The Empire Cafe, Soho (2012) by Bobby Stevenson

As a haven for the unloved, the eccentric and the lost,  the Empire Cafe was perfectly situated in a little corner of Soho. It also prided itself as a home for those on their way up and a passing place for those on the way down. 

It had been known over the years by several different names, some of which you most definitely would have read about, but its charm was in the fact that it had served coffee, and later tea, from the same premises for over three hundred years. There is a signature carved into the wood that suggests Benjamin Franklin had happily visited the place and it is known that Samuel Pepys mentioned the Cafe in his diaries.

If you’ve ever been to London and drifted around that part of town then I know you must have passed it. Perhaps you drank in it and were unaware of where you were. Perhaps you hadn't see the Cafe because you were looking up at some other building or maybe you had just been checking your appearance in the reflection of the Cafe’s window; but the place is there, I promise you.

One sunny afternoon, just after I returned home from a bad war in North Africa, I walked through its doors and never really left. I sometimes feel the place had been waiting on me. 

It was run by Mister Chestnut and he was never referred to as Andrew Chestnut, or even Andy. He was just Mister Chestnut, plain and simple, and when he and his Father both ran the place, then he was simply known as Junior. 

In the mid 1700s, it was rumoured that the Hellfire Club met in secret at the coffee shop and that one night it was lost on the turn of a card. One of Mister Chestnut’s ancestors was asked to hold on to the property until the rightful owner came to claim it. He never did, and there was talk that the owner had been killed in a duel. So through this one act of God, the Chestnuts became part of the Soho establishment. 

I was taken on in 1946 as chief dishwasher and toilet cleaner and I loved it, every grimy second of it. Those who used the place were a who’s who of all the movers and shakers of their day. In the late evening, when we closed up shop and over a hot cup of Java, my employer would tell me stories of the past, those he had witnessed and those he had been told about by his Father and his Grandfather; all the wonderfulness that had been passed down through the family.

Regardless of claims by other establishments and by other people, Grandfather Chestnut swore that he had watched Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels spend most of their days in the corner table furthest from the door, writing the Communist Manifesto.

“Always with the one coffee between them” his Grandfather had told him, “one coffee for the whole day”, he added, then he would let out an eruption of a laugh. 

Mister Chestnut told me of  the “saddest man who ever walked through those doors”.

“Must have been February, yes it was, it was February..”

“What year?” I asked him.

“Let me think. 1895, as sure as eggs is eggs, ‘cause it was just after my fourteenth birthday. In he came, all broken. He sat down over there and I asked him if he wanted something to drink. ’Hemlock, dear boy, hemlock' . I asked my Father for hemlock and he clipped me around the ear. ’Don’t be so bleeding stupid’ said my Father, ‘You must have misheard him.’ So I walked back towards the table when I spotted that he was sitting with a young man, older than me but younger than him and get this, they were holding hands. The young man read from a card that the older man has passed to him ’For Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite – Good God Oscar, my father can’t even spell. The ignorant beast.’

“I only saw the older man once again when he came in a few weeks later. He had aged so much in that short time, and as he sat down all the rest of the people in the cafe got up and left. Apparently he went to prison  not long afterwards."

 "But there was a more curious one than that” said Mister Chestnut, “just let me put on another pot of coffee as I think you may need it.”

When the coffee had been brewed and we were both sitting comfortably once more, the storyteller continued. 

“He was a little man, spoke with a German accent. Now I know what you are thinking young man, you are saying to yourself that the description would fit many people. And you would be correct to make that assumption, except I remember him for something he said. He shouted at me that I was to bring him a coffee and that is what I did. As I approached the table I could hear him laughing, so I smiled back at him. A happy customer is a returning customer and I was just about to tell him to recommend us to all his friends when I saw what he was so happy about, on a newspaper sitting on his table were the headlines ‘Over fifteen hundred sank to death with giant White Star steamer Titanic’. “Bloody rich Jews” he said, “best place for them”

“To say I was shocked, disgusted even, that a man like this could say such evil things about other human beings. I was about to ask him to leave when a second man came in, his brother Alois, I had seen him in the cafe before. If I remember correctly, he and his brother Adolf had lived in Liverpool for a while to avoid conscription to the Austrian Army.”

“Not Adolf Hitler?”I asked.

“The very same.” Came his reply. 

Mister Chestnut kept me on for most of ’46 and ’47 washing and cleaning until one day he took me into his office. I had been there for two years and this was my first visit to the inner sanctum. It smelt of liquorice and tobacco and looked as if it was decorated for a fortune teller rather than a cafe manager. 

“I want to promote you, my boy. Enrique is old and leaving at the end of the month and I will need a waiter. Of course it will mean more money for you and also the Olympics will be here soon. I will need a much younger man to deal with all our visitors and friends."

So that was that, I had a few more shillings in my pockets and no more cleaning of the toilets. I handed over my brushes to the new boy, donned my waiter’s apron and started whistling.


He was correct, was Mister Chestnut, the year of the Olympics was the busiest I could remember.We worked every day from sunrise to almost sunrise the following day. Naps had to be taken, when and where we could find the time. There was a little store room out the back where I managed to take forty winks now and again. 

I remember one night I had just splashed water on my face to waken me up when this very distinguished gentleman entered with a young blond girl in tow. The two of them asked for the quietest table, which was always the one at the back next to the toilets. Now I tell you this dear friends, I will go to my grave believing that it was the Queen’s husband whom I served that night and the blond woman was not his wife. This is not the place to tell such a story since he is not able to defend himself but I promise you - if it was not Philip Mountbatten, the Duke of Edinburgh then I will eat my hat. I looked over at Mister Chestnut and I know he recognised the man because he put his finger to his lips to warn me to say nothing.

On Christmas Eve 1950 I asked Maria, the most beautiful girl who worked in the restaurant next door, to marry me. She accepted and we got married in the New Year holding the reception at the Empire Cafe. We invited all the regulars. It was a night I shall never forget.

One day in 1951, Mister Chestnut took me into his office for only the second time and told me that it was all mine. “The time has come - you have a family to consider” he said “I will be seventy this year and enough is enough.” There was no son to pass his business on to, "God's will", he would say. So he considered me the nearest thing he had to a son and the Cafe was to be my inheritance. He slapped the keys in the palm of my hand, put on his big overcoat and never crossed the threshold again. 

My neighbours were actors, jazz musicians and more recently Chinese. After Limehouse had been bombed in the war, the Chinese had begun to move into Gerard Street and the areas surrounding it. This brought with them, the Chinese gangsters - as if there weren’t enough British ones in Soho. 

Talking of gangsters, the first time I saw one of the Kray brothers he was sitting having a coffee, minding his own business when the coppers  rushed in and dragged him out of my cafe. He had apparently deserted from national service in the army for the fourth time.
 

What I also remember about the Fifties was the music. Now there are some who will tell you that the birth of British Rock and Roll started in the 2I’s coffee bar in Old Compton Street, but I say it was at the Empire Cafe. On Saturday nights we would have Tommy Steele, Wee Willie Harris, Cliff Richard and Hank Marvin. The Cafe was always crowded at weekends, so much so that some of those that couldn’t get in, moved to the 2I’s, which was a bigger venue. Perhaps that is why they claim to be the birthplace but I know the truth, we were first.

As for the gangs, the Krays had always stayed up east and the Richardsons to the south of the river. One night the Kray twins came in and took a table from a couple who were already sitting at it. The boyfriend got up to challenge them and Reggie Kray slapped the boy and threw him and his girlfriend through the door. I was about to say something  when Ronnie Kray told me that if I knew what was good for me, I would get them coffees and leave them alone. 
I learned that night, if you wanted to stay in business in Soho then you had to see nothing and say even less.

Luckily my wife, Maria, didn’t see any of this as she was now at home looking after our two sons, James and Robert. I have a photo on the Cafe wall of  James with Bobby Moore when he and his wife came to the Cafe just before he flew to Mexico for the World Cup. 

As the Sixties turned into the Seventies, Robert began to take on more of the responsibility for running the cafe. James had decided to work in computers and had joined an IT company over in Putney. He and his wife moved into a flat in Chelsea and very rarely ventured into the West End.

In 1976 I became a grandfather for the very first time and Maria suggested that I took more of a back seat in the business. We stayed in Dulwich for a while but I still insisted on visiting the Cafe three or four times a week.

In 1980 we moved to Deal by the sea; it was  Maria’s idea and was probably helped by Robert who may have felt that I was interfering too much in his business.

There are so many stories about the Empire Cafe that I want to tell you. Ones concerning prime ministers and princesses, rich men and poor women,  writers and painters, musicians and kings. All of them true and all of them from the Empire Cafe. 

I will, one day, I promise.
  

I am well into my eighties now and the Cafe is run by Robert's own daughters and sons. It’s been years since I last laid eyes on the place, but if you happen to be passing then why don’t you pop in for a coffee and ask them for a story? 
 

Tell them I sent you.

L & H by Bobby Stevenson

 

 

You asked me, my young one, as we sat by the sea

What life had brought to my heart.

“Was it joy, was it sadness,

Was it laughter and tears?

The kindness of lovers?

The friendship through years?

Or the dreams of a life

In a heaven above?”

“It was none of these things,

It was hope,

It was love.”

Once, This Was Our Land by Bobby Stevenson

Once, this was our land,
Where we ran the highest peaks and held the very sky inside our palms.

Once, this was our land,
Where we stalked the work fields for all that we could take,
Where love came calling and was so easily found, that it was cheaply wasted.

Once, this was our land,
Where we ruled the earth and all within it and the rules were most certainly ours.
But now the eyes don’t see too well and the head no longer remembers so clearly,
And as I sit on the bus and look from my window, I see the young with different rules,
Not mine, for sure and in their eyes I  see it all – it says:
“This is our land”.

Remembering Disneyland By Bobby Stevenson

The window’s opened an inch just to let the room breathe a little as the rusting setting sun is just perching on the trees across the way and peeking into my window, hitting the Oleanders full on. The perfume hits my nose and pinches my sadness, ‘hey kid, this is why you walk and talk, get over yourself’. A seabird screeches for a partner somewhere in the outer banks, and just then I can smell the sea, a little sour as it worms its way by stealth into the room. 

Upstairs, Mrs Hack plays her husband’s jazz records and for a few minutes she can forget that he went to ‘Nam in ’65 and never came home. Oh, the sweetness of the dulling of the senses.

Across the street, as the dusk drops down bringing with it all those things which it’s known for, some kids leave the ice cream parlor screaming and hollering and remembering their almost perfect day at Disneyland, ‘if only Josey hadn’t thrown up over me’ shouts the nervous one whose eyes gave up the ghost a while back.

And so I sit and pour a drink as the sun packs up and finally leaves the room and a steel chill hits my stomach and I wonder why in all those years, I never got to go to Disneyland.

Stealing Moses By Bobby Stevenson

the poem of the story of the screenplay 

Jake was only 14 years in face but so much more in heart
And Moses, 7 it said on the social report but he was small
And on the nights Mama beat Moses, Jake could hear him crying
Through the wall – the little black boy next door.
Jake had never had a Dad, not one that you could point to in the street
And that was where his Mother worked for 20 bucks a time.
The day that Jake gave Moses a piece of his sleeve to dry away his tears, was when he heard of the little boy’s dreams and the little boy’s real fears.

So on a strange little Wednesday when Jake was left alone again, he took a fiver from the box his mother hid under her bed and stole Moses from the house next door.
The bus took them to the seaside where they ate ice creams and Moses gave the world something rarer than gold – his smile.
But these are the days of child murderers and so people grew concerned.
“All I wanted to do was see him smile” said Jake up to the judge
But the judge didn’t want to listen and sent Jake to a place where his mother didn’t need to care.

Now Moses can cry all he wants as there’s no one left to hear.

Seeing By Wireless (2012) by Bobby Stevenson

As a boy, Stan thought he could remember seeing a clown being fired from a cannon at a circus in Hove. He couldn’t recollect, however, witnessing a man flying through the air. At least not one who flew straight through a pair of heavy wooden doors knocking Stan over and causing him to end up in the middle of a busy street. That sort of just didn’t happen in Hastings

Stan lived off this story for years, and he told and retold it so often that people stopped listening.

“That was how I met Logie” Stan would say to everyone and no one in particular.

On the morning we speak of, he had set out intending to go for a constitutional stroll along the older part of town. This was his sanctuary; down here he could scupper and hide by the little fishing boats and let the wind wash away his mother’s ‘inspirational talks’. 

Stan was twenty four years of age, for goodness sake, and since leaving the army had never held down a decent job. The war had been long over and for a man born on the first day of 1900 he was not making a wonderful example of the new dawn. What was going through that stupid head of his? I ask you?

In life, all the best things appear to come when you least expect them, usually followed by the best things hitting you straight in the face - or making you roll out into the street - just the way Stan met Logie, as if you didn’t know. 

Now here’s a question, would Stan have ever known he could be an engineer if he hadn’t met Logie? Just like there must have been another Einstein or Shakespeare out there who, for whatever reason, never got a chance to find out about their own genius. Not that I’m saying Stan was a genius but certainly Logie was one and he knew Stan had his uses. 

After the ‘flying man’ episode and as a way of an apology, Logie took Stan for a drink. As so often happens in these circumstances, they found they actually liked each other’s company. So much so, that when Logie’s landlord stormed into the public house later that day “to find the mad Scottish scientist who had blown up his rented rooms” Stan lied for Logie and told the landlord that his friend “had been taken to hospital that very afternoon and could be at death’s door even as we speak” whereas Logie was actually hiding in the toilet.  Needless to say, the two of them became the greatest of pals.Here was Stan, a man in need of a job and Logie in need of an assistant he could trust. Stanley Addlington was born and bred a Sussex man and proud of it, his friend John Logie Baird, or Logie as he preferred, was from Helensburgh in the West of Scotland.

Now it wouldn’t be so far from the truth to say that Logie was run out of Hastings. Logie and his landlord had an altercation in the street when he demanded recompense for the damage caused by the explosions. Logie reluctantly paid the swine and decided enough was enough, taking his inventions to a set of rooms in London’s Soho.And it was in these modest rooms that John Logie Baird demonstrated the first electro mechanical television.  

Stan would tell you that he was the first face ever to appear on a television screen. He had done it to amuse himself one night when Logie was out. The problem was that since he was the only person in the room at the time, he couldn’t actually see himself on the screen but he did remember burning himself on the lights needed for the camera. When Logie came in the next day and spotted the burns on Stan’s face, he smiled to himself having guessed what his friend had been up to. Unfortunately for Stan, history chose another as the first televised face.

Those London years were the busiest of Stan’s life, forever working on Logie’s latest inventions, sometimes fourteen to sixteen hours a day. Too much work for him to realise how lonely he actually was.

In the spring of 1936, Logie decided to take a trip home to Helensburgh to see the family but due to his deteriorating health Logie asked Stan to drive him up there. This meant that Stan could take the car north and return to collect Logie at the end of the stay. Stan had only been to Scotland once before and that was when Logie transmitted television pictures to the Central Hotel in Glasgow via a telephone line from London. So yes, he would drive him to Helensburgh and then take the car on into the Highlands. 

Whatever made Stan take the Coldharbour road at Inveraray is between him and his maker but turn he did and before long he was staring at a rusty welcoming sign:

‘Coldharbour: The B nniest Place in the West’. 

Coming in from that direction, the village hall was the first real building you would pass. Outside Stan saw a rather pretty girl taking down a notice telling that the library was now open. She disappeared inside the hall and Stan saw this as a reason to stop. 

When he entered, she was packing up the makeshift library into boxes and was apparently doing so without anyone to help her.

“Excuse me” said Stan.

The girl spoke without lifting her head. “If you’re going to tell me there’s a letter ‘O’ missing from our village sign, then I already know. It fell off last week. If you’re here to borrow books, you’re too late and anyway judging by your accent you’re not from these parts.” And on she worked. 

“I just wondered.....I was wondering if you would like to come out with me this evening...for a drink or something, young lady?”

“Did you just call me young lady?” enquired the girl.

“Depends - did you want me to call you ‘young lady’?”

And the beautiful young girl thought about it and decided, yes, she did like it. So that was how Stanley Addlington met Agnes Lily Sorensen, daughter of Peter; the man who sat quietly in rooms. 

Stan decided that this was as much of the Highlands as he wanted to see and found a room at Mrs Edith Huckerby’s bed and breakfast – five shillings and clean sheets.

Mrs Huckerby never told her lodger that she disapproved of Agnes and her demented father but it seemed to Stan that Mrs Huckerby disapproved of everyone. What she needed was a hard kiss on those lips, thought Stan, but decided he wasn’t the man for the job. Although her house smelt of the most delicious baking, Mrs Huckerby, herself, smelt of mothballs, probably one of the reasons why Stan did not feel he was the right man to deliver the kiss. 

Stan and Agnes spent the next Sunday afternoon walking the high hills overlooking Loch Awe – Agnes liked the way Stan called it ‘Lock ah’, in fact she liked many things about Stan. She was twenty two years of age and this was the first time she had ever had these feelings. 

On the following Tuesday ,as usual, Agnes set up the library in the hall but this time there were two differences: Stan was there helping and the rooms were full of the happy sound of laughter, even the sun turned up to shine through the windows.

They set up the books in an ordered fashion, crime was on the left and very popular in Coldharbour, the classics were on the right and the penny romances were in the centre; the latter proving very popular with the women and girls of the village who never stopped dreaming of their knights in shining armour. 

Stan, Agnes’ knight, lifted a small vase out of a tired old box and asked what it was for.

“Ah that’s the suggestions vase, at the end of every session I read what’s been placed in it. Some suggest particular books, some just want to leave a message, some to place some money or to say thanks” said Agnes. 

By the end of the afternoon Stan knew it was time to head back south to Helensburgh and pick up Logie. They intended to stay a night in Glasgow before driving to London and Stan wished with all his heart that Agnes could join him, but he knew about her father and him sitting in a room quietly.

So when Agnes’ back was turned, Stan scrawled a quick note and placed it in the jar, then he kissed her goodbye and promised lovely Agnes that he would return. 

As he was driving away from Loch Awe, he looked at his watch and knew that she would soon read the proposal of marriage he had placed in the vase.Stan was just about to whistle his favourite tune by way of celebration when the car skidded for several yards before tumbling off the road. He was sure he had felt the road shaking just before the accident. As he sat stunned in the automobile, he felt it again, the earth definitely moved. The machine was stuck good and proper and there was no way he could push it out. So Stan set out to walk up the old road that followed the Orchy River to the bridge.

Nothing passed by him that afternoon and it was early evening before he arrived at a small house in Inveronan on the shores of Loch Tulla.An old man answered the door, “There is nothing we can do this evening for your transport young man, but come away inside and we’ll feed and water you”.

In Coldharbour, Agnes was clearing up the mess in the hall. There had been small earthquakes before in the area but this was a bit stronger than usual. Still, she got to work picking up all the bookshelves and the scattered books but Agnes failed to notice the broken vase lying on its side and its contents having spilled out under a wooden desk. 

In the morning, Stan thanked the old couple who fed him well and who asked for nothing in return. He walked the military road across Ba Bridge and into Glencoe, finding a telephone at The Kingshouse and thereby allowing him to notify Logie that he would be delayed.

In the Autumn of 1936, Logie and his team were busier than ever supplying the BBC with their latest television technology to test against other competing systems. Logie’s group were based at The Crystal Palace, a structure moved from Hyde Park to Penge Common in 1851. 

Stan had bought a small house near-by in Sydenham, in the hope that he would hear from Agnes and that she would say yes. It was nearly the end of November and Stan had begun to give up on the idea of a life with Agnes. 

Several days before the Coldharbour hall was to be used for a Saint Andrew’s night party Miss McKelvie, the village hall cleaner, found the contents of the suggestion vase underneath the desk, including Stan’s proposal of marriage. 

So on the night of the 30^th of November and instead of dancing in the village hall, Agnes found herself knocking on the door of a house in Sydenham, south east London. She had been reluctant to go as it would mean leaving her mother with a father who sat and said nothing, but her mother told her that sometimes happiness only comes once and that she should catch it before it was too late. 

Stan proposed properly to Agnes that night with the ring he had been keeping safe on a chain around his neck.  It was just as Agnes had accepted Stan’s hand in marriage, that she noticed the redness of the sky. She thought, at first, it was to do with the London lights being so much stronger than those in Coldharbour but when Stan went out into the garden he could smell the smoke, then he heard the clang...clang...clang of the fire engines. 

The Crystal Palace, and all ideas that he and Logie had worked so hard on over the years, was on fire. 

The BBC, in the end, chose another television system just as the country drifted into war. In Hastings, Agnes and Stan got married and had two wonderful years before Agnes moved back to Coldharbour to wait on her knight returning from battle.

Being Human by Bobby Stevenson

Being human is never really understanding
Being human is loving and hurting at the same time
Being human is hoping and caring, stealing and sharing
Being human is tears and pain and fear
Being human is wondering why the hell we’re here
Being human is being lost for most of your life
Being human is cursing the gods then hoping they are there
Being human is watching the stars with the same wonderment we did from the caves
Being human is sacrifice, strength and sometimes bravery
Being human is selfishness and slavery
Being human is mental illness and confusion
Being human is sometimes an illusion
Being human is watching lovers fade
Being human is regretting all that’s left unsaid
Being human is wishing you had done some more
Being human is lifting yourself up from the floor
Being human is writing, painting and scoring
Being human is making music that an ape should be proud of
Being human is everyone feeling but never always sharing
Being human is hoping that tomorrow will be better
Being human is all we have.

 

Shake The Heavens (2012) by Bobby Stevenson

 
The couple in front of him lit their cigarettes from the same match, kissed until the smoke was coming out of their noses, then each slumped into a big red balding seat ready to wallow in another Saturday night at the Regal cinema. 

Ricky was his usual late self and arrived out of breath just as the rousing newsreel music was starting up.

“Hurry up and sit down”, demanded James.   

“My mother...”

“It’s always your mother, just shh...there’s something coming on that I want you to see”

They impatiently sat through a story of the latest spring fashions for the young ladies of 1951 then a report on Tottenham Hotspur and the Arsenal football teams fighting for the top place in the English First Division - although James, with a snigger, dismissed talk of any team other than the Arsenal

“This is it now, watch”

The excitable announcer talked over some film of London’s Southbank. In only a few days time the Festival of Britain would open and the focal point was be the breath taking three hundred foot structure which gave the impression of being unsupported.

“Bloody hell” James was pleased at Ricky’s reaction.

”It’s like one of those Dan Dare rocket ships...” the couple in front came up for air, told James to shut up and then just as quickly returned to kissing, “..and I am going to climb that bloody monster.” James whispered. 

“Why would you ever want to do that?” asked Ricky already knowing the answer.

“Because I can”.

Yep, that was the reply Ricky was waiting for.

The guy in front, whose face was now covered in lipstick, told them if they didn’t shut up right this minute he’d hit them. Then the guy in front of him, told him also to shut up; you could be here all night with this stuff.

“Excuse me, my crazy friend but weren’t you watching? It is three hundred feet high” a fact that was worrying Ricky.

“I know, ain’t it brilliant?” this time James talked in a cheap American movie kind of way. 

You see, to James everything was brilliant and brilliant acted as the base level for his life. If it wasn’t brilliant he wouldn’t give it the time of day but somehow every brilliant thing that James attempted to do would result in Ricky getting into more serious trouble.

The alternative for Ricky was not being James’ friend and that was too awful to even think about. It would mean Ricky going back to being shoved around the British Library by his parents. It would mean Ricky’s mother cleaning his face in full view of people with a handkerchief, into which she had just made him spit.

Somehow getting into trouble was his only salvation.

One Saturday, James had suggested that Richard call himself ‘Ricky’ after Bogart’s character in Casablanca. Richard hoped that James would soon tire of it but yesterday when he knocked at Richard’s front door and asked if Ricky was in, Richard’s mother belted her son’s ear.  

“James is such a sweetie, why would you ever let him call you by that awful name, you wicked boy? It’s not very clever, not in any way is it clever, Richard, do you hear me?” 

Ricky wasn’t listening to his mother, instead he was contemplating greater ideas such as there must be a time just before a person is born when the gods decide if you should be blamed for everything in the universe or be allowed to get off scot free. Ricky knew that the gods had voted him into the former group and James had, most definitely, been voted into the latter; even when James blatantly lied to peoples’ faces they always ended up thanking him for something or other, Ricky knew he could never beat those odds.

On the morning of the 2^nd of May, the boys boarded the London bound train weighed down with paraphernalia, most of which was a mystery to Ricky. 

“I’ll explain on the way” said James and over the sandwiches that Ricky’s mother had supplied, he did just that.

For several months, working with his college and pretending to be studying architecture, James had contacted the manufacturers of the Skylon- the new name for the big rocket - and they had supplied all the specifications. So he knew it was aluminium and steel and James reckoned on two ropes and a couple of small hammers should do it.

“So you’re going to climb the thing then come down again?”

“Hell yes, but I’ll leave a souvenir at the top to let them know I was there.” James was smug.

He thought maybe a bottle of whisky but Ricky had to remind him what would happen if it fell. 

“What about a flag?”

“I don’t have one” 

Then James noticed the scarf that was around Ricky’s neck but Ricky argued that it was the college scarf and anyway it had cost three guineas and since it was the college scarf it might give the game away. James said he wanted to give the game away and blow the consequences, so Ricky reluctantly handed the scarf over. Ricky never liked blowing the consequences, he could see trouble ahead. 

When they arrived at the Southbank, the workmen were still putting the finishing touches to the Festival Hall. James had reckoned this might happen and had brought working clothes for both him and Ricky. It worked as they managed to walk straight past the security man who mentioned that it was getting a bit cold and James had to agree. 

“What now?” asked Ricky, still thinking about the consequences being blown.

Apparently the plan was to wait until midnight when the lights on the Skylon were switched off. Was climbing in the dark a good idea?

“Hell yes”

Ricky wondered about James, who had never actually been to America but still talked like them. 

They found that they could crawl under the Pavilion and it seemed a great place to hide and was relatively warm. After a long wait and a bit of cramp, James attempted to stand up and hit a trap door with his head, this led into the Pavilion itself. 

“Bloody hell” shouted Ricky. “Shh”

“But look at this place it’s got food and more food and champagne” 

James ruled that they would return to the room after he’d climbed the tower, assuming that he survived. Anyhow he had a backup plan that if things got too dangerous or the wind picked up, he’d just jump into the Thames.

“And hope you don’t drown”

No wonder Ricky’s mother hits him, thought James.

So a few minutes after midnight James got ready to start the fifty foot climb which would bring him to the bottom of the Skylon. It was all a matter of shimmying up the cables that held the tower in place. Ricky knew his friend and knew he was more scared than he was letting on, so Ricky started their game that had seen them both through troubled spots in the past. 

“Who would you rather kiss Dinah Shore or Doris Day?” asked Ricky.

James opted for Doris Day, every time. Then they discussed who the better singer was between Frankie Laine and Bing Crosby, both of them opted for Bing. Ricky reminded James that he better not fall off as he still needed to go with his pal to see ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ when it came to the Regal. 

Ricky then asked who was the best player between Jackie Milburn and Stanley Matthews. James knew that Milburn had scored against the Arsenal and so ignoring the question he quickly disappeared into the night.

“Be careful” whispered Ricky, to himself.

It was the most difficult climb of James’ life. The overhang was more than he expected and a couple of times he thought that his great view of Big Ben might be his last. By four am he had made the top and Ricky had been right, there was no way you could leave a bottle of whisky up here. He caught his breath, enjoyed the view for a minute then tied the scarf to the top of the Skylon. 

When he’d lowered himself halfway down, he noticed the policeman standing at the bottom. Where was Ricky?

James’ options were limited, he was still high enough to jump into the river or maybe he could take his chances with the copper. It was getting light and it was cold, going down by rope was his only choice. He could easily outrun the policeman so that is what he did. As he slipped down the support cables he jumped off earlier than he or the copper had expected. Luckily nothing was broken and on a hunch he headed towards the Pavilion. Sure enough Ricky was hiding under the building and without being seen, James rolled under to join him.

“Let’s find that trapdoor” the words crept slowly out of James’ mouth.  

Within ten minutes they each had a bottle of champagne to hand and were swigging it back good style; the policeman was nowhere to be seen. Without realising, both sat down behind the big fancy sofa and fell asleep.

It was Ricky who saw her first; there she was staring at him, Queen Mary as large as life. Ricky shook James awake, who grumbled all the way into consciousness. He was about to say ‘bloody hell’ but Ricky realised what was coming and slapped a large hand across James’ mouth.

“What are you boys doing here?” whispered Queen Mary.

“I’ve climbed the Skylon, your majesty” said a bit too loudly.

The smile on her face was subtle but definitely there. She nodded to the boys to look around the sofa, which they did.

“Blood....” the hand got slapped over James’ mouth again.

There was King George the 6^th, Queen Elizabeth and Winston Churchill.

“Bloody hell” exclaimed Ricky, who couldn’t help himself and had no one to slap a hand over his mouth. 

An army officer came over to tell Queen Mary she was required outside whereby she smiled at the boys and left.

“Think she’ll tell?”

“Don’t know, but we don’t want to chance it”. Quickly the boys dropped through the trapdoor and stayed there until it was dark again. 

The next Saturday night at the Regal cinema James and Ricky watched, from the comfort of their red balding seats, a newsreel report on the mysterious appearance of a scarf at the top of the Skylon. 

They laughed and laughed until everyone in the cinema told them to shut up.

The Trash Men by Bobby Stevenson

I’m just like my Father and proud of it,

We both pick up litter from the street,

It’s the way we are, I think he said,

And I guess he’s probably got that right,

It doesn’t make us soft or stupid,

It doesn’t make us sad or weak,

It only means we care enough,

And there isn’t much of that lying

Around the street these days.

Touching Gravity by Bobby Stevenson

Where I am today, I can trace all the way back to that time on the mountain.

I suppose there are many people with similar stories but this one had so much impact on the rest of my life that I still think about it every day.

Prior to the mountain, I was just a guy who rarely thought of anything other than work and holidays. On one of those weeks every year, I would walk the West Highland Way with friends. It runs 95 miles from Glasgow to Fort William in the west highlands of Scotland. It can be a rough walk and usually is.

The first couple of times I went with my pal Freddie and his son. They were both very fit and enjoyed the experience a lot more than I did. We all suffered from blisters on our feet but my blisters seemed to have their own blisters.

I killed the pain by taking aspirin every morning – not a healthy way to walk. So I decided for the following year  that I would get super fit and start to enjoy the walk.

And get fit I did. So much so, that we started not just to walk the 95 miles but to climb up every mountain over 3,000 feet along the way. In Scotland hills over that height are known as Munros after the man, Sir Hugh Munro, who recorded them.

Just before the walk reaches Glencoe, there is an estate known as the Black Mount which belongs to the Fleming family (as in Ian Fleming of James Bond fame). There is a path which winds through their estate and which follows the old military road built around 1750. About a mile or so into the estate there is a crossing called Ba’ Bridge. Freddie decided since it was such a warm, sunny, June day that we should climb over into Glencoe over the nearest munro.

We were in shorts and t-shirts as we ascended up the grassy slope. This took us on to a horse-shoe shaped area, and apart from the path we came up it was 2,000 feet down all around. The hills were sloped to the east and it was difficult to see to the west coast and appreciate what type of weather was coming.

We reached the top of the horse-shoe with little struggle. Then it suddenly got very cold, followed by a severe wind and then snow, lots of it – and all this in June. It came down so hard that it was impossible to see anything, a real whiteout. We were freezing and it was dangerous to walk any distance.

A few feet in front of us we saw a small wall of stones that had been built at the summit as a protection from the wind.And there we stayed as the weather closed in. It only got worse.

We sat looking at each other and freezing and I felt as if I was watching a film. How could this happen? It wasn’t meant to be like this, not here and now. Funnily enough the same feeling occured a few years later when we were landing in Helsinki airport and the landing gear wouldn’t come down.

Freddie and I covered ourselves and hoped it would pass and this was all before mobile phones. We hadn’t told anyone where we were going and we didn’t know ourselves until we were actually climbing the mountain.

I felt that if I was going to die of hypothermia then I may as well go for a walk and take my chances. In staying put there was a certainty of dying. Freddie decided to walk too.

What happened next you can interpret it as you feel fit. There was only one other way off the horse-shoe without falling 2,000 feet, a very narrow path (maybe two feet across) that provided a way across to the top of Glencoe.

Suddenly the sun came out – not across the sky but just one sharp sliver which had pushed through the clouds and lit up the narrow path; nothing else surrounding it, just the path. Although the snow was still falling, it was possible to see that the path led to a safe ledge and so we took it.

This is the part that made me change my idea of everything: when we got to the other side and safety, the sky clouded over and the sun disappeared. Not after a while, but right there and then.

We were able to walk down through the Glencoe ski area and reach the climbers’ bar at the Kingshouse.

We didn’t really talk that night – we both knew what had happened. We drank whisky and thought about things in front of a roaring fire.

When I got back home, I decided that if something wanted me to keep going then it might have an idea where I should go. Within a year I resigned my job and moved out into the world, a changed man.

Today, I write a little, act a little and sing a little all because of that day on the mountain. Hey, I'm poor in money but rich in everything else.

I know what happened that day and so does Freddie. I’m glad he was there or I might have doubted it.

The Sad Valley (2012) by Bobby Stevenson

 

Tommy was tired of waiting for his life to start. 

He had given it more than enough chances in his nineteen short years, thank you very much, and still there was nothing to get excited about. So Tommy thought he might as well begin his life without any help from anyone.

His current dream was to watch the World Cup football final at Wembley and if something was going to happen, it was going to happen there. After all that was London, it was 1966 and it was most certainly the place to be. 

Tommy had made a list of some of the people he would probably meet: Julie Christie, Mick Jagger, Jean Shrimpton and Terence Stamp for starters. He’d seen all of them in newspapers and all of them seemed to like walking down King’s Road, Chelsea on a Saturday.

There was just the small matter of earning enough money to get him south and the small matter of keeping a roof over his head when he got there. 

After his Grandfather had passed away, Tommy was given the choice of any piece in the old house. He settled on a small, beautifully carved, wooden box that once held his Grandfather’s pipe tobacco and a watercolour of the hills above the village, painted in his Grandfather’s own hand. These would be the two possession he would take with him to start his life.

To raise the cash, Tommy worked on Sid’s farm from sun-up until dusk, then at Bella’s cafe until nine at night, followed by the Climber’s bar until one in the morning. When he had finished, he would deposit all of his day’s earning in the beautifully carved tobacco box and collapse onto the bed. By the morning, he was like a new man and would be itching to start all over again.  

The day he left, was just like any other one, he awoke with the sun rise and decided to slip away before the rest of the family rose. It was easier that way. He lifted his rucksack and prepared to walk the twelve miles to the railway station.

The weather was kind and he arrived with plenty of time to spare. Tommy decided to spend a couple of his hard earned pennies on a cup of tea but anything as frivolous as a cake was not to be entertained.  He reached into his sack and discovered that his mother had packed several sandwiches in a brown bag. He smiled to himself. They were his favourites – all filled with cheese and onion, and as he lifted one out to take with his cup of tea, a note fell from the brown paper bag.

It said “You can’t start a life on an empty stomach. Love Mum”

There were enough sandwiches to feed a small army and would easily keep Tommy satisfied on the journey south. He couldn’t remember mentioning he was going to start his life to his Mum but that was mothers for you. They knew everything, sometimes before you even knew them yourself.

The journey was perfect as he sat eating his sandwiches and watching the well remembered hills getting swallowed by the distance. 

The train whisked through towns with black smoke and cities with grey people but the nearer he got to London, the more excited he became. He knew he was going to start a life and that made him happier than anything else he could imagine, even more than the inflatable Yogi Bear he had received on his fifth birthday.  

When he opened the train door he could actually smell London and it spoke of streets of dreams, and hopes and people that would become his friends. He felt as if he already belonged, and although there was no one there to meet him, it seemed as if everyone was there to meet everyone else. What a place to start a life and what a place to call home. 

He spent the first night in a small hotel near Victoria station. It was run by an old woman, of maybe forty years of age, according to Tommy. She insisted that he call her ‘Twiggy’. He’d never seen such an old woman wear such a small revealing dress. 

“We calls it a mini skirt in these parts, young man”  

Tommy thought it was a very fitting name for such a short skirt. He mentioned to the old woman that he was in London to get his life started and all Twiggy would say was “Fancy that”.

At Breakfast, Twiggy was wearing an even shorter skirt than the night before and there were several business men in the lounge who kept dropping knives and forks so that Twiggy would bend over.

Tommy asked some of the men if they knew where he could get a ticket for the final of the World Cup. All of them, without exception, started laughing. “Oh, that’s a good one”, “That’ll keep me chuckling all day. Thanks lad”, “Aye, thanks”. 

The door closed behind him asTommy stepped into the London street still hearing  the laughter from the Breakfast room. What was so funny about what he had asked? 

There was now two days until the Final; surely someone was willing to sell him a ticket? To be honest he didn’t really know where Wembley Stadium was. “Somewhere in the north of the city, or the west” was how his brother had described it. So Tommy started walking. He felt it was best to avoid buses and The Underground until he knew London better.  

Within an hour, he’d arrived at Camden Lock and this place was alive with music and flags and laughter. It appeared to be the centre of the world for celebrating England qualifying for the Final. There were parties in windows above him, people on roofs dancing. A conga line made up of a dozen or so very happy people came out of a bar, slithered its way across the road and into a bar opposite. All these people, thought Tommy, had already started their lives and this made him grow even more excited to start his.

As he neared Kentish Town, he noticed a small cafe on his left. The place smelt of coffee, looked as if it was in Morocco and had the mellow sounds of jazz drifting out through the door. This was heaven. 

When the waitress served him his coffee, he thought he had been given the wrong cup, “Excuse me, but I think someone may have already drunk from this”

There was only the smallest amount of coffee at the bottom of a very tiny cup. The waitress smiled and moved on. Tommy noticed people piling sugar on top of the coffee and so he did the same. He shouldn’t have swallowed all the contents at once; he realised that the moment he went dizzy,  

“You okay man? Like, are you cool?”

The question came from Herbert, who spoke with an American accent but really came from the east end of London.

“Here, try one of these” said Herbert “Just call me Herbie, all my friends do” and he handed Tommy a French cigarette.

“I don’t smoke” said Tommy. “This ain’t smoking, this is living” said an agreeable Herbie. So if it meant his life would start sooner rather than later, Tommy decided to smoke a cigarette. 

Before he knew it, Tommy was lying on the floor - apparently in a room above the cafe.

“We carried you up after you passed out” said the ever present Herbie. “I guess the cigarette was too much man and maybe the coffee, man. You got to take that coffee wisely, man. It can floor a buffalo” 

Tommy wasn’t sure if his life had now officially started, or he had just pulled into the side of the road to let the rest of the traffic go past.

“Where’s my bags?”

“What bags?”

“I didn’t see no bags, man. Too many people carrying too many bags in this life”  

Tommy shot woozily out of the room and down a very narrow staircase before slipping the last few steps into the bar and crashing on to the floor.

He could hear a girl in the corner say “That’s the second time that man has landed on the floor, what do they put in the coffee here?”

By the time Tommy got back up to the room, Herbie was dancing naked on the kitchen table to Highway 61 Revisited. Tommy’s bags had been stolen along with his money and his chance of ever seeing the World Cup final at Wembley.

Naked Herbie asked Tommy “What World Cup Final, man?”

So Tommy and Herbie became the best of pals. Tommy stayed in Herbie’s room but kept his clothes on at all times, unlike a lot of Herbie’s other friends; Herbie’s room seemed to be the place to get naked in Camden. 

England won the World Cup and that made Tommy happy. Herbie gave Tommy some of his shifts in the Cafe downstairs which let Tommy start to save some money again. 

One evening in October, after Tommy had just finished working twelve hours in the cafe, he heard a sobbing from the room, when he entered there was Herbie crying his heart out. 

Tommy put his arms around Herbie and held him. Maybe it was one of his family that had died but Tommy had never heard Herbie this upset before, even the day he’d cooked the breakfast naked.

“It’s this, man” and he showed Tommy the newspaper. “All those beautiful children”

In the Green Hollow Valley in Wales, a mountain of coal mining waste had slipped in the heavy rain and covered a primary school.“We got to go man. You and me, we got to help those people. Those children” and Tommy sat beside Herbie and they both sobbed into each other’s arms. 

Tommy had saved enough money to get him and Herbie as far as Merthyr Tydfil and then they would have to walk the rest. It was dark by the time they reached the village, but there were lights everywhere, all the way up the mountainside. No matter how tired they felt they got to work right away, digging the slurry that covered the school and the little ones. 

Sometimes you give up on the world, believing that everything is greed and bad but now and again you can see the best of people even in the worst of situations. 

At least several hundred children, teachers and parents were missing. The slurry had slipped across the school and into the houses opposite. Tommy was digging between the houses and the school and as he looked up he saw Herbie carrying a child with a cover over the body. Herbie looked at Tommy and his eyes spoke of a million things he had seen that evening. 

Important people came and went; The Queen, The Duke of Edinburgh and The Prime Minster but Tommy and Herbie never once wavered from the digging. A couple of times Herbie fell asleep but Tommy would notice and waken him up again. 

This is not to say that the boys were heroes, everyone was a hero that weekend. Everyone pushed themselves beyond what they thought they were capable of, to release the little bodies. Herbie was told to take a break and he reluctantly did so. He went over to Tommy and shared a French cigarette and Tommy smoked it with him. 

“I don’t think I can cry anymore” said Herbie.  

A bearded man stopped and asked if he could possibly have a cigarette and Herbie invited him to sit. The man told them that his child had been ill that day and had stayed at home with his wife. His other child had gone to school and he had survived but the slurry had taken his home with his two darlings.

“How does that happen?” he asked them, how indeed.

It had been a long time since any child, or anyone for that matter, had been brought out alive and although Herbie and Tommy believed they could hear shouts for help, it was only the tiredness calling.

By the following morning 120 bodies had been recovered but many loved ones were still waiting to be found and brought home. 

There are times in your life when you know that something you have taken part in or witnessed will change your soul. Tommy knew it. It didn’t make him bitter, it just made him realise that we are each other’s keepers and we are all in this together. Good and bad times.

On the Monday morning Herbie, dirty and exhausted, felt it was time they returned to the cafe.

“Who’s gonna make the coffee, man, eh?”

Tommy tiredly agreed and they started off hitch-hiking back towards Merthyr. 

There were so many cars, ambulances and trucks transporting everything back and forth that getting a lift wasn’t so easy.  Tommy decided the best thing to do was split up and meet back at the railway station.

“I’ll have a Frenchie cigarette waiting on you man” was the last he heard of Herbie. 

Tommy sat at the station for several hours before he felt that something was wrong. He tried the Merthyr Tydfil police station to see if maybe Herbie had hitched naked and been arrested. It was just a thought to cheer himself up. The policeman informed him that they were too busy and that all missing reports were being centralised in Cardiff. He would be better going there. 

It was Tuesday before he found Herbie’s body lying in the morgue. It seemed one of the trucks taking slurry from the school hadn’t seen him in the lashing rain. He had been hit and died instantly.

Tommy got back to the room above the cafe on the Thursday and only then did he weep. He wept for the children and for the parents and for his friend, Herbie. 

And that is when he realised that you don’t ever wait to start your life. It begins the very first day you are born. Tommy was living when he was at home, he was alive when he was in the room above the cafe and he was most certainly living when he was with his best friend Herbie. Tommy had been alive all his life, he just hadn’t realised it. 

So Tommy did something he’d never done before, he took off all of his clothes in Herbie’s room and stood naked.

“This is for you, my pal”

And somewhere out there, he was sure he could hear Herbie laughing.

Retreads by Bobby Stevenson

 

WE NEED YOUR HEART TO SING ITS SONG

Don’t cry too long
My little one
The world is waiting on your smile
Don’t listen to the midnight whispers
It is their way
To make things dark
Don’t feel
That other hearts are hardened
Sometimes they need
To take a rest
Don’t wish that you were someone
Other
This life is only meant to test.
Don’t think
That you are somehow chosen
For all the trials in the world
Don’t cry too long
My little urchin
We need your heart to sing
Its song.

IF ALL OF THIS WERE UP TO ME

If all of this were up to me,
My gifts would be of other things,
The son to spend an afternoon
With a father long since gone,
The granddad seeing his offspring grow,
As his life goes on and on,
The children gone before their time,
Would come back home and ring the chime,
And chances lost would be our choice,
To try just one more time,
The girl whose births would fill a home,
A brother not a day alone,
The friend who’d never know the pain,
Of all that cancer brings,
If all of this were up to me,
Then these would be my things.

BE WHO YOU ARE
Be who you are,
Be magnificent,
Be strong,
And except to those who cared too much,
The one who never quite belonged.

Be who you are,
Stand tall, unique
Be grand
The one who smiled at little jokes,
That no one else could understand.

Be who you are,
Let laughter roll the same as tears
Take pleasure in the here and now,
Not in the days or months or years.

Be who you are,
Be loved
And loving everything,
Don’t back away from chance nor dare,
You too will have your song to sing.

Be who you are,
Let happiness and joy
Break through,
The universe was wise enough
To only make the one of you.

Shades Of Lives by Bobby Stevenson

A Life Half Lived

Always bending for every wind that blows my way,

Arching to the north, swirling to the south,

Never able to stand in my own true place,

Some see it as a weakness,

Contemptuous, even,

But I know the truth,

It’s because I’m broken inside,

And when they bury me,

It’ll be a stranger they mourn.

Footprints On A Carpet

Even if it’s only footprints on a carpet

Or blades of grass crushed where I once sat

Or a muddy scar upon a garage wall

Where my hand had leant upon

Or a thumb print on a pane of glass

On that day we talked and talked

Or a smile that made your face light up

When you thought of what I said

Or a note left out to tell you news

Now crushed and thrown away

Or a space that I once stood upon

Now emptier in the absence

Even for just one of those

That I’m remembered by

Then I’ll be satisfied in years,

That once,

Just once,

That

I

Was

Here.