One of the good things that occurred in Gujurat

 

Global Schwarming

‘Dad, are the Himalayan glaciers melting?’ Dad, looked up from the recycling bins in surprise at his twelve year-old daughter’s question and the serious expression that accompanied it.
‘Er … I don’t know. What makes you ask?’ He was buying time as they both sorted and checked their respective bins - he the plastic and her the cans - during their routine environmentally friendly chore.
‘Well my teacher was telling us the other day that according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - they call that IPCC for short - that the Himalayan glaciers will all be gone by 2035.’ Shona paused before dropping the baked bean can into the green wheelie bin that stood at chest height before her concentrated features as she squinted into the early morning sun that reflected from the snow as it melted into a thin crust on the lawn of the families semi-detached house.
‘I imagine that your teacher knows what they are saying. I presume they research their facts carefully before they present them to their students, so I guess they are quite correct.’ Dad returned to removing the cellophane film from the packaging and stuffing it into the plastic bag looped around his wrist for the purpose.
‘Yeah, I thought so too, but it says in your paper today that that simply isn’t true,’ she looked for reassurance to her father who now paused and looked down at the pile of newspapers, mainly the Daily Express, that stood in a separate pile awaiting disposal at his feet ‘how can that be?’
‘Well, I would have to read the article before I could comment love, but not everything that’s printed in newspapers can be trusted you know.’ he averred, knowing full well that his propensity for that particular publication owed itself to his father’s preference and therefore a comfortable acquaintance with its editorial style rather than actual content.
‘It was on the news on the telly too. It seems that the United Nations report it was in wasn’t actually based on scientific evidence at all but came from an eight year-old news report.’ she continued confidently to report herself without ceasing from her can sorting.
‘Well, even the UN makes mistakes love. Be careful with those cans there, we don’t want any accidents sweetie.’ he glanced and marvelled at her dexterity and intellectual maturity.
‘Well I know, but how could they base such an important claim, that’s central to the climate change argument on a brief telephone conversation with a relatively unknown Indian scientist. Surely it was inevitable that it would be shown to be false?’ She dropped the can with a purposeful clang into the pile that now occupied the entire base of the wheelie bin.
‘Well, again, mistakes happen in large organisations love, what can I say?’ He knew only too well from his own position as an employee of the local authority how commonplace such ‘mistakes’ were.
‘Robin Davey says that climate change and global warming are all a load of government propaganda intended to manipulate the population into fear and to subjugate third world nations.’
‘Robin Davey says what?’ he shook his head to emphasise his surprise. ‘Who’s Robin Davey when he’s at home?’
‘Oh, this boy in our class. He reckons that Al Gore is making a fortune out of it all and he says that the wealthy governments and political parties are just cynically manipulating the discourse to raise taxes and keep China and India from outstripping them economically.’
‘Does he now? Blimey, where does he get stuff like that from?’ an old head on young shoulders normally had some parental input he mused silently to himself.
‘His mum and dad are into that counter-culture stuff, you know, ‘conspiracy theories,’ she used her now empty hands to draw quotation marks in the air as she spoke ‘and all that stuff. He thinks we’re all idiots. He’ll love this. He reckons recycling's a waste of time, that all this ends up in landfill dumps or transported to China where they just burn it anyway.’
‘Is that a fact? What evidence does he have for that then?’ He’d heard similar rumblings of discontent before and knew there was no simple answer he could offer.
‘He doesn’t usually have to give evidence, more create suspicion, though this’ll be meat and drink to him - well not meat, he’s a vegan, like his folks actually.’ She continued now with sorting the paper and cardboard from the pile that stood between them.
‘Do you think our doing this and turning off our electrical items from standby actually does make the slightest difference dad?’
‘Everything makes a difference love, you can’t let stuff like this compromise everything you believe in, just because of an error, however glaring it may look. You remember what we talked about with regard to peak-oil and sustainable power sources?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well that doesn’t change because of this. Whether or not the Himalayan glaciers will last another ten thousand years we’re running out of fossil fuels and they are the single biggest cause of conflict of modern times.’ He felt deflated by the need to repeat these simple truths that he maintained but continued as calmly and confidently as his slightly depressed mood allowed. ‘It may seem like a drop in the ocean, what we’re doing here, but it isn’t about counter-balancing what is happening in China love.’
‘Well that’s another thing that Robin Davey says.’
‘What is?’
He says what is the point in recycling when China is building one thousand new coal-fired power stations. He reckons we are just fooling ourselves by thinking that any efforts we make can alter anything. He also reckons that we are being arrogant to assume that man-made pollution can have such a serious affect on the world’s climate.’
‘Has he even read the scientific evidence?’ dad, now returning to his old bulwark was irritated by this young man’s regurgitation of the same old ostrich-like arguments.
‘I wouldn’t even dare to tell him that again after this dad.’ Shona looked equally disconsolate as she hesitated from her previously enthusiastic sorting of the family’s rubbish. Her dad, Brian sighed deeply and, resting both hands on the lip of the brown wheelie bin turned his head and looked at the earnest expression of concern that contorted her beautiful face.
‘It’s hard to argue with cynicism because the very first thing cynics do is to attack the arguer, and not the argument.’
‘Oh yeah, he’s very good at that, always undermining me when I speak up in class. He’s got this sneering ‘what-do-you-know’ attitude and always puts anyone down who doesn’t agree with him.’ She remembered bitterly how, when on the last occasion she had defended her joining an environmental group at the school, he had mocked her enthusiasm by calling her ‘Al Gore’s bitch’ and claimed that ‘There’s lots of green to be made by turning green’. He’d even accused her of supporting the Tories because of David Cameron’s relatively recent defection to environmentalism by the simple - and some may say cynical -acquisition of a mountain bike. She’d cried bitter tears as Robin taunted her by stating that he was ‘going home to burn some old tyres and plastic’ and she’d fled his sneering and mocking laughter as his friend, Kevin Thorpe taunted her by shouting ‘Having another rant love? What’s up, got your period again?’ They’d even emailed her a Youtube link in which Penn and Teller, the media hardened ‘disillusionists’ of American TV amused themselves and their audience with the gullibility of American recyclers. She wondered what she might be greeted with on Monday next when no doubt she’d be confronted by this latest ‘Catch-22’ of the environmental divide.
Returning to the house they washed their hands in depressed silence before settling down at the breakfast table where Shona desultorily searched the internet for some good news about the bad news.
‘What are you doing love?’ her mother enquired as she loaded the dishwasher.
‘I’m trying to find some positive argument for negative news.’ she replied, a little too testily for her mother’s liking who nevertheless hesitated to respond in kind.
‘Set the bar a little high there love.’ Mum’s know a lot about their daughters and she didn’t wish to press the detonate button that lies concealed behind every adolescent girls offhand remark.
‘Do you believe that the world is going to become uninhabitable unless our leaders can agree some formula, any formula, to reduce carbon emissions mum?’ It was a big question even by Shona’s standards and her mum had stepped into too many traps she had laid for her to shoot from the hip over this, her most obsessive and therefore dominant teenage preoccupation.
‘I believe that unless the human race changes its rationale from one of consumption to conservation that we are in for enormous difficulties and tremendous suffering.’ she diplomatically replied.
‘Hmph, and how are we going to achieve that!’ shot back Shona, testing her own argument by countering her mother’s.
‘With people like you.’ It was an ineluctable argument which Shona nevertheless proceeded to chase down.
‘And how exactly am I, a teenage girl whose schoolmates laugh at her, likely to be able to do that all on my own? It’s a bit like how are my friends in Greenpeace likely to be able to persuade the Chinese and Indian Governments that their people remaining poor is in the best interests of the rest of the world?’
‘By training yourself to adapt to a time, which will come, when everyone of us are subjected to regulation when the supply of fossil fuels, and therefore conventional power sources, are effectively exhausted.’ Her mother paused in reflection as she considered a world without labour-saving devices such as the one she was currently loading. ‘There are billions of people in the world who will never know what a washing machine is love and when the electricity is either too expensive or simply rationed it is them that you will be competing with for resources and it will be those who can adapt to that sort of existence who survive.’
‘That’s a pretty depressing outlook mum,’ she said glumly ‘How am I going to sell that argument to boys who are lashed to their X-boxes and girls who simply can’t go out without their makeup!’ She mimed the sort of girl who’s idea of environmentalism was a new ‘low-carbon’ footprint shopping mall or having to share a ride in a four-wheel drive people carrier.
‘Well you’re not, so I wouldn’t even try love.’ her mum’s matter-of-factness flying in the face of her own fundamentalism. ‘It’s what you do, not what you say. Education is a matter of what you need to learn to survive and prosper and there’s little if any point in fighting ignorance with clever words.’ Mary, who’d watched her husband and daughter’s fanaticism develop and confound itself many times on the blunt edge of resistance had always preferred what the Chinese referred to as ‘the third way’.
‘But I just don’t understand how intelligent boys like Robin Davey can deny the scientific evidence, even though some of it is flawed, and insist on rubbishing perfectly rational perspectives. It’s almost like they are determined that we are all going to die.’
‘Perhaps he’s a nihilist?’
‘A nihilist?’ She’d heard the word and now needed the meaning.
‘A nihilist is someone who chooses to believe in nothing as a way of remaining free from all other notions of ideological programming.’
‘Yeah, that sounds like Robin alright. But he’s so bright and is exactly the sort of person who could inspire other young people to change their ways.’
‘Not all leaders are intelligent people and not all intelligent people are capable of leadership. To lead you have to believe in the righteousness of an idea.’ She saw her daughter’s frustration and wanted to sustain her idealism but reinforce it with some pragmatism before she despaired from such negativity.
‘You know he’s even set up this website called ‘Global Schwarming’ and today there’s a link to an article in the Daily Express which says “CLIMATE CHANGE IS NATURAL: 100 REASONS WHY” It is soo depressing mum. I feel like giving up and agreeing with him that we’re all going to hell in a handcart. It’s just like we are fiddling whilst Rome burns, like that mad Roman emperor, what was his name?’
‘Oh, Nero. Yes, it does seem like that sometimes, but it is also healthy to consider both sides of any discourse dear.’ She closed the door on the dishwasher but hesitated to press the ‘on’ button, at least for the moment. ‘It is always much easier to oppose an argument, however logically based, and much easier to attack those who support it. In fact being a nihilist is the easiest thing of all, after all, how much effort is required to suspend belief? What these people conveniently overlook is that we are depleting the earth’s natural resources at such a profligate rate that we actually need three planet’s to sustain the current rate of consumption. Where exactly we are likely to find the other two-and-a-bit planets’ worth of resources from isn’t something any nihilist is likely to want to answer. If the population continues to grow at the present rate then it will be impossible to sustain life in its present form until the end of this century. Everyone with any imagination at all can see that. People are living longer and it is inevitable, even given the vapid arguments of those who deny the problem, that famine, drought and of course war will be the only way of controlling the competition for food, water and power.’
‘That’s a pretty bleak outlook mum. You’re really cheering me up here!’
‘Sorry love, but that’s exactly why it is important that people like you do believe in trying to change not only the way we think but most importantly the way we act. We need young people like you, tomorrow’s leaders, to begin the process of looking for a better set of values than simply consume, consume, consume until everything has been literally consumed!’ The motor on the dishwasher started its programme as Shona’s mum involuntarily pressed the ‘start programme’ mechanism as she made her final emphatic point.
‘You sound like one of those ‘envirogenicals’ as Rob Davey calls them mum,’ Shona smiled at her mum’s passion realising how much of it ran through her own bloodstream. Maybe I will start referring to him as a ‘environihilist’ and see how he likes that?’
‘I wouldn’t waste my breath love. Save your energy for those who want to be saved, not the ones who are content to drown, or burn.’ She smiled, relieved to see the spirit returning to her daughter’s eyes. She’d no wish to see her passion blunted by the scepticism of the boy in question, however ardent he was. She was just as concerned that her daughter didn’t become a hostile fanatic, using such loaded terms as ‘climate change denier’ as if anyone uncertain about what the future held were themselves some kind of latter-day heretic. She loathed the media’s polarisation of the debate which played with the earnest and derided the undecided in equal measure, undermining as it did the level ground of reasoned discussion and intelligent argument, and saw all too clearly the fecund appeal of counter-culture to young minds as febrile but narcissistic as her daughter’s tormentor.
‘Maybe I’ll write an essay and submit it to his website stating “One Hundred Reasons Why Climate Change is Natural, and One Good Reason Why We Must Act Now.’
‘Oh yes love, and what would that be?’
’Survival of the species mum.’
‘Good point love. What kind of fool would argue with that premise!’

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT!

Dear readers and friends,

I have decided that in future I will publish my writings in an online publishing website hosted by the publishers, Harper Collins. If I am able to demonstrate an interest in the novel Juggernaut there is a possibility that I may be able to have it published by this route. I depend on your critical comments and support of course in my endeavours so if you feel able to help and assist me in this I will be most grateful and indebted to your generosity.
Please continue to follow what happens to Gerry and share it as widely as you feel able on http://www.authonomy.com/ReadBook.aspx?bookid=15037#chapter
My very best wishes and grateful thanks to you all for the coming New Year which hopefully will bring us all some degree of prosperity and contentment.

Gary (Bill Walters) Rudd

Chapter Twenty-Three - Nature's Way

Malcolm Moore was a surprise visitor to the front door of the Hood family’s house late one summer afternoon. Unbidden by anything other than the repetitive sound of rock music in the immediate vicinity of where he lived he drove around the estate in his Hillman Imp until, locating the source, he knocked on the front door of the house where he was greeted by the boys’ mother. The appearance of the long-haired and bespectacled boy, who was five years older than Glenn didn’t seem to faze her too much as she soon admitted him to the upstairs bedroom where Glenn and Gerry were rocking their way through David Bowie’s Saviour Machine from which they immediately paused at the appearance of the older boy who resembled John Lennon in many ways except for the semicircle of flesh that was missing from his left ear. The mutilation had occurred they later learned when Malc, as his friends and family called him, had got in the way at very close range of a friend firing a twelve-bore shotgun. One degree further toward Malcolm would have blown a sizeable hole through the centre of his face and head, so, in a way, he was lucky.

And he did seem to enjoy certain privileges. He had quite a nice car - courtesy of his father who was the general manager of a well-established car-dealer’s - and having recently left school enjoyed some source of income as yet unknown to the Hood boys and considerable liberty and freedom. After their unsophisticated introductions had been made Glenn’s self-consciousness somehow decided him against accepting Malc’s immediate invitation to join him at his house where they could apparently listen to some ‘sounds’ and talk about the possibility of forming a band, a band in which he hoped to find musicians to accompany on his Sonor drum kit which Gerry having accepted the invitation found arranged in the dining room of Malc’s parents’ rather modern looking home. The house had an ostentatiously open-plan staircase and, best of all a massively powerful hi-fi which was built-in to the living room’s fitted wall unit, speakers and all, and which blasted out sounds and frequencies that Gerry had not heard the like of before.

Malc placed LP after LP onto the Goldring Lenco deck and from the top of the range Wharfedale speakers Gerry felt, not just heard the sounds of what he was told were the Californian band Spirit performing tracks from their latest album The Twelve Dreams of Doctor Sardonicus. Not content with this aural bombardment Malc made, lit and then handed Gerry his first joint. Gerry had watched as Malc carefully manipulated the two Rizla papers into an angled ‘L-shape’ into which he then poured the contents of a Rothman’s cigarette, licked and split along the seam, before rolling a lump of brown gelatinous vegetable matter into a long black sausage which he carefully arranged along the length of the envelope of white tobacco-filled paper. This he then licked along both gummed strips before expertly twisting into a cone-shaped ‘reefer’ before rolling the ‘roach’ of cardboard, taken from the Rizla packet and inserting it into the narrow end of the conical cigarette. As he lit it and took a deep and satisfying draw on the joint, Gerry watched as the snake of blue smoke drifted from his mouth and was then inhaled again into his nostrils before it could escape. Malcolm gave Gerry the first of what he would learn was one of his trademark grins before mischievously handing the reefer to the young teenager whom he was now inculcating to cannabis smoking within minutes of their first meeting. Gerry, trying to copy the sophistication of the much older boy inhaled deeply but immediately coughed out a cloud of smoke as the much more pungent aroma hit his lungs.
“Take it easy man!” smiled the impish youth to his latest acolyte, advice which proved very valuable when it was later ignored by a curious Glenn who, overcoming his initial misgivings later appeared on the doorstep and ignoring the same instruction spent several hours vomiting.
Gerry felt the first sensations spreading through his body and after an initial period of uncertainty and discomfort soon found the sounds emanating from the speakers ever more agreeable and fantastic. The dope made Gerry feel the music more intensely and as the initial wave of wellbeing took over his small frame he began to giggle uncontrollably at the masterful humour and bonhomie that seemed the natural manner of this laid-back and benevolent young man.

Malc’s suggestion that they ‘play some music, man’ met with little resistance and though Glenn had failed to reappear from the bathroom other older boys with exotic instruments and wispy beards had by now arrived and plugged their guitars into the several amplifiers that stood in various positions around the room. It was Gerry’s first ‘jam’ with older musicians of an ilk that could actually improvise the music as they played rather than copying the lines from a solo in a song and, under the influence of this new narcotic, he loved it. He played with a sense of uncontained adventure and succeeded in laying down some ‘tasty grooves’ as his colleagues taught him a new terminology for what he was now attempting and apparently succeeding in achieving. The mystery guitarists who came and went throughout the chaotic hours of that afternoon and evening - uninterrupted by Malc’s parents who also came and went amidst the chaos and reefer smoke - seemed to enjoy the ‘session’ and shook hands firmly with Gerry when the performance dissolved into another round of ‘toking’ on the comfortable sofas during which the song Nature’s Way insinuated itself deeply into Gerry’s floating subconscious teenage mind. ‘If this is nature’s way then I like it’ thought Gerry almost levitating with serenity and pleasure in the heady company of so many cool guys. The sound of Glenn vomiting could only be occasionally heard above the tremendous volume that Malc’s parents seemed to take for granted in their thoroughly liberal household.

Returning home with his distressed older brother Gerry vowed to return and experience once again the benign though highly illegal pleasures of pot, as soon as possible. Malc had many interesting friends and Gerry soon found himself in ever more exotic company and a considerable amount of trouble at home. Gerry’s father didn’t appear to be opposed to Gerry and Glenn’s new acquaintance calculating that the longer the boys spent playing music at their new friend’s house the more peace he would enjoy as a result. He seemed to take to Malcolm who, with his apparently respectable father Basil and knowledge of motor cars seemed to be the kind of person who wouldn’t necessarily lead his boys, Gerry in particular, astray. Well, at least that’s how it appeared in the beginning. Gerry’s unknown whereabouts during his frequent and lengthy absences were not known about and if Bill Hood had any idea of the goings-on he would certainly have put a stop to them instantly. But he and Gerry were ever more like strangers to one another. Bill, now deeply immersed in financial worries - brought about by the milking parlour he had built for a local farmer who now had solvency problems of his own - was involved in legal wrangles amounting to many thousands of pounds that threatened the future of his business. Gerry, since his move at school, had been less of a problem and his passionate pursuit of work had convinced his father that perhaps a more practical career lay ahead for the boy who might not now add-up to much academically, unlike it was supposed his brother Glenn, for whom high hopes still existed. Making friends with young men such as Malcolm might, his father reasoned, help the lad develop some useful contacts for when he inevitably left school. The deception, such as it was, suited Gerry perfectly and he refused to miss any opportunity to develop his ever more exciting social life regardless of the problems that were now steadily building up for him at school.

Gerry coasted through his schoolwork relying in the event on Dietmar to hastily copy homework or complete whatever exercise that now lay between Gerry and another night out with Malc and his mates. Such nights out would leave Gerry exhausted and bleary-eyed and from which he would arrive at school the following day still partially stoned from another night of excess and indulgence. His various jobs and gigs sustained him financially without any demands on his father’s purse and though the teachers at school were beginning to notice an inexorable deterioration in Gerry’s performance his behaviour at least was not causing them any worries so no reports were yet forthcoming to create discord in the family. Gerry shamelessly exploited this black hole of necessity and burned the candle at both ends for almost the entire third year of grammar school. There were no exams to take or pass and his backsliding was not therefore even on the radar of parents or teachers. His was the life of Reilly and he was living on borrowed time.

Before the bubble had time to burst Gerry was going to fill it with as many new experiences as he was able. He took to visiting, with Malcolm, a very eclectic group of people who lived in a very spacious and spacey flat on the side of the hill overlooking the city of Lindon. There, through the picture window that looked down upon the city’s sparkling lights he met with beautiful sinuous young women in kaftans and Afghan coats who spoke openly about love and sex and who petted him in affectionate ways that he quickly got used to and greatly enjoyed. Handsome young men, recently returned from travels to exotic far away places told him dubious tales of encounters with crazed Afghan tribesmen in the Hindu-Kush whilst Gerry learned to smoke from chillums and bongs, inculcating him further into a culture of drugs and music but, so far at least, not sex. His lack of sexual maturity frustrated Gerry keenly aware as he was of the difference in age and sophistication of the bearded and muscular men who accepted his presence with nonchalant ease, feeding his desire for hash and grass without complaint or demur. In this company Gerry learned to debate, joke, curse, discuss philosophy and theology and listened to the very latest tracks by Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart and Pink Floyd courtesy of the owner of the local record store who kept the same company and habits. The group or collective as he sometimes heard it called liked Gerry and he loved them. Evenings painting walls with psychedelic and luminous designs were interspersed with building hot air balloons - balloons that were so successfully eerie in their glowing iridescence that he was to learn many years later of a nearby neighbours mental breakdown who, when witnessing phalanxes of these ascending in the darkness from the adjacent garden seriously believed them to be UFOs! The nights grew longer and the days paled into relative insignificance as his arrival home in the Hillman Imp grew later and later.

Gerry attributed his luck to the fact that he now had little or no interest in alcohol. He’d tried that again since the bailer incident and the drunken nights at the Plough but had been put off by the nasal vomiting incident after a bottle of cider had left him so drunk that he had been rescued off the front lawn of a kindly woman’s house and, having been allowed to puke in her bathroom for several hours returned home sufficiently chastised to call a hasty halt to his alcoholic apprenticeship. Dope, he felt, suited him much better and his parents, now fully aware of his propensity for smoking, simply turned a blind eye to it outside their home. That he reeked of tobacco fumes at least was inescapable, but he never smelled of alcohol and for this they counted their doubtful blessings. His nocturnal comings and goings were therefore glossed-over in an attempt to maintain the uneasy truce between him and his father, his mother covering for him on many occasions in order to maintain the uneasy peace in a house that by now contained enough stress to boil over with the latest solicitor’s letter or household bill. Gerry was under the radar and took full and complete advantage with the many liberties this allowed him.

Glenn, now embarked on his final GCE exam year had other things on his mind, mainly girls, and the expectation of the family lay entirely on his shoulders, educationally at least. Gerry simply deflected all enquiries about his own diminishing prospects with the simple response “I’m only a third-year, I have two whole years before I have to do my exams. I’ll have plenty to worry about then!” which in truth was certain. He would have plenty to worry about then, had he but known the extent of his approaching anxieties, but for now he hadn’t a care in the world. The summer of 1971 could not have been better for Gerry. He would laze around in parks with his much older and exotic group of friends, playing music, smoking dope and practicing his wiles on some very beautiful ladies knowing that they were helping to hone his skills for the inevitable day when his own chance came. And come it did, all at once.

Sharon Rogers was widely acknowledged to be by far the prettiest girl at the Robert Pat school. She was breathtakingly beautiful, with long straight brunette hair, deep blue eyes and, with her impossibly long legs and ample breasts, a fantasy figure for all boys between twelve and twenty years old. She was, at fifteen, two years older than Gerry when he was given the message from one of her many retainers to meet her behind the bike sheds after school that day. Gerry, at first bemused and thinking she intended to meet Glenn who at almost sixteen was more appropriately aged still went to meet her just to say he’d had a good look up close. When they met he was truly stunned. Stunned by her perfect skin and flawless features but also stunned by her rather common-sounding voice and unsophisticated manner. This paragon of beauty just did not compare to the charming and eloquent young women that Gerry was comfortable in the company of. His attempt to elicit a conversation fell on very stony ground and after acceding to Sharon’s request for a snog, which he enjoyed but didn’t overly prolong, Gerry decided that this was not the girlfriend he was actually seeking and declined most politely the chance to be her boyfriend causing considerable consternation with his and her friends who simply thought him insane.
“You’re doing far too much of that dope if you turned her down” said Glenn to him as they walked home together with Gerry trying to vocalise the enigmatic decision which had served to propel him into another league of unpredictability.
“I know she looks great…” he reasoned with his perplexed brother, “…but there’s nothing going on between her ears at all! There’s more to girls than a pretty face and nice tits.” he argued but Glenn shook his head at him disbelievingly like the brother of a man who had just refused the gift of eternal life.

Gerry had no such doubts. He wanted a girl who could wear an Afghan coat and roll a spliff whilst discussing nihilism. In the event he’d have to wait a long time and live to regret that particular quirky set of demands for even longer. For now, his mind made up, he walked away from the local pin-up girl without a care, certain that what he wanted existed and that judging by the disappointed reaction from Sharon, and the fury of his own friends, he’d get what he wanted eventually. The sickly sweet aroma of the joint that he smoked on the way home, much to his brother’s disgust, wrapped Gerry in an invisible blanket of comfort and his pin-prick pupils failed to reveal to his waiting and trusting mother the extent of his descent into the drug-addled mindset of a dope-smoking teenager. Glenn kept his secret and Gerry’s wastrel ways continued unabated, at least for now.

Chapter Twenty-Two - The Price of Petrol

Mindful of the unpredictable nature of fortune, Gerry’s new-found income as a musician did not distract him from other avenues of earning potential. A visit to a friend and former supermarket colleague who now ran the number-plate shop at a local motor factors proved very profitable when, after making the tea, placating an irate customer and locating a missing item he was adjudged to be sufficiently useful to deserve a Saturday job which he accepted with the proviso that he be allowed to leave early in order to travel to his latest gig.

A new and further unexpected development arose when tiring of the quiet tyranny of his horticultural master, Burt Mee, he became aware of a part-time position at a petrol station in Toddington, the village where he would visit Dietmar. The local car-sales lot had two rather ancient petrol pumps and the job was to serve the passing motorists and local account holders with their fuel and oil needs and, as he was to discover, meet the endless demands for coffee from the junior partner Mr. Burdon. The interview consisted of calculating the price of four gallons of four-star petrol - then thirty-seven-and-a-half new pence per gallon - which the hitherto mathematically challenged Gerry answered quickly and correctly as one-pound fifty. He was instantly installed into a position which he then understood was not much sought after as he learned the sullen and despotic ways of his employer. Lengthy periods of inactivity on the infrequently visited forecourt would be interrupted by pointless tasks - such as the washing, polishing and valeting of the rusting and worn-out but over-priced hulks that stood forlornly on the carefully swept car lot - designed only to confer his employer’s authority and status. Gerry would complete the days roster of tasks whilst dealing with the regular and passing customers in between coffee making duties which would elicit not even a glance of recognition from his taciturn boss as he pored over the records of sales and shuffled log books behind his tatty desk from whence he would spring into action like an ageing praying mantis at the first sign of what he uniformly referred to as ‘punters’.

The long ride up the steepest hill in the area didn’t deter Gerry nearly as much as the boredom and poor wage he received for the Sunday morning shift and the daily cash-up he had to perform in a long-winded and entirely questionable accounting procedure before handing-over to another local boy and nearly caused Gerry to quit prematurely before he made his remarkable discovery. The petrol pumps themselves - one four star and the other three star petrol - were not of the latest design though mercifully they were electrically powered. In order to operate them, which all customers of the time expected, Gerry had to manhandle the pump out of its aluminised holster, and turn a separate handle - which was about fifteen centimetres in length - a half turn which engaged the motor. As the handle turned it brought up shutters which concealed the reels of digits on the pump which displayed both the volume of petrol delivered (in gallons and quarts) and the amount the customer would then be required to pay (according to the currently prevailing price). The nozzle of the pump could then be placed into the filler opening of the car’s tank and as the reels began to turn invisibly beneath the shutters the shutters themselves would drop and reveal the rotating numbers. For some reason best known to its manufacturers the shutters would only reveal the quantities and price of the delivered fuel-load part-way into the process. Gerry could never understand why this concealment and later reveal of the pump's contents had been deemed appropriate by its designer but he soon learned an accidental benefit to this odd facility. The pump was not easy to operate and Gerry’s slight build and puny arms would struggle to reholster the nozzle as he was required to return the handle to its original starting position. The result was that when he next flipped the handle into the on position it failed to ‘zero’ the counter, leaving the previous delivery of a gallon on the now hidden reels. His next delivery of three gallons was therefore only two gallons and when the unquestioning customer paid without protest Gerry was left with a small surplus of cash to account for during the dreaded cashing-up procedure.

In between fending off Mr. Burton’s latest demand for a caffeine infusion he ran out of time to explain or account for this genuine mistake and, in an attempt to solve the problem, pocketed the spare cash, knowing that the readings for the pumps, at least in terms of fuel delivered, would be correct in the days cash-book. On his way home Gerry mused at his profit from the day and quickly calculated that he had in fact discovered his own oil-well, full with possibilities and perhaps even more potentially lucrative than the cigarette-machine scam. Slowly and with carefully measured scrutiny of the customers responses, Gerry introduced his new scheme, confident that were anyone ever to notice he could easily blame the pump for its eccentric behaviour, but no-one ever complained or even noticed. He took care to leave only the small deliveries un-zeroed on the pump and only to add his ‘tax’ to the owners of expensive cars who required a minimum of four gallons but more often much larger deliveries into their waiting tanks. He figured that if they were to check their actual consumption, a less than likely occurrence in pre-Opec days, they would see it as an aberration in the car’s performance, and so he was therefore careful not to repeat the ruse on the same customer, at least initially.

The scam worked like a dream and Gerry began to look forward to his Sunday stints when he would emerge loaded with cash, once almost forgetting to collect his wages such was his new found surplus. He was careful not to discuss this with anyone and his regular gigs paid so well that no-one questioned the source of such wealth which, when combined with his Saturday job and musicians pay exceeded many working men’s weekly wages. When the Saturday shift became available Gerry informed Dietmar who, having expressed a desire for some quick cash agreed that a hundred metre walk was within his range, and Gerry quickly inducted his friend, to whom he was grateful for the generosity with the amplifier, into the job and scam all at once. He was certain that Diet would not be tempted to poison the well of their now mutual good fortune, with any excessive plundering of the pumps or customers and together they began to enjoy the benefits of their now shared oil-well, undetected by employer or customers alike. They were the modern day Clampit’s and the refined black gold that emerged from their doctored pump seemed like a direct portal into the mother vein of fossil fuels into which they were now comfortably and firmly tapped.

Gerry had noticed from his previous experiences how trust can make and mar a relationship. He noted how all relationships improved as trust was built up but how that self-same trust also become a burden to those thus indebted. He and Dietmar were friends at school and shared a quixotic view of the world they now so confidently inhabited. Dietmar’s short sojourn - he quit when he had made his target for cash to buy a brand new colour television, the object of his desire for money in the first place - after only two months, having carefully calculated the extent and volume of his fraudulent fillings, entirely satisfied with the transaction between the two friends. However, it was what he did next that drove a wedge between their burgeoning friendship.

Gerry arrived early that Sunday, aware that he was required to train the ‘new boy’ in his duties. He was more than a little shocked to learn that the boy proposed by Dietmar - to the employers who had greatly liked the unusual boy - was none other than Ralph Ireland-West. Gerry had maintained some relations with Ralph since his move to Toddington but their friendship had cooled considerably since the looting of the cigarette machine. He greeted him in a friendly enough manner and set to showing Ralph the duties and processes required to perform the job. No word or hint of the pump scam passed his lips and Gerry suspended all swindling activities for the day, certain that Ralph could not be trusted with the secret of the scam, and equally certain that should he learn of it the single ‘well’ of Gerry’s genius would become so over-exploited within a day that Ralph would become a weekend millionaire but put paid to the scam forever. Ralph’s sneering grin should have alerted Gerry to what lay ahead.

Within days Ralph had taken to adding substances so noxious to Mr. Burdon’s coffee that were the victim of these evil concoctions ever to have learned of it - Castrol GTX, RedeX additive and animal faeces were amongst the dreadful ingredients - the Police would have immediately been involved. Uneasy though this made Gerry it was the chance discovery that he had made and which for all he knew Ralph was about to that haunted Gerry’s waking moments. The tension and uncertainty combined with his other sources of relative affluence proved too great and fearing mass apprehension of the culprits, himself particularly, Gerry decided to quit whilst the going was good. It proved to be a prescient moment. Ralph had pried the secret from Dietmar and the train was rolling inexorably toward the buffers as customers limped off the petrol station forecourt with virtually empty tanks having paid to be ‘filled-up’. A few short weeks after Gerry reluctantly left the filling station it closed its doors forever in the wake of a weights-and-measures investigation, brought about by incensed motorists who had run out of gas within miles of leaving the forecourt having paid for a full tank. Ralph had ran the well dry yet again, but at least Gerry was beyond the scrutiny of the government’s investigators as they set about ransacking the offices for clues to Ralph’s wanton plundering. No-one was implicated in the end when it transpired that Mr. Burdon’s accounting procedures had violated Custom’s and Excise regulations to such an extent that even Ralph’s greedy and insatiable appetites were considered mild by comparison. Gerry had got out in the nick of time, and he knew it. Dietmar apologised for the indiscretion, which Gerry readily accepted, knowing full well the dangers of such an association were not easy to anticipate, even with a mind like Diet’s, who learned much from the encounter with the mad copper’s son.

Gerry’s luck, not having run out entirely, then presented another unexpected opportunity. A petrol filling station in Wykeham was currently seeking a pump jockey and when Gerry applied he - and his unsuspecting employers - were overjoyed with the boys immediate knowledge and familiarity with their rather outdated petrol pumps. They were exactly the same model as those Gerry had so recently bade a sad farewell to in Toddington! His new boss, a South African émigrée who spoke Swahili when angry, was great. Although possessed of a slightly irascible nature with an explosive temper, Humphrey Butler had an energy that Gerry liked, and he liked Gerry. Whilst Humphrey would tinker around in his mechanics shop, emerging black and flecked with underseal for a very occasional cup of tea, he would simply leave Gerry to serve the customers, count the cash and fill in the accounts sheets at the end of each day. Gerry quickly built excellent relationships with all of the regular customers and would spend his hours between serving at the busy petrol station learning to play the latest drum rhythms from his favourite songs on the Formica topped counter in the office. Chastened by his previous near-miss Gerry felt such a regard for his employer that he never once exploited the petrol pumps potential for easy money and in any case his three jobs were now proving so lucrative he no longer felt the need to resort to nefarious activities which inevitably seemed to attract the attention of Ralph Ireland-West whom he now regarded as a parasite of the worst sort. At school they barely spoke and on a school coach trip Ralph had actually tried to intimidate him with physical threats which Gerry had laughed off but not forgotten. Somewhat estranged by Ralph’s excessive appetites, Gerry moved in very different circles now and too much water had passed under their respective bridges, much of it tainted by Ralph’s extremity and rapaciousness.

Gerry wasn’t entirely satisfied with his musical direction, playing working men’s clubs and pubs on the cover band circuit, and although the money was regular and well-paid he sought new musical challenges as 1971 revealed to him the talents of David Bowie in the form of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. He and Glenn would listen repetitively to what quickly became their latest obsession and then try to deconstruct the tunes, rhythms and melodies of their latest idol. The boys formed their own band with another friend Tom Andrews who owned a rather less than magnificent drum kit. His father however, a local businessman who touted the products of an ‘art-studio’ had an art studio in which they could rehearse. It wasn’t a great meeting of musical minds and led to quite a few fallings out between the two brothers due to musical differences and sibling rivalry. Glenn, who considered himself the most experienced of the three, refused on principal to defer to Gerry in spite of them both understanding that Gerry was the more seasoned musician with many live performances now under his belt. Gerry was never to know how irksome it must have been for his older and equally accomplished brother to have to watch idly from the audience as cheering crowds turned out to watch the child prodigy climb onstage with his outsized instrument and sing and play with apparent ease the popular songs of the sixties and seventies. Gerry’s diminutive stature alone seemed to arouse excitement in the crowd and his ability to perform without nerves in front of any audience left Glenn shifting uncomfortably with simmering resentment as his own talents went unlauded. The chance to redress this as leader of the new band turned Gerry’s older brother into an unsympathetic figure and with his new red-headed girlfriend adding her futile and derisive comments from her seat in the rehearsal room, arguments and disputes smouldered uneasily preventing the progress that Gerry had become used to in his business-like dealings with other musicians. A fierce dispute over repertoire was hurriedly concluded one evening with Glenn stomping toward the exit, guitar slung over his shoulder and amplifier in hand. Sadly Glenn had failed to unplug the power cord from the socket and as he reached the full extent of his dramatic exit he was arrested by the cord, much to his younger brother’s hilarity who he then thumped in the head. It was the end not only of The One-Eyed Gods but their joint musical adventures which thereafter occurred in increasing isolation from one another. Gerry benefited more from this division and his older brother would never again feel comfortable on stage in what he had come to feel as an uneven competition. Gerry, who continued to respect his brother’s immense knowledge of musical theory, tried, unsuccessfully, on many occasions to mend the rift but the glass was broken and their respective musical ambitions took entirely different courses, not without resentment and rivalry. For Gerry, as ever, one door closed and several more opened.

Chapter Twenty-One - Catch-22

Catch-22, is a paradox in rules, regulations, procedures, or situations in which one has knowledge of being or becoming a victim but has no control over it occurring.

Dietmar Frantz not only had the most unusual name on the school’s register but he was arguably the most unusual boy in the school, had they but known it. Inarguably one of the school’s brightest lights he had single-handedly resisted all accusations of being a ‘swot’, a ‘brainbox’ and a ‘geek’ where all before had so singularly failed. Handsome, in a self-deprecating way, he also somehow managed to maintain the appearance of a self-possessed person without any apparent need for a group of worshippers. Neither seeking nor lacking for attention he continued to cut a solitary but never lonely figure throughout his time at Westeven Grammar where his grades hid his complete lack of regard for authority and belied his distrust of celebrity. He was as charismatic as he was enigmatic and no-one could quite penetrate to the source of his obvious power beyond his easy-going charm, affability and self-confident but never arrogant mien. Girls queued-up to genuflect before him and boys who found themselves perturbed with this cult of personality still somehow adjudged him non-threatening though not entirely harmless or defenceless.

Gerry found himself being placed next to this phenomenon of popularity on his first day in his new class and content at least to not be sitting next to an acknowledged geek or boring-old-fart assumed the position of a student with much to prove in his first Latin lesson. Frank Mason, the famously unstable volcano of pithy remarks and heart-stopping threats had assumed his position sitting astride the corner of his well-worn desk and began to read from the mysterious text-book, a copy of which sat on the desk in front of the utterly bewildered Gerry, foreigner to the language his new teacher now spoke.
“Right new boy, what is your name by the way?” he remarked almost half-heartedly.
“Hood” Gerry confirmed for the benefit of all those who now surrounded him.
“Hood what boy?”
“Gerry Hood, sir” he muttered self-consciously to the silent room.
“No boy, I mean what word should you append when answering a teacher’s question?”
“Upend sir? I would have to stand on my head to do that” smiled Gerry, breaking the ice, or so he thought.
“YOU SEE THIS BOILER BOY!” roared the now standing six-foot of gnarled and clearly agitated Latin teacher - “well, it burns bodies! He stared down the new boy who he had deliberately targeted in the whispered knowledge that he had heard which had notified him of the boys wilfulness well in advance of this, their first encounter. Mr Mason had a reputation as a disciplinarian, Glenn having gleefully told Gerry that very morning of an incident concerning Nicky Birch, who having been discovered as the culprit who wrote ‘SPURS’ on the blackboard in Mr. Mason’s hut had then experienced the crusty old gentleman write the exact same legend on the seat of his school trousers and publicly spank it off in front of the entire class.
“When you speak to me in this class you will refer to me as ‘Sir’ on every occasion. Do I make myself clear?”. His voice trailed off into a whispered threat.
“Yes… Sir” Gerry added pausing as long as he reasonably dared to emphasise his actual disdain for the deliberate humiliation he knew he was now being required to take as the rear-end of the pantomime horse Frank Mason had so carefully constructed.
“Now boy. Conjugate the Latin verb to love” added the spiteful teacher smiling the self-satisfied smirk of a tormentor.
“Gerry was just about to confess, as intended, his complete lack of any grasp or vocabulary at all to the smug pedagogue, but before he could walk blindly into the next stage of his ritual humiliation he noticed a carefully hand-written note had appeared between the leaves of the text book he was holding on which was written: amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant.
Gerry falteringly read the words on the paper and noticed his teacher narrow his stare as the esoteric words tumbled from his mouth and the snare snapped shut without capturing its prey.
“So you do know some Latin then boy?” his rhetorical question bringing only a sullen nod from the intended victim who had now stopped giving his tormentor the eye-contact favoured by the bullying teacher.
“Hmm … we’ll see how much in time, right class, page one-hundred and fifty-seven. Complete the exercise IN SILENCE” he bellowed and the class set about their task with the eagerness of the petrified, apart from his colleague who had made a rather more desultory attempt which seemed to involve special writing and drawing implements of a design hitherto unknown to the already fascinated Gerry.

The lessons passed far more rapidly and easily than Gerry had thought they might and during each of the five periods that day Gerry became acquainted with his new teachers, fellow students and the increasingly eccentric idiosyncrasies of his new co-conspirator. Dietmar Frantz was, it transpired, the most subversive person Gerry had so far encountered. His knack of answering one key question during a lesson, confirming both his attention and comprehension, was studied and deliberate and concealed an utter disregard for the manner in which the lesson was intended to proceed. Diet, as his friend allowed himself to be addressed, learned quickly and thoroughly without the unwelcome attention or intervention of his teachers and provided Gerry with an entirely new model of lassitude to which he clung, at first uncertainly, but with renewed determination and vigour. Notwithstanding the gulf Gerry was required to cross in order to catch-up with his new class mates who were sailing through their subject knowledge - a very different set of demands to those Gerry had previously been exposed - with apparent ease, he clung to this superman’s coattails as if his life and their friendship now depended upon it. He couldn’t be certain where this new dynamism might lead, but he was prepared to find out and had little if anything to lose. Marginalised by his friends because of his involuntary move, Gerry’s bridges had been burnt for him and so all new horizons became his focus and Dietmar his lens.

Gerry met his mother’s enquiries about his latest day at school or his hoped for progress with cautious optimism, fearful at once that his new allegiance would be uncovered as the subversive plot it had already become and to which he readily submitted himself. Dietmar had many talents; he could draw cartoons - which were published on match days in the local football club’s programme - and he was also an excellent writer and humorist. Gerry discovered the foundation to this in the extraordinary collection of Alfred Neumann’s Mad Magazine, Private Eye and Punch magazines which quite literally lined the walls of Diet’s bedroom in the family’s small but spacious bungalow which stood in the hilltop village of Toddington. Diet lived with his quite elderly parents, who having seen their daughters grow-up and pair-off were now barely tolerated by their recently-teenage son. Diet ruled-the-roost and his parents quietly accepted his dominance. They never had family meals, Diet’s were delivered outside his room on a silver tray whenever he rang the small brass bell that sat on his bedside table. Bed-times simply didn’t exist. Diet would sleep whenever his body finally caved-in to the reading, watching of his own television, or playing his electric guitars through his extremely powerful amplifier and speakers, which might happen at any time of the night or day, his preference seeming to be the early hours of the morning. Diet’s youngest sister Dorothy was herself an accomplished and well-known singer, at least in local terms, whose partner was himself a partner in his father’s second-hand musical instrument shop in the city. It was thereby that Diet had obtained a Framus semi-acoustic bass guitar - carefully and liberally stuffed with his sister’s sanitary towels in order to overcome its propensity to feedback - and his latest acquisition a Hofner Verithin semi-acoustic guitar which neither suffered or benefited from such modification. These he played enthusiastically if inexpertly and drove both his parents and neighbours to distraction with high-volume nocturnal performances of Beatles’ songs with which he was currently enamoured. Gerry’s experience of one such moment, when on a sleepover with his new and respectable friend, was so dramatic that it threatened to perforate his eardrums as Diet hammered out the introduction to Paperback Writer at four in the morning. When the cacophony eventually abated Gerry fully expected an explosion of anger from Diet’s father, an ill man with his own concerns who occasionally appeared in a dressing gown from his next door room. In the event he was astonished to hear no more than a polite whimper from Diet’s mother who quietly implored him to “turn it down just a little, if you wouldn’t mind Dietmar?” which was met with another furious salvo from the guitar, the Vox AC100 now turned up to its deafening maximum as he cranked his way through Revolution back-to-back with Day Tripper playing along to his record-player, itself no slouch in the decibel department. Gerry felt liberated around his new chum, effortlessly soaking up his influence and influences until Dietmar exposed a chink in their new relationship by offering to let Gerry borrow one of his books.

Gerry had rather gone off the process of reading under the careless tutelage of Miss Markham and felt immediately intimidated by the huge tome his friend passed him as he pored over the somewhat more alluring periodicals that surrounded him.
“Try this!” said Diet, without looking up from the pornographic magazine he was flicking through distractedly whilst smoking the Turkish cigarette, the noxious fumes from which did not seem to disturb his parents who wafted around the rest of the house but were absolutely forbidden entrance to Diet’s very private domain. Gerry searched the front and rear cover for visual clues as to its contents but was unable to discern anything other than its title Catch-22, the name of its author Joseph Heller, and that it was by all accounts printed on the rear cover, a stunning read. He opened it cautiously and searched for further clues before reading the opening paragraph.
“What’s it about?” he asked, pausing for validation from his friend.
“Oh, you’ll see” replied Dietmar, enigmatically and continued puffing from the oval-shaped barrel of the pungent cigarette which he cradled in the cigarette holder clenched between his perfect teeth. “I’m sure you will find it very interesting.
Gerry did find the book very interesting and both he and his brother Glenn tore through it, comparing notes, until the meaning of Catch-22 was thoroughly apprehended and hotly debated between the boys who, having discovered yet another mutual interest, immersed themselves into counter-culture with the avidness of the new convert to Dietmar’s guru-like aplomb. Never once reproaching or mocking Gerry’s new-found enthusiasm or child-like innocence, Dietmar built new confidence in his friend and founded a lifelong love of literature, a love so nearly stillborn from the counter-intuitive efforts of those actually trained and paid to do that exact job. Cervantes’ Don Quixote quickly followed and even as Dr. Cole, his new and highly knowledgeable tutor of English smothered Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood in the torpid wet blanket of study, Dietmar coaxed Gerry through his own library of classics which one day might produce George Orwell and another J.P. Donleavy.
“Why don’t they give us anything interesting to read at school, or better still, make what we do read interesting with debates and discussions?” Gerry enquired from his friend as they pored over a dull text, apparently selected for its dull prose.
“Because learning is deliberately separated from interest by those who ultimately require us to submit to dull, boring and repetitive labour” Diet replied without looking up from his latest delivery of Men Only which had arrived, on a tray which included sunflower seeds and sliced cucumber, outside his bedroom door minutes earlier.
Gerry didn’t yet know the truth or otherwise of his friend’s assertion but he couldn’t imagine Men Only ever making it to the shelves of the school library in spite of its ability to captivate Dietmar once a week.
“You know I actually thought that attending a Grammar School was going to be a magic-carpet ride to success, well, that’s if you believe what Winwood cracks on about every bloody week in assembly” said Gerry, making public his thoughts in the way which his father described as ‘opening your mouth and the top of your head coming off.
“Grammar School? What Grammar School? Westeven Grammar is a comprehensive in all but name” rejoined Diet before adding “I wonder how many O-levels she has?” before sharing the latest centrefold with his sniggering friend.

Dietmar had recently landed a paying gig in a band, courtesy of his sister but soon tired of the disciplines of dates and repertoires, preferring his own company and choice of material to the three-piece cover band Connexion he had joined. Surprising Gerry one day he spoke almost as an aside “Do you want my job in this band?”. He knew that Gerry had now become very proficient as a bass-player and had been practicing with several local bands, always using borrowed amplifiers and speakers. Gerry was also aware that his father had been less than encouraging about the growing dedication of both of his grammar school attending boys feeling that his own youthful enthusiasms for music had now provided the worst sort of distraction from their studies. Without any income there was no way that Gerry could even contemplate his friend’s remarkable offer prevented as he was from buying the equipment necessary for the task.
“You can borrow my gear and, if you like it, pay me for it over a period” his friend said almost telepathically reading Gerry’s mind.
“Really? You’d let me do that?” asked the astonished Gerry, allowing the centrefold to slide from his grip.
“Yeah, why not” said Diet puffing on his Balkan Sobranie, decided already that music was not the career he sought or desired.

Liberated from the need to even seek his father’s permission Gerry auditioned and was inducted into the band within the week and as he sat in the centre seat of the shuddering Ford Transit van on his way to his first paid gig he wondered whether he hadn’t found a way around the Catch-22 mentality of an education system that seemed determined only to fit him for a future he neither desired nor would be able to fulfil. If all institutions shared the mindless aims and ethics of his school, it was only a matter of when, not if, he would fail to reach the numbers of missions required to obtain freedom from their relentless demands. He was thirteen going-on thirty and had by good fortune discovered an escape route, a loophole to the inevitability of getting a job and earning a wage. No longer required to ask his father for money he was headed for independence and rock n’ roll was his key. Fate had dealt him a lucky card and Gerry wasn’t about to let this one slip through his nimble fingers.

Chapter Twenty - Hot Gossip

The problem of obtaining paid work could be divided into two distinct areas for Gerry and, to a lesser extent his fourteen-year-old brother Glenn. Opportunity and age. There were few places, other than the newsagents’ paper-rounds, where a not-quite-yet thirteen year-old might find paid work without rising at the crack of dawn and trudging the pavements in all weathers at unsocial hours for poor wages. Christmas was not far away and both Gerry and Glenn wanted to obtain some of their own funds to tip the balance in their father’s ruthless negotiations with vendors of electric guitars. Bill Hood was notoriously parsimonious and the boys wanted to avert yet another embarrassing disappointment as his harsh bartering skills reduced yet another prospective seller to a committed collector. The boys were also keenly aware that the arrival of electric guitars would also require the appearance of amplification, a factor that their father had yet to be informed of, so funds were in demand to avoid the frustration of silent electric guitars and paternal outrage.

The solution arrived in the nick of time with the completion of the new supermarket. As its management prepared to open their doors for the long-awaited rush for Christmas bargains they identified a number of staff shortages, principally in the stores. They were short of trolley-pushers and shop-floor workers to clear up the mountain of waste cardboard that had accumulated in the aisles as the shelves were packed with their surfeit of products. Glenn had a friend who had already been made an offer of employment in the stores and as he arrived at the end of another exhausting day wrestling with the cardboard mountain and the temperamental bailing machine that was experiencing significant teething trouble as it chewed its way through the Himalayan range of packaging he confided to Glenn that his employers were literally ‘desperate’ for workers. Glenn did all the talking and the diminutive figure of his younger brother stood slightly behind him as the stores manager, Jock Alexander, detailed their duties in his highly esoteric and therefore only vaguely understandable Scottish brogue. The tiny bald man, with the thickest lens glasses either of the brothers would ever see, had a particular form of myopia that rendered him both virtually blind and apparently stupid, though no-one would fully understand the depth of this delusion until many years later when he left over £100,000 to the local school from the vast wealth he had quietly accumulated in stocks and shares trading.
Whilst the boys were thinking they were slipping easily under the dim radar of a man with cataracts he was in fact exploiting employment legislation which forbade Gerry at least from becoming an employee at all.

There were two tasks required of the boys; pushing the trolleys which the customers would abandon at the remotest corners of the twelve-acre site, and collecting the cardboard outers of packaged goods as the army of shelf-stackers reloaded the shelves. The latter was the ‘cushier’ of the two simply because it was indoors and therefore not subject to changes in the weather. The job of pushing trolleys - up to twenty at a time, but sometimes expanded to huge anacondas of wheels and wire as the boys challenged each other to ever more ridiculous feats - was hard and unrelenting. It also provided the very real possibility of altercations with car-owners who were in the vanguard of motorists now rapidly discovering the vicissitudes of mass-parking and damaged paintwork. Interrupted by the occasional canteen break, the boys would work three or four evenings-a-week after school and all day Saturday in the Sunday-closing world that still prevailed in Britain at the time. Smoking was compulsory and the older workers could all be relied on to provide cigarettes which would be repaid, with interest, on pay day. It seemed like fairly easy money and when Friday arrived the boys would count their gains, pay their debts and, along with their new workmates head off down to the pub!

The local pub, the Plough, was a cosy little boozer in the old village of Wykeham where on Friday evening, around nine-o’-clock the boys and their friends would huddle into a corner and drink as many pints of Guinness as their money would allow and their stomachs could hold. This weekly feast would not have been complete without the consumption of one of the pub’s steak-and-kidney pies, which were consumed in an upside down position, flopped on their paper plates, with plastic cutlery. Epicurean delights of pickled onions and eggs were washed down with more beer and then regurgitated in the gardens and onto fences en route home. Saturdays would dawn in the Hood household where two pasty-looking boys would crawl to work with their latest hangover and indolently shove trolleys and collect cardboard in a haze of still semi-drunken torpor. Their colleagues, an eclectic bunch of school-leavers and men of misanthropically mysterious origins, worked like the crazed crewmen of an ocean-going ship to empty the aisles and clear the car park of all obstructions and as the frenzy of Christmas shopping proper descended on the beleaguered store’s staff, spirits were high.

It was the custom of the company who collected the half-ton bails of cardboard to reward the endeavour of its collectors, so when Gerry was presented with a half-bottle of Teacher’s finest Scotch Whisky, the twelve-year-old boy looked for guidance to his elders. Brian - or Brain as his schizophrenic condition had seen him hastily renamed - was already half-way through his bottle and there seemed to be no hesitation amongst the other lucky recipients of this unexpected bonus to consume theirs as fast as possible. Gerry, wishing only to fit-in to this apparently pleasurable camaraderie, raised the flask to his lips and drank deeply from the fluted bottle now clamped to his lips. He was shocked by the acidic burn at his throat but closed his eyes and concentrated on consuming as much of the unusual tasting amber fluid as he could gulp down. A temporary break-down at the besieged bailer resulted in the cardboard from the shop floor being piled-up and allowed to accumulate in ever-increasing mounds as the operatives struggled with the recalcitrant machine which now stood inert and useless. Brain, having drained his own draught dry, was now sitting mumbling quietly to himself in tongues behind the broken behemoth whilst an increasingly hysterical workforce giggled, sniggered and guffawed their way to and fro’ from the overwhelmed store’s gangways, now piled-high with cardboard boxes. The chaos finally resolved itself, at least for Gerry, when in a fit of hysterical laughter he interred himself deep within the largest mound of boxes and detritus and simply fell asleep. Recovering just in time to collect his free frozen turkey from the deep-freeze, Gerry staggered home with his brother and slept the sleep of the drunkard.

The guitars, which had been purchased shortly before Christmas, were beauties. Glenn’s, a copy of the Rickenbacker 6-string electric popularised by John Lennon in his Beatle’s days, had a rich red sunburst body, three pick-ups and a tremolo arm. Glenn set to work, immediately removing the tremolo arm which he deemed superfluous to his requirements and filing down the frets into fat strips of flattened metal in an attempt to ‘improve’ the action, something he almost immediately regretted. Gerry’s was also second-hand but was a well-preserved right-handed edition of the Hofner Violin bass which was also synonymous with Paul McCartney of the Beatles, a fact that had somehow escaped the boys who were not in fact their biggest fans. Gerry recalled how the craze for the fab-four had resulted in a plethora of Beatles branded products which included a plastic ukulele bearing an imprint of the mop-tops which could neither be tuned or rendered playable. He also remembered without affection a plastic wig, based on their iconic hairstyles, which when placed on the wearer’s head resulted in cuts and sores to where the tops of one’s ears met the side of the head. They were rubbish and set Gerry firmly against the exploitation of brand-name products for good and the Beatles for several decades to come.

A single speaker Selmer practice amplifier had also been purchased from one of the vendors which had a volume, treble and bass control knob but which immediately presented a serious problem. It had but one input socket. There was no way the boys could play at the same time! A local boffin was consulted before the simple solution of adding a second socket was decided upon. This was only partially successful however in that it reduced the output level for an individual instrument from the quite loud five watts RMS dividing it unevenly between the two instruments. Never ones to be easily deterred the boys soon found an alternative remedy. Their father’s much-loved valve radio-set had several input and output sockets on its rear and with a few stripped wires Glenn’s guitar was soon demonstrating the truth of those who preferred the warm tones of valve amplifiers. It was when the boys decided to swap instruments to see if playing the bass through the radio and the guitar through the Selmer that the limitations of the pre-war speaker revealed themselves in a distorted low-frequency grunt which tore the radios speaker cone into fluttering fragments before their amazed eyes. Replacing the mortally-wounded machines casing after desperate investigations, the boys left it to their father’s future discovery and made-do with the over-subscribed Selmer although Gerry learned that placing the bottom of his bass firmly against the old wardrobe in the boys’ bedroom created the same acoustically amplified effect and sound of a double bass.

The boys had other older friends who allowed them occasional access to their more powerful gear and the guitars were in constant use from the moment of their arrival until the occasional irascibility of their father decreed silence, usually defined by his turning the mains electricity off in exasperated protest. Top of the Pops continued to dominate the weekly battle for control of the airwaves and as the charms of Pan’s People faded the erotic gyrations of Hot Gossip replaced them in everyone’s affections save for the boys’ father who felt that this was a step too far. It was gossip which would also result, shortly after Christmas, in the boys both getting the sack from their jobs at the supermarket. A rather dour and taciturn man named Cliff arrived on the scene and soon created a discord in the stores department that had hitherto not been evident. The misanthropic Yorkshireman soon convinced his myopic boss that more men and fewer boys were required and so it was that following a particularly dismal day of precipitation Jock Alexander announced to them both in his peculiar and indecipherable contralto “You’re finished!”.
After some discussion in which the boys grasp of idiomatic English was tested to its extreme and the grim realisation that they had been stitched-up by Cliff on allegations of insufficiency, Gerry hurled his now redundant overall into a deep freeze in a fit of anger. His elder brother’s more dignified response resulted in the boys’ father being able to negotiate a second chance for Glenn but there was to be no reprieve for Gerry whose petulant display in front of the store manager proved to be his last act in the firm’s behalf. Unemployed and without any real hope of child-labour elsewhere Gerry had, to use his father’s description ‘shit the nest’ and would now have to look elsewhere for his suddenly-curtailed income.

Little did he know that on return to school and his new friendless class he was about to experience a revolution in circumstances and earning potential that would dwarf his previous aspirations and set him permanently free from the world of wages.