Life is great, baby

The age of miracles is not yet passed I thought some time ago, on hearing news of Billy Rolands, a former schoolmate. Nothing had distinguished his time at school, nor mine. We belonged to a group possessing the happy knack of being there but seldom noticed, and whose real education began the moment we left school. A group where quite a number, on discovering we had talents and abilities not even hinted at in all our school reports, surpassed the drab existence of our former teachers and did surprisingly well. Billy Rolands was one, apparently. I say apparently, because from the way I see things now, there is a most interesting kink in his story.

When we'd both left school I found employment in the office of solicitors Whist, Crew and Udgeon, or to give them their full title, Freeman Tremain Whist, Sanford Crew, and Barry Lee Udgeon. Billy on the other hand, left New Zealand and worked his passage on board a ship bound for good old U.S.A. The hippy movement breezed into world history, its adherents eventually padding along our streets with simple smiles sandalled feet and flower power.

Two years later I left the lawyer’s office, which by then I'd renamed Twist, Screw and Bludgeon, and began a twelve month break on my OE (‘overseas experience’). A letter from Billy Rolands a few months previously had drawn me to start in San Francisco, to take in the hippy scene and look him up at the same time.

My introduction to the city was per the Gray Line bus tour entitled, The Happy Hippie Hop’. It was in keeping with the driver's message and its drawled delivery:

'Yew are now a-seein the largest hippie colony in the world as we pass threw what's known as the Smokey Curtain Collective. Marijuana is staple diet hea. They yews it to stimulate their senses. They injoy paradin, deminstratin, seminarin and discussin, especially tellin us what's wrong with the quo of the status. Malingerin is injoyed and wide spread, along with self expressionin, strumin gueetars, suckin and blowin pipes and bangin away ... on bongo druums that is'.

If you recall those days you'll remember they didn't just blow their own minds, they blew the world's mind as well as they smiled, danced, got high and loved everybody from one hip happy day to the next. Billy, I found, was well into it. He sure looked the part with his ample body enveloped in flowing robes, teeth smiling through the mass of fuzz around a face framed in flowing shoulder-length peacock-coloured hair. A most acceptable guru informing folks how to get hip and blow their mind and savings all at the one time. I do believe it was his Kiwi accent and casual take it or leave attitude which endeared him to the folks who sat at his feet and paid him his considerable financial dues.

The hippie movement was not for me. I wished him well and meant it, as I left on the next leg of my OE heading for England. Our family, being high Church of England, included candles on the table to illuminate dinner on Sunday evenings. I'd promised my parents that I would get the real oil by dipping into things ecclesiastical, which meant staying a few weeks with a friend of my parents, the Vicar of a church in Cambridgeshire. The persuasive softly spoken chappie talked me into a weekend spiritual retreat, isolating me at Martin Abbey close by the east coast of Kent, where the wind blew cold and with nothing to view but the headstones of sailors and travellers drowned nearby. For the next 36 hours I was subjected to singing, chanting, fasting and long readings from religious books delivered in voices bereft of all save a few dreary montonous notes.

San Francisco and all things hippy beckoned very strongly from the stone cell where I was expected to sleep. Strange really, everyone else there seemed to accept it all as normal. But I'd fulfilled my ecclesiastical duty within those cloistered C of E walls, and I left the place to the Abbot, his followers and all things Kentish.

I returned to New Zealand, completed a Pyschology degree and started a counselling business, getting people to unburden themselves as they relaxed on a couch in my consulting rooms. For the next five years things went well, except for a handful of regulars giving me a difficult time helping them overcome problems of gross immaturity, deep insecurity or an excessively aggressive attitude. Living in Wellington was fine, but too many genuine customers were put off by MPs and top government executives cluttering up my waiting room.

Installing a locum, I took six months leave and set off for San Francisco to check things out again with my old school friend, Billy. Alas, there was no sign at the place where he should have been. I asked for help from a middle-aged man intent on enjoying a few evening drinks. He'd already started I discovered as he put his arm around my shoulder and breathing foul methelated vapours full into my face, coughed and spluttered:

'Billy is now the Right Reverend Brother William, yes sir. He done got hisself blessed by a Kuru. None udder dan Hari Krispa, a true Guru and a Yogi. Dat Brother William, he been filled and is singing the praises and tellin it like it is, man'. I managed to break free and left gulping deep breaths of fresh air and a host of fleas who reckoned they knew a good home when they saw one. I also had Brother William's new address.

I really wasn't prepared for what I found a few kilometres out of town.

Billy had found an old abandoned Mexican styled ranch-house and, with the flower power gang, help converted it into a monastery. This was some new Billy, more a William in fact. Certainly, with his beard and moustache trimmed, hair neatly tonsured and wearing a creamy white robe with golden sash around his middle, he looked magnificent. His new position as Abott of the monastery suited him, I thought. I also thought it would be run along the lines of the monastery I'd stayed at in England. It was as well my parents were not with me, nor the dear Vicar from Cambridgeshire.

Once inside the grounds my senses had to grapple with their world of hip colouring, hip music and hip terminology. Abbot William was now Abbey Baby, a with-it hip cleric whose favourite blessing was:

'May all your visions be incandescent auras suffused with the brightness of seven heavens'.

As far as I could see, the brothers were kept in a state of expanded but fuzzy consciousness by consuming dope-laced cookies washed down with home-brew. The brew looked innocent enough but contained a delayed eye-wobbling wallop with a built-in automatic repeater at 60 to 90 second intervals. Everything was: 'Beautiful man', as Puff the Magic Dragon wafted through the air waves in sound and smell. Brown rice, sprouts and lentils served by a large earth mother borrowed from a nearby women's prison, ensured a steady movement to the men's room.

Four hours later, when it was time to leave, Abbey Baby offered lavish inducements to stay, which I declined. When Abbey Baby left to answer the phone, I discarded the habit loaned to visitors and hit the outside pavement running.

I returned to normal civilisation courtesy of Air New Zealand. I do confess to sneaking through customs a small memento of my trip: the recipe for Abbey Baby's cookies. I've made a few friends from the drone house in Wellington, who have access to all the cookie ingredients. As a consultant counsellor, I enjoy groovy sessions with a handful of our country's kaftan-clothed top drones, along with a six figure annual fee. And yes. Life is great, baby. Have another bickie.

 Dennis Crompton © 2000
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)

A peculiar swing of the pendulum

Pendulum clock conceived by Galileo Galilei around 1637, but never completed. (Wikipedia)

Quite a number of city folk look on me with something akin to pity when I tell them that I live in the country, especially when I mention the name of the town. Odd really as many came from similar situations themselves. Some faces soften: those who've made it financially; or those in the process and who plan to return; those who get out of the rat race and come back into the peace and calm of the rural scene…which is a fiction really. The pendulum can swing from tranquillity to disaster just as easily in country districts as in the cities. It did in my town.

The bank's still there but not the blood stains. They went with the blue carpet and some of the fittings ripped out during the alterations afterwards. Working in the district forensic laboratory for some years I'd processed photographs and items of many crimes. I've seen what bullets can do to a human body when delivered at very close quarters. It was horrific what one bullet did to the victim who survived.

Understandable, then, that customers and bank staff required counsellors to assist them and members of the police and St John's Ambulance to cope with it all. They did their best but some things can't be altered. Not with counselling. Not with the passing of time, not even when the sun shines, when the streets are peaceful or when people pass their daily lives with the appearance of quiet assurance. Ask those affected on that day and they'll tell you that a recurring nudge from their subconscious reminds them of the peculiar swing of the pendulum.

Before 'that day' everything about the bank had suggested permanence: the quietness within its solid structure; the carpet soft underfoot; the neat uniforms of the staff; and the calm appearance of the manager. It was the same each day of the week. You could bank on it, as the saying goes. This section of the counter was for the ordinary public, that section for business people with their canvas bags of cheques and cash, and over there was for other business and where you made enquires. Folk who'd ‘made it’ ordered their travellers cheques and foreign currency there, all smiles and quietly confident in possession of their wealth. A great time for them to be alive and with further excitements just around the corner. (Further excitement. Yes indeed.)

Each locality has its quota of odd people of varying ages, backgrounds and persuasion adding their distinctive flavour, even a richness of one kind or another. In our town there was a woman, some called a medium, who could be counted on to say or do something beyond the norm during the different phases of the moon. On this day, when no one could have guessed how she knew, her voice urgent and insistent said there was a foulness and smell of death in the air. Then, in the same breath, likened it to the horde of pests awaiting release from Pandora's box. She was going on about innocent people being shot when the young receptionist put the phone down. ‘I thought it was a hoax,’ she sobbed later, when the editor heard about it.

But by then it was too late.

An unusual kind of excitement was brooding in the kitchen of the home of the Bowden family, not far out of town that day. It coincided exactly with the phone call from the medium to the local press. At the Bowden house, Scott's mother was sick to her stomach. Her son's normally warm personality had changed, with an abruptness that sent her reeling. Breakfast had been bad enough, she just couldn't do anything right for him. It was more than just a bad temper, it was the mood changes that began to cause her serious concern.
Then, about mid-morning she'd said something that tipped the scales the wrong way and the air became heated with tension. It was a great pity, but understandable when the facts became known. At a friend's place the night before his drinks had been spiked, for laughs apparently. Whatever the substance was, it set in motion an outrage that filled many people with horror and despair, especially the parents of teenagers. The fools who'd wanted a few laughs, if they got them, was actually the one responsible for the deaths and heartbreaks that followed.

The change began in the early hours of the following morning, Scott struggling with his fuddled mind trying to make sense of what was happening to him. Waves of panic and alarm sent him rushing into bursts of wild activity, little of it balanced or coherent before gradually becoming quiet again. A quietness which progressed to an unnatural icy coolness suggestive of a mind teetering on the brink of insanity. He'd left the house by the time his mother had called him for lunch, and she hesitated a while before phoning the police to tell them of her concerns. Her recorded message was played back two hours later.

Junior bank teller, Grant Haskell, was a spirited young man, who possessed along with his good looks a bubbling kind of personality which most people, especially other teens, found attractive. He also had considerable potential which the bank was keen to nurture. Scott Bowden knew Grant. They'd played basket-ball and been on the same school camps together. They were friends but not close friends. Yet two witnesses were convinced he'd shown no recognition of Grant as Scott had rested the barrel of the rifle on the counter. They saw him survey the bank staff, their eyes mesmerised by the rifle moving backwards and forwards in an arc in front of them. They'd watched as Grant moved slowly from behind the counter, attempting a smile in the hope Scott would recognise him and stop the madness.

As Grant opened his mouth to speak to Scott, the barrel of the rifle wavered slightly up and to the left. The crack of the shot stunned everyone and they all said how, in a kind of slow motion, they watched in disbelief as the bullet entered just below Grant’s jaw to come out a fraction of second later by the side of his left eye. Just before Grant crumpled to the ground, there was a moment when the skin and bone in between burst open and a gaping hole pumping with blood appeared in the side of his face. Moments after the blast, Scott appeared to regain a brief semblance of normality but still he gunned down a customer and a bystander outside who'd tried to prevent him leaving. He was caught, tried and sentenced.

Our laboratory supplied the evidence at the trial, establishing that a drug found on the premises of one of the party-goers was the same as that found in Scott's brain at the post mortem. The two deaths in our small town and one bank teller dreadfully disfigured was news-worthy for a while. You're probably thinking, 'I've heard it all before', except it didn't end there; there was another peculiar swing to this particular pendulum.

At a manager’s meeting, the local bank manager, Mr Reginald Naylor, felt that reconstructive plastic surgery to Grant Haskell's face would be a constant reminder of the murder and therefore offensive to some people who relied on the bank. The general feeling was it would be better for Grant to be away from it all, and they left Mr Naylor to sort it out from there. It might have helped if he'd talked to Grant, however, as Grant had the potential to rise well above his own position. Mr Naylor felt that just wouldn’t be right. To give himself time to sort things out, he gave Grant a month's paid leave, after his long spell in hospital and reconstructive surgery, and he made his plans.

The letter was on his desk when Grant, almost restored to his former identity but with horrific signs on the suffering he had endured still evident, returned from the hospital and his extended leave. He was warmly welcomed back by his colleagues who had been regular visitors to him throughout his rehabilitation. Grant had been and integral part of the bank team, even as a junior teller, and the bank had always stressed the importance of that. They'd had regular get-togethers, week-end seminars, a mixture of intensive lectures and fun-times to achieve that end, and they'd succeeded. Loyalty to each other went hand in hand with loyalty to the bank. So you can understand what Grant thought of loyalty when he opened the letter terminating his employment.

Some weeks later, Gwyneth White's dog attracted her attention to a patch of bush on her family farm. It was the body of Grant; it was presumed he'd gone missing in the bush not long after receiving his termination letter. Searchers had given up after several extended sweeps of the area failed to find evidence of him being there, and yet there he was, not far from his home town.

Now what will happen at the next swing of the pendulum do you think?

Dennis Crompton © 1997
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)

Angels guard thee

Sometimes in my sleep, when I am least on my guard, somewhere just below the fully conscious surface of my mind, I realise that I am weeping. Not the surface weeping restricted by thoughts of what people would think of me, but a deep sobbing, as if some control gates have opened releasing a built-up flood behind them.
There is something quite profound and reassuringly therapeutic about what is happening that I want it to continue for a while. It is accompanied by a desire that someone be present to witness with me what is happening, as if without it, the event will not carry sufficient weight to be a sustainable therapy for me.

I've tried to think through why this has happened and reason that it is in order that some kind of rebalancing can take place. In various places around the world we can find fresh springs of water. We know that some force below is pushing the water to the surface. Those who have studied these things will have a good explanation of how this comes about.

But what causes our weeping to rise from the depths of our unconscious being? I guess psychologists and therapists of one kind or another will have their explanations. Certainly we're fortunate to possess this inbuilt safety device which detects when parts of our system have reached a dangerous level and must be dealt with. Fully conscious, our personality fights against reducing this danger by the normal process of weeping. I know my system has been influenced and shaped in the past by the false premises of: Be a man. Men don't weep. Only weak people cry. It won't do for people to see you weeping…

Fortunately we are wiser today. Counselling is provided for those in highly stressed occupations, such as the fire service, ambulance and police. These people know that at any time they can call on the services of a trained counsellor to help them whenever they feel their inner stress is becoming too much for them to cope. I am thankful for that part of my system, which like guardian angels, keeps watch, helping me to weep when things become too much.

Now cracks a noble heart.
Good-night, sweet prince.
And flights of angels
sing thee to thy rest!

Hamlet v/1.373

Dennis Crompton © 1997
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)