Chapter Two
FROM FUNNY FLOOR COTTAGE
TO NOTHING NORMAL HOUSE
……
Cillian of Tea Lane in the backstreets of Belfast was quietly confident that his life could be sustained as a seaside entertainer. How hard could it be with his nice ways and grey matter. He was Irish for the comedy element, yet had brain the size a planet as christened by Barry Barbados. And hugely cultured and eccentric too. Brilliant and driven, he was smarter than the average bear with the rarity of an eidetic memory. There was nothing that could change the fabric of his mind.
Thanks to Barry Barbados, he now lives in a world curious of the quintessential English Seaside music hall scene, and Blackpool he must see this melodrama he first heard of in that famous Belfast Gin Palace snug. So ahead is a journey through the lost worlds of Tartan and Lakeland.
This landscape of the unknown is out there, with it’s attractive gatherings of wooden huts and silly hats. So to start this future. Cillian knows he must press into service every skill he has, and he had many and there was more to discover and bump into to.
And Daisy Doughnut the anthropomorphic doorstop doll from Downpatrick is coming too to join the journey and be part of the emotional camaraderie, as she is the most precious personal effect of his early life. Daisy Doughnut is jam-packed with sentiment, and all her imprinting of Freud and Shakespeare that Cillian could master. If a doll could be clever and talk what she was told, she was the one.
So all follies of Daisy Doughnut were to accompany Cillian on his odyssey as his imaginary illusory friend. Even the doll Daisy Doughnut as an escape mechanism, she seemed to make more sense to him than the human race. As from Cillian’s eyes, what a lot of screwballs they are. These people he shares oxygen with they fight wars that are seen as honourable yet they are murder on an enormous scale and they make really useful inventions for the human race yet forcibly prevent other like-minded souls with patent laws from using them or making modifications.
But this was not like discovering a new planet, as Cillian now had to find out where he was going. He researches earnestly this Blackpool, first as a lightly disguised version of Brighton. And this Blackpool, it had a cloned lattice Eiffel Tower like that cloud buster in Paris. There were lots of Bubble trams, all packed with Miss Peregrine’s Hotel for Peculiar People types.
Here Guinness with Barry Barbados he tastes on his lips, and he is not even there yet. All of Cillians’s senses were working in synaesthesia trying to make sense of Blackpool. This big word that is a production of all the sense impressions, said or spelt like that stupid Anglesey Steam Station of Llanfairpwllgwyn-gwll. This name a dummy publicity stunt to get the visitors into Wales. But Cillian thought why could they not just call it Orme or Baa. As it would be so much easier to write on a postcard and not a bitch to remember.
And Cillian Custard would always remember the one special day that Miss Honeyhole stayed behind class and taught him the discovery of that new word, and what a tongue-twister it was. His teacher Miss Honeyhole despite her acrimony with the world was quite pretty. She looked like she was from another planet of the Hottie System, Chocolate Charlie and Fiddlehead would joke as they would always stare at her globes rather than be lost in thought.
And she was quite successful in explaining synaesthesia in seconds to the Ice Cream obsessed mind of Cillian of Tea Lane Belfast. She was in those shared moments much more precious to his mind than all his books. Sometimes they talked about those great Italian polymaths who could draw chapel ceilings and explore the first science of how bodies and brains work in a river of blood. Let alone the new science of psychoanalysis, and all that new formal gobbledygook about the Interpretation of Dreams written by this headshrinker called Freud who the World thinks keeps his Bats in the Belfrey with his haunted mind.
But for the journey to Blackpool, Barry Barbados was the first to believe in this Cillian Custard, and allow him to consider the endless possibilities. There was so much inquisition and fishing to consider to flirt with fame of this genesis on the stage. Cillian and his brain had been a star in school with all his sums and tables, but nothing like this. There were a thousand boards to walk, and a city of summer faces to meet in the lore of training. It was something that Cillian had never dreamt of nor expected from his days at Little Heads with all those dictatorial assignments many moons ago, when Miss Honeyhole the suspected mistress of the devil caned classics of social injustice into his head. All those possessions of memory to Cillian were as about as much use as reading Shakespeare to the monkeys at the Belfast Zoo or painting the Giant’s Causeway green for St Patrick’s Day.
And another thing. Life has ingrained in Cillian that there is no budget in brains. No wealth or trophy in giftedness like for example Leonardo da Vinci. His enormous contributions to science and art with all his variety of engineering and anatomy, yet he was obscure with financial substantiality. As this Leonardo for all his greatness in history could barely afford a loaf or refreshment, or even a day out for a bag of chips and onion rings if there was a Fat Fanny chip shop in Florence at that time.
So like this Italian deity of brilliance, gray matter acuity and income are not related. Money does not measure mind or serve any remote comparison as it’s finances only feed the ego if by inventory. Cillian once read that Leonardo da Vinci sat on the sidelines of a society that had most people counting money, yet the true wealth was his science and imaginative itinerary of inventions.
Yet on the other hand with no comparison to this intellectual great, Cillian’s path in life took on a new direction. He needed the almighty shilling, and thought how to make his way to Blackpool. He knew nothing in this life is free. Even in Belfast you needed a penny to pee, but Cillian Custard of Tea Lane was an expert in covert urinating.
His eyes were wide open as Cillian had a great idea to make money. He would walk round every backstreet gin palace in Belfast from Squeeze Gut Entry to Hercules Street and with Belfast’s first printed phonebook he had liberated from the Glover library then ask the drinkers to test him. All three thousand, at a shilling a go. And get it wrong, Cillian would buy them a beer or whatever poison of cocktail they liked. It was just like that first night of verification at the Crown Liquor Saloon when celebrity sorcerer and seer Barry Barbados first put Cillian’s mind to the test.
Here Cillian was rarely wrong, with many betting for opportunity of alcohol they would never win. It was a mug’s game. Like in the Crown Liquor Saloon, when asked the Make Life A Little Sweeter Sweet Shop that was three one four one five and then Take The Biscuit Tearoom of St Georges Market which is Three six four six five. Hundreds were thrown at Cillian on each occasion he popped in his answer, and everytime he was right. Sometimes he deliberately made a mistake and bought one winner some wine, and was always careful to make sure he had an audience to see this. For when drinkers see that they can score, then they think come here come here there’s more.
But Cillian did not know what amazed them more. Was it his eidetic memory, or the new technology of the Victorian Era where you could talk to someone in Bangor from Belfast almost right away through an exchange rather than surrender a week’s wage to borrow and bridle a horse.
Be as it may, their entertainment was guaranteed. Yet they were in pain to imagine the capacity of Cillian’s memory and the workings of his mind. As never before had the world seen or heard anything like this show. Even if it was in a smokey Irish bar with lots of music and hecklers, and his audience unsure if he was a magician or a genius. These people were his sponsors to the seaside stage, after his secret study at Funny Floor Cottage. Cillian did not tell many people of his plans to know three thousand telephone numbers until he could actually do it, as it was so unbelievable. His family downstairs were oblivious to this, and first thought that Cillian was upstairs choking the bishop while reading in secret the Memoirs and Life of Fanny Hill a woman of pleasure that Floella found under the bed while cleaning the sheets. But no, their lost in touch son with more brains than the boffins of Queen’s University was reading the Belfast phone book.
And these wonderful testing people round every pub in Belfast, intoxicated and singing out of tune in Guinness. They always congratulated and patted his back, then paid him windfall for his enterprise. As this was entertainment better than bearded Bridget table dancing her Irish lament of insufferable Caoineadh songs. Now that was pure torture, as reading a phone book was much more fun than that.
But luck with Cillian was not to be found here in any matter, as it was almost always his innovation of thinking. He knew what he was doing like a theatre mentalist. Sometimes he heard the same number twice like when they asked what is the number of the Is My Bum Big In This dress shop of Stranmillis, as maybe they have shopped there for the wife or have acquaintance with the dressmakers. There was always a reason.
But there was nothing supernatural about the intuition of Cillian and his particular set of skills. Three thousand Belfast telephone numbers, so how did he actually get there many will want to ask. Such a waste of time some said, well any rational person would think what is the point of this. It feels like one of those Jules Verne books where he flies to the Moon in his rocket just to see if the lunar surface tastes like Dingle Peninsula Cheese. As everyone knows the Moon is made of dairy products. Well according to the proverbs of John Heywood who in Queen Beth’s time declared that the Moon was made of cheese. Grown men believed this, but who knows. Someday in science we may visit our solo satellite in space with it’s professed oceans of dairy milk craters. Cillian in childhood was once instructed to believe that a cow in some fertile fantasy of poetry had jumped over the Moon, but even at three with night time narration from Grandma Nana-banana Cillian was not buying that tale either. Not even her joke that this aerobatic cow supplied milk to the Milky Way.
And very much on another rock in space, this one called Earth. Is one of the most outstanding examples of memory evidence that is taken for granted every day. Humans have this incredible ability to manipulate vocabulary as each society invents new words to suit their history and time on Earth. Cillian knew that from the Oxford English Dictionary in the Glover Library, that was a great book of learned words. That the average human mind uses over twenty thousand words of voice and body of talk to produce the most amazing show of recall and recognition for even the most basic sentence. And then to Cillian, numbers too have all the flavour and savvy of an international language. So anytime you think Cillian is a genius chair of chat, which he is. Then look at yourself. You know lots of words. You’re reading this. Everyone has this private inventory of vocabulary, and this stationery in your head that even works in your sleep, is as unique as your face and fingerprints.
Cillian’s mind was always on fire with this madness of imagination, as he made his way forward to finance his future with an extraordinary collection of mnemonics like some alphabet of dreams. So Cillian went round all those darkened Ale Houses of Belfast and lit up their faces with his memory, if it was first not inspired by the offerings of Napoleon’s Nose Moonshine or the Devil’s Tongue Egg Soda. Cillian made his dough from this show like the days when he sold door locks and Christmas chocolates and all it’s magical moments of the people he met. His next step was to use this rainy day cash to get from Belfast to Blackpool and to buy that window of time before he walks the boards of the theatres on Stew Pit Street, and then meet all the people from the industrial Wakes who have not woken up yet. As this was not the sort of job you can buy, this life for Cillian and his wonderboy memory it was his only by inevitably and destiny.
And the journey to get there, on this excursion and pilgrimage of hundreds of milestones and landmarks. Cillian decided to cycle there. It was perfect for him. He could not rely on carriages and coaching Inns, and a journey by bike was perfect for him. The odyssey of the outdoor life on a bicycle was a regular feature of his previous heart of a lion athletic youth. As Cillian had many a memorable Sunday run to Dublin, that he did with more Blarney than the stone. And sometimes he went as far as every cobble to Cork, sleeping in barns with the pigs just to keep warm.
But now literally he had the World beneath his bicycle wheels, as he chose to meet Blackpool by bike. And now for the acquisition of a new bicycle carriage as Cillian armed with cash sought a beast of nature bike that had all the features to match his odyssey of quality. His first visit was to the showroom of the Roadster Classics of Raleigh was Gass Brothers Bike Boutique on the Lisburn Turnpike by the Kabollocks Turkish Bistro, and here Bicycle Bob and Cillian Custard first meet.
Bicycle Bob had just taken delivery of the most perfect safety bike that he canvassed Cillian with. It had enormous twenty eight inch rims with leather Brooks saddle. The utmost comfort on donkey tracks with it’s classic geometry of sit-up-and-beg. There was a great wicker basket on the handlebars for seating the globetrotter Steampunk Daisy Doughnut, and the garment bag of necessity. Cillian bought this bike without hesitation, that was so pristine and painted in some spectacular glossy black. His fortune of shillings and farthings he gifted him. Every part of that bike was a telephone number round Belfast’s metropolis of Gin Vaults. He earned it, and there was lots of money for boarding and lemon cake along the way too. Cillian on his pedal adventures lived on this, it was his propellant and lunch. His body was fit and was a different engine of heart and musculosketal system, not like those new unseasoned Karl Benz Velo fossil fuel burning technology that people started to call cars. Cillian remembers seeing one of those fossil fuel bangers putt down Sandy Row, and everyone was shouting “Get a horse!” They were not popular as they putted along, smearing the Sunday dresses with spitting oil outside the local First Presbyterian Church on the Giant’s Foot Road.
Cillian was so proud of his new bike, and he called it Manda Panda. It’s informal pet name and sobriquet handle of label from his deep and touching childhood friend Amanda. For them they were cradle to grave associates and had a lifetime legacy of friendship. They sometimes shared bikes to the sea by Donaghadee, always his forever friend. Amanda thereafter an attractive friend primarily of intellectual stimulation, had great say and influence to his mind. They spent many happy days pedalling and pigging out with ice cream at some lush Cream by the Sea called the Gelato of Parlour O‘Freddo.
But now time to say goodbye to Belfast for Blackpool and here Tea Lane takes forever to say toodle-oo. It is always difficult to part company with life in the fabric of masonry that once certainly held his every thought. These were buildings built in the year of the finding of the Venus de Milo primarily to house the workers of the nearby Europa Textile mills and Aula Palatina brickworks. And now Cillian had his last look at the mosaic boobs of the bathhouse. Every industry and trade from shoemakers, flax dressers and even blacksmiths had a nest of living quarters here. And Master McMurdo in Tea Lane even slept with his donkeys Kentucky and Barbarossa there. These imperfect bottom of the barrel yet cute creatures had a jarring bray when Cillian wanted to read his books and he shouted in donkey talk to shut the fudge up. They were certainly nothing like the gentle neigh of a pony. But these dimwit donkeys were out to lunch that day, and knew no better that Cillian was leaving and he was so hoping that his new home in Blackpool did not have the seaside ride donkeys dwelling next door.
His childhood chums arrive. Chocolate Charlie with no teeth wraps his exceptional friend Cillian some Butter Fudge from his inheritance A Quarter of Sweet Emporium, which was sad as Jelly Babies and Allsorts were not his thing as he really wanted to become a surgeon. So life was not a box of chocolates for him. And then the balding Amadeus Fiddlehead had abandoned his run for British politics, and played goodbye strings on one of his vintage search for brilliance Italian Stradivarius Violins. His life too not his plan, but the bright side. Those crappy violins that even made Dumbledog the street Pooch cry in pain were now worth some dosh.
The Vico Ristorante family turn up too, to say their piece of well wishes and success. Her royal hotness Ophelia and then Manfredi of the Benedetto’s gifting Cillian a lunch of olives and platter of spaghetti Alla Carbonara. Even the antiquity appeared of the perfectly aged Giuseppe Leonardo once of Rinkha of Rowland who whispered with his wit, “You cone do it!” And childhood treasure Amanda, this angel of information. She wrote and was delicate in her apology by letter as she was not there to wish au revoir as she had great success as a foreign ambassador as she was working as a diplomat in France with the frogs.
Here one down it was still touching to kiss the street of Tea Lane this bon voyage at his prime of thirty four and enjoy all the kind goodbyes. Cillian was at peace with his legacy of Tea Lane and the incomprehension of his mellowing father, star turn of the great double act of Fred & Flo of Sandy Row. Cillian had no philosophy of the system, as he did not live or think like anyone else. And Blackpool was to change everything, and not even Cillian could imagine that bombshell.
Of course there was a parting gesture from his mum Floella who came to the door with her words, “On your bike, my son Cillian, the Rinkha Thinker. Be sure to write and enjoy the Blackpool and Stew Pit Street you have endlessly told me about. I hope it is so like the seaside magic of our days out in Bangor and Donaghadee. Leave a lot of sparkle where ever you take your heart and thoughts, my son!”
And Captain Fish of the One Penny Plaice Shop by the Fat Fish & Cow corner shop, he says it will softly shower down with snow. Not sure if that is his real name, or if he is an expert with the weather. A bit like being called Mister Guinness if you run a pub. And now Cillian leaves the street, inebriated with Isla’s Fat Cat Vodka and Brenda Bee’s Bastard Behind The Eye Rum. Or whatever it was that Chocolate Charlie and Fiddlehead bought him from the Wizard of Wine corner cellar. And also leaving behind all the ghosts of his villainous brother Ferris who was now the Bishop of Ballynonce, and what ever indecency he practiced there. And of course stopping at Sandy Row Cemetery to whisper parting tribute to Nanabanana in her necropolis, who was once the mindful Cillian’s rational family soulmate and founder of facts and information. Every week Cillian would cut the grass at her grave and leave pebbles painted like stones in the museum, and now nature will carpet her memory or Chocolate Charlie and Fiddlehead will pay veneration with respect to Cillian’s requests to keep her plot pretty.
This Belfast to Blackpool now was barely a few days of elements away. Cillian had plans to pedal to Stew Pit Street and it’s herculean metal tower that was higher than the Cliffs on the Coast Road in just four days. His Raleigh Roadster ceremoniously leaves Tea Lane to claps and cheers, to continue to these theatres and taste of honey. Hopefully avoiding the bowel emptying seagulls as professed by Barry Barbados.
Cillian then waves north, and after resting with pint of stout to wash down some fried soda bread and egg in the Morning Star Coaching Inn of Belfast with it’s great hospitality, and then he was of to the Rock of Fergus near Carrick. His bed for the night was a cottage on Magee’s Island near Brown’s Bay with his favourite Aunt Isobel. Here there was candlelight and sirloin cooked rare, as he was walking on air in a soapbox of excitement. Here with Aunt Isobel there were thick whitewashed walls and a Cornish range cooker. Gothic shelves of works of Shakespeare and the romantic poetry of Walter Scott were everywhere. Cillian could not help but notice the first edition of The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls and then Walter Crane’s Baby Opera that was a book of old rhymes that Nanabanana used to read him at night. Cillian then thought that this book was kindly passed through family. So Cillian was never alone with his thoughts that first night, as it seems his childhood of rhymes was enjoyed by another child.
The iron bath rolls out, and soon Cillian wishes goodbye to Aunt Isobel, upon which he hears in the distance the brass bell of the morning ferry. His cabin upon the White Star Orpheus awaits warm to one’s heels. It was a great time of thinking in that berth of this great ship, as Cillian at sea decided he could not look back on life like the legend of Eurydice exiting the Underworld or bear regret to any of life’s misconceptions, as ironically Cillian knew that he would not be going on this odyssey of showbusiness if it were not for the thousands of times he had fallen in the World. He then had a flashing thought of Thomas Edison who had found one way to make viable the invention of lighting, but two thousand ways not to.
Breakfast time at port of Larne, and Cillian was filled with a heart-stopping Ulster Fry from the Jack Dawson DiCaprio Café, washed down with Grape Expectations Wine. This was his last legacy of the perfect Irish traditional death on a plate breakfast of Ulster Fry, till the land of Highland and Haggis. And Cillian was later devastated to discover that Ulster Fry was not served on the Kingdom mainland, and that the English were missing out on this mouth-watering masterpiece even if their heart arteries weren’t.
Cillian then enjoyed a gentle crossing of this ship of dreams RMS Orpheus to Cairnryan, passing Paddy’s milestone island Ailsa Craig that captured the outline and silhouette like of Mount Slemish, where Saint Patrick as a shepherd to combat his imprisonment and loneliness found God. Cillian brought to mind the schoolboy joke that the magnificent curve of this island was the breast of Helen of Troy in the distance.
And Manda Panda was safe in the hold of the ship dressed in hay, encased in a crate of straw and pine. Then later bagpipes and kilts against a field of thistles welcome the ride in it’s infancy in Bonnie Scotland. Now light is suddenly failing and looking above the buttermilk effect sky, the weatherly snow queen of Wigtownshire approaches. So Captain Fish from his shop of smelly sea creatures in Belfast was more than right. With his prodigious vision that it was going to snow.
Cillian putting together Manda Panda, was suspended in atmosphere as he sensed that the snow will hinder his passage east. But nothing could stop Cillian as he made his way to the Parish of Minnigaff sustained by lemon cake and a promise of a guest room he might find on the way. The first squall and flurry of snow began to fall. Large flakes were observable by his gas carbide handlebar light, as this soft doughy snow deepened. Cillian was wrapped in his legacy of knitted shawls and scarfs perfected by the master of weaving and braiding. Gifts through a lifetime from his Grandma Nanabanana, and he was well comfortable with his passage and grip on the Newton Stewart Way. His senses were wired to the aroma of haggis as he passed many firelit smoking But n’ Ben cottages. The treelines were the guidance to the glens against the seating of the snow, as it got deeper. Now the snow was a foot deep and dangerous, with little grip and traction. Hours later his gas carbide lamp was burning like a wickerman, and surely you could see the outline of Cillian Custard and his burning lights from almost every hill in Kirkcudbrightshire. He then verges upon some property by the Cree. Here ice was so titanic, that he had to stop. Cillian so wondered how he was going to find a room in this rage. There was no-one to help him, but he did see a big brass sign that read Belfrey Bats. He first thought this was some big fancy house of some lord and lady that you read about in Charles Dickens. Like Miss Havisham’s grand mansion in Great Expectations. But no, it was an old gothic spooky school. That had a grand vestibule that was a shelter in the deepening curtain of snow, and Cillian in survival mode first thought that was his sleeping quarters tonight as he snuggled safe against a large unknown alien door. His overcoat and scarves to protect him, and become like a blanket. His head was covered and insulated from nature, and his body heat maintained. And soon the life of dreams as Cillian closed his eyes and vanished into fantasy and invention. But no, as footsteps and a fractious key turned in some antique Jacobean rim lock that imposed upon his senses. The carved door with it’s gargoyle carvings opens slowly, and Cillian falls against the feet of the visual of an Uncle Fester. And the direful doorman did say, “And who are you, my frozen friend. You need an ark and I Noah a guy”, he joked. Cillian needed no invitation. The door was ajar, and warmth and candescence blazed. This barrel-shaped man like a literary monster with sunken eyes and deranged smile then said, “I’m Professor Sporran, and I receive you at Belfry Bats International School.” And Cillian’s imperative almost crying reply, “And I Cillian Zoltar Custard from Belfast, a maestro of innocence and memory is trapped in a sea of snow following the Lemon Cake road to Blackpool.” And Professor Sporran as he spoke and said “Cakes and comfort on us, tonight shows no mercy for man so with no fuss let’s find you quarters and quiet.”
Cillian’s legs and lungs were giving out, and this was the land of plenty. A room was found, the Eelmarsh suite at top of the spiral. In a calming palette of ice cream sorbet colours, with art hung at kooky angles to drive home the idea of fun. There was a round attic window porthole to a playground, and an all iron cottage bed for one. There were books everywhere, all writings and compendiums of cake & jellies to medical surgical advice. Even the first edition of the Eyes of Tiresias that Grandma Nanabanana, used to read to Cillian at night and give him apparitions and nightmares. Reflecting on the period and austerity of the building, Cillian drifted off to sleep in awe of the cornices and leaf theme ceiling rose. During which he enjoyed the guest bottle of Culloden Bombshell Brandy.
Cillian fell to sleep with the sound of many young squealing voices, and compared this to his years of malady at Funny Floor Cottage of Tea Lane in a bedroom barely a man’s height, with walls and ceilings as blank as the intellect of the World’s many evil tumultuous political dictatorships. Once he fell to sleep, his dream that night was of a Yeti from Tibet chasing a polar bear in a snowstorm. His dinner was dashing through the snow. But according to Freud, that dream must have played with great reference to his own struggle in the snow that night. The human mind has no escape and cannot be turned off like a Thomas Edison Phonograph.
But then in the morning, there was something that Cillian certainly had no control over. And that was the battle cry of a school bell in the morning that was enough to wake the Egyptain Mummy at Belfast Museum and all his stuffed cats. Emerging from the Eelmarsh Suite, Cillian smelt heat and breakfast and peeped past his door to see children running in chaos on the floors. Belfrey Bats he was soon to discover over the staff of life porridge breakfast was a macabre boarding school, with a house system of dormitory and discipline. And Cillian like these souls in co-ordinated outfits was a guest of the elements. Professor Sporran addressed his introduction of Cillian to this flock of faces over this unpremeditated fireside Saturday assembly. The circle of pupils like Cillian were also in confinement to the conditions, as they too were locked in by the elements and had homes in unreachable snowbound glens.
Every passage to the village was hid under a cover of drift. Everyone was trapped in a way of natural wonder. And outside, there was the most beautiful artistic landscape of snow sculptures. A water cycle of snowmen so slapstick, and some were scarfed in Tartan. With their rudimentary coal stone smiley faces and carrot noses, they populated the playground amidst snowball battles that exhilarated a holiday of fun.
But before long, Professor Sporran was heard to shout and collect together twenty something of young scholars in the reception. And now they all came together in the main fire-lit hall for the occasion of fireside reading. Professor Sporran the headmaster of Belfrey Bats International School complete with his whirlwind kids, were brought to their attention that there was a guest here today to teach them the power of thought. They were all up for it. Anything to do with imagination and the workshop of the mind, they were all ears.
First Professor Sporran gets their attention. “Children of Belfrey Bats from Ullapool to Aberdeen, with your kind attention and permission I have the honour of presenting to you. All the way from Oireland, Mister Memory Cillian Zoltar Custard. And I know what you are all thinking, you cannot have an Irish Memory Man. But we have one here for you today, and this blizzard has brought his brains to Belfrey Bats. He knows telephone numbers of those new exchange devices, thousands of them. So everyone, please put your hands together for the Irish Mister Memory!”
Cillian takes the floor. He thought what an introduction. These kids will either be expecting supernatural forces or a séance with the ghost of Robbie Burns. But no, he simply said hello and asked them all their names and where they were from. Then said to pick a number from one to a million and tell him. Cillian then wrote a list of Ice Cream flavours from the Rinkha on the blackboard and asked them to all pick one. And no Irish Memory Man was complete without a Belfast Telephone Exchange Company book, so he had that sideshow with him too.
Then Cillian said, “A question please, ladies first.” A young girl in the front whose luscious locks cascaded down her shoulders like a waterfall of gold, she put her hand up first and asked, “Memory, who designed the Forth Railway Bridge please?” Cillian promptly said, “Two great heads came together to design this titanic train track in 1882, they were Sir John Fowler and Sir Benjamin Baker, am I right Miss Caitriona Flora Fraser from Dunfermline who picked two hundred and seventy one thousand, eight hundred and sixty four and likes Bonfire Toffee ice cream with gooey honeycomb pieces with bubblegum sauce and squirty cream. And are you the one who wanted to know the number of the Birds Custard Factory in Belfast on York Road which is three two one six four and they use the best flour!” Caitriona Flora Fraser was floored and looked up as if to say, “You are so everything, and whatever your way you are amazing.”
Cillian went round the room, and they asked him everything from the works of Dickens and even the Jacobite Rebellion. He was enchanted by their fascination of memory. These were minds of innocence and making. Yet Cillian sensed that their thoughts were well dressed and read by rote, and not by illustration. He so wondered if he could describe his technique of connecting pictures. But Cillian was quite strategic as he knew that he could not broadcast his violent and steamy graphics to remember, as this was beyond the certificate of their sensitive years of consent. The workings of the mind of a mnemonist are as foul as fanatics on Flirtini, that mind numbing cocktail containing vodka, champagne infused in pineapple. And alcohol as we know preserves many things, but memory is not one of them.
But still they will remember that day, and that cordial opening by their headmaster Professor Sporran.
Cillian in this grand gothic snowbound school had showed them something with this substance of imagination, that was an unspecified commodity of thought that no other living person could possibly give them. All the pupils in the class that day were totally unaware that Cillian’s system had adult technique, yet inner child genius. He answered their questions, but so irked and disheartened as he could not truly show.
The snow continued to fall quite thickly at Belfrey Bats, with Cillian making no associations to a Whale Omelette or Fred & Flo of Sandy Row. It really fell thick. And Cillian so enjoyed the company of the school and the hospitality of the Eelmarsh Suite finishing of the house brandy, until the snow started to thaw and return to nature. It was a few wonderful days of sharing enlightenment in memory that Cillian could tailor to their version of understanding. Most of the time to keep warm, the children and teachers roasted and cooked around the cast iron fire surrounds. And on occasion of leaving with Daisy Doughnut on Manda Panda, who the kids loved and passed around to play. And as Cillian greeted goodbye to Professor Sporran and his peculiar house of Children, there was great social congratulation and his invitation to return.
Next the haul to the hotels and theatres of this new shore and whore resort of Blackpool. A day of cycling then Cillian unwinded for high tea at some congenial corner café en route somewhere halfway between Dumfries and Duncow. This establishment was christened The Mother of Nessie, an eatery that was either a poetic reference to the mythological Sea Horse or sarcastic overtones to the proprietor’s Mother-in-Law who fed Cillian some delicious traditional Haggis from the hills. This was a savoury pudding of minced sheep, as a national dish encased in stomach. It was washed down with drams of Scotch Whisky. And Cillian’s address to this Haggis, he said it was certainly not a small Scottish animal as custom and inside comical story expected. And then later as he passed Gretna Green with it’s institution of marriage. That triggered the thoughts of Socrates who said that by all means marry, where if you get a good wife you become happy. However if you get a bad one, you become a philosopher.
Cillian arrived at the Scottish border and soon the love and lie of the lakes ahead, with wind pushing him to the water of Windermere. Watchful to charming small independent shops of sheepskins and Cumberland Sausage by the markets of Mint Cake. Here Cillian booked a bed in the Tales of Peter Rabbit B&B by the Life is Sweet Jam Shop. And that night he exchanged bodily fluids in melodramatic secrecy with the landlady’s daughter called Linda, as Cillian always raises hormones where ever he goes. Her invitation with his soft Irish accent that can injure women, she could not resist or was it his oxygen blue eyes. She was pretty without issues, and a great audience for their analogy of each other’s life in passing. These two souls to vanish from each others sight of life in the morning with the repercussion of two like-minded spirits thinking what-if.
And from as Cillian left Windermere and this spontaneous adventure of love then there arose thousands of memories captured on this trip with his mind, this almost human daguerreotype. As he pedalled in all weathers, passing a great Roman Fort on Hard Knott Pass and then high tea of endless lemon cake on Fell of Cat Bells by Derwentwater. All these places he explored in books, became real. Then soon the city of ale Lancaster in these first days of eighteen ninety eight, as Cillian came close to Blackpool and his pedal into party city. That quintessential English seaside resort with it’s Zoological Pier of Pleasure and all the most dangerous and exhilarating fairground attractions. This was a custom built resort of cold reading fortune telling and bearded lady shows in every seaside sideshow setting, that was once a great forest of oak and boglands with discoloured water of the peatlands. This landscape a replenishment to this enormous gargantuan and grotesque refuse of black pools, hence why some fool in town hall called it Blackpool. And these black pools were naturally congested with the indignity of pond life, and centuries later pond life of a different kind was to evolve. It even had a big sign that said Welcome to the Seaside, the land of sunshine and wonderful views. And whoever wrote that, has obviously not cycled through Scotland and experienced it’s spectacular beauty.
Cillian was rejuvenated with a feeling of great pleasure, as soon as he sees the lattice of the tower. Some imperial Eiffel copy on the coast, that was a replica in many ways of that big trade show in Paris and no-one knew how to take it down, or wanted too after it’s international show. There was advertising on the side of this Blackpool Tower for Pears Soap or whatever that says to the vanity of the target audience. It was truly a nostalgic introduction to the consumer era that compromised promotion for their hygiene on holiday. And from that cloud buster and gallery in the vault of heaven and celestial sphere, people jumped in self-slaughter. Literally a view to die for, and every far remote sight you can see from Lakeland to Llandudno.
For Cillian, this very first day in Blackpool was as haunting as that demonic hound on Dartmoor. There was no Ulster Frys here, nor institutions of education. This was working class yet there were thousands of boutiques of enterprise from beach hut bathing vogue to mill workers teashops of distinction. Millions came here every year, with it’s great curiosity of attractions. As one particular feature in the Belfast Telegraph broadsheet that Cillian could not get out of his head and had to see, never mind the Tower and the dipper. This was the tale of the speciality act at Zamboni Circus that many of the Irish wrote about where the most agile African elephant called Ebenezer the Elephant who could furiously juggle with his trunk a trio of circus clown dwarfs. These very trusting midgets were called Gary the Goblin, Pint sized Peter and Tristan the Troll. The audience he read loved this circus showcase, and Ebenezer the Elephant it seemed would do anything for a lady finger banana or a sniff of Tracy the Bearded Lady. And once or twice a week, Ebenezer the Elephant would drop the little stunted fairy folk. And signage also appeared on the pier that pleased the bucket and spade brigade, that advertised the fact that no unicorns were harmed or injured in this fools’ paradise circus. And even the visitors despite their blinkers knew that this was a joke just to please the kids. Well most did, as a million questions come into your head when you are surrounded by these zombie like people with silly hats by the seaside. As this town did not carry the atmosphere and intellect of the Queen’s University campus of Belfast. As it seemed the seagulls were more savvy.
But back to the friendly elephant from Equatorial Guinea. Ebenezer the Elephant was indeed the most harmless character, and loved the children feeding him rhubarb and custard drops ands sometimes the aniseed twists. He was called Ebenezer the Elephant in the matinee shows, and a more nasty reserved name not for little ears in the evening shows that rhymed with Thick as Fudge the Elephant. But whatever the branding, the Ringmaster would constantly say in his show that his mother from the long lost kingdom of Spectrum must have knitted his hat. And his trunk which looked like a giant genital that was a weapon to soak the audience from a wheelbarrow of custard. The holiday people loved their seaside gig with Ebenezer the Elephant, and the valets at the hotels were on commission to shout from the rooftops this seaside sideshow. And this Ebenezer the Elephant, his best friend in the circus was a three legged donkey called Wonky. Once bit by a murderous killer crab, so his days of doing the donkey rides by the pier with all the fat kids was over. An infection forced some surgeon from Saltcoats Surgery in St Annes to take off one limb. So this donkey became Wonky the Donkey.
And adjoining this haunt of holiday was the windmill whistlestop of Lytham, a seaside town of cat ladies without cats. The greatest employer here in Lytham was the carbonated soft drink factory by the Cookson’s Dock that specialised in it’s counterfeit brand of Coke, the caffeine of the Clifton family. And it took a lot of bottle to become the first bottling company to compete with this international brand that protected it’s secret recipe like the guards round the Queen or the gold reserves hidden under the floors in the Bank of England.
And here in Lytham it had pretentious entitled types and public plumbed toilets. It was a central base that Cillian so desired for intensely. In this neighbouring seaside town, there was a class community of boutique shops and fine dining. There were no cannibals or cooking pots to be seen. And rare were the beggars and vagrants on the streets, that appeared for every opportunity in Blackpool.
However Cillian was very much impressed with Lytham, but this windswept and curious cyclist needed a home now to set heart on. So next day, Cillian went house hunting looking on the grapevine and advertisements in corner shop windows he sought. His first night in the Fylde and he needed somewhere to sleep and recharge. Cillian found a beautiful bed & breakfast in Blackpool called The Whispering Trees and the landlady was the most adorable Miss Flufftooth. But this lovely lady could not stop talking. And not in the traditional sense did her vocal chords have a cut-off switch or a mute button. All night long at the bar, Cillian’s mind was drained by the commentary of her days as a stunt double and stand-in for actress Sarah Bernhardt. And in her illustrated interviews, Miss Flufftooth described how she pioneered celebrity. This went on all night, and there was no duck tape nor a spare key to escape to a beach hut when you needed one.
The next day after the most palatable breakfast, Cillian gathered his thoughts and explored the Blackpool Town Hall visitor and excursionist shop, from where sales of rock and murky postcards appeared. And hidden amongst all the posters of theatrical publicity, Cillian found an almanack for the showbusiness circles that was some sort of directory for the performing arts. Lots of landlords were advertising their summer season stop-over for the stars here. And some sounded like they themselves were the warm-up comedians for the Winter Gardens. There were Rent-a-Room Chambers, Cuddle Cottages and Laugh-a-Lot Lodge. But one particular property jumped out at Cillian like building an Irish bar on Everest. He could not miss this magical and unnatural sounding Nothing Normal House, that was a great apartment to rent at Port Stanley Park’s gothic estate. Right across from the Willy Wanka Face Cream Factory by Dumb Bird Lane, it was once an asylum and local haven for the looney tunes and those of unfirm mind. And Nothing Normal House was cleared of it’s insane clientele and professionally restored to capture the magic of the industrial mills. Cillian instantly fell in love with the palatial Nothing Normal House, and there was not a sausage or Sweet Fanny Adams that was going to stop him moving in. This imposing house was some collection of rooms impregnated with oddball mystique in addition to a view and great vision of the rolling landscape of Whitegate Drive. The Bubble trams passed and rattled outside, and there was the notorious character of a cosmetics mill and it’s precocious brand on the edge of the seaside and industrial suburbs. Meeting his new landlord here, Cillian shook hands and shared stature with Master Joseppe Walsh. And outside their regulation and all the ink on posh paperwork with the rules of tenancy, they knew they would become good friends, and they did. His amity and fellowship was almost like Eden, and Master Walsh was a magnanimous and benevolent kindly landlord at this extraordinary gothic property.
And now Cillian’s new poetically named home Nothing Normal House was to become an ivory tower of intellectual isolation. The house was dripping with atmosphere, and there was great thinking space for opportunity. And outside a scenic landscape of textile mills and chimneys, rather than donkey rides and the satire of silly hats. The factory just footsteps away across the trams, was populated and peopled with human figure like marionettes with perfect complexions as they spent their days in labour at the Willy Wanka Face Cream Factory. Everyone in Blackpool wanted to work there, and have it on their Curriculum Vitae and description of career. It was like the cat that got the cream to work at Willy Wanka.
And like the great industry landscape of Manchester, he could people watch here. Even Daisy Doughnut in her new home with a seat by the vintage box sash windows of such original features was also a witness to this wonder even though she only had puppet button eyes of her thirty years since she was once rescued from the Belfast Love Shop for stuffed toys. And talking of this Daisy Doughnut, this feral stuffed rabbit doorstop doll of such charming personality and animal magnetism. These two have been sentimental souls since Santa of eighteen sixty nine, once a gift from Granma Nanabanana and not allegedly as told from the big fat bloke of Candy Stick Lane North Pole and his magic perpetual sack. Every secret and surge for enthusiasm in life, Cillian shared with this gormless anthropomorphic doorstop doll. Daisy Doughnut was born hand-crafted of the Ulster Weavers factory and was king of the silent treatment, and went everywhere with Cillian. And sometimes she was smuggled into Little Heads, but she distracted the class who didn’t learn much while she was passed around the class. Never once did Daisy Doughnut dare to question the troubling elements of the Fred & Flo effect and all that bizarre discouragement in childhood, nor answer back. This gift from the late Granma Nanabanana was like a tribute to her life he wanted to keep alive, and in later years Cillian was to discover that his stuffed soulmate was a gift from some unique Gift shop in Botanic Avenue called Belfast Love Shop for stuffed toys and not the North Pole as his inner child was once led to spectacularly imagine. In those days when you are five, this Santa was such the Elves and North Pole fantasy to every child in Belfast, and when Cillian became six he lost sight of the reindeers and chimney and he said to his mum Floella, “Mother, you can be Santa this year!” And reflecting on this one morning while walking to Little Heads school, he did joke in the great company of Chocolate Charlie and Fiddlehead that indeed he did not see any conviction of Santa and Elves regarded as true anymore. As now he was a rebel without a Claus.
Cillian was always looking back on his life, and every past speculation. All these bygone times overwhelmed with imagination were important to him. Now the learning and theatrics begin in this great sanctuary of Nothing Normal House, with it’s historical imprisonment and crucifixion of minds that could tell a few tales itself. This mind of inner child destruction to become a gift on the circuit when Cillian found better ways for his imagination to turn wood into precious metal for the seaside excursionists still gazing into their penny telescopes.
However Cillian was not born with a perfect set of guidelines to memory, and able to do all the things he evolved to do in the theatre. How else was he illustriously gifted a piece of cake system, when his heartfelt life in Belfast was a day by day practice of really bad decisions. As here he was in a different World escaping a life pulled to pieces in every direction by Fred & Flo of Sandy Row, the experts of mental destruction. Next is the blow by blow account of this letting the cat out of the bag discovery. And it was all quite by chance. It was something he had never once seen before, and this new information made learning as easy as looking at Ebenezer the Elephant of the Zamboni throwing and catching those three circus clowns.
Well what exactly was it that he had not seen before? Soon you will find out. Quite by chance Cillian with carriage of opportunity gets wise to the wisdom that all you need to have perfect memory is quite simple systems of imagination that work with technique. It is certainly not the classical conditioning of rote memory, with the most useless information battered into his brain at Little Heads. All the nonsense of Kings and Battles in time that is no use for the etiquette of Victorian domestic life.
And when Cillian looked back at those wonder learning years with the three R’s and the practical yet ecclesiastical readings of Socrates, he came to realise that he had arrived at the door of Nothing Normal House with all the basics and a burning desire to succeed. Under the wing and guidance of Master Joseppe Walsh, Cillian was untouched by the festival and madness of Blackpool. His master plan was to become the true champion of memory. He knew his giftedness was misunderstood by many, and they would say that he was a dreamer in a cuckoo land. As let’s face it. More people are interested in the lines of Lotta Crabtree’s ass or the next round of Thirsty Kirsty Rum, than information in a head that you cannot actually see like a galaxy without the use of a telescope. But Cillian always knew that his mind was psychologically unfurnished with exposure, with the bequeath of experience in this theatrical setting. Now he was faced with thousands of seaside souls and creatures of individual character in Blackpool. And all he could do to start is to hope that his mind is of learned use to them, and that he could find success and a market for his memory. And these same people would not take him to pieces, or label him a fruitcake. As for the gift itself, it is like watching the plot-line for a Sherlock Holmes play as the mystery is lost when you watch the show twice. And the public his paymasters did not want to pay again. An evening with this Unforgettable Memory Show to many was a one-off, as they wanted to say they were there. But no-one wants to hear the Darwin’s Monkey Act from the Preston comedy show tell the same joke twice at the Cheapo Seato Theatre. But Cillian was never defeated by this, and his positive spirit was one of a person of quality. Here he was to think and draw inspiration from the sea, and not let the history of Fred & Flo of Sandy Row take too much away from his new magic of today. Cillian will think and grow rich. Next he tells all, as he joins the ranks of the World’s most clever people. And here is his simple secret secret. Something to Cillian that in society is unseen by others.