Good evening Biggleswade!

And so to the Red Lion pub, to witness a performance of Ellie Dee my friend Mick's band. It is a hot, sweaty affair in pub with low beams and horse-related nick-nacks stuck on the wall. The first set starts slowly. The band play mainly 8Os covers with great verve. Slowly the small performance area, little larger than an inglenook, fills up with drunker and drunker blokes and women in less and less clothing. It's a recipe for confrontation – a rock band going full tilt in a medieval dungeon equipped with axes, maces and the like and lots of booze-filled blokes feeling sexually-challenged. There is no actually fighting, merely “eye balling”. We escape intact at about one in the morning.

I help Mick and the band to shift their gear out through the pub's only small door – not easy, as the place is heaving. We stand outside in the cool night, our ears ringing. Around us is a typical English market town on a Saturday night. Black and white, Tudor cottages, weaving drunks, shaven-headed psychos and people vomiting their kebabs into the gutter. It's like Shakespeare's England. For hundreds of years there have been blokes playing lutes – and drunks. And now it's us.

Artistic endeavour

It was a full week. The Chadwicks, the office rock band, met for a rehearsal on Monday night. After a couple of glasses of Dutch courage, we gathered in a local rehearsal studio – a damp cave, redolent of rock n roll, under some railway arches. The studio is called Alaska. Trains thunder periodically overhead. A sign on the door says “This is not a massage parlour”. That gives you a flavour of the place. It is wonderful. Humming amps, battered speakers, the thump of a bass guitar, the muffled sound of a band rehearsing the primeval rhythm of a rock song. Sniff and breath in the sweat and damp, plug in your guitar and away you go. There are many ghosts in this place. The five singers sang. We played our rock songs and drank beer and wine and had a grand time. Only Jon and me were left at the end. I was a bit shell-shocked.

Tuesday night was a rehearsal for my Edwardian melodrama, The Friends of the Dragon. Five people sitting around a kitchen table, neat, freshly printed-off scripts, red wine. The idea was for me to explain the message and themes of the play and for us to talk about the characters and their motivations, before doing a read-through of a couple of acts. We never got round to the read-through. Four hours of animated conversation ensued, table thumping, gesticulating, everybody talking at once. At one point, there was a fully-fledged and passionate argument on a racial theme. It was initiated by my use of a word – a quite innocuous one – which was current at the time of the play, but is no longer considered acceptable. By the end of the session, the scripts were tattered and covered with wine stains. I remember us all linked with our arms around each other's shoulders singing Major Tom (the Bowie song) at the tops of our voices. It was a bit too much. The play is emerging rather slowly from these encounters with our psyches. Too slowly. I wish that we could rehearse without getting hammered.

Meanwhile, at home, my horned man mask is slowly emerging from papier mache and chicken wire. We have selected the music. Night on a bare mountain, some Django Rheinhardt jazz and the sound of a spooky ambient choir. The play is in four acts. Watching a recent production at the Brockley Jack theatre, which did not have a discernible story really and a vague sense of place, has helped our little troupe. We plan to put on the play in the living room/dining room of my friends' large Victorian house. The first time I saw the space, I said to myself ... it's a theatre.

PS My most recent editorial is linked to below. I took me about two years to be disillusioned with Tony Blair, but only two weeks to be hugely disappointed by Gordon Brown and to realise that he represented and, in fact had been a well-spring, of what we call “New Labour”, just as much as the smiling Blair.

Out on the street, the public's contact with local institutions, constantly denuded of power by unelected surrogates, has become frighteningly remote, society has become more unequal and divided than ever and the UK's democratic deficit has grown larger.

Words from bright new ministers ring more and more hollow, legislation looks increasingly desperate and disconnected. There is a sense that time is almost up and that the political well has run dry.

Lies, damn lies and local government – click on this

Life, weird innit

Wake up in my house (always a relief). Off work today. Going to Bristol. Listen to Bill Bailey on Desert Island Discs. Life affirming. Stumble downstairs for a cup of tea. Feed the cat.

Chapter Eight (extract)

On my second night in Coral's suite, there was a tap on the door. I was on my own, waiting for Coral to come back. It was Culadar. His brisk manner was matched by his linen suit and his striped tie. The bed was still pulled out. I had scarcely left it in the last two days. He glanced at it and gave a wry smile.
"I hope that you have been … comfortable."
"I have, thanks. Would you like a drink?"
“Yes, please.”
“Would you care for a gin and bitters?”
“That would be admirable.” He grinned with delight. "I see that Coral has been looking after you."
"Yes, she has."
He spoke to my back, as I prepared his drink.
"Austin, I have some news which may be unwelcome to you. It is time for you to leave the ship."
I protested.
"I know that you do not want to, but your work is done. You see, Coral has been released from her evil spell. When Ishmal boards the ship, in Ceylon, she will be able to pretend that she is still under his baleful influence. When the time is right, she will be able to pass on everything that he has found out, to the authorities."
"I see."
"Don’t worry. I will make sure that she is rescued, before Ishmal is able to harm her." He smiled. "Trust me."
I did not, entirely. I thought about what he had said.
"So, it was not Ishmal who knocked me out."
"No."
"Who was it then?"
"It was one of his men. He boarded the ship at Port Said, to act as a spy."
"What happened to him?"
He touched his throat with his hand and made a clicking sound.
"You killed him?"
He chuckled.
"Yes, just after he had rendered you unconscious and tied you up. Don’t worry, Austin. I gave him a burial at sea."
I thought, with annoyance, of the hours I had spent trussed up in the wardrobe.
"Why didn’t you rescue me?"
"Austin, a little adversity is good for the soul, don’t you think? I wished to test your powers of endurance and, also, to give you an opportunity to flex your psychic muscles. In any case, I dispatched Scaramouche to help you, did I not?"
"Eventually."
I realised that I was glaring at him. I rubbed my wrists.
"All’s well that ends well," he said. "Of course, Ishmal will wonder where his man has got to. But that will have to remain a mystery. He is not to know that a barracuda is feeding on the man’s flesh, is he?"
He gave a coarse, ugly laugh.
The thought of Coral and Ishmal lying together made me feel sick.
"I know that is not an ideal situation, Austin. Once again, I must ask you to suppress your personal feelings, for the sake of a higher purpose.’
"I don’t want to leave the ship," I said.
He looked serious.
"Well, I’m afraid that you have to. I have spoken to certain people and arrangements have been made. Just after midnight, the Oronsay will dock at the Port of Aden. Coral will be interviewed by an intelligence officer, who will board her there. You are to disembark. You are to be flown back to London from RAF Khormaksar."
It was odd thinking of London’s drab buildings and dreary skies.
"Is it really necessary?" I said.
"Yes. Ishmal may already have vouchsafed to Coral certain vital secrets. She is a patriot, just as you are. She does not want the West to be held to ransom by an Arab despot, any more than we do."
"I see." My resolve was beginning to weaken. "So," I added. "What is Ishmal up to?"
He looked evasive.
"I am not sure. I have certain suspicions but they have not been confirmed …" He glanced around the room with its unmade bed and strewn plates and glasses. "As you know, Austin, MI 6 are experts in interpreting intelligence. Let us just hope that their officer can tease out some salient facts when he talks to Coral."
"MI 6?" I said, "not MI 5."
"Yes, this is an international matter, with ramifications for the entire world. I have contacts at the Foreign Office who have been fully appraised of the situation, as does your friend, Captain Knight."
He fingered his MCC tie. It was hard to imagine him as a leading light in the stuffy world of the Marylebone Cricket Club. He had assured me that his name was on the membership list.

I have been expecting you, Mr Bond

I thought of this brilliant way of promoting my books – guerrilla marketing. I catch the bus on the mornings when I don't cycle. The idea is this, see – I leave a book on the bus seat every time I get off. That way, someone will pick it up and maybe read it. They recommend it to their friends. Bingo. Problem is, both times I tried it, it went horribly wrong. On each occasion, a well-intentioned good samaritan picked up the book and gave it back to me. Duh! I did not feel able to explain what I was doing and sheepishly took it back. On the other hand, it's a good way to strike up conversations with complete strangers.

Apropo, I have written a play. It's called The Friends of the Dragon. It's an Edwardian melodrama, set during World War One, which incorporates Devil worship (themes – good versus evil, romantic love, appearance versus reality). If all goes well, we the players (my friends and me) will perform it in my best friend's dining room, for which the play was designed. In preparation, our little players' troupe went to see a play at our local pub theatre, the Brockley Jack, last night – this after an exhausting day at work. The play was so-so, I thought anyway, the actors were brilliant. We talked to them afterwards – we were the only block booking in a sparse audience that night. We explained to them our little project. Much laughter. It was a happy evening, except that I feel like Sisyphus at the moment – a man rolling the same boulder up a hill everyday. Every morning, he starts again. He is the historical character with whom I most identify.

I'm reading the new Bond book – Devil may Care by Sebastian Faulks. Brilliant stuff. The stiff upper lip, macho tone and casually racial stereotyping are just right. It's the under-statement and the little details that make it work. Faulks I think was the right man for the job.

Oh rose thou art sick

A sick heat. It's ironic that I am writing about a character cruising through the Red Sea in the summer of 1953 in my ongoing novel and imagining the torments and delights of the Egyptian sun, while England is shimmering in a heat haze – at least at the moment.

I have been sorting through letters and poems left by my mother and visiting my father in a care home periodically. My feeling towards him are very complicated. I love him but he has always been emotionally inarticulate – cut off. Now, he is living in a kind of hell. It is not a kind of hell. It is hell. His wife died suddenly. He is living in one room, virtually, in a care home many of whose residents have dementia. He has never had the words to express his feelings (words were my mum's thing); even less so now.

I saw him on Sunday. I drove him to a pub for a meal, lifting him in and out of the car from his wheelchair in the sweltering heat. His mind seems to have deteriorated a bit more each time I see him. On Sunday, he could not remember what had happened and who had visited him the day before. He could, however, remember going to school by tram from his house in Northfield to the centre of the Birmingham, when he was a boy. I say remember. He could not convey the tactile qualities of the experience of travelling on an electric tram in the 1930s – I suppose most people couldn't, but they could have a crack at it. I know that he was unhappy because he felt unloved by his parents. But he has never actually told me this. He has never actually told me anything. Where my father should be is a massive hole – a void. Now I am peering into it.

I feel sorry for him. I touch his shoulder and say that I love him. I do love him but we cannot talk to each other, in the meaningful sense of communication. I never will be able to talk to him, because we speak different languages. He speaks engineer's language – practical, understated. I have never esteemed that way of being. I can understand it but it is alien to me. I only realised about halfway through our meal in the dark, wood-panneled pub (too expensive for my dad to feel comfortable in) that he was deeply depressed. Obvious really. Why wouldn't he be? But then my dad spent most of his life depressed. Enthusiasm was my mum's thing.

I am back home now. I drove back from Kidderminster, I felt utterly exhausted and emotionally emasculated after my trip, as if my soul had been frozen in liquid nitrogen. I had been in the dark, inexpressive world of my father. God I am a screw up.


More from Chapter Eight

I felt with my hands a table and chair, a bedside cabinet and a firm, narrow mattress. I must have been confined, I surmised, in the smaller bedroom in Coral’s suite. I tried the door handle. It gave way. Thank God. Should I open it? On the other side of the door, in all probability, was an enemy with terrifying powers. I knew that I, too, possessed psychic abilities, although I had never cultivated them. In the past, I had experienced astral projection; I had even changed my physical form in a tussle with an evil enemy. The problem was, I did not know, intellectually, how to call upon these techniques – my adoption of them had been instinctive. Perhaps practising magic was like flying. Since my first moment at the controls of Avro 504, flying had come perfectly naturally to me. My instructor had joked that I had not needed lessons; on my first circuit I had performed manoeuvres that normally took hours of painstaking practice to perfect. At the conclusion of the lesson, I had brought the Avro down, without his assistance, in a perfect three-point landing that drew applause at the edge of the airfield.

It was time. Slowly, I pushed open the door. Again, Coral’s living room was illuminated only by a glowing red headscarf. There was a faint scent in the air, Coral’s perfume, and something else – like the ripe, fusty smell of an overheated sick room. A large shape floated into focus. Coral’s couch had been pulled out into a double divan. It was covered by a glistening sheet. White was her favourite colour. There was nearly always something of that hue on or near her – a stole, a towel, a quilt. I was utterly spent. My body felt as though it had been pummelled by hammers. I feared, from a more urgent pain, that the cartilage in my shoulder that had been damaged in Paris was torn again. A blind, physical need propelled me towards the bed, whose sheet covered a long shape.

Press day

A hard day in the word mines, seeing a weekly publication, Environmental Health News, to press in a sweltering heat, although a small rheumatic fan blew tepid air over us. I read page proofs made some corrections on-screen and passed pages for press. We launched the good ship EHN (sent the pdf files to the printer) at 5.45 pm. They were received by sweaty men in their shirt-sleeves who had just embarked reluctantly, in the ancient traditions of printing, on their night shift. Pub time. It is what we call “wine Wednesday” today. There is a glass of Merlot with my name on it waiting for me at the Slug and Lettuce. I have been tinkering with chapter eight of my novel, Dragon Rampant, over the last couple of days and here is an extract from it. The context is that I have been locked in a wardrobe by the bad guys in the bedroom of my muse. I am cruising through the Red Sea in ship called the SS Oronsay. The year is 1953.

Chapter Eight – Flying (extract)

I heard a rasping sound, like air passing in out of a bellows. There was a savage pressure in my head, like white light pressing against my eyeballs. The pain pulsed to the rhythm of the dry rasping – it was my own breathing. I had not just been tied up; I had been trussed up like a chicken, my wrists bound in front of my shins, and left in a stifling confined space. At least I was still on the ship. I could feel its reassuring pulse through my back, the gentle low-intensity vibration that trembled through its molecules, from the engine room to its squat yellow funnel. My windpipe was tight and cracked. I was desperate for a drink. I knew that I must move my arms and legs as much as I could, if they were not to become knotted. I flexed them, in the hours that followed, to a rhythm of my own devising. I have no idea how much time passed – hours of tormenting thirst, of searing pain and of drifting in and out of consciousness.

I felt a dry scratching on my wrists. It had teased me from sleep. What was it? The sensation felt like an insect’s proboscis or the flickering tongue of an animal. It was not unpleasant, like being tickled. The movement had a rhythmical, purposeful quality and was accompanied by a sucking noise. It was focused one a small area, between my hands. I pushed them apart, experimentally. The binding creaked. The scratching continued. I applied more tension. The binding loosened a little more. Oh joy. The creature, whatever it was, was trying to release me. Presently, I could separate my wrists easily. One more jerk should do it. The binding gave way. My hands flopped against a hard surface on both sides.

Surprise

Well, my birthday came and it started well. I stumbled downstairs to find that my daughter had bought me just want I wanted – a breadmaker. The weather was indifferent – humid and grey. I span off into another world – the word mine in fact – spending the rest of the morning and early afternoon embedded in chapter eight of my latest book, Dragon Rampant. I heard the rest of the house and my suburb wake up. At a certain point, after numerous cups of tea, I decided to go shopping in the huge Tesco's in the Old Kent Road. My daughter had been encouraging me to go out, and dropping hints. When I got home, my arms stretched by shopping bags, I discovered the reason. All of my friends, well 99 per cent of them, were standing in my small garden looking into the house through the kitchen's sliding glass door. It was a surprise party. The afternoon was a blurr of red wine and rock music and delightful recognition of the people who were there. It was perfect.