Please forgive us our numeration. For we are mortal and riven by digits, transfixed by the sin of scale.
This is a real-world guide to the fictionalised landscapes of my Dark Lustre books – books that move from North Devon to Berlin and Bavaria and which feature dark histories, a bird called the Unglückshäher and an amazing band called The Countess Marie-José de la Barre d’Erquelinnes Hextet. AKA the Hextet.
This guide will be ongoing – a number of objects that acted as triggers and inspirations for the books. There will be a bar of chocolate and there will be a scale model of a submarine, complete in 50 weekly parts. There will be a pasty bag saved from the back alleys of Looe in Cornwall. There will be a book called Collectible Spoons Of The Third Reich. Most of these objects were gathered on research trips in Devon and Germany.
In Dark Lustre there’s a subtextual battle between past and present. A terrible history infuses our current era. There are words wrought in rusted metal – metal transported from the Upper Silesia of 1945 and now sat in a Bavarian castle. A castle NOT OPEN TO PUBLIC. There are other things as well – less grave, but with their own power. Let’s see what they might be…
Object 1. Pasties
Let’s start with something emblematic of the British Southwest, something rich in democratic delight, in savoury sensuality. The pasty – an ordinary pleasure. Pasties are a leitmotif in Dark Lustre. Pamela Budeax is singer with the Hextet. In DL1, leavening the lassitude of casual labour, she enjoys a pasty made by Warrens, self-proclaimed “Oldest Cornish Pasty Maker in the World.” Pamela was born in Cornwall herself. As she bites into the friable pastry she reads a short history of Warrens Bakery – printed on the bag the pasty came in. Founded in 1860. An enterprise catalysed by a romance in St Just, on Cornwall’s far western periphery.
Pasties recur through Dark Lustre. Alongside Pamela, the other key character is Tommy Quantox – around retirement age, formerly a Royal Navy logistics expert. In Germany, Tommy becomes fond of the BackWerk bakery chain’s Tomate-Paprika-Snack, a “lightweight Strudelzeug – a €1 outlier to the pasties of home”. He, of course, wonders if Kraftwerk ever frequented BackWerk. I don’t wish to damn pasty chains such as Oggy Oggy and the West Cornwall Pasty Co., but I’m happy to report that, from all the pasties eaten for Dark Lustre research, small, local pasty makers scored highest. Best of all was Sarah’s Pasties in Looe.
Sadly, pasties often aren’t really a cheap treat these days. In 2012, the Conservative cnuts opened the door for VAT on pasties. The £5 barrier has long been breached. Pasties sold on railway concourses can now push £7. WTF. Perhaps Tennyson was anticipating this sales-tax snack shit-hammer when he wrote of “A pasty costly-made… where quail and pigeon, lark and leveret lay, like fossils of the rock, with golden yolks imbedded and injellied.” But, while time is not always kind, it can be in the case of the pasty. Visit a branch of the Cornish Bakery chain at the close of day and you may swoop on remaining pasties for just £1.75 – or £3 for two.
Object 2. 3D Eagle’s Nest postcard
Something illustrative of Dark Lustre’s darkest depths. My core German research trip for Dark Lustre was in 2016 – Düsseldorf, Berlin, Bavaria. For books irradiated by the dismal afterglow of the Nazi epoch, Berchtesgaden in Bavaria was a key destination – the alpine town above which sat Hitler’s Berghof complex, his mountain-side HQ. And, up above the Berghof, sits the Kehlsteinhaus, better known in the English-speaking world as the Eagle’s Nest.
This Nazi eyrie balances on a ridge line nearly 2,000 metres above sea level . Nowadays, the beauty of Berchtesgaden and the notoriety of the Berghof site attract visitors. Hitler’s Berghof HQ itself has long since been obliterated. The site is now home to the Dokumentation Obersalzberg, an information centre where the horrors and iniquities of Nazi Germany are calmly detailed.
The 3D Eagle’s Nest postcard is ill-advised kitsch, Mein Kamp – a Nazi scenic super-cabin beaming out through lenticular plastic. Today the Eagle’s Nest is a cafe-restaurant. I didn’t buy the 3D postcard at the Kehlsteinhaus cafe. It was closed when I visited and – just as well – they don’t seem to sell souvenir merchandise. I bought the postcard in neighbouring Berchtesgaden.
Hitler hardly ever ascended to the Eagle’s Nest. He was scared of heights. He was deterred further by thoughts of meteorological jeopardy. At the Berghof site, Hitler was surrounded by layers of SS bodyguards. The SS sigil on their uniforms was a stylised image of twin lightning strikes. But Hitler himself was scared of the electrical storms you might get up on the mountain top.
Object 3. Energy drinks
A snow-covered hillside above Kabul. Two boys running a roadside stall. They look about eight and freezing. Cartons of cigs, ersatz Pringles and a variety of energy drinks. Among them, cans of Monster Energy. They get everywhere, these cylindrical emissaries, c/o Monster Energy, Corona, California. Energy drinks are omnipresents of our century – animating fizzwasser, perk-u-pop sponsoring Formula 1, air races and breakdancing.
An energy-drink theme kicks in early in Dark Lustre. Young Ollie’s dead body has been found below the cliffs at Morte Point. A little later, Tommy Quantox is up on the cliffs at night, trying to get some bearings on this death. The dark is full of eerie sounds, ominous signs. Minor among all this, Tommy finds an empty can of Monster Energy. In the blackness, he’s a little spooked by the Monster logo, a stylised letter M, as if gouged into flesh by the talons of some ambush predator.
The Monster variants are legion. MONSTER RIPPER. MONSTER KHAOTIC. MONSTER BEAST UNLEASHED. The latter with 6 per cent alcohol, and maybe to be followed by… MONSTER REHAB. We like to deck our psychoactive potions with dramatic, even fatalistic nomenclature. Black Death Vodka. MONSTER ASSAULT. That’s not nice. While Tommy and DL co-protagonist Pamela Budeaux are in Germany, other energy drinks appear. Hell and Heavywater. Billy Boy energy drink, with a condom stuck to the side. And Fire Of Istanbul, aimed at Germans of Turkish heritage.
The Dark Lustre books feature aureate speculation – on a phenomenon that’s both grave and goofy. NAZI GOLD. As I was finishing the books I came across a Monster variety new to me. MONSTER ULTRA GOLD. It felt like a sign. As I now hold it, it has a weight, a kind of beauty. Any metallic drinks can might seem remarkable at the right moment, in the right light. There are such moments in Dark Lustre:
“Every so often, Tommy found himself amazed by the metalwork of contemporary aluminium drinks cans – so thin, so light. He imagined an Anglo-Saxon horseman finding such a can, which had somehow been transported to the fifth century. Surely they’d see it as equal to the work of their most exalted metal smiths? The featherweight silver of a drinks can was as miraculous as any ancient cloisonné metalwork, however heavily studded with garnets. The equal of a filigree-lined sword pommel, unearthed in a ship-burial at Sutton Hoo.”
Object 4. Posters
Even in the 21st century, posted notices remain part of the rock band’s comms arsenal. Pamela, singer/guitarist with The Countess Marie-José de la Barre d’Erquelinnes Hextet, delights in poster art – as with the above design for an early Hextet show. This poster heralded a great night down by the North Devon riverfront. Support band Interfered With By Stone Age Man began cataclysmically and then moved into a rock approximation of six pages of Gothic-lettered parchment, as inscribed by monks on sixth-century Lindisfarne. The DJ played Fats Domino, Siouxsie And The Banshees, Patsy Powell & The Honky Tonk Playboys. Then cued up her renowned twin-turntable fusion of Suicide’s Dream Baby Dream, mixed with Lady Saw’s cautionary Kingston dancehall tale, Peanut Punch Make Man Shit Up Gal Bed.
Seeking inspiration, Pamela visits a Berlin exhibition of Krautrock posters. Imagery is manifest: Kraftwerk, Guru Guru, Agitation Free. And a haunting, little-known Kosmische Musik kombo called Föhn / Fön. There are other posters in Dark Lustre. Out in the woods and with a gunman lurking, Tommy Quantox sees a poster on a fence. YOU ARE NOT ALONE, it says. It’s from a Samaritans campaign, but, under the darkening leaves, the words take on another meaning.
The above poster is from a night in Leipzig. A women-led event headlined by Annika Line Trost of Cobra Killer. The group Die Leeren Dosen – “The Empty Cans”– woz wunderbar! They played conceptualised Can covers – as instrumentals but with a twist. This conceptual brilliance arrived with the way they leave gaping silences amid their propulsive playing:
“Suddenly, in the middle of the can track known only as STUTTGART 75 EINS, the four women stopped dead still. Dramatically, powerfully, the venue was filled with the total absence of sound. As the women kept their bodies unflinchingly still, their eyes darted from side to side, sweeping the crowd, pre-empting anyone who might be tempted to defy the silence. Between STUTTGART 75 EINS and STUTTGART 75 FÜNF there was another taught, protracted silence. Perhaps Die Leeren Dosen imagined that by playing the first and final tracks from Can Live In Stuttgart 1975 they were implying this whole concert. Pamela breathed in sharply. At this rate, the Hextet would have to be at the very top of their game.”
