Seeing Stars (7 page)

Things started to move very rapidly. The old man directed

him through the rush-hour traffic to an office at the back of

the Calls Hotel. “Sign here,” said the Registration Officer.

Norman took a fountain pen from his briefcase and signed

the form. It was official—he was now a citizen of “The

Knightsbridge of the North,” as some commentators have

called it. But when he turned around to shake hands, the

pewter-haired man in the brown suit was high-fiving with

councillor Bill Hyde, The Right Worshipful Lord Mayor of

the City of Leeds. Then the doors flew open, and three

policemen wearing canvas hoods dropped Norman to the

ground, ripped open his shirt, and plunged a white-hot

branding iron into his chest, just above his heart.

Norman lives in Roundhay now, not far from the park. I

doubted him once, and asked him to show me the proof.

He parted his dressing gown and I read the words
Leeds,

Like It Or Lump It
seared into his ageing flesh. Then he

hobbled to the window and looked at the hills to the west.

To the Pennines, if my geography is correct, or, as they’re

sometimes known, “The Great Divide.”

We’re heading up to bed, Mary and I, drawing the

curtains against the cold, inquisitive night, turning

down the wick, setting up the fireguard to cage the

sleeping tiger in the grate. Mary is just about to sweep

the line of toy animals into the shoe box, where they

live, when I say, “Just for once, shall we leave them

where they lie?” Mary hesitates and says, “You mean

right here? On the floor? Underfoot?” I kneel down on

the rug. On closer inspection they’re all dogs—moulded

plastic, mainly, but a few made from china or pot, and

a couple of border collies cast in iron or lead. Mary

kneels also, and we notice in detail the many breeds, the

great variety of shape and form. The Pekinese lifting its

wounded paw; the shiny-nosed spaniel; the Scottie dog

with the scarlet collar and erect tail; the yappy terrier

baiting the foursquare St. Bernard; the sleek red setter

with a juicy bone in its mouth; the line of Dalmatian

pups, six, no seven in total, all nose to tail.

And crouching low behind them we see their purpose,

their procession, how they journey as one towards the

towering green mountain of the Christmas spruce,

where baubles are small villages among the wooded

slopes, and fairy lights are streetlamps on the narrow

path zigzagging its way to the starry summit. Mary

says, “You’re so right. We should leave them as they

are, tonight and every night. Think of his thrilled face

in dawn’s tender glow.” Then we climb the ladder to

the loft and bed down together in the loose feathers

and straw, exultant with our choice, creators of a new

tomorrow, peacemakers in the holy war.

At the annual Conference of Advanced Criminal Psychology,

Dr. Amsterdam and myself skipped the afternoon seminar on

Offending Behaviours Within Gated Communities and went

into town to go nicking stuff. In Halfords he pilfered a shiny

aluminium gizmo for measuring the tread depth on a car tyre

and I nabbed a four-digit combination lock. In the gardening

section of John Lewis’s he filched a Butterflies of the British

Countryside Wallchart while I pocketed a squirrel-proof bird

feeder. In Poundstretcher he whipped a small tin of Magic

Stain Remover and I helped myself to a signed 2005 official

McFly calendar. In Specsavers he purloined a pair of silver-

rimmed varifocals and I lifted an origami snowflake from the

window display. In Waterstone’s he slipped an unauthorised

biography of disgraced South African cricket captain Hansie

Cronje inside his raincoat and I sneaked out with an Original

Magnetic Poetry Kit. In Oxfam he appropriated a five-

hundred-piece Serengeti at Dusk jigsaw and I swiped a set of

six coasters designed by authenticated aborigines. Then with

our laminated delegate passes streaming over our shoulders

on lanyards of pink and purple ribbon we legged it out of the

precinct and across the park. And from the high iron bridge

we slung the lot over the ornate railings into the filthy river

below until every last item of merchandise had either sunk

without trace or was drifting away downstream. “Remind

me, Stephen, why we do this,” said Dr. Amsterdam. I said,

“I really don’t recall.” Peeling a brown calfskin glove from

the cold, moulded fingers of his prosthetic hand he said,

“Let’s make this our last, shall we?” We shook on the deal,

and even managed a partial embrace. A mute swan pecked

idly at a Paisley-patterned chiffon scarf before it picked up

speed and slithered over the weir.

When you ask me what time it is, it’s purple. And when

the alarm goes off in a morning it’s a sort of metallic, minty

green, like the noisette triangle in a packet of Quality Street

—a particular favourite of mine but hard on the teeth. And

when you love me, and whisper your love for me,

personally, into my inner ear, it’s custard-yellow embossed

with a bold red heart, like a door I once saw in an otherwise

dried-up town on the side of a hill near Salamanca.

Salamanca, which is beige but burnt at the edges. Most

days I’m here on the other side of the glass, under the high

ceilings. It’s like a job, but without the bit you call work.

In prison, I’d be the one pushing the trolley of books along

the corridors, recommending cowboy adventure stories to

big-time embezzlers, making the Arc de Triomphe out of

toothpicks, cave-painting the walls of his cell. If you’re

passing, ring the bell of the studio and come up. This

morning I’m tackling some major piece, but where to start?

There’s no instruction book for an activity of this nature, no

downloadable manual. With a domestic knife I pop open a

tin of True Confessions and tip it out on the canvas, thick

treacly jollops, but another tone is needed in this top corner

so I go for a touch of Wednesday Week, which you might

be surprised to learn was the colour of Caesar’s pillow and

whose essence is obtained from the pituitary gland of the

ocelot. What next? How about a little Male Model, to

echo that thin trace of Mars Bars bottom left. The

telephone wants feeding in the back office but it will have

to wait. Now for some softer hues: a daub of Julie Ocean

should do the trick when combined with this swatch of

onion sack. Did I shave this morning or was that the day

before? See, sometimes I’m Don Quixote tilting at

imaginary foes. Sometimes I’m Casanova planting a final

kiss on the peach-like breast of the Contessa before leaping

from the balcony into a waiting gondola, her volcano-faced

husband flailing at my shadow with his leather fist. And

sometimes I’m more like myself, black coffee hardening in

a cup, seagulls caterwauling in the bay, my hands too big

for their cuffs. That pretty trawler in the lee of St.

Michael’s Mount is a Radio 4 afternoon play about a

working-class boy who raised a lion cub under his bed:

note how easy it is for the mind to nod off at the tiller, but

frankly that’s the idea. So before I know it I’ve piped a

delicate line of My Perfect Cousin around a triangle of

ripstop with all the precision of the master cake decorator

applying a blushing smile to his icing-sugar bride. My

darling, if I embedded a long, moon-coloured sliver of your

priceless hair beneath this thick blob of Jimmy Jimmy,

could it be our secret till our dying breath? Runaround,

Here Comes the Summer, It’s Going to Happen—properly

blended they form the most eye-catching shade but one yet

to be named. Acrylics summon me to the dancefloor!

Sure, these paintings are loud, but do I look like a mouse?

It’s chaos in here but a kind which I understand and call

home. There must always be a small corner of rapture,

otherwise what’s the point? And all the while I’m tapping

my feet to the colours, going at it with brushes or blades

until the world looks for all the world like it sounds.

During the summer of 1996 I was working as a Tattooist-

in-Residence on a reclaimed slagheap in the South

Pennines. On July 28th at three minutes past midday I was

approached by Mary-Anne Nogan (M-AN) and her then

husband Mark Dawson (MD), who reported an unusual

sighting near the disused pithead. Locking up the kiosk, we

travelled in their Citroën Saxo to within a hundred yards or

so of the site, then cut the engine and freewheeled down the

slope in relative silence. No sooner had we engaged the

handbrake than I knew with almost one hundred per cent

certainty that we were looking at a juvenile female

Celebrity (
Movie Star
). As misfortune would have it, local

landslip and subsidence have caused something of a dead-

spot for mobile phone coverage in a region otherwise lush

with signal, and I dispatched MD on foot to “get on the

jungle drums” from the nearest public phone in a local

hamlet. The celebrity had taken up position on a

cantilevered metal girder about twenty yards or so in front

of us, and despite being a good three thousand miles off the

beaten track seemed relatively unperturbed. The defining

features I would summarise as follows: a slim-bodied

celebrity with enhanced features, conspicuously plumper

than a stonechat. Its song I would describe as a repetitive

me me
me,
me me
me,
and in behaviour it displayed the

frequent “coquettish” flicking of the rump and strutting

walk so closely associated with the species. Being entirely

unprepared for such a wholly unexpected sighting, we

possessed no photographic equipment, not even a notepad

and pencil to make a rough field sketch. However, I

remembered that in my knapsack I always carried a reserve

tattoo kit along with a basic selection of coloured inks. I

hooked the electric needle up to the car battery, and M-AN

made the ultimate sacrifice when, without being asked, she

lifted her blouse over her head, uncoupled the clasp of her

bra strap and offered the unblemished surface of her bare

back as a canvas. MD returned, scarlet-faced and out of

breath, and after a few words of explanation on my part he

agreed I should carry on with the sketch, and even

contributed himself to the outlining of the secondary

feathers with a blue biro from his pocket. It wasn’t long

before several members of the local Celebrity Spotters

Club were on the scene, and only hours before other

twitchers had joined us from as far away as Manchester and

Fridaythorpe. The celebrity continued to show well for

four more days, even drawing observers from abroad, all

keen to be present at what the
Yorkshire Evening Post

subsequently described as “the sighting of the century.”

And at a low-key but very moving ceremony near the

pithead this summer, M-AN and myself unveiled a plaque

carved in anthracite, dedicated to the memory of her former

husband. A devoted father and keen amateur dentist, MD

was to meet his untimely death in a freak drystone walling

accident just six months after the extraordinary happenings

of that extraordinary day.

I put on weight at Christmas, then more during

Lent. I tried the Nine Plums a Day Diet, the

Pine Needle Diet, then the Eat Your Way to

Health and Happiness with Pencil Shavings

and Talc Plan, then ate nothing but road salt

and hen feathers for more than a month, but just

piled it on, pound after pound. Each morning,

as naked as a fish and fully shaved, I gawped at

the digital readout on the bathroom scales, much

as a bereaved dog-lover might stare at a

veterinary bill.

My girlfriend was tactfully mute until

Valentine’s night. After crawling out from

under the ruins of sex she led me by the

manacles through the wardrobe door, and there,

amongst hangers and rails, guided my fingers

towards tailored waistbands and handcrafted

belts, towards beautifully finished collars and

cuffs, towards the pinpoint darning of zips and

buttons and studs. Tearful in the hard,

indigenous light of the moon she whispered, “If

you can’t do it for me, then at least for these

attractive trousers, mister, or this handsome

jacket, or this gorgeous shirt?”

I was doing what we’ve all done at some point in our lives,

let’s face it, Googling my own name, when I dropped

across a website promoting the Cuckoo Day Festival in the

village where I was born and grew up. Attractions included

the Crowning of the Turnip King, the Dead Fish Throwing

Competition, Worm Charming on the bowling green, an

Armed Manhunt across the moor in pursuit of a well-known

car thief, the Wheelbarrow Parade, and the opportunity

to pelt a Tory councillor with out-of-date meat products.

But the event which really caught my eye was the Simon

Armitage Trail, a guided tour which promised to take in

“every nook and cranny of the poet’s youth.” I went

straight down to the local joke shop and bought myself a

false wig-and-beard combination, completed the disguise

with a large overcoat, and on the day of the tour made my

way to the old lych gate at the appointed hour.