Next door to Ethel lived a Jamaican lady called Carmen she had two young boys and no husband, I got to know her and we got on well, she was having a party and invited Ethel and myself and we excepted, I am far more of a partier than Ethel was, however she could dance and enjoyed her music which was mainly oldies, we did the 60’s but this was raw Reggie, not what you hear in the charts, fire in my wire is one example.
We had a good time and I got down with the best of them and I learnt a lot a lot about Reggie and I danced with the ladies it is intimate type of dancing but I was always what is called a dirty dancer.
Carman told me she and her boys were in turmoil, something spooky such as a form of ghost was walking through the bedrooms straight through the walls, they were all seeing this, why come to me I don’t know what I’m doing, I had not said anything to give that impression, I always keep things to myself I mentioned it to my brother Merlin because we had messed with the Ouija Board in 1971 it gave us Double Cream the 33/1 winner of the derby, I never continued with that stuff but I wondered if it would help out in this situation and maybe chat with this nuisance ghost.
I asked him and he agreed so off we go with the home made Ouija Board to do some ghostbusting, what an idiot I was… we arrive and were setting up but the ghost wasn’t having any of it he promptly knocked Merlin on his arse, fortunately there was a bed there so no harm done, I have no idea what I done but this place was not big enough for me and the ghost, whatever had happened Carman had no future problems? I really have no idea, I only know something was there and now it wasn’t.
I had experiences and gifts which I never took seriously, in them days there were coal fires and me and Ethel were sitting in the living- room when I looked into the fire and I said to Ethel that George was with a group of people in the pub and would be calling in later. George was a friend of Ethel’s and her family who I had only met once; she said that he didn’t drink and that it was too late in the evening for him to call in, not long after a knock came on the door and I went to answer and it was George, I let him in and I saw the look of surprise on Ethel’s face, I asked him if he had been drinking and he said he had been out with some friends having a drink and decided to call in.
I had started something now I had become a fire-reader; she always wanted to know what I could see in the fire, I told her she would be offered a house with a kitchen tiled from floor to ceiling with a horse shoe above the back door, I came in from work and she told me she had been offered a house and had been to see it she excepted it, it was exactly had I had described even the old horse shoe was there.
We moved in and this had a fire in the kitchen and so I wasn’t free from fire-reading, I never made a big deal of it and I certainly never made a point of looking for things and I never told anyone about it but Ethel would always ask me because everything I had said had come true and then on this occasion I saw the death of her 21yr old nephew, Ann’s son who only lived up the road from where we had moved to, it was in fact the same road and her son played in goal for a football team on Sundays, he made a dive for a ball and hit his head on the goal post and later collapsed in the bathroom, the knock on his head had led to a brain haemorrhage and in after a few days in hospital he died, I never read the fire again.
Ethel took her 2nd husband back which was a surprise given all that she and the kids had said about him, apparently he had been visiting her while I was at work and had an affair prior to telling me the news, and so I left which meant that I was instantly homeless.
My mother was now living in Scottsdale Arizona which was the best thing she could have done, I was not going to tell my family because this was my problem after a period of time I got a bed sitter in Meridian Street it was a poky hole it had an electric hob with small oven which took a fortune in the meter which was a coin meter I couldn’t even boil water it was cheaper to go up the Holyhead pub, it had a small bed in the corner.
It was Christmas 1974 and the song Lonely this Christmas kept playing on the radio and I thought what am I doing here, I was drowning in self-pity, as I said songs can say what we can’t and really hit the spot I can relate so much and I was sitting alone, whether I stay there or not is my choice, we can’t change the past but we can change the future, what we do today can change tomorrow) and so in the new year I took off to London.