Dorcas Eatch
Going nowhere. Doing nothing.
Beer and Loafing in LS11
When the going gets weird, the weird move to Beeston.
-
Dreaming of Fields.
“That simple action of putting pen to paper will help you think about what it is you’re really trying to achieve,” recommends a website I happened upon this morning whilst balancing a searingly hot mug of coffee and a plate of drippy buttered crumpets on either arm of my chair, distracting me from my regular devotional attention to Mike Chitty’s latest dispatch from the Leeds Culture Wars. Seems that if I jot my long-term longings down in good old fashioned ink, “on a postcard, in a letter, on the back of a bus ticket” then I’m well on the way to achieving all that I ought to; my success “WILL happen, it’s an inevitability, a probability, not a possibility.”
I’m game for that, I thought, sucking up lashings of lustrous black ink into my favourite Mont Blanc and riffling the desk drawer for some decent cartridge paper. Admittedly I’m no La Rochefoucauld when it comes to compressing my less than precious insights into gem-like, glittering apercus, though I can usually manage to scribble a word or two of tolerable sense, and as the subject was my favourite topic, myself, I reckoned I’d be onto a winner. But when I read further and noticed the contributions from Albert Einstein, Marcus Aurelius, Ayn Rand and Violet Baudelaire (I’m assuming she’s the sister of the French fellow who translated De Quincey and invented symbolist poetry? Hoping she’s the cheerier sibling, as old Charlie was a bit of a mope) I realised that an aspiring literary/philosophical chap like myself would have to take it exceedingly seriously. My entry is rather more than a mite bigger than a bus ticket. In fact it’s more billboard than post card, but there’s positivity throbbing in every past participle and pulsing through the tiniest jot and tittle of punctuation; if I had to condense it any further the thing would be brighter than a thousand suns. Eyeballs would melt and brain cells would spontaneously incinerate. I simply had to share.
7.0 am: Woke up to John Humphreys sticking it to Nick Clegg. Another night tormented with nightmares; all the world’s problems and only one lifetime! When will I ever accept that there is only one of me, a frail, fallible, fissiparous human being . . . this is the desperately depressing down side of being so sensitive! Already in a mood fouler than the turbid air in the General Elliot’s tap room. Must buck my ideas up and pronto. Make an attempt to enumerate my goals for the day, repeat a raft of uplifting maxims from that treasure chest of practical wisdom, The Quote Book, and try to fix my mind on the positive.
7.17: Land of Nod proves too big a destination value . . . ZZZ.
10.03: Jolt awake with a ripping pain in my left cheek. Breeze from open window has dried the dribble to the pillow. Ouch. Maintain steady, single pointed mindful awareness as the pain subsides. Stumble unshaven into the kitchen and fire up the kettle. Salutations to the sun.
10.10: So so behind on emails. Remember mum’s advice, More haste, less speed, which I always took to mean STOP! If you do nowt and act gormless there’s always someone more competent will come along and do the work for you. The technique has stood my dad in good stead all these years. I see no point in questioning the accumulated wisdom of the family. Decide not to feel guilty about ignoring a pile of correspondence. Instead listen to uplifting podcasts, watch life-enhancing videos on YouTube, and plan to spend the evening in spiritually edifying company, intellectually frollicking with the enlightened crowd. Finish coffee. Make more coffee.
10.51: Positively reeling from a surfeit of peppiness. Though it could be the caffeine. Time for elevenses. Crumpets. Maybe a Hobnob. And an aspirin or two.
11.30: Noting the diminishing supply of morning. Tell my self that time is but a delusion and ponder deeply upon the midday. Nothing done as such this morning but feeling good about feeling positive.
11.35: Admitting to a niggling anxiety. Quelled by Donovan; first there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is . . . Wise words. Such a pretty tune too. Start on the positive blogs, read positive quotations, inspect positive reviews of positive books, shed a small tear at touching anecdote of a minor triumph over adversity, inwardly smile at all the good there is in the world, beam a big positive beamy face to my neighbours Micky and Vicky, busy slamming doors and shrieking constructively, give thanks and praise.
11.48: Take a breather. All this positivity is making me woozy.
11.55: Remember that I’ve neglected to write a post for my daily blog, How to Spin Friends and Monetise People.
12.07: Paean written, more unpolluted positivity injected straight into the jugular of the universe. Done my bit to restore the Karmic balance.
12.30: Wondering where to go for lunch. Put a copy of Screwing Your Way to Success; Life as a Flat Pack Instruction Manual in my bag. Have a little sit down. Day dream delightfully about all the positive thoughts I’ve yet to think, all the motivational manuals I’ve yet to devour, all the uplifting experiences I’ve yet to encounter. Doze off.
12.55: Phone! Ringing! Lunchtime . . . where are you? Where am I, indeed . . . Dashing to the bathroom for lightning shave, dabbing minor lesions with squidged up toilet paper, then I’m out of the door. Companion immoderately displeased by my modest lateness. Reference to egregious wounds elicits no sympathy. Tears. Some people just can’t be reached by another’s hurt.
2.19: Two pints of Blue Moon and a cashew nut burger take the edge off any unpleasant feelings and I foresee a whole afternoon of unimpeded positivity stretching out before me. No need to scowl concentratedly into edifying tome. Let mind flit about gathering the sheer profusion of woolly wanderings.
2.40: Strikes me that I’ve not kept up with the comments on several uplifting blogs. Feel a tug of moral obligation. Add my two penn’oth of positivity for what it’s worth. I know it’s appreciated, they return the compliment tenfold.
3.23: Remember I haven’t touched base with the international edifying community. Positivity never sleeps! America produces positivity at an almost industrial scale. The sheer scale of motivational output is daunting. I must buckle down and read on for fear of losing my standing in the world of big-spirit and speed-think.
5.01 Crack open big book on character building and self-motivation at last, but before I’ve read half the foreword by a major figure in the world of Uncritical Psychology my tummy grumbles.
5.25: Dusting cake crumbs off keyboard. Just seen a tweet about negative effects of simple carbohydrates on moral fibre. Decide that Victoria sponge is having a deleterious effect on my circadian rhythms. It must be the jam filling that makes me dopey.
7.25: Still glued to page seventy five of Positive Psychology Classic when I’m startled to attention by whistling from the kitchen. Boiled water for pasta. Seem to have been reading Martin Seligman’s list of publications, citations and honorary appointments for over an hour. Positive bloody hero that Seligman.
7.34: In mad rush to waste no time in unedifying ritual of eating I scald mouth with thermonuclear pasta. Not feeling so clever now. But facial disfigurement is a minor price to pay. Something I shall have to overcome. Boing back from adversity. Think brightly. Onwards.
8.15: Decide I need culture. What will bring most positive payoff though? Ballet? Film? Opera? Do I play plebeian and go to the pub? Switch laptop on and scour the blogs for information about hedonic ratings of competing cultural forms.
8.57: Realise it’s possibly too late for a film and Act One of the Opera finished quarter of an hour ago. Congratulate myself on solid decision not to do ballet, however. Ballet has no measurable effect on promoting tangible life goals. May still make the pub though. Tie shoelaces, retrieve wallet, rummage around the flat looking for keys.
9.30: Find keys in wash basket along with library card and a corkscrew. No time to divine the meaning of that unnatural conjunction of objects. Slam the door and rush wildly down the hill in the direction of beer.
9.42: Arrive Midnight Bell and down first pint of morally inspiring Leeds Best. Two more pints and my metrics of uplift and spiritual fulfilment are restored to acceptable levels. Realise if I leave pub now I can call into Tescos for an elevating bottle of Merlot and be home in time to catch book at bedtime on Radio Inspire, the choice of listening for goal driven, self-actualising, achievement driven good people throughout the nation.
11.47: Bed at last. Fall into fitfull half sleep, tormented by anxiety dreams in which I have gnawing thoughts of positive words left unspoken, uplifting literature left unread, inspiring blog posts about achieving one’s dreams left uncommented upon, gratifying comments on visionary blog posts left unreciprocated . . .What if Leeds . . . had style!
Call me shallow - I totally admit it, I’m about as deep as a cross section of Happy Shopper cling film - but I appreciate a well designed, thoughtful, attractive logo. If it’s only the local takeaway or self-employed dog-sitter even I’ve been known to get a bit sniffy if the marketing is on the dodgy side. Once I even turned down a rather lucrative piece of work owing to the fact that the business in question insisted on corresponding with me in Papyrus font on some hideously gauche stationery. Which quite possibly makes me a typography snob too, and quite possibly in a minority of one. If the logo represents something as important as the vision for a city, which is a pretty deep and difficult concept, I think I’m justified in expecting something quite eye-catching, powerful, remarkable even. And if that city happens to be Leeds then I want a logo that expresses all the passion, pluck, gumption and grit that I feel makes the place great. . . Obviously that’s a tough brief and I’m the first to admit I wouldn’t fancy being the one to design it, but that’s why I’m not a pixel magician. So, let’s see, What If Leeds . . .
Forget for a moment that there’s only seven words and four separate font effects clamouring for attention, what concerns me is that owl . . . I’ve just had to slap myself smartly with a cold damp flannel as whenever I think about that owl my mind goes into an overdrive of obscenity, a growling bitter diatribe consisting mainly of guttural word shards of a mainly Anglo-Saxon origin. Owl/Leeds . . . it’s a fairly lame and uninspired choice of mascot. If it must be an owl then at least one of the glorious golden ones on the Civic Hall, or any of the lovely bunch on the Leeds Owl Trail. We’re hardly short of magnificent, impressive, fabulous beasts in Leeds (though why we can’t have the Leeds Town Hall Lions as our logo I’ll never know . . . there’s nothing quite like those four striking fellows any where else, they are pure Leeds.) Quite why this jejune, inept bit of clip art is thought to represent me and my city is beyond me . . . if they told me it was the logo for a small nursery in Moortown, even that would be far too lazy for words.
Actually, style isn’t as superficial as I made out. Style is the way we do things, the surplus of delight beyond the strictly necessary, the swagger in the step and the spice in the sauce, and it’s the style of a place that makes you want to be part of it, not the plain facts and certainly not the bare statistics. Style should come across in everything we do as a city. Nobody in their right minds could call that owl stylish. Clip art never caused a heart to beat faster or created a sense of passionate identification with a particular place. What if Leeds had a sense of style . . . Let’s get rid of the owl.the culture vulture » What I think about Cultural Conversations.
Is it self-deprecation, or self-depreciation? Anyway, I always find it funny. Less a review more an admission of lackadaisicality.
the culture vulture » Good Times at Leeds Corn Exchange.
Another post for Culture Vulture. Working on the next.
The dreadful has already happened . . . my two penn'oth on arts funding.
Before I start let’s make it clear that I’m not against public funding for the arts. If I had my way I’d double it at the very least. In my ideal world I’d expropriate the expropriators, poleaxe the bankers, turf out the queen and all the silly hangers on, pull the plug on Trident and all that missile malarkey, and exile the Tories to a clapped out council estate in Castleford. I’d put all that money into a fleet of Lancaster Bombers and cash bomb the North. When I’d done that I’d go fetch that ridiculous Damien Hirst skull and present it to The Leeds United B team as a kickabout. Perhaps I’d present them with Damien Hirst’s real skull . . . no no, this is a private fantasy and best not indulging in that dangerous and dotty direction. But you get the drift. My heart’s in the right place even if my thinking is a bit dislocated.
I’ve been following the discussions about Arts Council funding cuts as a pure outsider. It’s not really my area of expertise. I honestly don’t know that much about the Arts Council and can’t really say they’ve had much of an impact on my own development as a human being, but I’ve always been glad they are there, doing whatever it is they do. All those philistine arguments from the so called libertarians that we shouldn’t be subsidizing middle class passtimes from the tax takings don’t really impress me that much; it’s a bit like wanting to abolish Bridlington because you don’t like the seaside. I was really hoping for some kind of galvanising response from the Arts Council, something I could really get behind, a perfect, sharp, clear gem of a clincher for when I was down the pub and it came to that banging the table and reducing the room to awed silence moment. So I was a bit dismayed to read Why the arts matter, a kind of manifesto from The Arts Council, and possibly one of the limpest, lamest, uninspiring protest pieces that I’ve ever come across. The more I read it the more furious I got. Not because I disagree with public funding. I just think there has to be a better argument for it. Before I go through the godawful thing, bullet point by thudding bullet point, each another shot in the foot for the arts, let me quote something that I consider a bit of a touchstone, a paragraph or two of a late essay by Richard Hoggart, a Hunslet lad (though I don’t hold that against him) who knew a thing or two about public funding. He could write a bit too. Subtract the particular reference to VAT and apply the quote to all the #artsfunding stuff you see everywhere.
The economic case for spending public money on the arts is being more and more used. It is increasingly based on sophisticated data: about the power of high level art to attract foreign tourists, who then spend much money on all sorts of other activities, and so on to the Government’s revenue from VAT on tickets . . . The revenue from VAT can be shown to be more than the public purse gives in support to the arts in the first place. No doubt any treasury tyro could demonstrate the wholes in this argument. If the government began to give subventions to all sorts of bodies thought worthy by somebody, on the grounds that those bodies paid a great deal of VAT, we would have a pantomimic, Widow Twankey situation - in which we all took in each other’s washing but had no external expenses. It is sounder to argue, not that public subventions should be more generous because of the amount their activities attract in VAT, but that the arts should, as are books are at present, be exempted from VAT on the general grounds that they can be educative and civilising.
It can easily seem that any stick is good to beat opponents with when one is arguing a case about which one feels strongly and virtuously, on the side of the angels. This is never a good way to argue and can rebound badly. The arts, like any other activity whose benefits are not easily assessed and never entirely proved, should have their case made on the most clear and honest and mature grounds, not by cobbling together dubious claims.
So, let’s go through Why the arts matter weighing up clear, honest, mature arguments against dubious claims.
15 years sustained support . . . visionary leaders, blah blah. Don’t know about you but anyone who makes a unilateral declaration of spectacular brilliance makes me a bit suspicious. I read this as, we’ve had 15 years of economic growth, haven’t we been lucky chaps! Entrepreneurial business models are great . . . but the thing about entrepreneurs is, most of them fail. Simple fact nobody ever talks about. And, trouble with relying on any life-sustaining machinery, there’s always an off switch.
Tiny budget, huge return . . . Oh for heaven’s sake not the bloody half a pint of milk argument! Meals on wheels, free school milk, wheelchairs for crippled kids, guide dogs for the blind, domestic violence shelters, respite holidays for carers . . . you pays your money and you takes your choice. Lots of things that are worth doing only cost a few pence, but why pick one above any other? Maybe I value caring for my elderly neighbour more than giving a glitzy impression to the tourists. As for “fastest growing part of the economy” . . . erm, maybe not for long. Who says that’s guaranteed anyhow? Economies don’t always grow. The last sentence of this paragraph quite literally made me feel nauseated. Apart from that execrable cliche, “proven track record,” does whoever wrote this really believe that crap about regeneration? “Cohesive and engaged society?” . . . if that phrase wasn’t so ludicrous, obnoxious, and offensive, I’d be laughing out loud. Where have these people been, exactly? Not anywhere I’m familiar with. Wish they’d let me take them on a wander through my part of town.
Kind of society we want to be . . . Sorry, I don’t remember being asked what kind of society I wanted this to be. Who is this “We” they are talking about so blithely? I certainly don’t identify with this bland, anodyne corporatist crap. “The story is clear” . . . who to? And what story exactly? You call this recitation of dubious claims and spurious statistics a story . . . and you’re the Arts Council? Obviously narrative isn’t a strong point.
Arts vital role in economic recovery . . . strictly, the sentence beginning “Arts investment . . . “ is just gibberish. I take it to mean art is now totally co-opted into the imperatives of capital accumulation. Art is the fuel that fires the engines that could propel UK plc to race ahead against international competition. Art is also, somehow, the route out of recession too. Art is now “the creative economy.” I wonder what Ruskin, Morris, Orwell, Hoggart would make of this? Art equals cultural tourism . . . Lucky, Lucky Liverpudlians!
Artistic enjoyment and creativity has never been more universal, more innovative, more easily distributed, shared and exchanged . . . I kind of agree with this one. Just not sure how much it has to do with the Arts Council. Seems to me that much of the genuinely interesting stuff happens in places the Arts Council just can’t reach . . . the biggest laugh I heard from any audience recently was when Ivor Tymchak did his little routine at BettaKultcha III, asking everyone if they’d found the Arts Council evaluation forms under their chairs . . . after a few seconds of anxious shuffling and searching Ivor screwed the piece of paper he was holding, tossing it into the crowd, and said, “No? That’s cos we haven’t got any . . . “ General mirth and merrymaking ensued. The relief was palpable.
Art = healthy society . . . artist as Stakhanovite? . . . Lord, help us. Art’s fags, absinthe, devilry and lots of drunken debauchery with people you shouldn’t . . . what’s the feckin’ point otherwise?
Arts cuts, disproportionate . . . blahdy blah . . . heck, I’m bored rigid by this. Hardly a call to the barricades. More numbers, mind-numbingly dull sentences, drone, moan, groan . . . Then this little doozy of an admission about the cultural model; “But it is a finely balanced economy: if public funding is significantly reduced, the knock-on effect will be profound and the private sector will not make up the shortfall.” So, what was that you were saying about visionary leadership then? Visionary, but only if the economy goes on as before in the boomtimes. Leadership, but only if things don’t wobble too much. Visionary Leadership seems to be a case of screwing your eyes up really tight, pressing your fingernails deep into your palm, and wishing the world would disappear and leave you alone. Too late.
The dreadful has already happened.
I’m not going to bother with the rest of this dreary document. Go, read it for yourself and see what you think. But if that represents the best they can do then heaven help the struggling artists they are meant to speak for. Perhaps it’s time to retrain as something useful, like . . . I don’t know . . . a Big Society Consultant or something.If you think angry shouting people are funny . . .
via break.com"Holland is the only country with a national dog!" Why didn't I know that?
I'm an idiot . . . artistic evaluation.
Last week I wrote a review of an arty event in Leeds. Great event and my review was positively glowing. It was a week long extravaganza and I couldn't get to everything and the organisers wouldn't have wanted me to. Each day had different shows and each drew in a particular audience, that was part of the point. My review picked out my own highlights, admittedly personal and apologetic to anyone I didn't mention. One particular event I said was "rivetting," the art work was "weird and wonderful" and some of the pieces "were genuinely disturbing." My only slight caveat was that I "didn't understand what he was on about on his website." It was a genuine confusion. If I review something I say exactly what I think, there's no point being all polite and politic. I liked the guys art, but his writing didn't do the work justice. I didn't say he was an illiterate oaf who should not be allowed near word processing software until he'd learned how to put together a decent sentence, I just said I didn't get what he was talking about.
The following day the guy responded. Here's the text with incriminating details removed:
The reason P. Kirby can not understand what I am trying to express on my website and is limited to describe my work as weird and wacky, is he is an idiot. I had the misfortune to meet this individual during the ***** exhibition and find him deluded in his importance and two faced.
Avoid ***** at all cost, couldn’t organise a p*ss up in a brewery if you want my opinion. All credit to ***** (the other exhibition I'd seen the guys work) goes to ***** and the rest of the *****.
Now I'm fine with the personal invective. Though I don't remember exchanging more than two words with the guy at the other exhibition he was involved with and our only contact was when I took a picture of his work in progress and put it up on the website. Still, his insights into my personality flaws, failings and foibles stand. Obviously he has preternatural insights into the human soul that I'm just too obtuse to be a party to. I'm not an artist. Perhaps that's it. And I never would take credit for anyone elses exhibitions. I was there almost every day during the exhibition he mentions, and he and his mates were fully responsible for setting up, marketing, marshalling and managing the event. I wouldn't want to claim any credit at all, and I'm sure the handful of penurious students and assorted scruffs and scallies who turned up really enjoyed themselves. Hopefully they can all copper up and make enough between them to buy a print. That would be nice. And maybe he's right about me being an idiot and not able to organise a piss up in a brewery (and fuck I hate the middle class delicacy of erasing the vowels. It's PISS UP fuck it, just come out and have the balls to say it you middle class soft shit . . . ahem.) So when the several hundred people with money enough to buy the guys stuff have been through the place recently, and some have asked about his work, well, shucks what an idiot I am! I forget who did it. Dopey me. And let's face it, he wouldn't want an idiot marketing his stuff to paying punters now would he? This idiots opinion that his work was "rivetting, weird and wonderful" must be turned on its head. In reality the work is dull, bland and anodyne . . . what other conclusion can be reached? That's the artist's own self estimation after all. It would be two faced of me to carry on with my over-estimation of the work on show.
What really bugged me wasn't the insult. It was his inability to grasp what I had written and his complete disregard of plain Englsh. I don't mind insults but get the facts right and don't come across as if you've spent too much time in remedial class. I never said the work was "wacky" because that's a word I haven't used since I was just out of nappies. I said his work was "wonderful" . . . but I'm an idiot, ignore me. All I was asking for was some simple clarification, some clue about what the work meant, which I wasn't really getting from his website. For instance, this:
This imagery is framed within our ornate world, diverse and subversive these unique paradox moments form a body of work that questions the onlookers visual representation and ideals towards the every day task of being
Strictly speaking this isn't a sentence in any known dialect of English. It's just an example of art school, impress the tutor, read a bit of Adorno but don't understand it, gibberish bollocks. The whole website is written in this alien, clunky, claggy nonsense. Which is a pity since the work is fabulous (again, ignore that and consider me quite deluded on the quality of the work, it must be shite if I liked it.) And all I wanted to ask him was, what's the work really about? In ordinary, everyday, conversational English please. Is that too much to ask? That's what people who might buy this stuff really want to know. But, well let's face it, this artist is above mere grubby commerce and he would feel excruciatingly uncomfortable were I to introduce his work to people with the means to invest in it. He's a serious artist communing with his soul, making images for love and the purest and highest of motives, not a mere word monkey like myself who has to live on my wits. Let's leave him alone to contemplate the everyday task of being. I shall turn my face away in shame . . . both my faces.Review of Test Space
Here's my review of Test Space Takeover for Culture Vultures.Bumping into Uncle Tommy.
I've just had another a message from my uncle Tommy on Facebook! I managed to avoid him yesterday as he walked past Temple Works. I dodged behind one of the big pillars at the entrance to the car park and watched him amble by, clinging onto Joan, his long sufferring wife. He didn't see me. I thought I'd escaped, but he managed to collar me on the way to The Grove. Not pleasant. I handled the experience much more expeditiously than last time, which was just before the Black Dog Artists Collective tour of Holbeck back in October. That was excruciatingly awful. Scarred me for life!
While I was waiting in the Wonderwood garden for the tour to begin, chatting with a couple of the other people who'd started to gather, I spotted my Tommy and auntie Joan sauntering towards The Midnight Bell. They always drink in the Commercial around the corner till about 1 o clock, before moving on to The Cross Keys, and then The Grove or The Prince of Wales. Sometimes, if they are feeling flush, they'll nip into The Hilton, which they think is incredibly posh. They have done this every Saturday for the past 20 years. I hadn't reckoned on bumping into them, however. I didn't know they'd changed their route. My ultimate fear is that they'll discover The Hop! Uncle Tommy is the family disgrace. He's my dads younger half brother (my grandmother on that side was a bit of a goer . . . when I was about 14 she married the grandfather of a class-mate for his money, and we're certain she killed him! It wasn't the first time a man she was seeing disappeared or died mysteriously.) Tommy was also the first of our family to get a place at university - he's a decent artist and has had lots of stories and poems published - even had a play on radio Four, I think. He's also a noisy, belligerent, angry, drunk who regularly used to get into punch ups with the local Irish travelers, just for a laugh. When he's drunk he can turn from loquacious charm to seething, vicious, menacing mayhem in the blink of an eye . . . if he misinterprets the blink as some sort of invitation to test his manhood. Fortunately, he's a bit scared of me - ridiculously as he could annihilate me with one judicious left hook! but he knows I can take anything he can throw verbally and give back more. He once pissed my sister Christine off so much she refused to speak to him for years. That takes some doing. Anyway, I spotted Tommy about twenty yards away. I knew he'd seen me. I was the tallest person in the group, stood right in Tommy's eye-line as he walked toward the pub door. There was no way I could escape and no way to pretend I hadn't seen him. I thought the best tactic was to break free of the pack and go meet him, so sparing the arty types the full blast of local culture, the voice of the real Holbeck. He'd already shouted my name a couple of times when I reached him. I tried to explain what I was doing there and where we were all going, but he was more interested in the prospect of cajoling me into the pub for a pint. Auntie Joan, bless her, was at least interested in the Giotto towers and Temple Works, and tried to get Tommy focused on the conversation. He was 6 or 7 pints into his day though. Not dead drunk, but not amenable to reason, and was swaying on his feet and slurring every third word. Just as Tommy mentioned that he was bursting for a pee and must be off, simultaneously pointing out the window of the gents toilets and telling the assembled ladies that if they wanted sight seeing they'd be in for a treat in a minute or two, we were joined by the young woman who'd arranged the tour, Yvonne. She'd assumed I think that Tommy and Joan were stragglers and would be joining our little cultural party. Tommy's eyes twinkled . . . he'd seen Yvonne approach and his beer befuddled brain had concocted a little story. Yvonne, pale, pretty, painfully middle-class, armed with a clip-board and a shopping trolley full of picnic provisions, arrived at my side and cheerfully greeted Tommy and Joan and hinted that we'd be setting off in a moment . . . Tommy interrupted her with the immortal phrase, "So, this is the next Mrs Kirby, glad to meet you, I'm your uncle Tommy!" . . . I can only guess the look on Yvonne's face. Tommy made a move as if to hug the poor frail girl but I managed to block his approach (heaven knows what would have happened if he'd managed to maul her! it really doesn't bear thinking about.) I saw Joan look imploringly at Yvonne with an expression that must have said, go! Now! Run away quick, because when I turned around she was in the middle of her group, surrounded by people she felt comfortable with, her back to us, stooping, shrinking almost, as if she was trying to make herself not there. I had Tommy by the shoulders. He was rocking and couldn't really see straight. I told him, loudly and slowly, that I didn't know any of these people . . . I didn't think he would be able to take in much more than that snippet of information. Joan grabbed his elbow and said that she'd take him into the pub, "so you'll all be safe." As soon as Tommy had gone the tour started. I didn't really get chance to apologise but obviously the event had been talked about . . . later that evening I got a tweet from a friend who asked me about the walk and the view from City Inn (where we'd all ended up for a drink) and said, a propos of nothing, "Yvonne's lovely, isn't she?" Yvonne is indeed, lovely. Poor girl must have been traumatised. Every time she's noticed me since then she's managed to scuttle away sharpish. Who can blame her? -
Phil Kirby's Posterous
Going nowhere. Doing nothing.
