Good News

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. Manueĺ’s dad by the way. You know, Manuel: the Spanish waiter in John Cleese’s hotel as Sartre-esque hell. Funny how they both ended up with starched collars and bow-ties in their professional lives. 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 and 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, 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 lucky ones 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.