Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Half mad half genius
posted by John Davies at 8:49 PM
We shared some great Bono stories on our ramble yesterday (the best being Mike's mum in the lobby of The Clarence, at the swaggering hotelier's invitation to choose a song for him to play for her on the piano, she - not knowing who he was - asking if he knew anything from Phantom of the Opera).
This prompted me to recover my fading friendship with Half Man Half Biscuit and enjoying some audio extracts from Achtung Bono I also discovered the otherwise unreleased Epiphany, a true classic of English madness and manners:
I can recall the day quite clearly:
a Friday in July, a sweltering eighty degrees.
Martin Jarvis was completing his week in Dictionary Corner.
He'd been reassuringly average.
Somewhere in the Shires surgeons had entered the mind of Mr Stinchcombe
and found black apes gibbering on dark lawns.
I'd spent the afternoon becoming increasingly frustrated with the grooving agitator on my lime Dyson.
I was due in Parbold at 7.15 and wasn't going to make it.
Telephoning the person who needed to know this
I found myself caught up on a crossed line, something I'd not experienced for years.
I listened in with quiet delight.
It appeared that someone called Bill, whilst out walking the bounds that morning,
had looked into Top Acre and been horrified to see
the almost visible ribcage of a foal
which belonged to the straggle-haired girl from Keeper's Cottage
whose name, if this was a Helen Fielding novel,
would be something like Martha Flanagan.
But the countryside is never as romantic as townsfolk believe it to be
And the girl's name was Karen Henderson...
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john davies
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