Learning to whistle…

I need to tell you about my Uncle Charlie. Everything I’m going to tell you is true, even the bits that aren’t true are true, they still run in my head remembered, polished and burnished over years to shine with yesterday’s light. Not lies, not deceits - truths lovingly recalled, longingly remembered, not imagined, lived.

Lived and lived and lived.

Uncle Charlie could fly - not really fly, but REALLY fly. Here, I’ll make a film for you. Watch him on his bike as he comes around the corner delivering the newspapers to the townspeople. Look at him. You might think that he really could take to the air as he whistles and sings his way around the dark, be-drizzled council estate, so light, so tall and thin, like a character out of a Dickens’s story. Watch him weave, see him racing the barking dogs, look at how the rain can only make him wet outside, not inside. He’s as dry as bone and warm inside. And look at him flying inside his head - not in a really clever way, but in a REALLY CLEVER way. His own way; his ‘I can see all colours I can hear all music I can feel all weathers I can smell all life around me – all around me, pulling and exciting me, so much life!’ really clever. Only his way.

See him? I wish I could make it clearer for you, but it’s in my head, running in black and white, a bit grainy, running a little too fast so as to give it that slightly jerky motion that you see. I’ll try to make it clearer for you. Watch here he comes. That’s him there at the corner, down there, listen you can here him coming. He’s whistling as he rides his bike, legs spinning on the pedals, weaving his way, flying through the mist and fog-like rain on this dark December morning, Charlie’s coming to bring my comic all the way from Butter Market, wrapped in scarves, collars up, cap pulled low over his face. Look at me, still in pyjamas, in our shadowy kitchen waiting for the tea to brew, waiting for Charlie to come and drink the tea - watching for him out of the window, listening for his whistle, waiting for his magic. Here he comes, up the road, through the gate, along the concrete garden path, swinging his leg over the handle bar, the last three yards a single pedal glide, then off - his hand dipping into the newspaper bag, a quick rap-a-tap-tap on the door, and here he comes again, flying in, all scarf and legs and smile and cough and comic.

“Got a cuppa char?" he asks smiling, glasses misting over as he comes into the almost warm kitchen. “Got a cuppa char for Charlie?”

And of course we always did - and one of Mum’s cigarettes.

Uncle Charlie was magic. Uncle Charlie, magic Charlie, the one with the sparkle in his eye, the chuckle in his throat, the sweet in his pocket, the quick smile… and something else, some dark hidden thing behind the inch-thick pebble spectacles deep, deep, in the deepness of his poor-sighted eyes - lurking just beneath the surface. What was it? It was magic for sure, but not the magic of top hats and rabbits or the magic of pennies swished from behind the ears of small excited boys, he could do that and more, but this was MAGIC! Real magic, life magic, the magic of chimneys and poster paints and mouth organs and winters’ tale and burning pianos and Rolf Harris with his Stylophone and too-short-of-money and rockets and (BANG!) the atomic bomb. REAL magic, life magic, dark magic - rushing, tumbling, winning, losing magic. Charlie’s magic.

I was in awe of Uncle Charlie. He knew everything, EVERYTHING! The names of the planets in order, and where each constellation sat in the skies, and how to build paper aeroplanes and paper chance machines and paper houses for the side of railway tracks, and how to make music from a biscuit tin or two spoons or a dustbin or a shoebox and some string, and the names of ALL of Ali Baba’s forty thieves, and how to sweep a chimney whilst keeping most (most) of the soot in, and how to make Christmas decorations from old toffee wrappers, and how to sing like an Irishman, and how to make a hat from an old newspaper, and a sword from sticks, and a bow and arrow, and a paper kite, and how to take two colours and make a third, and how to, and how to… and how to…EVERYTHING!

Everything magic, and fantastic, and clever - and everything you could ever wish for to keep you entertained or make you laugh - and everything you could ever need to keep that edging darkness at bay. EVERYTHING… that some might say was - nothing.

Charlie rode his big black bicycle, delivering papers for the local newsagent on Butter Market; the papers, safe and dry in a newsprint grubby canvas bag balanced precariously in the tubular steel basket sticking out from in front of his handle bars. That bicycle his wings, the machine that he flew on, and the fuel of the flight his whistle. And what a whistle! Not the reedy trying-to-follow-a-tune whistle we might all blow - but a whistle like you have never heard before, a boy-to-man lifetimes practice whistle, with tremolo, warps, and rising crescendos, a whistle to match any songbird or boiling kettle, a whistle like no other before and no other since, a special whistle, a magic whistle, his whistle.

“Teach me to whistle.” I asked him.

“I’ll try. But whistling isn’t in the mouth, it’s in the mind - and you could be wearing your tin hat.”

“I’m not wearing a tin hat!”

“We’ll see, we’ll see. You don’t always know that you’re wearing it then one day you realise and, WHOOPS, there it is right on top of your head all shiny and hard. By then it’s too late though - it’s going or gone and almost impossible to get back. Take care of your hands and look out for tin hats is my best advice to you my lad, you’ll need your hands AND your imagination to become what you might become.”

But I didn’t care about tin hats or hands, I just wanted to whistle. So Uncle Charlie patiently taught me, showing me how to hold my lips, how to blow and how not to blow, teaching me the whistle. For days then weeks I tried, forcing spent air from between my soundless lips, not once aware of the hat upon my head.

“I’ll never whistle!” I cried, really cried, the tears running down my face.

“Yes you will. Come on, give it another go. Listen.” He whistled. A long lilting tune of a sea shanty so salty I could taste the waves. “There!” He pointed. Two seagulls swooped down from the clouds.

“Did you do that?”

“Maybe.”

“Again!” This time a tune I recognised as a hymn, but so much more, the whistle soared upwards as a single ray of sunshine broke through the flat, grey clouds and dazzled the window of the red brick house across the way.

“Did you do that?”

“Maybe.”

“Once more!” This time a darker whistle, low and rumbling, deep from inside his throat, out through his lips - higher, higher, higher, shriller, more erratic, warbling, screeching, jarring, as if to break a glass. And then, as if in answer, the reply of the siren on top of the tall pole outside the fire station – nnnnyyrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…

“Did you do THAT?”

Charlie smiled, “Come on boy, try again, take off that tin hat. Let your thoughts out. Whistling isn’t in the mouth; it’s in the mind, in your head, inside your imagination. Now take off that hat and whistle!

I reached up, removed the tin hat from the top of my head, and blew as my thoughts came rushing out.

“Phweep!”

My first whistle!

Shrill, hard won, long-time coming – but whistle never-the-less.

“Well done! You have it. There’ll be no stopping you now, you’ll soon be whistling to make me run for the money.”

Uncle Charlie smiles, then jumps back on his bike and, whistling like a boiling kettle, is off to deliver the newspapers to the townspeople. Just look at him go, listen. You could almost think that his whistle will take him up high into the air and away, flown away by a whistle.

“No stopping you now, you’ll soon be whistling to make me run for the money.” He calls from over his shoulder as he turns the corner, and in that moment I know it isn’t true. I’ll never whistle like Uncle Charlie. His whistle is all his own and the only tin hat he ever wears is his Civil Defence helmet and then only for an hour or two. Look, watch as he goes whistling, whistling, whistling, mind free, imagination everywhere.
Watch him go, now wave goodbye.

There - my Uncle Charlie, now you know all about him. I never whistled like him, I never could and I never will. Instead I do the safe thing - I make my hat stronger day by day, placing it firmly on my head, readjusting it every now and then - but hardly ever taking it off. Sometimes though, like now, I dare to remove it for an hour or so... and for those few precious minutes I fly and whistle and can do magic.

Thanks for teaching me to whistle Uncle Charlie…
“Phweep.”