Chapter Three. Part IV

Chapter Three. Part IV.

Sometimes we’d play a game. One of us would ask a question which the other would have to think up an answer to, but they’d have to answer it as though it was coming from the other side. It sounds simple enough, but you should try it - it’s next to impossible. Well, I’ll qualify that; it is of course possible, but, it’s very, very difficult to do it at speed. 

I guess, like anything if you practised enough you’d get good at it, but why you’d want to I don’t know? I just thought it would be an interesting exercise, firstly to see how this “board thing” could be simulated, and secondly–though I’m slightly ashamed to admit it–I still needed to eliminate Carol from the niggling conspiracy theory I couldn’t quite shrug off. 

But let’s just take a look at what you have to do; first you have to come up with a good answer to whatever the question was, then you have to start spelling out that answer. So you search for the first letter and push the glass towards it, then you have to locate the next letter, and so on. Your eyes look towards where the glass is heading, and then they have to search again. It’s a painfully slow process that might in fact be almost acceptable, or somewhat convincing was it not for the remarkable smoothness and speed that we experienced the rest of the time without even trying.

The result of this little charade was, I concluded, that even if it were Carol who was the instigator, she must then be a genius with ability well beyond my understanding. This in itself I felt would be justification for wonderment. 

Still we persevered, and continued putting ourselves to the test from time to time, thinking that we might get better at it, but if there was any improvement it was unnoticeable. To cap it all off, more than once, when our fingers returned back to the glass, it would take off at a whole new tempo and we’d be told how foolish we were. 

Let’s take a brief look at the remaining sessions we had leading up to the end of this month of February.  

On the 24th, once again we spoke with Brenda. Understandably, I was particularly interested in any contact with my sister, more so than anyone else. Every time Carol and I sat at the table with the board in-between the two of us, I would be wishing for those unmistakable characteristics that spelt out her presence. 

Before she passed away, Brenda had been very active in the world of politics as a Labour Councillor in the town of Chorley, Lancashire where she lived. She’d always held strong views about our welfare state and the rights of the common man. 

On this day I’d made a note of the topics I wanted to address during the session. At the top of the page I’ve jotted the words: “Astral travelling” and “National Health”. There had been much discussion around this time about the threat to Britain’s National Health service, and I wanted to know what Brenda’s views were. 

On one hand I imagined that if she was to express a view, her comments would be somewhat dispassionate - not because she wouldn’t care anymore, but because it would be more an issue belonging to the mortal condition - something the we, here, had to deal with ourselves. This is what I anticipated, but it looks like I was mistaken. 

When I posed the “Health Service” question, the reply was, “Oh, a bugbear of mine … do not let this great National Health service go … vote Liberal”, (Brenda had been staunchly Labour, so it was somewhat surprising to see those words). 

“My passion. Been following the news and have inside information”, she went on.

I asked about the present Liberal leader of that time, Paddy Ashdown, and the response was, “Fantastic, he feels for the common man”. 

I was told the brandy I was drinking smells wonderful. When I asked if it’s possible for her to drink brandy, she said, “Don’t need … just a memory, very fond one … enjoy the next sip for me, cheers to you both”.   

Brenda said goodbye, and we were then visited by Ian. This was his second visit. He told us:”Do you know that when I left that place and came here, I had a choice as to which time in my mortal life I would like to be in. I chose [19]76. We hung out”. He then said, “Not got long, others [are] here”. 

When I enquired as to what brought us to his attention, Ian’s words were, “Some bird told me Nicol’s around, had to check it out”.   

Once again, there’s absolutely no way to determine if any of this is genuine, but if Ian really was who he professed to be, then this was a friend of many years; a friendship that began in 1967 when I was sixteen years old.                    

             

At that time he was serving an engineering apprenticeship (at his father’s behest) in the British Aircraft Corporation factory (BAC) at Preston, but what he really aspired to do though, was much less about being an engineer, and much more about becoming an artist. 

No sooner had his five years training been completed that he was enrolled as a student in art college on a foundation course. A few years–and art schools–later, he was finally accepted into the Royal College of Art in London to study sculpture. 

I also lived in London at that time, and just by sheer coincidence, there was a spell in which we lived virtually across the road from each other in the suburb of Lewisham. These were the 1970s, and I recall much of when we were in each others company as extremely fond times; we did drink a lot of beer together. 

It was during one of these pub outings that Ian told me about the tremors, or shakes, he was having in his arm. I told him it was probably nothing, just a “nerve thing”. Turned out I was both right and wrong; it was indeed a “nerve thing”, but it wasn’t nothing, in fact it was a brain tumour.

I moved to the USA in 1979, by which time he’d had his surgery, chemotherapy, etc., and I hadn’t been away long before receiving the letter from my mother telling me of Ian’s death. He was just 30 years old.

TBC ...