Vagaries

I’m not fishing for sympathy here (although it is, of course, always welcomed) but I have not been well.

Now, being unwell, you will rightly suggest, is nothing unusual – certainly nothing to write home about for someone of my age – but I am now staggering into month three and, lassitude in hand, facing certain facts for the first time in my life: a) although this is almost certainly not something that will kill me, it is nonetheless, something that I will most probably die with; b) I feel certain that it is not something to which I would so readily have succumbed in my previous six decades on this earth and c) that it has been able to knock me so low is almost certainly due to my advancing years. I don’t like it.

In common with most people I imagine, whilst I have always known that old age would be coupled with increasing ill-health, I was pretty certain that I was well-equipped to sidestep it. I am not, after all, most people. I am perfectly aware that my eventual fate is the same as everybody else’s, but if I am asked I cannot picture it at all. Infirmity is for other people. Death will call on me, but I do not plan on being around to meet it.

I have retained a child-like brain that refuses to envisage a future without me in it. Unfortunately that self-same brain is in charge of my less ageless body and when my grandkids say, “Can you do a roly-poly grandad?” it answers “Of course,” before I have the opportunity to talk some sense into it and, let’s face it, once you’ve told the grandkids you can do a roly-poly, you’re bloody well going to have to do it even if it means taking your vertebrae home in a sack. You can surround yourself with kids, or you can surround yourself with people of your own age, and we all know what they are like.

It is hard to pinpoint the age at which we start to regress, but it is there for all of us: the second childhood; the age of ‘To hell with it. Why not?’ The age of resenting being told you can’t do something to such an extent that you will resolve to do it, no matter the price you will pay. Consequence disappears from view like a five-year old with a skateboard on Ben Nevis. The ability to foresee the consequences of your actions is something you do not achieve until puberty, at which point it is trumped by the ability to ignore them. Everything bad will happen to somebody else.

Once we have children, our lives become ruled by cause and effect and the fear of death becomes far more potent, not because a foreshortened existence is any more terrifying than it ever was, but because the thought of leaving the kids to fend for themselves is something we are all programmed to resist. Risk is something taken by those without children. Until, for the rest of us the grandkids come along. They are your joy, but they are the responsibility of your children and if their abiding memory is of you dying whilst doing something monumentally bonkers for a person of your age… there is a certain appeal in going out to a chorus of “Doesn’t he realise how old he is?”

For the last few weeks I have been robbed of all potential of behaving in a thoroughly age-inappropriate manner and the sooner it sorts itself out the better. It is very easy to tire of being a pin-cushion. I have things to do that would be considered extremely foolhardy in anybody else of my age. I have a life to live that does not embrace illness and is more likely to involve a stolen half-hour in a soft-play than Sudoku on a river cruise.

I may have aged a few years in the last few weeks, but I have decided to leave consequence behind me.

Now, find my stick and oil my truss, I’m going for that roly-poly…

Mission Statement 2.0

Seven and a half years having elapsed since my original ‘Mission Statement’ I thought that it was perhaps time for me to once again take a moment or two in which to ruminate on the disparate reasons for all of this. I, in common with the rest of the world, have changed over that time: in 2018 the UK Prime Minister was Theresa May, The U.S. President was Donald J Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping… so, ok, the world has not actually changed that much at all: maybe it just feels more f*cked up than it used to be…

I have changed. I was approaching my sixtieth birthday back at the start of this and I am comfortably past my sixty-seventh now. Physically I have changed – hence the new site icon with which I appear to have replaced a smug Kenny Rogers lookalike with a startled Freddie Mercury – I seldom drink and write these days and if I have a peanut butter sandwich I owe it to my teeth to make certain that it isn’t crunchy, but this blog continues to be principally about me and how I fit into the world that surrounds me.

Well, not terribly well as it turns out. We rub along ok I guess, the world and I, but as I get older, the world is definitely gaining the upper hand. Since the start of this picaresque narrative we have, in the UK, blundered through Brexit, staggered through Boris Johnson, done God-knows-what through Liz Truss and we are now about to bequeath Nigel Farage to the world (although, let’s be honest, some of you deserve him). The rest of you have had to endure the age of the three Presidential Marx Brothers: all of them barmy and each with a finger on the nuclear trigger. Between them they have made the sad descent of each of us into mental and physical decrepitude far less certain – we may well not have the time required to get there.

So, where should I start with blog 2.0? Writing blog 1.0 sometimes required the kind of attention usually reserved for drunken games of Jenga and cooking risotto – the former being far too fraught with possibility for me to even consider these days and the latter having become so routine a part of my existence that it now requires little conscious thought except in attempting to correctly double the amount of wine stated in the recipe. Going forward – nonsense phrase of the day as I have yet to find a way of taking my life backwards – I feel that I will have to come up with some kind of agenda which I will pin to the office wall. If it is anything like as efficient as my medication-taking regime, we may well all find ourselves at a loose end before the year is out.

It occurs to me that I should also probably tackle my tendency towards self-obsession, but I have no idea what that would leave for me to write about. Even when I write fiction I seldom actually create characters, but rather pick out threads of my own personality – almost always the ones that I would most like to eradicate – and magnify them. It is the only way I know to find empathy with the bad guys. It is the only way to give them a third dimension – unless of course they are politicians in which case, having two faces, they each have four dimensions, the fourth being naked, self-serving greed.

I have tried many ways of keeping up to date with WordPress Reader, but setting a few minutes aside before each writing stint seldom works as I always get drawn into the ‘Comments’ boards and either write nothing of my own or do it at 2am fuelled by coffee, chocolate and whisky – a regime which, as I have said, I have endeavoured to leave behind me (a task made much easier by my current lack of deadlines: everything can wait) so I tend to block read on my office laptop which has a screen of sufficient dimensions to ensure that I can see the words without resting my nose on it. I can lock myself away in my office and shut myself off from the world, but the world doesn’t care for that very much. It is insidious. It always finds a way in.

Managing distractions should be easy, but almost anything can get a grip on my attention: raindrops on windows, squirrels on fences, delivery drivers on my driveway, birds on feeders, who sang that, who wrote that, I wonder what time it is in Ulan Bator? It doesn’t take much.

Now, where was I?

Focus is the thing. I am really good at focus – compulsive almost – when things must be done, but far less so when completion is merely desirable. Latitude is something I should never be given – unless, of course, you are attempting to give me directions, in which case it could be very advantageous. I am capable of drifting off from almost anything and I spend much of my time trying to work out how to get back to where I was – if only I knew where that was.

I am, in truth, a bit of a rambler – except I hardly ever wear shorts and never with a knapsack – and where I go is hardly ever where I intended to go, so maybe detailed planning is not entirely feasible. I very much hope that this blog can offer a view of the world through the eyes of someone who is beginning to reap the harvest of sixty odd years of life. I do not want it to be about growing old, but about living with growing old. I don’t intend to regale you with a list of everything I have that is packing in, but to concentrate on everything on and within my body that is not giving in to the ravages of time. I can’t think of much at the moment, but leave it with me…

If I’m honest, the plan remains pretty much as it always was, to cock a snook at age and everything it brings with it (although, not with sufficient severity to annoy it to the extent that it buggers off and leaves me). Over the last few I have learned that I cannot ignore everything I am told (my wife is particularly adamant that I adhere to this particular principle in all my dealings with the medical profession – even when I would dearly like to believe that they don’t know what they’re talking about) but I can choose to not necessarily hear everything. My age makes that so much more believable. My mission is to catch old age with its pants down and to take a snapshot for all the world to see.

Your mission – should you choose to accept it – is to come along for the ride. You might as well. I mean let’s be honest, how long can it possibly take?

As a consequence of ignoring the inner voices…

I feel that I ought to start with a (mercifully short) apology. This is my first post in a number of weeks: my absence was initially the result of ill-health, which was followed by a much longer period of indolence that I would find totally unacceptable in anybody else, and while on the first count things remain unresolved, on the second I have given myself a firm poke in the midriff and strongly suggested that it would be in my best interests to pull myself together and grow a pair. I need to get back on the horse. (A task made all the more difficult by the fact that I seriously do not care for heights and even less so for huge beasts with minds of their own.) I can’t help but feel that what a world dominated by the likes of Trump and Putin really needs is even more of my whingeing and whining, so from next week, it is my intention to get back to as close to normal as I have ever been. (On a slight side note, in my absence I have received a number of emails from WordPress advising me of a surge in my readership which made me wonder whether the best thing I could say would be nothing, the many thousands of bots that seem to appreciate my badly out of date drivel can’t all be wrong, can they? I feel as though I should probably thank them for their loyalty.)

If I’m honest, doing what I am told has never really been my thing. I might recognise the truth in what I am told, but nag away at me for long enough and I will almost certainly dig my heels in. It’s not a trait that I am particularly proud of, but I consider it no worse than nagging, even when well-intentioned. The water torture drip, drop of ‘you must’, ‘you mustn’t’ is almost certain to bring out the oppugnant in me. Tell me that I should be mindful of what I eat and I will be so. Tell me each and every time I go to put something in my mouth and I will almost certainly go for something supersized and greasy instead. There is a fine line between benevolence and overbearing, and infinite repetition is the bridge across it.

This is a bridge that I built myself. I am the king of self-enlightenment, which comes complete with an innate inability to leave myself be: I always know what is best for me and, furthermore, it is nothing adjacent to what I am habitually doing.

A couple of days during which I was incapable of putting pen to paper were followed by weeks of “What you need to do is to get back to writing” which, inside my head translates as “Sod that, I’ll just sit here in the warm and watch crap on TV.” My advice is sound, but my inability to listen to it complete. Only after I realise that I am not heeding my own advice do I stop giving it, at which point – and never before – I realise that it is sage.

So here I am. I hope that I will be back properly from next week and, for that, I can only apologise.

You have been warned.

BTW. In my absence the default font for my new posts and (it appears from this end) all of the old ones appears to have changed. I’ve tried to address it to the best of my (sadly limited) abilities. If the changes are too jarring I can only apologise. Like most things ‘Word Press’ it appears to be a problem with no obvious solution.

All That Cecil Wanted

Photo by Trust “Tru” Katsande on Unsplash

All that Cecil wanted
Was a shiny yellow bike
So he wrote to Father Christmas
And he told him what he’d like
A dozen gears
Suspension spring
A horn to honk
A bell to ring.

Then little Cecil posted
His missive in the box
With a postscript at the bottom
Saying “Please don’t bring me socks!
A paint set’s fine
Or Lego bricks
A football shirt
A box of tricks.”

But Cecil he insisted
Whatever else he had
He had to have a bicycle
Or else he’d go quite mad
He’d stamp his feet
Or scream and shout
He’d make a scene
There was no doubt.

Yet Cecil had a problem
Though he really didn’t know
His parent’s impecunity
Was something of a blow
They had no cash
To throw around
He wouldn’t like
What they had found.

And so on Christmas morning
Young Cecil was bereft
And he railed at Father Christmas
For the rubbish that he’d left
But he didn’t scream
He didn’t shout
He grabbed his coat
And just went out.

Though Cecil went a-walking
To heal his broken heart
The lack of what he wanted
Was tearing him apart
He held back tears
He wouldn’t cry
His Christmas dream
Was just a lie.

The hollow Christmas Story
Was nothing but a joke
If Santa wouldn’t help him
Because his folks were broke
It wasn’t fair
It wasn’t right
He made a plan
He vowed to fight.

So Cecil took his chances
Imagination fired
He scanned the streets around him
And stole what he desired
The Christmas dream
Became at best
“Take what you want
And sod the rest.”

The moral of this fable
Is don’t just sit and moan
If Santa doesn’t bring it
Then go and get your own
A sin, it’s true
Maybe a vice
You steal the bike
And pay the price.

The price for our poor Cecil
Was screaming in his head
He wanted to be honest
But he’d turned to crime instead
A cost in pride
A price in grief
When conscience says
“You’re just a thief.”

So Cecil took the cycle
And made an honest stance
He twice tried to return it
But the owner said “No chance.
My parent’s paid
All that is true
But it serves them right –
I wanted blue…”

MERRY CHRISTMAS ONE AND ALL…

The Capacity to Believe

I am 67 years of age, I have had more than enough time to earn my ‘Cynical Badge’ and yet, fundamentally I am a believer: fairies, pixies, ghosts, werewolves, dead certs, 100% guarantees, honest politicians, ‘humble’ film stars, karma, parallel universes, the Big Bang, UFO’s, Big Foot, Santa Claus, Donald Trump’s conscience, I have an unrivalled capacity to believe, and at this time of year my openness to the suspension of scepticism is legendary. I do believe in father Christmas, not as the white bearded, ruddy-faced individual who drops a gift off at every house in the world over the period of a single night, but as the reason that the mince pie and glass of whisky I leave out every Christmas Eve is always gone by the morning – and let’s face it, it’s a far more logical thing to believe in than Donald Trump having a conscience.

There is a good will at Christmas that is almost defiant. The soldiers who ceased fighting on the Western Front in order to play football (Germany won by the single goal in extra time) share rations and show one another photographs of their loved ones were not smiled upon by their superiors. It was tolerated, eventually, but definitely time-limited. Anyone unprepared to skewer the man with whom they had shared their duff just hours before could expect to be shot by their own side. The higher echelons were so worried that this spirit of camaraderie between the two armies might persist that they withheld pigs in blankets until the troops could produce a chit affirming that they had robbed at least one child of a parent on Boxing Day. The spirit of Christmas can prevail, but seldom for long in the face of those with something to gain.

In my life, the spirit envelopes me at the beginning of December and lasts for the whole month, generally crashing around my ankles on the dreaded New Year’s Eve with the singing of Auld Lang Syne and the reckless expectation of hugging people whom you wouldn’t touch with a bargepole at any other time of the year. We all fear that we are that person.

So December is all about ignoring the fact that January is on its way and with it the two great portents of mortality: New Year’s Eve and another birthday. New Year’s Eve generally sees me in bed and asleep in time to be woken by the midnight fireworks; New Year’s Day is often the day on which my wife begins to pack Christmas away and January Second is the day on which I become another year older. Death is not something I choose to think about – it is an inevitability – but it does come ever closer along with its sister inescapability, infirmity. Illness is something I do think about, but if I’m honest, in a very abstract sense; never deeply enough to actively delay it. Over these three days, though, my thoughts do turn to the final days, weeks, months, or even years of sub-standard existence and, should I make any resolutions – always broken by the 2^nd – they are always to do with keeping myself on my feet and doing the crossword. (I am aware that elderly people traditionally take up Sudoku for brain exercise, but it is a complete mystery to me. Numbers float in all directions and every grid features two 9s.) I am fortunate enough to be relatively fit and mentally acute – I know that neither are ‘given’ – but always on the lookout for signs of deterioration. Forgetting to put the cat out is a worry, forgetting that we’ve never had one is far more so. I try to enjoy each Christmas as if it is my last which – for all of us – it could possibly be.

Of course, nobody wants their last Christmas to be marred by family feuds, burned turkey or indigestible Brussel sprouts. (To many, Brussel sprouts are always indigestible, but Christmas without them – like Love Actually – is unthinkable) so the pressure is always on to make it a good one. Children embrace it properly and are even prepared to forgive you for being totally lame for anything up to twenty-four hours. The even become suitably competitive for the Christmas Hat Game*. They might even sit and watch a film with the rest of the family and abandon their phones for minutes on end. I suppose it says much about our nation that the most cherished ritual of Christmas is the afternoon nap. It wouldn’t be Christmas if you didn’t sleep through The Kings Speech and wake up with the desperate desire to open the windows.

I am supremely lucky to be part of an extended family that wants to spend time together. We gather, in various formations, as often as we can. Because there are so many of us we tend to drift in and out of one another’s Christmas these days – even if only by Zoom – but Christmas is a day when nobody minds a phone call during dinner or a visit just as the pud is being lit. ‘Come in, pull up a chair and grab a spoon. There’s plenty of everything, and not a single cynic in the house. So, what did Father Christmas bring you?…”

*Everyone wears the paper crown out of the Christmas Cracker. When the first person (hopefully discreetly, but after a couple of snowballs, who can say) takes theirs off, everyone else must follow suit as subtly as possible. The last person left wearing their hat must accept the ridicule from the room as well of the responsibility of being the first person to remove their hat in the next game – and there will be a next game, there always is: it is surprisingly addictive.

Take Good Care of Your Elf

…And nobody ever thinks about the Elves, do they? The fat bloke in the red suit – one day a year he works – is the man who gets all the plaudits. Thousands of bloody doppelgangers all around the world he has, sweating their nuts off in cheap polyester onesies, fur trimmings, elasticated beards, pinned down by screaming kids, while you-know-who snores the month away in bed, scratching his balls and dreaming of mince pies. He gets all the credit whilst up here in Lapland, we Elves slave away in the old man’s freezing sweatshop three hundred and sixty four days a year, trying to guess at the start of January what the little buggers are going to be asking for come the start of December, before they change their minds and decide they’d sooner have something else at the last minute and who gets the credit when that all works out ok hey? Is it the poor pointy eared little person in the scratchy pea-green suit who actually made it all happen? No, of course it isn’t, it’s Glory Boy, obviously, who takes all of the credit despite the fact that he’s still wearing his reindeer slippers and no pants whilst all the real work is taking place. It’s like being Taylor Swift’s drummer. She knows that nothing works without him/her, but as far as the audience is concerned they might as well be a piggy beetle with a wooden leg stomping about on a biscuit tin. Nobody ever asked what poor sod had to spend his working day rubbing Fiery Jack into Elvis’s dodgy pelvis did they, even though there would have been no show without him. We may not have to massage Elvis’s groin, but without us Santa would be substantially lacking in Ho-Ho-Ho.

We talked about going on strike once, we did, convened a meeting and everything but the world is full of cheap Chinese Elves these days, isn’t it? He’d sack us as soon as look at us and replace us with untrained Chinese Peasants, even though they’d all be too big for the uniform.

It used to be ok of course: a child who wanted a lead-painted wooden pull-along train in January could generally be trusted to still want one in December and, anyway, a sharp parental clip around the ear was generally sufficient to deter bouts of fickleness. Not now. Nobody wants to give the kids wood these days on account of the risks associated with Dutch Elm or such like and whatever silicon chipped gizmo they wanted in January – when we sat down to start assembly – will have been superseded by fourteen more advanced models by November, not to mention become ‘totally lame’ and certain to elicit nothing but ridicule from their friends whose parents have connections in Japan and therefore access to ‘the latest thing’ before it even hits the production line. There is always a newer model and it almost always comes out at the very moment you’ve wrapped the old one.

Of course, I have tried to help: I’ve told the Big Man that we need to modernise. We could save so much if we dropped all that personalised delivery malarkey and replaced it with a card through the letterbox informing the recipient that the gift has been left in the registered ‘safe place’ or the recycling bin, whichever is easier. Perhaps we will need to instigate a free returns policy – or at least a free QR code to work out how much it is actually going to cost – as a quick and convenient way for people to divest themselves of all the amusing mugs, bookmarks with the wrong name and foot spas that are the true hallmark of Christmas present. I mean, what’s wrong with a nice on-line catalogue? All that writing a letter to Santa and posting up the chimney nonsense is pretty archaic isn’t it? Just open the Christmas App and drop whatever you fancy into your cyber-sack. Choose exactly what you want and return when you decide you don’t – that’s bringing the whole thing into the 21^st century isn’t it?

And of course, bringing the whole thing up-to-date will have far reaching and positive effects here in Lapland. We Elves will be able to concentrate on producing the toys that we’re good at – I, for instance, am very proficient at the tin xylophone – knowing that if orders come in for goods that we haven’t made the client will just get an email on Christmas Eve informing them of unavoidable delays and the possibility of a refund sometime towards the end of January – right after our post-Christmas shutdown. There is, however, still next day delivery available on hand painted novelty musical instruments etc etc. Also, with no deliveries to be made by our own carriers, we can finally lay off those stinking flippin’ reindeer. They think that they’re so special. Alright, they can fly faster than the speed of light, but they only have to do it for one day a year and somebody still has to clean up after them for the other three hundred and sixty four. There’s little worse in this world than reindeer shit all over the soles of green felt slippers let me tell you. I can’t wait to put them out to grass.

Talking of which, that brings us round to the old fella himself doesn’t it? Do we really need him anymore? I mean, fat man with white hair and a long beard, does that really fit the profile of a modern, forward-looking business? A giant red hoodie? Really? White fur trimmings? Got to face facts: you just don’t get away with that kind of meme these days. ‘Free gifts for all’? I think that Advertising Standards would be down on us like a ton of bricks. ‘The season of joy, love and peace’? Give over. The season of family rows, dyspepsia and disappointment more like. Throw in an open invitation for children to come and sit on the old soak’s knee and we could wind up looking at the biggest law suit in history. The knock-on reputational damage to all of Elfdom could be catastrophic.

I’ve tried to explain it all to the Big Man, time after time I’ve tried, but you know what it’s like, nobody ever listens to an Elf…

The Six Weeks of Christmas

I put myself through this every year and I have no idea why. It is normally sometime in the middle of November when I start to consider what to do for Christmas and, more troubling, whether I’ve actually done it all before. Now, I enjoyed writing last week’s post, but one week out from Christmas Eve I must admit that it didn’t seem to be altogether seasonal, so I decided that something altogether more uplifting would be necessary to rebalance the scales this week and consequently – as I tend to write this kind of nonsense well in advance of publication – here I am, over six weeks out from the big day fretting over what I have to say and attempting to jot down some kind of list of reasons to be cheerful. It is currently wet, windy, unseasonably warm and just the right side of gloomy to be unconducive to such enterprise. It might say ‘Cheerful’ on the front of the bus, but I have no idea what route I have to follow to get there.

Cheery is my default disposition, but if I’m honest, maintaining an equilibrium is often easier said than done. As human beings we begin life as a relatively blank slate: contented = asleep; uncomfortable, hungry, or fearful = crying – and life slowly rounds-off our corners, chips off our edges and gives us definition until, eventually, it reaches a stage where the cracks begin to show, erosion sets in and bits start to drop off. Remedial care and general repairs become a way of life. Common sense tells me that there can be very few people of my age without any ongoing health issues to contend with. It is a common maxim that laughter is the best medicine, but when you get to my age, paracetemol certainly runs it a close second.

For me, frustration is the heaviest burden: that I am not as fast, not as proficient, not as amusing as I once was. I know that I have started to repeat jokes – a real grandad thing to do – I do not always realise that I do not necessarily share common experience with people who are half my age. I am not, by today’s standards, terribly PC. Oh, and I repeat jokes…

I feel as though I have always been a little behind the curve: I remember the other boys at school sniggering about Master Bates in ‘Oliver Twist’ and not knowing why. I remember similar tittering at the mention of Hymen in ‘As You Like It’ and the embarrassment of having the reason for it explained to me by one of the more worldly wise boys in the class who, incidentally, claimed to have actually seen one. It is the main reason I have never been into bandwagon jumping: I know I would miss it and fall flat on my arse.

Naivety is, I think, my Super Power. I am often completely oblivious to the contempt in which I am being held by the wiser heads who can chuckle at double entendres in Classical Greek whilst I am left agonising over whether Rich Tea is funnier than custard cream. Give me a short-sighted character and a banana skin and I am happy. I really don’t have much time for the kind of jokes that require an explanation: man falls down open manhole = funny; man goes on to explain that the open grate is a metaphor for sexual dysfunction, less so. I do though, have a high tolerance level. I do not necessarily dislike those with whom I fundamentally disagree, as long as we can share chocolate and laugh about it afterwards. Harry Secombe once said that he always suffered fools gladly because he was one of them.

I am foolish enough to love Christmas – not the lights and the glitter, the crap jokes and the over-eating, not the unwanted gifts, the mistletoe, the alcohol, the chocolate… ok, all of the above if I’m honest – and while people are very eager to inform me that Father Christmas is not real I would argue that he certainly is – in spirit. I love the spirit of Christmas. Not the Christmas Gift Top Trumps of ‘see how much thought/money/physical queuing endeavour I put into your gift’ but the ‘Wow! A Freddo Bar, thank you,’ spirit. It is the ‘I love a mandarin,’ spirit. It is the scattering fragments of walnut shell over an area roughly equivalent to half a football pitch spirit. It is the ‘Fetch a hammer. Nobody could open an almond with these crackers,’ spirit. I love the Salvation Army at Christmas (although I deplore the fact that they are still needed.) How emotive is the sound of a brass band? I always equate the sublime film ‘Brassed Off’ with Christmas, simply because of the music, in much the same way as I now equate The Beach Boys ‘God Only Knows’ with the season because of its use in ‘Love Actually’. I cannot imagine any of it without ‘Miracle on 34^th Street’ – The Richard Attenborough version obviously – because some things are non-negotiable.

Writing Christmas posts troubles me. For weeks before they trouble me, yet nobody actually reads the posts I make over the Christmas period, they – quite rightly – have far better things to do, like finding a thousand disparate ways of wrapping a Lottery Scratchcard; calculating the defrosted weight of a turkey sufficient to feed twenty (including three vegetarians, one vegan, two meat-eaters who just don’t like turkey and would much prefer chicken, a Scandinavian in-law who would rather have herring and the kids who will only eat it if it is minced and covered in baked beans) and getting the sprouts on. It is not December if your house does not smell of brussel sprouts and red cabbage.

Anyway, here we are, for me it is actually November 12^th and for you it is probably December 21^st; I am looking forward to it all while you are probably already up to your neck in it. I always presume that most of my readers are of a similar age to myself and anticipating a nap in front of Strictly rather than a seasonal tumble from a new skateboard, so all I can advise is that you try to enjoy it as much as you possibly can. It might not be quite everything that we want, but Lord knows, we may not have too many of them left in us and, let’s face it, nothing quite compares with the thrill of watching the grandkids start to learn about dealing with disappointment when they open the monogrammed handkerchiefs you’ve bought them…

Many Things to Many People

Montague Jones was many things to many people. To his mother he was always Montague Barrington Pilkington Carrington Jones because that was the name she had given him. Montague because it was Romeo’s surname. His mother had never read Shakespeare – in truth she had read little beyond the menu at McDonald’s – but she knew the story of Romeo’s all encompassing love and she hoped that by giving her son that name he would be spiritually bound to reserve the same kind of devotion for her. In truth he hated the name and despised his mother for giving it to him. Worse still the supernumary names that she had insisted upon attaching to it, which she used in full whenever the occasion allowed, preventing Montague from pretending, even to himself, that they did not belong to him: Barrington, after a village she once saw on a jig-saw box, to which her romantic soul told her she would retire one day where she would drink Amontillado sherry from a tiny cut-crystal glass, rather than the mugs full of gin that routinely helped her make it through the day as a young mother; Pilkington because it reminded her of the double-glazing salesman who had brightened her day just nine months before her son was born and Carrington because the name allowed her a little nod towards the daughter she actually wanted by using the surname of Joan Collin’s character in Dynasty. Jones was the surname of the man who – before the days of DNA testing – appeared on his birth certificate as ‘Father’ and to whom Montague’s welfare was entrusted after the untimely death of his mother.

To his father he was always known as Monty, a name he particularly despised having seen the cover of a book “Monty – His Part in My Victory” by some bearded weirdo on which the Monty character was depicted as a wizened shrew-like man with a hook nose and a strange grey moustache that looked like it was trying to escape his face. Montague hated any association with this character and his father, sensing his son’s discomfort, was all too willing to heighten his unease by claiming to anyone who would listen that he had actually been named after the great man himself. Montague swore that he would take revenge one day when he was older, but fortunately his father passed away whilst he was still at school, the result, according to the coroner, of a diet that consisted almost exclusively of brown ale and chips and caused the kind of imbalance that almost certainly led to him toppling down the stairs early one Sunday morning whilst his son played ‘Cowboys and Indians’ in his bedroom with a cast made up entirely of household implements and cushions.

His outright refusal to respond to the name Montague at school led to him being known as Baz by of all his classmates and Barrington by all of the teachers. He suffered the ridicule routinely handed out to ‘care kids’ by the other children and only the humiliation of having ‘Free School Dinners’ saved him from the embarrassment of having his dinner money stolen on a regular basis. Unable to relieve Montague of cold, hard cash, his fellow students instead set upon a regime of piling ignominy upon ignominy upon him until he finally fully absented himself from further education, a step that was to be his salvation as he was subsequently not on board the school bus that ran off the road in the winter of young Jones’ thirteenth year, killing three of his contemporaries and maiming many more. Fortunately he was nowhere near the bus when tragedy struck, nor was he anything like the person who had been seen loitering around the bus station the night before – as far as anyone could tell…

To his workmates he was known as Pilkington when, in an effort to connect with his biological father, he began work as a window fitter. He was a popular member of staff to all but his fellow employees, employers and customers. Many co-workers refused to work alongside him which, ironically, ensured his own continued employment whilst those alongside him were routinely sacked for rejecting the instructions of their supervisors. Cheaper, less experienced workers were employed and, consequently, corners were cut. Workplace accidents became commonplace and the company eventually folded leaving Montague, the longest-serving member of staff, and the only one with all ten fingers, to face the pain of redundancy.

To the staff at the Labour Exchange he was known simply as Carrington in reference to his single likeness to the characters of Dynasty: overbearing arrogance. Montague made it quite clear that he did not need to be offered jobs because, quite simply, he had no intention of ever working again. All he required was a signature on a piece of paper that allowed him to draw his regular remuneration from Her Majesty’s grateful government at the Post Office. One or two members of staff naively attempted to point him towards gainful employment, even, on occasions, hinting that he would not receive the necessary signature if he did not at least attempt to find work, but those responsible seldom lasted long. It was not unusual for them to suddenly fail to turn up for work themselves, usually resulting in the other overworked members of staff ‘signing Montague off’ for extended periods, during which time he did not need to report to the office at all. The remaining staff members – many of whom had suffered unexplained ‘near misses’ to all manner of catastrophe – finally clubbed together to buy him a Fax machine through which they would send him – anonymously – the necessary paperwork each week.

To himself he remained simply Montague Barrington Pilkington Carrington Jones, a friendless, jobless orphan: a man who was isolated from the rest of humankind by a total lack of all empathy or sympathy and a personal hygiene regime that bordered on reckless. His shuttered upbringing had equipped him instead with an array of personal traits: antipathy, sociopathy and psychopathy that had coalesced to make him the person he was – the most ruthlessly efficient, emotionless serial killer ever known in the British Isles.

Of course no other person (still) alive knew that Montague…

A Few Things That Make Me Smile on Holiday (although not always in a good way)

I enjoy a holiday as much as the next man – unless, of course, the next man is the man that enjoys holidays far more than anybody else, in which case I probably don’t enjoy them quite as much. Holidays are like jewelled rainbows in rain-darkened skies, but they do, similarly, come at a cost e.g. it’s always raining somewhere. My wife is a lover of the ‘sunshine’ holiday and as she a) is a travel agent and b) books the holidays, it is generally the sun we go in search of. We have, on occasions, gone in search of other things: we went for a brilliant and freezing few nights to Lapland in search of the Northern Lights (which we found – only to discover, like everyone else, that they are much more spectacular on film) and we went to Scotland in search of what would possibly become my favourite whisky, but I remember very little of that. We have been to many a sunshine destination only to find that the sun has packed its bag and headed off home and, in our younger days, we have stayed in hotels that must have had to bribe someone in order to obtain the single star they displayed over the door, but I cannot honestly recall a bad holiday. There have been bad bits – hotels that claimed never to have heard of us and rooms with more resident wildlife than the Serengeti – but always outweighed by the good bits.

Now I have to be honest; I was born in the (very) late fifties and holidays then consisted of either perma-damp caravans, prize bingo and fish & chips or holiday camp barracks, prize bingo and roast rabbit. Until I met my wife and we honeymooned in Majorca, ‘abroad’ was very much a foreign country to me. The caravans of my youth were inadequately heated and lit by calor gas, devoid of all electricity, running water and flushing toilets. When I close my eyes I can still smell them and it is entirely possible that only selective memory tells me that they were the location for the very best of days, but they certainly opened my eyes to the fact that holidays, like everything else worth having, are what you make them.

I have a disposition that allows me to find pleasure in almost all of what I do – and despite the fact that holidays are almost always these days framed by my two most hated places, the airport and the airplane, I continue to derive great pleasure from them. I am not going to pretend that I spend my entire vacation grinning like some fat, albino Cheshire Cat, but holidays are always filled with things that bring joy to my heart and, to a lesser extent, a wry smile to tightened lips. I will list them below, purely in the order they occurred to me. Some of them you will recognise, some you may not. I do tend to view life through a lens of ‘Is it just me?’ so I’m not sure if they are a common theme of everyone’s vacation. Perhaps you can tell me…

Airport ‘rows’ between people who, for whatever reason, are temporarily blind to the fact that there are several thousand other people surrounding them.
The ‘farter’ on the airplane.
People walking bare foot across a pebble beach to reach the sea.
Old people who think that they can be sexy whilst dancing to Tina Turner.
Cats that take your seat when you go to the bar and refuse to move when you return.
When I say ‘Yes’ to ‘Do you want ice in your whisky?’
Soup for breakfast.
‘The trouble with the Germans is…’
That the French insist on calling Flip-Flops, ‘Flop-Flips’*
Mid-morning cake with a beer.
Five thousand TV channels, but only the News from Azerbaijan in English.
The face made by people as they first submerge their lower portions into the swimming pool.
‘It’s OK when you get used to it.’
People attempting to put a parasol up in the wind.
Chips with everything.
Cloud watch.
‘A five minute walk to the beach.’
The rare occasions when I am not the palest body around the pool.
Ill-fitting shorts and ill-advised swimming costumes.
‘Where are you from?’
‘England.’
‘Ah, where in England?’
‘Lincoln.’
‘Where?’
‘Lincoln. It’s in Lincolnshire.’
‘Is it near London?’
‘No.’
‘Manchester?’
‘No.’
‘Ah, you’re Scottish…’
‘Does this contain meat?’
‘No, just ham.’
Some people – and I include myself – should never wear a hat.
Dads and daughters, barriers down, actually enjoying each other’s company.
Children in a swimming pool are never cold – even when they’re blue.
Elderly men with holiday pony tails.
Every palm tree sunset looks like the cover of Hotel California.
The sheer impossibility of climbing aboard a lilo on the water.
Clouds – not because they block the sun, but because clouds are bloody brilliant.
Tasselled ponchos and tie-dye T shirts.
The words to English songs when sung by non-English speaking singers.
Remaining on the sunbed ‘just in case’ until driven indoors by hypothermia.
People who preface everything they say by ‘When we were in [insert very glamorous holiday resort] last year…’
Cocktails that contain none of the traditional ingredients.
Foods that do the same.
The series of ‘original works’ distributed throughout the hotel and obviously daubed by an over-Calpol’d three year old with the attention span of a juvenile gnat.
People who decided they didn’t need the mozzie spray.
Local musicians who are clearly much better suited to ‘the day job’.
Couples on their first holiday together.
Men who clearly do not usually wear shorts.
Men who don’t usually ‘dress up for tea’.
The dining room confusion of new arrivals.
Being there.
Mis-spelled tattoos.
Exaggerated sad faces on the return transfer bus.
The drinks trolley slalom to the aircraft toilet
The glum determination of those who are dying for a drink on the plane, but know that they have to drive at the other end.
Planning the next holiday on the way home

*Whilst the Aussies call them ‘thongs’ which we all know are skimpy knickers.

Black Boxing

It is called Black Boxing and this is just an example of how I understand it to work – although I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you were able to prove me completely wrong:
1. I have a bag full of things I no longer need.
2. I give it to charity.
3. The world is a better place.
The Black Box is sandwiched between steps two and three and contains all of the things that need to occur in order for step three to be achieved: things that I neither understand nor know about. I know that there is a whole cart load of cogs in there, but I just don’t want to even think about how to turn them. I (in my utter saintliness) give, and someone who needs the help benefits from it. It is all I need to know.

Except that I am suddenly beginning to become aware of how liberally my life is littered with the little consciousness vacuums that lay between my actions and the ultimate consequences of them. I have no idea what happens between putting an empty beer bottle into the recycle bin and drinking another beer a few weeks later, ensconced in the self-same silica, because I don’t need to know. It is of no consequence to me. Conscience tells me I have done a good thing by recycling my bottle and the Black Box confirms it, by hiding anything that might, like Putin’s line on ‘defence’, point in another direction. Black Boxes contain all of life’s messy stuff: you meet a girl and fifty years later, when you celebrate your Golden Wedding Anniversary, nobody cares at all about all of the stuff that happened in between times – good days, bad days, laughter, tears, shouting, coo-ing, pendulous haemorrhoids and a veruca the size of a Pacific Island (before the Chinese built an airbase on it). As we get older it is increasingly life itself that gets Black Boxed.

Obviously, it is not always a good idea to delve too deeply into what comes in between. How many meat eaters actually want to know what goes on with the sheep and the cows and the pigs between farm and plate? They have a happy, carefree life, they die a stress-free painless death and that’s that. The Black Box contains a carnivore’s conscience.

The Black Box is the very essence of Psychology and Sociology: the core of all dilemmas and the essence of all solutions. Take a known situation and a wholly predictable outcome, stick a whopping great Black Box between them and bingo! nobody even has to consider the mechanics of what happens in between. The world becomes a much simpler place. Psychopaths are, for instance, famously the responsibility of absentee fathers, but as long as we do not need to understand the mechanics of it, we can find a solution by merely providing a father for each and every budding Norman Bates. Any man who does not have a son must adopt a proto-psycho and, simply in the act of doing so, eradicate the infant’s antisocial tendencies. Nobody needs to know how. The Black Box contains the hows and whys. Drop any number of fatherless children together with an equal number of childless fathers (I know, I know, but stick with me) into the Black Box and the world instantly becomes a better place. Perhaps someone could create a Black Box capable of taking in a self-seeking, sexist, entitled, ego-maniac before spitting out a normal, well-adjusted human being. Let’s think about who we would like to put in it. I bet we’re all thinking about the same former prince.

I mention all of this because I think that I may well have just isolated a Black Box that could save the world! Let me talk you through it. The planet is suffocating in a blanket of greenhouse gases, heading towards temperatures that could lead to financial calamity for tanning parlour owners and a mass-extinction event capable of engulfing the rest of humankind – although not necessarily the ones you’d want. Carbon is the problem. We can either stop releasing carbon into the atmosphere – which we seem to be incapable of doing – or find a way of removing it retrospectively. This we can do, although it is in itself a complex process which, I think, involves giant filters, melamine, broccoli and a whole lot of other stuff which is probably contained within an even bigger Black Box. I know that diamonds are made from carbon. They are dense, they are famously ‘forever’, they are stable, virtually indestructible and very manufacturable, much like government lies, so here is my solution:
1. Capture the carbon from the atmosphere
2. Black Box
3. Use it to make diamonds on a massive scale
4. Black Box
5. Bury the diamonds where no-one will attempt to dig them up (Chernobyl, Gruinard Island or Wolverhampton) and Bob’s your Mother’s Brother. The planet is saved and all you need to do, dear human race, is simply fill in the Black Box…

P.S. Believe it or not, I am actually by qualification a sociologist and I do understand how Black Boxes really work, but wouldn’t it be lovely to live in a world saved by poetic licence?

P.P.S For a couple of weeks I had, thanks I am told to a bot, a readership in the thousands. On the third week my figures returned to normal but last week my weekly blog had a readership that could be counted without taking off the second glove. I don’t think it was a bad post, but even if it was, that would not explain the absence of readers: nobody would know it was bad until they had read it. If anyone can explain I would love to hear.