PINS - Rule Fifty-four: The End of the Game

(Just do what you have to do! I can't live your life for you!)

I know it’s the end of this game but there is no real end of PINS; there are endless moves and units lose pins along the way. Units reform, they wait on their commanding officers and they find themselves in new situations. And then, after it’s all done, they all go back in their boxes in the shed. To come out again, when there’s a chance.

But…

There I was in the dream and I was comforting everyone in Altham Church, even though I was dead, I had to come down to tell you it was all right here, everything was alright and the colours in the old church were very strong, with golds and soft, grassy greens, and clear, rich blues and shining silver and gold, just the colours of Lancashire in my head, like a peacock’s feather set in crystal, that’s how it felt. And the colours of Tyneside, the soft greys and strong clear blues, all there, and I just thought, bloody hell.

And…

It still feels like the time I was sitting on the metal seat of a tricycle and I pushed it around a miniature roundabout with my feet - we were in Blackpool, in an outdoor amusement park, my first holiday. And round and round I pushed myself, I wasn’t going to trust using pedals, my feet felt safe on the concrete, the idea of taking my feet off the ground and trusting them to the pedals? Oh dearie me, no. No trusting. This must have been after the stay in hospital, I knew what to trust. But that’s the game, PINS, you have to carry on somehow. 

Anyway,

I'm gonna sit right down and write myself a letter / And make believe it came from you…

But it's…

TIME FOR A REMINDER!

Remember when we started this game?

A sunny day walking down Nuns Moor Road. Down the hill, past Leazes Park. Sliding down the Barrack Road. Quiet. Bank holiday.

I step into the road to avoid the bloke driving the mini refuse cleaner. Thirty-odd years ago, I dressed up as a cow for a whole week round here. Lonely Youth.

Fokkinhelmanluk at that, lukkatit. Wheya’s tha bus, man? Wheya’s tha bus?

A sharp crackle of complaint. Swigging from a bottle.

Fella has a point, mind, his leg’s a mess. Bandaged. Mobile Zimmer frame given a shake. 

Two days previous, I saw a barn owl perched in the rafters of a barn, used as a backstage at a rock festival.

Dad, tell me about PINS. What were you doing?

Why ask me about that, Richard. 

The fluttering eyelids, the slight intake of breath, meaning he’s trying to put me off.

What were the rules? There are lots of notes, I can’t make much sense of it. What was Hassreich? Or Donovan? And why the welded metal miniature firing gantries? The maps? Why did you never get past the initial rules?

A long exasperated sigh. 

Don’t be so soft.

Silence on both sides. It’s like being in the back of the car again. Swing past St James. Can you still get the Metro from here? 

Do what you want, Richard. I can’t be bothered with that now.

Tha bus, a mobile-hospital-taxi-van-type-thing (with one wheel in the right place at every corner) glides uphill. There was a bus station near here once. Took my bemused granda to the Heap O’ Trouble / Load Of Mischief in Clayton-le-Moors, East Lancs. Depends on how you say it, I suppose.

All gone.

I look left. He’s off. Back to wherever. Mind cleared.

The game of PINS is now put back in the box and placed on the wardrobe in the back bedroom, where all remembrances of things past should be stored. You can’t walk through wardrobes, sadly, and memories, like how the river flowed next to the Old Black Black Bull, or was there really a rabbit living under Stanley’s main stand, will have to wait.

T’ra for now.

An accompanying post to this Rule, with relevant illustrations, can be found in the Museum of Photocopies.