An Arthurian Legend.

“Keep writing” , he says, “keep writing.”

Well, it’s all very well him saying that when he’s off gallivanting around a muddy field in Somerset isn’t it?. Expecting me to do all the bloody work! 

I ask you, what a cheek! I’ve been in that muddy filed myself, with him in fact, and I well know what goes on there; drugs, rock ’n roll, sex too probably though he might be a bit old for that now.

He might be a bit old for the drugs as well, come to think of it. I suspect the closest he gets there is a few pain killers for the knees, or a bit of Vick vapour rub for his chest in the winter months.

Is Vick vapour rub considered to be a hallucinogenic I wonder; I’m pretty sure my grandmother was addicted to it, though if you challenged her she scoffed at the suggestion: 

“Addictive??!! Nonsense, I’ve been using it for years.’

She was in fact addicted to a lot of things; her red arm chair that sat to one side of the fire place, long after the neighbourhood where she lived became a smokeless zone and the fire had to be replaced by an electric bar heater; People magazine; The News of The World – before it folded – and, mysteriously, red lentils. She ate them with everything, even banana custard!

When she died we found sacks of them hidden at the back of the lean-to that was also where she stored the coal that she continued to have delivered in the hope that a future Conservative government would repeal the Clean Air act that she always believed was the work of ‘those skinny socialists’.

 

“Keep writing”, he says, “keep writing.”

What does he expect me to do? 

What else IS there to do?

My television no longer works because I refuse to buy an HD version, I don’t have a Netflix account and the local library no longer exists; it’s been re-imagined into a vegan hair dresser’s. I’m not sure what a vegan hairdresser is, and I’m not even sure what a hairdresser’s is these days; the only person I let cut my hair is my wife and has been for the 38 years we have been together. It requires a lot of bravery, her technique is to cut a snip, step back to look at it and then burst out laughing; but I love hearing her laugh so I am prepared to endure the looks of the neighbours when I go out walking.

 

“Keep writing”, he says, “keep writing.”

This is meant to be a collaborative effort! What am I going to write if he hasn’t written something in reply to what I wrote before in reply to what he wrote before that in reply to me saying ‘just start!’ after he’d said let’s write.

Where’s the justice in that?

Where’s the sense in that?

What’s the point?

 

What’s the point of anything come to that?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well..

 

 

I guess you have to do something.

 

Write/write/write.

Right/right/right.

There you go – I wonder what he’ll make of that.

I wonder if his garden shed is still full of all the bits and bobs, flotsam and jetsam of a life time entertaining?

Last time I looked in there – he was asleep and I was outside the house waiting for him to wake up – I saw things that I had last seen thirty years previously.

And we had stopped using them then.

And I wonder what he really IS doing in that field in Somerset.

 

Listening to one of the singers from the side of the stage on a damp chilly evening when you can see the condensation forming as the lyrics leave their lips?

Or lying in a sweat lodge listening to the music from another dimension?

Or sitting in the skeletal wreck of a car in the pay field pretending to be a taxi driver to the future, for the children who are climbing on top.

Or watching two performance artists sitting at the end of a very long stretch of white fabric staring at the remains of a TV set?

 

No, none of these.

 

It will be midnight, mid-summer’s day; a small circular stage in a dip in the meadow, surrounded by a thousand people waiting for something to begin. 

There will be a small tent off, on each side, styled to look like an Arthurian castle where the actors are still preparing for a performance of King Arthur.

He will turn to me and say ‘so, this is what everyone has been doing, having kids.’

Then as the crowd hush a drunk will clumsily climb up on to the stage and start singing, very badly, destroying the spell that has been settling upon us

The people will catch their breath – this is not what we wanted.

A moment will seem like an hour.

Then,

Low and fast,

Running from one of the tents, a character dressed like a minstrel,

He will run across the field, jump effortlessly on to the stage, continue across dropping a shoulder and shifting their weight just enough to send the drunk spinning back to where they had come from , and then disappearing into the opposite tent.

The crowd will roar, the fanfare will sound and Guinevere will step into the moonlight and charm every single one of us.