The Beverage Dispensing Technicians Tale
No, its not the Tabard. That was in Southwark. This is Peckham, but its
close enough to make no odds. They used to pass along here, the pilgrims,
if they were taking the scenic route. Lets see now, a half of mead-style
bitter, two cokes and a glass of malmsey red, that’ll be two groats and a
farthing. No, only joking, one of those purple ones should do it, yeah the
one with the twenty on it.
What’s that? Cloudy? Let me see. Yeah that’s o.k. Its meant to be cloudy.
We drink our coke like that over here.
Actually I’ve taken quite an interest in the pilgrims just lately, I’m doing
my NVQ in Historical Interpretation see, at the local college. Helps with
this place. The boss’s idea. We’re all going to take on characters from the
tales. I won’t be a beverage dispensing technician then.
What’s that? You call them barmen in Blackwater, Arizona do you? We
used to. Last century. We’ve come a bit more up to date here. Although
I’ll be an “ale wright” when I get my costume. That’s what they called
them in medieval times. An “ale wright”.
Just got to finish the course. Should be a breeze for me. I’m a trained
actor. I went to drama college. One of the reasons I got this job. No, not
because ninety per cent of actors never do. I’ve been on telly, me. I was
in a crowd scene on the Antiques Roadshow. No, because my training
makes me an ideal historical re-enactor.
Yeah. Of course I can tell you a tale. Got to do one for the course, sort
of graduation piece. Do you want to hear it?
Hang on just let me get someone to serve them. Oi, Wife of Bath. Mrs.
Bath.. Tonya. Serve that lot will you.
John Galloway
October 2003
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It’s about when I was a student. One of the lads I was at college with was
Jez Martin, the pop star. You must have heard of him, lead the new-age
punk revival. Re-interpreted a couple of classics. Got to number one with
“Anarchy in the EU”. World famous. Well everywhere except Backwater
Arkansas then. Alright Blackwater, Arizona.
Do you want to hear this or what?
So I was at drama college with Jez Martin, the famous punk musician. He
was there to study mime, because that’s all they do, pop stars. Mime.
Although, give Jez his due, he could really play guitar. And sing. Even
wrote his own songs. Which is what this story is about.
It all started when Jez was at school. Went to a good school in one of
those places that pretend to be London but aren’t really. Kind of tacked
on the edges. Bexley or Bromley, somewhere like that. The suburbs, the
kind of place where they propagate the middle classes. A bit like
mushrooms, you just plant them there, leave them alone and up they pop,
Daily Mail readers who work in eye-tee or run shoe shops.
So Jez was developing nicely. Got into the grammar school, worked hard
and had aspirations to go on to university. Or probably music college,
because even back then he had talent. It was a school that nurtured
talent but was a bit snobbish. Jez wanted to play guitar but he had to do
bassoon. That’s him you can hear doing the melody on the remix of
“Peaches.”
No, I don’t suppose you have heard it.
Anyway. You get the picture. Good kid in good school doing good. Never a
problem. Not so much as a kept in at break time for having his top button
undone. That is, until Sirupov came along.
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October 2003
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Sounds Russian doesn’t it? That’s not his real name, Sirupov. It was his
nickname. His surname was Figgis. Sirupov Figgis, you see. Syrup of Figs.
No. Never mind. Well this bloke was a creep. Never liked Jez. Always had
a downer on him. Would make him practice some small phrase of music
over and over again until he’d blown all the life out of it, at which point
Sirupov would declare it impossible to teach him and storm out.
Well that was it for Jez. Lost his confidence. Gave up the bassoon even.
Although he did start to play the electric guitar in his bedroom, with the
sound turned down.
Figgis was a nasty piece of work by all accounts. Picked on kids for the
slightest reason, and if he couldn’t find one he just made it up. He was a
youngish bloke, early thirties but losing his hair. Always wore tweed
jackets and corduroys. Knitted waistcoats. Jez reckoned Figgis didn’t
take enough roughage in his diet, always had sallow, slightly shiny skin, as
though he was full to the brim with toxins that he couldn’t dump. This
bloke took his crap out on the kids.
Well Figgis had pretensions to be a composer. Every time there was a
school concert some new piece would be trotted out for the boys to play
to show off Sirupov’s talent. Jez called it music by numbers. A series of
notes in a mathematical sequence with no soul at all. So it was a big
surprise when Figgis won a major national composition competition. The
Lord Lloydd-Loom prize for musical excrement or some such.
“Thin Gold Crosses” it was called. Figgis reckoned the inspiration came to
him when he was sitting by a lake watching the sunlight glinting on the
water.
John Galloway
October 2003
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It should have become instant lift music. However, it got so big they had
to play it on Top of the Pops. Figgis was made. Money came rolling in from
royalties and appearance fees, he got commissioned to write film scores
and TV music. He gave up teaching, moved to Hampstead and got wheeled
out occasionally when they were short of panellists for lunch time game
shows on TV. That was his life sorted. So he thought.
The problem was that Jez reckoned Figgis had stolen the tune from him.
He told the school, but they were too busy polishing the grand piano
Figgis donated for assemblies. Jez’s parents were too middle class to
believe a teacher could do anything so sneaky and underhand, or
unprofessional as they called it, and all his mates just nodded and kept
their real thoughts to themselves.
That was it for Jez. Destroyed he was. He stopped working in school.
Stopped going even, and began to do drink and drugs. Well, glue mostly.
Left school with a handful of low grade GCSEs and went to work in a
burger bar sprinkling salmonella seasoning amongst the sesame seeds. Any
ideas about university and succeeding to his suburban birthright went
down the road with Sirupov Figgis.
Jez was understandably very bitter. He spent a lot of time thinking about
what he’d like to do to Figgis. How he would visualize his face as he
lowered the chips into the deep fat fryer and watch the skin turn deep
red, then peel off in curls and crisp into lumps like pork scratchings. And
as for the cardboard compactor scenario, just don’t ask. It’s funny but if
you ever met Jez you wouldn’t believe him capable of such thoughts.
Wouldn’t spit on a spider, he wouldn’t. That’s not how he got Figgis in the
end anyway. No, he reckons it was while he was laying out the salad table
one evening that the answer came to him. He was stacking the tomato
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October 2003
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wedges and was focusing on how if he didn’t put them in just the right
place they all fell into disorder and how this was a metaphor for the state
of his life - that he was displaced and this would be rectified by shifting
himself to where he ought to be. I’m not sure if he was still on the glue at
this point. He figured that Figgis’ success should be his success and that
what he had to do was take it from him. To do that he needed money.
It was that simple really. That’s how the whole new-age punk revival
movement came about. Jez needed the money to take Figgis on and the
quickest way to it was through popular music. He went to drama school
because he reckoned that was the easiest place to find a band and
rehearsals could be part of the timetable. He also knew agents would
breeze through every so often and sure enough before he’d finished his
first year he had signed a record deal and had dropped off the course. By
the end of another year he had the money he needed to humiliate old
Sirupov, and make him admit what he’d done.
Jez had a strategy. When he released “God Save Mrs. Parker-Bowles” he
cut a b-side called “Fingered Crotches” which, you’ve no doubt guessed,
was a punk take on “Thin Gold Crosses.” Figgis sued, of course. Couldn’t do
much else really. Some punk-rocking upstart re-arranging his masterpiece
for piano and pneumatic drill. He managed to get an injunction preventing
it from further distribution which, of course, meant sales shot through
the roof as everyone bought it off the internet from Belgium, the
spiritual home of punk rock.
On the back of all this interest Sirupov’s record company re-released his
tune and easily pulled in enough sales to cover their costs.
You may have seen the trial in the papers. No, maybe you’re right, it’s a
bit too parochial for the Bleakwater Clarion. It was a London story, with
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October 2003
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additional interest in Britain, Europe and generally what I think of as the
world.
So Figgis turns up in court in light grey suit, pastel shirt and tonally
matching tie. Everything to impress the jury. Jez goes in bondage
trousers, ripped t-shirt, leather hat and enough eyebrow rings to hang a
pelmet. He wasn’t there to impress anyone.
It was one of the shortest libel trials ever. Figgis’ lawyers put him in the
box and he described his distress at hearing his masterwork bastardized.
He again told the story of his watching the water as the sun set and of
the sparkling crosses dancing across it and of the stirring to scribble his
feelings down in the only language he knew. Music.
Jez’s defence lawyers didn’t ask much. “Can you play the piano, Mr.
Figgis?” Of course he could. “Can you read music, Mr. Figgis?” Ditto. Then
would he mind playing this. The lawyers set up a keyboard on the edge of
the dock, gave him the score of “Thin Gold Crosses,” and got him to play a
bit. Then they gave him “Fingered Crotches.” Well, it was obvious to
everyone it was the same tune. Then they pulled their rabbit out the hat,
their coup de grace. The lawyer pulled an old manuscript book out of his
pocket, folded the pages back to a particular place and asked Figgis to
play that. That’s right. It was the same tune. It was Jez Martin’s music
homework book and an exercise entitled, “Fingered Crotchets.” Red ink
was scrawled all over it and, in Figgis’ handwriting, “Your ambition exceeds
your ability. F-“.
That was it. The judge pulled the plug on the case, awarding costs to Jez
and pretty soon his lawyers had stripped old Sirupov Figgis and his record
company of every penny they had ever made from the tune.
John Galloway
October 2003
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Jez was very rich and never needed to work again. Somehow, though, I
don’t think that was the reason he gave up music and became a
chiropractor in Bedford. I think he’d done what he set out to do, to right
the wrong and get his own back on old Syrupov Figgis.
What? Oh, last anyone heard of him he was teaching piano in a minor
public school in Kuala Lumpur.
John Galloway October 2003
John Galloway
October 2003
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