crinklybee

The Scholar Of The Number Fifteen Bus

In a long-overdue sequel to that time a bloke tried to run off with my front wheel but I saw him off by brandishing a floral-patterned teacup from Whitby market, I've finally had my bike nicked.  The result is that I'm spending rather more time on the buses than usual- to be precise, on this classic cross-town combination; the 197 out of Levenshulme towards the city centre, then the 15 from Oxford Road out towards my workplace somewhere in Manchester's Fashionable Westside.  It is while engaged in this circuitous commute that I make my latest acquaintance with The Scholar.

As ever, The Scholar boards the number fifteen bus just as the dilapidated inner-city flatshare terraces of Old Trafford give way to the Terry and June-esque suburban sprawl of Stretford.  Oriental, bespectacled, sober, and turned out in smart brown raincoat and sensible shoes, our man might be taken at first sight to be a Physics student of the mature variety.  This impression is enhanced when he produces a neatly-folded sheet of A4 paper from the outer raincoat pocket, adopts a faraway expression, and begins to write- with tiny, but precise stokes of an expensive-looking ballpoint pen.  However, as the journey unfolds it becomes apparent that the conscientious scribblings which ensue represent something altogether more remarkable than any last-minute exam preparation. 

At the bottom of Kings Road we get our first clue that something extraordinary is afoot.  The bus comes to a halt and an old lady climbs aboard, trailing a tartan shopping trolley and brandishing a purple-plastic-covered concessionary pass.   Simultaneously, The Scholar furrows his brow and makes several precise markings on the folded-up sheet of paper.  As the pensioner takes her seat, the scribbling abruptly stops.

The next stop is The Quadrant, where the old lady gets off, to be replaced by a whole host of new passengers: a sharp-suted black woman in her twenties, a pale young man in a white shirt and tie who looks like he could be a trainee bank clerk, and a buggy-wielding young mother.  This flurry of activity is accompanied by a frantic outbreak of penmanship from inside the raincoat.  As the new arrivals take their seats and the bus pulls away to begin the long ascent towards Edge Lane junction, the pen once again comes to a rest.  At the next stop, no-one gets on or off.  This lull in proceedings is marked by a solitary pen-stroke- curiously directed towards the top right corner of the folded-up sheet of A4 paper. 

As the bus makes its way up Kings Road, the unmistakeable conclusion is that The Scholar is engaged in the precise recording of all passenger-related activity on the Number Fifteen bus.  Clearly this task is too multi-layered to be entrusted to any known system of annotation- Western or Oriental- so our man has devised one of his own.  As the downstairs deck fills up with rush-hour commuters, the beetle-like handwriting spreads to all corners of the page.  By the time we reach Chester Road, the folded-up sheet of A4 paper is a veritable tapestry of tiny but ornate markings.

At the stop before Stretford Arndale, the elegant system of annotation is tested by an unforeseen event.  The sharp-suited young black woman, it seems, has taken none too kindly to spending her morning commute as the subject of academic research.  She leans over the ticket-strewn aisle:

'Excuse Me'.

No reaction from behind the glasses.  No reaction at all.

'Hey you!  You with the pen!  Excuse me!'

But it is no contest.  The Scholar calmly rises from his seat, settles in one just out of reach, and resumes his intermittent notation- with, it seems, even more deliberate precision than before.   His furious challenger retreats from the scene.  'Bloody nutcase', she is heard to mutter to herself, as she steps down onto the pavement and recedes from view.

The next stop is Stretford Arndale.  The Scholar- absolutely untroubled by the momentary malfunctioning of a portion of this morning's data- stands up, slips his A4 sheet of paper into the inside pocket of the raincoat, and climbs off.  Out of the side window, I can see him crossing the dual carriageway.  For the first time all morning he is in a hurry- dodging between the speeding traffic in a bid to reach the shelter on the other side.  As we pull away and cross Barton Road by the Robin Hood pub, I crane my neck and see why: coming in the other direction is a half-empty double-decker.  The front is emblazoned with the number 15.

The Scholar clambers aboard the Piccadilly-bound service, delves into the outer pocket of the raincoat, pulls out a fresh sheet of A4 paper, and folds it neatly in half.  Another chapter in the never-ending tale of the Number 15 bus has begun.  One day, perhaps, this sage figure will condescend to decode the months and years worth of scribblings and lay bare his life's masterwork for us all to marvel at. Until then, we can only wonder what mysteries of intersuburban bus travel are hidden inside his smart brown raincoat.   

The Hobbler

For the past seven weeks I've been hobbling around the place, and suffering from occasional spasms of pain shooting all the way down one leg- pains which until a fortnight ago were enough to startle me bolt upright, with monotonous regularity, at 4:30 every morning.  Apparently it's called sciatica, which until recently I would have imagined to be the name of the Inter Milan right-back.  Instead it turns out to be what happens when an inflamed disc at the base of the spine exerts pressure on some nerve or other at the top of the leg.  Anyway you can take it from me it's no bleeding fun at all, and the discovery that my suffering is shared by celebrities such as the former Manchester United centre-back Gary Pallister do nothing to brighten my daily outlook.

I suppose this is what happens to thirty-nine year olds who forget for sixty minutes a week that they're not twenty-five any more and go careering with wild abandon around football pitches, fondly imagining themselves to be performing a passable impersonation of Peter Beardsley in his pomp.  This is what I had been up to on that fateful March Tuesday night on pitch six of the Whalley Range five-a-side centre .  Nothing untoward seemed to have befallen me as a result- until I tried to walk off the pitch and found that one of my legs seemed intent on staying exactly where it was.

It really is a crying shame, as I had (in common with every thirty-nine-year-old amateur five-a-side player in the country) until that moment clung to a faint hope that there was still time for my criminally overlooked ballplaying flair to be spotted by the professional talent scout who we imagine to be secretly watching our every move and scribbling away in a notebook .  It was only a matter of time, I felt, before this grizzled old figure, resplendent in raincoat and cloth cap, stepped out from behind the bushes and intoned the magic words- 'Here, put these clothes on'.  The following Saturday would see me make my debut for Newcastle United, coming off the bench as a 79th minute replacement for Obafemi Martins, and setting up a last minute winner with a far-post cross after a mazy dribble through a tiring Birmingham City defence.

That was what I imagined would happen seven weeks ago when I still had the use of both legs.  Now I'm starting to have my doubts.  Perhaps it really is expecting too much of a multi-million pound Premiership outfit to take a chance on an untried thirty-nine-year-old office worker with a pronounced limp, whose career highlight so far remains a thirty yard lob over the stranded goalkeeper of Stafford Polytechnic's Third XI, which formed the consolation goal in a 9-3 defeat sometime in the late 80s.  A sad indictment, I'm sure you would agree, on the lack of romance in the modern game.

Of course bits of me seizing up inexplicably for months at a time is all I should really be expecting now that I'm very nearly about to be forty.  Yes, forty.  Young Frankie (who is very into birthdays, his imaginary friend Dodder recently had one that lasted several weeks) seems to be looking forward to it more than I am.  He says he's got a surprise present wrapped up for me and he can't possibly tell me what it is- then in a moment of weakness lets slip that it is 'A tractor, and a fox'.

A tractor, and a fox.  I don't think we can possibly improve on that so we'll leave it there for now, shall we, as it is late and I need to hobble off up the stairs for the night.  Next time out, I'll reveal what was really in the surprise package, and offer various sage words from my new-found perspective of just the other side of thirty nine and therefore probably- probably- just ever so slightly too old to be entertaining serious thoughts of embarking on an alternative career in professional football.  Until then, then.

Why I Can Never Go Back To Castro Urdiales- Part Four

It was the end of my first afternoon in Castro Urdiales, and I was being shown round the lodgings that the Inlingua people had arranged for me-a tiny bedroom in a modern apartment just across the road from the Academy.   My guide was the live-in landlord, Santi- a dapper-looking fellow in his forties who, as he had explained to me in between cursory references to the temperamental nature of the bathroom fittings, supplemented a primary income drawn from a management job at the local oil refinery by renting out rooms to itinerant 'young professionals'.  The whistle-stop tour of the rather dank and box-like inner quarters had concluded- not, one imagined, by accident- at the apartment's one remarkable feature- a balcony affording magnificent views of the Cantabrian coastline.

'Of course you'll have noticed the oar back here', Santi remarked as we peered over the railings. 

I had not.  I had been too busy admiring the seventy-yard-high waves of the Atlantic Ocean, crashing angrily against chalk-white cliffs directly in front of my face.

'Er..'

'Impressive, isn't it? It belonged to my grandfather, as a matter of fact .  He was the best oarsman that Cantabria ever produced.'

I noticed the sporting heirloom in question now.  It was made of expensive-looking wood, about thirty yards long, and attached at knee-height to the outer wall of the apartment, just underneath the window-ledge that separated the balcony from the main living room.  It looked like it would take the strength of three men just to lift it from the hooks that kept it in place, never mind make any meaningful impression with it on the fast-flowing rivers of Cantabria. 

Santi's grandfather must have been an impressive figure indeed, I reflected as I wrote out a cheque for the first two months' rent.  Certainly he coudn't have lived in this place- an overenthusiastic stretch of the arms whilst yawning of a morning could have taken out two internal walls and sent room-fulls of unsuspecting flatmates crashing to their death against the unforgiving rocks.  Still, the rent was cheap, and the morning commute consisted of getting in a lift, crossing the road, and ascending two flights of stairs.  I would just have to make the best of it.   

As the weeks and months went by, it became apparent that the cramped nature of the living quarters was the least of my accommodation-related problems.  To put it briefly, Santi was an unusually houseproud man. To put it slightly more insistently, Santi could have cleaned, tidied and polished for Spain- a country which would have been a prime contender for Gold Medal honours should The Obsessive Pursuit of Domestic Cleanliness ever be adopted as an Olympic event.  Needless to say, the live-in landlord expected the same unimpeachable standards of home hygeine from the rent-paying twenty-somethings under his roof.  A stern view indeed was taken of any departure from the pristine- a coffee-cup left unwashed for twenty minutes on the kitchen workbench, say, or a magazine left open at the dining table.  I took care never to find out for sure, but imagined that the discovery of a stray hair on the gleaming white porcelain of the bath would have resulted in summary evicition,  quite possibly effected by means of that ocean-facing verandah.

In the circumstances it was perhaps unsurprising that I spent most evenings (and every Friday and Saturday night until six in the morning) out on the town.  But occasionally- very occasionally- the rigours of the constant social whirl would have taken their effect so comprehensively that a cosy night-in was the only option.  It was on such a night that the incident occurred- the incident which means I can never go back to Castro Urdiales again.      

........

There were just two days to go before the teaching contracts were up, and we were due to leave Castro Urdiales for ever.  Myself, fellow teacher Rachel and Abby were taking advantage of Santi's absence for the evening (he was rumoured to keep a ladyfriend in Laredo and would at unpredictable intervals depart for the mountains on romantic errands) by flaunting a flagrand disregard for the houserule (which, by the way, hadn't been mentioned during that whistle-stop introductory tour) that forbad lodgers or their houseguests from setting foot without pre-arranged permission either in the living room or on the balcony.

It was on my fourth- no, maybe my fifth attempt of the evening at hurtling the windowsill to gain access to the outside that disaster struck.  The strong home-made Cuba Libre in my right hand (also the fourth or fifth of the evening) caused me slightly to misjudge the descent to the floor level, and instead of a comfortable landing on the patio, my feet became lodged painfully against some weighty obtrusion half-way down- wooden, by the feel of it- which after showing momentary resistance, crashed under the force of my right Doc Marten shoe and gave way. The sound it made- a hollow 'Craaa-aackk'- was momentarily loud enough to drown out the incessant volume of the waves crashing against the cliffs below. Somewhere in a not-far-distant  churchyard, in a very long, wide, grave, the finest oarsman that the Cantabria ever produced, turned in his grave.

Me, Abby, and Rachel were slower to react- by maybe half a second.  After this shocked interlude, drinks were set to one side and frantic efforts were made to splice back together the severed seagoing implement.  Our frenzy was to no avail.  The oar, while not smashed quite clean in two, was disfigured by a jagged split which ran near enough from side to side and along a quarter of its considerable length.  Only the merest sinew of ancient oak prevented a split into two pieces of approximate fifteen yards each having been effected by my clumsy, alcohol-ridden size nines.  The best we could do- and we had to admit, even through Cuba-Libre tinted glasses, it was next to useless- was to shove a large plantpot in front of the stricken artefact, in the hope that Santi's renowned eye for detai might comprehensively desert him on his inevitable return from the amorous clutches of the Woman of the Mountains.

The cold light of day brought an even more forlorn outlook.  Hungover, we traipsed the streets of Castro looking for a hardware store that might, miraculously, store a patent adhesive designed specifically to effect invisible repair to giant one-hundred-year-old pieces of rowing equipment.  The best we could manage (hampered as we were by a reticence to explain to any shopkeeper the precise nature of the job at hand, lest it become apparent that an assault by a drunken hooligan had put paid in seconds to the town's most prized cultural artefact) was a tube of overpriced standard-issue superglue. 

Needless to say, the overpriced adhesive proved about as much use as the oversized plantpot at hiding the evidence of our misdemeanour.  The only option left was to sweat out the remaining twenty-four hours before the next coach left for Bilbao Airport, meanwhile praying to whichever Deity we could call upon that Santi did not take it upon himself to return home beforehand and sreak hideous vengeance.  As you have no doubt guessed from the fact that I am alive to type these words, the Woman of the Mountains clearly held more allure on this occasion than the 7:15 Sunday morning departure from Laredo Central, and we made it onto that Bilbao express in one piece.  Which is more than can be said for Santi's grandfather's oar.  May he- and it- rest in peace.    

Why I Can Never Go Back To Castro Urdiales (Part Two)

On the face of it, Inlingua Academies' decision to open up a branch of their English-teaching franchise in Castro Urdiales made sound business sense.  Between April and October, it was said that the population of this sleepy Cantabrian fishing port swelled to more than four times its normal level, as hordes of 'Bilbainos'- bankers, shipping officials and their families from the thriving commercial centre of Bilbao just along the coast- left the pollution of the big city behind to take up summertime residence in their second-home seaside towerblock apartments.  Inlingua's target market was the adolescent sons and daughters of these moneyed incomers- indulged teenagers whose academic shortcomings had left their parents exasperated enough to fork out a few thousand pesetas monthly, in a bid to cram in enough English to see them scrape through the all-important September state-school resits back home in the leafy suburbs.

The theory, like I say, was sound enough.  The only flaw was in the execution.  Due to some wrangle over contracts, the opening of the 'academia' - really just a converted apartment on the first floor of one of those semi-deserted towerblocks- was put back several months from the originally-planned date.  As if that was not enough, there was some other wrangle (or maybe just a good old -fashioned cock-up) on the publicity front, which meant that a planned Cantabria-wide blitz of radio and poster advertisements completely failed to materialise.  The net result of this confusion and incompetence was that the school opened its doors in near-secrecy- and in the middle of January, a good three months after the last of the Bilbainos had fled the by-now inhospitably windswept one-horse fishing port for the bijou cosiness of their main dwelling.  On the first day just four students came along to enrol- and they were all from the same family. 

The Revuelta children were the sons and daughters of a middle-class family from the farming village just down the road.  Jose and Antonia were shy (if sometimes stroppy) teenagers; their younger siblings Alejandro and Josefina were charming (if sometimes moody) pre-adolescents.  For reasons that I can't recall, Asun the hideously underworked school secretary sent the older two off to my colleague and fellow TEFL novice Rachel's classroom, leaving the younger pair in my care.

It is worth recalling at this point that when it came to the teaching I really didn't have a clue what I was doing.  That two-week TEFL crash-course in Birmingham- much of which, now that I came to think of it, had been whiled away on liquid lunches in backstreet pubs off New Street- had left me unprepared for the rigours of instructing tiny Spaniards in a foreign language, even if I had them locked in one-on-one for an hour at a time.  After six weeks of intensive tuition, Josefina's command of the Shakesperian tongue extended to 'My name is Josefina.  I am seven.  Who are you?'.  Meanwhile, me and Alejandro had more or less given up on English altogether- after forty-five tortuous minutes we would close the textbook, get the 'Panini' football stickers out, and spend the rest of the hour risking the wrath of Asun on the other side of the thin classroom wall by indulging in excited, whispered, Spanish conversation about the fortunes of his favoured Real Madrid.   

After a week of this stressful work (and it was strangely stressful- we weren't allowed to leave the 'academia' during working hours, in case we were suddenly swarmed by new students, and would while away the afternoons watching the rain from the balcony and making cups of tea in metal cups on the hideously slow electric hob in the apartment kitchen) me and Rachel were ready to hit the bright lights of the big city. Unfortunately Bilbao, although just 30km along the main coastal road, was served by a bus service that ceased after 7PM, so it was the Castro nightlife or nothing.  The Castro nightlife was concentrated on the two streets nearest the seafront, each of which boasted half-a-dozen claustrophobic and over-lit bars.  After sampling each of these thoroughfares twice Rachel would declare herself tired of being clumsily chatted up by drunken fishermen (and occasionally I would have reason to empathise).  As dawn approached we would esconce ourselves in one of the town's two trendy hotspots. 'La Noche' or 'El Norte'.

'La Noche' was considered the more fashionable locale among the resort's twentysomethings, but 'El Norte' had a video jukebox, which in the context of Castro Urdiales was as unfeasibly exotic and alluring as a spaceship.  The unchanging ritual was to put in 200 pesetas and select 'Altogether Now' by The Farm.  It had to be unchanging as the playlist remained unchanged the entire time we were there.   The denizens of Castro were unswervingly loyal in their musical tastes.  If The Farm were the favourites in El Norte, everywhere else in town REM held sway- to the extent that even the old fishermen seemed to know all the words to 'Losing My Religion'.  One day me and Abby (who had become curiously attracted to the town's dubious charms and used to come to visit) were drinking in one of the overlit backstreet bars when a weatherbeaten old chap plonked himself down next to us, nodded towards the speakers, and intoned: 'El Rem, no?  Mucho Cambio De Ritmo!'  (REM- a lot of change of rhythm, isn't there?).  This unlikely conversational gambit became our Castro Urdiales catchphrase and we would never tire of repeating it to each other. 

As daylight broke through, we would end the night taking in the action outside the locale we had taken to calling the 'violent bar'- where the ritual was for the more hot-headed of the town's young menfolk to end the evening by hurling dustbin lids at each other across the town square.  The effect was largely comical, and nobody ever seemed to get seriously hurt.  By Sunday afternoon when we resurfaced from our slumbers the lids would be back in place and respectable-looking families would be promenading across the square in their Sunday best.  The only reminder of the long night-time would be the taste of 'Voll Dam' extra strength on the throat and the unmistakebale opening bars of 'Losing My Religion', drifting out of the front door of one of the well-to-do cakeshops.  'Cambio de Ritmo', indeed.      

All this and I haven't even started to tell you why I can never go back to Castro Urdiales.  But it's getting late.  Let's just say for now it was to do with a fussy landlord, a series of strong home-made 'cubalibres', and a 200-year-old rowing-boat oar. 

...............

To be continued

Why I Can Never Go Back To Castro Urdiales (Part One)

It was November 1990 and unfancied outsider John Major was vying with housewive's favourite Michael Heseltine to take over running the country following the sudden and spectacular demise of the hitherto-impregnable Iron Lady.  Myself, I couldn't care less who took over the helm of the sinking ship of Thatcherism.  I was getting out.

Most likely I told anyone who would listen that it was the prospect of several more years of Tory misrule that had led me to flee the country in righteous protest.  In reality the thinking was somewhat less highly principled.  Five months had passed since my graduation from Wolverhampton Polytechnic, and life away from the cossetted world of the Student Union was proving just as harsh and cheerless as I had spent the last four years fearing it would be.

I was eking out a living back home, reprising my summertime vacation role as a clearer of tables in the cafeteria of Newcastle Airport.  This was just as soul-destroying an existence as it sounds.  The early shifts used to start at 5AM.  On six days a week I (and everyone else in my mam and dad's suburban cul-de-sac) would be woken at 4:20AM precisely by the impatient beeping of a NODA taxi. Three minutes later, half-dressed and still munching on a slice of toast, I would dive headlong into the backseat and try to squeeze myself into a space between piles of unironed clothing that on closer inspection proved to contain an indeterminate number of my semi-comatose colleagues.  Six miles later, via pick-up points in Godforsaken outposts of the far West End such as Blakelaw and Newbiggin Hall, our sorry cargo would be deposited at the Newcastle International Airport (Tradesman's Entrance).  None of us would have spoken a word in the interim.

Six hours into the shift, mind you, I would be looking back at the wordless commute as the undisputed highpoint of the morning.  Typically, three hours of sleepless tedium at the controls of a wonky-wheeled table-clearing trolley would have been interrupted by the Duty Manager's sudden, shrill cry of 'Delay!  Five Pound Delay!'.  This was the cue for what looked like three thousand hungover Glaswegians to ascend the steps into the deserted cafeteria from the main concourse, each of them bearing a token for five pounds worth of refreshments, doled out to them by their tour operator as statutory recompense for the unforeseen tardiness of their departure. 

These fearsome Caledonians, already somewhat put out by having to spend the first precious hours of their annual holiday slumming it in the bowels of a foreign airport, would find their mood in no measure improved by the positively scandalous prices charged for the menial fare on offer.  Somehow, I always seemed to be saddled with till duty during delays, and my requests for £3.80 for a limp bacon butty and a pot of tea would be met by bursts of Glaswegian invective that made Billy Connolly sound like Noel Coward.  On bad days (say when the main departures to both Tenerife and Alicante had been delayed by twelve hours each) the masses of slumbering, ill-tempered Highlanders littering the linoleum made the shopfloor resemble a deleted battescene from Braveheart, only with added swearing, and the claymores replaced by overpriced steak and onion baguettes.    

As autumn gave way to winter the thought of even one more week of this relentless minimum wage suffering became unbearable.  Thankfully the Guardian Situations Vacant column brought news of an escape route, in the form of a two-week crash course in Teaching English as a Foreign Language staged by Inlingua Academies, Inc at their Birmingham HQ. Bakc at the cafeteria, I handed in my notice to a duty manager too far gone with sleep deprivation even to notice, squeezed the wonky-wheeled trolley into a space between two prone families of unshaven Glaswegians, and caught the first train south.  My Spanish adventure (well OK, it was a West Midlands adventure for now, but if I passed the course and signed the appropriate forms it would become a Spanish adventure) had begun.      

.........

To be continued...

The Man Who Fell Asleep

According to some bloke on Newsnight Review the other week, our caffeine-infused lifestyles are causing us all to go mad with lack of sleep.  As someone who is

1/ as addicted to caffeine as everyone else

and

2/ the parent of a three-year old boy who wakes up every night at eleven o'clock, and then again at three in the morning, at which point he climbs into our double bed and doses fitfully until 6:30AM sharp

I can only concur with this learned gentleman's observation.  When you factor in my longstanding custom of dropping off by mistake while putting Frankie to bed, and consequently staying up staring at this here computer screen until silly damn oclock of a weekday morning, you have a surefire recipe for the very insomnia-produced delirium that the Newsnight fellow was on about.  And so- it is with no little pleasure that I relate to you the joyful news that last night- for the first time in maybe four years- I went to bed at a sensible time, slept soundly for eight (eight!) hours, then got up in time for work.

This singular turn of events has come about as a result of me having the house to myself for a few days.  Charlotte and Frankie are away down south on a family visit, leaving me in full charge of the Levenshulme operation.  I have vague notions of spending this time productively- starting work on that novel, perhaps, or maybe just tackling the bulging pile of mail, some of it dating from before Christmas, that is clogging up 'my' section of the intray.  The reality, of course, is set to be somewhat different.  For a start I have somehow managed to fill up my work diary with pesky evening residents' meetings, meaning that tonight is the only one I'm actually spending home alone.  And then, of course there is my well-documented outright laziness to consider. 

No- I think the novel (and the bulging pile of mail, and the List of Things In Our House That Don't Really Work So Let's Sto Pretending That They Do) can wait for another couple of days, at least.  I've spent from nine to six all day at work writing letters, printing out Powerpoint Presentations, and stuffing them in envelopes, so I think tonight's productive activity will be limited to writing this post (and I always feel very virtuous indeed when I've managed to bang a post out), making myself a spaghetti bolognese, then falling soundly asleep for nine (nine!) uninterrupted hours.  Good night everyone, sleep tight...