Haunting memories from The Smile Cabinet.

Back in the late 1980's various circumstances came together to force a slight change in career paths. At the suggestion of the marketing department of one of West London's leading Breweries, I became a contracted blackboard artist. Using the completely new graphics medium of acrylic pens, I was quickly able to develop an individual style which ultimately saw me travelling around the country to an assortment of venues: pubs, hotels, restaurants, wine bars, nightspots, day centres and care homes. To give you an idea, the illustration above was completed for a desserts board located in the Food Bar of the Village Hotel, Dudley, West Midlands (sadly, long since painted over). Having spent most of my previous creative life sitting behind the safety of an office desk, puffing cigarettes and gulping gallons of lukewarm coffee in between typewriter key assaults to meet impossible deadlines, this was an entirely new experience. Climbing unsafe ladders, working high up on dodgy planks where it's impossible to balance, and worst of all, coming down and enduring the odorous breath of very drunken customers telling awful jokes and growling menacingly if I didn't go ho,ho,ho at the right moment.

However, this bizarre episode of my life abounds with amusing episodes. One of my late Summer commissions was on the outskirts of Oxford, site of one of the gatehouses into this ancient, venerable, dusty City of Spires. As was often the case, the pub was being refurbished. It had been agreed that I would liaise with the Manager to sort out any precise messaging required for the parade of newly installed boards. During the briefing, one of the carpenters working upstairs ambled across to us and said "She's at it again." He didn't seem too perturbed and went to refill his cracked coffee mug from a paint splattered Thermos flask. Who was he talking about? Was there a roaming nymphomaniac on the premises? Was she under 45 years old? The Manager kindly obliged with the following information. "She seems to be the ghost of an ex-landlord's wife who is taking great exception to the fact that we're moving the old staircase. So she throws tacks and nails around while the men are working. They didn't like it at first but now they've got used to it."
"So what's the story?" I ask in anticipation. "Personally, I have no idea, but a few regulars will be coming in the back bar tonight and they might know something." I duly get on with work, leaving one board purposely empty.
Later, I am introduced to a regular who knows the pub intimately; its history...and apparently, the origins of this rather perplexing haunting. No phantom, just an empty space chucking screws and nails at innocent tradespeople trying to do an honest day's work. Try and imagine an Oxford accent with a slight burr and a drawl in between sups taken from pints of bitter paid for by me.
"She was the landlord's wife. Every Sunday he made her dress up in her finest clothes, stand at the bottom of the stairs ( the staircase they're currently removing) wait for him to return, usually violently drunk from a pub up the road, then force her upstairs to make love on the Sabbath. She was a deeply religious woman and then finally one day, she threw herself down that very staircase (now being removed) and has haunted this pub ever since..."
The vacant board could now be completed! A true ghost story to captivate customers. A poignant, ghostly tale to make it into alternative Oxford tourist guidebooks.
I worked feverishly for over 2 hours and many marvelled at its heart-wrenching detail. I was due to return and finish other boards 3 days later. When I did, I immediately saw that the board had been completely blacked out. Confused and rather angry I finally found the Manager's Deputy.
"Sorry Mike" he said, "what nobody told you is that this isn't an old ghost story.
The ex-Landlord is still a regular here and apparently spends absolute fortunes behind the bar...."

In the village of Thundersley, Essex, there is a pathway known as "Screaming Boy Lane".

On the corner of this lane is a Pub. Whilst working on their boards during the day, a local came up to me and said, "if you hear a tapping on the window tonight, that will be young Will"...

Will he, won't he? No he didn't. But with too much information, it doesn't lead to a good night's sleep in the room off the cellar. Why, you ask, was it called "Screaming Boy Lane"? Because, yes, there was a murder in the 18th Century involving a young farm boy who screamed a lot and woke up the neighbours before he was brutally throttled by a person or persons unknown.

All credit to the local Council at the time for listening and believing all the local gossip about screaming ghosts of murdered boys and not renaming the lane Acacia Avenue.

The third ghostly haunt I was never frightened by was in a pub/hotel just outside Southampton.

Conveniently, the guy from the IT company installing the computerised tills was a psychic. So when the newly recruited bar staff emerged from the cellar as white as sheets having been met with a malevolent icy blast, he was able to calm their nerves with news that the whole cellar region was haunted by at least two agitated spectres, both aged around 12 or 13 years old. These two poor souls were still inhabiting an astral moment, desperately trying to dig out their smuggler mates from a tunnel collapse that had occurred some 300 years previously. According to our psychic IT genius, behind an old bricked up wall probably lay the forgotten corpses of up to 18 felons who were inept at tunnel building. Our happy guide to the supernatural also told us that room 16 in the main block was on the site of a previous room where a musketeer blasted his young mistress to kingdom come and some 145 years later,was still regretting his hasty actions, which is why the lights kept flickering on and off. Oh, and I nearly forgot...a monk kept passing through room 2 on his way to a long gone abbey up the road.

Having a smashing time with the wife's BMW 33i Sport. What a silly place to put a tree stump.

I was going to entitle this,

"3 Good Things About Smashing Up The Wife's Car" then realised that writing notes from an assortment of hiding places: under tables, in downstairs cupboards, from the depths of wardrobes surrounded by mouldering old socks, and using a straw to breathe through whilst submerged in a freezing cold water tank in the loft, was all rather pointless. "Be a man" I kept telling my quivering carcass, face the consequences. Tell her that it's all her fault for having a very silly car without proper gears. So how, while she slept, did I demolish the wife's treasured BMW33i Sport, in a Car Park, on a sunny Sunday morning, with no one around as I pondered without my reading glasses the reason why a strange yellow light kept appearing on the dashboard? I could have consulted the Manual certainly, but I repeat, I didn't have my reading glasses. "Let's save an exorbitant BMW Dealer bill" I said to myself as I went Back and Forth. Forth and Back. Back and Forth. Back then Forward into a tree stump. Not just into it. On top of it, thus demolishing the automatic gear box which caused the entire auto lever console to leap into my left hand. Shiny pieces of car decorating the sprawl of bramble bushes. In my diary of embarassingly crass episodes in life, this now comes in at Number One. I should never, ever have tried to be an expert BMW mechanic on a Sunday, especially without my reading glasses. And on reflection, the big clod-hopping shoes didn't help either. I'll never know why that little yellow warning light came on as the vehicle has now been declared a write-off. I've actually buried the spare key just by the tree stump as a mark of respect. BMW33i. 2002-2010. RIP.

Of course God exists. He just happens to be rather busy.

Recently, the scientist Stephen Hawking declared that God doesn't exist. Tell that to a Muggletonian. In 1651, Lodowick Muggleton and his cousin were glancing through the Book of Revelations when, lo...they discovered that, contrary to popular belief, God is far too busy to listen to idle prayers. This must have been disturbing news to the prayer mat industry and to anyone admonishing little children for not saying their prayers before bedtime. Indeed, Muggletonians were so convinced that God wasn't listening, they tried to silence all other Evangelicals disturbing His afternoon nap. They were known as the "Ranters"...and indeed they ranted at anyone - Quakers in particular - who kept muttering praises to God. So what did the Muggletonians reckon God was doing? He was preparing for the end of the earth, of the universe, of time, of absolutely everything. And just before this spectacular event, he was scheduled to appear, warn everyone and make his apologies. The Muggletonians never had a precise plan of action for this event, other than the fact that they'd been very good, never been a nuisance, and would have been on hand to fetch God his slippers and make Him a cup of cocoa at bedtime had it been required. There was another interesting truth they discovered at the back end of the Book: God was only 5ft-6ft tall. Also, Heaven was located just 6 miles above the Earth.
But think they were a bunch of loonies at your peril! The author and poet Sir Walter Scott did just that and died a horrible death as a result of the Muggletonian curse. And indeed, the wag of a pointed finger from a Muggletonian could easily spell doom to anyone who doubted the truth of their beliefs. God only knows what happened to the 6 mile above theory when the Apollo Moon Mission crashed up through Heaven's floorboards...