GRIFFITHS' AFFLICTION

I was surprised when I heard that Griffiths was studying medicine. With his occasional bouts of narcolepsy, which caused him to conk out completely for no apparent reason at crucial times, I didn’t think he was the man for the scalpel. I remember one lunch-time in the office, one minute he was sitting eating a bowl of pea soup, the next he was face down in it, looking like a recumbent Martian. He was badly scalded and when he came back from the hospital, his face was swathed in bandages, like the Invisible Man’s. He explained his affliction by saying, proudly, ‘It’s something about a genome. I’ve a thousand too few, or too many.’ Doctors tried to control it with mescaline, until Prentice grew wildly addicted to it and started writing poetry in Urdu, a language of which he’d had no previous experience. Finally, partial control was exerted by the ingestion of a daily vitamin C tablet and a regimen of unexciting food such as celery. I never thought that Griffiths was cerebral enough for the doctoring. One night we were out for a drink and chatting about the war. I asked him to name the source of the famous quote: ‘Dictators ride to and fro on tigers that they dare not dismount.’ He thought for a moment and said, triumphantly, ‘Gandhi.’ ‘Gandhi was a pacifist,’ I said. ‘It was Churchill. What on Earth made you think it was Gandhi?’ ‘Well,’ he replied, ‘Gandhi was Indian and they have tigers in India, don’t they?’ A few months later, I ran into Griffiths at the sports centre. He had been working on the weights and was in the foyer, in the process of sniffing his left armpit. ‘Do I smell?’ he asked. ‘Everybody smells,’ I replied, ‘that’s why we’ve got noses. If you mean do you smell bad, then the answer, fortunately, is no.’ I asked him how he was getting on with his medical studies. ‘To tell you the truth,’ he said, ‘not too well.’ I asked him to elaborate.
‘I’ve made a couple of errors,’ he remarked. ‘They asked me to begin a treatment of depilation on a patient and I though that meant giving him suppositories. I nearly managed it, too, until the doctor asked what the hell was I doing cutting the chap’s hair at the wrong end.’ ‘An easy mistake to make,’ I admitted.
‘Then there was the time they brought someone in who had bad frostbite and I diagnosed athlete’s foot before giving him a shot of ether to dull the pain. He ended up losing four toes and I was reported to the Medical Council. I gave it up after that.’ The last I heard of him was that he’d taken up as a parliamentary sketch-writer. He fell asleep regularly, but so did his colleagues, especially after they had given the old liver a pounding in the Flying Pheasant on Old Queen Street the evening before. It could be said that finally there was one job where Griffiths’ affliction was a positive advantage to him.

THE QUARREL

Amberley and his wife were walking towards the hospital entrance. Parking was always difficult there. Amberley noticed that a small woman and a female nurse were having to push a wheelchair up the road to another wing, because the footpath was blocked by parked cars parked on double-yellow lines and right on the kerb. Despite his advanced years, Amberley felt his hackles rise as he saw yet another car mount the pavement and park. The driver got out. He was a large, belligerent-looking middle-aged man with a fierce beak for a nose and a pair of wilful piggy eyes. Amberley walked up to him and said “You should be locked up, parking here. Look at that poor nurse having to push the wheelchair up the middle of the road. See how dangerous that is?” The big stranger clenched and unclenched his large gnarled fist and set his large jaw. “Are you talking to me?” “Of course, I’m talking to you. You’re the thoughtless one who is endangering people’s lives by parking there.” The big stranger paused to take all this in for a moment then replied, with some asperity, “Listen, Grandad. I’ve been driving round and round this bloody hospital for fifteen minutes and this is the only place I can park. My son’s lying in there and this is the only slot I can find. I’ve as much right as anyone to park there.” Amberley’s wife tugged at her husband’s sleeve. “Come away, George, we don’t want any trouble.” Amberley reluctantly walked away but, as he did so, yelled over his shoulder “Go and park in the main street over there, and get out of the car park.” “Go to Hell in a hand-cart, you wizened old berk,” was the sharp rejoinder. Nevertheless, when Amberley and his wife returned, they noticed that the big stranger’s car was parked precisely where Amberley had indicated.

ELLIE BOWMAN RETURNS

Devlin bought the old mill for well below the market price. He took a risk. Risk was his business. It was no longer a mill. It was operating as a builder’s storehouse. The roof on the west side had fallen in after a fire, and the brickwork of the mill chimney, which stood a hundred feet high and was a ‘B’ listed building, needed urgent repair. The mill looked decayed and sad. To Devlin, the sadder, the better. He intended to transform it into a number of premium apartments and to make his fortune in so doing. He knew the history of the place from his grandmother, who had worked at the loom a half-century before. She had described the clanking of the machinery, the noise, the dust, the smell of hot oil, the painful skin rashes from the raw wool, the darkness, the long hours, the camaraderie between the mill-hands, the severity of the owner and the bowler-hatted managers, the pittance of pay the workers earned. There had been several tragedies at the mill over the years, but none worse than that which befell young Ellie Bowman. Ellie was a young woman of about twenty-eight. She had to look after four machines and had to be very nimble and quick to move timeously from one machine to another. On the fateful day, the mechanics had oiled the motion of one of the machines, and had left a patch of oil on the stone floor. Ellie dashed forth as required, slipped, became entangled with one of the looms, and was strangled to death before anyone could come to her aid. ‘They do say,’ said Devlin’s Grandmother, ‘that she appears from time to time, especially when there is some great change afoot. One of the contractors saw her clearly when he was removing some of the machinery.’ Devlin dismissed this as fanciful nonsense. He viewed his new purchase one frosty evening in February. He stood in the long, low basement area that had once housed all the machinery and he fancied he heard the whining of the Brammer belts and the clatter of the looms. A full moon lit up the ruined, and open, western end of the mill, casting a brilliant light. He prided himself on his temperament – he was a man of steel, a man with whom liberties could not be taken. To his great surprise, he watched as a woman, head tilted back and arms thrown out in front of her, apparently in supplication, beseeching someone, appeared from the shadows and stood in front of him. Her face was suffused and purple and her eyes seemed almost to be out of her eye-sockets, so protuberant were they. Devlin watched this phenomenon for several seconds and then, being a man of steel, took to his heels so quickly and so far that he did not halt until he reached the next town, five miles away. The next day he put the mill back on the market.

HAPPY DAYS, HAPPY TOYS

I see a civil servant from Plymouth put up for sale at auction his collection of 7,500 McDonald's Happy Meal toys because his wife said that they took up too much room in his house and that either they, or she, would have to go. He agonised for a week and got rid of his wife. No - only joking. He reluctantly shipped the whole collection of Happy Toys to the auctioneer. Apparently, this most civil of servants visited McDonald's every week for twenty-five years until he got his sense of taste back. According to Wikipedia, that utterly authetic encyclopaedia of Hard Facts, Happy Meal toys have become increasingly elaborate in recent years. Whilst initially they were little more than cheap plastic trinkets such as frisbees or balls, they have gradually been replaced with increasingly sophisticated toys, many of which are aligned to some existing toy line or contemporary motion picture. Between 1996 and 2006, this was usually a Disney movie. That was when old Walt came to his McSenses and decided that he wasn't going to put his name to any more grub that did not accord with his own views on healthy eating, i.e. two lettuce leaves and a nutmeg sandwich, brown over easy. The degree of sophistication of contemporary Happy Meal toys is such that today each one comes with a wiring diagram and a full socket set. Surprisingly, the civil servant had to go back round to the auction room in his Ford Thames van, because there were no takers for his collection. No-one met his reserve of £10 the lot. I find this an incredible state of affairs. I can only assume that most people prefer their wives.

NATIONAL AFFRONT

I see that National Front chap, Griffiths I think his name is, was on 'Question Time' last night. Since then, the switchboard has been jammed with viewers demanding that the Beeb should have had Wogan on the panel instead. Not that I saw it, of course - far too highbrow for me. I watched another programme where two sturdy blokes built a shed in a garden in Torquay. Now, that's real television. Anyway, back to old Griffiths. I ask you - what has happened to our freedom of speech? He might have the dottiest views since someone said you could make a submarine out of a cow's udder, but isn't he entitled to voice them? I still recall Winston Churchill, unless it was some other cove, saying that while he didn't much like what I was saying, he would defend to the death my right to say it. I thought that was pushing it a bit too far, because I've never said anything controversial, or in the least important, in my entire life. Anyway, Griffiths had a rough time of it. Apparently, Greer Garson made mincemeat of him. I'm sure, though, that old 'Dickie' Dimbleby would have given him a fair summing up. I still remember when he did Winston's funeral, there wasn't a dry eye in the house. Oh, and I've known my share of fascists. We had them down at the old grammar school. We called them 'teachers'.

SUNNY DUNNY

Dunbar is a town steeped in history. I believe that the castle dates from the 13th century. It is an imposing ruin, standing sentinel over the harbour of what was once a very busy fishing port. Dunbar is the sunniest seaside town in Scotland ('Sunny Dunny') and was the birthplace of John Muir, who created the notion of national parks in the USA and then here. He is greatly revered in America. The museum paying tribute to him in the town of his birth is a former retail unit on the High Street. Maybe the Council takes the same view as Ralph Waldo Emmerson: "Every hero becomes a bore at last."

Lunchtime Walk

I walked out of the building. Dark, smelly, no daylight. Glad to be outdoors. Till I saw the weather. Mizzly, drizzly, soaked in minutes. Bank of cloud so low it seemed to brush my forehead. Opened my huge umbrella, gay red and white stripes, the only colour for miles. Walked. Limped. Needed my stick. Rat-a-tat-tat on the ground. Blind Pew on acid. Into the Grange. Dripping money. Dripping trees. Yellow poster on a gate advertising a talk on climate change. No climate change apparent here. A surprising number of old Volkswagen camper vans. Bohemian spirit in the heart of middle-aged, middle-class Edinburgh. Roads covered in speed bumps, one of which nearly took the sump off a Fiat Punto. Breeze drifted rain onto my good suit. Romanian wool, guaranteed to shrink at the sight of water. All in all, not much of a walk, really.

"Photo Album"

I take totally rancid photographs. Dozens of albums, some cheap and nasty, others expensive, all chronicling the story of a life. the chronology of events, good and bad. A family, growing up, sometimes in distress, sometimes in happiness. Travel. Blackpool with its glorious illuminations and its extrovert seediness - hedonism - 'Pleasure for all at the Pleasure Beach.' Wallsend-on-Tyne, the town where I grew up, dying, decaying, shorn of investment and development since the death of shipbuilding. Full of friendly and warm people done down by successive governments and councils. Photographs of people, faces fixed with rictus grins behind painted smiles, maybe they're lined with pain - the show must go on and nobody must know.

"Getting Older"

The only way for me from now on is down. My gums are receding faster than the Scarborough coastline and my hair, once blonde, is shot through with grey. My brain continues to slow down. I forget people's names -'Jenny who?' I'm losing my faculties. I've had an injury that has made me walk with a stick. I look like Jake the Peg. My skin has collapsed like a burst souffle. Only my nose and eyebrows continue to grow. I'm like a human Pinocchio, except for the untruths. I'm increasingly sceptical and cynical about everything, especially the Government, banking and the legal profession. I am thinking of forming the 'Anti-everything league'. My philosophy is now one of 'hanging and flogging.' All that, I'm rich in experience, deep in knowledge and rippling with wisdom, I think.

A Long Time Ago.....

There was Blackpool - a long spit of shore separating St Annes and Fleetwood, an archaic pleasure-palace for the great masses and a place that, for a short while, I called my home. I would walk from Squires Gate to the South Shore in winter, when the place was deserted, to marvel at the power of the waves and, if I was lucky, witness sunsets like golden balls of fire erupting from a dark volcano on the horizon-line. Then everything went belly-up and Blackpool became too hot for me to live in, so I escaped.