Seventies Saturdays

Seventies Saturdays

Occasionally, when they aren’t asking for money, my kids ask what things were like when I was young. I tell them that the world was dark and dangerous and there was a lack of quality television. We only had three channels and most of those were off air most of the time. There was nothing to watch over your sugar-enriched breakfast cereal and children’s programming ended just before you got home from school. There was Swap Shop on Saturday mornings, which was good as long as your only other option was doing your homework or having rickets.

Thus, when my dad occasionally had to go to work on a Saturday morning he used to take me with him as a treat. A very inexpensive treat too. Now you're stuck with taking them to soft-play for a tenner or the cinema for a fortune. Different times.

I didn’t really know what my dad did for a living. Ten year old me just knew he was in charge of lorries and a warehouse. In the warehouse was wood, but my dad called it timber and so I did too.

We drove there, probably in his Vauxhall Viva, with Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewart on Radio Two and me in the front seat. I may or may not have been wearing a seat belt. If we had to stop suddenly my dad would put his arm out across me, keeping me perfectly safe. There was a tin of hardboiled sweets covered in icing sugar in the glove compartment. That’s how we rolled.

I should tell you about my dad. He was born in South London a few years before World War Two and he tells me stories of watching Spitfires dogfight and searching bombsites for shrapnel. For me my dad is Clint Eastwood's character in any of the Spaghetti western trilogies that we watch. He is often silent, he smokes cigarettes (not cheroots but close enough). He has a wicked sense of humour and takes no shit, least of all from me. He has never shot anyone; but I did see him deliberately trip a boy who scared away the pigeons I was trying to feed in Trafalgar Square. When I was a bit older my friend Fred told me that my dad scared the living shit out of him. My dad once took me to the Lord Mayor’s parade and I sat on his shoulders.

My sense of direction being what it is I have no clear idea where my dad worked to this day. Somewhere in Twickenham in what was then Middlesex in what is still South West London is all I can tell you. There are orange and blue chain link gates in a wooden fence. My dad unlocks these and we drive into the expanse of the loading yard. There are lorries in orange and blue company colours, their flat beds sheeted over with tarpaulins. Old fashioned lorries really, but I don’t think there were curtain-sided cyclist-crushing artics on the roads in those days. I remember the yard being windblown and desolate and my dad would lead the way to the single storey office building that sat on its own in a sea of tarmac.

The smell of the office is a strong blend of coffee and tobacco. Underneath that is the chemical taint of what I think was the ink they used in the telex ribbon. Every empty desk, cluttered with papers in files and on spikes, was just as its owner had left it on Friday afternoon. Most have a little tin ashtray and a large blotting paper mat marked with stains of mug rings and odd little scribbles, sums and notes. There are pink haired trolls, newton's cradles (which I set going) and metal stick men on metal stick horses balanced on metal cylinders (which I set going).

At the weekend the place is silent and empty like one of the ghost ships found abandoned in the South China Seas that I’d read about in my comic (The Victor - teaching young boys not to trust Germans, Italians and the Japanese since 1961). First things first my dad buys me a hot chocolate from the machine. Press the button, clunking and whirring, then a plastic cup appears and a mixture of boiling water, sugar, sodium benzoate and chocolate flavouring froths into it. Brilliant. A machine that automatically makes you a hot drink. I'm IN the future. Could not get enough of that. When I could I poured the hot chocolate away in a plant or outside; I didn’t really like it but I didn’t want him to know that.

Along one side of the yard, away from the office’s smell of smoke and ink was the cavernous warehouse and a completely different smell. The smell of raw timber. You can smell this too – walk down to the back aisles of your local DIY megastore where the joists and fence posts are stacked. Breathe in. That my friends is one of the smells of my childhood and I love it. Anyway back to the cavernous warehouse. We have rows of metal pillars supporting a corrugated roof. Asbestos didn’t become lethal until 1982 so that’s probably what the roof is made of. Up there are skylights and these cast a dim beige-tinted light between the towering stacks of timber down to the concrete floor. The palleted towers of plywood, joists and doors reaching up to the roof form canyons that echo to the clackers that I am probably cracking together as I poke around. This is the seventies. Small children are allowed to roam freely through the industrial workplace.

Lurking in the canyons like sleeping dinosaurs are abandoned forklift trucks. There are two types, front-loaders and side-loaders. I am proud that I know this. They are huge and dirty and fantastic. I can climb up into the seat and push the levers. I am ten and alone and all bets are off.

If I was lucky the driver would have left the forks off the floor when he’d knocked off on Friday evening. This meant, and I can’t stress how cool this was, that I could make a massive yellow-painted powerful machine work On My Own. I push a lever forward and the great metal forks sink to the concrete with a satisfying clunk. That’s probably still one of the top ten thrills of my life to date. After I had eked as much fun out of forklift taming as was available I would saunter back to the office on the off chance of another hot chocolate.

There were pictures of topless ladies on calendars in the office. I am ten and am interested only in the mechanics of this. My working assumption (much like the earth being at the centre of the universe for a medieval pope) is that no one is going to let anyone take pictures of them in the nude. That would be just so weird, no one would let that happen. But there they are. Ladies with their bosoms showing. So, to keep things in line with my worldview these pictures must be faked. The ladies must have clothes on – maybe a t-shirt or a vest top, and they must put on a fake boob-suit so that it looks like they are topless but actually are not. And very nice they looked too, although once I had my theory of the boob-suit I didn’t pay much more attention to them. Once you know how the trick is done you lose interest. This was a hypothesis I remember holding on to through for some time. James Bond’s attractive girlfriend couldn’t be naked under the sheets; she was an actress after all. She couldn’t be naked with Roger Moore could she? There must be a clever skin-coloured suit that she was wearing. I don’t remember any later epiphany of actually realising that nudity was “real”. There was no slack-jawed realisation of “oh my god she’s naked”. It probably happened in secondary school in front of my classmates and I’ve blocked the trauma of it all.

One last thing – desk calculators. Not everyone had them. Sometimes there was a slide rule on someone’s desk. I had no real idea how to use a slide rule either then or now. But I liked the satisfying engineering of the slide, the complicated gradations and the way it slid smoothly out of its groove. But sometimes, there was a calculator. Slightly smaller than a cash register. You could turn it on at the plug, and click the switch at the side and a bright green “0.” would glow on the screen. If I pressed a button the number would change. I would add up numbers, big numbers to make bigger numbers until the display was full up. If you went too far you got an “E”. For Error.

You might have noticed the satisfaction I get in this story from pressing something “here” and making something happen “there”. A recurring theme that I didn’t notice until I got to the end here. I loved that feeling then and I love it today. Hence my later work for NASA when I invented the red button that launches things into orbit. I never thanked my dad for giving me the time and space to find that out. If I had he would have thought me daft; so it’s probably best that I didn’t mention it.

Short Story: Too Many Chiefs

Too Many Chiefs

Ang Tuin's temple was large and airy and mostly painted white, which he did not like. All through his second life there had been wood panelling which had filled the space with a rich scent of beeswax and nutmeg, but the tall men had come to make another of their changes. They had levered off the panels, the long nails screeching painfully as they pulled from their holes That had upset him. He had managed to make them sick and he thought one might have died. But the effort had just made him even weaker & he had slept.

When he awoke the trees outside the arched windows on the far wall were lush with summer foliage. But were now dwarfed by great stone and metal buildings which had not been there before. Far away, machines crossed the sky itself, gliding in silence like distant albatrosses. Ang Tuin watched them go, remembering the ages he had spent watching far horizons and the distant specks that had sometimes crossed them. There was a box on the wall next to him with a red light on it too. It hummed low and soft and he didn’t mind that.

Some time later a man came to attend to the needs of the box. He was a short man with a belly that his overalls barely contained. His overalls said he was Brian. Ang Tuin reached into his head. He found that Brian was perhaps as angry and frustrated as Ang Tuin himself. Someone had shouted at him while he was driving his car. (Ang Tuin knew what a car was. This wasn’t the first head he’d reached into.) Brian knew this man by many names; git, twat, cretin, Brian had a list. He had accosted Brian and struck his car with his fist in an argument in the street. There were images: a queue of cars, a contorted face leering through a window. Ang Tuin cut through them and placed a single bright thought into Brian's head. “I am not a whipping boy, I am the one who whips.”

Even this gleeful action was an effort, and he had to sleep again. As he rested for season after season he cast his mind back. To the days when he was newly born, called into life by the priests. Venerated at a great wooden altar in front of the other statues of the Rapanui heads. He had had power back then, as had all the gods; they had been strong. His territory had extended down the forested slopes of the volcano that was called Terevaka and adjoined that of Ang Kai who was the god of the eight huge statues on the western slopes of a smaller hill. Ang Kai who had ruined them all. Ang Kai who had reduced Rapanui to an empty island, battered by wind and wave. An island of great stone heads that slowly shifted on their earth foundations, leaning and toppling according to the whim of the remorseless winds.

At the start of Ang Tuin’s second life the tall men had raised his statue up in a city greater than he would ever have imagined existed. A temple had been created for him. Who knew what gods must assist the tall men in their endeavours for them to prosper on such an extraordinary scale. His worshippers came to the temple all through the daylight hours; men in different kinds of hats, with clothes that fitted tight to their bodies, waistcoats bedecked with gold chains. They had hair on their faces and were serious in their disposition. Ladies in their finery, dressed with feathers and long flowing skirts, hats perched on their heads like tall ships cresting waves. They gathered in front of the statue, its blank eyes staring unseeing at them and through them. They were hushed in reverence, reading the neat white cards set out for them by the priests.

“Moai Monolithic Head. Devotional statue. Rapanui Polynesia, Southern Pacific Oceanic region. Est. 1500 BC. Solidified Volcanic Ash. 20 tonnes weight. 23 feet height.”

Sometimes a priest would tell them stories about how the Statue came to be and what service it performed. The worshippers would politely ask questions and some would reverently run their hands across the statue’s rough surface.

Ang Tuin felt loved, the worshipper’s reverence filling him with energy. In return he diminished their troubles. A married man, a merchant, wracked with suspicion over his young wife’s infidelities found himself relaxing; she loved him, he was sure of it; these were just idle worries, that he could afford to ignore. A young boy, commissioned as a midshipman on the Royal Sovereign, and mortally afraid he would cry like a girl from homesickness was suddenly so very tired of the confines of his parent’s house and longed for the horizon. Ang Tuin performed his role, they performed theirs. All was in balance again, as it should be.

The priests filled Ang Kai’s temple with other items to aid worship. There were displays in glass cabinets edged with dark wood and more names on white cards. Fragments of pottery, stone, wood and metal from long dead peoples. They were many and various and called names like Romans or Inuits or Macedonians or Aboriginals. He wondered how they had lost their power and been brought to this great room far from their cities. Had their gods failed them too? Were they all so greedy?

Ang Kai had been greedy. Ang Kai’s tribe called themselves the Kavanui. Meaning they were the Chosen ones, the Selected. They worshipped Ang Kai in much the same way that Ang Tuin’s tribe (who were unnamed) worshipped him; offerings, sacrifices, devotion and fire. In return the gods rewarded their people. Rapanui was windswept, wet, often cold. For tribes who sated their gods it was none of those things. Or rather it still was, but only on the outside. Viewed through the prism of the tribes, the island was a paradise. It was blessed with fresh breezes, nourishing rain and occasional warmth. With the help of the gods the island could be seen as a beautiful place. It was a matter of perception. See things the right way and life was good. Crops grew, livestock grazed, social structures were maintained. Ang Tuin and his like nurtured thoughts in the heads of their devotees; they attended to their needs, spoken and unspoken. In cold winters they fed thoughts of warm springs to come. When crops were sparse they revived memories of feasts gone by and the promise of more in the future. They made shy girls into devoted wives, turned shy boys into brave warriors. The small communities that populated the island had occasional feuds & occasional alliances. They married, they died and they were re-born. All was well, life was in balance.

But Ang Kai was not content with simply being, he had encouraged his tribe to bring him more. When they ran out of resources he sowed the idea of taking territory from other tribes and they swept through the island like a plague. A few generations was all it took and Ang Kai had it all. And a few generations was all it took for him to lose it. They stoked the fires ever higher and burnt everything, gave him everything, they starved and froze and died and were reborn. But fewer and fewer were re-born and they died younger. Until one fine spring morning the last flame went out, a smouldering heap of ash cooled and streaked away in the sea breeze. The few emaciated tribe members stood round the great heads mumbling prayers, eyes cast down. And Ang Kai saw too late that he was lost.

Then they were alone, so many small gods in so many stone heads.

And so, towards the end of Ang Tuin’s first life, tall ships had come with tall pale men in strange clothes. They laboured under bright blue skies, digging at the hard earth until they dragged one of the statues down the hillside onto the flat plain. Under a huge timber frame they raised it onto the back of a cart towed by 6 beasts and then onto one of their tall ships. Ang Tuin was reborn.

Just as things had changed on Rapanui, Ang Tuin saw things change in the city of the Tall Men. The glass cabinets were rearranged constantly for new exhibits. Men came and removed all the cabinets containing the axe heads, flints and pottery shards. Ang Tuin wondered where they went. Shelves were put up, filled with artefacts, then taken down again. Different cases replaced them. These ones had lights in them. The priests wanted things to be more exciting, more interactive. There was now a stuffed polar bear rising up in the Inuit section. Amongst the Romans there were swords and spears and armour. An Aboriginal hunting party crouched in a cave-mouth. The Native Americans had a wooden totem pole reaching to the ceiling. The devotional scripts were removed and now brightly coloured stickers showed people where things were from and what they did.

The distant shores from where the worshippers came were hidden from Ang Tuin, but he heard them; at the start there were hooves clattering on stone streets and the clamour of voices, then cars that had motors that belched black fumes and crashed and banged. Then more cars, less hooves, more people, more noise, it was never really quiet anymore. The tide of worshippers washed in, objects were laid out for them, were revered, were removed and the tide washed out again. Through it all his Stone Head stood imperious and unmoved.

Hand in hand with the changes in and outside his temple walls Ang Tuin saw changes in the people themselves.

More worshippers came in bigger numbers; rails were put up, the priests asked people not to touch the exhibits. The worshippers changed. They wore different hats in softer materials, their clothes became looser and then more colourful and looser still. The men started to wear their gold on their wrists not their waists. The women showed their ankles, then calves, then thighs. Then no one wore hats.

Worshippers no longer strolled through the temple pausing at each exhibit and marking the contents and the words. Ang Tuin watched them move more & more swiftly, their pauses becoming rarer, their attentions easily distracted. Sometimes they missed out whole sections of the displays. They started to eat and drink as they walked. They were hardly worshipping at all. They spoke more loudly; to each other, to devices held to their ears. They brought their children! Why would they bring mewling children to a temple?

These were surely signs of a people’s downfall; when temples became market places and school rooms; when gods were no longer given due reverence; Ang Tuin felt himself become weak as he was overlooked.

His congregation ignored him, drifting through the room, perhaps sparing him the occasional glance, but not caring about him any more than they cared about a pet dog. These rational, yet irrational people with their constant need for comfort and convenience but with no idea of how to obtain it. No respect, no awe. They knew everything and knew nothing. He resented them, resented their blank expressions and their unseeing eyes. Their ignorance and constant need to chatter about their inane lives. They had left him and now they had what they deserved; a sour, weak unworshipped god alone in his great hall.

Occasionally he would reach out to someone, instil fear or hatred or anger. A fat man in tracksuit, stuffing fried chicken into his face found himself suddenly afraid of the germs that surely swarmed and multiplied on his food. But such efforts, though amusing, served only to sap his strength. He spent longer and longer sleeping and dreaming, and each time he awoke the world had moved on further.

This time on waking he saw there were two small boys and one small girl gathered round about the head. They were dressed in purple sweatshirts. On the front in white print was a tree in a circle and the words St Jude’s Primary School. Two of them were wearing baseball caps.

“Wow” said one, looking up. “How big is that head? That’s massive!”

“What’s it of?”

“Huh?”

“What’s it of? Who is it?”

“Dunno. Maybe someone famous from ages ago?”

“Cool isn’t it? It’d be well heavy to shift”

“Ha ha – you said the S word! I’m telling!”

“I did not! I said shift! Shift! Shift! You’re an idiot.”

“You are” There was a short interlude of poking and discussing who was an idiot.

“Get off. Someone must’ve done it though. Someone had to get it up here.”

“Where’s your cap Sadie?” A teacher approached from the Inuit exhibit.

“Don’t know Mr Meacher.”

“Is it back in the lunch room?”

“Don’t know sir, it might be.”

“Go and find it then Sadie. Go and find it ! Haste girl!”

“What is this Mr Meecham?”

“This, Josh is an Easter Island Head.”

“How old is it?”

“Well shall I stay here with you and tell you or shall I wander off and let you READ THE SIGNS!” He pointed at the writing and the pictures on the laminated notices, then folded his arms and raised his eyebrows.

“We’ll read it ourselves sir.”

“Excellent. I love learners. Who do I love?”

“Learners sir!” giggling

“Very good. Learn away.” Ang Tuin watched Mr Meacher stalk off to oversee a scuffle at the other end of the room.

The two boys were reading the card.

“It’s flippin’ three thousand years old! That’s older than God and Jesus!”

“People worshipped it, is IS a god already!”

“How cool would it be to be a god! A proper god with super powers and that could see the future.”

“That’d be so cool and you could get people to work for you and bring you stuff”

“That’d be so sweet!” The boys ran their hands over the bottom of the statue.

Ang Tuin felt their energy. Their awe and wonder wasn’t much, but it was more than he’d felt for a great deal of time.

“Human sacrifices! Look Robin! Human sacrifices! It says it there!”

“Oh wow – that would be how it got its super-powers. With blood and killing!”

“We should do that, we should make a sacrifice.”

“Huh? What’re you on about?”

“We should make a great sacrifice to the god of the head”

“If you do I’m telling.”

“We should…I could…”

Robin’s eyes rolled back and he crumpled to the floor. Ang Tuin left the boy, making soothing noises in his small head. They had minds like mice these little ones.

Mr Meacher arrived on the run. He checked the boy’s breathing and took off his sweatshirt.

“Hold his legs up Josh, he’s just got too hot and probably didn’t have enough breakfast. Millie, can you tell Mrs Tempest to come and give me a hand? The rest of you can stop gawping, go and learn some stuff. Go! Robin will be fine.”

Ang Tuin was thrilled. A sacrifice. He felt the rush, the world swam into sharp focus, colours became vibrant, buzzing with energy. He hoarded this, not tempted to use it on amusement or mischief. He held it close to him like a priest clutching his gold.  

Sacrifices had always been made of course. But of goats or sheep. People were not livestock. Nevertheless the priests had stated it it on their texts. Human sacrifices. It was not for him to question them. A weak one. Worshippers would sacrifice a weak goat, a runt of the litter. A weak person would surely serve that purpose. Then he would have power, he could help his worshippers and they in turn would revere him. Recognise him for what he was and not be distracted by their mundane lives encroaching on Ang Tuin’s temple.

More seasons went by.

One day the girl came. Her hair was dark, streaked with the cherry red of a dying fire’s embers. The chair she sat in was covered in stickers of many different colours and designs. She gazed at Ang Tuin’s statue. Ang Tuin gently reached into her mind so as not to upset her. Her name was Alice. There was a feeling of sadness, a great weight within her. Ang Tuin was pleased. This was the girl, she was meant to be sacrificed.

Alice sat there for a long time, staring up at the impassive granite face; she did not notice the woman in the sunhat come up behind her. She yanked headphones off Alice’s head and spun her round to face her. The woman’s face was an older version of the girl’s; but the years had etched bitterness into it. The woman bent over yammering into Alice’s face, berating her for her misdeeds. She just sat there with eyes downcast as if discovered at some guilty pleasure. She was always doing this, wandering off in a daze, why do I have to come and find you, why couldn’t you stay where we’d agreed, she was useless, a dreamer.

Ang Tuin felt all this as he reached out for the mother’s mind and found screeching madness, a cacophony of conflicting voices full of anger, fear and resentment. He placed an image in there amongst the yapping and snarling. An image of the sword in the display behind her, that sword in her hand, that sword in the chest of her daughter. Then she would see, finally she would see what a sacrifice her mother had made all her life; finally she would be sorry for what she had put her mother through.

The mother abruptly got up and strode to the Roman diorama. The gladius was the standard issue sword for Roman soldiers. It is a short stabbing sword, not for fencing or swashbuckling. It is very functional, very Roman. She hefted it in her hand.

At this time several of the small children, buzzing around in the hall being interactive with everything, turned their attentions to the Archimedes Screw in the Macedonian section next to the Easter head. They suddenly thought they could move it if they hung off it. That would be fun.

The mother walked back to the girl, standing in front of her, raising both her voice and the sword. The girl watched her in a resigned fashion, as if this was commonplace. Ang Tuin watched and waited.

Meanwhile two pregnant mothers with buggies like tanks, making their way down the aisle to break up the party on the Screw became panicky. They suddenly realised that if they didn’t get there their kids would die, simple as that. They both broke into a run. Coming from two different directions, focussing on their charges, they collided. Their buggies knocked out the lynch pins of the screw and it flew free like a ram, swinging from the steel cable that held it to the ceiling.

It collided with the top of the statue’s head knocking it forwards and Ang Tuin was suddenly looming over the tableau of Alice and the mother, sword arm still upraised. Slowly at first then gathering massive momentum as tonnes of weight succumbed to gravity, the statue tipped over.

He was going to crush them both, this would be a great sacrifice indeed. But then everything changed. Inexorably it all slowed to a dead stop. He hung inches above their heads like a gull scanning for mackerel.

The mother slid forwards on the smooth floor. Not a part of her body moved; but she and the chair and Alice glided beneath him all the same.

Then he was falling again, the mother’s ludicrous sunhat filling his view and the giant flat nose drove itself onto her head like a thumb on a drawing pin.

Vocanic ash, under stress reacts like glass. The statue crushed the life out of the woman and then as it met the marble floor it shattered into a thousand small pieces. Ang Tuin felt the rest of his power draining away.

Some of the pieces flew into the next section where Heimdall the watchman of the Norse people was ironbound in his ceremonial shield. Finally he had managed to convince some small ones to swing on that screw. He could see now the green space beyond the great window to the South. With the stone head gone, the sightline across parkland down to the river was opened up. At last His temple was now fit for a Watchman.

Across in the Macedonian exhibit, a crudely curvaceous clay statue of a woman stood next to a collection of pottery artefacts. Ishtar the Lightbringer goddess of love, sex and fertility felt the power within her temple and was contented. The women with the pushchairs had been her idea. She had thought to call them and their unborn children to her. They brought with them the fresh life and fertility that she revelled in. It had been many seasons since she had received such close attention.

Amarok in his ceremonial reindeer hide had once been the taker of those Inuits who would hunt alone at night in the Arctic snows. He had only wanted the woman, not the girl. Two would have been a waste, an offence even, against the sparse ways of the Inuit. He was pleased that he had thought to make that happen; he had all he needed now; he had culled one from the herd; one that needed culling. He had no need of a temple, but the white walls were the colour of snow, and in this warm land it would have to do. He didn’t really miss the frozen wastes anyway.

Later, for the tall men there was of course an inquiry. People were blamed, promises were made, compensation paid.

None of these details concerned Kalseru the ageless, the Great Creator Serpent, the Aboriginal Dreamtime God existant in the red-earth dusted cave paintings in their hermetically sealed display cases. Kalseru who was of both the earth and the air and from the time before time. He called all things to return to him, even the gods of men when they forgot their purpose. These small gods. Their lives were so short; like may-flies. He passed his all-seeing eye over and through the sixteen remaining deities in His temple, weighing their desires, guiding some, leaving others to their own devices. All was well now. All was back in balance.

The statue was irreparable but some of the pieces were just big enough to stick bar codes on. In his third life, such as it was, Ang Tuin found himself in something called a gift shop.