Memory swirls, mingling with dreams. The first song I ever heard, or remember hearing, is �A Windmill in Old Amsterdam� by Ronnie Hilton. I was 5, and the year was 1965. The song�s chorus may be familiar to connoisseurs of the ludicrous:

I saw a mouse!
Where?
There on the stair!
Where on the stair?
Right there!
A little mouse with clogs on
Well I declare!
Going clip-clippety-clop on the stair
Oh yeah

A little mouse with clogs on

In that room, my parents� room, the one with the wardrobe, I had some years previous to hearing �A Windmill in Old Amsterdam�, seen a real golliwog � �real� as in something forged amongst the intricacies of consciousness. It happened one night � doesn�t it always? � when I awoke in my cot to find your actual pre-PC Robinson�s jam figure � black, frizzy hair, the lot � staring at me through the cot bars until my screams sent it scuttling off to whatever elemental, ludicrous place it had come from. Maybe even across the landing to that first floor front room, where stood the radio.

I can�t imagine why the radio was even there. My parents were not at all fond of background noise, and there was always too much work to do in those days � scrubbing, polishing, wiping, cooking, worrying, crying � to stop for simple everyday radio pleasures. But there it was, the valve box, trilling out in its message, in the same room where only a year or so earlier I�d seen two or three large faces of old people in the curtains. Their grey-haired heads looked down quizzically on me, a little boy, confused rather than scared by that which shouldn�t be, or should it? And then, startled by a thought process of disturbed logic, I ran to escape and hide by a big cupboard near the landing.

Where?
There on the stair!

My mother, who had been busy scrubbing, polishing, wiping, cooking, worrying, sensed that something was wrong. In later years, when I no longer lived at home, she would sense other disturbances from afar, knowing when I had been arrested, for instance. On the day of the old people in the curtains, she came running up the stairs to save me from the intangible. These things, memories or dreams, you carry with you.

I never did tell my mother about the old people, but she would have known them. They came from the same place as the stuff of the old Polish folk tales she told me in my childhood. Tales which informed me that out there

Where?

strangeness and bad magic are afoot. In her eastern Polish village, before being ethnically cleansed to Siberia by the Russians at the start of World War II, my mother had herself seen the inexplicable lights lit by the village�s agitated dead, encountered the devil�s horses, and had been warned by her guardian angel about the trials and, yes, tribulations to come.

These same stories were also told to me by my babcia, or my grandmother, who every morning, would climb the stairs.

Going clip-clippety-clop

One stair at a time, slowly, with difficulty, a cup of tea for me in her shaking hand. I, her little prince, waited impatiently in bed, in the first floor front room where I had heard �A Windmill in Old Amsterdam�.

clip-clippety-clop on the stair

My babcia�s Parkinson�s made the cup rattle against the saucer, spilling some of the tea. I would listen to this Parkinson�s cup and saucer chatter, and wonder why she couldn�t be a little more careful. And couldn�t she be a little quicker about it? Unkind thoughts in the room, the same room where not only had I seen the old people in the curtains, but where I also gone into a dangerous coma. My parents and a doctor gathered around my bedside, waiting for the ambulance when, apparently, I sat up, pointed to a corner of the room

Right there!

and asked: �Who is the boy in white, the one getting into the coffin?�

After delivering the tea, much of it slopping in the saucer by now � tsk � my babcia would remind me, warn me again: never get up from bed backwards. Never. Ever. Otherwise bad things would surely happen. I heed that warning to this day. This was just one of the superstitions of a peasant woman who could easily transform the mundane into mystery, myth, conspiracy, and prophesy; spinning dark truths and, of course, untruths. These were her ludicrous fairytale songs to sing.

I saw a mouse!

Later, in 1978, I wondered if my grandmother, after her death that year, had joined the other old people in the curtains. Those guys, I never saw again. Nor did I hear �A Windmill in Old Amsterdam� by Ronnie Hilton ever again after I first heard it that first time.

Well I declare!

Richard Cabut has written for a bunch of papers, etc: The Guardian, Time Out, the BBC, the Daily Telegraph, the NME. Pen names include Richard North. He played in the punk rock group Brigandage, and published the fanzine Kick. He writes fiction, cycles around London and takes pictures. To read Richard's article on Richard Hell's reading the the 2005 Meltdown Festival on the 3am website, click here. To read Richard�s story, �Get it On� on the showcase section of this site, click herehere.

© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.