One November evening I turned round the corner of Cardiff Road and Commercial Street and bumped into three boys, John Mattioti, Bruno Romola and another boy I’d taught in the Junior Boys School. It was a cold evening, already dark, and a fierce wind had caught my eyes, making them water. It was hard to focus; I was shivering, and feeling tired; tired of teaching, tired of a routine that was slowly squeezing the fun out of life.
I sensed, or maybe imagined, the disappointment on the boys’ faces – only they were no longer boys, but men, bursting with promise – confronted with this jaded ghost of Christmas Past.
But little did I know that words were being spoken, magical words that would change my life and that of others.
On the other side of the Atlantic, in Jackson Heights, New York, Frank Griffiths, a man I didn’t know, was talking to another man I didn’t know - Ron Gonella. Ron was exploring the possibility of teaching in Britain on a Teachers’ Exchange scheme. How seriously I didn’t know then; I’m not too sure now. But the words had been spoken.
The words traveled over the Atlantic to Middleborough and exchanged with a man I did know: Richard Lewis, an old Swansea friend. I had talked once or twice about the possibility of a teacher exchange, but usually over a pint or two. Now Frank told Richard about a guy called Ron, and how he’d been talking about maybe coming over on some kind of exchange
That night I got a telephone call.
The wheels moved quickly. More phone calls followed as we exchanged house – apartment – school details, and got the necessary permission from our respective Head Teachers.
Thank you, God, I breathed. Ron, Annette and their daughter Erica had a magnificent apartment in Jackson Heights, and the school I’d be teaching in would be St. Agnes Academic School for Girls. He was swapping all that for a small three-bed semi and an entirely different kettle of fish – St Joseph’s Comprehensive.
I was called to London for an interview. The Central Bureau of Teacher Exchanges took these things seriously. The interview went smoothly; I mean we’d done the job for them, made our own match, everything. All they had to do was rubber stamp it - and rubber stamp it they did.
I remember traveling back on the London to Cardiff train. It was snowing hard and the train stalled for an hour just outside of Gloucester. Worse the heating stopped too. I stared out a grey window at an even greyer sky, and countryside blanketed in snow.
What I’d just signed up to, the enormity of the adventure ahead, was subsumed by a more immediate desire. What I wanted now, what I dreamed of, was a 16oz steak and a bottle of red wine. That image is still fixed in my mind, a white countryside, the fading plush interior of a Berni inn, a thick sirloin steak, and the most expensive red wine I could afford. I ate in silence, got a taxi and crawled into bed.
Friday, 16 October 2009
Thursday, 8 October 2009
Tamagotchi
Greg Thomas reminded me of a boy we both taught, Darren Jones. Young Darren got very excited over the fact that he wasn’t yet old enough to vote. He thumped the desk, his voice resounding through the classroom. ‘It’s a disgrace, a disgrace I tell you, an infringement on our human rights. Thirteen year olds should be allowed to vote! We have rights!’ He got more and more excited. Out of curiosity and perhaps to calm him down, Greg asked him who he would vote for if he was given the right. ‘I wouldn’t vote for any one of them. Bunch of crooks, that's what they are.’
We talked of others we remembered: Jack Hobbs who walked the corridors looking morose, sometimes ecstatic, but always puzzled. Occasionally he would leave the classroom to smoke his pipe, and towards the end of his teaching career, if rumors are true, had to guided into his coat and gently pushed out the door by a loving family who understood his reluctance to go. My favorite memory is bumping into him on only the second day of a new school term.
“Don’t you find term’s beginning to drag, Mike? I do.”
We talked of the short-lived but intense Tamagotchi craze, and the mayhem it caused in the classroom as kids who had never fed a dog before became enslaved to their new digital pets. They had to be watered and fed, played with on a regular basis. Failure meant death or starvation in less than half a day. These were not wholesome or healthy pets. These were digital divas and kids found themselves enslaved.
The school responded slowly at first, insisting that each of these egg-shaped monsters had to be handed into the Office at the start of the day. The problem was merely transferred as office staff became embroiled in the digital will to survive.
Typing would be punctuated by urgent but surreptitious sessions of feeding and playing, none of the women willing to confront a tearful child at the end of the day with the news that their pet had been translated into greater glory. In a Catholic school one wondered whether there was a digital heaven and hell, but there was most certainly a digital god. Its name was Tamagotchi and before him all bowed.
This was the school I was soon to leave - a year in America. My ship had come in.
We talked of others we remembered: Jack Hobbs who walked the corridors looking morose, sometimes ecstatic, but always puzzled. Occasionally he would leave the classroom to smoke his pipe, and towards the end of his teaching career, if rumors are true, had to guided into his coat and gently pushed out the door by a loving family who understood his reluctance to go. My favorite memory is bumping into him on only the second day of a new school term.
“Don’t you find term’s beginning to drag, Mike? I do.”
We talked of the short-lived but intense Tamagotchi craze, and the mayhem it caused in the classroom as kids who had never fed a dog before became enslaved to their new digital pets. They had to be watered and fed, played with on a regular basis. Failure meant death or starvation in less than half a day. These were not wholesome or healthy pets. These were digital divas and kids found themselves enslaved.
The school responded slowly at first, insisting that each of these egg-shaped monsters had to be handed into the Office at the start of the day. The problem was merely transferred as office staff became embroiled in the digital will to survive.
Typing would be punctuated by urgent but surreptitious sessions of feeding and playing, none of the women willing to confront a tearful child at the end of the day with the news that their pet had been translated into greater glory. In a Catholic school one wondered whether there was a digital heaven and hell, but there was most certainly a digital god. Its name was Tamagotchi and before him all bowed.
This was the school I was soon to leave - a year in America. My ship had come in.
Thursday, 1 October 2009
A Melancholy Moment
I don’t play now, at least not often. I write. It’s what I do, what I enjoy but sometimes….. Every so often I bring out my mandolin or mandola. The fingers are stiff, and their tips hurt after a bit. The strings are sulky. They sense I’ve lost my calluses and are making me pay for months of neglect. But the fingers remember tunes I can no longer name, and I persevere. I ‘workout’, practicing an hour a day, sometimes more until the calluses return and my fingers skim over frets with some of their old suppleness. It’s a fine moment, and then…. What’s the point?
A moment has gone.
Once I played with a band, lost in a shared sound, excitement, companionship.
I put the two instruments away, admire my new tungsten tipped fingers and return to the keyboard. Writing is a solitary pursuit.
It wasn’t always so. I enjoyed playing with the Welsh Dancers, following Henry on fiddle, the oomph provided by Lol on an old concertina, though now she’s become a grand old lady and plays the harp. Then one day, Henry suggested a drink in the Red Lion on the corner of Charles St. and Stow Hill.
Over a pint of Courage best bitter he and Lol announced their intention of forming a folk band, with the less than catchy title of Teithwyr Twmpath. We practiced religiously at home and together. Sheet music was used until we’d mastered a tune and then thrown away. Later the band’s name was changed to the more sexy ‘Devil’s Elbow’ (Though whenever we played at St Anne’s Parish Ceilidh, they always billed us as ‘Fiddler’s Elbow’. Religious dyslexia perhaps)
We had various guitarists: a suave mathematician called Nigel Stephenson, Mike, a loud and jolly, guy from Oxfordshire, and finally Quince, who possessed a melancholic, slightly flat voice but played the essential guitar. We attracted a flute player, another Nigel who later became a vicar, and a moody Dutchman called Theo who played the Uillean pipes. They made a lovely sound but hurt the ear when being tuned; like piglets in an abattoir. Finally there was Reg, who played Bodhran and Jug. He was a solidly built postman with a smile like sunshine and hair from the Seventeenth Century.
And yet, it must be said, we never became superstars, though we were big for a time in Abertillary
From left to right: Nigel the flute, Lol, Mike, Henry, Theo, Reg, and two friends. I'm taking the photo.
We were also big in O’Reilly’s, a wonderful, family owned pub in Baneswell. We played every Sunday lunch time, paid in Guinness, followed by a ‘lock-in’ when the pub ostensibly shut but the beer continued to flow. The wonderful thing about O’Reilly’s was discovering how alcohol aided the learning process. I think scientists somewhere have proved this, though it’s a case of swings and roundabouts. You can learn something quickly with the aid of alcohol - lose it when sober – and pick it up again when next time you’re drunk. So not ideal for airline pilots but effective for musicians. We played by ear, picking up new tunes from visiting musicians.
But what powered the band and no doubt ruined my teaching career were the weekly Ceilidhs throughout Gwent and sometimes beyond. They paid well, and negated the need for me to climb the rungs of teacher advancement. With tax-free cash in hand, along with my ordinary salary, I was earning as much as a Head of Department with beer thrown in, and none of the hassle. These were golden times.
Saturday, 26 September 2009
Dead Flowers
Sometimes you do things, and things happen.
I bought a second hand violin in a Swansea junk shop. I think it cost me seven shillings and sixpence (pre-decimalization) 45 pence, new money, or about 75 cents. I bought it because it had the same tuning as the mandolin, which I could play; beyond that I had no idea why. It’s just sometimes good to listen to your voices.
A few years passed and I was sitting in my Newport bed-sit, time on my hands and thoroughly pissed off. The violin was in a case grey with dust and sat sulking in the corner. What surprised me was how easy it was to get a tune from it. The fingers worked by themselves; the bowing was something entirely different, more arthritic chainsaw than Stephane Grappelli. But I learnt, and the neighbours didn’t complain, at least to my face.
Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. It’s the only reason I can think of why I decided I was good enough to play the Rolling Stones' ‘Dead Flowers' on the violin at the school’s Christmas Concert. Fortunately I was rescued within two minutes by students who knew the words and covered my shortcomings.
I put the offending instrument away for a time.
Sometimes also, people come along.
Father Tony Hanson was an effete and cultured priest who, amongst other things, enjoyed match-making. He’d heard I ‘played’ the violin, knew of a Welsh dance group so desperate for musicians they’d sign on a paraplegic who could whistle, and introductions were made.
From then on I learnt how to look elegant in waistcoat, stockings and breeches, discovered a whole host of Welsh tunes, and spent summer weekends in country pubs and fairs while the dancers posed and twirled.
I could say my finest moment came when the troupe came third in the Welsh National Eisteddfod, but the truth was I was scared shitless, remembering an earlier debacle on stage with ‘Dead Flowers’. I just put my head down and played and hoped I wouldn’t be found out.
No, my finest moment, in this particular context, came when I met Henry and Lol Lutman, who had also (I think) been ‘fixed’ up with Welsh Dancers by Father Tony Hanson.
More musical adventures next post.
I bought a second hand violin in a Swansea junk shop. I think it cost me seven shillings and sixpence (pre-decimalization) 45 pence, new money, or about 75 cents. I bought it because it had the same tuning as the mandolin, which I could play; beyond that I had no idea why. It’s just sometimes good to listen to your voices.
A few years passed and I was sitting in my Newport bed-sit, time on my hands and thoroughly pissed off. The violin was in a case grey with dust and sat sulking in the corner. What surprised me was how easy it was to get a tune from it. The fingers worked by themselves; the bowing was something entirely different, more arthritic chainsaw than Stephane Grappelli. But I learnt, and the neighbours didn’t complain, at least to my face.
Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. It’s the only reason I can think of why I decided I was good enough to play the Rolling Stones' ‘Dead Flowers' on the violin at the school’s Christmas Concert. Fortunately I was rescued within two minutes by students who knew the words and covered my shortcomings.
I put the offending instrument away for a time.
Sometimes also, people come along.
Father Tony Hanson was an effete and cultured priest who, amongst other things, enjoyed match-making. He’d heard I ‘played’ the violin, knew of a Welsh dance group so desperate for musicians they’d sign on a paraplegic who could whistle, and introductions were made.
From then on I learnt how to look elegant in waistcoat, stockings and breeches, discovered a whole host of Welsh tunes, and spent summer weekends in country pubs and fairs while the dancers posed and twirled.
I could say my finest moment came when the troupe came third in the Welsh National Eisteddfod, but the truth was I was scared shitless, remembering an earlier debacle on stage with ‘Dead Flowers’. I just put my head down and played and hoped I wouldn’t be found out.
No, my finest moment, in this particular context, came when I met Henry and Lol Lutman, who had also (I think) been ‘fixed’ up with Welsh Dancers by Father Tony Hanson.
More musical adventures next post.
Thursday, 17 September 2009
Sometimes God plays dirty
The second great love of my life was Moira McDowall. Unfortunately God got in first and she became a nun. If this had been a Hollywood film she’d have been played by Audrey Hepburn. Trouble is I can’t really see who’d play me. Harold Lloyd perhaps.
During the time when things were going wrong we continued with a cycling holiday in Brittany that we’d already booked. I spent a lot of the time in a tent reading Pickwick Papers. It’s supposed to be a funny book. I didn’t think so then. Other memories include a dry and kindly Dutch lady and a down to earth Belgian who didn’t bother with a handkerchief when he rode. His method combined elegance with efficiency. He’d turn his face to the road, and with a finger pressed against each nostril in turn, he’d blow with great force. I made a point of riding in front of him.
During the time when things were going wrong we continued with a cycling holiday in Brittany that we’d already booked. I spent a lot of the time in a tent reading Pickwick Papers. It’s supposed to be a funny book. I didn’t think so then. Other memories include a dry and kindly Dutch lady and a down to earth Belgian who didn’t bother with a handkerchief when he rode. His method combined elegance with efficiency. He’d turn his face to the road, and with a finger pressed against each nostril in turn, he’d blow with great force. I made a point of riding in front of him.
Friday, 11 September 2009
Mugged by Sheep
I’d met Dave Loney on my Moroccan journey. I’d grown tired of the brazen blue skies, longed for some cloud, anything to make the blue less boring, less powerful; cut it down to size.
Come to Yorkshire, he’d said. In fact we could do the Lyke Wake walk. It sounded good: cool moor-land weather, bags of atmospheric cloud, and a pint at the end. A year or two later I took him up on the offer.
‘You know how long it is,” said as he was tying up his boots.
‘No,’ I said, thinking of the pint at the end.
‘Forty miles from Osmotherly to Ravenscar on the coast.’
So that was why we were setting out at 5 a.m. Forty bloody miles? “Sounds good.’
‘You get to sign a book at the end. You’re officially a ‘Dirger’.
‘Dirger?’
‘And if you walk it back again next day you’re called a ‘Double Dirger’.’
I wondered whether ‘Dirger’ was Yorkshire for ‘Fool’ but said nothing.
I can’t remember how we got there, but the bleak expanse confronting us is etched on my memory. I wince when I think on it. What’s so wrong with brazen blue skies?
The walk began and ended in mist.
Occasionally I’d look up from the uneven ground, the razor sharp grass, at Dave always ten paces ahead. His rhythm was steady, the small rucksack bouncing up and down on his back like a bloody metronome. I couldn’t take my eyes off it, my world reduced now to a dark strip of neck and a small green bag bouncing up and down, up and down. Couldn’t hate Dave. He was my only way out of here. I targeted my hatred on that bloody bag that found the walk easy and had learnt the art of the silent taunt.
“Tired yet, Mike?”
I’d gone beyond that. “No. You?”
“Thirsty?”
I didn’t answer. Saw him shrug
The name of the walk has Viking origins. Lyke is an old word meaning ‘dead body’ – (peculiarly apt I thought as the walk came to a close.) and related to the German word Leiche. ‘Wake’ refers to the watch over the dead prior to burial. Bear in mind that RAF Fylingdales on ‘Snod Hill’ has as its motto ‘Vigilamus’ (We are Watching’) All terribly spooky to the walking dead staggering across the moor.
It was late afternoon when we stopped. The mist had cleared and three great white snooker balls dominating the horizon. Fylingdales – part of our early warning network against nuclear attack. Just then a four minute warning seemed attractive. Just enough time to finish our cheese sandwiches.
We’d tried eating them earlier but had been disturbed. Attracted by the rustle of paper, the aroma of bread and Wenslydale cheese, woolly wraiths emerged menacing from the mist. Cows are reputed to be dangerous when they’re in calf. They have nothing on the Yorkshire sheep in search of a cheese sandwich.
It wasn’t our finest moment, being mugged by sheep.
Come to Yorkshire, he’d said. In fact we could do the Lyke Wake walk. It sounded good: cool moor-land weather, bags of atmospheric cloud, and a pint at the end. A year or two later I took him up on the offer.
‘You know how long it is,” said as he was tying up his boots.
‘No,’ I said, thinking of the pint at the end.
‘Forty miles from Osmotherly to Ravenscar on the coast.’
So that was why we were setting out at 5 a.m. Forty bloody miles? “Sounds good.’
‘You get to sign a book at the end. You’re officially a ‘Dirger’.
‘Dirger?’
‘And if you walk it back again next day you’re called a ‘Double Dirger’.’
I wondered whether ‘Dirger’ was Yorkshire for ‘Fool’ but said nothing.
I can’t remember how we got there, but the bleak expanse confronting us is etched on my memory. I wince when I think on it. What’s so wrong with brazen blue skies?
The walk began and ended in mist.
Occasionally I’d look up from the uneven ground, the razor sharp grass, at Dave always ten paces ahead. His rhythm was steady, the small rucksack bouncing up and down on his back like a bloody metronome. I couldn’t take my eyes off it, my world reduced now to a dark strip of neck and a small green bag bouncing up and down, up and down. Couldn’t hate Dave. He was my only way out of here. I targeted my hatred on that bloody bag that found the walk easy and had learnt the art of the silent taunt.
“Tired yet, Mike?”
I’d gone beyond that. “No. You?”
“Thirsty?”
I didn’t answer. Saw him shrug
The name of the walk has Viking origins. Lyke is an old word meaning ‘dead body’ – (peculiarly apt I thought as the walk came to a close.) and related to the German word Leiche. ‘Wake’ refers to the watch over the dead prior to burial. Bear in mind that RAF Fylingdales on ‘Snod Hill’ has as its motto ‘Vigilamus’ (We are Watching’) All terribly spooky to the walking dead staggering across the moor.
It was late afternoon when we stopped. The mist had cleared and three great white snooker balls dominating the horizon. Fylingdales – part of our early warning network against nuclear attack. Just then a four minute warning seemed attractive. Just enough time to finish our cheese sandwiches.
We’d tried eating them earlier but had been disturbed. Attracted by the rustle of paper, the aroma of bread and Wenslydale cheese, woolly wraiths emerged menacing from the mist. Cows are reputed to be dangerous when they’re in calf. They have nothing on the Yorkshire sheep in search of a cheese sandwich.
It wasn’t our finest moment, being mugged by sheep.
Friday, 4 September 2009
The voices take over
Me and Sheri Lamour were talking, shooting the breeze. Work was slow that week and there was little else to do. The office needed cleaning but one look at Sheri tells you everything you need to know about her. She don't do cleaning, her skills lie elsewhere, and mine mostly involve drinking and solving crime. We don't do cleaning.
“Anything out there?” I was talking about the news, not the stumblebums grazing on fried chicken or breeding the new feral horde. I didn't have much hope. My old Morgan radio had almost given up the ghost, regurgitating lie after lie from the slimeballs who now rule this once great country, either that or the salacious tattle from broads with more silicon than brain. Jeez. I like a broad with something to hold. I just don't want to be knocked of my seat when they turn.
“There's the Megrahi guy,” she said. Did I tell you that Sheri has a voice like honey and a figure to match?
A shiver ran up my spine. It was that kind of name.
“What's he done?”
“Blew up a plane.”
“Ours or theirs?”
“Ours.”
A murderous mist enveloped me. It sure as hell wasn’t dust. “And the guy's not been fried.”
“He's been released on compassionate grounds.”
I sunk lower in my chair as I listened to Sheri's voice. Sweet though it was, it covered pure cyanide. As I worked it out this piece of pond-life had served less than a fortnight for each of the 259 women and children he'd blown from the sky. What the hell was going on here, and why was Sheri telling me this...? That last bit intrigued me. The dame knows me inside out and then some, and she knows Clay Cross likes mysteries to solve, not venting rage against the dark forces sucking all light from the world. I'm a reasonable guy.
“So what's the real story,” I said.
Sheri pouted, her lips like dark cherries holding a worm. "They say it's a cover up."
“You mean Megrahi's the patsy.”
Sheri shrugged helplessly as if to say what the hell do I know? You’re the detective, big guy.
I gave her my shark's smile, the one with teeth. "What else do they say?" I've always found 'they' useful. Rumour's cheap. Informers you pay.
“Witnesses perjured themselves.” She took out her lipstick. When she brought that thing to her mouth the world stopped, and she stopped talking; only I wasn't finished with her. Not yet. She must have seen it in my eye; anyway she stopped, gave that secretive smile of hers that makes me go whoozy.
"So why didn't the guy appeal?" Hell, you can appeal for jaywalking now, appeal for being born stupid.
“They didn't want him to. Every time he tried, they kept on stalling, and then the guy got cancer.”
Ghosts go whoo hoo. They don't appeal. I got it. "So why not let Megrahi die in prison?"
“Compassion,” Sheri snarled, as though the word offended her. “They said Megrahi would soon face a higher power, and that it was the right thing to do even though 'some hurt can never heal. Some scars can never fade.' She sounded like she was going to burst into song. She sounded like Hank Williams. The thought was distressing and I closed my eyes, even as she said the killer line. 'The deal was freedom if he dropped his appeal.'
The lyrics made sense. One thing didn't. What the hell was our government doing about this?
Sheri Lamour read my mind. The FBI thinks it's a pile of crock. Bob Mueller's furious.
Never trust a man who sounds like a yoghurt pot, they're either Gestapo or Red, and all three amount to much the same thing. Even so I don't prejudge; it's not the American way. "I bet he is," I said, waiting for more. We have a nuclear arsenal, Scotland has thistles. "What's he doing about it?"
“Well, he sent a strongly worded letter...after the bird had flown.”
The office was silent except for the grinding of teeth.
“Then Hillary Clinton got involved.”
“Jeeze, I bet the Scots were terrified.”
“But they waited until it was a done deal before anything was said."
The office suddenly smelt of fish. “Do you smell that?” I said
Sheri raised her wild cherry red to her lips. "You've done it again, Clay," she breathed.
“Time for a spot of Kentucky mash,” I said, taking two dusty glasses from the middle drawer. Sheri took hers, the one with the lipstick.
“Compassion,” I sneered. The man had been set up, and governments were doing what they do always do best, covering themselves in outrage.
I wondered who was really involved, and why they’d gone for the Libyan and not them, but Sheri was busy.
“And I bet there was a trade deal involved.” I said. Sheri gave me her secretive smile.
“Anything out there?” I was talking about the news, not the stumblebums grazing on fried chicken or breeding the new feral horde. I didn't have much hope. My old Morgan radio had almost given up the ghost, regurgitating lie after lie from the slimeballs who now rule this once great country, either that or the salacious tattle from broads with more silicon than brain. Jeez. I like a broad with something to hold. I just don't want to be knocked of my seat when they turn.
“There's the Megrahi guy,” she said. Did I tell you that Sheri has a voice like honey and a figure to match?
A shiver ran up my spine. It was that kind of name.
“What's he done?”
“Blew up a plane.”
“Ours or theirs?”
“Ours.”
A murderous mist enveloped me. It sure as hell wasn’t dust. “And the guy's not been fried.”
“He's been released on compassionate grounds.”
I sunk lower in my chair as I listened to Sheri's voice. Sweet though it was, it covered pure cyanide. As I worked it out this piece of pond-life had served less than a fortnight for each of the 259 women and children he'd blown from the sky. What the hell was going on here, and why was Sheri telling me this...? That last bit intrigued me. The dame knows me inside out and then some, and she knows Clay Cross likes mysteries to solve, not venting rage against the dark forces sucking all light from the world. I'm a reasonable guy.
“So what's the real story,” I said.
Sheri pouted, her lips like dark cherries holding a worm. "They say it's a cover up."
“You mean Megrahi's the patsy.”
Sheri shrugged helplessly as if to say what the hell do I know? You’re the detective, big guy.
I gave her my shark's smile, the one with teeth. "What else do they say?" I've always found 'they' useful. Rumour's cheap. Informers you pay.
“Witnesses perjured themselves.” She took out her lipstick. When she brought that thing to her mouth the world stopped, and she stopped talking; only I wasn't finished with her. Not yet. She must have seen it in my eye; anyway she stopped, gave that secretive smile of hers that makes me go whoozy.
"So why didn't the guy appeal?" Hell, you can appeal for jaywalking now, appeal for being born stupid.
“They didn't want him to. Every time he tried, they kept on stalling, and then the guy got cancer.”
Ghosts go whoo hoo. They don't appeal. I got it. "So why not let Megrahi die in prison?"
“Compassion,” Sheri snarled, as though the word offended her. “They said Megrahi would soon face a higher power, and that it was the right thing to do even though 'some hurt can never heal. Some scars can never fade.' She sounded like she was going to burst into song. She sounded like Hank Williams. The thought was distressing and I closed my eyes, even as she said the killer line. 'The deal was freedom if he dropped his appeal.'
The lyrics made sense. One thing didn't. What the hell was our government doing about this?
Sheri Lamour read my mind. The FBI thinks it's a pile of crock. Bob Mueller's furious.
Never trust a man who sounds like a yoghurt pot, they're either Gestapo or Red, and all three amount to much the same thing. Even so I don't prejudge; it's not the American way. "I bet he is," I said, waiting for more. We have a nuclear arsenal, Scotland has thistles. "What's he doing about it?"
“Well, he sent a strongly worded letter...after the bird had flown.”
The office was silent except for the grinding of teeth.
“Then Hillary Clinton got involved.”
“Jeeze, I bet the Scots were terrified.”
“But they waited until it was a done deal before anything was said."
The office suddenly smelt of fish. “Do you smell that?” I said
Sheri raised her wild cherry red to her lips. "You've done it again, Clay," she breathed.
“Time for a spot of Kentucky mash,” I said, taking two dusty glasses from the middle drawer. Sheri took hers, the one with the lipstick.
“Compassion,” I sneered. The man had been set up, and governments were doing what they do always do best, covering themselves in outrage.
I wondered who was really involved, and why they’d gone for the Libyan and not them, but Sheri was busy.
“And I bet there was a trade deal involved.” I said. Sheri gave me her secretive smile.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)