This book is finished in first draft. It is presently weighing in at 46,000 words. Which is light for a novel. After the rewrite it may creep up a bit. Any suggestions on how to develop it further?
Chapter 11 – The realm of Pete
Danny rolled up with a bottle of red plonk and three carefully constructed jays. It was a thank you. On the way down the stairs he got a whiff of the pungent smell seeping under John’s door and bumped into Mr McDoud, in his shoe-length overcoat, heading back in from his day out propping up a park bench.
‘Allriet,’ Mr McDoud muttered, glowering at him blearily.
‘Yeah,’ Danny replied. ‘Doing grand. And you and the Mrs?’
Mr McDoud grunted and muttered something in rich indecipherable dialect while fiddling with his key in the lock.
At the bottom of the steps Jeanie and Sandy were setting off to work in their wigs, high-heels and skimpy tight dresses. Danny watched them totter off, Sandy holding on to Jeanie’s arm and giggling something into her ear. Whatever it was seemed to be hilarious and they both fell about. They seemed happy.
Danny hadn’t been in Pete’s abode. It was the basement flat that opened on to the wondrous garden.
He rapped on the door.
‘Come in, my old dearie,’ Pete said with a big beaming smile. He motioned Danny to sit down on the settee. It felt cold in the room, kind of damp, and he noted Pete still had his old air force greatcoat on. No free leccy in Pete’s place. Pete lit the paraffin stove which immediately filled the room with pungent fumes but at least started emitting some heat. He filled a kettle and placed it on top of the stove. ‘Cuppa crobes for later,’ he said grinning.
Danny was too busy looking round the place. It was like a cross between a workshop, museum, music shop and laboratory. There was stuff all over the place and a set of weird contraptions. He wasn’t sure what crobes was but he was up for it.
‘Sounds good,’ Danny said, grinning back at Pete. Pete’s dark tussled hair looked untidier than usual and there was a good few days growth between his droopy tash and siddies. ‘What you been up to?’ Danny reached down and lit the first of the jays through a hole in the paraffin stove.
‘I’ve been putting together this light show,’ Pete enthused. ‘You sit back and I’ll show you.’ He dug around in the back and put an album on. It was Frank Zappa and the Mothers – a good choice on any day. ‘For ambience,’ Pete explained, still dabbling about with a mass of wires. Danny handed him the joint. He took a puff and handed it straight back and continued to fiddle around with a spaghetti of wiring.
Danny saw the five harmoniums piled up in the corner. Two of them had been taken apart. Probably Pete scavenging them for parts. On the wall, hanging from nails, were a variety of weird musical instruments.
‘What are those?’ Danny asked.
Pete looked up from tracing the mass of wiring, clicked in a plug. ‘That’s it,’ he exclaimed, looking pleased with himself. ‘Those are my manoyukes and guitallelles.’
Danny saw a bunch of cut-outs of wood in similar shapes. ‘You make these?’
Pete looked up from a projector that he was fitting a slide drum in. ‘Yeah. I make them.’
Danny handed him the jay and sat back. The room was getting warm enough not to freeze the knackers off a mosquito. In an hour or so he was sure he’d be able to take his coat off.
Pete took down a couple of his weirdly shaped creations and handed one to Danny along with the Jay. ‘You play that one and I’ll pitch in with this.’
‘I can’t play,’ Danny protested.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Pete assured him. ‘Strum along to Zappa. You’ll pick it up.’ With that he flicked out the lights and turned on the projector. The whole wall lit up with a mass of crinkly psychedelic colour.
‘That’s cool,’ Danny said. ‘You got any glasses?’ He was opening the bottle of plonk.
‘No,’ Pete said. ‘But I’ve got a couple of mugs.’
‘That’ll do.’ Danny said. ‘That is one weird light-show.’
‘You’ve not seen anything yet,’ Pete assured him. He’d been rummaging around some more and come up with a baked bean tin with the top and bottom cut out so it was a tube. He set up a little motor in front of the projector and put the tin on it so that it slowly rotated and the beam from the projector shone through it. As it went round the colours changed.
‘’Wow!’ Danny said, sitting back into the sofa and taking it in. ‘I’ve not seen anything like that.’
‘No,’ Pete agreed. ‘I’ve been playing around with polarised light. That drum has a polarised sheet in it. As the light shines through it it’s changed.’
They settled back to finish the joints and wine as Floyd and Zappa provided the backdrop with Oldfield thrown in, the wall pulsated with colour, lighthouses flashed on and off, streets lit up and hills were illuminated. While Pete and Danny strummed along to the music.
The room filled with magic. Even Danny’s strumming fitted in.
Crobes turned out to be coffee. The kettle took an hour to boil but it the crobes was excellent.
Other selected books and novels:
Anecdotes-Weird-Science-Writing-Ramblings – a book of anecdotes mainly from the sixties and other writing.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anecdotes-Weird-Science-Writing-Ramblings/dp/1519675631/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1461832001&sr=1-9&keywords=opher+goodwin
More Anecdotes – following the immense popularity of the first volume I produced a second
https://www.amazon.co.uk/More-Anecdotes-Essays-Beliefs-flotsam/dp/1530770262/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1461832001&sr=1-5&keywords=opher+goodwin
Goofin’ with the cosmic freaks – a kind of On the Road for the sixties
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Goofin-Cosmic-Freaks-Opher-Goodwin/dp/1500860247/ref=sr_1_13?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1461832001&sr=1-13&keywords=opher+goodwin
The book of Ginny – a novel
In Britain :
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Opher-Goodwin/e/B00MSHUX6Y/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1461306850&sr=1-2-ent
In America:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=opher+goodwin
In all other countries around the world check out your regional Amazon site and Opher Goodwin books.
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