Educating Peter

by Tom Cox

  Within no time at all, Peter had helped himself to a powdery charcoal chipette and been sucked into a discussion about guitars with Michael and Robin.

  ‘So you’re into Flugelphones, then? We generally prefer something with a bit more give, like a B Pierce Flinbacker.’

  ‘Cool. Yeah, I like the Flinbacker. But I just tried a Swugelbacker Airbus. It’s not so good on feedback, but you should hear it, like, chime.’

  ‘Yeah? Swugelbacker made a wicked Airbus in about ’73 – a bad momma. Hard to find now, but you should look out for it. A bit like the Swerving Zed that McCracken made in ‘78, but more solid in the impact area.’

  ‘Oh. McCracken? Have you ever seen one of their Flying Whores? My mate Raf’s always on about them.’

  The previous night I’d been in bed by ten, after a History channel documentary, a chicken salad and a lone bottle of organic beer, but now I got the hazy, elated feeling that I, too, had been living it up in the House Of Folk. Circulus had an effortless way of drawing you in to their mindset and their psychic powers seemed to be working on Peter, who, from the moment we entered the house, had instantly seemed more relaxed than I’d ever seen him. As he talked shop with Circulus’s rhythm section, I found myself momentarily free of my caretaker responsibilities and took the opportunity to soak up the rare afternoon sun and entertain Orbit with a stray mandolin string. I hoped, for my hand’s sake, that it wasn’t the kind made from cat gut, but soon got the impression that Orbit wouldn’t kick up a fuss if it was. Even Circulus’s pets seemed sort of stoned and groovy.

  This, I thought, was The Life. Being in a band wasn’t about hotel rooms or signing sessions or fashion shoots; it was about being able to sit in your back garden together and talk rubbish all day. Circulus didn’t have a record deal, never had any money, spent much of their life on the dole, yet they were the happiest people I knew. The skinniest people I knew, but the happiest. Wherever they went, flares, capes, outlandish headwear and laughter followed. And whatever happened for the remainder of the day, I felt sure Peter could take something positive away from this experience. After all, the kid hadn’t exactly had an easy introduction to the rock and roll life: he’d met an axe-wielding busker, hung out at a petrol station, stared into a closed waxwork museum, got stuck in a lift with a frustrated mime artist, and chased the ghost of a cult icon his tutor wasn’t even interested in. He needed a break. And he wasn’t the only one. As I looked across the grass at my for-once keen-eyed pupil, I felt the lull of driving fatigue, sun and safety kick in, and drifted off into a contented half-sleep. Around me, four or five conversations continued, flitting in and out of my dream-like state . . .

  ‘Their first album, or the second, with the scarecrow on the cover?’

  ‘He sucks.’

  ‘No, it’s an Epiphone, I think.’

  ‘Carrot soufflé! Woo-hoo.’

  ‘He’s mad on chips. I don’t know what it is. Is that weird for cats? Crisps, too. But only smoky bacon.’

  ‘No, I only met him a few months ago. But he’s known my mum for ages. This whole thing was kind of her idea.’

  ‘Yeah, no, the first, with the bear.’

  ‘Our other cat, Rameses, prefers Twiglets.’

  ‘What about carrots? We’ve got loads in the kitchen.’

  ‘Do you think it will fly if you attach it with this piece of string?’

  ‘Ha! Wicked!’

  ‘You dirty old man!’

  It was the last voice that prompted me to bolt awake. It had a Smurf-like quality to it – a 45rpm pace in sharp contrast to everyone else’s 33rpm. It was hard to tell how long I’d been asleep. Under an hour, I sensed, but as I surveyed how our little garden party had progressed, it felt like at least a couple of days. To my right, Michael, watched by Emma and Robin, was alternately inhaling, shouting, and inflating balloons from a helium canister. To his left, Leo and two of the slumped survivors who’d been around the kitchen table earlier were attaching carrots and chips to the bottom of other balloons with string. Meanwhile, over on an old sofa, beneath the shade of a holly bush, Kevin was showing Peter the correct stance and grip for the firing of a gun.

  ‘Morning, Tom,’ said Emma. ‘We’re shooting balloons. Want to join in?’

  ‘Is that . . . Is that a real gun?’ I said, rubbing my eyes.

  ‘No,’ said Peter. ‘Just an air gun. It’s Kevin’s. The idea is to chop the carrot down just small enough for the balloon to carry it, then let it go and shoot it. Cool or what?’

  ‘Er . . . yeah. Be careful.’

  Over the previous seven years, I’d interviewed two or three hundred musicians. Some had claimed to drink whisky for breakfast; some had claimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ; others had claimed to be clairvoyant preachers in league with the devil. I’d lain flat on the roofs of skyscrapers and stared at the New York skyline with some; I’d hung out at Stonehenge with others. But never had I come close to shooting carrot-carrying balloons with any of them. Somehow, this fact struck me as hugely significant. Had I wasted my young life? Perhaps. And now it was too late. I was too busy being a responsible father figure to join in.

  ‘I mean, y’know,’ I continued, ‘that thing looks dangerous. Watch it. Seriously. What if it, y’know, twists in your hand when you shoot it?’

  ‘I’m okay.’

  Bang!

  ‘See?’

  ‘Mmm. Good shot.’

  ‘Wanna go?’

  ‘No. I’ll just sit here and eat my chips.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  And so the afternoon progressed. It was hard to find fault with Circulus, and in the half-decade I’d known them, I’d only located one flaw in their friendship. Actually, ‘flaw’ was too strong a word; it was more of an irksome discrepancy between their plane of existence and the rest of the world’s. It was known, to all those who walked in the band’s social circle but held down conventional full-time jobs, as Circulus Meantime. Circulus Meantime, which originated a couple of miles south of Greenwich observatory, was a bit like Greenwich Meantime, but with minutes that lasted ninety-eight seconds instead of the usual sixty. Circulus Meantime wasn’t merely about being late; it was about being punctually late. Circulus Meantime wasn’t about frequently staying in bed beyond eleven am; it was about always staying in bed beyond eleven am, and showing discipline about it. There were times in the past – social occasions like my twenty-fifth birthday, during which the band had arrived through the pub door just as I was staggering out of it – when the conventions of this different time zone could be frustrating, but over the years I’d learned to allow for it. It was surprisingly easy, once you worked out the ten commandments.

  1. Thou shalt not turn up at a pub before last orders.

  2. Thou shalt not say, ‘Shall we go?’ Thou shalt let it happen, like, organically.

  3. Thou shalt stay up late enough to watch the sun rise at least twice a week.

  4. Thou shalt not deem it fashionable to be late. Thou shalt deem it altruistic.

  5. Thou shalt never let thy train timetable stand in the way of sartorial perfection.

  6. Thou shalt not leave thy joint half-finished.

  7. Thou shalt not forget thy cape.

  8. Thou shalt let thy platter of ancient tunes spin to its natural end.

  9. Thou shalt never hang around during that dead, desolate period after the shops shut and before the pubs fill up.

  10. Thou shalt amble.

  This afternoon was a classic example of Circulus Meantime. The idea had been to head up to the nearby Oxley’s Wood to shoot the band’s first pop video, but the garden party had become a bit like the party in Buffy The Vampire Slayer where the Vengeance Demon grants Buffy’s sister’s wish that no-one ever leave. On the one hand, I wished I could spend more Saturday afternoons like this. On the other, the eight of us had other, bigger plans for the day, and I had a responsibility to return Peter to Crouch End in time for his fencing class.

  ‘Shall we go then, guys?’
I announced, trying to sound as casual as possible, but somehow feeling like the biggest square in Plumstead.

  ‘Groan,’ said the garden.

  Eventually, capes were donned, acoustic musical equipment was gathered and scrawny legs creaked into action. We were to travel in convoy: half of us in Alice, Michael’s Seventies Ford Escort, the other half with me in the Ford Focus. I’d put the van into retirement for the time being, having been intimidated by the you’re-a-weirdo-aren’t-you nature of the looks Clive The Assistant Haulage Executive had been giving me upon my returns to the depot, but now, as I saw Circulus’s collection of props, I began to regret it. Considering Circulus were always broke, their rate of gadget-acquisition was astounding. When I walked into a charity shop, I found endless Barbara Taylor Bradford novels, Music For Pleasure albums and rejected Littlewoods clothing for the old beige pensioner market. When Michael, Robin and Emma did exactly the same thing, they unearthed a treasure trove of retro audio gold and bohemian finery. Now, as I dropped hints with my accelerator pedal and watched the metal and cloth pile up in my rear-view mirror, I wondered what my friends were expecting and precisely how long our project would take to complete.

  Oxley’s Wood on a Saturday was full of golden retrievers, cyclists and small children with ice-cream beards. It was a bit like many other suburban British parks, but more mystical – although whether it would have been as mystical without Circulus there was hard to say. The band had a way of invading and altering a place with their presence. They didn’t dress so differently from Ed The Troubadour, but while people whispered and pointed towards Ed, they simply grinned at Circulus and wanted to join in.

  Kevin was the first to climb the big oak tree – the biggest, perhaps, in the entire park – and others quickly followed: Michael, Emma, Leo and a zealous-looking Peter. Robin operated the video camera. I, meanwhile, lingered at the bottom of the trunk, passing instruments up to my friends, guarding the ghetto blaster and scribbling in my notebook. On the ghetto blaster, a country and western song about chicken by Sunforest rang out above the trees. In the tree, though, the only things being plucked were guitars and mandolins. On bongos, Peter, now in a fetching Lincoln green hooded cape, joined the groove and explored his ‘tribal’ side. Every few minutes, a confused cyclist or enchanted child would stop and wonder what in the name of Beelzebub these bizarrely attractive people who dressed like elves were up to. Then they’d pause and their faces would no longer express confusion, but wistful wonder, a look which said nothing so much as ‘Why don’t I know people who do stuff like this in their spare time?’ It was the sort of scene that it was an honour to be part of – the true essence of creativity.

  I was creating as well, or at least trying to. As designated director of the video, it was my job to come up with a concept and storyboard. The idea was to do this spontaneously. My problem was Sunforest’s chicken song. It was hard to get it out of my head. Every theme I came up with seemed to have chickens in it, either a) crossing a road, b) getting decked by one of Bernard Matthews’ turkeys, or c) taking LSD. Circulus hadn’t written the song for this video yet, but I was pretty sure that what they did write wouldn’t involve fowl.

  Eventually, I came up with a story – a reworking of the Little Red Riding Hood myth. Little Green Folking Hood (Peter), while on the way to his grandma’s house across the park in Woolwich, carrying a bag of normal mushrooms, would be abducted by a coven of strange, chanting folk musicians (Circulus – or, as they would be known here, The Evil But Really Quite Gentle Pixie People), who would force him to eat their evil mushrooms. First, he would escape, aided by the strong and silent Folkie With No Name (me), but, finally, in a stunt which involved one of The Evil But Really Quite Gentle Pixie People (Kevin) posing as a holly bush, he would find himself ensnared for eternity. The final scene would depict him being led away to a quiet corner and offered a selection of weeds (non-hallucinogenic) in an ancient ritual that I hadn’t quite worked out the point of. The film would serve as a cautionary tale concerning the debasing effects of too many vegetables on the nation’s youth. It wasn’t going to be The Godfather, but, considering the whole thing had taken me six and a half minutes to write, I was proud of it.

  ‘Sounds alright,’ said Peter.

  ‘Can we wear capes?’ said Michael.

  ‘Where do we get the mushrooms?’ said Emma.

  Moving on to a path overlooking a walled garden, we began filming – first a heavy-breathing, running scene along the path, then the first encounter between Little Green Folking Hood and The Evil But Really Quite Gentle Pixie People in the garden. From beneath a nearby tree, Kevin located some grey fungus which would pass adequately for mushrooms. A rotting park bench, emblazoned with the legend ‘Tozza dun Kelly Anne here – 11.4.1998’, served as my director’s chair (I wondered if Kelly and Anne were two different people). From here I barked instructions to my cast such as ‘Try and suffer with the mushrooms, Peter’ and ‘Emma, dahling, sense his pain with your upper forehead’, then, seeing that they could handle themselves perfectly well without me, amused myself by trying on a selection of Michael’s hats and capes. Occasionally a passing man in a tracksuit would wander into the background of the shot, but progress was smooth. Peter, who’d obviously studied drama at school, had an unusually intense way of gazing into the camera, while Robin, on camera duty, was clearly from the Scorsese school of tracking shots, and, as darkness swept in over the woods, we had a wrap. Or, to look at it another way, a rush job. In roughly a month’s time we’d reconvene, by which point Circulus would have edited these images into some semi-coherent form and placed their spooky, warped folk melodies alongside them.

  Before I hurried Peter back to his fencing instructor in North London, there was just time to view ‘the dailies’ back at The House Of Folk, as Emma made me a quick VHS copy of our work. I wasn’t sure if you could still call your dailies ‘dailies’ when you were only shooting for one day in total, but I did so anyway, since it made me feel professional. I needed to feel professional. Maybe it was too early to ascertain if what we’d created was genius or crud, but I was leaning towards crud. Circulus themselves seemed quite content with it, but, then again, the only home video of theirs that I’d seen before was their ‘cover version’ of Permissive, the long-lost, indescribably grimy movie about bitchiness and suicide in the groupie underworld of Seventies rock. This was three minutes long and consisted entirely of Michael trying on wigs, repeatedly holding up a card with ‘London, 1971’ written on it, and shouting at Emma to get out of the bath.

  It was only later, watching the Little Green Folking Hood tape for a second time at home, with the help of the fast forward and rewind buttons, that I noticed Peter – rear frame, taking advantage of a break in the action – sneakily slipping a Blue Oyster Cult CD into the pocket of my shoulder bag.

  I’d initially thought it was a mushroom.

  A SPIRITUAL BEARD

  ‘WE SEEM TO be meeting a lot of people who wear capes.’

  ‘Yeah. It’s funny that. I used to like capes when I was a kid – perhaps it’s something to do with that. I had this one that my mum sewed for me: it had a “T” for Tom on it, in the same way Superman’s had an “S”. Did you ever wear capes when you were younger?’

  ‘Um. Not really.’

  ‘But they’re quite goth, aren’t they? I mean, Batman – isn’t he a bit of a goth icon?’

  ‘No! No way.’

  ‘But you enjoyed wearing that green cape, didn’t you? Don’t deny it.’

  ‘Yeah. It was fun. But I was glad to get my jacket back on. We miss each other if we’re apart too long. But they were so cool, those guys. Like, really mental, but dead nice.’

  ‘Yeah. I always find myself doing an unusual amount of giggling when I’m with them, but can never really remember what was funny.’

  ‘Mmm. But, yeah, what I mean is, though, we seem to be doing a lot of folk stuff. I suppose those guys weren’t folk, like in the way the stuff my Uncle Charles – he�
�s like this hey nonny nonny guy with a beard – listens to, but they sort of were.’

  ‘Well, I think you find far more interesting people in folk music, most of the time, than you find in ordinary rock music. You never get a folk musician talking about indie bonuses.’

  ‘What’s an indie bonus?’

  ‘It’s this term that stems from all these indie bands in the Nineties who used to say, “We just do what we do, and if anyone else likes it, it’s a bonus.” It’s like the ultimate boring thing to say in an interview.’

  ‘What? You mean a bit like when they say, “The music should speak for itself.”’

  ‘Yeah. A bit. But what I was saying is folk musicians nearly always have an interesting story, because their music’s so inextricably linked to people and places. It’s not just this faceless, bland thing. Also, most of the best rock has its roots in folk. Led Zeppelin are very folk in a way. But don’t worry – we’re only meeting a couple more folkies.’

  ‘Are they hey nonny nonny guys with beards?’

  ‘One of them is, sort of. Although he’s more hey beery beery than hey nonny nonny. The other one’s got a kind of spiritual beard.’

  ‘Oh-oh.’

  ‘And there’s a really important album I want you to listen to which is sort of folk, but Seventies rock people liked it.’

  ‘Does it have songs about thyme and roses on it?’

  ‘Er . . . A few.’