Chapter 5: The Rescaling of Moortown Water Tower

Chapter 5: The Rescaling of Moortown Water Tower
The timing was calculated to coincide with the anniversary of Richards death. He had fallen in love with a prostitute and enchantress. She bled him of all his money. Finally of his life. But he gave it willingly. I had known richard since boyhood and his greater days were proud. However, after a long amphetamine habit he succumbed to heroin. The only way he found to pay for his habit was to sell gear and his false lover would come to him and beg, steal and borrow it from him. He didn't mind but built a fantasy that she played into of a love affair on the cusp of opening up. She may have had to do this to fulfill whatever delusion richard required. All of us told him he was being bled dry. His story alone deserves a book so I shall not linger but, after being broken in body, heart and spirit he became suicidal in the scale of his self medication. When they kicked down his door a coffee table heald some fifty empty special brew cans, neatly lined up, all full of his urine. His body was saturated with heroin and methadone. Whether he deliberately took his life or drifted so close to despair and drug use he cared not if he lived or died I will never know. But overall, amongst his freinds, it was well known that his death was brought on by his inability or lack of urge to escape the enchantment and certainty he took his own life. Looking back, his death inspired a madness in me. I had lost my closest freind and myself became wreckless in my drug intake. Though a green burial in lawns wood cemetery, his tree is the only one of the graves there that died. Its roots no doubt poisoned too. I carved a block of wood and hid it in the bushes above his grave which I revisit on occassion. To pay my respects. We would anoint the block of oak and Richards grave with special brew. Then climb the water tower.
At the time I drove the Sin Van. A transit marked across the windscreen and down each side with simply Sin in large letters so all road users could see we were sinners. I picked up Lipton in Bath. He was living as a street person, begging and selling drugs to fellow homeless. He would return to his site periodically but parked up out in the country near Pilton, there was little money to be made there.
'Got all the kit sorted, Skree?' , 'Bar the action men, yes'. We had a final ritual to perform. A final stop to the climbing of industrial engineering. An opening line in our search for jesse and his underworld. Picking up two freshly boxed action men, I chose the archer, Lipton weirdly went for the deep sea diver. 'What the fuck did you choose that one for? ' I asked thinking the heroin was stilling his sharp nose for the ephemeral. We never set out to be urban english shamans. It was something we chanced upon as a generation. At first, in our early teens, magic mushrooms were just a way of getting out of ones head. It didn't take long to realise we were on to something far greater. A historic lineage of english witchcraft entered our blood. Secrets of life and magic, universal truths, religious experiences came fast and furious. Acid compounded our abilities to shift between dimensions but it was the sheer volume of free psychedelics that granted us the healing powers. As witches our duty was not to the sickness of individuals but the sickness affecting our land. A growing greyness. A failure in common man to see the earthly wonders. Awakening each morning on this strange planet, teeming with life and they were moaning about pensions and insurance. The nation were turning inward, getting up to work in frowns, they no longer heard the music. Psychedelics had forced us to be shamans. It wasn't a choice really but we were duty bound to restore the colour and beauty back to english minds. To cure the nation of this grey sickness. This is still my duty.
'I never had it as a kid, I had the hang glider, commando, sailor but never the diver'
'It's a short dive he'll be taking' I reminded Lipton. Their fates were grim, sealed.
In the van we had various ropes and ladders. Getting up was bound to be different and could be any sort of changes since my youth.
The drive takes about four hours which passed quickly. This is usually the case when on shamanic ritual duties. Even in our industrial architecture climbing phase, the excitement was always enough to shorten even longer journeys. Lipton was drinking a fair bit but I had to keep it to the odd can. A pull for drubk driving would put a damper on things. The police are after us always. They actively promote the grey. They often kill our kind too. This has been going on for centuries, since the witchfynding days where a mushroom tripper could be drowned easily. Such is the fear of our powers. But we normally win. They are chosen from those of the lowest of iq. Servants of the sociopaths who spread the grey. Pawns, really, foot soldiers of the dull.
Our first port of call was to tom and trout faced Tina's . West park I still headed for habitually as I had done for the previous near decade as richards flay was where I usually stayed. My remaining immediate circle being the customers who he had served. Tom was old and Tina a good sight as could be expected, still in greif and self medicating to compensate.
Tina was a prostitute too though her clients tended to be doctors, lawyers, businessmen and her roll more of a councelor than anything. Quite unlike the enchantress who had brought about richards death. I ought to point out that we knew these girls as fellow drug addicts, any notion of us paying for sex from them would have been laughable, culturally out of context. They were freinds who shared a habit and their business their own business.
They helpfully sorted us out, me with some rock and Lipton with his gear. Leptons spirits were lifted as the size of deal and quality in Leeds was always superior to Bath or Bristol. Pipes weren't the best preparation for this type of job and though I was stocked up with valium along with their sedating effects comes intoxication. You need to have your wits about you on trips like this. Climbing water towers may seem modest from the ground but a fall was a death fall.
After buying chips, eaten in the van cab, we drove on up to moortown, parking in Nursery Close where we unloaded our equipment and donned hi visibility vests and hard hats.
Since my youth the fencing had been replaced by folded alloy tri spike sections. This was crowned by the terrible razor wire that Brough innevitable cuts, however careful or gloved one was. Perhaps through tradition we took the same piece of fence to cross. Hidden by woodland providing the privacy required. We had one eight foot ladder and capped the wire with heavy blankets. This meant hawling the ladder over this first fence. The pipe we used as boys to gain access to the base was gone and a secondary fence cut us off. Fortune favours the brave and a large cable real, empty was rolled over to ascend the fence and the ladder dragged up and dropped over to get inside the inner area. From here the ladder again was used to get on the towers base.
Once on the base no significant obstacles lay ahead though the old spiral staircase was now a ladder and backscratcher, much less safe and harder work. I went first, Lipton behind. As we gained height adrenaline and nostalgia blended. Wind becomes a problem occasionaly but today was relatively still.
'Where we hanging them?' Lipton asked. I'd fashioned two miniature nooses to hang our juju dolls. These did not represent Elvis and jesse but me and Lipton. I'd brought the makita hammer action drill, wall plugs. Lipton heald my ankles as I leant as far over as I could work. Soon the two holes were drilled and plugged. The nooses were readied and fixed with security head screws.
We sat the archer as my juju doll and the deep sea diver on the edge, slipped the nooses over their necks. We ritually took a pipe each using wind proof lighters. Then their final push and our dead miniature selves swung. Dead. Our climbing adventures completed, sealed and signed. I recently went up there but couldn't see if they'd been removed or still swung. Our enterprise now lay entirely underground.


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