Lingua Franca Read online

  Behind Nigel is a projected screen with a reminder of our campaign slogan:

  Birdseye: Believe in a Brighter Barrow

  Nigel talks about Lingua Franca, its exponential growth and its plans to grow more. He remarks on how every time we have one of these sessions, the room feels more crowded. We do a good line in talking about how great we are. Nigel proceeds to outline the events schedule; we’ve got radio interviews, signage consultancy and a series of meetings with local businesses. He says that if anyone needs reminding, we ought to behave in a way that befits our organisation.

  ‘No, don’t do that,’ someone jokes, and everyone laughs. Nigel discusses the empirical benefits of naming rights on a local economy. He makes a couple of jokes, which get an insincere laugh. I sometimes wonder if they’re laughing out of fear, like hopeless victims of a dictatorship being forced to smile with a gun to their back. Then Nigel pulls a face, which tells them something’s not funny anymore.

  ‘And as we gather today, I’d like to observe a minute’s silence for Eden, who will always remain in our thoughts.’ The silence is observed in different ways. The journalists stare into a respectful distance. Some of the photographers take pictures. The rest of us don’t want to think too much in case we cry. Then we’re released. We’re allowed to walk freely and make coffee. I make it my business to avoid conversation and to listen. The dominant accent is a kind of south-east whine that belongs to nowhere. It’s an accent you might hear as far west as Swindon and as north as Dermalogica. Everyone says I did a good job on the town hall speech. I might have got pelted with vegetables but I did a good job. I’ve set the tone. I’ve made it possible for the circus to execute its programme of events. I’m the ringmaster. A tired ringmaster. The journalists look in my direction, making sure I can see their accreditation badges. I’ve got a conversation scheduled with The Travelodge Gazette. I’m ushered to the corner by the make-up artist. She has a brush belt which holds each of her little make-up wands. She asks if I can face the light. My face is subject to scrutiny. I’m advised to look up so she can get a better view.

  ‘Don’t look so scared,’ she says. She smiles and sticks her tongue out – briefly – in a way that’s meant to be playful. Not like a lizard. She makes an effort to drag her kit box closer. She works on the outer reaches of my hairline, dusting it. She’s forced to lean so high that her stomach is exposed. The belly looks at me. My eyes are closed, but I can sense I’m being watched. One of the journalists says, ‘Mr Platting,’ and announces that we’re going to speak in a minute. I know exactly how it will go. They’ll ask how it feels to be hated. They’ll ask which towns are next, and whether anywhere is off limits. They’ll ask what I think about emojis. They’ll ask about Kendal. They’ll probably know what the headline will be. Miles Platting: I’m not evil, I’m edgy. Then we’ll take a walk by the shore and they’ll try to get me to reveal a deeper side. They’ll ask me to paddle in the water and pose on a rock. They’ll tell me where to look and how to smile. Then I’ll cock my head and turn sideways. Nice, very nice! I’ll invite them to my little container unit and serve them beer from a fridge. You’re not so bad, Miles. Who cares what they say…

  *

  We gather at the barrier that separates our bubble from what Nigel calls the animal kingdom.

  ‘We’re going on safari,’ he says, unapologetic in comparing small town Englanders to baboons and chimps. We follow our tour guide, a fully vetted local. He points to the dock, where ships were first built in the 1800s. Some of the operations team aren’t keeping up the pace; some are distracted, texting on their phones, or having their own private conversations. In the absence of anyone paying attention, Nigel feigns interest and asks the local to tell us more about girders, bolts and iron ore. The members of our party only start to show interest when we pass through the town centre; the web copywriter laughs at the missing apostrophe on Jaynes Fish Bar; the social media manager laughs at the orange-skinned women in the hair salon; the junior creative points at traffic and says, ‘Where’s everyone going? Where do they work?’ They point at boarded-up pubs and downmarket retail chains no one knew existed. They compare the town unfavourably to London and its socially acceptable alternatives: Brighton and Bristol. It makes me want to rename Brighton Tropicana. They look at the man selling pies and they laugh out loud. They almost want the tour guide to hear. They want him to know they come from somewhere better.

  ‘What do they do on weekends?’ says the tone-of-voice guardian. He is unaware of his own intolerance when he says, ‘I didn’t realise Barrow was so pikey.’

  ‘Birdseye.’

  The tour guide keeps walking. He points out where we can get our clothes washed and dried. Then he says goodbye and it takes a few seconds for anyone to notice.

  We look in the junk shop, which everyone finds hilarious. They marvel at the old trinkets, the granny crockery, defunct board games and things no one makes anymore. The salesman answers their questions, taking their enthusiasm at face value, rather than for its mocking intent. I ask the salesman what he thinks of the new name.

  ‘Yeah, well. If it brings people to Barrow…’

  ‘Birdseye.’

  ‘Aye, Birdseye. Then… whatever, like.’

  Nigel enters the main room, with its broken furniture, a table with hundreds of porcelain rabbits and a broken grandfather clock. It looks like the inside of someone’s mind.

  I wait at the exit while Nigel buys a slightly chipped garden gnome.

  In the pedestrianised town centre we’re joined by some journalists, who follow us into the train station. Here we are, the hottest ticket in town: Lingua Franca on tour. From a distance, what we’re doing must look weird. There’s something strange about the sight of a dozen men debating the position of a train platform sign. Nigel’s wearing a builder’s hat in case he gets struck with a hard object. The railway men who fix the lines stop to watch what we’re doing. There’s a photographer who tries to make some space and get a clear shot. It’s fine so long as they don’t have any vegetables. The sign specialist allows the drill to do its work. He pulls away and the sign holds firm.

  Birdseye-in-Furness

  There is a small logo accompanying the text. We applaud, which is a reminder as to the purpose of the event – to mark the renaming of the railway station. A member of the council suggests it should have a suffix that says ‘formerly Barrow in-Furness’. This is what we call the suffix quandary. No one wants to erase the old name completely. If you’re a local person, it’s difficult when you see it for the first time. It’s all fine in principle, but not as an action with consequences. It’s never easy to let go. A train pulls into the station and the passengers disembark. They look at the sign and some of them hold their mouth, while others shake their head. In time, they won’t be so shocked when they pass the sign. It won’t register as being significant. Now though, it’s a big deal. It’s the end of the world. It’s official. Barrow is dead and Birdseye is alive. Your town has been sold. Please lend us your nose so we can rub it in something.

  The events happen Birdseye-wide. Our journey is accompanied by a swarm of journalists. We visit a homeless shelter where the homeless momentarily become famous.

  We visit the library, which is renamed Birdseye Library. A member of public raises the suffix quandary; we refer them to the terms and conditions.

  In the local doctor’s surgery, we shake hands with the community nurse, who guards the door as if we plan to force our way inside. We eventually get to meet a patient in the waiting room. She holds my arm in a grip – not because she needs to cling to something but because she wants me to listen. It turns out she lives an actual life, not a stage-managed one. Someone takes a nice picture.

  We instal a plaque at the ex-servicemen’s club which commemorates its renaming to Birdseye Ex-Servicemen’s Club. Nigel sits next to the veterans and makes long, wayward conversation in the hope that someone might take a photo. He talks about the building because it means he doesn’t have to ta
lk about war. Nice building, he says. Really nice building. The veterans talk to us about the local youths who keep spraying the walls with graffiti. Their solution is unanimous: more discipline. A retired RAF pilot talks about the time he flew a plane at 300 miles per hour at the oncoming Luftwaffe. The Head of Content tells them how to obtain Google Analytics login details for a website they’re never going to build. We end up staying for a couple of hours, which consists of talking about the weather and if it’s ever going to change.

  We enter the Pig & Thistle, a flat-roofed pub that’s part of the same brick structure as the newsagent next door. The men sitting at the tables are focused on the big screen, reminiscent of the White House staff watching Bin Laden’s assassination. But it’s not Bin Laden – it’s horse racing. Some of our team are smirking. The copywriter laughs at the word premises misspelt as premisses. The operations director points at the menu and asks if anyone wants the £3 steak-and-ale pie. The background noise is a never-ending hum. Lots of people seem to be shouting at the same time. Two women jostle at the bar. They’re using words like ‘love’, but in a threatening way. There’s a man at the counter who doesn’t have any arms. The barmaid turns the pages of The Sun for him. I’m conscious that we’re being watched, but no one else seems to notice. Nigel stands at the bar, doing a headcount for all the pints he wants to buy. The tone in Nigel’s voice – high and mighty – means it’s been a good day for Lingua Franca. We’ve achieved our goal of raising brand awareness while keeping local anger to a minimum. He looks at the landlady and orders a round. She doesn’t smile very much.

  ‘That’ll be forty-five pun.’

  ‘Can I pay with my—’

  ‘You can dee as you like but it’s forty-five pun.’

  As far as I know, the landlady isn’t aware we’re the villains of Birdseye. This is just how she welcomes people from the netherworld. She doesn’t know that we’ve killed the name Barrow, and replaced it with a nonsense term. If she knew, it would fuck her world. Most of the regulars probably hold the landlady in high esteem. She serves warm ale and allows them to sit in the pub all day. One of them has a walking stick propped against the radiator. Another man, who looks like he needs to wash his hands, has draped his overalls over the chair. There’s a dog sitting in the middle. None of them get enough daylight.

  I lean on the counter and ask where’s good to eat. The landlady says, ‘The Lamb’s alright.’ I ask if the Lamb is a pub or a dish. She looks at me while bending to throw something in the bin. She says nothing. Her time is finite. When I ask a question, I’d better make it a good one. I haven’t asked a good question yet. I ask if there’s a newsagent where I can buy cigarettes. The landlady says, ‘You know there is.’

  ‘I’ve never been to Birdseye before.’

  ‘Barrow.’

  One of the men looks at us and says, ‘Are you boys in the army?’

  It’s hard to explain what we do. We sometimes refer to ourselves as a professional branding agency, which, in the former Barrow-in-Furness, makes us sound like scum.

  Nigel says, ‘No. We’re just visiting Birdseye.’

  One of the older gentlemen shakes his stick in our direction. ‘What ye calling it Birdseye for?’

  ‘What else should we call it?’

  ‘Barrow-in-Furness.’

  The landlady says, ‘If ye calling it Birdseye ye can get out noo.’

  One of the drunks tells them to shut up because we’re in the army. Each of us becomes occupied in a separate conversation. The situation develops. They seem to get a sense that we’re Lingua Franca; we’re the ones responsible for the revolution.

  ‘You know what you should call it?’ the slurring man at the bar says. ‘Barrow-in-Furness.’

  ‘In fairness,’ I say, and he doesn’t catch onto the wordplay. ‘Birdseye has a certain ring to it.’

  ‘It’s nee Birdseye to us, man.’ The gentleman is nearing the end of his pint. I get distracted for a bit. Behind the counter is a plaque in honour of a dog. Clearly, the landlady feels nothing towards humans but has a great affection for dogs. Dogs can’t hurt you the way humans can. If I suggested this to her, she’d throw me to the hounds. ‘I’ve lived here me ’ull life. It’s Barrow to me, and always will be. Barrow-in-fucking-Furness.’

  The main concern of the landlady is to divert their attention away from causing trouble. She’s seen this before. However much the landlady frowns, she’s not the type to turn away customers, even those looking to ruin her town. She just says, ‘On you go, lads. Keep your voices down.’

  We do our best to walk through the pub without making eye contact. On the wall is a framed shirt signed by the players of Barrow Football Club. There are pictures showing old people dancing and various get-togethers where the catering looks bad. In another town, the vintage metal signs and lantern lights would be considered cutesy. We walk further into the pub. The dominant noises are the chatter from the locals, the broad accents, which seem to become thicker, more impenetrable, the more they speak in our direction. We gather some of the creaking wooden chairs and settle down. I encourage Darren to sit on the small circular stool – a pouf, I think it’s called, but I don’t want to say the word ‘pouf’ aloud. In the middle we put a big pile of coats, our own little island. A group of men start to congregate around us. One of them has their mate in a headlock. Another one raises a powdered thumb to the other’s nose; the nose takes a sniff.

  ‘This song’s focking great,’ one of them points towards us. ‘Come and focking dance.’

  No one from our side seems to be smiling anymore. No one’s interested in pointing out spelling mistakes, or laughing at the women’s taste in clothes. We’re in a staring contest with each other. Nigel mumbles something about key performance indicators. We’re running out of chat.

  ‘Come on, posh twats! Come and focking dance.’

  ‘We’re fine, thank you,’ says Nigel.

  ‘It’s a focking great song.’

  ‘It is a great song.’

  Our Head of Brand tries to engage him in a conversation about Celine Dion.

  ‘Fock off, Celine Dion. Focking southern conts.’

  It seems to spread, the information. We’re a bunch of southern conts. We have floral trousers and hair bands. They want to punch us in the face.

  They beckon us towards their mosh pit. We look at each other. Doing nothing would appear to increase the chances of getting our heads kicked in.

  ‘Fuck it,’ says the junior creative.

  We stumble through the machine smoke. There is positive momentum, a surge. Our world collides with theirs. The young drunken males lock arms around their shoulders and sing. The song implores them to feed the world and let them know its Christmastime. They bellow the words with a knowing irony – that none of them are going to feed the world. They look at us to judge whether we’re worth a second chance. I’m asked to give my name. They ask what I’m doing in their pub because they’ve never seen me before. One of them says that St George’s Day should be a national holiday.

  ‘It should be a focking national holiday, every day of the week.’

  They huddle together, singing with a beer bottle as a microphone. Some of them squint at the women in our group, deciding whether to grope. I find myself standing in the same spot, unable to get my legs started. I’m a tree trunk. I start to move and everyone starts to laugh.

  ‘Focking dance, ya cont.’

  The tone sharpens again. We’re doing a passable impression of people having a good time, but there’s an edge. One of the men sidles up to Karen on PR; he bumps her with his belly and puts an arm around her shoulder. Nigel looks at me with a let’s wrap it up gesture.

  ‘Come on, mate,’ says Head of Brand, lifting the man’s arm from Karen’s shoulder. They all begin to swarm, turning their gaze to Head of Brand.

  ‘Fock off you soft southern cont.’ They jab a finger on his chest.

  There’s a ‘whoa, whoa, whoa’, an ‘easy gents’, and from their side, a
gathering of men who seem outraged, but pleased to be outraged. This is where they’re most comfortable – the moment just before a fight. Language can only get them so far. Bare knuckles can do the rest. Something smashes somewhere. There’s the sound of chairs scraping backwards. I lift one of the barstools in case I need to ram at them like a pair of antlers.

  Nigel shouts, ‘Get out!’

  Someone shoves Nigel. Darren puts his arm around the principal aggressor, like a football manager disputing a decision with a linesman. Head of Marketing attempts to ease Head of Brand from a headlock.

  I do my fire marshal thing, shepherding the marketing coordinators and CRM specialists to safety. We retreat to the island, taking whichever bags we can. I manage to clear a path for the rest of us to run. Over my shoulder I can hear them chant, ‘Wankers! Wankers!’ This is what happens when worlds collide. We should have a flag, really. A flag with Lingua Franca on the front, with a latte as our emblem. We’re Lingua Franca. We belong in the city and we drink pumpkin spice latte. We make new worlds, better than your own.

  We can comfort ourselves with one thing. If we ever return to the Pig & Thistle, it will probably be something else: a Costa Coffee or a Little Chef. Then our work will be done.

  11. METAMORPHOSIS

  The walkway connecting each shipping container offers a perfect view of the harbour. From our towering position above the slipway, it looks as though man has triumphed over nature. There aren’t many trees or parks, just the industrial imprint of tankers, docks and tenement housing. But here we are, with our brightly coloured shipping containers and wire fence. I peer from the ledge, high above the scene. They’re carrying things like little ants in a colony. The morning’s activity involves litter-picking; they’ve left beer bottles and cigarette packets in the hedges. Nigel watches without getting involved. He maintains his authority by instructing people on what to do and where to stand. I’d rather stand outside my little square box and watch the ships come in.