Alan Fletcher, graphic designer, died on September 21st. Together with partners Colin Forbes and Bob Gill, he was an inspiration to aspiring designers of my generation. Fletcher, Forbes and Gill, founded in 1962, revolutionised 'commercial art' in this country, creating design solutions that were rooted in ideas. We designers owe him much. In his own words, "Design is not a thing you do. It's a way of life."

This was his favourite part of day, when night critters were making for home and the day shift was stirring. Up ahead in the half-light, a heaving black mass in the road marked the spot where the crows were feasting on fresh road kill. Unlike most guys he knew, Morten would swerve or hoot to avoid squishing any living creature - except for rattlers that is. He loved animals and took pleasure in seeing them running wild out here in the desert; jackrabbits, raccoon, wood rats, javelina, mule deer, sometimes even a coyote - although numerous, the most elusive of all.

Despite owning a rifle, he never used it to hunt. Last time he’d taken a shot at a wild thing was on his tenth birthday. Taken out by his Pa to get his first deer, he could still recall the desperate feeling of revulsion and guilt that swamped him when he saw the creature in his sights fall in a heap after his bullet struck. Pa had never forgiven him for failing this bloody right of passage, the reminder only removed when Frank Smeijers was killed in a car crash three years later, six months after walking out on his family for the last time. Morten wasted no tears. He was glad when the old man left, relieved when he died. He stayed away from the funeral and never spoke of him.

Morton tucked two dollar bills under the Tabasco bottle and slid out of the booth. He removed his cap and combed his fingers through his greased hair before setting the hat back on his head, pulling the peak low. On the way to the register he passed a table occupied by a couple. A man aged around seventy by his reckoning and his companion. A woman with skin so tight her mouth was stretched into a permanent smile. Morton was reminded of a photograph he’d seen once in an old magazine of the mummified remains of a Japanese soldier from World War II, putting on a grin of death for the cameras, his helmet still in place, strapped up under his chin.

To mask his reason for staring a second too long, Morton nodded ‘hi’ as he passed. The woman’s arms sagged underneath, hanging like a turkey crop, blue veins criss-crossing under the pale freckled skin of her chest and shoulders. Morton had a rush of nausea and looked away. Old people gave him the creeps.

The cashier, a beaming Latino guy in neat white shirt, blue tie, sporting a pencil moustache like a 40’s gigolo in a black and white movie, took the check and rang up the total.

‘Everything OK for you sir?’

‘Yeah, jus’ fine’, said Morton, the toothpick between his teeth waggling up and down as he spoke. He took the change without checking it and moved towards the door.

‘Take care sir. You have a nice day now’.

Morton raised a hand in reply, using the other to pull on the door. He took in a lungful of outside air - still chilled - and pulled a cigarette from the pack in the top pocket of his shirt. Lighting it, he snapped the burning match in two, woodsman style, and flicked it away in a smoking arc.

Getting to the truck, he tugged at the large padlock on the toolbox in back. Satisfied, he unlocked the cab and climbed in. The Park was one thing, but outside he took no chances. He’d known guys get cleaned out while their vehicles stood in the lot for as long as it took to down breakfast or dinner. Charlie Beekman lost all his tools while he took a crap in the Seven Eleven outside of Ajo one time. Gone for five minutes max. With no insurance, it took all the money Charlie had and what he was forced to borrow to replace his gear. Swore he knew who’d done it, but could prove nothing. Threatened to shoot the son-of-a-bitch, but Charlie was full of shit. Didn’t even own a gun.

Today, Morton was working at Walmart on Highway 90 down in Sierra Vista. He had two days to redecorate the Photo Center, which would be closed for business for the duration. Two days was the time head office had allowed. Two days was as long as Morton would take.

He’d been working as a company painter for the last twenty months, travelling around four southwestern states. The job was OK. He liked the freedom. Moving on from place to place, two days here, three days there. No boss nosing over his shoulder. Yeah. He’d done worse. Couldn’t ever get free of the smell of paint though. It was under his nails, ground in to the cracks on his hands, on his eyelids, in his hair. Two shades mostly - 075 90 10 and 110 90 10 - Walmart wall colours. Morton was a two-tone, one company man. Except, that is, for his sidelines.

Morten Smeijers poked at the mashed remains of his Lumberjack Slam with the sharp end of a half-chewed quarter slice of wheat toast. He was full to busting: three buttermilk pancakes, a slice of grilled honey ham, two bacon strips, two sausage links and two eggs plus hash browns and choice of toast. Nothing for him and he still weighed in at a little under a hundred and twenty pounds in his bare feet, at five feet eleven and three quarter inches tall.

Morten eased his skinny ass to the right and released a silent whiff of gas, the red vinyl seat creaking under him and sounding, to all, like a shorts ripping fart. If anybody in Denny’s had been listening, that is. And if they’d heard, they wouldn’t have much cared. But it didn’t stop him from smiling his ratty smile at the thought, breakfast debris stuck hard to his tobacco coloured teeth.

The server, called Albert according to his name badge, came by with a refill. ‘You need the check’, he said, not waiting for an answer, slapping it face down on a clear patch of table. He limped off, the coffee as dark as his hands as it swilled violently around in the glass pot he carried.

Morten broke open a sachet of sugar and watched the granules pour into his mug. He turned over the check, adding up the total in his head before letting it fall back to the table like a spent leaf. Pushing up on the back of the booth, he raised his hips and dug deep into the left pocket of his Wranglers. He tossed a roll of bills down and peeled off a twenty and three singles, pocketing the balance before setting himself back into the seat. Then, unwrapping a toothpick, he set to work in the darker corners of his mouth.

Scanning the room from the frayed shadow under the peak of his cap, Morten reviewed his day so far. Out just as the sun lit up the east window of the trailer, he’d left the rest sleeping - his brother Ole, Mom, little Debra. Only Max the dog had stirred, sticking a flat dusty head out from his place under the steps as Morten sat to pull on his boots. Max stretched and yawned, his jaws shutting with a snap as he smiled up at Morten, his tail thrashing the corrugated trailer wall hard enough to make a dent.

‘Be still Max. Someone’ll be up to fix you somethin’ soon. I can’t take you today, OK? Max dropped his head and looked away, pretending not to care. He slumped down, resting his jaw on his paws, only his ears remaining alert.

Morten walked to the pick-up and opened the driver’s door. He never locked it in the Park. No one was going to make the trip out here to steal a truck, least not in the dark. This place had a reputation that the residents did nothing to counter, as on balance, it worked in their favour. Keeping town trash and passing vagrants away was one of them. Turning left out of the open gateway, Morten put his foot to the gas and headed into the sun, the radio pounding - 'and what you give is what you get'.

I’ve been doing this job of mine for nigh on forty years. What job is that then? Well, when I started out in 1968 it was known as graphic design. I guess that still comes the closest to an accurate description, although it could now be too narrow, as in recent times the lines that once divided the disciplines associated with visual communications have become increasingly blurred. Although the broad principles that were in place thirty-eight years ago still apply, the means by which solutions are realised have undergone revolutionary change. The tools at the disposal of designers today are beyond the wildest imaginings of yesteryear.

I started out in the record industry, working for Decca Records as a cover designer before moving to EMI to do much the same. From there I went freelance before setting up the company I am still part of with two other founding members, who are also still around – just. Just, that is, for me, because in six months I shall be heading along the happy trail into the sunset of retirement.

A leisurely retirement? Not bloody likely. I’ve got plans. Lots of ‘em. Getting on with all those things that have been squeezed out by the rewarding, but unremitting demands of a day job. Like what? Taking photographs, writing, painting, illustrating, broken up with a spot of travelling, with occasional interludes set aside for doing absolutely nothing. Nothing, save for watching shadows on the wall.

I know that it won’t be as I imagine. Nothing ever is. I’m prepared for that. I’m ready to adapt to what ever comes swooping out of the blue, ready to rethink and change my mind on just about everything. I realise it’s going to take time to realise that the only client in the room is me. I’ll be the one to please, and I plan to please myself. I’ve done my time. Now it’s time for a spell of freewheeling, feet off the pedals, hands off the brakes and if I crash into the ditch, well, so be it. If nothing’s broke, I’ll climb back on and set off in another direction, chosen by a random pin in the map. Can hardly wait.

Maybe it was the colour of the sky today or the angle of the light or something like that, but I bought to mind a back-road - nowhere I could name - someplace south west of Winslow in Arizona. The sun cut in sharp through the glass screen, magnifying heat despite the driver’s window being hard down and a breeze tugging at my sleeve as it lay along the sill. I squinted ahead for a thirty-mile stretch of slick two-lane blacktop, far-off starburst reflections bouncing back off some vehicle like a plainsman’s signal mirror.

Presently I could make out the outline of a bus, moving at half my speed. In ten minutes I had pulled up close enough to make out the two red stoplights and black warning message of a yellow school bus. I eased my foot off the gas and tucked in behind, half-a-mile distant. Through the rear window strung out along the back seat, a row of heads, not turning, but looking forward. hair black and shiny clean in the sunshine.

I followed for ten minutes or so, content to let time drift to a standstill on the blazing flat; five buzzards traced wide circles above, when the lights on the bus began to flash. Halting centre lane, the stop sign swung down, commanding me to do the same. I switched my foot to the brake and the tyres left diamond tracks on the red earth of the soft verge. For a moment, all was stillness. Then a trio of miniature twisters raced across the tarmac and whirled through the dusty mesquite like a gang of malevolent spirits bent on mischief.

At last, appearing from around the front of the bus came three children; two brothers and an elder sister. They stood for a while; adjusting back-packs, fixing trailing laces, making sign and waving farewells to those still aboard. Not until the bus pulled away did they begin to walk; walk unhurried along a tyre-rutted track leading to a loose collection of low buildings up a whisper of a slope that passed for a hill out there in the desert wilderness. At first I hadn’t seen the ranch homestead and would have missed it altogether if I hadn’t been minding their progress.

Three little native American kids going home on a slow daydream afternoon, their lives and future as distanced from my own as the miles from that place to my own front door.

Tuesday. Lack of pointy pointless shoes. Lack of lightly boiled greenish things. Lack of mooching about with a determined look.

The ads that appear, unsolicited, at the top of my blog page had me guessing this time. Without exception, they all concerned themselves with stuff to do with promoting puppy training. Puppy training? Where the hot diggidy dog did that come from?

I can understand that reference to a place, say New York City, may generate a bag full of hotel sites, or flight promotions. Mention of a medical condition could stir up a rash of remedies - cure-all pills, potions or lotions. The same could apply to an unguarded, fatuous remark concerning one’s weight. As to a careless whisper regarding problems in the bedroom department, those Viagra vendors need no encouragement to serve up the spam.

So what, I wondered, had triggered this mysterious preoccupation with pets of the canine kind. A search through my recent blogs soon sniffed out the link. It was, of course, the title of a Cat Stevens’ song, ‘I love My Dog’. This led me to wonder if similar animal references would engender a reciprocal response. There’s only one way to find out: ‘Buffalo Soldiers’, ‘Cool For Cats’, ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’, ‘Running Bear’, ‘Hungry Like The Wolf’, ‘Rattlesnake Shake’, ‘Boris The Spider’, ‘A Horse With No Name’, ‘Fly Like An Eagle’, ‘Piggies’. Ok, I’ll stop now.

Went for a stroll at lunchtime to take the London air – breezy – and wound up in my favourite institution, The National Portrait Gallery. As usual, lots of interesting things to see, including a retrospective devoted to portrait photographer, Angus McBean. I know him from the shots he took of The Beatles, featured on their first LP, as well as the first EP release. To you youngsters that’s Extended Play, like a single but rather than two tracks - one a side, it featured four – two a side. What do you mean, what’s a single? Anyhow, I wasn’t familiar with McBean’s earlier work, which established his reputation as a leading theatre photographer working with great figures of the day such as Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson.

An enthusiastic visitor to Surrealist exhibitions in the 1930’s, McBean decided he could create something equally successful in his photographs. Commissioned by a newspaper,
he produced a weekly composition throughout 1938, often working with artist Roy Hodbell. The photographs brought him acclaim, controversy and international recognition when Life magazine also featured the work.

Prosecuted for homosexuality, McBean spent most of the war years in prison, before his release at the end of 1944. By 1945 he was back in business, rebuilding his reputation as Britain’s leading theatrical photographer, the decade seeing some of his most creative and successful years. At the end of the 50’s the theatre work began to run dry which is when
McBean started producing images for record companies. As well as The Beatles, he photographed Cliff Richard, Helen Shapiro, Billy J Kramer, Matt Munro, as well as classical artists Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland.

Asked by a young Quentin Crisp what his sitters hoped for from a McBean portrait, he said, to make them appear beautiful. His photograph of then partner Quentin certainly achieved that. After he officially retired in the 70’s, his work was rediscovered and during the design obsessed 80’s, McBean was much in demand for new commissions. He died on the night of his eighty-sixth birthday in 1990.

From an absorbing half hour amongst the work of Mr McBean I walked along the corridor to take in the BP Portrait Awards exhibition. As usual I was most taken with the looser styles, the works that showed undisguised brush marks rather than painstaking photographic detail that slavishly reproduced every pore and blemish. But each to their own.

Finally it was up to the balcony gallery that featured photographs of the Beatles, from the mop-top fabby years through to post Maharishi hippy dippyness. The prints included a shot of George circa 1966 which I’ve coveted ever since I saw it featured as part of the Brit Pop Art Exhibition at Tate Britain two or three years ago. Once back at my computer I managed to track down a signed print (by the photographer, not George) of said item for sale. So I placed my order and hopefully will receive it in three or four days. Brill.

By the way, did you know that the Maharishi collection of clothing now includes a full line of ready-to-wear, shoes and non-violent clothes. Imagine - if everyone wore a pair of Maharishi pants - no more war. I wonder if you can?

The voice is much the same. As for appearance, it’s difficult to say. The pictures on the CD cover are obscure. Deliberately so, I imagine. As for the music, it’s a long way from ‘The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore’. I speak of Scott Walker - one time teen idol, pin-up of girls young enough to know no better – and his new collection of songs, titled ‘Drift’.

A long time previously, as one third of the fictitiously related Walker Brothers - three Americans, reversing the British music invasion of the USA with a series of soaring ballads - Scott was the front man. His richly coated bass-baritone carried such tunes as ‘Make It Easy On Yourself’, ‘My Ship Is Coming In’, and ‘Stay With Me Baby’ into the mid-60’s charts.

I saw Scott and his ‘brothers’ once, at the Gaumont in Southampton. As could only happen back then, they shared a concert tour of UK theatres and cinemas in the mixed company of Cat Stevens, Englebert Humperdink and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. I went along with my mate Dave to see Jimi. Who decided that it would be a smart career move to get The Experience to close the first half of the show, featuring this bizarre cavalcade of artistes? Someone with a keen sense of humour, or most likely, no sense at all.

The memory of the event is a touch misty now. Cat Stevens performed ‘I Love My Dog’ and ‘I’m Gonna Get Me Gun’, dressed in a three-quarter length black coat and white ruffled shirt. Funny how some memories stick, while others are wiped clean. Anyhow, Cat was OK. And the girls liked him.

Jimi, Noel and Mitch were, not surprisingly, a mite subdued. They rattled through the highlights of their first album, with a few covers chucked in and made their escape; happy to be sharing a limo and making speed for the seventy miles that took them safely back to the refuge of The Ad Lib or The Scotch of St James I shouldn’t wonder. But the boys liked them.

The Walker Brothers topped the bill. They sang. The girls screamed. They sang some more. The girls screamed. They sang again and in about half an hour it was over. Nobody hung around for long in those days. Still, the girls and some of the boys liked them.

Engelbert I don’t recall. Selective loss of memory no doubt. I guess somebody liked him.

Scott has certainly travelled a dark and cracked pathway since that time. Gone is the matinee idol with blond teased coiffure, flashing American teeth, Carnaby velvet trousers and cashmere crew neck, teasing the girls (and boys) with carefully crafted angst and suffering; a victim of love lost, a lost boy with the voice of a man, that broke, just like a woman.

The music he makes now is from the blackest of deep shadows. No more lush orchestrations. Substitute massed violins and trumpeting brass for the sounds of a man applying his fists to a punch bag, grunting and sweating, surely in some bleak lock-up under a railway arch: up to no good in a world filled with pain and forbidden sex. Not easy listening this, more a test of endurance. It’s taken me four or five attempts to get through from beginning to end. But compare Scott’s progress to the others sharing the bill back in the time that swung. Cat Stevens, only recently recording again after years spent in devotion to his Islamic faith. Jimi long dead. Who knows where his music would have taken him? Would he have continued to push ever upwards or drift into sad showbiz mediocrity? As for Engelbert, he was already there - the Vegas crooner, now re-living the past, the glamour gone, the sideburns dyed black.

Scott has stayed distant from the recent flurry surrounding the issue of a Walker Brothers greatest hits compilation. Not damning his past work, just no longer interested. Content, it seems, to follow his own illusive, mysterious and uneasy interpretation of the place he finds himself occupying in 2006. One in which it’s unlikely that the sun will shine anymore.

Tuesday. Lots of mascara and pointy pointless shoes. Lots of lightly boiled greenish things.
Lots of mooching about with a determined look.