A CLICK AWAY FROM CHAOS
by
Leslie Cameron
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY:
Leslie Cameron on Smashwords
A Click Away From Chaos
Copyright © 2008 by Leslie Cameron Peck
ISBN 978-1-60145-452-2
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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1No More Josephs, Thank You
*****
In a one-man band, everybody plays piano. And in a one-man business, everybody does the post run: which is why I’m striding out across our village green, carrying the weekly bundle of mail to the local post office.
“Looks like you bin busy, Timothy Melrose!” our Post Mistress remarks. Don’t be fooled for a moment. First-Class Freda isn’t complimenting me on my work rate. Far from it: she just wants to see who I’ve been writing to.
“All a part of the daily grind,” and I drop the letters on her counter.
Freda takes each envelope in turn, weighs it carefully, and then stamps it with a resounding thump. We are now at package number eight. “Had a cousin, once,” Freda tells me. “She wrote letters – almost every Christmas.”
“Always nice to get a letter,” I smile back and make a note to keep that gem on ice until my next job-seek interview.
“Even better when they come by first class post,” Freda reminds me.
And that’s why we call her First-Class Freda. Ages back, when we first set up shop in Ashiestiel Green, Freda had refused to sell me a second-class stamp. “Old Jim won’t pedal up to Paddy’s place for peanuts,” she had told me in her distinctive Cornish drawl. “First class only, thank you,” as if a less-expensive stamp might have downgraded Old Jimmy’s professional status.
Mind you, in all our time round here, I’ve yet to come across anyone called Paddy or any sign on any gatepost that might suggest where he’s living. But does it matter? With our Freda, it’s a first class stamp or nothing.
In her teenage years (or so I heard), our Post Mistress had lived in Truro. Then, on a girls-night-out in Falmouth, she became romantically involved with an Able Seaman. And when he was posted to Rosyth, she chased him north to splice his mainbrace, in a manner of speaking. But once his frigate had disappeared behind an iceberg in the Arctic Sea, her Jolly-Jack had decided that he preferred the icy waters of the North Atlantic and never even sent her a Bye Love, See U Later card – by first-class stamp or any other form of postage.
So she stands behind Post Office counter, waiting and watching, just in case her beloved Jack should find himself in Ashiestiel Green one afternoon and wander into Senga’s mini-market by mistake. (Or so local gossip has it.)
First-Class Freda must be in her sixties. Nothing wrong with that, of course. Always pleasant: favours the darker blues, especially in winter when she goes for the kind of padded jacket that her Jack might have used on crows-nest duty.
But Freda’s major hobby is the Green, its funny little ways and everyone who passes through it. She sees it as her responsibility to know everything about anything (which accounts for her interest in my mail). From her vantage point behind the counter, she can watch the village as it goes about its daily business and keep a log of everything that has, is, or should be happening as the day wears on.
Apart from selling first class stamps, Freda’s shop is kind of general-purpose store, with an accent towards leisure. All the usual postal bits and pieces are there – pencils, pens, bottles of ink, all kinds of envelopes and jiffy bags, yellow stickies, giant rolls of parcel tape and tubes for sending rolled-up paintings to your granny. She also stocks an all-age/all-occasion shelf of greetings cards, two racks of paperback books and, within the last few weeks, has included a selection of just-released videos in her range of attractions. Freda believes that you can learn a lot about your neighbours from their choice of viewing.
“You watch him, Tim,” she said one afternoon. She was referring to a recent video-borrower who (even as she spoke), was scuttling across the Green, probably in search of a VCR. “He’s a top-shelf man,” she added with a sideways glance.
Purely in the line of what’s-she-on-about, I checked that shelf: Sound of Music, the Rambo series and a handful of Carry On specials were clearly on view. I wondered what the customer had discovered in the darker corners of this cultural treasure trove.
It’s easy enough to find your way around Ashiestiel Green. If you stand at the Post Office door, Senga’s mini-market is on your left, Wullie’s dry goods shop (where nails are still sold by the handful) is on your right - while Alicia Weatherall’s pride and joy, the white-walled Bonnie Prince (with its rustic thatch and nest of smoking chimneys), is dead ahead. And behind its Good Food Daily sign and up the hill a bit, you’ll find Davie Dexter’s garden centre.
So, without breaking the practiced rhythm of her stamp-and-drop-it-in-the-sack routine, First-Class Freda can watch you buy your milk, bread, Heinz Baked Beans and other daily necessities from Senga - then cross the green to get a tin of Sunburst Yellow for the rabbit hutch from old Wullie. And early callers to the tap room of the Bonnie Prince will be noted in the log for future reference.
However, should you then decide to trot up the hill to buy a potted plant for auntie’s birthday – or visit the church, the village hall or the library (which are down the lane a bit and round the corner) - you are probably out of range. But I wouldn’t bet against a paid informer phoning back to Mission Control with the intimate details.
I’m not sure exactly how much she knows about the way we make a living. By now, she must have realised that Carrie and I work from home (in a neat little cottage, three bedrooms and a garden, halfway up the lane to Davie’s place). And now and then, she may see either of our daughters when they call in to see us.
Carrie and I have nothing to hide. After all, most days she sees me in T-shirt and joggers, walking our dog round the green. And she knows I use the golf course every so often. She found this out when someone grassed me up about the wicked slice that put a brand new Top-Flite golf ball clean through one of Davie Dexter’s greenhouse windows. On top of this, she knows I generate a lot of post – but doesn’t always know what’s in it.
Our way of life is no big secret: I’m a freelance trainer. Office products: mainly I develop outlines for training programs. And once in a while, I deliver a day or two of on-site instruction. One day, I’ll explain it to her – but I don’t have time right now.
“Seven pounds and twenty-two pence,” Freda tells me, having added up the various items on her pocket calculator.
“Should be able to manage that,” I tell her, making a show of searching for the money.
“Can’t be easy,” Freda continues. Now that we have finished the business of the day, she can start to build towards her secondary theme. “Not with Christmas just around the corner.”
Oh Freda – please! We’ve only just had Hallowe’en! And we haven’t finished with the nightly fireworks by a long chalk. “Perhaps I should have written to Santa Claus as well,” and I turn to go. But it’ll never be that easy to escape from First-Class Freda.
She will never give up. One day – and that (she hopes) may be tomorrow - she will find the magic button that will answer all her questions. She tries a flank attack. “Davie’s needin’ help with his Christmas trees,” she tells me.
Another job in wellies? Well, why not? Since we agreed on compensation for the greenhouse window situation (and I repossessed my brand new golf ball), Davie and I have got along quite well. For example, back in April, when a job-seek exercise had required a back-up sack from the depths of the post van, Freda sold my body to his garden centre for a couple of weeks of bagging compost. At £5 an hour (cash in hand), shifting several tons of Davie’s Super-Gro organic fertiliser had helped to fill a shortfall in the household budget.
“What’s he paying?” This is my standard response to any offer of work.
“Same as always.”
“In cash?”
“But if you don’t fancy Christmas trees,” she goes on, “there’s always Mrs Weatherall.”
Yes, Alicia the Unbelievable, she who rules the Bonnie Prince with an iron dish cloth. In the past, when work has been thin and hard to find (and poor old George has blown his back again by shifting one too many barrels on a Sunday morning), Mrs Weatherall - as she prefers to be called - has used my services to help her out behind the bar. Although her hourly rates are modest, the freebie pints and old steak pies for Kandi-dog have helped us make it to the next there’s-a-job-if-you-want-it phone call. At a guess, Mrs Weatherall is in her fifties. Small and dynamic, she’s the kind of woman who inspired Monty’s Desert Rats to push Rommel out of the North African desert. Not exactly a Lilli Marlene – more of a Jack Russell with attitude.
But we mustn’t be unkind: it was thanks to Mrs Weatherall that we came to live in the village in the first place. “Bar work?” I ask Freda, always hopeful.
“Not quite, my dear,” Freda smiles, knowing she has hooked her victim. “Mrs Weatherall needs a bit of help with the village Nativity Play.”
Back home, in our modest little cottage, hardly more than an 8-iron shot from the Bonnie Prince, Carrie laid it squarely on the line. Being Scottish born and bred, she understands how things work around here in a them-&-us community: “Pray for a phone call,” was the best advice she could offer.
Her real name is Carmen (but God help anyone who dares to use it in public). Just before my bride-to-be was born, her mother caught a matinee performance of Carmen Jones in one the minor Edinburgh cinemas. Because she felt that (a) the leading lady was only having fun and (b), Harry Belafonte was a typical man and got his just deserts, she named her daughter after the Dorothy Dandridge character.
Could have been worse, I suppose: the Sunday program featured John Wayne in a re-run of The Sands of Iwo Jima.
“No problem, sweetheart,” I replied in my best James Cagney. With my record of church non-attendance, there was every chance I’d blow the interview. So, with this comforting thought in mind, I paid a courtesy lunch time visit to Mrs Weatherall. However, if I was expecting a frosty “Thank you” and “We’ll let you know,” then I was right out of luck.
The Bonnie Prince is the kind of pub you only seem to see in the Sunday Supplements. It’s real, nothing trendy - just the kind of country hotel you always hope to find on holiday. A walnut bar, matching pump handles, wooden stools that rock no matter how many beer mats get jammed under their legs and it has a flagstone floor worn smooth by the boots of countless generations of Ashiestiel villagers.
And it has a dartboard! As well it should. I believe that any pub without a dartboard should be stripped of its licence, right there on the village green, with everybody jeering.
Over time, Mrs Weatherall has upgraded her menus to meet an ever-increasingdemand for haute cuisine and Nouveau Beaujolais. The dear old chalkboard that used to offer soup-&- rolls and ploughman’s lunches has been expanded to encourage chips with pies, fried haddock or goulash, as preferred. She has even brought in one of those neat little bar-top ovens to bake potatoes - locally grown with Davie Dexter’s organic fertiliser, of course.
“Freda said you might be coming over,” the good lady smiled in her warmest hostess fashion as I parked myself on a comfortable stool. “What would you like?” and she waved a gracious arm across the line of walnut pumps.
Nothing changes. A lot of my freelance work comes through employment agencies – and when an agent offers lunch, you know that the job will be a ‘nasty’. The problem is, of course, that once you’ve eaten the T-bone steak, you can hardly refuse to sign the contract. “A pint of the Special, please,” I conceded. Might as well enjoy it while I could.
In general, village life is great. Fresh air, local food, no nine-to-five – and everybody knows our Kandi-dog by name. But there is a downside. It’s called Community Involvement. Earlier Community Involvement had included organising a raffle in aid of a party for the local children – while the Easter Fete had yet to rear its troublesome head.
As I sipped my pint, the only cloud on my horizon was the resurrection of the Nativity Play - and because the previous production team had fallen out of favour, that cloud was about to rain all over me.
For years, the Nativity Play had been handled by the ladies who ran the Sunday School. At first, they had stuck to the outlines of the original story. But after an outing to Les Miserables with the Women’s Institute, the left-wing faction of the Sunday School committee had re-directed the story through a downward spiral into comedy - complete with villainous innkeeper, an incorrigible VAT inspector and an anti-Herod demonstration as a grand finale. It had not gone down too well.
“So it’s back to basics, please,” Mrs Weatherall demanded with an unforgiving smile. “Can you do it?”
“Who’s going to help?” I dared to ask her.
“Senga will supply refreshments,” she promised, “and Davie will lend you a bale of hay for the manger scene.”
With even less to start with, Stephen Spielberg had given us Jurassic Park. “No problem,” I agreed – all at sea on how to go about it. I had no choice: I had drunk the Weatherall Shilling and a refusal was out of the question.
As I signed my life away, I hadn’t got as far as problems with the cast, their costumes, incidental music and the sundry extras needed to keep the punters happy for an evening. At this moment, we had only agreed in principle; details would come later.
“We only want the true spirit of the Nativity,” Mrs Weatherall confirmed as she cleared away my empty glass. The interview was over - and as no-one was offering a “One more for the show?” I went home to report to management.
“Beware the Ides of Mrs Weatherall,” said Carrie when I told her of this great opportunity to become a theatrical impresario within the confines of the village.
“I’ve got the bale of hay,” I replied. “I only need a virgin, three wise men and a cardboard donkey – what’s the problem?”
Carrie decided not to dignify my question with an answer.
The village Community Hall – as they prefer to call it – was built in 1937 to commemorate the Coronation (of which King, children? – does anybody know?).
From the outside, it resembles an old log cabin from the golden age of pioneering. If you catch it in the setting sun around October, you can easily imagine men in buckskin, sitting round a roaring fire, skinning beaver. Since the ceremonial opening (probably by Mrs Weatherall’s grandmother), it’s been updated with electric light, running water and a bottle of liquid soap, most of which drips onto the reasonably-new linoleum. It has a stage, an office and a ping-pong room – in which, Mrs Weatherall has decreed, we will store the bale of hay. It also has a small piano that either needs a proper tune-up or a woodcutter’s axe, whichever is the less expensive option.
Next evening at the first audition, I found out what Carrie meant. A Nativity Play can be an absolute minefield, starting with the parents. In any average community, everyone wants their little darling to be a Mary or a Joseph. Demotion to the rank of King is seen as a slap in the face for the entire family.
“Have they forgotten I baked that Batman cake for the harvest festival!” one unhappy parent complained on hearing that her pride-&-joy was on the short list for the critical part of Second Angel.
As for Shepherds – just forget it. In a village Nativity Play, it’s not participation, it’s the glory.
Once again, I turned to Carrie for advice. We were sitting on our crazy-paving patio, drinking an after-breakfast coffee while a pair of blackbirds argued noisily over an old piece of toast they’d found in a long-since-faded flowerbed. We’d been discussing colour themes for the spare bedroom. She wanted duck-egg blue; I preferred orange.
To change the subject, I turned to Mrs Weatherall’s opening instructions for my project. It didn’t take long because she hadn’t told me very much. Once I’d covered the concept of the true spirit of the Nativity, the material ran dry, so to fill up the time allotted for my coffee-break presentation, I included my thoughts on casting, finding costumes, organising music and so on.
Carrie was less than impressed. But as always, her advice was right on the ball. “Those who can, produce,” she said. “Those who can’t, get help.”
Good idea – but where to find it? Under normal circumstances, I would have rung-around the agencies, searched the media adverts in the Guardian and maybe called in one or two favours. Even so, it would have been be easier to find a Klondike nugget in a sandpit than to identify a body who would fit the role of producer for a Nativity play. I had to seek a higher authority.
Later that afternoon, I went in search of Jessie Mackay, our village librarian. I found her in the Reference section, getting ready for the younger readers’ Christmas Poster competition.
Jessie Mackay is considered by many to be our saviour. Thanks to her, Ashiestiel Green is still a village in West Lothian. But only just. Some years ago, a mix-up of civic developers on their way to a conference in Kilmarnock mistook our lane for the A71 and found themselves outside Freda’s post office.
“Delightfully quaint!” cried one, admiring the Green in all its glory...
“Awfully house-&-garden,” declared a second. “Let’s rebuild it.”
“With you all the way,” said a third - and within a year, the first six companies to appreciate the opportunities offered by the New Town development of Grant’s Quarry were open for business. The actual shopping centre is about a mile from here – and the super hi-tech business park is a couple of roundabouts further on.
It should have been closer – but through a stroke of good fortune, Ashiestiel Green itself was left alone. From somewhere, Jessie Mackay produced this ancient scrap of parchment that promised the vengeance of God, the Saints and anyone else with spiritual muscle if an English army should ever dare to camp on (or even close to) the Green. As it had been endorsed with the double-dagger seal of none other than Black Douglas of Ashiestiel (the one who fought with Bruce himself at Bannockburn), it was declared by the University to be totally genuine and irrefutable in Scottish law. And once it had been discussed by a panel of experts on television, the developers took fright, redrew their plans moved the shopping centre well away from any risk of ghostly retribution.
This leaves our rather pleasant Green - with its terraced cottages, the giant beech (beloved by every crow for miles around) and crimson hawthorn trees - as the perfect setting for a historical romance. When Edinburgh Castle is shrouded in mist and the Pentland Hills are glinting in the morning sun, you can just about imagine Black Douglas in full armour, clattering along the lane to buy a tin of Brasso from the mini-market.
“How’s the Grand Production?” she asked. Jessie is a smallish woman who favours cardigans and tweeds. Years ago, she settled here from somewhere beyond the Black Isle – but she’s never told anybody why.
“So far, I have sixteen Marys, thirteen Josephs and not enough of a supporting cast to ride a bicycle,” I confessed.
“Who’s playing the piano?” she asked, pinning up a giant Santa.
I was about to offer her the job but Jessie cut me short. “You need help,” she said, following the current theme of stating the obvious.
“How about an e-mail address for the Pied Piper?” I replied. “Nothing permanent, you understand – just a million kids to Disneyland for a couple of weeks.”
“I’m sure we can do better than that,” Jessie promised, starting on the reindeer for the cardboard sleigh that would eventually hold the sack to receive the entries for the poster competition. “I’ll give my niece a call.”
My technical advisor arrived by bus on Friday evening. Steff’nie (as she called herself) had worked in Children’s Television and was used to dealing with young performers. She was twenty-five or so, tall and slim and she preferred to dress in washed-out jeans and T-shirts with protest legends. At first, I thought her bright green hair might have caused disparaging remarks among the parents. But once she’d got into the swing of things, they seemed to accept her overall enthusiasm and had no objection to their children being in her care.
We met in Aunt Jessie’s kitchen and sat on pinewood chairs around a matching table. Tea was served in big china mugs. Mine had been decorated with a rather jovial puffin. Aunt Jessie has also laid out a plate of cakes, probably by arrangement with Senga Harris.
“So what are we aiming for?” asked Steff’nie. She spoke with a bit of West-End-of-London twang - but as she’d once had coffee at a pavement table three chairs away from Cameron Macintosh, then I suppose she was entitled to.
“Nativity play – basic details – stable, shepherds, three wise men – all the usual stuff,” I explained.
“Is that it?” she raised her carefully sculptured eyebrows.
“Not quite,” I said. “We’ve got a bale of hay and Senga Harris is in charge of the refreshment table.”
Steff’nie had to think about it for a moment. “Would that include an unlimited supply of strawberry tarts?” she asked.
“Just like those,” I said and pointed to very fine example of the product, right in the middle of the plate of cakes.
Steff’nie picked it out and tried it. “Quite acceptable,” she decided. “For a dozen a night, I’ll give you an unforgettable performance.”
First rule in business: listen to the words. Don’t get taken in by a jam-stained smile. But she was good, no doubt about it - definitely worth her box of strawberry tarts. By the end of the second rehearsal, the had filtered out the excess glory seekers, filled the empty ranks of Kings and Shepherds and with the promise of their possible participation on a backing track for Atomic Kitten, had tuned the others into an acceptable choir of Little Angels. Minor inconveniences - like costumes, music and lighting – were overcome by leaning on the parents to supply them, free of charge.
In early December, I reported back to Mrs Weatherall. “It’s going like a dream,” I told her, sitting at the bar and making merry with another freebie pint of her Special.
But the Les Miserables experience had left dear Mrs Weatherall with a grave distrust of outside help and she was just a shade concerned. “Is she aware of the basics?” came the desperate question.
So I gave her the cold-eyed stare that I reserve for clients who question my methods of instruction. “Trust me,” I told her, summoning the maximum degree of confidence.
Having dealt with Mrs Weatherall, I left the show to Steff’nie and concentrated on the higher-profile activities of organising Senga and her home-made cakes (not forgetting strawberry tarts), collecting the bale of hay from Davie and covering some of our seasonal expenses by helping him with his Christmas trees.
Big mistake! Although I didn’t know it at the time, Steff’nie was up for an interview with Channel 4 in January. It had something to do with the alternative side of TV comedy and with this in mind, she saw our village Nativity Play as a golden opportunity to expand her CV. Her back-to-basics vision would be an ideal starting point to launch her new career.
During the lead-up weeks, tickets were prepared (proceeds to the flower fund), programs printed and chairs acquired from all kinds of unlikely places.
Eventually, we reached First Night. Up till then, no one (to my knowledge) had any idea what had been rehearsed with such enthusiasm in that old log cabin. It seemed that every member of the cast had taken a vow of silence.
However, on the night, the Community Hall was crammed to capacity. Once First-Class Freda had informed the village that a London Producer was running the show, the tickets had virtually sold themselves, leaving a small black market in their wake, such were the heights of expectation in the Ashiestiel community.
From the moment that the house lights went off, everything hung on the creative brilliance of Steff’nie. From the point-of-view of all the Nativity plays in all the village halls across the world, this production would become the Dirty Harry of them all. To me, it asked the question: “Are you feeling lucky?”
In her storyline, the inn in question was hosting a computer conference. Being full of sales people, the only accommodation available to the travelling Mary and Joseph was the Demonstration Room.
“We can use it to announce our product,” Joseph explained to the audience.
“Then push for world-wide distribution,” Mary replied.
From there, the story was allowed to unfold. True, the village was able to accept the cardboard boxes (borrowed from the mini-market) and could follow the idea of a laptop, bubble-jet printer and a modem as gifts.
But in the final sequence – when the wise-man Sales Director announced the Birth of Jesus Project by opening a web-site on the internet, I rather think they lost the plot.
From the safety of the wings, I noticed Mrs Weatherall in her usual front-row seat. At first, she sat rigid. Then her face went red with anger. However, at the web-site scene, rage took over and she dropped her teacup.
“Time to go, I think,” whispered Carrie who was standing beside me and we tip-toed out through the back door before our client could invoke the John-the-Baptist clause in our contract with a cake knife and a silver salver.
“Here’s hoping for a phone call – quickly,” I replied. Anything would do. Anything to get away from Mrs Weatherall, Community Involvement and anything to do with First-Class Freda, who dropped me in it in the first place.
*****
2Nice One, Graham Bell
*****
In a late-night chat show some time back (probably one of the Saturday evening series with Michael Parkinson), songwriter Sammy Khan was asked the standard question:
“What comes first – the words or the music?”
Straight off, Kahn replied: “The phone call.”
It was just such a call that disturbed our mid-morning tea break on that particular Monday, back in Milton Keynes. (To keep the record straight, this point in my personal calendar came long before anyone had even thought about Scotland.)
Anyway, when phone call broke into our concentration, we were talking seriously about redecorating our living room. In the Melrose household, we were always talking seriously about redecorating, but never really took the concept to its full potential. Carrie’s liking for wallpaper was in serious conflict with my own preference for emulsion.
I don’t mind painting. I’ll paint anything: walls, windows, doors and even the occasional dog kennel. I find it deeply satisfying to take a brush, dip it into virgin paint and change the look-&-feel of my environment in one long joyful stroke. Maybe, in a former life, I’d daubed my cave with animal pictures. Who knows? I’m never happy with a roll of patterned paper. Nothing against the actual paper, you understand, I live by paper and I kind of like it, but when a roll of paper gets involved with a bucket of paste, brushes over the age of consent and a pair of Health & Safety scissors (namely, with their blades locked solid in the closed position), I find that each and every length creates its own interpretation of the pattern. Nothing ever matches, meets or tries to help me out in any way, shape or form. With me, an afternoon of papering is a one-way ticket into Hell.
However, in a passionate speech that demanded the paper solution, my lovely wife had explained her point of view very clearly. “This room must have a design”, she told her audience of at least a thousand. “It’s so enormous: it demands a positive infusion of imaginative colours to control the space.”
Couldn’t really argue. Most estate agents would have called that living room in Bradwell Common spacious. It already held our television, three-piece suite, sideboard, dining table and those six hard-carved chairs that auntie gave us when she moved from Thornton Heath to that three-room bungalow in Fareham. Without much effort, it could easily have taken a full-size snooker table as well. I held my ground. “Surely a lemon wash with a couple of animal prints would be enough?” I tried.
“Once a spanner-man……” She left the line unfinished and shook her disbelieving head at Bobby.
Dog-of-the-decade Bobby was a German Shepherd (not Alsatian, thank you), nearly ten years old, but overloaded with enthusiasm. When people say their dogs can understand, I never argue. Bobby understood. He looked at Carrie with his dark brown sympathetic eyes and sighed. He also favoured paper. From a dog’s-coat point of view, glue can be washed away without much bother. But paint needs a lot of scraping with very scratchy wire brush.
Couldn’t argue with the ‘spanner-man’ description, either. For seventeen years, Burroughs had used me to repair, support, teach or write about its wonderful range of equipment. After far too many years with oily fingers and a toolbar, I’d been upgraded to the heady heights of instructor and transferred to the company’s hotel and training complex at the fully-featured Education Centre at Milton Keynes (complete with swimming pool and squash courts, thank you).
There, life was not unpleasant; the sky was blue, the grass was green and there were roses round the door, so to speak. There was a little cash to spare and the market had a pet-food stall that sold real Bobby-meat.
Then we got hit by an early frost. In a merger of industrial giants, Burroughs and Sperry became Unisys and, almost without warning, my job-for-life became restructured and the new arrangement found itself with far more employees that it actually needed. In a shattering blow to my ego, the now all-powerful Unisys explained that it would just have to manage without me.
“Here’s a goodbye cheque and let’s have your car keys,” was their final word.
(It wasn’t quite like that: there was a cheque, of course – but they let me buy the C-reg Maestro at a knock-down price. Market value was out of the question in case it attracted capital gains tax.)
Being too old (or so I thought) to start a new career and far too young to play bowls all afternoon, I was resting for a week or three, thinking-up a bright new tomorrow. Carrie didn’t seem to mind at all: she was happily involved in the fashion department of the nearby Marks & Spencer’s. Bobby wasn’t a problem, either. His life revolved around two good meals and a three long walks on a daily basis. I was undecided: should I write the ultimate romantic novel? Or work a night shift, stacking shelves in Waitrose?
At my farewell interview, I had asked my former manager for his advice. I’d known Richie in various capacities over any number of years. Once in London, once in Germany and then again when he’d invited me to join his team in Milton Keynes.
Over coffee in his compact office, we’d spent some twenty minutes talking over my chances of going it alone in self-employment. I had no specific plans: it was just a paragraph or two of idle chat around the general idea of selling my body in a cut-throat world before we came to the closing handshake and the last Goodbye.
To explain my point, I told him of a recent visit to the MK shopping centre, where I’d seen a brilliant example of selling the product. As usual, there was a tin-shaker lurking in by the big main doors in search of funding for the Cause of the Day. On this particular Saturday, Women Against Rape were on can-rattling duty. At my end of the shopping mall, a sad-faced woman in a scruffy sweater and a pair of ragged jeans was finding it hard to persuade anyone to make a contribution. Even grannies (who always give to lifeboats, Poppy Day and any kind of animal) were keeping well out of her way. No matter how good her cause, she – as a salesperson - had nothing to offer.
But at the other end of the concourse, a very attractive young girl in a bright blue jersey and a tartan skirt was welcoming everyone who came her way. In response to her marketing technique, a dozen or more young lads were jostling around her, all anxious to pay the going price of 50p for a close-up of her dazzling smile.
“So what?” asked Richie.
“If you want to sell your product, you have to make it look attractive,” I said.
“In theory, yes,” Richie agreed. But from his point of view, unless an idea could be run from a market stall, the very concept of running a business made it difficult to control. “Only a fish-&-chip man can make and sell at the same time,” he warned me.
He could well have been right. Only time would tell.
Then, just as the lady of the house was about to have another dig at her former spanner-man, so the anti-wallpaper villain was rescued by that unexpected phone call.
It was Russell from the Education Centre. When I’d first arrived in Milton Keynes, Russell had been on our side, meaning that he taught field engineers, just like anybody else. Then, as the Centre got its act together, so the training agenda had been expanded to include classes for customers. Smart idea: if we could teach our end-users to handle the kit in the way so carefully explained in the manual, we wouldn’t need so many engineers dashing around the country, sorting out their mistakes.
Within a month or so, Russell had worked himself into one of the management chairs upstairs in Customer Education. Looking back, I’m not sure if I ever really cared for Russell. For a start, he was violently anti-smoking. Yes, I know: in this enlightened era, non-smoking is par for the course. But back in those darker ages, smoking (cigarettes, pipes or cigars – didn’t really matter) was more or less compulsory. In those days, we believed that those who didn’t want to share our nicotine could sit by an open window and enjoy the diesel fumes from nearby traffic.
(How times have changed. Now the wheel has moved half-circle and it’s the smokers who have to stand outside and enjoy the environment of the everyday city.)
“Was that Russell?” Carrie asked. “The Russell?”
So his reputation had reached the staff room in one of Britain’s favourite clothing stores! “The one and only,” I told her.
“He who…” Carrie started.
“…disposed of all the ashtrays in his classroom.” I finished.
“So what did he want?”
“My company at lunch,” I said.
“Anywhere nice?”
“Black Bull, by the canal.”
“When?”
“Today – at one o’clock.”
For the rest of our tea break, we tried to work out why a confirmed anti-smoker would want to take the pipe-man-of-the-year to a steakhouse for a freebie lunch. “You must have something he wants,” Carrie suggested.
“Advice on home decorating, perhaps?”
Bobby’s mournful sigh spoke volumes.
“Advice on something, that’s for sure,” Carrie agreed, “and before you sell him a lemon wash with animal prints, enjoy a cigar with your coffee.”
I remembered Russell. Back in the happy days, I’d let him have an old cylinder head from an Austin Maxi to use for ballast on his boat. He kept his little cruiser on the Ouse at Bedford with every intention of (one day) sailing as far as St Neots. Hardly in the Christopher Columbus category - but every mariner must have his dream. Sadly for Russell, his big adventure sank one summer’s afternoon when the Spirit of Atlantis managed to hit a submerged Hillman Hunter half-a-mile south of Great Barford. Within minutes, Russell’s pride and joy had vanished in a festival of muddy bubbles, probably dragged to the bottom by the weight of the cylinder head from my old Austin Maxi. To this very day, I still believe that Russell holds me partly responsible.
Once upon a time, the Black Bull had served the needs of the Roses & Castles fraternity on the Grand Union Canal. Now it was a theme pub; general Olde English Countryside, horse brasses, copper jugs, wicker baskets and plastic flowers. It also boasted an excellent restaurant. Those who could afford the haute cuisine dined in style on the upper deck. Below, the cargo area was open-house with menus chalked on blackboards for the passing lunch trade.
As always, the tall, thin Russell was immaculately dressed. Today, he’d gone for his light grey suit, his peacock-blue shirt and a rather daring yellow tie and he’d probably re-brushed his light brown suedes out there in the car park.
“Let’s try here,” he suggested and made his way towards a neat little alcove by an obviously open window. When we were comfortably seated, he handed me a menu. “Anything you like,” he promised. “Unisys is paying.”
It was his way of saying: “I won’t be offended if you have a pie-and-a-pint.” So I did – except that the steak-&-ale pie came with chips, Veg of the Day and a sensational glass of Guinness that had just enough froth to make it interesting.
During the meal, we chatted about nothing in particular. Russell didn’t care for dogs and as my total contribution to the world of sailing lay beneath the murky waters of the River Ouse, we had to tiptoe through the kind of bedding plants on offer in the market and whether a Flymo could ever produce an acceptable garden lawn. Riveting it was not – but it had to lead to something. Russell wasn’t buying lunch for fun.
When we’d more or less covered these important topics to extinction, Russell moved towards the main item on his agenda. “So what are you doing with yourself?”
It’s the kind of question I hate. Personal pride demands I answer in a positive manner - but reality suggests I tell the truth and confess to doing absolutely nothing. “Getting by,” I said. “Losing golf balls – walking the dog – nothing illegal.”
Russell sipped his orange juice before replying. “I need an instructor for word processing,” he began, “and I believe you to understand it.”
A compliment? From Russell? Time to find out if he meant it. Without asking for his approval, I filled my pipe and lit it, making sure it billowed clouds of smoke across the table. “I know how it works,” I admitted.
“And I’d like you to cover it for Customer Education.” Russell then explained the contract he was offering. “Fifty days at £125 a day,” he promised. “Starting Monday.”
So, almost by default, I became a freelance trainer. In the planning phase of my new career, I had seen myself sitting at home in a comfortable leather-backed chair, reading the Daily Telegraph and drinking Earl Grey while getting ready to satisfy the training requirements of British commerce. But life is never how you read about in the brochure.
That first course was an absolute comedy of errors. In my days in field engineering, my classes had been men only, smokers preferred. Everybody knew each other, usually from having met on earlier courses – and as the weeks and months went by, I saw the same dear faces in the hotel dining room for breakfast, lunch or the evening meal. Within the first twelve months at Milton Keynes, I had probably got to know most of the engineering staff and a fair proportion of its managers.
In the classroom, that degree of familiarity helped to build its own rapport. At the end of each course, the instructor had to complete an assessment of each student. To allow myself an hour to complete the paperwork, I’d give the class a time-filling exercise.
“Who’s got a dictionary?”
Someone always had one.
“Remind me – how many B’s in abysmal, please?” and carry on writing the reports.
In the software class, the second day was always going to be heavy going with a large amount of basic knowledge to be covered. So at the end of the first day’s play, I’d give them a pointer to the way ahead:
“Tomorrow will be tough – so be in bed by ten o’clock. Doesn’t matter who with – just get to bed by ten,” and let them dash away to the swimming pool, the squash court or the bar, depending on their personal preference.
Keep them happy, keep them working - and within a matter of weeks, that shut-down line became a part of the act. It just came out of its own accord.
However, on that Monday morning, my first-ever word processing course for Customer Education showed just how different life in the world of the great upstairs was going to be.
God help me! There were fourteen women, in their teens to grandma’s age, all waiting for the golden light of education to be shone in their direction. I made the classic error of letting them assemble in the classroom, then trying to dazzle them by making a grand entrance.
Another big mistake. They had bonded: I was the intruder. On top of that, a first-time run through any course is always like an expedition through an unknown jungle. Once you’ve covered the material a couple of times, you can head off awkward questions with: “We’ll deal with that tomorrow when we print a document,” or something equally obtuse. But on a first time out, it’s all too easy to be turned around and trapped in a one-way street of ignorance. But that’s experience; you either learn your trade or take up stacking shelves in Waitrose.
To be fair, most of the ladies were interested and completed their assignments in accordance with the student guide. However, Beatrice (an older lady from Lowestoft), just didn’t want to know. As luck would have it, she’d spent the last ten years as a part-time clerk. Every afternoon, she’d pushed her mother down the promenade in a wheel chair. But this was about to come to a grinding halt. If she completed this course and learned to process her employer’s mail through a screen, she’d be at it 40 hours a week. Tough luck on mother, but that’s the job description, Beatrice.
So Beatrice decided that if she could fail with distinction, maybe her boss would relent and keep her on part-time and allow her to promenade her mother as per usual. The trouble was, to make her plan come true, she’d need to blame her failure on the unfortunate instructor. Oh, the devious ways of women!
Never mind: we’d struggled through Day 1 with less than half-a-dozen serious misfortunes. With the time approaching 5pm, I brought the day to an orderly conclusion. Such was the relief that I relaxed. Above the blissful silence, I heard a voice I recognised as being mine pronounce:
“Tomorrow will be tough – so be in bed by ten o’clock……” it started. Even with a red light flashing STOP! STOP! STOP! inside my head, I couldn’t put a brake on my end-of-Monday prattle. The voice went on: “Doesn’t matter who……….” And you can guess the rest for yourself.
Back home, still sweating with embarrassment, I confessed my sin to Carrie.
“You said what?” she asked in total disbelief. “To a roomful of women?”
“At storm force 10,” I confessed. “Loud and clear,” and made a mental note to call the manager at Waitrose, first thing in the morning.
But some days, your luck is in. No matter what the ladies wrote on their complaint reports at the end of the week, poor Russell couldn’t sack me. Well, not just yet. He’d already promised my body to British Caledonian (which shows how long ago we filled the classrooms with our tobacco smoke) for the following week and couldn’t find a suitable replacement in time for Monday.
“But please don’t offend the BCal ladies,” he warned me, worrying that his career was about to evaporate along with mine. “They’re far too important.”
We made one concession to the sudden wealth created by the redundancy cheque. On Carrie’s insistence, we changed the Maestro for something with a bit more style.
“If you’re going it alone, you’d better look successful,” she said. So on a breezy Saturday morning, we went along to the VW showroom and upgraded our wheels to a rather sporty Sirocco. Probably not the best kind of Bobby-car, but he quite enjoyed downdraft from the sunroof. To this day, I can’t be certain if it created quite the right impression, but it was a very enjoyable drive.
Forget that - let’s get back to East Grinstead. So there I was, in BCal country on a stay of execution - and trying to survive another all-woman class.
But this one went like magic. Not a single problem or complaint. The difference? In the summer, BCal took on extra female staff to handle their holiday bookings. The ladies wanted the work: and to get the three-month contract, they had to pass the course. I taught; they worked - and everyone was happy. Even Russell.
*****
3From BCal to the Skies
*****
With the glittering success of East Grinstead now firmly stapled into my record, Russell’s training assignments came on a regular basis.
First, he invited me to take a three-day trip to Manchester for the TSB (as they used to call it). Once again, a troublesome student tried to derail my program of attractions. But remembering Beatrice (and her four handwritten pages of vitriolic criticism), I telephoned Russell during Day One lunch and told him all about it.
“He doesn’t like our product,” I explained. “Insists his PC could do it better.”
“And what did you say?” Russell asked.
“Asked him to bring it in to prove it.”
“And will he?”
“Doubt it, Russ – he rides a bicycle.”
“Leave it with me,” Russell promised, “I’ll speak to his boss.”
He must have done so: my student with the attitude problem didn’t appear for the afternoon session. Nice one, Russell.
That evening, from the comfort of a massive king-sized bed in an out-of-town hotel, I phoned Carrie with the news.
She wasn’t all that bothered about my troublesome student. There were far more pressing matters on her agenda. “Bobby’s missing you,” she reported. “He’s lying on your bed, looking terribly depressed.”
It wasn’t difficult to imagine the picture. With those big brown eyes, pinned-back ears and frequent sighs of deep despair, a hang-dog act from that German Shepherd (not Alsatian, thank you) could bring tears to a glass eye. Olivier’s Hamlet was an amateur performance when compared to Bobby in his Dying Swan routine. In later years, Kandi would display identical abilities. They must come as part of the GSD package.
“He’s coming the old soldier,” I tried to reassure her.
“Not true,” Carrie protested. “I had to hand-feed him his chicken!”
Lucky old Bob; room service on demand.
Next, I was invited to visit Northern Ireland. Russell called me about it on a Tuesday morning. “Generating Board, Northern Ireland,” he began. “Three day system software – can you let me know by Thursday?”
Customer Services had sold a series of training courses to a number of electricity generating boards across the country. As every course I did was money in my bank account, I wanted my share. “What’s to think about?” I asked. Never say no to a pay day.
“Generating Board, Northern Ireland,” he repeated. “Could be dangerous.”
“Not if it’s properly earthed,” I replied.
Sometime during the previous year, a lad from Belfast had attended one of my field engineering courses. The others (naturally) wanted to know what it was really like to live in (what the media described as) open warfare. “If you’re not involved, you won’t get hurt,” he had explained.
I repeated this philosophy to Carrie – but the ‘troubles’ were not her major concern. “Just make sure there’s enough chicken in the fridge to feed your dog,” she told me.
From Milton Keynes, I drove to Birmingham and flew to Belfast. Everything was checked at both ends of the flight – bags opened and their contents checked. Serious-looking officials demanded answers to a set of questions – for example:
Purpose of visit?
Where are you staying?
Contact name and number?
I did my best to get the answers right. On the less-aggressive side of their security arrangements, I was met by a pleasant-looking lad who was wearing well-fitting dark blue suit from Marks & Spencers. (It wasn’t difficult to place the suit. It goes with the territory. You can’t spend endless hours on a cold stone wall in the MK shopping centre, waiting for your wife to finish her evening shift, without being able to recognise an item from the M&S menswear section.) This was Aiden, the in-house contact for my stay in Northern Ireland.
“First time in Northern Ireland?” he asked as we shook hands.
“It is,” I smiled, “and looking forward to it.”
“Let’s hope you like us enough to come back!” laughed Aiden as he guided me towards the car park.
As the journey wound its way south, we passed the time in casual conversation. I remarked on the number of farms that had recently replaced their roofing. As the plane had circled its way into Aldergrove, the bright red tiles stood out like beacons in the lush green fields.
“All thanks to London,” Aiden explained. “If the downdraft from an army helicopter disturbs a single tile, the government pays for a whole new roof.”
“Well done us,” I said.
“Same with walls and gates,” Aiden continued. “You can’t imagine how much damage an army truck can do while it’s parked in a country lane.”
“Nice to know we’re appreciated.”
“Indeed you are,” Aiden agreed, “mostly by the farmers.”
From there, the conversation moved on to golf. “Next time, bring your clubs,” Aiden suggested. “We could finish early and play an evening round.”
“Or we could finish at lunch and go round twice.”
“Even better,” Aiden agreed. “In fact, there’s a nice little eighteen-holer right next to your hotel.”
“Now you tell me,” I complained. “What’s the hotel like?”
“You’ll love it,” Aiden promised.
Eventually, a long winding lane made its way to the car park of the Dunsmore Inn, a large white building totally surrounded by lush green pasture. Once upon a time, it could have been a cattle barn. But if it looked a touch mundane on the outside, there was a thumping great welcome waiting on the inside.
Once a guest walked through the solid oak double-front door, he found himself surrounded by a Hollywood interpretation of a baronial hall from the days of Robin Hood. An enormous stone-built fireplace blazed with massive logs that filled the room with a lazy, all-embracing heat. Above and to the left, a minstrel gallery suggested late-night entertainment. A dozen large and comfortable easy chairs waited on an emerald green carpet. To complete the picture, it only needed a trestle table with a hundred men in armour, drinking ale and tearing snacks from the carcass of a roasting ox.
We found a couple of easy chairs about midway from the fire. Aiden ordered Bushmills and we sat and contemplated the meaning of life, good Irish whiskey and the joy of walking over well-cut fairways with a half-set and a dog (but making sure we kept within the strict context of our training syllabus, of course).
At 6pm, he drained his glass (third or fourth, I can’t remember), said “Goodnight” and promised to return in time for breakfast.
My only major problem during the entire visit was the evening meal. Nothing wrong with the actual meal, you understand – but it required a serious determination on my part to reach the actual dining room.
The hotel had been designed to emphasise the simple pleasures of the land – like drinking. Those who wanted to spoil good whiskey with the taste of food were required to make their way across the function suite to reach the dining room. Unfortunately, tonight the function suite was being used by a rather large and boisterous wedding party.
At seven, I went down for dinner and tried to make my way through the crowd of wedding guests. Almost before I had got my foot through the door, a large red-haired gentleman accosted me. "Now you'll take a drink to wish me daughter luck!" he insisted. It was not an invitation.
With another Bushmills in my hand, I was introduced to the bride’s mother, her auntie, her grannie and a number of other people who were only too delighted to sing her praises.
“Is this your first visit?” grannie wanted to know.
“It is,” I told her as one of the uncles topped up my glass.
“But you will come back!” grannie made me promise.
After I had drunk another fairly large one to wish his daughter all the very best, her father allowed me to escape to the dining room. It was rather quiet. Only five of us had made it through the function suite.
A waitress introduced herself. “I’m Bridgit,” and lead me to a table. “Is this your first time here?”
I wondered: when you arrive at the security check, do they stamp Look after this one on your forehead in ultra-violet ink? And do they change the tag-line for a second visit? “Thanks for coming back” or possibly: “What did you forget?”
An hour or so later, I had to run the gauntlet of the function room again. This time, it was the turn of the groom’s family.
"You'll take a drink to celebrate me son's weddin'?" demanded a rather thick-set man in a kilt as he thrust another Bushmills into my hand. Then I met the bridegroom’s mother, his auntie, his grandad and several of his friends and neighbours – all who thought their darlin’ Patrick was the finest son in all of Northern Ireland.
“And is this your first time?” Auntie Maureen wanted to know.
“Sure won’t be my last,” I promised, now positively glowing from the Irish whiskey.
Somewhere in the middle of this endless fog of hospitality, I ran a software course – which (according to their end-of-course report), was ‘Conducted in a thorough and professional manner. We would like to see Tim back in Northern Ireland in the not-too-distant future’.
Which amazed Russell almost as much as it astounded me.
From the point on, my assignments seem to fall nearly half and half between the Education Centre and the open country.
On the away-day side of the work sheet, we did Norwich. When Carrie asked if she could come along, the client generously provided a delightful hotel room that overlooked the river. On our first evening, we strolled through the grounds of the cathedral, ankle-deep in cherry blossom. Later in the week, we found the mustard shop and played the tourist role by buying a jar of the famous yellow product and a novelty mustard pot to put it in. It’s still around, smiling happily from the back of the sauces shelf in the kitchen cupboard. Sometimes, freelance training could be quite enjoyable.
But it was during one of the in-house courses that I had my lucky break – or so it seemed at the time.
Customer Education sold its wares to all and sundry. Anyone who’d bought the company’s equipment was entitled to visit Milton Keynes for training - so long as they paid the going rate, of course. And that included Alec from the Grant’s Quarry plant in Central Scotland.
Alec was an easy-going kind of lad who liked a game of golf and always carried his clubs in the boot of his car. To me, Alec was a just a bit more than another student. He represented a business possibility: one large factory, dozens of potential victims and (most probably) with a fair-sized training budget. It was worth the price of a round and a couple of pints of something warm and frothy to find out more. So on the Wednesday, I invited him to play the local course at Windmill Hill.
“It’s clay-based, flat, reasonable greens – and we can have a jar or two in the clubhouse afterwards,” I told him.
He was all in favour. “Just like home,” he agreed.
From the business point of view, a round of golf has one advantage: you have the target all to yourself for at least four hours. He can’t be got at by telephone, interrupted by his secretary or called away to solve a crisis. For the length of the round, he’s yours to do with as you please.
Even in the height of a Milton Keynes July, you need to tee-off as close to six o’clock as possible or you can find yourself in darkness round about the 15th green. So we changed during the afternoon coffee break and hit the road for 5pm.