Brian Gill - Lionsongs: Home
The Zundapp HS750 was a German built motorcycle, manufactured in 1942 and was the other vehicle of choice for Biddly and his companion Chum in the middle phase of the War.
Biddly? Who the hell is Biddly? Or Uber-Reichmarschall Otto Von Biddly, to give him his current title. Biddly is a super-hero who is not bound by time and space and rides an old Bella R201 motor scooter and latterly the Zundapp, the engines of which are so powerful that they can propel Biddly through the space-time barrier, enabling him to go anywhere and any-when in space-time. His best friend is a dog called Chum, who always sits at the front of the Bella, with his paws on the handlebars, leading obsrvers to believe that he was actually driving, which he wasn't of course. This seating arrangement was one of the reasons the R201 was retired in favour of the HS750, which had a sidecar in which Chum could sit. The HS750 was also equiped with an 8mm light machine gun, mounted on the sidecar, which it was Chum's job to operate, as well as being the observer and which he would have done had he been able to get his right paw through the trigger guard.
When I was three years old until I was about seven, I took on the nick-name bunnygill, joined up in one word with no capital letters. I'd just learned to talk, let alone read and write and would not have not have known a capital letter if it walked up and bit me on the leg. The name came about when one day my dear old Mum said to me,
‘Are you my shilling squirrel or are you my two-bob bunny?’
As, at age three I neither knew nor cared what either entity was and had not learned to make sundry gestures indicating ambivalence, I earnestly replied, with my best 'cuddle me' expression,
‘Why, I’m your two-bob bunny, please Mummy!' Or so I was told...
In choosing this child’s nick-name, I unwittingly set in motion a chain of events that in the years that followed would inextricably link me with Biddly. Now there would be two of us – could this have something to do with the inevitability of my choosing to be the two-bob bunny?
It was shortly after this memorable event – it’s not every day of the week that one gets a new name - that I had my first imaginary conversation with Biddly. I have never been sure whether I gave him the name or he gave it to me, but he was an entity whom I immediately identified as a friend. The all-knowing and wise super-being, as old as time itself, known as Biddly. He appeared in the sideway between my house and next door, where my best friend Brian lived with his mum and dad, Auntie Jess and Uncle Len and an old collie dog called Judy. He was riding a strange looking motorbike, which seemed to appear from nowhere, I seemed to recognise the bike from somewhere or some when and I realised years later that it was the same one as my friend Brian had when he was 17, some 4 years later, but the strangeness of that detail had not made itself felt at that time. On the bike with him was a remarkable dog, Chum, I later learned. The fact was, that there was nowhere that the motor bike could have come from; it had seemed to just appear from the direction of the garage and all there was in the garage was an inspection pit in the floor, covered with old, oily planks, but I had never seen inside the pit; there could have been another world down there for all I knew. Biddly knelt down and put a gentle arm around my shoulder as I was sitting in my toy car with my eyes popping out of my head in amazement and looking down at me with a smile said,
'How are you today, bunnygill?'
‘Why is that important to you?’ I replied, whilst wondering how he knew my new name, '…and what's your name, anyway?' I added almost as an afterthought.
He replied with a smile, 'Why, I'm Biddly. Captain Biddly for now, at your service, bunnygill.'
Chum had been sitting quietly, looking from me to Biddly as we spoke and back, as if watching a game of tennis. Finally, he said ‘Woof…’, looked at us both in turn, and then got up and ran up the garden to chase a butterfly.
'I'm not well, Biddly.' I said conversationally, suddenly accepting this new set of very confusing circumstances,
He said with a frown, 'Oh...? What’s the matter with you then?'
Triumphantly, I replied, 'I've got a bloody fine cold!' As soon as I'd said this, auntie Jess, who had been standing at her kitchen door the other side of the sideway, listening intently to me and Biddly conversing, burst out laughing! She was used to my antics. One day I climbed on her dustbin to sing her a song - there were two dustbins in the sideway, up against both our garden fences and I used to get up and sing my favourite song to her, which that day was 'How much is that doggy in the window', which Lita Rosa used to sing. I'd actually met Lita Rosa in the Dinner Gong restaurant one day, where my mum used to take me after school most days. She gave me an autographed photo, which I was thrilled about; I thought I was the only little boy who'd got one. I was quite confused. I thought Lita Rosa was family. I thought that she was somehow also my mummy! This particular day, I'd climbed up and had just begun my song... 'How much is that doggie in the....' and disappeared! I heard auntie Jess say with some alarm 'Aw-er!...Bun's just vanished!'
The lid of the dustbin had collapsed and I'd ended up in the dustbin; very scared and shocked by my sudden change of status. My mum came out the back gate, hearing the commotion and said 'Serve you right bunny; I told you not to climb on the dustbin'.
I don't think Biddly ever found out about me falling in the dustbin; at least, he never said.
'You’re a very, very lucky young man, bunnygill',
'I suppose I am, Biddly'. 'Do you really exist Biddly? I mean really...?'
'Yes, the three of us really exist. I’ll prove it to you'.
'Can you?'
'Yes I can. Think of a number…'
'I don’t know many numbers, Biddly'.
'How many exactly?'
'3'
'And what are they bunnygill?'
'1, 2 and 3'.
'And what does 1, 2 and 3 make?'
'786?'
'Precisely! So now you know another 4, including 786!'
‘Wait a minute, 4...? 4...? What’s FOUR..? You never mention anything about a 4...'
‘Four's just another number, bunnygill – and incidentally, you now know 5 new numbers…’
'5...? 5...'? And what the hell is FIVE..?'
'5? Oh, that's yet another number.'
'We seem to be getting into some kind of philosophical loop here, Biddy...and you haven't explained why 1, 2 and 3 makes 786 yet, either! …and don’t tell me 7, 8 and 6 makes 123…! Oh no! That’s another bloody number, isn’t it Biddly?
‘It is and it probably does - somewhere in this Universe, bunnygill, but not here and not now. "Look...", he suddenly said a tad impatiently, "I know what I’m talking about; trust me…"
‘Well... if you say so Biddly… how many numbers are there in all, anyway?’
‘The exact number of numbers that you can know – that it is possible to know – is infinite – and before you ask, bunnygill, infinity is a very, very big number; bigger than the whole World.’
Bunnygill thought about this revelation for a second, and then replied, ‘And do you actually expect me to believe that infinity exists as anything but a mathematical concept, Biddly?’
‘Ah…’ said Biddly ‘Now you have asked what is known as a VBBQ - a very big boy's question. You should do well in big school when you start it bunnygill, but somehow I don't think you will.'
'I sometimes think Biddly, that if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t know any mathematics at all!’
‘I am Biddly!'
'And I am bunnygill!'
'And that's my mum', bunnygill added, much as an afterthought.
'Er...no. It isn't actually your mum'.
'Who is it then?' Now feeling a little smug in his certitude.
'She’s the mystery; you’ll meet her one day'.
'Tomorrow, Biddly?'
'No, on another day, when you’re a big boy bunnygill. You'll see her another day'.
His favoured means of transport in the early years was a German-made Bella R201 motor scooter, not actually built until 1954 and how Biddly come to have one during the Great War is still a mystery. I came to find out that it had had a special 200cc engine, developed in a secret Werhmacht underground weapons laboratory, that had so far managed to escape serious damage as a result of the intense bombing. This amazing engine had such immense power that it could actually propel the Bella scooter through the infinity of inter-dimensional time and space and I imagine it was unique as they only had time to build one before the facility was overrun by the advancing Russians, who didn't comprehend the significance of the mysterious looking scooter, which had been hurriedly left in the lab's car park by a departing German technician, where they almost missed it.
The only other Bella that I knew of in existence was co-incidentally driven by my oldest living friend in the real world and my very first next-door neighbour, who was and in all probability still is named Brian and who is about eleven years older than me, but Brian’s Bella was painted red, so Biddly could not have borrowed it or anything...
Biddly's was painted overall in matt Reichluftfarhtministerium 02 grau with a mottled dankel grau on the upper surfaces and a stencilled black palm tree motif on each side of the front mudguard, which feature was probably added later by the German officer in Benghazi, from whom he'd won it in an unlikely game of cards one night in the Blue Orchid bar. The mudguard was unusually large and resembled a parrot's beak in appearance. This 2-tone colour scheme in all probability started off as a nice, glossy factory finish called 'Berlin Mist' or ‘Bavarian Autumn’ or something similar, but was weathered and scuffed to it's later shade and in this latter form this colour scheme was the one apparently favoured by Biddly during his war years.
Biddly, who had assumed the identity of a British Army captain, was serving as a part-time, under-cover intelligence officer with the Long Range Desert Group in 1941, which was not a secret organisation, but became more secretive while Biddly was serving with it. Along with the Bella, he also acquired from the German, who was very drunk at the time, an Afrika Corps officer’s tunic, complete with an iron cross and it's accompanying faded red, white and black ribbon, a white silk scarf and a pair of Werhmacht-issue desert goggles which apparel he was subsequently rarely seen without.
It has already been pointed out that the scooter in question was not actually manufactured until 1954, but this is not an un-common occurrence where Biddly and his Bella motor scooter are involved, for nothing is quite what it seems in Biddly's world.
Biddly disappeared one cold winter's day when there were several feet of snow on the ground. He apparently suddenly got the urge to go up the back garden to look for a bone he'd buried some days before and the only words that he left me with were...
'I've got to go up the back garden now - I might be gone some time'.
I should say at this point that I suspected that Biddly was not exactly human. He was, as far as I could make out, though he never confirmed it, half dog, half bear and half human. Thinking about it, I don't remember ever having a good look at his face. 150% is of course, far more than it should be, but as I said, nothing is quite what it seems in Biddly's world. I may have misunderstood things entirely. After all, it was many years ago and it all seems a little hazy and dreamlike now, but that was my impression of reality at the time.
The day he disappeared, I watched him slowly making his way up the garden path, fighting against the snow, great quantities of which continued to swirl into the kitchen through the open back door, blown by heavy gusts of a chill winter's wind, until his shape became one with the swirling snow that my Mum was endeavouring to keep from invading her nice warm kitchen, until she finally made me come in and close the door. That was the last time I ever saw Biddly...or was it?
(The adventures of Biddly are for another time and another place)
Back to my conversations with Phil....
We also discussed at length the meaning of time and whether space itself has a sub-atomic structure, and just how bendy can light actually BE, anyway?
The original source of light and Everything Else appears to have been, according to Le Maitre, a primeval atom of infinitesimally small spatial dimensions - and personally I would go further than this and say that in all probability, the singularity which started it all had no spatial or temporal dimensions at all - it measured zero * zero * zero * zero. As one of the zeros is time, there would of course be no clock running and because the distance from any point to any other point would have been zero, it follows that anything (or anyone) traveling in the pre-Big Bang Universe or Multi-verse or whatever we care to call it, would have been, by virtue of being everywhere at once and everything at once, omnipotent, omnipresent and eternal. Ring any bells?
It is clear, to me at least, that this domain existed only in a number of other dimensions that as yet are undiscovered and un-quantifiable. After all, if one wishes to compress the whole of Creation into a space of zero dimensions, logic would dictate that it has to go somewhere/somewhen else!
You can say that the 'zero' Universe was pretty much infinitely hot and infinitely dense and perhaps this proximity to infinity was the event that caused the Big Bang - a misnomer if ever there was one, as it was certainly not big; it was infinitesimally small and it didn't go 'Bang' or 'Boo' or even Bing-Bong!' It made no noise whatsoever. It would be more accurate to say that the 'big light' was turned on.
That is, of course, if infinity and 'true' zero can ever be reached. Perhaps touching infinity or zero was actually the event that triggered the Big Bang. The pre-Big Bang Universe could have existed for eternity or an instant; as there was no time, it would have made no difference. Time only appeared 'later', after the Big Bang with gravity and space and matter. All there would have been before this epoch was a point of zero dimensions consisting of very hot, very dense energy, but of course a very pure and special energy, for it was destined to become the Universe(s). It was only after the Big Bang that the time clock started running and things stopped being instantaneous, time began 'slowing down' and the bigger the Universe became, the slower the clock ticked and continues ticking.
I think that there must be two alternative possibilities regarding whether it is possible or not to reach both infinity and zero. Imagine the last few instants of the known Universe, beset by a catastrophic gravitational collapse when it has reached the limit of its expansion. The inrushing mass, which would have long before ceased being matter and would now be in the final phase of being completely broken down into irreducibly small components, way past being white hot and of unimaginable density, has the merest sliver of time left and now the only points left to go are infinity and zero and eternity, because if there’s no space, there can’t be any time.
At that point it reaches a crossroads with an infinite number of roads leading away from it, like the exact centre of the body of a rolled-up hedgehog with an infinite number of spines pointing off in all directions, representing all possible Universes. Each spine has a different set of dimensional pre-requisites; a different set of rules. Some may well have the roughly the same or similar features to our own Universe others might be completely alien and impossible to quantify.
So, you are at the centre of future creation. This is where it is all about to happen. This point measures zero*zero*zero*zero in the old Universal money, which means that it never was and in its current format never will be any part of our Universe, must still exist in some dimension or dimensions, but dimensions outside of universal existence, because remember the location we are now at is at the ‘non-universe’ point.
It can do one of two things. First, it can ‘bounce’ back out the way it came in, possibly an infinite number of times, entropy permitting, or if not a limited number of times, with the amplitude of each bounce gradually decreasing and therefore never quite reaching the centre of the crossroads, the zero and infinite numbers not quite reached. In this case, the Universe will exist recurrently, possibly an infinite number of times, but the basic components will be the same each time. Including us.
I believe that we could be truly eternal because we evolved from the original Big Bang and as there is, in this first case, nowhere else to go and because all things, whether matter or energy, continue to exist in one form or another, we must be included.
I can’t guarantee that an individual identity will remain intact, but all the particles and energy or whatever else of which we are comprised most certainly will. We could be optimistic and say that any system which has the savvy to evolve itself into the Universe would not unduly put out by remembering which atom to put where in the making of a living, breathing person. However, the human self is uniquely formatted for life on this planet and as far as we know, no other. If we were re-created in another part of the Universe, in a completely different environment; say an atmosphere of methane and ten times closer to the local star, for example, then we’d look and feel very different, because life in such an environment would have a completely different set of pre-requisites and rules.
The ‘bounce' would be caused by the switching off of gravity when all the space disappears and the spatial and temporal dimensions near zero and the opposing force of pressure, cause by the immense density, forces everything outward again instantaneously in a Big Bang, creating time-space and gravity as it expands. This pressure, it would seem, could be Einstein's 'cosmological constant' which he put forward as the opposing force of gravitational force.
The second of the options is that the 'very hot ball' may reach the zero point at the centre of our ‘hedgehog’ and be in a true state of non-existence, where all values are either zero or infinite. For example; the settings for temperature, density, and curvature of space would all be infinite and the settings for space-time and gravity would be zero. In this case, the force of gravity would prove to be stronger than the pressure of the compressed energy which desperately wants to force everything outwards. This situation would obtain until the ball reduced in size so that space-time equaled zero and gravity disappeared as a result.
The determining factor which ‘nudges’ the point to explode toward any one of the ‘hedgehog’ spines and thereby become this or that particular universe, are of course unknown and I don’t see any way that they could be discovered. So, if our universe is indeed heading for the ‘big crunch’ of a gravitational collapse, whether we will know if it comes back again the same old place or spins off into another universe entirely, depend on whether we can develop technology to enable a human observer to ‘go down with the ship’ and actually observe a complete gravitational collapse of the Universe. I should think personally that it’s very unlikely.
To answer the original question... it follows that light has the quality of being infinitely bendy!
But, we have so far been unable to reach a satisfactory conclusion to this conundrum. Still; 'pretty damned bendy' ought to cover it for now.
However, to get back to the point, he has still not given me expressed, categorical permission to print his lyrics, which is unfortunate because I feel that I do certainly have a virtual right; a moral right; I have his tacit approval...besides, he's hardly likely to sue me; he's my mate! And I've sort of promised to make him a miwyonaire as well, if the song is subsequently taken up by say, Stephen Spielberg and used as the theme tune for his next blockbuster, not in this life perhaps, but assuredly in the next!
I can’t believe it. Almost two years have gone by since I first started the site and it’s time to look at what I’ve accomplished – right, done that - very little actually!
I’d intended to put all my songs on the site, complete, modern, well considered and well presented renditions of my songs, as they stood and in which I had complete confidence, but it has never happened. The reason why it hasn’t happened is firstly because of my basic disposition, which is, as my physics teacher Bob Slaughter described in my report at the end of the 4th year when I was just 15, ‘able but indolent’
Well, he wasn’t wrong and I have no complaints. Of course there are other factors. Firstly, I live in Thailand and it’s not easy to retain a sharp focus on work matters when you’re living in paradise; surrounded by beautiful girls, fabulous food, spectacularly good weather all year round, dramatic tropical storms, elephants, tigers, butterflies as big as your hand, huge snails, gigantic caterpillars, and can afford everything you can think of, except the shiny, new Porsches and Ferraris in the showroom on the Sukumvit Rd., still, as they say, ‘been there; done that’ in a previous existence. Also, recording one's songs has changed out of recognition since I was a lad. It has gone from singing and playing a number with a guitar in one take, a couple of takes if you had a Revox or similar, to equipping yourself with a digital multi-track recorder, a keyboard, assorted widgetry and a computer to hold it all together and the expert knowledge to operate all of the above and you find that bravado only just won’t cut the mustard. Saying with a brave face ‘Yeah, I can play the piano – I mean, how hard can it be?’ is just not the way to go.
Basically, I need a PhD in rocket science and a pilot’s license in order to get up to speed with the technology and frankly, who’s got the time or the inclination?
Plus the fact, I’ve been too busy watching Barack Obama duking it out with John McCain and Fox News and I’ve been getting very exasperated with the way Fox's ‘fair and balanced’ coverage has been linking Barack Obama to Stalin, Hitler, Count Dracula and The Devil himself! Well Fox, as an Englishman with absolutely no interest in the scary world that you present and with no axe to grind at all in the upcoming US election, let me say this. How on earth can you claim to be 'fair and balanced' when your entire broadcast is dedicated to re-electing the Republican Party? It would be different if you owned up to being brazenly biased, but Bill O’Reilly and the incomparably one-sided Sean Hannity especially, shout down and browbeat anybody who is not an extreme, right-wing, neo-con. Fair and balanced? My left foot! The only one of you that says anything remotely sane, let alone ‘fair and balanced’ is your ‘token democrat’, Alan Coombs, and I think it is sad that you end up shouting even him down – and he is staff! He must think that he’s got the worst job in the world. Fancy coming in to work and having to face you lot every morning. If I hate it so much, why then do I watch Fox so much? Maybe because one day I pray that you will find something good to say about someone other than the likes of Genghis Khan on one of his stroppy days.
It reminds me of the sad history of the extinct Creaky-Croaky bird that ruled the skies many millions of years ago. Its evolution suffered an unfortunate turn due to magnetic fluctuations caused by irregularities in the Earth’s rotation, which had a genealogical impact. The Creaky-Croaky’s right wing began to mutate and over the eons became so hideously over developed that the poor creature became capable of only flying in ever-decreasing right-hand circles and eventually lost the power of flight altogether, inhibited by its grotesque right wing. Earthbound and only able to stumble its sad path of ever decreasing circles, it grew bad tempered and learned its unpleasant guttural cry of ‘Creak, croak…creak, croak' and made noises which sounded remarkably like the words 'Arrrk arrrk, palling around with Reverend Wright and Bill Ayres..arrrrk!' Before it finally became extict, in frustration it took to pecking at other birds that were still capable of soaring to the left and then to the right and of undertaking normal, straight and level flight.
I digress. Now where was I?
There is also a creeping paranoia that if you give it your best shot with the knowledge and tools you have, all that might result is mediocrity and that is worse than crap! That does not impress anybody and worst of all does not impress ME, which is after all the whole point of the exercise. So, how to exit this particular doldrum? How to obtain the necessary inspiration to produce my songs the best way that I can? How to construct a body of work that will impress my peer group and most of all, impress ME? I have one saving feature and that is that I don’t care a bugger about whether the man on the Clapham omnibus likes my work or not. He is not and has never been my audience. No, what I want…what I crave is peer group acceptance. To have my mates and other musicians of a similar standard listen to my work and be pleasantly surprised, if not impressed. To elicit the response 'Yeah... not bad' instead of 'Brian? Brian? Who the fuck is Brian?' So I can say to some people who will still slag it off for whatever reason, ‘No excuses, it was the best I could do – in fact it was everything I could do’. Another saving feature is…I have two saving features; it’s not a requirement for me to make any money from this project. I have enough money and that is wonderful, because it means that I need not have any fear of commercial pressure tainting what I produce. Like Morecambe and Wise and Laurel and Hardy, that other famous double act, Music Business, is no longer a consideration for me.
I’ve also decided to write a book, using some of the ideas I’ve included in the ‘Stories’ section of the site and also in some of the song histories. I’ve tried mixing it all up in the ‘Stories’ with blogs, political rants and raves, observations and jokes and it has become confusing and unmanageable. The book will be about my early life in the bands and all the people I’ve met along the way. It will be called, temporarily at least, ‘Ok boys, from the top...’
UPDATE... I've decided not to call the book 'Ok boys, from the top...', which is, let's face it, a bit too polite...a bit too Christian...a bit naff! Instead I have nicked a line out of one of my songs called 'I Won't Dance' - the title will be 'That Boogie Beat Damn Killed My Soul!' ...much better.
The deal with Von Biddly is that I have received permission from the highest level to write a book that gives an account of this remarkable character's life. Central to my decision to write this account is my discovery of the only person who has ever gotten a clear view of him without one of his disguises and also come close to being bitten by his companion Chum, when he was mistaken for an enemy agent in the dead of night and then foolishly started eating a biscuit. The next instant Chum had snatched the biscuit from practically the back of the person's throat and almost taken off his head in the process. This person has agreed to come out into the open from his secret location in Germany, where he has been for many, many years and illustrate the book for me. His identity must for now remain a secret for obvious reasons...shhhh...mum's the word.
This book will be called 'Von Biddly's War'.
I’m also changing the way the stories and song histories is presented on the page. It probably wouldn’t get me through my ‘O’ level English language exam these days and putting a line of space between paragraphs is totally wrong, but my eyes aren’t as good as they were and trying to read a whole page of print in one go against a black background on a computer screen is more than my little brain can take; my eyes are beginning to rotate in their sockets! So, I have broken each page up into separate sections, each section being three or four inches long. I’ve tried to keep some logic in the exercise; so that I'm not writing a line like 'I love you' and putting the words on separate lines! It was done mainly to give my poor old eyes a break.
By the way, I did get an 'O' level in English language. 40 odd years ago, it was. Yeah, nothing to it, really. Can't see why some people make such a big fuss about it...