AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

For earlier Chapters and an explanation of this dreadful story, see blog: The Cardiff Grandma. WARNING: This novel contains fake Welsh.
In the previous episode, everything seemed to be going well then, but was really going “Well, then…??”. Now, along with Erm the erstwhile Cornishman, we must ask: Beer? -- and encounter Short Mat Bowls.

The Cardiff Grandma Chapter 49

The search continued. The disheveled and unkempt academic may be losing his faculties but he remained single minded.

‘Beer?’ he’d enquire with increasing desperation and growing frequency as he ambled along. Most people he had encountered so far either shrugged and scurried away from the tall figure or decided that maybe what he really needed was alcohol. The latter type of people would then seek to offer alcohol in various forms – typically a quantity of warm liquid in varying shades of brown in a volume approximately equal to 568 milliliters.

Despite having no firm idea of how to reach his desired destination and despite being locked into a deep state of pre-post traumatic shock, he had somehow managed to get himself just a few miles from the very thing he had been seeking all this time.

Downtown Ottery St Mary on the second Carnival Tuesday night of the season was no place for a stranger. It was hardly a place for a local. In the past it had been the scene of numerous unsavoury incidents, several unsightly riots and a few good old fashioned bar-room brawls as tourists and visitors had innocently wandered away from the relative safety of the main highways and found themselves in the middle of territory ‘belonging’ to one, or other, of the local street gangs. The gangs had originated back in the days when shit kicking and cattle rustling had been the main sources of income and enjoyment for the locals. For thirteen years straight an Ottery man had been the All Devon Champion Shit Kicker, a feat, and feet, that was, and were, proudly honoured and talked about to this day. A fine art of shit kicking was something not fully appreciated outside of a few isolated rural communities in the on the southern side of the western English counties. The sport was said to have a long and malodorous history and was even rumoured to be the origins of the now more popular activity of Turd Tossing. Equal, if not the same, level of skill was often displayed when it came to rustling cattle. The domestic cow, being not an insignificant beast, is not easily rustled. The great physical strength and amazingly low level of general intelligence that it takes to crumple up such an animal as if it were made of paper was often underestimated.

These days few outsiders even bothered to venture to Ottery St Mary, even outside of Carnival seasons, and those that did would only be seen in daylight, often in the company of a local ‘guide’. Having the assistance of someone with local knowledge was an distinct advantage when it came to not being physically harmed, killed or worse. Being with someone with the ability to resort to violent bodily violence against any aggressor was an additional benefit. The local girl guides were an excellent choice for this line of work, it was a line they particularly enjoyed. Fortunately, as strange as he appeared, Professor Erm was no stranger to the area. This was something that the locals seemed to instinctively know and respect for they all kept a generous distance from the figure as he staggered along. It was either that or he was giving off such a strong odour that they just couldn’t stand the attack on their olfactory senses.

Through his misted perception the dazed Professor Erm seemed to instinctively know that he was nearing the end of his journey. It was the same natural instinct that enabled migrating birds to navigate great distances, that allowed the Salmon to return to the place of their birth to spawn after years at sea, that meant that small coins, pens and combs would rather be at the back of sofas the world over. And metaphorically speaking, the village in which the missing professor had arrived after his long odyssey from Cymru, taking in Ottery Saint Mary as a penultimate stop, was the back of the sofa. Indeed a simile would not be inapt, because like the back of a sofa, this village also secreted small coins, pens and combs…

The small South Devon coastal village with the distinctive name was often over looked and undervalued by passing tourists and nearby residents alike. This suited the local inhabitants, suited them down to the ground. They didn’t crave a return to the transient notoriety that their village’s name had brought in earlier times. It was a quiet rural community in a quiet rural area. Very few people of note had emanated from the village. Very few people at all had emanated from there in fact. It was the kind of place where people are born, live and die, invariably in that order, without ever spending more than a few weeks at a time being anywhere else. And even then they’d rarely travel more than fifty miles. One person had come from there, one person had left and made something of a career for themselves whilst living away. Just one person.

That most people who ever did leave never returned wasn’t something that any one who remained ever seemed to bother about. There were plenty of things to occupy the days of the locals without there being a need to concern themselves, or each other, with what may, or may not be going on in the rest of the world, let alone Ottery St Mary. For one thing there was Short Mat Bowls!

Short Mat Bowls was a man to be reckoned with. Sailors used him to calculate their position at sea, deeming him more reliable than the north star, and that’s how he made his living. But when he was ashore he indulged in his hobby, detecting jazz. He sometimes accepted private clients but mostly he worked for himself, dragging himself out of bed at the crack of eleven, not shaving, putting on his trusty beret and sloping out the door to arrive at the site of the ostensible jazz just in time for the last set. To his great annoyance, his life was being chronicled by his long-time friend and fawning admirer, Plenty Capable, whose life Short Mat Bowls had saved more than once by not killing her when he could have. Opportunity and motive were ever present, but while Short Mat Bowls was a hard-boiled, ham-fisted, bullheaded bloodhound of a jazz detective, he was also a sport.