"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away".
Philip K. Dick
Part 2: "I May Be Used, But Baby I Ain't Used Up"
“ . . . On the road again . . . Just can’t wait to get back on the road again . . .”
As I drove the tree-lined lanes through Kent, I thought about how Ken would try all manner of ways to get me to like Country & Western music. No matter how many times he tried, I could never share in Ken’s enthusiasm for those sad cowboy singers with their exaggerated southern drawl; accompanied by the dreary sound of a twangy acoustic guitar, a sad fiddle and a nauseating high-pitched, steel guitar. This kind of music went against the grain with anything that was transcendent and deeply spiritual and I could never take to it. With titles like: Get Your Tongue Outta My Mouth 'Cause I'm Kissing You Goodbye . . . You're the Reason Our Kids Are So Ugly . . . She Made Toothpicks Out Of The Timber Of My Heart, and Mama Get The Hammer (There's A Fly On Papa’s Head) – could’ya blame me?
I thought that if Ken could see me now and see what I was going through, he would probably lose no time in playing me a track from his compilation CD of Country & Western Greats . . . something like, I Keep Forgettin’ I Forgot About You . . . I’ve Been Flushed From The Bathroom Of Your Heart, or You Stuck My Heart In a Old Tin Can and Shot It Off a Log.
I laughed at how – while in the pit of a drunken depression (a luxury he would sometimes allow himself) – Ken could play these songs and even take them seriously! I suppose he had a lot to be depressed about when it came to fanatical women suffering from rational, raison d'être deficiency.
I remember one night being awoken by heavy banging at the door. I lay there thinking that surely someone else in the house must hear the banging and will go down to answer it? . . No . . . no . . . nothing.
Swearing to myself, I finally got up out of bed and putting on my jeans I drowsily and precariously made my way down the two flights of stairs to the front door. As I opened the door I was surprised to see two policemen standing there.
They were silhouetted by the headlights of a police car that was parked behind them. The tranquillity and quietude of my parent’s respectable, middle-class, urban road – disturbed by the police transmissions coming from the two-way radio in the car – was, if a little, disconcerting.
More than just a little anxious, I asked what the hell they were doing knocking at the door at 2:00 in the morning!
“Sorry to disturb you sir, but we want to talk to a Mr. Ken Ward. Does he live here?” “Well, yeah,” I answered, scratching my head and yawning, “Why . . . what’s it all about?”
“Are you Mr Ward?” the other policeman said. I shook my confused head and then called up the stairs to Ken, who by this time had half-dressed himself having been woken up by the commotion that had reached his bedroom.
Making his way downstairs Ken turned on the hall light. The policeman who was doing most of the talking then stepped forward – his features becoming more discernible in the light. He then told Ken that a Pamela so-and-so had phoned the local police station and had asked them to call round to this address to give him a message.
“She was frantic sir,” the young man said, “She wouldn’t give her own address and said that you should call her immediately as it was . . . dare I say it sir . . . a matter of life or death!”
Ken sighed the kind of ‘drained of energy’ sigh that someone would make after having got £30 out of the cash point machine only to go back to the car and find a parking ticket for £30 [1] – and went to the phone to call Pam.
“Hello?” he heard Pam say in a sweet unassuming voice. On hearing Ken’s voice she rounded on him:
“Where were you tonight? . . I thought you were going to ring me!”
“Do what?” Ken answered, “Wait a minute . . . you mean to say you got the police round here to get me to call you – so that ‘you’ could ask me WHY ‘I,’ NEVER RANG YOU TONIGHT! . . ARE YOU FRIGGING MAD!?” – An understatement . . . she was “barking!”
Ken then explained to her that 1) he had to stay at work to get an order out for Monday – which was true – one consequence of being a screen-printer [As regards the national statistic chart revealing occupational reasons given for grounds for divorce, printers are near the top] – and 2) that her phone was engaged every time he phoned her – which was also true. Fortunately, the police had gone by this time and so didn’t get to know that their call-out was a waste of the Met’s resources as well as taxpayers money.
The three of us would often muse about what Pam would do the next time Ken wouldn’t be able to call her or turn up. And on such evenings when he had that warm feeling in his “cricket set”, and was in two minds whether to see her or not – as by then it was becoming increasingly obvious that he had a neurotic psychopath on his hands – he would just sigh and say, “Oh well . . . If I don’t go round there tonight she might call in the SAS.”
Funny, the thought of paratroopers in black hoods landing around my father’s property didn’t seem that absurd especially after the drama Pam had pulled.
I laughed at the memory of that incident and the many others that came to mind – all of which had involved the sad but interesting and often chaotic life of Mr. Kenneth G. Ward . . . then the reality of driving to a real “dog house” was like a black cloud that had suddenly appeared over the car. I could only feel that like Ken’s recurring problem with women, my own life was again taking a similar backward turn. No doubt about it, when it came to women, my life seemed to follow the same path as his.
“Oh well,” I shrugged, “it was only going to be for a while; a temporary solution, while I looked for a proper place of my own” . . . uncertainty was certainly no stranger to me.
As I drove the “mad-mile” towards Addington and then Sutton I imagined the welcome prospect of a long-lasting UFO abduction to take me out of this mess – but to no avail, abduction only seems to happen to either those whose minds couldn’t be further away from imagining this possibility, or those who are not interested and don’t particularly want it – unless your name is Travis Walton [2] – which makes you wonder . . . if we really do create reality, then why is it that we tend to create the reality we don’t want?
My neural pathways then made a connection between the American deep-south; the home of those pathetic duelin’ banjos; where if you got married three times you’d still have the same in-laws: Yes . . . the same place where we get song titles like: I May Be Used, But Baby I Ain't Used Up and Pardon Me I've Got Someone To Kill . . . and the weirdest and funniest UFO incident on record . . . the Hopkinsville Goblins of Kentucky . . .
Could reality be any stranger than this cultural-mix between people who have been brought up on a national-diet of cowboy rednecks; whining about the sins of alcohol, broken hearts, loose women and wanton violence . . . and athletic, somersaulting goblins from the universe next door?
The month is August: the year is 1955 – two years before the birth of yours truly; the year when Einstein, the granddaddy of the Theory of Relativity, passed from this world into a somewhat relative universe to be with his departed relatives, and the year when James Dean turned off a road in this reality and took to the hyperspace-highway.
As these globally influential people left this world, they probably passed those who were going in the other direction . . . yes, the “alien goblins” who were visiting our world and who had come here to provide some amusement – just like computer-game “Lemmings” or “Gremlins;” here to brighten up a reality that in the aftermath of World War II had become as dreary and as boring as watching a season of Ruth Rendel Mysteries or maybe a spotty teenager chewing on his own toenails.
After all, we were still a year or two away from good ol’ Rock n’ Roll, Polka-Dot dresses, Sputnik and Hoola Hoops.
