME</span>)</span><br />
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Excuse me for writing but I think it’s a shame</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">That we’re bombing (</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">ENTER REGION, COUNTRY OR STATE</span><span style="font-size: small;">),</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Killing its children and sealing the fate</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Of (</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">COUNTRY OR STATE</span><span style="font-size: small;">) and its next generation</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Who’ll grow up with war as the default situation.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">The likely result of our military action</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Against (</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">ENTER NATION/ETHNIC GROUP/POLITICAL FACTION</span><span style="font-size: small;">)</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Will be to make enemies of all who survive</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">And make it impossible for (</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">COUNTRY/STATE</span><span style="font-size: small;">) to thrive.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">But at least we’ll have stolen their (</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">ENTER NATURAL RESOURCE</span><span style="font-size: small;">),</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">If you think that’s a good use for the Royal Air Force.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Or perhaps we’re just there to please (</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">ENTER ALLY</span><span style="font-size: small;">)</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Or to boost (</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">ENTER HOME COUNTRY</span><span style="font-size: small;">) internationally</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Thus somehow promoting enhanced foreign trade -</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">As in: “Oi! Buy our goods or else we’ll invade.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">I’m far from convinced that’s the best way ahead</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Because people can’t shop or invest when they’re dead.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">In conclusion, Sir/Madam/O Great One (</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">NAME OF LEADER</span><span style="font-size: small;">),</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Before we get caught up in nationalist fever</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Can we please hold our horses, then take a deep breath</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">And not sentence thousands of people to death?</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Let’s try to make peace and goodwill our object.</span></span></div>
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<div class="p1">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Yours sincerely, love (</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">ENTER OWN NAME</span><span style="font-size: small;">) xxx</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">© Jon Horne 2018</span>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14263300799761107648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963835422094102879.post-38250316405230781882018-02-03T21:13:00.000+00:002018-04-19T15:41:50.648+01:00Mark E Smith: The Last Days<br />
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And the band, henceforth group, played on.<br />
Hauled up in a dumb waiter, Health and Safety approved,<br />
ranting, chanting, slurring, blurring the line between sense and prejudice,<br />
our hero, henceforth OH, rises, eyes darting right to left, left to right;<br />
one withered hand strapped to the chair as if electric.<br />
The end, the end is literally nigh.<br />
<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />
Middle aged punters, male, formative years much formed<br />
by aforesaid OH, cheer briefly, assuming theatrical ploy.<br />
They see the rodent cheeks, the visible fucking agony,<br />
the two microphones positioned to allow OH to fidget<br />
and manoeuvre himself into position<br />
of least pain whilst still vocalising, and gasp.<br />
<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />
And the group played on.<br />
Riff number one: bass-led,<br />
guitars trace double-helix pattern,<br />
its DNA of German/Lancastrian CA ancestry producing<br />
regular and these days planned dissonance.<br />
<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />
OH wheeled across boards by wife/kyb, b.voc.<br />
Sober-haired hired hands, suntanned arms beneath untorn sleeves.<br />
Planned dissonance. Seconds of eloquence as diamorphine permits.<br />
False teeth provide added bite. Hell to pay, hell to pay for.<br />
Where once OH paced, now slides down the chair, plants feet on boards<br />
and rocks, fractured, enraptured, if only.<br />
<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />
Out on the Merch desk, mirthfully self-identified<br />
hobgoblins lay out apparel, yellow vinyl, silver discs<br />
and check for 4G, re: Mobile Pay. Cash tins open<br />
for punters of Luddite sensibility. Cold imperial measure<br />
in plastic glass imbibed. The group plays on,<br />
muffled by fire doors. Planned dissonance.<br />
<br />
A steady stream exit. Disgruntled and/or lachrymose, pause at Merch desk<br />
to recall lank-haired pretender, oddly delicate of feature, part-formed;<br />
then newly-polished spokesman in the Colin/AH Wilson vein,<br />
US wife/gtr, b.voc., unwonted solutions<br />
to planned dissonance - cf. No Bulbs.<br />
Both incarnations available on 180g vinyl with shirt XXL.<br />
<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />
Riff number two: bodiddley skip, unselfconscious,<br />
blues accidentals permitted, if accidental. Why dissonance?<br />
Why plan? Middle-class revolting suspects fear<br />
of naked written word. Anyone can bark, we say. OH says:<br />
you try, see if your bark gets anywhere<br />
near this one’s bite. That was months ago.<br />
<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />
Later, and on the edge of an industrial estate,<br />
briefly in opioid sleep, OH cannot hear the voice<br />
of replicants in Schindler’s lift. Cannot ask what the fuck.<br />
Not that it was ever any better, he might have added.<br />
Wife/non-NHS carer pushes, clicks and holds door,<br />
aids, unzips, unbuttons, lifts immobile arm, places dictaphone<br />
near face for easy access to brain. Capturing all that might escape<br />
in these last days. Damned dissonance.<br />
<br />
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Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14263300799761107648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963835422094102879.post-38671669269740063702018-01-24T16:29:00.000+00:002018-01-24T16:29:25.275+00:00Clown White (short story)<div class="p1">
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">He took a long, blood-reddening draft of still, salt air. He had been shut away too long in a tiny room whose three walls and scarlet curtain he could touch at arms’ length. Deep orange crenellate clouds made a lush backdrop to the abbey ruin in the windless hour of sunset, but it was too late to be standing around watching clouds. He stretched and exhaled hugely. A little girl, passing, started at the sound and began to cry. A man bent down to comfort the child, then turned to glare. He met the father’s stare and raised an eyebrow. The father shook his head. If one of his victims still feared him outside, he must be doing something right.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">There wasn’t time for any of this. He shouldered his duffel bag and half-ran towards the bridge. It was the worst part of the day for visitors; a few of them in a rush, the rest like pillar boxes, and no one going single file - except that, unusually, everyone got out of his way, even if half of them gave him filthy looks. Grateful for small mercies, he smiled at those who let him through, and as he did so, felt a naggingly familiar sensation on his bottom lip. You are kidding, he said to no one but himself, and ducked into an alley which turned into steps leading to a row of holiday cottages. In deep shadows, he removed a set of plastic fangs, and touched his face to feel the baby-soft coolness of Clown White, like touching soap - that and a hint of cherry-flavoured syrup standing in for dripping blood. He hadn’t taken any of it off, although he distinctly remembered doing so. Or was that yesterday? Well obviously it was, he thought, unless it was the day before, or God knows when before that.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">No, he had been at work - not jumping out of a cupboard to frighten children, but cooking, then table-waiting - which, he thought again, is where he should be now. He checked himself for cape, syrup-soaked dress-shirt, ghoulish winkle-pickers, or any other day job accoutrements.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Now very late, he crossed the bridge and turned left. La Gourmande At The Red Lion stood bare-beamed and tasteful among the jet shops and tat parlours, like roasted sea bass on a chip shop menu. Hopes of sneaking into the kitchen unnoticed were dashed as he saw Ken outside, finishing off a cigarette.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“I know, Ken, I’m sorry,” he said as he scurried past the chef.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Hold it right there. No, on second thoughts - Christ, man, what’s that on your face? Just get inside.”</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">At least it saved him having to serve the public. After twenty minutes Pete/Pierre the head-waiter had to tell the other kitchen staff to grow up and shut up, as their hooting and heckling could be heard in the restaurant. After that, there were only whispers and snorts. Eventually, Ken stepped in.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Just go and clean it off, and make sure no one sees you. The rest of you, one more word and you’re on notice, all of you.”</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Baked on by two hours over a hot gas hob, it took fifteen punishing minutes of Swarfega to shift the makeup. He returned to his post red-faced and sore. Around nine o’clock, as the streets briefly quietened, there was a lull in orders before the last-chance diners filed in. Ken motioned him outside.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“I don’t know what the joke is, lad. I’ve got Pete on my back now.”</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“I took an extra shift. I won’t do it again - well I’ve got to do it tomorrow, but I’ll be here on time.”</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Decide what your job is. I’ve been very understanding with you.”</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“I know, I know. Tomorrow I promise I’ll be on time.”</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“You’d better be, and without the...” Ken mimed blood dripping down the side of his mouth.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">An embarrassed smile. “Yeah.”</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">A series of orders arrived, sparking frantic activity, which only subsided long after the sitting, when the kitchen was cleared and cleaned in preparation for breakfast.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">On leaving the restaurant by the back door, he spotted his father and Jeanne crossing the small market square beneath the old town hall. Jeanne’s ponytail swayed. They stopped and kissed. He could, with some effort, have ducked out of sight and waited for them to be on their way before crossing the square himself, but he was too tired for tact. Jeanne tensed and broke off the embrace as he passed.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“’Ello,” she said, dropping the aitch in an accent as cartoonish as her leather jacket and culottes.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Hello Jeanne. Hello Dad. Been out?”</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Been to your place, son. Impressed by the belly pork, I must say.”</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">His father took a deep, self-important breath. He glanced at Jeanne, who nodded in agreement and actually licked her lips. He reddened. It alarmed him that he was so pleased that his cooking had won the approval of his father’s pouting, olive-skinned girlfriend. He wished it was because she was French and knew decent food when she tasted it.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“I didn’t know you’d been in.”</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
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<span class="s1">His father pulled Jeanne even closer and touched the top of her head with his chin.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">“I thought I’d treat her tonight. Didn’t I, darling? It worked out well. The top was like fine pastry - salivant, you might say. Very good indeed.”</span></div>
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<span class="s1">After all the face-scrubbing earlier on, his forced smile was not just figuratively painful. A long silence ensued, broken at last by Jeanne, who said: “Well, goodnight. We shall see you soon, yes? Come for dinner, I will cook.”</span></div>
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<span class="s1">“Thanks, yes, I’ll do just that.”</span></div>
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<span class="s1">“Goodnight, son.”</span></div>
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<span class="s1">‘"’Night Dad.”</span></div>
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<span class="s1">So now she’s inviting people round for tea; there’s a development, he thought. He turned around briefly as he continued across the square. They were facing away from him. His father was pointing at something. He had his other hand in Jeanne’s back pocket.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">How like himself, he thought miserably, to begrudge his father the pleasure of an exotic woman with a perfectly rounded bottom to grope in full view of anyone who wanted to look.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">They might, like pilgrims or tourists, have been be about to climb the abbey steps; or else there was the east pier with its lapping waves and romantic sense of isolation, and still no more than a light breeze to disturb them. They were more likely standing in the middle of the square in order to allow him a head start, since all of them lived on the other side of the river, and had to cross the same small bridge to get home. He hurried onward.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">By the time he had climbed the hill, to the once grand house in which he had a tiny studio flat, the fresh air had put him in better spirits. Although tired, he carried on to the end of the road, to the cliff edge. Rabbits scattered and disappeared into their warren. On the horizon, cargo ships fought the current towards the Tees. Until the morning, when he would be Dracula in clown white, fangs and a cape, and in the evening, cook.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Written for the Writers Write 12 Short Stories challenge, Jan.2018</span></div>
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<span class="s1">_______</span></div>
Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14263300799761107648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963835422094102879.post-28055615282209164532017-01-10T23:20:00.005+00:002017-01-10T23:43:11.173+00:00Gem Or Ashtray? (L-M)<b>Lick - <i>Come / Shirtlifter</i></b>. If you Google this, I recommend Parental Control. I'm sure I saw this lot, sometime in the late Paleozoic. Guitar line like <i>Cannonball</i> by the Breeders, vocal like almost anything by the Manic Street Preachers. Average. A shame because it's on their own label, catalogue number LICK001 and everything. Ashtray.<br />
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<b>Linx - <i>So This Is Romance</i></b>. Obviously a keeper, but being ruthless I was going to chuck the ones I had on LP, particularly when the B-side is just an instrumental. Good job I checked, because a) it's not on the <i>Intuition</i> LP, and b) the lyrics are cornier than a tin of Niblets, so having the instrumental is a good thing.<br />
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<b>Living In Texas - <i>And David Cried</i></b>. A white label from my brother's old studio, so this isn't going anywhere. However I haven't heard it in years, so... This is as of-its-time as a Flanagan and Allen 78 or a Grateful Dead quadruple LP. Joy Division drums anchor wandering bass and sax. Pootles along in a spacey fashion until the singer incants: "And David cried" repeatedly at the end. The B-side An Dem Bahnhof (nice use of the dative - we're not going to the station, are we?) consists of ranted verses interspersed with the title, accompanied by lo-fi synths. Could be The Normal, stroppy Gary Numan, or anyone from 1984 who had been listening to Kraftwerk. Well I like it. Can't find it on YT so here's another of their songs.<br />
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<b>Manfred Mann - <i>5 4 3 2 1</i></b><i>.</i> When I was 12, we went on a swimming-club tour of Scotland. One of the lads I was billeted with gave me this, which at the time I thought was nice of him. Only now does it occur to me that it must have been his Dad's record. So familiar that I thought I'd check if it was any good. Blaring out in mono, it chugs along much better than it does on nostalgia radio. Labelled on the sleeve with my John Bull printing set.<br />
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<b>The Maytals - <i>Walk In Love</i></b>. Intense. Why haven't I been playing this? On the instrumental track B-side, Toots Hibbert's vocal bleeds into everything; must have been recorded live.<br />
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<b>Meanwhile Back In Communist Russia - <i>No Cigar</i></b>. Intense in another way. Scared-sounding woman narrates a short story indistinctly over a malevolent bolero of up-the-neck bass and swirly organ. Like an episode of <i>Silent Witness</i> when it was still good. It's on YT but Blogger won't let me link to it for some reason. Here's another MBICR track.<br />
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<b>JC Messina - <i>Time Won't Let Me</i></b>. Back at the turn of the 90s we used to go out to the Black Horse pub between Aston Uni and Duddeston on Friday nights. Upstairs was indie city: Charlatans, Mondays, Primal Scream, and choice oldies, most particularly a track the DJ (maddeningly I've forgotten his name) wouldn't name, and which in pre-internet days you couldn't just Google. On the last night he told us that our favourite track was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaj1wVNvSqk" target="_blank"><i>Time Won't Let Me</i></a> by The Outsiders, a mid-60s US band. There y'go. This is not that. I couldn't resist buying a cover version of it, which now that we do have Google turns out to be a northern soul 'classic'. Either immeasurably valuable or a dodgy bootleg. By the awful sound, it must be the latter. Great track though. Weird and creepy B-side called <i>Nice And Easy</i>. "Don't matter to me if her face is too bad but it matters to me if her body's been had." Ick.<br />
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<b>Mo-Dettes - <i>Paint It Black</i></b>. Awful cover version, saved by the much better B-side, <i>Bitta Truth</i>; also the fact that I saw them at Grimsby Central Hall and like having a souvenir. Here's <i>White Mice</i> instead.<br />
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<br />Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14263300799761107648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963835422094102879.post-33133371040075085012016-12-22T23:25:00.000+00:002016-12-22T23:25:24.335+00:00Gem Or Ashtray (J-K)<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Jefferson Airhead - <i>Scrap Happy</i></b>. A baggy gem.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Johnny and the Hurricanes - <i>Rockin' Goose</i></b>. From a job lot at the car boot. It rocks. It makes goose noises. Obviously a keeper.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Grace Jones - <i>Demolition Man/Warm Leatherette</i></b>. As 80s as Margaret Thatcher fronting Cameo, which is what this sounds like. Better than you'd think.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>KC And The Sunshine Band - <i>Sound Your Funky Horn</i></b>. Gem. Next.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Dave Kelly - <i>Return To Sender</i></b>. Blues bands bore the pants off me, partly because they're all the same, but mostly because I've never heard one to match the Dave Kelly Band at the Sub in Cleethorpes on (squints) 19th January 1983, probably not at 8.00 pm. One of the last nights I was able to drink illegally.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The version of Return to Sender is pretty dull, to be honest. The B-side is a good country-rock original, Dawn Surprise. I'm keeping it because I don't know where else to keep my ticket signed by DK and the (late great) sax player John Irish Earle.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Kingmaker - <i>Eat Yourself Whole</i></b>. The Wonderstuff without the wit, tunes or bounce. Ashtray.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>June Kingston - <i>Say You</i></b>. I want to like this. JK used to be in the <a href="https://youtu.be/S0JCoMYpiA0?t=12s" target="_blank">Mo-Dettes</a>, who I saw when I was 16, and then she was the other voice on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqQT3oKA3v8" target="_blank">Our Lips Are Sealed</a>. But no. Ashtray.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Kid Creole and the Coconuts - <i>I Am</i></b>. A Coati Mundi gem.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Bo Kirkland and Ruth Davies - <i>You're Gonna Get Next To Me</i></b>. Great backing track, but the he-says-she-says vocal has all the drama of an episode of The Archers. B-side is better. If you like it, look in the MIND shop on Flowergate.</span></div>
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Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14263300799761107648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963835422094102879.post-74689853993095875022016-12-22T20:45:00.001+00:002016-12-22T20:48:30.696+00:00Gem Or Ashtray (G-I)<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><b>General Public - <i>General Public</i></b>. One that I wanted to like, but never really did. Dave Wakeling and Ranking Roger's distinctive vocals, but without much of what made The Beat great. 80s sound. Ashtray.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3a16iTwYKoc" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3a16iTwYKoc</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><b>The Gist - <i>Love At First Sight</i>.</b> Another one from someone-who-used-to-be, in this case Stuart Moxham, the songwriter for the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oXHWcN05NA&list=PLrrOOMmmKmAN16Czrfm2OwFYH2PuXWcao&index=3" target="_blank">Young Marble Giants</a>. As the Gist, he and his brother Phil (also from the YMG) had a great little instrumental on the C81 tape. The A-side is a slight but pretty song with dodgy vocals drenched in 80s sound. The B-side (below) is better, sounding like a demo for a TV theme, written by another Moxham brother, Lewis. Not a gem but a curiosity to keep.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><b>Girls At Our Best - <i>Go For Gold</i></b>. Oh, I remember this one now. Absolute gem. It's 80s indie day at Gem Or Ashtray. Callow middle-class female vocals delivering spiky lyrics backed by Wilko Johnson guitar (they wish) and drumkit-last-birthday drums. <i>So</i> many indie bands sounded like this, back then, but hardly any of them had the songs. This is sarky as you like, and catchy as hell.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><b>Celibate Rifles & The Hard-Ons - <i>Where The Wild Things Are EP</i></b>. Early-90s punky rock, or rocky punk. I used to love this sort of thing. Now I just remember loving it. Give it six months.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><b>Hefner - <i>Christian Girls</i></b>. Another band I saw live and then bought the single. Hard to believe quite how indie I used to be. B-side includes clumsy pedal steel. Obviously I'm keeping it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><b>Helen And The Horns - <i>Freight Train</i></b>. The most middle-class record in the box, possibly in human history. Sounds like a Radio 4 announcer auditioning for Kiss Me Kate. Gem.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><b>Immaculate Fools - <i>Immaculate Fools</i></b>. A taste of the madeleine. Takes me back to somewhere I'm not sure I want to be - in a Banks's haze and Rothmans fog in the attic room of a large terraced house in Wolverhampton. Masses of acoustic guitars, plenty major 7ths and a gravelly voice that should be him out of the Psychedelic Furs but isn't. I might have seen them the same night as Helen and the Horns (in the Wulfrun Hall - the little one behind the Civic Hall). Great record though. I'd forgotten. Gem.</span><br />
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Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14263300799761107648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963835422094102879.post-28089660140045833272016-12-15T13:50:00.001+00:002016-12-15T23:48:45.334+00:00Gem Or Ashtray? (D-F)<div class="p1">
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Dr John: <i>Jet Set</i></b>. Primitive, concussed hip hop. This ought to be an ashtray but I'm keeping it to hear the line: "Top o'the mornin' t'ya guvnor" at my leisure.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Echobelly: <i>Insomniac</i></b>. Another band I saw live in the mid-90s. Hyped to death at the time. I thought this was going to be the same as Drugstore but it’s a proper gem. Live, they sounded a lot like the Smiths, but this is their own thing. Big ambition, big chorus. Love it.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>8-Storey Window: <i>I Will</i></b>. Sounds like an English Pearl Jam. I’m not that keen on the real Pearl Jam. Ashtray.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Fantastic Something: <i>If She Doesn’t Smile (It’ll Rain)</i></b><i>.</i> Not sure, maybe, oh I think… starts at Simon and Garfunkel and ends at the Beach Boys. Can’t argue with that. Originality isn’t everything. Gem. Instrumental version on the B-side won’t get played though.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Fantasy Funk Band: <i>Smoove’s Fantasy Funk Band</i></b>. All-sampled semi-bootleg. Sounds like being in between stages at a festival. Not a gem but a keeper.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Farmers Boys: <i>Muck It Out</i></b>. Great cover, great title, even a great sleeve note. I liked it once and I wanted to like it now, but it’s a parody of the 1980s, from the 1980s, that nowadays just sounds like a standard 1980s track. Ashtray.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Five Darrens: <i>Beggars and Priests</i></b>. Ordinary. B-side ‘Can’t Think’ is better. Keep for six months. If I don’t have a craving for mid-90s powerpop, I’ll charity shop it. Cute, the feedback at the end goes into the runout groove. Nothing on Youtube.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Floaters: <i>Float On</i></b>. My copy is pressed queasily off-centre. Singers start their verses by naming their star sign (‘Leo, and my name is Paul.’) The last guy, Larry, is louder than all the others and shouts ‘Cancer!’ just when your end-of-the-disco smooch might have been getting more arousing. Ashtray.</span></span><br />
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Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14263300799761107648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963835422094102879.post-39725931890083656292016-12-15T11:38:00.000+00:002016-12-15T13:54:08.441+00:00Gem Or Ashtray? (C)<div class="p1">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Chi-Lites: <i>Homely Girl</i>.</b> Terrible. B-side? Not bad. I'm wavering. Nah. If you like it, it'll be in the MIND shop on Flowergate next week.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129;"><b>Chi-Lites: </b></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129;"><b><i>You don't have to go</i></b>. Much better. Gem.</span></span><br />
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<span class="s1"><b><u>The Cigarettes: <i>They’re Back Again, Here They Come</i></u></b>. Skinny tie early 80s mod-punk, somewhere between the Buzzcocks and Eddie and the Hot Rods. Major chords, choppily played; vocals like a fast, squeaky Bob Dylan. Almost all indie pop used to sound like this. Framing the song inside a short piano tune was a nice touch. The cover is a mod pastiche. Looks classy. I wouldn’t buy it these days, but I’m keeping it.</span></div>
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<u><b>The Cigarettes: <i>Can’t Sleep At Night</i></b></u>. Mod sensibilities gone, replaced by post-punk paranoia. Shadow of the bomb and all that. Same label as B-Movie, and with much the same sound. Another non-buyer/keeper.<span class="s1"></span></div>
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<b><u>Patsy Cline: <i>A Stranger In My Arms</i></u></b>. Classic and all that. Rinky-dink blues, beautifully sung. The voice is drowned in musical treacle though, particularly the Jordinaires style backing vocals. Don’t know how often I’m going to play this. Might have to go to the MIND shop - which I think is where I bought it. B-sides are saving it though - a small band and no backing vocals. Version of Lovesick Blues is great. I’m sold. Gem.</div>
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<span class="s1"><b><u>Coldcut: <i>Stop This Crazy Thing</i></u></b>. That thing with swing band riffs over an electro track; Coldcut were doing it decades ago. Corny big beat (Tarzan samples, anyone?) and a Junior Reid vocal that doesn’t say a lot, but I’m keeping it. B-side version without the vocals better still.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><u>The Commodores: <i>Brick House</i></u></b>. I got some Commodores singles in a job lot. ‘Easy’ and ‘Zoom’ aren’t going anywhere, but I have no memory of ‘Brick House’. Not surprising because it’s dull. B-side is a Lionel ballad, Sweet Love. Trundles along for ages, then a huge key change, then he starts preaching. I bet he leaves the piano and starts working the audience. Not working on me, I’m afraid. Ashtray.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><u>The Commodores: <i>Flying High</i></u></b><i>.</i> Sounds like an advert for Laker Airways. A bit of a quote from ‘Shaft’, then back to jingle mode. I know it’s incredibly hard to make music as smooth as this, so I feel bad when I say… ashtray.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><u>Nicola Conte: <i>Arabesque</i></u></b>. Soundtrack pastiche. 60s Brazilian vibe via Italy 1999. Sax riff and vibraphone. Slow burner with fast drums. Tense. Gem.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><u>Joseph Cotton: <i>Musicians</i></u></b>. Plinky-plonky electro dancehall. Growling MC prattles on about black race, white race, Japanese race etc. Probably dodgy as hell but I’m not taking notice and I like it. B-side is a voicing by Don Camilo - breathless and scared, Might be a gem, definitely a keeper. Not on YouTube.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><u>Cowboy Junkies: <i>A Horse In The Country</i></u></b>. Total gem. Medium paced, understated, stoical and heartbreaking. I’ll be playing this over and over again.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><u>The Cravats: <i>Rub Me Out</i></u></b>. A fearsome artefact of the Thatcher era. On Crass Records. Stencils, Letraset, blurred photos, screeching paranoia, self-loathing with muffled everything except for oddly tuneful sax. A keeper, mostly for historical reasons (“Was the world as bonkers as it is now when you were a boy, daddy?” “Nearly, darling. Listen to this.”)</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><u><b>The Crimea: <i>Lottery Winners On Acid</i></b>.</u> Too long and drenched in echo, but a soppy love song. B-side tries too hard to be nasty. Not sure, so I’ll keep it for now. If it’s not getting played in a few months’ time, it’s going.</span></div>
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Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14263300799761107648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963835422094102879.post-76121420847300076932016-12-15T11:32:00.001+00:002016-12-15T23:51:05.821+00:00Gem Or Ashtray? (A-B)<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #1d2129;">My 7" singles are out of the garage and in the living room. There are plenty here that I never listen to. The charity shop awaits. It's time to play </span><b><span style="color: #cc0000;">Hidden Gem Or Future Ashtray?</span></b></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><b><u>ABC: <i>That Was Then But This Is Now</i></u></b>. Hidden gem. I'm surprised. Since ABC reformed for the Mums and Dads circuit (and recorded a pretty passable Christmas song), Radio 2 has rediscovered the singles from Lexicon of Love, which will never have the freshness and serious/joke tension that they did the first time round</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">. No one ever plays this, which has a punch to it, and isn't taking the piss.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><b>American TV Cops: <i>Atrocity Girl</i></b>. I saw them live, aeons ago at the Princess Charlotte in Leicester, and it's a great title. Then I barely played it. Turns out it's a pop-punk gem. Best line: "The party's over, your boyfriend's dead." I can't find a video for it, so here's the song that the title refers to.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><b>Aswad: </b><i style="font-weight: bold;">Ways Of The Lord</i>. Which are straight and narrow, apparently. Grit your teeth through the preaching and you'll find, as usual with Aswad, a pop-reggae gem. The dub version with fewer lyrics is better still.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><b>Bearsuit: <i>Drinkink</i></b>. They made a great record called <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8PSeQNlpBQ" target="_blank">Hey Charlie, Hey Chuck</a>. I think it was great anyway. John Peel played it so often when I was driving over to visit the future Mrs H that I probably just have happy associations with it. Anyway back in the early noughties (i.e. in the final days when music was hard to access) they didn't have it in Selectadisc, so I bought one of their other records instead, and it just gives me a headache. Ashtray.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><b>Beautiful South: <i>Song for Whoever</i></b>. I never saw the Housemartins live, but did see the BS at their second or third gig when they were still raggedy and indie. They used a huge PA which collapsed and could have killed someone if the audience hadn't dived for cover. Innocent days. The meta-pop thing was interesting for five minutes, but now it's just annoying, and the BS went onto far worse things - particularly the interchangeable female singers, directly contradicting the stern message of this song. Prejudices about the BS aside, will the record be saved by the B-side? On musical terms it's a good track but the lyrics are another critique of songwriting. Can't be doing. Ashtray.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><b>B-Movie: <i>The Soldier Stood Alone</i></b>. The single before <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93sCH85732o" target="_blank">Remembrance Day</a>. This is nearly as good. Gem.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14263300799761107648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963835422094102879.post-6456558586922472592016-11-21T14:56:00.002+00:002016-11-28T15:05:11.503+00:00The Siren - a Legend of the APEs story<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I was up before the Germans. In trainers and a glorified string vest (fully breathable, seasonally adjustable, £159.99) I ran three laps of the complex, timing myself. Thirty minutes and a bit, which at my usual pace added up to something over six kilometres. I run at at eight minute mile pace, not bad for my age but a full minute slower than my peak a quarter of a century ago. Back then, I cared little for running; it was too easy, and to run at speed made me look unattractively keen. I mused upon what I might once have been capable of, had I put the hours in...</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<b>To read the rest of this story on Kindle, please get it from Amazon.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>We at <i>Jon Horne's New Words</i> apologise to readers for the inconvenience. I'm trying to sort it so that I can publish the stories on Kindle and leave them on here.</b></div>
Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14263300799761107648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963835422094102879.post-29214024355999726932016-09-01T15:46:00.001+01:002016-11-10T11:00:12.591+00:00Ten Years White<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">(what we did on our holidays, August 2016)</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I sit on and touch hot earth</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Brush grass from the stone</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Leave flowers, promise more</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Across <b><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Helredale+Rd,+Whitby+YO22+4JA/@54.4767815,-0.6087025,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x487f17757f8917b1:0xce59a184cd790587!8m2!3d54.4767815!4d-0.6065138" target="_blank">Helredale</a></b> the North Sea waits</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Gravediggers joke and make clay piles</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">White ghosts of rain on <b><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Europort,+Rotterdam,+Netherlands/@51.9414283,4.0833234,12z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x47c452bae08aa485:0xc04b4add99f44a47!8m2!3d51.9432256!4d4.150799" target="_blank">Europoort</a></b></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Thirty thousand tons twist stiffly to dock</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Wader bills of windmills spin, evenly</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Moderating the east wind</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Gusting across the continent</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Flat factory roofs, canals and estuaries</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Ruled straight by dredge and drained by mill</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Give way to brown pine, French signs in</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Hillside towns empty in daylight, rambling</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Like brambles around <b><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Schengen,+Luxembourg/@49.4990589,6.2567854,12z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x47953fbe9d06dbe7:0x400d1d6d1057110!8m2!3d49.4709461!4d6.365046" target="_blank">Schengen</a></b></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The meltdown factory squats like a great</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Multi-legged beast across <b><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Saarbr%C3%BCcken,+Germany/@49.2470726,6.8424552,11z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x4795b152e302c0eb:0x422d4d510db6b80!8m2!3d49.2401572!4d6.9969327" target="_blank">Saarbrücken</a></b>. Metre-wide</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Pipes jointed and ready to animate</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Red walls a scaled thorax, rippling</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Decorated steeples, fodder for the machine creature</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Basle,+Switzerland/@47.5546097,7.5594406,13z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x479049c72769304f:0x361ceb70f36d8a90!8m2!3d47.5595986!4d7.5885761" target="_blank">Basel</a></b>’s motorway displays its wealth crassly</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The city modest in comparison</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Where money is made, grey good taste</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Signs in spacious font in yellow-lit tunnels</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">To F, D, CH and I. I follow I.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">A tunnel separates German from Italian, then</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Lugano,+Switzerland/@46.0293394,8.8547211,11z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x47842df76a4211f1:0xef8c04212ea1f8e0!8m2!3d46.0036778!4d8.951052" target="_blank">Lugano</a></b>, private lakesides, even more flash cars</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Terraces made for display are empty</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">As kettle-air predicts a thunderstorm</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">In the night, explosions. Rain drums on the roof.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The Mediterranean shines. <b><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Nice,+France/@43.7030414,7.1828944,12z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x12cdd0106a852d31:0x40819a5fd979a70!8m2!3d43.7101728!4d7.2619532" target="_blank">Nice</a></b> burns and grieves.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Deep cut valleys now one-way streets</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I shut my window to windscreen-cleaners</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">A flick of the wiper, a curse in English</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I park and shelter in an air-conditioned waiting room</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I love the sound of an engine, although my ears ring</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">And I fear for my hearing. Against the ferry’s funnel</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I doze in its shade. If you like, reliving the prenatal</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Not that anyone believes that any more</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I am surrounded by a pink sleeping bag and conversation</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">My daughter and I in goggles, face down in</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/07020+Rena+Majore+Province+of+Olbia-Tempio,+Italy/@41.1625021,9.1734633,15z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x12dbe1fb3e55a599:0x4046510158ba23e4!8m2!3d41.1634899!4d9.1829833" target="_blank">Rena Majori</a></b> bay, as clear as lemonade</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Fish dimensioned like fine-toothed combs</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Green over seaweed, sandy over sand</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">It takes time to see they are transparent</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Pine needles mute footsteps. The canopy fends off</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The sun. At six, it’s already too hot to be running</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">But we do, anyway. An empty beach awaits</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The crowds. Tables line a wall. A generator hums</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">A drinks-seller brushes red dust from his van</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Is+Arutas+beach/@39.9530762,8.3988762,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x12dd747758e255c3:0xa0250d44f3aeb2e!8m2!3d39.9530762!4d8.4010649" target="_blank">Is Aruntas</a></b>, risotto sand, pebbles in 1:20 scale</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Kites, parasols and nods of recognition (not to us)</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">A shoal of silver somethings, black-eyed, shimmering</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">A wave in still sea, like curtains separating us</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The shallow from the deep</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Braided head, face heavy with foundation</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Jolted glance at the sound of a male voice</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Betrays the display of confidence</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Factor eight at most spread over bare arms</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">And hands that have never held a steering wheel</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Ever louder as night wears on, <b><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/09170+Oristano,+Province+of+Oristano,+Italy/@39.8995752,8.5765197,14z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x12dd9be7ed5515ed:0xa58565a678eb8601!8m2!3d39.906182!4d8.5883863" target="_blank">Oristano</a></b> is on holiday</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Here, daring all to hush them. An old man does</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">And they do. At three in the morning a shout: Marco!</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">To someone’s delight, Marco throws the first punch</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">And pulls up a tent in frustration. Mary is Assumed.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Mary, prone and mediaeval, decorates the church</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Of <b><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/07031+Castelsardo+Province+of+Sassari,+Italy/@40.9129539,8.7059149,15z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x12dc76578d96bc05:0xcea0cdfd7249a71c!8m2!3d40.913692!4d8.708592" target="_blank">Castelsardo</a></b>. Wires go to the ceiling and I fear</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">She may be assumed theatrically. In a transept, fires of Hell</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Engulf a soul like red ribbons around a cake. The dead</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Of world wars, here like everywhere, share surnames</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I am wearing the shirt I had on when my daughter was born</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">There are pictures to prove it, and they are her</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Favourites of me, ragged and long-haired, holding her, </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Taken by her exhausted mother through tears</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Propped up on pillows in a high hospital cot</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">We are boating on the <b><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Ard%C3%A8che,+France/@44.8139,3.8133543,9z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x12b4d646459ecd55:0x3093cafcbe325e0!8m2!3d44.759629!4d4.5624426" target="_blank">Ardèche</a></b>, as busy as a motorway</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">She wants another picture, me in the shirt</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Her beside me, both of us grinning in the sun</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Taken by her mother, through splashes. She thinks</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">With growing sophistication, that it would be cute</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">A money-off deal: all-day hire of a canoe, plus barrel, oars</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">And a lift to and from the river. We have capsized</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">And I can’t see. I yell her name. Her mother finds her</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Afloat, carries her to shore. This is the last time</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I will wear the shirt. Irony frightens me</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">From here to home, a <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Jura,+France/@46.7819516,5.1688269,9z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x478d22493eb71b43:0x309ce34b30d27f0!8m2!3d46.762475!4d5.6729159" target="_blank">pleasant anticlimax</a>. <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/Baden-Baden,+Germany/Zeebrugge-Dorp,+8380+Bruges,+Belgium/@49.9798458,3.4641307,7z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x47971f4391f73145:0x630f291933f3c5c1!2m2!1d8.2285242!2d48.76564!1m5!1m1!1s0x47c4a9948524a747:0x79357fded366f85c!2m2!1d3.195115!2d51.326515!3e0" target="_blank">Longer on</a></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/Baden-Baden,+Germany/Zeebrugge-Dorp,+8380+Bruges,+Belgium/@49.9798458,3.4641307,7z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x47971f4391f73145:0x630f291933f3c5c1!2m2!1d8.2285242!2d48.76564!1m5!1m1!1s0x47c4a9948524a747:0x79357fded366f85c!2m2!1d3.195115!2d51.326515!3e0" target="_blank">Kilometres</a> than drama, and I’m glad of that</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">No need to make anything up. Home to find</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Eldest is well, home is standing, old cat is ailing</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Ten years white, the van will be green next year</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14263300799761107648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963835422094102879.post-48988616362559203182016-07-13T14:55:00.001+01:002016-07-13T16:58:09.910+01:00When Caroline Changed Her Name<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Dawn lies in the bed where they spent their last night</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">No stranger to regrets, this one is a keeper, concerning</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The morning when she packed his bag and sent him on his way</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i>Just go,</i> she said, without a smile, and now he’s gone</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Trawling paid, then, if you were careful what you spent</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Give him this, he never was one that she had to rob</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Of his wages at the quayside as some wives did</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">When the boat disappeared in a swell, he left her in credit, just</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">And then, nothing changes. She was alone anyway</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">She looks after everything the way she always did</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Money still comes in, for a while. But they’ll stop it</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">And when they do, she’s not a hope to fight them on her own</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">A drink with the girls proves too much. Alone on the sea front</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Mirror ball flashes on the pier, like a lighthouse beam</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Brief anonymity, lemonade and barley wine</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Lead to unexpected smiles, a dance and then a pull</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">She sends Caroline, nine, off to school with a kiss</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Pleats ironed, blazer frayed, face scrubbed of tears</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">In half-light, told not to tell, she didn’t see at first</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">A familiar shape in bed. A gasp of joy, then stamping rage</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Thirty-one is too young to be wearing widow’s weeds</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">And too old to be choosy - isn’t that what they’d be saying?</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Instead of glancing at her, furtively, and clicking tongues</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">And walking on, hands clasping the handles of shopping baskets</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Half an hour of make-up, nails red, feet squeezed into</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Unyielding patent leather. A skirt - <i>not too long, eh</i></span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Men, polite or leering, greeted with the same smile</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Marooned on the front desk, she is the face of the company</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The girls in the canteen don’t ask, if she doesn’t want to tell</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Listening to them while they smoke is better than the radio</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Caroline is a worry - quiet, still reading picture books</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">She sees out seven months, then hands in her notice apologetically</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The money made sees them through the hottest ever summer</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">She hides at the beach or on a coach, not at home</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">From the news. When the boat is declared lost</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">She wishes Caroline would cry, or let on that she understands</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The new man, to whom Caroline now speaks sometimes</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Proves a stayer. He has a mother and a sister too</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Both so respectable that they don’t have to show it</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Sharing a semi and a car, grandmother and aunt in waiting</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The wedding is on Christmas Eve, Registry Office only</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Drinks with the mother and the sister, no other family</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">In attendance. Late husband’s relations informed</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">One reply: Whatever they say, I wish you well. No clue as from whom</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">With inevitable pregnancy, another issue: Caroline and he or she</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Cannot have different names. A long evening explaining</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Registry Office once again. With folded arms, Caroline</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Won’t sign. No need. The school receives the new name anyway</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14263300799761107648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963835422094102879.post-47239929116260770742016-06-20T12:26:00.001+01:002016-11-09T14:58:17.874+00:00A Small Decision (sample)<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>I remember the moor, no longer in bloom but still having a residual vibrancy from the late-morning sunlight refracting through dew on brown autumn heather. There were still cows out on the lower fields, taking what for them would be last meals of fresh grass before death or winter hay.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>I had half a second’s warning. Behind a blind summit was a dip just deep enough to hide a crashed car - or to hide a sheep, which is what they had hit before turning over. A white Escort, an ancient Mark Two, was on its side, one door half off. The body of the sheep lay on the verge, ten yards in front of the car. A man lay between the car and the sheep, on the road itself. He could have been sleeping in the sun. It is possible that he was still alive when we passed. I think I saw a woman still in the car, but that might be because I know she was there.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
...<br />
<br />
To read the rest, <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01N3P3FFX" target="_blank">go to Amazon.co.uk</a></div>
Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14263300799761107648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963835422094102879.post-4155568657617889302016-06-20T12:20:00.001+01:002016-06-20T12:57:49.483+01:00Sea Glass<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">(Seaham beach, March 2016)</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">One day it will all be like this</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Worn down, opalescent</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Indistinct, collectable remains</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Stone, shell, glass, china, brick</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Rust and plastic</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Nestling in sand, clay, coal</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Preserved in coarse conglomerate</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">One piece, held up to the greying sky</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Kidney-shaped, pink and smooth</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Framed by small fingers, face proudly</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Turned to the wind. Our girl</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Keeps it safe</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Wrapped in orange polythene</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">To be displayed or used, later lost</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">By things that are extruded hot</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Will our civilisation be known</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">One in millions fossilised, the rest</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Broken up and recycled</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Except plastic</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Sculpted by erosion, melted</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Reformed by continental drift</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Waves break on groynes, sending up spray</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Blown ashore, it rains down</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">She squeals and scampers. Distracted</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">By piddock holes and green glass, I say</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Don’t get cold</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">She pulls her hood up, it blows off</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">She slides on her knees in pebbles, laughs</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">And tongues a loose tooth</span></div>
<br />
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14263300799761107648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963835422094102879.post-87696425177653718242015-11-26T22:45:00.001+00:002015-11-26T22:46:22.759+00:00My Swimming Days - The Book<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-E8S1Tx82g1Y/VleKt-QateI/AAAAAAAAAQ4/6ujx908qsmA/s1600/MSDcover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-E8S1Tx82g1Y/VleKt-QateI/AAAAAAAAAQ4/6ujx908qsmA/s320/MSDcover.jpg" width="200" /></a><br />
A year of stories from this blog, tidied into book form, printed on delicious paper and covered in the picture to the left of this babble.<br />
<br />
Get it from Amazon, £5.99 a pop. Free postage for book orders over £10 - you can buy someone else's book too. Get from here:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/My-Swimming-Days-twelve-stories/dp/151775741X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1448277541&sr=8-1&keywords=my+swimming+days" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: x-large;">MY SWIMMING DAYS</span></a>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14263300799761107648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963835422094102879.post-78462636915447328382015-08-21T01:20:00.000+01:002015-08-21T23:36:44.564+01:00Festival - a Legend of the APEs story<div class="p1">
<div class="p1">
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(<a href="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/81131204/festival.pdf" target="_blank">click here to download as a PDF file</a>)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“You can’t be a man of the people sitting behind a desk in your London office,” one of my Martians said, over a £15 latte with trimmings that I had told her very specifically was not going onto my expenses bill.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I don’t sit, I stand up,” I replied tartly, knowing that this would only make it worse. People seeking to revitalise British politics do not have to stand up at a desk, with a laptop perched on top of three early-1980s mint-condition editions of Richard G Lipsey’s <i>Introduction To Positive Economics</i> and a decade’s worth of the <i>Lloyd’s Bank Economic Yearbook</i>, bound in red leather - the binding being a present from my prospective father-in-law. Three weeks ago I put my back out, which any Earthling would regard as a thoroughly populist thing to have done, but which the Martians see as a sign of weakness that must be never be alluded to, for fear of <i>polluting the brand</i>, as they call it.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A reedier voice said: “Sir, we are talking credibility <i>in the electoral sense</i>.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I love it when the Martians call me <i>sir</i>. In the office it is a rule, even for them. We may not yet be in parliament, but the polls are going our way and we are practising for power.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I take it you have a suggestion, Ash.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I get to call them by their first names. Everyone else has a staff made up of Ruperts and Hugos with the occasional Clarissa. I have three<i> </i>Ashes. This one is the male, Asian Ash, short for Ashma, an unfortunate choice by his parents, given the wheeze in his voice. The first was Scouse Ash, short for Aisling, who is ginger and freckly in a way that I rather like. She came with a Masters in Social Psychology and a fundamental mistrust of the kind of politics that I represent - something that she and I share. She is the most human of all my Martians, with oddly normal penchants for diets, shoes and Tranmere Rovers, whose under-15 team her youngest brother plays for. I therefore cherish her opinion as I cherish the toast in an anchovy rarebit. Not present at this informal meeting was Ashley, a handsome, chiselled and deeply unpleasant Old Salopian (I had to Google what that meant; you should do the same if you’re interested) who will one day bring us all down, either deliberately as a power move, or accidentally if someone finds the hoard of extreme pornography and/or blackmail letters that I imagine he hides under innocuous filenames on his office computer.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Well sir...”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Don’t tell me I have to wear a hard hat. They make me look like a sadomasochist and they hurt my auricles.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“No, we’ve done enough of those for the present time-band. Public credulity rates are at a post-peak precipice. What we need to do is engineer a scenario with cross-spectrum penetration and crowd-sourced outreach potential.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sometimes silence is the only option.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“We also need to shift the Manhattan on your age-demographic - pull it to the left, as it were.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“The left? Excuse me, did I miss a memo?”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In a tone like a bored car alarm, Aisling said: “It’s a bar chart. Left means younger.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Thank you Ash,” I said. She was looking longingly at a brick-patterned display of cakes on top of the counter, which presumably didn’t figure in her latest diet. In the queue, young men with architectural haircuts had stopped glancing surreptitiously at me and were staring straight at her. Whether it was lust or because they had never heard a live Liverpudlian accent before was hard to judge. Regarding the former, I didn’t have many of them down as heterosexual. Perhaps they thought she was going to push in the cake queue.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ashma continued: “The closer to the mainstream we paddle, the more mature the age bracket becomes. If the mode can’t be pulled back a little, then natural collateral damage kicks in, and that’s a problem when it comes to future ratings.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Ash?” I said to Aisling.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“He means your supporters are so old, they’re likely to drop dead before they get a chance to vote for you, so you need to get some younger ones on your side. Fat chance of that if you carry on being a misogynist arsehole.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I beg your pardon!”</span></i></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"><i></i></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Sorry, a misogynist arsehole, <i>sir</i>.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Thank you. Well I didn’t write the bloody speech, did I? Did you see how long the sentences were? I was merrily spouting off about fair play in times of austerity before I even saw the bit about paternity tests and child benefit. I could hardly stop mid-sentence and say I was talking rubbish.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She was right. The speech had been a PR disaster. Not realising that one of our baby Martians (interns, unpaid, deservedly so in this case) had written it without help from the Ashes, I hadn’t taken the trouble to read it before delivering it to an almost exclusively male and mostly Asian audience of ‘business leaders’ (read: shopkeepers with pretensions) in Bradford. If you’re going to call me racist for calling them sexist, feel free. I said mostly Asian, by the way; the non-Asians were just as bad. I saw their reactions, and the bit of the speech that Aisling was complaining about got the loudest applause of the night, from wavy-haired Pakistanis and bullet-headed Yorkshiremen both.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Aisling said: “You never used to play to the crowd like that. They used to respond to you, not just lap it up while you pander to their basest instincts. I never expected to agree with your policies but I always felt that you were speaking the truth, even if it made me uncomfortable. Isn’t that true, Ash?”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Always an iconoclast!”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I thought you liked everything to be iconic,” I sneered.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I think you’re pulling my plonker, sir.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Aisling looked as if she was about to be sick.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I know that Ashma is more comfortable with phrases such as <i>‘crowd-sourced outreach’</i> than <i>‘pulling my plonker’</i>, but I also know that without his grasp of stats and how they relate to the supposedly real world that the rest of us occupy - how a point pushed in a speech can lead to a percentage point gained in an opinion poll - I would at best be a local councillor somewhere in the Midlands, standing as an Independent because I couldn’t make the grade in either of the major parties.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“But now I should be more circumspect.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“No, that’s our basic problem, sir. You can’t back down now. I’ll see if I can pull the paternity test idea round to making the dads responsible. You’ll sound like a killjoy but you won’t look as if you want to force us all back in the kitchen.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Right.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“The thing is, without you providing the common touch, we don’t have a lot to work with. It’s not as if there’s any substance here,” Aisling added, enjoying her moment.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I will punish her severely for that. Touring the country as I regularly do, the people I meet range from the enthusiastically stupid to the sourly misanthropic. I spend most of my time between engagements wondering how in God’s name I can have ended up representing people like this, questioning what aspects of my beliefs have propelled these dingbats into my orbit. I do know, actually. Although I make out that the old definitions of right and left are redundant in a post-industrial society (I don’t put it that way, I prefer to say, with feeling: <i>“Who are the bosses and who are the workers, now that the factories and forges have gone, now that the real work has gone abroad to China, to India, to unregulated labour markets; now that the industry which made the north of England, the Black Country, south Wales and Clydeside the beating heart of the world economy has been sold and abandoned by successive governments for generations?”</i>), actually I am a centre-right economic and social liberal with protectionist instincts who could, without much squeezing, fit into either the Labour or Tory camp. This moderation, you would think, would keep the weirdoes away, but instead the outliers see me as a blank canvas onto which they can project whatever they like. I am a working-class northerner (I’m neither), championing the forgotten workers’ cause against the metropolitan élite, or else I’m an old-school-tie, wogs-begin-at-Calais patriot championing the British cause against the ever-present threat from our nearest neighbours (I went to a comprehensive and I love France). In a sense though, they are both right. A politician is a representative of the people who follow him or her, so all of us really are blank canvasses. My lot happen not to be very bright, or even very nice, and this does rather rub off on me. For her cheek, I can make Scouse Ash spend days and days air-kissing south-coast ex-Tories so embittered that they are almost septic, who follow me because they think I’m strong on immigration and tough on the French. They will feed her their wives’ disgusting Victoria sponges and she’ll have to open her mouth and chew. I will follow that up with an excursion to the wastelands of Yorkshire and Durham - endless meet-and-greets with jaundiced, booze-pickled old union men who spend their lives in a state of beatifically northern self-righteousness over the miners’ strike, and have turned to me because they think I’m going to bring back ‘the <i>real</i> work’ (see above), not to mention that my federalism (<i>“a strong Scotland, a strong Yorkshire, the North-West, the Midlands and Wales, self-determining, but always united!”</i>) sounds a lot like London-bashing, particularly when I want it to. When in London incidentally, I speak to ‘real Londoners’, <i>priced out of their own homes by the bubble-blowing policies of successive governments.</i></span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“So what’s the solution? How am I going to get down with the kids? I think I left my hoodie and baseball cap at home.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I’d stick to the middle-aged if I were you,” Aisling muttered, needlessly condemning herself to a week in our Doncaster branch, rooting out a handful of BNP types who keep trying to join us under pseudonyms.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ashma said: “The festival season, sir.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“What?”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Live debates on the festival circuit.” </span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Who the hell is that going to persuade? I did Edinburgh once. You couldn’t hear me over the noise of the pub downstairs.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“We’re banking on that,” Aisling said.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You’ll be cleaning the toilets in a minute, love, I thought.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Explain.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Proper festivals, not Hay or Edinburgh. You’re there to be seen. Getting heard is a bonus.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“<i>Proper</i> as in cider and mud?”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“You’ll find they’ve moved on a little since your day. Most of them have a literary stage now.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I didn’t know when they thought my ‘day’ was. Not recently, I assumed.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“But music festivals nonetheless?”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Exactly.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Hobnobbing with Noel Gallagher backstage? It’s been done, badly.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“You won’t be backstage,” Aisling said, “you’ll be out-front with everyone else, and then you’ll jump up for the interview, pint in hand, mud on your jeans.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I’ll be keeping a bucket of mud outside my trailer, will I? Not even the public are that gullible.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“You’ll be camping, in the public campsites. No backstage passes, that’s the beauty of it.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I won’t,” I said.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“You will,” Aisling replied triumphantly, “sir.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It got worse. It was unacceptable, for reasons of the whole cross-spectrum penetration business, for me to go alone. That I could have handled. I would have stayed in my tent all day, walked to the interview via a bar and some convenient puddles, then gone back afterwards and drunk gin and tonic alone until I passed out. It would have been like a brief and noisy solitary confinement. Oh no, said the Martians, I had to be seen out and about, with my present partner-stroke-probable future wife on my arm at all times. My ratings amongst the distaff electorate are very poor, they explained, partly due to my abysmal lack of interest in women’s issues and my lousy attitude toward women themselves, but mostly because the ladies needed to see me with at least a permanent partner (although I would be so much easier to sell if I had a straightforward wife and kids) in order for them to feel that I have the requisite instinctive comprehension of ordinary people’s concerns. So, like it or not, my girlfriend was going to have to come to the festival and more importantly be photographed there.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“What the bloody hell do you think she’ll say to that?” I reasoned.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“You’ll have to persuade her,” they replied. “Persuasion is your job.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Anyway,” Aisling said, “I’ll be there with Ash - in the background of course. You won’t know we’re there, but we’ll look after your missus while you’re working. Tell her that.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I thought for a moment she meant she would be accompanied by Ashma, who is the sort of man - I use the term loosely - who would get trench-foot if he stepped off the pavement onto a grass verge. The thought of him suffering lightened my spirits briefly. Then I realised she was talking about Ashley - <i>horrible</i> Ashley, braying, muscly Ashley. You could say my misery was complete, but only in the way of a defendant seeing the judge drape a square of black felt across his head, as opposed to the real completion of Pierrepoint pulling the handle.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Aisling might have an Irish name and the complexion of a Viking; she might have just enough twinkling charm to get away with calling my fiancée ‘your missus’, but she’s no more a prole than I am: she went to a minor public school on the Wirral, day-girls only, no boarders. Her parents are an investment broker and a teacher, both still working. I make it my business to know these things. Ashma wouldn’t have survived at a comprehensive, or indeed at a boarding school with the Ashleys of this world, so he was educated at home. Perhaps it shows or perhaps his mother did a sterling job to make him as normal as he is. Compared to this lot, I am actually a man of the people - state-educated, provincial, industrial middle-class. My dad worked on the fish docks, for himself in later years, a boss, not a worker, although I’ve seldom known anyone work as hard, and the reason I’ve turned myself into what I am, the reason I have a First in Applied Political Economy and years of experience working for politicians right across the left-right spectrum, the reason I spend ninety per cent of my time in London despite being a leading light in party devoted to decentralisation, has always been to avoid working on the docks. These days the avoidance is metaphorical; the docks don’t exist, thanks to forty years of snivelling cowardice on the part of successive Governments of every stripe caving in to the eco-boys <i>and</i> the French over fishing quotas (<i>I meant that bit - did you notice?</i>) but the smell of trimethylamine and their whole frostbitten presence still hangs over me.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is why I keep the Martians around me, and is why, when it comes to the nitty-gritty of meaningless gestures to drum up support amongst selected sections of the voting public, I do what they tell me. It was why, that very night, I was gently massaging my fiancée’s shoulders in front of her home computer - partly to show affection but mostly to stop her from jumping up and running out of the room - as we read the line-up of the festival that Ash and Ash wanted us to attend.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“You like them, don’t you? I’ve heard you playing them in the car. And <i>they’re</i> on your running playlist, look,” I said.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’m not going to tell you the names of the acts. I’d heard of some of them, and I like a couple of them, genuinely, but for me they are part of another world, the one you probably live in. The names sound wrong coming out of my mouth. Not for me a Gordon Brown / Arctic Monkeys personal credibility haemorrhage, as Ashma once called it.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“There’s a comedy tent.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She peered at the screen again, then up at me.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Do I have a choice?”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I smiled, meaning: <i>Yes, you have the choice either to come along, or else find yourself a partner who doesn’t have a public persona to maintain</i>.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’m out of practice packing. To get into the mood, I changed into a t-shirt, jeans and hiking boots. What I needed to carry, it turned out, were three t-shirts, a spare pair of jeans, numerous underpants, a pair of wellies and sandals - and towels, lots of towels. It took many iterations and three different rucksacks to achieve this: I should have had a look at some websites for advice, but I’m always concerned that someone might be logging my searches. I braced myself for a shouting match with my fiancée as she tried to fill a suitcase with coordinated outfits and high-heeled shoes, but instead she came downstairs twenty minutes after I’d finished packing, carrying a tiny holdall.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Hope you don’t mind me being sweaty,” she chirped. “Don’t worry, I’ve got lots of knickers in here, and plenty of underarm. You can take my wellies, you’ll look butch carrying them.”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She was wearing grey shorts and a darkish pink top, with walking boots not unlike mine. She had found a cap to wear, her hair ponytailed and threaded out of the back. A pashmina was folded into the handle of the holdall, ready to drape across her shoulders at the first sign of cold. She looked... lovely actually; a little wholesome for my tastes, but, yes, lovely. The get-up suited the sunny disposition that seemed to have taken her over. Now I started to worry: she was beginning to act as if we were going there to enjoy ourselves. I cursed my powers of persuasion.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Where’s the tent?” she said.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Ash will sort that out.”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Which one? No, if we’re going to do this, we need to sort ourselves out. I thought that was the point. Don’t worry, there’s a Decathlon at Lakeside, we’ll get one there. It’s on the way.”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The point,</i> I wanted to yell in her face, <i>is for me to be photographed at the festival with you there for decoration, not for both of us to be seen prancing around a dystopian simulacrum of the consumer society in darkest Essex looking for tents.</i> And then I thought, perhaps a bit of accidental exposure alongside White Van Man is precisely the point. Getting papped there <i>and</i> at the festival would be like getting a favourable write-up in the <i>Sun</i> and the <i>Guardian</i> on the same day.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Good idea,” I replied breezily.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“And you can get a hat - <i>for the sun,</i>” she added, in a mumsy tone that I could have done without.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Days went by. The rucksack and holdall sat threateningly in the spare bedroom. Tickets arrived at my desk labelled “Admission and General Camping”. I searched the envelope in vain for a VIP pass. I spent hours on the treadmill, trying to up my stamina in preparation for the ordeal to come. Then the fateful Friday morning arrived. We showered together, put on our Festival clothes and we were off, my fiancée and I, to mingle with the target demographic (35-45, degree-level education, working full-time, ‘partnered’ and with children all called Alfie or Emily).</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I had a moment of weakness before we left, a frantic check through my rucksack to check I hadn’t forgotten anything, and a swift tug on the doors of my two home-safes (the one my fiancée knows about and the one she doesn’t) to make sure that both were securely locked. The wasted time put paid to breakfast, unfortunately. Never mind, I thought, there will be food at the festival.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I must say, Lakeside was a success. The wide aisles in the huge retail space encourage <i>striding</i>, and with my sporting background I am good at that. Camping equipment brings out the Desert Rat in all of us. It is hard not to strike a commanding pose when pointing at canvas. Even the weediest man has the air of a giant next to a tent and a Calor gas camping stove. Allowing ones partner, an attractive woman (though not intimidatingly so, from the point of view of the female voter) who was looking her best in a rustic sort of way - to choose the double sleeping bag added an agreeable erotic frisson. All of this happened in view of mobile phone cameras, one at first, building up to three by the time we reached the till. <i>How’s that for cross-spectrum penetration?</i> I thought. I’m being Twittered and Instagrammed with not a single paparazzo involved. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was daunting though, realising I would have to be <i>on</i> for forty-eight hours straight. In a tent I wouldn’t even be able to snore without someone hearing.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As we ventured past Colchester, traffic got heavier, and finally came to a stop within a mile of our destination. In the two hours we spent queuing within sight of the festival entrance, with the car engine turned off in the baking heat, my fiancée loudly played CDs of the acts that she wanted to go and see. She was still taking the idea of enjoying the festival too literally for me. I concentrated on silently answering imaginary political and personal questions despite the ongoing racket. After a while the questioning, in the style of John Humphrys but mostly in the voice of my father, descended into the sort of raw personal abuse to which my father would never have resorted, but which my psyche dishes out at will, especially when the target is myself. I gave up and waited for the queue to move.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Inside the site, the queue went triple-laned, and I started to get looks from all sides. I am increasingly prominent these days, surprisingly so for a politician not actually in parliament yet, whose party still only has a handful of local councillors. I learned a long time ago to act the part even when no one was taking notice. I glanced at each one of them and gave the slightest of smiling nods in acknowledgement of their interest. By the law of averages, few of those staring will be sympathetic to our cause, but even if they hate my guts they will feel a little warmed, in spite of themselves.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The people taking our tickets took no interest in my smiles and nods, so I took it a little further.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Looking forward to it,” I said as if they had asked, and on my left, my fiancée gave an excellent display of grinning teeth to back me up. This she continued throughout the process of parking and lugging our possessions to our chosen spot, picking up wristbands, and even while putting up the tent. For this I was grateful because however commanding I might appear next to an erect tent, while it is going up I am unmistakably a middle-aged man with a dodgy back. My fiancée has fifteen years on me, and put the tent up on her own, smile intact. By clever use of gestures and chat I was able to make it seem superficially as if I was in charge. A lot of cameras were out, although none were pointed at me: most people were taking pictures of their own tents, presumably for Twitter, such is the narcissism of the age.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With our bags safely stored in the tent and a day and a bit to wait before the interview, there was little for it but to enter the festival grounds and soak up the atmosphere. My fiancée was boiling hot from her exertion, so I bought her a cold lager, which led to three more in rapid succession, leaving me forty pounds lighter, financially speaking, and a little more drunk than I would have liked. It hadn’t rained for weeks: far from wading through mud, the entering crowds kicked up a dustcloud worthy of migrating wildebeest.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I could see straight away that Aisling’s crack about appealing to the middle-aged was not unjustified. This was a gathering of the 1970s-born generation. There were youngsters around, but they all seemed to be hanging around with their parents. I tried to imagine my parents taking me to something like this. In my day, you knew where you stood with your parents, which was as far as possible from where they were standing. Had the youth of the nation completely lost its spirit? I could use this, I decided. Youthful rebellion - alluded to, nothing more - provided an image of renewal (could I bring nationalism in at this point?) that hinted at virility whilst remaining gender-unspecific and not at all creepy. Poking fun at these kids’ conformity would, at the simplest level, ingratiate me to the parents, which was of course the point. I would have to keep the humour sly, so that they didn’t feel as if their young were under attack. Parents can be protective toward their offspring - apparently. Mine never were. I would have to be subtle also because I’d be talking bullshit. Kids were hanging around with their mums and dads in order to score a free pint of expensive lager before going off on their own: their behaviour was in reality a function of inflated beverage prices, not the apathy of post-banking crisis youth.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My fiancée had returned with two more pints of beer, then gone to find a toilet, and I had inadvertently drunk both of them as I was musing about my potential speech. I’m not normally a drinker, but the afternoon was getting hotter by the minute, and dust was starting to catch in my throat. I decided I had better replace her drink, otherwise her pleasant and amenable mood might not last as long as I needed it to - which was twenty-four hours minimum, given that we could if necessary make a dash for home after the interview, no matter how much the Ashes wanted us there for the whole thing.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I got up and immediately fell sideways, bouncing off a man who was walking by and then tripping over a woman who was setting out a picnic rug. I apologised, not too profusely but with what I hoped was self-deprecating wit. I began seriously to wish I hadn’t skipped breakfast, and wondered if I should get some kind of sustenance inside me before I started consuming more alcohol.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What I wanted was a bacon sandwich, but to a public figure, they are this year’s toxic foodstuff. I happen to think that Ed Miliband was ordered by <i>his</i> Martians to eat one in order to prove that he’s not really Jewish, but maybe that’s me having a lower opinion of the electorate than I should have. He should have known better anyway, being at least part-Martian himself. Thinking about Miliband’s agonised bacon face killed my appetite, so I returned to the bar and queued for beer. Some band or other had finished on the main stage - actually I knew who the band were, by the age - my age - of the thirsty people suddenly swarming at the bar. I remembered from reading the line-ups - and I remembered deciding that I wouldn’t be seen dead watching - a reformed eighties synth outfit who no longer had the hair to lather with gel and put into ridiculous shapes as they used to. There were more like this on the bill, nostalgia acts to please fifty-year-olds, forty-year-olds, thirty-year-olds. Then there was the long list of unknown acts. Probably some of those were themselves five years out of date, and were there to attract the twenty-five-year-old nostalgics; I didn’t know. Swelled with codgers like me, the beer marquee was suddenly as full as a West End pub on a Friday night, or the bar at Aston University Students’ Union, circa bloody <i>decades</i> ago.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Shut your eyes and you wouldn’t know the difference,” one of the crowd said, about the band, which made me even more glad I’d missed them. I thought, how can I make a speech that hints at revitalising the country’s culture through youth-style social/artistic rebellion when my generation is represented by this tired old rubbish?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I held my ground, as I always try to do, against the crush, caught the barman’s eye with a raised brow of my own, and bought two more beers at a fiver each. At this rate I was going to be borrowing money off Aisling before the weekend was out.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Or Ashley. In the brief gaps between crowds of punters leaving the main stage area, I could pick out my fiancée sitting close to the spot I had vacated. Next to her, unmistakeable because of his size, the jut of his chin and the angle of his bearing - he always looked as if he had just thrown back his luxuriant hair and was gazing out to sea - was Ashley. She seemed tiny and vulnerable next to him. Once again they disappeared behind a swathe of sandal-footed bare legs. I couldn’t help but feel protective toward her, and quickened my pace. Almost inevitably, I stumbed on a raised divot. I felt myself begin to fall and the only other feeling I had was an intense irritation that I was going to have to go back to the bar and queue for yet more bloody drinks - unless I could just keep myself upright. In what must have been the blink of an eye, I gained control of my limbs, and then lost it again as the legs themselves seemed to take over, one buckling under me and the other shooting forward like the legs of a Cossack dancer. As one leg took my weight, the other shimmied back, then itself took the weight while the other one made a low half-step. While all this was going on I kept my arms raised and my eyes forward and in two or three steps I was upright, steady, and still holding onto the drinks. On my hands there was barely a drop of spilled beer. Years of running and the dancing days of my youth had served me well, I decided.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I turned to both sides and nodded with a half-smile, in case anyone had seen. I felt a fool of course, but the trick is always to pretend otherwise. I was still holding the smile when I reached my fiancée and Ashley.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I handed my fiancée her drink and said to Ashley: “I’d have bought you one if I’d known.”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“You made it, sir, I was starting to worry,” Ashley said.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The words arrived as a drawn-out glottal whine like the noise of a distant bandsaw, in an accent formed in the school dormitory and remolded by internships in the States, over-winters in the southern hemisphere, and seasons in Megève.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Less of the ‘sir’, we’re in public. How did you find us?”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“You’re hard to miss, with the staggering about and falling over. Nice recovery, by the way. So I hear you didn’t manage to put your own tent up. I hope we’re not going to be treated to images next week of you standing around being useless on YouTube. That’s so not why we’re here.”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Excuse me!” my fiancée said. “That’s not what I said at all.”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ashley ignored her, and added: “Seriously sir, if there’s anything else you can’t do, call us. We’ll arrange for you to look as if you’re doing something else. We’ll be in touch.”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With that, he rose to his full, impressive height in one movement.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Here’s your festival phones,” he said. He raised one eyebrow as if mugging for the cameras, and reached onto his pale blue man-bag. He pulled out two phones that looked ten years old and handed one to me, one to my fiancée. “No camera, no wi-fi, and it’s charged. You’ll find our number in ‘contacts’.”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He turned in the military fashion and began to stride off into the crowd. I tried to think of something to yell at his back that would stop him in his tracks, but nothing sprang to mind. Instead I concentrated on looking anywhere but at my fiancée.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“What?” she said, after taking a long time to spot that I was ignoring her. “We were discussing camping. I was telling him how easy our tent was to put up, and happened to say that we’re looking after your bad back. I barely know Ashley, I was trying to make conversation.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I’m sure. Well I’ve finished this beer. Shall we go and enjoy the festival then?” I mimed rabbit’s ears quotation marks around ‘enjoy the festival’.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Oh, for heaven’s sake!”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I conducted a brief recce of the Literary Tent, in which I would be debating. It was full, despite there being another band on the main stage. There was a bulky, middle-aged woman on the stage who appeared to be dressed in a floral curtain, and even that failed to cover her up. She was reading from a book, presumably her own, a passage set in a village square in Portugal - scents of wild herbs and pine, the usual - in which her eyes meet with those of a handsome local who turns out, hallelujah, to be a widower, and... I didn’t want to hear the rest. It was a bit florid. It was also quite hard to hear over the noise of the band on the main stage, and the sound-man kept turning her up. It was definitely her own work and it didn’t sound like fiction. I could tell that she wasn’t happy reading the story. It was plain to see in her eyes that she didn’t want to tell the world the details of her love life, but for reasons that seemed to tie in with her dress sense, the need to be artistic or ‘transgressive’, she felt that she had to. Maybe her publisher had told her to do it.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is how it is, I thought. Power used to be an aphrodisiac. Now it’s the other way around and you have to prove your virility before anyone listens to you. Once, the young were the ones who had all the sex, or wanted to but didn’t, and sang pop songs about it; meanwhile the middle-aged and the old got on with running the country and writing books about the human condition and the state of the world. Now the stage is overrun by men in their fifties singing juvenile songs and plinking about on keyboards, this silly old woman is forced to boast about her Latin lover in print and in public, and I am reduced to parading my girlfriend around a field in East Anglia in order to prove my manhood to the great mass of the middle-aged and middle-class.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Let’s move on,” I said to my fiancée.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I’m listening,” she whispered back crossly.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Fine,</i> I thought. I stood up and walked off with my hands in my pockets, looking in retrospect like a sullen, pouting teenager. I know this because I’ve seen the footage.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Topographically, the festival site was a natural bowl. As I stamped away from the literary tent I could feel myself being pulled to one side. To compensate, I leaned, which made me sway. Highly amplified music came from all sides, filtered by distance and the breeze so that all I could hear was a wooden thud like the repeated closing of a heavy kitchen door. These thuds came in separate rhythms from the different stages and tents dotted around the main stage down in the bowl, and as I walked I became sensitised to the syncopation, following the beats and waiting for two of them to hit together. I pictured it as three or four tennis players bouncing balls on the turf with their rackets at different heights. I desperately needed to eat something before my woozy state turned into full-on synaesthesia.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At times like this, you can keep your halloumi wraps and saltfish patties, only chips will do. I was not in a minority thinking this, and queued for a good twenty minutes, then just as the woman in the van was handing me my chips, I realised that I had spent all of my money on beer. She was still holding the tray of chips out for me, and I made the decision to take them off her before she could take them back. I was about to leap up, grab them like a seagull and run away when I felt a tap on my shoulder.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Hello,” Aisling said. “I’ve been looking for you.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I span around in surprise, then asked: “Have you got any money?”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“What? Yes, wait a second.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She reached into her handbag, pulled out a purse and began opening and closing zipped compartments. Finally she pulled out a ten pound note and handed it to me. I turned and waved it at the woman with the chips, who had gone behind the till. When she emerged again, she was serving someone else.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Excuse me,” I said. “My chips.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“You’re too late, someone else had them.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“You can’t do that! Can I have some now please?”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“There’s the queue.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“What?”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I don’t care who you are, <i>Mister man-of-the-people</i>, if you want chips, queue for them.” </span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In my mind, she had turned into a mediaeval hag, all chin-hairs and warts. Lamely I said: “I did.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With that, she turned to someone else, ignoring my further protests.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Never mind, eh?” Aisling said, leading me firmly away from the kiosk.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I was annoyed that Aisling hadn’t managed to pay for my chips, but was so pleased with her for inadvertently saving me from doing something incredibly stupid - stealing them - that I could have kissed her. Then I kissed her, which was incredibly stupid.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In my defence, I was drunk, lightheaded from hunger and suffering from mild heatstroke. These are the defences I’m going to have to use over the next few days as this whole bloody mess unravels.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Aisling took offence. She bolted back to the main stage which led to the VIP area, and that was the last I saw of her all weekend. I have no idea if she told Ashley, not that it mattered in the end.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I thought about chasing her across the long sloping paddock, but a brief moment of clarity showed me how like a dangerous lunatic I would have looked, chasing a small freckled woman, on whom I had just planted an unwanted kiss, across a field to the martial soundtrack of a thudding bass. Instead I trudged, defeated, back to my fiancée in the Literary Tent.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She hadn’t moved, but the curtain-clad author had been replaced by a young comedian who I recognised from television quizzes. My fiancée smiled at me. Evidently I was forgiven, which made me more miserable than ever. I thought briefly about breaking up with her, there and then. It would have got it out of the way. We could have gone home separately, one of us driving, the other with Ash and Ash. She could have stayed if she wanted, given that she was so keen to enjoy the festival, not to mention that she’d put the tent up by herself and deserved to have a night in it. On the other hand, I didn’t know if Aisling was going to tell, and if not, it could have been forgotten.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And so I settled down to ‘enjoy’ the festival. I was too sick in my stomach to be hungry any more, and I was more sober than I’d been in hours. I accompanied my fiancée to one of the smaller stages, where we watched the second half of an alt-country band’s doom-laden set of hushed pedal steel ballads, and then witnessed an unscheduled appearance by a young singer who even I know to be number-one in America. Once again the air above the crowd’s heads was chocka with camera-phones, and not one was pointing at me.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“You stay out if you want,” I said. “If I don’t go to bed now, I’ll fall asleep here.” I meant it, as I seemed to mean everything I said over the next however many hours it was that we were at the festival.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“No,” she replied, “I’ll hit the sack too.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She didn’t sleep at all, she said in the morning, what with the music being so loud and drunken people tripping over and kicking the tent on their way past. I slept like an innocent and woke up with barely a hangover. My performance at the debate was solid, as far as I remember. The main parties sent a couple of minor functionaries each, and I was probably the only person onstage with any real ambitions in politics, which rather gave me the edge. I got in a few lines about hoping for a new youth culture, but it wasn’t necessary; my usual tropes were sufficient. There were no interruptions from the main stage because it was too early for the music to have started. Sadly that meant it was also too early for anyone except a few elderly Radio 4 types to want to attend. I didn’t see any phones pointing at me, and the festival didn’t record the debate. The chairwoman shook our hands afterwards and apologised for the poor attendance, and we the debaters all ignored each other.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In case it was the last afternoon we would spend together, I didn’t hurry my fiancée out of the festival. There was a nineties band on that she wanted to see. I dutifully went with her, and at one point we even danced together.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This final dance <i>was</i> recorded, and indeed broadcast on YouTube, although not at the correct speed and not to the same music.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It took many hours to get packed up and drive home, and when we did, my fiancée was ready for a well-deserved rest. I was ready for whatever shit was going to get thrown at me. I managed to divert my fiancée away from the landline phone and the messages it held, and plugged in my smartphone. There were forty missed calls and half as many messages, all from Ashma and Ashley. Ashley couldn’t decide whether to be furious with me or to gloat, and somehow managed to do both at the same time. Ashma sounded as if he was having a panic attack, repeatedly. In message after message, he told me to look at a YouTube channel that was posting videos of me. Repeatedly, and in an ever-higher voice, he told me to <i>talk to no one, please! </i></span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I turned on the computer, and while my fiancée was taking a shower, looked at the YouTube link that Ashma had helpfully included in an e-mail to go with all the phone calls and texts. There were five videos in all, four of them being clips of me at the festival. The first was of me falling over as I tried to stand up, cutting to me managing to keep my feet as I tripped up whilst carrying the beer, the second was me flouncing out of the Literary Tent, to the soundtrack of the author in the flowery dress getting louder and louder as the passage she was reading got more and more explicit. The third video was of me arguing with the woman from the fish and chip van and then kissing Aisling. The woman’s ‘<i>Mister man-of-the-people</i>’ sneer came across particularly well. The fourth, ridiculous but poignant, was my fiancée and me dancing. Differences in picture quality indicated that the videos had come from different sources. Someone had taken the trouble to bring all this together, and I wondered what the hell else there was out there, waiting to incriminate me further.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nothing more would be necessary. The fifth video was a compilation of the previous four, slowed down and set to Debussy’s <i>Arabesque Numéro Un</i>. I had to admire it. It would have been so easy to speed it up and set it to <i>Yakety Sax</i>, but this way the agony lasted for an eternity. My recovery with the beer glasses became a strange, alien dance, and the kiss changed from being a sloppy, relatively innocent smacker, to a clinch that hovered somewhere between the romantic and the disturbing.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The landline rang. I hadn’t noticed my fiancée getting out the shower, and she answered it.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I’m sorry?” she said. “I’ll get him, he’s... what do you mean? All right, I’m doing it now.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She turned on the television, and there was the slow-motion video, blown up to forty-two inches. A studio audience was laughing, almost drowning out the gentle, soothing music. She smiled a little at first, giving me a rueful little glance, which I couldn’t return. She froze at the kiss and pulled the towel more tightly around herself. When the video finished, she went into the bedroom without looking at me. I watched a little more, as a panel of three comedians and a retired former minister wiped tears of laughter from their eyes. The ex-minister said: “Words fail me,” and the audience erupted into further hilarity.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<ul>
<li class="li1"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">- -</span></span></li>
</ul>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is three days later. I don’t have anything to resign from. I’ll leave the party if they want rid of me, but we are beginning to pull the situation around. I am actually associated with the phrase ‘<i>man of the people’</i> now. It used to be just a jokey office shorthand to describe the populism that we aspire to, but now someone has said it, out loud and on camera - and it doesn’t matter how sarcastically she said it, the phrase is starting to stick. It doesn’t hurt that she said it in a grating Suffolk accent that sounds like something from the nineteenth century. I know it is a Suffolk accent, not just because the festival was in Suffolk but because the <i>Daily Express</i> traced the woman to a chip shop in Ipswich, where she very graciously commented: “I was just tired. It was a long shift. I quite like him, really.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Aisling has agreed to pretend to have had an affair with me. The kiss will look like part of that, rather than the small-scale act of personal violation that it was. She is single, luckily. I didn’t know that. Will anyone think the worse of her because they think she slept with me? My Dad will, but he lives in an old people’s home in Cleethorpes, and no one has cared about his opinion for years. My real exes haven’t done too bad, the ones I’m in touch with anyway, so I can’t be all that toxic. Aisling will break up with me, as of now, quietly but making sure that everyone knows about it. She will cite a personal/professional conflict of interest, and insist that she wishes to continue working for our cause, and indeed to continue working as one of my Martians.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I don’t know what the price will be. She can have all the fancy coffees she likes, and she will never have to deal with Keep Eastbourne British or the Doncaster blackshirts. In the present climate, where a charismatic man is seen as an incipient rapist, she could have hung me out to dry, so I am hugely in her debt. It may well be that I end up working for her cause, and to be frank I’m not too worried if that’s what happens. If she wants me to speak up for women, I’ll do that. If she wants me to be a spokesman for ginger-nuts from the Wirral, I won’t mind. For years I’ve lacked a direction, and as long as she doesn’t tell me to invade somewhere or sell off the NHS - neither of which are quite her style - I think we’ll get along fine. Ashma knows the score, and says - in his incomprehensible way - that he doesn’t think anything has changed, which I find quite insulting. Ashley sits in his office and stews. I don’t think he had anything to do with the videos, but someone has put out hints that he did. Him knowing about my bad back is not really comparable to the hold that Aisling has over me.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My fiancée and I have split up, sadly, and obviously. The kiss, she said, wasn’t anything in itself, but it showed that my heart wasn’t really in the relationship. Yes, she said, she knew I wasn’t going to run off with Aisling, but as soon as I got a sniff of the power that I crave, I would be off with <i>someone</i>.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“They all do. You all do,” she said. “It’s best that we’ve found out before it’s too late.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She doesn’t know about my phantom affair with Aisling yet, and it will be quite humiliating for her when it goes public. To make amends, I know people who know people, who have visited people. The clips still on YouTube and occasionally doing the rounds on television have been very slightly edited, about a quarter of a second trimmed so that my former fiancée’s face no longer appears in the flouncing out section. The clip of us dancing together has disappeared completely. I owe her more, but that is all the power I have at the moment.</span></span></div>
</div>
</div>
Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14263300799761107648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963835422094102879.post-81671213093060881202015-07-04T01:10:00.000+01:002015-07-04T14:52:59.256+01:00The Mirror - an Ellice Watkin story<div class="p1">
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">(<a href="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/81131204/ellice.pdf" target="_blank">download as a pdf</a>)</span></span><br />
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Ellice Watkin lifted the lid on the compact mirror that she had found on her dressing table that morning. Decorated in violet with white polka dots, it was not expensive, but it was metallic and the catch and hinge were strong enough for it not to fall apart. Still attached was a white post-it note with a large ‘X’ in orange, underlined in blue. Brown paper, no name, no message except for the sticker, which presumably represented a kiss. It could have come from one of the helpers, but that was hard to imagine. They had only as much time for the residents as their job required. She had done stints as an orderly, back in the days of council-run homes. But for having Patrick late in life, she might have had the time to train as a nurse.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Although it was only an ‘X’, it looked like a man’s writing. A woman would have used different colours, she decided - anything but the orange - and added something like a smile or a heart.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It could have come from one of the congregation, although she would be surprised, a mirror being an instrument of vanity; also because she had not heard from any of the congregation in the three weeks she had been in St Margaret’s. She had not so far been able to justify asking someone to take time away from their home and family on the Lord’s day just in order to walk her to church, especially when there was a room for ‘Private Prayer and Reflective Meditation’ just along the corridor.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">There were churches up the road, not of her communion but not so far removed that she couldn’t worship there. The church she had attended for the past fifty years was not the same denomination as the one into which she had been raised. What did it matter whether you had been immersed wholly in water or just splashed by a vicar when a babe in arms? The actions meant the same thing. The front door of St Margaret’s was not locked to her, and she was not so crippled that she couldn’t limp up the road to church, given the time. Perhaps it was just the company of <i>that</i> congregation that she missed. They didn’t miss her, otherwise they would have visited. She thought again of Patrick, who had stopped going to church as soon as he got too old to be forced to go. His father had been no help at all, saying: “Let the boy have a mind of his own.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">What would Patrick think if he saw her, shut away in this little room with a large plain cross on the wall and fading pictures of himself at school, himself in her arms when he was a baby, and of his late uncle Neville in uniform, in a glass cabinet? There were no pictures of his father. Errol always said that she thought small, and that was why he had to leave her and seek his own way in the world. Had he meant to leave her in the most hurtful way he could? Surely it would have been kinder to say simply that he had got himself another woman - he probably had - than to make out that she had been holding him back. At the same time it had sounded like a son leaving home, more than a husband abandoning his family. Was it any wonder that Patrick would go on to leave the way he did?</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The face in the mirror had the deep brown eyes of a wise old woman that she had had since she was a child. Much good they had done her. As a girl she had dreamed of being swept off her feet and taken away to America; instead those deep eyes meant that she got roped in to look after all the neighbourhood’s children, while her friends took all the boys. She was twenty-five before Errol persuaded her to marry him and sail to cold, smoky England.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">A single mole sat atop a high cheekbone. With less of a tendency towards bulk, she might have been an attractive young woman. To make her feel better, her mother had always said: “The boys don’t know what they’re missing.” With the disruption caused by the move - and to the relief of her knees - she had lost weight recently, but as a result age lines were scattering across her skin like blast marks. With God’s grace, the end would come before she reached the First Floor.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">She could hear them on the First Floor. It was a blessing when she couldn’t. <i>You lip-read, don’t you Ellice, love?</i> a nurse had said, recently. It was true that she was growing deaf, but there was a force of will involved too. As a child, living beside the docks where her father worked, she had learnt to block out all manner of input from the senses: billowing smoke and the metal-on-metal scrape of steam-powered cranes loading containers on chains, squeals of live animals being herded onto ships, obscene shouts in every language coming from the sailors and stevedores. The pitiful cries of those whose minds were dying before their bodies was no different.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">There was a flicker of movement in the mirror, and she was suddenly aware that as she was staring at herself, her bedroom door was half-open. She snapped the compact shut. The skin on her lips was starting to crack; on her knuckles too - she hadn’t noticed that before. Her precious Eight Hour cream had gone, but there was some baby oil in the bathroom - no, on the bedside table. She must have put some on last night. There should be lip-balm, somewhere, too. Maybe that was in the bathroom. The air was so dry. </span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">She remembered why she had been looking in the drawer. It wasn’t for the make-up mirror, it was for headphones. The Daily Service would be on the radio by now. She peered into the drawer again and located the headphones. She took off the hat that she had been wearing ever since she got out of bed, and placed the headphones on her head, losing grip with one thumb and twanging an ear painfully. There was no sound. Then she noticed that she had not yet plugged the phones into the radio.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Forget my head one day,” she muttered as she reached up on top of the cupboard. Nothing. She turned and looked up, and saw a scrap of tissue paper and a dust dandelion where her radio had been.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">She looked furiously around the room and found nothing. Suddenly it was too much. Why in the name of all that is holy was she in this God-forsaken place? <i>And the Lord overthrew the tables!</i> For a second she imagined herself charging into every room on the ground floor, screaming into terrified faces:<i> “Give me back my radio!”</i></span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The trouble was, it would just be some thin-as-a-rake, demented woman who had seen the radio and thought it was hers, and had forgotten that going into other people’s rooms was something you weren’t meant to do.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The last person she had sworn at was the health visitor who had put her in this place. She hadn’t sworn to her face. In fact, she hadn’t sworn at all in the sense of words actually coming out of her mouth - but the fury with which she had bitten back the bilious words made Ellice feel as if she might as well have said them. It wasn’t the health visitor, or the GP that had put Ellice in the home, it was the stairs leading up to her flat; it was the weight of her bloated body pressing down onto joints that could no longer take the strain. It was that no one was there for her.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It was a different health visitor that came to the home, one who only knew her name because it was written on the door. She hadn’t had the chance to apologise to the old one, which didn’t upset her too much. It was important to apologise for ones behaviour - that being the puny, earthbound equivalent of atoning for ones sins before the Lord - but it wouldn’t be kind to the health visitor, who hadn’t heard herself being called anything and might even now be thinking that Ellice was grateful that she had found her a decent, stair-free home in which to live.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">There was a muffled noise behind the door. Ellice turned and nearly screamed as she was confronted with a full meals trolley inside the room, right in front of her. The orderly made a gesture, pointing to and tapping her ears, and she realised that she still had the headphones on.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I’ve got your tea, Ellice love.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">She bit back the response that her name was Mrs Watkin <i>love</i>, and held out her hands to accept the covered plate of whatever it was that she must have ordered earlier in the day. The orderly ignored her and placed the plate on her bedside table.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Or I can take it through to the Reminiscence Room if you’d prefer.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>What is the ‘Reminiscence Room’? Somewhere else that you can barge in on me whenever you like? </i>she thought, but with tears of rage welling up, she managed to smile and say: “No thank you darling, I’ll take my breakfast in here.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Like the purring of an injured cat, her quiet, measured tone served to calm the feelings that were threatening to explode from inside her. The orderly snorted and shook her head for some reason.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Excuse me,” she asked, as the orderly backed out of the room ahead of the trolley, “could you see if you can find my radio please? I’m missing the daily service.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“That’s in the morning, love.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Pardon?”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“It’s half past six. I’ve brought your tea, duck.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Oh yes, so it must be. Please, my radio.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I’ll get it for you in the morning.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Has anyone been in my room?”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I’m just in charge of getting you fed and watered. Right, well, off I go. Don’t forget your tea eh? It’s your favourite.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The orderly and trolley clattered out, leaving the door ajar again. For a split-second she caught a glimpse of a face that looked like Patrick’s, and then it was gone. Best not to have those glimpses, she thought. Losing most of a day and then seeing her son appear out of thin air were two good ways to get locked in on the First Floor.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Her ‘favourite’ turned out to be sliced roast chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy. Carrots too. She had to admit it was almost exactly what she wanted to eat, although she would rather have cooked it herself. Having spent a lifetime fighting against her appetite, she felt full after half the meal. Unwilling to face the orderly’s gentle teasing about the half-full plate, she pushed herself to her feet and carried her tray to the kitchen hatch, like a schoolgirl ready to go into the playground.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">She had once read a piece in <i>the Mirror</i> about Las Vegas, about the gambling houses having no clocks or windows so that the gamblers would lose track of time as they threw away their money. There were plenty of clocks in St Margaret’s, but none of them told the same time. In red LEDs on the television it was 3.21; by the clock next to the plain cross it was a quarter past eight. It was suddenly dark - straight after handing the meal tray in, which made no sense; she must have fallen asleep in the meantime, for two hours or nine, depending on which clock was right. Light came into the room in narrow strips, unforgiving white through the half-open door and streetlight yellow under the window blind. As if delirious she sensed faces in every shape.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As a young girl she saw ghosts in the pale shadows of the moon and the dock’s distant floodlights, monsters in the pile of clothes on the back of the wicker chair in the corner of the living room that had served as her bedroom. There was no reason now to fear ghosts. If they existed, which she didn’t think they did, then they would probably just be her friends coming to visit. As for monsters, something was going to carry her out of her earthly life within the next couple of years, be it a heart attack, cancer or a stroke. Being devoured by a creature of the night was better than the last two of those, and much better than hanging on for senility.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The faces hadn’t yet resolved themselves into the abstract shapes that they would inevitably be, so Ellice resigned herself to turning on the bedside light. She turned around to reach it, and as she did, there was a movement behind her. She tried to spin back around, but the operation took too long. The bedroom door was open and there was no one there. The mirror had gone from the table, too.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">A furious calm overtook her. She checked herself to make sure she was dressed. Nothing said ‘First Floor’ like running through the corridors screaming “Intruder” with a lot of flesh on show. Her slippers were gone, but feet didn’t count as flesh. She hauled herself upright and went in search of the radio thief.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Empty corridors indicated that it was the middle of the night, not merely mid-evening, and shuffling feet turning a corner at the end of the corridor told her she was not imagining all this. She wanted to shout “Come back!” but dared not in case the nurses appeared and bundled her back to bed. She continued on her lumbering path, and hoped that her quarry was as slow as herself. Turning into an apparently identical corridor, she saw the person - the man, a black man in a ragged dressing gown - a few steps ahead. He wasn’t carrying the ballast that she was, but he was hunchbacked almost to a right angle, and clearly found it hard to move. If only he would stop, she thought. She was going to catch up with him in a moment; there was no need for this painful, slow-motion chase. One of the rooms on this corridor, or the next, would be his. But he didn’t even turn around. For a moment she wondered if she was mistaken, if she was merely pursuing some poor, crippled, innocent man around the endless corridors of an old folks’ home. Then he opened a door and turned to face her. She went suddenly cold.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Errol said: “Come in.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">She was too exhausted to yell at him or hit him, or turn on her heels and stamp back to her room in fury. The withering effects of forty years had made his face look as if the air had been sucked out of it - so much so that his skin hardly sagged on his cheekbones. The shape of his face was more visible to her than it had ever been. The shape of his face was Patrick’s.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">After the first flush of loneliness caused by his leaving, she had never wanted Errol back. There wasn’t enough to him. She had missed having a husband, but God forgive her, anyone who was not physically repellent could have played Errol’s part in the marriage. That which makes a person real and individual, a person’s earthly mind and ethereal spirit, was mostly lacking in this mediocre man. She had been as much to blame. She knew, even if she had never admitted it, that she had married him because she was lonely, because she had wanted children, and because she hadn’t wanted to spend the rest of her life living in a two-room concrete dwelling with an outside toilet, right next to the docks on a windblown island where a life of ceaseless pain and struggle was normal.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And here he was giving her a glimpse of how Patrick would look in thirty years. Patrick had <i>never</i> had Errol’s face.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Did Patrick come to you?” she asked. She didn’t want to tell him that Patrick had left her - it was none of his business - but if he had found and gone to stay with Errol for some reason...</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“No. Where is he?”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I don’t know. If you don’t know, then we have nothing to say to each other.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Ellice.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Silence. He probably wanted her to speak so that he could interrupt her. That was how he used to communicate.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“What, Errol Watkin?”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He smiled at the sound of his own name. “No, you speak. You chased me here.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I chased you out of my room, <i>bway</i>.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The smile disappeared satisfyingly.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“When did Patrick go missing?”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“A lot of years. I thought you might have been him. I wish you were him.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“What happened?”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“That’s between us, not you. You were gone. Why were you in my room?”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“You’re my w...”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“You dare!”</span></i></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I wrote you a note. I wanted to get you a present to say... Hello. But I don’t get out, so I... borrowed...”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“You stole someone’s mirror and gave it to me.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I didn’t know what to do.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Then you stole it back.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Yes.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“And I have to live in this place with you.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I’ll do what you want, Ellice. I’ll be a stranger, or I’ll be your friend. Or your husband.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“What happened to the women?”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I don’t know. There weren’t any while I was at home, I promise.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Don’t lie to me. Where did you go? You were supposed to be thinking big.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I didn’t get as far as I wanted.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“And now you’re stuck in a granny farm like me. Well don’t let me hold you back again. Goodbye.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Back in her room, there wasn’t a note, which wasn’t a surprise. The next morning, or the next daylight when she was awake, Ellice found Errol in his room.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“How long have you got to live?” she asked.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Six months, four months ago, but I don’t feel worse since then, so maybe six months still. More likely two. You?”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Until I drop. No time limit. I’ve got a bargain for you, a proposal.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Oh?” He gave a look that indicated he needed to say something flippant, but the look she was giving him didn’t allow it.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Yes, I mean a proposal. Do you still want me, for six months, or two?”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“You mean it? Yes.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Find Patrick. I’ll tell you everything I know. You find him, I’m yours.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">With that, Ellice Watkin returned to her room, where she found someone else’s radio sitting on her bedside table. If one of the clocks was right, it was time for the morning service. If not, there would be orchestral music somewhere on the dial - if only radios still had dials.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">She cried a little, for the first time in a long time. Errol wasn’t going to find Patrick - he hadn’t had the brains or the application to do a job properly even before his spine had got itself bent up like a shepherd’s crook. Patrick couldn’t find her himself, now that she was stuck in St Margaret’s - no matter how many notes had been left with the neighbours. In a long and decently-led life, this was the first time she could remember having no hope.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">She would take Errol back anyway. He looked very lost. It wouldn’t be one-way traffic. He was stupid and shallow, but warm; a paddling pool next to the ocean. If they could persuade the nurses that they weren’t both senile, they could be a beacon of hope for the other residents, a little love story that wasn’t real but looked very sweet.</span></span></div>
</div>
Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14263300799761107648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8963835422094102879.post-53329875319880082192015-06-30T12:38:00.000+01:002015-06-30T12:38:06.825+01:00How To Write A Book<div style="text-align: left;">
© me, 1996 - Drawn with the ClarisWorks word processor, lost when Geocities went belly-up, and found today using the <a href="http://archive.org/web/" target="_blank">Wayback Machine</a>.</div>
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Step 1. Motivation:</div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RSNj2NG5n8w/VZJ2UkU6X8I/AAAAAAAAAOY/dsIw0iNhReQ/s1600/HTWABbetter.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RSNj2NG5n8w/VZJ2UkU6X8I/AAAAAAAAAOY/dsIw0iNhReQ/s1600/HTWABbetter.gif" /> </a></div>
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Step 2. Decision:</div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uTlq6Z6p2as/VZJ3OaRTaMI/AAAAAAAAAOg/xPjrN2DMcIg/s1600/HTWABchoices.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="302" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uTlq6Z6p2as/VZJ3OaRTaMI/AAAAAAAAAOg/xPjrN2DMcIg/s320/HTWABchoices.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
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Step 3. Action:</div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kTzxktafnDk/VZJ3cIPMtyI/AAAAAAAAAOo/s6S-tt47YHg/s1600/HTWABwrite.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kTzxktafnDk/VZJ3cIPMtyI/AAAAAAAAAOo/s6S-tt47YHg/s1600/HTWABwrite.gif" /></a></div>
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Step 4. Characterisation:</div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SJTw5jW4gvc/VZJ3igTbQEI/AAAAAAAAAPc/vSuqQCBJ8YU/s1600/HTWABhero.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SJTw5jW4gvc/VZJ3igTbQEI/AAAAAAAAAPc/vSuqQCBJ8YU/s320/HTWABhero.gif" width="222" /></a><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7axHElxEhfM/VZJ3i1f-_vI/AAAAAAAAAPY/fGfWZ1xFJ-Q/s1600/HTWABheroine.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7axHElxEhfM/VZJ3i1f-_vI/AAAAAAAAAPY/fGfWZ1xFJ-Q/s320/HTWABheroine.gif" width="148" /></a></div>
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Step 5. Form:</div>
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(a) Every story should have <b>a beginning</b>.</div>
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For example, here is the beginning of my autobiography</div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bTu6JbINVPc/VZJ3iHTbSfI/AAAAAAAAAO8/csSCP_L9Gug/s1600/HTWABbirth.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bTu6JbINVPc/VZJ3iHTbSfI/AAAAAAAAAO8/csSCP_L9Gug/s1600/HTWABbirth.gif" /></a></div>
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(b) From here, move on to <b>the middle.</b></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--Xrkhn5vXc4/VZJ3iZ-O7lI/AAAAAAAAAPM/5iINxzQj1dc/s1600/HTWABconflict.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="275" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--Xrkhn5vXc4/VZJ3iZ-O7lI/AAAAAAAAAPM/5iINxzQj1dc/s400/HTWABconflict.gif" width="400" /></a></div>
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Now do <b>the end</b>.</div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PyhQlBhb_cc/VZJ3iKjppyI/AAAAAAAAAPA/Vy4tyQ37Z_A/s1600/HTWABend.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PyhQlBhb_cc/VZJ3iKjppyI/AAAAAAAAAPA/Vy4tyQ37Z_A/s1600/HTWABend.gif" /></a></div>
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Step 6.</div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3c8uu22s5dc/VZJ3jFbtCII/AAAAAAAAAPU/dXgzpVYoz2E/s1600/HTWABpublish.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3c8uu22s5dc/VZJ3jFbtCII/AAAAAAAAAPU/dXgzpVYoz2E/s1600/HTWABpublish.gif" /></a></div>
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Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14263300799761107648noreply@blogger.com0