SHROUD SPOTTING

An elderly woman entered my father’s funeral home in a tizzy. She expressed her desire to be buried in her own clothes. Crack! The cemented surface of tradition lay crumbling. The long era of burial shrouds in our Southern way of death was over.

Before she lost her job, I scrambled down the stairs whenever the Shroud Lady came to visit. Most women in town spent a couple of hours in the beauty parlour and emerged with twelve-foot high lacquered statues on their heads. The Shroud Lady wound her dark hair in a simple bun, ran a tube of red lipstick across her lips and piled her arms high with green cardboard dress boxes. She was a farmer, a mother and a shroud maker and had no time for parlour parley.

She opened the boxes carefully; even so the chiffon dresses billowed out. Hand covered buttons, lace trimmed high necks, pleated fronts, all details that made her the best shroud maker around. Not that there were many women sewing away, fighting to make their mark on the funeral business.

With a wink at the Shroud Lady, my father let me choose which ones he would buy. Sherbet colors stared back at me: pale pink, powder blue, lavender, mint green. Soothing colors heightened the strong impression that the corpse slept peacefully. I wanted one. I thought it would make a nice nightgown. I imagined wearing it, the chiffon floating behind me as I wandered the funeral home barefoot.

Then the Shroud Lady removed one from the box, gave it a little shake and turned its back toward me.

Tricked! The shroud had no back. Two strands of fabric tied at the back of the neck, the rest of the gown, also shorter than I had imagined, was open to the air.

Technically, a shroud is a winding cloth, or sheet made of natural fibre. But we Southerners do tend to exaggerate and “shroud” rippled off the tongue easier than burial dress. There was nothing natural about the nylon chiffon our seamstress bought by the bolt. But really, a shroud can be born of any type of fabric. And I learned that a shroud often materializes quite accidentally...

Recently I met a young textile artist at the New Designer’s Show in Islington. In constructing her project she followed detectives to crime scenes in which the victim had been left to the elements for many months. She studied victims’ clothes - clothes that had sadly become their shrouds.

Then she began to bury her own clothes, or rather, stole t-shirts from her father and placed them in the compost. She was astonished at how quickly the fabric deteriorated. She told me this rather cheerily.

Her business card is made of fabric with a hint of stain. Cheeky.

Thanks to Keely Butler for the use of her photos.

Séances And Other Pastimes

The first time I conducted a séance I was about twelve years old. This foray into the spirit world was purely for entertainment’s sake. Fright was the goal, and a séance was a way to fuel the fun of being terrified, as if growing up in a small town in the South wasn’t scary enough.

The perfect place for a séance would have been my father’s funeral home, in which he worked and we lived. But that was too real for most of our troops; anywhere but there was the cry. No one really wanted a spirit to actually appear. We put the setting together like an impromptu picnic. Anyone have a candle? What about a tablecloth? And we weren’t fancy about it, no cloaks, turbans or costume jewelry.

We clasped hands and I asked the spirit world to join us, as you do. Sometimes nature cooperated by sending a breeze through an open window. On nights when it was so warm and humid that our hands joined in a moisture bath, heat lightening flashed, the electricity crashed, the dark became darker and we were left dumbfounded by the silence. Then we screamed. Tantalizing as they were, these natural occurrences weren’t reliable. Time to employ – The Foot.

“Can you tell us Oh Great Spirit, does Jimmy love Deborah? One tap for yes and two taps for no, please.”

I became very good at tapping underneath the table with my foot. I stretched my leg and made it seem as if the tapping originated from the far end of the table.

And then we got one of these!

But then we saw this

and never used it again.

We added levitation to the repertoire. We called it “lifting”. It kind of works.

The person to be lifted lay supine on the floor. We sat on the floor around her, one person at her feet, another at her head and two people on each side. We made a lever with our hands by holding our forefinger and thumbs together - this looked like a gun - and placed them under her body. The leader hypnotized the subject into feeling very relaxed and heavy, soothing her, instructing her to allow her body’s weight to fall into our fingers. This went on for a while until our fingers, hands and arms began to ache. Finally, the leader said, “Lift!” With that the body rises in the air. Yes, it’s supported, but it really did feel like the body lifted much higher than it should and it felt outrageously light, as if floating. Then we gasped and dropped her from the shock of it. Worked every time.

Moving on to derelict house hunting, otherwise known as haunted houses, it was a pleasure to risk falling timbers, floors on the verge of collapse and an untold number of vermin to rummage through the remains of a lonely house.

One night we hit the wrong house. It was occupied! A woman who looked the living embodiment of a witch stuck her head out the second story window and angrily yelled down to us as we tried to enter her house. I clearly saw her long black scraggly hair, her one front tooth protruded terribly and her eyes were ever so slightly crossed. We ran away as our hearts leaped up our throats.

Ghost House

by Robert Frost

I dwell in a lonely house I know

That vanished many a summer ago,

And left no trace but the cellar walls,

And a cellar in which the daylight falls,

And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.

O'er ruined fences the grape-vines shield

The woods come back to the mowing field;

The orchard tree has grown one copse

Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;

The footpath down to the well is healed.

I dwell with a strangely aching heart

In that vanished abode there far apart

On that disused and forgotten road

That has no dust-bath now for the toad.

Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;

The whippoorwill is coming to shout

And hush and cluck and flutter about:

I hear him begin far enough away

Full many a time to say his say

Before he arrives to say it out.

It is under the small, dim, summer star.

I know not who these mute folk are

Who share the unlit place with me--

Those stones out under the low-limbed tree

Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.

They are tireless folk, but slow and sad,

Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,--

With none among them that ever sings,

And yet, in view of how many things,

As sweet companions as might be had.

HEARSES and CURSES

My father was vain about his hearses. When he first opened his own funeral home he couldn’t afford a new hearse, so he bought a used Henney Packard combination hearse and ambulance.

Not this one, but similar

In those days the funeral home also operated as the emergency service, such as it was. If you needed to go to the hospital you phoned your funeral home of choice, one of three in our little town. While our living citizens finally moved past segregation, our dead did not; an African American undertaker owned one of the three, which left my father with a single rival. Curses flowed between the two - the upstart new boy in town, and the ancient undertaker who had an easy time of it until our arrival.

My father’s ambulance was equipped with a tank of oxygen and a first-aid kit and that was about it. Your swift ride to the hospital was free and a short one, probably down Main Street, around the town square and up the hill. Citizens soon stretched the meaning of emergency to be defined as a ride to the doctor’s office, the dentist, the pharmacy, even a trip to the ophthalmologist was not too much trouble. However, if, for ten or twenty years, my father taxied you to your appointments, loaned you a truckload of chairs for your fish fry and your daughter’s wedding, and you then didn’t return the favor by ensuring that your family knew that your single, final desire was to have him undertake the details of your demise, then oh good god. In his smooth Southern drawl, “That sonofabitch.” For weeks.

The day he pulled up in his shiny new Cadillac hearse, our town’s first white funereal vehicle, we admired it for his sake. I saw it from my bedroom window, which was right above the embalming room - and whose isn't - and ran out to meet the great white. My father hopped out and stood with his chest puffed out a bit, his hands jingled change in his pocket and he smiled with a general air of satisfaction. Nods of approval all around and then I requested a test ride around town. Off we went. I secretly nicknamed her Grace. She was a high performer.

The first time I saw a horse drawn hearse in a procession was the day Tony Blair resigned. Oh the exquisite irony. As I walked along the busy Finchley Road, traffic crept behind the carriage and by habit I stood still until it passed. Once an undertaker’s daughter…

I thought of my father and how much he would have appreciated the send off. Four beautiful black Friesians pulled the wooden carriage, the coffin visible through the etched glass. My pulse quickened. I’ve seen every type of coffin and casket imaginable, still, the sight threatens. One of the horses majestically turned its plumed head. Carriage lanterns flanked the coachman and flower rails full of streaming flowers rolled past. I don’t know if he was ever aware of the history of coffin transportation, but if so, I know he never witnessed anything like this.

“Well I’ll be goddamned.” That’s what he would have said.

Japanese

Cuban

On Skis

Bourbon, Bar-B-Que and the Bell Witch

John Bell, Jr.

OH GAWD it’s been hot in London. I was in our local grocery store gabbing with a neighbor, blocking the produce aisle, as you do, and we talked and talked and oh, so much fodder upon which to catch up, chat and gossip. But not really, we were just trying to prolong the luxury of air conditioning.

I find it useless to explain the lack of air conditioning in London to those across the pond, or at least those who have never experienced a European summer. “You don’t have central air? Why, just stick an air conditioner in your damn window!”

I moved on to the frozen food section, not that I needed any, and thought about witches, bourbon and barb-b-que, the ingredients of a Southern summer. Cooling off. Sustenance. Mischief.

On the border of Kentucky and Tennessee in Adams, a little enclave in Robertson County, therein lies the setting of the legendary Bell Witch.

Robertson County sits in the bottomland of the Red River.

This is tobacco country where Robertson County is the dark-fired tobacco capital of the world. In late summer the smell of fresh cut tobacco fills the thick, hot air as it hangs to dry in tobacco barns.

As teenagers, with a designated driver, and shamefully, sometimes not, we fuelled up on the only thing a decent Kentucky native would drink late on a Sunday night, the sweet and fiery liquid that is Kentucky bourbon.

I swear we'd find bourbon in our shampoo if they could think of an angle.

Chocolate Bourbon Balls

We went ghost hunting after midnight. Driving through the Bell farm back roads where no streetlights shone the way, our headlights beamed through coal black darkness. With flashlights, we studied the tombstones of the John Bell family, plantation owners and slaveholders, who were haunted by Kate, the witch.

We ran around screaming at the slightest provocation, like a screeching owl, or a tap on the shoulder. Our footsteps covered the same ground upon which General Andrew Jackson and his men had stopped for an overnight visit with John Bell.

The soldiers were terrified with the witch’s antics and begged to leave. It was noted that Jackson dropped to the ground laughing and said "By the eternal, boys, I never saw so much fun in all my life. This beats fighting the British."

1894

Bell House 1909

We stumbled upon the cave on the Bell farm. A bat flew out of the mouth of the cave and one of our crew wet her pants in sheer terror.

This fright night stuff makes one ravenous, onward then to raid a parent’s refrigerator, which reliably contained some sort of leftover bar-b-que. Bar-b-que in the South is the actual food, not the act of grilling. “Let’s go eat some bar-b-que.”

Kentucky barb-b-que restaurants don’t want you to forget where you are: Old South Bar-b-que, Good Ole Boys and Old Hickory, to name a few. And for the nostalgically romantic there’s Moonlite Bar-b-Que, Shady Rest and Good Old Days. My personal favorite sauce:

I think it was the display of the “real lump wood charcoal” and HP Barbecue Sauce at the hot end of Waitrose that woke me from this dream of summer Southern nights.

SPENT SOME TIME IN THE CLINK

It looked promising, nestled in a corner of one of my favorite London areas. I approached The Clink Museum from London Bridge way and passed through Borough Market and its big bad self, although less big and less bad now. After years of discussions and delays a railway bridge is being built above the renovated Victorian glass roof and when it is finished no one is quite sure what will have survived. The capital’s oldest market dates back to 1014.

I steered away from the food and drink with some difficulty and headed to Clink Street. On the cobblestones I ran into a young man dressed in Victorian costume, but not a very good one - shabby and inauthentic, poor fellow. His horror makeup was more clownish than Hammer and he appeared to be bored rigid. A second non-scary creature took my money, mumbled instructions to “listen to everything and read everything”. All righty then.

A groaning waxwork man hangs in a cage at the entrance to welcome visitors to the basement level. Don’t be concerned; it’s not at all gruesome.

The museum tries to recreate the conditions of the notorious prison. The exhibition features a handful of prison life tableaux, and dwells on the torture and grim conditions within. One theory goes that the name of the prison comes from the 'clinking' of the prisoners' chains, though a more likely explanation is that the word comes from the term for rivets or nails used to fasten the restraints.

The floors are scattered with sawdust, the piped-in stories heard somewhere near the wax statutes are less than evocative; the loop repeats too quickly and there’s a bit of bad acting. I read that this small museum is arranged into a series of cells, but frankly, I didn’t get it.

I was on my own and remained the only person in the museum for the entire visit. I expected to cringe a bit, maybe pick up an eerie vibe, but at no time did I feel a prison-like atmosphere, even in the company of a whipping post, torture chair, foot crusher, and other torture implements. Signs urge one to have a go with the ball and chain, or why not pop a scolds bridal on your head?

I picked up a chastity belt made of iron. Applause for any woman who walked Bankside in wilting heat or bitter cold with that thing under her skirts. It was curious to see a sign next to the beheading block that encouraged one to place their head upon it for a photo op.

The biggest challenge in the Clink is that it’s so very dark, made so by black painted walls and poor lighting. I struggled to read many of the display boards, which held huge paragraphs of text.

In this little black dungeon’s defense, it would be impossible to recreate the conditions of the Clink. If they had succeeded, there would be no visitors.

The history is as intense as you’ll ever find. The origin of the Clink can be traced back to Saxon times and was owned by a succession of powerful Bishops of Winchester who resided on the South Bank of the Thames. In 860 a Synod ordered that there must be a place to keep bad monks and friars. The Clink was attached to Winchester Palace, the home of the bishop, where at that time it would have been only one cell in a priests’ college.

From the 12^th century the Clink housed prostitutes and their customers. The Southwark area of London was home to the red-light district where brothels, usually whitewashed, were called "stews" because of their origins as steambath houses. The bishop licensed brothels and regulated their opening hours. Joining the ‘whoores’ were thieves, rogues, vagabonds, drunkards and fiddlers. Yes, fiddlers.

By the 13^th century, torture and horrendous mistreatment of prisoners began, thanks in part to the knights and soldiers returned from the First Crusade where they picked up a few nasty torture tips.

Outside the Clink, the prison whores, bared to the waist and with shaven heads, were whipped at the bloodstained whipping post. The Ducking Stool was used for punishment of scolds, ale-sellers and bread-sellers, who sold bad or underweight goods.

By the time Shakespeare moved into the area with The Globe around the corner, the entire cast of one of the other theatres was “thrust into the Clink for acting obscenely.”

Remember those Puritans who were imprisoned for their religious beliefs? Several of the men who were to become the Pilgrim Fathers spent years in the Clink before their voyage on the Mayflower.

So unless one walked through a display of fettered humans amongst stink and squalor, blood, death and illness, corrupt jail keepers and extortionists, there’s not much chance of hearing, smelling or seeing an authentic medieval prison. Understood.

The ruins of Winchester Palace stand oddly alone across the cobblestones from the Clink. All that is left is the west gable of the Great Hall and its gorgeous Rose Window.

You can’t miss the Clink or the Rose Window. They make up the middle of a triangle between Starbucks, Pret A Manger and Gourmet Burger Kitchen. Maybe we should be grateful there’s a museum there at all…

THE MAYFAIR FOX

In the 1930’s a woman living on the edge of Hampstead Heath was seen leaning out her bedroom window aiming a rifle at a fox, which she shot to death. The newspapers reported the incident citing astonishment that a fox could be found on the Heath. No one seemed to question the fact that the woman, who’d borrowed her father’s rifle, opened her window and began firing indiscriminately. This was near the time that wild parrots and parakeets began to appear on the Heath as well; let’s just hope that her target practice didn’t extend to small, flying animals.

These days the Heath is teeming with foxes and parrots. I’ve seen both. It is almost disarming to see the bright colored birds flying through the trees of the Heath. What in the world are they doing there?

I was not at all surprised to hear of the Hackney fox that attacked the twin girls. Foxes have built their numbers in London since the 1940’s as London spread into the countryside and encroached upon their habitat. When we lived at Hartley’s Jam Factory in Southeast London we had two resident foxes for a time. The mother was in good health, but her kit was not. The authorities were called and the community was told to leave them alone until the mangy kit was nursed back to health. We were told not to feed them, so they foraged left over pizza and take-out food, which is normal for city foxes, especially those that can’t find the riches of a back garden.

One day they left the Jam Factory. We occasionally saw them roaming the surrounding streets and lying on grassy areas until they eventually disappeared.

I’ve seen others. They’re everywhere. They’re not small foxes like the kind my grandmother used to wear around her neck, but rather, tall and dog or wolf-like. When I see them in daylight they slink away, but at night they become bold.

On a late evening walk in a quiet street in Mayfair, I noticed what I thought was a dog with its nose to a shop window. We were both window-shopping and I looked around for its owner. But there was no leash, no owner and when it turned to look at me I saw it was a fox. I wanted to cross its path but its eyes were translucent in the dark and reflective against the shop window’s glow. It glared at me in a Stephen King way. The fox won - I crossed the street.

So don’t tempt foxes. They’re hungry. Don’t leave your ground floor doors and windows open as an invitation to starving urban foxes. Although attacks are rare, their presence is not.

I cannot tell whether this fox is a visitor to Downing Street, or lives there already.

WRAPPED

Whew! What a whirlwind THAT was. We arrived in Norfolk the day before the TV pilot shoot in a downpour carting an entire wardrobe of clothes, umbrellas, a laptop and half of Selfridge’s cupcake collection. Never did travel lightly.

The crew had already camped out in one of Gissing Hall’s public rooms. Cameras, lights, sound equipment and a zillion battery packs strewn across the space suddenly made it all seem very real and I almost lost my lunch in the midst of it.

I can’t say much about the process or the candidates, there being a surprise reveal element and all, but for two days we all worked like beavers in tree heaven. The sun and heat dealt their own surprise reveal and soon outdoor shots became more than a possibility. I can say that I’ve ruined a pair of Barneys NY heels in a walking shot across the moist carpet of grass into which I sank with each step forward. And when I tried to manoeuvre the pebbled driveway, well, not my finest moment.

By the end of the second day we were tipsy with weariness. The last shot should have been quick and easy, but Malcolm, whose coordination can sometimes be challenged when he’s overly tired, just had a bit of a problem. If you haven’t seen it already, here’s an outtake from the shoot.

The result of this experience, twenty-seven hours of tape, is stacked up in the editing room where I imagine some kind of magic will be performed. Until then, it’s happily back to writing, reading, reading, writing.