Jacmel.

WTNT34 KNHC 091451
TCPAT4
BULLETIN
HURRICANE ADVISORY NUMBER 29
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL
11 AM AST THU SEP 24 2014

...EXTREMELY DANGEROUS HURRICANE HEADING FOR JAMAICA AND THE
WESTERN CARIBBEAN SEA...

AT 11 AM AST...THE GOVERNMENT OF JAMAICA HAS ISSUED A HURRICANE
WARNING FOR JAMAICA.

A HURRICANE WATCH AND A TROPICAL STORM WARNING REMAIN IN EFFECT FOR
THE ENTIRE SOUTHWEST PENINSULA OF HAITI FROM THE BORDER OF THE
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC WESTWARD...INCLUDING PORT AU PRINCE...


Jacmel’s a bit of a dump really. The beach is dirty but the girls wanted to stretch their legs and I needed to check the bilge pump so we hove to. Mind you it’s been a lovely place at one time. Built by rich merchants from Port Au Prince who used it for a weekend getaway and there’s some beautiful old houses. But now it’s looking very rundown. We wander through the market. It’s Sunday. I know that means the women will likely all be in church while the men go cockfighting. There’s a young bloke following behind us. He’s got a hyena on a piece of string. A very well behaved beast I must say. I ask him in my best Anglo/French if he knows anything about cockfighting. He looks puzzled so I jump up and down and flap my wings. A small crowd gathers. ‘Ah la gague’ says someone, ‘suivez moi.’ and off we go through the market past a lot of shacks till we come to a big tin hut. It’s full of people drinking rum and shouting and there’s a concrete pit in the center. Cockfighting is a big deal in Haiti. It’s come to symbolize the relationship they have with Dominica. Two roosters fighting over Hispaniola.

It was unbelievably hot and noisy in that shed but nobody seemed to mind. Next two blokes are holding hooded roosters, the excitement reaches a crescendo and everything goes crazy.

The human mind is a funny thing. I’m watching all this, the crowd, the roosters clawing and pecking at each other, the stuffy tin shed and for some reason I’m getting flashbacks to my first brush with the porn business.

I believe I told you about Aunty Doris and Uncle Archie and the naughty goings on in the living room. I wasn’t supposed to watch but of course I did. Later on Uncle Archie let me work the camera and move the lights around. Even gave me a few black and white still photos to flog at school.

When Auntie Doris got nicked and Dad in the Scrubs it was just me and Mum. Uncle Archie used to come round a lot to see how she was doing. He’d always slip me a couple of quid and send me out somewhere so I had a lot more personal freedom. Those were great days. One summer I borrowed Archie’s Standard Vanguard (and his driver’s license), and took mum to Butlins. She loved it didn’t she? Skegness! Bloody marvelous.

Funnily enough looking back I was a bit of a slow bloomer. Had me first real bunk-up at Butlins. (I’m not counting the messy knee-trembler with a Girl Guide from Crouch End. Saucy little piece from Brownhills named Thelma. Brummy accent. Met her on the roller rink. Black lace knickers and a real goer once I got her away from her mate.

Also, come to think of it that was the first time I saw a proper boat. Mablethorpe Yacht Club Annual Regatta. Posh bastards or so I thought at the time. I made a mental note to meself. Dicky Boy you’re having one of those yachts one day. Anyway the holiday camp was great. Remember Oliver Reed in Tommy? His haircut? I was a Teddy Boy...well not really but I caught the tail end of it. Drape jackets with velvet collars, bootlace ties, drainpipe trousers and suede shoes with thick crepe sole were on the way out. Italian suits and winkle pickers that was me. Duck tail and Tony Curtis sideburns. And the music…Gene Vincent and Bill Haley. Smashing up cinemas. Lovely. No internet in them days. Buddy Holly. Dancing of a Saturday night at the Palais. Jiving we called it. Best England had in those days was Petula Clarke and Frankie Vaughan. Unless you count Tommy Steele or Cliff Richard and the Shadows.

Then in the sixties some strange things started happening, Beatles, Stones, Kinks, The Who, and next thing I know we’ve all morphed into mods somehow. The lads were buying Lambrettas, putting on their parkas and Doc Martens and scooting off to Southend for punch-ups with rockers. Went there a few times meself, not for the fights so much but to look at the ocean. Loved watching the sailboats. Course like I say…it’s all a bit of a blur.

Back at the cockfight I notice they aren’t tying knives to the birds like they do in the Philippines and I also see a lot of the roosters don’t have spurs. They clip them or twist them off with pliers I’m told, which doesn’t hurt the bird too much. If it bothers you, you can use a hot potato. Put a potato in the microwave for 5 minutes, or until REALLY hot. Get somebody to hold the rooster upside down then quickly stab your hot potato onto the rooster’s spur. Hold it there for at least 60 seconds then when the spur is still hot and soft give it a sharp twist. The spur will pop off easily without harming the rooster.

Well we lost a few dollars in that hot tin shed but the girls loved it. It was interesting to see a slice of local life and make a contribution to the Haitian economy. Poor buggers need all the help they can get. Looks like we dodged a hurricane...now here comes another one. Time to find a decent harbour.

Groovy Bob.

Robert Fraser was born into a wealthy banking family. He was educated at Eton. He was an officer in the King’s African Rifles in Kenya. Chummy with Idi Amin so rumour had it. He lived in New York where he hung out with up and coming young artists. His dad helped him get a London gallery started.

Simon liked Robert. Everybody did.  He was always charming and not snobbish at all. Simon dropped in the gallery often when he was in the West End to say hallo and have a chat. Robert was always happy to talk about art. Especially Pop Art. Simon learned about Blake, Hamilton, Dine and Warhol.
‘Soup cans. Silkscreen prints. Buy one Simon. You won’t regret it.’ said Robert.
Poor Robert. He had it all, looks, charm, titled friends. He was a real trendsetter with an eye for art. And he loved the dark side. He got sucked into the Stones orbit. Deeply flawed was Robert. Drugs…..oh yes….one of the first people in London to do LSD and one thing lead to another. Moroccan houseboys, rough trade, coke he tried them all. He ended up with a heroin habit, gambling debts and AIDS. One of the first people to die of it in fact.
But those evenings in his flat were fun while it lasted. Well Simon thought so. On the face of it it was just a bunch of oddballs sitting around being cool but you never knew who might show up. Keith Richards was there a lot, so were Anita Pallenberg and Marianne Faithfull. John Dunbar, Dennis Hopper, William Burroughs, Terry Southern, Kenneth Anger were all frequent visitors. It was the place to be. Something was in the air.
“Mark my words,” said William Burroughs, “that boy is headed for a fall.”
William and Simon were sharing a pot of Earl Grey in Fortnum and Mason’s Tea Room. Shoppers, mostly women, were chatting away at other tables. Chandeliers, aspidistras, all very sedate and English. Everything was cool. Once William accepted that you weren’t queer there were no problems. 
“This whole public school thing is very strange to me,’ said William, “the English equivalent of Ivy League I suppose.”
“It’s not just Eton,” said Simon, “Robert is a misfit. He’s brilliant and fascinating. But weak too in many ways.”
Things were never the same for Robert after the Redland’s bust. Going to jail wasn’t as funny as he made it seem. More drugs, a trip to India, a new gallery that never really took off, AIDS, death. RIP Robert.

Guano.

Then off to the southeast Nyum spots some land. Bugger me what’s that? Can’t still be Jamaica surely. Quick check of the chart says it must be Navassa. Just a low rocky looking lump, not much to look at but it has an interesting history. On his 4th. Voyage in 1504 Columbus was on his way back from discovering Panama. His ships were full of worms and leaking badly so he had to beach them in St. Anne’s, Jamaica and send for help. He sent a few blokes off in dugouts to try and reach Hispaniola. They ran out of water and landed on ‘Navaza’ where they found a few birds eggs and iguanas to eat. A few of them died and the rest managed to get to Santo Domingo in their canoes. Nobody visited the island again until the 1600’s when it became popular with pirates.

Then in the 1800’s some enterprising Americans got interested in guano. In 1857 a Mr. Cooper supplied a $50,000 performance bond to President James Buchanan (as required by law) and two years later the President proclaimed that Navassa now "appertained" to the U.S. You can take the word appertain any way you want really. Legally speaking it means "loosely belonging to or temporary ownership." It’s all explained in the Guano Act of 1859(U.S. Code Title 48, Section 1411-1419) which goes something like this:-

"Whenever any American citizen discovers a deposit of guano on any island rock or key and not under the jurisdiction of any other government and not occupied by citizens of any other government,  at the discretion of the President, he can say that the island appertains to America."

The Guano Act goes on to discuss the required filing of an affidavit and bond and discusses issues such as the President sending troops to protect the guano miners should they be threatened by other governments or bad guys.

Many guano islands were bought and sold. Not just the mining rights but actual real estate ownership. Geezer called James Jennett of Baltimore made a nice living discovering guano islands. He’d sell the guano rights as well as the islands themselves. Those were the days. Oscar would have loved the Guano Act.

Anyway that’s enough birdshit. Time to get some of that canvas down. There’s supposed to be a jetty here somewhere but I don’t want to chance it so we drop the main anchor and I tell the crew to get a bit of sleep. The wind’s died down a bit but there’s still a big swell. I don’t entirely trust the anchor myself so I’m up here with the all-weather laptop watching the chain and waiting for the sun to come up. Won’t be getting much sleep but that’s the downside of being captain. As soon as it gets light it’s all hands on deck and we’re off to Haiti.

 

 

 

 

Creative writing.

I expect you’re wondering how  Arthur got from the tobacconists to Thailand? It's a long story. I'll get round to it in due course. Meanwhile here he is in present time sitting in his bookshop in Northern Thailand. Business is slow. He might sell the odd book or swap one or rent one out. The internet has played hell with the book market but some people still like them.

Doesn't look like he's doing much at the moment but he's actually hard at work thinking about a book he intends to write one of these days.
It’s hard to think of Arthur as a tortured genius. Anguish? Not really. He doesn’t feel any great existential inner conflict. In as much as he exists in the real world at all he just sort of plods along. Takes things a day at a time so to speak.


Nor does he feel any burning need to communicate. So why does he write….if making notes can be considered writing? Maybe because there are days when he feels like part of the human race. For some obscure reason he wants to record his thoughts and feelings and share them with his fellow men, and women of course…and in so doing unburden himself.


It’s as if Arthur has been suppressed all his life, by his mother mainly of course, and growing up in England, the class system, the climate. The school she’d sent him to hadn’t helped much either nor had his two years of National Service. It’s a burden he seems doomed to carry around all his life and he wishes there was some way of exorcising all his demons. Living in Thailand hasn’t done much for his joi de vivre either really. He desperately wants to write but he doesn’t know where to start…his head is full of ideas and experiences from his own time in Thailand and the stories he’d heard over the years…but he knows the creative process can’t be rushed. It either comes or it doesn’t. So he makes notes…but so far he’s only been able to come up with a couple of short stories. He has one short story more or less finished and he’d shown it to Jim in ‘Silly Suds’. Which had been a mistake in hindsight. It had taken Jim weeks to get round to reading it and then he hadn’t said much.

‘It’s not bad Arthur but…’

‘But what?’

‘Well mate I’m not really the one to ask about literature am I?…Daily Mail and lavatory walls is about my limit… ‘  

Not very helpful.

It had been a lot of work getting that final draft ready for public consumption. Arthur had written and re-written it and kept making changes right up to the minute before he’d had it printed out in the Internet place and then one day he’d bitten the bullet and sent it off to a magazine in the UK. How long ago had that been? Five months? Six? And he’d heard nothing. Not even a rejection slip. It was enough to drive an aspiring author to drink. He takes a notebook from his pocket and begins to write…


Dear Whatsname…Thank you for your total lack of interest in my manuscript. I sincerely apologize for submitting the thing in the first place and appreciate your unwillingness to respond to my e-mails or long distance telephone queries. I should have sent it to somebody who knows good writing when they see it instead of wasting your valuable time.  Also I regret calling your secretary a snotty bitch on the phone and hope she understands that I have been under a lot of stress lately. She is just doing her job and I suppose she gets tired of shielding you from the unwashed herd of unpublished writers but that’s her job so she should be able to deal with it don’t you think? And as for you and your spineless approach to editing all I can say is that you have passed up a great opportunity as far as my work is concerned and one day you will regret it. I am not a vindictive person by nature but I can be a vengeful when I’m roused I’ll have you know. I should also point out that I am in the book trade myself and I have connections. As for my manuscript which you probably didn’t even read and with which I enclosed the appropriate stamped addressed envelope well don’t even bother sending it back to me as you should by rights do. Instead please be so kind as to fold it into a cone and shove it up your arse…I mean anus…no arse…

There, that’s the way to deal with those people. Who do they think they are anyway? Sitting in their fancy offices in Kensington and places and going to literary lunches. Nitpicking Old Etonian twits mostly. Bloody punctuators. They know nothing about real life.

Mewsing

 

Simon enjoyed working on the mews house. He had a fellow called Dave helping him. Dave was from Fulham and seemed to know what he was doing.

‘We’ll do the outside first. Roof and windows and re-pointing. Pop the old double-glazing in. When that’s done we’ll do inside. Start with the stairs. Leave the kitchen and bathroom till last. Lot of serious plumbing needed in there mate.’

‘A lot?’

‘Well there’s a cast iron down-pipe for starters…even some lead. You’ll want that out. Everything’s PVC these days.’

Simon likes it when Dave gets technical. Makes him feel like one of the boys.

‘By the way,’ says Dave, ‘there’s a bit of paperwork for you. Bills and that.’

Which is a roundabout way of saying the lads need paying.

So Simon learned about drains and damp courses and he liked the work. The house had been a stable at one time, part of the Grosvenor estate. The plan was to turn the street level into a combination studio and living area. Upstairs would be bedrooms and storage. There were piles of bricks and old window frames everywhere. Bashing out walls was dirty and dusty but it made a contrast with bashing out record reviews and interviewing pop stars.

Sometimes he fell asleep on an old mattress in his dirty overalls. Sometimes he would change into his trendy gear and go to places like Ad Lib and the Scotch where he would find people like McCartney, Jagger, and various Small Faces. He picked up a lot of gossip. Some of it he would use in Monty’s music rags. Some he would keep to himself. Monty had a strong aversion to law suits.

Pirates of the Caribbean.

BTW I have received a memo from the author. He thinks I’m rushing things. Simon for instance spent a lot of time in a mews in Chelsea during the Swinging Sixties. That was before he settled down. I’m supposed to say something about that. I’m also supposed to inject a few more subplots including meetings with my old mates Oscar and Chuck Woww.

So I’m scanning the horizon one day and along comes this bloody great black schooner, black sails, skull and crossbones, the lot. Hallo I think, someone thinks he’s Johnny Depp. So I get the binoculars out and there’s this big bloke in the cockpit. Looks like some kind of mutant, some biker must off had it off with a sasquatch. Bald, huge gut on him and a big black beard down to his whatsit. Sort of bloke who keeps pythons for pets.

There’s something that looks like a cannon up the sharp end and a nude woman stowing a jib sail. Bloody hell! It’s Pamela Anderson! What’s she doing here?

Should I mention I’ve decided to go to BVI and have a look at Oscar’s treasure island? Just waiting for the right wind conditions. Might stop in at Haiti. Dominica’s sort of on the way too. The Dominican Republic I should say. Or Dominatrix as Oscar likes to call it. Nasty old sod. He likes being whipped by black girls.

That bit for instance is part of a sub-plot about pirates which may never be used. I put it in without the author’s permission because I’m bored. Let me know if you like it and I’ll try to sneak some more in.

You probably think all this is coming to some kind of climax right? Well maybe it is but the climax could be delayed for a long time. How am I supposed to narrate this stuff when they keep making changes? It’s the bloody author’s fault. And the Editor. We’re dealing with several interconnected lives here…lots of situations and characters and places…it’s one bloody thing after another. Starting to wonder why I took this job.

Right where was I? Ah yes…Arthur. Talk about boring. He married Lorraine and she had a baby that they named Cynthia. Lorraine’s father, Ernie, died soon after and Lorraine inherited the tobacconist shop. Which is why we find Arthur now sorting through boxes of Mars Bars and Golden Virginia. India is already fading into memory. It’s not a very exciting life but he doesn’t complain. Not good old Arthur. He pops up to London occasionally to see Simon other than that he knuckles down and keeps his nose to the grindstone, does a bit of reading. They have the odd day out in the Morris Minor on Bank Holidays and that’s about it. 

Monty

Samantha took Simon to see Monty. His office was on Denmark Street….otherwise known as Tin Pan Alley. Simon told him about IT, OZ, Black dwarf etc. “Very good,” said Monty, “you’ve established your radical credentials. Do you want to make some real money?”

“Doing what?”

“Interviewing pop stars. Writing record reviews. You could do PR for the record companies.”

“Sell out you mean?”

“Well I wouldn’t call it selling out exactly. You can strike a balance.”

Monty was very generous. He paid well. Simon enjoyed meeting the movers and shakers, the music and the backstage gossip. Best of all he was guaranteed publication. When he finished an article there was no waiting around to see if it got used. And no problems about getting paid.

Still it was more Keith Altham than Nick Kent. Simon wasn’t intellectually satisfied. A chance meeting in a pub with Francis Bacon sparked a renewed interest in visual art. Simon started going to gallery openings which is how he got friendly with people like John Dunbar and Robert Fraser.

It turns out Samantha was no slouch herself when it came to getting in with the in crowd. She’d already been on Top of the Pops as a dancer. There was a chance of a spot on Juke Box Jury and she was doing quite a bit of modelling.

So I’m going to give Simon a couple more carefree bachelor years. He got a mortgage somehow on a dilapidated coach house in a Chelsea mews. The idea was to fix it up but things did not go totally smoothly with Samantha. They lived together for a while but it was on and off. Simon just couldn’t leave the girls alone. Samantha liked to play around a bit too. She wasn’t short of boyfriends. Me being one.

I’ll say one thing for Samantha…she was no snob. She would talk to anybody. Which is how I got to know her I suppose. Simon was writing something about punk and I was managing the Stench at the time. Him and Sam did an interview with me and the lads. I’d see her around the clubs and we would often have a chat. There must have been something about me that she liked. OK let’s be honest. I bonked her a few times but that’s how it was in those days. Nothing serious. People were fucking like rabbits.

Montego Bay.

Samantha! Don’t get me started on Samantha. I’ve got my own Samantha stories which I will reveal in due course.

Meanwhile here we are in MoBay. Decided to skip Cuba. Very tricky sailing on the approach to Santiago, as Columbus discovered 500 years previously. He was heading west, thinking he was off the coast of China, but he had to give it up. He got the crew to sign a piece of paper swearing that Cuba was so large it must be part of Asia. 

Just outside Santiago we spotted this thing sticking out of the water. Gun turret of the Vizcaya I think, sunk by US battleships in 1898. Nasty thing to run into in the dark. Then the headwinds got ridiculous so I thought sod it and came down to Jamaica.

Tied up in the Montego Bay Yacht Club. Pricey but nice enough. The other day me and the girls rented a Land Rover and drove out to the Cockpit Country. This is where the Maroons lived out of reach of British forces. After a series of battles they were granted land in the region in 1739. Accompong is the only Maroon village which has kept its original name. Accompong was the brother of Cudjoe, a Maroon chief and the name comes from an Ashanti word, Nyamekopong, which means ‘lone warrior’. To this day the village is ruled by a man called The Colonel who has the power of life or death over the villagers. The Jamaican coppers leave them alone.

Talking of life or death in Jamaica the murder rate here is chronic. Nearly 900 killed last year out of a population of 2.6 million. That’s high. The rum’s not bad though. Appleton still make a good one...they bloody should, they've been at it since 1749. But I find the Jamaican rums a little on the sticky side, which is why I drink Bajan whenever I can. Mountgay mostly but Cockspur will do at a pinch.