I can't remember when I first heard the voice. It sounded like Adele on a loop - you know, that enticing but slightly irritating pub singer enunciation - echoing inside my head. I was sure it was someone speaking or singing but any words were indistinct. At first I thought it was some sort of fluid in me eardrum deal. But there comes a moment when any person is confronted with the impossible that they have to put aside their protestations and just accept that something is real.
Yeah, try and explain that with your precious science, Professor Brian Cox.
It was then that I conducted a series of triangulation tests in order to determine the exact location of the voice's source. By standing with a bucket on my head in Heaton Park and on top of the Trafford Centre I was able to calculate from where these mysterious words were emanating.
Imagine my surprise to discover it was from an active volcano halfway between Manchester and Liverpool!
Mount St Helens, which last erupted in 1980, is situated just off the M62 (Junc. 7). Bizarrely, during that eruption an enormous statue of a head emerged from the Earth's crust. My in-depth research revealed that it was this mystery head that was responsible for the voices that were haunting me. So on Monday I went to visit it to see what it was on about.
I gingerly tip-toed my way through the ash and pumice and obsidian and whatever else it is that comes from volcanos (volcanoes? vol-canoes? What? Canoes?) And there I confronted this monstrous boat race and raised my fist, challenging it to speak again.
Only now it remained silent. "What would you have me do, o head?" I implored once more.
Again, silence.
I remained there for about another hour and a half (that's how long the podcast about narrow boats I was listening to lasted). And still, all I got was this:
Well, that was enough for me. I don't like being jerked around, even if it is by a giant head on top of a volcano. I poured the last of my luke warm tea out of my tartan thermos and set about heading home.
And that is when the monolith spoke. I don't know how many people heard its words - to me it seemed as if the sounds were still coming from inside my head. Maybe its message was for me and me alone. At any rate I feel a desperate need to share those words with you now.
As I stood there, teetering at the crater's edge, the head finally passed what it had been trying to say to me all this time:
"Near a tree, by a river, there's a hole in the ground where an old man of Aran goes around and around..."
More soonliest.
