Death And The Anti-Maiden
There are many ways to die in a lonely crofthouse in Lewis.
In all that solitude you might develop Peculiar Ways and, according to the Institute For The Study Of Loneliness, Peculiar Ways are 17 times more likely to cause your death or maiming than Usual Ways.
There was a man, a lonely straggle-bearded man who had long shut up his heart to human love and tenderness. No man nor woman nor child could reach him after a terrible tragedy one summer in his twenties. He bought a lonely crofthouse, retreated from Lewiskind and subsisted on home-made nettle products and the milk from a sweet-natured cow called Aggie-Louise.
He was a man of regular habits but uneven temper and often would he run out of his house screaming terrible words at the world and scaring poor Aggie who would only yield a sort of thin yoghurt for days after such episodes. But although his habits were regular, and for the most part usual, he had developed one habit that is now recognised as being Type 1 Peculiar. This habit was to prove fatal.
Many people who spend a lot of time alone will talk to themselves. Some will talk back to themselves. But there
are a few, a very few who will cease to use regular speech altogether and find all the meaning, all the means of
expression they need in their solitary lives, in the lyrics of Madonna. In particular, the smash hit 1986 album True Blue.
“I’ve heard all the lines, I’ve cried oh (oh) so many times, Those tear drops they won’t fall again, I’m so excited ’cause you’re my best friend” the straggly-bearded man would say to Aggie, and she would know it was time to go to the stool for milking.
“Open your heart with the key, One is such a lonely number” he would sing softly to the mouse that lived behind the radiator. “Ah, ah, ah, ah Open your heart, I’ll make you love me It’s not that hard, if you just turn the key”
And “Don’t want to grow old too fast, Don’t want to let the system get me down. I’ve got to find a way to make the good times last, And if you’ll show me how, I’m ready now” this man with thorns round his heart would tell the spider in the peatstack.
Then later, bitter and brooding over glass after glass of the all-purpose nettleated spirits he distilled in a still made from two welded together tin bathtubs, later he would grow angry. Sweeping plates and cups off the table in a fury and sending the chair crashing against the walls he would fall to his knees and yell “Where’s the party, Where’s the party, someone tell me, Where’s the party, come on come on” with all the savagery of a rhinocerous with toothache.
“And when the samba played” he often spat at those times with a cruel sneer, “The sun would set so high, Ring through my ears and sting my eyes, Your Spanish lullaby”
Pretty soon the straggly-bearded man lost all ability to speak anything other than lyrics from the True Blue album.
One morning, the man stepped out into the garden to milk Aggie-Louise as usual but right away noticed something was wrong. 50 feet yonder Aggie-Louise lay on her side, not moving. So still… So still! The man ran across the yard to her, half-knowing what he would find but half-hoping against half-hope that Aggie was still there…
He sobbed into her cold neck for about an hour before he could bring himself to close her amazed dead eyes. As he rose, he saw that in death she had leaked a little milk and it had puddled, could it be? …in the shape of a telephone? Aggie, this dear dead cow was giving him a message! Telephone somebody! she seemed to be saying.
And suddenly he knew.
All this living alone, protecting himself from human love and hurt had been for nothing. He had loved Aggie, he
hadn’t completely shut down, he could still love again!
He knew what he had to do. He would run to town and be embraced into the warm bosom of his family once again, the prodigal teuchter would come home. So he ran and ran and then he stopped and wheezed and all of a sudden his chest felt tight. No. Something wrong. Got to get help! His mind worked furiously.
Up ahead was a pink weather-beaten old telephone-box, his last hope. Dragging himself to the phone-box, he
struggled inside, clutching at his chest and dialed 999 – a free call. It was ringing! Sweet Jesus, thank-you!
A dispatcher answered the phone at last. The man’s left arm was in some kind of spasm now.
“What’s your emergency?”
“Tropical the island breeze, all of nature wild and free” said the man.
“Pardon me sir, I can’t make you out, can you repeat please?”
“Papa don’t preach, I’m in trouble deep” choked the man desperately. This wasn’t right. what was wrong with his voice? Why couldn’t he ask for help?
“Papa don’t preach, I’ve been losin’ sleep!” he cried desperately.
“Sir? sir? Are you all right? What is your location sir?”
“Last night I dreamt of San Pedro. It all seems like yesterday, not far away, La-la-la-la-la-la-laaa, Te dijo te amo!” he screamed, his face wet and contorted with wretched pain, his eyes wild with panic.
“Sir? Are you there sir? Sir!”
But sir wasn’t there. He was going away. It would be a long journey but at the end he would reach a happy warm place, a place where the sun shone on golden limbs and where none of the cushions were made of scratchy Harris Tweed.
I want to be where the sun warms the sky, he whispered softly, barely audible.
When it’s time for siesta you can watch them go by
Beautiful faces, no cares in this world
Where a girl loves a boy, and a boy loves a girl…
The ambulance found his body an hour later after tracing the telephone box. Only his elderly mother and his drunken brother attended the funeral.
And that’s just one of the manners in which having a Peculiar Way can kill you in a lonely croft-house in Lewis. Sometimes just one Peculiar Way is all it takes.
THE END
May 22nd, 2008 at 10:50 pm
With pologies for the dodgy formatting. Wordpress was sticky and uncooperative, like a child after too much candy floss.
May 23rd, 2008 at 12:50 am
I am that man. A teuchter in very place I as born. A cow and a croft would suit me nicely, thank you. But, being allergic to phones, I might have trouble doing the dying part. Would Twittering the Samaritans suffice?
May 23rd, 2008 at 12:54 am
Wonderful.
May 23rd, 2008 at 1:33 am
Hey Sam. You’re It. Sorry.
http://thekettleisalwayson.blogspot.com/2008/05/in-lieu-of-friends.html
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:25 am
If only he’d stayed off the Neths, how different things might have turned out.
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:32 am
Culchie could have gone on Holiday
May 23rd, 2008 at 4:23 am
You send strange tunes milling in my head. Here’s one that’s driving me demented:
‘There was a boy – a strange enchanted boy. He travelled very far, very far, over ? and hills’ Do you know what it is?
‘He was a man of regular habits ‘. I’ve often wondered – are there mod cons in crofts?
May 23rd, 2008 at 5:42 am
He was not only peculiar, he was an idiot. Everyone knows that when you’re in the midst of a myocardial infarction, you invoke Jim Morrison and the Doors’ Riders On The Storm. Geeze, must I tell people everything?
Cheers.
May 23rd, 2008 at 6:18 am
Tragic. I blame Madonna. You’d have thought she could have found somewhere to insert the lyrics I’m dying, send an ambulance. Poor man. He reminds me of the Hungarian who said “My nipples explode with delight” because it was in his phrase book.
May 23rd, 2008 at 7:09 am
What Twenny said.
May 23rd, 2008 at 9:16 am
Sneezy, if I were a Samaritan i should be honoured to receive your dying twitter. God forbid an’ that, obviously. The man in this story didn’t know anything about the internet though. He thought it was something his auntie wore over her rollers after getting up but before going to the shops.
Twenty, wonderful?! A man has died for God’s sake!! What about the aching tragedy, the terrible lonely end outside a pink telephone box? Where is your heart, man??
Prenderghast, so you should be. I’ve a bunch of memes I’m supposed to have done already adn it just makes me feel like I’m back in uni and the uncompleted assignments are lining up and they’re due tomorrow but I have to spend today in a 6 hour exam and good God, I’m in my pyjamas and now I’m waking up, phew, but lawks and larry! The assignment part was true!
Conan, although it wasn’t in the story, the man was also a sometime smoker of Narijuana, which is the hairier, hardier, stingy cousin species of the common herb. A cross between nettles and marijuana in fact. It can sometimes inflame the respiratory tract but smoking a dock leaf straight away afterwards mitigates this.
Sniffle, but haven’t you heard? Holidays are one of the most common places for falling in love – the brief respite from life’s cares, somebody else doing the cooking, the copious alcohol, it’s not the real world and love is everywhere on holiday. He couldn’t risk it. It would be like sounding the trumpets of love at the Jericho’s wall of his heart.
Pat, “?There was a boy – a strange enchanted boy. He travelled very far, very far, over ? and hills? Do you know what it is?” I’ve got a cousin like that, if that’s any use to you? ‘Course they threw the key away on that one. Being strange and enchanted isn’t any use to anyone at the fank. No mod cons though – just the old ones like “Will you take Bessie off my hands just for an hour, while I nip to the butcher’s?” And Bessie not getting picked up til after tea that night.
Rand, he was a simple man though, not much in tune with the modern popular music artists, ‘cepting Madonna. If you’d said Jim Morrison to him he’d have thought it was the third cousin of his cousin Hector on the other side, Mary-Alice’s boy. Riders On The Storm would just be people on the bus to town.
Nanas, this is not the only person that has died from madonna lyrics. These days it’s more common to die from a Spice Girls lyric though. “Well, I’ll tell you what I want, what I really really want, yeah I’ll tell you what I want what I really really want, Oh I’ll tell you…etc” has got more than one person killed by an enraged fellow customer as the post office queue gets longer and patience and tempers start to fray. That one lyric has claimed the lives of thousands and Tipper Gore wants a label out on the albums to warn people of its possibly dangerous effects.
Fmc, but wherefore the tears? This comment box should be awash in tears by now at the horribly cruel twists the man’s life took. It should be awash in tears simply because of the painful nettylated spirits gag. Abob! We should all be abob! Like Alice in the rabbit hole!
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:25 am
@ Everyone bar Sam: Betimes I love the replies-to-comments by Sam as much as I love her original post. All agreed?
May 23rd, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Now I am truly afraid since I’ve been called peculiar by more than one concerned person. I still speak in your tongue so I’m safe for now, but just a moment ago I was reading the classifieds and kept seeing ads “desperately seeking susan” and men seeking women who are “like a virgin”. I think I’d better play some Cyndi Lauper to block out the Madonna.
Oh yeah…I see your true colors, but don’t girls just want to have fun?
May 23rd, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Like Primal said
May 23rd, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Where the fucking fuck did my fucking comment go. Fucking internet. Anyhow like Primal said.
Also had to google Teuchter. File under “You Learn Something New Everyday”.
May 24th, 2008 at 3:48 am
Agreed!
May 24th, 2008 at 8:14 am
Primal, indeedy deed!
May 24th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
First off, I would think that speaking only in Madonna lyrics would be fatal in and of itself.
Secondly, Primal, yo!!!
Fifthly, Where did all the time go?
May 24th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Ah Sneezers, away and boil your bum – affectionately, that is. You are too too sweet, ya daftie, ya.
Jali, Cyndi Lauper won’t cut it, hun’. You may have to mainline Tom Waits, take Belle & Sebastian tablets and enroll yourself in a deprogramming program with an emphasis on modern funk-fusion. That Madonna’s a bitch to get out of the system.
Sniffle, get thee to a bum-boilery too! My head will get too large and someone will just come along and very properly cut me down to size and then I’ll only be sad. Boo.
John, there you are! You’d gone very pale there for a bit, or your site had. Glad you’re back. – A man never forgets where he was when he first learnt a Teuchter wasn’t a throat infection. Glad to be instrumental, my friend.
fmc, I’m not kidding, my head will grow large and I will become intolerable and more irritating than a bad case of jock itch. x
Conan, and where have you gone? I can’t get into your site any more and that is very sad.
Brian, i lke the way you think, my friend. You are the man that counts that little bit bigger. It’s good to take command of these unruly numbers. They’ve had their authoritarian way for too long. I sense a revolution with you as its strong-chinned champion!
May 25th, 2008 at 10:24 am
Sam, is this a birthday card for Madonna’s 50th?
May 27th, 2008 at 4:26 am
Sam, lurker issues… normal transmission to resume soonish.
May 27th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
I read this a while back and tried to comment but — well, you know what happened!
Homemade nettle products — I love the idea of that. Nettle soup, nettle shirts, nettle greeting cards? I ought to get creative with nettles. God knows I’ve got enough of them…