THE

THE DEEP POOL

   As you may have noticed it's 2007, the darkest day has passed and the nights are getting shorter. Its strange how quickly the dark days of winter seem to come upon us and how slowly they recede to the point where you think ‘wow! – its 5pm and it's still LIGHT! It probably shows just how internal winter really is – a state of being to be borne until March, with a hard eye turned on those who seek to dissuade you of the severity of it all. (Thanks mate – that's really cheered us all up – anything else while I search in the kitchen for a long sharp knife?).

   I was talking with some loveable old Geordies (Men from the northern city of Newcastle – we call them ‘Scotsmen with their brains kicked in') in a bar in Winchester in late December, and their talk reminded me of how I stopped being on the dole (social security payments) when I moved from Carlisle to Newcastle in 1968. Carlisle dole office was an austere regime, but I never saw much of it because they kept finding me work, the bastards, and no matter how quickly I managed to get the sack – usually for having too long hair in a dangerous factory setting, the dole sent me out on another mission, till I finally gave up and became an operative in the Carlisle Metal Box factory. This was a ridiculous job which involved putting a tiny hook on the ring-pull of a can, then winding it up until it snapped the ring-pull open, then writing down on a report sheet the tension, expressed numerically, needed to open the fucker. At first I sat religiously doing this all day to different can batches until one of the older lads in this ‘production control office' pointed out that the figures would ALWAYS fall between these two extremes, so I might as well just make them up, especially as nobody, anywhere, cared about the results. Making the figures up proved to be even more boring than actually going through the work motions, so I continued to sit all day with my mini-crane, waiting for the ‘thwap!' This marked me out as a weirdo amongst my work ‘colleagues', worse, a long haired weirdo, and everyone stopped speaking to me because I was doing my job. Anybody who has listened to my album ‘Control' may be very mildly interested to know that this factory contained huge presses which made a massive pulsing noise for which I found matching words, these being ‘Wait a minute for my Black-eyed Susie'. After four months of ‘Black-eyed Susie' at Blue Cheer volume I was mercifully sacked after not getting my hair cut on a third warning – ‘You could fall in the press and get mangled with hair that long'.

‘But I don't work anywhere near the press'.

‘That's hardly the point – on yer way'…then I moved to Newcastle and its dole office. However, one visit to this unbelievable environment was enough for me – I'm sure it's bad even now, but back then the toxic mix of despair, aggression and blatant pointless intimidation of the ‘are you staring at my foot?' variety made me decide to earn an existence in a darker art. ‘Oh aye, a bad place by any man's standards' the Geordies agreed. Earlier I'd made them laugh by describing how my mother, father and their drinking cronies would buy Newcastle Brown Ale by the crate in the Rex Hotel, Whitley Bay in the late Forties, and just have the barmaid leave the full crate by their table.

‘Ya coodna dae that today like' one of them mused. ‘Why – has the Rex been closed?' I asked. More laughter – can you see why this is funny?

   It was in Newcastle, back in the late sixties, that I first began to truly appreciate the sheer variety of male codes in existence and the nobility of soul that often accompanied such codes, like an invisible angelic presence. I was once in a bar at the foot of Westgate Hill, where I lived, having a pie and a pint with some guys before we all went to watch Newcastle United (football team) get murdered by Sunderland (football team). I was very down, and eventually a kindly Geordie at our table asked me, on behalf of the others, what was wrong. What was wrong was, the night before I'd been to see Derek and the Dominoes at the legendary Mayfair Ballroom in Newcastle with my girlfriend. In the middle of the band's set, a girl who worked in a bookshop I frequented came past and said ‘hello' in a completely harmless and non-sexy way. Sadly, my girlfriend decided to read something into this and threw a glass of whisky and coke in my eyes. This is a painful experience – stop reading right now, go and get yourself a whisky and coke and throw it in your eyes, just to get a better sense of this passage of narrative. Whilst I was writhing in agony, the bookish girl, infuriated in a Geordie-girl-kind-of-way, smacked my girlfriend in the mouth, nearly knocking her out cold. I couldn't see this, but all around me I could hear male and female voices shouting ‘fuckin bahstads' while Eric Clapton shouted ‘LAY-LAAAA!!!' with Metal Box press intensity. Needless to say, we were not on speaking terms the next day, and I started to relate my sadness about all of this to my concerned Geordie tablemates.

   As soon as it became clear to them that I was about to talk about the opposite gender, al hell broke loose.

‘Na na na man – wa no heea ta talk aboot wiimin right? – if ya want ta talk aboot wimmin fuck off somewhaur else like, or better still, get some moa drinks in an' we'll faget al aboot this shite'. Wild but firm agreement all round – I'd clearly transgressed – they'd made allowance for the fact that I simply didn't appreciate the no-talking-about-women code, but it was my first and last warning about such disgraceful behaviour. (Cultural tip for those who may be tempted to visit Newcastle and order their famous beer in a pub – do NOT ask for a ‘Newcie Brown' – nobody says that, ask for ‘a broon ale'). I really warmed to this no-women-talk code - having heard the dismal shit men do talk about women when they get together, the notion that you don't talk about them AT ALL struck me as being intensely honourable (and also very relaxing…). It's also unique in my experience. Liverpudlians come close to it, but even they will tolerate talk-about-women, albeit with discomfort, smoking and gazing out of the bar window with a distracted glazed look until it's all over and conversation can return to how shit Manchester United fans are – ‘they can never just lose on the day – there's always got to be a stupid reason why they WOULD have won, but didn't'…It was to be another 30 years until I came across men in groups who deliberately didn't talk about women, and that was under the aegis (shield of Zeus) of the phenomenal American thinkers Robert Bly and James Hillman who ENFORCED such behaviour in meetings of men, one of the reasons being to illustrate the poverty of men's thinking when stripped of this touchstone subject.    

   This past December, when I played in Newcastle with Damien Jurado, the next day I had lunch in a Chinese café on the corner of the wonderfully named Penkle Street. Two Geordie blokes were at another table and one of them took a call on his mobile phone. This is a transcript of his end of the conversation, accurate within one or two words:

‘Aye aye aye aye aye – aye?, oh aye-aye-aye – AYE! – aye aye, no – aye aye…..aye – ah told ‘im from day one that the kid's heid's full o' shite – anyway, ah'll see ya amorra night Kev' – aye – aye, oh aye – bye now'.

   On leaving the Chinese café I crossed over into Westgate Hill to have a look at the pub I mentioned earlier – it was of course, still there, but I didn't go in. Outside it, two teenage lads who couldn't play guitar were playing guitar, sitting on the bitterly cold pavement, strumming madly and with great joy, while their less-than-convinced mate looked around uncomfortably. I walked through the city to Grainger Street Market, seeing some sights of human desolation too sad to speak of – William Blake's ‘marks of weakness, marks of woe'.

   Connected to this beautiful market is a huge bar called The Black Garter, of which I may have written on other occasions. I stood at the crowded bar watching the unending tumult of to and fro – the bar manager was a sulky Cockney kid who eventually came over to where I was standing to try and sort out a dispute that had developed right next to me. An old fairly smashed farmer type Geordie geezer had been served a pint of lager called Kronenbourg by a disinterested blonde teenage girl. He was complaining that his lager was in fact another kind of lager called Stella Artois.

‘I gave ya Kronenbourg from here' said the lass, patting the Kronenbourg beer tap.

‘It might ha' come oot the Kronenbourg tap, but it's Stella an' ah divven't want Stella' explained the geezer.

‘Just a minute' said the lass and went and brought round Cockney kid.

‘Woss problem ma'e' asked Cockney kid, not making eye contact.

‘He asked for Kronenbourg – ah gave ‘im Kronenbourg' said the lass before geezer could start.

Wo' you wan'?' asked Cockney kid.

‘Ah want Kronenbourg, but this isna Kronenbourg – it's Stella'

‘I' come aht the Kronenbourg tap – it's Kronenbourg' said Cockney kid – ‘you wan' Kronenbourg, not Stella, yeah? – or do ya wan' Stella?

‘I WANT Kronenbourg, but ah've GOT Stella!!' said the geezer, beginning to fray badly.

‘Am I missing somefink here?' asked Cockney kid of us all, implying that the farmer geezer was a victim of CJD human variant.

‘Ya lost up yer own arse' said farmer boy unhelpfully. It was time for the fabled Leven interjection - amusing as this was, it was going nowhere, and Cockney kid was clearly troubled by the notion that he may have became lost up his own rectum.

I turned into the bar and the conversation with what I considered to be witness authority – other Geordie geezers craned in carefully, pleased to see a development - participation mystique was established and Cockney kid tried to avoid my presence like Saddam Hussein confronted by a noose.

‘What he means is, Stella is coming out of the Kronenbourg tap, for whatever reason, and he doesn't want Stella – it doesn't agree with a lot of people – as you know, being in the trade, it's nickname is ‘Wifebeater' and it may not be his cup of tea. I'll tell you what – I'll taste it and see if he's right – Stella's a lot sweeter that Kronenbourg, with a distinctive artificial honeyed aftertaste'. I'd made this up, but the idea that these beers had ANY characteristics that separated them on the refined palate had electrified the assembled company, and Cockney kid felt sullenly obliged to allow me to referee – especially as everyone by now implicitly understood that Cockney kid knew perfectly well what was wrong.

Word had wordlessly spread throughout our end of this wildly snaking bar that something was up, a kind of nicotine hush had fallen and although almost nobody knew what the hell was really going on, that didn't seem to matter.

   However, Farmer boy was initially reluctant to surrender the glass of lager to me – he hadn't entirely followed what was happening, and I could see him thinking that, once handed over, his power in the dispute may be fatally compromised, and, even worse, I might say it was KRONENBOURG!

‘Give ‘im ya beea man' chirped a small bloke wearing a battered green trilby and holding a racing paper. Farmer boy handed it over as if it was a landmine – I looked at the colour as if this was all I actually needed to do, then took a sip, followed by a glug. Total silence now – even the presenters on the TV football programme were watching – ‘and we're going over live to The Black Garter in Newcastle Upon Tyne where the referee, wor Jackie Leven, is about to adjudicate in the Kronenbourg/Stella dispute that's been bedevilling the bar for the last seven minutes' whispered Jeff of Sky Sports.

I proffered the glass to Cockney kid – ‘Well, he's right, it's definitely Stella – check it yourself if you need to – if you're a lager drinker yourself, you'll know immediately'.

Cockney kid had decided in the intervening seconds to be equal to the unravelling scenario – ‘No, your word's good enough for me mate – I'm sorry sir' he said turning to Farmer boy, ‘I didn't catch on to what you were saying to me – I'll go and change the barrel and get you a Kronie straight away if you'll bear with me'.

‘Aye, all right kidder' said Farmer boy in warm forgiving tones, and a whoosh of thrilled conversation consumed the bar – we were all bigger men for it – the stranger had no axe to grind but wished only to facilitate, the barmaid had served the drink in good if uncomprehending faith, the bar manager, previously and correctly viewed with suspicion, if not drunken disdain by the cast, had faced up to his responsibility for the chicanery and agreed to put it right with impressive dignity, and, most important of all, Farmer boy had not only stood up for his rights, but had then brought the wicked-but-now-repentant landlord back into the human fold when the moment came, and had done so in a manner which can only be described as archetypal within the Geordie way of seeing.          

   I could feel Geordie types in the immediate vicinity keening to talk to me, but failing to think of an appropriate way in. I unfurled a copy of the Independent newspaper that had been under my arm and turned to the sports page on the back. There was a picture at the top of the page of the mentally unstable manager of Chelsea Football Club, Jose Mourinho, pointing his fingers to his temple as if they were a gun whilst screaming, his mouth foam-flecked, at a linesman, who was ignoring him.

‘Fuckin Mourinho – he wants to try joining the human race' I said, turning to three young builders standing next to a fruit machine and showing them the picture.

‘Aye man, but he canna, ‘cos he's lost up his own arse' replied one of them – ‘he's like a bairn – he'll get the sack one day, an' aye, he'll have a load a money, but he'll have nowhere to go in the world'…

jl