Cotton and Coal

2010-09-15T19:30:00.001+01:00

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

Missing having Batson at the breakfast table, in the bedroom, or the boardroom?

Fear not. Coming soon...The Bumper Book of Batson’s Best Bits

A self-explanatory compilation of the best of Batson (1862 – 1865) to be self-published by one of the country’s most bitterly haunted ghost writers.

Revel! In the end of Batson – long live Batson!!
Reminisce! Over all the things he did – the meaty topics he chewed over despite his vegetative state; the issues he tackled and the ladies he tickled.
Realize! There are plenty of other things to read now that the worldwidewotsit has expanded exponentially. Check out the latest leaks from Afghanistan – fresh and tasty at this time o’ year.
Respect! Select a date and come see me on my forthcoming world tour (TBC – depends on transport costs).
Recall! Post No. 7935 (subplot 6a) – product (of a prodigious imagination) was simply too hilarious, and may cause serious side (splitting) effects.
Revisit! The schadenfreude experienced when Batson’s hapless pursuit of Daisy finally fell flat.
Rejoice! In the fact that 'BB' has found happiness with Licky, while mouthing ‘it’ll never last’ to your neighbour on the omnibus.
Randisize! Yourself. Blow your whistle and choke on your gristle at the full-colour Pastry Girl pin-up, free with every third copy sold (specify buttery or puff).
Request! Your favourite posting and get it blown up and/or framed before your very eyes (packages from £5, 0/, 99d). Or write directly for our discretely-bound pamphlet Blackmail: How Much is too Much?
Rewind! Design your own customized post, in which you can star (from £3, 0/, 99d including postage and…get packing…do you really think you can buy my services in such a way, and so cheaply? Blaggard!*)
Reunited! At last, it’s like you’ve never been away BB. Did I mention I saw you reading at the Hatbox launch? ‘You did, now shut your cake hole!’

*allow additional 50d for each nice thing that happens to you over course of the posting & I’ll see what I can do.

Herewith & Thither Ltd. – Literary Executioners of the Batson Bargreaves Estate. Shotguns Pumped. Fortunes Told. Anarchists Strung. Good Rates.

2010-08-19T17:33:00.001+01:00

THANK YOU...

A word of genuine thanks to all my readers – especially those who have stuck with me since the winter of 1862, when first I moved into my cheesy wedge-shaped warehouse flat. Newcomers will find a plentiful archive of ‘this’, ‘that’ and ‘the other’ within the boundless confines of this mechanical journal’s archives (managed by my literary executors Herewith & Thither Ltd.) Finally, I invite you to follow the example of Ms Thelma Rave – a beauty brought to you here at no extra cost – and, in her own very fine words ...RAVE ON!!

2010-08-18T19:17:00.001+01:00

Saturday 3 July

Well, this must almost be it then. Or is it? I remember my 30th birthday feeling a bit like it. But then watching Growler and Magz tonight splitting the difference of their 60+ years, amongst friends old and new, you suspect that it unquestionably isn’t (or at least not until the morning after). I’m quite convinced that my 40th will feel like it (though Smokeless Uncle Bargreaves recently had his 50th and tells me even that didn’t feel like it – or not much of it anyway). But the going away to America – did I tell you? Well, that feels like it at the moment. A new chapter, a new book; a new mechanical journal to shed light upon that famously underexposed realm (I have a mad fancy to locate this one in the past – perhaps long before the civil war even started over there). But by far and away the most important reason why this feels like it is it is because I began to relate my tales to you as single, lonely (occasionally moany), bachelor-to-the-stars Batson Bargreaves and yesterday Licky Shazhorn accepted my proposal of marriage. I could not be happier.

2010-08-18T13:42:00.001+01:00

Saturday 19 June 1865

To a happy midsummer’s evening in and out of Cleggy & Martina Watts-Amis’ new manor outside Hebden Bridge is added a delicious hint of gothic. As friends we sit in and amongst history – not only as a diversely employed and scattered grouping, many of whom are either at momentous times of their lives, or so fed up momentous things happening that they’re indulging in just one more momentum and then waiting for the grandkids; but also quite literally – the garden terrace having been built upon, and of, a graveyard. If the adults are unnerved they do not show it. Or at least not until it’s their turn to ‘get them in’ and they are forced to descend the stone slabs that connect the liberally-peopled upper world with the unnervingly cold and empty cellar. For it’s within these cheerfully whitewashed walls that the communal ales are stored – right beside the sacrificial slab, of which more later. The kids, as well as being universally charming (of which scrub earlier), are fearless in spite of being utterly self-possessed – none more so that robust Rosie Watts-Amis, who leads me down the garden path, quite literally, on a quest for ghosts and fairies. The boys are old enough to bash each other around but not yet to note the significance of the finite dates and fading dedications on which we rest our modern bottoms. In that aspect, as of many, all is as it should be. Those of us without look onto irrepressible life unfolding. All creatures great and....still. For one mammal amongst us hasn’t stirred since his arrival – Clarky the dog. Neither mayflies nor the meaty smells upon which they swoon can distract the minor traffic offence-solving sheepdog from looking straight down dead at the lawn.

‘Clarky, what are you looking at?’ asks Melinda, his mistress.

He shifts his head from side-to-side.

‘What’s that?’ asks Jefferson, his master.

Tilts it coquettishly.

‘I say old boy,’ I butt in, ‘what you up to?’

And then, simultaneously, a semi-circle of us realize what he’s doing –trying to work out which of the bodies to dig up first. Never has a hound been fed so much barbecued food so quickly by so many. The children look on enviously, and I swear I see young Rosie going into her playhouse to fetch a bucket and spade.

A night has passed in good voice, with Franco Kestrel’s lute supporting the moonlit howling of half-a-dozen amateurs more naturally than any organ grinder, Ploy Stanchion or sarcastic ‘Oui?’ ever could. The next morning, due to leave with Erick & Thelma, Cleggy calls us back, seconds before we can jump into the bugger’s buggy. Seems that a solid onyx larder belonging to the previous owners needs moving out of the cellar so that the local council can collect it (along with some cheap jibes about being run by ‘kaftans’ instead of ‘suits’).Needless to say, BB is not the strapping fellow he was just 8 hours earlier, and is almost pinned to the stone ‘altar’ down there for time immemorial. As Licky later comments, it wouldn’t be the first time any of us had sacrificed ourselves for the sake of a young lady’s appetites. And when Rosie wants a new larder for her iced treats, who on earth, or under it, could possibly say no?

2010-08-02T14:40:00.000+01:00

Thursday 17 June

I ‘sign on’ and for the second time in my brief career as unemployed hear someone desperately trying to come off benefits, despite having no job to go to. Yes, Manchester once again finds itself testing a new system for the new century, or the one after that (you will recall how the recent trialling of ID cards belly-flopped so spectacularly in the sensible North West). When it comes to ‘Jobseeker’s Allowance’ the mechanics can be so complicated, so baffling and/or terrifying that some genuine claimants rather despairingly believe they’d rather do without. ‘Fair play, release ‘em; leave ‘em to it!’ the cash-strapped government may say. ‘If only it was that easy,’ the advisor advises each want-away, mournfully, ‘but to relinquish your non-salary requires you to navigate a series of obstacles more challenging than many work-based tribulations. And it’s not like I can guide you through them. You need to speak to the rather terrifying Mr X, in Lytham-St-Anne’s, long-distance.’

In contrast, I appear to be one of the luckier few. There is a social security category for ‘author’ (my advisor seems as stunned as I by this) and any jobs they come across in that sphere (proofreader, copywriter etc) will be tossed my way. Most grateful and all the more if they can be home- (or USA-) based. I doff my cap and leave to rapturous applause. As ever I am stunned by the power of language to affect everyday lives. Those who panic in the face of bureaucratic questions get caught out by or caught up in the system, while others need only chuck out a long word or two, to see their status instantly elevated. While I myself am not immune to somewhat verbose and self-indulgent prose, I dread the day when an educated murderer charms himself out of trouble in the dock, while an inarticulate innocent is sent down for the crime of miscommunication, having been labelled as irredeemably word-shy.

2010-07-29T17:50:00.000+01:00

Something’s Afoot

Or why would I be sending an intricately-worded letter to Licky’s father, Dr Shazhorn? And spending so much time with Sir Dempson Makepeace; our lunchtime walks becoming far more intense than the mid-noons we used to spend perusing last year’s designer stockings, ahead of Dempson’s inevitable failure to avoid eating a grilled cow sandwich. I can almost see the old Batson looking at the new Batson looking in the windows of jewellers’ shops, and hear him whispering across to his regenerated self: ‘Go on, chuck a brick through that. Then run like the wind laddie!’ until a kind of intermediate Batson (who for some reason looks like a transvestite Peeler) says ‘Allo, allo, allo’ and tells the old Batson to ‘Clear ‘orf now. You’ve ‘ad your fun – nuffin’ more to see ‘ere, nuffin’ more to see...’

2010-07-28T20:46:00.002+01:00

My Salford Heritage

They are easily scorned every couple of years: the St George’s flags and red-and-white bunting dripping from the thin-walled homes of the poor, glimpsed whenever you’re short-cutting through their neighbourhoods, safely tucked up in your carriage; hinting at the cheap beer and expansive beer bellies that lie behind closed doors or – now that summer’s here – the other side of lopsided garden gates. It is only when you tread the streets of such an enclave that you realize what a footerball tournament at which England attend really means to those with no work and little hope. This glorious diversion can be watched at home, with family joshing and heckling all about, and will be witnessed throughout this housing estate with more passion than ever could throb within the VIPs, on comfy seats, inside the stadia themselves. Despite my love for their game and empathy for the people, I will always be an outsider here, and treated as such (politely, contrary to popular belief – an old chap delights in telling me how there were once fields as far as the eye...) I can point to ancestors who worked and died here in the mills; to generations of United fans; to my 11 years in Manchester (plus one in Salford itself) but no – I will be judged upon my unfortunate habit of talking the same way that I write. Fair enough. Or, as they say in Salford, ‘furry muff’ (an indigenous breed of jackrabbit, or bush hare, I believe).

2010-07-28T16:26:00.001+01:00

Tuesday 18 May

We nearly lost him. And now we’ve found him again it’s easy to thank your chosen deity, leave him in the care of his good woman and neglect to go and press the flesh; or hug the man, as often as you should. It’s left to Brandon Blaque himself to call on me directly. He favours a team of crow messengers, over the traditional pigeons, but nothing is lost in translation. Sanchez flutters down to my desk where I sit surrounded by countless little bits of myself in word form, before discretely revealing just two: Visitors Welcome! That means today; that means leaving petty thoughts of an unpublished nature far behind and hopping a tram to Salford to see someone who has genuine challenges at this time in his life. We thought we’d lost Brandon when he went into a coma. He has come through the other side, practically uninvited. A genius on matters electronic Brandon hides his short-term memory problems by zapping holes in any arguments that dare stray too close, with a characteristic cool we’ve been familiar with for years. But that doesn’t mean all is as it was. In this perfectly clean, perfectly friendly, perfectly dull convalescence home Brandon is regularly checked and injected with insulin. He stares straight ahead, takes it, then goes for another cigarette. The smokes are what remain of Brandon’s freedom right now. Cause of much friction they are more than the filthy, soot-flavoured sum of their parts: IF YOU WANT TO GO FOR A CIGARETTE, JUST ASK A NURSE is pinned above Brandon’s sideboard; the block capitals suggesting that my friend hasn’t been institutionalized quite yet. I escape into a summer’s day. No consolation that Brandon would rather have the night. He walked almost to his flat under cover of darkness last week before they sent a carriage to pick him up, bring him back: IF YOU WANT ME TO START BEHAVING, DON’T ASK.

2010-07-28T14:51:00.004+01:00

Saturday 15 May

DH’s birthday celebrations at Beach Bar and a chance to catch up with brother Sydney, Lady Bron, Larry and friends. Later we’re entertained by a ‘youth of today’ who no-one will admit to having hired. While initially amusing for his feral wit and interactive ‘guess what I’m on?’ game, the lad turns out to be somewhere to the right of Wagner – and not even half as tuneful. Deidre, regularly found to the left of Rousseau, today unites both wings of our sofa; the price for initiating the breakfast beers that see Licky and I stagger home early.

2010-07-27T01:23:00.000+01:00

Friday 14 May

Momentous events – at least for Licky and myself; she has her job in Washington DC. Provided the weather is set fair over there (can you imagine your humble narrator operating while drenched in Americanisms, or getting burnt to a crisp by potato chips?) there should be nothing in our move to stop me furthering the dream of becoming a full-time writer. My better half (there, I’ve said it) will have a more public and prestigious role at the Embassy (no less) so I better get used to the idea of being the lemon outside the limelight. The small apartment you’ve come to know so well (please return the keys before our departure) tonight plays host to one of its famous parties. Dylan is all smiles and plans to visit; Godiva Grappenhall, our running mate, is in a fine state; so it’s left Deidre Darknight and I to o’er balance the Puppet Show machine, in a final act of anarchy (the Americans don’t approve I hear). Fortunately we wake to find no bridges burning – just a few bumps and bruises evident around the flat. We’ll clean them up before a sitter is identified; July the likely month of our escape: but to what? It’s clear to us we have the presence of mind but what if the US President minds us? We’ll be living mere miles away and I bet he has a team of (better) gag writers...

2010-07-12T22:40:00.001+01:00

Thursday 6 May

Having seen neither (greying) hide nor (leathery) hair of Swarthy Erick in Chorlton on the day of Clark and Rita’s wedding last weekend (highlight: the funnier of two Catholic fathers scanning the room for three signs of Rita’s future intentions before settling on ‘aisle’, ‘alter’, and – spreading hands forth as if to capture the congregation – ‘you’) I determine to track him down on a dark and brooding election night. Working on a hunch I hire a wagon and head up to Lancaster, managing to stay on it during this visit to the only pretty grey town left in England (see previous here)

My first point of enquiry is, naturally enough, the Pope Street residence of Jefferson and Melinda Cake, the former being a close school-friend of both myself and Erick. How strange to think that last time I was here, for a party, I inadvertently exposed an illicit love affair – opening myself up to poker-hot agonies, where today I chuck Licky’s name around like it were yesterday’s tripe, rather than tomorrow’s gold dust. In spite of the small talk Melinda will not divulge Jefferson’s whereabouts and likewise claims to have set neither fair eye on the third scruffy Arbuckle of our shambolic trio. Draining my cup of tea I request the use of their back garden for a pre-departure cheroot, and in doing so inadvertently stumble upon a gold mine. Or more accurately, I find Jefferson’s disproportionately loyal black & white pooch, Anubus, growling at me – to his wagging backside a mountain of slag more suited to a non-PC Detective-Inspector’s lexicon. In fact it is the entirety of the stolen coal, and rather than some stereotypical overweight, alcoholic cop who has his problems but who finds his heart in the right place every second Tuesday when it isn’t being operated upon because of all the chips, it is Porthole who is suddenly at my side, out of nowhere. Hurrah!

‘Be gone now, foul hound!’ he explodes, sending a Thai fighter spinning into a ginnel.

But Anubus won’t take things lying down and is soon diving into our favourite water-based detective; doggy logic suggesting that if the human will throw himself around suggestively, the canine has no choice but to fetch both balls. While battle rages I turn to Melinda.

‘Why?’ I ask.

‘Because the poor need this loot more than your cotton and coal traders ever will!’

Melinda takes time out from cooking with flour, eggs and milk to hit Porthole over head with the Little Book of Conscientious Living. Already tickled into unconsciousness it is with horror that I watch my closest ally nibbled to death with a good quiche entree. He loved a pipe after a meal but now there isn’t one bit of him left to smoke it. We watch his smoking implement fall to the ground and rotate to a standstill in the gutter.

‘This...’ I tell Melinda gravely, ‘...has got serious.’

‘There will be occasional victims in the struggle to free the people.’

‘Try explaining that to a Lancaster Peeler.’

‘Okay,’ her eyes flash, ‘what do you want?’

Forever putting my friends first, it takes me milliseconds to request enough of the coal to support the Voluntary Early Death of Dylan, DH, Deidre Darknight, Bateman and myself. The rest of the profits can go to the hellish other ‘people’ as far as I’m concerned. Ourselves provided for, there is only one question left for Melinda,

‘Just how long have Jefferson Cake and Swarthy Erick been members of the People’s Liberation Front of Hoylake and West Kirby, and what exactly are they planning for tonight?’

‘It was the A-level politics,’ Melinda admits, shame-faced, ‘back at Coldly Strange. Jefferson never recovered from getting a B, while you...somehow...’

(Edited for purposes of modesty, but yes – I did get a slightly higher grade)

Election night, London – Late...too late. Hundreds of British Broadsiding Corporation journalists have taken every decent horse in the country meaning the only method of transport left open to me is time travel, a sadly imperfect ‘modus operandi’ that sees me overshooting somewhat to a future time of hatless heathens. I’m assured the technology will have been perfected soon after my lifetime but that does me no good today as Erick and Jefferson have long since put their plan into operation. There they are, up in the inky-stinky sky, easing their air balloon between clouds of soot and black-lunged seagulls; sprinkling the populace with their specially-developed dust of indecision (the Wirral and Switzerland being the only two known places where apathy and existential panic can be mined in equal quantities). By daybreak it has become all-too-clear that their plan was never to blow up Parliament – but to hang it.

‘Agitators! Anarchists! Antipodeans!’ I yell upwards, shaking both fists violently, until fairly quickly I find my knuckles relaxing as I begin to think that they probably weren’t so bad after all...and in fact if they were running for government I might even...

A storm beginning, Melinda goes out back to scold Anubus and as she does so is one of the first to observe the brand new Frankenstein coalition emerging from behind the castle walls. Surely it won’t take long to tip him over; his last act to take the economy down with him? And then the real fun can begin.

2010-06-30T11:59:00.006+01:00

Friday 30 April 1865

And so it arrives at last...my final day at the Cotton Exchange. I’m struck by such a narrow range of emotions as I hop, skip and jump into work this morning (calmness mixed with serenity mixed with relief mixed with gratitude) that it’s a not insignificant battle to decide whether I’m walking on air or pushing gently through candyfloss cobwebs; though once I’ve trodden deep into some worm-filled poodle poop (where do my neighbours think they live? Monaco?) I’m quickly reminded that some loose ends are yet to be tied up. While Porthole Drift (the water-based detective) has confirmed the arrest of the agitator Swarthy Erick, we have no guarantee that the stolen coal now recovered has been fully counted and accounted for. The result could be that our long-promised Voluntary Early Death Allowance is held up for a day or two. Not interminable, but a man has debts...and not only to society.

Recall the Male Eagle soars overhead. Why? Last time I used him I was a single man; his job to hunt down pigeons I’d sent out late at night with amorous messages for unsuitable women – I hadn’t employed him in months. Then Sanchez flutters down beside me and starts pecking at my squirming soles.

‘Get off! What you doing?’ I counter, my day quickly unravelling.

‘Eagle try to kill Sanchez,’ he mimes.

‘But why?’

‘Message from that Afthole.’

‘Porthole’

‘Whatever.’

‘Saying..?’

And then suddenly there arrives the pungent smell of the sea, mixed with the iron tang of blood – a combination that takes me back to Demspon’s stag do in Whitby when we mistook the cliff-top graveyard for the club, The Cliff-top Graveyard. Will I ever get to work today? It’s Porthole, his breath as unholy as what comes out of it is full of them.

‘Batson, I didn’t want to ruin your last day. But alas, your premier witness, Tom Fatbottom, has been struck down.’

‘The cause?’

‘An inappropriate response to excessive politeness.’

‘The effect?’

‘We have nothing on Erick or Patterson – they will simply revert to their story of having found the coke on top of a toilet cistern.’

‘And the payout?’

‘You may have to wait a while...’

‘Your expenses?’

‘Expensive.’

A darn and blast it has to be for now – though the latter works well in summing up the after-work festivities. One forgets the generosity of friends (‘workmates’ – what a horrible word) when one of their number departs and not only am I lavished with gifts while still on the warehouse floor (World Cuppa ’65 collectamungo, plus dozens of cards portraying foreign types; art books; a bottle of beautiful Talisker) but innumerable whiskies at the Briton’s Protectorate thereafter are thrust into my hoary paw. I don’t have to spend a penny I don’t already have – save for the developing costs of the daguerreotype images that Dylan and I partake in as we hand in our passes, say goodbye to security and bid our lives in cotton and coal farewell forever.

2010-06-14T15:47:00.000+01:00

Wednesday 7 April

There are several reasons for the explosive, port-fuelled rant that will leave a craterous impression in Licky’s impressionable mind-field come 11pm tonight. Latterly it is the launch of almost identical general election campaigns by the Westminster equivalents of the Jocks and Geordies. Both say we need to save money; neither wish to significantly cut the defence (or as it’s become known more recently: attack!) budget, and I conclude – with a vitriolic demeanour that more than makes up for my blatant lack of strategy – that as my Uncle is a famous musician he is bound to be able to obtain firearms, from which point the revolution can begin! It’s been a long night. Between them Licky and Miss Jordan manage to put me to bed, but not before I’ve reminisced with Sanchez (my only pigeon ever to have seen ‘action’) about his experiences in the Mexican-American war (guerra del ‘47)

Why so wound up? Surely a commentator with BB’s legendary maturity has seen enough elections to know that they are always a thoroughly frustrating business, even when we’re not being sold a pack of lies by a white-smiling bloke with the kind of gravitas – and sinister power-lusts – normally associated with unemployed underpant models. Okay, so I admit there was more than one wooden spoon stirring my melancholy mood: despite my pro-European leanings, I simply hate to see Manchester Unitered being beaten by a smaller club (and let’s face it there are no bigger) in the League of Champions, as they are this evening.

So that’s it then? Hardly going to stand up in court as I lay down in bed. Hold on, just one more thing in me defence m’lud – the unsettling events that unfolded by day. Yes, something had been nagging at me more than the mothers of countless UK politicians (i.e. of invitation) or the entire Unitered team (i.e. of the disappeared). Why would someone with Swarthy Erick’s proven background in school cross-country (one way of briefly escaping Coldly Strange Grammar School) be attempting to conceal a race result surely no more than half as bad as mine? I thought back to the glimpse of paper attained within that Mersey Paradise. More like architect’s plans now I came to think about it. Just what had he and Patterson been doing there? Lunchtime I’m quizzing Tom Fatbottom, the eyewitness from the Jawed Rabbit who’d seen the two queer coves/rum sorts (please delete one, if not both, of these ‘amusing’ anachronisms) those weeks ago.

‘So these two chaps fighting by the side of the canal. Definitely out-of-towners were they Tom?’

‘Aye, but...’

‘But what?’

‘Ye’er an oot-of-tooner t’ me n’all BB’

I’m sorely tempted to whack the fella. There’s nothing worse than having to explain my proud Manchester heritage to strangers who believe me an imposter, just because I don’t say ‘arrighht?’ every five minutes.

‘So you’re saying the men ascertain the same level of recognition factor in your eyes as I, the Mankiest Manc in the village?’

‘Y’whaa?’ (yes, that too)

‘Thank you. You’ve answered my question, Tom, and now I must go brood and chin-stroke for a while.’

‘Winker.’ (I think he said)

And so whatever the result had been tonight, however startlingly reformed the political classes, I would still have been left with a problem, for how do you solve a problem like Swarthy Erick: how do you make him ‘sing’?

2010-06-10T12:33:00.000+01:00

Wednesday 31 March

A certain amount of trust in Porthole drifts away today, because despite his extensive detective work (revealing the competition to be somewhat loose-flaked, if not downright organic) Licky has failed to get the new job in Bangladesh which would have changed both our lives and – more importantly – the very fundamentals of this mechanical journal forever. Can you imagine me writing from a boat on the Bay of Bengal, while wrestling with saltwater crocodiles or the socio-economic issues facing an overpopulated and poverty-stricken nation? Well don’t bother, because our barnacle-brained sub-mariner has underestimated the competition, informing us that there was no need to poison the potatoes of Licky’s biggest rival. It could be that other international opportunities arise, but in order to be able to scoot away with the tastiest, cleverest morsel since certain kinds of cheese were discovered to be sensitive to atmospheric changes, I must ensure that the Voluntary Early Death funds are recovered speedily. I am not one to rely on a woman, or rather I am one to rely on a woman for everything but monetary recompense.*

*Please note that due to technical problems, former girlfriends are unable to leave comments following this particular post.

2010-06-09T14:10:00.001+01:00

Sunday 28 March

The Liverpool half-marathon ends mercifully: a decent stretch of exposed Mersey sloppy-kissing us towards the finishing line after several sunlit laps of Sefton Park during which my breath and boyhood anecdotes are both in danger of running out, to Licky’s simultaneous worry and relief. I record a time of just over two hours, Licky is four minutes behind me; PJ runs here for army charities, having swapped his performance-enhancing backpack and slinky running leggings for a Busby and some bell-bottoms, while ‘over the border’ Astrid is powering around the Wilmslow course. Yet it’s as refreshing as the sometime sea breeze to report that all of our training paid off and we finish with similar times, so equating the incredulous expectations of our sofa-softened friends to monies raised.

With customary anti-authoritarianism a local scouseman has extended our stay here by loaning us his residential parking pass to paste upon Licky’s horse and carriage. Warming down in a nearby hostelry I’m surprised to spy Swarthy Erick at the bar, accompanied by someone who looks just like yours truly, but who you suspect might have finished the race in 1:59, such is his slim advantage in years and the additional confidence naturally bestowed upon those with slightly more hair than me. Yes, that’s right – it’s Erick’s new companion, Patterson – someone who flatters to deceive in all the right ways; for who could resist a man of such overlapping charms?

‘Ahoy Erick,’ I offer up, along with a frothing beer, ‘do the race n’ all did thee?’

Surprisingly, his reaction isn’t that expected of one so near and dear. Before acknowledging us he seems keen to hide some paperwork beneath their table, and I can only imagine that this is evidence of a shockingly bad finish time.

‘Ah Batson – you know Patterson,’ he manages.

‘And what the Dickens happened to you two?’ I enquire, seeing now that both have cuts and bruises around their faces.

‘Pantomime horse trick, came a cropper,’ explains Patterson hurriedly.

‘I see,’ I say, though I don’t particularly.

‘Any clues on who stole the Sludger yet?’ Erick enquires, as we advance the session.

‘An out-of-towner, so reckons Porthole,’ I confide, ‘and I have my eye upon a certain Rendell Pifflewax.’

‘Good, good,’ and Swarthy seems to brighten, ‘let’s get another round in then.’

2010-05-28T15:15:00.002+01:00

Saturday 27 March

Sir Dempson’s first speaking role with his new company (Chorlton Love-Es) is typically farcical, yet he is ably mentored throughout by our good friend Franco Kestrel, who strolls through In Through the Out Door! with a casual insouciance well-suited to his role as a prospective MP. Such a house-bound scenario, while occasionally repetitive, beats having to learn lots of fancy lines straight after the mute commitment that was ‘1965’; instead inviting Makepeace to move, and occasionally rock, his body – diving behind sofas whenever indiscrete pairings venture forth into the pristine drawing rooms of the creator’s tawdry mind, or flashing the audience with his miniature private eye’s camera. Early nerves settled we must now wait and see how far my good friend can travel on the road to Puppet Show stardom. Myself, and my several dozen uncommissioned stage-plays, wish him very well indeed.

2010-05-27T16:31:00.002+01:00

Saturday 20 March

What a performance! What a palaver! No sooner have I had my first acting experience than I’ve had my first drunken acting experience. The fault – like an erroneously-delivered Tory rag, for which the paperboy must be flogged – is at the door of Sir Dempson Makepeace QC (‘queer chap’). It is Dempson who with characteristic camaraderie assembles the ensemble between today’s matinee (shuffle across stage in chains: 21 seconds on and off) and the evening (what can go wrong?) showing of this jaw-dropping (pant-dropping? I shudder to think) production. The venue for more than several powerful IPAs is the Watership, down near the Town Hall, and while it is good to have Licky join us (in fellow ‘lifer’ and eternal student Reith she meets a friend of mine younger than herself for the first time since Erick had years taken off him by that kindly magistrate/hairdresser) it is Porthole to whom many of us are eager to direct our loose tongues.

Why?

Without wishing to in any way prejudice our man’s ongoing investigation into the theft of the coal barge, and with it our hopes for Voluntary Early Death payouts, it must be said that there is a certain member of the cast who perfectly fits the description of his prime suspect: ‘the outsider’...

...Rendell Pifflewax is less cool than even the least cool amongst us (and in this sub-group I must include myself and the two other readily-identifiable seniors; funky as we very well might be). While most of us retain an air of ironic detachment befitting the least paid, least appreciated members of the cast & crew (no matter how secretly thrilled we are at tripping the light fandango), Pifflewax is always at the theatre hours ahead of our call, dressed and chained and ready for those intense 21 seconds (to go). He appears to be a simple soul – innocently doting on the lead actress and calling Dempson’s Liverpool-based footerball team ‘scum’, with a heartening lack of ambivalence. But the fact remains: he is not one of us. The lad looks like he can barely afford to smoke, let alone purloin white bread. And with the links now proven between poor diet, lack of nicotine, and acts of irascibility, can we really doubt that it is Pifflewax who is the backstage miscreant responsible for repeatedly flooding the toilets and smearing the walls with our mud-effect make-up?

Fortunately, tonight the ‘us’ that is ‘we’ get away with it. Despite stage manager Mugs raising an eyebrow, and a troupe of us raising an illicit glass of wine back stage, no ‘breathalyser’ ever invented could stop a determined actor going about his craft. We may have won extra plaudits for looking a little worse than usual for our years of captivity. We may have tripped over each others’ chains, careered into the audience and inadvertently strangled the Mail’s theatre critic. None of us can remember. Yet one thing is certain – Pifflewax was missing from our number tonight, yet still bears the signs of some injury upon his crown – perhaps evidence of an earlier, and more serious, misdemeanour? I must tell Porthole at once; if you catch my drift, please tell him yourself.

2010-05-11T16:58:00.003+01:00

Thursday 19 March

How times change. It must seem like only yesterday that Licky Shazhorn walked into your life through these very pages; how she charmed and seduced you with that irrepressible attitude until – eventually – you asked whether she’d move into your one(big)-roomed flat with the chez longue and the stone floor and the pigeons manning the rafters playing ‘Why Are We Waiting?’ on the tin buckets lined up below. Well I’ve got news for you, pal, she’s changed her mind – she’s moving in with me. At least for a few months. And please, no comments about me going soft in my old age (not that this mechanical journal has had a comment since records began). To all intents and purposes this ongoing yet consistently overdue account will remain that of a bachelor going about his and other peoples’ business in Manchester. It’s just that there won’t be any dilly-dallying or shenanigans from now on, if you know what I mean (not there’s been any dilly-dallying or shenanigans in this mechanical journal since records began) (nor a fantastic record of people knowing what I mean).

I digress. But not for much longer, because this week sees the delivery of a brand new Puppet Show Box for the apartment, in advance of Licky’s relocation – a gift from anxious parents understandably fearful for her sanity chez Batson. It’s some years since I watched any significant amount of domestic puppeteering, though I do catch up on the occasional cookery show via Pie-Player. As when attending a lengthy school reunion, what most disturbs me most about goggleboxing for seven hours straight is not so much the dire nature of the scheduling, nor the fact that no-one seems to wear a damned tie anymore, but the fact that the show-offs and the jokers you remember from your student days have aged so preternaturally in the decades since you last laid eyes. How long has Pete O’ Phyle, once an unlined face in favourites such as Little Horse/Old Man and the Children’s Jelly-vision Workshop: Late, had those unsightly bars in front of his eyes? Or John Carrion – presenting the perennially hardy Get Off My Land (And Stay Off) – that badger’s hair and brown bear’s belly? It’s as much as I can do to avert my eyes from once-sprightly 1840s newsreader Bryan Parody’s agonising, there-before-the-grace-go-I, double bags and toothless smile, and listen to another report of grim mischief from the People’s Front of Hoylake & West Kirby – the hijacking of the Mersey ferry by suicide bomber. While it first appears there is no porpoise to the attack, one is later retrieved from the underside of the smoking hulk; the only other casualty being the further demise of my childhood innocence. Where is the world that once stood still for me?

2010-04-29T14:22:00.001+01:00

Wednesday 17 March

‘Do you know what I think?’ asked Porthole, as we sat surrounded by posters of great performances in the Exchange green room.

‘That you need a new conditioner?’ I asked, with tact, noticing tiny freshwater crabs side-winding between the famous detective’s well-known ear and greatly-respected forescalp.

Porthole flung a thick dreadlock – size of a baby’s arm – huffily over his shoulder, and in the process sent a miniature crustacean plopping neatly into each of our coffees. On first meeting him, I recall how Mr Drift-to-you would often use one of his famous natural dreads when mooring up for the night, clamping his feet into ‘barge stirrups’ to retain the status quo. But after particularly unsettled nights, when the black water was full of discord, and the second guitarist full of that chord, found he could often awake in Grappenhall with his fine, dry but extraordinarily strong hair stretched all the way back to his aquatic parking space in Latchford. At this point, as men of a certain age should, he decided to get shorn, or at least keep it in his trousers. But back it grew, and out it spilt – like his far from rock-solid family trees of information.

‘I think,’ he continued, ignoring me and the crabs, ‘that this was a job perpetrated by an outsider.’

‘Ye gad man,’ I smiled tightly, screening the room for fellow thesps or ungodly hacks, ‘I’ve warned you about the racism. It’s simply not done here. And if I’m to make myself a future in this...’

‘Bargreaves!’ and Porthole’s barnacle-enforced fist slammed down onto the naturally sourced wooden table, ‘you’re a bloody idiot. This world – it’s not for you. You’re a cotton trader and writer of blarney, and if we don’t track down this missing coal, you’re gonna be out on your ear without a farthing to your name.’

There was a polite knock on the green room door and we looked up to see a cigarette-thin figure danced nervously behind it.

‘Everything all right in here?’ he asked.

‘Fine,’ I smiled sweetly, crunching on the remnants of my drink.

‘Okay Bargreaves, love, if you’re sure – on in five, okay?’ the assistant narrowed his eyes at my companion, then promptly disappeared.

Porthole harrumphed.

‘You want to know what I’ve found out, or not?’

‘Please – fire away,’ but my gaze had returned to the brave stocking and turtle-neck combos of those great players upon the walls.

‘You recall that the only clue we have so far is the silhouettes of two men fighting upon the towpath, as the barge driver lay unconscious nearby?’

‘Mmm-hmm.’

‘Well, if young Tom Fatbottom didn’t see two scatched and suffr’d men enter the Jawed Rabbit, night of the wobbery, and ask for brandy to cure their internal woundings.’

‘Fascinating,’ – Othello (1849)

‘Funny thing is – and you know Tom – ‘kens every face in the city thanks to what happened to him, and him sitting outside the pub on that trolley all day long.’

‘Yes,’ – The Taming of the Shrew (1826)

‘Said he never seen neither face before – newcomers.’

And I thought the thought; then bashfully swatted it away – for surely I had no chance of winning best newcomer (1865)? Yet if by some misguided fortune the prize was destined for my outstretched hand...then who would need coal, and Voluntary Early Death Allowance? Who could ask for more than the stage, the flowers; the applause resounding around a life equipped for all seasons – and with convincing reactions to stereotypical seasonal weather conditions to match?

‘THIS IS YOUR FINAL CALL – GENTLEMEN OF THE ENSEMBLE, PLEASE,’ came tinnily over the tannoy.

2010-04-26T07:49:00.000+01:00

Indulging our Fantasies...legally!!

Sir Dempson and I in Milton Beefheart's '1965', at the Royal Exchange, Manchester

2010-04-26T07:40:00.001+01:00

Monday 1 March

Of which more on. A mixed bag are we. Most of us appear to be budding young actors fresh out of these Drama Schools we hear of. But standards at such institutions have recently risen to such a degree that we can’t always judge by appearances when it comes looking their alumni in the eye. A perfectly charming creature may approach us, claiming to have studied at Bolton College of Mime (incorporating Whitehaven Wind Farm), only for a closer inspection (fingernails, dah-link) to reveal him to be an attendee of Oldham’s working Mineshaft Theatre of the Blacking-up. Likewise, a sturdy lad who claims he’s here only for ‘a pie and a laugh and another pie if chance be upon us’ might in fact be a recruit of the new school of Espionage and Spycraft that hasn't just opened up near the city council’s Ministry of Love.

One or two older chaps (if older can be applied to a late-blooming 29 or 30) have clearly sneaked in so that they may network with the more established members of the cast; their acting careers already having something of the stale bun about them. It is these fellows who may be seen lounging around in the corners of our dressing room (yes, our VERILY OWN dressing room – with twenty names upon the door in black and white!), trying not to stimulate their invisible wrinkles while reading of ‘that bastard’s’ success in second-hand editions of Stage. You’d be too polite to say it, but as an amateur hack I perchance complain more than you’d like about this writing business; yet to see these chaps is to realize that time remains – remarkably enough – upon my side. It is these boys who must thrust themselves, pelvis-first, into the limelight when given half-the-chance; they who must pay their agents a quarter of their wages (a bit rich even given the convenience of maintaining one outside of London town). The knockbacks suffered in their short careers weigh heavy on their stooped shoulders; highlight the irony that an actor’s body must be kept upright and nimble for eternity and they will give you a look so withering that it almost melts your make-up.

So it may not surprise you to learn that Dempson and I stick with the marginally older crowd, backstage at the Exchange, where boiler-suits hang and chains await us beside fake muck for our feet – those who, perhaps surprisingly, have least to lose and so get most excited about this great big dressing up adventure. By day we may be full-time dads or social workers or council bigwigs – by night we play out together. It is all in the game, as they say. It is a four-star triumph, say the Manchester Guardian, after ‘our’ press night performance this evening. We supernumeraries hang out after our shuffling feet have done their business, but the glamorous 'after-show' appears limited to some crisped potatoes and a selection of celebrities too local for my taste, while the free booze appears to have been taken by those schemers at the Ministry of (drunk men speaketh the) Truth.

2010-04-19T08:33:00.003+01:00

Saturday 20 February

With not a sniff of the stolen coal to be had it could be that I’m relying on my nascent acting career to keep me in short shorts and ‘cowboy’ denim this coming season (see the new ‘Home on the...’ range at Post-Colonial Apparel). Certainly our formidable foreman believes that the untouchable mill owners and retired ministers of labour who struggle to steer our NGO (Nnngg Grrrr Organisation) will have no hesitation in recovering the price of their lost investment from our Voluntary Early Death settlements. And while five pounds per performance isn’t quite slave labour, as it might prove to be in 1965, or 2065, it is close enough to the mark for our Stage Manager to give careful instruction on how to stash it – deep within the ruffles of our costume to avoid anyone in the audience getting the slightest idea of our salary. Ironically enough, it is as prisoners – in chains – that we will perform our honest work over the weeks to come. Today, at the final run-through, Makepeace and I get a decent Exchange – a couple of sashays (tomato-based..? or will we cut the mustard..?) up and down the stage and the Director, Milton Beefheart, appears well-satisfied, giving the shuffling rabble a thumbs up and crisp round of applause as the SM raises an eyebrow. First round to the condemned Eurasian hordes!

2010-03-16T19:28:00.002Z

Sunday 14 February

Desiring to clear my mind of a writhing barrel-full of red herrings I take to London with Licky to celebrate another of her twenty-esque birthdays (them were days) on a sticky Hackney dancefloor. Sadly the playing surface isn’t quite adhesive enough for Mimi Pixel who takes a tumble while promoting her new release: Single Mother on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdance (Penguin, £7 0s 99d). Mimi is fine and a credit to the small Manchester contingent we have introduced to a crowd only anything less than friendly when disappearing into the smallest room in their 30s (don’t we all – the old wine sack fills up quick these days). A bearded, beatific beardy – on the other hand – causes us some concern on the way back to our hotel. Lying several degrees below a Californian horizon he’s read about in an irresponsible novella, and with his white-toothed smile and glassy pork pies staring on up to heaven, this chap could be the opening shot of an artsy, indie Puppet Show of the American type or, strap an electric cello to the lad, and – behold – a wholesome alternative to Seattle-based ‘cringe.’ Fortunately, trained tooth fairy Astrid is with us and able to gently persuade the floppy young man into the recovery position or ‘whatever’ as would have called it, had he been able to speak.

Today it’s cross-country to visit the smallest member of Licky’s tribe – the tiniest of heartbeats soon quietly insistent that the throbbing bpms of last night exit our fragile headspace. And so to the tribe, and my ingratiation into it; if it’s not Ozzie Sheryl rampaging through Chorlton over New Year, it’s Licky’s birthmate Xah, and her partner Barthe, helping us live it up in London. All welcome to and welcoming of my world, but now – unaccountably – it’s time to smell the nappies and work beyond my core hours at the Warehouse...

...for not content with his fortune and good fortune the inestimable Dempson Makepeace has decided to try his hand at acting, and earlier this month we both cat-walked through an audition for parts in ‘1965’ at the Cotton Exchange Theatre. This week we learn that our names will indeed be up in lights – or at least somewhere towards the back of the program, near the small ads for used stockings, ageing muses etc. So now cometh the time to prepare for the stage, with not a little nervousness, nor – you know me too well – disproportionate pretention. The last time I trod the boards was with Swarthy Erick in an off-Broadstairs production of the ‘Tempest’, and we all know what happened then... (or do if we retain a copy of Coldly Strange Grammar School Ragmag No. VIIIII, and are prepared to wade through the small ads for cocaine-based revision pomades, after-hours tuition from desperate chemistry teachers etc).

Tonight I have mere minutes to check in with Porthole on his badly-moored boat and it’s just as well he has no words for me, which – on closer examination – neither does the somewhat bedazzling script for ‘1965.’

2010-03-04T16:39:00.002Z

February 1865

Imagine my surprise to find the disgraced Chelsea captain and City’s unleashed pitbull amongst the 'criminal types' identified by the irascible Porthole Drift.

(with thanks to Cesare Lombroso)

2010-03-04T11:51:00.002Z

Tuesday 9 February

To meet Porthole Drift at the semi-submerged, Half-Drowned Water Rat, a quaint little place on a natural island of compacted skulls, just outside Manchester’s inner city limits. This is one location I avoid when on my canal-side run, lest I be tempted across this very gangplank for something capable of putting hairs upon the hoariest sailor’s chest. Incidentally, you may wish to know that Licky and myself are training for Liverpool’s half-marathon next month; Porthole certainly doesn’t. While I explain how runners are traditionally chased down streets thonged with scousers by a healthy mix of locals insisting they buy you a drink and locals insisting you buy them a drink, Porthole simply looks at me down his pipe, catatonically unable to register interest, even through his non-lazy eye.

‘The marrar in ‘and,’ he wheezes, producing a lethal-looking fountain pen while Muff, his dog, slobber-mouths an ancient cracked black ledger across the wonky table towards us.

‘Of course,’ I sup my nettle rum, grateful for my newt-skinned tongue protector, ‘your investigations, how – erm – go they?’

‘Ruled a few out,’ he sighs, screwing up his supremely weathered, turtle-shaped face into something approaching that of everyone’s favourite Jersey-based detective, ‘But tha’ dunt mean I canna rule ‘em back in igin, innit?’ he cackles, youth flooding back to his face, stopping just short of the tidemark round his craggy, saggy neck.

Drift goes on to explain, accompanied by both expansive gestures and intricately explained and annotated expenses claims, how he first suspected that the coal barge had been stolen by one of the criminal underworld, perhaps as a valentine’s gift for Betsy Belpas of Blackburn – a notorious coke fiend. His one clue so far – a sketch from a canal-side speed monitor revealing two men struggling on the towpath next to an unattended vessel – suggested that competing overlords may have fought over their prize, perhaps allowing the tug to schlep on unattended. However a trip to Blackburn (an incredible £1 4s 6d) allowed Porthole to slam shut this particular avenue. Following a recent binge it was confirmed that Betsy’s nose had dropped clean off and its wooden replacement – though beautifully polished – was doing nothing for the local boys. Back to square one (by bus – an infinitely more satisfying £0 0s 3d).

‘Could there be a political aspect to all this?’ I ask the famed investigator, trying to ignore an alligator-faced man sipping tequila opposite.

‘Poritikal eh?’

‘Yes – though I pronounce it: political. But that’s fine. Cool, in fact.’

Though I’m anything but; Drift considers this.

‘Strangest thing,’ he says, finally, ‘found a little book next to the body of the navigator – Marx it were writ by. Yet it weren’t funny at all. Maybe cos they can’t writ down what the dumb bloke does in them Puppet Shows, like.’

‘Not Karl Marx, by any chance?’ I venture.

‘Knows him do you?’

‘No,’ I answer, humbly, ‘though poritikal he certainly – erm – be. Bumped into his friend Engels some years back. Told me the working class was deprived of all pleasure except sexual indulgence and intoxicating liquors.’

‘Talking of which,’ and Porthole shuffles to his feet, ‘I best be off to see Mrs Porthole, if you catch my drift?’

‘Of course,’ and I hand him a small sack of money lent to me by warehouse management in lieu of my Voluntary Early Death, ‘but do keep me updated.’

‘I will that,’ he promises, with as much significance as he can be bothered to summon, ‘I will that.’

I watch him go. Finish my drink as slowly the luminosity of his genius fades from a place unworthy of his awe-inspiring company.

TO BE CONTINUED...

2010-02-04T21:52:00.002Z

Thursday 4 February – The Thievery Corporation, a Case for Porthole Drift

With all the birthdays flying around at this time of year – Sir Dempson’s celebrated last weekend by way of deer stalking at Denham Massey; Miss Shazhorn’s within touching distance (not that I will until our impending anniversary) – it’s easy for a man (that’s what I am) to take his eye off the ball, especially if that ball is sat in premature retirement above the boiler, as deflated as Miss Jordan’s chest before that suspicious trip to Switzerland. Or perhaps it was the daydreaming of Voluntary Early Death that led me to mislay an entire barge full of coal last Tuesday. Now I’ve lost the odd bit of coke in the past, you won’t be surprised to learn, and I once lent a chunk of our finest ‘black gold’ to a tinker who carved it into a slightly racist likeness of me before selling it back to me for thrupence, but honestly – a whole barge of the stuff?

Having spent this long with me, in this deliciously seedy corner of The One Great Northern City (voted top ironic tourist destination north of the Cotswolds by readers of Country Life for the last sixteen seasons), you will no doubt have some suspects in mind for the theft of all this dusty goodness. And theft it must be, for the good ship Sludger is nowhere to be seen the length and breadth of this canal – or at least nowhere between here and Old Trafford, at which point my morning run gets painful and I have to return home to wash my feet in iced rum. But while Shifty McQuiggin has indeed been redeployed at the Warehouse he is serving his multiple debts to society by wearing diamante shackles and a distressed rat-skin coat. With a balloon glued to his forehead, a pencil and some extremely thin paper, he can now be traced almost anywhere with ease. Swarthy Erick? How dare you! Thanks to the papers, we’re all aware of my childhood friend’s arrest in Morocco for terror wrist offences, but it later transpired that the distended muscle was caused by one-armed press-ups – something to take the mind of the monotony of his summer job in the steam rooms.

No, no and no – and don’t even remind me of the Russians. Last time I implicated them (and their talking cat) in crimes against the Batson body, fifteen of my carriers disappeared over St Petersburg (long-distance chat-line), my worldwidewotsit connection was hacked into, and I found a mysterious pipeline in the wall of the flat through which my ‘special shag’ was fast disappearing. Yes, the trail was cold, and the clues were few and far-between – but I knew it was a challenge that Porthole Drift would rise to, while scratching his great hairy sea legs. I blew on the special whistle he’d given me as a boy and soon I saw his barge, Gypsy Lady, racing towards me at a rate of knots. An extremely slow rate of knots. But he got there. In the end. But it was five-fifteen by then. And I was really tired after a day at work twiddling my gums. So I said I’d speak to him later in the week.

TO BE CONTINUED....

2010-01-24T17:50:00.001Z

Friday 22nd January – A Winter Ghost Story

So are ghosts as we understand them truly spirits trapped in limbo, betwixt heaven and hell, or merely the frozen pictorial ‘footprints’ of lives gone by – ever to be replayed in one particular location, like that dodgy puppet show that got jammed in your mechanical puppet show player at your college halls of residence (since demolished)? I for one never really paid such a long and convoluted question any mind, until one evening (this evening) when I became inadvertently trapped with the, and to some extent, my past. The day had started and ended reasonably enough – I ‘logged off’ at five, sending the carriers home to roost and telling Tim Talooly to write up the day’s trading at his leisure (‘be off now Tim, enjoy the weekend, and steer clear of my arch-rival Sedmond Divuck’s fantasy novels – you know how they play with one’s mind!’) It was then just myself and Delia Doogood remaining in the open plan, she immersed in a cauldron of filth brewed up by our supposed colleagues in the immigration service (‘I be off now Delia, I’ll enjoy my weekend, be sure to log off soon, lest reality subsume a fantastical weekend’). Imagine my surprise to be at the kitchenette – regurgitating my packed lunch into something resembling dinner – when the warehouse was suddenly plunged into DARKNESS.

‘Tim?’ I enquired. No answer.

‘Delia?’ I pined. Not a sausage.

‘Stephen?’ I hazarded. Nothing. Alone.

Without carriers I had no hope of attracting Licky (at the gymnasium), nor Bateman (packing for America), nor Sir Dempson (breaking into his own house), nor Pekalowski (picture-framing maids on their commute home), nor that girl I really fancied at primary school (even though I now have a deep voice and an apartment with two toilets). There was nothing for it but to ‘man up’ (a request so often at Licky’s lips), ‘get on with it’ (likewise) and see what was amiss in the workplace I hope to escape in mere months.

As regular readers will know I have worked at this particular cotton warehouse for almost ten years – hence the generous payout I anticipate for Voluntary Early Death – and it has always been a most comfortable environment, give or take the odd Shifty McQuiggin or Simon Slimon. Tonight things are very different. The doors are all locked tight, the heating off, the only light is from my lighter (a mémoire morte to a long-doomed Clipper); the only sound my own breathing. Until it stops. There in the corner, bending over the facts machine – his bald head as luminescent as the moon ricocheting off an icy lake wearing mink, is my former boss Marcus Kamp.

‘Morning Batson!’ he cries.

‘But it’s...’ I butt in – the tension, like my change of tenses, irredeemably tense.

‘Those figures ready for Sierra Leone?’

‘Oh yes,’ I lie, and am suddenly with myself eight years before – a smelly young upstart and no mistake. Yet there is with the figures, and I know it. I have failed to take account of the cost of the horse-drawn required to take the emergency cotton to the semi-clothed civilians in Kenema. Disaster. And while Marcus himself seems unperturbed what is this rising from his bald spot? A ghostly vision and no mistake – Mistress Guilt in all her glory – torn nightdress, fangs bared. Terrified I yell:

‘I’m sorry!’

And she vanishes in a puff of smoke. Alone again, patrolling the corridors.

‘Licky?’ Nothing.

‘Bateman?’ Nowt.

‘Pekalowski?’ ‘Shaddap, I’m sketching this.’

I venture onwards, upstairs or downstairs – my feet feeling no distinction in the pitched darkness. Suddenly a woman in white, bent over the cast-iron printer.

‘Hello?’ I address her bonnet, ‘Hello?’

When she finally turns I both recognise her and don’t. ‘Give her a kiss,’ urges my twenty-five year old self out of nowhere, but when I look at her eyes (a vivid blue but sad and old before her time) I see now that this is the last thing she needs. Where have I seen her before? I search within myself until all is clear: buoyant and happy at the start of a work’s night out; guilty and remorseful in the morning – she is every maiden I have ever harmed, who has ever made the mistake of sacrificing herself to me. ‘Kiss her,’ is the urge from within. But then that pretty face begins to distort – Mistress Guilt pulsates beneath the perfectly made-up skin.

‘I’m sorry!’ I yell, and while no sound comes out I am ultimately, inexplicably back at my flat, Miss Jordan’s suspiciously tanned arms all about me.

‘I’m sorry,’ I mutter, exhausted – so glad to be in familiar surroundings, and good company.

‘No need to apologise to me love,’ Miss Jordan oozes reassuringly, ‘just give us a cut of your Voluntary Death Allowance.’

Like ravens in the rafters my pigeons squawk agreement.

2010-01-12T19:37:00.003Z

Monday 4 January 1865

A slipshod slide back to work after holidays branded by the extreme temperatures therein – from the warm welcome extended by our families in the Lakes and Hull to the frozen groans of my apartment back in Manchester; an icebreaker on so many occasions it now sits trapped in sub-dinner party temperatures. With Voluntary Early Death and its accompanying payout pending in April will this be the year that I finally get to write professionally, or will I career off the tracks like that milk float sliding towards the Exchange on a dirty great sheet of polar paving? I rescue a Health Shake from the burning wreckage and thank the stars that such a confusing ’65 is starting soberly – Licky and I having been worn down by such saucy seasonal merriment as cigars (inhale) and bagpipes (exhale) at Dr and Mrs Shazhorns’, intoxicating puddings at the Bargreaves’ residence, and a party dans l’apartment that saw Bateman first go Dutch with Spike upon the love seat (actually a second chaise longue, a wonderful present from Licky), then Greek in a generous attempt to purge me of all unnecessary glassware. Such hangovers I will not miss this month, yet I sense your need for insight more intoxicating than how to mix a perfect lime and soda. Very well – the Gentleman’s Annual Tupperware party, 23rd December, The Peaky Peveril. High marks all round (a 9 from me, for the soulful journeys made in ’64); the pool won by Sir Dempson (who took out an innocent maid in the half-time snowball fight) and Charlton of Chorlton; Swarthy Erick talks of his moving plans (opening an orphanage?) while the rest of us talk children like naughty ones in the corner. Just as last year I’d struggle to eat a whole one but there’s no doubt they continue to fascinate such whisky-seared hearts as ours; Ted and Arnold explaining how closely they follow a healthy man’s bathroom habits enough to put most of us off for now.

2010-01-10T16:39:00.005Z

Saturday 26 December

At this time of year it is a Bargreaves’ family tradition to ensure everything is nailed down in our idyllic, snow-covered cottage and to group-canter to Ambleside where my parents’ friends Derek and Sandy host the Boxing Day hunt from their beautiful five-bedroom house. What makes this year extra-special is that accompanying Barton, myself and the perfectly-matched parenthesis, are Marny and Licky, the former better-half soon to have the better brother over in Canadia for a turn – perhaps a five year turn; the latter recovering from the journey from her own folks’ home in Hull, during which she had to carry her little pony over the Pennines when it got tangled up in the Snakeskin Pass.

As long-standing philanthropists Derek and Sandy have been busy organising their Christmas Soap Kitsch Hen in which Derek dresses as a hen and distributes eggs to the region’s homeless while Sandy provides all-manner of scrubbers with a decent all-over wash before dressing them in retro styles. Sadly, due to the face-freezingly cold conditions this winter their plans have snowballed, as has Derek, slipping on an unwanted puddle outside the poor house – children are so wasteful – and ending up on the banks of Derwent Water fifteen times his own body size. With all their eggs in one basket, and the ‘40s style clothing irredeemably crumpled, this year they must think of new ways of helping those living on or in the streets, woodlands, badly converted barns or new-builds of Cumbria. So it is that sons Packer and Frisby arrange the mob into teams of modestly-paid beaters as the two families saddle up their hunting reindeer after a preternatural feast of overlapping meats.

A word about Lakeland hunting traditions – such is the perfect isolation to be found in these parts that many small tribes of former invaders continue to grow fat in tiny, bespoke enclaves, despite having been happily trounced by native armies as long ago as 1864 BC. Last year saw an unforgettable battle against a band of Vikings whose removal and collection of Modern Warfare books from Kendal library were both significantly overdue. Never has an axe been so skilfully applied than by Mrs Bargreaves in giving several fleeing Olafs a dangerously dapper short back and sides. And who could forget Derek and Batson Snr, at nearby Sweden Bridge, fending off a vastly superior enemy with a merciless string of ancient one-liners and rehashed cracker jokes – the enemy contorted with pain, then deported to Spain.

This year, prompted by a bloody campaign in the Westmorland Gazette, our chosen targets are lingering Legionaries, left over from the anti-Scotch DIY boom of AD 122, and now reliant on their dwindling supplies of dented tagliatelli. Always a healthy competition between the lads of the two families (despite a unifying appreciation of Man:United) it is with concern that I note that my nose appears redder than my reindeer’s – is 1864 to be remembered as the year my body finally went to port? Will I really be able to compete with Packer, fresh from the Ozzie sunshine, where he lives on a press-up farm with his charming wife Inspira? First blood to Barton who, as a lapsed vegetarian, is best placed to sniff out the wild boar being roasted round the back of Boots by two unsuspecting Roman footmen. Only able to run in straight lines it takes our baby rhino just minutes to wallop them over the border to face a tardy dose of Caledonian hospitality. Frisby weighs in by tying together the shoelaces of an entire garrison of tortoise-forming mincers, then pouring himself a dry sherry atop his steed while watching them slowly topple over. Packer has collected five helmets to my three with just ten minutes to the supper gong when I spot a quivering cohort behind a nearby hedge. Tall, angular, full of Christmas pudding and supremely generous, it is then that I notice Licky at my side, quickly forming herself into a menhir that I can fling at the fleeing soldiers, flattening half-a-dozen of them. With such teamwork I can only see Miss Shazhorn and myself conquering the world next year, perhaps following an overdue detox.

2009-12-11T12:39:00.002Z

10 December 1864

The green-eyed monster is not only a free gift that has seen an unprecedented rise in the popularity of Sawdust Melts from 1856 – present, but also a ‘yours-for-nothing’ emotion that comes with every human package, and one that if used liberally can lead to more discomfort and heartache than a 180g serving of nobody’s favourite breakfast cereal. So how can one treat such a beast – starve him, as a foreman in the Sawdust Melts factory might isolate a nut ferret in a particularly dank and fruitless corner? It is a noble idea and one I grow increasingly tempted to try. But in the meantime, using a method I can trace back to my first sip of noggin at 15, I have concentrated on the opposite approach – feeding the cute little bitey thing with as much liquor as I can lay my hands on. Reader, I am not sure of your own experiences, but to me this has been an experimental treatment which has failed time after time. For whenever a new love enters my life, it is the Jolly Green Dragon that they are soon shaking hands with, not long after Mr Trousersnake.

In many aspects of my life I am fortune to be seemingly immune to jealousy. Professional jealousy? It would seem churlish to complain as others catch the wave generated by a notoriously fickle publishing industry. I am nearby on the beach in any case, sipping G&Ts in my skimpy briefs, braced to re-enter the Medlock with my stiff homemade board at a moment’s notice and – who knows – maybe ride the next ‘big thing’. No, there be no monsters here, nor on the issue of money, for as we approach the good season all I can ask present-wise is: what do I really need? (Okay, my bed – constructed one dim and distant night while Bateman helpfully fed me beers – has finally fallen to bits, but where am I going to find a stocking even big enough for a single?) Hierarchical office jealousy? I don’t even know what that means. Stagecoach riding jealousy? I have no case to answer. In matters of the heart, however, I am regularly an uncharitable nightmare record of disaster. So let’s try and find out why.

Autumn 1845: a gang of friends – of (thrillingly) both sexes are out for the night in Liverpool. The airborne sexual tension is palpable and merges with the cheap and ineffective sweat preventatives of the lads; the ‘trog oil’ of the more gothic ladies amongst us; vinegar from the nearest chippy, and the exotic aroma of rotting mangoes, cast asunder by drunken dockside porters. Gretna Gallweather and I are getting on famously – as was meant to be, as was written in the stars. We watch a friend’s nascent string band die on stage, the schadenfreude just one more bond between us (turns out we both like history, boiled eggs and repression). Then, returning smiling from a piddle, disaster strikes – my apparent best friend Jaz Funkpantz (long since off the devil juice but charmingly louche at the time) and Gretna are hand-in-hand, smiling at me like I’m the celibate priest about to marry them, not simply a vessel for the heady brew of impotency that marks the beginning of my adult life.

Of course as the years flew by I had my fair share of fortune and misfortune in love, before finally reaching the point where I could have no tangible regrets. But despite this there were always times when I lashed out jealously; more-often-than-not this took the form of an unwarranted outburst, always about as helpful to the situation as a chocolate teapot at an orgy (has yelling at someone ever sapped them of their Sapphic tendencies? I don’t think so). At other times I have used incitement to jealousy as my weapon of choice – more rewarding (in an empty kind of way) when used on those girlfriends who have driven me to a rage with their incessant flirting or pander-free use of my ego (if you haven’t fallen out of love with me yet, dear reader, you can imagine how others may have done so).

So who’s to blame when I find myself once again up to the ears in green-hued monster dung? Greta? Jaz? Coldly Strange Grammar School (‘turning boys into men into boys since 1636’)? It’s very easy to blame the past, in whatever form, except that I suspect mine is not much different from any other man’s, unless they are blessed with the fatal magnetism of a Henry VIII, or the saint-like demeanour of a Thomas More. So when it comes to the work Christmas meal this week, well before my humble pie, I intend to crunch on Sawdust Melts, having poured my remaining whisky down the drain, and placed the green-eyed monster (collector’s issue/product recall pending) at the bottom of my waste (of time) bin. We’ll see how long it stays there.

2009-11-27T13:59:00.002Z

A beautiful painting inspired by yesterday's events
By Batson Bargreaves

2009-11-26T21:39:00.003Z

Monday 2 November

How strange it will be to leave the flat; to step outside the soothing machinations of the cotton warehouse, to stumble beyond the slippery trading house floor. Locked into these worlds you presume I am, and until today I could not countenance meeting you elsewhere but meandering down Oxford Road, looking for the nearest grog trough when your pounds and pennies would be better spent on fixing those gangrenous teeth; could think of nowhere but the handy Bar That Twas a Bog when it came to taking you aside and thrusting a temperance pamphlet into your gnarly old paws while standing you ‘one last drink.’ Yet all that may change, my fair-weather friend, for today – in the time that it takes you to adjust your corset, apply your lippy, and career blinking back out into the street – a communiqué rustles its way round work; a fresh breeze that prompts amongst my colleagues a mixture of airless gasps and prolonged heavy breathing. For we are to be offered Voluntary Early Death (VED), a scheme dreamt up by the uber-bosses in London to separate the wheat from the chaff. Yes, short-term riches may be (y)ours, in exchange for lifelong unemployment and a pauper’s grave.

Short-term riches!! Seconds before the wind of hope is deoxygenated by the guff of indecision, I have applied for release. There is no guarantee that it will be granted. You more than anyone know how my financial skills have come to be relied upon (when, sated, you told me that the dimpled ceiling of the Rochdale Ritz was ‘as of the stars an’ heavens an’ that’, remember how quick I was to use said imperfections to demonstrate basic tax law?) Nevertheless, I live in hope of a new beginning – a chance to write, a chance to sing, a chance to dance, a never-to-be-repeated opportunity to buy a solid gold bong encrusted with images of semi-precious stoners. Never has impending doom given me quite as light a head. Walking home along the canal, wondering what career a man could pursue after 12 months bitter struggle with the page, who should I spy but my old friend Porthole Drift, the famous detective, coming my way on his crimson barge ‘Gypsy Lady’, enjoying a pipe while Muff the dog hunts out some tea for the tillerman?

‘Ahoy Porthole!’ I harangue.

‘What-ho,’ he replies with added pith.

No doubt in town to solve one of his cases with a leisurely disregard for the mounting death toll, I see a future beyond the piles of rejected manuscripts with which I’ll insulate myself next winter, if only in penning the unpublishable biography of this distinctly peculiar fellow.

2009-11-11T18:23:00.000Z

Monday 5 October

The beginning of my birthday week and like Mr Scruff, my tailor (who presents me with a brand new DJ to mark my 36th) I determine to keep it real. Although off work, I go about my chores as usual – anything but face the (real/metaphorical) blank page/blank cheque that represent my much-delayed literary career. However, when Miss Jordan reminds me that I have an optician’s appointment at lunchtime I get a stomach-based feeling not dissimilar to that encountered on my 6th birthday when a giant horse-fat jelly was delivered to my boarding school, fresh from Uncle Horace’s glue factory. Yes, an appointment with the eye people is always a lot more exciting than it should be to someone of increasingly blinkered vision.

11.30am I finding myself huffing and puffing about Cross Street. Am I propositioned in the Patagonian Poultry Parlour? No. Am I Lothario’d in Larry’s ‘Laser Finish’ Laundrette (aka Pekalowski’s new ‘Dirty Clothes in Public’ Company)? Rarely. Then why must I always be salaciously seduced in Superspex? Should this read like a complaint then you too require an eye test – the ladies here are for the most part twinkling goddesses and if one or two are a little blurry round the edges then that’s probably for the best. Here, as in no other part of my existence, there are no awkward silences, no askance glances while I complete life’s necessary forms, try to read mixed messages or the writing on the wall; here soothing voices gently stroke what remains of my ego – telling me what a treat for the staff it is for me to appear in person when collecting my latest patent leather eyewear.

A TRAP, dear Reader, we’ve seen them on these pages before. A WOMAN is no doubt behind it, we can safely assume. With Licky sent to Australia in diamond chains (a desperate attempt by her family to wean her off effeminate men) I can only think this an arrangement she has made to test my undying, eternal faithfulness to her. By good fortune I have my hip flask about me and, taking an almighty swig, I proceed to smash up Superspex – at one point flinging a two-for-one Top Hat and periscope combo at a wall-sized display of wire-and-crystal kitten glasses. Back home, having presented Miss Jordan with the almighty bill, I proceed to bash seven shades out of the opposition in two rounds of footerball tonight. Yes, I am dealing with Licky’s absence fine, thank you for asking.

2009-11-10T20:48:00.000Z

Wednesday 9 September

To Chorlton Village, sitting within Strangest Bar, though it’s never too odd to have Jill’s company over several yards of ale, or metres of wine in her case. But while old times would normally be danced around, tonight there is no skirting from the present and the recent loss of her Mum, Sandy. An independent, strongly-humoured woman, living alone in the ferocious Welsh borderlands, it is with heavy pen that I note down the songs she chose for her service, enabling me to remember her via a host of heroines on phonograph later this week; but it is with pride and a smile, and no disrespect to my own family’s choice of path, that I listen to how Jill and her siblings arranged for Sandy the first humanist funeral conducted in Llangollen that anyone can remember, to the chagrin of the local Vicar. As ever tragedy and comedy aren’t too far apart and the evening ends with my fingers jammed into Jill’s shell-likes while she swallows iced water backwards – the only known cure for her indiscriminate hiccups, and my sincere helplessness.

2009-10-21T09:07:00.010+01:00

Friday 28 August – Paris

Much excitement today as our trip coincides with a decree from Emperor Napoleon III that a great/grande Exposition Universelle is to be held in Paris come 1867 (should the world still be in one piece b’then!) Exhibits will include a giant Iced Bun on which schoolchildren are to recreate famous battles from the Russian front, a violin concerto performed by a child prodigy inside a special crystal in which he is to be incubated and raised from next Thursday, not to mention – for the nature lovers amongst you – a man dressed as a bear fighting a bear dressed as a man, to the death! It is sure to be spectacular but in the meanwhile it is exciting to hear that a band once local to our beloved Manchester – Pastis (pronounced ‘Past it’) – will play in celebration of this massive indulgence on the festival site tonight.

THE EXPOSITION ARENA: TO BE MADE ENTIRELY OF CHEESE BY AN ENTHUSIASTIC TEAM OF NORTH AFRICAN VOLUNTEERS

After a day of sightseeing, buying miniature Eifel Towers in anticipation of forthcoming erections, we arrive at the riverside venue. Excitement ripples through the crowd like flatulence at a bean factory. The facilities are impeccable, the queues for beer significantly less, and less violent than their English equivalent. What Licky and I cannot find anywhere are the tobacco tubes that would allow us at least a frisson of bad behavior. We decide to split up and pursue the most attractive smokers, of the appropriate sex, available within our immediate circumference. Needless to say, while I charm several young lady models into submission, Licky makes a right exposition of herself. Speaking French – or even English – is so ‘last season’ the lady models have already told me (with their eyes), something Licky doesn’t seem to appreciate. However unfashionable, and having missed the Afro-chirrup of Vladimir’s Weekday, we reunite in anticipation of Pastis – their famous ‘dirge’ nothing if not momentous in its attitude. Alas, the emotions have already spilled over, and a trembling announcer comes on stage to tell us that the famously blue brothers have argued backstage and split. Such is the size of the ensuing Gallic shrug that I fear the lads will have seen it from their private hot air balloon home. We disperse to paint the town (a very united) red, and over several ‘giraffes’ of wine talk about the old days, of which the music was only ever a background to the irreplaceable friendship and love.

2009-10-20T09:07:00.001+01:00

Thursday 27 August - Paris

Due to the collapse of so many notable institutions this year the summer bank holiday has been specially extended, ‘And Don’t Come Back’ was the rather specific message unfurled at Dover to anyone playing the markets, such as yours almost-completely-truly, and I was only too happy to obey my public and whisk Licky away to Paris. It is our first holiday abroad as it’s long and abreast of Brest, but its planning was by no means down to my huge romantic bone, more the combined funny bones of several friends from Chorlton Village days, most especially the teasing tibias of Cameron (no relation) and Carmona who these days spend their days in and around Grenoble. Swarthy Erick and Swervy Thelma; Jefferson and Melinda Cake make up the numbers with us – much fun spending this year’s modest bonus, plus the best-in-show award that Sanchez picked up at Blackpool Birdz (he’ll never know); later the gold doubloons Miss Jordan has sewn into my chest hair, in this wonderful metropolis. Cheap the Frenchies, nor their city, ain’t – whatever you may read in the papers or cheerily racist periodicals I’ve brought along in a last, ultimately fruitless attempt to stereotype Cameron. A Kiwi friend of the ‘big man’ takes us to a dark and dingy eatery off Rue Oberkampf tonight where we tuck into three courses of the most delicious five star cliché.

2009-10-16T09:13:00.001+01:00

Wednesday 12 August

The Hatbox Project is finally yours, having been ours for far too long. Admittedly you will have to fork out 20 shillings for a mixed bag (box) of work squeezed, shaken, or gamely extracted from a range of Manchester artists; price being just one of the issues that has sustained its three ‘masterminds’ on a journey of self and mutual discovery (as literary editors Spike and I clashed over Petra Couture’s contribution – there being no casting vote we were forced to undertake a dual, lost by me – Ouch! – while Dylan, as the sole artistic editor, had double the work, if only half the arguments; something he was compelled to raise with us aggressively). I have nothing but respect for creatives who collaborate more than occasionally – perhaps it’s no coincidence that these pairings are usually writers of Puppet Show comedies situationale, and that the characters therein are almost always catatonically dysfunctional. Certainly it’s no surprise to learn that my inviting Larry Pekalowski and his sixteen-man, four-carrier, and one- monkey strong crew to record tonight’s launch in As Muck bar is seen as a distraction rather than a boon by my partners. In the event it is Bateman and Licky who take on most of the photographic duties, though the anticipation is clearly for them both to be more drinking/violent than shrinking violet.

Even after all, the fussing and fighting – the numbering of the little blighters under the shadow of Bateman’s giant concentrating tongue and oversized colouring book – the launch proves well-populated and, eventually, relaxing. 100+ people turn up, not in any way swayed by the free drink on offer, and as well as the literary circle/female cycle of Mimi, Tattetta, Mandy Candeur, and Amy-Lou (who brings along her famous, and friendly, fella, Gisbo Gibson, from folk band Tennyson) it is great to have Sir Dempson and Swarthy Erick amongst a scattering of near life-long supporters/hecklers – likewise DH selecting the tunes; Daisy making an appearance – so rare I see her these days – before the whole night comes under threat from an impromptu reading, inspired by this very (quite..) mechanical journal. Shuddering in the toilets – not for the first time – Bateman struggles to affix his false moustache while I admire my real McCoy; sweats over his lines while mine are firmly pressed into the old grey spongy matter, yet on stage, frustratingly, it is the young pretender who gets all the laughs (not that there’s many) precisely because of his well-rehearsed ineptitude! Spike comes up to run the bingo and order is restored, until the same lucky lady wins two boxes in a row – and promptly faints with surprise, gratitude or fear. Three of us at least knowing just how she may feel.

2009-10-11T10:48:00.003+01:00

Saturday 8 August

Having produced a Batson’s Guide to Manchester some (ahem) months back – to a high personal standard yet in the company of friends who exceeded expectations (Tattetta’s beautiful pen-and-inks of contemporary tankard, footerball and monographed water closet; Jill and Conrad’s expert use of ‘daguerreotype shoppe’ to aid presentation), it is of great relief to be preparing it for the world today, albeit in leafy Didsbury – a barely lukewarm hotbed of radical pamphleteering. If the language within the Guide is occasionally fruity it is as nothing compared to the five-a-day that tumble from Licky’s raspberry-prone lips as we sit at opposite ends of her dining table – she folding the things together, me thinking of a line or two to make each one unique. The cause of her unrest? 100% jealousy (with added juicy bits). As the creative within the couple, it is up (or down) to me to sit at the typewriter, smoking, thinking, as I ape the portraitbook status bar in creating a label for every last guide, i.e. ‘Batson is…a troubled genius.’ Some of Licky’s suggestions, tossed like whizz-bombs in my direction, suggest that she may have a future in print – albeit in a future world of filth and insult in which I will play no part (‘Baston is….a twook’, ‘a wazpants’, ‘a misguided old fool’, ‘cruising for a bruising’, ‘single’, ‘probably the worst writer in the world’, ‘sic’, ‘hairy chicken thighs cod breath’, ‘baboon off-day face’, ‘conclusively unpublished’ etc). Roll on the Hatbox launch on Wednesday, at which Spike, Dylan and I will have VINDICATION written all over our faces (unless we can think of a better idea).

2009-10-07T13:11:00.003+01:00

Tuesday 21 July

For some years now we have been warned of the imminence of a worldwide attack of Wine Flu – a robust kind of a virus that threatens to floor around 40% of the planet’s pop. Well finally it has hit us where it hurts – in the loved ones. Readers will know there are few things Licky likes more than a drop of cab sauv or pin noir and it seems despite regular use of the alcoholic hand rub at work (which when combined with extra strong perfume/aftershave offers decent cover should you have over-indulged the night before) the beastly germs have at last found a way through her defences.

A pigeon flutters in through the skylight, then plunges like a stone onto the sofa, folds her wings and demands a cup of tea before parting with her news. Yes, dear readers, her – the very strain apparent in the very italics – the agency having insisted that I take on my first ever female carrier, Bacha. I finish off my sausages and absinthe (all that’s left safe to consume these days?) with feigned casuality but eventually can wait no longer, “How is she?” The good news: Licky is recovering, bedbound yet in high spirits, though I cannot visit. The bad news: her doctor ex can, being a doctor and all that; but being a man, undoubtedly wanting Miss Shazhorn’s return to his life by way of a tip. It is with mixed emotions that I retire restlessly:

Will the distinctions between the sexes, that birds like Bacha have pecked apart, re-form like so much cheap meat in the wake of this outbreak? Is it not to be expected that the weaker sex should look to the more robust components of the stronger at times like this? What good a part-time pamphleteer to a maiden amongst all this? The latest bulletins via the worldwidewotsit do little to settle the mind. Apparently a second wave of flu will snaffle us over winter so perhaps it’s best to glug it down first time round. Colloquially, in any case, it seems that infected friends and friends-of-friends are collectively riding things out – something I seek to confirm with Bacha once she gets down from that sanctimonious perch in the rafters she insisted on building herself.

2009-10-05T14:19:00.006+01:00

Sunday 19 July

To those confused by my recital at the desperately damp Manchester Book Fair today (a majority of the 20-30 good souls huddled in Tent A as I read from Tent B – a vision behind a waterfall – all of whom appeared to sense that something fishy was up, and that the something fishy was quite possibly swimming upstream, occasionally floundering, all the while inexplicably wearing a top hat) I offer this self-indulgent, self-published interview by way of introduction and enlightenment.

BARGREAVES EXPOSED
When were you happiest? Cotton and coal shares hit new highs, I learn from my favourite carrier, while in bed with my favourite gal.
What is your greatest fear? Missing out on future gossip due to irritating mortality.
What is your earliest memory? Desperately pulling the cord in the steam pram while bearing down on Great Aunt V.
What is the trait you most deplore in others? Duplicity.
What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? Being scrupulously honest, at the expense of good punch-lines.
Your most embarrassing moment? Manchester Book Fair, Chorlton Poetry Festival etc etc.
What is your most treasured possession? Daguerreotypes of ancestors, diaries.
What do you dislike about your appearance? My blue-white ‘plates of meat’ appear to have given up the ghost several years ago.
Who would play you in a Puppet Show of your life? Oscar Wilde’s butch sister.
What is your guiltiest pleasure? Non-British wine.
What is your most unappealing habit? French cigarettes (consumed anally).
Where would you like to live? By the sea (Miss Jordan insists on running me consecutive baths after my morning dip in the Rochdale Canal).
What does love feel like? Coming up for air/repeal of pro-smog laws (1862).
What was the best kiss of your life? Swarthy Erick side-stubble on countless birthdays.
Worst job? Pot washing is hard work, but there are perks (if you don’t mind a soapy aftertaste to your half-eaten pie).
If you could edit your past, what would you change? A history degree somewhere posh and dusty may have aided projects past and present.
How do you relax? Like every man alive and a surprisingly large amount of women.
What single thing would most improve the quality of your life? Better class of pigeon.
Greatest achievement? Writing a novel (the unpublished Blaggard, 1860)
What keeps you awake at night? Fear of insomnia.
What is the most important lesson life has taught you? Seize the day, wrestle it to the ground, and give it a good, firm beating.
Where would you like to be right now? Pretending to fish in turquoise waters while contemplating world domination/belly button fluff (mine the latter to achieve the former?)
Tell us a secret: I am ¾ Ponce but rarely visit my homeland.

Sterling (not literally) support today comes from long-time Hatbox collaborators Spike and Dylan and it is to the latter’s chuckling form that I direct much of my reading (a pseudo footerball commentary that simultaneously describes a date with Daisy). Meanwhile Licky feeds the crowd cans of imported larger and homegrown smiles. In genuine news from the world of literature, Mimi Pixel celebrated the launch of her (published) book on the 2nd July while I was in Spain. I raise a can to her, then hurl it towards a funky young poet half my age and trouser size.

2009-10-02T09:07:00.006+01:00

Monday 29 June – Friday 10 July

Since qualifying in Teaching Manners to People Unfortunate Enough to be Born Non-British (TEMPUEBN) I have had few opportunities to test my mettle in this most challenging of arenas. Chance would be a fine thing – especially when one requires a new steam mangle for the apartment – and here it comes, hair all piled up like a Dockside dame, in the form of co-worker Barry, whose former roommate at the University of Life, Sunderland, is running classes in even more isolated Aragon, Spain. I am invited to be the extra pair of hands, though as we’re teaching youngsters, the extra (pleading) voice, or pair of legs (to catch up with/flee from the little ones) may both be more appropriate expressions.

My going away party is an elongated affair (though as nothing compared to the apparently lifelong relationship we enjoy/endure with the pricey and ever-so-easy Crow 2 at which it’s staged) and someone forgets to set the alarm correctly for tomorrow; the same someone who insists on one more drink with the gang; the same someone I resolve to leave firmly behind here in the UK. No, not darling Licky (who kindly transports me to the balloon-port where I get the second flight of the day to Barcelona) but the BB who was relaxed, and chilled and ever so English over here, and hadn’t seen a child since…

Teaching English in Spain? More like teaching aliens on the less-populated, treeless and unshaded side of Mars, I pen to Licky in desperation. The temperature hovers around the mid-30s and although the ale (‘lager’, the Spaniards pronounce it – mispronouncing our ‘larger’ while ironically serving it in smaller glasses) and (chin-dribblingly succulent) fruits of our labour taste infinitely better after long days in the classroom and racketball court, it is clear why Steve and his partner, Brucinda, run this two-week summer school only once a year (usually in summer). Yet the location is undeniably stunning – Abenfigo is a cactus and elderly senora-strewn village on the edge of nowhere, accessible from sleepy Alcaniz only on the school donkey, which I am forced to ride in and out each day, to the amusement of the children.

Perhaps the most memorable, and saddest, incident I came across while Englishing out here was the almost inevitable rivalry and subsequent scrap between two of my charges. If Barton is my ‘baby rhino’ then Steed was my ‘baby bull’. A strapping lad of around 13 he possessed both an intelligence that gave him little patience with his classmates and a wild, unwilled, and (essentially) ‘uncool’ unruliness that gave them little patience with him. I would eat my packed lunch on a step with Steed each day, discussing the latest news from Pamplona’s occasionally fatal bull runs. Yet anyone who has ever seen the children’s puppet show ‘Grunge Hill’ will know how this particular story ends – with Steed finally cracking on the penultimate day of school, scrapping in the yard with popular wind-up merchant Paulo, until Steve and myself are able to separate them with a well-placed ‘Riiiiiiggggghhhhhhtttttt!’ or two. Steed misses the last day – of water-fights, pantomimes and tuck – and I can only hope he remembers my salami-stained words: ‘it gets better,’ and hope they come true for him as they did, eventually, for me.

2009-09-25T12:38:00.000+01:00

Saturday 20 June

Smokeless Uncle Bargreaves has been a professional musician since he was half my age, but tonight will admit to being nervous on stage for the first time in years. At a full Phil’s Harmonica Hall in Liverpool, he and long-time cohort Hovis McSilkut, are backed by a full orchestra – a twitching mass of highly-strung egos – which is nothing if not an intimidating tribute to their near-30 years of tunes. Used to bashing it out at 11, the musos later admit to sneaking clockwork amplifiers beneath the feet of the string players, the better to pump up the volume. Sure enough, around halfway through, the audience – including Licky, the Bargreaves family, and Uncle’s partner Hana – rise for an indiscrete, but very enjoyable, dance. Currently working with Desmond Cakeland, author of the groundbreaking Generation K, Smokeless Unc later agrees to show this grand old/neu man of letters/worldwidewotsitting some of my own craft. I can’t help but wonder whether the cutting-edge contemporariness of my/your mechanical journal may be overshadowed by the quant, very English nature of my befuddling novellas.

2009-09-25T12:35:00.001+01:00

Friday 12 June 1864

An 1840s-themed party at Bron and Sasha’s place in Chorlton sees friends and friends-of-friends plus everyone’s favourite maniacally laughing best-mate Ivan T Watt-Eason trapped happily beneath the same billowing Bedouin tent out back. DH wears an inflatable rubber ‘bodybalmer’, Larry Pekalowski a bright white coal-sack and slacks, while Sasha herself is dressed as an incredibly classy bowl of fruit. Memories of my youth (shockingly Bron, whose birthday we celebrate, only entered stage left in 1838) mingle with apparently grown up gossip. Bateman – dressed as a chutzy-faced WG Grace – tells us how, marooned in the Ukraine, he recruited two young local ladies to re-start his malfunctioning flying machine. But it’s left to Licky to provide the knock-out blow – her high spirits blended into a powerful punch that sees us partying like its 1899, a year that hangovers suggest we will be fortunate to incorporate into such pronounced purple patches, however prolonged.

2009-09-13T11:33:00.000+01:00

Thantom Legg

The cotton crunch has seen building work forestalled on the Crystal Maize project, destined for the bunion-ridden foot of my dirty old Princess, but in one of the huge residential blocks on Whitworth Street I monitor the progress of Thantom Legg, as I have since I arrived in this neck of the woods. While always keen to use genuine names in this journal – preferring a direct slander to a vicarious gander – you may note that this chap’s name is a tad unconvincing. You would be right, if a little damned petty, to be suspicious. I admit to never having spoken to the man, yet on Sunday streets round here, the weekend boozers dispersed, you get to know by sight those shuffling about their business. And shuffle he does. Often I have wondered how such an injury befell him – one that sees a fit young man (early 40s – my new definition of late youth) with a permanent limp for the last eighteen months at least. With modern medical treatment now available to any male over 5’4” it seems almost unbelievable that a bash or funk of any description could lead to such an extended recuperation. I cast my mind back to when I first saw him, a slab of butter-coloured hair failing to obscure music hall good looks, arguing with a beautiful young woman at the foot of his building. Vicious words were exchanged – I missed their exact nature due to the passing of a farting horse – but it was evident that Thantom was more-than-able to nimbly circle his prey – or his quarry? Two weeks on, drained of colour, he was navigating the streets with difficulty, as now. There is little more to say. I leave you with, I hope, a little of the lingering mystery inherent in the private lives that surround us. I wonder who you wonder about (with only a little curiosity, truth be told: your business, dear reader – just as long as you’re retaining your own healthy fascinations). Licky arrives home with yet another bruise – hurdling a gate while running through the rich Hulme countryside. They say the heart is the body’s most resilient organ – it is certainly not the old pegs (legs).

2009-09-12T08:45:00.001+01:00

Monday 8 June

Sometimes, no matter how scrupulously one prepares for the inevitable, it is still a great shock when it arrives, kicking and screaming, or whispering significantly into your life. Today, my surviving Grandma (Bargreaves) passes away in her sleep, and we must take consolation in the fact that she herself – at 89 – was more than prepared to be released from this mortal coil upon which we spin and stagger. Several years of ill-health had seen her body deteriorate while her mind and, for the most part, her humour, remained sharper than many of the younger Bargreaves who so adored her (is it too much to ask for our mind and bodies to go together? And if not, who do we ask?). She spoke of death often; insisted we should make the most of our lives while young, relished telling stories of old Lancashire, and the husband she lost too soon after he was force-marched across Europe by the Prussians. The family strain to picture them reunited in a summer meadow.

At 35, naked – if not always alone – I console myself with the words of author John Otter’s Dyke who tells us that at the midpoint of life’s arc one has lost the ‘curling, warm darkness’ you could snuggle into as a child on sleepless nights, but not yet become comfortable with the ‘second darkness’ still to come. Certainly death has been on my mind more than ever this year – because of my beloved Gran, my own (irreversible) wrinkles and greys, but also the sheer quality of the vintage (who would wish to lose all this?) which has conversely placed old cave face between the (increasingly hairy) ears.

Smokeless Uncle Bargreaves had been caring for his Mum, our matriarch, while the rest of us stayed on in Canadia. In hospital, so poorly, and with the doctors giving her only days, he recounts a dream she had. Offered, by a figure just out of shot, the choice between leaving right away and staying to see her ‘lambs’, she chose the latter – despite her readiness to go, despite her apparent lack of faith. Big, grey and wrinkled we may have become but it’s a privilege for Barton and I to see Grandma B on our return. Don’t bleat – look after each other, her last words to us. It’s hard to think of any simpler, more profound truth in life.

2009-08-17T22:20:00.001+01:00

Sunday 17 May

Each summer those people of Manchester fortunate enough to have get up and go, go out and get incredibly sweaty in the ages old running of the almost completely knackered bovines. Initially called a ‘fun run’ a massively successful legal action by the pipe-snorting Byron Badger almost bankrupt the city five years ago, since when the race has been known as ‘an adequate trot, if you like that sort of thing’ by Mayoral decree. Yet again work commitments prevent me from entering this year’s race but I am happy to lob mustard bombs from my rooftop in a bid to encourage the notoriously sluggish cattle to prang the odd adversary, and generally pep things up. Even in today’s poor weather it is certainly a site to behold – the young men literally running their bullocks off while the last half-dozen Miss Lancashire’s, fancy-dressed as bunnies, prick up their tails and flee from several hews of heifer.

Despite sharing an undisclosed number of small pints with me the previous night, and an initial, protracted nudging by an over-affectionate Friesian, Licky manages a record time this year, beating several workmates and an elderly Kenyan man in a go-cart. Pigeons swoop over the field, relaying news to a giant mechanical owl capable of calculating the times of runners to the nearest flashback; something complicated by the fact that at around 9.5k many participants witness their entire lives flashing before them. The finish time of one senior plodder is thereby recorded on the worldwidewotsit as 78 years, 11 months, three hours and a vivid image of ‘that bonny lass from French revolution.’ Within such a vast array of inappropriately clad peoples there will always be some who try to use the event to their own advantage. His manservant having reported him lost somewhere in darkest Ancoats (‘probably eaten by a Homeless’) it is small surprise to read in more than one gossip column of Lord Gallagher cavorting with a milk maid in a lopsided giraffe suit while completely off his bypass. Still, nothing unites a town like a giant, bloody feast and I eagerly make my way to meet Licky on Deansgate, off which all participating animals are assembled, roasted and served on a giant bun roughly the size and texture of Bolton. I offer Licky some wooden sachets of tomato sauce stolen especially from work. Then quickly wish I’d remembered the water.

2009-08-15T16:30:00.001+01:00

Friday 8 May

Night starts in the Old New York Bar where Licky is with what can only be (reluctantly) described as the next generation of cotton traders. While I still consider DH, Moony and myself as young soul rebels, it is clear that despite the immense wisdom we retain between us (diluted slightly as we move to sit with Swarthy Erick; the balance restored once his better half Swervy Thelma veers in from the bar), we are no longer regarded as cutting edge. Despite the fifteen-year age difference it is nice to see Licky soon join us, as I marvel at the cheekbones, and cheek, of rival admirers. Later meeting up with Che O’Gooner, on a rare visit to Manchester, Licky further struggles to raise the average age of the gang; some of us still able to able to recall the heady days of the Plantation club and the cardboard discs so expensively produced by Call Centre records some 20 years whence. But there is little time for stories – hugs and dancing being the order of the day, as they were back then (I think).

2009-08-15T15:43:00.000+01:00

Saturday 25 April

Home from the annual Pigeon Emancipation Conference in Kent (PECK) where unflappable guest speakers seek lofty discourse on topics including Feather Allergies: Why Was I Born a Bird? and Hat Splatting the Abusive Boss: Moral High Ground or So Much Thin Air? While supposed to be clubbing with Sasha and Zack I suddenly become as tired and contented-looking as Sanchez in his wicker casket beside me on the train (he pulled of course, the little minx – first night). Licky, I’m finding, against my better judgment (and larger girth), is able to fill the plainest of rooms with her presence, and the promise of mixing drinks in her West Didsbury kitchen (the cocktail maid is away) is prospect enough for this sleepy old dog tonight. However, ever thoughtful, Ms Shazhorn has invited round two of the most glamorous ladies in the whole cotton trade – Deirdre Darknight and Ursula Grunbrun – to join us for high jinx and dancing. Having convinced ourselves it’s 1799, Deirdre takes a tumble on a high note, something dealt with using her usual determined laughter, as I look on aghast. How strange, or not, that it is Licky who shines brightest for me these days. How odd, or not, of her to invite me to come to this conclusion in such a public way.

2009-07-31T08:56:00.004+01:00

Wednesday 22 April 1864

Still very much in denial about our nascent relationship, Licky and I attempt a small-scale skirmish; a joint storming of Beach Bar to thrash out some intimacy in the Ronson-lit beer garden. However, no sooner have we downed a dirty bitter than the presence of Bateman and Larry Pekalowski, 'fresh' from their latest round of Harrow Fives, is announced by the sound of rackets slapping against any available backside. Their last fifteen encounters have all been won by the American and we can little imagine his reaction should Bateman finally beat him, though a fair guess would be UNPRINTABLE, you little UNPRINTABLE (UNPRINTABLE being the worst of all contemporary insults, oft aimed at the writer sans publishing deal). Tonight boyish banter is the order of the day. Now Licky is no prude, her soft voice enshrouding a multitude of sins, but when the language turns a certain shade of blue we realize that to rekindle our date we should head back down Oxford Road and find some privacy in the lair (I have had the foresight to send Miss Jordan and my entire army of carriers to the gala night of Birds, an erotic shoulder dancing club opened opposite us on Princess Street). Licky and I walk arm-in-arm. A takeaway Italian reverse pie sits in a cardboard box that warms my hand; all is well.

Then on this most romantic of nights, under the bridge outside Crow 2 who should I spot but the blasted troll? Crutches splayed he sits next to Shifty McQuiggin, both snarling their way through a drink. Brilliant – my two prime sources of middle-class guilt in one convenient yet unsanitary location. Normally I’d give them a pound and have done with it, but I’m damned if I’m going to let Licky see me tremble under the weight of their combined gnarliness. Before we reach the underpass I begin our necessary acceleration, eyes locked dead ahead I encourage Licky to do the same by suggesting I can see a two-for-one sale at Bumbles Wine Merchants some 2,000 yards hence. It is no good – the second we are past them I hear that voice, terrible in its familiarity.

‘Marry her!’

We continue walking.

‘Marry her!’ he shouts again. I run the voice through the primitive data analysis machine recently installed within my top hat. Drunk – certainly. Aggressive – no, the troll must have consumed his optimum dose of cooking sherry. I stop, Licky’s curiosity encouraging me to turn and touch the peak of my hat. The troll’s toothy smile, the colour of an albino pit pony, strains to break the darkness.

Almost home, the talk unusually small for us too, I finally scratch the itch in my britches. Although I have carefully handpicked the delicious toppings for our reverse pie – double-cheese, banana, salami and garlic – I know we shall never consume them. A poor old fellow, down on his luck, needs all that healthy nourishment more than the randiest couple in Manchester. ‘Wait here,’ I command Licky, and run back towards the bridge. Although he has seen me just minutes before, it is clearly a struggle for the troll to recognize one half of the above (and former victim no. 14825) but more disturbing still is his inability to comprehend good grub, sourced from the finest gift horse.

‘Ta,’ he manages reluctantly, then grins up at me like some hideous giant child, ‘couldn’t give us a quid for a drink to go with it?’

2009-07-30T09:13:00.000+01:00

Wedding Smells

Another momentous occasion in a year I sense will have many. First Dempson and Lady Makepeace introduce young Groucho into the world, now Parson and Marny can get cracking on exactly that sort of thing. The lime green trimmings, so patiently acquired in Piccadilly station’s Tie Stocks over the last few weeks; so unlikely under a dun Manchester sky, sparkle as they were meant to, beneath a sunny Albertan dome; against the snow and awesome white of the Cardston temple.

In order to authentisize my big speech Barton kindly runs my wooden microphone through a clockwork wah-wah pedal, the resultant slurring an almost perfect imitation of one ‘over-the-eight’. However, when it’s time for me and Smoky Uncle to mingle with the other guests we cannot help but feel that water-into-wine should be more than a metaphor at such religious gatherings. It turns out there's little to fear – the room is set up in such a way that two long lines of guests shuffle past each other, exchanging greetings and good wishes, until you've met the whole darn troupe. Near neighbours strapped in snowshoes have come from far and wide, while carefully removing layers of fur reveals a shivering of former Brits contained within this most pleasant of ID parades. Only the dehydration caused by a hundred polite conversations proved a problem – and we all know that alcohol is the last thing one requires for that condition.

Once the deed is done the most enduring daguerreotype of the day must be of Marny lifting aloft my besuited 'baby rhino' (stuffed full of competing lasagnes and victorious ice cream). Yet there is no need for my sister-in-law to prove her superhuman strength – we have already surrendered to the tough and tender charms of our new home-from-home and those who grace it. Home from home-from-home will take a little adjustment but at least I have a certain someone to help with the inevitable trouser lag.

2009-07-17T09:03:00.003+01:00

The Borderlands and Beyond (Bachelorhood)

A record turnaround and I’m off to Canadia for Barton’s wedding. I use my few hours back in Manchester to great effect – supping wine while Licky massages my steaming feet/washes the carbon from my footprints. Then it’s away to London (a city which I know only from the postcards, following the ancient Manchester tradition of thoroughly ignoring it while there) and on across the Atlantic, by way of clockwork catapult this time. While hardly smooth, the journey in our specially hollowed-out comet is going well, until a familiar-looking shape appears from the blackest of clouds. It is Bateman, of course, in his famous Phallic Flyer – a machine so suggestive that even the brawniest of our air stewardesses blushes like a pilot caught (twice) over the limit (again).

‘Woah there!’ he bellows, slapping a leather glove against our stony-faced exterior, ‘Where do you thing you’re going?’

Fortunately for us, the navigator is able to maintain just enough speed to prevent us becoming but a drop in the ocean.

‘To bloomin’ Canadia,’ I retort – omitting curses to spare my bucolic family from the muck and brass of town.

‘Behold my Bachelor preserver,’ he gestures up and down his silver sheath, ‘come to save Barton from eternal error!’

‘He’s getting bloomin’ married,’ I splutter, ‘like all of us – most of us – will one day, now get out of our way good sir.’

At which Bateman fires what can only be described as a salami-based projectile towards our vessel. Mrs Bargreaves, preparing an eight-inch thick lasagne for the assembled passengers and crew, reacts quicker than those salivating around her, lifing her prized baking tray to the heavens and deflecting Bateman’s ill-intended missile towards Alderon. Defeated, he reverses dangerously - back towards his Cheshire headquarters.

We touch down safely in Alberta, are met by Marny, her brother and his wife and begin the short journey to their folks’ snug retreat in the Borderlands. Eighteen hours later we are sat eating pancakes and maple syrup while looking out at a wedding cake landscape that encompasses British Columbia, Montana and lots of white space in between. If the geography is intimidating the new family is anything but. With Smoky Uncle Bargreaves due to arrive the next day the only daunt taunting me is how to deliver a memorable best man’s speech while sober, to the sober, who will no doubt remember it as faithfully as the hymns I can only mime to.

2009-06-23T21:38:00.002+01:00

Biker Boys, Sao Paolo

It is of some obscure comfort to me that my brother Parton retains some of the famous Bargreaves absent-mindedness, despite his last drink being some half-decade whence (a decade he sees as half-full and I as half-empty). On the last day of the fair I realize, somewhat characteristically, and with a long-distance doff of the filial cap, that I’ve left our all-important banner at the English Old Boy’s Club the night before. With the doors about to open and my greatest besiegement outside active service about to begin, there is no way I can fetch it from the other side of town, but the advice of a colleague leads me into a hitherto unexplored realm – that of the ‘biker boy.’ With one killed on the roads each day, this is no job for the faint-hearted. Upon meeting the rogue entrusted to weave through traffic on my behalf I wouldn’t wonder if he had no heart at all – a xylophone of ribs over which hangs a battered leather jacket; a cigarillo dripping from a face smeared head-to-toe in engine oil and city smog. The discernible expression is one of melancholy – changing to desperate greed only as he whips away my cash, in return for said rolled-up advertisement.

Perhaps I would be a shade lighter in my appraisal had his fellow biker not later walloped my fellow delegate with his helmet; my fellow having tried to take down said fellow’s vehicle license plate (this following – almost inevitably – a hairy smash-up on a major highway into town). Siamee tells me that once reported the biker boy will almost inevitably be sent tumbling into a life of far lesser volition, so in this case took drastic action – perhaps in the hope of preserving his family. Mixed feelings on these desperate warriors then, as on much of the Brazil I see. It is a country striving for better things, many of which it will achieve, but the crime is criminal and – shuddering in my taxi en route to the Balloon Port – likewise the hellish-looking prisons. Yet something amazing happens in the queue through customs to persuade me into positive thinking. Imagining I am joining my fellow travelers, I brandish my documents within a line of all creeds and colours, only to realize (characteristically slowly) that I am actually amongst those most at home here, and nowhere else but this diverse, pulsating nation.

2009-06-12T08:21:00.005+01:00

Ibirapuera

I spend a last morning in my adopted coffee shop on well-healed Jose Maria Lisboa before heading onwards to Ibirapuera Park and the grand exhibition hall within which my work here begins. So it appears I will never discover the filling of my favoured stuffed croissant (sugared salmon would be my best guess, strange as it sounds) but have at least a pretty good idea of the routines of the security men opposite; all tinted glasses, blacked-out pigeons and barely concealed pistols as they seek to protect the rich and famous from the kidnappers and cracked heads on the street.

A banner above my head pronounces Cotton and Coal: fresh from the UK and combined with my ultra-professional demeanor, entices a steady stream of interested customers to our stand. All good for business but my own interest is with our translator, Siamee – so quick at her job that askance she can tell me something of her life here. Siamee’s family are pioneers in what will become a wave of Japanese immigrants in the 1920s and ‘30s (she predicts), and while she studies in Sao Paolo she grew up by the Amazon, in the sweltering trading port of Manaus (‘much too humid for you, look how you sweat now!’) where her dad taught her to shoot at nine, in case attacked by man or beast. As if to counteract the contraband flowing up and down river from Manaus, Siamee tells me of (yet) another European’s folly and how an Opera House was transported, cut stone-by-cut stone, through the jungle to where it now sits in fetid surroundings, hosting piercing arguments between the untamed and the cultured. A dirty great pile of coal will serve your country better, I tell her while dabbing my forehead with the nearest bit of cotton available.

2009-06-09T16:13:00.002+01:00

Sao Paolo

A city of many layers, from what I could gather through my limited Portuguese (I imagine Rio is more geared to English tongues and fancies) and restricted time here. Towering apartment blocks and offices keep snug the middle-classes but pounding the streets reveals the vibrantly aspirational along with those content – or doomed – to spend their days outdoors; possessions loosely bound in brightly coloured bags, bottles of cachaça glinting in the sun. Then what delight to enter the cool of the art gallery between banking houses on Paulista; so close to neglected old masters that I could have defaced them with my quill. The same street gives a fascinating insight into what once was here, when the use of oils was still restricted to cooking and lubing…

Regular pedants will know that on my every foreign trip I insist on assembling local bread, cheese and salami into a reassuring picnic, chewing the fat while overlooking some great site or simply staring at foreigners. And what could be a nicer spot to do this from than the small, gated park of Trianon? Within minutes I am utterly terrified, to the amusement of assorted office hounds on their own lunch-breaks. Tough policemen break into girlish laughter at my demeanor. The cause? Admiring the palms above my humble bench my eyes reach a delicate, floating gauze of…spiders…spiders EVERYWHERE…webs with legs protruding across the very paths I came by (they must be in my hair, have laid their eggs by now!). Fat spiders, skinny spider, little spiders, GIANT spiders, all of them laughing their tiny/huge venomous chops off. Yes, that’s right – a little bit of jungle is preserved right here, in this supposed sanctuary, simply to ruin the peace of jelly-limbed Europeans like myself.

2009-06-04T22:09:00.001+01:00

A Batson in the Americas

It is my whopping great good fortune to spend the last days of March and a significant chunk of April in the Americas, beginning with a succulent taste of Brazil and ending up in the crisp, horizon-baiting landscapes of Canada where my brother Barton and his wonderful Marny tie the knot amongst friends, family and the kind of decorative snow that doesn’t get all slushy and in your socks. In between the two trips I am home for a matter of hours, thrusting my soiled Brazilian outfits towards Miss Jordan on the way up to my boudoir while demanding that the sealskin woolies are out and lunchbox packed for North America five hours hence. Such speed in and out is demanded if I am to make the most of my time with Miss Shazhorn who has kindly come over with a bottle of claret, in celebration of my midway point. On departure – all too soon – Licky tells me to look to the skies mid-Atlantic, Bateman having promised a display, if not a lift, in his nascent (and knowing him, narcissistic) flying machine.

2009-06-02T22:46:00.000+01:00

Saturday 21 March

In the same way that viewing risqué material on the worldwidewotsit never quite quenches the thirst, so our consumption of multivarious ales at the annual Wigan beer fest still leaves some of us acting like bankers; namely: Sir Dempson Makepeace and your humble narrator, electrified by the scrumpy and on the wrong side of the tracks. There has been some recent debate concerning the ready availability of cheap alcohol in your average supergrocers. Your connoisseur will counter this by highlighting the gulf in quality between the hand-reared stouts of Wigan and the tinned continental pish stacked high down the road at an almost identical price. Who would bother sampling cotton when they’ve just consumed seven pints of silk? No-one is more surprised than I to find the two of us, minutes after leaving the arena of the overweight, standing in a snapping crocodile of queue, trying to buy four ciders for the train home from a hand-rubbing corporation too tight to hire enough staff.

Regular readers will be aware that any previous crimes committed within the yellowing pages of this mechanical journal were of the heart. Only once have I been cautioned by a ‘Peeler’ and that took the form of a quiet word on Portland Street, informing me that I looked rather too dangerous in my latest sartorial mash-up. So prepare to be shocked, dear reader, as I tell you of what happened next. The cuckoo-clock mechanism of the self-serve gently sleeping, the snaking lines of people confounding our need for joyous fun, we abandoned our four-pack of ecstasy in the soft fruit! Then, aghast at the foibles of the system, we re-entered the store, picked it up and ran. Or would have done had we not remembered at that very moment Sir Dempson’s gammy leg (remarkable as he’d spoken of little else all night). Arm-in-arm, cackling, in a scene that must never be relayed to (but will no doubt be repeated by) Sir Dempson and Lady Sparkles’ young son Ernie, we shuffled, staggered, hopped and jiggled our way back to Wigan station.

So how does this action, so out-of-character, sit with me after the event? At first guilt manifests itself like a glorious shining boil as I yell cider-fuelled abuse towards a uniformed grunt as he threatens to expel a drunk from our locomotive. Fine behavior, were the drunk not manifestly more sober than I, Erick hisses. Back home unpunished I maintain a more levelheaded demeanor; consider repaying the supergrocers’ before recalling all the times I’ve been overcharged by their ‘faulty’ machines having purchased a ‘special offer’. Still, you may rest assured that the next time I break the law to this extent will be when refusing to sign up for an identity card when they’re finally introduced to our country; the results of their laughable trialing in Manchester doubtless long ignored by the authorities. Come visit me in gaol on that non-too-distant date. And bring some cider.

2009-05-18T08:53:00.000+01:00

Tuesday 10 March

Incredible lunch for just five shillings fifty at the unbeatable Briton’s Protectorate. On leave from the warehouse, and with no afternoon’s travail to trail back to, it is a delight to see Dempson and Growler struggling to unseat themselves from the fireside following game and pheasant pie washed down with ale the colour of exotic dishwater. Had the sun not been out I may be there still but after my second pint, and having completed the synopsis for my breakthrough novel, Breakthrough, I haul my slovenly bones down to the Museum of Science and Industry for examination and possible extra-existential donation. It is to the memory of my Great Uncle Trafford that I dedicate this particular visit. As a little bratwurst I would yawn and ball as he took Barton and I around these very exhibits, explaining the inner doings of mysterious machines without which ‘we wouldn’t be here today’ (‘But I don’t wanna be here today!’ would come the wailing riposte). I see now how strong the temptation must have been for Trafford to place me inside the Toddlermatic, a fearsome, piston-heavy beast – banned only last year – which, powered by the vanishing souls of slum-dwelling infants, created perfect ice cubes for various sporting regattas down south.

Alone with sentimental memories in the transport hall it is a shock to see Bateman polishing what appears at first to be a giant silver cigar, dressed top to tail in leathers, from shining knee-length boots to peek-a-boo eye-mask (this is a flying machine, he explains, and pork pies are rumoured to explode at high altitude). Yearning for a return to the East and some sort of recreation (if such a thing were possible) of our endurance-themed holiday last year, the ‘man has decided to save on steam train fare and propel himself thataways by means of this elastic-powered airship. While it will be a stretch for Larry, DH or myself to find the time or money to join this foolhardy mission we would certainly be happy to twang our friend across the sea, I reassure the begoggled adventurer. We shall have to see who snaps first.

2009-05-08T17:15:00.003+01:00

Saturday 7 March

Lit by intermittent gaslight, as my tumbling horsedrawn gallops through the dusk towards yet another party, I take a good look at my hands for the first time in years. Prematurely veined, with the same blood-pumping deltas I recognize from my father's as a boy, I now notice my very first liver spots. Prematurely vain (as a teen I couldn't leave the house without an up-top slop of beeswax) it may surprise my older friends to know that I greeted this sight with a smile. Not of happiness - for who wants to be reminded of the receding years or hairline? - but of relief. An indication that some day I'll be able to give up worrying about my physical and sartorial elegance altogether; simply waking up and requesting the aged Miss Jordan cover my tummy-banana with a squirrel-skin sheath, or whichever rag we've been using to buff the grandfather clock, before setting out for a day of startling jetpack-wearing youngsters.

Am I making a serious point? Not yet, I don't feel quite old enough to and this is another reason for the smile. I am content with my lot (if not the world at large) in a way that would not have occurred to me in my younger days. I feel better, healthier, more positive, helped by the fact that much of the time I'm having an absolute ball. Yet one can't help but wonder about my generation's gentle approach to middle-age. Only ten years ago we were all munching on barndance biscuits and even now more seem to be taking up hazardous pursuits (e.g. marriage) than forsaking them. I don't imagine for one second that this lot will be making way politely for the next. I foresee their remaining hair being dyed bright pink, pensions traded for magic monkey juice; all night waltzing in mechanized bathchairs. This is truly a generation that will refuse to grow old, unless .......children....... once you have them it seems they refuse to grow old more vehemently than anyone else ever previously alive. ‘Send them down the mines’ is the learned advice of this increasingly wizened old tortoise.

2009-05-06T07:14:00.003+01:00

Fri 27 Feb

I was aware of Licky Shazhorn chiefly through the socioeconomic expertise that saw her first lending me tuppence towards an iced bun in the warehouse café, then trading hypotheses with Freddy Bangles and Earnest Groucho, two mutual friends from Germany who’ve been sniffing around the working class these last few summers. Renowned as one of the few women capable of taking on Bateman face-to-face (most preferring to simply smash him over the head, or up a dark alley, with a tea tray, from behind) it is Licky’s latent skills as nursemaid that are unexpectedly put to the test tonight.

Another work night out ends in tragedy

Perhaps the dry mouth that results from coughing up a last-minute public tribute to colleague and footer bud Hicks is responsible for my choosing Starjuice over champers at his well-stocked leaving do. If we are to blame the recession for my choosing the cheapest (and strongest) option at the Status Quo cocktail bar then how to explain mine and Licky’s buying double pints at two-for-one, and then drinking them twice as fast? Surely one for her statistical chalkboard and something for the more sober to muse over as cake is nibbled, cigars half-smoked, and the remnants tossed outside to my gentleman troll and his friends.

The party self-selects down Oxford Road to Cramped where, upstairs amidst the palms, screened until the last minute, Daisy joins us looking…Daisyish. Ever the gentleman, and to avoid any kind of misunderstanding, I am quick to dangle my new drinking partner over the side of the building – allowing Licky a comprehensive yet terrifying view of the freshly demolished Spa shop before we move on. Do I deserve punishment for such actions? Here it comes dear reader, despite your protestations. Innocently attempting to trip Licky over – several more pints to the good – I take a tumble, a single blonde forelock and several pounds of forehead smashing into an unrepentant Manchester. So the city had been waiting all this time, almost a year, since I Glasgow kissed Krakow in much the same way? Jealousy is a terrible thing, pride too, of which there is little as Licky dabs my wounds with just a smidgen more pressure than is strictly necessary.

2009-04-28T20:45:00.001+01:00

Wednesday 18 February

The cotton crunch may have bitten, but the ‘he-session’ has moved in for the kill (it turns out the ladies kept wads of loot and any number of part-time jobs beneath their billowing petticoats). In an effort to economize and help keep Miss Jordan in the lack of style to which she is accustomed, I forego the steam train and instead catch the Megacoach to London for an ostensibly educational visit (missing a lecture by one of my heroes more than he missed me). As my unconvincingly Italian father used to say, ‘What a mistake-a to make-a.’ Beginning my journey in a stylish lemon woolsuit I am soon sweated to tart discomfort – the primitive air-chilling system having literally backfired. By the time I reach Rosa’s in East London I am as delayed as a pre-booked carriage and my jokes are twice as hackneyed. No matter, I am soon cheered by beers at her local alehouse, exotic London made more so by the sense of urbane Europe she exudes. Only later do we dream of ragged, windswept Swedish islands, over cooking sherry back at her flat in the early hours. In between we meet an artist in a late bar and I am reminded of the gentle acts of artifice that oil the wheels of commerce and conversation in the capital much more than in crude, rude Manchester. It is perhaps because allies are rarer in a city the size of our capital that instead of dismissing the precocious middle-aged talent soon resting a hand on her knee, Rosa is all charm until we part when she makes it clear that in this town, on this continent, in this lifetime, she has no need of his contact details.

2009-04-23T21:40:00.001+01:00

Monday 2 February

Marks the start of a week-long stag do for my teetotal brother Barton which will culminate in double-clubbing on Friday and as close to an authentic hangover as I can possibly muster for the lad come Saturday morning. But like a groom being cast off onto an eerily silent lake, with no tangible means of return, rudderless, and with the only available wind organically sourced from his own raw bottom, Barton’s stay begins calmly enough. Womb, upstairs on King Street, is a restaurant of the highest order – a former Gentleman’s club only opened to women after a particularly political Belfast girl chained herself to the rice pudding, it boasts huge windows through which one may follow (with a soupcon of disdain) the ever-so glutinous shoppers that populate this part of town. As we scoop up scallops under gaslight, my bro-haha remarks that we could easily be mistaken for lovers who dare not speak their names. Yet in truth – our receding hairlines racing each other to 40 like two middle-aged, denim-clad celebrity charioteers – we have never looked more like siblings; our strong brows and lips still drawing the occasional fan (in Barton’s case, poor soul, quite fatally).

2009-04-21T19:14:00.001+01:00

Wednesday 28 January

A sad day for literature as Rabbit Dutchfinger departs this life for which his curiosity remained undimmed. Growing up, or failing to, it was always Jack Roadrunner who kicked, caught and ran with my imagination; shouldering near-peers onto the touchlines. A little older, it’s interesting to read the wider take of one respected critic – that while Jack was great on the adventures available to the free American man, it was Rabbit who possessed the compassion to consider what effect such freedom might have on the American woman (and/or child) he left behind. Obviously I cannot reveal my sympathy with this viewpoint for a few more generations, or in the pub, where ironic misanthropy is barely a whisker away from true feelings.

2009-04-20T21:21:00.000+01:00

Saturday 24 January

Off to Lancaster or, more accurately, off to the pub on the way to the station on the way to and the way back from Lancaster with Cameron and Jesus while in between crack medical team of Jefferson and Melinda Cake do their good doctor/insane cackling doctor hosting routine. No sooner has Jefferson added Polish beer to the trans-Europe expressway that is my stomach than Melinda has put me to bed and with this considerate act spared the pleasant plethora of party guests from my blurting of Miss January’s name for one small portion of the month at least. What she could not prevent was a small queue assembling to take daguerreotypes of my slumbering form. Apart from a few decades, and a slightly superior cape, the most recently dead pope has nothing on me.

2009-04-20T07:27:00.006+01:00

Friday 23 January

Q. What is worse than a three-day assault by a raving Scotsman?
A. When said guest is buffed to a prime only glimpsed (through a hedonistic haze) in our middle-‘20s when life was all shared houses and mutual hosiery.
A. When said guest has acquired an unpatriotic tan in his new home of Grenoble, has traded late night cabre-tossing for early morning boulder climbing and is consequently fit, ready and able to drink you under the table.

Yes, Cameron is in town, a bottle of bright green Chartreuse shoved into my trembling paws upon arrival, he is soon reassembling his Hulman army – no new models here amongst Presuming Ted (‘yeah, I’ve given up the drink,’ comes the deceptively reedy voice, ‘just fill half of that vase wi’ red. The flowers? I ate them. Thanks BB’), Jesus Jones (fond of a chat, the beard seems to filter out all but the best stories this weekend), Melanie (more tempting tales of Southern Abroadia), Dieter, Swish and their recent babba. Tonight’s climax sees me accidentally locking Cameron out of the flat while Bateman and I chase erotic shadows of our former selves in Macca’s Thumbs. Meanwhile Carmona tries to co-ordinate the men-children from faraway France via the Worldwidewotsit. It proves too much, even for one so experienced in controlling this particularly fiery breed.

2009-03-11T11:44:00.001Z

Thursday 15 January

My first crush of the year doesn't seem to be working out. As Tattetta tells me tactfully, if a woman wants to spend time with you, she'll find a way of doing so. If she doesn't, she won't. I rarely look at the 'problem pages' of Tatt's mechanical journal, lest I see myself within. However, following my every confession - whether relayed to her by pigeon or worldwidewotsit - I advise my solicitors to glance over her work and carefully calculate my commission. Ever generous, I will wait to collect my purse until she moves back from notoriously pricey London; not that this looks likely – she’s embracing it with treacherous lust, something I find myself never quite able to do, despite the tentative purchase of a Mollusk carte this year (allowing subsidized travel on anything steam or herbivore powered within 300 yards of St. Paul’s). Likewise settled in London, Mimi is undertaking a final edit of her book for Dodo and being lined up for interviews with select members of Fleet Street (Thackeray!; Parochipolitan). I expect the hacks, and soon the nation, to be steamrollered by the Northern ideas factory that is our Ms Pixel. Nearby Rosa, our Scandinavian inspiration mill, is enjoying luck more similar to my own– hacking heroically into the void while straining to save her suitors, rather than herself, or the bother.

For all the secure cells of friends my favourite part of London remains the handsome Camden drinkery where I take Sasha today, following a fleeting work trip. I like the fact that the place is just far enough way from the rush and push of the nearby souvenir shops; adore the wood and leather, the candle-lit smoking grotto at the back, the memories of drinking here with a new love, grinning like a Cheshire cat while dog-sitting for my Uncle in Hampstead. Most of all I like the way that I by now know the exact route from its exit onto Chalk Farm road to Euston and the train home. And the fact that Sasha buys our tubs of beer thereon.

2009-02-13T13:22:00.000Z

Friday 9 January 1864

Several years ago I lived, likewise a hapless bachelor, in a splendid flat in the hamlet of Hulme. One of my favourite things about this positioning was the ease with which I could stroll into town across a freshly-built, architecturally pleasing bridge. Something I liked less about Hulme was the sheer lack of people on the streets and it was this that helped prove my undoing one fine and crisp morning.

‘Been inside y’know,’ his ratty cohort told me.

‘Really?’

The troll simply grinned at me (did he have a gold tooth in those days?)

‘Yeah, know what for?’ he continued, rattily, ‘Throwing someone off a bridge.’

They hunched their shoulders in mirth, wheezed out a couple of constipated laughs. I looked around. No-one within three hundred yards, just apartment blocks old and new. I took out some silver. ‘Pound’. They snatched at the note and from then on, almost without fail, were waiting for me patiently on that now curs’ed bridge. Most mornings, most dusks, I paid my toll to the troll. It was still cheaper than the omnibus I told myself – the logic of the coward.

The next time I saw the troll he was in the newspaper – an illustration but unmistakably him (lurching forward, challenging the artist to capture the good in him). He’d been jailed for beating upon an ex-girlfriend. Nice. I shuddered at the memory, by this point safe in Chorlton Village (the only place I’ve ever actually been ‘thugged’) then promptly forgot all about this grotesque figure.

Five years on, three months ago – smoking a cigarillo outside my warehouse on a dark, deserted Princess Street: ‘Mate,’ comes his still-familiar Manc-Liverbird tones, and then his well-lived-in face is in my Dorian Gray, just a few choice fumes between us (for me, cabernet and stilton; for my date, the cider and bin surprise). ‘Can you help us out?’ comes the inevitable request. I do everything I can to stop our eyes meeting – anything to avoid rekindling the old relationship, my regrettable subservience. While you might suppose me long-forgotten to him, it is clear from his demeanor that – out of prison – he has taken to the street. And once on the street, no matter how much you knock back, you live and die by the memory of its furnishings and populace. Were the troll to know me again I might as well give him the keys to my flat, making him a cuppa while politely refusing the offer of his sleeping bag equivalent. The cigarillo is out, ‘No,’ and I am gone, pretending I live somewhere else, perhaps some blissful future society.

And then I saw the troll again yesterday, in this freezing weather. He passed me outside the House of Angles where I was waiting for Growler ahead of our walk to the footerball court. The troll always carried with him a dangerous charm, a grizzled worldliness that must have made him attractive to ladies that way inclined. Now he carries a ripped bag of bulging rags, wears a filthy, colourless coat; drags a bad foot behind him painfully. I move out of his way. He talks to another unfortunate at the entrance and then double-backs towards me. I swiftly pull down the hat, navigate him, find Growler has been waiting there all along and we’re off. Punishing, that’s what the forecasters call this weather – punishing. I don’t expect to see the troll again. Some holy fool or selfless soul will take him in, or he will die in a doorway without ceremony. And to think, we started this exciting year together. New year’s day and I decided to visualize some family history. A great-great-great grandfather, newly widowed, lived on Hanging Bridge Lane with his young son, many moons ago. Town was not unexpectedly quiet – I had the narrow lane to myself, made some sketches. Skeletal trees against a white winter sky and then, emerging from Cathedral Gardens, a hunched figure, bag in hand, shuffled past my late, great Uncle’s favourite pub, the Adi Dassler. I return to my notes. By trade the distant me is variously described as ‘lodger’ and ‘traveler.’ How tough must life have been back then? I unfurl the pound in my pocket and head directly for the sales.

2009-02-12T11:54:00.002Z

Saturday 13 December

The last wedding of the year is another success. Whatever your views on marriage – and I remain at least as uncertain as the women uncertain of me – there are few more romantic sights on earth than a bald, footerball-obsessed man in his fourth or fifth decade dribbling up the aisle to claim his bride. So it was with the Gaffer, earlier in the year, and so it is with Charlton of Chorlton today. I paint an unfair picture – both friends devise, improvise and heart-feel speeches more poignant for their lack of precedence; both lift the lid on just how much their beautiful ladies mean to them (the Gaffer – clearly drunk on the occasion – agreeing to lift the lid again every 25 years of marriage). Having prolonged the party with Bateman and Dylan at McCartney’s Thumbs last night, I am able to give Yolanda a full facial treatment on arrival – the alcohol on my breath drying her make-up instantly while simultaneously providing a complimentary shot of Dutch courage.

Barn Dance Bob mans the amplified musicbox once again, guaranteeing Jefferson Cake-initiated madness on a dancefloor over which he exerts total control. Like a despot squandering his remaining energy on the last night before revolution; like a kind of reverse-Nosferatu, Cake shows no mercy as he sinks his soft thighs into fang-sharp shoulders, holds his all-encompassing arms aloft and commands us: ‘Dance!’ The chaos is only assisted by Bob distributing inflatable violins amongst the throng – older members of both families left aghast at the sight of Dempson fiddling himself into a frenzy. Good days to me are seized, wrestled to the ground, then kicked under the fug-patterned carpet of the past. But as our shared dust settles, couples emerge: stronger, only momentarily confused, and able to give a lift home to those less decisive, or less lucky, than they.

2009-02-08T17:08:00.004Z

Friday 12 December

And so I think this mechanical journal – all creaking puns and sprung confidences – is over a year old now and I take delight in the fact that its purpose is still far from clear. It has been cathartic, of course; it has secured me a small book deal while simultaneously allowing me to lie gently but shamelessly into the ether, it has let me settle some scores, in secret, coded and occasionally blatant ways. Less selfishly, it has saved countless friends from many volleys of verbal flourishment in the pub (the small likeness of me in the top left of your canvas allowing far greater right of reply than the fleshed out me, three pints in and ‘on one’). It has been responsible for six relationships (none of them mine), three children (paternity case pending) and the reunion of a poor old blind man with his beloved lost puppy, Maximillian Schnell the Younger (so how does he schnell? etc).

But I suppose its main function, if you’ll pardon the unforgivable French, is as an aide memoire. Who knows where some apparently insignificant anecdote, recorded here, will take me, or a superficially better writer in the future? How would our highlights remain so vivid without the context-heavy filler; the stodgy day-to-day from which we rise like butter pastry to taste life itself? Unless you save and iron your newspapers (like me) I find it hard to believe you have found greater access to the momentous and the trivial in so condensed and retentive a format. It has been a pleasure, and has certainly stoked my own pipe, to provide your stodge and mine in neat but irregular servings. We will be sure to look back with pleasure – or mad regret.

Cotton Exchange Christmas Party Committee, December 1863

Yet if there’s one thing I’ve needed no reminder of – not since Barton and mine old days on the saggy peninsula – it’s how to have a party in someone else’s manor. Tonight, with the help of a Christmas committee consisting of the good, the willing, the lonely and insane, I have more than my fair say on the running of the annual bash at our beloved Cotton Exchange. The poetry stall does mixed business. Thanks to our efforts in finding the finest, cheapest wine (half a bottle each, plus beer, is about right for ‘Oh go on then’ inclined workmates) a great deal of the entries are illegible. These I would have taken for the ‘protest vote’ had I not uncovered a number of others composed wholly of fruity language and lewd suggestion. I switch to helping another Batson on the bar (and before you ask, this is no confusing Folies Bergères reflection but a genuine namesake: I save my heavy drinking for Crow 2). Having sent the charmed circle spinning erratically into the night, there is just time for a quick tidy up before we workers follow them out. I spy the chocolate fountain, bunged up in mid-flow, and wonder if it’s not a little like me after ten years in the same workplace, sweet as it can be.

2009-02-04T20:47:00.006Z

Monday 10 November

If you are alive and have at least intermittent access to a portable puppet show then there is a good chance that you have watched, or simply heard about, The String, the most addictive pastime to cross the pond since the scalping craze of ’52 destroyed some of the best minds of my generation and rendered others (myself included) struggling to regain more than a limp modicum of whisp. For the uninitiated the series is set in one of America’s infamous ‘hatless’ estates, just along the coast from relatively New York. Here the boundaries of good and bad, hatted and hatless, are blurred by the obvious corruption to be found in city halls (step forward Sir Dempson Makepeace) and the reluctant honour periodically perceived amongst thieves (behold Scarface and Shifty scrapping over the tab end I’ve just nonchalantly flicked from my window). The universal appeal of such unpredictable and more than occasionally violent drama is obvious and while some wait months for the latest script to arrive via carrier eagle, others flock to the Langworthy estate where Badger Box Office presents the unusual spectacle of local lads acting out the very latest scenes – not, thank Barksdale, as a result of some winsome youth theatre programme – but due to specially trained electric eels who swim over from the States, up the nearest canal, and spasm a cast of swarthy-faced miscreants into an uncanny recreation of life ‘on the corners.’

Introducing Gerard B Spittoon as ‘Omar’

As with many such miniseries, we are soon identifying our favourite characters, then identifying with them, then – if we are not careful – being identified as them by starstruck policemen and banged up in gaol (spelt wrong). Whilst my Russian ‘friends’ will no doubt return one day to administer their fearsome vengeance as I’m tied to a chair in a cargo ship, at least part of their mission will be to retrieve the advance copy of Grime and Bumishment I stole from them mid-parody. Reading this apparent amusement some weeks ago I grew a beard, an overcoat, a rubbish alibi and a manic grin before I knew it, becoming the scoundrel Raskalbotham almost overnight. Here, Larry Pekalowski is bearing an uncanny resemblance to a smooth-faced gangland overlord while Bateman, confounding expectations, has taken on the characteristics of McGuilty – a ‘cop.’ I’m not sure where it will all end – series five presumably – but if we don’t watch out The String will have us all strung up, unable to tell right from wrong, black from white: and then where will be?

2009-02-02T08:34:00.001Z

Wednesday 15 October

I hesitate to say it, because it means excluding myself on grounds of maturity, but the last people I would turn to in this city for any demonstration of raw humanity – by which I mean love, hope and good naturedness – would be students. My undergraduate days were spent on the mean streets of the West Midlands, in a small terraced shed-conversion, smoking hashish so dark that each toke represented twice one’s recommended daily intake of fibre; sharing a communal carrier that lived in a graffiti’d cage at the top of the road and spat in your face whenever you explained, weeping, that you wanted to get a message home to Mummy, but didn’t have a ten penny piece. I wonder how many of this generation’s slim-line carrier carrying, fat-bottomed, skinny-fitted, angular-faced mannequins ever had to live off their Uncle’s rejected Crimean rations (‘a little too dry, Mavis’) while saving up for an entire term to afford two hours goggling at the opposite in a cider pit the size of your horribly-stained handkerchief?

Such stereotypes are there to be busted. Shopping on Market Street’s cheap-as-frittes Eurodeli I linger improperly on the face of a young undergraduate. He has picked up a novelty item from the baskets in-between the sensible, nut-free items – an imitation steering wheel I think. His friend – another lank haired goon – is busy sifting through the soft fruit with long, languorous fingertips. There is something about the look on the face of this first specimen that can’t fail to warm my thirty-something-year-old heart. He is so proud of the amusing mime of which he is about to partake. He is so profoundly optimistic of its success. He is thinking no further ahead than the payoff to the gag. He is with someone he may not have known very long but someone he already likes more than any of the ‘squares’ back home. He has nothing to worry about but cheap fruit, cheap gags and – if they’re lucky – an amusingly shaped vegetable. Like many such Manchester inspirations it is the sheer simplicity (fools would say stupidity) of the vision that distracts me from all ills and sees me smiling directly into my soft pillow of overpriced loaf.

2009-01-20T20:10:00.000Z

Sunday 28 September

It is easy (as well as accurate) to blame our overseas allies for the fact that in many parts of a world so recently your oyster, dead-eyed sharks now lie in wait, incensed to something calmer and more horrible than madness by imperialist behaviors and as eager to bag a Brit as you might be a tiger or marmoset head for the clubhouse wall. It takes a certain amount of spunk to continue traveling indiscriminately, seeking peers willing to debate the sins of the father (not simply bump off the sons). We must remember that the alternative is isolation and regression. Likewise, even when it’s as uncomfortable as a bearskin hat in the desert, we must continue to support our brave soldiers overseas, if not every cause they fight and die for. Yet humbled are traveler and soldier alike as we read of far greater courage, displayed with a reckless logic that those bent on obliteration are too misguided to ever comprehend. Afghanistan has a long and troubled relationship with us; I wonder if the relationship between its men and women has always been so volatile. This week I read of a senior female policeman killed in a typically cowardly attack. Rumoured to have oft given those guilty of abusing women a good, informal battering, documented as having killed three men who had previously tried their luck, this time her assassins took no chances. Her colleague accepts she will be next. Many more will die before women are accepted into office. God is Great. We accept that not all causes can be so straight and true, so black and white, but we can at least equate its multiple heroes with the individual Western lives we take such great care in retaining.

2009-01-19T21:24:00.001Z

Thursday 25 September 1863

With an assumed identity – teacher – and a resolve for fresh beginnings I commence my course of study at Manchester Hackademy. As a purveyor of TMPUEBN (Teaching Manners to People Unfortunate Enough to be Born Non-British) perhaps I can circumnavigate the cotton crunch and even do a little good for a change. The world may yet open up for me, and while the dream of Daisy and me opening up a little school in Naples is long gone, there is still no reason why I can’t quiff my hair and travel to Cambodia for a year or two’s misadventure on my own. Four-and-a-half weeks long and as intense as an elevation ride with my half-dozen ex-girlfriends’ future fiancées, it says something for the quality of the TMPUEBN staffing and attitude of my coursemates that the closest I come to catatonic despair is when one tutor tells us that we’re sure to pick up this particular point later in the pub together. Pub?? We are as dry as I feared the Middle-Eastern students would be (nothing could be further from the truth. All our volunteer learners are resolutely charming, only turning to violence during the passive tense, where anger is the only available option). Thirty days later we are exhausted but qualified and the night out, when it comes, is worth the wait. But I can’t give up the day job just yet – I have my team of carriers to support, and Miss Jordan. And Miss Jordan has to support her burgeoning assets. But one day, on the not-too-distant horizon…

2009-01-18T21:42:00.001Z

Thursday 18 September

Food – I am gradually accepting – is key to love. A liquid lunch, fun as it may be, can dilute feelings if served up on too regular a basis, depriving a relationship of its more nourishing qualities. My all-too-brief season with Sally is peppered with trips to Manchester’s independent eateries while at home my gnocchi surpasses itself several times during the five minutes it takes to prepare. Eventually, while we can still fit into an elevation machine, it is time for us to call on the badger at the Milton Tower.

‘The poet?’ he groans down the drainpipe, ‘I hope you’ve at least brought your muse.’

‘I have.’

‘Then come up. Press 12 and 14 together.’

Byron’s top floor apartment is less bachelor pad, more eight bedroom single man’s solarium with space for his every illegitimate child and at least half of their mothers. Naturally, he lives alone, seeing no-one but the upstarts who run his business interests and the writers and publishers who promise him literary fame while hoping he sees fit to expand theirs disproportionately. Greeted by the occupant’s steam-powered butler – coal eyes glowing more in despair at his very creation than in warm welcome – I try to show no fear while gripping Sally’s increasingly podgy hand with my own clammy set of sausages. Finally our host arrives, through a trapdoor. The smoke clears. Startlingly, Byron wears a solid gold headdress of a type I have seen once before, in Manchester museum. It is based on Birdie Num-Num, the pagan god of pigeons. Horrifyingly, he is carrying a book of his own poetry.

‘I can see why you’ve made so many powerful enemies, Byron,’ I mumble bravely.

‘Silence,’ he barks metallically.

‘I have come to collect your dues,’ I murmur heroically.

‘Batson,’ he is speaking to me, but looking at Sally, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. And I don’t suppose you do either. Now let me read.’

About halfway through the incoherent ramblings of someone evidently high his own supply, Sally relinquishes her grip. I wipe my freed hand upon my pantaloons in a way that makes it clear to Byron that I am in no way aroused. Conversely, I haven’t seen Sally’s eyes this wide since we were served melted scallops at The Anglican. She practically staggers through the door afterwards. I have no choice but to follow, not a cent retrieved for my masters.

‘What is it?’ I demand.

‘Did you understand not one word?’

‘I didn’t go to Cambridge. I didn’t even go to the other place.’

‘Perfect. Perfect Old Egyptian. I’m afraid he has cursed my heart forever.’

‘In a good way?’

‘Yes.’

Our happy days of going Dutch are so destroyed.

2009-01-15T06:07:00.002Z

Batson facts #3: Gangs have always been a feature of Manchester life, as demonstrated by this menacing daguerreotype, found pasted to a gaslight on Tibb Street.

2009-01-14T21:13:00.001Z

Saturday 5 September

The Lively Postcards make their Manchester debut at Oldham Street’s 24 Hour Protection Bar. The eagle-eyed reader, coincidentally blessed with an elephant’s memory and a lonely moose’s lack of anything better to fill one’s head with, will recall my dreams of music management, and their beginnings at the Periscope’s end of season shindig. Barton’s band have a new promoter tonight and while the venue is infamous I can’t help feeling he could have promoted the evening a little better and, once onstage, given them at least some promotional candlelight with which to highlight their obvious talents. Luckily, the assembled friends do a good job of generating their own primitive electricity; that lustfully directed at Postcard’s singer Tobias Wolfhead of a less superior type than that crackling between Sally and I, I like to think. Which makes it all the harder to explain that she is required to attend at least one date with the notorious Byron Badger (to whose lair I must thereby gain access or risk the wrath of my Russian master, here downing margaritas at the bar). Still dealing with a world so recently defrosted it is lucky your dapper narrator is keeping up with such well-worn narrative threads…

2009-01-07T21:13:00.002Z

Tuesday 2 September

Time waits for no man, except, curiously, in the year of the Batson: 1863. From my angle (45 degrees, bent at the top) time has stood still for some months now. On my beloved Princess Street I have gone about my business as usual, always surprised to find the same carthorse mid-rear, hoof perilously close to that familiar gurning urchin, caught mid-scamper but still yards ahead of what appears to be a marble Policeman. Were it not for the funky and contemporaneous dress of my frozen peers I would imagine myself live in Pompeii. Today I touched a lady. She didn’t respond. Something’s wrong. While I sense the cotton crunch may by now be an enormous coal shitbag, the flying monkeys at the Exchange haven’t changed the numerals for months. The mechanical journal has been at rest – the whole worldwidewotsit mildewed – but fear not, while others basked in inertia I have been busy planning out my whole life between now and January 1864 (1864! Can you imagine it! Remember when we wondered what we’d be doing in..! etc) and feel confident I can follow its course almost to the letter. So wish me luck as slowly, as if after some distant, brutal winter, the rigid limbs upon the street begin to drip and thaw; horsey stamping some sense into the young man’s brains, a lady in the finest turquoise slapping me full across the face.

2008-12-01T20:30:00.003Z

Wednesday 27 August

A visit from Barton and his fiancé Marny – soon returning to North West territories even more remote, and possibly wilder than Wigan – do well to calm me before my interview for the controversial course of study I wish to partake of. While many Britons still feel the foreigner is doing little more than feigning ignorance of God’s own Queen’s English, I believe the savage requires some gentle persuasion towards the universal tongue, especially if he will cough up some shiny stones in exchange for native tuition. And so it is relief that after an improvised lesson to my equally embarrassed future classmates I gain a starting spot on the intensive TMPUEBN (Teaching Manners to People Unfortunate Enough to be Born Non-British) Certificate beginning late September.

Saturday 23 August

The annual ‘Modesty’ festival passes just outside the warehouse so I have no excuse not to view the outrageously tame floats and marchers who pass by, embracing the mute applause, paranoid glances and below-the-knee miniature flag waving of the heavily-disguised crowd (is that not Patty Persil, my first Manchester love, laughing heartily beneath an unconvincing beard?) The steps of my building are populated by a rum tribe of teenage girls, all holding aloft their modern little lithograph machines while liberally-greased, gripping it hard, I fire mine off at anyone worth blackmailing. Sadly it proves to be the Mayor in suspension belt and southbound platform shoes, not Byron Badger; nor could my nemesis do a better Queen Vic than Dempson Makepeace, plastered with slap but unmistakably himself, waving feyly from a clip-clopping carriage. I divert my gaze, blush for England and pretend to play with my telescopic tool as the Fire Brigade parades past in trousers a full half-inch above the ankle. It seems to do the job for Doris and Danielle, both of whom ‘Hoorah!’ with delight until their false moustaches fall off. Meanwhile the entrance to the warehouse itself is looking scruffier than during Scarface Jones and Shifty McQuiggins’ most recent sit down protest (‘less soap, more beans’ I think it was) as half-a-dozen strangers smoke black cigars and heavy shag upon the sacred stone.

It is time for some air. Or at least that is the old excuse. I crane my neck to see what remains of the cavalcade – Mad Richard and his snarling pack of pint-sized doggy war veterans – but, I must confess, I’m more-than-half looking for Sally Pepper who less-than-half-promised to join me here. With the efficiency we expect with a sigh from modern society, the bin men have soon moved in to clear up the abandoned facial hair, lippy and ripped military uniforms that are all that remain of the day. I troop up to the flat alone and discouraged and sit on the roof with a glass of wine, hoping the street cleaners can somehow summon Sally’s tidy figure. Then suddenly, with silent violence I am reaching for my rod. Down below: a straggler – clearly drunk I recognize him as a ‘hooray horseman’ of the Peterloo type. He barely notices as I fish a flowing blonde wig from atop his port-red dome. And all-at-once I have the prop required to enter Byron’s citadel of chaos.

2008-11-26T21:39:00.001Z

Wednesday 20 August

Mimi Pixel, whose famous mechanical journal has inspired my own, and whose career has worked in almost inverse proportion, has committed the conjoined artistic sins of success and deciding to move to that there London. Tonight we commiserate with Mimi in her South Manchester mansion, unable to point out the pure recklessness with which she trades it for a shoebox in the city of lost souls and odd, abandoned size 11s. But despite the gloom hovering just below my surface and the faces of Tattetta, Petra and Amy-Lou – contorted in sympathy – floating clockwise across my mechanical expression, there is essentially and undeniably, and especially after a trip to Bargain Barrels, every excuse to have a party. Soon all the teeth bared in congratulation at her book deal are tinted their regulation pink; awestruck schoolmates bid goodbye to Mimi’s own Mister Pip, and Sally Pepper finds no problem in bringing her own unique flush and sparkle to the proceedings.

I leave the festivities somewhat reassured, Mimi having informed me that far from being a secret agent, the fellow representing her in London conducts no more than literary espionage (there comes a secondary pang when I realize there is little chance of him helping me pin down maverick Russians and sabre-toothed badgers). Locating the wagon stop on Mimi’s sprawling estate proves difficult for Ms Pepper and I but eventually we manage to find the isolated pub near which nocturnal hooves pause. We would get a drink, we joke, but the place is abandoned beyond the symposium of drinkers locked inside behind night-black curtains that flutter only briefly then leave ourselves to ourselves and the journey back to garrets.

2008-11-26T09:07:00.002Z

Saturday 16 August

It will not have escaped the reader that in this particular year (1863); the year I have selected to share this glimpse of Manchester life via the medium of mechanical journal, I have frankly struggled to find a woman who will admit to being of same mind. There have been dark, enlightening incidents beneath closed bedding (though not many). There have been frustratingly innocent walks with tall strangers behind which straggled squat, filthy thoughts reduced to rags and mutterings. There have been dirty pleasures with pot-bellied, pipe-smoking ladies during which I have gasped and wheezed for nothing more than friendship. But on the question of which female acquaintance to lumber Byron with, and so begin the elevation of this dear monkey off my back, I am at a loss to decide. Or rather, there is not a great deal of choice and no-one who springs out and says, ‘I am thine BB, pray sacrifice me!’ as there was in the old days.

A pleasurable, if damp, afternoon, spent at a Brass Bandwidth event with Jill and Conrad in the outerskirts of town. Back in the city I find Bateman and together we canoe down the flooded canalway to Spike’s flat (all industrial chic and limited edition Spinning Jennies). A warm welcome from Spike and introduction to some of the characters with which he is working on his pilot puppet show, ‘It Ain’t ‘Alf ‘Orrible.’ As a well-known producer mixes Bateman a rum and banana cocktail he surreptitiously enquires of Spike whether the two drenched canoeists are together in more ways than meets the oar. With ‘Omosexuality some way below opium on the old tolerance scale it is some hours before we cease the awkward laughter that follows our host’s relaying of this tall tale. As we bid goodbye I feel something hard pulsating under my hat: it can only be a gem of a Batson idea taking shape.

2008-11-05T17:32:00.005Z

Friday 15 August 1863

Part I

It is almost preordained that as soon as my younger brother Barton comes to stay the flat is suddenly packed-to-bursting with nightwalkers of every disbanded gild, disinclination and disorder known to (normally) take turns harassing the good folk of this city. While last night was spent in near perfect pitter-patter with Pepper, I am stunned at the number of pigeons who circle us the moment I’ve assisted the Barton waistline from its sled. Wings vibrate against a wall of bright white sky, birdsong merges into one long disorientating chirrup; it is as though I am being given insight into some mad future world where communication is channeled as openly (but with a good deal more noise) as it is between my brother and his Lord. And as if to contradict the very diversity to which I testify amongst my friends, I note that each of their carriers wears the same miniature tux (‘awww’ coo the ladies), the same faux monocle as is de rigeur in this summer’s Pigeon Post. Are we to conclude that all my friends are as gauche and booze-ridden as each other? Perhaps inevitably when they are seen through the eyes of the abstaining Barton, however often he insists that they’re his eyes and we should dashed well leave them alone to make their own judgment.

2008-11-05T17:31:00.001Z

An Englishman's home is his castle - apparently..

2008-11-05T17:30:00.007Z

Part II

We catch up amidst the beams and await the party. Having Byron Badger’s bird confirm our later meeting allows me a chance to relay my news of recent happenings beyond the normal, of which Barton knows much. Just a few short years ago and ten minutes hence he would have been fighting for the wine with me and Growler; smoking recklessly on the sneering lip of the building with me and Brandon Blaque. Times have certainly changed, but whereas the last five years have seen me producing a smattering of new words, he has searched a plethora to locate just the one – albeit highly original in nature. It brings him peace without any notable loosening of the mind, which is all a man can wish for his dear, deepening bro.

At a rowdy Wig Bar, Ancoats way, we meet Mimi, Tattetta and Amy-Lou amongst a group of more alleged writers. While Blaque entertains the ladies with naval tales of sea monsters in Turkish baths I fade into a dark corner of the beer garden where the Badger awaits. I steel myself, getting ready to rob one of the biggest, yet least seen beasts known to prowl the Manchester undergrowth. What price a visit to his flat to read some more of my worshipful poetry?

My question hangs in the air like a bad simile. Tattetta has found us and nothing will prevent her telling us of a nearby club we simply have to attend. Byron waits patiently for her to depart; acknowledges her lingering smile with one of his own.

‘A date – with your woman,’ he tells me, before gathering up his enormous top hat and departing with a whistle between his gleaming incisors.

2008-10-30T22:34:00.002Z

Sunday 3 August

Early hours spent poking the fire at Daisy’s. Sadly she is staying with friends. It is Hogarth and I who sit round their outdoor wood burner, discussing life in the light of another departure (across the oceans, up the aisle or into the cells they go). Hogarth concludes I’m a hopeless writer; I inform him he’s a useless footberballer. We must have been drunk to countenance such opinions!

I wake on the kitchen floor, having slept on a latticework of crusts. Squinting up I see more stark and unsettling evidence of Daisy’s injury. Cups, plates and cutlery litter the surfaces along with stripy drinking straws – trademark of the invalid, or idiot. Hogarth has my sympathy (it was Daisy’s offer to keep things shipshape that forestalled his replacement of Miss Marsh, who famously ran off with the Vacuum) but Daisy my undivided. After a quick slurp from a watering can I make my way to her friends’ round the corner, one of whom makes the lass presentable while downstairs I try to scrape off whatever is making my tongue that shade of yellow.

My luck is in – not in the old sense of the cliché, but in escorting Daisy home, making her a drink (not forgetting the straw), setting up an old favourite on her portable puppet show, I gain a sense of selfless happiness, which isn’t quite the point but… we can chat without my lusts protruding for a change. For who would pounce on a defenceless woman incapable of using her arms? Whether you choose to believe me or not, I leave Daisy fed and watered and stocked full of the steely determination one forgets at one's peril.

2008-10-29T22:35:00.003Z

Saturday 2 August

Inspired by Ms Pepper, and her effortless fluttering around the palpitating heart of Manchester’s poetry scene, I decide to see if I can’t coax Badger out of his ivory tower with a gentle wooing, combined with a subtle appeal to his legendary vanity.

Esteemed Badger, could I cadge-a
Favour?

One I would return with interest to any likewise encumbered
City Centre neighbour?

Myself and worthy friends are launching a poetry pamphlet that may be of some interest and benefactors are sought but between you and me they are not a patch on you for who could be bolder and braver?

While those cursed with lesser constitutions might consider a re-draft, I simply haven’t the lifestyle to realize such niceties. The poem is passed to Mandy for delivery, along with a proposed meeting time & place, and I am off with Hogarth to Chorlton village to bid goodbye to Laughton, who aims to transport himself and his girl to New Zealand using only the power of gin. There is shocking news at the Shoebox Tavern en route; Hogarth breaking it to me that Daisy – his housemate, my hearbreaker – has broken not one but two of her elbows while tumbling from her penny farthing. Shocked, I send my most musical carrier; ‘mend these broken wings’ the message I wish to relay, before deciding that’s (quite) enough poetry for one day.

2008-09-26T07:36:00.005+01:00

Thursday 31 July

Approaching my mid-30s quicker than a runaway steamship heading downhill towards the equator, it is perhaps time I began at least a tentative mapping of the (presumed) years ahead. In the past, due to my contrary nature, it was very easy to plan what I wanted for the future: precisely what I couldn’t get. This led to any number of distracting and diversionary romantic pursuits over the last decade that have left me, this time on, exhausted, alone but – crucially – either still alive or enduring a vaguely underwhelming afterlife. So it is that I sit down tonight and construct an Excel worksheet from some old piping I find lying about on the roof. ‘Lifeplan 35’ I name the thing, a touch grandly.

With qualifications as abstract as my art it may seem rash to add to them but, in accordance with their global aims, my employers have offered to subsidize a course in TMPUEBN (Teaching Manners to People Unfortunate Enough to be Born Non-British) and it would seem churlish not to sign up, perhaps one day practicing abroad (I hear Bolton is nice this time of year). So there's something to place upon the crooked shelf marked ‘self-development.’ ‘Boozing’ and ‘smoking’ are unsurprisingly adjacent to ‘Cut down’ and ‘Give up’ spelt out in screws as old and rusty as the sentiments themselves; which is not to say that the evening passes without fresh achievement – for the first time in my life I succeed in cooking for more than two people. And who could be more deserving of my decapitated peppers (stuffed with bolog, topped with goat’s cheese) than my old Levenshulme friends, Louis and Rouge? Family, friends and music are discussed, as always when we meet; but the smoking is cut down, the beers non-excessive. Perhaps this is the key to plotting the years hence: maintaining a clear head, even if the final decision is simply to foggy it up again with future excess. From next door comes the howl of someone trapped in a cold shower; their approach to modern lusts a little more radical than mine.

2008-09-19T07:43:00.003+01:00

Saturday 26 July

In the same way that Byron Badger, so I’ve heard, will not get warm and fuzzy on his own supply, the shady philanthropist would no more countenance inhabiting the Northern Quarter, an area named in honour of his popular pot-based package, than I would backstreet Scouserpool. Yes, my bookish, hopelessly weedy reader, I have been compelled to begin my trailing of this enigmatic figure; to extract a bounty from him or face the mixed metaphors and organ rearrangement so beloved of my Russian friends. And here I am at the foot of Manchester’s newest sky-tickler, the all-glass Milton Tower, the thirteenth floor of which hosts Badger and his entourage. Having tamed the gorillas on the door using an old red-eye mind trick I am ushered into a velveteen elevation machine that makes my own look like Davy Jones’ locker. And it is with the sure knowledge that I should have seen it coming that I note shiny, mother of pearl buttons marked ‘12’ and 14’ but nothing to assist my pressing need to reach the elusive ‘13’. While considering whether or not to buy an oxygen flannel and face the stairs, a fortuitous carrier from Mimi arrives, summoning me to the nearby Briton’s Protectorate. Here a celebration of Mandy Candeur’s birthday is underway. While a good friend of Mimi’s, Mandy is also a member of Badger’s inner circle; one who has been trying to persuade him into more salubrious pursuits. Yet it is difficult for me to concentrate on her (beer) garden of delights when out-of-season and from a leftfield that still feeds half of the city springs unknown Sally Pepper, both bountiful and bounty-less. The rest is drink and talk and wondering how Mr Badger, despite his wealth, could have spent his evening more pleasurably. The twinkle of a moonlit telescope suggests he’s seeking inspiration.

2008-09-14T14:36:00.000+01:00

Wednesday 23 July

Not content with our colourful, occasionally lurid, set of Manc-made characters, often existing more for our own amusement than theirs, Bateman is deserting them and I for some weeks in the Mexican sun. Naturally I accuse him of gross cowardice, insinuate that he is simply distancing himself from a friend with powerful enemies; go on to threaten a civilian court martial which could lead to him being blanked at dawn (if either of us ever saw such a thing). In actual fact being guest of honour at a Day of the Dead parade, dressed as a skeleton while navigating scores of wailing foreign types, will probably be at least as frightening as remaining my right-hand man (though his main preoccupation is wondering which skin conditioner will best show off his bone structure). Tonight Bateman hosts a send-off at his apartment, or more accurately upon his smoking gallery (the first of many lapses). We may be high up but the tone is reassuringly low - DH and Bron providing the (outside) toilet humour while on departure I know not whether to worry more about Sydney’s short stagger down Oldham Street or Moony’s moonlit cycle to the shaky suburbs. Both make it home, I’m happy to report, while the latest transatlantic news is that while Bateman’s clipper appears to be manned only by a skeleton crew, the silhouette of his well-sculpted hair has been spotted off the coast of Cancun, its owner cackling at the thought of sordid adventures ahead.

2008-09-05T14:07:00.003+01:00

Monday 14 July

With what is perhaps my single most act of maturity thus far into adult life, I have decided to give up smoking. While the fatal health problems caused by biffing/jiggery pipery remain largely unproven, I sense that the roll-ups are in no way contributing towards my plan to live forever. But it isn't easy, the tobacco worm having grown to inhabit the armchair of my brain when not swimming its leisurely backstroke up and down the bloodstream. And from such a vantage point it may easily convince one that the two old fellows sharing a street corner gasper seem a rough outline, if not a complete picture, of health: a resemblance I could not unreasonably expect to share with them at that age. It is, however, a thesis that compels one to forget the third of the trio – perhaps the first of the gang to die, quite possibly some considerable time before, with an emphysemic cough relieved only once his ashes had joined the ether. It is a challenge and one I will rise to; the cutting down I have thus far undertaken only invites the first of the day (night) to produce a giddying rush not dissimilar to sniffing industrial glue, quickly followed by a morbid desire to chain-smoke my way back to grim-faced happiness. But a couple of acts before I give up the cigarette sponsorship (all those logos so effectively patching the holes in my racing britches...) – a last, massive cigar and a necessary dance with 'Miss Green' (and yes, I will inhale her perfume) in order to move as seamlessly as possible within Badger's squareless circle.

2008-09-05T09:25:00.004+01:00

Saturday 12 July

Forever clasping almost anything warm-blooded to her bosom, it won’t take Sanchez long to recover post-op in Miss Jordan’s mountainous retreat, but the warning has been heeded. This trio of intruders, like the baddies in classic puppet show Supersurf II, are winning the crucial battle of the skies and I must at least pretend to acquiesce to their demands. In fact I must DEFINITELY concede UNILATERAL and UNAMBIGUOUS defeat (let’s presume they’re peering over your shoulder, sweet reader). The cotton crunch means I cannot replenish the ranks of my exhausted carriers and today I find only Bilko fit enough to take my message to the crazy Easterners, one assuring them that I will befriend and then betray Byron Badger as requested (or not, should HE be reading this). I turn Bilko’s tiny, bespectacled head towards Sanchez in his quilted shoebox, thermometer in beak, reminding him that any of his clever spiel might spell the end of us all today.

With words dispatched, time is bought and I use it wisely: taking the wagon to Hebden Bridge with Swarthy Erick to camp it up in lush fields with old friends, the newly Francophiled (and bloody tanned) Cameron and Carmona. It is Carmona’s 40th yet she looks better than I’ve ever seen her, straining to control their continental pooch ‘Spirit’ while catching up with roses red & white. So here is yet another option for escape – the invigorating South of France (Cameron enjoys a 5-mile run each morning, pursued by the natives with pitch forks) – yet for all the rain and pain can I really leave Manchester again? If my standard of poetry drops much further I will be run out of town regardless.

2008-08-20T08:01:00.002+01:00

Wednesday 9 July

Mimi Pixel, my inspirational friend and comrade in the literary trenches of Manchester (sandbags stuffed full of rejected manuscripts) is off to London, armed with her dangerous first book, I Don’t Need Your Money to Bring Up My Boy Lord Archibald. Guaranteed to inflame the ultra-conservative and ultra-liberal crowds alike, especially if the puppet show adaptation goes ahead, I look forward to seeing both groups toasted; such bigots a modern (wo)man can do without.

Yet for all the shared excitement, the inevitable trips darn south, life here sans Mimi will be strange. To lose a friend from Manchester is unfortunate but not uncommon; to lose a friend from Manchester is like a red brick being looted from the very warehouse of one’s soul. My carrier finds hers in confrontational mood tonight. Mimi will be leaving with quill sharpened, ready to take on love and life. And while I may be tempted to join her, brandishing my stubby pencil amidst sundry southerners, I cannot flee Manchester for reasons less valiant than hers. I must stick it out until I too get the call – first finishing the Hatbox Project, then this mechanical journal; signing off my latest Dickensian/headian manuscript before ridding Manchester of those who would spread misery & mischief instead of love & head massages. Suddenly I need a lie down.

Seeming seconds later Sanchez is pecking me awake, a tiny silver banana protruding from his side-feathers. And thus the flying monkeys do return. A greasy caff of your choice, dear Mimi, should I survive the work at hand.

2008-08-20T07:19:00.003+01:00

Batson's facts #3: Byron doesn’t hesitate to hire his henchmen from amongst the world’s emerging superpowers. However, this is Bryan Chang from Ducie Street.

2008-08-18T22:10:00.002+01:00

Tuesday 8 July

Bateman calls for a life-planning session before a shy likeness of the world inherited from my great-great-grandfather, Clock. Of great-great sentimental value it is nevertheless difficult to scan as rather than purchasing a shiny new globe upon convincing himself that the world was less than flat (‘o’wise I were had run off t’ end o’ bloody planet taam ma baak wettled backwar’ forth, wa’ t’owt a bell’) Clock simply glued an existing chart to a lumpy old cannon ball/plum pudding (depending on which side of the family/you believe). The resulting gift-wrapped testicle works better as an abstract representation of how we all see our mortal coil most days. But eventually we succeed in locating Mauritania where Bateman informs me that despite the vast dryness of the desert, the coffee shops and the beautiful, buy-me-a-drink blue eyes of the Berber women, there is barely a snort of liquor to be found. The prospect of our traveling without a drink, in a country requiring armed escort (simply to protect me from Bateman) and where being sold into slavery can happen up to three times daily, is as appealing as peeing in a sandstorm. Or it would be if I hadn’t already exceeded the week’s grace so generously gifted to me by those who would have me rob the city’s most dangerously eccentric man.

2008-08-06T18:42:00.001+01:00

Monday 7 July

For obvious reasons I am presently keeping myself indoors, although for everyone else there is a motivation just as chilling: a ponderous anthem of dehumanizing rain for the second consecutive summer. If this is the slow, global toasting of which the experts speak, where’s the upside of the muffin? Where are the summer frocks and gauze pantaloons; the mere snips of garments designed to illuminate – through blinding flashes of pale skin – the seasonal dancing in the streets? I certainly haven't seen them. And when I have had cause to rummage around Miss Jordan's unnecessarily large chest (pinching her mothballs or borrowing that rubberized rolling pin) I find her outfits almost too petite to sate my nostalgia for the swimsuits of summers past.

The weather at this year’s Beechin’ Festival, Chorlton, was conducive to sitting round a solid oak table, holding hands with those not already struck by lightening. But despite the pleasure taken in briefing Ella, Erick’s long-term ladyfriend, on his numerous faults; in entertaining Mimi’s youngster with tales of untimely pet death, not all of life’s acts can be played out in the pub (one weeps). And so I must thank Tattetta for her soggy weeknight invites to numerous theatrical follies, in advance of her brooding reviews. Like Old Abe across in America, I feel the stressful preoccupations of the day quickly ebbing away once safely in my seat, however stimulating the person beside me or amusing those opposite, taking aim, having raided the props cupboard in jest.

2008-08-05T22:11:00.000+01:00

Saturday 5 July

Rosa makes a rare appearance in Manchester, bringing with her a calm and graceful Nordic logic that is immediately put to good use. For not without prompting will Bateman construct the furniture required to replace that looted last weekend by disgruntled, unpaid dwarfs. I make myself a cuppa in the mug shaped like a Cheshire cat (awarded to Bateman for being the biggest cheese in his school) and by doing so remind myself that while I may smile at his floor-based efforts, it is my multi-fractal brackets, sprockets and goggins that will be numbered if I can’t pay off our Russian friends. Yet when I’m not living in the moment (an ambition it took some time to fulfill) I’m looking to the past (to the eternal regret of my careers advisor, now retired) so for tonight, with our guest amongst us, it isn’t hard to put aside my future worries by eating Chinese and dancing like an Egyptian at the Mummified Kitten, a strip club on alternate nights (if I tell you Cam and Tam were shaking their stuff on the dancefloor, you’ll know the type of night it was tonight). Larry’s out late, smoothly pressganging us into the Paper Club, by which time I’m almost speechless, despite the best efforts of the regional boys to resuscitate me for a quote or two.

2008-08-04T22:32:00.000+01:00

Wednesday 2 July

I never get bored of running my feet all over my dirty old Princess Street; a large part of this attraction – somewhat perversely – I put down to her being claimed by so many, even if the deposits left upon her (multifariously thrown up by this journal) suggest she is loved by a relative few. I like the blend of nationalities – encouraged by its hotels, embodied by Chinatown; the nocturnal shift that sees the maritime boys and girls take over the streets or try to make a Rio of the Rochdale canal. Miss Jordan tells me I’m getting soft in my old age but should I find myself growing weary of strangers, I have faith in my bewitching wayfare to summon at short notice a friend from a past life. So happens today when Jemima, on her way home from shopping, spots me tramping towards the Eurodeli and jumps off a Latvian-pulled Omnibus to persuade me for a pint instead. Now treading on the very toes of our Princess, just before she becomes Cross Street, we head into the Watership, down near the scaffolding that we all hope hides our new town hall and square (the pièce de résistance of which, we are told, is to be a hot air balloon in the shape of Saint Nicholas). Beginning her career long ago as my gaoler, Jemima happily reveals her latest promotion (from suspiciously feminine PC to Sergeant ‘What you looking at?’) and I take advantage of her good mood to ask a favour: how does one discover on which roads the nocturnal Byron Badger strolls, the frequency with which he looks over his shoulder, and which of his friends are likely to come a-bounding from the shadows?

2008-07-30T21:47:00.001+01:00

six-hundred-and-sixty-six-to-six

Rushing in from Bateman’s eleventh-floor balcony harry Larry, DH and Bron hand-in-hand and of a pale subsumed disproportionate to the ale consumed. Saving time before diving for the bedroom, with its hardy glass partition reinforced by mist, they use Larry’s highly malleable face to express their collective horror while Bron’s striking, actorly tones attempt to vocalize it. Only Sydney is left outside, finishing a roll-up while stroking his Darwinian beard; a man eternally fascinated with history even as he risks becoming it. The lip-licking presence about to send him to his maker appears highly amused by this stance, so much so that the man-sized, cat-like beast hovering opposite him on two legs (as if to hover on four would be innocuous!) begins to mimic his every action and expression, even leaning over to steal a filter tip at one point. Such reportage I establish while taking cover behind the tallest dwarf but soon I am no mere spectator, my collars being felt by long, intelligent fingers before I find myself lifted to the ceiling.

‘My money please,’ coos a smooth, calm voice, spiked with foreign.

‘Of course, the bet,’ I play for time but the chips are down.

Shaken from side-to-side with an almost apologetic cruelty I find myself wishing more than anything that my friends were circus strongmen, dragoons, axe-wielding hobgoblins, or at least into the equivalent role-play. Instead I hear Bateman offering our tormentor all the hair-restorer he requires. And is that shirt from Paul Smith it really suits you? Time for diversionary action.

‘I don’t have the money now,’ I splutter, ‘It’s in my own apartment, in the form of coal bullion. If you like I can take you-’

A third figure appears while the second remains unseen to me. At first his tweed suit and moon-shaped glasses reassure me somewhat. Could this even be an Englishman? He opens his mouth to display cracked and jagged teeth, the tonsils behind them bloody and pulsating. So far so good. But then comes his voice: educated and distinctly Eastern.

‘When he says your money,’ the odd-bod intones, ‘he means the money you’re going to steal for us from that double-crossing, TB-spreading Byron Badger.’

‘Oh him,’ I mutter, ‘he’s a right-‘

‘Or else,’ comes a purring from outside, ‘you end up like your landlord.’

And there is poor old Mister Vladimir – who wouldn’t impale a fly – strangled with his own rent book, dangling from the balustrade of the terrified young girls’ opposite.

2008-07-29T22:24:00.001+01:00

sixty-one to nine

DH, Sydney and Larry arrive bearing beer and bantering in their thick, Northern Quarter accents. The game, in the absence of any European guests, takes on a secondary nature: the dwarves that Bateman has hired to interpret the action barely hiding their contempt for a noisy and distracted audience. I answer a knock to the door while over my shoulder continuing to speculate with our host about the probable effect of the cotton crunch on the price of olives. But even offering Dave Gorman the last sautéed shrimp won’t take the look of constipation from his unusually strained features.

‘What is it man?’ I ask, google-whacking him on the shoulder, ‘You look like you’ve seen our landlord.’

Dave begins to shake violently, whatever nibbles we offer him soon ending up all over the dwarves. Shielding him from their increasing anger, I assure him we’re all friends here.

‘They’re coming,’ he whispers, finally, ‘Coming to collect their winnings.’

‘Who?’ I snap back, finding out seconds later but not in an it-all-happened-so-slowly-like-in-a-dream kind of way. In actual fact – and in real time – events were about to unfold so quickly and bizarrely as to make gradual hair-loss seem comparatively normal.

2008-07-25T16:19:00.001+01:00

seventeen-past-seven

Nervously nibbling pickled garlic, comfort food of the foolhardy, Bateman repeatedly repeats while telling me for the first time the supposed truth about this, that and (especially) the other. Like myself he went to an all-boys school, something difficult to wish on one’s own worst enemy, a part that Bateman has been flirting with in recent days, but while the A-grade hang-up I achieved was a freakish fear of ruggerball (and thereafter of such perfectly usual preoccupations as caning corrosive curries, waggling genitalia in all-male environments and biting the ears off your inferiors in confined public spaces) with him it was hair. Born with a Charles II perm, Bateman’s hirsute appearance made him the envy of master and servant alike; his status as a pin-up boy, advertising everything from school plays to garden fêtes, eventually provoking an attack of jealous rage from his numerous betters and worsts. Hiding up the nearest tree wearing impractical beige pantaloons, I can only imagine young Bateman’s fear of the mob as they bent back that mighty willow before catapulting him head-first into Blackburn’s deepest hole.

‘Since then,’ he looks out the hair-obsessed town; at the fashionable centre-partings of a thousand thatched rooftops – dwellings where every man, woman and child would kill for a moustache as lavish as mine, for ‘pit hair of such softness, ‘I have relied upon certain products to keep the follicles frolicking, so to speak’

And once again appears the vial of purple liquid, brandished a touch more modestly this time.

‘I’ve been developing this with a couple of underground sources,’ Bateman continues, ‘I’d already had an advance from McCurly and was on my way to see him with a sample when you suddenly and inexplicably…’

‘Hold on,’ I interject out of my seat, ‘first sample of what?’

‘Hair restoring potion. Top secret. But I should have told you BB, as a friend, and as someone likely to mess everything up if not fully briefed.’

‘Why didn’t you?’

‘We were in Poland,’ Bateman glances out at Hair Tower, the latest fully-woven skyscraper in an increasingly furry Greater Manchester, ‘I noticed your hair, like mine, was disappearing after a fall. I thought you might try to steal the recipe, out of mad desperation.’

‘Do I look vain?’ I ask.

‘It’s like looking in a bally mirror,’ Bateman replies before smearing a steaming purple blob into my forelocks, ‘Except I’m obviously a lot younger and hairier.’

So all is well between us and there is time for laughter and loose ends before the other guests arrive. What of Shifty and Scarface? Trained chemists I am told, moonlighting at the warehouse by day then developing the ‘product’ by night. I point out that many prominent evil doers have begun their working lives as chemists; would Shifty and Scarface also be expecting state funerals? Perhaps, but back in their native St Tropez, Bateman suggests, for their real names are Yves and Laurent. Stereotypes disguised as clichés I muse: ingenious!

2008-07-25T08:40:00.002+01:00

Sunday 29 June 1863; thirty-one-past-six

If I was poisoned by one of Dave Gorman’s crew of motley market manipulators they will surely rue the day. Honed in the doorway of Miss Jordan’s bedchamber for much of the day, the cough is working overtime this evening as I make my way round to Bateman’s – released on bail and determined to ‘explain everything’ before half-time in tonight’s Euro ’63 decider. Whoever is responsible for the strange, occasionally lethal misdemeanors of the last few months is soon to encounter my deeply-throaty, intimidating hinting as I seek out the clues that will finally send them ‘darn’. And like a hunky punter in tight-fitting fluorescent coal sack on the prowl about Lion Lion, glancing at his bling-encrusted pigeon for a time check and hearing it’s only just gone midnight, I am keeping my options open. To persuade them from their Russian roulette and craps (two activities I’d have no problem combining, were I gambling man) I have given Gorman and his cohorts irresistible odds on a Spanish victory, but on condition they attend the soiree; DH, Sydney and Larry are also expected in spades. Should everyone show up we will already have a dangerously overcrowded balcony, eleven floors up, overlooking the city, yet my money is on an uninvited guest or two swinging by before the day is out.

2008-07-21T22:46:00.001+01:00

Saturday 28 June

What do people do in Manchester? Skim-reading this mechanical journal may grant you the impression that we drink a bit too much and you would not be wrong but I hope the occasional entry may also convey the delight that drinking just the right amount with just the right amount of quality people can be; something I am not alone in searching for yet a situation I am happy to encounter with a serendipitous regularity. A Hatbox project meeting last night is a happy case in point. Or it would be if such an example d’esprit didn’t also illustrate the near-impossibility of encountering the mythical night sketched loosely above by leaving such a situation at its peak; that is before – in the hope of prolonging the evening – you find yourself having over-indulged yet again, a fact that looms as large as the impending day mid-way through your series of hoary impressionisms of Italian-American actors.

‘With every high there’s a low’, a lyric refrain in many a skinny Mancunian folk singer’s tattooed armoury. Never a truer word was spoken in a city with a climate uncannily adept at reflecting your mental condition. But the hardy city dweller cannot simply rue the loss of last night’s magic beneath trembling silk blankets like some Parisian garret-dweller. No, if he or she is to be depressed they must examine their malaise; sniff, taste, feel and explore it, for that is the spirit of industrial curiosity they have inherited from their forebears. As such this morning I stride out and into my town, deliberately selecting the streets and shops I find most gloomy and distasteful in search of perverted salvation. It seems my friends have inherited similar good sense, for there is Bateman, just ahead of me, breathing the same pasty-flavoured air that inhabits every nook and cranny of Market Street’s most notorious shop shanty town.

What’s he carrying? My heart skips a beat (something it can ill-afford to do in this condition). Poking out of a brown paper bag is the unmistakable snout of a bottle brim-full of that infernal, and inflammable, purple liquid. Where’s he heading? Straight for McCurly’s Hair Design & Sculpting to the Stars. Revenge? Surely no bad quiff is worth that, yet Bateman strides purposefully on. I summon up all of my remaining energy, cursing that last pint of Starjuice. I scatter deep-thinking and zombified shoppers alike in my quest to catch up with my nemesis, then I shout in my basest American:

‘Look out McCurly, he has a bomb!’

Panicked, Bateman holds the bottle high above his head, sending it sliding across the arcade only as I rugby-tackle him to the ground. As he threatens to protest I stuff my half-eaten pasty into his anarchy-ridden gob. Ironically, given past exploits, it is Jemima who stops the spinning bottle via a size-seven hobnail, picking up the damning evidence with a triumphant smile.