New Britain

I was up before eight in time to see Mum leave for work but I made no effort to sit down and make a start on my work.

I frittered my valuable time away until  two when guilt finally took a hand and forced me into action. I made desultory notes for an hour and a half until Grant’s call interrupted me. It’s just a case of getting going, because I know once I’ve conquered the initial psychological barrier I’ll be able to do the work quickly and do it well. Perhaps coming home to do it was a mistake.

Grant called round half-an-hour after he’d called, staying until ten. He says he’s writing an obscene country and western song based on an impromptu rendering into a tape machine he and I did years back and has just finished reading a life of Artaud. I played him Whitehouse’s New Britain and the shrill electro-screams and metallic breathing prompted him to put his hands over his ears and demand that I turn it off because it was unnerving him. We listened to The Fugs and Captain Beefheart instead. . . .

Grant is going back to Gloucester soon to find accommodation for next term, which begins Oct 1st. We talked about the supernatural for a while and he told me of the alleged haunting of Woodley residence hall at Gloucester, where the shade of a mid ‘70s suicide has been heard and glimpsed on the top floor—one student supposedly felt himself being dragged across the floor in the middle of the night. Crying and sobs have been heard coming from one particular room, but always stop when the door is opened, & Grant said the building has an odd atmosphere. He also told me about the ‘Gloucester Prowler’ who creeps around the corridors of Woodley trying doors.

Dad was morose and subdued the brief time I was in his company. This I attribute to his hassles over his job that continue unabated. I’m returning to Watermouth tomorrow night to sign on Friday, and I’ll then travel back to Easterby the same day. This will consume another two and possibly three days of my rapidly dwindling holiday. I can’t push the guilty feelings from my mind. . . .

Numbers

I was up at twelve: Dad came home at two-thirty, Mum at four. . . .

Lee rang to say he’d got my coat from the bus station which is the best news I’ve had all week! I half expected Claire to ring and was vaguely disappointed when she didn’t. . . .

No work attempted. Lee comes back to Easterby on the last coach tonight. Head full all day of Spielgelgasse 1, Zurich (Cabaret Voltaire open nightly here, Feb-Aug 1916), Spiegelgasse 6 (where Lenin lived), and Bahnhofstrasse 19, on Zurich’s main shopping thoroughfare (Dada Gallery where many important artists showed).

Manifold errors

Jeremy and I went into town late morning and returned four hours later with several books from the library.

He isn’t looking forward to the festive season because with his Dad’s remarriage he feels like a stranger in his own home. He described to me the “constant edge” which exists between him and the rest of the ‘family,’ particularly with his step-brother and step-sister who have the usual tap-room derision for all forms of further education. I don’t envy him his situation.

Constant rain today, very heavy at times, but it’s still quite warm. Dad was annoyed at today’s TUC Congress; he said that their decision to give full support to the striking miners was “shocking” and “disgusting,” and declared it to be a “turning point in this country.” TV shots of the miners demonstrating outside the Congress elicited the usual “Look at that lot! You can’t tell whether they’re men or women” etc. “Look at that face—a shocking man,” he said when McGahey appeared, and he emphasised this last point with muttering and sighs.

Ever the reasoned polemicist.

I suppose I’m just as bad, flying into an internal fury on catching sight of the vision of baldness Alex’s friends uniformly present. They’re so utterly predictable, and this is what irritates me, but I never stay around to find out what they’re actually like as people; maybe this is unreasonable but I feel I’ve got the measure of them. Their ‘uniform’ of ‘weirdness’ and dole culture alienates me immediately.

Genesis P. Orridge was on ‘Earsay’ the other day talking about his mixed-media ideas, which I found quite interesting—but why the tired iconography of skulls and shaven-headed mysticism? It’s a tricky path negotiating judging harshly and failing to judge at all; both attitudes lead to manifold errors.

Andrew has been in Denmark since a week last Wednesday. Sten owed him some money from when he worked the festival last time and so paid for his airfare over. He hasn’t been in touch yet.

Crag

Our hike went off as planned despite glowering skies and spots of rain.

We left the house at nine and parked in Ranelathe, a place I dislike for the simple reason that I can never forget the terrible outings we had there with Nanna Beardsall and Reg when I was a kid. We would sit by the river while the latter would drag an unwilling Dad to the White Boar for a round, N.B.’s sandwiches of undercooked bacon and limp white bread getting bigger and bigger in my mouth as I chewed until, finally near to puking, I’d remove the rubbery mass without being seen.

With these memories looming large in my mind we set off over the bridge and on towards Carngill.

The Ainder was in full spate despite the drought, the water racing muddily between its banks. We tried unsuccessfully to cross through fields at Carngill but were forced back by a vicious looking brown bull with a ring through its nose which ignored Dad’s attempts to deter it with his stick. He was angry and “humiliated” at having to retrace his steps past two men repairing a roof who we presumed to be the creature’s owners.

We continued on the road through Raikel Stones. It grew very still and warm despite the overcast and as we climbed up onto the moors near High Edge Farm it looked as if it could thunder. . . .

We crossed a metaled road and continued along a green track emerging high above Whitgarth Reservoir which has recently been enlarged. Mum and Dad showed me a nearby barn that has been thatched with ling and heather by an expert from Northamptonshire at the behest of the Water Board. From then on it was a steady climb through fields to Dry Crag and the road which passes near Whitehill Cave; this we crossed to follow a rough rocky track across the moors, being passed by dozens of trials bikes, some of them quite old. We headed back down a metaled road to High Edge Farm in bright sun and our walk was nearly ended.

We were back at Ranelathe for six and at home within an hour.

Jeremy arrived at eight while I was on the ‘phone to Lee, who’d rung to say his bike has disappeared from the hallway of Maynard Gardens and that he was going round to tackle the prime suspects (from the Philip Street squat) with Gav, whose bike has gone as well, although his was stolen in the first place.

Our tape with the “whispers” has turned up at Radio Watermouth, which is good news as we thought it had been lost. I said to Lee that I’ll see him on Friday as I’ve got to sign on, but will probably come back straight away.

Jeremy is staying overnight.

Revenants

I slept with the light on most of the time last night again; this current surge of interest in things unknown has done nothing for my peace of mind at nights.

Dad retold me his experience with the mysterious cat during our first visit to Calverdale when we stayed in the cottage at Gilsey in August 1980. He was the only one up and he’d just come out from the kitchen after switching on the kettle when he saw a cat saunter with tail in the air across the middle of the floor. It disappeared behind a sofa in the corner of the room. He said he hadn’t noticed the cat on his way to the kitchen and was sure he would’ve had it been there. He pulled out the sofa but the cat was gone – no trace of it. He looked all around the room and even checked to see if there were any holes in the sofa through which the cat could climb into the upholstery.

Nothing.

Mum also told me how she hated sleeping in the upstairs bedroom and was often “scared stiff’ by tapping at the windows and rattling casements, as though someone was walking about in the room. There was also an unpleasant atmosphere and a cold, damp sensation up there.

I remember that second night Lee, Jeremy, Michael and I spent in the porch of the church at Borley; we’d just heard the whispering on the tape and we were suddenly assailed by a powerful smell like rotten and decaying vegetation. It was a musty unpleasant smell and reminded me of the odour of the stinkhorn mushrooms that grow sometimes in the garden. We all four noticed it more or less simultaneously. Lee even went outside the porch and said the smell lingered there too. As I remember there wasn’t very much wind. It seemed odd that the smell should just suddenly occur.

Jeremy rang tonight, and he’s coming over tomorrow night about eight. The rain has been falling steadily all day, although Mum and Dad went to Snaythrop Abbey to pick blackberries during the afternoon. They left me here to “work,” although needless to say I did little of that, listening instead to Athletic’s match at Holmeshaw on the radio, which they lost 3-2, and reading Underwood’s Borley book.

Planning on a hike near Raikel Stones and Whitehill Cave tomorrow if the weather is good. It’s 12.30 and the rain is still pouring . . .