28. Self Portrait of a Clever Dick

Who am I at this time of the morning? Let me introduce myself.

My name is John.

I was born on the 23^rd of June, one day before St John the Baptist’s Day. That is why I have the Christian name John.

The trouble with Christian names is that you are likely to be named after some poor sap that was martyred. And, in my case, someone whose head was served up at a banquet to reward that  teenage sexpot Salome for prancing around in veils.  Hardly a good omen, surely.

Salome had a major role in John the Baptist’s death. John had denounced Herod for enticing Herodias away from her husband in Rome, Herod’s half brother Philip, and shacking up with her in Galilee. At his birthday banquet Herod was so titillated by the dancing of his niece Salome, Herodias’ nubile fourteen-year-old daughter, that he vowed to give her whatever she wished for. Prompted by her mother, who was pissed off with John for calling her a sinful shameless trollope, Salome asked for John’s head on a platter, a wish that Herod reluctantly granted.

If this was an early example of hell having no fury like a woman scorned, then heavenly retribution, vengeful and swift, was equal to it. Salome did not meet a happy end. Crossing a frozen river, the ice gave way and she found herself with her head wedged above the ice and her body dancing helplessly in the frozen water below. Eventually the ice closed around her neck and severed Salome’s head, which was then delivered to mummy and uncle. Her body was never found.

God must have been inspired to dream up such a tidy slice of divine retribution. Perhaps God is a fiction writer. Perhaps God was hacked off at having John sent up before room service had the heavenly mansion ready. Perhaps God wanted to claim exclusive copyright to the idea of poetic justice. Or perhaps God wanted to cement the notion amongst the faithful that (s)he, the godmother/father in the sky, was in control and would take care of things. To this day we vainly believe, in spite of the evidence to the contrary, that ‘God looks after his own’ and that ‘what goes round comes round’.

The saint’s day of most Christian martyrs is the day of their death. But not John the Baptist. His saint’s day is his birthday, June 24^th. The ‘Decollation of John the Baptist’ (I kid you not, that’s what it’s called) is ‘celebrated’ on August 29^th.

From my naming and birth date you will rightly deduce that: (a) my parents were religious and, (b) I am a Cancerian. These two ‘facts’ have no necessary connection.

This writing lark is fun, isn’t it? There’s me in the middle of the night – it’s 4.42am on January 24th 2012 – and there’s you, God knows where and when – reading this stuff when you just know you have better things to do with your life. And now it’s 4.43am! Anyway ignore the tangents in this piece if you are busy, or allergic to diversions, or irritated that I am enjoying the luxury of speaking to you in this inanimate way with its veneer of intimacy. Just remember the lesson of my last blog (27. "Blogging: Where Truth Lies") that literary voices come with forked-tongues. You only have my word for it that it’s 4.43am here. Oops, 4.46am! How time flies.

I was born in ‘Auld Reekie’. That’s Edinburgh, Scotland. The nickname Auld Reekie, or Old Smokey, dates from the 16^th century when the black smoke from the tenements in the Old Town produced a permanent smokey haze around the city.

I sometimes like to claim that my scoliosis is a characteristically Edinburgh deformity. The twelve story high tenements of Auld Reekie date back to the fifteenth century and the city became notorious for the filth thrown out from the tenement windows into the street below. Old Smelly would be an alternative translation of Auld Reekie, reflecting the reek, or foul, stale, fetid odour of the Old Town. Here’s how the historian G.M. Trevelyan described the Edinburgh streets of the early eighteenth century:

‘Far overhead the windows opened, five, six or ten storeys in the air, and the close stools of Edinburgh discharged the collected filth of the last twenty-four hours into the street. It was good manners for those above to cry “Gardy Loo!” (Gardez l’eau) before throwing. The returning roysterer cried back “Haud yer han”, and ran with humped shoulders, lucky if his vast and expensive full-bottomed wig was not put out of action by a cataract of filth. The ordure thus sent down lay in the broad High Street and in the deep, well-like closes and wynds around it making the night air horrible, until early in the morning it was perfunctorily cleared away by the City Guard. Only on a Sabbath morn it might not be touched, but lay there all day long, filling Scotland’s capital with the savour of a mistaken piety.’

And so I conjectured that my Edinburgh ancestors, roisterers all, over many generations developed, as a result of running crouched through the streets late at night with their coats pulled up over their heads, a hereditary scoliosis that I could proudly display as part of my birth right.

Born then in Edinburgh to a religious family, you may surmise that my parents were Presbyterian. You would be half right.

My mother was Presbyterian.

My father was an Anglican.

You now also know that my mother and father are either dead or gave up their faiths. Or both: - i.e. both are dead, or both gave up their faiths. Or either one of each - gave up faith but still alive. Each. Tricky little things words.

You have, however, discovered, or may think you have discovered, that: (a) I can be a right smarty-pants when I put my mind to it, and (b) I am showing off.

Am I showing off? Yes, of course. That’s what writing is, amongst other things. Display. Disclosure. Showing off.  Introverts tilting at extroversion.

I am also hiding. I could have told you some facts that would have created a different self-portrait. Full of intimacy and personal revelation. But, to my mind, writing is not therapy, however therapeutic it may happen to be.

So there are some facts about me. I know they don’t give you much of a skeleton to hang me on but then five facts don’t go far. Scarcely cover the nail of my little finger really.

Then again, when you think about it, the nail of my little finger is quite a lot. From a drop of my blood you could tell whether or not I was your father and from a hair on my head whether or not I murdered your Aunt Jessie.

If you had an Aunt Jessie, that is.

And she was murdered.

And they found someone’s hair on her corpse.

And it was my hair.

And there wasn’t any rational explanation as to what it was doing there.

Or my lawyer couldn’t think one up.

OK, Christopher, you can stop novel-hopping now. Go back to your own book. This is my story and I’m trying to develop a style of my own, not a pastiche of yours.

I told you I was showing off. This is an in-joke for the literati. The literati like in-jokes, oblique references to obscure texts. It makes them feel superior. Like they are well read or something. Up with the play. If you don’t know what they are on about, just fake it. Look knowing and grunt approvingly. Christopher is the narrator of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003), a novel by Mark Haddon. Christopher has Asperger’s, a form of autism. I hate reading books that good. Puts me off trying to write.

Christopher has Asperger’s. He likes to hide away in private places where people can’t bother him. Like on rooftops. This is not in fact one of Christopher’s favourite places but that of an Asperger’s boy whose behaviour I hear about from my wife Sharon, a primary school teacher.

Here is another fact for you. My father did not lose his faith.

Therefore, QED, he is dead.

This is a cue for a story about only receiving 99% for a maths exam at school, and being angry about it. How competitive can you be?

Sorry. Here we go again. Can’t keep away from going off at a tangent. Like providing footnotes. I like the aura of veracity that footnotes convey. Through the close-knit conspiracy of a different font and smaller font size, they give a sense that the secrets of an underworld are being laid bare, the hidden mechanics beneath the text above. They give the reader access to the mysteries of the writer’s craft and the confidentiality clauses of the writer-reader contract.

The point of this tangent? My best subject at school was maths. I like the surface safety and rationality of maths, the world of theorems and proofs. Fantasy in contrast makes me feel vulnerable. In one exam we were required to show all the calculations in the quadratic equations we had used to work out the angles in various geometric figures and conclude our answer with QED, quod erat demonstrandum. In one of my answers I neglected to write QED at the end and was deducted a mark. No wonder I am so anal-retentive.

Now I am admiring my 1960s young manself in our full-length wardrobe mirror. All dressed up for a night in the West End. I look pretty cool in my Buddy Holly glasses, my cutaway collared pink Pierre Cardin shirt, my knitted royal blue tie, painstakingly Windsor-knotted, my light grey shorty jacket, matching trousers and black wet-look ankle boots. Behind me my Mary Quant young wife in her plum skinny-rib sweater, suede mini-skirt and matching thigh-length boots looks on approvingly.

I walk into the room and see myself looking in the mirror.

“My God,” I say, looking at this preening apparition of younger myself, “Whose idea was that?”

“What’s bugging you, old man?” he replies. “Forgotten what it’s like to be with-it? Trendy? One of the Mods? I mean, look at you man. You’re ancient! A grandad! Where’s the glamour in that?”

“Mock not, lad. Mock not. You’ll arrive here yourself one day if you don’t cut yourself to death in the meantime by being so sharp.”

“Yea, but come on grandad, why so square? You could at least make an effort. Buy something new for Chrissake. You look like a fifties’ hangover. Get a new jacket, a new shirt, some new trousers, new shoes. Just something new… Please… You’re embarrassing me.”

“I like these clothes. They’re comfortable.”

“Comfortable! Comfortable! When did you start wanting comfortable? What happened to the Londoner in you, grandad man, the city kid? Why did you have to become so goddam suburban? Should have stayed in London, that’s what you should have done. Myself, I blame New Zealand. You’ve gone soft and soppy down there. Views of the stars at night and all that pastoral crap. Cats’ comforts grandad. Move back here. Get a life again!

Resumé.
London Scottish Kiwi. Likes privacy and own spaces. Happy exploring and reminiscing about the past in a self-conscious and sentimental way. Lived in Auckland, New Zealand from 1972 to 2011. Now living in Orewa

.

Oh yes, and John had an Aunt Jessie. A Great Aunt Jessie Munro. A formidable lady in her widows weeds. She’s very dead now. No, he didn’t murder her. [Only the memory of her.]