Hunter S Thompson, Richard Nixon & ghosts in the sun of Toy Town (part 1)
Another Day in Paradise
“Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning”
Hunter S Thompson
It was a little after the 12 bells of Noon from St Luke’s Church as I descended the 110 stairs from the church grounds high on the hill and above the toy town of my spiritual home of Ironbridge. The stairs are a daunting prospect in the daylight of the brightest and clearest summer’s day so far here in England and at night they transform into a treacherous descent even William Peter Blatty couldn’t possibly envision for the denouement of his Zeitgeist horror book and film for the ages. It wasn’t the power of Christ that compelled me to take this particular trip today or even many years ago and on nights under crystal clear skies with only bats and owls and the creatures of the night for company. If I were to tell you only a fraction of what happened on those nights you wouldn’t believe me, let alone the nut of those twisted stories best forgotten and left with the shard remnants and memories of a past left in its rightful place. Dangerous tangents eh? Only for the brave and foolhardy among us.
There were no bats or owls today of course but memories of my time and life in Ironbridge come easily when reading Hunter S Thompson under a blazing sun. This is the third time I’ve read “The Great Shark Hunt” by Dr Gonzo with the other two occasions being exactly a decade ago and after reading and falling in love with Thompson’s greatest collection of writing whilst living in Ironbridge I immediately started reading it all over again and this time on the idyllic Spanish island of Marbella and among the semi-rich, semi-famous and semi-literate patrons of Puerto Banús. Hunter would have been in his element in this beautiful part of our world and I imagine him even now gently inserting a Dunhill cigarette into his holder before enjoying a beer and watching the shoals of fish gallivanting in the harbour opposite the “Pizzeria Picasso” in the playground for the idle rich and fabulously wealthy.
Beware dangerous tangents, for they are everywhere.
Before settling down in the church courtyard with the Good Doctor and his ongoing evisceration of everything that Richard Milhous Nixon ever stood for, I’d already said hello to Fred and Mary, my Ironbridge swan friends, and spent roughly 45 minutes feeding the lovebirds and a small pack of hungry ducks. “Beth’s Bench” behind me was constantly busy with a rotating cast of tourists eager to take a few minutes in the sun and in wildly different circumstances from the night this bench was christened in a past best forgotten. Beth (name changed to protect the innocent) was my companion to Marbella all those years ago and strictly speaking I was the companion or rather the “Vain Man” too wrapped up in himself, his book and his Spanish t-shirt suntan to care about pressing the self-destruct button on a year long love affair that should have resulted in the beautiful Irish/English firebrand becoming my third and last love of my life, but thankfully for all concerned I pressed the big red button before she finally stamped it through to the centre of middle earth. More memories of Ironbridge. More characters collected along life’s journey. More ghosts of the past.
More dangerous tangents.
More slippery slopes.
Toy Town was a hive of activity with the purest milk of human kindness yesterday. It was the Monday after the Sunday before, and a day when my spiritual home was humming and alive and chock full of humanity enjoying a little piece of heaven here on planet earth. Nowhere near as busy as the day before, but each and every shop was wide open for business, a roaring trade in ice-creams continued alongside a never ending stream of dogs and dog walkers, the former desperate for a taste of their human companion’s ice-cream or a dip in the river afforded the fortunate few whilst the latter watched on in encouragement, but also much later on in our story today. For now, we’ve descended the stairs into the piping hot sunshine of Ironbridge, smoked a cigarette at the War Memorial whilst gazing upon the magnificence of the “Grand Old Lady” and after crossing the bridge we’ll take up residence with the Good Doctor in the best seat in the house beside the river before I tell a stranger where and when I learned to play chess and how I bested “Ironbridge George”, Toy Town’s most colourful of characters.
Part 2: Coming Soon.
Part 2: Coming Soon. Whilst you hold your breath and try to contain your excitement, here’s one of my nine self-published books you’ll easily find on Amazon via the link provided and suffice to say, my spiritual home features heavily in any and all of my writing.
"Tales I Tell Myself" - link to Amazon
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.