I saw Frank Today

Leeds was like an emerald city that Christmas.

It was nearly the end of the Year 2000 and we'd all survived. The Millennium. No earthquakes, no Armageddon, no planes falling from the sky!

It was good to be alive. 

In the urban sleet I could see the blurred glow of fairy lights in the shop windows, as eager shoppers hurried for last minute gifts before the Big Day.

It was December 23rd and most office workers had finished for the holidays that afternoon. Straight out into the wet snowy world of city centre stores rammed with hopeful punters, briefcases held above their heads.

I was in town on business with the Council and, my meeting done, the last of the year, I put my coat collar up, case in hand and entered the winter streets.

Finely garbed manikins behind glass greeted me with their outstretched fingers, offering seasonal combos of scarves and gloves in the paisley style popular that year. Coloured lights flickered around them in their spotless, lifeless and forever stylish windows, the frozen rain running down the glass, creating a muted scene, like a Christmas card dropped from a building and descending further and further below.

I was heading home but first wanted to check whether I could grab a Kaiser Chiefs T-Shirt, a present for my daughter. They'd created a stir that year with their I Predict a Riot and now we had a young fan at home. Yorkshire lads too, so it must be alright. 

The big stores like Lewis's and Debenhams were just brimming, the escalators jam-packed, as if a ground invasion was imminent and everyone was going up to the roof.

I passed my favourite pizza joint just off the Headrow and I could still hear the owner, a feisty Italian raggaza, shouting at her young beleaguered staff to hurry up with the orders. She sounded less threatening through the icy rain, her voice tempered in the crystals. It was always a spectacle eating there. I was in a rush to get home but I did wonder when I'd next sit down for a Margherita and a coffee. The new year still seemed like the uppermost book, within sight but still unreachable.

The sun had set. Night had come early. It was December. My Joe 90 specs were dripping wet. The whole dark city looked like an Atkinson Grimshaw left out in the rain.

I passed a tiny newsagent wedged into the side of the Victorian market's entrance. The keeper looked like a sentry guarding the town's souls bottled in the Christmas lights. I bought a walnut whip.

I remember my late Mum bringing home walnut whips from BHS after her Saturday job at a clothes shop was done for the day. Preston will have looked just the same in sleet, back then in the distant Seventies, a city of the past, but it didn't seem to bother her in her big hat and warm woollen coat.

A tear formed in my eye. Sometimes life was just too real. A head-on rush of nowness and all tomorrow's doubts gushing towards you like the dirty seething bore of the rivers, dragging up every sordid deed there ever was in our ancient towns.

In the distance one of Leeds's many arcade clocks tolled four. Four o'clock and it felt like midnight, where everyone was up and dressed for shopping. 

Tempus fugit. What would happen if all the clocks stopped at once. I had this feeling that something would arrive, would emerge, would rise from the murky wharfs and take us all with it back down below.

That 'dreadful something' a poet once wrote.

Something about the city.

Milton Keynes was a UFO they reckoned. I thought Leeds was too. The Northern one. The massive trailer to be picked up second, en-route to God knows where in the dark cosmos, it's city-folk the food of whatever was up there. Even the strays would go and all those millions of pigeons. 

Leeds's civic emblems are owls. They're everywhere. Golden ones. I've never seen any though. Owls, just tons of pigeons. They don't get a look in really in civic life.

There's a stray dog called Civic. I've seen him. He lives under the steps of the Civic Theatre. I hope he's warm enough in the cold weather. Thinking about him makes me sad. Not like those Victorian's who got dead robins on their Christmas cards. I've never seen a dead robin and I'm not keen on feeling sad, especially at Christmas.

I saw a plane fly over from the airport. Then another. Missiles of happiness heading somewhere hot I guessed. Bacardis round the pool. Rejuvenate the batteries. A crash trolley for the soul.

I moved on, a goldfish in the high street flow, surging ever forward. I remembered how the City's river had flowed backwards when the open cast flooded. Like time in reverse. Maybe one day people will visit themselves and fix all their mistakes.

A woman came out of the city dental practice holding her mouth. She must have been in agony to go on the 23rd December. I remembered meeting my Mum outside the dentists in the Seventies.  I'd had an extraction and was high on gas from that disgusting mask. I had blood dribbling down my chin. It was like an awkward dizzying dream. I found out later that my Mum hadn't met me at all.

It was here that I bumped into Frank getting off a bus. 

Frank Root my old work colleague from years back.

"Hi Frank!"

He stared at me. I thought he was straining for recognition, but there was something else. Something distracting him.

"Frank it's me, Richard. We worked together at Rees's. Remember?"

The sleet had turned to flakes of snow and an air of excitement and semi-panic gripped the city centre, as shoppers and office workers generally speeded up.

I recalled how Frank, an elderly gent back then even, used to stop every day for lunch in our office at 12.30, take out his snap and unpack six small cooked chicken legs wrapped in foil and slice two big fresh tomatoes into quarters. Seasoned with salt and pepper and washed down with a mug of tea, woe betied anyone who tried to disturb him in that glorious thirty minutes of greasy fingered munching. He did it every single day. 

Yep, a champion tomato grower at his most happy in the greenhouse, he was his own man our Frank. A working pensioner. Old school. After many years of marriage, his wife had died and his son had moved to New York. His daughter had lived nearby and kept an eye on him.

"You been Christmas shopping Frank? What you been buying then?"

He looked at me blankly, my chatter not registering with him at all.

I looked down at what he had in his hand, expecting a bag from Harvey Nicks or somewhere.

It was a gas mask. An old one. Tatty and somewhat to my surprise, smoking a little.

"There's something coming Richard".

"Sorry. What's that Frank?"

"There's something coming, Richard, from the sky."

"Sorry, I don't know what you mean Frank" I replied, non-plussed, looking up.

Frank then grabbed me by the shoulders and spoke with slow and ominous power.

"There is something coming from the sky Richard. Beware!"

At this Frank turned and trudged off into the maelstrom of people on the pavement.

I was completely at a loss as to what had just happened and couldn't make any sense of it at all. In the end I decided he'd had a few and caught the bus into town to have a few more. It was Christmas after all.

With twenty minutes before my train home I nipped into Argos and picked up the new improved version of the George Foreman Grill. It was a last minute Christmas gift for my Dad, so he could taste the American Dream.

I boarded my train to Agbrigg, clutching onto George. It was really snowing now and with tomorrow being Christmas Eve it was looking like a white Christmas after all. No more dreaming Bing, it's going to happen.

I showed my ticket to the conductor, sat back and enjoyed the season's spirit as it washed over me. 

I was riding home for Christmas.

A sweet golden fricassee would be cooking on the stove. My wife made it every Christmas Eve, a recipe given to her by her Mum from the old country. The sauce was to die for, the capers adding that touch of mystery as no-one really knew what they were. I told our young daughter they were little aliens that got distributed among the human population in jars. It was an effective vehicle for travel, the jar and reminded them of home, Caper World, where they lived in small glass houses under a pickled sun.

It was really delicious, the fricassee and the bottle of vino helped make the mood merry and bright.

"I met Frank today darling."

"Frank?"

"Yes, you know, Frank Root, the old guy I used to work with."

"You met Frank Root today?"

"Yes, in Leeds, he got off a bus"

"That impossible Richard. I spoke to his daughter just an hour ago."

"And?"

"Richard, Frank died yesterday morning. She rang to let you know."

"But I spoke to him today"

"You must be imagining it love. Frank's dead. I'm sorry"

Disconcerted completely by this news, I finished my wine and washed up.

Was I losing my mind?  I remember him telling me. Something is coming from the sky Goddam it! He told me!

After another glass of wine in the kitchen I began to feel lighter and after reading to my daughter and tucking her in, explaining that Santa would already be high in the clouds somewhere in the world, landing on houses just like ours, I hung up her stocking and kissed her goodnight.

"Goodnight Daddy. I love you. Mummy too"

I went back downstairs altogether brighter, the subtle hues of the tree lights in the hallway reminding me of the magic of yuletide and the magnificent power the season held, giving us the meaning our live's yearned for all year long.

In the front room my wife seemed excited pouring our fireside tipple.

"I know it's traditional to give you one present on Christmas Eve, but I can't wait Richard. I have to tell you now!"

"What? What is it?"

"We're going to New York City next September, 2001! A week's holiday in the Big Apple! We go on the 8th! I've booked us flights, hotel and some fantastic days out like the boat to the Statue of Liberty on the 10th and guided tour of the World Trade Center on the 11th!"

She put her glass down and grasped my hand.

"Oh Richard, we'll be on top of the world!"