North Manchester Easter 1983: The Waddington residence.

The boys awoke early that day, eager to discover the big shiny Easter eggs that their vallium dependent mother had somehow managed to provide - despite Father having legged it with the child benefit payments, some seven days earlier. Yes, Father was off on another adventure, or as we adults know it: a colossal bender.
All of a sudden there was an indiscernible bellowing in the corridor outside followed by a thumping rap at the door; the little boys faces lit up: “Daddy’s home!”
Hug deprived arms outstretched, Father batted them aside as he stumbled into the lounge en route to the bathroom, his progress halted by the sight of something confusing, strange and possibly dangerous…
Quick as a flash, the boys- anticipating danger - knelt over their precious brood; gingerly covering the eggs with their feeble rickets-ridden arms. But all was lost, as Papa STAMPED and STAMPED on the strange objects that were clearly not there when he had left. And so, to an early bed, and a life of further fear and violence in sunny Langley.
This is a true story, related to me long ago by a childhood friend who went by the highly inventive nick name ‘Waddy’.
I mention it only because I think I finally understand where father Waddington was coming from....and here is a list of things that I’d been adjusting to, after ‘emigrating’ to France, that might explain my growing empathy with the Buckfast Easter Bunny:


1: The bizarre chimes of the half-deaf, 100 percent mad, 90 year old woman at the village church. Her atonal pealing had me in a sweat every sunday morning, gave me the fear something terrible - evocative, as it was, of The Wicker Man. It’s nigh on impossible to accurately describe sounds with words at the best of times, but I think it’s fair to say that you truly had to hear this to believe it. I could have recorded a few bars; looped them and mimed the ringing on BBC 2’s ‘Later’:  « Genius! A wholly primal catharsis- Nietzsche’s void conveyed via the purest vessel for the physics of sound: la cloche » AAARRGHH!
God only knew what the old hag had in mind for Christmas day. I could only hope that it didn't result in me running over to join her; emitting an odd little giggle as I went.

2: The endless ‘bonjours’. Quaint, I had thought initially, how French people greet each other - regardless of prior acquaintance- I like that; no more silly head-down tough guy demeanour for me! « Bonjour, I mean Bonsoir!, M‘suir-Dame, bonjour, bonjour, alors- toujours- les fleurs » Oh just fuck off!!
It wasn’t long before I wished I were invisible. Oh and god forbid you casually ‘bonjoured’ someone that you had already acknowleged that day; it's not for nothing that the phrase faux pas has been assimilated unfettered into the English language. I had replaced walking in fear of being mugged with a fear of being hello’ed, or worse, kissed.

3: Kissing. Now here’s something I had genuinely believed I would become accustomed to, possibly even grow to enjoy. I bet you’d like it wouldn’t you? All those suave young French men, or sexy little French maids, eh? Well first ask yourself this; what is the most popular dish in France? Answer: it’s irrelevant! Be it steak; chicken; seafood; veg’ - - whatever, it’s going to be smothered in garlic and onions and somehow they’ll find a way to introduce a nice wet cheese into the mix; they always do. Luckily for me the local custom required only two kisses, in other areas it’s four - but only two for the kids (presumably they’re acclimatizing). Combine the stench with the facial hair - both male and (what the village loosely described as being) female- and the custom loses some of it’s mystique. Kissing is for weddings and funerals; possibly modern football.

5: The hypocrisy of it all; so many customs developed - one would assume - to engender and sustain a sense of community, only serve to ostracise those who decline to play ball. The locals mistrusted me because I’d once politely refused to attend for an aperitif with the neighbours; or else I’d missed the village fete. Perhaps by not passively participating in forty five minute conversations - at one hundred miles per hour - I’d somehow retarded my picking up of French: how else does one learn the past participles other than by passively participating?
Whatever the reason, if they had only given me time they’d have realised I was a decent person, but you see I was the stranger - the foreigner -and the onus was upon me.

6: The massive xenophobia: It wasn’t solely because I was English, you understand, okay that didn‘t help but in rural southern France if you are not BORN AND BRED in the village you are not OF the village. I’m sure it’s the same in the backend of Cornwall or the outer Hebrides, but it was a big bloody change for me. I had a lot of pressure relieved by the Germans who moved in shortly after myself. It didn’t take long for them to make an impact:
Armistice day was marked by a 100 per cent turnout at the weedy little war memorial in the village ‘square’; actualy make that 99 per cent as I was watching pie eyed from the bedroom window - still half cut from the night before -and the Germans were working on the house....
So the deranged bell ringer commenced with her insanity to mark the two minute silence and I shook my head for the thousandth time. Thirty seconds passed without incident, the mayor (always a colossal prick and treated as godlike by the villagers) looked suitably proud - despite his undoubtedly Vichy past; even the birds gave it a rest. Cue the Germans; naturally oblivious to the occasion and they’ve finally managed to extract that rusty old bath from the upper floor: out the fenetre it goes! Achtung! CLANG!
The villagers looked to the mayor for guidance, the mayor just closed his eyes, Quasimodo went nuts of course - convinced that the mayor had hired some extra help for the occasion she opened the gates to aural hell in response- so I shut the windows.
I wasn’t excused from the scrutiny of the locals for long though, and I should really have made a greater effort to integrate, but I didn’t like the feeling of being cornered: so eventually I withdrew. If you can’t join ‘em - Fuck ‘em.
And if you are what you drink - I’ll take a white Whine and a pint of frothy Bitter SVP.

Anyway, I wasn't alone, I had my faithful hound.
Lola and I are both city types, she was no more suited to the rugged terrain than I, but we were grateful for the long sunday walks and at least we didn't have to look to the woods for approval.
I began to bid the trees an ironic bonjour, I soon stopped though: you’re careful of yourself when there’s nobody around to tell you that you’re becoming a trifle eccentric, or completely cuckoo. There were all kinds of nuts lying around the floor, walnuts; chestnuts; peanuts probably: not roasted though, but aesthetically pleasing none the less. There were also scores of fruits and berries to plunder, which - after testing them out on Lola - I gorged upon, until there were precious little left for the poor girl! None in fact. She’s lovely.
Then came the wasp attack. I won’t dwell on that, suffice to say that it really, really hurt. Really hurt. In fact it fucking murdered. But I forgave the countryside for the wasps because, really, wasps transcend the city/country divide (what is their point exactly?).
But, alas, a falling out with nature did eventually arrive when Lola tried to eat a big fat country toad (and I swear I wasn‘t testing it out on her).
Lola’s a big girl, she’s a Dogue De Bordeaux like in that film Turner and Hooch, but she was well and truly bitch slapped by this sweaty little bastard. I took her home shortly after the (brief) contest as she couldn’t stop snuffling, also the rain - which had brought the toad out with it - had begun to come down in sheets from the night sky.
A brief digression; if you’ve never left the city - as I hadn’t - the finest sight in the universe awaits you; the first clear night you experience not only brings out the stars, lot’s and lot’s of them, but you can actually SEE the milky way. Now being a city boy I at first perceived this celestial powder to be stardust; probably a Disney term but that‘s what it looked like. But no, it is - according to the locals- the Milky Way! The Milky fucking Way!! Unless those bastards in the village were mocking me...
So anyway we arrived home, entered through the big oak door which opened straight into the kitchen, nice place - open fire etc.
Lola halted abruptly in the centre of the stone floor, as if caught in a vacuum, apparently lacking any volition. She did nothing for quite a while - so I called her to me. Still nothing.

Eventually she staggered to her bed and flopped down like a falling oak: god did she have a funny look on her big dopey face. Foam appeared around her floppy jowls shortly after. Spooked, I ran up the stairs and searched the internet for answers; occasionally flying back down to examine her for symptoms. Fucking toad poisoning! Potentially lethal. Who knew?
With broken French I consulted the 24 hour vet (it’s amazing when you discover such facilities in such a place) , he said that considering her size she’d probably be alright, but that I’d have to sit with her throughout the night; either that or get her down here as a matter of urgency, I couldn’t honestly say.
Anyway, I lit a fire - using logs that I’d actually managed to split myself - and settled down to watch the dog, who by now I’d learned would spend the next few hours tripping her tits off.
I looked up at the wild boar - who’s head had been attached to the wall by a previous resident - and imagined that he looked back knowingly; he’d have rolled his eyes but they were just a couple of kids marbles that an amateur taxidermist had improvised: one green the other brown, like David Bowie. I pondered that maybe she was visualising human beings communicating using only woofs and barks....I have to admit that I tried a few lines out on her. She didn’t mind, much.
After an hour or so I decided that Lola was taking the toad licking incident in her stride, it was hard to discern any real change in her expression, which carried a permanent look of pathos anyway. With Lola seemingly immobilised by the hallucinatory toad saliva I gambled on leaving the open fire lit and was about to retire when....

Knock.........Knock.......... Knock.

Now, coming from the city - with all the crime and violence that a city brings - I had taken heart in the fact that nothing bad here ever happens: ever. I had thought that having been witness and victim to various nefarious acts over the years that if the time ever did come for someone to deal with a ‘problem’ then the village would look to me for guidance: and rightly fucking so.
But if you could sit - alone - in a room lit just enough to blacken the thinly glazed windows, upon which the rain is lashing down, at four am and hear a dead thumping on a ninety year old oak door.....don’t imagine that you’d feel anything other than a cold stream running through your veins : it’s the kind of feeling that confirms there is a fate worse than death. You know the one I mean.

I looked at the Lola, my loyal beast: she was suddenly asleep. I even looked up at the boar - who possessed a quite dissuasive aspect - but his rutting days were long since gone. I briefly considered falling back on anger; maybe ten years ago I’d have shouted the village down and rushed outside, but I was a cautious thirty five years old now: what if the visitor didn’t respect good old fashioned hard-headedness? Could I fit my skull inside the boar’s head? That might do the trick!
My reluctance to act allowed enough time to pass for me to realise that a repeat of the knocking was unlikely; you just know that after a certain amount of time has passed the visitor has either given up - or else is aware of your proximity to the door and is waiting patiently for your arrival. Unless it’s your mother. I couldn’t see through the windows, I didn’t dare approach them... I turned and quietly opened the door to the stairs.
The door separating the kitchen from the stairs was a recent fixture; previously the whole bottom floor had been a cellar and although the kitchen had been relatively modernised the large adjacent area giving access to the staircase was not. It was damp, stone walled and dark; the only way for light to access the room was through a window at the top of the stairs where they turned to go up once more to the bedrooms.
The window opened flush to the alley floor at the side of the house: I hadn’t closed the wooden shutters that day.
I picked up a torch and steeled myself to climb the stairs, but the light only obscured the view through the glass; by the time I’d turned off the torch I was already halfway up the rickety staircase. My face was now five feet from - and looking straight at - a pair of legs, they were wearing black trousers and black boots, both were made of indeterminable materials but they appeared very old: perhaps ancient.
The legs I were accustomed to seeing through that glass (in the daytime) were of the side-on variety; usually wearing caramel coloured stockings and with a yapping little dog in tow. These legs were facing into the house and were purposeful: confrontational. They disappeared as suddenly as they’d appeared and I realised that the rain must have developed into a full blown storm; without the flash of lightening I’d have never seen those legs. I carried on up the stairs as if I could pretend not to have noticed the intruder and as if that ignorance somehow afforded me protection from him.
I turned and took the next few steps up to the next floor where the bedrooms were. This was perhaps where I should have remained, as it was the only floor of the house not to have access from the outside. However, instinct dictated that I climb higher, and so I blindly crossed the landing and climbed the staircase up to the converted attic.
The attic was huge and, in the daytime, very well lit as I’d invested in Velux roof windows and modern French doors to the back garden. Most of the houses in the village were built into a gradient; the side alley rose up to my back garden and on further to the houses above mine.
Yes the attic was well lit in daylight, and in the night it appeared that lightening intermittently afforded the room the same luxury. I sincerely wished it had not.
The rain beat on the roof, thrashed the windows, and was interspersed with terrible claps of thunder. I was by now baffled with fear and stood immobile a few feet from the top of the stairs; something was not right. It was then that I felt a drip from above, it tapped a couple of times before I reacted, I reluctantly looked up and noticed that the roof window was ajar. I was about to reach for the long stick I had found whilst out walking Lola and with which I was able to close the high ceiling windows, when I noticed that the aperture was gradually widening. Time ceased. I noticed the dark figure above me; the silhouette of a wide brimmed hat. There was no fear, nor any reaction toward fight: something had resigned me to the role of spectator. I felt that I had come face to face with an awesome power.
The figure descended from the skylight and hit my wooden floor with a heavy thud. The wind was shoving rain onto our heads, more rain fell from the brim of the intruders hat and down onto my face. For a second I wondered how the end might come, what method he would employ, but I needn't have bothered....
The thunder roared once more and the lightening closely followed - causing the Christmas presents under the tree to briefly come to life; something about their silvery bows drew the intruder away from me and towards them.
Anyway, turns out it was the ghost of Waddy's dad, no big deal. He came out with some Steven King shit about me having summoned him by writing down his story. "Bollocks" I said, and we opened up a bottle of twelve year old whiskey; lit a cracking fire and had the best Christmas ever.
Except for him dancing up and down on the presents that is.