Bells - Last Orders

 

The first bells of any significance to me must be the ones used by my father and grandfather to call ‘last orders’ and ‘time, gentlemen, please’ in their pubs. They were fixed to a post or wall behind the bar and with a firm tug on the rope, sent out a loud peal with an authoritative tone. At some point the word ‘gentlemen’ was removed and it was simply ‘time, please’, even in the Vaults. The Vaults was considered the mens’ bar, simply because no ladies would like to go in and from what I remember in my formative years, the men were not always gentlemen.

Another distinctive bell I remember from childhood is the ringing of my dad’s alarm clock. These days everything bleeps digitally from a radio or mobile phone, but this wind-up monster, which no longer works but I keep it as a treasured possession, was loud enough to wake the whole house and pub beneath – but not always my dad. I don’t know who was the genius behind the idea, but biscuit tin, yes, a metal one, a few of my marbles inside and the clock on top of the lid was louder than ever with the added power of ‘rattle’. That worked a treat.

I started secondary school at what is locally known as ‘the old Palatine’, an impressive building between Bennett Avenue and Park Road in Blackpool, which is now the University Campus of Blackpool and the Fylde College. It was great for me to return decades later and find it much the same inside, except the long corridor which stretched from one end of the school to the other now had sets of fire doors closing the length into sections. In my early school days it was open and at each end hung a bell. These two bells were monitored by duty prefects who rang them to announce the end of lessons. They could be heard all over the school and were much more efficient than the weak electric buzzers we had to listen out for in the new school twelve months later when we relocated to St Anne’s Road. The old building had character, the new one did not. The old building is still standing and is useful. The new one, demolished and rebuilt after only fifty years, or thereabouts.

I wish I knew what happened to my mother’s brass bell. It was made in the style of a lady with a tiny waist wearing a crinoline skirt. It lived on the mantelpiece for years, then, when my mum was ill and in bed, she had it close to her so she could ring it if she was alone and needed something. It is yet another thing that seemed to vanish into thin air after she died.

Here is a poem, Edgar Allan Poe, placing bells where he perceived they belonged in a life-cycle,

The Bells 

1

  Hear the sledges with the bells—
                 Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
        How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
           In the icy air of night!
        While the stars that oversprinkle
        All the heavens, seem to twinkle
           With a crystalline delight;
         Keeping time, time, time,
         In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
       From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
               Bells, bells, bells—
  From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

2

        Hear the mellow wedding bells,
                 Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
        Through the balmy air of night
        How they ring out their delight!
           From the molten-golden notes,
               And all in tune,
           What a liquid ditty floats
    To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
               On the moon!
         Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
               How it swells!
               How it dwells
           On the Future! how it tells
           Of the rapture that impels
         To the swinging and the ringing
           Of the bells, bells, bells,
         Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
               Bells, bells, bells—
  To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

3

         Hear the loud alarum bells—
                 Brazen bells!
What tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
       In the startled ear of night
       How they scream out their affright!
         Too much horrified to speak,
         They can only shriek, shriek,
                  Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,
            Leaping higher, higher, higher,
            With a desperate desire,
         And a resolute endeavor
         Now—now to sit or never,
       By the side of the pale-faced moon.
            Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
            What a tale their terror tells
                  Of Despair!
       How they clang, and clash, and roar!
       What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
       Yet the ear it fully knows,
            By the twanging,
            And the clanging,
         How the danger ebbs and flows;
       Yet the ear distinctly tells,
            In the jangling,
            And the wrangling.
       How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells—
             Of the bells—
     Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
            Bells, bells, bells—
 In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!

4

          Hear the tolling of the bells—
                 Iron bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
        In the silence of the night,
        How we shiver with affright
  At the melancholy menace of their tone!
        For every sound that floats
        From the rust within their throats
                 Is a groan.
        And the people—ah, the people—
       They that dwell up in the steeple,
                 All alone,
        And who tolling, tolling, tolling,
          In that muffled monotone,
         Feel a glory in so rolling
          On the human heart a stone—
     They are neither man nor woman—
     They are neither brute nor human—
              They are Ghouls:
        And their king it is who tolls;
        And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
                    Rolls
             A pæan from the bells!
          And his merry bosom swells
             With the pæan of the bells!
          And he dances, and he yells;
          Keeping time, time, time,
          In a sort of Runic rhyme,
             To the pæan of the bells—
               Of the bells:
          Keeping time, time, time,
          In a sort of Runic rhyme,
            To the throbbing of the bells—
          Of the bells, bells, bells—
            To the sobbing of the bells;
          Keeping time, time, time,
            As he knells, knells, knells,
          In a happy Runic rhyme,
            To the rolling of the bells—
          Of the bells, bells, bells—
            To the tolling of the bells,
      Of the bells, bells, bells, bells—
              Bells, bells, bells—
  To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

Edgar Allan Poe

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Terror - Ghostly Happenings

 

There’s something scary about looking up into the darkness at the top of the stairs. It started at my great-grandmother’s house when I was a little girl. Nothing happened, I was just spooked and the feeling has always been with me. Our landing light stays on through the night. My bedtime reading can’t be anything jumpy or thought provoking since ‘The Amityville Horror’ years ago – the film was bland compared to the book – such stories, and I enjoy reading them, are good for the afternoon. I accompanied my daughter to see ‘The Woman In Black’ at the cinema. This film absolutely terrifies me. I like the story, but I can’t watch it properly, not even on television at home.

“Tell me when this bit’s gone,” she whispered.

“I can’t, I’m not looking,” I whispered back, face covered with hands.

Recently, the stage play was on at The Grand Theatre. I’m told it’s very good and scary. My daughter asked me to go and I would have done if not for the covid situation, even if I was to spend two hours staring at my knees in the darkness.

One of the pubs our family had on the front was a former hotel, full of empty rooms. Most of these rooms were on the floor above our living accommodation and was out of bounds to me and my friends for safety reasons. On the same floor as us but separate to our flat was a corridor of about six former hotel rooms. Two of them were empty until my paternal grandfather moved in with us for a while and made one a lounge and another his bedroom. My dad used one for a spirit store (drinks, not ghosts), one was a guest room where my other grandparents stayed on their frequent visits and one was Joe’s room. Joe came with the pub. He was a live-in member of staff, of some very senior years, and when not working, kept himself to himself apart from watching the Saturday afternoon horse racing on our television, full volume due to his impaired hearing. Once a week my mother or Kathy who looked after us all, made him his favourite steak and cow-heel pie. He was a lovely man and we were sad when he died. I believe he was ninety, or thereabouts. I would guess it was a couple of years after Joe had passed when someone played a trick and scared the living daylights out of me. At some point, I moved into what used to be Joe’s room. The corridor was always a bit dark, but enough to see my way. One afternoon, as I came out of the room, there was a white, waiter’s coat floating in the air.  I screamed as terror gripped me and my dad came running from the nearby kitchen. It was all supposed to be in good fun. It might even have been Halloween. The jacket was on a wire hanger hooked on to a light-fitting. I recovered, eventually.

For a short time, my father took over The Old Hall at Sandbach and we moved to live there. I mention it by name because it was featured on the TV programme ‘Most Haunted’. We were aware of a ghost. Nothing scary, just a woman in a crinoline dress with her hair piled high. She vanished as soon as she appeared and always in the restaurant at night. She wasn’t mentioned in ‘Most Haunted’ but Derek Acorah and his team found plenty of other paranormal activity that we weren’t aware of or been told about.

When our son was about three years old, he had what we recognised as night terrors. The first time it happened I was terrified. It was the middle of the night and his screaming woke me up suddenly. I was out of bed and in his room in a nano-second, heart pounding. He was sitting up, unaware of me, staring ahead, screaming and crying. I rocked him, calmed him down and settled him back to sleep, somehow, while filled with terror myself. The look of fear in his face unnerved me more than anything, like he could see something I couldn’t. Luckily, there weren’t many episodes.

With all this in mind, I suppose it’s odd that I would happily spend a couple of evenings on ghost hunting tours with my friend. We had a fascinating time at The Grand Theatre in the dark and the talk from the organiser explained things that had happened to both of us at separate times on visits to see productions. When the opportunity to do something similar at the Spanish Hall came up, I was full of enthusiasm. Unfortunately, some of it was so scary, the experience was overwhelming fear.

My poem, which features in The Dead Good Poets Haunted Blackpool,

A Ghost Tour in the Spanish Hall

An evening in the Spanish Hall
Fun-time promised for one and all.
Exciting times for you and me,
Paranormal activity!
Hopes and desires, all are risen,
Someone’s speaking, we must listen.
“Enter the rooms with open mind,
And be prepared for what you find.”
The semi-darkness of torch-light,
Anticipation of the night;
Wondering what there might be here
To chill us with delight or fear
We heard a strange and weird sound,
Quiet growling from underground.
Distant laughter, joyful patter,
Ghostly party fun and chatter.
Chink of glasses, bell-like tinkle,
Passing orb gives us a twinkle.
We crept across the ballroom floor
To where we hadn’t been before.
A woman beckoned from her chair.
As we approached, she wasn’t there,
Just vanished, like she’d never been
But we both knew what we had seen.
And later, on the wide stair case
I froze as something touched my face.
I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t shout;
Someone was with me, there’s no doubt
When we sat in the back-stage room
We both smelt dated perfume
Like musky lavender and rose
Stagnant, lingering in repose.
And that mirror! I dared not see
The presence sitting next to me.
I felt their breath upon my cheek
And could not move, too scared to speak!
I must now be most explicit,
Show respect to restless spirits.
Never ridicule, tease or taunt.
It might be you they’ll come to haunt.

PMW 2012
Thanks for reading, Pam x

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