Story - The Crackle

 "Room, play Beatles Abbey Road"

 "Shuh Duh" followed by Lennon's strained tones came together from the walls and Gregis sat down to his screens and the dreaded aeronautics homework.  

He wasn't making much headway on the basic principles of lift, but his brain knew all about that shiny hammer of Mr Maxwell.  And, preventing further progress, here was his grandmother coming into the room with her endless chatter.  But a diversion is a diversion....

"Oh I wish it would!"

"Nan?"

"The sun.  I wish it would come out, like Georgie says.  It's been raining for so many days now."  She sang along in the melodic alto that always surprised him, seemed so at odds with the small woman it floated out from.  Joined in the handclaps too, but suddenly threw in an extra loud one that jarred against her oneness with the music.

"What was that?"

"What?"

"That extra big clap you threw in?  It didn't seem to have much to do with the song."

"Oh, but it does boy, it does.  It's where the crackle goes.  It's the missing link to the past, it's the sound of my youth, and mother's and her mother.  It's real music.  I sometimes think your mother isn't really mine, the way she rejects it."

He looked sceptical, and being subjected to the ramblings of an old woman was something he'd got used to and generally ignored.  But this, and he couldn't have said why the thought came to him, this felt different.  Right enough, there was usually some grain of sense or truth in Nan's words, if you worked hard enough.  

"Is this going anywhere Nan?  What's Mum done wrong?"

"Wrong?  No, nothing wrong.  Not really.  Except by breaking the tradition.  By being so desperately 'modern' in everything.  For having no feel for her heritage."  She looked at him quizzically, teasingly.  "Why did you choose the Beatles today Gregis?"

"Um, I just, um, like them I guess.  Heard this one at Donal's place, his mum's really into this ancient stuff and it kind of, you know, talked to me..."  His voice tailed away, his sense of stupidity growing.

Nan clapped her hands again.  "Perfect.  Perfect.  You are one of us.  Maybe the gene just skipped a generation.  And a gender.  Have you ever wanted to be a woman Gregis?"

"Err, no, not really.  No, no, not at all, not really."

"Oh well, it was too much to hope for.  But that shouldn't stop us.  Next time you're at my house I'll show you what I mean.  Oh, and best not mention it to your mother..." 

And with that she left.  Gregis got no further with lift.

------------------------------------------

His curiosity raised, he went round to Nan's place as soon as he had time.  Two days had passed and he still hadn't come up with a single plausible explanation for that conversation.  Crackle?   That was a noise from physics experiments.  Or the unwrapping of packaging.

"Ah, Gregis, I didn't think you'd take long to come and see me.  Intrigued, eh?  Or just trying to humour a crazy old woman?"

Gregis blushed, not sure which answer was the correct one.  She took him into the main room.

"Room, lights fifty five" she commanded, and the lighting came on softly, but enough to see by.  "Room, deck shelf out, speakers out."  Sections of the facing wall opened up and three 25mm shelves slid out.  To left and right the shelves supported large boxes with a black mesh material covering their fronts.  In the middle sat a curious device, an antique of some sort, with actual physical knobs and buttons.  It was a low black box, sat on small rubber feet, with a rectangular clear plastic canopy on top.  Through which he could see a circular plinth with dulled pin sticking up in the centre, a curiously bent metal arm to the right, and more of those little hand controls. WTF?

"Room, record storage out, highlight Abbey Road."  From the bottom of the wall six large drawers slid out, each filled with... old bits of cardboard?  Gregis had no idea what was going on, or why was he being shown all this junk from the past. 

Above one of the drawers a narrow beam shone.  Nan went over and pulled out one of the old bits of cardboard, held it up for him to see.  On one side there was a lot of writing, some of it clearly a list.  On the other side a picture showing four guys in weird outfits, with even weirder hair, walking single file across a black and white striped bit of old road.  He looked askance at his gently smiling relative.  

From the cardboard she slid a circular piece of black plastic, on which he could see concentric lines, and a label in the centre.  She pulled up the see-through cover on the box, and placed the round plastic ever so carefully on the plinth, the central pin sticking through a hole in the middle.  She pressed a couple of buttons, adjusted a knob, then lifted the bent arm and lowered it very very slowly on to the outside of the now spinning piece of plastic.  He was still mystified until...

Shuh Duh, Shuh Duh, rattling percussion, deep bass.  #Here come old flat top,

He come grooving up slowly, He....#

They smiled at each other.  They listened.  The crackle came.  And some understanding.

It took patience, but Nan gradually explained what was happening, what the device was (a 'record deck', what the bits of plastic were (LPs, or records, or albums, of discs, or 33s, or simply vinyl, they had so many names for these things in the old days), how the sound was produced, how precious these items were now, how rare they'd become.  She allowed him turn the record over, to play the 'B side', made him take his time, savour the sensations of doing it all by hand.  Sense the value it created in being joined to the original creation.  

"And Mum never liked this?"

"Hated it.  Wouldn't have it in her home.  Backward she always said.  Like being a primitive.  Couldn't understand why you'd want to do something slowly by hand that was available in a few syllables.  She never got it at all.  I can see you do though."  Her smile warmed him through.  "Want to try another album?  Plenty here to choose from."

He nodded.  "Where does all this come from?  Why haven't I ever heard about this stuff?  How old is that Abbey Road music?"

She laughed, a rejuvenating giggle, and adopted a conspiratorial stance, came close.  "It first belong to my great great grandmother, back in the early days of the last century.  The LPs are mostly even older than that.  But they've been loved, cared for, and every little scratch and crackle is precious now, it's part of the music to me.  This equipment, and the collection, has been passed down through every generation since.  Until your mother decided to break with it.  So maybe you'll..."  She didn't get to finish.

"Yes.  Please.  Yes, definitely. Yes."

Although she was a good 20cm shorter than him her hug felt all enveloping, as welcoming a hug as he could recall.  

"Of course it will have to wait until you have a place of your own, where your mum can't interfere.  And it might be best if we kept this little chat between ourselves, eh?  But until then you're welcome to come here as often as you like and maybe I can guide you through what the collection holds?  Is that a deal?"

Nod, grin, nod, grin, exuberant laugh.

"That's done then.  So now... how would you like to be introduced to Steely Dan?  I think Pretzel Logic would be a good place to start..."

Story - The Wisdom of Jersey

 Eccentric would be the polite description for my Uncle Jersey.  Batshit crazy was my preferred term, but he had still been an important part of my early life.  I was grateful for all he'd done for me, in awe of all he'd done for himself, and always looked forward to seeing a man who could make me laugh like no other.  

Now he was gone.  I hadn't seen him for a couple of years.  The last time he came back to Kirkcaldy, for the trek to the place he still called home.  We'd emailed from time to time, even had three or four phone chats, so he was never compltely gone from my life.  Nor I from his.

So maybe I shouldn't have been too surprised by the phone call, but it still came as a jaw dropper all the same.  Norwegian solicitors don't call me every day.  She told me she was acting as Jersey's executor, could I confirm my home address please, and would I be able to travel to Vardo in the first week of February?   My travel expenses and accommodation would be paid for from the estate.  I asked what it was all about, but all she'd give me was that this was at the wishes of my deceased uncle, and she was not permitted to give me more information, except to say that it would be to my benefit to come.  Otherwise I would get nothing from the will.

His body had come back to Fife to be buried.  He was fondly remembered by his old friends and ex colleagues, so there was a decent turn out to see him off.  I was the only family member.  There weren't many of us left, and I was the only one who'd come back to our home town.  None of which explained why he'd want to make me travel out into the frozen back of beyond at the coldest time of the year.  But what else could I say but Yes?  He was my uncle, he was special to me, and, more than anything, I needed to know what the hell he was up to.  Jersey never did things without a reason, even if the reason sounded totally weird to everyone else.

My tickets duly arrived.  Plus full stage by stage instructions, and a shopping list with the means to satisfy it.  So I went shopping.  Cold weather gear mostly.  And a camera.  A better camera than I'd ever owned before.  Oh Jersey, what the hell am I going to be doing?

The travel date arrived.  Train to Edinburgh Airport, flight to Oslo, a night in the blandness of the airport hotel, another flight to Kirkenes, then the grumbling bus journey out to Vardo.  Darkness fell like a kidnapper's hood, the temperature plummeted, and I knew I was in Jersey-land.  Who would actually choose to live out here?

Next morning I received an alarm call I hadn't asked for, telling me to be at breakfast by eight thirty.  Elin Pettersen, the lawyer who'd called me to initiate this crazy adventure, would be joining me.  She turned out to be about my age, chestnut haired and brown eyed to confound my stereotypical Nordic expectations.  Severely pretty.  And fun.  She'd loved dealing with my uncle, he was so "different", and he was missed by many in the town.  Even if none claimed to have understood much about him.  His will tied in well with his personality, because it was "different" too.  Her emphasis of the word different was strong, the first time suggesting that craziness I knew so well, the second telling of... I wasn't sure.  I wasn't sure I liked ther not knowing.  But I'd come to do Jersey's bidding, and that's what I'd do.

I had a day to myself, but she could arrange for any outings that interested me (birds featured highly on the list of possibilities), and tomorrow I would be picked up at three and taken to the reading of the will.  I should pack my bag.  No, I wouldn't be going far, but I wasn't going to be back at the hotel for... a while.  Elin Pettersen was a tease who enjoyed a bit of mystery.

A big red SUV duly arrived the next day, driven by a big guy called Rolf who tended towards saying no words when a dozen or so might have been helpful.  Beside him sat another surprise.  Celia, my cousin who lived over in Massachusetts, who I hadn't seen since she emigrated ten years before.  And she hadn't a clue what was going on either.  One more stop before we left town, and now beside me was cousin Greg, who usually resided in Cork, I thought, although I'd later learn he'd been in Waterford since then.  And Roscommon.  And now Kilkenny.  Greg was the member of our family who was most like Jersey.

We were taken to a big lodge about ten kilometers out, given a key and our bags, and saw no more of Rolf.  So in we went.  More written instructions.  Whose room was whose, where the food was and what we should try making, to make ourselves comfy and wait for... whatever.  What else was there to do but as we were told, and begin the long process of catching up with each others' lives.  

Elin arrived after nine.  Elin was grinning from the confines of her Bibendum snow suit and furry halo.  Elin was having fun.  She sat us down and proceeded to read to us, slowly, clearly, frequently stopping to see if we'd understood.  The clarity wasn't lacking, nor the understanding of what it meant.  We all knew the Why too - Jersey.

We were to stay in the lodge for the remainder of our trip, a further four nights.  On the morning after the last night we would decide for ourselves who got the money the will provided, an amount which would only be specified on that day.  The decision should be based on one thing.  Which of us managed to take the best photo of the Aurora Borealis.  

Elin smiled broadly at our reactions to this news.

"Mr Howden said you would all look surprised." was her succinct comment.  We looked at her, we looked at each other.

"Anyone any good at taking photos?" I asked.  Two sadly shaking heads.  I joined in.  Jersey knew us, had known us, too well.  Elin told us she'd be back in a couple of days.  Outside we could see... nothing.

We spent the next couple of days trying to learn the complexities of the DSLRs we'd been told to purchase and bring along.  None of us had much of a clue about depth of field and shutter speeds and exposures, so we read the manuals and fiddled about and tried to figure out what worked and what didn't.  It didn't take long to realise that setting them to Auto wasn't going to do the job with the Northern Lights.  

It was a well chosen spot, but there were no lights the first night, just moon and stars and a peace none of us had ever known.  We kept learning about the cameras, but we learned even more about each other.  In childhood we'd spent a lot of time together, but that had ended over twenty years ago and there was a lot we had missed out one.  A lot of remembering of how close we'd once been, friends as much as relations.  

We got a few pics taken on night two, but even we could see they were a bit rubbish.  The third night was a lot better, both in the clarity of the lights and of the photos we all took.  We were starting to get the hang of it a bit.  By night four we were really starting to enjoy ourselves, all thinking we might have a new hobby, and wishing we had more time to get even better.  The lights were at their most spectacular around one in the morning, and we had to force ourselves to look to our lenses when all we really wanted to do was stand there and go "Wow!".

Elin turned up the next day, asking how we'd got on, had we decided who did best.  We all said there really wasn't much in it, but I said I thought it was Celia, Celia said Greg, and Greg said me.  The lawyer laughed again, her severity a thing of the past now.

"I have one final task to undertake before you leave us, to read out the final provisions of your uncle's will.  Please listen carefully.

"Ms Pettersen will read this to you when you have completed the task I set.  I hope she will be doing so to all three cousins, my beloved niece and nephews, reunited after so long."  Elin paused, looked at each of us in turn, nodded, and carried on reading.

"I hope that, when you leave here, it will be with fond memories of your crazy old uncle, and four things I've given to you as my parting gifts.  I don't give a shit..." Elin cleared her throat and suppressed a laugh "who took the best photos, I only hope you all had fun.  That would make all four of us, because I had a lot of laughs coming up with this idea."

" First off, there's a bit of money for each of you.  Not a huge amount, so don't get your hopes up.  Putting on this stunt meant keeping a fair bit aside, and I never was one for saving much.  Life was always there to be lived.  Elin will tell you what there is in a minute.  My second gift is a new skill, maybe even a new joy in life.  I knew none of you were photographers so I hope the learning has worked out, and that not only do you know how to use a camera, but you'll start to look at the world differently, with the eyes of the artist.  Number three is the experience and memory of one of the great natural wonders of the world.  I hope the chosen nights delivered the best of the spectacle.  And finally the gift I hope you're treasure most.  I've given you back each other.  Don't lose that one, it's precious.  I love you all.  Jersey."

Our reader stopped there, letting it all sink in, letting the tears come, letting us get together and hug.  Who knew our crazy old uncle was so sentimental, and so wise?

Elin told us about the money, which worked out around eighteen hundred pounds each.  Not life changing for any of us, but welcome all the same.  But we travelled back to Oslo as different people to those who'd passed through the airport less than a week before.  The guide books tell you that seeing the Aurora is something unlikely to be forgotten.  Jersey made sure of it.

Story - Strange Boat

 The end of lockdown appeared to be in sight.  The end of furlough, the end of sitting at home staring at the walls.  Joe Wicks and banana bread could go fuck themselves.  There had been no self improvement, no languages learned, no hobbies adopted.  Sleep, eat, game, drink, eat, game, film, sleep again.  On and on and on.  

In the beginning it hadn't seemed too bad.  They tried to set him up to work from home, but quickly realised it wasn't practical.  Too much hands on required.  So he'd been furloughed.  The reduction in income didn't hurt at all, for there was nothing to spend it on.  No gigs, no films at the cinema, no nights out at the pub.  He found himself with more money than month for the first time in his life.

There was even a briefly, socially distanced, period back at work, but it hadn't lasted long.  Back to his wee flat again, back to sleeping at any time that suited, back to only leaving the flat for milk, bread, beer and a few ready meals.  And cereal.  How many Coco Pops can one person eat in nine months?

But now.  Even the gaming held little appeal.  He'd tried to read, but his concentration was shot. In the beginning he'd gone out every day, into the Spring sunshine, he'd walked, he'd Whatsapped pals, called his mum, tried to build up a healthy routine.  By October it had all unravelled.  What was the point in going out if there was nowhere to go?  What was the point in talking to people if you couldn't arrange to meet up?  What was the point in trying to cook when it was just for you, and your taste buds had atrophied along with the rest of your body?   What was the point in anything?

2020 could get in the bin of memory.  So far 2021 could join it, although the recent government announcements flickered little spasms of hope before the eyes.  Except that he didn't know if he could cope with hope right now.  He didn't think he could cope with going out, with people, with work - with getting properly dressed or having to jump to the tune of the alarm.  He didn't think mornings existed any more.  The strangeness of this covid world had become a normality. 

This was making him ill, and he knew there was a need to break from his senseless nihilism.  He commanded Alexa to select a random track and half listened to what emerged.  He didn't recognise it at first, until the words connected in his synapses.

#We're living in a strange time

Working for a strange goal

We're living in a strange time

Working for a strange goal

We're turning flesh and body

Into soul#

"Alexa, repeat song" he pleaded.

#We're sailing on a strange boat

Heading for a strange shore

We're sailing on a strange boat

Heading for a strange shore

Carrying the strangest cargo

That was ever hauled aboard#

Strange Boat, by the Waterboys.  Strange times, even then, back in the eighties.  Mike Scott had it right.  Times were always strange, for strangeness was simply newness.  New situations, new people, new ways of working, new routines, new habits, new life.  New pandemics.  Always, for ever and ever.  Nothing was strange, just different.  

He felt surprisingly cheered by this revelation.  People demanded a return to 'normal'.  But this life, the one he was living, had become 'normal' through these strange months.  And when that 'normal' changed it would never be the same as the one he'd had before.  If he was heading for a strange shore that was fine with him.  He'd ride the boat and see where it took him.  

Story - Not My Fight

Midnight.  It had been a long shift.  The restaurant was packed out that night and I hadn't stopped for five hours.  Hence my dislike of Saturdays.  I was about to realise what an understatement that was.

We left when we'd cleaned up our own section, so it was usually odd ones and twos leaving for half an hour.  I was one of the last.  Stepped out the back door, hearing it clang shut behind me, and breathed in the cool night air.  It might be city centre air, but after the intense heat and steaminess of the kitchen it was like being up Ben Nevis.  As I looked up to the sky, I heard them before looking round.  A grumbling undertone, a questioning, the sound of tension.

At either end of the alley were five or six guys.  Hoodies, trackie bottoms, white trainers.  And, when I looked more intently, knives.  

"Where'd he fukin come frae?"  That from my left.

"Is he one a yous?"  From the right.

"Poofy wee git like that?  You takin the piss man?"

"Aye, looks like one o yous, eh?" 

Both groups took a few steps closer. I tried to remember how to breathe.  Gang fight?  Couldn't be anything else.  We all knew it happened round here, but so far our close had been spared.  At least as far as we knew.  Now they were very much here, and I'd walked out into the middle of it.  My brain fast forwarded through my options.  Didn't take long.

I could bang on the door and hope someone was there to let me back in.  But those blades were only about four metres away now, and they could be on me much quicker than anyone could open up.  Or I could try to talk my way out of it.  There was nowhere to run.  I talked.

"I'm no wi anyone.  Just finished my job for the night, I only want to get to my bed, so if you guys would like to let me pass..."  I looked left.  I looked right.  Passing through didn't look like an available option either.  

"You want him?"  From the left.

"Naw, you have him.  Needs to be oot the way and we can dae the business."  I didn't think being oot the way sound too enticing.

"Come on guys, I'm no a part o this.  You let me get hame and I'll leave you to get on wi... it."

"Is he takin the piss?"  From the right.

"Sounds like it, eh?"  From the left.

"You're deid pal."  Finality, from the right.  The one that talked stepped towards me, blade rising.

Right then the door behind me opened.  Fear turned me into an escape ninja.  Whirled round, shoved poor old Guy back and jumped in, grabbing the door bar behind me and pulling it tight shut.  

"What the...?"  Guy looked up from the floor, looking almost as scared of me as I had been a second before.  I told him the story.  We listened.  Talking.  Only talking.  My sudden appearance and vanishing act seemed to have created allies of a sort.  Eventually the voices ceased and we looked at each other, both sure that we weren't sure if it would be safe to venture that way again. 

We went back through the kitchen into the restaurant.  Only Tony and Bella left.  Our faces told them there had been trouble.  Tony called the police, they came to tell us there was nobody there and no signs of trouble, and they'd start checking round our back way more often.  They even drove me home.  I hoped I wouldn't need any more lifts. 

Story - The Results

 "It's for you" she said, handing me the white envelope, with the three blue letters in the corner.  N.  H.  S.  

I stood there, looking at the paper in my hand.  My name in the window.  This address.  She was right, it was for me.  She knew what that meant too.  "Sorry.  Or not sorry, more ..."  She wasn't sure what it was more of.

But I knew what she meant, so I gave the shortest of nods, and let her take me by the hand through to the sofa.  Sat me down, asked if I wanted something to drink.  The shake of my head was as curt as the nod had been.  Minimalist communication.  Minimising the outlets for the fear that was squeezing it's way out of the dormant recesses of my body and coming to the surface in wave after wave.  I saw the envelope was shaking.

She got me a glass of water anyway.  "Here, have a few sips of this, then we can open it together."  Sat beside me.  Close.  Close enough to put her arms round me if arms were needed.

I sipped.  I shook.  I wished I were elsewhere, in another time.  But it was now, it was here, this was happening.  "Do you want me to open it for you?"

I looked at her like she'd suggested we open a bar on the Moon.  Was this a possibility?  Didn't I have to do it?  Were there rules?  And if she did, what then?  The words on the page inside would remain the same, the meaning they conveyed would be just as it would be if I opened it myself, the rest of my life would be mapped out because it already was.  

"No.  I have to.  Do it.  Myself.  Thanks.  No."  The words came out, disjointed, like I had only learned  language in recent weeks.  It was her turn to nod.

"I'll get the letter opener" and she was off again, and back, and her speed took my breath away.  While I had gone into slow motion, a film at the wrong speed, a buffering screen, a semi animate being.  Gently she removed the envelope from my hand, deftly sliced apart the seal, gently placed it back in my fingers.  Waited.  Waited.

I looked into her eyes, read the concern, for me, and for her ability to find the right words, Whatever they might be.  "They haven't phoned.  So it's almost certainly good news.  If it was bad they'd have called us in."  An 'us' had never meant so much to me before.  I tried to grasp her positivity, seize it to myself, let it oil my movements, drive my fingers into doing what they had to do.  

The single A4 sheet came out easily.  Unfolded effortlessly.  But did not render up it's meaning so readily.  Not to me.  I saw the print.  I saw some letters.  They refused to join up into words and sentences, so I stared at the black on white, willing it to soak into my mind.

She beat me to it.  The hug enveloped my arms and body and moved the paper from my line of sight.  So I tried to read the hug instead.  It felt like a happy hug.  Was it a happy hug?  My cheek was damp from her tears.  She moved back a few inches.  Teeth showed.  In a smile.  A big smile.  Eyes shining with moisture.  A happy smile, happy eyes.  A happy hug.  "Oh Joe, that's wonderful."  And the hug returned, stronger, happier even.  

"It's clear?"

She pushed back, hands on my shoulders, the smile puzzled now.

"You didn't read it?"

"Couldn't."

"Let me.  Read it to you."  She took the fateful sheet, wiped her tears away, read out the fateful words, repeating those few key syllables.  Grinned.  

"Say it again."  She did.  And this time my brain cooperated.  Formed the sounds into words into meaning.  Told me what I wanted to hear and not what I'd dreaded.  I was in the clear.  It was over.  Life was back on.  Happy hugs on both sides.

Story - Gerry Mayson

 

"Pete - how are we going to carry that?"  I looked round to see Clodagh pointing at the one item I'd spent the day trying to avoid.  It had been placed in the corner for safety, but now we were getting close to clearing the room and it had returned as an issue.

"Take it with us in the car?"  She didn't even need to say anything.  I knew how daft an idea that sounded, taking a thing of that size and fragility on seventy mile trip with a couple of five year olds.  "OK, so we leave it to the pros.  But pack it up ourselves?"

The object in question was an intricately decorated pot about seventy centimetres high and thirty five in diameter at it's widest point.  It had been a wedding present from my folks, a huge surprise at the time, and we both loved and feared it.  Because this wasn't something they'd picked up at the garden centre.  This was a Gerry Mayson.

That was a name I first heard when I was sixteen.  As part of the utterance "Bloody hell - Gerry Mayson?  Really?  What is the bloody Turner Prize anyway?" from behind my father's newspaper.  The tabloid lowered to reveal a stunned facial expression and no further sound for a few seconds.  Then he told us who this Gerry guy was.

They'd been at school together.  When I say together I mean that they were in the same year.  Gerald had been one of the bright kids, one of the poncey arty ones that my dad's crowd shunned.  There might even have been a bit of bullying, although my father didn't quite phrase it that way.  But they had ended up going to hospital together, both having been in the wrong place when light fitting fell from the ceiling, and that created some kind of a bond.  Not enough of a bond that they kept in touch after school days, but sufficient for Dad to feel some connection to what he'd just read.

Gerry Mayson had won the Turner Prize for his innovative ceramic creations, and the social and political commentary they resonated with.  My determinedly lowbrow father couldn't have told a Rembrandt from a Kawasaki, but even he realised this was a big thing, and he felt some pride by association.  But I knew it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference to him.

I was wrong.  When an exhibition of Mayson's work came to town he insisted on a family outing.  And there was the man himself, revisiting his childhood haunts.  That hospital trip came in handy, allowing Dad to remind the potter of their common experience, and their unlikely relationship was resusictated.  For me, with artistic pretensions my parents had never understood, this was a godsend, and suddenly my painting wasn't just the "fannying about" it had been previously.  Gerry got my folks to take me seriously.  Better still, Gerry took me seriously, liked what I was doing, and provided me with all sorts of help.  I would never have got to where I am now without a bit of potter patronage.

So when my parents presented us with the pot a few days before our wedding day I was bursting with emotions.  Pleasure at them coming up with a gift so imaginative and personal.  Terror at them coming up with a gift so simultaneously beautiful, fragile and uniquely irreplaceable in the universe.  Bafflement at them coming up with a gift that must have required my mother to fellate Gerry Mayson every week for a year for him to present us with a large, shapely, glazed tribute to our connubial moment.   And now it had to survive a house move.

So we found a box.  We put it in the box nestled in bubble wrap, swaddled in towels, cocooned in a duvet.  And then into another, spacier box that was really a wardrobe and gripped the smaller massive box in five winters worth of coats and anoraks and assorted cushions in floral prints and jazzy designs.  It was the Amazon package of the house removal world.

Then we let these professional carrying and shifting people take it away and into their lorry and out of sight, and imagined the pot in a million shards in a motorway pile up.  People died in the pile up but all our concerns went into the colourful fragments waiting to be unearthed by firemen.  They say moving house is one of the most stressful events in anyone's life.  And most people, I suspect, don't have a big, shin,y multi coloured pot, lovingly created by an internationally renowned artist, that commemorates the biggest day of their lives and must 'be there' until they become corpses.  Do they?

We got in the car.  We remembered to bring the children.  We drove the seventy miles, making reassuring noises, smiling reassuring smiles.  We watched the professionals unload.  We watched them unload the wardrobe containing the box containing the pot and the cold weather garments and the soft furnishings.  We couldn't hear any rattling.

Settle in first.  You have to, don't you?  Kettle, plates, get a takeaway, let the kids be excited, makeshift bed making, get the kids into bed, pour a large drink.  It's ten thirty.  The wardrobe is sitting there.  We talk about putting it off until the morning, but know we won't.  I open the wardrobe.

Out they come.  Cushions and coats.  The big box.  A duvet.  Towels.  That's handy, we need towels.  And then, bubble jacketed, the pot.  There have been no untoward noises.  We can breathe, almost.  Unwrap, carefully, fretfully.  It is as was.  No chips, no scratches, no hint of potlessness.  We can go to bed, we can sleep.  I will not have to pretend to my parents that we've moved to Peru.  I can face Gerry Mayson.