My Year in the Avant-Garde

I was still sixteen in May, 1982, and things felt as though they were moving, artistically speaking, even if I wasn't quite sure of their direction. I'd produced my first cassette of formative industrial music made by hitting a bedspring with a pencil, then taping over the end with a sinister sounding television news report about a local man arrested for terrorising ducks; Rod Pearce of Fetish Records had told me that he would give my tape a listen, which I'm fairly sure he did because that was the last I heard from him; and I'd joined some sort of avant-garde band on the side.

The invitation had taken the form of a postcard pinned up in Renton's Records in Leamington Spa, which seemed to be the only place which stocked music by the Residents. Persons wanted, it said, for avant-garde band based in Stratford-upon-Avon. I'm paraphrasing but the request definitely specified avant-garde, which I'd recently learned referred to artists such as Karlheinz Stockhausen and myself. I phoned the guy, who told me his name was John Mullins. I said that I was a guitarist, roughly speaking, and he assured me that musical ability wasn't really a consideration.

My best friends at the time were Eggy and Graham, and Graham had an older brother named Martin, occasionally known as Peewee for reasons I didn't quite follow. I never saw much of Martin but regarded him as an elusive and mysterious role model. He had an amazing record collection comprising albums by Alternative TV, Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle, Faust and others, and on the few occasions when he spoke to us, he always said something cool. Additionally, he played bass in the Abstracts, who were amazing and who impressed me most by being the first band I heard where the bass and the guitar seemed to be playing two entirely unrelated yet somehow complementary parts of a song. Just this year, someone on facebook shared a photograph of the Abstracts taken at the time, and it was kind of shocking to see three grown men with some little boy. The little boy had been Martin, and so at last I understood the nickname. This realisation brought with it the understanding that Graham, myself, and my other contemporaries must have seemed like foetuses to those older kids.

I mentioned the possibility of my joining the John Mullins band to Graham and he told Martin, and Martin was surprised because he knew John from school and knew him well. John Mullins, so I was told, suffered from epilepsy, which worried me because I didn't really understand what it was. What little information was passed onto me from Martin suggested I should proceed with caution for reasons which remained unspecified.

My dad dropped me off in Stratford-upon-Avon on Saturday the 15th of May, according to my diary. I bought some blank tapes, the 12" single of Temptation by New Order, and borrowed an album of Stockhausen's Stimmung from the local library, after which I went to meet John Mullins at his parents' house in quite a nice part of Stratford.

John was tall, distinguished, fairly handsome with floppy blonde hair and glasses. He dressed like a concert pianist or someone who had been to one of the better schools, which I suppose he had given that he knew Martin. He seemed intelligent and witty, someone who probably wouldn't respond to fart jokes, and I tried hard to avoid coming across like some immo - as was Mark Harrison's blanket term for the terminally immature. It was therefore probably fucking lucky that I'd chosen that day to check a record of Stockhausen rather than Blaster Bates out of the library.

Naturally we talked about music. I think he may have mentioned Cabaret Voltaire as a potential influence on the phone, to which I had responded favourably. Now I had to admit that I hadn't actually heard anything by them, although I was a big fan of Throbbing Gristle, of whom John had heard only very little. He played me The Voice of America, which I found electrifying. He'd just bought their most recent album, 2X45, but said he'd found it disappointing because they hadn't fed the drum kit through any special effects. This led directly to tracks from Soon Over Babaluma by Can. I'd never heard of them. I was impressed by the cover printed on some sort of foil, but I found their music underwhelming then as I do now. This, John suggested, was the sort of thing he was hoping we would play, something in this general vein.

As the morning swung around to noon, Andy turned up with Vanessa - whom I took to be his girlfriend. She was still at school and presumably the same age as me, albeit more emotionally developed, as seemed to be more or less everyone else in my age group. Andy was the other guitarist. Vanessa briefly left to retrieve Paul from the pub, and Paul turned out to be Paul Gardiner, the drummer from the Abstracts, which I found massively exciting. Paul brought someone called Henry with him. Henry was into Queen and Ted Nugent.

John directed us in a couple of extended jams, himself accompanying us with funky bass and prepared tapes of short wave radio noise. The first piece had a vaguely Latin feel, which we followed up with something in C major, which I noted in my diary without quite understanding what it was. My job was to agitate my guitar by scrabbling fingers across the strings like a spider, slowly allowing two particular high notes to emerge, to chime like a bell. It was all a bit of a racket and I found it hard to tell whether what we'd just done had been amazing or shite. I wasn't getting much feedback from the others, who possibly regarded my presence as puzzling - a sort of foetal scarecrow from one of those Deliverance themed towns on the way to Oxford. Anyway, John seemed approximately happy, or not actively displeased, and proposed another session on Tuesday evening.

He phoned me once I was home from school on the Tuesday and  said the session had been cancelled due to something about Andy being crap, but he would let me know as soon as anything else happened. This was kind of weird. I'd assumed that if anyone was crap it had been me, but Andy had apparently kept sneakily introducing tunes to our improvisations. Additionally he'd been playing in time with the percussion on the second track despite having been expressly instructed to do otherwise.

My diary records that John and I spent one afternoon in June messing around with reel to reel tapes, although I don't remember it.

Another few weeks after that, he let me borrow a stack of albums as clues to where he was coming from, musically speaking - Cabaret Voltaire's Red Mecca, James Blood Ulmer's, Are You Glad To Be In America?, plus Gruppen and Carré by Stockhausen. He told me he had a gig at the Green Dragon on Tuesday and that I should come along and see; so obviously I wasn't in the band, whatever it was, which was something of a relief as I still didn't really understand what John was trying to do. If he had some great vision, it wasn't anything I recognised.

I didn't go along, and Martin relayed that it had been a bit of a disaster with John pissed to the point of being unable to stand whilst hectoring the audience to vote Labour.

We didn't really speak to each other over the summer. I was too busy shitting myself over having left school, feelings of alienation, and all the usual stuff. I was feeling particularly alienated by Eggy who had taken to referring to my seemingly sophisticated friend as John Muggins. Eggy had become somewhat Cromwellian since leaving school and had delivered at least one speech in which he lambasted the sort of people who can record a piece of music which is just one note going on for a hundred hours and yet who don't know how to make a cup of tea. He wasn't naming names, but he didn't really need to. It wasn't like I was even listening to much Stockhausen myself, let alone forcing it upon him or going on about it; and I actually made a pretty decent cup of tea.

By September I was at the South Warwickshire College of Further Education in Stratford retaking all of those 'O' levels I'd messed up. Happily this meant occasionally bumping into John at lunchtime, going for chips, or maybe just a pot of tea in the second hand bookshop at the end of Henley Street. We talked about music, or he talked about politics while I listened. We both seemed to understand that our band was never going to happen and was therefore not worth discussing. Being politically naive, I'd heard somewhere that Tony Benn wanted to abolish private property, which obviously upset me given how long it had taken me to build up my collection of twenty albums, not to mention all of those back issues of 2000AD comic.

Our conversation therefore ground to a massively awkward halt when I told John I wasn't too sure about that Tony Benn. Strangely, he didn't set me straight, which was either down to his good manners, or that it didn't seem like I'd yet developed the brain capacity necessary for any sort of understanding.

Our phone calls and random encounters became more and more infrequent, eventually reducing to just a series of anecdotes. He was living in London. He was working as Peter Tatchell's secretary in the run-up to the Bermondsey by-elections. He was dead, an alcoholic, or had been almost incapacitated by his epilepsy. While I remain ignorant of his eventual fate, I can entertain the thought that maybe things worked out well for him, because he was a nice guy and I wish we'd known each other better. We may not have much more to discuss now than we did then, but he made my teenage years a good bit more interesting than they otherwise would have been, even if I still, to this day, don't really understand what any of it was about.

I hope he found whatever he was looking for.

Feud

Since moving here, I've done more or less all of the Texan things which establish oneself as part of the San Antonio landscape. I've eaten chicken fried steak. I've experienced the music of both Selena and George Strait. I've been to a Spurs game, even though I found it massively underwhelming. The only thing left seemed to be feudin' with hornery types, and now I've ticked that one off the list as well.

It was a routinely horrible morning at the beginning of 2020, routinely horrible because the year didn't really get off to a great start with three deaths amongst friends and family, one relative sent into something of a tailspin by the same, the demolition of the house in which my wife used to live - apparently because the new owner just wanted something in a different colour - a traffic citation, and the aforementioned wife suddenly finding herself obliged to work from home because the company decided it could make great savings by giving the office space to someone else. Then, as I take out the trash I happen to notice Squidward out in his yard.

'Good morning,' I call.

I won't remember the reply but it's something testy about how he's engaged in the activity of gathering turds produced by our cats which have been deposited upon his property, or at least his landlord's property.

Okaaay, I think, and get back inside.

Squidward has lived here since before we moved in. He used to star in a popular children's cartoon series and I believe he worked in seafood retail but is now retired.

Ten minutes later he rings our door bell.

'Sorry about the snide comment,' he says, 'but you've got to understand my problem. I'm asking nicely, so what are you doing about all the cats?'

We have a number of cats, although not all of them belong to us. Most of them are feral or stray cats which we feed because someone has to. The population is fluid, more than ten, but not too much more. Some of them roam into Squidward's garden from time to time because they're cats and it's cruel to keep them cooped up inside.

We work with people from the San Antonio Feral Cat Coalition, which is recognised by the Animal Control Services of the city council, to make sure all of our ferals and strays are spayed or neutered, which usually reduces the nuisance factor unless you just plain hate cats. I've told him this before, suggesting I'm fine with him hosing any that wander into his yard so as to deter repeat appearances. I bought him a bag of something called Silent Roar, which is also supposed to deter feline incursions.

I've heard his objections before and I still don't know what he wants me to say. Maybe he wants me to concede and get rid of them or have them all put down in accordance with what is presumably his idea of a good neighbour.

'I mean I wouldn't mind if it was just one or two,' he says, and I immediately recall that he clearly did mind when it was just one or two. He's been at us since we moved here, not often but just enough to form a pattern built up from just about every conversation I've ever had with the man.

Our first encounter was him welcoming his new neighbours across the chain link fence which divides our respective yards. The welcome was a detailed account of how terrible the previous tenants had been, three young guys who partied hard all of the time. This one always puzzled me because the mail we still get for the previous tenant is all addressed to Maria Ramos, a young single mother who lived on her own with just her kid. This is how everyone else in our street remembers her. No-one remembers the three party dudes. Not even the landlord was able to remember the three party dudes, because we asked when we bought the house from him.

Then Squidward wanted to know whether we were leaving food out for vermin - raccoons and opossums. We weren't, but he established the theme of the great interest he takes in what happens in our yard, the one we now own. I find this odd because generally I've never given a shit what other people do in their own yards, so I find it difficult to imagine that sort of mindset.

Yet here he is again.

He tells me that he's just sold one of his three cars - which I presume would have been the one with the personalised licence plate. The buyer complained about the paintwork having been scratched by cats. Online research suggests that this is actually impossible. Cat claws lack the necessary density to make a mark on automotive paintwork just as I'm unable to scratch the paint of a car with my fingernail, excepting obviously shitty paint jobs where some hillbilly has brought a can of emulsion back from the hardware store in hope of recreating the vehicle from The Dukes of Hazzard. Casual scratch marks left upon vehicles almost always turn out to be from trees, so it is generally believed.

As we have our conversation, such as it is, he takes a call from the disgruntled buyer so I have to stand and listen, wondering if he actually does want me to promise to have them all rounded up and euthanised. He clearly believes it's an option.

The city of San Antonio has a no kill policy regarding feral or stray cats, instead having opted for TNR - trap, neuter, vaccinate, and then return them to wherever they were found. The policy was adopted on the basis of it being better to manage stable cat populations which aren't going to produce a ton of kittens, for without stable cat populations, unstable cat populations tend to move in, bringing with them all the fucking, fighting, disease, and territorial marking you get with un-vaccinated, un-neutered cats.

Squidward gave me a heads up as I was heading out on my bike about a year ago. 'Hey, just a heads up,' he said. 'There's been an Animal Control truck seen in the area. They've been picking up any cat they find and euthanising them on the spot, so you might want to keep your guys inside. I'm telling you this as a friend.'

Even at the time it sounded a little like the five-year old who has definitely just seen a real dinosaur.

More recently he suddenly had a daughter who was going to get rid of her two beautiful cats after ten years, and did we know anyone seeing as how we're obviously cat people and all?

It was a weird question. The daughter was living hundreds of miles away, and it seemed odd that someone in San Antonio had been picked as the potential solver of this apparently knotty problem. It seemed odd that she somehow lacked the ability to seek adoption in her part of the country; and the description of beautiful cats sounded very much like the words of a man trying too hard to impersonate someone who has no problem with cats. It felt as though the answer he was rooting around for was, hey - we'll take them, we love cats, we need as many cats as we can possibly get our hands on.

The thing is, we actually don't want that many cats but here they are, and there were at least five already hanging around when we moved to this street. When it's practical we find homes for them, as we have done over and over. We didn't bring the raccoons or opossums with us either.

Back in the here and now, he ends the call and says the same stuff all over again. I still don't know what to tell him. We can't do anything we're not already doing.

'That guy who lives next to Donna shot someone in the head a few years ago, right inside their house,' I tell him. 'You remember that? I mean with all due respect, while I'm sure we're not the most amazing neighbours in the world, I don't really see how we can be the worst.'

'I think very highly of you.' He seems slightly stunned and is pulling back, trying to be the nice guy again. 'We're very fond of the both of you,' he adds to no obvious purpose, then leaves.

A few days later we get a letter from Animal Control Services. Someone in our neighbourhood has registered a complaint about property damage and nuisance animals, but it's a form letter naming no names, adding that we should ignore it if it doesn't apply to us.

We talk to Susan from the Feral Cat Coalition. She works with Animal Control and warns us that we should expect a visit, and also that Squidward has filed a claim against us with the small claims court for property damage, a claim which didn't go anywhere due to lack of evidence seeing as he'd already sold the car, despite it having apparently been reduced to scrap by cats.

We spend a couple of days shitting ourselves. We've all seen Animal Cops Houston.

Animal Control turns out to be one young woman who turns up in the truck. She's a cop and actually very helpful. The city is mainly concerned that strays are subjected to the TNR process, which all of ours have been, and that we're demonstrably making efforts to reduce potential nuisance - for example leaving sandboxes around the yard to draw the production of cat poo from adjacent properties, which we do. Having been satisfied that we're not the sort of people who end up on episodes of Animal Cops Houston, she leaves and puts in the necessary good word by which we are able to apply for a cat colony license. This means that providing we TNR and otherwise stick to the established rules, we can have as many cats as we fucking well want.

I never had a strong opinion regarding Squidward, beyond thinking there was something a bit unpleasant about him. Now, however, he's pretty much revealed himself for who he is behind the unconvincing nice guy persona. Donna has told us he once called the cops on her son who was playing his radio too loud, so loud that the walls of Chez Squidward were apparently quite literally shaking. Everything about him seems fussy, suggestive of a privileged upbringing which failed to segue into the riches and status he probably believes to be his due, which is why he's reduced to living around here. He'd clearly rather live in Terrell Hills surrounded by doctors and dentists, prissy older women with face lifts, a better standard of person, people who touch base or give you a heads up, somewhere with a neighbourhood association to prevent scumbags such as ourselves moving in.

I've seen our cats in his garden, but they mostly stay away, and I find it difficult to believe in the hundreds of steaming turds with which they supposedly bespoil his beloved driveway on a daily basis. I suspect it's more likely that he simply hates cats and is too finely attuned to how others may impact upon his existence. Anyone living in a town or a city will probably have neighbours, and one has to make allowances for the same or else fuck off and live on a private estate with a high wall around it.

Our cats are all neutered, excepting the Wombat whom we have as yet been unable to catch. There's not much fighting, not even much bird destruction going on - contrary to the received wisdom - and not much, I would argue, to get all snitchy about. It's not like we have a fucking meth lab in the garage.

The next day, a tiny grey cat turns up on our door, a living skeleton who has been seen up and down the street for weeks, getting  more and more emaciated by the day. We haven't been able to get near her, but hunger has evidently overridden her fear, and here she is. We get her to eat, although she can't handle much at first, and over the next couple of days she gets stronger and begins to fill out a little. Once she's up to it, we'll get her neutered and take it from there, maybe see if we can't find a good owner as we've done with previously rescued kittens. Once inside our home, she's friendly, and too friendly to have been just a stray. Most likely she was dumped by some arsehole.

I've never been the sort of person who can simply walk on thinking fuck it - someone else's problem, and I don't understand anyone who is, at least where animals are concerned. I don't understand anyone who sees a cat, raccoon, opossum, stray dog, or any form of wildlife, domesticated or otherwise, and whose first thought is that had better not shit in my yard. On days such as today I tend to think such persons lack empathy and are as such incomplete human beings who probably shouldn't be allowed to raise children.

I am resident in America thanks to a green card and my whole life is here. I'm reliably informed that criminal convictions of any kind don't look great when reapplying for a green card, or even seeking citizenship, and I live next door to a man who calls the cops because he can't get along with others.

I don't think I'll be having much to do with him for a long time.

Robot Monster

We've been given a pitch at Robot Monster; we being my wife and myself, and Robot Monster being a record store on St. Mary's, next to El Milagrito. Robot Monster is named after a b-movie from 1953, itself named after its central villain, an alien being resembling a man in a gorilla suit wearing a space helmet. Robot Monster is often recalled as having been one of the worst movies of all time, a status I doubt given other supposed worst movies of all time which I've actually seen, and which are usually just a bit cheap, and which generally piss all over the majority of contemporary tat, regardless of budget. Anyway, Robot Monster the store seems to stand in relation to conventional retail establishments much as does its filmic inspiration to anything involving Harry Potter. It sells vinyl records, but it also sells musical instruments, effects pedals, t-shirts, action figures, and anything else to which a price tag may be attached once all the crap has been cleaned off. Rusting single seater spaceships and automobiles from ancient fairground rides are parked on the roof and around the sides of the building, which itself is decorated in the colours with which Mexicans traditionally paint their houses. So Robot Monster isn't too easy on the eye, but nevertheless serves as an example of what made America great, and of what still makes America great in those places where the very worst of our shitheads never dare to venture for fear of either Communism or catching something.

Either Pie or Alba are related to the guy who runs Robot Monster, or they know him, so that's how we came to be invited. He asked either Pie or Alba if they wanted to set up a craft stall selling stuff in anticipation of Halloween, which they did, and here we are. Bess has known both Pie and Alba a long time. Pie got her name due to a love of pie during her teenage years. I'm not actually sure which one of them is here today, and I'm almost certainly getting my wife's friends confused with one another; but one of them has a table from which she is selling hand crafted spooky goods in black, orange and purple. There's a small paved patio in front of the store with iron fencing running around, so that's where we are. We set out our stall, I attach my canvases to the frame upon which I display them, Bess arranges all of her stones and painted things across the table; and we sit and wait to become rich.

We're next to an old guy selling photographs he's taken of Mexico, and I recognise a lot of the places because I've been to them. I wait for an opportunity to talk to him, but he's entertaining Alamo Heights types for about an hour - well dressed face lifty women who are probably having a cultural experience, but don't actually - after all that - buy anything, because they never do. By the time they've moved on, I've decided I can't be bothered, plus I've realised that his photographs are just snaps he's taken on a bog standard digital camera and then printed off on his PC.

On the other side is a family of hillbillies selling baked goods and wooden things embossed with crowd pleasing slogans about America or local sports teams.

The crowds, however, fail to materialise.

Around lunch I drift next door to El Milagrito and order migas to go along with various sweet teas for everyone else. Migas is essentially an omelette cooked with cheese, salsa and corn chips for texture, usually with refried beans and fried potatoes on the side. It has become my late breakfast of choice in recent years, and the El Milagrito version is as wonderful as their reputation has promised.

After lunch I succumb to the gravitational pull of Robot Monster. I'd been holding out, fearing the inevitability of this being one of those sales where I spend a lot more than I make. Their vinyl section leans strongly towards punky metal and bands with names like Crematoria or the Satan Likers rendered in hand-drawn barbed wire letters, because that sort of thing seems to be San Antonio's default setting, musically speaking. This means that I find an album by the Varukers, which is weird because they're from Leamington Spa back in England, where I took art foundation. Unfortunately, beyond the sheer novelty, they were never really my sort of thing so I keep on browsing. I'm sort of tempted by the Charles Manson album, but eventually pop for Hey Jude, a compilation of Beatles singles I've had my eye on for a few months, and the first X-Ray Spex album, which I only have on compact disc.

'I used to deliver her mail, you know,' I tell the bloke at the counter, because I still can't get over the fact and am therefore still telling anyone to whom it will mean anything. 'She was lovely.'

I'm referring to the late Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex. I used to see her out and about in Dulwich with some frequency. She had a lovely smile and, as claimed, I briefly delivered her mail. This is significant within my own personal mythology because Germ Free Adolescence by X-Ray Spex was one of my wake up records, one of a couple which vividly heralded my transformation into whatever the fuck I was as a teenager.

'Very cool!' Bob, as the bloke at the counter will eventually introduce himself, is gratifyingly impressed. 'I've played in England a couple of times. It's a great place!'

'You're in a band?' I'm actually very relieved to hear this because it shifts our conversational focus away from my name dropping.

'Used to be, man - not these days. I play bass.'

'What was the name of the band?'

'We were called Pigface.'

'Holy shit! You mean with Martin Atkins?'

'Yeah, man.' He's surprised I've heard of them. 'Martin's a great guy. You know I never played on the records, but he gives me a call when they tour.'

I feel slightly embarrassed that I've never knowingly heard anything by Pigface, having regarded them with suspicion as being Martin Atkins surrounding himself with famous pals in the absence of inspiration. Naturally I keep my mouth shut because I like Bob.

'Small world,' he laughs.

I also laugh, then tell him about how the guy who installed our washing machine used to be in Brujeria, a Mexican band featuring Shane Embury of Napalm Death, with whom I shared a couple of distantly mutual friends back in England. My distended name dropping has begun to sound a bit wackadoodle, as my wife would put it, even to me; but Bob smiles regardless.

'Sixty dollars,' he says, ringing up the sale.

'Holy shit! What? Are you sure?'

'The X-Ray Spex is fourty-five.'

'Oh bugger.' I take the record from the counter. 'It was fourteen, I'm sure.' Fourty-five is written on a red circular sticker attached to the plastic outer sleeve, but it hadn't occurred to me that this could be a price, there being no dollar symbol. On the other hand, $14 is specifically printed on a label on the inside of the record sleeve. The Beatles record also has its price denoted in this way.

'Well okay, then - fourteen, I guess. Sorry about that.' Bob seems embarrassed and I get the impression he's only filling in at the counter for a buddy. 'He really needs to get his pricing sorted out.'

I pay and get out, telling Bob it has been nice to meet him. I later realise there's something odd about the X-Ray Spex album - a couple of additional titles have been added to the track listing on the cover in a different font and with the dubious spelling of Oh Bondage Up Jours. Also, it's on the Art-I-Ficial Records label, which seems dubious. Discogs lists it as a bootleg, although the sound quality is great. I'd been wondering whether it really was priced at $45, and the $14 sticker was only a leftover from the original sale. I don't want to have gotten Bob into trouble, but then the pricing did seem ambiguous, and I don't feel so bad given that the thing is obviously a bootleg.

Bess's uncle Carl has turned up at our stall with his family in tow, two sons and two daughters. They've bought two of my canvases while I was inside boasting about having delivered mail to Poly Styrene. Selling work to relatives, even if only to relatives by marriage, somehow feels like cheating, but a sale is a sale, which is itself gratifying regardless of other considerations.

They ask after my mother's health because I was visiting her in England about a month ago.

Carl, presumably now thinking about English things, tells me something about some Beatles record purchased from Robot Monster, qualifying the report with, 'although I know you've never cared for the Beatles.'

I take up the carrier bag from the store and slide the Hey Jude album up from within, adding, 'I don't know what gave you that idea,' because I truly don't. Carl is ever a man of mystery.

He laughs.

'Talking of the Beatles,' I continue, 'you know my mother grew up in Liverpool, right?'

'I didn't know that!'

'Well, all this time I've thought she occasionally saw them wandering around the city, just as fellow teenagers, and she didn't think anything much of them. That was the story I remember.'

'Wow,' says Carl, not yet caught up to the implication of an incoming twist ending.

'Well, it seems I've remembered the story wrong all this time. She actually saw them play at the Cavern Club, but wasn't impressed for whatever reason.'

'Wow,' he says again with added feeling.

I can hear myself saying all of this as I'm saying it, and I find myself exhausting, but I say it anyway.

It's probably why Martin Atkins never listens to any of my records.

My Own Personal Nelson Muntz

Nelson Muntz is a character from The Simpsons, the bully at Bart's school who graduates to being merely a slightly unpredictable hardnut in later episodes. When I saw my first Simpsons way back in the nineties, I recognised Nelson straight away. I felt as though I knew him. My own Nelson wasn't quite a bully, but I'd certainly found him intimidating.

The school was tiny, Ilmington C of E Junior & Infants on the edge of the Cotswolds. There were seven kids in my class, expanding to nine or ten by the final year. We got to know each other reasonably well, excepting Nelson - as I'll continue to call him - because like I said I found him intimidating, and I really had the impression he worked at it. One day during the later years, our teacher - Mr. Davies - announced that we would be keeping diaries of our daily activities as a writing exercise. None of us were particularly happy with the idea. Nelson was particularly disgruntled, explaining to the rest of us that he resented the proposal that he might be required to keep a record of all the little kids he'd beaten up that week. Even at the age of nine, this struck me as a slightly weird announcement. It must surely have occurred to him that he could simply omit mention of all the little kids he'd beaten up that week, but apparently he really needed to tell us about it.

Boasting aside, he can't have been much of a bully. I never really developed a fear of him as I did with a couple of the older kids; and once we all went to the much larger secondary school, much like his Simpsons namesake, his status was downgraded to that of mere hardnut in relation to some of the genuinely violent psychotics spawned on the farms around Shipston.

Additionally, Nelson was sometimes quite funny, so if we were never quite pals, it was difficult to harbor animosity towards him. He sold me the first two Boomtown Rats albums and one by Public Image Limited when motorbikes and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal lured him away from anything punky, as happened with almost everyone else at our school.

I was never into motorbikes, although I drew the Philadelphia Freaks riding their bikes from the Inferno strip in 2000AD comic. The Philadelphia Freaks were a sports team of horrific cyborgs, and the drawing so impressed my art teacher that it was pinned to the wall in the art class. It also impressed Nelson. He asked if I'd accept a commission to paint horrific cyborgs on the petrol tank of his own motorbike. I said yes. He paid me a tenner, or maybe a fiver, and gave me the drawing of the character he wanted me to paint. He'd taken my art from the wall of the art room and cut out his preferred monster. I wasn't sure how I felt about that, but obviously I wasn't going to say anything.

I spent a weekend painting the thing, using the enamels with which I would paint Airfix kits to fill in the detail on a silhouette of the figure sprayed in gold paint. I don't recall the result as having been anything special, and years later, I popped the question on facebook:

Do you remember I painted the tank of a bike for you, maybe around 1982? Did it ever get put back on the bike and did you ever take a photo? Just wondering because with hindsight I'll bet there's probably some reason why bike custom people don't use little pots of Humbrol enamel or whatever it was that I used.

It turned out that he did remember:

I do and do you what I fucking regret selling it to this day it was brilliant the tank and the bike I mean, do you know never took a picture of it either (sorry) I remember to this day it was black with artisan robots and stuff way ahead of its time the bike was an old villiers Sprite 250 that I had for my 12 Christmas !!!

This came as a relief to me:

I'm just glad it worked. All these years I've imagined you taking it out on the road and the whole thing sort of peeling off before you're back home.

I'd anticipated some vague memory of resentment over my shoddy custom job, thankfully without foundation.

Think back it all brings back a bit of a comedy, the day you gave it back to me Michelle Warren told me I couldn't play with her tits anymore after I got my painted tank back it kind of took my mind of things ..... Oh and the paint job was as good the day you gave it back to me think sold it when I was 17 or so !!!

I remembered Michelle Warren but not her tits, and I suspect it had escaped me that Nelson had ever been granted access to them, so it's probably a good job that he mentioned it or I never would have known; but this exchange came later.

Meanwhile back in the eighties, I left school and had no good reason to think about Nelson; but as I've found, as one progresses along the path of one's existence from one place to the next, those I miss tend to be those I never knew very well, those who provided texture, those who had something but not a good reason for us to keep in touch. So from time to time I wondered what became of Nelson. Eventually, inevitably, facebook provided the answer to this question which I probably should have known not to ask; because we still didn't really have much to say to each other, and then there was the Brexit referendum, upon which Nelson opined:

Sorry Lol you are a better person than that !! We have got a real chance to actually do things right and if I'm being selfish get our own way for once, we as a country have objected to 79 (I think) new EU rules and our objections were ignored every single time, try not to look into this too much I think the vote to exit is nothing more than ....... "Do you know what, I am fed up with being dictated to 100% of the time and ignored if I dare challenge or question" we are quite prepared suffer in the short term to forge a better environment for ourselves. The whole immigration bit is largely a red herring and a convenient label to stir the shit

Despite my being better than something or other, this wasn't a dialogue I could see going anywhere useful, which it accordingly didn't:

Doom and gloom doom and gloom suck it up at least we haven't got shit loads of Brussels rules and regulations to tick off before we tackle it all ..... All you need is some Tommy can do attitude .... Ok let's have a brew then come on you wankers lets get at it !!!

This was followed by some peculiar comment about the spirit of Isambard Kingdom Brunel with Nelson announcing that he was heading outside to build a suspension bridge on the grounds of the possibilities having become endless. I was unable to find the comment when I went back to look for it, so maybe he'd deleted it, having discovered that Brunel was the son of French immigrants.

Anyway, the pattern had been established, this pattern being our social media interaction being limited to politics. The one exception was some comment I'd made about the Sex Pistols which he'd somehow read as a criticism and accordingly jumped to their defense on the grounds of the Pistols at least having been better than all that New Romantic stuff which came after, which was all a bit gay. Otherwise, I might submit all manner of posts to my facebook page, photographs of things I'd painted, myself stood on the surface of the moon, selfies taken while bowling with Prince Philip and the Chuckle Brothers, and never so much as a dickie bird from Nelson, but the moment I mention Jeremy Corbyn, as if by magic...

Sad to say you are wrong Lawrence on the simple premise, once an anarchist gets what they want they simply cease to be an anarchist and morph into something more wildly extreme like Che, Pot, or dare I say Hitler ? Or they swing the other way and conform to line their own pockets !

Corbin typifies for me the very essence of anarchy in attacking the establishment - be careful what you wish for !

The thing I found the most mystifying about this one was the bewildering conflation of Che Guevara with Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler, almost as though he had no fucking idea about who Che Guevara actually was but was simply pulling names out of his ass. Under other circumstances I might have asked did you even go to school, but I quite clearly remember that he did because I was there too.

It didn't get any better when I opined that the Conservative party comprised mostly amoral money-grubbing shitbags who shouldn't, under any circumstances, be re-elected at the end of 2019. My argument was based on the idea that if all of the country's problems were, as fuckwits claimed, the fault of the previous Labour government and the Conservative government had spent its time in office correcting their mistakes, their apparent inability to correct those mistakes despite having had nine years in which to do so would seem to suggest they might not be the right people for the job. Additionally, Conservative solutions to Labour's mistakes had included the extradition to Jamaica of old age pensioners who had arrived in England at the age of just three months, and austerity policies, by which those physically or mentally unable to work were denied benefits just to see if it might inspire them to pull their socks up and get a job, at least in the cases of the ones with legs. As my mother's job is to provide legal advice to such people, I'd met a few of them and therefore had direct experience of their problems being absolutely life threatening and genuine. The argument that they all get given free cellphones and live a life of dole scrounging luxury never sounded like much of an argument to me, but apparently it worked for Nelson.

Anyone remember the lovely note left on the treasury wall from the last government 9 or 10 years ago ? Well it read like this ..... money all gone, good luck !

Life is fab till the moneys all gone...then some poor fucker has to go in and clean up the mess then gets blamed for the shit not of their making !

Just saying

I wanted to argue against this drivel, to suggest that maybe the whole point of government was finding ways of raising money to pay for essential services - because I'm pretty certain government funding isn't based on whatever small change the previous lot dropped down the back of the fucking couch - but I knew I was in essence arguing with the contents of a right-wing opinion column, something which waves a hand to make some general point about those people, then orders another pint. I was wasting my time.

Money greases the wheels, when you run out guess who suffers the most ....go ask any Cuban when Russian turned off the tap ....and its those in over paid jobs top 5 or 10% pay 70 to 80% of the tax in this country ...where the fuck do you think they will do when they get taxed 99p in the pound as they did back in the 70s ?

Yeah great idea let's eat cake and caviar for a week and starve for a month after month after month, because the money,s ran out ...that's really good for the poorest and most in need like those in hospital or unable to work.

Still there will always be a room at Chequers and massive debt owing to those you ought not to have borrowed from.

Still the needy will have free WiFi and a £600 phone to check if their benefits are in their bank account ! ....well until such time the treasury is empty ?

The thesis, as I understood it, seemed to be fuck those dole-scrounging sponge monkeys and will no-one think of the millionaires?, a thesis I can have delivered direct to my earhole by phoning my dad, should the need arise.

I'd tried with Nelson but I should have known better. I didn't really know him at school, and I don't really know him forty years later beyond that he plays a lot of rugby and holds views such as those given above, delivered with the same bullying tone as the one about all the little kids he'd beaten up that week. He was setting me straight whether I liked it or not.

I shuffled him off into a subgroup of facebook friends, one bound by settings which mean they don't see any of my posts or get to comment upon them...

...not because I prefer an echo chamber but because I can already read and if I'd wanted to carry on reading the opinion column of the Sun I probably would have stayed in England. Regurgitating what you heard some bigger boys saying does not constitute a viewpoint, not even when framed in matey terms as though we ever had anything at all to say to each other. I'm sick to the back teeth of those actively working to make the world worse, those who believe anything told them by a nice man in a suit. I'm tired of the xenophobes, the good company men, the good little soldiers, the loyal snitches, the teachers' pets, the police informants, the head boys and girls, the neighbourhood watch award winners, the apple polishers, the people who are only able to elevate themselves by pushing down on someone else, life's Manchester United supporters, kisser's of the royal arse, grateful Ygors, goodly serfs, those who ask can I carry that for you, master?, and anyone who ever described themselves as proud without having actually done anything to be proud of beyond being born in a certain place.

Life has been better since, at least that part of my life involving social media. My curiosity about whatever became of has reduced to almost zero because most of them apparently turned into arseholes, thankfully with a couple of exceptions.

So that's another lesson learned. I probably should have learned it back when he first cut one of the figures out from something it had taken me hours to draw.

An Englishman in HEB

HEB is my local supermarket, our equivalent of Tesco or Sainsbury's. The most popular, most visible alternatives are Target and Walmart, although they don't quite count, being department stores with grocery sections; and I dislike Walmart due to their employment practices, generally depressing atmosphere, and because the last time I went, I was refused entry with my backpack. This was in the wake of a mass shooting in the El Paso branch of Walmart, down on the Mexican border. I guess the staff were concerned that I might intend to go nuts with a firearm I had fiendishly secreted in said backpack, although my actual intention had been to buy stuff and use the offending item as a means of conveying it all back to my dwelling. I have reservations regarding Walmart's commitment to discouraging persons with firearms going nuts given the great prices to be had in their own well stocked guns and ammunition department; although in their favour, they prevented my potentially deadly ingress by posting a crack team of very old ladies at the store entrance.

'Sir, you cain't come in heah wit' that,' they told me.

There are smaller supermarkets such as Michoacana, which is handy for anything Mexican which can't be found elsewhere, but HEB is the most convenient. As with branches of Jim's diner, HEB is to be found all over town, and each store has a slightly different character according to the neighbourhood it serves, as denoted by an unofficial but widely known nickname. The fancier end of Alamo Heights is served by the Gucci B, whilst the more temperate end of Alamo Heights is served by the Dooney B - a joke which my wife had to explain to me but which apparently makes immediate sense if you've ever bought an expensive handbag. The one on Fredericksburg Road is called the Deco B in reference to its architectural style, and the one near the Jewish Community Centre is sensitively referred to as the Heeb.

My local HEB is known as the Ghetto B because we live at the edge of what many rap artists would recognise as the 'hood. Practically this means that white women with face lifts are rarely seen amongst its clientele, the majority of whom seem to be Hispanic, which itself also means that it can sometimes be difficult to buy bratwurst. On the other hand, I feel approximately at home at the Ghetto B, as though they're my peeps, roughly speaking.

I shop there every day, just fifteen minutes as I make my way home from the trail negating the need of one massive, expensive and time consuming shop at the end of the week in the generally exhausting spirit of a mountain climbing expedition. Consequently I know the store pretty well, and the staff have come to inhabit my current mythology in the absence of workmates, even those to whom I've barely spoken a word. Excepting my wife and facebook, they're what I now have instead of a social life, which works out fine seeing as I've discovered that I'm not actually that social and quite enjoy not having to talk to people all the time.

I know to avoid tills worked by Lorna or the woman with Karl Malden's nose. I checked out at Lorna's till on three occasions when I first moved here, and there was a problem every time. I'd bought the wrong one, or picked one that wouldn't scan, or something else which had her rolling her eyes as though I'd done it on purpose before calling for a manager. The woman with Karl Malden's nose seems less contentious, but once stockpiled all of my purchases at her end of the conveyor belt after ringing up the prices. This meant I was unable to pack them into my bag as they were scanned, and gave me the impression that she believed I'd been banking on doing a runner without paying; so that was annoying.

There have been a few whose tills I always head for, based on some vague impression of their being nice people, or at least interesting people - Jennifer who resembled a Mayan princess, and the young black woman with blue lipstick who always seemed unreasonably happy - both of whom have gone on to hopefully better things. Then there's Lesbia, who used to work at Walmart, and I don't know but that's what's printed on her name tag; and no, I'm not going to ask. There's Thomas who has a girlfriend who lives in England, which is how we got talking, because he flew over to see her about a month before my own most recent visit. It turned out that she lived in a village called Stoneleigh, near Coventry. Given that Stoneleigh is so small as to have neither a shop nor a pub, and I used to cycle through the place two or three times a week when I was living at my mother's place, back in 2010, the level of coincidence would seem comparable to that thing about random chimps coming up with Macbeth.

Today I'm carting my seven tins of cat food, bottle of tonic water, and ten packets of Ramen noodles for the kid to Katherine's till, which is rare, although I think this is the first time I've noticed her name tag. She seems okay, but is very, very small, and I've developed an irrational fear of small people ever since I went out with Dora the Explorer. Someone called Brandy is stood at the end of the belt on bagging duty. As they work they're talking about allergies and having trouble sleeping. Katherine recommends something called Benadryl.

I listen in because I've had a couple of restless headachey nights, which I'm blaming on pollen in the absence of any better idea. It never used to affect me, but I guess now it does.

Usually I pack my own bag, but sometimes it seems rude to do so if there's a bag packer stood there looking bored, as they occasionally do. I give Brandy the bag, the one I always bring with me.

'I love that pattern,' she says with a strong Texan lilt, the kind which sounds like words spoken whilst chewing gum. 'Is that like a crocodile print?'

'I've no idea.' I don't want to be rude but it's just a bag, and weirdest of all is that I've had this conversation before in this store with other bag packers. I guess they're just making conversation.

'Did you say you were having trouble with allergies?' I ask her, because I actually want to know.

'Nope.'

I'm confused. 'Was it you who had the allergies?' I ask Katherine.

'Yes.' She squints at me, curious. 'London?'

It takes me a moment to recognise it as a question.

'Yes, I'm from London.'

'I just love your accent,' says Brandy.

'Thanks.'

'My friend is from London,' Katherine adds, then starts on some story about a phone-in radio show which relates in ways which aren't yet obvious, and I'm suddenly aware that I'm holding up the line. I pop my card into the reader and enter my number.

'Do you know what part of London?'

'No, but I can tell the accent apart from the rest.' She means as distinct from other English accents. 'I bet we all sound weird to you, ha?'

'Well, not really. I've been here ten years so I don't really notice.'

'But at first we must have sounded strange.'

'At first, when I first came here, yes.'

I've had this conversation many times before, but it's preferable to the weirder alternatives, such as the cashier who deduced that I have a rabbit because I was buying rabbit food, told me that she too had a rabbit, then spent the rest of the conversation going on about the terrible smell of rabbits. I found this weird and confusing because Charlie, who is our rabbit, usually smells quite nice.

I've had this conversation before, as I say, but I don't mind it at Ghetto B because I know people are simply curious, interested to meet anyone from a foreign land.

'How do you like it here?' Brandy asks, as they always ask.

'I like it a lot,' I say, as I always say. 'To be honest, I like it a lot more than I like England.'

So that was my adventure for this week.

The Writers' Workshop

Where do you get the ideas for your amazing books? is a question I am asked all too often, and it's not the only question either! Sometimes it's how do you write your amazing books? which is of course another matter entirely. Naturally, were I to answer such questions on each occasion of my being asked, I would barely have time to write my amazing books! Therefore it seemed high time I offered some more general address in hope of satisfying everyone's curiosity, affording my readers a precious glimpse of how the magic comes about; and so today I'll be sharing some of my thoughts on the work of a few aspiring authors.

War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. Whether it be Star Trek, Star Wars or Babylon 5, I love science-fiction, and science-fiction novels can be great too. In fact I'm unapologetically a particularly huge fan of Philip K. Dick, the crazy genius who brought us both Blade Runner and Total Recall. Unfortunately, anyone reading War of the Worlds hoping for anything in the vein of one of Dick's famous twist endings will be disappointed. War of the Worlds is a steampunk novel, and steampunk is Victorian science-fiction, although I know I hardly need to explain that to anyone who, like me, follows the adventures of that mysterious traveller in time and space known only as the Doctor! If War of the Worlds sounds familiar, then you're probably thinking of the wonderful BBC serial of which this is the novelisation. Wells strives to tell an exciting adventure in jolly old Victorian England but comes unstuck by concentrating on the action whilst ignoring the powerful character development we saw on the screen. I'm all for writers branching out and doing their own thing, but not at the expense of the drama. My advice would have been to develop some conflict for George, perhaps with a childhood scene wherein (for example) his father makes light of our young protagonist, perhaps being dismissive of a childish drawing the boy has done for his dear old dad. Wells' War might then serve as a clever metaphor for George's internal struggle as he wrestles with feelings of abandonment, subconsciously seeking the approval of a father figure while fleeing from the Martians and their terrible ray guns. Wells might do well (no pun intended there!) to pick up a few of my officially licensed He-Man and the Masters of the Universe tie-in novels so as to see how his somewhat flat characters could have been better handled.

Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence. No-one loves to curl up on the sofa on a rainy day with a super-gooey romance like I do, but I have a hard time believing that D.H. Lawrence feels the same even if that's what he's tried to write here. This is probably the grumpiest, gloomiest romance I've ever tried to read, and the hero doesn't even sound particularly dashing. There's an introduction by one of the author's snooty friends making a big deal out of Lawrence's descriptions of the natural world, but to be honest I found this aspect even more depressing than his failure to summon up anything approaching lovey dovey. My advice to D.H. would be to treat himself to a binge watch of Midsomer Murders for some pointers on creating a charming rustic atmosphere, and because romance does actually feature in the show every now and then - certainly more than you'll find in Women in Love. Women Having a Bit of a Moan would have been a more accurate title!

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Behind each successful author there will always be a queue of others hoping to ride on the same ticket to YA publishing stardom, and I'm sure Stephenie Meyer has lost count of those hoping to duplicate her success with the fantastic Twilight franchise. Mary Shelley can hardly be faulted for her ambition in picking such a well established character as Frankenstein, but she  should have done a bit more research. Whilst this Frankenstein sounds familiar from Shelley's long-winded steampunk influenced description, the problem is that old bolts-through-the-neck never shuts up, instead delivering long lectures which I doubt even the great Boris Karloff, the original Frankenstein, would have had the patience to memorise. With a little more effort, this could have been the beginning of an amazing, if not terribly original, franchise with  Frankenstein meeting a spooky Egyptian mummy, a werewolf and so on, but it's hardly surprising that Shelley's publisher declined to pick up the option on this one.

The Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. I know what you're thinking - it sounds like one of those super saucy Confessions films from the swinging seventies starring Robin Askwith, the key to which was the suggestion of lewd material without showing too much. If Mr. Burroughs saw any of those films, I would say he probably didn't learn anything because this book doesn't make any sense, and is extremely lewd with page after page describing what two men of certain inclinations might get up to if left to their own devices. Now I'm no prude, and I'm a great supporter of the LGBT community, but this sort of thing really is beyond the pale. There isn't even any description of anyone sharing a romantic lunch in suitable preface to the bedroom unpleasantness described in such detail, which I'm sure the author thought was very clever indeed. No-one likes a toffee nosed show off, Mr. Burroughs. In the author's defence, it seems the publisher has mistakenly published the pages of his novel in the wrong order, resulting in a mish-mash of such bewildering composition as to resemble the sort of insanity which was popular amongst the spaced out druggers of the 1960s, and fans of cult classic The Prisoner might enjoy some of The Naked Lunch had Burroughs not spent so much of the book describing things I would rather not discuss with children present.

London Fields by Martin Amis. I have to confess that I don't know how this one ended, having given up half way through. The problem is that whilst Amis clearly strives to recreate the charm of the beloved Cockney characters from EastEnders, he fails to imbue them with what we writers refer to as relatability, which is a quality where the reader is able to imagine him or herself as one of the characters in the book. My advice to Mr. Amis would be to pick up a couple of volumes of Black Pudding Row, my popular series of heart-warming tales of down to earth folk living in a pleasant town in the north of England. It's possible to write working class characters without recourse to foul language, Mr. Amis. You simply have to keep at it.

So there we have it for this time. I hope you've enjoyed my sharing a few humble suggestions as much as I've enjoyed sharing them with you; and if you're a budding author, I hope this has provided a few pointers. A book should transport its reader to a magical world of wonderment and make believe, so it's important that we who have been blessed with the task of arranging that transport should get it right!

The Blue Hole

We are driving to Wimberley, Texas, a journey of an hour or more. Some woman has asked Bess to paint a design on canvas using specific colours, and we've worked out that it will be easier - and certainly cheaper - to hand deliver the finished piece to the woman's parents than to stick it in the mail; plus we're probably due a day out. Bess tells me that I've already met the people we're visiting - although I have no memory of them - and that they are old and will therefore most likely hold with certain views and opinions. I am to be on my best behaviour. It's news to me that I'm ever less than delightful even in proximity to the absolute worst kind of shithead.

Wimberley is pretty and of surprisingly alpine character for this part of Texas. It reminds me of Ruidoso, New Mexico, which is way up in the mountains. Houses are spread out, hidden by walls of cypress, down gullies or up the side of a hill. We follow winding roads and eventually arrive at our destination.

'Be nice,' Bess reminds me.

'Okay.'

Marie and Marvin are indeed of a certain vintage, both retired, and I remember them from Bess's grandmother's ninetieth birthday celebrations. Marvin reminds me of both Hank - Walter White's brother-in-law from Breaking Bad - and Yondu from the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, although not bright blue. He's gruff but genial, and immediately comes across as a nice guy.

They invite us in. They compare notes with Bess - mutual friends, Bess's grandmother, and Pearsall, the town serving as a common point of origin for everyone in the room except me.

I look around and notice a bookcase with actual books. This seems like a good sign. It's something I don't see very often.

'So how did you two meet?' Marvin enquires.

It's the inevitable question and I can hardly blame anyone for being curious. We give the answer we always give, which somehow leads on to Marvin asking what I think of all the business with Prince Andrew. You can tell he's treading with care, choosing his words just in case I whip out a sword and challenge anyone insulting her majesty to a duel; or possibly just in case I'm a raving republican.

'I don't really know, but I don't think a lot of it,' I tell him. 'To be honest, I try not to think of the younger royals at all. I think Princess Anne was probably the last one of them who wasn't completely useless.'

I'm surprised by my own later-life monarchism, which is either something to do with having just finished watching the third series of The Crown, or possibly being a displaced Englishman living in a country which has chosen an illiterate fucknugget for its supreme being; but it's true that I've never had strong feelings about the royal family one way or the other, beyond that they seem a wearyingly easy target for those who somehow believe their abolition will lead directly to some kind of classless utopia. I appreciate that there may be a republican argument to be had regarding leaders who've risen to positions of authority without having been democratically elected, but given the dangerous fucking maniacs who have risen to the top through the democratic process, I'd suggest there's a shitload of wiggle room in that proposal.

Marvin chuckles and mutters something about Boris Johnson.

'He was a comedy game show contestant when I was living there,' I say, 'just a bumbling cartoon toff, and he was very good at it. I have no idea how he ended up where he is. He's terrible.'

'Well, we have the exact same problem here, as you know,' Marvin tells me, and it's clear we're on the same page.

We give them the painting which is to be passed on to their daughter, then Marvin shows us his workshop. He creates art by burning lines into wood with a heated stylus much like a soldering iron. This is a new one on me, and he's very good at it, achieving a surprisingly subtle realism in the images he crafts.

We stand by the car saying our goodbyes. Bess hugs Marie.

'I don't do all this hugging thing,' Marvin explains.

'Me neither,' I report with obvious relief and we shake hands.

'You two are the same person,' Bess laughs.

We head to the centre of the town, to the local museum.

The local museum is a log cabin with two rooms. I manage to look at the grinding stones of the old corn mill for about five seconds before the attendant helpfully explains that these are grinding stones which were originally used at the old corn mill. He then describes their operation, how water would drive a mill and the corn would be ground into flour between these two stones. I'd point out that, having attended school as a child, I am very much familiar with the concept, but his monologue presents no gaps in which I can wedge my interjection.

I move on.

All around the room, the walls are adorned with informative essays and illustrations from old books describing the founding of Wimberley. I try to read but the attendant follows me and takes to summarising each piece of writing. I guess he's just glad to have someone to talk to.

The next room is concerned mainly with Jacob de Cordova, a Jewish man of Spanish ancestry born in Jamaica, and who founded The Gleaner. I recall The Gleaner fairly well as the newspaper of choice for almost every Londoner of Caribbean heritage I ever knew, so this seems like an interesting story with more than its fair share of peculiar random swerves. Bess and I look at the picture of Cordova's grave, and the map of Texas he famously drew, and a painting of the Battle of San Jacinto, but it's difficult to work out how all of these elements might be connected whilst our chatty host is yacking away, and now he's somehow onto the subject of James Bond, the famous English spy who wrote all of those books and who had the idea for them while living in Jamaica.

We give up and leave, trying hard to be polite about it.

We wander through Wimberley, taking in a few of the galleries.

Finally we head for the Blue Hole, which is to be found in the local park. Unfortunately, it being Autumn, it's the Orange Hole at this time of year, what with all the leaves covering everything. Bess summons a picture to her phone and shows me how it looks in summer. It's a small lake, surrounded by cypresses, beautifully clear waters with a terrifying limestone orifice at the centre. It reminds me of the cenotes of Mexico which were traditionally believed to lead to the realm of the dead.

We pass another couple as we leave and Bess detects an English accent so we have the usual conversation.

'He's from Coventry,' Bess says.

The woman mutters something about Dorridge. This rings a major bell for me although I can't remember why.

'It's near Coventry,' the woman explains.

'I know,' I tell her as the penny drops. 'I went on a sort of pilgrimage to Dorridge a couple of years ago. Do you know John Wyndham, the writer?'

'No,' she says.

This floors me for a moment. 'Well he was born in Dorridge so I went there to see if I could find his birthplace. You must know The Day of the Triffids?'

'Oh yes,' she confirms happily and we all spend a moment talking about John Wyndham's famed predatory plants.

'Do you remember Quatermass?' she asks, having apparently mistaken the focus of our conversation for scary stuff we can remember seeing on the telly.

Bess and I discreetly extricate ourselves from the conversation for the second time today. Even as the Orange Hole, it has still been worth the trip.