hear his inconsolable wailing for ever.” “Let me see,” said
Norman, peering into the plastic bag. The old man was
right. There was no number two. There was a half-eaten
carrot and a wooden fish, but no number two. “A couple of
years ago a woman in Beeston had triplets. I walked here
over the meadows, swishing through the morning dew with
my pocket screwdriver and my bag of numbers, and the
population that day stood at 715,406. I had no number
nine. And, well … I’ve never told anyone this before, I just
swivelled that number six upside down. I’m not proud of
what I did that day, but this is worse. This is shameful. It’s
going to haunt me to my grave.” “Can’t you buy new
numbers?” said Norman, ever the pragmatist, always
looking for a positive outcome. “Not like these. These
were made by the founding fathers, cast from the anchor of
the first boat to pull up on the banks of our plentiful river. I
should have guarded them with my life. But people borrow
them and don’t bring them back. The number one is on
loan to a folk museum in Ottawa, and my grandson … he
stole a few numbers and sold them to buy ketamine.
Listen, do you hear crying? Do you hear that pitiful wail?”
“It’s just the breeze in the overhead cables,” said Norman,
and he helped the broken old man into the passenger seat of
his car. They sat there not speaking for a few minutes, and
the vehicle shook as articulated lorries rumbled past in the
inside lane. The clouds started to clear and the streetlights
went out. Then Norman said, “I’ve got it. What if I come
and live in Leeds, then the sign can stay as it is?” “Would
you do that for me? Really and truly?” asked the old man.
“Of course, no question,” said Norman.
Things started to move very rapidly. The old man directed
him through the rush-hour traffic to an office at the back of
the Calls Hotel. “Sign here,” said the Registration Officer.
Norman took a fountain pen from his briefcase and signed
the form. It was official—he was now a citizen of “The
Knightsbridge of the North,” as some commentators have
called it. But when he turned around to shake hands, the
pewter-haired man in the brown suit was high-fiving with
councillor Bill Hyde, The Right Worshipful Lord Mayor of
the City of Leeds. Then the doors flew open, and three
policemen wearing canvas hoods dropped Norman to the
ground, ripped open his shirt, and plunged a white-hot
branding iron into his chest, just above his heart.
Norman lives in Roundhay now, not far from the park. I
doubted him once, and asked him to show me the proof.
He parted his dressing gown and I read the words Leeds,
Like It Or Lump It seared into his ageing flesh. Then he
hobbled to the window and looked at the hills to the west.
To the Pennines, if my geography is correct, or, as they’re
sometimes known, “The Great Divide.”
A Nativity
We’re heading up to bed, Mary and I, drawing the
curtains against the cold, inquisitive night, turning
down the wick, setting up the fireguard to cage the
sleeping tiger in the grate. Mary is just about to sweep
the line of toy animals into the shoe box, where they
live, when I say, “Just for once, shall we leave them
where they lie?” Mary hesitates and says, “You mean
right here? On the floor? Underfoot?” I kneel down on
the rug. On closer inspection they’re all dogs—moulded
plastic, mainly, but a few made from china or pot, and
a couple of border collies cast in iron or lead. Mary
kneels also, and we notice in detail the many breeds, the
great variety of shape and form. The Pekinese lifting its
wounded paw; the shiny-nosed spaniel; the Scottie dog
with the scarlet collar and erect tail; the yappy terrier
baiting the foursquare St. Bernard; the sleek red setter
with a juicy bone in its mouth; the line of Dalmatian
pups, six, no seven in total, all nose to tail.
And crouching low behind them we see their purpose,
their procession, how they journey as one towards the
towering green mountain of the Christmas spruce,
where baubles are small villages among the wooded
slopes, and fairy lights are streetlamps on the narrow
path zigzagging its way to the starry summit. Mary
says, “You’re so right. We should leave them as they
are, tonight and every night. Think of his thrilled face
in dawn’s tender glow.” Then we climb the ladder to
the loft and bed down together in the loose feathers
and straw, exultant with our choice, creators of a new
tomorrow, peacemakers in the holy war.
The Delegates
At the annual Conference of Advanced Criminal Psychology,
Dr. Amsterdam and myself skipped the afternoon seminar on
Offending Behaviours Within Gated Communities and went
into town to go nicking stuff. In Halfords he pilfered a shiny
aluminium gizmo for measuring the tread depth on a car tyre
and I nabbed a four-digit combination lock. In the gardening
section of John Lewis’s he filched a Butterflies of the British
Countryside Wallchart while I pocketed a squirrel-proof bird
feeder. In Poundstretcher he whipped a small tin of Magic
Stain Remover and I helped myself to a signed 2005 official
McFly calendar. In Specsavers he purloined a pair of silver-
rimmed varifocals and I lifted an origami snowflake from the
window display. In Waterstone’s he slipped an unauthorised
biography of disgraced South African cricket captain Hansie
Cronje inside his raincoat and I sneaked out with an Original
Magnetic Poetry Kit. In Oxfam he appropriated a five-
hundred-piece Serengeti at Dusk jigsaw and I swiped a set of
six coasters designed by authenticated aborigines. Then with
our laminated delegate passes streaming over our shoulders
on lanyards of pink and purple ribbon we legged it out of the
precinct and across the park. And from the high iron bridge
we slung the lot over the ornate railings into the filthy river
below until every last item of merchandise had either sunk
without trace or was drifting away downstream. “Remind
me, Stephen, why we do this,” said Dr. Amsterdam. I said,
“I really don’t recall.” Peeling a brown calfskin glove from
the cold, moulded fingers of his prosthetic hand he said,
“Let’s make this our last, shall we?” We shook on the deal,
and even managed a partial embrace. A mute swan pecked
idly at a Paisley-patterned chiffon scarf before it picked up
speed and slithered over the weir.
The Overtones
When you ask me what time it is, it’s purple. And when
the alarm goes off in a morning it’s a sort of metallic, minty
green, like the noisette triangle in a packet of Quality Street
—a particular favourite of mine but hard on the teeth. And
when you love me, and whisper your love for me,
personally, into my inner ear, it’s cus
tard-yellow embossed
with a bold red heart, like a door I once saw in an otherwise
dried-up town on the side of a hill near Salamanca.
Salamanca, which is beige but burnt at the edges. Most
days I’m here on the other side of the glass, under the high
ceilings. It’s like a job, but without the bit you call work.
In prison, I’d be the one pushing the trolley of books along
the corridors, recommending cowboy adventure stories to
big-time embezzlers, making the Arc de Triomphe out of
toothpicks, cave-painting the walls of his cell. If you’re
passing, ring the bell of the studio and come up. This
morning I’m tackling some major piece, but where to start?
There’s no instruction book for an activity of this nature, no
downloadable manual. With a domestic knife I pop open a
tin of True Confessions and tip it out on the canvas, thick
treacly jollops, but another tone is needed in this top corner
so I go for a touch of Wednesday Week, which you might
be surprised to learn was the colour of Caesar’s pillow and
whose essence is obtained from the pituitary gland of the
ocelot. What next? How about a little Male Model, to
echo that thin trace of Mars Bars bottom left. The
telephone wants feeding in the back office but it will have
to wait. Now for some softer hues: a daub of Julie Ocean
should do the trick when combined with this swatch of
onion sack. Did I shave this morning or was that the day
before? See, sometimes I’m Don Quixote tilting at
imaginary foes. Sometimes I’m Casanova planting a final
kiss on the peach-like breast of the Contessa before leaping
from the balcony into a waiting gondola, her volcano-faced
husband flailing at my shadow with his leather fist. And
sometimes I’m more like myself, black coffee hardening in
a cup, seagulls caterwauling in the bay, my hands too big
for their cuffs. That pretty trawler in the lee of St.
Michael’s Mount is a Radio 4 afternoon play about a
working-class boy who raised a lion cub under his bed:
note how easy it is for the mind to nod off at the tiller, but
frankly that’s the idea. So before I know it I’ve piped a
delicate line of My Perfect Cousin around a triangle of
ripstop with all the precision of the master cake decorator
applying a blushing smile to his icing-sugar bride. My
darling, if I embedded a long, moon-coloured sliver of your
priceless hair beneath this thick blob of Jimmy Jimmy,
could it be our secret till our dying breath? Runaround,
Here Comes the Summer, It’s Going to Happen—properly
blended they form the most eye-catching shade but one yet
to be named. Acrylics summon me to the dancefloor!
Sure, these paintings are loud, but do I look like a mouse?
It’s chaos in here but a kind which I understand and call
home. There must always be a small corner of rapture,
otherwise what’s the point? And all the while I’m tapping
my feet to the colours, going at it with brushes or blades
until the world looks for all the world like it sounds.
The Sighting of the Century
During the summer of 1996 I was working as a Tattooist-
in-Residence on a reclaimed slagheap in the South
Pennines. On July 28th at three minutes past midday I was
approached by Mary-Anne Nogan (M-AN) and her then
husband Mark Dawson (MD), who reported an unusual
sighting near the disused pithead. Locking up the kiosk, we
travelled in their Citroën Saxo to within a hundred yards or
so of the site, then cut the engine and freewheeled down the
slope in relative silence. No sooner had we engaged the
handbrake than I knew with almost one hundred per cent
certainty that we were looking at a juvenile female
Celebrity (Movie Star). As misfortune would have it, local
landslip and subsidence have caused something of a dead-
spot for mobile phone coverage in a region otherwise lush
with signal, and I dispatched MD on foot to “get on the
jungle drums” from the nearest public phone in a local
hamlet. The celebrity had taken up position on a
cantilevered metal girder about twenty yards or so in front
of us, and despite being a good three thousand miles off the
beaten track seemed relatively unperturbed. The defining
features I would summarise as follows: a slim-bodied
celebrity with enhanced features, conspicuously plumper
than a stonechat. Its song I would describe as a repetitive
me me me, me me me, and in behaviour it displayed the
frequent “coquettish” flicking of the rump and strutting
walk so closely associated with the species. Being entirely
unprepared for such a wholly unexpected sighting, we
possessed no photographic equipment, not even a notepad
and pencil to make a rough field sketch. However, I
remembered that in my knapsack I always carried a reserve
tattoo kit along with a basic selection of coloured inks. I
hooked the electric needle up to the car battery, and M-AN
made the ultimate sacrifice when, without being asked, she
lifted her blouse over her head, uncoupled the clasp of her
bra strap and offered the unblemished surface of her bare
back as a canvas. MD returned, scarlet-faced and out of
breath, and after a few words of explanation on my part he
agreed I should carry on with the sketch, and even
contributed himself to the outlining of the secondary
feathers with a blue biro from his pocket. It wasn’t long
before several members of the local Celebrity Spotters
Club were on the scene, and only hours before other
twitchers had joined us from as far away as Manchester and
Fridaythorpe. The celebrity continued to show well for
four more days, even drawing observers from abroad, all
keen to be present at what the Yorkshire Evening Post
subsequently described as “the sighting of the century.”
And at a low-key but very moving ceremony near the
pithead this summer, M-AN and myself unveiled a plaque
carved in anthracite, dedicated to the memory of her former
husband. A devoted father and keen amateur dentist, MD
was to meet his untimely death in a freak drystone walling
accident just six months after the extraordinary happenings
of that extraordinary day.
The Crunch
I put on weight at Christmas, then more during
Lent. I tried the Nine Plums a Day Diet, the
Pine Needle Diet, then the Eat Your Way to
Health and Happiness with Pencil Shavings
and Talc Plan, then ate nothing but road salt
and hen feathers for more than a month, but just
piled it on, pound after pound. Each morning,
as naked as a fish and fully shaved, I gawped at
the digital readout on the bathroom scales, much
as a bereaved dog-lover might stare at a
veterinary bill.
My girlfriend was tactfully mute until
Valentine’s night. After crawling out from
under the ruins of sex she led me by the
manacles through the wardrobe door, and there,<
br />
amongst hangers and rails, guided my fingers
towards tailored waistbands and handcrafted
belts, towards beautifully finished collars and
cuffs, towards the pinpoint darning of zips and
buttons and studs. Tearful in the hard,
indigenous light of the moon she whispered, “If
you can’t do it for me, then at least for these
attractive trousers, mister, or this handsome
jacket, or this gorgeous shirt?”
Bringing It All Back Home
I was doing what we’ve all done at some point in our lives,
let’s face it, Googling my own name, when I dropped
across a website promoting the Cuckoo Day Festival in the
village where I was born and grew up. Attractions included
the Crowning of the Turnip King, the Dead Fish Throwing
Competition, Worm Charming on the bowling green, an
Armed Manhunt across the moor in pursuit of a well-known
car thief, the Wheelbarrow Parade, and the opportunity
to pelt a Tory councillor with out-of-date meat products.
But the event which really caught my eye was the Simon
Armitage Trail, a guided tour which promised to take in
“every nook and cranny of the poet’s youth.” I went
straight down to the local joke shop and bought myself a
false wig-and-beard combination, completed the disguise
with a large overcoat, and on the day of the tour made my
way to the old lych gate at the appointed hour.
The turnout was woundingly low: two elderly ladies, three
day trippers who’d missed the coach to Malham Cove, and
some goofy-looking student with a notepad and pen in his
hand. Our guide for the day was wearing a safari outfit,
including khaki shorts and a bullwhip tucked in his belt.
“My name’s Bob and thank you for coming,” said Bob,
reading from his notes. “And it’s not just for convenience
that we rendezvous beneath the eaves of this churchyard
building. For it was here, acting as a pallbearer at his great-
grandfather’s funeral, that Armitage felt the weight of the
coffin biting into his shoulder, and whose pain and
subsequent tears were mistaken for grief by other
mourners, an experience recounted in his first ever
Seeing Stars Page 6