by Magnus Mills
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“No, no!” he cried. “It’s fantastic.”
“Have you got a mirror?”
“Afraid not,” he said, wiping tears from his eyes. “Sorry.”
The price was two pounds and ten shillings. At that time I earned one pound ten at my Saturday job, so the coat was by no means cheap. I decided, however, that it would be a good investment for my forthcoming winters as a student at some faraway university (or, as it turned out, polytechnic).
“I’ll take it,” I said, producing a hard-earned five pound note.
The shopkeeper can’t have had any other customers that day because his till was completely empty. Informing me that he would have to go and get some change, he left me inside the shop, still wearing the coat, and locked the door as he went out. Half a minute later he returned, accompanied by another man who I assumed came from a neighbouring shop. The two of them stood peering in at me for some moments before quickly turning away and moving out of sight again. When he returned for a second time the shopkeeper was smiling broadly.
“Here we are,” he said, letting himself in. He gave me my change and then asked if I’d like the coat wrapped.
“No, I think I’ll wear it now,” I replied. “Looks quite cold out there.”
“Suit yourself.”
He wrapped up my raincoat instead, and when I departed he insisted on shaking my hand.
“You’ve made my day,” he explained.
On the journey home a strange sense of solitude came over me. I sat on the bus in my newly acquired coat feeling quite aloof from my fellow passengers. Actually I felt sorry for them as they undertook their humdrum workaday journeys, while I enjoyed the unhurried timelessness of half-term. When we came to my stop I turned my collar to the wind and disembarked.
Of course, I was not at all surprised by my brother’s response on seeing the coat. He was an immature fourteen-year-old and I took no notice when he asked me where I’d hired my tent. The reaction of my mother, on the other hand, was most disappointing. As I entered the house she gave out a sort of gasp and instantly pushed a folded handkerchief to her mouth. I asked her what she thought of my coat but she was unable to answer.
“Want a cup of tea?” I enquired, reaching for the kettle. Without replying she rushed into the next room.
I was just stirring the pot when she returned. By now I’d taken the coat off and hung it up. After taking a deep breath, my mother asked me to put it on again, then she walked round and round me, looking me up and down. Finally, she undid the hooks and examined the label inside. It said:
MADE IN GREAT BRITAIN
XL
DRY CLEAN ONLY
OTHELLO THEATRICAL SUPPLIES LTD
Kindly, my mother offered to remove the label.
♦
The following Tuesday evening I went to see Pink Floyd at the Colston Hall in Bristol. They were touring with their latest offering, a semi-orchestral composition entitled ‘Atom Heart Mother’. I had actually attended the first ever public performance of the piece earlier that summer during the Festival of Blues and Progressive Music at the Bath & West Showground, Shepton Mallet. Along with a quarter of a million others I’d endured two days of searing heat and dust. By the time Led Zeppelin played late on the Sunday afternoon there was virtually no drinking water available, and unscrupulous vendors were charging as much as five shillings for a can of Coca-Cola. As a callow youth I had believed this drink could quench my thirst and actually paid the fee not once, but twice. Ultimately, the event would be washed out by heavy rain, but not before Pink Floyd had made their long-awaited appearance late on the Saturday night.
‘Atom Heart Mother’ was an ambitious instrumental piece in which the band were augmented by a full brass section from a proper orchestra, along with a ten-member choir. There was also a massive TV screen showing close-ups of all the on-stage action, plus an extended light show and a firework display during the closing notes of the finale. Yet somehow I’d managed to sleep through the whole thing, having lain down on my groundsheet while I waited for it to begin. When I awoke it was the early hours of the morning, the showground was enveloped in mist, and all was quiet. Now, several months later, I had a chance to make up the deficit. Pink Floyd were on tour again! With my ticket in my pocket I set off for the Colston Hall. The first person I saw when I entered the crowded foyer was a girl from school called Alison who I was quite friendly with. (In fact I quite fancied her and had asked her out a couple of times. She had declined the offer in a gentle, sympathetic sort of way, and we were now officially ‘friends’.) She was standing with some people who’d left school the previous year, none of whom I knew very well. As I approached, wearing my belted Russian Imperial Army greatcoat, one of them looked at me, then said something to Alison and she glanced in my direction. Instantly, she put her hand over her face, closed her eyes and half-turned away. Sensing I was intruding on some private moment, I went and stood somewhere else. The first part of Pink Floyd’s show included another new offering, an avant-garde composition entitled ‘Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast’. This non-musical piece of work was to be found on their latest album, and the band had admitted in the music press that it was only a ‘filler track’ because they didn’t have enough viable material. Nevertheless, a paying audience sat and watched as one of their roadies prepared his breakfast live on stage, accompanied by a ‘sound-melange’ of snap, crackle and pop, sizzling bacon, and, surreally, the voice of Jimmy Young. At the interval we filed out of the auditorium and into the bar for a drink. There was someone behind me giving the performance the benefit of his opinion, which was apparently at odds with that of his peers, who had roundly applauded it a few moments earlier. As a matter of fact I thought he was quite courageous, announcing as he did that he thought the whole spectacle was quite absurd, ridiculous even, and a prime example of the folly of youth. To my surprise, none of his companions seemed to disagree. They smiled at me, one by one, as they passed me by. Turning up my collar, I went and stood by the doorway.
EOF
