When the Pilot Light Goes Out Read online

  On another occasion during our regular reccies (which stood for reconnaissance missions) we heard other kids in our badger area. Like a bunch of juvenile chimpanzees, we sprang into action. We climbed our favourite conker tree that was used for every surveillance issue encountered in the nearby vicinity, but in this instance we were unable to get a better picture of the disturbance. We decided the best thing to do, as a way of a warning, would be to fire off a couple of arrows. We did this and nothing much happened. We fired off a couple more whilst the others, still in the tree, kept a look out. Still nothing; Minesh stayed in the tree, he was the best climber and newly appointed ‘mega-skilful-dissapearer’. The twins joined me, Peter, Joe and Tony, and we all let loose a couple of arrows each.

  The other kids went quiet. Good, we thought, they must have got the message and decided to sneak away, cluck, cluck chickens!

  ‘What’s going on Minesh?’ I whisper-hissed.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  ‘Where are they?’ I said, still whisper-hissing.

  ‘Don’t know, I can’t see them,’ Minesh said.

  Then we heard them, like faint whistles or rockets in the woods, leaves being torn and then cracks of tree trunks. Dirty tactics, I decided, throwing stones; probably not even covered in clay. Well out of order. We shot the rest of our arrows in their direction and waited again. More whistles, like fireworks on Guy Fawkes’ Night, only much quieter. More cracking on bark, lots of whistles now.

  ‘Flipping hell,’ I screamed, looking up into the trees. They were being aimed into the trees near Minesh. ‘Minesh, what’s going on?’

  ‘Big!’ Minesh squawked.

  ‘Big what, Minesh? You flipping Joey!’ I asked, sensing the panic rising.

  ‘Big kids coming!’

  We glanced up to the brow of the hill and to our horror there were at least twelve big kids running straight for us. I looked up as Minesh grabbed a weak branch and it cracked, lowering him a full building’s height a little faster than comfortable and back into our group. I couldn’t believe it, the well lucky git; he should have at least sprained his ankle or broken his leg or chipped a tooth. We all broke out into a mad dash, proper pegging it for our lives, as more missiles rattled all around us.

  ‘I think they’ve got guns,’ I shouted as we hurdled down through the bracken, every shortcut utilised, back to the ponds and alongside my house’s back garden and finally the leap from the broken tree trunk and over the fence and into my space. We all bolted like a pack of trapeze artists and sat puffing and panting, searching the fence for signs that our pursuers were going to follow us into my garden. But they didn’t; we had lost them.

  Minesh pulled out a metal ball bearing and said it was what the big boys had been firing at us. The twins said they were adventure scouts and they had a cousin who was one; they were all well hard and proper skitzos so we were well lucky. Next time we should use sharper arrows, I thought. Those black widow catapults with ball bearings were a powerful adversary to any group of kids.

  5 – Gosh

  My earliest memories were as a boy in hospital in London. I remember watching my piss go up tubes. Big black mamas came along and washed me by picking me up by the ankles and roughly going over my privates with a wet flannel. I wondered if they used the same flannel on all the kids. I wondered if they were actually nurses or just people who took advantage of sick kids whilst nobody noticed.

  I remembered coming round after being in theatre and, although drowsy, convinced I still had the strength to play with the other children. I jumped down from my bed and landed in a heap from the waist down. I still had no feeling.

  I sometimes wondered if memories like this, the being fairly fucked, vulnerable, a bit out of it, were half the reason in subsequent years I sought to replicate my earliest memories.

  One particular night in bed on the ward sticks in my mind. Strange kids lay in different beds all around me, all of them ill to a different extent. It was dark, clinical and morbid. Some kids were beyond much help. To me it was all irrelevant, and I didn’t want to be there as much as any other kid, but this was what had been deemed necessary and the best course of action for a better later life. Kids, though, don’t know, never know, how lives can be made better or worse. Words of encouragement and understanding only last as long as the sentence in which they are uttered. Kids just want to play, be at home, with toys and friends or cuddling Mummy and Daddy or Flopsy the rabbit. They don’t want to feel trapped, lonely, violated, imprisoned in a hospital. Scared, scared even of the other sick kids that cry at night. Kids don’t understand that other kids have the same fears.

  That’s when I saw the white ghost drifting down the corridors, walking alongside the wards, looking through the windows in search of her baby. I was the baby.

  ‘Here I am, Mummy.’

  She had come to rescue me and take me home; she looked at me in my bed and stopped. Why didn’t she come in? But she couldn’t come in. She wasn’t allowed, but I didn’t know that. One hand on the glass partition was all that separated us. Half a wave, half a gentle motherly caress, and then she was gone and I was alone and the ward fell silent again. The ghost had gone, my ghost had gone. All that was left were the muffled sounds of kids alone with their pain.

  I remembered being wheeled to the lift on the way to theatre. A few lungfuls of gas and I was off into dream land. If I had known how bad it would be when I woke up, like most kids I wouldn’t have been half as worried about the whole going to sleep bit. I still maintained, though, that all operations on children should be done in the middle of the night. That would be understandable to a kid. Lots of strange things happen in the night. It’s when crazy big red blokes come down your chimney, it’s when monsters come out from under your bed, tooth fairies dish out the money for your well-wiggled teeth, the world transforms into a winter wonderland. It’s when you wake up and the whole world has suddenly changed. It’s normal to go to sleep and when you wake up things are different. It’s wrong to go to bed, wake up, be wide awake, get told to be brave and then get put back to sleep whilst alert and fully aware of all the bad stuff that’s going on around you. Bad things happen when you go to sleep in the middle of the day.

  6 – Pilot Light

  I hardly even bothered telling my colleagues I was going to lunch any more. I flicked my name out on a board indicating whether I was in or out of the office and slunk away.

  I’d often just walk up and down Chapel Market, desperate for someone to talk to outside my office. Just a bit of normality is what I craved; I started smiling as soon as I left the building. I stopped at Bryan’s rice and pea stall to buy some jerk chicken. If he asked how I was he’d find me busily struggling to justify my own existence. In my imaginary conversations with him I normally got it sorted, so by the time I was at the front of the queue and ready to order in the end I just had the same conversation we usually had, which ended on me saying, ‘Have a good day, mate.’

  So I’d go back to work, sit at my desk and eat my lunch. Trying to ignore the ringing phones, I would carry on my conversation with Bryan in my head, now determined to explain myself.

  I was known as Pilot Light, supposedly because I never went out. It was an old-school, supposed requisite of the job, apparently, to go out and do boozy lunches. I worked in the print industry. My general job title would be account director, manager, sales rep or handler depending on who you spoke to in the company. The role included finding and keeping happy people who produce printed items, and then wining and dining them as often as proved necessary in order to ensure they used my company to produce as much as possible of their printed items. It was presumed, by my esteemed established colleagues, that bribery was the only way to ensure work. I had always been of the inclination that my job and role were better served within the company by my always being available to cater for my client’s needs: reactive more than proactive.

  I never liked or wanted to be a pushy salesman. Whether I was preparing a qui
ck quote or answering whether a job was possible (within certain time restraints) or even supplying samples of previous projects, if I was out getting pissed, I wasn’t likely to be capable of doing both. This led to the nickname Pilot Light. Because I never went out, it was presumed I was doing something wrong. I was mocked, but I believed I knew my clients and what they wanted from me better than my peers – but who knows for sure. I liked to think they understood my thinking better when they started struggling to get reimbursed for their work expenses. But that was all they worked for. Every day going out and getting pissed for a living! It was a dodgy job and one that led to more than one person I knew losing the plot on drink and drugs. I didn’t really believe it was necessary and felt sorry for the ones who couldn’t see they were addicted.

  If you’re lucky you can find like-minded people who enjoy your company as well as use your company. What your colleagues and clients might never know is what you get up to when you go out. The work you and the real you don’t always meet. I’d always thought shitting on your own doorstep was best avoided. So knowing what I was like when I went out was possibly asking a little too much. Sometimes things are best left to the imagination of others. I always figured my clients knew me well enough to imagine what I’d be like to go out with regularly and were quite happy not to do it more than necessary for fear of damaging both of our mental well-beings.

  7 – After Dark

  Dad would come and wake me in the middle of the night. I’d put on a woolly hat and pick up my torch and off we’d go into the darkness. Dad’s torch was a proper, standard man’s type, no flair, durable, waterproof, heavy, two settings, full beam and half, bright and direct, lighting fifty metres of night-time woodland track. My torch, in comparison, was silver with a red plastic head, light and fairly weak, but had various buttons that, once utilised, changed the light to different colours: red, blue, green and the standard. We’d walk through the woods.

  Most people would think we were mad, or Dad at least was mad. I wasn’t scared, though; I was with my Dad. Actually, I was sometimes, like if we heard something crashing through the undergrowth. One time we walked into a family of badgers busily scoffing, grunting and running around. They didn’t seem to care that we were there. I suppose the fact that we stood dead still, transfixed, gate-crashing their night-time forays, meant they could just get on with whatever they were doing. Another time we stumbled across some poachers, hunting for rabbits. I think they were more scared of us emerging from the darkness. I expect they thought we could have been park rangers or the police, but once they knew it was a bloke and his son they relaxed. They introduced me to the Jack Russell that was excited about going down holes to search for its quarry. They were quite open and friendly people, just looking for some food. Another time we found a glow-worm on a path on a particularly starry night. We lay down for a while looking at the stars as bats skimmed over us, shooting out sonar squeaks as they hunted bugs, and the moon was so bright we didn’t need our torches to see where we were going.

  It was heaven as a kid growing up there. A magpie turned up on our street one day: it was as mad as a hat, it tried to peck my sister’s toes. It was as friendly as you like, too friendly really. All the neighbours had to shut their windows to stop it coming in their houses, worried it would nick their jewellery. As soon as you went outside it would swoop down and try to land on your head or shoulders. I thought it was great and would have loved to have kept it as a pet. It even made a big dog run away, chattering like a rattle – I thought it was laughing. Unfortunately someone came and took it away. One day someone brought a squirrel into school but it was well mad as well and some girls screamed and didn’t like it either so it wasn’t allowed in again. Another day a dog ran around the school playground and we chased him for ages, and another time a great black-backed gull poohed on one of the other little boy’s backs. It was great; it went all the way from his head down to his bum. The dinner lady told me off for laughing at him because he had to wear his PE kit all day.

  8 – Recession

  I was running across Croxley Green thinking about the last conversation I’d had with Chloe’s dad. I’d tried to explain it all to him: how I saw it all panning out. He’d tried to understand. I was running and hadn’t planned a route. I’d put on my trainers and shorts and top and run out the door. I was being carried along by my iPod’s random selections. Some songs made me run on with a steely determination, others made me want to stop and weep. Where I was running to and what was I running from I hadn’t decided. I felt like I was in training for something and hadn’t yet learnt what it was. I was knackered; perhaps now would be a good time to head home, I thought. I found myself explaining myself to myself. Nobody was interested, nobody cared.

  When the inevitable recession had hit, the last sector that was properly screwed was the financial market. Those that worked in marketing or in retail, in travel industry or those in print like me had felt the effects for ages and known it was coming. We had long since tightened our belts before the rich City boys felt the pinch. First the marketing budgets were cut; that meant overstaffed creative agencies shed excess staff. Then it started becoming difficult to find work. Different people started purchasing what little print was being produced from preferred suppliers or, worse still, the cheapest print companies; in turn printers battled each other by lowering costs, and the weakest companies folded.

  Although this was happening for years whilst fat cat bankers continued paying themselves massive bonuses, eventually even the financial market stopped producing so much print, instead opting to send group emails rather than printing monthly reports. Design and media agencies still pitched for new business, architects still produced plans, books were still being sold. Life went on, it was just increasingly difficult.

  I had to find different markets to my preferred financial sector. I became hardened to hearing about other people’s hard times. I knew about the recession years before it affected most people; most people understood, though. The ones who had to battle to survive were the ones who paid for the fat cats to get their bonuses for causing the problem in the first place.

  In a dog-eat-dog world everyone is a potential meal, even if you’re a vegetarian.

  I thought I had a blister.

  9 – Essex Express

  As my mum set about her weekly shop, Dad would mooch off and check out the hi-fi or running magazines or latest electrical items for sale in the new one-stop-mega-shop that was Sava Centre in Bas Vegas. I soon got bored of checking out which Transformer had the most strength and speed and could only bounce the plastic footballs back into their metal housing for so long before a miserable shelf stacker or an old lady with a tartan push trolley would start moaning, so off I wandered. Little boys copy their fathers.

  At the entrance to the shop was a crazy water feature with a giant clockwork mechanism that to any engineer like my father was a thing of moving, metal wonder. I just saw a massive money pit. I learnt quickly it was okay to take the money out if it looked like you were throwing it back in. Disapproving stares soon turned to blind eyes: I was basically recycling other people’s wishes. I was young and didn’t know any better. I was someone else’s problem child.

  I enjoyed skimming the two pence pieces, especially if I managed to get them into the eternal workings of the machine. I was always hopeful of causing carnage to the moving parts. Also, if you got the angle correct you could skim from one pool into the other as surrounding the massive clock were compartmented, separate water wells. It was whilst skimming from section to section that I’d occasionally strike it rich and be able to grab a silver coin. These beauties wouldn’t be thrown back; these found their way into Martin the Newsagent’s tills and gifted me Panini football stickers. I never did manage to get the Meadowbank Thistle gold badge. I always seemed to need, need, need, need, need whereas the other kids just got, got, got and needed to complete. I’d also purchase a Lemonade Sparkle ice lolly which would need to be consumed double quick befo
re meeting back up with Mum and Dad and my suspicious sisters. They always seemed to sense when I’d had something they hadn’t.

  I realised I was getting out of my depth when, guilt-ridden, I admitted my crimes to a priest during confession and then gave my pocket money to the clockwork fountain as a way of saying sorry and doing my penance. This wasn’t until I’d discovered my scam and crime of the century: ‘the grand cake theft’. I’d learnt that I could go to the cake counter and order two iced fingers and two doughnuts without needing to pay a penny, and then calmly walk to the rear of the shop where upstairs they had a buffet-style cafe with toilets. Here I’d find myself a free cubicle where I’d stuff my face before ripping up the box and flushing it down the loo. It was the perfect crime. I was always a fussy eater as a kid, but at times I really wasn’t hungry much, to the utter frustration of my parents. I left some money on the cake counter in the hope that in some way it repaid my debt to society.

  My adventures got further afield as I learnt to gauge exactly how long a ‘big shop’ took when compared to one of Mum’s ‘quick grabs’. ‘Big shop’ soon meant I could get as far as the arcades in Eastgate. I could check out the Chinese karate shop and look longingly at the numbchucks, punching mitts and ninja stars and other fighting tools. Other times I’d just mess about in my sister’s favourite shop, Confetti, with the glittery silver and gold pens. Although undoubtedly a girly shop that sold all types of pens, diaries and pads and papers, and all sorts of things to ignore, I’d still take my time writing a few rude words and my name ‘woz ere’ and ‘West Ham United rule’ before running off to the old market on the other side of the town centre behind the strange water fountain with a massive, wet, bronze lady lying down with a baby. Although that mission proved more of a ‘leggit’ run and didn’t leave anywhere near enough time to talk with the swearing parrot in the smelly pet shop or look at the farting powder or other funny tricks in the joke shop.