A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
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NECKLACE, AFFAIR OF THE MISSING - While the recovery of my mother's pearl necklace might not, strictly speaking, qualify as an adventure, the unerring instinct with which I located it in under Christine's pillow was the first indication of my vocation. The pro-Hamilton mood that followed coincided with a period in which Christine, having exhibited a reprehensible trait, remained firmly in the dog-house. Her seventh birthday, which fell the week after the initial shockwaves of her disgrace, was a subdued affair, the proposed trip to the Safari Park being cancelled in favour of a dinner at which the only guests were our grand-parents. Christine's violent retribution, a sneak attack from behind while I was saying my prayers (at the time, I was a particularly devout child), was the first of many beatings I suffered on account of my art.
While we never discuss the matter, I'm sure with the application of hindsight, Christine appreciates the intervention that prevented her from following an entirely different path. Ironically, my recent discovery that my niece, Muriel, was experimenting with cigarettes, entailed a complete role-reversal. In the fullness of time, I expect that Muriel might reconsider her own immediate response to my ‘interference'
NEIGHBOURLINESS - We live in an age of indifference. Our grandparents were reassured by the appearance of a neighbour's friendly face at the window. Now, more than likely, his concern would be interpreted as voyeurism. His interest would more than likely be repaid with threats and lawyers' letters. The unsavoury fixations of television writers and journalists, few of whom, one suspects, would qualify as good neighbours themselves, have contributed to this climate of prurience and suspicion. The consequence is that well-meaning individuals are inhibited by a terror that their actions might be misinterpreted. How many tragedies might have been averted if not for embarrassment?
In 2006, I launched the Drumfeld Good Neighbours project, an initiative undermined from the outset by my own neighbours' malicious slanders. 'Trossachs Seer Dubbed "Neighbour From Hell"' screamed the Examiner's headline. Closer examination of the article revealed that I was accused of nothing more fiendish than practising what I preach. Elpeth Spence's claim that I intruded upon a moment of intimacy was particularly damaging to the campaign. While I freely acknowledge looking through the Spence's bedroom window, it was because, from the shrieks of anguish emanating from within, I assumed someone was being violently assaulted. When I established that wasn't. in fact, the case, I withdrew, but not, unfortunately before knocking over a flower pot, an act of clumsiness that alerted Mrs Spence to my presence.
NELSON, DANIEL (1946 - 1968) - On the twelfth of August, 1968, less than a month, co-incidentally, after my birth, Daniel Nelson staggered into the Strangers bar in Greenbank, Wisconsin, his shirt saturated with his own blood. Within minutes, despite efforts of the staff to revive him, he was dead: the probable cause a stab wound to the upper chest inflicted by a long, thin blade. I say 'probable' because the wound was only one of several. Daniel had been stabbed a total of seven times. Blood stains in the vicinity of Strangers suggest that the fatal assault took place within a vehicle from which the dying Nelson was ejected before making his way to the bar. One witness recalled having to swerve to avoid a man he assumed to be drunk stepping from the rear door of a black car. As the 'drunk' staggered toward oncoming traffic, the car from which he emerged accelerated away. This was almost certainly Daniel Nelson.
With no apparent motive, the Greenbank Police Department assumed that Nelson's murder was a random act of savagery. Various local thugs and degenerates were questioned but none detained. By the time Nelson's remains were released for burial a month later, the police had acknowledged defeat. "It was just one of these things," recalled retired detective Ray Hollis when I contacted him years later. "We did everything we could." His complacency wasn't justified by the facts. When the investigation, headed by Hollis, failed to elicit a confession through violence it was abandoned. Despite the promptings of Nelson's parents and sister, nobody within the Greenbank P.D. thought to establish links between Daniel's murder and a strange incident three years earlier when a teenager, missing for a week, was found by loggers in the forest that rings Greenbank, muddled and without the slightest memory of where he had been. The name of the youth was Daniel Nelson.
An intelligent investigator regards co-incidence as a red flag. Every event in our lives is in some way linked. When the pattern of someone's existence is afflicted by such improbable misfortunes twice within a limited timescale, we're obliged to sit up and take notice. "Just one of these crazy things," insisted the idiotic Hollis when reminded of his negligence. Nobody familiar with the official investigative process, encumbered as it is by a slavish demand for 'evidence', should be entirely surprised by his attitude, though his lack of curiousity seems remarkable even by the standards of his vocation.
Certain names possess a resonance for no apparent reason. This applies even to those without any pronounced psychic gift. Why randomly combined syllables should leave one person cold while causing another an overpowering sensation of forgotten knowledge is testament to the threads that connect us. Even before I was apprised of the facts of Daniel's case, the mention of his name was sufficient to create a mental picture that tallied with the reality in every particular. I can see him now, his broad smile tempered by the apprehension that the world might not consider him entirely acceptable. No-one else might have suspected this lack of confidence in a champion debater who, incidentally, studied the same book on public speaking I inherited from my Grandpa Sneddon. Is it possible that Daniel possessed some foreknowledge of his fate? His sister, Irene, thought so. “Daniel was never the same after he went missing,” she told me. “The spark was gone. He withdrew into himself, it was as if he was waiting for something to happen.”
NEMESIS – A transgression against one is a transgression against all. He who assumes the mantle of nemesis must prepare to be ostracised.
NIMMO, SAMUEL (1967 - ) Actor, Dwarf – In casting Samuel Nimmo as Hamilton Coe, the producers of the People Who Saw Tomorrow demonstrated both contempt and ignorance of their subject. Nimmo, at the time a fifteen year old actor stunted by a metabolic disorder and physically unsuitable for most of the parts he auditioned for, had no conception of how to tackle the role. I don't know how much research he did, if any, but his performance exhibited zero comprehension of the clairvoyant experience. The repercussions were immediate. I was deluged with hate mail and renounced from seventeen different churches. One particular zealot threatened to have me forcibly baptised, adding that contact with consecrated water would cause my skin to melt. For weeks I was unable to venture outside without an adult escort and on these occasions children would point at me and emit a bloodcurdling shriek, an impression of Nimmo's version of my investigative technique. It took years for my reputation to fully recover from the damage inflicted.
Nimmo's freakish performance attracted the interest of the sort of voyeurs who intentionally seek out bad art in order to reassure themselves of their own intellectual superiority. The influence of such champions was, however, minimal. Blindly encouraged, Nimmo briefly re-located to Los Angeles, the worst city in the world for someone of his temperament and appearance, where he auditioned for various ‘Child of Satan' roles popular at the time. In this, he was stymied by his unequivocally sinister appearance: in the popular imagination, the son of the devil is superficially cherubic. Nobody glimpsing Nimmo would imagine him to be anything other than a bad egg.
An outsider by appearance only, Nimmo craved acceptance and was mortified by his treatment in America. In Britain, his rejections had been sweetened by words of encouragement: nobody would have referred to his appearance as a factor, however obvious. L.A. casting directors, however, thought nothing of laughing incredulously as he entered the room. One was so incensed by Nimmo's temerity in auditioning that he emptied the contents of his ashtray over his head.
Embittered by rejection, Nimmo returned to Britain where he was reduced to appearing in pantomime and being physically demeaned in rock videos. Footage of him dressed as an imp or satyr occasionally resurfaces on the music shows Spencer watches in the early hours of the morning. It was at this time that he formed an unreciprocated fixation on the actress Kate Winslett with whom he appeared on an episode of Casualty, a BBC soap opera set in a hospital on which Nimmo regularly appeared as a corpse or malign, inner city child. To this day, Nimmo claims to have secretly married the actress: in an eerie parallel to my own problems with SAMANTHA EADIE-COE, he was, in fact reported for harassing her after an incident outside her apartment reported in various newspapers.
Later that year, Nimmo (now calling himself Sammy Nemo) increased his notoriety by claiming to be fourteen years old and attempting to join a scout troupe. Attributing his haggard appearance to a rare disorder, he eagerly participated in a Duke of Edinburgh camping exhibition before being exposed by concerned relatives. Nothing excites British journalists more than the suggestion of paedophilia to which Nimmo's subterfuge was attributed. Almost certainly innocent of this, his behaviour was, in fact, a desperate attempt to reclaim the innocence lost when he fell in with the makers of The People who Saw Tomorrow. See also KELLY, NINA and PEOPLE WHO SAW TOMORROW, THE.
NOSTALGIA - As I frequently remind my audiences, a man who remains rooted in the past is unable to fulfil his role in the present. The genuinely creative person doesn't squander his thoughts on issues that are no longer relevant: he's absorbed in the here and now. Retrospection is as pernicious as any other addiction. Let's not be sentimental about the affliction. What we commonly refer to as nostalgia is just an affectionate word for a compound of senility, surrender and regret. Those who indulge in it inhabit a realm of ghosts. We obviously refer to memory for information, but it's important not to distort what we find there. I've given various lectures on this topic at Drumfeld Public library. On each occasion, I've been thanked by individuals stricken by the spontaneous realisation that their entire lives are still dictated by incidents that should have long ceased to matter. What purpose does it serve to dwell on the mortifications of childhood? If I was so inclined, I could, recount the daily lunchtime ritual of being pelted with my classmates' unwanted sprouts or the trauma of being dragged from Karen Gardner's laundry basket. “My life was ruined!” I could wail. Instead I'm grateful to have been offered the opportunity to persevere. There are storms over the course of anybody's life. We measure someone's character by his ability to weather them.
NUMBSKULLS - See ADAMSON, PETER; ASQUITH, COLETTE; BECKHAM, DAVID; CHRISTIE, FRASER; COE, SPENCER; DUNN, MICHAEL; EVERETT, STEPHEN; INGLIS, PHILIP; JACKSON, PAUL; KELLOGG, FRANCIS; LESTER, DR PHILIP; LOGUE, COLIN; MCATEER, ROSS; MINTO; COLIN; MURRAY, EWEN; TOBIN, MIRIAM; URE, WILLIAM.