Myths & Melancholy

There are people and proceedings apparently assembled entirely from hearsay.

Biographies that persist through whispered myth, spun from wide-eyed playground hyperbole, promoted via bar-room boasting.

Infamous exploits that thrive within a loosely-tangled hairball of fact and fable.

Around North End Road, history pits the brickwork; it impregnates yellowing ceilings. There, through common conversation alone, people may be rendered real enough to rub shoulders with. And although no-one you know has seen them, everyone claims to know someone that has.

Is, for example, the existence of Munster Road’s elusive peek-a-boo dandy mere conjecture, or does he occupy a realm in the here and now? Many say they have seen him swing a gay parasol in the dusky twilight. Several attest to spying him saunter past Olive’s on the corner of Wardo Avenue, pausing momentarily to finger the leaves of the box ball tree that stands there.

Consider Mr. Dave, notorious brick-built barman of The Goose. Has he only ever pulled pints in the unrequited dreams of dry-mouthed drunkards, or did he really force-feed a 20 x 22 gram card of Mr. Porky pork scratchings (packaging ‘n’ all) to a hapless punter for “looking at him funny”, as market folklore decrees?

And what of ‘Easy’ Elsie Blow? Have you ever accelerated her sputtering pulse, or smudged her clumsy rouge with the heel of your hand? Perhaps her history solely resides in lines written on walls: grotesque slogans proclaiming her to be dirtiest puzzle in SW6; alleged invites to underage lads scratched in the bubbling cream emulsion of unheated, busted-seated, public conveniences.

She could be nothing more than an ongoing narrative of Chinese whispers, dictated via the urgent imaginings of deprived youth, but through the years she has been depicted in a litany so vivid that anyone would know her the moment she appeared.

Mooning around the kitchen once, I pressed Ma on the veracity of Elsie’s existence, but she didn’t answer. Instead she fixed me with her flinty eyes, and with grim vigour continued chopping the courgette she held pinned to the kitchen table. She clearly felt such topics to be forbidden fig for a freshly-weaned whelp like me so, sadly, my blinkers remained.

And yet, like a mercurial striker penetrating a well-drilled back four, the truth will ultimately wheedle its way though the most densely-woven deception. Like dogged chickweed winding through hairline concrete cracks to sprout into the light.

Last week, I was loping along towards the river to take in the tides. Hard sunshine kicked off corroding fenders and the market roar gradually decayed as I drifted further away. Generally looking like I couldn’t help it, I was struggling within my brain to evaluate the difference between a chamfer and a bevel when a tiny bulb of light burst in the corner of my vision.

I looked down the alleyway I was passing by, and there, through the opened doors of someone’s garage was, unmistakably, Elsie. Elsie. Unmistakably. At once, that multitude of after-hours murmurs found itself reconstituted into an irrefutable, copper-bottomed fact.

Frozen in mid-pucker, she was modelling hourglass corsetry for the readers of some rank magazine. She had spilled herself over the bonnet of a burnt-out Hillman Imp, like a marshmallow congealing on a hot stove.

I was dimly hypnotised. There she actually was, like some queasy conflation of a blowsy brothel madam and a dinner lady on Viagra.

The director of this squalid scene, weaselly in his soiled gabardine, flashgun primed, was evidently aspiring to some kind of Ballardian tableau. Framed as it was by the garage doorway, it looked more to me like a road safety poster targeting mature nymphomaniacs.

Where is the allure, I wondered, of exposing one’s chassis and gaskets to the world? Why divulge one’s vitals in the centre spreads of catchpenny publications that are doomed to curl and bleach in wire carousels standing off-kilter on suburban station forecourts? What fate for one’s flesh to be fondled only in facsimile by the grubby thumbs of bored salesmen with gout?

Collecting copper’s a diminishing trade right now, but are a few photographer’s farthings slipped into the willing gusset going to put sufficient steam on the table to justify such bruising indignity?

As I slipped away I sensed a rare melancholy consuming me. That uncomplicated optimism that springs, some say, from a robust dim-wittedness, felt punctured.

It got me thinking about the dead-ends and disappointments that might be awaiting me one day. It was like a future memory of a life unlived.

But how could I feel things I hadn’t encountered yet?

Had I acquired this awareness via the eye peeping through the door crack, the ear straining at the keyhole? Had half-remembered conversations and splinters of market chatter been absorbed subliminally, just like the tall stories spawned in these here streets?

Or perhaps it had been learned through actual experiences elsewhere, from recurrent episodes where the chafe of failure is felt first-hand. Speaking of which – I’ll see you at the school of hard knocks on Sunday!

Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!