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IMMINENT CATASTROPHE by Clive James

imminent catastrophe goes on

Not showing many signs of happening.

The ice at the North Pole that should be gone

By now, is awkwardly still lingering,

And though sometimes the weather is extreme

It seems no more so than when we were young

Who soon will hear no more of this grim theme

Reiterated in the special tongue

Of manufactured fright. Sea Level Rise

Will be here soon and could do such-and-such,

Say tenured pundits with unblinking eyes.

Continuing to not go up by much,

The sea supports the sceptics, but they, too,

Lapse into oratory when they predict

The sure collapse of the alarmist view

Like a house of cards, for they could not have picked

A metaphor less suited to their wish.

A house of cards subsides with just a sigh

And all the cards are still there. Feverish

Talk of apocalypse might, by and by,

Die down, but the deep anguish will persist.

His death, and not the Earth’s, is the true fear

That motivates the doomsday fantasist:

There can be no world if he is not here.

COLLEEN by Tom O’Brien  (extract)

Chapter one

They’re hanging me tomorrow at Gallows Green. Over the bridge at Ballsbridge and out to Singland where the unfriendly Clare trees await me, their nooses swinging in the breeze at every step I take. Oh that it were The Burren, where there are neither trees to hang a man, water to drown him, nor soil to bury him.  But what is the use of such fanciful thinking; he that lives by the sword must surely die by it.  Sir, it is my neglect of my religion that brings me to this place, for had I taken good advice I would not now be meeting this unhappy end.

            ‘Twas said of my master’s execution that the carriage horses bearing him there refused to cross Ballsbridge  –  this despite much cajoling and beating  –  and that he climbed from the carriage and walked the remainder of the way.  A clear indication of his innocence, I heard it said many a time afterwards in Scartaglen.

            ‘Twas also reported that his parting words were, ‘may the gates of Paradise be ever shut against me if I had hand, act, or part in the crime for which I am now about to suffer.  If Sullivan be found, my innocence will appear’.

            Well sir, I am found, and I declare before Almighty God that I am guilty of the murder, but it was Mr Scanlon who put me up to it.

……..

The man seated by the fire put down his pen and rubbed his eyes.  Soon he would need to light the candles, an extravagance he indulged in as little as possible these days.  Light was visible a long way in the dark; who knew what was lurking out there waiting to pounce in these troubled times.  He had seen human scarecrows lying by the wayside, the green-grass spittle dribbling from near-lifeless lips, others wandering witless, gnawing at tree barks and shrubs in their desperate search for sustenance.  A lighted window would be like a beacon to such scavengers.

Not that he didn’t feel sympathy. There but for the grace of God and all that…if a God could still be believed in that would allow such suffering.  What was it O’Connell had said only last year? It is impossible to calculate the numbers of people who will perish in Ireland within the next twelve months of famine and pestilence, unless we vote for the repeal of the corn laws. How can we on the one hand complain of starvation and on the other vote against provisions being as cheap as they might otherwise be?  Well. It was easy enough to calculate now; all one had to do was walk a stretch of road and count the poor wretches.

Of course there were many who traded on this human misery  –  indeed cashed in on it.  The gombeen men and hucksters who made outrageous profits from the trade of foodstuffs, the landlords who evicted their tenants to ‘improve’ their land. Now the dead were being buried in nothing but a shroud; he had seen coffins with sliding bottoms to facilitate their continual use. Still, they were the lucky ones; many just lay where they fell.  Oh, ‘twas an ill wind alright…

He re-read what he had written. Could one ever be sure of accuracy after such a long time?  After all, the tale he was recording had happened in 1819, almost thirty years ago now. And all he had to rely on was his memory, which, with the onset of middle age, was about as reliable as the weather.

Still, did it matter a jot if it wasn’t the truth in its entirety? It was substantially correct, the way he remembered it, and if he embellished a phrase or two here and there, put the extra word in the occasional mouth, well what was it but poetic licence?  All writers claimed such privilege.

No story was ever the complete story; the truth, like beauty, was in the mind of its beholder; the whole truth and nothing but the truth was seldom that. Besides, it altered nothing of the basic story; the shocking and brutal murder of Ellie Hanley, whose bound and mutilated body the Shannon finally yielded up, and the subsequent hanging of her husband and his manservant for the terrible deed.

‘Ah Ellie, beautiful Ellie. Now they have taken to calling you The Colleen Bawn. Your story has spread across the water, in articles and books. You are more famous dead than you ever were  –  or ever could be  –  alive.  Yet what were you?  Just a slip of a girl, not even sixteen. But able to turn the heads of all the young bucks in the county of Limerick.  Indeed the city too, I venture, had your fair countenance graced its streets.

Young and innocent Ellie, lured from your home by a rake and a scoundrel, then spirited away never to be seen again ‘till your broken body was washed ashore on the bleak sands of Moneypoint. Oh what a Godsend you were for the papers. Oh what a joy to the storytellers.  Such innocence, such beauty, such tragedy.  And yet a beauty like yours can never truly be innocent. We both know that, don’t we?  You saw from an early age what a weapon beauty could be.  How it could be used to manipulate. How you could use it to twist men around your little finger.  And you did.  Your father, your uncle, John Scanlon,Stephen Sullivan,Edward Fitzgerald, Gerald Griffin and God knows who else.  Maybe even O’Connell himself. There is one more I must add to the list; this poor scribbler now endeavouring to take his mind back to the event that was to cast a blight on the lives of all those associated with it.

Chapter  2

The courthouse emptied rapidly. Wave upon wave of excited bodies surging streetwards, the air humming with a combination of pounding feet and excited chatter at the spectacle just witnessed. There would only be one topic of conversation in the taverns and ale-houses of Limerick  tonight.  O’Connell had triumphed again.

God, how the rabble loved him. But then, what was he but a rabble-rouser himself? Aye, and with the knack of exploiting the untapped power of the bawling, unlettered multitudes. When he growled they roared, when he said jump they asked how high.

He shook himself free of the onrushing crowd that had propelled him to the street outside the assize, struggling to anchor himself lest he be carried along Bridge Street, towards the numerous taverns  and eating houses that beckoned, into that  malevolent stew that was the heart of the city.  He had no desire to re-live O’Connell’s triumph, exaggerated and embellished as it would undoubtably be behind veils of alcohol and smoke.  Across the street, the Cathedral offered sanctuary. He contemplated a few moments solitude within before keeping his appointment with Ellen. Better not though.  Within seconds he had turned down an alley, away from the jostle and excitement, heading towards the quayside and the comparative peace and quiet of the Shannon.

What a circus it had been back there.  O’Connell the ringmaster, orchestrating the proceedings in his own inimitable way. He had everybody jumping through hoops  –  and most of them didn’t even realise it.  O’Shaughnessy was as guilty as sin; everybody knew he had seized that ship and set up as a pirate. He had even been caught red-handed. Yet he had walked free because O’Connell had argued that any offence committed had taken place on the high seas, over which no assize court had jurisdiction. The judge himself had been taken in  –  that same old fool whom O’Connell had recently described as ‘resembling a goose trying to get under a garden gate’  –  and had ruled there was no case to answer. No wonder the perpetrator had thumped O’Connell heartily on the back as he left court a free man, saying ‘may the Lord spare you, Counsellor, to me’

‘Have you got a moment, Mr O’Dea?’.

He turned from his contemplation of the river to face the man who addressed him. Fairly tall, he was in his mid-twenties, his ruddy complexion suggesting an outdoor way of life.  As if to emphasise this, he carried with him a blackthorn stick.

It was Stephen Sullivan, Mauria’s brother.

‘How are you Stephen?’  It must be all of a year since they last met.

‘I saw you at the trial.  Powerful stuff, wasn’t it?  The Big Fella was in top form, I thought’.

He could barely keep the sneer from his voice. ‘If any man can make a fool of the law, then O’Connell’s your man’.

‘Ah sure, wasn’t he trained for it. And be the best brains in England and all. All the better that he can turn it to the advantage of  dacent Irish people against the like of them that have taken everything we own’.

‘O’Shaughnessy decent?  He’s nothing but a robber and a highwayman. And now he’s free again to roam the roads and waylay any misfortunate traveller unlucky enough to come within his sights. When his next victim is found lying penniless and half-dead in some lonesome ditch, let O’Connell share some of the blame.  He is, after all, the reason that scoundrel is walking free this day.  Oh, crime pays alright; handsomely in the case of Daniel O’Connell’.

‘I never thought, Mr O’Dea, to hear any Irishman speak against him. Especially you.  Isn’t it enough that Englishmen tremble every time he opens his mouth?’.

‘I am not against him, not when he turns his venom on the Saxon foe. But the man’s a buffoon too often for my liking; too much bluster and not enough substance in my opinion. He blows with the wind.  And what blows with the wind eventually disappears. And as for liking him, I can’t say  I do.  Not his manners and not his morals’.

Sullivan seemed about to say something, then changed his mind. He contented himself instead with scraping some caked mud off the heel of his boot with the blackthorn stick.

‘My master wishes to speak to you’.

‘Your master?’.

‘Mr Scanlon,sir’.

Ah yes. Mr John Scanlon.  Squire-about-town. Late of the Royal Marines, wasn’t he?  Boozer, braggart  and not at all shy when it came to the ladies. Still, you couldn’t hold that against a man.

‘What does he want?’.

‘I cannot say. Except that you may find it to your advantage’.

‘Cannot or will not, eh?’. He laughed.  ‘Come on man, you two are thicker than curdled milk, tell me what he’s after.  Something devious if I know Mr Scanlon’.

Sullivan shook his head.  ‘I dare not, sir.  He can tell you himself tonight. You will find him in Dooley’s after eight’.

He thought for a moment. He wouldn’t get off stage much before nine thirty; fifteen minutes to clean the muck off his face, another fifteen to placate Ellen.

‘I couldn’t possibly make it before ten. If your master wishes to wait until then we can discuss his business with me.  If not…’ , he shrugged, ‘…then it will have to be some other time’.

He took out his fob and checked it. The time for his rendezvous with Ellen was almost upon him…

‘Now, if you will excuse me…’

He had taken but a few steps when Sullivan spoke again.

‘Shall I tell Mauria you will be down Glin way soon?’.

‘No’, he replied, squeezing his lips together, ‘tell her nothing’.

…………..

Young girls liked to act older than their years, especially when in the company of older men.  This was something he had come to believe with the passing years. He  didn’t dwell on it particularly.  Nor did he place too much significance on the discovery, merely that it was true. And it was truer still of the acting profession, where, for various reasons, there were more opportunities ( and reasons ) for this generally harmless deception.

It was certainly true of Ellen, he thought now, as she waved him to her table. It was smack in the middle of the dining room, where the lunch-time traffic was at its busiest. Trust her to pick the most conspicuous spot in the hotel.

Her long hair, burnished -copper in colour, framed a face that had been carefully made-up to highlight her most alluring assets, her eyes. Dark pools in a blue lagoon, was how he had once described them. She certainly looked older than her eighteen years now, at least half a dozen years older.

‘Tell me all the news Jeremiah’, she gushed as he pushed his way to the table. ‘Leave nothing out, mind. You know how I like to hear the latest gossip.  What’s been happening while I’ve been away?’.

‘Of gossip I know little, and care less’.  He sat down opposite her, excited, not for the first time, by the gentle rise and fall of her breasts beneath the white material that held them.

‘Why Jeremiah! You old fraud. Who was it told me of Mr O’Connell’s little pecadillos?’. She smiled sweetly at this. ‘Or of that judge who likes to wear ladies garments in his chambers at night?’.

‘What gossip have I related to you about Mr O’Connell? I cannot remember’.

‘Why, his fondess for young women of course’.

‘Oh that’.  He laughed.  ‘That is not gossip.  It is common knowledge.  Anyone one the circuit will confirm it.  O’Connell is a large man with large appetites; his sexual appetite is by no means the least of them’.

‘There!  If that is not gossip I do not know what is’.  She raised her hand to her mouth to hide her titters.  ‘And slanderous too.  Be careful he does not have you up before a judge for it’.

He could see from the flush on her face that she was enjoying this banter.  ‘And who will tell him?  You?  Besides, any man with a family  of seven can hardly de described as anything but industrious in that department’.

‘What a licentuous mind you have Jeremiah’. She placed her hand over his on the table, suggesting that the state of his mind didn’t bother her unduly.

‘How was your trip to Cork?’, he inquired.

‘Very tiring.  And quite expensive too.  Mr Bianconi has put his prices up to tuppence a mile. I hope you will remonstrate with him the next time you see him’.

An unlikely happening, he reflected.  Charles Bianconi moved in different circles these days. Amazing what a little success could do.  Five years ago, was it?, he was eking out a living hawking his prints around the patterns and fairs of Munster; now the Bianconi stagecoaches were carrying passengers and mail the length and breadth of the province.  And to think he could have been part of it!  But he never believed it could be successful; the Royal Mail coaches were too established, had too much of a monopoly.  Instead, he had bought Bianconi’s remaining stock of prints and prospered briefly…

‘I shall certainly convey your displeasure, my dear…the next time I see Charles’. Perhaps he had overstated his association with the fellow to Ellen, which had never been more than a passing one. ‘What I really meant was how are your family in Cork?’.

‘As well as can be expected’.  Ellen’s jolly manner suddenly evaporated.  ‘My aunt wishes me to leave the stage.  She says it is no profession for a young lady. In her eyes, the only suitable one is that of marriage, preferably to some lump of a farmer with a gaggle of children tugging at my apron strings’.

‘And your uncle?’.

‘Him!’. A disparaging wave of her hand.  ‘I do not wish to speak about him.  He is unfit for human consumption’.

What it was about her uncle that displeased her so she had never said, but he suspected it might have a sexual basis.  She hadn’t said so in as many words, but she must have inferred it in some manner for the notion to have taken root in his mind.  He visualised the uncle as an old letcher, perhaps spying on her as she undressed for bed in her tiny room in the farmhouse.  Maybe even sneaking in there when the rest of the household was fast asleep and attempting a furtive coupling. How would Ellen react to that?  Would she scream?  He didn’t think so.  She was too composed, too calculating for that.  What then?  His guess was she would try to use the situation to her advantage.  A little harmless blackmail, perhaps.  He wouldn’t put it past her.  A tremor of exhilaration swept over him as he visualised her lying there, her flesh white in the candlelight, her bosom heaving as she gazed gazelle-like at the dark form above her.

‘I think you should consider not going there any more’, he remarked after the waitress had laid their table with a pot of tea and a plate of ham sandwiches.

‘Where should I go then?  They are my family, my only flesh and blood’. What had happened to her parents was never made clear; all he knew was that she had spent most of her childhood at her uncle’s farm.  She had, in fact, grown up there.

‘Maybe you should give serious consideration to your aunt’s suggestion’.

‘Get married?  But I should have to leave the stage.  Settle down and give up the only pleasure I have ever known? Never!’.

He helped himself to a sandwich.  ‘There are ways Ellen dear.  You could marry someone in the profession.  Someone who would be your mentor, who would cherish you. An older man’.

Something in his voice caused the hand reaching out for a triangle of bread to freeze in mid-air.

‘Someone like you, I suppose?’.

‘Why not?’.

‘Surely not, Jeremiah’.  She must have seen the hurt look on his face for she hurriedly placed her hand over his.  ‘Oh, I didn’t mean it like that.  But we are friends, are we not?  The very best of friends?’.

He nodded.

‘My aunt says best friends should never marry.  Not each other, anyway’.

‘Not even when they are lovers?’.

A small smile crossed her face.  ‘It is true we have made love.  But that is not a reason’.  The triangle of bread finally made it to her mouth, where she chewed it carefully for some moments.  ‘Are you in love with me?’.

‘I want to take care of you’.

‘I can take care of myself.  Besides, you hardly know me’.  She held up a hand to forestall his objections.  ‘You don’t, not really .  We have known each others for a few months, courtesy of this travelling show.  Fate has thrown us together for a brief spell, it could just as easily cast us apart tomorrow.  In a week we head for Tralee, two weeks later I head for London while you head back here.  We might never meet again’.

‘Marry me and all that will change’.

‘I cannot marry you Jeremiah.  I will be your friend, your lover, whatever you want, but I cannot marry you’.

……

At first he couldn’t see Scanlon through the haze and cursed. He had rushed himself for nothing.  A turf fire burned unevenly in the large open hearth at the rear of the room, occasional downdraughts causing clouds of smoke to billow outwards and envelope the largely unconcerned sprinkling of drinkers. In the dim light they looked for a moment like apparitions, their ghostly features indistinct behind the smoke-veil.

‘Over here man. In the corner’.

He remembered Scanlon as a big man, tall that is, but he was unprepared for the giant that rose to meet him.  He couldn’t have been much under six foot.  He himself was five eight – a fine cut of a man even if he said so himself – but he felt like a pygmy in this man’s presence.  His complexion, too, was fair; much fairer than it had any right to be given the dark and runty appearance of most of his contemporaries.  A Saxon then.  He must be.  His ancestors anyway.

‘You’ll have a drop?  Scanlon signalled to the serving-man and an extra glass was brought to the table.  He poured a generous measure from the earthenware jar by his side, then raised his own glass.

‘Slainte’.

The whiskey tasted surprisingly smooth, much better than the watered-down potheen he usually made do with.  But then, if the gentry couldn’t get hold of the good stuff who could?  He made suitable complimentary noises, then noticed the man scrunched up in the corner by the fire.  It was Stephen Sullivan and he was snoring contentedly.

Scanlon tapped the jar. ‘Too much of this. He’ll sleep it off and be as right as rain in a couple of hours.  A good man to have on your side, is Stephen.  Better than most, anyway’.  He poured some more whiskey in his own glass and took a deep draught of it.  ‘And how is your charming companion, Miss…Miss…?’.

‘You mean Miss Lavelle?’.                                                                                                             ‘Yes, that’s the name.  A stage name of course?’.

‘Of course’.                                                                                                                    ‘I caught her in a show in Dublin some time ago. I thought she was delightful’.

‘I shall pass on your compliments. I’m sure she will be pleased. Was it that you wished to see me about?’.

Scanlon looked at him through the haze and he could see that his eyes were bloodshot.  ‘Good grief, no.  Something much more in your line. You are a consumate actor I have been told.  A man of many parts, they say’.

He couldn’t help but feel a twinge of pleasure.  ‘Well, I do my best’.

‘You can play a part then?  Any part?’.

‘You name it, sir, I can play it’.

‘A priest then. Can you do a priest?’.

He chuckled.  ‘Child’s play Mr Scanlon.  Child’s play.  Give me something more demanding’.

His companion poured some more whiskey. ‘Oh, I don’t doubt you can act the part on stage.  Any reasonably sane fool could.  But could you do it in real life?  Could you put on the vestments and fool a person into believing you were the genuine article?’.

Something in Scanlon’s voice chilled him.  On the surface, it seemed am innocent enough question, but when its echoes died away, a sense of uneasiness, menace even, seemed to linger in its wake.

‘This is what you wished to see me about?  You want me to impersonate a priest?’.

‘Yes’.

‘I have never impersonated anybody before’.

‘Acting, impersonating, it’s all the bloody same’.  The bloodshot eyes stared insolently across the table at him.  ‘I never yet met an actor who didn’t have something to hide. Or an actress for that matter.  Your whole profession is one of shiftiness and impersonation’.

He stood up. ‘I didn’t come here to be insulted…’.

His companion placed a restraining hand on his arm.  ‘Sit down man and have another drink’.  He held up the jar.  ‘You won’t find any better, I guarantee’.  He poured again.  ‘Don’t take it so personal.  I am sure there are fine upstanding fellows like yourself throughout the profession but it doesn’t always come across that way. Does it?’.

He shook his head.  It was true.  ‘No.  We have our fair share of charlatans, I admit’.

‘So, we agree on something. Now, what about this job?’.

‘You’re asking me to break the law?’.

‘Only a little’. A smile from his companion this time that somehow conveyed only marginal warmth.  ‘And nobody will know except you and me’.  He patted the sleeping form beside him.  ‘And Stephen of course, but he won’t tell’. While he had been speaking he had been searching his jacket pocket. He now produced a purse.  ‘Ten gold sovereigns for less than an hours work.  You’ll not top that, eh?’. He counted five shining coins onto the table.  ‘Five now to seal the bargain’.

He couldn’t resist picking one of the coins up. It was the first time he had held one for years.

‘What is it you require me to do?’.

‘In two days time I am getting wed to the most beautiful girl in all of Limerick.  I want you to perform the ceremony’.

This is the video of the short version of my play about Shane McGowan – FALLING FROM GRACE. 

The performers are Pablo McFee, Natasha Langridge  & Therese Miller

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WrLwDc2TDG4YYANyN3OhzAnglkqtSJqj/view

THE DISPOSSESSED by Tom O’Brien

Being away for so long had made me homesick.  When you’re young, four years seems a lifetime. The notion of swapping the concrete wilderness that was Kilburn for the more natural one of Currabaha for a few weeks seemed like a good idea.

Oh, I was brash and I was flash; my easily-acquired ‘Big Smoke’ veneer not so shiny anymore, but I was still lonesome. London was a great place for people like me – fellas with little inclination of getting out of bed in the morning – yet deep down there was always this nagging feeling that I didn’t belong.  Where did I belong? That was the burning question even then, all those years ago. I didn’t know then, and I’m not sure I know now…

The first shock I had was seeing my father’s physical condition. He seemed to have aged ten years. And he had developed ulcers on his legs which made walking painful. His bicycle had been replaced by a moped – an NSU QUICKLY.

This contraption carried both him and my mother wherever they wanted to go with the greatest of ease. It was progress of a sort I guess.

The biggest shock, though, was seeing the electricity cables connected  to the house. For years we had lived in a twilight world of paraffin lamps and candles. Now the place was ablaze with electricity.  There was even an electric cooker and a TV.  There was piped water too. No more dragging buckets  up from the well a hundred yards away. The only modern convenience missing was a bathroom – and father was working on that.  To be truthful, I had forgotten how primitive our existence used to be.  London had seen to that.

“Speak to your father”, my mother urged.  “He won’t make the first move”.

As we hadn’t spoke for almost a year before I left, I wasn’t sure how he would react.  I needn’t have worried: he seemed as eager to talk as I was. The period of silence between us wasn’t referred to at all. Both of them showed a keen interest in my life in London so I invented a fictitious existence for myself.  I don’t think the truth would have gone down well, so I told them what they wanted to hear.  I felt a real shit telling them lie after lie, but what was the alternative?  Tales of my gambling and thieving would hardly have endeared me to them.

Little things that I had forgotten, like people blessing themselves as they passed a church or drivers stopping to offer you a lift, reminded me forcefully that this world and London hardly spoke the same language. The culture gap was so great, the way of life so different, that my few years absence made me feel a stranger myself.

I was forced to play out the charade of the big spender when I visited the Dirty Bucket and other watering-holes in the neighbourhood. And suffer all the back-slapping and hand-shaking as I bought drinks for half the county.  A prestigious  job had to be invented too – so I told everyone I was I was working for the William Hill  organisation.  Which I was in a way.  Someone got the mistaken impression that William Hill was  a building  contractor, and several fellows asked if I could fix them up with a “start”. I said I’d see what I could do.

One day I borrowed my cousin’s motorbike and rode up the side of the Comeraghs. And when I could ride no more I abandoned the bike and climbed. Finally, I stood in the shadows of Crotty’s Eye, a needle-like projection that eavesdropped on the valleys below.  Idly, I wondered what Crotty, the highwayman, thought when he looked down on those plains.  I imagined him, patiently sitting in the eye of the needle, watching potential victims grow large before his eyes as they made their way slowly along the mountain trail. And I visualised him,later, dangling from the gallows in Waterford City, where he was hanged for his crimes.

“Hey Crotty”, I shouted in the wind,  “I bet you never thought the Clancy Brothers would make you famous” .

I’ll tell me ma when I go home the boys won’t leave the girls alone…

A highwayman, now that was the life.

Being there reminded me of Deirdre. It didn’t seem that long ago since we had swore our undying love for each other on this very same spot. Now I had learned from my mother that she was to be married to some fella from Cork in a couple of weeks.  “Forever”, she had whispered in my ear. “I will love you forever, Terry”.  It occurred to me now  that “forever” isn’t such a long time after all.

Making my way back down I passed Lackendaragh’s Cave. It wasn’t really a cave; merely a couple of stone walls bridged over with galivanised iron and bits of timber. then covered rocks and sods of earth.  The rear end was sealed with more stones, the front partly covered with fertiliser bags. I peeped inside but he wasn’t home.  The place looked like it hadn’t been lived in for some time, so perhaps he had moved on. That didn’t seem likely though; he had lived half way up these mountains for as long as anyone could remember, coming down to the village on the odd occasion to collect his few meagre rations. I had always thought of him as Moses, with his long white beard and flowing hair.  Perhaps he was dead.

The days passed in a pleasant alcoholic haze and I was well into my second week before I got as far as Tramore. Which surprised me, because I always felt some special  ‘magic’ about the place. Now as I strolled along the prom all I felt was indifference. Oh, it was still a beautiful spot, and it was difficult not to be moved when you saw those big Atlantic breakers rolling into the bay, but when I looked back at the amusement arcades and fairground booths that dotted the sea-front, I realised it could just as easily be Brighton or Clacton.  Or any of a hundred other seaside resorts.  And I felt sad.

I hadn’t been long in the town when I noticed a girl hanging around the arcades giving me the eye.  We got chatting and I learned she was from Belfast. She told me she was  working as a maid in one of the hotels and it was  her day off.  Later, we sat on the pier, our legs dangling, and ate greasy chips washed down  with  warm Fanta. She told me her name was Marian, and said she had watched me ride in on the motorbike.  When she asked if I owned it I said yes.

“I love the feeling you get on a big bike”, she said.  “Don’t you?”

Then she asked if I would take her for a spin.  I was only too happy to oblige and we soon left the town behind us in a ribbon of blue smoke.

The bike was a charging chariot and I was starring in Ben Hur as we negotiated the coast road. We flew low over Annestown and Boatstrand, slowing down only to negotiate treacherous hairpins. When the adrenalin finally gave out we found ourselves on the cliffs overlooking Bonmahon.

The signs of decay were everywhere.  If ever a town basked in the shadow of former glory, this was it.  Less than a hundred years ago, this was a thriving mining community, vibrant and volatile.  The lanky main street once boasted rows of terraced housing – maybe not exactly luxurious living – but at least it radiated life. All that was left now was a ghost town. The sand dunes had crept relentlessly towards the remains of the Main Street, the only barrier to further encroachment the facades of the houses. They has been chopped off at shoulder height and were only recognisable because the bricked-up windows and doors were of a different colour.

We had parked quite close to a railed-off section of cliff.  Here, too, the signs of decay were visible.  DANGER!  KEEP OUT!  DISUSED COPPER MINES.  Even the warning signs were faded.  The copper, the houses, most of the people, long gone. Nothing left but some bloody great holes in the ground.

The summer day ebbed as we sat on the grass and talked.  About everything – and nothing.  Marian had spent some time in London, working in hotels along the Bayswater Road

“Most of the guests were sex-maniacs”, she said. “Everything time we went into a bedroom to do our work we needed armour.  Many of them were Middle Eastern, Arabs I suppose, and they thought their money could buy them anything”.

She laughed at one particular memory…”one guest was still in bed when I went into his room.  He had a book on his lap, a guide book he said, and asked me to point out a certain landmark to him. I am short-sighted and had to bend down to have a look. Well, he pulled away  the bedclothes and you can imagine what I was left looking at!  That was enough for me…I came home to civilised people after that”.

She would have returned to Belfast, she said, but most of her friends and relatives were fleeing the place. “There’s more of us in Shannon now than Belfast”.  Then she asked me if I was a sympathiser.

I said I hadn’t thought about it much but I supposed I was. Well, if ever there was a collection box to be filled I always threw a few bob in.  I had seen the pictures on the telly; hordes of them tumbling over the border, faces on them like they had seen Old Nick himself. And sure maybe they had.

Later, as the sun sank into the sea, we rode back into Tramore and terrified ourselves on the big dipper.  Then we jousted in the bumpers; the head-to-head collisions sending her screaming with delight. When we had our fill of drink we went dancing in the Silver Slipper, and later still I asked her to come back to London with me.  She said she would.  To celebrate we consumated our  passions on the still-warm sand  with the Atlantic breakers lapping gently against our toes. Afterwards, I fell asleep.  When I woke up she was gone.  And so was my wallet.  Ah well, that’s red-headed women for you.

The following night I went dancing in the Rainbow, with money borrowed from my mother.  What I thought of as a palace now turns out to be nothing more than a glorified shed.

I watched from the shadows as a man scattered handfuls of crystals on the uneven floor.  Occasionally, when the ballroom doubled as the cinema, the same man used to strike terror into us youngsters, curbing our exuberance with whacks on the head from his torch. Now, he was just an old man.

Later, as the hall began to fill, I felt like an interloper as I watched the age-old rituals unfold.  The men lined up one side of the hall, the girls along the other. The space between was a sort of no-mans land, across which the two sides sized each other up.  When the music commenced it was a buffalo stampede across no-mans land to grab the girl of your choice.  Sometimes there was a sharp change of direction to grab a second or third choice when the initial selection was commandeered by somebody else.

I didn’t dance all night.  I merely stood there and watched, and realised that I didn’t have the stomach for it anymore.  Friends and acquaintances, I watched them waltzing and fox-trotting by me, happy in their world, and I knew I wasn’t part of it anymore.

Absence hadn’t made my heart grow fonder; it had only distanced me from them and their way of life. For the first time in my life I truly understood the expression I had often heard in London, “you can never go back”.  Its true – You can never go back.

A few days later I “acquired” some more funds and returned to London. I’ve never been back.                                                                                     

                                                                   end               

WHEN THE ICE HAS LEFT ICELAND

 When the ice has left Iceland

What will happen to you?

When the ice has left Iceland

What, then, will I do?

No ice, no spice

No life, no love

Just tainted water from the heights above

We could sail the lakes there,

Where there once was snow

(which was not that long ago)

We could build a boat

A kind of Noah’s Ark

And sail it close to the new ice-skating park

And the Icelanders,

What of them now

Perhaps they will now be called

No Icelanders somehow

With their icy peaks no longer there

Just jagged rocks rising everywhere

No Iceland

No Ireland

No Scotland

No Greenland

No England

No Falklands

No Lapland

New Zealand

No Thailand

No Poland

No Finland

Swaziland

Switzerland

Netherlands

New Foundland

Nobody’s-around-land

NO MANS LAND

A REHEARSED READING – WITH MUSIC BE THERE!

EXTRACT:

FALLING FROM GRACE

A new play by

TOM O’BRIEN

Act one

Scene one

Enter   SHANE MacGOWAN singing IF I SHOULD FALL FROM GRACE WITH GOD.  

If I should fall from grace with god
Where no doctor can relieve me
If I’m buried ‘neath the sod
But the angels won’t receive me

Let me go boys
Let me go boys
Let me go down in the mud
Where the rivers all run dry

SHANE:           Good evening ladies and gentlemen! I am sorry to announce that due to

unforeseen circumstances SHANE won’t be appearing here tonight.

Too much….(indicates drinking with his hand)   Oh yes.

pause

WHAT? Am I dead?  No, I don’t think so. Not yet, anyway.

But these days you never can  tell, can ya? Maybe I’m a hologram

VICTORIA CLARKE enters.

SHANE:         This is Victoria. She’s …she’s…ah…ah…       Kcch…We’re an item.  (pause)  Again. We have no children. Except me. (laughs ). Kcch…kcch…kcch.  I stole that line from Brendan Behan. He stole it from someone else I expect. Probably Paddy Kavanagh.

VICT:             That’s slander, Shane

SHANE;         He’s fucken dead. Ya can’t slander the dead, can you?  Anyway, I come to praise Caesar not bury him. He was one of the greatest Irish writers of my time. Or any time. Greater than Joyce or O’Casey anyway.

Well, maybe not Joyce. Joyce was a bloody genius, he invented a whole new language. Brendan stole a few lines from both of them here and there.  But where’s the harm in that? I did the same meself.  Kcch…kcch…kcch.   Did you hear about the time he arrived in Montreal and some reporter asked him what he was doing in Canada. ‘Well’, he said, ‘I kept reading all these ads saying drink Canada dry, so I thought I’d give it a try’. (laughs)                            Maybe I’m him. His reincarnation, like. We, the Pogues I mean, got our dress style from Brendan. Did ya notice the similarity?

VICT:             The slept-in-a-ditch last night look? Yeah, I see where you’re coming from there, sweet pea

SHANE:         Yeah, well we’ve all lain in the gutter in our time – and few of us were looking at the stars.

                                    (sings)  THE OLD TRIANGLE

A hungry feeling came o’er me stealing

And the mice were squealing in my prison cell

And the ould triangle went jingle jangle

All along the banks of the Royal Canal.

VICT:             Very funny, Shane.

She settles herself on a stool, slightly apart from Shane. During the action they sometimes interact with each other, other times they appear separate from each other, though they are aware of each other at all times.

VICT:             I was living in an Irish-speaking hell hole in West Cork when I first heard tell of Shane. He was a nobody when I met him

SHANE:         I was a fucken Punk. I was the Punk.

VICT              I was desperate to be a Punk myself, but living where I did I had to make do with a black bin liner and fishnet tights. In my local pub I became friendly with Spider Stacey, who played the tin whistle and sang a bit. One night he had Shane with him. He was very aggressive.

SHANE:         You should feel honoured. You were in the presence of greatness. The fledgling Pogues.  Kcch…kcch…kcch.  Anyway, I was fucken drunk, not aggressive…

VICT:             You were drunk and aggressive. And very arrogant, I thought. It was Spider’s birthday…

SHANE:         Well, go on then, buy him a drink. It’s his fucken birthday.

VICT:             You can fuck off for yourself, Shane O’Hooligan- or whatever you call yourself these days. (smiles sweetly) And that was how we met.

SHANE:         Wait a minute.  Arrogant…you said arrogant.

VICT:             Yeah, you were. You still bloody are. (pause) So it was love at first sight, was it?

SHANE:         Yeah, it was, like. Yeah.

VICT:             And what about all your other women?

SHANE:         Kcch…Kcch…Kcch…

SHANE sings VICTORIA (c Shane MacGowan 1994)

Down the dirty old streets
The Angel of the East is calling
And with a trembling hand
I open up a can
I can hear a baby bawling

Vicoria, you left me in opium euphoria
With a fat monk singing Gloria
My girl with green eyes

VICT:             I didn’t fall in love with you for years. I think I was twenty. I’d known you for ages then.

SHANE:         It only seemed that long. (laughs) Kcch…kcch…kcch

VICT:             Don’t you remember? It was my birthday. And somebody told you to kiss me.

SHANE:         It must have been God.  And did I ?

VICT:             (pushes him) ‘Course you did.  I was irresistible.

SHANE:         You still are.

VICT:             I know. And afterwards, on the way home in a taxi, we had an argument.

SHANE:         I remember that!  You were trying to tell me I knew fuck all about Sean Nos singing.  Just because you came from the back of beyond in pre-historic West Cork and I was a sophisticate from London…

VICT:             You came from Puckaun, and what do they know about anything in that hole!

SHANE:         They know about Sean Nos singing. And dancing. And playing music. All my people were musicians and singers. It was open house there every night.. Anyway, I come from Kent, not Puckaun. Tunbridge Wells. I was born there, like, but I’d never admit coming from there. I was born on Christmas day. Did ya know that?

VICT:             (sings)  Hark now hear the angels sing

SHANE:         Some Christmas present!  Kcch…kcch…kcch

VICT:             And then you kissed me goodnight. And I fell in love. (smiles sweetly) I moved in with you and your flat was disgusting. One room, red walls, black carpet and a mattress on the floor. Overflowing ashtrays and bottles everywhere.

SHANE:         And you tried to change everything.

VICT:             I tried to clean it up, yeah. Tried to clean you up. I’m still trying after all these years. (laughs) You still won’t have a bath.

SHANE:         I had one last year. Kcch…kcch…kcch

SHANE          You had five tellys – and none of them worked properly. Oh, and that crappy record player. What was that song you used to play all time? Van Morrison.  (she hums it)

SHANE:         Yeah, yeah. Astral Weeks. (he sings a few verses and Victoria joins in)

                        (ASTRAL WEEKS by Van Morrison © Caledonia Soul Music)
If I ventured in the slipstream
Between the viaducts of your dream
Where mobile steel rims crack
And the ditch in the back roads stop

Could you find me?
Would you kiss-a my eyes?
To lay me down in silence easy
To be born again, to be born again

VICT:             You played it right through the night once. I’d rather take a cheese-grater to my forehead for six hours now than do that again.

SHANE:         He’s a poet. Like Dylan and Springsteen. You gotta listen to the words. The words are everything. (pause) Nice bloke, Van

VICT:             Yeah.

SHANE:         Even if he is a fat fucker these days.

VICT:             Shane! He might call you a drunken fucker…these days.

SHANE:         I’m a drunken fucker most days.

DEAD IN A DITCH by Patrick Kavanagh

Dead In a Ditch

(To Hilda)

Unless you come
I shall die in a ditch,
Poet dead in a ditch.
There will be no bluebells there,
Only the vetch
Smelling of death
Weeds around me,
The mud of hooves
That prance there
Falling over my eyes.

Rags of beggars that passed
Will clothe my soul.
The winter will come through the bushes,
Rain will fall
Making puddles in my face,
The snow will come
And cover me up
Like the Babes in the Wood.
Then no one will stop
To examine the heap,
No one will know where a poet’s asleep.

I shall die in a ditch
Like a dog or bum,
Poet dead in a ditch
Unless you come.

(July 1945)
-Patrick Kavanagh
Copyright © Estate of Katherine Kavanagh

LIVIN’ IT UP IN KILBURN & CRICKLEWOOD

By

Tom O’Brien

 When I first came to Kilburn in the mid 1960’s my residence was a less than salubrious double room in house that had seen better days, run by a certain Mrs McGinty in Iverson Road. It was the sort of place where you wiped your feet on the way out.

I was sharing the room with Vince Power – later of Mean Fiddler fame – with whom I had gone to school with in rural Waterford in a place called Newtown. Newtown comprised of a couple houses, the church, the school, two pubs, and a sweet shop, so the culture shock of walking down Kilburn High Road for the first time was quite something!

Within a few hundred yards I had seen two cinemas, The State and The Grange – monoliths of stone from a bygone era – an Irish dance hall, The Banba – and numerous pubs with names like The North London, The Black Lion, Biddy Mulligan’s, and so on.

There was also a Wimpey Burger Bar on the High Road, with a notice board just outside on the pavement which advertised rooms to let. It was here that I first read the legend ‘NO BLACKS, NO DOGS, NO IRISH’ It was also the first time I had seen black people in reality. I began to wonder what I was letting myself in for.

Vince was soon working as a floorwalker in Whiteley’s department store in Queensway, while I had got a job in the accounts department of Smiths Radiomobile factory in Cricklewood. In between times we listened to music from Vince’s collection of Buddy Holly and Patsy Cline records.

Cricklewood, too, had an Irish dance hall, called The Galtymore, and it was smack in the middle of the Broadway.  Big and bawdy It had two dance floors, one for modern music and one for Irish dancing, and was nearly always filled to capacity. And just a stones’ throw away was The Crown, even bigger and bawdier, and full of thirsty Irishmen washing the dust down after a hard day digging holes or pulling cables all over London and outlying areas.

Oh the crack was good in Cricklewood, but t’was better in the Crown

There were bottles flying and Biddies cryiing, and Paddies goin’ to town

Oh mother dear I’m over here, I never will go back

What keeps me here is the rake of beer, the women and the crack

The words of ‘McAlpines Fuseliers’, Dominic Behan’s homage to the expat shovel brigade, were regularly ringing in our ears as Vince and I danced our nights away at The Banba or the Galtymore. And sometimes our afternoons too; for there was a Sunday afternoon tea dance at the Banba, where hung-over Irishmen could sober up for the night ahead!

This was also the era of The Sunshine Gang, a group of expat thugs that plagued the area at the time. Said to have originated from the Longford/Westmeath region, they were into protection and other criminal activities. If bar and shop owners didn’t pay up they basically came in and smashed the place up.

The Banba, which was up an alley off Kilburn High Road was attacked during one tea dance while we were present; they wedged a Mini in the entrance, beat up the doorman, then started smashing up the hall inside. They were looking for Michael Gannon, the owner, who had presumably forgotten to pay his ‘subscription’.  They left after a few minutes, having no doubt been paid! They occasionally put in an appearance at the Galtymore as well!

We weren’t long getting to know the pubs in the area. Biddy Mulligan’s was a favourite of ours, as was The Admiral Nelson in Carlton Vale, owned by  Butty Sugrue. Butty originated from Kilorglin in County Kerry and was a Circus Performer cum-wrestler-strongman-publican-entrepreneur. He had toured Ireland with Duffy’s Circus, billed as Ireland’s strongest man and in Kilburn he had pulled red London buses up the High Road with the rope held between his teeth! A couple of years after we arrived, he had his barman, Mick Meaney, buried alive in a yard adjacent to the pub, where he remained for 61 days – a Guinness Book of Records world record. ‘Resurrection day’ saw thousands line the High Road as Mick was proudly paraded through Kilburn in the back of a truck.

There was always plenty of singing and dancing at The Admiral Nelson, and Jack Doyle was frequently seen at the venue singing for his supper. Jack had slipped a long way down since his heydays when he had fought for the British Heavyweight boxing title, or when he had been feted in Hollywood before marrying Mexican actress Movita, the couple moving to London, where they toured the country singing and performing to delirious audiences, and becoming the 1940’s  equivalent of Posh and Becks.

The bigger they are the harder they fall is a well known saying, and Jack eventually fell further than most. Whenever anyone asked him what caused his downfall he always replied ‘fast women and slow horses’. Some years later he would be found dead in a park in West London, penniless and shoeless. Listening to Jack and Movita singing together would send shivers down your spine.  Listen on the link below

Eventually Vince and I moved on to Harlesden where the 32 Cub in Harlesden High Street was the Mecca for the Irish population. Situated next to the Elm Tree pub on the High Street, in the building that was formerly the Picardy cinema, it was heaving every weekend.

By now Vince had met his first wife, Theresa, and before too long they got married and had a  child. Somehow, I managed to miss the wedding!

A few years later I was married myself (1971) and Vince was my best man wearing a suit borrowed from his brother-in-law! Yes, he was that poor!

In between times a lot had changed in our lives; Vince was now working in demolition, knocking down rows of terraced houses in the Willesden area, I had been a guest at Her Majesty’s pleasure for eighteen months, been deported back to Ireland and come back again, and had won a tidy sum of money with my regular Saturday bet on the ITV7 at my local William Hill’s betting shop!

HIGH LIVIN’ IN HARLESDEN

Harlesden, Park Royal, Craven Park, Stonebridge, Willesden Junction…they all still have the power to evoke strong memories whenever I look back to period of my life. The Royal Oak, The Spotted Dog, The Case Is Altered, The Elm Tree and others remain as clear in my mind as if it was only yesterday.

Park Royal was a weird sort of place on the fringes of the Western Avenue; cut off from both Acton and Ealing, it was surrounded by the railway marshalling yards of Willesden Junction and Harlesden.  The North Circular Road, snaking around its outskirts, completed its encirclement.

It was a dreary landscape that I grew to know well.  Tall chimneys jostling for prominence on the pylon-ravaged horizon, belching all kinds of shit into the atmosphere;  galvanizers, zinc-platers, lead-smelters, other obnoxious plants all polluting without discrimination. The milkmen did well though; stomach-lining it was called.  And the bosses were happy to pay; it was a damn sight cheaper than decent working conditions.

It was hard to imagine people living in the midst of all this but they did.  Isolated pockets of grimy Victorian terraced houses poked their heads up along the narrow streets, like they had been spawned by their much bigger neighbours – although it was a fair bet that they were there long before the industrial estate.

Stranger still was the sight of Park Royal Hospital – later to become the Central Middlesex – sitting bang in the middle.  This sprawling complex languished amidst the soot and grime, shit and slime, collectively inhaling whatever was floating about at any given time.

On reflection, perhaps it was the perfect set-up.  The houses, the factories, the hospital, schools, pubs; there was even a crematorium somewhere in the vicinity – everything a body needed from the cradle to the grave.

By now I was sharing a flat in St Thomas’s Road in Craven Park with ‘Larry’, whilst Vince and his new family were not much more than a stone’s throw away, ensconced in a council house in Stonebridge Park. I had finally turned into a law-abiding fellow- sort of! – and was gainfully employed in one of the factories in Park Royal, weighing and loading copper piping for delivery to the outlying building and plumbing trades. Every morning I walked the one mile plus journey; along Nichol Road, down Acton Lane, past the railway marshalling yards and Harlesden tube station, until finally I hit Barrett Green Road where the factory stood. Each journey became a walking competition; seeing how many other walkers I could pass on the journey – well it helped pass the time!

GOIN’ TO THE DOGS

Park Royal dog track was only a stones’ throw from the hospital, not that we generally took too much notice of it as we hurried past to get to the track in time for the first race, which was at 2.30pm every Monday and Friday. Betting shops in those days were dreary places; there were no monitors, no TV’’s, nothing only chalked-up prices and The Blower. Much better to go to the track and lose your money in style!

The Blower relayed the race commentaries to the shops – although not instantaneously as I accidentally discovered one afternoon. I was rushing for the first race, still several hundred yards from the track, when I heard the tell-tale shout from the track and knew the race was already underway. Cursing, I dived into the nearby betting shop, hoping to hear the tail-end

of the race commentary, praying fervently that trap six wouldn’t win.  Imagine my surprise when the commentary didn’t begin until almost half a minute later.

The significance of my discovery didn’t sink in until later, when I met up with Larry at the track, and we were watching a race in progress.

‘You know’, he remarked as we watched a race in progress. ‘This is a front-runners track. How many dogs leading at the halfway stage ever get beaten…?’

‘Not many’, I agreed.  It was then that the significance of my knowledge hit me.  A dog could run a long way in thirty seconds.  Most races were half over at this point.   When I voiced my opinions, Larry saw the implications straight away.

‘Christ!  Pity there’s not a betting shop outside the track’.                                                        It was a pity.  The one I had just been in was less than three hundred yards from the track. But too far away all the same…

The thinking caps were on in earnest now…

The answer, of course, was walkie-talkies.

All it needed was for one of us to be positioned in a suitable location to relay the trap number of any dog in a clear lead at half way.  The receiver would be waiting around the corner from the bookies for the magic number; it would take only a couple of seconds to dash in and place the bet. All we had to do then was wait for the money to start rolling in!

Getting hold of the walkie-talkies wasn’t too difficult, but they cost over fifty pounds. They were just what we needed though – with a range of over a quarter of a mile. We carried out several trial runs to make sure we were within range of each other, then realised we needed to find a quiet spot from which to observe the races.  It wouldn’t do to be seen at the track speaking into a walkie-talkie!

The answer was staring us in the face: The Central Middlesex Hospital. Some of its buildings overlooked the track; there was bound to be a suitable vantage point somewhere.  More importantly, we found that visitors could roam the grounds freely.  This allowed us to select a flat-roofed building that gave us a clear view of the race.  It was ideal in another sense too; it had an air-conditioning unit on the roof which provide ample screening from prying eyes.

Our plan was to rotate the operation in case the bookie got suspicious at seeing the same face collecting winnings all the time.

It pissed down that first afternoon.  As the saying goes; ‘You wouldn’t put a dog out in it’.  Only two idiots were soaking it up; one on the almost-obscured roof of a hospital building, the other skulking behind a betting shop in Acton Lane.

The rain eventually ceased and the racing got under way.  I was on duty behind the betting shop that day, and every time Larry gave me a number I rushed into the shop and had a tenner on it.  We were aware that not every race would suit our purposes; however, that first day provided four races, of which three produced winners, the fourth selection running wide at the last bend when still in front.  We didn’t care too much though; three winners at six to one, four to one, and two to one had given us a profit of more than a hundred pounds on the day.

Larry was hopping around the kitchen after the share-out.

‘This is it…the big one.  We’ll go to town now, boy!’

I had to admit to a sense of satisfaction myself.  It had been my idea – not Larry’s – and it was a success!  We only had to operate it a few times a week and we would soon be rolling in it.

In a few months we had accumulated a lot of money.  I had never seen so much, and neither had Larry. However, our dreams of a fortune were soon scuppered when the track was suddenly sold over night for redevelopment. It shut down immediately, with no warning to anybody.  There were no betting shops open at night so the evening meetings were useless for our purposes, and the only other afternoon track , Hackney, was too far away from a bookies for our walkie talkies to be effective.

End of Dream!

THE ACE CAFE

We got into the habit of frequenting the Ace café, an all-night dive that was more than an eating house for many who used it. It was a meeting place, a way of life, perhaps even a home for some.   It looked as if it had fallen off the back of some passing lorry and had landed lopsidedly on the edge of the North Circular Road, near Stonebridge Park station. There it sat, its neon sign blazing, the jukebox blasting, attracting the flotsam and jetsam of the city just as easily as it absorbed the grime from the passing traffic

Inside, there were bikers, long-distance lorry drivers, small-time villains like us, probably a few hookers, definitely a sprinkling of people of no fixed abode.  Sometimes, we sat there drinking strong coffee, playing sad songs on the jukebox. And watching all the lonesome faces as ‘Take These Chains From My Heart’ and ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’ permeated the fried-bacon and dog-roll atmosphere.  Some nights Eleanor Rigby turned up, pushing her worldly goods before her in a battered pram. We called her Eleanor because she said John Lennon had seen her there one night and written the song for her. She was about sixty, lived in a steel container near Wembley Stadium, and nearly always sported two bright red slashes of lipstick that never quite lined up with her lips. She invariably sang along in a high screeching voice whenever someone played her record on the jukebox;

The tabloid press carried many articles portraying the cafe as a place where decent people didn´t go. And maybe they were right.  One of the favourite pastimes with some of the bikers – the ton-up merchants – was to play a tune on the jukebox then race their bikes to a certain spot then back again before the tune finished. It was coined record-racing.

A lot of our scheming and planning took place in the Ace.  Although our crimes were small our ambitions weren’t.  We were merely practising for now; building up to the day when we would really make it big.  Nothing too spectacular; some swindle or con that would net us ten grand or so would do nicely.

Now that our Park Royal scheme was in ruins, Larry had purchased a new suit and an old van, and we decided to go into the furniture removal business.

We hired a couple of lock-up garages and began filling them with fridges, washing machines, TV’s and other household goods that we got from High-Street stores on the never-never.  They were falling over themselves selling us stuff we were never- never going to pay for!

It was a beautiful scheme.  Larry viewed empty houses on the pretext of buying them, got duplicate keys cut, and then convinced the stores he was the owner and had the goods delivered there. As soon as the delivery van disappeared around the corner, we whisked the gear away to safety in Larry’s van. We then sold the items through a network of local newspapers.

I told him I couldn’t believe it was easy.

Larry laughed and patted his immaculate suit (another purchase on the never-never).

‘The whistle is half the battle. As far as they’re concerned I’m a man of property. If you can convince them you’ve got bricks and mortar, credit is no problem’.

THE GREAT GREEN SHIELD STAMP ROBBERY

;

When Larry wasn’t stuck in the racing pages, he was plotting new ways of making money. We knew we were petty thieves – small fry in the world of crime – but, as, we kept telling ourselves, it was better than working for a living. Anyway, we could dream, couldn’t we?  Today, knocking off market stalls; tomorrow the Great Train Robbery!

Lock-up premises became our speciality, and the railway line that ran behind our house was very convenient for the places we set out to rob.  It traversed the Harrow Road and snaked round Scrubs Lane, where there were plenty of warehouses and factories suited to our purpose. We only selected places that had no night watchman; not that we felt cowardly or anything, but we didn’t want the added complication of assault included in our armoury. For one thing, it got the police more interested. For another, it was property we wanted to hit not people.

Between nine and eleven at night was the best time to be about our business; it was late enough for the premises to be empty, but not late enough to arouse the suspicions of the cops if they spotted you in the vicinity.

Our initial efforts were purely speculative; taking what we hoped we could sell; typewriters, adding machines, offices chairs etc.  These we lugged along the railway line, scampering up the embankment whenever a train was heard approaching. The following day we loaded them into Larry’s van, selling them to a guy that operated a second-hand office furniture business from a railway arch near Queens Park station.

Once, we broke into the lock-up petrol station along the Harrow Road from us, Larry being convinced that the takings were locked away in a filing cabinet every night. It backed onto the railway, so it was chicken feed to jemmy the back door open.  We searched in vain for the money; all we found in the cabinet was lots of blank Green Shield books – and hundreds of sheets of stamps.  We took the lot with us, then spent most of the night licking and sticking – something which Larry thought hilarious.  Still, we managed to redeem about thirty quid’s worth at their Wembley office for our efforts.

Larry was mechanical- minded and liked messing about with old record players and other gadgets, repairing them then selling them on. He even rebuilt a juke-box once, and had it installed in the nearby café that we used, splitting the proceeds with the owner.

Another time he got hold of a high-powered air pistol, which he adapted to fire ball-bearings. Afterwards, we took a trip to the dump, found some old plate glass and tried it out.  I was amazed at the results; a neat hole in the glass every time.

Armed with this contraption, we ventured out in the van in the evenings, seeking suitable lock-up jewellers.  After we’d located one, we parked close by, and having made sure the street was clear, fired at the jeweller’s window through a small hole we had made in the side of the van. The resultant hole in the glass was large enough to enable us to fish out small items of jewellery using a length of coat-hanger wire. We sold the proceeds from a briefcase down the Portobello Market on Saturday mornings, one of us keeping a sharp look-out for the law.

Ironically, the closest we came to the police was when a couple of thieving bastards snatched the briefcase and legged it in the direction of Ladbroke Grove. A nearby stall-holder gave chase, and somebody else went searching for a copper.   We decided that discretion was the better part of valour and made ourselves scarce.

The operation gradually fizzled out, partly because of the publicity it received, but mainly due to technological advances.  The new trembler alarms tended to go off if you as much as looked at them.

THE MICHELIN MAN

One night, in the Ace, Larry got picked up by a handsome-looking woman who must have been well into her forties. (That was a thing with Larry – he liked older women)

‘’I’m well in there, lads’, he said the following day.  ‘Her old man died a few months back and left her a big house in Willesden Green.  And loads of money as well’.

‘He must have been a subby then’, I replied

We didn’t see a lot of him for the next week, until one morning he turned up in a suit several sizes too big for him, and wearing carpet slippers.  The clothes belonged to his lady-friend’s dead husband, and were all he could get his hands on when making his bid for freedom.

‘I know now what killed him’, he said. ‘She wanted it all the bloody time. D’you know what she did?  Hid my clothes to stop me leaving’.  He put on a lady’s voice; ‘One more time and you can have your trousers back, Laurence’, He shook his head. ‘Ah Jaysus, she’s sex mad’. He shook the oversize coat. ‘As soon as she went to the bog this morning I grabbed this suit and took off’.

The incident kept him away from the Ace for a while and she made several enquires to several of us as to where he had gone.  We told her he had gone to America.

‘Oh, she said, clearly disappointed.  ‘There are some…items of his at my place.  Would one of you care to call round and collect them?’

‘No thank you!’ we chorused.

We gave the suit to a regular, who we had christened the Michelin Man.     His eyes were practically invisible, he wore a mouthful of false teeth, and he carried a plastic bag of vomit around with him. The vomit was food – usually from the café – that he had regurgitated. Apparently, he had an ulcer problem, causing him to puke up the food.  We reckoned he took it home and ate it again.  A few nights after we gave him the suit we saw our lady friend giving him funny looks as he puked into his bag.

It was through an acquaintance met in the Ace that we had our first real brush with the law. Our air-gun was redundant by now, and we were desperately seeking new ways of increasing our cash-flow.

‘Allie?’ remarked the acquaintance, when the name of a certain shopkeeper kept cropping up, ‘he’s the biggest fence around. Cigarettes now, he’ll take all you can supply and no questions asked’.

This was good enough for us. We soon established our bona-fides and he agreed to pay us half the retail price for everything we brought him.

We had already decided on a target; a lock-up newsagents in nearby Wembley.  It was alarmed, but it was an external bell type, which was easy to neutralise, merely a matter of sticking a piece of cardboard between the gong and the mechanism.  I accomplished this from the roof of Larry’s van then we made short work of the door with a crowbar.

We reckoned it to be a quick in-and-out job; no more than a couple of minutes to grab what cartons and loose packets we could find.  We were almost finished when the alarm went off like an air-raid siren.

‘Jesus!’, roared Larry, ‘the fucken’ cardboard’s fell out’.

Soon there were lights coming on everywhere, and voices shouting.  Worse, a vicious-sounding dog started a racket a few doors away.

It was time to go.  We piled head-first into the van; I managed to pull a blanket over the evidence and we had regained some semblance of composure as we turned into Wembley High Road. It was then that the Panda car pulled in behind us and began to keep pace with us.  Not knowing what else to do, I just kept driving.  And the Panda kept following.

I nudged Larry. ‘What do we do?’

Larry seemed to have lost the power of speech, apart from mumbling incoherently.

‘This is no time for bloody praying’, I shouted.  I did some quick calculations; no tax, no insurance, no driving licence…all that gear in the back.  We were up shit creek.

I gave Larry a kick in the shins.  ‘I’m baling out the next red lights.  You’d better do the same if you don’t want to spend the next few birthdays in nick’.

I guess we timed it right.  As we ejected at the lights the cops were also getting out, putting their caps on.  I could hear their shouts as I leaped a hedge and hared off across a stretch of parkland.  I was young and fit and easily lost my pursuers. Trouble was, I got lost myself in the process, and not wishing to show myself on the streets in case the cops were still on the prowl, I decided to kip under some bushes until daylight.

I was stiff, sore and soaked to the bone when I finally made it back to the flat.  Larry was sound asleep in his bed. He had encountered no problems, having come across a bicycle in a nearby driveway, and was indoors within fifteen minutes of taking to his heels.

We never discovered what happened to the van or its contents, and the experience put the wind up us for some time after that.  Still, you can’t keep good men down.  Within a week Larry had a new set of wheels – a Triumph Herald, white with a black sun roof.

‘What d’you reckon?’, he asked after he had driven it away from the garage. ‘Fifty down and twenty quid a month’.

I laughed. ‘I reckon not many instalments will get paid’.

I was right.  Within a couple of months the finance company was round trying to re-possess it.  And not having much luck.  The first time they called they found it chained to a tree.  Larry took to keeping it in a garage after that.  On a subsequent visit they came armed with a pair of bolt cutters.  We took great delight in telling them that both Larry and the car had gone on a long visit to Ireland.