There was a man once. 'Purity can be found beneath the skin of a 25p orange' said the man, wearing a smile that was just the right side of psychotic and swinging the lead all frantic. A Professional Lollygagger emerged from the shadows into the blind alley sporting eyes like the spiv. They came and walked here everyday, demonstrating tricks. There were two women who made many a purse from a sow's ear, not caring a tinkers curse, they gave the glad-hand in such a way as to make grown men cry. There you go, I've set a scene..
For me it was a case of Hamlet, without the Prince. I was on my uppers blowing along aboard a white elephant and selling myself a lemon at every step - that was then though, that was all that time ago back then. It was an open and shut case. Which mask was being worn…not the kind of thing you remember and which face held sway? Fuck knows. "What did I say? I said FUCK KNOWS. What of it?" I felt compelled to answer. This was the focus of my study - at that time anyway - all that time ago. This was indeed my focus, my main area of investigation. Was I scooping the kitty or was it more kicks than halfpence? Anyhow, the answer came in time, it was staring me in the face - I decide to rely on the fact that truth is stranger than fiction and decide to leave the truth behind. My old Uncle always knew it, an apple a day keeps the taxman away, so I must learn how to make an apple of my own, a buck, a square buck, a square apple. So now I'm getting on fine, I'm on the right side of the bug eyed rent collector and you can keep your Saturday night and Sunday morning.
Running for the bus one day, running past the woman who washes the steps, on our way to the lathe or the hairnet factory and a thought occurred "What happened to the Johnny Dankworth soundtrack played on a Dansette so small that it could've been mistaken for a toy?" It wasn't a toy but that's beside the point, what happened to it? What happened to the one with the small shandy, I offered her a fag once, nothing came of it. What became of the prototype coffee shop? You don't mind me asking do you? I feel that I'm entitled to know, I feel that by my knowing it might add a certain import to the situation. What did they ever do with the girl in trouble who wore an A-line skirt as her Father stared at his new TV, all bemused? He watches as Roger Bannister runs the miracle mile, the four-minute mile? Four minutes in life before the five minutes of fame generation ruined it, mucked it up, spruced it up and packaged it all, quelling juvenile delinquency and giving birth to the kind of empty vessels who make the most noise. How did I end up between the devil and the deep blue sea, pulling on the lever of a slot machine and getting close but never the cigar?
68
It all had something to do with local tradesmen and their associations. "It's five and twenty past two in the afternoon," she said and we agreed that it was indeed that time - or around that time. Telling the time was a less precise art then, you were never quite sure whether it was five and twenty past two or twenty three minutes past. Eventually they decided that too many minutes were remaining unaccounted for, it was an enterprising young baker started it. He figured he was losing three pounds a year in unaccounted for time. Time unallocated to any task in particular. Time where people might have a fag or browse a pocket novel. He wanted it done away with and on Thursday November 15th 1979 he invented the digital watch. He conveyed a meeting in the square to ascertain reaction and punish dissent. "Shall we throw our weight behind it? Let's talk turkey..." he begun his speech as a man called Ralph, his greatest advocate and supporter, jumped through the air and began doing dirty work at the crossroads. Speaking to nobody who needed to hear he said:
"We'll put on a right old dog and pony show, we'll take a liberty or two, its money for jam. A silver-tongued fella like you can get on the scent right enough. We've been up hill and down dale and now is the time, now is the time! We've been from pillar to post but I tell you now is the time. You know your onions now, you've served your apprenticeship, earned you wings, you've got a first class degree in Experimental Tourism and Applied Mechanics and we're going to publish you paper on 'Investor Sentiment and Asset Evaluation'. Take my tip, before you can say Jack Robinson you'll do it, you won't cave in. It'll be enough to make the cat laugh".
The crowd were not cowed, they spoke as one: "Will I go in at one end and come through the other side? What will I want if I don't want money? Is it a cert, a dead cert?"
"Certainly it's a cert from beginning to end, from soup to nuts it's a dead cert. It's what I call a racing certainty. You hold all the aces and I've slipped another up your sleeve and put a hot coal into your mouth". If you want to get on then remember: "A nod is as good as a wink to a blind man, the competition is non-existent and nothing succeeds like success…"
The bookie looked over his shoulder but that was the
least of it. The problem was that Ralph was not well liked. Maybe it
was something in the way he rolled his 'R's' but words melted away and
turned to ash and dust in his mouth. Mothballed reflexes never churned
into action and the only liberties taken came at too high a price, they
never went down to the wire. No one liked him but he didn't care. He
succeeded in giving people the pip at every opportunity. The cat didn't
laugh and the dogs moved in. The baker might've done things differently.
The lesson had been too much forgotten, he who pays the piper calls
the tune and the water must be tamed, dammed and directed with a kind
of ritualistic mania, a kind of ritualistic drama. They kidded themselves
that he'd been doing the dirty work at the cross roads but instead he'd
built a railroad, cheap labour navvies aboard a train where all platforms
led back to vulgar bad manners, heavy with shop sold,
shop soiled irony. I know what you're thinking. You thinking "What
about me? What became of me?" You people take your eyes off me.
Well I'm in the pink, I got a job with the spiv siphoning petrol, it's
dangerous work and unrewarding, right up my street, just my kind of
gig…"