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The Locum, “Yellow Rose”, would move around in my flat at will but she wouldn’t print out her words unless I first lit the incense. She liked music, too, although preferably nothing very modern. Thelonious Monk was a particular favourite. Daily I encouraged the words to spill from her mouth and, as I read them spewing forth on the apparently endless ticker tape, an intense warmth began to glow around my heart. She seemed to be regurgitating fragments from my books, my CDs and — most uncannily of all — my consciousness: “ingerlish garding yor roases r re3d so y r mai pepl orl hange in ther hedz 1nce ai satt yppon the hille 2 wodjch thr wurld gou bai thr chursh belz saundjd midnite az ai roas 2 sae gudbai the sunn lite filturz sofly thru the pajl an watry skai 2 cadj the mirurd sammon az it roas to taek thr flai shain on silvur sunne...” Whether it was the rhythm of her words, the jumbled diction, shredded syntax or just the misplacing of the words themselves, they generated some profound magic in me. From the quicksands of my memory, the past swelled up and burst, spraying me with fragmented images and traces of sensations; fledgling emotions thrown from their nest and left to fend for themselves. It was a Utopia I have lived in my heart: the first light of an English summer’s day. The tinkling of a china tea service on a summer lawn. The smell of freshly mown grass. The hissing of car tyres on country lanes while you’re dozing in the sun. Lying in a field, looking up at the sky. Train rides to backwater stations in carriages with compartments and corridors. Black-and-white British films on rainy Sunday afternoons. The theme music from All Our Yesterdays and Coronation Street. It was an idea of England in the pre-graffiti years, before vandalism and football hooligans. A dream in primary colours of how this country should have been after the war. Hats and suits and pencil skirts; docile materialism, peace and tradition. The benevolent Empire. An England that never was. Sunshine; floral-patterned dresses; cigarettes that wouldn’t kill you but make you look suave. Cor! not Viz. Dixon of Dock Green, not CSI and Cold Case. BBC Radio 4, not Sky Channel and MTV. The Goon Show and Do Not Adjust Your Set, not South Park and Family Guy. Afternoon pub lock-ins, not draught real-ale in cans. Brighton Pavilion and the Natural History Museum, not Planet Hollywood and the internet. Thick cut marmalade and the Sunday papers, not www.boingboing.net, pop tarts and Vice. “Tell me more, Locum, tell me more,” I said, day after day, combing the endless ticker-tape for the words that came out in one long line. It was impossible to predict what she was going to say next. “thr roadz L so hajv ther wystful reste wenn thr wethrcox persh stil end ruste end the taun iz a kandulit rume the strijts L so dreme ther dreme this valie wud is pledjd 2 thr sett shajp uv thingz & risunablly hedjd hier pojsd in kwietewd karm elemjntls brude frum this grenewud onlj the lorns r soft thur tre stemms grajv & auld sloe branshes swaij alof the evning ajr cumz coald thr sunnsete scaturs goald smal grasiz tos & bend smal pathwajs aidli tendd 2wards uz feerfal endd yeeld 2 the lorrel bransh this twailajt paily faedz a hart widj shud jentli bete...” The effort it took to grasp some timeworn idea, to advance beyond the gobbledegook, was the challenge. It was a challenge made worthwhile by my upturn in demeanour following every painstaking discovery: the source of a quotation, the original rhythms obscured by a dense flood of oblique, misspelt cut-ups. This warmth sprouted like a seed in my heart and grew. And as the ripples made by a pebble thrown into a pond spread outward, the waves of make-believe caused tears of joy to rise behind my eyes. The incense blew on zephyrs like smoky fingers that, along with the scent of yellow roses, carried the mildewed fragrance of old books; the smell of summer orchards; the vibrant industry of beehives and the percussive clatter of red double-decker buses idling at Piccadilly Circus. I experienced in its pervasive fumes the brute force of a phantom cup-final choir and saw the spectral smiles on the faces of Notting Hill Carnival policemen. I wasn’t just wallowing in nostalgia; with every word the Locum issued, nostalgia was consuming me. It was like cracking a secret code; deciphering hieroglyphics. *
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