April 2011

Morts and Mikki

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Morts and Mikki

Morts was an extremely lovely fella who sort of looked after me and let me stay in his house in the early 70’s in Poole, Dorset, England. Mikki Rain is his lovely daughter who is very much alive. I have a song about them both which I keep meaning to get on to one of my records – the song is called ‘Morts Code’ and contains the following verse:

‘Oh I’m the new born singing man

I do what I can and I do what I can

I give thanks to the man with the furniture van

And his beautiful daughter Mikki Rain’

Morts died last year and there was a beautiful funeral service for him in a church in Ashley Cross in Poole. Mikki gave a fabulous speech about Morts who was beloved by many people from that time, all of whom turned up to remember a great man and a true friend. The church in question had always frightened me when I lived in that part of the world; it’s imposing and somehow out of scale for the surrounding area. So it was a thrill to enter it at all. Morts used to socialise at the Conservative club directly across the road from this church, so afterwards we all went over there for the wake. It was one of the best days of my life, just being in the company of so many people who I really like or indeed love, and though, of course we all missed Morts, it just said it all about him that the room was golden with good feeling and reminiscence. I remember I had business to attend to back at home so could not stay more than a couple of hours. It was hateful to tear myself away from that room and walk the half mile up the hill to Parkstone station. There is a view from the station across Poole Bay (second largest natural harbour in the world after Sydney) and further across to the Purbeck Hills. Waiting alone for the train in the cold air, looking at the sea and the hills I had a yearning so strong that it twisted me inside, and I did not know what the yearning was for or about. It’s so important to accept in life that these feelings will come – it was important to feel the mysterious power of the yearning and try not to fret over what it meant – worrying too much about what things signify can be the road to depression. It’s like the blues – honour the feeling and it will pass.....

When I was a younger arsehole, busy being the singer in my old band Doll By Doll, there was a time early on in the band’s development when interest in us was intense and our live shows were intense. The intensity was real hard work, not made any easier by our penchant for lots of drink and drugs. Sometimes after London shows I had a desperate need not to be around the ‘scene’ which the band had acquired, and on these occasions Mikki would, from time to time, invite me back to an ocean-going barge called the Queen Phillipa upon which she lived on the south shore of the Thames river not too far from Battersea Power Station. I was extremely grateful for these times of peace. I would stay in her room on the boat and in the morning she would drive me over to her studio near Portobello Road where she worked as an artist and let me see what she was currently working on. She has a fantastic eye and formidable technique and would take the time to explain the background to whatever she was working on. It was an unspoken point of honour between us that we never had a single moment of sexual contact during these encounters, and never have. Indeed, she considers me to be a hopeless braggart, and if circumstances permit when we meet she relishes stabbing me deep in the grisly heart of my undoubted pretension. For my part I consider her to be a feckless mouthy tomboy, but that doesn’t stop her being the wise woman of our tribe in Dorset, a tribe I was honoured to join all those years ago when Morts let me sit in his kitchen for an eternity, trying to work out how to really write songs, and what it is I wanted to say to and of the world.

Mikki recently sent me a book out of the blue. She knows that I’ve always been enamoured of American pulp science fiction from the Sixties in particular, as much for the graphic design and smell as the stories. The book is called The Eyes Of The Overworld (Quest at the End of Time) by Jack Vance. Vance is great real old timer of the American science fiction scene – the cover shows a sort of space Robin Hoody character holding up what looks like a huge squid and looking puzzled, whilst in the background huge mushroomy things with faces look on at him with what seems to be bemusement. The story is wonderfully bonkers and is actually more fantasy that science fiction, but I’m enjoying reading it and being back momentarily in the atmosphere of early teenagehood when this sort of book and its crazy world saved me from the aggressively monotone world of Scottish new town existence. As I remember it, later in his career Jack Vance made things hard for himself by publishing a couple of books about the ‘People of the Wanhk’. Couldn’t one of his friend have had a word? But imagine thinking of the book, as Mikki must have done ‘fucking hell, look at this – I’ll bet Jackie would appreciate it’, then buying it and posting it – this surely is what friendship is all about.

I miss Morts – sitting in bars with him, he would watch me with owly eyes as I burbled on about my ‘world view’ then make comments which could sound initially simplistic, but in fact were designed to take you back to the building blocks of your idea. When I was really young I had a recurring dream about an elaborate wooden train set which was in my bedroom, and I would wake up confused and disappointed to discover it wasn’t there. I told this once to Morts. He thought for a moment and said ‘when you had this dream, did you ever think ‘oh, I’ve had this dream before’ or did the dream seem fresh every time?’ I said that it seemed fresh every time so that the sense of disappointment remained really strong.

He said ‘well, it’s amazing that you can remember THAT!’

That’s what friends are for – to intrude without seeming to intrude when asked to intrude: gratitude is like peace – it comes dropping slow.