Indian Rope Trick Page 2

This piece of information, revealing that the sculptor had made no mistake at all, added to the realization that it would have been perfectly easy for him to have put the stirrups in afterwards if he’d wanted, caused me in later years to feel a certain doubt about this tale. But literal truth, of course, was not its real point. It was a fable about the artistic temperament and where it could lead you if you gave way to it. Hull was never a city with a great enthusiasm for the artistic temperament.

But it did like jokes, the earthier and more practical the better, and if you went past the Fisherman’s Church and down Dagger Lane and through the old market you would find yourself in the dim, mysterious recesses of Ferens Arcade in front of a magic cavern known as The Joke Shop, replete with everything the heart of a boy could desire. Just standing outside it was enough to make you feel you were in the centre of the universe, because the window, glowing in the gloom of the arcade, was packed with so many objects of wonder, that you ceased to ask yourself “which of them shall I buy today?” and just basked in your sheer proximity to them.

Where else could you be in the presence, separated only by a sheet of glass, of The Mystic Envelope, (Producing an Amazing Variety of Magical Effects)? Or be able to judiciously weigh the merits of The Paper Tearing Enigma (Gets Them Every Time) against those of the The Trick Cigarette, The Disappearing Pips, the Magic Nail Through Finger, the Double Sided Sucker or the Cake of Black Hand Soap?

Where else could you gaze to your heart’s delight on The Puffing Sailor (Cleverest Novelty For Years, Uncanny, Unbelievable), The Jolly Golly (Full Directions Enclosed) Sexy Anna, the Beach Girl (The Bachelor’s Delight), the Joke Beetle (Endless Innocent Fun), the Bottle Imp, (Will Not Lie Flat, Can Be Examined) The Magic Bottle Diver (A Wonderful Novelty) the Wine into Water Illusion (Equally Suitable for Stage or Party) the Afghan Band (A Startling Paper-Cutting Mystery) or The Indian Rope Trick - described, in the language shaped by Shakespeare and Milton, as “Simple But Creating an Atmosphere of Great Expectation”.

I think the words describing the Indian Rope Trick could also be applied to my childhood in Hull, because although it was simple it did indeed create an atmosphere of Great Expectation.

It’s hard for me to say whether Hull was any more or less interesting a place to grow up than other large, industrial city in Britain or indeed anywhere in the western world: but it had the capacity, with its fogs and trolley buses and mysterious alleyways and ruined vistas and heroes in glass cases to produce Great Expectation.

It is an atmosphere, when I think of it, which has continued to envelop me ever since.