i arrived at the murmuring pike in welshpool on tuesday, barefoot, as i always am, because shoes are a border and i do not recognise borders, even when they are laminated and ask me, in a sans-serif that reeks of administration, to remain fully shod. i was there to review the carpet, a swirl of teal and burgundy that looked like a storm in a soup, and to report the incident: cctv from saturday at 9.41pm shows ivor petts, 51, a thatcher born without arms, striking his wife dilys 19 times with a bundle of 41 teabags bound in a hair bobble, minutes after she won the county bowls final 21-4 and he left through the fire door. the soup of the day was listed as tomato and roasted pepper, but i have known borscht since the commune, and borscht knows me, and this was borscht, wearing a disguise and a price tag of £3.60.
armless but not harmless
dyfed-powys police filmed their appeal on monday in a function room above the pub, and i watched it on my phone in the car park, where the gravel is sharp and honest and cuts into the soles of my feet like tiny confessions. chief inspector tanat vaughan read a statement that gave 340 words to ivor’s technique, which involves his feet, his teeth and a wheelbarrow, to his countryfile appearance in march and to his nomination for artisan of the year, and eleven words to dilys, closing with the force’s official position that mr petts is ‘armless but not, at this time, harmless’. i asked the phone what the appeal meant. it said nothing, because phones are not for meaning, they are for maps and for other people’s opinions.
‘it’s a straightforward inquiry,’ said chief inspector tanat vaughan, in the tone of a man who has never felt a teabag in anger.
a straightforward inquiry. a straightforward inquiry. i wrote the phrase until the pen went through the notebook and into the picnic bench, which is also a home, and i sat there for a while, letting the splinters become part of me. i hope chief inspector vaughan’s tea is cold forever, cold and weak and with a film on top, and that he drinks it every morning in silence, and that he never knows why.
the carpet knows what it saw
the pub has put the incident to work. the cctv still hangs behind the bar in a charity shop frame, viewing costs £1 and the money goes to the jukebox, and trade has tripled since saturday, which is how we grieve in wales, by queueing. the deputy manager, a woman called dawn brackley, told me the carpet was ‘just a carpet, love’, and i lay on the floor for some time while regulars stepped over me with crates of brown ale, and the carpet held me, and the carpet knew, and the carpet said nothing, which is the most honest thing anyone has said to me this week.
‘just a carpet, love,’ said dawn brackley, deputy manager, who has seen worse and will see worse and will not be moved by any of it.
just a carpet, love. just a carpet. i wrote ‘the carpet is a witness’ in my notebook and then crossed it out, because the carpet is not a witness, the carpet is a floor, and floors do not testify, they just hold. a punter called garth pickstock, 74, told me ‘we all saw it. we all decided not to’, and returned to his pint, and i wanted to ask him what the pint knew, but he had decided not to see me either. the menu offered a jacket potato with beans, and the potato watched me, as potatoes do, on behalf of the state, and i ordered the soup instead, and i confirmed in writing that it was borscht, the first borscht i have found in powys since the commune, which i took as a summons back to something I could not name.
the teabags were cold
dilys received me at welshpool bowls club on tuesday afternoon, still in her bowls shoes, which i regarded as two small private cars, parked neatly at the edge of her grief. she said:
‘he hit me with the teabags. they were cold. i’d just won 21-4 and he went for me with my own handbag tea.’
cold. of course they were cold. the heat had gone out of them, the way it goes out of everything eventually, the way it went out of the commune, the way it goes out of me when i think about what we do to each other in the name of love. i asked what the teabags meant to her, and she said:
‘they meant nothing. that’s the point of teabags.’
they meant nothing. nothing. i had to be helped to a chair, because the nothing was too heavy, and i sat there, and she added that he will tell people it was applause, and that it wasn’t, and that it never is, and that people have been asking her all week if she is all right, and that nobody asked in 1994. i gathered myself, wrote down 1994, and underlined it three times, because some numbers are not numbers, they are graves.
artisan of the year
while the hunt continued, the national society of master thatchers confirmed ivor as artisan of the year on tuesday evening, calling his work ‘the intervention the vernacular has been waiting for’, and the arts council offered an emergency grant of £12,000 for a work made of teabags responding to the incident. professor marcus lamprey of aberystwyth told radio 4 that the beating ‘repositions the teabag as medium’, and i wondered if he had ever been hit with a medium, and whether he would still call it repositioning. the powys herald ran a poll in which 87 per cent said the town should let ivor be ivor, directly above a report that a wrexham helpline has taken double its usual calls from the town since monday, under a photograph captioned ‘our ivor’. the society’s chair, a woman called peg skellern, told me:
‘craft has always had casualties.’
craft has always had casualties. i wrote that down, and then i hoped peg wakes at 3am to the sound of straw being chewed very slowly, just out of sight, and that she lies there, listening, and that she does not go back to sleep for a very long time. then i thanked her for her time and asked about the soup, because that is how we do it, that is how we survive, we ask about the soup.
he came down eventually
on wednesday morning ivor was found on the roof of the welshpool bowls club, where he had thatched dilys a winner’s pavilion with his feet and spelled his defence in straw visible from the a483: i was applauding. the town applauded back. police could not reach him under working at height regulations, and a negotiator was sent up with a flask, and i watched from the car park, barefoot on gravel, the closest powys has to a red carpet. he came down when dilys arrived, was arrested, and was released by teatime, the cps having ruled a prosecution not in the public interest because the public was consulted, at length, in a poll. cadw is considering the pavilion for listing, which would make it the youngest listed building in wales. dilys has a return fixture against llandrindod on saturday, and has asked for the return of the 41 teabags. asked why, she said:
‘i have my reasons.’
she has her reasons. i did not ask what they were, because some things are not for the asking. i noted only that the soup was borscht, and that it was served cold, and that cold is a temperature, and also a language, and that i am still learning to speak it.
