Slopes of Vesuvius

I rendezvoused with Lee as arranged at eleven in Smiths. He turned up looking like something from the Imperial Japanese Army in a small black peaked cap amd dark round specs, checked shirt buttoned at the neck, faded blue Chinese trousers, and dirty white pumps.

He mentioned a couple of good army surplus shops up Whincliffe Road. On the way we bumped into two of his friends from Easterby College, Rick Blevins and his blonde girlfriend; their faces broke into smiles of recognition as they spotted Lee’s tall figure looming out of the crowds. “I told you he was weird,” said Rick to his girlfriend. “Yes, he is, isn’t he?”

It was a long slog up Whincliffe Road. The sun was fierce, and we sweated past the usual string of shabby grocers shops, the fruit out front a temptation to flies, dingy cluttered second hand electrical dealers, junk shops, newsagents. . . . The Salvation Army Hostel is the finest and newest building in the area. We stopped to look in Scallyrags (second hand clothing), where we were watched by a silent Indian in a woolly cap, who never said a word, not even when Lee bought a ghastly tartan waistcoat.

We had fish and chips and I sweated like a pig.

At long last our destination hove into view, just as Whincliffe Road flattens out prior to its descent into Whincliffe, nearly at Monroe barracks. It was an army surplus store befitting of the name, filled with ammunition boxes, jerry cans, military footwear, haversacks, combat jackets, machetes, plus the usual assortment of waterproofs, hiking gear and industrial clothing. I bought a pair of German parachutists boots as used by the Argentinians in the Falklands for £9.99.

I got the bus home. Lee cycled over again later and stayed an hour, maybe more; I'll see him again on Saturday at Jeremy’s barbecue, which sounds a real barrel of laughs. He’s invited Ms. Hirst, Lee’s Mum, Duncan Verity, not to mention an assortment of Beaumont relatives.

Lee and I have cooked up a plan to take photos at about a dozen sites across Easterby. We’re going to tie Lee up with a bag over his head, bind his hands and maybe even his ankles and he’ll play dead, lying in corpse-like awkwardness while we liven things with pig’s blood which he’s scrounging from the abattoir. We’ll get a few shots of him sprawled in subways and in the centre of town; it should be quite interesting.

How will people react to a blood-spattered corpse plus four attendants with cameras and spare pig’s blood? Will we be arrested? ‘Youths Fined for Corpse Chaos.’ And in court we'll quote lines of Nietzsche with Gothic melodrama: “We build our cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send our ships into uncharted seas! . . . We are robbers and ravagers because we cannot be rulers and owners!”

It should be a laugh.

Mum and Dad took Nanna B. and Nanna P. for a run up through Calverdale. They had an enjoyable day, marred it seems only by N.P.’s ceaseless outpourings: every scene found an echo in her immense storehouse of memories and she drifted through her monologue with a monotonous regularity.

She’s mentioned to me that she’s ‘stuck’ with her “memoirs” at page two hundred or so and it seems that she’s lost when it comes to thinking about herself; what she's written is skimpy and lacking in detail, and if she’d write about her own past as thoroughly as she talks about Uncle Kenneth, Shirley, Aunty Dorothy, "ar" Nicola, etc., then she’d be approaching Dad’s two thousand-odd pages by now.

I heard from Barry this morning. He sent me a cheerful and untroubled postcard from Spain where he’s holidaying with Carl Cotton; he jokes he’s training to be a part-time bull-fighter.