Chapter 4: Up in the air

Every Monday morning there was a board meeting. I was to be taken in the helicopter to the industrial estate that my life swappee owned outright.

Gerard Braughn's remaining helicopter was a mid-seventies model, one of the last models that was used in the Vietnam War, so it was a right cranky old whirlybird from about 1974.

When we lifted off I was surprised to find that the sensation didn't affect me physiologically. I thought I'd feel like my midriff was becoming detached.

I looked down at The Vale of York. I was surprised to find that there was even less forest than I had previously thought. The familiar grid formation of land enclosure stretched in every direction. The whole scene looked like a partitioned desert from the sky. I had a flash-forward to a time where The Vale of York had actually turned to desert. When you drive through a rural area, the hedge-rows give you the impression that they border even greater and complex patterns of flora. Here, and in most parts of Britain, they border flat, empty fields with all the charm of sand-paper.

'A squirrel could go from London to Brighton without touching the ground not more than a few hundred years ago,' I said to the pilot.

He was a pleasant man of not many more years than myself, but looked twenty years older. He had been an army pilot and then a police pilot before working for private owners. He was used to being filmed by the mass media.

'What's the chances of developing a helicopter that runs on a water-powered engine?' I asked him.

'It's been possible since about 1950,' he told me.

I had not been expecting that.

'It won't happen until the companies have drained the last drop of oil from this planet. You can't change human nature.' he said.

Here it was again. The old 'human nature' argument.

'Human nature seems to be anything that people want it to be,' I said.

We banked. It was boiling in the cock-pit. He was sweating profusely.

'Doing more but not considering the impact on the environment is the problem,' I said. 'If we do less there is automatically a shallower environmental foot-print, and doing less also involves taking more time over what is done. Airships could be an important chance for a more relaxed and speculative journey through life. I'd love to see a renaissance of air-ship travel, with solar and wind powered machines. The second industrial revolution might throw up fantastic sights like post-modern galleons. Ships that cut through the sea at great speeds soundlessly. Giant boats that left no pollutants in the water whatsoever.'

'They wouldn't cater for the desire to travel as fast as possible,' he said.

'No, but they might give the human race more time to consider which direction it's headed.'

Sheep looked like miniature toys from the helicopter. Houses looked like the hotels on a Monopoly board.

We quickly ascertained that we had hitherto been on opposite sides of the fence and he had been involved in police operations to clear travellers off sites.

'They never tax or M.O.T. their vehicles.' he said. 'Bloody death-traps their vehicles. They have all kinds of kids, pets, etc. on board without a thought for safety.'

I corrected him.

'I have a mate in West Wales,' I said, 'who rebuilds 1940's classic trucks and he would never let a vehicle go out unless it was more than road-worthy, unless it was perfect. I would never risk driving a vehicle that was more than likely to destroy me in some horrific mechanical break-down.'

He spoke about raves and the noise pollution.

'A police helicopter drowns out a sound system from quite high up,' I told him. 'I think you'll find that the noise pollution from vehicles and industry is far worse.'

The helicopter banked again. The pilot flattered me by saying that I had actually improved his attitude towards counter-culture. He did not deny the need for another industrial revolution. We disagreed on one fundamental point.

'The human race will always comprise of competing tribes,' he told me. 'The conflict will be never-ending. Competition for resources at a time when natural turbulence in weather conditions are leading to extreme natural disasters will make sure that death and destruction will prevail and we had better just get on with it.'

We came down in a field near Gerard's offices. Outside there were workmen doing God knows what on the industrial estate. I was picked up & then driven to the boardroom. I had to get out of the car, get in the car again, get out of the car again, get in the car, drive round and approach again, get out of the car again... That's reality TV for you. Then I had to walk into the building, then I had to walk out of the building, walk into the building again and then I had to walk out of the building and walk into the building again. The scene was then re shot. I got back into the car, I took the car back out of the drive, drove in again, got out of the car, walked into the building and got filmed again. This sort of thing went on every day, all the time, with the excuse that you need different camera angles. After a half an hour of this, I was finally able to walk into the place.

It looked like all boardrooms look. We have seen enough of them on telly. I walked into the building. There were loads of adjacent offices with secretaries and typists and suited types who worked for Gerard. I was taken to Gerard's seat at the table and, on a wall-chart, there it was: another piece of amazing synchronicity. Not only did Gerard own acres of land in Yorkshire, Scotland & Southern Ireland {according to his son} he also owned land in the Afan valley in Wales. He was planning to put a recreation centre on that land. Exactly the same kind that was being attempted right next to where I live in West Wales. This would, of course, involve defoliation, the construction of dry ski-slopes, squash courts and a whole domed area for people to have money hoovered out of their pockets. Gerard's job in the Afan valley was to get it built, have it all done and dusted, drive away any of the local residents who were causing trouble, buy up the necessary land against the will of the local farmers and have it all pushed through. Then he would be paid and another company would take on the running of it. There was a display of what was intended in a triptych. I saw a two dimensional, annotated diagram. I looked at it and I thought, this was not planned. When he was doing his life swap, he did not even know what part of the country he was going to. Yet here he was, visiting a part of the country that was united against an almost identical plan to his and he was not only going ahead with his, but he was in competition with another major business family from Ireland who were trying to push it through near Narberth in Pembrokeshire, right next to us. They were both trying to see who was the 'cleverest', as though it were a big game.

I just looked at the map. Few of the people who were going to turn up to this board-meeting were going to be able to pronounce most of these place names, I thought. However, I have a rudimentary grasp of Welsh already. I cannot believe it, I thought. Maybe someone has arranged this, someone who is super-powerful and knows what is going on.

I turned around to the camera crew.

'Are you aware of all this?' I said.

'No,' they said. 'Say it again Craig.'

'There's a project near where I live in West Wales that is almost exactly the same as this,' I said. 'Well, that's all they need in the Afan valley, is some squash courts. I've heard it's the national sport of Wales” {I was being sarcastic here}. “Who is this for? This is for the business class, the élite. They're setting up their geodesic domes after having analysed Hippie culture and thinking, "oh, we can do that, but for this reason." Am I expected to discuss this at the board meeting?' 'Oh, Craig,' the director said. 'I believe it's your board meeting, you can discuss anything you like.'

'Of course!' I said, 'I control all of it!'

'Well, naturally, they're coming here to take instruction from you.'

So, I thought, what I really need to do is find out how much the workforce is being paid, find out whether any of them are getting either close to or below the minimum wage, find out what the working conditions are, find out whether he has allowed his workforces around the world to be unionised, find out what is going to go on with the Afan valley thing and if it involves even one tree being cut down, it gets stopped, it gets pulled. I have to find out what they've done to communicate with the local residents and see whether or not they want this, and then try and just say, if I were running this business these are the things I would do. Obviously I was not stupid enough to think I had the power to do Jack Shit, but at least display to the public on film what I would do.

They walked in and there was my PA, a very short and very alluring, and conventionally attractive, blonde power-dressed, "sex-on-a-stick" as my mate Brayf would say. That's how she got that position, next to Gerard, I imagine. There was Gerard's son and then there was his business organiser. She was a middle-aged blonde, power-dressed woman, relatively attractive but, I felt, cynical.

So there were these two women of different ages, one of whom was hopelessly connected with the business world to the point where I found her quite hard to talk to, even though she was very helpful and very, impressed with the way I conducted myself in the business I had to do during the week. She was good at her job but however good at it she was, she would have been far better served doing something creative with her life. The PA, bless her, was only interested in flirting. So much so, that every now and again she would wink at me. This is like a Carry On... film, I thought. No-one has ever come on to me in this stereotypical way. Is that what she thinks Working Class women do? That I would find it alluring. 'Have you got a problem with your eye there madam?' I was tempted to say.

She was terribly excited about this earring-wearing pirate being given the job of her personal boss for the week. I am sure she would have had me adulterise my marriage in an instant as part of a power-game play in this whole thing, although I did not consider it once. I found her extraordinary and desperate come-ons, to be quite scary.

You see, while, in theory, a show like Desperate Housewives may be titillating, when you actually, physically inhabit the same space as the characters that they are satirising, if you are anything like me then you will be repulsed, regardless of how attractive they might seem. When she walked in, I said the words in my head. 'Don't do this to me, don't do this to me, don't do this to me...' Who was I talking to? God. She knew how to push all the right buttons, but that was her job. I could have been the biggest bastard in the world, and she would still have humoured me and made me want to shag her. This was sex as a weapon on a level that does debase it. Who is a Christian? Well, you folks are not, because sexual exploitation in all kinds of manners is one of the things the early church had a down on, but the Romans were very good at it. Here I was with a woman who was convinced that I wanted to sleep with her, and would sleep with her at any time. I am really sorry, but to use a quaint South East London term, "Lady, you are damage." Nothing good could come of this, it will only end in tears and I was not letting the baser side of my physical self be enslaved by you.

So, with that knowledge in my head, I decided to blow all of their preconceptions out of the window.

'Afan valley,' I said, 'why don't you make it into a festival site like Glastonbury and it can become the second biggest, or indeed biggest open-plan festival in Britain, totally powered by solar and wind energy, having all the best music from the four corners of the world playing there, multi-represented on media channels all across the globe, there's not only a commitment to new energy, but a centre of culture and learning... What about that? You can do that on five hundred acres?'

'Well,' they said, 'this all sounds very interesting Craig, I'm sure that Gerard will take a lot of these things on board...'

'Get out of here,' I said. 'I bet he will, but we are on the edge of a second industrial revolution. We have to be otherwise we will die out. And basically, you do not want to do what you are doing in the Afan valley because it will inflame the locals, it will chop...'

'Oh, no trees are being chopped down, Craig...'

'Get out of here! Don't tell me that,' I said, 'because if you've been told that, you have been lied to, yes?'

'Well, we don't look into it that deeply...'

'No,' I said, 'you just move the money about at the top of the tree. Look into it that deeply!'

I was not happy.

'Anyway,' I said, 'now I need to know what I've got to do.'

They laid out my week's agenda. Except it was hardly an agenda at all.

'This man works an hour a day!' I said. 'That is not really work, that is just phone calls. Trying to sell things to people when you have a lot of money at your disposal is easy. Getting credit when you've got money is easy.'

'He has been bankrupted twice', I was told.

'Yeah,' I said, 'but he could get credit couldn't he? I can't get credit and I've never been bankrupted. So excuse me. And when I mean credit, I mean credit. I don't mean a five hundred pound loan that I'm having to pay eight hundred pounds back on. I mean, "oh, can I have two and a half million pounds please?" That's credit, so don't tell me he's been on the bottom. He has never even seen the bottom.'

Neither had I. There were more levels to uncover in this world before I saw what was underneath it all.

They did give me the names of millionaires I had to ring to drum up cash for them, and I have got them written down still. I have got the minutes to the board meeting written down. I set an agenda. I held the meeting very professionally, as I have many meetings, both in conventional office work places, for trade unions and for organising festivals and gigs. They were really surprised I did it properly, but of course I would. That's what I do. I think that tickled them, really.

'What? Ring multi-millionaires and try and get money off them to sponsor this ball? Oh, that'll be really fun. Can you imagine, that'll shock them won't it? With all the TV and everything around, we should get a few bob!'

'Oh, this is so exciting, Craig, this is going to be fun,' said the middle aged business advisor, who was similarly dressed, the kind of blonde bob hair-cut, all of them heavily made up. This was exciting for them, having a rebel in their ranks and seeing what their take on it would be.

Then came the coup de gras. I asked if the band I was in could play a tune or two at the ball. They said that they didn't see a problem with that & I nearly fainted. Of course I didn't tell them that I intended to sing the lyrics to our strongest anti-war song. Of course I didn't tell them the subject of Iraq ran through it. Then again they didn't seem even curious about what the music sounded like let alone the lyrical content. It would be interesting to see what the establishment made of heavily politicised Space Punk in a band with a Greek name Pnevma meaning the spirit of life.... the gift from the gods that allows us to see beyond life-destroying illusion.

Our band playing in the environment I was to embrace for the show had been one of the main aims both I & the director had agreed on. That these lyrics were represented in some form was a condition that he promised in order to get Kiran & I on the show. When it looked like the full band were allowed to play at the polo club ball both he & I were clicking our heels with excitement. I was allowed to go away & make all the necessary phone calls.

When the meeting ended I walked out of the board-room and I stood in the foyer.

'This is such a stagnant environment,' I said. 'This is like every other office in the world.'

I turned around to them.

'I'll tell you what I would do if I were the boss. Maybe we can do this. I've got a mate in Bristol,' I said, 'who could come and paint a beautiful mural in the entrance to this office block so that it would be the envy of all other executives. People would be thinking, "Oh, we're off to a board meeting at Gerard Braughn's!" and looking forward to it. Let's say you come into the entrance and there is this amazing fresco. You name a subject, he can paint it. I'm not talking about a graffiti artist here. He is a Renaissance artist in the classic style, and he is fast. He is a lot faster than Leonardo and Michelangelo and he ain't a lot different in terms of his technique. He has studied these people. He went to the Chelsea School of Art. He hated it, he left like all good artists would leave. He was too extreme for them, but his subject matter isn't extreme. His technique would blow the minds of all the people that you want to make a deal with. At the moment, they walk into this building and it looks like a doctor's surgery. And you expect these people to work well in this environment? I bet they don't, but that would change. As for the exterior, well, I would have all that frescoed and muralled as well and the helicopter! We can't really expect Gerard to go that far, though. Enough to have this foyer painted. What do you think of that? Do you think he would go for that?'

Well, I have to say that when I was standing in the foyer with the business advisor she was just totally amused by my behaviour, she was excited when I laid out some of the things I was going to have to do, and things that they wanted me to do and I was prepared to do.

Anyway, I was standing in the foyer and the PA, bless her, says,

'Craig, this is your moment.'

There is nothing more sexually appealing than a woman who turns around and admires the situation you are in and then eggs you on in true, Lady Macbeth fashion.

'Do it Craig, do it now, if you don't do it now you will kick yourself. Do something with your artist friend, get him down here this week.'

'Oh, do you think so? This week? As part of the film thing?'

Now, bear in mind that this woman had a positive influence to play on this plot, I will give her that and this is why I was so disgusted that she let me down at the end.

'We can get him in to paint a picture for Gerard,' I said, 'that would be nice, wouldn't it?'

'Oh, that would be lovely,' she said, 'what do you think he should paint?'

'Well,' I said, 'we've got a helicopter and horses, so it's obvious. He paints a winged horse. The two things Gerard loves most: going up in his helicopter and riding a horse! And that's so cultured it's beyond reproach. I bet he can turn up and in a day we'll paint a horse.'

'How much will he want paying? I don't think we can justify this to the accountants.'

'He won't want paying,' I said. 'What we can do out of common decency is pay for his rail travel and his materials. I'll take it out of our weekly spending money'

He insisted on paying for them himself and he tried to pay for his rail ticket too when he arrived at the end of the week.

Kiran & I weren't having any of that. It would cost a fraction of what Armada had given us.