I am Wolf! Protecting my pack is my very nature, core to my being. My being President perpetual, I must bite into enemies, scent coming difficulties on the breeze and attend many foreign summits. Like my wolf brothers I stand firm, and bay at the moon and the stars in leadership, until they hear and respect our voices, our demands. With you, my pack, at my side, our future is whatever I imagine, our beliefs in me are strong, your direction is clear and true. Onward!
Moving On
24 June 2016
Dear all,
Just a few words from me, on what is, after all’s said and done, both a sad day and a new start, a chance to listen again as we reach out and look forward.
For, onward we’re propelled. Even today, this difficult today we’re having. But still. Ever the New Radicals. Never more than when it’s been against our will – surely, that’s the finest thing we’ve ever had?
I know that together we have done things. The achievements have been many. Samantha and I often speak of them, between bouts of tennis and laughter, we remember and look out across the lawn. ‘Things!’ we say, and hold hands, thinking of Andy Murray. Presently, someone arrives with a letter or drinks.
This has been a difficult time. There is no question about that. Or around that. Recent events have overshadowed the light that hasn’t yet come to fall on the shape of all the achievements there have been. Profoundly sorry. But that’s okay. This is modern Britain. We have the present, between us and among us. The country remains a guest list that our names are carved upon. I’ve asked George and yes, it’s fine. They serve ice-cold margaritas on Necker Island. And if I’ve learned one thing, it’s to say ‘why shouldn’t we’, of all people?
Sandrine and I often speak of them. The brightest and best. The many ways in which we’ve unlocked that potential. Modern things for all, the way pop stars can walk the streets, unafraid, Irish too, warmly. This isle, this endless moment. The things we’ll achieve, in the time I’ve already had, heated and yellow, in a bag, strapped tightly to my ankle. Safety first, for we’re a people ready for anything, robust and steady.
And that’s what gives me confidence. It gives Sally and me strength. With Europe behind us and yet somehow all around us, like a fog that guides, not from above, I’ve got to say: we’re well-placed and humming a melody for the ages. Beverley Knight. Jools Holland. Jim Davidson. Debbie McGee. The time has never been more now. I’d like to thank everyone. It’s been an honour to serve.
Wonderful.
Yours,
D.C.
Good Hunting, Will
The southern end of Piccadilly at 4pm on a weekday – I was wandering and wondering. There’s a certain breezy freedom to the city between three and four, the streets clear of lunching office workers, leaving the sparseness of mid-Nineties video games.
Perhaps it’s the feeling that no one on the street at this hour can possibly be doing anything important. Or conversely, that the people you do see are so wealthy that their power defies easy comprehension. A Barbour jacket hides so many professions. Still, somehow the city seems to sense this shared rudderlessness, and together we commitment-phobes march on, gently failing to adequately fill the pavements.
Passing the galleries and seasonal tourists clumped together composing photographs. But moving on, the streets eventually reassert themselves like temporary tributaries breaking free from the morning’s long gridlock. I finally got into gear as up ahead I spied the destination.
It was half-four. No harm in getting there a bit early. Scan the joint, a cheap avant-pint to take the edge off of things, perhaps. The meeting was to take place in a chain pub off Gloucester Road, just around the corner from that home of other extinct species, the Natural History Museum. But must think positive.
In cities this size it’s all about finding your niche among the many on offer and the determination to jump in. Activities for every taste, you don’t have to be like everyone else, but there are directories to help you find your tribe. DIY-robot badger-baiting on Hampstead Heath? Why not. Poetry as anger-management technique. Gambling workshops for the under-fives. Just sign up, go along and see what happens.
Walking in, the Stevenson’s Rocket possessed that epic emptiness of the chain pub in the afternoon, marrying architectural excess with more limited ambitions on the food and beverage front. I stood at the long ferry-like bar and ordered a pint of something mild.
The place had seemingly hundreds of empty tables but the best spot, on a raised dais at one end, was annoyingly already taken. Early… but not that early, it seems.
The figure who’d bagged it just had to be Will, aka [email protected], the guy I’d encountered on the Meetup website two weeks previously. The zero-one seemed to signal ambition, at least. Or maybe we’d all be given numbers at the meeting? It’s supposedly a group effort, in any case, that’s part of the process – such as the website described it, anyway. A few more pint holders began to gather and for once a group of men all seemed to be early attendees to an emotional commitment.
‘Hello! Great! Right, name badges on! Fab. Simon, lay out the map of West Six, would you, thanks.’
Alan, Dave, Chris, Thomas, Dave, Rich and so on, 11 middle sort of every-men, penning our names on stickers, wary but getting into it.
Will was hard to place at first, aged between, what, 38 and 50, maybe? His short brown hair had the ashy highlights popular with TV naturalists. The North Face body warmer, a solid choice too, fatigues for the civvy street adventurer.
Will’s assistant Simon tacked a large map of Greater London to the pub table. Will leant over to smooth it out and as he removed some small red plastic flags from his bumbag, I caught a quick glimpse of the iconic logo of a Swiss Army penknife and some indelible markers nestled within.
‘Right, I think we’ll get started. I’m Will – head of Love Pioneers, and you, everybody here… are all vets –’ he paused for dramatic effect and leant forward with both hands on the table, ‘for we’re all veterans of the dating wars, are we not, gentlemen?’ The accompanying smile was upbeat, and as welcoming as it was simultaneously undermined by the content of the observation.
‘Match.com? Come on, hands up.’
Two Daves and a Rich raised their hands with rueful smiles.
‘Guardian “soul” mates?’ he asked, making it three words. Everybody but Thomas raised their hands. ‘Oh-Kay Cu-pid?’ Chris, Alan and myself raised our hands.
‘Oh-Kay Stu-pid more like!’ crowed Will in what was clearly a well-worn bon mot. He continued, conspiratorially: ‘We all know there’s got to be a better way, right?’
A few nods, a history with common features. Yet somehow the ‘stupid’ had leaked out of the sentence, rebounding off the upturned faces. Bonhomie momentarily stretched thin. And this tiny overreach would be echoed in more dangerous forms over the coming days and nights. Such long days, and complex, difficult nights.
‘What chance do we stand, alone? Am I right? It’s hell out there. You know the stats. You’d be better off going on Dragon’s Den than most dates in this town. But if we work together? Together… we’ve got a chance. A bloody good chance. Oh yes, my friends, together is how we’re going to win the dating.’
Will paused to point at one of the small flags, which was in place at the bottom of Chandos Place, just before you hit the Strand.
‘Now lads, this may look like the perfect location, right? Central, easy for her to get to from the office… Nicely done. Pub that does food? Good, strong choice, yes?’
With a sudden swish, Will knocked all the little flags off their hopeful positions on the streets of central London.
‘No! Wrong! It’s not gonna work! You haven’t a hope! Simon – tell ’em…’ Will wheezed a little and sat back, while Simon stood up to address us in his place.
‘Lemon Tree pub, on Tuesdays it has a live music night…’ his voice was flat-toned but confiding, ‘a local running team go in there for a wind-down around 7pm… they’re all quite athletic. It gets r
eal rowdy. It’s… it was hell—’
He trailed off. No more need be said. We sipped, pondered and stared at the paper city. This was our first step into a new mindset, a new approach. We were about to learn the true power of shared intel, coordinated male endeavour and the previously unsung role of map-reading in modern romance.
•
A month later and I can honestly say we really are no longer merely daters. We have truly become love pioneers. We even have a song, written by Anthony (Love Pioneer 04), a graduate of the very first intake. Our ethos is completely analogue. ‘Happier app-less!’ is the motto, undistracted by technology yet proud of our emotional technique.
True, a good mantra also papers over a few fears. You just keep repeating it under your breath until your heart rate’s behaving.
I’ve never been particularly physically minded but here we are – Chris, Dave and myself – gripping a series of connected ropes and pulleys that we’ve just tapped into the side of the railway bridge at Charing Cross. We’re about 45 feet above the street, because – and this is where you have to just go with me a little – the fourth pioneer on our team, Alan, is about to appear outside the window where Ellie, the current object of his affections, is having a glass of wine with her friend Sarah. It’s early doors still, but it seems to be going to plan.
My hands are clad in cheap builders’ gloves as I hang on to the side of the building, one part of the little counterweight system that’s propelled Alan and a fairly cheap ukulele up outside the windows of Stems Wine Bar. One of the many things I’ve learned as a love pioneer is that there’s no love without fear. You’ve got to open yourself up to vulnerability, both emotionally and physically. It’s also a great moment to recall the stirring lyrics of our Pioneers song:
All for love and love for all,
For every gal loves a pioneer,
The things we do, will stand us tall,
It could be love, it feels like fear…
I remembered leader Will first playing back the group’s song on some travel speakers at our second get-to-know-you session and realising we’d become a unit for the very first time. Quite a nice tune, as it goes. Upbeat.
Spending more time around a group of adult men, acquaintances not yet friends, you quickly realise the key role played by small signals and subtle cues. Did our increasing confidence draw directly from Will’s perennially outdoorsy wardrobe? And was his belly laugh a sign that things were going well, or badly? We learned mutual responsibility, looking out for each other; I guess without a football team or sporting past, I’d simply kind of missed all this.
Will was persuasive. You found yourself repeating fragments of his monologues at the oddest times. ‘If you don’t want to learn new things about you, how can you learn new things about someone else?’ went the Pioneers’ adage. ‘When your pulse is up… you’re ready for love,’ was another. Camaraderie glued it all together somehow.
For how else would we have successfully completed the part-underwater Operation Veronica for Chris back in October? Or the four-nights-atop-a-barn-in costumes that became For the Love of Debbie? (Surely Dave’s finest hour to date?)
I looked up and across at Dave, who had a foothold on an office window about 8 feet away and was leaning back in his harness, checking in no doubt on the Arsenal iPhone app. He didn’t seem at all fazed by our current mission or indeed his physical location. And truth be told, that’d been one of the revelations of the group. Surprisingly, being entirely among men in the cause of being among (a) woman opened your eyes to the strengths and oddities of your own side.
I gave the rope between us a little tug.
‘How’s he doing up there, Dave?’ I whispered as loudly as could still be effective over traffic.
‘Magic!’ Dave winked. ‘He’s just turned up. Almost show time!’
Chris’s voice, a little lost to traffic noise, wafted up from some 12 feet below me.
‘Has he delivered the payload?’
‘Just about to!’ I smiled, entirely unsure of anything but my unwavering belief in the little bolts that Steve, now based at ground level, had come and drilled in earlier, during his lunch hour. Before his current position at the Youth Hostel Association, Steve had worked in a hardware shop and could speak powerfully about tools, physical tolerances and adhesion levels.
I looked up again and saw Alan making the agreed ‘W finger’ sign with his left hand, so Dave and I leant back on our ropes a little to pull him into the ‘readiness position’. As the opening bars of Robbie Williams’ seminal ‘Angels’ could be heard coming from Alan’s ukulele you could dimly sense the growing impact of this act of ur-pioneering.
A group of onlookers, presumably including our target Ellie, had gathered at the windows as members of the bar staff prised the windows open – either to enact a rescue or facilitate better smartphone angles, it wasn’t entirely clear. Alan’s voice was a surprise too – a rich baritone that proved a neat counterpoint to the tinny sound of the bright yellow ukulele. Ellie was surely his. At the very least he’d get an Advanced Love Pioneer (Dedication At Heights) badge from Will. I found myself smiling. Get us!
Some two minutes later we started feeding the rope rapidly through our hands in concert, as Alan was hauled bodily into the wine bar above by black-shirted staff members. Storming the Bastille at last. I looked down to see Will smiling broadly from the pavement. He made an ‘O’ with his fingers and took a swig from the miniature bottle of Midori liqueur he keeps in his utility belt for victorious moments.
An hour or so later and our merry band were ensconced in a pre-booked area at the back of the Blackened Barrels behind Waterloo Station, celebrating Alan’s big night.
In the fog of battle, of course, there always remain questions over the wider prosecution of the campaign. When is a win truly won? Which scene is final? I mean, we’ve all seen Zulu.
Would Ellie’s shock merge paths with adoration, her initial horror morphing into the opening chapter of a beautiful shared story that always makes people laugh when the couple embellishingly re-tell it? Or would her admittedly sudden departure come to represent a settled indifference to Alan or just 1990s mega-ballads in general?
For when time has got so late…
And no one noticed we were there,
We’ll not settle for a dinner date,
When danger shows how much we care.
The singing was fitful, and even a few wayward harmonies started to slip in, a definite mark of growing confidence. Dave and Chris were doing this thing where they make a drum machine noise by slapping their cheeks whilst making an ‘O’ with their lips. It’s supposed to be a bit like Queen; it’s certainly endearing.
Someone ordered some more potato wedges as Will spread out the year planner on the barrel table.
‘I can’t say how proud I am of every one of you. We’ve had a great night, gents, no question. Alan’s shown us all what’s possible, with a beautiful dream, and an even better team. But there’s a lot more to do. Right? Simon – can you spread out the Victorian sewer plans – the next one, I’m not going to lie to you, is a biggie…’
Home Time
With the printer’s unresponsiveness now a glaring fact, popular television historian Professor David Starkey is, after much fiddling, realising that a USB port on his 14-month-old MacBook Pro might be broken. Some 57 miles away, in Hove, Zoë Ball has lost the run of a much-loved garlic press, lifted-slash-gifted from an early edition of Celebrity Come Dine with Me.
In Ashton-under-Lyne, Tommy Cannon cannot for the life of him remember which floor of the IKEA car park his S-Max sports activity vehicle is parked on. Worse, famous swimmer Duncan Goodhew has just trodden some Waitrose pretzels into the living-room carpet whilst momentarily distracted by his son’s high-pitched laughter at a cable TV repeat of The Sooty Show.
On an otherwise balmy morning in Brooklyn Heights, Matthew Barney is all at sixes and sevens with an otherwise nifty Nest thermostat system, whose display is stuck on 88 de
grees. Some 4 miles away, David Hyde Pierce has over-aggressively pierced the film lid on a tub of Dean & DeLuca creamed kale during a cast read-through of Lost in Yonkers, upending the contents over his artfully pre-scuffed Converse tennis shoes.
At precisely 2.29pm, as his car purrs up the driveway to the secluded cottage he bought shortly after wrapping on Michael Haneke’s 2005 thriller Hidden, Daniel Auteuil is spitting tacks when he realises he’s left Paris without his iPhone charger.
At home time, fuzzily defined as a nagging hour’s-worth of minutes located somewhere between half-three and five, former Defence Secretary Michael Fallon sits parked outside Camden Forest Academy for a good half-hour, listening to a terrible play on BBC Radio 4, before angrily recalling that he doesn’t actually have any children.
In efforts pursuant to distant yet inflexible objectives, obedient to buried, unconscious drives and directives whose authorship remains unclear, the world stumbles on, its blood up and its guard down.
The Onset of Battle
‘How long have we been here?’
Chris tugged Pete’s sleeve as he asked, brushing a bit of mud off his left ankle. Pete continued to calmly stare through the binoculars as they lay, curled up under the violated topiary about 130 yards from the right-hand edge of Kenwood House. About 25 feet away the head and neck of a swan lay in the middle of the gravel path that led up to the house.
‘Shh… keep your voice down,’ hissed Pete, staring intently at the woods opposite. ‘I think the second assault team have made it as far as the lake.’
‘You mean Georgia, Jonathan and Katherine?’ muttered Chris, needling.
Pete turned back to his partner.
‘I mean… the second assault team. Try to stay focused, it’s the only way to… to do well at this,’ he finished. They continued to lie on the ground and their voices were replaced by the noise of insects loud and near, but also distant, less recognisable sounds.
Not From Above! Page 5
