31st August 2011

August 1st, the weeks stretch out towards the final Bank Holiday before Christmas, the last day of the month bringing an end to the meteorological summer.

Life continues to be a montage, or a marriage, or a mirage …. maybe all three.

I am back at work, hot on the heels of the camping adventures. I check the diary for my week and realise that I have two late nights to negotiate and two afternoons of duty…. Cool, I like duty. It is a chance to get to deal with everything and everyone who falls through the door. In that way, it feels fresh and we all get to gain a little more insight into the world of our clients. Most, I have met before over the years and I am on first name terms with. Others are a little more withdrawn, anxious even, understandably caught up in their own broken space.

I have started to get some attention for a piece I wrote on the Blog about Steely Dan. I am delighted, as without piling it with any external links, it is sitting somewhere between pages 7 and 8 on my AOL Search.

Sarah West becomes the first woman to command a Navy Warship, HMS Portland, in its 500 year history.

Friday Night Club, with a late visit from Tracy B and Andy. He has been working away all week and got caught up in the tiredness of it all; the driving, the late nights and the early starts. They head for home earlier than usual.

The markets continue to fluctuate with the USA losing its international AAA+ status on the back of the nosedive of the Dow Jones index. Down to AAA…. hardly a dent really in the gas guzzling chassis that is western progress.

News arrives of the polar bear attack in Norway and the death of the young man on a schools expedition…. sad. It reminds me of the fact that I must send a condolence card to Jon Arne and his family.

We chew over the fact that it is going to be a busy month….

When Saturday Comes. 

The Football Championship starts, with a commentary for the Birmingham game. I think of Gary T and despite our differences here and there, was glad that we had resolved our friendship before his tragic death recently…. off The Aquaduct at Froncysillte – the village of Trevor to you and me. 120 foot above The Dee I believe at its highest point.

My first thought when I heard, was so selfish…. That’s Joel and Tinas’ favourite place…. why there ???

Where else.

Gary was a Brum and a big fan of his variation of The Blues, a season ticket holder these past few years again and undoubtably, he would have automatically tuned in to the rat-a tat-tat of the afternoon commentaries, bringing the early bouts of a new fixture list to life.

Stuart Kuttner and Rebekah B make all the columns over the deleted e-mails from News International Corps…. Even Heather Mills makes a substitute appearance in a mess that is demanding of extra time.

The Taliban shoots down 31 US and 7 Afghans in the biggest loss of US life in one incident in Afghanistan. An Argyll and Southern Highlander is accused of keeping body parts, fingers to be precise of Taliban Fighters.

The War of the Flea continues to rage.

We had been invited to a party up in Brymbo. A 50th for Dave BP, famous drummer with the band James and a genuinely, self effacing nice guy. He is an old friend of Daz and Nia, our erstwhile companions in this life of kids, kissing and camping. I had been to the house a couple of times before, ten or more years ago, with my old mucker Colin Farrell. It was nice that Alison, Dave’s long term partner remembered me. She was as lovely as I remembered her. Daz and Colin would have rubbed some sparks off each other believe me.

Where are you Farrell ? Last seen in Wetherspoons in EP, overheard by my son Jamie ordering drinks with a barful of friends. Great.

We drove the five or six miles up into the hills. It was nice and relaxed, with a few glasses of red under the covers of various outstretched tarpaulins and gazebos. I was balancing an unusual variation in plastic glasses, clumsily twisted and locked from two sections, stem and bowl into one. I passed it between my hands and sat it on the bench we had commandeered for the duration. The noise continued to ratchet up from the conversations around us, Dave treating us all to an impromptu set on the small stage prepared for the occasion. Before long everyone was slaughtered, talking incessantly, choking on the diarrheoa like glut of words and wiping the whiteness of the dry corners of their mouths. When you are (relatively) straight, as I am these days, it is hard to keep up, a reminder of the changes these past months and years. It was a nonsense that I looked in at these days, unlike previously when I would have wallowed in it, demanded it even…. Scenester.

I chatted with Simon, trying to disguise the fact that I had lost control of the red wine glass, turning it onto the inside and bottom of my light coloured jeans. I made a lame attempt to negotiate a taxi without much luck. Fuck it, let’s walk.

Turning the first corner I came upon a fight in the local, ‘The Tai’. Two women and three men beating the daylights out of each other. It was like a trailer for a Wild West movie. I watched for a few minutes before moving on. Generally, the walk is downhill thank God. All of Wrexham glistening in the distance. Undulating here and there through the heavy rain via Brynteg, Moss, Gwersyllt, Rhosrobin, Rhosddu, Park Avenue, Maesydre and finally, at last, home. Home and safe.

Daz, Nia and Jan barely realised I had joined them when I finally got myself up from my bed. In their sweet madness, they were viewing photographs on the laptop at the kitchen table. Lost to it all. Fair play. I left them to a day of recovering and headed back to Brymbo for the car. There were no buses and I had no cash for a cab, so I walked back….uphill. Not advisable with a few hours turn around, but do-able all the same. Just….

I passed through the stirrings of the Sunday morning. A man on a bike, greeting me loudly as if he knew me, a small woman being walked by a dog as it strained towards the long grass. Skirting the radio mast in the distance, as if judging my best option for an assault on what looked like the Eiger, I picked a manageable path in my mind. Rhosnesni Lane, past the Nine Acre field, Garden Village, Rhosrobin again and the avenues up through Gwersyllt once more. Across the grass over Moss Valley and up the steps to The Castle pub. Right turn, past the White Hart and the Cross Foxes and slowly, pulling my legs beneath me over the brow of the last hill. I took a break with a bottle of coke from the Spar, choosing not to buy tobacco. What with these lungs ? The man who pulled the gate behind him, as I passed his house with its tidy garden, knew with a grin what I had been through…. ‘not long now boy’ he remarked. I paced on, like one of the crew that you see muttering to themselves, walking endlessly, strung out on a cosh full of Largactil.

Old thoughts of Victoria Road and Cae Pentre, the barmaid in The Castle trying to get my bet on in time…. a winner…. Nine Acre of all things.

I parked the car at the back of Jan’s work and headed for a few cask in town. Marky P and John H tried the Money Trick on me, while I sat on a town bench, eating triple chocolate cookies and swigging Irn Bru. 

– What are up to Steve ?

– Waiting for Godot.

I had a few of the Jennings Sunbeam in The Nags Head and walked the last mile or so home. Home again…. safe.

The weekend had given birth to an amniotic rush of riots…. the bucketfuls of news that wash the words of the presenters, mirrors in general the excitement of news, rather than the news story…. a variation of the coverage for the Arab Spring protests…. can you compare a bunch of 15/16 year old kids with the Security Services in Syria…. and what about the overseas analysis of our world…. all from the safety of my own chair…. Well.

COBRA met again. Stamp it down…. A Robust response.

Gareth called and we discussed these and other matters. I noted, silently to myself that we all seem to have nothing in common other than that we are all different. I was reminded of Brother Kev’s great observation;

– ‘ If things are going to be the same then things will have to change ‘.

We remembered Porthmadoc and the member of The CAT team that we encountered.     Christians Against Tourists.

By the time Gareth left we were still on lockdown…. Wrecked…. For a Fiver…. Horizon…. A World of Colour….

Janet and myself shared a triple chocolate cookie, from the bag that Marky had previously had his eye on…. at peace with each other again.

The e-petition is standing at 76 thousand, encouraging the loss of benefits and tenancies for the convicted individuals after the riots. Hillsborough tops the 100,000 ceiling, demanding the full transcripts and information that exists somewhere to be produced…. evidence for the dealings of those affected.

While I was back at The Maelor Hospital, awaiting my check up after a recent visit to their theatre, the radio heralds stories of the ‘Good News Network’. What a great idea. The talk continues its own post mortem of recent events…. dissection and reflection…. It delivers a poignant speech from the Father of his boy, killed in Birmingham along with 2 others in a drive through. The night courts are working overtime and Cameron gives the optional orders to shoot rubber bullets, for the first time on the Mainland.

Stories of MS and its associated genetics, as well as for Mark Kozelek in London…. Wish I was there.

A palindrome day 11/8/11.

Andy R called up again for the FNC and Gareth was dutifully reminded of his recent whisky chaos. We worked our way through the rich seams of luck that enabled all of our paths to meet. Both of them drinking mugs of tea and me steadily draining my glass of red. Andy left with some tunes by Richard James and Sun Kil Moon in his pocket and hurried down in the darkness, to the waiting lift from his daughter Eloise. 

“…. and found some things there that nobody’s seen, place ain’t the same no more….”

Happy accident…. I’ll use that.

TB and Andy J arrived again, clutching wine and lager and with Tracy P in tow, on an occasional excursion from her new home in The Hand.

It was late already and getting on for 2 o’ Clock when everybody left and Jan settled me down for a spread of Tarot. I tried to resist.

The Magician, The Fool, Death, The Devil, The Wheel of Fortune, The World, Justice and The Sun…. Now that’s what I call a hand…. It was a question of when….

We tore through the conversation, suddenly turning it on its side with an indignant white wine sauce, stoking our feelings and words. I hadn’t felt as if I had spoilt the holiday ?…. Apparently everyone noticed…. I like the van…. safe…. I felt a little bit bruised by the time I headed for my bed.

The Google Dance sees off my latest offering as my piece on Steely Dan shifts me out of the Internet Search Charts from Page 6 to oblivion. Ah well.

There has been a flourishing well of motifs, signs, signatures and portents….

Our game had been postponed at Tottenham following the riots and I was trying to get an hours sleep before heading for TB’s Party….

I was in bed on a Saturday afternoon…. I drifted and began to feel a creeping paralysis…. I coouldn’t shake it off. I felt two hands either side of my pillowed head and the voice above me spoke in a soft whisper….

“…. Ah, he’s asleep….” I struggling to stir, as if pinned down as my own eye turned to look back at me. A last big effort and I finally made it to my feet, rising and stretching to the memory…. Very strange….

There was a good show for the bar-b-cue. I was starting to feel a little like Michael Winner. Janet had taken Tracy B to the Lady Lever Gallery in Port Sunlight, as a distraction from the preparations for her birthday party. There was a nice mix of family and friends, old and new…. talking with Barry and Tyler, Kerry and Nia.

I took off about 11pm…. the chill of the evenings coming earlier and earlier. I caught up with the radio…. still raking over the dust of the riots…. The indignancy of the commentator luring the words out of the radio caller, playing a tight game of devils advocate…. the smattering of sad unfortunate deaths…. a disaffected and uncaring youth…. Have you not heard of the Gin Riots ? Try this then…. Wikipedia – List of Riots in London.  

Janet rustled up a great breakfast to see Daz and Nia and young Annie and Elvis on their way, and before we had caught our breath we were back to work….

Pay day…. still a great day despite the monopoly imposed on it from credit transfers, virtual banks and virtual money. These have consistently destroyed the joy of the brown envelope …. shaking the coins and counting the neat corners of the notes…. you never really knew how much you would get….. relying on the generally sour-faced mix of secretaries to get your tax and emergency code sorted. I remember in most jobs it was the norm, getting my money wrong for the first week or two.

In my lunch break, I treated myself to new editions of Mojo and Uncut (as always), a pouch of Drum Gold, a scratch card (in case I didn’t have to go back to work), a Manchester Tart and a copy of The Independent.

When I was 16 and claiming a bit of dole (it was £7.70p back then), I would head to the Patisserie Anglais after calling to the Post Office…. Melody Maker and NME, 10 B+H, a quick bet on an outsider at Manny Cooks, a Strawberry Tart and The Mirror…. I hadn’t started to read The Guardian at that point. What a creature of habit I am.

We had a few, long restless nights, tossing and turning and smoking and sighing until we made our peace once again. In good time for the weekend visitors…. The folks were heading up to Wild Wales.

We had originally planned on a trip to Bantry for this month but Dad wasn’t so well after news of his Aneurysm. Friday night, the usual houseful …. Kev…. Bog…. Tracy P…. Even Rob had an invite but maintained his Marlon Brando like reclusivity.

Oven baked chicken and vegetables…. strawberry cheesecake…. a few glasses of wine and the hubbub of the chat around the kitchen table. Lovely.

Saturday…. a lazy morning with a light breakfast followed by  a visit to Nancy and Paddy in Coedpoeth graveyard. The NEWI stones, set in relief – Masons, Carpenters, Bricklayers…. I gazed at them as I sat at the traffic lights…. thoughts of Cartrefle…. Misha…. We headed to the Pant Yr Ochain for a pint, taking a trip past the back of the old place in Llay and ordering a  Titanic Stout.

A little overcast with a drizzzzle falling as we turned back for home to ready ourselves for an evening meal at Jamuna, our favourite Indian. The folks seemed relaxed and happy, glad to be out of the space that is theirs and comfortable in the space that is ours. Mum rattled off her impersonation of Pat, her face twisted in an uncommon shape. 

‘Did I spoil your holiday….?’

We threw around the 252 charge sheet and settled our conversations over the rumble of the radio again. 

On to The Jamuna and a late anniversary meal for us, held back from July. Poppadoms and Chutney, Korma, Jalfrezi and Chicken Shashlik, sweets and coffee. I was stuffed. We all were. I drove back after only two small reds. We saw the folks off for a change and stayed up a little longer for a last glass and a smoke to oil the talk. It was good to feel as if we had gathered up all the pieces we had misplaced from each other this last week or two. It was good to feel safe and warm in each others arms.

Sunday, we had arranged to go out for lunch and with Lana and Jamie, Joel and Tina and the three respective grand kids…. if you include the two preganancies the girls shared between them we were 13 in all…. Lucky for some I say.

We got the folks back home to EP for early evening and hugged one another for the joy of happy times. I made good on the road back, blowing a kiss to the border sign as I always do…. Welcome to Wales.

Kian stayed over and we watched the bat from the back step as it circled the house…. Tired, we fell into bed, catching part of the emotional service for those killed in Norway…. I had remembered to send a card to Jon Arne.

Monday again. Overnight the news of the advance on Tripoli. Evening and the beautiful purple clouds climbing over the deepening red decline of the sun, dividing out the late August evenings. Already since June, we have lost two hours to the light. Elika and Clint are back from the V Festival. Safe enough, if stinking a little of the piss and beer after squatting in a field with 60,000 wreckheads for the weekend. Good on them, I hope they forget the worries of the hygiene and remember the joy of the moments ….and do it all over again sometime soon.

We are expecting rain….

A Red Arrow plane falls from the sky. Another dead pilot. His wife is so composed as she faces the media, her words so soft…. I don’t know whether I am in shock or in awe.

The numbers of riot arrests and prison remands is swelling and bulging, like a bubble in a tyre awaiting the moment to explode again…. Thatcher – Major – Blair – Brown – Cameron…. The famous fucking five…. 30 years of riotous comment…. I have to say Major is my own favourite. In spite of, or maybe because of the Currie affair. Health of the Nation.

I so wanted it to be Blair, the first (and the only so far), PM that I have voted in during my lifetime.

Tripoli has started its fall to the Rebels ? It would have been a destination for my Father post Suez. Ironically he was a volunteer during National Service in England. 

The Winehouse Report concludes no illicit drugs in her system but it remains to be seen whether Px drugs and alcohol were to blame. Remember Presley, Jackson and many more in-between.

Branson survives a fire.

Britains’ Youth Crisis is propounded from all and sundry…. witness young Samuels getting tasered, along with other more newsworthy individuals at large. There are harsh sentences, for prison and university students. I am not sure which is worse…. as the clearing system crashes. 190,000 hopefuls for 30,000 places. A-Level results rise for the 29th year in a row. Prison time bomb…. 20% of 16 – 24 year olds are currently unemployed.

The NEET generation poke their tongues from the newspaper headlines, having a look back at us all the same, reflecting our own incapable selves.

The deaths of Jerry Leiber, Nickolas Ashford and Robert Robinson are sadly final while Steve Jobs is forced to retire on health grounds.

Following on from the A-Level results and the madness of the pursuit of the university places, the GCSE’s seem to be saying…. ‘ People aren’t stupid enough….’ as the system crashes again.

An earthquake jolts the fault line under the basements and cellars of New York, leaving a frightened city taking to their beds tonight….

On a lighter note, and I am happy to receive confirmation of this, Long, Jean, and Silver, all scored in the weekends football games. I have been reading Treasure Island on and off since we went cruising last year…. in the Caribbean that is, not on Corporation Road in Birkenhead.

I have been writing a song with my good friend Robert, a surviver of the Llay Years, a fellow keeper of the Llay Tapes and a comrade ever since. I thought it might help with my confidence, after all it is what I used to do. My usual reasons for writing lyrics are personal pain, but I haven’t written one in 8 years, it all dried up in a pool of…. I just want to sing again…

We were in Criccieth again for the annual family Bank Holiday weekend. There was a good crew as always. The Bolan cover of the edition of Uncut that we rolled up on, brought memories from 1970 of Gail T and Margaret B…. engrained whispers of the lyrics to ‘Hot Love’.

A friend of Arwel with the hairy hands brought some logs to compete with the store of pallets from Cadwalladers. The girls discussed a Bitch and Stitch evening, to alternate with the usual Friday Night Club.

Gaddafi negotiates his future from my sparsely used radio. What a guy. £1m pound reward.

A field in Criccieth…. home to the wedding ring that I lost…. for now.

Saturday night and I fancy another glass but give my last Guinness to the lovely Nia instead, while she and Daz swap niceties for a while around the white heat of the fire…. I hear but don’t listen and head for the warmth and safety of the van instead…. listening to the ghosts of Johnny Cash coming through the trees.

Passing Frongoch on the trip home, I raise a salute to all of the memories.

Sunday…. e-bay clothes…. Joel – Tina – Cantril Farm – Kenny Holmes – A better class of poverty…. Good news on the wires about the Kev and Tracy story…. All the very best…. A tag on a false leg…. Hurricane Irene…. causing more damage to NY and the east coast before heading on up to Canada….

A nice piece about words that we aren’t using…. Aerodrome…. I find that a little unusual or should it be Aerodrone…. Like one of those letter ladder games…. how about Amiodarone, an anti-arrythmic for when you are poorly….

Mercenaries executed by rebels…. Smug radio Nick H…. alright for you in your warm studio…. Mindfulness…. Empathy…. Truth…. remand sentencing is a feeding frenzy, box ticking, arse watching…. Lockerbie bomber and Yvonne Fletcher…. CNN breaking news…. Coma/Dead…. Jails will be full in weeks…. actually undermining justice…. 4 years for a Facebook riot that didn’t happen.

 The gold leaves dance down from the trees along the Holt Road, spilling their way through the quick air and start to pile up in the gutter. I check my money at the bank buying newspapers and a bottle of Red.

Dani rang, it was great to hear her voice…. we had managed to miss each other all summer…. she was in my thoughts often these days…. We discussed her holiday and the problems with the passport…. Christina’s Mum would do it again…. Genetics…. Christina was once held in Manchester Airport, apparently with the fingerprints of a serial killer on her hands…. I wonder if my hands will be warm enough through this winter….

Work again…. five days squeezed into four. Janet had me rub some skin cream in her back to try to clear the changes in her natural pigmentation. For some reason I thought of the underground bunkers in Libya, hacked through with sand coloured stone…. the cream was of a similar hue. The lotion was out of date like most things in the ‘medicine cupboard’…. apart from Paracetamol and Ranitidine…. and Warfarin and Statin and Amiodarone….

It was nice, a day not talking – not because we had to but because we didn’t have to…. Libyan rebels within sight of Sirte….

Gareth called to say hello, pinning the tail on the donkey that is life…. He has got an interview for a job…. We talk of the Celtic Tiger and the English approach…. all punishment related…. understandably…. belonging…. London London London.

We toasted the outcome with an imaginary Gin and It.

We picked up on it again when he called back on Tuesday evening…. An umbrella approach that encapsulates rather than isolates…. that brings that sense of belonging we like to feel….

Gaddafis’ wife and children head for the repressed ally that is Algeria. The World Athletic Championship bemoans the rules regarding false starting…. Well what do you expect…. this is TV scheduling for you…. reliant on the Commercial Dollar…. Gaddafi himself gets the ultimatum to be out by Saturday.

Tony Sale, another of the Bletchley Park crew passes away.

My Steely Dan piece is on Page Two…. Hurrah….

Labile…. it makes me want to live forever…. Not so for the friends of Wooton Bassett…. Repatriation…. as Travellers are evicted in Essex…. A tragic mystery in New Brighton….

In my chair in Mill House, 14 years ago tonight, with nowhere to go…. the news broke of the death of Princess Diana. The next morning, having slept in the office, I received a key of goodwill from my friend Brian…. I will never forget his kindness…. It really was the beginning of the end…. 31st August…. Last day of the Month.

‘ …. A voice of reason in the all new age of reality….’

NB. The answer to the question in the June edition of Last day of the Month is now available at the bottom of its respective page.