THE DEEP POOL - February 2007

   Early morning first light last Wednesday, a light fall of snow on the darkened fields like a Russian prayer, we drove to the stables to collect a horse who was going to the horse hospital in the west of England, near Tetbury in the Cotswolds. ‘Afternoon' said Martin, who was driving the horsebox and who must have arrived in the dark. The stablegirls were preparing the horse for the journey – there was no help I could give, so I walked over and leaned on the nearest gate, watching crows pray. From time to time they would rise in a flurry from one snowdusted furrow to alight in another. To my right, seen through bare snowy apple trees, our friends Jane and Steve's low house lay in silent sleep. Lemon-grey light slowly seeped across the farm buildings and a fox dashed across the fields, zigzagging as he went.

   On the horizon was a vast bank of mixed mature trees that follow the course of the magical road that stretches from Botley to Bishop's Waltham. Seven o' clock struck and the sound of muted silvery bells from four parish churches rippled towards the yard where about ten horses watched the preparations whilst chewing hay. The church bells, as one might expect, were all in slight disagreement as to what  exactly constituted 7 a m, as if they were observing important time differences of four or five seconds.

   By midday we were standing in the freezing yard outside Tetbury with Scandinavian Sven, the horse doctor making his preliminary examination of the horse. He had already amused us with a story of risque comments made by Lady Halifax about a well endowed male streaker between races at Royal Ascot (posh horseracing meeting). It is said that if you have to ask the price of a private jet airplane you can't afford it, and something similar was true about the remarkable horseboxes that kept arriving in Sven's yard with other sick horses on board. You rarely see vehicles like this except in the back pages of Horse and Hound, and Martin and myself were beginning to feel like scruffy gypsy horsedealers in the company of the other horse owners/handlers, hopping from foot to foot as we were in the biting snow-wind, looking distinctly up to no good. After a couple of hours of this, Sven came past, looked at us, and clearly decided it was time we stopped messing up his pristine gravel.

‘You know lads, zer iss a grreat liddle pub chust down zer road whar zey are alvays plissed to see peoples zat are visiting ze yard – vy don't you go der instead of stending in ze cold all day'?

Well, what a good idea, and ten minutes later we were walking in the door of the Holford Arms. This was a charming simple classic country pub with an immense log fire and a friendly though mournful Welsh landlord in attendance. We ordered a drink and Martin started talking to the landlord. Martin IS a horsedealer with his own yard close to where I live – this was the first time we'd really spent any time together, and I didn't know what kind of guy he was, other than ‘all right'. We were also the only customers at this point in the early afternoon – we wanted food and we needed to warm up the landlord a bit so we didn't feel awkward in the silences of the room, broken only by the occasional spit of burning laurel logs. I was about to start a simple conversation with the man, considering myself a bit of an expert in these situations, when Martin beat me to it and started asking the guy direct forceful questions in a way I could never have done. It was more like an interrogation, and I flinched at the power of intimate response that his questioning made necessary from the poor bastard. I needn't have worried: as I was about to discover, I was in the prescence of a master communicator. In no time at all we knew the entire occupational history of the landlord, his reasons for being where he was, his thoughts on the pub trade, his basic philosophy, what made horse people tick and a fund of emotional detail in between. Martin had ushered me and him into the best seats in the room, right in front of the fire, and our food duly arrived, fish and chips for me and ham, eggs and chips for Martin. As we started to eat, two enormous labradours suddenly bounded into the room, one friendly, one so unfriendly that everytime someobody new entered the pub it had to be kicked into submission by the vexed publican. A pub with an ungovernable psychopathic dog – crazy.

   I had a look at my newspaper as we sat there – there was an article about this year's Glastonbury Festival, and how all tickets are going to have the photo of the ticket owner on them, ‘to thwart ticket touts'. How sad is that, or is it just me? It sounds like a decision that might come about as a result of having ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair on your festival board as a consultant.

‘So Tony, in your student days at Oxford you yourself played guitar in a band, Ugly Rumours, and you still take your Fender Stratocaster guitar on holiday with you. As a pretty straight kind of guy who obviously still has a love of music, what are your initial thoughts on how we could improve the festival experience next year?'

‘Well, the first thing that strikes me is that we have to look at the overall event in terms of a possible terrorist attack and the bottom line carnage that would ensue if this were to eventuate. The very least we should be doing is ensuring that all tickets carry a current photograph of the ticket holder, but also, in my opinion, the ticket should carry a full range of biometric information, national insurance number etc – a bit like the new passports we envisage, in fact,'not so much a ticket, more of a passport to festival safety' is how I would present the purchase to the public. We should also try to ensure, in the interests of a harmonious event, no pun intended – hahaha! – that ticket buying priority is given to those of a lunatic Zionist proclivity, the sort of person who covertly enjoys the continuing agony of the Palestine people.'

‘Hmm – that's certainly given us a lot to think about Tony – certainly we could run with the photograph idea for the upcoming festival – as for the rest, maybe one of your knight mates would like to take that up and find a wider commercial application for the potential information resource, beyond the constraints of the event in question.'

‘Actually, I've already given that some thought, and may I suggest…'

   On a brighter note, here in the UK, we seem to have hit an interesting popular entertainment patch where deserving talent is finding huge success. I'm thinking of course of Al Murray, the Pub Landlord, who has a show on early evening television on Saturday night. If you've ever tried to watch television at this time of day on a Saturday, you will be familiar with that feeling of dirty emptiness inside, a feeling that although life isn't worth living, you're too tired to bother committing suicide. For the first time EVER there is a show on at this time which is worth watching, which is very funny whilst having serious points to make (only just). Nothing is more futile than trying to describe something from television for people who haven't seen it themselves – this is my opinion anyway, but let me just say that Al Murray does a great thing where he sets up his guests by asking them a question thst requires thought and application to answer properly: while they give their considered answer, he glazes over, making an ‘ih' sound from time to time to let them know he's not listening. I've already been banned from copying this technique in conversation with loved ones, especially as they've long suspected I don't listen anyway.

At school I had a wonderful history teacher called Mr Proctor. I perfected a look of intelligent interest in what he had to say when he spoke, nodding from time to time, pursing my lips and furrowing my brow  in concentration when all the time I was thinking about the new Pretty Things record. He knew I was full of shit and from time to time he would turn towards me quickly and say – ‘you boy, what am I talking about?' He caught me every time, and I'd be going ‘Er, something about Napoleon?' He once took my homework book from me at the beginning of class, and without looking at it he wrote ‘intelligent woffle' in the appropriate margin, gave it back and said ‘do it again'.

   Also, in the music charts (how ancient that phrase now sounds) Amy Winehouse and Mika are at the top as I write. Amy is the best singer in the UK and Mika's single ‘Grace Kelly' is a joy – if he's got more like that he'll be a star for as long as he wants.

   A Swedish magazine just asked me what snatches from popular songs go round my head – an interesting question – try it on yourself. Not what songs are your favourites, but just bits that stay with you and keep coming up.

Mine are:

‘Takes me higher than a Georgia Pine

Stand back children, it's the 309'

(Johnny Cash)

‘I'm not the only soul

Who's accused of hit and run         

Tyre tracks all across your back

Baby I can see you've had YOUR fun'

(Jimi Hendrix)

‘I'm cold and I'm tired and I can't stop coughing

Long enough to tell you all of my news

Like to tell you that I'll see you more often

Often is a word that I seldom use

You must think my life's a circus

Watching me laugh and slapping my thighs

How'd you like to die in a room full of mirrors

With nobody around to close your eyes?'

(John Prine)

‘He comes from under the cryptosphere

Where the great sadness begins

He's courageous enough to be scared

But he's much to humble to win

Bless the ridge rider

The ridge he's riding is mighty thin

I guess the ridge rider

Forgets he's travelling with a friend'

(Judy Sill)

   And so it's the time of year when, suddenly there are no more pine needles to be found floating mysteriously out of crevices and ‘betwixt and between'. You bully the Christmas tree out of your house, having loved it for those precious few days, but when you try to get rid of the needles, they keep returning, each a poignant reminder of an innocent time when you ate too much chocolate and drank too much of the hideous liqueur from Italy – in truth no worse than shite like Drambuie or Glayva (Scottish alco-syrupy drinks) but hey, that's OOR shite!

   And in two weeks I'll be in Berlin, talking about my new record and wandering alone down the great central boulevards  - Ku'dam and Kantstrasse, finding a small late night bar in Goethestrasse, to sit alone, examining unexplained cuts on my hands, listening to the gentle small talk of a great Celtic race, thinking of loved ones lost and gone.

jl