Good News

Cherry

By Ewan

Sat, 22 Aug 2020
  • 1950 reads
8 comments
 

The man who stands outside the council offices in the afternoons isn’t your normal pavement ranter. There’s no dog on a string by his side. Nor is there a cap, a top-hat or a saucepan with pitiful sums at his feet. He’s dressed like Leonard Sachs, if you know who that is. Maybe you’ve heard parents or grandparents talk about the Good Old Days and for once they don’t mean the time before gender fluidity and tolerance, “when you could say what you thought”. They’ll have been talking about a television programme. Lots of “light entertainers” put on cod-music hall acts for an audience who dressed up like the Victorian upper class. Leonard Sachs had a gavel (!) and he was the presenter. Yes, it was that bad, but there were worse things on the electric friend in the corner of your front room.

Like The Black and White Minstrel Show and its little clone, “Junior Showtime”, with Glyn Poole, a little blond mop-top-barely-more-than-a-tot paedophile’s wet dream as its presenter. They were much worse. This was a time when people, a lot more than you might think, thought Alf Garnett was spouting what Johnny Speight really believed. I think back to those days and feel I shouldn’t be surprised that nobody noticed about Rolf and Jimmy and Glittering Gary.

 

In those days my parents wore the little enamel badge of Gospellers themselves and I went to Bible Classes run by the Scripture Union and learned the order of the books that all the fairy tales Christianity could muster were transcribed in. Transformed from Aramaic or Greek into Latin and English and probably even Klingon, but not Parseltongue.

I never could figure out what the Good News was: a carpenter king died for my sins? I hadn’t committed any. Gospellers aren’t big on personal guilt and ad-hoc absolution. Then they said it was for all our sins. When you’re seven or eight they don’t tend to go on about original sin too much. It makes small boys try to think up something really bad to do. Of course we give up, realising pretty soon that there’s nothing new under the sun.

 

The man outside the council offices is no hot gospeller, no doomsday merchant, there’s no end-of-the-world-is-nigh nonsense. I mean, we know that from the news, right? No, his gospel is quite different. Like I say, he doesn’t rant. Doesn’t speechify. He tries to look everyone – everyone – in the eye. Naturally, most people don’t let him. They look at the ground, at the sky, at the person at the other end of the street who might just be the girl you sat next to at school until you moved away or she did, whichever it was. Some people even cross over to the other side of the road. Nowadays, too, they get their mobile out and pretend to take a call or look at snapchat posts of strangers’ genitals.

But, every so often, he catches someone’s eye and he smiles the beatific beam of the truly mad. Here’s the thing though. These people, these lucky few, they smile back and then he throws back his head and he laughs. His laugh is a sound so full of joy that all the passed and passing-by look away until the joy is out of earshot.

And you know what? The next day they - the ones who do catch his eye, that is - come back to hear him laugh again. Some try to speak to him, ask for an explanation. I did, once or twice. Now I just come to hear him laugh his good news, not to wonder what it is that he finds so funny. I don’t care. I’m going to find my own spot soon, and spread the good news myself.

Certificate PG
Story
Not Quite Good Enough
Other Fiction

Comments

Submitted by Ed Crane on

which brought back some childhood confusions of my own. I had to look up Mr. Sachs and I realised I vaguely remember him as I passed through the living room on my way to somewhere else (anywhere!) in the house.

Despite the 50's and 60's garbage my parents and Grandparents watched (or rather had on the telly because there wasn't anything else on) I don't recall the Good Old Days being particularly popular in our house. Most likely my Grandparents were too young or not allowed to go to music halls (my maternal great grandfather was a Major in the Sally Army) and didn't remember such things except for some famous names who were already old when they were young. My parents no doubt thought it was rubbish, whereas I considered it non-existent extinct Victoriana.

I take your point about Rolf and GaryG, but I'm not so sure about Mr. Jimmy Clunk-Click. I was told by a Yorkie girl friend living down South, Jimmy was well known in Leeds dance halls during the late fifties as; that "handy" DJ. The fact that my girlfriend was too young to go to these hops at the time show how well known his legendary roving fingers were locally, long before he hit the big-time.  

I have to admit I would have tried to escape to my iPhone should I have encountered the man outside the council offices, although I do tend to smile at wierd people much to the annoyance of my ex. who was pretty good at cold and scary F***k off stares.

The last sentence is a gem :)

Enjoyed this read

Thanks, Ewan

Ed.

 

 

Submitted by airyfairy on

Let me know when you find your spot.  If travel is allowed over the Pennines, round the Dales, over the hills and far away on a Tuesday with quarantined track and trace, I'll come and find you.

We have a Big Issue seller here who stands outside M&S singing, dancing, waving his arms and greeting everyone in Italian.  I find it interesting to see who waves back and goes on their way with a smile (hopefully with a mag) and who does a very wide arc to avoid him.  

As a child, I was taken to see the Black and White Minstrels live show at the Victoria Palace Theatre in London.  Dear God, I thought it was fab.  

Have you read Dan Davies' book 'In Plain Sight' about Savile?  Not only did pretty much everyone who was anyone know, they all happily enabled him.  It's one of the most chilling things I've ever read.

 

 

Submitted by Di_Hard on

I remember seeing a little girl shrink away from him on the sofa thing on Jimlfixit, and he gave her a filthy look. He said something about it to her dad, who was embarrassed. I found him scary after that. Maybe a fake memory but often the teenagers he was hugging on Top of the Pops looked tense, as they did for some of the other ones who turned out to be dodgy too. We tried watching Mad Men last night, the way all the men seemed to think women were theirs, I don't know if it was really like that, but it was very uncomfortable to watch, there was no sign of women's liberation at all.

Also, if female can be dodgy smiling back at men? However I still remember last year when I went into town feeling very low and a lady gave me a RADIANT smile, it really was like a light. I didn't know her but it was the most precious thing. So I know what you mean!

 

Submitted by Ewan on

did start out at the end of the 50s (Draper was a Korean war veteran) and you're quite correct, there is hardly a trace of feminism depicted in series one at all. This is chiefly because 50's America was all Norman Rockwell and "I like Ike" and the "little woman" stayed at home.  If you look at advertising from the time, it perpetuated this. What we think of as "The 60s" didn't really start at all until the Beatles, even in America.

Tracing Peggy, Joan and Betty's story arcs through all of the series shows how difficult it was. Things do change over the course of Mad Men, but glacially slowly as they did in real life. Even so, Joan, the sex-object secretary, is a Vice President of Cooper Sterling Draper Price by the third last series. (How she gets there is another minefield for modern sensibilities, but the writers show very clearly she should have had the job anyway).

It's no coincidence that the most interesting story-lines involved these three women.
"The past IS another country", they DO do things differently there. Our depictions of it should not project modern beliefs and mores on them that were not there. The reader or viewer is free to decry how things were, of course, but not to deny they happened.

Author Page at the 'Zon
 

Submitted by Di_Hard on

will try a bit harder with madmen, thankyou

 

Submitted by hudsonmoon on

Even though I'm not familiar with any of the names you've mentioned, I found that if I filled it in with names I am familiar with, it all made perfect sense. 

I remember a show called Queen for a Day. It was hosted by Jack Bailey. As a young boy of lean means, I always felt embarrassed for the contestants. They would pick women out of the audience based on how needy they were. Each contestant woud tell their tale of woe: I need a heart specialist, I need a new refrigeratr, I need need shoes for the kids. That sort of thing. At the end of the show Mr. Bailey would put his hand over the head of each woman, and whoever got the strongest response from the audienc was the declared the winner. The music would start playing and they'd put a regal sort of robe on the winner, seat her on a throne and put a crown on her head. It was one big weep fest and I always hoped to God that my mother never found herself on the show. 

That's how I remember it anyway. Maybe you had something similar your way? Thanks for conjuring up so many memories you conjuror you. 

 

Submitted by Ewan on

dropping by, Richard.One of those shows which might have seemed familiar, had you seen it, was Johnny Speight's vehicle with Alf Garnett as a working class bigot. It crossed the pond and became All in the Family. It was, admittedly, less controversial than 'Til Death Do Us Part, but it was instantly recognisable if you saw both as I did.

I do remember Queen for a Day being referred to by stand-up comics and in reruns of contemporaneous sitcoms on AFN in Berlin in the 80s. A horrible concept, but public humiliation has always been a staple of TV.

Best

Ewan

Author Page at the 'Zon
 

Submitted by Ed Crane on

Vaguely remember it. RAF boys I think. Not sure if they were pilots.

Many years ago my neighbour at the time was a hedgehopper. Not from the band - real one. He flew out of RAF Honington in Norfolk. He trained young pilots -- a qualified instructor. Used to buzz our houses sometimes for a giggle. He eventually got a place with the Red Arrows. Great bloke.