The Giant Boy and I are leaving Gambier Towers, after four happy years listening to bell-ringing practice. It's always the same tune,but it seems to be causing them problems. I wonder if they do requests? I shall pop in and ask for "Jump Around", before I go. In my usual Domestic Godlessy fashion, I shall be throwing myself into the task of packing. I favour the "Cramming things into binbags which then split" approach. Many house moves have made me quite the expert, and I have some tips to share. The most important of which is to put the corkscrew in your handbag. Try not to pack dried spiders,which have a habit of adhering themselves to cashmere sweaters. Desiccated arachnids are not being worn this season. Also, as much as one might think one has thrown away stuff, there will still be lots of cardboard boxes at the other end which contain half-finished bottles of body lotion, single socks, and inexplicable bits of metal which might be a vital component of something. If you own a toasted sandwich maker, chuck it now. Everyone has one, and they have all only been used once, then put away with little bits of melted cheese still in them. Pack the kettle,with teabags in it, last. In fact, cram that in your handbag as well.
I have lived in some peculiar places, with some very unusual people. And declined to live in some others.One flat I went to see,appropriately in Botanic Road, boasted a tree growing up through the bathroom floor. Another,in Hackney, featured a cast-iron door with axe marks still clearly visible. They obviously had a very determined postman. In Leeds, my two friends and I moved into a huge Victorian house owned by a lady called Mrs Koppock, who lived next door. She smelt strongly of wet dog, though there was no dog. I imagine she just liked that particular aroma,and scented herself liberally each morning with "Eau de Chien Mouille Bagarre".
She was,it is fair to say, quirky. No namby-pamby nonsense about tenant's rights for her. She would appear in one's room at any hour of the day or night that took her fancy. I fear that this practice was injurious to her mental health,given the tenants she was harbouring at the time. Apart from myself and my pals, there was Nigel, a post-graduate student specialising in Early Welsh Poetry. He had a sadly drooping walrus moustache, a smoking jacket which he tied tightly around his waist with a piece of bell cord, possibly originating from the Leeds Grand Railway Hotel, and habitually wore a fez. Mickey lived in the basement, where he was usually quiet and inoffensive.Every now and again, though, he would become spectactacularly drunk. The least successful transvestite I have ever known (and I have known a good few);his ladygarment evenings saw him crammed into a tight short leather skirt, and a navy blue jacket with a sailor collar. His beard was light brown ,contrasting strikingly with the scarlet lipstick he had applied,seemingly whilst in a rocking boat in a storm with his eyes shut. Thus arrayed, he would put "Ride A White Swan" on his gramophone relentlessly repeated at extraordinary volume and sit on the stairs outside Nigel's (wisely shut) bedroom door, howling of his love. We had few visitors, but when we did, they seemed to co-incide with Mickey having a turn. I once had to make polite conversation with several members of the Leeds University Gilbert and Sullivan Society, as he rampaged around the basement ,smashing things and hammering on Nigel's door, with Marc Bolan warbling away as background music. Poor chap,he was tremendously intelligent and good company, in his calmer periods. After Nigel left, gratefully, for a more tranquil existence in Wales, Mickey and I became quite pally, and had shopping trips together for fishnets and enormous shoes. Upstairs, we had Liz, a violinist. When she wasn't playing the violin, she favoured being tied to her iron bedstead and noisily whipped,by a series of chaps who all looked like Hell's Angels. The next morning,one would meet her on the landing, scurrying off to rehearsal. My social skills were taxed by these encounters; and etiquette books remained unhelpful on the dilemma. I generally made some cheerful comment on the weather, and tried not to look past her into her room,where heaped leathers and tangled sheets would be strewn about the floor. All this had started to prey upon our landlady's mind, and she decided to mount a moral crusade.This started with her suddenly jumping out of a hedge like a trapdoor spider, as I was fumbling for my keys with some chum or other in tow. "Are you a Homosexual?" she would demand, of no-one in particular. "Because I can't have THAT in my house...My husband was killed by a Homosexual, in The War, you know" News to me, and also to Mr Koppock, I think, who was often to be seen in the garden, peaceably digging Mrs Koppock-shaped holes.
Of course, ninety-nine per cent of the time, my companion would indeed be a Flaming Queen, but if you went about like RuPaul in Leeds in 1973, a few batty old ladies were as nothing in comparison to the general level of disapproval to be encountered in Briggate.
She upped her game gradually that summer; suddenly popping her wildly-scarfed head around our bedroom doors, looking for Vice. One day I was sitting harmlessly chatting with my friend Tom, who in addition to being devotedly gay, had the manners and demeanour of a BBC announcer circa 1952. Mrs K ran in,grabbed my spectacles (which I was wearing), and ran off, burbling about adultery and speaking in tongues. "Now look here, Mrs Koppock!" exclaimed Tom, striding manfully after her retreating,giggling, form,"that is really too much. Give Elizabeth her glasses back AT ONCE."
It is perhaps unsurprising that I had one of the only three inexplicably supernatural experiences of my life in that house.
Another story.
So,whatever East Albert Road has to offer, I am sure that I will cope. This is not to throw the gauntlet down to Fate, by the way, but more (to paraphrase that faintly annoying poster one sees everywhere now) in the spirit of "Keep Calm and the Corkscrew To Hand".
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