Let it Be

Speaking words of wisdom?

“I dig a pygmy!” by Charles Hawtrey and the deaf aids! Phase one, in which Doris gets her oats!”

On the long and winding road across the universe to the beautiful village in which the phrase “Dig a Pony” has been part of the lexicon since 1779, I me mine and not the two of us listened to The Beatles final album “Let it Be” and I got a feeling, for you blue and well after the 909, that I simply had to get back to where I once belonged. They’d taken Maggie Mae away sadly but there were ghosts with different names now. And back then. In that strange old house. In the shadows of a grand old lady.

Can you dig it?

“When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be
And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

And when the broken hearted people living in the world agree
There will be an answer, let it be
For though they may be parted, there is still a chance that they will see
There will be an answer, let it be

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be
There will be an answer, let it be

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be, be”

“And when the night is cloudy there is still a light that shines on me
Shinin’ until tomorrow, let it be
I wake up to the sound of music, Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be

And let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

And let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be”

When I find myself in times of trouble I head as often as I possibly can to a small hamlet/village called Ironbridge and a magnificent “Grand Old Lady” who was positively gleaming in this afternoon’s winter sun. I listened to the “Let it Be” album to and from the universally famous site of the world’s first iron bridge and twice more when I returned home. It’s long been a favourite album of mine for far too many hard days nights, but after watching the incredible Peter Jackson documentary on the making of the album and the completion of the Beatles jigsaw of fights and recriminations, splits and reunions, live takes and the rumblings and grumblings of production problems after, this album has officially usurped “Abbey Road” as my favourite Beatles album.

Well, favourite other than the first disc of the “White Album”.

Can you dig it?

My trip to see the grandest of all iron ladies went expectedly to plan. I played tourist guide to an elderly couple visiting Ironbridge for the first time, the Sexy Sadie of the chip shop (real name Sam) was still as flirtatious as ever and rather annoyingly, she derived immense pleasure in laughing at the sorry plight of my football team. The two girls I first met with Sam a decade ago are now mid twenties young ladies and one of them still has my copy of the book “Gone Girl”. It seemed churlish to raise this issue and Sam had me under her seductive spell anyway. She always does. I could blame it on the intoxicating smells of salt and vinegar or that sizzling sound as a fresh piece of battered fish is dropped into a casket of raging oil, but they were gone. Ghosts of a decade’s past perhaps or a middle England mirage from the 19th Century. There were ghosts everywhere it seemed and I decided to try my luck instead in the local “Old Fashioned Sweet Shop”. I had a ghost story to tell you see, but a kindly Welshman by the name of Jeremy had a ghostly story to tell all of his own.

I’ve known that kindly, genial Welshman for a month or so shy of a decade now and he’s the last human standing for whom I can tell my story, ghosts or not. I’ve exhausted the usual avenues, the brother who isn’t my brother, the love of my life who can’t be the love of my life, those unpaid angelic souls who’ve sat on my shoulders for more years than I dare admit. I even tried to tell my story in a Court of Law but I just argued with the Judge, the story of which I told Jeremy in my usual bitterly flamboyant style that only I can surely perform. He listened intently to my tales of deadlines and unwanted dramas, the injustice inflicted by those dastardly Neanderthal ghosts of years past, the toxic, sulphuric vapour trail they left in their wake.

Those ghosts of an old house, in the shadows of a grand old lady.

Before I left my old friend with a bag of the finest old fashioned sweets money can buy (Army and Navy, Lemon Bon Bons, Cola Cubes and assorted jellies — Current Affairs Editor), I’d like to say that I didn’t say that I find life utterly exhausting, the legal thing is dragging me down lower than a snake’s penis and that I have zero purpose in this upside down world, but I did. Alas, I was going to tell him anyway and at least I left it as an encore rather than the main event. The sweets were already deliciously more sour than my tale and I left that old house in the shadows of a grand old lady before I could tell him that the anniversary of the passing of another grand old lady is mere days away and I peacefully wish I wasn’t around anymore to recognise this heartbreak once more.

Jeremy’s story? Well! That old house in the shadows of the world’s first iron bridge continues to create ghost stories all of her own. We can now link three earthly departures to this house in the past decade alone, “The Artist” has taken his brushes to another part of the country and a ghostly acquaintance from summers past is seemingly on the road to his own personal hell. Thankfully I’m not driving this time. We got into all sorts of a hellish hullabaloo the last time.

Oh, and they found a secret room! For some unexplainable reason, that old house had flats numbered one through six despite there being only five apartments for rent. There’s a new owner now of that debt giving albatross and reason for my loud outbursts of injustice at a prig of a man in an expensive suit in an English court of law. My old friend joined the new owner who, with the aid of a sledgehammer and a presumed wanton abandon, smashed his way into a secret room full of cobwebs and dust, a single television and, after some major investigation, a false panel leading to a door, and a door when creaked and jarred open revealed an old painted number on it covered in dust.

The number 5.

“I’d like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves and I hope we’ve passed the audition!”

Thanks for reading. For less serious fare, a lucky dip from three of my most recently published articles. Alternatively, please see my archival lists for a cave of wondrous other delights:

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