The Words of the Mouth

by Ronald Smith

CHAPTER NINE

  Back in Edinburgh after nothing tangible had emerged from the London escapade, I walked into the St. Vincent Bar. There, perched on a bar stool was a London dope dealer I knew as 'the Priest', because he'd been studying in a seminary before he turned onto drugs.

  "Small Minds are looking for you," he said enigmatically.

  I groped with this idea.

  "Bruce, their manager, wants you to call him,"

  Bruce, I thought, Bruce's cave ? My mind was off on a tangent.

  "He wants to hire your studio for the band to practise in." No sooner had the penny dropped than I was dropping coins into the phone at the back of the bar.

  Bruce described the last place the band had used for practice; the owner's wife hadn't liked them to play after midnight,

  "Look, Bruce, there's no worries up here, they can play all day and all night if they want to."

  "Can they really? Great, What about soundproofing?"

  "That's no problem, we're out in the country."

  "We'll be right up to have a look," he said.

  I drove like a man possessed back through Fife, paused at the Mill to hurl orders at Mairi : "Get the place tidied up ! Sweep out the hall! We've got a band coming to see the place ," and sped off to Perth to buy caviar, real coffee, French bread, brie, and wine.

  When I got back, she was indignant as I piled the food on the kitchen table. "You're stupid. You're mad. Caviar? Who do you think they are? They'll never…"

  Her tirade was cut short as the gravel outside scrunched under the wheels of Bruce's red Volvo pulling up beside the house, Barrie and Pete, a sound engineer, were with him.

  Bruce just adored caviar and Brie. Then they had a tour around the building and admired the hall with its balcony like an Elizabethan theatre. 1 talked enthusiastically of how musicians need to separate themselves from the distractions of the city, how boredom from nothing to do often pushed people into creative work. Here, the boys could go to the pub in Newburgh, take a few walks in the country, then they would have nothing else to do but come back to the hall and play.

  The-Tibetans give an artist whatever he wants - fine clothes, food, a woman - while he is working, because they consider art to be an expression of their religion. The artist himself doesn't need any possessions; when he finishes what he is working on, he leaves it all behind. I wanted to provide the band with that kind of freedom and stimulation.

  "I'd like to hire this house, too," said Bruce, "Can you have it all ready by next week?"

  "Oh, absolutely," I replied, not really knowing if I could. But I knew I had to say that, this was my only hope, the only glimmer of light in the darkness, and nothing was going to stop me.

  When Mairi heard that the band was to live in the house with us, she blew up. "Don't you dare do this to me. Will Sangster! There will be wretched pop musicians using my kitchen, all over the place."

  'Just like a housewife,' I thought.

  "Well, don't you dare put a spoke in the wheel and wreck my plans'." I volleyed back. "Just accept it, go along with what I'm doing. It's the only way we'll recover your money."

  As Bruce left, he said, "You'd better tell the neighbours across the road, in case they get alarmed."

  "I'll do that," I said, smiling broadly and waving while they drove

  off.

  Then I went mad with the cheque book, spending nearly £500 I didn't have, to hire some unemployed local tradesmen : two joiners, a plasterer,

  and an electrician. I also recruited Neil and Richard from down the road, two good men who gave me solid support. We began repairing the frost damage and installing a wood stove in the hall, working flat out at a terrific pace, completing work that would have taken months if this crisis hadn't appeared.

  Then the phone rang; it was Bruce. "Look, the boys don't really want to live in someone else's house, they'd be uncomfortable and feel in the way. We'd like to have the end house near the hall, only it's frost-damaged; can you get it ready?"

  'He'll call it off if I hesitate,' I thought. "Don't you worry about that, Bruce, I'll get it together, it's OK," I assured him breezily, wondering meanwhile if it was possible.

  So we switched our efforts over to the end house, repaired the burst pipes, repainted it entirely, working round the clock in sheer desperation. Mairi, glad to have Bruce on her side, put back all the carpets we had dragged out to dry.

  A big Lancia sports car roared in to the yard, containing Frankie and her cousin Nigel. I had not seen her for years, and as she flounced breathlessly into the kitchen, she was caught up in the whirlwind of manic energy.

  "God, Will, Why didn't I know about this place before? This is just what I've always wanted, this is absolutely my dream - oh my God, and I'm on my way to Australia - Oh, look, I'll come into the business with you."

  "Look, Frankie, there's a huge hassle on; I don't even know if I've got a business yet."

  She was getting terrifically enthusiastic about the place, already identifying herself with it. I could feel her starting to put emotional blackmail on me. "You've got to tell me whether we can do this, because if not I have to go to Australia in three days."

  "I can't commit myself to a partnership, Frankie. And I can't make up your mind for you; I don't want to be your excuse for not going to Australia, I don't want that responsibility."

  Frankie can plunge into huge depressions, weeping for hours and having to be held and comforted. I felt protective, and I found myself attracted to her, since Mairi had thrown me out of her bedroom and I was wanting a woman. But a little reflection didn't make entanglement with Frankie seem a good idea; anyway, I didn't feel she fancied me in the slightest, so a flirtation seemed harmless enough. I went along with her fantasies and even started making half-hearted advances.

  She threw herself into making plans. "You've got to have a video, Will. You've got to have tapes for the band. And you've got to have P.D.'s."

  "What the fuck are P.D.'s?"

  "That's what you keep in the fridge. You keep it stocked and take a note of what they consume and charge them for it on their P.D.'s. You've got to do it this way."

  "What the bloody hell are P.D.'s?" But I never found out.

  Frankie then dashed off to the Highlands to steal things from her mother's hotel : downies, coffee percolators, ashtrays, and towels. Next, she produced a video and some electric sandwich toasters she had bought

  But she was still in a state of flux, unable to decide whether to stay and help or go to Australia, trying to manoeuvre me into giving her a definite commitment, which 1 refused adamantly to do.Only one hour before her plane's departure, I had to phone the airline in London and cancel her ticket. To make sure she got her money back, I spoke in a grave voice to the ticket clerk: "This is Mr. Wiseman, Miss Reid's family solicitor. Her mother has just died, and she has just learned that her cousin has been killed in a car crash. Miss Reid is in deep shock and is heavily drugged." This last remark was not so far from the truth, as she had a lot of cocaine with her. A few days later, the refund cheque arrived.

  Mairi and I were now screaming at each other and arguing bitterly, while still working really hard to finish the place in time.

  "You two go ahead and build up your business together, I want to get out of it all now. Give me £70,000 and I'll leave."

  "For Christ's sake, Mairi, where the hell am I going to get £70,000?"

  Jamie had fallen from favour and Mairi's latest boyfriend was hovering about, a long-haired gentle Canadian named Don, who specialised in computerized music. I quickly summed him up; he was nothing but a paper man, a fiction, all talk and no substance, and she would soon tire of him.

  "I won't stand between you and Mairi," I told him, "but I love her and I want us to get back together."

  "I'm sure you will," he simpered. "I can see that you really care about the lady and when you're around, I promise I'll keep out of the way."

  I laughed to myself; ' the naive wimp actually thinks he's got a chance with
her,' and it was a double pleasure to observe Jamie's jealousy. Typically, he resorted to a massive intake of drink and drugs. I soon noted scornfully that he had added heroin to his list. Junkies earn my unqualified contempt; I hate them.

  The wooden floor of the hall was unvarnished. Only a day before the band's arrival we decided to risk using several old cans of varnish I had found in a Dundee jute mill. As well as Neil and Richard, I dragooned a friend Sonia, and her teenage son Crispin, into helping, when they dropped in to visit one afternoon. I was becoming quite unscrupulous about making use of anybody and everybody.

  Crispin was learning to play the drums and it happened that Small Minds was his favourite band. The first thing he asked was, "Does the band need a drummer?" It was plain that they were his heroes, so I told him I'd let him watch the band as a special favour, although I had intended keeping everybody out of the way.

  The varnish stubbornly refused to dry. "Open the doors," I told the others, but soon began to worry that the frosty night would make the hall too cold for the band. We borrowed a large, space-age electric heater and turned it full blast onto the floor, "This will dry it in no time, lads'." I announced with delight, but to my horror, a huge area of varnish erupted in large blisters, and still it would not dry.

  We shoved the heater aside and replaced it with a smaller one. Gradually, the varnish grew less tacky, the blisters slowly subsided, and our blood pressure with them. The atmosphere in the hall had become more airy and light since we had painted it and varnished it, I noticed.

  "Haven't you checked the soundproofing in the hall?" said Mairi. "Don will do a sound check for you," She certainly knew how to rub my nose in it now that she had found another substitute for me.

  "To hell with Don," I snarled, "I don't even want to know about soundproofing, I haven't got time to think about it." 'They'll just say that it's not going to work, I thought, but it IS going to work. Screw the lot of them,'

  Frankie began complaining: "Oh Christ, I wish I'd gone to Australia and not got involved in this total madness. It's just one flaming row after another between you and Mairi with the kid screaming in the background ."

  "I told you to go to Australia, If you want to go, then go, I can't give you a definite promise about this business and say whether or not it will go on," I disclaimed testily.

  Then the band arrived.

  Two enormous lorries full of sound equipment squeezed up the narrow drive and into the yard, filling it with their bulk. I took one look at all that equipment and panicked: 'OH MY GOD! SOUNDPROOFING.’ I drove in feverish haste up to the dump to get old mattresses, carpets, anything 1 could stuff in the windows to kill the sound.

  The neighbours went wild when they saw the lorries. The phone rang with alarmed enquiries. I went across the road to calm them down, explaining that we had soundproofed the hall and the noise would be minimal because the building was well back from the road, behind the mill. They seemed pacified, so I confidently brought one woman over to show her all we had done.

  Her manner changed abruptly when she saw the equipment; there was a whole wall of speakers. "We're going to the police'." she announced.

  "If you're going to take that attitude, you can do what you like. I'm going ahead anyway," I retorted defiantly.

  The band hadn't even started playing and already the weazels were closing in. So I said to the boys, "Look, we might get some hassle; in fact, I'm expecting it, But that's my problem. Don't let it worry you. If it gets heavy, I might ask you to think about turning the music down if you want to, until we get some better soundproofing organised."

  "Yeah, yeah, that's OK, man, we'll keep it down if you ask us." Don offered to do a sound check. I turned on him: "You promised to keep out of my way. Go and have your scene elsewhere, not right under my nose."

  So he and Mairi left; at least that was one irritation out of the way,

  Frankie took the band ponytrekking while the roadies set up the equipment. They work with amplified sound and need plenty of volume. As soon as they began playing that evening, the music blasted out over the entire area. It was clearly heard in the middle of Newburgh and was absolutely hellish across the road. But I thought it was beautiful. I could feel the music rattling all the dust out of the buildings, the gorgeous rich elfin quality of the sound creeping through the misty woods. It felt as if the whole land was in sympathy; the music the Minds played was like the land itself: elfin, graceful, light.

  The neighbours, however, went on the offensive. Some phoned, and others came to my door to complain, "I'm getting the hall soundproofed," I assured them, but they refused to go along with me any further. It was war.

  I told the band to turn it down a bit, which they did, but we couldn't understand why the din was still so loud. Then we realised the whole roof was vibrating like the sound board of a guitar and was actually amplifying the music, while the hill behind reflected it all directly at the neighbours' houses.

  There was an awkward dilemma building up, I know what artists need; ideally they should have nobody telling them what to do, or telling them to stop what they're doing, because if one does, then the anarchist in them starts resisting, triggering off a negative process. They should have everything done for them, anything they want, so that after a while the pleasure palls and there is only creativity left.

  I had made the boys feel at ease. There was a table in the hall covered with food and the best hash. I had sat in the kitchen with Mick and Jim saying, "Lock, if there's any trouble, just relax, keep cool and don't worry. I've told you that you can play all night and I'm sticking by that. I'm going to soundproof the hall while you're away on 'Top of the Pops', If the police come, I don't want you to get hassled; just relax and keep an eye on the drugs."

  It was twelve midnight and the band had been playing for six hours when the first cop arrived, louping into the yard like a dog.

  What had kept them, I don't know.He had gone up to the entrance of the hall and was standing on the raised loading platform when I came up behind him, a couple of feet lower down. He went straight into the attack: "Get that bloody noise off!"

  "Listen, if you're going to talk to me, would you come down to the level I'm standing at?"

  "I will not." So I jumped .up on the platform right in front of him, face to

  face.

  "Get that noise off!” I could see that he was not going to listen to anything I might say.

  "I will not," I repeated, "I'll get it down, but I will not get it off. This is my property."

  "I'll get my superior," he spluttered.

  "You get your superior, get him," And off he went.

  In a little while an Inspector came striding across the yard. I went out to meet him and said, "The problem is not up here, it's down at the road, down at the neighbour's property,"

  He agreed, and went back to the road.

  I popped inside the hall and said to the band, "Keep playing, but keep it down for a bit," then followed the Inspector down to the gate. There were two other policemen with him, and several of the neighbours were watching from their doors.

  "I don't think that's too loud," I told him,

  "1 do," he replied. A car drove past.

  "I can't hear the music over that car," I told him.

  "Well, I can,"

  "You're on shaky ground."

  "What!" he exclaimed, startled by my effrontery, "Shaky ground? What do you mean?"

  "I know I am, but you are, too. You don't know it, and that's worse. We wouldn't have put up all this investment without checking a few facts and figures. There's an organisation behind this; I’m just the front man."

  "I still think it's too loud."

  "That's your opinion, but you've got to argue against a machine. There are specifications in law about sound levels. You don't suppose we would do all this without keeping ourselves covered, do you?"

  "I don't care. 1 think that," - he pointed towards the Mill which throbbed with music, - "is a breach of the peace."
/>
  1 felt like King Canute ordering back the tide, holding them back by sheer will power, talking fast to mix them up. "Look, you've got to be very careful what you do here, because this band is rehearsing for their appearance on 'Top of the Pops' tomorrow."

  "Ahh, rubbish, they are not."

  "They ARE," I emphasized.

  Another carload of policemen arrived, joining the group. Some of the neighbours began crossing the road to swell the crowd. The pressure against me was increasing.

  A second car drove by.

  "Listen, mate, the music is no louder than that car." The Inspector and his men seemed uncertain.. As they hesitated, I thought that perhaps I had them under control.Then the band turned the volume way up, and the blast of sound blew my act apart, 'Shit',' I thought, 'I'd better move fast'.'

  "I'm going up to turn it off,” I shouted over the din.

  "Oh no" he roared, "We're coming in," And the whole mass of policemen rushed up the drive towards the hall.

  I managed to get ahead of them and scramble up onto the platform at the entrance.

  "Stop right there. Listen to me, the whole lot of you! I have offered to turn the music off. You are all out of order, because I have consistently offered to turn the music down to an acceptable level, and now I'm turning it off. I want to declare that if any of you come any further I will be quite within my rights to defend my property, and I am going to register a protest about your conduct."

  They paused, looking at me. "I am now going in to turn the music off," I said, staring back at them.

  "You do that," said the Inspector.

  I had won.

  I walked calmly and deliberately to the door, shut it behind me, and strolled nonchalantly over to where the band was, waiting until they finished the number they were playing. "You'll have to stop, boys. It's either that or we get arrested, not just me, the whole lot of us”

  They exchanged glances. "We may as well get to bed since we're going to London in the morning. Yeah, right, it's OK, we should stop now anyway, it's cool."

  The next morning I drove them down to Edinburgh in their van to catch the lane for their gig. They were really excited: "This is our big break!

  “Good luck, guys," I said to them at the terminal as they went to board the jet, shaking each one by the hand, "You can do it.”

  "Thanks for everything," they shouted back, "We'll put one of your drawings on our drum kit for luck."

  I drove back to the mill thinking I really needed a break, and decided to take the day off. We had about forty-eight hours to get the entire hall soundproofed and I needed a rest before tackling that. But Frankie had organized a public relations exercise; she had made an appointment for us to see the Head of the local police force.

  I went to the station at the time, but there was no sign of Frankie, so I went in alone. I said to the Chief "We're going to have the Hall completely soundproofed, the noise will be totally silenced. We had to have the sound up really loud to see where it was getting out. Last night was part of an experiment, but we’ve got it under control."

  He started moralizing in a disapproving tone. "This sort of noise damages people’s ears and minds all over the country..."

  I cut in: "Do you realize what would have happened last night if I hadn't stopped your men from coming in and arresting the band? Do you have any idea how much publicity you would have created for them? The boys finally get their big break and then you prevent them from appearing on 'Top of the Pops'. The entire pop music industry, all the media, would have seized on the story, there would have been enormous publicity. They would have been absolutely delighted; they would have sold so many records that each one of them would have made more money than you'll make in ten years. And can you imagine how you would have been written up in the press?"

  The Chief looked reflective. Then he started on a different tack: "Do you have planning permission for all this?"

  "Of course we do," I said, lying blandly, with an expression of surprise at his naivety. Telling him not to worry, I left, as the band was coming back that night.

  I ran into Frankie outside; she was dressed in her most respectable best, intending to charm the Chief, and was annoyed that she had missed the meeting, but she consoled herself by planning another pony trek with the boys when they returned.

  The next day I phoned the only insulation company in Scotland. I got an answering service, to my chagrin. But I soon located the manager's home number and said to him, "You'd better get up here straight away because we have to soundproof an entire building in a hurry,"

  He arrived half an hour later. I showed him the hall and described the problem. He looked at the large, high room and said, "Your roof is like a big sounding board, that's where the noise is coming from. You need a layer of compressed plastic board over the rafters, then leave a gap and put on a second layer of fibreglass with protective sheets."

  I looked at him hard. "Will it work? You’d better be right because I’ve got no time to check it out.”

  "It’ll work."

  ''Right, when can you get it up here?"

  "In a couple of hours."

  I jumped in the car and shot off to Perth to get nails. I scoured the town for washers but they were in short supply and I couldn't get as many as I needed.

  Back at the mill, I was down to only three helpers. Frankie had just injured her ankle by falling off a horse while pony-trekking with the band. Her cousin Nigel was so short-sighted he could only see a couple of feet, and he was also very clumsy. Richard was blind in one eye, and Neil was scared of heights.

  The insulation arrived, huge piles of it. I organized some scaffolding. Richard set up a tape deck in the hall to provide music while we worked. I sang lustily to a Van Morrison track "I been working so long”. Frankie hobbled about the kitchen, making cups of tea and rolling joints to prepare us for the mammoth task that lay ahead.

  At first, there was bedlam, with everyone rushing about saying "Do this', Do that.” I had to be in a hundred places at once, running furiously back and forth, working at breakneck speed, inhaling fibreglass dust because I couldn't work fast enough with the protective mask on.

  Everything went smoothly once we settled into working as a team. But after we had finished the walls and began on the roof, we began to run into snags.

  The roof was uneven and had to be made level before we could put on the second layer of insulation. Then we ran out of washers. Improvising desperately, I cut up my old pictures to act as washers. As I banged in nails, I could see images from them, like 'Snake woman'.

  Next, the team began to fall apart because I had to leave Richard in charge while I went off in search of more washers. The power went to his head; acting like Der Furher, he ordered people about, making them resentful. The way to lead is not to stand there telling people what to do: instead you do it yourself and they follow.

  I escaped into the kitchen to contemplate what lay ahead. Everything was beginning to go haywire. We were only one third of the way through the most difficult part of the job and there were only a few hours left until daylight, the deadline, when I said it would be ready for the band. I could hear Bruce saying to me, "Look, man, if you can't get it together we'll have to go away."

  The whole adventure seemed to be collapsing and I slumped back despairingly in my chair.

  Then Paul, the roadie, started hassling me. I'd been using their van to collect materials, but I had put more petrol in it.

  "You owe us fifteen quid for petrol, mate," he demanded aggressively. He makes sure everything works out for the band, trampling on everyone else.

  "I don't owe you anything," I replied wearily.

  "Yes you fuckin well do."

  "I don't."

  "I'll fuckin gob ya," he threatened.

  "Tell you what, I'll toss you for it. You can call the toss."

  Taken aback, he said, "All right, you're on."

  He won the toss. "OK, here's fifteen quid." I reached for my wallet.
/>   He looked at me, "No, man, you can keep yer money. Get me a hat, some goggles, a pair of gloves, and overalls, and I'll help ya."

  I gave him the wide-brimmed Clint Eastwood cowboy hat I had worn to the UB2 concert, lending his small stocky frame and rubbery face a macho appearance.

  At that moment, an acquaintance named Lennie Love wandered into the kitchen. "Want some speed. Will?" He had a lot of it in his pockets.

  "I've never taken amphetamines in my life, Lennie, but now is certainly the time." I put a lot of the powder into my tea, then began snorting line after line greedily.

  Frankie grew alarmed.

  "Stop," she shook my shoulder. "You'll kill yourself. Nobody can take that much speed."

  Then Paul and I went over to the hall to finish the ceiling.We hadn't time to erect proper scaffolding, so we balanced planks on tables, boxes, the balcony, making a geometric structure as we moved across the roof, handing pieces of fibreglass sheeting to one another,bending and twisting into the most awkward positions, being careful not to step on unsupported ends. Several times I put my neck out of joint, but just gave my shoulders a twist and it returned to normal. The pain grew almost unbearable, but I worked on. Whatever tool I needed was always in my hand before I could ask for it, We were linked by pure telepathy, so totally together that there were no barriers; it was like the most intense sexual experience. I've never known anything remotely like it.

  On the fourth day the police gave up. They were now afraid to raid us because of the publicity, and they started telling the neighbours to stop bothering them with any more complaints.

  By this time I thought I couldn't take any more; I began to think I was going mad, I'd been through several weeks of manic exertion, taken enough speed to kill me, and I began to have a recurring phobia about knives – every time I saw a knife, I could feel it and see it cutting throats, wrists, balls

  When Sonia and her son Crispin had been helping to varnish the floor, I had told him he could come and watch the Minds practise. I had kept everybody out of their way, but now it was their last night here before they went off to London to record their LP, so I told Sonia to bring him over. I’d spoken to the drummer about other people playing his equipment, and he said he didn't mind if they knew what they were doing.

  So when Crispin asked me "Do you think I could get a shot of their drums?" I knew they would agree. But I said to him, "I think so, but you'll have to ask them." He was a tall, gawky, self-conscious boy and he squirmed with embarrassment. "I can't."

  "Go and ask them, Crispin," I said sternly.

  "I can't; what will I say?"

  "I'm not telling you what to say, just go over and ask them."

  "But what will I say?"

  "Go and do it, I refuse to help you," I repeated, kicking him ut of the kitchen.

  Three times he came back in an agony of shyness; each time I drove him back.

  Sonia began to get concerned and protective, but I assured her they would let him join in.

  Soon we heard the muffled sound of a drum playing. "Oh, that must be Crispin'," She jumped up excitedly and wanted to rush over to watch him.

  "Wait a bit," I told her, "we'll go over when he has settled down. But don't say anything to draw attention to him and make him feel embarrassed.

  We went in through the Mill and on to the balcony. There was Crispin, battering away at the drums while Mick was operating a drum machine. The boy was extremely nervous, locked into a tense, repetitive riff, and Mick was trying to knock him out of it by hitting him with different rhythms to change his pattern. Then the rest of the band strolled in casually and began picking up their guitars and playing along with Crispin, who went wide-eyed with amazement, still thrashing away, almost in a panic at first.

  After a quarter of an hour, Mick took over. It was a sort of initiation for Crispin; he came out declaring he was going to be a drummer with a rock group.

  When we returned to the kitchen, Jane was there, "I've just had a phone call from some friends," she said. "They want to park their bus up here,"

  "Wait a minute," I said, suspicious suddenly. "What bus? How big is it?"

  "Oh, the pips were going and they didn't have any more change, so I told them just to come on up."

  "You did what?"

  "Oh, don't be so inhospitable. Will," interrupted Mairi. "There's plenty of room."

  Full of misgivings, I turned to Sonia, who wanted to watch the band. "I'll take you back over, but you must appreciate that they are doing very serious work and the vibes in the hall are very strong, so don't do anything to make yourself obvious."

  But as soon as we were on the balcony overlooking them, she started getting into a flutter of excitement. Down on the floor, Mick's foot was quivering with high nervous energy as they played chords and riffs. "Oh, look at his foot," she exclaimed to me.

  Mick couldn't have heard her over the noise, but immediately his foot stopped and he jerked up his head to look at the drummer, who stopped playing. The others all reacted by stopping or losing the pace of what they were doing as the vibe shot around the hall.

  I took Sonia out, explaining, "Look, these guys are just about telepathic. You'll disrupt them if you stay in there. What you did was draw attention to his foot, particularised it and broke the flow. There's an incredibly strong atmosphere in that room, but it's also very sensitive.

  " To compensate her, I took her on a guided tour of the buildings and the grounds, recounting the saga of the construction.

  As we neared the house again, a bus about forty feet long was pulling up alongside the Mill, It was covered with psychedelic designs and provocative slogans like 'Legalize Dope' and 'Fuck the Pigs'. Inside were two families calling themselves 'The Agents of Chaos', and a pack of alsatians, lurchers, and whippets.

  Sonia went over to the house while I watched with mounting irritation. The inmates stepped down and stretched their legs, a wild, unkempt-looking crew who immediately began complaining about police harassment on their way here. I could sense that they were trying to move in, make themselves at home. I wanted them to feel as unwelcome as possible, so I said, "Look, you're not staying here, this is not the place for you. And stay out of the way, keep to this area. Don't go near the band, don't let them even see you,"

  I feared that this was a long-planned invasion by Jane, her move to get these people to squat on my land and take over.

  On another level, I knew they were just desperate people looking for a place to stay and thinking 'This is good'. But I'm Jekyll and Hyde, part of me gets the horrors about people's intentions.

  I stormed into the kitchen and took Jane aside, "They are not staying here and that's that. I'm not having the band disrupted by this lot, these people are nothing but trouble, they'll have to leave.”

  Mairi flew to Jane's defence: "For heaven's sake, Will, they've just driven miles to get here."

  "I wouldn't have allowed Jane to invite them up here in the first place ." And rounding on Jane, I said, "So you've just wasted these people's time and money by telling them to come without asking me. What you've done is totally disgusting,"

  Jane and Mairi began shouting and protesting, and a hellish argument erupted, Jane had an absolute abhorrence of authority and the state. She tried to live in a system of reality she had constructed around astrology and Tarot cards; a mystical cave I had become increasingly intolerant of.

  "They can't leave until the twelfth because the aspects aren't right.”

  "You do things despite the stars, not because of them, Jane."

  "You're behaving like a fascist'."

  I blew up at that jibe.

  "You and your friends out there have a fascist superiority belief that everyone else is like a turnip, an idiot," I ranted to her, "You have a tribal loyalty like a pack of dogs, sharing each other's craziness, putting on festivals and having confrontations with the police, creating problems for yourselves." I gestured towards the Agents outside. "They drive around with 'Fuck the Pigs' plas
tered on their bus and then they're surprised they get hassled. That's not subtle. Look, I dress up, I cut my hair, 1 live in the world as it is. I want to romp through it, not create opposition,"

  "It sounds to me like you've sold out to the state," Jane commented contemptuously.

  "No, Jane, you've got it wrong. Here, we've pushed back the state a little, widened the parameters. But the Agents of Chaos are like secret weapons of the state to destroy places like this. Their minds are hardly their own. They've been broken down into a jumble of hatreds and reactions and they go about fucking up other people's scenes."

  "Since you moved up here, Will, you've become a tyrant." Mairi threw the remark at me like a dagger.

  "I have to become like a tyrant to make sure things don't go wrong. By being open, I attract these leeches and the disorder they bring with them. They're like Pavlov's dogs, they don't respect me unless I show some teeth. It's impossible to keep order unless people respect you," By now I was wound up, and my disillusionment began to flood out.

  "I wanted to build a system where people could borrow a book or a tool. But again and again they misuse this privilege, borrowing things and not returning them, or losing tools, I've had to develop a horrible alter ego through having to put up with the pressures of creating this place. My friends can see through it, but others can't.”

  I paused and glared at them, not really noticing or caring whether they were following me. "This place was to be a home for projects where people could be affected by what's happening, the more floating in and out the better. But I have to say 'This is only temporary, you stay here until it's the right time to move', because products of the state like the Agents are always wanting to settle here, put down roots and make it their home. Then I have to sort out the problems they bring, winkle them out."

  But they were both lost to my reasoning. All the frustrations and anger of the last months boiled up in me and I knew for the first time that I was capable of murder, that I could batter Mairi to death in a rage. Holding my tongue, I left the kitchen and went outside.

  I walked across the yard, towards the Mill, It was dark and the Agents had settled down for the night in their bus, curtains drawn, chinks of light showing from within. But the dogs were outside; they were guarding the camp. When they saw me, they formed into a pack that advanced slowly with ears flattened, growling lower and lower, like a rusty door hinge slowing down. It was a menacing moment; when that growling stops, they are ready to spring. Only my knowledge of dogs saved me from being savaged; like an even bigger dog, I growled my anger back at them in the same way: "G-ehhrr-r!"

  And they backed away.