Contemplating Mortality
For some people the contemplation of their own death is debilitating. People get scared and make every effort to prolong their lifespan through careful diet and exercise and medical checks; others take the escapist route into drink or drugs or the pursuit of experiences. From early on I’ve had plenty of opportunity to look at death, including my own. I’m not afraid of coming to a full stop – dying – though apprehensive about the way it happens. Having spent my life being able to rely on my mind and body doing what I wanted them to do I would certainly fear being dependent. I’d only cope with that for a short time then I’d die. I’d just decide and die: while I’d got the strength I’d take a bottle of whisky with aspirin. I’d have a pact with Des, whichever one of us went first. What better way to go than getting drunk with your best mate?
In spite of my atheism people have found something spiritual in me and have tried to involve me in spiritual matters. A guitarist friend, whose wife is a spiritualist and who is into Transcendental Meditation, wanted me to meet his guru – an Indian man. I never did. He said something quite strange to me:
“I’d like to know how you’ve done it.”
“Done what?”
“Achieved karma without meditating.”
The way I’ve explained this – and I presume he meant I had some inner calm and acceptance – is that music sustains me in the same way that religion sustains others. When my mother died it was my music that helped me – not pious words. Music took her place.
Anyway, I went to a spiritualist church three or four years after my mother died because my friends invited me – not because I had any real interest. The medium said, “There’s an A and three Bs” and considering that my mother’s name was Albina Betsy Boswell Billington it seemed like a link but I didn’t respond. I don’t believe in it though bizarre things have happened to me from time to time. Whilst I was staying with Mike Slaughter I decided to take my girlfriend for a walk. Mike told me to watch out for The Judge: a formidable individual sporting a black eyepatch and very aggressive towards anyone on his land. At one time he would have been called a “hanging judge”. Anyway, we did meet him. He had an eyepatch and carried a gun. Forewarned, I spoke with him in a very civil way and there was no problem about our walk to the abbey.
Once we reached the abbey we were approached by a woman with a very posh voice and a man with a black eyepatch. This was not the same man we had already met. There must be an explanation but I don’t know what it is.
Losing Control
But if my fear of death isn’t great I do have other fears. I have a complicated fear of heights. I’ve parachuted from a plane – the waiting was awful but once I’d taken the plunge it was fine and I’d do it again – yet was debilitated by panic on a circular balcony in a basilica in Prague. If I’m on a motorbike or riding a horse I can go closer to the edge than if I were walking. Having to concentrate on riding a horse or a machine diverts my attention from the fear. Horses aren’t stupid – they won’t go too close, whereas if there’s only me on foot, there’s only me stopping me. In those circumstances I’d trust a horse more than myself.
And I’d rather go downwards, hanging on a rope into a black cave – it doesn’t matter how far down – than upwards.
I don’t know if death or fear of death is like this – losing control, being out of control. Whilst some control is there you feel scared of losing it; once there is no possibility of control and you’re falling, then you also let go of the possibility of control – the thing you were scared to lose. Then you don’t have fear. Perhaps my mother, secure of her destination, had no difficulty letting go, whereas my father clung on to life for longer than was believed possible because he was more pessimistic about his fate.
When you’re asleep your rational mind is not in control and your subconscious mind – the one that deals with unresolved hopes and fears – starts playing up. In my early years my sleep was troubled by vivid dreams and sleepwalking. I used to wake up, upside down or under the bed. Once, when we were staying with my aunt in Lancaster they called the police because I was missing. I was found under the bed.
I often suffer in my dreams; themes recur. One dream I had was after a hospital trip with my parents where I had been x-rayed on my hips. I remember being in the brightly lit x-ray department. In the subsequent dream there was an amputated leg standing by the side of a bed occupied by me. I could actually see down into this leg, as if it were a tree trunk or one of those scientific models. Strangely, the amputated leg is a recurring motif in my life. My brother Ralph had a motorbike accident and this was a possibility for a while; years later my son Nathan also had an accident where there was a chance that amputation might be needed. I suppose a Freudian would say that the amputated leg was about fears of powerlessness and as I get older I have to face this.
My earliest nightmares bombarded me with huge, intensely colourful shapes and loud unmusical noises, all crowding in on me. As I got older the sound decreased and these coloured abstractions were translated into concrete ‘realistic’ situations impossible to negotiate, equally terrifying and always unresolved. There I would be: trapped in a canal lock or at the top of a mountain without any means of descent. You could say these dreams were prophetic: my life has contained heightened experiences – often dangerous or complicated or ludicrous or impossible to resolve – and loud, though not usually unpleasant sounds of one kind and another.
I want the epitaph on my gravestone to say: “That’s resolved”.
My survival instinct is well developed and I can be aggressive but I haven’t been troubled by hating people. If there was a problem I would deal with it straight away. Incensed by the behaviour of a man who claimed to be my friend but then slept with my girlfriend, I drove my Suzuki 850 through the man’s plate glass front door and, still on the motorbike, pinned him up against his kitchen units. Then I rode off again. It wasn’t just about sexual loyalty, which wasn’t necessarily de rigueur in my circles at that time. It was more to do with his friendship with me. I had bigger expectations of him. The anger I felt didn’t hurt him physically; it was absorbed by the glass door. I remember kicking another door down. A bloke owed me money so he moved house. It wasn’t so much the debt but the lying and deceit, the lack of straightforwardness that upset me.
There was one time when I absolutely lost it. Absolutely lost it. It was an occasion when I was challenged by two men on two fronts: a territorial matter and a question of protecting my girlfriend. My training had given me the confidence rarely to have to fight – that and my loud voice. When I was in my thirties I was still pretty handy and going out with a girl who was eighteen years old. We’d been to The Cheshire Cheese and there had been a bit of aggravation between a local musician and a couple of Hell’s Angel types. The musician was scared so I said I’d escort him out to his vehicle.
When we went to leave – my girlfriend was driving – the two big blokes were in the next car, opening the passenger door to prevent her getting into the driving seat. It was humiliating for her and maddening for me. The Incredible Hulk is such a good expression of what happens to me when the adrenalin starts working. If the two blokes had read the signs in me they would have avoided a bad experience. But they didn’t. (19)
The next thing I realized was that the police were trying to pull me off someone. Someone whose face I was grinding into the car park with my elbow. “There’s another bastard,” I said. The other bastard was unconscious. I had no recollection of hitting him. But I was covered in blood: none of it mine.
But you never forget the ethics of what unarmed combat is – it’s about winning a competition within reasonable ground rules. I’m not sure how this incident squares up.
Heroes And Heroines
If you don’t have a god to inspire and sustain you, you have to find human examples: heroes and heroines if you like. Hero status isn’t always earned. When Eugene Van de Hoog was serving in Cyprus, he left camp illegally and was walking
past a bar when a bomb exploded. Something was hurled through the air and Eugene found he was holding a child whose legs had been blown off by the explosion. He took him to hospital but he died. The child had protected Eugene from the effects of the bomb and saved his life. The anomaly was that Eugene got a medal for bravery. But he never claimed it was an act of bravery. It was a convergence of events in which one person died and the other survived. There was no intention in the moment, though Eugene did act to try to save the child in the next moment.
I have a photo depicting a shared moment with a gaunt-looking, whiskered man in a rather formal dark suit with a white shirt and tie: my friend Eugene. Eugene Van de Hoog, originally from Bournemouth, had lived in Guernsey during the German occupation and had found his way to my shop via a honeymoon walking the Arctic Circle – part of the time with his wife – a spell in the Royal Marines, a period of study at Loughborough where he became an arts graduate in filmmaking and eventually life on the Shropshire Union Canal. Here he emerged as a top-hatted entertainer who looked like something out of an old medicine show. He owned two Dobros and his talents included the seven string guitar and Appalachian mountain harp.
A mutual friend brought this legendary eccentric to the shop to see the instruments – we had similar tastes in music and we became friends; I was forty and Eugene was about ten years older. Apart from everything else, he had the distinction of having appeared on the BBC’s Six-Five Special. He didn’t become famous but had a small band of devotees. The man had style; everything he did was over the top. When I knew him he was doing the pubs up and down the Shropshire Union. His music was a cross between country and blues and he made folk music fun. He did clever parodies like a version of “Deck Of Cards” in which the subject became a bottle of Guinness. There was another song he wrote called “Banal Canal”. He was resourceful and intelligent; artistic and practical. I admired his storytelling – all based on true experiences – and his practical skills. He had picked up a number of crafts on his travels, including carving whalebone! Like Whitty, he painted a tie for me. He also entertained children with puppet shows out of the side of the boat and made all his own puppets. He had such an enthusiasm for life and gigging.
Eugene Van De Hoog requests that
the assembled company participate
in a little group therapy by oscillating
their vocal chords in unison
and oscillating the aural orifice with
verve. This will assist in the restoration
of the whole.(20)
I’ve always admired the way my friend Eugene lived his life and approached his death; we had a very brief time together but it was fun as well as being poignant. Eugene was special; when Des shook his hand he said it was like having an electric shock. Shortly after meeting Eugene, I received a phone call from him. He had terminal cancer. Echoes of my father. I rented a boat, moored it next to Eugene and Dianne’s boat at Nantwich and travelled with him, looking after him in practical ways and taking him to gigs.
Eugene had the distinction of having three wakes – two whilst he was living. The first one was upstairs at The Railway pub in Nantwich, where he performed. The second one was arranged by me at The Leisure Club in Crewe a few months later. Being a positive person, Eugene had lived longer than anticipated. I was planning on providing a solo entertainment but the shop being the shop, all rumours came back to me: Eugene had a strong sense of mischief and was planning a parallel entertainment behind my back. He was busy gathering a set of musicians together. A sort of competition formed and I was doing the same: the Skunk Band was on again. To add to the fun I actually dressed up as Eugene in this good-humoured battle of the bands and a good time ensued, with both sets of musicians playing and Eugene jiving with two beautiful girls.
Eugene eventually ended up in a hospice in Winsford. Des and I used to kidnap him and take him for a smoke at the local round the corner. We would sneak drinks into the ward for him. The time came when the nurse told us he didn’t want to see anybody. I couldn’t accept this. “Tell him it’s Snakey Jake,” I said. The reply was so frail it was almost imperceptible. “I don’t want to see anybody.”
And that was it. Eugene died on 29th January, 1992.
The funeral was touching: heaving with people. A testament to his impact because he had only been in the area for the year of his dying. We went drunkenly to scatter his ashes at Norbury. After this, my memory fails me. Fortunately for me, Lorraine Baker from the Boat Band somehow got me back to Nantwich and onto my boat.
Before his death, Eugene had asked me, as a promise, to look after his wife Dianne and this I did to the best of my ability. She had an 1890s boat called Gerald that was quite well-known in boating circles. I helped her with it and taught her the jobs conventionally done by men. She eventually bought a Dutch barge and moved to Europe.
Funerals create heightened emotion: not only sadness but also anger and laughter. Although I won’t actually be around for it, when asked about songs for my funeral, “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” by Louis Armstrong comes to mind! I’d want Matthew to do something about the terrible sound system at the crematorium as well. There’s always plenty of scope for gallows humour at funerals. A chemist in Nantwich who used to play the saxophone left a tape to be played at the crematorium. It was “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes”! Mick Shenton told me about it because he helped the widow with the funeral arrangements.
Plum died of a heart attack. His funeral reflected things about him. He used to deal in cars; I called his firm “Kerbside Motors” and when his hearse came I said, “That’s strange – there’s no For Sale sign on it!” The other thing was that they’d actually closed Crewe crematorium because someone had stolen the lead off the roof. It was all of a piece with Plum somehow and I know he would have laughed. At Moggsie’s funeral I was a bearer. The family plot was opened up and found to be full of paupers. So they buried him next to the dog cemetery. He wouldn’t have minded.
Some of the most difficult performances I’ve had to give have been at funerals. I was asked to arrange and learn “Abraham, Martin And John” – a song written by Dick Holler after the assassination of Martin Luther King and recorded by various people, including Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye – as a tribute at Eugene’s funeral. Des and I fell out and I was left on my own with it. I slowed it right down and gave it funerary dignity with guitar punctuation on the line “the good die young” using slide. I personalised it by inserting “my special friend” in one of the lines. Gut-wrenching bass notes. The effect was cumulative then I faded it at the end.
I don’t have any solemn feelings about the body of a dead person – a bin bag and cart the body off as far as I’m concerned. Funeral services help the living, not the dead.
To me Eugene was a hero because of the positive way he lived. He had the courage to embrace life. There are those whom I admire for other reasons. There’s a scene from the BBC 2 1973 series The Ascent of Man in which Doctor Jacob Bronowski stands in a pond and holds mud from it in his right hand. It’s a very emotional moment. He is at Auschwitz and ash from people exterminated there will be mingled with the earth and water.
We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.
Doctor Jacob Bronowski. (21)
Members of his own family had died at Auschwitz.
I was impressed by Doctor Jacob Bronowski’s erudition and humanity. A friend of my wife wrote to him and received a handwritten letter back. I was moved by this personal gesture.
When I visited Auschwitz-Birkenhau I thought about all the people classified by the Nazis as freight who had worked and died there, and about all the people who had been dehumanised and transported from Africa to work and die in the New World, and saw no difference. Racist bullying on a vast and organized scale. And I thought of Doctor Bronowski and wondered how he personally dealt with what had happened to the Jews. Havin
g seen the claustrophobic 1940s newsreels of the camps, what strikes you when you visit Auschwitz is its vastness. With its much documented purpose-built railway line, Auschwitz is itself a big place. Built originally as a barracks; it has tangibility that Birkenhau, the extermination camp, lacks. Birkenhau is the size of a small town. The Germans tried to obliterate it so all that is left is an empty space filled with your worst imaginings.
In 1984 Sir Michael Tippett’s oratorio The Mask Of Time, like Bronowski’s work an overview of the history of humankind, was inspired by The Ascent Of Man.
Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi both sacrificed their personal freedom for the liberation of others and their different approaches have interested me. Mandela and the ANC had resisted apartheid peacefully until the Sharpeville Massacre, after which they resorted to sabotage.
During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to the struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities…if needs be it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.
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