Clerks (1994)

 

LuLaRich (2021)

 

'Up that Loganville Estate'

54/50

A Day Out (1972)

 

Crime (2021)

 

Comfort and Joy (1984)

 

Common Murder by Val McDermid (The Women's Press Crime 1989)

 

I’m sorry, Duncan, but I quit. I resign. As of now, I don’t work for you any more.” She stopped abruptly, feeling tears beginning to choke her. She snatched up the sheaf of copy from the table where Duncan had laid it, turned, and walked out of the office. No one tried to stop her.

In the ladies’ toilet, she was comprehensively sick. She splashed cold water on her face and took several deep breaths before heading for the offices of Socialism Today.

Here there were no security men on the door to challenge her, no secretaries to vet her. She walked straight up to the big room on the second floor where the journalists worked. Dick was perched on the corner of his desk, his back to her, a phone jammed to his ear. “Yeah, okay…” he said resignedly. “Yeah, okay. Tomorrow it is then. See you.” He slammed the phone down. “Fucking Trots. Who needs them?” he muttered, turning round to reach for his mug of coffee. Catching sight of Lindsay, he actually paled. “Christ! What the hell are you doing here?”

“I’ve got a story for you,” she said, opening her bag and taking out another copy of her manuscript.

“Is it to do with the computer print-out?” he demanded.

“Sort of. Among other things. Like murder, kidnapping, GBH, and spying. Interested?”

He shook his head reluctantly. “Sorry, Lindsay. No can do. Listen, I had the heavies round at my place last night about you. It’s a no-no, darling. It may be the best story of the decade, but I’m not touching it.”

A sneer of contempt flickered at the corner of Lindsay’s mouth. “I expected the big boys at the Clarion to wet themselves at the 

“thought of prosecution. But I expected you to take that sort of thing in your stride. I thought you were supposed to be the fearless guardian of the public’s right to know?”

Dick looked ashamed and sighed deeply. “It wasn’t prosecution they threatened me with, Lindsay. These are not people who play by the rules. These are not pussycats. These are people who know how to hurt you where you live. They were talking nasty accidents. And they knew all about Marianne and the kiddy. I’ll take risks on my own account, Lindsay, but I’m not having on my conscience anything that might happen to my wife and child. You wouldn’t take chances with Cordelia, would you?”

Lindsay shook her head. Exhaustion surged over her in a wave. “I suppose not, Dick. Okay, I’ll be seeing you.”

Starter for 10 (2006)

 

That Cardiacs song

 Two 180s in the same month? It's been a while. It must be from watching all the darts.

53/50

I'm walking back from this previous statement. The Loxley Robins - for the foreseeable future - will be my dart of choice. I hope it works out for me.

Porridge (1979)

 

Shaun of the Dead (2004)

 

The Unbelievable Truth (1989)

A Matter of Life and Death (1946)

 

The Guard (2011)

 

"Wait a moment . . ."

Just like when you were kid when you would go outside for a kickabout after watching a cup final, I picked up my darts after watching today's World Championship Darts. I'm really enjoying the Loxley Robins darts now.

They are not just a novelty, gimmicky dart.

52/50

The Split (1968)

 

Slinging Arrows by Wayne Mardle (Ebury Press 2021)

 

There does come a point when every darts player is forced to confront his or her intake and for me that point came in Vegas – where else? – during the summer of 2004. I’d reached the final of the PDC’s third Las Vegas Desert Classic, a huge event at the Vegas MGM Grand.

Remember when Tyson fought Holyfield in 1997? Same place. Some aspects of my own experience at the MGM were similar – for instance, the huge LED screens above the stage, which had once flashed with the rotating names MIKE TYSON and EVANDER HOLYFIELD, were still there, and were now reading PHIL TAYLOR and WAYNE MARDLE. (It’s quite something seeing your name up in lights like that, and it’s hard not to feel empowered. I remember seeing the stage and thinking: ‘Right, I’m going to maul him. I’m going to absolutely maul him.’) Unfortunately that’s where the similarities end, mainly because while Tyson famously left the ring having torn something off, namely a not insignificant portion of Holyfield’s right ear, I staggered onto the stage after tying one on.

By that I mean I was pissed. I wasn’t paralytic, but equally I hadn’t been to bed for two nights. I was competing against the world’s best player, in a major final, live on Sky Sports, and I hadn’t slept for forty-eight hours because I’d been knocking back champagne, vodka and mojitos, and gambling like a fiend.

The game was due to start at midday, but I’d taken up residence at one of the hotel bars at 6am. I remember when I’d first arrived at this little bar in the middle of the casino – a bar no bigger than ten feet wide, with a little opening for the barman and a handful of poker consoles on top – I’d said to the barman: ‘Are you open?’

And he’d gone: ‘We’re always open.’

It was music to my ears. By that point I’d already been drinking for so long that I’d convinced myself I was sobering up, even though of course I wasn’t sobering up at all and was, in fact, becoming progressively more drunk. The reality of the situation was not something that troubled me when I ordered a vodka and cranberry. Then another. Then several more.

I was having a great time as the clock ticked closer and closer to midday. 

Somewhere in the blur of it all Sharapova won the Wimbledon final, beating Serena Williams, and I’d had a bet on that outcome so I was jumping around the place like a lunatic. And of course by this point the darts fans were all wandering in, and I was there in my Hawaiian shirt so even in Vegas I wasn’t exactly blending in, meaning that the fans were all coming over for photos and autographs.

The barman was watching all this happen – and bear in mind I’d been there two or three hours by that point, and he’d been serving me for the duration, so there was no doubt about it: I was drunk. The barman went: ‘I have to ask, who are you?”

“I said: ‘Well, there’s darts on, isn’t there?’

‘Yeah,’ he nodded. ‘I know that.’ And then this look of absolute horror crossed his face. ‘Hold on,’ he went. ‘Are you playing?’

‘Yep, I’m in the final.’

He looked me up and down, paused a moment and replied: ‘Can I bet on the other guy?’

‘Yes, you can!’ I declared triumphantly and, with that, I staggered off to face my fate. I turned back, and he was just kind of staring at me, with the most subtle shake of his head. You know the head-shake: the type you’d usually only get from a disapproving parent. And at that point I remember thinking: ‘Wayne, there’s a very slight possibility you might have overdone it.’

This came into focus (and for me, it was pretty much the only thing in focus) when I got downstairs to the practice room and found Phil, already practising. Safe to say, Phil hadn’t exactly been on the piss during his time in Vegas, and the only refreshment he had in front of him was a small portion of fruit. He looked me up and down and said: ‘What the FUCK has happened to you?’

‘Nothing,’ I said, attempting to gloss over the fact that I probably looked like I’d just been dragged away from a brawl outside a tiki bar. ‘I’m fine. I’m fine!’ (If someone tells you they’re fine once, they might be – if they feel the need to tell you twice, they’re not fine at all and are almost certainly pissed.)

I asked Phil what he’d been up to in Sin City and he told me matter-of-factly that he hadn’t left his hotel room in the last seven days. ‘I’m here to play, and win, then go home,’ he said, adding that in his entire time there he’d only left his room to eat and play darts.

I looked at him standing there, all ready to lift another trophy, and I said: ‘Phil, I think you might win this.’

Which, of course, is exactly what happened, although strangely he only beat me 6–4 in sets (and I actually won more legs than him), and it was a pretty close game considering I was off my face on Vegas! As for my trusty barman, who’d been such a friend when he was pouring out those vodka and cranberries, and such a stern parent when I’d staggered off to meet my defeat … Well, despite his claim that he was always open, I didn’t see him again the next day, or the day after that. I like to think he did go and place that bet on Phil winning; that he pocketed the cash and jacked in his job on the spot. At least one of us would have been lucky that day.

Capital (2015)

 

Trust (1990)

 

Everton, Howard's Way (2019)

 

Dracula (1931)

 

Report for Murder by Val McDermid (The Women's Press Crime 1987)

 

Lindsay Gordon put murder to the back of her mind and settled down in the train compartment to enjoy the broken greys and greens of the Derbyshire scenery. Rather like home, she decided. Except that in Scotland, the greens were darker, the greys more forbidding. Although in Glasgow, where she now lived, there was hardly enough green to judge. She congratulated herself on finishing the detective novel just at the point where Manchester suburbia yielded place to this attractive landscape foreign to her. Watching it unfold gave her the first answer to the question that had been nagging her all day: what the hell was she doing here? How could a cynical socialist lesbian feminist journalist (as she mockingly described herself) be on her way to spend a weekend in a girls’ public school?

Of course, there were the answers she’d been able to use to friends: she had never visited this part of England and wanted to see what it was like; she was a great believer in ‘knowing thine enemy’, so it came under the heading of opportunities not to be missed; she wanted to see Paddy Callaghan, who had been responsible for the invitation. But she remained unconvinced that she was doing the right thing. What had made her mind up was the realisation that, given Lindsay’s current relationship with the Inland Revenue, anything that had a cheque as an end product couldn’t be ignored.

The fact that she cheerfully despised the job she was about to do was not a novel sensation. In the unreal world of popular journalism which she inhabited, she was continually faced with tasks that made her blood boil. But like other tabloid journalists who laid claim to a set of principles, she argued that, since popular newspapers were mass culture, if people with brains and compassion opted out the press would only sink further into the gutter. But in spite of having this missionary zeal to keep her warm, Lindsay often felt the chill wind of her friends’ disapproval. And she had to admit to herself that saying all this always made her feel a pompous hypocrite. However, since this assignment involved writing for a magazine with some credibility, she was doubly pleased that it would avoid censure in the pub as well as provide cash, and that was enough to stifle the stirrings of contempt for Derbyshire House Girls’ School.

The Frighteners (1996)

 

The Heartbreak Kid (1972)

 

Now You See It by Stuart M. Kaminsky (Mysterious Press 2004)

 

June 25, 1944

The Pantages Theater wasn't on fire, but Blackstone definitely had a problem. My brother Phil and I had been hired to take care of the problem before it killed the World’s Greatest Living Magician.

Inside the Pantages, Phil was sitting in the front row with his sons Dave and Nate. Dave, at fourteen, was two years older than his brother and trying his best to hide his awe. It was what fourteen-year-olds did.

Uptight (1968)

 

Mildred Pierced by Stuart M. Kaminsky (Mysterious Press 2003)

 

Until Wednesday afternoon January 5, 1944, there had been no deaths, intentional or accidental, caused by the firing of a crossbow in the recorded history of Los Angeles County.

On that day, while the German army of Field Marshal Fritz von Manstein was retreating into the Pripet marshes in Poland and the U.S. Marines were driving the Japanese back at Cape Gloucester in New Britain in the Pacific, Mildred Binder Minck made history.

The day after Mildred’s historic demise, I sat across from her grieving widower, Sheldon Minck, D.D.S., in a room in the Los Angeles County Jail.

The Los Angeles County Hall of Justice on Temple Street between Broadway and Spring takes up a city block. It’s fourteen stories of limestone and granite, an Italian Renaissance style building with rusticated stonework, heavy cornices, and a two-story colonnade at the top.

The L.A. County Jail occupies the five top stories. Sheldon Minck, D.D.S., was occupying only one chair on the fourth floor of the jail. He faced me through a wall of thick wire mesh.

“Toby, I didn’t do it,” he said.

Shelly Minck is not a thing of beauty to behold when he’s at his best, happily drilling into or removing the tooth of a trapped patient. Seated on the other side of the wire, he was not at his best.

“I mean, I don’t think I did it,” he added.

Shelly wore a pair of dark slacks and a long-sleeved wrinkled gray shirt. His thick glasses rested, as they usually did, at the end of his ample nose. Beads of sweat danced on his bald head and his large stomach heaved with frequent sighs.

“They won’t let me have a cigar,” he complained. “Is that fair?” 

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

 

To Catch a Spy by Stuart M. Kaminsky (Mysterious Press 2002)

 

When there were no other visitors around, I talked to the gorillas or the chimps. The gorillas paid more attention. I leaned on the railing and looked through the bars.

“I’ve had a hell of a day,” I told the big gorilla.

He kept eating, but he looked at me intelligently. I took it as a sign that he didn’t mind if I continued.

“Someone tried to kill me,” I said. “Someone is threatening to kill a couple of my friends. A Nazi. I mean the guy holding them who tried to kill me is a Nazi.”

“That’s how you got all scratched up?” came a raspy voice at my side.

“Yeah.”

The gorilla found a banana and delicately peeled it, still looking at me.

“You think you had a bad day,” came a raspy voice again.

A thin woman in a cloth coat too warm for the afternoon had moved up to the railing without my seeing her. Her hair was white and wild. She had clear light blue eyes and a smooth face. I couldn’t tell how old she was. She clutched a big blue purse to her chest.

“I slept in the park, a little shed behind the Greek Theater,” she said.

I wasn’t sure what to say, so I just nodded and went back to looking at the gorilla. He was now staring at the thin woman.

“Look at them,” she said. “Place to sleep every night. Someone feeds ’em. Don’t have to work, worry about where the next meal is coming, where to bed down.”

“They give up their freedom for that,” I said.

She cackled.

“Put me in a cage with a place to sleep and three squares and you can come and talk to me whenever you like about Nazis trying to kill you.”

“I was talking to the gorilla. I mean, about the Nazis.”

She shrugged and leaned her chin on the purse.

“Go on,” she said. “I talk to ’em too. Say, if a cop comes by, don’t tell him I tried to put the bite on you.”

“You didn’t,” I said.

“I’m working up to it,” she said. “Cop comes and real polite ushers me out of the zoo if I’m puttin’ on the bite.”

“We’re just fellow animal lovers,” I said.

“And both maybe a little nuts,” she said. “Nazis trying to kill you. You come back from the war shell-shocked, something?"

“Too old for the war,” I said.

“So was Milton,” she said, “but he volunteered and they took him. Want to know why?”

“Why?” I asked, and the gorilla and I waited for an answer.

“Because he had a special skill, my Milton, which is something I don’t got. Milton knew barometers, thermometers, all kinds of meters. Worked for the city. Not this one, Newark, New Jersey. Then he got himself killed on a ship somewhere and left me bubkas.”

She looked at me.

“Is that a sad story?”

“Very,” I said.

“Sad enough to make you kick in a few bucks?” she asked.

“Sad enough,” I said, pulling out my wallet and fishing out two singles.

She took them and plunked them into her purse.

“That’s one of my better stories,” she said. “Depends on the customer which story I use. True story is even too sad for me to tell myself. Won’t tell that one for five, even ten bucks. Rather starve. This is the point where you tell me you gotta go. You’re late for something.”

“I’m not late for anything,” I said.

She was looking at the gorilla again.

“Got any kids?” she asked softly.

“No.”

“Good,” she said. “You lose ’em, you lose your heart. Know what I mean?”

“I think so,” I said.

“Gorillas,” she said, looking back at the two animals. “They look so smart. Like they’re thinking, working out some big problem. You think?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe,” she repeated and ran a hand through her wild hair. “Listen, I gotta go get something to eat. It’s been good talkin’ to you.”

“Same here,” I said.

“And stay away from those Nazis. They’re bad news.”

She walked away, a slight limp. I watched her head down the hill, her eyes toward the ground. I looked at the gorilla. He was watching her too.

“You could have offered her a carrot,” I said.”

The Warriors (1979)

 

The Outlaws (2021)

 

Guilt (2021)

 

A Few Minutes Past Midnight by Stuart M. Kaminsky ((Mysterious Press 2001)

 

The sunshine was gone again. The sky was gray. It looked like rain in Pershing Square but the small park was packed with people on benches eating their lunch out of paper bags, strollers, and servicemen on leave wandering through the city. Plus the regulars.

The regulars were there. Along with those passing out leaflets on everything from the dangers of drinking beer to the need for a wall along the coast to keep the Japanese from landing, they stood on wooden boxes or overturned trash cans. They insulted the crowd or tried to get those gathered around them to accept Jesus, the end of the world, the promise of Communism, the need for universal celibacy, the dangers of Communism, the threat of organized religion, and the necessary preparations for the brave new world coming after the war.

My favorite over the years had been Gibberish Dave who had come every day for almost two years. Dave had a dark, dirty beard and always wore a ragged suit and a variety of dirt-stained shirts. Dave needed dental work. Shelly had volunteered. I was there. Two years ago.

“I’ll take care of your teeth for nothing,” Shelly had said. “I’ve got some experimental procedures I’d like to try. What do you say?”

“I say, I say, I say,” Dave had sputtered and spat. “I say refurbishing is not always the answer. The stars hold the answers, but the stars don’t speak in words. They speak in codes, blinking. Nazi astronomers understand the code. They’re using the code. Notebooks are full of drawings by Leonardo da Vinci and Pope Leopold the Second and Dennis Day. If we don’t wake up, we’ll all keep sleeping.”

“And eating,” said Shelly. “But not with those teeth.”

“Teeth that bite are bilious,” Dave whispered.

“Here’s my card,” Shelly had said, handing Dave a card. “Come see me.

“Soup and steak?” asked Dave.

“Tuna sandwich and Pepsi,” said Shelly.

Dave never took Shelly up on his offer, but week after week, Dave kept coming to Pershing, losing a tooth now and then, making less sense each time I heard him until one day, I began to think I understood him. That’s when I stopped listening.

The Celluloid Closet (1995)

 

The Great Train Robbery (1903)

 

Gloomy Sunday?

Finally hit a 180 with my Harrows Graflite 24g. I've had them since the end of June. I only throw with them occasionally - maybe a bit more now - but it's always nice to hit a least one 180 with any darts you have knocking about.

Now, if I could only hit a 180 with my 28g Datadart brass darts  . . . 

51/50

Darts Greatest Games: Fifty Finest Matches from the World of Darts by Matt Bozeat (Pitch Publishing 2017)

 

Sid Waddell told the armchair enthusiasts that Deller was “not just an underdog, he’s an underpuppy” and asked: “Can Deller do the unthinkable and beat Bristow in the world final?”

For Deller, who threw spring-loaded darts designed to avoid bounce-outs, reaching the final, a fine achievement for a qualifier, wasn’t enough.

He was there to win the World Championship and predicted a 6-3 victory.

He blew six darts at a double to make it happen…

Earlier, the match had swung this way – Deller led 3-1 – then the other – Bristow levelled at 3-3 – then back again.

Deller won the seventh and eighth sets, taking him into a 5-3 lead and just one set away from the World Championship.

In the ninth set, Deller was 64 points away, then 18, then eight, then four…

Six darts at a match-winning double were missed and Deller spent the next two sets “shaking my head. I should have been world champion.”

Ever the opportunist, Bristow showed why commentator Dave Lanning described him as “a burglar” on the oche.

In his youth, Bristow had burgled houses and the North London ne’er-do-well-turned-king-of-darts brought his street cunning to darts. Knowing Deller was vulnerable, his mind elsewhere, Bristow smoothly upped his average by a few points and plundered five legs without reply while Deller chewed over those missed match-winning chances.

When he claimed the opening leg of the 11th and deciding set, Bristow led for the first time in the match and that realisation, the possibility of defeat, snapped Deller out of his ruminations. Either he started throwing his best darts again or he would lose – and he hadn’t come here to lose.

The spell broken, he rediscovered his fluency to break back immediately with a 121 checkout, then hold his throw to leave Bristow needing to do the same to save the match.

Bristow got to a finish first in that fourth leg.

He took aim at 121 with Deller also on a three-dart finish, 138.

Bristow threw 17, then treble 18 and with 50 left, everyone zoomed in on the bull’s-eye. Everyone apart from Bristow, that is. Rather than go for the bull’s-eye to win the leg, Bristow was so sure Deller wouldn’t take out 138 for the match, he threw 18 to leave his favourite double 16.

This wasn’t hubris. Bristow had thought it all through. He reckoned Deller’s mental mastication – “He could have beaten me earlier, he had his chance” – and the awkwardness of the 138 finish – “it was all over the place” – guaranteed he would come back to the oche and have three darts at his favourite double.

Years later, he would think otherwise, saying the pressure would have been greater on Deller had he been faced with a smaller finish. “If he had 58 left he would have been standing behind me thinking: ‘I’ve got two more darts for the title,’” he said, but still, nobody, not just Bristow, really expected Deller to take out 138.

“He’s banking on Deller not doing this!” cried Waddell excitedly and when Deller’s first dart landed in treble 20, there was a chance Bristow had got it wrong.

Deller had taken out big finishes in the earlier rounds of the championship and knew what he was doing. “I didn’t stop,” he said. “There was no way I was going to think about it.”

Had he thought about the importance of the darts he was throwing, his arm would surely have twitched, so Deller ignored the crowd’s growing excitement when he nailed treble 18 and coolly switched across the board to fire his final dart into double 12.

“I have never seen anything like it in my life,” said Waddell while Deller shook his fists above his head in sheer joy.

“It was perhaps the next best thing that could happen to me,” Deller would tell Darts World, “… next to playing for Ipswich Town.”

The Crafty Cockney by Deryk Brown (Futura 1985)

 

Darts Apprentice

Alec Williams was passing a classroom one day when he discovered that Bristow was inside, throwing darts. He saw one dart clip a boy’s ear and was, naturally, horrified. He shouted out that this was highly dangerous. ‘Oh, no, sir,’ came the reply in a chorus. ‘Eric wouldn’t hit anyone unless he meant to. ’

Bristow learned his darts from his father. George used to play, perhaps twice a week, about the time he got married, usually at the Londesborough public house in Stoke Newington. During the years that followed he played little. He did not have the money to go regularly into pubs. George’s interest was not seriously fired until his son showed an aptitude for the game. For two years, from nine to 11, Bristow simply threw darts at the board. After that, he suddenly became good.

Even then, as he threw he would cock his little finger like a man eating lobster at Buckingham Palace — this style, later to become famous, is natural and not affected. Bristow had a natural stance and a natural throw, too, with no apparent effort involved. (This does not mean, of course, that he did not put a vast amount of work into his game.) As soon as he was tall enough, he began to lean towards the board, another characteristic which was to stay with him. There is a school of thought which believes that darts players should not lean because they cannot achieve perfect balance and control if they do. ‘You’ll never make a darts player like that,’ George once told his son in the early days within hearing of half a pub. Bristow leaned towards the board and popped in another dart.

As we have seen, from the age of nine Bristow had both a five-foot snooker table and a dartboard at home as a shift in the often-changing household created a little more For a while he played both games against George but the snooker petered out. The snooker matches were not sufficiently momentous for either father or son to remember who won. Darts took over as Bristow began thousands of hours of practice. If there was something unappealing on television — a love story or some soap opera — Pam would be left to watch it on her own. She would be expected to arrive with a plate heaped with sandwiches from time to time as the darts score mounted. For Pam Bristow, the suffragettes had fought in vain.

The male Bristows would often play 1,001-up, which many darts buffs argue is the best form of all. Certainly, it is the best format for an aspiring champion to play: it enables him to get into the groove of high scoring better than the shorter 501-up, which is tailored for‘ television. And, in theory at least, the Bristow even played a million-and-one as well. They would set out on that long trail, add up their total in lots of 10,001, and eventually lose track of their score, this being before the days of calculators and home computers. Bristow maintains that he and George could, in fact, have got through a game of a million-and-one in 24 hours or so. That is unlikely, although it is I surprising how quickly these marathons go.

By the time he was 13, Bristow was becoming quite proficient at darts. He had tried football, cricket, golf, boxing, swimming and cards, plus one or two more pursuits. He could, for instance, play chess and dominoes. But it seemed as though he would be best at darts. Occasionally he could score 140 which is two darts in the small treble 20 bed, and another dart in the single 20. Very occasionally, at 12, he would score 180, which is all three darts in the treble 20 bed. In darts, they get quite excited about that.

Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops by Shaun Bythell (David R. Godine, Publisher 2020 )

 

Yesterday, a man telephoned the shop and asked for a copy of my second book, Confessions of a Bookseller. The total, including postage, was £18. As I was taking down his credit card details, he said, ‘Please add an extra £10.’ When I asked him why, he replied, ‘Because I know how hard this time must be for businesses like yours, and I want you to still be there when all of this is over, so that I can come and visit the shop again.'

The Clearance by Joan Lingard (Hamish Hamilton Children's Books 1974)

 

‘I don't like hills,' I said, shocking the Frasers, as I knew I would. To them the hills were sacred; they plodded up and down them as purposefully and reverently as pilgrims trudging to Mecca. It's a form of religion. Like bingo, or football. My mother goes to bingo; Mrs Fraser takes to the hills. ‘I don't have to like them, do I?' I asked. I seemed to have struck them dumb. It was the first time that I hadn’t heard them chattering. I no longer felt awkward; I was enjoying myself.

‘She’s a city lass,’ said Granny apologetically.

Freak Out the Squares: Life in a band called Pulp by Russell Senior (Aurum Press 2015)

 

I was living in a flat above a sex shop with a girl who had a bit of a Béatrice Dalle thing going on and was the object of much pining amongst local musicians, including Jarvis. In a bid to impress her, he climbed Artery-style out of the window and made his way along the ledge, only to fall twenty feet onto the pavement in front of the sex shop – his broken glasses and splayed limbs serving as a dire warning on the dangers of pornography to several adolescent boys who had been plucking up the courage to go in.

It seemed touch and go for a bit, he’d broken his hip and was in hospital for a while, then moved out into residential care. But he slowly improved and was able to come out in a wheelchair. We had to cancel a couple of shows but he gamely did the rest in his wheelchair.

I shamelessly milked the mishap for all it was worth and took Jarvis down to London to do press, which included a surreal photo shoot pushing him round a skateboard park in the chair.

For the next show at The Clarendon, London, we brought a coach party down from Sheffield. The trip down to London was always filled with expectation. On the way into the metropolis, the excitement mounted: there were famous people just walking down the street, bold as brass. Rover always seemed to spot Oliver Reed just disappearing into a pub and demand that the van stop, but no one else ever saw him. It was probably just wishful thinking on Rover’s part, like the time when he went past Felicity Kendall in the street and she ‘gave him the eye’. Can’t remember the concert, it got some reviews.

Never one to avoid advancing the greater glory of Pulp by resorting to bad taste, I cut out a picture from a Romania Today, 1968 magazine of a forlorn man wired up with electrodes – onto which I drew broken glasses to make it look like Jarvis.

I Care a Lot (2020)

 

Found on my phone . . .

Posted on the blog on 22nd September, 2024 . . . seriously.

Why were you hiding on my phone? My 50th 180 of 2021 and I've never got round to posting it. That just doesn't make sense.

50/50

No Wonder I Take a Drink by Laura Marney (Saraband 2004)

 

My lasting memory of Mum is of her standing leaning against her bed, wearing her good pearls, nicely turned out in a peach blouse and lemon cardi, bare naked from the waist down. She was threatening to sign herself out of the hospice for the third time that week. Anticipating this I had sneaked her in a half bottle of vodka. We both knew it would probably finish her off but that's the way she wanted it. She died three nights later. Before she died and after I'd helped her put her drawers on and poured her a watered-down vodka and coke, she nearly told me something.

I could see she was struggling and I suppose I should have been more patient or just told her to bloody well spit it out, but at the time I was too busy noticing that my mother had no pubic hair. I couldn't believe that, at age sixty-eight, she would take the trouble to give herself a shaven haven. Where would she have got hold of a razor? And besides, her hands shook most of the time.

At first I thought it was just another of her rants about the Health Service, actually a thinly disguised rant about her own health, but her tone was different, not angry, she seemed frightened. She closed her eyes and shook her head vigorously, the way she did when we argued. And then she went strange. She started rocking back and forth, moaning and shuddering.

'Your dad says I should ...'

She was scaring me with her amateur dramatics so I decided to nip it in the bud.

'Dad's dead, Mum, he died four years ago.’

Slowly she opened her eyes and showed me a thin aggressive smile.

This Much is True by Miriam Margolyes (John Murray Publishers 2021)

 

At that time, in the late sixties and throughout the seventies, Equity was sharply divided on how best to fight apartheid. A growing list of international playwrights, including Daphne du Maurier, Samuel Beckett, Tennessee Williams, Muriel Spark and Arthur Miller signed a declaration through the Anti-Apartheid Movement in London, refusing performing rights for their plays to all theatres in South Africa where discrimination was practised on grounds of colour.

I agreed, I felt that artists and sports people should refuse to work there – we had to name and shame the South African government by boycotting all commercial artistic engagement in the country.

As an Equity Council member, I attended all the meetings. Vanessa Redgrave was never a member of the Council, but she and her brother, Corin, regularly spoke at the annual general meetings with fire and fluency – both superb speakers without notes. I first worked with Vanessa in 1972. Ted Heath was in Number 10; in Equity likewise, the right wing was in power: people like Marius Goring and Nigel Davenport and Leonard Rossiter. Leonard was a bastard: a good actor, but a nasty, spite-driven man. With all those right-wing actors flexing their muscles, the Workers Revolutionary Party faction were the great opposition, and so Vanessa became an important element in the deliberations.

Vanessa was quite retiring, except when there was anything political going on, and then she would harangue you from morning till night. I didn’t know her well but, intoxicated by her articulate conviction, I started to join her at the WRP meetings.

When you were interested in politics in those days – and I suppose for some people it is still the case – you had to go to meetings. You wanted to stand up and be counted, and I was no different. I soon became a signed-up member, though whether I joined the WRP literally because of Vanessa, I don’t know.

Not long after I became a member, the WRP annual summer camp was held in an enclosed field by the Blackwater estuary in Essex; naturally I went along. Gerry Healy, the leader of the WRP, was an unpleasant, devious chap; he was dangerous in fact. There were talks and discussions in a big tent and Gerry would lecture us all about how to move England to the extreme left. I’d never been to that sort of political meeting before, and it was not appealing. Most of the other camp attendees clearly found it rousing: I found it threatening and nasty. I realised then that this wasn’t my idea of a left-wing revolution, but the summer camp was in a beautiful place, and Vanessa and people like Frances de la Tour were there, so I stayed. In the morning, I thought I’d go for a walk with a chum. When we arrived at the fence enclosing the camp, a man with a gun was guarding the gate. He said, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ I said, ‘For a walk.’ He said, ‘Oh, no. You can’t leave.’ I said, ‘What do you mean we can’t leave? We want to go for a walk.’ ‘Well, you can’t. That’s against the rules,’ he said. ‘No one can leave the camp.’ And he put his hand firmly on his gun. ‘All right, love, keep your hair on,’ I said and we went back to the Red House, our revolutionary hostel. Although I stayed to the end of that particular jamboree, that incident marked the end of my workers’ revolution”