THE DEEP POOL - JANUARY 2005

HOGMANAY - the sky was full of cheap rockets and grown men unrinated into the flower baskets outside the Dolphin pub (steak and chips with glass of wine - 32 pence) when it would have been easier to 'use the toilets available'. To pee in the flower baskets you have to stand on tip-toe, lean back, and, giddy with a tractor load of Stella Artois, force your dick between the dead pansies. As i have discovered. This sounds unkind to the Dolphin pub in my village of Botley, which has genuinely charming staff and the best-kept beer for miles - me and Harry the dog often stop there on our way back from the creek, and then forward to the butchers to get a bone for Harry and six eggs.

I myself stayed at home on New Year's Eve, sipping cider brandy and watching a shit film called The Wicker Man, which has beautiful footage of The Isle Of Skye and terrible performances by Edward Woodward, Britt Ekland and Diane Cilento. People, i've noticed, reckon this film is a 'cult classic' and i watched it with this in mind, but still couldn't see it as anything but the clunky 'B' movie it seemed when it first came out. Time is funny in this way. I remember once going to see an awful film called A Town Called Bastard with Telly Savalas (Telly and i were lovers at the time, and even though he starred in this film, he wanted to watch it with me in Bournemouth - i suspect with a view to oral sex followed by Maltesers if i was overwhelmed by the greatness of his performance). After 49 seconds of direness in which it became clear the film was dead, i went back to the box office and said that the film was depressing me so badly for reasons i couldn't put my finger on, that i wondered if i could go and see one of the other films in the cinema complex, as i had paid my money and the film was still only 2 minutes old.

This proposition caused consternation among the box office staff - was i just trying to see 2 films for the price of one? Did the fact that i simply didn't like the film make any difference at all? - After all ye pays yer money and ye makes yer choice. Or was this a churlish attitude in view of the fact that i'd stated my case so early in proceedings. But what if it set a precedent, and EVERYBODY started to think they could just chop and change, stop watching one film and start watching another? I said - well, how many people in reality come and ask to see another film because their original choice was boring them shitless. Shifty looks between the staff at this point, then, reluctantly - well, we don't have to do this sir, but if you would like to go and see Clint Eastwood's Play Misty For Me instead, we'll turn a blind eye on this occasion.

Well, thanks very much but there's four of us - i'm just here representing all of us, so can we all change film, and could we go to the pub and come back for the next showing so we can see 'Misty' from the very beginning? Real anger now among the staff - this is just a piss-take boss - we should tell the bastard to fuck off if he doesn't like the film....But the manager was taking the view that, having agreed to the swap in principle, he wasn't going to quibble about the circumstances of the process - an admirable demonstration of the sophistication of the trained managerial mind in the early '70s...i doffed my head in genuine respect, we went and drank some Badger Bitter, then came back for 'Misty'. Unfortunately for me, in the pub, somebody had decided to flagrantly disregard Doctor Timothy Leary's first rule of drug-taking - 'Thous shalt not interfere with thy brother's conciousness' and had put an LSD tab in my bitter - so by the time the mad woman at the end of 'Misty' was waving her knife around and threatening to kill the blonde airhead who was Clint-the-jazz-disc-jockey's 'lady' i was deeply fucked up to the point where, when i was proffered the Malteser box, all i could see was a cluster of radioactive asteroids, albeit covered in cheap chocolate, which, if i bit one, would turn me into a molecule in the knife blade of the mad woman - and when she CUT DEEP INTO THE BLONDE AIRHEAD'S NECK, I, AS A LEAD MOLECULE, WOULD BE THE FIRST ONE TO PUSH ON THROUGH THE TAUT BRONZED CALIFORNIAN SKIN, MOVING QUICKLY TOWARD THE JUGULAR VEIN WHERE THERE WOULD BE MUCH MORE RESISTANCE UNTIL, WITH A SQUIRMING TEARING WRENCH I CAUSED THE LIFE BLOOD TO LEAP FROM THE WOMAN'S BODY, SPILLING DOWN THE CLIFF FACE TO THE MIDNIGHT BEACH BELOW.

Luckily Clint turned up and killed the knife bitch before this could happen, saving me from this acid fate, but i still could not countenance Maltesers for about 4 days....

After the film, we all went for a pizza - mine had all the charm of a warm urine-soggy ancient duvet studded with olives.
'What did you think of the film?' i was asked. As i looked round the table, i knew that they were all in it together, spiking my drink and waiting to see how i was coping. They were acting casual but had the faces of evil bloated cats who'd just opened a bumper tin of condemned pilchards.

'Yeah, it was - cool' i said with care and difficulty. I knew i had to say more to convince them that i'd survived the acid ravages and was still myself.
'I particularly liked the bit where the Malteser molecules entered the knife-blade just before she was going to slay the blonde chick...' - at this point i gave up and just nodded sagely as if what i was saying made universal sense and no further comment was necessary. It had an interesting effect on the company - although i was clearly out of my head, i seemed to be in receipt of a level of insight it may not be wise to question or laugh at. This is how it was in those days.

Later, on my own, down by the sea at night, i watched the Englsh Channel ebb and flow and was thinking about the power of the ocean.
'You're not so powerful' i said, internally, to the sea, in a sneering dismissive tone....

'OH YEAH?' - the sea said back with such a force of personality that i fell to my knees sobbing and pleading for forgiveness - only the ocean can forgive - children who don't want to live - only the deepest love can shine - on a human heart turned blind......

Oh, and before i forget, my deep apologies to those of you who may have turned up to see me at Jim's Accoustic Cafe in Colne, north of Manchester in December. This is a show i love doing - it's a slightly crazy place, but always a good and intense evening. I was flying from Southampton to Manchester, then on by train to do this show, and i then had a show in Haltwhistle in the Borders the night after. I got to Southampton Airport in good time and queued at check-in. When my turn came, the check-in woman said - 'Oh, sorry sir, the flight's full'.

I said 'what do you mean full? - i've got a full price ticket here which i bought weeks ago'.

'Yes, i can see that, but the flight is oversubscribed - we can get you on the 9 40pm flight'.

I explained that this was of no use to me whatsoever, and started to lose my cool - something i know from long and bitter experience of airline staff is a complete waste of time. She just kept on saying, politely, that i could get as excited as i wanted but i still wasn't getting on the plane and she was sure i would get my money back. So that was the end of my show in Colne - i'm a real pro about 'the show must go on' but there was just no way to get to Colne in time by train - and i STILL had to go to Haltwhistle the next day.

Haltwhistle was the last show of the year and i enjoyed it very much - seeing my good old friend Arthur who still plays bass in The Lurkers and 999. He put on this show for me - the people in this part of the world are just great - when i arrived on the train from Carlisle i was a little early so i went into the pub by the station with an icy cold wind whipping down from Hadrian's Wall as the last forlorn light twisted away in the west. The bar was a wild carpet of sleeping sheepdogs, or at least half-sleeping sheepdogs, with half an eye posted on their smashed flat-capped owners, waiting, waiting, for that moment when it was time time leap into action, jump in an old rickety Land Rover and surge through the lanes to a rain-beaten farmhouse. A few bits of tinsel around the bar announced the coming of Christmas, and somebody had left an unusual Action Man in a plastic supermarket bag in the men's toilet ('Gay Northumbrian Farmer And His Faithful Pissed Off Sheepdog').

The next morning i struggled in a gale though the sleeping town back to the railway station, still dark, waiting for the train from Newcastle. The train came into Carlisle where i lived in the late '60s early ''70s. I worked on the Christmas post on that platform in Carlisle once, and also worked in Metal Box factory here, while writng the songs that would become the album Control. I just wished that for once, i could put down the bloody guitar, and walk round the city, down to the indoor market and down to the River Eden. But it was time to go home to the south coast and prepare for my first winter without parents. I knew i'd miss my train change at Birmingham New Street and i did, so i went to Selfridges department store in Birmingham, ordered a glass of champagne and said thank you - first to my mother and father, and then to everyone else who looks after me as i make my through this grazed world of noise and unexpected silences, like when the air conditioning breaks down on an empty train as it stops between Banbury and Oxford, windswept red cows slowly walking round and round an abandoned country church...

jl