THE DEEP POOL --NOVEMBER 2006  

I walked round to the village square to buy the newspaper at 6 30 in the morning – for the first time this Autumn, deep frost covered the roofs of the ancient red houses and a turquoise and crimson dawn fell upon the market hall across the road. When I got back to the house I opened the kitchen doors to let the terriers out and a butterfly came waltzing in – further down the garden wall flowering currant was flowering.

   For the first time in a long time I noticed myself looking forward to Christmas, although not to hearing the horrible Slade Christmas song – I once spent Christmas in Nassau in the Bahamas, and even there, there was no escape from this terrible record: in fact I insisted that it be turned off when it started playing at Christmas lunch. The head waiter asked me why I wanted it turned off – I said I really hated the record, why else? – he looked at me as if I was telling him his daughter had a heroin problem, then turned away slowly with a resigned nod of the head, then said, half under his breath ‘Grouch'.

‘And DON'T call me names!' I said loudly enough to make the room turn and gawp – ‘hating this record does NOT make me Grouch!' There was an impossibly tall, good looking American basketball star and his wife at another table, and when the record was turned off, and he understood what the altercation was about, he turned to me and said ‘Right on man!' With this the room relaxed into a thrilled tension, if you see what I mean, and I received approving discreet American style smiles. Sadly, the next record on the loop was I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day which I also can't stand, but I didn't have the fortitude left to similarly deal with this, especially as the snowbird population of the room was head-bobbing gently along to the beat as they spooned warm lobster mayonnaise into their trembling, improbable dental work.

   The basketball star, whose name I kept being told but couldn't remember ever, something like Watford Christbike, turned out to be a real character, with a fearlessness that set him apart from others. One day down at the rum bar on the beach, a white American oldster took his photo. Watford turned to him and said with emphatic politeness – ‘Don't take my photo please – I'm on holiday too'.

‘Well you're no fun' sniffed the oldster, embarrassed to be singled out, but also implying that the guy was fair fame game. Watford ignored this and turned back to sipping his rum cocktail with his missus. The eejit oldster then took another photo, at which point Watford strode across the sand with the oldster retreating in horror. He wrenched the camera from the man and threw it with all force into the ocean. When I say all force, I'm talking trans-Olympian strength – for a minute the camera looked as if it might join all the airport lost luggage that forms the rings round Saturn, then, like trying to watch the flight of a golf ball on television it plopped silently into the sea in front of Miami. There was a smattering of careful applause from the beach crowd – not so much for the throw as a statement but for the sheer show of unadulterated power. Mutterings of approval too – I know nothing of American basketball, but I thought I heard someone saying ‘No wonder the Cincinnati Foreskins wouldn't let him go'.

‘I need to report this to someone!' said the oldster to the Caribbean bartender who had watched all this with an invisible smile.

‘Report it to me!' said the barman who reached down under his bar with brisk authority, then came back up with a pen and notepad – ‘tell me what happened while it's still clear in your head, then I'll take my report to the hotel manager'.

This rather threw the oldster – ‘well, you saw what happened – just write down what happened'.

‘I was serving drinks sir – I could sense a commotion, but I'm trained to stay out of people's affairs on the beach in case I'm accused of staring at half naked women'. Now the barman had become the centre of amused interest on the part of the bar crowd, about 40 well-oiled yank geezers who were heartily sick of staring at the surf, and the oldster was in danger of becoming a bit-part player in a greater drama. Watford had trudged off to the hotel swathed in towels without a look back – another day, another camera, and his departure had taken a lot of the sting out of the drama.

‘That was a very expensive camera, that was a terrible thing to do, and I think the police need to become involved' – with this the oldster turned away with a shaky flounce and followed Watford back to reception.

‘Oh sir!' the barman called after him – he looked back warily – ‘Merry Christmas!' The whole bar, including myself, instinctively raised our glasses to him. He turned away and spent the rest of his holiday by the pool.

   As I was saying, I find myself looking forward to Christmas – some elements of it have always cheered me, like shortbread tins. ‘Oh no, shortbread tins' people I'm with will say, steering me in another direction before I see them and get all blubby about the Scotty dogs and fireside scenes. There is a slightly curious shortbread tin in Marks and Spencers this year (or is it John Lewis? – musn't drink so much before looking at replacement toasters). This tin shows a picture of Kilchurn Castle at the east end of Loch Awe – a beautiful long loch on the way to Oban via Brander Pass. You would think it almost impossible to take a daft photo of this iconic castle, as iconic as are Castles Stalker and Leven, but this photo manages to have an electricity pylon and power lines dominating the background. For us aficionados of shortbread tins, this is just ridiculous – how can your heart sink into the timeless snowy soulfulness of such a scene with a fuckin pylon in the background? And I speak as an aficionado of pylons too – those of you who may be too aware for comfort of elements of my career, will know that in Doll By Doll (my old rock band) we had our own pylon-spotting club, with our own badges and everything – the most famous of which boasted a picture of the Pamphill Pylon (famous pylon just outside Wimborne in Dorset) with the legend ‘Let Pylons Be Pylons' written underneath. That's a play on words for English-not-first-language people – we have an expression in the UK, which is ‘let bygones be bygones', which means ‘yeah, I fucked up your life – so what?' – this may be of help to people in the Birmingham area too.

   Shortbread tins aside, I find myself reviewing the year – the good the bad the ugly etc – does everyone do this? – is it part of a universal programming, or is it just another thing that Des O' Connor started so long ago that it now seems like part of the very fabric of emotional intelligence? Perhaps we shall never know…

   Not for the first time since I moved to this village, my Person Of The Year is our local mystic drunkard, Kevin – the first person to make me feel welcome here, and a touchstone spirit in my life – in Summer we swap plums and fish – in Winter, vodka and pheasants – it seems to work. At the end of Summer I went into the Brewery Bar and got talking to Kevin, who had taken full advantage of the long hours of sun. Talk turned to soft fruit (as indeed it sometimes does in the Old Testament).

   ‘You likes greengages (kind of plum), don't ye Jack?' Kevin asked with a rabid twinkle in both eyes. I said yes I did. ‘Well guess what I had last night - I had greengage crumble (traditional UK pudding), but that's not all'…here Kevin indulged in a long dramatic pause – ‘I had greengage crumble with cream AND custard! – aaaHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAA!!!' As Kevin roared on with laughter at the memory of this gastronomic moment of triumph, he held my gaze and I could see down three centuries the kind of unadorned poetic merriment that can accompany the culmination of each season – yeah verily the gods and the goddesses can be heartless bastards, but it is still possible to outwit them on occasion and have a greengage crumble with cream AND custard. This, by the way, is not the same thing as over-ordering in an Indian restaurant…

   However, the year is significantly not yet over (bit of BBC-speak there) and I'm looking forward to my last shows. Where am I going? Oh yes – on November 17 th I'm at The Marine in Sidmouth. This charming pub belongs to a good old friend of mine called John Borrett, and he's put it in the book so we have an excuse to see each other again and have a laugh and a joke. The Marine is on the Esplanade in Sidmouth – a charming town without a supermarket on its outskirts, and with breathtaking views along the south coast of England. My parents took me there on holiday when I was about thirteen, and this remains a magical memory for me. It feels like a million years away now, but I still remember booking into our bed and breakfast on the esplanade, just along from The Marine, and crossing the street to sit on the beach in the warm evening air on my own between small wooden fishing boats. I don't know what was occurring to me at that point, but there is a sense of something organising deep down inside, in gently fading light.     

   Then I'm back at the Bein Inn for twa nichts, then Leicester, Leeds, Newcastle, Birmingham and London. How I love these big butch English cities. For me a small tour such as this is a true meditation and a privilege: the freezing pinched-faced teenage kids hustling to no avail through the streets in cheap denim jackets, Chinatowns just opening for lunch with that permanent air of subtle depression that somehow doesn't matter, students in railway stations dithering over what sandwich to buy, long taxi queues in shivering rush-hour sleet with not a taxi in sight, hotel rooms with a view of pigeon shit, four hour train journeys with no view because the windows are so dirty – I love it all, and so does my guitar.

   Then finally, Christmas Eve. Nothing left to do but hang up your stocking in the front room, douse the fire, and hope that when you come downstairs in the morning it will have been filled by Heather Mills McCartney.

jl