Easter Lillies

Easter week-end was getting close and the statement ‘Easter Camp Exercise’ was marked in bold red marker pen on the parade room whiteboard which gave me a heart-flicker of nervy excitement every time I saw it.  As far as I was concerned, I’d joined Ashpriors School Army Cadets just in time to grab a free camping holiday with my new mates.  However, no-one told me that the word ‘Exercise’ was the cadet equivalent of real soldiers going off to war – a kind of, what you’ve trained for, ‘this is it’ moment.

      It all started well enough. A couple of damp Wednesday evenings in the Cadet Hut - playing games and consuming loads of crisps and pop.  It was better than being at home; even TV in those days wasn’t very good, particularly on Wednesday evenings when it was pretty much downhill all the way after Time Tunnel.

     All you did was turn up at this cedar wood shed, tucked neatly within the school grounds; play a few games, do a bit of drill trying not to giggle, and fumble a bit with an old Lee Enfield rifle.  ‘This is the bed block and blade, this is the bolt, this is the safety catch, and this is how you ease the springs’. Then, at the end of the evening, a small dismiss parade – lots of good natured hollering and foot stamping and being made to feel like tough little soldiers.

     In charge of training was the laconic Sergeant George Barkett. A bricklayer and ex-soldier:  hair hogged down at the sides, regulation style; boots buffed up like black snooker balls; his back straight as a tent pole.  He was still Army, right down to his nerve ends. I wondered how he must have hated being a bricklayer, after serving out most of his life amid the hot sands of Africa and Asia with his rifle sights glinting under the desert sun. Now, he’d mostly be seen holding a dulled trowel somewhere in rainy Ilminster with red brick dust under his nails. For him Army Cadets must have seemed like a gift from God. 

     On our last rifle training period before Camp I asked Sergeant Barkett, somewhat naively, about the rifle’s piling swivel.  I’d remembered old Mr Cummings our History teacher intoning with military mellifluousness Henry Reed’s ‘Naming of Parts’ poem from ‘Lessons of the War’ and the words, because of his outrageous delivery, had stuck with me. 

     Cummings had called it a ‘pailing swivel’ in a mock-Sergeant Major accent; but when I asked Barkett about it using that odd pronunciation he narrowed his eyes like an angry snake. He recovered quickly telling me I was thinking of the wrong rifle but added that it was unwise of me to act smart this side of Easter Camp.

     I wasn’t really being smart, I was just trying to join in more, but it backfired. Barkett didn’t seem that keen on any of the four of us who’d just joined.  Earlier I’d noticed him gazing out of the window onto the strange, dusk-filled school playground where seasoned cadets, properly turned out in uniform, were being marched up and down like clockwork soldiers by a bossy kid wearing corporal chevrons. Barkett was nodding approval at the child-like bellows and the precision of the drill movements being instilled by this young chump, probably thinking that here were soldiers in the making, unlike these poetry spouting poofs.   

     The word was that some of these adult cadets were a bit wistful. It must have been hard trading military briefings, battle-drills and bawdy jokes in the Mess, for evenings sat slumped with their wives in front of the telly, sharing a pot of tea and a slice of date and walnut.  On Wednesday evenings however, they could dream.  

      He looked at me. ‘Are you down for Easter Camp?’

     ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘If there’s enough uniform to fit me.’

     ‘Good,’ said Barkett. ‘Maybe we’ll get a chance to talk about piling swivels when we’re on a hill side in the Quantocks waiting for the enemy; if you’re still in the mood.’

      I’d no idea what he meant.  It seemed like a threat, but I quickly dismissed the thought, probably due to my excitement about Camp.  I loved camping: smoke-spiced soup, that stale vomit-like stink in your tent, playing slugs in sleeping bags, your clothes smelling of smoke, and your hair turning to moss and itching like crazy.    

     The school janitor, Hughie Kilgore, a snippy Scot with the snurped face of an ancient cherub, kitted us out.  Hughie had served as a gunner during WW2 until a shrapnel injury allowed him to see out the rest of the War in the regular Army stores. On Wednesday evenings these days, Hughie would put aside his mop and bucket and become Corporal Hughie.  The cadet uniform store was his lair, his hard old janitor’s nose immune to the stench of old leather, dried sweat and stuff called Blanco; a vinegary, wax-smelling concoction used for weather proofing webbing belts and pouches.

     Once it became your turn, Hughie would pull out bits of uniform from his shelves which quickly gathered around your feet like a pile of dead soldier’s limbs.  From the heap he’d find berets so tight they cut off the blood supply to your brain, shirts so hairy you knew how it felt to have trench lice and trousers that fell comically to the floor when you walked. 

     One by one he tied belts harshly round our middles, spun us round in front of a misty mirror, teased us about Easter Camp and screeched about our mothers needing to feed us extra ‘tatties’ because we were, ‘naethin but skin an' bain.’ I remember feeling relieved that Hughie’s trusty shrapnel wound guaranteed wouldn’t be going to the Quantocks with us the next day.   

      Once we got there, things quickly got worse.  As we unloaded the trucks, two men, almost identical twins and both dressed as Army soldiers appeared almost as if they’d popped out from one of the boxes we’d brought. The haircuts, the bearing, the language, they were obviously Army regulars.  Then, from nowhere it was all: ‘get the fuck off your arses and get these fucking tents up, move yourselves you little shits!’ We all leapt up and did as we were told, stunned into an obedient and frightened silence.

     Relieved I spotted Mr Burbidge, normally a popular teacher who smoked a cherry wood pipe and wore a tweedy newsboy cap. The same cap I watched sail off in the wind whilst he was in the playground in discussion with Mr Hennessey, the gardener, about some floribunda roses that had been beheaded. I remembered saving it from its stuttering leap-frog towards the compost heap next to the vegetable patch.  I remembered that the cap had smelled like an intensified version of Mr Burbidge, a blend of burnt tobacco and musty hair oil. I remembered how he’d thanked me.

      I readied myself for a conversation with Mr, now ‘Lieutenant’ Burbidge, who, I thought, as a specialist in Rural as well as General Science was bound to feel joy being amid the Quantock Hills. He’d have seen the fields of primroses and bluebells on the way in, and the way the grizzled Erica Heather, now exhausted by winter, was preparing for the explosion of red and purple Ling and Bell.  He’d know that during the 1950s, the decade in which all of his cadets were born, it was designated an area of outstanding natural beauty.

        As he looked in my direction his eyes seemed dead, like a sheep’s.  He looked like Mr Burbidge, but I doubted it was ‘my’ Mr Burbidge, particularly when he snapped into consciousness, glowered, and shouted 'why the fuck are you standing around boy, get wood for the fire!’ I looked at his once benign face as if to say:  ‘Mr Burbidge, it's me, remember, I rescued your hat.  And in science when I did that frog thing you said I was brave. And when I correctly identified those spores in the Petri dish, you were impressed, and you said I'd done so well stopping Perkins from drinking that fluid and Whinyates from setting fire to Lucy Spangler’s plaits with a Bunsen.’ Then gave him a weak smile.

      'Move. Your. Fucking. Self!’  He said. ‘And you, and you, and you!’  As he uttered the final 'you' he went to place his foot up the backside of a little kid called Sykes, just missing him. Sykes wailed anyway clutching his rear in imagined pain.

      Mr Hollybery, our English teacher, was overseeing the tent detail. Nearly as short as us, but stocky and busy, like a rugby back. I decided to approach him and ask whether he thought Coleridge and his young wife Sarah had walked here with the Wordsworths during their 18th Century rambles from the nearby village of Nether Stowey. But I changed my mind when I saw him bawling at Dunch, calling him an ‘idiotic little creep’ for bending a tent peg and imploring him to ‘use his fucking noggin,’ before tearing the mallet from him and making an action that suggested he was going to club Dunch half to death with it.

     Dazed from that image of unexpected violence, getting our own tent up was a nervy ordeal which quickly blistered and bruised our fingers. At one point it got caught in a fierce gust of wind, flew off and hung suspended in the air like a giant bat before flopping down in a heap having sailed frighteningly close to the fire. One of the sergeants dragged it back over to us and dumped it at our feet like a slaughtered animal and warned us to stop pissing about.  Later on we were given square tins with fold away handles from which we were to eat our daily rations of porridge or burnt stew.  

    That first evening, under orders, we sat quietly by the fire; roasting our faces, chilling our necks, and swotting sparks from our heads like they were glowing mosquitoes.  The peaceful fire-crackling silence was then broken by Mr Hollybery singing something that sounded vaguely pornographic about a Sir Jasper, whose lady, as suggested by the words, was in the habit of laying naked before him on a beds of lilies. It was one of those bonding songs with a simple chorus that we were forced to shout loudly into the wind, like we were 18^th Century seamen sailing to our doom.         

      I wondered why on earth I’d volunteered to come to this hell. All the adults seemed to be acting like fiends.  Later, from my tent, I could just hear a family of ground-nesting nightjars I’d seen earlier.  I’d read somewhere that any disruptions near their nests and they’d move out. Their unsettled chirruping made it seem they were packing their bags, and I envied them.

      In the morning we all sat in a circle in the middle of the camp, like pint-sized Red Indians, eating sticky porridge from our tins whilst our tents were inspected for signs of poor hygiene. Suddenly there was a clattering of activity and I saw a lad called Wilkins, who’d refused to get up for breakfast and had fallen back to sleep, being dragged from his tent, feet first whilst still in his bag. He was dumped outside still zipped up, looking like a startled maggot. Half his belongings and some of ours rolled out with him, like making it look like he'd been dragged from amidst a pile of rubble. Wilkins and the rubble came to rest close to our feet and under our shocked, silent faces. 

     Another lad called Potts was foolish enough to fight back and was wrestled out of his sleeping bag and bundled towards a ditch for a dunking. As his sleeping bag fell away I was astonished to see he was wearing orange striped pyjamas rather than the oversized green vests the rest of us casually bedded down in. I noticed his pyjama bottoms neatly tied with a white bow as if his mother had put him to bed that night. But his scattered hair ruined the image. Like ours, it looked stiff and filthy from the heat and ash of the fire we’d sat around the previous night, singing awful songs about lilies and mucky old Sir Jasper whilst peeling potatoes until our hands looked like pig's trotters.  

     I started to feel homesick for Potts as well as me – especially when he went and sat on a log by the ditch, sobbing in embarrassment and looking ludicrously orange and displaced against the predominance of greens and browns.  

     Over the next two days we walked miles with maps, tired, hungry, wet and sad, and a bit like Potts, weeping; except we kept ours on the inside. Apart from a few, we would all rather have been at home. There was some more cowboys and Indians war stuff, running and shooting with deafening blank rounds, and getting hollered at for pointing our rifles too close when firing because blanks at close quarters, we were told, 'can still be dangerous!'

     Then it was time for the final exercise. We walked to the hillside to prepare for the night ambush. On arrival Sgt Barkett produced a tube of camouflage cream.

     ‘I don’t want to see your faces shining in the moonlight like a bunch of Easter lilies’, he said.   ‘If I can see you, so can the enemy. Cover up’ 

    He squeezed a fat slug into each of our outstretched palms and we streaked our faces and necks until we looked like wretchedVictorian street urchins. Then we unrolled the grass from a series of outlined rectangles and dug shallow trenches to hide in. Then like little troglodyte carpet fitters, reapplied the grass rolls to the freshly dug earth to fool the enemy into believing we weren’t there.

      We sat silently in the holes, turning into anonymous black shapes as we watched a Quantock combe become shrouded in black. As we waited my nose leaked clear snot and my fingers went numb.  

     Hours later I looked at Sergeant Barkett’s inert, lumpy black shape on my left and thought, slightly deliriously, about the piling swivel conversation we’d had in the warm cadet hut. It seemed ridiculous now. Then I caught sight of a scramble of shapes purposely making ground towards us. The trip-flares popped, splitting the silence, freezing a tableau of human shapes inside the flickering lights.   

      ‘Enemy front!’ roared Captain Hollybery.      

      This was it! On the command we popped up like glove puppets and rattle-raked them with everything we had.  Then there was silence. The air reeking with the smell of burnt pencils from the cordite and humming like white noise as the residue of the racket that split the night, ebbed away,  A sporadic series of snaps, pops and harsh whispers filled the void.  
And that was it.  The whistle was blown to indicate that the both the exercise and the week-end’s playacting was over. We all trudged back to camp relieved that we would be going home first thing in the morning.     

      Once it was light, we ‘broke camp’. Gleefully, with the industry of a nest of ants, we packed the tents up, stuffing the smelly canvas and clanging poles bag into their bags and throwing them onto the trucks. We extinguished the fire and jumped into the waiting coach.

      I rested my head against the window of the coach feeling the campsite grit prickle my scalp and reflected upon the awfulness of this odd Army experience. It wasn’t until much later I learnt that the adult supervisors were expected to expose us to some hard character building treatment, typical of Army life, to deter those of us who thought joining up was an easy option to leave school early. At the time, I didn’t know what to think.  

      As the coach neared the end of the track where the tarmac road began and the Quantocks ended, I spotted a pond on the corner containing a cluster of water lilies, which appeared to be slowly emerging, shyly showing their waking faces to the sky. I closed my eyes, and let the image swirl around my mind as the rumble of the coach engine slowly rocked me to sleep.    

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                                                         Commentary

The original idea of ‘Easter Lilies’ came from a notebook entry (Ragan, M. 2011 p56-66) following a memory exercise from Activity 21.2 (Workbook, 2006). I’d expanded it later as a possible TMA04 fragment for continuation through-line for TMA04. As I developed it further, I thought it had the potential to stand alone as an autobiographical piece so placed it to one side for a possible future EMA.         

     At one level this work is a light hearted account of a short spell in the school Army cadets which incorporated a week-end’s experience when things got tougher. But, to work as the final EMA, I wanted to take the opportunity to demonstrate as fully as possible, how my writing skills have developed throughout the course. I wanted it to have depth by exploring a theme within the life story account - in this case childhood and the notion of learning about life through exposure to new experiences. 

     For Easter Lilies I’d in mind a kind of confessional in the manner of Nigel Slater's Toast, (Slater, N. 2003) showing a sensitive, bemused boy with added authorial observations and wisdom from my older self. But unlike Slater’s style, I wanted to give the responsibility for the narrative completely over to my older, knowing self, closer to the Martin Amis style (Workbook, 2006 p307) to show a retrospective understanding of the experience.  I wanted the humour and the pathos to be expressed by me today, rather than leaving it to the reader to work out what’s happening from the confusion at the time.  I thought this a better way to showcase my final piece of writing.

     I utilized certain writing techniques such as memory, research and theme all learnt and improved upon during the course, to help give the story life, depth and readability. I have found the TMAs, tutorials and tutor feedback  useful here reinforcing the importance of illuminating moments of experience by ‘showing’ rather than ‘telling’(Workbook, 2006, Tutorials 1-4, 2011/12 ), a harsh lesson learnt after TMA05's lack of an illuminated emotional moment. I believe I’ll always do better work when I keep this in mind.

     In this EMA I made reference to ‘Naming of Parts’ (Reed, 1946) partly because of its subject matter, but also to invigorate the tone; blending the prosaic harsh realities of the moment with some creative musings about the settings and background. I also included Coleridge, known by all characters in the story, as a rare famous person from this area.  I mixed up the tones for effect hoping to add pathos to the humour, always keeping it creative in style rather than reported anecdote.  

     I tried to imbue my (real) characters with sufficient complexity letting my imagination add colour to the facts. (Workbook, 2006 p276, p325). I drew on memory and research to organize the narrative, ensuring that the setting was consistent with late April, as my exact memory on seasonal specifics, needed help.  I reminded myself of the importance of ‘associative memory’ when recalling in sensory detail: sitting around a fire, putting up tents and waiting on cold hillsides. (Workbook, 2006, p318 p326)

     As the course has progressed I now try to get the right balance of similes to help enrich my descriptive prose, but to reflect the importance of the EMA I wanted this time to include symbolism and metaphor to show that I now have a better understanding of the many course writing techniques discussed.  The use of water lilies, which are buried in sludge before they can mature fully developed  are a kind of metaphor for the young cadets, and the character Sergeant Barkett can't help but notice their faces shining by moonlight, as lilies might. The lilies I’d seen from the coach window continue the symbolism and permit me as narrator to make the connection.  

      I’d decided that autobiographical Life Writing would be a good option for an EMA as most of the fictional writings and even some poetry I’ve written for the exercises, TMAs and tutorials have included lots of autobiographical material which suits my style. But I was also keen to extend the breadth of my work by challenging not just my memory and research vital to any autobiographical work, but to use a range of techniques from fiction and poetry to help bring my EMA to life. I hope now my writing skills have improved and sharpened in preparation for the advanced course.

  

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References:

Haslam, S. (2006) in Linda Anderson (ed.) Creative Writing: A workbook with readings. Milton Keynes/Abingdon: The Open University in association with Routledge

Ragan, M. (2012) Private Writer’s Notebook P56-66 under title: ‘Through Line Options.’  Not published.

Ragan, M. (2012) ‘Oddments of an Odd Life’. Tutor Marked Assessment 04 TMA04 for A215 Creative Writing. The Open University. 

Ragan, M. (2012) ‘The Seaside at Night.’ Tutor Marked Assessment 05 (TMA05) for A215 Creative Writing.  The Open University. 

Reed, H. (1946) Lessons of the War. 1. Naming of Parts.  http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/lessons-of-the-war Accessed: May 16^th 2012

Slater, N. (2003) Toast: The story of a boy’s hunger, London: Fourth Estate

The Open University A215 Creative Writing Tutorials, 1- 4 (2011, 2012) http://learn.open.ac.uk/mod/forumng/discuss.php?d=866925 Accessed May 7^th 2012. 

The Test

Another from Future Learn. I didn't really complete the last course offered by the OU, but I'm led to believe that another one will come along later this year. It's now October so I'm guessing next month perhaps. The example below is from an exercise that was peer reviewed. I don't know how many reviews it received (only a couple I think), but they were generally favorable. I know that the exercise caused some disquiet among students due to the randomness of the reviewing process - the work had to be uploaded, then by some arcane system it would drop into another students working web area who would then be given the task of either reviewing it, or clearing it prompting a new one to take its place. This could take place an infinite number of times so you had to hope that at least someone liked it enough to actually want to review it - everyone had to review a piece of work to enable them to make progress in the course, but no-one had to review YOUR work. I think the brief for this the beginning of a longer story with emphasis of atmosphere and character 

'It was late and already dark as the solitary, slightly hunched figure of drama group leader Christian Robinson slowly read through the list of regular players. He was deep in thought, scratching his invisible beard, draining the last of his coffee slops and buttoning up his coat against the static cold of the old hall. He did a bit of acting himself, but these days was styling himself more as a director. He imagined himself as a creative influence capable of making other people do great things.

By this time everyone else had gone and he’d stayed behind wondering who to cast as the 'prince of darkness' for the upcoming horror play he'd promised the politics club: those fusty old worthies, who shared the Leddington-on Green village hall two nights a week who although rather dismissive of the drama group's work, had surprisingly requested a dark play especially for them. Christian without hesitation had said yes.

He had to be serious about casting this time though. If this went well, he knew at least two of the expected creak-filled audience were sufficiently influential in matters to do with local entertainments that if it went down well the next stop could easily the playhouse in town. The mayor or least his wife would be in this audience so maybe next stop would be The Leddington Athenaeum, Then maybe onto, who knows?  The world and oysters, he was thinking. So, someone tall, he thought, with the right amount of menace at his disposal. An ability to do creepy, yet urbane. Intelligence combined with the cad. Creepily urbane. Cleverly caddish. Sinister. Commanding.

He ran through the options. Paul was too short and didn't have anything like sinister in his delivery repertoire. His ears stuck out too - making him good for comedy. Richard's voice was too high pitched, his hair, foppish, his eyes too wide and his hands too small. This made him a good 'weak man', a hen-pecked husband, or a failing romantic. Malcolm was too effeminate in his manner - great for girl/boy roles or old fruits but not this. Tony, too rigid - too military, good policeman material and does petty officialdom brilliantly, but not this. Lewis, is too music hall. Maybe he could be a Jonathan Harker character at best, arriving at the glowering doors in the rattling rain and simpering against a backdrop of ropy sounding storms - courtesy of Bill and his ramshackle skip of percussive instruments that wobbled and hissed at his command. But someone needs to be there, he thought, someone standing expectantly in the shadows. Someone to frighten him and the audience. And none of this lot are cut out for this.

He suddenly realized how late it was, too late for this place. As he began hurriedly to gather up his things there was a knock on the door. It so hard it shocked him. So hard it echoed through the shell of the old building and made the startled walls moan and the air rumble. He purposely didn't look up. The candle guttered. The shock sound from the dark, kept his frozen eyes down. All he could see was the broken shadow that had slipped silently and unbidden through the hall window and seemed to hang everywhere. Whoever this was, he thought, he either had his man or was in grave danger.  

A Flash of Thunder, a Crack of Lightning

This came from Familiar Words in Unfamiliar Places. Another of the myriad ploys to try to get encourage the writer to be original.  Original in thought and in technique. Easier said than done. 

The children knew from Mrs. Bunsen’s science lessons that lightening only ever flickered when black clouds had somehow turned day into night as if someone was slowly turning the dial of a giant dimmer switch. Thunder would follow with booms and rumbles that sounded to them like sky warriors were bashing and rumbling their shields and preparing to attack Earth. The last time this had happened during one of those lessons Mrs. Bunsen had promised them that there was nothing to worry about as it was only explosions of air pressure, similar to when a squeakily tight balloon has too much wind in it and eventually has to go pop. But this was a hard blue sky day with a sizzling disc of pale orange sun and not a single cloud in sight. What was happening up there made no sense


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Net Result

This little autobiographical vignette was drawn from the section called 'Starting Ploys'. In this case I'm setting up a life writing anecdote which has a calm opening as the scene is set before a violent interruption that changes the tone of the story. Although I didn't really set out the themes other than 'autobiographical' as with many of my early 'life writing' examples' bullying' as a theme often emerges. . 

I remember as a boy when I first went fishing at the local canal. My friend was already quite skilled so he brought everything that we'd need. This included a wicker-basket which contained jars of maggots that looked like cheap penny sweets,ornate floats that looked like African tribal jewellery,and things he called lures that turned out to be undercover devices that deviously imitated fish but were clad in a violent armoury of trapping hooks and clamping teeth. As he set up the rods and tackle I sat quietly on the grassy bank watching a family of moorhens flitting about. I closed my eyes and breathed in the oily damp of the stagnant water and the submerged weed. I was looking forward to my first ever experience at fishing but the day was about to take a spiteful turn.

Characters The Double Bass Histories

In my first year at grammar school I was asked which musical instrument I would like to learn to play. I immediately chose the cello as both my father and my grandfather had both played the double bass and I felt that with the cello I might somehow be maintaining the male family tradition of playing awkward stringed instruments made of wood. Both of these men were quite thick-set with sturdy backs from working in the mines and could handle the weight of the bass, but for a reedy 13 year old five footer like me the cello would be a more suitable instrument.It was during the 1950s when my father played most. Jazz was all the rage and he was often spotted on his bicycle,scooting awkwardly through the town on his way to various dance hall gigs, him standing on one peddle, the spike of the double bass securing the instrument to the other. No one had cars so quite how the drummer transported all his kit remains a mystery.

 My grandfather's double bass career ended rather abruptly when both he and the monstrous instrument, the same one that my father was to inherit,collapsed and fell with a sickening clatter in the music pit of the local picture house. It was reported later that he'd had a seizure whilst vigorously providing the dramatic music for a silent film. 

Characters 4 Teddy the Clown

Another character from my Future Learn experiences. I can't remember the brief - each character sketch or scenario was supposed to help us exercise a specific writing technique - but whatever it was I quite liked this one. 

'I knew a circus clown once, called Theodore William Foofourang. I never knew whether this was his actual name or a made up one with which he could trade easy jokes, along with his over-sized feet, nobble nose and swazzel voice. One morning, one of those cruel, dull, November mornings, Theodore or Teddy-Clown as the children called him,was found dead in the local park fish pond. According to the park keeping attendant who found the body,several koi carp were nibbling at his prosthetic nose and sucking down what was left of the pills that floated from the bottle he still held. His only living relative was traced as his sister,an aged spinster surprisingly named Miss Elizabeth (Betty) Foofourang. She announced to a disinterested world via the Lewisham and Greenwhich Mercury that her brother probably died keeping any joy he might have been born with,still locked away in his heart.'

There is a danger I suppose from accusations that this character is nothing much more than an outrageous cliche: the sad clown.  But to hell with that. Actually now I come to think of it that might have been part of the brief. Whatever the case he's here if I ever need him. 

Characters 3 Trevor

I have chosen another character form my underused notebook.  This one wasn't so much received with thunderous applause and hysterical approval but rather to sound of one hand clapping.  I'd like to think the timing was against me as the creation of Trevor  I thought fitted the brief of the exercise better than many other examples that appeared far more popular. Here it is...

Here in this bleached BBC TV footage of 1970's off-colour, Britain is seen coping with a summer like it's never had. The flickering images alternate between crowds of young girls in various states of dress and distress, and a group of suited young men standing on a stage looking bashful and bemused. A young policeman is spotted, wearing a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled almost to his shoulders. Before the news clip ended he was seen stumbling with near exhaustion,showing the strains of his wiry tattoo-less arms as he carried an unconscious sixteen year old girl from the scrummage of a tearful and hysterical crowd.

Before the decade was finished,Trevor, having impressed his bosses over the years, had ditched the blue uniform for a brown coloured suit which matched his tie which matched his shirt, which matched his hair and sideburns which he now wore fashionably long. His car was brown and so were the fingers of his right hand from the tiny No 6 cigarettes that he burned to the hilts between tensed fingers whilst trying to understand how troubled souls worked. 

Today, a slightly shambolic Detective Chief Inspector of a run-down Auckland police office, with three broken marriages, a drink problem, a rented flat and at least one health scare behind him,Trevor gathered himself to make his belated retirement speech to a group of assembled worthies. One of those amassed to pay their respects, hidden in the crowd and very alert,was a 58 year old Billionaire American Business woman called Ms Emily Pargetter who after many years of searching had finally tracked him down.