Announcing

BAGLADY-AT-LARGE

Traveling the Pilgrim Path twixt Progress and Regress

Flipping the dice on Life's Board-game of Snakes & Ladders. When last we saw Ashley Grimes, she was retreating from her Church-house shelter, along with all the resident roaches, ants, spiders and mice.

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THE BAGLADY CHRONICLES

READ INSIDE THIS BOOK

BAGLADY AT LARGE

I admit, now and again, I woke up thinking that my life, in whatever realm you care to mention, was little more than flat-out failure. Paralyzing thought! But as the Buddhists say, at times like those, it’s best to clear away the mind-demons, rouse oneself, and make a pot of tea. Besides, I often felt like an ostrich in a sand dune, striving to shut out whatever distractions came my way. And there were many. Having the concentration of a fruit-fly, I’d need to inhabit a flotation tank to be able to focus properly on what I was doing. Lucrezia was bound to lose faith in me and my so-called creations. I’d probably never be up to the task.

Nevertheless, it was easy enough to plug myself into the self-feeding network of Oldie-Worldie artistes who kept swanning around to various functions and soirées of the literary kind. Thomas, the mild-mannered cynic, surfaced from time to time as did Miriam Wentworth, the flint-edged gal from academe, both of them habitués of the scheming Scriveners Guild. Encountering these familiar faces as well as fresh faces at one Writers Fest or another was challenging my natural habitat of isolation. In time, a rash of ‘open mic’ poetry readings became trendy at the Merrie Auld-Hallows Pub on the High Street. Then they migrated further afield in places like Islington, Soho, or swanky old Hampstead itself.

And I actually made so bold as to read my verses aloud alongside the youthful and aging balladeers, many of whom favoured political satire and proudly exuded the robustness of working-class bards. My quirky, rarefied verse stood out curiously amongst them. To my own surprise, I had begun re-stirring my ancient cauldron of fictions; it took my mind off the mundane and the ‘snarling wolf’ at the door. And I wondered if all the lost years that had accomplished nothing and amounted to nothing might, some day, prove to have some worth.

On Saturday evenings, on what became our own literary pub crawl, I met up with a transient scattering of soulmates who arose out of the misty urbanscape of Auld-Hallows. Delicate souls we were, a breakaway schism from the official Scriveners Guild which continued to be ruled by the scheming Bombast-in-chief and Poet-provocateur, Russell Kingston. We rebel mavericks preferred to seek out a tranquil little waystation, all to ourselves, where we wouldn’t be chastened and challenged. In other words, where our literary sprouts and sightings were allowed to flourish or gently wilt in an incubator, shielded from criticism and harm. And so it was, that the Merrie Auld-Hallows, the decrepit Dickensian beer saloon on the High Street, became our transient ‘literary salon.’

Amongst our band of littéraires, I aspired to the rôle of Grand-dame of Letters. Yet even so, I remained evasive about my age, as though it were a brand of social disease. Comical, wasn’t it, that someone of my vintage was actually harbouring thoughts about ‘the Future’, when life as we know it would probably be winding to its close.

One member of our renegade arts-gang was young Antoinette. Built like a mannequin and taller than most of the men, she wore her height proudly. No slouch, she! Nor could she be faulted for her perfectly blue ‘designer eyes’ and the extreme regularity and pretty-ness of her features, smooth and passively bloodless as if moulded by a carpenter’s plane. I suppose that we all have our cross to bear.

“I’ve had to learn dressmaking because shop clothes just don’t fit me. I dress as I please now, fashionably retro, extreme retro, in fact,” she said.

Well, I thought, since haute couture both comes around and goes around, Antoinette dressed in stiff lace, black velvet neckband and Victorian wallpaper-style fabric might, in time, end up stoking a Victoriana revival. Which wouldn’t be all that strange, given the flux of shifting epochs, latitudes and time zones here in Auld-Hallows. Antoinette spent her days creating archaic designs and flowery patterns for an artisan textile firm with factory premises near the newly rechristened SERENITY PATH and GOODWILL CANAL. And her taste in epic verse was just as flowery. She confessed to overdosing on Milton and Shelley, and neither would these dead poets loosen their grip on her poetic tongue.

“I’m just old-fashioned in my tastes; I’ve never felt much at home in this century, anyway,” she said. “I was raised by a couple of schoolteachers of the retrograde nineteenth-century strain. And so, it was a real culture shock, coming down here to London on my own. Sometimes, I feel like a foreign migrant myself, although the quaint little English village I come from, I swear Miss Marple would feel at home there, is less than a hundred miles away.”

Seated in the banquette opposite Antoinette was Lorna Delaney, who had somehow resurfaced and fastened herself to our little group like the sting in the tail. Her own personal sensitivities were ultra-delicate, though, as I’d previously witnessed first-hand. But then, human feelings in general are often raw, smothered or repressed, when not being carelessly bludgeoned to death. That’s why I was so cautious and discreet in my comments and critique, even self-censoring in the extreme. Which, oddly, seemed to annoy Lady Venom. She was a chronic dispenser of blame, too, applying it by the trowel and shovelful.

“All those starving children in Yemen and Somalia, that’s your fault,” she proclaimed, regarding us one and all.

“What do you mean!”

“Well, it’s obvious. As long as such horrors exist around the world, we’re all to blame, all of us, including me, unless I make the effort to do something about it.”

“Do what?” said Antoinette.

“Well, raise people’s awareness, for one thing, and prod their consciences, if they have any.”

“Right, you’ve just done that, so you’re pretty much in the clear,” retorted my aging friend, Finn, uncharacteristically blunt. “Who’s brought something along to read?”

“I have,” said Lorna. “It’s called ‘Hungering World.’”

Yes, all her creations were typically stark, like fermented bitters, sometimes causing her to erupt, after recitals, into torrents of tears. Likewise, Finn’s creative offerings (and mine) resembled fossils or memorabilia from another epoch that neither of us would part with despite their ugliness and gloom. Perhaps that’s why, in a spirit of empathy, Finn sometimes invited himself to my tiny domestic haven, north of Commonwealth Road. Typically, he arrived dangling a couple of bottles of wine. There was usually nothing special to celebrate, of course, unless it were the gratuitous gift of life we’d both been granted. No Happy Valley, I admit. Rather more often, a Vale of Tears.

And so saying, after imbibing a few glasses of Vino Veritas, came the moment for Finn to revisit the thorny issue of himself, his Ego, his dissatisfactions. These had become the true magnetic north of our conversation. For someone who thrived on grandiose ideas, sadly, Finn’s focus of late was whittled down to the fixed contemplation of himself, his unfulfilling talent and hollowed-out charm. Which was considerable, nonetheless. He had the most transient of features. One moment, he resembled a grey-tufted cherub—seriously, like that of a Da Vinci canvas—it was fascinating, even mesmerizing to watch. The next instant, his mood changed, the gloom deepened. His fluid features reassembled themselves alarmingly, Mephisto-like, dramatically peaked brows, incandescent eyes, ashen cheeks.

However, the true mystery man was a relative newcomer to our group named Yeshua. He appeared amongst us one frigid evening, evoking Mary Shelley’s grandest night-frights: towering yet spindle-thin, cheeks of a faintly greenish pallor, bramble-bearded, and with dark-glistering eyes. Judging by his sepulchral tales, steeped in New-Age Apocalypse, he might indeed have been a magnet for tormented souls whose private lives ended up gruesomely pulped and taxidermized into his fictions. Nonetheless, our response to Yeshua’s flair for the literary dark arts was as soothing as a mild anesthetic. As for myself, I ransacked my brain for the gentlest, most complimentary anodyne I could muster, but—whoops—before I could respond, it was Lady Venom herself who launched a full-frontal attack. Truly, she could no longer abide my sick-sycophantic manner, my timid reluctance to voice a critical opinion, to be honest and brutally frank as she was now compelled to be with me.

“You really must learn to be more forthright,” she declared, with a vehemence that could hardly be warranted, surely, I thought. “You’re nothing but a craven bootlicker. Stop smiling and agreeing with people, for god's sake, stop slathering them in fulsome praise.”

There came a shock of silence. A strained, uneasy silence. I glanced around, cautiously, for something awesome that was bound to happen. The crackling candle-lamps on the wall, would they blitz into flames? Would the cursèd skies burst open and pelt us with rat-tail and scorpion-sting? Would a wicked flood-tide sweep in from nowhere and hurl us off our feet, or else, would these rotting floorboards split asunder, engulfing us underground—? Well, no, in response to the odious affront, I offered a shrug and a mild, blank stare. Privately, though, I vented like a fumarole. You want forthright, Lady Venom, you want frank? So, how’s this—

May your tongue rot in your head! May your heart be staked to the gatepost! May your eyes vaporize down your cheekbones! Till I draw my last breath, I shall bloody well loathe you, dear!

WELCOME TO AULD-HALLOWS

PILGRIM'S PROGRESS

Go to BAGLADY-IN-FREE-FALL