A funny thing happened on the way to the Forum

[Serial_Apologist]

Ah yes, just as Penge used to be in the Parish of Battersea.

A neighbour pronounces it to rhyme with the French word mange. Mange tout-à-fait, en effet.

Wonderful stories coming from Lat - all too true to be fictional.

[BBMmk2]

Am able to have a couple of pints of real ale!!

[Serial_Apologist]

Am able to have a couple of pints of real ale!!

Wonderful, BBM!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Am able to have a couple of pints of real ale!!

[Serial_Apologist]

A couple of nights ago I attended my first gig at L'Klektic, a club devoted to leftfield music situated in an artist's compound - studios and what-have-you - located on the edge of the grounds of Lambeth Palace, and overlooked by the railway tracks exiting from Waterloo station. Thanking me for being there among the four-strong audience, the saxophonist and leader of the quartet learned that I had made my way by bike from Crystal Palace. "Not far from where I live, in Brockley", she said. "Oh I don't live in broccoli", I replied, "I live on it!"

[Richard Tarleton]

I know the feeling - Mrs T and I attended a Belfast Festival concert by a Moroccan outfit called Jil Jilala back in the 1980s - I'll never forget their dismayed expressions as they leapt on only to see that the band outnumbered the audience. Needless to say we all clapped and shouted like maniacs, to try to make up for all those people who weren't there.....

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

This is story from 47 years ago, when I was in the 6th form at a boarding school. I know this all sounds very old-school-tie-ish, but there was a school tradition that of "Founders Day" lessons were cancelled and each year group was taken on an organised ramble;

It might generally be assumed that the leaders of a walk involving a large group of young people would be planned carefully, and perhaps inspected beforehand. When the persons in charge were very senior members of the school teaching staff, one of whom was an experienced teacher of geography, then good organisation could be virtually guaranteed.

The 1968 Founder’s Day Walk was in Derbyshire. Gerald Brown (Senior Master) and Barbara Waddington (Senior Mistress) were directing us. The route was from Ladybower Reservoir to Langsett on the A57. The proposed route was a high level walk, rather than the easier valley route. I had my Ordnance Survey one-inch Peak District map with me, and the route seemed clear enough, but nearly two hours of walking, the teachers stopped us. Clearly they were lost, having taken us in circle so that we were now in a place we had passed an hour before. Mr Brown took out his compass, and marched forward, saying, “This way!” Was this really the man who had taught us to map-read? After arriving at the same place for a third time, Gerald Brown announced that were going to make a “partial retreat” and walk up the valley. I presumed he meant we were going to walk to Langsett via the valley route. It seemed a sensible alternative. Tony Biggin (future composer) and I set off, with the others trailing behind. After a while, we lost sight of everyone else and arrived at the café in Langsett and sat down waiting for the rest of the party. Nearly an hour passed. We expressed our concern that someone might have had an accident, but we still expected someone to arrive shortly. The café owner overheard us and asked us if we were waiting for the school party. We told him we were, only to be told that they were not coming. They had phoned through to say they were returning to school on the coach. We had been abandoned. Two options remained open to us: we could hitch a lift home, or phone Tony’s father, who might be able to pick us up after finishing his day’s work in Barnsley. The café proprietor allowed us to use his phone to contact Mr Biggin, who was able to pick us up within an hour. We arrived back at school midway through the “bangers and mash” supper, having missed the main course. Roger Spinks (Master-on-duty) told us that Mr Brown wanted to see us at the end of the meal. Our meeting was not a happy experience. Mr Brown asked us why we had “run away”. We explained that we had a map and had gone to Langsett as planned and had waited patiently for over an hour for the rest to turn up.
“I told you we weren’t going to Langsett,” he bellowed. Neither of us could recollect having been given such an instruction, but we remained silent. He told us to report to the headmaster on the following morning.

The headmaster seemed more amused than angry when we went to his office before lessons on the next day. He was genuinely interested in knowing how we had found our way to the intended destination even though the organisers had not, though he did not phrase it in this way. He almost congratulated us, but instead simply welcomed our safe. I wondered whether the Senior Master and Mistress had been the ones who the headmaster had really told off.

[johncorrigan]

A couple of nights ago I attended my first gig at L'Klektic, a club devoted to leftfield music situated in an artist's compound - studios and what-have-you - located on the edge of the grounds of Lambeth Palace, and overlooked by the railway tracks exiting from Waterloo station. Thanking me for being there among the four-strong audience, the saxophonist and leader of the quartet learned that I had made my way by bike from Crystal Palace. "Not far from where I live, in Brockley", she said. "Oh I don't live in broccoli", I replied, "I live on it!"

You're not as green as you are cabbage-looking, S_A!

[Lat-Literal]

The temporary postman has a memory for faces. He had seen me on one of his first deliveries. Now there I was on a distant road returning from the shop with a bag of sugar. He was walking in the opposite direction. There was immediate recognition. "Hello mate" he said and there was a smile which said that he knew exactly where I lived too. Two days later, I stopped what I was doing on this forum and walked quickly towards his van in this road. He was at the back of the vehicle and its doors were open. The normal routine is that they look inside the van for twenty seconds and gather all the post that is for our bungalows. I stood beside him. He knew that I was there and I knew he knew. If he hadn't known he wouldn't have spent over one minute facing inwards. Nor would he have said nothing whatsoever for nothing whatsoever was precisely what he said. The delay was the consequence of him feeling a need to come up with some kind of excuse and him not being able to come up with any sort of excuse. I anticipated that when he did turn round there would be no surprise on his face about my being alongside him. Eventually he turned to prove my anticipation right. "Yeah, I know, I made a boo-boo yesterday, didn't I" he said.

"Don't worry" I replied "it is not a criticism. I just wanted you to be aware of the strange numbering. There is no bungalow with the number one". "Yeah I know" he said "I rang the doorbell and everything but they were out". That would be the neighbours. "The post got to me" I said. "It's alright". For a moment I wondered if I was responsible for the boo-boo. There was a thought of mentioning that I regularly prune the pyracantha so as to ensure that the number of my bungalow is visible. However, I couldn't recall whether I had pruned the pyracantha or if the number could be seen clearly from the road. The back of his vehicle was at an angle so where we were standing did not provide me with the opportunity to check. I didn't mention the pyracantha. "I will take any post you have for me now" I said helpfully. "That will save you climbing one extra set of steps". He handed me an envelope with a smile and a "there you go mate". Any irritated expression on my face which might easily have been misinterpreted concerned an absence of the envelope I really wanted.

On the following day, it seemed appropriate not to walk over to the van. Consequently when I spotted it I waited until he was crossing the road. That enable me to type on the forum for 25 seconds longer than I would otherwise have done. I then left this forum and opened my door as a subtle reminder to him not to make another boo-boo. This seemed to be by far and away the kindest approach rather than to enter into any relevant conversation. I felt it was what any reasonable person in my situation would have done, whether an immediate neighbour or someone else who he said hello to on the road near the shop. As he walked up the steps with another envelope that was not the envelope I wanted, he smiled but the smile seemed slightly cooler. Perhaps it was my imagination for it was a day of Outer London smog. But the slight coolness was also in what he said. "There" and that was that. It wasn't the usual breeziness and I hoped that I had not upset him. But how could I adapt to the change in demeanour while ensuring future boo-boos were absent.

On the third day, it seemed sensible to wait a little longer. I would open the door once he had completed the journey up the steps and just as he was about to place any important envelope in the letterbox. This would enable me to glance surreptitiously at the number on that envelope while saying hello to him and smiling unassumingly. But he appeared somewhat startled. That wasn't what I had wanted at all. I was just thankful he didn't stumble inadvertently into any parts of the pyracantha that might or might not need pruning. Once again, it wasn't the envelope I wanted but the envelope was for my address. Nothing was said and while he didn't exactly run back down the path he left the premises rapidly.

I must say I find this regrettable. The woman with fair hair when she is on makes many more boo-boos than the temporary postman has ever done. I have never dared to question her about it but others have tried. They tell me she says "did I, oh my god, I am doing that all the time". She then throws back her head and laughs loudly so that it is impossible for anyone to follow up on it. As for the man in glasses who disappears for a week whenever anyone has a CD rush or whatever, everyone in this road has told me that he has a condition which doesn't enable him to speak. I have investigated this matter over a considerable period of time and know for a fact that he can rise from no words to half a dozen with persistence. Actually his manner is cyclical so that once he is heading towards a pattern of four or five words, he lights a cigarette as soon as he leaves his van so that he can return naturally to zero words. I like him best as his regular disappearances are a sign that the envelopes I want are due to be be delivered whether or not they actually arrive.

[french frank]

I went to a recital - I think it was in Salzburg, in a small hall close to the Mirabell Gardens. I was attracted by the name of Daniel Purcell as one of the composers on the programme. It was a small ensemble and an audience about the same size, maybe ten or twelve, scattered sparsely over the front few rows. The applause was muted at the interval and the recital resumed with an audience of about five. I stayed in spite of the muttered defections because the kindness of my heart prevailed over the possible embarrassment of staying.

I know the feeling - Mrs T and I attended a Belfast Festival concert by a Moroccan outfit called Jil Jilala back in the 1980s - I'll never forget their dismayed expressions as they leapt on only to see that the band outnumbered the audience. Needless to say we all clapped and shouted like maniacs, to try to make up for all those people who weren't there.....

[Lat-Literal]

The aural logo for the television station E4 is a lot of noise with people banging and crashing. It is also arguments and images flashing on and off the screen without any prior warning. E4 has a visual logo too. It is a figure in the shape of the number four with the letter E written on its side. And it likes to walk accompanied by party people along a road to the vague sound of squelching. That the visual logo has a face is not wholly unsurprising. I suppose its colour would ordinarily be described as a striking purple. In contrast, those with an interest in being accurate would probably describe it as damson. But what is most noticeable about it is the way it walks. The walk is jerky and wobbly yet strangely precise in the forward direction if not about its shoulders. While its presumably mechanical feet are an extension of its presumably mechanical body it looks as if it has something like ugg boots on. I mention the visual E4 logo only because I don't think it is supposed to be a cat. Oh and additionally because the cat across the road walks in a very similar way. The similarity is extraordinary but the paws of the cat are just like furry boots. While healthy, it needs a pedicure but not one that involves goldfish swimming around in a bowl.

The name of the cat is Ben. He used to have a brother called Bill but according to the local grapevine he scared him away and Bill never returned. Some think he was run over by a vehicle but that idle speculation has never been supported by any sort of evidence. Ben is not a pretty looking cat and his reason for living has never been to be perceived as comical. Nevertheless, he becomes fascinating and not without humour whenever he has a morning walk. I look above the computer screen and am mesmerized by his manner of movement. When it is combined with his characteristic jerkiness, his cautious approach to placing each paw down on the pavement turns him into a cartoon. Plonk, plonk, plonk go his paws, always steadily and without side-to-side wobble. Because the damson E4 figure has a wobble it enables it to be a little different from Ben. Specifically, with that wobble, the visual E4 logo is more puppet like. A puppet which has no head for business but enjoys going to a club without any need for words or other thoughts in its always upbeat mind.

I don't know who owns the visual E4 logo. What I do know is that Ben's owner is the driver of a train. He carries sixteen tins of cat food into his house at any time of the day or night. I know if there is going to be an arrival of cat food because LBC Radio is on loud in his car when he has been shopping with cat food in mind. Not so long ago, he had his arm in a sling below which were very visible cuts. They appeared to be along the entire length of his lower arm. He said that he had bent down to stroke a cat in an adjoining street and it had turned vicious. We accepted what he said not on the basis of belief but rather that Ben's owner is a very nice man. Sadly, I haven't seen either him or Ben for a few days. Apparently, Ben's owner is in hospital. He had a seizure while driving his train and he was on the local news station because of it. So too was information about two people who had lost their lives on the rail but fortunately those incidents were on the day before. As the hospital is a long way from here, I don't know what to do. He was so kind when my mother had a heart attack last year, visiting her in hospital and driving my father and me to her hospital by car. He even did a detour so that Dad could see the station from which he had been evacuated and the place where he and his friends came second in the 1950s to Des O'Connor under Brian Michie. It was in his car that Dad's condition began to be revealed.

My father became physically uncertain many years ago. However, it is only in the past few months that he has said "Febbi" instead of "February" and "Pelenope Keet" instead of "Penelope Keith" with the end of her first name pronounced as "nope". There was a brief moment when I wondered if his playing with words had gone too far. He had always insisted on calling the village of Detling "Delting". While that began as a joke, it subsequently became habitual so he believed that "Delting" was the correct pronunciation. To be told otherwise would make him irritable, he was only in his forties at that time and "Delting" was not the only example. All these years later, a similar situation arises with every other sentence. Initially it seemed disloyal and even unreal to wonder if it had become a medical condition. Slowly I realised that a condition is exactly what it has become. A friend whose father's condition began with a problem in sounding words advised that later there can be wandering. His Dad would leave the house in a "don't stop me" frame of mind. Subsequently he would be all at sea. Lacking direction, he became angry when others said that he needed helpful support. He was not for a direction of that kind or any kind.

In that light, what is felt to be needed is additional certainty. Radio news is the very opposite, especially when it is loud. So too are vehicles that are driven at break neck speed towards pets, images flashing rapidly on a television screen without any prior warning and on my father's more uncertain days the colour that is damson even if most people would call it purple or prupil. A similar range of phenomena has a more or less neutral effect. That range includes mobile letters with a face and also a number on the side, the question of whether a mechanical device could ever be described accurately as a puppet, films about the war especially when the sound quality isn't sound, how good people who are victims of life's injustices and running jokes about singers by Morecambe and Wise. On the positive side, I like to watch Ben as he makes his way towards the woman at the end of the road who wholly unnecessarily gives him regular fish. His pavement etiquette is remarkable. Plonk, plonk, plonk.....his paws walk along an imaginary line and such is his adherence to it he is more safety conscious than any human I know. On turning right at ninety degrees, he prepares to thank the woman who was recently found not knowing how or why she was in an industrial state near Crawley with hissing, snarling, spitting and back arching. She just throws down the bowl and sort of runs into her living room in case he then turns nasty.

Sometimes I wonder if Ben needs support from people who are not in need of support from other folk. It might only need to be an occasional uplifting as when my uncle just before his death was visited by Penelope Keith because she was the High Sheriff of Surrey. The cockney gardener lad and the true lady. The timing of her appointment could not have been better. Alternatively, Ben could join the rest of us walking as logos to the coolest of clubs, all cats of one sort or another with little interest in what is on television or any other screen. The first person I would choose to be a part of the gang would be Ben's owner but I don't know what it would be like to be in his shoes now. He is the same age as me. While I was tuning in and out of 4E he was one of the locals who never seemed to wobble in the wrong way. What has happened to him unnerves me as much as it saddens me.

[BBMmk2]

When I was in nursing, a few colleagues went over to Oz, and some have come over to visit in good old Blighty, and I was chatting to one via Messenger, and he be coming over in July/August time! Be great to see him again.

[Lat-Literal]

Part 1 of 4

I am not sure how my neck became cracked. It might have been two decades of computer use which modern medics describe as natural wear and tear. Alternatively it could have been the previous Government, small screen re-framing or the very long-term experience of being required to have neighbours. Very possibly, though, it was the bald man with tattoos and what first appeared to be a genuine cockney accent. The one who having divorced his lesbian wife had taken his four children regularly to church. He would show his children there how to ring its bells for a full one half of one hour, not that he would suggest that they should try to do so themselves. He would then run out of the building and hide in a hedge with the instruction to them that they should wait for the arrival of the angry church warden. His children would be required to run too at that point before he re-entered the building to answer the churchwarden's questions. "Have you seen any children running off?" Answer: "No but I heard them ringing the bells and isn't it terrible with kids these days, you can't trust em". Oddly, I first met the man on an afternoon when I had walked to Greggs trying to enter each church en route. I hadn't decided to be a parishioner. I had just been ill on account of seeing a doctor who became a certifiable sadist when she was "just having a bad day". Advice : never choose the first of the day's appointments. And never ever contact the service that is geared towards conciliation. It will exist only as an aggressive legal mechanism to justify the indefensible. And it will cause greater ill health.

The establishment was on a small parade of shops opposite a supermarket in the shabbier part of town, not that I dislike it. On opening the door, there was the sound of ringing to advise its part owner that someone had entered the building. Three tiny dogs yelped and ran out around the ankles onto the main road as a low volume Steve Wright emanated from a speaker. Then the dogs ran back in through beads that reminded me of how the entrance to Danny's flat was transformed when he acquired a Thai girlfriend. This, though, was not a place of any taxi driver with an alcohol problem who could try to get one into the Masons, not that one ever wanted it. Rather it was a step into the unknown. I doubt that I would have been there at all if the caramel doughnuts hadn't all been bought. It had also surprised me that the movers and shakers of places in need of greater attendances should consider anyone they didn't know as unequivocally a thief. However, the lock and key mentality is immediately explained when biographies of reverends are thoroughly read. It emerges that they were all previously in banking, the health service and pubic administration. Only one such place had been open and it was just before the parade of shops. I joined what turned out to be a group there for folk who find it enormously difficult to leave the house. The organisers spun a wooden spoon on a table to determine who should speak about what they had managed in the past fortnight. While it never pointed at me, it was interesting to hear about pub crawls in Brighton and cruises on the Panama Canal.

What did I expect? I am not entirely sure. It was possibly an individual in a white coat, probably female and medical looking, who while coolly reassuring on the day would not anticipate I would be paying for any treatment. That it was someone who appeared to have had a background in road building was a shock and it prompted a different sort of mixture of certainty and doubt. The limited but acceptable reception to my speech about muscular-skeletal matters as they had been aggravated by Britain plc was followed by a take it or leave it. Be there at 3.30pm the next day and "if you change your mind let me know well in advance because I don't like to be messed about by people". By the time I reached home I had decided against it. However, I went to bed knowing that I wasn't prepared for any argy-bargy in a fraught and no doubt argumentative telephone call. It was also very clear to me that I had no other options and the matter would not be satisfactorily addressed of itself. So there I was on the next day beyond the dogs and the bells and the beads and Steve Wright in the Afternoon on a couch below signed photographs of anyone but similar nonentities. Had the South London snooker player who skipped school to become a Champion and the woman who when jumping out of helicopters was known mostly for her rear of the year, among many others, only paid £35 for one half of one hour?

[Bryn]

?

[Lat-Literal]

Part 2 of 4

"I will do a deal with you". That was the phrase uttered by the twenty-something senior head of one part of the conciliation service. Intended late on that Friday afternoon to put an end to e-mails that couldn't be replied to with any accuracy, it had shaken me. Long after the process of her passing me on to a unit where people don't realize that they need serious help themselves, I pondered how everything now was a deal ahead of anything else. In private health, for want of a better description, that point is more explicit. However, it doesn't have to be said by either party because it is implicit in the undertow. The approach on the surface is often more friendly but it is accompanied with no obvious pretence that it is anything other than strictly business. Sensitivies can be greater there especially in the service provider. I was asked early on if I had wondered why there was no logo for a professional association on the shop sign. That hadn't actually crossed my mind at all. I was more taken by the assurance during a brief question and answer session that the problems were not only understood but that they could be rectified. Possibly to distract from appropriate thinking, the decision was taken to begin the treatment immediately. Additionally, I was told that if I were to experience any pain afterwards that was normal and even to be expected but there wouldn't be a repeat of it in all the weeks ahead of us.

Appearances can be deceptive. People who sound like they were born and bred on the Old Kent Road can turn out to have been raised in a fairly wealthy part of Surrey. While with all of the effing and blinding in every sentence one might think that they had been in a football gang in the seventies, they may have an utter disdain for all things football and rather acquired an early interest in organic medicines with genuine qualifications to match. Any solid evidence of that nature of pioneering subsequently discovered on the internet may not necessarily lead to the conclusion that they once landed a punch on Nick Cave so that he fell off the stage laughing. As for any thought that all those who work almost invisibly in the shabbier areas of town were always eking out a living, no, for some when they were millionaires had a mansion and chauffeurs and they were friends of Pete S.

Irrespective of any arm snapping on the ground floor, not to dwell upon all of the being pulled up from the ground and dropped down again, this wasn't a place of one mere room of business and a bit of domesticity as it is generally understood upstairs. It was a labyrinth with stairs leading on to places I was never permitted to see. And in that town, all manner of people would suddenly appear and then just as quickly disappear. The lad who raced down past the framed first edition Jamie Reids - yes - to show me a teenager on his mobile phone. "Do you like her?, he asked with a sort of innocent friendly awkwardness, "I've had her" and then smiling he was rapidly back up the long stairs again. All the twenty-something women, blonde haired, who might have easily been models had they not each had a baby on their arm. They visited in groups of six while the biker left glaring, the old fella on crutches stood chatting and the very old woman who could barely walk was helped by me to the door without expecting thanks. The gay man and the straight woman arrived to discuss sharing a flat there. In one room, legal potions were boxed having been placed in tiny glass cases. There were several new "wives" of the man, some of whom had girlfriends. And in this extraordinary place I first heard the word polyamory and had it explained with the very slight intention of receiving a look of shock. The man didn't get that look but rather a liberal shrug of the shoulders. We were getting on surprisingly well but my failure to be overly conservative on that matter may have led to the tailing off.