Evolution

I’ve always worked, even in the loosest sense of the word. When my dear old dad popped his clogs way too early, my mother lost her husband, her livelihood and her home in one fatal blow. I resolved not be a burden and dropped out of sixth form college to get a job. I was seventeen.

My first brush with gainful employment was at a meat importing company near Smithfield Market in the City of London. It was a tedious gig and some days it sent me to sleep – literally. In those days, I was far too fond of sowing my wild oats. My employers were very forgiving but we both knew it wasn’t a marriage made in bovine heaven.

Next up, flogging light bulbs to the rich and famous in Habitat, a trendy home store on London’s infamous King’s Road (well, it was infamous back in the day). Felicity Kendall was always sweet and Lionel Blair was always vile. My partner in crime was an eccentric old Chelsea girl who had the look of Margaret Lockwood and drove a battered Citroen 2CV. As a pretty boy with a wandering eye, I collected phone numbers on credit card slips and tripped the light fantastic. They were the heady days of a deliciously misspent youth: ‘Days on the tills and nights on the tiles…’ as I wrote in Perking the Pansies (that’s my first book by the way. Not a bad read so they say). Eventually, I abandoned the Lighting Department for the counting house and rose to the rank of Chief Cashier. Cooking the books took all of half a day and I soon tired of flicking the abacus and twiddling my thumbs.

A life in the New World beckoned. I threw caution to the wind and boarded a Freddie Laker flight to the good old U.S of A – a one-way ticket to the land of the free and the promiscuous. I planned to stay and wallow but after a few months spreading the love in Washington DC, I became homesick. Before long I was flying back across the Pond to a land being ravaged by rampant Thatcherism. Imagine if I had I stayed the course. I could be a Yankee citizen with an irritating mid-Atlantic accent and a completely different tale to bore you with.

The Iron Lady would have approved of my next position – credit controller at Citibank, trying to extract cash from the cashless. It was a soulless task. As a bleeding-heart liberal, my face was never going to fit and I jumped ship before I went under. Besides, it was time for me to grow up and get a mortgage. I got a proper job with a pension attached at the council. This wasn’t any old council, mind. Oh no, we’re talking the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, a beneficent parish with the richest real estate on the planet and enough reserves to bail out Greece. More through luck than judgement, I crawled up the career ladder and become quite important with a fat budget and a hundred people to boss about. But then I met Liam and he turned my head with dreams of hazy, lazy days in the sun. I was seduced. We liquidated our assets, upped sticks and lived the dream for a time. It was the best thing I ever did, and we did it for as long as we could.

And now we’re back on home turf. Why? Well, you’ll have to read the sequel to find out. We soon looked for ways to pass the long samey days, anything to avoid the empty calories of daytime TV. Quite by chance, Turkey turned me into a writer and new skills bring new opportunities. What are they? Find out more in a day or so…

Now That’s What I Call Really Old

Göbekli TepeThis blogging lark is a bit of a hit and miss affair. Who knows the right formula to blast a post into orbit and keep it there? Certainly not me. My random musings about the life of a washed-up ex-pretty boy are small fry when compared to the big fish in the overcrowded blogpond. I’m astounded that anyone’s still listening.

At the end of 2011, I published a post about the ancient ruins of Göbekli Tepe in eastern Turkey. Now That’s What I Call Old was a throwaway, humble little post of about seventy words, and hardly did justice to the age and significance of the enigmatic ruins. Little did I know it would be the post that keeps on giving while the archaeologists keep on digging*  – 12,000 hits and rising. One hit for every year of Göbekli Tepe’s estimated existence. There’s a poetic symmetry to that, don’t you think?

*I suspect, for the moment, the trowels have been put away while the murderous chess game is played out just across the border.

Happy Anniversary, Liam

Happy Anniversary, Liam

It’s our wedding anniversary today. Unlike the resurrection of Christ, it’s not a moveable feast. We celebrated our nuptials a day early with a boozy lunch at one of Norwich’s finest eateries followed by a slow pub crawl back to the loft. The food was divine but the delicious highlight was when an elderly Norfolk broad sitting at the adjacent table said loudly to her companions.

‘The same thing happened to me during my colonoscopy.’

wedding rings

Liam slipped his ring on my finger seven years ago. I suppose I ought to have an itch to scratch, but my senses have been so dulled by yesterday’s excess I can’t feel a thing.

Sing, Little Birdie

Liam hyperventilated at the prospect of watching Eurovision’s Greatest Hits, an extravaganza beamed across Europe by the BBC  to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the travelling camp fest. I slipped a little something in his Rioja to calm him down. Compered by Graham Norton in his newly acquired hipster whiskers and the posh-frocked Swede, Petra Mede, the show featured some of the contest’s most iconic/dire/fabulous/dreadful (delete according to taste) songs from times past – Brotherhood of Man, Johnny Logan, Lordi, Nicole, Bobby Socks (who?) to name but a few. Sadly, ABBA didn’t reform for the celebration but the BBC did chuck in Riverdance to get the feet tapping (an interval act that was one of the best things to ever emerge from the competition).

Eurovision 2015

Eurovision has come a long way since Pearl Carr and Teddy Johnson represented Le Royaume-Uni in 1959 with Sing, Little Birdie. Now we have the transgender Dana International (winner for Israel in 1998) and Conchita Wurst, the bearded lady (winner for Austria 2014) singing a duet holding hands. Way to go, sisters – changing the world one sequin at a time and really pissing off the bigots.

I Could Murder a Pint

The Murderers Public HouseNorwich is blessed with a wealth of hostelries to quench the thirst and chew the cud, but few are as famous as the Gardener’s Arms on Timberhill, one of the last family-owned pubs in the city. Partly dating back to the Seventeenth Century, the traditional ale house is stuffed with oldee worldee nooks and crannies, knotty oak beams and exposed brickwork. Its fame derives from an infamous past. The Gardener’s Arms might be the pub’s licensed name but, for years, it’s been known locally as the Murderers. Why? Because after closing time one late night in 1895, Frank Miles battered his estranged wife with a hammer and left poor Mildred for dead. Handy Frankie should have swung for his dastardly deed but the case attracted huge public sympathy and his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. What had the luckless Millie done to deserve such a sticky end? Apparently, she was seen with another fella. Oh, that’s alright then.

Murderer's Pub

Jack the Lab Rat

With Norwich covered in a blanket of low grey cloud, the much anticipated solar eclipse was a bit of a damp squib – more like God just dimmed the lights than a biblical black out. Hardly a spectacle to drive the ignorant to their knees. Still, I did sense a fleeting cold snap. Spooky.

I was up and out early for my appointment at the docs that morning. Following my arterial rebore last summer, the local surgery had invited me to be poked and prodded by five pairs of second year medical students from the University of East Anglia. It was revision time, just before their exams. I was the star turn and was more than happy to do my bit for medical science. The apprentice quacks grappled with inexperience and dodgy equipment and tried to find a pulse in my right leg. It would have been easier to find El Dorado. The poor things hadn’t been told about my condition beforehand but despite the frustration and head scratching, they turned out to be a cheery and dedicated lot. I’m sure they’ll all be a great credit to public health one day.

By the time I’d left the medical centre, the clouds had been replaced by warm bright sunshine. Typical. If God wants to see me on my knees, she’ll have to do better next time.

Here’s one she made earlier…

Solar Eclipse

Chasing the Dragon

In 2013, we had gorillas in our midst. Last year it was the elephant parade and for 2015 it’s Go Go Dragons. Expect to chase the technicolor creatures along the Norwich dragon trail this June. Now call me a party pooper if you want, but I thought the purpose of these campaigns was to highlight the desperate plight of endangered animals. The last time I looked, dragons, unicorns and centaurs, fun and fantastic as they may be, don’t actually exist. I know, shut it, Jack. The kids will love it.

Dragon

Through the Round Window

For weeks now, a flock of starlings has been ebbing and flowing in the skies above Norwich. Every evening, at dusk. I took a few snaps from the loft with the Nokia.

Yes, I know. They don’t really capture the magnificence of the mumurating birds (that’s what they do, apparently). You had to be there. So, here’s something someone made earlier.

Bewitched

The CrucibleMaddermarket Theatre Blue PlaqueA damp and dingy Saturday afternoon saw us at the Maddermarket Theatre for an am-dram matinee courtesy of the Norwich Players. We were Maddermarket virgins and I fancied a peek at the converted Catholic chapel. A striking Sixties’ add-on foyer looked better on the outside and led us to the interior of the church, reconfigured as an Elizabethan playhouse. We took our pews for The Crucible, Arthur Miller’s loud and densely scripted account of the Salem Witch Trials in colonial Massachusetts at the end of the Seventeenth Century. I looked around the audience. Many of them could well have sailed on the Mayflower. By now, we’re used to mingling with the grey herd at Norwich’s cultural events, but the care homes of Norfolk must have been deserted that afternoon. When the over-generous use of dry ice to create the misty ambience of a midnight glade threatened to gas the first four rows, I feared some of the punters might not make it back to the coach.

Maddermarket Theatre

Miller’s now iconic play is a story of rampant fundamentalism, ignorance and the abuse of power. Mass hysteria is whipped up to impose religious orthodoxy and settle old scores. Miller wrote the piece as an allegory of Fifties’ McCarthyism when the U.S. government hounded and blacklisted alleged communists (and socialists and liberals and anyone else who didn’t tow the party line). Sound familiar? Just take a look around the world. The play’s core message is just as relevant today as it was then. The talented thespians did well to deliver the difficult drama with conviction leaving us with the real sense of a menacing world gone completely bonkers. Sadly, the message was all lost on a few. As we queued to leave the auditorium at the end of the performance, an old Norfolk broad turned to her companion and announced:

“Didn’t understand a word of it. Not a word. Marvelous, wasn’t it?’

Jihadi Janes

Death

With the remorseless horror in the Middle East being played out on our screens every day at 6pm, it’s hard to make sense of the senseless. The baffling case of the school girls who have allegedly travelled to Syria to become brides of ISIS only adds to my bewilderment. Sometimes, it takes humour to wade through the treacle – the British funny bone is a cultural characteristic forged by wartime adversity and a healthy disrespect for the respectable. Cue a recent Facebook exchange with a Bodrum Belle of my acquaintance.

“Hello, Jack, now where’s this new book of yours? Got myself a little girlie spa holiday booked to get away from frozen Bodrum. I need something to read so get printing. Bodrum is seriously cold this winter. Roll on spring. Me and a few gals are off to Egypt, and very cheap it is too, all 5 star inclusive tackiness. Why so cheap? Because the British Government says it’s unsafe and advises not to go. Well that doesn’t hold these gals down. If we do get taken as Jihadi brides, at least we can say we’re used to the heat.”

“Hello, love. The book’s with the designer. It’s not just thrown together, you know. Make sure you pack some sheets – just in case you need to wrap yourself in polycotton for the wedding. You’ll forgive me if I turn down the invitation to your nuptials…”