Good Friday?

Indeed it is Good Friday. Not being of any real religious persuasion that doesn’t mean a great deal to me; I don’t wish to upset anyone of the Christian faith, but it feels much like any other Friday to me.

There is one most noticeable difference, given my locality of the last three years, and that is the banishment of booze. For me, it is not so much of a Good Friday as, say, an arid or parched Friday. It’s one thing that the pubs are closed, but quite another that you can’t even pick up your tipple of choice from the local supermarket, should you wish.

Fear not friends; I have scoured my fridge and managed to locate a can of Guinness hiding in the vegetable drawer. It’s pathetic attempt to pass itself off as celery or a pack of organic carrots is, frankly, ambitious to say the least.

I'll take one over none.

So Good Friday or not, I will be imbibing a little of my favourite tipple, perhaps not in the quantities I had wished for. I think `pretty poor Friday` may be a more apt moniker.

Still, knowing I have one can makes it feel like a good Friday to me… the said can is living out the last hour of its life… any appeals for clemency have been vigorously turned down.

A strange and curious paper trail – The end (for now).

The journey back was an altogether different affair. Mike and Jules remained  tucked up to each other, and there was still very little river traffic. We really were blessed with the weather, there wasn’t so much a streak of cloud in the sky, it was the colour of one of the Blue Curacao bottles you see on a cocktail bar shelf. As we’d agreed previously, I set about filling in the blanks that we’d missed on the outward portion of the trip. There’s quite a knack to giving a good tour, something that I knew I did and, something that I prided myself in. It needs to be well-balanced, including dates, history, historical figures, etc but, equally important, you need to humour people. There were a tremendous amount of funny anecdotes concerning the river. Standing on the back of the punt regaling them, you felt like a bit of a stand up comedian.

The conversation that had consumed the trip on the way down wasn’t completely out-of-bounds, and there were a couple of occasions where we returned to it briefly again. I felt sure that both parties felt that the subject had been more than covered, there was no need to flog this any further. The impact had been made early on, I was aware of that and so were Mike and Jules.

We punted back at a nice even pace and in no time at all were passing under the bottleneck at Magdalene Bridge. Again, there was no problem getting through. There were a few more boats this time round but, with a little forward thinking and deft manoeuvring on my behalf, we were passed it all without so much as a bump.

The good weather had really brought people flooding to Quayside, the place was packed out. I had mixed feelings about the place as a whole, there was a seedier side to Quayside, a side that the visiting tourist was blissfully unaware of. Whenever I passed Quayside, I tried to see it through a tourist’s eyes, thus everything seemed warm and fluffy… It was nicer that way!

We were now not much more than a minute or so from the green where I tied my boat off. Mike and Jules could see that the tour was reaching its end. Mike lent back over the cushion, raised his arms and placed his hands behind his head, interlocking his fingers. “What can we say Des, but thanks so much. It’s been a real pleasure getting to meet you. The tour was fantastic; we haven’t felt this relaxed in ages. I feel pretty confident that we’ve both learnt from this experience.”

Jules spoke up too. “Yeah, thanks so much Des. It really has been a great experience. Think about what we talked about, I know you will. Like we said previously, what have you got to lose. The worst that could happen to you is that you’d end up like Mike and me. Seriously, I really hope we’ve gone some way to changing any preconceptions you might have had about Born Again Christians, we’re just people like everyone else… only we know where we’re heading.”

I span the boat through 180 degrees and, with the most delicate kiss of boat against bank, brought the Archduke to rest. In a fluid and polished motion I wedged the punt between bank and pole, driving the pole deep into the muddy water. I stepped from the platform at the back of the punt onto the embankment, and then leaned forward offering a hand to Mike and Jules, one at a time to help them exit the boat.

There is a stipulation...

Jules was the first out. She stood, patted down the back of her jeans with her hand before clasping my hand and stepping out. Mike quickly followed. The three of us were now standing together on the bank, all that remained was for them was to pay. They were a sound couple, I knew that £25 was coming my way, I even felt reasonably confident that a tip of some description was pending but, like I said earlier, there was still some mileage to run in this thing yet.

Mike reached into his back pocket and withdrew a black leather wallet. He opened it in front of me, I could see a collection of the usual plastic cards as well as a compartment lined with crisp new notes from a cash machine. He thumbed through the notes taking a number out in his hand before placing the wallet back in his pocket. What followed next was the icing on the cake as far as I was concerned.

“Ten, twenty, thirty,” he counted the notes into my hand before saying,” it’s £25 for the trip, right. Well here’s an extra fiver for a tip.”

“Thanks very much,” I said, “are you sure about the tip, it’s really not necessary.” I looked at him and he was still holding another ten in his hand.

“Sure I’m sure,” came his reply, “and what’s more, I have a further ten for you here.”

“No come on,” I said, “you’ve given me more than enough already, I can’t.”

“Please, take it, I insist,” was Mike’s reply. “There is a stipulation concerning the last ten however.”

“What’s that?” I said with an air of reservation

Mike held my gaze for a moment, pausing before saying,” it’s for you to buy a Bible with.”

“Are you serious Mike? Listen don’t worry about it, you know my stance on Christianity and religion. I don’t need a Bible and, if I had one, I wouldn’t read it. If I take this extra tenner from you, all that’s likely to happen is that it’ll go in my pocket with everything else I earn today and probably end up being spent on booze down the pub when I finish up.”

Mike raised his left arm and Jules stepped under it, pulling her in tight to him. They both took one last laboured look at me before nodding their heads and Jules saying,” it’s not money, right… it’s a lesson, OK… now use it!”  With that, they about turned and walked off. I looked down at the money in my hand before splitting it and placing £30 in a front pocket of my jeans, the other tenner I folded in half and placed in my shirt pocket.

When I returned to my house that evening after a busy day and with a pocket full of notes, I reached straight for my shirt pocket and removed the tenner. I turned it around in my hands, looking at it from different angles. There was no getting away from it, it was a tenner, like all the other tenners I’d come across in the past… only different. This tenner had been sent to do God’s work, nothing more, nothing less. There was no way I could spend it on booze, I’d be struck down by lightning. Quickly, I folded the note into a small square and opened the sock drawer in my chest of drawers. Pulling the socks forward, I placed the note at the back of the drawer before pushing the socks back into place. What to do now I thought… I know, I’ll go to the pub for a drink, safe in the Knowledge I’ll be spending my money and not the bearded man’s upstairs.

“What of the strange and curious paper trail?” I hear you ask. Well… for a while it lay at the back of my sock draw, its destiny unresolved. Given time it would make its way into my pocket and take me down another road, but hey… that’s another story.

A strange and curious paper trail Pt 12 – A short story by me

 

My mind was awash.

Like I said, it’s a wide bridge, again we were exposed to that drop in temperature we’d felt previously when passing under Magdalene Bridge. In what felt like a far longer period of time than it had been, we drifted out the other side. At the top of the bridge to the side, sat one of Cambridge’s nicest pubs, `The Anchor`. The pub was on two levels, at street level and also at river level. You could get down to the river level by the stairs inside the pub or you could take a flight of stone stairs that led down from the bridge. There was a paved area adjacent to the bridge that had a number of picnic tables and umbrellas, it wasn’t more than a foot or two above the surface of the river. This area was roped off with a thick red rope with nice brass fittings, the kind of thing you’d expect to see at a film premier. The place was packed, as it always was on a sunny day. It’s a bit more like a smaller and more discerning version of Quayside, it tended to be more populated by locals, it was a place that I enjoyed coming to myself for a quiet drink.

This was our halfway point, this is where we were due to turn round and start our journey back. I took a quick look at my watch, we’d been on the river for twenty-five minutes. This certainly wasn’t my fastest tour and, by the same token, nor was it one of my least uneventful. Usually, when I reached this point of the trip, my mind would slip into reverse momentarily and I would see all the sites we had passed on the river, and review parts of the tour I had given, a mental recap if you like. This time, that part of my head had gone blank, it was like the trip was starting out here, like we hadn’t done the first half of the river at all. I was consumed by this growing feeling of self-awareness, of change almost. The only way I can sum it up is to say I felt like a different person to the person that had set off on the trip twenty-five minutes ago.

We were on a large circular bowl of water called the Mill Pond. It was a little bit like a river cul-de-sac. This is where all the tours ended that had departed from Quayside. I planted the pole into the muddy bottom at an acute angle, whilst driving the punt hard in the opposite direction with my feet. The punt rapidly spun through 180 degrees. We were now back facing Silver Street Bridge, treading water, about to head back to where we’d started out from.

My mind was awash with all we’d covered on the first leg of the trip. The more I thought about all this the more outrageous it seemed. It felt like an eternity ago that I’d been arguing down at the river’s edge with the idiot that was trying his best to take this couple from me. If only I’d been armed with the information I knew now, the conversation between him and I might have gone somewhat differently, can you imagine it! “Look, you’re wasting your time trying to get these people to come with you in your boat. You see, they’ve selected me to take them out on the river, they’re messengers from the Lord… they have a lesson for me.”

“Yeah, alright mate, whatever… You take ‘em out but be sure to get a hat for that head of yours, I think you’ve had too much sun.”

However you looked at it, this was a most unusual run of events, I’d never experienced anything like it. I was expecting a more sedate journey back, as we’d agreed. Unbeknown to me there was more mileage in this thing yet, this strange tale was about to get stranger still.

 

THE FINAL PART OF THIS (NOT SO) SHORT STORY CONCLUDES TOMORROW.

A strange and curious paper trail Pt 11 – A short story by me

Kings was now receding in the rear view mirror of our minds, all that was left was the undulating reflection of its chapel and spires in the wake of the punt. Mike and Jules nestled up close to one another again. This stretch of the river felt cooler than the open segment we had just left. Up ahead the hard stone facades of Queens and Darwin College plunged into the inky black water. The other bank was close by; this was a narrow stretch of waterway. Some tall, well established trees stood firmly rooted on this bank. Even with the sun overhead, its rays fought to find a channel between the trees or to make an impact on the shadows cast by the tall college buildings.

Ahead was the Mathematical Bridge, the only wooden bridge on the river and an object of great curiosity and speculation. Myth has it that the bridge was built by Sir Issac Newton and that no nuts and bolts were used in its construction; the bridge staying in place as a result of all the forces and pressures acting on it being equally distributed across its span. The story continues, that at some time, in its later history, Queens College students took the bridge apart in an effort to understand the engineering involved and cold only put it back together again and, more importantly, make it stand with the aid of nuts and bolts.

As we slowly drifted under the bridge I chose to speak. I wasn’t sure how well what I had to say would go down, but I wanted to say it all the same.

“You haven’t asked me, but I’m sure you’re obviously curious whether I believe in God or not!”

“Of course,” said Mike.

“Let’s just say I believe in something,” I said, “but they’re my beliefs, and the person or thing that I choose to put my faith in doesn’t set unreasonable demands or ask me to attend a place of worship to validate my faith.”

“ What on earth could unreasonable demands be?”, asked Mike.

“You know,” I said, “thou shall do this and not do that… that type of thing. Laying down the law, telling me how to live my life. Stifling me as an individual, trying to shepherd me as best it can into becoming part of a collective group.”

“Woh, woh ,woh now,” came  Mike’s reply. “God asks nothing of his followers, only that they take him into their hearts and, that they lead a good and honest  life, following the example set by Jesus and his disciples in the Bible.”

“OK, fine,” I said. “It’s not just Christianity that scares me, it’s religions as a whole. When you look at all the major religions, with the exception of Buddhism, they’re all pretty strict. Each likes to think it’s the only true religion, and other religions are just impostors trying to steal their thunder. I can’t help thinking that religion in this vain is a really outdated concept. When you look at most of the wars being fought round the world,at anyone time, a lot of them are being waged on so-called holy grounds. A lot of people argue that it’s not religion that’s at fault, only a very small number of obsessives that claim to follow that religion.”

“Look,” said Jules, ”what you’re saying is valid in places and is used as an argument by all kinds of people, but that doesn’t make it right. When something isn’t tangible or visible we tend to doubt its presence. You said earlier that you didn’t believe in Big Bang theories, etc. You said you felt sure that life couldn’t always be explained by science, that divinity was playing a trick on us. Well, there is no trick, all we have to do is open up our heart to the Lord and let him in. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying before, `There’s none so blind as those that don’t want to see.` ”

She continued: “ Mike and I were just as sceptical as you until… this sounds very cliché… until we saw the light. Listen, what have you got to lose. You’ve felt that something has been astray, living your life the way you have up to this point. The changes needed are minimal but so rewarding, it’s just a state of mind really. I speak for us both when I say, this is a lifestyle change, once you make the change there’ll be no going back to the uncertainty you feel now, you’ll have headed off down the right path and, what’s more, you’ll know it”

Powerful stuff indeed I thought, real food for thought. That was me, a sceptic, but the worst kind of sceptic,

...hurtled down the runway.

someone who wasn’t prepared to change his ways in order to prove or disprove something, well not in this example anyway. Try as I might, I just couldn’t see me making any change. I spoke to God, but on my terms, which were generally pretty loose. God probably wouldn’t hear from me all year until, perhaps, I was on a flight, then I’d have a quite word with him as we hurtled down the runway. A little selfish on my behalf really but, as I’d been lead to believe, God didn’t judge.

We were metres away from Silver Street Bridge now, this is a wide, traffic bearing bridge with a squat, solitary, central arch . Timing is crucial when you approach this bridge; you want to get a good pole plant in before you get to it. You need enough momentum to carry you under it and out the other side. The roof of the arch is too low to allow you to plant your pole while under it. Should you find yourself with not enough forward motion the easiest thing to do is place the flats of your hands on the low ceiling and pull the punt along. I’d managed to get in a good solid plant and we planed through most regally.

A strange and curious paper trail Pt 10 – A short story by me

So much for my tour, it had gone kaput. By now we’d drifted on by Trinity, passed under Garrett Hostel Bridge and were more or less in front of Clare College. Thank God the river had been quite, in terms of the other people on it. I hadn’t had to take any last-minute evasive actions to avoid collisions with punting.

Conversational foreplay.

This was proving to be a very interesting conversation; I was no longer feeling that I was trapped, more that I was engaged in a discourse on the virtues of leading a spiritual life.

We drifted on past Clare College, one of my favourite colleges on the backs, it’s the second oldest college in Cambridge, founded in 1326. When viewed from the backs, it’s Clare’s old court that you see, a wondrous example of  `classic` architecture that was new a new style of  architecture at the time of its inception in 1638. It also has the most beautiful of gardens which are a profusion of colour from spring into late summer.

No sooner do you pass Clare, having drifted under one of the three arches of Clare Bridge, than you are greeted by what must be Cambridge’s answer to the Pyramids at Luxor, the majesty that is Kings College and its chapel.

It’s the chapel that comes crashing into the field of vision; of first your left eye, very quickly followed by the right as you drift in this direction down river. It’s like a monolithic man-made Eiger that’s burst through a fissure in the ground and is rampaging, heavenwards. A mass of Masonry and ornate leaded stained glass windows, built over the course of one hundred years from blood, sweat, tears and unbridled ambition. It rightfully takes your breath away, when this part of the river is busy, it’s as if someone has stolen in and taken away the sounds of the surroundings and replaced them with the mechanical whirring of camera shutters, going off one after the other.

My tour had been woefully absent up to this point, our conversation had barged in and taken over. Here, I had to make an exception. With the help of this exploding vista, I returned Mike and Jules’s attention to the tour. As we floated on by this outrageous site, I reverted to dates, when, where’s and by whom. Religion and, God specifically, was on hold.

It was here that the three of us made a pact. I said that there was obviously more ground to go over as far as our conversation was concerned. The whole subject matter had got right under my skin, the possibilities and the directions this conversation could take were endless. I did however want to give this couple the tour I thought they deserved. Already, I’d missed out vast tracts of facts, history, speculation and the funny little titbits that I liked to throw in.

The agreement we very quickly reached was that we would carry on up the river as we were, talking as we saw fit and not worrying too much about history etc. Any gaps or omissions on my behalf cold be filled in when we turned the punt round at the halfway point – a place called the Millpond – which probably wasn’t much further than six or seven minutes from here. All parties were happy with this and, I felt sure, were fairly desperate to return to the fold…

I got us under way. “So this gap, void or lack of direction in my life is down to the fact that I haven’t let God into it, that’s what you’re saying, right?”

“Yeah that’s pretty much it,” said Jules.

“And let me get this right,” I said “you were able to spot this void in my life, when I made the approach to you on the roadside, and asked you both if you’d like a trip on the river.”

“Bingo,” said Jules, in a fashion I almost felt was a little patronizing.

I slightly tilted and nodded my head, you know, one of those knowing nods that’s a little patronizing in itself.

Mike piped up: “We saw you from a distance, long before you saw us. We knew that you were one of these guys offering river trips and, we could tell we had some work to attend to where you were concerned. In fact, Jules and I looked at each other and said, `looks like there’s not going to be a day off for us today, oh and by the way… looks like we’ll be going out on the river!`”

“Nah,” I said “that’s just too much.”

“I’m sure it sounds hard to believe, but that’s exactly how it was. Let’s just say, with our experience of life you get to recognize one of your own. Don’t forget, as I told you earlier, we’d had similar life experiences to you. We came from a similar past with the same failings. When you’ve identified those failings in yourself, it’s easy to spot them in someone else.”

This really was blowing my mind. I remember at the time thinking you could write a book about this and… well… here we are. So, could it be that these two people represented the missing link, as it were. Modern day disciples sent to fix the broke and spread the word. This was conversational foreplay of the highest order, without wishing to be crude, I was wet with anticipation.

“So,here we are on the river, you got your man. Were your assumptions about me right, can I be fixed?”

“No assumptions,” said Mike, “and how can you fix what isn’t broken? All we knew is that we wanted to get to know a little more about you, point you in the right direction and leave you in better shape than we found you. Again, this was a passage of life that we’d been through ourselves, we knew how to approach this, we knew what it would take to make you hear `The Lesson`,” this time he raised his two hands, fingers together to represent inverted commas.

At this point Jules joined the mix. ”Now it’s probably clear to you why we didn’t take up the offer of the other guy that wanted to take us on the river. Unbeknown to him, the price of the trip wasn’t a factor. Like we said previously, you didn’t sell us a trip on the river… we selected you to take us for the reason that we had something to pass on to you.”

ludicrous Sheenanigans!

It’s been hard of late not to do a little bit of `Charlie`. I’m sure if it’s been hard for me, it’s been harder still for Mr Sheen. His ramblings about `winning` and `warlocks` is, erm… strange… no sorry, deeply concerning. He was the star of some US sitcom called `Two and a  Half Men`, I’ve never seem it but it must be one hell of a show – the producers were paying him 2 million dollars an episode. Now, that kind of money buys you a lot of `Charlie`. I can’t help wondering if the producers felt they were getting a good deal for their money.

I feel sorry for the women in his life that have to put up with his antics. Still, I would imagine they get taken care of one way or another. If you spend enough time over at Charlie’s, you’ll be flying round the house too!!

A strange and curious paper trail Pt 9 – A short story by me

Mike continued to look at me,” I hope that last statement hasn’t freaked you out, Des!”

“Not at all,” came my reply. “Although I must add, it’s come as a bit of a surprise. Congratulations on being the first-born again Christians on my boat… Well at least the first that I’m aware of.”

“Thanks very much,” said Mike. “Like I said earlier, we hadn’t counted on meeting someone like you today, but life is full of surprises, eh!”

“You can say that again.”

Mike looked across at Jules and without any verbal prompts, she picked up where he left off. “Do you remember us saying you looked like a person that was fairly happy with their lot? We’d asked you if there were any gaps in your life, any voids, I think, was the wording. You told us all in all you were happy with your lot although, on occasion, you felt like a ship without a rudder. You talked about being on a path to somewhere or something, but not knowing what it was.”

“Yeah, yeah, of course I remember that.”

“Well,” said Jules, “I put it to you… that missing somewhere or something is God… how do you feel about that?”

Oh no, I thought. Here I am on this floating oasis of calm with two salesmen sent from God. I couldn’t believe my misfortune. Not much more than half an hour earlier I was made up with myself for having managed to tout a trip so quickly. How rapidly the tables had turned. Now I was faced with the prospect of finishing this tour whilst fending of the advances of Billy Graham and his wife. Up to this point, I’d liked this couple, now I had concerns, fears almost

I shouldn’t of worried, I’d allowed myself to get ahead of myself. What had changed? They were still the same couple that had got on the boat fifteen or twenty minutes ago, only now, they had a conviction which they’d made me aware of, a conviction I didn’t think I shared.

Jules ran her fingers through her hair, setting her hair back from her face. She drew the index finger of her left hand up to her top lip, running it back and forward along its length. I could see she was in thought, I knew she was considering her next words carefully.

“Born Again Christians, right! You probably think we’re a right pair of stiffs. Green, naïve, no experience of life apart from going down to the local Baptist church on a Sunday, doing a couple of readings from the New Testament, then picking up our guitars and tambourines and bursting into song to praise the Lord.”

“Well,” I said “it is an image that’s crossed my mind.”

“ Of course it is, Des! It’s the type of image that a lot of people would imagine when thinking of Born Again Christians. Bible bashers, wholesome types, good doers, inoffensive souls really, but not the kind of people you’d want to end up sitting next to on a plane, or trapped in a kitchen at a house party with. Well… let me tell you… this couldn’t be further away from the truth.”

She was in full flight now. “We were just the same as you, Des, living our life day-to-day, taking things as they came. We partied, drank too much and even took drugs on more than a few occasions. Like a lot of people we went to work, often doing work that we weren’t overly excited by, and why? Well, I’ll tell you why… More often than not, it was to be able to pay for material goods, you know, TV’s, CD’s, clothes, cars etc. Sometimes we’d spend huge amounts of money on a week or two’s holiday.

Guitars and tambourines.

And what was it all about? I guess we thought the material stuff would help to define us, it’d give us some kind of identity, associate us with our peer group. As for the holidays, they helped us escape the hum drum of our existence, they gave us life experience away from our lives, the experience we gained from visiting far-flung destinations would make us more interesting, more rounded, you could say.”

 

I was nodding in agreement as Jules spoke, she wasn’t saying anything that I hadn’t thought of to myself many times before.

“ You see, we’re all guilty of dis-empowering ourselves. We’re not looking within to find contentment. We think we can find happiness through possession of stuff, by making attachments to material things, by getting out of our bubble for a week here or a week there. What does this say about us all? What is says is that we’ve lost our way somewhat… to use your expression, `we’re like ships without rudders`.”

Wow, I had to say, she was quite a talker and, if she was a salesman of God, I could see why he’d taken her on. Really, when you looked at it, she was talking a lot of sense. Stuff that not too many people find the time to think about or, when they do think about, end up scaring themselves with the consequences.

A strange and curious paper trail Pt 8 – A short story by me

Mike lent forward so his back was no longer resting against the seat back. He shuffled in his spot before crossing his legs in front of him. He seemed to clear his throat, or at least that’s how I remember it. Without any hesitation he blurted it out, “We’re Born Again Christians, Des, and we think we can help with filling in the gaps.”

Born Again Christians, eh, on my boat and, it seemed, in full recruiting mode. Nothing was said for a moment, a moment that appeared to be so much longer than a moment, this moment felt like it consisted of a hundred smaller moments each vying for the soul right to be `just a moment in time`.

Now, I’ve always been a very open-minded kind of person, I’m not a fan of stereotypes and branding or labelling people. I’m also a great believer in `to each his own`. I wasn’t a church goer but, by the same token, I wasn’t an atheist. I’d always felt that life was too complex to be explained by the likes of a Big Bang theory. Someone or something, much bigger than us Homo sapiens,was sitting at a potter’s wheel or  artist’s easel and, with an unimaginable creativity, was laying this thing we call the universe down. It had to be this way… right! Divinity was playing a trick on us, it was leading us to believe that we had all the answers. That we as a species could quantify and explain everything away, even down to how we, the planet we occupy and our immediate universe came to pass. For as long as I could remember, I felt sure that life was a succession of lives, we didn’t just go through the motions of one life to end up in a wooden box or in a vase on a mantle piece. That would be pointless and serve no purpose… I felt sure that we were here to serve some kind of purpose.

After saying that I’m not a fan of stereotypes and labelling people etc, I did have a preconceived notion of what young Christians looked like and how they probably acted. Mike and Jules were very much removed from this notion. In many respects they reminded me of myself, they were free spirits, they had  a worldliness about them. The way they outwardly spoke and presented themselves was very casual; they were current, hip, uncontained and unrestricted. I had been duped by stereotyping, something I didn’t feel I fell prey to very often. I clearly had a very outdated picture of Christians and Christianity; my labelling had sold me a dummy.

We’d drifted past the Wren Library now and  were just passing under Trinity College bridge. From here on in, until we reached Garrret Hostel Bridge, it was all Trinity College land. Trinity was a leviathan of a college, an educational powerhouse. The biggest and wealthiest college in Cambridge. Legend has it that you can travel for sixty miles in any direction and still be on Trinity owned land.

Next to Trinity’s main college site stood the boat shed, it was here that twenty or so of the college’s own punts fanned out across the river. Not so long ago the `Archduke` had counted herself amongst their number. Now she was a renegade, plying her trade along this esteemed stretch of water, free from the convention of the rest of the fleet. More often than not, when I passed the boat shed, Paul or one of the other lads I knew would be out dispensing punts to students or hiring them out for private hire. I had a couple of mates down here that worked in the same capacity as me, they’d also bought ageing boats, done them up and offered private trips to people.

It always brought a smile to my face seeing Paul stumbling about the tarmaced apron that stood outside the boat shed. He’d be dashing in a kind of lop-sided, awkward way,  between shed and riverbank handing out cushions, poles and collecting rentals etc. He really was a 60’s psychedelic throwback, If Manson’s `Family` were looking to swell their numbers, then Paul was their man.

 

 

...sold me a dummy.

A decided lack of CGI but all the better for it.

Opera Kinski.

I love great film, and I know I’m not alone in this. A good friend of mine put me onto a great film called `Fitzcarraldo` that was made by the German director, Werner Herzog in ’82. I knew nothing of this film, but had felt a little trepidation when my friend described it as, “bonkers… but great film making”. I thought it’d be a bit of an ordeal that I’d have to soldier on through… It turned out to be anything but… I urge you to watch it!

Here is a very basic summary as I see it: The film is set towards the latter part of the 20th Century and is set in an isolated town, Iquitos, Peru. Its central character is called `Fitzcarraldo`, a European of Irish extraction, played by Klaus Kinski. He has a love for the opera and, particularly the singer, Caruso that knows no bounds. In short, he has an overriding desire to bring opera to the natives of the Amazon basin – up until this point it has only been accessible to the wealthy rubber barons who populate the bigger towns that have cropped up along the Amazon.

Looking for a method to fund this outlandish dream, he has dealings with an established rubber baron who tells him of a large plot of land that has great rubber harvesting potential, but is not being worked due to its inaccessibility. He decides to lease this land off the Peruvian government on the understanding that he will use it for rubber cultivation.

His paramour ( Claudia Cardinale) is the madame/owner of the local whore house, she puts up the money to front the operation, as well as pay for a steam ship to sail to this part of the forest, reachable only by sailing down a very small tributary of the Amazon. This is also where the tale goes wild. There are two parallel tributaries that join each other but are separated by a raging rapid that is impassable. On inspecting maps of the area, `Fitz` identifies a mountain pass at the point where the two tributaries are closest to each other. It’s here, using the help of 1500 local indians that he decides to take the steamer out of the water and – using a system of rolling logs, pulleys and winches – drag the steamer up and over the mountain, depositing it on the other tributary, having circumnavigated the rapids, and thus giving him access to the land he has leased, and the valuable rubber it contains.

Back in ’82 CGI was extremely basic, as were computers. Herzog, eschewing easier options, actually had the steamer dragged up and over the mountain by the indians et al. The part of the film containing this Herculean feat is riveting viewing.

After accomplishing this unimaginable task, there is a sting in the tale to Fitzcarraldo’s dream. I won’t disclose how the tale winds up, suffice to say, this a man with serious ambition… if he can drag a steamer over a mountain pass, he can accomplish anything.

In summary, the story is way out there – to put it mildly, the setting is beautiful and remote. Fitzcarraldo/Kinski is wildly eccentric and engaging. I hope like me you know nothing about the film and… if you watch it… derive the pleasure  I did.

PS. I thought of including a link to the YouTube trailer but thought better of it. It shows too much of the film.

A strange and curious paper trail Pt 7 – A short story by me

Down to the nuts and bolts.

By now they were both trailing a hand in the water. It’s a beautiful feeling, the sun on your skin, and this cool, almost crystalline water cascading between your open fingers. I looked down at them both and could almost see the cogs going round in their heads. I expected some kind of question, something that would be a continuation of the conversation that had gone before, but what I got was a statement… one hell of a statement!

Mike withdrew his hand from the water, shook it, and placed it in his lap along with his other hand before interlocking his fingers and thumbs. Again, he seemed to pause for a moment’s thought before looking up at me and saying, ”what if I put it to you that you didn’t successfully sell us this trip on the river, but that we selected you to take us on this trip because we had a message to give you… a lesson to teach you if you like.”

Somewhere in my head something went bang, it seemed like the workings in my head had just ground to a halt. The day had started casually with a smoke in my boat, the `edges had been rounded off.` I’d started this day like many others…with the exception of the smoke, I hasten to add. The sun on my face, the rocking of the boat under my feet, the pole in my hands, everything felt familiar, everything felt like going over old ground, everything except the statement that had just been put to me.

“Are you serious, is this for real,” was my reply.

They both looked up at me and, nodding in agreement said, “yep, this is totally for real.”

I was forging into new territory here with this couple. This statement had changed any preconceived notion I might have had for this trip. I looked down at them both, my field of vision seemed to shrink, it reminded me of watching the old spaghetti westerns as a kid. The westerns were always filmed in Panavision, which meant the depth of your film shrunk, and both the top and bottom of the film had a thick black border. That was what I was seeing now. I guess you could call it serious tunnel vision, my focus was on Mike and Jules… and their statement of course.

We’d just passed under the Kitchen Bridge or Wren Bridge as it is also known. Christopher Wren had submitted plans for this bridge, although the bridge went on to be built by a local mason with the rather unglamorous name, Robert Grumbold.

There were no college buildings on either side of the river right now, just a grass bank on either side. The river meandered first right, then left, people were lazing on the grass banks either reading, eating or chatting. All were happy just to take in this beautiful day. Through a couple of willows, up ahead on the left bank, I could see the Wren Library, a beautiful sandstone looking building, that when struck by the sun took on the appearance of gold ingots, stacked one on top of another, this marked the beginning of Trinity College’s land.

“So,” I said… “you `selecting me… a message`, what do you mean by all this? If you’ll forgive me for saying, I take a lot of people out on the river, and I have a lot of different conversations, but I’ve never had anything like this put to me before.”

“Of course you haven’t,” said Jules. “We’re not just having a superficial conversation here, you know, you giving us some history and facts, Mike and I nodding in acknowledgment, maybe one or both of us throwing in a few pleasantries for good measure. We took this trip with you with a purpose in mind, and now I think it’s time we got down to the nuts and bolts.”

Jules continued: “Before we met you, we’d walked around the city, did some window shopping, pottered round some book shops and had a coffee and pastry in a small café. At that stage, we had no idea that we’d be running into you on the street. I’d go so far as to say that we hadn’t any idea we’d run into a `you` type character,” Jules raised both her hands, each with two fingers together to indicate inverted commas at this point. “Today was meant to be a day off for Mike and I, we hadn’t planned on encountering anyone that would need our help. When we saw you, we knew how we were going to be spending the next segment of our day. You see, that’s the beauty of being the people we are, there’s no days off, you never know when you’ll be needed.”

This conversation was severely impeding my work rate. I’d plant the pole every once in a while just to keep us going but, by and large, the pole was just trawling behind me, idle, like myself.

With the pole tucked under my left arm I said, “tell me more about what you mean by `the people we are.`” We were cutting to the chase now, all was about to become clear.

Jules lifted her head from Mike’s shoulder where it had been throughout our conversation. She shuffled a couple of inches away from him, then turned her head ninety degrees to face him, “ I think it’s your turn Mike, you can proceed from here.”