PINS - Rule Ten: A Local Decision

(He looked down at his hands and, picking up his pen, wrote, “I feel Hopeless, and Useless.”)

It’s about time we understood what a local decision is.

They seem to be important, according to the photocopied notes we have. At the top right of the main sheet, there’s a paragraph of underlined text that says local decisions can “only be used once a day.” This means they must be important. Only important things can be used, or acted out once a day. We all know that.

Local decisions are for specific units in specific, local circumstances. We told you to guess what a unit could be back in Rule Five: What is a Unit? . (Yes, you can guess…. Anything you like.)

And local decisions are made locally, by C.O.s. Remember them? We told you what a C.O. was back at The Beginning - The Game of PINS. But if you can’t be bothered checking, a C.O. can be anything beginning with a C, and an O. The photocopied notes say C.O.s can influence things. If you haven’t already, we suggest you pick something beginning with a C, and an O, and make a C.O.. Just for that one moment, once a day.

Once one day, on a morning, I looked out over the street and saw the text, WE ALL KNOW WHAT YOUSE ARE UP TO AND YOU WON’T GET AWAY WITH IT WE’RE WATCHING YOU painted in thick, white capital letters on the tarmac in front of next door’s house. I liked the people next door, they always nodded, always asked after my granda and nana, who were well-known in the area. Granda had something to do with Red Ellen Wilkinson in the 1930s and 1940s. Or so a range of bedraggled old fellas would tell me in the pubs and clubs, from Windy Nook to Low Fell. When my nana died a few years later the vicar said she was “ladylike”, though the vicar had never met my nana and had only recently come to the parish. Car got nicked after the service, too. West End… As to next door, I later found out on the local grapevine that they were connected in some way to the ram-raiding that was going on around the city. I had no idea. I decided to say nowt. Best way. Say nowt. Let it slide.

One C.O. that can make a local decision is the “Elector of Rennesbourg - King of Pomzony - Catholic.”  (Charles VIII & II + Henry I & II) newly created Electorate - formerly a Duchy - inherited hereditary lands (East Poenland etc) belonging to Electorate of Hunswick - except those claimed by new kingdom of Nordreich - Bucherian dynasty.” Though the Elector will have to make these decisions in secret as they are on the back of GMC-headed paper, sheets of which may inadvertently be picked up by an unwitting passing secretary, plonked into a typewriter and then sent out to be used on more mundane council business.

“You can come and work next to us if you like. Learn the job. In the office. Just expenses, mind. City centre, think of that. Learn how the paper runs.” I said nowt. Daft fuck that I was. A bad local decision. Later, I felt useless and hopeless.  

Sitting stark naked on the windowsill of the attic bedroom, two floors up, we looked out over the gloaming of an Accrington estate. Nothing to do in the 1990s. Everything was too much and too concentrated, all at once with too many emotions, rolling about like bloody marbles spilled out on the ground - and nothing at all. Nothing at all; to boot, for good measure. You see, something (not everything all at once), was elsewhere. More drizzle. United in missed chances. Shall we jump? I’d bet it would look like a record cover. No. Fuck that. What a stupid idea, stupider than this town. A good decision.

Decide, locally, to get up early and play the spoons on your knee to the tune of D’Ye Ken John Peel. Bash the spoons lightly on the thigh muscle above your right kneecap (if you are right-handed) or on your left one if you’re left-handed. All together now.

D'ye ken John Peel with his coat so gay?
D'ye ken John Peel at the break o' day?
D'ye ken John Peel when he's far, far a-way,
With his hounds and his horn in the morning?

You can have one shot at the chorus, then you have to get the bacon and sausages out. Light the grill with a Swan cook’s match and sort the pans out for the eggs. Any rinds and crumbs and slops an’ that, hoy out for the birds, they’ll be waiting for you. Toast last, though you never do and it’s always cold when you butter it.

For the sound of his horn brought me from my bed,
And the cry of his hounds which he oft time led,
Peel's "View, Halloo!" could awaken the dead,
Or the fox from his lair in the morning.

Become increasingly frustrated with those who have not awoken. Shout up the stairs that you’re not doing this again and it’s not your fault if the toast is burned and the fat’s gone hard and the bacon’s overcooked, though you make a local decision to do it every day, using up your decision-making powers before anyone is aware. Console yourself by remembering - probably through your choice of song - that one of your great-ancestors was Shadrak, King of the Gypsies, that’s what they called him and he was known all along the border. And that your uncle would come round on New Years Eve and play the range with a special pair of spoons. There. Cheered up.  

Another local decision is to throw that eel up that tree out the backs, it’ll find water sure enough. If you don’t want that eel that is. The eel is in a bucket, plonked on the kitchen table. It’s from the quay market. It’s a present, just catch it and skin it. Holding onto an eel, even in a bucket, means a set of local decisions to do with the best way to grasp an eel and the best way to kill an eel and the tools with which to kill it. These are a set of local decisions that the 19 year old you is not yet equipped to take. And you only have one. Eels can escape anywhere in their quest to find water, so why not hoy it down the toilet out the back (though it may get bunged up), or down the drain (the eel may be too quick in disappearing or what if the bars of the gutter grate are too close for it to wriggle through)? Eels are tough, and this one can go up the tree next to the back gate. You try, standing on an upturned crate and tipping the bucket towards the lowest branches. The eel disappears before you can see where it went.  A strange decision with no clear outcome.

We need to think about some localities soon. That’s where local decisions are made. Here are some to think about. The population is expressed in rounded-up figures. Cheel - 1,645,000 ; Bartley - 602,000 ; Burton - 384,000 ; Pothing - 282,000 ; Donovan - 201,000 ; Pexton - 183,000 ; Kraft - 172,000 ;  Stant - 132,000 ; Pry - 130,000 ; Wright - 126,000 ; Lembord - 122,000. 

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