The Story of John Nightly

by Tot Taylor

  After launch, Wave Dragon tugged to Nissum Bredning for extensive testing activities to optimise the Wave Dragon technology. Wave Dragon will be connected and produce electricity to the grid over a longer period of time.

  From 2003 to 2005 a development consortium will perform long term and real sea test on hydraulic behaviour, turbine strategy and power production to the grid. The 4.35 mill. project has been secured through substantial grants from the Danish Energy Administration (1.7 mill. ), EU (1.5 mill. ) and from the Danish system operator Elkraft System’s RTD fund (0.25 mill. ).

  Wave Dragon is a slack moored device of the overtopping type, consisting of two wave reflectors focusing the waves towards the ramp, where water overtops into a reservoir. The pressure height in the reservoir is converted into power through a number of variable speed axial turbines.

  In a project co-funded by the Danish Energy Agency and the EU, a model Kaplan turbine especially designed for the low and varying heads and flows has been developed and tested with very promising results. This and 6 new turbines will be installed on the prototype in the ongoing Nissum Bredning project. The prototype is designed as a 1:1 (full-size) model relatively to the wave climate in Nissum Bredning. This corresponds to 1:4.5 for a North Sea Wave Dragon and a 1:5.2 scale for a Wave Dragon in a 36 kW/m wave climate.

  Due to scale effects the rated power will be 20 kW resembling 4 MW when deployed in a relatively low-energy (24 kW/m) wave climate and 7 MW when deployed in a 36 kW/m climate. The prototype activities are expected to establish the necessary knowledge in order to deploy a full-scale offshore Wave Dragon in 2006.

  Contact & Information:

  Wave Dragon ApS

  Blegdamsvej 4

  DK-2200 Copenhagen N

  Denmark

  He’s in! He’s on! He’s John-nie Wal-ker! This is Radio Caroline International on 259 metres on the medium waveband broadcasting three and a half miles off the Frinton, Essex coast…

  Beaming up the love from the North Sea tonight. This is Free Radio. It’s ten o’clock and that means it’s Johnnie Walker’s Ten O’Clock Turn-on Time! By the way, thanks to everyone who writes in and says ‘thanks Caroline’ for defeating the British government and keeping going – you can depend on us. We’re gonna be here forever – good on yer, we’re gonna be here forever! Now, anybody listening in the car? For anyone driving around Frinton – Frinton in Essex – the sea has calmed down tonight. I might just try getting out on the deck, at about 11.30, so stick your cars around Frinton, point your lights out towards the sea and get your headlights flashing – that’ll be at around eleven o’clock tonight. Coming up is Walker’s One to Watch this week on Caroline. In the old days you used to be able to see the lights of Radio London just a little way away from the ship but now it’s just me and Caroline – we’re out here all on our own.

  [He places a purple-labelled disc on the turntable]

  Now… who’s gonna vote for Harold and the Labour government after they put the pirates off the air? And what d’ya get instead? BBC Radio 1? It went off the air at seven o’clock tonight! They’ve all gone to bed! Coming up, we got the Yardbirds, the Mamas & the Papas, but first, a big favourite out here, this is John Nightly and…

  Church Lane, Trumpington, Cambridge. The home of Jani and Valerie Feather, Monday, 11 January 1968.

  ‘Before you say anything… please let… please let me speak…’ The boy’s eyes stayed trained on the piano in the corner of the room. ‘I’m really sorry, but I’ve… I’ve come to see you to say something in person and… and… I’ll have to just… do it… say it… all pretty quickly now.’

  ‘Is that why you’re talking so fast, John?’ Jana carried on sorting through her papers.

  ‘Yeh… I mean, no – what do you mean?’ The boy looked aimlessly around the room. ‘Please… it’s taken all of my energy to… and strength, to come here and…’

  ‘Come by foot, did you?’

  ‘Jaan…’

  ‘John…’

  The boy jumped back in: ‘Jaan… let me speak,’ he fumbled. ‘And say… ‘cos I… I think, I mean – I don’t “think”, I know – I know that I will ever… I mean, never… I never will meet… anyone – a woman, I mean – a woman, any woman, anywhere, so… who is so… would be so… completely…… completely… suitable… for me, and…’

  ‘Go fuck yourself, John.’

  The girl slapped a ruler down on the table. ‘I suit you?’

  ‘Yes – I mean, no… I mean, you don’t… Well, you don’t…’

  ‘I don’t suit you… at the moment… Think I’m getting it now.’

  ‘God… Christ, look… “suitable”… That isn’t the word, obviously. I… it’s…’

  John breathed deep breaths then puffed out his cheeks in exasperation as the ‘love of his life’ re-ordered the carefully drawn plans on her drawing board and placed a soft cover over them. Jana would not be going back to her work today.

  ‘How about if you save yourself all the agony and let me say something?’

  The girl collected her pens and pencils into a tidy heap. She turned straight on to her former hero, who carried on speaking.

  ‘…what I would like to say… it’s like this, really. I say this in such a way, I mean, the way that I actually mean it. Mean every word… nuance…’

  Jana fixed him.

  ‘Why don’t you just piss off and leave me alone, John. That’s what I want to say. That’s the sum of my thoughts and nuances, my… my darling. And go and be with your models and actresses and… ballet dancers… Contessas – all that fucking… crap… and leave reasonable people… people like me… suitable people… alone. Well alone.’

  John spoke in a whisper, as if he were afraid someone might hear – though there was no one else in the house.

  ‘…Contessinas…’

  ‘Contessafuckers… is what I mean!’

  Jana paused. ‘I got that wrong actually, didn’t I! What I mean… It’s you that’s a Contessa-fucker, isn’t it? Not them! You’re that alright, John. What a changed man you are. So easily influenced. So easily softened. So… smoothed out. So easily… fucked, presumably. Not at all the… bright, ambitious individual, the bright starre, the dedicated… loyal (believe it or not)… village boy… “real” boy I used to be… to know…’

  She spoke hysterically but still nervously, before turning back to gather up the remaining items on her desk – pencil sharpeners, metric rulers and set squares – realising she had nothing at all to occupy her hands. Jana continued to speak with her back to John. ‘What on earth happened to you, boy?’ Her brain barely able to get her mouth to produce any kind of dignified sound.

  ‘Better go off and fuck ’em,’ she sniffed, finally letting go at last, ‘then go and fuck them around. Like you did me. Why don’t you? Probably are already. Fucking them around, I mean. What the hell are you doing here, anyway? You don’t owe me any money or anything, do you? Did I put in a bill for a million coffees or… ten thousand “cheese snacks”… five hundred bus fares?’ Jana swallowed and turned round to him. ‘You left me alone for such a long time. What is it suddenly that… ?’ She broke off. ‘You really don’t give a fuck for me – about me – do you?’

  Jana held on to a side table to steady herself. She picked up a gold cigarette-box in the shape of a violin.

  ‘No response? What’s the matter with you then? You used to have plenty of words.’ She took out a cigarette and lit up. ‘D’ya hear me, John? What I’m saying here? Why don’t you fuck off… fuck off, FUCK OFF! And be with that one, and that one… and that one… See how long they last with you? See how long they put up with it. Contessa… Waydown or whatever she’s…’ Jana took two long drags in quick succession. ‘The numbness of not being with you, John. Total numbness. That’s what I’ve been experiencing… while trying to… hate you and absolutely loathe you and… detest… and wish something bad would happen to you for all the bad you’ve done me… And then… hang on to you – or the me
mory of you – for some weird, crappy reason I don’t understand. Don’t know why. Have no idea why.’ Jana turned back to face the wall. ‘And to myself, trying to somehow hang on to myself…’ she sobbed. ‘Go and try it, boy. See if you can experience the things with them that you experienced… with…’

  The boy, almost choking with stifled tears, awoke from his slumber.

  ‘This is not… God… Christ Almighty… I mean I… I won’t… I can’t… I don’t expect to be able to…’

  ‘Good, John. Good. Go on, cry, cry… cry your fucking eyes out… blare like a kid…’ She held her hand to her throat as if having difficulty breathing. ‘You fucking arsewipe, John.’

  The boy, disintegrating rapidly, blathered on. Apart from anything else, never in the ten years since he met Jana Feather had he ever heard her swear. The girl’s language, a free-expression soufflé of unadulterated spite he associated with Pondy or Lee, freaked him out almost as much as the terrifying reality of the situation itself.

  ‘I know I won’t be able to… cannot experience those things again – things I experienced with you.’ He looked round for a tissue. ‘You know I can’t. That… was the start of everything, where it all came from. You were the start of it… when things – influential things – got to be discovered, and…’

  Jana dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief and turned away from the twerp standing before her, who blabbed and sobbed too, making little sense, really making a terrible, terrible job of what he had come to do.

  ‘Discovering music, being with you… being really, really…’

  ‘That’s what it was!’ The student continued to pitilessly mock.

  ‘Your family… being with them… this isn’t what I came to say, but… a normal family, getting away from mine, watching how your family… operated… your mother and father…’

  ‘Operated? You’ve really got it sorted out, fucker… I was “suitable” and they “operated”… we must have been a very convenient family indeed.’

  ‘I do mean “operated”. Important to say it. How they related to each other. A proper… unit. A really… a loving family.’

  ‘You can tell?’

  ‘Godsake, Jaan… it was such a different… different to mine, you know it was… completely…’

  ‘John…’ Jana blew a stream of smoke in the direction of the open window. John furiously rubbed his eyes.

  The architectural student, having edged closer, positioned herself a foot away from the slobbering, shaking cretin. Point blank.

  ‘I want to ask one thing, John. Quick little thing. If you will do me the honour – the last thing you’ll ever, ever have to do for me – of answering it honestly.’ She moved in close. ‘Let me ask you this…’

  Jana wedged the heel of one foot inside the inner step of the other, the position her father had recommended she assume when about to embark on a particularly difficult task like singing a solo as a member of her school choir. Perfectly balanced, she stood bolt upright in front of her assailant.

  ‘Did you like being with me? Did it do anything for you? Did you like being with me at all? Did you ever really… like me… even know me, were you ever… even a little bit interested in me?’

  ‘What do you mean like you? I loved you. So much, Jaan. So… so much. I loved you… I love you now.’ He twitched. ‘Not “loved”, I mean – love – I still love you. I will love you. Every day I will. For all time as well. I know it sounds… stupid, put like that. For all that time. It’s true. Every day of my… you know that. I want you to know…’

  ‘Get out please.’

  The girl turned away, supporting herself by placing her hand on the family’s Bechstein upright.

  ‘Can’t you just let me…’

  ‘Get out, John.’

  ‘Jaan… I just want to…’

  Jana stubbed out her cigarette on the glass ashtray and turned back towards him.

  ‘Get out now please… You’re going to have to leave right now I’m afraid.’

  A sound at the front door. A crazily familiar sound. Someone arriving home. The girl took a second handkerchief and began to hurriedly wipe her eyes. John looked back in the direction of the living-room door. He caught a shadow as it moved through the gap between the velvet drape and the damp-stained wallpaper. A familiar shadow. The front door to the house slammed tight. The imposing figure of Jani Feather – master, mentor, maestro… father – was home. John heard Jani place his violin case in the umbrella rack, hang his raincoat up on the stand and clear his throat, in the same three-way rhythm, laid out across the same clickety 1-2-&-then-3, as he had heard so many times before.

  Just a couple of summers ago, hearing this signature arrival, John Nightly would have taken his hands off Jani’s daughter, jumped off the couch, straightened his clothes and quickly made himself decent enough to greet his Master. Today the boy waited in dread for the presence about to enter the living room. Jani made his way down the narrow hallway with as much dignity as he could muster. Slightly louder footsteps than usual and a further discreet cough to announce his presence were concessions to the upheaval taking place in his own living room.

  In the old days, if he had not set eyes on John for even an afternoon or two the teacher would’ve greeted the boy with a warm, bearlike hug.

  ‘Dr Feather…’

  ‘John… call me Jani, I told you… call me Jani, for God’s sake,’ the proud and generous man would reply. ‘I’m not your teacher now.’

  But today Jani, having noticed the Jaguar parked in the road beside Jana’s cycle, continued straight past the music room, not even peering in to check on the current hair length of his former protégé, any trace of pot recently extinguished, or the general emotional state of his only child, as he would have in the past. His young genius mustered a broken-voiced greeting.

  ‘Dr Feather…’

  ‘John.’

  Came the abrupt acknowledgement as Jani strolled right on past, the Cambridge Evening News and a leaflet about the St John’s Harvest Supper rolled tightly under his arm.

  There was no way that Jani could ever have thought about embracing or even giving the briefest of welcomes to one who had brought his own daughter so much misery. After he and his wife, and Jana, had in a way ‘adopted’ John, given the boy opportunities, singled him out – rescued him – as John himself acknowledged. Jani had, after all, trusted John Nightly with his most treasured possession; and had shown the extraordinarily gifted boy so much… love.

  This action, the barest acknowledgement of the boy’s existence, by such a respected figure, cut deep. As deep as Jani’s daughter’s unexpected and totally uncharacteristic aggression.

  John signalled he was about to leave. His face almost on the floor.

  ‘Wait…… John.’

  Jana pushed back the hair from her face, reached out and took John’s tissue from his hands. Her cheeks were raw with tears.

  ‘I want… I just hope… you do well, John. That’s all. I hope that you really do… do well. Get on well. I really, I sincerely hope you do.’

  Taken aback by the sudden change towards him, the boy attempted to speak but was unable to. His lips trembled, his teeth chattered uncontrollably. He felt worthless. A complete waste of time, waste of space; a waste of a person. It was as if he suddenly saw the girl’s true worth. Feeling he’d been wasting every moment of his life not spent in Jana’s company. While she, clutching her tear-soaked shirt, but keeping her distance, continued.

  ‘Don’t be nasty to people, John. Don’t do your worst.’ She took the deepest of breaths. ‘Do your best. If you do your worst… if you are… cruel… and if you don’t consider your… the consequences of your actions… you’ll cause chaos everywhere you go.’

  She sniffled, wiped her eyes again and smiled almost apologetically.

  ‘Remember that, boy. Won’t you? You may be incredibly talented – and you are… fucking Christ you are… but so are a lot of other people. Consider them as well.’

&n
bsp; Jana raised the dynamic of her vocal cords, while remembering that Jani was now in the next-door room.

  ‘I’m talented too, you know. I am… I always have been. Ever looked at me that way? Considered what I’m good at… might be able to achieve? Ever thought about that, John? Considered my talent?’ She took a breath. ‘Haven’t, have you? Haven’t had time, have you, darling? Poor fucking sod.’

  She was off again. An agonising, despairing pronouncement, sobbing uncontrollably. John had nothing more to say. Jana began to cry the whole house down, forgetting Jani, forgetting herself, forgetting Church Lane, the backstreets of Cambridge, and the world outside.

  ‘I’m talented too, John… I’m clever… too. I can do things. Just consider it, you fool. Consider others.’ Jana breathed in but not out again. ‘We all have something to give. It’s not just you, you fucking idiot.’ She lowered her voice. ‘We all have something to give. Look for it in others. If you can spare a few moments… And don’t… don’t go around causing all this… chaos.’

  ‘I don’t want to hurt anyone, you know. I don’t want to put anyone down. I’ve no principles, no morals. I just go along. No one influences me anymore. I’m on my own.’

  Bob Dylan, London, May 1965

  Queen Square, Regent’s Park, London NW1. Sunday, 17 January 1968.

  ‘Do you remember Kenneth, darling?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m going to marry him on Saturday, if you don’t marry me…’

  item: Monthly Cultural Notes: July.

  Holidays are a problem. Ask a friend or neighbour to take care of watering duties and greenhouse maintenance. Be on the lookout for red spider mite, greenfly, whitefly, thrips, grey mould and mildew. Time to raise lawnmower blades and lower the garden veranda. Check potatoes, tomatoes, courgettes, marrow and peppers daily. Peg back wands of Guara and Poppea. Summer flowering buds make a fine show – Gloxinia, Achimenes, begonias and cannas especially.