Island of Lightning Read Free

heel. How do I know it’s cracked? Because we are the same age and her heel is cracked where my heel is cracked and in need of a hard scrub. Digging where I dig, counting those ivory-coloured corals, round as moons, and walking where I walk, a pedicure seems urgent now. And when she stands it is as I do, one foot almost balancing on the other. A peculiar posture.
    Yes, call her Katia. The hurricane woman. But that hurricane is almost blown out. Whenever I meet her, it is in places such as this. Always these places.
    No matter the hour, time’s nearly up. Katia knows it. Yet what else is there to do? Another drink? Another man? But all the men are lesser men now. Somehow disappointing men. Looking at such men she can measure herself. Gauge how far she has fallen. How far she has travelled in the wrong direction. Or she might compare herself to the others who are catching a different bus.
    And as pubs will, The Buck encourages introspection. Iwan Llwyd wrote a poem about a man he met here. A man he considered a ‘character’. Now Iwan is dead and that man still a drunken boor. I look at Katia, never so haggard, never more thoughtful. She glances at her watch and waits at the counter. The wind might have slackened and I leave.
    3.
    Two weeks later the town is full of men with tremendous quiffs and sideburns. Some of this hair is real. The first two I spotted were searching for a café. Yes, unmistakeable Elvis tributeers. Probably they had booked rooms a year in advance, Elvis weekend specials without breakfast.
    And soon there are hundreds. And then thousands. Many are men and women dressed as Elvis, or characters in the Elvis pantheon. As this is particularly sparse for a man who recorded an (estimated) 800 songs, their fancy dress is given over not only to approximations of The King, but people wearing anything notionally historical from the period.
    These include men turned out as GI’s, with women as appropriate dancing partners, men and women dressed as ‘hula’ Elvis from the ‘Hawaiian’ films, adorned in plastic garlands. A few are characters salvaged from early hits like Jailhouse Rock.
    This is one of the few songs that offer such opportunity. A Leiber-Stoller number from ’57, Jerry Leiber died in August 2011 and was one of the era’s better lyricists. Clearly he influenced Bob Dylan. ‘Jailhouse Rock’ offers drama, characterisation, wit. How rare.
    Of those paying homage to Elvis, two or three members of one party are dressed as ‘the Purple gang’ – in fact “the whole rhythm section”. There are also the convicts with their numbers, possibly Spider Murphy, Shifty, and ‘the sad Sack’.
    â€˜Jailhouse Rock’ and ‘In the Ghetto’ were probably the most interesting songs, lyrically, that Elvis recorded, the former ideal for interpretation by imaginative fancy-dressers.
    Otherwise there are ironic, no, brutal commentaries on Elvis’s weight gain in later years. Some men wear inflatable suits, others are padded with pillows. But generally, it’s a bizarre parade. Anything goes, the weirder the better. Because tributes these days invariably involve some form of impersonation. Fancy dress has become a new art form.
    Porthcawl seems an unlikely place for an Elvis celebration which has rapidly become extravagant. I work for the charity, Sustainable Wales, and am in the town every day. We have run a small shop for the last five years, Sussed , where all goods, the staff and volunteers are told, have their own unique story. We have to be able to tell those stories. So, be interested in what you sell, we encourage. This isn’t an ordinary job. We’re promoting life not a lifestyle.
    That life might include local honey, environmentally-friendly detergent, fair trade chocolate. Crucial purchases? Hardly. We also sell new books. Not many, but enough to make us the only shop for miles aware of new literature.
    But