Gene, I do hope you won't mind me contacting you like this. We haven't actually met but you are friends with my uncle...

Gene, I do hope you won't mind me contacting you like this. We haven't actually met but you are friends with my uncle...

It is an uneventful October afternoon in the school staffroom - lunchtime break. Some arguments going on as I had been stirring things up. It is a few days after Bob Dylan being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and I am taking full advantage of this news. I had been saying for years that Bob should get the award. When I first started saying this many years ago people laughed at me. But as usual I did know what I was talking about and now here it was and I am certainly making capital of the event.

BOB DYLAN   ...   winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature

Enough stirring accomplished I head upstairs to the sanctuary of my Sixth Form office...

I open up my emails. I delete the rubbish (in other words anything about UCAS. Tee! Hee! Hee!) and am almost deleting the email titled 'Gene, I hope you won't mind me contacting you like this. We haven't actually met but you are friends with my uncle...'  when  on a sixth sense I open it. Boy am I glad I did! 

...

All that afternoon the contents of that email kept running through my head. So much so that when I was on the phone ordering copies of NUTSHELLS CONTRACT LAW by Robert Duxbury I said Robert Detterling causing momentary confusion.

In the end I phoned Tony of the big saloon and arranged to talk to him about the email after work. We don't teach in the same school so I arranged that we meet up in the Harris & Hoole coffee bar in Uxbridge High Street at 5.00pm. I arrived at the coffee bar early. They do wonderful hand-roasted coffee here. I sat at a table looking out towards Uxbridge Underground Station. Just love that sculpture by Anita Lafford in front of the station. Entitled 'Anticipation' it is quite conventional but has a definite charm. I love the way families often congregate around it.

ANTICIPATION by Anita Lafford

I took out my mobile smart phone which has FM radio, plugged in my earpiece, and listened to the PM programme on Radio 4. Serendipitously there was a feature broadcast about Bob Dylan being awarded the Nobel Prize. It seems that Bob has so far not made any acknowledgement of being awarded the prize and it's not known if he will attend the award ceremonies - or even if he will accept the prize. Some nobody from the Swedish Academy is calling Bob's silence extremely rude. Good old Bob!

I was so engrossed in the radio that I didn't see Tony arrive. I went to the counter and bought Tony a chocolate muffin and a cappuccino and had another black coffee myself.

"Well, in a nutshell Tony, I have had an email from Detterling's ginger nephew. He has had a major rift for some years with his uncle and seems to feel that I may be in a position to help heal things."

"You sure the email is kosher?" Tony responded. "Oh yes. No question. Some details about my correspondence with his uncle only he could have known," I assured him.

Tony replied,"Gene you have always been known to lend a helping hand to those in need. I guess you will do the same here."

I hesitated a little and said, "Yes, I have had much correspondence with Detterling for almost twelve years now. However I have not had intercourse with his nephew. I wonder if I am the right man for the task."

"If Detterling's nephew has taken the trouble of contacting you then he must be confident you can help. I'm sure he will bend over backwards to make sure everything will pan out," ventured Tony.

...

Despite Tony's reassurance I remained in Hamlet-like indecision all evening. Should I reply to that email? I couldn't sleep. I got out of bed and knocked on Marianne's bedroom door. (Since the children have left home we have separate bedrooms. It's ideal really and saves Marianne a lot of discomfort when I arrive home from the Good Yarn Friday nights semi-plastered after six pints of Tuborg and maybe a couple of Jameson's Irish whiskies.)

I talked to Marianne about my dilemma over the email from Detterling's nephew. (She never reads my blog by the way.)

Marianne didn't want to know and asked me to close the door quietly behind me on the way out.

I got up again about half past four in the morning and went to my study, switched on the computer and replied to the email from Detterling's nephew. What had I unleashed?

Next day in school I kept checking my emails. (I have to do this surreptitiously as there was an issue some time back about me using social media in directed time. As always I brushed the matter aside. I think the young Deputy Head who was detailed to speak to me about this was totally overawed by me and my reputation.) Still, better be careful. I don't want anything blotting my copybook in my final months of teaching.

Nothing throughout the day. That evening the first proper intimations of approaching winter fell. It was a dark and stormy night. The wind howled and the heavy rain lashed up the drive sweeping over my exposed Nissan and the front windows of Chez Vincent.

About 9.30 I went into my study to put the finishing touches on my Sixth Form assembly talk and to do some further research on the ramifications of the case of Peter and Hazel Bull which I am working through with my Year 12 'A' Level Law cohort.

Peter and Hazel Bull

Ping! and lo and behold there it was on the screen; a reply from Detterling's gay nephew to my email. I was beside myself.

The email began:

Hi Gene,

Thank you so much for responding to me. I think something good will come out of this for all parties.

First let me say that I and my partner **** are big, big fans of you blog. We just loved your 'Sweeney' pastiche THEY LOOK A BIT GINGER TO ME GUV. Hilarious! In many ways you appear to be the new Jeffrey Bernard, Uxbridge the new Soho, and The Good Yarn the new Coach & Horses. We wish you every blessing with your fulltime writing career. Any publishing deals yet?

' I enjoy doing nothing.'  Jeffrey Bernard

    

Now I have begun this correspondence because I feel you are just the man to broker a peace in this long-standing rift between Uncle Detterling and myself. Yes, while it was very wrong of him to publish on your blog that I had committed suicide I must try to forgive him. He has posted to you that he may not have very long more in this Vale of Tears so I must act before it gets too late. 

I replied immediately:


Hi ****

So good to hear from you. I'm so glad to hear that you and your partner **** enjoy reading my blog. It's the first time my writing has been compared with that of Jeffrey Bernard. Usually the comparisons are to James Joyce, Albert Camus and Ernest Hemingway. Nevertheless I regard the Jeffrey Bernard comparison as a compliment. By the way your uncle Detterling's writing has often been compared with that of Melvyn Bragg. Tee! Hee! Hee! Oh! well. Maybe Melvyn Bragg is one of his literary heroes?

Melvyn Bragg  ...   Detterling's literary hero?

By the way I have often thought that the young Jeffrey Bernard bears a remarkable resemblance to the young David Essex.

The young Jeffrey Bernard

Yes, I may well be the man to broker a peace in this  feud between you and your uncle Detters. I have got to know Detters quite well over the years and figure I have a good handle on his psychology.

Yours etc

GENE

[By the way from this point onwards in this narrative I shall, in the interests of preserving their anonymity but giving them actual names, be referring to Detterling's nephew and his nephew's partner as Cosmas and Damian. I did toy with the idea of calling them David and Jonathan and then Sandy and Julian but no: Cosmas and Damian, two saints names always linked together, really fits the bill. Cosmas Detterling's nephew and Damian his partner.]

COSMAS and DAMIAN

To this email I had the following swift reply from Cosmas:

Hi Gene,

Yes you have indeed a good handle on Uncle Detters' psychology - in fact I remember a psychological profile of him that you compiled.  He is of course the archetypal pinko liberal Guardian-reading pseud that you depict him  - but there is more. Can I recount an episode from his youth that may be of interest to understanding his fragile psychological make up and his contradictory and often hypocritical stance on sexual matters?

The incident I want to describe dates back to when Detters was a Sixth Former. So I guess it must have been around the time of the Butler Education Act (Tee! Hee! Hee! as you would comment Gene.) Anyhow he was observed by his fellow students to be in possession of a then rather risqué publication entitled HEALTH & EFFICIENCY. He was hauled up to appear before a meeting of the Sixth Form students' council to explain himself. His explanation was that the magazine was not his but that he had bought it for an elderly house-bound neighbour. He was asked to wait outside while the council deliberated.

Eventually the chairman of the council appeared and read out to Detterling a prepared statement:

'Detterling we do not accept your explanation for being in possession of this publication. We believe that you have been using HEALTH & EFFICIENCY as an aide-memoir to masturbation. We therefore instruct all Sixth Formers to ostracise you forthwith.'

The chairman went on to say:

"And off the record Detterling let me say that you are displaying the subtle undertones of sexual abnormality which if left unchecked will curdle into pathology."

The student council chairman was gay and thereafter Uncle Detterling harboured a deep-seated subliminal resentment to gays.

Hope this is helpful Gene.

All the best,

COSMAS

Well, well, well. How interesting. The youthful Detterling sent to Coventry accused of engaging in the Sin of Onan. I wrote straight back to Cosmas:

Hi Cosmas,

Thank you so much for this. It gives me another angle on your uncle's tangled psychology. Maybe some insights here into his persistent anger and ever-present misanthropy?

 This was a strange incident indeed but I have one of equal strangeness and much more recent involving the old boy. 

I know that you and Damian have been following Detters' exploits over the years on the TES website. You remember a poster named Middlemarch? She was  a Headteacher and a very capable and well-informed lady. We formed quite a friendship over the years. Anyhow she told me that she once attended a TES meet - I think it was in Leeds - and had a close encounter with the canting old phony. It seems he approached her crooning: "I believe in miracles. Where you from? You sexy thing?" How corny. But it gets worse. He then came up with the most bizarre pick-up lines in the history of the universe. He leered at her in a most suggestive manner and said: "My dear has anyone ever mentioned that you look the spit image of Fanny Burney? Spankest thou? Hast thou ever been spanked? Wouldst thou spanketh me my dear?"

Fanny Burney

Needless to say faced with such weirdness Middlemarch got out  of there mucho pronto.

Will be back in touch soon Cosmas,

GENE

To this Cosmas replied:



Thanks Gene,

Another insight into the weirdness that is my Uncle Detters. In this Middlemarch interlude it sounds to me as if the old boy had been at the Wincarnis again.

And this business of his memoirs... you are sensibly taking that with a pinch of salt. It will never happen. Detterling has always entertained this delusion that he is a writer. I remember visiting him as a little boy and he had a designated writing room which he pretentiously called his 'studio'. My word was that 'studio' a desolate place? Spartan  and almost unfurnished with an Olivetti electric typewriter on a rickety trestle table and two pictures on the walls: framed photographs of Rock Hudson and Kathy Kirby.

Kathy Kirby

Rock Hudson

He always made a big deal about never being disturbed while he was working in the studio saying: "My boy, we writers are fickle creatures. The muse and our genius can desert us in a second's flash if we allow this world to intrude."

All the best Gene,

Cosmas

 To which I replied...


To be continued