Not until 1998 did I begin to write some details about Ned - 16 years ago and Ned
was nearly 11. I would frequently get out of bed about 4am and write for a couple of hours. Below are a few of my records on and for Ned. It starts on rather bad world news.
August 1998
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| Ned and Dilly in 1998. They loved each other. |
I noticed on Sunday as the news from Northern Ireland
came through in graphic detail with pictures of a woman in a skirt made ragged
by the bomb and a fallen, shattered expression, running from the blast area
with a boy of about your age, his head dripping blood, that within minutes we
could smile about something unrelated to the bomb. Our impact from the blast
was not even superficial. We can feel outrage and pity and then get back to the
real business of our own lives so quickly. What does this make us? Ordinary I
guess.
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| His face gradually changing |
You are too young and we are too old for feeling the
bitter essence of anger that makes you get up and do something about those
unacceptable injustices that the majority of people do accept. One day I hope
you will feel that keenness. I hope you will be able to direct it towards
positive action too.
30/08/98 04:47:34
This week the global news is all about the collapse of
the Russian economy. Amazing how personalised such a potential disaster can
seem. Don’t they realize that they could upset the delicate balance of MKP? And
in a week when we have taken on staff Rob and bought a new Saab? These Russians
are selfish to the core!
You have been listening to Adrian Mole aged 13 and
three quarters. I should think it strikes many chords with you as you edge
towards teenagerhood. You have been lovely this week. You can be moody
sometimes, but the mood can shift into this really kind and good fun,
nice-to-be-with tone and it’s
great to experience.
We have just done a deal with Paul Anness. Paul looks
like a shambling academic. He arrived wearing not one but two coats on a rare
day when the temperature was in the 90s. With him he brought Joanna Lorenz, his
editorial chief wallah and one-time amorata. They were impressed with the
set-up. That in itself is a lesson. I tend to be hyper-critical of MKP and how
we have set it up. Other people seem very complimentary about it. I should
relax more.
Chris and I continued our relationship through until my
last year at university. She found someone else down in Exeter. I was crushed.
I mean crushed flat. I thought life was not worth living and I went into a
zombie like state for months, throwing myself into relationships with a
reckless disregard for the consequences. When I came out the other side of my
depression about a year or so later, I woke up to the fact that life goes on no
matter what. Tragedy is mostly a state of mind. That state of mind is mostly
self-pity. Self-pity is a waste of life. You believe other people are affected
by your self-pity, that they sympathise. Mostly they are totally bored by it
and prefer you not to be around. Self-pity is a disease - if you start to let
it get a hold you will find it hard to shake off.
We used to listen to Glenn Miller records and play
billiards in the front room of his house. The front room became our encampment
from when we were 11 until we left university at 21. We had parties there,
snogged girls there, debated endlessly about where we should go in the evenings
there.
Ned and his dad on CorfuI get a special pleasure from leaving you both safely asleep. Makes me feel like your guard dog might feel, sleeping outside your cave thousands of years ago. Special job this - lots of responsibility. I wonder if ancient hounds got a little shivery feeling down their backs too.
Yes, I know it’s a pretty unsocial hour. My head swims with mush. I look at the green neon of the alarm clock digits and they say 2.05. I find myself down here at the computer again. You are sleeping on the sofa in the bedroom grating your teeth so loudly that I wonder you don’t break them. Mum is possibly awake herself - it is tricky for me to slide out of bed and slip on my dressing gown, do the latch on the door and feel my way on to the first step (where I might find the warm fur of Dilly’s coat) then close the door past its child finger-saving stop, without waking her.
Over these pages I will try and explain how I feel
about you and Mum. You are my family. That’s a special job, lots of
responsibility. I’ll explore those feelings partly for my own sake because they
are probably the most important I will ever have, and partly because I want you
to know about them. Parents never really explain or try to explain how they
feel about ‘familiness’. Nor do they describe usually until it is too late, how
they love their own kin. We all get embarrassed about our emotions and some get
over-obsessed with them and turn them into a hobby. I don’t know if I am well balanced
in the emotion department or not, but they do intrigue me and they serve a
definite purpose in life. Without them we would be something inhuman. In fact
we would not exist at all because we would have killed ourselves off millennia
ago.
01/10/98 05:15:28
A few days after your eleventh birthday. It was celebrated in roast potatoes, chicken breast and a gravy of friends, some who stayed the night in a squirming huddle on the spare room floor. At half past midnight you came into our bedroom saying the storm is freaking us out. Nature put on a son et lumiere for you, my son et lumiere. On Sunday you Macdonald’d and roller World’d. You stumbled amongst the many stumblers while some cool dudes threaded their way through the drunken staggerers with silken speed.
A few days after your eleventh birthday. It was celebrated in roast potatoes, chicken breast and a gravy of friends, some who stayed the night in a squirming huddle on the spare room floor. At half past midnight you came into our bedroom saying the storm is freaking us out. Nature put on a son et lumiere for you, my son et lumiere. On Sunday you Macdonald’d and roller World’d. You stumbled amongst the many stumblers while some cool dudes threaded their way through the drunken staggerers with silken speed.
Mum and I had a bit of falling out during your
circuits. She told you off for not putting your shoes in a locker - I thought
there should not be any tellings off on a birthday, but I suppose I would over
indulge you given half the chance and Mum has a tough practical streak which
rightly keeps us all in order at times. She noticed after Roller World that you
smelled of sweat hints of hormone changes to come.
You have two late birthday present to come too. Go
Karting next week and the Liverpool home game in three weeks’ time. I sometimes
wonder if such pleasures are coming too early for you and might leave the
day-to-day life you have too humdrum. You might have to wait till you get to my
age to work out that question and by then you might not care.
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| Ned using glue - not sniffing it though! |
The deal is for 8 books of 128 pages each. 8 books on
history and 8 more on Bible stories. This goes right up against what we are
doing for Guy Parr and could be the end of that relationship when Guy finds
out. Guy has said all along that we should do business with other companies,
but that is the last thing he wants and will do everything in his power to
prevent that happening. So why do we court the possibility of losing Guy’s
business? Because he is unpredictable and somewhat power crazy. When you do a
lot of business with one person, and we have done over £1m with Guy, that
person will start to take liberties. They will want to prevent you from
becoming too powerful yourself and holding their business to ransom. Guy has
already shown the power-hungry side of his character and Gerard and I are
making new alliances to feather the nest a bit.
Paul seems slightly less power mad, but time will tell.
The build up of business with Paul could be very good for MKP, but I am aware
that all business is risk-taking. The biggest risk is not to take the risks.
Fortunately, I have prepared myself for this riskiness over the last 30 years
of my life. This is how I think it happened.
When I was seventeen, I fell in love. Her name was
Christine Smith and she was my first real love. Chris was a year older than me
and it seemed as though she was a mature and exciting woman, though not much
more than a girl to my boy at 18. She left school a year before I did and
worked in London for a year so that we would both go to university at the same
time. I threw myself into the relationship completely and it steered everything
I did and everything I thought. It was the perfect antidote to the violence and
misery of home life. Mum was drunk and belligerent much of the time. She deeply
resented Vicky’s marriage to Peter. She thoroughly disliked Chris and she aimed
much of her frustration and violent fits at Dad.
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| 12th year birthday present - flying experience |
When I shook off the self-pity I also shook off a
clinginess I had for safety in all things. I suddenly burst through into the
energy that living has. I can’t say I was wildly happy and devil-may-care. That
is simply not my personality. But I became less introverted and constantly
afraid that I might not be pleasing people all the time. I started to grow up
in other words. It will amaze you as you do grow up how few people are really
grown up. Nobody completely grows up. Everyone has the same child in their
heads that they have known since first memories, but some people manage to
reach a watershed of development - and leap over it. Others do not. I think I
leapt and as I leapt I realized that life can be fun, but you have to take the
occasional risk. Not be repressed by constantly weighing consequences.
Does that mean because I was devastated in my first
love affair that I therefore am prepared to risk losing Parragon business? If
you like.
18/08/98 05:40:14
It is 5.40. Gerard snores in the next room. A
subterranean beat from a huge piece of mining machinery. He swears he does not
snore, but I have heard him from the 20 paces down a hotel corridor, loud
enough, I thought, to wake the occupants throughout its length. He has stayed
the night, as he sometimes does, because he is in the office tomorrow and
journeying home to Oxford for a few hours is tedious. Though Gerard would
travel through a firestorm to enjoy the warmth of his matrimonial bed - well it
will be matrimonial when he marries next year.
It is good to have a friend and a partner in business.
Friendship is sweet and elusive. I had one good friend when I was your age Ned.
His name is Peter Arnold and I have mentioned him to you a few times. We were
friends until the end of our university days, Always fiercely competitive with
each other to the point that we had fist fights on occasions. We fought over
politics mostly. He was middle class - his father was an advertiser for The
Daily Mail and they owned their own house. They supported the Tories we
supported Labour and our political persuasions were thrashed out in the
playground and on the bus to school.
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| Ned with a marvellous smile about 1992 |
I dream about Peter all the time. It is guilt probably
- that I have allowed the friendship to wither except for a Christmas card and
the odd letter. To keep up the friendship would be for the wrong reasons now
anyway. Nostalgia is not friendship, but it is not always possible to tell them
apart. So I am glad I have this relatively new friendship with
Gerard. He will always be the loud, exuberant one to my slightly shy,
apparently thoughtful counterpart. That’s OK. It works well in friendship and
business to be counterparts.
22/08/98 02:17:51
22/08/98 02:17:51
Yes, I know it’s a pretty unsocial hour. My head swims with mush. I look at the green neon of the alarm clock digits and they say 2.05. I find myself down here at the computer again. You are sleeping on the sofa in the bedroom grating your teeth so loudly that I wonder you don’t break them. Mum is possibly awake herself - it is tricky for me to slide out of bed and slip on my dressing gown, do the latch on the door and feel my way on to the first step (where I might find the warm fur of Dilly’s coat) then close the door past its child finger-saving stop, without waking her.
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| Ned with Jessie Grisewood about 1991 |
22 October, 1998
Just had a dream that I was trying to fill the car with
petrol. Someone gave me a special Black and Decker attachment, a metallic blue
drill that attached to the petrol hose. It provided masses of pressure to help
fill up the tank with petrol, but was hard to control and impossible to turn
off. When I looked round the car itself was full of petrol and Gerard was in
the driving seat up to his waist in murky green petrol. I asked him why he
hadn’t told me to stop adding petrol and he said he hadn’t noticed the car
filling up.
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| Dad and son by a washing line? |
This weekend we go to Liverpool to see a game and stay
the night in the Adelphi. I go with a few misgivings. Liverpool is a world that
seems full of aggression. You will love it, I’m certain.
Tomorrow I have a golf society day at Harlow. Now
there’s aggression!
Business is growing fast and seems like my subconscious is hinting at inflammable dangers. There are dangers, but danger, as we know is exciting. It can even be addictive. We are going to open up offices in Saffron Walden to help cope with the commissions coming from Faber, from Octopus, Southwestern, Scholastic, Parragon and our own publishing list. People like the books we do which is flattering, but the staff are like a globular mass that I am trying to push up an incline. I hope for as much enthusiasm for this rise of MKP as I and Gerard have. This is totally unrealistic, but without their keenness the drive has to come from me and that is getting a bit exhausting.
Business is growing fast and seems like my subconscious is hinting at inflammable dangers. There are dangers, but danger, as we know is exciting. It can even be addictive. We are going to open up offices in Saffron Walden to help cope with the commissions coming from Faber, from Octopus, Southwestern, Scholastic, Parragon and our own publishing list. People like the books we do which is flattering, but the staff are like a globular mass that I am trying to push up an incline. I hope for as much enthusiasm for this rise of MKP as I and Gerard have. This is totally unrealistic, but without their keenness the drive has to come from me and that is getting a bit exhausting.
11/11/98 04:58:09
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| Ned's first day at his secondary |
Armistice Day. We marked Thanksgiving on Sunday by
attending Finchingfield Church and watching you ‘parade’ there from the scouts’
hall. Unusual for us to go into a church let alone doing so without a
christening or wedding involved. I don’t know if Thanksgiving could mean
anything to an eleven year old. I doubt it somehow. You kill hundreds (or is it
thousands?) weekly in Red Alert - The Aftermath. What can the deaths of people
fifty or 80 years ago mean to you or any young boy?
The terrible deaths - some 11,000 so far - in Nicaragua
and Honduras from Hurricane Mitch are on the TV. 11,000 dead, millions
homeless. When I was 11, in 1961, I remember the US general election more than
I remember any world-scale tragedies, but I guarantee there were some that
year. What will you remember most from your tenth and eleventh year I wonder.
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| Photo by Ned, Cordoba - my old house |
We are at that time when we should be choosing your
next school. There is something a bit boot-sale about the whole business. You
can see parents worried sick that they may make the wrong choice and miss out
on a bargain. Some people read masses of magazines before buying a stereo or
cam corder and then hand over money sure they have the best possible purchase.
Whether you go to Helena Romanes, or Saffron Walden or Newport, you will do
well or you will turn against school and society and family and take to
glue-sniffing. If you do well or do badly, I don’t believe it will because of a
decision we make now about your next school. Your fate is sealed in your genes
and in your life over the last eleven years. The signs are pretty good.
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| On a cliff in Crete 1998 |
Business wise we approach another corner. Guy Parr has
indicated that he can get his books more cheaply than from us and may cancel
orders for 2000. We have steadily reduced his percentage of our work from 90
per cent last year to about 30 per cent this year. He has created us with his
money and believes he can now pull our strings. I can understand that he might
feel that, but he’s mistaken. He has a strong power instinct, I have a strong
survival instinct.
We are planning to take over offices in Saffron Walden in a
couple of weeks. We are taking on new work from Octopus and Scholastic. My
problem is coping with employees who, quite understandably, do not feel that
the success of MKP is their guiding principle.
21/4/99 3:47:32 AM
Quite a lot has happened since the last entry. NATO has
gone to war with Milosovic and you have grown a centimetre or two and we have
had a trip to Italy which was successful for MKP and a first for Kate. Last
night we watched Lock, Stock and Two
Smoking Barrels – the second viewing for you yesterday as you were at home
nursing the wheezes. I suspect it has not ruined your chances of growing up to
be a normal and quite nice person.
Next week you are off to the Isle of Wight for a week.
This will be a week in which you will be out of touch from us for the first
time in your life. That represents a big step for you and for us. It is a step
we are not really looking forward to as much as you are, but I suppose we have
to grow up some time.
14/6/99 4:36 AM
14/6/99 4:36 AM
You returned safely from the Isle of Wight and the
world seems a safer place now that that has happened and the war in Kosovo
appears to have finished - two events more or less equal on the DAD (Dreaded
And Dire) Richter Scale of paranoia.
Just to help you pin this moment in time - when I
choose to add a few lines in the journal - we went to Blue Water shopping theme
park purgatory yesterday. It was a kind of consolation prize for Kate who had
wanted to go to London for a wedding anniversary treat. We didn’t go to London
because she felt too poorly with a summer cold. At Blue Water we bought an
exercise machine (do we still have it? did we ever use it?) and a duff computer
game - Populous. Remember now? When I bought it you said typically ‘It’s your wedding anniversary’. Meaning I
don’t think I should have presents - you should.’ I said, a little
sarcastically, ‘It just gives me pleasure buying things for you son’, and you
replied, quick as you like, ‘Then I want you to be as happy as possible, Dad’.
I love that quickness in you.
MKP appears to have turned another corner. We had a
meeting with Paul Anness on Friday in which he offered to sell and distribute
all our books. This is a huge boost. It means our books will have guaranteed
sales in UK, Australia, The States and possibly in foreign language markets as
well. And this on a day when Guy Parr phones Gerard and tells him that he does
not want to go to his wedding or speak to him. A spiteful blow to Gerard
personally, which he was barely able to prevent showing. In the long term what
is more important - business or friendship? I hope I never have to make the
choice, but I hope I would make the right one.
21/6/99 3:58 AM
You lost half a tooth again at youth club. A clash of
heads - you and Oliver - and you were instantly transformed into a little
bruiser with a dodgy temperament (just facially).
21/9/99 1:27:45 AM
21/10/99 2:27:33 AM
I just had a dream that I was being sent to the Moon.
It was, as you might imagine, a big event in my life, but it seemed I was the
only one to think so. There was a send off party. The evening paper had the
Moon shot all over the front page but the type was so small no one could read
it - no one could read my name! I went to look out the window to see the Mon
and it had regular stripes across it
- black stripes. This was considered by all the party goers to be not a
good sign. The time came when I had to leave and I went to find Kate to say my
goodbyes. As there was a good chance I might not come back from the Moon (the
venture was a private one dreamt up by some colleague whose I identity I was
hazy on) I thought Kate might be anxious. In front of everyone I attempted to
kiss her long and lingeringly, but she would not have it and twisted away. She
then asked me if I had done my homework! I lost all patience, told her that I
was just about to go off to possible death and anyway, I’d had no time to do my
homework. And we had a row.
Suddenly there were only a few people left in the room.
Gerard was there and so was someone who was to be our employer when I returned
from the Moon. Gerard let me know that he had found a job with Reed and I
realised that we had both been fired even before starting the job. The
erstwhile employer told me that my union rep had had it in for me and had ended
up apologising for the whole affair - with it being so inconvenient that I
should choose to go off to the Moon. He was so smug about it that I hit him in
the face, saying ‘Didn’t expect that did you’ and walked out of (what turned
out to be his apartment). I got as far as the lift and realised I had left my
jacket with my wallet in it. No wallet, no taxi. No taxi, no Moon!
I rushed back to the door which he was trying to shut
on me, fearing another smack in the mouth, but something stopped the door from
closing completely. He tried to push it shut and I heaved against it, but
something solid just wouldn’t allow him to shut it even though he was much
stronger than I was. I realised that what was preventing the door from shutting
was a supernatural force, a force that had decided that I’d had enough rotten
luck for one day and had intervened on my behalf.
Crazy dream meaning what? I have deep insecurities
about my relationships with my colleagues and my wife? My attempts to do
something daring and audacious will be thwarted by everything and everyone with
the exception of a supernatural or spiritual force? Am I lacking a faith?
Wednesday today (actually Thursday now). I returned
from Frankfurt on Sunday. Our stand was a joke - a corner on the Anness stand.
Gerard had made a huge tactical error and he knew it, but there was no point in
dwelling on it, but it has caused a tension between us. Business otherwise was
quite good, though cashflow problems loom. Had some good ideas while away
though - the flippers - 1200 books in one, and the Encyclofax, an encyclopedia
in Roladex form - who knows.
After being away on a trip I always get a frisson of
pleasurable anticipation as I walk down the long hall to find you and mum. You
were in your dressing gown - 4 sizes too small for you now and riding up your
back. I crept up on you and surprised you and you gave me a hug, spontaneous in
the first instance and then self-conscious. Mum gave me a peck on the cheek -
she never lets go. This may have been the root of the dream.
1 March, 2000
Woke up as usual in the earlies - often 2.30ish. The
song ‘Climb upon my knee sunny boy’, an old Al Jolsen number floated into my
head. My dad used to sing it to me and, sure enough, I would climb upon his
knee. Memories and tunes like that are as rare as hen’s teeth. I am pleased
this one came back from wherever it had been dormant in my brain folds. I hope
you will have such memories lodged in your brain for unexpected sleepless
moments. Other sleepless moments leave me feeling quite different - full of
reasonless dread. I sometimes wake up with only one thought - that I do not
wish to survive you.
Business news: we are doing all right. We prised our
last £50k from Parragon last week (the day we went to Bournemouth and spent
most of the time in traffic). Problems continue to bubble up with Gerard who is
proving to be an ego at odds with my own - inevitable in partnerships I guess.
The Flippers (now Mixups) and the Car Box Book - ideas I had in Frankfurt - are
beginning to come good.
May 6, 2000
Yesterday was a sad day. We had to take Dilly to the
vet’s to be put to sleep. ‘Put to sleep’ sounds such a lame euphemism, but that
best describes what happened. I had taken her to the vet two days before and he
had discovered what he called ‘groats’ in her stomach, and they were not
medieval coins. He said she would have a short time to live and we discussed
the options when I came home. That, I think, was what you found the really hard
part.
The next day I gave her extra strokes and pats. I
imprinted her smell in my mind – her smell of old dog which is faintly muskily
comforting (if it comes from your dog). Last evening, before mum and I left to
take her to the vet’s, you gave her a last hug that seemed to last forever. It
was gut-wrenching, tear-pulling, for us all, but for you it was the first real
face-to-face with loss. More so than losing your granny or your grandad. They
did not share your house night and day since you were born until the age of twelve
and a half. You stood up to yesterday bravely. I was very impressed. We both
were. You helped me dig the grave in the garden, under the bottom apple tree.
You said it felt wrong somehow and I knew what you meant – digging her grave
while she was still alive was macabre.
At the vet’s, mum and I shed some tears as a little
patch of Dilly’s leg was shaved for the needle and she died almost as the
needle entered her vein. Her eyes glazed, she slumped, she was dead. The
saddest thing for me was seeing the few drops of blood around the needle wound.
A trickle, no more, but had we hurt her as well as killed her? That was my
irrational concern. I carried her in her teddy bear blanket (I had taken that
around the world years ago) to the car. She seemed twice her previous weight.
Back home I tried to ignore the fact she was still warm as we lowered her into
the grave. Mum had bought some roses from the shop to put in the grave. I
filled the grave with soil and it was done.
May 29, 2000
I was thinking in the bath the other day – all
religious belief is fundamentally self-obsessed. Christianity is run on solid
capitalistic lines – believe in me and you will be rewarded, handsomely, for
all time.
But the universe is not like that. It is not centred on
Earth or in us. The only true God is the universe itself and everything in it,
whether living or dead, organic or inorganic. We are literally space dust that
has reconstituted itself into something that can breathe and think. We are made
from bits of rock and gas stirred up in a chemical reaction. That is what we
are and what we will become. So even devotion to and worship of the universe is
ultimately self-obsessed. Religious faith is not what the universe demands, nor
what we should bend our lives towards. Self-belief is the true expression of
‘Universalism’, not self-obsession.
June 2, 2000
Something I sometimes wonder when I look at you and
don’t know what is going on inside your head, whether it’s good or bad or not
yet really troubling you enough to be either: just how much do you realize that
this is it. This is probably as happy as you will ever be. Unless something
devastatingly terrible happens or something miraculously wonderful, your
capacity and readiness for happiness is already programmed into your make-up.
Like me you will always be working on the future – looking forward to
something, working on a ‘project’. But only sometimes do I appreciate that the
project I am working on for the future has already happened and I am living
through it right now.
It’s too obvious for words really – like a Thought for
the Day on Radio 4, but the obvious is sometimes shy to reveal itself. The
cliché is ‘Life is not a rehearsal’ and clichés, like the obvious are sometimes
overlooked. That particular cliché might be the most important one you will
ever come across.
July 10, 2000
Another early morning start. Something made a noise at
4.45am this Monday morning. It was like someone fiddling with a door latch and
then a bar of soap falling off a shelf into a bath – mechanical clicks and
bathroom echoes. It woke me up. I have heard the same noise in this house. In
fact it recurred about 15 minutes later – so I got up. Just to place this in
time, yesterday we bought you a new guitar with Nik’s help at Blake End. We
went to Nik and Sherry’s where you played the guitar while Rudi hit the bejesus
out of his drum set. You sounded OK. Yesterday, too, I wrote a letter to Peter
Arnold, I wrote up suggestions for new projects for Southwestern, we had roast
ham for lunch and watched a terrible film called Dead Husbands on TV last
night. That should do it.
When this noise woke me I was having a dream about you
and Ben Williams. It was based in Spain and involved a burger café where
something historical was going to take place at 4am for which the whole town
was staying up. I was writing a note for you to excuse from school for the next
day (in terrible handwriting) when the something mechanical with a bathroomy
glissando woke me up.
In the 20 minutes it took me to decide to leave the warmth
of your mum’s sheet and blanket nest, I thought about why we are here. The
reason is obvious: we are here to have children and to perpetuate ourselves.
Just as single-celled amoeba have to split, we have to conjoin to make more of
ourselves. That is one reason, if not the
reason, we love our children so much. They are the manifestation of our reason
for being. And where did it begin? Did it begin with those single-celled
organisms in the primeval cup-a-soup, or long, long before? Before the Big
Bang? My theory is that we are one manifestation, and one of many, of a
universal restlessness. We are so-called life and so-called intelligence. But
what if we simply do not recognize the ‘life’ in a chemical reaction. Watch
water boil. Doesn’t that have life? Or clouds move, or volcanoes erupt, or
waves crash. The one little extra that organic life has over these tumultuous
releases of energy is just that – organic life – a different expression,
perhaps, of something we have in common with every thing, every atom, in this
particular universe.
July 31, 2000
Just a note about your golfing exploits yesterday when
I took you to Elsenham with Ollie. First champagne (or bitter gall) moment was
when you shanked a ball off the fairway into my rib cage. I was not seriously
hurt, just surprised. You and Ollie (I think when you realized I was not going
to die) started to wheeze and giggle. You both fell on the ground on hands and
knees fighting for air between gasps of laughter. You, interestingly, cried
tears of laughter, just as always do (whenever I hit someone in the rib cage
with a well-struck seven iron).
On the third tee I could see that the group of people
who were gathered around the flag using the hole for putting practice, were out
of range for you (and probably me). I heard the swoosh of the ball you’d hit
with your driver and had this vision as it soared skywards, of it pole-axing
the little girl who was mindlessly practising putting. It landed, mercifully
about three yards from the flag – but the one on the adjacent hole. So in a few
short minutes I had narrowly avoided my death by golf ball and witnessing you
murder a sweet innocent in the same fashion.
But it is good to see you making progress. Good to
witness the maturing process. The architrave on the kitchen door is whittled
with the marks of your growth. Something like 5mm a week during some growth
spurts.
September 26, 2000
The eve of your 13th birthday. The teenager
is showing itself and has been for a while. He’s got heavy hands, they pull on
his shoulders and hang his head. Little eruptions have appeared on his nose and
forehead, small by volcanic standards, mountainous by his. The voice is a tonal
shade of a man’s voice and when it drifts through the house, and it rarely does
because the preferred volume is just sub-audible, it denotes the presence of a
stranger until the source is identified.
A series of small battles have already taken place
between you and your mum. On Saturday there was a minor drama as Rudi became
dislodged from the group of you mooching around in Chelmsford. You were captain
sensible and rightly concerned so you phoned on the mobile. Sherri blamed you
all and found Rudi guiltless – surprise, surprise. But before this there was a
row in the car as you tried to make abortive arrangements with your mates and
mum called you a birk and lost her cool. I could see that teenager or not you
could be brought to tears by some unfair stabs to your dignity. They were
unfair, but people are, especially mothers to their sons.
It is vital that your dignity is maintained and vital
that you both give and get respect. Like most parents mine did not try
consistently to preserve my dignity and like most kids I was in turn
disrespectful to my parents. Like most kids who have grown up and whose parents
have died I deeply regret having done so. That is irreparable and that makes it
so sad.
October 17, 2000
I go to Frankfurt in an hour or so – it’s now 4.25 am.
Been awake with odd twinges in my stomach and pains in my back. Probably
nothing serious – I strained my back lifting desks (why do you have to do that
sort of thing? you asked). Might be a hernia or just a pulled muscle, but
thoughts at 3.30am are not conducive to minimising the seriousness of things.
At that time the mind loves to contemplate blackness. Now you are getting older
and more of a man, I can consider my own death – whenever that should be – with
slightly less panic. You are not so dependent, nor so loving in some ways. Our
letting-go process has got to start and you are making it easier by being more
removed from us. That, I suppose, is all part of the nest-leaving. Strange
though innit.
October 26, 2000
Frankfurt was a momentous success for us. Machaon, the
Russian company, has proposed to invest £2m in us with all sorts of publishing
deals for Eastern Europe. This could be the turning point from small to big,
from well-off to rich, from hard work to even harder work, from content to
hilariously happy, or smug or arrogant or couldn’t care less. I don’t know.
Thought about the impact you have, one has, upon other
people this morning as an infection. There are so many parallels. When you
leave an impact upon someone, you enter their heads as a memory, a tiny
chemical disturbance, like a virus. And like a virus the memory lodges in their
brains unless eaten away by disease, or corroded by time. Like a virus it wants
to breed and infect other brains, so people who you have infected will spread
their memories/impressions of you to other people – infecting by mouth,
infecting by sound, or written word or of course, by Internet. The biological
imperative, or Darwinian answer, must be that impressions and memories combine
forces to spread the word about strong characters to attract potential mates.
If that is true, and I think it probably is, the worst thing to be is a shadowy
person, a wallflower. Whether your influence is good or bad, it is better that
it should be either rather than simple invisibility.
October 27, 2000
The growth of MKP is a bit like your growth. Between
September and October you grew about 1cm. Over the last year you have grown
about the same amount you grew over three years – from 8 to 11 years I believe.
MKP is going through a growth spurt too. Next year we could go from £3.5 to
£5.5m, which is staggering growth in our fifth year. It is the company’s
adolescence turning into adulthood. Will it make us turn inwards, look grumpy,
grunt and get spots? I hope not. And if this phase of yours lasts much beyond a
year we will all be thinking of rebellion. Still love you though.
Last night you went off with James to his flat in
Dulwich Village and today you will probably go to Chessington Fun Park. We are
both irrationally concerned about you whenever you go away, even for a few
days, and likewise when we go away. Your concern is non-apparent if you have
any. Guess that’s good.
Last night we went to the new Dickens Brasserie for
Janet’s 41st birthday. It was OK, but your mum at 4.02am is
regretting a surfeit of red wine and rich food.
November 20, 2000
Much has happened since the last entry a few weeks ago
– some of it good, some not so. The not so good involves friends. Jill Thomas
died two weeks ago. You remember her of course and her husband ARK and dog
George. Jill had a wonderful whinnying giggle, was full of energy and life and
sparkling intelligence. Her only fault was meanness with money. Mum was
devastated by the news, but she rides these blows surprisingly well, falling
into depressions only momentarily. Then David. I played golf with David three
weeks ago and noticed he was not his usual self – he looked older and his voice
was sibilant and strained. I received an email saying he went in to hospital a
few days after the golf for a biopsy on a ‘lesion’ on his tongue. It turns out
that it was a cancer and he has
had an operation to remove half his tongue. We went to see David on Saturday
night (you were walking with ghosts in London) and it was a shock to see him.
The operation involved lifting up half his face, breaking his jaw and grafting
muscle tissue from his back on to the unaffected part of his tongue. He was
badly swollen, breathing through a tracheotomy tube and dribbling constantly.
He managed bravely to speak, but the words were difficult to decipher. He broke
down and it was hard for me not to do the same. If David pulls through this
(and I suppose it is not 100 per cent certain) he will never be quite the same,
nor will he be able to stand before his students and lecture in quite the same
way. He is amazingly determined and courageous and I hope these attributes will
repair him quickly.
We have been to the States, which was good. Spent a few
days in Manhattan, trudged the sidewalks, circumnavigated the island in a
Circle Line ex-coastguard cutter which saw active service in WW2. That was
fascinating and taught us much about the history of New York from a
showman/guide who was a frustrated actor with more than a touch of the dramatic
moment. We then flew to Nashville for a meeting with Southwestern. We had three
meetings with them one of which was to present our case for acquisition (or
partial acquisition). We are asking £2m for 25% - the same as with Machaon and
now with Faber. Something looks as though it will happen soon which will help
to solve our cash crisis.
December 5, 2000
Makes you think – these friends with cancer – how brave
they can be. You never hear of people who are not brave about grave illness or
certain death. Perhaps something gives you courage under these circumstances,
but in Jill and David’s case I don’t remember it being religion. So where does
it come from?
We had a meeting with the bank today and they are
prepared to give us a line of credit based on our debtors’ ledger. This simply
means that if are owed £1m we can write cheques up to that amount even if we
have yet to collect the money. This should make life easier – and means we
should be able to pay Christmas bonuses this year. Gerard is looking strained
and tired – not surprisingly if he is awake at this time of day (2.21 am) which
he probably is not. He has a lot of aggression lately which I don’t like to see
– not that he ever points it in my direction. We are sometimes a bit like two
dominant males in a lion pack – it can be difficult. But we have a lot of
mutual respect and we need aspects of each other’s personalities to make the
business work. We go to Moscow in two days. That should be interesting.
February 27, 2001
It seems that the time between these entries is warped
to pass at twice normal speed. Just as a footnote to that last entry, we saw
the NatWest yesterday and they seem to be prepared to increase our overdraft
facility to half a million. Frightening stuff!
I had a weird dream last night which culminated in you
shooting a young hood outside this huge house in Spain owned by gangster
friends of ours. You then went inside the house, which was also a school, and
shot one of the tots who were running around in panic. I asked you why you’d
shot the little boy and you calmly said ‘He was on the way to the class’.
My subconscious is mulling over, perhaps, that calmness
of yours which sometimes borders coldness. At your school they think you are a
cool customer, meaning you do not panic and take things in your stride. That is
a good quality if it does not make you icy. I don’t detect ice, just coolness.
Two programmes I have seen this week – one on the
Eastern Front and the other on Nazi wives and the last moments in Berlin during
the war, make me realize that this state of peace we have is as fragile as a
soap bubble. I have always expected war of some kind to happen during my
lifetime as I have only scant respect for the level of intelligence in world
leaders. I will be too old to fight if it happens and I hope to God you also
become too old to fight yourself.
24, April 2001
I had a medical for life insurance purposes. One of
these strange actuarial processes – if they think they will have to pay out in
the near future they won’t insure me, if they think I’ll live for ever they
will. Anyway, the nurse (who you met) did my blood pressure – 120/80 which was
good. She told me that when you are over 50 years old, you add your age to 100
for the upper figure, so 150 would be average. And anything below 90 is good
for the lower figure. She tested my pee and that was not so clever. It showed
sugar in the urine and that could be diabetes, or it could be a dodgy reading.
The pee has gone off for more tests in a jiffy bag. She weighed me. With all my
clothes on I was 12 stone! So I weighed myself again this morning and
registered 11 and a half. That is still worryingly high for me and it could be
a) I need to eat less and exercise more, b) I am getting old and fat whatever I
do, c) I really do have diabetes.
We watched Gerard’s video of his wedding yesterday.
Like all such videos it was tedious in the extreme to everyone apart from those
caught on screen. You looked amazingly younger, though it was only two years
ago. Gerard is going to lend me the leads necessary to edit our videos and make
our own tedious video.
30/5/01 3:08 am
Dr Meekins confirmed that I don’t have diabetes, is the
postscript to the above.
Perhaps the reason I cannot sleep is because today we
may have started a process that will take us somewhere very different from
where we are. We had a visit from Mike Kidd, a Sean Connery look alike who is
MD of a company called AMS. He came to look at our assets, as he put it, and he
like what he saw. If he is able to convince his American owners then they will
buy 25 per cent of MKP for a sum to be discussed. It could be £1.5m. That will
allow us to rapidly expand and do all manner of things we cannot do at the
present. It may also provide what they – our auditors – worryingly call an
‘exit’. The Russians are still
interested in us – a year after their initial flirtations and want to have us
meet the mysterious Gerard de Geer again in his London eerie. Tomorrow I fly to
Chicago for the Book Expo American bookfair.
Things are happening to the little company that started
down here in the basement. Things are happening.
12, June 2001
A footnote to the above entry.
Mike Kidd and his cohorts at AMS have not got their act
together. We are small fry to them. However, Gerard had a meeting with him on
Friday and they are still interested by all accounts to take a piece of us. The
problem is that business people like to talk business, even sometimes for the
sake of it. And how do you know when they are doing that? You do not.
We met Gerard de Geer, the Swiss banker, in the
Criterion restaurant, rather than his city office. The table was large and
round, the food was, though Pierre Marco White’s, average and the ambient noise
was terrible. So I heard little that was said from anyone present – the two
Gerards, Natasha, Julia, Kate and Jane. All the women looked exquisite. He
cancelled a meeting in Zurich for the following day and met with us again at
the Lansdowne. Natasha and Julia present also in one of the hotel’s luxurious
subterranean rooms as well as an astute young man called Martin (Swedish I
believe) who is one of the owners of Machaon. We talked about merging with Machaon
– not something we had ever considered and not something we really wanted. As a
company we have more to offer than Machaon – we are creative and we have assets
in our copyrighted books and artwork, and we have access to the States.
Machaon, on the other hand, has access to the Eastern European markets.
De Geer phoned me yesterday and said that Natasha would
not be running the merged company, if that was a concern (and it was). He
wanted me to run it. Natasha has given us the distinct impression that she and
de Geer are lovers – nothing he said yesterday suggested that. Today one of his
money experts is flying out from Zurich for a look at our figures. He appears
to surround himself with experts. We are flattered by all this high level
attention but must not be seduced by it.
27/6/2001
The footnote to the footnote above is that Gerard de
Geer was not prepared to have his chief operating officer in Russia walk out on
him. Edward Allenby (the man from Zurich) reported back that we were in good
financial shape, and that we should be the senior partners in the merged
company. Natalia flatly rejected this and emailed Gerard de G to that effect –
he lost his bottle. He disappointed me, this man of high finance. The whole
business turned, for those few days, on an emotional outburst from a hysterical
woman with a monumental ego.
Our dealings with the other company who wanted to mate
with us, AMS, also bore no fruit. Mike Kidd, (the UK boss) who had tried to
broker a deal whereby AMS bought a 25% share of MKP, was brushed aside by his
US masters. More bruised egos. Another cul de sac. I don’t get bruised myself
by these knock backs because I don’t invest a huge part of my emotions in them.
Gerard has mentally bought the new car, moved to North Oxford and booked his
flying lessons after the first meeting with these people. I don’t do that.
‘These people’ love to play at making deals (as does GK). The weighty
discussions, the looking at balance sheets and portentous summaries about them
– this is the currency they deal in.
Meanwhile we have to make the business work.
Today was my first day as juror in the Marc Best v
Crown case at Chelmsford. He drew a sophisticated air pistol on a group of lads
who’d been bantering with him. I told you – illegally – about this case when I
came home and you got up in the middle of my description to walk off to your
PlayStation or whatever. You were bored. I lost my rag with you, which I hate
doing, but you are going through a rude phase and I see no reason to tolerate
it. I hate to see you underachieving and that is what you are doing. I am
having serious doubts about Helena Romanes.
29/6/01
The case finished yesterday and after 5 hours of
deliberating we found him not guilty. I have rarely enjoyed such a profound
sense of satisfaction – we were split down the middle to begin with and
everyone, bar a couple, seemed totally obdurate in their various camps. I
favoured not guilty because I thought it was not a cut and dried matter. The
prosecution had to prove that Marc Best intended to cause Luke Hall fear that
he would be shot is what it came down to. That they did not do. The youths, I
could sense, were crowing in court. They had someone against the ropes – in
legal terms – and were enjoying
it. There was something ugly about the process of terrifying this man who had
been stupid, had wandered into their patch.
Gradually turning the ‘guilty’ 50% of the jury was what
gave me great satisfaction. I felt a bit of what lawyers and barristers must
feel each day when they win a case. And I felt on good form and able to argue
the points convincingly. Another day and I might have said little. Even greater
satisfaction came when the ‘not guilty’ verdict was delivered in court and we
were able to see the relief on the defendant’s face and the approval on the
judge’s face. Best thanked us warmly several times and then shook hands with PC
Berry, who was a prosecution witness – that helped to demonstrate, when he had
no need to demonstrate anything, that he was not an out-and-out villain.
The whole thing was a fascinating insight into the
legal system, but much more it was an insight into what personalities emerge in
the jury room. The ones who favoured not guilty were mostly the quieter ones.
Young guys who had hardly said a word during the three days came out with some
well timed interventions on behalf of a not-guilty verdict. Those who had made
up their minds on guilty did not want to be seen to be changing them – we
should really have done the whole thing as a secret vote and then there would
have been no public ‘climb downs’. Anyway, justice, I think, was done.
Tried to have a conversation with you last night about
having conversations with you (and its difficulties) and I think I was a bit
hectoring. Sorry.
3, July 2001
We went to see the auditors yesterday and met Guy
Boxall there too – he is our bank ‘manager’ and looks a few years older than
you. Still, we think we might have got agreement for extended our overdraft to
£500,000 by the end of July which is what we need to run the business. I never
have overdrafts and here I am with a cool half mill! Received an e mail from
Julia Zavatanaya yesterday asking us to put the Animals Encyclopedia on hold
which nearly made me flip. I spoke to the writers and designers on the project
and told them I had cancelled it. I hate doing that. Last week I fired Adele
(my PA) and I didn’t enjoy that either, but everything that has been uncovered
since would suggest it was the right decision.
I bought you a new computer on Saturday. We have money
and you make very few demands on it. Indulging you is a form of
self-indulgence. Seeing you happy makes me/us happy. We love you. That simple.
10, July 2001
I am not enjoying such a moment right now (it is 4.38
in the morning and I should be in deep slumber), but there are moments when
this profound feeling of well-being overcomes me, as it must do everyone apart
from the most irreversibly miserable wretch. What causes it? I think it is when
something strikes a chord with a moment in my childhood or at least the moment
when I first experienced that particular response to something – sight, smell
or sound. The smell of leaves burning is an obvious one. And I think that this
resonance is sometimes too subtle to realize – the leaves are burning and the
nose is picking up the smell, but the brain does not recognize it as leaves
burning – just something good and associated with well-being. We need these
resonances from our past, from primal moments and we spend much time trying to
repress them.
James, we heard yesterday, has ‘come out’. Your
response was ‘Well, James is still James’. I hope all his friends and relations
are equally mature about it. I hope he is happier with the ‘secret’ being out.
Peter will struggle with this though, unless he has known deep down for some
time. I wonder if there will be any camping-it-up from James. I don’t really
mind. What if you turned out gay – would I be so generous? Probably not.
November 27, 2001
Since the last entry there has been the 11th September atrocity, the start and middle of an Afghan war, the loss (again) of part of your front tooth, the purchase of a VERY LOUD amplifier for your electric guitar and life, with its huge self-imposed suffering and its minute irritations and celebrations, not surprisingly, goes on.
Since the last entry there has been the 11th September atrocity, the start and middle of an Afghan war, the loss (again) of part of your front tooth, the purchase of a VERY LOUD amplifier for your electric guitar and life, with its huge self-imposed suffering and its minute irritations and celebrations, not surprisingly, goes on.
Someone quoted Wittgenstein the other day - he was a
student? of Bertrand Russell's. Anyway he said "Death is not an event in
life". I know that is very meaningful, but I could not (even under pain of
death) tell you exactly why.
We went to see your cousin's flat at the weekend and I could
see you mentally purring at the freedoms and self-reliances he now enjoys. It
will come to you - but not too soon, I hope. His dad seemed much older to me than
last time we met him. Ageing does that I am sure - lies around dormant for a
while and then has a sudden leap. He seemed indecisive and old mannish.
Preserve me from that as long as you/I/we can.
Business front: we may have just landed £600,000 of
printing for Southwestern. Looks possible. We are pushing the packaging
business aggressively again to prop up our struggle with cashflow. Gerard is in
Australia (actually in flight as I write this) to sort out one customer who has
gone bust and seek out new business. On the way back he will visit our printers
in Hong Kong. He likes this element of the job though I know it causes domestic
strains for him.
5/12/01 1:51 am
Crazy time again - of the morning and of the business.
From where I am sitting the business looks in serious trouble. How could it go
so wrong from the last entry a few days ago to now? Simple - I looked at the
figures more closely and this is what they tell me. We have to collect £350k in
the next few weeks and pay out a similar sum. That gets us passed the end of
the year, but in January we have to pull off the same trick and that will
simply not happen. We have promised a printer that we
will pay them £200k immediately, a similar sum at the end of December and a
similar sum at the end of January. We cannot do this.
Why didn't I look at the figures more closely before?
Well, I did, but I was told that everything is fine. I should
not have believed him He works on the "it'll be alright on the night'
principle. I work on the 'seek the problem and you'll find one' principle. Not
as much fun, but closer to reality. He believes that we have a profitable
business and we probably do. But a very fit athlete can still have a heart
attack or run over a cliff. MKP is having a seizure while falling towards the
beach.
The options are pretty bad: collect more money faster
while selling more books at better prices. Make half the staff redundant and
cut right down on new books. Sell half the company for the debts we have. Go
into liquidation and start all over again.
 |
| Gerard and me in Nashville seeing Southwest Publishing |
Mick at the Vine slipped on a toy at the top of the
stairs yesterday and he is still unconscious. And I think I have problems.
2/2/02 4:17 am
Update on the above - we have survived another month.
Creditors are holding off bringing us down as it is not in their interest to
get only a portion of their invoices. I have just sent out a note to our
creditors saying that we will have to pay them on 60 days not 30 (a bit rich
this as some have been waiting months for their money anyway).
Paula is having an awful, awful time. Her husband Tim
has been diagnosed as having a brain tumour. He is in his 40s and has never
been ill in his life until now. Paula's oldest daughter went in for surgery on
a growth on her face only yesterday. Fate can deal it out like that I guess.
What do you do? Turn to religion? I was thinking about
that the other day - the attraction of religion. Everyone needs someone to turn
to, everyone is lonely inside and everyone needs reassurance. We all need to
speak to an inner voice when we are outraged by some one or some thing that
appears to deny us justice. Humans are inveterate organisers, so they have
organised a higher court, a vast collective inner voice to whom we can rant our
sense of injustice. This we call our God. We are all instinctively superstitious.
To admit to ourselves that God is just an echo of our own inner voice is to
walk under a ladder when generations have walked around it - if we have to
admit that no one other than ourselves is listening, that sense of injustice is
multiplied many times.
Mar 16 2002
This has been an extraordinary week. It started badly
when I went to the office to collect some work and found in the post a letter
from Parragon's lawyers threatening to sue us for over £180k because the Jewish
lobby in the States had decided passages in books we'd created for Parragon
were not to their liking. It is bollocks of course and will be treated
appropriately, but all weekend the scenario of closing the business, making
everyone jobless etc. etc. played incessantly in my head. The weekend was not
restful.
Monday something more extraordinary. I received an
e-mail from Christine Smith. She had found me through Friends Reunited,
strangely enough a few weeks after I had given up trying to find her through
the same channel. We have now exchanged several e-mails and it is a wonderful
feeling having all those nagging questions asked. They have nagged for 30
years. Was she still alive - yes but her husband Patrick who I vaguely remember
and considered for years my nemesis, died in 1994. Were her parents alive: no
they died in 86 and 94. Where was she living - I thought Lancashire and I was
right, Bolton in fact. And there was another strange thing. Three weeks after we
visit (for the first time) the likes of Swinton, Salford and Bolton, the likes
of Swinton, Salford and Bolton occur as leylines in her current life and her
life for the last 30 years.
March 26, 2002
We have survived another six weeks since the last
entry, but the wolves are closing in. I had a fax yesterday from a Mr Toru
Takezawa from Dai Nippon. They have said we must cough up the money or the
Tokyo office will have to become involved and …well, the Tokyo office becoming
involved means what? Public beheading? Harikari? I have no idea, but the threat
sounds pretty ominous.
 |
| Ned (right) with a mate on holiday |
1 April, 2002
Chris Sterling, it would seem, has come through with
the money that will breathe life back into the MK Patient which lies gasping on
its bed, nearly dead from blood loss. It is unclear if he is going to make us a
loan of £300k for the stock - on which he will have call at cost - or if he is
going to buy 10 per cent of the company for £500k. Either sum will buy us
headroom for a while. The headroom will only be enough if we rein in our printing lust. We had a visit from Paul Anness and Simon, his financial Merlin.
This was a visit to help and advise us and advice was what they gave us freely.
Gerard heard from them what he has heard from me many times - you have to
temper optimism with realism etc. Boring stuff. But it struck home. The
following day Gerard was seriously crest-fallen - he was suffering from a lack
of confidence in the company, he said. In fact he was suffering from a lack of
self-confidence which is his oxygen.
I thought he was on the brink of tears and he said in
so many words that he was thinking that perhaps we should wind up the company.
I pointed out to him that being business partners was more complicated than
being a married couple. For a start we had 22 children! By the following day
fortune (and Chris Sterling has one) shined upon us and I guess, as they say,
that that's business.
Yesterday we had lunch with Vicky et al at the George
in Shoreham Village. You had a drive in Miles' new Porsche Carrera. While you
would love to own one yourself one day, and I guess it would symbolise having
'made it', I hope that your apparent interest in communism takes a stronger
upper hand when it comes to deciding on placing value on things in life.
It was mum's 55th birthday on Friday (Easter
Friday) and we took her to Dickins Brasserie for an evening with some staid
middle-aged types like ourselves (except we are not, of course). You were
really good company and, apart from a few angry pimples you have been scratching,
very good looking. And I speak as a completely disinterested party. Today you
are going with Sam and Mick to see Leyton Orient play. Meanwhile you sleep
cocooned in your duvet and that fact alone brings me peace and a sense of
worth.
June 6, 2002
The papers are full of possible imminent war between
India and Pakistan - talk, even, of nuclear war, a scenario hardly discussed
seriously for decades. Oblivion and slow death for millions of people can
barely be imagined - some people, I fear, find it easier to imagine when it
involves third world countries. The other thing filling the headlines are more
prosaic - the World Cup and England's likely early departure from it.
You are still at Rudi's having spent the night there.
We went out with Nik and Sherri to see a film about Jackson Pollock. Don't like
being robbed of your company even for one night and even though you spend most
of your time in your room or in the room next to it playing guitar. Your guitar
playing is getting pretty good. Sometimes I think it could get seriously good!
Friday, November 19, 2004
Friday, November 19, 2004
A gap of over two years since the last entry. I have
some making up to do – no ambiguity intended. MKP-wise we sat down with a
company called Autumn Publishing yesterday to discuss a possible sale. As I
described to you last night, it was just a bottom-sniffing stage. They are
owned in turn by Bonnier Carlson, a Swedish company with a half billion pound
turnover. Could be the roseate road to financial security that these entries
are tinted with, or another smelly red herring. Nearly a year ago I had a
meeting with a one-time boss, the diminutive Lawrence Orbach. He offered us
£400,000 for the company and salaried positions of £100,000 a piece. We turned
him down of course. It will be interesting to see what Autumn come up with.
 |
| His 18th birthday party 2005 |
You have a car now, a Fiesta Fun something or other.
Strange beyond wondering to see you sitting next to me steering your way to
more independence, more maturity and more danger. You are confident behind the
wheel. Well, until the Saturday before last you were. You will remember for
ever the near incident in the car park at Wyevales. You had negotiated
perfectly well the drive to Peaches to look at guitar bits, new dual
carriageway where your speed topped 65mph, the two busy roundabouts – but
somehow you lost concentration at the car park entrance at Wyevales and took
the corner recklessly wide while a silver car was coming out of the car park. I
said STOP, STOP, STOP!! And almost too late you did. The silver car’s driver
mouthed PRAT as he imagined the stove-in off side wing to his pride and joy.
You then drove round the car park the wrong way in a red fug of shock and
embarrassment and could not bring yourself to drive back home. Stuff like that
happens when you are learning new skills – luckily there was no awful outcome,
but it showed you the horrible spectre of one and that will speed up the
learning process.
 |
| His 18th - Nancy and Sid were his presents |
You took your driving test today. A somewhat fraught
day. You’d thought that your instructor would be taking you on the day of the
test (up until the night before), but since you had forgotten to book the
lesson (!) it fell to me to take you for your 8.40am appointment with the
scary-or-what DVLA. We set out slightly later than planned. We then got half
way out of the village when I asked if you had the instructions of how to get
to the test centre (you can get lost looking for his car keys). No you hadn’t.
Back home. Start again. You drive fine as far as the major Nemesis roundabout
at Bishop’s Stortford, but stall in a yellow don’t enter unless your exit is
clear box. Angry artics head for car as lights change, Dad says quick hail
Mary, Ned pulls away with whole centimetres to spare. In Stortford we follow
his instructor’s directions to the test centre, but it appears not to be there.
So we drive round Stortford again with time ticking away and shoes filling.
Seems we both could not see it for the red mist. Ten agonizing minutes in the
waiting cell while small talk is made with other quaking youths and their
instructors. You go off with “Roger”. Turns out Roger is the chief examiner, is
tough but fair, does not tolerate fools gladly, does not speak unless it will
save a life. The other examiners are of course driving off in cars with dual
controls. I can’t help wonder how Roger will cope with pushing his feet through
the foot-well as you approach give-way lines at ball-shrinking speed (his feet
may fit the imprints mine have made over the past few months). I make more
small talk with the instructors about the minor intricacies of parallel
parking. Meanwhile you have not yet left the car park with Roger. You are both
looking under the bonnet. If you have any knowledge of what is under there it
will have come from the examiner.
You eventually drive off, turning (gulp) right for the town centre. The other two cars had turned left for open countryside completely devoid of roundabouts, traffic lights, children with footballs, out-of-control prams and cars. I wait with Tim and Sheila exchanging views on reversing round a corner, the legal limits of tyre tread, the proportion of people who fail first time, how to recognise if you have failed when returning to the centre. Apparently a short time spent in the car is bad – examiners don’t want to cope with emotional sobbing. Too long is bad – examiner is going over the 16 minors and four majors with the driver. Somewhere in between short and long is good.
Forty long minutes pass and the first car returns. The 22 year old woman with snaggled teeth, who her instructor, Sheila, described as “a good little driver”, is the first back. She bay parks beautifully, just like you’d expect from a good little driver, but she is out of her instructor’s car in seconds. Looks bad. Turns out it was bad. She’d failed. Next back is Andrew (who you know from HRS). About 30 seconds (is 30 seconds long or medium? – I’d forgotten to ask!) in the car and Andy is out with a cig in his mouth – a snout of smug satisfaction or a fag of failure? It was the latter. Two very down drivers and one to go.
Your Fiesta swings into the car park. You are doing your bay park. I can’t look but instructor Tim jumps up and looks nervously out of the window - “Christ, I thought he’d caught my car for a second”, he says and he was not joking. I doubt Tim does much of that. But the bay park looks good, a bit close to Tim’s car, true, but OK. From where I am standing it looks as though you are either biting your knuckles or picking your nose. Roger is looking at a clipboard. There is no communication. We go past the 30 seconds barrier, 60 seconds, 90 seconds...at least four hours pass before Roger gets out. I walk past him on my way to the car and he says ‘morning’ but without a flicker of any tell-tale winks, smiles, nudges. I go to the car and you look down-in-the-mouth. I quickly consider what words of consolation to offer (plonker, muppet etc). But it is all a ruse. The smile breaks through the attempt to fool me and there’s a quick manly hug, a ritual whipping off of the L plates and the adrenaline high reaches a summit.
So you passed the test. The question is did I?
The trip in USA 2006
N arrived looking fit and well I was pleased to see and soon afterwards Ned turned up with some new friends (mostly girls and all very pretty). They’d been to Sea World, fed manta rays and the like. We ate a meal of huge barbecued steaks and grilled vegetables with lemon meringue pie to follow – not the low cholesterol diet I was somehow expecting N to be on and which S told me he must restrict himself to under strict doctors’ orders. She seemed to get a bit inebriated very quickly while I was gagging for a drop more of the Shiraz. After dinner we sat in the huge lounge in vast easy chairs which made us all look doll-sized, looked at some of the photos Ned took with the office camera of the exhibits in the Ripley warehouse – the six-legged lambs, two-bodied, one-headed goats, two-headed parrots, albino giraffe, statues of Marilyn Monroe and Abraham Lincoln made from well-chewed gum and so on. A friend from across the road was there by then with a strong southern drawl. The mother of the red-headed girl who Ned has befriended. She and S giggled girlishly over the mention of certain exhibits and photos that they have stored away at Ripley’s – there’s Long Dong - the man with the penis that hangs lower than his knees, and another one with two penises. A side was shown that slightly surprised me and slightly embarrassed Ned. Tiredness eventually drove me to bed about 10.30pm – 3.30am in body time.
We went through
towns like Leadville, Ouray, Durango – all erstwhile mining towns with some of
the western Victorian style buildings amongst the more modern utilitarian
styles favoured by the banks, the supermarkets and even the Chinese
restaurants. By Durango I’d been driving for 8 hours and was beginning to long
for Mesa Verde National Park. Ned and satnav babe had navigated us through some
bad sign-posting, some strange road layouts and in Ned’s case, some expert
next-seat driving. He is very alert. The reaction time between Ned and me is
quite marked these days. I am slow to pick up signs, what people say and what
they mean, compared with him. It has to be said though that communication
between us is not helped by him speaking softly away from my line of sight. But
he is a good companion to travel with – not the most voluble, but then neither
am I. I’m aware I start conversations occasionally to break a silence which
only I am finding uncomfortable. He does not speak when it’s not necessary or
just for the sake of it. I can see my admiration for him growing by the day,
but do not feel this is necessarily reciprocated. He said last night that he
would like to get a tattoo done while we’re away – CRM, Kate’s initials. I
think that reveals so much about his feelings for her – feelings that largely
remain unspoken. I thought about having KT tattooed somewhere myself.
I occasionally
find myself on this trip thinking briefly: I must phone Kate about such and
such or make a mental note to tell her when we get back about something she
would find amusing. Most of the trip, from that point of view, has been fine so
far – some of it has been sheer bloody murder.
We took the bus
trip to the cliff dwellings – 14 of us, average age about 104. There were kids
and younger couples as well as the gerrys to be fair. Our guide was Rob – a softly
spoken dude a bit like the narrator of The
Big Lebowski. We saw the pueblo pit houses and wondered at their
preservation. We saw the cliff dwellings and wondered at their way of life –
handholds in vertical cliffs to use on a daily basis for gathering food and
supplies – all of it gaup-worthy and gaup we did. Gauped at the scenery, gauped
at the dead trees. We ate both nights at the Far View Lodge restaurant served
by a cute biology major who was working her vacation and moving on to Hawaii to
continue her studies. She delivered food to tables on huge trays carried on her
narrow shoulders, in the other hand a fold-out table for the trays. All very
expert. The food was fantastic – I had a spinach and bean strudel flavoured
with cumin on the first night and Ned had tuna on top of steak which he thought
was fabulous. The following night I had halibut and Ned had the chicken breast
– food of the highest standard up there at 7000 feet 30 miles from the nearest
town.
We arrived at
Gouldings Lodge about 2pm and ate a lunch of unlikely awfulness. The lodge sits
under an overhang of rock and stares out at the icons of John Wayne films. We
hired The Searchers to watch that
afternoon (set in Texas according to John Ford), and had the unsettling
experience of being able to watch views on the TV of Left Mitten and Right
Mitten and the big rock in between and then look at those same views out of the
hotel window. Being in Utah there is no alcohol, so that longed for beer that I
was drooling for as I drove towards Gouldings Lodge in the 100 plus
temperatures which required the air-conditioning on full even with the roof
down, was denied. In the evening we decided we couldn’t face another meal in
the same restaurant so we headed up the road to a Navaho reservation where
there was another restaurant. We crossed the state line into Arizona and Ned
twigged that that meant we could have a beer – except Navaho tribal laws forbid
such a thing and the restaurant was shut because of ‘water problems’. No
surprise about the water problems. We consoled ourselves by watching the sun
disappear in a totally Hollywood and utterly showy fashion on the darkening
plain. Ned drove us back to the execrable restaurant where I had a Caesar salad
and iced tea, Ned chicken breast and a dry and uninviting green salad. We came
back to our room and watched Munich –
we gave it praise. We decided to move on today rather than endure the
restaurant and trips with morose Navaho guides through a landscape we could
enjoy just as well by driving into it and driving out of it. So we are going
off plan and will hopefully find accommodation at Lake Powell – our next
destination.
Ned is still
‘asleep’ in his bed, though I am showered and ready to get packed and go. He
likes to start his day later than I do – it’s a real teenage thing. Perhaps
their school or working day should start later and finish earlier?
We had a late breakfast at Kaytana in a Holiday Inn where a group of Finns (I think) were celebrating someone’s birthday rowdily. While waiting for breakfast I watched a woman, probably sixty, about 5ft tall and 4ft round, Navaho you’d have to guess, ordering breakfast. Though obviously local she had to repeat her order several times. Instant comprehension is a thing of the past in my grumpy old man’s view. She waddled off to the salad bar, her buttocks rolling like a ship’s stabilisers, and slyly dipped her fingers in the dressings and tasted several before ladling away on her chosen salad. I had a Denver Omelette making the repeated mistake of thinking it would be a normal sized omelette on a plate with a touch of greenery. This two-egg omelette must have been laid by a chicken crossed with an ostrich – no way were only two eggs involved, even allowing for the cup of diced ham, and one chopped green pepper. Ned had a Belgian waffle with maple syrup. We both left the table with apparently more food on our plates than we started with.
Later
Lake Powell is
a resort in the desert – yesterday the temperature exceeded 105 degrees. The
balcony of this room we’re in was not unlike the sauna at home, the air conditioning
vent adding a hot stale breath to the baking concrete. There is a whole city of
houseboats outside – they get lowered into the water on the back of
all-American trucks with the double chrome exhausts pointing skywards and the
preposterously long bonnets concealing preposterously large engines making that
all-American growling sound. The boats are some sort of super-size-me
indulgence I can only imagine. The size of a twin-storey trailer home they are
luxury pied a terres that are probably occupied for two weeks a year for people
who are content to spend their time and money on a supersized reservoir. It is
a reservoir with desert heat and winding canyons, but what else? Our boat trip
yesterday was totally worthwhile though we queued for an hour behind rude and
arrogant Germans who’d basically just pushed in, our English reserve
restraining complaint. The whole boat rental thing was shambolic, but we
finally pulled away in our 19-foot Baja across the shimmering Lake Powell. The
thrust through the water when I pushed the lever fully forward was unexpected
and thrilling. We skipped over wave tops and bow waves thumping down onto the
water and both grinned like maniacs.
She’ll be like Katie - caring and inventive
and attentive in bed. I’ll feel a contraction in my groin when I see her naked,
delight at the sight of her underwear, knowing it has known her skin like I
have. She’ll laugh at me, get angry with me, giggle at things I say and do, get
irritated by things I don’t always do, kiss me and touch me unexpectedly, grab
my hand in the cinema, the car, a restaurant, at a party, give me a special
smile that is unique for me and get one back that is likewise unique for her,
and do things for me and want me to do things for her, feel hurt when I forget
or go off into my own world. She’ll understand my background, my politics, my
passions, my silences, my moods, my jokes, my likes, my pet hates, my
prejudices, my tastes in food and clothes and when she does not understand
she’ll be willing to learn over the years. She’ll see it as years, till death
or until something breaks and severs us. And I will want to stroke her, touch
and smell her hair, lick her skin, tickle her toes, grab her arse, explore her
sex, kiss her nose, suck her nipples, rub her shins with mine, grind against
her pubis with mine, wash her feet, have her wash mine, put my head upon her
stomach and listen to its contents gurgle and laugh about it, see her age,
watch her wrinkle, fuss about her health, feel abandoned when she’s away, feel
at times desolate when I’m away, want to show her new things, share her
education in the world of experiences, new places, new friends, even old places
and old friends. Feel excited by coming home to her, feel the home is empty
without her, eat her food, make food for her, pour her a drink, take her a
tray, care about her, care for her, be cared by her, thrill to the sound of her
voice, her endearments, experience that tingle of pure joy that is possible
with someone you love, ripple up the spine and spring from the neck into the
cortex, sending shivers, starting tears. Care enough to be disappointed, almost
loathe and then repair and love again. If she has children of her own I will
learn to love them and feel responsible for them as she will for my son. If she
is young enough she’ll want to have my child, if not she’ll want a child we
can’t have. Most of all she’ll want to get inside my heart and reside there
comfortably and securely and not feel that her previous life will be any more
other than in memories, hopefully good ones and she won’t resent that my memories
will be precious too and indelible too and permanent. And she’ll make the
everyday special again and remove the threat from the strange. The memories
will build, the pathways in the brain slowly extend and very, very gradually
the old lives will be replaced by the new.
Later
Later
Later
So what did we
do on our last day of this trip? We went down to Fisherman’s Wharf again, had a
late breakfast/early lunch at Hooters – yes, twice in 24 hours. The selection
was better today, they had the Tuesday night, only English tourists about girls
in last night, no need for large hooters girls, just parade the scraggy ones.
But Wednesday early lunchtime was different. I inveigled two girls, four
hooters, to be photographed with Ned. They put on instant professional smiles
for approximately the duration of the flash from the camera and puffed up their
waitressing qualifications for the same length of time. Great photo though,
even if Ned looks a bit hemmed in. We then went to Ripley’s Odditarium – a
homage of sorts. Then we took a boat to see the Golden Gate Bridge – stupidly I
thought this might be viewable from the hotel it being called the Golden Gate
Holiday Inn, but it was (and still is) several miles away and seemingly
shrouded in permanent fog/cloud/smog. We went underneath it and its halo of
vapour and then circled Alcatraz, such a weird haunted looking place even
though milling with tourists and seabirds. Much of it has been fire-bombed by
militant Native Americans (who like to call themselves Indians) in their Big
Sit In of the late sixties. It is draped in rust and crumbling concrete but
gets over 1.5 million tourist visitors a year, so cap’n Ahab told us.
You eventually drive off, turning (gulp) right for the town centre. The other two cars had turned left for open countryside completely devoid of roundabouts, traffic lights, children with footballs, out-of-control prams and cars. I wait with Tim and Sheila exchanging views on reversing round a corner, the legal limits of tyre tread, the proportion of people who fail first time, how to recognise if you have failed when returning to the centre. Apparently a short time spent in the car is bad – examiners don’t want to cope with emotional sobbing. Too long is bad – examiner is going over the 16 minors and four majors with the driver. Somewhere in between short and long is good.
Forty long minutes pass and the first car returns. The 22 year old woman with snaggled teeth, who her instructor, Sheila, described as “a good little driver”, is the first back. She bay parks beautifully, just like you’d expect from a good little driver, but she is out of her instructor’s car in seconds. Looks bad. Turns out it was bad. She’d failed. Next back is Andrew (who you know from HRS). About 30 seconds (is 30 seconds long or medium? – I’d forgotten to ask!) in the car and Andy is out with a cig in his mouth – a snout of smug satisfaction or a fag of failure? It was the latter. Two very down drivers and one to go.
 |
Ned is 18 here in his Megane
|
Your Fiesta swings into the car park. You are doing your bay park. I can’t look but instructor Tim jumps up and looks nervously out of the window - “Christ, I thought he’d caught my car for a second”, he says and he was not joking. I doubt Tim does much of that. But the bay park looks good, a bit close to Tim’s car, true, but OK. From where I am standing it looks as though you are either biting your knuckles or picking your nose. Roger is looking at a clipboard. There is no communication. We go past the 30 seconds barrier, 60 seconds, 90 seconds...at least four hours pass before Roger gets out. I walk past him on my way to the car and he says ‘morning’ but without a flicker of any tell-tale winks, smiles, nudges. I go to the car and you look down-in-the-mouth. I quickly consider what words of consolation to offer (plonker, muppet etc). But it is all a ruse. The smile breaks through the attempt to fool me and there’s a quick manly hug, a ritual whipping off of the L plates and the adrenaline high reaches a summit.
So you passed the test. The question is did I?
The trip in USA 2006
Friday, July 7, 2006
These are the
first few hours of the American Adventure. I am sitting outside in a steamy
Floridian dawn beside a swimming pool at N’s luxury home. I was collected
yesterday from the airport by his wife, S. She is vivacious and very pretty in
a good all-American way. Very out-going and direct which I like. She told me,
with an accent a bit like the woman in Fargo,
that virtually everyone has fallen for Ned. They love his politeness, his
humour and of course his accent. When we arrived at this house – an oversized
bungalow with nick-nacks everywhere, I met Rich who is Sharon’s brother-in-law.
He is confined to Orange County for a certain amount of time before being
allowed back to Toronto where he lives. He seems nice enough – a little frightened
around the eyes perhaps.
N arrived looking fit and well I was pleased to see and soon afterwards Ned turned up with some new friends (mostly girls and all very pretty). They’d been to Sea World, fed manta rays and the like. We ate a meal of huge barbecued steaks and grilled vegetables with lemon meringue pie to follow – not the low cholesterol diet I was somehow expecting N to be on and which S told me he must restrict himself to under strict doctors’ orders. She seemed to get a bit inebriated very quickly while I was gagging for a drop more of the Shiraz. After dinner we sat in the huge lounge in vast easy chairs which made us all look doll-sized, looked at some of the photos Ned took with the office camera of the exhibits in the Ripley warehouse – the six-legged lambs, two-bodied, one-headed goats, two-headed parrots, albino giraffe, statues of Marilyn Monroe and Abraham Lincoln made from well-chewed gum and so on. A friend from across the road was there by then with a strong southern drawl. The mother of the red-headed girl who Ned has befriended. She and S giggled girlishly over the mention of certain exhibits and photos that they have stored away at Ripley’s – there’s Long Dong - the man with the penis that hangs lower than his knees, and another one with two penises. A side was shown that slightly surprised me and slightly embarrassed Ned. Tiredness eventually drove me to bed about 10.30pm – 3.30am in body time.
Sunday, July 9, 2006
I am in bed in
a dingy hotel in Boulder. It does not reflect its website is all I can say. I
see no leather sofas in this room, or views into the mountains. It is more of a
rooming house with a view of a white factory wall. We arrived last night at
about 10pm, beamed in by our sexy companion satnav voice. She has ineffable
patience and her tone never varies no matter how much her excellent
mild-mannered advice is ignored.
Yesterday I
awoke about 6am in the household. I was billeted in their daughter’s room who
is 18 and has the pink frilly room of a younger girl. It has many photographs
around the place in ornate frames and on feminine notice boards of almost
identical friends. They all have straight white teeth that are displayed in
every photo. N’s leggy, pretty, frothy wife is in many photos as well, looking
perfectly compatible with her daughter and friends. N is in some too –
strong-jawed, darkly handsome and with the photogenic confidence of an up and
coming senator. At the restaurant on Friday night he and his wife were only too
happy to be photographed – most English people hate it, but they had their
features already composed by the time the camera was levelled. We returned from
the restaurant all mellowed by the expensive and heavy red wine we’d drunk. N’s
eating and drinking preferences show no signs of being intimidated by his
recent heart attack. S is very loving to him, calls him his nick-name and
touches him all the time. She has been seriously frightened by his brush with
mortality. My presence must have been a reminder that it can be far worse than
a brush. Their brother-in-lawhad no idea that Ned had lost his mother so
recently. Ned has not made references to his new status, or displayed signs of
grief, even though being among complete strangers can be an emotional
lubricant.
Ned quickly
became a popular attraction with the local girls during his week in Orlando.
One 12 year-old girl was distraught at his leaving and clung on to him
tearfully. He was given a book with loving inscriptions from Alex, an 18
year-old red head and some beauty and he has pledged to become her pen pal. His
first missive was penned on the plane to Denver. I had forgotten how he looks
when he writes with a pen – head tilted and very close to the paper, just like
he wrote when he was five or six.
At Denver we
collected our car – the Ford Mustang convertible with its big growly engine and
sixties’ technology. It is raw and unsophisticated, but looks and feels the
part for two cool dudes like us. I drove from Denver in the dark and wet,
trying to understand the controls, adjust to the roads and the strange
unannounced nature of the exits from the toll roads and everything went fine
until we entered Boulder and Ned berated me for cutting up someone on my right
just at the point I had to make a right turn. There was a moment of irritation
from me as I took the wrong turning followed by two minutes of stiffened
silence. I must not be irritable with Ned even if he is with me. It does not
require a balance. We ate last night at a Denny’s. I am determined not to eat
this crap for the whole three weeks or I will be putting on pounds and yearning
for my own cooking.
 |
| In the Boulder mountains with Sandy |
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
We are now in
Mesa Verde National Park – 15 miles of staggering scenery and blighted
trees. The entrance was guarded by
two people wearing scouts’ uniforms. We set off yesterday from Boulder. During
the night I’d had a cramp in my leg that woke me up with its intense delivery
of pain in my calf muscle. I cried out with it and I think Ned thought I was
having a heart attack poor sod. I went for a pee and I was horrified to see the
bowl turn bright red. I then had, while I was trying not to panic about the
blood, a sharp pain in my kidney area like a rabbit-punch. Some awful prognoses
went through my head before I realized I’d passed a kidney stone. I drank a lot
of water yesterday and did not see a repeat of the problem.
(I received an
email from Cathy Robson while in Boulder with a photo showing a lovely face and
blonde hair and a gorgeous smile. She was in a garden hummock, lying in bright
sun and angled shadows.)
We spent some
of Sunday watching the Italy/France game in an Italian bar in Boulder called
Amonte’s that was crowded when we arrived at 11am with standing room only. By
12 it was packed wall-to-wall with clapping and chanting American-Italian
flesh. It was a riveting game – what I could see of it as I swivelled my head
around the long-necked viewer directly in front of me who stood while all about
him sat. There were raptures when Italy won (undeservedly) on penalties.
We then went,
after four hours on our aching feet, to a very subdued French brasserie down
the street for some food. I asked for the chef’s omelette hoping for well, an
omelette. When it arrived the omelette was the smallest and simplest thing on
the plate. It sat on top of slices of steak and brie supported by a mixed salad
big enough to feed a dinner party.
I phoned Sandy
to make a meeting later in the day. She picked us from our truck stop hotel and
took us off into the mountains around Boulder in a Nissan four-wheel drive that
reeked of and was coated in her Labrador. The dog fur was everywhere – enough
of it to knit a whole dog. Sandy is lovely. She is I would guess about 40
though her demeanour and outlook is very much that of an undergraduate with
hippy tendencies. It’s not always easy to get on the same wavelength as
Americans – I think I was too tired and jet-lagged to achieve this with Sandy,
but the other reason is that I don’t find her even slightly attractive and
that’s always a lever for making an attachment where I am concerned.
Yesterday we
drove through the most breath-taking, jaw-widening, eye-popping, neck-tickling
scenery I have ever seen. More about this when I have found an adaptor to
charge this laptop.
Now back in the
lodge room. It has views that are so spectacular that very quickly you take
them for granted - these huge canvasses of rocks and plateaus strung out under
big blue skies painstakingly decorated with white press-out clouds. All in a
day’s work for God I guess. The journey to Mesa Verde was a photo-opportunity
rush of vistas each more remarkable than the first. I kept nudging Ned to take
some footage through the windscreen whether it was a gorge opening up as the
car rounded a bend, swathed in low cloud and chopped out of the scenery with a
blunted saw, or a mountain in the near-distance suddenly presenting itself,
impossibly vast, topped with ice-cream and ostentatiously reflecting itself in
(my mum used to call it a Muriel) a lake at its feet. Such a scene we once had,
I seem to remember, hung as a mural above the gas fire in the living room. In
this real world tableau there were ribbons of road with mountain on one side
and hundreds if not thousands of feet of sheer drop on the other. When the wall
of rock was on the left hand side it meant we were next to the sheer drop on
the right. The road was wet and the rain was lashing and the drop was pulling.
The beauty of the scenery was glimpsed momentarily through the terror.
 |
At the Grand Canyon
|
 |
Ned beside the Mustang he drove at times
|
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
 |
| Looking down into the Grand Canyon |
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Yesterday we
travelled through landscapes that were from another planet – Martian red plains
stretching towards a spirit-level flatness in the impossible distance
punctuated with office block outcrops of rock on a titan-like scale. The road
from Mesa Verde rapidly went from scrub to outright desert as we headed towards
Monument Valley. We stopped at the Four Corners sight – the point at which
Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico all meet is marked by a metal circle in
a parking lot where you can buy Four Corner T-shirts and cheap Navaho
jewellery. People queued to have their photos taken on the metal disc. The
Navahos are sulky to a fault, but why shouldn’t they be given their fall in
status from proud tribe to service industry slaves. Ned drove from the Four
Corners site for a few miles looking very much the part as a star from Route 66
circa 1963. The Mustang is quite beast – an unsophisticated hunk of Ford
technology with a big gas-guzzling six-cylinder engine. At three bucks a gallon
its thirst seems quite modest.
We arrived at
Gouldings Lodge about 2pm and ate a lunch of unlikely awfulness. The lodge sits
under an overhang of rock and stares out at the icons of John Wayne films. We
hired The Searchers to watch that
afternoon (set in Texas according to John Ford), and had the unsettling
experience of being able to watch views on the TV of Left Mitten and Right
Mitten and the big rock in between and then look at those same views out of the
hotel window. Being in Utah there is no alcohol, so that longed for beer that I
was drooling for as I drove towards Gouldings Lodge in the 100 plus
temperatures which required the air-conditioning on full even with the roof
down, was denied. In the evening we decided we couldn’t face another meal in
the same restaurant so we headed up the road to a Navaho reservation where
there was another restaurant. We crossed the state line into Arizona and Ned
twigged that that meant we could have a beer – except Navaho tribal laws forbid
such a thing and the restaurant was shut because of ‘water problems’. No
surprise about the water problems. We consoled ourselves by watching the sun
disappear in a totally Hollywood and utterly showy fashion on the darkening
plain. Ned drove us back to the execrable restaurant where I had a Caesar salad
and iced tea, Ned chicken breast and a dry and uninviting green salad. We came
back to our room and watched Munich –
we gave it praise. We decided to move on today rather than endure the
restaurant and trips with morose Navaho guides through a landscape we could
enjoy just as well by driving into it and driving out of it. So we are going
off plan and will hopefully find accommodation at Lake Powell – our next
destination.
How am I coping
with all this emotionally? Not too badly – I keep the emotions under lock and
key though reminders about previous summer holidays keep escaping through the
key-hole and gnaw at my resilience. This holiday, were I doing it alone, would
seem pointless - the same sights and experiences, but all quite hollow and
meaningless if Ned was not here. I can make the experiences seem meaningful
with Ned at my side, though with Kate the whole thing would have been 100 times
more worthwhile for me – just the way it is I guess.
We had a late breakfast at Kaytana in a Holiday Inn where a group of Finns (I think) were celebrating someone’s birthday rowdily. While waiting for breakfast I watched a woman, probably sixty, about 5ft tall and 4ft round, Navaho you’d have to guess, ordering breakfast. Though obviously local she had to repeat her order several times. Instant comprehension is a thing of the past in my grumpy old man’s view. She waddled off to the salad bar, her buttocks rolling like a ship’s stabilisers, and slyly dipped her fingers in the dressings and tasted several before ladling away on her chosen salad. I had a Denver Omelette making the repeated mistake of thinking it would be a normal sized omelette on a plate with a touch of greenery. This two-egg omelette must have been laid by a chicken crossed with an ostrich – no way were only two eggs involved, even allowing for the cup of diced ham, and one chopped green pepper. Ned had a Belgian waffle with maple syrup. We both left the table with apparently more food on our plates than we started with.
Now at Lake
Powell on Western Mountain Time in a room overlooking the much-vaunted lake
itself. As lakes go, from where we’re seeing it, it has little but size to
shout about. But water in Arizona is an oxymoron so I guess they’re entitled to
feel proud of their man-made oversized reservoir. The drive here was through
more cowboy movie countryside – perhaps B cowboy movie countryside after the
monumentalism of yesterday, but magnificent for all that. We are at Lake Powell
Resort – it’s a marina to you and me with rooms. It’s a few miles outside the
strip development town of Page boasting seven churches side-by-side as you
enter the town. I went into a store called Stiks that sold all your camping,
shooting, fishing, drinking and murdering needs. A sign said “There’s no such
thing as too much ammo” and another said “Booze and Boats Don’t Mix” – I
couldn’t see one for guns and booze not mixing, but hell-spit-dang – this is
Arizona boy. I bought a ten pack of Buds relieved to be back in god fearin’,
boozin’ country agin. Ned and I
are drinking some of them now, each of us filling in our journals. I wonder
what his says and I can’t help wonder what he thinks about me, having
experienced more of me in the last week than ever before:
Dad: how can I describe him? He is short, hair
is grey and cropped and moves up and down on his temples when he chews food.
He’s 56 which is more than three times my age – most of my friends have dads
who are in their forties. His body is not in bad shape (he weighs the same as I
do though I’m a few inches taller, but I’m too slight, need to build up more muscle).
I have inherited his short hairy legs, his eye colour, and some of his
behavioural patterns. He’s a bit of a pedant, thinks he is still a teacher at
times and can’t resist trying to pass on knowledge whether it’s important,
interesting or neither. He tries to make jokes, mostly puns which he and mum
always were doing.
Our conversations are a bit stilted, as you’d
expect. We don’t have a vast amount in common – why and how could we? He wants
to talk to me about literature and books he thinks I might or should read. The
one major thing we have in common I can’t really talk about – it’s just too raw
and painful. I know dad would like me to open up about it, but I can’t take his
emotionality. He is obviously on some kind of mission to rebuild his life without
mum and that will leave us further apart. I know I can be a bit dismissive, put
him down easily with a sneer, and sometimes I just can’t help myself from doing
it. I don’t mean it maliciously, it is just an age difference thing I suppose.
This trip has been good though. I dreaded it before we came away – being with
dad pretty much 24/7 for three weeks was daunting as a prospect, but it has
been OK.
Later
How different
this ‘holiday’ is to what I had last year and every year before that for 19 or
so years. No love-making in the afternoon after a bottle of wine some sun and a
laugh with friends. No banter, no rubbing on of sun-tan oil, no getting dressed
for dinner, the smell of her perfume, watching her as she files her nails, puts
on makeup, no late night brandies, coffees and more banter. None of that, none
of that.
And now the
tears which must be sucked back into their ducts for the sake of my son who
types on his laptop too, doing his journal – two would-be writers tapping away
at the day’s thoughts and observations. We talked at supper just now about the
dangers of making too-quick judgements about people and how it was the writer’s
job to get behind the outer layers and caricatures. I introduced this because
I’d asked him how he saw me, prompted as I was by my attempt to write myself
into the role of being my own son. He is reluctant to get engaged in such a
discussion, and I suppose that can only be expected.
Friday, July 14, 2006
I am feeling a
little more positive today. I’ve been reading The Alchemist in which it repeatedly says “if you want something
enough the universe conspires to make it happen”, well, I won’t get Kate back
no matter how much the universe conspires, but I want resolution pretty badly,
about as badly as I have ever wanted anything. But I realise I am still on this
‘journey’ and for my own sake it needs to be a positive one. Ned, I believe, is
further along the road than I am. I read the notes I made on him starting about
1998 and he comes across, even then, as a cool, together character. I must
accept that because he is cool and because he is my son, there will not be a
great opening up of the soul to me. It almost feels as though the roles have
been reversed and I need to open up to him. But I know my tendencies for soul
revelations too well. They are not always a good idea Jim, are they?
Saturday, July 15, 2006
 |
| Hiring a boat to investigate Lake Powell |
Antelope Canyon
was a narrowing lane through a town of towering sandstone. We gingerly steered
the boat as far as it could go and then ran out of turning space and had to
back out as the walls were closing in on us. A frisson of concern – up a creek
with only a 1.5 litre engine and a paddle, but up a creek nonetheless.
There was no
escape from the burning sun out on the water – relief came from pushing the
boat to its limit and enjoying the almost cooling breeze - like that from a
fan-oven. Ned enjoyed piloting the boat – he is on film smiling and winking
contentedly, his pleasure immortalised. There was another moment of excitement
when I found a stretch of water to ourselves and put the boat in a tight and
fast turn – we felt it start to slide across the water, the propellers losing
bite, me losing control, but fun though.
We ate in the Driftwood
Lounge. I had the quail and Ned a huge steak. The quail were disappointing, but
the Pinot went down well. Ned had a swim and we came back to our room where Ned
played a game (Civilization) on his laptop and I edited the day’s filming and
watched some of The Return of Martin Guerre. The laptops are a godsend
– they allow us to enter our own private worlds of music, film and thoughts
just as we can when at home. I unwisely watched some footage last night of
Seville – the trip we made with Rosie just before Kate died. I watched the film
but had to turn away whenever Kate came into view – the laptop is private but
my tears are not.
Back to the
positive – it’s now five months, five big strides away from the disaster – like
those houseboats I have been lowering myself gradually into the water and now
need a final shove to part me from the truck and set me afloat. It’s happening,
it’s happening.
What do I want
then – so much that the universe will conspire to make it happen? I want my
life back but can’t have it. I know what I don’t want, I know what I’m not, but
to know what I want and know what I am – that’s hard. I have not surrendered to
self-pity. I have bouts with it, but I usually win. I have not become
excessively morose – my dejections and sobbing fits have remained secret
interludes for months and are getting more rarefied. That does not mean to say
that I have conquered dejection, far from it, but life, if it’s to be bearable,
must not acquiesce to dejection’s demands and repress any determination to get
on with living tolerably. I am not deluding myself into thinking that
everything fundamentally is OK, it’s not and I know it, but if I can survive
five months I can survive six, seven, a year, two, three, four years – for
good. And surviving will give way, in time, to enjoying, enjoying give way to
feeling good, fulfilled even.
I need a
partner in due course – a life partner, one with whom all those tiny and great
intimacies can be shared with again. And what will she be like? She’ll be
attractive, to me at least, and if not at first then with time. I don’t know
what she’ll look like, how tall or short, fair or dark.
Sunday, July 16, 2006
A new life –
that is what it means in effect. Not many people are given that opportunity,
not many want it, but that new life has now started. I’ve been given a ticket
and I can use it or lose it. Simple as that. Amazing how despair and optimism
can snuggle up together, one thought of ‘I really can’t cope with this’
immediately followed by ‘everything is going to be alright’ – all within the
blink of an eye, the twitch of a synapse.
We have now
arrived at the Maswick Lodge in Grand Canyon National Park. The journey from
Lake Powell began after a modest breakfast in the Rainbow Room at the Lake
Powell Resort. Modest means it was enough to feed a whole family if they were
starved for three days and had a passion for Bran Flakes, blueberries and
strawberries. The waitress was from Romania – it tells where they are all from
on their badges – Michigan, Argentina, Glasgow, Washington, Pennsylvania – I
didn’t see two the same. I can imagine that these 19 plus students have a ball
after hours – let’s put Alaska with Hawaii for a climatic change and see if
Montenegro can get off with Croatia (for once), and who wants Glasgow tonight?
Come on someone must want Glasgow – and so on. We spent an hour or so by the
pool trying to even up the T-Shirt shape of white skin on our torsos with the
brown arms and red shoulders. I looked discreetly (I think) at a family of two
parents and six kids and admired the organisation and weight of love that such
a family must absorb and exude. How wonderful.
By the time we
drove away from Page the temperature was around the 105 degrees mark again and
having the Mustang’s roof down and the air-conditioning on full-blast made
little difference to the skin-cooking power of that sun. I stopped for petrol,
I mean gas, and was befuddled by the options with little messages scrolling
across a digital screen instructing me to replace
nozzle and begin fuelling. I
replaced the nozzle, I pressed the button, pay
inside with cash, and stood beside the Mustang while the bowser bleeped and
no gas issued. I went inside where a man the shape and size of a water butt
told me I had to lift the lever. Right. He noticed the logo on my sleeveless
T-shirt – Lake Powell – and unfortunately engaged me in conversation. “What the
wimmin like at Powell?” “er, very nice…” I said. “No, they wearin bikinis or
topless or what?” I got his drift and said, “they’re all about 19 to 22 years
old, come from all over the world and are stark naked.” He looked at me very seriously and
said: ‘ahm goin’ to Powell tomorra”.
Within an hour
or so of Page we were seeing just how grand Grand Canyon was or was going to
be. You come round a bend and there it is – a terrible falling away of the
earth, a wound so deep into its red crust that it should reveal its bone and
seeping blood. And it is red, pink, terracotta and all the shades at the red
end of the Pantone chart, the Dulux paint chart – Navaho Crimson, Red with a
hint of Colorado River Basin or whatever. More variations on red than B and Q,
that’s for sure. We stopped at a few ‘viewing stations’ as they are
unromantically called and took the obligatory snaps having parked amongst the
hired or owned recreational vehicles (RVs). An RV is a motorhome but usually on
a grand and luxurious scale, often towing a Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV) or FWD
to you and me or another trailer containing GKW (God Knows What). One thing is
for certain, the whole kit and caboodle is VFE (Very Fucking Expensive).
 |
| Dad trying to look manly! |
I changed our
booking arrangements having got the feeling that Grand Canyon was going to be
amazing but how big can it be and how wide can your eyes open? I arranged that
we stay here for one more night and then go to Las Vegas a day early. I feel
Ned needs some good people watching experiences and so do I. How many 18 year
olds can really ogle at nature in the same way they can ogle at the follies,
monstrosities, idiocies and lunacies of people? So we have a 700 sq ft suite
with all the trimmings for three orgiastic nights in Las Vegas. And WTFN?
Monday, July 17, 2006
We ate at the
El Tarvo restaurant last night. The walk there took us past the rim. We took
photos and a few for some canyon-struck couples. One couple suggested that we
were occupying the best view as though there was a precise spot for a good view
of one of the seven natural wonders of the world and a yard left or right of
that it was crap. Back at the El Tarvo and the people in front of us were
assured by a lady maitre de that they would be in good hands and they would have
an excellent ‘server’ tonight. I could only wonder if that meant that they had
off nights with the serving – when hot mesquite sauce and raspberry coulis went
flying all over the place. We weren’t assured about our server, but he turned
out to be OK – fleeced me of some $30 for half a bottle of Pinot Noir – so he
knew his job. He was obsequious in all the right places, but you wouldn’t want
to spend an evening at the pub with him. I had rib-eye steak – when it arrived
with Ned’s shrimps he asked if there was anything else we needed. I suggested
two or three extra diners to help us eat it all. Haw, haw, haw – as Charlie,
the unlucky suitor from The Searchers
would say. Our server was discreetly unaffected by the quip. This thing they
have about bringing everything on the plate is quite gross. It assumes that
everyone has the same gargantuan appetite and that you want your plate loaded
to the gun’ls so your eyes and nose and mouth – all the sensory organs – are
placed less than arm’s length from the food you are about to eat. Ned and I
don’t even do this when eating at home – unless we eat in front of the TV,
which is not a good way to appreciate food in itself. Food goes into separate
dishes so that you choose how to arrange your food and choose how much to load
your plate. They have this thing about water as well. A brimmingly full glass
of water becomes a fetish for the water waiters – anything more than half inch
below the brim is a downright abomination for them and they must fill, must
fill, must fill...
We watched A Short Film About Killing – a Polish
film made in 1987 about a 20 year old who kills a taxi driver and then is
hanged for it. Dark, gloomy stuff, but we can’t have a diet of desserts without
some roughage. Today we’ll do the Hermit’s Trail and do some serious ogling at
Mother Nature.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Now ensconced
in the Stratosphere hotel on the Strip in Las Vegas. Yesterday went as follows:
we got up latish, grabbed some breakfast – breakfast has nearly always finished
by the time we pitch up, so it was a croissant for me and a Danish for Ned,
walked down to the Hermit’s Trail and then walked in the gorgeous but
over-warming sunshine for about four miles or so. We stopped at the ‘overlooks’
and overlooked some of the most breathtaking scenery yet invented by God and
his cohorts. There were temples, ziggurats, half-finished tower blocks, fists
of rock tearing out of the bedrock, plumes of sandstone reaching into the sky,
escalators of rock stepped into mile-length risers and treads, even a Californian
Condor for our delectation. Having walked the trail for about half its length
we chickened out and boarded a bus to take us to the Hermit’s Rest itself.
Noted a man who had to be English wearing a topi, knee-length khaki shorts,
long socks and wielding a telescopic walking stick which he fussed with
interminably on the bus – turned out he was American, just a very sad American.
He went to lengths to point out the excellent ventilating abilities of his hat
to someone who should have known better.
We got back to
our room – I got chatting to our neighbour who was from Minneapolis who told me
that ‘they have soy beans, corn and the Indy 500 and that’s it’. I had to
sympathise that he and his family would now have a week of sharing a room and
the Grand Canyon, awesome though it was, and then head back to all those soy
beans, corn kernels and car racin’. I went off in the Mustang to the Market
Plaza for some beers. It was pretty much the only time I’d driven on my own and
I wondered what the whole journey would have been like driving solo. It would
have been totally different, totally miserable and I would not have done it.
Howard drove around New Zealand on his own and seemed to enjoy the experience.
How? When I got back from the General Store I phoned the Papillon Helicopter
company to arrange for flights over and through the canyon the following
morning. We then went to see the Imax film of the Grand Canyon just outside the
park. Imax is like any other film you might have seen but compares in drama and
size with Cheddar Gorge and the Grand Canyon.
We then went to
Bright Angel Lodge to eat. The food was not special, but I hadn’t expected haut
cuisine. Just before we were about to walk back – about half a mile or so, a
huge rainstorm began. We spent some time in the Bright Angel Gift Shop where I
threatened to buy some good hikin’ and huntin’ rainproof gear just to terrify
Ned. He is very conscious of how I should and should not look – mostly how I
should not. We walked back in warm, serious drizzle, which virtually dried on
our backs as it fell. The smell of rain-freshened pines, the momentary glare of
distant lightning.
This morning we
reported for our helicopter flight. I have never been in a helicopter before. I
wanted that electric buzz I had the first time I got in a Chipmunk or a glider
when I was 14 years old, but it wouldn’t come. It was too tame. Ned was up
front with the pilot, which was good – he had by far the best view. I was
facing backwards with three Texans – a boldly moustachioed dad of about 45 and
his two sons. Where was mum? I couldn’t help but wonder. Hopefully she just
didn’t like helicopter flights. We flew over the forested area to the music
from The Last of the Mohicans,
crossed the rim of the canyon to the sound of Thus Spake Zarathustra
and after some history lesson commentary, returned to the strains of Jurassic Park. But this does not
describe the flight, which was totally majestic. There probably is no better
way of seeing the canyon – it was designed to be seen from a moving flying
platform and that is how we had the privilege of seeing it. Watch my movie if
you don’t believe me, available in the foyer for $25.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
I have just
been down into the Casino area for a late breakfast, leaving Ned on his
pull-out sofa bed to catch up on some overdue extra zz’s. The gaming floor is a
level from Inferno – the poor souls
who are consigned there for some horrible and inhuman deeds committed in a
previous state, are forced to sit in front of spinning, migraine-inducing lights
and put dollar bills into a hungry slit, pull a handle and look on
disconsolately while the spinning lights, symbols and numbers arrange
themselves. They must do this for ever it seems waiting without too much hope
that a particular permutation of symbols and numbers will occur and release
them from this torture. Food and drinks are brought to them by long-legged,
devil waitresses so that no relief is granted from the chairs on which they
sit. They sit, eat, drink, pull that doleful handle, smoke so much that the air
is sickly sweet, and occasionally look round at the other poor souls engaged in
the same infernal activities. Eventually they put on pounds and pounds of fat
around their midriffs and under their chins so that movement on and off their
chairs is painful and arduous. They are unable to wear anything but loose
fitting, elasticated, synthetic fibres and trainers. Allowed to go the
restrooms every few hours, they can be seen moving between the aisles of
machines, their billowing buttocks wobbling uncontrollably with each short,
uncertain step. And all this is accompanied by a loud cacophony of bells,
hoots, jinglings, whistles, sirens and pop music. Even an innocent soul can
quickly become lost and disorientated. The neon signs and directions are confusing
and cunningly designed to make sure that all but the most knowledgeable will
pass by the temptations of the winking, beckoning, ever-hungry machines.
Enough of that
– let’s flip back to Monday. We left the grandeur of Grand Canyon for the lower
plains and drove for about five hours through somewhat less spectacular
countryside stopping just once at Kingman – not so much a town as a row of fast
food outlets and truck-maintenance facilities. We ate fast food at a Denny’s,
but did not have our truck maintained. The next stop was the Hoover Dam. What
an amazing piece of industrial design. Built in the middle of the Art Deco era
it was my type of styling. The turbine houses (I assume they were turbine
houses) were four towers standing aloof from the dam itself like sentinels. The
sweep of the dam is elegant and the setting between the canyon walls is
magnificent as though chosen for its aesthetics rather than it’s hydroelectric
potential. We got out of the car to take photos and quickly had to return to
the Mustang’s welcome air-conditioning. The heat was gasp-making.
A twenty-mile
drive from the dam and Las Vegas came into view – a huge spread of urban sprawl
with The Strip and The Stratosphere (our destination) clearly visible from 10
miles away. The traffic was fast and closely packed. Without satnav babe we
would have struggled to navigate as no one gives way, no one gives an inch. We
trustfully gave over the Mustang to the care of the valet and entered the hotel
through the Dante-esque scenes described above. The assault on the senses is
extreme. These casinos, and we have been in a few now, are serious stuff. They
want your money, no mistaking, and they want to take it in as quick and
efficient way as possible.
After a shower
we went for a walk down the Strip. After half a mile we needed another shower.
The air was as thick and clinging as a bath in cocoa. We went into a casino and
found a restaurant and were served by a Lurch-like waiter wearing a floral
shirt with matching pinny. We got a cab and asked the camp, garrulous, but very
cheery driver to take us back the scenic way. He told us he’d been in Las Vegas
for 20 years and had seen massive changes. The changes were still going on and
ever-faster building programmes put underway so that what was left of ‘old’
Vegas would soon be gone, ‘old’ meaning built in the 1950s and 60s. We saw a
host of fountains erupt outside one casino, choreographed to ‘Big Spender’. We
saw Manhattan in miniature at New York New York – the Brooklyn Bridge reduced
to a walkway about 50 metres long.
The whole place is unapologetically glitzy, unreal, gaudy, brash,
vulgar, tasteless and fun. Something caught my eye on the carpet of the hotel
room when we got back – it was a sequin. That was a little insight into the
previous occupants.
Yesterday
morning we decided to give the ‘highest rides in the world’ on top of the
Stratosphere a try.
It meant queuing for over an hour before we could take the
lift to the 104th floor. Ned took the X SCREAM - the one that shunts
you off the edge of the building at 866 ft high and then drags you back to do
the same thing again, and the BIG SHOT that gives you 4 Gs of fun and the
feeling of zero gravity as it propels you into the sky. I had a beer.
The next
experience was going to an oxygen bar. We lay on beds/chairs which rumbled
vibrations into the back and shoulders while we breathed oxygen through our
noses which had been filtered through various essential oils. We finished with
a neck massage from a girl of 21 using a vibrating plastic hand. I bought some
eucalyptus oil for the sauna. We had lunch at the Mexican restaurant or bar.
Never, never will I be tempted to have another burrito. A flat bread the size
of a large dinner plate was filled with a cup of cheese, a handful of chicken
pieces, a ladle of refried beans, a gob of guacamole, another of a white sauce,
then wrapped up in a tight parcel of bacofoil and put on a paper plate with a
handful of tacos. It took a couple of bites to realise how disgusting the thing
was, but it was a couple too many.
We took the
monorail (another first) up to MGM and watched Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man’s Chest, which was totally
entertaining. Bill Nihy looks just like himself even when wearing a prosthetic
animated octopus over his head. We ate supper in the MGM complex (complex is
the word – it is enormous and bewildering) and returned by monorail to the
Sahara Hotel. This is a leftover from the 50s and is due for demolition soon.
We walked to the Stratosphere and booked ourselves in for the 10.30pm show of Bite! – gothic piece of ‘erocktica’
(geddit?). We were ushered to table 51 (almost on the back wall) and shared
table 51 with six other show goers. I sat next to a tiny Indian lady wearing a
sari who was with her tiny Indian husband. I smiled at her and she smiled back
and kept looking at me. Eventually she said ‘You in room 88, yes?’ I thought
I’d sat by chance next to a little fakir with powerful gifts of perception and
mind-reading. What wonderful possibilities that might offer in this town, I mused.
‘Yes room 88’ I said.
‘I clean room’
she giggled. ‘Yesterday, I clean room’. And so she had.
The show
started – volume high enough to loosen fillings. Six girls moved through the
tables in hooded gowns, one dragged her hand across the back of my neck as she
passed behind me – a little thrill. They got on stage, danced a bit, wearing
vampire teeth and not much else. People were chosen ‘at random’ from the crowd
who turned out to be, coincidentally, acrobats, show singers and big-breasted
vamps. The plot was not too hard to follow as there wasn’t one – just tit
wobbling and arse jiggling and pretend humping basically. But that’s entertainment, as they say.
Went for
another late breakfast this morning and sat drinking my café latte in the
Starbucks, when a siren started. I assumed someone had landed a huge jackpot,
but it turned out to be a fire alarm. We were told to keep calm. So I did.
Later
We had lunch at
Lucky’s – me a tuna sandwich that contained a whole tuna and a family-sized pot
of mayonnaise. We then went downtown to see The
Return of Superman. Not, filmically, a cultural experience, but good
special effects. With a few minutes to spare we looked around some markety
places off the Strip and came across some Chinese people running a foot massage
parlour. The Chinese lady who accosted me said something like: ‘You wan feed
message. You ha deecunt’. So after the film we went and had the feed message
and a little bit of deecunt is always welcome – she gave us $5 deecunt in the
end. For me at least, it was excruciating. First Chinese man he put on prastic
groves, then he put alcohol rub on feed, then he tickle rike clazy between toes
and he lub rike mad on sole of feed and cause gleat pain all way up reg and
into head. It broody hurt. I am sure so much discomfort and $15 each must do
some good though. We watched a Hawaiian dance and drum group perform in the
market. The girl moved her hips and arse in a quite impossible manner. Some
poor sole from the small impromptu audience was dragged into the centre to
prove how much he could not wiggle his arse. It was supposed to be fun, but I
thought it was plain embarrassing.
We walked about
two miles down some slightly dodgy roads off the Strip to find the Hard Rock
Café. When we finally reached it, yes, it was OK, but not the seminal dining or
rocking experience I’d been led to expect. As I spoke to the maitre de to get a
table, Ned grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back - apparently I’d walked past
some other lackey who wanted to escort me to the maitre de and his lectern. I
am getting irritated by these little displays of his lack of manners and
respect though I am trying very hard not to. On the long walk down to the Café
I had been wrestling with tearful thoughts about Kate and had to keep shaking
my head to rid myself of them, not very successfully. I felt emotionally
drained by the sheer dissembling of it all. Talking about buildings, about the
film, about all manner of things, when I just felt like hugging myself into a
ball – perhaps it was the reflexology allowing stuff to come out. When we got a
table at the Hard Rock and after Ned had yanked me by the shoulder and his
first words were: ‘Why were you so desperate to have a foot massage?’ I guess I
dealt with it badly and said something like: ‘Why do you have to put it like
that? I was not ‘desperate’ I just wanted one and thought you might enjoy it
too.’ And so on until I could see Ned disappearing behind that screen of
exasperation that says ‘What is the point in trying to communicate with you,
you just over analyse everything…’ etc.
etc. I said that we had been together 24 hours a day for two weeks and
had a week to go and we’ll make mistakes in communicating and
mis-communicating, that I do over-analyse everything and I am a difficult sod,
but there is a lot of me in him and that does not make for easy times at all
times. I think he took this for a confession of sorts. I must remind myself
that he is not yet 19 and yet he has the togetherness of a man of my age. Also
I need to remember that he is, in part at least, me and has my genes and yet
has fewer of my weaknesses than I have. And I should remember that he is partly
what I have made him, genes or no genes. We are so similar in so many ways that
I feel pride and guilt – but mostly pride.
Anyway, we got over
it and came back to the Stratosphere had a drink and watched Prizzi’s Honor with that erstwhile sex
bombshell, Angelica Huston. Now in beds, tapping away at our respective
laptops, the sound of girls’ screams coming about 800 feet up from the top of the
Stratosphere – enjoying their terrifying rides. Time for some sleep.
Friday, July 21, 2006
My dad’s
birthday – I had a text from Vicky to remind me. I was thinking just now about
a simulacrum for my ‘journey’, I mean the one away from the death of my wife
not the one towards San Francisco. The satnav system is a bit like it – there
is a path I need to follow indicated on the little screen, but occasionally I
err and an unhurried American babe’s voice says in perfectly measured tones:
‘recalculating route’ and ‘please return to the indicated route’ and ‘take hard
left turn in one point one miles’. It is the same in my head for my other
journey, but infinitely more complex: ‘avoid that emotional precipice’, ‘do not
look in rear view mirror’, ‘take a rest’, ‘road ahead subject to subsidence’.
There are not really such parallels. My set of instructions is all to do with
motoring ahead in a fairly blind fashion, but avoiding U-turns at all costs.
The first few months were so terrible I am in dread of heading back towards
them, so motor on wherever it may take me.
I am aware of
course that the past two weeks has been a period of 24 hour-a-day
companionship, even allowing for the odd blip, still companionship. When we get
back I will be back at work, Ned may go off to Cornwall for a week or so and
soon after he’ll go to university, so my own company may be my companionship. I
have to head that prospect off at the pass. I find solitude more tolerable that
it once was, but it is usually forced upon me by circumstance rather than
chosen by preference.
We talked
briefly about a thought I’ve been having. It concerned the fact that inside
every head and every brain there is a unique and unreachable set of thoughts
and calculations going on which can never be understood completely by any of
the other millions of brains that are humming away. The brain is a lonely and
impenetrable room for all of us. Even when you cradle the head of your lover,
wife, child, that unreachableness remains no matter what conceits we use to persuade
us that we have breached the gap. When I told this to Ned he mentioned
something about the cat in the box and Wittgenstein.
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Really Saturday
– US Pacific time zone. The morning started sadly. I was having a dream. I had
to find my way to a publishing party and got lost (on a motorbike) in east
London. With the help of some passer bys in Liaison Street (never heard of it)
I was directed to the party. There were drinks, laughs, publishing chat,
boredom. I left and saw Kate at the bottom of a ramp. I rushed to her, my arms
open, but she was sad, unhappy, standoffish. I said ‘what’s wrong?’ and she
said: ‘I know, I know what is going to happen.’ I hugged her, knowing too. I
awoke with the pillow wet from my tears. The first time I have known a dream to
produce physical symptoms (as it is now – stinging, acidic tears, which I guess
means that I’m dehydrated which is no great surprise given that it was 126
degrees F yesterday and much the same today).
Yesterday: we
left Las Vegas, without much regret between us, it has to be said. Las Vegas is
a peculiar type of malady rather than a city. As we drove away from it there
were obvious building programmes afoot, huge ones. The service industries are
growing up around a fetish for gambling and they must be peopled by workers who
must live somewhere. They in turn will have families and the city-oasis will
continue to grow, self-perpetuating for who knows how long. A city without
water and natural assets, growing thanks to the manure of human greed.
We drove
through a hundred miles or so of Death Valley, spectacular flattened landscapes
of sand, rock, scrub and sallow skies with forks of lightning and a road that
ran straight as a single-minded determination to get out of the withering heat.
We didn’t stop until we reached Mammoth Lakes – and here we are in a ski resort
except there is no skiing although there is snow a few hundred feet above us.
We are at 9100 feet as opposed to minus 200 feet this morning. Ned was
shattered so I left him to sleep while I read the Los Angeles Times over a
glass of Sauvignon. (A waiter in
the bar said to someone ‘I’ll have it broughten over to you’). The short
up-hill walk from the lodgings to the lounge left me without much puff,
something I blame on the altitude rather than my lack of fitness. Health note –
apart from the kidney-stone-incident, I am in good shape. Have not put on
several stones as a result of the appalling diet we are forced to eat, have had
very moderate amounts of alcohol (especially when compared with holidays a la
Thorpes!), have walked a long way most days and am now up to 50 to 60 press
ups, OK half press-ups, each day, with biceps plumping up like reasonably-sized
Russets. I read about the Israeli bombings in Lebanon. There were accounts of
innocents dying in the hundreds above half page ads for beds, wondrously
comfortable and even ‘intelligent’ beds. A nation sleeps.
We ate, after
Ned had been roused and he’d had a shower, in the lounge (built 1952) under
candelabra fashioned from many, many elk (I guess) antlers bedecked with
lights. This was the Mammoth Lakes
Inn. Clientele was middle-aged in the main and overweight, but not surprising
given the trips many made to the dessert areas of the buffet. Ned had a steak
of elk-like proportions and I had six shrimp on a bed of linguine. We failed to
get to the finishing lines.
Ned taps away
at his laptop, faster than I can, though I have used a laptop for many years
longer than him. I look at him from time to time and wonder at his progress,
his maturity and togetherness. He sometimes puts my faffing about to shame, and
I have never seen myself as remotely indecisive. I wonder too at how he is
coping with all of this – not just his mother’s death but being away with his
dad for three weeks in an alien landscape. The fact that it is alien makes it
more bearable – there are fewer landmarks to remind us of our bearings. If he
sees it as I do then it’s a buffer, a cushion, between what was then and what
is to come. There can be no going back – a terribly hard fact to take on board,
but it is so, so irrefutably true. No going back. And no going forward unless
we accept that fact.
Sunday, July 23, 2006
A terrible
night – very little sleep. I started off with the ear plugs in place and the
eye shades, my own little world of sensory deprivation, but the ear plugs
simply amplified the sound of my own heart beating, not so much a thump, thump
as a thoink, thoink. So I took them out. The next problem was my breathing – I
just couldn’t seem to get enough oxygen, probably because there isn’t enough up
here. My breathing would get shallower and shallower and then I’d have to gulp
in air. It was like a series of minor panic attacks – or how I’d imagine them
to be. So I feel a bit spaced out this morning and a bit depressed – not a word
I use very often about myself. Need to shake it off before Ned wakes up –
though he seems depressed most mornings and always has done. He’s not a morning
person, more of a 3pm to 4.30pm sort of person – I’ve joked with him in the past.
Haw, Haw, Haw!
Later
 |
In Yosemite
|
We are now in Yosemite National Park just before 10pm. We had a game of pool and a weird breakfast of vegetarian chilli for me and a chicken sandwich for Ned at 11am and then moved off into the literal wilds. Ned is, I thought today, an intrepid explorer of the great indoors.
We were soon
into the slow ascent of Yosemite Park – winding around mountain trails, coming
across verdant meadows and rushing brooks, then huge towering bluffs of sheer
bone coloured rock, followed by outrageous mountain-scapes – pure Ansel Adams,
but in full colour. We ended up here, at Yosemite View Inn – another glorified
holiday camp really, but with breath-taking views and the Yosemite River
‘Running Through It’. We refused the room with the single King bed and
eventually negotiated this room with two beds, a kitchen, a view over the river
and close to the pool with its two Jacuzzis. We spent a couple of hours at the
pool in microwave oven temperatures, reading our books while a variety of girls
looked at Ned. Their looks say it all – I recognise them from years gone by,
and it’s nothing less than the look, if not the desire for, animal lust.
We ate in the
Diner – I had so-called shrimps again having realized that it’s the one food
that they tend not to overload the plate with. Tomorrow we head off to San
Francisco and possibly get a view of the giant redwoods – strange to think it’s
the last lap of the journey. Have we taken full advantage of the trip or with
each other? Certainly not, but there was no certificate to be won at the
finishing line. We have done pretty well and still a few days to go, so I’m not
complaining (for once).
Monday, July 24, 2006
I thought in
the sleepless hours (I should have left the aircon on) about what the real
differences are between what I now have and what I had before from a balance
sheet point of view. The emotional angle is written down here – and the plusses
and minuses recorded as best I can. Emotionally it will be a long time before
the books can balance, I know that. But the pragmatic side of me – which is
curiously as dominant as the emotional, perhaps pragmatism being the balancing
part of my nature, there for survival reasons, and I am a survivor – tallies up
what I have compared with what I had and finds the situation not quite as bad
as it seemed before. Just read this last paragraph again – what a complete load
of bollocks!
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
We have enjoyed
a day in San Francisco. We went to Union Square and bought some new togs –
Calvin Klein pants, Armani Xchange shirts, some Puma trainers for Ned. I think
he felt better for this extravagance, and so did I. We got back to the hotel
about 4pm and left by 7pm for Fisherman’s Wharf. It is where Brighton meets
Mevagissey – loads of tat plus a working fishing port. We sighted Alcatraz from
the cab – an amazing fortress about a mile out to sea. We wondered about the
inmates – lifers who would regularly see the city lights and the bustle so near
yet so far. We looked at the submarine, wondered through the ancient penny
arcades (now quarter dollar arcades) so similar to the type of thing I
experienced at Margate, Southend and Bognor – see the execution, hear the lady
laugh maniacally, watch what the chorus girls did after work and so on.
Cabinets made from wood and figurines fashioned from putty and bits of string –
but still working.
We ended up in
Castagnolas – a fish, strangely enough, restaurant. I persuaded Ned to try
oysters, so we had two each. While we waited for the oysters to arrive Ned
noticed a sealion had popped its head out of the water and was eating a fish.
It looked somehow very familiar, the skull human sized and shape, its movements
slow, graceful and deliberate. The oysters arrived – gobs of phlegm inside
ornate shells. The waiter advised us to try a little Tabasco with them. Ned
managed to get one down, the fiery Tabasco burning his lips, but he baulked at
the second. So I had three and warned him of the unpredictable affects this
could have on my libido. Ned had to disappear for a few minutes – something had
constricted, as it sometimes does, his throat.
We then went
and had a drink in Hooters watching, while we waited to be served, the Hooters
beauty contest on TV monitors. There was a stark difference between the quality
of the Hooter girls on TV and those not serving us. We watched incredulously as
a woman rolled fishing boat-like into the bar. Her arse was at least triple
width, yet she moved with a certain grace, as though on rollers or tiny
centipede legs.
Tomorrow is our
last full day in the States. I have enjoyed it, being with Ned especially. As
I’ve said before, without his company the whole thing would have been aimless.
Yet I feel the hours closing and this companionship closing with them. I would
always have regretted not doing this, but will feel the loss all the more
keenly when this suddenly stops when we arrive back in the UK. I think we have
derived something permanent from our trip however, which can never be taken
away – I know I have. It’s a poor consolation for what we both would have had
over the last few months and the coming years, but it helps to prepare the
ground for new beginnings. I hope this journal will start to take on more
positive perspectives as this stage comes to an end and those beginnings begin.
Later
 |
| Enjoying the centre of San Francisco |
Now 12pm, Ned
restored to the hotel room after a night out with Tyfanny and her Vietnamese
family. A moment or two of awkwardness when, because of Ned’s sometimes cryptic
way of communicating which assumes that everything is plain bloody obvious, as
clear as a pikestaff and does not need putting into stupid, unnecessary words
for Christ’s sake, I thought I was invited to the evening with Tyffany and
family and that they probably would not all go off together on the last night
of our trip and leave the poor old bastard at his hotel on his Jack Jones. Call
me old fashioned, but I thought that was plain old-fashioned rudeness. Anyway,
we got over the moment. Before that I had struck up a conversation with a woman
called Celeste in the bar – one of those things that happen. I ordered a glass
of wine, she had just ordered one before me and the barman thought I was paying
for both. When he asked for $13 for one glass of house Merlot, I questioned him
and he explained his mistake – unless it was all an elaborate contrivance
between him and Celeste – nahh, can’t have been. Anyway we made polite
conversation about weather, how hot it’s been of late, air conditioning, her
husband’s job, her job, the attractions of Berkeley for studying, and so on.
Had I been making a pitch and had she been available, then I was doing OK. I
said to Ned afterwards that I have not been in conversations with women sitting
alone at a bar for at least 20 years – and I didn’t do it then, didn’t go into
bars, didn’t converse even when there were no ties (but there always were of
course).
 |
| Two Hooters and a Ned |
We walked back
from the wharf up the Big Dippery roads that characterise San Francisco, but
saw no car chases with air-borne T-Birds, squealing tyres, sparking exhausts
and random shots fired from waving Magnums.
He is at his
laptop now as I am mine – now half past midnight. He laughs, wheezes, chortles,
snorts, sniggers, sniffs and wears a wide, handsome, mirthful grin as he watches
downloaded video shorts of the antics of cats, dogs and children. It’s good to
see him so relaxed and so relaxed in my company. This may be the last night we
ever share a bedroom, sleep within a few feet of each other, share these
nocturnal intimacies, the tapping of our laptop keys – mine muted and hesitant
consonants, Ned’s more clacky and urgent fricatives. We both start a new life
tomorrow having ended one today. This has been a rite of passage in a way, a
coming together in preparation for a parting. I could get emotional about that
too, but Ned is uncomfortable with my emotional displays, and who can blame
him? The one thing that has been a little sliver of contention is when I get
too ‘analytical’, ‘…you are over
analysing the situation dad’ has been said a few times. There are, above this
sentence, a quarter of a million taps of these keys of over-analysing, but that
is what I am and what I do. I was given a brief lesson by Ned in Wikipedia – he
understands its mechanics fluently and its mechanics are beautiful. It is an
organic growth of an encyclopedia to which anyone can contribute. I entered an
article on Miles Kelly Publishing and may write one on children’s reference
publishing as none currently exists. Ned’s fluency was mesmerising – it is a
little spotlight into the speed of his brain which is formidable.
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Truly is the
last day now and we must pack and get on the road to the airport and all that
that entails. Not something I enjoy any more. There was a time when the merest
whiff of aviation fuel would trigger flutters of excitement. I am actually
looking forward to being home, a bit anyway. It has been only artificially
‘home’ for the last few months for obvious reasons, but I intend this to be a
turning point, for home to be home, living to be living again. So, as George
once famously said, bring it on!
 |
Ned and his aunt Vicky 2012
|
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