Although pathologically disposed to fret about the valuables I had been constrained to leave in the van overnight I managed a few hours of sleep in a warm hotel room's comfortable bed. I was exhausted, the house had gone, but I wasn't yet out of the woods by a long way. I phoned Robbie, but there was no answer. That day I was due to attend the launch of the cd that friends and I had recorded to raise funds for a campaign against a proposed mass waste incinerator in the area. The initial campaign had been launched by local farmers and rural communities. We were under the impression that we were an accepted and legitimate part of the campaign. When we arrived at the farm where an annual fundraising Christmas Fair was taking place we discovered that hippies, punks, artists and other ne'er-do-wells were not universally welcome into that community. We were anticipating being able to perform live some of the songs we'd recorded, but that plan was vetoed when we arrived. Someone put the cd into a ghetto blaster and there were a lot of complaints. We mooched about, ate cake and sulked. Sometime after mid-day I decided to return to my own version of reality. I'd been out of reach of a telephone signal at the farm and when I got closer to town the connection kicked in with a notification that I'd missed a call from an unknown number. I pulled over and rang the number, which turned out to be NatWest Bank's Fraud Department. Once through the security procedure I was connected with a man who explained that his department had stopped the payment going through. I could not believe it. Does the bank not communicate with itself? My own branch was fully aware of what I had been doing (I'd even used one of their computers to make the transfer!) and claimed not to be able to understand why the payment to Robbie had failed to go through. After a short conversation which seemed to satisfy Fraud Man he agreed to release the money. Forty years of brand loyalty had more than once proven to count for nothing and I was sickened by the continual news of some of the bank's other activities. I hung up and called Robbie again. He sounded tired and said he would explain, but first he would check his account. Within minutes he rang back and announced, "You own a boat!" What a relief. A few weeks later I changed banks.
As unbelievable as my tale of the bank's actions had been, Robbie's experience of his previous twenty-four hours beat mine hands down.
As mentioned, Robbie and Robbie had been together since they were at school. They had lived on the boat together since they were sixteen, a couple of years I think. Boy Robbie was a bit of an odd-job man. He had a truck and took on labouring and simple maintenance jobs and cut logs for a living. By all accounts he worked hard. The Farmer often used his services around the farm. Girl Robbie worked in an office for a chain of stores. She probably worked hard too, but her work proved more varied. On the day the transfer of money was due Robbie told Robbie she was so excited she wanted to go to the bank to see the amount show up on the cash machine. She took the bank card they shared and drove into town. Strange, maybe, but that's what happened. While she was out Robbie heard his phone ping with a message. Except it wasn't his phone. Robbie and Robbie had identical phones and she'd picked up the wrong one. Automatically Robbie looked at the message:
"Darling, I can't wait to be with you forever. Not long now. xxx."
It seems people really write stuff like this, but that wasn't the point. The message was from Robbie's line manager at work. He was more than twice her age and married with children. It turns out the late night stocktaking was a bit of a euphemism.
In an understandably masculine rage, Robbie set off in his van at a rate of knots. Her plan had apparently been to empty the joint account of cash the moment my money had been transferred into it, so that she with her middle-aged lover could head off into the sunset. Robbie was heading to Robbie's boss's house, a house he knew well, because the Boss Lover had apparently taken a shine to Boy Robbie and played a bit of a mentor role as he was setting up his labouring business. Robbie and Robbie had often been guests for meals with Boss Lover and his wife. They had babysat the children.
On the way to the house Robbie saw Boss Lover's car heading in the opposite direction, so he screeched to turn round and gave chase. At some point Robbie's truck rammed Boss Lover's car and pushed it through an estate agent's window. I rather liked that bit, it sounded like karma, which it would have been had it been the right estate agent. The police were called and Robbie was immediately arrested and subsequently charged with dangerous driving pending a charge of attempted murder. He was locked up for the night, but released the next morning.
It seems that Boss Lover had a bit of a thing for underage girls and illegal substances. His wife confirmed he had form in both these activities, but usually came home after each adventure. He was arrested by the police on the Saturday and was still helping with enquiries the following Tuesday.
Despite my irritation with NatWest's Fraud Department it seems they had actually done Robbie and me a favour by holding up the payment. I still don't quite understand how Robbie thought she was going to be able to withdraw £18,000 in one go from a hole in the wall with a bank card, so things may not have been quite as bad in the end. It's a pity that Robbie lost everything I had paid him in the fines, solicitor's fees and compensation for damage to Boss Lover's car and the estate agency he had caused. He didn't know whether to buy another van for work, because he didn't know at that stage whether he'd lose his licence and/or his freedom when the case got to court. The prosecution was definitely in favour of an attempted murder charge.
My story is not quite yet over. During the first few years of the millennium I worked on a number of projects for a local music charity. We did some brilliant and often barmy projects together. I'm reminded of the time L ran a string of mic cables from the top of the largest wind turbine in Europe (which just happened to be in the area) so that the sound of the turbine blade could be captured, sampled and processed into a live composition under the direction of composer, Duncan Chapman. My contribution to that work was dropping stones into a tub of water. Another time I trained a novice samba band to play at the opening of the new swimming pool in another nearby town. We put a trombonist in the learner pool in which L also arranged an array of hydrophones, so that a group of school pupils could hit bits of metal underwater. Meanwhile in the main pool a synchronised swimming team did their thing in perfect synchrony. I suppose such extravagances were the icing on the musical cake. They were a lot of fun, but the bread and butter workshops of pre-school music, singing, musical theatre and percussion groups also came to a halt when the funding eventually ran out. Those of us who had been part of the staff of the charity got together at Christmas times for a meal and a catch up. The evening of Prison Saturday was 2011's planned get-together in a pub in one of Norfolk's prettier villages.
I took some things over to the boat during the Saturday afternoon. It was quite a struggle manoeuvring my mattress along the top of the river bank and down the rickety steps on to the collapsing landing stage to squash it into the boat. It was muddy, dusty and stained with oil by the time I got it to the far end of the boat and into the cabin. There was no bed-frame so it went directly on to the deck. I had no wood or coal to light the stove and being new to the area no idea where to buy any. The gas for the instant hot water and the cooker had also run out and again I had no idea how to change the bottle or where. I left things as they were and set off for the reunion meal.
I had only managed the first ten miles before I noticed that my lights seemed to be getting dimmer. I'd experienced this once before many years previously during a nightmare journey to a performance in Chester Cathedral. The alternator on my car had failed and the battery was discharging rapidly. I suspected the same thing was happening to the van. I eventually made the decision to turn round and head back to the boat, but the lights went out completely while I was on a stretch of dual carriageway, so I pulled into the first lay-by I encountered and phoned my friends to explain the situation. They were going to wait for me, but I told them to order their food without me. L offered to come and pick me up, but I was in a very remote place with the unassigned remains of my worldly goods in the van, including several of my instruments, my computer and the washing machine. I had visions of returning to an empty van suspended on bricks where the wheels used to be; it wouldn't be that unusual for the area. I doubted I would be able to start the engine again to get the heater running so I declined the offer. In the meantime I called out the breakdown service and their engineer turned up and confirmed my diagnosis. He hit the alternator with a hammer and according to his multi-meter all was fine again. It wasn't. My plan had been to leave the engine running so I could charge up the battery and keep the heater going all this cold December night, if necessary, and as soon as it was light I could head off to my usual garage where I could leave the van and call my brother to come and collect me and at least the washing machine he was helping me relocate. I had a full tank so that shouldn't have been a problem. However, at around 11pm the engine cut out. It had been idling for several hours and had clearly thought that enough was enough. It declined the invitation to start again. I did not fancy the prospect of being found frozen to death in the cab of my van so I phoned L again who was still at the pub. He did not hesitate to offer to pick me up. We loaded my computer and guitar into his van along with the van's battery, which we could charge when we got to his place - a gothic rectory he shared with his wife - once a very famous pop star, but now reborn as a cult artist of no little significance. My earliest memory of L had been seeing him playing guitar in the band behind his wife on Top Of The Pops in the 1980s. It is one of my proudest boasts that she made up the bed settee for me in one of the large downstairs rooms packed out with bizarre, ethnically inspired stage props that towered over me in this huge, unheated house. Even better than that, she had put a hot water bottle in the bed.
After that things were fairly ordinary. L took me back to the van. I met my brother a couple of hours later than agreed to move the washing machine. We all had lunch. I had an invitation to eat an evening meal with another musician friend. He insisted I stay the Sunday night and use Monday to try and sort out the heating issues on the boat. I didn't argue. The van wouldn't fire up again on Monday so out came the same RAC man as attended on Saturday night, who this time re-routed a lot of wires and cables. I managed to get hold of some fuel for the fire, but the gas for the cooker and the water heater had to wait till Tuesday. I was now, though, a fully-fledged boater. I had been without a home for three days.
Only after moving on to Loretta did I realise that the ceiling was just slightly too low to allow me to stand up straight. After a few weeks I was in agony from both the pain in my back and the patchwork of grazes on my head from the light fitting that was placed strategically to do the most damage. Robbie and Robbie were several inches shorter than me, so it had never been an issue. P had inherited some money during the year and two months later we bought Timeless together. The rest, as you probably realise, is where we came in.
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