Burley Cross Postbox Theft (34 page)

I can’t wait 2 tell U about the move I pulled with Mr Wolf! OMG! It was a masterstroke! What an idiot! I almost felt SORRY 4 him! They’re all so easy 2 play, it’s, like,
totally
ridiculous! I’ve been being everybody’s perfect little miss! I have Uncle A eating out of my hand, now. I even made a speech at school to raise money 4 charity! I’m being the perfect, little ZOMBIE CHILD just like they all want me 2 be!! They’re all so stupid and pathetic! They make me
SICK
!!! I can’t wait 2 make them pay for what they’ve done 2 me!!

None of them understands me like U do, Gab. None of them speaks 2 my soul like U do, my sweet, dark blade, my blood,
my black, black Prince, my beautiful, brave and broken, skinny, Skinny Lad.

I am working on a scheme 2 get my phone back, but it might end up taking too long. They watch my EVERY move – esp. Penelope. That ugly, fat cow HATES me. She’s so jealous of me, it’s pathetic! She keeps telling me lies about you, just like Mum did. WHY DO THEY NEED TO DO THAT?! DON’T THEY KNOW IT JUST MAKES US STRONGER?!

WE R INVINCIBLE!!!!!

I’m pretending to write 2 mum right now (in hosp.) so that I can write 2 U instead. They won’t even allow me 2 keep my pencil case when I get home from school! First the internet, then the phone, now this! I even have to
ask permission
to write my diary! I know they are reading it behind my back! How stupid do they think I am?!

Is there NOTHING they won’t take from me? Is there NO DEPTH these zombies won’t stoop to?

The plan is that we meet up on Christmas Day, behind the church (St Peter’s) at 3pm EXACTLY. I’m planning 2 feed them a cock&bull story about going 2 light my mother a special candle in church. Nobody will suspect. I won’t be able 2 ring U again or contact U 2 confirm.

REMEMBER! Our Song! ‘STICKWITU’!!!!

UR my life!

UR are my blood – my smooth, smooth knife – my Guardian Angel – my soul!

Until the 25th, then – and eternity.

Sing our song if U feel low:

A X

PS PLEASE, PLEASE DON’T FORGET ABOUT ME, GAB!
I AM DESPERATE! I AM ALL ALONE! I AM
DEPENDING ON U!!

Tollhouse Cottage
Fitzwilliam Street
Burley Cross

20/12/2006

Dear Teddy,

Festive Greetings from Burley Cross, England!

I have enclosed the set of Christmas stamps, as requested. Once again, secular designs. They’re perfectly passable, I suppose. Two each for First Class and Second Class. I especially like the £1.19 Christmas Tree and Presents. Can’t help thinking the Father Christmas on his Chimney and the Snowman are somewhat workmanlike, however…

They’re by Tatsuro Kiuchi. He’s a very reputable Japanese digital illustrator. Perhaps I’m getting a little picky in my old age, but I can’t help feeling like there’s something a fraction ‘hollow’ about the set, in general.

Is it just the preponderance of blue? I’ve never been a great fan of blue tones at Christmas. I much prefer the warmer, interior tones of red and green. Of course I fully accept that those perennial Christmas themes of snow and ice demand a blue/white palette, but I loathe the fashion for blue trees and blue lights at the moment. People hang them all over their houses nowadays – outside, too! I fear we’ve become terribly American since you were last in the UK. You’d probably hardly recognize the old place!

Call me an old grump if you like, but when I see blue lights I immediately think ‘emergency’: Police! Fire! Ambulance! I certainly don’t think ‘festive’ or ‘relaxation’.

It surely must have some bearing on the issue (the stamp issue – no pun intended!) that they don’t celebrate Christmas in Japan. It isn’t even a proper holiday over there.

On a somewhat more positive front, my Tristan da Cunha collection is almost ‘definitive’, now. The 1995 Queen Mother’s Birthday arrived on Friday via Stanley Gibbons. I’m very pleased with it and am currently only hankering after the 1977 Naval Ships/Crests and the 1973 Anne and Mark’s Wedding (neither very expensive – I’ll probably order them for my birthday in late Feb).

Thanks so much for your letter. It was funny and informative, as always. I was delighted to hear that the long-anticipated talk by the man from the Organic Soil Assoc. went down so well on the island. I can’t pretend I’m not eaten up with jealousy that he got government support to fund his trip over there.

From your brief précis I didn’t get the impression that he had much of great interest to offer on the subject of soil erosion. This was definitely a missed opportunity. There’s so much to be said (and done) on the matter – and not just in Tristan da Cunha, but worldwide (Africa! Asia! India! Even here, in the UK!). Imagine the differences we could make, environmentally, if we just put an end to tilling, if we finally resolved to stop using crop residue for other purposes (like fencing, animal feed etc.) and opted to proceed the
natural
way.

I know seed-drilling technology can appear prohibitively expensive at the outset, but just consider the money to be saved, in the long term, on diesel and fertilizer! Our topsoils are so vulnerable, so fragile. It’s taken literally millions of years for them to evolve on this planet, and yet what people seem signally incapable of comprehending is that once they’re gone, they’re gone for good (unless you have a spare million or so years to wait around for them to gradually reconstitute, that is!).

World populations are growing at an alarming rate, millions go hungry every year, more and more pressure is being placed on the remaining soil stocks we have left, but
still
we persist in using farming methods whose long-term (even short-term) prognosis leads to erosion and sterility. This isn’t just carelessness or stupidity, it’s nothing short of criminal.

As I always like to say: people – the general public – really need to stop thinking of soil as just ‘muck’ or ‘dirt’ (denigrating it, in other words) and to start realizing that it’s the foundation, the very lifeblood, of this beautiful earth we inhabit.

Part of the problem has always been that we (and by ‘we’ I mean governments, the big corporations etc.) are addicted to short-termism. That, and the fact that we invariably have a
vested interest
in shoring up an unsatisfactory situation (and thereby cheerfully maintaining the status quo). What exactly am I getting at here? Well, that real money –
serious
money – is always made from supplying treatments, not from inventing cures. Where’s the logic in solving a problem if it means that the numerous institutions/industries that have been carefully developed over the generations to support it (pretending to counter it, but actually only sustaining it) will be rendered obsolete?

I was listening to a programme on the radio the other week about the huge increase in cases of Type 1 Diabetes, worldwide, and the various ways politicians and scientists have set about responding to this crisis (for the record, your average diabetic requires approx. £1 million in healthcare spending during the course of their lifetime). It became increasingly obvious (as the report progressed) that scientists were only really getting substantial, private and public funding to try and improve the kinds of treatments already in existence, not to grapple with the fundamental problem outright. Because where’s the profit to be had in finding a cure for something?

Let’s think about it this way: if your local street ‘dealer’ suddenly found himself in possession of a pill to cure heroin addiction (in one fell swoop), would he opt to sell it to his regular clients, even if they were willing to pay ten times as much money for it as for their regular hit? Not likely! Even your lowliest street punk understands the rudiments of capitalist economics! Supply and demand! These same principles apply across the board, not least to farming and to soil.

Sorry, Teddy – here I go again, banging on, relentlessly,
about my favourite topic! You must be heartily sick of my incessant rantings by now! In fact you’ve probably accumulated about as much ‘core’ knowledge on this subject as
I
have after all these years (merely by acting as my sounding-board!). On that basis, there’s no ‘earthly’ reason (Oops! A little inadvertent geological joke!) why you shouldn’t host a public meeting yourself to discuss this vital issue in an island context (I can certainly supply you with a good set of crib notes!) instead of patiently waiting for me to turn up and host one.

If only Joanna’s sister hadn’t moved to Stuttgart… She insists on seeing her twice a year, and our already frugal holiday funds are rapidly depleted on flights and hotels (Pam, her sister, lives in a one-bedroom flat). As things stand (and much as this grieves me), I can’t see me fulfilling my childhood dream of setting foot on ‘The Loneliest Island in the World’ any time in the foreseeable future.

Curious to think that it’s been all of forty-four years since we last saw each other, face to face. I remember waving a cheery farewell to you from the docks in Southampton like it was only yesterday (the memory of that moment remains crystal clear!); a blithe twelve-year-old, so full of hope and heat and heart and confidence… Where’d it all go, eh?!

I suppose I shouldn’t let myself get too down in the mouth about it. These things are generally always best left in the hands of the Gods (‘Insh’allah’ as the Muslims are wont to murmur). If it hadn’t been for a series of entirely unpredictable and earth-shattering events, after all (an erupting volcano, no less!), we would never have met up – or have become such firm friends – in the first place. So who am I to pronounce with such certainty (or such resignation) on what the future may hold?

‘The Loneliest Island in the World’… I couldn’t help but smile wryly to myself as I wrote that down just now. Because I don’t mind admitting – at least not to you, Teddy – that sometimes I feel rather like a lonely island myself (even the loneliest island, on the odd occasion!).

I shouldn’t complain. I have so much to be grateful for: good health, a loyal wife, a charming home. Burley Cross is such a beautiful place (a ‘chocolate-box’ village, to all intents and purposes), and I’ve grown to truly love West Yorkshire over the seven years since Joanna and I first moved here, but I must confess that I sometimes struggle to find people I can really talk to, people I can exchange ideas with or truly ‘open up’ to.

I sometimes feel starved of intellectual stimulation, of decent conversation. I used to enjoy the odd chat with Lance Tunnicliffe (OBE), but it’s been difficult to maintain the relationship since he moved into sheltered accommodation in Ilkley. I’m not entirely sure why… Perhaps I serve as too much of a painful reminder of his old life (now over)? Hopefully this feeling may alter, in the fulness of time.

Then there was Robin Goff (the inventor – or ‘The Prof’ as he’s known about the place). He’s an odd man, somewhat scatty, slightly sensitive and irascible, very intense, a keen fell runner, but extremely interesting for all of that. Unfortunately our blossoming friendship has recently been soured (I won’t go into all the sordid details) and I’m not sure if it will be possible to get it back on track.

The point I’m struggling to make here, Teddy, is that I still feel I have so much more to give… I just long to do something useful, something substantial, something of consequence, to break free from my shackles (self-imposed as they undeniably are) and purge this gnawing maggot of frustration that constantly and relentlessly seems to worry away at me.

I suppose this is all just part and parcel of the aftermath of Robbie’s death. A child’s death is never easy, but the death of a chronically disabled child takes its toll in so many quiet and insidious ways. It’s much less straightforward than you might imagine (on an emotional level), so much more difficult to ‘unpick’.

Joanna has coped with things by throwing herself, wholeheartedly (the only way Jo knows how!) into her many
charitable pursuits – chiefly her animals. She’s become absolutely indispensable at Gawkley. I was speaking to one of the other volunteers in Ilkley the other week who said they were thinking of naming her their ‘Patron Saint’!

But it’s always been that much harder for me, Teddy, not least because I found the situation with Robbie so much more demanding – so much more challenging – than Jo ever did (Jo’s faithful as a Fox Terrier – loyal to the bone). I was always that little bit less ‘easy’ with it, less ‘natural’ with it, right from the start. I resented more. I gave less (or less willingly).

After he passed away I honestly believed life would just miraculously ‘start up’ again, that I would somehow (almost effortlessly) pick up where I had left off. But it seems like time has got away from me. Things have changed. They’ve moved on. And it’s a cultural shift as much as anything. I keep reading articles (in
Nature
, the
New Scientist)
about how geology is ‘the coming science’, but I still have this nagging feeling that I’m ‘old hat’, that I’ve jumped off the carousel, that I’ve missed the bandwagon to some extent.

Seventeen years ago, I felt like a lone voice crying out in the wilderness on soil erosion issues, but today there are many voices, all clamouring together, in unison. How to make oneself heard among them, I wonder? How best to stand out and yet still to fit in?

Of course, on a rational level, I know that this upsurge in interest can only really be to the power of good (politically, environmentally) and yet still I find myself almost
resenting
it at some level (absolutely ludicrous, I know!).

I was watching a nature documentary on television the other week about the life-cycle of the earwig. It transpires that earwigs actually have a set of wings on their back – perfectly functional wings – which they never bother to use! I found this fact both strange and extraordinary. Where’s the sense in lugging around a spare pair of wings all day, I thought, and yet never going to the trouble of unfurling the damn things? I mean
why not just throw caution to the wind and cut loose, for once? Take to the air? If only as a novelty – for the sheer thrill of it? As an experiment! Because you can!