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The
year is 1965. Outside, it is dull, wet and cold. Inside
the steam room of the Derby Turkish Baths, it is a hissing
haze of hot, gurgling, boiling anger, a chamber of pea
soup where visibility is down to an arm's length. Dimly
seen, a man is resting in the corner, head lolling back,
eyes closed, pleasantly soaking up the heat - or so it
seems. Various bathers come and go. All regulars, they
all know this ugly, effeminate man who frequently secludes
himself in his usual corner. They all know the outrageous,
the common Becksitch Betty, the local drag act, the acid
queen who has inflamed so many passions in the nervous,
closeted, gay communities of Derby and Nottingham. Nobody
wants to bother this infamous bitch, left to doze in swirls
of vapour, left to doze in a miasma of his twisted hate
and jealousy.
It
was the very last time this hated old hag was ever seen.
Nobody saw him dress and nobody saw him leave the building.
Becksitch Betty never returned to his mean little cottage
in Belper and was never, ever heard of again ... until
... On July 12th in the year 2005, Simeon Hogg is celebrating
his 60th birthday. By a fluke, he stumbles upon the truth
and solves the old mystery of the disappearance of the
infamous, the long-past Becksitch Betty. That same ugly
old queen Simeon once knew when he was a scruffy chicken
forty years before.
Narvel
Annable delivers yet another cracking autobiographic whodunit,
which begins in Detroit on the day before the assassination
of President Kennedy. Eventually, it takes us into deepest
Derbyshire, into a bitchy underworld of crones, queens,
toads, goblins, gnomes, feral boys and social-climbing
snobs of the mid-1960's - finally concluding just days
after the appalling London bombings of '7/7'.
Follow
the candid teenage Simeon as he cycles. Meander with him
around the leafy lanes of Derbyshire and discovers a labyrinth;
a secret, subterranean, fairytale world which could have
been penned by Grimm. Meet his unique collection of curious
characters, all taking shelter in their twilight existence;
monsters, clowns, the high and the low, the pretentious
and the pompous, the scented and the sneering, the common
and the crude. They are all here, all inspired by real
people, all warped by the vicious homophobic cruelty and
bigotry of 1965.
"A
rare pleasure I never thought I'd see: a gay thriller
set in Derbyshire."
Matthew
Parris The Times
Nineteen hundred and sixty five was the most eventful
year of my life. The hilarious adventures, anecdotes and
laughter still echo around my head. They now cry out to
be preserved in these pages, hopefully for others to enjoy.
The
following is a novel inspired by a summer cycling holiday
I enjoyed in one of England's most beautiful counties.
As a 19-year-old I encountered an interesting selection
of some curious and colourful characters which constituted
a rich experience. Sadly, most of them are no longer with
us. These events took place in real places, in this book
peopled by a fictitious cast.
Allow
me to introduce you to these caricatured composites who
are inspired by a selection of the types I met forty years
ago. However real flesh and blood the original model,
who actually ends up on these pages (after being processed
through my brain) is very far from being any real person
- alive or dead. The Peak District is the main setting,
but my adventures also took me into Nottinghamshire and
occasionally further afield.
Here
follows a secret subterranean world which could have been
penned by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Do you remember when
you were very small? You were told that if you had enough
faith, if you could feel at one with nature, believe in
the magic of trees and peer into dark cavities formed
by dense hedgerows, look into the caves of tangled root
systems - you might just catch a glimpse of the fairies.
Well, I did look; not under hedgerows, but in those special
Derbyshire places where 'fairies' can be seen - if you
know how to make contact.
Those
strange types were invisible to the majority in that they
were un-noticed.
You had to believe in them, be aware of them and want
to meet them. I did. I met a goblin, a gnome, a talking
toad, a talking ball, a cartoon character, a pantomime
dame and a whole circus of confused gender. Here follows
my painting. This was the world as I saw it, as I found
it, to the best of my knowledge - hitherto unwritten.
This
secret history of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, to be
unfolded in the following pages, is largely oral and unwritten.
For example, when I am dead, Edna will be dead. In other
words, I may be one of the few who can recall any hearsay
regarding Edna. Edna, an old Derby eccentric, spoken of
in the 1960's, was notorious back in the 1920's.
No one has ever written about Edna. When the last person
who can remember Edna is gone, Edna will be gone forever
- and that is sad.
This
is not intended to be a bawdy book. It will gain strength
from between the lines,
from the unspoken and the subtle. It will be bitchy, happy
and sad, snooty and snobby, pretentious and unpretentious
but, most of all, it should be funny.
These
people lived on the edge of a disapproving society. They
took shelter in their twilight private world. They varied
from the old, decrepit and grotesque, to the young, beautiful,
fit and full of fun; from the pompous, punctilious pedant
to the common, crude peasant; from the professional to
the plebeian. These people dealt with the prejudices of
mid-twentieth century Britain and coped with homophobic
intolerance in their different ways.
Cruelty
and bigotry shaped these individuals into their interesting
forms which, in turn, influenced a teenager on a bicycle,
who was coming to terms with a fundamental new self-awareness.
Four
decades have now passed, old laws have been repealed,
education is more enlightened, clubs have been opened,
support services are available and society is a little
kinder. The odd, craggy, quirky characters of yesteryear
seem to have disappeared. We will not see their like again.
Scruffy
Chicken is the book I have always wanted to write. I wanted
to write it before I wrote Miss Calder's Children. This
is another autobiographical book, another chance to examine
and explore the characters who have shaped my life. The
monsters, the freaks and the clowns - I met them all in
1965.
Scruffy
Chicken is a social history of Detroit and Derbyshire,
a comparison and contrast of the gay scenes of the US
and the UK as they were in the mid 20th century.
Come
with me. Meander with me on my cycling trip through the
leafy sun mottled lanes during the summer of 1965 and
let me introduce you to the secret world of a scruffy
chicken as he discovers the curious characters of Derbyshire.
"A
rare pleasure I never thought I'd see: a gay thriller
set in Derbyshire."
Matthew
Parris The Times
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