The Ghost at Besford Court ...

1 January 2007
Besford

As our time at Besford draws to a close, I’m minded to share the tale of my sightings (???) of the Besford ghost, one with which I am intimately familiar, a spectre that inhabits the netherworld whose marches rub against those of our apartment, specifically our bedroom.

I know this ghost, we have shared the intersection between her world (she is, indeed, female) and mine. We have shared this connexion in the magical hours between midnight and dawn but we have also shared space in the early evening, in the morning and as we retire.

This existence of this ghost, if her ‘being’ depends on the acknowledgement of her occasional presence, is due to my belief and no one else’s. My wife steadfastly refuses to ‘believe’ or, perhaps more likely, chooses to deny that she crosses or touches the world of living humans in our bedchamber. Indeed, her steadfast refusal to even acknowledge or discuss the possibility of a ghost where we sleep is firm and unshakeable!

Inevitably there are, as is the case with virtually any long inhabited place in England, tales of ghosts associated with Besford. Although the main court is still just shy of a century old, there were residences, messuages and defences, perhaps even a moat (well, it sure looks as if there might have been a moat to me), that antedated by centuries the more recent stone structure where we reside. A lot of life has trod this ground – not all of it can have been happy and we’re told that unhappiness is the midwife of phantasms.

Whatever the story, and no one can substantiate (nor, equally, has anyone ever denied) the existence of the ghost in our home, I have ineluctable and undeniable evidence of her passages into or across our world. This evidence is as plain as the nose on your face.

And what is that evidence? Simple, smell. That’s right, my ghost has a scent. It’s a wonderful, old-world, sweet, slightly heavy perfume. The sort that my great aunts used, the sort that my Mother favoured in the 1950’s or, before we were introduced through the medium of my birth, what I imagine my Mom favoured in the 1940’s; a ‘Shalimar’ type fragrance, flowery, lingering, just airy enough to be wafted along by even a faint breeze.

I’m lying in the bed, it’s, say, 9 PM. I’m reading, it’s late autumn and outside the night is well and truly established. My wife and daughter are not here, they are visiting relatives in Switzerland. It’s quiet and calm, I am settling nicely when an almost imperceptible hint of a breeze passes across the bed. It is a movement that I would most probably never even notice but for its cargo, a perfume from another age.

Funnily, I have never been afraid of our ghost. To me she is a benign presence, entering our bedroom, not from the hall or any adjacent room but from one of a myriad of dimensions that touches ours. She comes in, so softly, so gently that the only perceptible sign of her presence is the sweet, comforting perfume that washes over the covers and quietly soothes me with its presence.

But our ghost never stays long. Her scent washes over us and then passes on. Sometimes she flickers in, her scent leaves and then returns, like the calm waves of the Mediterranean or the Caribbean. Eventually, though, after a minute or, sometimes, even two, she passes on, heading, I suppose, through a shimmering barrier between one world and another. I wonder which one is her home …

And that, my friends, is what I know of our Ghost. Once, before I learned that to mention her was to invite trouble, my wife brought out a couple of scented candles that we keep in the room. Demanding that I sniff them, I did and, to placate her, I agreed that the smell of one was precisely the smell of my Ghost. Of course, we never light that candle and, don’t tell the wife, its perfume is not much like that of my Spectre, she favours a much sweeter and more lingering fragrance.

Toilet Entertainment (cave lector)

31 December 2006
Besford

For my money, the very best places for food, drink and recreational urination are those in which the staff – clearly concerned about ensuring that whether the customer is there to ingurgitate or gormandize, every part of the ‘experience’ should be enjoyable – has placed a large block of ice into each urinal just before the dinner rush. When required to make a visit to the facility, the user is entertained by the prospect of trying to help melt the block of ice. Sometimes it’s clearly too large a task for one man to accomplish in one visit. In those cases there appears to be some unspoken male bonding thing that persuades the previous user to see if he can at least split the block into more manageable pieces so that those who come after him can carry on the work.

I’ve run into these frozen urinals in various places. Most recently I encountered one in Spain.

On a commercial basis, especially for bars, they make sense, there is something addictive about trying to melt a small iceberg that encourages the purchase of more beer.

Happy New Year!