Dave

Tuesday is market day.

It doesn’t matter where I am, or what I’m doing – Tuesday is always market day, it always will be. Also, Tuesday’s the day I get my comic.

I met up with Dave tonight, first time in twelve years and it really was as if the last time I’d seen him was yesterday. He is a constant in a world where constancy seems to be draining away – like my Tuesday comic, or market day, or battered fish for dinner. Spending some time with Dave, on market day evening, in my home town, was a reminder of who I am, what I was, and what remains important. It grounded me a little and made me recognise that I have roots - some very deep. But best of all we talked, and laughed, and drank some beer like all three of us used to do in the old days. Two old friends not much changed.

But first…Tuesday is market day and I get my comic.

Thame is a very pretty market town in Oxfordshire. I was born there in my Gran’s house in Wellington Street. I didn’t realise at the time just what a lovely town it is. History is in every house - well the older ones, and some of them are over five hundred years old. Each Tuesday there’s an open market on the cobbled market square. Stalls of all types and lots of them – fruit, veg, flowers, shoes, meat, bric-a-brac, clothes, books – most things you need, and some that you don’t.

When I was a child there was a huge fish stall selling smelly fresh fish all laid out on ice in wooden boxes; “Get your Cod, fresh from the sea!” My Gran always fried fish for dinner on market day.







On market days my mum and I would wander down to Holland’s the newsagents in Buttermarket to collect my comic. My uncle Charlie worked there, he sorted and delivered papers amongst other things - it was ‘on order’ so I was sure of getting it. I was allowed one comic a week. Over the years I swapped and changed on a pretty regular basis. I think I started out with The Beano, then Dandy, and migrated on to The Magnet. Magnet was great because it wasn’t a ‘strip’, it was a ‘serialised adventure comic for boys’ - all text and a good long read. The stories were about the British Empire (The Wolf of Kabul), the Second Word War (Take that Fritz!), cops and robbers (it's a fair cop guv), ghosts at public schools (Yaroo!) - and of course the wild-west (Quick, form the wagons into a circle). I can remember other comics that I read occasionally – Dandy, Beezer, Hotspur, Wizard, Eagle, TV 21, June and School friend (borrowed from my cousin Linsey) and finally Fantastic - which was a black and white UK version of the colour American comic books that were sometimes for sale in Castle's, the rival newsagents – but The Magnet was the best.

After that all the comics seemed to be about football so I stopped reading them.

I don’t know which comic I was eagerly devouring when I first met Dave – probably Beano or Dandy. I can’t remember, I was only five. I met Dave in the playground on my first day of primary school. I have a dim recollection of my Mum pointing him out to me and telling me to look out for him - I don’t know why - perhaps his Mum said the same to him, but we struck up a friendship on that first day that seems to have lasted forever.

Twelve years absent and instantly at home.

Last night, first for thousands, we met in the ‘Brewers’. Dave had used it quite a bit in his teens but I only drank there occasionally, and only when Dave was in.

One of the best things about Thame is that it has lots of pubs, and there were even more when I was growing up. The Oxford Arms is now an Italian restaurant (Prezzo, a chain, I ate there – Spaghetti – average but passable) and the Saracen’s Head is an now an estate agents; but The Bird Cage, Swan, Black Horse, Nags Head, Cross Keys, Star and Garter, Falcon, Six Bells, Rising Sun, and the Oxford Arms are all still going strong.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get to ‘do’ them all, but after the Two Brewers - which hadn’t changed from the spit and sawdust kind of place that I have teenage memories of - we walked down to the Six Bells.











The Bells holds a special place in my heart. It was here, as fifteen year old ‘men’ that we were first served halves of bitter in our school lunch breaks, dressed in school blazers and ties, by a white moustached barman called Charlie. Charlie looked like he’d been in the army a long time ago and didn’t seem to mind that we were underage. There were three of us then – me – Dave - and Julian.

Julian couldn’t make last night, he killed himself a few years back. We talked about him, remembered good memories, raised our glasses, and tried to work out why.

Then, on up the 'Lower High Street' a little and into the Rising Sun.

The Rising Sun used to be a strange old pub, dark and dingy and run by an ancient old chap who we called ‘Shakey’, because he shook badly. We used to roll in for a pint, Crombie overcoats, Ben Sherman shirts, and see if we could ‘nick’ the beer out of the pump when ‘Shakey’ went out back. It seemed like ‘fun’ at the time - a lot of things are ‘fun’ at sixteen - you learn as you get older though. The Rising Sun has changed completely, it’s still ‘traditional’, but opened up and much lighter. There wasn’t a sign of ‘Shakey’; perhaps he was out the back. The place was heaving with a pub quiz, the landlord/quizmaster booming out questions in his ‘bingo caller’ voice.

Q. “Whose pen name was Ellis Bell?”
A. “Emily Bronte”. But I wasn’t playing.

It was completely packed, so we just had the one and moved on to The Abingdon.

I'd hardly ever used the Abingdon Arms - but it was quiet, it was getting late, so we stopped and had a couple and talked about the old days. Dave’s a great listener, he gets to listen a lot in his job I guess, and I’m a great talker when I’m talking about my favourite subjects – me and my blog – it’s all about me.

As I said to Dave last night “Read the blog, you’ll find out loads” – I know I do.

I think Dave will feature in my blog in the future. I’m not done with him yet.

Yes, it’s all about me, and Dave - and Julian.

I find out loads.

My Desert Island Discs…

Have I mentioned that I was at school with the composer and famous headmaster’s son Howard Goodall, and that he was on ‘Desert Island discs’ a few months back?

Well he was and I’m very jealous.

You just wouldn’t get away with coming up with a programme like ‘Desert Island Discs’ today would you? Even the programme controllers at Radio Four would have a problem - where is its edge?

I’ve been listening since I was a child; the radio was always on in the background at my Gran’s house, tuned to the Home Service, later to become Radio Four.

I remember ‘The world at one – the latest news headlines this whateverday lunchtime’, Listen with Mother ‘Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin”, The Archers, Woman’s Hour – I still listen to some of them (I’m an Archers freak) and Radio Four really hasn’t changed much since its Home Service days.

The Daily Service is the longest running programme; it’s been running since 1928 but is only broadcast on long wave these days, a ‘real’ programme is broadcast on VHF. Woman’s Hour has been running since 1946 and The Archers is a relative newcomer - the first episode was really quite recent…1951.

Roy Plomley first aired Desert Island Discs to the opening music of ‘By the Sleepy Lagoon’ on 29th January, 1942. It’s the longest running music programme. Michael Parkinson took over when Plomley died, then Sue Lawley - who was recently replaced by Kirsty Young. I don’t remember Parky doing it – he must have though; perhaps he did it when I was still young enough to have a life where Radio Four was not vital to my well being and inner peace.

The seagulls superimposed over the softly undulating theme music conjure up sea, sand and sunshine in my mind and, as the music plays in, I’m looking down on the island from far above, drifting down towards palm trees. Of course on a real desert island there wouldn’t be any seagulls, just parrots - but the sound of parrots cawing wouldn’t be quite as relaxing and this desert island doesn’t exist outside of my head anyway – so seagulls are fine.

Azure blue waves gently lap at the shore as I gently touch down. White sand – virgin and perfect apart from the occasional pink conch shell - squelches up between my bare toes. I’m wearing jeans cut-off at the knee, no shirt, no shoes - and I’m brown all over by the looks of it – well, there’s nobody to see me here, so I can be. Looking down at my feet I realise that I can see my toes - I’ve lost weight, quite a lot of weight, and I feel great as a result, there’s even a little muscle in my legs and arms.

I look around. My hammock is slung between two sturdy palm trees not far from my palm leaf roofed hut (“yes - I would be able to construct a shelter”), over a small fire a large blue fish is cooking on a spit made from sticks (“I’m sure I could fend for myself, I like the idea of cooking whatever I can find ”). I caught the fish myself in the lagoon using one of my fishing spears, I make them from the bamboo I harvest in the jungle, the walls of my hut are made from the same material (“I’m very practical and would be able to provide for myself - as long as there are fish in the sea and fruits in the jungle”).

I’ve been marooned here for a while and I’m coping pretty well with the loneliness (“I don’t need people around me all of the time. I’m good with my own company. I like routine - and space to make my own routine – I stick to it. I don’t have to be talking continually - I have the films in my head for company”).

I’ve read some of the Shakespeare – Twelfth, Much Ado, The Tempest, Hamlet, Anthony and Cleopatra (“I did that for ‘A’ level”) – but I haven’t really bothered with the bible. I’m working my way through ‘The Complete Ray Bradbury’ ("I still think that ‘Something wicked this way comes’ is the best story ever written").

There isn’t much of the Calvados pays D’Auge (my luxury) left, I’ve drunk it all almost. Good job I found that sweet apple tree and the washed-up barrel - I’ll have some cider ready for drinking in a month or so.

I walk over to the wind-up gramophone sitting on my small bamboo table besides the hammock. Carefully stacked in a pile are my eight records. Strangely there's only a groove on the 'A' side, the 'B' side has no groove - no track at all - it's completely smooth, like a round black mirror.

One - ‘Tell Me What He Said’ by Helen Shapiro. (“This was one of six singles that came with my parent’s red Dansette record player back in 1962. They purchased it mail order and on the tick. I must have been about five at the time and I remember playing the records over and over, fascinated by the ‘changer arm’ that allowed the next record to drop down when the previous one had finished playing. They had ‘Little Red Rooster’ by the Stones and ‘The Theme to Z cars’ as well – but this was my favourite of the six.”

Two - ‘Sumer is icumen in.’ (“A traditional English folk song that we used to sing at primary school in the original Middle English – ‘Sumer is icumen in, Lhude sing cuccu! Groweþ sed and bloweþ med And springþ þe wde nu, Sing cuccu!’ Fantastic! It reminds me of May Day and the Maypole dance at the village fete. I never danced, but there was something earthy, almost pagan about it. Perhaps that’s why I never really embraced my Church of England upbringing. I think I prefer the old ways, I’m a pagan at heart - and when I hear this tune played on the recorder I feel happy, a child again. It makes me smile"
http://www.pteratunes.org.uk/Music/Music/Lyrics/summerisicumenin.html

Three - ‘Band of Gold’ by Freda Payne. “I remember listening to ‘Pick of the pops’ with Alan Freeman in my bedroom on a Sunday afternoon. One day this track blasted out of the radio and I liked it so much I went out and bought it. It was the first record I ever bought. Listening to it now I wonder why a thirteen year old boy was so taken by a song about penile dysfunction and unconsummated marriage. I don’t think that I really knew what it was about at the time. I was just taken with the sheer energy of Freda Payne’s delivery. After ‘Pick of the pops’ it was ‘Sing something simple’ – how I hated that - homework still to do and school in the morning – groan!

This track was almost 'Double Barrel' by Dave and Ansell Collins, a great and groundbreaking reggae track that I think is closer to rap than ska. Maybe it was the first rap track - I loved it. Dave and Ansell weren't brothers, they never even met - they were brought together from Jamaica and New York by the magic of the studio mixer. They were very close, but in the final analysis Freda just beat them - after all, she was my first single.”

Four - ‘Get Down and Get With It’ by Slade. “I’d heard a single called ‘The Raven’ by a group called Ambrose Slade on Radio Luxembourg. Some time later the group renamed themselves Slade and this was their first hit single. I was a teenager and, as were a lot of teenage boys at the time, going around it an Abercrombie overcoat, two-tone tonic trousers and tasselled brogues. Slade were THE band. They were the first group I saw live - at the Oxford Playhouse - they were supported by Suzi Quattro and Thin Lizzy – what a great concert…sorry, gig!”

Five - ‘Virginia Plain’ by Roxy Music. “What did Bob Harris say about Roxy on Whistle Test? ‘If that is the future of rock music I don’t want any part of it.’ How could he say that? He was so wrong! I thought that they were the most astonishing thing that I’d ever heard, so retro, yet so futuristic at the same time. Ferry’s hair, McKay’s white boiler suite, Manzanera’s shades, Eno’s eye liner, and Thompson’s drumming – what a band! ‘What’s her name? Virginia Plain?’ What a song! And one of only two where the title is also the last words of the song – the other being ‘Up the Junction’ by Squeeze.”

Six - ‘Tinsel town in the Rain’ - The Blue Nile. “Someone I worked with gave me a compilation tape he’d made up and there was a Blue Nile track on it, not ‘Tinsel town’, but a good track, so I went out and bought the album on tape and played it until it wore out. I saw them live in Manchester years later. The audience was full of middle aged musicians – they were still great though. This track sends a tingle up my spine and I’m thinking of having it played at the start of my funeral, it's very uplifting. I wonder who'll be there?”

Seven - Erik Satie, ‘Gnossienne No 1’. “I don’t know where I first heard this. I think it may have always been there in my head. I seem to know it well, but don’t know why. I think I may ask it to be played at end of my funeral – it calms me down – not that I’ll need to be calmed down on that particular day.”

Eight - ‘Cloudbusting’ by Kate Bush. “What can I say? I’ve always been in love with Kate and I always will be – it’s just a pity that my love hasn’t been reciprocated. This is just the best track. It has everything – a story, weird science, magic. I even had a yo-yo that glowed in the dark like the one mentioned in the song. I’m a proficient yo-yo’er. I can do all the tricks - around-the-world, walking the dog, damn your eyes – everything…And Donald Sutherland in the video…What more could you ask for? Apart from maybe Kate Bush for company on my island – Oh I can’t have that? Pity.”

“And my favourite Kirsty? The one I’d save if a big wave washed all the others into the sea…now that is tough…let me think.

The Satie I guess, or is it Kate?
Yes, definitely the Satie… No Kate.
Definitely Kate.”

Howard…EAT YOUR HEART OUT!

Columbo moment...

Remember ‘Columbo’?

Yes, of course you do – battered raincoat, smelly cigar, ancient Peugeot, wife who’s mentioned a lot, but never seen – and of course the famous ‘just one more thing…’

It was always ‘just one more thing.....’ that eventually tripped the killer up. It always seemed like an afterthought, clever - it usually caught the killer off guard.

Isn’t there always - ‘just one more thing…’? One more thing to consider, one more thing to do, one more thing to be concerned with – there always seems to be ‘just one more thing’. It's called having a 'Columbo moment'.

Sometimes we decide to take ourselves to the 'Columbo moment' – ‘I’ll just pack one more thing…’ And before we know where we are our case is bulging and we are looking at having to pay a hefty excess baggage charge - particularly if we’re flying budget airline where two pairs of underpants and a toothbrush are just about the only luggage allowance that you have - there's certainly no room for a raincoat.

And isn't it that 'Columbo moment' that almost always makes us late?

You know where I’m coming from… you have an important appointment – maybe a marriage or a birth – and there is ‘just one more thing’ that needs to be attended to before you can get into the Rolls Royce or call that ambulance. You attend to that ‘one more thing’ and suddenly realise that the reception is just about over and you’ve not even got to the church; in fact your partner has married someone else, divorced, and has visiting rights to the kids; or not only have your waters broken, they’ve evaporated - and your ‘newborn’ child is in the kitchen making its own sandwiches for his/her school lunch.

And what about when you get caught up in somebody else's 'Columbo moment'? You are on the phone, you are in a rush, and you want to get away - but it’s your mum / wife / aunt / long lost friend / salesperson on the line…

“I have to go.”
“Yes you do, but (Columbo moment alert) just one more thing…about your father.”

“It’s been great talking to you. We must catch up again sometime…”
“Okay, but before you go(Columbo moment warning) , just one more thing - do you remember...”

“No. I already have one.”
“Okay, thanks for your time (yes, you guessed it). Just one more thing, did I mention our one time only, two for one, extra special offer?”

I've had a few 'Columbo moments' over the years, and some of them have caused me some real problems. I once missed a connection from Chicago to Iowa because I stopped to do 'just one more thing' - a phone call - and I had to wait fourteen hours for another flight.

Another time, in my teens, I went on a school trip to Switzerland. I was shopping in Lucerne and went back into a shop to buy 'just one more thing'. The queue for the till was so long that by the time I'd paid for my Swiss army knife and got back onto the street the rest of the school party had moved on assuming that I was with them. Fortunately the Swiss police managed to reunite me with, 'Hubby' Clibbon - my furious and very worried art master - some five hours (and nine miles uphill) later.

Sometimes though 'just one more thing' can be a blessing in disguise. A few months back I left the house a few minutes later than I'd planned to, delayed by 'just one more thing' - an e-mail. Forty minutes, and fifty miles, along the M6 later I encountered a really bad multiple accident that could have only happened a few minutes before. So who knows - perhaps that particular 'Columbo moment' may have saved my life?

Usually though 'Columbo moments' are a nuisance, and there is always, always, always going to be ‘just one more thing’ that you can do, if you want to - but maybe it would be better to forget your 'Columbo moments' and make ‘one more thing’ the ‘very last thing’ - wouldn’t that make your life calmer and easier to cope with? Yes - now that you think of it, it would, wouldn’t it?

So... big deep breaths and repeat after me… “I will stop having 'Columbo moments'. I do not need to do ‘one more thing’ and when I have finished ‘the last thing’... I - can - stop."

How does that feel?
Better?
Good.

Oh yes...while I'm thinking about it - just one more thing!

NGC 63, Friday the 13th, 2020

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Oh no, another Friday the 13th and there’s still one more to come this year in November. This happens every eleven years, so I’ll be sixty-three the next time we get another triple whammy.

I wonder what I’ll be doing when I’m sixty-three?

There is a galaxy in the constellation of Pisces, a spiral galaxy, NGC 63 - maybe I’ll go there the next time we have three thirteenths in the same year. That is if they have Friday the thirteenths. Maybe they won’t have time at all - no years, or months, or weeks, or days, or hours, or minutes, or seconds.

No time at all – timelessness, what a comforting idea, no reason to rush.

I wonder what the planet I’m on in NGC 63 will look like?

I’d like it to look like a surrealist landscape. I like surrealist art, I find the artists as interesting as the work. The really big surrealist painters were Jean Arp, Max Ernst, André Masson, René Magritte, Yves Tanguy, Salvador Dalí, Pierre Roy, Paul Delvaux, and Joan Miró. There were lots of other artists trying it though, most artists of the time tried surrealism at some point and they either liked it and stuck with it like Dali, or didn’t and moved on like Picasso.

I like Dorothea Tanning. She was married to Max Ernst, one of the biggies. Tanning is so incredibly sexy. I think she’s still alive - living in New York, in her eighties, so maybe I should say that she used to be so sexy.

It’d be great if when I arrived on this planet in NGC 63 it was populated by surrealist painters – particularly the young Dorothea Tanning. There’s a photo of her with Max Ernst, taken in 1946 in the desert in Arizona. It’s by Lee Miller, the surrealist photographer. It looks like a photograph of a dream, a dream photo. In it Ernst is a giant of a man with his trouser leg rolled up and Dorothea is a minute sylphlike dark haired girl in a flared skirt. She’s so tiny; she looks about two feet tall compared to Ernst, a weird photo – a dream, the sort of thing you may come across in a galaxy as remote as NGC 63.

If you ever get to Philadelphia check out the museum of art. There’s a painting by Tanning called ‘Birthday’. It’s fantastic in every sense of the word, a self-portrait and she is gorgeous in it. It shows her in another surrealist dream, and it looks like a bad one. A woman stands on a slanted hardwood floor in an open doorway. She’s standing stiffly, not smiling. The background is doorways, door after door as far as the eye can see, and her purple dress is flung open above the waist. It looks like satin, you can see her naked breasts. Tree roots, tendrils and tiny naked women cover her skirt. It is very erotic – she is very erotic.

There’s a small furry creature with round, piercing eyes and extended bird’s wings at the woman’s feet -her pet perhaps? I don’t know. The woman’s gaze is locked on a point somewhere far over your right shoulder, but she’s looking way beyond you - she knows that you are there but you’re simply not important. I wonder what she is seeing?

I think that she about to start a journey. Where is she going? I don’t know, but wherever it is I don’t think it’s anywhere good. Perhaps she’s off to Hell, or Mars, maybe even back in time to the start of it all. I can’t know, and she’s not telling, but I bet that when she gets there whatever or whoever she finds there isn’t very lucky for her.

I wonder if it’s Friday the thirteenth in that picture? I wonder if she’s going to NGC 63 and it is Friday the thirteenth?

I wonder if she’s coming to see the sixty-three year old me that is desperately waiting for her.

Is she going to tell me her secret? I hope so.

Skullduggery

I heard a word used today that I'd all but forgotten about and the hearing of it made me remember what a fantastic word it is. It's the kind of word that when I was young was regularly used in newspapers, in general conversation, and even on 'Blue Peter' - particularly around Guy Fawkes night.

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It is such a great word.

Skullduggery

Yes, I know it should be spelt with a single - but how much darker is it with that other 'l'?

It conjours up visions of grave robbers at midnight digging deep to remove the bodies of the dead as they lie wrapped in their shrouds. The worms wriggling... well... you can fill in the rest, I'll leave it to your imagination.

Or maybe it's about pirate treasure? Was it a pirate law to place the 'Jolly Roger' on top of the booty ready for the finders? Maybe it was some sort of pirate curse and they would be blinded at the sight, or choke on their own tongues?

Or perhaps it has something to do with poets and philosophers? You know, the ones that used to keep a skull on their desks to remind them of their own mortality as they wrote their odes to long lost consumptive lovers - wasn't that called a 'momento mori'?

Skulduggery - what a magnificent word. Today it means 'underhand practices', but what of its origins?

Nobody really knows where it came from but it is probably an American word first coined in America to describe political intrigue - how disappointing.

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Some experts think that it is probably a Scottish word, most likely from 'sculduddery' which meant fornication, adultery, unchaste - a little more intriguing perhaps.

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Despite me wanting it, it isn't cockney rhyming slang - which is a real pity because I can only think of one other word that it rhymes with.

Skulduggery, skulduggery, skulduggery, skulduggery, skulduggery.

Skulduggery - I'm going to start using it whenever I can because there are so many situations in these dark days that it applies to.

SKULDUGGERY...go on make up your own definition.

The real world?

For a long time my father told me that I should ‘start living in the real world’ - he still does sometimes and I’ve never really understood why. What is so great about the real world? It seems pretty dull to me and always has. From an early age I’ve preferred the ‘not real’ world and when, at the age of nine, I broke my arm after not vaulting a vaulting horse, my interest in the unreal became even stronger.

My broken arm - caused by me not vaulting the horse - was in part due to the teacher who was meant to stop me from coming to any harm as I vaulted. It was her job to stand by the ‘too high’ horse and steady me if I got into trouble. Unfortunately she’d been distracted for a moment and I fell to the floor breaking my arm at a more or less ninety degree angle just below the elbow.

That evening poor Miss Mathews came to my house with a brand new paperback book – Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis. As soon as she’d left I carried it to my room and escaped the real world for the very unreal world of Narnia.

For the next couple of years I moved from one unreal world to another dependent on what book I was reading at the time. Soon I’d expanded into paintings and music as I started to realise that it was better to live in an unreal world of my own making - or at least one that I’d borrowed from Breugel, Cole Porter, Ray Bradbury, or even David Bowie– than live in the mundane real world all of the time.

So here I am today still jumping between worlds. Most of the time I slip away from reality through losing myself in a book, dipping into the landscape of a painting, disappearing into a radio play. I hardly ever manage to travel by television, although films are no problem at all – perhaps television is too real or maybe it’s just me - and of course there is my blog.

But it isn't as simple as that - the unreal can co-exist with the real, and I’ve found that there are some places in the real world that aren’t quite as real as others and where reality isn’t as real as it should be. I think that most of us have been to places where we’ve felt that they, or we, or both, aren’t quite ‘here’. Places that are a little disjointed - outside of our full reality. I call them ‘flux places’. I’m going to tell you about a real ‘flux place’ that I’ve been to, so that you can go there if you ever have the chance…or the need.

Sometimes I drive right down to the western tip of the Llyn and stand on a small mountain looking out towards, Ynys Enlli, ‘The Island of the Tides’ - Bardsey Island - as it rises from the sea like some half submerged sea monster.

You could easily drown in the tides that swirl around it - sometimes I almost do; losing myself in the whirlpools and swells of the sound. It is said that the Vikings gave the island its English name – the Bard’s island – and even from the distant mainland you can hear the poetry and taste the magic. Others say it’s the Isle of Avalon and that Arthur was brought here after his final battle to heal in Merlin’s magical castle made from glass, they say that they are both buried on the island – and as I look and imagine, I believe them.

I went there once, by boat from Porth Meudwy, rubber dinghy then fishing boat, alighting on the dock to the welcome of barking seals and the whistle of the wind across a near treeless landscape. I spent time on tiny beaches calling to the seals and trying to understand their replies as I walked to the lighthouse at the far end of the island, tasting the salt blowing in from the Irish Sea.

Saint Cadfan built a monastery here and thousands of pilgrims made the long, hard trek to Bardsey along the Northern pilgrim’s path from Clynnog Fawr. A long ago Pope decreed that three pilgrimages to Bardsey were equivalent to one pilgrimage to Rome. Some choose to stay and die here and they say that twenty thousand saints are buried on this tiny fragment of dream. If you look carefully you can almost see them.

In the 19th century over a hundred fishermen and farmers along with their families lived on the island, it was a hard and remote life. Lord Newborough (the island’s English owner) decided to make the oldest male on the island ‘Brenin Enlli’ – king - to settle disputes and keep order. The king wore a tall, ornate crown made from tin, painted gold that looked like King Neptune’s crown. This tradition continued until the death of the last king in 1927, his name was Love Pritchard. I know a direct descendent of his – have talked with him about kings and crowns.

Sometimes as I stand on the mountain, looking out to Avalon, I imagine King Arthur, Merlin, Saints and Pilgrims, pirates and kings, tin crowns and dreams - and I slip away from the real world to another place.

Of course you realise that what I've written here could all be imaginings - I wouldn't know -and you can never really know where reality ends and the unreality begins can you?
Perhaps that is what the real world is all about?

Taking the Myth...

Today is my birthday. I was born in 1957. It was, as days go, a fairly unremarkable day - a slow news day. I was born on 10th March, the same day as - Shannon Tweed the Canadian model and actress, some American actor called Matt Knudsen, an American folksinger called Jim White and…oh yes, Osama bin Laden.

1957 was the year that the BBC fooled the nation into believing that Spaghetti grew on trees. Thing was, back in 1957 most spaghetti came in cans with tomato sauce, so I can see how people were fooled. I was probably in my mid teens before I saw a packet of spaghetti in a shop, and maybe twenty before I ate freshly made spaghetti in an Italian restaurant in Wolverhampton.

Way back in 1974, seventeen year old me bought a copy of ‘Kimono my House’ by Sparks. There was a track on it called ‘Equator’ and the opening verse went ‘I always felt that I had quite a gift as a judge of human character - This is the day and the time and the place - And I wonder, wonder where you are - Surely, we set it for 3pm - Surely, we said it was March the 10th (Equator, Equator) - You said you'd meet me there - You must be just around the bend.’

I’d read somewhere that the antichrist would be born on March 10th, so I wondered if the lyric of the song was a message to him. The message wasn’t for me though – I’d checked and I was 666 clear – so perhaps it was a message for Osama.

Anyway – let’s say it was and spread it all over the Internet…

- in 1974 Sparks sent a message to Osama bin Laden through the lyrics of track 10, (the final song), of side B on ‘Kimono my House, informing him that he must be around the bend and that as good judges of human character they knew him to be the antichrist. This view (or so it is claimed) is shared by Shannon Tweed, Matt Knudsen and Jim ‘the preacher’ White - whose 1997 album ‘Searching for the Wrong Eyed Jesus’ is also believed to be a reference to Osama. Prior to this many believed Richard Dimbleby to be the antichrist who, as perpetrator of the BBC’s ‘Swiss spaghetti harvest’ hoax, is claimed to have damaged the minds of thousands of members of the British working classes in 1957 -

So there you have it.

Off you go…crank up the handle of that urban myth hurdy-gurdy and get it out there.