Down Time

Welcome home

Andy Bullock

 Among the many emails awaiting await me on my return to the Bridge, let me share a couple with you.

Hi Tom. Just heard about 'change of plan': they don’t want me to start fieldwork on Mon as I'd hoped. Pity...I'm exhausted here!! Baby not sleeping, and boys having terrible troubles with homework.

I offered heartfelt sympathy. I am having terrible troubles working the grill, after two months of the international cuisine provided by Oasis Camps by the Nile. I managed not to burn M3’s potato waffles this morning, which is more than I can say for what the grill rack did to my foot.

Tom. Did I tell you about the tourist who breezed into town this week? He announced that he hadn't actually read your report yet but that he didn't agree with it. Then he looked at his watch, announced he had to get to the airport, and breezed out again.

In this context, I need to explain that a “tourist” is a consultant, official or politician who stays for an even shorter time in the field than a freelancer. In the old days, tourists conducted a “windshield survey” from the four-wheel drive, or even indulged in "over-fly research". Nowadays, the smart virtual tourist needs a memory stick at most. The tourist who actually lands and exchanges words with the local earthlings, or even with a freelancer, is to be applauded. And properly rewarded with a decent per diem.

I’m sure he’s quite right about my report. The trouble with us freelancers, you see, is methodology. We just don’t get it.There is a panoply of -ologies out there, of which the tourist is master. But with a freelancer, you're lucky to get any method at all, just a lifetime of experience of getting it wrong.

* * *

"What shall I do about supper?"asks my fragrant lady.

Perhaps either of my readers may be able to enlighten me on the methodology of rhetoric employed by Mrs M when I return from my travels. She sits bolt-upright several minutes before the alarm is due to go off, starts reciting lists, and continues this process while executing a neat sub-routine that involves selecting some of the animals for waking, and others for shooing out of the back door. Before I have had a chance to turn on Radio 4, she has delivered to my bedside tea from the blessed Teasmaid, may its name be praised.

She returns to bed long enough to take a sip from her own. "It'll have to be bangers and mash, I suppose... I'd better go and see if M3's shoes are dry." I hear her tripping daintily downstairs for the second or third time.

Friday Tex-Mex night at Oasis. The home-made nacho chips are much praised. And there's guacamole and sour cream to go with the fresh tortillas if you get to the trough before the Russians.

I manage to be-stir myself to take a large slurp from my cooling tea, before collapsing again onto the pocket-sprung mattress. May the name of John Lewis live for ever. My mind is completely blank about what I might offer instead of bangers and mash.


The L word may have risen momentarily to consciousness before I banished it.

There is just so much not to do during down-time. Currently I am enjoying one of these rare but happy occasions when there is another outing booked in the weeks ahead. This means that I can bask in the prospect of another cheque.

For a start, there is the condition of the garden. The Mandallay estate normally rivals the Augean Stables on my return, despite Mrs M's best efforts. (Ever since a particularly tricky moment when the children were as small as the puppy, she has sent me a series of bulletins about the achievements of various animals, starting the week before my return.) Also, the boys' lacrosse sticks need attention, and the boiler is bleating. The hoover's hose leaks, and the outside lights are, always, always, on the blink.

Yes, it all takes a lot of time not to attend to. Instead, I shall spend most of the morning, I am sure, trawling the internet, and consdisering the options for updating my lance. It's so twelfth century. They do them in alloys and even carbon fibre nowadays, collapsible, self-cleaning, even with a guidance GPS.

"Lasagne," I capitulate.


"I expect they'll be going out, but that would be perfect tomorrow."

I'll have to think of something else.

Saturday at Oasis. Barbecue night. The roasted goat is surprisingly good.

Cry Freedom

I return to the theme of waving flags.

Here I am, right up to the minute. It’s only five days since the final whistle and I’ve just taken in Wavin’ Flag, the official Coca-Cola anthem of the FIFA World Cup.

I hate football.

Wavin’ Flag was on the radio again. M3 had imbibed the lyric and was singing along to it. So I got him to tell me the words. Loud and slow, as to a foreigner, which I am.

Once upon a time, I may have imagined, like the song’s author, K’naan, that “When I get older, I will be stronger.” But I certainly I will not admit that I ever fancied that “They’ll call me Freedom, just like a Wavin’ Flag.”

So why is it that I feel a small flutter in the breast, a tear behind the visor? Drat! Yet again, Coca-Cola is teaching the world to sing, and yet again I’m a sweet sucker for it.

I find it helps me to apply the concept of freedom generously, and then I find it in plenty. Once upon a time, for instance, I had the freedom to stare at any one of the four walls of my empty cell, or even at the TV. Today I have the freedom to decide whether or not to attempt to evict M3 from the Mandall marital bedroom, where he is demonstrating remarkable skills in multi-tasking: channel-hopping, reviewing Facebook, conducting a stretch-test on the laptop cable, complaining that his phone hasn’t got internet, and demanding that I (that’s right: me) that I fetch his phone from the Fiesta, because I offered to get it fixed, so I must retrieve it. (He found the wretched thing in the creatures formerly known as his jeans.)

Such freedom! Happiness is mine.

At this moment, I am claiming the freedom to shut myself in the L-shaped cupboard, laughingly called Daddy’s Study.

“Give me freedom, give me fire, give me reason, take me higher”, sings K’naan. Perhaps it’s the big Zulu thump on the beat. Or perhaps it’s just that damned F word: I can’t help it.

Cry Freedom! The word, especially in a South African context, makes this freelancer weak. The chains of the profit-and-loss and the logical framework, the environmental appraisal and the Executive Summary all fall to the floor.

* * *

It’s Sunday 1^st May 1994, and I’m flying into Jan Smuts Airport, Johannesburg for a small joust at the expense of the tax payers of the European Community. (Do you remember those halcyon days, when we were still a Community and the whiff of Ludwig Van’s Eau de Joy still lingered over the Brandenburg Gates? Ah, Freedom!)

The polling stations for the first free South African elections have just closed. From the 747 window, I see a new South African Y-Front flag flying over the police hut by the runway. Later that night, Uncle Percy stops the car in an empty white suburban street. He steals me an election poster off a lamp post. He holds it at arms’ length and stands quite still, beaming back into the smiling face of Nelson Mandela. Madiba (as we came to know him) got a bit bent in my suitcase, but it’s still here in the cellar at Mandallay, in amongst the Mandall family’s abandoned instruments of music, sport and torture.

* * *

K’naan didn’t start out with the Coca-Cola FIFA version of Wavin’ Flag. This version of Wavin' Flag, on t'internet as northern wags like to call it, seems to be about waiting and wanting in Mogadishu.

Born to a throne, stronger than Rome 
But Violent prone, poor people zone
But it’s my home, all I have known 
Where I got grown, streets we would roam 
But out of the darkness, I came the farthest 
Among the hardest survival 
Learn from these streets, it can be bleak 
Except no defeat, surrender retreat

* * *

My job is to make you smile but it’s hard today. Trinny has died, beloved sister of Susannah, our friendly little two-year old cat who has kept us all company and made us laugh on dark nights and sunny days.

Trinny was victim of a hit-and-run driver outside Mandallay. In the daytime, we Bridgers are the most considerate of drivers, waving each other through, smiling and greeting on our way to the station or the church. But when night seizes the Bridge, we like nothing better than to clip a carousing teenager, or crush a crazy kitten – then scarper.

Trinny sometimes denied that she lived on the edge, but usually owned up.

Looking out of an attic window one day, I observed parallel wobbly white scratches on the slates of the West Wing. A few days later, Mrs M brought Trinny in, confused, panting, and bleeding. We kept a vigil all night, and by morning Trinny was fine. She professed not to know anything about it, and said that her cat food must have been spiked. In any case, she promised Polly, our old bitch* retriever, not to do it again.

But there was no stopping her. The roof of the West Wing has more stripes than Trinny’s tartan top.

I remonstrated with Trinny about the risks of base-jumping. Of course, there’s nothing you can do.

“Freedom!” she miaoued, and skipped off across the road, wavin’ her bag.

So long Trinny

*Polly is the old bitch formerly known as Bruno in this column. Polly told me she doesn't do butch, and didn't want to keep up the pretence any longer. I do appreciate, incidentally, my continuity editors who check my column for errors. Thanks to you, Mandallay is settling down to a standard location and orthography on Longhurst Lane. Your corrections give this old freelancer that rare and lovely feeling that he is being listened to. 

NOTICES

Deaths 

HADDOCK Fannie, nee Mae, and Johnny found capsized in their tank on 14th July. Married only for one week, Fannie and Johnny have gone to re-join their beloved Freddie, who departed this life on the 7th of this month.

WOODALL Trinny suddenly on Longhurst Lane on Monday. Missed by her sister Susannah, by all the Mandalls, and possibly by the bitch, Polly. Laid to rest ‘neath the Leylandii. Free to roam without fetters. No fish please.

Just a thought

It’s just a thought, one of those bats that flits through the empty belfry of the freelancer’s cranium.

(I’ve heard it said that one of the reasons that we freelancers spend so much time fettling up the lance between campaigns is that we have a short attention span. Bad habits from an early age. Hence, it’s just the one thought. Invoice in the post.)

This particular thought is a thought about a - never mind.

 
The point is: the following notice has appeared on Stockport Road in Marple.

Can you see that? It says:

Young drivers THINK

There’s a thought. One would like to think that this thought is founded on observation, but I haven’t found any evidence to back it up. However, I expect that it’s the considered view of our friends over at Traffic Services in the Stockport Communities, Regeneration and Environment Directorate, CRED for short. (I mustn’t knock CRED. By this time next year, I fear the Big Society will just be a Big Hole, and that our liberal democrat council will have lost its street CRED altogether.)

Mrs M and M1 rage against this sign every time they pass it. It’s making a terrible mess of the Fiesta.

Mrs M is a great defender of modern youth. Returning recently from one of our family outings to Pizza Hut and the Royal Exchange in Manchester, for instance, Mrs M observed that the younger Ms ahead of us were having difficulty persuading a G4S security operative (who has replaced the ticket inspector) at Piccadilly Station to let them board the Marple Express.

The boys’ rational arguments appeared to be having little impact on Mr G4S: mere boyish reason was nothing to him. I don’t know whether it was the force of Mrs M’s reason, or the end of the rounders bat poking out of her capacious handbag, but, at her appearance, Mr G4S quickly waved the Mandalls and the rest of middle-aged, middle-class rabble onto the Marplestar.
 
“They always try it on with the kids,” she said, poking the handle back in her bag.

I don't want to fall out with the family, but I think Traffic Services have got a point. There is plenty of evidence that young people think, and I am not aware of any research that young drivers are an exception. Young people conceivably employ thought in choosing whether to protest against a war or join the army. Some may use thought in the course of their research into the relationship between prime numbers and the Neanderthal genome. Others weigh up the economics of having a baby at 15, while yet others discourse on whether Mumford and sons are arrivistes, and whether their bumbling onto the stage at summer festivals to coincide with their surprise hit single, is not quite as haphazard is it appears. ("Dad," I hear the chorus. "Stop trying to be Down With The Kids." I'm not, I retort. I heard about them on Radio 4. So there.)

The strongest evidence that young people think, however, is Facebook: young people spend a great deal of time thinking about each other, about themselves, and about hair products.

I suspect that Peter Jenner, the vicar up in Mellor, might agree with Traffic Services. Peter says that he hopes his parish is a place for “seekers” at least as much as for “finders”. We think, we seek, we hope.

If Peter is right, perhaps Marple is a bit different from, say, Alderley Edge, whose portals sport following the message:

Children please drive slowly

This, one feels, is addressed to under-aged footballers who have already found themselves in possession of everything that they ever wanted, and have therefore already wrapped their first Lamborghinis around my Zimmer frame.

* * *

Back in Marple, and a little further along Stockport Road, Traffic Services – or whoever – exhorts us as follows:

That's right:

Don't become a Statistic

One thing we are never short of is a statistic. 56,817 drivers and riders aged 30 to 39 were involved in recorded UK road collisions in 2008, nearly as many as the 58,846 under-24s. (That's approximate: Mrs M wasn't available to check the figure-work.) What is more, the alcohol level in the blood of thirty-something drivers involved in crashes is much more likely to be over the legal limit (39%), than that of 16-19 year-olds (23%).

Anyway, all I was thinking was that young drivers might like to know this too, before they are crashed into by a drunken git in a bloody Range Rover.

M3 has just come back from an extended Graffiti workshop at our local Specialist Youth-Wise Communication College. I have suggested that he add a rider (so to speak) to the road sign.

Young drivers THINK

Thirty-somethings DRINK

It was just a thought.

* * *

NOTICES

Deaths

MAC our dear goldfish Freddie Mac, on 7^th July at Mandallay, of a bloated bladder, bravely borne.  He leaves his beloved Fannie Mae, and their young friend from Brabyns Fair, John. Freddie is re-united with the Dreamers on high.  Donations to Lehman Brothers. No weed please.

Marriages

HADDOCK Fannie Mae to Johnny on 7^th July, after a long engagement.  The Bride’s Maids wore salmon, and the periwinkle bouquet was caught by Ann Chovy. Fannie and Johnny plan to honeymoon in Wales, before returning to found a Cordon Bleu School in Mandallay.

Hokeh Tokeh

Does Tom ever do any work?

Le Club Med Africana, Tokeh Beach 2009 by Steph Malyon

It’s not that I pine for Mandallay on my excursions to foreign fields. Still, by the end of a Saturday that is too hot or wet to do anything much but listen to the air-con, I’m ready for anything: even a meeting of the Freetown Hash House Harriers on Tokeh beach, which they tell me is about 10 miles out of Freetown.

I hitch a lift from a “hasher” in a diplomatic Land Rover. I think it may have been one of ours, but off duty as it were.

The road from Freetown to Waterloo is paved with good intentions, and little else. At least as far as Tokeh. As long as I’ve been coming here, it’s been in the process of reconstruction. One day it may be finished, so that taxis and poda-podas can run up and down, taking people and produce hither and thither. Until then, Tokeh is a long way out.

A hand-painted arrow on an abandoned tanker directs us to the beach. We pass a heap of tangled concrete and steel bars, and drive onto the beach, a great arc of white sand, with a flat rocky platform in a crystal sea. We pull up in a glade by the only intact structure, a pleasant villa.

The Hash House Harriers tell me that they are “a drinking club with a running problem”. They give themselves curious names: Brown Nose, Black ‘n’ Pecker, Star Babe. I understand this last is in honour of a West African beer.

We stood around in a circle and shouted at each other. This advanced shouting technique is familiar to me as it is the way people got me to do things at school. I also practise it frequently with the boys. Several of the Hashers are, I understand, management consultants.

After the circle, some of the more energetic hashers ran around in larger circles shouting “On On” and blowing a horn. The rest of us had a very pleasant morning. It had rained heavily the night before, so it wasn’t too hot. We plodged behind the runners though soft warm flood meadows, green blades of grass shooting from glistening water. Every now and then, there would be a cry of “False Trail” when the paper trail the runners were following gave out. Soon afterwards, runners wearing fluffy ears in tooth-grinding hues of orange and green would dash back past us. So we could gently turn around, to resume our conversations and our ambling in the opposite direction. I met all sorts of people.

Then it was circle time again. This time they poured beer over their own or each others’ heads and other body parts, then sang “Swing low, sweet chariot” with gestures.

Several local people watched this patiently. A very persuasive villager called Barry sold me a coconut which he opened expertly with his cutlass. It was full to the brim with cool milk. His friend sold me half a dozen delicious oysters, after which I considered it safest to close my eyes, before anyone tried to sell me anything else.

Brown Nose must have chosen this moment to start telling me how, before the civil war, Tokeh was an outpost of that great French institution the Club Med holiday village: Club Africana Tokeh. It seemed, I reflected, a long way from the Mediterranean, but then M1 and myself are in full agreement that France is a state of mind...

“Bonjour monsieur Mandall, Gentle Member. I ‘ope you have travelled well from Angleterre. I am your Village Chef, Henri Toulouse Lautrec. You can call me Chef. And I will call you Gentle Member."

"Please don't. I find it embarrassing."

"But Gentil Membre, it is an indication of our respect to you. Montez dans mon ‘elicopter, and I will whisk you to ze Club Africana Tokeh. ‘Ave a meringue.”

“No thanks, chef. I’ve just put one out.”

We land in the palm-fringed bay, on the platform of rock. A bridge connects it to the shore. Little golf carts are taking us around like extras in Port Marion. Chef shoos away a film crew for a Bounty advert, and resumes his commentary.

“Ere we ‘ave ze village, ze village bar, ze ‘urts with all ze modern convenience, and ze hunderd bed hotel... and ‘ere is la piece de resistance, ze village dance floor for ze crezzy hokey tokey.

“We ‘ave all sort of diversion for your degustation. There is Jacques Cousteau making ze scuba. See, Gentle Member, where Presidents Mobutu and Giscard play at 'Risque' -"

"I said, please do stop all that 'member' business. I know it's different in France, but still -"

"It is, 'ow you say: "to err is 'uman'?"

I resist the temptation to say that Tou-louse is stupid.

"- et voila Jean-Jacques who runs his classe extra-murale de philosophie, and Brigitte Bardot who is modelling for Paul Gau - "

I awake to find the Hashers packing up the remaining cases of Star beer. I’ve missed the fried chicken and rice. Barry and his mates are drifting away. They did quite well with the coconuts, but, strangely enough, there weren’t any other takers for the oysters.

Beach boys - by Vannessa without Borders

Some kids hang around hungrily, hoping for tips. Club Med kept Tokeh in work, before it got destroyed in the war: ten, twelve years of dreadful comings and goings. Just the busted concrete remains. I don’t look too closely for stains and chips on it.

Now there are a few fishing boats, but, with the road so bad, it’s hard to get it to Freetown to sell the catch. Still, there’s a new hotel being built. Maybe one day the road will be finished. Things'll brighten up yet.

I apologise for late publication this morning. We ran out of internet here.