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Endgrain

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Jazz music is much like the sea, with surface tensions failing to corroborate the underlying mutinous vibe—and you can drown in it. Meet Paco Pastorals for example: piccolo jazz-moister extraordinaire and great entrepreneurial genius of late. Late-night drinking sessions of old; way back before the newer, rather ambiguous although legal, 24/7 binge promos, though!

Enter the valiant-vainglorious: Victor, in propria persona ex-naval functionary sea-dog struggling on the dry, dry land whilst, rather shakily trying to balance the log in his cul-de-sac public house: The Chequers. In the nick-of-time, he was approached by familiar, after-hours acquaintance, Paco—with a view to the establishment of an auxiliary, once-a-month only, Musicians" Club. To be held in the back room, away from the mainstream, c/w entry fee—virtually all-night.

In actual fact, the pair of them went way back to '75 when Victor, under the wing of the illustrious Captain Peter Jackson, post [last orders] military career worked as head barman on The QE2; no doubt enjoying The Royal-Connection en route: Mr Pastorals was currently cruising along with one of the resident dance bands, on flute; a free passage to New York. To the famous "Birdland" night club where he was to further his knack for improvisation, Victor"s nemesis—JAZZ! Until this little revelation they had enjoyed many a mutinous, after hours boozing session alone/together in splendid isolation.

This was [probably] their finest hour.

Isolated as journeymen in limbo before Old Victor, the proverbial drunken sailor, jetsam washed-up on the floundering shore of the South Hamptons somewhere; before he came into his bar. Literally: inherited a last-chance-saloon, out in the sticks; a bottle-bottom kickback from his dear, late Uncle Romilly. Paco was soon to follow in Victor"s wake, though. Accused, on a return booking, of being "too precious." Far too "jazzy" now, as he condescended to the cabaret [my friend] music, and walked the short pier that was effectively his plank to the promenade. He tracked Victor down. It wasn't hard to do as the bullish man left a trail of broken china all over the shop, as if a loose canon off the rails; a runaway train gunning it upcountry—north of Windsor, High Wycombe way.

So, there was Paco—post-Cunnard, and his scruffy entourage, to include chairman; treasurer [himself] and vice-president—Victor, of course would be nominally elected as the Main Man presiding over the victuals, he would have to sanction the issue of meal/off-the-roll raffle/tickets (a legal requirement for any late drinking club at that time) on receipt of the café-culture entry fee. Such fee to cover the costs of guest musicians... blah, blah and, that was it! A done deal so it seemed: with Victor effectively having to do Sweet Fanny Adams.

Strangely, there was a conspicuous lack of any music whatsoever in the pub proper; just the brittle ambience of well-worn bar billiards—clonk; the addled grandfather (if time were a river this one would be an eccentric eddy) clock—whir, clinkety-clank, set against the contrapuntal, dulcet church bells beyond: no conflict of interest by juke-box, then. No loss of disco revenue.

However, round about midnight, just when things were getting nicely mellow; the guest player"s swinging and singing, it didn't mean a thing. The proprietary "Old Vic" ran into a sudden squall; bawled them out! Pulled out the proverbial plank—THWACK! A broadside on the bar; first off they all thought he"d decided to join in, liven it up... have a bit of a go at it himself—post-modern-jazz being as it does (?) Outside the box, he was right there on the down beat, though: the old bugger meant it—"Treason!"

The rocking boat downscaled on a high "C" of Star-Spangled nonsensical fusion... stuff as the much dreaded post-maritime migraine ensued: THWACK! THWACK!! "The Yanks Are Coming" he further declaimed. What musical brouhaha, the planky end grain staring like loaded barrels of sawn-off menace, straight at them: Thelonious Monk's classic "Round about Midnight" at the deviant blowing section really yanked his ball-and-chain (loose from the metaphorical dungeon of p.m. melodies) it seems.

Then the calm, the bottle of rum, the pacifier courtesy of the committee: duly pasteurised, Vic admitted to having a pathological hatred of American [Afro- in particular] jazz music, but as President, conceded to being the proud owner of a somewhat modest [Caucasian] record collection which they were, rather patronizingly invited/pressed up the gangplank of his mind, a crows-nest, to appreciate. And sure enough, next to the gramophone, under a portrait of Regina v. Dredge (Her Royal Highness, right up there on the flock-wallpaper) was leaning a stack of old 78r.p.m. EMI/Decca acetate discs containing: The Complete Speeches of Sir Winston Churchill, himself. Enough words were uttered from His Masters Voice that night to keep them silently standing-by, at Victors self-aggrandising, vicarious pleasure; at least until he suddenly went into another spasm and bolted.

Down the narrow staircase, over the chessboard tiles, he went out to the motor and off down the lane—psychologically figured toward the opaque horizon but out of his depth as the band played on at the lower deck—mutinous undercurrents prevailing.

He didn't get too far though, as Paco—on the short-straw, tracked him down (again) to the outer perimeter of the axis-of-bigotry, the junction where he had apparently had a go at forking left but didn't quite make the reverse camber—wall of death and thus ended up quite compromised at the partition: a telegraph pole. Luckily for him the axles-of-evil balanced out in his favour as the rack-and-pinion assembly centre-folded neatly up the near-side supporting steel stay, riding up it at an angle of 60 degrees north, half-mast. Not that Victor knew that, though. The acrid smell of battery acid, generally toxic stuff that permeated the interior carcass, and the perverse refusal of the ignition switch to engage the starter motor, duly prompted him to make a break for it—he simply opened the door (against the grain of exponential gravitas) and stepped out.

"Whoosh, wanged-a-wrover on-is gwrassy Noel, Wromilly..." Victor was allegedly heard to say as Paco observed him rolling down the embankment, into the yawning gullet of the dozy early-morning articulated refuse collection road-train coming round the bend. Snap! Closing time in one brief sound-bite: famous last words it would seem, (oh well, "Pride goeth before destruction and an haughty spirit before a fall) from the slippery old Vic as he tipped bite-sized into the jaws of defeat—be-bop! More methane to the landfill, beneath the screamingly unprincipled land-gulls, bubbling underground for the final bell—pfttt... Paco Pastorals felt the over familiar hand of history on his shoulder, the end of a another gig tragically cut short as a new sun arose: Victor has been (License Applied For) and gone.

The time to split from the lubricious lock-in of the Davy Jones"s locker crime scene, lack of further funding behind The Chequers masthead—busted flush of a very tight ship; unlike the crooked timber of humanity you can"t saw-up a river or walk up its waterfalls, water-boarding in a continuous cadence with neither conscience nor short ends where the grain should, really stop. So he just went right-on along with it; along the flow all the way to mainstream land (where you can drive in the middle-of-the-road, unambivallently!) Cool.

Well, maybe. Even Paco had to admit to it, the slight frisson: he was beginning to feel the heat on his back, the tortuous Dionysian currents below the global drift of Victor and his likes.

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