THE LOLA BOYS ABROAD !

Was it egotistical to write of one’s own experiences? What else was there to write about? Even if an author took on the feelings of others or wrote fictionally about characters they’d invented it was still through the prism of their own imagination.

A biography was still seen through the writer’s lense. What to include. Which details to omit. One’s perception of the world and the description of a universe which others inhabited always emanated from one’s own mind. We cannot, it seems, escape the bars of our own mental cell, however hard we try.

Paul knew he was meant to ditch the ego. And surely writing about himself was only re-enforcing it.

And realising that he was strengthening the ego and still talking about it made it grow even larger.

And writing sentences like the last one made it enormous.

He couldn’t bloody win.

He thought he was so amusing when he coined the phrase –

‘Wherever ‘ee goes – I go!’

But when reading it back it only seemed pretentious.

But then he was often accused of that.

That was him all over.

Self congratulatory.

Over-dependant on the kindness of strangers. He often likened himself to a tragic Tennessee Williams character, revelling in the misfortunes of his life. Not seeing it for the utter tragedy it really was. Not recognising how truly sad he was beneath the performance. He sailed on a savage ocean of stormy emotions pulled by the surge of a turbulent current over which he had no control. Or so it seemed.

He had no real sense of direction.

No inner compass.

He’d been drowning since birth only he never knew it.

He’d struggled to the surface now and then, even managed a bit of synchronised swimming at his most buoyant. But invariably he was pulled by the undertow into the murky depths of despair and confusion. Struggling in the Sargasso Sea of life which held him like an aquatic prisoner amid its wily weeds.

He gasped for oxygen on so many occasions momentarily dragging those around him down too. Sometimes he wondered why there was still any ship mates left on board his craft.

In some ways he knew there weren’t.

He was on a solo trip. All those who sailed aboard the planet were.

One was extremely fortunate if there were a crew to help them navigate life’s course, but ultimately a person had to put the wind into their own sails.

And Paul now realised he wasn’t gonna do that with a ‘yo ho ho and another bottle of rum!’ It was finally time to bid adieu to the drunken sailor that had rocked his boat for as long as he could remember and take the helm. He was well aware he was sailing into uncharted waters but that was one pastime he still enjoyed.

Adventure.

The unknown.

It was the only aspect of his worldly voyage that seemed to hold any fascination for him in his current state. Ill winds prevailed and all his usual passions seemed lost at sea.

He’d heard it described as ‘Anhedonia’. A state defined in the dictionary, a book he’d once read for pleasure as a child, as a lack of just that.

An inability to feel or experience the stuff.

What a pleasure!

He felt much like Hamlet – the Shakespearean misery guts not the cigar.

His shipping forecast was not good. The earth seemed to him like that stale promontory the dour Dane described in one of the famous soliloquies in that play.

Paul had sung those very words once. High – literally. Stood proudly on a rostrum twenty feet above the famous stage of The Old Vic theatre playing the lead in the musical ‘Hair.’ Now those triumphant times seemed like such stuff as dreams are made of.

Or nightmares.

What a piece of work he was!

He remembered as a child walking along a long hospital corridor with his father by his side feeling horribly nervous regarding whatever procedure he was to undergo. His dad had told him off for walking in a particular manner. Paul had been entirely unconscious of the way he was moving towards the ward until his father had helpfully said,

‘Don’t walk like that!’

‘Like what?’ he’d responded innocently as the rather green eleven year old boy he’d once been.

‘Like that’, repeated his father, illustrating with a camp hand movement to what he was referring, ‘that’s how poofs walk!’

Paul had always been aware since that moment of how he moved.

He’d never felt entirely free again.

At ‘The London Nautical School’, to which he’d doubtless been sent to straighten out his stride, he was constantly reminded of the lightness of his feet. Everything about him seemed to offend the other boys.

The way he spoke.

His manner.

His breathing!

Those years had not been plain sailing.

He always lunched alone in the depths of the aging vessel of a building on Stamford Street in central London. Eschewing the mess the other pupils used and ate. He avoided any form of contact with any of his fellow crew and stared out of the portholes during lessons gazing at the London skyline. Longing to jump ship.

At lunchtime he’d walk onto the South Bank and meander the concrete maze of the National Theatre, marvelling at the huge black and white photos of puzzling productions like the classic Greek play ‘The Oresteia’ or the controversial ‘The Romans In Britain’, which had included a male rape. Something Paul underwent daily at his place of education, mentally and spiritually, if not physically.

Well not totally.

He’d also bunk off from class and sit conversing with murky men in St James’ Park. Sometimes sharing their refreshment and resisting their obvious advances with red-faced teenage embarrassment.

At classtimes he’d find himself inexplicably in Whitehall and Downing Street. During the dark days of the Falklands war, after he’d stood on parade and listened to the headmaster speak of former pupils recently sunk, he’d escape the naval gloom and stand for hours spectating as Mrs Thatcher came and went through the famous black door of number ten. He felt as though he was witnessing history. It was far better than attempting to study it with Captain Daniels back on Stamford Street. That period was always a riot.

Literally!

The aforementioned master would sit behind his desk reading a book on knots and occasionally gulping from a thermos flask as his class fought, threw chairs at one another and spat.

Paul learnt nothing.

Except how to expectorate!

And he was so keen on history.

And geography.

And literature.

And life.

Even though it was knocked out of him every bloody day.

Or slippered.

Or caned.

Or worse!

In fact he had garnered no education in the entire time he was at ‘The London Nautical School.’ He’d been forced instead to engage in years of simply just navel gazing.

The place was a joke. Worse than a borstal.

A fraud masquerading in an impressive uniform.

In fact that was the single aspect of the establishment Paul had liked. He wore his navy beret with pride even though he was continually mocked for doing so. He thought it possessed style. Despite the institution which forced him to wear it having none of that quality.

Even the address was fake. Blackfriars was its official locale.

Blackfriars S.E.1. !

One didn’t need to be a London cabby to possess the knowledge that such a location was a geographic impossibility, as that more upmarket district was north of the river.

The clue was in the ‘S’ of the postcode.

It stood for shit!

No – the dump where Paul battled daily was aptly positioned in Waterloo.

Still is.

It was years before Paul could even pass the place.

When he eventually did, whilst inadvertently stumbling onto Stamford Street on route back from a particularly rough audition, the place seemed so small and inconsequential. Not half as Orwellian as he’d remembered when he’d been held prisoner there. He’d even gone aboard illegally and toured the decks, returning to his old lunch spot in the hull of the building. There had been a room there, open and no longer padlocked. It was still dark and damp but there was a piano inside. Paul sat in the dank and airless brig and played a bad version of ‘The Moonlight Sonata’, the one tune he knew.

It was pathetic. He cried. Then left.

It hadn’t helped!

Now, far too many years later, on an equally uneven keel in boozeless Bali, these dark and not so distant memories were flooding back.

A tsunami of childhood angst threatening to drown him if he let it wash him away. But he wasn’t about to.

Instead he was going to examine it.

After all, the unexamined life wasn’t worth living – he knew someone far cleverer than him had said that.

He knew he would be pushing Descartes before the horse but he didn’t care.

He wasn’t going to worry if he was being pretentious or not.

Or whether people found him funny.

Or attractive.

Or talented.

Or anything.

Actually.

And most importantly he was going to walk in the way he wanted.

In his own manner.

In his own shoes.

He was only just learning after so many years of mis-education that there was really no other way.

He made a mental note to walk exactly like a poof back to Stamford Street some day very soon.

Stand at ease outside ‘The London Nautical School’ and give the decrepit old admiral one final salute.

Only this time using just one finger!