Festival City

Edinburgh is rife with festivals.  There is even a website listing them.   The city is the setting for a new novella by John Robertson Nicoll called The Balloon Man in Edinburgh.

On a fine Spring day in Edinburgh a strange, shabby little man alights from the train at Waverley Station and makes a beeline for Princes Street Gardens bearing gifts for the squirrels that inhabit the trees there. He meets an old Polish gentleman who, feeling sorry for the little "tramp", offers him free temporary accommodation in his large house on the edge of the City's New Town. But old Josef doesn't know what he has let himself or his tenants in for. Over the next few days the old landlord, poor lovelorn Miss Laird and the crook, Driscoll, will all feel the effect of Buster's presence and their lives will be changed forever.

Currently it is available in a Kindle edition, £1.78, and there is a free Kindle app for those of us - like me - who haven't got a Kindle and want to read it on the PC. 

John R Nicoll also has a blog and is supposed - nudge nudge - to be getting on with writing an important fact-based play about Scotswoman  Jane Haining, who refused to abandon the pupils under her care when the Nazis took power in Hungary. 

Raft Pie

Where the salt water meets the fresh water there is a line in the river. Just above that line is The Republic of Raft, not so much anchored as lazing alongside a ramshackle landing stage, dreaming of gamblers on paddle steamers and fine ladies languidly dipping white hands and long plaits in the water. 

It was the thin days of January but this year the snow had only glanced the surrounding countryside. The Raft itself rarely froze in; its proximity to the salt water kept its path clear for a quick getaway. Dadder Raft insisted that if needs be, the Old Girl - by which he might have meant the either the Raft or Mammer - could sail coastal waters but her days hauling to Holland were probably over.

Mammer assured us little Rafts that she and Dadder had sailed the seven seas, but we rather doubted this as Dadder had none of the compulsory elements of a sea captain. No wooden leg, no parrot, not even a spy-glass or a turtle-neck jersey. Besides, Dadder could swim and everyone knows sailors are allergic to water, which is why they never drink it. Did you ever see a sailor drink anything but rum? Of course not.

School had begun again and we trudged down to the Board School which had its compensations at this time of year. In the corner the Board had provided a hearth big enough for a dragon to live in, surrounded by great iron railings.  Our teacher, Miss Mavis, did not care for being cold so her high-seat desk had shuffled closer to the fire and she chose to conduct as many lessons as possible  with us sitting in a circle on the floor next to it.  The wooden floor was hard on the bum but then again, it was warm to the touch and far, far away from the incomprehensible maths cupboard which shivered far away at the back of the classroom where a disgruntled stuffed badger lived on the top shelf because nobody could think of what else to do with it.  A stuffed adder, quipped Miss Mavis, might have made more sense.

The school caretaker, lumbering along in his regulation blue dungarees and carrying the symbols of his office, a broom and a bucket, came in to the classroom at break time to top up the grate.  Sometimes there would be faint footprints of coal dust as if a Santa had got lost and fallen down a chimney out of time.  Burton Coggles, whose dad had been down a coal mine, said that the caretaker was really Santa and this was his cover job, you could tell because if you looked in the coal dust there were tiny sparkles.

Back at the Raft, Mammer and Baba cuddled up to conserve a little warmth. We did not appreciate it, but food grew scarce in January and Mammer began to choose us over herself.  Her paying work of sewing tended to drop off just after Christmas, so she caught up with repairs, but always there was the difficulty of where dinner was coming from. Or at least, coming from legally.  Dadder was a marsh man, a wet bob, so in absolute terms he could never starve, not even if he ended up eating the roots of reeds - you can, they are edible - but that diet grinds the teeth to nothing. Protein is what you need, and that means a certain flexibility of attitude.

Up river was an Old Empty Water Mill which stood adjacent to Squire Bragg's farm.  The mill housing, the habitable shack at the bottom and the mill pond had been in the care of the Last Daughter of the Last Miller  but she had died and the Remaining Relatives had set to squabbling about the sale of it. For the moment, reasoned Dadder, it was the property of the Estate of the Last Daughter,  not yet passed legally in to anyone else's hands.

He slipped down to the mill pond because it was here that a colony of carp with mouths the size of half-crowns grazed the still surface of the pond. Where there was weak sunlight slanting through the bare branches the carp would sunbathe.  Here, he had laid out a net in the shallows, pegging it down but leaving the mouth slack so that it could be lifted, just a few inches, and instantly create a prison which only the most determined jumper would get over.   Dadder didn't like nets, them being too much in the nature of  'evidence' if the water bailiffs called, but this wasn't the river so they didn't have any authority, not even allowing for the fact that the pond was fed by, and flowed into, the river.

While the Last Daughter had been alive there was no trouble.  She agreed that so long as they shared the catch, and it was purely for personal use, they would harvest what they needed and no more than that.  There didn't seem to be any shortage of fish the size of cats, they took a pair, another grew in its place. That, after all, is the point of a carp pond.  But she was gone and there are flocks of black-coated solicitors who might want to argue the finer points of testamentary law.

Besides, personal use wasn't directly what Dadder had planned. This was a variation to the bargain. His idea was to take a catch to the fishmonger who was would pay cash as the sea boats were not going out so often this month, leaving his slabs looking bare. Carp is all very well but cash is king.

The sun was well up when he slid two of the fish out of the net and into a canvas bag slung under his arm, offering a prayer for the soul of the Last Daughter, and slipped away brushing his footsteps out behind him so that you would never know that so much as a cat had been down to the water.  Reluctantly he left the net laid out so as not to disturb the bed of the pond anymore than it had been, but if someone cared to look they would find it.

The reeds on the lonely riverbank whispered "fisssshhhess" as Dadder slipped by,  lamenting two brothers who would now sleep with the humans. 

Dadder marched past the Harbour Lights, in to the open shop with its marble slab and winked at Mr Baker the fishmonger.  It was a trick of fate that the baker was called Mr Butcher, while the butcher was called Mr Grocer, but then fate has a whimsical sense of humour.  Mr Baker took a peek in to the bag and held up two fingers.  Dadder responded with four, and they closed at three.   The bag was emptied under the counter.  Due to the sensitive nature of the fish they would not appear whole for fear of provoking queries, questions, unwelcome comments, but they would be displayed in neat fillets under no name. If asked, Mr Baker would say "wytch bream".  "Wytch" being another word for "best not ask".

Stopping for a swift ale at the Harbour Lights, Dadder enquired if anyone had seen Squire Bragg and was reassuringly told that he had last been seen taking a train to the Spa, where he intended to sweat out the port and Stilton which had given him gout over Christmas.  While the Squire was away his man was taking it very easy so he shouldn't be about much but was probably going to be on the dominoes team that evening. Dadder nodded his thanks, which might duly show up in the form of a few coneys liberated from under the Squire's hedges, a form of pest control for which he didn't charge the Squire and didn't trouble him with the knowledge of it, neither.

The bar shut shortly, the landlord being a great believer in late lunches for landlords, and Dadder took himself over to see Mr Grocer -who had now opened after his own lunch - where he handed over a note written in Mammer's italic script: "1lb of minced beef, please".

That was nearly all the business of the day so Dadder hurried back upriver while there was still light and pulled out the last of the potatoes from the sack in his shed and two onions.  Not much to work with but in the sea-locker Mammer had a tin of tomatoes and there was a dab of butter and a drop of millk in the cool tin which nestled beside the boat.

Ahead of the return of the little Rafts, ravenous from school, Mammer fried the beef in its own fat, then the onions and tomatoes, laying them down in a pie dish. On top of that she put the mashed potatoes.  The great metal pie dish was left on the top of the pot-bellied stove, keeping hot and cooking very gently. 

Back in town Miss Mavis had finished reading the class an episode of "Moonfleet" had looked out of the school room window and come to the conclusion that she didn't trust the sky.  It looked grey and sulky, as if ready to pick a fight with the ground.  Swiftly she divided the children in to the believers and heathens, put Leonard the class Jew in to the Wendy House, and whisked the believers through The Lord's Prayer, shooing them out of the door and telling them not to dawdle but to get home before the weather closed in.

Burton Coggles remembered to knock on the Wendy House door to tell Leonard to come out, who answered as if he had been asleep and not listening at all. The Wendy House was made of hardboard with a cloth roof, and not much bigger than a kennel.  Leonard increasingly looked like Alice, growing until she filled up the White Rabbit's house. This impression was inadvertently fostered by Leonard's father who believed in buying shoes with room to grow, so that Leonard trip-slapped about in footwear suitable for an apprentice clown.  

Most of the children lived in the town so Miss Mavis had no concerns for them, but the Rafts had to go along the river bank and she considered them a feather-headed brood, harmless but with less wit than the ducklings on the pond.

She sighed and, regardless of the cold, she gathered her coat, scarf, hat, gloves, galoshes and umbrella - still rolled at this stage - and pointed it to emphasise the way. "Come along children, time to go home" and she marched us smartly down to the path which would become the river bank.  We had to huff to keep up; she was small but she travelled like a determined little tug bringing a liner in to dock.

At the bend of the river, where the water is still salt but you can see the Raft, she stopped and pointed towards our craft with her umbrella. " Run along now, I can see smoke from the chimney and I can smell something delicious."
"Come with us, Miss"
"No dears, I need to get home before the sky makes up its mind."
We ran towards the wisp of hope.
"And anyway" she muttered to herself "there are enough mouths there to feed already".

When we got to the Raft, we turned to wave to say we were alright.  Standing on the raised bank she was outlined against the sky, the wind tugging at the hem of her coat. The pink grey dusk had changed her clothes to the dark bronze of a statue and she rested on her furled umbrella like the knight guarding a tomb in the church. Her hat stood like a heavy circlet on her head.  The line of angry cloud in the heavens held back - or seemed to - while she stood between us and the fated rain.

Miss Mavis looked back towards the Raft, hearing with relief  the distant clink of spoons on enamel plates. On the air was a faint aroma of cocoa telling a story of a voyage from the far Americkees to Holland, but where it came from she could not fathom. 

The Kingdom of Raft

Where the salt water meets the sweet water there is a ramshackle landing stage against which leans an extraordinary craft which could, allegedly, go to sea. Not that anybody should be fool enough to try for the vessel is overgrown with cabins and chimneys, festooned with nets. An empty paddling pool is tethered to it, like a lilly pad in the stream, and on it sit the ducks, quacking insolently at the frustrated cat who lies on a tin roof chittering impotently. The ducks never fall for that old trick. The boat - for there is a boat under there - spreads herself against the bank and the landing stage like an old woman bathing her feet in the river, her skirts spread out and dipping in the water. This is the Raft, the current berth of the Raft family.

A Small Kingdom

Dadder Raft, being a scholar of maritime law, insisted that since time immemorial the land between the highwater mark and low water mark belonged to no one. The legal authority for this was cited as Miss Elizabeth the librarian at the harbour branch library. Since she worked for the council this was regarded as a definitive opinion.

Nana Raft (Mammer as she was then), when challenged to verify the opinion, said the librarian was an expert cable knitter and anyone who could read one of those seafaring patterns obviously knew what they were talking about.

Dadder had always fancied a country seat and reckoned that this gave him the means to acquire one in a certain sense. The river also had high and low water marks and, crucially, one crook in the river's bow was dug as an over-flow for the highest of tides. Most of the year it would not be used but just once or twice it filled with water. Unlike the sea shore, this was only flooded for a few days a year. He argued that this piece of land belonged to him as much as it did to anyone else. A tiny estate which was so prone to flooding that it vanished twice a year appealed to his sense of continuity. He said farmers on the Nile had sorted this out thousands of years earlier.

Squire Bragg who owned the adjoining farm land could probably have challenged this but as he would have had to pay the costs and neither of them fancied arguing with the water bailiffs who maintained they owned the river, yes, and the fish therein, he didn't bother. They agreed to differ so long as Dadder would keep the footpath clear and save Squire Bragg the burden. The bailiffs also reached an accommodation on the matter and Dadder was furnished with a rod licence; what for I know not. He was a tickling man.

Dadder therefore established his HQ which was part bothy, part elderberry bush, on the elbow of the river below the built-up bank. The footpath ran along the top of the bank so only people who really wanted to would make it down in to his Shangri-La. The soaring canes of the elderberry were lashed in to order, their leaves pointing outwards as far as possible. A seat was wedged between the stems, a very long seat that he could even lie down on. Beneath this was a long box with a few tools in it, dragged out when necessary for work. They were not over-worn.

When the foliage was pulled over you would not know there was someone in there at all, except if you heard him snoring or arguing a case with himself, invariably winning. A nearby willow wept silver tears at his eloquence. A rowan stood tall and measured his justice in its blood-red pannicles; it balanced perfectly. Summer passed into autumn and Dadder forsook his flowing realm for his leaning-place at the bar of the Harbour Lights.

It suddenly occurred to him that with the leaves falling he shouldn't leave the toolbox lying where anyone might find it. On an unseasonably warm afternoon with the sun beginning to slant long in the sky, he went back to the bothy only to find he had a squatter.

Madjy Fidjy

A sandy short-haired terrier gave a yip as Dadder came towards the bothy.  The elderberries which had temporarily given it a roof of purple tiles had gone, stripped off by the birds. A pair of smallish cuban-heeled boots wriggled out towards him, followed by a pastry of petticoats, none too clean, and eventually a small torso topped by a grey head wearing a stout hat shaped like cottage loaf.

The terrier rushed back until it was just in front of the petticoats and announced that it would have anyone, do you hear me, anyone, who wanted to make a fight of it.

Dadder was wondering how to approach the delicate matter of trespass when the woman stuck out her none-too clean hand and said: "Madjy Fidjy, house sitting at your service".
"I don't need no house sitting, Madam" replied Dadder, noticing that she didn't seem to be offering service so much as taking it.
"You do. Someone nearly had your tools away. I stopped them".

This may or may not have been true, but Dadder was in no position to argue about it. "What brings you to my property, Madam?"
"Property, is it. Well, my pilgrimage takes me along the road to Walsingham and I'm resting a while. Here, have a cockleshell." She reached in to her apron pocket and handed Dadder a shell as it it were a ticket.  "I ain't got much but I'm not bound for charity. How much do you charge?"
"Charge for what?"
"For the roof, man."
Dadder went blank for a moment at the novelty of being offered money. Besides he had no idea what the going rate was for a night in a bush.  He looked at the booted bundle of rags in front of him. "No charge, so long as your dawg stops trespassers. I don't want people moving in".

Dadder went back to the Harbour Lights, an absentee landlord. He didn't expect to see much of Squire Bragg or the water bailiff this side of next spring so he couldn't see there was much difference if he or his agent - or steward as he thought of her - stood guard on the property.  She had her camp fire, her cooking pot, her shelter and her dog.  Once, when the high tides were expected, he went down and warned her to leave in case the elbow filled up.  That night Madjy Fidjy visited the raft and they had a State Banquet on board with dancing on the path. She read the fortunes of the Raft children, and they were all going to marry handsome princes. Even the boys. Mammer Raft told them not to mention this to the Vicar.

Madjy looked at Dadder's almanac which contained the tide tables, the moon phases and the great calendar which even gave the names of the future winners at Newmarket races.  She looked serious and made counting movements on her fingers, muttering to herself.  

It was the early morning of Christmas Eve when Mammer Raft told Dadder to check on Madjy, see if she wanted to come to Christmas Dinner. She had already stuffed duck feathers in to a pillow and the paddling pool floating in the river looked less full than it had earlier in the year. A wooden decoy sat there now, persuading migrating featherheads to come down for a free feed.

Dadder got up in the dark and trudged along the bank, hoping to run into Madjy at breakfast. The white marker stones of chalk ran along the bank like glimmering bubbles.  As he got to the bothy he realised that no dog was barking.  He scrambled towards the silent willow wands.  No boots, no smoke, no smell or sound of habitation. Not even a wisp of condensed breath escaping between the branches.  He thrust his head in to the bush, fearing to see a stiff figure like the marble effigies on the tombs in the church.

There was nothing. The space was as empty as the cockleshell which had stayed in his pocket.  Dadder watched the silver sun rise in its new position. It conveniently rose between the banks as they pointed north, as if somebody had built them perfectly to cup the rose crown which poured pale blood on the surface of the greysilk river.

Only, his wooden castle was not quite empty.  On his throne of old plank there was a heavy earthen-ware jar with a gut lid stretched over it, tied with brown twine.  An old bit of card poked out from under it and a childish hand had written in pencil stub:

Rowon Jeli 
Zuger, viniger, creb aples, rowen joose 
Thenk kew, gorn to Welsinam for the Birth.

Dadder carried the rowan jelly, the colour of the rising sun, back to the raft and gave it to Mammer.

A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Domesday Ambridge

The Gospel Oak in Winter by Ms Caroline Bone
Words on the funeral of Nigel Pargetter of Lower Loxley

Over at the Archers the words continue to fly over the execution of Nigel Pargetter. Vanessa Whitburn, late of Brookside, claims that the wider audience loved it. She believes she is a far-sighted dramatist bringing cutting-edge realism to an old format.

The commentariat - whom Whitburn believes are unrepresentative of the five million audience as a whole - say they aren't listening and don't want that story line. If they wanted realistic drama, they'd open a book or go to the theatre or perhaps pick a DVD. They are a literate audience, not dependent on Whitburn for their high culture. Also, they've got enough trouble with real grief and 'ishoos' and don't need to feed vampirishly off fictional grief, thank you very much.

They regard Whitburn to be much less technically adept as a dramatist than she thinks herself. They don't believe a farmer who has been stuck in a ditch and nearly died, had a tree he was felling fall on a farm worker killing him, and had his cousin squashed by a tractor, would go up on an icy roof in the middle of the night for a poxy banner. There is another Archer who is stupid enough to do it, but he's bone idle and would have left the banner up there until it was current again. They also plain don't like her, regarding anyone who dismisses an actor by phone after almost thirty years collaboration as demonstrating supremely bad manners and encapsulating everything which is wrong with the Archers, the BBC and indeed, the country.

Whitburn was acting within the law; the Archers actors are not on employee contracts but are freelancers and the recording schedule jigs around their other paying work. Still, it was both callous and cowardly, a personal failing, to do that over the phone when the charming Graham Seed deserved at the very least a visit. As many listeners expect bad news about their own jobs in the coming months, they identified with a man pleading for his character to be spared.

Like the failure of the BBC to realize quickly enough why the Jonathan Ross episode was such a danger to them, Whitburn continues to think this was Seed's fault for not being in her office when she wanted to sack him. How dare the audience complain, who do they think they are, the people who pay her wages? In Whitburn's Ambridge, Seed is only a bloke so he doesn't matter and he hasn't got any special cards such as being black or gay or lefty. He should think himself lucky he got a phone call; he could have found out when he opened the script.

The Archers is Middle England's 15-minute coffee-time treat during the day or perhaps their Sunday soak instead of going to church. They are part of the congregation of Ambridge which was extended by William Smethurst when he edited the show from 1978-1991. It is a very broad congregation indeed which stretches from people who put up wallpaper border strips half-way down the wall in imitation of aristocratic dado rails, to people who inherit good furniture.

Smethurst used his background as a journalist to introduce a feeling of 'all human life is here' in to the story lines, although in fact they were there from the start. Drastic measures had been taken to keep the show on air; the BBC had tried to discontinue it in 1972 in an early showing of spite towards the middle-class audience which had dwindled, despite a 20 year relationship with the village created by Godfrey Baseley in 1950.

Smethurst credited the radio boss Jock Gallagher with defiance at the time, a preparedness to do what would keep the show on the road, although he didn't always think much of the story lines which emerged. He joined as a script writer in 1974 and took over the editor/producer's chair in 1978.

Yes, Smethurst spiced-up but the dish but it was still a recognizable product of English literature in a rural setting. The Aga Saga is a regular best-seller, the product for people who would like a country house at Burnham Market but manage with booking a short break in a holiday cottage or, at minimum, lavender bath salts and a face-pack during the omnibus edition, looking forward to a Sunday lunch done in their new Conran chicken-brick. It's traditional, darling. He positioned it for Middle England and proved there was a regular mass audience for an everyday story of country folk, refining and re-tuning the 1950 classic recipe for the 1980s listener, astutely trading on its own nostalgia.

Smethurst has also been credited with injecting humour in to the story, aligning it with comedies of modern manners.

The approach was typified in Smethurst's 1981 book "Ambridge, An English Village Through The Ages". It was a history as written by local people and a history lecturer - all named characters in the show - and contains an early reference to the Reverend A.S. Pargetter who collected and listed the Borsetshire dialect in the 1850s. His son, Edmund Pargetter, extended the volume in to the better known Borsetshire Dialect for publication by the English Dialect Society in 1869.

"Undoubtedly the most famous work on dialect lexis is Joseph Wright's six-volume English Dialect Dictionary (1898-1905) which remains an essential text for all students of the subject. This pioneering work drew on the collections of the English Dialect Society, set up to gather its data and disbanded in 1896 when it saw its task to having been completed. Decades before Joseph Wright, the English gentleman-scholar Alexander Ellis began to investigate regional pronunciation, no mean feat prior to the invention of the International Phonetic Alphabet and sound recording." Says Clive Upton, professor of modern English language, University of Leeds, substantiating that Smethurst was spot-on with his research, making the fictional Pargetters do what the real Alexander Ellis did.

There are caches of the publications of the English Dialect Society in university libraries. I like to think that at least one of them really is by a Pargetter. Smethurst played a perfect hand of fakes which the English adore, smuggling real history in to fictional accounts.

In 1984 the copy of "Ambridge" which I have here, was presented to Martin Roberts, a pupil at Sandown High School on the Isle of Wight, for winning the Thomas Cup for Physics and Maths. There is no way to know for sure - unless Martin Roberts is out there and able to confirm this - but it is a strange book to give to a teenager unless he was a fan of The Archers and was already a conspirator.

The book is beautifully edited, pitch-perfect for a middlin' audience with a sweet-tooth for accessible history. It presages the current popular history shows such as The Edwardian Farm in collecting the reminisences of Doris and Dan Archer, formalizing the back-story of the village.

In a dizzy display of references, even the backstory has a backstory. The Visit Worcester site milks the connections for all it is worth, as it contains some of the locations Godfrey Baseley had in mind when he wrote the original. Go to the Bull at Inkberrow and complete the circle by looking at Archers memorabilia.

Smethurst kept up the fun with the Archers Official Companion, followed by a cookery book, and then Dan Archer's own memoir. Other spin-off publications fostered audience affection and involvement which helped protect the BBC when serious questions were raised over the BBC's future in the 1980s. Smethurst left the programme in 1991, having been begged to save a TV soap. Vanessa Whitburn took over.

The difference could be summed up as 'pomposity'. Smethurst was not above jazzing up the story, but his game was building a show and hanging on to it, not lecturing the audience. Whitburn was reported by the reputable commentator Gillian Reynolds to have enjoyed working for Smethurst but said "of course the programme was a lot frothier and lighter and less substantial in those days".

Smethurst had a book to sell by 1996 "The Archers: The True Story" and was not impressed by Whitburn's handling of the vehicle. He disapproved of what he called Whitburn's "urbanisation, feminist propaganda and political correctness"

That's the nub of it; Smethurst writes stories you might want to read which build on a tradition of engaging characters and emotions, plausible plotting and properly researched factual backgrounds. Whitburn is writing a story of contemporary issues which claim to be in a rural setting but her agenda is already a period-piece of hectoring social finger-wagging, frozen in the dying days of Spare Rib magazine and Brookside itself, the decline of which Wiki summarizes thus:

"The Gordons were considered miscast and generally unlikeable; furthermore, the abrupt death of Alan in the 2002 siege aftermath, followed shortly after by Debbie dying in a car crash, gave the remaining family a depressive on-screen presence as their children dealt with becoming orphans."

Whitburn's Ratner moment - named for when Gerald Ratner blew up his own company by insulting the intelligence of his customers - came on the Today programme the morning after the 60th Anniversary edition. Two things became startlingly clear; the character was dead, not injured - the cliff hanger had not resolved that - and the real life actor had been prepared to carry on in the role for as long as he was able, so the storyline didn't emerge from him wanting to leave the show. The audience united in rage rather than grief that they had lost the one character they really liked and enjoyed hearing.

Everyone holds their breath for the RAJAR listening numbers, as if hundreds of cogent dramatic analyses from the core audience were not warning enough; this programme has jumped the shark.

Or perhaps it was pushed.

Yasmin Ahlbi-Back: Our most precious possession

I was at a Hollywood party with my very good friend Kate Winslet and was expounding the finer points of how to deliver a line from Hardy with the suitable regional accent.

I explained that it is all about imagining one has a mouthful of bumpkin, like a country pumpkin, and all the doors and windows are open so it is a bit chilly.

"Oooh Arrh Mr Frodo" like that, as if the nipples are standing up, which is what we thespians call the finer points.

This is what a famous professor of linguistics told me, although I already knew it because this was how I did it when I was a drama student, but I turned down the place at RADA in favour of becoming the only non-white columnist in the whole of the British Empire. It is very lucky for everyone I did this as otherwise William Paxton would have wasted his time inventing greenhouses to throw stones in and movable Twitterer.

Unfortunately, like many silly white women who can't keep a husband, Kate has let herself go. I've given her diet tips, a copy of my exercise DVD and some of my tamarind gravy which makes an excellent facial toner. But I've warned my son - he's a barrister you know - against painted Jezebels, even Kate's.

Speaking of barristers I've decided not to mention the subject of gay barristers such as Gareth Compton and stoning any more,

Reluctantly, I have instructed my police force not to take matters any further but a rather thick officer said 'Well, m'arm, that's for the CPS to decide whether there is a realistic prospect of a conviction under ­section 127 (1a) of the Communications Act 2003' as apparently it is not up to me at all! This is ridiculous. We'll have people complaining about being arrested for no reason except being a Tory next, as if that wasn't reason enough.

What a disappointment that the youth of today are unable to stand up to wicked dictators like I was when I bravely ran away from Uganda. Fortunately we respect freedom of speech over at my column, which is why the editor has decided twice now to delete all the comments as their support for me was embarrassingly overwhelming.

Yazzer Ahlbi-Back - A memoir part 1

1972. Standing on the grass airstrip of my farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong hills, my honest native bearer, Moma Akawimbe, knelt with the tears rolling down her good-natured black face. "Massa don't go" she begged, terrified that she would be left without my secret recipe for Spicy Ackee dumplin's.

Alas, I had to leave as I had received a proposal of marriage from the Heir to the Throne and had to tell him personally that it could never be. He was too white, too male, too everything for me to seriously consider it.

He would just have to get over my musky dusky beauty and satisfy himself with some pale neurotic shicksa (so my Jewish best friends told me). But he could never forget me.

Alas, my true love Vincent Cable was, unbeknownst to me, in the arms of my arch-rival, the twinkle-toed Olympia Rebelo. Her with her nursing qualification and PhD in Music (she played the bassoon and it was rumoured all round Kenya that she could hold her breath for three minutes) she had the insubstantial attractions which shallow white men are often overly-impressed by.

Once he saw my advanced qualifications in literature and lapped my coconut dhals I was confident there would be no more talk of all this foxtrotting and the military two-step. But first, I had to fulfil my destiny to become The Only Non-White Columnist in Britain.

And except for all the others, dear reader, I did.

Teatime Fiction. The Harbour Adventure. Part 4

Big Fat Helen has been rescued from the harbour but the alarm has given the Magistrate the excuse to encroach on the Harbour Master's territory.



The Magistrate arrived. To represent The Law In The Land, he had jammed his Bowler hat on to his head, which is what he wore when he was out and about. He reserved his top hat for ceremonial occasions, not least because it was his best hat. His Bowler was more the working hat and could be easier replaced. It was also lined in thin cork and was more likely to float if it wound up in the water.

"If anybody is dead, I am the Coroner's Deputy" he announced.
"Nobody is dead, thank The Lord." said the Harbour Master, curtly.
"Well, I'm glad you now thank The Lord for that and have give up appeals to heathenish gods" replied the Magistrate "And all that is needed is for you to respect some of the other Christian principles, and we'll all be better off"
"What do you mean by that?" spluttered the Harbour Master.

The Magistrate opened his mouth to answer but was shouldered out of the way by Little Fat Helen, who arrived with towels and a pair of stretcher-bearers, carrying the green canvas stretcher.
"Let me through. Got to get her home, lads" ordered LF Helen, as if the wet Helen might dissolve or shrink. The stretcher bearers looked doubtful, but rolled her on to the groaning canvas, then got another couple of mates to help heave the stretcher up. Eventually the four of them took a handle each and LF Helen walked alongside to make sure her sodden sister didn't roll off. The wooden spars creaked but did not crack.

The Harbour Master turned to Dadder and took out his note book and pencil. Pushing his nautical cap, the sign of his office, back a little, he squinted at us.
"Now then, what happened?"
The Magistrate broke in.
"Your daughter jumped in the dock when she was surprised by a seagull. Silly girl. These children saved her."
The Harbour master looked offended at this slur on his child.
"How do you know, Sir?"
There was an awkward silence.
"I saw it".
"How? You came from the other side of the bridge. It's miles away. Your eyesight must be good."
There was a long, awkward pause.
"I happened to be glancing out of the window".
"What window? The court has only got a little fanlight in that wall, and that in the upper gallery".
"If you must know, I was watching for the ... Mail packet from the West Indies. Yes. That was it."

The Harbour Master leafed back through his notebook of events from the past week.
"That boat arrived two days ago. The Post Mistress herself collected that mail, and she'll have sorted and distributed it by now. If there was anything on it for you, you should have had it early this morning."
"There's no law against a magistrate looking out of his own courthouse window."
"I never said there was. I just remarked that you must have very good eyesight."
"He could be using binoculars" interjected Dadder, remembering how these things go in Agatha Christie books.
"You have no proof of that" stuttered the Magistrate.
"Well what's that round your neck, then?" Dadder blundered on.
"Ah yes, these are...these are...birdwatching. My new hobby."

The Harbour Master shut his notebook with a snap. "I think I've heard enough to establish that there is no Foul Play here. Fowl play, yes. Foul play, no. My daughter overbalanced and, by the Grace of God, did not perish. I will put it in the incident book and the Harbour authorities can examine them as an when they think suitable."
"I'll be the one to decide if there has been Foul Play." Spat the Magstrate. He paused. "And I have found that there has not".
Dadder jammed his woollen hat back on his head.
"If you gentlemen have done agreeing, I'll take these children home" he said.

He was shooing the Raft children in to line, oblivious to the Magistrate and the Harbour Master looking daggers at each other. He suddenly remembered why he had come, and turned round.

"Blessed if it didn't go right out of my mind. Begging your pardon, Your Worship, but I came to ask the Harbour Master if it was alright to push a Revenue Man off the Raft, on account of him being an illegal boarder, but he says 'No' on account of the Revenue is the state's business and that's how the libraries are paid for. How say you Sir?"

The Magistrate thought about it for a moment, and then bearing in mind the legal opinion of the Harbour Master, gave his own.

"I should say that it depends on whether the officer has identified himself. If he has not, then you are entitled to take whatever steps seem sufficient to you, but you should take care not to go beyond sufficiency."

Dadder bowed. "Much obliged to you Your Worships. I can push him off the raft but not keel haul him. See, isn't that preciserly what I told Mrs Raft. Come along duckerlings, time to go home".

The End

Teatime Fiction. The Harbour Adventure. Part 3

Big Fat Helen has been knocked in to the harbour. She held up a Flying Saucer sweet and a huge seabird swooped at it from behind her.



The tide was high so she didn't fall too far, but she was fully dressed and she had her shoes on, and the little Rafts didn't know if she could swim the way wetbobs do. Seadogs are superstitious like that; they may never learn to swim as they think it invites drownding. Wetbobs learn to swim sooner than they walk because they are bound to fall in and swimming is the best way to survive.

"Quick Baba, the bell". Baba Raft ran over to the emergency bell and began to swing on it, dinging it madly. Middle Little Raft ran to the life-belt ring which was hanging on a hook and wrestled it down, heaving it in to the water where it hit BF Helen on the head. Big Little Raft went down the steps with a spare rope from the harbour-side, attached to a ring in the wall.

BFH was dressed, but she was big and buoyant, she hadn't hit the water too hard so she hadn't gone right down, and she was close to the steps. Her clothes spread on the surface.

By now grown-up sea boots were thundering down the steps, a cockleshell boat had appeared and great knuckles were grasping BF Helen, pulling her back from the sea's hungry mouth. She was slapped on to the dockside, coughing, spluttering, and being sick.

"Bloody kids" said a voice. "Always causing trouble".
"No" moaned BF Helen "albatross".
"We haven't got any albatrosses, nor golden eagles neither. We've got some pushy seagulls, if that's what you mean".

By now the Harbour Master had rushed down to clasp his daughter to his bosom and Dadder Raft was shaking us "What happened, what happened?" Baba Raft was crying, possibly because of the loss of the flying saucers, which were dotted over the water like rice paper petals and dissolving in a fizzy scum.

"I told you to deal with those gulls, didn't I. I said they would have somebody over" complained a voice in the crowd. There was a mutter of consensus. The public enquiry had found in under three minutes that this was all the fault of the Harbour Master, probably inevitable, and only justice that it had very nearly been his own BF Helen who was a goner. Perhaps that would persuade him to Do Something.

The alarm had gone round the harbour and up the cliff, and the Magistrate, who had been hard at work with his binoculars, came thundering over the swing bridge, carrying his Legal Authority in to Enemy Territory, in case the Harbour Master had been negligent in any way.

To be continued. Harbour Adventure part 4

Teatime Fiction. The Harbour Adventure. Part 2

Dadder Raft is on his way to get a legal opinion from the Harbour Master on whether he is permitted, under Water Law, to push a Revenue Man off the Raft.



The river path gave way to the broad paved harbour with its adjoining squares of warehouses basking on the gentle slopes. At the far end of the harbour, close to the pier, was the Harbour Master's Office, an exceptionally fine building in the manner of the Magistrate's Court, which was on the other side of the estuary, over the swing bridge. On the Magistrate's side the terracing was steeper and the the houses clung to the cliffs like barnacles, keeping their glittering glass eyes on the comings and goings of the ships, tutting at the women going aboard in defiance of custom and inviting disaster. The Magistrate kept a pair of binoculars in a box in the upper balcony of the court. He would perch up there while the court was closed and he had no registry work to do, scrying the Harbour Master's side through the small fanlight window.

Matters of disagreement arose between the Magistrate and the Harbour Master. For instance, the Magistrate maintained that the moment a sailor or similar nautical - reprobates, pirates, convicts, drunkards, philanderers, blasphemers and general ne'er do wells - set foot on dry land, then landlaw was their lawful master.

The Harbour Master maintained that as the harbour edgings and pier were man-made and projected over the water, then he was the lawful authority according to Maritime law. Moreover, he believed that a little traditional maritime discipline would work wonders and he still had the Cat in its mahogany box, and he could use it, by Neptune he would, if the situation demanded it. Throwing a man in chokey was, in his view, cruel, whereas a quick stripe and back to work made the point without costing much or affecting a man's livelihood.

The Constable, the Harbour Bailiff, and indeed the thieves, reprobates, pirates, blasphemers, etc had all got used to waiting while the Magistrate and the Harbour Master had their procedural wrangles. It took so long that the drunkards were often sober by the time it was decided what should happen to them, so they went home or back on board, if they could remember where either were, when the Constable nodded them off. The pirates sat nervously in the lock-up - a desperate bunch of men - in case the Constable decided on a spot of pre-emptive hanging as a result of a jurisdictional misunderstanding.

Everybody knew that the real cause of disagreement between the Authorities was the extraordinary kindness shown by the Magistrate's wife to the Harbour Master when his wife died. This was not something the Magistrate could complain about - one is expected to show kindness when the mother of young girls passes away - but even so, there are limits. The Magistrate, the most upright of men if you don't count the Vicar, which he didn't because he didn't trust that Vicar further than he could throw him, suspected those limits had been breached on several occasions.

The pinnacle of the Harbour Master's undisputed authority was that he was in charge of the swing bridge over the estuary which divided the town. He decided if the bridge was to be swung, hence breaking the road, and the Magistrate could only howl in impotent rage if his lawful prey had already escaped over it. It was miles upstream before the river could be crossed by the Constables, so the Magistrate kept a boat on his side but knew that by the time it was crewed and launched, the miscreant would be long gone.

The Magistrate and his wife had no children, which perhaps explained a lot. The Harbour Master had two girls, each named Helen, as were all the women in the Harbour Master's family, for the famous Helen of Troy whose face Launched A Thousand Ships. Nature then determined that older would be Big Fat Helen and the younger Little Fat Helen. It had to be this way because you can't call a nineteen year old woman "Old Fat Helen".

Dadder Raft went in to the Harbour Master's Office, a temple to mahogany and polished brass. He dinged the ship's bell hanging over the counter and Big Fat Helen bustled out to warn the little Rafts to not put fingerprints on the brass, she'd just finished polishing that.
"Might One hinquire as to the precise nature of One's hinquiry?" she politely asked Dadder, who had whipped off his knitted beany bobble hat because he was in an Official Office, and was wringing it in his hands.
"It's a personal matter. I need to speak to the Master."
"Ah" said BF Helen sympathetically, with a broad wink. "I'll get him. I'll take the children for a walk".
"No, it's nothing like that, but thank you, the children could do with some air".

Outside the office, BF Helen immediately took the Rafts to the sweet shop and bought a bag of flying saucers and offered them round. Taking a pink one for herself and nibbling it, she instructed them. "Don't fall over the edge, don't go down the steps, don't get on any strange boats and don't feed the rats, cats or seagulls." She stretched out her arms with her shawl spread behind her head "An albatross this big carried off a kid last week. Never seen'im agin. If you hold up food for them, they'll grab you in their talons." Baba Raft looked on the verge of tears. "It's alright" cooed Big Fat Helen. "They only do it if you feed them. Don't feed them and you'll be alright".

Baba Raft howled as a huge white bird which had been cruising over the harbour spotted BF Helen's pink flying saucer and came at her from behind as she spread her arms in imitation of an albatross. It zoomed at her, its beak open, and scooped up the sweet, screaming as the sherbet began to fizz in its gullet.

The shock knocked BF Helen over the edge of the harbour, tripping her against the low chain which marked the boundary, and with a shriek she fell in to the water.

To be continued Harbour Adventure Part 3.

Teatime Fiction. The Harbour Adventure. Part 1

The Raft raft was moored inside the estuary just at the boundary where the Harbour Master's authority waned and the River Authority's authority waxed. Dadder Raft could get a little money by labouring, by transport, by buying and selling at the borders of these jurisdictions. There was, if absolutely necessary, The Social but they were a nosy lot and brought in their wake the gulls of the Revenue, not that they'd pick much off the spars of the Raft.

Every now and again one of the noisy Revenue buggers would land on the fairing, stamp up and down accusing Dadder of having a concealed sea-chest of golden doubloons, and eventually flap off with a token, having satisfied themselves that they had scavenged all there really was to have.

"Good riddance" Dadder would mutter, and we'd wonder if somewhere there was a glittering hoard, our patri-money. In truth, he had only his gold earring, the traditional cost of an emergency burial. In Dadder's view, Revenue men belonged to landlaw, not waterlaw, and this was sufficient to make their presence an illegal boarding. Could he lawfully push them over the side, make them walk the plank, or keel-haul them under the Raft's weedy hull?

Nana Raft (who was Mummy Raft in those days) had heard this line of legal reasoning several times and was no nearer an answer, although she had made a special trip inland to the library to answer it. The librarian offered her to look at the reference copy of the 1896 volume Dicey, Morris & Collins, The Conflict of Laws, but Mummy said it would take too long to find, let alone copy out the relevant passages. Beside, she was fairly sure this was a criminal matter, and what they really wanted to know was: was it maritime law or inland waterways?

"Depends precisely where the Raft is moored, I should think" said Miss Elizabeth, the librarian, "But you'd have to ask someone who knows because it might make a difference if it is an ocean-going ship or an in-shore boat." The librarian paused, wondering if a boat carried its legal jurisdiction within its timbers. It used to - that was the law of the sea. She fiddled pensively with the wheels on her date stamp. "I wouldn't mention it to the vicar. He might think you were looking to get in on the wedding business. In my opinion, you should try Agatha Christie. You can take books those out. She's always killing people and she usually explains where it is legal. I think you can kill someone on a train if you are coming back from abroad. Providing you do it before France that should be alright." she stamped the books and took the index cards out, popping them in to brown-card loans pockets. "But I'm not a lawyer".

Dadder asked Nana what she had found out, but he got no reply as she had reached a thrilling part. He decided to take this matter up with the Harbour Master. "No point in asking the Magister-rate, is there?" he announced "He's landlaw, so it stands to reason he won't know". "Uh-huh" said Nana, which he took to be agreement.

He strolled off up to the Harbour, a gaggle of little Raft tenders bobbing along in his wake. The Harbour was an adventure and there might be a chance of begging sweets.

To be continued, Harbour Adventure Part 2

Top Shelf

As a short-house, I clear out the Top Shelf only once a decade. It pops in to existence when I think about it. Two manners of things roost up there: things which are needed Occasionally and things which will be needed only Once.

Birthday candles are needed on Occasion. There was a time when people were mad for them. They loved them so much that they would make excuses to have candles on anything; cakes, sandwiches, mashed potato. One pack of candles was never enough. Now it still wouldn't be enough, but that's because we'd need a cake the size of a table top and have a fire extinguisher standing ready.

The wick in a birthday candle is not engineered the same way as a table-candle. It is a lightly twisted thread in a column of fuel. If you got enough of them alight at one time you could set fire to the wax. That could ignite the sugar and fat in the frosted topping and the aerated structure of a chocolate sponge would give the fire imps a feast. You'd be lucky not to blow a hole in the cabin roof, all that energy going up at once. That's why people must get on and sing "happy birthday" or else they might as well do a countdown.

Luckily, disaster didn't happen. As the candles were only alight for a brief moment and the audience didn't care so long as it got to blow them out, I took to saving them and recycling them for the next festival of singed fringes. Special guests got new candles, of course, while people who could only be persuaded to eat fish if it first had Happy Tuesday chanted over it to it, as Our Lord Taught Us, made do with the re-treads.

Over the years the number of recycled candles grew, then demand dropped, and they were re-homed to the top shelf and lived in a slot next to the 4-Minute Food.

This food is what I will eat if the 4-minute warning goes off. I've never been clear about how long you've got left to eat it, but that is probably dependent on where you are in relation to the bang. It turns out that if you have delicious food up there, you will eat it in the course of ordinary and then where would you be if the moment came? It follows that 4-minute food is that which isn't tempting enough to eat normally but would keep you going in the event of need. It should take little preparation and be edible cold from the tin if absolutely necessary, or heatable over recycled birthday candles.


In field tests it turned out that there was a good reason the tinned spinach was marked down to fourpence. How Popeye the Sailor Man opens the stinky slithery stuff and chokes it down, I will never know. What I do know is that the remainder of life spent subsisting on something a slug would turn its nose up at, is going to need more than a birthday candle and a song floated on it to make it bearable. That's fourpence I won't see again.

I don't think May 2006 is going to come round again either, so the pease pudding is going to have to go to a historical collection or landfill. There are some purposes to old food; you don't break in to an Egyptian tomb and immediately set about clearing out the dead Pharaoh's food locker, it has historical relevance of itself. Except, what would a tin of pease pudding and jar of pickled walnuts say about me?

Future children would solemnly poke at it supposing that pease pudding was the delicacy of choice, kept in a sacred ark and served on Ritz crackers. As the serving suggestions says:

"Ready Cooked. Vegetable. Traditionally served hot with boiled meat. Try it also. Hot or Cold. With any meat or fish."

I only bought it for the label. I like its firm red recognition of my own wisdom. Foresight in a tin, combining traditional virtues with proven technology. Arguably, I should have made someone else eat the pudding - with a birthday candle on top - and then pasted the label smugly inside the cupboard door. Wait, what's this in the small print?

"Quality Guarantee. We want you to enjoy this product. If you are not entirely satisfied, please return the EMPTY can and coded can-end to our Customer Services Manager, saying where and when purchased. This guarantee does not affect your statutory rights".

They are even unwise enough to say where to send the can and, let's face it, they can't check where I bought it. As we can assume it was well before 2006, I've forgotten and I've probably lost the receipt by now, but it's a reasonable bet that hanging on to a product until it is four years out of date goes beyond the spirit of the guarantee. Anyway, if I don't eat it, how do I know if I've not enjoyed it, except that I haven't - yet.

Perhaps Premier Foods, who acquired the HL brand in the 1990s (probably about the same time as I acquired the tin) would like it back for their Company Museum. Tiptree, the jam makers in Essex, have preserved a preserves museum (free entry, next to the lovely tearoom), or maybe there's a food historian who would like it.

Out, out, brief candles, and take that pease pudding with you.

Home Helps

The Raft family tree grows thus: Great Granny, Granny, Nana, Mummy, Dadder, Baba.

Many years ago Nana Raft was ill. In those days abdominal surgery involved the dangerous procedure of being opened up and consequently the patient was in bed for a month afterwards.

The doctors corrected the problem and Nana Raft rested for a few days under strict supervision. When it came to time for her discharge, the matron did what we would now call 'an assessment' by asking what the situation was on Nana Raft's craft.

The position was this; Granny Raft had to go home and Dadder Raft had to stay at work, him being the sort who only got paid if he did the job. If Dadder Raft didn't work, the ship would sink. This left the flotilla of little Rafts in the care of a woman who wasn't supposed to set foot on the deck, except to visit the heads, lest her stitches came undone. If Nana Raft had to move about, the Matron wasn't prepared to discharge her.

Don't come here with arguments about hospital not being a prison; in those days Matron decided when you could go home and saw herself as a deputy angel with a flaming sword, standing guard over her stricken patient, and she wasn't about to let a single one of them burst open and undo all Doctor's hard work. The Social was called, although I can't remember what the department was named in those sepia-tinted days.

The Social dispatched their agent, the aptly name Mrs McClean, to take charge of the Raft Raft. She berthed alongside us, a white bowsprit bosom billowing below her blond-grey hair and stone-blue eyes, and from the moment I saw her I knew we were saved to harbour. Mrs McClean was a Home Help, which does not adequately describe how vital her work was because without her we probably would have had to go in to care or at least been split up and distributed over a wider family, or we might have starved to death or fallen overboard.

Mrs McClean did not do counselling, which hadn't been invented and she wouldn't have done it if it had. She had Opinions, chiefly in the matter of the necessity of cleanliness, and her opinions were Right. Her Catholicism was betrayed only by a small golden cross round her neck and tightly pursed lips when heathenish views and practices were mentioned. Mrs McClean was of the Opinion, although she never said so, that there were few disputes insoluble in a decent bar of green soap, and this she applied to demonstrate the point. Cleanliness was next to Godliness, an' sure didn't Our Lord make that very point when he washed the feets of some mucky devils?

If it was good enough for the Son of Man, it was good enough for Mrs McClean, and she set about her work. Children were washed, fed, and washed again, being sent either to school or bed, as the situation demanded. Nana Raft was washed, fed, and tucked up in her bunk with an improving book. The pillows, pillow cases, sheets, blankets and candlewick bedspread all washed and monumentally constructed around the bed-cage which kept the weight off Nana's surgical wound, the way a snowy cloth is spread precisely over an altar stone.

Nana was to be presented as an Offering to the District Nurse, who came in to Check the Dressing. How would it be if the Nurse found Things Untidy? Unthinkable, unallowable. Mrs McClean would never be found dozing if the Son of God came by, and the District Nurse was His deputy, so it followed that they would both be treated the same, except that the District Nurse could keep her sensible lace-up shoes on and the Son of the Father should take his mucky sandals off and change in to a nice clean pair of slippers at the end of the gangway, unless he came in his Holy Ghost form and whafted about. If God had meant us to wear our shoes onboard, he'd wouldn't have given us slippers, would he?

Dadder Raft was the miserable beast of burden in this tableaux, and thus to be treated kindly. Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn, Deuteronomy 25:4, so he received egg and chips. She didn't go so far as to wash him and give him a quick once-over with a curry-comb, but there would be a basin, the soap and towel standing ready when he came home. "There's hot water, you'd better use it before it gets cold". Besides, oxen attended Our Lord's birth and if it's good enough for the Newborn King, then it's good enough for Mrs McClean, so Dadder Raft was allowed back on board, but he'd better take off his boots before he set hoof on deck.

Here Mrs McClean gave her lips an extra-tight puckering. She approved of children, of course she did, even godless little heathen ones like us, who might yet be Saved. She approved of marriage, which is ordained by God, and you can't get a higher recommendation than that, and it's better than heathenish practices, polygamy and I don't know what the By Our Lady savages gets up to, which is why she worked so hard to shore up marriages. She approved of families, and sure wasn't it good enough for Our Lord, so it's good enough for Mrs McClean. But she didn't approve of women being Bothered by men in general, and definitely not those Women Who Had Stitches in particular.

It might properly have been the business of God's deputies, the Doctor and the District Nurse, but Mrs McClean had her own flaming sword - as she feared did Dadder - and she felt that the very saintliness of God's deputies might prevent them dealing with this most earthy of subjects, especially when talking to a pagan and one who might, she suspected, really have hairy goat legs and cloven hooves, going by the great quantity of boywool in the wash basin. Deuteronomy 25:4 is specifically about mouths. Moses neglected to mention other muzzles, a typically slipshod oversight when law comes from men and not God. At least, she hoped it was an oversight and not a deliberate omission.

She fixed Dadder Raft with her eye as blue and hard as marble.
"She's not to be Bothered" she commanded.

It would have been pointless for Dadder Raft - long since gone to Valhalla under his shield on his fiery longboat - to protest that he had no intention of Bothering anyone, which probably would have earned him a clout over the snout with a broom for talking filth. He was mostly baffled, but he took the hint and found himself a billet up the other end of the Raft, padding along in his darned socks.

After a few weeks Nana Raft recovered and when the District Nurse said the stitches were healed, and the Doctor agreed, our angel McClean sailed away to save other children, another woman, leaving the smell of soap and the glow of polish, a lingering blessing from a woman who left no fingermarks or footprints.