Tilly has a ‘sister’, a bodyguard of sorts, who is powerful as an ox. She’s the ‘moll’ of a man they like to call ‘The Reverend’. This man is a brute, very violent. He puts me in mind of Francis, that thug we knew when we were young upstarts in Kinshasa who used to beat us, mercilessly, at the drop of a hat.
After you did a runner and I joined the Congolese Police Force…
[A corrupt insider! It gets worse!]
… I helped to bring about his undoing…
[I say ‘undoing’ but the word he uses is ‘dispatch’ – as in ‘I dispatched him’. The language is very ‘sticky’ though, very ‘opaque’, and – in all good conscience - I don’t feel entirely comfortable in pushing the point any further than I already have.]
A few weeks ago, while I was carving in the kitchen…
[Terrifying thought! Such macabre images spring to mind! Although I think he is actually just doing some woodwork on this occasion, Detective.]
… ‘Reverend’ Horwood paid me a visit…
[You’ll already be very familiar with this notorious individual I should imagine.]
…and expressed a great interest in my work…
[Turf war! Not a shadow of a doubt. Horwood plainly already has a counterfeit narcotics ring operating in the area…
I do think it only fair to warn you that from this point onwards the narrative becomes very ‘psychedelic’. The language is far more esoteric and abstruse, with a slight whiff of ‘the occult’ about it. I don’t think this is just an accident, either. It’s ‘Lokele’ truly ‘coming into himself’. All marks of civilization gradually drop away as he begins ‘talking jive’ or ‘the language of the “hood”’.]
I happened to be putting the finishing touches to a figure on a cross, a ‘nkondi’ …
[I have left the word ‘nkondi’ untranslated because there is no real English equivalent for it. A ‘nkondi’ is a kind of traditional Congolese wooden sculpture which is held to have magical and spiritual powers. They are usually about three feet high and can be found planted in clearings in the Congolese jungle, usually clustered into small groups.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind at this point that ‘Lokele’ is carving these objects, hollowing them out, and then filling the insides with illegal, narcotic substances – fashioning a kind of African ‘Trojan Drug Horse’, in other words.]
… Horwood was very impressed by the standard of my work. He had a good look at it, smiled at me, somewhat intimidatingly, then gestured towards it and asked if he could take it away with him…
[A line delivered at gunpoint, I’ll be bound – although this fact isn’t made explicit.]
There was little I could really do but oblige him. I warned him that the sculpture wasn’t finished yet. I even went so far as to suggest that it had latent, supernatural powers. Horwood wasn’t buying any of it, though…
[‘Lokele’ says some stuff about banging nails into the chest of the figure he’s carved. In this manner the ‘nkondi’ traditionally becomes a kind of ‘fetish’ or voodoo doll. Try not to be too alarmed by this idea, Detective. There’s nothing remotely controversial about it. Most Congolese sculpture is held to have such properties.]
… he just grabbed the sculpture and carried it off to his ‘church’ where he displayed it in full public view.
[‘Church’ or ‘gang hideout’, i.e. the natural extension of the ‘Reverend’ metaphor.]
I can’t pretend I wasn’t fairly ticked-off by this development…
[Horwood made ‘Lokele’ look ‘a pussy’, in other words – out on the streets, where these things really count. ‘Lokele’ is now in danger of losing the respect of the wider criminal fraternity. Respect – as you will know – is everything to people of this ilk.]
Luckily, a short while after, I was visited at home by a man called ‘Paul’…
[An Englishman, whose name – strangely enough – also has the ‘Reverend’ precursor. I’m presuming he’s a member of Horwood’s gang, but has recently usurped him as leader.]
The meeting was rather tense. Paul said that Horwood had taken the ‘nkondi’ independently, without his permission (or that of his ‘congregation’). It seems they were all highly irritated by his actions. He asked if I would mind if he dealt with Horwood accordingly…
[The exact phrase this ‘Paul’ uses – I hate to nit-pick, but it’s important – was more along the lines of ‘he asked if I would mind if he took Horwood down’. ‘Lokele’s very careful not to give too much away, here, though. This whole segment is drenched with distracting religious imagery and other types of hocus-pocus.]
I just laughed him off and confessed that I didn’t really care…
[‘Attaboy! Always be sure to cover your back, eh?!]
Paul became very jumpy at this point. He broke out into a sweat. I offered him a drink and he accepted a whisky…
[A grave error. Alcohol will only dehydrate him still further.]
We chatted away aimlessly for a while about nothing in particular – ‘religion’ and the nature of mortal sin etc…
[This Paul is obviously having something of a crisis of confidence – i.e. talks the talk but can he walk the walk? In my honest opinion, I don’t think he’s man enough to take the old Warhorse, Horwood, down. ‘Lokele’ is right to hedge his bets on this issue.]
… then Paul made his excuses and left.
Anyway, Brother, I do hope you have a Happy Christmas this year, and that it brings you everything you could possibly wish for – and more.
Do spare me a brief thought as you enjoy your festivities…
[Poignant. The life of an outlaw is certainly a lonely one.]
God bless you,
[And you, my dear friend, ‘Lokele’. Enjoy these final, few hours of liberty, while you still may… See you in court! R.S-T.]
******
[letter 8]
A dispatch from the desk of:
Baxter Thorndyke, Cllr
The Old Hall
Burley Cross
21/12/2006
Trevor Ruddle, Ed
The Letters Page
Wharfedale Gazette
Trevor,
See if you can fit this into your letters page next week, will you? Somewhere prominent – first letter would obviously be ideal (there is a Christmas theme to it, after all).
As I’m sure you can imagine, I’m literally flat-out right now, bogged down with the usual, heinous combination of personal, charitable and professional obligations (not least hosting the BCRSC annual Christmas Fund-Raiser on Monday – we’re roasting a whole suckling pig this year; should definitely be worth sending down a photographer – and putting the finishing touches to a groundbreaking paper I’m due to deliver to The Royal Society of Anaesthetists in Birmingham – early Feb. – on ‘The Physiology of Hypothermia’), so the prospect of throwing away yet another precious hour of my valuable time in responding to the ludicrous opinions of that idiotic blow-hard Tunnicliffe (WG,19/12/06) was not one I especially relished, I can assure you. Yet respond I must.
I know you’re just a local rag – and he’s an OBE – but why do you persist in publishing his inane drivel every week? The man’s a clown – a scourge (or ‘a pea in the shoe’ as I believe I heard Julian Moxham call him in open session at council on Friday).
How old is he, anyway? Eighty-seven? Eighty-nine? Isn’t it about bloody time he retired from public life? Put his feet up? Gave the good people of Wharfedale a much needed break from his endless, sullen preachifying?
I saw him staggering around in Ilkley Tesco’s car park on Wednesday afternoon clutching an organic cauliflower in one hand and a bottle of Ruddles Ale in the other. Seemed lost. Or half-cut (can’t quite decide which). Is he still following that bizarre raw-food diet he keeps banging on about? If so, can alcohol really count as ‘raw’? (Surely there’s a measure of heat involved in the brewing process?)
The man’s hardly an advert for it (raw food or brewing). He’s just a wit
hered husk. He looks like the hollowed remains – the vile, yellowed carapace – of something an insect has recently hatched out of (a small, white maggot springs to mind).
My wife, Tammy, blanched when she saw him (she was with me in the car at the time). ‘I almost feel sorry for him,’ she gasped. ‘He looks revolting! So grimy! So thin! Like a mouldy old piece of horseradish!’ (And Tamm – as you know – doesn’t have a bad word to say about anybody, due to her deeply held religious beliefs.)
I’ve a strong suspicion he’s entering his second childhood (he displays all the radicalism of youth and yet none of the sense – or temperance – of maturity!).
What on earth was the Queen thinking giving an honour of such magnitude to a wretch of his stamp? So what if he ‘helped to design the wind turbine’(as I read in Who’s Who Online, recently)? ‘Helped’ to design it?! How wonderfully nonspecific! (What did he do, exactly? Man the tea trolley? Refill the office photocopier at a critical juncture?!)
‘Helped to design the wind turbine?!’ Well, it’s hardly a cure for cancer, is it?!
The sooner that rancorous, bile-ridden old canary topples off his artfully recycled perch the better, as far as I’m concerned. I’m as green as the next man (greener!) but his holier-than-thou attitude gives environmental causes a bad name.
If you ask me, he’s never been quite the same since he was forced to quit BC. Selling Rombald House and moving into sheltered accommodation in Ilkley was obviously a severe blow to his fragile self-esteem (he was always at the heart of what I liked to call ‘The Old Guard’ in BC – thought he ruled the roost when I first arrived there!).
People generally like to pass him off as ‘eccentric’ (because of the title, I suppose), but I was never under any illusions about the real nature of the man. He was always a nutter. Very, very controlling (the way these ‘idealists’ – these ‘men of principle’ – so often are).
And – to be fair – he’s never much liked the cut of my jib, either (probably sensed, from the word go, that I wasn’t especially eager to buy into his whole ‘left-leaning, aristocratic schtick’).
I remember him starting the most ridiculous quarrel with Tamm and I pretty much as soon as we first stepped foot in the village (July, 1998). I’d begun legal proceedings to try and alter the public right of way which – at that time – ran alongside The Old Hall (tourists were using it as a temporary latrine – and worse. It was horrendous. I’d wander out into the garden and find my hydrangea festooned with used condoms – male and female).
The way Tunnicliffe overreacted to the situation you’d think I’d actually suggested redirecting it through his own living room! So what if the new route ‘trimmed’ a few feet off the back end of his garden? After I’d inspected the original deeds it became glaringly obvious that he’d ‘accidentally’ extended the boundary of his property on to the adjacent moorland by a distance of some five and a half metres!
I wouldn’t even mind, but his back garden was already enormous and completely overgrown. He was forever banging on about ‘promoting biodiversity’, and was an early proponent of that whole ‘grow your own wild-flower meadow’ racket (I always saw this silly fad for what it really was, i.e. a feeble excuse for not bothering to maintain your lawn. ‘Gardening for Squatters’ is Tamm’s hilarious take on it!). He was always a lazy old sod. His late wife, Melody, was apparently the green-fingered one.
Of course Tunnicliffe didn’t have a leg to stand on, but he still fought the decision, tooth and nail. He cost me a small fortune in solicitor’s fees.
Then, no sooner had the issue been resolved than he started doing everything humanly possible to put the brakes on Tamm and I cutting down this half-dead yew in our front garden (which completely blocked the view from our dining room window).
Started up quite a little campaign (even a petition)! What a ridiculous carry-on! The way they harped on about it you’d think the damn thing (which had been self-seeded from a tree in a neighbouring garden) had been planted by Great Queen Bess herself, then celebrated in a sonnet by William Shakespeare! It was an absolute farce.
The really ludicrous part of it was that I’d always been universally derided as a bit of a closet ‘tree-hugger’. I was BC tree warden for three years (started the BC Befriend a Tree movement at the local primary school). At my strict behest, Tamm only ever buys household paper products from ‘managed sources’. I’ve been a member of the Woodland Trust since 1986, for heaven’s sake!
Of course it can’t have been a coincidence that around about that time I was chairing a committee on the council (aimed at making the local moorland more ‘walker-friendly’) when a committee member (I forget who, off-hand) idly raised the idea of changing the name of Tunnicliffe Bridge into something slightly more ‘directional’.
When LT found out about it (heaven only knows how) he absolutely flipped! I’ve never seen anything like it! He was apoplectic! I mean it’s not as if it’s even a proper bridge – just a couple of large stepping stones crossing a small beck! And given that the main, practical function of that ‘bridge’ was to take walkers (principally tourists – not local people, by and large) to the Cow and Calf stones, it only made common sense for the bridge to take on the name of the famous site it led to (and was directly adjacent to!).
I was still relatively new in Burley Cross at the time. Little did I realize that my perfectly innocent involvement with this entirely reasonable scheme would bring me up against an ego of such extraordinary magnitude! Well, I certainly found out soon enough! And I’m still finding out nine years on!
But enough of LT and his ridiculous hobby-horses…
Thinking forward into the New Year, there are several, fascinating ‘live’ issues I’m currently grappling with which I don’t doubt will be of interest to your paper. The first relates to our ongoing problems with the public toilets at Burley Cross. Tom Augustine (a founder member of the BCPTW, whose wife volunteers at the Gawkley Wildlife Refuge) has lately come up with an ‘animal safety’ angle on the story which I think may well warrant a small article (especially in the approach to the warmer summer months). I can pass on his number to you if you don’t already have it (send me an email. I should be back online within the next day or two).
It has also come to our attention (at the BCRSC) that Wincey Hawkes has begun accepting coach parties at The Old Oak again. She insists on doing this full in the knowledge that there is insufficient room for the coaches to turn in the designated space. The resulting damage to grass verges is appalling (I have seven or eight excellent photographs – all of publishable quality – which I can send to you via email early next week, if you’re interested).
The verges are obviously only the tip of the iceberg. As always, my main beef with Mrs Hawkes is the serious threat her irresponsible actions present to pedestrian and road-user safety alike (there’s actually more to this story, which I’ll be more than happy to go into at greater length, off the record).
Thirdly (and finally), I am working on something pretty startling at the moment relating to manhole cover theft in the UK by the Chinese. This is something that I think may well blow up in the Wharfedale area in a very big way in the New Year – in fact, I’ll all but stake my reputation on it. I’m presently in close communication with the local constabulary and Liam Holroyd MP on the matter. If you can manage to keep the issue under your hat for a while I’ll definitely have something ‘solid’ for you within the next three or four weeks…
I thoroughly enjoyed your piece in Friday’s paper about the current problems with the big cairn on Farnhill Moor. You opted to take a ‘lighter slant’ on the story. I can fully understand why you felt the need to (the week before Christmas etc.), but I do think there are some pressing, underlying angles to this scenario – both criminal and environmental – which I may want to take up with you at a future date (didn’t have the opportunity to write a letter on this occasion, although I may yet, if I can somehow find the time next week… In fact, on further consideration, I
think I probably shall).
And while we’re on the subject: ‘POC-“ATCHOO!”’??! So let me get this straight: you elect to give a front-page, banner headline to the ‘scoop’ about a man who pulled a seven-pound carp out of the Kidwick Reservoir (where fishing is illegal, incidentally) because it coughs up a small, plastic Pokémon toy (‘At-choo!’ for your information, is the sound of a sneeze, not a cough), yet three whole weeks later, there still isn’t so much as a mention of Barbara Simmonds’s fascinating talk to the sixth-formers at St Hugh’s on the wider implications of the excavation work at Hamblethorpe?
Why?
A Pokémon toy?!
An inappropriate pun?!
Whose brilliant idea was that?!
Most disappointing, Trevor, old man.
Baxter
PS Am reduced to using snail mail due to a pesky virus on the Mac.
[letter 9]
A dispatch from the desk of:
Baxter Thorndyke, Cllr
The Old Hall,
Burley Cross
20/12/2006
Sir,
In February (WG, 12/02/06) Lance Tunnicliffe OBE kindly provided readers with a step-by-step guide on ‘How to be a Green Valentine’.
Included among his many, novel suggestions for Wharfedale’s environmentally inclined lovers were ‘making your own card’, ‘not going out for a meal but staying at home and eating by candlelight’ (for the record: sober lighting would certainly be de rigueur if I’m the designated cook for the night), ‘turning off the TV and passing the time by playing a few hands of rummy’, ‘just talking’ (a perfect way to ruin a romantic evening I’d have thought, especially if – by a cruel twist of fate – there happens to be a match on), ‘going for a moonlit stroll’, (a little risky if you live in Moss Side or next to Beachy Head), ‘sharing a bath’, and even (a course that could well prove fatal for Inuits) ‘turning down the heating’ and ‘snuggling up on the sofa together to keep warm’.
Burley Cross Postbox Theft Page 12
