So this'll be it then. Saturday. Back in the day Saturday was the shiny jewel that nestled between the forced march of the working week and the long exhale that was Sunday.
Back in the day it would have found us, Johnny T, Rich, Squire and me, straining at the leash to be gone. Doors slammed on bodies crammed into Johnny T's dark green Cortina. We, the collective known as Freeway, young, dumb and full of come. A legend in our own lunch break, barrelling down the old Reading road to London through a swirl of autumnal leaves, and all the while, in the name of practise, singing in something approximating harmony of a mythical land where the sun shone to a greater purpose. California our way.
Soho,Denmark Street, Shaftesbury Avenue. Kinsey's, Sound City and Orange. The places to be. Was it really always mid-day? Gazing in wonder at the guitars and amps that we would never own, and the girls that we would never cherish. In hindsight we didn't really know what we where doing with the first, although we mistakenly thought that we knew exactly what we would be doing with the second. But it was all one, as in any case, we couldn't afford either of them. But Oh! the magic of the looking and the longing.
Today I tumble out of bed and spend my rehearsal time surrounded by an array of instruments the like of which we could only have dreamed of back in the day. I play (extremely averagely) through an amp that any one of us would have cheerfully murdered the others for. And I reflect upon the fact that whilst I love and value that which I now own, I realise that I have traded the intense magic of the looking and the longing - the anticipation if you like, for the quieter pleasures of ownership.
The magic is still there, thank heavens, but now rather than star burst and sunshine it is like the silent fall of ash from a gently lodged fire.
Saturday, 15 November 2014
Monday, 26 March 2012
The Word on the Street.
A cruel story runs on wheels,
And every hand oils the wheels as they run.
(Ouida 1839-1908)
Dear Holly,
Do you ever feel that life somehow swirls around and past you without handing out the information that it seems to impart to other people? I only ask because that was exactly the way I used to feel when I was about your age. It seemed that everybody at school knew all the cool and essential stuff that I only ever got to find out about afterwards. Mostly this doesn’t matter, but sometimes, just sometimes it does…
Point in question, early sixties English radio, which despite being the most avidly consumed form of entertainment, was still, as it turns out, a covert world. Thanks to some very creative people it was a veritable minefield of post war subtexts as the hide bound, stiff upper lipped morality of the BBC found itself increasingly under attack from within by a new and subversive strand of humour that used as its base camp (pun intended) the very delicate subject of homosexuality.
Now, back in the early sixties the world was a very different place. For a start we didn’t have media or homosexuality. Of course, the first of these existed in the bright, primary glare of the Sunday supplements who, between life affirming articles on Cardin and Courreges, also, found the time to enlighten its reader as to the whereabouts of the ‘bohemians’ and their like, who where apparently to be found loitering in and around the mews of Kensington and Knightsbridge. Meanwhile, back in the sticks, the rest of us just had to make do with the telly and the wireless, whilst those of us of a different persuasion simply batted, rather cryptically, for the opposition.
Television, by today’s standards, was a crude affair consisting of just two channels, the BBC and ITV, both showing in black and white, and on air for about eight hours a day. The output of both stations was very tightly regulated with all the programming subject to the most stringent moral censorship. As unbelievable as it may seem now, the evening news always carried a feature on the royal family, indeed such was the coverage that when I was a youngster, I actually felt that I knew prince Charles – now how’s that for state mind manipulation? And just to remind us who had placed the great and the good in their elevated positions and we in ours, the evening always ended at around ten thirty to eleven o’clock with a wonderfully innovative piece of programming called the epilogue. Yes, the final few minutes of every night’s schedule on the BBC was given over to a chap from the God squad, who came on and patronised the hell out of the nation in an Oxbridge accent before allowing us all to toddle off to bed. Bloody perfect.
The puritanical approach adopted by both stations was a direct reflection of the way that the state radio, aka the BBC, conducted itself. Whether it was music, comedy or a play adapted for radio, the first imperative was always the moral high ground. The BBC had a rather lengthy and meticulously observed set of standards and these were religiously enforced. Strangely enough it was just this straight jacketing that allowed some of the most precious comedy to slip under the radar.
The bravest, and most hilarious example of this was a little vignette that conducted itself on a weekly basis from within a program called Round the Horne. It involved two extremely exuberant gentlemen played by Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddock, (Julian and Sandy) who conversed with the host (Kenneth Horne) on an infinite variety of subjects in a slang that I eventually discovered was called ‘polari’. This was, in fact, the preferred patois of the 40’s and 50’s gay man (and woman?) that allowed them a mode of communication that was all but unintelligible to the outsider. It also acted as a homing device for others of the persuasion. Everything from Renta-Chap was totally bona. Remember this was the suppressed, homophobic world that was still awaiting its liberation at the hands of the ‘gay lib’ explosion of the 70’s. In the world that Julian and Sandy were broadcasting ‘homosexuality’ was still viewed as an obscene act, an imprisonable offence and deemed to be a ‘treatable illness’. To be accused of homosexuality was no light thing. Even into the late 70’s the stigma still had the power to ruin reputations, careers and lives.
Of course, being a kids none of us understood any of this. We had all heard of people who were supposed to be ‘Queers’ but we had no real idea as to what the term actually meant. No, all we heard were three bloody funny people having a great time. This was to have totally unforeseen consequences.
Back in 1965 Peter, Alan and Chris were a pretty tight little gang. We did most of the things that children and young adolescents did at the time. That is to say we collected tea or bubblegum cards, stamps, coins and, of course, the old seven inch 45’s. We spent loads of time in the school holidays ‘over the fields’, building camps, sitting around fires telling one another lies and generally having a good time. Later we went to various church based youth clubs in the town, to play table tennis, drink orange juice, listen to music and lust (hopelessly) after the girls. And all this time Julian and Sandy were infiltrating our lives. No I don’t mean we were becoming gay. What we were doing was adopting, and adapting, the language.
All three of us had become Kenneth Horne fans, with a special emphasis on the Julian and Sandy segment. The opening catchphrase of “Ooh ‘ello, I’m Julian and this is my friend Sandy!” invariably heralded about three minutes of unrelenting hilarity in which the coded sentences flew like knives. Peter, being a good mimic, had started to incorporate certain of the lines and phrases into his conversation and Alan and I had soon followed suit. Within a year or so we had, what Peter dubbed ‘yer bleedin’ vernacular’ down pat, our own private language, which afforded us many a good laugh as we mystified the uninitiated around us. Our conversation was littered with words and phrases such as, ‘bona’, ‘bulging lalleys’, ‘dolly little palones’, ‘look who’s come trollin’ in ‘ere then’ and Peter’s favourite, ‘ Ooh! Ain’t he bold!’
Now all of this was a completely nonsensical litany, derived and delivered in much the same way that a youngster would have spouted ‘Goon-isms’ just a generation earlier. But of course ‘Goon-isms’ didn’t carry the coded double, and in some cases triple entendres that polari did…
Fast forward to the year 1967, the summer of love.
Peter, Alan and I had all just left school and had obtained gainful employment in nearby Oxford. Together we all travelled back and forth from Wantage on the 23E, the bus equivalent of an express. We were young, silly, and full of zest because life was completely wonderful, and indeed at such an age and in such a time, how could it have been any other than that? ‘Swinging’ London was now the centre of the known universe, with the Kings road and Carnaby Street as its hub. We were very privileged in as much that our innocence and naivety allowed a complete suspension of disbelief. This combined with our geographical location allowed us just enough proximity to catch the city’s mystic ripples, whilst being far enough removed so that we failed to see the papered cracks and blemishes that lay beyond the smoke and mirrors, seeing instead the beauty and perfection of the moment. The airwaves were full of flower power, with ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’, ‘I can hear the grass grow’, ‘Happy together’ and ‘Groovin’ all jostling and craning for our attention. It is worth remembering they had to be stood high-a-tip-toe if they wanted to achieve this, because standing in their way was a little gathering of songs collectively entitled ‘Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.’
Man, we were in heaven.
I cannot be sure of course, but I’m guessing that the mansion that the Lord has set aside for me is entirely decorated in paisley silk wallpaper, has nothing but scatter cushions and sag bags littered around the studio floor with, as its focal point, a huge mono (yes mono) record system. Oh, and a walnut cabinet containing the entire Beatles’, Hendrix and Small Faces’ output on vinyl. Lord, if you don’t deliver I’m going to be extremely miffed.
But wait, there was more, I had met and fallen totally for a goddess from a neighbouring village. It still seems impossible to me that a simple blouse and mini skirt could have accommodated so much loveliness. Her name was Sue, and she remains to this day the most beautiful girl that I have ever seen. Even better, and to my amazement the love was reciprocated.
But fait’s largess extended even beyond these wondrous impossibilities for, as I believe I have already mentioned, this was 1967 and we were allowed to have icing on our cake. One of my two best buddies, the aforementioned Peter had met, and fallen for her younger sister Madeleine, (also a beauty) which was unbelievably perfect!
So this is how our days went. Get up, catch bus, indulge in yer actual bleedin’ vernacular. Work, catch bus, indulge in some bleedin’ more. Rush home, get changed, catch bus. (I think you’re getting the picture) See girls, have great time thus (always) missing the final bus back. Run the four miles home singing Sgt Pepper’s, Pictures of Lily, Silence is golden, et al. Get up on following day and repeat the procedure.
Like I said, life was pretty much perfect.
Which is where the unforeseen raises its head. One beautiful summer’s evening Peter and I, as was our wont, boarded the bus that would take us to the girls’ village. Because this was a fairly small and semi-rural community everybody tended to know everybody else. Now this piece of information may appear to be extraneous but is in fact a very important piece of the puzzle. Anyway…we boarded the all but deserted vehicle where the conductor, having checked our passes and having nothing better to do, fell into conversation with us. To the best of my recollection the conversation went something like this…
Bus Conductor. “Where is it that you two lads go off to every night then?”
Peter. “Over to West Hanney, to see the girls.” (Waving an inclusive finger) “We’re going out with sisters”
B.C (laughs knowingly) “Oh, is that what you call it?”
Peter. (Slightly confused.) “Is that what we call what?”
B.C. “Now come on lads, it’s ok, you don’t have tell me porkies.”
Peter. (More than slightly confused) “Well that’s where we are going, why?”
B.C. (Slightly defensive) “Oh nothing it was just something that I, ahem, (Cough, muttered expletive) “oh it was nothing.”
Peter. (Much more than slightly intrigued) “No, come on, you’ve started, so out with it.”
B.C. (Very defensive and slightly belligerent.) “Well, everybody knows you know, it’s the word on the street that you two…”
There followed a silence, broken only by the rumble and jolting of the bus. I had
absolutely no idea as to what was going on, but Peter, who was always faster off the mark than I, had finally tumbled the coded utterances into one cohesive and
understandable sentence.
Peter. (Scarlet with anger and embarrassment) “It’s the word on the what? Are suggesting that Chris and I are…”
B.C. “Oh come off it son, you both talk like a couple of bloody poofters!”
C.W “What in god’s name are you two going on about?”
Peter. “Congratulations are in order Chris, our friend here thinks that you and I are, er, engaged.”
C.W. “Well shit honey, that was sudden.”
I can still see the two of us now, haring across West Hanney’s lovely village green with the helpless, uncontrollable laughter of our delighted outrage flowing back over our shoulders like unfurling banners. Even now, after all these years, I can still stand on that green and catch the echoes of those juvenile hoots, can still feel the dull ache in my chest caused by the adrenaline rush, the running, the ecstatic outpouring. And if it is very quiet I can still catch a glimpse of those two totally innocent and carefree figures as they careen, bounce and rebound through the long shadowed sunlight.
For me the moment was truly priceless. It would not be until a lot later in life that I would be able to see the true injustice of that evening’s bus ride. And that was not that we had been accused of being homosexuals, but rather, that in our, so-called, permissive society, homosexuality could or should be the basis for being accused of anything at all.
There is a rather satisfactory coda to this little saga, and this occurred some two or so weeks later. Both Peter and I had that rarest of things, a Saturday off, which we had arranged to spend in Wantage with Sue and Maddy. The morning started early and went well. I seem to remember we paired off, arranging to meet later in the morning. You know, I can still remember how good it felt to be just wandering around Wantage holding the girl’s hand. Moving in and out of shops at random, going off at tangents as you bumped into friends who were just jumping off to here, or stopping off there. Wandering down the little back lanes bathed in sunshine where you had to keep stopping, had to keep holding, had to keep prising, pushing and playing.
“Chris, stop it. Someone’s going to see us in a minute.”
Her eyes, caught somewhere between annoyance and amusement, are never the less reflecting the heat that you are both now feeling, heat which owes nothing to the sun. When you’re sixteen going on seventeen this stuff matters. Anyway, having run out of alleyways we ‘troll’ around the market and Woollies for a while before ending up in Norton’s the record shop for an essential purchase. (I still have the copy of The Rush’s ‘Happy’ that I purchased there that day, and I still think it’s bloody marvellous.)
Finally, after many happy encounters and excursions, the four of us reunited and came to rest in the Windmill café, which boasted everything that a sixteen year old could wish for, namely, great milkshakes, frothy coffee from an honest to god espresso machine and a simply wonderful jukebox. It was Saturday, we were young, the world belonged to us and, with the unwavering optimism of youth, it was ours forever.
Trust me, all the fancy gizmos and doodahs that the world has to offer couldn’t even begin to furnish the complete sense of joy that this one morning had given me.
Perfect happiness lies in total simplicity, everything else is just stuff.
Full of frothy coffee and milkshake we decided to all head back to Sue and Maddy’s for the rest of the day, and accordingly we set off in search of a bus. Well, I wonder if you can guess who the conductor was on the bus that day? Now me, I was for letting bygones be bygones. I mean, this wasn’t the first time that the three of us had been on the same bus together since that evening, and by studiously avoiding the situation everything appeared to be settling down, so to speak.
Or not, as the case may be.
“Ooh hello. Well look who’s come trolling’ in ‘ere then!
I turned to find Peter, with Sue and Maddy clasped one under each arm, posing and (for god’s sake) pouting in the direction of the hapless conductor.
“Why Clippie,” continued Peter in his breathlessly nasal Kenneth Williams’ rush, “how simply marvellous to varda your dolly old eke. D’you know Heart Face, I just haven’t been the same since you ran your lallys through my riar the other night. Well I’d simply love to stop and talk but as you can see we’ve got the dolly palones in tow so we’ll just be trollin’ along upstairs. See you in a bit”
Mesmerised, I remained where I was as the three of them, laughing like loons, disappeared up the steps leaving a mortified looking conductor and a dozen or so very mystified passengers. He worked his way along until he came to me, where, dropping his voice to mere whisper, he said, “Bloody hell, he’s really pissed off isn’t he?”
“Yes,” I replied, “I’d say that was a fair assessment.”
“But if carries on like that everybody’s gonna think I’m a fucking shirt lifter.”
“And your point is?”
“Well it’s not true. Look, if I go and tell him I’m sorry about the other night do you think he’ll back off?
I patted his shoulder sympathetically in passing, “Well,” I said as prepared to launch myself up the stairs, “you must please yourself. I would imagine that Peter would be prepared to let it go, however… ” I paused and nodded in the direction of the assembled and attentive passengers, “I wouldn’t rate your chances with the word on the street.”
I guess the moral of the story is, if you are not prepared to varda the bleedin’ book, then you’d best nante kip the cover completely Heart face.
Love’n’stuff,
Chris Wilson White.
p.s. I still have absolutely no idea what any of this stuff means.
And every hand oils the wheels as they run.
(Ouida 1839-1908)
Dear Holly,
Do you ever feel that life somehow swirls around and past you without handing out the information that it seems to impart to other people? I only ask because that was exactly the way I used to feel when I was about your age. It seemed that everybody at school knew all the cool and essential stuff that I only ever got to find out about afterwards. Mostly this doesn’t matter, but sometimes, just sometimes it does…
Point in question, early sixties English radio, which despite being the most avidly consumed form of entertainment, was still, as it turns out, a covert world. Thanks to some very creative people it was a veritable minefield of post war subtexts as the hide bound, stiff upper lipped morality of the BBC found itself increasingly under attack from within by a new and subversive strand of humour that used as its base camp (pun intended) the very delicate subject of homosexuality.
Now, back in the early sixties the world was a very different place. For a start we didn’t have media or homosexuality. Of course, the first of these existed in the bright, primary glare of the Sunday supplements who, between life affirming articles on Cardin and Courreges, also, found the time to enlighten its reader as to the whereabouts of the ‘bohemians’ and their like, who where apparently to be found loitering in and around the mews of Kensington and Knightsbridge. Meanwhile, back in the sticks, the rest of us just had to make do with the telly and the wireless, whilst those of us of a different persuasion simply batted, rather cryptically, for the opposition.
Television, by today’s standards, was a crude affair consisting of just two channels, the BBC and ITV, both showing in black and white, and on air for about eight hours a day. The output of both stations was very tightly regulated with all the programming subject to the most stringent moral censorship. As unbelievable as it may seem now, the evening news always carried a feature on the royal family, indeed such was the coverage that when I was a youngster, I actually felt that I knew prince Charles – now how’s that for state mind manipulation? And just to remind us who had placed the great and the good in their elevated positions and we in ours, the evening always ended at around ten thirty to eleven o’clock with a wonderfully innovative piece of programming called the epilogue. Yes, the final few minutes of every night’s schedule on the BBC was given over to a chap from the God squad, who came on and patronised the hell out of the nation in an Oxbridge accent before allowing us all to toddle off to bed. Bloody perfect.
The puritanical approach adopted by both stations was a direct reflection of the way that the state radio, aka the BBC, conducted itself. Whether it was music, comedy or a play adapted for radio, the first imperative was always the moral high ground. The BBC had a rather lengthy and meticulously observed set of standards and these were religiously enforced. Strangely enough it was just this straight jacketing that allowed some of the most precious comedy to slip under the radar.
The bravest, and most hilarious example of this was a little vignette that conducted itself on a weekly basis from within a program called Round the Horne. It involved two extremely exuberant gentlemen played by Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddock, (Julian and Sandy) who conversed with the host (Kenneth Horne) on an infinite variety of subjects in a slang that I eventually discovered was called ‘polari’. This was, in fact, the preferred patois of the 40’s and 50’s gay man (and woman?) that allowed them a mode of communication that was all but unintelligible to the outsider. It also acted as a homing device for others of the persuasion. Everything from Renta-Chap was totally bona. Remember this was the suppressed, homophobic world that was still awaiting its liberation at the hands of the ‘gay lib’ explosion of the 70’s. In the world that Julian and Sandy were broadcasting ‘homosexuality’ was still viewed as an obscene act, an imprisonable offence and deemed to be a ‘treatable illness’. To be accused of homosexuality was no light thing. Even into the late 70’s the stigma still had the power to ruin reputations, careers and lives.
Of course, being a kids none of us understood any of this. We had all heard of people who were supposed to be ‘Queers’ but we had no real idea as to what the term actually meant. No, all we heard were three bloody funny people having a great time. This was to have totally unforeseen consequences.
Back in 1965 Peter, Alan and Chris were a pretty tight little gang. We did most of the things that children and young adolescents did at the time. That is to say we collected tea or bubblegum cards, stamps, coins and, of course, the old seven inch 45’s. We spent loads of time in the school holidays ‘over the fields’, building camps, sitting around fires telling one another lies and generally having a good time. Later we went to various church based youth clubs in the town, to play table tennis, drink orange juice, listen to music and lust (hopelessly) after the girls. And all this time Julian and Sandy were infiltrating our lives. No I don’t mean we were becoming gay. What we were doing was adopting, and adapting, the language.
All three of us had become Kenneth Horne fans, with a special emphasis on the Julian and Sandy segment. The opening catchphrase of “Ooh ‘ello, I’m Julian and this is my friend Sandy!” invariably heralded about three minutes of unrelenting hilarity in which the coded sentences flew like knives. Peter, being a good mimic, had started to incorporate certain of the lines and phrases into his conversation and Alan and I had soon followed suit. Within a year or so we had, what Peter dubbed ‘yer bleedin’ vernacular’ down pat, our own private language, which afforded us many a good laugh as we mystified the uninitiated around us. Our conversation was littered with words and phrases such as, ‘bona’, ‘bulging lalleys’, ‘dolly little palones’, ‘look who’s come trollin’ in ‘ere then’ and Peter’s favourite, ‘ Ooh! Ain’t he bold!’
Now all of this was a completely nonsensical litany, derived and delivered in much the same way that a youngster would have spouted ‘Goon-isms’ just a generation earlier. But of course ‘Goon-isms’ didn’t carry the coded double, and in some cases triple entendres that polari did…
Fast forward to the year 1967, the summer of love.
Peter, Alan and I had all just left school and had obtained gainful employment in nearby Oxford. Together we all travelled back and forth from Wantage on the 23E, the bus equivalent of an express. We were young, silly, and full of zest because life was completely wonderful, and indeed at such an age and in such a time, how could it have been any other than that? ‘Swinging’ London was now the centre of the known universe, with the Kings road and Carnaby Street as its hub. We were very privileged in as much that our innocence and naivety allowed a complete suspension of disbelief. This combined with our geographical location allowed us just enough proximity to catch the city’s mystic ripples, whilst being far enough removed so that we failed to see the papered cracks and blemishes that lay beyond the smoke and mirrors, seeing instead the beauty and perfection of the moment. The airwaves were full of flower power, with ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’, ‘I can hear the grass grow’, ‘Happy together’ and ‘Groovin’ all jostling and craning for our attention. It is worth remembering they had to be stood high-a-tip-toe if they wanted to achieve this, because standing in their way was a little gathering of songs collectively entitled ‘Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.’
Man, we were in heaven.
I cannot be sure of course, but I’m guessing that the mansion that the Lord has set aside for me is entirely decorated in paisley silk wallpaper, has nothing but scatter cushions and sag bags littered around the studio floor with, as its focal point, a huge mono (yes mono) record system. Oh, and a walnut cabinet containing the entire Beatles’, Hendrix and Small Faces’ output on vinyl. Lord, if you don’t deliver I’m going to be extremely miffed.
But wait, there was more, I had met and fallen totally for a goddess from a neighbouring village. It still seems impossible to me that a simple blouse and mini skirt could have accommodated so much loveliness. Her name was Sue, and she remains to this day the most beautiful girl that I have ever seen. Even better, and to my amazement the love was reciprocated.
But fait’s largess extended even beyond these wondrous impossibilities for, as I believe I have already mentioned, this was 1967 and we were allowed to have icing on our cake. One of my two best buddies, the aforementioned Peter had met, and fallen for her younger sister Madeleine, (also a beauty) which was unbelievably perfect!
So this is how our days went. Get up, catch bus, indulge in yer actual bleedin’ vernacular. Work, catch bus, indulge in some bleedin’ more. Rush home, get changed, catch bus. (I think you’re getting the picture) See girls, have great time thus (always) missing the final bus back. Run the four miles home singing Sgt Pepper’s, Pictures of Lily, Silence is golden, et al. Get up on following day and repeat the procedure.
Like I said, life was pretty much perfect.
Which is where the unforeseen raises its head. One beautiful summer’s evening Peter and I, as was our wont, boarded the bus that would take us to the girls’ village. Because this was a fairly small and semi-rural community everybody tended to know everybody else. Now this piece of information may appear to be extraneous but is in fact a very important piece of the puzzle. Anyway…we boarded the all but deserted vehicle where the conductor, having checked our passes and having nothing better to do, fell into conversation with us. To the best of my recollection the conversation went something like this…
Bus Conductor. “Where is it that you two lads go off to every night then?”
Peter. “Over to West Hanney, to see the girls.” (Waving an inclusive finger) “We’re going out with sisters”
B.C (laughs knowingly) “Oh, is that what you call it?”
Peter. (Slightly confused.) “Is that what we call what?”
B.C. “Now come on lads, it’s ok, you don’t have tell me porkies.”
Peter. (More than slightly confused) “Well that’s where we are going, why?”
B.C. (Slightly defensive) “Oh nothing it was just something that I, ahem, (Cough, muttered expletive) “oh it was nothing.”
Peter. (Much more than slightly intrigued) “No, come on, you’ve started, so out with it.”
B.C. (Very defensive and slightly belligerent.) “Well, everybody knows you know, it’s the word on the street that you two…”
There followed a silence, broken only by the rumble and jolting of the bus. I had
absolutely no idea as to what was going on, but Peter, who was always faster off the mark than I, had finally tumbled the coded utterances into one cohesive and
understandable sentence.
Peter. (Scarlet with anger and embarrassment) “It’s the word on the what? Are suggesting that Chris and I are…”
B.C. “Oh come off it son, you both talk like a couple of bloody poofters!”
C.W “What in god’s name are you two going on about?”
Peter. “Congratulations are in order Chris, our friend here thinks that you and I are, er, engaged.”
C.W. “Well shit honey, that was sudden.”
I can still see the two of us now, haring across West Hanney’s lovely village green with the helpless, uncontrollable laughter of our delighted outrage flowing back over our shoulders like unfurling banners. Even now, after all these years, I can still stand on that green and catch the echoes of those juvenile hoots, can still feel the dull ache in my chest caused by the adrenaline rush, the running, the ecstatic outpouring. And if it is very quiet I can still catch a glimpse of those two totally innocent and carefree figures as they careen, bounce and rebound through the long shadowed sunlight.
For me the moment was truly priceless. It would not be until a lot later in life that I would be able to see the true injustice of that evening’s bus ride. And that was not that we had been accused of being homosexuals, but rather, that in our, so-called, permissive society, homosexuality could or should be the basis for being accused of anything at all.
There is a rather satisfactory coda to this little saga, and this occurred some two or so weeks later. Both Peter and I had that rarest of things, a Saturday off, which we had arranged to spend in Wantage with Sue and Maddy. The morning started early and went well. I seem to remember we paired off, arranging to meet later in the morning. You know, I can still remember how good it felt to be just wandering around Wantage holding the girl’s hand. Moving in and out of shops at random, going off at tangents as you bumped into friends who were just jumping off to here, or stopping off there. Wandering down the little back lanes bathed in sunshine where you had to keep stopping, had to keep holding, had to keep prising, pushing and playing.
“Chris, stop it. Someone’s going to see us in a minute.”
Her eyes, caught somewhere between annoyance and amusement, are never the less reflecting the heat that you are both now feeling, heat which owes nothing to the sun. When you’re sixteen going on seventeen this stuff matters. Anyway, having run out of alleyways we ‘troll’ around the market and Woollies for a while before ending up in Norton’s the record shop for an essential purchase. (I still have the copy of The Rush’s ‘Happy’ that I purchased there that day, and I still think it’s bloody marvellous.)
Finally, after many happy encounters and excursions, the four of us reunited and came to rest in the Windmill café, which boasted everything that a sixteen year old could wish for, namely, great milkshakes, frothy coffee from an honest to god espresso machine and a simply wonderful jukebox. It was Saturday, we were young, the world belonged to us and, with the unwavering optimism of youth, it was ours forever.
Trust me, all the fancy gizmos and doodahs that the world has to offer couldn’t even begin to furnish the complete sense of joy that this one morning had given me.
Perfect happiness lies in total simplicity, everything else is just stuff.
Full of frothy coffee and milkshake we decided to all head back to Sue and Maddy’s for the rest of the day, and accordingly we set off in search of a bus. Well, I wonder if you can guess who the conductor was on the bus that day? Now me, I was for letting bygones be bygones. I mean, this wasn’t the first time that the three of us had been on the same bus together since that evening, and by studiously avoiding the situation everything appeared to be settling down, so to speak.
Or not, as the case may be.
“Ooh hello. Well look who’s come trolling’ in ‘ere then!
I turned to find Peter, with Sue and Maddy clasped one under each arm, posing and (for god’s sake) pouting in the direction of the hapless conductor.
“Why Clippie,” continued Peter in his breathlessly nasal Kenneth Williams’ rush, “how simply marvellous to varda your dolly old eke. D’you know Heart Face, I just haven’t been the same since you ran your lallys through my riar the other night. Well I’d simply love to stop and talk but as you can see we’ve got the dolly palones in tow so we’ll just be trollin’ along upstairs. See you in a bit”
Mesmerised, I remained where I was as the three of them, laughing like loons, disappeared up the steps leaving a mortified looking conductor and a dozen or so very mystified passengers. He worked his way along until he came to me, where, dropping his voice to mere whisper, he said, “Bloody hell, he’s really pissed off isn’t he?”
“Yes,” I replied, “I’d say that was a fair assessment.”
“But if carries on like that everybody’s gonna think I’m a fucking shirt lifter.”
“And your point is?”
“Well it’s not true. Look, if I go and tell him I’m sorry about the other night do you think he’ll back off?
I patted his shoulder sympathetically in passing, “Well,” I said as prepared to launch myself up the stairs, “you must please yourself. I would imagine that Peter would be prepared to let it go, however… ” I paused and nodded in the direction of the assembled and attentive passengers, “I wouldn’t rate your chances with the word on the street.”
I guess the moral of the story is, if you are not prepared to varda the bleedin’ book, then you’d best nante kip the cover completely Heart face.
Love’n’stuff,
Chris Wilson White.
p.s. I still have absolutely no idea what any of this stuff means.
Dying to know
Sudden death is nature’s way of telling you you’re fired. (Anon)
Dear Holly,
Today’s letter starts on a sad note. Tom, a friend and fellow bus driver with whom I shared lodgings for a couple of years, died this week after a fall. Tom could never abide English winters and, as was his habit, had taken the opportunity to absent himself from this one in favour of the Caribbean for a couple of weeks. It seems that after an afternoon spent carousing he strayed from the cool of the bar into the heat and bustle of a sunlit street, missed his footing, and just like that, his life on earth was over.
THE STRAND.
How fragile is the strand that plays,
Through life, in which we’re always caught
Which, winding through our unmapped maze,
Proves so much shorter than we thought,
Spun days are marshalled into years
Hand dancing in the daily round
They glitter brightly in the sun
Then disappear without a sound
Don’t sleep with all that might have been
Don’t stand to watch the one that weeps
The spinner’s hands toil on unseen
Awake! Before the spinner sleeps.
(Chris White.)
Ignore that sound, its just Wordsworth spinning in his box. Now, young ladies of eleven are far too young to be thinking on death, come to think of it, we all are. What is the point of obsessing on, or worrying about the inevitable? It would be a bit like me fretting about my bus breaking down every time I took it out of the yard. Common sense tells me that it has got to break down at some stage, but until it does I’m simply going to sit back and enjoy the ride.
Anyway, we, as a society, have managed to get our priorities concerning life and it’s inevitable demise arse about face. The truth is that dying is the easy bit, my cancer taught me that. When my illness was at its’ bleakest, and the road leading back to normality lay hidden under a mass of medical complications, I became aware that opening my hand and letting go, so to speak, was the easiest and a not all-together unattractive option. Fortunately the hospital’s nursing staff along with family and friends made sure that there was never the time or opportunity for me to seriously examine this avenue of escape.
No, it is life that is the difficult art to master. It has often occurred to me that it should be approached the same way that a recovering alcoholic approaches his or her affliction, that is to say, one day at a time, and after all, a wine this wonderful deserves to be sipped! (Sorry, I know it’s wrong, but couldn’t resist)
Philip Larkin summed it up beautifully in his poem ‘Days’ when he wrote;
‘What are days for?
Days are where we live.’
It completely encapsulates the unavoidability of our situation. Days, he points out, are where we spend our allotted time, with the question, framed in the first line, being answered only when the priest and the doctor, in their long coats, come hurrying to aid our final moments.
Ah! The doctors and priests, here representing the twin corner stones of our society, that is to say science and religion, and that should in fact read science versus religion. For the truth is that both of these parties continually seek to gain the upper hand in the pursuance of knowledge in the area of the after life. Not content with that, they then attempt to enlist as many of us as they can, to stand a watch on their own carefully built defence platforms, where once installed, we are encouraged to hurl insults and platitudes in an attempt to unravel the other party’s rainbow. Given that the main aims of both camps seems to revolve around the acquisition of as much money as they can lay their learned little hands on, my advise to you Holly would be to ignore both camps and make your own way.
A fuller explanation required? Ok…
It is a commonly held view, and one often proffered as a form of consolation, that the only person who is not aware of the sudden death in the family is the deceased. From time immemorial we have banded together in our collective grief and offered a balm against our common loss. Echoing around the halls, the drawing rooms and the kept-for-best parlours of our burial/burning gatherings, the theme is always the same. Be it the well heeled, crested plate, catered-in affairs of Knightsbridge or the mean back to back tribal gatherings of inner city Liverpool, whether accented by the long voweled music of the valleys or the terse cut and shunt of Walthamstow, it’s the same old litany offered in tones of comfort and total certainty. ‘Well, at least he/she didn’t suffer.’ we say to one another, whilst balancing plates and cups on knees or arm rests. ‘I mean it’s hard on those of us who are left behind, but at least he/she didn’t know a thing about it.’
Oh come on, look me in the eye and tell me that you’ve never said it. Yes, I thought so. Well, I suppose I’d better hold my hand up here and admit that, whenever I’ve come face to face with the suddenly bereaved, my brain has invariably assumed the quintessentially British position of stone dead, and left me coming up empty in my desperate search for an original line of condolence. As a consequence I’ve suddenly heard the trusted, rusted and trite lines just falling out of my mouth. It’s as if another me has taken over, and although I know it is going to happen I am totally powerless to prevent it. And I hate, and I mean I really, hate myself afterwards. In fact, on the ‘amIdead?o’meter’ (patent pending) it’s right up there with that first bleary evaluation the morning after that unbelievably pissed night before. You know, the bit where you tell yourself that it could have been worse, and all the while the truth, in the shape of the incontinent, window licking, bus pass recipient is snoring her unshaven gorgons head off right beside you. (Sorry, bloke writing here)
There must be an alternative, a more authoritative approach.
Science!
Ah, well, science of course has this problem. Now whilst it’s true that a fair slice of those within academia have made a shit load of money telling us what cannot exist and why, not one of the God burying brigade has ever managed to get his finger on, let alone under, the veil. Although, come to think of it, making a shit load of money without compromising the status quo is pretty good going. So sorry, as you were fellows, science has not only not got a problem but is doing very nicely thank you.
So on to the church, which, come to think of it, is also doing very nicely. That really shouldn’t be that much of a surprise of course, given that it is the other half of the status quo, the yin to science’s yang.
Whatever, the established church must trot out a good line on this, I mean after all, it’s part of the job isn’t it?
Well, no, as it happens. The main job would appear to be managing vast tracts of the British Isle whilst pontificating about camels and eye’s of needles. And another thing, I’ve probably just missed it but you know I can’t find that bit in the new testament where Jesus, having just finished feeding the five thousand, turns to the multitude and says, “My bells need re-hanging, so with that in mind Simon-Peter and Mary Magdalene will now be passing amongst you with a bucket, feel free to give until it hurts.” Ah, it’s probably just me.
Anyway, the best they can do is trot out that twenty-third psalm thing, which for the uninitiated is a three thousand year old piece of rap supposedly composed by a King David. (No that wasn’t his stage name, that is in fact what he was.) Anyway, whilst hanging out in his pastoral idyll he’d find himself given over to flights of orthography and go banging on about fearing no ill because hey! the man upstairs, complete with his rod and staff, was going to be all over it at the moment of your death.
Really? Jam tomorrow anyone?
A PSALM OF DAVID.
The Lord he is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul;
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Yea, thou I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil;
For thou art with me;
Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
(King David) allegedly.
Well your majesty, truly great poetry, but sort of thin on the old reassurance level. And while we’re here, has anybody else got a question or is it only me? Apart from anything else, and resisting the temptation to be lewd, what is a rod and staff? No, I don’t know either, and I’ve got to be honest, anybody that comes at me with his rod or his staff whilst I’m busy walking through the valley is going to get a bloody good kicking. (Ok, so I gave in)
So if both science and the church cannot give me a satisfactory answer, then who can? Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but of course the answer is nobody. That’s right, absolutely know one. I don’t care if their name is Hawkins, Dawkins or Pope Eric the twenty-first, whatever they have to say about the subject, and no matter how cleverly they couch their arguments, it still comes back to that one small man shouting loudly into that good night. Refuse to go gently we may, but claiming we go knowingly we cannot. So this (for free!) is the unvarnished truth. For heaven’s sake live with it.
I’m going to leave the last word to a chap called Nathaniel Hawthorne, a 19th century American novelist who had this to say about passing on.
“We may sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death.”
I can live with that.
Love’n’stuff.
Chris Wilson White.
Dear Holly,
Today’s letter starts on a sad note. Tom, a friend and fellow bus driver with whom I shared lodgings for a couple of years, died this week after a fall. Tom could never abide English winters and, as was his habit, had taken the opportunity to absent himself from this one in favour of the Caribbean for a couple of weeks. It seems that after an afternoon spent carousing he strayed from the cool of the bar into the heat and bustle of a sunlit street, missed his footing, and just like that, his life on earth was over.
THE STRAND.
How fragile is the strand that plays,
Through life, in which we’re always caught
Which, winding through our unmapped maze,
Proves so much shorter than we thought,
Spun days are marshalled into years
Hand dancing in the daily round
They glitter brightly in the sun
Then disappear without a sound
Don’t sleep with all that might have been
Don’t stand to watch the one that weeps
The spinner’s hands toil on unseen
Awake! Before the spinner sleeps.
(Chris White.)
Ignore that sound, its just Wordsworth spinning in his box. Now, young ladies of eleven are far too young to be thinking on death, come to think of it, we all are. What is the point of obsessing on, or worrying about the inevitable? It would be a bit like me fretting about my bus breaking down every time I took it out of the yard. Common sense tells me that it has got to break down at some stage, but until it does I’m simply going to sit back and enjoy the ride.
Anyway, we, as a society, have managed to get our priorities concerning life and it’s inevitable demise arse about face. The truth is that dying is the easy bit, my cancer taught me that. When my illness was at its’ bleakest, and the road leading back to normality lay hidden under a mass of medical complications, I became aware that opening my hand and letting go, so to speak, was the easiest and a not all-together unattractive option. Fortunately the hospital’s nursing staff along with family and friends made sure that there was never the time or opportunity for me to seriously examine this avenue of escape.
No, it is life that is the difficult art to master. It has often occurred to me that it should be approached the same way that a recovering alcoholic approaches his or her affliction, that is to say, one day at a time, and after all, a wine this wonderful deserves to be sipped! (Sorry, I know it’s wrong, but couldn’t resist)
Philip Larkin summed it up beautifully in his poem ‘Days’ when he wrote;
‘What are days for?
Days are where we live.’
It completely encapsulates the unavoidability of our situation. Days, he points out, are where we spend our allotted time, with the question, framed in the first line, being answered only when the priest and the doctor, in their long coats, come hurrying to aid our final moments.
Ah! The doctors and priests, here representing the twin corner stones of our society, that is to say science and religion, and that should in fact read science versus religion. For the truth is that both of these parties continually seek to gain the upper hand in the pursuance of knowledge in the area of the after life. Not content with that, they then attempt to enlist as many of us as they can, to stand a watch on their own carefully built defence platforms, where once installed, we are encouraged to hurl insults and platitudes in an attempt to unravel the other party’s rainbow. Given that the main aims of both camps seems to revolve around the acquisition of as much money as they can lay their learned little hands on, my advise to you Holly would be to ignore both camps and make your own way.
A fuller explanation required? Ok…
It is a commonly held view, and one often proffered as a form of consolation, that the only person who is not aware of the sudden death in the family is the deceased. From time immemorial we have banded together in our collective grief and offered a balm against our common loss. Echoing around the halls, the drawing rooms and the kept-for-best parlours of our burial/burning gatherings, the theme is always the same. Be it the well heeled, crested plate, catered-in affairs of Knightsbridge or the mean back to back tribal gatherings of inner city Liverpool, whether accented by the long voweled music of the valleys or the terse cut and shunt of Walthamstow, it’s the same old litany offered in tones of comfort and total certainty. ‘Well, at least he/she didn’t suffer.’ we say to one another, whilst balancing plates and cups on knees or arm rests. ‘I mean it’s hard on those of us who are left behind, but at least he/she didn’t know a thing about it.’
Oh come on, look me in the eye and tell me that you’ve never said it. Yes, I thought so. Well, I suppose I’d better hold my hand up here and admit that, whenever I’ve come face to face with the suddenly bereaved, my brain has invariably assumed the quintessentially British position of stone dead, and left me coming up empty in my desperate search for an original line of condolence. As a consequence I’ve suddenly heard the trusted, rusted and trite lines just falling out of my mouth. It’s as if another me has taken over, and although I know it is going to happen I am totally powerless to prevent it. And I hate, and I mean I really, hate myself afterwards. In fact, on the ‘amIdead?o’meter’ (patent pending) it’s right up there with that first bleary evaluation the morning after that unbelievably pissed night before. You know, the bit where you tell yourself that it could have been worse, and all the while the truth, in the shape of the incontinent, window licking, bus pass recipient is snoring her unshaven gorgons head off right beside you. (Sorry, bloke writing here)
There must be an alternative, a more authoritative approach.
Science!
Ah, well, science of course has this problem. Now whilst it’s true that a fair slice of those within academia have made a shit load of money telling us what cannot exist and why, not one of the God burying brigade has ever managed to get his finger on, let alone under, the veil. Although, come to think of it, making a shit load of money without compromising the status quo is pretty good going. So sorry, as you were fellows, science has not only not got a problem but is doing very nicely thank you.
So on to the church, which, come to think of it, is also doing very nicely. That really shouldn’t be that much of a surprise of course, given that it is the other half of the status quo, the yin to science’s yang.
Whatever, the established church must trot out a good line on this, I mean after all, it’s part of the job isn’t it?
Well, no, as it happens. The main job would appear to be managing vast tracts of the British Isle whilst pontificating about camels and eye’s of needles. And another thing, I’ve probably just missed it but you know I can’t find that bit in the new testament where Jesus, having just finished feeding the five thousand, turns to the multitude and says, “My bells need re-hanging, so with that in mind Simon-Peter and Mary Magdalene will now be passing amongst you with a bucket, feel free to give until it hurts.” Ah, it’s probably just me.
Anyway, the best they can do is trot out that twenty-third psalm thing, which for the uninitiated is a three thousand year old piece of rap supposedly composed by a King David. (No that wasn’t his stage name, that is in fact what he was.) Anyway, whilst hanging out in his pastoral idyll he’d find himself given over to flights of orthography and go banging on about fearing no ill because hey! the man upstairs, complete with his rod and staff, was going to be all over it at the moment of your death.
Really? Jam tomorrow anyone?
A PSALM OF DAVID.
The Lord he is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul;
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Yea, thou I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil;
For thou art with me;
Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
(King David) allegedly.
Well your majesty, truly great poetry, but sort of thin on the old reassurance level. And while we’re here, has anybody else got a question or is it only me? Apart from anything else, and resisting the temptation to be lewd, what is a rod and staff? No, I don’t know either, and I’ve got to be honest, anybody that comes at me with his rod or his staff whilst I’m busy walking through the valley is going to get a bloody good kicking. (Ok, so I gave in)
So if both science and the church cannot give me a satisfactory answer, then who can? Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but of course the answer is nobody. That’s right, absolutely know one. I don’t care if their name is Hawkins, Dawkins or Pope Eric the twenty-first, whatever they have to say about the subject, and no matter how cleverly they couch their arguments, it still comes back to that one small man shouting loudly into that good night. Refuse to go gently we may, but claiming we go knowingly we cannot. So this (for free!) is the unvarnished truth. For heaven’s sake live with it.
I’m going to leave the last word to a chap called Nathaniel Hawthorne, a 19th century American novelist who had this to say about passing on.
“We may sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death.”
I can live with that.
Love’n’stuff.
Chris Wilson White.
Wednesday, 21 March 2012
The Roar.
Un-noticed when it came to stay,
Unheard, it never went away.
It mapped my course, until the day
It stopped.
No light could penetrate the roar,
No access, window, screen, or door,
It made all less, by being more,
So small.
Its heat that never comfort gave,
Dark peace, the silence of the grave,
Where anger substitutes for brave,
So cold.
And lastly, when it thought me dead,
Stole from that lodge inside my head,
And morning’s balm sighed in its stead,
Dear God.
Vast silence stole on deafening wing,
Through silvered fold and crystal ring,
I really heard the stillness sing,
It sang.
Were mornings burnished quite this bright?
Or weightless leavened quite so light?
Who sees afresh this reborn sight?
It’s me.
Chris Wilson White.
Unheard, it never went away.
It mapped my course, until the day
It stopped.
No light could penetrate the roar,
No access, window, screen, or door,
It made all less, by being more,
So small.
Its heat that never comfort gave,
Dark peace, the silence of the grave,
Where anger substitutes for brave,
So cold.
And lastly, when it thought me dead,
Stole from that lodge inside my head,
And morning’s balm sighed in its stead,
Dear God.
Vast silence stole on deafening wing,
Through silvered fold and crystal ring,
I really heard the stillness sing,
It sang.
Were mornings burnished quite this bright?
Or weightless leavened quite so light?
Who sees afresh this reborn sight?
It’s me.
Chris Wilson White.
Monday, 11 April 2011
The Restaurant at the End of the Seventies
Dear Holly,
‘Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.’
The French politician Anthelme Brillat-Savarin spoke these words some two hundred years ago, long before the sterility of the fast food chains. The French, as you may be aware, take their food very seriously, and I cannot help but wonder what he would have had to say about a generation of people who regularly receive their daily bread by ‘going large’ out of a king size family bargain bucket. I would like to think it would have run along the along the lines of ‘tell me where you eat, that I may be elsewhere.’
I know that you find my ambivalence toward all fast food chains a little, how shall we say, snobby? Puzzlingly perverse perhaps? Or even obdurate to the point of um, well quaint? Well, there may well be a grain of truth in all of that, but none of it is the real reason for my aversion. I do try. I tell myself that it is only lunch or whatever, but there is just something about sitting down to eat in the middle of an acre of colour coded, product themed, bright’n’shiney plasticized surfaces that irritates the hell out of me.
Cloaked, as these places are, in anonymity, a Mctuckyhut-any-town is exactly that. A seemingly endless series of buildings strategically strung out across the country, all mired in their own self imposed mediocrity, and serving food that exactly matches the surroundings, thus making it the gastronomic equivalent of a Britney Spears album. Yum.
But, putting all that to one side, the truth is I’ve been spoiled for these places by one backstreet restaurant that ceased to exist over a quarter of a century ago. This was a place that would have been totally out of step with today’s health and safety conscious, utility-minded ethos. Nothing bespoke here, everything seemingly salvaged from other lives and bent to purpose, and that purpose was pizza. But that is to sell it short, for what happened in that twisted old building lifted the experience to something higher than just the culinary, for they took that one simple dish and made it an art form.
As is always the way, it was there for a season and then gone. In this case the building that it occupied was up for redevelopment and, as a consequence, I have not tasted a pizza worthy of the name in the last twenty-five years. But if I close my eyes and concentrate I can still conjure up the sights, the sounds, the smells, and yes dammit, the taste…
Strung between the commercial bustle of Corn market and the pedestrian squeeze of New Inn Hall Street there lies, right in the heart of the city, a lovely little backwater of Oxford serenity called St. Michaels street. Despite the rampant commercialism that exists at either end of its boundaries, it has managed to retain a cool and aloof disdain from all the modern day madness that conducts itself just yards from either of its portals.
The street itself is not without a certain amount of commerce, as it boasts a bookshop, a café, a restaurant and a pub, all sedately nestled between a neat fronted terrace of town houses, solicitor’s offices and a church. The pub, itself quaint and sedate of edifice, looks as if it has been there forever, but that is just a slight of an architect’s hand, for it has not.
Thirty-three years ago the space now inhabited by the pub was a wonderful, ramshackle two-storey building called, quite simply, St. Michael’s Pizza cellar. To gain access you climbed the three or four stone steps and entered through a cramped doorway to where wooden stairs took over. These were broad, gnarled and worn and as much a social area as anywhere else in the building. They twisted away into the dappled gloom in both an upward and downward direction, allowing access to the three whitewash walled rooms that thronged with the young, and the not so young of Oxford. The music was good, and it was loud. The air was filled with both expectancy and a delicious mix of aromas that whispered of mushroom, mozzarella, garlic and onions, fresh herb and freshly tossed greens, all bound together by the twin elixirs, olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
Candles, stuffed into crusty and musty old wine bottles were the only source of light. They threw their uncertain illumination onto collections of miss-matched cutlery splayed across rustic, check clothed tables, which were in turn surrounded by a their own hotchpotch collection of rickety wooden chairs. It was hot, sweaty, chaotic and vibrant. It was, in short, the only place to be on a Sunday evening. There in the dancing gloom we would convene, me and the gang, huddled around a corner table, laughing and talking over and across each other as we waited for ‘The Egg’ (our nickname for our regular and beautiful waitress) to come and join the revels for as long as she dared, before leaving with our order.
I have said convene, but what I should have said was reconvene, because our Sunday sessions were wont to start in an Abingdon pub around about midday. Afternoons were invariably spent at Phil and Mary’s lovely little house on the outskirts of the town. There we would listen to music, (they had a wonderfully eclectic collection of vinyl) play chess or scrabble, argue over books or films whilst, all the while, gently imbibing wines with a variety of cheeses. These memories run like a golden thread through the tapestry of my existence. This was, of course, the fag end of the seventies and so convention demanded that there be a fairly large ingestion of tobacco going on, with whatever additives people had been considerate enough to bring with them. In short, we all had friends who had friends by a river. If you don’t understand that last sentence it’s because you are too young, or too old, or of course, too stoned.
The fellowship was a fairly elastic affair, one week would see just three or four of us present, the following week could find the ranks swollen to some eight or nine souls, but one thing was a constant at the gatherings, and that was an unswerving friendship and a sense of belonging. Apart from myself (who couldn’t seem to find a girl dumb enough to hang around for too long) the rest of the crew seemed, to my slightly envious eyes, to be pretty settled.
Thus it was that week after month after year, the pizza crew, Phil and Mary, (clever) Trevor and Pauline, Gary and Sandra plus CW and whoever, together with assorted friends and etceteras, would leave the quiet little close in Abingdon and wend our way to the shadowy, heavenly scented set of rooms that invariably rounded off our weekend. Once clustered around our table the menu was produced and perused, but it was purely for form, everybody knew exactly what they were having, indeed had known, long before they entered the haloed portals. Everybody had a favourite dish and tended to stick to it.
The pizza produced in this establishment was as unique as the place itself, opulent is a word that springs to mind, also succulent, plump and glossy. Damn, their pizza was a gastronomic tone poem. Of course we always opted for the healthier and more sensible approach by sharing a pizza or two amongst the gathering, didn’t we? Actually, no. The Sunday night pizza gathering was an exercise in true democracy, one man, one pizza.
I seem to remember that a certain amount of training was required before one could successfully finish off a whole pizza single handedly, some indeed never acquired the necessary conditioning. One had to gird one’s loins and loosen one’s belt before reaching deep down into the soul to search for the stamina, the fortitude and the dogged determination required to complete this Herculean task. Or to put it another way, they weren’t just beautiful, they were bloody huge.
Thus it was that Sunday after Sunday the faithful would answer the call and ingest carbs before the alter of pizza perfection. We were a gathering, a circle of friends. Unthinkingly we trod this earthly stage and raised our glasses against the morrow. Even if we had been able to recognise them, we wouldn’t have been able to hear the warnings above the laughter in our ears, and that, perhaps, is as it should be. For many years on, and all that made the fellowship so special is as nothing. All the souls who worked and ate at this place, once released, spun off on their own little orbits to revolve in and around new solar systems. Indeed, all the pairings and connections that made up our little stellar system slowly sundered one from another until today all that remains is one man’s aging memories, and a building that shouldn’t be there.
Enjoy what you have whilst you have it.
Love‘n’stuff,
Chris Wilson White.
Thursday, 7 April 2011
The Laundry
Nobody grows old,
We just crease and fold,
Like the laundry.
(Stephen Duffy)
Dear Holly,
I went and saw my Dad (your granddad) the other night after work. As usual he fussed over and around me, asking me all those questions that parents always ask their offspring. You know the sort of thing, was I feeling well, was I eating enough, was I getting enough sleep? You’d think I was still ten the way he carries on. But he only does it ‘cause he loves me.
Now here’s the thing, Granddad is really tiny and really old. Another eleven years and he will be a hundred! He still sees me as a young man because compared to him I am. But I know that to somebody of your age I am really old, because compared to you I am.
Now think on this, to a five year old you are all grown up! Frightening isn’t it? You have been pensioned off before even becoming a teenager. (Do they still have teenagers?)
The truth is, that apart from his aches and pains, my father feels about life almost exactly the way that you do. The bit inside us, our spirit or soul, whatever you want to call it, never grows old. Your mum still loves the things that she loved when she was young, as do I. The only bit that ages is the body that we are given to walk around in. And so it is that one day we simply come to the point were we just don’t need our bodies any longer.
Now at this point I should make it clear that there are any number of different schools of thought as to what happens next. So take your pick. Some say that we simply cease to be, whilst others acknowledge some form of higher power with an accompanying after life. As for me, well, all I can tell you is, we fly. No, this is not a drug infomercial. At my moment of crisis, when the surgical team were doing their very damndest to get me breathing again, to keep me alive, I was elsewhere, swimming or flying, I really don’t know which.
Now we have to put all this in perspective. I had just had three invasive operations in as many days, I was totally off my tits on drugs, and apart from waking up for thirty seconds or so (I surmise) to discover that I couldn’t breath at all, I was pretty much out of it. So why do I believe that it really happened? Why cannot I just accept the fact that it was a failing man’s fevered hallucination?
The answer lies in the word parochial. What a bloody splendid word that is. Parochial. It just sort of rolls of the tongue doesn’t it? As English as Mothering Sunday.
The Bloomsbury defines the word parochial as meaning; ‘concerned only with narrow local concerns without any regard for more general or wider issues,’ and (whoops) derived from the French ‘parocialis’. Bum!
Anyway that just about sums me up. I am completely, absolutely, totally and unrepentantly parochial. We are talking here about a chap who is sublimely happy to be driving a country bus for a living. I have never felt the need to go gallivanting off in search of pastures new. I have always felt the pull of the rolling downs of Oxfordshire and Wiltshire rather than the rolling plains of America. The Mediterranean is just fine and dandy but I would rather be strolling, fish and chips in hand, along the front at Pool harbour. Finally, I do not find the cosmopolitan bustle and crush of airports, connecting pick-ups and the resultant hotels etc, in anyway appealing. If I want that sort of environment I can just go and sit in my car on the M25 in the rush hour. Listen, even my dreams are small and unremarkable. Like I said, parochial.
Well, (to get back to the point) this experience was about as far from parochial as it gets, well, except perhaps for just one little point which I’ll return to in just a moment. This place that I went to, this inner or outer space or whatever it was, was huge. And I don’t mean like the dome of St. Paul’s is huge, I mean the hugeness that is in fact forever. Vast incalculable vistas of space, with a mind numbingly massive column of glass or liquid that stretched away for as far as the eye could see into the darts, dots and winks of a light from unfathomable reaches. Oh, and did I mention beautiful? Perfectly, silently, wonderfully beautiful. I was aware that I was being gently shepherded, both by the wall itself, which was totally aware of me, and something which I sensed was, in some way, much bigger, but unseen, off to my right. I wanted to stay there forever.
And here is that little parochial bit I was coming to, it was as familiar as the path home, in fact I think it was exactly that. Why? Simply because, a) we all know what the path home feels like – and this was it, and b) I remembered it from the last time I was there, even down to knowing when that was. Yes I know it had none of the trappings that conventionality demanded of it. Connelly’s Bee Gee Jesus and the light at the end of the tunnel were both notable by their absence, and I guess it must have been St. Peter’s day off because he was also a no show. No, all I can tell you was that it was right, all so right, and so natural.
Now, I don’t know how the God squad would view it, and frankly I don’t give a toss. I realise it would have been nice if somebody could have tossed an angel or cherubim into the mix, or even better, if a voice had come booming out of some suitably holy cloud with a message for mankind, but I’m afraid not. So yes, I was in the presence of something huge, but not frightening or in anyway judgemental. And no, I have absolutely no answers as to what any of it meant, nor do I care. That I believe it happened at all is enough.
John Tavener wrote a cracking piece of choral music entitled, ‘What God is we do not know.’ Well, I think that just about sums it up. Mankind has spent centuries shoving God into a succession of boxes, and usually for the furtherance of some political or financial necessity or another. (Hell boys, here comes another war that needs justifying – wheel him out!) God has historically ended up being corralled by the good and the great as their special preserve, that is to say being administered to by the few for the ‘good’ of the many. Well don’t blame God, after all, you get the government that you deserve.
Universally they have given him a bunch of prophets to kick around with, whilst others have saddled him with a son that I’m beginning to suspect surprised him somewhat. The fragmented faithful’s approach to the throne is demonstrably legion. Some have covered their heads to worship him whilst others have insisted on bareheaded adoration. Shoes off, shawls over, Saturday for this one, Sunday for that, fish for Friday and nothing for lent, shriven, unshaven, circumcised, creationised, God – this is so complicated.
Basically, all that this proves is that the world boasts full employment upon the largest and longest construction contract in the history of man. Because, despite claims to the contrary, it is still moving ahead and has now reached, er, biblical proportions. Given that the damn thing is now bloody huge, how come none of us can actually see the tower of Babel?
My ‘flight’ or whatever gave me one insight, and it is this. Our world is a tiny ball of mud rushing through a huge and unlimited freedom. It is our ark, our lifeboat if you like. The trouble is that we, the passengers, sometime back at the beginning of our voyage, began setting up a whole bunch of committees, all dedicated to the act of defining and redefining the Captain. Now this in itself wouldn’t have been so bad except that along the way it became acceptable to ostracise, suppress and even toss overboard those of the opposing persuasions. We have now come to the point where the boat is floundering under the weight of these countless different banners, all waving in their defiance of the other man’s stand. Well God cannot be heard above this tumult of conflicting voices, and he in fact has probably retired to the nearest celestial pub, to have a pint and wait us out.
A relationship with God does not flourish in the mire of conflicting doctrines and creeds. A million binding rules aid only those who are doing the binding – and that ain’t God. What I felt out there boiled down to simplicity, love and trust, there wasn’t a bloody rulebook in sight.
How arrogant do we have to be to blithely assume that our particular brand of God is the only valid one?
How blind do we have to be not to see that if every religion has a different set of rules, then it follows that most, if not all, of these rules have come, not by the hand of God, but from the power hungry hand of man?
Now here’s a couple of really scary thoughts. What if true communion with God involves your ability to throw away all the claptrap paraphernalia that has been steadily choking it to death for the last twenty centuries or so, thus forging a personal relationship with him based upon a freedom that admits and expresses who and what you are?
No! No! Far too inclusive. Why that would mean, not just acknowledging, but actually mixing with, and accepting strange foreigners such as derelicts, gays, estate agents, tranny’s, druggies and lesbo’s and all sorts of other women and…(please feel free to fill in your own personal phobia.)
Let’s be honest, if God were actually, physically here, we know where he would be hanging out, but (since he’s not) you and me can be found loitering well up wind, on the clean part of the temple steps. I mean we’ve all got laptops and stuff, we are all far too warm and comfy, so…
What if your moment of self-knowledge hinges upon your ability to leave the safety of your trusted little gathering, and, sans the social club, go walkabout out upon the untested sands alone?
Finally, and most importantly, what if your most far-reaching act of faith was your acknowledgment of the fact that, ‘what God is I really do not know’?
Now that wouldn’t be playing with it would it? Think about it, the landfills would be full of institutionalising books that no one needed or heeded anymore. The BBC could stop putting together those crap quasi-religious programs that are neither fish nor foul and spend the money on something a little more meaningful whilst the religious organisations, who’s first agenda was the house they had built upon God’s financial rock, would go out of business overnight.
Now that really would be doing a new thing.
Are we ready to give it a go then? Oh I see. Ah well, it was just a thought. Tea break over, everybody back to the building sight.
Eternally yours,
Chris Wilson White.
Monday, 4 April 2011
Bimbo in the Limo
Nobody suspects the comfy sofa.
(Monty Python. The Spanish inquisition.)
‘If you want a picture of the future, picture a boot stamping on a human face – for ever … and remember that it is for ever.’
(George Orwell. Nineteen Eighty-Four.)
Dear Holly,
I hardly knew whether this was important enough to mention or not. I mean, on the face of it, the lacklustre and trivial antics of yet another bunch of celebs, that ever increasing handful of people ‘desperate for some ardent glory’, seemed hardly worth turning on my laptop for. I had always seen the rise of this particular strand of what we laughingly call our culture as something to be studiously avoided, but had not afforded it any serious observation until just the other night. Then, whilst sat watching you watch television, I was reminded as to why I no longer owned one, and, with the distance and clarity that not owning one lends you, I saw with an Orwellian certainty why I suddenly wished that you were in the same boat as I, so to speak.
The latter part of the twentieth century saw the elevation of the celebrity as it harnessed itself to the ever-increasing power of television. The voracious appetite of the media was, of course, only too pleased to welcome a cheap and easily replaceable source of entertainment into its’ fold. Together they flirted with, and floundered through, many exercises in banality until, god help us, they eventually hit upon what has risibly become known as ‘The Reality Show’. At last they had a formula that asked little or nothing in the way of talent from the ever-interchangeable participants, and that could be tortured and twisted through a million different permutations, allowing the bloody thing to run forever…
It is no wonder that God has packed his rod and staff and his overnight bag and buggered off in a huff to a place beyond the miasma of the unknowing. The one that has taken his place has seemingly created the biggest miracle of all. Forget the water into wine routine, that’s just old hat, and as for the feeding of the five thousand, well, whatever. No brothers and sisters, draw near and hear my words, for one is upon us whose multi-function remote control I am unworthy to finger. It has become all things to all men, being simultaneously both god and whore, and further still, it is in possession of an alchemic power far beyond the whit of mere mortal man. Yes, hear me my friends and tremble, for it has stumbled upon the secret that has eluded man since the dawn of time.
This deity turns shit into art!
Well, if not into art, then at least into entertainment.
Apparently.
Halleluiah!
Sorry, did I type that right out loud? Forgive me I got carried away. Anyway the program we were watching was called ‘Airhead idiots on ice.’ Ok, so maybe I made that bit up, but I believe that just about covers it. Briefly, the plot was as follows. Take one bunch of young, good looking (see? I hate them already) wannabees and pair them off with an equal number of recognised experts in their field, or in this case, rink. Give the afore mentioned couples enough time to work up a torrid and drear dance routine and then launch it before a panel of judges and an awaiting national audience.
Why?
I have absolutely no idea whatsoever. The boys and girls who could skate may well have entertained or even enthralled me with their hard earned skills and beauty if only they had not been hampered by the left footed and leaden efforts of their manikin partners. As a result, and despite great costumes, lighting, camera work etc, the best that could be said of the ensuing display was that they, er, did it. Not well, but they got there. This was, of course, after edited highlights of the rehearsals designed to show us just how crap they were at the beginning. And guess what? The ruse worked. The crowd went wild. I really must get back on my medication.
No, hang on. I’ve just had a brilliant idea. How about at the next Olympics, just before sending out our pair of dodgy skaters, hungry to replicate Britain’s former glories, we show the panel of judges edited highlights of the pair in rehearsal? Show them all the thrills and spills that occurred whilst the hapless pair traversed the torturous road to crapsville? Bugger the drive for perfection, stuff the requirement of talent allied to sheer bloody willpower. Let’s just shoot a really great video and show it in juxtaposition to a really drab performance and we’ll be home and dry. Gold on the podium, a word or two of praise from the dispatch box at the next P.M.’s question time and an O.B.E before January the second. Sorted.
Just think of it, we will never have to strive for anything ever again. For somewhere between the feeble and vacuous posturings of our politicians and the inane world of the celebrity lies a land called blandly indifferent. Yes my children, I have seen tomorrow and it is called mediocrity. And listen! Do you hear the voices of the media moguls, these latter day prophets, raised in adulation at the new dawns’ approach? Yes, and so do I, and I don’t bloody like it. And neither should you.
Orwell was right in his vision of a future world where everybody was held in an unknowing sufferance. But even he didn’t see that the foot, stuck so permanently in our collective face, could be subtle, and that far from wearing the oppressive boot, it would in fact be wearing a comfy slipper.
So to answer my own question, yes, of course it’s important, given that any media that has unlimited access into our homes, and therefore into the minds of our young, is going to make a deep impression. If, as in this case, the largest part of the message that it carries seems to engender a hopelessly facile ‘reality’ then we all have the right to be worried. Very bloody worried.
So next time you catch yourself watching a program in which the self obsessed scrabble shamelessly in pursuit of their fifteen minutes of pointless fame, ask yourself the following question, just how many new suits of clothes is the king buying these days?
Yours in mutual apathy,
Chris Wilson White.
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