Tragedy, A bloody tragedy
2007-05-04, 12:14 a.m.
A rock and roll tragedyMany years ago (at Easter, actually), world renowned blues guitarist and all round super duper house guest and amusing story sharer Mr Tom Dale and his lovely wife Tam, visited their good friends BF and Stepfie.
Mr Tom Dale, so imbued with Easter cheer (and some whisky, and some beer and some more whisky and some more beer) was he that he could not resist the charms of an Easter bonnet recently abandoned by one of the resident children of the household (Treac).
As you can see�.
Easter chicks carelessly glued on an old school boater gaily clustered on a fine piece of spring headgear, makes a most suitable adornment for a musician of Mr Dale�s calibre.
As the evening progressed, one or more of the chicks became dislodged.
The most robust of these specimens turned out to be a chick whose hideous physical deformities (and love of Jimmy Hendrix) led him to be christened Little Wing. A rock and roll chick in the finest tradition, I bring you his sorry fall from grace and ultimate inevitable tragic demise.
Little Wing travelled the land (well, he went to Chav Ville � twice!) accompanying Mr Tom Dale and acting as a kind of Svengali figure. From his vantage point, perched atop Mr Dale�s more usual headgear choice of splendid vintage bowler hat he was able to coach Mr Dale in singing techniques and guitaring techniques and generally being cool techniques which Mr Dale would most certainly never have achieved on his own as he lives in Cornwall where they don�t really do much which could really be called dynamic.
The constant pressure on Little Wing to steer Mr Tom Dale�s career along the right path (sometimes even playing harmonica for him � no mean feat with a plastic beak!), sadly took its toll, and by Sunday nightbefore long Little Wing had turned to drink
Whilst still fairly in control of his faculties (if a little sticky), a subsequent disastrous affair with Abi Titmuss (Im not sure who she is, but everyone seems to have had an affair with her so Im putting her in!) and critically vilified coffee table book (�A Load of Photos of a Chick With Nothing On� � The Times Literary Supplement called it �a bit of a fucking swizz if you ask me, there�s no big wobbly boobies in it. And not a single minge�) left Little Wing depressed. His drinking had escalated to such a point that he sometimes appeared to be, literally, swimming in Guinness. New �friends� took advantage of his good nature and he was soon heavily in debt. Most of his substantial income, gleaned from raiding the bowler hat when Tom had been out busking, was spent on the drugs these so called �friends� supplied. Often he was too drunk to hold the spliff himself and would pay his entourage to help him get wasted
In one of his last authorised photo sessions, onlookers described him as being �obsessed with Sylvia Plath�. Close personal friends Callum Best and Ewan Blair said �Where�s the fucking vodka?Wingy was in a funny mood that day. Whining on and on with that poetry stuff. All he kept saying was �not waving but drowning�. I think he was a bit out of it m�self as Ive never really rated Sylvia Plath, Im more of a Danny Abse fan. Or Pam Ayres, she�s good.�
Ironically �not waving but drowning� turned out not to be the idle ramblings of a drunken, stoned, polyester-plumaged pop potentate, as this picture would attest
Police autopsy reports: �Mr Wing was discovered on a table surrounded by a large pool of sticky white fluid. His houseboy, Filippe was not able to say what had come over him but we suspect fowl play.�
Readers of a delicate disposition may care to look away as we show this last shocking picture of Little Wing; bedraggled, befuddled and sprawled naked next to a packet of the sort of drug taking apparatus which can be used to make marijuana cigarettes. Shameful.
RIP Little Wing
April 2007-April 2007
Listening to blues ruins lives, kids.
Oh and here�s a picture of Treacle in the cloak I finally finished making for NITG�s girlfriend. I think you�ll agree she looks more than a tad like Yoda.
Dinner with the MD of our South Africa Office tomorrow night and then celebratory Engagement Dinner with my family on Friday. Eee, pass the stretch caftan!