28th February 2011

February. Mainly grey and almost permanently overcast.

The wind has started to lift itself out of the late winter torpor, getting ready for the fresher days of early spring. Teasing the cleaner air through the scarves and overcoats and the occasional balaclava of the street kids, playing out their never-ending variations with stones, sticks and a burst ball.

When the sky does slice open, beyond the grey, we are treated to huge, billowing pillows of white cumulus nimbus, raring up and chasing each other past what is still visible from my window, on and on until finally disappearing south, to Shropshire and the border counties.

The quicker, small clouds, scud through the vastness and are princed in pink and soft greens, reflecting the dying sun as the evening falls on its own feet.

Robert Tressell passed over, on February 3rd 1911, in Liverpool Royal Infirmary and was buried in a Walton Cemetary, in a paupers grave, one hundred years ago this month. One Hundred Years. Think about it for a moment. The man who all but gave birth to the Labour Movement.

The first copy of his novel ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’ that I ever read, was given to me by my Father. It had a picture of a costume drama production by the BBC on the cover, that I had studied, looking for clues as to the owner of his brave sentences. It had a preface by Alan Sillitoe, himself a master craftsman, wielding words in a manner that Tressell, could skilfully and adeptly have mirrored. A painter and decorator, whose own careful creations, he would have manicured in his own preferred medium of gold leaf. The preface to the book, combined and co-erced his own memories. Sillitoe had been  in the RAF and he mixed his story with the narrative, highlighting the fact that his own first copy was an abridged edition. He also had TB and was pensioned off to write and write again at 21 years of age.

Edited…. censored…. censured…. banned…. excluded…. not wanted and certainly not for the likes of us.

Tressell/Noonan/Owen. They all would have liked that about it. Photographs of him, show a calm Edwardian face above a healthy moustache.

It was first published, three years after his death, thanks to the efforts of his daughter, Kathleen, who eventually raised the finance to erect a worthy headstone, many winters later.

There was a little triangle of bookshops in that part of town then, between Berry Street and Renshaw Street, where I found myself week to week as money allowed. The Progressive, the Out of Print and a small 1st Edition shop, that was stuffed with rare delights but guarded by a curmudgeonly old buffer in front of house. I only ever managed to afford one book from there. A collected Plays, an American print by Sean 0′ Casey. I paid £5.00 for it. There was also another bookshop, a little way off the main run, up on the corner of Mount Pleasant and Rodney Street, that catered for the college bodies. It was close to the Irish Centre and often welcomed it’s doors to me for a Guinness and a stretched out read of the papers, lounging in the comfortable chairs.

Beyond that, I saw a drama production myself at the Liverpool Playhouse. The Foreman,  Hunter/Nimrod was played in turn by all of the cast. A real Everyman and equally able to portray the dark side in us all. The final pages, including Barringtons’ grand gestures, I had to read upstairs on my bed, feeling the injustice prickling the tears in my eyes.

In the novel, Hunter played out his parallel life as an undertaker, bothering and burying the dead in turn.

Onomatopoeic.

Didlum. Grinder. Sweater. Bloater. Bleb.

My youngest boy, armed with more love than you could feed a big horse with, was forced up to the hospital himself this week. Filled with anaesthetic and tubes and opiates, having the air sucked out of him. He was almost killed with the kindness of the nurses and finally laid to rest on a firm pillow, ready to take his sleep before the doctor came to check on him. Finally raising him up on to his feet, Lazarus like.

Pneumothoraxis. Reached up and fell straight on the floor, like a kitten fa fa-falling asleep from the chair.

“….This one can go…. on to you JC…. whoa…. easy, easy…. he’s got a lung out I think….give him here…. careful with him.”

Gareth called in, to the unusually quiet Friday Night Club. Just me and a glass of Cabernet Sauvigon and Donald Fagen swinging through a Florida Room. Gareth had forgotten his tobacco again and only stayed an hour or two before taking his bike home to bed.

The February evenings are built for conversation but it is rarely allowed to blossom. Usually the desire to baton down the hatches, set the heating and pour a glass of red, allows the radio to simmer in the background nicely for a little while. By the time the papers are glanced through and tea is conjured up for four or more, it is time for wall to wall TV/PC/WMP and the constant effort to extend a cute ear, automatically set to the football scores.

I am as guilty as any other with this scenario, but it really does stifle, blunting all that is in-between.

Gareth comes to talk and the conversations warm the space between us in the cold evening air.

Cries for…. DEMOCRACY…. FREEDOM…. THE PEOPLE…. spill out in to the bedroom air. The radio, as it crashes up in volume wakes me from my half cocked sleep, fading in and out of audio-focus. The blood and pain are real but as I listen to the sounds of the ambulances ferry the dead and wounded, my tired eyes slide back to my own self-sodden dreams…. Pure REM…. Hollow Points…. Confusing the detail with my own cardioversion. I reach back and I think of A+E and I remember Mr Aruni Sen…. TIA man…. a wizard…. I count myself among his friends. It was hard to judge his birth nation, not that it mattered and at first, in my confusion back then, I thought Portuguese or Spanish, but no, more probably Middle Eastern or North African, with a frame out of Glasgow. He is remarkably assured, dextrous, digitally coherent and a man who knows his work. He is confident and I immediately feel better.

Talk of civil war. I wake again in a Sirocco like sweat.

My first and only visit to Africa so far, happened last March. So it is a full year on since then. What of the changes ?

Tunisia was everything we wanted it to be. All inclusive, Amara our dining host all attending, and like his name, unfading and eternal. He was certainly a gracious conducter, finding us the food, wine and even tobacco, that effortlessly dropped and appeared quietly, from the waiting numbers who fell busily under his spell. He arranged a celebration for us, for my 50th birthday, in a restaurant out and beyond the hotel grounds. It was Mexican, owned and ran by a French woman and perfect for an Irishman and his Welsh maiden. Amara joined us for coffee and as the waitress brought out a celebration cake, I noticed it was decoratively spelt -Steeve -. I have begun spelling it like that myself these days.

Amara looked happy and his eyes smiled, as he gently stroked his healthy moustache…. Point 33…. recurring.

The facebook revolution some have been calling it.

Harnessing the jolt of the current social media gatherings…. agitating…. the Facebook friendly contingency of Arabs in Egypt…. Tunisia…. Libya…. Bahrain…. living and dying by the pen not the sword.

February, slowly turning with an expectant heart; witness me and my wife getting nowhere again, in a quiet flurry of silent accusations but finding the strength to wash the dishes and place out the bins.

Ah well, soon be spring.

Planes out of Tripoli…. Hercules bombers, bringing back the frightened and scared from desert spaces. It stokes memories of the footage of Saigon in it’s final days. So much to remember…. Christchurch…. Earthquake….Clinton and Cameron, like the vultures in Bedknobs and Broomsticks…. Embargo….Sanctions….Book early.  

Briefly, going back for a moment to those early Liverpool wanderings…. There were one or two other bookshops that I crept into occasionally, one on the road through Whitechapel and one near to the side of the old tunnel, that was run by Carmel, a stalwart among the distributers of the Socialist Worker. She was an old friend of my Fathers and I remember them having challenging words about the referendum on the Common Market. My dad was an ‘Internationalist’, he still is and living in another country other than his own, he remembers well the importance of belonging. Really belonging. She didn’t quite concur with his European tendencies and he in turn, really didn’t care what she thought. He wasn’t ever one to acquiesce for the purposes of small talk.

I got to know some of his comrades over the years. Pete Titherington, the convenor at Vauxhalls, ‘Commie’ Joe Jenks, we even met Bob Parry, the Riverside MP at a memorial event to Jim Larkin, in a pub near Wood Street in Toxteth where he had been born. I would often see them on the train, heading over to town, in their white Lee Coopers or traditional Fleming jeans, black DM’s and Harringtons, tucked over a scarf and sporting trimmed, healthy moustaches, meeting up for a few pints in the Flying Picket or going to the match.

What would the Militant Tendency have made of Bradford Points. A contemporary evaluation of health and welfare and safety matters. 

Alan Turing, the late, seemingly great, father of the computer, in all his Enigma Variations was painfully cushioned by his own cyanide heavy death. Thanks to the National Heritage Memorial Fund, a grant has been secured this month to keep his papers for Bletchly Park. Somewhere, harnessed deep in his human processor, the means to first launch and then dissolve the ‘Discovery’ expeditions, to new and unknown times, were found and treasured.

I think about the three of them…. Joe and Joel and Joey too…. Three Kings. A Prial. Sharing their stories around, each with a unique sense of time and history and space. Glad to be meeting in a safe place, gnawing at the twisted truths, acknowledging all their potential…. and not a moustache between them.