#thingumybob

We arrived in Bradford after dark. Some disabled people were operating rowing machines in a charity marathon in a local showroom. We wandered in and looked, leaving some silver in the collecting boxes, neither the first nor the last of the small spenders. It was midnight as we checked into the hotel. There wasn’t a soul or a sound except for the red-nosed night porter, as old as Moses. Paul had brought Martha (My Dear) with him – the sheepdog of the same name. ‘Can you shampoo her?’ he asked the porter who recoiled in terror. ‘It’s her arse,’ said Paul, and he put his fingers in the thick curls around Martha’s back passage and pulled off a cluster of clinkers. ‘Look!’ I nearly fainted. ‘I’m afraid not,’ said the porter. It was very late after all. Next morning, another lovely day. I felt very nice and clean around the brain, always have a lovely morning after acid. A few months earlier Paul and I had gone shopping for suits; he had told me navy blue pinstripe was already on the way back (meaning that he wore it) and I fell for it – and ordered one. I had taken it with me to Bradford; just right for Bradford I said. I wore it down to breakfast and then we went off to the Victoria Hall where the Black Dyke Mills Band were waiting on hard wooden chairs, looking bloody marvellous and real and solid and honourable and stocky and lots of other words like that. Paul had on a magenta shirt and a white jacket, double breasted, with black trousers (no one had ever told him they were on the way back), and the Black Dyke Mills Band was quite stunned by his charm and by the way he handled the music. Marvellous recordings were made, indoors and later in the street, of both ‘Thingumybob’ and ‘Yellow Submarine’. It was a good morning for everyone because the portable recording unit worked, the band and McCartney worked, and the press worked out beautifully – I saw dozens of old friends and we had a few pints and then lunch. At around three o’clock, as we filmed the last TV interview (‘How do you like Bradford?’ ‘It’s great …’; fast-moving stuff like that) I decided to off the suit and black shoes, put on a pair of red corduroys and a white Mexican cotton shirt from Olvera Street, Los Angeles, a couple of beads, an Indian scarf and down my throat went another 250 milligrams of the dreaded heaven-and-hell drug. What a day for a daydream. ‘Should be an interesting journey,’ said Paul. The chauffeur said: ‘Back to London?’ and we said ‘yes’, not sure that it was the right answer.

<…> As we rolled away from the South Midlands and approached the Northern Home Counties the acid really started to bounce. It was late afternoon and if there was a heaven to be found on this soil, then I reckoned it would be found this evening, in the green and gold of this divine countryside. ‘Would you like to swing on a star, carry moonbeams home in a jar?’ ‘Yes,’ said Peter Asher. ‘Where would you like to go?’ I asked. ‘AA Book,’ said Paul. ‘Pick the most beautiful name in Bedfordshire,’ I said, ‘that’s where we should go.’ Peter looked at the map for what seemed like two hours or more. ‘Harrold,’ he said, after fifteen seconds. ‘Harrold?’ said the driver, naturally knocked out with delight to leave the M1 and crawl down B, C and D roads to a village no one in the car, including himself, had ever heard of. We wound through Bedfordshire checking off the signs steadily until we reached the village sign: Harrold. Oh, it was a joyful Sunday sight. It was the village we were supposed to have fought the world wars to defend, for which we would be expected to fight the third when told to, but won’t. It was a Miniver hamlet on the Ouse and there were notices telling of the fete next Saturday, and a war memorial which made me weep. Thrushes and blackbirds sang and swallows dived into thatches and a little old mower wheezed as we walked down the only street there was past the inn which was closed, past the church which was open, nodding to a sandy man with a 1930s moustache and khaki shorts as he clipped his hedge and stared at these city people with funny hair and clothes. It was seven o’clock and acid or no acid, it was opening time and I steered us into the most beautiful village inn the world has ever known and there were three or four people in there, or more or less; magical antique villagers with smocks and shepherd’s crooks and also there was a fruit machine offering Jolly Joker tokens. Through the dancing lights, past the sparkle of the green and tawny bottles, I saw the sandy man with the khaki shorts. <…> ‘Welcome to Harrold, Paul,’ said the sandy man, the local dentist, downing the rich gold beer he had earned with his shears. ‘I can hardly believe it, in fact I think I’m dreaming.’ We next found ourselves in his house, below dipping oak beams, a banquet provided for us, hams and pies and multi-jewelled salads, new bread and cakes, chicken and fruit and wine; and the dentist’s wife, a jolly lady, still young beyond her maddest fantasies, bringing out her finest fare. Paul McCartney was at her table in the village of Harrold.

Hiding at a turn on the crooked staircase stood a little girl, shy and disbelieving. But she had brought a right-handed guitar and landed it in Paul’s (left-handed) hands but the wizards were producing this play by now and floating with the splendour of this, the strangest Happening since Harrold was born, the dentist and his wife, and the neighbours as they crowded the windows and the parlour, and the children, all caught their breath as Paul McCartney began to play the song he had written that week: ‘Hey Jude,’ it began. I sat peacefully, full of the goodness you can find within yourself when goodness is all around and the dentist’s wife picked up on it and asked why life couldn’t always be like this and I told her there was nothing to fear, nothing at all and the dentist brought out the wine he had been saving for the raffle at the fete next Saturday and we drank that to celebrate the death of fear and the coming of music to Harrold and then, and gradually, the dentist was freaking and he asked me what I thought I was talking about and for a moment it was very tough, very. Ah, but Dr Leary’s medicine was good that day and we came back to a good position again, but I didn’t feel quite right about the dentist after that, and I don’t think he felt quite right about me, but how was he to know and what was I to do? You don’t just tell strangers you’ve been taking that naughty old heaven’n’hell drug. It was now eleven o’clock and we were still in the house and the inn was closed but a winged messenger came to say that as this was the night of nights, never to return, the inn was to be re-opened. ‘In your honour, Paul.’ It was 11 p.m. Paul had The Look on his face, the ‘do we don’t we?’ I nodded: tonight we should. The pub was absolutely full. The whole village was here. Paul played the piano until at three o’clock a woman stood and sang ‘The Fool on the Hill’ and he left the piano to dance with her and kiss her on the cheek and then I went and sat in the little garden and cried for joy that we had come to Harrold. It was a most beautiful garden, with hundreds of old-fashioned flowers, lupins, foxgloves – that sort of thing, and Alan Smith came out, pissed as a newt and said, ‘Why so sad, old friend, why so sad on such a night?’ ‘Not sad,’ I said, ‘not sad, old pal, just happy to be alive.’ We left then, waved away by the Harrolds, by all of them, and we never went back and I never looked at the map again, not even to see if Harrold was there.

(As Time Goes by Derek Taylor)

(Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part X, Part XI)