Carol Clewlow - Not Married, Not Bothered

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that a man stuck with a daughter around the house who shows no sign of getting a job will grab the first opportunity to do something about it. George Gordon was no exception. He moved swiftly the day that old khaki Ford Pop puttered to a halt. He knew that car and more importantly he knew its owner. Head bent beneath that upraised bonnet that day, he gave the sort of horror-struck intake of breath that would have won him Best Actor from the Academy of Motor Engineers if only the judges had been there to hear it. Its owner, with four children to support and a too substantial mortgage, blanched at the sound and at the mournful shake of the head that accompanied it.

Thus it was that Harry Oates, editor of the Free Press , got his car mended for free and I got a job on this paper.

My current incarnation here is my second. It’s a nice irony, although not by any means an accident, that that same Sophie Aitchison is now my editor.

Sophie and I have now spent a considerable part of our lives working together. Not long after I left to travel, she also departed, to a down-table sub’s job on the Bristol evening paper. She was still there, although rising up the table, when I returned from my travels. No sooner had I set foot in my home town, than certain circumstances necessitated a flight from it (all will be explained), so that for a while – for the second time in our lives – we lived together. Her position with the paper meant she was able to put in a good word for me when a job came up and I subsequently spent the best part of seven years there in the end, first on news and then as a features writer. I left for what would prove to be an unhappy spell in freelance public relations, something which at least had the advantage of propelling me into that English degree at the university. It was here that I started to write, producing the first of the ‘Aunts’ books for which I am now (mildly) famous.

After some success I was able to give up the day job (I had moved the twenty-five miles back to my home town by then; bought this cottage). Over the years the media group that owned Sophie’s paper had acquired various weeklies, one of them being the Free Press . When the job of editor came up she applied for and got the position, which proved to be a godsend for me, since by this time my life, for various reasons, no one reason, had fallen into financial disrepair and I was in dire need of some extra income. Treating accusations of nepotism with the contempt they deserved, she offered me a job so that today my life has come full circle. I’m back where I started, something which no longer worries me.

Thus now I work three days a week at the Free Press (Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays should you wish to contact me). This helps cover the bills and at the same time leaves me plenty of time for my writing. Lest you should think I am the subject of any favouritism from my editor, given our previous association, I can assure you this is not the case. I get the same treatment, the same bum jobs as everyone else in the newsroom, something confirmed one Wednesday a couple of weeks after the Fleur episode when I found myself marked down to cover the latest example of New Age lunacy in my home town – the opening of Bad Ponytail Peter’s new phobia clinic.

OK: some facts about my home town. First off, I won’t be naming it because there’s a pair of genuine olde worlde sixteenth-century stocks at the bottom of our High Street and I don’t want find myself sitting in them. *And while I don’t believe in all this witchcraft crap, still, with a coven on every street corner (each with accompanying website) you can’t be too careful.

You see it’s Flake City, my home town, the Wacko Capital of the Kingdom. Other places have the Town Band, the Soroptomists, the Gardeners’ Club. We have the Tantric Drummers, the Wicca Society and Friday Night Channelling. Some people believe the ley lines conjoin in my home town. Some think we’ve been visited by aliens (something I give more credence to than most but only because of my mother). Some think that Joseph of Arimathea visited, that King Arthur is buried here. *What’s certain is that the myths are pressed down hard, layered like the peat in the moors, and that now we dig them up and shovel them out the same way in every New Age shop and emporium. It’s been this way since the mid-sixties when the first tepee went up, the first long-haired aristo clip-clopped in on his horse-drawn caravan.

Today, you can buy fifty-six different varieties of Tibetan Bell in the High Street of my home town along with every conceivable shape of crystal and candle.

The problem is you’re screwed if you want half a pound of tomatoes.

Bad Ponytail Peter’s already on the pavement outside the Avalon Alternative Health and Therapy Centre †when I arrive with Danny snapping away in front of him. Once approaching him from the back like this would have been the best way to observe the long straggle of greasy grey from which he got his name. But then one day, possibly because of that grey, he shaved it off.

‘Shocking,’ Danny said the first time we saw him without it. ‘The loss of a national treasure.’

It was more as a tribute than anything else that we decided to keep the name. Thus, shaven-headed as he is, he remains Bad Ponytail Peter, a.k.a. Peter Tarantine, Reiki Grand Master, author, *Thought Field Therapist, re-birther, channeller, chakra cleanser, aura diviner, director of the Wicca Academy …

‘He’s also a Grand Vizor …’

‘I’d never have known.’

Which is why Bad Ponytail Peter will be conducting the ceremony at Magda’s wedding.

This being the Flake Date of the Month it’s no surprise that Magda’s here drinking her dandelion wine, biting into her lentil vol-au-vent, or that there are more aromatherapists, reflexologists, Indian head massagers, I Chingers, crystals healers and white witches that you could shake a stick at (shaking a stick somehow seeming an appropriate piece of imagery for this bunch with their assorted weird modus operandi ).

‘So, you think there’s a demand?’ I asked Peter (my standard business start-up question). He gave me a pitying look through the new rimless glasses he’s adopted, probably to make him look more like a therapist.

‘My dear,’ this is in his smooth, creepy Aleister Crowley voice, ‘the world is awash with phobias.’

Now, before we go any further, I should like to point out that whereas I don’t have the first idea where my chakras are, I do know I’d have to be held down by a team of ten before I let Bad Ponytail Peter cleanse them, plus I wouldn’t let him near my aura.

‘Many people’s lives are ruined by phobias, not least because they don’t even realise they have them,’ he said, and I pretty much knew what was coming. ‘For instance, they may have problems with relationships .’

He pronounced the word in the manner of an accusation, so that I figured if I could open up his forehead, pull it down like a hatch I’d see the vision he has of himself, in Joy of Sex mode, leading some luckless female through an ecstatically gymnastically challenging position. He’s pitiless when it comes to sex, according to Magda, who had an deeper than usual channelling session with him one Friday night.

‘He’s just so serious ,’ she said after one glass of wine too many. ‘He won’t give in. You just feel this terrible responsibility to have an orgasm.’

Meanwhile, it seems there’s no end of the weird things people can be scared of. The list on the leaflet I picked up from Peter was full of them – clowns, chickens, feathers, chins …

Chins?

‘I mean, how can you be scared of chins?’