The Words of the Mouth

by Ronald Smith

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  A few days later I decided to travel down to London to explore the possibilities, perhaps to meet someone who knew of a band that wanted to hire a studio for practising.

  I set off in our little Renault. I was driving down the motorway through south-west Scotland near Kirkpatrick, when I began to worry about the battery being flat and noises the car was making, and came off on a side road to find a garage, I had bought a battery and was heading back when I saw a sign which read

  'Bruce's Cave'

  Christ'! So of course I went to visit it, followed a path into the woods and into a river gorge, along a wooden footpath on the side of a cliff with a drop of fifty feet below.

  Through the square cut entrance was a stately cave containing a big room. It must have been an invisible hiding place back in Bruce's day.

  Inside, all alone, I thought of Bruce on the run from his enemies, everything was going wrong for him, and yet in the end he succeeded. So I said a little prayer: 'just let me do this thing, get the Mill organised as a music studio.'

  Then I walked back to the car and drove on south to Huddersfield, where I stopped off to visit a Peruvian friend named Manolo, who was my daughter's godfather.

  He came with me the next day as I set out for London, but as we were leaving he said, "I've got to sign on at the Unemployment Exchange before we go."

  "Look, I can't wait, I've got an appointment in London and I can just about make it,"

  "Won't be a minute. Will," I dropped him at the entrance where there was a huge queue of about two hundred people. He skipped ahead of the queue, signed on, and was back in a matter of minutes, and we were away,

  I was driving at eighty miles per hour through worsening fog, straining my eyes to see ahead.

  "I've got to keep going," I said grimly, and stubbed out the joint we were smoking.

  Then ahead I saw two cars spinning around, and a man by the roadside frantically waving his arms, I shifted down through the gears, stopping only five feet from the cars.

  At that instant I got an overwhelming feeling of an avalanche bearing down on us.

  Manolo at the same moment shouted, "Move the car!"

  I couldn't at first decide which way to go, but just as I pulled over to the side, a huge bus roared past, right through the spot where we had been, smack into the cars ahead, knocking them out of the way as it careered off into the mist.

  Manolo and I leapt from the car and ran along the embankment, towards the bus. Ahead, we could see fires flickering through the fog, and a mixture of diesel oil and petrol was flowing along the tarmac like a long fuse under the stopped cars. In the distance, a car exploded into flames, and a BBC cameraman hurried past.

  "How the hell did you get here so quick, you vulture?" I called out in anger.

  "I was just on my way to work," he squeaked apologetically.

  "Ha Ha!" I retorted ironically, turning to the now stationary bus.

  We kicked in the damaged door of the bus to release the passengers – a party of young schoolgirls and two teachers, whom we led over to the roadside, out of danger.

  Then we continued along past the log-jam of cars, Manolo on one side and me on the other. He was soon in the heart of the pile-up, comforting people who were shocked, getting warm coats for the injured, helping someone to an ambulance. I told people to stand clear of the inflammable liquid spreading across the motorway; droves of them were wandering around or standing like sheep, some with lighted cigarettes, oblivious to the mixture of spilled fuel trickling under their feet.

  In the centre of the chaos, a lorry and a car were impacted together, fire from the burning lorry spreading around its load of metal drums.

  "Stand by your cars " a policeman was bawling through a loud-hailer.

  I went up to a cop and said, "I can get fifty people and we'll lift these vehicles aside for ambulances and firetrucks to get in."

  "No, you're not allowed to touch any vehicles or the insurance companies won't pay up."

  "But look at that lorry; what's in these barrels?"

  "We don't know."

  "That could be explosive, that could give off poisonous gas and take out all these people."

  "STAY BY YOUR CARS" continued the loud-hailer.

  I could not passively watch such insanity; my awareness was very acute, prompting my survival instincts, although many people were uncomprehending of the danger around them. But I was also enjoying myself thoroughly by this time.

  After about an hour, there were signs that the cars were going to start moving: passengers climbed back in, drivers started their engines. I was returning to my car when I saw the school party on their way towards the bus; one of the schoolteachers was still weeping hysterically, being supported by the other, followed by the children, many of whom were also crying.

  I stopped the first girl and gave her a big hug, saying "Look at all those colours and all that smoke; isn't that fantastic?" She stopped her tears and looked around, with a sniff.

  "There's nothing wrong with you, is there? Weren't you lucky you didn't get hurt?"

  She nodded with a smile. I gave a big hug to every kid who was crying and spoke to her about the kaleidoscope scene and her good fortune, wanting to counteract the lesson these teachers had given by their example on how to react in a crisis.

  Manolo appeared with a very tall American whom he had dragged unhurt out of a flattened car in the wake of the bus. He was going to Uxbridge, so Manolo, typically, had offered him a lift with us. He tucked the lanky young man, stunned and pale from being sandwiched by the bus, into the front seat, and then jumped in the back, from where he directed a mischievous commentary on my driving.

  "Did you see that? He almost hit that car! I wouldn't sit in the front with him. God , Will, watch where you're going."

  The unhappy passenger began to flinch, and press his foot on a non-existent brake, as I sped south, making up for lost time.

  "Shut up, Manolo, I'm driving this car."

  When we reached Uxbridge, the guy took out his wallet and produced a sheaf of banknotes. "How much do I owe you?" he asked, obviously one of these independent types who doesn't want to owe anybody anything. Manolo was virtually penniless, but he replied with some heat, "Listen, mate. Don't pay us; if you're ever in this situation again, just help another person like 1 did you."

  Manolo's purpose, in coming to London with me, was to find a drummer from New Orleans named 'Stretch’, who could get him a job with a band, but he didn't know where to look. We stopped in Maida Yale to find a pub I knew about, the Prince of Wales, and as we were trying to locate it, Manolo spotted an ancient crone and asked her the way,

  "I don't know where anything is," she lamented in a weak, spidery voice,"I can't find my daughter, I don't even remember my own address.” Manolo was suddenly all solicitude. "Can I help you? Where does she live?"

  After two hours of driving around London attempting to follow her fragmented directions, a growing dread that we would be looking after a doddering 80 year old woman for the next two weeks, began to haunt me. Scrawled in the back of her address book, which contained a strange variety of addresses, mostly abroad, I saw a house number which was just round the corner; she said it was her nephew's.

  We knocked on the door. A scowling, unshaven face emerged.

  "Mr, Murphy?"

  "Yeah, whaddya want?"

  "We've brought your aunt, she was lost when we met her."

  "What did you bring her here for?" he growled unwelcomingly, "I don't want her,"

  "Well, she's your problem nowl" We retreated hastily to the car.

  "Right, Manolo, don't even TALK to anyone else,” I ordered, as we drove off.

  Inside the Prince of Wales, I looked over Manolo's shoulder and there was 'Stretch', the very man he was looking for.

  Enthusiastic greetings were made, exclamations about amazing coincidences offered, and soon we were swept along with a convivial group of musicians out of the pub and into the st
reets of London.

  Before long, I found myself in a theatrical party in a place I thought of as 'Toad Hall', one of those upmarket gatherings where everyone knows everybody else and they are all hustling one another, trying to make connections, get jobs. There was the usual sprinkling of pop stars, joints being smoked, and cocaine in the bedroom.I was the only person who didn't know anybody, I just stood and watched.

  London seemed like a colossal prostitute - they were all selling themselves like whores. I stood in the middle of the room and willed myself to be fantastic, put a secret smile on my face, as if I knew something no one else did. That, plus my gift of the gab, got me the offer of making a film with the BBC before the evening was out.

  The next few days I went around on a hunting trip, visiting Computer Animation Studios, meeting various people, seeing the work they were doing, trying to learn their terminology, their way of thinking, just letting my curiosity lead me on.

  I wandered into a boardroom where people thought I was from another department, commented on what was being said, listening and learning all the time. I found an Animation and Film Graphics Company in a place called 'Sangster House'. Standing in the centre of a room, I called out to them "This is my house. My name is Sangster. Get out, you bunch of squatters, " and laughed. They showed me their computer room and offered to let me work there. If I had had something concrete to offer, I could have made some deals, but at least I made several connections in films and music and met several promoters whom I told about my studio, before I returned to Scotland, confident now that something would turn up.

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