Big Beacon, page 25
And then I said the words: ‘I’m hopping mad and I want something in the middle.’
The stars twinkle in the sky like tiny diamonds, even though up close they’d be really big. I’m outside the BBC, and the show has ended.
I had at least signed off the show with a bit of oomph. Perhaps I was a touch overzealous. The culmination of the show saw me summon a cameraman (Terry, good guy, unless you’re a woman) to join me on the street to gauge whether the central London public were getting behind the idea. I can’t remember how many viewers shouted the slogan from their windows. Some say it was two, I seem to recall it was about forty. But I admit, I had encouraged the general public to bellow ‘I want something in the middle’ from their windows, and apparently that played badly among Mumsnetters because it aired at a time when young mothers were trying to get children to sleep. Fine, I apologise, move on.
But from the reaction of the local residents, I really do think I have tapped into something special. I have captured something. The powers that be cannot ignore that. They cannot, and I’m confident they will not. Sure enough, I get a text from my assistant: ‘They want to see you now.’
Bring. It. On.
Cut to me striding down the corridor, a man with almost rhinocerine confidence: ‘I’m gonna need breath mints, a big banana and some coffee.’
If these words sound familiar, good. They appeared at the beginning of the book as well. Because this is the point where the strand about my TV career connects with the chronologically later strand of the whole lighthouse business.
You’ll notice that the italics previously used to delineate the older strand of the story from the new gradually begin to disappear in the course of this paragraph. Has that been done before? I’m certain that is hasn’t. And before we know it, yep, the italics have gone and we are out of flashback and into the more recent stuff, which is also flashback, but more recent than the material that had been, but is no longer, in italics.
I hoik up my shirt, extend my arms like Christ on the crucicross, so that my assistant can apply roll-on deodorant. And then I enter the meeting, ready for the new chapter of my life. I’m crying my eyes out as I write this. This is incredible.
* * *
118 Covid fans may have noticed the topic has not been mentioned in this book. I have chosen instead to monetise my views about the illness by turning them into a children’s book. Due to be published when I can find a publisher, the book will be called either ‘Viral Boy’, ‘Kid Covid’ or ‘Poorly Ben’.
119 As ever, though, Jez has come up smelling of roses. Yes, on the one hand he ruffled a few Guardian readers’ feathers when he said he was dreaming of the day when Meghan Markle is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while crowds chant, ‘Shame!’ and throw lumps of excrement at her, but on the other his series about a farm has been a huge success and is now appointment-to-view television for white, right-of-centre, middle-aged men everywhere.
120 And as a keen equestrian it’s a measurement she knows all too well.
121 Christ Jesus, God Almighty, the Holy Ghost, if any of you are reading this (?), I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news? Christianity is still really popular, despite a few bumps. The bad news? Money-lenders are doing even better. And that’s gotta hurt.
THE FRIENDS OF ALAN PARTRIDGE
April 2023
I’m discharged from hospital by the doctor, who talks as if he’s doing me a favour, although he concedes that I was free to leave at any time, so in a sense we’re jointly discharging me. Still, I’m in good fettle and for that I have to thank the healthcare practitioners.
So, I do. Gone are the days when you can give a nurse a peck on the cheek or a squeeze round the middle, so I gather them at the booking-in desk, ask for a bit of hush then quite simply ‘clap for carers’. The room falls silent save for the meaty sound of my palms colliding. Then, after the allotted two minutes, the nurses smile and make their way back to work. I feel good, they feel good.
I’ve been advised not to drive, so my assistant settles me into the passenger seat, takes residence on the driver’s side, moves the seat right the way forward then pulls away. I could point out that as a result she now has to rotate her head nearly forty degrees just to see the rear-view mirror, but that’s for another time.
Having experienced her driving before, I have learned a number of techniques that allow me to enter what I call a ‘mind spa’, a place deep within me where I can simply relax and let all my worries – e.g. why is she indicating a mile before the turn off? – just slip away. These techniques essentially take the form of distractions. I might try to recall the names of the Bourne films in order (harder than you think!) or I’ll play a game of ‘What is the worst house on this street’. And before long, I’ve whiled away huge chunks of journey time.
Which is how, before I know it, we’ve arrived back in Kent. Not to continue the build – no, that dream is over, an old ticker like mine clearly isn’t up to the ravages of seaside renovation – but to collect my things, hook my assistant’s caravan to the towbar and leave the lighthouse for good, ready to be sold.
Abbot’s Cliff looms over the horizon and we loom towards it, until we’ve pretty much loomed together. I sigh a sad, sad sigh. Once again, there’s a black cloud over the sea, and once again it reminds me of my former dog (now dead dog) lying down, having died.
I think of Seldom, of how he’d appeared to me from beyond the grave all those months ago, his way of saying this is what he wanted for me. ‘Well, old friend,’ I say in my head. ‘I said I’d do it for you, but it seems I’ve let you down.’ And for a second, I’m relieved he’s dead because, my God, he did not like it if you didn’t do what you said you would.
Just as I’m thinking, Thank God that animal is dead, I hear a sound. It’s the wisps of a shanty, almost certainly a sea one, on the breeze. I look to my assistant, confused. There’s a smile playing on her lips, or it’s indigestion, one of the two. She stops the car. ‘Let’s walk the rest,’ she says.
We get out and now I can hear the shanty more clearly. The singers are pretty good. A little loud on the bass, maybe, and the female altos are a touch pitchy, but pretty good.
I come over the hill/mound and see the lighthouse. Its walls are freshly whitewashed, the door resplendent in shiny pillar-box red. The windows gleam and the brass door furniture also gleams.
Whaaaat? It’s finished. My lighthouse is finished. The Abbot’s Cliff Lighthouse in association with Alan Partridge is finished.
My assistant gestures towards a small gathering of people, with a sweep of the arm she’s slightly over-practised in her head. There are the local shanty group, singing that Wellerman song. The builders smile and chat. A few selected locals enjoy cider from a small stand which technically doesn’t have a licence, but I don’t say anything.
She tells me they’ve come together in the last week to finish my work for me. And if you stop to consider it, that is incredibly moving. These are the very people, remember, who had taken against me earlier in the book. And now, here, right near the end of the book, those same people have done a full one-eighty and have come together to work towards a common goal with the man they had previously antagonised – completing a truly unexpected reversal of sentiment (see fig. 1), which is all the more impactful because it’s unexpected (see fig. 2).
And now they’re all here in the same scene. It really is incredibly moving. But then I suddenly chill (the going-cold version rather than the relaxing one). I’ve remembered something.
‘Oh, no!’ I either exclaimed or declaimed, depending on which is the right word.
The thing that has splooped into my head? The legal writs I had instructed my assistant to hand-deliver to the builders the previous week for breach of contract.
‘Don’t worry,’ she says, reading my mind. ‘I didn’t deliver them.’
A wave of relief washes over me. I want to say, ‘That’s why I pay you the big bucks,’ but for obvious reasons I am unable to do so.122
‘We did it for you, Alan,’ they all say in perfect unison, certainly in my recollection, as the shanty soars towards its key change, again in my recollection.
‘Thanks,’ I shout, and I walk inside my house. I close the door behind me and my assistant soon follows.
‘Don’t you want to go and mingle with—?’
‘Get a press release out,’ I splutter. ‘I want you to contact publishers, TV channels, whatever. Quickly, please.’
‘Now, then. It doesn’t do to gloat.’
‘Who’s gloating?’ I say. ‘I happen to think the preservation of our architectural heritage is something to be celebrated, and who knows? Maybe getting the word out will inspire another man – or even a woman – to take on a similar project, that’s all.’
My assistant does make me laugh sometimes. She can hold a grudge against someone in her church for decades, just because they baked biscuits for the vicar on his birthday and didn’t tell the other ladies in advance, and she seems to think we all think the same way. No, if anything, I felt a twinge a sadness for James Martin and the BBC’s flagship magazine show This Time. I have finished my build and James Martin hasn’t. I have beaten the BBC. I have won. They have lost. And that has to hurt.
I turn back to her: ‘Oh, and call a structural engineer.’
‘Why?’
‘They did all this in a week? I guarantee it doesn’t meet building regs. Ask Nick Knowles. Apparently, on DIY SOS a wall fell on a grandma, and they had to shelve the whole episode … and what is that?’
In front of me is a painting on the wall. It depicts a stricken fishing boat being scooped out of the water by a pair of giant hands, as a beam of sunlight shines down through stormy clouds. Above the ship are the words, ‘Behold, God is my salvation’.
‘One of yours?’ I ask my assistant.
‘Oh, yes,’ she says proudly. She’s become quite the watercolour enthusiast in her dotage, which is bloody commendable, although I’ve sought assurances that it doesn’t impinge on her work, and reserve the right – as her employer – to do spot checks by turning up at her address in the middle of the day to ensure she’s not in her smock.
‘Well! Lovely hands. They are possibly your best ever knuckles. And is this eczema or a smudge?’
‘Smudge,’ she replies.
‘You should auction that for charity.’
‘Don’t be silly. It’s yours to keep.’
‘Are you mad? You have to auction that!’
‘I did it for you to keep.’
‘Trust me, that painting belongs at auction.’
‘No, no, keep it.’
‘Auction, I think.’
‘I think keep it.’
‘Auction.’
‘Keep.’
‘Auction!’
‘Kee—’
‘I’ll put it in the guest bedroom, alright?!’
A truce. I have avoided upsetting my assistant, which I hate to do. As I say, she’s a commendable worker. No, more than that – she’s a commendable woman. Oh, and ‘she’ has a name. Her name is Lynn. Lynn Benfield. And I am fond of her.123
‘I do think you should buy these people a drink, though.’
And generously, I did, going back outside and offering each attendee one free cider. If they didn’t drink cider, they could give theirs to someone else, and that person could have two, but there were to be no exchanges for a soft drink. I wasn’t getting into all that.
I drink my cider – it’s kind of like apple juice but a wine – and look at my house. Then I remember: There’s someone I’ve forgotten, someone I ought to be with.
Cut to me running. Running along the beach. I’m going at quite a lick, although the undulation of the sand makes me flail and stumble, diminishing the Chariots of Fire vibe I was hoping for. Still, I run, the sides of my hair flapping in the breeze like the clumps of fur on a horse’s legs. My lungs are bursting as I run – fetlock, that’s the word I was after – but I press on.
A woman on the beach up ahead turns. It’s Red. We’ve not spoken since she informed on me to the contractors. She smiles when she sees me. I’m getting closer, closer and then I …
… run right past her. She frowns and goes, ‘Hmph!’ Or I assume she frowns (she’s behind me at the time). She sees I’m running toward someone else. Or something else. A kindred spirit. Maybe the only person in these parts who truly understands me. It’s a seagull. A seagull by the name of Likeworm.
I throw my arms around the large seabird, embrace it as I would a long-lost pal, and fondly whisper, ‘Never shit in my mouth again.’ The gull doesn’t fully reciprocate my hug and I suffer lacerations on my cheek and ear from the frantic jabbing of its beak. I take it by the wing and walk it veeeeery slowly back to the lighthouse. To home.
The sun is going down now. I look at the lighthouse, at the cliffs, at the smattering of houses up above, at the locals I am proud to call my friends. It’s a new life, but it’s one I’m looking forward to, with both hands.
And, just as I had when I arrived at BBC Television Centre all those years ago, I find myself shaking my head wistfully for about ten to fifteen seconds.
When the last of the locals have got off my property, and I am about to usher Lynn to her caravan, I see something shiny in the corner of my eye.
It’s a plaque. A plaque bearing the words ‘HML Seldom (formerly known as Abbot’s Cliff Lighthouse). Opened by Her Royal Highness the Princess Royal Princess Anne, 13 April 2023.’
‘Lynn,’ I stutter. ‘Is this … real?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she replies, but with a noticeable smile.
‘Keep talking,’ I instruct.
‘Well, it wasn’t an official engagement. She was on her way to Portsmouth naval base, but she very much enjoyed it. So I had a plaque engraved in town.’
I look at her, waiting for a smirk to break out and give the game away, but she holds firm.
‘You would have taken photos,’ I say.
She hands over her phone and I spool through her photos, but she’s managed to flip to the front-facing camera again so the only photos from that day are ones of her own torso and neck. ‘That’s a shame,’ she says. ‘I suppose you’ll never really know now.’
‘Then I’m afraid I can’t believe you,’ I tell her.
‘Well, that’s up to you, isn’t it?’ she replies. ‘You could always just choose to believe. Like I choose to believe in God. Night, night.’
God bless Lynn. In her efforts to make me feel better she’s forgotten about the existence of social media. It would take me mere seconds to check if Her Royal Highness the Princess Royal Princess Anne had opened my lighthouse, the home in which I will spend the rest of my life.
And yet … I choose to do no such thing. Because my assistant is right. It is up to me. And I’m choosing to believe.
* * *
122 By the way, just to double back, ‘splooped’ is one of my own words. I sometimes make them up if I feel existing vocab doesn’t quite offer the sense I’m looking for.
123 By which I mean, professionally fond.
EPIDOGUE
It’s May 2023 and I’m back in Norwich – yeah, decided not to do the living-in-a-lighthouse thing in the end – and I’m also back to being clean-shaven. I’m glad I let the beard grow for a while: in arable crop rotation, a field gets to remain fallow one year in every three. This helps to improve the fertility of the soil. And the same is true of my face. With my facial hair left unharvested and wild for so long, the follicles underwent a reset and now, well-rested and with their vim replenished, they are able to produce high-quality hair that grows more quickly and evenly than ever before. It means that if I’m going to be attending a music festival in the Cotswolds or speaking to a mechanic in a few days’ time, I can allow the stubble to do its thang, knowing it will emerge swiftly and neatly rather than in fat clumps like it did before.
Why did I leave the lighthouse?
I made some good, good friends there, but it was impossible to ignore the potential rental yield for a historic coastal building. A simple benchmarking exercise, looking at similar properties in similar seaside locations, suggests I can expect a median nightly rate of £400, assuming you can get more like £500-550 in high season. An occupancy rate of even just 70 per cent (around 250 nights per calendar year multiplied by the £400) means you’re looking at annual revenue of around £100k.
They say owners should apply the ‘50 per cent rule’, where you set aside half of the rental income for property maintenance. Now, that’s obviously ridiculous, but if we spend a quarter of that (roughly £12k a year) on cleaning, pest control, mowing the grass, replacing damaged items, taking legal action against guests who have damaged items, and the upkeep of smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, etc. etc., that’s still almost £90k of clear revenue.
With half of the purchase and renovation bill kindly supplied by crowdfunders, my mortgage repayments amount to just £18k a year. Subtract that from the £90k and, oh look, I’m bringing home £72,000 per annum. Not bad. Not bad at all.
Does that detract from the selflessness of my renovation work? Not really. It’s not as if I’ve sawn the lighthouse from its foundations, winched it onto a low-loader and hauled it back to Norwich with me – that would have been too costly and the house would have suffered chronic structural damage in transit. No, I wanted to restore this lighthouse for the people of Kent, and in Kent it remains, there for the whole community to enjoy, albeit from the outside – although they’re free to rent it on Airbnb if they’re that fussed about getting inside.
I also plan to open the house to the public for three days in every calendar year, with one of those set aside for school children and the disabled.124
