The Leader of the Gong
By Dominic Horton
Following my second round of
mild-graines a few weeks ago my health has far from been fully restored to such
a degree that I have been in bed by 2100 hours many evenings and I have also
avoided the Flagon & Gorses for a whole week as I thought I would go dry to
see if it made any difference; it has not so I think I can rule out booze as a
cause of my ailments (meaning they are not ale-ments.) So it was back off to the quacks to see what
he could do for me. Being burdened with
a chivalrous nature I offered my seat up in the packed waiting room to three
women all of whom refused my offer; none of them struck me as being offended
feminists so they all must have been thinking, “I’d rather endure standing up
than put my aris anyplace that you have been.”
Like my Dentist Mr Shulman, Dr
Mangolatta is a young man of Asian descent and, also like Shulman, he also
arrived at work a minute before he was due to start, unshaven and a little
slovenly. But Mangolatta inspires
confidence in the same way that Shulman does, with his contemporary medical
knowledge and easy manner and I have complete faith in him and given that my
eyes passed their recent test with flying colours it is not blind faith
either.
 |
| Derek Wilton |
Mangolatta explained that my blood
tests revealed that all my major organs seem to be in decent fettle and I have
no obvious illness to explain my symptoms, so he opined that my malaise is most
probably down to post-viral fatigue.
When doctors have no idea what is up with you they diagnose a virus and
when you have had a virus but you are still ill they state that it is
post-viral fatigue; they must learn this trick in week one of their medical training
and it sticks with them throughout their careers. Mangolatta also said that I have an ear
infection so prescribed some antibiotics.
At the pharmacy I was shocked to find that the price of a prescription
has penetrated the £8 barrier (oddly the price has been set at £8.05) so before
we know it you will get no change out of a tenner. It will be cheaper to buy a bottle of vodka
than pay for a prescription so it will be like the days of Soviet Russia when
in the absence of any proper medication doctors would prescribe Vodka for all
illnesses, even those that were caused by the excessive consumption of the
spirit in the first place.
So I was hoping that the gong bath
that I attended last Friday (on the kind invitation of Greenetta Redhead) would
cure my unwelcome ills. For the
uninitiated (as I was prior to Friday) a gong bath involves someone banging
Oriental gongs for an hour or so, while you lie motionless on the floor with
your eyes closed, following which the gongmaster fleeces you out of a
tenner. Despite the gong bath not being
a usual Lowlife activity I was
keeping my mind open about it and I was looking forward to the evening. My only prior experience of gonging was when
I was a child, staying over at St Helier guest house in Llandudno with my
grandparents and my brother when the landlady, Betty, would bang a gong to
signify to the guests that breakfast or dinner was about to be served, so I
didn’t know quite what to expect at the gong bath.
The gongmaster, Phil the Gong, is a
Derek Wilton look-alike and wore a Chinese style white ice-cream man’s jacket
but I refrained from quipping “two choc ices please”, as it didn’t seem
appropriate in the circumstances. After
my introduction to Phil was complete, I lay down on my roll mat, in unison with
all of the other gongees, ready for action, or inaction more like. Before he started the gonging Phil the G
said “let us say 'ohm' three times”, which was fitting as being very
nervous that is exactly where I wanted to go (I realise that this weak gag only
works here in the Black Country.) Then
I closed my eyes and the gonging started and I have to say it sounded
unbelievably enchanting, the sound seemed to envelop me and reach to every
part of my body and soul. After a few
seconds I opened my eyes to make sure Phil was actually banging the gongs
personally as I wanted to make sure that he wasn’t playing a BBC soundtrack
whilst sitting in a chair swigging on a can of Special Brew with his feet up,
reading the Sporting Life, tab on.
 |
| The Acme Thunderer Whistle |
Suddenly the gong music changed
slightly and became dark and sombre and it reminded me of the spooky soundtrack
in Apocalypse Now when Willard is sailing down the jungle River to find Kurtz and it put the wind up me a bit and
gave me the woollies. It didn’t help
that shortly afterwards the old bloke lying not far from me nodded off and
started snoring loudly, so it felt more like being in a hospital ward at night
than a relaxing Eastern experience. At
least the snoring signified that the old fella was still alive, which was
reassuring, as I am sure Phil the G wouldn’t have wanted to have a fatality on
his hands. Shortly after I was taken
out of my mystical plain again and brought back to reality after I heard a
rustling and it became clear than one of the brethren had broken rank and stood
up, presumably to attend an impromptu call of nature. You can always hold a wee in for a decent
amount of time but if you need a Tom T*t and it becomes pressing then you have
no choice but to go, so I had empathy with the gongee in question.
Back to the gonging. Some Percy Edwards style bird imitations were
followed by Orca the Killer Whale and
I was getting fully into the swing of things but then an odd but very calming
thing happened. As part of my on-going
illness I have had flashing lights in front of my eyes, like the Aurora Borealis
almost, but gradually under the influence of the gong the lights formed into
slow moving decreasing circles (that Richard Briers would have been proud of)
that gently floated across the inside of my closed eyelids. I felt a sort of soothing bliss, a rapture;
this feeling only lasted a second or two but it was an incredible sensation and
it was almost miraculous given that I am a sufferer of anxiety disorder and
generally more jumpy than a junkie who is walking through an eerie forest in
the dead of night whilst going through cold turkey.
Before Phil the Gong set about his
business he informed the gathering that the proceedings would be coming to an
end when he started to play percussive instruments followed by the sound of the
cymbals but when this eventually happened I was unsure as to whether things
were at a close and I kept opening and closing my eyes to check. To avoid doubt I think Phil would be better
off signalling full time by the tried and trusted method of three sharp blasts
on an Acme Thunderer whistle.
 |
| Percy Edwards |
Prior to leaving the building I
approached Phil to thank him for the exceedingly enjoyable gong bath and he
shaped up to hug me so I had to quickly thrust out a hand in panic for a
handshake to ward off his proposed over familiar bodily contact. I waved my tenner under Phil the G’s nose
but he seemed most perturbed by this as if to say that he’s a Buddhist and
money is of no consequence – he informed me that I had to drop the cash in a
basket on the way out, which I suppose is his way of dissociating himself from
the vulgarity of the monetary transaction.
To reflect on my gong based experience
I retreated to the Flagon & Gorses to partake in what are more familiar Lowlife relaxation techniques. After an hour or so, while I was propping up
the bar with Richie Ramone, to my surprise in strolled Phil the Gong himself
and ordered a pint of Bathams Best Bitter.
It was a case of East meets West Midlands. I suppose being a gongmaster is thirsty work
and no one could argue that Phil the G had earned his refreshment. Phil said hello to me and I felt a lot more
at ease, being in my natural habitat.
There was only one way to finish off
this most Oriental of evenings so after the Flagon I scraped into the Rhareli
Peking Chinese takeaway just before closing time. Instead of my usual I ordered schezwan beef
and fried rice and the Baby Faced Assassin seemed so thrown by this that for
the first time in my memory his perma-grin fell from his face and he seemed
somewhat distressed. This was probably
due to the fact that he wasn’t looking forward to asking the chef Mr Ping to
knock up the dish with only seconds left before close of play. I was going to tell the Assassin about the
gong bath but I thought better of it as if he attends the next session and
subsequently gives someone food poisoning he might be arrested for gong related
crimes. And we don’t want that now do
we.
© Dominic Horton, April 2014.
* EMAIL: lordhofr@gmail.com.
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