Jason often comes out with things - subjects seemingly plucked out of thin air - which fairly electrify me. One heavily overcast Sunday afternoon, he said that he had been stopped several times in recent months by people asking for money.
“Hardly anything unusual about that”, I said “Some people seem to think the rest of us are there just to finance their drug habit!”
“But these were NORMAL people, the ones that stopped me”, Jason protested “I mean normally dressed and everything. They didn’t seem short of money, they probably had more than me, and they didn’t look as though they were desperate for booze or drugs. They were just asking for money. It gives me the creeps”.
“It’s just the way of the world”, I said “There are so many out there who seem to think they’re automatically owed something. They’ve never been refused anything. That’s what I find scary. Look at the way people are on the roads. Everybody I mean. Drivers, cyclists and pedestrians. They all seem to have this insane belief that they can’t ever come to any harm, that everybody else will automatically get out of their way”.
I could see he wasn’t convinced though. And I decided not to say anymore, in case I really went into Old Fart mode and started ranting about The General Decline In Good Manners (and yes I do know I am a fine one to talk). Jason was clearly going to chew on this one for some time to come as well.
Over the next few days I got more and more concerned about him. He seemed to be going into an Al-like melancholia. The sudden, shocking death of Michael Jackson didn’t help matters. But I think that was the case for a lot of our generation.
“Why is the world always hard on geniuses, Gray?” he suddenly asked me one day.
“Because the world doesn’t understand them”, I said.
“I’m thinking of heading back up to Loch Ness”, he said , unexpectedly “Go and do a bit of the old Nessie-spotting. We’ll soon be coming into the right season for it. Some of the best sightings have been round August time”.
He look at me a bit wistfully, and I knew then that he was hoping to recreate the Summer of 2006, when we had met Magda and Xanthe there.
“You know I can’t come, Jason”, I said “I’ve got to stay here and work. I don’t want to piss off Mr Beresford at the moment, he’s my cash-cow”.
“Yeah but …”
“This looks like it might be a classic Summer [it wasn’t]”, I went on “The hot weather, and more tourists staying here because they can’t afford to go abroad. I’ve got to make hay whilst the sun shines, because Christ knows what next Winter’s going to be like, if the last one was anything to go by!”
I could see he was disappointed, but nothing could be done about it. I would have loved to have gone Nessie-spotting again, to get away from the Summer crowds, the endless traffic, and have long, atmospheric evenings in that extraordinary place. And OK, in purely practical terms, an artist can work anywhere, but the Shinglesea area was where I made money, and I couldn’t take it for granted how much longer I would have Uncle Beresford watching over me.
On another broiling hot day I arranged to meet Misty at the beach, after I had bought some supplies (pork pies and coca-cola) at the mini-mart, where I got stuck in the queue for ages, listening to two young mothers earnestly discussing childbirth.
“I can see it becoming the norm that all newborn babies weigh 10-14 lbs”, said one “And if that happens then natural childbirth will cease completely, and it’ll all be caesareans from now on”.
I had images of mutant giant-sized babies popping out all over the place, like some bizarre take on a John Wyndham novel.
I don’t think I had ever seen our beach so densely populated as it was that day, certainly not on a non-weekend or Bank Holiday one, and certainly not in term-time. It soon became clear why: the sea was warm. This was a phenomenon that I had never known before. Usually when you step into the sea around here your body instantly tenses up at the sheer freezing horror of it. But today it was like being in Hawaii or Australia, and everybody was making the most of it.
We both had a splash around (there’s no way you could call it proper swimming), and then went back to flake out on our towels. I was busy making derisory comments about a couple of men nearby who were too busy posing in their designer sunglasses, effetely batting a tennis ball about, to get wet in the sea (like REAL men do), when I noticed something odd in the far distance.
Two people were walking out of the sea So what? Well they seemed to be fully dressed. At first I thought they were simply wearing wet suits, but as I strained my eyes to see, they appeared to be wearing what I can only describe as formal business suits. And they didn’t look wet. I’ve seen some odd things in my time (particularly round here) but I’ve never seen anything like that before.
I turned to talk to Misty to ask if he could see them as well (he could), and when I looked back again a group of rowdy schoolgirls in matching school swimsuits were all running through the surf where I had seen the odd twosome. The girls were shrieking and laughing, and there was no sign of anything out of the ordinary at all.