THE DEEP POOL - SEPTEMBER 2004

Bere Regis ( Jackie's gig on Thursday 9/9/04 - Ed ) is of course, close to Poole in Dorset, so i've been reflecting further on my good friend, the late Nick Whiffen, of whom i wrote last month, and more generally, of my time(s) living in that part of the world. It continues to haunt me, and i yearn for it, but i now can't tell if the yearning is just The Yearning, and i happen to have placed it on this corner of Dorset, or what....maybe it's because it's where i first found something resembling peace when i emerged from the maelstrom of living dangerously in the North whilst being in stormy and doomed relationships ('it was a dark and stormy relationship as Jackie left the public house, replete with 8 pints of rough farmhouse cider, and swayed back to his own little farmhouse on his old brown bicycle, past swishing cornfields, the sun embering scarlet in the west, the river murmuring secretively to itself under the ancient bridge which he misjudged badly - clanging the front wheel against the parapet, and managing to fall with a heavy 'oof' but without injury or indeed, even pain.

Lying there on his back, sensing that there was no approaching car, he saw the full yellow moon seeping across the slumbering village of Sturminster Marshall, and for the first time in a long long time, heard himself think 'it's nearly good to be almost alive'....

Later, standing by a gate into the cornfield that lead up to the overgrown hill fort of Badbury Rings, the full moon in total mystery mode, he had a long unsteady slash and noticed that he really did not want to go to Madrid the next day on a promo tour for his album 'Control', but wished to walk through wood and field to the small town of Wimborne Minster, buy some fruit and vegetables, then return home, stopping off at The Vine at Pamphill,( still to this day one of the most atmospheric and little known pubs of England), and there have a fruit wine and play a couple of games of draughts outside with one of the old lads of the hamlet.')

Well, it was a long time ago, but it was my first experience in most important ways of the Yeatsian sense of 'and i shall find some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow', and to get back to where i was with this, at Bere Regis i shall be playing brand new songs and songs i wrote way back then when you could still buy a kid for two farthings and threepences were gold, featuring a portcullis and lots of edges, and you could still easily buy soft golden Morrocan dope that was gently hallucinatory, instead of all the black shit you get today that just puts you in a coma and makes your ears sweat (boy i'm really getting into this remembering lark - it comes from hanging around with my ancient mum in pubs on the coast, listening to her endless lovely tales of courtship with my dad on the banks of the River Wey, them walking arm in arm along the riverpath on blazing hot late afternoons from one pub to another - the songs of those times, and the songs of all our times).

Also, and i may have said this before, it may help you to think of this time of year in the Chinese way - that is, for them there are 5 seasons, not 4, and we have just entered the short but beautiful season which comprises September and early October, before we enter Autumn. This is a lovely way to think, because it helps deal with the blues of Summer ending and THE NIGHTS FAIR DRAWING IN as we say in Caledonia. As as John Martyn told us - Bless The Weather.

Ah!, now i'm remembering living in a farmhouse in the same part of Dorset with Doll By Doll man Joe Shaw. The farmhouse was called Rushcombe Farm, and one year Joe decided to make some beer with strong grass as an additive. He called it Rushcombe Ale, and on the labels it said 'Wait till the Rushcombes'. At first it was popular with local 'heads' (now forgotten slang of the time, meaning geezers with long hair, opinions that nearly worked, and a waistcoat that was given to them as part of a dope deal by a roadie with the Edgar Broughton Band), but it soon became clear that the rush not only came, but lingered for a ferociously and unfeasibly long time. so that by the time you inexorably had to re-enter the world of 'straights' for whatever reason, you were still far far too out of it to string together those all-important language structures that made ordinary people think you were okay - like 'hello'.
I of course had no such restraints and spent the whole Summer completely 'off my pram' (that's an expression that Neil Kinnock made up on the spur of the moment in an interview, then foolishly insisted was common parlance in his part of Wales - the media immediately went there and to their delight could find nobody at all saying 'off his pram').
This period of psychic festivity came to a horrible and sudden end when i was suddenly required to go to Spain and support Electric Light Orchestra on tour - a pretty serious gig at this time for a solo artist still off his pram on Rushcombe ale. The tales i could tell from this tour are sadly not fodder for the internet - more of a post-gig curry sort of situation as long as i'm totally convinced that nobody is taping me.

I worked real hard and had tremendous fun in August - we recorded my show with Ian Rankin, Michael Cosgrave and Deborah Greenwood in Edinburgh - to my mind the show was just fabulous, and a great guy called Jon Moon made a terrific recording of it. That night we stayed with Ian and his family at Rankin Towers and in the morning Ian made me a black pudding roll which was perfection - a soft white roll, twa bits ae Scottish black pudding (even the white bits are black - sounds like a Tremeloes song) and a braw big mug i' strong tea - we know how tae live!
I've just returned from recording in Wales - new songs for the double album that Ian and me will release in January, one which i really rate in particular called The Haunting Of John Rebus.

Also enjoyed playing Cropredy a lot - it was pissing down when we (me and Cosgrave) started, but the crowd were completely unfazed - i got drunk with Harry Farmer, my beloved agent, and met lots of wise old dogs - no, i do mean dogs.

I saw Lone Pigeon on before me at Green Man Festival - he was supremely good and very funny - a fellow Fifer - Git of the year so far was the soundman at Green Man who managed to alienate me for no reason whatsoever other than there is a breed of soundpersons whose idea of fun seems to be pissing artists off just before they play a festival, when you're already, shall we say, a little tense. I understand that they probably have to take loads of shit from twatty young bands with more 'attitude' (dread word) than brains, but hey, i'm a lovable old Scotsman who has to go for a walk to calm down, rather than seethe through the crowd and kick your fucking head in...

So, having had a grand old creative time of it recently, i'm going to spend most of September sorting out ma hoose. We've had walls plastered and floors sanded and now it's my turn to do the rest, including smashing the yellow tiles off the downstairs bog wall with a lump hammer - i'm a funny bloke - i love ironing 'cos it's so therapeutic, and i tend to write well when i'm doing straightforward sweaty jobs - hell, i even have my own drain rods - how many of you can say that - and i'm not afraid to use them!

But you've got be careful with this hard-work-as-therapy stuff: there's a fine Ray Bradbury story called The Scythe, in his book The October Country in which a man goes out to scythe his field (have i mentioned this in an earlier POOL? - i really should check what i've already written - 'sawright Jackie - you 'aven't . Ed ), and he notices that all the heads of wheat have the faces and personalities of everyone he has met in his life, and they are begging not to be scythed. I won't spoil the end. It can be like that when you're working with walls and floors - your sense of sight becomes like a Mark Rothko painting - you could see beyond if it wasn't for this hideous damned beautiful block of godless colour which says 'no passage beyond this point until you explain that terrible thing you said or did on this and that occasion - yes, there's been a few of them, has there not?, now you have TIME to think about it, and there's NO time like the present', or as my teacher said 'you don't find time boy, you MAKE it'.

So you're on your knees, sweating, with a hammer in your hand, and in the good whorl of wood, stories come through, with Max Ernst titles (little tables around the earth/teenage lightning/fiance of the wind) - you could never write these stories, but you deny your place in them at your greatest peril, and in the background Roland Kirk is playing 'Babehips', and it's worth remembering - you've got till October to sort this out, and THE NIGHTS ARE FAIR DRAWING IN...

jl