ECHOES OF A YOUNG ANARCHIST

ECHOES OF A YOUNG ANARCHIST

REMINISCENCES OF SCHOOLDAYS

BY

BARRY VAN-ASTEN

 

Having attained an age whereby I think it is fairly safe to ascertain that most of the illustrious creatures and sado-masochistic beasts that had a hand in my educational years have passed from this world of excess and depravity into more pleasant pastures, I bethought it wise to recall a few haunting escapades and glorious moments from my school days before it is all lost to oblivion. My only excuse is to preserve these simple tortures for the benefit of history. My initial dilemma has been one of discretion: should I change names to protect the innocent? And then I thought to hell with it, most of them are probably decrepit or gracing their graves and busy fuelling the fires of Hell so I shall present an honest account. It is not my intention to cause unnecessary offence or to be exceptionally insulting or to ‘get my own back’; I am just presenting my opinion from the perspective of the young boy who was there!

I attended Wheelers Lane Secondary Boys School in Birmingham from 1980-1985 and thoroughly detested my time there! Throughout my years at the school I was always in the second from top class (there were four form classes) and there was a good mixture of wannabe swots and intellectual psychopaths or roughs! Any weakness or signs of effeminacy were quickly seized upon and dealt with appropriately. There was one boy I recall who expressed a wish to join the Royal Navy when he left school – he had signed his own death warrant! The Navy being associated with homosexual practices (or so it was to our young minds) the rest of his time at school was made a living hell by constant taunts; but he seemed capable of taking the pounding in his stride and probably went on to achieve his goal! I had my share of tackling bullies from my time at Billesley Junior School where I fought the strongest boy in one year and the strongest boy in another! I also remember having chewing gum cut out of my hair and having internal bleeding from an older boy punching me in the stomach in 1976! I quickly learnt to make people laugh and it always helped having a good pair of fast legs, but wherever possible I stood up to them, took my beating and went back for more as a show of determination which often won through and warranted some sympathy or respect!
Perhaps the only real period I enjoyed, if being incarcerated for the best part of the day and made to do things one doesn’t want to do can be called enjoyment was my first year at the school when everything seemed new and strange. All the older boys seemed like big men to us small boys and they seemed to do what the hell they liked and get away with it; breaking the rules and sticking two fingers up to the teachers! They were a strange mixture of Mods, Rockers, Skinheads, Punks and Teddy Boys … all flouting the school uniform regulations.

There was a decidedly unwholesome Welsh element to the teaching staff from the Headmaster Mr. Griffiths; I’m not sure if the Deputy Head Mr. Rough, affectionately known as ‘Daddy Rough’ was Welsh or not, but there was also the P.E. teacher Mr. Roberts known as ‘Taffy’ who sported a moustache, and the bearded Mr. Kirkby who took Geography. Each morning began with an Assembly in the Hall as we awaited the presence of Mr. Griffiths to utter his words of wisdom leaning on his lectern like some mad dictator following the strains of Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance march!

My form teacher for my first year of school was Mr. Evans, a large bearded Welsh man who taught woodwork and rugby, not being greatly interested in sport the latter filled me with horror for I had and still have a very real aversion to mud! And it always seemed to be so bloody cold when we played either at the school or on Billesley Common!
My absolute nightmare at school was mathematics, perhaps that’s not quite true for I quite enjoy the subject now but why is it taught by such evil bastards at school that they make it detestable and spoil the subject for any future learning? Throughout my years at the school there was one who walked those ghastly corridors who was pure evil personified; a man so detested by me that he was nothing short of the Devil incarnate! The teacher in question was the mathematics teacher, or at least one of them named Mr. Hobbs. He was a pint-sized, portly, pipe-smoking old man who I believe had been in the RAF as far as I knew; a man who wore the air of a hero and didn’t mind reminding everyone of it that he single-handedly defeated the German Luftwaffe! If he was in a good mood, i.e. not breathing fire or pulling the heads off small boys you only got the chalk thrown at you; if he was in a bad mood it would be followed by the wooden blackboard rubber! His gruff and croaking voice would rise and fall and some of his talk would be almost inaudible and to show his contempt, which he did often, he would give a great sniff as if to say ‘you’re not fit to lick my shoes boy!’ I believe it would be safe to say that he wasn’t overly keen on foreigners or anything that was not ‘English’ and having a foreign name myself that swiftly put me on his list of ‘pupils to destroy with utter misery’ and he took great delight in his tasks! He would set us our work to do and sit at the front of the class casting glances and directing vitriol towards us as he flapped and fouled himself like a great bird of doom before it was time at the end of the lesson for him to squawk in that hideous voice which to this day torments me: ‘Homework!’ I passionately wanted to do what Mr. Hitler had failed to do – kill Mr. Hobbs! I spent my dinner hour (lunch in less enlightened counties) pondering the many and most inventive ways of murdering him and in class whenever he would cough and splutter I looked expectantly towards him, praying for him to fall to the ground in agony and expire before the class to cheers and clapping of hands! It never happened!
Another maths teacher was Mr. Ball. I actually liked Mr. Ball, known as ‘Uncle Jack’ as I believe his first name was Jack, because he was such a good sport. He was quite old and doddery and could be mistaken for a simple-minded man, yet he was sharp as a tack and despite his hard of hearing and his mumbling in class he was a good teacher. Many times during dinner time I saw him going to the local pub The Hare and Hounds in Kings Heath smoking his pipe. During one particular ‘April Fool’s Day’ the class had been taunting him rotten and he took it with good nature. I informed him at the end of the lesson that I had placed a sign on his back which read: ‘Kick me’ and he casually said ‘I know!’ On another occasion, Wednesday 26^th September 1984, a boy in class decided to tell Mr. Ball that I had just drawn in the text book. I denied the accusation but I think it was a case of the boy who cried wolf; I had a reputation for bad behaviour. I took it in my stride and didn’t really care either way; it was all part of the adventure! A wonderful man!
The only other maths teacher I recall was named Marsh and he was a great lumbering, clumsy man with a deep voice who didn’t seem to stay very long.

In my first year I remember the music teacher, Mrs. Stevens, a lovely old lady with lots of enthusiasm and energy for the subject; a woman who believed in what she was doing and the integrity showed! She taught us to repeat the poem ‘Vita Lampada’ by Sir Henry Newbolt (1862-1938) with its ‘Play up! Play up! And play the game!’ I was in the school choir, I have no notion of how I got there (just as I have no notion of how I became a member of the school’s Athletics Team, but there I am in the team photograph looking thoroughly bored) and I recall being involved in only one inter-school choir competition; I can’t remember if we won, probably not, and I think it was the first and last performance!

I also quite enjoyed history and one of the history teachers was named Mr. Anney. This heavenly bearded creature with the features of a squat King Edward also featured halitosis that could stun a bull at one-hundred paces. Another redeeming feature of the man was his eyes which were continually in movement as if in a state of tremor and unable to fix a point to focus upon so it was difficult to assess whether he was looking at you or not! He was an enthusiastic teacher and I particularly enjoyed his classes on the ‘History of Medicine and Anatomy’! Another History teacher and one of my form teachers was Mr. Whitby who sported a fine ‘Walter Raleigh’ beard! We gave him the nickname ‘Buzzard’ due to his habit of staring into space as if looking for prey to feed upon. He was an odd man and I think a somewhat tragic figure; I remember some minor scandal surrounding him and I saw him many years later at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery skulking around the exhibits looking a little dishevelled. He looked right into my eyes with his buzzard gaze and fled into the crowds and out of sight! Another favourite teacher who took History was the lovely Christine Keats, a young and attractive woman who went on to become an influential figure in the teacher unions! She became an assistant to the Head, Mr. Griffiths and one day I was passing his office with his door open and I made a comment that the two were having an affair, knowing he would hear it and sure enough he came out like a badger from its set and glared at me!
I don’t remember who took us for Religious Education perhaps because I found it so dull, nor do I remember who took us for Computer Studies which bored me endlessly with its tedious inputting of data merely to write one’s name and print it! Technical Drawing was taught by Mr. Clayton, an elderly gent with an unremarkable personality if I remember correctly and I do not recall who took us for metalwork.*
For Biology there was Mr. Goldstein, a Jewish teacher with a hooked nose and piercing cross-eyes beneath a bushy brow wearing a lab coat. A nice enough fellow who failed to notice that I had drawn a swastika (purely for shock value) on my breast pocket which could only be seen in a certain light to replace my school badge which was a yellow cart wheel surmounted by a yellow crown on a black background! Chemistry was taught by Mr. Lacey, a fine fellow whose son would sit in on the end of the lesson after junior school finished and wait to be taken home. Physics was taught by Mr. Millward, a stern yet impeccably dressed man in a suit!
The delectable Miss Parker taught French and she was a very beautiful lady; Pottery was taught by a kind old lady whose name I think was Mrs. Hodgkins.
Art was given by the extremely laid back Mr. Judges and I remember attending a course at the Midlands Art Centre in Canon Hill Park in September 1981 with the Art class, trying various musical instruments and going behind the scenes of the theatre etc. There was another beautiful young teacher named Miss Mathews who flirted outrageously and taught some sort of contextual studies. Other teachers I recall are Mr. Watling, Mr. Braniff and Mr. Hewitt and a large somewhat effeminate man called Cobbledick!
My attendance at school was quite poor to say the least, between 1983 and 1984 I had eleven weeks off school!

There was another great menacing man whose cold stare could chill a boy from a hundred yards! This ‘track-suited terror’ lurked and could be upon a boy with superhuman speed and he was known by all as the P.E. teacher Mr. Ward, another of the great moustaches at the school! The rumour was that he only had one of what most men usually have two of in their trousers and according to legend he slipped at the swimming baths and injured himself! I do not know if this is true or not but the association stuck with him! Physical Education was a bore, I hated swimming, rugby and wasn’t keen on cricket, basketball or football; athletics was dull and so was weightlifting but I didn’t mind badminton so much and cross country running which was a good excuse to get out of school and have a casual walk round the streets or nip off for a cigarette! 

I enjoyed going off the premises at dinner (lunch) time which was strictly forbidden. I had set up my own catering business (ah the delights of Thatcher’s entrepreneurial Britain!) supplying docile swots with chocolate and crisps at a price and making a little for myself; I happily went to the local supermarket in King’s Heath with my order sheet! On one occasion, Thursday 15^th March 1984, a day when we caused a teacher named Miss Mason to burst into tears and run out of the class, a boy I knew set the fire alarm off and I was not present at the roll call so I was given a week’s detention: an hour during lunch and an hour during home time!

Mr. Griffiths the Head was the wielder of the cane but the preferred weapon of choice was the ‘slipper’ for minor offences. It was Mr. Ward’s honour to casually ‘slipper’ (actually an old training shoe) me along with three of my friends in the gym for going off premises and taking a trip to the local fish and chip shop in King’s Heath. He took a great run up and seemed to delight in the punishment, his moustache quivering with anticipation! This was on Thursday 26th May 1983. In fact, the same thing had happened at my Junior School, at Billesley, (Headmaster Mr. L. C. Galley) when a group of us went to the local shop and came back festooned and laden with sweets! Some swot of a girl, her mother was a teacher, told on us and it was the job of the Deputy Head, a fine man named Mr. Warburton who stalked the corridors like the figure of Death himself and had a habit of tucking his thumbs into his trouser waist and hitching his trousers up, to administer the beating. Once again it was the ‘slipper’ or what we called the ‘pump’ in the Assembly Hall. This must have been around 1978.  It was the kind Mr. Warburton who told me I was reading like a fourteen year old when I was ten, but I couldn’t stand those awful reading books on the curriculum and made no headway with them at school; at home I was reading encyclopaedias which I believed to be the only form of pleasure in reading! The Headmaster, Mr. Galley, was a mysterious man; I once saw him carrying a bundle in his arms which was a small boy kicking and screaming because he didn’t want to be at school and he unceremoniously burst into the class with him and seated him at his table, where he remained simpering quietly in floods of tears (the boy, not the Headmaster); I don’t recall whether he gave the boy a form of justice in the shape of his hand brought hard and fast upon his backside but it did dispel all rumours that the Headmaster only came out under the cover of darkness!

Many of my friends from Junior School went to my Senior School and I remember one boy who I was not best friends with but I did know him and like him. He had severe eczema and was eternally bullied because of it; he was a scruffy little urchin and whenever I remember him he is always either cringing from someone’s torment or looking over his shoulder. At Senior School Mr. Ward came into our metalwork class and broke the news to us that the boy in question had been hit by a bus and died, this was 1982 I think and I looked round to see the rest of the class smiling, sniggering and laughing – I had never seen anything so cruel and heartless! I didn’t learn anything about metalwork that day but I learnt a lot about human nature!

Some of my friends were also members of the 40^th Birmingham Boy’s Brigade back in 75 where I was a member for about three years I think. Someone had told me how to make a battery bomb and I made it to the specifications with the intention of blowing up the Methodist Church where we had our Boy’s Brigade with Captain Nash. Of course I tried to set the thing off to no avail but even at that young age there was a desire for danger! Speaking of Billesley Junior School, my first memory is of being naked with my brother and a young girl being examined together. I cried knowing at this young age (about four of five) that it wasn’t right to be naked in front of a) adults, b) girls and c) strangers! It was all very innocent at the time and I remember the infants had a little fenced-off play area not far from the main gate (there was no sentry on the gate in those days and adults came and went). The infants often played naked in the sand pit or with the water troughs on view for all the world to see and no-one batted an eye lid! That wouldn’t be allowed today!
Another memory is of playing with the bean bags and hula hoops watching the grown-up passers by walking outside the railings and thinking how lucky they were to be free, walking in the sunshine and that someday I would be able to be free like them! School seemed to steal the best hours of the day away from you, the hours before midday and then the time towards two-thirty; I always believed this throughout my school life and it was only after suffering all those years in the name of education that I came to appreciate fully those hours! I pity all children that have to be destroyed by the same methods! I also recall almost drowning at King’s Heath Swimming Baths, where we went with the school. I was limp and to all effects lifeless, not that anyone took notice of me except my friend who dived down and pulled me up! It caused a fear of swimming all through my school years and my young friend, a fiery tempered black boy who I looked up to, used to have pretend fights with me to try and impress the girls (which in his case it mostly did!). He even saved me from Mr. Warburton’s wrath one day as I was busy fighting a young ruffian who had been bullying me. The bully played the coward’s way and tripped my legs so that I hit my head. When Mr. Warburton came rushing to the disturbance my great black friend took a vial of theatrical blood from his pocket and poured it over his face, thus causing a distraction for me and the bully to make our escape! Of course I sought out the bully for a re-match but he smiled with what I thought was a small degree of admiration and no re-match occurred! Mr. Warburton also took a class to King’s Heath and we did some brass and grave rubbings at the Parish Church. I was accused around this time by a silly young girl who told Mr. Warburton that I had been spitting from the top of the multi-storey car park which I think was Sainsburys as we had gone up to see the view of the area! Back in class he singled me out and I denied it. He accepted my answer and said if I find you have said otherwise to anyone I will know! Many tried to get the information from me but my lips were sealed and even to this day the oath remains!
In fact it was at my junior school where I actually cried in front of a teacher! She was a lovely old frightening woman with a deep voice like ‘Peggy Mount’ who shouted a lot but I liked her (and feared her) named Mrs. Hackle. I remember having to learn the words to David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ and make a cardboard replica of Dodge City. I also recall being in a school play and I had to play the part of a tree dressed in a flimsy see-through green gauze material. The reason why I was crying was because it was found I was intellectually above the class and had to be moved up along with my friend, a beautiful young Asian girl! I was reluctant to leave! Another play I was meant to star in as a munchkin was The Wizard of Oz; I remember the rehearsals with Mr. Warburton in the Assembly Hall but I never turned up for the performance! Other teachers at the junior school were Mrs. Brinkley, Mrs. Cran and Miss Bowman who was the music teacher and played the piano during assembly.
But I digress, back to Wheelers Lane!

I really enjoyed English Literature, although the rebel in me would not show any visible interest, I loved books! The teacher, Mr. Goulding was a young idealistic man who had a great enthusiasm for his subject. I regret deeply that I upset his lessons by messing about and taunted him for I actually admired and respected him for talking to us on the same level. He was a laid back, slightly long haired fellow who wore round ‘John Lennon’ spectacles. I am pretty sure his name was David and the class took to calling him ‘Davros’ (as in the character from Doctor Who) and shouting out ‘brown shoes’ because he did indeed wear brown shoes – such was the want of young boys to annoy their teachers with the slightest fancy! Two memorable books we read in class were: ‘A Taste of Honey’ and ‘Of Mice and Men’. It was Friday 9^th March 1984 and we had been reading a book called ‘The Outsiders’ and Mr. Goulding had planned for us to visit the Classic Cinema in Station Street where it was showing as a double bill with ‘Rebel without a cause’ starring James Dean, a hero of mine! At the cinema I sat with my two friends whom I shall give the initials as N. S. and P. S. B. and Mr. Goulding sat in front with his beautiful young wife whom we had just met for the first time! I don’t think she stayed for the whole showing of the films for it was not long into ‘Rebel’ when my friends and I noticed the man sitting one seat away from me to my left. He must have been in his seventies and he had a terrible tremor in his right hand which he kept between his legs! He kept looking at me; probably because we were all wearing our school uniforms and he couldn’t believe his luck! And then as the aroma of stale salmon wafted through the cinema aisle Mr. Goulding casually turned round and asked ‘is that man doing what I think he’s doing?’ to which we answered in the affirmative and we all moved a few rows forward at his suggestion. Not perturbed, the old man with his lobster eye winking in the light from the projectionist, stood up and moved closer towards us, sitting down to resume his business! Eventually he got up and left and my eager friends were all for leaving too and following him and exposing him etc. but I was too engrossed in James Dean’s performance to bother with that! It was also in 1984 on Friday 20^th July to be precise at the age of fifteen that I took up the art of smoking! I had had the occasional smoke previously but I now took up this charming activity with great enjoyment and even waltzed into the playground smoking a cigarette to the astonishment of many lesser brave souls!

On Friday 28^th March 1985, the last day of term, a friend of mine brought into school a large tin of red paint! Another friend and I went absolutely berserk and it ended up all around the school daubed on walls and my friend had taken it outside school and decorated a car with it! Of course I forgot all about it until term began on Monday 15^th April 1985 and all hell broke loose! The next day the school caretaker named Wilkins, a nasty vicious little thug made a citizen’s arrest on me and took me to King’s Heath Police Station where I spent a couple of hours in the cell! It was my first and only experience of the cells and I decided there and then that I didn’t ever want to experience them again! On the following day at school Mr. Ward made me write out a statement for the Headmaster which I did. The final exams occurred in June 1985 and by August/September I was free from the hell of school! I turned my back on all that useless waste of time, went to University and made something of myself despite those early years preparing me for a life of handouts and poorly paid work! I still have resentment towards authority and on any occasion will defy and thwart it as much as possible, it’s the old anarchist in me that will not die!

* I have since been informed that the sadistic man in question was named Mr Pemberton whom I remember had a liking for calling the boys 'Gladys'!

NANETTE AND NOTHINGNESS

NANETTE AND NOTHINGNESS

BY

BARRY VAN-ASTEN

 

After an interval of almost eleven years the audience and critics alike gathered with great anticipation in a first performance of a new work by the composer Perkin Campbell. The vultures sat wide-eyed with dinner on their minds (and on their neck ties) as if staring into an open grave in which Perkin was about to be buried – ‘we have come to honour and pay our last respects to the great man who today ascends upon noble wings of gossamer towards the heights of heaven!’ Yet there was a remarkable absence by the composer which was notable to all the insect-brained thugs of the musical press who had the power to restore or ruin reputations!

Campbell, who had not known the delightful sound of applause too often, was described as a ‘long-haired knight of British serialism’ and his compositions were likened, perhaps too harshly, to a ‘man shitting peas into a china teapot!’ But Campbell’s glory days were far behind him and now he had resigned himself to the slow and gradual grind of teaching composition theory to a new generation of ‘long-hairs’ and short-hairs alike at one of the more prestigious of Oxford Colleges.
It is true that Campbell had been one of the leading British exponents of ‘experimental music’ and had he been born fifty years earlier there is no doubt he would have been one of the ‘bright young things’ who talked a great deal about art and produced very little of it. In fact, Perkin first came to the attention of the public, achieving some notoriety with his first major work the ‘Snoring Sonata’ of 1973 which draws upon the ‘exposition, development and recapitulation’ of its theme using sounds ‘nocturnally nasal’. The piece later became a tour de force in his short repertoire and made his name in the world of classical music. His second acclaimed work was his ‘Nose and Throat Quintet’* two years later in 1975, which explored further Campbell’s interest in the twelve-tone system as developed by Arnold Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School. Perhaps not achieving the recognition it deserved, nevertheless, it hailed Campbell as one of the most creative and innovative of British Avant-Garde composers of his time!
Throughout the summer of seventy-six Campbell worked on his next big composition which he completed the following year – his ‘Bowel Concerto in Two Movements’ (1977); unfortunately the premier coincided with the Queen’s Silver Jubilee celebrations that year and incorporated elements of the National Anthem. The Queen was decidedly not amused to say the least and even his greatest admirers thought he had become disturbed mentally and he lost all respect as a serious composer! Following the fiasco of the Concerto, all work dried up apart from a few film score offers and TV commercials which were indeed few and far between. He was lambasted in the British press and caricatured carrying a porcelain ‘urinal’ wind instrument everywhere he went! Critics said that Campbell had lost his mind and his direction and there were many disparaging comments and derogatory pieces written about the once brilliant composer Perkin Campbell.
But now he was bored – tired of having to teach compositional skills to imbeciles and the tediously dull with their ‘media’ chatter; tired of his whole existence!
The lights were lowered and the first movement began! ‘Finally’ declared the music press, two weeks before the performance, ‘a new work from Campbell!’ Not since his ‘Anne Boleyn Suit’ which utilised ‘random notation’ had the public heard anything and now his magnum opus – Nanette and Nothingness, a massive choral symphony was being performed.
It was a cold and dreary January evening and Perkin sat at home amidst the tattered threads of his life. Christmas had come and gone as it usually does and Perkin was glad of it, he couldn’t bear the whole affair, not since he was a child and saw his Uncle Charlie dressed as the Christmas Fairy doing something unmentionable with the turkey! The experience scarred him for life and now he couldn’t look at a turkey or any poultry for that matter without seeing his Uncle’s grinning face, all bloated and blotchy. And as for New Year that was a whole different story which is better kept covered up, just like Perkin usually is on New Years’ Eve, in his bed with cotton stuffed in his ears and in total darkness, he doesn’t want to hear any firework celebrations or god forbid, people having fun! No, this is an awful time of year for poor Perkin!
The second movement began!
Perkin, an eccentric and idiosyncratic man, did not, as I have mentioned, attend the performance. In fact, he was more afraid of what would be said of his drift towards the neo-classical than he was of the actual performance of his work. He had given so much of himself in his compositions that he felt extremely vulnerable; not since the terrible reviews of one of his earliest works ‘Sounds in Space I-IV’ (1970) had Perkin felt such pangs of anxiety. He did what he had learnt to do, retreat into his own comfortable dimension, well away from any ravenous public attention at his performances. Being a solitary sort of ‘old maid’ he refused to give interviews and discuss his work and the result was that he had become quite forgotten by the music world and only remembered by a select few who had interests in British serialism and its development, in fact, Perkin, by all accounts had died several times, according to one of the lesser accurate newspapers, of which they are numerous, if one reads such things!
The third movement began!
Perkin was reluctant to reveal the identity of ‘Nanette’ after whom the symphony was named but it is likely that she was one of his pupils, a fine Austrian pianist named Nanette Schumpfmeyer. Rumours at the time suggested he was in a relationship with the young woman but it was nothing more than an infatuation on his side; in fact, she acted as the muse to his creativity and was happy to do so! She would never know to what effect she had upon him for she filled his every waking thought and he venerated her into his ideal woman! Things could have been so different for Perkin had she shown him affection in return, but it was not to be! As a result, there had been a massive output in recent years of romantic works which he refused to show anyone and declared that they would be heard only posthumously!
The fourth movement began!
Perkin had been considerably unlucky in love and had remained a bachelor; his academic life in the college cushioned him from the outside world and gave him little opportunity to forge lasting relationships and besides, he was never comfortable around people and detested any form of intrusion upon his life. He did enjoy fishing and sometimes could be seen sporting his shotgun on the clay pigeon shoot, and on some occasions he could be seen furiously smashing a ball around the local golf course, but above all he much preferred listening to his favourite composers, such as Wagner, Messiaen, Sibelius and of course, J. S. Bach!
The choral symphony was drawing to a close. The blood-thirsty fiends were wiping the saliva from their lips and waiting to inject their reviews with the usual bile and sweet-smelling poison. The work was a combination of orchestra, voices and recorded sounds. In the final movement, following a short pause of silence is a loud eruption of a recorded gunshot which was slowed down to less than half-speed with echo and delay. As it rang around the auditorium, there was a deathly chill which seemed to penetrate the audience and then a tremendous applause broke out and the critics declared it a resounding success and a work of genius indeed; the spectacular savagery of the fourth movement had captured the torment and emotional torture of love’s loss and some were standing with tears in their eyes as they clapped. It seemed that Campbell had achieved recognition after all for an outstanding piece of orchestral composition, a work which would cement his name as one of the greats of British classical music!
Back at Oxford, Perkin sat in his richly decorated rooms, finished his half bottle of sherry, loaded a cartridge into his shotgun, placed his mouth around the barrel and pulled the trigger.

 

 

*It has become an ‘urban myth’ that during a performance of Campbell’s ‘Sneezing Sextet’, a member of the audience choked to death in the auditorium which gave Campbell the inspiration to write his atonal piece – ‘lung interruption’.

THE MAD MUDADABOB OF THE WOOD

THE MAD MUDADABOB OF THE WOOD

BY

BARRY VAN-ASTEN

 

It was a day of great sadness in the little village of Grimswald as Mrs Chilcomb the baker’s wife lay hysterical in her bed having slept very little the previous night after her youngest son Harcourt went missing yesterday. Her husband, Seymour, the baker was with the rest of the men-folk searching for the boy but it would be no use, he had disappeared like all the rest before him! The legends connected with Gallows Wood and the ‘Mad Mudadabob’ the wicked beast or ‘witch’ named by the villagers and said to reside in the woods were numerous and handed down through generations so that a very real presence was conjured that crawled through the woods and right through the village and whoever enters the woods were surely never to be seen again. Just over a hundred years ago four children were playing in the woods against their parent’s warnings and all four were never seen again. It seems that not a year goes by without some catastrophic event connected to the woods occurring.

The woods were dark and dense and those that had travelled near its edge where the road climbs towards Penwizen say that there is an awful pervading silence and that no birds will sing in the vicinity of the woods; no flowers bloom in the woods and the primrose and bluebell fear to grow beyond the outer limits of the wood within its strangling darkness. Strange lights have been seen flitting through the boughs at night and children sing songs about the fairies in Gallows Wood. Fearing yet more tragedies the Lord of the manor, Lord Montague announced a decree to the village proclaiming that anyone who can rid Gallows Wood of its infernal monster shall take his daughter, Lady Lucinda’s hand in marriage along with a thousand acres of land and a place within Monford Hall, he swore this upon his honour as a gentleman, which as we know is a very great oath indeed!
His Lordship’s daughter, Lady Lucinda was a very beautiful young woman with a pale complexion, long golden hair and large blue eyes, skilled in many arts and homely crafts with a very gentle nature and love for her father (her mother, Lady Matilda had died during childbirth and thus Lucinda became very close to his Lordship).
The first to announce his intentions of slaying the beast and claiming the Lord’s daughter was the shoemaker, Bill Trumble, who stated that he would make a fine pair of shoes and riding boots for his Lordship from the skin of the beast! The shoemaker set upon his journey to much cheering from the crowds that saw him off, and the shoemaker looked over his shoulder and waved as he went over the hill, puffing on his tobacco pipe with the gloomy Gallows Wood in view. The following day the shoemaker’s horse came trotting along the lane back towards the village and all the villagers feared the worst had happened to Bill, which indeed it surely had for he was never seen again from that day forward!
The next person to attempt the quest was the Butcher, Joseph Cotton, and before he left the village he declared that he would make a huge chain of sausages from the monster for the whole village to enjoy! And so he too set off into the distance with the dark impending doom of the woods before him. To keep his mind from the horror that lurked ahead, Joseph blew tunes upon his tin whistle but Joseph’s heart almost beat out of his chest as he neared the haunted woods and a dark mood took over the butcher which grew in intensity the closer he got. The next day Joseph’s horse was seen heading towards the village on the old Penwizen Road. Joseph was never seen again, much to the annoyance of those admirers who delighted in his pies and sausages!
The third person to set off from the village was the extremely short-sighted, bespectacled Tailor, Thomas Bullfinch, who presumptuously stated that he would stitch a fine suit from the skin of the beast and present it to his ‘Father in Law – Lord Montague’! His boastful attitude did not win him much favour in the village and besides, most of the villagers were too poor to afford his expensive suits and so hadn’t much taken to him as a villager, but, he may bring back a fine suit to prove that the beast is dead and so they made a great pretence of wishing him well, knowing that he would probably never be seen again, like the shoemaker and the butcher before him! And so he wasn’t!
Over the past few days as these brave men had set off into the woods with what appeared no fear of death, the Vicar’s daughter, Miss Selina Merryworth, had, like the other villagers watched them go. Selina was considered to be very beautiful amongst the villagers with her long dark hair and large brown eyes and she was well-liked and she knew that she was just as brave as any man, and so without notifying anyone of her intentions, she set off after dinner on horseback with a hunting rifle and the intention of bringing back the dead body of the Mad Mudadabob or whatever it is that lurks in the woods!
The moon shone full as Selina entered the dreary woods that hung over her like a dark shadow and followed a trail that meandered through the interior. Not a sound was heard nor a creature seen and the intense darkness held some fearful approaching menace. Suddenly the horse pulled up and began to rear and Selina could do nothing to encourage it to walk on. She dismounted and tethered the horse to a branch. In the distance beyond the dark boughs she could see a light and as she got nearer she could see the old woodcutter’s cottage in a much dilapidated state, yet a light shone within. Selina approached the cottage and seeing the door was open, entered, closing the door behind her. Through the murky gloom that was illuminated by a flickering fire in the hearth she could see human bones decorating the room, skulls upon the walls and a table and chair made of skeletons. In the hearth was a large pot and as Selina peeked into it she could see a pair of spectacles floating in the bubbling soup and then she noticed a pair of eyes behind them, glazed and staring at her and as she looked again she could see the ruddy remnants of the Tailor, Thomas Bullfinch’s face bobbing up and down in the boiling liquid, his tongue extruding from his mouth. Selina quickly turned away and as she leant against the table she could see a tin whistle and a tobacco pipe among other objects upon it, such as a small doll, a pair of dice and several coins.
Suddenly, the door flew open and there standing in the doorway was the figure of a menacing woman framed by the dark night behind her. Two points of fiery red lights pierced into Selina’s soul and in the next moment a large and lithe creature which must have been seven feet tall moved swiftly as if it were floating and Selina could see the human-like figure before her covered in a fine material which draped around the monster. The thing stared intensely at her and Selina felt something come over her, as if she were dreaming but she managed to pull herself out of the unearthly spell of the witch which must have overcome those who had tried to kill the beast before her and then without warning the thing rushed at her with great pace. Selina drew her rifle and blasted a hand-sized hole in its heart and the witch fell to a heap before it could get its sharp talons on her!
When she had recovered her senses Selina walked towards the monster and could see it had an almost human face, female in fact with eyes much like her own which were now black where flames were moments before and a mouth which was contorted into some wild grimace. She took the rope she had with her and bound the body of the ‘witch’ to some wooden poles she found in a clearing and attached the rope to her horse and set off back to the village and to Monford Hall.
When Selina reached the village her father the Vicar, who had been very concerned about his daughter, was the first to greet her and the church bells were ringing and the villagers were cheering and shouting with joy! In fact, the day became a festival day which would be celebrated for many generations after!
At the Hall the Lord was pleased to see Selina and looked at the ‘witch monster’ she brought with her and declared that the village was now safe! Then his Lordship added that of course she would not hold him to his oath to present his daughter, Lady Lucinda’s hand in marriage and that instead he would give her his daughter’s weight in gold coins, but Selina said:
‘My Lord, you are a just man and a noble man and your word is very truth amongst the village and so I request that you keep your word and honour me by allowing me to take your daughter’s hand in marriage!’ His Lordship was aghast but being an honourable man he was duty bound and kept his word and a week later Selina and Lady Lucinda were married by Selina’s father in the parish church of Grimswald and both brides were very beautiful, Selina wearing a lovely scarlet dress which clung neatly to her small bosom and Lucinda a white dress which complemented her delicate and petite figure and following the ceremony a great feast was prepared for the village and on the table, set for dinner, was the Mad Mudadbob, which had been roasting in the kitchen all day, on a magnificent silver platter, big enough for several children to bath in, which following the feast became its general use amongst the village children!
Mrs Chilcomb, the baker’s wife had an extra large portion of ‘roast witch’ and felt contented that by proxy she was getting even with the butcher, Joseph Cotton, who once served her a terrible cut of shoulder which she accused him of belonging to a small dog, and at the same time, getting even with the Tailor, Thomas Bullfinch, who once short-changed her but also not realising that she was also ‘getting even’ with her own son, Harcourt!
Selina and Lady Lucinda became very well-liked amongst the villagers and the Ladies resided at the Hall with Lord Montague and in time Lucinda’s duty to honour her father’s wishes deepened into a great love and intimacy for Selina!
It was two years later that Lady Lucinda’s cousin, Sheridan, a handsome man who was a very skilled horseman came to visit the Hall and stayed several days. Sheridan and the Ladies talked much about the legend of the Mad Mudadabob and how Lady Selina killed the witch; and how now birds sing joyously in the woods once more and flowers grow within without fear!

It is to be noted that not long after, there were celebrations in the village at the news that Selina and Lucinda had both fallen pregnant but as to who the father or fathers were were not talked about. Selina and Lucinda gave birth to a healthy girl and boy, respectively who both grew up to be very skilled in horsemanship!

THE POLYMATH

THE POLYMATH

OR

THE EUCLIDIAN PARROT

 

BY

BARRY VAN-ASTEN

Polly woke at an early hour and looked out of her apartment window which looked across Berlin’s beautiful Tiergarten as she ran her fingers through her hair. She was a young, although mature, dark haired creature with large explosive eyes and tremendously long lashes and the most fabulous legs any man could run his imagination up and down, yet she did not think she was attractive, in fact, she thought she was quite plain and ordinary.
Polly Vaughan had recently left her position as a mathematics lecturer at Oxford to take a senior position at the Berlin Mathematical School. As a lecturer in pure mathematics she had been consumed by the notion of infinity and there were many a male student who sat lusting after the beautiful Miss Vaughan all to no avail for the delectable Miss Vaughan was married to her career and her love of numbers! At Oxford Polly had produced an extremely entertaining paper titled: ‘The Poldark-Putin Paradox’ which brought her some minor notoriety and in some quarters ridicule as it stated that ‘all men have torsos but not all great torsos belong to great men’ a reference to the two gentlemen in the title; feminists attacked the thesis on grounds that it suggests that all women want of a man is a ‘decent set of abs’ when every woman knows that men are too lazy to achieve this and if they do it is because they are too vain or probably gay! But the thesis was also championed at the colleges by fans of Ross Poldark and Aiden Turner who played the character of Poldark.
Polly was born an only child in the Welsh town of Kidwelly and as a dreamy child she was infatuated by two things and two things only – numbers and the spirit’s journey after death! She felt it emphatically and felt it all around her for she saw it in the birds and the animals and in the people about her; the old superstitions were still rife and the mystery of death still haunted the valleys of Wales. There was no denying it and even a hundred years of self pleasure would be of no consequence to the young Polly Vaughan for she had no interest in romance and the usual dreams of young girls and she decided to dedicate her life to the pursuit of numbers and the art of mathematics. She gleaned facts from life like a magpie and treasured all the knowledge she collected and accumulated long lists of enormous events like equations which she would add to, for knowledge was everything and the ordinary ways of the world seemed very dull by comparison to art, science history and mathematics!
Along Karl-August-Platz Polly would walk with the music of the universe singing in her ears and the catastrophic whirl of numbers revolving in her mind. At the Mathematical School Polly was thrown towards the Provost and sought him out whenever she could to be near him and look into his deep eyes for the truth was that during the short time that Polly had been at the School, Polly was falling neck over knickers in love with him! The Provost, Jonathon Lutz, was a man from Hamburg who was educated in England during his tender years; a tall and thin man in his mid-thirties who talked with the faint breath of a sparrow and leant in close during conversations as if his ears were tuned to a different frequency and struggled to grasp the sound of language. But for all the childish advances of the lovely Miss Vaughan, Mr Lutz seemed indifferent and showed no affection in return whatsoever, yet still Polly persisted in her endeavours towards Mr Lutz. Poor Polly was not very skilled in the art of love and of ‘wooing’ for she failed miserably to notice that Mr Lutz had an inexhaustible knowledge of women’s fashions and a deep interest in fabrics and colours; that he had an unwholesome fixation upon Judy Garland and musicals and enjoyed singing show-tunes in general and had a way of walking which was much too feminine to be classed as anything manly, in fact, there seemed to be nothing ‘manly’ about Jonathon and everybody knew it but Polly for none of these things seemed to hammer the nail home in poor Polly’s mind!
It was while walking in Henriette-Herz Park with Jonathon that Polly noticed a man who seemed to be signalling to Mr Lutz and he came forward and greeted them. The man, who was named Heinrich von Durstburgerdorf was a stout old man dressed in a faded suit from a bygone age; a man who had once been quite an important figure in Berlin society until some sort of public downfall. He bowed towards Polly after Mr Lutz introduced her and she noticed that one of his eyes was larger than the other one which made him look like some sort of owl with a halve closed sleepy eye and one wide-awake eye! Then the old man turned to Jonathon and said: ‘Sie ist hübsch, sie spricht Deutsch?’ to which Jonathon shook his head, saying ‘Nein!’
‘Sie wird tun!’ said the old man, delighted with the young woman companion of his friend. Then he continued: ‘Wie geht es dir mein iunger Freund?’ but before Jonathon could answer the old man said with a nudge of his elbow ‘Berlin ist berühmt für seine zarten jungen Ärsche!’ and he laughed. Before Jonathon could wedge a word in here or there the old man said ‘Es hat sich nach viel Vorbereitung fur die Nacht gewesen. Wir sind zu tief fur Zweifel Herr Lutz, von denen mussen Sie die konsequenzen erkennen.’
‘Ja Meister!’ answered Jonathon.
‘Wir müssen kümmern Herr Lutz, es besteht die Gefahr der Exposition überall!’ and here the old man spat upon the floor as if to end his sentence with a full-stop!
‘Meister’ said Jonathon, ‘Hagel im Namen unseres Herrn, des Teufels!’
The old man bowed slowly and said ‘Ich kusse sie hand und Satan’s schwanz bis zum nachsten Treffen wir Herr Lutz!’ The old man then turned to Polly saying ‘Forgive me Fraulein for speaking in my own tongue!’ and he smiled revealing a gap in his front teeth which glared ominously in its dark loathsomeness as he continued ‘you vill find us most hospitable!’ The old man then laughed and said ‘I am afraid I have not been feeling myself lately, unlike our friend here Mister Lutz who I am afraid to say Miss Vaughan, feels himself much too often for my liking!’
Polly blushed and turned away and Jonathon said nothing in return.
Looking at Polly, the old man with a wild twinkle in his eyes suddenly seemed to become energised and more animated as he said:
‘Fraulein, how like the beautiful Eva Braun you are!’ and he stamped his foot upon the ground and made a fist which he shook in the air. ‘I knew her as a child’ he continued ‘for I served in ze Hitler Youth; such a fresh glow… Of course it vas ze glorious days of ze mighty Third Reich,’ and here the old man attempted to click his heels but stumbled forwards upon his walking stick; the temptation to follow this with a Nazi salute was overwhelming, yet he restrained himself which to him was just as difficult as a young adolescent boy refraining from keeping his hand from his genitals at every opportunity! Heinrich, after righting himself, continued, ‘I remember ze days ven Heir Hitler unt his concubine Eva Braun ver in Bavaria – unt vot vhoopee zey made! Vot vhoopee!’ The old man said this while making revolting gestures with his body and thrusting himself with his walking stick between his legs into the most sordid shapes while raising his finger and thumb to his lips and pushing his lascivious tongue through the hole he made with them!
Polly turned away disgusted and offended, thinking how unbecoming it was of an octogenarian! As they parted the old man shouted after them saying ‘remember Mister Lutz that masturbation is a one-horse race!’ and he was gone, wheezing and laughing to himself into the distance.

Polly’s life had seemed like one long fairy-tale; she was an only child and since childhood she had had fantastic dreams, the significance of which she could not fathom and put it down to her vivid imagination; dreams of cosmic interplay that seemed to linger between this world and the next as if unable to penetrate the veil that separated them; the thin and fragile line between the dimensions like the surface of water which holds firm the dimension of water against that of air. Polly had a dream such as these just two nights ago when she dreamt that she had a visit by the Father of Geometry himself – Euclid! Polly may have failed to notice the terminal expression upon Jonathon’s face every time she attempted to get close to him and seduce him in her terrible way but she could hardly fail to notice the beautiful full moon above her just as she could hardly fail to notice the importance of the dream. In this dream, Euclid spoke to Polly saying that all language in the beyond is universal and that the human race has only discovered one-third of the elements found within the Solar System for many are not visible and many are the subtler energies not yet recognised by man, much as our eyesight only sees certain spectrums and our ears intercept certain frequencies. Euclid went on to hint at the possibility of time-travel and new ways of space propulsion which he said would be unorthodox to speak of as there is a form of justice beyond for those who break the code and impart future destinies which may or may not change the course of time!
The next day Polly told her dream to Jonathon who brushed it off with a casual ‘oh, it’s only a dream, I wouldn’t think too much about it! After all, you are a mathematician who clings to logic; propositions deduced in language which apply to definite rules of reasoning! It was merely a fanciful dream - Ein phantasievoller Traum!’
‘But dreams are important, they have meaning! I have rejected God and there is nowhere else to go!’ said Polly.
‘Oh I don’t know’ said Jonathon, ‘there’s always Blackpool!’

It was a grim October’s morning when Polly was walking along the Bellevuestrabe, the light was strangely compelling as it filtered through the almost bare branches of the trees, and with no clear way to Jonathon’s heart she sat down with a deep sadness upon her. She remembered how two days ago the old man had greeted her with his obscene gestures and how frightful he had been talking of the old world and its horrors like some old forgotten relic of a hateful and cruel period in time; like a ghost of the battlefield come to haunt her and fill her with dread and fury. She saw his large eye overshadowing his smaller eye and the horrid expression on his face as his tongue circled and poked through the hole made by his finger and thumb – ‘what a disgusting old man!’ she said to herself. It was shortly after these distressing thoughts that she felt a cold chill enter her body and with some fear and trepidation she returned to her apartment.
She wasn’t long at the apartment when she received a call from Jonathon asking if he could meet her for coffee and that he had something important to discuss with her. Polly agreed to meet him and wondered what the urgency could be, and not thinking too much of it put on her coat and set out again. Jonathon was already waiting at the coffee shop and seemed to have a strange expression on his face; he was extremely cold towards her when she greeted him. Polly sat down at the table tucking her long slender legs underneath.
‘What is it that’s so important Jonathon?’ Polly enquired.
‘I have been asked to attend a conference in Stuttgart and will be away some time’ he replied ‘and it may mean that you take on a little more responsibility at the School I’m afraid!’
‘I don’t mind that Jonathon’ Polly said with a sadness in her gaze which only a heartless fool would fail to recognise. Jonathon, of course, saw nothing unusual in her look. They sipped at their coffee in silence for a while as Jonathon sat looking at his watch and Polly stared into her cup. After a short time Jonathon received a phone call and excused himself to Polly as he spoke to the caller:
‘Ja wer ist es? Heinrich Ich erwarte deinen Anruf!
Ich bin dabei, es jetzt zu tun!
Nein, sie vermutet nichts!
Ich werde später mit Ihnen sprechen, wenn es fertig ist! Liebe zu unserer Dame Lilith! Auf Wiedersehen!‘
Then there was a long silence again as Polly sipped at her coffee and Jonathon looked everywhere but into Polly’s eyes until eventually, turning to Polly, he said ‘I almost forgot’, breaking the awkward silence, ‘I wish to give you something’ and he pulled out of his pocket a small gift which was wrapped with care. In giving it to Polly he accidentally dropped it on the floor and she bent under the table to pick it up. ‘Oh, I’m very sorry Polly!’ Jonathon said as Polly returned the gift to the table and carefully un-wrapped it. ‘What is it?’ she said with a puzzled look on her face. ‘Oh it’s a brooch, of a bird, a very queer looking bird with bright colours! It’s beautiful! What bird is it?’ she asked.
‘It’s a very ancient depiction of an exotic bird and I want you to have it!’ Jonathon exclaimed.
‘Looking at it more closely it looks like a parrot!’ said Polly, smiling at Jonathon.
‘Now that you come to mention it, it does look like a parrot!’ Polly thanked him and with this Jonathon rose as if to go but not before taking Polly’s hand and saying goodbye to her which he did with an equal coldness as when he greeted her!

That night Polly had such disturbing dreams that she felt the next world press close to her, much too close for comfort it seemed and she could not get rid of the image of the old man, and Jonathon turning his cold stare away from her and the parrot on her bedside table where she had put the brooch, rising and squawking and saying in almost perfect English: ‘Before the fruition of love – the mask of enchantment!’ which the bird repeated over and over again. The dream was very vivid and she could feel herself on her own bed yet she was unable to move or speak.

‘Before the fruition of love – the mask of enchantment!’

She felt that she was not alone in the room and that a dark presence was moving around the bed, a female form or what appeared to be a woman in the darkness moving around the room like a lithe and lissom panther and as she came closer she could make out the features of the woman which were altogether not quite right. The woman, for it was definitely a woman was slender yet sinister in her appearance and Polly could do nothing to protect herself from the woman for she felt herself to be held within some cosmic force which she could not comprehend!

‘Before the fruition of love – the mask of enchantment!’

Closer came the shadowy woman and as she did so she spoke words which Polly did not recognise, words which were almost vulgar and animalistic in their sound, yet compelling in their beauty also. Fear flashed through every nerve and fibre of Polly’s body as the woman came towards her and touched her face and shoulder and she could feel her hands all over her body touching her in places which had never been touched before, writhing upon her immoveable body; Polly could feel the long hair sweep against her skin which tingled and yielded to the soft lips of the thing, touching her every intimate recesses with an infernal passion…

‘Before the fruition of love…’

Then she fell into a deep sleep and could remember nothing else of the experience.

She awoke the next day more perplexed than ever and seemed very out of sorts. What did it all mean and who was the strange visitor that entered her sleep? It had all seemed so real but Polly put it down to the usual stress and upset of a new job and being thrust into the responsibility that entails. Polly took the small brooch and pinned it to her dress and went to work at the Mathematical School, much as she had done for the past two months she had been working there. All day she could not shake away the feeling of being different to her usual self and she could not really settle to any industrious work for long periods without the thought of the sinister visitor from her dreams wandering into her mind and the parrot with its ‘‘Before the fruition of love – the mask of enchantment!’ What did it mean?
That night she settled down to sleep much as usual and a cool breeze swept in at the window which she kept open a little as her apartment got quite warm in the night. The curtain danced gently as she watched from the comfort of her bed and drifted off into the realm of sleep once more. Time seemed a mere memory of numbers on a clock face and there was peace, utter peace in sleep. She could see the high street where she grew up in Kidwelly with its little tea shop and the river, and the church; her girlhood roaming through the dark doorways of the Castle there. Then suddenly she dreamt about floating on a vast lake that rippled in ever-widening circles and when she rose into the air to look down upon the lake she could see the ripples formed a huge eye, it was the eye of the old man obscenely winking in the water and from the centre of the eye appeared the parrot squawking with droplets of water falling from its feathers: ‘Before the fruition of love – the mask of enchantment!’ Polly felt herself dissolve in the eternal darkness of the nightmare upon her and from the darkness appeared the four walls of her room, her familiar room with her bed at one end and her form upon it. Suddenly she found herself lying on the bed and unable to move or speak but that parrot was echoing in her ears

‘Before the fruition of love – the mask of enchantment!’

Just then she felt once more that she was not alone and in her helpless state she lay there as some dark presence once more revealed itself to her. She looked into its eyes which were fiery red and she felt its warm insatiable hands enveloping her body. She felt every part of her body yield to the sensuous silhouette of the woman who consumed her; she felt that her soul was in the grip of this being and no matter how she tried she could do nothing to stop it. She felt the dread wrap of annihilation permeate her body as the thing caressed her like some enormous snake and tore at her as if it were a dark panther! And the lips once more kissed and pressed upon her flesh like hot pokers searing into her soft skin.
It seemed an eternity until the morning began to sweep in through the window and wash over Polly, bathing her in its golden glow and she opened her eyes. She felt very odd and was reluctant to stir from the comfort of her bed which during the night had seemed more like a prison. She felt physically weak as if she had not slept and there was a pain in her chest which caused her some distress.
Later that day she felt well enough to go out for a walk and tried to take her mind of it all; she found a little coffee shop and ordered coffee and sat down at a table in the corner by the window, looking into the street. As she sat there she noticed the brooch she was wearing and took it off. It was while she was examining it closely in her hands that she noticed something inscribed into the back of it, a strange symbol which she had never seen before. The symbol resembled an inverted letter ‘T’ with the ends forming little crosses or three swords with their points touching and the hilts outward and from the central vertical line was attached a curved line which hung from it like a reversed letter ‘S’, like a tail in fact. It was very strange and she intended to research the symbol to find out what it means. Perhaps it has some religious meaning she thought. At the next table two ladies seemed to be deep in conversation and discreetly observing Polly. Their conversation was spoken in hushed tones and Polly, not knowing anything of the German language thought nothing about the way in which the two women talked together:
‘Sie sieht aus, als wäre sie die ganze Nacht aufgestanden; Sie sieht aus wie sie von einem Regiment von Soldaten gefickt wurde!‘
‘Ich wette, sie erschöpft sie, bevor sie sie erschöpft!‘ and they both laughed.
Polly finished her coffee and headed back to her apartment.
Polly felt tired and decided to have a hot relaxing bath before sleep so she slipped out of her shoes and stockings and took her dress off and ran the water. She looked at herself in the mirror and she looked ancient she thought and she felt utterly exhausted; in fact, she felt so tired as she got into the bath that she could have fallen fast asleep right there and then. After a long soak in the hot water she got out she put on her night dress and suddenly remembering the symbol, she decided to sleep first and then begin the research as she was just too tired to stay awake. She got into bed and it was a matter of minutes before she was fast asleep; and it was also a matter of minutes before her dreams once again took a distressing turn. She felt her eyes open and she looked upon herself lying upon the bed; she could hear herself breathe and saw the motion of her chest rising and falling. Then suddenly everything went very dark and she had the strange sensation of floating in a vast nothingness, weightless as if under water. After what seemed an age she found herself standing in a room of sorts with pin-points of light and she could hear voices speaking. The voices appeared to be growing nearer to her until she saw two figures standing in a circle and the figures were robed. Polly recognised the voices as that of Jonathon and the old man with the funny eyes that she met in Henriette-Herz Park. They were talking in English and she heard the old man say ‘she still has rich pickings in her!’ Polly stood quite close to them and she felt as if she were a ghost for the two men could not see her and did not even know that she was there. It was extraordinary and exhilarating and very weird! She then heard Jonathon say that he had given her the magical brooch with the sigil of Lilith upon it and that even now she grows weak just as the cold moon waxes towards the full for the final evocation! ‘Meo periculo’ the old man uttered and followed it with "Vor der Frucht der Liebe - die Maske der Verzauberung!" and all was silence. Then darkness once more flooded her consciousness or whatever (or whoever) it was that was perceiving this vision and she felt herself being pulled towards some unknown and awful destination.
When Polly woke up the next day she shuddered to remember the dream, if in fact a dream it was, for it all seemed so real to her. As she got out of bed she felt a stinging pain all over her body and as she looked she could see scratches all across her flesh, her arms, legs and stomach; it was as if she had been attacked by a lion or some other type of big cat. Frightened and in pain she sat on the end of the bed and cried. After the awful truth of what was happening dawned upon her she realised she must do something and so she began to research what she now knew to be the ‘sigil of Lilith’ and to attain as much knowledge as she can on the subject. All day and all night she sat up reading and investigating various accounts of the demonic Lilith, evocations and ways in which to banish the spirits and demons and counteract any so-called ‘black magic’ practiced against one.
She came upon ‘The Lesser Key of Solomon’ with its conjurations and prayers, but she instantly dismissed this for its reliance on Christian mumbo-jumbo, and as she wasn’t much into God and the Church she would never allow one of those ‘filthy priests’ to perform an exorcism; she had always had a revulsion for those sanctimonious swine in the priesthood, ‘surplices and sodomy’ she called the Church. She had not one ounce of all that Christian rubbish in her soul; she would have to find other means of salvation!
Armed with the facts, she looked into alternative forms of exorcism and was immediately drawn to witchcraft with its more natural approach to the spirit and possession. She found a woman named Frieda Cox who practiced witchcraft and listened to Polly’s story intently and said she would help her. Frieda devised a ritual to rid Polly of the evil Lilith’s influence saying that at the moment there is only the first stage of possession but that they must not delay in their actions.
That evening, Polly went to meet Frieda at her home which was quite some distance away and she arrived just after eight. Frieda had everything prepared and there was no time to waste as she stepped into the circle of protection with Frieda after a ‘spiritual cleansing ritual’. The incense was thick and overpowering as Frieda intoned her incantations and made gestures with her magical implements and to give any more details as to the actual specifics of the ritual would be a betrayal to dear Frieda who worked solely for the benefit and spiritual advancement of humanity, but there were some mighty curses and bindings towards the evil Lilith whom Frieda felt to be outside the circle. Following the banishing of the demon Frieda completed the ritual with thanks to the Goddess and the ‘bright ones’ who watched over the ordeal and symbolically ‘opened a doorway’ from the circle to the outside world. The witch gave Polly certain instructions to follow concerning the brooch and to perform before she goes to sleep around her apartment and Polly thanked Frieda, weeping with tears of thanks. That night Polly strictly followed Frieda’s advice and instructions using salt around the bed and burning incense in the room before saying a protection spell and she got into bed. After a while she fell asleep and spent a pleasant, undisturbed sleep with no unnatural or infernal distractions in the night!
Feeling fully refreshed the next morning she had one more task to perform and that was concerning the brooch with the sigil of Lilith upon it. Frieda had said that ‘the recipient must send it back to its point of origin’ and that point of origin was Jonathon Lutz! Since her strange vision whereby Jonathon and the old man featured foul, she had known that it was possibly correct to say that Jonathon had not gone to Stuttgart and in fact he was more than likely still in Berlin! Polly adhered to this natural equation and calculated that he would be remaining out of sight at his home, communicating only with the outside world by phone and by post. She had also deduced that when Jonathon had handed her the brooch and it fell to the floor he must have tampered with her drink in some way too! In conclusion to all this Polly had bought an appropriate ‘vessel’ to send the brooch back to him and she hid it inside very carefully and wrapped the item and addressed it to Jonathon Lutz.
The next morning Polly dressed and went to the Mathematical School and all the talk amongst the lecturers was concerning their colleague Mr Lutz who had been found dead in the early hours of the morning. As more information surrounding his swift departure was made available it was revealed that Mr Lutz was found at home wearing ladies’ underwear and covered in brutal scratches, his eyes ripped from his head in a vicious attack and a look of sheer torment upon his face; beside his bruised and bloody body was a stuffed toy parrot! Two days later she read in the newspaper about the death of a local man named Heinrich von Durstburgerdorf who had once taken up the office of Bishop in Berlin but had had to give up the position due to rumours surrounding his private life and the corruption of children in the Church. Heinrich von Durstburgerdorf had taken his own life by cutting his throat with a German SS knife and his body was found at his home amongst his military collection wrapped naked in a swastika flag!
Polly was interviewed for the post of Provost at the Mathematical School but whether she took it or not remains unknown!

Celebrating 50 years of Star Trek

THE STAR TREK EXHIBITION

BLACKPOOL

30TH JUNE - 6TH NOVEMBER 2016

 

 

 

 

Original items from the classic Star Trek episode

'The Trouble with Tribbles'

 

 

Script for 'The Trouble with Tribbles'

 

 

 

 

 

Close-up of the script

 

 

 

 

 

an original Tribble!

 

 

 

 

 

a uniform for the unproduced 'phase II'

of Star Trek

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spock's bandana and ears!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The uniform aisle

 

 

 

 

 

The Enterprise

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shuttle craft signed by the cast of Star Trek Voyager

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Bajoran Phaser used on Deep Space Nine

and later altered to be used by Dilithium miners

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Transporter

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Klingon knife used in the original series

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Borg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Microtape cartridges used in the original

episode of 'Mirror, Mirror'

 

 

 

 

 

 

some of the pictures from the 50 Artists

celebrating 50 Years of Star Trek

 

 

 

 

 

 

Characters from the original series