June 2015 – Writer-insighter

The waiting

It’s the longest day today and up here in Scotland where I am right now, holed-up on the run in a small hotel in Tomintoul, that means the days are very, very long.

Because it’s Scotland it’s raining and it’s cold. I had to buy a sweater yesterday. I’d packed a spare but when I put it on it looked as if dogs had slept on it. Then I remembered that’s exactly what had happened back in January. That was a nice time. A hopeful time, cold but the days getting longer, one by one till now.

Near Christmas you hear Peter Gabriel’s song about ring out Solstice bells. Nobody knows what it means. It’s just another word, the way words are supposed to mean anything anyone wants them to mean now. It’s another solstice today. I don’t hear any bells ringing at all.

The place I was passing had a sale on, so I got a really nice jumper for £20. But it’s not the same as the old one. That was Italian, from Peek & Klopenburg in Dam Square, and even though it was in a sale it was a bit more than £20. It paid for itself though; I bought it back in 2002. Or 2003. I can’t really remember. I was in Amsterdam quite a bit for a while, for reasons which need not be examined too closely but were legal if not perhaps entirely moral. It depends, I think. Possibly.

Anyway.

Anyway, after today we’ll all be able to say it once again, showing our true British pessimism. Altogether now at 7pm tomorrow night please, roll your eyes skyward and say ruefully:

“Aye, the nights are fair drawing in noo.”

How the West was won.

1024px-Jesse-james-farm — The little homestead Jesse James came from. It wasn’t enough for his father.

A long time ago I had a friend from Kentucky. His great grandpa had seen Jesse James ride past. It was a family ritual he was lucky enough to be just born long enough ago for this very old man to do his party piece, the same way he’d told the story to his own son, and to his grandchildren and probably anybody else who would listen, the way men do.

The little boy was lead into the old man’s presence the same way other little boys had been for the past fifty years.

“Listen, great gran’pa’s gonna tell you ’bout the time he saw Jesse James…”

Like a lot of American heroes or maybe heroes anywhere, Jesse James had what might be called interpersonal relationship issues.

A man with surprising relationship issues. — A man with a limited anger management skillset.

He was born in 1847 in Missouri and got pulled into the Civil War as a teenager. It wasn’t like the song. It wasn’t big battles and flags and sad bugles, but a gang of people who went after another gang of people, preferably on their own, or at least hopefully vastly outnumbered and taken by surprise. James was fifteen when that started. After the war he took the skills he had, which were mostly killing people, and used them to rob banks and trains. Eventually one of his gang members called Robert Ford did the sensible thing and blew a hole the size of a tea-cup through him while he was hanging a picture in a house he’d rented.

There were popular stories which had the James gang as latter-day Robin Hoods, but the people they robbed didn’t think so. The ones who survived, anyway. It was a time when there weren’t police, interstates, paved roads in Missouri, cars, indoor lavatories or pretty much anything else we have now.

So the little boy, like generations of little boys before him stood in awe at the old man’s knee while older men, his brothers and uncles who’d all heard the story at the same knee stood there and smirked, waiting to hear it again.

“Did I ever tell you ’bout the time I saw Jesse James? I was about as big as you are now when he rode past me on his horse, about as close as you’re standing. I could’ve reached out and touched him.”

And the little boy’s eyes went wide and the older boys and men nudged each other and winked and waited as the little boy said, the same way they’d said for half a century and more, “So what did you do, g’paw?”

And the old man paused and maybe looked around the rest of his audience, judging the pause even though it was a true story, before he thought the time was right to tell the little boy about outlaws and the people who weren’t before he said quietly:

“I hid in the ditch.”

Heavy relics

A joke. A pathetic one. There ought to be another control pot, labelled “Fakeness.” It should go all the way to 12.

I saw one of these in a shop window about ten years ago. I thought it was a joke then. I still do now, except this is a joke for people with two grand to spray up the wall.

Are the soles curling off of your blue suede shoes? Do your flabby arms chaffe when you windmill your guitar? Is your quiff, let’s face it, not quite as stiff as it used to be?
Ladies and elderly gentlemen, you need a Fender Relic.

Here are some words. I know all of them, just not in this order.

Fender USA Custom Shop 60’s HSS Strat guitar heavy relic Daphne Blue

As the ad says, 100% genuine and all original, but obviously it means 100% genuine fake. A ’60s guitar is what it says in one sentence, but a 2012 guitar not even 20 words on.

“Let’s talk about the finish first…” Oh do let’s, as they say in Enid Blyton books, which are more realistic than anything about this guitar or the company selling it now.

Relic® – There and back and still here today.The authentic worn-in wear of a guitar that has experienced many years of regular use in clubs and bars. Marks that tell a story, finish checking all over the body, and scars, dings and dents from bridge to headstock.

Can we have a look at that? Or doesn’t the Sale of Goods Act apply any more? It isn’t authentic because it’s fake. It isn’t worn in wear, because it’s fake. It hasn’t experienced many years of anything, because it’s three years old. It certainly hasn’t been played in clubs and bars regularly, if at all. The marks it has tell a story, certainly. A story of fake. It’s fake. Everything about it is fake. A fake story about a desperate company selling fake guitars to desperate fake posers. Jeez, I thought I was bad enough. Even I wouldn’t buy one of these. Not even women who’ve had screaming fits at me would accuse me of that.

This model that I have for sale here is a ‘Heavy Relic’ – a custom order Relic with just a little more ‘World Tour’ treatment !!

Many people think why would you buy a guitar that has been artificially aged ? The answer is very simple – the LOOK !.. and the feel. This guitar plays like new (because it is) rather than an old worn out Strat with a part-warped neck.

“How’s about that then,guys’n’gals?”

Why bother buying a Mexican Strat and a packet of sandpaper and still having change out of £400? I mean, that just wouldn’t be authentic, would it? It’s the look, after all. That’s got to cost £1600 on its own. Sandpaper isn’t cheap you know. Except actually, in real life, it is.

Relic®. When bullshit isn’t enough anymore.™