A lively unicorn

Ah, the dead cat.  The choice spin tactic of 2015.

It is with regret I bring up the general election. For those still in need of counselling, help can be found here.

For anyone lucky enough not to be around the UK this year, the 'dead cat' was a new low in electioneering. When someone is losing an argument, becoming uncomfortable at their opponent's momentum, they now throw into the public debate an event known as a 'dead cat'. The dead cat may be horrible to look at, grotesque even. It may incite anger, or disgust. But that doesn't matter. For the person hurling it into view, it is simply better people talk about the cat than whatever they were discussing previously.*

This week, I came across an alternative to the dead cat...

...the lively unicorn.

A couple of years ago an elderly relative gave us use of his car, an old-but-immaculate Ford Focus. It has sat on our road in Peckham ever since - and for most of this time, it has sat idle. In fact, it has been parked up for so long, it's become less a people-carrying vehicle and more a site for community expression: the liberal parking manoeuvres of neighbours have decorated it with all manner of dents and scratches; the bumper resembles a Dulux colour chart.

Anyway, this week, standing by the stationary car, I watched as a small child crashed his BMX into one of the wheel arches.

He got up off the road straight away, thankfully, and assured me he was fine. (I stress I was primarily concerned with his well-being.) But then, clocking the car had something to do with me, he twigged he might be in trouble. Having picked up his bike, he went over to wish away any dent in the car's side. Unaware there was no way I would be able to identify a new dent, he released his lively unicorn...

"Normally," he told me, "I jump right over the cars."

Jump right over the cars?!! He had me. Any possible annoyance at what had happened had no chance of materialising. He began recounting his street-cycling adventures. Riding his 3-foot high bike, he explained, sometimes standing on the hub of its back wheel, he was able to hop over any car he chose. He pointed at the road's cars as if they had been assembled just for this purpose. It was what he did to pass the time.

I challenge anyone to be angry at a boy claiming to be their town's E.T..

Above (and below) is a postcard of Peckham produced by David Hankin. It shows the different sights around this corner of London. Two things worth noting. First, the sky isn't always blue in SE15. And second, if you squint hard enough at the picture of Peckham's Rye Lane, you can just about make out a young superhero bouncing over car after car after car.

* In the case of the Conservative Party, the cat took the form a relatively minor politician (Michael Fallon). As the Opposition seemed to be making headway on the issue of clamping down on tax evasion, he made some pretty low accusations about the leader of the Labour party - that he was someone willing to stab his own brother in the back, and was therefore not to be trusted. Sure enough, the media focused on the dead cat. Tax evasion was left for another year.

You can only play an ace once

All families have their traditions. When my brother and I were young, one of my family’s was to play cards, play hand after hand of whist.

In the summer, games of whist were a holiday ritual. Night after a night, a pack would come out, be shuffled, then dealt. I would partner my dad, my brother my mum. 

We had our own terminology to describe the action, the Atkins whistspeak, the Atkinsese. Do other whist players talk of  “rounds” and “trumps”? I have no idea. 

We even had our own set of clichés to call on to dissect each round. The winners' smiles would give way to groans on hearing the losers suggest some kind of altervictory. "I think we did very well, given our hands."

One set phrase has really stuck with me, become a maxim of reference in more than cards. Often when someone put an ace down, they would draw breath and declare, “You can only play an ace once.”

An onlooker (there never were any!) might have thought it meant you should wait until the right moment. Hold the ace back for when you need it most. And it did. But there was a second meaning – an ace can only win one trick, whether you play it now or later. 

In other words, just get on and play it.

Which brings me to this card in my collection. My American friends, take note, now is the time to hold onto your hats. Click on the images below so that you can get a proper look.

I found it at a market in North London, near Angel tube station. It’s not a great destination for postcard hunting, most of the traders deal in jewellery and antique furniture. But at one stall, alongside stationery from the American Civil War, were boxes of US postcards.

Spotting the postcards, I slipped into my market routine. Grab a section of cards, flip them over and scan for messages. Sift for Eluard’s gold… 

It was the surname of the recipient that made me stop on the card.

Pitt - a name of high British politics in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, jarring with the twentieth-century form of the postcard.

Then came the destination. Worcester College, Oxford – by coincidence, the place I studied American politics. At this point, I was already sold on paying the dealer the asking price of £3.50.

But then the message:

March 9

He's put Andrew Jackson's picture back in a place of honour. Ike had dumped it in the basement. Kennedy for President.

Michael

Of course, reading the message in Michael's handwritten scrawl gloriously delayed the punchlines, prevented me from making sense of the card in one go. I think I understood “Ike” as President Ike on only the third or fourth reading.

So there you go. The ace: a message from the Kennedy White House, sent only weeks after JFK came into office. The Best and the Brightest assembled in Washington. Hope made tangible in a card. 

And fifty years on, the card, a trace of Camelot, ends up in a Camden market.