Odd One Out: Hasty Conclusion

Oh, heck! If I carry on like this, with such a slow reveal, then it'll take until the end of next week! And I haven't got a lot of time, so...

3. True. But Keith Emerson never needed to worry. This was in the mid-1990s; a local band called Spitfire McGuire, quite big in North Notts for, well, a few months; had to quit 'cos I was finding it hard to get up for work on Monday mornings...

4. True. Durham Uni. Mid-1970s. Final year. Final day of final year. Traditional end of year show by non-returning undergraduates, soon to be graduates. Satirical verses read by yours truly on shiny toilet roll which unrolled more and more rapidly with each scabrous stanza...

5. True. Difficult now to recapture my state of mind at the time... But it's been lightly documented already on this blog...

6. True. The airport at Palma, Majorca, in the mid-1990s. The Ryanair queue. Surprisingly, Helen Mirren and Taylor Hackford, her film director partner and soon-to-be husband, were travelling bucket-shop. We recognized them. No one else did. Hackford scowled many times in our direction. Just leave us alone! Keep your eyes elsewhere! Mmm, my eyes may have strayed elsewhere, but the tips of my fingers evidently did not...

7. True. Publishing sales conference, Linda Barker, celebrity author, etc, etc.

8. True. Everyone seems to have passed their driving test 1st time round here... Course it was easier back then - when there was no written test...

9. FALSE!!! To those who thought otherwise... How could you? I mean, who do you think I am!!! Besides, my wife reads this rubbish. And she's the only one (the only wife, I mean...)

10. True. It's publishing again, celebrity author Michael Winner invites us to his posh house, champagne and another champagne (but not a 3rd, he's not that generous)... yawn... yawn...

11. True. Frankie Howerd. Pebble Mill At One. The BBC studios. I'm a shy and callow youth, alone with Frankie in his dressing room. Now, help me dear, shall I wear the pink shirt or the purple one? What a decision? I ask you? I help him choose. I couldn't help noticing that both shirt collars are dirty.

12. True. A CAMRA Real Ale 'Conference' at Aston University (I kid you not) in the 1970s. No one else from the book distributors would go - they were all ill or having babies or otherwise engaged, funnily enough - so it was left to me, the shy and callow greenhorn recruit. Luckily the audience was sparse, and mainly worse for wear. And there were some large, real-ale ladies there with suckling infants - honest! Fair put me off my regurgitated statistics.

Julie Driscoll: This Wheel's On Fire

Odd One Out: Not The Sunken Box/Drunken Boat

2. Shamefully true. OK, so let's set the scene. It's the early 70s. In Frankfurt-am-Main, West Germany. At a little progressive-jazz club called Sinkkasten on the corner of Mainstrasse. Steps lead steeply down to a smoky cavern with a low, vaulted roof. There's a small stage at one end, a bar stretching down the side, and lots of circular tables crammed into the remaining space. The tables are crowded with huge, foaming jugs of lager. Young people are packed in everywhere - sitting round the tables and cross-legged on the floor, leaning against the bar. There's the sweet, resinous reek of cannabis in the air.

On stage is the virtuosic, free-jazz pianist Keith Tippett and his wife Julie Driscoll. (I think she was playing percussion.) There may have been 1 or 2 other musicians with them - I can't recall. (Do you remember Julie's haunting, psychedelic version of Dylan's This Wheel's On Fire?) In the interval I chat to them at the bar. At some point in the 2nd half a girl from the audience - tall, beautiful, stoned - walks gracefully and purposively onto the stage and embraces Keith. It's a magical moment. A moment, we tell each other, we'll remember for ever. We? Well, that's me, my mate Nigel, his mate Chowcat, and Dodo and Fido and others we'd met just minutes or hours before.

The rest of the evening is patchy, unclear, evanescent in my memory. I know I looked half-heartedly for Nigel - who went missing towards midnight. (The cleaners found him comatose in the toilets the next morning.) And I woke up on a bench next to a tram stop - wallet thankfully intact but clothes in disarray and fake army great-coat missing - just as the Frankfurt bankers and equity traders, drug dealers and prostitutes were about to begin their daily business...

Odd One Out: Not Kenneth Williams

Well, it's time to reveal all...

1. True. I used to work in publishing, and occasionally had to shepherd round celebrity authors on publicity tours. The publisher I was working for at the time, J. M. Dent, had published 3 witty, autobiographical books by Kenneth Williams - Acid Drops, Back Drops and Just Williams, all bestsellers - and he was much in demand for bookshop signings, and radio and TV appearances.

One particular morning I had to meet him and Liz Newlands, Dent's publicity director, at the Grand Hotel in Birmingham and take him to BRMB Radio and the BBC Pebble Mill studios for interviews, then on to Hudson's bookshop in the city centre for a book signing. Before we left, we had coffee in the lounge and attempted The Times crossword - which I believe Williams did regularly.

Whenever I met him - which I did several times - I was struck by what a lonely and neurotic figure he was. Before a group of people, in front of an audience, he would effortlessly turn on the charm and put on his act, captivating us all with his stock repertoire of anecdotes and funny voices. But one-to-one he could seem rather serious and depressed (like a lot of comedians). I think Williams saw himself as much more than just a comic, an entertainer and a funny man. He was quite erudite and well read, and had intellectual pretensions. Though how comfortable he would have felt amongst a group of high-minded, academic intellectuals I'm not sure.

Whenever he saw me I always felt he was mildly disappointed, as really he only had eyes for Ernie, a muscular, swarthy Gibraltarian publisher's rep from the south-east. He overdosed on barbiturates on 15 April 1988. His diaries later revealed a conflicted and self-tormenting character, mulling on feelings of underachievement, and struggling to reconcile Christianity with his own homosexuality.

Odd One Out

Entertained and inspired by Rachel Fox's and Dominic Rivron's recent blogofrolics, I thought I'd risk 3 being too much of a crowd and jump on the bandwagon myself. The game is this: guess which one of the following statements about myself is untrue. Go on, have a go! It's obvious! Isn't it?

1. I once helped Kenneth Williams do The Times crossword.

2. Once I woke up half-clothed on a street bench in the middle of the Frankfurt morning rush hour without any clear recollection of how I'd got there.

3. I used to be a keyboard player in a rock and roll band.

4. Totally inebriated, I've read a self-penned poem written on a shiny-paper toilet roll in front of various eminent university lecturers, professors and academics.

5. I had a complete blog-breakdown for several weeks when I imagined all the blogs I was reading held secret, malign messages.

6. I once touched the hairs on the back of Helen Mirren's neck.

7. I once bored Linda Barker half to death by telling her in minute detail how I'd decorated my kids' bedrooms.

8. I passed my driving test first time.

9. I have another wife in South America.

10. I once accepted Michael Winner's offer of another glass of champagne.

11. I have helped Frankie Howerd get dressed.

12. On one occasion I had to give a talk about Book Distribution without notes and without knowing anything at all about the subject in a lecture theatre full of drunk people and breastfeeding women.

Sometimes I think this blogging thing brings out the worst in us... ;)

Ben Hope

The next day I left my tent pitched at Durness and took the coast road south-east to Loch Eriboll. The road - often single-track with passing places - wound round this magnificent loch to a river bridge. Just beyond the bridge a much narrower road headed south by the side of Loch Hope. At the end of the loch the mountains closed in. I parked my car in a small parking place in the glen of Strath More, put on my boots, adjusted my walking poles and set off up the steep western flank of Ben Hope, the most northerly Munro in Scotland.

On this recent Scottish trip my vague plan had been: to explore Scotland's western and northern coastline - perhaps visiting an island or two - and to climb three of Scotland's Munros, the most southerly, the most northerly and the highest. I'd achieved most of these things. I'd travelled the coast, crossed to the islands of Harris and Lewis, and summited on Ben Nevis, the tallest peak in the British Isles. I hadn't climbed Ben Lomond, the most southerly Munro, because of torrential rain; I didn't fancy such a hard slog in the wet. So I was especially keen to make it to the top of Ben Hope, the highest point in the north. I was in luck, for the weather was fine.

I tracked a burn up the mountainside - past tumbling waterfalls and rocky platforms to ever lovelier heights - and half-way up met a toad which obligingly posed for a quick photo...

I was pleased my fitness levels had increased over the weeks, and I gained the top without too much difficulty - keeping up with a scattering of other hill walkers much younger than myself! From here the views were quite spectacular...

The Sky At Durness

After the delights of Sheigra and Sandwood I followed the broad, bare sweep of a glacial valley for several miles to the Kyle of Durness. The mountains of Foinavon and Arkle towered majestically in the east. I wanted to catch the last ferry of the day across the shallow waters of the Kyle to the Cape Wrath peninsula - but it had been cancelled. So I carried on a further few miles and pitched on the cliff-top campsite at Durness. This site overlooks a perfect family beach - of rock stacks, rockpools, silver sand and pristine cleanliness.

I spent much of the evening gazing up at the sky. Black and thunderous clouds raced from south-east to north-west - but, miraculously, the downpour never happened. A purple mantle hung over shifting layers of black, grey, white, pink and blue. A dying sun, low on the western horizon, bathed all in gold. It shone like a laser beam of piercing light, and every object - every leaf, rock, stone, street light, tent pole and campervan - stood out in ultra-defined clarity for a few moments. Then it was gone. I crawled backwards into my inner tent, manoeuvred jerkily into my sleeping bag, and zipped it up...

I Recently Turned 55. Practically A Third Of My Life Is Over.

Although I wasn't exactly overjoyed to receive The Little Book Of Wrinklies' Wit And Wisdom as one of my 55th birthday presents last Friday (considering myself, if not pubertal, then only just entering early middle age), some of its collected wisecracks, I found, were very funny...

I'm very pleased to be here. Let's face it, at my age I'm pleased to be anywhere. GEORGE BURNS

Age is a question of mind over matter. If you don't mind, age doesn't matter. SATCHEL PAIGE

The three ages of man: youth, middle age, and 'You're looking wonderful!' DORE SCHARY

Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven't committed. ANTHONY POWELL

You know you're getting old when you go on holiday and always pack a sweater. DENIS NORDEN

You know you're getting old when you're dashing through Marks and Spencer's, spot a pair of Dr Scholl's sandals, stop, and think, hmmm, they look comfy. VICTORIA WOOD

I don't feel old. In fact I don't feel anything until noon. Then it's time for my nap. BOB HOPE

Old is when your wife says, 'Let's go upstairs and make love,' and you answer, 'Honey, I can't do both.' RED BUTTONS

Mick Jagger told me the wrinkles on his face were laughter lines, but nothing is that funny. GEORGE MELLY

I don't eat health foods. At my age I need all the preservative I can get. GEORGE BURNS

You gotta stay in shape. My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was 60. She's 97 today and we don't know where the hell she is. ELLEN DEGENERES

By the time you're 80 years old you've learned everything. You only have to remember it. GEORGE BURNS

My grandmother is over 80 and still doesn't need glasses. Drinks straight out of the bottle. HENNY YOUNGMAN

Sometimes it's fun to sit in your garden and try to remember your dog's name. STEVE MARTIN

If I had my life over again, I'd make the same mistakes - only sooner. TALLULAH BANKHEAD

At age 20, we worry about what others think of us; at 40, we don't care what they think of us; at 60 we discover they haven't ben thinking of us at all. BOB HOPE

Your kids will forgive you someday. Of course, by then you'll be dead. SOPHIA PETRILLO

Always be nice to your children, because they are the ones who will choose your rest home. PHYLLIS DILLER

- To what do you attribute your long life? - To the fact that I haven't died yet. INTERVIEWER and SIR MALCOLM SERGENT

Now that I'm 78, I do tantric sex because it's very slow. My favourite position is called the plumber. You stay in all day, but nobody comes. JOHN MORTIMER

They say such lovely things about people at their funerals, it's a shame I'm going to miss mine by just a few days. BOB MONKHOUSE

I told my wife I want to be cremated. She's planning a barbecue. RODNEY DANGERFIELD

Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is the special occasion. AVRIL SLOE

Sandwood

Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another. JOHN MUIR

The beach at Sandwood Bay in the far north west of Scotland is one of the loveliest you might ever hope to find, and this is much to do with its remoteness. You can reach it only on foot. You park in a small car park just south of Sheigra - the tiny inlet where I'd wildcamped the night. (There's a small toilet block there, with facilities for a wash and brush up and for filling your water bottles.) Opposite the car park begins a path which takes you 4 and a half miles across grassy, heathery peatland, past a series of jewel-like lochs, to Sandwood Bay.

It was early in the morning and there were few other walkers about. After a couple of hours I crossed the machair and descended seawards through sand dunes bristling with marram grass. A few rag-tag groups of beachcampers had already struck camp and were heading back towards 'civilisation'. By the time I'd placed my first footsteps on the fine, silvery sand, only one solitary tent remained. I had the mile-long beach practically to myself.

I made for an outlying platform of low rocks half-way between the bay's twin headlands (see pic), then perched on one of the rocks and scanned around with my binoculars. Oystercatchers probed for cockles and clams in the wet sand of the shoreline. Gannets thronged the skies above, gliding on stiff, black-tipped wings and plunging for fish in the turquoise ocean. As they dived, their wings folded back in a streamlined 'W' pattern. Lone cormorants flapped over the bay in direct, purposeful flight; others hung out their wings to dry on a distant sea stack, looking for all the world like giant vampire bats. Twice I briefly glimpsed a large, black and white shape in the water. No sooner did I focus on it than it submerged again. Could this have been an orca, or killer whale? It's quite possible - there are regular sightings of killer, minke, humpback and other whales, not to mention basking sharks, dolphins and porpoises, round this part of the Scottish coast.

I turned away from the water's edge, and walked beyond the strandline and behind the dunes to sheltered Sandwood Loch. Here eight ringed plover scurried along the shingle rim of the loch, teasing out invertebrates among the stones. Every so often, after a spell of frenzied motion, they would freeze, their brown and white feathers and black and white heads (resembling highwayman's masks) merging perfectly with the pebbled background of the loch's foreshore. It was so tranquil here, so unspoilt, so utterly beautiful - I almost felt I'd reached the very gates of Paradise itself.

(Like Ben and Glen Nevis, the Sandwood Estate is owned and managed by the John Muir Trust. It's a very special, indeed unique place. There are two main types of rock: Torridonian Sandstone - formed around 600 million years ago - and Lewisian Gneiss, which is 2 - 3000 million years old. The pattern of rivers and lochs, cliffs and bays, humps and hollows tell a tale of moving glaciers and melting ice during the last Ice Age - a mere 10,000 years ago. The strip of grassland along the coast, known as the machair, supports an astonishing variety of plants and insects (200 kinds of wild flower have been recorded, including eight orchid varieties), and it's also home to such uncommon birds as the twite and the corncrake, and the increasingly rare skylark. Today, amongst the human inhabitants, crofting and fishing are continuing, important sources of employment, and the Estate has fifity-four working crofts.)

Beautiful In A New Way

Norman MacCaig had a friend in Inverkirkaig (where he spent his summers for many years) called Angus MacLeod. When his friend died, he wrote a moving sequence of poems in his memory - Poems For Angus.

A. K. MacLeod

I went to the landscape I love best
and the man who was its meaning and added to it
met me in Ullapool.

The beautiful landscape was under snow
and was beautiful in a new way.

Next morning the man who had greeted me
with the pleasure of pleasure
vomited blood
and died.

Crofters and fishermen and womenfolk, unable
to say any more, said,
'It's a grand day, it's a beautiful day.'

And I thought, 'Yes it is.'
And I thought of him lying there,
the dead centre of it all.

This affects me deeply. It's so bare and simple and understated. And what a truth MacCaig recognizes when he writes of the village people not knowing what to say - except to comment on the weather. I think we can all understand this. For words are inadequate in the face of death. Perhaps we can say more through some homely truism or short comment such as 'It's a grand day' - or through silence - than we ever could through some wordy lament or grandiloquent speech.

A Man In Assynt

Who owns this landscape?-/The millionaire who bought it or/the poacher staggering downhill in the early morning/with a deer on his back?/Who possesses this landscape?-/The man who bought it or/I who am possessed by it? NORMAN MACCAIG A Man In Assynt

Just north of Ullapool is the National Nature Reserve at Knochan Crag. I drove there on the Monday I returned from Lewis, and idled round the short nature trail which winds across this geologically famous cliff. Every now and then you stumble upon minimalist rock sculptures and fragments of Noman MacCaig's poetry set in stone. From the top of the crag you look out over an extensive, glaciated, grey-blue, grey-green world of scoured valleys, bare, rugged mountains and tiny lochans. This ancient, deserted landscape - it's the parish of Assynt in the Scottish region of west Sutherland - contains some of the oldest rocks to be found anywhere. And, in nearby caves, the bones of extinct bears, wolves and reindeer have been discovered.

Deserted. Or, more accurately, cleared. For, in 18th and 19th century Highland Scotland, a forced evacuation of the peasant population took place with even more devastating effect than that produced by the English Enclosure Acts (which I've written about before). Scottish landowners - in a bid to improve profitability by turning huge areas of land over to sheep farming - ran roughshod over the old, cottage-economy, crofting culture of the Highlands. Whole communities were broken up and scattered to lowland and coastal areas. Entire populations of hills and valleys emigrated westwards (which is why one meets so many people of Scottish descent in the Americas - from Canada to Patagonia). Poverty, economic forces, the process of clearance and other self-interested acts by a relatively small number of rich, private landowners - these are the reasons why this part of Scotland is so depopulated. Although some landowners were comparatively benign, and tried to create a sustainable life for their tenants under the new farming system, others were notoriously cruel - such as the 19th century Countess of Sutherland, who quite literally burned crofters out of their homes, and whose name, even today, is mentioned only in hushed, shocked tones by present-day Sutherlanders.

I continued through this vast, humbling landscape, in the shadow of the Ben More massif, to the castle of Ardvreck, romantically situated on the northern shore of Loch Assynt (see pic). I paused a while and explored its ruined tower. It's beautiful there, with the rocky fortress of Quinag to the north, and the distinctive peaks and ridges of Canisp and Suilven to the south. At the end of the glen is the little fishing village of Lochinver, and just to the south of Lochinver, on the road to Inverpolly Lodge and Altandhu, lies Inverkirkaig, at the head of Loch Kirkaig - a sheltered sea inlet into which the lively river Kirkaig flows. It was here the poet Norman MacCaig spent his summers fishing in the lochs and lochans, and no doubt honing his fine, pithy poems - full of verve and wit - as he cast his line.

I pressed on round the rocky, indented coast of Assynt, through Clachtoll, Clashnessie and Drumbeg - along a narrow track of infinite bends and endless ups-and-downs - until I finally joined the A894, which took me to Scourie and Laxford Bridge. When I reached Kinlochverbie it was already late afternoon. A minor road led from here northwards, past tiny, cliff-top settlements, to Sheigra, my day's destination. I drove slowly down a bumpy track and parked on the machair overlooking a small sandy beach and the sea. Here I wildcamped. It was very peaceful. There was only a handful of other tents dotted discretely about the bay. Later I climbed the bay's northern headland - its firm gneiss rock was comfortingly grippy - and gazed out over the wind-chopped Atlantic. Some climbers appeared from nowhere at my feet - they'd been bouldering and free climbing out of sight on the sea-cliffs below. It was the most wonderful place, and only 12 miles from Cape Wrath, the most north-westerly point on the British mainland...

(Richard Baker's picture of Ardvreck Castle is available from Wikipedia under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike License.)

Turnstone

I have a new blog. It's called TURNSTONE: Shards, Sweepings, Stealings, Sayings, Secrets. You can find it here.

I've been uncovering lots of quotations, ideas, thoughts, poems, jewels which there isn't room for on this blog. So I'm putting them on the new one. The posts will be short and frequently updated. Please take a look if you have a moment. I hope you enjoy and will revisit! Do tell me what you think, and feel free to comment.

The turnstone is a shoreline wading bird with black, white and chestnut plumage. As its name implies, it turns over stones - in a ceaseless quest for food.

Endless Renewal And Other Things

It's November 1st. Last night was the Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-een), marking the end of one year and the beginning of the next, a time for settling affairs in preparation for the period of darkness and renewal ahead according to The Book Of Wicca by Lucy Summers. On a supernatural level, it is the time when the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest and spirits, elementals, and divine beings are able to walk upon the earth unsummoned.

Outside the weather's wild and wet. But mild. I remember when Novembers used to be bone-chillingly cold with freezing fog. We'd huddle round the bonfire on November 5th in balaclavas and warm coats, looking forward to a feast of roast chestnuts and butter-drenched baked potatoes after the firework display.

Yes, its blustery but mild today, and the wind is whistling round our ornamental cherry tree, shaking leaves of deep burgundy onto the driveway (see pic). After a hard week's work it's nice to stay indoors, relax and curl up with a good book or two. In fact two books arrived from Amazon last week (I'm an Amazon addict. After resisting for months, I've caved in yet again.)

I think I have a treat in store with Rumi's Selected Poems (I've enjoyed so many poems by Rumi on various blogs that I just had to read more) and John Hillaby's Journey Through Britain - somewhat of a landmark book for me. It was one of the first books to inspire my walking adventures. I had a hardback copy once before - which I've either lost, sold or given away.

(Like most other things, books come and go. The whole of my professional life I've been involved with books - buying them, selling them, collecting them, lending them, donating them, just falling short of stealing them, Joe Orton-style. My collection of books is constantly changing. Changing as the seasons themselves. Changing like Samhain following Lughnasadh. Changing as the colours of a flowering cherry tree.)

Back to John Hillaby's Journey Through Britain. I want to reread it. I have half a notion to retrace his journey, then try and write a book about it. We all need these dreams and aspirations. Personally speaking, I find I have more and more dreams and aspirations the older I get. The less time I have, the more I seem to want and need to do. I no longer have the luxury of youth's carefree idleness and enviable procrastination.

I love life! And I want to live and experience and read about and thrill to more and more things with each passing year.