By Loreena McKennit and its called the "Mummer Dance!"

Certain memories just pop into my head like bubbles in my bubble bath, of an evening...and this one "popped" while I was on the bus yesterday going into town to meet Mum for shopping!...it made me shivver.......

It had been a very sunny Wednesday morning back in 1988 when I was awoken by a stange sound...
A tinge of fear had ran up my spine as my newly woken brain reminded me that I was alone as Adrian (my first marriage) was off on a Meterology course in Bracknell, and this sound, was acutually someone trying to break into my house!!!!
18 months before we had bought the terrace stone cottage in New Mills in Derbyshire and money wise things had gone from bad to worse, where over a period of time most of the utillities got cut off and we had to use a card meter for the electric. Needless to say I soon came to realise that Adrian was absolutly hopelss with money, preffering to spend it on his beloved computers (Commoder 64 & Spectrum ZX) and the games that went with them. It dident take me long to realise I had married a 21 year old child!
Gathering my witts and rubbing my eyes I sat up with heart pounding at this noise of someone trying to break into my house. I quietly got dressed and sat on the bed for a moment feeling scared and confused....the scratching tapping noise was coming from both the back and front doors, as I could make out so I decided my best course of action was to look out of the bedroom window to see what was going on! I stood on the window sill and opened the top window only to see two middle aged men who had my front door wide open...........
"Excuse me!!!! whats going on?!!" I had shouted from the window.
"are you Mrs Goulding or Miss Short?" came a reply from the shorter man...the other chap appeared to be removing my front door lock!!
"Errr Mrs Goulding" I replied, now genuinly scared....this looked very official....
"Could you come down and open the back door?" the short chap shouted up, shading his eyes from the sunlight with his hand...I needed no further communication and quickly hurried down stairs where I saw sillouettes of 3 men standing at my back door!
I was alone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Tentivly I turned the key with a shaking hand and opened the door, where all 3 men promptly barged past me into the kitchen. The short man held a clip board, and proceeded to evict me from my home!!!!!!!!!
The faces of these men began to dissolve into hideous images as tears filled my eyes, as I was told Adrian had fallen too far behind with morgage payments and letters had been sent which I had never seen, so I figured Adrian must have hidden them!
"But I have pets!!!!" I wailed "a dog and a Budgie!"
"Not our problam love, we are here to get you off these premises imiediatly"
I was given enough time to stuff some belongings into a plastic carrier bag and collect my dog, Sam, and my birdcage, and before I knew it I was standing helplessly on my own concreate drive as these guys changed all my locks and locked and secured what had been my home!!! I had stopped crying, I was just stunned, stairing blankly at what had been my back door.
"I can drop you somewhere near by if you like!" the short Baliff had asked
" I work at a local pub! you could take me there!" I had muttered...and the next thing I knew I was being driven to work, a pub in the town that had been called the Bees Knees but during the drive the Baliff actually sounded very remorseful as he realised I had no idea about the morgage arrears and said something about being sorry, and he was only doing his job! It dident help me much though as he dropped me at the back door of the pub where I settled the bircage on a table and tied Sam to a chair leg so he dident run off, and I hurried to the bar to order a trebble Scotch from a bemused collegue who asked what was wrong.
" I just got evicted and I had no idea about it...can you give me change for the phone please?"
I downed my Scotch which calmed my splintered nerves a little, and ordered another before making my way to the payphone.
There was a crumpled piece of paper in my purse with a phone number on it. It was the number for Adrians Bracknell training collage, and I got through to him almost immiediatly. It turned out the he KNEW we were going to be evicted and he had even ARRANGED to be away on this course becuase (as he put it) he dident want to upset me!!!!!! He admitted to hiding the letters from the Bradford and Bingley, again because he dident want to upset me!!!! but while I was listening to these admissions my insides were boiling like a volcano...and I was ready to explode!
"Our marriage is OVER!!" I told him quietly but realy I wanted to scream down the phone at what a total f*****g bastard he was! Goodness knows how my resolve held but I think the Scotch helped!....I carefully replaced the phone on the reciever and quietly retreated to the back of the pub with my pets, and my drink, and my brain running like some manic machine, about what to do next.
The days that followed were a blurr!!
I had to beg for beds in the houses of regulars at my pub!! I begged my boss but he said a flat no!!...and spent my days in between pub shifts sat on the ground in the carpark of the local leisure centre. The carpark gave me small solace, and made me feel hidden because the carpark was quiet on weekdays so I was just an annoymous little person sitting in the sunshine with her back to the swimming pool looking out at the grey carpark!...at least the weather had been kind to me during those lowest of the low days! But there came an evening where I realy did have nowhere to sleep and knocked on the door of one of my regulars to beg yet again for a bed.
"Not tonight! I have friends staying!" the woman had said......
I was alone.......
So taking the last of my cash I took a taxi and booked into the Jodrell Arms in near by Whaley Bridge where I stayed for the next few days with my Dad picking up the rest of the bill, and at least I had a good breakfast every morning...Dad had also kindly taken my dog to my old friend, Jeans house where she had agreed to look after him, and a colleague at the pub agreed to take my budgie! Well at least my pets had new home, but I was still homeless......
It had been one of my lunchtime shifts when a regular called Aiden offered me a room in his house for £25 a week!!! and for a small moment I thought my luck had changed so I moved into this small room and arranged with the bank a date where I could collect the rest of my things from my house like my tv and hifi and over a space of a few days I settled in but things were far from perfect. My landlord, Aiden lived with his girlfriend, Rosezena and they had terrible and violant rows which I had to listen to most nights...so most nights I spent drunk to drown out both my own pain and their noise! Now at the pub I had befriended a short blond girl called Liz who looked a little bit like a midget version of Cyndi Lauper, but she was a punk, and wore weird and outrageus clothes and make up, but she took me to may parties (some of them wild) and showed me a kind of life that I dident like! However I also befriended a young blind guy called Graham who was much nicer and kept me company!! By this time Adrian was home and staying with me at the bedsit (which I reluctantly allowed) and dispite everything with the eviction I slowly came round to giving our marriage another try...Untill one evening my life fell to pieces once more...
Me, Liz and her husband Dave and my friend Graham decided to spend an evening at a pub in nearby Hayfield, and we stayed for a lock in (Graham knew the land lord very well) Now at about 1.30am David had vanished and me and Graham were chatting and drinking in the lounge...Suddenly Graham had gone very quiet and I asked why?
"Something is wrong!" he said, quietly "Very wrong....go and find your Adrian!" ...Blind Graham realy did have an extra sense!!!
Shrugging my shoulders I slid off my seat and went to where I had last seen him, in the pool room...as I turned the corner I was greeted with the sight of Liz sat on Adrians knee and they were deeply trying to evict each others tonsils!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I snapped!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! TWANG!!!!!!!!!!
Saying nothing I just picked up Adrians full pint and tipped it over their two heads...Adrian remined calm but Liz lept back and began shouting obsenities at me like a deranged fish-wife!! She challenged me to a fight!
"Awwww sit down you silly bitch!!" I told her and pushed her back onto a chair!
"What are you going to do about it!! you midget!! you know I would f*****g kill you!!!" I growled at her, and at the time I realy meant it!!!! I stormed outside, tears starting and made my way to the phone box and phoned my Mum who was staying with my dad at the time...in between tears I explained to a very sleepy mother what had happened, and then she said those immortal words.
"For Gods sake Vicky, come home love!"
I agreed, and the next day my dad arrived in his beige Allegro, and we loaded the car and did an "afternoon" Moonlight flit from my scummy bedsit in New Mills...there was nothing left for me there now!
From here on the rest of the story gets better but I wont drone on. I filed for divorce a month later and celebrated with Mum when my decree finale came through!! and spent the next 4 years working full time at the Postern Gate in Warrington........

With all this running through my head I finally got of the bus yesterday, at our scruffy bus station, where Mum was waiting with her shopping tolly.....
"Been waiting long?" I asked her brightly...she had no idea what demonic memories had just been ressurected........