Ali has had a bad morning – he found a rigged ewe in the lower field and, despite his best efforts, was too late to save it. Rigged, short for riggwelted, or sometimes cast. Locally it’s “couped” (pronounced “coped”). He’s exhausted and dejected, half-heartedly browsing crofting and farming websites for advice about the weeks ahead. He is out of his depth. I think we both are.
We have made some progress though. Preparing tea tonight Ali has remembered what “GLT” stands for: “Gillian liked this”. Me and my fussy ways. I am touched that he obviously listened to my feedback about our culinary efforts. I didn’t mention that it wasn’t quite the same after a freeze thaw cycle.
He does not, however, remember anything about the following email, sent by his Dad Curt Finks from his hospital chaplain exchange to Dallas, retrieved from the Bronwyn Gosling cache.
29 November 1994
Dear Alistair,
I cannot tell you how delighted I am that my E-mail message got through eventually – Chris brought through a laser printed copy of your reply, which I think he might have tried to decipher. He did not have much chance really did he!
I am glad your Mother was happy with her birthday card. Sounds as if you had a good time. I am also glad that you liked the reference to Hotel Cockroach. I am writing down all such experiences in the notebook you gave me, all the way from the drunk man who talked to me on the outward leg of my marathon trip to pick up The Rolling Stones tickets, to the “Nightmare on Elm Street” experience of my first night’s exploration of downtown Dallas, and the misunderstanding about “junction” (I now practise the word “intersection” in my sleep).
I watched Oliver Stone’s JFK on TV a couple of weeks ago (it was put up against Scarlett, the sequel to Gone With The Wind in the ratings war). It was good to see all the familiar scenes, having explored them myself already.
The Bill Drummond thing is interesting. The Proclaimers. Why? But it’s good to see him back in the music industry. I went to an amazing shop called Bill’s on Sunday. It is the largest independent record shop in the USA, and it had 2 KLF remixes of other people’s material that I had never seen before as well as a Big in Japan 12”. I couldn’t afford them because they all cost $20+. Talking about money, I have almost run out. I have had to pay for the first month’s accommodation, tickets to New York and pots, pans and trips to Mexico, so I wonder if you could enquire about having another $1000 sent across. There’s no real hurry, but we could maybe look into the cheapest way of doing it. Americans want to charge you for everything.
So, what do you think about the book bound in reindeer leather? It might be worth it, but I can’t reaIly afford it. You could try writing to them at the Irish Tower, and do what I did with Astrid Kircher, and just write a good chatty letter with the intention of getting a free autographed picture. Maybe worth a try. Don’t worry about the Silver single – I just saw it mentioned in the NME and am not all that desperate to get it. The other things sound excellent though, and I am looking forward to the tape.
Last night I went to see “The Mask” in a cinema diner where they serve beer and food at tables throughout the film. You might enjoy the film more than I did. Are you still seeing Gillian? Tonight it is pints of Newcastle Brown ale at a half price night.
Yes, so enjoy your crispy pancakes, and send my love to your Mother.
Your Father
Ali is mystified. He has no memory of receiving this particular email. He did make recordings to send to his Dad, but his recollection is that they were of concerts broadcast on BBC Radio 3. And he kept newspaper cuttings. We do not have printouts of Ali’s emails. We have been through Bronwyn’s box twice without success.
So, seven and a half years after Curt Finks allegedly wrote “Brent Goose Rock” on the day of the release of The JAMs’ 1987 LP, we have evidence of him writing about Bill Drummond and The KLF again. What, indeed, is going on.
I speculate that the fingerprints of The Benefaktor are all over this. Ali disagrees. Bronwyn is not part of his circle. Ali has known her for ever. And he remembers other emails from the pages of printouts very clearly, from the hours spent in the library working on his thesis. We don’t always read everything carefully. Conversations with our parents – and indeed spouses or anybody else – are often on autopilot. Perhaps the ghost of Curt Finks will help with some insights in a future pamphlet.
That evening, Ali goes into one of his monologues. He splits life into thirds rather than the halves implied by a midlife crisis. He does not think that the two are incompatible though. If the midlife crisis goes on long enough it can become the middle third. He does not like to speculate on what it means that he became a crofter at the age of 55. Perhaps the midlife crisis started before the crofting. I wouldn’t be surprised.
He thinks that the “theory” applies across multiple aspects of life, and might help explain his father. Childhood/youth doesn’t end at 18, particularly nowadays; the working years are the biggest chunk, for better or worse; retirement could be a lot of fun if you have good health and enough savings. And as he mansplains: a woman’s life could be split into threes, demarcated by menarche and menopause.
Men, I point out, are different. Ali frowns at that, knowing what I will say next. I remind him about his failure to consent for a vasectomy. I have never got to the bottom of that: was it weakness, an inability to give up reproductive potential, or his usual excuse – disbelief about the physics/ biology of what happens to all the sperm? It’s all rather academic now of course.
“Do we ever really know other people – what goes on in their heads?”, I ask.
On the spot, counting syllables on fingers, he writes me a poem called Pause, before renaming it Thirds. He is delighted at his own output. He wonders about submitting it to a literary journal. “Ali” could be a ewe or a ram, he points out.
Thirds
In bed I was a puddle of ink
on white sheets,
stained right through to the memory foam.
Charted peaks
of blood results forwarded by text,
“High for age”,
whipping my ovaries to regain
momentum.
—–
GP.
“My anxiety”.
Risks or solutions?
Signed script.
—–
I’m patched, rotating site, waist level
twice a week,
noting the sweats and flushes and sleep
in an app,
reporting my blood pressure and weight
by email.
And the return of puddles of blood
on white sheets.
By Ali Finks 22 April 2024
I read it through a couple of times, also counting on fingers, writing in the margin. It’s in lines of nines and threes, except for the middle section, which rocks between twos and fives. Ali explains that represents the highs, lows, edginess, tetchiness, irritability, migraines or washes of relief that I reported with my cycle, the OCP, mini pill, during my pregnancies and, more recently, the perimenopause and then the real thing. He asks what the “highs” were like. Not highs. Where did he get that idea from?
I can see what he’s trying to do with his poem, but it captures none of the emotions, the existential angst, the toe in the water before plunging into waves of overwhelming uncertainty at each stage. He’s captured the physical parts of it – the visible changes, or the measurable bits. I’m surprised that he didn’t mention the spots and weight gain. “Do you think I could do that within the wordcount?” he replies. I don’t deign to answer. He screws it up and sits in a sulk.
If Ali is stuck into thirds, I like the idea of halves. Before and after. If Ali’s thirds are, say blocks of 27 years, which would fit with my age when we married (27), and my age now (54), that predicts the respectable innings of 81. Midpoint would be 40 and a half. Where was I then? 2010. The aftermath of the financial crash, the start of the Tory years, or the coalition government at least. That would seem like a fitting midpoint. Downhill all the way from that point onwards.
So, we’re still trying to reconcile our thirds and halves. Like a hemiola in music. I remember my chosen role in life – as sometime GANTOB, for the next few weeks or months at least: my hobby/ obsession/ special interest. I try to think about examples of the hemiola in The KLF’s music. Google does not find any examples and John Higgs’ book does not mention any either. Ali is convinced that What Time Is Love is in thirds. He sings it out, the “dum dum dee dum dum dee dum dum dee dum dum” and “oo wee”, tapping out threes with his hand, struggling to sing simultaneously the “oo wee”, to split bars into two.
I play the Pure Trance version on YouTube. He’s remembered it incorrectly. I count it out in 4/4, though it feels as if it is straining to jump out of those constraints. “Dum dum, dee dum, dee dum dum, dee dum dum”. Ten dum/dees to Ali’s eleven. The different versions are all subtly different, with the contrast most pronounced with 1997’s ***k the Millennium.
I can’t find sheet music to prove my point. So I ask the GANTOB hive (question 16 of the 23 Questions). While waiting for an answer I decide to check out Andrew Lloyd Webber’s score from Jesus Christ Superstar (1971), remembering the idea that The KLF subconsciously stole the riff from “Trial Before Pilate (Including the 39 Lashes)” (perhaps via Anne Clark’s “Our Darkness” (1984)). We pop Clark’s track on Spotify, eyes meeting over the high synth “oo” from 3:30. Like a prototype Mu. I scroll through the Lloyd Webber score and find the following for the 39 Lashes section:
There is no suggestion of triplets, and it’s definitely 4/4. It’s all about the syncopations. I would have struggled to write it out myself of course. I give up trying to fit the dum dees to the written notation, but that does not mean that I’m wrong. Ali accepts my point grudgingly after the trumpets come in at around 3:40, sounding like Acid Brass.
“I’m still going to split life into threes though”, he mumbles and heads off to do the dishes. I wonder if I should go and say a few words of encouragement; but you can’t just magic up threes and twos from a misremembered 1980s earworm, force them together, and claim another instance of the number 23.
What a way to spend an evening, arguing about the minutiae of menopause, midlife crises and The KLF.
I turn to something more productive, pulling the BCG box from the other side of the table. I get to work on Curt Finks’ journal. There are a lot of threes in life. We had Peter Higgs’ The God Particle (TGP) in part 2 of these Muons pamphlets. Turning over the next page in the journal I try to work out his scribblings on cyclic AMP, wondering if they might become part 4? I am struggling to identify what part of Curt Finks’ life was not midlife crisis.
To be continued…
Pamphlet 33 of the 52 Pamphlets
Answer to Question 16 of the 23 Questions
GANTOB blog 