Many years ago my friend Darren Cooper, who ran our west Region services operation invited me to go persuade him to change the way he was doing business.
He lived on the second floor of a stunning old townhouse in La Quartier Latin in Paris. The office was MILES away and full of busybody execs so we met at his house to discuss things through.
It was June and he had the huge windows thrown open to the city busyness. We stat at his huge, dark oak table, with a tatty guitar leaning against the opposite end, and an amplifier facing us blankly.
Every couple of hours the intensity of our debate would fade, and we would pop to the ground floor where there was a very old cafe. We would talk music, and joke and peoplewatch as he smoked and while sipped glorious cafe au lait.
By six we had knocked together a plan of action. Darren theatrically closed both our notebooks and said "Dave, I'm hungry, enough bullshit for one day !".
He led me down and through the bustling throng to a backstreet restaurant. Darren embraced the fat , sweaty chef like a long lost brother, as they chattered in colloquial French. I smiled, picking out about every third word ! Did he have any canard du pays et champignons today ? Qui ? Tres bien !
" Sit down Dave, lad, you're in for a treat".
I was going to eat wild duck with wild mushrooms cooked like only the French can cook.
Darren and I sipped wine and water while Mm Du Fage busied himself.
The meals arrived in due course: richly steaming, diamond berries in the jus, marvellous. The Canard was so gamey I almost retched to begin with: Darren held my arm " persevere my friend, this is a delight once you savour it". He was right. Two mouthfuls in the overwhelming flavours fell apart and the wild oregano, dill, saltfish, grass and everything else that defined the duck's wild life burst forth. I have rarely encountered such complex flavours.
Simply stunning. We ate in near silence as the cafe buzzed with cognoscenti. A carafe of earthy Pinot Noir washed this repast down, so young and fiery that it still carried a fine spritz.
A slow meal fully savoured, followed by chat over sipped digestifs and we clapped hugs around each other and the chef before wandering back. Dark now, the streets shone with a million clipped soles. We ducked into Darrens local pub "the Long Hop" for pints of cuba libres and a game of pool with locals.
Around ten thirty we got back to his apartment windows now gaping to the moon. Across the street , the mirror image house to this one had a roof garden. Someone was playing the harmonica on there, very well.
Darren picked up his old strat from against the table, and began playing a simple 12-bar. After a distant laugh the two of them syncopated across the street.
I was a better player than he, but by the time Darren gave me a go, the moment was dwindling. After a memorable few bars my accompanist shouted and waved and fled indoors. Only the breeze and the music of Paris' very heart beating remained as the amp hissed.
We chatted, sipped cognac. I crashed in his spare room, no way was I spoiling this night with a taxi ride and a sterile hotel.
I dozed off , the Paris night kissing my cheeks. A good day.
Soul Tattoos
Reflections on some of the people and places who have left indelible marks on my first half century.
Friday 12 May 2023
People who tattooed my life - 16 - Darren a Paris
Monday 1 November 2021
15 - Stroke episide 3 - Enter the torture queen !!
Number 15 - Stroke of luck part 2 - Coming Home
Number 14 - Mister Lacunar Stroke ! (stroke journey part 1)
Saturday 12 December 2020
People who Tattooed my life : 13. Brightey
“I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.”
Thursday 17 October 2013
People who tatooed my life 12: Kim
My time with IBM ended badly but , but I had some amazing adventures, many that I could not even have drawn a picture of back as a nipper growing up in Smethwick.
One such adventure was my first trip to South Africa back in '01.
The chap who had asked me to visit a client in Jo'burg, Jake, was a notorious bon-viveur. He had a girlfriend who danced at the "Ranch" girlie bar, outside Jo'burg and because he was driving me around in Za I would visit her with him out of hours after our work, but before the club opened.
It was very interesting for me to see a lapdancing club during the day: in daylight the major security precautions could be more easily seen, and there was an air of tattiness and decay on the decor. Once inside Jake met with his girlfriend and left the dance hall for a while. I was left in the main room with the girls who had arrived early to stretch and warm up or whatever for their shift in a couple of hours time.
A few of the girls came over to say hello - Jake was very well known here ! One girl, Kim, came over to me and just started a conversation. She was a statuesque and impossibly beautiful coffee-skinned girl, made more lovely by the modest baggy gym clothing she was wearing instead of her dancers uniform. All the girls were pleasant, pretty and vulnerable away from the make-up,lights and pumping music.
So Kim stated : I'm a friend of Jakes? Sort of. Would I be coming by later ? Not sure - if local team wants to then yes. Do I come to dance clubs often ? Oddly enough I had to admit - I had been to quite a few. Lots of colleagues, and clients liked to spend their downtime having a beer, and ending up a a "gentlens club". So when i was travelling Id'take the local team out for a beer, and I'd step in with anything they wanted to do. This was just hanging out , nothing "Corporate". if they wanted to end the evening at a lap-dancing bar, we'd tag along.
Kim explained: " we get a lot of sad suits in here. You don't strike me as a sad suit. You married ?".
I showed her pics of my family. She was entranced;asking about school; my kids' loves and pets. friends, adventures. What about her family ? All back home in another unnamed country. She only had her boyfriend / manager here in Za. She didn't mind dancing but didn't really like the extras that made her boyfriend / manager the real money.
I said that it must be horrible doing a job you don't like, what else would she like to do ? "I wanted to teach" she said. " I started doing this to pay for my degree...but it sort of took over years ago".
I said I thought she'd make a lovely teacher and she got a bit upset. "My Boyfriend doesn't want me to be a teacher yet" she explained.
We talked about stuff for another fifteen minutes or so until Jake emerged from another room with his girlfriend. I stood up to go and offered Kim my hand. She declined it and gave me a hug instead saying: "You can have a free one after work tonight if you like". I told her I was flattered but that I am sure my wife wouldn't be very appreciative of it !
I took Kims hand and said: " I hope you get to be a teacher one day. It was lovely to meet you Kim".
Off she went. I never returned to the Ranch, as the client chose a meal at the word's best steak restaurant instead of a dancing evening.
I often thought about the girls and Kim expecially after I returned home. I had built a picture for myself of the "kind of girl" who would work as a lap dancer, or even a call-girl but none of the girls I met at the Ranch were anything LIKE that stereotype. Smart, vulnerable, sexy, yet even homely when freed of make-up and lights. Just father's daughters like my own who found themselves on a path in life they did not expect in many cases.
I bumped into Jake three months later in the coffee bar at our Heathrow location. Hands shaken, backs slapped. Thanks for my help.
Jake wasn't with his dancer girlfriend any more. By the way, did I know Kim took her own life soon after we met? I was shocked and horrified.
What a waste. All those kids who never got to receive Kim's enthusiasm and care through teaching...Rest in peace beautiful one. I will never forget you.
Sunday 16 June 2013
People who tattooed my life #11 David Jackson, and the Jackson family.
David Jackson and his family ( Brother Kevin, Sister Lynn) lived MILES away in Wansbeck court ( about 500 yards now but its a trek to a six year old !) and his mom Rita used to stop off at our house on the way to school to collect my mom and I. Our moms were fast friends considering the generation gap and canted away all the walk along Oldbury road. Mom was almost fifty by then, as I was a LATE surprise baby ! Rita Jackson was slim, 15-20 years younger and angularly beautiful, and always wore fashionable clothes. When I was little she always crouched down to my level to talk to me. I never forgot that. Its something I've always done with kids too because of her example, and how good it made me feel...
Anyway during those walks to school, Dave and I would chase ahead in the race to the underpass where our moms would leave us to cross in safety. All along the walk Dave and I would run and skip and talk rubbish until we were crying with laughter. Every day. We'd pick up some other kids on the way: Alan Brace, David Horrocks... man...Andrew Cooper...
An example of the nonsense we'd talk I still recall: in about year four when we would have been around 9 or ten, Dave and I were trying to decipher some of the strange graffiti on the underpass wall. Dave asked me " Dave... whats a fook ?" Clueless ( I never heard an adult cuss like that until I was sixteen and that was not in my house!) I answered " I think its foreign" .... Innocent times.
We were an odd couple: a bit like Laurel and Hardy: David was a slender lad whose school uniform hung about him like Just William, and his pockets were full of SUCH stuff: acorns, a catapult, some blu-tack, miniature darts...you name it. I was a foot taller and a yard wider ! It didn't matter. Humans only learn to care about our differences when we get much older....
Every day at school lunchtime we'd re-enact a castle invasion using invisible swords. It seemed everybody in the school would join in !
When I discovered music, and we started at Holly Lodge secondary school together Dave and I diverted paths a little: I started to hang with music fans, and Dave being a lover of Abba rather more than Led Zeppelin, flocked with birds of his own kind. We still walked to school together each day and still laughed though.
There came a time when one of the streets we walked along to school was being demolished. Dave always had a FASCINATION with finding useful things amongst tat and we spent at least an hour per day crawling over the demolition site. We found old money, some tools... some wartime documents and one day.... a vibrator.
Dave picked it up and waved at at me laughing : this shiny blonde plastic member ! Unfortunately just as were were hitting each other with it and giggling Harold Collins ( Mash!) and his mates were passing and saw us ! We endured a hail of stones and abuse, but we couldn't stop laughing !
Dave hurled the dildo away and it arced like a swallow before bouncing right off the head of Phillip Foster, one of our persecutors ! I am weeping with laughter as I replay that movie in my head !
Christmases were always lovely at the Jacksons' especially when Dave and I were old enough to sample a drop of alcohol ! Jon and Rita would lead the laughter, John's booming chortle making everybody else laugh too. We weren't laughing next day after our first alcoholic party at Dave's though aged about 14: a bottle of rum and black made us very ill indeed !
Later we would accompany John into the Spon Croft for a pint. In those days it was still thronging with Chances glassworkers slaking their thirst after a shift. I felt so grown up !
By then Dave and I were seeing less of each other: we were seventeen or so. I'd just got a car and Dave had an apprenticeship at a local auctioneers. Oh and little Lynn Jackson overnight had become absolutely gorgeous by the way ! But alas she had a boyfriend :(
I'd always stop and chat with Jon and Rita and Dave or Kevin as we bumped into one another but work and stuff made it less frequent. By the time I married and moved out aged 22, we rarely saw each other. Never fell out though we were just living our lives.
Years later I was drinking in the Barleycorn in Bearwood with my mate Andy and who should be in there but John and Dave Jackson with Kevin, and also John Mortimer ! So lovely to catch up : Dave and Kevin were successful antiques dealers and still as funny as anything ! We promised to meet up etc etc....and of course we never did.
When I joined Facebook a few years later the first thing I did was try to seek out the Jacksons but had no success. When Lynne found me much later and I heard the desperate tragedies that had struck down dear John and Rita and also my mucker Dave I wept. Properly wept. Nobody deserves to suffer and die young, but they in no way merited the devastation that visited them. John and Rita suffered terribly from brutal cancers and died close after one another. Dear David died at forty leaving a wife and kids. What a shocking waste of everything they all were and the potential they still had unfulfilled.
While I still sting in the heart when I think of their loss I am also grateful for the part they played in my young life and for the way we laughed.
And of course it is wonderful to be in touch once again with Lynn - still as lovely as when I took her to the Walsall arboretum lights one year in a failed attempt to woo her !
Thank God for the Jacksons and may He bless and keep then until we meet again. And Rita I still always bend down to speak to children.