back to top

(The 1950s)

‘Have you seen the bairn, Betty?’
‘Your Roman centurion’s out marching round the back-garden, with my poss-stick.’
‘Ha Ha, I think that if you asked her she’d tell you she’s more than a centurion.’
Daddy knows, everything.
And only he’d recognise the Emperor of Rome, and not dream of washing clothes with my, spear..
‘Oh! You’re there, princess. I didn’t see you come in.’

back to top

CHILDY IS THE WYND AND JOSIE IS THE TUNE chapters:

1
School to Shoal

(The 1960s)

Mum could play a mean mouth-organ, and on the first hearing of Bob Dylan on Radio Luxembourg I spent every last penny of two weeks pocket money on the record; proudly putting The Times They Are A Changin’ on the Dansette turntable for Mum to be suitably amazed by. Only to be incredulous, and vociferously mortified at Mum’s unsuitable response to the patron saint of Maggie’s Farm..
  ‘Mum, you’re gonna just LOVE this!.....’
  ‘UGH,uh,huh.. OH?.. He’s no Larry Adler… pet.’
  Anyway focusing on the task in hand, the only thing needing a changing out here in the middle of Northumberland Square’s this bicycle tyre but another plaster on the inner-tube’s hopefully gonna do for now… pump-pump-pump.. and that’s the bike pump not an excessive dose of flatulence.
  And whilst I give the other tyre a checking over and tighten the saddle that thinks it’s a Luftwaffe ejector model, I shall elaborate on the subject of things that rattle yer chain and windups, notwithstanding the Wind of change.

  Now they do say that opposites attract.
  Which I guess between girls and boys is true. The most observed and deeply pondered on attraction being that boys’ bikes have cross-bars, on which to strap rope balance and transport just about anything. Be one a Roman general fearless of the ides of March because all weaponry’s onboard; or a growin’up pacifist nature-lover never forgetting to smell the flowers and pick up half the fascinating planet to keep along the way.

back to top

  And thus rests my case that the uses and necessities of the cross-bar is boundless, and the boy/girl directive for their respective designs has always been lost on me. Girls’ bicycles because of what’s missin’, are inept in all but wheels.
  Before however this point’s overrun by Mrs Woolf’s line..

IT’S VAIN AND FOOLISH TO TALK OF KNOWING GREEK
.. let’s just say knowing my wheels good as them that invented ‘em; the trappings and endowments of what boys have never ceases to impress me, and I remain an avid admirer around them.
  I still test-ride their bikes for them, and on returning buckled wheels and fractured frames (one’s own injuries notwithstanding), I test-ride their replacements: I still accept all satin-hearts and padded Valentine cards imparting on them the knowledge that February 14th’s the date ancient Druids carried out their ritual sacrifices, because in the spirit of quid pro quo a good piece of cloth and cardboard’s never been a gift to sniff at.. ‘POO!’ give or take them that come scented: I still allow them to offload their spidery scrawled poems notes and song-lyrics painstakingly listing their erratums back for them..
But when boys keep asking me for a date, and I not unreasonably give them..
  ‘Fifty-five BC,’
  ‘OH, come on, Beth. A real date..’
  ‘Anno Domini five-hundred do yer?’
  ‘Yeah funny! Look come a bit closer..’
  ‘Ten sixty-six,’
  ‘Be-ETH..’
  ‘Anno Domini MCMXLIX. Can’t get closer than that, that’s when I was born.’
  ‘BE*%+>!!!’
.. Ain’t no way of getting around or escaping it. However agreeable their bikes one’s gotta deduce the world’s gone mad, and the ungrateful critters ask too much of kindness selflessness tolerance patience friendship understanding and, TACT.
  Just two weeks off my fifteenth birthday, adrift and adroit among the fallen berry and bitter-sweet smell of wood-smoke thick and rich in the autumnal September air, at this rites of passage in my life Grrrita Gargoyle wants to be alone! And the road one’s riding to is solace.
  So oft we take oneself after school, which’s technically 4pm but in my book’s 9am, down to the salubrious serenely beautiful solace of Tynemouth’s Haven Sands. Whereat Mother of Pearl is the matriarch and from whence all teachers and critters are, barred.
  A small pebble-dashed cove valleyed between cliffs that to the left house Tynemouth’s ancient castle and priory ruins, beneath which runs the pier to the lighthouse; and to the right housing behind their corner North Shields’, Black Middens. Namely the slimy jagged-toothed rocks of the river mouth, lurking in menacing gaping awaitance for high tide when unsuspecting ships and boats throughout history have found themselves as mercilessly chopped up and swallowed as did mythical-mariners sailing through the clashing rocks at the straits of Bosphorus, albeit decidedly more obliviously.
  Liberally strewn with small jauntily painted and kooky named wooden sailing boats, on the cove itself when the huge harvest sun casting all hues of the spectrum across the oil painted water, sets enthroned upon the waves..
The path to the shore’s edge from the chariot of the Sun God becomes bathed in gold, suggesting it was Midas not the life’s essence of Uranus, fell asunder into the blue..
  And perched hereupon my rocky promontory above the spitting spumes of Poseidonian solace, where Halcyon is a sea-bird and Hope that bird ever in one’s sight, with sketchbook and charcoal in hand I look up to the birds of heaven.

back to top

The wind laughs
And the world cries
       But I don’t care any more…

I’d been mildly irritated on the first day of my quietude, when a young boy, just on the periphery of my vision, stayed in my space for ages. So I left.
  The second time it happened, the same fellow trying to catch my attention again by smiling goofily up at me, was rewarded with the grimace of a gorgon. However on tugging the tentacles of my wind flying hair down roughly under my scarf; when the critter obstinately refused to turn to stone, I upped and left again.
  The third time, he straddling his long skinny legs across a boat just beneath me: I resigned oneself to my haven respite being over and readied to go with no plan to soon return..
But not until I’d picked up a few choice rocks to pelt into the surf where I’d the mind the interloper’s face should be.
  ‘Ha Ha, those are much too heavy. Here, let one show you with these smaller pebbles how to skip them across the waves..’
  ‘Humghfff?’
  Exasperated beyond Charm School that IT talked, as well as irritated! With the mind to drop the weight of the world I held full in my hands onto his feet, I turned around, and feeling warm breath on my cheek, came on level with..

back to top

..The palest intensest most beautiful strangely down-sloping grey eyes I had ever seen.
  On soft rose-blushed skin, were lips that pouted at me sensually. Then broke open into a huge white-toothed grin, made all the more riveting as the teeth over spilling each other in this lovely face, marked its one imperfection.
  Yet, in the same warm breath when the sun caught their pristine brilliance as they flashed at me again, was pure perfection.
  And her hair, shimmering and cut short round her face like a halo, was rich burnished copper-brown.
  Dressed in asphyxiatingly tight drainpipe jeans, mohair sweater near the shade of her eyes, navy-blue reefer jacket and Chelsea boots.. Whilst up close her femininity was apparent, so too was an enigmatic air of boyishness.
  Around the same height as I, when I felt her steadying grip on my frame as my knees buckled on sea shifting pebbles, I wondered what it was had her shaking when it was I’d had the SHOCK, not she.

back to top

  ‘I’ve been watching you for ages, and I do hope one’s not disturbed your concentration, too much. I.. I wanted to speak to you, because you are a joy to see sitting up there on the rocks.
  ‘On first seeing you, I thought one must have dosed off on the beach and awoke in a mermaid dream, and had to pinch oneself… Ha Ha.. You are real, aren’t you?’
  ‘With a few broken toes to demonstrate it, just a second ago you’d have had no illusions about that.’
  ‘Pardon?’
  ‘I.. err I just mean I almost dropped my drawings.’
  ‘Oh… OH, Ha Ha, and your Socrates book, too..
  ‘I’m Josephine, Josie to one’s friends. How do you do?.....
  ‘Ahem… and you are?’
  ‘Humghfff.’
  ‘Haa Ha Ha, has one presumed too much in thinking you have a name?’
  ‘Beth.’
  ‘Beth… that is a beautiful name..’
  Yeah, and so is GARGOYLE.
  Well, I’d heard it all from boys before. But this was, NO boy.
  And no one, not animal vegetable nor mineral’d ever shook my hand before. She continued to more than disturb me, but all of a sudden when her hand warmed and tightened around mine, she oblivious she’d still not released it.. It was the safest feeling.
  ‘Socrates hmm.. So what is it that you’ve gleaned from this book about, Socrates then, Beth?’
  ‘That he didn’t write it, and was made to kill himself just for thinking too intelligently talking too well and having integrity. And nothing changes. Anyways, gotta fly..’
  ‘Oh!.. Before you go, Beth, is there anything else one may find around these parts, of interest, other than a, siren?’
  ‘Well yes, there’s a siren alright. And it’s called the Smith’s Dock, “HOOTA”. But if all the aspects of Camelot Albion Elysium and Eden’s what you’ve a mind to find, look no further than “around these parts”; yer’ll find the tombs of kings of one of the greatest kingdoms in all Christendom up there among those ruins, the wizard’s cave where the bold knight, Walter fought off demons and dragons in the cliff beneath and, Eden’s just due west thataways. But anyways I’ve gotta..’
  ‘Will you be here again, around.. say at 6pm tomorrow, Beth?’
  ‘Dunno, guess I could try.. But I’ve a pile of homework to get through, so can’t promise..’
  ‘Homework, course-work, dissertation, DO bring it down with you, one’s sure that there are subjects that one can help you with..’
  ‘……. You’d.. err umghf, probably not know the sort’f stuff, I do.’
  Trusting that waggin-off’s not her forté.
  ‘The probability is that one, shall.’
  ‘BYE!’

I shall laugh like a child
In the wind and change…

back to top

Previous chapter | Next chapter
e. TOAD | Book 1